Hunt for the Holy Grail

by Preston W Child

  Then Tom’s office had received an anonymous call about a car that was on fire in an alley in Wynwood, and he had instantly known that it was his car.

  The fire had drawn the locals to the scene. A fire truck had quickly arrived and put out the fire. What remained of the sedan—of course, it was the green sedan, he could tell from the charred skeleton already—was smoked and cracked.

  Tom Garcia barked orders to his staff. “I want Forensics on this right now, we are on the clock!”

  To his deputy, he said, “Martins, I need two detectives. They are to set a perimeter that covers this area, the whole of Miami all the way to Fisher Island, and Virginia Key, and Biscayne, you got it?”

  “I got it, sir.”

  Tom gave Martins a printout from the computer. “Find this guy. He didn’t just ditch his transport, he burned it, trying to cover his tracks. It means he’s leaving the area. I wanna see where he’s going before the end of today. We don’t have much time.”

  Tom Garcia jumped in his car and headed towards the hospital.

  His wife, Betty, was going in for surgery that afternoon.

  —

  The news reports the other night were not as depressing.

  Following the death of a professor at the University of Florida, another professor, in the same department, had gone missing. Police were investigating the disappearance of Professor Peter Williams.

  That was all the statement that the press got from the Sheriff, Tom Garcia.

  Father Andre—Anthony—mouthed the name, “Tom Garcia.”

  He heard all of this on his small transistor radio.

  The next day, Anthony had taken off after telling his boss of a dead relation back home and his ensuing responsibility to fund the funeral.

  The cleric crossed the Caelian Hills early morning before the town woke. By noon he was jumping off a vegetable truck that was headed into the villages. He waited on that dirt road until another truck going the opposite way came by.

  This truck was laden with poultry.

  The rough and red-faced driver said he was headed in the direction of the Tiber if he would like to ride with him.

  Father Andre nodded.

  The smell of manure was strong, but not as much as the compulsion to save a life.

  Soon, the winding blue river rose from the earth on his left. The sunshine of the snake-like waterway. He smiled.

  The sun was still high when Father Andre stepped out of a taxi at the Piazza Del Popolo. He walked around the square. He needed to get the bearing of the place and to see if he was being followed.

  When he was satisfied that the group of tourists hanging by the Flamino bus station were genuinely what they appeared to be, he walked across the street to the only pay phone in the area.

  He dialed Olivia’s number.

  “Hello,” said an expectant voice.

  “Be at the front of the Castel Sant'Angelo, tonight, 8:00 pm.”

  Click.

  Father Andre rushed out of the booth and walked down the street. He bought sunglasses and a white bucket hat. He stepped back into the street, looking like a tourist.

  Down a narrow alley, and he disappeared.

  11

  The jet landed on a private airfield in Villa Glori. Miller told the team the place belonged to a friend he knew. Two servants from the villa took them into a mansion where they were settled in a penthouse. It was a magnificent place. There was a billiard table in the middle of the living room. The servants served drinks.

  Olivia looked around, expecting to see the owner of the place come out at any moment. Some of her suspicions filtered back into her head.

  Circled around another map of Rome, Miller indicated that they were five miles from the Castel Sant’Angelo.

  “Get some rest, Olivia,” Miller said. “In an hour we—”

  “I’m ready, Frank.”

  The men shifted on their feet; Liam Murphy eyed the billiard table. Borodin sipped some yellow stuff from his glass.

  Olivia pulled Miller away from the rest who hurried off to the billiard table and started setting the balls.

  Gesturing at the team, Olivia asked, “What is this, Frank?”

  “What is what?”

  “This is not the Antarctic; this is way more serious than any of us knows. Peter is missing, and these guys want to play poker?”

  Miller smiled. “That’s a billiard game, Olivia.”

  “Whatever.” Her voice trembled. “We don’t need a team; we don’t need them. Anabia is a biologist; Liam and Victor are explorers. Why are they here?”

  Miller looked at the group again, as though he was just seeing them.

  “They have families, Frank, what if something happened to them?”

  Miller sighed. “I understand what you’re talking about, but I believe we are going to need all the hands we can get on this adventure—”

  “Ha, adventure.” Olivia threw her hands in the air.

  Miller’s cell phone started ringing.

  “Hello?” he said and listened.

  He put the device away and told Olivia, “Someone is joining us.”

  “Who?”

  —

  The whir of helicopter blades filled the falling dusk. A tall man in beach clothes and a travel bag slung across his body jumped out of the helicopter and ran across the waving grass to the mansion.

  Victor Borodin, standing beside Olivia, said, “You have to be kidding me.”

  Olivia frowned. “You know him?”

  “I know this rat.”

  The man sprinted as the copter lifted off and flew into the darkening southern sky. He stopped before Miller, they shook hands.

  Miller invited everyone back inside the mansion.

  “This is former agent Lawrence Diggs, we’ll soon find how much we need his help,” Miller said to the team.

  Diggs nodded at everyone.

  The former agent had a leathery face, a patch of brown hair on his chin, and some tufts from under his flat cap. His blue eyes were hard, flinty.

  His hairy hands looked like copper pipes, skinny but sinewy.

  A black van was waiting outside by 7:08 pm. The team filed in. It was big, specially modified to accommodate a clandestine operation. There were two consoles and computers on one side of the van. Diggs took his place there and set himself up.

  There was a small opening between the cab and the back of the van. Olivia could see the streets from where she sat. She could see Liam Murphy as he drove them across the Tiber. The Castel Sant’Angelo looked in the distance. The lights of the castle sprinkled the night and the nearby river with its glory.

  Diggs directed that the van stop about three blocks before the Corte Suprema Cassazione. The former agent pulled up a map of the area on his computer screen. It was a more comprehensive one that either Olivia and Miller had.

  He pointed at the Castel.

  “Here it is.” He looked at Olivia.

  Diggs took a black vest from his bag and gave it to Olivia. The vest was so heavy it pulled Olivia forward.

  “What the—”

  “Sorry, ma’am.” Diggs held her steady. “It’s Kevlar, for protection.”

  He helped Olivia into it.

  “I understand the people we are up against are professionals, they have guns. Except you’re faster than light, you’re gonna need this.” He produced a gun, a very colossal gun. “Here, this is a Magnum Special, try not to shoot yourself in the hip or your foot.”

  Diggs gave her a quick crash course on how to shoot. Then he gave Olivia a radio receiver too.

  “Put this in your left ear.” He went to his console, he spoke into a microphone, “Can you hear me loud and clear, ma’am?”

  “Yes, loud and clear.”

  “Perfect.”

  Olivia felt more, as though she was two people. The Kevlar weighed at least two kilos or so, and the gun on her hip made her want to lean forward.

  She had done some shooting at the Miami shooting range under Tom
Garcia’s tutelage.

  Miller grabbed her hand. “How you feeling?”

  “I got this.”

  “Perfect, we got twenty minutes,” Diggs announced.

  He gave Olivia the thumbs up. Borodin swung the door open, and Olivia breathed cool wet air.

  —

  Olivia walked as carelessly as she could. This was Rome, thousands of miles from Miami. No one knows me here, she told herself as she walked down the piazza with its cobbled sidewalk and the insistent breeze against the side of her face.

  The aroma of strange delicacies filled her nose. She held back the urge to stroll into one of the restaurants where people sat on chairs and round tables, laughing, gesticulating in that peculiar way of Italians, speaking the language with such melody.

  The Castel Sant’Angelo was now less than a mile away. Olivia slowed down. She continued walking, her eyes peeled for something out of place or a green sedan.

  The Castel looked like a big church. The doors were open, and yellow light burned in all its windows as though the insides were on fire, like a dragon’s gut.

  When she got to the steps, Oliver stopped. She turned around and stared into the street. Two small cop cars blew past, Polizei, written on the side. Then a fire truck followed. Olivia looked up the way she had come. It was calm up there.

  She waited.

  At 7:58 pm, she thought that the cleric may not call her.

  Just when she decided a stroll in the Castel was worth it, her phone started ringing.

  —

  Three lanes of the broad highway led across the Borgo, those two miles of highway merged into one as it entered the Vatican City

  On this road, there was another van like the one in which Olivia’s teammates waited for her.

  The Asian assassin screwed a suppressor on the muzzle of two Berettas. He wore a dark sweater and a black jacket over it. Behind him, there were others like him, screwing silencers on different sizes of guns and strapping up.

  A tech guy stared at a screen with a map of the area. His interest was in the movement of the journalist; she was represented on the screen by a black dot. The dot had stopped walking.

  The tech guy looked at Lin and nodded.

  “Castel Sant’Angelo, that’s the meet.”

  Lin said, “Sure.”

  He stuck a radio receiver in his ear. The others did too.

  He pulled a black beanie cap over his head and stepped out. Behind him spread three more men with their guns hidden in their clothing.

  They walked towards the Castel.

  —

  By a priest's training, he was capable of delicate disguises. The journalist had passed Father Andre on the street; he had been standing on the curb, waiting for a taxi. He was dressed in a brown tweed jacket over baggy trousers and a pair of scuffed black shoes. He walked with a hunch that set him off like an old man on his way home from work. With his bushy hair, he was unrecognizable even by close associates.

  Andre had even touched her, slipped a piece of paper in the lower pocket of her jacket. The cleric had felt her body armor, though he could not tell that it was Kevlar.

  He had watched her go up the steps of Castel Sant’Angelo. Andre had then crossed the street as two cop cars sped past, followed by the fire truck.

  Andre then entered a trattoria opposite the Castel, chose a table by the glass window, and ordered a maritozzaro.

  He called the woman on the steps of the Castel Sant’Angelo with a small cell phone he had purchased that afternoon.

  “Hello, Father Andre,” came the woman’s measured voice. “I’m here, just like you said I should.”

  Andre was not looking at the woman anymore. He watched the street around her. After making sure that the woman was alone, Father Andre said, “Turn around and start walking.

  “You’ll see a building shaped like a cone, it is called the Ospedale Santo Spirito…”

  “Is it a church?”

  “Yes,” Andre said. “Just walk, I’m right behind you.”

  The cleric left most of his food uneaten and walked out, his eyes not leaving the woman on the other side of the narrowing street, and keeping up with his disguise.

  That was when he saw the Asian.

  —

  Lin was confounded.

  He knew the woman’s face, but had never seen the cleric before. The woman was walking towards him and his men now, the cleric should not be far behind.

  He scanned the pedestrians. Mostly tourists, women in skimpy clothing, and men in beach clothes. Americans apparently, who thought every country was like Miami.

  He placed his palm loosely on his gun. It will require minimum movement, just a twist of his wrist, and a cough of death from his pistol. But where was the cleric?

  Olivia looked bulkier than he remembered her.

  Why?

  —

  Father Andre stopped before a small piazza. He joined a group of old men to look at the newspapers on the stand. There was a hot debate about the American election there.

  He counted four odd men; the lead had features like an Asian. The others hung back. Their eyes searched the street behind the woman.

  Olivia looked relaxed.

  Andre’s jaws tightened. Was he being set up? How did the Templars get here so fast?

  Father Andre took four copies of the newspapers off the stand and paid in excess. He hurried down the street towards Olivia.

  He saw the Asian draw his weapon. He walked faster, hunched forward.

  “Hey, Mama Mia”—he nudged Olivia—“buy my papers, help me feed my family tonight.”

  Olivia turned to the heavily accented voice. She smiled at the old man—Father Andre—and looked up and down the street. Her face was ashen with apprehension.

  She sighed and dipped her hand into her pocket. “How much?”

  “Whatever, Mia, whatever,” he said again in that laden accent.

  Behind them the organs started playing in the Ospedale Santo Spirito, the music filled the street, a booming orchestra.

  The old man shone his dentition at Olivia and gave her the papers. He looked behind her, raised up his hand over his head in delight. His eyes bulged, and his smile widened.

  He pulled Olivia’s hand. “Come, come, the church begins, come!”

  “No, please, I have to go.”

  “You must come off the street into the church!”

  Olivia followed him.

  —

  Lin's hand left his gun and went to his ear. He stopped by the steps of the church, wet with the yellow lights of its sanctity.

  “Who was that?” he hissed.

  The guy in the control van said, “He’s just a local, I think. We don’t have a positive ID of the cleric.”

  “Shit.”

  But what if that old man was a deception?

  Lin walked into the church with an increasing crowd. The pews were getting filled. He searched the seats and found Olivia walking to the front row, the old man pulling her hand.

  He started towards them, wriggling through the loitering people. As he neared the two people, he rummaged Olivia’s body. No package.

  The man seemed genuinely interested in the church service too.

  Lin spoke into his radio, “Abort, wait outside. She doesn’t have the package. And the Father is not here yet.”

  Lin walked back to the steps; he scanned the street.

  He would get that son of a bitch.

  —

  “Hey, where are you going?” Olivia called after the old man.

  She watched in confusion as the old man rushed through a side door in the corner of the church and was gone. She looked at the paper she had just purchased against her wish and shook her head.

  Olivia walked back to the entrance.

  As she walked down the stairs, she felt someone beside her. It was Diggs.

  “Just walk on, back to the van, slowly,” he said through clenched teeth.

  “What?”

  “Do it,” he hissed.


  —

  The first shot sank in the newspapers on the stand where Father Andre had just made his purchase.

  Olivia screamed. Diggs ducked and pulled out his own gun. He shoved Olivia into the newspaper stand, where about six people were now cowering. People shrieked and ran for cover.

  Two more shots came. One barely missed his head.

  He turned back and shot into the body of a man who was retaking aim. The man fell backward. Diggs picked Olivia up, and they ran down the middle of the small Piazza. They found a small alley at the back and ran down it. Footsteps followed behind them closely. More shots sprayed concrete over their heads.

  “Here.” Diggs kicked down a door.

  The aroma and steam of cooking filled the air. Diggs and Olivia ran down a narrow kitchen where surprised chefs with large white hats and spoons gawked at them.

  “Sorry,” Olivia apologized.

  They burst into an elegant restaurant with white walls and people eating pasta. Behind them, Lin had also broken in. His gun coughed more shots, plates shattered around Olivia and his protector, people screamed and dove under tables.

  Diggs pushed Olivia down. He turned a table over her. Then from behind it, he sent several shots over.

  Lin dove out of the way into a corner of the room.

  “Liam, bring the van around,” Diggs barked into his radio. “The Tre Pupazzi restaurant!”

  Olivia hunkered down on the floor and shook all over. Behind the table with her was a woman. Her huge eyes looked like they would fall out of her face. She clutched a small black box against her bare chest; Olivia nodded reassuringly at her. She shook her head and mumbled.

  Diggs searched the last spot where the assassin was and shot at the place again. The bang was loud. The woman beside Olivia screamed.

  Several more shots hit the back of the table and the surroundings.

  Diggs shot into the ceiling, putting out several lights.

  He looked at Olivia. “You ready?”

  She said “Yes.”

  Olivia braced herself. She looked back there once before dragging the woman with a black box with her. “Come on,” she said.

  Slugs fell around them as they darted out the door. Olivia saw a man bleeding where the woman with the box was.

  Diggs hung back, bent at the knees, and firing into the dark restaurant.