The Protocol (A James Acton Thriller, Book #1)

by J. Robert Kennedy

  “Give us the skull.”

  Faisal was stunned. There was several million dollars worth of currency, gold, and jewels in here. Why would they want a skull made of crystal? It had been handed down for over a thousand years, from father to eldest son, but except for the sentimental value, it didn’t have any real monetary value. He couldn’t believe he was going to be the one who finally lost what had been in his family since his forefathers lived on the desert plains. He walked to a shelf and took down the skull, handing it to them. They must be from another clan, here to shame my family. The men carefully placed it in a case and started to leave the room. One turned around and faced him. “Sorry,” he said as he raised his gun and fired. Faisal grabbed at his shoulder as he felt the impact. He looked down, puzzled by the lack of blood, then collapsed.

  Somewhere on the Atlantic, 1212 AD

  Richard lay on the deck of the boat, propped up against a barrel that had once contained life-sustaining water. His throat parched, lips cracked and skin badly burnt, his once proud body had withered to an emaciated skeleton. If anyone should happen upon his ship they could have been forgiven for thinking he was dead. And he should have been, but he willed himself to stay alive, knowing he couldn’t die until his mission was accomplished.

  He had left England months before, determined to sail himself, and the skull that had killed his beloved family, over the edge of the Earth. The voyage had taken far longer than anyone had anticipated, and when it became evident the end of the world was farther than expected, he had begun strict rationing to prolong the voyage. That had only extended their provisions by a few weeks, however, and if it weren’t for a fortunate heavy rain that had partially replenished their water supplies four weeks earlier, they would have been dead by now.

  But that water was gone. His trusted friend and companion, Johnathan, had died two days ago and now only he and three crew members remained. All were in as bad a shape as he was and the ship was now essentially sailing itself. He prayed for the edge to come before he lost all strength and succumbed to the inevitable death that awaited him. He must ensure the skull went over the edge so no one else could be killed by it.

  As he lay in his near-death state he heard a roaring sound. At first he thought he was hallucinating, but then the other men stirred. They’d heard it, too. The sound grew louder and louder. The edge! He forced himself to his feet, realizing the roar must be the great waterfall at the edge of the world. He was resolved to sail over it at the prow of his boat, crying the names of his wife and child as his life ended.

  But what he saw stunned him. He had to rub his eyes several times and was convinced he must now be hallucinating, but one of his men, who stood with him, pointed at it, too. “It be land, Lord Baxter!” he whispered hoarsely. “How can it be?”

  Richard’s shoulders slumped in defeat. How could we have been so wrong? He looked up again and watched as the waves crashed, not over the edge of the world as had been foretold, but against the shore of a mysterious new land.

 

  Montague Place, London, England

  “What sort of disaster?” asked Acton, completely enthralled at the tale being told him. As he processed the information, history as he knew it was being rewritten in his head.

  “You’ve heard of the Great Fire of London?” asked Rodney.

  “Of course, 1666 wasn’t it, killed over thirty thousand people?”

  “No, the first Great Fire was actually in 1212. The city was nearly lost. Forgotten by history, the 1666 fire became incorrectly known as the Great Fire of London. Before that time, the fire of 1212 was known by the same name,” explained Rodney. “And we were responsible for it.”

  “Responsible? How?”

  “When the second skull was discovered and subsequently recovered, we realized there may be others. We dispatched teams all over the known world to look for the skulls, mostly by monitoring religious ceremonies. It was around 1200 AD that we found the third skull. It was retrieved from a mosque in what is now Tehran. Our operatives brought it back to London. When it was put into the same area for safekeeping as the other two, a humming sound was heard. Our scientists were immediately summoned and during the examination the three skulls were placed together.

  “It is thought that natural light shone down on them and then an incredible explosion or release of energy occurred. All the scientists were killed along with many innocent Londoners. The fires that ensued destroyed a large part of the city.”

  “I remember the fire now. I’ve read about it, London was nearly lost,” said Acton. “How do you know though that it was the skulls that did it? Couldn’t it just have been a coincidence?”

  Rodney nodded. “Yes, it could have been, but when we were able to get back into the area at nightfall, we found the skulls in the center of a blast wave. We separated them, realizing their true power.”

  Acton looked at Rodney skeptically.

  “I know this sounds far-fetched, Professor, but all of it is documented in our archives. Almost two-thousand years of painstaking journals and drawings. When you come in, I will show them to you.”

  “Yeah, well we’ll see about that,” replied Acton. “Okay, so you nearly blew up all of London. How the hell did I find a skull in Peru?”

  “We knew this new skull must not be anywhere near the other two. It was decided that we must get rid of it so there would be no chance of it ever coming into contact with the original skulls. A group of volunteers took the skull and sailed it over the edge of the world. It had been assumed they were successful. That of course was before we knew the world was round,” smiled Rodney.

  “I didn’t think people still believed it was flat then.”

  “Well, with our lineage being Roman, not Greek, it unfortunately proved popular to discount their mathematicians at times, and in the early thirteenth century, with the crusades and religious fervor at a peak, literal translations of the bible were popular.”

  “And after these things I saw four angels standing on the four corners of the Earth.”

  “Exactly, Revelations. How can a round world have four corners? The first to sail were led by a nobleman, Lord Baxter. They sailed south-west to avoid the ice packs to the north, and were supposed to go off the edge with the skull. Instead, they discovered America. South America to be exact.”

  “How do you know?”

  “Because, Professor, the skull you found is that third skull.”

  “How do you know it’s the third skull? I thought there were lots of these things all over the world?”

  “Yes, there are,” replied Rodney. “But there are only twelve genuine skulls that we know of, the last one having been discovered in Nepal in the early twentieth century. We keep track of all of the skulls very closely, watching to make sure that no three ever come in contact. This has meant that our organization is now spread throughout the world. We have people shadowing the owners of all the skulls, all of them that is except the last of the lost skulls.”

  “Lost skulls?”

  “After the disaster in 1212 we began sending all the skulls, except for the original two of course, across the Atlantic with the intent that they would be lost over the edge of the world. When science replaced religious dogma, we returned to the belief the world wasn’t flat.

  “What scared us the most is that we had sent out four skulls across the Atlantic. If those four were to come into contact somehow, we had no idea the level of destruction they could bring. In 1492, of course, the New World was formally discovered, and when news of this reached us from one of our operatives who was on the Pinta—”

  “Wait a minute,” interrupted Acton. “You had an operative on one of Columbus’ ships?”

  “Several actually. It was going to be a long, tough voyage so we couldn’t rely on only one man. Martin Alonzo Pinzon, the commander of the Pinta, was actually a member of the Triarii.”

  Acton shook his head in amazement or disbelief—he wasn’t quite sure which.

  “Ne
edless to say, with this news, we sent more people on expeditions in search of the skulls. It took hundreds of years, but eventually three were recovered and placed into the hands of people that could be trusted, without them even knowing, to keep them safely separate.”

  “How could you rely on them to do this? I’ve heard many of these are in private collections.”

  “Yes, but over the years we’ve had many fakes created and spread throughout the art world,” explained Rodney. “As well, we’ve discredited some serious owners such as the British Museum and the Smithsonian most recently by rigging a switch for a BBC documentary that then proclaimed them frauds. Many of the real skulls are now believed to be frauds, therefore no one has any interest in them anymore except as oddities. Others, who hold the real skulls, are terrified to actually let them be tested in case theirs too may be proven fake. It’s the perfect situation.

  “Most people think the skulls are fake therefore they don’t draw any attention to themselves, and the others don’t want to find out that what they own is fake so they remain quiet. There are a few that believe what they have is real, and tour around the world showing them off, but we always have people watching them and protecting the skulls. And, much to their annoyance, discrediting them. There’s a reason why many are considered off their rockers. We strategically place people in the crowds at these events to ask loaded questions, give tainted interviews and whatnot, just to make the whole thing look like a carnival.”

  “But, why? Why not just collect them all and seal them away in separate locations so that no one can bring them together?”

  “Part of our belief system is that these skulls were indeed placed here by the gods or God. We believe that they were sent as a message to mankind, and that when we are ready to understand it, we will. We have come to believe that if the skulls are all locked up and hidden away from humanity, they will not be able to have the influence on people that they are supposed to. By allowing them to move through civilization, with more and more people being exposed, we believe that eventually mankind will evolve to the point where the message will be revealed.”

  “Funny, I’ve heard something like that before,” commented Acton, thinking back on his conversation with Laura. “Okay, so your group, the Triarii, essentially track the movement of all of the skulls and take action when necessary to make sure that they don’t come in contact?” summarized Acton. Rodney nodded. “Okay then, who’s trying to kill me?”

  Rodney’s expression turned grave.

  “A former member of our group.”

  When Acton heard who it was his heart sank.

  Moscow, Russia

  Alexander quietly entered one of the many damp storage rooms in the basement of the Lubyanka building. The former KGB Headquarters’ purpose may have changed—albeit slightly—but the building that housed it was a testament to Soviet era quality. Primitive. Modernization, decades overdue, was finally occurring, but these dark, dank rooms had escaped even the slightest upgrade. Alexander was used to the smell, having worked here for over fifty years as a custodian of the records. Regimes had come and gone during his tenure from as far back as Khrushchev.

  Today, he was on a mission for his true masters. Neither the current regime nor any previous had his true loyalty. That was reserved for the Triarii. And today, he would fulfill his mission to protect an artifact the KGB had recovered from the Nazis after conquering Berlin. Hitler’s obsession with archeological relics had netted him one of the precious skulls. The Triarii had been unable to stop it from being stolen from the Jewish family in Warsaw that had been its keepers for generations. When the Soviets recovered it, they merely cataloged it and filed it away as a meaningless religious artifact. The atheist policies of the communist era meant anything with a religious connotation was of no importance.

  He had recognized it immediately, however. A member of the Triarii through his father, he had obtained the job in the one agency that would know if the skull existed in the Soviet Union. It took years of work to gain the security clearances to search the records, but he had finally done it and soon found what had been lost.

  It had been decided at the time the safest place for it was right where it was—in a forgotten box in a forgotten room. Now, however, nothing was safe. Today, for the first time since the end of World War II, the skull would leave its damp home.

  British Museum, London, England

  Clive buzzed them into the control room. He stood to shake Laura’s hand. “Has your friend returned?”

  Laura hesitated. “No, actually I’m getting a little concerned.”

  “Is Professor Acton familiar with the city, Professor?” asked Clive.

  “Who?” asked Reading, in a voice loud enough to startle everyone in the room.

  “His name is Jackson,” said Laura, “and no, he’s not familiar with the city. He’s a visiting professor from the United States and is probably lost. I told him to hail a taxi if that happened and to go back to the university. He’s probably there now.”

  Reading stepped closer to Laura. “Now listen carefully, Professor. We are looking for a Mr. James Acton, a Professor from the United States, in connection with fourteen deaths, today. So, I’ll ask you one time.” He leaned in even closer. “What is your friend’s name?”

  Laura desperately tried not to tremble. Then her fear turned to anger as she realized there was nothing they could do to her. She had done nothing wrong. She also knew James couldn’t be involved in those deaths because he had been with her almost the entire day. She decided to stall.

  She stared Reading straight in the face. “His name is Jackson,” she said firmly.

  “Very well.” Reading turned to Clive. “Pull up the footage of the back entrance. I want to see this professor.” Clive nodded and his fingers flew across the keyboard. Within seconds they were viewing footage of the conversation between Rodney and the two professors. “Pause it there.” Reading pointed to the screen. “Can you blow that up?”

  “Yes, sir,” said Clive. A few more keystrokes and a drag of the mouse and they were looking at a block of pixels. A few more keystrokes and the software sharpened up the image so they were looking at a perfect picture of the man in question.

  Chaney held the photo of Acton up to the screen. Both he and Reading said at the same time, “Acton.”

  Reading looked at Laura. “Care to change your answer?”

  “Okay, fine,” she said. “I met him today. What’s he supposed to have done?”

  “He’s wanted for questioning in connection with the torture death of a tourist, a theft from this museum that resulted in the death of seven people, and the death of six police officers,” said Reading.

  “He only arrived in London this afternoon!” exclaimed Laura. “How’s he supposed to have killed half the bloody city when he’s been with me almost his entire time!”

  “I didn’t say he’d killed them personally, but he’s connected somehow. And I’m not sure I believe you when you say nothing is missing.” He turned to Clive. “Is there someone else you can call to verify the contents of that room?”

  Clive looked nervously at Professor Palmer. “I, ah, yes, I mean, there should be a backup.”

  “Okay, call them and have them go through the storage room and let me know the result,” said Reading, heading for the door. “Professor Palmer, I’d like you to come down to The Yard with me for questioning.”

  “I’ll do no such thing! I’ve done nothing wrong!”

  “Professor, if you want I can charge you with interfering in an ongoing police investigation,” said Reading, then in a firmer tone, “or you can come down voluntarily for questioning.”

  Laura’s expression conveyed how angry she was, but she acquiesced. She followed Paul out the door with Chaney and Reading bringing up the rear.

  RAF Lakenheath, USAF 48th Fighter Wing

  The C17 Globemaster III Tactical Transport Aircraft had just landed, its four Pratt and Whitney PW2040 turbofan engines, each capable of
over forty thousand pounds of thrust, were still winding down. Red was already yelling at the ground crew to hustle on the unloading, knowing they would need the equipment quickly. “Get the bird set up and armed ASAP!”

  “Armed?” asked the Crew Chief. “With what?”

  “What do you mean, ‘with what’?”

  “In case you’re not aware, we have a little thing going on over in Iraq and Afghanistan,” retorted the Chief. Red glared at him. “I’ll see what I can scrounge up.”

  “You do that.” BD is going to be pissed. He climbed into his Humvee and headed back to the temporary headquarters. Entering the rec room, he found Dawson relaxing with the team who seemed to be enjoying themselves for the first time in days. Dawson sat in a reclining chair, squeezing a stress ball. He looked at Red as he entered the room and motioned for him to come over.

  “That’ll learn ya!” bellowed Smitty, who had just won a game of pool. He took the money from the table and yelled, “Who’s next?” Red smiled at the display as he sat in a chair across from his friend.

  “Our gear’s arrived. They’re setting up the bird now, don’t know about ordnance though.”

  “Explain.”

  “Apparently there’s a shortage.”

  “Fine, we’ll make do,” replied Dawson. “We always do.” Then he leaned closer to Red and lowered his voice. “When you were seconded to DARPA, did you ever hear of anything called Structural Amorphous Metals?” he asked, looking at his second-in-command.

  “Yeah, the SAM project, something to do with extremely strong metals or something,” recalled Red. “Why?”

  “Any chance that our sculpture could be made of it?”

  Red shook his head. “Not unless the project took a U-turn. They were dealing with crystalline structures, not blocks of crystal.”

  “Do you have any contacts still there?”