by K. T. Tomb
“Tony, the Illuminati, whatever—they’re gone. They are old news, for us at least. It’s been two months. I think if they had a game plan, they would have acted upon it by now. After all, they are as out of the closet now as they could ever be.”
“They waited fifteen years, Oscar. Fifteen years. What’s two months?” Chyna countered.
“We can act on it later, Chyna. Right now, we need to concentrate on this email Sandra sent us. It’s a good opportunity, Chyna. It’s freaking Asia for God’s sake. I don’t know about you guys, but I’m sick of Europe and the goddamned Middle East,” Oscar said.
“Oscar, there will never be a better time than now. They think—”
“You know what I think? I think that you are eaten up, Chyna, and who could blame you? None of us do. Tony betrayed you. He betrayed all of us, and your desire for revenge is completely justified. But that’s not the way to run things, Chyna; and you know it. I understand you want to get back at him for what he did, but you’re blinding yourself with hate. We need you objective and focused on the mission.” Oscar let out his thoughts, and it was as if everyone had finally taken notice of the elephant in the room.
Chyna didn’t know whether to feel rage or guilt. She knew Oscar meant well, but the way he had called her out was unacceptable to her; not to mention quite out of character, which was part of the reason she had allowed him to carry on as long as he had. He had all but accused her of being an unthinking bitch looking for blood. She set her teeth and fixed him with a glare that quickly reminded him who was the boss and that he had stepped over the line.
“Oscar, trust me. I am completely in control of my faculties, and hear me when I say this; I spent two months without him, without any of you and it’s given me perspective. I have thought about this long and hard. The Tony we knew never did things half-heartedly. He always had a plan and he knew when to execute it. You and I both know where it got him. We made a mistake once, and I’d like it if we didn’t make the same one again. I know he had a reason for coming out when he did. My instincts scream out loud when I think of it. He had a plan and it’s moving to the next stage. The Ivory Bow was just a piece in the puzzle, albeit a seemingly important one.” She found that she had moved up from the table and was pounding it with one fist; as if she were hammering for a clue about her erstwhile lover’s next move.
“Chyna, maybe Oscar is—” Lana began to say, but Lana brooked no argument when she met Chyna’s gaze.
“He had a plan and it’s moving to the next stage,” Chyna stated with finality.
With that, she walked out. Meeting adjourned. How dare they betray her now? She felt like screaming at all of them. Why couldn’t they see that she was right?
Chapter Two
RSS feed. Lana Ambrose, 2014
Reuters World News
Bouts of Madness Plague the Faithful in Spain
Several strange cases of spontaneous madness in individuals visiting some of Spain’s most auspicious religious sites and cathedrals have reported all over the country. The latest occurrence has seen four persons visiting the Santa Iglesia Catedral de Córdoba falling into bouts of unexplained mild insanity. The four have remained on the premises of the church, undisturbed for days during which they have conducted lengthy rants about religious purpose and their work for God, have not bathed, slept or eaten. Well-wishers and concerned members of the public have been bringing food for the people who have now become known as the Mezquita pilgrims.
As she stormed out of the living room and into her bedroom, Chyna was in a fury, but after she had a chance to cool off, she felt bad about how she’d treated her team.
They had become her only family, had always been her only family, and she had disregarded their input like a petty call center boss demanding hours at the desk from her workers. They had been with her in her lowest moments, albeit only in heart and mind rather than in body and she realized that her behavior toward them had been unwarranted. Maybe they were right. Maybe she was consumed by her desire for revenge. Had she lost her vaunted objectivity? Without her ability to pull herself back from a situation, see it from an impartial viewpoint, what use would she be to Found History? She hadn’t even allowed anyone else to speak, to fill her in on what had happened in her absence. Had she returned to soon, maybe?
No.
She knew she was right. She felt it in her bones. It had become more difficult to trust her instincts, yes, but she had known Tony intimately for fifteen years. Chyna was nothing if not observant; despite missing that he would betray her, there was no possible way he could have hidden everything, there had to be some clue in their joint history. He had a game plan, and she was sure that something must have happened to have made him reveal his carefully concealed identity and his so called reborn Illuminati. Anger be damned, she was going to get to the bottom of it.
“Chyna,” Mark called to her. She turned to see him in leaning against the doorway with his cane supporting his bad leg.
“Not now, Mark. I know—”
“I’m not here to berate you. Oscar just found something. We think you should see this.” His voice was grave, and it was only then that she noticed the worry lines on his face; more pronounced than before his ordeal.
“Okay,” she said, following him back into the living room. She expected some kind of reaction or at least castigation for her behavior moments before, but found that everyone was more focused on the lone laptop screen and their phones than on her. Something was definitely up.
“What’s going on?” she asked. It was only then that they looked up. No one mentioned the incident that had taken place just moments before, and for that she was thankful for their compassion and eagerness to forgive.
“They’re gone,” Lana said. “All of the artifacts we recovered on our adventures and expeditions? They’ve all been stolen.”
“What?!” Chyna’s eyes widened. “How?”
“We don’t know yet.” Sirita said, but her eyes were still boring into the laptop. “But we’re on it.”
“How could this have happened?” Chyna shook her head. “I mean, they’ve all been kept under proper security in their respective locations, right?”
“Yes, they have, but someone—or some people—got to them and stole them all, every last one.” The worry lines were stark on Oscar’s face.
“Everything? The Codex? The Armor?”
“Everything, Chyna. Every single thing we’ve ever recovered is gone,” Oscar said grimly.
“Not everything,” Sirita piped up. “The Minoan Mask is still in the University museum, and obviously the Babylonian display can’t just be put into the back of a pickup truck. There’s a pattern here though. It’s not much to go on, but there is something.”
“What is it?” Lana said.
“Who owned the Codex?” Sirita asked, standing up and wiping the whiteboard clear of numerous bubble charts and notes in many different hands and colored markers. She pulled the top off a fresh black marker and wrote codex on the whiteboard, in the top left corner, and looked at Chyna.
“Ankhesenamun, the Egyptian Queen,” Chyna answered. Sirita wrote Ankhesenamun next to codex.
“And the Aquitaine Armor?” Sirita’s pen flew over the board.
“Eleanor of Aquitaine.” Came the answer.
Sirita’s raised brow was enough of a hint for Chyna to fill in the blanks in the theory for herself.
“They’ve taken all the artifacts owned by great women,” Chyna concluded, “The bow; The Ivory Bow, I guess he’s stolen that too. It was owned by Christina of Sweden.”
Either no one noticed that she had used the masculine, singular pronoun or no one had the guts to question who she was referring to.
“Yup, pattern right there,” Sirita nodded.
“Or it could be a coincidence,” Mark said. “Maybe there’s no pattern and the Minoan Mask is next. We should let the curators in Athens know it may be under threat.”
“Emailing them now, I’ll advise doubling t
heir security,” Lana said, turning back to her own laptop.
“How the hell did they break into the Hagia Sofia?” Oscar wondered. He had been particularly impressed with both Rashid Abdullah, the curator, and his security set up at the famous museum. “We should call and check up on him.”
“What do we do now?” Mark said, “Alright, this is a thread that could be true, but we don’t know why, or what for, or even how these artifacts could possibly be of use together.”
“We are going to have to go through our job requests and begin looking for historical artifacts owned by famous women. “If this is his…” She interrupted herself and forced the idea that Tony was acting alone out of her head. He was a part of something bigger and he was playing out a role. She had to consider the whole and not that one, traitorous individual. “If this is their plan and their pattern is consistent, then there must be other items that they’re after. Logically, if they had everything they needed to do whatever it is they are going to do, Tony would already have done it; and now that they think they have us stymied after the whole Dresden affair, they must think they can beat us to them. In fact, I think this supports my theory from before—now, I am sorry for blowing up at you all, I really am, but if Tony really is moving to the next level, then these artifacts must mean something to them. I don’t know what they plan on doing if they find them, but it can’t be good. We don’t even know if they need them at all, but the fact is that we need to stop them.”
“You think really fast, do you know that?” Mark complimented Chyna with a wistful smile.
“I may be emotionally compromised, but my ability to think logically is pretty intact, I assure you,” Chyna shot back.
“Enough with the verbal foreplay you two,” Lana said. “Come over here and take a look at this.”
Chyna looked toward Mark and saw the faintest hint of a blush, but he quickly composed himself and rounded the table to sit by Lana in front of her laptop, which was surrounded by some notes and scribbles on various yellow Post-its.
“I didn’t think it was important enough to report, but then I caught the news when I fired up my email and I know that it couldn’t be random. Of course I didn’t even think of it until Siri drew our attention to the pattern, but we just might have the next item on the list right in front of our faces.” She mumbled to herself and trailed off as her eyes ran over the article on her screen.
“Lana, what is going on?” Chyna said.
“I’ve been collecting stories, weird ones in case they turned up something useful. I’ve got them coming in through my RSS feed. Pretty much just the standard practice for when we’re investigating a new item; but here,” she frowned, and handed Chyna her laptop, “look at this. All of these are articles I’ve collected from the news out of Spain, and they’re all about similar incidents.”
Chyna browsed through the wide array of pages that Lana had saved in a folder. Briefly, she recalled a time when she too would sift through cuttings of newspapers, doing the very same thing manually. However, the news at hand was much more important than remnants of the past.
“You see it?” Lana coaxed.
“How is this possible?” Chyna frowned.
“What happened?” The voice that spoke belonged to Mark.
“Religious madness, or at the best case some kind of mass hysteria it seems. All of these are news pieces about different people. Apparently, they started experiencing religious visions and then went mad, as in psychotic, crazy mad. They claimed they were working for God and whatnot. Most of them have been admitted to mental institutions all over the place, but doctors are still insure of what is at the root of their conditions.”
“Some kind of fever, maybe? Physical illness tends to get to the brain sometimes, right?” Mark had taken over the seat in front of the laptop by that point and was doing some sifting of his own.
“No. Every person who was afflicted was in perfect health, except some who had a common cold and such. No linking histories of mental disorders, drug abuse, nothing.” Chyna shook her head.
“So why is this important?” Mark was still lost.
“Because of the Rosary of Isabella,” Chyna stated plainly. It hadn’t taken her a minute to guess why Lana had called her when she had. Lana was good at sniffing out opportunities where there seemed to be none.
“The rosary of who?”
“The Rosary of Isabella. Isabella the First, or Isabella the Catholic, was the wife of Ferdinand II of Aragon and the Queen of Castile and Leon, which was the crown of Castile. There was immense turmoil in Spain during her time, but she brought stability to the nation, for better or worse.
“It’s said that she was deeply Catholic and most of her decisions were, according to her, brushed by the hand of God. She had a rosary she used to keep with her at all times. Even in public appearances, or when sleeping at night, she always kept it with her. She claimed it lent her prudence and gave her messages from God. It was also said that she experienced visions and voices which she claimed were God himself talking to her. When she died, people began to believe that the rosary had magical powers, and that it really was a gift from God to Isabella which had helped her to save the kingdom. News spread fast, and people began to vie with one another to obtain the rosary. But superstitions arose around it and the most propagated one was that this particular rosary could only be passed on to Isabella’s blood successors. Anybody else who tried to wear it and harness its power would go mad with delusion. It could only be controlled by her and the blood of her blood, as if she, or God, had marked it in some way. It got lost in time, though. I think it was passed on to her grandson, Charles, who became the next king of Spain, and it was just never seen again. Some thought it was stolen, though the popular thinking was that it had been hidden somewhere.
“The signs that these people are showing—madness, religious visions, and hallucinations and so on—they can only point to the possibility that it has been found, or rediscovered, I think.”
By the time Chyna finished speaking, Sirita and Oscar had joined them in their tight circle around Lana and were listening intently. Mark was still peering into the laptop, as was Lana, peering from over his shoulder.
“Or maybe it’s just a trap. You’re pulling at big straws here. How do you know it’s not just a bad batch of LSD?” Oscar stated.
Chyna had never felt more cheated than she did at Oscar’s words.
“What’s your problem?” she barked.
“What?” Oscar raised an eyebrow.
She knew he was challenging her, and damn her if she backed down.
“Why are you just itching to take a bite out of me? Do you think I’m some kind of a moron? That I don’t know what to do?” she seethed.
“I didn’t say that. I’m just saying that your judgment might be a little bit clouded after what you went through. What you’re saying now is only supporting what you said earlier. Look at this: another artifact owned by a famous woman. If they stole all the others, what are the chances that they are not staking us out and waiting to follow us as soon as we leave?” Oscar explained.
Chyna knew his argument was valid, but that didn’t mean that she would be deterred from following the course she had already set.
“So? I also said that we need to stop him from reaching them before us,” she countered.
“Doesn’t matter. It’s too dangerous. They might be waiting, whoever they are.” Oscar shrugged. “I can’t let you do that.”
“Do what?”
“Go wherever this is happening.”
Chyna stared at him long and hard as if wishing to burn a hole in the spot where he stood. His concern was understandable and touching, but she knew that if she wanted any form of closure, she would have to do it all on her own.
“Lana?” she called out without redirecting her gaze.
“Yup.”
“Where was the last report from?”
“Wait... it was a town called Cordoba.”
“Book the flights,
get us a place to stay and make sure security is covered.” The finality in her voice rang out as loud as her announcement: “The rosary is being moved.”
Chapter Three
RSS feed. Lana Ambrose, 2014
The Stepmother: Juana was born in 1439, 14 years younger than Enrique. Juana was very unfaithful and very flaunting. Her behavior was no better than that of a woman in the brothels. Because of her scandalous ways, when she gave birth to a daughter in 1462 named Juana, the baby was nicknamed ‘la Beltraneja’. Many believed her father was not King Enrique but was Beltran de la Cueva, Enrique’s chief steward. While Juana drained the treasuries to live in luxury and finery, Enrique lived in a lifestyle opposite from his wife’s. He did not bathe, he was dirty, and he never changed his clothes. King Enrique had been married once before, to Blanca of Navarre. She had died in 1464. King Enrique and his family lived at the castle of Segovia, where he also kept Isabella and Alfonso. Isabella grew up in the secluded castle and was very religious, which would come into play later in her life. She and her ladies entertained themselves with music, embroidery, and art. She lived a relaxed lifestyle, but she rarely left her prison. Enrique was keeping her from the political turmoils going on in the kingdom, though Isabella had full knowledge of what was going on and her role in the feuds.
The aura around him was supposed to be divine, spiritual, exulting, and maybe it was to all of the other people in the room.
In his years of association with the Illuminati Reborn, Tony had seen many strange things; circles drawing themselves in the sand, a fire atop a mountain deep underground and men screaming and dying, flayed alive for betrayal of the tenets. Despite his experiences and what he had seen, Tony had a hard time buying into it completely. Direct contact with the sect and also with the knowing winks and favoritism within the FBI had shown him just how deeply entrenched his secret masters were in the fabric of the global power structure. He was still a cop, and despite the evidence and the burden of proof, he felt that it still lay with the cult to produce categorical, empirically tested results. He knew the effects of psychotropic drugs on the mind and he was sure that there was more than incense in the burners surrounding the altar. He himself had used scopolamine on more than one occasion to persuade people into doing all manner of things for his sponsors. It wouldn’t do to let his doubts show in that place, the consequences of that he knew all too well, reprogramming and lobotomy or death itself. He concentrated on the altar in front of him, and the wailing of the goat which was being subjected to cruel slaughter in the name of some stupid grand architect and an even stupider society. What a waste.