The Rosary Riddle (A Chyna Stone Adventure Book 7) Read online

No.

  She knew she was right. She felt it in her bones. It was harder to trust her instinct now, yes, but she had known Tony intimately for fifteen years. And Chyna was nothing if not observant; despite missing that he would betray her, there was no possible way he could have hidden everything, there must be a clue in their joint history. He had a game plan, and she was sure that something must have happened to have made him reveal his carefully concealed identity and his so called reborn Illuminati. Anger be damned, she was going to get to the bottom of it.

  “Chyna,” Mark called to her. She turned to see him in leaning against the doorway with his cane supporting his bad leg.

  “Not now, Mark. I know—”

  “I’m not here to berate you. Oscar just found something. We think you should see this.” His voice was grave, and it was only then that she noticed the worry lines on his face, more pronounced than before his ordeal.

  “Okay,” she said and she followed him back into the living room, expecting some kind of reaction or at least castigation for her behavior, but found that everyone was more focused on the lone laptop screen and their phones than her. Something was definitely up.

  “What’s going on?” she asked, and it was only then that they looked up. Yet, no one mentioned the incident that had taken place just moments ago, and for that she was thankful for their compassion.

  “They’re gone,” Lana said. “The artifacts that we recovered on our adventures and expeditions? They’ve all been stolen.”

  “What?!” Chyna’s eyes widened. “How?”

  “We don’t know yet.” Sirita said, but her eyes were still boring into the laptop. “But we’re on it.”

  “How could this have happened?” Chyna shook her head. “I mean, they’ve all been kept under proper security in their respective locations, right?”

  “Yes, they have, but someone—or some people—got to them and stole them all, every last one.” The worry lines were stark on Oscar’s face.

  “Everything? The Codex? The Armor?”

  “Everything, Chyna. Every single thing we’ve ever recovered is gone,” Oscar said grimly.

  “Not everything,” Sirita piped up. “The Minoan Mask is still in the University museum, and obviously the Babylonian display can’t just be put into the back of a pickup truck. There’s a pattern here though. It’s not much to go on, but there is.”

  “What is it?” Lana said.

  “Who owned the Codex?” Sirita said, standing up and wiping the whiteboard clear of numerous bubble charts and notes in many different hands and colored markers. She pulled the top off a fresh black marker and wrote codex on the whiteboard, in the top left corner, and looked at Chyna.

  “Ankhesenamun, the Egyptian Queen,” Chyna answered. Sirita wrote Ankhesenamun next to codex.

  “And the Aquitaine Armor?” Sirita’s pen flew over the board.

  “Eleanor of Aquitaine.” Came the answer.

  Sirita’s raised brow was enough of a hint for Chyna to fill in the blanks in the theory for herself.

  “They’ve taken all the artifacts owned by great women,” Chyna concluded, “The bow; The Ivory Bow, I guess he’s stolen that too. It was owned by Christina of Sweden.”

  “Yup, pattern right there,” Sirita nodded.

  “Or it could be a coincidence,” Mark said. “Maybe there’s no pattern and the Minoan Mask is next. We should let the curators in Athens know it may be under threat.”

  “Emailing them now, I’ll advise doubling their security,” Lana said, turning back to her own laptop.

  “How the hell did they break into the Hagia Sofia?” Oscar wondered. He had been particularly impressed with both Rashid Abdullah, the curator, and his security set up at the famous museum. “We should call and check up on him.”

  “What do we do now?” Mark said, “Alright, this is a thread that could be true, but we don’t know why, or what for, or even how these artifacts could possibly be of use together.”

  “We are going to have to go through our job requests and begin looking for historical artifacts owned by famous women,” Chyna said. “If this is their plan and their pattern is consistent, then there must be other items that they’re after. Logically, if they had everything they needed to do whatever it is they are going to do, Tony would already have done it; and now that they think they have us stymied after the whole Dresden affair, they must think they can beat us to them. In fact, I think this supports my theory from earlier—now, I am sorry for blowing up at you all, I really am, but if Tony really is moving to the next level, then these artifacts must mean something to them. I don’t know what they plan on doing if they find them, but it can’t be good. We don’t even know if they need them at all, but the fact is that we need to stop them.”

  “You think really fast, do you know that?” Mark complimented Chyna with a wistful smile.

  “I may be emotionally compromised, but my ability to think logically is pretty intact, I assure you,” Chyna shot back.

  “Enough with the verbal foreplay you two,” Lana said. “Come over here and take a look at this.”

  Chyna looked toward Mark and saw the faintest hint of a blush, but he quickly composed himself and rounded the table to sit by Lana and her laptop, which was surrounded by some notes and scribbles on various yellow Post-its.

  “I didn’t think it was important enough to report, but then I caught the news when I fired up my email and I know that it couldn’t be random. At first I didn’t even think it was a pattern, but the research says otherwise.” She mumbled to herself and trailed off as her eyes ran over the article on her screen.

  “Lana, what is going on?” Chyna said.

  “I’ve been collecting stories, weird ones in case they turned up something useful. I’ve got them coming in through my RSS feed. Pretty much just the standard practice for when we’re investigating a new item; but here,” she frowned, and handed Chyna her laptop, “look at this. All of these are articles I’ve collected from the news out of Spain, and they’re all about similar incidents.”

  Chyna browsed through the wide array of pages that Lana had saved in a folder, and she momentarily remembered a time when she would sift through cuttings of newspapers, doing this same job manually. However, the news at hand was much more important than remnants of the past.

  “You see?” Lana coaxed.

  “How is this possible?” Chyna frowned.

  “What happened?” The voice that spoke belonged to Mark.

  “Religious madness, or at the best case some kind of mass hysteria it seems. All of these are news pieces about different people. Apparently, they started experiencing religious visions and then went mad, as in psychotic, crazy mad. They claimed they were working for God and whatnot. Most of them have been admitted to mental institutions all over the place, but doctors are still not sure of what it is.”

  “Some kind of fever, maybe? Physical illness tends to get to the brain sometimes, right?” Mark had by now taken the seat in front of the laptop and was doing some sifting of his own.

  “No. Every person who was afflicted was in perfect health, except some who had the common cold and such. No linking histories of mental disorders, drug abuse, nothing.” Chyna shook her head.

  “So why is this important?” Mark was still lost.

  “Because of the Rosary of Isabella,” Chyna stated plainly. It hadn’t taken her a minute to guess why Lana had called her when she had. Lana was good at sniffing out opportunities where there seemed to be none.

  “The rosary of who?”

  “The Rosary of Isabella. Isabella the First, or Isabella the Catholic, was the wife of Ferdinand II of Aragon and the Queen of Castile and Leon, which was the crown of Castile. There was immense turmoil in Spain during her time, but she brought stability to the nation, for better or worse.

  “It’s said that she was deeply Catholic and most of her decisions were, according to her, brushed by the hand of God. She had a rosary she used to keep with her at all times. Even in publi
c appearances, or when sleeping at night, she always kept it with her. She claimed it lent her prudence, gave her messages from God. It was also said that she experienced visions and voices that she claimed were God himself talking to her. When she died, people began believing that the rosary had magical powers, and that it really was a gift of God to Isabella that had helped her save the kingdom. News spread fast, and soon people began to vie to obtain the rosary. But soon superstitions arose around it and the most propagated one was that this particular rosary could only be passed on to Isabella’s blood successors. Anybody else who tried to wear it and harness its power would go mad with delusion. It could only be controlled by her and the blood of her blood, as if she had marked it. It got lost in time, though. I think it was passed on to her grandson, Charles, who became the next king of Spain, and it was just never seen again. Some thought it was stolen, though the popular thinking went that it had been hidden somewhere.

  “The signs that these people are showing—madness, religious visions, and hallucinations and so on—they can only point to the possibility that it has been found, or rediscovered, I think.”

  By the time Chyna finished speaking, Sirita and Oscar had joined them and were listening intently. Mark was still peering into the laptop, as was Lana, peering from over his shoulder.

  “Or maybe it’s just a trap. You’re pulling at big straws here. How do you know it’s not just a bad batch of LSD?” Oscar stated.

  Chyna had never felt more cheated than she did now at Oscar’s words.

  “What’s your problem?” she barked.

  “What?” Oscar raised an eyebrow. She knew he was challenging her, and damn her if she backed down.

  “Why are you just itching to take a bite out of me? Do you think I’m some kind of a moron? That I don’t know what to do?” she seethed.

  “I didn’t say that. I’m just saying that your judgment might be a little bit clouded after what you went through. What you’re saying now is just supporting what you said earlier. Look at this: another artifact owned by a famous woman. If they stole all the others, what are the chances that they are not staking us out now waiting to follow us as soon as we leave?” Oscar explained.

  Chyna knew his argument was valid, but that didn’t mean that she would be deterred from following the course she had already set.

  “So? I also said that we need to stop him from reaching them before us,” she countered.

  “Doesn’t matter. It’s too dangerous. They might be waiting, whoever they are.” Oscar shrugged. “I can’t let you do that.”

  “Do what?”

  “Go wherever this is happening.”

  Chyna stared at him long and hard as if wishing to burn a hole in the spot where he stood. His concern was understandable and touching, but she knew that if she wanted any form of closure, she would have to do it all on her own.

  “Lana?” she called out.

  “Yup.”

  “Where was the last report from?”

  “Wait... it was a town called Cordoba.”

  “Book the flights, get us a place to stay and make sure security is covered.” The finality in her voice rang out as loud as her announcement: “The rosary is being moved.”

  Chapter three

  RSS feed. Lana Ambrose, 2014

  The Stepmother: Juana was born in 1439, 14 years younger than Enrique. Juana was very unfaithful and very flaunting. Her behavior was no better than that of a woman in the brothels. Because of her scandalous ways, when she gave birth to a daughter in 1462 named Juana, the baby was nicknamed ‘la Beltraneja’. Many believed her father was not King Enrique but was Beltran de la Cueva, Enrique’s chief steward. While Juana drained the treasuries to live in luxury and finery, Enrique lived in a lifestyle opposite from his wife’s. He did not bathe, he was dirty, and he never changed his clothes. King Enrique had been married once before, to Blanca of Navarre. She had died in 1464. King Enrique and his family lived at the castle of Segovia, where he also kept Isabella and Alfonso. Isabella grew up in the secluded castle and was very religious, which would come into play later in her life. She and her ladies entertained themselves with music, embroidery, and art. She lived a relaxed lifestyle, but she rarely left her prison. Enrique was keeping her from the political turmoils going on in the kingdom, though Isabella had full knowledge of what was going on and her role in the feuds.

  ***

  The aura around him was supposed to be divine, spiritual, exulting, and maybe it was to all the other people in the room. In his years of association with the Illuminati Reborn, Tony had seen many strange things; circles drawing themselves in the sand, a fire atop a mountain deep underground and men screaming and dying, flayed alive for betrayal of the tenets. Despite his experiences and what he had seen, Tony had a hard time buying into it completely. Direct contact with the sect and also with the knowing winks and favoritism within the FBI had shown him just how deeply entrenched his secret masters were in the fabric of the global power structure. He was still a cop, and despite the evidence and the burden of proof, he felt that it still lay with the cult to produce categorical, empirically tested results. He knew the effects of psychotropic drugs on the mind and he was sure that there was more than incense in the burners surrounding the altar. He himself had used scopolamine on more than one occasion to persuade people into doing all manner of things for his sponsors. It wouldn’t do to let these doubts show in this place, the consequences of that he knew all too well, reprogramming and lobotomy or death itself, and he concentrated on the altar in front of him, and the wailing of the goat that was being subjected to cruel slaughter in the name of some stupid grand architect and an even stupider society. What a waste.

  He looked over himself, dressed in flimsy robes that the society garbed him in, and then to One Eye, who was heading the ceremony. If it had not already been proved, One Eye would still think that the sun went around the Earth. His ideas were archaic and chaotic, but in technical terms the man whose name he had never learned actually outranked him in this arena. Something to do with 12th level Observator privilege which struck Tony as ironic, given One Eye’s obvious biological lack of depth perception.

  Tony, on the other hand, was the one who looked at the stars to tell the positions of the Earth. He was the one who investigated and believed and did not go on blind faith. He was a practical man, a fast thinker, an actor. Cop. How did he get into this? Of course he remembered why, it was the promise of power. Advancement. The realization that the tendrils of the society went so far and so deep that to ignore them was to accept slavery and remaining another member of the bovine herd instead of ascending to the higher echelons and attaining the divine. What a joke, the only real divinity was in the exertion of power. The strong survive, and the best chance of survival that Tony had was with Illuminati Reborn.

  The chanting around Tony grew louder and louder until his ears and head ached. All he wanted was for this to be over, but he followed with the rest of them, reciting his parts with an external show of fervor.

  As the ritual neared its end, everyone gathered around the altar where the now disemboweled creature had finally stopped wailing. He was lying dead in a heap of blood and entrails that ran from inside him to under the mahogany table that served as the sacrificial altar, collected by a silver bowl which overflowed with gore. The stench was sour, fecal, sanguine and profane. As he had seen before with these cowled figures—none of whom he knew the true names of, although he suspected they all knew his—the sacred event would soon be followed in the wake of slaughter.

  He saw One Eye smear his hands in goat blood and pour on it a tar-like, black substance which caused some kind of chemical reaction with the blood of the goat, fizzing in alkaloid alchemy, producing great gouts of sputtering green-black smoke that engulfed One Eye. Tony had once been told that the ritual was once performed with the blood of virgin girls. As an unfortunate side effect of greater documentation of the human populace over the last century, not to mention the perceived relaxat
ion of social attitudes toward promiscuity, the society had made the reluctant decision to replace human blood with that of livestock to the detriment of the quality of the ritual. Of course the last human sacrifice for divination had taken place long before Tony had been illuminated, so to him the ritual was as mythical as the covenant of the Catholics or the nature worship of the druids. Unlike those forelock tugging fools, by whatever manner of description Tony chose to apply to the event or the reasoning behind it, the sacrifice always produced results. The smoke formed pillars in the air around them, great Moorish styled columns that floated in the windless environment, moving and positioning themselves with no external influence that Tony could see into great banks, filling the sacrificial chamber. One such apparition passed right through him, reforming itself on the other side of his body, leaving a salty taste in his mouth and bitter fumes in his olfactory system. Over the body of the goat, at the center of the grid formed by the columns the smoke pooled into a great flat disc four feet in diameter. A minute or so passed, and Tony looked around to the dozen men around him, who stood stock still and said and did nothing. He was smart enough to not question the inactivity out loud and to be patient. After an excruciating wait of some seconds, the pulsing and pounding of his blood in his ears the only sound apart from his shallow breaths, a change came over the apparition. A building formed in the mists, by the looks of it a Christian church in the style popular in the Mediterranean in the pre-Renaissance era. Moorish pillars, surrounding a Christian church. There was only one place that Tony knew of that juxtaposed the two; but why were they being shown this vision? What did it mean with regard to his goals?

  “Mezquita,” One Eye said.

  “Mezquita,” repeated the cloaked figures in unison.

  Tony gritted his teeth. It was all well and good invoking these rituals, they never failed in their guidance, but why was everything always so obtuse? The candles that illuminated the chamber went out, and by the time he had fumbled his way to the exit, he realized he was alone, apart from One Eye, who had discarded his robes and stood in his conventional clothes. Tony felt ridiculous, but could not simply drop the consecrated garments. How did he do that? Tony followed One Eye in silence to the rooms above the chamber, through a palm print activated security door into the office where he had left his bag and his civilian clothes. Once suitably dressed—another invasion of his privacy as One Eye watched the entire process with his one eye—the two men left the building via the exit usually reserved for diplomats and governmental aides. The United Nations building was sixteen miles from John F. Kennedy Airport, but with a diplomatic plated car and police escort, the journey would be quick even with late afternoon traffic. From previous experience, Tony knew that by the time they arrived at their destination a plane would be waiting to traverse the Atlantic to Spain.