The Golgotha Pursuit

by Rick Jones

  Then he watched Farid and the magic that was still in the boy’s heart, despite the horrible things the child’s eyes had been witness to. If only Farid had the tools to become a Vatican Knight. But the boy didn’t have a vicious bone in his body or a stain upon his heart. If nothing else, he was more suited to becoming a priest or an imam.

  As soon as the game was over, Kimball beckoned to Farid to join him by the bench. When he did Kimball patted the seat beside him. Farid took it. Then in passable Arabic, Kimball asked him how he enjoyed the game of basketball. Farid, of course, thought it was the greatest thing in the world. Then as soon as Kimball brought out the photos for Farid to examine, the boy’s smile quickly vanished.

  “I’m sorry, Farid,” Kimball apologized. “But this is important.” He handed the photos to Farid, who started to look at them one by one. “Do you know this man?” Kimball asked him.

  The boy nodded. Yes.

  “Who is he, Farid? Who’s the man in the photos?”

  Farid handed the pictures back. “Abbad,” he said.

  “Abbad who?”

  “Abbad Chahine?”

  “Are you sure? Are you absolutely … sure?”

  He nodded. “He’s close to my father.”

  Kimball corralled Farid and pulled him into an embrace. “Good boy,” he told him. “That’s all I needed.” After releasing the boy and then depositing the photos into his shirt pocket, Kimball told Farid to go off with his ‘buddies.’ Farid smiled at this. The magic was back. So he ran off to be a boy amongst other boys his age to play in the world of make-believe.

  Kimball wished he could once again feel the magic that was in a boy’s heart. But that magic left him long ago.

  Kimball had work to do.

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  There are three things for certain on this planet: death, taxes and war. And Oliver Beckett cashed in on the latter, making his fortune as an independent arms dealer, developer and manufacturer with legitimate contracts in Iraq, Afghanistan, and countries in Africa, with his leading production company approximately sixty kilometers, or thirty-six miles, north of London.

  He was a man of many wants and needs that money could buy. In particular, certain unattainable items that happened to surface on the black market. But when such goods did appear he never paid with cash, which always left a trail that could be followed by suspect authorities. What couldn’t be followed, however, was a barter or trade of one good for another. A simple bargain of commodities with no transference of funds.

  Three years ago he met a man in Boston, Calvin Locke, who had the prototype design of a weapon that could revolutionize ground warfare. It was something Beckett wanted and badly, but something he had to receive without the DOD sniffing his tail, either. So he took Locke’s wife and daughter and holed them up in an abandoned warehouse with the promise to release them the moment Locke transferred the plans into Beckett’s hands.

  Locke kept his promise.

  Beckett didn’t.

  He murdered Locke’s family prior to the transaction. And then he shot Locke to tie up loose ends. Once the discovery was made by the principals in the DOD that Locke had downloaded the information against designed protocols, the investigation would begin and end the moment they discovered Locke’s corpse, with the trail immediately growing as cold as his body.

  Three years later and with the design perfected, Oliver Beckett now had the means to trade and add another relic to his already extensive collection of goods acquired from the black market. It was truly a remarkable inventory of properties ranging from stolen and priceless paintings from top-end artists that had been commandeered by Nazi forces during World War II.

  And though he was a man who had everything, it was never enough.

  So he wanted more.

  He had received word that an item he longed for was now available, but only at a steep cost. Appointments had been made. Plans were devised to get a certain person into the United Kingdom without drawing a suspicious eye since money, and lots of it, had a way of making those in charge of watching the borders turn a blind eye long enough for Beckett’s person to pass uncontested.

  There would be one man, a Syrian, with an item so precious that Beckett could feel himself on the verge of salivating like one of Pavlov’s dogs. Of course he would serve the sellers well. But it was also in his blood and nature to get the upper hand in the deal.

  But this time, he knew, they had him by the short hairs.

  Oliver Beckett looked at the clock. By this time tomorrow, he told himself, the Syrian would be making his way into the United Kingdom.

  The man just couldn’t wait.

  #

  Beth Earl had been a woman of position for Beckett Industries for the past two years. She was a contract analyst who also maintained charts and graphs of raw products coming in, and developed projects going out and to whom.

  She was also an NBIS operative (National Ballistics Intelligence Service), having been carefully placed by the agency with a stellar but bogus background that made her appear to be someone she wasn’t. To the captains of this particular industry her name was Lyn Askew, from Bath. She was devoted to her studies and excelled at Oxford in statistics and economics, landing in the top one percent. She had no family, no ties with boyfriends or to girlfriends, nothing that would detract her from her duties and commitment to Oliver Beckett’s organization. Her work was her life and her companion. And that was the type of people Oliver Beckett hired to run his company–those who lived and breathed profit and war.

  In truth, Beth Earl was a computer prodigy who had the ability to hack into certain files, then cover her cyber-fingerprints without company techs zeroing in on her IP. Corporate hacking and espionage was the norm of the business, so creating impenetrable firewalls to block any breaches from outside sources was a primary duty. Earl would make it appear that a corporate invader had found that pinprick hole to enter, steal data, and then exit with the trail leading to a computer located inside some college library. As good as she was, eventually her position would be compromised. This she knew. In today’s age of hacking and with minds pursuing the invading host through the Internet like cyber-assassins, it didn’t matter how good she was. If she wasn’t quick enough, she knew that one day she’d get a tap on the shoulder by security, be escorted to Mr. Beckett’s office, and never be seen again. It was the way Oliver Beckett dealt with intruders. With magic acts of making people vanish.

  Now information was being gathered by NBIS due to MI6 intel, stating that Beckett might be manufacturing an off-the-grid weapon for possible transport to the Middle East, which would be against international law since the weapon had not been duly registered as a manufactured design by the company, but a covert weapon produced for black market dealings. Additional information from MI5, the FBI, and the DOD suspected that the design had been appropriated three years ago from a top engineer in Boston, with the engineer and his family found dead via execution style. It was only until recently that a communication between Beckett and a known courier of the Islamic State had been intercepted. In the communiqué was the desire to start a program to barter for trade between Beckett Industries and the Islamic State, which is not only illegal, but highly so. Now Interpol was involved, keeping their eyes and ears attentive as well. In short, Beckett had foolishly placed himself in the crosshairs believing his system was impenetrable, and that he was invulnerable to the prying eyes of outside sources.

  He wasn’t.

  What remained a mystery beyond the communication was what type of weapon they were talking about and when this program would begin, if at all. So what Beth Earl had to do was to somehow find the missing link. A document. A file. Something that would tie him in with the appropriation of the missing design and the murder of the DOD engineer.

  So far nothing.

  And time was running out.

  Soon, if she didn’t f
ind the Holy Grail, she would have to leave her post with nothing to show for her efforts, which would stall the investigation …

  … Or wait for that tap on the shoulder.

  She continued to search.

  She checked drives and the files within those drives. She checked files within files. Then she checked files within files within files.

  Nothing.

  Then one day by serendipity, while examining an email thread that remained on the hard drive but apparently deleted, though the message was never truly erased but traceable through forensics, she discovered an encrypted message regarding the perfection of a prototype weapon that would revolutionize ground warfare. It was the M600 SR Squad-Level Precision-Guided 5.56 Service Rifle. The moment she read the thread she knew that she had finally struck pay dirt.

  She began to type and save and bring the thread to the surface. When the data was gathered, when the information was about to go to certain intel principals, as her fingered hovered over the SEND button, there was a tap on her shoulder.

  When Beth Earl turned to see two security guards, both brutish-looking men by nature with simian brows and prognathous jawlines, she knew that she had come to the end of the road. She had been there too long; she had taken the gamble and lost.

  “Ms. Askew,” said one of the brutes. “If that’s your real name. Mr. Beckett would like to see you in his office.”

  As Beth Earl got to her feet, she slyly hit the SEND button without them noting, and stood firmly erect as a show of steady defiance. Two seconds after the button was pressed and the message sent, the send-program she created immediately erased any traces of communication from the terminal the moment the message landed at the receiving IP. “I’m ready,” she said.

  The larger of the two stood back and gestured with a sweep of his arm for her to take the lead toward Beckett’s office on the second tier that overlooked the workshop. As she walked along the aisle between the cubicles, she looked up at the massive window that served as a complete wall to Beckett’s office. He was standing there looking down at them as they approached. His face had a neutral look to it, one that didn’t betray a single emotion, which gave her hope that the tap on the shoulder was not the kiss of death. But when she walked inside his office and saw that the carpet was covered with sheets of plastic to keep the blood off the fabric, she knew her life was over.

  “Welcome to my office, Ms. Askew. Or are you willing to give me your real name?”

  “Would it matter?”

  He shook his head. “No,” he said. “It wouldn’t.

  Lyn Askew, or Beth Earl, was neither seen nor heard from again.

  Like magic, Oliver Beckett made her disappear.

  But not until after she had pressed the SEND button.

  #

  Kelly Matthews was one of the leading principals of the NBIS, the National Ballistics Intelligence Service, and was poring over documents when her desktop pinged. She had received an important and highly classified message to her heavily guarded server from 90877, which was the assigned number of a covert working deep inside Beckett Industries and was trying to drum up evidence to support the allegations that Beckett was operating unlawfully by manufacturing illegal arms.

  As the encrypted data scrolled on the screen, as the numbers and symbols became legible reading matter, she began to read between the lines. When the entire message had been deciphered, her heart almost misfired in her chest.

  Here was a message from the contact. It was a confirmation Kelly Matthews needed to point an accusing finger at Oliver Beckett. He had perfected a prototype weapon without registering the designs with the proper authorities. He had been in contact with a member of the Islamic State, though this needed to be confirmed if the name on the email or the IP address came from a person with known ties to ISIS. Dossiers would have to be created. Parts of the puzzle would have to be pieced together to form a greater picture. But at least Kelly Matthews had the catalyst information to get this going.

  Once the proper files were created, she immediately sent them off to the directors of Britain’s National Defense Intelligence agencies, both domestic and abroad, with several carbon copies to directors of the DOD, the CIA, MI5, MI6 and Interpol.

  Oliver Beckett would now be under scrutiny from security divisions all over the world. If he sneezed, they would know about it.

  Feeling good about Beth Earl’s efforts, one thing did bother Kelly, however. Protocol clearly stated that once the data was attained or downloaded, then the area was to be vacated and a summons for immediate extraction was to be requested, usually within three minutes.

  But Beth Earl never followed through.

  By the next day when she didn’t return to base, it was believed that she had been terminated. Of course the management of Beckett Industries stated that Beth Earl had left at her scheduled time, her timecard proving as such, and never returned. A no-show-no-call. Oddly enough there were no camera images to support this, since the cameras were mainly directed on areas of manufacturing, not on administrative cubicles.

  When Beckett was informed by the authorities that there would be an ongoing investigation regarding her sudden disappearance, Beckett simply smiled with his cocky grin and said: Be my guest. I do hope you find, Ms. Askew. She was an asset to the company.

  The authorities went away flustered, the jurisdiction of her disappearance now falling into the hands of local police and inspectors.

  But everybody in the business and at the NBIS, especially Kelly Matthews, knew that she was dead. And that Oliver Beckett had ordered her termination.

  Kelly prayed for her associate Beth, aka Lyn Askew, who most likely had been tossed into a shallow grave never to be seen again.

  Such sorrows.

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  Washington, D.C.

  Shari Cohen’s house, a residence that once housed so many wonderful memories, now seemed empty. It had a sepulcher air about it, dead and unmoving. From the couch in the living room she could hear the tic-tic-ticking of the pendulum inside the grandfather clock in the adjoining hallway.

  … tic …

  … tic …

  … tic …

  It was the only sound in the house.

  She was sitting on top of the sofa with her legs crossed beneath her. She was wearing sweats and a tank-top. In her hands was a photo album.

  … tic …

  … tic …

  … tic …

  And then the minute hand struck the twenty-third hour of the day, the clock chiming and signifying the hour before midnight.

  Shari peeled back the cover to the album. The photos were of her grandmother who was a survivor of the camps, most notably Auschwitz-Birkenau. Even at the age of fourteen she showed the fortitude of incredible strength during times where a future seemed nonexistent. She was standing along the edge of a pit already filled with the bodies of the dead, with her chin raised in defiance. Her striped clothing hung on her like drapery, her body shrinking by the day until her skin pulled tight over her rack of ribs. Her eyes seemed to be falling back into their hollows, and her cheeks and jawline appeared completely angular from the incredible loss of weight. But it was the upward tilt of her head and her chin that spelled defiance and strength before the click of the camera.

  Shari smiled faintly as she traced the tips of her fingers over the photo.

  She remembered the moment of her Sweet Sixteen, years after her grandmother’s liberation. By this time she was aged with steel-gray hair and deep seams along her face, the lines of hardship. She remembered the stenciled numbers on her arm, which catalogued her at the camp. And whereas Shari was showered with gifts on her sixteenth birthday by family and friends, her grandmother, instead, gave her the gift of wisdom.

  “You’re a young woman now,” she remembered her grandmother saying to her. “Old enough to understand the things a young
woman should know. So what I’m about to give you, my littlest one, is the most wonderful gift of all. The gift of insight and wisdom.” It was here that her grandmother leaned closer and beckoned her to join her in close counsel, as if what she was about to say could only be passed on in whispers. “I’m one of Jewish faith,” she added, “as you are. But I was proud and refused to give up. To be a Jew in Auschwitz was certain death. But if you fight from here,” she said, placing an open hand over Shari’s heart, “if you’re truly proud of who and what you are, then you will survive. But never forget this one thing: there are terrible people out there willing to destroy you simply because evil has its place. If you want evil to take hold, then stand back and do nothing. But if you want to make a difference, then fight, so that all can live in the Light. Does this make any sense what I’m telling you?”

  Shari could remember giving her a quizzical look. So her grandmother held her forearm out, the ink of the magic numbers having faded to an olive green color.

  “Because I was a Jew, I was given this mark—even though I was a good girl who never hurt anybody. My parents, your great-grand parents, were good people who never received a mark because they were told to go to ‘the left,’ which, in Auschwitz, meant a quick death in the gas chambers. I saw them once as their bodies were being carted out of the chambers.” She smiled—the creases of her face many—but the lines so warm and beautiful, the lines of a person who truly loved life.

  She then reached for Shari’s hand and embraced it with maternal gentleness. “There is goodness in you,” she told her. “I can feel it. It is people like you who can make a difference in the lives of all, whether they be that of Jewish faith or not. These marks on my arm are a constant reminder of good people who turned a blind eye and did nothing to help me or others when life was at its darkest. And because of it many people died unnecessarily because evil was allowed to succeed. But in you, my littlest one, is a fire so bright I can see it in your eyes. You want to do good for those who can’t protect themselves, yes?”