Roberts & Maclay
Thriller
Copyright © 2020 by Roberts & Maclay (Roberts & Maclay Publishing). All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the authors, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
Translator: Edwin Miles / Copyeditor: Philip Yaeger
Imprint: Independently published
Cover Art by reinhardfenzl.com
Cover Art was created with images from: depositphotos.com (portokalis, marchello74, ccaetano, _Ansud_, fightingfear, I_g0rZh, iLexx) and Shutterstock.com (Gio.tto)
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.
www.robertsmaclay.com
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Contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Chapter 45
Chapter 46
Chapter 47
Chapter 48
Chapter 49
Chapter 50
Chapter 51
Chapter 52
Chapter 53
Chapter 54
Chapter 55
Chapter 56
Chapter 57
Chapter 58
Chapter 59
Chapter 60
Chapter 61
Chapter 62
Chapter 63
Chapter 64
Chapter 65
Chapter 66
Chapter 67
Chapter 68
Chapter 69
Chapter 70
Chapter 71
Chapter 72
Chapter 73
Chapter 74
Chapter 75
Chapter 76
Chapter 77
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“They that take the sword shall perish with the sword.”
From “Brockes Passion,” Part 1
Score by Georg Philipp Telemann (1681-1767)
Text by Barthold Heinrich Brockes (1680 - 1747)
1
Cattedrale di San Giovanni Battista, Turin, Italy
Jacinto Guerra had to take a big step to avoid stumbling over the corpses of the three guards that lay in front of him on the floor of the church. He had just removed the Shroud of Turin from the glass cabinet at the altar. Taking care not to damage it, he rolled it up.
He paused in his work for a moment and listened. On a pew beside him, the baroque strains of Georg Philipp Telemann’s “Musique de table” emanated from the small JBL Bluetooth speaker he had set up. He was particularly fond of the rondo. One of his companions, the one with a scar slashed across his right cheek, approached him and reached out to take the shroud. Guerra’s hand shot up, stopping Scarface in his tracks. He required concentration, and absolute silence. He would not hesitate for a split second to cut the throat of anyone who dared disturb the sublime passage in which the flutes alternated with the orchestra, as if in a dialogue. Scarface knew this and froze in mid-movement, his eyes wide and fixed on Guerra. At almost six foot six, Guerra was a giant—muscular, his face cruel, its lines carved too deeply for his forty-something years. He did not look like a man sensitive enough to love music. He looked, in fact, like the killer he was. And yet there he stood, immersed in the music as if in a trance. With the patience of an angel, Scarface waited until the rondo was over and Guerra returned to the world around him.
“Into the backpack, soldier!” Guerra handed the roll of cloth to the man, whose name simply would not stick in his head. For him, he was simply Scarface.
“That’s Italians for you,” Scarface said. “When they put the real shroud on display and run thousands of tourists through here like cattle, security’s tighter than Fort Knox.”
“And at night there’s just a couple of watchmen, and they didn’t slow us down for long,” said Guerra, glancing again at the three bodies. Scarface nodded and packed the shroud—measuring almost fifteen feet by four unrolled—into the leather document roll made especially to protect it.
“You can reset the alarm system,” Guerra said to the third man. “Let’s tell not only the good people of Turin but the whole world that another sacred relic’s been stolen. If we’re going to this much trouble to collect all this Catholic junk, we ought to at least make sure we get a little PR out of it.” He spoke the last sentence more to himself than to anyone else.
Guerra gazed through the nave of the cathedral and regretted that he hadn’t had the time to finish his work properly. For him, “finish it properly” meant finish it the way he had the previous week, when he had stolen the Crown of Thorns from Notre Dame: with an inferno that made headlines around the globe. That was their mission: to attract attention. Inspire fear. Sow terror. The Notre Dame fire had been the perfect start, and Guerra had no intention of deviating from that perfection in the projects still to come.
“Okay. Alarm system’s up and running again. It’ll go off in ten,” said the second of the two mercenaries, neither of whom had any idea of the real plan, and presumably had no interest in it either.
“Perfect.” Guerra tilted his head slightly, the order to go. Men of this caliber needed no lengthy thank-you speeches. A gesture of respect, soldier to soldier, and the timely transfer of the fee was quite enough. No need to go on about it.
Purposefully, but without haste, the three men made their way to the cathedral exit. Just before they left the church by the side entrance leading to the Piazza San Giovanni, they pulled off the woolen masks they wore with a synchronized movement. The black garments that, together with the masks, had marked them as criminals, transformed in a moment into the robes of priests. The three Heckler & Koch pistols they carried vanished into the large side pockets of their soutanes.
The square beside the cathedral was dark and silent. It had rained heavily not long before, and the streets were wet and fetid—the usual stink that congealed in a big city when it was too humid. The streetlamps had gone off for a few hours in this part of Turin. Guerra smiled, reminded once again of just how far their influence reached. One call was enough, and the switch would be thrown just f
or them. Sometimes their schemes were just a little too easy. But the thought was abruptly interrupted.
“Padre, can you spare a few cents for me? I haven’t eaten for days.”
Guerra, by nature, was a stranger to fright and surprise. His pulse barely rippled when he heard the child’s voice behind him. The other two men, obviously, took the unexpected intrusion less lightly, sudden uncertainty on their faces.
Guerra raised both hands and indicated to them to wait a moment. He went down on one knee before the boy and looked him in the eye. The youngster looked to be about twelve years old. “What are you doing out here all alone in the middle of the night?” Guerra asked in a gentle voice that took his two companions by surprise.
The boy looked into Guerra’s cold, gray eyes. “I broke out of the orphanage a few weeks ago. All the rules they had bugged me. I read a book in the library just a little while ago, about Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn, and I want to be just as free as them,” the boy said.
There was pride in the boy’s eyes. Guerra turned down the corners of his mouth and nodded appreciatively.
“So you’re someone who doesn’t like to stick to the rules, are you? A little mutineer, am I right?”
“Yes,” said the boy, his eyes radiant. “I have a dream. I want to be a race car driver and earn a ton of money. I don’t need school for that, or any teacher or master to tell me what I can or can’t do.”
Guerra’s companions were growing nervous. The alarm inside the cathedral would go off soon, and the whole area would be buzzing with carabinieri before they knew it. One of the men tapped frantically at his watch. Guerra ignored them and calmly went on talking to the boy.
“What’s your name, my son?” Guerra grinned almost imperceptibly. He was starting to enjoy the role of priest.
“Raffaele,” the boy replied hastily.
Guerra ran his hand over the boy’s head, mussing his hair a little. The youngster clucked his tongue and looked at Guerra with a broad grin.
“Rules are important, Raffaele. Otherwise, the world would get completely out of control, and everyone would do whatever they felt like doing. Most people in this world aren’t mature enough to deal with freedom. They need rules, they need laws they can follow. People are simply too stupid for freedom. They need a strong hand that shows them what they’re supposed to do.”
Raffaele nodded but didn’t say anything. He did not understand exactly what the padre was trying to tell him. Guerra looked around to his two companions and slowly rose from his crouch. He looked down at the boy and reached into the pocket of his soutane. Raffaele’s eyes grew large. “Thank you, Padre!” he said, before Guerra’s hand had reemerged. He plainly thought that the priest was going to give him a few euros and that he could finally get himself something to eat. Then everything happened at once: Guerra pressed his pistol to the boy’s head and pulled the trigger without a moment’s hesitation. The suppressor turned the cold-blooded act into a harmless “pfft.” Raffaele’s head tipped back and his skinny body slumped to the ground. Guerra’s companions, who had seen a lot in their mercenary lives, looked at Guerra with horror and a little disgust.
“No witnesses,” Guerra said, betraying no emotion. Without turning around, he strode off toward the corner of Via IV Marzo, where they had left the old Alfa Romeo 156.
2
Milan Airport, Italy
“Paging passenger Tom Wagner for Austrian Airlines Flight AUA158 to Vienna. Passenger Tom Wagner, please proceed to Gate D7.”
With a start, Tom came to his senses and looked around in confusion. It took him a few seconds to realize that he had nodded off in the VIP lounge at Milan Airport.
“I repeat: Passenger Tom Wagner, please go immediately to Gate D7.”
He shook his head. “Can’t anyone say my name right? My father was American. It’s not pronounced ‘Vahg-ner’,” he mumbled in annoyance. He’d been traveling for more than twenty-four hours: first the flight from Acapulco to Miami, then a seven-hour wait for his connection to Milan, and now another four hours had passed . . . three more and he could finally put his feet up at home. Fortunately, Tom had been blessed with the enviable ability of being able to take a nap wherever he happened to be. On the other hand, this same talent had landed him in hot water more than once.
Tom calmly gathered his things and glanced at the screens in the lounge, where a news program was being broadcast. The Shroud of Turin had been stolen the previous night, joining a growing list of purloined relics. In the past week, in addition to the shroud, thieves had stolen the Crown of Thorns from Notre Dame, the bones of the Three Wise Men from Cologne Cathedral, and the Holy Nails from Rome and Monza. On the news, they were speculating that Arab extremists were behind the raids. At the same time, however, people were glad that Cologne Cathedral had not fallen victim to arson the way Notre Dame had. The unusually high number of airplane hijackings in recent weeks was also being put down to ISIS.
Tom was just about to head for the gate when he stopped mid-stride. His gaze was locked on the forearm of a man who was just helped himself to an espresso from the VIP lounge buffet. The man’s sleeve had slipped up a little, revealing a tattoo:
It was a symbol Tom hadn’t seen for years, but it was burned indelibly into his memory. Nothing in the world would ever make him forget the first and—until today—the last time he had seen that symbol. From one instant to the next, his life had become a living hell. The car bomb that had killed his parents. The explosion that had made Tom an orphan. The actual memories of that day in Syria were dim in Tom’s mind. Pain, tears and desperation smothered almost everything that had happened. But one thing had stuck in little Tom’s memory: the man with the jubilant smile who suddenly stood beside him as he stumbled in tears through the rubble, the man wearing the exact same tattoo, who had put his arm around Tom and leaned down to him. He had pointed to the countless bodies, the blood-soaked soil and body parts strewn all around that surreal scene. “Remember one thing: what you see here is what happens when someone sticks their nose into things that are none of their business.” Then he had straightened up again, clapped Tom on the shoulder and left, laughing.
Tom would never forget the day, the face, the voice, or the tattoo. Or the music. For a reason Tom could not understand, he associated the death of his parents with a piece of music that had been stuck in his head all these years. The tattoo and that piece of music had stalked him in his sleep, fueling years of nightmares. Now all of it had come back into his life with no warning, like a punch to the gut.
Twenty-five years later: the same man, the same tattoo. Tom felt the heat rise inside him. He stared at the man in astonishment and did not move an inch. His head was spinning. He tried to pull himself together, to separate his emotions from his rational mind. His emotional side wanted to grab hold of the man then and there, confront him, knock him down, even kill him. The rational side—the elite fighter, the officer of the Austrian antiterrorist unit Cobra—stopped him from doing anything so foolish.
Another announcement: “Passenger Tom Wagner for Austrian Airlines Flight AUA158 to Vienna. Passenger Tom Wagner, please proceed to Gate D7 at once.”
The tattooed man calmly departed the VIP lounge and Tom could do nothing but follow him. He slid his phone from his pocket and, as unobtrusively as possible, took several pictures of him. He immediately sent the pictures to his friend Noah. Noah would run the images through facial recognition, and would no doubt come up with a match.
For now, there wasn’t much else Tom could do. The man was on the way to his gate. Tom followed him as far as the security checkpoint, but was unable to discover the man’s destination. Still, he knew Noah would find something. Since he’d been confined to a wheelchair Noah had become a true IT wizard. No code, no firewall, no encryption could keep him out. And in the course of his career, he’d built up an extensive network, with dependable contacts among the Americans, the Israelis, even the Russians and Arabs. Noah would find the guy; Tom was sure of it.
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“This is the final call for passenger Tom Wagner for Austrian Airlines flight AUA158 to Vienna. Passenger Tom Wagner, please proceed to Gate D7 immediately. You are delaying takeoff.”
He glanced at the departures board and quickly found which way he had to go. He broke into a run—he really could not afford to miss this flight. He had an assignment waiting for him in Vienna starting early the next day. Another boring assignment, as usual, but that was his job. His thoughts still with the unknown man, he took a left, raced down the escalator two steps at a time, ignored the moving walkway so beloved of lazy passengers, and spotted his gate about a hundred yards ahead. The waiting area was completely empty. Tom waved to the woman at the ticket desk, who screwed up her face in annoyance.
The Sacred Weapon: A Tom Wagner Adventure Page 1
