"You are on time," the dark figure pronounced.
Her hands were going to her face, in a shield of defense. She expected to be struck by the man joining her on the wood over the water.
Olivia gasped at the sight of Lawrence Diggs. He looked quite like a demon in his black attire. He wore a beanie cap; his face was wax-like, and his eyes were like black rubies. His spread arms gave the impression of a walking scarecrow.
Olivia recovered from her momentary fright.
"I couldn't find Pier 3."
"That's because there is none," the man said as he wiped the dust off his jacket. "Walk with me, please. You weren't difficult to find. And such a nice place you got, you thinking of starting a gallery?"
Olivia's eyes wandered over the man. He was even thinner than he was in Rome. "You have been busy. It was you in the street the other day."
"Yes, and it will be dire for me not to be busy," said he. "Father Andre sends his love."
Olivia stopped walking; her hand went to the man's shoulder. She let out a small groan.
"So, it's true?"
Diggs kept looking around, as though he expected company. Piedmont Bay was about deserted. Boats bobbed in the piers, like spectral things.
"Even I am in danger, they watch me too—"
"The agency?"
"Yes, I pulled up some files. They were way above my pay grade." He reached inside his jacket and pulled out a bulky yellow envelope. "Here, take this, it contains everything you need to know about the secret lab in the Antarctic. You were right about the cover-up."
Olivia took the envelope. "So right, I got fired for it."
Diggs stopped walking. They had gotten to the point on the pier where light from nearby could expose them.
"Admiral Huebner is alive, and he is a Templar," he added. "It is not certain though, how high up he is in the Order. Entire governments have been infiltrated, even the CIA. I'll be shot if they find out how much I know."
"What are we going to do?"
"Trust no one. Watch your back, the Asian almost got the priest. They are coming for you."
"Peter is still alive."
It was the turn of the former agent to show surprise.
"Oh well, that explains something."
"What?"
He looked over his shoulder again. He started back the way they had come. "I have to go now," he said.
"What am I supposed to do?"
"We can trust Frank Miller. We have to go back."
"Back to Rome?"
Diggs said, "Yes."
As he jumped over the pier and hit something below, he said again, "We can trust Frank Miller. I'll contact you in a few hours."
It was almost 8:00 pm, and it was getting cold by the water.
—
She drove around town awhile, to lose any tail. Then she twisted around again and drove to Tom's place. Olivia called the sheriff while she was parked in the street. Tom said it was okay to come to his place.
Before she turned in, she opened the package she had been given by Diggs. It contained fifty pages of top-secret documents.
In the morning, Olivia made copies. She drove down to the post office on Southwest 59th and mailed the documents to her box at the Miami Daily.
They'd keep it for her since they did not have her new address yet. She could get it when she wanted.
—
Her flat remained as she left it. The absence of her cat infuriated her momentarily. If they could take a cat, she wondered. Her cell phone buzzed. It was a text message from Diggs to meet him at Pier 3, again.
She packed a small bag, then she took a taxi down to Piedmont Bay.
Olivia found the boat. Just as the message said, a small white boat. The name Lotus was written in brown lettering on the side. It had a small deck with a blue roof. Olivia jumped in, unannounced, also like the message said she should.
Diggs appeared. He swam out of the water, snorkeling mask on his face and a waterproof bag in his hand.
Five minutes later, the boat was speeding towards Biscayne Keys.
—
A small airplane was warming up as they docked. A man was standing beside the aircraft. Olivia was sure he must be a hundred years old. He wore a straw hat and a severely soiled jumpsuit; it used to be red but was now black with grease.
The engine was so loud they had to yell to hear each other.
"This is major Barnes, he's gonna be our pilot." Diggs gestured at the old man.
"Barnes atchur service, ma'am."
The old man grinned, teeth stained black by tar.
"Where exactly are we going?" Olivia yelled as they boarded.
Diggs shouted, "Bali!"
"What's there?"
"You'll see."
—
The team was in Bali.
A morose Liam Murphy and a sharper Anabia Nassif, who quickly confided in Olivia as they boarded Frank Miller's jet that he'd been taking martial arts classes.
"In the last months, I have a yellow belt," Anabia said.
Borodin leaned across the aisle and mimicked Neo, from the movie The Matrix. "I know Kungfu."
Miller welcomed everyone on board. This time there was no butler serving drinks. Liam Murphy's solemn countenance was contagious. He was distraught to leave his kid. The thought of losing any of these fine men distressed Olivia.
She said to Miller, "I need a drink."
"Me too." Liam jumped.
Frank Miller served the poured schnapps in medium glasses. Liam grimaced. Olivia's eyes watered as the alcohol burned its way down her gut.
Diggs was keeping pretty much to himself, putting his arsenal of weapons together, oiling and cleaning them.
"Everyone is here on this expedition on their own volition," Miller began. "It will be dangerous, we are up against a ruthless enemy. The Templars don't fuck around. The Italian government may lock us up this time for good if we cause a disturbance. But we have the Vatican's support now—"
"Isn't the Vatican in on this too, I mean, I don't know?" Liam asked.
Diggs cut in, "How's your new baby, man?"
Liam nodded. "I had to come along, you know."
"Yeah."
Miller continued. "We have friends in the Vatican."
"So does the Templars," Olivia interrupted him. "And the CIA, they are everywhere, and they are powerful. They can be petty as well. They took Smokey."
"Who's Smokey?" Anabia asked.
"My cat."
Borodin's mouth fell open. Liam Murphy said, "That's just fucked up, man."
The jet dipped hours after. Diggs got up, grabbed his bag, and dropped on the floor. The team stared at him.
"Let's do this, ladies."
He handed guns to the men, magnums to Liam and Anabia Nassif, a Browning for himself, and a Glock 9 millimeter he gave to Olivia. Olivia turned it around in her hand. It was cold, the edges pricked at her skin and heart.
The jet skidded across a private airfield some minutes after.
—
In a different runway in a new clearing in the Chiavichetta fields, a separate jet was cleared to land on the private stretch of green.
The men who descended the small stairs all wore black coats and black trousers. They wore dark glasses, and each carried his own bag. And they all looked very dangerous.
A black van was waiting on the Via Della Magliana road. They filed into it. No words were spoken because none were needed.
Lin, the Asian, was leading the Templars' modern-day Knights.
The van turned around and sped in the direction of the Vatican.
—
6
The Muratella Home for Seniors got a new janitor a week ago. Gemma thought the janitor walked funny, pushing his cart along the linoleum floor of the hallways slower than even she would. And she was sixty last April. Gemma also thought that the amministratore should have gotten someone more. She searched for a word that didn't make her seem prejudiced as the janitor rolled his cart by—comple
tare.
The Home was a reasonably large establishment. Two floors of six rooms on each side, three male seniors in each room, the lavatories occupied two rooms at the end of the hall, and there was the storeroom for equipment. Gemma was a big woman around the waist. She loathed thin people. She loathed having to adjust her bulk around them even more.
She considered it a miracle worth thanking the Lord for that at her age, she was put in charge of the upkeep of men who were younger than her.
So, when the new janitor—Raphael, his name was—finished for the day and left, Gemma was relieved. She turned the TV up, which was on the counter. It was set on the desk at an angle that only she could watch it.
The double doors swung to let a strong draught in. On the heels of the cold draft was the appearance of an Asian lad.
He walked at an amble to the desk and flipped an ID card in Gemma's face.
"I'm from the Bureau of Employment. Did you receive new employees recently?" the Asian inquired in clear Italian.
After a moment’s hesitation, Gemma answered, "Not employees, just an employee."
"May I have a word with the said employee?"
"Yes, you could, if he was here." Gemma wrinkled her mouth at the man. "But he just got off for the night."
"He did?"
"Yes, if you had been two minutes earlier, you'd have caught his shuffling self as he went out the door."
The Asian frowned. Gemma could have sworn there was something disquieting about those black-button empty eyes of his.
"Shuffling? What do you mean, shuffling?"
Gemma gestured disdainfully at the hall. "It's the way he walks. He drags one of his feet on the floor, like he borrowed that leg or something."
A look of disappointment crossed the man's face. He folded his ID card and put it inside his black jacket.
Gemma frowned. "How come you go around so late about employees?"
The Asian ignored the question. He asked, "Do you by any chance have a picture of him?"
"Oh yes, there's one here, and it is clear." She pushed a passport photograph over the counter.
The man took a cursory look and put it in his pocket. Gemma began to protest, but the Asian gave her a look that closed her jaw with a definitive click.
"Also, do you have an address?"
"Oh, yes."
Gemma started ruffling through a large book. Her hand shook.
"Here, I found his address."
Gemma read it aloud to Lin.
—
"When does he get off?"
"Eight," said Diggs.
The team arrived at the Muratella Home just as the Asian left. Lights were on in the rooms. Shadows of old and bent people reflected on the glass windows. A TV was on. Diggs knew the routine of the Home by heart already. Eleven was lights out, but the team would not be waiting for that.
"We are sure now that he is safe," Anabia whispered beside Olivia in the back seat.
Diggs agreed. "Let's go visit the priest."
He put the rented Audi in gear and sped away.
—
Five black figures with heavy guns went up to the third floor of the building, two to flush him, kill him, and if by some miracle they missed, the three waiting in the hall would get him.
Their leader, Lin, the Asian assassin, waited in the street. It was just one man, a priest. If all else failed, he would shoot the escaping cleric, and then fire at his own men for incompetence.
The door was slightly open when one rubber-soled shoe pushed the door open. A TV was switched on. There was someone in front of it. He was eating crackers from a bowl, the white glare of the TV on his face.
The two assassins stepped into the room. One of them took aim. The other tapped the man, and he shook his head.
The man on the sofa, eating crackers and enjoying the raucous Italian show on the TV, wasn't the priest. They had seen the photo that the Asian got from the seniors’ home.
The two assassins, their faces hidden behind masks, glanced at each other. One of the killers shrugged. He meant, What the hell, let's kill him anyway.
One of them volunteered and took the mouth of his silencer to the sitting man's head. Just then, a door on the other side of the room opened, very slowly, the muzzle of another silencer poked out of the darkness there. It coughed death.
One assassin got it in the neck. He dropped his gun, grabbed his throat, and fell to one knee and bled. The second assassin managed to turn his weapon halfway from the head of the man on the sofa. But the bullet entered through the side of his face, knocking him against the wall, seconds after bits from the back of his head splattered it.
The man on the sofa turned slowly towards the dead men. He spread his teeth in a decadent smile. He joined the owner of the gun in the room, and they were both gone.
A minute later, the three left in the hall looked at each other. Their comrades had stayed too long. Something was off.
They proceeded with caution.
The assassin in the lead saw the feet sprawled on the floor through the half-open door; he froze, raised his fist, and the others stopped behind him.
The explosive guy came from behind. He threw two grenades into the room and pulled the door shut.
Those on the street saw the windows of one apartment on in the building blow out, showering the road with glass, dust, and a thousand bits of wood. Lin saw the explosion too.
He cussed, "Shit!"
He knew what had happened. He darted into the alley behind the building.
—
Liam Murphy was the bait. And Lawrence Diggs was the shooter. They were both coming down a ladder at the back of the building when Lin turned the corner.
Diggs was counting on someone coming around, but not the Asian himself.
Bullets rained around them. Metal sparked like a welder’s flare. Liam screeched. Diggs returned the shots and the Asian dove behind a dumpster.
Diggs hit the hard alley before Liam Murphy. He helped the hapless man down. Liam was cussing, running his hands all over his body.
Diggs grabbed him and pushed him down as another round of shots hit the wall where they had been standing.
"Am I hit?!" Liam asked wild-eyed.
"No, you ain't, just shut up and use your gun next time, will ya?"
There was an exit behind them. Beyond that was a waiting car, behind the wheels was a grim-faced Victor Borodin. Diggs fired covering shots at the sides of the dumpster, and Liam Murphy escaped through the exit.
Meanwhile, the other assassins had made it through the back of the building and were coming down the ladder. Diggs shot one in the back; he fell and landed on his head, something broke. His buddies didn't wait to get to the end of the ladder, they jumped off. Lin used them as cover and tried to pin Diggs to the spot where the former CIA guy was hiding.
Diggs saw him first, and he rose to shoot him. Lin grabbed one of the other assassins and hid behind the guy's body.
Diggs squeezed three times into Lin's human shield and made a run for it.
He got to the waiting car and jumped in. "Step on it!" he hissed.
Borodin threw the car in gear, and they were off. Lin came out blazing, but his attempts only sent people scampering into open stores and doorways, glass windows shattered somewhere, and someone screamed in terror.
Polizei sirens started singing nearby.
Lin spoke into a radio receiver on his wrist. "Come around, come around!"
Lin's kill crew broke into the street from the opposite side in their black van. He jumped into the back.
The tech guy had his face against the map on the computer screen, and he was yapping fast. Lin told him the escaping car had gone west on the Via Apolini.
"What are their likely exits and routes?" he asked.
The tech guy babbled, "That's gonna get them past the Cathedral Saint Patrick and on to the Satoria Mussolini. From there, they got three options, sir."
"Pull all the options up," Lin commanded. "The priest is at the
end of any of those roads, and so is the Grail."
Lin mouthed again into the mic in his wrist.
"I want all assets in the area activated now!"
He took a massive gun from a rack on the wall. It was a modified M16 rifle. He cocked it and watched the van catch up with the small car in front of them.
If the priest was in the car, then Lin would take the Holy Grail from his smoking, dead body.
—
Father Andre had spent less than a minute in his apartment when he left the senior home, where he started working recently. Diggs had asked him if there was anyone who he trusted could rat him out and the priest had mentioned the woman at the desk, Gemma.
"She is a curious fellow," he said.
And so, it had been.
"I told you they would come, you can't trust anyone, not even your superiors at the Church—"
"But, but—" the cleric stammered as they came down the steps.
Father Andre, Miller, Anabia, and Olivia were across the street when the black-clothed men came walking in with the shadows.
"Come on, go, go!" Miller hustled them back into a house nearby, and from there located an old, dry aqueduct in the middle of an old apartment.
"Thousands of liters of water ran through channels like this one, hundreds of years ago," Miller explained as they panted down an old staircase. "Now they are rarely ever used, except by women."
"What women?" Olivia panted.
The cleric threw a narrowing glance Miller's way. The billionaire didn't seem to notice.
"In the year 1240, Governor Flavius was vilified for giving an order that a priest could have at least a mistress, ease the urge to have sex," Miller continued. "The church hated the man for that, but by the turn of the century, some priests had devised a way to do what Flavius said. They received their lovers here and did their thing."
"How about the water?" Anabia asked.
Father Andre answered, "The water dried long before that."
The terrain dipped and rose, it winded both right and left. Some places they encountered pitch blackness. They came to a large hall. The architecture there was curved masonry, solid brick walls, and the doorways were arched. The dark line of the ancient water level was still visible on the old walls.
Hunt for the Holy Grail Page 34