James Acton 01 - The Protocol (22 page)

“Well?” asked Chaney.

“Nothing, I guess I was mistaken,” she said and moved on. After finishing the rest of the aisles she returned to the entrance. “As far as I can tell, nothing has been taken,” she told Reading.

“Okay, let’s go to the control room again and look at that footage,” said Reading, heading to the door.

Outside Riyadh, Saudi Arabia

Faisal stretched out the kinks from a long night’s sleep. He kissed his wife on the forehead and headed to the bathroom. As he relieved himself he looked in the mirror, admiring his moustache, then flushed the toilet, giving little thought to the fact he had just wasted more water than most of his countrymen used in a day, then turned on the gold plated faucets adorning the marble sink and pushed the plunger down. Leaning in, he carefully washed his face and hands. He reached for the towel hanging to his left and pressed his face into it. Once dried he opened his eyes and gasped.

In the mirror were two masked men, both dressed in black, pointing handguns at him.

“What do you want?” he asked as he swung around to face them.

“Open your inner office,” said one of them. Faisal paused. The man pointed the gun directly at Faisal’s forehead. “You have five seconds or he kills your wives, one at a time.” Faisal blanched, thinking of his wife in the next room who had born him three strong sons and was pregnant, he hoped, with a fourth. He knew they would kill her first as she was closest.

Faisal nodded slowly and raised his hands, dropping the towel to the floor. The man led him to a wall lined with hanging silks. Reaching forward, he moved some of the silk sheets aside, revealing a keypad. He entered his code and there was a clicking sound. Pushing with his shoulder, a door, previously hidden, opened. The two men shoved him inside.

“Give us the skull.”

Faisal was stunned. There was several million dollars worth of currency, gold, and jewels in here.
Why would they want a skull made of crystal?
It had been handed down for over a thousand years, from father to eldest son, but except for the sentimental value, it didn’t have any real monetary value. He couldn’t believe he was going to be the one who finally lost what had been in his family since his forefathers lived on the desert plains. He walked to a shelf and took down the skull, handing it to them.
They must be from another clan, here to shame my family.
The men carefully placed it in a case and started to leave the room. One turned around and faced him. “Sorry,” he said as he raised his gun and fired. Faisal grabbed at his shoulder as he felt the impact. He looked down, puzzled by the lack of blood, then collapsed.

Somewhere on the Atlantic, 1212 AD

Richard lay on the deck of the boat, propped up against a barrel that had once contained life-sustaining water. His throat parched, lips cracked and skin badly burnt, his once proud body had withered to an emaciated skeleton. If anyone should happen upon his ship they could have been forgiven for thinking he was dead. And he should have been, but he willed himself to stay alive, knowing he couldn’t die until his mission was accomplished.

He had left England months before, determined to sail himself, and the skull that had killed his beloved family, over the edge of the Earth. The voyage had taken far longer than anyone had anticipated, and when it became evident the end of the world was farther than expected, he had begun strict rationing to prolong the voyage. That had only extended their provisions by a few weeks, however, and if it weren’t for a fortunate heavy rain that had partially replenished their water supplies four weeks earlier, they would have been dead by now.

But that water was gone. His trusted friend and companion, Bruce, had died two days ago and now only he and three crew members remained. All were in as bad a shape as he was and the ship was now essentially sailing itself. He prayed for the edge to come before he lost all strength and succumbed to the inevitable death that awaited him. He must ensure the skull went over the edge so no one else could be killed by it.

As he lay in his near-death state he heard a roaring sound. At first he thought he was hallucinating, but then the other men stirred. They’d heard it, too. The sound grew louder and louder.
The edge!
He forced himself to his feet, realizing the roar must be the great waterfall at the edge of the world. He was resolved to sail over it at the prow of his boat, crying the names of his wife and child as his life ended.

But what he saw stunned him. He had to rub his eyes several times and was convinced he must now be hallucinating, but one of his men, who stood with him, pointed at it, too. “It be land, Lord Baxter!” he whispered hoarsely. “How can it be?”

Richard’s shoulders slumped in defeat.
How could we have been so wrong?
He looked up again and watched as the waves crashed, not over the edge of the world as had been foretold, but against the shore of a mysterious new land.

Montague Place, London, England

“What sort of disaster?” asked Acton, completely enthralled at the tale being told him. As he processed the information, history as he knew it was being rewritten in his head.

“You’ve heard of the Great Fire of London?” asked Rodney.

“Of course, 1666 wasn’t it, killed over thirty thousand people?”

“No, the first Great Fire was actually in 1212. The city was nearly lost. Due to an oversight in history, the 1666 fire became known as the Great Fire of London. Until that time, the fire of 1212 was known by the same name,” explained Rodney. “And we were responsible for it.”

“Responsible? How?”

“When the second skull was discovered and subsequently recovered, we realized there may be others. We dispatched teams all over the known world to look for the skulls, mostly by monitoring religious ceremonies. It was around 1200 A.D. that we found the third skull. It was retrieved from a mosque in what is now Tehran. Our operatives brought it back to London. When it was put into the same area for safekeeping as the other two, a humming sound was heard. Our scientists were immediately summoned and during the examination the three skulls were placed together.

“It is thought that natural light shone down on them and then an incredible explosion or release of energy occurred. All the scientists were killed along with many innocent Londoners. The fires that ensued destroyed a large part of the city.”

“I remember the fire now. I’ve read about it, London was nearly lost,” said Acton. “How do you know though that it was the skulls that did it? Couldn’t it just have been a coincidence?”

Rodney nodded. “Yes, it could have been, but when we were able to get back into the area at nightfall, we found the skulls in the center of a blast wave. We separated them, realizing their true power.”

Acton looked at Rodney skeptically.

“I know this sounds far fetched Professor, but all of it is documented in our archives. Almost two-thousand years of painstaking journals and drawings. When you come in, I will show them to you.”

“Yeah, well we’ll see about that,” replied Acton. “Okay, so you nearly blew up all of London. How the hell did I find a skull in Peru?”

“We knew this new skull must not be anywhere near the other two. It was decided that we must get rid of it so there would be no chance of it ever coming into contact with the original skulls. A group of volunteers took the skull and sailed it over the edge of the world. It had been assumed they were successful. That of course was before we knew the world was round,” smiled Rodney.

“I didn’t think people still believed it was flat then.”

“Well, with our lineage being Roman, not Greek, it unfortunately proved popular to discount their mathematicians at times, and in the early thirteenth century, with the crusades and religious fervor at a peak, literal translations of the bible were popular.”

“And after these things I saw four angels standing on the four corners of the Earth.”

“Exactly, Revelations. How can a round world have four corners? The first to sail were led by a nobleman, Lord Baxter. They sailed south-west to avoid the ice packs to the north, and were supposed to go off the edge with the skull. Instead, they discovered America.
South
America to be exact.”

“How do you know?”

“Because, Professor, the skull you found is that third skull.”

British Museum, London, England

Clive buzzed them into the control room. He stood to shake Laura’s hand. “Has your friend returned?”

Laura hesitated. “No, actually I’m getting a little concerned.”

“Is Professor Acton familiar with the city, Professor?” asked Clive.

“Who?” asked Reading, in a voice loud enough to startle everyone in the room.

“His name is Jackson,” said Laura, “and no, he’s not familiar with the city. He’s a visiting professor from the United States and is probably lost. I told him to hail a taxi if that happened and to go back to the university. He’s probably there now.”

Reading stepped closer to Laura. “Now listen carefully, Professor. We are looking for a Mr. James Acton, a Professor from the United States, in connection with fourteen deaths, today. So, I’ll ask you one time.” He leaned in even closer. “What is your friend’s name?”

Laura desperately tried not to tremble. Then her fear turned to anger as she realized there was nothing they could do to her. She had done nothing wrong. She also knew James couldn’t be involved in those deaths because he had been with her almost the entire day. She decided to stall.

She stared Reading straight in the face. “His name is Jackson,” she said firmly.

“Very well.” Reading turned to Clive. “Pull up the footage of the back entrance. I want to see this professor.” Clive nodded and his fingers flew across the keyboard. Within seconds they were viewing footage of the conversation between Rodney and the two professors. “Pause it there.” Reading pointed to the screen. “Can you blow that up?”

“Yes, sir,” said Clive. A few more keystrokes and a drag of the mouse and they were looking at a block of pixels. A few more keystrokes and the software sharpened up the image so they were looking at a perfect picture of the man in question.

Chaney held the photo of Acton up to the screen. Both he and Reading said at the same time, “Acton.”

Moscow, Russia

Alexander quietly entered one of the many damp storage rooms in the basement of the Lubyanka building. The former KGB Headquarters’ purpose may have changed – albeit slightly – but the building that housed it was a testament to Soviet era quality. Primitive. Modernization, decades overdue, was finally occurring, but these dark, dank rooms had escaped even the slightest upgrade. Alexander was used to the smell, having worked here for over fifty years as a custodian of the records. Regimes had come and gone during his tenure from as far back as Khrushchev.

Today, he was on a mission for his true masters. Neither the current regime nor any previous had his true loyalty. That was reserved for the Triarii. And today, he would fulfill his mission to protect an artifact the KGB had recovered from the Nazis after conquering Berlin. Hitler’s obsession with archaeological relics had netted him one of the precious skulls. The Triarii had been unable to stop it from being stolen from the Jewish family in Warsaw that had been its keepers for generations. When the Soviets recovered it, they merely cataloged it and filed it away as a meaningless religious artifact. The atheist policies of the communist era meant anything with a religious connotation was of no importance.

He had recognized it immediately, however. A member of the Triarii through his father, he had obtained the job in the one agency that would know if the skull existed in the Soviet Union. It took years of work to gain the security clearances to search the records, but he had finally done it and soon found what had been lost.

It had been decided at the time the safest place for it was right where it was – in a forgotten box in a forgotten room. Now, however, nothing was safe. Today, for the first time since the end of World War II, the skull would leave its damp home.

Montague Place, London, England

“How do you know it’s the third skull?” asked Acton. “I thought there were lots of these things all over the world?”

“Yes, there are,” replied Rodney. “But there are only twelve genuine skulls that we know of, the last one having been discovered in Nepal in the early twentieth century. We keep track of all of the skulls very closely, watching to make sure that no three ever come in contact. This has meant that our organization is now spread throughout the world. We have people shadowing the owners of all the skulls, all of them that is except the last of the lost skulls.”

“Lost skulls?”

“After the disaster in 1212 we began sending all the skulls, except for the original two of course, across the Atlantic with the intent that they would be lost over the edge of the world. When science replaced religious dogma, we returned to the belief the world wasn’t flat.

“What scared us the most is that we had sent out four skulls across the Atlantic. If those four were to come into contact somehow, we had no idea the level of destruction they could bring. In 1492, of course, the New World was formally discovered, and when news of this reached us from one of our operatives who was on the Pinta—”

“Wait a minute,” interrupted Acton. “You had an operative on one of Columbus’ ships?”

“Several actually. It was going to be a long, tough voyage so we couldn’t rely on only one man. Martin Alonzo Pinzon, the commander of the Pinta, was actually a member of the Triarii.”

Acton shook his head in amazement or disbelief – he wasn’t quite sure which.

“Needless to say, with this news, we sent more people on expeditions in search of the skulls. It took hundreds of years, but eventually three were recovered and placed into the hands of people that could be trusted, without them even knowing, to keep them safely separate.”