“I don’t really have a solid plan at this point except to get the book back to the Vatican as quickly and safely as possible. It will obviously be too cumbersome and hazardous for everyone to accompany us all the way, so I think this is something we’ll be deciding on later tonight.”
Lev looked down the table at Moshe and gave him a barely perceptible nod.
Moshe twirled one end of his moustache and looked down the length of the table. “According to one of our scenarios, it may be advantageous to use as many of you as possible.”
Leo smiled with the knowledge that Moshe and Lev had probably been making plans all along based on various perceived threats. It was a generational habit all Israelis shared from living their entire lives surrounded by an enemy bent on their destruction.
Leaning back in his chair, Lev surveyed the table and took a final sip of wine. “We’re planning on holding a briefing scheduled at 5:00 AM for the entire staff. We still have some details to work out in support of the final dash to the Vatican, but all of our efforts will be to support that mission. It will be vital that everyone is prepared to do their part, no matter how small it may seem. Until then, let’s enjoy our last evening aboard and try to relax before we dock, because tomorrow will be very busy indeed.”
As the dinner slowly ebbed to a finish, everyone pushed their chairs back and filtered outside. Strolling along the main deck, they could feel the fresh sea breeze and see the twinkling lights from the Italian shore as the boat moved along the coast toward its destination.
At one of the outside tables, Leo joined Lev and Moshe who were smoking Cuban cigars obtained by the yacht’s captain in Panama the last time the boat had passed through the canal. John and Ariella were coiled up on a couch next to Camp in the salon, and Alon and Nava had retreated back to the pool on the top deck to nurse their sunburns with a bottle of champagne.
“My God,” Lev said, looking at some of the young couples cuddled up around the boat. “This yacht is starting to look like the Love Boat. I think now would be a good time to go up to the operations center.”
“Operations center?” Leo quizzed. “I must have missed that on the tour.”
“We wanted you to sleep this morning and felt that if we took you into the ops center, you’d be awake the rest of the day. Come on. We have something to show you.” The three men slid out of their deck chairs and climbed the exterior stairs to the bridge.
Daniel and Sarah had left the table together after dinner. They made their way up to the railing in front of the bridge and stopped to look skyward at the stars. Along with all his other talents, Daniel was also an amateur astronomer and had taken to giving Sarah a verbal tour of the cosmos. She gently touched his arm as she pointed to a distant star and asked him its name. They stared into each other’s eyes for just a moment before a dawning awareness of the three men standing behind them interrupted the spell.
“There must be something in the water,” Moshe said as he threw his head in their direction. Leo and Lev stifled their laughter before they entered an area behind the bridge and descended the small stairway leading to the ops center. Once inside, Leo had to let his eyes adjust to the darkness in the red light of the room. Realizing that Moshe and the others would need his expertise, Daniel reluctantly excused himself from Sarah and headed inside. She turned away to face the sea with the picture of Daniel’s face still in her mind before descending to the deck below to join the others.
Inside the communications center, the yacht’s executive officer was at his console, scanning cell phone and satellite transmissions on shore with the help of a large mainframe computer capable of breaking encrypted codes. In front of a bank of computer screens, Daniel resumed a project he had been working on before supper. He had been absorbed with searching for encoded messages in the Bible all day, and his brief respite with Sarah was the only free time he had allowed himself.
Moshe stood next to the female communications officer and studied the lighted image of the Italian coast. He looked at Leo and noticed the puzzled look on his face as he listened to all the radio chatter. “We’re trying to pick up any cell phone or radio traffic about the yacht’s arrival in the area,” Moshe explained. “If it looks like we’re going to have a reception committee, then we’ll have to alter our plans.”
Lev had been uncharacteristically quiet since they entered the operations center. “Daniel found something encrypted in the Bible this morning that you might find interesting, Father.”
Was this going to be good interesting or bad interesting, Leo wondered. “Let’s have a look.”
Lev ran his hands through his hair and looked over the row of computer screens. “Can you bring it up on the main screen again, Daniel?”
The multicolored screen came alive with green letters forming a matrix. Circled in red were the words, Leopold Amodeo and John Lowe. The names were crossed by encoded script that read they will journey with the book to Rome. Then, at the bottom of the page, the most chilling words of all … the Antichrist will read from it.
The Antichrist? Leo felt the bile rise in his throat. “What do you think that means?”
Daniel turned in his seat and faced him. “The first part apparently confirms what we already knew. You and John must be the ones who will take the book to the chapel. However, the reference to the Antichrist took us by surprise. This is the first time we’ve ever seen his name encoded anywhere in the Bible. Of course he’s mentioned openly in Revelation … in the New Testament, but we’ve never seen it encoded before … except …”
“Except what, Daniel?” Leo asked.
“Except in the section of the Devil’s Bible we deciphered.”
Leo stared at the words on the screen. “That would make sense in Satan’s book, but this was found in God’s Bible. This is an enigma if I ever saw one.” The Antichrist will read from it. “What is the code trying to tell us?”
“It’s a mystery to us too,” Lev said. “This is the message I knew would keep you awake all day if you saw it. For now, all we can do is keep searching through the Bible and pray we can find something else that will help clarify that statement.”
A primeval fear was rising within the Jesuit warrior. Was it possible that the Antichrist was alive and now living in the world of men? The forces at work against them seemed to be multiplying by the hour. As disturbing as this last revelation was, Leo had to force himself to put this latest puzzle aside and concentrate on the mission at hand. “Can you all show me how you develop one of your scenarios?”
“Sure, Father,” Lev said. “Moshe, punch up the one we discussed before dinner.”
The large screen before them changed to display all of the towns and roads between the harbor at Maratea and Rome.
“As you can see, there are several main roads leading from this harbor toward Rome. This will work nicely in our plan because it allows us to pick and choose the best routes and vehicles for the trip to the city. Then we look at all the possible ways someone could spot you or ambush you on the road. We try to put ourselves in the other guy’s head. A plan of action is developed for every conceivable threat, and an offensive and defensive scenario develops from all the pieces. Moshe has just finished running an especially intriguing scenario that I think holds the best chance of success against a force that, for all practical purposes, we know nothing about. If you don’t mind, we’d like to work on it some more and eliminate some of the bugs before we present the final version to you at the 5:00 AM briefing.”
“That’s fine by me, Lev. I’m just a simple priest, and the closest I’ve been to an operation like this is watching a program about military planning on the History Channel.”