Thief on the Cross: Templar Secrets in America (Templars in America Series Book 2)

by David S. Brody

  Yet she didn’t seem to be in any immediate danger—Astarte continued to hold her hand, and Eliza continued to peer down at her with a frozen smile like some kind of Stepford Wife, albeit an unattractive one. Yet the fact remained she had been kidnapped and was bouncing along in the back of some windowless van.

  Amanda fought to control the chattering. “You told me your mum was sick, Astarte. Where is she?” She couldn’t help but stare into the girl’s eyes—they were cobalt rather than olive, but they possessed the same haunting, imploring look as the green-eyed, Afghani refugee girl on the cover of National Geographic magazine back in the 1980s.

  The girl frowned. “Uncle Jefferson told me it was okay to tell a lie if that’s what God wanted.”

  Jefferson. So this wasn’t random. Which should make it easier for the authorities to figure out. “What kind of lie?” Amanda expected Eliza to jump in and stop the inquiry, but instead she turned to the girl to await her response.

  “My mother is dead. I don’t remember her. But Aunt Eliza and Uncle Jefferson and God are my parents now. They take care of me. When I’m older I’ll take care of them.” She giggled. “Not God, of course. He takes care of himself. But I’ll take care of all the others.”

  Amanda sat up, swallowing her nausea. Who were the others? “All by yourself?”

  Astarte nodded emphatically, the vehicle’s dome light reflecting in her dark eyes. “I’m the Fortieth Princess. That’s my job.”

  Cam took another cab, this time to an Avis rental lot. On his way, alone in the back seat, he pulled Amanda’s picture up on his phone. The pose was classic—big smile, the wind blowing her blond hair, shamrock-green eyes alive and vibrant, head tilted playfully to one side. When he first met her she reminded him of something out of a fairy tale, a beautiful fair-skinned princess waiting to be rescued from a tower. It turned out she could take care of herself just fine. Except now, a year later, she really did need to be rescued.

  He fought back a rising sense of panic. He needed to stay calm, stay rational.

  From the Avis lot he drove to a Starbucks to use their WiFi connection. As a diabetic he needed to eat regularly, so he lunched on a bagel and banana. At some point whoever abducted Amanda—presumably January—would contact Cam with their demands. But in the meantime thoughts and visions of what might be happening to her tormented him. Grinding his teeth, he pushed his anxiety to the back of his mind. Worrying about her wouldn’t help him find her. And she could take care of herself; she was probably hatching an escape plan already.

  To find her he needed to learn more about Jefferson January, if that indeed was his real name. An Internet search turned up a year-old newspaper article detailing his plans to donate a portion of his collection of ancient American artifacts plus a large sum of money to the Pequot museum. But that’s all he found. Cam reread January’s letter and its strange message, wondering again what January wanted from him—obviously the stakes were higher than Cam had anticipated.

  Cam turned his attention to the Polaroid photo clipped to January’s letter. January had included it as bait, as an example of the kind of artifact he possessed in his collection. But what did it say about the man and his motivations? Cam examined the series of lines carved into an ovular black stone.

  BURROWS CAVE MAP STONE

  When he first examined the photo Cam thought the carving depicted a tree with branches running off it, but Amanda had suggested the lines portrayed a river system. “It could be a map of the Mississippi River basin,” she said.

  He had consulted an atlas—the trunk of the tree matched the path of the Mississippi River, the two main branches to the right tracked the Ohio and Illinois Rivers, and the large branch to the left mirrored the Missouri River. “Pretty good guess for a Brit.”

  “Just because most Americans couldn’t find the Nile if they fell in it doesn’t mean the rest of the world is ignorant about geography.” She had kissed him quickly on the tip of his nose. “Not that we don’t fancy you American cowboys.”

  He allowed the memory to gnaw at him for a few seconds—his nose still tingling from the touch of her lips—before returning to the map carving. They had decided the boat-like drawing at the bottom of the stone floated in what was probably the Gulf of Mexico, the igloo-shaped markings represented caves or other enclosures, and the letters looked like some kind of ancient script. But that’s as far as they got.

  He tried a few Google searches, hoping to learn more about the stone carving. After ten minutes he tossed the photo aside like a Frisbee. What he really wanted to do was jump in his car and race around the streets surrounding the casino, searching for Amanda. Using Google Earth, he looked down at the Foxwoods area from a satellite view. Woodlands surrounded the resort. Driving the streets aimlessly would be futile—January had carefully planned things out and perhaps even bought off the police. The two thugs on the shuttle bus were minor players and the amateurish encounter probably an aberration. This would be a chess match, not a street brawl. And to win Cam needed to better understand his opponent.

  Cam pulled out the letter and reread January’s words. “My mission, I am certain, will soon become your mission—to prove that America is meant to be God’s New Jerusalem.” He exhaled. Was that what this was all about? Had Amanda been abducted by some kook with a messiah complex?

  An electric garage door whirred open and the van bumped over a threshold before coming to a stop. Amanda guessed they had been driving for about 45 minutes, but that didn’t count the time she was unconscious. And it felt like they had been driving in circles, probably to disorient her in case she woke up early in the trip. She sat up slowly, the nausea not as bad as it had been. But she still couldn’t stop her teeth from chattering.

  “Astarte, can you tell me where we are?”

  “Uncle Jefferson’s garage. Upstairs is where Aunt Eliza and I live.”

  The back door of the van swung open and the woman who had first attacked Amanda filled the space. Tall and thick and freckled, like the Midwestern farm girls they showed in the old American movies. “Come with me.” Her words were flat and emotionless. Maybe some kind of military training.

  “Where are you taking me?” Amanda considered grabbing the child as some kind of bargaining chip but Astarte scampered out of the van before she could act.

  “I’ll drag you out of there if I have to.” Again, no emotion, just matter-of-fact. Amanda sighed, slowly sat up and scooched herself toward the back of the van, the bright lights of the garage harsh on her eyes. The garage was large and clean, with three bays and a row of power tools and yard implements hanging neatly against the back wall. At some point they might make a good weapon. Grabbing her by the elbow, the guard steered her toward an enclosed center staircase, Eliza following. Astarte skipped along ahead, her dark, braided pigtails swinging as she hummed what sounded like “A Spoonful of Sugar” from the Mary Poppins movie.

  “Astarte, can you wait for me?” Amanda asked. The girl spun around, smiling, and skipped back a few steps. Amanda pulled her arm away from the guard, who surprised Amanda by loosening her grip, and reached down to take Astarte’s hand. “Where are we going?”

  “Upstairs to have some lunch. Uncle Jefferson says you’re going to come live with us for awhile.”

  Amanda forced her teeth to unclench and her lips to curve into a smile. She did her best to hold the girl’s cobalt eyes. “Astarte, I’d really fancy a short stroll outside. I’m still feeling a bit under the weather. Will you show me around?”

  The female guard turned to Eliza as if looking for the woman to intervene, but Eliza merely shook her head slowly. Nobody said anything. Odd as it seemed, apparently the decision rested with Astarte alone. It was almost as if nobody wanted to cross the young princess. The girl considered the request, her finger on her chin and her lips pursed. She took a deep breath and delivered her verdict. “I’m sorry, but no. Uncle Jefferson said we were to go straight upstairs.”

  Amanda allowed the girl to see her disapp
ointment—manipulating the little princess might be her best chance for escape. Astarte looked at her sadly before brightening into a smile. “I know. I can have Aunt Eliza make you some hot tea. That will make you feel better. We’ll have a floating tea party, just like Jane and Michael Banks.”

  Another Mary Poppins reference. The children in the story longed for attention from the grownups in their cloistered world. Did Astarte see Amanda as some kind of magical English nanny come to nurture her? Or perhaps the girl was just lonely and in need of a playmate.

  Astarte opened the door to a staircase. Amanda scanned the room for some way to escape. Everything she had ever read or heard about self-defense told her to fight back or scream or do something to prevent being brought to an isolated place, but she was badly outnumbered and outmuscled. Each step brought her closer to a kind of attic prison, like some princess in a medieval fairy tale. But in a surreal and scary twist, it was not the princess but rather herself, the commoner, being held captive by a small army that deferred to a little girl known as the Fortieth Princess.

  Jefferson January watched the windowless van pull into the three-bay garage from his simple ranch-style home across the compound. He was the only man he knew whose garage was larger than his home. Of course neither edifice was as spacious or lavish as the underground bunker containing his most treasured pre-Columbian artifacts. Which was only fitting—he was holding the artifacts in trust for God.

  He fingered three of those artifacts now, wondering again if they were the correct choices. With Amanda Spencer’s abduction he now had Cameron Thorne’s full attention—January’s clumsy henchman with the broken nose could attest to that. It would have been easier if Thorne had been more responsive to January’s earlier correspondence; his indifference had left January no choice but to orchestrate Amanda’s kidnapping. He simply didn’t have the luxury of time, of waiting for Thorne to clear his schedule and make his way back to Connecticut a second time while the cancer ate away at January’s organs. In the end it was probably for the best—Thorne would be angry, but he also would be focused. Now that he had Thorne’s attention, the next step would be to seduce the man, to convert him into a passionate believer of the amazing story these artifacts told. A story that would change the way Americans viewed both their history and their God.

  The map stone had been a wise choice as an opening salvo, like a sultry smile from the blond across the bar. And the mini-brawl in the parking lot, though not planned, had gotten Thorne’s blood boiling. The seduction would continue later in the day when he whisked Thorne away to a secret locale—the trip would serve as a flirtatious repartee, a musky perfume, a brush of knee against knee. Finally he would consummate the romance by allowing Thorne to view the priceless artifacts.

  January smiled. The truth was he had never spent much time in bars, the consumption of alcohol being against his Mormon religion. But as a wealthy widower and church leader he had been the target of many attempted seductions over the past decade, before the ravages of cancer left him emaciated and stooped and addicted to OxyContin. He understood and accepted that the disease was part of God’s plan, that causing his once-powerful 58-year-old frame to shrivel and decay was a way to focus him on the sacred mission that had been ordained for him. Just as it had been God’s plan to take his dear wife from him at such a young age before she could give him children, thus allowing January to devote his life to Astarte and the fulfillment of her destiny.

  Struggling with the weight of the three shoebox-sized stones, he wrestled them one by one into a custom-made wheeled case. He sank heavily into his desk chair and dabbed his face with a handkerchief as he fought to fill his lungs with air. It was early for his next pill, but he didn’t want to be distracted by pain so he popped another OxyContin and downed it with a swig of bottled water. He had the advantage over Thorne for now, but the same extraordinary resourcefulness that made Thorne such a desirable ally could also make him a formidable adversary. Which was why it was a good thing God was on Jefferson’s side.

  Cam spent another half-hour trying to decipher the map stone, but he finally couldn’t sit still any longer and made his way back to the rental car. The bright daylight surprised him—it was still early afternoon. It felt like days had passed since Amanda’s abduction.

  As he unlocked the car door his cell phone rang. Finally. “This is Cam.”

  “And this is Jefferson January.” A nasally voice, almost wheezy. And calling from a different number than the one Cam had been dialing. Probably untraceable.

  Cam took a deep breath. “Where’s Amanda?”

  “She is quite safe. For now. And she will remain that way as long as you cooperate.”

  “If you hurt her I’ll hunt you down. I promise it.”

  “I’m hopeful there’ll be no need for that, Mr. Thorne.” Perhaps a hint of a Midwestern accent.

  “I’m listening.”

  “First off, no more visits to the local police. I know about your meeting in Ledyard. You’ll find I know just about everything that goes on around here.”

  “Fair enough. Let Amanda go, and there’ll be no need for the police.”

  January barked out a short laugh. “Nice try.” He lowered his voice, as if taking Cam into his confidence. “Here’s the thing, Mr. Thorne. I’m not a young man, and I’m doing the Good Lord’s work. I have stage four colon cancer—I’ll be dead in a matter of months, if not weeks. So you’ll find the normal things that motivate people won’t work with me. I have more money than I will ever be able to spend, I’m not healthy enough for girls, I’m not afraid of jail since I’ll be dead before they can lock me up.” He paused to catch his breath. “But I am in a rush. I don’t have the luxury of time, of convincing people like you to help me or to fit me into their busy schedule. So I take certain shortcuts when necessary.”

  Cam forced the rage from his voice. “So what do you want from me?”

  “I want your full and undivided attention. Which I now believe I have. So now, after a worthwhile delay, we can have that meeting we did not have this morning. Meet me at the museum at three o’clock.”

  “What, so your thugs can take another swing at me?”

  January exhaled. “That was a mistake. They were only supposed to be following you. I assure you it will not happen again.”

  “All right, I’ll come. But only if you bring Amanda.”

  Another bark of a laugh. “No, no Mr. Thorne. You are hardly in a position to make demands. Amanda will stay with me a bit longer.” He paused. “And Mr. Thorne. All those things that have gone through your mind the past few hours, all the horrible things you have imagined happening to her, all the perverse images that have forced their way into your consciousness—she has suffered none of those degradations. Yet.”

  CHAPTER 3

  Cam knew he shouldn’t be rash, but he also knew he was running out of options. Amanda was in danger, the police couldn’t—or wouldn’t—help, and he himself had no idea how to find and rescue her. But he knew someone who specialized in this kind of thing. He agonized over the decision for twenty minutes, desperate to come up with some other way to rescue Amanda. Finally he scrolled through the address book of his phone until he found a Rhode Island number. He hesitated before finally pushing the transmit button.

  Jacob Whitewolf Salazar answered on the third ring. “Cameron Thorne. I’m surprised you kept my number.”

  “My phone does it automatically.”

  “All right then, I’m surprised you called.”

  “Me too. But I’m desperate.”

  Salazar was a mercenary, a gun-for-hire, a Special Ops soldier who had taken his unique set of army-trained skills into the private marketplace. A year ago he had been hired by a Vatican splinter group to prevent Cam and Amanda from uncovering secrets revealed by medieval artifacts scattered around New England, secrets that had the potential to undermine the authority of the Catholic Church. Salazar had ultimately failed in his mission, though he would claim he chose to abandon it whe
n he began to find it distasteful. In either event, Cam bore a scar in his upper arm attesting to Salazar’s skill with a handgun and his willingness to use it. “I’m listening.”

  Cam took a deep breath. “What is it they say about strange bedfellows? I need your help.”

  “This personal or professional?”

  “Personal for me, professional for you.” Cam explained the details of Amanda’s abduction. “I think January’s holding her someplace near the casino, probably on Pequot land. Can you help me?”

  “I’m between jobs—I’m spending Thanksgiving with Rosalita. So I’ve got a few days.”

  Cam considered asking about the girl, but he had no stomach for small talk. Or for pretending he really cared about the mercenary and his daughter. “You okay that this might involve the Pequot tribe?” Salazar was himself half Narragansett; Cam expected that the tribes were at least loosely allied.

  “Not a problem. It might even help me get some answers.” He paused. “By the way, did you get a new dog?”

  One of Salazar’s overly zealous cohorts had killed Cam’s dog, Pegasus, a crime for which Salazar profusely apologized; by contrast, Salazar had viewed Cam’s gunshot wound as just part of a day’s work. “Yeah, a Labrador Retriever named Venus.” It was a strange question. Maybe it was Salazar’s way of showing he was still sorry about Pegasus. “Why do you ask?”