Portent

S. Heiser Michael

Description

Ancient conspiracy. Relentless evil. The hunt for answers continues.The climactic ending of The Facade left Brian Scott and Melissa Kelley with only each other--and the terrible secrets they carry. The Portent finds them living under new identities, their future clouded by constant fear of being exposed. By the time Brian and Melissa learn they're being watched, their carefully constructed lives will be over.Follow Brian and Melissa into the center of an unthinkably vast, centuries-old conspiracy, conceived to turn the faith of millions against itself. Revelations from ancient tombs, long-forgotten Nazi experiments, UFOs, occult mythologies, biblical theology, and godlike technologies converge in answer to a terrifying question: Now that "they" are here, what do they want?

Sujets

• Unidentified flying object

Informations

• Publié par: Lexham Press
• Date de parution: 27 août 2014
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781577995623
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 3 Mo

Extrait

THE PORTENT
Volume Two of The Façade Saga
Michael S. Heiser
 
The Portent
Volume Two of The Façade Saga
Copyright 2014 Michael S. Heiser
Kirkdale Press, 1313 Commercial St., Bellingham, WA 98225
KirkdalePress.com
DrMSH.com
ReadThePortent.com
All rights reserved. You may use brief quotations from this work in reviews, presentations, articles, and books. For all other uses, please contact Kirkdale Press for permission, at [e-mail] .
This is a work of fiction. Characters, organizations, places, and events are either products of the author’s imagination or, when factual, used in a fictitious manner. Any fictional character’s resemblance to actual persons, living or dead—unless explicitly noted as such by the author—is purely coincidental.
Cover design: Patrick Fore
Ebook ISBN: 978-1-57-799562-3
To my awesome kids, Amy, Molly, Calvin, and Simmi (“Summit”) .
You’re all in here somewhere, named and unnamed .
Por ∙ tent (pôr-tĕnt): An indication of something important or calamitous about to occur; an omen.
Contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Chapter 45
Chapter 46
Chapter 47
Chapter 48
Chapter 49
Chapter 50
Chapter 51
Chapter 52
Chapter 53
Chapter 54
Chapter 55
Chapter 56
Chapter 57
Chapter 58
Chapter 59
Chapter 60
Chapter 61
Chapter 62
Chapter 63
Chapter 64
Chapter 65
Chapter 66
Chapter 67
Chapter 68
Chapter 69
Chapter 70
Chapter 71
Chapter 72
Chapter 73
Chapter 74
Chapter 75
Chapter 76
Chapter 77
Chapter 78
Chapter 79
Chapter 80
Postscript
Acknowledgements
Publisher’s Note
March 29, 1980 : Jerusalem
1
In Jewish history, there are no coincidences.
— Elie Wiesel
“Don’t just stand there, kick it to me!” the boy screamed impatiently. The target of his anger stood quietly, looking down at the round, awkwardly misshapen object that had come to rest at his feet, propelled there by an errant pass. He hesitated. It didn’t seem right.
“Out of the way,” an older boy in his early teens commanded, sprinting toward his tentative teammate. He was only a step ahead of the small pack in hot pursuit behind him. “I’ll show you how to kick a ball.”
“It’s not a ball.”
“It is today,” he cracked, expertly timing his kick without breaking stride. The object fluttered through the air clumsily, hitting the ground with a thud about ten feet away. A cloud of dust rose up as more players scrambled for a shot, pushing and shoving for position.
“Stop that!” a woman’s voiced suddenly broke through the ruckus. “Stop that right now !”
The boys wheeled around, startled, and saw an elderly woman, hair pulled back tightly under a stylish headscarf, rushing toward them with unexpected vigor. The woman paused for a moment, catching her breath as she glared at each one of the young male faces before her. “You should all be at home preparing for Shabbat !”
Her attention shifted to the ground. She gasped, her hand coming to her mouth unconsciously. She bent over and gingerly picked up a human skull, intact save for the jaw, which was missing. It was unmistakably old.
“Where did you find this?” she asked, her voice low and firm, barely concealing her contempt.
“Over there,” one of the group pointed. “We’ll show you. We didn’t steal it—it was just there.”
“I don’t care if you didn’t steal it!” she snapped. “We honor our dead. Do you hear me?”
The boy nodded, then looked at the ground, avoiding her gaze.
The woman followed several of the boys about fifty yards away to the location of their discovery. She saw the black hole in the ground, along with some boards and the tread marks of a heavy excavator. More bones were scattered about the surface near the opening. She peered down into the darkness and spotted a small, symmetrical breach cut into the rock below, about eighteen inches square. A demolition crew had apparently blown the top off a tomb. She’d heard the blasting two days before.
“Gather up all these bones,” she ordered firmly. “I’ll take them and call the authorities. This will have to wait until the end of Shabbat .”
The boys complied and dispersed. The woman wrapped the remains in her scarf, tying the ends into a bundle. She shook her head as she embarked on the short trip to her home, fuming over the carelessness of the demolition crew. She was too preoccupied to notice one of boys lingering at the edge of the makeshift soccer field.
Once the woman was safely out of sight, the boy scurried to the location where he’d hidden souvenirs from his own excavation that day. Stuffing several handfuls of small bones into his pockets, he turned and ran home.
Two months before the end of The Façade
2
Coincidence is God’s way of remaining anonymous.
— Albert Einstein
Neumayer Station III ,
Queen Maud Land, Antarctica
70°40′ S, 008°16′ W
“Steady the other end when I pull in the rope,” the bearded man directed, sniffing through the perspiration dripping from the end of his nose. The warmth of the lab compartments was always welcome, but it didn’t take long for body heat, coveralls, a sweater, and a sub-zero parka to make a man sweat like he was in the tropics.
“Got it,” the man at the other end of the slender, metallic drilling tube replied. Clean-shaven and a decade younger, he watched as the first man ran through a process he’d performed many times.
The tube, twenty feet in length, rested inside a semicircular channel that, to the untrained eye, might be mistaken for a piece of rain gutter. The channel was balanced on a fulcrum that allowed the tube to be pivoted and directed to a series of stands atop a shelf running the length of the lab. It took only a few minutes for an experienced hand to station the channel and the tube on top of the support stands.
Neumayer Station III was, as its name suggested, the third polar research station funded and operated by the Alfred-Wegener Institute. The station was the first of its kind, integrating research labs, operations, and staff accommodations under one roof. Normally staffed by a dozen scientists and graduate students, it could accommodate as many as forty people.
“Now you’ll have something to keep you busy.” The bearded man smiled, glancing at his younger colleague. He wiped his brow and removed his parka, folding it over a chair. “Post-docs have all the fun.”
“Suits me just fine.”
“Leave your gloves on for now. I’ll push out the core for a look.”
The bearded man grabbed a large plastic dowel, roughly three inches in diameter, and inserted it carefully into his end of the tube. He pushed slowly, and the ice core glided out into the channel.
“What was the depth for this one?” his assistant asked.
“Seventy meters or so.”
“Gorgeous.”
“Yep. It sure— aahh , what the hell?” The bearded man frowned. The pristine clarity of the core section that had just appeared was very obviously marred by a distinct discoloration—a thin, very dark ring with intermittent blotches of cream and yellow just below the outer surface of the drilled core.
“Maybe if I smooth the surface a bit?” the younger scientist suggested, gesturing with a gloved hand, unsure of protocol.
“Go ahead. You won’t hurt anything.”
The young man bent over and began gently rubbing the imperfection. After only a few strokes, he stopped, staring in disbelief.
“Good God!” his older colleague whispered, following his stare. “It can’t be. There’s no way —”
“I don’t know about the black stuff,” his assistant replied, his heart pounding as he got on one knee so he was eye-level with the core, “but I know a thumb when I see it.”
3
No trumpets sound when the important decisions of our life are made. Destiny is made known silently.
— Agnes de Mille
The dark-skinned teenager kicked shut the door to his room, his hands filled with a sandwich and a cup of coffee. The room was illuminated by only the lamp on his desk, which was pushed tightly against his bed. He plopped down recklessly in front of the computer, spilling some coffee on the carpeted floor as he did so. He rolled his eyes, set his snack on the desk, and grabbed the shirt he’d worn yesterday from his bed to soak up the spill. Good as new , he thought, throwing the shirt into his closet.
He shook the mouse to stir his computer out of hibernation. His fingers flew effortlessly across the keyboard, logging into the network, then through the stacked layers of security or “gap management,” as Madison referred to it. He finally arrived at the anonymous email program he used for communication with the outside world. His eyes widened as he read:
Silent One ,
Castel Gandolfo is beautiful this time of year. I sent you a good envelope today. Tell me what you think of it. God be with us all .
Mantello
Mantello. It had been weeks since he’d heard anything from him. His pulse quickened as he navigated another security gauntlet—one of his own designs—to retrieve the “envelope” Mantello had mailed him.
He had met the priest nearly a year ago online through an astronomy forum. He could scarcely believe his good fortune of meeting a high-level astronomer who worked at Castel Gandolfo, the Vatican observatory. He and Mantello soon became distant friends. He’d adopted the moniker “Silent One” since it best described someone like him who was incapable of speech. Plus, it sounded cooler than his real name: Kamran.
His self-esteem had skyrocketed when Mantello had begun to refer to him as his assistant. It didn’t matter if the priest was str