"Nephilim - 03 - The Revealing" - читать интересную книгу автора (Marzulli L A)

"Do the Iranians know what has happened?"
"They have news indirectly. But he shouldn't have been in the car in the first place."
"Yes . . . yes ... that is true, but it doesn't change the fact that he was in the car and that he is now dead."
Another phone rang.
"Hold on for a moment; it's the red line." The Major put down the receiver and picked up the red phone.
"Major, this is the prime minister. I have very disturbing news. Have you heard? INF forces have killed an Iranian cleric."
"I know, I am on the phone with our intel," the Major replied.
"Yes, but do you know who this cleric is?" the prime minister asked. "He was the number-two man in line next to their prime minister. He just recently came into prominence."
"What was he doing here illegally?"
"We don't know"
"The strike was supposed to be on Hamas leadership in retaliation for the suicide bombing outside Mossad head-quarters a few days ago. You know about our policy to eliminate their leadership. The cleric was in the wrong place at the wrong time. What are the Iranians saying?" the Major asked.
"Their ambassador is livid, and there is talk of unrestrained retaliation. I want you to drop everything until we're out of the danger zone."
"Yes, sir," the Major replied, and the red phone line went dead. The Major picked up the other phone. "The prime minister said that the Iranians know about what happened."
"This might be the excuse they have been looking for to strike us."
The Major thought a moment then said, "Double the patrols on the borders and put the reserves on standby." He hung up the phone then opened the top drawer of his desk. He pulled out a bottle of No-Doze and popped several of the pills into his mouth. It is going to be a long night... a very long night.







11





Fitzpatrick sat at the conference table with the copy of the scroll he had received from the Hag in front of him.
"Well?" Mary pressed, as she leaned closer to the table to get a better look at the scroll.
Fitzpatrick wanted to ignore her, but glanced in her direction and gave the briefest of smiles. "I've never seen any-thing like it. Here's the strange part. The symbols don't link with any of the ancient Semitic languages, like Sumerian or Chaldean. It's like they're from an entirely new rootstock, a new language."
"Can you decipher it?" Joyce asked.
Fitzpatrick shrugged. "With enough computer time any-thing's possible." He turned to Vinnie. "How fast can you load this in?"
Vinnie toyed with the stubble on his pockmarked face, took a bite of a donut, and mumbled, "Maybe an hour or two."
"Good," Fitzpatrick said. "Let's get going on it, then."
"Where did the Hag get this?" Mary asked.
Fitzpatrick shrugged. "I don't know, but he thinks that it's important enough to get me down here after a three-day stint." "No mercy," Mary kidded.
"None," Fitzpatrick agreed.
Zach, the group's statistician, tapped his ever-present mechanical pencil against a worn clipboard. "I've finished the calcs you asked for, Fitz."
'Anything of interest?"
"What calcs?" Mary inquired.
"The probability that prophecies from different cultures, written in different centuries from diverse religious and ethnic cultures, would somehow dovetail together into what appears to be an `end-of-the-world-as-we-know-it' scenario."
Mary nodded slowly. "Can you repeat that?"
Fitzpatrick chuckled. "That's quite a mouthful, Zach. So what do you have?"
"The Native American Hopi Indians believe that it hap-pens during what they call the Ninth Sign. Apparently the other eight have already happened, so we're in the time frame for it to happen now. Anyway, the Ninth Sign talks of a dwelling place in the heavens that falls with a great crash. I'm thinking the Space Station here." He paused a moment, thumbing through the notes on his clipboard, then began again. "The Mayans give 2012 as the date, and pinpoint it to coincide with the winter solstice. In the year 1514 Pope Leo IX said it would be another five hundred years, so that makes it 2015Чclose to the Mayans' date."
"That's only a decade away, and I'm not even married yet," Mary remarked, glancing at Fitzpatrick.
Zach ignored her. "Father Malachy, a priest living in the twelfth century, predicted all of the popes in succession until the end of the world."
"Yes, after this current pope, I believe we have one left to go," Fitzpatrick replied.
Zach tapped his clipboard. "Exactly. And that puts Malachy's prediction very close to the others I just mentioned. The point is, we have no collusion between these people, and yet their predictions converge very close in the time line. They all predict that something is going to happen, and don't set your watch by it, but it looks like it may happensoon. By the way, we may be looking at the last in the line of Father Malachy's popes. Vinnie picked up something earlier about the pope having a stroke."
Fitzpatrick raised his eyebrows. "Really, did he check into it further?"