The Seventh Stone (22 page)

Baltasar Contreras frowned as he keyed in the finishing touch of his latest missive to his followers. He hit the send button, his words reaching around the globe instantaneously.
The plan is in motion. We are on the threshold of the New World. Be prepared
.
The Prophet
. For the first time, he felt trepidation.

He leaned back in the burgundy leather wing chair behind a mahogany desk so massive it dwarfed even his substantial girth. Surrounding him here in the billiards room were shelves of books and references collected for decades on strategic warfare, empire-building, and, of course, histories of religions. He had read them all, under the watchful eye of his father. Hunting trophies, from the elusive Kudu to a massive grizzly, gazed at him with a glassy-eyed awe, even though it was his father and ancestors, not him, who had conquered them. His trophy would be far greater.

The warmth of power rushed through his veins just as his message coursed through the veins of the Internet. Like a conqueror on his horse addressing the troops before the charge, he had rallied his legions with the code word,
threshold
. In twelve countries around the world, his cardinals shifted into high alert. His family had been building up to this moment for generations. He would be the one to guide their plan to its ultimate victory. He, Baltasar Contreras, was the descendent of the conquistador who had first braved the idea of ruling a new world order and the namesake of one of the three kings who visited the baby Jesus in Bethlehem. He would achieve nothing short of world peace.

And yet he had been forced to make his move. A command decision? Or an impulsive leap borne of the fear of failure? More worrisome, now that it was becoming real, he became aware of a tiny anomaly, a calcification, which could grow into a tumor of doubt.

“
You disgust me.” Baltasar stood suddenly. The voice alarmed him. He hadn’t even seen his father, sitting stiff and straight in his wheelchair in the gloom by the window overlooking the pied a terre out back. “My son,” he spat the words, “my own flesh and blood.” The man’s voice was both quiet and deafening, “a traitor to The Family.” His craggy hand crept from beneath the plaid lap blanket and twisted the left wheel of the chair. It turned like a tank turret sighting on a hapless villager. An ashen, crumpled face of frowning lips and narrowed eyes targeted Baltasar. “I’d say you were not my son at all, but it would defame your mother.”

Baltasar strode over to the crystal carafe on the wet bar. He reached down a snifter from the shelf above and poured himself two generous fingers of brandy. He breathed in the fortifying aroma. He watched the light play on the golden liquid. He would not be chastened like a schoolboy, not anymore. “I’ve done it, Father. I have set the wheels in motion to fulfill our family’s destiny.”

“
You have done nothing!” The old man leaned forward in his wheelchair and tightened his arthritic fingers into pathetic, misshapen fists. “Where is my grandchild? Where is the heir that will carry on the mission of the Contreras dynasty?”

The words stabbed Baltasar like blowdarts, the poison stinging his flesh, burning through his veins to his core, clutching at his gut, squeezing the very breath from him. If only he could have begotten a child. If only that’s all he had needed to do. But the mandate of glory and victory had been thrust upon him. “I am the last in the line,” he said, struggling to steady his voice. “I am Baltasar. I am the one.”

The old man sneered, and bent his thin mouth into a crooked smile. He parted his lips, revealing teeth yellow with age. With a gasping rattle, he cackled. “You! You are the one!” The cackle sputtered into a hacking cough that seemed almost to shake loose the desiccated flesh from his bones. Baltasar stepped forward, concerned. The old man thrust out his hand to stop him. “Your mother was pregnant when she was murdered, pregnant with the true heir. We knew, no, she knew you’d never be strong enough.” He buried his face in his hands. “If only she were not killed.”

Baltasar placed the snifter on the corner of the desk. He knelt by his father’s chair. “And she wouldn’t have been, not if we had restored the Breastplate.”

Father’s head snapped up. “Impossible! You know the story that has been passed down through the generations. That foolish missionary, Salvatierra, destroyed it five hundred years ago. He scattered the stones to the far corners of the Earth. God, Himself, sent the Tear of the Moon Emerald to the bottom of the sea.”

Baltasar dared to place his hand on his father’s. “The seventh stone,” he whispered, worried that his father’s thin heart might shatter like crystal to the contralto’s aria of his amazing news, “the Tear of the Moon Emerald, it has been found.” The old man looked at him, his glassy eyes wide. “You see, Father, this is the time. I am the one. Our network is in place. Through it, we know the Emerald is found. We are ready to pounce on all seven stones. I have arranged everything. It all hinged on the discovery of the Emerald, and now it has been found. It is my destiny.”

For several long minutes, the old man did not move. His eyes were fixed at a point far beyond this realm of reality. A passerby might wonder if he had died and hunt for signs of breath, of a beating heart, of warmth in his sunken, pale cheeks. Baltasar felt his own heart quicken. What if his father died now, when he was so close to proving himself? The old man’s chest heaved in a breath of air. “Show me the Emerald,” he growled. “Show me the seventh stone.”

Baltasar stood. He stepped back. “I do not have it, Father, not yet.”

The old man narrowed his eyes. “The other six sacred stones, then.”

Baltasar felt as if he were melting, shrinking back into a little boy who had been caught burning a text book in defiance of his relentless schooling. “They are within my grasp,” he said. All his brilliant planning, his years of hard work and sacrifice, had he done the right thing? Father was right. He as yet had none of the stones.

“
The ancient Jewish oracular stones, Urim and Thummim, you know where they are?”

“
I will. Christa Devlin will lead me to them.”

As Baltasar shrunk, his father seemed to grow in stature despite being confined to the wheelchair. “You fool. You don’t even know the location of the Breastplate. I suppose that Devlin will lead you to that, too.”

“
Even now, Gabriella Devlin Hunter is on the path to enlightenment.”

The old man crept his chair forward, like a lion stalking his prey. “Only the one who wears the Breastplate, complete with its stones, has the power to communicate with God. Moses used the power of the Breastplate to part the Red Sea. Aaron, his brother, wore it to communicate with God to determine the fate of his people. History thought that the Breastplate was lost when the Babylonians destroyed the Temple of Solomon.”

“
But history cannot bury what God has created,” said Baltasar, pride bolstering his courage. “In 1082, our ancestor, a friend to the great El Cid, conquered the Moorish ruler Al-Hayid, who, in utmost secrecy, traded his life for the most powerful artifact known to man, the Breastplate of Aaron.”

The old man coughed and spat. “Al-Hayid had lost his battle,” he said. “He thought the Breastplate powerless because it had been desecrated. Its gemstones had been removed and distributed as bounty in centuries past.”

“
He did not have the faith and foresight of a Contreras,” said Baltasar. “For four hundred years, our ancestors tracked down those stones. Alvaro Contreras, the mighty conquistador of the sixteenth century, acquired the last of them, the Kohinoor Diamond, and restored the Breastplate to its God-given glory.”

The old man’s cheeks flushed with his passion, giving him the semblance of renewed vigor. “He brought it to the New World and defended from the chaos of the jungle a temple befitting the Holy of Holies, for it is written,
You shall make the Breastplate of judgment. Artistically woven according to the workmanship of the ephod you shall make it: of gold, blue, purple, and scarlet
thread,
and fine woven linen.”

“
Exodus 28:30,” shouted Baltasar. “
And you shall put settings of stones in it, four rows of stones:
The first
row
shall be
a sardius, a topaz, and an Emerald; the second row
shall be
a Turquoise, a sapphire, and a diamond; the third row, a jacinth, an agate, and an amethyst; and the fourth row, a beryl, an onyx, and a jasper.”

The old man granted him a nod. “The Contreras family had the Breastplate in our possession. We are the ones destined to start a New World, to make right what is wrong.” He jabbed a craggy finger at Baltasar. “They took him back in chains, to be hung by the neck until dead. They stole that power from us. They were afraid!”

Baltasar swallowed hard. He had heard the story hundreds of times. “The Vatican was afraid,” he said. “Our ancestor, Alvaro Contreras, was jailed and sentenced to hang because the Vatican recognized his power to create peace. Mankind would be doomed, they thought, for who would need God, who would need His church, if people had nothing to fear?”

The old man snatched his son’s brandy snifter from the edge of the desk. He held it high. “The quest for the Holy Grail is a fool’s errand,” he said.

Baltasar dared to step forward. “The Holy Grail is nothing more than a legend glorified by stories in the twelfth century. To find the grail and drink from it to gain immortality is no more than a folktale.”

“
A man can gain immortality only through death.” His father dashed the snifter to the wide plank floor. It shattered, the sound ringing in Baltasar’s ears. The brandy spewed from it like blood, splashing onto Baltasar’s shoes. “And why should a man seek the Ark of the Covenant?”

“
When he already knows the power of the ten commandments.”

The old man sat up straighter. The tinge of life seeped through his gray pallor. “The Contreras family will not seek what other men seek.”

Baltasar raised his arms heavenward. “We will only seek the word of God from God.” Baltasar knelt again at his father’s knee. “I will find the Breastplate of Aaron,” he promised. “I will gather the seven lost stones and make it whole again. I will purge the world, and make it new.”

Baltasar reached his hand to his father’s. The old man recoiled. He turned away. “You are too weak,” he said. “We are damned.” His fingers gripped the wheels of his chair. He turned and creaked towards the billiards room door.

“
Father,” Baltasar called after him. “I will not fail the family. I will not fail you.”

The door swung open. Baltasar’s driver stopped at the threshold. He peered hesitantly into the room.

Baltasar sucked in a controlling breath. He realized he was still on his knees. He stood. “What is it, Simon?” he snapped.

“
Miss Lucia is asking for you,” Simon said.

Baltasar smiled, an unfamiliar warmth embracing him. She was asking. For him. Of all the years of complex planning, she was the one who was least predictable. Now an idea was forming in his brilliant mind. She could be the greatest reward of his mission. His plan was scrupulous, meticulous. His men obeyed without question. No, he could not fail. The thought of the next phase chased away his remaining doubts and curled his lips ever upward. He was like a father now. He had to take special care of the child who would change his life, a little girl named Lucia.

CHAPTER
28

Daniel kicked the jagged bits of terra cotta from the broken pot beneath the nearest metal shelf, and swept away the thorny plant and dirt with his loafers. He slotted the books back into their places near the desk. With the flat of his hand, he cleared a circle from the steam on the greenhouse’s glass wall to watch Christa. Contreras was right. If playing his part in a divine plan could save this amazing woman, then he was all in.

She skirted around the front of her purple Volkswagen, thumbing a text into her cell. She didn’t even try to hold down her skirt when the frisky wind played around her long, sleek legs. She was wearing those brown leather boots, both practical and unwittingly sexy, like her, that he dreamed about before going to sleep at night. Her brown curls whipped around her face, teasing him with peeks at her sculpted cheekbones and rosy lips. He even loved that scar on her right temple from that rebel’s bullet in Peru. It showed she was vulnerable.

He took one last look around the greenhouse to make sure he left no evidence of his search and opened the door. After the tropical heat of the greenhouse, the cold bit at him with sharp piranha teeth. He snugged his tweed blazer tighter and waited near the relative shelter of the greenhouse.