Authors: Robert Browne

The Paradise Prophecy (35 page)

BOOK: The Paradise Prophecy

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T
he rumblings of disaster began on the Internet.

Beel sat at his desk surfing the news sites. Maybe Moloch and

Mamman were right, maybe the cumulative efforts of the last several hundred years were about to pay off.

For weeks, the blogosphere and the social networks were abuzz with the news of the release of a classified document. One that allegedly offered proof that Hezbollah militants had not only gotten their hands on a cache of nuclear weapons, but intended to deploy them against Egypt.

The debate raged over whether or not this document was real, but the damage had been done and the governments of Egypt, Syria, Iran and Lebanon were all on high alert, with Israel scrambling to cover itself as well. All parties concerned were spouting tough, heated rhetoric, which generally sent chills down the spines of anyone who was paying attention.

Less than a week later, North Korea renewed its threats of aggression against the South and attempts at diplomacy by the U.S. secretary of state were deemed an unmitigated disaster. War between the two nations was considered unavoidable.

Add to the mix the downward spiral of the world economy, the riots during the recent G20 summit, violent skirmishes in third world countries, the rise in black market weaponry—including rumors of enriched uranium being smuggled out of Russia—and the general consensus was that the world was about to see a shit storm the likes of which it had never before experienced.

Rather than attempt to find real solutions to these problems, politicians took to the cable airwaves and blamed one another for their failings. Partisan mudslinging had reached a new high. Religious leaders told their followers to begin preparing for the Rapture as the rest of the world sat glued to their TV sets, wondering if they’d be alive for the next episode of
Saints and Sinners
.

Who would be kicked out of the house? Andrew or Tasha?

Beel smiled appreciatively every time his pet project entered the national conversation. To allow themselves to be distracted at such a critical time by television—well, in Beel’s opinion, they’d get what they deserved.

Perhaps the tipping point was close, and his brothers’ little experiment in Amsterdam would push it over. Or maybe Belial was right about the girl, and the elusive Telum had been found. The ultimate weapon. Beel allowed himself a moment to consider how sweet it would feel to free her.

The hard truth was that nobody really knew what was coming, including—and especially—the world’s heads of state. And what chance did humanity really have with the four of them pulling the strings?

And if this girl really
is
the Telum, Beel mused, these pathetic little creatures won’t know what hit them on the night of the blood moon.

BOOK VIII

Turbulence on the Road to Enlightenment

Of these the vigilance
I dread, and to elude, thus wrapt in mist
Of midnight vapor glide obscure, and prie
In every Bush and Brake, where hap may finde
The Serpent sleeping, in whose mazie foulds
To hide me, and the dark intent I bring.

—
Paradise Lost
, 1667 ed., VIII:157–62

ISTANBUL, TURKEY

B
atty and Callahan caught a chartered plane at a small airstrip just west of Istanbul.

B
ut as they crossed the tarmac, Batty felt an energy nearby. A darkness deeper than the darkness around them, as if someone were waiting in the shadows, watching them.

He remembered Ajda in that tunnel and wondered if this feeling was just the lingering residue of her attack. That seemed to happen to him sometimes. He had a hard time shaking this stuff off. But as they climbed the steps to the door of the plane, he stopped a moment and glanced around.

“What is it?” Callahan said, mimicking him, concern in her eyes.

He shook his head. “Nothing to worry about.”

He just hoped he was right.

Batty didn’t like small planes. Every one he’d ever flown in seemed to have a love affair with turbulence, and this one was no exception. But at least the seats were comfortable. If you had to spend hours bouncing around the sky in a tiny metal tube, it didn’t hurt to do it in a chair the size of a Barcalounger.

As usual, Callahan—who sat across the aisle from him—kept her nose buried in her cell phone. She seemed subdued, but he knew her mind was probably racing, just as his had been when he’d first been forced to come to grips with the realities of the world. It was a credit to her tenacity that she was able to hold it together so well.

Callahan was what his mother had called “a woman with no back up.” In other words, no reverse. Always moving forward, like a shark. And after seeing what she’d done to Ajda, he didn’t envy anyone who got in her way.

He hoped this trip wasn’t in vain. Even though Ozan and the monk had been somewhat careful about their e-mails, Batty knew that if Callahan could figure it out, others could as well.

And that meant Brother Philip was in danger.

Of course, they couldn’t be absolutely sure that Philip was a guardian. Their information on him was almost nonexistent. It seemed to Batty that a monk wouldn’t fit the typical Christopherian profile of spiritual redemption, but there was no telling where Brother Philip had come from. Callahan had requested a background check from her office in Washington, but had yet to hear back from them.

This whole government thing bothered Batty.

Back at the hotel, he had thought about D.C. and the e-mail Ozan had sent to an Internet café there. Knowing this was Callahan’s stomping ground, it had raised a question in his mind.

“How did you get involved in this case in the first place?”

“Same way I always do,” she’d told him. “They give me an assignment and I catch a plane. This one had a higher priority level than usual, but I’m not supposed to ask questions, just do my job.”

“You ever stop to wonder why they sent you to investigate the death of a pop star?”

“Of course I have.”

“And what’s your conclusion?”

“That they know more than I do. But then they always do.”

“Maybe somebody put a bug in their ear.”

“Like who?”

Batty shrugged. “Somebody who knows enough to recognize a red flag when he sees one. Maybe somebody who got an e-mail message that said, ‘stay alert.’ They hear about Gabriela, happen to be close enough to your people to wield some influence, and the next thing you know, you’re on a plane.”

Callahan looked as if she was weighing a decision, then said, “I’m breaching protocol when I tell you this, but I think the order may have come directly from the White House.”

“You think maybe our president is a guardian?”

Callahan laughed. “I highly doubt it, but he’s been accused of worse. Maybe somebody in his administration is. And if that’s true, then why bother with me? Why not warn the others directly?”

“Maybe he feels compromised. Thinks he’s being watched and doesn’t want to raise any alarms.”

“None of which tells us what’s at the root of all of this. Why Milton, of all people? Why
Paradise Lost
and the search for hidden messages? Why all the questions about missing pages and giant books? I can’t stand being blindfolded.”

“Maybe this Brother Philip will know.”

“Assuming we can find him,” Callahan said.

They had left it at that, taking a taxi to a remote airport in the dead of night, so that some pilot for hire could lock them into a tiny metal tube and bounce them all over the cloudless sky.

But in the end, it wasn’t the turbulence that terrified Batty.

It was the nosedive.

C
allahan was exhausted. She’d spent the last few hours running the night’s insanity through her head, visions of sycophants and human combustibles parading before her mind’s eye, convincing her that her entire life had been a fraud.

It wasn’t
her
fault that she hadn’t known these things existed, had thought that they were merely fantasies created to thrill and entertain in movies and books and around the campfire. But maybe if she’d had an open mind, had not been so closed off to that world, had accepted at least the
possibility
that it existed, she wouldn’t be paying for it now.

She thought about that moment in the alley in Paradise City. Seeing her ten-year-old self put a shotgun to her head. Had that merely been a product of her fractured past, or had something more sinister been at work? That whole place was knee-deep in the spooky.

She was, she suddenly realized, verging on another panic attack, and it took everything she had to tamp it down. Her hands were trembling worse than ever and she knew that if she didn’t get some decent sleep, very soon, they’d have to carry her off this plane in a stretcher.

But, like always, sleep refused to come.

Unwilling to sit here and let her mind keep recycling the same events until they drove her completely nuts, she pulled Ozan’s notepad out of her bag and started going through the verses he’d copied, concentrating on the crossed-out letters and words, trying to see if she could find what Ozan had been looking for.

She’d read up a little on Trithemius’s code schemes and one of the codes featured in
Steganographia
was called the Ave Maria cipher, in which you looked for every other letter in every other word. But it was clear that Ozan had already covered that ground and had come up with zip.

And no matter how she rearranged these words, she got nothing. Absolutely nothing. If there were any hidden messages here, they were beyond her feeble mind. Still, she spent the good part of an hour running through the possibilities before she finally gave up in utter frustration.

And she still couldn’t sleep.

Pulling Ozan’s iPad into her lap, she thought about checking for more e-mails, but the labs at Section had already been alerted and were busy scouring Ozan’s server, so she didn’t see any real point. Instead, she navigated to the
New York Times
Web site and stared morosely at the home page:

STATE DEPARTMENT WARNS OF NUCLEAR PROLIFERATION

The story warned that U.S. intelligence agencies had encountered evidence of the recent distribution of weapons-grade uranium throughout the Middle East and Africa. Some were concerned that several nuclear warheads had already been built and could well be circulating on the black market, and the impending threat of doom hung heavy over everyone in D.C.

The attorney general insisted that there was no need for alarm. He was working night and day and, with the president’s help, was busy putting together an international coalition to study and address these concerns. Most experts, however, agreed that this was too little, too late. The fuse was already burning and might not be all that easy to put out.

Maybe it wasn’t dark angels they had to worry about, Callahan thought.

Why the hell was she headed to Thailand?

Dumping the iPad in disgust, she settled back in her chair and closed her eyes. Maybe if she could just let herself go, didn’t try so hard, her creeping anxiety would subside and sleep would find her.

When she was very young, and her father was still alive, he would perch himself on the edge of her bed at night and sing her a song. She could always smell the booze on his breath, but she loved him and he was there and that was all that counted. She remembered his voice, low and sweet, as he stroked her forehead with his fingertips.

Then, to her surprise, there it was—his voice—right now. There inside her head:

Sleep, Bernadette. Sleep.

The sound was as real as if he’d whispered in her ear. But she knew that was impossible. He’d been dead for most of her life.

BOOK: The Paradise Prophecy

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Read Book Download Book

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