The Devil's Triangle

by Catherine Coulter

  As she watched the satellites spin, she marveled at the power of the technology their grandfather had created. All based on a weather machine developed early in the last century by Nikola Tesla and Appleton Kohath, using an early application of Tesla’s famous Coil. She’d read in the family letters that when Appleton had shown Tesla the papers and drawings Da Vinci had made of a weather machine, La Macchina, Tesla had exploded with ideas, and together they’d tried a number of approaches to creating a working model, and they’d known success, of a sort.

  Their first method was to send a large, unregulated weather balloon into the air to spray out a crystal cloud accelerant they had heated in a powerful electric field. They were able to create a spectrum of weather events, often by enhancing the processes that would naturally occur in nature. But they couldn’t control the results to the degree Appleton wanted.

  But now, with his satellites and lasers in place, her grandfather could energize the atmosphere more precisely, and with pinpoint accuracy create a windstorm or thunderstorm, depending on conditions in a fifty-mile prearranged radius. Cassandra knew his genius was the only reason they’d been able to refine their ideas using the newer technology. He’d tried to explain it to her, and she did understand some of it. She knew building storms involved creating a massive electric charge in midair by focusing the laser beams of three satellites into the lower atmosphere, and this caused a chain reaction among the charged particles, ending in a massive discharge, like a great ball of lightning, a sort of firestorm in the sky. She believed that somehow, the swirling pattern of combustion Grandfather created caused a massive downdraft of air, and updrafts all around it. If there was moisture in the air, massive clouds quickly formed. If not, the wind itself would rip up the ground below. Over water, the growing disturbance quickly spun into a powerful hurricane.

  She’d seen it happen, watched a small cloud form in a pure blue sky, almost in the blink of an eye, with a center like a blinding golden ball with lobes that would start to spin in the clouds formed around it. Then it would spin upward, like a rising tornado, the fiercely glowing firestorm still inside it, and the massive winds would follow. The storm would move in the winds it created and make landfall as a controlled and intense weather event. It was fascinating to watch. Ajax understood enough, and soon now, he would take Grandfather’s place, and they would have the control, make the important decisions, not Grandfather.

  It was amazing, really. Over the years, Grandfather had gotten more and more precise, and the Genesis Group coffers were kept full on the backs of the localized disasters, buying and shorting stocks of the insurance, construction, and supply companies most affected, sometimes buying and selling them wholesale. Their spiderweb of finances was run out of Singapore by a brilliant analyst, Landry Rodgers, a Brit, whose soul had been suitably corrupted years before. Landry was a man as skilled at manipulating investments as Grandfather was at controlling barometric pressure.

  Appleton and Nikola Tesla would have been proud. Their concept—Da Vinci’s concept—had been perfected in fewer than one hundred years.

  She sat back in her chair and watched the screens. Suddenly, a spear of sun caught the golden edge of the cherubim’s wing, making it shimmer. She reached out a finger and traced the long line of the wing’s edge. What she and Ajax had believed were grooves carved in the gold to create the illusion of feathers, were now more visible in the bright light. Not grooves—there were glyphs carved into the gold.

  She pulled a magnifying sheet out of her drawer and looked more closely. The markings weren’t unfamiliar to her, but she couldn’t read them. Had they been made in the beginning, when the Ark was built, or were they a more recent addition?

  She looked up to see Ajax come into her office.

  “What are you doing?”

  She gestured toward the phone. “I need you. Come here and look. There are some markings on the edge of the wing, runes or glyphs, I can’t tell which. Nor can I tell when they were made.”

  She handed him the magnifying sheet, and he bent low over the wing fragment. He looked up, his eyes shining as bright as the cherubim’s wing.

  “They look like Cuneiform, and that predates Moses by a few thousand years.”

  “Shouldn’t markings from his era be in Hebrew?”

  “That would be the most logical language, yes. Give me a sheet of paper and a pencil. Let me see if I can decipher this.”

  She did, and he bent his head over the gold, scribbling on the paper. “It will take me some time to translate. But a few I can pick out—Oh, I’m wrong. It’s Phoenician. Makes more sense, and makes things easier. See, here’s the glyph for door, and here’s . . .” He stopped.

  “What? What is it?”

  “Weapon.”

  Cassandra stared.

  He scribbled for a few more minutes, then met his twin’s eyes. “It’s a warning. It reads: Through this door lies a weapon of great power. Open it, and it will indeed kill.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “Something to do with the power of the Ark, surely a warning to those who aren’t Levites or Kohaths, so it doesn’t apply to us. Still, it doesn’t get us any closer to finding the Ark itself. Unless”—he paused, studied the cherubim’s wing—“unless the wing will somehow guide us to the rest of the Ark.”

  “As in divine magic of some sort? As in it gave you warmth and I heard its buzzing? You really think it could search out the rest of the cherubim itself?”

  He shrugged. “Who knows? I came to tell you I’ve instructed the crew to start a fresh dig in the southeast quadrant. It’s one of the few spots we haven’t searched extensively.”

  “Good idea. But first things first. We must alert Grandfather.” She picked up the encrypted satellite phone and started the detailed process of calling the Genesis Group’s true headquarters in the Caribbean. Before she could finish dialing, there was a knock at her office door.

  “Come.”

  Lilith entered. At the look on her face, Ajax jumped to his feet.

  “What is it?”

  “We have a problem. A very big problem. Major Russo failed. They’re on their way here—the FBI agents and the Fox.”

  CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

  Ajax cocked his head at her and said, his voice soft, “I don’t understand this, Lilith. How could they even know about us?”

  “I don’t know,” Lilith said, and took a step back at the look on his face.

  Again, that soft voice. “You should know, Lilith. You should know everything about this mess. You were MI5, you know all the players, all their skills, their resources. You’ve had control, always carried through. But this time you’ve screwed up royally.”

  “It is not my fault. Major Russo’s men should have killed them. But now they’re all dead. I was following, and I found them. One of Russo’s men wasn’t dead yet, he told me Drummond was still alive, and the fool died without telling me anything else. I came here to alert you.”

  Cassandra slowly rose, splayed her hands on her desk. Unlike her brother’s, her voice was hard as chipped ice. “Lilith, it is you who has failed. You were in charge of everything—the thief, the plan to kill her, and when that failed, the plan to capture her husband to draw her out. And now you’re saying it was Russo who couldn’t get the job done?”

  Lilith wanted to leave now, run out that door and keep running. She ran her tongue over her lips. “Drummond is better than anyone could have expected.”

  “Cassandra is right,” Ajax said. “It is you who are always preaching accountability, Lilith, that one must always take the blame as well as the praise. Isn’t that true?”

  “Yes, of course, but Ajax, these FBI, the Drummond agent, I couldn’t have imagined they’d manage to beat Russo’s men. He’s very proud of the killers he’s trained, and you have to admit, he’s performed admirably for us for years.”

  He pulled her against him, put his arms around her, held her close, and Lilith eased. He ran his fingers through her hair, whisp
ered against her temple, “I begin to believe this Drummond must be a magician. Perhaps he waved his wand and destroyed Russo’s men.” He kissed her, leaned back, and before she knew what was happening, a stiletto buried itself in her chest, up to the hilt. “Goodbye, Lilith.” She heard his soft voice as if from a great distance, but there was no regret. No regret. She died in his arms, his voice chiming in her head, soft, so very soft.

  Ajax eased her to the floor. He pulled his knife from her breast and wiped it off on Lilith’s black slacks.

  He looked up at Cassandra, who hadn’t moved. “I will miss her,” he said.

  Cassandra said, “They’re coming here.”

  He leaned down, picked Lilith up, and threw her over his shoulder. “I’ll be back. I’ll bury her in one of the tunnels. And, Cassandra, crash the public server for Genesis, put up a 404 message that we’ve been hacked and we’ll be back online very soon. We can’t run the risk of this Drummond and his team getting into our servers.”

  She nodded.

  He paused at the doorway. “We will find a way to stop this FBI agent. He and his team have been smart enough to find out about us, then we must assume he also has an idea of what we can do with the weather.”

  “I know what we’ll do,” Cassandra said, and her eyes sparked with excitement. “We will have Grandfather wipe out Washington, D.C. Flatten them with a hurricane, maybe a tsunami. The United States government will fall, the headquarters for the FBI will fall—it will be chaos. We will be the last thing on the FBI’s mind.”

  Ajax stared at her. “That’s brilliant. But they’re coming here right now. We must find out exactly what they know. Then we will have Grandfather act, if it necessary.” He frowned, shifted Lilith’s weight to his other shoulder. “I wish I could be certain we will be able to convince Grandfather to flatten the U.S. capital, even if it is necessary to save us.”

  “If Grandfather refuses, you know how to reprogram a storm that’s already in the making, like the current one.”

  “Yes, I can do that, but I can’t program directionality myself without his formula.”

  “Yes, the precious formula in his bloody vault.” She smiled. “Don’t worry, we’ll figure it out. Can you imagine, you and I will bring an entire country to its knees. And then we’ll be safe.”

  CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

  Castel Rigone, Italy

  Both Nicholas’s and Mike’s phones buzzed as the Škoda sped along the highway toward Castel Rigone.

  Mike said, “You’re going to want to pull off. Adam was fast. Here are the plans for the Kohath palazzo. This place is huge.”

  Nicholas pulled the car off the edge of the road, into the driveway of a small abandoned farmhouse, and he, Mike, and Kitsune studied the four pages of architectural plans on Nicholas’s tablet.

  Mike whistled. “Congratulations to Adam for getting his hands on the plans. Look at this place, it’s three thousand square meters. That’s a lot of real estate for us to cover. And what’s all this?”

  There was another page attached to the documents. “It’s from Ben,” Mike said, scrolling down, “He sent it to Adam, and Adam forwarded it. It’s the palazzo’s history prior to the Kohaths’ buying it in 1905. Way back, the whole town was supposed to be a secret Knights Templar stronghold. Plus twenty more pages to keep us entertained.” She laughed. “He’s even marked all his conjectures in red type so we don’t get confused.”

  Kitsune said, “There has to be another way in than by the front door. Given the palazzo is so old, I know there are dungeons or an ancient basement, and I’m betting that’s where they’ve got Grant stashed. With Lilith running the show, they know all about him, how dangerous he can be, so they wouldn’t simply put him in a guest room.” She pushed her hair off her face. “He’s probably drugged.”

  Nicholas pointed to the screen. “The main entrance is on the square, smack-dab in the middle of town, and the others are down the hill, here and here. I don’t know if they’re guarded, but it stands to reason there are at least a few armed men around.”

  Kitsune said, “Wait, look—there are the tunnels I remembered. There are so many of them, under the mountain, connecting to the palazzo, crisscrossing under the town. All over the place. As I told you, this was Etruscan territory—there have been lots of archaeological digs going on around here for many years. All I need is to find a tunnel entrance and I can go in that way, find Grant.”

  Mike said, “All right, it only makes sense that the tunnels connect to the house, but, Kitsune, didn’t you say it’s been years since they had archaeological digs here? So they’re probably blocked off, the tunnels caved in.”

  Nicholas raised a brow. “You’re thinking of Paris and our lovely evening in the crypts, aren’t you?”

  Mike shuddered. “I am. I’m not anxious to go for a walk under a mountain, that’s for sure. And I don’t know if it would be safe enough for Kitsune alone.”

  Kitsune said, “Let me key up Ben’s diagrams of the tunnels. See? I can tell this is an abandoned Etruscan dig site. You can bet the Italian government will have assured it was preserved. It runs right up to the wall of the house, directly into the back. Looks like basements to me. If Mike can get to the door, I can come up through the tunnel, and she can let me in.”

  Mike was nodding her head. “It’s a good plan, Nicholas, if the tunnels are still workable. Will our comms work that far underground? It looks like about a mile from the entrance here”—she pointed at a spot on the map—“to here, the city wall, and the back of the palazzo.”

  “I can’t guarantee they will,” he said. “I have an amplifier. It shouldn’t be an issue for Mike and me, but I don’t know if we’d be able to follow Kitsune through the tunnels. Kitsune, once you’re close enough to the house it should work. Assuming you can get close to the house.”

  Mike said, “But there’s another problem.”

  “What?”

  “How are we going to deal with their security? If they have any brains at all, they aren’t alone up there. You won’t be able to waltz through the back door, and into the house, you know they’ll be watching our every move. We know men brought Grant here, and they are more than likely guarding him. Add in whatever staff they have at the house, cameras, sensors—”

  “I’m already on it,” Nicholas said. “Let’s see what Adam’s come up with.”

  The call connected, Nicholas hit speaker.

  “Adam, we’re in place and ready to go. The house in Castel Rigone—I don’t know how you got hold of the plans and I don’t want to know. Well done. Have you figured out the security specs yet?”

  “Give me a minute, I’m finishing running the reports. By the way, we had a quick visit with Lia. She’s feeling better, they’re going to discharge her tomorrow. Her dad is pretty cool. He waltzed right into the administrator’s office in the Doge’s Palace, asked the man to lunch, and off they went, had a big time, Lia told us. I think they’ve got a flight home tomorrow.”

  “Good. Everything else okay there?”

  “We found three listening devices planted throughout the suite. They’ve been taken care of. And we’re making progress. Louisa is crashed in her room, they finally finished processing the piazza but not a single thank-you from Major Russo for all her help, nor an apology to us for their missing the shoot-out.” He snorted. “I think Louisa probably gave him what for. I asked Gray for help piecing together the financials. No irregularities so far, but we’re still searching. Okay, here we go, I’ve got their plans.” He whistled. “You’re screwed. The house has full-on security. Everything from thermal sensors to motion detectors to on-air live surveillance. They have to have a whole team to run this, it’s pretty extensive.”

  “Awful lot of security for a private home.”

  “It is. There’s something going on there, that’s for sure.”

  “So how do we get around it? We need to send Kitsune in the back through the tunnels while Mike and I go in the front.”

  “You’ll
have to find a way to turn it off. Cutting off the electricity won’t work, they’ll have plenty of generators. I bet the power goes off around that area a lot.”

  Nicholas said, “Well, if we can’t turn it off—”

  They could practically see Adam grinning over the phone. “There is one way. You do have that Faraday bag in your kit, right?”

  “Yes I do, and I like the way you think. Thank you for reminding me. We’ll be in touch. Keep monitoring us, please. I don’t want to get into trouble and not have someone to call in the cavalry.”

  “Do you want me to contact the local Carabinieri?”

  “No,” Nicholas said. “Let’s hold that in reserve. Who knows how many people are on the Kohaths’ payroll.”

  “Good luck getting the security system down.”

  “Thanks.” He hung up and grinned at Mike. “I’ve been wanting to try this.”

  Mike said, “I know you have. You and Adam both, not to mention Gray. He is going to be bummed when he finds out we used it without him. If it works,” she added.

  “I looked it over. I’m about ninety percent sure. We tested it in New York, but under controlled circumstances. I think it’s worth a shot.”

  “Try what?” Kitsune asked.

  “I have a micro electromagnetic pulse—EMP.”

  She gave him a high five. “I like a man who’s always prepared. You think a small electromagnetic pulse will knock out their security system. But what about—”

  “—I’m three steps ahead of you. I have a Faraday bag to go with my micro EMP. We’ll have to put all our comms, mobiles, earwigs, everything electronic we’ll need from here on out in here.”

  He dug in his leather briefcase and pulled out what looked like a large Ziploc bag, but it was opaque silver.