The Jews, the Catholics, the Muslims — they all had a rightful stake.
Paled continued to rub his chin while the bones of the Keepers were carefully gathered by Company men. No matter how careful the workers were, a femur or rib snapped due to the severity of their brittleness. And then in reverence, the staff of Aaron was taken and placed into a metal lockbox and sealed. It was, without a doubt, a truly magnificent treasure.
But the biggest treasure was the Ark and the tablets within.
“We’re almost done,” said Jacob, a minor player in the Lohamah Psichlogit.
Paled tried to make a logical determination for the theft before turning to Jacob with a questioning look. “Why take the Ark and leave behind the staff?”
Jacob shrugged. “For ransom?”
Paled shook his head. “It goes beyond that,” he said. “I believe they have something else in mind.”
Jacob took a step forward and noted the bare spots where the legs of the Ark sat on the platform, where the dust gathered around them for 3000 years. “Primary guesses?”
“Some,” he answered. “But as a member of the Lohamah Psichlogit who sees things in a perspective where psychological warfare, propaganda and operations of deception are a function, I believe they’ll use the Ark as a weapon of some kind, psychological or otherwise.” He took a step closer to the platform. “Tell me, Jacob… What do you see?”
Jacob hesitated, musing. “I see the Arabs using our own game against us,” he said.
Paled nodded. “And should they play the game well enough…” he said, his words trailing off. Then they could incite a war like no other…
… and destroy us all.
CHAPTER THREE
Pope Gregory XVII thought he had seen a fleeting shadow dart across the Papal Chamber from the corner of his eye.
The room was dark, the corners and recesses even darker with scant lighting from the moon coming in through the open doors that led to the balcony. A marginal breeze blew in from the west, causing the hemlines of the scalloped drapery to wave in poetic motion that was slow and balanced, as if the entire moment was caught up in a surreal dream. And though he could feel a cool and gentle breeze sweeping into the room and touch his flesh, his mind remained fevered and hot, perhaps the illness drawing the illusion that somebody else was in the room with him.
Nevertheless, the pontiff called out, his voice cracked and feeble: “Is somebody there?”
Silence.
Pope Gregory tossed the cover of the comforter back and sat up, swinging his legs over the edge until the soles of his feet touched down against marble flooring.
With the passing of Pope Pius XIII, Gregory had succeeded him, serving six months at the Papal Throne. Under his leadership conservatism reigned, pulling away from Pius’s more liberal stance to bend to the will of the masses for reform in a world that was ever-changing. But Gregory believed that the people should bend to the will of God rather than God bending to the will of men. So the pendulum began to swing back to a more conservative position, once again raising the ire within the Catholic citizenry.
Although he had drawn criticism from within the ranks, he was also lauded by those within the College as one not to back away from adversity, no matter how loud the voices may cry.
Getting to his feet, Pope Gregory’s world shifted, the shadows elongating and coming alive, reaching out and then pulling back, the products of a sick mind. At first he wobbled, took time to correct himself, then made his way toward the veranda with a buffeting wind blowing the hairs back from his scalp like the whipping mane of a horse.
A few hours ago he was as robust as Atlas who carried the religious world upon his squared shoulders. But now he was amazingly weak with barely enough strength to lift a hand.
His stomach also burned like magma moving in slow passage. And then his entire body became a tabernacle of pain as he hitched in his stride and tumbled toward a column by the veranda door, using it as a crutch, and looked out into the night.
Beneath the light of the gibbous moon with the obelisk and the Colonade standing sentinel beneath its gaze, with nothing but cold, blue shadows stretching out across the bricks of the plaza below, Pope Gregory marveled at the beauty of the country he had come to reign.
As he stood there his pain intensified as if something serpentine wended its way through his guts the moment he started toward the edge of the veranda in a stumbling gait with a hand across his abdomen, and the other stretched out for the guardrail.
With breaths coming in short gasps and his lungs laboring to pull in enough oxygen to keep him conscious, Gregory continued to admire the land that his papalship brought him. For six months he ruled as best he could under the servitude of God. And for six months he believed that such servitude should have been rewarded with an exceptionally long time to rule the Papal Throne. Six months was not even a blink of time within the cosmic eye, he considered.
“I know you’re there,” he said, his breaths coming with far greater difficulty.
But there was neither answer nor moving shadows. Nor was there the sound of a pin dropping or the hint of a possible footfall.
“In the eyes of God, do you truly believe that He will condone what you are about to do?”
The slight rush of a breeze passed through his ears, a sweet melody to calm and soothe. And he closed his eyes, waiting.
“God will not favor you,” he said. “No matter what you do as a member of the Church, He will only favor you in the end with the fiery lakes of Hell.”
The pontiff stood at the edge of the veranda with a hand against the rail and a forearm across his stomach, and then he began to teeter back and forth threatening to spill over to the pavement below.
“With the fiery lakes of Hell,” he whispered. And then his eyes flared the moment he felt a hand on his back and a push hard enough to send him over the edge. The old man began to pinwheel his arms while turning to face his executor, his feet losing purchase and going airborne as he slipped over the railing, the pavement hurling up at him at an impossible speed, the edge of the veranda dwindling away and becoming smaller. The moon was spinning, its face becoming a sad memorial denoting the end of the old man’s life.
And then he struck the bricks, hard, the impact sounding like a melon striking the pavement during a moment of dead silence.
Yet the pontiff survived with the smell of copper permeating the air and blood fanning out in all directions.
Coughing, with blood spraying out from broken lungs, with his eyes skyward, he thought he saw the shadow of someone staring down at him from the veranda. He was unmoving and still, and seemed to be wearing vestments. And then he pulled away, gone, leaving as silently as he entered.
As the pontiff focused on the point of the veranda, as his life slowly leeched away from his body, his vision began to implode at the edges with his sight turning black, then purple, and then the subsequent flashes of sunburst light leading to Ethereal Illumination.
With a broken hand twisted by the impact, the pontiff raised it to the Glory of the Light only he could see, smiled, and allowed himself to pass.
For the past six months Cardinal Bonasero Vessucci served the Diocese of Boston after his loss for the papal selection, having been criticized, then subsequently ostracized, for sitting in as lead counsel of a clandestine group of cardinal’s known as the Society of Seven. They, along with Pope Pius, recognized the fact that times had become volatile and the Church, having diplomatic ties with ninety percent of the countries worldwide, had become a viable target. In order to protect its sovereignty, its interest, and the welfare of its citizenry, Cardinal Vessucci spearheaded a covert group of elite commandos known as the Vatican Knights.