The Devil's Triangle (A Brit in the FBI 4)

CHAPTER

TWENTY-NINE

2005: Category 5 Hurricane Katrina made landfall in New Orleans. Levees failed, 1,245 were killed, and damages were estimated at $108 billion.

The Bermuda Triangle

Jason watched the news every night. It was an old habit, ingrained from childhood, when having a television was something rare and exciting, and a nightly news report was, with the exception of the movies, the only way to know what was happening outside of his backyard.

He could have watched on the computers, but he had a small theater, with comfortable chairs and a monstrous television. He sat back and tuned into another showing of the footage from Beijing. He watched the sand sweeping through the enormous city, choking the air and the people, suffocating thousands. He knew it had to happen in exactly this way, but still, the loss, the waste of it all, made him hurt deep, it hurt his soul. And in the end, what had been the point? For some predestined future to play itself out?

But then the evening news turned to the shootout in Saint Mark’s Square in Venice. Details were sketchy, but it was said that an American government operation had gone badly wrong, and an American federal agent was in the hospital. There was footage of the shooting, filmed by tourists, and most of it was shaky. But all the violence, the bloody deaths, the panic, were crystal clear to see. He stared, unable to believe what he was seeing. Unlike his own disasters, this one involved characters he knew very well, they were of his blood, and he knew in his gut the twins were tied to this mess—more, he imagined, they were responsible for it. The thoughtless, uncaring young idiots. So unworthy of their proud name, of their mother’s name. He was so angry, so despairing. He felt nausea and dizziness and quickly placed a nitroglycerin pill under his tongue. Slowly, he felt his heart calm, his body right itself.

All those men killed in the square had worked for the Kohaths; he didn’t need anyone to tell him that. Well, it was done, over with, and the chips would fall where they would fall, and he didn’t doubt for a minute that where they fell would spell disaster. And all because of yet another poor decision by Cassandra and Ajax. The waste of it all, he thought again, the sheer waste.

No more, he thought, he simply couldn’t do it. There would be no more arguments; there would be no more orders from him they ignored, no more acting on their own.

He knew time was flowing like a river into a desert. He wondered how many more people would have to die before time ran out.

He returned to his control room and sat in front of his bank of computers. Once calm, he flipped one of the screens to a weather station he liked, out of Atlanta. Naturally, the topic there was the out-of-season hurricane currently off the coast of Puerto Rico. There was no real concern; the storm was predicted to weaken, that if anything at all, there would be only heavy rains before the storm moved back out into the Atlantic.

He sucked hard on the sliver of nitroglycerin under his tongue. He would do what he had to do, no choice. He would call attention away from that disastrous incident in Venice and he would do it now. He had already stirred up the atmosphere in the Gulf of Mexico, warming the waters with the Coil’s laser.

He had a choice, certainly, of letting the hurricane simply peter out, but he thought of the millions and millions of dollars the Genesis Group needed to continue their exemplary archaeological work, he thought of the police tracking down Ajax and Cassandra. No, he didn’t really have a choice.

In the past he’d always managed to do a superb job of rationalizing, witnessing the influx of cash from Katrina and their other ventures. This storm was also needful and he knew exactly where to aim it.

Ten minutes later, the storm was reprogrammed, strengthening. It felt wrong, using a storm to cover his grandchildren’s tracks. He knew he was blackening his own soul to protect them. And should something happen, well, he could turn the storm and have it dissipate with the push of a button.

While he watched the endless variety of weather around the globe, storms causing untold destruction, violent hurricanes, snowstorms, and tornadoes he hadn’t caused, he picked up the folio he kept on his counter. In it were all his personal letters from Helen. He pulled one written nearly twenty years ago to the day. Helen’s hope, her excitement, all but leaped from the page. The paper was creased and worn from so many readings. He ran his gnarled finger along Helen’s rounded letters, still girlish despite her age. It hurt to read her words, yet he did, over and over again, always feeling close to her, for a brief time. The letter was addressed to her children. He’d read it to them, then put it away to keep it safe.

His hand shook as he read his daughter’s words.

Mysore Base

Gobi Desert

1996

Cassandra and Ajax:

Soon I hope to announce that your mother is the best archaeologist in the world. And this is why:

You two have always loved to play with our people as they excavated the tunnels beneath our home in Castel Rigone. You always knew we were looking for something important, heard the word Ark over and over, and when you were little, we told you it was a box, but a special box.

Now you know it is the Ark of the Covenant we’ve sought for all these years. We never found it and I couldn’t understand why. After all, I had Pope Gregory’s letter stating he sanctioned the Knights Templar to hide the Ark beneath our mountain—then their mountain of course—which I know they did, along with their own immense treasures. We have found much of their treasure, but the Ark isn’t there and at long last, I have found out why.

Today, I found another letter written by Pope Gregory. He writes of how his plans hadn’t materialized because the Polo family devised a plan to steal the Ark and present it to Genghis Khan in Zhongdu (now called Beijing), China. The pope doesn’t write how the Polo family learned of the Ark’s hiding place in his own vaults, and now it hardly matters. The Ark never got into the Templars’ hands.

I know the path the Polos took—it’s called the Silk Road. I know they were drawn off course, and were hit by a tremendous sandstorm near Dunghuang that lasted for days. And when they made it to Beijing, they did not have the Ark.

So, my darlings, it is time for me to follow their route, and dig where we think they were waylaid in a storm. Our only hope is that the storm was so severe they lost the Ark, and it is still there, buried in the sand. Every sign points to a certain spot. I am sure it is there.

Since they were not Kohaths, they had no right to the Ark and they were punished for their thievery. It will not punish me, it will embrace me.

So I write to you as I wait in Dunghuang for yet another sandstorm to end and the skies to turn crystal blue and make the air clear and crisp. I hope to set out for the site at noon.

Your grandfather will guide you. As you know he is a magician when it comes to storms, and you will come to understand this when you are older.