Destiny

SEVENTY-SIX

Marcus sat in a chair in his room, rested his head and listened to the sound of water running while Alicia showered. He thought about what he’d done by finding and neutralizing the Myrtus worm buried deep in the Iranian nuclear operating system.

Exhaustion in his body filled his mind and his thoughts began drifting, the resonance of the shower water fading, and the drone of traffic on the streets retreating like distant drums beyond the strata of the city buildings.

Darkness flooded his conscious mind and images filled his subconscious. Two sparrows flew from a date tree and perched on the cliff near where Marcus sat overlooking the Mediterranean Sea. He watched the sun dissolve into the sea, the breeze cool, and the valley filled with emerald shadows. He felt a strange peace wash over him.

A wind across the valley carried the scent of lavender and almonds floating amidst the remote softness of a flute and a woman’s voice layered beneath the rustle of the date palm fronds. “Marcus, we are fine…live, my love…live…”

“Jen…Jenny, is that you?”

The sun vanished beneath the Mediterranean, and dark settled upon the valley. A moonbeam broke through the boughs of a cedar tree, a shaft of light falling on the granite cliff next to him. Marcus stared at the spot for a few seconds, then he reached for the aged stone. Suddenly, his hand was bathed in creamy white light. He felt a sharp pain in the center of his hand, followed by a throbbing that was soothed in a soft whisper, as if the concealed voice came from ancient sea currents found in the depths of a seashell. ‘The blade itself will unseal it. Bring it forth…deliver its message…then release the spear into the fire of Etna.”

“The fire…where? What fire…?”

“Paul? Paul, are you okay?”

He opened his eyes, blinked away double vision and fatigue. Alicia stood next to his chair. She wore a white terry cloth bathrobe, courtesy of the hotel, and a towel wrapped around her damp hair.

She touched his arm. “I didn’t want to wake you. But you were talking in your sleep and perspiring. I thought you might want to lie down in the bed since you haven’t slept in two days.”

Marcus said nothing, his eyes meeting hers. Alicia adjusted the robe and felt a drop of water run down the center of her back. “Paul, why are you staring at me? I feel self-conscious.”

He shook his head, closing his eyes for a moment. “No…I’m sorry. It’s just that the last time I saw a woman in a white bathrobe was before she tried to kill me. Give me a second to shake the dreams out of my skull.”

Alicia nodded, her eyes soft, compassionate. “Were they nightmares? You were saying odd things in your sleep.”

“Sometimes I can’t differentiate the nightmares from….” He blew out a breath. “What’d I say?”

“I only heard a little. You mentioned Jenny’s name, and then you said something about a fire…where’s the fire, you asked. What were you dreaming?”

“Same thing I’ve been seeing — dreaming for the last few days. I see an explosion, like a huge bomb, white-hot fire and gases. Then I’m standing in a cold, dark place…maybe a field. There are no trees. It has the look and feel of twilight all over the world, and dark ash is falling like black snow.”

Alicia hugged her arms. She gently touched his shoulder. “You need sleep.”

Marcus stood and smiled. “Maybe there was something in that dinner…something I’m allergic to. A shower might rinse away the weird dreams.”

Marcus showered and changed into fresh jeans and a black T-shirt. As he entered the room, Alicia looked up from her laptop. “Feel better?”

“Cleaner.”

“That’s a start.”

“What are you working on?”

Alicia smiled, glancing down at the computer screen. “I was watching the news coverage of Adam leaving. I’m so happy for him, and so sad that Brandi’s still in an Iranian prison.”

“We have a few days left before she’s released.”

“Do you think they’ll keep their end of the deal?”

“I don’t know. But if they don’t…”

“What, Paul? What happens if they don’t?”

“Maybe the White House will grow some balls and intercede.”

Alicia sighed and looked at the notes she had written by her laptop. “I moved from watching the international news on my laptop to digging for information. You always call it research, but the truth of the matter is I’m a hacker on cyber steroids. I’m trying to get my mind off Brandi and the last forty-eight hours. This is a sort of bizarre therapy for me. Like a high-end video game. I have to focus and block everything else out. I’m hacking deeper into the inner realm of the Circle of 13.”

“What have you found?”

“Most of the people in this club don’t use digital communications, or they have assistants do it for them and speak only in generalities. That’s a lot of what I’m getting — meeting locations, times, logistics, food and even liquor preferences. They all seem to like expensive single malt scotches. I did find where Senator Wyatt Dirkson took an impromptu trip, or an undocumented trip to Texas where he stayed three days and nights at the ranch of billionaire Jonathon Carlson. The good senior senator is pushing hard in congress to get a majority behind his bill, the proposed National Security Act. This bill, if enacted into law, would provide more than thirty billion dollars to fund massive satellite surveillance technology. It would mandate GPS monitoring and registration in all cell phones sold in the U.S. Also, it would authorize the government to obtain access to the browsing history of people using Google and other Internet search sites, social pages and apps.”

“Sounds like the Patriot Act on speed.”

“You got it. In Senator Dirkson’s case, a direct benefit, if this bill is passed, is Jonathon Carlson and one of the companies in which he has controlling interests, Integrated Security Corp, or ISC for short, would stand to make a lot of money, and the senator would get a huge financial kickback. Both men attended the same Ivy League schools, and both have colleagues and deep connections within the Kinsley Group. And look at this…Carlson’s grandfather, on his mother’s side, Andrew Chaloner, operated the private investment firm of Chaloner and Shipley, which had financial ties to Thyssen Steel before World War II. The investment made them money. Here’s the flip side, by investing in the infrastructure that financed the Nazi party, the investments eventually contributed to the deaths of ten million people.”

Marcus was quiet a moment. Then he said, “James Tower mentioned the name Chaloner, but he couldn’t recall the first name. All of these revelations, the puzzle pieces, it’s as if they’ve been opened to take us into the lair of spiders who’ve been weaving a web of deceit for almost a century.”

“Maybe longer. Chaloner and some of the other families in the circle go back three centuries. It’s a conga line of DNA that takes them…” Alicia paused. “Paul, it’s traceable all the way back to the seventeenth century.”

“How are you spelling the name, Chaloner?”

“C-h-a-l-o-n-e-r. Why?”

“Because I remember something Isaac Newton wrote about a court trial, and now we have the connection with Andrew Chaloner during World War II. James Tower said this guy, Chaloner, was in the market for the Spear of Destiny. Maybe Philippe Fournier knew it, too, and somehow managed to use the Vatican’s money to buy it from Tower because Tower had told Bill Donovan that he never found the spear on General Patton.”

Alicia said nothing for a moment. “What did Newton write?”

“It was buried in some of his biblical notes. Newton said the genesis of evil, the seed first spawned in the Garden of Eden, can be handed down, father to son, mother to daughter, or any combination of a family tree because our roots come from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. He wrote this while summing up in court his prosecution of a convict, a man by the name of William Chaloner.”

“Newton the scientist became Newton the prosecutor?”

“One and the same.”

“So who was Chaloner?”

“I don’t know much more about him. Chaloner apparently crossed paths with him after Newton accepted a position from the King of England to become Warden of the Royal Mint. See what, if anything, you can find on William Chaloner.”

“Give me a minute.” Alicia cross-referenced names and dates, keyed in data, and watched her screen fill with information. “Listen to this. This guy, Chaloner, wasn’t just your average run-of-the-mill, seventeenth century rascal — he was to crime what Newton was to science.”

“How?”

“Give me a sec.” She paused and read. “This indicates Chaloner became Newton’s nemesis. Counterfeiting was epidemic in London around 1690, when Newton took the job at the Royal Mint. Newton streamlined the Royal Mint, and introduced paper currency. Before that, all coins were hand-struck from the Royal Mint. England was going through a banking and economic crisis, not unlike what we’ve experienced. Chaloner was a mastermind in the underworld of counterfeiting, fraud, and high concept crimes, truly a brilliant criminal. Newton used his scientific prowess, his mind and incredible attention to detail to trap Chaloner in his own fraudulent game. This information says it took Newton a year to do it, but he caught what many consider the smartest criminal in England during the seventeenth century. He personally prosecuted Chaloner on charges of defrauding the Bank of England, counterfeiting, and high treason.”

“So the greatest scientific mind, Isaac Newton, laid a trap for a man of immense intellectual capacity, and he won. What happened to Chaloner?”

“Let me see….” She read silently a few seconds. “He was executed. Says he died by hanging. Not the kind where the condemned prisoner drops and his fall results in a broken neck. This is the type where the executioner kicks the apple box out from under the guy at the end of the rope and the victim dies slowly.”

“You said that Jonathon Carlson’s grandfather was Andrew Chaloner whose firm invested in Thyssen Steel before World War II. Can you find any connection between Carlson and the William Chaloner in Newton’s time?”

Alicia looked from Marcus to her computer screen. “Give me a minute.” She pulled strands of hair behind her ears and began punching the keyboard. Her eyes were transfixed on the screen, plowing deeper into her analysis. She paused briefly to write something on a notepad then continued tapping the keys. In less than a minute, Alicia looked up. “I have news for you.”

“What?”

“Jonathon Carlson, on his mother’s side, is a direct blood descendant to William Chaloner, the criminal mastermind who, as we discussed, fought Sir Isaac Newton 300 years ago…and lost.”