‘No,’ Cardinal Piero Baptista yelled as he slammed his palm down hard upon the sturdy oak conference table. ‘We cannot allow this person to force his way into official Vatican business, especially given the consequences of his last visit.’
Cardinal Michael Boyle sat patiently as Baptista lowered himself back into his seat with nothing further to offer than a scowl. Of course some of the cardinal’s reasoning was correct, but to heap all the blame on just one individual was completely unjustified, and Boyle couldn’t help feeling much of this animosity was more personal in nature.
‘Come on, Piero, that’s not fair…the poor man was dragged into this like everyone else. And I might remind you that if he hadn’t been, then who knows where it would have led us? Besides, he’s a friend of ours.’
This last comment had Baptista seething once again. ‘No, he is a friend of yours…there is a difference, you know?’
‘You’re right,’ Boyle conceded, ‘but, given what he told me over the phone, he may hold some of the answers that we’ve been searching for.’
Boyle stood up and rested both hands upon the table top, not in a threatening manner this time but rather as a gesture for them to meet halfway. ‘Let’s see what he has to say, then. What harm could it do?’
Baptista’s scowl disappeared and was replaced with a serious look of concern. ‘That is what everyone said last time and we all know how that turned out, don’t we?’
Cardinal Boyle took this downbeat reply as a yes and, with a gracious nod of his head, he strode over to the double doors, pulled one ajar and muttered quietly to someone outside, ‘Send him in.’ Boyle then headed back to his seat but decided to stand behind it rather than sit down.
The two cardinals waited in silence and listened as the crisp sound of footsteps on marble flooring grew ever louder, until coming to an abrupt stop just outside. There followed a short knock at the door.
‘Come in,’ Boyle called out, as the doors swung open and two papal Swiss guards, each wearing traditional blue and yellow striped uniforms, trimmed with red and topped with a military-style black beret, marched inside with their visitor in tow.
‘Alex,’ Boyle called out with a welcoming smile, offering his hand. ‘It’s good to see you.’
Harker grasped the cardinal’s outstretched hand and shook it firmly. ‘Thank you for seeing me at such short notice, Michael. I appreciate it.’
Boyle offered a nod and turned his attention towards the other cardinal, who had already risen from his seat. ‘This is Cardinal Piero Baptista.’
Harker reached over and shook the man’s limp and obviously unenthusiastic hand. ‘It’s a pleasure, Cardinal,’ he said politely, but his greeting was rewarded with little more than a sneer. So when Boyle motioned to the spare chair next to him, he was happy to take it.
In his late forties and with thick strawberry-blond hair, Michael Boyle had always been a straight talker, willing to give anyone a chance, but unforgiving to anyone who betrayed his trust or did not behave ‘on the level’, as he was so fond of putting it. Harker had met this Irishman at a charity event long after quitting the priesthood, and the two of them had rapidly clicked and become good friends. Although they rarely met up, Harker made a point of emailing the man several times a year, just to keep the bond alive. And when Boyle was made a cardinal earlier that year, Harker had been one of the first to congratulate him.
The grey-haired and much older Piero Baptista, on the other hand, was a complete unknown to Harker and, despite hearing the name over the years, the only thing he had to judge the cardinal by was the look of deep mistrust being aimed at him as he took his seat.
‘I asked Cardinal Baptista to join us here because of the’ – Boyle paused and rubbed his brow uncomfortably – ‘unusual nature of your phone call. Something to do with…living corpses, I believe?’
The very mention of such a notion had Baptista wincing and, as Harker began to elaborate upon the telephone call he had made earlier, even Boyle developed a sceptical glint in his eye.
‘Before we begin I want you to know that, no matter how strange this sounds, I’m only telling you the events I witnessed with my own eyes, and not making any assumptions that I myself may or may not have drawn.’ This came out of Harker’s mouth sounding more like a plea than an explanation, and although both of the cardinals remained silent, their expressions signalled deep misgivings.
‘I’m not sure exactly how to say this, so I’ll just say it,’ Harker continued awkwardly. ‘During the past twenty-four hours or so, I have seen three people – all of them dead – come back to life. The first I had seen strangled in front of my eyes only for him to wake up and walk out of a Berlin morgue several hours later. The other two had been dead for, I guess, several days or more, but managed to pull themselves out of their graves and begin walking around…as if alive.’
‘How do you know they had been buried for days?’ Baptista asked, stony-faced.
‘Well, their rotting skin and bloated bodies were a dead giveaway. And if you smelt the stench coming off them, I think you’d have reached the same conclusion.’
The cardinals both stared at him in shocked silence.
‘You say you saw a man actually strangled to death?’ Boyle finally asked uneasily.
‘Yes, I did,’ Harker replied firmly. ‘He was almost as close to me as you are now.’
‘Was it reported to the police?’
‘Yes, but after showing me security footage of the same man walking out of the morgue on his own two feet, they reckoned it was some kind of publicity stunt and didn’t want to know any more.’
‘Perish the thought,’ Baptista muttered coldly, while rolling his eyes.
‘What’s that supposed to mean?’ Harker queried blankly, not allowing his anger to get the better of him.
‘It means, Mr Harker – or is it Professor?’ Baptista subdued Boyle with a raised hand as he was on the verge of intervening. ‘It means that since you showed up at the Vatican…what, over a year and a half ago, the Church has suffered more destruction than in the last two hundred years.’
‘What?’ Harker protested, feeling genuinely shocked by this accusation.
‘Since your initial mysterious meeting with the last pope, John Wilcox, we have had that same pope go AWOL, then a shooting inside the Basilica, directly in front of the world’s media, not to mention world leaders. And, on top of all the malicious and damaging gossip that I will not even go into now, out of respect for the unfortunate dead…there now comes this.’
Cardinal Baptista rose to his feet and made his way over to a drawn curtain on the opposite side of the room, flinging it open to reveal the crumbled ruins of what had once been St Peter’s Square. ‘Behold the aftermath of the atrocious event that not only led to the deaths of over fifty thousand innocents, but that of the recently elected pontiff himself, his holiness Salvatore Vincenzo.’
Harker, followed by Boyle, walked over to the window and gazed down upon the destruction. The media had been awash with images of the devastation which the HAARP weather machine had left in its tracks and, even though Harker had watched all the television coverage, this was the first time he had actually seen it with his own eyes. Emergency services had spent over a week sifting through the rubble, and the fifty-metre crater underneath it, before completely walling off the entire area from the public and banning any helicopters or planes from flying over Vatican City. The whole expanse had been kept from the prying eyes of the media by order of the new pontiff himself and, with so many people lost and the near impossible undertaking of identifying all of the dead, including Pope Vincenzo, there was talk of turning this pulverized holy site into one large ceremonial tribute to the dead.
Next to it, the entire facade of St Peter’s Basilica had been ripped away, revealing the crumbling remains of individual rooms. And although covered with giant yellow tarpaulins, it now looked more like a crumbling classical ruin than the epicentre of the Catholic faith. Below its remnants, JCB diggers lined the crater’s edges, along with two giant cranes erected at opposite ends of the square and, even as Harker took in the awful sight, workmen continued clearing rubble and laying new foundations for whatever restoration plan the Vatican had decided upon.
‘Surely you can’t blame me for all this?’ Harker ventured, in barely more than a despondent whisper.
‘Oh yes,’ Baptista replied angrily, ‘the weather machine. Reported by the media and then discounted soon after by the same journalists as pure fantasy. That was quite a story you concocted.’
Even though it seemed the blame for all those terrible events was now being dumped at Harker’s feet, he remained silent for a moment as he surveyed this utter destruction that had cost so many lives. He had not been directly responsible, although used as pawn in the Magi’s twisted plans, at every stage of the way under the guidance of Pope Adrian VII, better known to his acquaintances as John Wilcox. But, of course, the cardinals didn’t know that important detail. That sinister and despicable group of zealots, which evolved out of two thousand years of hate and greed, and their vile attempts to take control of the Catholic Church and hijack the minds of its followers – no, he had not been party to it at all. And even though that same twisted organization had been obliterated, with help from the Knights Templar, Harker could do little to stem the feeling of guilt and responsibility that suddenly hovered over him now like a dark cloud. Could he have done more to prevent those disasters?
‘What are you saying exactly?’ he asked, suddenly feeling drained of energy.
‘I am saying that even as the fortunes of the Catholic Church have declined,’ Baptista rasped, ‘your own fame – or should I say infamy – has risen. And, after all that has happened, you now turn up here with further tales of murder and resurrection which debase the memories of all those who lost their lives in events that, at every turn, you have been connected to.’
Harker felt his spirits sag as Baptista speedily swished the curtains shut. ‘You, Professor Harker, are what sailors term a Jonah,’ the cardinal continued, before taking his seat again at the conference table. ‘You bring bad luck to all those around you.’
This damning attack left Harker speechless and, in a moment of weakness, he began to feel sorry for himself. It was true that, since establishing the existence of the Knights Templar and their ongoing war with the Magi, everyone he held dear had experienced some measure of bad luck – and Chloe was just the latest victim. Sure, the Magi were gone, defeated, but he still found himself embroiled in events that served only to hurt the ones he loved. Could Baptista somehow be right? Had something unseen rubbed off on him during his recent exploits? Something real? Was he genuinely a Jonah of sorts, destroying the lives of all those around him by just being alive?
As he asked himself these questions, and before his feeling of self-pity grew any stronger, he remembered something that Sebastien Brulet, the now deceased former Grand Master of the Knights Templar, had written in his goodbye letter.
I leave you therefore with one last piece of advice. Some secrets have the power to warp a person’s sensibilities, and in doing so transform them into the very thing they most deplore. Be wary of this, my friend, and never allow yourself to veer aside from the path of what you know to be right.
Those simple words of guidance immediately renewed a sense of purpose in Harker and suddenly he felt himself imbued with renewed determination. He couldn’t control the extraordinary events that seemed to follow him, but he would damn well make sure he did everything in his power to bring them to a righteous conclusion.
‘Please forgive him, Alex,’ Boyle offered, placing a reassuring hand on Harker’s shoulder. ‘Piero lost many friends in the great destruction and I am afraid, you, unjustly, have become the focus of his anger.’
Harker looked over at the glaring cardinal and patted Boyle’s arm reassuringly before returning to the conference table, now with renewed vigour.
‘There are no words that can adequately describe the tragic loss of life or the damage done to the Church, but I will not let myself be blamed for things that were totally out of my hands,’ Harker declared resolutely, standing there with a steely look in his eyes. ‘My actions have always been in the interests of preserving life and if you can’t accept that, then that is something for you to come to terms with…not me. And I hope in time you will come to realize this, but it is your decision to make, not mine.’
Harker’s abrogation of responsibility appeared to only chip away slightly at Baptista’s anger. But as he continued, the man’s glare began to soften.
‘Everything I have told you about these “resurrections” – or whatever you want to call them – is true. I have no cause to lie and the only reason I came to you is that, given the disturbing and ungodly nature of what I have witnessed, I felt that you could give me some guidance, because frankly… I am out of ideas. Now you can either help me to figure out what the hell is going on or not, but either way I am resolved to find out… It’s your choice.’
The anger in Baptista’s eyes had now diminished noticeably, but he still sat there motionless and without saying a word.
‘Of course we’ll help, Alex,’ Boyle stated resolutely, smiling at Baptista. ‘It’s just such a lot to take in… Tell me, do you even know who these two “corpses” might have been?’
Boyle’s conciliatory tone brought a lighter atmosphere into the room and Harker seized upon it, finally resuming his seat and planting both his elbows on the table.
‘There were two names on the headstones: one was Alfonso Bianchi and the other Daniele Russo. I can’t remember the birth dates but the dates of death were definitely this year.’
Harker had barely uttered the names when both cardinals exchanged a look of wide-eyed astonishment. Without pause, he pushed for further information. ‘Do those names mean anything to you?’
It was clear that Boyle did know something, because he had begun to bite his bottom lip nervously. Then he turned back to face Harker, despite a warning shake of the head from Baptista.
‘Eight days ago there was an accident—’
‘Michael, this is not the time,’ Baptista interrupted, visibly annoyed with his colleague’s admission.
‘If not now, then when?’ Boyle replied and, still under the disapproving stare of Baptista, he continued. ‘As I said, there was an accident just outside Rome eight days ago. A truck careered into a passing car, killing all three of its occupants.’
‘Who were they?’
‘Three local priests on their way to a regular meeting of the local clergy. Nothing out of the ordinary. They were taken to Rome’s American Hospital but were sadly pronounced dead on arrival. Then four days ago each was interred in his own parish’s cemetery.’
Boyle, now looking considerably perturbed, glanced over at Baptista, who also appeared increasingly uncomfortable.
‘Please continue,’ Harker prodded, sensing their uneasiness.
‘That night two of the graves were desecrated, and in the morning both bodies had vanished.’
Harker already knew who they were talking about and ventured the names: ‘Father Alfonso Bianchi and Father Daniele Russo?’
‘Yes.’ Boyle gave a sombre nod as Baptista looked on. ‘We thought it was some kind of sick joke… You wouldn’t believe the things some people do these days.’
Oh I believe it all right, Harker thought to himself, reflecting on the cemetery at Cervete. ‘So what happened to the third body?’
Boyle’s face began to pale as he contemplated what appeared, from his pained expression, to be the most difficult part for him to reveal. He first glanced over at Baptista, and this time received a grudging nod of the cardinal’s head.
‘I’ll inform Dr Wheatley that we’re on our way.’ Boyle abruptly rose from his seat. ‘Perhaps it’s best you should see for yourself.’