by Rick Jones
“Where?”
“My apartment in Rome. Make sure that the body is appropriately disposed of. And I do mean appropriately. The last thing I want is for questions to be directed at the principals inside the Vatican. That would only generate prying eyes, which would make our agenda much more difficult to achieve.”
“Understood.”
“How soon?”
“I can have a sanitation crew there within the hour.”
“Excellent. Now tell me what’s going on at the Damascus Front.”
“We have an appointment with the Seller. An Iranian dealer. He has the item in question. The price, however, will be costly.”
“Do we have the funds to cover it?”
“We’re selling antiquities that were taken from Palmyra and the Mosul Museum. Though we have buyers, we cannot transfer funds safely to hidden accounts in the time frame they’re asking.”
“How long?”
“Three days. He says if we don’t have the funds by then, then he’ll seek another bidder.”
“How long before we can get the funds in question?”
“At least two weeks.”
“How much is the asking price?”
“Ten million in American dollars.”
“Negotiate,” Abdallah Kattan stated firmly. “Tell him we’ll offer fifteen million in American dollars, if he waits two weeks.”
“I will try, Abdallah.”
“Make sure this happens, Fariq. Do more than just try. Everything begins and ends with this man from Iran. Offer him a million dollars in American as good faith payment. If we don’t come through with the funds by then, then he can keep the money.”
“You’re taking a risk, Abdallah. But I’ll do as you say.”
“Keep me posted as to what the Iranian says.”
“Of course.”
Abdallah Kattan severed the conversation by folding the cellphone. Then looking at the corpse of Cardinal Restucci, he said, “Allahu Akbar.”
Chapter Two
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The Vatican Secret Archives
Vatican City
Less than an hour after the assassin left the Secret Archives, the area was milling with investigative members from the Corps of Gendarmerie of Vatican City State, along with the co-directors of Vatican Intelligence, Fathers Auciello and Essex.
The lead investigative officer of the Gendarmerie, Lieutenant Geno Zanetti, was in his early sixties, had gunmetal-colored hair and eyes, and a sizeable paunch from too many years of sitting behind the desk while investigating cases from a PC. Though his suit was stylish, it looked as unkempt as a wrinkled sheet. By his side stood Sergeant Giovanni Gallo, a smart-looking upstart who was young and lean and filled with ambition. Fathers Auciello and Essex were also on hand. The two, however, were careful not to cross into the investigative territories of the crime unit while they combed the areas around the bodies for trace elements. Inside the chamber, all four men surrounded an empty pedestal beneath a cone of light.
“Two dead,” Sergeant Gallo said. “And for what? A book?”
“It’s not just a book,” Father Auciello returned. The priest, a man who was Lincolnesque in appearance, began to circle the podium as if to study the dais for infinitesimal clues. Then: “It’s a diary that was started more than two thousand years ago by Saint Peter. In his own penmanship, the first pontiff wrote a journal of life before the crucifixion of Jesus, and of secrets thereafter.”
Lieutenant Zanetti, with his hands inside his pockets, stated, “So the book’s value, I’m assuming, is priceless?”
“Obviously.”
“At the cost of the lives of two men.” Zanetti looked at the priests. “I wonder why?”
Neither Father Auciello nor Father Essex answered, leaving the topic open for debate.
“I’ll tell you why?” said Sergeant Gallo. He stepped closer to the podium and within the beam of the overhead light, the officer looked at the empty table where the book once sat. “ISIS is losing ground in a battle they cannot win. Their blackmarket cash flow from the oil fields have all but vanished. Their financial dependency is now based on kidnappings and the selling of antiquities, such as this book. They steal the tome. They sell the tome. And they continue to fund their cause.”
“Perhaps,” said Father Auciello.
“You have another idea?”
The priest nodded. “The book has been stolen twice before. Once in 360. The other in 1355. And both times the consequences of these thefts resulted in the deaths of thousands, before the book was returned to the Vatican.”
“And you believe there’s a tie between those thefts and to the one that happened here today?”
“I hope not, Sergeant. In fact, I pray not.”
“Why?” the lieutenant asked Father Auciello.
“Because of the nature of the book’s contents,” the priest answered. “The church has gone to great lengths to keep these secrets safe from the public eye for centuries.”
“That doesn’t answer my question,” said the lieutenant. “I asked why?”
“Perhaps you don’t like the answer I gave you, Lieutenant Zanetti, but it’s the only answer I can give you. The nature of its contents has been protected by the Vatican for more than two thousand years, and will continue to be protected for two thousand more.”
“Only if you find the book,” stated Gallo. “From where I’m standing, that may be a longshot, especially if ISIS stole it. Who knows, it might be half way to Syria by now waiting to go up on the auction block.”
“Perhaps,” Father Auciello said as he continued to circle the podium.
“But you don’t think so?”
“I don’t know,” Father Auciello stated sincerely.
“But you’re leaning elsewhere, is that it?”
“In the business of intelligence, gentlemen, you learn not to look at one individual or make a rush to judgment.”
As the hours, thereafter, ticked off at a glacial pace and the investigation appeared far from wrapping up, the co-directors of Vatican Intelligence returned to the Comm Center. There they retrieved digital tapes of the incident and ran them through the system, so that the numerous angles played out on a myriad of screens along the Comm Center’s wall. The intelligence unit, which was staffed by Franciscan priests, played the data by cleaning the images, stilling the images, sharpening the photos, and then applying the visual data to VisageWare, a state-of the-art facial recognition software program.
Though the assassin appeared Caucasian, that did not weaken Sergeant Gallo’s theory that ISIS was behind the action, which was sound. Muslims came in all races and from many countries.
As the program cycled through its database of faces numbering into the tens of millions, the program eventually tapped out without a match. The assassin was a ghost, an unknown.
“We’ll keep looking,” Father Auciello said to Father Essex. “Pass the images around to the Mossad, MI6, the BND, and the CIA—maybe they’ll get a strike.”
“And should they come up empty?”
Father Auciello hesitated a moment before answering. “Then we wait until a trail emerges.” Both intelligence officers knew that in order to pursue a killer who possessed the most secretive tome regarding Catholicism, they would have to follow the breadcrumbs which, in this case, would be the bodies of innocent people.
As soon as Father Essex left to contact other bureaus, Auciello was left standing alone to wonder.
A book, he thought, written by the hand of Saint Peter ...And the many lives that are about to be in danger.
The priest sighed despairingly knowing what the future was about to bring.
Somewhere beyond Vatican City a killer roamed.
Chapter Three
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Rome, Italy
When the assassin reached his apartment, he set the briefcase and biretta on a table, popped the buttons of his cassock and removed the garment. His torso and arms were heavily tatto
oed with ink sketches of the Virgin Mother whose hands were clasped together in an attitude of prayer, and many crosses of different shapes and sizes. On his back were the tattoo markings of a pair of angel wings that stretched from shoulder to lower back.
Opening the briefcase, he removed the large book and carefully placed it on the table. With fine traces of his fingertips, he ran them softly across the leather-bound cover. “Written by the hand of Saint Peter,” he commented softly to himself. Then he opened the book to the first page.
The script was in Aramaic, a near-dead Semitic language that was spoken in scarce regions of southwest Asia and nowhere else. As a means to code the vernacular, Saint Peter added detailed cryptograms to force a difficult interpretation.
Grabbing a mobile scanning wand, the assassin laid the unit flat against the page, then ran the wand slowly from the left side of the page to the right. He did this repeatedly with numerous pages, with the wand capturing the writing like Photostat copies within its memory files. After he collected the wand’s memory capacity of eighty pages, he then transferred the memory card to a laptop computer and downloaded the images. The laptop’s screen showed the crisp, clean images of the book’s pages. After the assassin typed commands to enable a decoding program, the computer took on a life of its own as it began to read and interpret the lettering and symbols.
Easing back into his seat, the assassin watched the system react to the writings of Saint Peter. Knowing that he had to deal with an obsolete language that was filled within encryptions and mysterious symbols, he knew he would have to be patient. The sequencer, though it had been calibrated to interpret certain measures of Aramaic, would do little to deduce the hidden meanings of Saint Peter’s writings. When enough parts of the analyses had been gathered by the system to piece together a comprehensible meaning, the assassin would have to determine the rest by filling in the gaps with his own interpretations.
As the program attempted to decipher the symbols and codes, the assassin wondered how long he would have to wait to begin his mission in full. Days? Months? Years?
Getting to his feet, the assassin went to his bedroom. The windows were heavily draped, leaving the room in darkness. Against the wall was a large cross whose edges were surrounded by filaments of neon light. When he switched it on the light burned a bright red, which gave the room a sinister cast. Getting to his knees and clasping his hands together, the assassin began to mouth the words to a prayer. As soon as he was done he reached underneath the bed, removed a box about the size of a humidor, placed it on the bed, and opened the lid. Inside was a whip for self-flagellation. Removing the item and gripping the handle within his right hand, the assassin started to flog himself by slapping the tails against the tattooed angel wings on his back, causing his skin to turn red and raw, and then bleed. The angel’s wings were becoming stained, the white ink deep within his flesh turning red as he cried out for divine forgiveness. When he was sure that he had been purged of his sins and the murders of the guards justified, he returned the whip back to its box and slid it beneath his bed.
Now as he stood within the dim cast of light that was being thrown from the neon edges of the cross, the assassin bathed within this crimson light with saintly patience as if waiting upon divine direction, while his angel’s wings continued to bleed.
Chapter Four
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Damascus, Syria
Several days after the murder of Cardinal Restucci in Rome, Damascus, unlike the beauty of Rome, was looking more like a war-torn landscape with each passing day. But in the Warehouse District, which was governed by those who were wealthy enough to afford their own battalions, Fariq walked to the gates with an aluminum suitcase and three armed men. After the team had been relieved of their arms, Fariq and his unit were escorted to a hangar-like building. In the background where the city of Damascus seemed so far away, columns of smoke could be seen rising skyward. There were also the occasional sounds of distant bomb bursts. After the hangar door was opened, Fariq and his men were escorted to a stairway that led to an office on the third level. Once there, they were invited into a large office where several heavily-armed men with automatic weapons were strategically placed around the room keeping guard. And sitting behind the desk where he studied Fariq with caution and interest, was a man of dark-complexion and a pencil-thin moustache.
Fariq, carrying the suitcase with both hands, bowed his head. “Allahu Akbar,” he said.
The dark-complexioned man said, “You are the one called Fariq, yes? You’re the courier to Abdallah Kattan?”
“I’m sorry for being late,” said Fariq. “Damascus is starting to become a difficult place to travel from one point to another without coming across some type of conflict.”
“Fifteen minutes won’t kill me,” said the dark-complexioned man. “But if you’re late again, Fariq, it may kill you. My time is valuable. But I understand that Kattan wishes to renegotiate.”
“He does.”
“The terms of our agreement is to be met today. Ten million dollars in American money, or I find another buyer.” He looked at the suitcase. “And that seems a little small for the money I’m asking for.”
Fariq stepped cautiously forward, the man appearing sheepish in manner.
“Houshmand, I am here to offer you a much greater deal, if you can wait another ten days. We are routing the money into our accounts as we speak. But as you know, we must do so with caution.”
“So, what you’re telling me, Fariq, is that you don’t have my ten million in U.S. funds.”
Fariq pointed to Houshmand’s desktop and lifted the suitcase. “May I?”
“No, you may not.” Houshmand snapped his fingers, which galvanized an armed guard to grab the suitcase and lay it on the floor far from Houshmand’s desk, where he opened it. Inside was one million in United States currency.
“You come into my office,” said Houshmand, “with a fraction of what you owe me, and Kattan thinks that’ll be acceptable?”
“Kattan’s terms are as follows. If you wait for the funds to process, we’ll pay you fifteen million dollars total. In ten days, if the funds don’t come through as expected, then this money is yours to keep. At that time, you can seek another buyer.”
Houshmand seemed to mull this over, an additional five million. Then the Iranian, who was quite diminutive in size, rounded the desk and went to the suitcase.
The money was stacked in bundles of hundred-dollar bills. Then to Fariq and without looking at him, he said, “Ten days?”
“That’s all we ask for.”
“And when that time comes and goes without hearing from you, Kattan won’t take offense at not getting this money back? He will not send a goon squad?”
“No,” said Fariq, shaking his head. “These are Kattan’s terms, in good faith. Your money in ten days if the remaining balance of fourteen million dollars in American currency cannot be delivered for the sale.”
Houshmand nodded at this. Then, “Kattan’s terms are acceptable. You have ten days from today to come up with fourteen million dollars. Upon transfer, then the item is yours. If not, the sale is cancelled and the suitcase and everything in it becomes mine by default.”
“Those are the terms.”
Houshmand turned to Fariq. “Agreed.”
Fariq nodded his affirmation of the new deal. Then he asked, “May I see the item?”
Houshmand paused at this, the Iranian saying nothing for a long moment before saying, “Of course. For fifteen million dollars, you should see what you’re purchasing.” After a few snaps of his fingers, a large man entered the room carrying a metal container that was roughly the size of a portable cooler.
“Open it,” Houshmand ordered.
The large man undid the clasp, and carefully raised the lid.
Fariq’s eyes flared to impossible sizes, the man enamored as if he was seeing the Holy Grail.
Then with a wave of Houshmand’s hand, the man closed the lid and locked it.
“The balance of fourteen million dollars is to be paid in ten days, Fariq, and not one day later. Is that understood?”
“Abdallah Kattan will be most pleased.”
“I don’t do this for Kattan or for religious reasons. I don’t care what his cause is. I do this for profit, Fariq. It’s business and never personal. In ten days if the terms are not met, Kattan better not think about retaliation.” The Iranian swept his hand across the room to emphasize his guards. “As you can see, I’m well prepared to take on all comers. A business deal is a business deal. If Kattan cannot meet the deadline, the fault belongs to him since he renegotiated the terms of the new deal.”
“He understands. Kattan is a man of his word.”
“We shall see,” said Houshmand as he returned to his desk. “Ten days, Fariq. Not a minute more.” Then he waved for his men to show Fariq and his bodyguards out of the complex.
When they were gone, Houshmand stared at the open suitcase on the floor and at the stacks of bills. A million dollars with fourteen more to come.
While sitting at his desk as bombs burst in the distance, as fires burned uncontrollably in parts of the city, nothing was bad enough to erase the smile off Houshmand’s face.
Chapter Five
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Brussels, Belgium
Three Days after Fariq’s Visit in Damascus
The man was in his eighties. Though he had been quite athletic during his life, his aged body had bent to the shape of a question mark over time. With tufts of white hair blowing with the course of a mild breeze, Adalgiso, with a cane in his hand, labored up the steps to his apartment on the fourth floor. Removing his jacket and hooking his cane over the rung of a coatrack, Adalgiso went to the living room expecting to see his cat on the couch meowing delightfully at his return.