Blood Relics (A James Acton Thriller, #12)

by J. Robert Kennedy

  “Shoot me now!” cried Niner, grabbing his seat cushion and pretending to vibrate. “I’m having flashbacks of Afghanistan!”

  “Don’t tempt me.” Dawson nodded toward the bags near the entrance. “We arranged for a few supplies.”

  “Weapons?” asked Reading.

  “Are you asking as a cop?”

  Reading smiled. “Never mind.”

  Niner grinned. “Good choice.” He looked at Acton. “Any word on your wife?”

  “You got my last update about the phone call?”

  They both nodded.

  “Then that’s about it. I’m heading for Rome shortly to begin my search for Saint Longinus, but I’m not overly optimistic, especially with the time constraints I think we’re under.”

  Niner put his water bottle on the table. “You’re still convinced this is all about the blood of Christ and healing some sick dude?”

  “Yes. The German guy confirmed it’s about the blood, or at least the Blood Relics, but not why. The only thing I can think of is its purported healing properties. And Laura did refer to a doctor and a lab.”

  “We’ll operate under that assumption,” said Dawson. “You said you’re going to Rome?”

  “Yes.”

  “Then one of us will go with you—”

  “No,” interrupted Acton, shaking his head. “I want the three of you looking for Laura. It’s a hell of a lot more likely you’ll find her than I’ll find some two thousand year old corpse. The Vatican Inspector General—”

  “Giasson?”

  Acton nodded. Dawson and the others on his team had dealt with Giasson during the storming of the Vatican they had all become mixed up in. “Yes, Mario’s agreed to provide security for us while we’re there.”

  “Us?”

  “I’ve got some academic help arriving this afternoon.”

  “Okay, we’ll leave the relic hunting to you. As long as our hostiles think you’re useful to them, you’re probably safe. We’ll focus on finding your wife. I’ve forwarded all the intel we’ve got to our contact at Langley, and if I know him, he’ll come up with something. In the meantime I think we need to run down the one lead we do have.”

  “What’s that?”

  “These KSK guys.”

  “That’s exactly what I was thinking,” said Reading, shaking a sheaf of papers. “They all used to work for Renner Security based in Stuttgart, Germany.”

  Acton’s eyes narrowed, Stuttgart not exactly where he would have thought a band of mercenaries would be headquartered. “Stuttgart?”

  Dawson drained the last of his water. “Yeah, the German Special Forces are headquartered about twenty miles from there so they use it as a recruiting center.”

  “Are they reputable?” asked Acton.

  “They have their usual bit of dirty laundry like most of these types of outfits that provide private security, but nothing that’s made headlines.”

  Reading grunted. “Just means they haven’t been caught.”

  Dawson chuckled. “I’ve already set up a meeting with their CEO for later today. You’re welcome to come along.”

  Reading shook his head. “No, I’m going to stay here and coordinate things.”

  “Sounds like a plan,” replied Dawson, turning to Acton. “What time is your flight for Rome?”

  Acton looked at his watch then jumped from his seat. “I’ve gotta get ready. I’m leaving here in fifteen.”

  Dawson rose. “Okay, you said you arranged a room for us?”

  Acton pointed toward two keycards sitting on the table. “Those are yours. Your room is across the hall.”

  “Is it anything like this?” asked Niner as he stood, taking in the large room.

  “All the rooms on this floor are suites and I figured it was best we were all close. You’ll each have your own room.”

  “Thank God,” replied Dawson, motioning toward Niner. “He’s newly single and horny. I was afraid I’d have to share a bed with him.”

  “And I like to spoon.”

  “He’s not joking.”

  Acton laughed, the first time since Laura’s kidnapping, and it felt good.

  These men were the best in the business, and with their contacts, Laura just might stand a chance.

  Because he could see no way he was going to find the body of Saint Longinus.

  Not without a miracle of my own.

  St. Paul’s University, St. Paul, Maryland

  Mai Trinh flinched as a hand waved in front of her face. She ripped the earbuds free as she spun around in her chair, cringing on instinct at whatever might be about to assail her.

  It was Tommy Granger.

  She smiled, covering her heart. “You nearly scared me to death.”

  “You had your Katy Perry cranked so loud I don’t think you’d have heard a herd of elephants stampeding behind you.”

  “Why would there be elephants behind me?”

  Tommy laughed, dropping into a chair beside her. “We need to work on your sense of humor.” He wagged a finger at her. “I bet back in Vietnam you were considered very funny.”

  She blushed, turning away slightly. “Not really.”

  “Ahead of your time, then.” He nodded toward the screen. “What are you working on?”

  “Something for Professor Acton.”

  Tommy leaned forward quickly, his knee suddenly bouncing rapidly. “Did you hear what happened in Paris?”

  “Yes, that’s what I’m working on.”

  Tommy’s eyes narrowed. “I don’t understand.”

  “Professor Palmer has been kidnapped—”

  “You mean she’s not dead?”

  Mai shook her head. “Thankfully, no, apparently the kidnappers called Professor Acton. They want him to find the Spear of Destiny.”

  “What’s that?”

  “The spear that stabbed your Jesus Christ.”

  “Oh yeah, like in that Mel Gibson movie. Have you seen that? The Passion of the Christ?”

  She shook her head.

  “My parents took me to see it when it came out. The theatre was packed. There’s this scene where they torture him—” His voice cracked and he shook his head. “I remember crying out at one point for them to stop. It was the first time I saw my dad cry, and he’s not really big into religion.”

  “Sounds like a good movie.”

  He nodded. “I watched it again just a few months ago…” His voice drifted off as his eyes glistened. Mai desperately wanted to reach out and comfort him, this boy, this young man, who had helped make her feel a little less lonely, clearly needing it.

  But she held back.

  It wasn’t her way.

  She decided distraction was the easier way to go.

  “The kidnappers want the professor to find the body of Longinus, the Roman soldier whose spear it was.”

  “They want him to find the body of some dude who died two thousand years ago?”

  Mai nodded. “He became a bit of a revered figure from what I’ve read, so it’s definitely possible.”

  “I suppose. But what if he can’t find this guy?”

  “Then Professor Palmer will be killed.”

  “Jesus Christ!” Tommy quickly made the sign of the cross. “Sorry, I guess that wasn’t the right choice of words considering.”

  Mai shrugged, not sure why.

  “Do they have any leads?”

  “I just sent a bunch of research on Longinus to Professor Acton. My best guess at the moment is Rome.”

  “No, I mean the kidnappers. Any leads?”

  “They’ve apparently identified some of them, mercenaries I think, but not the lead guy. According to the email update I just got he hasn’t shown up in any databases yet.”

  “Maybe they’re looking in the wrong databases.”

  Mai’s eyes narrowed. “Sorry?”

  “If this guy doesn’t have a criminal record, then he’s not going to show up in their databases. What do we know about him?”

  Mai brought up
the document she was using to track just that, the amateur sleuth in her already fantasizing about doing what the authorities couldn’t. “Not much. He has a German accent, spoke perfect English to the Professor and perfect German at the museum in Vienna. This is his picture from the security camera.” She scrolled down, showing a clear image of the man holding a hostage from behind. “And that’s about all we know.”

  Tommy shook his head. “There had to be something in the phone call. Too bad they didn’t record it.”

  “They didn’t, but the Professor did take notes.” She brought up a photo of the pad sent in the email update to her and several others including Dean Milton.

  Tommy quickly read the scribbled notes then leaned back, his fingers tapping the arms of the chair. “Sounds to me like he’s in some sort of warehouse or a large home.”

  “Home?”

  “Yes. My grandparents have a large estate and when you walk on the floors there, the scale of the house is so large, everything echoes. It’s just as possible that this is a house and not a warehouse. Think about it. A long quiet walk where all he hears is footsteps echoing, then a door, then more footsteps in another large area. That area we know has Professor Palmer in it because she’s put on the phone and says she’s being kept in a lab with a doctor named Heinrich.” He paused. “Have they found any record of him?”

  “Not that I know of.”

  “Well, he’s probably easier to find if that’s his real name. Anyway, the caller could have been walking down a long hallway then entered a room where they’ve got a lab set up. Some of the rooms in my grandparents’ house are huge—easily enough room for a small lab.”

  “I guess it’s possible.” Mai wasn’t nearly as convinced of the possibility, but then she thought Professor Acton’s home was large, though apparently it was quite modest, especially compared to some of the homes she saw on television.

  They were unbelievable.

  Maybe it is possible?

  “My point though was that if it is a large house, then it could be his house. Remember, these guys have committed robberies in Spain, Rome, Vienna, Paris, then Rome again, all in four or five days, which means they’re well-funded. I doubt they’re flying commercial, especially after Vienna where they were caught on camera—which if you look at the footage they were showing on TV last night certainly suggested they weren’t concerned about being seen—which means they’re probably flying chartered jets. And that means money.”

  Mai’s head was nodding the entire time, Tommy making a lot of sense. “And they don’t appear to be stealing for money,” she added. “Apparently there were other very valuable objects including gold and jewels that could have been taken at the same time but weren’t.”

  “Right, right! Money isn’t their motive. And if these mercenaries aren’t concerned about being caught on camera, then they obviously aren’t concerned about working again or going to prison, which means they’re expecting huge payoffs that will allow them to disappear and live out the rest of their lives in comfort.”

  “Which means money.”

  “Yes! Lots of money. So if we assume there are huge amounts of money involved, and that people who do this sort of thing usually have some sort of criminal record before they try something this big, then the fact the lead guy has no criminal record suggests he’s the moneyman and the mercenaries are his hired muscle.”

  “So we’re looking for a millionaire?”

  “At least, maybe even billionaire. But the fact nobody has recognized him suggests he’s reclusive.”

  Mai turned to her keyboard, quickly making notes. “So he’s very rich, probably German—”

  “Or Austrian, perhaps Swiss, they speak German too.”

  “Oh, okay. He’s probably a recluse, but he’s apparently quite athletic and certainly didn’t seem shy to me.”

  “Not like us!” laughed Tommy, putting his hands on Mai’s shoulders and shaking her gently. She froze for a moment, trying to regain her focus, it the first time she had been touched physically by a boy in over a year.

  She hadn’t realized how much she had missed it.

  And she didn’t mean intimate contact, it was just contact of any type. Professor Palmer always gave her hugs, which she craved, and Professor Acton would give her a quick hug when she would arrive for dinner, but beyond handshakes, this was the first time someone had put their hands on her in a familiar way.

  “Oh, I’m sorry,” said Tommy, removing his hands, apparently noticing she was still frozen.

  “No,” she whispered, her head dropping slightly. “It’s okay.”

  She glanced slightly over at Tommy who was beaming, the meaning of her words thankfully not lost on him. She smiled awkwardly then turned back to the computer. “So he’s probably not in the computer business?”

  Tommy laughed. “Probably not! My guess is it’s family money.”

  “Why?”

  “He’s too young to be that rich and not all over the Internet. My guess is he was born into the money and therefore learned how to keep a low profile.”

  “So how do we find him?”

  “High society.”

  “Sorry?”

  “For fun I wrote a program for my senior thesis to show how the government could track our movements through other people’s social media posts. The program pulls photos from Facebook, Instagram, whatever, then using facial recognition plot points, uniquely tags the people in the photos then crawls all of the friends’ accounts that had everything set to public viewing. I can follow those plotted people through their friends and acquaintances, use the geocoding embedded in the metadata—another thing most people don’t know about—and then just through data analysis, identify which Facebook accounts belonged to what face.”

  “So you could trace someone through their friends’ photos back to their original account and know where they had physically been?”

  “Yes, it was a piece of cake!”

  “Huh?”

  “Sorry, an expression. It means it was easy.”

  “Oh.”

  “Can you do that with this photo?”

  “Sure, I can plot his facial recognition points no problem. Then we just need to write a program that pulls as many photos from the Internet as possible dealing with high society—and I don’t mean Hollywood, I mean the truly rich—where somebody like this might show up and be caught on someone’s camera, a press photo, whatever.”

  “Do you think you can do it?”

  “Yes. But it might take some horsepower. We’re talking a lot of data, a lot of bandwidth.”

  “Meaning?”

  “We’re going to need Dean Milton’s permission to use the lab.”

  Mai smiled. “You get to work, I’ll go talk to the dean.”

  Hotel Astor Saint Honore, Paris, France

  “Do you have enough money?”

  Niner’s shoulders slumped, a frown creasing his face. “I’m an E-5 in the army, Doc, which means before allowances and bonuses, I make about thirty-three thousand. Of course I don’t have enough money.”

  Acton flushed, stammering out an apology. “I didn’t mean that, I meant—”

  Niner rubbed a tear from his eye. “It’s so hard, you know, trying to get by on so little. I send every spare penny I can to help out my folks. Then there’s my family in South Korea. You know it’s really hard there; that country’s so primitive, so poor.” He shook his head. “I can barely make ends meet. D-do you have enough money?”

  Acton’s eyes narrowed. “Wait a minute, South Korea is one of the richest countries in the world. You’re bullshitting me, aren’t you?”

  Niner grinned. “You should have seen your face, Doc!” He laughed, his head shaking. “Don’t worry about me, I do just fine. And I know what you meant and yes, the account you provided has more than enough. We tapped it for our flight here along with the equipment delivery and vehicle when we arrived. We’re good.”

  “Okay, just let me know if you need more, and don’t hesitat
e to use that entire line if you have to. I don’t care what it costs to get Laura back.”

  The elevator doors opened. “I completely understand. I don’t know if there’s anything I’d stop at if it was somebody I loved.”

  A doorman bowed to them slightly as they pushed through the revolving doors, and as Acton stepped into the fresh air he was greeted by a gentle breeze and car horns blaring.

  “Taxi, sir?”

  He didn’t bother asking how the doorman knew he spoke English.

  Must be how I’m dressed.

  He glanced at Niner who was surveying the area, probably for threats, his eyes hidden behind sunglasses, his eyeballs doing most of the wandering rather than a turning head.

  Maybe it’s because I’m with an Asian guy?

  He doubted it. With the number of former French colonies in Asia—not the least of which was Vietnam—there were plenty of Asians in France.

  Just good at his job.

  “We’ve got a car waiting for us.” Acton looked at the empty laneway in front of the hotel. “Or supposed to be.”

  The doorman pointed to the road. “Everything is blocked by that ridiculous automobile. You’ll have to go to the street then to the right. All of the cabs and limos are there. We have staff there to help.”

  Acton nodded. “Thanks.” He and Niner walked the few yards to the road and past a Jaguar XK-8 cabriolet, its owner in a shouting match with several people including what appeared to be his wife.

  “I cannot move the vehicle, it is broken down!” he shouted in a thick French accent at an angry tourist. “What part of that do you not understand, you imbecile!”

  “Don’t be calling me an imbecile, mate, you’re the one that bought a Jag!”

  The exchange continued, the entire electrical system apparently having failed. Acton spotted the chauffeur that had picked them up at the private airport the day before near the end of the street, waving.

  “It is a new battery, I’m not an idiot! When I say the car is always doing this, it doesn’t mean I’m not trying to get it fixed.”

  “Shoot the piece of shit, put it out of our misery.”

  “I had a Jag once, cost over two hundred euros for a new battery!”