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A moment later, a second guard arrived and took the place of the one who had disappeared. A total of six minutes went by before the original guard returned with a different man.

He wore a robe of dark blue. His brown hair was thick and cut short. His blue eyes were intense, like he carried the weight of the world on his shoulders, but his smile was warm and kindly. He could have been a high ranking member of the clergy, but his age quickly made Sam doubt it. The man might have been in his mid-forties, but no older. Years of a sedentary and learned lifestyle had turned his once muscular physique into adipose. Underneath which, strength and speed appeared to have remained. He held his posture well, like a boxer. Despite the maximum age limit being set as 30 years, his belt bore the yellow, red, and orange insignia of the Pontifical Swiss Guard.

Sam swallowed, hard.

His problems had just evolved into something far more dangerous.

The stranger inserted an iron key into the heavy wooden door and unbolted the latch. “Mr. Reilly, you and Dr. Delacroix are to come through immediately. I’ve been expecting you for some time now, and I don’t like waiting.”

Chapter Ninety-Eight

Sam and Zara followed the man. He moved with a surprising speed for his rotund stature. He led them down the stairs and across a cobbled courtyard. They turned down an alley that merged into a larger one. At the far side of which nestled a stone building that housed both a supermarket, and a small post office. Past it, the Tower of Nicholas V stood as a rich symbol of the Bank of the Vatican.

The man didn’t introduce himself or speak to either of them until he passed the Gate of St. Anna and entered the barracks of the Swiss Guard. Once there, they entered the hallway and stopped at the fourth door on the left, labeled in Latin — Swiss Guard. Minister for the Future.

The stranger opened the door, his eyes meeting Zara’s. The curve of his outer lip dipped, slightly. “Dr. Delacroix, I must beg your patience and ask you to please wait out here while I speak to Mr. Reilly, alone.”

Zara nodded her head and waited as Sam followed the man inside.

The stranger closed the door and said, “Have a seat, Mr. Reilly.”

Sam took a seat, and grinned. He’d never been on a non-tourist tour of the Vatican before. “I’m sorry. You’re the Witness to the Master Builders?

“Among other things, yes. That is one of my many tasks.” The man offered his hand. “My real name is John Wallis”

Sam took it. “Pleased to meet you.”

“I only wish it were under different circumstances.” Wallis looked around the room, as though uncomfortable about how to broach the next subject. “Good God, Mr. Reilly! Dr. Delacroix has survived!”

“Yes. You sound almost displeased, by the revelation?”

“More distressed than you could know.”

“Why?”

“The Master Builders are going to be most concerned!”

“Why?”

“Because they had planned her death for nearly four hundred years, and now you’ve just ruined it. I have half a notion to invite her inside and kill her myself, but from what I hear, the damage has already been done, and now all we can do is go forward — with whatever it was Nostradamus was trying to achieve.”

Sam stared at him. A new revelation unfolding. “You were the buyer! You were the one who paid her to find the book of Nostradamus!”

“Yes, of course.”

Sam paused, trying to make sense of the new revelation. “If you knew that Zara, finding the book of Nostradamus would send the world into chaos, why did you pay for her to find it in the first place?”

“Because she was always going to find it. Nostradamus had already foreseen that. That much was fact. We figured so long as it was going to happen, we were going to be better off paying for it to happen. That way we could at least make arrangements as the event unfolded.”

“Why didn’t you just kill her when she was a child?” Sam suggested.

“It’s not as simple as that. Nostradamus had already seen the event. That much was already determined. She was going to find his damned book, and she was going to try to change the future. But she was going to make mistakes, and in doing so, she was going to decrease the life-span of the human race.”

Sam nodded. He’d heard the argument from her own lips, previously. “So what went wrong? How did you let her escape with the book?”

“The future intervened. Luck would have it that she wasn’t in the camp when our men attacked. She escaped, and with her, she carried the book of Nostradamus with all its danger.”

Sam laughed. He was enjoying himself, despite the incredible revelations. “Nostradamus told her to run.”

John remained silent. His eyes fixed on Sam’s face, as though he was trying to decide if Sam was lying. “Nostradamus predicted this?”

“Yes. Why, does that surprise you?” Sam smiled, glad to have made a visible effect on his new opponent. “Apparently he was very good, I keep being told, although I still struggle to believe a word people say about his predictions.”

“My predecessor told me that Nostradamus once believed it was impossible to change the future.”

“If that’s the case, then why does it matter that Dr. Delacroix found the book, or for that matter, that she survived?”

“Because Nostradamus was wrong. It's part of Church Dogma — free will. If the future is set, then how can man have free will? But we know by the Word of God that man does have free will, so the future must be malleable, yes? The fact that Zara has survived this long is proof that the future can be changed. You see, it’s not that it can’t be changed, it’s merely a case of being difficult to change. Big changes are impossible on their own. You need to set up a new series of events, joined together like strings, to influence big events.”

“Zara explained it, as though we’re driving a small car and we want to knock a big truck off the road. We can’t do it on our own, but if we hit a bigger car, followed by a mini-van, followed by a small truck, eventually, we’ll send that big truck off the road.”

“Yes. A very simplistic explanation, but it will suffice for now.”

Sam asked, “Why is Dr. Delacroix so important?”

“You mean, what does she do?”

“Yes.”

“She will have a gradual effect on the future. She will change the course of a rebellion, and in doing so, stop a major war in the African continent that would inevitably spill out across the globe.”

“But we’ve put systems in place to stop the war before it’s begun!” Sam said.

“And they will work!”

“What’s so wrong about that? So we saved humanity?”

“No. You sped up its demise.” John sighed. “Humanity was on a path to cease in three hundred years — instead, it will now cease to exist by the end of this century! Thank you Mr. Reilly.”

“Why?”

“There was supposed to be a World War III. It was going to be disastrous for humanity. Billions of people were going to die. Less than a tenth of the human population would survive.”

“Why did we want that?”

“Because we’ve become the plague of our planet. We are the locusts. The planet can’t sustain our ravenous growth forever. This was supposed to be the correction. And now, we must try to avert the real disaster.”

“And what will that be?”

“We have no idea. We haven’t yet seen the vision which will explain it to us — or we would have stopped it sooner. If it could be stopped.”

Chapter Ninety-Nine

Sam asked, “What’s your purpose in all of this?”

Wallis said, “To save mankind.”