The Hades Conspiracy (A Delphi Group Thriller Book 3)

by John Sneeden

  Zane kept the pedal to the floor. The forest rose up ahead. He knew the road would soon wind back and forth, but he kept accelerating.

  “Here they come,” Amanda said.

  He checked the rearview mirror. Headlights. Gunshots rang out in the distance, one of them finding metal.

  “I thought you disabled both vehicles,” Zane said to Carmen.

  “I got most of the tires,” she said. “I also fired a bunch of shots through the grill of the third vehicle. It’s not going anywhere. I was about to do that to the second when they started firing.”

  The road twisted and turned, forcing Zane to moderate his pace. He needed to maintain speed, but he also knew an accident of any kind would be fatal. He looked in the side mirror. The other driver was throwing caution to the wind, taking turns faster than he should. Even though he was in danger of careening off the road, the gamble was paying off. They were gaining ground.

  Zane still couldn’t understand how they were driving on two good tires. He figured they must be self-sealing tires, the kind that would take you several dozen miles even when flat. He doubted they could hold up long after a gunshot, but they might make it a mile or two.

  He thought through his options. Should he increase his speed even if it put them in danger of running off the road? Suddenly, he remembered something he’d seen along the road as they’d walked up, and a plan took shape in his mind. It would take perfect execution, but it just might work.

  After a sharp turn, they entered a straightaway. Zane believed the place he was looking for was just ahead on the right. He needed to get there before the pursuing vehicle turned onto the straightaway. A moment later, he saw it. It was closer than he’d expected and coming up fast. Clenching his teeth, he reached down and killed the headlights.

  “Zane?” Carmen asked from the back.

  Ignoring the question, he took his foot off the gas and jerked the wheel to the right, turning into a small grassy clearing. He brought the vehicle to a stop by using the emergency brake then shifted into neutral and released the brake.

  The pursuing vehicle came flying around the curve, its headlights spearing down the road to their left. Zane hoped he’d pulled far enough off the road. If the other driver saw them, the plan would fail. So far, so good. He wasn’t slowing down. The driver probably assumed they had already taken another turn, which was exactly what Zane had counted on.

  Zane studied the headlights in the side mirror. The approaching vehicle was almost upon them. When it was approximately twenty yards back, he shifted into drive, mashed the pedal to the floor, and turned left. His timing was flawless. The other driver saw him pull out into the road, but it was too late to react. He jammed on the brakes as Zane turned into him. The resulting impact punched the other SUV off the road and into the woods. Inertia and gravity did their work, rolling the vehicle onto its side as it careened through a stand of saplings.

  A second later, a deafening bang echoed through the trees as it slammed into the trunk of a towering tree.

  After slowing for one last glance, Zane hit the gas and took off down the mountain.

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  ZANE WALKED QUIETLY down the hotel corridor, a cup of coffee clutched in one hand. When he found the room he was looking for, he rapped softly on the door. A moment later, the peephole darkened and the door swung inward.

  Carmen motioned him in. “Welcome. How is your room?”

  “Way too small.”

  After escaping down the mountain, the team had switched back to their car and traveled to Menaggio, a small town along the western shore of Lake Como. Following a brief search, they’d been able to locate two rooms in a boutique hotel overlooking the Piazza Giuseppe Garibaldi. Zane had argued they should travel an hour or two to the south, a move that would put some distance between them and the gunmen back at the villa, but Carmen had rightly pointed out Menaggio was their best chance at finding rooms at this late hour. Most of the towns lining the southwestern shores of Lake Como were small, and even though early March wasn’t the busy season, there were probably enough tourists to fill up the few hotels. In addition, they needed to get Emily into a comfortable bed where they could monitor her condition.

  “Come see our patient.” Carmen shut the door behind him and set the latch.

  Zane continued into the large-but-simple room. Amanda sat at the table with Pauling’s laptop under one arm.

  Carmen gestured toward the two beds on the right. “As you can see, she’s still pretty groggy.”

  Emily was curled up in the fetal position on the bed closest to the window. Zane was glad to see she was finally getting some rest. During the ride to Menaggio, she had improved slightly, although it was obvious some of the sedative still coursed through her veins. She’d even been able to share a few details of the last twenty-four hours.

  The bulk of her time in captivity had been spent answering questions from her captors, and for the most part, she’d told them the truth. She admitted she was Richard Pauling’s daughter and that she’d come to Italy seeking clues related to his disappearance. She told them she’d been searching her father’s house when ambushed by a group of American investigators.

  During one of the interrogations, Emily had asked the men about her father’s fate. A direct answer never came, but the expressions on her captors’ faces indicated he’d likely been killed. From that point forward, she had fallen into a deep period of depression. For a brief time, she’d even stopped plotting her escape. The news of her father’s probable demise had taken away her will to live.

  As she’d continued to share a few details, one in particular grabbed Zane’s attention. At one point, she had awakened to find a man sitting a few feet away. He was gaunt and sallow like a corpse and had the unblinking stare of someone possessed. Emily said she’d never before felt the presence of such evil.

  Zane asked Emily for more details, but the only thing she remembered was his name—Viktor. Her fear had been so intense it seemed to have erased much of what went on after that. Zane made a decision not to press her further. If her memory did return, he was sure she’d share it.

  Hearing voices, Emily lifted her head. Thankfully, she didn’t seem as pale as before. Carmen had insisted she sip bottled water in the car, and the hydration seemed to have helped restore her color.

  Emily’s eyes fell on Zane, and she brightened immediately. “Hey.”

  “Hello.” He sat at the foot of the bed and patted her leg. “It looks like they gave you some good stuff. I could use some of that myself.”

  Emily gave a little laugh. “Not sure you’d want to go through what I did in order to get some.”

  “Try to get some sleep, honey,” Carmen said.

  “Okay.” Emily looked briefly at Zane before adjusting her pillow and closing her eyes.

  Zane and Carmen crossed to the table and pulled out chairs.

  “Find anything?” Zane asked Amanda.

  “We were getting Emily situated and haven’t had a chance to look.” She turned the screen so both of them could see then mashed the power button.

  “Let’s hope there is something on here,” Carmen said, “because at this point, it’s all we have.”

  “That’s not entirely true,” Zane pointed out. “Don’t forget your detective work from inside the wardrobe.”

  After Emily had fallen asleep in the car, Carmen had briefed them on the conversation she’d overheard between the leader of the assault team and the man with an American accent. She was convinced the latter was someone she recognized. In fact, she was also convinced he was someone who held a high position within the United States government. Unfortunately, the phone connection was poor and had distorted his voice just enough to hide his identity.

  The reference to the Vatican had most captured Zane’s attention. What did the cryptic reference mean? Was the Holy See after the map? Or had the man been referencing some kind of operation against the Vatican? He guessed the latter, although it was only a hunch. />
  Carmen sat back in her seat and crossed her arms. “Assuming the Vatican reference is a lead, where do we start? Don’t get me wrong. I think it’s significant. I just don’t know what we can do with the little information we have.”

  “We’ll need to put our minds together.” Zane nodded at the laptop. “Who knows? Maybe Pauling left us a piece of information linking everything together.”

  As they waited for the device to boot, Zane parted the curtains and looked out at the Piazza Giuseppe Garibaldi. The hour was late, and activity in the plaza had slowed considerably. A boisterous group of tourists spilled out of a restaurant to the left. On the opposite side of the square, several couples strolled along the shore of Lake Como.

  The laptop chimed. Zane let the curtain fall back into place.

  “Let’s see what we have here.” Amanda used the touch pad to maneuver to the device’s documents. When the contents displayed, she let out an exaggerated sigh. “Good grief, this may take all night.”

  Hundreds of folders appeared on the screen, each named with a long set of what seemed to be random letters. Amanda clicked on the first folder, only to find another underneath it. The nomenclature was the same as before, a string of arbitrary letters.

  Carmen frowned. “It looks like layers of dummy files to me. Keep clicking through.”

  Amanda did as instructed. Each time she opened a folder, another appeared underneath. Finally, after clicking through about twenty layers she finally arrived at an empty folder. Dead end.

  Zane looked at Carmen. “I’m impressed. How did you…?”

  “It has nothing to do with my smarts. I’ve just seen this a couple of times before. It’s a common trick to hide a private file. It will throw off the casual snoop but not a sophisticated hacker.” She nodded at the screen. “Go back to where we started. I think that’s the group we need to focus on.”

  Once Amanda returned to the highest level of folders, Zane looked at the names again. “Unless I’m missing something, the letters are completely random.”

  “Scroll down, please,” Carmen said.

  Amanda did as instructed.

  “Who has time to put all this together?” Zane took a swig of coffee. “I’m guessing it would take hours—if not days—to put something like that together.”

  Carmen answered without taking her eyes off the screen. “A man who is hiding something of great importance, something others would kill for.”

  “Look.” Amanda pointed with her free hand.

  Zane’s eyes narrowed. The folder names changed from sequences of letters to sequences of numbers.

  “Wait!” Carmen said.

  Amanda looked at her. “What?”

  “Why didn’t I think of this before?”

  “Why didn’t you think of what?” Zane asked.

  “The folder names. Look at them.” Carmen’s voice was filled with excitement.

  Zane examined the first few. He didn’t see anything special about the names. Like the previous ones, they seemed completely random. “Sorry, I don’t see a pattern.”

  “How many numbers are there?” Carmen asked.

  Amanda used her finger to count off each digit. “Eighteen.”

  Carmen looked at Zane. “Sound familiar?”

  Zane set his cup down and ran a hand through his hair. “I must need some sleep because I don’t see a thing.”

  “I don’t see the significance either,” Amanda said.

  “Here, watch this.” Carmen scooted closer and commandeered the touch pad. She inserted the cursor in the middle of the eighteen-digit number and inserted a space. “Okay, how many on each side?”

  “Nine?” Amanda asked.

  A look of understanding formed on Zane’s face. “Once again, I’m impressed. If you hadn’t done that, I never would’ve seen it.”

  “I still don’t get it, guys,” Amanda said.

  Zane looked at her. “They’re GPS coordinates.”

  Amanda widened her eyes.

  “Assuming you’re right, does this mean he’s giving us another location?” Zane asked Carmen.

  “Possibly, but I don’t think so. If that were the case, we’d have no way of knowing which one of these is the right one without spending hours going through each and every folder and subfolder. But I do have a theory.” She reached into her pocket and retrieved her phone. After finding something, she set it down, moved back to the laptop, and scrolled through the folders.

  Zane realized what she was looking for. “Let me guess. You think one of the folders has the GPS coordinates of the mountain villa.”

  “Very good.” Carmen’s eyes narrowed as she studied the numbers. “I think this is it.”

  Zane scooted his chair closer as Carmen clicked through the subfolders. A moment later, she stopped. She had just opened a folder, and instead of finding one underneath, there were two. The first was labeled For Your Eyes Only, and the other was labeled with a number.

  “I think we hit pay dirt,” Carmen said.

  She clicked on the one labeled, For Your Eyes Only first. Inside was the thumbnail JPEG. She double-clicked the image, and an ancient document appeared, or at least a portion of one. The roughly square piece had two straight sides, the top and the right. The bottom and left-hand sides were both torn.

  Zane leaned forward for a better look. The cream-colored document was faded and weathered. But what he found even more interesting was what was written on the surface: dozens of darkly shaded lines.

  He looked at Amanda. “Do you know what it is?”

  She enlarged the image. “It looks like our map.”

  “Are those roads?” Zane asked.

  Amanda continued staring at the screen. “It’s possible.”

  “Rivers perhaps?” Carmen asked.

  Amanda pointed at some of the lines. “You might be right. It does remind me of the Nile Delta, with all its fingers and tributaries.”

  Zane noticed one of the lines led to a large square space in the upper right-hand corner of the document. He indicated it with his finger. “If that’s true, perhaps this is a lake or some other large body of water.”

  “The parchment is so worn it’s too hard to tell,” Carmen said.

  “Technically, it’s not parchment. It’s papyrus.” Amanda zoomed in on one of the document’s torn edges. Small threads protruded. It looked like the edge of a torn cloth. “See those fibers? That’s what’s left of the pith strips, the inner part of a papyrus plant. Ancient Egyptians and other ancient peoples removed the pith from the plant then cut it into strips. The papyri were created by weaving together two perpendicular layers of strips.”

  “So essentially, we’re looking at torn plant fibers,” Carmen said.

  Amanda nodded.

  “Is that important?” Zane asked.

  “It is in one sense.” Amanda enlarged the image even further. “I’m an archaeologist, but documents aren’t my area of expertise. That’s a very specialized field. That being said, I can tell you it has the look of authenticity.” She looked at Zane. “In my professional opinion, we’re looking at an ancient document.”

  “Obviously, Pauling thought it was authentic.” He looked back at the image. “If this is a system of rivers, is there any way to determine where they might be and the significance? Is there a program that would match the image to something on record?”

  “There are any number of image-recognition tools online, but something tells me this won’t show up. Remember, Dr. Pauling was just starting to figure out what he was dealing with. That means it’s not the sort of thing you can pull up on Google. It’s going to take some research—potentially dozens of hours of research—to figure out what the lines represent. At this point, I can’t even say they’re rivers.”

  “There was another folder,” Carmen said. “Let’s see what’s in there.”

  Amanda backed out of the current folder and opened the other one. Inside was another thumbnail JPEG, which she double-clicked on. Zane’s eyes widened. The pho
tograph showed an open drawer, and resting inside was a polished stone relic. Its shape was odd with spokes or spires sticking out of a circular center.

  Amanda leaned closer. “It looks like a star.”

  “I was going to say a wheel,” Zane said.

  Carmen pointed at a tag next to the relic. “Can we get a better look at that?”

  Amanda zoomed in, bringing a number and date into view. “It looks like the kind of labeling we use on the archaeological storage drawers at UT.”

  “Maybe this was taken at a university,” Zane suggested.

  “It’s possible, but I don’t think so.” She zoomed back out and pointed at the right side of the image. “See all those other drawers? This is a big facility with high-end equipment. We don’t have anything that expensive at UT or anywhere else I’ve visited. I’m guessing this is one of the big museums or the private collection of a very wealthy individual.”

  “Or perhaps a government archive,” Carmen suggested.

  Amanda turned toward her with wide eyes. “That’s it.”

  “That’s what?”

  “An archive. This drawer is in an archive, and I’m pretty sure I know which one.”

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  “THE VATICAN?” CARMEN asked after Amanda gave them the answer.

  “Are you sure?” Zane asked.

  “Give me a minute.” Amanda stood, walked over to her luggage, and pulled out a tablet.

  Perhaps the pieces were finally coming together. First, Carmen overheard a cryptic reference to the Vatican. In addition, they found the image of a relic on Pauling’s hard drive Amanda believed might be housed at the Vatican. But what was the connection? Perhaps the group that killed Richard Pauling was trying to get their hands on both the map and the relic. At this point, that was a reasonable conclusion.

  “Here.” Amanda offered Carmen the tablet. “Take a look.”