The Covenant of Genesis

‘He’ll decide based on the facts. And I think he is just as likely to vote with you as with me. Until our Jewish comrades appoint a new member to the Triumvirate, this will be the fastest way to reach a decision. And since Chase and Blackwood have the location of Eden, we need to move fast.’ He looked at Nina. ‘You will come with us.’

‘So I get to stay alive, huh?’ she said.

His hard smile did not reassure her. ‘For now.’

30

Vatican City

It is the smallest independent state in the world, less than a quarter of a square mile in area. A city within a city, completely surrounded by the Italian capital of Rome. Yet for all that, it is also one of the most powerful states in the world, transcending boundaries of nationality and race and politics to hold influence over more than a billion people across the globe: the followers of the Roman Catholic Church.

Both Rome and Vatican City were places that Nina had long wanted to visit. But she had planned to do so as a tourist, not as a prisoner. And especially not with the threat of death hanging over her.

A threat that would be dismissed - or carried out - based upon the word of one man. A man she was about to meet.

Once Ribbsley had all his photographs, the Covenant moved out, making a long and cold flight in the remaining paracraft. Their destination was the bleak Wilkins ice runway some forty miles from the Australian Casey research station, the only place for hundreds of miles able to support aircraft capable of crossing the Antarctic Ocean. Two Hercules transporters waited there, one of them taking Nina, the two surviving Covenant leaders, Ribbsley and Callum to Hobart on the Australian island of Tasmania, from where a jet carried them on the lengthy journey to Europe. It was night when, exhausted and jet-lagged, she was finally brought to the Vatican in an Audi Q7 SUV with blacked-out windows. Zamal and Callum flanked her, each holding a gun. The Audi passed through a side entrance, Nina catching the barest glimpse of the majesty of St Peter’s basilica before being driven to a nondescript building near the tiny city-state’s railway station.

The guns were put away, but Nina felt no less threatened as she was taken inside, Vogler leading the way. Men in dark suits stood guard within, with the same cold, hard faces as Vogler’s team at the frozen city. Former Swiss Guards, now tasked with a more secret objective. Was this the headquarters of the Covenant, right inside the Vatican itself ?

The building’s interior was elegant yet austere. This was a place of work, not worship. Though it was quiet, their footsteps echoing through the polished hallways, Nina got the sense that a lot went on behind each of the closed doors she passed. There was a feeling of power, understated yet undeniable.

Vogler took her up a flight of steps to a door at the end of a long hallway. He opened it. ‘Go inside.’ Nina hesitated, then steeled herself and went through. Vogler followed her, the others remaining outside.

The room was a mix of office and study, two walls lined with book-filled shelves and tall filing cabinets, high windows in the third giving a view of the dome of St Peter’s. The fourth wall was dominated by a beautiful marble fireplace, flames crackling gently in the grate. Before it were two armchairs of time-polished red leather.

An elderly man dressed in black sat in one of them, gazing into the fire. Vogler stood beside him, respectfully lowering his head. ‘Cardinale,’ he said. The man looked up, replying in Italian. Nina didn’t know the language well enough to understand what they were saying, but from their tone it was clear they knew each other well.

Vogler handed the old man the cylinder containing the recording of the song. He examined it, then carefully placed it on a small table and stood to face Nina, revealing that his clothes were the robes of a cardinal. There was something unusual about them, however, and it took a moment for her to realise what: they were devoid of any kind of colour or decoration, even a crucifix.

‘Dr Wilde,’ he said, gesturing to the empty armchair. ‘Please sit down.’

She eyed it suspiciously. ‘Not until I know what’s going on.’

He shrugged. ‘As you wish. I simply thought that after your long journey you might want to be comfortable. I hope you don’t mind if I sit.’ He lowered himself back into his chair, the leather creaking. ‘I am Jonas di Bonaventura, and I’m sure you have many questions. But the question that has brought you all this way is a simple one: should you live?’ He fixed her with a piercing, crystal-clear gaze that belonged on a much younger man.

‘You want me to answer that?’ Nina replied. ‘Because in that case: a big fat yes!’

Di Bonaventura smiled. ‘You live up to your reputation, Dr Wilde. Do, please, sit down. It will make my neck ache if I have to keep looking up at you.’ The smile darkened. ‘And you would not want that to affect my decision.’

Nina paused, then perched on the edge of the chair. Vogler moved to stand behind her - in a position, she realised, that would give him the easiest shot should he choose to draw his gun. ‘So,’ she said, trying not to let that intimidate her, ‘this is the headquarters of the Covenant of Genesis, huh?’

‘The Covenant has no headquarters,’ said di Bonaventura. ‘It does not even exist. Officially, at least. It is a shadow, a phantom, its work known only by a few.’

Nina looked through the windows towards the great floodlit dome of St Peter’s. ‘Including, you know . . . him? The man in the hat?’

Vogler made a faint sound in his throat, enough to indicate his displeasure at her disrespect. Di Bonaventura, however, merely leaned back in his chair. ‘Of course not. That is our firmest rule - he must never know. That would make His Holiness a hypocrite, and that cannot, must not, be allowed to happen. What we do, we do in secret. I am a cardinale in pectore, a secret cardinal - but not in the way most people would use the term, even His Holiness. Popes are chosen from the ranks of the cardinals, but simply by knowing of the existence of the Covenant I am disqualified from ever being nominated. I am, you might say, an agent of the Church, just as governments and corporations have their agents who work to protect them. And keep their secrets.’

‘Like the secret of the Veteres. Yeah, I know all about them,’ she said, catching a slight upward twitch of the cardinal’s white eyebrows.

He smiled again. ‘You do? I think not.’

‘Well, let’s see now,’ said Nina. ‘They date back to well over a hundred and thirty thousand years ago, they expanded across the world all the way from Africa to the Antarctic, they built cities that wouldn’t be equalled in scale for over a hundred millennia, they had a complex written language, a numerical system that would be adopted by the Atlanteans, they worshipped a single god . . . and something else too, what was it?’ She pretended to search her memory. ‘Oh, and they came from a little place called the Garden of Eden, that was it,’ she finished. ‘I think that about covers it.’

Di Bonaventura regarded her silently . . . and then, to her growing dismay, laughed long and hard. It wasn’t sarcastic, or mocking - he was genuinely amused, in the same way that a parent might be at a display by a precocious child. ‘My apologies, Dr Wilde,’ he finally said, still smiling broadly. ‘You do indeed know a great deal about the Veteres, some of which, yes, the Covenant did not. So I congratulate you on that. But despite everything you have learned, there is one thing you have not - the secret of the Veteres themselves!’

‘What?’ Nina demanded, realising that he had just effortlessly manipulated her into revealing part of her hand - the limits of her knowledge. ‘What secret?’

Di Bonaventura merely smiled again, infuriating her. ‘None of what you have discovered matters to the Covenant. If that were all it was, the Covenant would not even need to exist.’

‘So what’s the secret?’ He said nothing. ‘Okay then, it’s something you think is such a threat to the Abrahamic religions that all knowledge of it has to be suppressed and all evidence destroyed. Am I right?’

He nodded. ‘Go on.’

It struck Nina that if she did deduce the truth, she could be signing her own death warrant. But something drove her on: she had to know. ‘But it’s not just that this civilisation existed long before Abraham. There’s something about it that contradicts Genesis - that can be proved to contradict Genesis,’ she realised. ‘That’s the threat, isn’t it? And you know what it is.’