Hunt for the Holy Grail

by Preston W Child

  Everything there looked untouched. The grass, fresh and unruffled. The porch steps creaked; Olivia knocked.

  After three more attempts, Olivia walked around the back. As she approached the corner, she saw paper rustling in the wind under a tree with low boughs. She looked over the low, white picket fence to see if any nosy neighbor had taken an interest in the stranger. There was none.

  As she turned back to rustling papers, she heard the hum of a car, and it sounded familiar.

  She wheeled around fast.

  The green sedan was in the street. The man behind him wore dark glasses, and that was all Olivia saw before the car promptly turned around, almost slamming into Olivia’s Corvette.

  She ran into the street to get the number on the plates.

  She was too late.

  —

  Olivia’s heart was still chugging through her ears when she reached the back of Peter’s apartment. The back was empty except for a grill pit stand. She touched the mesh on the pit, it was still moist from recent use. The backdoor was open, and from the semi-darkness in the house, more papers rustled.

  Olivia felt her skin contract.

  “Peter?”

  The sudden woofing of a dog from somewhere not far away jolted her, and she turned around.

  She ought to consider getting a gun.

  Olivia picked up one of the papers off the grass. It was a page from a more extensive collection, she saw. This one was page 201, and a subheading in bold that read, The Templars of Jerusalem.

  She picked up more, her eyes not leaving the open door.

  “Peter?”

  She stepped into the kitchen. It was hot. The odor of spoiling food hit her nose. She shook her head, thinking there was no way Peter had been living in this house for the past three days.

  A colony of cockroaches had taken over the dirty dishes; red, fat, and winged ones. Unrecognizable food remains had grown blue and brown varieties of moss and mold.

  After making sure there was no Peter in the house, she started around the back again.

  Halfway around, her cell phone began ringing.

  “Hello?”

  “We have your boyfriend,” said a synthesized voice. “In forty-eight hours, he will be dead—”

  “Who are you!? What have you done with Peter?!” she screamed into the phone.

  “—or you bring the Holy Grail to us.”

  “What?! Are you the one following me around? What’re you following me for!?”

  Click.

  “Hello? Hello? You—” She gripped the phone and screamed into it, “You cowards, why don’t you face me!!”

  Olivia hurried to her car; her phone beeped again.

  It was a text. It said, The Grail for your boyfriend’s life. In 48 hours.

  8

  Olivia called Tom Garcia after she had found Betty asleep, filled with medication. She had also placed the flowers beside the bed.

  “Calm down, Olivia. Did you get a number?”

  “No, I didn’t, I couldn’t, I was…”

  She drew her jacket closer to herself. Dusk was falling outside, and the temperature was dropping. A cold draft came in every time the doors of the main entrance swung open. Outpatients, inpatients, she didn’t know which the people who stared at her were. Her face in the glass opposite her was that of a scared girl. Her hair was a tussle on her head.

  “Alright, stay there, I’ll pick you up in one hour,” Tom assured her. “Then you’ll come and make a statement, alright?”

  “Yeah,” said she, hoarsely.

  Tom asked about his wife, and she said the woman was out, doped.

  Click.

  The hospital was settling in, darkness was complete outside. The disinfectant smell of the wards filled Olivia's nose, cries for help, the heaving of vomiting, and the scream of a patient getting the needle.

  She wanted to run away from the terrible human condition in the place. She craved safe solitude. But there was a man in a green sedan out there, and she cringed at the thought of touching her cell phone because that metallic voice could just seep into her soul.

  And now Peter was gone.

  She could not even be sure if the Holy Grail was real, or if any of the things happening the past few days were reality.

  She buried her face in her palm. The notion of praying was not appealing. She could not remember how to do it. The last time she found herself in this sort of jam, she had Peter Williams for support, and Anabia Nassif, Itay Friedman, the Russian Nicolai, and the other guys.

  She raised her face and looked around, nostalgic with memories of not long ago. She had those guys to help her make sense of the crazy events.

  And Frank Miller.

  Yes, the billionaire had been an enormous help. Without him, they wouldn’t have…she wouldn’t have—

  Olivia rushed at her bag; she held her breath. The card that Miller had given her, the card with his number on it.

  She found it in the small pocket in the inner lining of the bag where her miscellaneous stuff was.

  She held the card in her hand for a long time, debating the odds.

  Olivia found a payphone in the lobby. A nurse twice her size in a uniform told her she could use it, free for the first thirty seconds.

  The odds were high, and against her.

  Here goes, she thought.

  “Hello?” came Miller’s voice. “Olivia?”

  “Mr. Miller, I want to meet.”

  “Good.”

  —

  From the hospital, Olivia drove to the police station without any more events. Tom was in some meeting downtown with some committee. With the elections approaching, and some Republican candidates were getting disturbances at their rallies, the city was cranking up security.

  The cop who took her statement looked familiar.

  When Olivia asked if they’d met, he looked around the pool before responding.

  “Steve was my partner,” he said.

  Olivia’s eyebrows squeezed together, and her hand froze over the police logbook.

  “I’m sorry, ma’am, sad business with your friend,” he continued grimly. “Shit like this makes you think, well, what the hell. You never know who a man really is till he’s faced with death.”

  Olivia said, “I guess.”

  “But we’ll find him, he’s gotta show up somewhere.”

  Olivia nodded and packed her bag; told the cop she’d be leaving.

  “Can I drop you off?”

  “No, I got my car.”

  She flew from the place, feeling choked. She drove around town for a while, checking the rearview mirror as she came by Tom’s place. She parked in the street, two blocks off. She fingered the keys that Tom gave her.

  Olivia finally drove into Tom Garcia’s driveway and left her car there. She called a taxi that took her to the Andover area, where she found a motel.

  The motel was a small one on the edge of the road before the off-ramp that went off to Highway 11. It had a small parking lot that Olivia scanned as she walked through the little door.

  A girl with hair like fireworks was at the desk. She chewed her gum so hard her temples pumped. She filled out the book and took Olivia’s card without taking her mascara-blotched eyes off Olivia’s dark shades.

  The shades she decided on as she came in, for disguise.

  She took her keys, and she headed up the stairs to her room; her phone started ringing. She locked herself up, flung her handbag—and the phone—onto the small bed.

  She stared at the phone. The number began with a different code; she went to the window and pulled the blinds aside. The parking lot and most of the highway was visible from her window, and the red lights of the motel sign declaring the name Glory Wall flickered on and off.

  When her phone started off again, for the third time, it occurred to her that Tom Garcia may be calling, or those who had Peter may have had a change of heart.

  “Hello?” she said in a hesitant voice.

  She heard a whoos
hing sound, then static. She was going to hang up when a voice broke through the awful reception.

  “Am I speaking to the journalist, Newton Olivia?”

  “Who is this?”

  “Father Andre.”

  “Who?”

  “I have the Holy Grail; I understand they have your professor friend. I’m waiting for you in Rome.”

  “How am I…”

  “I’ll keep in touch.”

  Click.

  9

  The green car stopped about a foot before the motel sign, away from the light.

  The man that stepped out of it wore black biker clothing—except his boots—and an incongruous baseball cap. They were what could be described as tactical rubber soles, designed for stealth.

  He walked casually to the front desk, where the girl with multi-colored hair watched TV set up on the wall. The girl had long ditched her gum and was now eating ice cream from a cup. It was past midnight, and business wasn’t expected, at least not until the early hours of the morning again.

  The man rapped on the desk.

  The girl looked at the brooding figure and said, “Uhuh?”

  He pushed a badge in the girl's face. “FBI.”

  “Fuck what?”

  The man gestured towards the stairs. His voice cut the silence. “I have to check your records, I’m looking for a fugitive.”

  The girl’s face fell. She took her skinny feet off the top of the desk and looked closer at the man. Their small establishment was a serial offender of regulation. But they had protection from the local motel commission official. What the hell was this?

  “Can I have a look at the badge again?”

  The man showed the badge, this time more slowly, with more venom in his steely voice.

  The girl saw the black, large font FBI letters, and a photo beside it, and that was all she needed to see to make her shoulders slump.

  She pushed the large book with all the names in it to the man. The man looked over the desk and saw the black screen of a dead computer; he shook his head in genuine amazement.

  He went through the log for that day, with the tip of his gloved finger. He found what he needed.

  He shook his head. “My fugitive isn’t here,” he said.

  The girl breathed relief audibly.

  As the man stepped back outside, she flipped her TV back on.

  —

  When Olivia drove away from the motel in the morning, a taxi tailed her from a safe distance.

  She never thought anything about the taxi again as she joined the traffic in town. There were literally taxis behind her.

  She checked only to see if she was being followed by a green sedan.

  On 21st Street, on her way to Miami International, she stopped at a pay phone. She left her bag in the car. She memorized the digits on the card already and left the card in her bag.

  As she crossed the street, a man walked to the side of her car. He entered the Corvette and went to work in Olivia’s bag.

  Olivia stayed three minutes at her phone call. The man spent half a minute in her car and was gone.

  When Olivia nosed her car towards the airport five minutes later, the taxi did not follow her.

  It didn’t need to.

  10

  Frank Miller was waiting at the airport when Olivia arrived.

  “We are running out of time,” he said. He herded Olivia towards a jet that was parked in a hangar at a corner of the airport. “Come, the team is waiting.”

  The strong wind blew dust and thorn bush about the airfield. Olivia squinted at the figures standing by a white airplane. The jet looked familiar. So did the men standing around it.

  “We have”—Miller looked at a gold-plated wristwatch—“forty-one hours to go—”

  “I bought a ticket for Rome—”

  “You can’t afford eleven hours, Miss Olivia. We’ll make better time on my jet. Come on, meet the team.”

  It was a solemn meeting.

  Liam Murphy looked hardened since the last time. Anabia Nassif seemed to have greyed around the ears. He wore glasses now and looked more Indian than Middle Eastern. Victor Borodin attempted a hug; he was taller and severely tanned. Then the group grew quiet.

  “We are sorry about Peter,” Anabia Nassif said. “We hope we get the Holy Grail in time, you know, to save him.”

  The rest tried to meet her eyes. Olivia smiled. It felt like reuniting with people she has never met before. The last time still felt like a past life, a dream, and their company like those of close friends.

  The engines of the jet started, and Miller ushered everyone on board.

  Ten minutes later, the Florida landscape was falling from view slowly and surely.

  —

  The décor of the jet breathed affluence. A valet served beer; Olivia accepted soda. Borodin gave her a knowing look. Unabashed, he said, “You dropped the addiction.”

  Olivia smiled without offense. “Nicolai told you?”

  The Russian nodded. Olivia asked him why the other Russian wasn’t on the team.

  “He retired from active life, he got married to Mika, his girlfriend of sixteen years two months ago,” Borodin said in his thick Russian accent.

  Olivia grinned and drank to Nicolai’s happiness.

  Liam Murphy raised his Bud Light. “To Nicolai and a life of bliss and kids.”

  There was a cheer, cans scraped each other, and laughter went around.

  “Kids?” Miller asked Liam.

  “Yeah, why else would I give up my freedom, and this?” He swept his hands around, spilled a handful of beer on the carpet.

  “Here, here.” Nassif nodded.

  Miller raised his beer again. “Alright, to kids.”

  The team toasted.

  Miller shrunk his can and dunked it in a trash basket by his chair.

  “Fellas, we need to know what we are dealing with—” He signaled to the valet.

  The short man, dressed as an English butler, opened a compartment up above a window; he brought down a black briefcase. From it, he fished out a map and gave it to Miller.

  “Here is a map of the area of Rome I think the cleric is hiding,” he said, spreading the map on the carpet.

  Liam Murphy whistled. “We are not just gonna land and start searching the streets, are we?”

  “We have just forty hours left,” Anabia said softly.

  Olivia opened her bag and showed them a small map too. It was more modest in scale than Miller’s.

  “Here’s something I got,” she said. “This shows the location from which Father Andre called me.”

  Miller frowned. “Where, how did you get this?”

  “Floyd, my colleague at the Miami Daily.”

  Liam Murphy nodded. “Yeah, this is even better, narrows things down for us.”

  “Floyd had done some magic with his triangulator. The map showed the location where Father Andre had made his call from. His phone call originated from the area around the Vatican City,” Olivia said.

  “That’s understandable,” said Liam.

  “Yeah, considering,” Anabia supported.

  Olivia touched a spot on the map. “Il Sorpasso, here, that’s the street where the pay phone is, about a mile from Borgo. The cleric must live around here—”

  Miller saw the look on the men’s face and clarified. “The Vatican doesn’t have him on record, so we assume that he is either being protected by the See, or he is truly not known there, in which case he could be anywhere now.”

  Olivia looked at the faces. “The people who took Peter are after him too. They are ruthless, and they would kill anyone who stands in their way. They think the Holy Grail will give them powers.”

  Miller looked away. Olivia noticed how the man’s face clouded.

  “Mr. Miller?”

  “Frank, please.”

  “Frank, do we have help on the ground, someone who knows the streets?”

  Miller glanced at her, questioning.

  “I have never
been to Rome; we need someone who knows the city.”

  Miller nodded. “Someone will be waiting for us.”

  —

  On a different but smaller airfield on the serene Virginia Key, another jet took off and bent into the winds towards Rome.

  Onboard this jet were six men. The leader had just set a green sedan on fire an hour before joining the group at the single airway on a green patch of earth. The leader was Asian with the monosyllabic name of Lin.

  The sedan smoked now on the corner of Coconut Grove and 201st Street in an alley, to be found by cops from Sheriff Tom Garcia’s office.

  The man had changed into black tactical clothing, reminiscent of US Marines. And indeed, he was a marine, in a different life. With him, were five other guys, an assortment of killers, dedicated to the Order and prepared to lay down their lives—or take other people’s own if it came to it.

  One of them was a police officer named Steve. He had shown himself worthy to come along on this assignment because he had killed a former member who had failed in his task.

  This is a pleasant change from driving around in that goddamn sedan, Lin thought.

  He sat apart from the rest, with what looked like a computer on his lap. The device was, in fact, a Locator.

  When the woman, Olivia, the journalist, left her car without her handbag to go to the payphone, Lin took her cell phone and cloned the number Sim on it. It took just a few minutes to do.

  Now Lin followed the progress of a dot on the screen of his device. The dot was the location of Olivia.

  Olivia would make Lin’s job easier.

  She would lead him and his team to that vexatious Father. And to the Holy Grail.

  —

  Tom Garcia spat in the road, irritated.

  It was a reaction to both the scene before him in particular and to his job in general.

  Olivia had reported a green sedan that followed her. He had gotten a traffic tape of the time and locations where Olivia had traveled on those occasions. The green sedan had shown up, stolen, and with a stolen license plate.

  The sheriff’s department had then begun a city-wide search. The driver of that sedan was definitely tied up with Professor Peter William's abduction.