The Hand of Christ

by Joseph Nagle

  “I don’t know what you are talking about.” How could he put the two together so quickly?

  Then it hit his father, Michael must have the Hand of Christ. Blurting out, “Holy shit, Michael, you have it don’t you? Oh my God, it exists. I can’t believe it. Do you know what this means, Michael? Have you any clue? My Lord! I mean that figuratively, not literally, Michael - this proves that the claims of the Church for the past two-thousand years have been fabrications; outright lies! I knew it, everyone called me crazy, but I knew it!”

  Michael’s father sounded as if he had just discovered Atlantis. The man was giddy and he wasn’t trying to hide it. Michael knew that his father was probably jumping around, shaking his finger in the air as if he were chastising a child. Sighing, Michael said, “Dad, calm down. I haven’t told you that I have seen it.”

  Michael's father shot back, “Oh, put a sock in it you spook. You are my son, I know you better than you know yourself. You may be able to cast a stone face at everyone else you tell your lies, but I can read you like a book. How do you think I knew about what you do?” His father’s voice was rising with excitement. Michael imagined the man pacing restlessly back in forth in his book-filled, unkempt office.

  Back in his office, pacing in a frenzy, and around stacks of books, Michael’s father nearly yelled out, “Tell me, where was it? Is there more to it? Is there anything else written on it?”

  “You really need to calm yourself down, Dad. I can’t go into this right now. Not on this phone, I have already said too much.” At that moment Michael could hear the heavy footsteps of the CQ coming down the hallway. Shit. “Dad, listen to me. I have to go. I’ll stop by tonight, at your office.” Michael was about to hang up the phone when the marine’s voice loudly barked, “Sir, you can’t be in here!”

  Michael hadn’t yet put down the phone and his father was still on it trying to ask him more questions. Michael sputtered off a string of phrases that confused the old man, “Flight time is in two hours, terminal B, and gate 68 - right? Okay, thanks for your help.” Michael hung up on his babbling father and turned to the marine, “Sorry, I wanted to confirm my flight out of SFO, and this office was open, so I helped myself to the phone.”

  The marine gave Michael an unsure look, ushered him out, and closed the door, but locked it before stepping away. “Sir, I believe your ride is waiting for you outside.”

  “Okay, thanks.” This was Michael’s chance to find out the other thing for which he came inside. As he was being escorted to the exit of the building, he asked the CQ, “Sergeant, the other two Hornets, when are they due back? I had a bet with one of the pilots that I could do a barrel roll at four-g’s; he told me I was full of shit. I won the bet and I want to collect my twenty bucks.”

  The Marine CQ responded, “After leaving Palmdale, they were logged to fly another three hours before their return to base. The pilots needed some flight time. It should be another hour or so before they get here. Who was it? Major Johnston? That guy is always betting stupid stuff. The Major always and conveniently forgets when it comes time to pay up. The cheap bastard still owes me fifty.”

  The information caught Michael off guard; three Hornets were sent to Palmdale, but he had only seen one. Things were getting more complicated.

  Leaving the detachment’s headquarters building, Michael climbed into the waiting Yukon and stated the only three words he would say on the short ride to SFO, “To the airport.”

  Chapter Twenty

  Flight 369 – SFO to DIA

  San Francisco to Denver

  The plane was full and the Flight Attendant ambled her way through the cabin pushing the drink cart in what seemed a purposeful and cruelly slow manner.

  Row 28, seat F of the 737 fit Michael’s place of choice on a commercial flight. Really, any row beyond 25, so long as it was an aisle seat, was his preference.

  Standing nearly 6’ 2” and a lean 205 pounds, Dr. Michael Sterling needed the opportunity to stretch into the aisle, even if that meant that it could be only one of his long legs.

  Something was always better than nothing, his father always said.

  Michael had to put aside his anger for the contempt his father had of his job with the CIA. Michael had needed his father’s expertise about the book, and, besides, it had been good to hear his father’s voice again.

  On this flight, the aisle seat that he coveted was even more critical given the wounds caused by the fragments of shrapnel that had been lodged into his right thigh. But what annoyed Michael more was the old book shoved into his pants. Its corners, bound by metal, pierced him at the waist with every slight movement.

  Michael had not been concerned in the slightest that the metal corners of the book would set off the detectors at airport security in San Francisco; the Colt 1911 .45 caliber handgun strapped to his left side would do that just fine. When flying commercial, and with official cover, diplomatic credentials were provided to Officers by the Company; it made security at any airport in the US, and many US friendly nations, a non-issue. Michael had been given a set of credentials during the debriefing at Skunk Works along with the new weapon.

  Michael was uncomfortable in his seat and shifted back and forth in hopes of finding a more comfortable position. The pain that ran through his right side increased somewhat. It was as if the pain purposely attempted to mute the thoughts that cycled repeatedly through his mind, thoughts about the events that had just transpired in Syria. Those events ended with the death of his old friend, a man that Michael thought had been a CIA asset. Yousef’s impending demise had compelled him to remove some unknown burden onto Michael.

  He would miss Yousef, one of his closest friends for the last fourteen years.

  The attack was still fresh in his mind; burned into what remained of his clothes. Michael could smell the faint odor of sulpher from the smoke of the detonated grenades, and the carbon from the two weapons he had used to kill seven Hezbollah soldiers. He wondered if anyone else noticed.

  There was no time to change, except for the fresh trousers and shoes given to him by the aircraft carrier’s Captain, Michael’s clothes looked horrible. Unfortunately, Top-Secret mach fifteen, unmanned stealth aircraft rarely came stocked with a fresh change of clothing, Michael supposed; especially for those hastily extracted from the site of an attack by Hezbollah in Syria.

  The US wasn’t there; Michael wasn’t there. That’s what the official position of the United States and the CIA would be.

  Michael knew that right now somewhere in CIA Headquarters at Langley, some low-level Operations Officer had already written the “official” Associated Press dispatch, approved by the Director, and had been passed on to all major media sources. The US would officially declare no knowledge of the negotiations and would condemn the attack as that of a known terrorist organization. The President would issue a statement saying that “his heart and prayers would go out to all of the innocent civilians affected.”

  It would be the standard White House rhetoric.

  Undoubtedly, footage of the attack had already hit the internet, and somehow CNN would already have a crew at the mosque, sifting through the carnage, and with the contrived AP story spewing from their lips. It would be all over the media and internet by now.

  The Company had used the major sources of American and European media for decades as a tool to propagandize popular thought. This had been a well kept secret. But through the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA), if one were so inclined and had the intelligence, ability, and time to scour thousands of recently declassified documents, this fact can be verified. Compliance with The FOIA did not mean that the information had to be easy to find, just that it had to be available. Ironically, the CIA offers an online tool called the CIA Records Search Tool (CREST) where all of the declassified elements of CIA history can be found.

  Americans have long suspected that certain parts of the media were merely an arm of the government, used to “assist” certain political activities throughout the entir
e world. To this end, they are wrong.

  The majority of those in government have no idea that this manipulation exists and they never will. It has been an unofficial tool, and quietly used by only a select few in the Company; it is a tool whose power has waned in recent years. The advantageous use – or exploitation, depending on who you ask – of the media was much easier before the days of blogs and instant video uploads; it is much harder now to control the flow of instantaneous information.

  The internet, originally intended to be a shared connection between multiple scholarly databases, and between military institutions, morphed quickly into something much more. The government didn’t expect this, or the speed at which it occurred.

  The Web had, at a blazingly feverish pace, nearly eliminated the power of intelligence organizations to manipulate the truth and guide popular thought. There were already actions in place to fix this.

  An unannounced bout of turbulence painfully reminded Michael of Yousef; his words echoed in his thoughts. Playing like a song whose lyrics are stuck like a broken record in one’s head, Yousef’s dying words, echoed by his father, reverberated:

  “Michael, He did not die on the cross.”

  But there was disturbingly more: The book that Yousef handed to Michael gave detailed information on a secret organization; one that Michael thought was fictitious. He wondered what his father’s reaction to that would have been. He had purposely kept this information from him.

  The cover of the book was titled “Orden,” or “The Order,” and underneath the Latin inscription for The Order was the Roman numeral “I.”

  When he opened the book, what he encountered had both astonished and terrified him. The first page was emblazoned with a blood-red handprint, and the name Yeshua written in tiny Hebrew letters underneath. Michael was perplexed by this; Yousef had said that Yeshua was the Hebrew name for Christ as did his father. The symbol had a place in history, but few had known of it. Was he carrying an actual hand print of Jesus, the one his father had mentioned, or was it just symbolic?

  Dr. Michael Sterling has spent the better part of his life immersing himself in history. Invariably, one could not be a student of history without crossing paths with the many conspiracy theories that exist. The Order is supposedly a small network of intellectual elites working to dominate the world through one world government, and who want to thin the world’s population until there is nothing left but an elite class and those that serve them.

  Supposedly, they have wealth beyond any imaginable extremes, and in many forms. They control politics and policy through their financial resources and through an intricate and small network of well placed political and corporate elite. Other aspects of the conspiracy point to the use of social engineering to influence people’s attitudes, behaviors, and accepted norms. Keeping the people weak and in conflict has been their mantra, it averts attention away from them, and from social progress.

  Could it really be? Does this network exist? His mind went back to another thing that Yousef had said: “They have infiltrated my government and yours as well as others.”

  The book outlined a history of such political manipulation, and the final pages seemed to contain a partial description of the location of the organization’s treasure. However, it was cryptic and not revelatory by any means. It didn’t seem to point to any one place or any one thing that was the treasure. It appeared to be a riddle, and was written in English: Two halves of the world, evil leads to good. He is the first, the key to the beginning. To the sea i go. To the Presidents’ Mother. It is the second key to our power. It is Hidden.

  However confusing that was, the most troublesome pages in the book were in a section that was simply titled Terminus. His Latin was a bit rusty, but clearly it meant terminate; it was a kill list. A descending list of names was on each page, each name had been crossed out except for the last two: Joseph Reisenberger, and Mustafa Museini – the names of the new Pope and of the Ayatollah of Iran.

  What was just as astounding was that the name, Mahmoud Abdul, was listed on the line just above the Ayatollah’s; a name almost anyone would immediately recognize.

  President Mahmoud Abdul of Iraq had been recently tried and convicted by an International War Tribunal for crimes against humanity. The punishment of death had been exacted by that council in the prior year. The trial and subsequent execution of the ex-president had been met with a tremendous amount of outcry from certain Islamic groups and liberal countries. Not that it mattered: he hung anyway.

  Liberal organizations of the international community had called the war in Iraq an invasion that was created by a highly politicized lie. The US, backed by France and the UK, had sat in front of the United Nations and had protested the procurement and possession of weapons of mass destruction by Iraq. They had argued in front of the UN that there was evidence that Iraq had plans to use those weapons against western countries. As evidence, they had pointed to Iraq’s use of chemical weapons in the past with the Kurds and with Iran, and to the ex-Iraqi president’s desire to build an atomic weapon.

  Initially, the deployment of forces to Iraq had been accomplished without the approval of Congress and under the guise of a peace keeping mission. The US, along with forces from participating western countries, had entered Iraq to assist and protect the United Nations’ Weapons Inspectors.

  The weapons of mass destruction were never found.

  Provoked by the build-up of a NATO “peace keeping” force in his country, and fed by his own ego and growing frustration, Abdul had grown impatient. Further stoking the flames of his discontent, the citizens of Iraq and other Islamic communities of the Middle East had chastised his weakness when confronted by infidels.

  Mahmoud Abdul, in an effort to save face, eventually had confronted the military forces in his country with his own army, but the result had been a vicious and swift war by the US coalition, and had lead to his disappearance and subsequent capture six months later.

  Scanning the list of names again, it became quite obvious to Michael that each crossed out person on the list was a prominent leader. Further, each person had been killed or died under mysterious or controversial circumstances.

  Michael could see that the list was chronological; the list ended with the name of the current Pope, and was preceded by the recently assassinated Ayatollah, the executed President of Iraq, Bachir Gemayal of Lebanon, Robert Kennedy, JFK, and Hitler. The list continued on for centuries.

  Heads of state, Presidents, prominent leaders, Kings, and Popes; The Order was seemingly responsible for nearly every major political assassination in history!

  Quickly, it hit Michael. Unable to merely just think the words, Michael quietly stammered that, “They killed the Ayatollah. They are going to kill the Pope! The Pope is who Yousef was referring to when he had said, “Protect the next.” The new Pope was just elected in the Conclave; the new Pope was the next – Protect the next Pope was what Yousef had meant!” Holy shit, he thought.

  At the footsteps of his death, Yousef had repeated, “…protect the next, protect the next...”

  “That’s it!” Michael said, although this time, a bit too loud. A couple of heads turned his way. All Michael could do was offer an awkward grin and give a quiet apology to the glaring passengers.

  Contemplating what he had just uncovered, it had made sense. The new Pope had just taken his position in the last few months; his name was the newest on this list. He was the next. This was why Yousef had worked so hard to get him to Syria. He had information on the both the assassination of the Ayatollah and of the Pope!

  My God, Michael thought. It was bad enough that the ambassadors of four warring countries and the Ayatollah had been assassinated, but if the Pope were killed it could possibly lead to... Michael shuddered at the thought running through his mind: World War III.

  But what purpose would it serve? Michael really wanted to get off this plane.

  As an officer for the NCS, Michael has conducted numerous core intelligence
collection operations overseas. From a cognitive perspective, Michael was a talented officer. He was a highly regarded and an appreciated member of the intelligence community, not only for the many successful missions he conducted, but also for his post-doctoral work on the history of the relations between the Middle East and the West.

  Most of his current assignments focused on providing historical guidance and expertise relative to the intelligence collected by overseas agents. Spending nearly a decade in Special Operations, Michael had shifted from the more dangerous work of Special Operations to the more mundane – but by far less dangerous – work of helping to create usable Middle East policy. His analysis of intelligence was for “Eyes Only” viewing by select members of the intelligence communities and the President.

  The assassination of the Ayatollah coupled with the attack at the Umayyad Mosque would have devastating consequences that would lead to war, that’s what he would tell the Director; undoubtedly, his analysis would get to the President. But worse, the killing of the Pope would certainly be tied into today’s events as retaliatory and would be catastrophic. Each side would blame one another, neither would bend. The world would be caught in a panic, straddled by a seething Iran and an angry United States. The scariest prospect to consider was that right in the middle was Israel: a nuclear capable country.

  He could only imagine the look on the President’s face when he (or the Director) gave him this analysis.

  The talks in Syria had not gone as planned, that much was obvious. His dead friend had been an asset of Syrian Intelligence that the CIA had courted for years. When it was learned that Yousef would be attending Georgetown for graduate work – undoubtedly a cover for his own covert activities in the US – it had opened a massive window of opportunity for the CIA to recruit him. (Often, foreign intelligence agencies send their officers to attend US colleges for study, particularly in graduate work. It doubled as a fantastic means of cover for their subversive activities in the US.)