From the Ashes (26 page)

But today, in this cavernous, largely empty hall, he felt not peace but trepidation. The greatest and most fearful mystery this church currently held was neither ecclesiastical nor carved in stone. And thus far, it had proven lethal for all who had sought to discover its truths.

The pair started walking down the length of the nave, taking time to gaze at the ornate sculptures and brilliantly colored stained glass that graced the walls. Some sections of the walls still bore the black of smoke and ash from the terrible fire that had ravaged the church in December 2001. It was a miracle that the fire hadn’t been worse, that the church was even still standing. Like the miracle that
Jon
was still standing after all that had happened. And the worst, Jon feared, was yet to come.

When they reached the front of the church – the bishop’s pulpit, the altars, and the empty choir loft all in attendance – Jon checked his watch: 3:57. They needed to hurry. Although the chapel they sought lay only a few dozen yards away on the other side of the choir loft, he was well aware that, if he allowed himself to, he could take an hour walking that short distance, entranced as he was wont to be by the artistry and mystery that surrounded him, and nervous as he felt about what they might find in the chapel. Worried about what fresh terrors the truth might bring.

They walked to the right of the altar, and began to traverse the south side of the ambulatory, slowly making their way eastward. On their left, the choir rose above them with fifty-foot granite columns stretching upward behind an ornate lattice of wrought-iron fencing. On their right, a series of chapels passed by in a heart-wrenching flurry, each likely to hold historical and cultural particularities that Jon was dying to explore. But they had a job to do first. There would be other times to explore, to indulge, to immerse. The church, having been around for nearly twelve decades, probably wasn’t going anywhere anytime soon. And, if nothing went awry in the easternmost chapel today, Jon and Mara would hopefully be around for a while longer as well.

An intricately sculpted bronze gate was set inside the stone entrance to the Chapel of Saint Saviour, the site of their date with destiny. Angels paid homage to a golden cross set against a green and red wreath, and a stylized Alpha and Omega provided a backdrop to the beautiful metalwork. Alpha and Omega. Beginning and end.

Or the beginning
of the
end. Whatever end that might be.

They walked into the empty chapel. Empty save for the haunting stone stares of angels and saints above, of bishops interred, of Christ and the apostles looking holy in a giant stained-glass window as the bright of day lit them from outside. None of whom, presumably, could have sent the text message summoning them here. Jon poked his head into an alcove on the left of the chapel. Nothing but a locked door, leading to some other place in the church, inaccessible to all but clergy and lay staff. He glanced at his watch. 4:01. Their mysterious summoner was mysteriously absent.

“It’s after four. Where is he?”

Mara shrugged in reply. “Maybe his clock is running slower than yours?”

“Egh.” Jon walked to the altar, stared at the elaborate stained-glass artistry.

“Beautiful, isn’t it?”

Jon spun on his heel toward the voice. Mara, who had been studying the details of the altar, whirled around just as fast. The voice belonged to the third person in the room, a person who had entered as stealthily as a jungle cat stalking its prey. A man the pair had seen, briefly, earlier that day. It took Mara a second to recognize him as the man who had bowled into her at the library that morning.

Jon broke the nervous silence. “Are you the—”

“One who summoned you here? Yes.”

“Who
are
you, exactly?” Mara asked, her face contorted in a combination of apprehension, distrust, and curiosity.

“That
is an excellent question, Mara. Oh yes,” he went on, Mara’s eyes opening wide with surprise right on cue, “I know all about you. Both of you. And I’m here to help you get what you want.”

Jon narrowed his eyes. He felt defensive of both Mara and their mission, and he wasn’t going to just let some outsider purporting to have all the answers into their circle without due scrutiny. “And what do we want?” he asked the man.

“The truth.” The man raised his hands skyward as though a televangelist preacher, exhorting heaven itself to rain its blessings down on him. “The liberation and vindication that only pure, unadulterated truth can provide. A truth that I am here to impart.”

“Who killed Michael,” Jon said, his eyes still narrowed with suspicion. “The conspiracy.”

“Precisely.” The man was cool, his voice and tone even as though he had been rehearsing this speech for quite some time. And yet, strangely, there didn’t seem to be a bit of falsehood about him. Not that Jon could detect, anyway. “Michael understood a great deal. More perhaps than he realized. More than
we
realized. But then, in order to understand all that, you must understand the big picture.”

“You still haven’t answered my question,” Mara broke in. Jon looked at her with a combination of pride and concern. She was stepping up, but whether or not that was wise remained to be seen. “Who are you? And who is this ‘we’ you speak of?”

The mysterious stranger let his eyes drift to one of the heavenly warriors flanking the room. “Who I am, who I
was
, is a tricky question.” The man’s speaking pace quickened as he returned his gaze to Jon and Mara. “One that will be answered in due course, but one that will only add confusion if I attempt to explain now. Time is of the essence, and the answers you seek are far from simple.”

“Can you at least give us your name?” Jon returned, his tone somewhat hostile. “Or would that take too much explaining, too?”

“You may call me Wayne. But my name is of little significance to your quest. You need to understand the truth of how this whole mess got started. Before people like Michael were killed in the ongoing cover-up. Before soldiers like myself were killed in foreign lands and resurrected back home in America for the purpose of slaughtering the curious in order to hide the truth. Back to the original conspiracy, almost a century ago.”

Wayne swallowed audibly and took a deep breath. “The truth about Operation Phoenix. From the beginning.”

Manhattan
January 1932

The knock at the door was unexpected at this late hour. John D. Rockefeller, Jr. had just sat down in his favorite reading chair, the rich leather cushions seeming to absorb some of the stresses and worries of the day. The West 54
^th
Street mansion was replete with classy furnishings, not overly lavish, but in a style that Mrs. Rockefeller had deemed “tastefully grand.” Mr. Rockefeller’s den was no different: the antlers of a trophy deer were mounted on one wall with assorted stuffed waterfowl; two of the other walls were lined in bookshelves, filled with thick leatherbound tomes and copious ledger books representing years of records for the many business enterprises in the Rockefeller empire. A solid but quietly elegant desk – a green-shaded reading lamp perched in one corner, a pocket-watch holder resting near the other edge – was positioned in the middle of the room, facing the door, its back to the chilly, snow-addled world outside the room’s only window. Between the desk and the door, nestled between the towering walls of books that met in the far corner, were two leather chairs, one of which held the man who was a household name, while the other sat empty.

He didn’t arise immediately when he heard the knock, assuming that it was some drunk who had gotten lost on the way home. Prohibition, he thought to himself, was long in need of repealing. Although he himself was a lifelong teetotaler, he knew the eighteenth amendment was causing more problems than it was fixing. If these poor bottom-feeders who populated the city, destitute in every sense of the word, needed anything, it was a pick-me-up. And it wasn’t like they couldn’t get it anyway; the prevalence of speakeasies in the city was at a record high, and the fact that they were generally run by mobsters, running all sorts of underground criminal enterprises on the side, just added to the problems he found with the ban. It didn’t quell the amount of alcohol people drank; it just moved it to the shadows, a far more dangerous place for secret vices to dwell. It was a good idea in theory, but simply untenable on the ground. Pass all the moral and idealistic laws you want; human nature would always win out in the end. Get the vices out there in the open, Rockefeller felt. Secrets and lies only breed more secrets and lies, and often more criminal ones at that.

Rockefeller was yanked from his thoughts by the opening of his den door, followed by the entrance of two men. As soon as he saw one of the men, he stood up, partly in knee-jerk courtesy, partly in surprise. The knock was not from a lost drunk, after all. The man who his butler, Robert, let into the house was just as unexpected as the knock he had been responsible for. He was dressed in a woolen overcoat, which Robert took as the man shed it, the heated mansion providing a warm refuge from the cold January night. A business suit, with a gray tie and black wingtip shoes, completed the ensemble. His graying hair and mustache gave him an air of wisdom, adding to the decades of experience, both in high-ranking political and military positions, that glinted in his eyes. The man was Henry Lewis Stimson, Secretary of State to President Herbert Hoover.

“Henry,” Rockefeller began, his voice and demeanor far less sure than was customary for the industrial giant. “What brings you here at this hour? I haven’t seen you since... what, that White House dinner last summer?”

“The Independence Day dinner, I think, yes. How are you, John?” The Secretary seemed calm, at ease, ready to play whatever cards he had, whatever purpose for which he had come, at his own pace, with his own timing.

“I’m well enough.” The tycoon shot a thumb at the window. “Can’t say the same for those poor saps down in the soup kitchen lines, but hey, somebody’s gotta run things.” A twitch at the corner of Stimson’s mouth portended a smile that never came.

“Indeed,” the Secretary said. “These are tough times. As you know with your having to go it alone on your big project. The ‘Rockefeller Center,’ you’re calling it, right?”

“That’s right,” Rockefeller responded. “Not the most
creative
name perhaps, but, it will be my legacy, after all. Right smack dab in the middle of Manhattan. It’ll be fantastic, regardless of the Opera pulling out.” The Metropolitan Opera had decided to pull out of what was to be a joint financial venture in the Rockefeller Center, owing to the 1929 stock market crash and the ensuing Great Depression. “Besides, people see ‘Rockefeller,’ and they think success, they think progress. Am I right?”

“You’re right, John, absolutely right. Which is why I came to you. I need results. I need a man I can count on to ensure that this nation progresses the way it needs to: the American way.” Stimson glanced at Robert, then back at Rockefeller. His host got the hint and excused his servant, who bowed slightly as he backed out of the room, shutting the door behind him. Stimson sat himself in a leather chair facing Rockefeller’s reading chair, and waited for the tycoon to seat himself before he would continue. Rockefeller paused for a moment, realizing too late that the shock of the unexpected visit had caused him to entirely forget to extend the household courtesy to his esteemed guest. Regaining control of his faculties, he nodded to Stimson, seeming to indicate an unspoken apology for forgetting his manners, to which the Secretary responded with a nod of his own, seemingly indicating his understanding and acceptance of the apology. Rockefeller eased himself into the chair in which he had so recently sat alone, ready to spend a quiet evening at home, away from affairs of business, politics, and the state of the nation. An evening that was now as good as lost.

“What do you mean, Henry?” Rockefeller started, realizing after sitting down that his interlocutor wanted him to prompt him for whatever purpose he had envisioned for this visit. “What, you want me to move investments to boost the market or something?”

“Not exactly, John.” Stimson was biding his time, drawing out the conversation for dramatic effect, like an actor following a preplanned script. He pulled a silver cigarette case from his coat pocket. He opened it, pulled a cigarette halfway out, then looked up at Rockefeller, almost as an afterthought asking, “Mind if I smoke?”

“Please,” Rockefeller answered, anxious to get to the point.

“You don’t happen to have—”

Rockefeller’s lighter was out, flipped open, and lit in his extended hand before Stimson could finish his sentence. Stimson dipped his head, cigarette pressed between his lips, to the flame, lighting his stick of tobacco and puffing briefly before leaning back in his seat, crossing his legs, and turning again to his host.

“I don’t need to tell you that the economy is worse than it’s been in a long while,” Stimson began. “It’s getting better, to be sure, but the general public isn’t feeling the effects yet. Given time, the President’s plans
will
work, but the voters aren’t too keen on starving to death, or eking out some meager existence that’s about as far away from the American Dream as they can imagine. And all the while, those damned Russians are touting all their successes resultant from their conversion to Communism.”

“But that’s only because they’d all but isolated themselves economically before the crash,” Rockefeller interrupted, slightly indignant at the audacity of the Russian propaganda machine. “Communism, especially that rotten blend the Soviets are serving up, simply
can’t
work.”

Stimson smiled briefly, almost patronizingly, and nodded to the tycoon. “You’re absolutely correct, John.” A long drag on the cigarette, followed by an even longer exhalation, the smoke pluming slowly from his lips. “And it’s likely far more rhetoric and flag-waving propaganda than actual results. What’ve we heard from the Soviets? Nothing but ‘official’ government reports and bureaucratic bullshit, espousing their noble ways and the productivity it supposedly gives them, and condemning the rest of us. So yes, it’s probably a bunch of hooey, but me knowing that and you knowing that just won’t cut it with the masses.”