Charles Brokaw - The Lucifer Code

Almost overnight, the paradigm for doing oil business in West Africa changed. No longer did the bulk of the profits go to the country that owned the oil. Now it went to those able to extract it.

Across the room, Tristan Hamilton cheered the arrival of the helicopters.

‘Elliott,’ the president called over the phone.

‘I’m here, Mike. As you can tell, the problems over here are multiplying.’

‘You need to get out of there,’ Waggoner said. ‘Once everyone knows Americans are over there pulling this kind of crap, the Saudis and the Shia are going to retaliate.’

‘Not just me, Mike. We’ve got to find a way to get us all home.’

‘All right,’ Waggoner said. ‘Let me get together with the Pentagon and see what they can put together. You stay healthy till I get back to you, do you hear me?’

‘I do. I will.’ Webster looked at the television then at the wall of glass, catching his own flickering reflection in the fires burning in the city. ‘We’ll come through this okay, Mike. You’ll see.’

The president broke the connection and Webster pocketed the sat-phone.

Vicky used the remote control to change channels on the television. Once she had it back on her network, she seemed more relaxed. Her people were more deeply entrenched in the oilfield confrontation than the reporters from WNN News. Webster wouldn’t be surprised if there was another fatality. He was certain Vicky DeAngelo was counting on that.

‘That was the president?’ Vicky asked. She didn’t miss much, especially when she was in hyper mode.

‘It was.’

‘He wants to get you out of here?’

‘Yes, he does.’

‘But you are not going to go?’ Vicky looked up at him.

‘You’re in the news business. You want to tell me how you would present a story about the Vice-President of the United States deserting a country where hundreds of his fellow citizens were left in danger?’

Her smile was cold enough to adorn a morgue. ‘Truth to tell, Mr Vice-President, I’d crucify you.’

‘Now there’s a particularly gruesome death.’ Webster smiled in remembrance.

‘So you’re staying here.’

‘How would you feel if I left you behind?’

‘I’d crucify you twice.’

Webster smiled.

‘I have to admit that I’m somewhat irked at your lack of willingness to be rescued.’

‘Why?’

‘Because if you get rescued, I get rescued too. Seems pretty selfish of you to decide we can all die here.’

‘We’re not going to die here.’

‘How would you know?’

‘Because I would.’

Vicky looked at him, new understanding and suspicion dawning in her eyes. ‘Waggoner’s going to do it, isn’t he? He’s going to try to get us out of here.’

‘Are you going to quote me on this?’

‘No.’

‘Then yes. He is going to try to get us out of here.’

‘When?’

‘Soon.’

Vicky looked back through the window at the burning city. ‘Well, he’d better not be late.’

Webster threw an arm round her and pulled her close. No matter how much Vicky DeAngelo liked to pretend she was captain of her own fate, she lived with fear. Everyone on the planet did. Of course, they didn’t know what real fear was. Yet. But when the time came, if they didn’t align themselves with Webster, he intended to show them. At that moment, a bolt of pure cold lanced Webster’s heart. He swayed for a moment and nearly fell. He forced himself to remain on his feet and the feeling went away.

Vicky looked at him with concern. ‘Are you all right?’

‘Of course.’ Webster smiled at her reassuringly. ‘Why wouldn’t I be?’

‘You would be. You always are.’ Vicky patted his chest.

But he knew what had happened. Someone had found that cursed scroll that John of Patmos had written. He left Vicky and retreated to the corner. He took his sat-phone out of his pocket and called Eckart’s number.

‘You haven’t found them.’

‘Not yet,’ Eckart replied. ‘We will. It’s just a matter of time.’

‘They’ve found the scroll.’

‘Where?’

‘I don’t know. If I did, I would’ve sent you there first.’ Webster made himself relax and take the edge out of his voice. If they had found the scroll, it meant that Lourds had broken the language the Brotherhood of the Scroll had developed.

One of the languages anyway.

For thousands of years, the plan had been in effect. Even the Brotherhood of the Scroll had been breached in the end. Constantine had been but the beginning. He had helped foster the paranoia inside the Brotherhood, making them aware of how vulnerable their knowledge was. God had created man to be open, to have no secrets. God didn’t have secrets. That was one thing man had not understood. And that was why the serpent was so successful in the Garden of Eden. The serpent had encouraged Adam and Eve to know the things that not even God would have been able to explain to them. The serpent had known, but not even the serpent could have explained God’s ways.

They just were.

All it had taken was the suggestion that there were things God did not want man to know. The rift had started then and had not ended.

‘Find them,’ Webster ordered. ‘And when you do, kill them.’

‘What about professor?’

‘Kill him too. I no longer care to know what he knows. Kill him and bring the scroll to me.’ Webster put the phone back in his pocket.

In all his plans, he had never factored in someone as gifted – or as lucky – as Professor Thomas Lourds. Now the man’s skills were going to earn him nothing more than an early grave.

Passage of Omens

Hagia Sophia Underground

Istanbul, Turkey

25 March 2010

In the steady, golden candlelight, Lourds translated the scroll and read it aloud.

Let it be known that this is the last writing of John, also known as John of Patmos. I am an old man, and I am come willingly to the end of my days. I write now under no threat of coercion only what the Lord my God would have me write.

I came to this island to spend my final days in peace, but I did not find peace. I found only the end of the world. I have seen him, I have seen the Beast, the Devil by all his names, and I have seen his efforts to take the world down before Jesus comes again.

I was there when Jesus returned to us the first time, and I saw myself the holes in his blessed hands and his blessed feet. We were not all believers. It changed me to admit this, but we were not. Even after everything we had seen him do, after we had seen him walk on stormy waters, after we had seen him raise the dead, we could not easily believe he had risen after dying so painfully.

As hard as it had been to watch him die, it was harder still to watch him take his leave of us. And more difficult again to take our leave from each other.

Many of us are dead now. In fact, I believe myself to be the last of his chosen alive, and that won’t last much longer.

You have read my visions of what is to come, of the seven years that will plague those who do not truly believe. But I have not revealed everything that will pass.

There will come a day when the Great Deceiver will rise to power among men. He will pass among you as one of your own and you will know him not. He will have practised to be one of you. He will be born unto woman, but he will be darkly evil. In those End Times you will not recognize evil as surely as you may think. But when you know the Devil, know also that no weapon made by human hand will truly destroy him.

Only one thing is capable of that, and I will soon give it to you. It is called the Joy Scroll and it has the power to strip away the Great Deceiver’s might that he will have accumulated by the time you read this.