Robert Browne - The Paradise Prophecy

Less than a week later, North Korea renewed its threats of aggression against the South and attempts at diplomacy by the U.S. secretary of state were deemed an unmitigated disaster. War between the two nations was considered unavoidable.

Add to the mix the downward spiral of the world economy, the riots during the recent G20 summit, violent skirmishes in third world countries, the rise in black market weaponry-including rumors of enriched uranium being smuggled out of Russia-and the general consensus was that the world was about to see a shit storm the likes of which it had never before experienced.

Rather than attempt to find real solutions to these problems, politicians took to the cable airwaves and blamed one another for their failings. Partisan mudslinging had reached a new high. Religious leaders told their followers to begin preparing for the Rapture as the rest of the world sat glued to their TV sets, wondering if they’d be alive for the next episode of Saints and Sinners .

Who would be kicked out of the house? Andrew or Tasha?

Beel smiled appreciatively every time his pet project entered the national conversation. To allow themselves to be distracted at such a critical time by television-well, in Beel’s opinion, they’d get what they deserved.

Perhaps the tipping point was close, and his brothers’ little experiment in Amsterdam would push it over. Or maybe Belial was right about the girl, and the elusive Telum had been found. The ultimate weapon. Beel allowed himself a moment to consider how sweet it would feel to free her.

The hard truth was that nobody really knew what was coming, including-and especially-the world’s heads of state. And what chance did humanity really have with the four of them pulling the strings?

And if this girl really is the Telum, Beel mused, these pathetic little creatures won’t know what hit them on the night of the blood moon.

ISTANBUL, TURKEY

Batty and Callahan caught a chartered plane at a small airstrip just west of Istanbul.

But as they crossed the tarmac, Batty felt an energy nearby. A darkness deeper than the darkness around them, as if someone were waiting in the shadows, watching them.

He remembered Ajda in that tunnel and wondered if this feeling was just the lingering residue of her attack. That seemed to happen to him sometimes. He had a hard time shaking this stuff off. But as they climbed the steps to the door of the plane, he stopped a moment and glanced around.

“What is it?” Callahan said, mimicking him, concern in her eyes.

He shook his head. “Nothing to worry about.”

He just hoped he was right.

Batty didn’t like small planes. Every one he’d ever flown in seemed to have a love affair with turbulence, and this one was no exception. But at least the seats were comfortable. If you had to spend hours bouncing around the sky in a tiny metal tube, it didn’t hurt to do it in a chair the size of a Barcalounger.

As usual, Callahan-who sat across the aisle from him-kept her nose buried in her cell phone. She seemed subdued, but he knew her mind was probably racing, just as his had been when he’d first been forced to come to grips with the realities of the world. It was a credit to her tenacity that she was able to hold it together so well.

Callahan was what his mother had called “a woman with no back up.” In other words, no reverse. Always moving forward, like a shark. And after seeing what she’d done to Ajda, he didn’t envy anyone who got in her way.

He hoped this trip wasn’t in vain. Even though Ozan and the monk had been somewhat careful about their e-mails, Batty knew that if Callahan could figure it out, others could as well.

And that meant Brother Philip was in danger.

Of course, they couldn’t be absolutely sure that Philip was a guardian. Their information on him was almost nonexistent. It seemed to Batty that a monk wouldn’t fit the typical Christopherian profile of spiritual redemption, but there was no telling where Brother Philip had come from. Callahan had requested a background check from her office in Washington, but had yet to hear back from them.

This whole government thing bothered Batty.

Back at the hotel, he had thought about D.C. and the e-mail Ozan had sent to an Internet cafe there. Knowing this was Callahan’s stomping ground, it had raised a question in his mind.

“How did you get involved in this case in the first place?”

“Same way I always do,” she’d told him. “They give me an assignment and I catch a plane. This one had a higher priority level than usual, but I’m not supposed to ask questions, just do my job.”

“You ever stop to wonder why they sent you to investigate the death of a pop star?”

“Of course I have.”

“And what’s your conclusion?”

“That they know more than I do. But then they always do.”

“Maybe somebody put a bug in their ear.”

“Like who?”

Batty shrugged. “Somebody who knows enough to recognize a red flag when he sees one. Maybe somebody who got an e-mail message that said, ‘stay alert.’ They hear about Gabriela, happen to be close enough to your people to wield some influence, and the next thing you know, you’re on a plane.”

Callahan looked as if she was weighing a decision, then said, “I’m breaching protocol when I tell you this, but I think the order may have come directly from the White House.”

“You think maybe our president is a guardian?”

Callahan laughed. “I highly doubt it, but he’s been accused of worse. Maybe somebody in his administration is. And if that’s true, then why bother with me? Why not warn the others directly?”

“Maybe he feels compromised. Thinks he’s being watched and doesn’t want to raise any alarms.”

“None of which tells us what’s at the root of all of this. Why Milton, of all people? Why Paradise Lost and the search for hidden messages? Why all the questions about missing pages and giant books? I can’t stand being blindfolded.”

“Maybe this Brother Philip will know.”

“Assuming we can find him,” Callahan said.

They had left it at that, taking a taxi to a remote airport in the dead of night, so that some pilot for hire could lock them into a tiny metal tube and bounce them all over the cloudless sky.

But in the end, it wasn’t the turbulence that terrified Batty.

It was the nosedive.

was exhausted. She’d spent the last few hours running the night’s insanity through her head, visions of sycophants and human combustibles parading before her mind’s eye, convincing her that her entire life had been a fraud.

It wasn’t her fault that she hadn’t known these things existed, had thought that they were merely fantasies created to thrill and entertain in movies and books and around the campfire. But maybe if she’d had an open mind, had not been so closed off to that world, had accepted at least the possibility that it existed, she wouldn’t be paying for it now.

She thought about that moment in the alley in Paradise City. Seeing her ten-year-old self put a shotgun to her head. Had that merely been a product of her fractured past, or had something more sinister been at work? That whole place was knee-deep in the spooky.