by Joseph Nagle
Michael furrowed his brow and leaned in to the medallion for a closer look.
The outlines of the stone tiles seemed randomly chiseled with no symmetry in their shapes. Michael traced his fingers over the stone and then the medallion.
Slowly, he turned the medallion; it grated against the floor. The beam of light began to move.
Within moments, the outline of the medallion mated with the once seemingly random shapes of the tiles’ edges.
Michael stopped.
One of the medallion’s purple stones now absorbed the light and spewed it at a sharp angle toward the fresco that adorned the room’s door.
The medallion is the key—ein gift.
The refracted beam of light found the center of the angel’s halo—the center of the sun symbol.
The halo’s glow had turned into a very dull brown, the result of mixing the two complementary colors.
Odd, thought Michael.
And then Michael snatched the medallion from the floor.
“No!” Gerald screamed. “You fool! I’ll crush every ounce of breath from her; put that medallion back!”
Michael stood and saw that Gerald was on edge. He was squeezing Sonia so tightly that she had trouble breathing. Dragging her easily, he moved quickly toward Michael and thrust his weapon toward Michael’s face.
“You’re trying to toy with me, you son of a bitch! I said put the medallion back in the floor!”
“Easy,” Michael screamed back, “just take it easy.” Michael held out the medallion half. “We can make a trade. I’ll give you the medallion, but you let her go. I figure the ray of light will be gone in about four minutes; what’s it going to be?”
“Dr. Sterling, what if I just pull this trigger and kill you both, eh? I’ll put the medallion back myself! How’s that for a deal?” Gerald replied.
Michael raised the medallion high over his head and threatened, “You wouldn’t know where the beam of light is supposed to go—only I do! Now release my wife, or I’ll smash this thing into two dozen pieces!”
Gerald’s face was red with anger and his nostrils were flared. Sonia struggled as she tried to gulp some air.
The two men stared at one another.
Sonia felt the world fading to black.
Michael saw his wife’s eyes begin to roll backward. He was out of threats; his bluff had been called.
Gerald saw the well-trained special operations officer give in. “Find me some fucking bones real quick, or the two of you are going to be added to the pile of corpses in this room!”
Michael looked at Sonia and gave her the most reassuring look that he could muster.
And then he winked.
It didn’t have much effect.
“Find them yourself,” Michael calmly stated as he threw the medallion half to Gerald.
Gerald pushed Sonia away. She collapsed to the stone floor as he caught the medallion; a sharp barb on the inside of the medallion nicked his finger. Instinctively, he put the finger to his mouth and spat a small drop of blood mixed with spit.
Michael went to his wife, but Gerald ordered, “Don’t move, Dr. Sterling. She’s fine.” He took aim with his pistol at Michael and knelt to the floor to reinsert the medallion into the hole.
As his knee reached the floor, Gerald stumbled somewhat. The white marble disc spun wildly, but only in his head.
Michael silently thanked the colonel.
“What…what’s happening to me?” Gerald’s words were a bit slurred as he fell to all fours.
Taking a breath, Michael exhaled slowly to gain some control over the adrenaline flowing through his body. And then he stated, “As I said earlier, this room is one big allegory. Above are the heavens and around us the earth.” And then he pointed to the floor. “Below us is hell.”
“And the king’s… the k-king’s body is there?” Gerald felt his tongue thickening and his throat going dry.
“No.” Michael had fully intended to be pithy.
“Then…th-th-then he’s in the wall; where the l-l-light pointed?” It was getting worse.
Again, Michael was terse and to the point: “No.”
Michael waited for a moment. He stared at Gerald with eyes that told of a man ready to kill. He tightened his hands into fists and readied to spring at the once-armed man. But, instead of attacking, he thought of Sun Tzu—supreme excellence is breaking the enemy’s resistance without fighting. He didn’t need to attack.
Instead, Michael unclenched his fists and with his foot, he pushed Gerald onto his back. He knelt next to the man, grabbing his face with both hands. He physically twisted his head until his eyes stared upward and into his own.
“I’ve given you a gift,” Michael nastily spat as he repeated the word that the colonel had used.
Indeed, a gift it was. The colonel had been fully aware of Michael’s linguistic background. Michael spoke a number of languages, including German.
It had been a code, a simple code from the mouth of a dying friend.
Explaining to the downed man, Michael said, “In German, the word gift means poison.”
Ein gift.
Gerald’s eyes shook.
Michael’s voice was filled with anger, and he forcibly twisted Gerald’s head even further so that he now stared straight upward at the ceiling, “That’s an anemoscope; wind and stars, the sun and the moon, and the four seasons. This room tells of Christianity’s pagan roots. This room connects the preaching of the ancient cosmology and the sun worship that happened for more than three millennia before Christianity—it connects the sun, the moon, and star worship—all of which defined nearly every religion before Christianity absorbed, edited, or outright stole the teachings and turned them into versions of their own.”
Then Michael yanked Gerald’s face in the opposite direction until it was smashed painfully into the floor; Gerald’s nose flattened against the white marble line. “And that’s a meridian line. We are standing on circles tiled into the floor, which are held together by a single one. They represent the soul of the universe, and this line is more than a calendar: it represents Gehenna.”
“Ge-ge-ge-henna, wh-what is…” Gerald stammered but couldn’t finish the sentence. He tried to push himself to his feet, but Michael pushed back. He fell heavily against the stone with an odd grunt.
“I didn’t think you would know,” Michael retorted. “Most people haven’t the fortitude to pursue, much less trust, the primary sources that legitimately provide evidence and answers to questions, or to understand the history of the cult to which they lay prostrate with their hands clasped together in prayer each Sun-day. Most people are lazy and flat-out credulous. Instead, they rely upon storytellers than to do the work for them. Gehenna is hell, the place where the soul will go for spiritual purification before being worthy of heaven. From the looks of it, you must feel like you’re at Gehenna’s door right now.”
Michael patted Gerald on the fat part of his cheek and continued, “The church has done everything in its power to wipe clean the original methods of worship by the first Christians, methods that were nothing more than a syncretism of Mithras from the outlying Persian Empire and Horus from the Egyptians. In the fourth century, the church issued orders to their monks in Egypt to pick up arms and kill followers of the sun god Serapsis and to destroy the Serapeum, which eliminated thousands of years of recorded history; the church outlawed by order of death any religious worship other than Christianity. Hell, the Vatican sits atop a destroyed Mithraic temple! Over in St. Peter’s Basilica are a couple of mosaics that prove the link between sun-worship and the Christian cult: one has two Irish monks with hands raised paying homage to the sun, while the other is a second-century depiction of the sun-god Helios in a pagan tomb! They’ve preferred people like you as their followers: ignorant, gullible, uneducated, and unwilling to seek proof even if it’s right under your damned feet! No, it doesn’t surprise me that you don’t know what Gehenna is.”
Michael paused for a moment as he wat
ched the poison continue to deprive Gerald of his strength, and then he said, “That’s what the room is meant to outline. One couldn’t simply eliminate the customs and beliefs embedded for millennia into an ever-changing empire’s citizens, beliefs that derived from the prevalent forms of worship that were still quite evident in the first century. The original Christians still considered the sun, the stars, the moon, and the planets as godly. When a man died, an old Christian teaching told of seven angels that stood by awaiting that man’s soul. Those seven angels represented the seven known planets of the time; it was a way for the new religion to absorb and recognize the cosmological teachings of older religions—to make the forced conversion to Christianity more palatable, the church turned the seven planets into seven angels. Hell, anyone with a library card or a night’s worth of clicks on Wikipedia could come across numerous examples of the blending of sun worship and early Christianity!”
Michael stood abruptly to his feet and ran to the brightly painted fresco of the angel. There, he slapped hard the glowing halo surrounding the angel’s head and yelled back at the fallen man, “This is one of the most blatant examples! You’re in a room that marks daily the solar cycle, surrounded from top to bottom and left to right by the seasons of the year, and standing upon a floor that outlines the days of the year! It’s the sun around his head, not a halo, you drooling, half-dead idiot!”
Michael walked over to Sonia and picked her up. Caressing her face, he gently asked, “You okay?”
Sonia nodded. “Interesting story, honey.”
“It’s no story; it’s history,” Michael replied and then kissed her on the forehead.
Pulling away from his wife, Michael smiled reassuringly at her and then looked to York; the kid’s eyes were closed, but his chest was expanding and contracting slightly. Michael sighed with relief and silently thanked no one in particular as he thought, the kid’s alive.
Moving back to Gerald, Michael knelt again; his voice was calmer when he said, “Some of the seven angels were good; a few of them were not. The seven angels stood on either side of a line, waiting; the line divided that man’s soul from heaven or hell. This is that line. When the soul was sent to Gehenna, it had to pass through a gate. Your king’s body, the last master of the Order of Christ, is behind me; in the east wall and through one of the gates painted on that wall.”
Gerald struggled to look at the wall. His eyes shook and worked to focus as they looked past Michael and to the fresco that adorned the wall. Although a brilliant piece of work, it was more ornamental than allegorical. A nude man was painted so that only his backside was shown. His body was in the middle of the wall, splitting the fresco in half. The fresco was intended to be quite symmetrical, different than the rest in the room. What was painted on the left side of the man was nearly mirrored to his right.
It looked like two doorways—gates—were painted onto the wall. One door was to the man’s left, one to his right. There was nothing overly dramatic about the scene.
Michael went to the colonel’s body and felt for a pulse. Still half-hoping to find one, there was none. Michael closed his eyes and let out a defeated breath. Whispering, Michael said, “You were a good man, Colonel.”
Rising to his feet, Michael said to Sonia, “Help the kid get to his feet. The two of you need to get out of here. I’ll take care of this guy.”
Sonia was stunned. “I’m not leaving you, Michael!”
Michael responded almost robotically. “What comes next isn’t for you, Sonia,” and then Michael reached into his pocket, grabbing his phone. He put it into Sonia’s hands and cupped his warmly around hers.
She knew that what Michael had to do next would contradict her commitment to healing, to saving lives.
“Listen to me, Sonia; the kid’s hurt. You need to help him, and the two of you need to get as far away from here as possible. Take this phone; once outside, press the number eight key until you get a connection. Tell the person who answers who you are and what’s going on; he will get you to a safe house. Wait for me there.” Michael leaned in and kissed both of her cheeks and then her lips. It was good to feel their warmth and her reciprocation.
“Now go.”
Sonia smiled weakly, but said nothing. She ran to York and helped him to his feet. As they moved toward the door, Sonia looked back to her husband. She had wanted to tell him that she loved him, but, instead of words, a scream poured from her mouth.
Michael looked back; Gerald was on his feet.
A thick and long cylindrical device hung loosely from his leg. A needle was deeply embedded into the meat of his thigh.
He looked like a man who had been to hell and back. His skin was a mixture of pasty white and gray, doing little to blend in the bit of thick drool that clung to the corner of his mouth. His pistol was hanging uneasily at his side and in his hand. He started to raise it to take aim, but was having some difficulty.
Michael shoved Sonia and York through the door as he shouted, “Go! Goddamn it—go!”
Michael slammed the door behind them and turned to Gerald.
The gun was aimed directly, albeit unsteadily, at Michael’s head.
Sarcastically, Michael asked, “How was Gehenna?”
Gerald pulled back the slide, charging the weapon, and responded, “You tell me.”
His voice had returned, although with a pronounced scratchiness.
Gerald reached down and slowly pulled out the syringe; the thick muscle of his thigh provided some resistance against his effort. Once out of the muscle of his upper leg, he threw it to the floor, where it clanged loudly.
“Epi-pen?” Michael asked.
Gerald smiled. “A Green Beret is always prepared.”
The man had been in anaphylactic shock, but he had obviously thought of all possible outcomes in his mission, including being poisoned or gassed. The Epi-pen had delivered a single dose of epinephrine to counter the effects of the poison that had been delivered by the medallion’s sharp barb.
Injected through a spring-loaded autoinjector, the recipient needn’t have much strength to get the hormone and the heavy-gauged needle into his system. Once inside of the body, the intended results come quickly: the heart beats faster—much faster—and the blood vessels constrict. Adrenaline begins to be produced at an elevated rate. All of which assist the body in recovering from, in this case, an attack by means of poison.
On the other side of the door, Sonia tried to reenter the room, but, with some difficulty, York stopped her. “He’ll be okay, I promise,” said York as he pulled her away from the door. “Let’s do what he says and get out of here.”
She didn’t resist.
The two of them moved as fast as they could through the Vatican’s grounds.
Over her shoulder, Sonia glanced at the door. It took all of her will to not go back.
CHAPTER EIGHTY-FOUR
THE AMERICAN HOSPITAL
OF FRANCE
NEUILLY-SUR-SEINE
The wealthy neighborhood of the Neuilly-sur-Seine is a bourgeois suburb of the 16th arrondissement. Tranquil, well kept, and reserved for the select few of society, the neighborhood’s residents do not accept with grace anything or anyone considered less than refined.
To the contrary, the residents of the Neuilly-sur-Seine fiercely guarded their enclave from the ill-bred and unfastidious.
Madame Jacqueline Bouquet had been enjoying the high sun of the unseasonably pleasant day. Her smaller-than-average size West Highland white terrier was doing his best to walk as had been trained. Near his owner’s right side, the well-groomed canine strutted with his tail pointing straight skyward as Madame Bouquet did the same with her nose.
It was fortunate that she had momentarily paused during her stroll to scoff at a piece of clearly untrimmed boulevard; she had every intention of pointing out the lack of attention to the neighborhood’s community board. Had she not paused, the speeding Porsche would have certainly needed to swerve to avoid colliding with the old woman.
&nb
sp; However fortunate she was, her dog, Monsieur Mathieu Francois Bouquet, whose champion sire shared the same surname, was not.
The speeding auto turned abruptly into the long driveway of the American Hospital of Paris alongside which Madame Bouquet had been strolling. West Highland white terriers are known to be an anxious, if not downright nervous, breed. The nineteen-inch wheels of the sports car came close to the dog, but did nothing more than whisk its hair as it sped by.
However, to Madame Bouquet’s horror, and certainly to the shock of the dog, the tiny heart of the terrier beat nearly twice as fast in the span of a moment.
It was too much for the animal—its heart ceased.
The acrid smell of burnt rubber filled Madame Bouquet’s nostrils as the speeding Porsche screamed to a dead stop.
She watched as its passenger door opened, and a man dressed in a dark suit was pushed out. He rolled twice, and then as fast as everything had occurred, it was over.
The Porsche was gone.
Madame Bouquet’s mouth was as agape as could be.
The man lay prostrate on the asphalt.
A large hole could easily be seen in his hand.
Within moments, two white-suited orderlies ran to the man. They were confused, but picked him up, put him on a stretcher, and quickly wheeled the man into the hospital.
Madame Bouquet looked down at her champion Westie that lay limp on its side; she was too stunned to speak or move. The only energy she could muster was a light tug of the terrier’s leash, to which no response was returned.
CHAPTER EIGHTY-FIVE
THE KING WILL POINT
THE WAY
THE TOWER OF WINDS
The beam of light was still pouring through the hole and into the Tower of Winds. Gerald stood where it met the floor.
Time was running out.
“Put the other half into the hole! And make sure it’s aimed the right way,” Gerald barked as he cocked his weapon.
