Apocalypsis 1.0 Signs (5 page)

»No idea.«

»In seven days.«

Peter exhaled. »It could still be a coincidence.«

Dream on! You know better that that!

»Coincidence? Also that the men were both priests and the woman was a nun?«

Peter was impressed by Loretta’s research. She enjoyed the baffled look on his face.

»What was a nun doing in the Himalayas and a priest in space?« Peter asked.

»Perhaps the same thing as we are doing, darling – searching for answers.«

Loretta tapped her finger on the spiral symbol.

»Is this all you know? Or is there more?«

»I think this is a lot to be going on with. Peter, I have no idea how these things might be connected, but I’m sure that this symbol is a lead. It will lead us to the Pope and to a few answers. Now it’s your turn.«

Peter had always loved Roman afternoons. The time after the
pranzo
, the extensive lunch, when everyone retired behind closed blinds to take a little nap. Between one and four, the heartbeat of the city changed – many stores were closed anyway during the midday hours – and the few Romans that one met on the street at this time of day seemed calmer and more content because they had enjoyed a good meal. Or they seemed grumpier because they had been forced to skip their naps.

In the meantime, however, Peter had begun to fear the afternoon because it was the hour of the monster. The monster that was lying in wait for him, somewhere, in secrecy, ready to attack him at any given time and digest him slowly and through excruciating pain. The afternoon was the monster’s preferred hunting time.

Fully clothed, he was lying on the double bed of his darkened hotel room as he waited for the migraine to strike. But it seemed that it would spare him this time. The worst thing about the migraine, next to the pain and the agony, was the helplessness of being at its mercy, all of a sudden and without any warning. In most cases, the attacks only lasted a few hours, but they left him drained, without any memory. He wished back the times when he and Ellen had still celebrated the afternoon hours. When he had still been able to sleep.

A telephone call to his adoptive parents had been overdue for quite some time now, but Peter couldn’t focus on that. Something else preyed on his mind. He watched the ballet performance of the light reflections that glided through the slats of the blinds and danced on the ceiling, and he tried to recall where he had seen the spiral symbol before. It had been a long time ago, a very long time ago, that much was clear. But every time he tried to focus on the symbol and to reach back in his memory, the image became a blur. He had always been proud of his almost eidetic memory, so that this stubborn memory gap unsettled him even more.

The traffic outside regained its usual noise level. Time to get back to work. He still had an article to write.

Even though the
Hotel Le Finestre sul Vaticano
was just a thoroughly mediocre
Bed and Breakfast
, it had – as its name arrogantly boasted to the world – a direct view of the Vatican and St. Peter’s Basilica. It was located on the Via Conciliazione, a broad boulevard that Mussolini had cut through the heart of the city and that ran dead straight from the East towards St. Peter’s Basilica. Peter would have preferred to stay at his favorite hotel, the
Albergo Santa Chiara
by the Pantheon, but as he had to report on the conclave, his managing editor had insisted on a hotel with a view of St. Peter’s Basilica.

Peter arose from his bed and cast a glance out of the window. In the distance was St. Peter’s Basilica, only a few hundred yards away, and right behind it was the roof of the Sistine Chapel with Michelangelo’s famous ceiling fresco. Once again, St. Peter’s Square was filled with people who seemed to be hoping for some kind of sign, for some explanation for the outrageous turn of events. Or simply for a new spectacle.

Back at his desk, Peter focused on his article about the Vatican finances. The Vatican Bank didn’t publish any numbers or balance sheets. The only thing that was known was that the annual budget of the Vatican State was about two hundred and fifty million euros. The majority of the budget was devoured by the salaries and pensions for the almost three thousand employees of the small city-state. The money came from real estate proceeds, donations, and from the dioceses and religious orders around the world. The remaining sum of fifty million euros was contributed by the Vatican Bank.

In reality, however, the worldwide assets of the Catholic Church were estimated to be somewhere between ten and a hundred billion euros. Each of the richest dioceses alone, the dioceses of Cologne and Chicago, had an annual income of over half a billion euros.

At the end of the seventies, the
IOR
, the
Istituto per le Opere di Religione
, had been embroiled in a financial scandal involving shady business and security deals with the Banco Ambrosiano, the Mafia, and the illegal masonic lodge
Propaganda Due
. It was alleged that John Paul II had funded the Solidarity movement in Poland through the Banco Ambrosiano. In 1982, Roberto Calvi, the chairman of the Banco Ambrosiano, was found under Blackfriars Bridge in London. It looked as if he had hung himself. As it turned out, he had been assassinated by the Mafia. The collapse of the Banco Ambrosiano also rocked the Vatican Bank. It could only be saved by a financial injection from the assets of the
Opus Dei
and, in return, it was made into a personal prelature by Laurenz’s predecessor, John Paul II. Which meant nothing less than that it was now a worldwide diocese without a bishop’s See. Hence, John Paul II turned the
Opus Dei
de facto into the most powerful diocese in the world. It was also unknown where the money of the
Opus Dei
came from.

Currently, the
IOR
functioned as a type of central bank for the Catholic Church where many of the dioceses, religious orders, and other Catholic institutions had bank accounts. But the Vatican Bank was still refusing to publish information about their assets and business transactions, which provided further fuel for conspiracy theories about the machinations of the Vatican.

Peter was convinced that the Vatican was still, through the
IOR
, involved in shady business deals worldwide, and that the Vatican also used the
IOR
’s assets for the implementation of political goals. However, this could not be empirically proven.

Shortly after seven-thirty, Peter finished his article, which only summarized facts that were common knowledge, and sent it via email to his office in Hamburg. Absent-mindedly, he browsed through the latest news on the websites of
CNN
, the
BBC
, and
Radio Vaticano
, and then he took a shower.

The monster came as he trudged back into his room with a towel around his waist, angry about the badly cleaned wood floor. This time, the migraine hit him without any warning, without any sign, without the small pre-shocks of nausea and impaired vision. A supernova exploded in front of Peter’s eyes, bulged into his head, and filled it with pain, completely and utterly. Peter didn’t even notice his knees buckling. The last thing that he consciously registered was a red cloud chasing towards him, enveloping him completely.

Then came the darkness.

And the fear.

Fear was a mathematical binomial, a paradox of darkness and light, two elementary powers that scraped against each other like tectonic plates, incessantly, crushing him in between. The result of the binomial equation of darkness and light was pure, clear and one hundred percent distilled fear.

In deepest darkness, Peter pushed himself through a narrow shaft. It was so narrow that his body would only fit in if he pulled his arms above his head, and he could hardly move. With every movement, the shaft became narrower. Like a tube tightening up around his body. But there was light at the end of the shaft. As he was screaming and desperately gasping for air, Peter struggled towards the light, but instead of moving forwards he continued to move further and further back. The light became smaller and smaller – and then it went out.

Peter sank into a dark ocean. Deeper and deeper. Endlessly deep. Not a single sound could be heard except for the throbbing of his blood. Peter tried to swim but he could move neither his arms nor his legs. Around him things flashed and gleamed, weird fish and sparkling creatures, and above him he saw the lights of a city. Unreachable. Peter’s lungs were squeezed by the pressure of the water and they were screaming for air. He wanted to breathe. Exhale. Breathe, breathe, breathe! But whoever exhaled also had to inhale, and this would have been his certain death. The lights around him vanished. Peter felt a burning sensation in the muscles of his arms and legs, comparable to a severe case of cramps, and he was left with only one wish: to exhale and inhale again. That’s exactly what he did.

Everything went out. The entire world, the time, the pain, even he himself.

Then he saw St. Peter’s Basilica. Peter moved along the Via della Conciliazione towards St. Peter’s Square. He was dragged along by floods of countless people. St. Peter’s Square was already filled with hundreds of thousands, all of them staring at a single spot. Peter turned his eyes and looked up at the Sistine Chapel. White smoke was rising from the small chimney. A new Pope had been elected!
Habemus papam!
Peter was wondering whom the Cardinals might have chosen in such a short time – when a blazing flash lit up the night. The people around Peter started to scream and he saw a gigantic mushroom cloud rising above St. Peter’s Basilica. As if in slow motion, a huge explosion transformed the basilica into powder that rolled as languidly as a sea of oil over St. Peter’s Square, tearing the assembled crowds to pieces, bending columns like straws and flinging the cars that were parked behind the barrier into the air. A huge fireball appeared from underneath the mushroom cloud, it grew with torturous sloth and then thundered over the square, incinerating walls, people and cars. Then Peter heard a voice. The voice said:

»Chaos reigns in the Via della Conciliazione. Ambulances rush to the scene from all directions. Dead bodies and debris litter the streets, which look like a battlefield. Approximatley thirty minutes ago, a huge explosion shook the entire Vatican. Eyewitnesses describe a blazing flash of light ripping through the dome of St. Peter’s Basilica. The blast killed thousands of people and tossed debris and parked cars several hundred yards into the air. At this hour, nothing is known about the background details of this devastating attack, or about the fate of the one hundred and seventeen cardinals who had gathered in the Sistine Chapel for the conclave. At this point, only one thing is clear: the Vatican, the center of the Catholic Church, no longer exists.«