The Eye of Moses - Vatican Knights Series 22 (2020) Read online

  “This isn’t going to be easy,” Mr. Spartan said to Mr. da Vinci. “I don’t know too much about the Vatican Knights outside of hearsay information, but if he can’t fight, then he may slow us down.”

  “Trust me. Kimball Hayden is more than capable of dealing with opposition. He’ll do fine. He’ll be an asset, Mr. Spartan. Wherever trouble lies, Kimball Hayden will be the first to confront the enemy and grant him defeat. He’s truly gifted in a way that will serve the Consortium well.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  Lucerne, Switzerland

  Across the gorge that separated Deep Mountain from the rest of the world was a cable-car station belonging to the Shadow Klan, though it was named after a dummy corporation to deflect suspicion. The station was manned by a team of armed guards who processed the eligibility of personnel to reach the Deep Mountain facility. At the entrance to the cable-car station, a facial-recognition scanner would measure certain landmarks on one’s face to confirm identity before being buzzed in. Salt was used to this protocol and considered it a necessity rather than a nuisance.

  After having been buzzed into the station, Salt passed the guards’ station and waited for the cable car, which was approaching from the Deep Mountain facility. When the cable car arrived, Salt, along with four others, entered the lift. As soon as the doors closed behind them, the cable car began its return trip to the mountaintop facility.

  The cable car climbed at a 45-degree angle along a taut cable with the gorge beneath them a thousand-foot drop. As the vehicle ascended towards the precipice, Salt admired the scenery of the surrounding mountains, loving the colors they exuded—the purples and the blues and the pristine white of snowcapped peaks.

  As Deep Mountain drew closer, Salt cast his eyes to the gorge beneath the cable car. The pines appeared as specks that dotted the landscape. And a river which had not frozen over meandered like a thin thread along the mountains’ passageway.

  Once the cable car reached Deep Mountain, Salt headed for the bank of elevators. On the wall beside the elevator doors was a touchscreen and keypad that asked for ID and password. With the dexterous fingers of his right hand, he typed in the required data.

  AGENT ID

  * * * * * *

  PASSWORD

  * * * * * * * *

  Less than a second later it read:

  ACCESS GRANTED

  Then the magnets galvanized themselves into action and started to raise the elevator from a lower level. Once the elevator arrived and opened its doors in invitation, Salt stepped inside and said: “Lab Six.”

  The elevator’s voice, which was female in character, answered: “Thank you, Mr. Salt. Please head to Laboratory Six.”

  After descending about thirty feet, the elevator reached its destination of Laboratory Six.

  Once inside this massively hollowed-out cavern, Salt made his way to the bell-chamber that contained Aaron’s rod. There were banks of TV monitors situated on the table, all which viewed the staff that rotated slowly on a pair of stanchions inside the compartment.

  “Mr. Salt.” Elias Caspari smiled as though he was pleased with Salt’s on-time presence. “You’re just in time.”

  “For?”

  “The emitting power-readings of the Eye of Moses have been holding steady at safe levels,” Caspari answered, “ever since your unit confiscated the item. We’re sending a team inside to remove the crystal from the head of the staff so it can be further studied under alternative conditions.”

  Salt appeared apathetic as he watched a two-man team dressed in hazmat suits and face-shields. “I thought you said the readings were safe.”

  “They are. But we always prepare for the unknown, especially when we’re dealing with a dark particle.”

  After the men suited up, the two-man team entered the bell-chamber. Once inside, the door automatically closed and locked behind them. Outside the bell, everyone was watching the monitors closely.

  One of the men in the hazmat suits ordered a stop to the rod’s rotating platform by raising a gloved hand towards the screen. As soon as the stage stopped moving, the men moved in for a closer look.

  The particle continued to pulsate with a life of its own, the crystal it was embedded in glistening like the shell of a diamond. After walking around the staff and making detailed observations as to how to extract the jeweled crystal from the head of Aaron’s rod, a tech turned on the audio feed so that everyone in the lab could listen to what was being said inside the bell.

  “Team One, you read?” asked the console operator.

  A hazmat tech gave a thumbs up. “Loud and clear.”

  “Readings are stable.”

  From a small satchel, a hazmat tech removed two items: A laser scalpel and a pair of long-nosed tweezers. “Approaching the element,” he said.

  “Copy that,” acknowledged the lab tech who managed the console.

  With careful precision, the hazmat-tech started to slice away slivers of petrified wood that were the size of fingernail clippings. Careful not to strike the crystal, the tech moved to weaken the area surrounding the mineral in order to extract it like a loose tooth. After forty minutes of shaving away at the borders surrounding the quartz-like cocoon, the tech raised the tweezers and held them close to the mineral.

  “Moving in for extraction,” he said.

  “Proceed, Team One.”

  The moment the two sides of the tweezers closed on the crystal; blue bolts extended from the cocoon at the speed of light. Electrically charged tendrils struck out blindly to defend itself with the stabbing points of the bolts striking and scorching the bell's interior wall with quarter-sized circles. Blue charges continued to lash out at the techs, causing them to spasm like marionettes at the end of a puppeteer’s strings, the bolts then punching through their suits and piercing their flesh. The material—made of plastic, fabric, and rubber—ripped to vent tendrils of smoke as their skin bubbled and charred. Their face-shields were no longer clear but painted over with a color that was more burgundy than red. And in the subsequent moments as the bolts withdrew back into the crystal, the techs fell to the floor as smoldering remains.

  Elias Caspari felt nauseated as to what he had just seen. Not because of the loss of life which he had witnessed on occasion without drawing sentiment, but because of the failure involved. This particle was not about to relinquish its hold on the rod, which had become its home for millenniums. To touch it obviously invited death. The question now was: how were they going to extract it? Let alone harness it. This particle was like a bronco that neither wanted to be yoked nor controlled.

  This setback, however, was just that to Elias Caspari: an obstruction that needed to be resolved. The best minds in the world were working inside Deep Mountain. He knew his team of researchers would come up with a solution since there was a solution to everything.

  “Find it!” he cried. “I want the answer to harnessing the power of that particle!”

  With his hands clasped behind his back, Caspari stormed away leaving Salt to wonder about the type of power they were dealing with, of whether it was spiritual or celestial. In the end, Salt concluded that it had to be divine in nature because the power within the crystal was too great.

  When the door to the bell-chamber unlocked and opened, the acrid scent of burnt flesh permeated the entire lab, a sickening odor. But Salt appeared unmoved by the scent and was already thinking that it would take time to exploit the power of the dark particle.

  And time, he considered, is never a luxury when there’s an agenda at stake.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  The Consortium Stronghold

  Cochem, Germany

  Deep beneath the Consortium lair was a tech lab with high-end equipment that featured state-of-the-art technology. There were Plexiglas monitors where technicians used specialized gloves to move holographic apps around the panes to open files and images. On the far wall was a mega-screen that could be broken down into two-dozen
grids that received live feeds from across the globe. Or it could be used as a central screen for a single purpose, depending on its need. Currently, a technical team was concentrating specifically on the movement of the chopper that lifted off from a field close to the Croatian bunker.

  Using a string of geospatial satellites, they were able to follow its northwest trajectory all the way to Lucerne, Switzerland, where the vehicle landed. Then with the use of application programming, a separate team was able to tap into time-stamped feeds from CCTV cameras that were located throughout the Swiss city.

  After the eye-in-the-sky satellites tracked their movements from the chopper to three awaiting vehicles, they followed the targets from an overhead view until they moved into range of CCTV scanners. Once they were able to coordinate the vehicles’ location to a nearby camera, they were able to zoom in on the faces of those exiting the sedans. Facial recognition software immediately began to scan certain landmarks on faces with geometric lines running from dot to dot to confirm identity. Hits were validated at 99%, which brought up images and biographical records of the people identified.

  When the master screen held nearly a dozen photos with fact-based information, Misters da Vinci, Spartan, and Kimball Hayden were called to the Tech Chamber.

  Hayden was amazed with this area and wondered about the billions of dollars it took to create such technological marvels that were nowhere close to hitting the public sector. In fact, the lab of Vatican Intelligence, he considered, paled in comparison.

  Against the far wall on the central monitor were photos of those they had tracked from the field in Croatia, by way of satellite tracing. What came as no surprise to Mr. da Vinci was that they were all operatives who had worked with several different groups to ply their mercenary trades for financial benefit. But what caught his attention was their team leader, a man by the name of Salt, someone who was no stranger to the Consortium.

  “Salt,” Mr. da Vinci mentioned openly. Then he ordered Salt’s photo to be the primary image on the screen next to his biographical record. As ordered, the assassin’s image appeared on the monitor.

  “His name is Johannes Bossert,” Mr. da Vinci said to those within earshot. “He goes by Salt.”

  “In regard to his features, I’m gathering,” said Hayden.

  “Which are, of course, unmistakable.” After a pause, he then added: “About four years ago he disappeared from radar—fell right off the grid. Nobody knew what happened to him—the man simply going up in smoke. Before his disappearance, however, he was classified as a radical Christianist whose extremist activity put him on the terrorist map. What we know for certain is that he’s an extremely dangerous individual whose battle techniques include an expertise in martial arts and the use of double-edged weaponry. If he’s in league with the Shadow Klan, he’s not going to be fun to deal with.”

  “Perhaps you had it wrong,” said Hayden. “Maybe we’re not dealing with the Shadow Klan at all. Maybe this guy is directing his own movement. We are, after all, talking about a Christian relic here.”

  But Mr. da Vinci nodded at this, with the meaning behind the gesture telling Hayden that he was mistaken. “It would be a solid assessment, if not for those he was with,” he told him. After ordering the confirmed photos of those who were with Salt on the screen, seven of the dozen men were confirmed to be active members of the Shadow Klan.

  Mr. da Vinci moved closer to the screen. “The Shadow Klan has always been known as a confederation whose primary objective is to steal trade secrets regarding weapons development, and then to perfect those weapons and hit the black market with them. Now I’m assuming with the theft of Aaron’s rod and with Salt captaining the chair to its military force, that their agenda is to promote the dark particle for their own military use. They’re evolving as an association who now believes that they have the strength to command a global force behind the power of the Eye of Moses.” He turned to look at Mr. Spartan and Hayden. “And should they break down the secrets of the quatrains with the use of the crucible, who knows how powerful they could become.”

  “What about law enforcement?” Hayden asked.

  “Not in this case,” he answered. “They would simply turn Aaron’s rod over to the leading political and military principals who covet its powers, and would no doubt try to mine the dark particle for military uses. Be it the United States or perhaps an association of allied countries. They would try to achieve the same purposes as the Shadow Klan, which is to tilt global power in their favor by restraining certain heads of state. There are no cowboys here wearing black or white hats. The goals of absolute power are the same for both sides.” Then he shook his head. “So, no. We need to retrieve the staff and the crucible, then put them in a place where they can never be misappropriated again by any power.”

  Kimball Hayden understood this since the American government would consider the same uses, should they have their eye on the prize of the dark particle. To sequester the rod and the crucible made sense.

  Mr. da Vinci continued to rub his chin with his fingers in deep thought, a habit he was never able to break or was aware of. On screen were the faces of mercenaries, hired killers who valued the dollar over the life of strangers. And then to the techs, he said: “Track the team and find out where they’ve gone. Use every CCTV camera in the city if you have to.”

  Then turning to Mr. Spartan, he said, “Prepare your team for mobilization.”

  After Mr. Spartan concurred with a nod, Hayden asked, “Where are we going?”

  “You’re going to Switzerland, Kimball. To be specific, Lake Lucerne. That will be the starting point to track down Aaron’s rod and the crucible. All I ask is that you bring them home safe.”

  Without adding anything further, Mr. da Vinci left the tech lab.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  Deep Mountain

  Switzerland

  Inside a central chamber within the Deep Mountain facility was a lab designed specifically for decoding. After the crucible had been placed upon a pedestal, a mechanical arm with a read-only lens circled the container to capture the etched symbols inside the bowl. After the lens of the arm had taken stilled photos of the images, they were automatically entered into a decryption database for processing.

  On a pair of wall monitors, the left screen was displaying the nonsensical puzzle pieces that had yet to be decrypted or determined, whereas the right screen had the printed quatrain they were trying to decode. So far, gains were proving minimal.

  The analysts were discovering that the symbols within the bowl had a specific syntax to them. The key here was to find the proper arrangement in order to break down the stanzas into a communicable form of reading. Whereas some of the characters appeared to piece together passages into workable form, those same characters also failed to interpret others. Nostradamus had created red-herrings within the crucible to keep the riddles within the quatrains safe. But with computers that can break down enigmatic codes a thousand times faster than the human mind, finding the key to the proper syntax would not take long. Whatever mysteries were hidden within the verses, the Master Techs would eventually discover them.

  Having witnessed the failed attempt regarding the extraction of the crystal cocoon from Aaron’s rod, Elias Caspari was hoping that the analysts had made progressive strides concerning the interpretation of the quatrains.

  The level of clarification was at 18%, which Caspari considered a great leap in a few days. By the end of the week, the secrets of the quatrains would be completely spelled out. Hidden treasures, Biblical relics, secrets that would empower the Shadow Klan—they were all there for the taking. All they had to do was to read between the lines and see into the mind of Nostradamus.

  Though Caspari was pleased on one level and disappointed on another, he eventually returned to his office where the view never disenchanted him. The landscape from his elevated perch was truly God’s country, he considered. A million-dollar view.

  Closing h
is eyes, Elias Caspari realized that he needed patience if he were to lead. To push for results would only cause tension amongst the Master Techs, who might falsify results simply to appease him. What Caspari needed was concrete, verifiable findings. Not mollifications.

  Patience, he thought.

  And then repeatedly in his mind, a mantra: patience . . . patience . . . patience . . .

  But deep down he knew that this was not a part of his makeup. Patience meant that time would have to be plentiful, which it never could be under such circumstances. How long would it take for the Consortium to send forth its forces and try to take back what was taken from them? That was the question that was first and foremost on his mind.

  Shifting his eyes towards a wall clock, he noted the time. It had been nearly three days to the hour since he had sent Salt to lead his assault team into Croatia. That was more than enough time for the Consortium to galvanize their league into action. And Caspari could only wonder if the Shadow Klan had done enough to cover their tracks.

  He would soon get his answer.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  Emmen Airport

  Lucerne, Switzerland

  It was late evening by the time the plane landed at Emmen Airport in Lucerne. The sky was clear as an infinite number of pinprick lights glittered against the nighttime canopy. The air was cold with the course and touch of a light breeze. But it was something Kimball Hayden was used to after living in the Maryland clime during the winter.

  Disembarking, Hayden felt oddly out of place with the members of the Consortium. They seemed to be a unique breed amongst themselves, all low-keyed individuals who evidently focused on the mission in silence through the entirety of the trip, the plane’s cabin tremendously quiet. Misters Spartan, Archimedes, Donatello, Galileo, Michelangelo, Shakespeare, and Plato—which were obviously callsigns—appeared to be in states of meditation. Hayden, on the other hand, shifted anxiously in his seat because he wanted to dive right into the fray. But the Consortium, who had been an established society for centuries and the keeper of global secrets, appeared as if they were going to a funeral.