Perspiration formed on Pip’s upper lip and forehead. He wiped it away.
He said, “Luco’s past doesn’t have any bearing—”
“You know it does. But now he’s not deceiving housewives or some Podunk cult in Gelnhausen or Stroud or Toledo . . .” Hüber’s voice had grown louder. He took a deep breath, and then a toke on the water pipe. He continued to speak without releasing the smoke he had inhaled, so his words, while calmer, appeared to steam out of his mouth. “Collegium Regium Custodum et Vigilum Pro Domino Summo Curantium is a global power with infinite resources: wealth, politicians, business leaders . . . assassins.”
He whispered this last word, emphasizing it, then paused only briefly.
“As you know, we take our mandate very seriously. Everything we have ever done has been in service to it. When Scaramuzzi is exposed as the fraud he is, we won’t run him out of town or have him imprisoned; we will slaughter him. We will wipe away every vestige of his existence: his family, his associates, his . . . friends. Six months after his grip on my less-discriminating colleagues loosens, the name Scaramuzzi will be gone from the world. There will be no record of it; no tongue will speak it. Do you believe me?”
Pip tried to swallow. His mouth and throat were as dry as scorched concrete. He had already bet on Scaramuzzi to win the terrible game he was playing, so he did not have to scramble to make a decision. All he needed now was courage. It was in him, somewhere. He found a little and said, “I believe you have the power to do what you say. I do not believe Luco will ever be exposed as anything other than who he says he is. Why do you doubt him?”
“More importantly,” Hüber said, “why do you believe him . . . if you do?” He leaned forward. Candlelight illuminated his piercing blue eyes. “Why do you, Pip, believe Luco Scaramuzzi is the Antichrist?”
19
Brady was situated in the passenger seat, the computer open on his lap. Cables snaked from its left side down into the foot well and the components Alicia had taken from the helmet case. Brady didn’t know squat about digital video rendering, but the images on the screen were stunning. About a dozen men were standing around an open residential garage looking at the camera. He could see the complexion of each face, right down to the whiskers and blemishes. The entire frame was uniformly clear, without the washed-out areas and deep shadows indicative of bright lighting.
Craning to look out the back window, Alicia squealed out of the parking space.
Brady closed his eyes and told himself to just relax. If his doctor could witness Alicia’s driving, he’d prescribe a diuretic and a beta-blocker to keep Brady’s blood pressure from spiking into the coronary zone. Or more likely, order him to take a cab.
On the screen, Alicia moved on to a staircase. Here and there, smudges marred the walls, down low, where dark soles had grazed them. Brady could make out a thin film of dust on the upward-marching baseboard. Tapping the lap top’s space bar, Brady paused the playback. He turned to Alicia just as she steered the car onto the exit ramp. Sunlight flooded through the windshield, lighting up her face. For the briefest moment it appeared to Brady that the illumination came not from the sun but from Alicia. It took his breath away, but the next second he let out a single chuckle. The games the mind can play.
“What’s funny?” she asked, dropping the visor and reaching for sunglasses stashed in a center console cubby.
“Uh, it’s just . . .” No way he’d attempt to explain that illusion: His inner voice took on an Italian accent. I saw you glowing like the Madonna, mi amore! Yeah, right. He went back to his reason for pausing the playback. “You did it,” he said. “You solved our biggest hurdle.”
When Brady had joined the Evidence Response Team’s R&D unit a year ago, Alicia had already logged ten months on the CSD project. The first demonstration he’d seen was less than impressive. The image had been shaky, grainy, and alternately underexposed and overexposed. Without better resolution, he hadn’t seen how the device would benefit either profilers or prosecutors. Brady’s job was to help CSD programmers understand what information profilers needed from it, to prepare a manual that would guide users in getting that information, and to field-test progressive iterations, always with Alicia. This was the first time the image had been nearly as clear as the human eye, an objective the entire team agreed was necessary but many believed was unattainable.
He continued. “This image is worlds beyond the last field test, just . . . what? Six weeks ago.”
She grinned. “Well, I’m only the person who rags on the technicians until they produce what I want,” she said humbly. Then, with exaggerated pride, “I’m really good at that.”
“Whoever or however, it got done. I had my doubts.” He hit the space bar again and watched Alicia ascend the staircase. “How is it so smooth?”
“The cameras are mounted in gyroscopic housings that act like ministabilizers,” she said. She punched the gas and cut through the narrow space between two cars to reach the third lane over. Horns blared, but she was oblivious. “Like the Steadicams they use to make movies, but a hundred times smaller. Even with them, the raw footage still shakes and vibrates enough to give you a major brain crunch after a few minutes. So one of the things the VAC does is use software to further calm the image. We can do that because we’re filming in high-def digital, which is nothing more than computer language itself.”
Speaking of brain crunch, Brady was getting one, whether from Alicia’s techno-jargon or her driving, he didn’t know. Viewing the crime scene walk-through wasn’t going to help, but he had to do it. He started the video again. Low mumbling reminded him the volume was turned down. Sometimes comments by professionals touring a crime scene helped eliminate ambiguity about things on the video. He pushed the volume-increase key. From the tinny speakers, Alicia’s voice said, “Hold on a sec . . . shoe print.”
“Oh, hey, try these,” she said next to him. She reached into the backseat, groped blindly, and then took her eyes off the road to look. The rear end of a semi was coming up fast. She handed him a set of gold headphones, braked sharply, and changed lanes seconds before hitting the truck.
“They’re noise canceling,” she said, “which is really a misnomer. You can still hear ambient sounds, but they help quiet everything around you and make whatever it is you’re listening to really crisp.”
He jacked them into the computer and turned them on. Immediately the engine and road noise dimmed to a low roar, like shutting a window on a beach house.
Video-Alicia said, “I used infrared. That’s why I turned off the lights. Can you get around me and tag that?” Loud and clear. By the time the walk-through reached the laundry room at the top of the stairs, he was totally immersed. He was there.
20
Hüber’s question was the reason Pip was restricted from meeting with a Watcher alone. He was not prepared for a direct assault. Holding up under a grilling was not in his nature. Ask him to fly down to Palermo to pass out bribes or retrieve documents from locked government offices in the black of night or review files with a destructive eye toward anything that did not support a particular cause—these things he could do; at these things he excelled. But pointed questions about issues that truly mattered flustered him. Even telling the truth was difficult when the questioner’s agenda was counter to his own, when the stakes were high. He always thought he’d be the type who confesses to a crime he didn’t commit because he couldn’t take the pressure of a police interrogation.
Hüber was waiting for his answer, holding the nargila’s mouthpiece, smoke leaking from it.
Why did Pip think Luco was the Antichrist?
He didn’t think Why not? was the answer Hüber wanted to hear. It was, however, closer to the truth than anything else Pip could think of. Eight years ago, Luco had explained he’d stumbled upon a man who claimed to have knowledge of an organization that was waiting for the Antichrist. Luco had found that many prophesied aspects of the Antichrist’s life uncannily matched his own. Those that did
n’t, Luco had explained, could be reinterpreted, retrofitted, or manufactured. He had a plan, one that involved more than two years of study and “sowing”—that was the word he used. He would then make sure the right people noticed him, not people within the Watchers’ organization, but people who knew people who knew people.
“Are you in or are you out?” he had asked Pip. If Pip had not actually said, “Why not?” what he had said meant the same thing. The scheme had sounded far-fetched and risky, but so had every one of Luco’s scams. And those scams had earned the two—charming, irresistible Luco and hardworking, behind-the-scenes Pip—lifestyles far exceeding those of their criminal friends back in Raddusa.
They had heard that the Watchers had a bequest to give the Antichrist when he appeared, but neither had any idea of the vast wealth and power that awaited the Beast of Revelation. By the time they realized the enormity of what they’d gotten themselves into, it was too late to back out. Pip suspected Luco would not have agreed to quietly disappear, even if they could. The scheme was too challenging, the rewards too tempting.
Hüber already knew about the prophecies credited to Luco. If he had not bought into them by now, Pip wasn’t going to convince him. With little enthusiasm, Pip said, “There are world conditions that prove this is the time.”
“Yes, yes. For the first time in twenty-six hundred years, there is an independent Jewish state. The Christian Church is in upheaval, bickering amongst itself. People are fed up and confused, running from one spiritual experience to another. They are teetering on the brink of apostasy, if they are not already swimming in it. Secular society too is in crisis, economically, politically, in every way a good anarchist could hope for. I agree, the world is primed for Antichrist’s arrival. That thrills me, of course. To be the generation that receives him! After two thousand years, to be among the few who will welcome him with an empire of more accumulated wealth and power than has ever been wielded by one man. But one man will possess it; one man will use it to achieve the greatness prophesied for him.”
Hüber leaned forward, staring past the smoking nargila into Pip’s eyes. “Luco Scaramuzzi is not that man.”
“Okay,” Pip said. “Forget about world conditions; forget about his general background and personality. Luco has fulfilled specific prophecies. He . . . he . . .”
Hüber raised his hand and closed his eyes. “Don’t bother, Pip. I know which prophecies he claims to have fulfilled. I also know certain of them could have been—were—bent and tweaked and twisted to force an alignment with Scaramuzzi’s life. How convenient that he has Father Randall and his team of theologians to explain and correct the Watchers’ interpretations and those of our own theologians.”
Pip sighed and leaned back into the chair’s supple leather. “If you are this suspicious and doubtful,” he said with resignation, “even of the wisest theologians we could find and in the face of empirical evidence, how do you expect to ever find him—the right one, according to you?”
Hüber smiled, but his smile was cold and without a trace of humor or joy. “I know in my blood. Right now, it tells me Scaramuzzi is not that man. It tells me you know it as well. I only wish my colleagues knew it. But they will, Pip. Don’t imagine they can be fooled forever.”
He held Pip’s gaze a moment, then leaned forward to check the smoldering charcoal. Apparently satisfied, he said, “This has all happened before, you know?”
He nodded at Pip’s surprised expression. “My predecessors were no more discerning than my colleagues, apparently. Hitler, Napoleon, Justinian, Nero. Each manipulated prophecy to suit his own circumstances. With the help of the Council or its predecessors, each rose to great prominence. And each drenched the earth in blood.”
That smile again.
“You don’t have to be the real Antichrist to butcher millions. You just need someone who believes in you.”
Pip’s head was starting to feel like a buoy on high seas. He said, “What are you saying? That Luco will try to conquer the world and slaughter millions of people in the process?”
“Of course. He is pretending to be Antichrist, isn’t he? The Antichrist conquers ten nations, according to Revelation. He unites them into a single empire, then declares war on the rest of the world. Through no small measure of charm, intelligence, ruthlessness, ambition, and coincidence, Scaramuzzi has—for now—the backing of the Watchers, an organization of immense wealth and power. With our resources, there is nothing he cannot do.”
“And what he wants to do is fulfill Antichrist prophecies,” Pip added.
“Right down to Armageddon.”
Pip considered this. He said, “If it’s so awful, why do the Watchers want to help?”
“First, let me clarify. The Bible is clear there are many antichrists, destructive beings who hate God and seem . . . hell-bent, you might say, on causing harm to His creatures. Those pretenders I mentioned—Hitler, Nero—most certainly were antichrists. As is your boss, probably. But the term antichrist can be applied to them only in the way good children are called ‘little angels’: they are no closer to being angels than cows are, but their good behavior is what we think of as angel-like. Would-be despots act like Antichrist, but they are not he, and the Watchers are not interested in them. Our desire is to assist only the real Antichrist. The philosopher and Dominican friar Tommaso Campanella called him l’Antichristo’s Massimo, the Super-Antichrist. Both Daniel and the apostle John dreamed about this man. He has a manifest destiny that we aim to help him achieve.”
“But why ?”
Hüber gave him a sly look. “We know Antichrist will array all the countries of the world under him. He will possess absolute power. He will decide who lives and who dies, who will scrub toilets and who will own houses in Anguilla with servants and harems. His advisers and confidants will influence his thoughts in these matters. They will be the beneficiaries of his reign.”
Pip shook his head. “Don’t you already have enough?”
“There are things money cannot buy,” said Hüber “You know Lord Winston, of course.”
The Watcher with the estate outside London. Pip nodded.
“The poor man is confused. He has a . . . hmm . . . fondness for little boys. Only a few months ago, the parents of one of his young houseguests made accusations. Had some kind of medical tests to support their claims. If I told you the amount of money and influence we brought to bear on the situation, Pip, you’d fall over dead of a heart attack. Even so, Lord Winston’s proclivities almost became public knowledge. It was that close.” He showed Pip his thumb and forefinger, like pinching salt. “The public would have forced an investigation, which would have uncovered who knows what other indiscretions. Eventually, no amount of wealth or clout would have kept him out of prison, assuming he hadn’t slit his wrists by then.”
He looked at the nargila as though he’d forgotten about it, stuck the mouthpiece between his lips, and pulled smoke into his lungs. He blew it out, watching it swirl and rise.
“Thing is, Pip, we all have penchants that could land us behind bars or in a back alley, beaten to death. The wealthy, especially. We have tasted as much freedom as this puritanical world will allow us. We want to taste the rest, without the threat of losing everything. When we make the rules and have all the money, morality and public opinion will be”—he took another quick draw and exhaled—“as insubstantial as smoke.”
Pip felt sick. Could all of this be about the unrestrained pursuit of forbidden desires? Was sin’s pull really that strong? Pride, greed, envy, anger, gluttony, sloth, lust. Dante had it wrong: the seven deadly sins were fatal not to the ones practicing them, but to anyone who got in their way.
“All of your efforts,” he said, unable to keep the disgust he felt out of his voice, “all of the Watchers’ efforts for fifty generations—so you can pursue perverted desires?”
“So we can experience everything. The ultimate life has no bonds, no restraints of any kind.”
“But Antichrist’s reign
is prophesied to last only a few years.” Pip could not get his mind around what seemed to him a foolish investment of time, money, and devotion.
“Seven years,” Hüber said. “That’s not carved in stone.”
“Not carved . . . ? You hope to change prophecy?”
“Satan knows God better than anyone, and he obviously thinks he can come out of Armageddon victorious, despite the Bible saying he suffers defeat. Otherwise, why would he try? He’s probably defeated God’s will, God’s predictions, many times. Maybe prophecy is nothing more than God’s rousing motivational speech. ‘We’re going to win this one, by golly!’”
“You can’t believe that.”
“I do, actually. An unfettered life of pleasure: people have killed and have died for one such day. Imagine, seven years! Now what if—because we know his downfall, his missteps, and we can prevent them—what if we get ten years, thirty years? What if we create a whole new empire that never ends? You would not scoff then, would you?”
Pip blinked. How could he answer such a question?
Hüber adopted a conciliatory tone. “I want to avoid the mistakes of our past, Pip. The needless drain on our resources, the voluminous bloodshed.”
Pip wondered which concerned him more. “How do you plan to do that?”
“By ensuring there are no pretenders to the throne on my watch.”
“Why don’t you just kill him?”
“I have been vocal in my opposition. If Scaramuzzi were to die now, even by an apparent heart attack or in an accident, I and the few of my colleagues who think as I do would be immediately purged in retaliation and to be sure opposition never goes that far again. We are a democratic organization. Majority rules. He must be discredited first.”
“But . . .” Pip sorted through his thoughts. He did not want to suggest a course of action against Luco, but curiosity nagged at him. Besides, Hüber and the other Watchers undoubtedly had pondered this and had instituted a policy regarding it. “But wouldn’t premature death prove he wasn’t Antichrist?”