Blood Relics (A James Acton Thriller, #12)

by J. Robert Kennedy

  “Must have been blessed by the Queen!”

  Roars of laughter replaced the angry shouts for a moment, leaving Acton wishing Reading was with him to hear the exchange. The chauffeur rushed toward them, taking Acton’s carryon bag he was rolling behind them.

  “Allow me, Professor.”

  “Thanks, Andre.” He turned to Niner. “I think I’m good from here, thanks for the escort.”

  “Nothin’ doin’, Doc.” He extended his hand and Acton took it, shaking it firmly, not risking any type of limp wristed display with this warrior. “Good luck in Rome and make sure you keep us posted on your movements. If you need help, you’ve got our numbers.”

  “Thanks, Niner. Find Laura for me.”

  “We will.”

  Acton climbed in the back of the Mercedes S600, Andre closing the door, the shouts and horns immediately silenced, and within moments they were underway.

  On an expedition he was certain was doomed to failure.

  Dean Gregory Milton’s Office

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

  “Mai Trinh’s here to see you.”

  Gregory Milton’s eyes widened slightly. Odd. He hit the button on his phone. “Send her in, Rita.” Milton rose from his chair as the door opened and the tiny Asian girl that had helped save his friends in the Hanoi incident entered, shy as ever.

  “Good morning, Miss Trinh,” he said, motioning toward the couch. “What can I do for you today?” He was certain it was about what was happening in Paris right now. He had received a call from Acton late last night and hadn’t got a wink of sleep, powerless to help.

  It was frustrating.

  With his back in recovery mode he wasn’t able to hop on a plane and go help, though even if he were perfectly healthy he wouldn’t be much good beyond moral support.

  But sometimes that’s all that was expected. He was certain Acton wouldn’t expect him to solve the problem, just be there to help him through this difficult time mentally.

  He had already made the offer last night but Acton had saved him by telling him he needed somebody stateside to coordinate things should it become necessary.

  He had agreed.

  And he had seen by the CC list on the email updates that Mai had been informed and enlisted to help in the archeological aspect of this crisis.

  And now she stood in his office for only the second time, the first when he had formally hired her several months before.

  He took his seat after Mai, wincing slightly as a pain shot up his spine.

  Sitting up all night wasn’t smart.

  “I need your permission to use one of the labs,” she said meekly. “One of the computer labs.”

  “What for?”

  “Well, Tommy Granger—”

  “The whiz-kid who was arrested as a minor for hacking the DoD mainframe?”

  Mai’s head shot up, her eyes wide. “He’s a criminal!”

  Milton smiled. “Some might say so, though he claims to have gone straight. Anyway, continue.”

  Mai seemed uncertain as to what to say.

  “You said you needed a computer lab. Why?”

  She smiled slightly. “Tommy came up with the idea of trying to find the German using the Internet. He wants to use facial recognition to crawl the web and find his face in photos of high society.”

  “High society? Why?”

  “We think he’s rich.” She quickly gave him a rundown of why, and it seemed solid. Very solid, in fact. And the idea she and Tommy Granger had come up with was fascinating. He remembered reading about his software, even allowing himself to be used as a guinea pig.

  It was frightening in its abilities.

  He had immediately gone home and updated his privacy settings on Facebook and disabled the geocoding on his phone.

  “So do we have your permission?”

  Milton nodded.

  “Use whatever resources you need. Keep me posted.”

  A broad smile broke out on Mia’s face as she jumped to her feet, he a little slower. “Thank you so much!”

  “You’re welcome. But don’t forget your primary job is to help Jim out with his research.”

  “Of course, sir. It will be Tommy who does most of the work. I’m not very good on computers, not like him.”

  “You’ll learn. Just make sure you put it to good use,” he said with a wink.

  She blushed.

  He opened the door for her, making a mental note to check if winking in Vietnam meant something different than here.

  He closed the door as a spasm of pain shot through his spine. He gasped, grabbing at the small of his back, collapsing to one knee. Dropping to all fours, he rolled over, clutching at the epicenter of his agony.

  He closed his eyes, focusing on his breathing. It wasn’t the first time this had happened, and it probably wouldn’t be the last, but it was the first time it had happened at the office, and it was the first time it had happened without Sandra around to help him.

  He cursed.

  “Rita!”

  The door opened within seconds and Rita cried out. “Oh my God! Are you okay?” She rushed to his side, kneeling down beside him.

  “It’s my back.” He pointed to his desk. “Top drawer, right hand side. Pills.”

  She jumped up, rushing around the desk, pulling open the drawer with trembling hands, the bottle shaking in them. “How many?”

  “Two. And calm down, you’re making me nervous. It’s not like I’m having a heart attack here.”

  “I-I’m sorry, sir, just the sight of you on the floor.”

  She poured out some pills on the desk—all of them by the sound of it—then plucked two from the pile, rounding the desk with his bottle of water. He took the pills and popped them in his mouth as she propped his head up. He sipped some water and swallowed, lying back down, the pain already beginning to wane without the muscle relaxants having had a chance to work their wonders.

  “What can I do?”

  “Get me a pillow and two strong students.” Rita nodded, grabbing a throw cushion from the couch and placing it under his neck. She hesitated.

  “Students?”

  “To get me up.”

  “I’ll get Oscar. You don’t want the students seeing you like this. It will undermine your authority.”

  He chuckled, regretting it. “Whatever you say, Rita.”

  Rita disappeared to get one of their maintenance workers while he tried to relax every muscle in his body, battling the temptation to give in to self-pity. He had spent too many hours, too many days, crying about what had happened to him, usually when the house was empty, his wife at work and his daughter at school, unwilling to let them see what he had become.

  A paraplegic wreck.

  But in time he had overcome the emotional aspects, at least enough to move on with his life, and once he realized he could actually be fairly independent even if in a wheelchair, he began to appreciate he could still live a full life.

  But when the one toe had been spotted by his daughter, tapping to music, it had changed everything.

  But not completely.

  His doctors would say the fact he was feeling this pain was a good thing, it something he couldn’t have felt after the shooting, but right now part of him, a tiny, infinitesimal part, wished for momentary paralysis to kick back in and take the pain away.

  Stop feeling sorry for yourself.

  He thought of his best friend and the agony he must be going through with his wife being held for what was, for all intents and purposes, ransom.

  At least she’s alive.

  Which was something his newly pessimistic nature had convinced him she wasn’t.

  He frowned.

  Maybe I should see that shrink they keep offering me.

  He had always thought seeing a psychiatrist or psychologist—he’d have to look up the difference—meant you had failed as a man. He wasn’t sure where the thinking came from, probably his father, maybe even his grandfather. Both were
vets, his grandfather a former Marine who had fought in the Pacific during World War Two, his father a draftee in the Vietnam War. Both had done their duty and survived, and never spoke about what they had seen or done.

  PTSD wasn’t something acknowledged back then. Back then they called it shell-shocked, and it was frowned upon.

  Neither had ever sought counselling—at least as far as he knew—and he thought they had lived out full lives. But it was a new age, where men were more likely to express their feelings rather than keep everything bottled up inside, even soldiers encouraged to speak out if they were in trouble.

  It was something he had embraced as an educator, but never thought he’d be in the position to actually need that help himself.

  Perhaps it’s time.

  The door opened and Oscar entered, the shocked expression on his face causing a wave of shame to sweep through Milton’s body, almost overwhelming him as he felt immediately emasculated.

  I’m making the appointment today.

  CIA Headquarters, Langley, Virginia

  Chris Leroux pushed back from his keyboard in frustration, kicking his foot out to send him into a spin as he leaned back, staring at the ceiling tiles. He had spent two hours trying to gain access to the Renner Security network and had failed.

  He didn’t like failure.

  But from what he could tell, beyond a couple of computers connected to the outside world that contained nothing but their external website and a contact form, there seemed to be nothing else.

  Which he knew was BS.

  What it most likely meant was they had a completely segregated internal network which was rare in the corporate world, most companies having their networks connected behind firewalls to the outside world, relying on security hardware and software to keep the bad guys and governments out.

  Though some would equate the two.

  What he had found out was interesting. By hacking the German government’s public benefits system, he found that the intel indicating the identified gunmen were former employees wasn’t exactly correct. In fact, he had discovered something quite fascinating. It appeared that Renner Security had a habit of firing and rehiring their German-born employees, and that those employees, when fired, had sometimes been tied to what might be described as questionable activities around the world.

  Plausible deniability.

  He could just imagine the conversation going to occur later today when Dawson named the identified shooters.

  “They did what? It was just that type of thing that got them fired!”

  By firing their personnel before sending them out on a questionable op, the company could deny involvement. Once the op was finished, and assuming everything went smoothly with no blowback, they’d be rehired so they’d be entitled to their generous government benefits upon retirement.

  He assumed that the same was being done with their contractors, though deniability there was much easier.

  Just pay cash.

  But this was a German based company that specialized in giving former KSK personnel jobs. They seemed to have an excellent reputation and had never made the papers. It was the off-the-books ops that had garnered some attention, but only from the intelligence community.

  Until now.

  If this current op was actually part of a Renner Security contract, then it marked the first time they were involved in something clearly, blatantly untoward.

  Which made him think they had no idea what their “former” staff were doing.

  Whether they knew or not however was irrelevant in the end. It was who had hired them or their former employees to carry out the job that was. And the best way of finding that out was to follow the money.

  He had already found the rather modest bank accounts of the identified men, and there was no unusual activity going back two years, which meant they most likely had private accounts for the nefarious activities.

  But he had found a mistake.

  One of the men, who was an employee for the better part of the past two years, had no salary deposits in his accounts for the entire time.

  Which meant his money was going somewhere else.

  And only the internal computer network at Renner Security would tell him where.

  But how the hell do I get access?

  There was a knock on his door, startling him out of his continued spin. He grabbed the side of his desk.

  “Enter!”

  He still felt like Captain Picard every time he said that.

  The door opened and his heart leapt into his throat at the sight of his boss, Director Leif Morrison, the National Clandestine Service Chief for the CIA.

  He jumped out of his seat. “Sir, can I help you?”

  “May I come in?”

  “Of course!”

  Morrison stepped inside, closing the door behind him. Leroux motioned to one of the chairs in front of his desk. “Please, have a seat.”

  “Thanks.” Morrison sat down, crossing his legs and folding his hands in his lap. “What are you working on?”

  Leroux stole a quick glance at his screen. “Umm…”

  A slight smile broke out on Morrison’s face. “Spill.”

  How does he always know?

  “I got a message from Dylan overnight asking me for some help. Actually, the help is for Professor James Acton.”

  “The man whose wife was shot and kidnapped in Paris yesterday.”

  It wasn’t a question, it was a statement of fact, which meant Morrison knew full-well what was going on and was just here to confirm it.

  “Yes.” Leroux wasn’t sure what to say. “You see, he—the professor—got a phone call from the kidnappers. Apparently she’s alive and they’re holding her until he finds some ancient body, Longinus, I think.”

  “Saint Longinus, the Roman soldier who lanced Jesus at the crucifixion to make sure he was dead, and had his blindness cured when the blood touched his eyes.”

  Leroux’s eyebrows popped. “Umm, yeah.”

  “While I do enjoy reading the Bible, I also enjoy reading the Apocryphal texts as well. Quite enlightening.”

  Leroux made a mental note to download the Bible onto his eReader that night. He had tried reading on his tablet but it made his eyes too tired. There was nothing like a dedicated eReader. There was no backlight to strain the eyes, and it read just like a book—if not better. He often wondered why “the jungle” had released their tablet and called it the same thing as their eReader. The devices were so completely different in function and purpose, that he felt it actually dissuaded people from buying eBooks since they weren’t a pleasant experience on a backlit tablet.

  It was like using the microwave over the oven. Sure it was faster, but it never tasted as good.

  “Chris?”

  “Huh?” He suddenly realized his mind had wandered like it so often did, as if trying to convey some bit of critical information to whom, he didn’t know. “Oh, sorry, sir. Well, I was asked to help try and find Professor Palmer.”

  “As I expected.”

  Expected, not suspected.

  Leroux’s cheeks flushed and he dropped his chin slightly. “I’m sorry, sir, I know I should have cleared it with you first—”

  Morrison held up a finger, cutting him off. “Let me save you from having to come up with some lame excuse on the fly. Are you using your team?”

  “Of course not, I’d never do that. And I’m not neglecting my duties. And I’ll make up any time I do spend on this.”

  Morrison chuckled, rising from his chair. “Which is exactly why I trust you, Chris.” He waved off Leroux’s exit from his own seat. “Tell me next time, you might just be surprised what happens, like right now.” Morrison’s hand gripped the doorknob. “This is now an official task. Use whatever resources you need.”

  “Th-thank you, sir!”

  Morrison nodded and left the room, leaving Leroux to kick off from the desk, sending his chair into another spin.

  All the resources. Officially.

&
nbsp; He smiled.

  Now that this is official…

  He needed access to the internal network at Renner Security, and until a moment ago, he had no way of actually doing it.

  But now he did.

  He picked up the phone and dialed.

  Ciampino Airport, Rome, Italy

  James Acton smiled as he descended the steps of the Gulf V charter, his single carryon brought behind him by an insistent and gorgeous flight attendant. The woman had paid an uncomfortable amount of attention to him, she probably under the false assumption he was rich and unhappily married, the flashing of his wedding band doing nothing to deter her.

  He hadn’t wanted to be rude so he had ended up feigning sleep, which had worked.

  I should have brought Niner, he’s single now.

  “Professor Acton, so good to see you again. I wish the circumstances were better.”

  Acton shook Mario Giasson’s hand as the head of Vatican security glanced over his shoulder at the blonde bombshell descending the steps in six inch heels.

  “Monsieur Acton, ’ere ees your bag!” she cried, her thick French accent making her even more gorgeous. She pressed a piece of paper into his hand. “And should you get bored, ’ere ees my hotel.”

  “Umm, thanks.” Now he knew why she had insisted on bringing his bag down herself—it gave her the excuse to give him her number.

  She rushed off, the wiggle causing even Giasson’s eyes to wander to and fro. “New friend?”

  Acton chuckled. “Never fly a private jet alone. They think you’re rich and looking to score.”

  Giasson laughed as they loaded his bag into the trunk. “To resist such a lady’s advances proves just how much you love your wife.”

  “I know, and if I ever told her about how well I did, somehow I think I’d still lose.”

  Giasson tossed his head back with a good belly laugh then climbed in the back seat with Acton. “Too true! Fortunately in my line of work I deal with very few women so my wife doesn’t have much opportunity to get jealous.”

  “I teach at a university. Lots of opportunities. Luckily Laura isn’t the jealous type.” His face clouded, Giasson picking up on it immediately.