The Last Day (69 page)

Feldman returned the cameraman's gaze, frowning. In ad their time together, he'd never seen Hunter so unrelentingly hate-filled. So unwaveringly resolute. After a long pause, Feldman sighed and turned to Lazzlo. “Commander, do you still want me to assist with negotiations for the transfer of power here?” He purposefully avoided the term “surrender.”

“I trust no one else.”

Feldman turned back to the stubborn cameraman, shaking his head. “I've got a bad feeling about this, Breck.” He sighed again. “Okay, pack up your camera, we're heading for the Negev.”

115

The Papal Quarters, Vatican City, Rome, Italy 4:51
P.M
., Sunday, April 23, 2000

N
icholas VI had remained in seclusion for the greater part of the weekend. He'd emerged in public view only twice. The first time, to conduct Good Friday services. The second, to preside over Christianity's most important religious celebration, this morning's open-air, sunrise, Easter Sunday Mass in St. Peter's Square. It had rained the entire service, and it was raining still.

In the three weeks since the pontiff's
ex cathedra
decree, Nicholas had grown increasingly depressed over the escalating discord and bloodshed in the world. The situation had caused him to put a distance between himself and his Curia, and in particular Antonio di Concerci. Apprehensive and agitated, the pontiff had spent hours alone in his study, in front of his TV, obsessed with the steady streams of disturbing news issuing from the Holy Land.

His anxieties had begun in earnest a week ago with the unexpected return of Jeza to Jerusalem. The bizarre parallels to Christ and Palm Sunday had caught the pontiff completely off-guard. As had the prophetess's miraculous escape through the Golden Gate, the messianic implications of which had not been lost on him. Yet, he had steadfastly refused to watch Jeza's portentous Good Friday sermon, having sternly warned the faithful to avoid her message as “deceitful words of Satan.”

The news of her death had come to Nicholas as he was praying in his quarters. A chamber nun informed him. Nicholas had immediately gone to his television and watched the continuing replay of the shocking assassination. Despite his convictions, he had found himself stunned and disturbed by the pathetic, heartless murder. He'd reflexively begun a prayer for the repose of Jeza's soul, until it occurred to him that that was inappropriate. Instead, he offered his prayers for the souls of the countless victims falling to the worldwide religious civil war of Armageddon that currently raged across the planet.

Nicholas fully anticipated the Judgment to begin this morning. Yet, returning in disappointment from his Easter services, the pope was hit with the unsettling PET scan revelations. Jeza's mind was unaltered! He calmed himself with the knowledge that, while perhaps this news refuted di Concerci's argument about Jeza being controlled by IDF radio messages, it did nothing to discredit Nicholas's doctrine that Jeza was the product of a more sinister, supernatural force.

But the day's disclosures were hardly over. Later that morning, the pontiff was distracted from his thoughts by a breathless announcement of the
Resurrection Tapes.
He was riveted once more to his TV screen, his hands clasped tightly together as the sequences of Jeza's purported rise from the dead played out in front of him. His respiration escalated and he began to perspire. How could God ask him to endure any more of these assaults on his convictions?

“No!” he cautioned himself, aloud. “My faith is being tested!” He would not succumb. He rose and walked decisively to his window where, outside, the sun was finally starting to break through the clouds.

The pontiff studied the sky long and carefully for any signs that the Son of God might now be making His appearance. While there was still no indication, there was yet another ray of sunshine on the horizon. From his TV, Nicholas overheard a report that the cataclysm of world turmoil was at last waning. The majority of millenarians appeared to be pausing in their violence long enough, at least, to reconsider their positions in light of this latest, ambiguous information about Jeza.

As much as he'd anticipated and prepared for the Second Coming these past weeks, even Nicholas would welcome a stay of execution. He sighed, feeling the pangs of his self-imposed confinement. He longed to walk in his Vatican Gardens once more. To smell the flowers and sweet air after the cleansing spring rain.

He forbid his Swiss Guard to accompany him. Stepping outside his palace, the pope realized that this was the first time since his coronation that he'd walked unencumbered in his kingdom. It was liberating. His unhurried afternoon stroll along the grounds took him past all the great, beloved treasures of religious art, architecture and priceless beauty that two thousand years of Christianity had bestowed upon him and his Church. He lingered delightedly among his possessions for hours, unrecognized without his standard retinue about him. With dusk approaching, he slowly began to wend his way back toward his quarters.

The sky was completely clear now, and before he retired, the pontiff decided he would take this rare opportunity to enjoy one of his favorite panoramas. There was no more beautiful a view of Rome than that from the ancient papal observatory at the top of the Vatican's lofty Tower of the Winds.

Entering the ground-level museum building, he was greeted by several pale-complected clerics who were surprised from their quiet studies to see their monarch without his customary guards. Nevertheless, they were cheered to find the pontiff out and about again.

Nicholas was wearied by the hard climb up the tower's steep, spiral stone stairs. At the top, the winded pope happened upon a young archivist monk who looked shocked beyond measure to encounter his sovereign in this manner.

The friar had been seated on the floor, re-creating on a sketch pad inscriptions and drawings from the venerable walls of the old observatory. Astounded, the monk scrambled to his feet and bowed low, turning crimson in the face. “Holy Father, pardon me, I had no idea you were coming here this evening.”

Nicholas placed his hands on the sides of the nervous man's cheeks and gently guided him to an upright position. “Not at all, my son, you have nothing to be concerned about. My visit was unannounced. I was walking past and simply decided to come up for a quick view of my Eternal City. I used to come here often when I was a young priest in the service of Pope John XXIII. Please, don't let me interrupt your work.”

“No, Holiness,” the monk demurred. “What I do is of no consequence. I'll leave and allow you your peace.”

Nicholas was touched by the man's deference, and smiled. “Tell me, my son, what is your name?”

“I…I am Pietri Dominici, Your Holiness. I'm an archivist in the museum, here to document the information left on these walls centuries ago when the tower served as the Vatican's astral observatory.”

Nicholas found the company of this unassuming young man a refreshing contrast to the pomp and politics of his entourage. “Please, stay and keep me company for a while, Pietri. I won't hold you from your work long. Tell me, what have you learned from your research here?”

“Well,” Dominici reflected on his studies, “as you can see on this wall here,” and he pointed to an inscription, “these are calculations regarding the movement of the stars and planets, dating from the late 1500s, I suspect. And here,” he indicated a rather involved drawing of the sun and seven planets in elliptical orbit, “is an illustration of the solar system visible with the primitive telescopes of the day.”

“Ah, wonderful!” the pontiff said admiringly. “And what of these figures over here?” The pope gestured toward a series of numbers in columns.

“Those, Holiness, date from about 1580, and are some of the early calculations in the preparation of the famous Gregorian calendar, the computations for which were developed right here in this observatory.”

“Amazing!” Nicholas exclaimed. “Who would have believed at the time that, four hundred years later, this tower would still stand and Pope Gregory XIII's successor would come here to gaze out upon the third millennium!”

“Of course,” the monk added lightheartedly, “you'll need to visit me again next year to do that.”

Nicholas was confused. “How do you mean, my son?”

“Well,” Dominici smiled, “although the world doesn't celebrate it this way, the
true
turn of the millennium won't occur until January 1 of next year—”

All the color immediately drained from the pontiff's face. “What did you say!” he demanded.

The monk stepped back. “Holiness, please, I did not mean to offend you! I—”

“Explain to me what you mean!” the pope shouted, grabbing the hapless friar by the front of his brown robe.

His eyes bulging from their sockets, the quaking monk searched the pope's face, as if looking for a clue to the meaning of this inexplicable display. “H-holy Father, forgive me, I merely mean that in terms of the calendar, we are only now completing the one thousandth year of the past millennium. The first year of the third millennium does not begin until the year 2001.”

The pope's grip had loosened and he stared past the humiliated monk, out across the tiled rooftops of his Eternal City.
“Of course!”
Nicholas whispered to himself, in shock.
“I knew this!
How could I have closed my eyes to something so obvious!”

The friar continued his explanation, trying to redeem himself. “Just as the number twenty completes a full score, and the number twenty-one would begin the next score, and…”

But Nicholas was no longer listening. As the significance of this revelation fully enveloped him, he released the poor, frightened monk, slowly collapsed against the wall and slid to the floor, his eyes glazed.

At the sight of this, the friar became hysterical. He dropped his notepad and pencil and fled screaming down the staircase for assistance:

Before help could arrive, Nicholas had recovered enough to begin a lumbering, lurching retreat down from the tower. He met a flow of would-be rescuers rushing up from below, but they stopped immediately at the sight of him and stepped aside, flabbergasted, as he pressed past. At the bottom of the staircase, Nicholas confronted a bevy of flustered, well-meaning nuns and priests gathered in unfocused confusion. He did not look at them, but waved them off and staggered down the hall, moving persistently onward.

Vehemently, Nicholas threw open the main doors of the museum and exited into the night air. He trudged relentlessly forward, heading toward the Basilica, a desperate group of Vatican personnel following in halting disarray. Pushing past the astonished guards at the front gates of the cathedral, Nicholas entered the quiet sanctuary. St Peter's was still full of worshipers this Easter Sunday evening, all of whom were quickly overcome with the unexpected distinction. But for those directly in the path of the distraught pope, the exhilaration was cut short by the anguished, wild look on the pontiff's face.

The baffled faithful recoiled in disbelief as he brushed by. Oblivious to the commotion he was causing around him, Nicholas approached the gaping maw of the catacombs leading to the tomb of Peter. He staggered to a standstill in front of the railing, swaying from the exertion and emotion. Panting, his arms trembling beside him, he glared down into the silent depths, calling out in a booming voice that shook the entire basilica.
“Why?

“Why? Why? Why?”

Nicholas waited for an answer, but there was none. He leaned on both hands against the railing, breathing less rapidly now. Shifting his gaze upward to the High Altar, and in a more subdued, broken voice, he moaned, “There have been worse popes! There have been popes less sincere, less conscientious, less faithful. Why! Where have I failed? Where have I earned Your disfavor?”

Still no answer.

In frustration, he blared down once more into the catacombs, “Simon Peter!” And the words resonated endlessly. “Hear me, Peter! I want no more of it!” And then in an impassioned voice of resignation,
“I want no more of it!”

With that, Nicholas tore the papal ring from his finger, holding it aloft where the light of the altar candles caught it in golden gleams. “I give it all back to you, Peter,” he wailed. “The burden, the agony and the mystery, I return it all to you!” Pausing for a moment, he then hurled the ring into the blackness of the catacombs below where it clanked and clinked and chimed off the stone steps in its descent.

The bewildered onlookers had drawn close in dumbfounded regard to witness this unprecedented exhibition. Nicholas, sweating profusely, spun around on them suddenly, catching them by surprise and sending them scattering. Taking no notice, the aggrieved pope stumbled off down the main aisle, through the gates of the cathedral, and out once again into St. Peter's Square.

A large gathering of Vatican population had already collected there. In short order, word of the crisis had circumnavigated the city, and Nicholas's final, labored leg through the square to his papal quarters was through a gauntlet of shocked, embarrassed but irresistibly curious onlookers. It was everything the desperate Swiss Guard could do to clear a path for him.

While the screams of ambulances drifted closer, the white, perspiring Nicholas finally entered his apartments and arrived at his chambers, sending his attendant nuns into abject panic at his sight. Inside the sanctity of his library at last, he locked his door and faltered to his desk. Dropping heavily into his chair, he laid his head down amidst his books and papers, closing his eyes to the incessant pounding at his door.

Having never had to cope with such an emergency, the distressed chamber nuns required ten minutes to locate a key to the pope's quarters. Several anxious cardinals and the resident papal doctor, a napkin still around his neck from his interrupted dinner, slowly, cautiously edged open the large wooden doors.

“Papa?”
one cardinal ventured timorously, looking around unable to spot the pontiff immediately.

Nicholas never even lifted his head. “Leave me and lock the door! I command you!”