The Lucifer Code (44 page)

In all his plans, he had never factored in someone as gifted—or as lucky—as Professor Thomas Lourds. Now the man’s skills were going to earn him nothing more than an early grave.

Passage of Omens

Hagia Sophia Underground

Istanbul, Turkey

25 March 2010

In the steady, golden candlelight, Lourds translated the scroll and read it aloud.

Let it be known that this is the last writing of John, also known as John of Patmos. I am an old man, and I am come willingly to the end of my days. I write now under no threat of coercion only what the Lord my God would have me write.

I came to this island to spend my final days in peace, but I did not find peace. I found only the end of the world. I have seen him, I have seen the Beast, the Devil by all his names, and I have seen his efforts to take the world down before Jesus comes again.

I was there when Jesus returned to us the first time, and I saw myself the holes in his blessed hands and his blessed feet. We were not all believers. It changed me to admit this, but we were not. Even after everything we had seen him do, after we had seen him walk on stormy waters, after we had seen him raise the dead, we could not easily believe he had risen after dying so painfully.

As hard as it had been to watch him die, it was harder still to watch him take his leave of us. And more difficult again to take our leave from each other.

Many of us are dead now. In fact, I believe myself to be the last of his chosen alive, and that won’t last much longer.

You have read my visions of what is to come, of the seven years that will plague those who do not truly believe. But I have not revealed everything that will pass.

There will come a day when the Great Deceiver will rise to power among men. He will pass among you as one of your own and you will know him not. He will have practised to be one of you. He will be born unto woman, but he will be darkly evil. In those End Times you will not recognize evil as surely as you may think. But when you know the Devil, know also that no weapon made by human hand will truly destroy him.

Only one thing is capable of that, and I will soon give it to you. It is called the Joy Scroll and it has the power to strip away the Great Deceiver’s might that he will have accumulated by the time you read this.

The Joy Scroll has, like the writing that has led you here and given you these secrets been written in another language. Four keys to this language have been hidden in the places in the mosaics. Together, they will give you enough information to decipher the Joy Scroll.

Now, please forgive me for I am very weary and wish only to see my Master in all his Glory. God be with you and reward you with his mercies.

Lourds looked up from the scroll. ‘That’s all there is. Except for the second scroll.’

The second scroll had been wrapped in the first. True to John of Patmos’s words, Lourds hadn’t been able to read the second scroll.

Joachim looked at the wall behind Lourds. ‘These places then.’

Lourds looked at the mosaics as well. ‘These places. And with everyone pursuing us.’

With a smile, Joachim turned to him. ‘Now you will find your faith, Professor Lourds. With all that is arrayed against us, I think we can agree that we will not get through this alone.’

I don’t know if we’re going to get through this alive, much less alone
, Lourds thought.

Basilica Cistern

Hagia Sophia Underground

Istanbul, Turkey

25 March 2010

‘How are we supposed to get the Medusa head to turn over?’ Cleena asked.

They stood once more in the huge room filled with stone columns. Every sound they made echoed throughout the building.

‘With this,’ Lourds said. He held up the first scroll and showed them the end. He had been puzzling over it since he’d first seen it. Now he felt certain that it was a key. But where was the keyhole?

‘Here,’ Olympia called. She’d evidently deduced what the rod was going to be used for as well.

Lourds walked round to her on the other side of the Medusa head. She aimed her light at a crevice between a pair of snakes sprouting from the Medusa’s head. Sliding the rod into the crevice, Lourds felt the channel bottom out. He turned the rod and heard tumblers click. The Medusa head vibrated as mechanisms inside slid into place. Four snakes elongated and became a pedestal. Stone ground against stone as the snake legs took the weight of the head and allowed it to flip upside down.

Lourds watched in amazement. A moment later, what had been a seamless forehead split open and revealed a gap that held a gold ring with a four-inch span. As the noise died away, Lourds reached for the ring and removed it from its hiding place. He felt the inscriptions on the inside of the ring before he saw them. They were etched fine and sharp, looking as though it had been only days instead of two thousand years since they’d been made.

‘What is it?’ Joachim asked as he joined Lourds.

Lourds fingered the notches cut into the ring. ‘Part of a device that, hopefully, will prove to be a Rosetta Stone.’

‘Are you certain?’ Olympia asked.

‘I am,’ Lourds said, ‘unless John of Patmos intended to have a final joke at the expense of this world.’ He put the ring carefully in a protective pouch inside his backpack. Then he took the rod from the Medusa head. Another series of grinding noises took place in the Medusa head as it once more turned upside down and locked into place beneath the stone column above it.

‘Do you think Constantine knew about the Medusa’s head?’ Olympia asked.

‘I do,’ Lourds answered. ‘His hand has been in everything we’ve touched so far.’

‘He kept his secrets very well.’

Lourds silently agreed. Then he shouldered his backpack and headed out.

‘Getting across the borders while we’re being hunted isn’t going to be easy,’ Joachim said.

‘Really?’ Lourds acted surprised. ‘Then isn’t it lucky that we have a professional smuggler with a network of travel coordinators for contraband along with us?’

Cleena didn’t turn round and didn’t say anything, but Lourds could tell she was smiling.

Olympia scowled. ‘Don’t act like you planned this, Thomas,’ she said quietly. ‘I know very well why you allowed that young woman to come with us.’

‘Well, she
is
quite handy with weapons.’

Olympia said something completely unladylike.

CHAPTER

25

Arch of the Four Winds

Villa Doria Pamphili

Rome, Italy

3 April 2010

‘Thomas! Over here!’

F
eeling beat up from the last few days of travel and all the stress he’d been under since they’d left Istanbul, Lourds didn’t see his old friend and mentor for a moment. He stopped and stood still, looking for any unfriendly movement around him.

‘You’re clear, Professor.’ Cleena’s voice echoed in Lourds’ ear canal.

Although he’d worn the earwig for the last week or so, he still wasn’t used to the device or the need for it.

Father Gabriel Madeiro sat on a bench in the shade of a copse of trees. He was a short man, but filled with boundless energy. He was almost as wide as he was tall and his hair and beard had gone snow white so that they stood out against his dark skin. He closed the fat book he was reading and used a thick forefinger to mark his place. Lourds knew without seeing the cover that it would be a thriller. Father Gabriel had introduced Lourds to James Bond and Jason Bourne at the same time he was instructing him in the intricacies of Latin. It had been Father Gabriel’s love of language, of old, dead books as well as potboilers, that had ignited the same passion within Lourds.

When he got close enough, Father Gabriel grabbed Lourds in a powerful bear hug for a moment and lifted him clear off his feet. In his sixties, Father Gabriel remained a powerful man.

‘It’s so good to see you,’ Father Gabriel said when he released Lourds. ‘I miss having you underfoot.’

‘Hopefully these days I wouldn’t be underfoot so much,’ Lourds said.

‘I don’t think you would.’ Father Gabriel waved Lourds to the bench. ‘You’re having quite the career these days. Atlantis?’ He raised his eyebrows. ‘Now that must have been exciting.’

‘It was.’

‘I read your book. Very enjoyable.’

‘I’m glad you thought so. I would have much rather told you the story in person.’

‘I would have much rather heard it in person.’ Father Gabriel lifted his shoulders and let them drop. ‘Unfortunately, I was doing some work in Rio de Janeiro.’

‘And avoiding the winter, as I recall.’ Lourds smiled, and for a moment the visit almost seemed casual. Except that he had the four rings he’d collected from Cordoba, outside Moscow, Jerusalem and Istanbul.

‘I missed winter, but not too terribly much.’ Father Gabriel’s dark eyes regarded Lourds speculatively. ‘I wouldn’t have guessed you would turn out to be a criminal, though. I thought I’d mentored you better than that.’

‘A criminal?’ That surprised Lourds.

Father Gabriel nodded. ‘The word I have is that you absconded from Istanbul with some very important religious artefacts.’

‘Do you believe that?’

‘Not for a minute.’

Lourds grinned. ‘Well, actually, that part is true.’

‘Really?’ Father Gabriel gave him a look of mock shock.

‘I seem to recall a certain Roman Catholic priest—’

‘Who shall remain nameless.’

‘Who might
prefer
to remain nameless,’ Lourds went on, ‘who wasn’t above a bit of skulduggery now and again.’

‘Perhaps a toe over the line here and there.’ Father Gabriel grinned in delight.

‘You shouldn’t have taken me along. You corrupted me.’

‘I didn’t corrupt you. You were sixteen—’

‘I was
twelve
,’ Lourds objected.

‘And your babysitter’

‘Au pair.’

‘Had already corrupted you.’ Father Gabriel tugged at his beard. ‘Or perhaps you corrupted her. I forget how that went exactly.’

‘It was mutual corruption,’ Lourds said. ‘She was experienced, but I was better read.’

‘Another fault of mine, I suppose.’

‘You’re the one that left those trashy spy novels lying around.’

Father Gabriel grinned. ‘So I did.’

Lourds was silent for a moment. ‘I’ve missed you.’

‘I know,’ the old man said solemnly. ‘I’ve missed you too. The years grow shorter …’

‘And they move ever faster,’ Lourds finished. ‘I think I’m finally beginning to understand what you were talking about.’

‘Good. My efforts weren’t wasted after all. I’m relieved.’ Father Gabriel focused on Lourds. ‘How much trouble are you in?’

‘A stone’s throw away from the yawning mouth of hell.’

Father Gabriel rubbed his hands together. ‘It’s been a long time since I could make any such claim. Tell me about it.’

Seated there in the shade, with the whisper of the wind round them, knowing that Cleena MacKenna guarded him with her pistol only a short distance away and that her friend had a spy satellite watching over them, Lourds did. He told Father Gabriel about the rapid trip to Russia where the statue of the Virgin Mary wept, and how they’d found the second golden ring within one of the foundations of the church that Patriarch Nikon had purposefully placed there when he built the church. He told his friend of the journey to Jerusalem to the Church of the Holy Sepulchre where they’d discovered the third ring inside one of the walls near the ladder that no one had moved on the second storey for over a hundred years. That ladder had marked the spot where the True Cross’s shadow had fallen at the time of the Crucifixion. And finally, Lourds told Father Gabriel of the pool at the Grand Mosque of Cordoba and how the waters had turned red as blood only a few days before their arrival.

When he finished, Lourds sat back and waited to see what Father Gabriel’s reaction would be.

‘You think the Vice-President of the United States is Lucifer?’

Lourds hated the way that sounded when said naked like that. ‘It’s not just me,’ he answered defensively. ‘Several other people think that too.’

‘Tell me, Professor, what do you think your colleagues at Harvard would think if you told them this?’

‘Honestly, I shudder to think. My parking privileges would probably be revoked.’

‘You realize they’d rather think you were a thief than a wild-eyed madman. Being a thief has a certain sexy cache.’

‘Do I look like a wild-eyed madman to you?’

‘No, you don’t. You look incredibly tired is how you look.’

‘I feel incredibly tired. These past few days, the last three weeks, have been a blur.’

‘And yet you found Lucifer.’

‘Truth be told,’ Lourds said, ‘I wasn’t looking, and apparently it isn’t that hard.’

‘Because he was looking for you.’

A cold wind blew down the back of Lourds’ shirt. ‘Not,’ he said, ‘a good thought.’

Father Gabriel pulled at his beard. ‘The Vice-President of the United States.’

‘Yes.’

‘That certainly takes some getting used to.’

‘It does.’

Then Father Gabriel smiled. ‘But I’m not surprised to find out Lucifer decided to go into politics. Though it could have been worse.’

‘Worse?’

‘He could have become a televangelist. If I’d had to guess, that’s what I would have put my money on.’

In spite of the situation, Lourds laughed.

Father Gabriel joined him, and then asked, ‘How can I help you, Thomas?’

‘I need a place to stay where I can work,’ Lourds said. ‘Somewhere safe.’

Father Gabriel nodded. ‘Of course.’

‘Enough room for my road companions.’

‘One of them is a woman?’

‘Two, actually.’

‘Including the young redhead over there by that tree looking as though she’s innocently hanging about?’

Cleena cursed, eliciting a smile from Lourds. She made an obnoxious gesture at the priest.