by Rene Fomby
Foreign Minister Giordano pointed to a notation near the bottom of the first page. “It says here they’ve issued their own version of Article Five. An attack on Turkey by any Western nation will be considered an attack on Allah himself.”
The prime minister nodded, his brow now deeply knotted, his eyes turned downward in thought. “And they are labeling any attempt at such an attack as a new European crusade. Which, by the way, may be ancient history to all of us, but I’m told that their wounds from the old crusades are still very raw and fresh. Even though they largely won that war.”
“So this is what we’re left with,” Moretti mumbled. “Our own people in open revolt, and a war that promises to rip this world completely in two hanging by a thread.”
“The Revelation of St. John,” explained a voice from the back of the room. It was a minor aide, a female intern who was somehow related to one of the ministers.
“Excuse me?” asked the prime minister.
The aide looked cowed, not having intended to say anything out loud, but the prime minister encouraged her to speak up.
“The Book of Revelations. From the New Testament. There will be wars and rumors of wars, pestilence sweeping the earth. Brothers will turn against brothers, sons against their fathers, mothers against their daughters. And then the earth as we know it will be destroyed. They call it the Apocalypse. Eschaton, the end of the world.”
“God have mercy on our souls,” Carlo Rossi said in a quiet but strained voice, as the rest of the room muttered their agreement.
70
Vatican City
“Your Holiness, the NATO alliance isn’t totally rejecting the idea of going to war with Turkey. They just think we might be better served by stepping back a little and seeing if we can find some kind of peaceful middle ground.” Joseph Pinotti had spent the last thirty minutes trying to convince the pope that diplomatic measures might prove to be more productive than the military option. But he wasn’t making much headway.
“Diplomatic measures? Pah! And what did Jesus himself say about this? ‘No one can enter a strong man’s house without first tying him up. Then he can plunder the strong man’s house.’ Turkey attacked us precisely because they know we are weak and unwilling to face the strong man. NATO and the West have been turning the other cheek so much, they no longer even know from which direction the blows are coming. The strong man has his will with us while we labor to tie our own pathetic selves into knots.”
Pinotti nodded, struggling to show proper deference for the Bishop of Rome while still trying to deflect him from the hopeless path the pope had laid out before them. “Yes, Your Holiness, I understand completely. But without the support of the NATO Command, what chance do we have against an enemy like Turkey? Our Swiss Guards would be ground up like sausage in the first few minutes—”
“The NATO Command? They are like little children, fussing to their parents about missing their evening dessert. But in the end, they don’t matter, NATO doesn’t matter. Only the people they serve matter, and those people are ready to hear God’s message, to hear about God’s plans for their future.” The pope had been playing with a fountain pen, and he now set it down firmly on the desk in front of him. He had come to a decision. “Notify my staff to send out a press release. I will be making a speech from the loggia at St. Peter’s tomorrow morning.”
“A speech? What kind of speech?” The only thing Pinotti had learned so far about this pope was that he was unpredictable. And a speech, when he was in this kind of mood? It couldn’t turn out well.
“Yes, it is time for all to us come together to serve God. ‘If a kingdom is divided against itself, that kingdom cannot stand. If a house is divided against itself, that house cannot stand.’” He motioned for Pinotti to leave, all the while mumbling under his breath. “NATO? We’ll just see who wields the real power in this world …”
71
Cappadocia
“Where’s Boucher?” Constantine growled as he swept into the room. “He can’t handle a piss-ant FBI agent and my son’s Jewish whore given all this time?”
Peter Boucher’s chief lieutenant looked away, not wanting herself to become the target of the emperor’s ire. “We haven’t heard from him since he left for Spain, Your Grace.”
“Well, I’m tired of waiting for him. You—what’s your name?”
“Duval, Your Grace. Simone Duval.”
“Okay, Duval, you’re my general now. We’ll deal with Boucher when and if he ever bothers to show up again.” Constantine pointed to a seat across from him, grabbing one himself. “Sit down. What do you know about Eschaton?”
“I think the better question is, what do I not know about it. I assume I’ve been fully read in on all of the details, but Boucher had a habit of keeping some things close to the vest.”
“Right.” Constantine tapped a pen lightly on the table top in front of him. “Okay, things are moving forward much faster than we had planned. The pope is going to make an announcement tomorrow morning, and we need to be poised and ready to take advantage of it. Today is what? Wednesday? That’s perfect. We’ll release the video tomorrow night, right about dinner time in Europe, and we need the priests to execute their part of the plan immediately afterward. That way Europe will wake up with the entire southern half of the continent in total disarray, total bedlam. On fire, quite literally. Once we’re sure that part of the plan is in place, we’ll make the move. I think Saturday, Sunday at the latest. I take it you’ve got that part under control?”
The new general consulted her notes. “That would work out perfectly. We’ve been holding the assault ships at bay out in the Mediterranean, and our packages are already sitting in Washington, Paris and London just waiting for your orders.”
“And the Wall?” Constantine asked. “How is that going?”
“That part of the plan is well ahead of schedule. Now that the Italian army has retreated, we’ve got a steady stream of raw material flowing from Civitavecchia straight up the highway into Rome. And a similar setup on the eastern coastline.”
“What is the current status of the Italian army? Are they still causing trouble?”
“No, Sire. They sent a bunch of tanks down the road toward Rome, trying to force their way through and basically knock down the fortifications we had built up, but we used a human shield between the tanks and the wall, and in the end they couldn’t stomach the idea of rolling through all of those people. Especially since we had it all very well televised.”
“Excellent! It looks like you’re going to work out very well around here, Duval. I don’t know why I kept that idiot Boucher around for so long.”
“Thank you, sir,” Duval said, lowering her head in a slight deferential bow toward her emperor. “I won’t let you down.”
“See that you don’t,” Constantine warned her. “See that you don’t.”
72
Vatican City - Thursday
The pope’s speech was being covered live by every major television outlet around the world, as well as live radio and hundreds of Internet streams. St. Peter’s Square itself was packed, everyone eager to hear what the Vatican had promised was going to be a major announcement about the war on Islam.
As pope Peter II stepped out onto the loggia, waving his arms, the crowd erupted with a deafening roar that went on for minutes. Finally, he started motioning with his hands for everyone to quiet down, but it still took several more minutes before he could be heard.
“My brothers and sisters in Christ!” he called out, and once again the crowd went wild. He gave it a full minute before he motioned to calm them down again.
“I stand here before you, your Miracle pope, and proclaim in the face of God and all that He has created, that the time of miracles is before us!”
This time it took almost ten minutes for the audience spread out before him to finally quiet down, as the commentators on television filled the gap with inane predictions of what his ultimate message to the faithful was going to be. Eve
ntually, though, the roar settled to a soft murmur, and he began again.
“I stand before you in a time of great sadness, in a time of great darkness. The evil that we have seen in our own lifetimes is beyond measure, and I know that many of you have had reason to doubt the future of our world. To doubt the mercy of our Lord, Jesus Christ, who sits at the right hand of our God to judge the righteous hearts of mankind. These past few weeks alone have seen Satan rise up through his followers and challenge the very center of our faith, challenge the strength of those hearts we have all dedicated to our Lord, and to his Gracious plans for all of humanity. I understand that. I have been humbled myself by the events that I have witnessed over these past two weeks. Humbled by seeing the lives of so many of my friends stolen from us by those who have turned away from God, those who have embraced the Angel of Darkness in His stead.”
The pope stopped for a moment to let those words sink in, as the talking heads on television debated the correctness or incorrectness of what he had to say. Then, looking down, his eyes closed, he continued. “But, as our Lord has proclaimed to all of us in His most Holy Testimonies, and in the words of St. John, ‘This is the message we have heard from him and declare to you: God is light; in him there is no darkness at all. If we claim to have fellowship with him and yet walk in the darkness, we lie and do not live out the truth. But if we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus, his Son, purifies us from all sin.’”
He raised his head and stared out across the now-silent crowd before continuing. “As our Lord has said, ‘Anyone who claims to be in the light but hates a brother or sister is still in the darkness. Anyone who loves their brother and sister lives in the light, and there is nothing in them to make them stumble. But anyone who hates a brother or sister is in the darkness and walks around in the darkness. They do not know where they are going, because the darkness has blinded them.’ And that, my children, is exactly what we are facing today. A darkness that has blinded our world, blinded our faith from the true glory of God.”
“As our Lord has proclaimed, ‘Dear children, this is the last hour; and as you have heard that the antichrist is coming, even now many antichrists have come. This is how we know it is the last hour. They went out from us, but they did not really belong to us. For if they had belonged to us, they would have remained with us; but their going showed that none of them belonged to us.’
“‘But you have an anointing from the Holy One, and all of you know the truth. Who is the liar? It is whoever denies that Jesus is the Christ. Such a person is the antichrist—denying the Father and the Son. No one who denies the Son has the Father; whoever acknowledges the Son has the Father also.’”
On television, the talking heads had finally caught on that the pope was quoting from the Book of Revelations, which some were calling a flawed message while still others raced to connect the signs of the coming Apocalypse with the rapidly developing events of the previous two weeks.
The pope drew a deep breath and paused to sweep his eyes slowly across the crowd, from left to right and back again. “‘These are the words of him who has the sharp, double-edged sword. I know where you live—where Satan has his throne. Yet you remain true to my name. To the one who is victorious and does my will to the end, I will give authority over the nations—that one will rule them with an iron scepter and will dash them to pieces like pottery.’
“‘These are the words of him who is holy and true, who holds the key of David. What he opens no one can shut, and what he shuts no one can open. I know your deeds. I know that you have little strength, yet you have kept my word and have not denied my name. I will make those who are of the synagogue of Satan, I will make them come and fall down at your feet and acknowledge that I have loved you. Since you have kept my command to endure patiently, I will also keep you from the hour of trial that is going to come upon the whole world to test the inhabitants of the earth. I am coming soon.’
“‘These are the words of the Amen, the faithful and true witness, the ruler of God’s creation. To the one who is victorious, I will give the right to sit with me on my throne, just as I was victorious and sat down with my Father on his throne. Whoever has ears, let them hear what the Spirit says to the churches:
We give thanks to you, Lord God Almighty,
the One who is and who was,
because you have taken your great power
and have begun to reign.
The nations were angry,
and your wrath has come.
The time has come for judging the dead,
and for rewarding your servants the prophets
and your people who revere your name,
both great and small—
and for destroying those who destroy the earth.
Now have come the salvation and the power
and the kingdom of our God,
and the authority of his Messiah.
For the accuser of our brothers and sisters,
who accuses them before our God day and night,
has been hurled down.
They triumphed over him
by the blood of the Lamb
and by the word of their testimony;
they did not love their lives so much
as to shrink from death.
Therefore rejoice, you heavens
and you who dwell in them!
But woe to the earth and the sea,
because the devil has gone down to you!
He is filled with fury,
because he knows that his time is short.’”
The mob filling St. Peter’s Square was now nearly silent. Those few who were avid students of the Bible struggled with whether the pope really did mean that the end times were upon them, while the rest simply struggled to understand what in the world the pope was talking about. After a short pause, the pope looked down at the notes clutched in his left hand and got to the real meat of his message.
“My brothers and sisters in Christ, we cannot go into this great test of our faith as a divided Church. We who have pledged our souls, pledged our very lives in service to our Lord of Lords cannot face this challenge alone. Nay, the time has come to heal the rifts that lay within our own Church, to right the wrongs that have so long weakened us and left us defenseless before the powers of Satan and his many demons. For it has been written, if a kingdom is divided against itself, that kingdom cannot stand. If a house is divided against itself, that house cannot stand. We must therefore bring our Christian houses together as one in this struggle.
“A thousand years ago, the Latin Church and the Eastern Church parted ways, divided over theological issues both great and small. But in the days ahead, in this great war of wars against the forces of Islam, against the forces of the fallen angels of God, those differences can no longer be allowed to weaken our Church, to close our hearts to each other at the very time God demands that we open those hearts to the Holy Spirit, open our hearts to the blood of the Lamb. And so, on this fateful morning, I call upon my counterpart in Constantinople to help me heal this rift, and to unite our faith into one Church once again, One Holy Catholic and Orthodox Church, led by bishops coequal in apostolic authority, as it was in the beginning.”
The commentators on television and the bloggers on the internet were going crazy. Reunite the Church? Was this pope insane? How on earth could he ever believe the Orthodox churches would go along with this bizarre scheme?
But the pope wasn’t quite finished. “There are those who would question this, just as there are those who have questioned our faith in the Lord Jesus Christ for two millennia. But let them question! Let them cry out in disbelief! For war is upon us, my children. It is not a war we have brought upon ourselves. It is not simply a war we are waging against the forces of darkness who have opposed us for far too long. No, it is the battle that has long been promised to purge the scourge of Islam from this earth, to rid this world at last of the pestilence and famine and evil that S
atan and his followers have let loose upon our planet, upon our very lives, upon our very souls.”
He stopped to stare directly at the television cameras that were projecting his image on the large screens to either side of the loggia, and on countless screens around the world.
“This is my message to you, and to the leaders of the Western world. Now is not the time to be timid. Now is not the time to dissemble, to equivocate, to lay down before our mortal enemy, to continue to turn the other cheek until our faces are bloodied by our enemy’s wanton savagery. God calls us! His time is upon us! His promise is before us! The Messiah comes once again as has been promised to judge us all, so this is not the time to be found wanting. No, my children in Christ, this is not the time to pray for peace. This is the time for war!”
73
Venice
Sam spent the rest of the day Wednesday and most of the morning Thursday putting out fires caused by her insistence that her business managers drop everything they were doing to assist Carlo Rossi in evacuating the Italian government out of the quickly deteriorating situation in Rome and up to the relatively safe alternative bastions of Florence and Venice.
Getting through the Wall turned out to be the hardest part. Somehow the barricade was going up even faster than anyone could imagine, and the government’s last caravan going north had required an armed escort by a long line of tanks and armored personnel carriers, with jets from the Italian air force strafing the road just a few dozen feet overhead.
Everything eased up slightly when the pope’s speech came on the radio, the rebels blaring it out from massive loudspeakers mounted on either side of the gate leading out of Rome like a clarion call as the last of the tanks rumbled through.
※
When Harry woke up, he saw that Sam had sent him an email overnight, apologizing for dropping the ball on the Skype call and giving him her blessing for moving forward—cautiously—on the terrorism case.
