The Immortal

by Thomas Nelson

  Could a man—even one as ostensibly brilliant as Asher Genzano— manufacture such a tale?

  I sat for a moment, listening to the gentle rhythm of the rails, then lowered my head to intercept his gaze. “What did you do then—after Antioch?”

  He blinked, staring at me as if I had brought him back from some faraway place. “I returned to Rome, of course. It was the only home I knew. Nero was emperor, however, and his cruelty inspired revolts in Rome and the outlying dominions. He began to persecute those who called themselves Christians, and I heard rumors that he actually started the great fire that devoured Rome in A.D. 64. Life in Rome was barely tolerable, but I had no roots elsewhere. Though my old friends were dead and gone, I did meet a few people I had known in years past; they immediately assumed I was the son of their old friend. Not wanting to explain my curse—for that’s how I saw it, nothing less than a malediction—I allowed them to believe whatever they wished.

  “I continued to live in Rome, working in the employ of old family friends, for another twenty years. When it became apparent that my unchanging appearance might arouse suspicion, I left, this time for Galatia.”

  He bent his head and studied his hands. “That is where I learned the entire truth. I had heard, you see, that the Nazarene claimed to be the son of a god, and by the time Claudia died I realized he must have spoken the truth—no one else could inflict the curse of immortality upon another living soul. But in Galatia I heard the entire story—how Jesus was born of a virgin, lived a simple life, preached repentance and good works, and died to pay the penalty for mankind’s sin. The Christians in Galatia had given themselves over to good works, and I labored among them for many years, hoping that God would see my labor and my earnest heart. But after thirty years, as my companions grew gray and bent, I remained strong and upright. And so I left Galatia too, before anyone could discover my shameful secret.

  “Not long afterward I realized something else—my curse was particular and meaningful. Every man is born under the curse of sin, and every man can find release through Christ. But not every man has struck the face of God in such pride as mine, and Jesus never told any other man what he told me. I had been singled out to remain on earth until I saw him again. The Christians who understood his teachings explained that he would come again at the end of days. So it was in Galatia that I realized I would wander the earth until Christ comes again . . . until the evil one is revealed.”

  I stared at him in dazed exasperation. “You’ve lost me, Asher. What evil one?”

  He gave me the smile one gives a dull-witted child. “The Antichrist. I have spoken of him to you before.”

  From far away the train whistle stretched across the concentrated silence in our compartment. He had mentioned the Antichrist before and had apparently retained a perfectly good memory of the occasion— so he did not fit Kurt’s profile of an amnesiac.

  I’d been trying to force Asher into a psychological box all morning, but I could no longer deny the truth: Asher Genzano was not psychotic. Neurotic, perhaps, or an accomplished liar. But he appeared to be in complete possession of his memory and mental faculties.

  “So,” I began, deliberately changing the subject, “what did you do after you left Galatia?”

  His tight expression relaxed into a simple smile. “I wandered from place to place, working at various jobs, learning as much as I could about the people who called themselves Christians. Nero had begun to pursue them, and the apostle Peter was executed in A.D. 67, in Rome, of course. The persecution of Christians continued for 250 years. Not until the emperor Constantine granted Christians freedom of worship were those who followed the Nazarene able to feel safe in the city that had crucified Peter.”

  He lowered his head into his hands and kneaded his forehead as though his head ached with memories. “I saw it all, Claudia. The great plague that swept through Rome in the second century, the division of the Roman Empire, the fall of Western Rome and the rise of Byzantium. I have lived throughout the lifetime of every pope. I witnessed Charlemagne’s crowning in St. Peter’s, the Normans’ attack upon Rome, and thousands of Roman citizens gasping for their last breath in the plague called Black Death. I met Michelangelo; I once spent an entire morning watching him paint in the Sistine Chapel. I saw the Spanish troops of Charles V pillage the city and destroy countless works of art. I stood in the crowd as Galileo was condemned to death for heresy; I heard the shouts of acclamation when England’s Bonnie Prince Charlie was born in my native city. I fought for Rome when Napoleon captured it, I worried when Italy entered the First World War, and I wept when the Fascisti marched on the city and Mussolini became prime minister. I cheered with thousands when Rome hosted the Olympic games; I was standing in St. Peter’s Square the day a wild-eyed fanatic tried to assassinate Pope John Paul II. Though I have traveled the world over, I have never stayed away from Rome for long, for in Rome beats the heart of the world. I can take her pulse through the city’s streets; I can read her future in the newspaper headlines. And what I see today, Claudia, troubles me more than anything has ever troubled me in the past.”

  His face betrayed a certain tension, a secret passion held rigidly under control, and I felt a tiny tremor of fear when he met my gaze. I swallowed against an unfamiliar constriction in my throat. “What do you see?”

  He smiled, but it was the kind of stiff grimace an undertaker would fix on the face of a corpse. “I see the fulfillment of the vision spoken of by Daniel the prophet: ‘Its ten horns are ten kings that will rule that empire. Then another king will arise, different from the other ten, who will subdue three of them.’”

  I felt my own smile stiffening. “Asher, I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “A confederation of ten nations—another king will rise and subdue three of the nations. He will destroy their leaders and set himself in their place.”

  “Who will?”

  “The Antichrist.”

  I snapped my mouth shut and leaned back in my seat, amazed that he had managed to bring the conversation back around to this particular obsession. What fed his fascination with the Antichrist?

  Something in me wanted to crack him open like a Russian nesting doll, opening shell after shell, searching for the man inside the mystery. Had he once been a guide in one of Rome’s historic buildings? Perhaps he was the son of literature professors, or he had majored in history in his college years. Perhaps one of his professors had cheated him, or jilted him, or hurt him and left a deep psychological scar . . .

  I tucked the thought away as the train whistle blew and the rhythmic clacking of the rails began to slow. We were nearing Brussels, and we had risky work to do. I didn’t dare upset Asher until we were safely rid of our obligation to Santos Justus.

  “I’d like to hear more on the way back.” I gripped the edge of my briefcase and gave Asher a careful smile. “But for now, let’s concentrate on the job we’re here to do, OK?”

  He smiled, ruefully accepting my decision to set the subject aside. “Whatever you say, signorina.”

  TWENTY-ONE

  WE DID AS SYNN HAD INSTRUCTED, TAKING A CAB FROM THE TRAIN station to the Eurovillage Brussels Hotel. I was not entirely comfortable being alone with Asher in the hotel room, but he seemed to sense my unease and took pains to respect my desire for physical space. While I sat at the desk and riffled through the drawers, trying to find a suitable piece of stationery, he sat in a wing chair and turned on the television, thoughtfully lowering the volume. While he watched a local news station, I stared at a blank sheet of beige cotton bond and tried to write a sympathy note to Rory’s wife. No matter how hard I tried to summon the words, my thoughts kept returning to an imagined scene in which Asher and I were detained by angry Belgian nationals who had discovered that our national identification cards were false.

  Scarcely ten minutes after our arrival, the telephone rang. Asher picked up the phone, murmured “Oui” in a restrained voice, listened for a moment, then hung up. “They will pick
us up outside in a black sedan,” he said, a faint glint of humor in his eyes. “The driver will”— he tugged on the lapel of his jacket—“wear a red flower on his coat.”

  I brought my hand to my mouth, smothering an incredulous smile. There was something strangely ludicrous about this entire situation, and I felt a wave of gratitude toward Asher for helping me see it.

  “I’ll be just a moment,” I said, moving toward the bathroom. “I just want to freshen up before we go.”

  He nodded, and I stepped into the bathroom and closed the door, pausing a moment to stare at my reflection in the smoky mirror. My eyes looked like black holes in my face; no condemned criminal could have looked guiltier.

  “Shape up, Fischer,” I told my ghostly reflection. “Just do this and get out. Nothing’s going to happen, and no one’s going to care.”

  Five minutes later, Asher and I were walking through the hotel lobby, where a man in a dark coat lounged against a marble pillar. After spotting the clichéd red flower, Asher walked over to the man, murmured something in French, and the two shook hands. Asher beckoned to me, so I followed them through the lobby and into the bitterly cold wind. After seating us in the backseat of a sedan, the driver whisked us through the streets of Belgium.

  Asher and I didn’t speak until we stopped outside a concrete and glass building. I barely had time to ask, “Are we here?” when another man opened my door and practically pulled me onto the sidewalk.

  This man, a tall, thin fellow with long brown hair and a long face to match, gestured toward the building entrance. “This way, mademoiselle.” I glanced back for Asher, saw that he stood right behind me, and together we followed the man into the building and through a maze of hallways.

  Finally he led us into a small, windowless room with bare walls. The air smelled of sweat and pulsed faintly with fluorescent light. A fax machine rasped on a stand against the wall, spitting curled paper into the room. Above a utilitarian table, a column of dust rose toward the ceiling in a column of greenish light. A computer monitor sat on the table; a still image filled the screen. A heavy bald man with a pair of headphones on his ears sat at the end of the table and fretted with some sort of electrical control panel. His neck was so thick that his head appeared to rest directly on his substantial shoulders.

  Our escort pointed toward two steel folding chairs, then moved toward the fax machine. “The meeting is to begin in ten minutes,” he said, gesturing that we should be seated. “We wanted you here early so you can understand how to direct our cameras. We have six cameras in the room. If you tell us what you want to see, you shall see it.”

  I looked up at our guide and decided his mustache was more intention than fact. “What about the sound?” I asked.

  Mr. Thin Face nodded. “We have excellent audio reception.”

  He scanned the fax for a moment, then folded it and tucked it into his pocket. Without another word, he leaned back and flipped a switch, plunging the stuffy room into a silent darkness lit only by the soft gray light from the computer monitor. The technician’s hands floated over his controls, magically changing the picture on the screen so I could see the room from several different vantage points. The room under observation seemed to be a parlor in a deluxe hotel suite, or perhaps a drawing room in a private home. The curtains were heavy and of luxurious fabric, probably velvet; the sofa and chairs were likewise of fine quality. Several lovely paintings hung on the walls, and an ornate carved door appeared to be the main entrance.

  “Where are the cameras hidden?” I asked, a little amazed by the technical setup.

  “Inside the impressionistic paintings.” A smile ruffled our host’s shadow of a mustache. “The camera itself is nothing but a tiny dot. In such a painting it is practically invisible.”

  “And where is the meeting taking place? A hotel?”

  The smile disappeared. “That, mademoiselle, you do not need to know.”

  I sat back, feeling abruptly rebuffed. Asher filled the awkward silence. “The microphones—are they hidden with the cameras?”

  “No. The listening devices are tucked behind the electrical switch plates. The fools did not think to have the room swept before arranging this meeting.”

  We sat in silence for at least another five minutes, watching the monitor like terriers at a rat’s hole. Then we saw the door open. The technician’s hands stilled, and three men entered. One had his hand clasped upon another’s shoulder, and all three displayed a generous amount of teeth in casual, relaxed smiles. Right away I realized these were the same three ambassadors I had read at the EU Council of Ministers’ meeting five days before.

  “They are friends; they are comfortable; they are sincere,” I murmured, tilting my head as one of the men moved to a cabinet to pour drinks for the other two. “And this one considers himself a host.”

  The thin man peered at the screen over my shoulder. “That is Dutetre.”

  “Well,” I drawled, “at least I know they’re meeting in Belgium. It is only natural that Dutetre would feel obliged to serve his guests in his home country.”

  The thin man said nothing but crossed his arms and stared at the monitor. I returned my gaze to the screen as the camera zoomed in for a closer view.

  After serving his guests, Dutetre sat in a wing chair facing the others, who had seated themselves on the sofa—another signal that he had arranged this meeting. Leaders usually situated themselves at the end of a table or in the center. In the absence of a table, the wing chair served as a substitute.

  Dutetre crossed his legs, a sign of confidence, and said something to the others in French. Immediately, the smiles disappeared.

  “How do you feel things are going?” Asher said, translating Dutetre’s comment.

  He paused as Dekker, the ambassador from the Netherlands, answered, then translated his comments as well. “Not well. Justus is meddling in our affairs. He has already proposed that a WEU peacekeeping force be installed in Amsterdam to quell the recent student uprisings.”

  “Have you investigated the cause of the riots?”

  “Of course. All the rioting students are either affiliated with Unione Globale or have been influenced by the organization’s literature.”

  Asher pointed to Vail Billaud as the representative from Luxembourg spoke. “Are any other countries having trouble with students from Unione Globale? I’ve heard the organization now has branch offices in every country, even the United States.”

  “They only cause trouble when Justus gives the word,” Dekker said. Anyone could have read the bitterness in his face. “Justus is applying pressure to us alone, my friends, and I do not know how we can stop him. If we resist his ideas, we will be reprimanded by the other nations of the WEU. And how can we justify resisting peace?”

  “Justus defines peace as power.” Billaud’s eyes narrowed with fury. “And I do not want him to have power. It is already difficult to resist him.”

  On and on they talked, with Asher translating in a rough whisper. The atmosphere in our little spy post grew tenser with each passing moment. I pulled out my notebook and made notes on body language when appropriate, but once I had ascertained that these men trusted each other and were speaking truthfully, anyone could see they were worried. Their conversation left no doubt that the force worrying them most was Santos Justus.

  The conversation lasted for half an hour, then Dekker glanced at his watch and stood, announcing that he was late for another appointment. All three men embraced in farewell, and when the camera zoomed in upon Vail Billaud’s face, I thought I saw the glint of tears in his eyes. These men were not only worried . . . they were terrified. For themselves, and for their countries.

  One sudden, lucid memory broke into my thoughts: A confederation of ten nations—another king will rise and subdue three of the nations. He will destroy their leaders, and set himself in their place.

  Asher’s words washed through me, shivering my skin like the touch of a ghost. The WEU was comprised of ten nations. Was San
tos Justus planning to overthrow the leadership of these three countries? I had seen nothing in Justus’s personality to indicate he was capable of such ruthlessness, but I had spent little personal time with the man. Yet here I was, locked in a secret room, spying upon three unwary diplomats for him.

  As a bead of perspiration traced a cold path down my spine, I pushed away from the table. “If you have no further need of me, monsieur, I am not feeling well.” I must have sounded as weak as I felt, for Asher’s arm went around my shoulder, supporting me as I stood. The lights came back on in the room, and I saw that the thin man had filled a page of notes too. “Wait, mademoiselle,” he said, looking at his notebook. “You must explain to me everything you saw and what it means.”

  “I can’t.” I was breathing in shallow gasps, trying not to inhale the sickly sweet stench of body odor. I had the feeling Monsieur No-Neck had not bathed in a week.

  “You must stay.” The thin man looked up at me, his brows arching. “You will tell me all I need to know, and I will report it to my superior—”

  Asher fairly growled at the man. “Mademoiselle Fischer will make her report to Justus alone. Can’t you see she is not well? Take us out of this place at once, or Il Presidente will hear that his representative was mistreated.”

  The thin man measured Asher with a cool, appraising look for a long moment, then abruptly closed his notebook. “One moment, mademoiselle, I’ll have to take you out.”

  Swallowing against the nausea threatening my throat, I picked up my notebook and slipped it in my purse, then moved toward the doorway.

  Lengthening his stride, the thin man led us out of the building and to the car. Safe in the backseat, I closed my eyes and leaned against Asher’s solid shoulder as the engine roared to life.