Book of Bravery

by James Burke

  Not that there’d be much in the way of rest, given she’ll be waitressing at her mom’s busy Thai restaurant. Not that the 22-year-old minded. Working in a restaurant was second nature to Tina who enjoyed helping her mom out.

  Being first generation Thai-American, there was some pressure on her to study something other than the art-education course that she eventually chose. For a while it looked like she may instead have chosen to be a language teacher, given how she excelled in both her Mandarin and French high-school classes. But either way, both her parents knew their daughter well enough not to push her in a direction against her will. Her mom and dad knew she wasn’t like others, including her elder brother Jeremy who favored business and computers. Like his father, he was introverted, fastidious and ambitious. Tina was the complete opposite, but neither was she like her mother.

  If I had a couple of words to sum up Tina they’d be: kind yet cautious. These qualities were largely an indirect result of a hidden talent that she had. In fact, Tina’s secret gift gave her a head start in most things in this human world of yours, when it came to understanding people at least. With one glance, she could make out those of you who are good hearted and those who weren’t. Based on that, she could further appreciate what really mattered; a lot of that was simply about being virtuous.

  Now I can see you are thinking what could be such a gift?

  You may shrug it off as something New Age or paranormal, but Tina had the ability to see other people’s auras, a phenomenon recognized by many spiritual traditions — Christians call them haloes as an example. Perhaps one out of every 50,000 people has the ability to see them.

  Without getting distracted by the history or theory of it all, I will just stick with what Tina could see when she looked at someone, which for a decent individual is a subtle, luminous glow surrounding the body that is typically centered on the head. The more virtuous the person the greater the glow.

  However, if someone was of a lesser character then the field that she saw was correspondingly weaker. For those who are horribly depraved and corrupted, she instead saw they were covered by a dark mist.

  Given she could gauge such things, Tina chose her friends well. On the surface, they were an eclectic mix of different races, ages and beliefs but they had one thing in common, they were decent people. That’s one reason why Tina liked working at the diner; from the light that shone from Bill and staff such as Gabriela she knew she was in good company.

  Bright

  After dismounting from her bike and chaining it up, Tina entered through the diner’s back service entrance. She cut through the kitchen and made her way to a small staff zone where she stowed her personal items into a metal locker. As she put on her apron, Gabriela passed carrying dirty plates.

  ‘Tina thanks for coming in so quick.’

  ‘No problems, busy yet?’

  Gabriela shook her head.

  ‘But in an hour, it will be.’

  Prompted by the noise of the diner’s front-door bell, Tina went out to the dining area to begin her shift. She approached a newly-arrived family of four and seated them at a window booth. After leaving them with menus to review she stopped to pick up some used plates off a table and it was then that something caught her attention from the corner of her eye.

  Something glowing.

  She looked towards the glow and saw a man seated at the counter who had the brightest and largest aura she’d ever seen.

  Beyond the glowing man was Bill at the espresso machine who was waving at her.

  ‘Tina, I appreciate you coming in at such short notice. You’re a star!’ Bill said.

  She smiled at her boss and gestured that it was nothing. Then the man on the stool turned to casually look her way. His face was radiating so much that she barely noticed that he was softly smiling.

  The only way I can describe to you how she felt at that moment was that it was if an avalanche of warmth hit her. Such was its force, it nearly brought on a surge of tears. Quickly she composed herself and went to the kitchen with an armful of dirty plates.

  ‘Super shy but a heart of gold,’ Bill said to the glowing man who was of course Quintus. ‘This year I’ve mostly been lucky with staff, other years so so.’

  In the kitchen, Tina delivered the dirty crockery to the dishwasher and then went to a mirrored window that allowed her to look into the dining area unnoticed. Gabriela came up beside her and joined in staring at Quintus.

  ‘Yeah, he’s sure super cute in an old-world charmer kinda way,’ Gabriela said as she playfully elbowed Tina in the ribs.

  Yes, but it wasn’t his fetching looks that fascinated Tina.

  Live from Rome

  The television behind the diner’s counter was going live to a reporter in Rome.

  ‘You guys mind if we hear this?’ Quintus asked.

  ‘Guess we’re looking at it, may as well hear it,’ Lance said.

  Using the TV remote, Bill upped the volume.

  On the television, a ZBS reporter named Jake talked to the camera.

  ‘It’s after midnight here and we’re in the city’s historic center, and most people are asleep,’ Jake said. ‘As you can tell there are not many about.’

  Behind the reporter, in the shot’s background, was the floodlit Trevi Fountain in all its Baroque grandeur. The vision cut to the U.S. studio where Teresa, a news anchor, was asking questions.

  ‘It may be late Jake but is there yet any indication what the mood in the Italian capital is like?’

  Back in Rome, Jake shrugged.

  ‘Well Teresa y’know the Italians are still coming to terms with the tsunami that hit Venice less than 18 hours ago. So, it is somber, the mood is somber, that’s how I can best summarize it at the moment,’ Jake said. ‘Now despite Chuck Goyette’s prediction about the Venice catastrophe being correct, he still, surprisingly, remains relatively unknown here in Italy.’

  From here dear reader I’ll focus on things that largely occurred off camera for a bit. What TV viewers didn’t see was a thin young woman in the background sitting on the edge of the fountain clapping her hands. The crew’s soundman heard her and gave her the ‘shut up’ look. She glared back at him which he ignored.

  The woman appeared in her mid 20s. She wore black skinny fit jeans and a dirty t-shirt. Her arms were covered with hard-core tattoos and she had piercings in her nose, lips and eyebrows. Her unruly hair was peroxide blonde with dark roots showing.

  As implied earlier, these features weren’t visible to TV viewers. To them she was only a blurred figure, so they missed when she tossed something into the fountain water — something like a coin but much larger. A moment later a three second tremor shook the area.

  I can tell you that the reporter Jake nearly wet his pants when the buildings rattled around him.

  ‘Holy mother of…’ he exclaimed.

  After the tremor subsided he resumed talking to camera, somewhat frazzled.

  ‘Teresa, I presume you’re still with us,’ he said. ‘I’m not sure how that looked back in the studio, but we just experienced a tremor maybe or perhaps even a small earthquake.’

  The TV crew didn’t notice the thin woman walk off in search of a taxi stand which didn’t take her long to find. When she got into a waiting taxi, the elderly driver — a man named Antonio — got a shock. Her body odor was putrid. It smells of death, he thought. Like something dead on his nephew’s farm.

  Antonio looked back to her, trying his best not to grimace, and asked where she wanted to go. He was surprised that her reply was in faultless Italian. He had presumed she was from elsewhere.

  As instructed, he drove her to the Leonardo da Vinci international airport. During the drive, he did all the talking, some of it about his family but most of it about the tremor that occurred just minutes before she got into his car and the tsunami that recently devastated Venice.

  When they finally arrived at the airport the woman gave him a generous tip and some parting advice.

  ‘Get ou
t of Rome within the next four hours or you will die.’

  That left Antonio in a cold sweat. He didn’t drive off straightaway; instead he watched her thin figure enter the airport’s departure area.

  After five minutes of contemplation, he picked up his cell and phoned his wife. She eventually woke from her sleep and he informed her what had occurred.

  ‘Pack your bags and get ready to leave,’ he added.

  Antonio then tried phoning and warning others — friends and relatives. Despite the time, most answered their phones, but no one took notice of what he had to say. It wouldn’t be long before they wished otherwise just as he regretted not being more convincing or forceful.

  Travelling in his taxi, he and his wife, their two pet cats and whatever they could grab, were out of the city limits by daybreak and making their way to his nephew’s farm. By then, the thin woman — who others called Death — was onboard a 9-hour flight to New York City.

  CHAPTER VIII

  Countdown

  By 7pm the diner was half full of customers. Bill was busy making drinks and Lance was long gone. The tremor in Rome seen earlier on the TV was enough to send him home. Quintus however remained at the counter, watching TV and drinking umpteen cups of coffee. Luckily, he was impervious to the effects of caffeine. In the past 24 hours he’d already watched more television than what he had in the past decade. It was an extraordinary time.

  Quintus checked his watch again. It wasn’t long until the big quake was due to hit Rome according to Goyette’s prediction. Over the course of history, he had seen many ruined towns and cities, especially the wasteland of Eastern Europe following the Mongol invasions and later in Western Europe during World War II. The thought of something similar befalling Rome soured his gut, but he had to see if it would eventuate.

  If Goyette’s quake did transpire it was evidence enough that what Tai had trained him for had come. In such a development, he’d cancel his job interview scheduled for the next day and get himself to an international airport to catch a flight to China. The only thing that his teacher told him was that when the end times arrived he would have to return to White Dragon Mountain. He wasn’t sure if his mission remained valid, but Tai’s words were all he had to go on.

  Quintus sensed the people in the traffic outside the diner were driving home or at least somewhere with a TV, to watch what would transpire, to see if the end really was nigh. But he failed to pick up that among them, there were some, like those in a white Humvee and a following black limousine, who couldn’t care less about the fate of the world.

  Unsavory

  A downside of my telling you this story is I have to listen to or be inside the heads of some unsavory characters. On this occasion, I was an unseen witness to a conversation between five men in the back of the stretched limousine that had just driven past the diner.

  All of them were simply appalling individuals, including 34-year-old Albert Peach, the account manager from Black Crest. He was as spineless as he was morally corrupt. Among the others were Marx’s henchmen — Vacher and Irfan. You should already have a fair idea of who they are.

  Seated opposite the Black Crest staff were the Amado drug cartel’s Hector Herera and his sidekick Antonio Chavez. The Amado were sadists; beheadings were their trademark.

  Fueled by alcohol and other substances, all five were full of loose talk and bravado. For me, having to listen to it was like having a trashcan full of garbage poured over my head.

  After one of Vacher’s ribald stories, there was more laughter and drinking. Despite the ‘jolliness’ of it all, Irfan was looking back, checking for tails. Herera slapped him on the knee.

  ‘You’re making me nervous tipo! No one’s going to tangle with us,’ the cartel lieutenant said.

  Herera thumbed towards his driver and another tough-looking brute in the front.

  ‘My warriors are former Mexican special forces, same as the guys in the Humvee. All U.S. trained,’ he said with exaggerated pride. ‘No doubt Marx hires quality also eh?’ he said referring to Irfan and Vacher.

  ‘Yeah, these guys were both black ops,’ Peach said way too eagerly.

  Vacher gave Peach a displeased sideways glance.

  ‘Who said anything about black ops?’ Vacher asked Peach. ‘Do you even know anything about black ops?

  Herera butted in.

  ‘C’mon no one cares. Relax guys,’ he said. ‘I’m hungry, let’s eat.’

  Herera tapped his driver on the shoulder and issued orders in Spanish.

  ‘Felix, find us somewhere to eat. American food is okay. In fact, go back to that old-style diner we passed before. Tell the Humvee to follow.’

  The FBI

  Three FBI agents from a special surveillance group team were in the back of a moving unmarked van. The one calling the shots was 42-year-old Chris Pena. He and the other two watched monitors showing chopper vision of the cartel’s Humvee and limousine.

  A brief crackle of static was heard before a voice from the police surveillance helicopter came through a speaker system.

  ‘Both subject vehicles pulling over turning around on Ryland,’ said the voice.

  Pena’s cellphone vibrated and after checking the caller’s identity, he took the call.

  ‘Agent, what’ve you got for me?’ he asked Joseph Rose who was phoning in from an FBI strategic information and operations center somewhere in Virginia.

  ‘Zero information so far on the two new arrivals,’ Rose said referring to Vacher and Irfan. ‘But I have something on Herera’s preppy chaperone.’

  Pena, still watching the monitor, switched on the phone’s speaker so all could listen.

  ‘His name is Albert Peach, a business development manager for Black Crest, a hedge fund management firm based in NYC. He is pretty dull but his boss, Aaron Marx, is plenty colorful,’ Rose said.

  ‘Pad on the Hamptons I presume,’ Pena said.

  ‘Bit darker than that.’

  ‘How dark we gonna go?’

  ‘Forget Wall Street pal, this freaking guy is a member of several secret occult societies, funds an annual witchcraft event in Georgia and is a practicing Satanist.’

  Pena raised his eyebrows.

  ‘You never cease surprising me agent Rose.’

  ‘Depending on your worldview he also backs some dubious causes, among them the Hindley chain of abortion clinics and the financing of several far-left organizations.’

  ‘But any ideas why his employee is in Reno with cartel maniacs?’

  ‘Yeah let me get to it; this next point will mean something if you’ve been watching the TV recently; this guy Marx provided the startup money for Temple Science Ministries and its founder Chuck Goyette.’

  ‘Sure, so he has a diverse portfolio,’ Pena said.

  ‘But listen, it’s understood he’s made most of his billions off the radar, through the likes of the Amado cartel,’ Rose said.

  ‘Is he under investigation by anyone?’

  ‘Not currently. He has friends in high places. After the global financial crisis, he was under investigation for security fraud, but it went nowhere. That was as close as anyone got to him.’

  Then Rose delivered more juicy stuff.

  ‘But if we look east, it gets even more sinister. Marx has made a lot of dough in China where he’s well connected with Communist Party elite. He is even on a couple of Chinese state company boards in some advisory capacity. He also has a subsidiary called Black Crow that is set to provide logistical, operational and security services in some of China’s border areas. Some say he’s the most powerful white guy in China. I guess it helps that he is fluent in Mandarin and six other languages.’

  Pena by this stage was ready to move on.

  ‘Joe we’re getting information overload here. Any details on his links with the Amado?’

  ‘Yeah let me get to it. Marx is on extremely friendly terms with some high-ranking party members and one PLA military official in particular, a General Zhou Lijun.’

&nbs
p; ‘C’mon Joe, I’m running out of time,’ Pena said.

  ‘Yeah, yeah, just listen. This General Zhou has an upstart son named Lin who recently became a suspect in the production and shipping of precursor chemicals to Mexican drug cartels.’

  Now we’re finally getting somewhere, Pena thought. He knew the Amado cartel uses precursors shipped in from China for manufacturing meth, most notably fentanyl which is 50 times more potent than heroin.

  ‘There’s more information, data and details about it all which I’ll email you,’ Rose added.

  ‘Sure Joe, much obliged,’ Pena said as the call ended.

  A minute later, an encrypted email arrived for Pena with more information about Marx. Needless to say, what the FBI thought it knew about the hedge fund manager and his associates in China was merely the tip of a very large and sinister iceberg.

  The Phone Call

  Marx stood alone at the window of his office. Shirtless and barefoot, he took in the nighttime view of New York City. The only thing he had on were his suit pants. Satanic themed tattoos covered his bare back.

  In one hand he held a lit cigarette and in the other an Atomos smartphone which cost him $15,000. The Atomos was secure enough to give him the confidence no one was eavesdropping or taking his data. The person he was about to call had one as well, in fact it was a gift he gave him last time they met. He scrolled through names and stopped on one that simply read: Lin.

  He hit the dial button and the call went across the globe to southwest China.

  A ringtone broke the silence in a patient’s room at a Chinese military hospital. Its sound didn’t disturb the deathly pale General Zhou Lijun who lay unconscious in the room’s bed, nor did the two elderly women sitting by his side show any annoyance. That was left to hard-faced Colonel Deng Jia at the foot of the bed. He gave an evil-eye glance at the expensively-dressed Lin who pulled the ringing Atomos from his jacket pocket. He answered it, fully aware who was at the other end.