“I have a job for you, a priest.”
“Where is he?”
Emilio looked at the boy. “You have to go to America.”
“What’s a priest doing in America?”
“They have priests in America too, Luigi, don’t be daft,” said the Cardinal irritably. “Now, you have to get up on your English—”
“They don’t talk Italian in America?”
“Luigi, it’s America. Are you sure you have the brain for this?”
Offended, the boy said, “You underestimate me, Cardinal.”
“Get some guys, gritty guys, and make sure you get good shooters for the job. The Americans are crazy, and they love guns. Take this.” Cardinal Emilio gave him a piece of paper. “Call this number. He’ll give you everything you need, and a guard.”
When Luigi was gone, it occurred to the Cardinal that he chose Luigi because if the boy died out there in America, he would not be missed by anyone. And because Emilio hoped that the boy would not make it back.
Cardinal Emilio shrugged. Collateral damage, he thought.
He told the driver to take him downtown. He needed a little hot time with a mistress.
—
It was sleeting still in the morning. Tom Garcia met Olivia’s team at their Northwest hotel. Frank Miller, he had seen on the TV before. They shook hands and conferred. Tom nodded at the Russian, Victor Borodin. Tom didn’t dig Russians much.
Diggs showed Tom what he did with the security. Tom had tripled one of Diggs' wires coming to the hotel. Tom wasn’t so impressed by CIA guys.
“Former, not anymore,” Olivia reminded him.
Tom shrugged. “They never change.”
“They never do, yeah.” Olivia agreed when she recalled the things Diggs did in Rome. “What have we got?”
The team gathered around in the living room of the suite.
“We think this Half-face is here in Miami,” said Tom Garcia. “Did you see the morph in the photos?”
“Yeah.” Olivia passed the notes and photos around.
“Your buddy Floyd from the Miami Daily hooks me up with those, by the way. We broke into your flat and your computer. Sorry. I had to. The house is in the Pinecrest area.”
“The Pinecrest Florist and Balloons shop?”
“Yes,” he said to Olivia. “We think the Templars bought it for a reason. We also think it had something to do with the holy thing you guys were looking for.”
“The Holy Grail.”
“Yeah, did you find it?”
“No,” said Olivia.
“Good, cos if you can’t, then they can’t as well.”
Everyone turned to the priest, who had been quiet all morning.
“And you may be right about one other thing,” Tom added. “There may be a connection between this and the American elections, you know? I’m just saying. Take a look at this.”
He took a newspaper clip from his pocket. He spread it properly and gave it to Olivia.
“Page seven of the Miami Daily, yesterday,” said Tom.
Olivia read and passed it along. Miller read the clip and said, “Brolin is Templar?”
“I think he is.”
“We need to have proof,” Liam said.
“It ain’t against any law to join an Order. The Templars are not banned in the US because they are not supposed to exist. So technically, they can buy a house and have their meetings and get registered in the city. But now they killed someone. There’s a homicide case on them, and we are trying to solve that. If an election candidate is involved, then we have a huge problem on our hands.”
“The elections are in two days now,” said Miller. “We have to move fast.”
Everyone agreed. Tom Garcia rose to leave. “I took off the tape from the house. At this time the public believes the house is not a crime scene anymore. I hope this Admiral Huebner thinks so too.”
“Tomorrow, then?” Olivia asked.
“Yes, tomorrow is a great day for a hunt.”
—
What Diggs’ wires could not tell him was that a blue Buick LeSabre had followed Sheriff Tom Garcia’s Jeep to the hotel.
The Buick was parked on the street. Behind the wheel was Gerald Dietz. He was drinking a Coke. His radio was on, and Dietz was listening to the news on it. He turned it off when the sheriff came down the steps of the hotel and got in his Jeep.
He was prepared to start his car.
Sheriff Tom Garcia left. No one else came down that step that was imported to his mission, so he sat back and enjoyed his Coke and music on the radio.
—
Miami International Airport.
Three sharp-looking men walked through immigration, each with his own duffel bag for a day’s trip.
Luigi led the contingent. They met another man waiting outside the airport. This man had a Mercedes Benz with a lot of room, and a bar waiting in the street. He was Italian Mafia, and he was a Templar.
They drove in silence for some time through Miami. The car took them over the bridge and into Jungle Island.
Luigi liked being over the water and asked their host why they were driving away from the city.
“Guns,” said the host, cryptically.
“Guns? What’d you mean? We have to go to an island to get guns? I thought you guys were supposed to have guns hanging from every storefront?”
The host shrugged.
They drove through a dirt road and turned into an abandoned factory. Guys were waiting there; two cars were parked side by side. Luigi and his two friends joined the host, and they walked into the factory.
It was not clear what the factory used to make, but Luigi didn’t care.
The host joined the two men on the other side of a metal table. They reminded Luigi of the three blind mice in three different trench coats and hats, the American version of the mafia.
On the metal table, there was a heap of weapons. Luigi and his three friends picked their choices and put them in their bags.
“No drinks?” Luigi pouted.
The host shook his head slowly. “Don’t be slow, okay? If this goes bad, it goes bad on all of us, and it makes us look bad, okay?”
“No problems.”
The host proposed, “Maybe we can get pizza later.”
“Naw, what you have here is not pizza, it is poisonous rubber.”
The host raised his hand. “Alright, no offense taken.”
—
Dietz decided to hit the priest right at the hotel. But as he put his hand on the door handle, he saw a black Dodge Charger come down the street. It stopped a few cars down the street. There were three people in it.
They did not come out of it.
Dietz sat back in his car. Interesting, he thought.
—
Around noon, the rain reduced to some drizzle again.
Luigi’s feet were clamming up under him. The radio stations played shitty rock and roll; his companions were a bore.
Luigi checked in his sideview mirror. He checked out the front of the hotel, people went in and out. Now, a couple of men stepped out. A woman was with them. The priest was one of the men.
He wore blue jeans and a white turtleneck sweater. A black baseball cap perched on the back of his head. Dude could not even wear a baseball cap properly. It was on his head as a skull cap would be. Luigi shook his head and spat onto the curb.
A black Jeep was waiting for the group in the street.
Luigi followed the Jeep west.
Behind him followed another car, but he didn’t see it.
—
13
He was livid. If the building hadn’t been emptied mostly, he would have thrown and broken something.
He came here to hide. To wait out the American elections before unleashing his agenda on the country that took everything from him. The house had gone through modifications in the last two days, quietly. Because the cops in the parts were nosy.
He was mad at the woman. He must have done something to hi
s Snake; Peter turned, betrayed him and his Order.
But the Order would rise again, yes it would. There are other ways, but he regretted his losing the Holy Grail. He was mad at the priest as well, and he would strangle him with his own hands if he found him.
Everyone screwed him. They were either inept—like Talbot—or vile double-dealing snitches, like Emilio. But he was willing to forgive Emilio. The Cardinal was even better than the CIA chief, for he had sent people to America to kill the priest—and the women—but the priest most importantly.
Once he was an admiral, but now he couldn’t even look in the mirror. He smashed mirrors right after looking in them.
The Half-face sat with his back to the street. Beside him were two heavily armed bodyguards.
He waited for news from Emilio that his number one problem had been solved.
He would get none.
—
The Jeep stopped. The rain started drizzling.
The occupants came out in the street. They checked their weapons.
Luigi was momentarily confused. Did these people expect him? They were packing some real metals too. It didn’t matter, he would still hit them. He signaled his friends.
“Alright, guys, we go in fast, hit, and then get back out here,” he said.
They put their shotguns in their big trench coats. Luigi swore when the rain touched his face. It was cold.
—
Diggs went around the back of the house. Sheriff Tom Garcia led the others to the front entrance.
The sheriff knocked on the door.
“Newspaper,” he hollered.
Behind him, Liam snickered. Anabia Nassif gave the other man a cross look. “Really?” he whispered.
The door opened slowly. There was a body in the crack. The face wore sunglasses. Sheriff Tom Garcia put his shoulder into the door and forced his way in.
“Freeze,” he announced quietly.
The man raised his hand and backed into the living room where the man sitting on a chair looked like Frankenstein.
—
Luigi and one of his friends walked faster. They went up the overgrown lawn without looking back. Luigi pushed the door open and cocked his shotgun.
“Where is the priest?” he asked the shocked group in heavily accented English.
The priest was not in their midst.
—
Parked right in front of the house. Dietz had not known which one the sheriff and his people were going into. So, when they came around, he looked away, a newspaper turned upside down on the steering wheel.
Dietz saw moments later the back of Luigi and one of his friends. The third guy was backup, and he was waiting right behind a hedge.
Dietz stepped out of his car, cocked his own gun too, and walked nonchalantly up the lawn.
With his gun down between his thighs, he walked up the steps, used the muzzle to push the door open.
Luigi turned just as he finished asking about the priest. “Who are you?” he asked Dietz.
And that was the last question Dietz ever got to hear before his body got blown open from the back.
The CIA agent fell face down with a hole the size of a pawpaw in his midriff.
Luigi’s third friend walked in with a smoking shotgun.
“Luigi, what’s the hold-up?”
Luigi looked relieved. He looked at the room again. There was one ugly bastard seated on the only chair in a vast living room, and four men and one woman. But no priest.
“Where’s the priest?” he asked again.
Luigi’s friend, the one who killed Gerald Dietz, turned around when he heard rustling behind him. He didn’t make it long to see who it was. A bullet exited his throat. The second one made it farther. His shotgun found a mark in the doorframe. Diggs shot him in the head.
Luigi’s gun dropped; his hands went up in surrender.
Father Andre was standing behind Diggs.
“Padre?” Luigi said in a small voice.
—
“Admiral Huebner?” Olivia stared at the face.
It was really him. The sheriff handcuffed the man, and they led him into a waiting squad car. Diggs stood over the body of Dietz; his face showed no emotions whatsoever. He walked away.
“What are we going to do with these bodies?” Tom Garcia asked the priest.
“You are the law, do what you wish.”
Olivia came to the priest. She touched his hand. “Now you are safe.”
“For now.” He smiled, but his eyes remained sad.
They stood on the porch. The rain had started falling. After all this time, Olivia mused. The admiral was Half-face, and Peter was the Snake. Yet the Grail remained at large.
Or…
Olivia glanced at the priest. She looked at his feet. Something about them. She had seen him limp once, and then at other times. It was a limp that came and was gone again.
Frank Miller interrupted her thoughts.
“Liam needs to head back upstate,” he said, “and Anabia too. He’s a professor, you know.”
“Of course.”
“How about you, Padre?”
The priest shrugged, then he looked at Olivia. “Miss Olivia volunteered to show me around the neighborhood.”
“Oh, good.”
They watched the ambulance take the bodies away. The squad car left with Admiral Huebner, and the men on the team left in a taxi.
“What an expedition,” she murmured.
—
Epilogue
The elections came. Matt Brolin was declared the next president.
It was not established by Sheriff Tom Garcia’s investigation if the president was a Templar or not.
And Admiral Huebner was not saying anything.
One morning after the election, FBI agents stopped by to pick up the admiral, and the case was taken off the sheriff’s shoulders.
He was relieved.
—
Brickwell Avenue, Miami, Florida.
The Lutheran Church.
There was a rotunda in front of the church. Olivia Newton and Father Andre sat there, the sunset behind them. They had stopped here because the priest had requested the rest.
“My legs hurt,” he winced.
Father Andre pulled the left leg of his jeans up. Olivia gasped. She looked at the priest. He smiled. Olivia chuckled, then she closed her eyes and stuffed her laughter.
“Now, you know,” said Father Andre. “Like I said, I am the Grail.”
Darkness was crawling through the street. It was getting cloudy too, maybe another bout of wet weather. It would be welcomed. Olivia thought of Edward Byrne. She was going to have to call him.
Father Andre tapped on the prosthetic in his left leg. It made a thick sound, like a container filled with water. He twisted it around the knees, and the plastic foot detached. Inside the hollow, there was a cup, shiny and golden.
Olivia lost her breath.
Her hands went to her mouth.
“My God,” she whispered, “you had it all this time…”
“The Holy Grail, ladies and gentlemen.”
It had been three weeks since the priest went back to Rome. Olivia received an email from him. It said:
Hello, Rome is beautiful this time of the year. Would you like to see it sometime? I’d love to show you around without being chased by an assassin.
Regards to Aunt May Gilmore in Connecticut.
Then the priest signed as Andrew Gilmore.
Olivia rushed to her computer and searched the web. A particular Anne Gilmore had been at the house of the Gilmores the night they died in an arson that was never solved. Anne Gilmore had been pregnant with a boy at the time. She died of smoke poisoning after she delivered the baby boy. She named him Andrew before she drew her last breath.
A single tear rolled down Olivia’s face. She was smiling and crying.
The priest was her brother.
END
of Book 1
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Hunt for the Holy Grail Page 40
