The Hand of Christ

by Joseph Nagle

  PART I

  Chapter One – Present Day

  The Grand Mosque of Umayyad

  Damascus, Syria

  CIA Officer Dr. Michael Sterling entered the large great room of the centuries old Grand Mosque. Normally, he would have been impressed by the slender columns topped with ornate capitals of the Corinthian order flanking the great room’s entry; and the colorful mosaics on the interior walls that depicted Paradise.

  Today wasn’t a normal day.

  Michael wasn’t supposed to be there.

  Scanning the large room, it only took him a moment to see Yousef amidst the small gathering of ambassadors and their assistants.

  Michael moved slowly while carefully studying the man’s body language. Yousef Malak Aramasu is with Syrian Intelligence and Michael’s counterpart. Yousef is also Michael’s asset; a long-time source of intelligence on Islamic activity in the Middle East.

  Yousef wasn’t hard to spot: short, thickly built, and bald; a fit and fiercely intense man for his age. He carried himself with well earned authority and confidence. Michael often referred to him as a Syrian bull.

  Besides his unique appearance, Yousef often compulsively rubbed his bald scalp – a nervous habit he had picked up when they both were graduate students at Georgetown fourteen years ago – and was doing it now.

  It had been some time since Michael was forced into the field for a covert mission. Over the past three years, his expertise on Middle East relations and policy had allowed him to keep his talents cemented in the US instead of conducting paramilitary operations overseas. It was a change of pace that he needed and welcomed.

  At 38, Michael’s short wavy blond hair had been spared the thinning consequences from a career of immense demands, but had suffered in other ways. The small wisps of silver along the edges of his hairline were nearly indistinguishable, but had prematurely crept higher with the years. This trip would add to that movement. It annoyed him to be in Syria.

  Yousef was on the far side of the great room and was politely chatting with the Syrian and Lebanese delegations. Michael easily picked up on subtle signs from his asset, and could see that his old friend was unapologetically preoccupied and not really digesting the conversation.

  The US and Israeli counterparts to the Lebanese and Syrian delegates anxiously waited to begin the secret negotiations. They were in the middle of their own muffled conversations on the side of the room adjacent to Yousef. Without any doubt, every government representative in the hall was going over one last time the tactics they would use during the talks.

  The men – born into their hatred of one another and enemies for more than fifteen centuries – were separated by an unnecessarily large yellow-marble table. Slightly oval, the table nearly ran the length of the hall. It was mesmerizing; the highly polished surface of the marble reflected a kaleidoscope of colors from the ornate tiles that lined the walls of the hall. The table’s well designed effect was almost hypnotic.

  Spread about the center of the table was treats of karabij – a local specialty – and cherry topped baklava. Pretentious, heavy silver trays had been ceremoniously placed on both ends of the long, polished marble slab holding the required number of ceramic demitasses for the Turk kahvesi. Thick copper pots with long wooden handles sat atop each tray, steaming a sweet aroma laced with cardamom into the air. Michael loved Turkish coffee; his jet lag could really use a cup of the dark concoction right now.

  Yousef looked up as all in the room sensed Michael’s entry, not unusual given that Michael’s tall, broad-shouldered athletic frame and classic American good looks stood out in a room full of short, dark-haired Middle Eastern men, and one bald one.

  The two intelligence officers caught each other’s glances; Yousef offered Michael a slight and respectful smile. The Syrian Officer barely nodded, but Michael knew Yousef well. The signal was clear, and told him to move to the corner of the room. Yousef wanted to speak with him, and he didn’t want to wait. Understanding the silent message, Michael quickly paid his regards to the US and Israeli Ambassadors and then circumambulated the large table that separated him from Yousef whilst nodding a respectful hello toward the Lebanese and Syrian delegations.

  As the two officers approached one another, safely away from the curious ears of the others, the old friends warmly clasped hands. Yousef spoke first and said, “It is good to see you, Michael. I was extremely pleased that you could make it on such short notice.”

  Michael’s response wasn’t as courteous, and he quietly snapped, “You didn’t give me much choice, Yousef. You contacted me through the Director; you used an obsolete dead drop. You know that I am no longer in the field. What the hell were you thinking when you did that!” Michael had to refrain a bit from showing him the heights of his true level of anger; Yousef had taken some real liberties with his methods.

  “Please, Michael, I can see that you are displeased by my actions. I was left with little choice. I couldn’t reach you and you had to be here, I needed you here.”

  “Here, in a Mosque!” Michael’s voice rose just enough to draw the slight ire of the US Ambassador. Aware of his minor faux pas, Michael led Yousef by his elbow further from the prying ears of the delegates.

  “You have taken a big risk, Yousef. An American and Syrian intelligence officer meeting during Middle East peace negotiations in a mosque isn’t so subtle.”

  “Michael, Mosques have long been the place that Muslims work to settle disputes, even with non-Muslims. You, of all people, should understand that. Given the scope of these talks, being here is comforting to many in attendance. I offer you my apologies for my methods, but as I said, I needed to reach you.”

  Michael knew that Yousef had something important for him; the break in protocol was unprecedented. “I couldn’t be reached for good reason. Yousef, tell me what’s going on, it’s not like you to go outside of the rules.”

  Lowering his voice to a raspy whisper, Yousef surprised Michael when he said, “For quite some time, I have been tracking an organization that has infiltrated my government and yours as well as others. Michael, this organization has been in existence for centuries, and operates under a charter with only one goal.”

  Yousef stopped speaking, and glanced around the room making sure that he couldn’t be heard. Michael wasn’t quite sure how to react to what his asset was telling him, and decided to stay quiet and listen.

  “Michael, they are planning to…” Yousef stopped mid-sentence, one member of the Syrian delegation was moving closer.

  Yousef stepped closer to Michael and said, “We can’t talk here; let’s get some lunch when we are finished. I have something important for you to see, and then you will understand. Meet me at the usual place, one hour after we conclude.”

  The two officers of their respective intelligence organizations were interrupted by a member of the Syrian delegation, “Gentlemen, shall we take our seats?” It was more of a statement than it was a question, all of the men knew that what they were about to discuss had historic repercussions; few wanted to wait.

  Indeed, there would be repercussions to their meeting, but not for the ones they had hoped. Unseen to the men, outside of the mosque, the streets were atypically quiet: the stifling noise and choking smog of the incessant traffic was absent; the vendors that lined the streets were not there; the beggars that clawed for spare change were missing, and the heavily garbed women that used the morning to make their way to market were all gone.

  In the shadows of Umayyad, the Grand Mosque of Damascus, a company of Hezbollah soldiers waited for the signal from Major Shalid Maliki - the signal to attack.

  Chapter Two

  Papal Apartment

  The Vatican

  Joshua Apalis Reisenberger sat in his private third floor studio, trying to stay focused on the task at hand; the entire world was watching, and anxiously waited for his first words of wisdom.

  Expectations for him were high.

  As is always the case with men in lofty positi
ons, there were those that were waiting for him to fail; wanting for him to fail. The pressure to perform more than just admirably was suffocating. The absence of any new and well-received doctrine from him would constitute a miserable failure, and should have been the very matter that encapsulated every thought he now had, but it wasn’t; his mind was elsewhere.

  Through the nearby, oversized third-floor window, intense rays from the high sun, first, painted the one-hundred-thirty-two foot obelisk in the middle of St. Peter’s Square before making their way uninvited into his studio. The unassuming window, now bare of the white-robed man, is the place where he stands each Sunday blessing the crowds amassed on the square below.

  Joshua was distracted and his thoughts were unfocused; the bright sunlight that came through the window only added to that distraction. Instead of attending to his task, he thought about the path of the invading mid-day sunlight. Starting from the heavens, the rays traveled over the tired currents of the darkened Tiber River, drifting lazily as they peacefully burned their way into the Apostolic Palace: his new home.

  Joshua stared, almost enviously, at each unencumbered ray that incessantly split through the slight separation of the blood--red velvet curtains adorning his pulpit. His eyes traveled the path made by the beams of light as they floated from the window to the apartment floor; to where they sharply caught a slightly raised corner of the inlay on one of the 16th century marble slabs.

  Instinctively, he squinted at the sunlight as it bounced off of the marble floor. He had no choice in the matter: the refraction from the slightly misshapen floor fiercely latched onto the eyes of Pope Leo XIV, reminding him of what he had found there. The Pope – now and forever to be known as Leo – let out a heavy sigh and reeled deeper into the worn confines of the oversized padded leather and ancient chair, resigned by the distraction and the remembrance it brought.

  When Leo looked at the broken tile, his mind drifted to that day nearly three months ago. He thought the same thing now that he had thought on that day when he had first noticed the broken floor: Odd, how could they have not fixed this?

  The part that had been odd was that the new Pope’s apartment had recently undergone an extensive as well as exhaustive three-month renovation. Sworn to secrecy, over two-hundred laypersons, engineers, and architects worked incessantly around the clock to manage a nearly complete overhaul of his new home; the place where Leo – just like every Pope – would reside until his death.

  His predecessor had no real desire to change his quarters or to modernize them; he had preferred, quite simply, a place to relax and reflect. The recently deceased Pope’s inattention, or apathy, had led to the laborious remodeling of the apartment.

  Numerous renovations, updates, and additions to the apartment were made; the walls were even lined with new bookshelves to house Leo’s vast collection of both ancient and modern texts and classic works. Each piece of literature had been meticulously placed by the workers in precisely the same order they had been found on the bookshelves they were removed from, and when relocated from their previous home. There were thousands of books.

  Updates to the apartment were expertly managed, and in a tremendously short time given the scope of the project. The electrical system was archaic by modern standards; having long since been phased out by Italy, the apartment still had the 125-volt electrical outlets of previous generations that were rarely found elsewhere.

  It was an inside joke to the previous Pope’s staff that surely the now deceased prior Pontiff would have expired well before his natural life expectancy, or burned down the apartment by using the wrong electrical converter to plug in his beloved DVD player. The entire apartment had to be rewired for the more modern 220 volt configuration.

  Additionally, during the renovation it had been found that the piping for the apartment’s water supply was covered with tremendous amounts of rust and lime; thus, the entire plumbing system had required extensive modernization. The out of date kitchen was begging for a facelift and had been completely remodeled including new, modern appliances, cabinetry and counters.

  Most interesting, if not slightly crude, the false ceiling throughout the apartment had contained unseen buckets of water resting precariously along the unseen rafters. They had been quietly placed by the staff of the previous Pope to catch the falling rain that leaked through the holes in the seldom maintained and surprisingly dilapidated papal roof. Upon inspection, some of the buckets were nearly full of stagnant rainwater.

  Numerous heads of state had taken audience with the Pope in his apartment, and had been merely a heartbeat away from being drenched by a falling bucket of dirty old storm water. Hardly representative of the fastidious nature and attention to detail one would expect from the Vatican.

  The Vatican had been an independent sovereign city-state since the Lateran Treaty in 1929 with the Kingdom of Italy (signed by the fascist Prime Minister Benito Mussolini) and contained some of the world’s oldest and most precious works of art and architecture. In addition to its historical possessions, the Roman Church holds the records of some of history’s greatest moments both known and unknown to the world (and the source of Leo’s current trouble).

  Upon its consummation, the Lateran Treaty conferred in perpetuity enormous wealth to the Holy See. So immense and valuable were the Church’s holdings that, with all of its global interests, the Church was rumored to be one of the wealthiest organizations in the world.

  To find the Papal Apartments of the Apostolic Palace in such need of refinement and repair was an embarrassment to the Vatican; they had worked hard to stifle the extent of the apartment’s needs. Using only devout Catholics during the remodeling, the Church had threatened all of the workers with excommunication if they broke their vow of secrecy.

  The table at which a distracted Leo sat idly was small, simple in design, and constructed of old and deeply rich mahogany. Immensely dark, it was marked with the nicks and dents of papal frustration from its three centuries of prior use. The table rested on a raised platform in front of Leo’s numerous bookshelves and was the same ritualistic spot where each Pope would sit to work on Catholic doctrine and sermons from one Conclave to the next.

  It was an interesting, if not juvenile, tradition starting with Pope Clement XI in 1700 for each successive Pontiff to carve his initials into the table’s top. There were twenty-three sets of initials, including his newly carved set. For a moment, he had felt like a young choir boy after having carved his own initials onto the table.

  Today, the new Pope had sat down with his intent to work on his first Encyclical as the Holy Father, but could not stay committed to the task. He was supposed to be hard at work on his first letter of Catholic doctrine and had intended to release it by week’s end for use by the Church’s Bishops around the world. But his current state of duress had him thinking only of one thing, and that one thing wasn’t the Encyclical.

  I wish I had not been elected the Pope, thought Leo.

  He wanted to regret this thought, but did not and would not. Leo’s recent discovery had changed him. He buried his face into his hands and repeated the thought: I wish I was not Pope.

  Only a few months prior, upon the deliverance of the white smoke from the Conclave, the Cardinals seated around the wall of the Sistine Chapel all decisively wrote on folded paper, “Eligo in summum pontificem Joshua Apalis Reisenberger,” electing him Pope.

  His election was not without some controversy, and this bothered Pope Leo XIV; Leo wanted this controversy to be the basis off his first communication to the Bishops and, thus, to all Catholics world-wide.

  The center of the controversy around his selection as Pope emanated from the time that he had held a position as an influential member of the Roman Curia, the administrative arm of the Holy See and the governing authority for the entire Roman Catholic Church.

  His selection as Pope came as a bit of a surprise to the world mostly due to a document published in 1999 – written by him while he had worked in the Roman Curi
a – titled The Dominion of our Lord. The publishing of this document had sparked heated debate, outrage even, amongst the world and with many Catholics. Most troubling was the contradictory nature of his document’s main theme of salvation against the view held by many young Catholics that the Church was finally modernizing.

  By electing Joshua as Pope, many within the flock had felt the Church was taking a very large and unnecessary step backward.

  During his time with the Curia, he felt that he had been correct in writing that the Roman Catholic way is the only way. The main issue with the central theme of the document had been the manner in which it was interpreted; to many, the document clearly had denied salvation to non-Catholic Christians.

  The recent death of his friend, the last Pope, had shaken Leo. The death of a great man and close friend, coupled with his own recent brush with mortality and impending open heart surgery, had forced Leo to think once more of the path to salvation. Must one necessarily be a Roman Catholic to find his path to heaven? Wouldn’t a benevolent God accept all into his kingdom that had led a virtuous and moral life whether Catholic or not?

  Time and age tends to make a man more conservative, more reserved, and unwilling to see beyond his own periphery. Leo had fallen into this same geriatric trap, but as of late was seeing quite a bit more clearly and beyond his own diminishing horizon. He had become much more introspective and realized that as his life was nearer to the end the opportunity to create a new beginning for the Church was at hand. Leo wondered if what he had found - the source of his worries - was some sort of divine inspiration showing him a way to give the Church that new beginning.

  Lost in his thoughts, Leo’s gaze drifted unknowingly back to the rays of light coming through his window. Throwing his hand up to cover his face, he let out a small shriek of frustration. Again, the seemingly ceaseless refraction of burning light that bounced off of the marble floor sharply poked his eye demanding to be noticed.