Apocalypsis I Page 9

  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, desperate, 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 t
he 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 surreal 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.

  »I could only deduce it from what he stammered in Italian, between curses. He had been alone during the lunch break and wanted to prepare another one of the walls for the new wiring. So he cut it open. And in doing so he came upon a hollow space in the wall. What happened thereafter remains a mystery.«

  »What was in the hollow space?« Maria asked. Peter already had an idea what the answer would be. Don Luigi raised his arms in regret.

  »That’s the point! It was never found! I inspected the spot in detail and more than once. I saw the cuts for the wires in the wall but I didn’t see a hollow space. And it was the same story in the other rooms: nothing. Later on, I even studied the construction drawings from the 15th century but there was no indication of any hollow space in the wall, either. The question that remained, however, was what had happened so suddenly to the construction worker?«

  »What did you do with him, Don Luigi?« Peter asked.

  »Well, I, of course, tried to help the man on the spot by attempting to cast the demon out of him. Unfortunately, to no avail. He was admitted to hospital, where he died the following day from heart failure. May God have mercy on his soul.«

  »And now you think that Laurenz knew about this hollow space and that he hid something in there that is connected to his resignation?« Peter’s voice sounded upset.

  Don Luigi shrugged his shoulders. »It is mere speculation. Even if this hollow space really exists… it would be almost impossible to find it without a distinct clue.«

  Peter couldn’t help his sarcasm. »Not to mention,« he said, »how much more impossible it would be to enter the Apostolic Palace without anyone noticing, to sneak past the Swiss Guards onto the third floor and to break into the Pope’s sealed private apartment.«

  Don Luigi shrugged stoically. »Well, now, I wouldn’t say that.«

  XVIII

  May 10, 2011, New York City

  Frank Babcock wanted to become a better person. He really meant it. He wanted to be strong and change his life, this shabby life that was filled with filth and despair; he wanted to save his soul. He wanted at last to step out of the shadow of his brother Steve, who was feared up and down the Lower East Side, and who had turned Frank into what he was today. He really wanted to do it. Throughout his life, he had trailed behind his big brother, had admired him, had always done what Steve wanted him to do – now he’d had enough. But Frank Babcock knew that he was weak, so weak, much weaker than Steve.

  That he would not be able to do it alone.

  So Frank had found his way back to his faith. He had remembered that he was a Catholic and had given himself to Mother Church. He attended Mass every day, over time he confessed a whole heap of sins to Father Hanson, and every night he read one chapter from the One Year Bible, an uplifting little book that Father Hanson had given him as a gift, which contained 365 excerpts from the Holy Scripture for each day of the year, all summarized to the essential points.

  However, Frank Babcock knew that this still wasn’t enough. Sooner or later he would have to face the facts and his personal Armageddon. As strange as it was, this thought had begun to make him feel quite calm.

>   As usual, Frank got up at three in the afternoon and made himself a coffee, which was so strong that it started a riot in his poor stomach. He still had two hours until Mass, and afterwards he had to run an errand for Steve, which he couldn’t delay.

  Wrapped in his tattered old bathrobe, he was shuffling through his long hallway into his tiny living room when there was a knock at the door. Neil Cummings, his neighbor from across the hall, stood outside, also in his bathrobe, also unshaven, also gray and withered despite the fact that he was not even thirty years old. Occasionally they played chess together and Neil was always on his back about asking Steve whether he had a job for him.

  »Hello, Neil.«

  »Hi, Frank. Did I wake you or something?«

  »What’s up, Neil?«

  »There was this country song that I heard on the radio yesterday and I can’t get it out of my mind. Great song. And I know you dig that stuff, so I wanted to ask if you know it or something.«

  »Come in, Neil. Would you like some coffee?«

  He poured his Irish neighbor a cup and made him sing the song to him.

  »That’s ›Someone Else’s Song‹ by Wilco,« Frank told him. »Beautiful song. I have it.«

  Frank shuffled into his bedroom, which was just large enough for a bed and the small dresser, on top of which sat his CD Player. Steve had gotten him this apartment because he thought that Frank had to live in Manhattan – to be available 24/7. It was one of those typical railroad apartments – a narrow tube, which consisted primarily of a hallway that ran the entire length of the place and connected to a series of microscopically small rooms. The apartment was tiny, shabby and dark, but it was all that Frank could afford in Manhattan. It was located on 7th Street between 2nd and 3rd Avenue. Lower East Side, Manhattan. Steve’s personal kingdom.