The Atlantis Prophecy

52

STILL TORMENTED over her sudden abandonment and betrayal of Conrad, a resolute Serena marched into the office of Cardinal Tucci in the Governorate with the terrestrial globe and a plainclothes security detail of six Swiss Guards. Much like the American president's Secret Service, the centuries-old guards protected the pope both at home and abroad. Whether they would do the same for her now, well, she was about to find out.

Cardinal Tucci was seated in practically the same position she had last seen him weeks earlier, deep in his leather chair between two Bleau globes, echoes of the globes that Conrad had uncovered. Tucci held a glass of red wine in his hand. The silver Roman coin around his neck caught the morning light from the window beside him, warning her that he was the head of Dominus Dei.

She said, "A bit early in the morning for that, Your Eminence."

"Sister Serghetti, I see you brought me the globe," Tucci replied, "along with an entourage."

Serena turned to the captain of the guards and said, "I'd like a private audience with His Eminence for a moment. Wait outside."

As the guards withdrew and closed the door behind them, Tucci took another sip of his wine. "I take it you disobeyed my direct orders and opened the globe?"

"I did, Your Eminence. Both of them."

"I see."

"So do I," Serena said. "And I see your mother's family in Boston among the names at the bottom of the Newburgh Treaty. You're Osiris. And Dominus Dei is the Alignment's cell within the Church. It always has been. Long before the Knights Templar. It's the Church that's in danger, not just America."

"Is that what you told Dr. Yeats?" Tucci said dismissively. "I'm sure he appreciated your sentiments. Tell me, did you sleep with him on your adventure?"

Serena pointed her finger at him. "You are the wolf in sheep's clothing, Tucci! You don't love the Church. You've never loved the Church. You and your kind have only used the Church for yourselves, to build a worldly empire for the Alignment."

"Well, if you bother to look around, Sister Serghetti, you'll find that there are plenty of others like me. Where God builds a church, the Devil builds a chapel, you know. I take it by the guards that you've told the Holy See?"

"I have, Your Eminence, and this is one chapel I'm closing."

"Only to build the Antichrist's cathedral." Tucci finished his wine. "Indeed, the federal city of the future, the world's capital city, is going up soon. Something to make Washington and the new Beijing pale in comparison."

"What are you getting at?" she demanded.

"America is inconsequential in the sweep of history-it doesn't even merit a mention in the Book of Revelation," Tucci said. "It was the globes all along and not the Newburgh Treaty that the international Alignment was interested in."

"The globes?"

"They're necessary for the construction of the Third Temple," Tucci said in triumph. "By uncovering the globes you have now ensured the rise of the last master civilization."

"You're insane," she said.

"Soon you'll be, too." He placed his empty wine glass down and nodded toward the door. "Shall we call your guards?"

Serena took a step toward the door and caught a blur of movement in the corner of her eye. She whirled around in time to see Tucci rush toward the window and hurl himself through the glass with a thunderous crash. She heard a scream outside, ran to the sill and looked down to see Tucci sprawled on the pavement below, two uniformed Swiss Guards pointing up at her in the window.

"No!" she gasped.

She heard the door behind her fling open as the guards burst in. She turned from the window to see the captain staring. But not at the broken window and terrible scene outside. He was staring at the Dominus Dei pendant on the floor. She stared at it, too. The chain was unbroken, as if Tucci had removed it first before he had leapt to his death.

"Is everything all right, Sister Serghetti?" he asked her.

"Cardinal Tucci is dead, Captain. Obviously everything is not all right."

Her heart was pounding as she watched the captain pick up the medallion off the floor with great reverence and hand it to her. He was practically genuflecting, as if he now answered to her.

Somehow he has it in his head that I'm the new head of the Dei.

She took the chain and stared at the ancient Roman coin. Only the pope could nominate the head of the Dei, she knew. But then she recalled the jokes of conspiracy buffs in the College of the Cardinals who said that it was Dei all these centuries who picked the popes.

"Cardinal Tucci was not well," the captain said suddenly, as if forming his story for the Vatican's press release about the incident. He clearly knew more than he was letting on. "Arrhythmia, you know. It is a shame his heart should fail while looking out the window."

"Thank you, Captain. You are dismissed."

"Very well," he said and knelt to kiss the medallion now wrapped around her fingers. "I will post guards outside your door and leave you to your privacy."

She watched him close the door behind him and sat down in Tucci's chair, suddenly feeling like a prisoner in a cell full of secrets.

She stared at the medallion in her hands, realizing that it was her only way out now. To protect the Church she would have to root out the Alignment, even if it meant joining the Dei. She mourned for Conrad, but knew in her heart that she couldn't abandon the Church to these predators. She had to find out what the Dei was up to.

I do those things I don't want to do, and don't do those things I want to do, she thought, paraphrasing St. Paul. What a wretched woman I am.

Slowly she put the chain with the Dominus Dei medallion around her neck, feeling the silver Roman coin press heavily on her heart.