Soul Thief (Blue Light Series) (44 page)

“So, you’re telling me that they both escaped and they took out nearly your entire team in the process?” De Roché said.

“That is correct,”
answered the voice on the end of the line. “But do not worry. I have two more teams in pursuit as we speak.”

“I want to know how this could have happened, Isaac.”

“They must have known we were coming, although I cannot understand how. We learned of their whereabouts only twelve hours before the raid, as you well know, sir.”

“
This is totally unacceptable. I want them found and I want them both dead. Do you understand me?”

“Yes, sir.
It will be done.”

“It
had better be.”

Isaac
felt betrayed. He’d done everything De Roché had asked him to do, beginning with the destruction of his daughter’s house (careful not to harm her in the process. It had been a very delicate and strategically planned operation) and ending with the betrayal at the Ohio church. Unfortunately the Collector had been aware of his deceit and had nearly destroyed him in the church fire. He’d barely managed to escape. Thankfully De Roché’s team of burn specialists had brought him back from the brink. It had been a grueling recovery. He was still scarred and weak, but able to work and eager to jump back into the game.

De Roché
had seduced him away from the Order with promises of immortality. What man would not go to the ends of the earth for such a reward? And who better to offer such a gift than one who possessed immortality? Now Isaac was having serious doubts that De Roché would or could ever deliver on such a promise. Worse, he was beginning to question his own judgment. The Order had been good to him and he had betrayed them. He would like to run and hide. But of course he would never be able to run far enough or hide well enough. If De Roché’s people didn’t find him then s
he
certainly would. He should have killed her when he’d had the chance. Isaac gazed blankly at the floor and pondered taking his own life.
I have failed everyone, including my God,
he thought.

“Do you know if they escaped together or separately?”
De Roché asked, bringing Isaac back to the moment.

“
The woman escaped first,” Isaac replied. “A gun battle ensued between her and my forces. Somehow she managed to elude them. She is smart, extremely adept.”

“I know her
and I am well aware of what she is capable,” De Roché said.

“
When the remainder of my team stormed the house they engaged the young man,” Isaac continued. “But he escaped before destroying the house and trapped all but one of my team inside.”

There was a long silence on the line before
De Roché spoke again. This time his voice was hoarse with barely controlled rage. “I fear that your injuries and long recovery have affected your judgment, Isaac. I have decided to send Theo to lead the hunt for my daughter. I want her brought back to me unharmed.”

Isaac
did not like it when De Roché got this angry. And he certainly did not care for his security chief. He was a cruel and abusive man, and in Isaac’s opinion, more a thug than anything else.

“
Annie is on a chartered aircraft that just landed at a small airport in Richmond, Kentucky,” De Roché said. “It is possible that she and her husband have been in communication and that they plan to meet. I have learned that she is with a police lieutenant from Portland, Maine. His name is Jennings. I want you to locate them and keep your distance until Theo arrives. Do you understand?”

“
Very well, sir.”

“
Now, this is particularly important, Isaac. Federal agents are also looking for my daughter, and I do not want her falling into their hands. Understand me, if they take her, or if she is harmed in any way, the consequences will be grave.”

“I
f she is with her husband it could be . . . well . . . delicate, sir.”

“
Again, you will wait for Theo before making a move. He knows my daughter. He will see that the operation is handled . . . let’s say . . . in a delicate manner. In the meantime I want Nadia Zeigler found and I want her eliminated.”

“
As you wish, sir. May I ask how you managed to elude federal agents?”

“They had no reason to hold me. They found the body they were looking for on my property
. She was mauled by dogs. A building was also destroyed.”

“A building, sir
?”

“Correct, but it is of little consequence now. What is important is my
dog handler. He was taken into custody. It is presumed that he covered up the woman’s death. It does not matter what he says. He will never live to testify.”

“
I see, sir, but how will the publicity affect your . . . presidential aspirations?”

De Roché sighed as if he’d become bored with the conversation.
“Being president does not matter now. Once I have the child and the artifact I will have all the power I need. As soon as my daughter is returned to me we will be gone far away from here where no one will ever find us.”

“Very well, Sir.
But . . . what about . . .?”

“
What about what, Isaac?”

“Your promise, sir
.”

“I have not forgotten my promise. You must first
deliver what
you
promised and only then will we talk about immortality and its possibilities.”

“Very well
then, sir.”

Édouard De Roché put down the phone and stood looking out over the grounds of his estate. Exhaling noisily, part sigh, part groan, he moved from the window to the antique table in the corner where a bottle of Asla T’ Orten Scotch Whiskey complemented two crystal tumblers. He poured three fingers of the scotch into one of the glasses and brought it to eye level, gazing at the rich amber liquid inside. Asla T’ Orten was one of the most expensive scotch whiskies in the world, aged 105 years. Older than most humans on earth. But not as old as him, he thought. Not even close.

The old man
raised the glass to his lips and sipped the whiskey, pausing to savor its richness, appreciating the smooth burn as it trickled down his throat. He turned and retired to the brown leather chair he’d had specially made for his large frame. His was the body of a warrior. He’d been born into a warring family and war had been his destiny. But he was no longer a warrior, at least not in the conventional sense.
It had been more than seven hundred years since he’d killed with sword or hand. Seven hundred years since he’d found the object of his immortality on a muddy battlefield in France. That’s where he’d made the bargain with the entity. Or rather, the entity had made the bargain with him. It had been a simple bargain; in exchange for a rich future and a long life he had turned over the object and promised that when the time was right he would father a child who would then deliver a savior for the human race. He’d fathered many children in his long life, but he’d had to wait more than seven hundred long years for his beloved Annie to be born.

What the collector had not realized, however, was that De Roché did not care a wit for the human race; he’d been around long enough to see the flaws in the human species and thought most were not worth saving. De Roché cared only for his own continued existence and for those select few he could mold to his own design. He cared only for those who could serve
his
grand purpose. The human species would continue, but it would be a much different species than what had come before it. In the future, warriors would be legendary; men of science would transform civilization. Everyone would be genetically perfect. Inferior genes would be eliminated from the pool.

Amazing what one c
ould learn in nearly a millennium of life. De Roché’s battles had once been fought on bloody fronts. Now they were waged in financial boardrooms and in some of the most sophisticated scientific laboratories on the planet. His empire spanned the globe. He had people inside nearly every government lab on the planet. His employees were involved with such organizations as NASA and CERN, and JPL. He had research people in the medical labs of some of the greatest universities, and of course he had his own secret facilities where all of this extraordinary knowledge melded together like the parts of some cosmic jigsaw puzzle. His scientists were secretly building a new human race and subsequently a new human future.

His researchers
had already mastered the art of brain transformation and gene manipulation. Thanks to the study of his own immortality some of the most brilliant minds on the planet had discovered how to regenerate the human brain and keep it alive indefinitely. Subsequently they had learned how to build new healthier and stronger bodies in which to place these regenerated—and in some cases—genetically altered brains. And the laugh of it was, there was nothing magical about any of it. It was just a question of fundamental science, and mostly of resources. Anything could be accomplished with the proper amount of resources. And De Roché’s resources were limitless.

The key to immortality was
quite simple actually. Stem cells are taken from the brain when it is young and stored away cryogenically. When the old organ dies it is stripped of all its cells and DNA, then washed clean so that it can become the simple architecture for the reserved stem cells to populate. Once the stripped out organ is fed the young stem cells, a miraculous thing happens, the organ begins to reanimate.

Any organ can be regenerated, but b
rains are more complex than other organs, in that intricate arrays of nerves and spinal connections need to be made. The details were being mapped out now by some of De Roché’s most brilliant scientists. Life was being renewed every day in his secret laboratories.

In the future, humans would
become whatever De Roché decided they should become. His new army of explorers, soldiers and scientists would repopulate the earth and move out into the solar system and eventually the galaxy. The future looked very bright for the newly reengineered human species.

De Roché
also knew about the blue lights. He was no fool. Some of his scientists had been clandestinely assigned to government teams that had studied them. Although no one knew for certain, it was believed that they were portals, “wormholes” that made faster-than-light travel possible. In a sense they were time machines. Advanced civilizations somewhere back in the far reaches of time had figured out how to construct stable wormholes, a curved-space shortcut between one region of space and another, and had installed them here when the earth was still young. De Roché suspected that the Collector was some sort of cosmic being who had traveled here via one of these transport systems.

But De Roché suspected—as did others—
that these organic wormholes were much more than transport devices. Some scientists believed they were complex life forms with empathy and intelligence, the extent of their purpose and potential still undetermined.

Governments did not like the uncertainty of them and had tried to destroy them, without success. But De Roché and his teams felt just the opposite. They wanted to
study them, use them. Trouble was, they were turned off and nobody knew the secret of turning them back on. Nobody except De Roché, that is. He’d learned much in his long and continued relationship with the Collector, and perhaps the most valuable thing he’d learned was the relationship between his future grandchild, the mysterious artifact, and the sapphire blue transport systems. But the greatest mystery of all was why his future grandchild had been chosen to be the only one with the power to turn them on. And what the fragment of a weapon purported to have pierced the flesh of Christ at the crucifixion had to do with it was an even greater mystery. The most popular theory was that Christ had not been human, that he had not been of this earth. Perhaps he was some sort of divine alien and his blood contact with the object at his death had somehow instilled within it the power to turn on the portals.

Perhaps the artifact
was a key of sorts that would unlock the secret, but according to what he’d learned from the Collector it would be useless without the child.

He
would soon have all the answers he sought.

De Roché
stabbed a button on the remote beside his chair and a section of wood-paneled wall slid aside, revealing the large flat-screen television. His finger hovered over the button. Finally, he turned the set on.

Grainy static appeared, then a fixed image of a driveway filled the screen. The color footage was clear—amazingly so.
He picked up a hand controller similar to that of a joystick for a video game and moved it slightly. The picture widened and traveled along the perimeter of the estate. This was the very latest in camera technology and it covered every aspect of the estate in ultra high definition. He would never again be caught as he had with Rachael. As well as high-def cameras the estate was now surrounded by the latest in ultra-sensitive motion detectors. He knew he could no longer depend on his security force. They were merely flawed humans after all. Until he had his daughter back and the two of them had gone from this place, he would be diligent about his own security.