Apocalypsis 1.02 Ancient Read online

  EPISODE 2

  ANCIENT

  Lübbe Webnovel is an imprint of Bastei Lübbe GmbH & Co. KG

  Copyright © 2011 by Bastei Lübbe GmbH & Co. KG, Cologne, Germany

  Written by Mario Giordano, Cologne

  Translated by Diana Beate Hellmann, Los Angeles

  English version edited by Charlotte Ryland, London

  Editors: Friederike Achilles/Jan F. Wielpütz

  Artwork: © Dino Franke, Hajo Müller

  E-Book-Production: Dörlemann Satz, Lemförde

  ISBN 978-3-8387-1442-4

  All rights reserved

  No part of this publication may be reproduced in whole, or in part, or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publisher.

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  XVI

  May 10, 2011, Santiago de Compostela

  The man rushing to cross the Praza do Obradoiro had no eyes for the beauty and architectural harmony of the square and its cathedral, wrested skillfully and delicately from pale Galician granite. He paid no mind to the souvenir vendors, who had just begun to reopen their stalls after the rain, nor to the trios of students in Renaissance costumes who were singing suggestive and salacious songs to the tourists and pilgrims. Neither did the man notice that the people in the square were instinctively moving out of his path, as if they could sense that he was pushing a wave of death ahead of him. Heavy and threatening gray clouds were looming over the city, which was notorious as the rain capital of Europe. Gusts of wind were blowing plastic bags over the square and chasing groups of pilgrims back into the cathedral or into their guesthouses.

  Nikolas headed straight for the Hostal de Los Reyes Católicos, a former hospital from the 15th century, which had been founded by Queen Isabella of Castile and King Ferdinand of Aragon. It was in this hotel that Christopher Columbus had been granted financial support for his uncertain expedition to the West. Today, the striking building housed a five-star parador, which was said to be the best hotel in the world.

  Nikolas was wearing designer shoes and a plain English raincoat over a gray flannel suit and open-necked shirt. Less than an hour ago, he had been wearing waterproof overalls, rubber boots and gloves to ensure that he didn’t soil his clothes with the blood of the Cardinal. There had been a lot of blood in the Cardinal’s body; now it was flowing towards the Atlantic Ocean, together with the city’s sewage. The exsanguinated and skinned lump of flesh that had once been a popular cardinal was now lying, together with its skin, under a plastic sheet, carelessly hidden in a little pine forest by the beach, waiting to be found in the very near future.

  At first, Nikolas had kept the Cardinal under surveillance for a few days, as Seth had commanded. But it had been to no avail. Then, yesterday evening, he had finally received clearance to pay the Cardinal a personal visit. In his gentle, almost juvenile voice, he had asked him a few simple questions. At first, the old man had not shown any fear and proved surprisingly resistant to the pain. Until Nikolas had begun to skin him alive with his machete by slicing him up from the toes to the neck, slaughtering him like a sacrificial lamb. And let’s not forget that, before he started, he had sewn the man’s lips shut so that he could not scream.

  Hatred is good. Pain is good. Pain is the light in the darkness and in the chaos of the world. Pain is order. And hatred is the mother of all pain, the pure, eternal and holy flame, the manna of the light.

  He had allowed himself plenty of time. Over and over again he had asked the Cardinal the same simple questions. When he finally got the answers, he had simply continued – despite his promise of a quick death. It was a question of order.

  Of course, Nikolas knew that he was insane. Only an insane person was capable of doing these things. According to all diagnostic criteria available in this world, he had to be a monster. However, this did not mean that he didn’t know exactly what he was doing. He didn’t enjoy killing, and he didn’t experience a feeling of ecstatic euphoria, nor did he feel dull pressure when he had not killed for a longer period of time. The only thing that he felt afterwards was satisfaction – the satisfaction at having done the right thing. Having fulfilled his sacred duty. He did not have to kill. The act of killing aroused him just as little as the sight of a child’s toy. But killing was necessary and, like everything else in this world, killing had to follow a clear order. And the name of this order was pain.

  The Master, all clad in white, was expecting him in his suite. Even though Nikolas had known him his entire life, his personal encounters with the Master were still moments of sublime grandeur for him. He kissed the Ring of the Light and threw himself on the ground in front of him. There he lay prone, stretched out flat with his face down, his arms sprawled out to the sides, waiting to be spoken to.

  After a while Seth addressed him. »You may rise now, Nikolas,« he said and assigned him a place to sit down. »Tea?«

  »It would be my pleasure, Master.«

  Seth poured light green tea into two little bowls, and then he sat down in a chair opposite Nikolas and watched him for quite a while. On a low occasional table between them was the envelope that Nikolas had taken from the private secretary and that had put them on the track of the Cardinal. Nikolas knew what the envelope contained.

  »Give me your report.«

  Without saying a word, Nikolas handed the master a list with twenty-one names. Seth took the list and studied it.

  »Are these all of them?«

  »I believe so.«

  Seth put the list onto the occasional table next to the envelope.

  »Which of them was supposed to get the envelope?«

  »None of them. The stick was supposed to be forwarded to a mission hospital in Northern Uganda.«

  Seth raised one of his eyebrows. »What a coincidence. Who exactly was the person who was supposed to receive the envelope?«

  »The Cardinal didn’t know that, either. He only had the address of the mission station and the instruction to deliver the envelope in person.«

  Nikolas pushed a photo over the table. It showed a young nun with African children in front of a clay hut – none of the kids were smiling. »I checked the mission station out. This nun had been working there for five years. Eight days ago, she suddenly disappeared. Nobody knows where she is now. Definitely not a coincidence.«

  »Well done, Nikolas.« Seth pulled a normal off-the-shelf USB stick from the envelope. »We’ve been examining this stick for days now, with all the means at our disposal. It contains only one encrypted file. We were able to crack the file but it only consists of columns of figures. The experts assume that the numbers encode geographical coordinates.«

  »A map?«

  Seth didn’t answer. Instead, he took a closer look at the photo of the young nun. After a while, he handed the picture back to Nikolas.

  »Find her.«

  »Do you want me to kill her?«

  »No. She might be the key to the map.« Seth tapped his finger on the list with the twenty-one names. »These you will kill.«

  »What about Laurenz?« Nikolas asked.

  »Other people are taking care of that. As soon as Laurenz has been found, I will call you.«

  XVII

  May 10, 2011, near Bronte, Sicily

  At some point during the night he had stopped screaming. Instead, he had tried to shake off the paralyzing fear by pushing his back against one side of the wall and his legs against the other in an attempt to work his way up the well shaft like a mountain climber, inch by inch. But to no avail. The shaft was too wide to provide enough support. He was exhausted, desper
ate, and freezing, and he spent the night curled up in a ball next to the damp wall, waiting for the morning to come. He remembered an old nursery rhyme and couldn’t get it out of his head, instead beginning to murmur the words to himself. The same thing that he had done back then. Because as long as he could hear his own voice, the fear had not completely defeated him.

  And until then, there was still hope.

  Little rabbit in the hole

  Sat and slept,

  Sat and slept,

  Little rabbit, are you ill,

  Why can’t you jump up the hill?

  Little rabbit, are you ill,

  Why can’t you jump up the hill?

  Despite the fear that held him relentlessly in its grip, he found a few moments of sleep that were roiled with hazy and dreadful dreams. Dreams of a shallow pit in the middle of a desert and of sand pushing against his chest.

  … Sat and slept,

  Little rabbit, are you ill,

  Why can’t you jump up the hill?

  In spite of the cold, he became thirsty. Peter emptied one of the bottles of mineral water that they had left for him, and a little later he peed into the bucket. A mistake, because the acrid smell of his own urine was like a knife that cut all his pleasant thoughts into pieces and made it impossible to take his mind off his situation.

  Time passed agonizingly slowly. Laughing at him. But at some point, finally, morning approached, tenacious like glue, but without bringing any heat. Peter started hopping on the spot to warm up. Another mistake. When he stopped he was soaked with sweat and shivering even more from the cold.

  He wondered for the umpteenth time whether they planned to let him rot in here or whether someone would come at regular intervals to throw down water and food. They had not killed him right away – so why all the fuss with the well? But his thoughts slipped from the inner walls of his mind just as his feet had slipped from the walls of the well.

  … Sat and slept,

  Little rabbit, are you ill,

  Why can’t you jump up the hill?

  Peter watched the streak of light making its way into the shaft with such agonizing slowness that it was as if someone had poured oil over the well. When daylight had finally reached the bottom of the well, Peter resumed screaming for help.

  Around noon, his screams were answered.

  »Peter? … Peter, is that you?«

  The voice sounded as if it were coming from far away, from a different world, but nonetheless, he recognized it immediately.

  »Maria!« He shouted with all his might. »I’m here! Down here in the well!«

  A little later, the light at the top of the well was obscured and a face looked down at him.

  »Peter? Are you down there?«

  Maria hadn’t brought a rope, so she had to go back to town to get one. The wait seemed to be endless. And when he finally climbed out of the well, he resisted the impulse to lock her in his arms. The dried-up well stood all alone on a stretch of rocky wasteland that was overgrown with dense shrubs of broom and surrounded by high dry-stone walls built from lava blocks, as was typical for this region. Not far in the distance, the snow-capped summit of Mount Etna was rising into the sky. Not a single house in sight; and the monastery was nowhere to be seen.

  »How did you find me?« Peter asked, looking around and gasping for air.

  She stood in front of him, clad in her nun’s habit, and watched him with a mix of concern and helplessness.

  »Well, I knew where you were heading. So I left this morning, took the first flight to Catania, and then the bus to get up here. It was quite a journey.«

  Out of nowhere, a wave of suspicion washed over Peter.

  »Why did you follow me? Why were you looking for me in the first place?«

  She turned away as if she wanted to make sure that nobody was eavesdropping on them.

  »Don Luigi asked me to follow you. He was worried that you might be in danger.«

  Peter didn’t believe a word she said.

  »And his worries prompted him to send you of all people? A nun?«

  She straightened herself, brusquely. »I spent a few years in a war-torn region in Northern Uganda. I can take care of myself, trust me.«

  »Did you go into the monastery?«

  »Yes, I did. There’s only a handful of old monks living there and they didn’t know anything about a German journalist. But I noticed a rental car parked near the monastery, so I thought something must have happened to you and took a shot at searching the area.«

  Peter still couldn’t believe her, but decided to let the matter rest for now. She had found him and she had freed him from the well. That was the only thing that mattered for now.

  »I guess I owe my life to you.«

  Suddenly she smiled again. »Don’t be melodramatic. Thank the Mother of God. Or your guardian angel, if you like.«

  Peter smiled back at her and all of a sudden he noticed that the sun was already high in the sky and that it was warm in the noon light. The smell of dry earth and gorse bushes wafted through the air.

  A beautiful day.

  They just made it onto the 3pm flight back to Rome. She was sitting next to him the entire time, first in the car, then on the plane and she didn’t say much. Peter’s suspicion dissolved like sugar in hot tea and was replaced by gratitude. He asked Maria questions about her time in Uganda, wanted to know what she had done before becoming a nun and why she had decided to become a nun in the first place.

  Maria answered in monosyllables, more out of politeness. She remained silent about her reasons for joining the convent. Exhausted from his night inside the well and his encounter with Laurenz, and perturbed by his alleged vision and the Fourth Secret of Fátima, Peter was wondering what kind of role Maria was playing in this game. In any case, his report of his encounter with Laurenz seemed not to faze her in the least.

  »He knows the Fourth Prophecy of Fátima, so he’s bound to distrust you.« She was even defending him. »Try to put yourself in his position.«

  Peter sighed in annoyance. »At least we know now that Laurenz is alive. It is obvious that he planned his disappearance very well. Whoever is helping him has a huge bunch of people at his beck and call, and a helicopter.«

  »What kind of impression did he make on you?« Maria asked after a while.

  »Laurenz?« Peter thought about that. »He seemed to be tense,« he finally said. »As if he were under pressure, somehow.«

  And then it hit him.

  »He was scared. He felt threatened.«

  Maria nodded. »He must have had his reasons to go into hiding. You tracked him down and he felt threatened by that. He had no intention of killing you. He only wanted to sideline you for a while. He was the Pope; he’s not a criminal! Sooner or later they would have found you in the well anyway. Or he would have sent someone to get you out of there. I’m convinced of that.«

  »Perhaps he sent you?« Peter blurted out.

  She rolled her eyes. »It’s bad enough that you don’t believe in the Mother of God, so you should at least try to believe in divine providence.«

  »Because?«

  »Because otherwise you run the risk of complete paranoia.«

  »Suffering from delusions of persecution does not mean that someone isn’t actually persecuting you.«

  »Do you really find it necessary always to have the last word?«

  He grinned at her. She turned away, brusquely.

  »Laurenz really did believe that I’m the one who’s going to blow up the Vatican«, Peter said after a while. »But I’m not the one, do you hear me? I will not do that, no matter what some vision or prophecy says. But as I am up to my neck in this thing, I want to figure out how all this is connected. So let’s do it again, from the beginning: who is Laurenz hiding from? And why?«

  »This is exactly the question I’ve been asking myself all night,« Don Luigi said.

  Just as the day before, the three of them were sitting in his small kitchen, and for a brief moment a sur
real feeling crept up on Peter, the feeling that the last twenty-four hours had never happened.

  As if.

  »I had a hunch that something was wrong,« the Jesuit priest grunted, pacing with rapid steps up and down the small kitchen. »The whole time. How fortunate that I sent Maria after you.«

  Peter glanced over to Maria, who was struggling to the best of her abilities to unscrew Don Luigi’s ancient espresso jug. He enjoyed watching her perform this trivial everyday task. The woman who had saved his life. The woman who was keeping secrets from him.

  »They searched Laurenz’s secret apartment on Via Palermo,« Don Luigi said, stopping abruptly in front of Peter. »The place was pretty much ransacked, they turned it completely upside down. The chauffeur’s murderer was obviously looking for something.«

  »For what?«

  Don Luigi sat down again.

  »I don’t know. I only know that he didn’t find it.«

  »I see. And what makes you so sure?«

  »The fact that it was never in that apartment in the first place, no matter what it was.«

  Once again, Don Luigi seemed to enjoy the amazed looks on the faces of Peter and Maria. »After the death of Pope John Paul II, the appartamento was finally renovated. The electrical system had not been refurbished since the 1930s and the water pipes were rotten, the roof was leaking and the fumes of twenty-four years of greasy Polish food were lingering in the air. So they used the time of the Sede Vacante for the long overdue repairs.«

  Don Luigi took a sip of his water.

  »One day, they called me to the construction site. An emergency. One of the workers was apparently suffering an attack of demonic possession. When I arrived at the construction site, I saw that it was very bad. The poor devil – he was still very young – was screaming blasphemous curses in Aramaic. In other words, in the original language of the Bible that this boy from the outskirts of Rome could never have heard in his life. So what had happened?«

  Don Luigi did not wait for the »we don't know« shrugs.