catalog on the display.
It was slick, glossy, and Carillo looked through it, didn’t see anything earth-shattering, but figured it couldn’t hurt to compare the catalog to what was being shown, and once he was taken directly to the display, he checked off each item, figured everything was there. She’d seemed particularly interested in something at the end of the last case. There was an illuminated map, and next to that a belt buckle depicting the Templar cross, a ring with the same cross, an old coin showing the double Templar Knights on horseback, and then a very worn cross engraved with the Crucifixion.
But then he looked at the catalog again, saw the price stamped on the cover. “I don’t suppose you have security tapes of the gift shop, do you?”
“Actually, we do. Just never thought about that.”
“I’d like to have a look.”
Sydney woke with a start, looked around, not recognizing the darkened room. There was a second of momentary panic as she recalled the accident, her basement prison, and she thought about Tex, wondered if they’d found him yet. If they were even looking for him. Griffin had come after her, saved her in direct defiance of any orders. What she wanted to know was, orders from whom? What obscure branch of the government did he work for? Was ATLAS a shadow branch of one of the most covert branches? Very much like her father’s work. Before his death, he’d worked special ops, even black ops for the army, and kept it from his family, work that wasn’t always on the up-and-up.
Was what she’d been doing on the up-and-up? She had only Griffin to assure her it was. Only his word that Carlo Adami, a man with legitimate ties to the U.S. and their allies, one of the most respected businessmen in the world, a man who funded numerous global charitable organizations, was up to his neck in murder and terrorist funding. Publicly accusing such a man of conspiring with terrorists to further his business interests would have been as welcome as someone accusing the pope of conspiring with the devil to help the church.
“You’re awake.”
She glanced over the edge of an eiderdown quilt, saw Griffin watching her from the arched doorway. “Yeah,” she said.
“How do you feel?”
“Sore all over. Groggy from the painkillers.” She remembered nothing after the stop at the hospital, other than sleeping on the long drive. “Where are we?” she asked, eyeing the wooden-beamed ceiling.
He walked into the room, stood at the side of the large double bed. “Our safe house. Your CT scan was clean, so other than a few bruises and scrapes, the cut on your hand from the shovel-”
“The least of my worries…Tex?”
“Nothing yet. But it doesn’t look good.”
“I’m sorry.”
“It wasn’t your fault.”
“But he recognized me. Adami’s cousin. From the hotel. He came after me.”
Griffin didn’t respond.
“Is anyone going to look for Tex?” she asked.
“Tex didn’t follow orders. He should have left. He knew the rules.” Before she could think of what to say, he turned, walked toward the door, and with his back to her, said, “I’ll see you in the morning.”
“Where are you going?”
He didn’t answer. He didn’t need to. She knew. Rules or no rules, he was going to look for Tex.
Jon Westgate exited the sedan that pulled up in front of Adami’s villa. The morning sun lit up the hillside. It also blinded him as he was approached by one of Adami’s goons, who patted him down for weapons. If Adami weren’t so bloody important to their operation, he would never have submitted himself to such humiliation. Surely the man knew that all Westgate needed to do was make one phone call, and for all Adami’s millions, he would never survive the next day.
But that was just it. Adami knew. And he also knew that as long as he held the cards he did, Westgate would never make that call. They’d needed him. But that was about to change.
Weapons search over, the goon escorted Westgate up the travertine stairs, through a large salon, then past the impressive double staircase, and a length of windows that looked out over a massive veranda, which bore the remnants of the previous evening’s festivities. They continued on up a back set of stairs that led to a private balcony with an unparalleled view of the lake, where Adami sat eating his breakfast. He looked up, smiled at Westgate, then indicated he should sit.
Westgate pulled out a chair, taking a seat across from Adami.
“Would you care for something to eat or drink?” Adami asked him.
“No, thank you. Tell me about the party.”
Adami took his damned time, sipping at a glass of orange juice, keeping him waiting. “An unexpected visitor,” he finally said, then proceeded to tell him what had happened the night before.
“Griffin was here? How did he get in?”
“The back wall, apparently. The guard who was working it is no longer in my employ.”
No doubt now residing at the bottom of Lake Nemi, Westgate thought. Adami’s penchant for killing aside, he turned his thoughts to what had transpired at the party before Griffin had arrived. “This woman, do you know who she was?”
“Unfortunately, not yet. I sent someone out to the hotel where they first ran into her, but apparently the records were sanitized. We learned from a maid that a woman of her description checked in, but as for any names…” He shrugged in that insolent way of his, as though he couldn’t be bothered by such minute details. “A shame we lost her, though. I had some high hopes of using her to bait some of the attending dignitaries.”
And there was the crux of Adami’s power. He had taken the lessons learned from the old Propaganda Due Masonic lodge, disbanded over two decades ago, and used them to his advantage. On the surface he was the king of altruism. Beneath, he had a number of high-ranking politicians and dignitaries from countless countries in his pocket. Most were brought into the fold by way of Freemasonry, a common bond exploited by Adami. He was careful to nurture this connection until he had them where he wanted them. Some were there due to simple bribery on a grand scale. Others because they believed in the cause, domination of the world’s banking system. A few very powerful heads of state, however, needed a bit more coercion, and therein was the key to Adami’s success, because he had dared to find out what their innermost fantasies were, then presented them with such, only to blackmail them once their wishes were fulfilled.
Surprising how many of them were sexually deviant, when presented the right opportunity. Not surprising how many caved, once they were faced with reality and a few choice photos or tapes of their escapades. And the Freemasons were the perfect venue with which to hide and manipulate those men. The inner circle of a secret society lent itself to corruption, because there were no checks and balances, no oversight. The Catholic Church got that part right when it condemned Freemasonry all those years ago. So yes, aside from the plain, greedy power mongers, or the bribed officials, the new C3 Masonic lodge also had its share of extremely powerful deviant members who would go to great lengths to ensure that their intimate lives didn’t cross over to their public personas.
It was perhaps this, more than the bribery and blackmail, that made Adami such a distasteful partner in crime. And the very thing that made him such a dangerous one. As much intel as Westgate’s boss had available at his disposal, he had yet to learn exactly
He smiled at Adami, decided it best to change the subject. “My boss doesn’t seem to think that this little plan of yours to stir up tension will work. He thinks you should just stick with supplying the bio arms that we agreed upon.”
“Little plan? Trust me. If we find what we’re seeking, it will do more than stir up tension.”
“Well here’s the thing-”
“The thing…?”
“Cut the I’m-Italian-and-don’t-understand-your-Americanisms crap. You’re as Italian as I am.”
“I haven’t been to America in well over twenty years.”
