The Illuminati Endgame (The Relic Hunters 7)

by David Leadbeater

  What next?

  “No matter what,” he said, “we have to hurry. Those are our friends up there.”

  Cassidy hauled the unconscious civilian to her feet and started marching her back toward the visitor center. On the way, Bodie and Pang pulled Adelaide up and forced her to walk before them. The morning was now advanced enough to welcome the first signs of visitors from over the horizon.

  “This won’t be what they’re expecting to see,” Bodie muttered.

  “Don’t worry,” Pang said. “I have a number to call.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY THREE

  It didn’t take long to drive to Pang’s safehouse in the town of Salisbury, throw their captives into two separate rooms, then convene in the large kitchen and open-plan lounge area. Despite the urgency, Bodie and Jemma took the opportunity to listen, talk and cook, throwing three packs of bacon onto two grills, and readying a whole loaf of bread.

  Cassidy brewed strong, hot coffee. No matter who you were, if you were serious about your mission, you ate and drank when you got the chance.

  “Ten ore samples,” Cassidy said as she distributed different varieties of coffee. “Lucie and Heidi. The Illuminati really do have everything.”

  Bodie took a seat on the couch, a crispy bacon sandwich flapping precariously in one hand. “They’ve got our ore samples too,” he said. “After all the effort we put into getting them...” He sighed. “It’s gutting.”

  His mind ran back through their adventures in Egypt, Algeria and the mega-mission to Everest base camp. From Loch Ness to Stonehenge and then it all went wrong. It wasn’t often they fell at the last hurdle.

  Sunlight streamed through a nearby window, a block of sunshine falling across his legs. Through the open pane, the familiar sounds of normality turned the overwhelming sense of disaster up a notch. Nobody out there knew what was coming.

  Come to think of it... neither did they.

  Bodie rubbed his aching knee and assessed his colleagues. In addition to Cassidy, Jemma and Yasmine, Pang was seated across from him. Butcher stood in a corner, looking uptight. There were also two local CIA ‘representatives’—local meaning London-based—and a British Intelligence officer with short, cropped hair named Terri. Every man and woman present—with the probable exception of Butcher—was field tried, tested and capable.

  “What’s your plan?” Pang asked.

  “There is only one plan,” Cassidy said. “Find the crucible.”

  “I’m assuming from your lack of effort that Heidi has no tracking device on her?” Bodie asked Pang. “No CIA implants, or whatever you arseholes do these days?”

  Pang shook his head. “She may still have her phone...” He glanced at Butcher.

  The young man shook his head. “I tried. No luck.”

  Bodie nodded at Butcher. “And we have no idea where they might be taking them. That leaves us just one option.”

  Pang looked up expectantly, mouth stuffed with bread. “Interrogation?”

  Cassidy was already rolling her shoulders in anticipation. “I get the Illuminati tyrant first.”

  Pang jumped up. “Soften her up for me. I’ll be along later.”

  Cassidy gave him the finger.

  Bodie put down his plate and sprang after her before a sharp reminder of how much his knee hurt stopped him. “Hey,” he said. “Slow down. This is the only chance we’ll get. I mean, we’ll put Butcher on finding the new Illuminati headquarters, but I don’t hold out much hope.”

  “He’s tech savvy,” Cassidy said. “And our queen in here doesn’t need to know we’re out of options and time.”

  Bodie nodded.

  Cassidy pushed through a door. Inside was a plain unfurnished room with a bricked-up window. Adelaide stood in one corner, nursing her elbow but otherwise looking none the worse for wear after falling out of the helicopter. The redhead’s face was pasty white, but Cassidy remembered that was relatively normal for her. Flaming locks fell over her shoulders and framed two burning blue eyes. Adelaide’s body was coiled, as if preparing to attack.

  “You know,” Cassidy said, closing the door behind her. “I remember you well. From my own interrogation. Do you recollect?”

  Adelaide frowned, unsure what was coming next. “Of course. I remember your distinctive squeal. Something like a cross between a pig and a burning cat. Such a shame the Great Dragon didn’t taste you.”

  Cassidy pursed her lips. “Yes, we stopped your black mass that day. Was Satan unhappy with you? Did he ignore you for the rest of the day?”

  Adelaide blinked at the unexpected question and slur. “The Great Dragon holds no truck with base human emotions.”

  “Really? But that’s where you’re wrong. I’ve had dealing with assholes like you before. Years ago, when I was on the streets. Before I was... saved. Pricks like you, who used to prey among the homeless. I learned all about your black masses and your orgies.”

  Adelaide shrugged. “The Great Dragon needs to be satiated.”

  “You mean he likes to watch?”

  “He feeds off our energies. He does not take part. He revels in our worship and the more we debase ourselves the more powerful he becomes. Maybe, one day, he will even take notice of one of us.”

  “Of you?”

  Adelaide’s blue eyes were shining. “That is my greatest hope.”

  “Dumb shit.” Cassidy closed the gap between them. “You enjoy inflicting pain. You love coupling with strangers. You like dealing death. The smell of blood makes you horny, doesn’t it? I see the perversion in you. The way you squirm when I expose your base desires.”

  Adelaide coughed and swallowed, but never took her eyes away from Cassidy’s. “I am superior. How we treat the non-believers has no bearing on us, on our future. The Great Dragon will provide. He always has.”

  Cassidy nodded. “I see. And how’s the Great Dragon gonna stop me from killing you?”

  She leapt and kicked out with her right foot, burying her boot in Adelaide’s stomach. The redhead folded with a gasp. Cassidy waited.

  “C’mon, Satan.” She looked to the room’s corners. “Come and save your most loyal bitch.”

  Adelaide looked up through eyes swimming in pain. “The Great Dragon feeds. On distress, on pain, guilt and hatred. On gossip, bullying, lies and ignorance. He will feed and he will grow.”

  Cassidy stepped back, seeing a dilemma. If Adelaide was so warped that she welcomed pain in any guise as a valid and welcome method of feeding her own Great Satan, then she was going about this all wrong. But how could you extract information from a captive who welcomed adversity, pain and death?

  “I want something from you,” Cassidy said.

  Adelaide rose to her feet, put her lips together and pouted. “If we fornicate, if we sweat hard, if we amass enough energy to satiate the Great Dragon one time, then I will answer one question truthfully.”

  Cassidy paused, surprised out of her line of questioning. “A fair offer,” she said, “and I’m sure you’d enjoy it. But it’s not something I have any interest in.”

  “It’s a means to an end.” Adelaide shrugged. “Another time maybe.”

  Cassidy focused. “I need to know where they’re taking my friends. Where the crucible is. Oh, and where your new headquarters is.”

  Adelaide looked confused. “And you expect me to tell you? I won’t reveal one word without the proper service being bestowed.”

  “Yeah, you’re not getting serviced.” Cassidy shook her head. “But you will answer all of my questions.”

  “Make me.” Adelaide raised an eyebrow and bit her lower lip.

  Cassidy could feel a sexual tension emanating from the redhead. It was crazy how she assumed she could control and turn even this interrogation; a sure sign that she truly believed she was part of a superior system.

  “I will confine you,” Cassidy said. “I will make sure you stay in solitary for the rest of your miserable life. No interaction. No worship. No possible way to feed the Devil. Your hands will be tied
, your body covered. That will be the end of your life.”

  Adelaide’s face fell.

  “Do you understand? No pleasures. No men, no women. Nothing except one hour in the rain in an empty yard and then twenty three staring at four cell walls. If you don’t help me, I promise that will be the very best of your future.”

  Adelaide shrank back against the wall. “I can’t.”

  Cassidy stood before her, a hard and ungiving assurance in her stance.

  Adelaide reached out for her, hands shaking, but Cassidy thrust them away. Adelaide started to unbutton her jeans, but Cassidy shook her head in revulsion. Adelaide sank to her knees.

  “You’re my prisoner,” Cassidy said. “For as long as I want. Your days of worship, of horrible corruption and twisted desire are over. We can tie you to a dozen murders. That’s a life sentence right there without taking anything else into consideration. So now, tell me... where is the Illuminati HQ?”

  Adelaide broke into sobs. Cassidy had expected a lot more fight from her, but now understood just how fragile and dependent her belief system was. It thrived on backup, strength and resources. It needed an awful lot of material and physical input. Take that away, and the hedonistic High Minerval had nothing to look forward to for the rest of her life.

  “I don’t know,” she whispered. “We fly in, fly out. It’s in the middle of a desert somewhere with rocks and things. Mountains, you know. You have to believe me... I don’t know.”

  Cassidy bared her teeth. “Don’t you give me that shit.”

  In truth, Cassidy did believe her. Adelaide wasn’t the kind of woman who would be aware of exact coordinates, rather she expected her subordinates to handle that kind of thing. From everything Cassidy knew of her, it made the most sense.

  “Are they taking my friends to your headquarters?”

  “Maybe, or they might go straight to the crucible. The Illuminati have had enough of waiting,” Adelaide sniffed. “We have become sick of standing around. We... they want their final endgame now.”

  “Which is?”

  “To reap the reward of Hades,” Adelaide said as if Cassidy was stupid. “Don’t you understand the prophecy by now?”

  “Sure I do,” Cassidy said. “Tell me more about this reward.”

  Adelaide narrowed her eyes. “I know only that it will mold the world anew,” she said. “A reward worthy of the Great Dragon. A reward left to us by our eminent ancestors—the Ishtari. It is our birth right, our just reward, our—”

  “Oh, shut up,” Cassidy muttered. “Don’t you ever get tired of that bullshit? So... it seems you have absolutely no idea what this reward might be? What form it takes?”

  “Form? It will reshape the world. Riches. It will redistribute wealth. Does the form matter?”

  Cassidy thought it mattered very much but didn’t waste her breath on Adelaide. “If you can’t direct us to your HQ,” she said. “You have only one chance left. Where’s the crucible?”

  Adelaide writhed in the corner, hugging the wall, falling to the floor and then standing back up. Horror, fear and indecision twisted her face.

  “I will not betray the Great Dragon,” she said through streams of tears.

  “It’s only material,” Cassidy said. “A material place. Your spiritual integrity is intact and... you can spend the rest of your life paying it back.”

  “Come closer,” Adelaide said. “Listen...”

  CHAPTER TWENTY FOUR

  Cassidy started to comply but then Adelaide’s right hand, twisted into a claw, flashed from the left. The sharp nails would have scarred her forever.

  Cassidy dodged and then kicked Adelaide in the shoulder, making her gasp. “Last chance. And then a life sentence of solitary.”

  “You think I would give up my brethren? My master? My whole world just to let a runt like you try to destroy them? You are as dumb as you are clueless. The Great Dragon will provide whether I feed him or not.”

  “You’re basing that on goodwill? On services rendered?” Cassidy laughed. “Don’t be too sure. The lowest corridors of Hell are lined with those that consume goodwill, that take and take and, when it’s time to give back, well... there’s always a reason why they just can’t seem to manage it.”

  “You’re speaking from experience.” Adelaide spat the words.

  “Of course I am. We all are. Pick any person, any place, on a random day and they’ll all have a similar tale. As humans, when we’re down, we reach out. We ask for help. And, when we’re on a high, on a roll, we give it. What could be simpler?”

  “And you’re saying that the Great Dragon doesn’t work that way?”

  “Now who’s the idiot? Your master feeds off lies, ill will, nastiness and witlessness. He embraces deception. He craves attention, endless awareness, constant worship.”

  Cassidy watched Adelaide’s face slacken before really turning the screw. “And then, when he stops hearing your voice and adulations, he will abandon you.”

  Adelaide scrunched her eyes shut. Cassidy’s words went to her very core. Sat cowering in a corner while being promised that her days of sumptuous material worship were at end, even though she’d live countless years longer under lock and key didn’t fit well with Adelaide. It made her tremble, made her moan in pain.

  “From Xiao to Han to Qi to Jin to Ming, and guarding the Silk Road. Where the Dragon Lines meet,” she recited.

  Cassidy held out her phone and found the voice recorder. “Say that again,” she said.

  *

  Bodie was impressed. It may have taken a while, but Cassidy had returned from the room with an answer. Judging by Cassidy’s face, that answer hadn’t been easily extracted either physically or mentally, but the remedy was in the results, so to speak.

  “What the hell does it all mean?” Pang grunted. “Why does it always have to be in code? One day, I’d be happy with just an address.”

  Although Bodie agreed with him, he didn’t respond. Instead, he grinned at Cassidy. “Good job in there. Did she break easy?”

  “Not as you would expect,” Cassidy admitted. “And I could have gotten it quicker but, hey, let’s not go there.” She looked around the room. “Who’s our geek?”

  Bodie was very much aware of Lucie’s absence. The new clue didn’t help allay his anxiety as to her wellbeing.

  Butcher had already stepped forward and placed his laptop on a coffee table. Now, he knelt before it and tapped at the keyboard.

  “This is my thing,” he said. “Been at this since kindergarten. I have an affinity with all things digital.”

  “Are we discussing the same thing?” Jemma asked. “Because that rhyme—or whatever it was—doesn’t feel digital. It feels old. Like Ishtari old.”

  “Sure it does, but the Silk Road is famous these days. And the names: Xiao, Han, Qi, Jin and Ming are fairly obvious.”

  Pang rolled his eyes. “They are?”

  Bodie shook his head. “Bloody hell, Pang, you really are just a blunt instrument, aren’t you? A mindless beast.”

  His words gave Pang pause, but Bodie was glad they weren’t directly questioned. In truth, he was as confounded as the blunt instrument.

  “They’re Chinese states,” Butcher said. “Or at least they were. I’m not entirely sure these days. Ming was the last Chinese dynasty ruled by the Han Chinese.”

  “And the Silk Road?” Cassidy asked.

  “Very famous. A trading route spanning over 1500 years of use. Opened by the Han dynasty in 130 BC and operating until 1453 it was neither a road nor a single path, rather a network of routes used by traders from all across the world. It was the original place to exchange goods and ideas between diverse peoples, four thousand miles of custom. One of its most famous travelers was Marco Polo.”

  “But how does it help us now?” Jemma asked.

  “That, I don’t know. But I have its route, and now all the various dynasties and states plotted on a map.”

  “From Xiao to Han to Qi to Jin to Ming,” Jemma recited from
memory. “And guarding the Silk Road, Where the Dragon Lines meet.”

  “Dragon lines?” Pang asked. “Don’t tell me this has something to do with the Devil too?”

  “Dragon lines is just another name for ley lines,” Bodie told him with a modicum of pleasure. “You need to pay more attention, mate.”

  Butcher tapped keys at a rapid rate. After twenty minutes, he looked up. “These dragon lines,” he said. “Do you have them plotted?”

  Bodie cursed silently. “It was all on Lucie’s computer and in her head,” he said. “Sorry, that’s on me.”

  “Not you,” Jemma leaned forward. “It’s on all of—”

  “Don’t be sorry,” Butcher interrupted. “During my initial investigation I plotted them myself. Here...”

  Bodie watched Pang. “You studied our mission closely then?”

  “Of course,” Butcher said. “Heidi wanted to know exactly what you were chasing and why. After learning that the Illuminati were involved, she had to know what we were up against.”

  “And it made it easier to find you,” Pang said.

  Bodie didn’t quite believe that of Heidi, but knew Pang was being serious. The guy was rarely anything else. “Okay, what do you have?”

  “Give me some time.”

  Bodie grabbed a bottle of water from the fridge and crossed over to the window. Salisbury—at least what he could see of it—sat sleepily in a midday haze, quite a positive change from recent days. But Bodie had been brought up in England and knew this could well be the calm before the storm.

  Lucie, he thought. Heidi. Hold on, we will find you. He didn’t like to think what might be happening to them.

  Were the Illuminati already there? At the crucible.

  “Maybe we should ask Adelaide where Hades is,” he said. “Just in case.”

  Cassidy gave him a pained look, then nodded, ready to rush in, but just then Butcher looked up.

  “This looks promising,” he said.