Charles Brokaw - The Lucifer Code

Joachim leaned back in his chair and folded his arms across his chest, obviously displeased.

Ignoring the man, Lourds opened the book to the page with the rubbing. He indicated the image.

‘This. I need to know where you got this.’

Joachim shook his head. ‘There’s nothing there.’

‘You’ve found nothing there.’ Lourds leaned back in his own chair. ‘I will.’

‘What makes you so sure?’

‘This rubbing was taken from a stone in the room where the older monks gave their lives to protect the secret of the Joy Scroll.’

Olympia turned to her brother. ‘Is that true?’

Holding his gaze steadily on Lourds, Joachim didn’t answer.

‘Joachim?’

Finally, Joachim nodded. ‘That was where it was found. But you could only be guessing that.’

Lourds turned back a few pages and tapped again. ‘This is one of the pages that were also found in that room. Or am I still just guessing?’

Joachim stared at the page, then back at Lourds. ‘How do you know this?’

‘Because I can read this page now.’ Lourds couldn’t help smiling at his obvious success, especially when Joachim’s eyes widened still further. ‘Would you like to know what it says?’

Central Business District

King Abdullah Economic City, Saudi Arabia

19 March 2010

The hotel suite was nothing more than an overly comfortable prison cell. Webster knew that and barely tolerated the situation. He wanted to leave the room just to prove that he could. And maybe he wanted to push Prince Khalid to see how far the young man would go.

Although there were no armed guards outside Webster’s door, they were posted at all the entrances to the building. He didn’t doubt that the room was bugged as well. If he had been in charge, he would’ve had the room wired for sound and video. That was why he was using one of the CIA’s white noise generators to cover his phone call.

For the last few hours, he had plied himself with liquor to take the edge off, and consoled himself with Vicky DeAngelo’s carnal attentions. For an older woman, she was a demanding and generous lover. Webster had been surprised, but his mind had focused on the promise brewing in Saudi Arabia and the threat building in Istanbul. In the end, though, Vicky proved to be as much like him as he had believed her to be. Once the fighting had broken out in the streets, she had deserted his bed and returned to her room and her computer to take control of the reporters still loyal to her within the country. News streamed from those reporters on the ground, but Prince Khalid’s soldiers worked hurriedly to find them and shut them down. Some of them had already been killed, but Prince Khalid hadn’t approached Vicky about the matter.

Webster stood to one side of the polarized balcony window and let the loose folds of the drapes conceal him. Beyond the glass, under the night sky, the city spread in neat squares, some of them lighted and some of them not. Power hadn’t been connected to all the new areas. Webster had turned the lights out behind him; he was more comfortable in the darkness. He held the sat-phone close to his ear as he spoke. Out in the streets, armed forces patrolled in heavy numbers. Tanks as well as soldiers moved constantly.

On the other side of the room, the muted television showed smuggled footage from Saudi Arabia on WNN News. FOX, CNN and MSNBC also carried much of the same footage. A lot of it came from Vicky’s people.

Prince Khalid had made good on his promise to remove the enemies of his country. Within minutes after speaking to Webster, special teams had hit the streets and begun sweeping Shia, suspected Shia and Shia sympathizers from the cities. That also meant rousting out many American and European businessmen. It also meant that anyone who had a taint of Shia about them got the boot. A religious purge had started and the repercussions were building in strength. Webster felt the power of it around him, like a roaring dark tide. It wouldn’t be calmed and he looked forward to watching it feed.

Many of those persecuted people had fought, not wanting to relinquish their businesses or their wealth. Several of those people, in fact – Webster suspected – most of those people had been killed outright. Others received rough handling or worse as they were loaded onto trucks and taken to train stations where they were herded like cattle onto boxcars. From there they were deported to India and Pakistan. Having dealt with problems of displaced people before, neither India nor Pakistan welcomed the Shia refugees. The displaced people would create a huge drain on the economies of both countries, as well as tying up manpower to keep the inevitable refugee camps manageable.

Webster knew that Prince Khalid counted on those facts. The drain on the finances and the workload of the military would leave the borders of both those countries weak. If the arrivals hadn’t been Shia, or presumably Shia, neither Pakistan nor India would have tolerated the forced expulsion flooding into their countries. And the refugees would continue to come like locust plagues. Those countries would be torn apart by Shia within their own borders who wanted to protect the new arrivals, as well as Sunni predators who would see the refugee camps as easy targets in which to hunt their enemies. Some attacks there had already started.

‘If you’re looking at the same thing I am,’ President Michael Waggoner growled, ‘then I think we’re looking at the seeds of a Middle Eastern war the like of which we’ve never seen.’

Although most people wouldn’t have recognized the tension in the president’s voice, Webster had known the man for years. Waggoner was as close to losing his cool as Webster had ever heard.

‘I’m looking at it,’ Webster said. ‘On the television and in the streets here.’

Waggoner cursed, another thing he rarely did. ‘I hadn’t forgotten you were there in the middle of it, Elliott. Sending you there might not have been the best idea after all. I’m worried about you too.’

‘I know, Mike. It’s a tough time for all of us.’

‘Are you all right? If you think you or your people are in danger, just say the word. I’ve got a Marine special OPS HRT waiting on board an aircraft carrier nearby. The colonel says he and his teams can be there in twenty minutes or less to get you out.’

‘There’s no need to do that yet,’ Webster said. ‘We’re safe enough here at the moment. If we do pull out, it could be taken as a sign of weakness. We don’t want that hanging over us.’

‘I know. I keep telling myself that.’ The president sighed tiredly. ‘I just don’t know how this situation went south so quickly.’

‘Our presence here didn’t have anything to do with that,’ Webster lied. ‘Prince Khalid already had an agenda. This whole time, the Middle East was only two heartbeats away from this kind of madness. Those two heartbeats have been silenced.’

‘Does Khalid really think he can get away with this without any repercussions?’

‘Prince Khalid’s in a powerful position. He’s not addicted to wealth and power like his father and brother. He’s looking to avenge his mother, his father, his brother and the rest of his family who were killed. He doesn’t care about repercussions. He wants to prove his manhood to the world. And he doesn’t think anyone can stop him. More than that, no one will stop him. Not everyone, perhaps no one, can afford to stop buying the oil Saudi Arabia has to sell.’

‘He’s insane is what he is.’

‘Crazy like a fox, maybe.’

Below in the street, a few quick flurries of flashing lights drew Webster’s attention. He recognized the muzzle flashes at once and knew that another battle or massacre had begun.