The pontiff leaned forward and saw nothing out of the ordinary. “I guess your eyes are better than mine,” he said. “I’m not seeing anything.”
“Here, let me show you.” The ADD took up next to the pope and began to trace his finger along the photos. “You can barely see it,” he started, running his fingertip on one image. “But there’s a geometrical figure here, a square. Can you see it?”
It was barely perceptible, but it was there. “Somewhat. Yes.”
“So we took more pictures, more images. And no matter which angle we took them from, the anomaly remained. There’s something beneath that desert floor. Whatever it is, John Savage is believed to be somewhere underneath, which is why we lost the signal. Most likely the surface is blocking the frequency.”
Without question… it had to be Eden! After all these years, it was hidden in plain sight.
The ADD waited as the pontiff pored over the photos. And then: “Notify the Knights of the Holy Order and ready them for assignment,” he said with firm measure. “I want the KHO sent to this location to implode this structure immediately.”
The ADD hesitated, puzzled. “But those inside?” he asked desperately. “What about John Savage?”
The pontiff fell back in his seat with the deeply sad expression of a man warring with his conscience, between his sense of duty and faith, of right and wrong. “I know,” he said sadly. “But as Pope, I must preserve the interest of the Church. And sometimes I can only pray that God will forgive and understand my reasoning over such matters.”
Father Gacobelli looked down at the pontiff with a puzzled look. “What’s in there?” he asked dryly. “What is it that you keep so secret?”
The pontiff was too ashamed to look Gacobelli in the eyes, but looked at his doughy chin instead, at his collar, at the SIV stitching on his shirt pocket, anywhere but his eyes. “Ask me no more questions. Give them the coordinates for the demolition. And tell them that no one will be hurt.”
“But that’s not true. You’re condemning some to die.”
This time he did look Gacobelli square in his eyes. “That’s if they're not dead already,” he said.
After Father Gacobelli left the papal chamber, Pope Leo went to the balcony that overlooked St. Peter’s Square and viewed the Colonnades and the Egyptian obelisk, and at the people milling about as he stood there questioning his sense of morality.
With great power comes great responsibility; this was clear. But did it also sanction the right to determine who lived or died? Such as the decision made by Pope Clement V when he ordered the burning at the stake of Jacques de Molay and the Knights Templar for the good of the Church? Did he have that same right?
Can I justify my actions in the eyes of God?
Feeling a great weight in his heart and at the core of his soul, Pope Leo XIV returned to his chamber.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
Obsidian Hall was living the dream of dreams as he stared at the wall and its perfectly etched images. Eden was a magnificent trove of wonders. Alyssa Moore was standing before the wall with photocopied pages, what Hall concluded to be from the black journal of her father’s writings that had been sent to Noah. “I assume that’s from your father’s text?”
She gave him a sidelong glance and took a side step away from him. He matched her with a side step closer. She lowered the pages and clicked her tongue. “What do you want, Hall?”
“Those pages,” he said. “It’s from your father regarding his journey to Eden, yes?” She ignored him, taking another side step. He mimicked her with a side step of his own. “The question is how it got into your hands, since he died in here.”
More silence.
“It speaks of this wall, doesn’t it? What your father referred to as the ‘Crystal Wall.’ If you look closer at the wall, you can also see what your father referred to in that journal of his as the ‘Crypts’ that lie beneath.”
She clenched the pages tightly in her grasp and gave him a long, hard stare of revulsion.
“Of course it doesn’t matter what those pages say,” he said. “I already know — even though they’re entirely encrypted.”
Now she looked nonplussed. “How would you know that?”
His smile took on the gleam of mischievous delight. “Simple,” he said. “I took your father’s journal away from Mr. Montario just before I had one of my men toss him off the balcony of his tenth-floor apartment.”
Her mouth dropped.
“I must say, however, that I was thoroughly impressed with the young man. He didn’t cry out once. But you should have heard the sound he made when he hit the pavement,” he stated with malice. “It was awful. Just… awful.”
With unadulterated rage, she dropped the pages and went after Obsidian Hall with clawed fingers.
John Savage was sitting against one of the black silica walls, thinking.
Until he lost his wife to another man, he’d never known that such a raw emotion of misery existed. It had erupted so quickly that it had overwhelmed him. It was alien and brutal at the same time, something far more painful than the bullet he had taken in the shoulder or the draw of a knife across his chest, which had opened him nicely.
For a while, his mind had been in disarray; with decisions difficult to make, always questioning whether or not he was making the right move, the wrong move, or whether or not he should be in the position to make such a decision when commanding a SEAL team while on a mission.
Emotionally lost and racked with pain, he had worn his best bravado face, and he and his team went to the southern Philippines where a Muslim faction was holding four American hostages and demanding a seven-figure sum for their release. The American government, however, always maintaining the platform to never pay such demands, opted to use military force instead.
Heading up his team through the southern part of the country, through the dense forest and high humidity, under the most atrocious conditions, he could only think of her. When they discovered the encampment, his unit surrounded the area. In the center were the hostages: A mother and a father, and two teenage children, both boys. They looked thin, pale and war torn; their bodies wasted. But they sat there as if they belonged — the Stockholm syndrome.
Having lost the keen edge of prudence, his thoughts not completely aware or focused, he neglected to examine the perimeter, and had not realized that he and his team had been spotted by those hiding within the trees far beyond the outskirts of the camp. The rebels had moved up behind them, surrounding them in a pincer move, enveloping them from all sides.
Whereas the sixth sense of his teammates kicked in, his did not until the first volley, with bullets stitching across the backs and chests of his teammates, killing them. What was left of his unit formed a wedge-shaped offensive and moved into the stronghold with their weapons raised and firing, picking off the insurgents.
One rebel lifted his weapon, an AK-47, and shot the hostages dead with one pull of the trigger, blood everywhere.
Savage lifted his own weapon with deadly precision and fired, taking out the left side of the rebel’s head in a splash of blood and gore as he tumbled back into the bodies of those he just executed.
And then time seemed to stand still, his world moving with the slowness of a bad dream. It was surreal, with gunshots going off around him; the waspy hum of bullets flying past him but not one finding its mark; the cries and agony of his teammates as they went down. He looked at the victims as they lay dead, with their eyes and mouths open at the shock of their mortality.
He had failed them. He had failed his team.
He was not sharp while taking point.
And it cost him valuable lives.