'Alright, I'll speak with Senator Dru and suggest that we drop you off in the South of England, I am sure that we can organise a plane ride even if you do have to parachute out.'
He glanced down at Gertrude who was still dozing fitfully on the floor of the van, a bundle of clothing providing a makeshift pillow for her.
'As for our young friend, we'll take her to Germany; I am sure that we can find her somewhere comfortable but secure.'
A grin creased Rey's face.
'Good, thanks Frans.'
He nudged Akosua who sat next to him.
'You remember your night drop training?'
Akosua blew out her cheeks dourly.
'Yeah - and I hated every minute of it!'
Jolene sat in the Ambassador's conference suite and waited for the screen to light up with Deputy Director Kappel's call, the now familiar humming of the pressurised air conditioning system droning in the background. She had requested an urgent audience with Kappel to report the latest events since in her estimation they seemed significant enough to require a reprioritisation of her investigation.
Presently, the screen flickered to life and from what she could see, Kappel sat at a normal looking desk and was probably located in his own office, her boss appeared just as fresh and focussed as he had done earlier that morning.
'Jolene! I assume that something of significance has happened since this morning, do you have an update for me?'
She coughed and prepared herself to give the details of the morning's events.
'Sir, our investigation into the supply trail of the book lead us to a Johann Janssens who runs an antiquarian bookshop in The Hague, I'll be sending details in my full report. When we arrived at his premises it was clear that Mr. Janssens was not present and it appears that there may have been a struggle. He is currently unaccounted for.'
'Alright, so that kind of dead-heads that trail unless we can find him or get something interesting from his paperwork. What is your suggestion?'
'No go sir, my guess is that he would have completed his purchase and sale as job lots or at least as a cash transaction, certainly I do not believe that whoever Janssens bought the book from would be recorded. As for Janssens himself, well, we have a much better lead downstream.'
Kappel sat back and raised his eyebrows.
'Oh?'
'During my visit to Janssens' shop, Dale Mallory was left taking a full statement from Gertrude Verker, the girl that Janssens sold the book to, however, during that interview her apartment was entered by persons unknown and the girl was abducted. Officer Mallory was beaten and incapacitated but he'll be alright.'
'- and that is good news, why?' Kappel asked, leaning in.
'We have an excellent description from Officer Mallory and my guess is that it is too much of a coincidence for Janssens to disappear and for the Verker girl to be taken by different people. My hunch is that since the assailants could no longer get to the book, they grabbed Verker to stop her talking about something. Clearly, they would know of the connection between the book and this group, The Brothers and Sisters of the Sun of the Sleepless, they may think that she knows something too, maybe something that is related to the book. It is just possible that Janssens had some extra information that could be useful to us and they feared that he had also told Verker.'
Kappel nodded in agreement.
'Sounds reasonable, what do you need?'
'I think that we have everything here. Langley can perform the background check on Janssens but it seems reasonable to assume that this snatch team may have been hanging around Verker when she was still in possession of the book. I suggest building a time-line of her movements over the last few days and trying to match the descriptions of the assailants in any CCTV footage we can find.'
'That could take a long time.'
Jolene grinned.
'Yes sir, but we have a great starting point. Our Langley support team has already determined that she had a stall at an antiques market on Thursday where she witnessed a tram accident; we tracked her through the Dutch police report that was submitted by the investigating officer. The significant factor is that the market takes place right outside of our embassy!'
'Excellent,' Kappel grinned as he sat back in his chair, 'it looks like you're progressing well. I agree that this is all too much to be coincidence so I'm raising your resource priority, if you need anything let me know.'
'Actually sir, I would like a Special Forces team put on standby, I suggest Wiesbaden Army Airfield near Frankfurt in Germany where I know there is a small detachment from our Special Activities Staff operating. Once we have a better handle on where we need them they can move pretty quickly from there. I'll just need an Operations Group coordinated and apprised of the situation so that they are ready to move.'
'No problem there, I'll make the arrangements. I have already given Jackson a higher security clearance, temporarily at least, so he should be able to continue his investigations into the background of this cult. Is there anything else?'
Jolene paused a moment, knowing that what she was about to say would not go down well.
'Err, yes sir, unfortunately we could not contain the incident at Verker's apartment and the Dutch police became involved.'
Kappel blinked a couple of times in silence.
'Jolene, we must contain any involvement of local law enforcement and that applies to wherever your investigation leads you, but especially so in The Hague. We want these people in our jurisdiction and I have already put our Special Transport Group onto alert. We do not want these people being arrested in the home of the International Court of Justice, do I make myself clear?'
'Yes sir.'
'As soon as you have a target acquisition, you call in for a snatch team and then we deal with this internally. We cannot afford any diplomatic fall-out from this. Is that understood?'
'Yes sir!' Jolene eagerly agreed again.
'Alright, good work Jolene, now, go to it!'
The screen blacked out as the secure communications signal was switched off and Jolene rapped the table as she considered her next move, absent-mindedly thrumming her fingers in a successive rhythm.
'Dale,' she thought, 'the CCTV footage. '
Jolene walked into the small office where Jackson was hunched over his desk and Dale was reclining back in his chair, his eyes closed. She walked up to stand at the desks that were shunted together facing each other.
'Gentlemen, any news?'
Dale opened his eyes and rocked his chair forward.
'I need a holiday -'
'Time enough for that when we save the world,' she retorted drily.
Looking down at the desk she suddenly became aghast to see what appeared to be cut-out pages from
Dirigo Lux
, the neatly razored sheets now lying in a pile to one side.
'Jackson? What are you doing? You were supposed to analyse the book not shred it into pieces!'
He stood and waved his palms to placate her.
'Its not as bad as it looks, I simply removed the inside cover board papers and all for a good reason. These books sometimes have documents or slips of paper pasted inside the cover boards, hidden away from prying eyes. In fact, I discovered something really interesting which made me think that there may have been other things secreted within the binding.'
Jolene looked at him suspiciously.
'What did you find?'
'This!' Jackson beamed as he held up a small square of what looked like a miniature printed circuit board onto which was pasted a microchip. The whole thing was tiny and fitted easily onto the finger tip of Jackson's pinkie as he held it out for her to view.
'What is it?'
'It is an advanced radio frequency identification tracking chip, commonly known as an RFID. Although this is top of the range, devices like it are freely available and used in supply chain processes everywhere, companies like Wal-Mart use them to track consignments of goods. I was going to send a scan of it over to Langley for analysis.'
Jolene peered closely at it.
'How did you know this was inside the book binding?'
'I didn't, but I wanted to check out the binding anyway and so I took it down to the security station where they have a small X-Ray machine for checking out suspect baggage that comes into the embassy. They passed the book through for me and gave me a picture which clearly showed something hidden in the spine of the book.'
Jolene looked down at the book lying open on the desk and gently lifted one cover to reveal the spine covering that had been neatly sliced along one edge and which was now hanging loosely.
'It devalues the book of course,' Jackson observed, 'but I guess that we can track the chip using serial numbers or something.'
Jolene nodded, impressed that they now had a definite lead to follow up regarding the recent origin of
Dirigo Lux
.
'Good work Jackson, wrap up the chip and I'll take care of that. Have you found anything of interest in terms of the text? Does it give us any further clues?'
'Not as such,' Jackson muttered, pursing his lips and shaking his head, 'but I have some interesting connections with other documents that came up in the agency library and the university searches that I set off the other day have turned up some useful material too. I just need to continue collating it all to understand the significance. Kappel gave me extra access and also prioritised my searches so that has helped, although I still cannot get to some of the documents that came up in my original trawl vector results. The stuff we really need is still out of reach.'
He looked pointedly at Jolene who noted his gaze.
'I'm afraid there is nothing I can do about that, Kappel would have to agree to that access. Go with what you have right now. Dale and I have to check out some CCTV imagery and I want a summary of what you've found when we get back, in the mean time, we'll leave you in peace. Dale?'
Dale looked up and grunted, somewhat gingerly lifting himself from his chair so as not to put too much strain on his knee which now throbbed dully from where the joint had been viciously kicked earlier that morning.
'I'm gonna need crutches -' he groaned sarcastically.
Jolene shook her head disdainfully.
'I could always get Sergeant Stanley to carry you down to the security room?'
'I think I'll manage by myself,' said Dale, grimacing as he straightened his leg.
Frans had made the call to Senator Dru on his secure cell phone and it had been agreed that all arrangements would be made to get Rey and Akosua back to England that very night. It had been agreed that they would drive to Midden-Zeeland Airport, a small regional airfield in the south of The Netherlands providing an uncontrolled one kilometre grass runway from where they could fly via private plane to the south east of England and parachute out prior to the plane landing legitimately and reporting to the local UK passport control authorities.
Senator Dru was slightly alarmed to hear about Gertrude Verker but accommodated the request to have her secured; their van would continue on to Germany and Gertrude would be delivered to a safe-house that would be prepared for her arrival and containment.
'What about you, Frans?' Rey had asked after the call ended. 'What are you going to do?'
Frans rasped some air in through the corner of his mouth.
'Good question! I'm not sure to be honest. I may accompany our new friend to Germany and stay low for a while. If the US manages to get a lead on you two they may also be able to identify me, so, it is probably better to make myself scarce for a while and go down the rabbit hole.'
Rey nodded in understanding.
'You could come to the UK with us?'
Frans raised a hand and waved it at him dismissively.
'I can think of better things to do than jump out of a perfectly good aeroplane, besides, I do not want to be the gooseberry when you are in the field!'
Akosua raised her head and looked at Frans questioningly.
'Do you still have the ring?'
He looked at her for a moment and fumbled into his pocket.
'Right here, I guess I may as well return it myself since there is no point in the courier trying to catch up with us.'
Akosua took the small ring box that Fans held out.
'So this was Queen Maria's
Sigil Ring
?'
She flipped open the box and carefully took out the silver ring, holding it reverently and peering intently at the wreath of oak leaves that surrounded it and the six symbols placed equidistant about the face.
The ring had been cast in 925 silver using the lost-wax process. To make the master for casting, the original wax was carved by hand on a small stand and the whole thing submerged in a plaster-like solution call 'investment'. Placed in a kiln, the wax melted as the plaster hardened and eventually evaporated leaving a hollow in the plaster the exact shape of the original carving into which the molten silver could be poured. It was significant from an historical point of view simply because it had been created in 1938 by Gahr & Co. of Munich, the very same company that had produced the
SS-Ehrenring
, or 'Honour Ring', bestowed as an award by Heinrich Himmler to members of the German
Schutzstaffel
during the latter years of the Nazi regime.