Charles Brokaw - The Lucifer Code

Eckart grabbed Lourds and yanked him to his feet. As Webster ran for a door on the other side of the room, Eckart dragged Lourds after him.

More shots rang out.

Desperate, not wanting the scroll to be lost, Lourds dropped and tangled Eckart’s legs in his. Eckart stumbled and fell, falling on top of Lourds in a loose-limbed sprawl. Adrenaline raced through Lourds’ body as he kicked Eckart in the face. Eckart fought back, but one of Lourds’ kicks caught him in the temple and knocked him out cold. Overcoming his surprise, Lourds grappled with the unconscious man and found a combat knife secured to his equipment vest. Holding the knife to cut the plastic cuffs was difficult, but Lourds managed.

Webster saw what was happening and rushed back toward Lourds. ‘No!’ He sounded desperate and near-hysterical.

Lourds took out the Joy Scroll and prayed. As he surveyed the symbols, his mind chugged through the final permutations to the solution of the puzzle. The rings hadn’t all revolved in a stack after all. They had fitted together on an axis forming a cross. Now he’d realized that, the translation – though still incredibly difficult – was at least doable. As he read, the characters on the scroll turned ice blue and the parchment felt freezing.

‘I name you Lucifer,’ Lourds said. ‘I name you defiler and destroyer.’

With an inarticulate cry of rage, Webster burst through the rolling scarlet fog from the flash-bangs and rushed at Lourds. Instinctively, Lourds took a step back, but before the vice-president could close on him, a shimmering force field appeared and held him back. Screaming and frothing at the mouth, Webster battered at the invisible wall.

‘Stop!’ he roared. ‘Stop!’

Lourds ignored him and continued. ‘I name you false and usurper. I name you deceiver and lord of lies. I name you tempter and vain pride.’

‘Would you like to know where the lost library of Alexandria is?’ Webster pleaded. His eyes looked hollow and yellow, like those of a rabid animal.

Lourds hesitated.

‘I can get you your heart’s desire,’ Webster promised. ‘All these years you’ve searched for the library. I can fix it so you can find those books. Everything you’ve ever wanted. It’s yours just for the asking.’

For a moment Lourds imagined what it might be like to walk the halls of that great library. He’d had a taste of something similar when he’d found lost Atlantis. He’d even saved a few books from that event. Some of them he hadn’t yet translated.

‘I can give Alexandria to you,’ Webster said in a crazed voice.

It was the most temptation Lourds had ever faced. He felt his resolve weakening, then he pushed his desires away. He didn’t want someone to simply hand him the lost library of Alexandria. After all this time of searching for it, he wanted to find it himself. That was what the dream was all about: the search.

‘I name you,’ Lourds continued, focusing on the task at hand, drawn by the solution he’d worked out, ‘so that others may know your falseness, too. Let each man whom you have befriended recognize you as no friend from this moment on. Let those who think they know your love recognize only the manipulation you offer. In the name of Almighty God, I banish you from this disguise you have woven for yourself.’

When he stopped reading, Lourds didn’t know what to expect. Webster still stood before him, but the man looked hammered, totally defeated. Slackness drained the anger and fear from his face. The smoke from the grenades swirled up around Webster and obscured him. Fearful, heart hammering in his chest, Lourds waited for him to come at him through the smoke. Then the scarlet haze cleared, and when it did – Webster had disappeared with it.

‘Don’t just stand there,’ Cleena said as she joined Lourds. ‘You’re going to get shot.’

Holding onto the scroll, Lourds took cover behind a desk. Most of the gunfire had died away.

‘Where is Webster?’ Cleena reloaded her weapon.

‘I don’t know.’

‘Did he leave?’

‘I read the scroll to him.’

Cleena glanced at him. ‘You translated it?’

‘I did.’

‘And Webster?’

Lourds shook his head. ‘Disappeared.’

Cleena shot a guard who closed on them, then she and Lourds headed back to the door she’d come through.

Slowly at first, afraid the men who hadn’t gone down from Cleena’s sharp-shooting skills would keep on shooting, Lourds crept from the room. Joachim and the monks – all of them amazingly still alive and convinced that it had been an act of God – joined them. They were dazed and unsure of what had happened. No one else had seen Webster disappear.

In minutes Lourds and the others reached the downstairs lobby. Together, they made their way out of the building.

No one followed and the American forces were put on standby.

Vatican City

8 April 2010

Lourds sat in one of the great libraries in the underground network beneath the Vatican. Father Gabriel occupied a comfortable chair across from him. If it hadn’t been for everything that had happened in the last few weeks, it would have felt like the old days when Lourds had studied there.

They watched WNN together.

‘The search for United States Vice-President Elliott Webster continues,’ the news anchor reported. ‘No one knows how or when the vice-president disappeared from the hotel where he’d been a virtual prisoner in Saudi Arabia for the last several weeks.’

‘Do you think they’ll find him?’ Lourds asked.

Father Gabriel shook his head. ‘Not in this world.’

‘What do you think the eventual conclusion will be?’

‘I don’t know. Are you going to write a book about this?’

‘A story without an ending?’ Lourds smiled. ‘Not likely.’

‘Oh, so you think you could sell prospective readers on the possibility that Lucifer, at least temporarily, found a home in the office of the vice-president?’

‘Sure,’ Lourds said, ‘but it has to have an ending.’

‘What kind of ending?’

‘They find Webster’s corpse.’

‘Do you realize you still refer to him as Webster?’

Lourds had noticed that. ‘I feel more comfortable with that name. Maybe saying the other…’ He hesitated.

‘Gives him more strength in our world?’

‘Maybe that.’

‘Superstitious nonsense.’

Lourds chuckled at that. ‘After everything we’ve been through and seen, you can say that?’

‘Definitely. Lucifer has as much power in this world as we choose to give him. No more, no less. We can’t lead him to victory, nor can we push him into defeat.’

‘I have to say in my own defence, he looked pretty defeated the last time I saw him.’

‘No. His fate has already been ordained by God. Satan doesn’t have free will. Just as God knew Lucifer would fall from the heavens, he also knows Lucifer will ultimately be defeated.’

‘That’s a discussion that would take far too long to explore at this point, and I do have things to do.’

Father Gabriel grinned. ‘You have a woman waiting for you?’

‘I do,’ Lourds admitted.

‘Which one?’

‘Both, actually.’

Father Gabriel’s eyebrows shot up.

‘Not at the same time,’ Lourds said.

‘Thank God you’ve got some morality left.’

‘Though the possibility is certainly of merit and worth investigating.’

Father Gabriel covered his ears. ‘Don’t. I’m an old man and you’ve been like son to me. A wayward son, perhaps, but a son nevertheless. I really can’t bear any further disillusionment.’

Lourds reached into his backpack and took out the Joy Scroll in its wooden cylinder. ‘I’ve talked it over with Joachim. We’re both of the opinion that you would be the best person to offer safekeeping for this.’