by Jacob Hammes
“I shot him twice in the ankle and I didn’t see a drop of blood on the carpet until Bishop tackled him. That reminds me,” Cynthia groped around in her pants pocket and came out with the ruby she had taken. “The cop who was shooting at us was holding this.”
David had been complaining of a headache, but upon seeing the jewel he looked decidedly uncomfortable.
“Are you telling me that what you’re holding is a Relic?” Gregory asked. David immediately nodded his head and muttered a muted ‘yes’ before anyone had a chance to grab any sort of detection device. He excused himself from the meeting and walked off in search of a bathroom and something cold to drink.
“Where did it come from?” Gregory asked. “It just fell out of his hand?”
“Yes,” Bishop answered this time, backing up his partner’s story. “I tackled the guy and knocked him unconscious and that thing flew out of his grasp. He was definitely not a normal cop, Greg. This guy was either out to kill or under some exterior influence.”
“I bet I can figure out the mystery of the magic rock,” Phillip said, making a grab at the stone. Bishop was too quick, though. He moved the stone well out of the wiry man’s grasp.
“Let me see it and I can figure it out,” Phillip said.
“I think it’s pretty,” Bishop teased.
“You’ll think it’s pretty when I shove it up your nose.”
“Nah, that’d ruin its luster, buddy. My nose is too pretty for that rock. Besides, the girls say my nose is good the way it is.”
Greg let out an exasperated breath that stopped the bantering rather quickly. He was trying hard to stay calm in the face of an international incident and neither Bishop nor Cynthia’s cool demeanor on the situation was helping. Sure they had been in spots like this before but that didn’t excuse the situation. It would be months before the DOD had this mess cleaned up, regardless of the team’s apparent lack of presence.
“Whatever the case,” Gregory forged on, “we are bringing you home. The Satellite was pinged again about the same time you left the airport this morning and since then two security guards have gone missing. I don’t know where John is headed but it looks like he was definitely at the airport about the same time you were. He could be on any plane to any country or could have never left at all. We are going to give the local authorities whatever information we have and close down our investigation until we have a better lead on this guy.
“It’s better that we not look incompetent, anyhow. Rest assured, if we can catch this guy we will. But for now we need to give any information we have to the local authorities, if only as a peaceful gesture. If you have any information I can pass along, now is the time to speak up.”
“Well,” Marcus started before anyone could butt in. “The little shop we visited is a storage unit for Relics. There is a man we need to get in contact with immediately. His name is Lambert Fredrickson. Apparently he’s been using the shop as a storage container for pieces of art he deems too dangerous to sell which means that he knows what he is doing. He knows about Relics.
“More importantly, he may have a lead on something John stole. Lambert has been laundering artifacts through the shop since the late sixties, or early seventies. He sends the items to the shop and they in turn send it off to a final destination. Whatever gets sent for storage is put down in a basement that’s shut off from the main shop. It’s supposed to stay hidden, but lately some employees have been a bit handsy.
“Somehow, John knew about the stockpile of Relics and he stole one. If we can get in touch with Lambert, we can figure out what was taken.”
“I bet I can guess what he took,” Phillip said, holding the book he’d taken from the cave in Afghanistan up. “I bet he took that dagger, the Eye of God. I’d bet my life on it.”
“That’s the dagger you said was made by Nebuchadnezzar and hasn’t been seen since the end of World War 2, right?” Bishop asked, leaning forward in his chair.
“That’s right,” Phillip said. “Stands to reason the two would be attracted to each other. It also stands to reason that John won’t be able to control himself much longer. With that much synchronous electromagnetic activity he’ll have days at most before he turns into a blubbering ball of mush.”
“Well,” Gregory said from the view screen over the briefing table, “we’ve never seen a case like this before so maybe he won’t turn at all. Unfortunately, ‘it stands to reason’ is not reason enough to rule out alternatives. We will try and contact this Mr. Lambert and see if he can give us any information on what was taken and how to handle the situation. He obviously has some sort of experience with Relics, seeing as how he’s been hiding them for longer than some of you have been alive.”
“We should also get a team in there to catalogue the Relics and safely remove them,” Marcus said. “That store has already taken one life—God knows how many more it is capable of taking.”
“I doubt that will be possible,” Gregory said. “An art dealer who deals in foreign countries will have the law on his side. No one is going anywhere with anything unless we can use political pressure to have Lambert hand over his stash.”
Marcus sighed. It was all too true that politics played a large role in how the team interacted with the rest of the world. He needed a reminder once in a while to remember that the world was a large complex place and not everything fell under his jurisdiction. In the states, he may have a get-out-of-jail-free card, but in Xian he could have been executed and the United States would have been powerless to stop it.
“I’d like to give David props for finding the stockpile in the first place,” Marcus said. Even though it was not necessarily true, Marcus liked to praise his teammates in front of his boss. “I would also like to thank Stephen for getting us out of a tight spot and Jeff, though he’s not here, for his good driving.”
“I’ll make a note of it,” Gregory said. “Thank you for bringing it up.
“Any more news?”
“I’ve got a feeling that John isn’t done with us,” Marcus said. His opinion held significant weight, even with Gregory, his long-time boss. Marcus was known throughout the UOD for one specific skill he had—intuition. “These corresponding murders, this travel across the world for something John didn’t even know existed... Something is in the works here, boss, and I doubt we’ve seen the last of John.”
“What’s on your mind?”
“I’m not sure yet, but if he ended up at the airport, I bet he’s after another piece of a bigger puzzle.”
“You don’t think he will stay in China then?”
Marcus spent a long second regarding the jewel that Cynthia had laid on the table. It was cut beautifully with sharp lines and a sparkling vein of pure gold ran through the middle. It was priceless, completely invaluable, and obviously dangerous. The UOD would undoubtedly analyze the thing in every possible manner before sealing it in a lead box and burying it in the archives. So far in Marcus’ line of work he had never seen so many people succumb to untimely deaths because of the influence of a Relic and its seemingly supernatural abilities.
“I don’t know,” Marcus conceded. “Honestly, I don’t know. I don’t see any other pieces, I just know they are there. We need to get a hold of Lambert as soon as we can and find out where this ruby came from. Lambert will know what John is after.”
“We will have a background check done on the man immediately,” Gregory said. “Once you get back, we will analyze your findings. Until you hear back from me, ladies and gentleman, your orders are clear—report home. That is all for now.”
The screen went blank. Marcus looked from face to face. Each of them held some sort of disappointment. He was not all too sure himself that he could take this without a sense of failure. After all, they had passed him at the airport and somehow did not even see him.
“All we can do now is keep up the good work from Washington, guys,” Marcus said, trying to sound reassuring. It came out a little too bland, even for his ears.
“You’d think we could have done something better, huh?” Brenda said. “The cave, the helicopter, the large amounts of Relics we’ve discovered. It all seems pretty menial when we didn’t even catch the guy we set out after, doesn’t it?”
“Yeah,” Stephen looked as if he could spit. “Tastes pretty bitter, this defeat.”
“Cheer up,” Bishop said. “It’s not like the local government is going to find anything on John. Besides, he was at the airport for a reason. My guess is between twenty-four and forty-eight hours from now, we are going to be on this very same plane destined for some unknown adventure in search of this guy. You think he has two Relics messing with his beta waves and he’s going to last long? Get real. If he’s not killing more people in less than three days, I’ll get my first tattoo.”
Everyone was taken off guard. Bishop was very proud of his unmarked body. In a job where everyone is both very spiritual and extremely superstitious, it was not common to see a man without at least one tattoo. The fact that Bishop had held off so long was a topic of conversation.
“Whatever is going on, we are going to be in the loop,” Marcus said, smiling and shaking his head at his old friend. “It’s our duty to keep up the good work and try, regardless of where we are, to catch this guy. Unless something else comes up we’re still on this case, guys. I really don’t give a damn what the higher ups say about that. John is ours.”
As a whole, the group felt a sense of gratitude at their leader’s sense of responsibility and unwavering ability to ride something out until the bitter end. David was even leaning against the door jamb of the conference room, white as a ghost, but happy to hear the pep talk.
Soon, the excitement of the team would waiver and fail. Even the UOD could not be prepared for every circumstance.
Chapter 20
When the plane landed in Washington, D.C., it was still dark. The layover time they had given the pilots and the extra travel time put them back into the city at twelve midnight. The weather, as cold and dreary as it was before, had taken a turn for the worse. Now, instead of rain a light snow had dusted the ground and was sticking to everything in sight.
A single ambulance was waiting for Brenda. She left in it by herself, surrounded by teammates that praised her work. They would see her first thing in the morning, they assured. That is, if the boss would let them. Brenda’s strong will and mission oriented demeanor told the team that she would have no visitors. She would be at work with the rest of them, regardless of what Gregory had to say.
Snow was preferable to the drizzle that had been plaguing the city for the last two months. When they had left, three days ago, it was not cold enough to snow. Now, all Marcus wanted to do was to get back to his apartment and take a nice warm shower to wash away the foreign dirt he had clinging to every pore and get out of this freezing weather. God willing, he would be able to call his significant other, too. His personal cell phone, which had been turned off upon leaving the country, showed that Julie had not been patient. She had tried contacting him six times now.
Black government vehicles met them at the airport and drivers took them the rest of the way to the building they called their headquarters. In the dim glow of the city lights and the light dusting of snow that added an ambience all to itself, the building looked even more ominous than usual. The dusty white gargoyles, far overhead, seemed to be drooling long icicles. The black windows reflected lights which made them seem as if ghostly orbs hovered just beyond the glass.
It was home sweet home.
The guard at the gate checked their identifications as usual and had them scanned one at a time beneath a barcode reader with a red laser. Marcus could not wait to see his own silver sports car, jump in and crank some music, and ride off as slowly as possible through the slushy downtown streets. All he wanted to do was get home. Home— the place he planned on sleeping the rest of the night in his own warm bed.
Underground, the first parking garage near the entrance to the facility was where the vehicles parked in neat order. They were for government use only and as such were kept as close to the guards as possible. It left the SUVs in plain sight of the guards and gave optimal coverage from every camera. No one wanted to find out where a sixty thousand dollar Chevy Tahoe had gone when no one was around.
Marcus shook hands with the other teammates and gave them his blessings. He was already given the go-ahead to rest for the remainder of the evening and start on the mountain of paperwork first thing in the morning. A helicopter, a Buick, two foreign cops, and Brenda’s ankle had all been damaged in the operation. Marcus would be busy for weeks. Not to mention a paper drawn up on every bullet that had been fired which, between the cave and the cops, added up to a considerable amount.
He tried his best to push the thought out of his mind as he walked down the parking lot to his car. The flashing overhead light had not been fixed and the red plastic cup still looked as eerie as ever sitting there in the middle of the parking space. It was the cup’s parking space, Marcus thought.
The silver ride purred as Marcus ran his hand down the perfect exterior and once again it made him think that this vehicle had been waiting for just this moment. If it had a body, it would be a woman; a sexy woman.
“Honey, I miss you,” became “Where the hell are you?” between the first and sixth message in Marcus’ inbox. It was only natural for a woman to go from happy to pissed when the man she was dating had not even bothered to return her calls for the last three days.
“I would have been angry, too,” Marcus thought.
It did not stop him from tossing the phone into the passenger seat when he got in the car and cranking up the stereo. It was his only chance to indulge in the love affair he harbored with the car. His drive home was short but the vehicle always made sure that it was both warm and loud. Some nineties grunge rock could cure any illness and ebb most fatigues. Add the caressing feel of a leather seat and Marcus had his own personal heaven.
The doorman greeted him as usual and his key opened his apartment as usual. The computers in his room turned the lights on like every other day that Marcus came home. It was nice to be there, so nice to be in the confines of something that was not a cave or a damned jetliner. Marcus swore that if he never flew again, it would be too soon.
The world was always changing, yet Marcus and his own comfortable bubble were constant. The thought was comforting.
Just like every night that went by when Marcus was alone and stressed, he took a hot shower and left the bathroom naked. His dark hair fell straight down the side of his head and nearly covered his eyes. The fact that Marcus had a miniscule amount of Native American blood in him gave him jet black hair that supermodels could only dream of. His muscles and tendons moved like snakes beneath his tanned skin as he walked around the apartment in the dark, letting his mind quiet as he did.
For the next half hour, Marcus took his time in the living room drawing outlines on the floor with special white sand. The pure white sand was from a beach in Florida near the Pensacola Air Force Base where his father had once been stationed. He had kept it for so many years and used it so many times, but still it was pure white.
The sand against the dark wood floor was as white as the snow falling outside. He traced gentle curving lines around his body, arcing back over one another as he traced out symbols committed to memory. Around the circle, where the symbols met the outer lining, he planted candles. It did not matter what color they were or whether there was enough wick to keep them lit long; Marcus was just going to wind down.
The ritual was nothing special, yet with the lights turned off and the haunting glow of the candles dancing across the interior of his apartment, Marcus felt something he had not felt in days—relaxation. His mind drifted through the photographs in his memory, bouncing from one scene to the other through all the things he had recently seen. The crew chief who had smiled at him when they had taken off, the cave and the spirits he had seen. It had been years since Marcus had seen an actual spirit and e
very time he did it was just as frightening.
Then there was the painting on the roof. For a brief second he saw the demonic head looking down through squinting eyes at the entrance to the mass grave that had been the focal point of the spiritual activity.
“How old was that place?” Marcus thought. If this Lambert character knew about the cave than he obviously knew about the grave. How did anyone but the Unusual Operations Division know about Relics?
It stood to reason that people would know about them; they had been around since the beginning of civilization. It should not have been a shock that people would have taken up arms against such things, but still it was. Marcus relied more upon the technology supplied to him and his team to find the Relics, not guttural instinct like this Lambert character must possess.
Marcus had an extensive library. He fit as much as he could fit into the apartment of moderate space and many of the books were for research into the paranormal. He had long believed in an omnipotent God that was watching over the world and an omnipresent devil that was always just out of sight. Though his faith was hardly present nowadays, he still felt a strong affinity toward those feelings.
Throughout his research into God and hell and the existence of demons and the communication with both, he had stumbled upon some very interesting topics. One such topic was how a pope in the fifteenth century believed in magic so much that he had ordered the execution of a man trying to cast a spell on him. Yet another pope in another time had hired a magician to replicate a night sky in a sealed room so that he may be protected from the ‘unfavorable’ heavens that were sure to plague him with some sort of misfortune.
The most interesting, however, were the passages about direct communication with the other side. One of his favorites dealt with a man in the mid seventeen hundreds. It was about a man who, for reasons unknown, had tried summoning demons. The summoning thing wasn’t what interested Marcus. It was that according to him, he had succeeded, and then couldn’t rid himself of them.