“We’ve received a grace from God. We owe it to Him to share it with the world. People need to know, Father. The world needs to know.”
“Not yet,” the abbot insisted, firmly. “It’s not up to us to decide.”
The younger monk’s voice rose with concern. “Forgive me, Father, but I believe you’re making a mistake. Others, many others, will undoubtedly try to claim the sign as their own. And in doing so, they will cheapen and corrupt this most sublime of messages. We live in cynical, amoral times. These charlatans will make it harder for the true voice to be heard. Our message could easily be drowned out by impostors and opportunists, irreversibly so. We can’t wait. We have to move quickly before the chaos turns this divine event into a circus.”
The abbot sat down and sighed wearily, massaging his brow with his calloused hands, feeling the room tightening in around him. The young monk’s words rang true, but he couldn’t bring himself to take that step. The consequences were too frightening to contemplate. He sat there, tongue-tied with uncertainty, staring at the stone floor while the monk hovered nearby, his steps heavy with frustration, waiting. The painting in the chapel crept back into his mind’s eye, and he thought again of Ezekiel’s vision:
Wheels of fire in a sky the color of a terrible crystal, all of it heralding the voice of God.
After a moment, the abbot looked up, a frown darkening his face. “It’s not up to us,” he repeated. “We need to consult with the councils and bring the matter to His Holiness. They will decide.”
AN HOUR LATER, Brother Ameen stood in the shadows and watched from the sanctity of a dark hallway as the library’s curator stepped out of his office.
He’d failed to convince the abbot. The old man was visibly overwhelmed by what he’d seen and seemed incapable of grasping the enormity of what was happening. But the younger man wasn’t about to let that stop him.
He needed to take matters into his own hands.
He waited patiently, his eyes tracking the priest as he ventured across the courtyard and entered the refectory. Moments later, the young monk sneaked into the priest’s office, picked up the telephone, and started dialing.
Chapter 14
Less than a mile from the ridge that the two monks and the driver had just climbed down, a boy of fourteen ambled after his small herd with tired feet.
Despite the early wake-ups, the boy did like the mornings best, as did all seven of his father’s goats. The sun was still low, the valley cloaked by the long shadows of the hills surrounding them. The cool breeze was a welcome alternative to the sun that would soon be bearing down on them, and the purple hues of the barren landscape were also easier on the eyes and, if he allowed himself to think of them that way, more inspirational.
Humming a tune he’d recently heard on his father’s radio, he rounded an outcropping of rocks and stopped in his tracks at the unexpected sight before him. Three men—soldiers, it seemed, from their outfits—were loading equipment into a dust-caked, canvas-topped pickup truck. Equipment like he’d never seen before. Like the sand-beige, drumlike object, perhaps three feet wide but only five or six inches deep, that snared his attention.
Even though the boy had frozen in place and stopped breathing, the men spotted him instantly. His eyes drew a line of hard, unforgiving stares that seared through the black Ray-Bans the men were wearing. He barely had time to register the familiar gear he’d seen on countless news broadcasts of the war in Iraq—the sand-colored camouflage BDUs, the boots, the sunglasses—before one of the men spat out a brief word and the others dropped what they were doing and took quick strides toward him.
The boy started to run, but he didn’t make it far. He felt one of the men rush up to him and tackle him from behind, bringing him down into the parched soil headfirst.
With his heart in his throat, he wondered what the hell they wanted from him, why they’d wrestled him to the ground, why he was biting into the sand and grit that also pricked painfully at his eyes. In a mad frenzy of terror, he tried to squirm around and get onto his back, but the man who sat on him was too heavy and had him solidly pinned down.
He heard another man’s footsteps crunching their way closer, then glimpsed a pair of military