God's Lions - House of Acerbi (31 page)

“They’re a bunch of Nazi’s.” Martha practically spit the words out. “My husband and I have worked at the chateau for almost two years now, and things there are definitely not what they seem. Those people are up to no good.”

“What do you mean ...
no good
?”

“Let’s just say it’s not a place you would want to spend your vacation.” Martha reached into her blouse and pulled out a plastic bag containing a thin, white folder. “And I have some papers here that will prove everything I’m about to tell you.”

 * * 

Above the small blue chopper, an unmarked Blackhawk helicopter remained out of sight as it followed behind at a distance.

Inside the spacious cockpit, the co-pilot reached above his head and flicked a switch before looking over at the pilot. “Should we take them out now, sir?”

“No,” the pilot responded in a tone that was measured and calm. “Our orders are only to follow them and see where they go ... nothing else. Mr. Acerbi wants to know where they land.”

It was late afternoon when the small blue chopper emerged from the clouds and descended over the castle for a landing at the base of the hill. All through the day, several members of the Bible Code Team had been staring up at a large screen on the wall in the castle’s underground communications center, where they had been watching events unfold in real time from a tiny, forward-looking camera mounted on Nava’s helmet.

The room had broken into applause after Nava had pulled off one of the greatest feats of flying any of them had ever witnessed. After the rescue, she had decided to maintain radio silence until they were five minutes out from the castle. Everyone in the communications room could hear the concern in her voice when she told them her passengers were showing signs of hypothermia and that the chopper was running dangerously low on fuel.

Grabbing some warm blankets and a thermos full of hot coffee, the team rushed from the castle and down to the landing pad, where they all waited anxiously until the chopper was safely on the ground and the engines had whined to a stop. Sarah was the first to step out as Ariella ran to her and wrapped a blanket around her shoulders.

“You feel cold, honey.”

“I’ll be ok. It’s good to see you, Ariella!”

John and Moshe threw blankets over the other two passengers, while Evita began shoving cups of steaming hot coffee into their shaking hands.

“We have a doctor here on the compound,” Lev said to the shivering trio. “He’s waiting for you up at the castle.”

Sarah waved him off. “I think we just need to warm up a little. I’ve had enough of doctors for a while.”

“How did they treat you back at the chateau?”

“Great ... until I climbed out a window and ran away.”

“Yeah, that really seemed to piss them off for some reason,” Alon said, climbing from the chopper with a machine gun in his hands. He pointed to Martha and Fredrick. “These are the brave people who helped her escape. They have something interesting they want to show you.”

“Ya ... interesting.” It was all Martha could mutter in her frozen state.

“Let’s get everyone into some warm clothes first,” Lev said. “We’ll talk later.”

With the sun now beginning to drift down behind the surrounding hills to the west, they began making made their way up the winding path in a diffuse light reflected off the white limestone walls of the castle. It was a peaceful end to a day that had been fraught with doubt and fear, but for now Sarah and her rescuers were basking in the afterglow of a mission that had seemingly gone off without a hitch.

Passing through the castle’s main entrance, Alon could hear the rattle of a helicopter in the distance.
Probably just a French military chopper ... scouting the area
, he thought to himself. Looking back out at the sunset, he slowly closed the door behind him.

 * * 

An hour later, after Ephraim had finally fixed the plumbing, the new arrivals had taken hot showers and changed into dry clothes just as the smell of cooking infused with garlic and white wine began to drift up through the castle. It didn’t take long for the three Spanish scientists to migrate down to the large, candle-lit dining hall, where the rest of the team had already taken seats at a long wooden table.

With an unknown virus ravaging the world outside the castle’s doors, the cooks had been working all afternoon preparing a French feast in an effort to lessen the stress on the team of weary scientists. With the first course of the evening, Hadar and her assistants flowed into the dining hall with trays full of steaming bowls of Bouillabaisse, the famous seafood dish that had originated in Marseille. Once a seafood stew enjoyed only by working-class fisherman who had prepared it from their catch-of-the-day leftovers, this culinary delight had risen over time to the top of the list of luxurious French cuisine. On this evening, the cooks had started with a base of tomatoes, saffron, garlic, and olive oil. To that, they added the usual assortment of seafood, including monkfish, mullet, snapper, scorpion fish, conger eel, and mussels. Many of the customers who dined at Hadar’s four-star restaurant in Tel Aviv had been known to shed tears when they tasted her version of the dish.

Since Europeans always served salad after the main course to cleanse the palate, the Bouillabaisse was followed by Salade Nicoise, a simple and traditional southern French salad consisting of lettuce, green beans, tomatoes, black olives, eggs, and anchovies.

Picking at her food, Martha cast suspicious glances around the table. After emerging from the oppressing environment of constant surveillance at Acerbi’s chateau, where every move she and her co-workers made had been observed by security men watching from hidden cameras, her trust level was at an all-time low. Looking at her husband, she saw that he was oblivious to everything around him as he devoured his second helping of Bouillabaisse
. No help there.
She thought for a moment.
Could these people be trusted?
Clearing her throat, she laid her spoon on the table and made eye contact with Sarah, who in turn nodded in Leo’s direction.

Her decision made, Martha reached inside her blouse and produced a thin white folder before shoving it across the table to Leo.

“What’s this, Martha?”

“It’s from the chateau, Cardinal. Most of what’s in there is just scientific stuff that I don’t understand, but there is enough spelled out in plain English for me to see that those people are up to no good. I mean, just take a look at the title on the cover page.”

After fumbling for his glasses, Leo reached for the papers. Right away he saw the title centered on the cover page:
Plan #322 for the genetically engineered viral extermination of a species.

The cardinal breathed in deeply before lifting his wine glass and taking a long sip. “Where exactly did you get this, Martha?”

“It came down the chute.”

“Excuse me ... the what?”

“The laundry chute ... the one that comes from the second floor living quarters at the chateau. It was mixed up in a pile of sheets. The only thing I can figure out is that one of the upstairs maids was changing the linen and didn’t see this little paper folder tucked in among the rumpled bed sheets. Whoever was staying in that room the night before was probably lying in bed when they were reading. My guess is they just left it lying there the next morning. The maid obviously didn’t see it when she gathered up the sheets and sent them down the chute. I discovered it when I was sorting through a pile of dirty laundry as I always do before I put it into the machine.”

Leo began thumbing through the pages as Javier and Evita leaned over in an effort to read along with him.

“What first grabbed your attention?” Leo asked without looking up.

“The word extermination jumped out at me right away. I’m German, Cardinal Leo. I was born there, but I’m also a Jew. Many of my family members were
exterminated
during the Holocaust. So you see, that word holds a special meaning for me.”

Martha was struck by the way the Cardinal’s green eyes blazed at the mention of the Holocaust.

“Yes, of course,” Leo said softly. “I can see how that word would tend to stand out.”

“After I read the cover page, I waited until no one was looking and stuffed the papers down my shirt. I had to wait until I got home that night to read the rest of it.”

“When did all this occur?”

“It was right around the time when Sarah showed up ... about a week ago. There had been a lot of activity around the chateau ... a lot more than usual.”

Leo continued to scan through the pages while Martha talked. He paused to push his glasses back up on his head and looked directly at the couple. The possibility that these two still worked for Acerbi was driving him to probe deeper. “Have you two shown this to anyone else?”

Martha laughed. “Are you crazy? If we had, we probably wouldn’t be sitting here right now. We’ve been listening to the news about the virus just like everyone else. The Acerbi Corporation owns a big drug company, so I just thought they were doing some kind of research on it. I was beginning to think that some of the research was going on right there at the chateau, because there’s a lab on the third floor that’s off limits to the regular staff. There was also a sudden increase in people coming and going from that area of the chateau, and we saw a lot of new faces arriving at all hours of the day and night in vehicles that had the words
Acerbi Pharmaceutical
painted on the doors. They were always talking about
the pathogen
, or
the virus
. They didn’t pay any attention to us. You know how it is—servants always seem to be like pieces of furniture, we’re invisible, and that’s a good thing. The kitchen staff told us they were serving twice the normal number of meals in the dining room.”

“What made you suspicious?”

“When I read through that folder, it was obvious they were describing how to spread a virus, not stop one. You might think I’m crazy for saying this, Cardinal, but when I read all that stuff it didn’t surprise me at all.”

“What do you mean by that?”

“I mean those men guarding the chateau reminded me of a bunch of Nazi’s. You could see the hate in their eyes. They were some very tough and cold men. I never once saw any of them smile. The only time they talked to us was when they needed something. Other than that, they just patrolled the grounds with their dogs and their guns ... watching everyone and everything. Sometimes it felt like we were working in a prison instead of a home. Everyone there was extremely suspicious of strangers.”

Leo handed the folder to Evita as he continued to probe Martha for more information. “What about Acerbi himself?”

“Oh, you mean Rene? I never trusted him. None of the staff liked him. I know I didn’t. He’s a hard man to figure out. I mean ... he’s moody. One minute he would be walking around, smiling and saying ‘Hello’ to everyone, then suddenly his mood would change for no apparent reason. He would be yelling at people ... threatening them. I always had a bad feeling when he was around.”

Leo heard Evita gasp and turned to see her staring back at him, her eyes filled with fear.

“I think we just found our smoking gun, Cardinal.”

Leo took the folder and looked down at the page Evita had just been reading.

The Executive Committee

Executive Order #322 - Eyes Only Communication – Incinerate after reading

Phase one of our plan to disseminate the genetically engineered pathogen has been a spectacular success. Our scientists have created a fertile breeding ground for an otherwise harmless virus by altering the DNA of unsuspecting populations through the use of genetically engineered wheat distributed in the form of cereal and free samples of baked goods.

Once a target population has ingested food made with our genetically altered wheat, a silent chain-reaction occurs within the DNA makeup of their cells, thus making them susceptible to the effects of the airborne form of the virus. In other words, they have no immunity to this new, artificially engineered pathogen and will die a quick and merciful death within hours of exposure. Those who have not eaten the modified wheat will suffer no ill effects whatsoever, and as a precaution against the possibility of mutation, the pathogen has also been engineered to die within 48 hours of being introduced into the atmosphere.

In a tribute to our scientific team, this ability to control the spread of the virus has been the true genius of our plan. By managing the dissemination of our genetically altered wheat products, along with the failsafe mechanism within the virus itself, we now have a means of containing the pathogen. As predicted, this random pattern of inexplicable life and death will breed fear and panic around the world, thus giving us the upper hand over the world’s governments as we enter phase two of our plan.

As you already know, the virus has been released in several widely dispersed geographical regions around the world, and to date, only the targeted populations in those areas have become sick. Within a matter of days, every government on earth will be looking to the pharmaceutical division of the Acerbi Corporation to come to their aid in the face of an unexplained epidemic they have no control over.

In clandestine meetings this morning with world leaders who are already under our control, we have assured them that their populations will not be affected by the virus. To those countries that are not currently under our sphere of influence, we will soon begin offering them the same guarantee if they agree to transfer control of their governments over to us.

Many of these countries will, of course, refuse to cooperate with us. However, we will make it clear to them that this is their only path toward salvation, both now and in the future. Any attempts to block our control will be met with immediate and fatal retaliation. Their countries will become barren wastelands heaped with corpses. Our plan is a simple one. Those governments who agree to our terms will survive with their current regimes intact under the umbrella of our shadow government. Those who do not will cease to exist.