The Second Messiah

When he reached the edge of the ravine, he floored the brakes and jumped out of his car. The priest saw the flames consume the blazing shell of the army truck and knew there was no hope for whoever was inside. His focus turned to the upturned white Ford pickup farther along the ravine, smoke pouring from its cabin. The priest blessed himself as he stared blankly at the accident scene. “May the Lord have mercy on their souls.”

His plan had gone horribly wrong. This was not exactly what he had intended. If the pickup’s occupants had to die, so be it—the priceless, two-thousand-year-old treasure inside the vehicle was worth the loss of human life—but he hadn’t foreseen such awful carnage.

He moved toward the pickup. A string of deafening explosions erupted as more mines ignited. The priest was forced to crouch low.

Seconds later his eyes shifted back to the upturned Ford pickup. He could make out the occupants trapped inside the smoke-filled cabin. One of them frantically kicked at the windshield, trying to escape. Nearby the sprawled bodies of a teenage boy and girl lay among the wreckage.

When the explosions died, the priest stood. His gaze swung back to the burning pickup. The desperate passenger had stopped kicking and his body had fallen limp. As thick smoke smothered the cabin, the priest caught sight of the leather map case, lying wedged inside the windshield.

He knew it contained the ancient scroll that had been discovered that morning at Qumran, and that the pickup was on its way to the Antiquities Department in Jerusalem with its precious cargo. But the priest was desperate to ensure that the scroll never reached its destination.

His orders from Rome were clear.

This was one astonishing secret that had to be kept hidden from the world.

Flames started to lick around the map case. “Dear God, no.”

He scrambled down the rocks toward the wreckage.

PART TWO

THE PRESENT

TWENTY YEARS LATER

2

ROME

It began with an omen.

Some said the bizarre event in the Sistine Chapel that midnight had been prophesied by Nostradamus, that it was a sign destined to happen.

There were other signs.

The Eternal City had an air of stillness, as if a storm were about to break, but that evening the sky was clear, a soft wind blowing from the west. Rome’s usual aggression and bustle had become a hushed calm.

On the main roads and along the Tiber, drivers occasionally pulled in, switched off their headlights, and turned on their car radios. Around a densely crowded St. Peter’s Square, the media crews’ satellite dishes pointed skyward, as if seeking celestial guidance.

Powerful television arc lamps illuminated the Sistine Chapel, while in the seedy pickup bars of the city’s red-light district, even the prostitutes took time out from their evening’s work to listen to the media coverage chattering from televisions and radios.

After all, whoever was elected pope was predicted to be the last—the man who would supposedly face Armageddon—and hundreds of millions of people all over the world were anxiously awaiting news of his election.

The previous pontiff had been dead for twenty-eight days. After the ancient rituals had been observed, his body embalmed, his papal seals broken, and his burial completed, a solemn procession of 120 cardinals of the Sacred College, dressed in red hats and red silk robes, had filed into the Sistine Chapel to choose a replacement to fill the Shoes of the Fisherman.

After twenty-nine secret ballots, they had failed to elect a new pope. When the clock struck twelve and a candidate had still not been chosen, the church would face its fifth week without a leader.

Among Rome’s anxious clergy agreement was clear. By midnight, a decision had to be made.

Cardinal Umberto Cassini thought he was about to have a heart attack. A small, scrawny Sicilian with watery brown eyes who usually smiled a lot, Cassini wasn’t smiling now. Beads of perspiration ran down his face. His pounding chest ached with stress pains.

The air in the magnificent fourteenth-century Sistine Chapel reeked of sweat. Every window and door was locked and the lights were on. The temperature was up to a humid eighty and the tense atmosphere was expectant. Cassini glanced at the wall clock: 11 P.M.

Seated at his wooden table in the ancient chapel, Cassini shifted his eyes toward Michelangelo’s powerful wall painting depicting the horrors of the Apocalypse. Umberto Cassini was experiencing his own terror.

The history of papal elections was a stormy one. Cassini recalled a troubling fact—the conclave of 1831 had lasted fifty-four days and in the process the indecision had almost ruined the church. Tonight it seemed another nightmarish tempest was unfolding. As camerlengo, the head of the conclave, Cassini was the man on whose shoulders rested the task of ensuring a papal successor was chosen.