Pentecost (9 page)

“That’s a great start. What about the location of Everett?”

“We have his house under surveillance in Arizona but there’s no sign of Dr Sierra’s family. He has a complicated system of shell companies which the forensic accountants are sifting through. It may be that he’s holding them in a place owned by one of them. Marietti has ordered surveillance only though.”
 

Jake understood the stones were the primary objective but he felt an edge of unease that ARKANE was less concerned with the lives of Faye and Gemma Price. Even if the location was found, he knew Marietti wouldn’t authorize their rescue unless the stones had been taken out of circulation. They also needed the leverage to get Morgan Sierra to work with them. What did Marietti see in her?

“I need to find out some other information as well. Can I use the pod?”

 
Martin grinned at him. “Sure, go ahead. I just added some new features. I think you’ll like them.”

 
Jake stepped over to a device that looked like a tanning booth squashed between Martin’s desk and the back wall. It was a prototype user interface for the vast libraries of digital knowledge that ARKANE held. The environment put people inside a virtual library where they could physically interact with the information. Martin had created it based on the Radcliffe Camera of the Bodleian Library in Oxford, but it was actually an old fashioned skin on a highly technical relational database. The user could roam the shelves, pulling various objects out and creating virtual pin boards or files of information. The system would suggest other artifacts or documents in the form of a friendly virtual librarian.
 

 
Jake entered the pod, and pulled the door shut behind him. As the device initialized he was transported to the open space of the Radcliffe Camera, surrounded by stacks of books and a high ceiling that stretched into the dome above. Even the quality of light was softer here, rays of sunlight streaming in from the arched windows. The librarian walked out from behind the stacks. She was the archetype of fantasy, complete with brunette bun and buttoned-up beige cardigan. Jake noticed that her cardigan had a button undone showing just a little more cleavage, no doubt one of Martin’s ‘improvements.’ He addressed her directly.
 

“I need information on Morgan Sierra, paranormal psychologist and lecturer at Oxford University. What do you have on her?”

 
As the librarian accessed the databases, her image flickered. Then she smiled, passing him an old fashioned file that opened up to a full view screen in front of him. He scrolled through the information, flicking through Morgan’s past, displayed in images, documents, even audio and video clips. ARKANE had access to all official records but also shared information with other secret services around the world. He stopped at her record from the Israeli Defense Force. He knew she had served, as all young men and women there are conscripted for military service, but there was more detailed information on her life back then.
 

Jake felt a twinge of guilt at looking through her life in this way, but he needed to know what he was dealing with. He saw that Morgan had been funded in her psychology studies by the Defense Force and had specialized in religious fundamentalism. She had headed up a team to try and understand as well as change the hearts and minds of those who hated Israel. It would have been a thankless task. There were also notes about her mental health and physical fitness. It seemed she could look after herself, being proficient in Krav Maga, an Israeli martial art. There were photos of her even competing in national competitions.
 

Jake opened the file on the death of Morgan’s husband, Elian, who was killed in active service. It seemed she had been there when he died. Then he swore under his breath to read about her parents. Both were deceased, but her father had been murdered by a suicide bomber on the number 12 bus in downtown Beersheba, Israel. He opened the images. There were devastating shots of body parts strewn amongst metal shards and shopping bags. One picture showed a sack of oranges in bright color as a severed arm reached for them in the foreground. After the incident, Morgan had changed her name back to her father’s Sierra and left Israel for life as an academic. Jake wondered whether the memories of that violence still haunted her, as the death of his own family tormented his endless nights and did it make her an unstable partner? Jake swiped the file into his storage area for later retrieval. A ping sounded and a message flashed in the corner of the screen from Martin. ‘Marietti wants to see you. NOW.’

Blackfriars. Oxford, England.
 
May 19, 11.17am

 
Father Ben Costanza knelt in the dim light of Blackfriars chapel, his white head bent in prayer as his fingers counted the wooden rosary beads tied at his waist, although his fingers moved more slowly now that arthritis had sapped his dexterity. The church was simple for a Catholic place of worship with white stone walls lit in the day by wide windows. There was no stained glass, only clear panels with decorative stonework. Ben watched as motes of dust floated in the light from the windows, streaming down to the altar of russet speckled marble. At night, candles in large silver candlesticks lit the corners of the church. There were wooden choir stalls and hard, straight backed chairs for the congregation, a modest place for a pure faith.
 

Years of devotion had made Ben’s knees strong, but the joints still protested as he sat back into the pew. He sighed. In his head, he was still a young man but time had definitely taken a toll on his body. He had enjoyed this chapel for nearly forty years now, his passion for teaching and speaking earning him a permanent place at the Dominican College where they taught the ancient disciplines of theology and philosophy as well as history, social science and ethics.
 

 
Ben was a tutor for the Angelicum, the Baccalaureate in Sacred Theology granted by the Pontifical University of St Thomas in Rome. He also lectured on inter-religious dialogue and had been heavily involved in the visit of the Dalai Lama to Blackfriars in 2008. He felt that the monastery should be a sanctuary in the bustle of the Oxford city and loved to tell people how it had survived for nearly a thousand years. The Blackfriars, Dominican monks, had established a priory in Oxford in 1221 when the Regent Master of the University joined the Order. There had been a working priory in the University up until 1538, when the monasteries were destroyed in the reformation of Henry VIII and the monks were scattered. Four hundred years later the current Blackfriars priory was set up on busy St Giles, a main road into the center of Oxford, between the Ashmolean Museum and Little Clarendon Street.

 
Ben loved the central location of the College in the city, an area home to the University offices, ice cream parlors and bars frequented by students living in this end of town. Amongst these modern distractions, the Blackfriars were a working priory, dedicated to a common life of prayer, study and preaching. Their daily mass was open to the public and a small congregation had formed around the little community, as well as students who came in for weekly tutorials. Ben was content here.
 

 
He crossed himself and left the church, glancing at his watch. He hurried across the quad, as he was expecting Morgan for their weekly catch-up. He smiled in anticipation, eager to hear about the gossip in the theological community. Morgan’s particular speciality meant she was often in the center of the latest storm of controversy. He enjoyed hearing about it but his age gave him a perspective that many others didn’t have. He knew the theological contentions they raged over had been debated for millennia and by far better scholars to no satisfactory conclusion. In God’s wisdom, he allowed men and women of faith to have diverse views on fundamental points but in Ben’s opinion, they didn’t matter anyway. Faith was of the heart and the head was a distraction, but he still enjoyed the gossip about who was feuding with whom. His time with Morgan also gave him an insight into a University that was moving away from old men like him. As she had found her way into college life, and begun to build her own psychology practice, they had met weekly for coffee and surreptitious sticky buns in his tiny office at Blackfriars.
 

As he rounded the corner, he saw Morgan was already standing outside his study, her brow furrowed with concern. She looked exhausted and she rubbed the stone around her neck like a charm. Ben worried about her like a father, acutely aware that he could never replace what she had lost, but given his monastic life, she was as close as he could get to having a family. When she saw him, a brief smile flickered over her face and he ushered her inside, concerned. Shutting the door, Ben listened as she told him what had happened with Faye, about the stones of the Apostles and the need to swiftly find the remaining items before Pentecost Sunday when the comet would be in ascendance.

 
“What do you think, Ben? Are these stones real? Have you heard of them before? My father gave me mine and Faye has one, but that doesn’t mean they belonged to the Apostles. It just seems crazy,” she said, rubbing her tired eyes.

“The stones are clearly a matter of faith for the people who want them, therefore it doesn’t matter what we think.” Ben spoke in a soft voice, trying to to calm her. “Faith can indeed move mountains but it can also destroy lives.”

 
Morgan paced his office, only managing a few steps in the small space before turning the other way. Father Ben sat back, pondering his bookshelf, the ancient tomes perhaps containing some wisdom they could use now. He wrestled with the many thoughts that teemed in his head. There were many dangers in this quest, but he couldn’t send her off without trying everything. He had been a friend of her parents, meeting them on an archaeological dig. He hadn’t agreed with how they had managed the divorce but he had promised Marianne he would always help her daughters. There were aspects of those times he wished he could forget, that continued to haunt his nightmares but now Ben knew he must help Morgan.
 

He looked up at a quote inscribed on his bookshelf from one of the Master Generals of the Order, ‘Divine wisdom is like a spring that comes down from heaven through a pipeline of books.’ Somewhere there was always a book that would help. He made his decision. Reaching up to the heavy bookshelves, Ben pulled down an antique tome. He opened it at a map of the ancient world at the time of Christ.
 

“Little is known of many of the Apostles after the book of Acts. They went their separate ways after Pentecost, and Christian tradition only gives hints of where they went after leaving Jerusalem. But it would seem best to focus on where the Apostles died, or where their primary place of worship is now. In that way, we might find clues as to whether the Keepers are still alive, or where the stones are hidden.”

“You mean follow the corpses?”
 

“It’s a place to start and there are some here in Europe. If Faye is in danger, you have no choice but to undertake this quest, even though I fear it could be for nothing. I guess you haven’t involved the police?”

 
“There isn’t time, and anyway I have the help of a group who specialize in retrieving religious artifacts, the ARKANE Institute. You must have heard of them?”

 
Ben’s heart pounded in his chest as he heard the name. The secrets they kept were the demons that crept under the battlements of prayer he tried to strengthen each night.

 
“Ben, are you OK?”

 
He had gone white with fear as he realized how far in she already was. He grasped her hand and leaned forward, his voice husky with concern.

 
“There are things you should know about ARKANE, people you need to be very careful of.”

She frowned. “But I need them to help me get Faye back.”

 
“At what cost? I’ve knowledge of this group, Morgan, the secrets they seek throughout the world. I worked with their men once, a long time ago, after the war. They have information that can bring down governments and change the world order. There are shadows behind their shining public face. You must be careful of them. They’re not doing this for your benefit. You’re nothing to them.”

 
Morgan laid a hand on his arm.

 
“Of course, Ben, but they have the resources I need to get Faye and Gemma back and then I won’t be working with them anymore.”

 
He laid a hand over hers and said in earnest.
 

“If they’re interested in these stones, then perhaps they are more than they seem. ARKANE only become involved when they know something is powerful and there
are
miracles on this earth, some indeed from the divine but others from the deceiver.”

Morgan leant forwards in her chair.
 

 
“Tell me what you know about them. Why are you so …”

 
Her question was cut off by the sound of breaking glass as an object came hurtling through the window behind Ben’s head, and the sound of gunfire erupted in the quadrangle beneath them.

***

Morgan saw the grenade as it landed. Her years of military training kicked in and she yanked Father Ben out of the tiny office into the stone corridor just before it exploded. The force knocked them both to the ground, the old man coughing and wheezing. The thick college walls contained most of the blast but Morgan realized it may have been a ploy to flush them out.