The Belial Stone (The Belial Series)

by Brady, R. D.

  “You’ll find the Chandler Group has their fingers in a lot of pies. We just tend to keep that quiet.

  “What about the security personnel?” Patrick asked, glancing at the security outpost by the front gate

  “We have twenty full-time individuals in the security force. All former military. They continually monitor both the buildings and grounds.”

  Giving her uncle’s shoulder a squeeze, Laney said, “Well, as far as safety goes, I don’t think we could do any better.”

  Patrick looked over his shoulder at her. “I have to agree.” He smiled, but Laney could read the concern in his eyes.

  “We’ll be okay, Uncle Patrick.”

  He reached back and patted her hand, but didn’t reply.

  Laney watched him for a moment, struggling to come up with something to say that would reduce his fears. She was at loss. How could you convince someone they were safe when a man with incredible fighting and healing skills might still be after them? Answer: You couldn’t.

  Shoving her concerns aside, she focused on the scenery. It was a surprisingly easy task.

  “This place is something out of storybook,” she said, as they turned onto the tree-lined main drive and drove for another half mile.

  The cart finally came to a halt at a large circular drive in front of the main house. A giant fountain of marble and gold adorned the center of the drive.

  Stepping out, the full view of the main house left her awestruck yet again. It had been modeled after Thomas Jefferson’s Monticello estate, but built on a much larger scale. The brick mansion towered three stories high, with pillars supporting the rounded roof. The windows were adorned with heavy black shutters.

  Laney stopped counting the windows when she reached twenty. She glanced at her uncle as he walked up the marble steps next to her. “Cozy, huh?”

  He grinned back at her. “Yup. Just a cozy little country cottage.”

  Relief flowed through her at the sight of his smile. She stepped into the house feeling lighter. And it was like she was stepping back in time. A giant crystal chandelier hung in the front entryway. It highlighted the three-story circular staircase and the polished black and white marble tiles. The white wainscoting and crown molding of the entryway stood in stark contrast to the deep hunter green of the walls.

  The home had, of course, all the modern conveniences. They were all cleverly hidden, though, so as not to distract from the historical beauty. Light switches were found on the underside of chair rails, and outlets and heating ducts were similarly hidden within the architecture of the walls. An elevator had even been built into the wall and covered with paneling. It was accessed through a switch plate also hidden.

  Laney gaped as she turned a full circle in the entry hall.

  “Pretty nice, huh?” Jake asked, a smile playing across his lips.

  “Nice? My little vegetable garden is nice. This place is…”

  “Phenomenal?” her uncle offered.

  She grinned. “That'll work.”

  Jake led them up the stairs. He’d offered the elevator, but Laney wanted to see more of the place. After checking out the second floor, they arrived at Henry’s office. It took up a full third of the top floor.

  Jake led them through the two large oak doors. Built-in bookcases dominated the room, covering every inch of three walls. A quick perusal offered a glimpse of first-edition literary masterpieces – James Joyce, Mark Twain, and Ernest Hemingway – as well as tomes on a range of international issues. The back wall, however, was entirely made of glass, offering a spectacular view of the rolling hills of the estate.

  Situated directly in front of the windows was the biggest desk Laney had ever seen. Made of handcrafted mahogany, it was L-shaped. On closer inspection, she noticed cherubs painstakingly crafted into the trim. There were also three sleek leather chairs positioned in front of it.

  The other side of the room had a large conference table, capable of seating twelve.

  “Just like my office at the University,” she said.

  Patrick stared out the windows at the lush back lawn. “I can’t believe this is actually a place of business.”

  “Henry believes that a good environment means a productive environment,” Jake replied.

  “Well, then this must be the most productive place on the planet,” Laney said.

  “I like to think so,” said a voice behind her.

  “Hey, Henry,” Jake said.

  Laney turned to see the elusive Henry Chandler, the man Forbes magazine had dubbed the most analytical thinker of his generation. He walked toward her and she gaped yet again. Casually dressed in a light blue oxford and jeans, she noted his unusual eyes. They were a rich violet, an arresting combination with his pitch black hair.

  She was sure, however, that his unusual eyes were not what grabbed most people’s attention when they first met him. Henry was easily over seven feet tall, and his head and hands were disproportionately large for his body. She immediately diagnosed him as suffering from some form of gigantism. With all the media coverage on the Chandler Group, why hadn’t she ever read reports on this?

  Realizing her rudeness, she snapped her mouth shut and extended her hand. “Dr. Chandler, it’s a pleasure to meet you.”

  Henry gently dwarfed her hand in both of his. Obviously, he was accustomed to the impact his size had on people. “The pleasure is all mine, Dr. McPhearson. And please, call me Henry. I’m glad to see you’re all right after your adventures.”

  “It’s been a rough twenty-four hours. Thank you for letting us stay here.” She glanced over her shoulder at her uncle, who had walked up behind them. “This is my uncle, Father Patrick Delaney.”

  Henry extended his hand. “Father, I’m glad you could join us. Your archaeological expertise may be invaluable in the next few days.”

  Patrick smiled as he shook Henry’s hand. “I’m not sure how all of our intrigue is going to be of help to you. I think we may just be distracting you from more realistic leads in finding Jake’s brother.”

  “Well, we have a strong belief the two are related.” Henry gestured behind him to a young boy, who looked no more than ten. He reminded Laney of Elliot from E.T., with his dark hair, big eyes, and freckles. Her focus on Henry, she hadn’t even realized he was there.

  “This is Danny Wartowski, our top analyst,” Henry said.

  Laney couldn’t hide her surprise. “Wartowski? Not the Daniel Wartowski who was up for a Nobel Prize in physics last year?”

  Henry’s smile seemed to reach from one end of his face to the other. “That’s our Danny.”

  “Impressive.” Laney smiled at the young man. She’d read about him, but meeting the thirteen-year-old prodigy was something else. He was just so young-looking, it was hard to reconcile the child-like image with the incredibly mature brain.

  Danny glanced up, his hazel eyes meeting Laney's for only a second before they resumed their inspection of the carpet. “Not really. It’s just physics.”

  Laney wanted to hug him. His introversion had been mentioned in the articles she’d read, but it was painful to witness. He seemed as if he was waiting for a blow, his shoulders hunched up around his ears. She’d never read anything on his early history, just his lightning-quick mind. But it was obvious his childhood had not been an easy one. The aftereffects were stamped all over his small frame.

  Henry led everyone over to the conference table on the right hand side of the room. “Let’s get started, shall we?”

  Henry took his position at the head of the table and everyone arranged themselves around one end. Danny took his seat next to him, placing his own laptop on the table.

  As Laney pulled out a chair, she realized that monitors had been built into the table. A wireless keyboard was on a shelf just under it.

  Henry hit a button and a large projection screen descended from the ceiling. “Okay. So here’s what we know: Tom went missing five days ago, which lines up with when other parolees have gone missing in New York state.
Their disappearances coincide with regular cargo flights underwritten by a political action group.”

  Laney looked at the slides that Henry displayed on the screen. Parolees had been disappearing from New York State for almost a year, at the beginning of each month. It looked like on average they were losing anywhere between twenty and thirty every month. Tom had disappeared in that same time period. Obviously, something was happening to them. But this couldn’t be related to Drew and the attacks on her. What were they doing here?

  Patrick interrupted, as if reading her thoughts. “I’m sorry, but I don’t see how any of this is connected to the attacks on Laney or Drew’s death.”

  Henry nodded. “I didn’t notice it, either. Danny’s the one who made the connection.”

  All eyes turned to Danny. Laney was amazed at the transformation in the boy. He looked confident, in charge, and years older. Apparently, his shyness only applied to social settings, not to his professional life.

  “I linked regular cargo plane runs by a group called Americans for Progress with the same time period.”

  Laney started at the name. “Americans for Progress? They’re the political group?”

  Danny nodded. “You know them?”

  “I asked Drew once about the funding for his research. He mentioned them. I remember thinking at the time that it was an odd project for them to be interested in.”

  “Well, Dr. Priddle disappeared shortly after Dr. Drew Masters’…” Danny stumbled over the name. He looked at Laney and Patrick, his face apologetic.

  Laney gave him a small smile. “It’s okay, Danny. Go ahead.”

  He nodded. “Dr. Priddle disappeared after Dr. Masters was found. And then Laney was attacked a short time after she received an email from Dr. Masters. An email that someone attempted to rescind after Dr. Masters had died. The likelihood that these events are unrelated is less than two percent.”

  Laney sat back, stunned. Priddle was missing? And the group funding Drew's research was connected to the missing cons? What the hell was going on?

  “So,” Jake said, “now we need to somehow link an archaeologist's research with a bunch of missing ex-cons. Pretty sure they're not hiring them for their research backgrounds.”

  Laney looked up sharply, warning bells going off in her head. A dark thought was forming in the back of her mind, but she really hoped she was wrong. “Henry, do you have any background on the missing men?”

  Henry hit a couple of buttons on his keyboard. “Yes. One of my analysts put it together. I just sent it to your monitor.”

  Laney glanced at the spreadsheet in front of her. Pulling out the wireless keyboard, she quickly flipped through the list of available statistical programs on the computer.

  “There you are,” she mumbled, finding the latest version of Stata. Importing the data into the statistical program, she stared at the list of variables. Running some collinearity diagnostics, she nodded. “Okay. All good.”

  Creating a negative binomial regression model, she ran it and watched in disbelief as the results appeared in front of her. She looked around the table. “I think I might have found the link.”

  She exported her results to each of the monitors.

  After looking at the monitor, Jake glanced at Laney, his eyebrow raised. “Laney, did I mention the ‘not going to college’ part of my background?”

  Patrick shook his head. “I went to college and I still don't know what this says. What exactly are we looking at?”

  “Right, right.” Laney said. She’d forgotten that not everybody spent their down time looking at statistical outputs. “Sorry. Basically, I ran a model to check on the health of the missing men. Prisoners are known for having a slew of medical conditions due to risky lifestyle, substandard health care, and a whole host of other reasons. The missing men, however, are in the top tier, physically speaking. None of them have any ongoing medical issues. They all have clean bills of health. Hold on a sec.”

  Her eyes zipped through the variable list. Re-working the model, she added a few more variables. She looked up when the model had run. “And none of them have any family listed. On paper, it looks like they’re alone in the world.’

  She looked at Jake and saw his jaw tighten. He wouldn’t show up in any of Tom’s paperwork, either.

  Henry drummed his fingers on the table top. “Okay. We have a group of physically fit inmates with no family ties. Why would anyone target this particular group?

  “That's just it,” Laney replied, the dark thought now supported by the data in front of her. “You said we need to link the missing men and the research. My uncle mentioned this morning that Drew’s paper is on a sister site to Gobekli Tepe.”

  At Jake’s raised eyebrow, she quickly explained about the Turkish site that predated the Fertile Crescent and consisted of multiple concentric circles of ruins.

  Continuing her original argument, she said, “My uncle’s never heard of a sister site to Gobekli Tepe. And that kind of site would make a huge impact in archaeological circles as well as being splashed across all media outlets. So I think it’s safe to say no one in archaeology is aware of the discovery. But if there is a sister site and for some reason someone was keeping it quiet, they'd need men to dig. They'd need…”

  Patrick finished the thought for her, his eyes wide. “Slaves.”

  She nodded, her eyes searching Jake's face for a reaction. Whatever he thought had happened to his brother, she was pretty sure he hadn’t thought of this possibility.

  Jake shook his head. “Slave labor? But why take them only from New York?”

  “They probably have an in with the parole department that gives them the location of potential targets.” Another thought hit her. “Which also probably means that the site is in the U.S.”

  “Is that even possible?” Jake asked. “On this scale? I mean, we’re talking hundreds of men in one place. How could you hide that kind of operation?”

  “Actually, it’s probably not as many as you think.” Laney paused, looking at Jake. She didn’t want to hurt him, but she knew she had to finish the thought.

  “The monsters who view others as property tend not to take very good care of their ‘property.’ They see the people under their control as expendable. You said this whole process started over eleven months ago. If we’re right, I think a large percentage of these men may already be dead.”

  CHAPTER 27

  Havre, MT

  Tom woke up with his teeth chattering. He forced his arms to move, the blood feeling almost sluggish in his veins.

  Sitting up, he shook his legs, which were tingling from the cold. Damn, it must be near freezing. He could see his breath as he exhaled. He swung his arms around himself, trying to generate some heat.

  Seeley sat up next to him. “It’s fucking cold, man.”

  He looked horrible. Seeley’s lips were blue and there were dark circles under his eyes. His normally warm complexion would now rival a vampire’s.

  Tom was pretty sure he didn’t look any better. He pulled the bedroll from the ground around his shoulders, trying to stave off some of the cold. “No kidding, man. Don’t think I can do many more nights like that.”

  Seeley nodded and stood up, shifting from one foot to the other. “They can’t throw us a damn blanket? How the hell we supposed to dig for them all day, when we’re freezing all night?”

  Tom watched the farm truck pull up and drop off a new batch of recruits. “Don’t think they care, man. We’re not exactly irreplaceable.”

  “No shit. Do you think last night was a fluke or is it gonna be like this from now on?”

  “Don’t know, man. I mean, it’s October. Gets pretty cold at night back home around now, too.”

  Seeley nodded and shifted to jogging in place. He stumbled over one of the other men who’d been sleeping next to him. “Shit, man. Sorry.” He scrambled back to his feet.

  The man didn’t respond.

  “Buddy, you okay?” Seeley asked.

  Tom looke
d over at the still form. No little puffs of cold air appeared around the man’s nose or mouth. Tom leaned down and pulled the man onto his back. The man’s arm flung out with the movement, hitting Tom in the leg. He focused on the man’s chest. It wasn’t moving.

  Tom stood up and shook his head at Seeley.

  “Damn.” Seeley looked over at the enclosure. “What do you think’s gonna happen when the ground gets too cold? We’re not gonna be able to dig.”

  Tom looked at Seeley, and then to the entrance when he heard a gunshot. The initiation demonstration was in full swing. Tom watched two men pick up a body and lumber over to the body pit. As they tossed the body over the edge, one of the men fell to his knees and puked. A guard kicked him in the back.

  Tom looked back at Seeley and shook his head. “When the ground’s too hard, we’re of no more use.”

  CHAPTER 28

  Baltimore, MD

  Laney placed Drew’s paper onto the wrought-iron table. She’d taken refuge on the expansive, back veranda on the Chandler estate after the meeting had broken up.

  Needing to sort through everything, she’d picked up a copy of Drew’s paper to finally read it. She’d had the paper for almost forty-eight hours and she still hadn’t had time to sit down and really go through it. If she was going to find answers, she knew that’s where she needed to start.

  Now that she had read it, though, she wasn’t sure she was any closer to finding those answers. She stared out at a family of deer munching away on the grass a hundred yards away while her mind tried to pull together the logic of Drew's argument. Her uncle was right, Drew did seem to argue that there was an ancient weapon of mass destruction buried at a sister site to Gobekli Tepe.

  Her uncle had said that Drew had attributed that information to Cayce. That, however, was only partly true. He had also attributed it to the Book of Enoch. Drew mentioned that the Book of Enoch also referred to an ancient weapon. But that was all he said. He didn’t elaborate.