American Heroes Series - 01 - Resurrection (36 page)

Ethan cocked an eyebrow. “Ty, I appreciate that you didn’t come on this trip to sit around, but you also know this is a special circumstance. I’m working a case and I really need for you to do what I tell you.”

“We can walk around,” Cydney, as usual, was trying to diffuse the situation. She smiled weakly at Tyler. “Did you show your dad your sword?”

Tyler grinned and raised his wooden weapon. “Will they let me take this on the plane?”

Ethan shook his head. “They will not. We’ll have to pack it in a suitcase to get it home.”

Tyler reached his sword into the back seat and tried to poke his father, which set Cydney to giggling. Leave it to Tyler to make her feel better; whether or not he realized it, he’d been doing it the entire trip. Cydney didn’t know what she would have done without Tyler’s comic relief; being around a child the same age as Olivia had done a tremendous amount to boost her spirits. He had been a God-send.

Ethan grabbed the sword from his son, turned it around and swatted him on the shoulder with it.  Cydney started laughing as Tyler whined for his sword until Ethan finally gave it back but only on the condition that he do as he was told from this point on and not argue about.  Tyler agreed and regained his weapon.

Arriving at the hotel, Ethan had the cop wait in the car while he walked Cydney and Tyler up to the rooms.  Cydney was exhausted and wanted to lay down for a bit while Tyler begrudgingly sat down to watch Italian television.  Ethan made sure the two of them were settled before returning to the
Polizio de Stato,
or the Rome Police Department headquarters. Even though this was a United States case with FBI jurisdiction, the Rome police were cooperating and J.D. decided to use the facilities at the Public Security Office for their investigative purposes.

The wild morning was about to turn into a wild afternoon.

CHAPTER TWENTY

Coral resisted their attempts to question her for eighteen long, painfully drawn-out hours; J.D. tried, Ethan tried, even Christophe tried. Coral cried and shrieked through the interview attempts until J.D. got on the phone to the Justice Department and worked through some strategy with the prosecutor who had been assigned the case.  When J.D. got off the phone, he had a definite scheme in mind. He pulled Ethan into the interrogation room with him as he went in for another attempt.

Coral was a mess; her makeup was under her eyes, on her neck and on the top of her yellow shirt. Her pink hair was askew and her hands were shaking as she clutched a wad of tissues. The room was minimally lit and cold, which they did on purpose. There were no windows.  Coral eyed J.D. warily as the man sat down on the other side of the cold metal table that looked more like a morgue slab.

J.D. folded his hands carefully as he gazed steadily at the raccoon-eyed woman.

“Ms. Aames,” he began. “I have been authorized from the Justice Department to make a deal with you in return for your honest and complete testimony.”

Coral’s blue eyes widened and she looked between J.D. and Ethan. “But I told you - I don’t know anything.”

“Yes, you do,” J.D. replied evenly. “If you deny knowing anything about this case one more time, this deal is off the table. I’m finished playing games with you. I’ll find something to prosecute you on and throw away the key. Do you understand?”

Coral’s wide-eyed gaze cooled somewhat. She may have been dramatic and hyped, but she wasn’t stupid.  As they sat and watched, her personality seemed to change; her face slackened and her hands clenched.   She sat back in her chair and looked away.  When she spoke, her voice was oddly dull.

“I can’t tell you anything,” she said.

“Yes, you can and you will. I’m prepared to offer a lot in exchange for your testimony.”

Coral looked at him. “You don’t understand. If I tell you anything, they’ll kill me.”

Now they were getting somewhere. J.D. was very careful about how he approached her. “Who will kill you?”

She smiled thinly. “Them,” she said simply, suddenly sitting forward and gaining a great deal of animation. “They’re everywhere, Special Agent Dickerson. They’re in the Paris Police department, the Federal Bureau of Investigation, Washington D.C. and anywhere else you can imagine. There’s no where you can hide me that they won’t find me. And they’ll kill me.”

“They’ll kill you in jail, too, just to make sure you don’t talk,” J.D. countered. “You’d be better off telling me what you know and at least give us a chance to protect you.”

Coral chewed on her red-stained lip as she thought on that. “There’s nothing you can do.”

J.D. wasn’t going to beg; he decided to play his cards and hope that was enough of an incentive.

“I am prepared to stop all audits on your corporation and release all of your financial assets,” he said. “In exchange for helping us locate Olivia Hetherington and The Lucius Robe, we will promise you completely amnesty for your testimony. Not a mark on your record.  I will only make this offer once.”

Coral was intrigued; that much was obvious. After several long moments of deliberation, she exhaled sharply and lowered her gaze.

“I need a cigarette,” she grumbled.

Christophe, sitting on the couch at the rear of the room, produced a pack and a lighter and handed them to Ethan, who extended a cigarette to Coral. She eyed the tall, dark and handsome agent as he lit her cigarette.  Taking a long drag, she inspected him from top to bottom in a way that totally destroyed her televangelist image. She looked like a cougar on the prowl.

“Do you swear you’ll release my assets?” she finally said.

J.D. nodded firmly. “Everything I just told you. It’s a given.”

She took another drag off the cigarette and seemed to surrender somewhat.  Crossing one of her bird-like legs, she blew silver smoke to the ceiling.

“Special Agent Dickerson, am I to understand that you’re a terrorism expert?” she asked.

J.D. nodded. “I am.”

“How much do you know about Die Anhänger?”

“Not as much as you do,” he sat forward, sensing they were on the verge of a confession. “Tell me.”

Coral eyed Ethan. “I’ll tell you if you throw him into the package deal.”

Before J.D. could respond, Ethan spoke. “Done,” he said. “Now tell us where Olivia and the Robe are.”

Coral laughed softly and took another drag of the cigarette. “You’re in for a real story, boys,” she said, almost grandly.  Her gaze moved between Ethan and J.D. “Die Anhänger had been around since Medieval times.  My father, my grandfather, and my ancestors as far back as we can trace were members. Secretive, of course, because the origin of the sect wasn’t something you wanted to spread around.  The original Die Anhänger were called, among other things, the Knights Templar.”

Ethan sat down next to J.D., listening intently as Coral continued.

 “Die Anhänger is really just a general term,” she said. “The term more popularly known in recent times is the Nazis, of which my father and grandfather were members.  The Third Reich, as it were.  But that dream died out with the end of World War II. There’s an entirely new group of us now, more powerful than you can imagine and far more clever. We’re not obvious with our determination to create a new world. We’re smarter. We know we must begin small and grow, spreading the word of Enlightenment so people gradually come accustomed to it.”

“Izan,” Ethan asked quietly. “It’s Nazi spelled backwards. So that wasn’t a coincidence.”

Coral shook her head. “No,” she replied, taking another long drag off the cigarette. “That was my father’s idea.”

“Is he still alive? Is he in on this?”               

“He’s still alive,” she nodded. “He is a part of Die Anhänger but no longer active. He’s too old.”

“So how does the Robe come into play?” Ethan wanted to know. “Do you really intend to crown the heir to the house of d’Orleans as the next Holy Roman Emperor with it?”

She nodded. “It makes sense,” she replied. “Joseph is a descendant of the Bourbons, the Carolingians and the Merovingians.  The blood of Christ runs through his veins.  It is imperative that the heir of Jesus rule the Fourth Reich for the sheer fact that it was Christ’s destiny to rule Mankind. He never got to fulfill that before the Jews and Romans were crucifying him. Joseph will take his rightful place as Jesus’ heir.”

“So that’s where the Robe comes into play?”

“Yes,” Coral suddenly grew serious. “But now there’s more to this than meets the eye thanks to young Olivia.”

Ethan struggled not to become emotional. “Why her? What do you need with her?”

Coral wriggled her eyebrows. “Originally, she was simply a means by which to gain the Robe since her mother had access to it,” she said. “But while we had Olivia as our guest, she told us something very interesting about the Robe.”

“What was that?”

Coral took a hit on her cigarette. “There was a tooth embedded in the folds of the robe,” she replied. “Once we were told about it, the entire mission took on new depth. We were instructed to get the Robe, and the tooth, at all costs and bring them both, and Olivia, to Rome.”

J.D. shook his head. “What in the hell for? What do you need with Olivia?”

Coral seemed to take on a very strange countenance, an almost dreamy way of speaking. It was eerie. “Joseph d’Orleans may be a distant descendant of Christ, but think what we can do with DNA extracted from the tooth?” she watched the agents’ stunned expressions. “This is where our plans changed, gentlemen.  With DNA extracted from the tooth, we can use an unfertilized human egg to clone Christ. Think about it; we can actually have Jesus Christ walk the earth again, born to a virgin and prepared to resume His mission on earth.  Can you imagine the fantastic implications?”

J.D. and Ethan sat for a moment in shocked silence.  It was Ethan who finally put the pieces of the puzzle together.

“Olivia,” he hissed. “You need her unfertilized egg.”

Coral nodded. “The egg fertilized with the DNA from the tooth will be implanted in her and she will carry the child to term.  Christ will once again be born from a young virgin, just as our blessed Mary was a virgin.  Olivia will be the Virgin Mary of our time, the mother of Christ.”

Ethan had to stand up; he was having a difficult time controlling himself. He walked away from the table, struggling with his emotions.  But J.D. remained calm.

“Where is she?” he asked.

“In Rome,” Coral replied vaguely. “She’s under the care of a fertility specialist.”

“Have they gone forward with this scheme yet?”

“They took her to the hospital yesterday. I don’t know what’s happened since then.”

J.D. hoped the men on the other side of the one-way mirror were getting all of this and moving into action; he was, frankly, still reeling from the information even if his manner remained cool. It was too crazy to believe.

“Coral, I need to know one more thing,” he said. “You deposit assets into a Cayman Islands account with a Vatican City address. Who is this money for?”

“It’s for our dreams.”

“I get that, but who controls it?”

She seemed to lose some of her calm. “The person who makes all of our decisions, who made the decision to clone with DNA from the tooth found in the Robe.”

“Who?”

“The one who will be pope someday very soon.  And he will crown our new Emperor.”

By this time, Ethan had turned back around and was listening intently. “So it’s not the current Pope?”

“Of course not,” Coral sucked down the last of her cigarette.

“Then who?”

“I’ll tell you but you can’t do anything about it.”

“Who?”

She put the butt into the ashtray on the table. “Cardinal Bishop Wildegrav.”

J.D.’s eyes bugged. “The Secretary of State for the Vatican?”

Coral nodded, eyeing Ethan as the man leaned over the table.  His muscles were bulging and his handsome face was near, making her feel very much like talking to him.

“He’s very much in control, of everything, everywhere,” she said confidently. “You can’t touch him. Not only does he have diplomatic immunity but he has papal immunity as well. I’ll tell you something else you can’t do anything about - he plans to assassinate the current Pope so that he can assume the post. I don’t know any details but I know that is his plan. I heard him speak of it.  Wildegrav must be pope in order to crown the new Holy Roman Emperor.”

J.D. sat back in his chair, shocked beyond words.  Ethan continued to lean over the table, gazing into the raccoon-circled eyes and wishing he wasn’t a special agent and a gentleman to boot.  He would like nothing more than to throttle the woman.  So he turned away, waiting for J.D. to make the next move. Frankly, they were all muddled with the information.  It would take some time to process.

But time was something they didn’t have. Ethan’s priority was to get to Olivia. On the other hand, he found himself angry because Cydney had never mentioned a tooth embedded in The Lucius Robe.  If Olivia knew about it, then Cydney certainly did. He wondered why she didn’t tell him. But Coral interrupted his tumultuous thoughts; she wasn’t finished with her story yet.

“Want to hear something else?” she asked, figuring she truly had nothing more to lose.

J.D. nodded. “Absolutely.”

She looked at her nails casually. “Wildegrav is German by birth, the product of Nazi parents,” she said. “His ancestry goes back as far as mine. He can trace his lineage back to the Templars also.  On Friday the 13th, 1306, King Phillip of France ordered the arrest of all Templars and the confiscation of their wealth.  The Lucius Robe was among those treasures confiscated. Now Wildegrav has the Robe back in his possession just as his ancestors did almost eight hundred years ago and he plans to keep it.”

“So The Lucius Robe is with the Cardinal?” Ethan asked from across the room.

Coral turned her rimmed-eyed gaze to him. “Yes,” she replied. “The last I saw, it was at the Vatican in his offices. But the tooth and Olivia are at the hospital.”

“Then the Cardinal is attempting to create Jesus,” J.D. muttered, more to himself.