Apocalypse Ark Read online

  “All right,” he said at last, reluctantly. “Let’s go.”

  * * *

  BROTHER JOSEPH HALLORAN had nearly seen enough. From his position on the northern side of Congo Street, he’d watched events unfold around the Temple of the Holy Covenant, first curious, and then fascinated. He had seen the stranger, clearly European or American, drive past the church, then park his car, which bore a rental sticker that he recognized from Bole Airport. Halloran had watched the man step out and lock the car, then disappear into the alley behind the church.

  Before all hell broke loose.

  The first shots had been muffled, coming from inside the building opposite where Halloran stood watching, but their sound was unmistakable. Then the explosion, and before he knew it, shooting from the alley, louder as it echoed unobstructed in the night. He’d drawn his own gun then, a SIG-Sauer P-226 chambered for the bottle-necked .357 SIG cartridge, and held it ready in his hand as he moved closer.

  Just to see what happened next.

  The solitary gunman wasn’t Halloran’s concern, but anything connected to the Temple of the Holy Covenant might have some bearing on his mission. If the stranger had some cause for hunting Keepers, they might share a common interest. At the very least, Halloran wished to see the outcome of what seemed to him a most uneven contest.

  But should he intervene?

  So far, he’d passed unnoticed, more or less, in Addis Ababa. That was the plan, of course. Collect intelligence and move only when he was ready. When the time was ripe. Intruding here might jeopardize his mission, or...

  Three gunmen from the temple had the near end of the alley blocked, trapping the man somewhere in the shadows farther back. Dim lighting there showed Halloran that several more were huddled near the back door of the temple, cutting off retreat in that direction. With a siren warbling from the east and swiftly drawing nearer, logic told him that police would soon be on the scene.

  He could leave now, report the incident to his superiors, and come back later for the interview he’d planned with Bishop Berhanu Astatke. That was, if the clergyman was still alive after the melee in the temple moments earlier. And if he wasn’t—then, what?

  Halloran would have to forge ahead without the information he had hoped to gain in Addis Ababa. Not unprepared, exactly, but with greater odds against him than he would have faced with full intelligence at hand. A greater risk of martyrdom, albeit in a worthy cause.

  Or could the new arrival help him? Was he operating on his own, or—as seemed likely—on behalf of some official agency? The CIA, perhaps? Or MI-6? The French DCRI seemed an unlikely candidate, but Mossad might have a passing interest in the matter. Likewise, if they were fully briefed, Italy’s own External Information and Security Agency, the AISE.

  Any of which might prove useful to Halloran, if they owed him a debt of gratitude.

  While he stood weighing risks against the possible rewards of stepping in, the Keepers gathered at the alley’s mouth were stoking up their nerve to make a move. He saw it in their posture, read it in the urgent way they whispered back and forth, clutching their weapons. Any second now they’d rush the cornered gunman, firing as they went, and Halloran would lose whatever chance he had of learning something from the stranger.

  Damn it!

  They were up and moving now. Resigned to whatever might happen next, Halloran left his hiding place and jogged across the street.

  * * *

  BOLAN HEARD SCUFFLING footsteps to his right, still nothing from the left as yet, but if they flushed him from his alcove it could all be over in a moment. Best case, if he beat the cautiously advancing shooters to the punch, he might surprise them, either take them down or make them cut and run, clearing a path to Congo Street, his car and freedom.

  Worst case, he would take some of them with him as they cut him down, maybe some others in the cross fire if the gunners lurking to his left were careless joining in the turkey shoot.

  He braced himself, trying to judge the distance as his enemies advanced, planning the dive from cover that would leave him lying prone, beneath their line of fire if he was lucky. Hopefully, he’d stitch a couple of them before the feces hit the fan.

  And after that? The only thing he could predict was bloody chaos.

  Sirens closer now, a few blocks out. Their singsong rhythm emphasized the numbers falling in his head. The doom clock counting down to zero.

  Bolan took his dive and heard the reports of large-bore pistol fire before he hit the gravel belly-down. He found his targets as they crumpled, three men dropping to the pavement, stunned expressions frozen on their dying faces. Farther back, a fourth man dressed in black, ebony-skinned, was aiming over Bolan with a pistol, braced in a solid isosceles stance.

  He caught the other gunmen rising out of cover to support their comrades, muzzle-flashes from his weapon lighting up the alley as the gunshots slapped at Bolan’s ears. Aware that he was being helped, without a notion as to why, Bolan rolled over and reversed direction, leveling his Uzi at the shooters who’d been caught flat-footed by the new arrival on the scene. He joined the fight with short, near-silent bursts that made a couple of the shadow figures dance before they dropped in flaccid attitudes of death.

  And it was over, just like that.

  Or was it?

  Turning back to face the last man standing, Bolan rose, holding his submachine gun ready, muzzle hovering around knee level. At the alley’s mouth, the stranger let his pistol dip a bit and said, “We ought to get away from here.”

  “Sounds like it,” Bolan said, acknowledging the sirens. “One thing, though...”

  “The introduction, eh? All right,” his savior said. “I’m Brother Joseph Halloran.”

  “Brother?”

  “It’s a title, not my name. I’m with the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith.”

  “That rings a bell.”

  “Why don’t we talk about it on the road,” Halloran said. “Your car, for now?”

  “Suits me,” the Executioner replied, already moving out toward Congo Street.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  Driving aimlessly in the Tekeze hatchback, Bolan said, “I’m trying to remember where I’ve heard about the Congregation of the Faith.”

  “Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith,” Halloran corrected him. “It’s in the news from time to time, but rarely mainstream media.”

  “It’s Catholic?”

  “Most definitely,” he confirmed.

  “And someone famous was associated with it, if I’m not mistaken.”

  “You’re probably thinking of Pope Benedict XVI,” Halloran said. “Before his election to the papacy, as Joseph Ratzinger, he served as prefect of the Congregation from 1982 to 2005.”

  “That’s him,” Bolan agreed. “What is the Congregation, anyway?”

  “It’s gone through several names since its creation in the sixteenth century,” Halloran replied. “The present title dates from 1988. Before that, in December 1965, it was named the Sacred Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith.”

  “Not sacred anymore?” Bolan asked.

  Halloran shrugged. “Depends on who you ask. From 1904 to 1965 it was called the Supreme Sacred Congregation of the Holy Office.”

  “Still pretty vague.”

  “All right. At its creation by Pope Paul III, in 1542, it was the Supreme Sacred Congregation of the Roman and Universal Inquisition.”

  Bolan blinked at that. “Witch hunters?”

  “Not to begin with,” Halloran said, “although it did get sidetracked for a while. The Congregation’s mission was to maintain and defend the integrity of the faith and to examine and proscribe errors and false doctrines.”

  “Sounds like you’re quoting,” Bolan said.

  “I am,” Halloran acknowl
edged. “No one serves the Congregation without studying its history. And its mistakes.”

  “I don’t hear much about witches these days,” Bolan said. “What’s the current job description?”

  “We still deal with cases of heresy,” Halloran said. “Six nuns in Arkansas were excommunicated for their association with the so-called Army of Mary in 2007, but that’s an unusual case. Overall, the Congregation is a promoter of justice within the church. It deals with delicta graviora, grave offenses that the Vatican takes most seriously.”

  “Examples?” Bolan prodded.

  “Crimes against the Eucharist or against the Sanctity of Penance,” Halloran said. “And since 2001, of course, we’ve been dealing with cases of pedophile priests.”

  Bolan couldn’t resist saying, “You got a late start there.”

  “Admittedly. Pope John Paul II issued an order giving the Congregation jurisdiction in such cases. Before that, cases often languished at the local diocesan level.”

  “So,” Bolan said, “I obviously have to ask what brings you here.”

  “To Addis Ababa?”

  “To Congo Street, tonight, taking those shooters off my back.”

  “Unless I miss my guess, the same thing that caused you to drop in on the Temple of the Holy Covenant with your grenades and Uzi.”

  So the padre knew his hardware. “And that would be...?” Bolan said.

  “You’re after the Ark of the Covenant,” Halloran replied.

  “You take that seriously?” Bolan asked.

  “I don’t know what to think about it, honestly. I hate to think the Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo Church would perpetrate a fraud, mounting armed guards over nothing, but stranger things have happened.”

  “And you were sent to check it out,” Bolan said.

  “More or less. Between my race and my affinity for languages, I draw assignments throughout Africa from time to time. The Vatican believes I can relate to Africans more easily than might a brother from Calabria, let’s say.”

  “Sounds right to me, if you don’t mind type-casting.”

  “I submit to discipline and go where I am ordered. Where I can be useful.”

  “Well, you earned your pay tonight,” Bolan told him. “But I have to say, I didn’t know the Vatican had soldiers.”

  “Sometimes,” Halloran said, “the issues we confront may be...extreme.”

  “Like Custodes Foederis planning a hocus-pocus attack on the Vatican?”

  “If it is what you call hocus-pocus,” the man replied.

  “You think they’ve really nabbed some superweapon from the days of Moses?”

  Halloran responded with a shrug. “Reality as you or I perceive it may be less important than belief. Custodes Foederis has called for attacks against the church and all its works, the so-called Scarlet—”

  “Whore of Babylon.” Bolan finished the sentence for him. “Yeah, I heard that line.”

  “Even without a supernatural weapon, dedicated zealots pose a threat to Catholics everywhere. Ending their madness is a prime concern of the Congregation.”

  “You can’t kill madness with a SIG P-226,” Bolan advised. “Only its carriers.”

  “I use the tools at hand for a specific task,” Halloran replied.

  “Been there myself. But I may have missed my chance this time.”

  “Bishop Astatke?”

  Bolan nodded. “I was hoping we might have a word. For all I know, he’s dead by now.”

  “You injured him?” Halloran asked.

  “Try ‘shot.’ He pulled a piece and jumped into the mix.”

  “A true believer,” Halloran said. “Willing to kill or die for his faith.”

  “Like you.”

  “And yourself?” Halloran asked.

  “I’m not that big on faith these days, but I’ve got the killing down.”

  “You may surprise yourself. May I suggest that we collaborate?”

  Tikur Anbesa Hospital, Addis Ababa

  BISHOP BERHANU ASTATKE swam back to fitful consciousness through a haze of medication, and found faces hovering over him. He recognized Tamrat Gessesse, focused on his parishioner’s anguished eyes, and rasped out the question, “Where am I?”

  “Tikur Anbesa, Your Eminence,” Gessesse said. “You’re safe.”

  Tikur Anbesa meant “black lion” in Amharic, and Astatke understood the reference even in his hazy, drugged condition. Black Lion Specialized Hospital was Ethiopia’s largest, attached to Addis Ababa University. In a nation where forty-four percent of all residents died before reaching age forty, Black Lion trained hundreds of doctors and nurses, generally working with outdated equipment and facing a shortage of critical medicines, and laboring under a defective ventilation system, with patients crowding the wards and hallways. Still, it was the best Ethiopia had to offer, and the country’s only cancer treatment center.

  Not that Bishop Astatke had to concern himself with death from a wasting disease. His wounded legs ached bitterly, despite the drugs that he’d been given. Even reaching out to clutch Gessesse’s slender arm caused him to moan and grimace, hissing through clenched teeth to speak.

  “Did you contact...Dextera Dei?” he demanded.

  Gessesse’s eyes darted away from the bishop, sweeping the space near his bed for eavesdroppers. There were few private rooms at Black Lion, and those they had were reserved for rare patients of wealth and influence. Bishop Astatke’s bed of suffering was situated at the far end of a ward containing twenty more, each occupied with trauma victims.

  “Answer me!” he grated, through another wave of pain.

  “I tried,” Gessesse whispered. “No one answered at the number I was given, but I left a message. No, don’t worry. I was not foolish enough to be specific. If the wrong ears listen, they will just be...curious.”

  “You mean no help is coming?”

  “I don’t know. If they had answered when I called—”

  “God help us!” Eyes half-closed, Astatke rode another wave of wrenching agony. When he was able to control his voice, he rasped, “I cannot stay here.”

  “You must heal,” Gessesse said. “The doctor says that if you’re moved, you may not live.”

  “We all die,” the bishop replied. “Better that than to betray the faith.”

  “You have betrayed nothing. Your courage shines as an example to us all.”

  “When the police come...”

  “They are here,” Gessesse told him. “Questioning the others as we speak. No one will tell them anything.”

  “I may,” Astatke said.

  “No, no. You’re far too brave for that.”

  “The pain...the drugs...I cannot trust myself,” Astatke groaned.

  “Have courage.”

  “You must help me, Tamrat.”

  “If I can. You have only to ask.”

  Astatke swallowed, clenched his teeth against the rising swell of pain, and said, “You must release me from this broken shell.”

  Gessesse frowned at that, looking confused, then gaped as understanding pierced the veil. “You must not ask me that!” he said. “I cannot—”

  “Yes, you can! You will! It is your duty.”

  “I don’t know....”

  “You speak to me of courage? Prove your own.”

  Gessesse looked around the ward, Astatle following his gaze as best he could. Black Lion was perpetually understaffed, with those on duty vastly overworked. Just now, there were no nurses or physicians in the ward.

  “Get on with it!” Astatke ordered, his dry voice harsh, commanding.

  Weeping silently, Gessesse drew the pillow from beneath Astatke’s head and held it poised above the bishop’s sweaty face. He said, “Forgive me please.”

  �
��The Lord forgives you,” Astatke said. “And I thank you.”

  Silently, the pillow pressed against his face, obliterating light and breath.

  Custodes Foederis Headquarters, Rome

  UGO TROISI LISTENED to the short recorded message for a third time, frowning as a man’s excited voice tried to convey his meaning without leaving any evidence on tape that might be useful to an enemy.

  “Emergency!” his unnamed caller said. “The Temple of the Holy Covenant is compromised. Bishop Astatke is in hospital. Others are dead. Security is jeopardized. Beware!”

  And nothing more.

  The tracking software on his phone informed Troisi that the call had come from Addis Ababa, a fact already known to him, since each Custodes Foederis congregation worldwide had a unique title. Likewise, Bishop Astatke was well-known to ranking members of the sect at the Sedem Illustratio, a key supporter of their latest move against the Scarlet Whore. In fact, he’d been so involved in the coup that Troisi cringed to think of him confined to a hospital bed, subject to questions and coercion from authorities.

  Steps should be taken to relieve the bishop—or to silence him—without delay.

  As for the rest, Troisi had to follow up at once, determine what had happened at the Temple of the Holy Covenant, how many of the Keepers had been lost, how many others were in custody. Without providing details, his unknown caller had conveyed the essence of a strike against the sect.

  By whom? Troisi couldn’t say. But there was no need to ask why.

  Someone was clearly bent on frustrating their plans to purify the faith. That narrowed down the field of suspects, but more research was required before Troisi could prepare to strike specific targets. In the meantime, he must share the grim news out of Ethiopia with Janus Marcellus and Mania Justina, his exalted Pontifex and Reginae.

  That promised to be one unpleasant interview, but he couldn’t postpone it. Every moment wasted now was a forsaken opportunity. And seeing Mania in a state of agitation, with her skin flushed, was a bonus for Troisi, even in the midst of a potential crisis.

  There was nothing he could do immediately for the faithful in Addis Ababa. Someone had to be sent to find and help Bishop Astatke—Troisi could do that on his own authority, before sharing the news—but any other action called for consultation with his masters.