The first fat drops of rain were hitting the sand. The drops were large enough to dig their own little craters when they hit. Gallant was going to have a hell of a time, his only advantage being that he would be running before the wind.
"How did the plane know when to pick you up?" Holliday asked.
"Satellite phone, an Ericsson R-290," answered Meg. "They've been flying in circles for an hour, waiting for my signal."
"A satellite phone? Where on earth did you pick up one of those?"
"Think about it," said Meg. Holliday could tell that she was grinning from ear to ear. "It'll come to you."
Holliday thought and then he had it. It was the only answer.
"Quince," he said finally. "He was one of yours." He cursed silently. He should have put it together long ago.
"Got it in one, Professor," Meg said and laughed, obviously greatly pleased with herself. "The whole abduction was just to make sure you were still off balance and not questioning things too much. Besides, I had to update Mother and her friends. Quince gave me the weapon and the phone while you were still knocked out." There was a pause. "We weren't prepared for an assault at the lake, however. That wasn't part of the plan at all." The twin-engined turboprop touched down, its sticklike three-wheeled undercarriage and fat tires barely making an impression in the sand. The livery was stark black and white and the name on the side was Skybus Air Express.
"One of Mommy's companies?" Holliday guessed.
"Move," said the young Sinclair woman.
"Why don't I just put the ark down and walk away?" Holliday suggested. "No harm, no foul. You've got what you want."
"Not yet," answered Meg. "We need you to authenticate the find."
"What makes you think I'll do that for you?"
"You have an incentive," said Meg Sinclair.
"What incentive would that be?" Holliday asked.
"Your so-called niece Peggy Blackstock and her archaeologist husband."
"What about them?" Holliday asked, his heart beginning to race. He turned around to face Meg Sinclair, sour bile rising in his throat. Sinclair's face was blank and the gun was still unwavering in her hand. "Tell me what you've done," said Holliday.
"How touching, such family concern." She paused. "Oh, of course! Peggy's pregnant, isn't she?"
"Tell me!"
"At noon today, local Israeli time, Peggy and her husband were kidnapped. For the moment they are safe and unharmed. How long that condition lasts is entirely in your hands."
Holliday froze. "So help me God…"
"God can't help you," said Meg Sinclair. "But I can. Cooperate and they'll stay alive. One wrong move and they'll be dead. All three of them. Now move."
Holliday stared at her. Never in his entire life had he experienced the utter fury and rage rising in his soul, not even in the heat of battle, not even when he'd felt the meaty slip-slide of his knife sliding across the exposed throat of a picket guard on the edge of an opium plantation outside of Garmsir in Helmand Province, Afghanistan.
"If you harm them in any way, when this is over I will hunt you down wherever you are and I'll see you dead and in the ground, you psychotic bitch."
"You'd kill a woman?" Meg Sinclair asked, batting her eyes and smiling. "I wouldn't have thought your chivalrous code would allow it."
"In your case I'll make an exception."
"Fine," said Meg Sinclair. "You've had your moment of heroic male posturing, but right now I want you to walk down the beach and get on that plane." The rain began to fall harder. Holliday gave himself another second to burn her face into his mind and then turned away and did as he was told.
Five minutes later, turning into the wind, the plane rose into the air in a hard climb, then banked and headed south. As they turned, Holliday caught a glimpse of the Deryldene D putting out to sea, wake churning hard behind her as she backed away from the beach. He glanced at his watch. The time on the bezel had run out and true to his word Gallant had waited to the last minute. Holliday silently wished him Godspeed, watching the little lobster boat for as long as he could before it vanished into the sheeting rain.
30
The modern Rex Deus came to America before the United States even existed in the figure of a man named Jonathan Edwards, a Puritan pastor, theologian and missionary to the Indians-and anyone else who would listen to him.
Edwards was proud of his past and almost obsessed with his own genealogy. Like most members of Rex Deus he could clearly trace his ancestry back to the twelve original Merovingian kings, rulers of the twelve kingdoms of the Franks, which covered all of what is now France, Germany and most of Italy, including Rome.
Through the Merovingian kings, Edwards traced his past history to the Desposyni and the adelphoi, the younger brothers and sisters of Christ himself and the carriers of his bloodline into the future. Edwards firmly believed that it was his life's work to discover other descendants of the Desposyni in America and bring them together to forge a nation.
By the time of his death in 1758 he had discovered seven other Desposyni families in the New World, and with their coalition Rex Deus was born again. The eventual objective of the secret group of interconnected families was to infiltrate every aspect of society, politics and industry as quietly and efficiently as possible, eventually to hold benevolent and truly Christian hegemony over America and perhaps, at last, in the name and family of God, they would rule the entire world.
They were believers in a literal and strict interpretation of the Bible and almost all were slave owners-Joshua's "Hewers of wood and drawers of water." They also believed in a strict aristocratic system of government as far as the right to vote was concerned, and were classifiably revolutionaries since they swore allegiance only to Christ and no other king, including the king of England. Most of all, they valued secrecy and absolute obedience. The Sicilian Mafia's laws of omerta were no more than a casual oath to the members of Rex Deus.
By 1776, Rex Deus had grown considerably in wealth and power. There were eight Rex Deus signers of the Declaration of Independence and a dozen more within the Continental Congress. By the outbreak of the Civil War, there were scores of Rex Deus members, associates and acolytes on both sides and in every state and territory in the nation.
When it was clear that America's trading partners in the outside world were going to back the already industrialized North, the Southern members of Rex Deus did their best to ensure the failure of the Confederacy. Just after the war, strongly opposed to Lincoln's freeing of the slaves, Rex Deus saw to it that there would be no more such radical policies enacted during his term. It was the first political assassination Rex Deus had been involved in, but it wouldn't be the last.
By the beginning of the twentieth century, Rex Deus had elected mayors, governors, senators and congressmen and were a behind-the-scenes force backing everything from isolationism in the face of World War One to supporting ongoing trade with Germany until 1917, even though the United States was supposedly neutral until that time.
Between the wars they were strong proponents of Prohibition, but saw nothing wrong with investing enormously in Canadian distilleries, the major source of illicit booze in the United States for the better part of fifteen years. In 1929, warned well before the stock market's imminent collapse, Rex Deus removed almost all its interests in the New York and Chicago markets, saving billions of dollars for the members of the secretive group.
With the rise of Hitler in 1933, elements of Rex Deus in Europe either began allying themselves with the Nazi Party or began quietly liquidating their assets and reinvesting in the war industries of the United Kingdom and the United States.
Although philosophically against Hitler on a number of levels, his methods and administration were sound, taking a small group of men and turning them into a ruthless political, economic and military force almost overnight. An impressive man with much about his organization to be admired, but clearly insane, not to be trusted, and without a shred of tactical or strategic sense o
r knowledge when it came to waging war.
Through their political members within the Roosevelt administration and with the full cooperation of their friends and colleagues in Big Oil, Rex Deus was also largely responsible for the foreign policy decisions that led to the choking off of all oil supplies to the "Heathen Jap." Not too surprising when you knew that Rose Francis Whitney Hull, the wife of Secretary of State Cordell Hull, came from a long line of Rex Deus members.
With their preferred policy in place, Rex Deus started investing heavily in war industries like small arms, rubber, steel and aluminum, well aware that the United States was being drawn inexorably to war. When Pearl Harbor came they were ready, all in the name of God, and particularly in the big-dollar, American God of Rex Deus.
After the war some members of Rex Deus, the Sinclairs in particular, began buying up utilities, both in the United States and abroad. Others continued investing in oil and others in real estate and banking. As America grew richer and stronger so too did Rex Deus.
The members of Rex Deus were not cracker evangelists who preached that prayer could bring you wealth and fame and took every credit card under the sun, even the Discover Card, just so long as you called their toll-free number right now with your faith offerings. The members of Rex Deus were True Believers, as devout and fanatical as the most ardent jihadist.
By the beginning of the new millennium, the senior members of the Rex Deus order were collectively the greatest single economic force in the United States as well as being the largest religious organization, and still, after more than two hundred years of remaining completely secret and off the radar, the existence of Rex Deus was barely rumored, and when those rumors did circulate they were invariably dismissed out of hand as nothing more than the paranoid delusions of the left liberal media and addle-brained, pot-smoking conspiracy theorists.
By 2008 the only thing Rex Deus hadn't done was to elect a president, and by the end of that year, with the abomination of a black man installed in the White House, it was clear to the Rex Deus elite that something had to be done before the country was irrevocably wounded, the very core of the nation's soul riddled with the cancerous tentacles of godlessness and unholy corruption. To fight this terrible scourge, Rex Deus would need a new leader and a new plan for the country if it was to survive. Drastic measures had to be taken and taken soon. A secret conclave of the Desposyni was called.
The Skybus Air Express turboprop resumed the normal flight path corresponding to the flight plan they'd filed earlier in the day and arrived in Bangor, Maine, an hour and a half after leaving Sable Island and well ahead of the newly christened Hurricane Otto that was now sweeping over the little outpost island in the Atlantic.
By the time they arrived at Bangor International Airport the ark had been transferred to a wooden crate already Customs-sealed and listed on the cargo manifest as medical isotopes. Holliday was provided with what appeared to be a genuine United States passport with his name on it and his occupation listed as copilot.
They were waved through the Customs and Immigration checkpoint as crew, and Holliday was immediately led to a private lounge. The two watchdogs who had been on the Skybus flight accompanied them, then turned them over to a new set of caretakers in the lounge. From their attitude and their demeanor Holliday assumed they were ex-military, and he also assumed they were armed.
Half an hour later they transferred to a Gulfstream G550 business jet in the black and red livery of American Fluid Dynamics Corporation. Slightly less than two hours later they arrived in Lexington, Kentucky. They were met on the tarmac by three hard- faced black men in white shirts and dark suits and three black Cadillac Escalade vans with darkly tinted windows.
Even in the brief moment that he saw their faces Holliday knew they'd seen war in one place or another, either Iraq or Afghanistan. They had the look in their eyes of soldiers who still saw things that haunted them in their dreams. Everyone climbed into the three vehicles and then, like a downsized version of a presidential motorcade, they swept out of the airport and onto Interstate 64.
From the interstate they made the brief thirty- minute commute to the state capital of Frankfort and finally, bypassing the small town of barely twenty-seven thousand, they arrived at Poplar Hill, home of the Sinclair family for almost two hundred years.
Originally Poplar Hill had been called Stoneacre Farm, named for the boulders that had been pulled from the soil by the earliest Sinclairs, and the farmhouse had been more like the impoverished cabin mentioned in the state song, "My Old Kentucky Home."
As the Sinclairs had prospered in the company of Rex Deus the old cabin on the hill overlooking the Kentucky River and the growing town of Frankfort had been replaced by larger and larger farmhouses, eventually becoming the gigantic combination neo-Norman, Gothic and Scots-Baronial style castle-mansion that sprawled over the summit of the hill today, a stone extravaganza that came complete with a granite porte cochere at the main entrance, several Disneyland turrets, a conservatory as big as a bowling alley, two secret passages-one on either side of the massive fireplace in the study-the Sinclair coat of arms inlaid in marble on the floor of the Main Hall and a tunnel leading from the basement kitchens to the stone stables and the coach house behind the main building. Half of the original stables were still used for their original purpose and held the Sinclair thoroughbreds, and the other half was used as a garage.
The building had been erected at obscene cost by Richard Oswald Sinclair, the present Richard Sinclair's great-great-grandfather. The chateauesque mansion had been built between 1888 and 1895 in direct competition with his art-collecting colleague, George Washington Vanderbilt, who built the famous Biltmore Mansion during the same period. The two men had wagered on who would build the largest mansion in the country. Vanderbilt won, with Biltmore coming in at 175,000 square feet to Poplar Hill's 165,000 square feet. Sinclair argued that if you included the stables, directly connected by the tunnel to the main house, he should have won. The two men never spoke again.
Holliday stayed in his seat for what seemed a long time and then one of the babysitters who had accompanied them on the jet escorted Holliday into the building and across the Main Hall. The elaborate entranceway with its marble floor and soaring ceiling with the inlaid coat of arms made Holliday acutely aware that he was still dressed in the jeans, rough shirt and work boots he'd been wearing on Sable Island. Looking at his watch, he realized that it had barely been four hours since he'd been staring down the throat of a hurricane.
He wondered if Gallant had made it through the storm and silently vowed to find out about the lobsterman's fate if he got out of his present situation alive, something he was beginning to doubt. If he authenticated the bogus ark for the Sinclairs his continued existence would only be a liability. While driving into the estate he'd seen hundreds of acres of field and forest, all far from any public road; plenty of places to discreetly dispose of a body.
They turned left off the entrance hall and went down a passage that looked like something out of Bucking-ham Palace, complete with dusty Persian carpets on the teak wood floor and heavily framed and individually lit oil paintings on the green, moire silk walls. The paintings were all European, mostly of horses in battle, their nostrils flared with the scent of fresh blood, their eyes crazed as their riders sliced each other to ribbons with their curved sabers.
They passed what appeared to be the doors of an elevator and a little farther on turned into a relatively small and comfortable-looking sitting room fitted out with couches and easy chairs centered around a reasonably scaled fireplace. Above the mantel was a simply framed painting of a small terrier-like dog in full flight.
"It's a Galla Creek Feist," said an elderly, elegant woman seated in one of the armchairs and noticing Holliday's interest. She had the rasping voice of a heavy smoker. "It's the kind of dog that Daniel Boone used when he was hunting squirrel. His name was Langford's Rowdy. He was my favorite."
Holliday noticed that the ark, uncrated, stoo
d on the coffee table in front of her.
"You must be the mother," he said.
"My name is Katherine Pierce Sinclair." She lifted a hand and gestured toward the armchair facing her across the table. "Sit down, Colonel Holliday, you must be very tired after your journey." She gave the babysitter a look and he withdrew, closing the door behind him. Holliday had the feeling that he wasn't going far.
"You told Meg your little ruse with the box wouldn't fool me."
"It never really had to. We had people watching Miss Blackstock from the beginning. I'm a great believer in leverage, Colonel."
"I told Meg what I'd do if either Peggy or Rafi were harmed in any way."
"There's no need for threats, Colonel Holliday," said the elderly woman. She lit a cigarette and blew a curling stream of smoke into the air. She held the cigarette like a man, between the lowest knuckles of the first two fingers. "No harm will come to them as long as you authenticate the True Ark."
"When did you plant it there?"
"More than a year ago. Among other things, Margaret is a trained archaeologist. She was quite capable of following the clues to the whereabouts of the ark herself. Sadly, those clues ran out on Iona. From there they could have traveled anywhere. There were a number of possible answers, including Sable Island, so we manufactured evidence to lead you there. Sable was the most attractive of the possibilities because it would prove the viability of Rex Deus's assertion that the ark came to the New World. We had the box created using authentic medieval tools and techniques and placed it in the ground on the edge of Lake Wallace. Margaret had the exact GPS coordinates so she knew exactly where to dig."
"The inscription in Greek was a nice touch."
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