by K. T. Tomb
Seeing that he was not going to receive any mercy from Chyna, Tony moved forward with his explanation of things. “The madman that we’re dealing with now is far beyond what the Illuminati had planned. He’s gathering together a very powerful collection of items, each of which has supernatural properties as well as having been previously owned by a notable female in history. What I haven’t yet put together is who this person is and why. But if anyone is able to do it, this team is more apt to find the answers and put a stop to this than anyone else.”
“Oh, I see,” Chyna mocked. “When things get too hot for Anthony Stewart, he comes crawling to us…”
“This isn’t for Anthony Stewart, Chyna Stone or anyone else,” Tony replied. “This is for the whole world.”
“I’m having a hard time believing that,” Chyna countered.
“I’m not,” Sirita broke in.
“Neither am I.” Lana nodded in agreement with Sirita as she spoke.
Chyna glared at the two and then turned her gaze to each of the others. Each of them shrugged in turn. Am I the only one that isn’t buying this? Have they all bought into this line of shit that he’s feeding us? Am I the one that’s wrong? Am I letting my own feelings get in the way? Chyna fought to regain her objectivity. “You know what,” she said finally. “You go on and explain to them. If they buy it, fine, but… I’ll be in the kitchen. You guys carry on.”
Eight pairs of silent eyes watched her retreat. She didn’t care. She opened the fridge, took out a bottle of water and leaned against the counter while she drank it. She could still hear them talking, but from that distance and without turning on the lights, she felt like she was no longer right in the middle of their conversation.
“You realize that you’ve pissed her completely the fuck off, right?” Oscar drawled. There was a threatening tone in it; a tone she’d never heard in Oscar’s voice before. She’d heard that you never pissed off a Southerner, but it wasn’t until that moment that she fully understood why.
“So, you have to turn over the crown and another item that you don’t seem to be very keen on telling us about,” Lana began. “When, where and to whom?”
“I’m to be waiting at Hotel Zlatnik in Belgrade, Serbia at 8:00 p.m. on June 20th,” Tony replied. “I don’t yet know who I’m meeting, but I assume that I will be met by a team of people who will take me to the person who is collecting these items.”
Oscar had started tapping away at his keyboard as soon as Tony gave the location and then he stopped. “That’s the Solstice!” he exclaimed and then began typing furiously.
“What? What’s up?” Mark asked, moving over next to him.
The activity even drew Chyna back out of the kitchen.
“Sirita pointed out and Tony just confirmed that all of the items had supernatural powers and were all formerly owned by notable females in history, except Marie Antoinette’s Crown,” he continued to ramble. “It has no supernatural powers, so we’ll set it aside for a moment. With those powers combined with the ultimate feminine power of a…” He froze and stared at the screen blankly, though it was obvious that there was a lot of activity taking place inside his head.
“Power of a…?” Lana prompted.
“A full moon,” Oscar responded.
“Fill us in on what you’re thinking, cowboy,” Chyna said, rejoining the group.
“A full moon on the solstice concentrates all of the feminine power of the universe before giving way to the male power that comes with the rising sun. Sol Invictus, the Unconquered Sun was, maybe still is, a Roman cult that has ties back to sun worship rituals in Egypt. A high priest in that order, who really understood what he was doing, could consolidate all of that power and take it upon himself. Theoretically speaking, he’d be completely omnipotent. But to do that, he needs to add one more element from the Egyptian worship of Re, which is the most powerful talisman of all feminine forms…”
“The All Seeing Eye,” Tony interrupted.
All eyes turned toward him.
“Which is the other item you’re to deliver,” Chyna whispered, just loud enough for everyone to hear. She suddenly had a much clearer picture of everything that had happened and the purpose behind it, but she knew that she had no time to sort through any of it.
Chapter Sixteen
Le Petit Trianon, 24 May 1774
Madame, dearest mother,
It has been two weeks since the death of my beloved grandfather king, Louis XV. I still cannot say how much I miss his presence at Versailles. It doesn’t help that my darling brother-in-law, Comte D’Artois, has been fraught with grief over the loss.
My sorrow must have been quite evident because today, in an effort to console me, Louis presented me with the key to my own estate, the Petit Trianon, and free rein to renovate it to my liking. I am blessed to have such a doting husband. He is kind and conscientious and devoted to my happiness.
Marie.
***
“Do you have it?” Chyna asked. She was surprised at how her tone had changed from snarling and snapping at him earlier to a more business-like one, which she usually took with her team members.
“I have it hidden in a safe place where only I know about, but, yes, I have it,” he responded. “I’m also pretty well fucked if anyone connected to the Illuminati figures out where I am.”
“Jesus, Tony,” Lana started in. “Your career, your whole life, your…” She glanced up at Chyna stopping herself from going any further and then she finished with a more general word. “Everything.”
Chyna drew all attention, especially her own, back to the subject of their meeting. “Okay, so, we have a person who is likely to be a high priest in the order of the Unconquered Sun cult. He’s gathered together—with our help, I regret to admit—some of the most potent talismans in history, which also happened to belong and be wielded by notable females. By having all of those talismans together along with the All Seeing Eye, he can perform an Egyptian/Roman ritual at midnight of the Summer Solstice, during a full moon and consolidate all feminine power into one place, whereby making himself omnipotent. Does that sum this up?”
“Essentially, yes,” Oscar replied.
There was a long, deep silence.
“Lana, you better break out that tin of yours and pray that you have plenty of capsules to go around,” Chyna said, breaking the silence and rubbing her temples as she felt the beginnings of a massive tension headache starting. “So, the only thing that doesn’t fit is the crown.”
“The crown is personal,” Tony volunteered.
All attention was turned toward him as they awaited an explanation.
“I could tell by the way he acted when I spoke to him. I even tested him by using it as a bargaining chip. He very definitely wants the crown and he wants it on a completely different level than he wants the other items. It’s personal.”
“Like family personal?” Sirita asked.
“Yeah, maybe, I think so,” Tony responded. “Yeah. Family personal.”
“Except we know nothing about him for that to help us,” Lana pointed out.
“He would be linked to the family of Marie Antoinette and the Bourbon Dynasty,” Oscar added.
“He calls himself Louis Charles Bourbon,” Tony said, his eyes lighting up as the connection struck him. “I doubt that’s his real name, but that’s the one he uses.”
“Okay, so descendants of Marie Antoinette,” Oscar said. His fingers started racing over the keyboard.
Mark and Sirita, suddenly having epiphanies of their own, snatched up their own computers and began typing with as much fury as Oscar. For several minutes, the clicking of the three keyboards was the only sound in the room.
“All I can find is Louis Alphonse de Anjou,” Sirita said after a few moments. “And you two girls have got to check this guy out. He may not be the actual King of France, but he can damned sure reign over my heart.”
Lana and Chyna moved over and took a look at the images of France’s leading royal preten
der.
“Jesus, ladies!” Mark exclaimed. “Can we stay focused for a few minutes?”
“Jealous much?” Lana laughed. She noted that Mark was looking at the same photos that they were. “Uh, huh, hypocrite.”
“I followed another lead that brought me there, alright?” Mark protested.
“Here is something of interest.” Oscar spoke up, drawing everyone back to him.
“What you got?” Chyna asked.
“It will take a minute to explain, but stay with me,” Oscar cautioned.
“We’re all ears,” Lana replied.
“Marie and Louis had four children. Two of those children were unquestionably theirs, but it is speculated that the other two were probably bastard children from Marie’s affair with the Swedish Count Axel von Fersen. Louis Joseph was the actual heir apparent to Louis XVI, but he died at the age of seven and that title, which is Dauphin of France, was passed on to his younger brother Louis Charles, who, in all likelihood, was actually the son of the count and not Louis...”
“It makes for a great soap opera, but where are you headed with this, cowboy?”
“The last born, Sophie, was born premature and died a month shy of her first birthday. That left only Louis Charles and the eldest child, Marie Therese. Louis Charles, who was dubbed Louis XVII, died of tuberculosis at the age of ten. In essence, he had been king for two and a half years after Louis XVI was beheaded, but nobody was really counting. So, that left the only surviving child, Marie Therese, to produce a true heir. According to royalist history, she never had any children.”
“You told us all of that to tell us that there were no truly legitimate heirs born to Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette?” Lana scoffed.
“No, that was the background for another story,” Oscar countered. “The setting for the next story is Hildburghausen, Germany, right around 1799. It seems that a Count Vavel de Versay and a Countess Sophie Botta took up residence in the Castle Eishausen. They were a very secretive couple, who rarely were rarely seen in public and when they were, the countess was never seen without a veil. Those odd circumstances and the timing of their arrival sparked some speculation as to their true identities.
“The eldest daughter of Louis and Marie, Marie Therese, was held in the Temple Tower in Paris even after everyone else, including her aunt Elisabeth, were dead. She wasn’t released until 1795 and she was immediately sent to Vienna, where her mother’s family was residing. She was allegedly married to her cousin, a shy, stammering young man by the name of Louis-Antoine in 1799. She eagerly agreed. The two never had any children…”
“You said allegedly,” Chyna pointed out.
“Yes, because it was speculated that the 17-year-old Marie Therese wasn’t really Marie Therese, but her half-sister, Ernestine Lambriquet, who had taken her place. The real Marie Therese had been subject to a great deal of sexual abuse by her captors while in the Temple Tower and became pregnant. It is that Marie Therese, who, after changing her name to Sophie Botta, showed up in Hildburghausen.”
“So, you think that whomever we’re dealing with might connect himself to Marie Antoinette via that link?” Chyna asked.
Oscar shrugged.
“True or not, that could be our connection. Keep digging, maybe we can find something there.”
Chapter Seventeen
Diary of the Queen
29 November 1780
My dearest mother is dead. Today is the worst and the gravest of days of my entire life. But I am selfish in my grief for to have lost such a great woman is not only my loss; it is the world’s loss as well. At mass, the Prince-Archbishop of Vienna, Cardinal Migazzi styled her by her proper and complete title; Maria Theresa, by the Grace of God, Dowager Empress of the Romans, Queen of Hungary, of Bohemia, of Dalmatia, of Croatia, of Slavonia, of Galicia, of Lodomeria, etc.; Archduchess of Austria; Duchess of Burgundy, of Styria, of Carinthia and of Carniola; Grand Princess of Transylvania; Margravine of Moravia; Duchess of Brabant, of Limburg, of Luxemburg, of Guelders, of Württemberg, of Upper and Lower Silesia, of Milan, of Mantua, of Parma, of Piacenza, of Guastalla, of Auschwitz and of Zator; Princess of Swabia; Princely Countess of Habsburg, of Flanders, of Tyrol, of Hainault, of Kyburg, of Gorizia and of Gradisca; Margravine of Burgau, of Upper and Lower Lusatia; Countess of Namur; Lady of the Wendish Mark and of Mechlin; Dowager Duchess of Lorraine and Bar, Dowager Grand Duchess of Tuscany, so all who were present would acknowledge her tremendous greatness.
Letters of condolence have made their way to me here at Versailles; mostly empty words of solace for a much feared but respected daughter in mourning. The most considerable of which came from King Frederic the Great of Prussia, my mother’s archenemy. Even he, at the news of her death, was astonished and overwhelmed with respect and admiration for her. He wrote to me saying, “The Empress honored her throne and her sex, and though I had fought against her in three wars, I never considered her my enemy’.
The loss is great and mingled nefariously with the joy of my pregnancy. Perhaps the strength I have lost with the death of my dear mother will be regained with the birth of a dauphin for France.
To whom shall I write of my trials and triumphs now? Who will care enough to read and respond to the silly scribbled thoughts of a girl like me?
Marie.
***
Because Chyna was certain that whoever had contracted Tony would certainly be keeping an eye out for his arrival, she made a decision to send him on a separate flight to Belgrade alone. She and her team kept the crown with them and the All Seeing Eye, which Tony reluctantly placed in her hand.
As usual, Chyna and her team followed all the proper diplomatic channels, aided by Antoine’s own Interpol credentials. They arrived three days before Tony, set up their operation in an isolated suite of Hotel Zlatnik and had identified three different individuals who seemed to work in shifts and had a great deal too much interest on who came and went from Hotel Zlatnik.
Oscar, Mark and Sirita had continued to dig in an attempt to find any sort of modern connection to the Dunkelgrafen (Dark Counts) of Hildburghausen. It was an enormous task to undertake, even for the three electronics wizards, but they stuck to their task with fervor, knowing that at any moment they would find one tiny shred that could break the whole thing open.
“Hold on a sec,” Oscar said about mid-morning of June 20th, the day Tony was due to arrive in Belgrade and a little more than twelve hours before it would be too late. “The Unconquered Sun is a patron of soldiers. So, our madman is likely to have been introduced into the order as a soldier.”
“That doesn’t really narrow things down, Oscar,” Mark responded. “Every young man and plenty of young women in this region were soldiers in the entire decade of the 1990s. Even if we narrow it down to just Serbian soldiers, why would still have a mountain of people to search through.”
“Yes, but if we take into account the things that we know about whomever this person is, we can narrow it down to particular ones and then trace backward. For instance, whoever this is, he’s wealthy enough to isolate himself, provide extremely tight security and pay someone a handsome sum to steal those artifacts. He’s also going to have risen rapidly in the ranks of the Unconquered Sun, if he’s going to have become a high priest within, let’s say, 25 years, given the fact that all hell broke loose in the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia in 1991.”
“Okay, so ranking Serbian military officers who became wealthy after the war,” Mark shrugged. “It’s worth a shot.”
“Any ideas what name we should be looking for?” Sirita asked in a sarcastic tone.
“I can tell you what name not to look for,” Oscar countered in the same tone.
“What name?”
“Louis Charles Bourbon.”
Sirita made a face at him and then turned back to her computer.
“Tony’s flight has landed,” Chyna announced to the room. “He’ll be here within the hour. I hope he’ll be here within the hour, even the next two or three hour
s would be okay, as long as he hasn’t ditched us.”
“He hasn’t ditched us,” Lana responded.
“How do you know that?” she asked.
“Because we have the crown and the All Seeing Eye.”
“He’ll get those two things before he bothers to ditch us,” Mark pointed out.
“Gee, thanks for that comforting thought, Mark,” Chyna muttered.
“How about you help me fix lunch, since the eggheads are all on their computers, and Antoine and the wolves are taking turns watching the spies outside?”
“I don’t know that I’ll be much help,” Chyna replied.
“That doesn’t matter. Your pacing and hand-wringing are driving me out of my mind.”
“I am not wringing my hands and pacing,” Chyna objected.
“I never saw you so nervous when you liked the guy,” Lana laughed.
“You know that I can kick your ass and toss you down the elevator shaft and no one would ever know that you’re missing, right?” Chyna teased.
“That would at least get you to stop wringing your hands.”
As soon as they were out of sight and earshot of the others, Chyna grabbed Lana turned her around and wrapped her arms around her. “This is where somebody always rides in to save the day,” she sighed, wiping tears from her eyes. “It used to be Tony and now…”
“Now what?” Lana asked.
“And now, I don’t know. I don’t trust him. I can’t trust him. I want him to be who he was before, but I don’t know if he still is that guy or if he can be that guy. I had closure. I had the damned door close tight and all of the bolts locked and now…”