by Joseph Nagle
The knife inched closer.
Michael gritted his teeth.
He was just too strong for Michael; there would be no last-minute heroics to counter the man’s strength. The outcome was simply a matter of physics: a stronger force prevails, and Michael had no leverage to use that would balance the unfair match-up.
Over the past forty-eight hours both his efforts and the injuries expended and received had left Michael too spent and too hurt to fight back effectively. Gerald was easily overpowering him.
Michael’s arms were failing as his fatigued muscles fought desperately against the closing blade and started to shake from the effort; Michael tried in vain to stop his own death. The knife was going in, no matter how hard he resisted and no matter the amount of adrenaline he could muster.
Michael’s hands began to slip down from Gerald’s wrists as the growing layer of sweat made a difficult predicament downright impossible.
Michael tried in vain to tap into some last well of strength, but he was on empty.
There was only one option, and brawn wouldn’t be it. Michael bit down, knowing that when the knife pierced his body, it would bring a searing pain. He did the only thing that was left to do. Michael relaxed his arms and let the knife plunge into him.
He gave in.
In the knife went, slicing through tendon and muscle; Michael could even hear it rub against the bone. He wanted to scream, but all of his air rushed from his lungs as if a sledgehammer had been swung into his chest.
Michael gasped for air, but the muscles that controlled the movements needed for breathing didn’t reply to his commands.
The knife was hilt-deep in his body. Hot blood poured profusely from the wound; the metal of the blade was firmly lodged inside him, but not in his heart. Michael had done the only thing left to do; he had contorted his body so that the blade entered into the crease where his shoulder met his torso. The fight was over, but Michael was not dead.
Gerald had lost, for a moment, his position of control; his balance was slightly off, and Michael sensed this. With no need to use his strength to resist the knife, Michael placed his knee deeply into his attacker’s kidney. It was enough to throw Gerald from atop his body.
Michael clumsily jumped to his feet but immediately fell. Up again, he awkwardly ran. At the same time, he pulled the knife from his shoulder, but this time, he did scream as its serrated edge chewed on his flesh as he pulled it out.
A growing blackness wanted to swallow him as the light that should have been there began to fade quickly. Little white stars snapped in the ink of the unconsciousness that was overcoming him, but the pain from the extricated knife had been excruciating, fortunately for Michael—a new course of adrenaline forced his mind to clear instantly, and the overwhelming blackness suddenly began to brighten.
Time slowed down; Michael took in every aspect of his surroundings as he ran. He could see and calculate everything and every possibility. His special operations training was now firmly in control of every one of his actions. Behind him, he knew that Gerald would soon find his feet and be in pursuit.
Prophetically, a large, long, and very baritone growl spilled out from Gerald’s mouth, echoing through the archives’ narrow halls. He was angered and on his feet as he gave chase. Michael ran through the archives, looking for anything that he could use as a weapon. A sliver of purple caught the corner of his eye; without losing a step, Michael yanked the decorative silk from where it hung on the wall.
The archives curved to the left, and Michael leaned forward as he increased his speed. The knife was in his teeth, and Michael could taste the salt of his own blood. While running at a full sprint, he tied one end of the sash to the knife; he wrapped the other end of the sash around his hand.
Gerald was gaining on him; Michael could hear his footsteps bearing down on him as the slap of his thick-soled boots grew louder and faster over the floor. Ahead was a wall and a dead end, but Michael didn’t slow down. Instead, he sped up as fast as he could and leapt at the wall feet-first; using his momentum, he sprang backward from the wall and directly at Gerald.
Gerald was moving too fast to avoid Michael’s attack. His mouth barely had enough time to open in shock. Michael was airborne and had arched his back while twisting mid-air.
Gerald saw a flash of purple and the white glint of metal. Michael had swung the knife outward while in the air. Tethered to the sash, the knife cut across Gerald’s cheek, and Michael quickly reeled it in and was ready for another strike before Gerald could feel the warmth of his own blood spill down his cheek and the burning from the long and wide gash across his face.
Michael spun the knife on the sash in a circular fashion—like a cowboy with his lasso. At the right moment, and without the courtesy of any warning, he released it.
The knife split the air as its business-end headed directly at Gerald. This time the blade found the soft part of Gerald’s abdomen and was embedded deeply. Gerald clawed at the knife, but instead he felt the sensation of falling; the tips of his fingers grasped in vain, unable to find the knife in his stomach.
Before Gerald’s knees met the cold stone of the archives, Michael yanked the knife out of his stomach, reeling it quickly in once more; he readied for one more strike, but first shouted, “The Primitus, who is he? What’s the endgame?”
Gerald spat through bloodstained lips with surprising strength, “Fuck you, Sterling!”
Michael spun the knife again and lashed out. He didn’t feel like asking the same question twice. The blade deeply sliced the man’s left ear.
Gerald fell to his side, screaming. One hand was on his ear, and the other worked to hold in the blood pouring through the wound in his gut.
Yelling out with a voice of promise, Michael warned, “The next one finds your other ear, and the one after that goes across your other cheek! I can play this game all night! Now who is the goddamned Primitus?! What’s the Order’s mission? Tell me, and end this now!”
Gerald painfully and with much difficulty pushed himself to his knees. Once there, he sat slumped and took two long and deep breaths. Each exhalation had an interesting crackling sound.
He knew what this meant.
Michael did too.
Gerald was bleeding internally. Blood filled his lungs. The knife had nicked his lower lobe.
Without the proper medical attention, his lung would slowly fill with blood; he would die.
He looked at Michael with as much difficulty as it had taken to get to his knees. His voice was hoarse; his words were difficult to form.
He was no longer the same man.
As Gerald spoke, each word faded more than the next. “You are wasting your time. The Primitus is beyond your reach—he is untouchable.”
Michael spun the knife wildly and released it; this time Gerald was ready. The knife was heading toward his other ear, but Gerald snatched it from the air.
Michael’s eyes went wide with surprise as the sash went taut. Gerald shouted a loud, gurgled scream and offered Michael no warning to what would come next.
His eyes went wild with lunacy as he shoved the knife into his own neck.
His body fell and convulsed erratically.
Michael stood breathless and then dropped the sash. To the dead man he went; he didn’t want to take any risks. He felt for a pulse.
None was to be found.
Rummaging through his pockets, Michael pulled out a cell phone and then looked for a wallet. He didn’t carry one; Michael had expected as much.
There was no time to waste. Michael thought of the Antonov, which carried the necessary parts and blueprint to build a nuclear weapon.
It was on its way to Afghanistan.
He needed to find that plane.
He needed to find the man behind all of this.
The inside of his sleeve was wet and sticky. A thin stream of blood slowly dripped from his fingertips. Gingerly, Michael took off his coat and bloodstained shirt. The place the knife had entered had left a neat
one-inch gash, through which blood pulsated with each beat of his heart.
Michael grabbed his shirt and ripped a long strip from it. Looping it a few times around his shoulder and under his arm, he tied it tightly using his free hand and teeth.
He slipped his jacket back on; it had been much easier taking it off.
Ignoring the pain, back to the acclimatized vaults he ran. There he was met with the same problem. The doors were equipped with a single biometric scanner. One would need to present a fingerprint in order to gain access.
Michael studied the scanner; he looked for a way around it. There was none to be found. Furrowing his brow, he took a step back. Think, Michael, think! There’s always more than one way to solve a problem!
But this problem didn’t seem solvable.
Michael sighed heavily and looked at his watch. Its surface was smudged, and he started to wipe it clean with the remaining sleeve of his shirt, but stopped just short of doing so.
He looked at the smudge again, this time a bit more closely.
He smiled.
The old conservator had said, I trust that you know full well it isn’t time that’s on your side.
The smudge wasn’t just some dirty streak: it was the conservator’s fingerprint. The old man was right. In fact, he had been rather honest with Michael. Certainly, Michael was running out of time, and as the man had said, it wasn’t time that was on his side.
It was the fingerprint.
Michael took off his watch and held it in front of the scanner.
Nothing.
Michael frowned and repeated the process, only this time he put the watch as close as he could to the biometric scanner.
Still nothing.
He looked at the face of the watch and scrutinized the fingerprint. It seemed intact. With a slow, heavy breath, Michael fogged the fingerprint for a better look. For a moment, the print was more pronounced and looked as clear as could be.
Michael breathed on it once more for a second look, and then it hit him. Biometric scanners react to the physiological aspects of what they are scanning, including body heat. The watch was a cold, inanimate object and produced nothing that replicated body heat. Michael remembered hearing once that a thief had been able to break into a bank after taking a printed image of the manager’s fingerprint and licking the paper to simulate the physiologic attributes of an organic being.
Michael breathed on the face of the watch again, this time a bit more heavily. He placed it immediately in front of the biometric scanner. A small flashing green light lit up its face.
Within a moment, the heavy doors hissed slightly open as the pressurized climate of the vault equalized with that of its exterior.
Inside Michael studied the stacks of simple, plain, drab-colored metal drawers. Each was only a few inches high and labeled with heavy calligraphy.
Overhead, a fan automatically turned on to recreate the pressurized environment. Michael could feel the cool air around him rise upward.
Looking at the labels centered on each drawer, he saw that they were labeled sequentially by date. Inside one of these drawers, Michael knew he would find the letter from Henry the VIII announcing his intent to divorce: the letter that anchored into history the beginning of the Anglican Church’s separation from the Catholic Church. Inside, he knew that he would find countless documents that the pedagogical world would salivate to study.
Michael scanned further and nearly lost his breath when he saw a series of drawers that were labeled not with dates but with hieroglyphs. A number of them began with a symbol of a raven-headed man.
It was Horus, the first Jesus in written form.
Slowly opening the drawer, Michael could feel his heart beating erratically and a slight film of perspiration across his brow beginning to form.
But this wasn’t why he was here.
He closed the drawer.
Under any other normal circumstance, Michael would have given a fortune and more to study the drawers’ contents.
But this day wasn’t a normal one.
Continuing his search, Michael traced his fingers along the shelves from top to bottom and left to right, and then stopped when he found the one he had hoped would be there; it was a date that shouldn’t be there.
October 5th, 1578.
It was a date that didn’t officially exist in the Christian world.
Four into Fifteen, Ten are Lost Forever.
When October 4th had ended in 1578, the next day became October 15th as had been ordered by Pope Gregory XIII.
“Well, I’ll be,” said Michael aloud. “They put it right here and in plain sight.”
Michael inhaled deeply and held his breath for a long moment. With an equally long and controlled exhale, he slid the drawer open.
Inside were long and wide layers of a few dozen parchments stacked one atop another. Folded in half like a book, the spine of the parchments was tied by multiples of tightly woven green and red string; so many that the woven string resembled a thin rope. At the bottom of the parchment, the two-tone string was secured to the drawer by a thick and heavy red wax seal; it was a simple security feature.
Try and remove the book, and the wax seal would break.
Without removing the book from the drawer, Michael opened the parchment and began to read.
Page after page, he carefully turned.
His eyes grew wider with each new turn.
It became quite clear that what he was reading was the recording of a collection of debts held by the Order of Christ.
The bound volume contained a century’s worth of monies—fortunes—owed to the Order. On the pages were names that belonged to noblemen, merchants, kings, wealthy families—and popes.
All had been heavily indebted to the Order of Christ.
Some still were.
The treasury stolen from Sebastian wasn’t mounds of jewels, coins, and gold.
It was debts.
Halfway through the bound parchments, Michael stopped. He nearly did a double take and had to read it twice.
“Unbelievable!” he whispered.
He slapped the palm of his hand on the top of the metal shelving with such force that his palm numbed. He wanted to shout out loud, but he held it in; instead, he gritted his teeth with anger. In an instant, he knew who was behind the madness of the last forty-eight hours.
Closing the bound parchments, he left them inside. He wouldn’t need them. He took care as he slid the drawer closed.
Michael readied to leave, but stopped in his tracks. Turning, he studied for a moment the drawers labeled in hieroglyphs.
What the heck, he thought, how many more chances will I get to be back in this room?
Back to the hieroglyph-labeled drawers he went. Slowly, he pulled one open. The parchments were bound in the same manner as the debts belonging to the Order had been. Michael stared at each page; all were written in demotic, a cursive derivative of Egyptian hieroglyphic writing.
With each flip of the page, Michael’s breathing grew faster; he thought of his father, a professor of religious studies at the University of Denver, who would undoubtedly have gone into cardiac arrest if he were able to read what Michael now read.
Michael scanned the pages fast, nearly disregarding his current situation. He became further engrossed with the passing of each page.
And then he stopped and suddenly stood upright.
“Jesus!” Michael proclaimed. His hands started to shake. He had to squeeze the outside edges of the drawer to regain his composure.
Taking a breath, he looked down at the parchment and read the demotic script again, wanting to make sure he was translating correctly.
“I can’t believe what I’m reading,” he said through a laugh. “I knew it—if only Dad could see this!” And then Michael realized that his father could. Removing a small digital camera from his pocket, Michael took a few photos of the documents. Happy Birthday, Father’s Day, and Merry Christmas, Dad, Michael thought as he slid the camera back i
nto his pocket.
After taking one last long look so he could remember correctly the demotic, he carefully slid the drawer closed and focused once more on the mission at hand.
He couldn’t wait to share with—and show—his father what he had just learned.
With expediency, he retraced his steps. In the old study room, the same sturdy guard wasn’t there to meet him. To the contrary, he was met with more than a dozen of them; half of which now had their weapons trained on him after he burst through the door leading into the room.
Sheepishly, Michael put his hands in the air and asked the nearest one, “You guys know where the newspapers are kept?”
An olive-skinned, dark-haired man who was clearly in charge forcibly made his way toward Michael. But he didn’t answer Michael’s question; the joke was lost on the leader of the Swiss Guard.
An unheard command separated the remaining two men between him and their leader as they made way for a fast-approaching, very large, and seriouslooking man. Every part of him shouted the need to fear him except for his eyes, which were set sleepily and deep into his face.
But that didn’t seem to make Michael feel any better.
The head of the Swiss Guard stood in front of Michael and put his thick hand on Michael’s shoulder as he gruffly inspected the bloodstained bandage poking out from under Michael’s coat.
The man didn’t introduce himself. Instead, he snapped his fingers and barked in Italian for a medic.
Michael shrugged him off. “I’ll be fine. You’ve got two dead bodies in there.” Michael pointed toward the Tower of Winds. “One is in the archives.”
“And my archives, Dr. Sterling?” The voice didn’t belong to the towering soldier in front of Michael. It was the senior conservator’s. “Were you careful, as I had asked?”
Michael wanted to say he had been, but that wouldn’t have been entirely true. “I’ve left everything in its proper place. But the man behind all of this opened fire in the lower levels. I’m afraid a few books may have been damaged.”
The old man shuffled forward. He was still hunched but made every effort to stand erect as he quietly asked, “And the ones that belonged to Sebastian?”
