Bones of Angels (7 page)

Whittington Manor, First Floor

Long Island, New York

Five acolytes stood frozen in their tracks. Before them stood ten Serbian soldiers, all glowing brightly. Each one held a rifle aimed straight at the acolytes, who screamed in terror.

Shrieks, in fact, could be heard on all floors of Whittington Manor.

The five trembling acolytes ran helter-skelter down to the basement.

“We must leave, my master!” exclaimed Brother Simeon. “Unholy spirits possess this house.”

“We have what we came for,” said Father Reynard tersely. “To think I am surrounded by cowardly brethren! Tell Gerasimus that we’re leaving. And make sure that he brings Whittington. The Professor might yet be persuaded to help us once we’re near the bones of Michael.”

“Yes, my master,” said Simeon.

“Where are the two military intruders?”

“I believe they made it onto the second floor.”

Reynard headed for the nearest stairway.

Ops Center

Aboard the Alamiranta

“I’ve lost the COM link to Hawkeye and Quiz,” said Touchdown.

“Is there a problem with the satellite feed?” queried Caine.

“Negative,” said Touchdown. “The feed is very strong on my end. The satellite is fully operational.”

DJ swiveled in her chair. “The bandwidth of the signal began to fluctuate when those orange energy readings appeared on the holographic display. Electromagnetic interference is jamming the signal to our men.”

“And exactly what are those damn orange readings?” asked an irritated Catherine Caine.

“Just what Quiz said they are,” answered DJ. “Ghosts. Paranormal investigators report such electromagnetic interference frequently when investigating hauntings.”

Archbishop Donovan had been standing off to the side, observing the Ops Center team at their stations. “Our own covert agents have occasionally encountered the same phenomenon,” he said. “The Church of England is not as heavily invested in the idea of ghosts and demons as the Catholic Church — just consider its exorcism rituals, which are very well established but seldom spoken of in public. There are those of us in the Anglican Congregation, however, who place a bit more credence in such matters. However, we believe them to be of a more spiritual nature than paranormal.”

“Which also predisposes you to hunt for the bones of angels,” Caine said with droll wit.

“Guilty as charged,” said the Archbishop with a disarming smile.

“Give me a few minutes,” said Touchdown. “I’ve got an idea.”

Caine looked confidently at the Archbishop. “He usually does.”

Whittington Manor, The East Wing

Long Island, New York

Two robed acolytes entered the hallway where Hawkeye and Quiz had entered the mansion. They fired their semi-automatic pistols straight ahead.

Hawkeye and Quiz had crouched on either side of the hallway. Aiming their sidearms up and to the center of the hall, they squeezed off two rounds apiece. The acolytes dropped, their robes billowing around their fallen forms. Spots of blood grew in size on the fronts of their religious habits.

“Hawkeye,” said Touchdown urgently, “I think you should know that — ”

Hawkeye and Quiz both felt a tingle of electricity flow from their backs down into their legs. They fell to the floor, having been tasered from behind by two more of Reynard’s followers.

“It’s only a mild shock,” Reynard explained, appearing before the stunned Titan operatives. “I wanted to know who else was trying to make contact with Professor Whittington.”

Hawkeye took a deep breath and shook off the shock. Climbing to his feet, he leaned forward, hands braced against his thighs. “I’m . . . ”

Hawkeye took a deep breath. Then another.

“I’m waiting for an answer,” said Reynard. “Who are you?  More operatives from the Church of England?  If so, you should know that your Beta Team is now quite dead — at the bottom of the bay a few miles south of Manhattan.”

Hawkeye suddenly charged forward at the disfigured cleric, driving him into the wall. Reynard responded by slamming his two fists against Hawkeye’s cheek bones.

Hawkeye staggered backwards on his heels.

“I’m well versed in the martial arts,” Reynard said, stretching forth his two arms in a classic karate stance, the palms of his hands flat. He leaned forward, the weight of his body leveraged on his left knee.

Hawkeye glanced to his rear. Quiz was struggling to stand. The two acolytes stood behind him, each still holding a taser.

“I think you’re outnumbered,” said Reynard.

Hawkeye thrust his hardened right hand toward the priest, but it was deflected. With Reynard slightly off balance, Hawkeye kicked Reynard in the abdomen. Reynard winced and shot forward with a blow to Hawkeye’s sternum, followed by a sharp jab to the throat.

“You’re going to tell me what I want to know,” Reynard said. “If you don’t, I’m going to kill you.”

Ops Center

Aboard the Alamiranta

“I’m sending a rather strong electromagnetic pulse through the sat feed,” said Touchdown. “Since they’re jamming me, I intend to jam them.”

“The ghosts?” asked DJ.

“Right. The ghosts. It should disrupt their energy patterns, at least temporarily.”

“Will it destroy them?” asked Caine.

It was Donovan who answered. “No, it won’t. The energy patterns of such spirits are too cohesive. They’re made up of some kind of plasma energy that is formed around the memories and thought patterns of a lifetime. They can’t be permanently destroyed, only temporarily disrupted.”

“Impressive,” said Caine. “You surprise me, Archbishop.”

“People assume that clerics simply stay inside and pray all the time,” said Donovan.

“Throw the switch, Touchdown,” ordered Caine. “Time for some ghostbusting.”

Whittington Manor, The East Wing

Long Island, New York

Reynard was about to renew his attack against Hawkeye when high-pitched screams sounded from every corner of Whittington Manor. To Reynard’s ears, they resembled the wailing of a thousand banshees. Mingled with the screams were the cries of his many acolytes.

“Master!” someone cried in the adjoining hall.

Reynard turned his head. As he did so, Hawkeye wheeled around and ran, grabbing Quiz by the arm. The two operatives pushed aside the startled acolytes holding tasers.

“Run into the picture frame straight ahead!” said Quiz. “Trust me!”

“Go after them, you fools!” yelled Reynard, returning his attention to the hall straight ahead.

Brother Cedric appeared by Reynard’s side. “We must leave, master. Our brethren are in chaos.”

Hawkeye and Quiz charged into an eighteenth century oil painting of a proper English gentleman standing next to his mount in a rural setting. Smashing through the canvas, the two men hurtled forward into darkness.

A steel door came down in place of the canvas.

Ops Center

Aboard the Alamiranta

“They’re descending rapidly,” Touchdown said. “But they’re . . . ”  He glanced over his shoulder at Caine in disbelief. “Look at the hologram. They’re moving down in a spiral motion.”

In the middle of the Ops Center, two red dots corkscrewed downwards in the holographic representation of Whittington Manor. Meanwhile, a hundred orange energy signals were dispersing throughout the home, growing fainter.

Simultaneously, fourteen red signals gathered on the first floor.

Whittington Manor

Long Island, New York

“Where are we, Quiz?” asked Hawkeye.

The two operatives were sliding down a spiral chute in complete darkness.

“We’re taking a shortcut,” said Quiz. “Enjoy the ride.”

“A shortcut to where?” said Hawkeye as his body twisted and turned at breakneck speed against a smooth metal surface.

“Somewhere safe,” said Quiz, gasping for breath. “At least, I think so. It’s been a while since I took this ride.”

“That’s comforting to know,” said Hawkeye, whose skin felt as if it were crawling with mosquitoes.

Their two bodies emerged at great speed from the bottom of the chute. Both men tumbled roughly onto the coarse wooden floor of a narrow corridor lit only by a weak sixty-watt bulb. The cinderblock walls were dark green.

A female emerged from a doorway fifteen yards ahead. It was Angela Marshall. She held a small metal box in her upraised right hand.

“Don’t move,” she told her two visitors. “If you do, I’ll immobilize you with a high-energy particle beam and then call the police.”

“I’m Quiz. This is Michael Hawke, also known as Hawkeye.”

Angela lowered her right arm.

“Quiz?  As in David Denton?”

“Yeah. That would be me.”

“Come inside,” said Angela. “Quickly.”

Hawkeye and Quiz entered the room from which Angela had emerged. The sign on the door read

ARTIFACT ROOM 4

GITH INSTITUTE

Ops Center

Aboard the Alamiranta

“They’ve disappeared!” said a worried DJ.

All heads in the Ops Center turned towards the holographic display.

The two red dots representing Hawkeye and Quiz had reached the bottom of the manor and then evaoprated.

“Were they affected by the electromagnetic pulse?” asked Caine.

“Negative,” replied Touchdown. “What I sent could have made their skin tingle a bit, or maybe feel itchy, but nothing more.”

“I’ve got a schematic of Whittington Manor,” said DJ, who had rolled her chair to an adjacent station. “It’s on Quiz’s computer. There are several basements and sub-basements below the manor.”

“The interference is gone,” reported Touchdown. “I don’t see any kind of shielding below the mansion, however. I should be able to read them.”

“Boost your signal,” ordered Caine.

Whittington Manor, Sub-basement #2

Long Island, New York

“We’re here to help,” said Hawkeye. “A mad priest is running amok around the manor. He’s looking for — ”

“The bones of St. Michael the Archangel,” Angela interrupted. “My employer, Charles Whittington, is fascinated by the subject of angels. He and Archbishop Connolly of New York are especially interested in locating what are believed to be the bones of Michael.”

“Connolly is dead,” said Hawkeye.

Angela’s mouth dropped open. “Oh my God. He was such a kind old man. And very sick.”

“Are you my uncle’s part-time curator?” asked Quiz. He was taken aback by the grad student’s beautiful features and trim body.

“Forgive my manners,” she said, extending her hand to Quiz, then Hawkeye. “Angela Marshall. I’m an anthropology student, and I seem to be spending more and more time here with each passing week. What’s going on upstairs?  A soldier passed by here a little while ago.”

“Was he wearing a gray robe?” asked Hawkeye.

Angela frowned. “Robe?  No. Kahki outfit. He was holding an old-fashioned carbine and speaking Italian. I was going for a cup of coffee and ducked back in here. He didn’t seem to notice me, and God knows this place gets some strange visitors. I came back in and locked the door until I heard a basement alarm indicate that somebody was entering the sub-basement via the secret chute. This place is crawling with strange portals and passageways.”

“We’ve noticed,” remarked Hawkeye. “By the way, what is the Gith Institute?”

Angela laughed. “If you rearrange the letters of Winton T. Gith, you get the name Whittington. It’s a pseudonym of the Professor’s. He’s a philanthropist who likes to maintain a low profile. He doesn’t do charity balls and dinners. He says it detracts from his work.”

Static crackled in Hawkeye’s helmet.

“ . . . eye?  Repeat. Are you there, Hawkeye?”

“I read you, Touchdown. We’re safe. We’re in an artifact room below the manor with Charles’ assistant.”

“Roger that,” said Touchdown. “Reynard and his acolytes have left the mansion. I read only three energy signatures, and they’re all in your location.”

“That means they’ve taken my uncle,” stated Quiz. “Or killed him.”

“Where was his last known location?” asked Hawkeye.

“I believe he was being held in one of the labs in the basement above,” said Touchdown. “I was finally able top penetrate the basements with my telemetry.”

“Come on,” said Angela. “I’ll take you to the Professor’s laboratories.”

The three figures left the artifact room and hurried up a concealed staircase hidden behind a revolving wooden bookcase.

“Why am I not surprised?” muttered Hawkeye, looking at the revolving volumes. “This place is downright weird.”

Hanger 15B, Laguardia Airport

Queens, New York

Father Reynard stepped aboard the Gulfstream used by members of the Council of Nine. Most of his acolytes would fly a chartered DC-9 to their destination.

The bones of St. Michael the Archangel.

He sat in a brown leather seat and fastened his seatbelt as the pilot revved up the twin jet engines mounted directly forward of the tail.

“And now the world will be judged,” he said to Brothers Antonius and Gerasimus. “The light Himself shall return to the world. The prophecies of Daniel and the Book of Revelation shall come to pass. This unbelieving, adulterous generation shall be judged and consigned to hellfire. With Him, we shall rule over the twelve remaining tribes of the earth. The chosen.”

He paused and scowled.

“And I shall be scoffed at no longer,” he added.

He ran his index finger across the scars of his face.

“I shall be vindicated. Let the papists be judged first for their arrogance and disbelief.”

Antonius and Gerasimus merely nodded.

Whittington Manor, Main Lab

Long Island, New York

Hawkeye, Quiz, and Angela had first examined the coroner’s table in lab #2, noting warm blood on the stainless steel surface. They then moved on to Charles’ main lab.

“They’ve got Whittington,” Hawkeye told Caine. “Looks like they tortured him. My guess, though, is that he’s more valuable alive than dead.”

“Agreed,” said Caine.”

In the main lab, Angela sat at the computer Charles used for personal correspondence.

“The Fox, as the Professor calls him, seems to have erased an email and attachment from Archbishop Connolly,” Angela said. “Fortunately, I have this.”

Angela produced a small jump drive from the pocket of her lab coat.

“All emails with attachments get copied to my computers in the artifact rooms below,” Angela explained. “I’ve been instructed to research any and all information that comes in pertaining to the bones of Michael.”

The curator inserted the external drive into the USB port, hit a few keys, and opened the email and its attachment. Together, the small group studied the photographs of the bones.

“I’ve seen these before,” Angela stated, tapping a few more keys.

The pixels on the screen transformed into a different display.

“That’s pretty cool,” said Quiz. “What did you just do?”

The photographs had changed to several maps.

“The attachment is a palimpsest,” Angela explained.

“A what?” said Hawkeye.

“A message on top of a message. In medieval times, when parchment was scare, original text was erased so that new text could be written on the parchment. But they didn’t have the technology to erase the original perfectly, so that such parchments usually contained two texts if one examined it closely enough. A palimpsest today is essentially a layered message. Government agencies use them all the time.”

“So what are we looking at?” asked Hawkeye.

“That,” said Angela, pointing her index finger at one of the onscreen maps, “is where the Professor and Archbishop Connolly obviously believe the bones of Michael are currently hidden. As you can see, the maps were drawn in medieval times. These are photographic reproductions that were apparently scanned into Connolly’s computer.”

“It looks like we’re going to France,” said Hawkeye, studying the maps.

“Return to the Alamiranta,” instructed Caine. “And bring Ms. Marshall. We’re going to debrief and re-deploy.”

“Yes, ma’am,” said Hawkeye. “Send us a pair of wings, and we’ll find our way back.”

A moment passed.

“By the way,” added Hawkeye. “Tell Archbishop Donovan that Beta Team was killed by Reynard.”

Whittington Manor, Main Lab

Long Island, New York

* Here we go again. You’re smitten with the grad student. I can tell. *

I must admit that she’s quite attractive.

*Come, come, dear boy. Attractive? *

Okay. She’s a knockout. And her name is Angela. An angel.

* And? *

She’s very intellectual. That’s a big turn-on.

* What about DJ? *

DJ?  Well, it’s not like we’re married or anything.

* That may be your perspective, but it will be interesting to see what DJ thinks of Ms. Marshall. *

Hey, Angela’s just a curator for my grandfather.

* I warned you that there was going to be trouble in the manor, but you paid no heed. Now you’re ignoring my psychological insights. *

You’re making too much over nothing. If I didn’t notice Angela’s beauty, I wouldn’t be human.

* Neither would DJ. *

Ops Center

Aboard the Alamiranta

DJ studied the feed from Hawkeye’s helmet cam. Angela Marshall was quite attractive. Too attractive. And she was very good with a computer — Quiz’s specialty. DJ had definitely noticed how her young lover had gazed at Marshall’s every move. She imagined herself in hand-to-hand combat with the grad student.

Archbishop Donovan interrupted DJ’s reverie as he addressed the staff in the Ops Center.

“I think your team should retrieve what is in a safe deposit box in Chase Manhattan,” said Donovan. “Before Beta Team was captured, they told me they had found an important manuscript, although they never had time to examine it or tell me what it was. They feared our communications had been compromised. But since they were willing to be murdered rather than speak of their find, I can only guess that the manuscript is crucial to our mission.”

“Of course,” said Caine. “I’ll call the president of Chase myself and make sure that Hawkeye is granted access to the safe deposit box. And my condolences on the loss of your team, Archbishop.”

Donovan lowered his head. “Thank you, Catherine. Let’s hope they didn’t die in vain.”

Titan Global Lear Jet

35,000 Feet above the Atlantic Ocean

Having retrieved a carefully wrapped package from the safe deposit box at Chase Manhattan, Hawkeye, Quiz, and Angela had boarded one of Catherine’s private jets, which was en route to an airbase in Portugal. From there, the trio would be ferried by helicopter to the Alamiranta, which was reversing course and sailing back into the Mediterranean.

“So what did you think of the Confederate soldier?” Quiz asked a pensive Hawkeye.

“Probably a holographic projection,” Hawkeye answered. “Your grandfather is a scientist and a scholar. I’m sure he knows how to create a hologram.”

“I’ll personally vouch for the fact that the manor is haunted,” asserted Quiz.

Hawkeye grinned thinly. “We all see what we want — or expect — to see.”

“Then how do you explain all those electromagnetic signatures Touchdown saw?  And those shrieks?”

“Anomalous energy readings from your grandfather’s equipment perhaps,” said Hawkeye. “As for the shrieks, they were the cries of Reynard’s acolytes.”

Hawkeye retuned his gaze to the sky beyond the cabin window. The wings of the Lear jet maintained enough uplift to keep the jet in the sky. That’s how things flew. Things. Not people, not angels, not ghosts.

He then gazed at the white cumulus clouds and the blue sky through which the plane was flying. He thought of many great works of art that depicted angels hovering in azure skies, or cute cherubim sitting harmlessly on white, fluffy clouds.

Hawkeye was a true-blue American, but he thought Karl Marx had gotten at least one thing right: Religion was an opiate for the masses.