Malachi turned the pages, his hands touching only the edge of each page in recognition of the great delicacy of the book. It had arrived in the Citadel barely a hundred years after the death of Christ, shortly after it was written on the island of Patmos. Any Christian scholar with a passing knowledge of Greek would have instantly recognized the apocalyptic imagery of dragons and lambs that whispered up from the dry pages. It was the Book of Revelation of St. John the Divine, the last book of the Holy Bible, written in the saint’s own hand.
The first copies of the Bible had been compiled and written in this very library, using the original texts as reference. But not everything had been copied into the official, public version everyone now knew. Under the supervision of the earliest scholars whole books had been omitted in order to help clarify God’s meanings. And anything that alluded too closely to the Citadel or the Sacrament was also omitted so the secrets would remain so. But the complete visions and prophecies of St. John had been preserved in this, the one remaining copy of the original work. Malachi found the page he was looking for and scanned the confusion of crossings out and notes until he found the seventh verse:
And when he had opened the fourth seal,
I heard the voice of the fourth beast say,
Come and see.
And I looked, and behold a pale horse:
and his name that sat on him was Death,
and Hell followed with him.
The same version was written in every Bible on the face of the earth. But in this codex there was an additional part that had been marked for exclusion by one of the fathers of the Church because of the direct reference to the Citadel.
And he did ride forth from the wilderness
A demon disguised as an angel
And the keepers of the flame within the great tower, which had stood and held the secret of God since Adam’s time,
Were fooled and they did let him inside
And there he did remove the light,
But the pure of heart were fooled not
And God did give them a white fire to burn away all corruption and carry the false one away unto death.
And God did smile upon those who had done His work,
And they did take their place by His side.
Blessed among the blessed.
And what had Athanasius — that fool — told him about the man who had cheated death and recovered from the blight? That he had ridden to the Citadel on a horse, and that his name was Gabriel.
What had they done?
The Revelation of St. John the Divine and the prophecy etched on the stone both predicted the end of days — and Athanasius had made it all happen. He had lit the fuse to something that would blow everything apart.
Malachi closed his eyes and tried to think. There had been constellations etched onto the stone too and moon symbols denoting a time frame. Maybe the end was not here yet, maybe it could be avoided. He reread the words of the saint, looking for fresh meaning in them, his eyes drawn to one phrase in particular:
But the pure of heart were fooled not
And God did give them a white fire to burn away all corruption and carry the false one away unto death.
What had Athanasius said about the demon, the one who called itself Gabriel? That it was recovering from the blight, and that they had taken it to the abbot’s private chambers to recover while they conducted their tests and pandered to it, slaves already without even knowing it — the fools. But Athanasius had also said something else — that it was still weak, not fully recovered. And he knew a way to the abbot’s private chambers through the stairways and corridors leading up from the locked reading room of the Sancti. And Malachi had the key. There was yet time to vanquish it, but he would have to strike quickly, before it grew too strong.
82
Franklin drove back into Charleston the same way he’d driven out. He had borrowed Sinead’s car, preferring the indignity of turning up to an arrest in a Hyundai Elantra to the pain and probable rejection of asking Marie if he could borrow her Chevy Malibu.
Jackson met him with two other uniforms as arranged at a gas station twenty miles outside the city limits. They drove back into town the wrong way on the empty lanes of the outbound interstate, lights flashing and sirens blaring in case they met anything coming the other way. The traffic on the inbound lane was as bad as it had been before and they drew envious glances as they blew past from all the people behind wheels, still waiting patiently in line and inching their way back home.
They killed the sirens and lights when they made it downtown and the traffic started to thin again. They weaved through the snow-softened streets and parked around the corner from Cooper’s church where Franklin went through his strategy for the takedown, the layout of the building, the number of people likely to be inside. He even called up a picture of Cooper on his phone to show them. The cops barely looked at it. Everybody knew who Fulton Cooper was.
They checked their weapons and put on body armor vests. Due to some mess up they had brought only three, so Franklin decided to do without. He couldn’t imagine Cooper was going to put up any kind of a fight. They went through it all one last time then split up, the two uniforms heading around the back to cover the rear entrance just in case the good reverend lost his faith in the Lord and decided to make a run for it.
Franklin and Jackson took the front. Franklin yanked hard on the bellpull and heard it ring somewhere inside the building. There were lights on and the most recent update from the Eavesdropper log suggested that Cooper, or his phone at least, had still been in the building as of ten minutes ago. Franklin reached into the gap between the mailbox and the wall to retrieve the crumpled pack of cigarettes with the bug inside.
Snow fell. They waited.
A light came on above them, lifting them from the dark and throwing their shadows out onto the blank whiteness of the road. Miss Boerman appeared in the doorway and regarded them with a look as cold as the ground they stood upon. “Yes?”
“Is the reverend in?” Franklin asked.
“Can’t this — whatever it is — wait until tomorrow?”
“No.” Franklin noticed her shirt was unbuttoned at the neck, a small thing but on her it seemed as though he’d caught her half dressed. Her hand rose to her shirt collar and her face hardened. “I’m afraid he’s unavailable.” The fine scar on her face wrinkled as she spoke. Franklin wondered if it was the reason she never smiled.
“Mind if we come in and see for ourselves?”
“Do you have a warrant?”
“What, you mean like this?”
Jackson held up the signed paperwork he had managed to hustle out of the one judge who was still in town and answering his phone and Franklin enjoyed the surprise that registered on the blank mask of her face. She looked up, still making no further move to unlock the gate.
“Okay, I’ll tell you what I’ll do.” Franklin opened his hands in his I’m-being-reasonable-here manner. “You have exactly three seconds to open this gate or I’m going to shoot the lock off and arrest you for obstruction of justice, sound fair?”