by Rob Jones
Neverov drummed his fingers on the arm of the chair and stood up without warning. He paced over to the window and looked out at all the cars racing along the parkway. Memories of traffic crawling around Moscow’s Garden Ring flooded back into his mind. Kutuzovsky Avenue and the Moskva River and Gorky Park. A long time ago and a long life lived in pursuit of Patrushev’s terrifying treasure.
That is what Grudinin had written about in the note.
General Patrushev who had headed up the Wolf Pack had been a mysterious figure, even for the old men who ran the Lubyanka all those years ago. Aloof and distant and dangerous, Dmitry Patrushev was part of the old guard. In his seventies back when Neverov was a young man, the old general had worked alongside Molotov and Kaganovich and even Stalin himself and knew more state secrets that most. But it was one in particular that had interested his protégé Colonel Grudinin, and it involved the night they had been ordered to travel out to Mount Sinai and retrieve a dusty, chipped old statue.
The statue was created two thousand years earlier by John the Apostle, and was believed to contain a hidden code pointing to some unknown text he had written for Revelation. A verse he was too terrified to include in the final manuscript, for fear others would consider him out of his mind.
What had he written about all those years ago? What had scared him out of his mind? Rumor among Patrushev’s old Soviet esoteric researchers was that it had something to do with Revelation 8… The third angel sounded his trumpet, and a great star, blazing like a torch, fell from the sky… Fogged by the vodka, Neverov’s mind strained to make sense of it all. Verse 8. The third trumpet of Revelation. Chernobyl. End times.
Apocalypse.
More vodka.
Where had John the Apostle hidden the manuscript? Could there really be a Revelation 23 like Grudinin had told him about in his suicide note?
Neverov slopped another slug of vodka in the shot glass and raised to his mouth.
“Za zda-ró-vye,” he mumbled.
To your health.
He would find more than good health at the end of this trail, or at least die trying.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Jodie Priest bit the bullet and took the call. She was leaning on the east wall of Dulles Airport’s Jet Linx private jet terminal at the time, just out of the rain and watching a Pepsi truck driving along the airport’s northern access road. Just off to her right, the rest of the HARPA team were climbing up the airstair of a Gulfstream jet. It was ready to fly to Europe, flight checks done and dusted and engines idling.
She sighed. This, she knew, had been a long time coming.
“Hey, Tyler. How’s it going?”
“Not good, Jo.”
She bit her lip and swept her rain-wet hair away from her face. “What happened now, Tyler?”
“Got mixed up with some guys and we robbed a bank in San Jose. Someone got shot. This time they’re going to throw away the key.”
She said nothing.
“They gotta find me first, right?”
Silence.
Tyler got the hint and changed the subject. “What about you? When am I going to see you again, Jo?”
She paused. Hunter was standing back to let Quinn go up the jet’s stairs and get out of the rain first. He looked taller from where she was standing. Taller and stronger.
“I’m doing something new now, Tyler.”
“Something new? What does that mean?”
“It means I moved on. They’re good people. We do good work.”
“And what can someone like you offer people like that?”
“Thanks, man.”
“C’mon, Jo! Me and you are like two drops in the same bucket. We come from the same streets.”
After a long pause, she said, “I’m not coming back, Tyler.”
“But we got so much history!”
“Even so…”
She heard him punch something and curse. A wall, she hoped.
“You’re really not coming back to California?”
“No. Not ever. I think I have chance of making something good for myself. We can’t go back Tyler – we can’t be young again. We can’t be those people anymore. We have to look forward now. I hope you can understand that.”
“I don’t get it.”
She wanted to say, I know you don’t. Instead, she said, “I hope you find a way to get someplace better.”
“Listen, if you walk away from me I’ll—”
She cut the call and slipped the phone into her pocket. Took a second out. Amy had emerged from the plane’s door and was waving at her, beckoning her. She waved back and walked over to the Gulfstream. She was stronger than she used to be. No tears this time. Tyler was knocking off banks in San Jose and she was climbing into a seventy-five million dollar private jet to be with her new family.
“All good?” Amy asked.
Jodie wrapped her fingers around the wet metal airstair rail and skipped up into the plane.
“All good, boss.”
“Then let’s get going.”
*
Amy knew Jodie was lying, and she knew why. Everyone on the team except Hunter knew about the young Californian’s history with Tyler and all he had put her through before she joined the team. She had been working for him when she broke into Amy’s apartment in Washington and got caught, changing her life forever.
Amy decided against bringing any of this up. Jodie was smart but she could lose focus. The worst thing she could do now was talk to her and drag it all up to the surface. She would watch her and make sure she stayed on point. The mission was already looking significantly more dangerous, and perhaps more historically important, than even the Atlantis mission. No one could afford any mistakes.
When the aircraft was at altitude and heading out over the Atlantic on its way to Europe, she unbuckled her seatbelt and called the rest of the team to attention. Blanco stopped her and stepped over to the small galley.
“Nothing is happening until coffee.”
“Good call, Sal.”
When Hunter asked for tea, the gentle hum of the twin Rolls Royce turbofans was the only sound in the cabin.
“Is that just to be difficult?” Quinn asked.
“No, it’s because it’s a superior drink.”
Blanco laughed as he handed him the cup. “Sorry, Max. There’s tea, but no bone china cups.”
“I’ll overlook it just this once,” the Englishman said. “But get Quinn here to make a note for future reference.”
“Make it yourself,” she said. “I’m not your personal assistant.”
Hunter gave an affable shrug. “You couldn’t afford the suit.”
Amy raised her hand and silenced Quinn’s reply. “Ahem, we’re still all getting used to Max being on the team and we all have to adapt.”
Quinn turned to Hunter, blowing him a kiss. “Love you, Max.”
“And I like you too.”
Lewis chuckled. Quinn’s eyes narrowed and Amy stepped in once again.
“Okay, so moving on. As you are all aware, we’re flying to Italy to acquire a lion statue which we hope will provide a further clue to something we believe John the Apostle hid from the world.”
Lewis popped open his buckle and shifted in his seat. “When you say acquire, you mean steal, right?”
“Why do you think I’m here?’ Jodie said.
Amy gave him a sweet smile. “We have ascertained that the third Revelation statue is stored in a private museum in Rome. The first is in the HARPA vault in the basement of the FBI building back in DC. The second is with Neverov and his team but we have what we need from it. We know from translations of the verses on these statues that they contain concerning references to some sort of apocalypse. It’s fair to assume the third one will provide the missing key to the puzzle and let us know just what John was trying to hide from the world.”
Lewis shrugged. “Still stealing.”
“As such,” Amy said, ignoring him, “the United States Government has sanctioned the use of the HARP
A team to retrieve the lion statue. It’s considered a matter of vital national security. We have been chosen because we don’t officially exist and any mission we undertake can be totally denied. If we get caught, we get disavowed.”
“That’s fine with me,” Hunter said. “I still officially work for UNESCO anyway and my boss Juliette is very accommodating.”
“I’m sure she is,” Jodie said.
Hunter smiled wistfully. “She can’t resist my masculine charms.”
“Moving back to the mission,” Amy said patiently. “Our orders are to remove the statue from Gallo’s private museum as fast and silently as possible. Everything I have said is, of course, Top Secret, and it’s also what I like to call the good news.”
Blanco finished a long glug of coffee and sucked his teeth. “And the bad news?”
“The bad news is that the Neverov and his unit could well be ahead of us by now. By the time we get to the museum they might already have raided it.”
“And then we’re playing catch-up,” Lewis said.
“Right.”
“And there’s more bad news. As we have speculated, it’s possible Giuseppe Gallo is a high-ranking member of the Creed.”
“Last I heard, crossing them was not a good idea,” Quinn said. “We’re already up against a bunch of former KGB and Spetsnaz, Amy. You think it’s a good idea to make an enemy out of Gallo, too? This could make things much more dangerous for us.”
“Only if we screw up big time,” she said. “If Gallo doesn’t find out who took his little statue, then he can’t come after us.”
“I wish I shared your optimism.”
“We’ll be fine,” Blanco said. “If we can handle the Creed once, we handle them twice.”
“Sal’s right,” Hunter said. “We all know that the Creed are descended from the Illuminati and that’s scary, but we survived them before. Besides – we don’t even know Gallo is a part of them. For all we know, the Creed could be controlling Neverov. It’s all just speculation.”
“Okay, then,” Lewis said. “That’s reassuring.”
“In the meantime,” Amy said, “we use the rest of the flight to acquaint ourselves with the schematics of Gallo’s palazzo where he houses his museum. Time to get to work, everyone.”
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
The Palazzo Giuseppe Gallo sat near the east bank of the River Tiber, housed inside a traditional Rome building built in the 1560s. Just a few hundred yards from the world-famous Pantheon, access to the palazzo was granted to the public during very restricted hours for tax purposes. Most of the time, like tonight, the building was used only by the Marquis Giuseppe Gallo.
The team were studying the palazzo from a short distance away, enjoying espressos at a café table in the Piazza Navona. As they chatted and pointed things out, Jodie was smoking a cigarette in silence, her eyes crawling studiously along the roofline of the five hundred-year-old building. Shuttered windows, honey-colored plaster crumbling from the architrave and red terracotta tiles running along the raking cornice at the very top.
She sucked on the cigarette, not hearing the others as she searched for the building’s weaknesses. Considered escape routes. Controlled the thrill she felt at the prospect of breaking in and taking something that belonged to someone else.
The art of burglary.
“It’s a beautiful building,” Lewis said. “I love Italian architecture.”
Quinn laughed. “What the hell do you know about it?”
“As a matter of fact Meg and I came here a couple years ago, not long before we found out she was pregnant.”
“And that makes you an expert on the architecture?”
He shrugged. “At least I can appreciate something that isn’t made of pixels. No offense.”
“None taken, douchebucket.”
“That’s pretty juvenile, Quinn,” Lewis said. “Calling someone a name like that.”
Blanco shook his head and smirked. Turning to Quinn, he said, “What the hell is a douchebucket?”
She shrugged and pointed at Lewis. “That right there, I guess.”
Jodie ignored the banter. Hunter had authenticated the statues and translated from the ancient Greek. Lewis had figured out the biblical context of the verses. Quinn would hack the security. Now, it was all on her to find out how to get inside the palazzo. A Vespa raced across the Ponte Palatino, horn blaring as it undertook a taxi and flashed into the back streets of Borgo.
Jodie’s concentration was unbroken. She blew out a column of smoke and spoke in barely a whisper. “The easiest way in is gonna be one of the skylights.”
“What skylights?” Lewis asked.
“There are six,” she said. “You can’t see them from here.”
“How the hell do you know they’re there?” he asked, craning his neck up and trying to get a better view of the palazzo’s roof.
“Because I looked on Google Earth on the flight, douchebucket. It’s called prep.”
“Got it.”
“And look inside one of the windows on the top floor. Look carefully, and what do you see?”
“Just a wall.”
“Wrong, you see a wall with some light in the wrong place. That’s because the light from above is pitching down through the skylight and projecting on the wall. See the way there’s a trapezium of lighter paint on the wall?”
“Uh-huh.”
“Skylight.”
Lewis laughed. “Pure genius. And how might we get to the skylights?”
“There’s a pizza restaurant on the first floor of the building at the end of this road. As you can see, it’s connected. We go into the restaurant and go out the back and use their fire escape to get to the roof.”
“Fire escape?”
“I checked their website. They have pictures of the terrace around the back.”
Hunter grinned. “She doesn’t miss a trick, this girl.”
“This girl has broken into more places than you’ve made bad jokes, Hunter,” she said. “If you don’t plan, you get caught.”
Amy checked her watch. “Good work, Jodie. Let’s kill some time before nightfall.”
Waiting for darkness to fall, they left their table and strolled slowly through the quiet streets of Tor di Nona until they reached the ancient river. Here, lovers walked hand in hand on ancient cobblestones and the setting sun sparkled on the Tiber. Up on the Lungotevere Tor di Nona, more Vespas flashed past them and street vendors stepped forward to try and hustle them into buying cheap jewellery and tourist trinkets.
As they walked to the pizza restaurant, they spent a few more moments studying the palazzo – glancing through the front windows and up on the roof. It looked empty, but there would be rooms around the back. They had to proceed with caution and be ready for anything.
“Here we are,” Amy said, pushing open the restaurant’s door.
“Yep, this is the ground floor,” Hunter said.
“First floor,” Amy said.
“Ground floor.”
Blanco scratched his chin. “Whatever you want to call it, we’re in the right place.”
“Exactly,” Amy said. “I guess I’ll order a couple of pizzas and grab a table.”
“Nice,” Lewis said, slapping his hands together. “Make them extra-large and make sure one of them is loaded with anchovies.”
Quinn rolled her eyes. “We’re not actually going to eat them, fool. They’re cover.”
“Speak for yourself,” Lewis said. “I’m starving.”
“I’ll buy you a pizza as soon as we’re out of here,” Amy said. “I promise. Now, we go to work.”
As they gathered around a table near the back of the restaurant, Amy ordered the pizzas and Quinn took out her GDP Pocket laptop and started tapping away on the keyboard. Only fractionally larger than a smartphone, the compact computer packed a high-speed Intel CPU and offered the sort of real keyboard preferred by hackers.
“All right,” the pale young goth said coolly. “I already see the museum’s
wifi. Give me a second.”
“How long?” Amy asked.
“Not long. Exploiting any weaknesses in wifi security implementations isn’t the hardest thing in the world, and I doubt Gallo has anything special set up. We’re well within the transmission radius of their network access point, so now it’s just me and Mr Linux and Miss Aircrack.”
“Please,” Hunter drawled. “There’s no need for vulgarity.”
Quinn ignored him and carried on tapping away. She felt the pressure of the moment resting heavily on her shoulders. Was she up to it? Sometimes, her confidence faltered. She didn’t exactly hate herself, but she had what a college psychotherapist had once called low self-esteem. She guessed that was about right and she knew why. She knew when it started but she didn’t like to think about it. Talking about it was impossible. Maybe, even after several dumpster fire relationships, she would one day find someone who could listen in the right way. For now, the guard stayed up.
Guard was better than an act. She didn’t like to think of it as an act. That meant deceiving the people around her. The stupid young woman in the Nirvana t-shirt playing games, guarding her true emotions from the world. The big hacker with serious attitude who hacked NASA, downloaded two million dollars’ worth of top secret source code and used it to hack into the International Space Station.
Yeah, that stupid young woman.
The stupid young woman who got bored on her nineteenth birthday and hacked into the Bank of America and stole over a hundred million ATM card numbers and pins. And yet, she was in her early twenties now but still though of herself as a stupid kid.
“So you can do it, then?”
It was Amy. She was getting impatient.
“I got into Bank of America in fifteen minutes,” she said, still looking down at her computer screen. “Something tells me Signor Gallo’s private museum will be much easier.”
Lewis craned his neck over Blanco and looked up at the open kitchen. Steam billowed up into the air and rolled along the ceiling as one of the chefs slid another pizza into the wood oven. The smell of garlic and sun-dried tomatoes and basil drifted out across the restaurant. “Man, do you smell that prosciutto? That smells great. You think they can get our pizzas here before Quinn shuts down the museum’s security?”
