Paul Johnston - Maps of Hell

“I’ll introduce you afterward,” the diminutive woman whispered, with a broad smile.

Karen nodded and looked ahead. There were ranks of veterans in front of the high altar, many of them in wheelchairs, all wearing berets with badges on them. Each was accompanied by a family member and a young soldier with similar unit insignias. The veterans themselves looked bewildered, as if the ceremony was directed at younger selves they had long since left behind.

There was a slight commotion in the row behind her and Karen looked round. To her surprise, she saw people moving along and Matt taking the seat directly behind her. He gave her a smile, which she didn’t return. She had assumed, after his behavior at FBI headquarters, that he had been taken somewhere to cool down. What on earth had he been doing? He had put her off something, though she couldn’t remember what it was. Fortunately she had regained her composure as soon as the justice secretary invited her to come to the minority veterans’ service, saying that her presence would send a message to criminals and terrorists that the kidnapping of a police officer, no matter where she was from, would be given the highest priority by the administration.

And now, Karen thought, here was Matt again. She considered complaining to the justice secretary, but the ceremony was beginning. Besides, she would have to see Matt sooner or later to tell him that their life together was finished. She had other priorities for her son now. She knew a major event was about to change her life irreversibly. She was ready.

I was only half listening to the readings and prayers as the service dragged on, so disturbing was the way Karen had looked at me. It wasn’t that she gave the impression of some horrific intent, or that she showed any signs of being a different person from the one I loved. But that was precisely the problem. She was the same woman; she just didn’t seem to care about me anymore. She had glanced at me as if I was of no greater significance to her than a dust mite. I began to lose confidence in myself. Maybe I was the one at fault. Maybe I had never really loved her and had never wanted a child with her…

I clenched my fists and forced myself to concentrate on what was going on in the cathedral. From the pulpit, a minister in dark purple robes was preaching about the necessity of sacrifice in wartime and how gloriously members of the nation’s minorities had fulfilled that, particularly in the defining war against European fascism and Japanese militarism. I had a flash of the blonde woman who had been sacrificed by the Antichurch of Lucifer Triumphant at the camp. Had her death been justifiable in those terms? In any terms? Then the minister paused and I felt a tremor of anticipation that I couldn’t account for.

“But the regimes you fought against so bravely,” continued the man at the pulpit, “despite what you were told, were not evil. For centuries they were the bulwarks of civilization against the barbarian. As long ago as the twelfth century, the Holy Roman Empire was defended by the great German Fredrick I.” The preacher stopped again and looked across the rows of listeners. I was sweating, my heart racing. I knew what was coming-I had seen it in dreams and visions that, deep down, my mind had suppressed and that my conscious will had resisted, until now. “Also known as Barbarossa,” the minister concluded.

There were a few seconds of silence and then all hell broke its chains. There was a loud blast from the front of the cathedral, smoke and dust immediately obscuring the altar and its carved figures. Then automatic weapon fire started, shots coming from all directions. People dived to the floor between the pews but there wasn’t room for all to find cover and the screams of the wounded and dying filled the air. I rubbed my eyes, my mind clogged by disparate thoughts and images. Barbarossa-Rothmann had called that the default trigger and there were obviously plenty of people in the cathedral responding to it. Sweating, I tried to fight the coffining and keep myself under control. Looking ahead, I saw Karen. She was bending over the woman next to her, the justice secretary, and she was brandishing something. Getting up, I saw that it was a pen, but there was a vicious shaft like a small skewer projecting from it.

“No!” I yelled, dashing the weapon from her hand.

Karen turned to me, her eyes wide, and screamed a single word.

I couldn’t make it out in the rattle of gunfire and the cries of thousands of people.

She understood that and said it again.

“Gerty?” I repeated, a dim recollection swimming to the surface of my mind.

“Goethe!” Karen screamed back at me.

Immediately I felt my knowing self fly from my body, as it had on the Isolde. I was aware that Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, born 1749, died 1832, was the greatest of German writers-the author of novels, poetry and plays, including the incomparable poetic drama Faust-and the universal genius of his countrymen. But I also knew that Goethe was my personal trigger, the word that activated the deepest level of conditioning that lurked beyond all conscious control.

I watched as my body moved into action, completely indifferent to the bullets flying around-fire was now being returned by army and security personnel against Rothmann’s sleeper Nazis. My other self paid no attention to Karen, who was being held tightly by Owen and Sebastian, but pushed his way to the end of the pew. The central passage was crowded by people pushing toward the exits. There was a crush all round as veterans in wheelchairs jammed against current army personnel and guests. Groups of VIPs protected by their phalanxes of guards were unable to reach the cathedral doors.

Then I saw my programmed self catch sight of the scrum of men in suits that had formed beyond the front row of pews. There was a glimpse of the president, his arm around his wife. His mouth was moving, but it was impossible to hear his words.

And then the Matt Wells I didn’t know made his bid for glory in accordance with the perverted vision of the Rothmann twins and the Antichurch of Lucifer Triumphant. He smashed his fist into a female soldier’s face and grabbed her assault rifle. Switching to automatic fire, he pointed it at the group around the president and charged toward them, screaming like one of the Germanic warriors that had massacred the Roman Emperor Augustus’s legions nine years after the birth of Jesus Christ.

The tumult rose to a crescendo.

I was unable to stop my separate self rejoining the body that was intent on destroying the leader of the modern world.

Everything ended in darkness as I tumbled into a deep well.

But after every darkness, until the sun finally consumes itself, there is light.

Well wrapped up, Karen and I were walking across a snowy landscape, the breath billowing from our mouths like ghosts escaping from tombs. In the distance, the hills were covered with pine trees and it was only with difficulty that I could make out the electrified fences marking the boundaries of the FBI research center.

“Not too cold for you?” I asked, squeezing her arm.

She smiled. “Not too cold for your son, you mean.”

I laughed. “He’s all right. He’s in a temperature-controlled swimming pool.”

“Yes, well, he’ll be out of there in a month, so I hope you’re looking forward to disturbed nights.” She stopped walking and then shook her head. “Not that there’s been a shortage of those recently.”

I led her down the path that led to the concrete block we’d been living in for the past three months. It was hardly surprising that the Justice Department had sent us to the facility in North Dakota. Neither of us remembered anything about what had happened latterly in the cathedral. It was calculated that there had been forty-six of the Rothmanns’ subjects involved apart from us, the majority in the armed forces and local police. One had been in the honor guard at the high altar and had detonated the bomb that blew him and many innocent people to pieces. Sixteen sleepers had been twins. The subjects had obviously been trained to fight to the death-only three of the forty-six survived, and one of those was in a coma. Neither of the other two said a word to their interrogators. Attempts were being made to reverse their conditioning in secret research centers.