The bounty of knowledge this strange-looking Tibetan monk offered was as mind-boggling as his opaque eyes and the asking price: “Accept our Society’s invitation, and the knowledge is yours to preside over as caretaker.”
From darkness the Light, from sickness and death… a level of joy and accomplishment I could never have imagined. I no longer fear death, knowing that the promise of immortality awaits.
And so, I live out my days to help others, each act of kindness seeding an everlasting fulfillment…
Let the Reaper come indeed!
— Guigo
Epilogue
The medieval town rose above undulating fields of golden wheat like an ancient Gothic island. Thousand-year-old walls, the mortar worn smooth, dated its baronial fortification. Narrow cobblestone streets weaved through rows of half-timbered houses. Ancient bridges traversed the Eure River, the inky waters of its three tributaries winding beneath archways of stone.
Chartres. Located sixty miles southwest of Paris, the French commune was a magnet of history, bearing witness to some of humanity’s darkest days.
Black Death: The Great Mortality.
Crowning the hill upon which the village had been erected was Our Lady of Chartres, one of the most magnificent cathedrals in all of Europe. Two towering spires, their unique designs representative of the architecture of the eleventh and sixteenth centuries, soared more than 350 feet into the heavens, rendering them visible for miles in every direction. Flying buttresses high-lighted a Romanesque basilica and massive crypt, its foundation encompassing 117,000 square feet. Gothic carvings adorned its facade, stained glass its portals.
It was just after midnight, and the streets surrounding the cathedral were deserted. The word had been passed — not a soul ventured outside, lest one tempt the wrath of God.
They approached the church on foot, each member having been sequestered in the village earlier in the day. Entries were purposely staggered, made through an earthen passage concealed within a dense patch of foliage adjacent to the church grounds.
Nine men: Each cloaked in a heavy hooded monk’s robe that concealed his face.
Nine men: Their names never spoken, their identities kept hidden lest one of their comrades be apprehended or tortured.
Nine Unknown Men.
The subterranean war room lay three stories beneath the church, its walls seven feet thick. The chamber contained its own power generator, and was equipped with sixteen-channel night-vision surveillance monitors and three wraparound computer security stations. One member of the Nine occupied a console, the other seven were situated in comfortable high-backed cushioned chairs that surrounded a circular oak table. Eight men, transformed by recent events. Awaiting the arrival of their leader.
Pankaj Patel was seated in the seventh chair. The psychology professor appeared to be speed-reading from an ancient Aramaic text.
Yielding to his curiosity, Number Five, a thirty-seven-year-old Austrian technowizard sharing the same bloodlines as Nikola Tesla, left his security post to speak with the sect’s newest member. “You are reading the Zohar?”
“Actually, I’m scanning.”
“What happened, Seven? Did you lose a bet with the Elder?”
“I’ve seen things, Five. I walked on water.”
“I thought it was ice?”
“It was a miracle, plain and simple. Now I am a changed man. I pray. I scan. I am even writing a spiritual book, with the proceeds going to the new Children’s Hospital in Manhattan.”
“Admirable. Tell me, Seven, when you pray, do you pray for the soul of Bertrand DeBorn?”
“Blow me, Five.”
“Seven!” The Elder entered the chamber, his opaque eyes scolding Patel. “Remember, my friend — restriction.”
“My apologies, Elder.”
The Nine men took their assigned places around the oval table. The Elder began. “Number Three, so good of you to be here, especially in light of your new responsibilities within the Politburo. Will our Russian friends agree to President Kogelo’s new disarmament plan?”
“If you had asked me two days ago, I would have emphatically said no. Since then, four of the communist hardliners have suffered fatal heart attacks.”
“Must be something in the water,” quipped Number Eight, a Chinese physicist in his sixties. “Two of our more radical communist leaders also died last week. No foul play is suspected, but, as the Elder likes to say, there are no coincidences.”
“You wish to comment, Number Seven?”
“It’s got to be Shepherd,” Pankaj stated. “Look at what happened to those neocons in Israel… the hardliners in Hamas. And don’t forget the two radical clerics in Iran who died before the election.”
“Every action has a reaction,” responded Number Six, a Mexican environmentalist bearing a Zapotec heritage. “While Shepherd attempts to micromanage the physical world, Santa Muerte grows stronger in the darkness below.”
“How do you know this, Number Six?”
“Somehow, the female Reaper managed to open a fissure that allows her access from Hell into the physical world. Two weeks ago, she exhumed the remains of a priest who had died in Guadalajara of swine flu and danced his contaminated remains at a local wedding.”
The Elder laid his head back against his chair. “Mr. Shepherd must learn to restrict himself as Emperor Asoka and Monsignor de Chauliac before him. We must find a way to communicate with our new Angel of Darkness. Number Seven, has your wife had any supernal communications since you and your family moved back to Manhattan?”
The professor looked uncomfortable. “None, Elder.”
“What about… your daughter?”
August roasted New York’s five boroughs in a midday broil, the heat rising off the sidewalks transforming the cement into a baking stone. The Hudson River, its surface stagnant to the naked eye, cascaded a subatomic tsunami of water molecules upward into the atmosphere, contributing humidity to the parade of cumulus clouds already forming to the west.
In the city below, a lunchtime crowd sweltered. Businessmen hustled between air-conditioned enclosures, red-faced vendors sought relief from umbrella-drawn shade and portable fans.
After forty days of inspection and 153 days of construction, debris removal, and public Masses, the Big Apple once more had a pulse. Manhattan’s population now approached six hundred thousand, with lower rent ceilings promising even more transplants.
The cemetery’s caretaker was sleeping off a hangover in his office. Venetian blinds were pinched closed above a window-unit air conditioner that had outlived its warranty. There were no graveside ceremonies on the schedule, and the summer heat had kept the visitors away—