Charles Brokaw - The Lucifer Code

‘Not a woman,’ Joachim said. ‘Mary, the mother of Jesus.’ Mary’s head was also surrounded by a glowing halo.

‘New Jerusalem Church,’ Lourds said. ‘I’ve been there. They have a fantastic collection of Greek and Slavonic manuscripts. Patriarch Nikon, Nikita Minin, belonged to the Russian Orthodox Church. As its seventh patriarch, he instigated a number of reforms. Unfortunately, they ended up splitting the church and incurring disfavour with Tsar Alexius, who until that point had been his best friend and a source of financing.’

‘New Jerusalem Church has been returned to a monastery,’ Joachim said.

Lourds nodded. ‘That happened back in 1990. For a while it was completely shut down. Many of the church’s treasures and icons were lost, but they retain the statue of the Virgin Mary.’

‘What does this inscription say?’ Olympia asked.

‘ “A great friend of the Church will fall, but not before he rises up an echo of the final resting place of our blessed Saviour. When the statue of his blessed Mother weeps, you will know the end of the world is near.” ’

‘Doesn’t exactly sound hopeful, does it?’ Cleena asked.

‘We wouldn’t have been sent here if there was nothing we could do,’ Joachim stated. ‘We all have a purpose in this place.’

The fourth mosaic showed orange trees round a fountain. A church was in the background, but had Islamic architecture instead of Byzantine or Gothic. Lourds knew the church’s long and interesting history because he’d studied there for a time.

‘This church, I’m supposing it’s a church, doesn’t look like the other two,’ Cleena commented.

‘It’s a church,’ Olympia replied. ‘This is the Great Mosque of Cordoba. Also known as the Mezquita.’

‘A mosque isn’t a place where I’d expect to find Christian artefacts.’

‘The two cultures have regularly tramped the same grounds,’ Olympia said. ‘Just as the Hagia Sophia, for a time, became an Islamic church, so did the Great Mosque of Cordoba in Spain.’

‘It looks like it’s always been a mosque.’

‘No, it began as a Visigoth church.’

‘I’m not going to pretend I know what that is.’

‘They were the East Germanic tribe of the Goths. Not the vampire wannabes.’

‘That, I had figured.’

‘Just checking. I don’t want to go too fast for you.’

‘I’ll let you know if you do.’

‘Anyway,’ Olympia continued, ‘the Visigoths began the church there in 600 AD. Then the Muslims arrived. Emir Abd ar-Rahman I annexed it and named it in honour of his wife. He began the reconstruction, which lasted for two hundred years.’

‘So who owns it now?’

‘King Ferdinand III of Castile took the church back in 1236 and it eventually became called the Cathedral of the Assumption of the Virgin.’

‘What does the inscription on this one have to say?’

Lourds leaned in for a better look. Then he translated, ‘ “At the church that is a crossroads where the east meets the west and both of those revere the Holy Mother, there will be made a pool. When the waters of the pool run red with blood, the end of the world will be near.” ’

‘And this is supposed to help us?’ Cleena asked. ‘This isn’t even a good pep talk.’

‘Don’t blaspheme,’ Joachim admonished her.

‘You don’t realize how astonishing this is,’ Lourds said. ‘John of Patmos died hundreds of years before the Great Mosque of Cordoba was constructed. Any of the times it was constructed. That he was able to predict it, and even guide the mosaic artists in these renderings so that we can tell what these things are now is incredible.’

Lourds’ mind worried at the information. Nothing in his education had prepared him for something like this. Of course, he hadn’t been prepared for Atlantis either.

‘Working out how that guy knew all this stuff isn’t going to help us now,’ Cleena said.

Joachim said, ‘Now you are the one who should be patient.’

Cleena ignored him. ‘So where is the Joy Scroll?’

Lourds stepped back from the wall and tried to take in the room.

‘If the scroll isn’t here, shouldn’t there be another clue?’

Staring at the mosaics, Lourds felt as though there were something he was missing. He was also certain that it was right in front of him, as plain as the nose on his face. Something about the mosaics. Something in the background. But it wasn’t visible to the casual eye. He took a deep breath and let it out, letting his mind soak up everything in the room. The candle flames wavered only slightly and caused brief shadows to scamper across the mosaic surfaces.

Just as he almost had it, he reached for it and it disappeared, eluded his grasp like fog. The mosaics all had amazing perspectives. They looked three dimensional, just like someone could – Lourds focused, hardly daring to believe what he was thinking. He strode forward and ran his hands over the mosaics.

‘Thomas, what are you doing?’ Olympia asked.

‘It’s got to be here. There’s no reason to hide the scroll any more. This room, this passage, that was the secret. The scroll was hidden here. It still is.’

As his body shifted in front of the mosaics, his shadow drifted across them. And a momentary flicker on the second mosaic caught his eye. It had only been a subtle shifting of shadows. When he tried to touch the spot, his fingers seemed to pass through the mosaic. Once the illusion was broken, he saw how clever the artist had truly been. There in the final resting place of Jesus, Lourds found the hole that contained a cylindrical shape. He smiled both at his own cleverness as well as that of the designer.

He drew a scroll from within the depths. The cylinder was made of carved wood and held only a few words in the language that Lourds had only just learned. When translated, they read: The Joy.

Lourds’ hands trembled with excitement as he opened the cylinder.

Central Business District

King Abdullah Economic City, Saudi Arabia

24 March 2010

Anticipation filled Webster as he watched the helicopters descend on the oilfield. The private security team had to have been waiting on a freighter somewhere offshore to get this close.

Saudi forces battled what Webster assumed were Shia forces. The helicopter pilots opened fire with heavy machine guns and killed them all indiscriminately.

‘Do we have someone there?’ Vicky DeAngelo demanded as she watched the attack. ‘You’ve got an international incident taking shape right now and I’m having to watch on WNN News! That is not what I pay you for!’

Webster walked back to Spider. ‘Who’s in the helicopters?’

Spider smiled slyly. ‘Them cowboys belong to Carnahan Oil. They’re the same bunch that settled the labour dispute in those West African companies a few years back.’

Webster remembered the story. Carnahan Oil was known for riding roughshod over Third World countries they did business with. In Africa, the way the oil business generally worked was cutthroat. Once oil was discovered, the politicians – or king – struggled to keep as much money as possible. All the while, they promised to spread the wealth. When the average citizen noticed that the wealth wasn’t being spread, they usually went on strike. Then the king, or politicians, called in the military to break up the strike and get the oil pumping again. Problems started when the military started thinking they were taking all the risks and not getting paid nearly enough. Then a coup took place, and the leaders were replaced by a military dictator who spread the wealth round to his troops.

During the West African debacle, Carnahan Oil had sent in their shock troops. Regretfully they weren’t able to save the king, and shot the oppressive dictator dead in the throne room. They put their own person in charge, spread a little more wealth to the citizens, and cut out the middleman.