warning.’
Calque made a face.
‘Look, the first clue, in what I now believe to be the first quatrain, runs like this:
The African desert will melt into glass False freedoms will torment the French
The great empire of the islands will shrink Its hands, feet and elbows shun the head.’
‘That means nothing. It gets us nowhere.’
‘On the contrary. Look at it again. “The African desert will melt into glass.” In 1960 the French conducted their first ever nuclear test in south western Algeria. In the Sahara Desert. They called it the Gerboise Bleu – the Blue Jerboa.’
‘You’re stretching, Sabir.’
‘Try the next line, then: ‘False freedoms will torment the French.’ In 1960 France granted – or was forced to grant – independence to French Cameroon, French Togoland, Madagascar, Dahomey, Burkina Faso, Upper Volta, Ivory Coast, Chad, the Central African Republic, Congo-Brazzaville, Gabon, Mali, Niger, Senegal and Mauritania. But still they persisted with their war in Algeria. “False freedom” is when you give with one hand and you take back with another. Now lines three and four: ‘The great empire of the islands will shrink. Its hands, feet and elbows shun the head.’ Great Britain was always the ‘great empire of the islands’ to Nostradamus. He uses the image on numerous occasions and it was always specific to Britain. In 1960 the British granted independence to Cyprus. Also to British Somaliland. Ghana. Nigeria. These are the extremities. Queen Elizabeth II was the head. By achieving independence, they shun her.’
‘Not enough.’
‘Try the next one then:
Germany will be strangled and Africa retaken A young leader will emerge: he will retain his youth Men will raise their eyes towards the battlefield A star will shine that is no star.’
‘According to your theory, Sabir, this quatrain should then refer to 1961. Does it? I don’t see that.’
‘Why don’t you? Take the first half of the first line: ‘Germany will be strangled.’ Nostradamus uses the phrase envoyer le cordon, meaning to ‘send the bowstring’. In other words to ‘order to be strangled’. And what happened in 1961? The border was closed between East and West Berlin and the Wall was built – a concrete cordon, effectively separating and strangling Germany. Now the second part of the first line: ‘And Africa retaken.’ On the 21st of April 1961 rebellious members of the OAS took Algiers, in an effort to stop General de Gaulle from granting Algerian independence. You remember that, don’t you, Calque? You were probably still busy cutting your milk teeth on the beat as a pandore.’
‘Pah.’
‘ “Men will raise their eyes towards the battlefield.’ Does that remind you of anything? On the 12 th of April 1961 Yuri Gagarin became the first ever man to enter space – in the Vostok I – thereby launching the space race and further aggravating the Cold War between the United States, NATO and the Soviet Union. “A star will shine that is no star.” That’s a pretty damned good description of an orbiting spacecraft, isn’t it? Especially when you figure that Nostradamus was writing 450 years before any such thing had even been envisaged.” ’
‘What about “A young leader will emerge: he will retain his youth?” I suppose you’re going to tell me that describes John F. Kennedy.’
‘Of course it does. Kennedy first took over the US Presidential office on the 20th of January 1961. “A young leader will emerge” – Kennedy became the leader of the Western world when he took the Oath of Allegiance. He will “retain his youth” because he will be assassinated, two years later, on the 22nd of November 1963.’ ‘I suppose Nostradamus calls that one, too.’ ‘Yes. I have it as “The pale carriage of the young King turns black.” The second line goes: “The Queen must mourn; the King’s crown will be sundered.” Kennedy was shot in the head, on the 22nd of November 1963, in Dallas, Texas. Robert McClelland, MD, described the wound in his testimony at Parkland before Arlen Specter on the 21st of March 1964. He said that the brain tissue had been blasted out through the top of the President’s skull. Look. I’ve printed his testimony off the internet. Let me read it to you: “I could very closely examine the head wound and I noted that the right posterior portion of the skull had been extremely blasted. It had been shattered… so that the parietal bone was protruded up through the scalp and seemed to be fractured almost along its right posterior half, as well as some of the occipital bone being fractured in its lateral half and this sprung open the bones that I mentioned in such a way that you could actually look down into the skull cavity itself and see that probably a third or so, at least, of the brain tissue, posterior cerebral tissue and some of the cerebellar tissue had been blasted out…” That seems to me to accord pretty clearly with “the King’s crown will be sundered”. Don’t you think?’
‘No one will take this seriously. You realise that?’ ‘No one will have the chance to take it seriously. Because I am not going to make these prophecies public. You yourself explained why, with your Cassandra parallel. I don’t have the originals. No one will believe me. And there are things in here that the Corpus Maleficus still want to know.’ ‘But Bale is dead.’ ‘So he is.’ ‘There’s more, isn’t there?’
‘The proof of the pudding, you mean? Well that comes next year. And the year after that. And the year after that.’
‘What are you talking about?’
‘Think about it, Calque. We have the starting date to the countdown as 1960. That’s clear. Even you can’t dispute that. And I have forty-eight quatrains moving on from that year, describing an event or events in each succeeding year which pinpoints that year as part of the cycle. They’re not all in order, but when you spread them out, they tally. I’ve got the US defeat in Vietnam. The Chinese Cultural Revolution. The Arab-Israeli War. The Cambodian Genocide. The Mexico City Earthquake. The First and Second Gulf Wars. 9/11. The New Orleans Floods. The Indian Ocean Tsunami. And that’s just the tip of the iceberg. There are dozens of smaller events which seem to tally too. It’s beyond the realms of happenstance. ‘
‘So what are you telling me?’
‘I’m telling you that the Mayans were right. According to the Mayan Long Calendar, they have the Great Change as occurring in 2012. On the 21st of December, to be precise. 5126 years – that’s thirteen baktuns, each comprising twenty katuns – from the calendar’s inception. That tallies precisely with Nostradamus’s own index dates. Except that he starts in 1960, at the exact turn of the Age of Aquarius. And he gives us fifty-two quatrains and a fifty-two-year warning. That’s 2012 too. It couldn’t be clearer.’
‘And you have the prophecies for the succeeding years?’
‘Yes. I’ve isolated them by default. It’s exactly those prophecies that Bale wanted so badly. One describes the Third Antichrist. The one who will bring the world to the abyss. Another describes the Second Coming. And another describes the location of a new visionary who will either confirm or deny the date – who can see into the future and channel the information. Only this person can tell us what awaits – regeneration or apocalypse. But all will ultimately depend on whether we are prepared to recognise the Second Coming. Recognise it universally. See it as something beyond religion, in other words – as a universal blessing. Nostradamus believes that only by bringing the world together – in the communal worship of one entity – can we be saved. ‘
‘You can’t be serious.’
‘Deadly serious.’
‘The Third Antichrist, then. Who is he?’
Sabir turned away. ‘He is with us now. He was born under the number seven. Ten seven ten seven. He has the name of the Great Whore. He already holds high office. He will hold higher. His numerological number is one, indicating ruthlessness and an obsessive desire for power. Nostradamus calls him the ‘scorpion ascending’. That is all I can tell you.’
‘But that is nothing.’
‘Oh, it is.’
Calque looked searchingly at him. ‘So you know his name?’
‘Yes. And so do you.’
Calque shrugged. But he had gone pale beneath his temporary Camargue tan. ‘Don’t think I won’t try to work it out. I’m a detective. Numerology isn’t an entirely alien concept. Even to me.’
‘I expected nothing less.’
‘And the Second Coming?’
‘I will tell no one of that. It was the real purpose of Nostradamus’s gift to his daughter. It is a secret that men and women would die for. A secret that could change the world. You are the only person on earth who knows
