The Judas Strain sf-4

by James Rollins

  Taking off her sunglasses, Seichan stared him full in the face, accusing, angry.

  “You gave it to them, Gray.”

  7:18 A.M.

  Vigor read the shock in the commander’s face.

  “What the hell are you talking about?” Gray asked.

  Vigor also noted the steel flash of satisfaction in the emerald eyes of the Guild assassin. She seemed to gain a measure of enjoyment in taunting them. Still, he also noted the thinness of her face, the bit of pallor to her cheeks. She was scared.

  “We’re all to blame,” Seichan said, nodding also to Vigor.

  Vigor kept his reaction placid, not playing this game. He was too old for his blood to be so easily stirred. Besides, he already understood.

  “The Dragon Court’s symbol,” Vigor said. “You painted it on the floor. I thought it was meant as a warning to me, a call to investigate the angelic inscription.”

  Seichan nodded, leaning back. She read the understanding in his eyes.

  “But it was more,” he continued. He remembered the man who formerly filled his seat at the Vatican Archives: Dr. Alberto Menardi, a traitor who secretly worked for the Royal Dragon Court. The man had pilfered many key texts from the archives during his tenure, stole them away to a private library in a castle in Switzerland. Gray, Seichan, and Vigor had been instrumental in exposing the man, destroying the sect of the Dragon Court. The castle ended up being bequeathed to the Verona household, a cursed estate with a long bloody history.

  “Alberto’s library,” Vigor said. “At the castle. After all the bloodshed and horror, once the police allowed us on-site, we discovered the entire library gone. Vanished away.”

  “Why wasn’t I told about this?” Gray asked, surprised.

  Vigor sighed. “We supposed it was local thieves…or possibly some corruption among the Italian police. There had been many priceless antiquities in the traitor’s library. And because of Alberto’s interest, there were many books of arcane knowledge.”

  As much as Vigor despised the former prefect, he also recognized Alberto Menardi’s brilliance, a genius in his own right. And as prefect of the archives for over thirty years, Alberto knew all its secrets. He would have treasured and been intrigued by such a discovery, an edition of Marco’s The Description of the World with a hidden extra chapter.

  But what had the old prefect read? What made him steal it away? What had piqued the interest and attention of the Guild?

  Vigor stared at Seichan. “But it wasn’t ordinary thieves who cleared out the library, was it? You told the Guild about the treasures to be found there.”

  Seichan did not even have the temerity to flinch at his accusation. “I had no choice. Two years ago, the library bought me my life after I helped the two of you. I had no idea what horror it hid.”

  Gray had remained silent during their exchange, watching, eyes narrowed. Vigor could almost see the gears turning, tumblers falling into new slots. Like Alberto, Gray had a unique mind, a way of juggling disparate fragments and discovering a new configuration. It was no wonder Seichan had sought him out.

  Gray nodded to her. “You read this text, Seichan. The true account of the return voyage of Marco Polo.”

  As answer, she shoved her chair back, leaned down, and unzippered her left boot. She removed a sheaf of three papers, folded and tucked into a hidden inner pocket. Straightening, she smoothed the papers open and slid them across the table.

  “Once I began to suspect what the Guild intended,” she said, “I made a copy of the translated chapter for myself.”

  Vigor and Gray shifted closer, shoulder to shoulder, to peruse the sheets together. The large seaman leaned over, too, his breath spiced with anise from the raki.

  Vigor scanned the title and the first few lines.

  CHAPTER LXII.

  Of a Journey untold; and a Map forbidden

  Now it came to pass, a full month beyond the last port, we sought to restore our waters from a fresh river and repair two ships. We ported in small boats, at which time the abundant bird and thickness of vine astounded. Salted meat and fruit were also depleted. We came with forty and two of the Great Kaan’s men, armed with spear and arrow; and as nearby islands were populated by naked Idolaters who ate the flesh of other men, such protection of body was considered wise.

  Vigor continued reading, recognizing the cadence and stiffly archaic prose from The Description of the World. Could these words truly be Marco Polo’s? If so, here was a chapter only a few eyes had ever laid eyes upon. Vigor craved to read the original, not fully trusting the translation — but more importantly, he wanted to peruse the original dialect, to be that much closer to the famous medieval traveler.

  He read on:

  From a bend in the river, one of Kaan’s men shouted and pointed to a steep rise of another peak from out of the valley floor. It lay a score of miles inland and deep within the thickness of the forest; but it was no mountain. It was the spire of a great building; and other towers were now spotted, half hid in mists. With ten days to idol in repairs and as the Kaan’s men wished to hunt the many birds and beasts for fresh meat, we set off to seek these builders of mountains, a people unknown and unmapped.

  After the first page Vigor sensed a palpable menace growing behind Marco’s simple narrative. In plain words, he related how “the forest grew quiet of bird and beast.” Marco and the hunters continued, following a trail far into the jungle, “trampled by these mountain builders.”

  At long last, as twilight neared, Marco’s party came upon a stone city.

  The forest opened upon a great city of many spires, each covered with the carved faces of Idols. What devilish sorcery were employed by such a people, I would never discover; but God in His merciful vengeance had smote this city and the forest proper with a great blight and pestilence. The first body was a naked child. Her flesh was boiled to bone and covered with large black ants. Everywhere one turned, the eye came upon another and another. A count of several hundred would not match the slaughter here; and the death was not constrained to the sin of man. Birds had fallen from the sky. Beasts of the forest lay in twisted piles. Great snakes hung dead from branches of trees.

  It was a City of the Dead. Fearing pestilence, we sought to leave with much haste. But our passage was not unwatched. From the deeper forest, they came: their naked flesh was no more hale than those strewn across the stone steps and plazas, or floating in the green moats. Limbs were rotted to expose the flesh beneath. Others bore bubbling welts and boils that covered most their skin; and still more carried bellies heavy with bloat. All around, wounds wept and steamed. Some came blind; and others scrabbled. It was as if a thousand plagues had blighted this land; a legion of pestilence.

  From out the leafy bower, they swarmed with teeth bared like wild animals. Others carried severed arms and legs. God protect me even now, many of those limbs were gnawed.

  A chill washed over Vigor, despite the growing heat of the morning. He read with numbing horror as Marco described how his party fled deeper into the city to seek refuge from the ravening army. The Venetian described in great detail the slaughter and cannibalism. As twilight fell, Marco’s party retreated to one of the tall buildings, carved with twisting snakes and long-dead kings. The group set up a final stand, sure their small party would be overwhelmed as more and more of the diseased cannibals entered the city.

  Gray mumbled under his breath, no words audible, but his disbelief was plain.

  Now as the sun sank, so did all our hopes. Each in his own way cast prayers to the heavens. Kaan’s men burned bits of wood and smeared the ashes on their faces. I had only my confessor. Friar Agreer knelt with me and offered our souls to God through whispered prayers. He clutched his crucifix and daubed my forehead with Christ’s suffering cross. He used the same ashes as the Kaan’s men. I looked upon the other men’s marked faces and wondered: in such trial, were we all the same? Pagan and Christian. And in the end, whose prayer was it that was finally answered? Whose prayer brought
the Virtue against this pestilence into our midst; a dark Virtue that saved us all.

  The story stopped there.

  Gray flipped the paper over, looking for more.

  Kowalski leaned back and made his only contribution to the historical discussion. “Not enough sex,” he mumbled, and attempted to hold back a burp with a fist and failed.

  Frowning, Gray tapped a name on the last page. “Here…this mention of Friar Agreer.”

  Vigor nodded, having spotted the same glaring error. Surely this text was false. “No clergymen accompanied the Polos to the Orient,” he stated aloud. “According to Vatican texts, two Dominican friars left with the Polos, to represent the Holy See, but the pair turned back after the first few days.”

  Seichan collected the first page and refolded it. “Like this secret chapter, Marco edited the friar out of his chronicles. Three Dominicans actually left with the Polos. One for each traveler, as was custom for the time.”

  Vigor realized she was right. It was indeed the custom.

  “Only two of the friars fled back,” Seichan said. “The presence of the third was kept hidden…until now.”

  Gray shifted back and tugged at his neck. He pulled free a silver crucifix and placed it on the table. “And you claim this is actually Friar Agreer’s cross? The one mentioned in the story.”

  Seichan’s firm stare answered his question.

  Shocked into silence at the sudden revelation, Vigor studied the crucifix. It was unadorned, with the barest representation of a crucified figure. Vigor could tell it was old. Could it be true? He gently collected it from the table and examined it. If true, its very weight gave substance to Marco’s harrowing words.

  Vigor finally found his voice. “But I don’t understand. Why was Friar Agreer cut out of the story?”

  Seichan reached over and collected the scattered papers. “We don’t know,” she said simply. “The remaining pages of the book were ripped out and replaced with a false page, stitched into the binding, but the quality and age of the new page dated it centuries later than the original binding.”

  Vigor frowned at such strangeness. “What was on the new page?”

  “I was never able to see it myself, but I was told what it said. It contained a rambling rave, full of references to angels and biblical quotations. The writer clearly feared Marco’s story. But more importantly, the page spoke at length of a map included in the book, one drawn by Marco himself. A map they deemed to be evil.”

  “So what happened to it?”

  “Though they feared it, whoever edited the book also worried about destroying the map completely. So the writer, along with a handful of others, rewrote the map in a code that would protect and bless it.”

  Gray nodded his understanding. “So they buried it in angelic script.”

  “But who inserted the page?” Vigor asked.

  Seichan shrugged. “It was unsigned, but there were enough references on the page to suggest that the Polos’ descendants had handed Marco’s secret book over to the papacy following the ravage of the Black Plague in the fourteenth century. Maybe the family feared the plague was the same pestilence that struck the City of the Dead, come at last to destroy the rest of the world. It was then the book was added to the archives.”

  “Interesting,” Vigor said. “If you’re right, it might explain why all trace of the Polo family vanished about then. Even Marco Polo’s body vanished out of the Church of San Lorenzo, where he’d been buried. It was as if there was a systemic attempt to erase the Polo family. Did anyone ever date that rambling new page?”

  Seichan nodded. “It was dated to the early sixteen-hundreds.”

  Vigor squinted his eyes. “Hmm…another great outbreak of bubonic plague swept Italy at about that time.”

  “Exactly,” Seichan said. “And it was also at that time that a German named Johannes Trithemius first developed the angelic script. Despite his claim that it was a script from before man walked the earth.”

  Vigor nodded. He had performed his own historical study of angelic script. Its creator believed that by using his angelic alphabet — supposedly gained from deep meditative study — one could communicate with the heavenly choir of angels. Trithemius also dabbled in cryptography and secret codes. His famous treatise, Stenographia, was considered to be of occult nature, but it was actually a complex mix of angelology and code breaking.

  “So if you wanted to hide a map during that time,” Gray concluded, “one you deemed evil, then locking it up inside angelic script might seem a good way to ward against its dangers.”

  “That is exactly what the Guild came to believe. There were clues in that secret page as to the location of this coded map, a map now carved onto an Egyptian obelisk and hidden in the Gregorian Museum of the Vatican. But the obelisk had vanished, lost in time, shifted around. Nasser and I played a cat-and-mouse game searching for it. But I won. I stole it from under Nasser’s nose.”

  Vigor heard the bitter pride in her voice, but he frowned and searched the others’ faces. “What obelisk are you all talking about?”

  7:42 A.M.

  In sketchy highlights, Gray explained about the Egyptian obelisk that was used to hide the friar’s cross and described the code painted in phosphorescent oils.

  “Here is the actual text.” Gray handed over his copy.

  Vigor studied the complex jumble of angelic code and shook his head. “It makes no sense to me.”

  “Precisely,” Seichan said. “The rambling letter in Marco’s text also references a key to the map. A way to unlock its secret. A key hidden in three parts. The first key was tied to the inscription in the room where the secret text was originally hidden.”

  “In the Tower of Winds,” Vigor said. “A good hiding place. The tower was under construction during that century. Built to house the Vatican Observatory.”

  “And according to the false page in Marco’s book,” Seichan continued, “each key would lead to the next. So to begin, we need to solve that first riddle. The angelic inscription in the Vatican.” She turned fully to Vigor. “You claimed you’d succeeded. Is that true?”

  Vigor opened his mouth to explain, but Gray placed a hand on his arm. He wasn’t about to give Seichan all of their cards. He needed to hold at least one ace in the hole.

  “Before that,” Gray said, “you’ve still not said why the Guild is involved in all this. What gain is there in pursuing this historical trail from Marco Polo to the present?”

  Seichan hesitated. She took a deep breath — whether to lie or steel herself for telling the truth, he wasn’t sure. When she spoke, she confirmed Gray’s own growing fears.

  “Because we believe Marco’s disease is loose again,” she said. “Freed from some ancient timbers of Marco’s original galleys found among the Indonesian islands. The Guild is already on-site, ready to follow the scientific trail. Nasser and I were assigned to follow the historical trail. As was custom for the Guild, the right arm was not supposed to know what the left one was doing.”

  Gray understood the cell-like compartmentalization of the Guild, a pattern taken to heart by many terrorist organizations.

  “But I stole some information,” she said. “I learned the nature of the disease, and its ability to alter the biosphere forever.”

  Seichan continued with the Guild’s discovery of a virus — something called the Judas Strain — and its capability of turning all bacteria into killers.

  She quoted from Marco’s text. “‘A legion of pestilence.’ That is what struck Indonesia. But I know the Guild. I know what they plan to do. By harvesting and harnessing this pathogen, they hope to create a slew of new bacterial bioweapons, an inexhaustible source born of this virus.”

  As Seichan related details about the disease, Gray had gripped the edge of the table. His knuckles ached. A greater terror had taken hold of him.

  Before he could speak, Vigor cleared his throat. “But if the scientific arm of the Guild is pursuing this virus, what is so important about this hi
storical hunt along Marco Polo’s trail? What does it matter?”

  Gray answered, quoting the last line of Marco’s text. “‘A dark Virtue that saved us all.’ That sounds like a cure to me.”

  Seichan nodded. “Marco survived to tell his story. Even the Guild wouldn’t dare unleash such a virus without some means of controlling it.”

  “Or at least to discover its source,” Gray added.

  Vigor stared out toward the city, his face limned against the rising sun. “And there are other unanswered questions. What became of Father Agreer? What scared the papacy?”

  But Gray had a more important question of his own. “Exactly where in Indonesia did this new outbreak happen?”

  “At a remote island, luckily far from any large population.”

  “Christmas Island,” Gray filled in.

  Seichan’s eyes widened in surprise.

  Confirmation enough.

  Gray shoved up. Everyone stared at him. Monk and Lisa had gone out to Christmas Island to investigate the same disease. They had no idea what they were about to confront — or of the Guild’s interest. Gray’s breathing grew heavier. He had to get word to Painter. But with Sigma compromised, would his alarm put his friends in more danger, paint a bull’s-eye on them?

  He needed more information. “How far along is this Guild operation in Indonesia?”

  “I don’t know. It was difficult learning what I did.”

  “Seichan,” Gray growled at her.

  Her eyes narrowed with concern. In his agitation, he almost believed it was genuine. “I…I truly don’t know, Gray. Why? What’s wrong?”

  With a hard exhalation, Gray crossed to the railing, needing an extra second to think, to let everything he’d learned settle through him.

  For the moment, he knew only one thing for certain.

  He needed to get word to Washington.

  1:04 A.M.

  Washington, D.C.

  Harriet Pierce struggled to calm her husband. It was especially difficult as he’d locked himself in the hotel bathroom. She pressed a cold damp rag to her split lip.