The Fallen Tabernacle of David (5)
The first items on the agenda had been, admittedly, a little of that sort. The meeting that followed, however, was serious enough in its own right, and it even managed to sound plausible.
“The security vacuum opened by the earthquake in the Republic of South Africa…”
“The stalemate on the front raised to subjugate the ‘Count’…”
They were subjects that set the eyes spinning at the mere hearing of them. Calamities on the scale of nations; the hunting of a vampiric brood that had swallowed a whole stretch of Asia Minor; the chaos of a military coup—and on, and on.
To Hitomi they might as well have been dispatches from another world, and they shot back and forth in the space of a breath.
“Word is Mr. F’s hypnosis app has all but reached the final stage of development.”
“I believe we ought to commence the vacuum operation against Secret Base Twenty-One, on the far side of the moon, before long.”
“It seems the Grand Master of the Freemasons kidnapped Lucifer and locked him away, and so the struggle for power inside Baal’s faction in Hell has grown fierce.”
…And now and then something passed that made her doubt her ears for an entirely different reason.
Even so, the proceedings as a whole were sane. That much could be said.
What astonished Hitomi still more was the speed at which such items were disposed of. Most of the discussion was finished the moment two people had tossed a few words across the table.
“That one—the minister’s your culprit. He’s moving military intelligence out through a contact. Motive’s probably a family matter.”
“Hmm. I see… This is… Yes. I can see it. November the sixth, 11:23 in the morning. Holy Knights at battalion strength are coming ashore. The enemy’s response is thin. It would appear to be a successful surprise attack.”
A genius who, handed only a few scraps of information, reached the truth at once, like an armchair detective out of a mystery novel. And a prophet who did not require even those scraps.
Apostle James the Greater, Abraham Delta. And Apostle John, Elif Yazıcı.
They could not lay an answer upon every problem. But the items they could answer were, for the most part, settled inside a minute.
“Next, then… the matter of the radical Holy Knights in Japan running wild. Seoyeon. Explain.”
“Yes. I will keep it brief.”
And then, for the first time in a long while, a story Hitomi actually knew came up.
It was the incident in which Akaba Akane had been set upon by Holy Knights. The shrine had been wrecked, and for a time she had imposed upon Han Seoyeon’s house.
Han Seoyeon acknowledged the Pope and carried the account forward.
“…That is the outline of the incident. Accordingly, for the time being, it appears the lead within the Japanese Catholic Church will pass to Osaka and Nagasaki.”
“And the chance that the Archbishop of Tokyo attempts one last desperate struggle? What do you make of it?”
“I judge it to be low. Archbishop Ibuki Hayato was the one who reported this situation to the Vatican in the first place, and so I would expect him to cooperate in settling it.”
“As Seoyeon says. Archbishop Ibuki may be hot-tempered, but he is no fool. He is even less the man to cling to a power he cannot keep.”
So Giacomo said, and turned his eyes to Seoyeon.
“Remember, though, that a wise head does not make every limb beneath it wise. This incident itself began because a Holy Knight under Archbishop Ibuki ran wild, did it not?”
“Yes. I will bear it in mind, Master.”
In the end the matter closed on a decision to leave it with the Japanese Catholic Church. And in truth, unless some other radical faction launched a suicide attack out of pure desperation, it was the sort of thing they could be trusted to handle among themselves.
The Vatican’s part came to nothing more than laying down a warning beforehand, so they would not act rashly—and, should it come to that, putting them down by force.
For that putting-down, Han Seoyeon and Mika Eru, already in Japan, were more than enough.
“Since Japan has come up, I would like to be apprised of the state of the investigation into Hermes Trismegistus.”
The one who entered the talk then was Apostle Matthew, gauntlets on her hands—Kirra Korhonen. Han Seoyeon nodded to her and went on.
“I will explain this as well. Where would you have me begin?”
“From the fundamentals, if you would. There may still be those who do not know Vampire Syndrome well.”
“Yes. Understood, Your Holiness.”
Objectively speaking, the office of Apostle was not so frantic that one never had a moment to draw breath.
One does not slaughter a chicken with a blade meant for oxen. An Apostle was, if anything, a blade meant for dragons, and the matters that truly called for their deliberate deployment were not so many.
Once they were formally committed, however, they could grow busy enough to make the head reel. An Apostle already in the field was often so consumed by their own work that they had no leisure left to spare a glance for an incident in the distant Far East.
Calling every Apostle together like this had, in some part, been meant to share precisely that sort of situation.
“A large-scale turning of people into vampires across the Japanese archipelago, known as Vampire Syndrome. At the root of it stands a group that calls itself Hermes Trismegistus.”
So far, they sounded like any ordinary cell of antisocial terrorists. The trouble lay in how secret they were.
“They were hidden so thoroughly that rumors even went about asking whether this was not ‘someone making vampires,’ but ‘a sickness that makes vampires’ circulating of its own accord. That is why the provisional name Syndrome was fixed to it—and under the weight of those rumors, it went so far as to evolve into an actual disease.”
In the end, because it had become a kind of illness, miracles could heal it, and the disaster turned perversely to good fortune… Even so, no one could deny that they had crossed an exceedingly dangerous bridge to arrive there.
And the name that mastermind claimed for itself was Hermes Trismegistus: Hermes the Thrice-Great.
They did not, of course, truly bear any sacred charge concerning alchemy. The estimate was that they had merely borrowed a name with a long tradition and taken it up as a symbol.
“As far as we have established at present, the organization consists of three people in all. There may be further hands attending to petty errands, but the actual core is three.”
So saying, Han Seoyeon tapped the tabletop with a finger.
“The Researcher, believed to be directing most of the plans, the Vampire Syndrome incident among them. The Vampire, who continues to supply the samples used for Vampire Syndrome. And last, the Prophet, who aids the organization’s gathering of intelligence and its work of concealment. These three are the members of Hermes Trismegistus.”
A group that read what was coming and slipped around every dangerous place. If one meant to put such people down, there was only one orthodox way.
“First, take their eyes and their ears. Otherwise it never even starts, does it?”
“Yes. Precisely. We therefore set the identification of the Prophet as our first priority and acted on that. It was fortunate that a contract previously made with a Shinto spirit let us, by chance, narrow the field to a collateral line of the Japanese imperial house.”
Narrowing the candidates down and down again, Han Seoyeon had at last come to an answer.
“Kan’in Tomoe. A singer-songwriter active under the stage name Tomoe, and a YouTuber whose work is song. That is the Prophet’s identity, and the Japanese Catholic Church is at present drafting an operation to capture her.”
“Will further support be required for it?”
The Pope’s question followed. Han Seoyeon thought a moment, then shook her head.
“In hunting a prophet, what matters most is concealing the operation. The fewer people involved, the better.”
A sudden strike with the smallest possible number—that, Seoyeon said, was best. Dionysius was of the same mind; he nodded his assent.
“However, since the operation must be carried out against a prophet, we may have to borrow a little of Abraham’s power. Would you be able to help us?”
“It should not consume a great deal of processing power.”
So she said, her eyes on the laptop set upon the table.
Abraham Delta Schors. The miracle he had offered when he rose to Apostle Candidate had been, precisely, the miracle of prophecy.
To keep the other side from overturning the board by some unreasonable means, borrowing his power was the surest course.
Of course, as she had already said, this was a matter in which information was best shared as little as possible, and she did not mean to entrust him with anything essential. It would be enough to check only the smallest movements, so the enemy could not flip the board.
It was hardly a troublesome thing to ask, and knowing Abraham’s temperament, there was no reason he would refuse. She had asked once all the same, for courtesy’s sake. And yet—
“…Abraham? Abraham Delta Schors?”
A moment later Han Seoyeon was calling his name in a blank voice.
For all her request, Abraham only kept silent. He did not so much as answer no.
Was he weighing what to say? No. Even so, it was strange that a judgment should take this long beneath that processing power of his.
And just as not only Han Seoyeon, but most of those gathered there, began to feel that something was wrong—
The laptop’s screen flooded a vicious red.
The display, which had held the sigil standing for Abraham Delta, collapsed in an instant and went wholly the color of blood, then turned pitch-black, as if the lights had been cut.
A scream leaked from the speakers, the scream of someone under violent torture. It began in a thick, low man’s voice, shifted by degrees into a young woman’s, and became again the voice of an old man.
All the while the screen flickered once more—blue, then red again—and slowly began to change into a bright gray.
Upon that gray, text started, slowly, to rise.
When the next full moon rises, Apostle Thomas meets his death.
Before the following year arrives, the wills of two madmen fuse into one and call down a great calamity.
A withered star pours down upon the Mongolian plateau.
In the Far East, three Omnipotents take counsel of war.
On the eleventh of December this year, three Muslim housewives in Turkey burn a pot while cooking.
On the summer solstice three years hence, a saint of Christendom is put to death in Jerusalem.
Hyakureno shows the miracle of healing Elisha’s illness.
Soon, on the day a comet crosses the ecliptic, the papal seat changes.
The next Apostle James the Less is not human.
Three days from now it will rain in Florence, but by evening it will clear.
Ten sentences, graven into a gray screen like a tablet of stone.
Everyone gathered there sank into silence. There was nothing else they could do.
—A prophecy had descended.