God's Lions - The Dark Ruin (3 page)

Curving up a wide ramp on the European side of the Bosporus Bridge, the big Chevy joined an endless parade of traffic moving from one continent to another across one of the busiest bridges in the world, and within minutes, they found themselves headed east through a warren of narrow streets in the Asian part of the city.

Digging through his backpack, Morelli retrieved a map and glanced over at Abbas. “Has there been any activity at the site since Eduardo left?”

“Nothing obvious, Bishop. I was out there last week, and except for a few graduate students and their professor, the place was practically deserted.”

“You say,
practically
?” Leo asked, leaning forward.

“Yes, Cardinal. The usual sheep herders and farmers still wander by, but as far as I know nothing out of the ordinary has occurred since Eduardo and his team left. Their departure was just as sudden as their arrival the month before. A childhood friend of mine from a nearby village was hired to do some digging at the excavation site, and he said it sounded to him like they didn’t find what they were looking for. He said Eduardo was becoming increasingly upset and threatened to fire everyone and hire another team of archaeologists. The next day, when my friend went to work, he and the other men were surprised to find that Eduardo and his people had packed up and left. They actually left the workmen’s paychecks lying in envelopes under a rock.”

“And the men doing the digging ... they weren’t told what they were looking for?”

“Apparently not. Every time they uncovered anything that looked important, Eduardo would show it to his wife, but she would always just shake her head and walk away.”

“What about the boy?”

“He stayed mostly to himself. Didn’t speak much to anyone, but when he did speak he was very polite. I can tell you one thing though. According to my friend, his mother never let him out of her sight.”

“Did your friend ever have a chance to speak with him?”

“Only once, Cardinal. The kid was sitting in the sun all alone on a hillside looking out at the horizon. My friend went over and offered him some bottled water. He said the boy looked up toward the top of the hill where his mother was standing before taking the water, and ...

“Please, Abbas ... any detail could be important.”

“He said the boy seemed distant. There was something about him that made my friend feel uneasy whenever he was around.”

“In what way?”

“Nothing he could pinpoint. I asked him the same question, and he said it was just a vague feeling of uneasiness ... like when a big dog is walking toward you and staring you down ... not growling but not wagging its tail either. A dog like that ... you never know what it’s going to do.”

“Interesting. I wish we could have come here sooner.”

Abbas cleared his throat. “I don’t think that would have been a good idea, Cardinal.”

“Why’s that?”

“The priest.”

“The priest?”

“Sorry, Cardinal, I thought you knew. A Coptic priest arrived the day before they left and offered to bless the site. The security men hustled him away and ...

“And what?”

Abbas glanced up at the rear-view mirror and swallowed. “After his visit, the priest’s body erupted in black boils. He died two days later.”

BABYLON, IRAQ

Squinting in the sun’s reflective glare, Eduardo Acerbi wrapped a frail hand around a glass of orange juice and looked out over the sand-covered ruins of the ancient city of Babylon from the rooftop garden of his new home. Actually, the word palace would be a better term to describe the immense structure that stretched out beneath him, for it was much more than just a home.

Originally built for an Iraqi dictator who had wisely decided to flee for his life ahead of an advancing American army, it was surrounded on all sides by high walls that enclosed manicured gardens and an artificial lake that mirrored the sky, and on the inside, the cavernous interior was dominated by immense crystal chandeliers that hung over patterned marble floors laid by some of the finest craftsmen in the world. Even the bathrooms, with their ridiculously high ceilings and gold-plated fixtures, seemed out of proportion. To Eduardo, it looked like the building had been constructed for a race of giants; a fitting architectural accommodation made in the name of ego rather than the actual size of the people who had once inhabited it.

The colossal palace was quite a change from the simple stone house in the idyllic French village of Foix, where the old man had lived for the past forty years after abandoning a life of privilege as one of the wealthiest men on the planet. He had left it all—simply turned his back and walked away in order to lead a life of virtual isolation with his wife Colette so that they could be true to the central tenets of their Cathar faith—a faith that had given Eduardo Acerbi the peace he had always desired.

After he had disappeared from his French chateau in the 1970’s, the search had lasted for months, until finally all hope had been abandoned. The newspapers and magazines of the day had called it one of the strangest disappearance cases on record. It was a total mystery. One of the world’s wealthiest men—a handsome husband and loving father who doted on his family—suddenly and inexplicably gone. He had vanished into thin air without a trace.

Eduardo’s first wife had remarried shortly after his disappearance, but within a year she and her new husband were dead; killed in a freak automobile accident. In her will she had bequeathed everything to the son she and Eduardo had adopted before he disappeared. They had named the boy Rene, and it was he who eventually inherited the entire sum of the Acerbi fortune on the day of his twenty-first birthday.

For years, as Eduardo and his new wife Colette lived in their quiet Cathar enclave, they had heard rumors of how Rene had been using the immense wealth and power of the Acerbi fortune in ways Eduardo never could have imagined. Some said his son had gone mad; that he was even indulging in criminal enterprises, but despite the rumors, Eduardo had remained steadfast. He had made his decision, and as painful as it was to hear these things about his adopted son, he had no desire to return to the brutal and corrupt corporate world he had fled from years before. He had become a Cathar. He was free—free from the materialistic world he had left behind to live a happy life with Colette.

But then, twenty-four years after he had disappeared, something had happened that had altered the course of his life forever. Eduardo and Colette were gifted with a child. Like the proverbial thief in the night, the child had been left on their doorstep; an infant swaddled in fine linens. At first they thought he must have been the product of some unfortunate young girl in the village who had secretly given birth out of wedlock, but Eduardo quickly realized something didn’t quite fit. As a man who had once enjoyed the finer things in life, he immediately recognized the label on the swaddling cloth. It had come from a company that manufactured the finest linen in the world—cloth so fine that it was affordable only to the very rich. Therefore the question remained as to why someone who could afford such expensive cloth would leave their baby on his doorstep in the middle of the night without so much as a note of explanation.

At first, Eduardo had been hesitant. He and his wife were getting on in age, and his first instinct had been to take the child and drive into the village where he could deliver the infant into the hands of a couple that was young enough to raise the boy into adulthood. But as he gathered the child up to drive him to town and looked into the infant’s eyes, he stopped. Maybe it was the fact that he had already left behind one adopted son in his haste to escape his past life. Maybe it was guilt. But whatever the reason, as soon as the infant’s golden-brown eyes had met with his, he somehow knew that the child in his arms was his destiny.

Together, Eduardo and Colette decided to name the boy Adrian, and after only a few short months, thoughts of ever giving him up had long since been forgotten. They were now hopelessly in love with their new son, and together they had become a family. They did all the family things together; joyful mealtimes full of laughter, planting vegetables together in the garden, walks through the woods and bedtime stories at night. Eduardo was recapturing the youthful life of a new father; a life he had abandoned once before and now vowed never to abandon again. Life had begun to take on the idyllic quality of renewed meaning—until fate once again intervened when the world was suddenly struck by an unimaginable horror.

While Eduardo’s attention had been fixated on his new family, his first adopted son’s madness had escalated to a whole new level. Fifteen years later, after Adrian had become a teenager, Rene had begun using the immense resources of the Acerbi fortune to go on a murderous rampage. He and a core group of power-hungry individuals had killed tens of thousands of innocent people with a deadly pathogen in a mad plot to eliminate half the planet’s population so that they could sweep in and take over the world.

As Eduardo watched and listened to events unfold, he felt helpless. As far as the world knew, he was dead. He had unknowingly handed over the keys to the vast Acerbi fortune to a madman, and now there was nothing he could do to stop him.
Or was there?
Clearly something had to be done to stop Rene. Eduardo’s conscience and mankind’s future demanded it.

After discussing the situation with a fellow Cathar, he had been put into contact with a secretive group in Israel known as the Bible Code Team, and it was during his first meeting with them that Eduardo had reluctantly divulged information that would eventually lead an armed force to his son.

After waiting in his little stone house to hear if their mission to eliminate Rene had been a success, Eduardo had finally learned that their plan to stop his mad son had failed. Rene had outsmarted some of the best tacticians in the world, and now millions would die a horrible death unless someone stopped him.

It was then, in a decision that he believed would doom his soul to hell for all eternity, that Eduardo Acerbi had finally decided to take matters into his own hands. He made contact with Rene, and under the guise of fatherly love, as he and his long-lost son sat talking in the upstairs library of the small farmhouse in Foix, the old man had tearfully served him a freshly baked croissant laced with the same pathogen his son’s scientists had developed. Two days later Rene Acerbi lay dead in a French chateau surrounded by men in blue biohazard suits, and Eduardo was devastated—
but that was only half of the tragedy.
Once again, the peace of Eduardo Acerbi’s world was about to be shattered by news that would be even more devastating to him.

In the days following Rene Acerbi’s death, the world had been shocked to find that Eduardo Acerbi was still alive. Not only was the reclusive billionaire still alive, but he also had a new wife and another son, and as the rightful heir to the vast Acerbi fortune, the old man had reluctantly agreed to resume his place at the head of the large multi-national conglomerate that he had created years before. Now, along with some of his old associates and a new group of wealthy men and women, Eduardo Acerbi began his rapid climb back to his former position as one of the richest and most powerful men in the world.

But there was a problem. Eduardo Acerbi was still a Cathar, and although his religion meant everything to him, it mattered little to his powerful new associates when it came to making ruthless business decisions that could affect the economic well-being of countless numbers of families.

Now, caught between two worlds, Eduardo agonized over what to do. He was trapped, for in the Cathar world, the possession of wealth and the power it gave them over others was seen as a tool of the devil. He had no choice. In order to protect his Cathar friends, he had to take his family and flee the sleepy village of Foix.
But where would he go?
As he sat thinking in the small upstairs library of the stone farmhouse he had lived in for the past forty years, his thoughts were suddenly interrupted by his ringing phone.

“Hello?”

“Eduardo Acerbi?”

“Yes ... who is this?”

An aged voice rattled on the other end of the line. “My name is of no importance. What is important is that you harbor the Beast within your house.”

Eduardo looked at the phone in disgust. “Look, whoever you are ... I don’t appreciate these kinds of calls. I’m hanging ...

“If you care about your son you will listen.”

Eduardo grasped the phone as his eyes stared off into space. “What is it you want ... money?”

“No,” the voice laughed, “money is the last thing I am interested in. I only want to make sure the child is safe. Check the signs. You know about the code in the Old Testament ... you’re good at codes, Eduardo. I know all about you. You are a highly intelligent man. You met with some members of the Bible Code Team a few months ago, and you possess the same code-breaking software on your computer that they use. Go and look for yourself. You might say your first son Rene was only a trial run. Why don’t you use some of those powerful connections of yours to access the latest classified astronomy reports? The dark star has risen, and you are now the child’s protector. Guard him well, for we’ll be watching.” The raspy voice in Eduardo’s ear suddenly evaporated as the call was terminated from the other end.

Now, sitting alone in his tiny upstairs library, Eduardo felt a bead of sweat running down one side of his flushed face.
The Beast?
At first, Eduardo thought the caller was just another nut-job attracted to people with wealth and power, but the more he thought about it the more troubling it became to him. Whoever the caller was, it was evident that he was in possession of information known only to a few select individuals. Not only did he know about the Bible code software on his personal computer, but he also knew of Eduardo’s collaboration with Lev Wasserman and his team the year before when they were looking for a way to stop Rene.

Rushing to his computer, Eduardo booted up the Bible code software program, and after selecting a particular scan sequence, he began to look for key words—words like
Beast, Evil One,
and
Antichrist
—all words that would trigger the computer to halt its scan if they were discovered encoded in the original Hebrew text.