Stones of Fire

mouth, her eyes glued to the television screen.

In silence, they watched the remainder of the news, Edie muting the volume when the sports came on.

‘Don’t you think it’s odd there was no mention of Padgham’s murder? There are three dead bodies at the Hopkins Museum, yet there’s no mention of it on the nightly news.’

‘I presume the bodies haven’t been discovered.’

She shook her head. ‘On Mondays the cleaning crew arrives at four o’clock. Why didn’t they —’ She gasped. ‘Oh God! Maybe they killed the cleaning crew.’ Spinning on her heel, she made a grab for the telephone. ‘I’m going to make an anonymous call to the DC police and inform them that Dr Padgham and the two security guards were —’

C?dmon yanked the phone out of her hand.

‘What are you doing?’

‘In this day and age, it’s impossible to be truly anonymous,’ he matter-of-factly informed her. ‘We already know that the local police force has been infiltrated. If you contact the authorities, you may inadvertently lead our adversaries —’

‘Right to us.’ Grim-faced, Edie sank to the bed.

‘I have a far better suggestion.’

‘Unless it involves a magic wand, I don’t know how you’re going to make things better.’

Knowing its source, he ignored the sarcasm. ‘I propose we do a bit of cyber-sleuthing. High time we met the enemy.’ He removed his jacket from the back of the wingback chair.

‘But we don’t have a computer.’

‘True, but the bloke downstairs at the front desk seemed amiable enough.’

22

‘Boy, you don’t know your dick from a stick!’ Stanford MacFarlane railed at his subordinate.

Just like Custis. Had he lived, his son Custis would be twenty-eight years old this month. But Custis was dead, the weak-kneed snot having –

MacFarlane shoved the thought to the back of his mind.

The framed photographs had been removed, the name Custis Lee MacFarlane stricken from the family Bible. No sense regurgitating the past. It was over and done with. Mortal man could affect nothing save the here and now. And then only if it was God’s wish that he should do so.

‘What was running through your gourd, Gunny, detonating that wad of C4 without the Miller woman being in the vehicle? This operation was supposed to have been swift and silent, not a blind-man’s game of grab-ass.’

‘Sir, the explosives were rigged to go off when the engine was started. I had no way of knowing the C4 would detonate when the tow truck hooked the —’

‘Well, you should have known! And how is it that Aisquith and Miller eluded six — count ’em — six men trained in urban warfare.’

‘I don’t know how they got the slip on us, sir.’

MacFarlane was sorely tempted to ram his knee into his subordinate’s crotch. Penance for his sins. Instead, he strode over to his desk. A hardback book, Isis Revealed, lay in plain sight on top of his in tray. He grabbed the book, waving it in front of the gunny’s face.

‘Are you saying that the man who wrote this pack of lies outsmarted six of Rosemont’s finest?’ He’d earlier had one of his assistants purchase the book, a hunter needing to know the nature of the beast before he laid his traps.

‘He’s good, sir. That’s all I know. Riggins is fairly certain they slipped through the 7th Street exit.’

MacFarlane wasn’t fooled by the Brit’s bravado. No doubt, Aisquith and the Miller woman were holed up somewhere, trying to figure out their next move. They were afraid, uncertain who they could trust. He had carefully cultivated that mistrust when he had spoken to the woman. The mess at the Hopkins Museum had been swept clean and the fiasco at the National Gallery of Art attributed to a rogue terrorist. But all that could change if Ms Miller gave a statement to the police.

He dismissively tossed the book aside, his gaze momentarily landing on the jacket photograph of a red-haired man in a tweed sports jacket. There is a special place in hell for men who blaspheme the teachings of the one true God. Soon enough, the ex-intelligence operative turned faux historian would know the meaning of terror, Aisquith playing with a fire that could not be extinguished.

As the silent seconds ticked past, Boyd Braxton wordlessly stared at him, a ‘Help me, I’m drowning’ look on his broad face. It put the colonel in mind of the night that the gunny murdered his wife and child. A mistake committed in a moment of unchecked rage, MacFarlane had used the calamitous event to bring the sobbing, baby- faced gunnery sergeant to God. He’d done good work that night, having made a promise not to turn his back on the man who now stood before him.

Ass-chewing administered, Stanford MacFarlane pointed to the parquet floor. ‘On your knees, boy. It’s time you begged the Almighty’s forgiveness.’

A look of relief on his face, Braxton obediently dropped to his knees, his head bowed in prayer. Glancing down, MacFarlane could see the crisscrossed scars that marred his subordinate’s skull. Souvenirs of a sinner’s life, the scars were undoubtedly the result of a broken beer bottle making contact with Braxton’s head.

Stepping back, giving the other man the space he needed to make his peace with God, MacFarlane walked over to a box on the other side of the room, the Stones of Fire packed and ready for transport. Acquiring the breastplate had been the preliminary to a much larger operation. A means to an end. The end being the cleansing of all perversion, all licentiousness.

Like ancient Egypt, America was headed down the path of destruction, the world no different now than it had been in the days of the pharaoh. Plague upon plague had been visited upon the godless pagans, none immune save the God-fearing Moses and his Hebrews. So, too, this epoch would see God’s might as never before, his terrible swift sword striking down the false prophets, the feel-good TV shrinks, the prosperity gurus. Those who do not heed the warnings of the Old Testament prophets would discover first hand how God judged sin.

With so little time left, America must have a revival of repentance, the nation having strayed from the tenets of God’s word as transcribed by the prophets. A course correction was needed. Holy warriors were needed.

MacFarlane walked over to the framed map that hung behind his desk. Starting at Washington DC, he cast his gaze due east. To Jerusalem.

‘O holy city of Zion, God’s glittering jewel,’ he murmured, ‘God said the Temple shall be rebuilt… and so it shall.’ Rejuvenated, he turned away from the map. ‘Rise to your feet, boy, and start acting like the man of God that you are.’

As Braxton shoved himself upright, a disembodied voice came over the telephone intercom. ‘They just brought Eliot Hopkins into the waiting room, sir.’

Pleased, MacFarlane turned to his subordinate. ‘Show the museum director into the office. And make sure you give him a hearty Rosemont welcome.’

23

‘How is it you know so much about Moses and his Egyptian roots?’ Edie enquired as she and C?dmon waited for the computer to boot up.

The hotel night porter, a good-natured student at the nearby George Mason School of Law, had given them access to a computer in the back office. More a storage alcove, the room was stacked with plastic bins and boxes. Sitting side by side at the computer, C?dmon in the lone swivel chair, Edie perched on a bin, they were there to cyber-sleuth. Although what C?dmon thought he’d find was a mystery to her.

‘For a brief time I dabbled in Egyptology while an undergraduate at Oxford,’ C?dmon said in response to her question. ‘That was before I became thoroughly infatuated with the Knights Templar and jumped ship, as you Yanks