by Rick Jones
“Is Opus Dei involved in this?” asked Isaiah.
“No. Everything seems to come down to the fanaticism of a few.”
“A rogue group?”
“Possible. But I want backup in place to handle the situation if necessary.”
“Understood.”
After Kimball gave him the coordinates of where to meet him, he shut off the phone and returned it to his pocket. Then he opened his jacket and removed his suppressed weapon from its holster, checked it, then returned it.
“Expecting a confrontation, are you?” Father Ferrano asked.
“If this guy is anything like his brother, absolutely. I watched Isaiah throw a dozen punches in two seconds against the assassin inside of Conway Hall, and he didn’t even put a dent in the guy’s armor. And Isaiah is one of the best in the world at what he does and has no equal, as far as I’m concerned. This guy was like a runaway freight train. And the only way to stop him was by putting a bullet in his head, which I did because I had no other choice.”
For the duration of the trip thereafter, Father Ferrano drove to the assassin’s address in London in silence.
Chapter Thirty-Four
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God is neither a He nor a She, but a supreme spiritual force who controls the trillions upon trillions of components in Nature at any given time and moment, by manipulating everything from the smallest living organism of the microbe to the largest creature on the planet, to Nature’s perfection. God is Nature. And Nature is perfect. Robert Bowman sighed as he looked at the recent passage he had written that was to be in a follow-up to his latest bestseller, though a title had yet to be named. No one is ever going to read this, he thought. Though the assassin missed his mark, Robert Bowman died, nevertheless. My life is forever changed. After highlighting the passage on the computer, Bowman hesitated a moment before he finally hit the DELETE button, which caused the screen to go blank. Sitting back in the chair, the professor began to reflect. He grew up in a small suburb to a mother and father who lived simple lives. He went to school. Joined clubs. Excelled at academics. Went to college. Avoided fraternities to further his studies. Went on to be one of the best in his class. And then he finally made a name for himself with a book that finally made notable listings, such as the New York Times and USA Today bestseller lists, with his name in print for all to see. “Robert Bowman,” he murmured. “A descendant of Christ and a plague in the eyes of some. Congratulations, Mr. Bowman. You finally made it on top long enough to be pushed off the pinnacle of success.” Then he stabbed the button hard with the point of his finger and killed the computer.
“It’s not all bad,” said Joshua with a German clip to his accent from behind.
Then the large man entered the room. “You will forever be revered by the Vatican.”
“All my life I wanted a rock star’s recognition. I wanted success so badly that I stayed up nights dreaming about it.” He turned in his chair to face Joshua. “They say that if you envision something long enough, then it’ll happen. And it did to me, though briefly. Now I’m about to end up right where I started. I’m about to become nameless once again.”
Joshua sat on the armrest of a nearby sofa, his large frame causing something within the piece of furniture to whine in protest. “I’m afraid that you fail to see something that is much greater than your own personal conquests of achievement.”
“What? That I’m a descendant of Jesus?”
“Exactly. You come from a bloodline of someone who happened to be the king of kings. Therefore, you are a prince.”
“A prince? I’m nothing but a man on the run from people who are trying to kill me. My life, as I know it, is over. It’s gone. No matter what happens from this point on, I will never be able to make a difference again.”
“Is that what you believe?”
“It’s what I know. I’ve been exposed to those who know the truth. And the church will forever hide me because of the blood that runs through my veins and the genes that make me what I am. I’m no messiah,” he added. “I’m just a regular schmuck who had dreams of becoming famous or infamous, depending on one’s religious viewpoints. I wanted to be the object of controversy.” “And you were granted that moment, were you not?” Joshua got to his feet, the man tall and large with a wide breadth to his shoulders. Yet his nature seemed gentle and kind. And then: “Look, Mr. Bowman, it may not have been a long time at the top, but you did have that moment of success that you envisioned, yes?”
“True,” he answered. “But I wanted more.”
Joshua started to wag his forefinger at Bowman, as if to admonish him. “Nownow, Robert, you had your moment. Now God has a different course for you.
Don’t you see? Your life is not over, it’s beginning.”
Bowman smirked and thought: if you say so. Then he turned away to stare at an empty screen.
From behind, Joshua said, “I’ve received orders from the Vatican that we’re to return to Vatican City. We leave tonight. Please, Mr. Bowman, see this as a blessing rather than a curse.”
“Yeah. Sure. Whatever.”
When Joshua left, Robert Bowman wondered where his new direction in life would take him. Then he raised his hands before him and examined them carefully, first turning them over to study the palms, then once again to inspect the backs of his hands. There were no signs of stigmata or traces of spiritual wounds. Nor was there anything to indicate that he was special at all.
Lowering his hands, Robert Bowman sat unmoving in the chair for hours, until the light through the windows finally faded to darkness.
Chapter Thirty-Five
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London
By the time Father Ferrano and Kimball Hayden reached the assassin’s location that had been given to them by Vatican Intelligence, Isaiah and Jeremiah were just pulling up to the curb in an SUV. As they gathered across the street from the residence in question, Kimball said, “There’s a good possibility that the assassin’s not alone here. There may be a second person involved in this as well. A brother. If that’s the case, you know enough to expect the shadows around you to come alive, so be ready. The optimum goal here is to find the Brimstone Diaries.” After a beat, he then asked, “Questions?”
There were none.
“All right,” Kimball told them. “Let’s do this.”
Once they were on the landing where they scoped the surrounding area and sighting few who had little to no interest as to what they were doing, Kimball removed his suppressed sidearm and fired off two muted shots at the locking mechanism. The lock itself suddenly disappeared as the rounds punched it inward.
Opening the door, which protested mildly on its hinges as it swept open, Kimball led the way with his firearm scanning from right to left, then left to right. The hallway was dark and the odor musty, like a stagnate cellar. A coat rack at the end of the hallway had a jacket draped over one of its hooks which gave it a marginal shape of a man, though it was as still as a Grecian statue. Recognizing that the outline was nothing more than a coat rack, Kimball moved on in absolute silence. Isaiah and Jeremiah, who also had their firearms out, branched out to clear the rooms. Father Ferrano remained by the door until the Vatican Knights went from room to room to sanitize the residence. Once Kimball yelled the ‘all clear” signal, everyone gathered inside the flat’s central room, which was the living area. The room was spartanly furnished with few items, such as a chair and couch that smelled stale and moldy, along with having foam bleeding through the rips in the fabrics. A scarred table stood between them, a rickety piece of furniture. And there were no framed pictures or adornments hanging on the walls, either. The windows, however, were covered over with tinfoil to keep out the light, which also elevated the heat inside the apartment.
After searching the room and moving on to others, it was the bedroom which provided the bonanza they were looking for. Like the central room, tinfoil was placed over the windows to shut out the light. A laptop was on the tab
le, though it was off. And on the wall above the bed, which was the only wall item hanging in the entire flat, was a large cross.
When Kimball traced his fingers along the edges and felt the tubing, he told Isaiah to flip the switch. When he did ropes of neon light suddenly flashed, hummed and buzzed to life, the room illuminating with the color of crimson. In the light Father Ferrano and the Vatican Knights appeared drenched in blood, their clothes saturated, so Kimball peeled away the tinfoil from the windows to allow the natural light to neutralize the red.
As they examined the areas of the closets, which held costumed clothing and most notably a priest’s outfit, Kimball also discovered a pair of boxes underneath the bed whose mattress had dipped heavily over time from a great weight that had been constantly pressed against it.
Placing the boxes on the bed, he opened the first. Inside were simple items such as a cellphone, a nametag, a pen and a paperback novel, nothing of any true value. When he opened the second box, he discovered a whip whose flogging tails were heavily spotted with the color of dark chocolate, that of dried blood.
“Father Ferrano.” Kimball called the Intelligence field officer over to examine not only the whip, but the contents in the other box as well.
Ferrano narrowed his eyes while first looking at the whip, then at the cross, then stepped away from the bed to note the dried blood drops on the floorboards by the bed. “This is where he flogs himself,” he said, “in punishment with the whip you now hold in your hand. And this is where he pays penance for the sins he committed in the eyes of God. And that”—He pointed to the cross on the wall—
“is the symbol for which he believes connects him to God. A spiritual conduit.”
“And these?” Kimball pointed to the items in the second box. “They don’t appear to have any value to them, even though it looks like he might have maintained them as if they did.”
First, Father Ferrano examined the pen, which had an inscribed name on it, nodded, and returned it to the box. Then he grabbed the paperback and rifled through the pages, returned that. Then he grabbed the nametag of the deceased guard inside the Secret Archives, and read it carefully before returning it. Finally, he grabbed the cellphone and was able to discover its owner in the apps and files before he returned it to the box. Stepping aside and rubbing his chin with his thumb and forefinger in thought, he said, “I believe they’re trophies.”
“Trophies?” This came from Jeremiah, who holstered his sidearm and stepped forward. Isaiah remained in the hallway to watch for possible intrusion.
“It appears that our assassin here,” stated the priest, “is collecting items from his kills. The cellphone”—He pointed to the device— “belonged to Edelina Böhm, the first victim who had been murdered in Germany. And the pen, that was from Lamont Charbonneau, in Paris, and victim number two. The paperback—though it has no name attached to it—I’m going to presume belonged to victim number three, Marsha Gibbons. And the nametag belonged to one of the guards inside the Secret Archives.”
Kimball shook his head in disbelief. “For what purpose?”
“Collecting the pen, the cellphone, the nametag and the book are trophies which are the hallmarks that reveal tendencies of a serial killer. Or, it could be that these trophies had been collected simply because they belonged to those within an exalted bloodline. Maybe he offered these to his neon cross as proof of his service to God.” The priest shrugged. “It’s hard to say, really. But there’s no doubt in my mind that the man was wired to perform inadequately within society.”
“In other words, he was sick?”
“Very sick. And worse, there’s an individual out there who may or may not be involved in this as well. His brother. It might serve the Vatican well to track him down before he turns his one-man religion into a crusade, if he happens to be wired like his brother.”
“A question remains, however,” Jeremiah mentioned. “The book. It’s not here.
So where?”
“It could be hidden in a bank box, a vault, it could be in one of a million places,” said Father Ferrano.
“Or it’s in the hands of his brother,” said Kimball. Then he turned to the laptop. “In an apartment that’s barely furnished,” he said, “that computer is likely to be the key to everything we need to know.” Grabbing the laptop, he held it up for all to see. “When we transport Bowman to the Vatican this goes with him,” he said, referring to the processor.
Father Ferrano nodded. “The forensics team will be able to mine it for all intrinsic data, even if Gemini deleted it. If he’s been corresponding with his brother, then it could possibly lead us to the Brimstone Diaries before more names are gleaned from it.” Then the priest looked at the laptop. “We’re getting close,” he said.
“Yeah. But not close enough,” said Kimball. “If his brother is involved, then he may decide to leapfrog over Bowman and go after the next name on the list. As you said before, Father, what we really need to do is find this man before he turns his religion into a crusade. It’s a sick world out there and it’s getting sicker all the time. Factions rise and fall all the time, but the agenda of doing harm always remains the same. It wouldn’t take time to recruit an army of those who possess a similar ideology.”
“We may be too late,” said Father Ferrano. “There may be an order already in line.”
“That’s why we need to find the assassin’s brother,” he told him. Then he held up the laptop. “And that’s why we need to get this to forensics. I believe everything begins and ends with this piece of hardware I’m holding.”
After scouring the flat for hidden locations and possible loose boards large enough to hide a tome underneath but finding no treasures, they had concluded that the book was elsewhere.
Leaving behind the trophies, Father Ferrano, along with the Vatican Knights, left the flat with the red neon cross buzzing and humming, with no one kneeling before it in homage.
Chapter Thirty-Six
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Milan, Italy
In Milan, the Craftsman was inside his shop when he received a pair of visitors, both of Syrian descent. They moved about the shop as if they owned shares of the Craftsman’s trade, the two betraying no emotion as they eventually confronted the old man who wore a tanned leather apron that appeared as aged as he was. “The crucible,” said one of the Syrians. “Your account should reflect payment in full.”
Giving a nod while untying his apron, the Craftsman then beckoned them to follow him to a nearby room. On a shelf beneath a workbench and covered with a chamois cloth was the item they had come to collect. Seeing that the Craftsman was struggling to remove the crucible, the Syrians aided the old man and lifted the crucible to the tabletop, where it landed with a heavy thud.
Pulling the cloth free, the golden receptacle shined with an aura that spread over their faces.
“It’s exactly like the one in the Basilica di Santa Maria Maggiore,” stated the Craftsman, “right down to its finest detail. In all due honesty, I must say that it’s probably my finest piece crafted.”
The Syrians ignored him as they seemed to marvel at the item, at the fine technique.
Going to the gold-plated crucible, the Syrian whose name was Bafiyet lifted the metal lid to look inside. Unlike the real crucible which was hollow, the internal system of this item was specifically designed with slots and grooves and panels to hold something securely within. All it needed was the perfectly-fitted item to be lowered into the crucible and fastened.
“May I ask what you plan to do with this?” the Craftsman asked.
“No,” Bafiyet returned smartly.
Without looking or acknowledging the Craftsman, the Syrians lifted the heavy item and carried it to a waiting SUV. Once the gold-plated crucible was placed inside the vehicle, the Syrians, without acknowledging or thanking the old man, simply drove off and made their way to Rome.
Chapter Thirty-Seven
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Damascus, S
yria
While the crucible was being delivered into the hands of the Syrians in Milan, Houshmand was delivering his package to Fariq in Damascus.
“Payment has been made in full,” Houshmand confirmed from the seat behind his desk. “Therefore, the package now belongs to Kattan.” Snapping his fingers, one of Houshmand’s acolytes immediately left the office. Then Houshmand pointed to a vacant chair in front of his desk for Fariq to take, which the Syrian did.
Once Fariq was settled, Houshmand said, “It’s 2,300 kilometers from here to Rome. It’ll be a difficult journey to transport such an item across many borders and through many lands.”
“This has been in the planning for many years,” Fariq told him. “Since then we’ve developed many safe channels and established powerful contacts. First, we will fly from Damascus to Istanbul. From there, we will drive to certain points to meet up with our liaisons in Bulgaria, Serbia and Slovenia. With the aid of these contacts, we’ll be in Rome in two days.”
Houshmand nodded his approval. Then: “The package, as you know, contains a three-kiloton yield. It’s a little less than one-third of the yield that took out Hiroshima. It’s small but effective.”
“It will definitely produce the effect we’re looking for,” said Fariq. “Everything always moves by the will and power of Allah’s Hand. We are simply his devices to promote what should and shall be.”
“Then in the name of Allah,” said Houshmand. “Allahu Akbar.”
