Indisputable Proof (26 page)

CHAPTER 43

September 13. Thursday – 12:14 p.m. Keene, California (9:14 p.m. Oviedo, Spain)

11 hours 46 minutes until the start of the Feast of the Cross

The tall Italian man, Esposito, stood inside the condemned fellowship hall. He picked up his cell phone from the table and called his contact in Oviedo, known to him only as The Prophet. The man’s name was concealed so that even if the authorities apprehended Esposito or any of the 21 martyrs in the States, they would not be able to ascertain the true identity of the trigger man in Oviedo. The phone call was answered on the second ring.

“Have you seen the news?” Esposito asked before he heard a greeting.

“If you are referring to the elevated terror threat level by the U.S., then yes, I have.” As always, The Prophet’s voice was serious, focused.

“We must go forth with the strike. I can band our brethren earlier than planned, and we will make the journey now. The Americans have admitted their guilt with this action. They took the Sudarium and fear our retribution.”

The Prophet’s voice was directive. “Patience. There has been a reported attack of an American military installation in Kuwait. I have people checking the validity of this incident now. If we determine it to be a ruse to cover up the elevated terrorist warning, we will strike. I should know within minutes. I will call you.” The phone line went dead.

Esposito looked to the closet. He could feel a festering hatred toward the Americans and their godless society. He was anxious to make the United States aware of the critical mistake that their Central Intelligence Agency had made in taking the Sudarium. It was time they paid the price for their smug actions.

God’s relics are not to be desecrated by the godless.

Several uneasy minutes passed before Esposito’s cell phone rang. It was The Prophet. “We have a man outside the American base in Kuwait. He has confirmed there was an explosion and a burning building on the U.S. installation. Sources on base are reporting casualties. This was the catalyst for the elevated terror alert. We will wait until the start of the Feast of the Cross at 9:00 a.m. tomorrow. As planned, I will send you a text message from the Cathedral of San Salvador the moment I confirm the Sudarium is missing.”

“Understood.” The Italian hung up. He was disappointed and agitated. They had identified prime targets, one that would strike at the underbelly of this atheist country. Whereas the radical Islamic terrorist attack of September 11, 2001 took the lives of less than 3,000; their actions would eclipse that total by
seventyfold
.

He ached for the attacks to begin.

Esposito wandered back to the table and sought out the King James Bible lying at the end. He opened to the scripture echoing in his mind. It had informally become their theme:

And said unto them, it is written. My house shall be called the house of prayer; but you have made it a den of thieves.

Yes
, the tall Italian thought with pleasure,
in the valley we will strike
.

CHAPTER 44

September 13. Thursday – 10:29 p.m. Isle of Patmos, Greece (9:29 p.m. Oviedo, Spain)

11 hours 31 minutes until the start of the Feast of the Cross

On the drive back to the Patmos airfield, Tolen felt a gnawing in his stomach as he recalled a critical piece of the Hebrew text found in the Costa Rican sphere.

The third jar marks the end of your journey, but all three will be needed
.

The first jar was still onboard the plane in a locker. If Jade and Kappel were going after the cache, they would need it.

Tolen called Reba Zee on her cell phone. She did not pick up. His concern escalated.

Tolen arrived at the dark airfield within minutes. He brought the rental car to a screeching halt just outside the gate. He left the engine running and hurried through the gate, racing toward the lone jet on the tarmac. It was after ten, and traffic on the runway had gone quiet. The hatch door was open, and the ramp folded out as he had left it, but the plane’s interior light had been doused.

Still in a sprint, Tolen quickly closed on the plane. In one fluid motion, he retrieved his Springfield from its holster. He had given Reba explicit directions to stay with the plane, and she always kept the interior lights on while on the ground.

Tolen reached the stairs, galloping up them in an instant. He was filled with an overwhelming sense of alarm as he knifed into the dark cabin, gun aimed ahead, primed for movement. The airfield lights cast a murky view inside, and he could see the cabin door ahead was open, yet there was no sign of life in the cockpit.

“Reba, where are you?” he called out.

In the shadows, he raced past the rows of seats, reached the cockpit, and flicked the master switch on the lighting control panel. The inside of the plane burst with light. Tolen returned to the cabin.

“Reba Zee!” he called out worriedly.

No response.

He looked to the bathroom door. It was closed. He slowly approached it, wary of an ambush. He turned the handle of the thin door, and it opened outward without any help. Tolen stepped back, gun raised. Reba Zee slumped out of the bathroom and onto the cabin floor, landing on her back with a thud, her head lolling toward him. The front of her unruly gray hair was smattered with wet blood where the center of her forehead had been pierced by a lone bullet hole. A trickle of blood had rolled down her nose and chin, effectively dividing her face in half. One eye was closed. The other pale eye stared up at him, eerily, as if she were giving him one last knowing wink.

There had been no attempt to emulate an Apostle-style death. Just cold-blooded murder.

Dazed, Tolen took several steps back and plopped into one of the passenger seats, never breaking his eyes away from Reba Zee’s lifeless body. He absently laid the pistol in the seat beside him, his head spinning.

Tolen looked at the locker. It was partially ajar. It was a foregone conclusion at this point, but he nevertheless moved lackadaisically over to it, not even bothering to pick his gun up from the seat. Sure enough, the stone jar was missing. He returned to his seat where he slumped into a fog of confusion and despair.

The chirping of his cell phone brought his thoughts back into some semblance of order. The caller ID number was not familiar, but it was a local number.

“Hello.”

“Who is this, please?” The man spoke in broken English.

“Who is asking?” Tolen countered.

“This is Hellenic Officer Nestor Bouboulis.”

Tolen stiffened. The Hellenic police were the national police force of Greece. It was CIA protocol not to divulge association with the U.S. agency, especially when on assignment outside American borders. At the moment, Tolen was not even comfortable giving his name. He feared somehow that the police had already connected him with the murder of the French woman.

“I ask again, who is this?” the man pressed.

“This is Samuel Tolen,” he said, reluctantly. “What can I do for you, Officer?” The only security cameras in the hotel had been in the lobby, and Tolen had skillfully avoided them as he had exited. Jade’s room, where Claudia Denoit hung on the wall, had been paid for by Diaz’s credit card. Tolen was mystified as to how the local police had found him so quickly.

“Mr. Tolen, we need to speak with you. What is your location on the isle?”

“What is this regarding, Officer Bouboulis? I have urgent business to attend to.”

“Do you know a Spanish Inspector named Pascal Diaz with the…,” Bouboulis paused, “Cuerpo Nacional de Policia?” The man continued without allowing Tolen a chance to answer. “It’s a silly question. Well of course you do,” he added with a disingenuous chuckle.

“Yes, we’re working together.”

“What kind of work?”

“Officer, I have a right to know why you’re asking me these questions.”

There was a moment of dead air. “We found his body at the base of the Monastery of St. John. His face had been smashed in by rocks until he was unconscious, and then he was pushed from the steeple where he fell to his death.”

Damn
,
like the Apostle Matthew
:
thrown from a steeple and
,
when he survived the fall
,
beaten to death with stones
. They had the order wrong but had still achieved the same grim result.

Bouboulis continued. “We found his cell phone. You were the last person who called him. I ask again. What is your location on the isle?”

Tolen remained silent.

“This is not a request you can deny,” Bouboulis’ tone grew aggressive. “Another body was just found at the hotel where you have been staying. Where are you?”

Tolen disconnected and turned his cell phone off, tossing it in the chair to the side where it clinked against his pistol.

He stood, found a white blanket in one of the side seats, and used it to cover Reba Zee. Tolen returned to the seat where he hung his head, tired and exhausted. In the last twelve hours, things had gone from bad to abysmal. He had nearly died in the explosion in Javier Diaz’s basement. He had uncovered Jade’s connection to Simon Anat’s reward offer and, through sundry facts, revealed her deception and partnership with Nicklaus Kappel, billionaire Simon Anat’s assistant.

Jade
. The thought of her pained him. He had trusted her. More than that, it had become personal. He had been drawn to her, only to discover it had all been an act. He felt betrayed. There was now no doubt in his mind Jade had solved the clue and that she was on her way with Kappel to retrieve the cache of Jesus’ artifacts at this very moment.

To compound matters, his pilot and friend, Reba Zee, had been murdered, as had his international partner, Pascal Diaz. Now, the Greek authorities wanted him for questioning in the homicide of Diaz. By association, he was their prime suspect, and to top it off, he still had no idea who had the Sudarium. If it was not returned to the Cathedral de San Salvador in Oviedo, Spain, in the morning, untold numbers of innocent Americans would die at the hands of terrorists seeking retribution.

The whole situation had turned impossibly dire. Tolen wondered if his own personal agenda had a hand in subverting the mission from the start, and he could not help but feel he had allowed things to go woefully off track.

Willing himself to action, Tolen removed a piece of paper from his pocket where he had scribbled the text from the Patmos jar upon it. He read it aloud:

Of the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, only the Son is charged with holding the contents on high where the ancients knew no god but themselves in the desert. Travel from the north. As David faced the lion, you will face the lion incarnate. Aim at the one on the left and dig at his right foot. There you will gain entry to the Holiest of Highs. The third jar marks the end of your journey, but all three will be needed.

He still had no idea what the message meant. Tolen had never felt so defeated in his entire life.

****

Eleven-year-old Sam sat in the middle of a small Jon boat, fiddling with his shoestrings. His father was in the back, next to the 20-horsepower hand-tiller-driven Mercury motor. It was an early spring morning, and the sun had barely begun to crest the horizon. The air was calm, the water placid, mirroring the dark morning sky, which was interspersed with a red and yellow hue to the east. The familiar smell of the river—rugged but not unpleasant—draped the still air. The occasional calls of whippoorwills and bobwhites originated from unseen places along the bank. As usual, the morning was picturesque and tranquil.

Sam watched as Jaspar Tolen pitched his lure in a weed bed of eel grass and slowly wound it back in, ever patient, waiting for a largemouth bass to strike. Once near the boat, the man would lift the lure and cast again: pitch, wind, lift—over and over; not going too quickly, and never stopping. Jaspar held his gaze on the reflective surface of the water. To Sam, his father’s concentration was epic.

Sam felt a deep sadness. His mother had passed away from a rare blood disease seven months before, and he missed her terribly. Some days were better than others. Today was not a good day, even though he loved to fish with his father and had looked forward to the outing. For some reason, the morning had brought a myriad of hurtful memories of his mother. Now, his rod lay propped against the gunwale with the lure dangling a foot over the water’s surface.

Jaspar Tolen spoke in a hushed tone, “Hey, Sam, you know how many fish you’ll catch with your bait out of the water?”

Sam looked up at his father. He tried to force a smile. “I’ve caught just as many as you have: none.”

“So you’re quittin’?”

“No, just taking a rest.” A question was perched on the tip of his tongue; something he had wanted to ask his father for seven months, but the time had never seemed right. For some reason, he blurted it out without much thought. “Why did God take Mom from us? What did we do wrong?”

Jaspar Tolen’s expression turned poignant. “Ah, Sam, we didn’t do anything wrong. It just happened. There are no explanations; only manmade reasons and excuses, but none of them matter. He took her, and now He’s caring for her. There is a plan to everything. We still get to hold her in our memories. You can never let the death of a loved one kill your spirit to live. It’s human nature to mourn and remember, but it’s just as important that we move on.” His father offered a warm smile. “Your mother wants you to enjoy life, son, so fish. Catch a big one, and I’ll cook it for dinner.”

The words settled over Tolen like a comforting blanket. For the first time, he knew his father’s compassion would hold them together.

“Hey, Sam…” Jaspar’s eyes lit up, and his voice escalated. It was odd for the man’s tone to be so loud. He made it a rule only to speak in low voices when on the water so as not to scare the fish away. “Hand me that can o’ pickles.”

“What?” Sam said, not understanding. There were no pickles in the boat.
What is he talking about?

“Can o’ pickles,” Jaspar Tolen repeated. He smiled.

Suddenly it was dark. Sam could barely make out his father even though they were only several feet apart. Confusion reigned. “What’s happening?”

“I’ve got to go now. It’s been time for me to go.”

“Wait! Father, where are you going?”

Tolen’s eyes flew open. He awoke to the bright light of the airplane cabin, breathing heavily as he lay inclined in the seat. A single thought ran through his mind:
What happened to the fish
?

Samuel Tolen had had this same dream many times since his youth. The frequency had slowed down in his adult years, but still it replayed every now and then, although this was the first time he had the dream since his father had lapsed into a coma. Because it was a remembrance of a real-life event, like watching a home movie, the events and imagery had always been the same. Yet, this time, and this time only, the ending had changed. This was the first time Jaspar Tolen had asked the bizarre question about a can of pickles, and the landscape had faded to black. Normally, the ending followed the true event: Sam had picked up his rod, and on his first cast hooked a 6½-pound black bass. After a dutiful battle, he had landed the trophy fish to their mutual elation. It was a day Tolen would never forget; one firmly etched in his consciousness not only for the thrill of the catch but for the answer his father had given him about his mother’s death.

Tolen sat up and looked at his watch. It was approaching 11 p.m. He was stunned he had fallen asleep in the first place, but thankfully it had only been for an hour. Thoughts of the dream left him stupefied and wondering why it had been different this time. He recalled the exact words his father had said to him in the dream: ‘
Hand me that can o’ pickles
.’

Can o’ pickles
? It made no sense.

Tolen shook away the vision. He looked at his cell phone sitting in the seat beside him. If the local police were monitoring his phone, there was a chance they might be able to triangulate his position. Still, he had to chance it. He picked it up, turned it on, and called Tiffany Bar.

“Tolen, where have you been? I’ve been trying to call you for the last hour.”

“Reba Zee is dead, as is Inspector Pascal Diaz.”

There was an audible gasp on the other end of the line. “Oh my god,” her words were filled with shock and bewilderment.

“I need you to stay focused, Bar,” Tolen instructed her with compassionate authority. “What have you got for me?”

“Um…I can’t believe...,” Bar started off track, her emotions bleeding through the phone.

“Come on, Tiffany,” he gently prodded, “what do you have?”

“Uh…yeah…Dr. Jade Mollur.”

“What about her?”

Bar released a long, stabilizing exhale. Slowly, her words gained strength. “She…was with Dr. Cherrigan in Switzerland.”

“You’ve already confirmed that information to me.”

“Yes…no,” she sounded momentarily confused, “there’s more. The night they were there, she phoned him late. The cell tower she called from was 57 miles away from the town where Simon Anat’s estate is located. Although they arrived together, they were in different locations that evening.