The Crimson Dagger - Vatican Knights Series 23 (2020)

by Rick Jones

  Setting the phone on the nightstand, he did not turn it off. Should he fall asleep and should she call, then he would make himself available to her. But as his eyes grew heavy and weighted with fatigue, as the time change started to get to him, Kimball finally fell asleep.

  The call he was waiting for, the call he hoped to receive, never came.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  The Kristallpalast

  Vienna, Austria

  By the time the van pulled within the vicinity of the hotel’s docking bay in the rear, about fifty feet away, Abd-al-Mumin’s team had already changed to a more casual dress to blend in. During the return trip, they had also broken down their military hardware and secured them inside their rucksacks.

  After vacating the van, Abd-al-Mumin’s unit entered the hotel through different entryways so as not to cast suspicious looks from hotel staff. Abd-al-Mumin entered through the hotel lobby. Ghazi and Zamir ventured through the side entrance to use the stairway. And Talib and Qusay had worked their way through the myriad corridors that led from the hotel’s docking bay to the higher levels. It took nearly fifteen minutes for the entire team to gather inside of Ali Mustafa’s suite on the seventieth floor.

  Once assembled, it was Abd-al-Mumin who handed over the Holy Lance into the hands of Mustafa, as though it was a holy scepter. And Mustafa, with his eyes too thick with tears because his gratitude was overwhelming, ritualistically accepted the relic with both hands.

  The Holy Lance; the Spear of Destiny; the Crimson Dagger, once dipped in the blood of one of God’s greatest messengers, was now within his grasp. Weighing the spearhead, he thought it had heft to it, which he believed it should have when taking into consideration the massive power it wielded. But he was also surprised that it did not exercise anything godly to the touch. There was no prickling of the skin or the marginal charge of static power. Nor did it exude an all-encompassing warmth or gentle eclipsing of the soul. It simply felt . . . plain.

  Nevertheless, Ali Mustafa held the Holy Lance skyward to show Allah that he was in full possession of His gift. With the Holy Lance, he would now rule a great army from the seat of a great nation. And he would do so with the Spear of Destiny fashioned and equipped at the end of a jeweled scepter, which would reign dominant for millennia under One Rule under the One True God. The spearhead would be the tip of the ruler’s staff, which he would pass down to his sons and his sons’ sons.

  “With this Crimson Dagger I now begin the line of my birth right. Allah will watch over me and my descendants. And together, as we serve as your vessels, we will rule under the tenets and the laws of the Koran. With the bounty of Your holiest treasures, I will command a great force in Your rule. See me, Allah, as a mere vessel to fulfill Your wishes, Your demands, and allow this Holy Lance to grant me the power necessary to act as Your servant.”

  To see this play out, at least in the eyes of the common man, one would see this as voodoo magic or an archaic ritual. But Mustafa remained steeped in old customs while at the same time trying to embrace evolution, which was somewhat of an oxymoron. To combine the old with the new would prove to have its difficulties. To mesh old ideologies while expecting new philosophies to work in tandem often proved disastrous. Nevertheless, Ali Mustafa was focused on altering old beliefs by turning them into workable and acceptable principles under Shia Law. With Allah’s guidance, his military legion would be able to promote the rule of Allah under similar codes of Shia ethics, although the conventions of the ancients had to be altered.

  Evolution.

  Without adapting to the progression of time, then there could be no ultimate victory.

  Mustafa then placed the Holy Lance close to his heart and hugged it as though it was a precious child. Here was the power of God, he thought. The power that would grant him the right to command armies that would overwhelm and overtake with a mere raising of his staff.

  Even the Great Satan will have no control against the power of Allah.

  And then from Ali Mustafa, whose voice remained firm, he said, “Allahu Akbar!”

  In chorus, everyone provided the cheer of ‘Allahu Akbar!’

  While Mustafa continued to cradle the relic close to him, seventy floors below and in the streets of Austria, a massive storm was brewing. Soon, Ali Mustafa would be given the opportunity to test his newfound power.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  Kapsch TrafficCom Control Center

  Vienna, Austria

  The Kapsch TrafficCom Control Center (The KTC) is headquartered in Vienna and manages intercity traffic and road infrastructure. The system was developed to monitor a vehicle, or a fleet of vehicles, through telematics, which is achieved through a combination of a GPS receiver and an electronic device installed in each vehicle along with a web-based software. The data is then turned into information by management reporting tools in combination with a mapping software. So, through the Kapsch TrafficCom telematics system, a vehicle, as long as KTC has the real-time GPS address, can be tracked via a satellite system to an accuracy of five feet. When a stolen vehicle has been reported, data is forwarded to the KTC by law enforcement authorities for investigative matters. So, when a geospatial satellite captured the van that was parked close to the Hofburg Palace in real time after the alert, the telematics system was initiated so that the communication system between satellite and the vehicle’s GPS software began to speak to one another. On screen inside the Kapsch TrafficCom Control Center, the vehicle showed up as a blip on the monitor against the wall. The names of streets were listed on the map as the vehicle made its way southbound. On a second screen, the van was captured as a live feed as it raced within the range of one CCTV camera and into the range of another, with the cameras tracking the vehicle until it had stopped close to the Kristallpalast, about fifty feet away. The KTC operators then utilized additional traffic cameras to survey five men exiting the vehicle, who then entered the hotel from different points.

  Jonathen Mayer was the executive operator who often worked in collusion with law enforcement after receiving sensitive red-alert issues. But on this particular matter where a potential act of terrorism may have been committed, Anselm Gruber, who headed the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution and Counterterrorism, and Sebastian Baeder, who was the chief officer of the Directorate General for Public Security, remained within the communication loop regarding the van’s movements.

  Mayer had been in constant contact with the authorities by reporting that the vehicle, which had been stolen two days prior, was captured leaving the Austrian Imperial Treasury with its course tracked through a number of CCTV cameras, as well as through its telematic system. Once a link was established between the satellite and the vehicle’s personal GPS software system, tracking was locked in on a couple of fronts, making escape virtually impossible.

  With an accuracy to within five feet, Mayer was not only able to provide them with the van’s actual position, but through the eyes of the CCTV cameras, he was also able to inform the heads as to where the occupants had taken residence, which was inside the Kristallpalast.

  Neither Baeder nor Gruber hesitated to spur their units, which converged on the hotel from different parts of the city to surround the building within a perimeter to block off all exit points.

  Lights flashed.

  Sirens blared.

  Tires skidded along the pavement as they came to screeching halts around the hotel, hemming the building in from all sides—north, south, east and west.

  Within the shadows not too far from the hotel’s loading area was the van, which a forensics team summarily commandeered in search of trace evidence in hopes of identifying those who were involved with the murders and theft at the Imperial Treasury. A blockade of cars strung themselves together, bumper to bumper, around the building, with a legion of police officers taking position behind the vehicles with their weapons drawn.

  With the lights and sounds and the number of overwhelming police, the area was like Fat Tuesday at the Mardi Gras—
the area appearing bright, populated and festive.

  From seventy floors above the street, none of this went unnoticed.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  The Kristallpalast

  Seventieth-Floor Suite

  Everyone had heard the sirens as they converged on the site, the wails loud and ear-shattering, if not blistering, even from seventy levels above the city landscape.

  Ali Mustafa and Abd-al-Mumin were standing on the balcony that surrounded the glass-bottom pool. Mustafa held the Holy Lance in his hand while the two looked down to see law enforcement merge en masse to create an unbreakable chain that surrounded the Kristallpalast.

  “You told me that you had cleared the Treasury and that no one followed.” Mustafa sounded angry, irritated.

  Abd-al-Mumin appeared nonplussed. “Khalifa took out the first wave,” he told him. “We were drawing distance from the Treasury as the second wave approached. I saw them turn into the plaza that fronted the Hofburg Palace. Believe me, Ali, not one unit gave chase. They were too focused on what was going on in front of the Treasury.”

  Ali Mustafa turned to Abd-al-Mumin with admonishing eyes. “Then explain to me why we now find ourselves in such a precarious position?”

  After a moment as though trying to find an appropriate answer, Abd-al-Mumin shrugged. “I can’t.”

  “Of course not.” Mustafa once again looked over the railing to the scene below. And then: “We’re being tested,” he stated simply. “Allah is providing us with the opportunity to reveal His power.”

  Ali Mustafa stepped away from the balcony, skirted the pool, and entered his suite where the others remained—all remaining silent while dutifully awaiting their orders. Sitting before a PC, Mustafa carefully laid the Spear of Destiny on the table with both hands, as though it was fragile, and took his seat before the computer’s keyboard. “Very well, then,” he said, typing. “Allah now inspires me,” he added. “I can see that now. I can feel His encouragement and sense what He wants me to do. Which is to test the Lance’s power.”

  He typed furiously, the man a mechanic at the keyboard.

  The screen, however, continued to pop up with ACCESS DENIED.

  More typing, fast and with urgency, with his fingertips coming down on the keys with authority and emphasis, until the monitor read ACCESS APPROVED.

  “By the grace and will of Allah,” he whispered more to himself.

  The Kristallpalast was often filled with dignitaries who filled the most luxurious rooms available, most notably the suites on the seventieth floor with their glass-bottom pools, top-shelf amenities, and first-class concierge service.

  More taps on the keyboard, this time bringing up a list of VIPs and their suite numbers. There were heads of state like the two reigning heads of Austria’s main political parties, one from the Austrian People's Party and the other from the Die Grünen, or the Green Party. Then there was the political principal from Germany who served as a ruling member of the Bundestag, the German federal parliament that is by comparison similar to the lower division of the United States House of Representatives. There were also captains of industry and CEOs, though not as well-known as the Elon Musks or the Jeff Bezos of the world, but nevertheless held a firm standing within the business community. There was also an Associate Justice of the United States Supreme Court, just another asset for the taking. But the holy grail from this laundry list of the high-profile dignitaries glared at him like a beacon, perhaps a gift from Allah, he considered. A few levels below and practically beneath his feet was the Vatican’s Cardinal Secretary of State.

  “Yesssss,” he whispered, the s-portion extending like a serpent’s hiss. “Now I know we’re being tested. To grant me with such a gift can only be done so by the grace of Allah’s planning.” He turned abruptly on Abd-al-Mumin. “All of this was meant to be. So you, Abd-al-Mumin, have no fault in this.” Carefully, Mustafa reached for the Holy Lance and lifted it gingerly off the table with both hands, then held it outward in homage. “It was meant to be,” he added softly.

  Then his features hardened, becoming both stern and menacing. The Ali Mustafa that everyone had come to know, a man who had the power to choose who lived or died with a simple wave of his hand, pointed to the name on the screen and said, “The authorities will be in the lobby below to question those to access information as to who we are and where we are. I will counter their actions starting with this one.” He tapped the monitor with the point of his finger several times. “Ghazi, Zamir, go to Room Seventy-Twenty-Four and bring me this man. Another will be with him. Make sure the other person ends up as a statement. And make no mistakes.”

  Then from Ghazi, “Understood.”

  “Now go.”

  Ghazi and Zamir responded without question, the two moving with purpose and spiritual energy.

  Ali Mustafa returned his attention to the others inside the room—to Talib, Qusay and Abd-al-Mumin, with a neutral expression. “There are others to be gathered.” From that point on, Ali Mustafa, who honestly believed that he was a conduit in service to Allah, outlined his strategy as to who to target.

  His team listened, shook their heads in agreement, and questioned nothing.

  When all was said and done, Ali Mustafa’s team moved to gather additional lambs for slaughter.

  Now alone in the shadows of the suite with nothing but the glare of the monitor shining upon him, Ali Mustafa held the Spear of Destiny before him. Then he wondered if the smallest measures of Christ’s blood remained embedded within the pores of the spearhead. And if so, and should he trace a fingertip over the dagger that had once been dipped in the blood of Jesus, would it connect him directly to this divine power?

  With an almost loving caress with the tips of his fingers, Mustafa ran them lightly along the dagger-shaped body of the spearhead. Still, he was not enlightened by the fact that he had been touched by the power of the Holy Lance, even with loving touches. There was no electrical discharge or surge of power. Nor was there an eclipsing of warmth or peace or contentment. All Mustafa could feel were the spearhead’s material composites, that of metals which included inscribed sheets of silver and gold.

  Now holding his hand before his face, he wiggled his fingers: perhaps the sensors within the flesh were not working properly? he wondered. Were there to be no sensations of ultimate delight or to fancy the pleasures of possessing such divine powers?

  He continued to look at his fingers.

  Nothing.

  As he continued to hold the Spear of Destiny as though it were an extension of himself or an added appendage, he got up from his chair and made his way to the balcony. To his right was the glass-bottom pool, which gave an open and scary view of the streets below. It was something he never considered to delight himself with, since he was afraid that the pool would somehow crack, break, and spill more than ten-thousand gallons of water, as well as himself, seventy stories below.

  In the surrounding streets below, convoys of vehicles continued to mount with numbers. Law enforcement was everywhere. And all avenues of escape had been taken away.

  Mustafa looked at the dagger that was lightly gripped within both hands and thought: But everything has a solution, doesn’t it?

  Holding the Holy Lance high to pay reverence to Allah, he said, “With Your guidance and strength we will defeat and overcome the impossible, since the word ‘impossible’ does not mean that something cannot be done. You have taught me otherwise that the word ‘impossible’ only measures the degree of difficulty. And for this I thank You for testing me and the powers You have bestowed upon me. Be assured that I will not fail You.”

  Lowering the spearhead close to his chest, Ali Mustafa closed his eyes and prayed.

  Elsewhere, the world was gathering its strength to contest a holy ancient relic that was alleged to have the powers of God.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  The Kristallpalast

  Hartwig Klein of Germany’s Bundestag, along with his wife of thirty-two years, were vacationing on
the seventieth floor of the high-rise building. Like most customers on this level, they were afforded the luxury of a glass-bottom pool that also served as a balcony, with the cost paid for by the German taxpayers. As a member of the Bundestag, such luxuries often went unquestioned when the stay was claimed as a government expense, as long as he met with allied leadership, even if that meeting was no more than thirty minutes inside a coffee shop.

  As he slept, his wife, Marta, found it difficult. After two hours of tossing and turning, she finally got up, donned a robe, and made her way into the kitchenette. Opening the refrigerator to choose from one of the two wine bottles, one red and the other white, she did not see the moving shapes behind her.

  After deciding upon the white wine, she reached inside and grabbed the bottle by its neck. But then she hesitated, that sixth sense suddenly telling her that she was not alone.

  As her eyes shifted in their sockets in the direction of where she suspected a threat while her body remained pinned by paralytic terror, a darkened figure raised its arm as though to point at her in accusation. But the arm appeared extended and stretched. And then the room lit up with a single muzzle flash as Ghazi fired off a muted round that sounded off as a loud spit.

  . . . Phfttt . . .

  At first, Marta appeared confused as she looked at the wine bottle trying to understand why she was holding it, the moment suddenly shrouded in mystery. It wasn’t until a second muted gunshot to the back of her head that finally sent her to the floor.

  Zamir, after softly closing the refrigerator door to cancel out the light, followed Ghazi’s lead.

  * * *

  Hartwig Klein slept with his mouth open with his buzzsaw snores a clear indicator that he was in a deep sleep. Zamir, who stood on one side of the bed with Ghazi on the other, carefully placed the point of his suppressed weapon deep inside Hartwig’s mouth, then tapped the suppressor against the man’s teeth to wake him. When Hartwig’s eyes opened with astonishment, he saw a figure standing over him—a Middle Eastern by his appearance—who had injected the point of his gun into his mouth. All Hartwig could think about was how the barrel had tasted of oil.