Glenn Kleier - The Last Day

More deliberately now, he cleared aside the top parchments with ungainly sweeps of his hand until he arrived at the page he sought. Praying for a miracle to deliver him, with shaking index finger he followed the handwritten passages to the lines:

”… those who know the truth, by the purity of their hearts shall they also know the messenger. But woe be to you, hardened hearts, which fail to see and hear. For you who hold your head high with arrogance, so shall you stumble over that which lies conspicuous before you.”

And…

”…if the First Prophecy is to be, it shall be fulfilled before the turn of the millennium; and if the Second Prophecy is to be, it shall be fulfilled thereafter.”

Disastrously, Nicholas had accepted at face value Pope John Paul II's call for “a sacred Jubilee Year to begin at the commencement of the New Millennium, January 1, 2000.” Nicholas had overlooked the now-conspicuous fact that the year 2000-and not 1999-was, indeed, the last year of the old millennium.

Despite how the world might celebrate its coming, in truth, the new millennium had not yet arrived, a point that even Nicholas, isolated though he might have been in his ecclesiastical ivory tower, had surely been aware. Yet somehow, fatefully, he had suppressed that knowledge. The dark passages of the Secret Letter reconfirmed the pope's dread convictions. It was the first prophecy that had been fulfilled. Jeza was the Messiah!

Nicholas's lips contorted in a grotesque grin of disbelief and betrayed hurt. He began to laugh, tears flowing from his eyes. Leaving the yellowed page where it lay, he pushed himself up from his chair and staggered away from his desk. The vault key, still in its lock, tore free from the pontiff's fob, but Nicholas was impervious.

“My God, my God” the pope ranted as he passed the threshold of his room, and those with their ears against his door jumped back in fear.

Collapsing on his bed, Nicholas could feel the pressure of his blood surging within his veins. He rolled over on his back and attempted to calm himself, but the sound of his chamber door closing alerted him to someone's unwelcomed presence.

“You!” the pope gasped, turning to discover the dark shape of Antonio di Concerci slipping quietly toward him. Nicholas rose up on one elbow, the exertion and anger showing like fire in his face. “What counsel do you bring me now, cardinal advisor?” he cried. “Do you come to fill me again with more of your misconceptions and your schemes?”

Halfway to the pope's bedside, di Concerci slowed and stopped. Frowning, he raised his hand to his chin and said nothing.

“The truth is there!” Nicholas pointed to his desk with a badly trembling hand. “I did not want to see it. I allowed my vision to be clouded by power and pride and stubbornness and fear!”

The prefect's eyes followed the direction of the pontiff's finger to where the yellowed papers lay.

“What do I do now, my cardinal prefect?” The pope's anxious voice grew louder and more strident. “Where do I go with my soul now? Will you share with me my failure and my shame? Will you stand at my side now before the Lord's throne?” Nicholas contracted his shaking fingers into a fist and bellowed out in desperate rage, “Will you defend me to God for the murder of His only begotten Daughter?”

With these last words, the pope was overcome with searing pain. He stiffened and pitched back onto his bed, hands fluttering convulsively at his side, eyes turning upward in his head. He shivered there, alone, in unbridled torment. And then, in a long, slow, pained gargle, he exuded his final breath.

Through all of this, the prefect had stood immobile, a deep furrow impressing itself ever further into his brow. He backed slowly away from the bedchamber, making his way quietly to the pope's desk. Picking up the letter, he read it carefully, stopping only once to glance over at the still form on the bed.

When finished, Antonio Cardinal Prefect di Concerci gathered up all the parchments, carefully slipped them inside his cassock and then moved to the pope's side to feel his wrist for a pulse.

Finding none, he stepped back, paused, then exited the room to summon the papal physician.

Somewhere over the southern Negev Desert 6:34 P.M., Sunday, April 23, 2000

A thousand feet above the desert floor, in one of six Israeli night-reconnaissance helicopters, Feldman, Hunter, a pilot, co-pilot and two military police were racing toward the supply depot Commander Lazzlo had identified for them earlier.

Feldman's plan had worked perfectly. Eziah Ben-Miriam's government had a number of sensitive issues to quickly resolve, and Jon Feldman held two of the keys. He could deliver Ben-Miriam a quick and peaceful surrender of the Hadassah, as well as the whereabouts of Israel's most wanted: Goene and Tamin.

And all Feldman had required in return was:

First, complete clemency for Commander David Lazzlo and his loyal troops. They had, after all, performed a great service for Israel. In defying Goene, they had defended the Messiah's body and delivered to the world the sacred truths that stopped Armageddon. Moreover, Feldman had argued, if the government accepted the premise that Jeza was risen from the dead, any pending murder charges would have to be dropped anyway.

And second, acceding to Hunter's demands, Feldman had insisted that he and the cameraman be allowed to accompany the Israeli search team to record the capture of Goene and Tamin-assuming it wasn't already too late. The interminably slow negotiations had cost Feldman precious hours.

As the reporters’ aircraft cleared a small cluster of mountains, the pilot signaled that they were coming up on the depot Lazzlo had targeted as a probable hideout for the two fugitives. Through the windshield of the craft, in the fading twilight, it was impossible to see much. But the scene was eminently visible in the eerie green glow of the cockpit's night-scanning screen.

It would appear that Lazzlo had been correct in his suspicions. Feldman could easily distinguish the parked form of a single Israeli military helicopter in front of what looked to be a large rock formation with a door in it. “There.” The co-pilot identified the craft, tapping the screen with his forefinger.

But it was soon apparent they'd arrived too late. A quick ground inspection showed the depot deserted and truck tracks heading to the southeast toward the least guarded area of the Egyptian border. Also as Lazzlo had surmised.

“We should have intercept momentarily,” the pilot promised, taking them back up into the sky and away. That proved to be an optimistic projection. An hour later, the tracks having dissolved in rocky terrain, the squadron had split up, hoping to detect the heat of the escape vehicle's engine on infrared sensors. But they came across nothing except a few carloads of millenarians working their way toward the new sacred shrine of Jeza's Resurrection.

There's no way they could have made it to the border yet,” the pilot informed his passengers. “I'm going to swing around and check out that Bedouin encampment we passed a few kilometers back. Maybe they've seen something.”

A few minutes later, they crossed a rise and came upon a sprawling camp. “Probably about a hundred fifty to two hundred Bedouins, all told,” the pilot estimated, gauging from the size of their large, circuslike tents. “We'll put down far enough away not to disturb their flocks too much.”

They dropped into a flat bluff about fifty meters downwind, the helicopter's prop kicking up a blinding dust storm. As the blades slowed and the clouds settled, an assembly of about forty rough-hewn men with rifles slowly materialized in the darkness, just beyond the swath of the rotor. One of the Israeli militia slid out of the helicopter, approached the nomads with his arms in the air, chatted for a few moments and then came trotting back at a fast clip.