The Armageddon Conspiracy (3 page)

The bulletproof windows in the
corridors didn’t benefit from blinds.
Normally, Vernon hurried
past, but now he stopped, morbidly drawn to look at what London had
become.
The streets were deserted.
It was frightening how fast the
city had gone from thriving metropolis to ghost town.
Although
Europe and North America were largely untouched by the natural
disasters, normal life had come to a standstill even here.

Most Londoners fled from their
workplaces as soon as the birds appeared and never went back, the
stock market suffered the greatest crash in history, and the
transport system was overwhelmed.
For once, the Government
responded fast, using an emergency plan drawn up years earlier in
anticipation of London suffering a catastrophic terrorist attack.
Within 36 hours, military and police control was fully established.
Only a skeleton Tube service operated now, and it stopped at 8 p.m.
when the curfew began.
Army convoys rolled through empty streets.
Under the Government’s emergency powers, all of the major utilities
– gas, electricity, water, telephones, fuel – were brought under
central control until further notice, and key personnel were being
forced to work whether they liked it or not.
Tanks and barricades
ringed Parliament, and similar arrangements had been made at all
key civic and administrative buildings.
Most TV and radio
programmes were cancelled, replaced by constant news reports.
Newspapers were still being produced, but probably not for much
longer.

It was only natural, Vernon thought,
that people wanted to be with their families at a time like this,
those lucky enough to have them.
Most of those still at work had
nowhere else to go.

At first, the Director General ordered
every member of staff to remain at their posts.
Soldiers prevented
anyone from leaving, but some people became hysterical, begging to
be allowed to go home to their families.
For practical reasons, the
DG relented; there was simply no point in trying to get productive
work from staff no longer mentally fit for duty.
The majority of
the family types were allowed out.
A handful, determined to do
their duty, stayed behind.
Practically all of the non-attached
members of staff volunteered to remain.

Vernon wondered if he ought to have
tried to get to Sweden, but he didn’t want to spend his last hours
with the wife he didn’t love, and seeing baby Louise would make him
unbearably sad.
There was only one person he wanted to be with at a
time like this, but there was no chance of that particular reunion
happening.

Six crows swooped down and perched on
the window ledge, staring at him.
He banged on the window to
frighten them off, but they didn’t move.

Making his way down the
corridor once more, he swore as he tripped over piles of litter –
mostly crisp packets, chocolate wrappers and Coke cans.
Conditions in Thames House had deteriorated fast.
Bins hadn’t been emptied for days.
The toilets were in a foul
condition, many blocked and leaking.
Everything throughout the
building stank.

The corridors were practically
deserted.
A couple of days earlier, the activity was frantic, with
everyone racing backwards and forwards from one emergency meeting
to the next.
Not now.
In a way, Vernon was glad.
Several times,
he’d bumped into people in tears, and he’d been unsure what to do.
Console them?
Ignore them?
Tell them to get a grip?
Tell bad jokes?
Nothing seemed right.

It surprised him how many beautiful
women were still left.
When he was a teenager, he always imagined
that if he were told the world were ending, he would find as many
gorgeous women as possible for sex.
Now, he realised, no one would
be having sex as the world ended.
Imminent extinction wasn’t any
kind of turn-on.

As he was about to step
into the lift, he got a call on his mobile phone.
Caldwell informed
him that within seconds of the UGT declaration, identical requests
had come in from three completely different sources.
They all
wanted an obscure document called
The
Cainite Destiny
.
It was the identities of
the three intelligence organisations that was so intriguing
–
Mossad
, the
Israeli intelligence service,
Bundesrichtendienst
, the German
foreign intelligence service, and
Sodalitium Pianum
, the Vatican’s
ultra-secretive intelligence service.

‘
The Vatican, the
Israelis and the Germans?’
Vernon blurted.
‘What the hell is this
document they all want?’

‘
I’m looking at our
database entry right now,’ Caldwell replied.
‘It says
The Cainite Destiny
is a
single page from a diary.
It was written in 1938 and came into our
possession at the end of WWII.
Only three people have accessed it
since then.
Two of them were Director Generals, and that was
several decades ago.
The third was your boss:
twenty-four hours ago
.’

‘
Are you
certain?’

‘
That’s what the
database says.’

‘
What’s the high-level
description of this document?’

‘
The Cainite
Destiny
was handwritten in German by one of
Heinrich Himmler’s senior adjutants.
The British army arrested him
after the German surrender in 1945.
According to our database, this
document gives some inexplicable version of the Nazis’ ideology,
based on the occult.
A professor analysed the document and said its
implications were terrifying.
His interpretation was rejected out
of hand.
Nevertheless, the document was given the highest possible
security classification because it was feared it was a coded
reference to a Nazi plot that might be resurrected by neo-Nazis at
some future date.’

There was a long pause.
Vernon wondered
why Caldwell had stopped speaking.
‘What is it?’

‘
Listen to this.
The
reason the document is called
The Cainite
Destiny
is that it suggests a direct link
between the Nazis and the Biblical figure Cain.’
He hesitated
again.
‘And there’s one more thing.’

The Nazis and Cain?
Vernon shook his
head.
Hokum.
Why would three of the world’s best intelligence
services be giving something like this even the slightest credence?
And why had his boss looked at it so recently?
‘Come on,’ he said.
‘I don’t have time to mess around.
What’s the final thing?’

‘
Sir, it predicts the
end of the world.’

Vernon swallowed hard.
Once, those
words seemed so abstract.
One day, they were certain to come true.
He just hadn’t expected it to be in his own lifetime.

He pushed the button to
call the lift.
As he waited, he studied the MI5 crest above the
lift doors, showing a combination of a golden, winged sea-lion on a
blue background; six red roses; three five-pointed green cinquefoil
heraldic flowers, and three portcullises.
The crest also displayed
MI5’s motto:
Regnum Defende
– Defend the Realm.
Right now, Vernon didn’t know
from what he was defending it.
Hitler reaching out from the
grave?

When the lift doors opened, Vernon was
startled to see Old Harry, the veteran lift operator.
Still in his
pristine bottle-green uniform, Old Harry hadn’t abandoned any of
his normal habits.

‘
Good afternoon, sir.’
Old Harry squinted at Vernon’s badge.

Vernon couldn’t believe he was still
having his ID checked.
Perhaps it was reassuring: the world hadn’t
completely gone to pieces if Old Harry was still following the
rules.
He’d even taken the trouble to spray the lift with air
freshener – a welcome relief from the sour smell that permeated the
building.

Vernon stepped inside and the doors
swooshed shut.

‘
Which floor?’
Old
Harry asked.

‘
Basement.’

‘
Right you are,
sir.’

Vernon couldn’t avoid seeing himself in
the lift’s mirror.
An exhausted man gazed back, with black rings
round his eyes, a gaunt face, a crumpled suit and crooked tie.
He
took out a comb and tried to tidy himself up.

The lift stopped and the doors opened
again.
A girl came in, dabbing her eyes.
Vernon looked away.
They’d
had a casual fling on a training course in Cardiff six months
earlier.
Another ghost of the past.

‘
Well, don’t
acknowledge me,’ she snapped.

That’s all I
need
, Vernon thought as he awkwardly
stepped past her into the detention block’s reception
area.

‘
Good luck,’ Old Harry
said as the lift doors closed.

Vernon nodded half-heartedly then
watched as the changing lights on the panel above the lift doors
showed the lift making its way to the top floor.
It wouldn’t be
long before the lifts were shut down; too much of a drain on the
building’s limited electricity.
MI5 and MI6 had already taken
themselves off the National Grid and were using their own
generators to ensure they didn’t suffer power cuts.
Soon, everyone
would be tramping up and down stairs.

He placed his security smartcard
against the electronic reader and pushed through the turnstile.
Glancing at the security guard, he noticed that the man was
clutching a set of Catholic Rosary beads.
He tried to think of
something to say, but nothing came.
Normally, he would make a
comment about football, but every game had been cancelled and it
seemed meaningless now.

‘
Sir
,’ the guard said once he’d gone past.

Vernon stopped and turned.
‘Yes?’

The guard fidgeted.
‘Sorry, nothing.
It’s just that…’

‘
What?’

‘
Can’t you feel it?
Ever since they brought that man in…’

‘
What man?’

‘
Isn’t that why you’re
here?’
The guard lowered his head and went back to counting his
Rosary beads.

Vernon shrugged and headed for the
coffee machine.
The world was full of riddles these days.
He needed
something to wake him up before the next shock arrived.
It wouldn’t
be long judging from what the guard had said.
The cells definitely
weren’t a place for innocent meetings.

He’d rather have stayed
in the Situation Room.
There was so much new work to be done now
that UGT had been called.
Strange times required the strangest
procedures.
Computer programs would be searching databases for any
documents that mentioned words like Armageddon, Apocalypse, End of
the World, Doomsday, Extinction, End Times, Judgment Day.
Analysts
would be scrutinising prophecies by every nut and mystic.
Even an
old favourite like Nostradamus, debunked or not, would be back in
the frame.
It was the moment when the secret services gave credence
to the supernatural.
Not because they believed any of it, but
because there was nothing else to go on.
And those programs would
no doubt soon locate
The Cainite
Destiny
.
He hoped he’d get an opportunity
to study it.

He vaguely recalled
something about
Godwin’s Law
having a habit of cropping up everywhere.
The
precise wording, if he remembered right, was, ‘As an online
discussion grows longer, the probability of a comparison involving
Nazis or Hitler approaches one – certainty.’
The same was obviously
true of apocalyptic predictions.