The Crimson Code
The forces of Islam could not match the West in terms of nuclear weapons, guided missiles, aircraft or warships. Ahmed knew that and accepted it. Indeed, he had decided to make that mismatch a cornerstone of his planning. For while he might lack high-tech hardware, he could more than match his opponent in special operations forces: carefully selected, highly trained, highly disciplined and highly motivated. They would be Saif Alsharaawi, the Sword of the East, a surgical strike weapon capable of winning military victory without sacrificing political or moral legitimacy.
But he had not had enough strike teams for today’s attacks, and so he had made and forged what was to have been an alliance of mutual gain. And his allies had betrayed him.
Worse, they had betrayed Islam. For as efficient as his teams had been, the bombings of the cathedrals had wiped out any possibility of moderation. And the West would strike back not at his allies, but at Islam. The senseless bombing of churches would accomplish nothing except to continue and intensify the Fourth Crusade already being waged against his people.
Ahmed knew what he had to do. And once his anger had passed, he would find a way to do exactly that.
He would turn their betrayal against them.
Moab, Jordan, 1230 B.C.
“It is time.”
The young Levite, Elezar, looked at Moses with something akin to fear. The youth was not yet old enough to become a priest, so he was still serving Moses and learning the holy ways, as he had been since his twelfth year. Serving a man who spoke with the Lord through the fire and smoke was often unnerving.
But nothing was as unnerving as this announcement, for it meant that Moses was about to die. Elezar could not imagine a world without Moses. Could not imagine that his own revered great-grandfather Eleazar was fit to take Moses’s place. Eleazar was a great priest, true, and could enter the tabernacle that held the terrifying Ark without injury or death but…
Moses was everything to these people, though they often failed to recognize it. They were a stubborn people, difficult to please, often quick to grumble when Moses was not there to steer them. Elezar tried hard not to be that way himself. But now he wanted to cry out to the Lord against the sentence that had been set on Moses.
“Come,” said Moses, picking up a staff and waving the young man to do the same. “We must climb Mount Nebo.”
Leaving the encampment on the plain behind them, they began to climb into the Pisgah Mountains toward Nebo, the highest peak. Elezar half expected to hear the rumble of the Lord’s voice, or see fire atop the peak as his ancestors had seen at Mount Sinai. Which was really not Mount Sinai, but Moses would not tell him where it really was, and none remained among the tribes who could recall, for all who had set out from Egypt with Moses were now dead.
After a long, hot climb, they reached the top of Mount Nebo. Moses spread his arms wide as if to embrace the breathtaking view.
“There, Elezar, you see? There is the land that was promised to the sons of Israel. I will not enter with the tribes, nor will you.”
Elezar stiffened. “But I thought…”
Moses turned to him, his eyes kinder than Elezar had ever seen them.
“Let us sit a while and talk, Elezar.”
Though it was said he was over a hundred and thirty years old, Moses sat with all the ease of a youth like Elezar on the hard, rocky ground. Elezar sat facing him.
“There are things you must understand, Elezar.”
The young man could no longer hold silent. “It is wrong that you cannot enter the Promised Land. It is wrong that you must die for such a small error when so many of our people have made larger ones and lived! Why can you not offer an atonement sacrifice? Why is the Lord being so harsh with you?”
Moses listened to the protests, smiling a little all the while. “My time to leave has come. I am no longer needed here. But I do not want these people to feel abandoned.”
Elezar knitted his brow, sensing there was something behind those words.
“Child, do you know your lineage?”
“Yes, I do.”
“Do you know the line of your mothers?”
Elezar hesitated. “I know best the line of my fathers.”
“You perhaps do not know then that you are descended from my line, as well. My daughters and their daughters married your fathers many times over. You are a Levite, but you are also mine.”
The news caused a trembling in Elezar, like a leaf disturbed by the wind. “It has not been told to me.”
“It was as I wished it. Until now. There are things you must understand, mysteries you must learn. These mysteries were once the pride of Egypt. They were set down on a sappir gemstone, written by Thoth himself, and discovered by my brother, Pharaoh Akhenaten, when we were but children. We studied the stone throughout our youth. And Akhenaten was the first to fully understand it. Thus he began the worship of the One True God… Aten…our Lord. The stone was once in the Ark. Now…”
Moses opened his leather bag and showed Elezar a polished sapphire pyramid, so small that it fit in the palm of the hand. A blue pyramid that seemed to hold as much depth as the night sky. Elezar gasped, amazed as he thought he saw shapes dancing within the stone. But he could not imagine such a thing, that Moses would steal from God himself.
“Relax, my son,” Moses said, reaching out to pat Elezar’s shoulder. “As I said, this is not the tablet of the law. This is far older. And far too powerful to leave in untrained hands. The Hebrews are a great people, but too stiff-necked for their own good sometimes. A knowledge such as this, in the hands of a people preparing to make war, would be…horrifying. But I have left them the Urim and the Thummim, which will be enough to aid them.”
“What is this power?” Elezar asked. “Is God not the only power that exists?” He felt his world reeling.
“There is only one God, and he is our only God.” Moses opened a small pouch and from it poured a fine white powder. “Manna,” he said. “The Hebrews think it came down from the heavens. In fact, it is a recipe from this stone, and El Shaddai showered it upon us at night as we camped near the foot of the mountain. Eat some, my son, for it will give you long life.”
Gingerly, Elezar reached for the powder, allowing Moses to pour some into his hand. He tasted of it and found it not unpleasant, though not exactly savory. It had the slightest hint of honey to it. The climb had dried his mouth and throat, making swallowing difficult, but he had brought a water skin and was able to wash it down. Moses, too, ate of the powder.
“Now,” said Moses, “the people will think I have died. You will descend the mountain and tell them I have gone to my fathers, and then you shall cleanse yourself as the law requires after touching a corpse. By this they shall believe I am dead and that you have buried me.
“Then, by night, you shall return to me. We must go to the place where your real training can begin. The mysteries must pass down, and you will be their messenger.”
Elezar’s jaw had fallen. “I am to lie?”
“It will not be a lie, for I am returning to my fathers. And as far as my people are concerned, I will be dead and gone. As will you. It will be years before you re-enter the world, Elezar, and when you do, you will be a man much changed, for you will know the secret teachings of El Shaddai.”
El Shaddai. The Lord of the Mountain.
2
Guatemalan Highlands, Present day
Father Steve Lorenzo had no idea of the carnage spreading around the world on that Christmas. His goal in life had become very simple: to keep himself and his flock alive. For the past fourteen months, he and his Quiche companions had wandered these mountains, hunted by both the Guatemalan police and the rebels. His once smooth chin now sported a bushy beard, and he could hardly remember the sensation of a hot bath.
And yet it was Christmas, and most of his friends were still alive to celebrate it.
He had no vestments. His cassock had long since given way to peasant clothing offered to him by his friends, who could hardly spare even that. He wore sandals one of his flock had made from vine and sections of tire rubber.
And never had he felt closer to God.
When life seemed its worst, as it had often since the police attack on the village of these people, he found a deep well of spirituality that reminded him of the early days of Christianity, when to hold faith in Jesus brought persecution and often demanded flight. Those early Christians had possessed little more than his tiny flock of survivors. In this time he lived as the early martyrs had lived, and it refreshed his faith even as it wore him out.
But his little band was well versed in the skills needed to survive in these mountains. The food might not be as reliable, nor always as familiar, as their rich fields of maize and their herds of sheep, but the forest was bountiful in its own right, and his friends knew how to use everything it provided.
This Christmas morning he celebrated Mass yet again on an altar made of fallen trees, with tortillas made of corn flour he had managed to purchase—along with beans—from a village they had passed a few days ago, with the few quetzals remaining in his pockets. The women had made the tortillas, patting them back and forth to flatten the balls of dough with an expertise that came from lifelong experience. They had been lightly cooked on a rock set amidst the burning coals of a fire. A nearly smokeless fire. Steve was still amazed that they could manage that here in the jungle.
He used the chalice and paten given him on his ordination so long ago by family and friends. The years had burnished them, and now when he touched them he remembered the faces of all his loved ones. Yet he was determined that when the time came, he would sell them without regret to keep these people alive.
It had been a long time since he had even thought of the Kulkulcan Codex, or the reason he had been sent to these people. The Church’s concern was so far away now, so remote.
He smiled into the faces of his flock and lifted a tortilla for all to see. Esto es mi cuerpo. This is my body.
This was all that mattered.
Fredricksburg, Virginia
Earlier that morning, FBI agent Miriam Anson was in church with her husband, Terry Tyson, a D.C. homicide detective, when her pager began to vibrate insistently. She had been tempted to ignore it entirely until after the service—this was Christmas, after all—when it started buzzing a second time. She turned to Terry, about to whisper an apology, when she saw he had pulled his own pager off his belt and was looking at the number.
Damn! The word exploded in her head, and she touched Terry’s arm. He looked at her, and she jerked her head toward the rear doors. He nodded and followed her just as the congregation stood up to sing a hymn. Nearly a thousand voices singing “Pass Me Not” followed them out into the frigid morning air.
Fredericksburg, beneath a bright blue sky and a layer of fresh snow clinging to trees and patches of grass, looked beautiful this morning. Picture-postcard perfect, Miriam thought as she grimly pulled her cell phone from her purse and dialed. Terry turned his back to her and did the same.
If they were both being paged…
“Anson,” Miriam said into her phone. “Kevin Willis called me.”
Kevin’s voice sounded in her ear a second later. “Come in now,” he said. “Black Crescent.” The current code for terror attack.
All Christmas spirit vanished from Miriam’s heart. “I’m on my way.” She flipped her phone closed and saw Terry turning to her, his dark face creased with consternation.
“I have to go in,” he said.
“Me, too.”
Now, hours later, as she sat through one briefing after another on the growing worldwide horror, Miriam wondered at the hearts of men who could perpetrate such atrocities on this holiest of days.
It would be so easy to give in to hate. But hate would not bring her any closer to justice. It would only push her closer to the very evil she fought.
As the briefing officer presented yet more grim statistics and the anger flashed through her, Miriam reminded herself of the central truth of the Christmas sermon she had heard: God appears in this world in stables, not in mansions or palaces, in the quiet of the human heart and not in a blaze of herald trumpets.
And not in the blinding, crushing explosions of bombs.
No, she couldn’t blame God for this one. Humans had done this all on their own. And if Miriam could help track them down, in the dark, silent corners where they hid…that would be the coming of God in this madness.
Rome, Italy
“I have to go to Baden-Baden,” Renate said to the chief. Lawton Caine, who was in the office, too, looked at her with something between sympathy and concern.
Jefe looked at her as if she were mad. “Are you out of your mind? You know the rules we play by.”
“They murdered my family,” she said tautly.
“I know.” The chief’s voice dropped with sorrow. “But you’ll do no good there now.”
“I have to go.”
“Damn it!” Cursing might be considered extremely impolite by Germans, but for once Jefe didn’t seem to care about cultural sensibilities. “Haven’t you noticed the pattern? Baden-Baden doesn’t fit.” He slapped his open hand against the paper map of the world on the back wall of his office, a map that covered nearly the entire space. “If you’re right, they’re after you!”
Lawton stiffened and straightened. “They think she’s dead.”
She shook her head. “After what happened in Idaho and Montana, they know better. There was absolutely no reason to pick that church in Baden-Baden if they thought I was dead. The grudge is an old one, Law. A very old one. What I did to the Brotherhood…”
The chief compressed his lips tightly. “I’ll have to forbid it. You stay here, Renate, where your skills can actually do some good.” He sighed. Then he ran his fingers impatiently through his dark hair. “Okay,” he said. “Renate, why don’t you tell me who would have the funds to support this attack, apart from the Saudi royal family.”
Renate regarded him stonily. “The Frankfurt Brotherhood.”
“Precisely! So why hit a parish church in Baden-Baden? To get you there. They’re hoping you’ll go to find out what happened to your family. Bookworm shows up again in her hometown. Renate, you nearly exposed them a few years ago. I don’t think they’ve forgotten.”
Renate lowered her head for a moment. Then she looked straight at the chief, her eyes like chips of glacial ice. “I’ll take a job as a dealer at the casino. I’ll change my appearance. My father worked there, and there will be talk. Plenty of it.”
“You’d be recognized within an hour. Renate, we could even give you contact lenses, hair dye and facial implants, and your old friends would still know you. You’re entirely too distinctive.”
“I’m not going to let them get away with this,” she said. “This is not negotiable, Jefe. I’m going to take the Brotherhood down. And I’m going to take out the son of a bitch who planted the bomb in my family’s church. It’s only a matter of how.”
“Then for God’s sake, let’s think about the how,” Lawton said. “He’s right. Going into Baden-Baden would do nothing but sign your own death warrant. Hell, we’re not going to find them in Baden-Baden anyway. You know that.”
“What’s their weakness, Renate?” Jefe asked. “The most you’ll find in Baden-Baden is a hit team waiting for you. A hit team you won’t even be able to trace back to them. So what is their weakness?”
“Money,” she said, instantly. “It’s their power base. It’s the blood running in the veins of the Brotherhood.”
“Well, blood runs back to the heart and the head,” Lawton said. “If we follow the money, we find the people who killed your family.”
“You can’t follow their money,” Jefe said. “They’re all bankers. They can hide money with the best of them. And you don’t even have a thread to pull to get all of it started. Renate, I know how you’re feeling, but the right thing to do is to focus on Black Christmas.”
“Our entire office is focused on Black Christmas,” she said, her voice dripping icy resolve. “The police agencies of the entire world will be working Black Christmas. You can spare me. You know that.”
“And we do have a thread to pull,” Lawton said. “We have Jonathan Morgan. Edward Morgan’s father. Edward was Brotherhood. If he was, his father is.”
Lawton had been on the case when Edward Morgan had masterminded the plan to kill U.S. Senator Grant Lawrence—at the time the front-runner for the Democratic presidential nomination—as well as financing a training camp for Guatemalan revolutionaries in Idaho. Although Lawrence had survived, he was now out of the presidential picture, seemingly content to be the senior senator from Florida. None of it could be proven in a court of law, however. None of it. That loose end still troubled Lawton more than he could say.
“That still doesn’t explain how you’re going to track their money,” Jefe said.
“Banks have a private Internet,” Renate said. “That’s how they transfer money, and I’ll bet the Brotherhood uses that network for its communications. If we can hack into that network, we can find them.”
“And how are you going to do that?” Jefe asked.
“I’m going to Frankfurt,” Renate said. “I broke in once before. I can do it again.”
“You’re not going alone,” Jefe said. “Lawton, you’re with her. You’ll need a computer guy, too. Take Assif Mondi from information services.”
“We may end up needing more than that,” Lawton said. “Niko Petropolis is available. He just got out of rehab. He took a bullet on that operation in Chechnya, remember?”
“I’ll have to ask the doctor if he’s field ready,” Jefe put in.
“So ask,” Renate said. Her voice was steely with resolve.
“Oh, I will,” Jefe replied. “But first, tell me what you have in mind.”
3
Saint-Arnans-la-Bastide, France
General Jules Soult, formerly of the French Army and now retired, sat in his study, enjoying a Cuban cigar as he looked up at the portrait of his renowned ancestor Marshall Jean Soult. The Marshall had built a great reputation in his service to Napoleon, although after Napoleon’s first exile he had briefly collaborated with the Bourbon king.
Soult pondered that collaboration as the television behind him continued its incessant assault of news about Black Christmas. Collaboration, he deemed, was often necessary for a man to achieve his ultimate goals. No shame therein.
Jules turned his head a fraction and watched the stream of videotape showing the worldwide destruction. He told himself he was sorry for all the lives lost and crossed himself while murmuring a small prayer as he had learned during his Catholic upbringing.
But the truth was that this plan had been his. Well, with a few added directions from his Order, an order that dated back to the Knights Templar. He still didn’t understand why they’d wanted to make that ridiculous detour to the small church in Baden-Baden, but he was a man who followed his instructions—to a point.
He turned back to the portrait of the first famous Soult. They were both military men, and as such they understood that there was a human price for every gain and every loss. Today’s activity was a major gain.
While the world reeled and grieved and hunted Islamic terrorists, his men would be doing their stealthy work in the streets.
Jules Soult was a man who studied history intently. George Santayana had said that those who do not study the past are condemned to repeat it. Soult agreed. One must study history in order to learn where the world’s great leaders had gone wrong and to improve upon plans that had gone awry in the past, one way or another.
Take Hitler, for example. Napoleon had tried to invade Russia and had been defeated by the winter. Hitler had not learned sufficiently from Napoleon’s lesson and had expected too much of his panzers.
Soult was determined not to repeat anyone’s mistakes. There was much to be learned in the historical record. Europe had passed the age where an emperor might be accepted, but it had not passed the day when it would accept a strong, unifying leader.
Soult knew he was that leader. His bloodline traced directly back to the Merovingian rulers of Europe, the blood that every ruler since the first century had carried or married into. He might never wear a crown, but he still believed he could reestablish a dynasty.
Much the way Hitler had. Only he would not make the same mistakes. No, he had studied history, and he knew what to avoid.
Hitler had lacked the gift of Islamic terrorism by which to demonize a people. For all of the long-standing hatred of those whom the bastard Church said had murdered the Christ, the Jews had done nothing to harm their European neighbors. And never again would the people of Europe be led to demonize an innocent race.
But radical Islam…that created an opportunity, one that he intended to exploit to the fullest. He had insinuated himself into the planning of Black Christmas—anonymously, of course—and ordered the bombings of the cathedrals. The original Black Christmas plan would not have served his needs. But what had actually happened would work perfectly.
European Muslims would be his scapegoat, the people against whom he could direct violence and thereby distract the people of Europe from his true aims. Moreover, as they joined in the violence against Muslims, they would become inured to hatred and killing. That coldness of heart would serve him well when the time came to recapture the rightful seat of Merovingian power.
Soon the phone would ring, and like Hitler before him, Soult would be given a free hand to conduct espionage against his enemies. He would hire his Ernst Röhm, create his brownshirts to incite the very violence he was sworn to prevent. Confidence in governments would falter, and when it did, he would step into the void.
That much of Hitler’s plan had been sheer genius. But he would not repeat that madman’s mistakes. No, Soult would do what Hitler could not, nor Napoleon before him. And Black Christmas was the key that had opened the doorway to his future.
He smiled up at the portrait, then took another satisfying puff on his cigar. The ducks were lining up beautifully.
It was a shame so many had died. He would light a candle for them. The Lord would certainly understand, because it was nothing less than the Lord’s birthright that he intended to reclaim.
As if on schedule, the telephone rang. He had been told to expect the call, and he knew who she was and what she wanted even before he picked up the telephone. There were advantages to having connections in the highest and most secret circles of power.
“General Soult,” he said, speaking in accented English.
“Ah, General,” the woman said. “You answer your telephone in English now?”
“I assumed it would be another American reporter asking for an interview,” he lied. “Apparently I was wrong. You are German.”
“Yes,” she said. “My name is Monika Schmidt. I am the director of the European Union—”
“Department of Collective Security,” he cut in. “I have seen you on the news many times today. You have had a very bad few days.”
“We have all had a very bad few days, General,” she said. “Once again, we find that our enemies are more resourceful than we had thought. And that we…”
She didn’t need to finish the sentence. The European news media had been finishing it for her for nearly twenty-four hours. How had the vaunted EUDCS, with its contacts in Interpol and the United States, totally missed the planning for Black Christmas? Frau Schmidt did not have an answer for them, though Soult could easily have supplied it. He had, after all, spent much of his career in French military intelligence. And he had used the skills he had learned there to direct the counterespionage operations for the men who had carried out the attacks.