Heiser Portent

1. Auflage 2014
ISBN: 978-1-57799-562-3
Verlag: Lexham Press
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: Adobe DRM (»Systemvoraussetzungen)

E-Book, Englisch, 464 Seiten

Reihe: The Facade Saga

Ancient conspiracy. Relentless evil. The hunt for answers continues. The climactic ending of The Façade 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?

Michael S. Heiser is a senior writer for Bible Study Magazine and a scholar-in-residence at Faithlife Corporation. He has also served as academic editor for the Faithlife Study Bible and is author of The Unseen Realm: Recovering the Supernatural Worldview of the Bible and the fiction series The Facade Saga.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Heiser, Michael S.

Leseproben

8

Coincidences are God’s way of getting our attention.

—Frederick Buechner

“Who are you?” demanded Brian, startled. He moved his chair to position himself between the girl and Melissa.

“Why don’t you ask your wife?” the girl replied defiantly, stepping to the side to speak to Melissa again. “You don’t remember me, do you?”

“If you want to talk, have a seat.” Brian stood up slowly, sensing that he needed to prevent this situation from escalating. He grabbed a chair from the adjacent table and positioned it for the young woman. Melissa said nothing.

The girl sat down without hesitating, still staring at Melissa, but she didn’t repeat the question. The short break helped Melissa regain some composure. “I’m not sure why you’re so convinced I’m this Melissa Kelley,” she began, “but you’re right about my not knowing who you are.”

“Figures,” the girl smirked, her voice trembling unexpectedly. She looked down at the table, then cupped her face in her hands and began to sob quietly. Brian and Melissa glanced at each other, mystified but still aghast at the sudden assault on their secret.

“Do you need help?” Brian asked.

“Yeah, I need help,” she sniffed, looking at both of them. “I need a buttload of help, but I’m not going to find any. A few weeks ago it was all a thrill. In college we talked all the time about sticking it to the freakin’ feds, but now I can’t see any way out. At least Dr. Kelley would have understood why I did it.”

“What kind of trouble are you in?” Melissa probed, carefully.

“I stole something. Actually, I took something my boyfriend gave me. He stole it, although it would be more correct to say he saved it. He’s in jail now, but I got away with it—at least for now.”

“Who are you running from?” Brian asked.

“The government, federal agents, FBI—who the hell knows?” She fretted with exasperation. “Do you have any idea what it’s like to be on the run?” The girl’s expression lapsed into distress as she fought back more tears.

Brian and Melissa avoided making eye contact. Both feared the same thing: that a shared connection might encourage the girl’s suspicion. “Brian, why don’t you get her something to drink?” Melissa suggested. “We can talk when she’s ready.”

The distraught girl nodded, and Brian left the table. He returned in a few minutes with her drink. The girl took it without a thank you and held it in her lap.

“Brian, this is Becky—Becky Leyden.” Melissa was careful not to telegraph that there was something familiar about the name, though she couldn’t place it. “Fargo is Becky’s home town, but she hasn’t been here for almost five years.”

The girl nodded, and Melissa waited, prompting the girl to take over. “I moved to California after high school,” the girl explained. “I was majoring in peace and conflict studies at Berkeley—you know, community activism, working for change, empower the 99 percent, ‘screw capitalism,’ and all that.”

“Then what?” Brian prodded.

“After graduating I spent the next two years with Greenpeace. That’s where I met my boyfriend. He was in a PhD program in environmental studies—global change ecology. He had a masters in polar studies from the UK. That’s how he got to the Antarctic, where this whole mess erupted.”

“What kind of trouble can you find in the Antarctic?” Brian asked.

“You wouldn’t believe me if I told you.”

“I might.”

“I doubt it, though it’s right up Dr. Kelley’s alley.” She glanced at Melissa, who knew she was deliberately referring to her by her actual name, as if probing for an advantage in a battle of wits. “Anyway, I applied to the graduate program in American studies a year ago at Georgetown. I wanted to study right-wing fascist movements in America. Not the normal ones like the Tea Party, though. I’m into—or was into—Nazi occult disciples, the Aryan Nation, the neo-pagan apocalyptic loons.”

“I wanted to study under Melissa Kelley,” she added, making direct eye contact again with Melissa, “since she’s the best for that sort of thing.”

Melissa stood her ground, trying not to let on that the brief recounting had jarred her memory. She now remembered voting to accept Becky’s application into the program.

“But Dr. Kelley disappeared this past summer,” Becky continued, scowling at Melissa. “All the dean would say is that she up and left the department to ‘pursue personal interests.’ So I quit. It was that simple. She was the reason I had applied.”

She shook her head. “But as awful as that disappointment was, it was nothing compared to what followed after my boyfriend got home from his summer post-doc.”

“Let me guess,” Brian interrupted. “Your boyfriend brought government property back with him, and they were more or less waiting for him when he got to the States.”

“Basically,” she conceded. “He had barely been home a day when one of our friends called and told us federal agents had questioned them about him. The feds didn’t know he was living with me; they’d gone to his old apartment.

“Some of the activist groups I hang with are ready for that sort of harassment, though. They got us out of DC in a car with some cash, but it only lasted a couple weeks. My boyfriend got desperate and tried to steal some money from a convenience store in Chicago, but he got caught. I was waiting for him in the car and took off when the cops arrived. He was still inside. That was our agreement, since I was carrying what they wanted. I had enough gas money left to get here. That was two days ago.”

“I’m sure they know you’re from North Dakota, so they’ll guess you were heading here. Have you told your parents what’s going on?” asked Brian.

“My parents moved to Mesa a couple years ago, so I’ve been staying with a friend from high school. It will make me harder to find, but it puts her at risk. They’ll track me if I use a credit card, and I’m out of cash. It’s looking like the end of the road …” Her voice cracked. “I really don’t want to go to prison, but it was the right thing to do. The government is so freaking corrupt. We can’t just let them fabricate history.”

“What do you mean by that?” Melissa asked.

The girl took a deep breath and scanned the café for anyone who might be looking in her direction. “About six months ago, my boyfriend’s scientific team in the Antarctic accidentally discovered plans for a Nazi base,” she explained, eyeing Melissa carefully. “It was to be built in Neuschwabenland.”

Melissa managed to suppress a gasp, but Becky saw the shock in her eyes.

“My boyfriend was at the station to study ice-core samples,” she continued. “The first core he saw was contaminated. It had a human thumb in it, along with part of some sort of notebook. The core drill had bored right through it all. What are the odds?”

“That’s …” Brian struggled for a response, amazed at the inconceivable circumstance.

“Freakin’ incredible, I know,” Becky finished his sentence. “Of course,” she continued, now eyeing both of them carefully, “Antarctica has never been inhabited by humans. That fact, in addition to the notebook, immediately told everyone they had a modern anomaly. None of the researchers or their funding agencies knew of any missing-person report from the region or anywhere in Antarctica. In fact, only one agency—the one to whom my boyfriend was ultimately responsible for his funding—reacted.”

“What agency was that?” Melissa asked.

“NASA.”

“NASA?”

“They’re involved in Antarctic research to study how life might evolve and sustain itself in extreme environments—ecosystems that are, in theory, similar to other planets. But that’s just the official reason of interest. They have other, more obscure connections.”

“Meaning what?” Brian asked, playing dumb. He and Melissa had an irresistible intuition of where this was going.

“The Nazis claimed the territory of Neuschwabenland during an expedition from December of 1938 until April of 1939. They wanted land in Antarctica for their whaling fleet, since the whaling industry supplied oil for food products as well as glycerin for creating nitroglycerine, used in explosives. The expedition also had secret military goals. On the return journey the expedition was supposed to check out some isolated islands off the coast of Brazil as potential landing places for the German Navy, especially U-boats.”

“What did NASA say when they heard about the discovery?”

“They did what our beloved capitalistic superpower always does: asserted complete ownership and command of the situation. They decreed that all materials related to the discovery were to be impounded and returned to them. No one was to handle them, and the news was to be considered classified.”

“So what happened?”

“All the scientists at the station had a look at them,” she said with a satisfied grin. “They were too late in issuing the warning about not contacting the outside world about the news. My boyfriend had already emailed me about it. He knew I was into Nazis and World War II, and he’d seen the notebook fragments before the find was reported. He told me about a word he found in the notebook, but I didn’t learn anything more until he came home. That first email was followed by news of NASA’s orders. Further outside contact was strictly monitored, so we had to avoid the...