Bloodline

“What?”

Alden smiled and glanced at the closed bedroom door. “I think I just found a good use for our poor Major Patel.”

9

July 1, 4:55 P.M. EST

Washington, DC

Painter sat in his office, struggling with a puzzle that set his teeth to aching. Since this morning’s briefing with the president, he’d been ensconced in his windowless office at Sigma headquarters, buried several floors beneath the Smithsonian Castle, yet steps away from the halls of power and many of the country’s best scientific institutions and think tanks.

Earlier, he’d reviewed the video feed from Somalia, listened to the audio recordings. Without a doubt, Amur Mahdi had been executed in order to silence him. The CIA was already squawking about the murder of one of its local assets, even though Amur was clearly playing one side against the other. And in this case, the turncoat had gotten crushed between them.

Still, the assassination of Amur offered further support to the idea that there was more to the kidnapping of Amanda Gant-Bennett than simple piracy.

Painter was sure of it.

But what?

So far, no ransom demand had been made. There continued to be no chatter among the various regional terrorist groups, no one claiming responsibility. If they had the president’s daughter, they’d be crowing from the rooftops about it.

So what game were they playing out there?

Painter could not shake the feeling that Amanda’s kidnapping was somehow tied to the Guild. Perhaps she was being used as a pawn by a competing criminal organization to put pressure on the Gants-that is, if the Gants were indeed the true puppet masters behind the shadowy Guild.

He had a hard time balancing that with the raw fear he’d seen in the president’s eyes, the anguish and grief in the First Lady’s embrace of her husband in the hallway. Even Gant’s older brother, the secretary of state, had seemed openly sincere about finding Amanda.

But that didn’t mean other family members were not involved.

He returned his attention to the large LCD monitor on his desk. Using a mouse, he scrolled through the long list of names glowing on the screen, each of them connected by branching and crisscrossing lines marking family ties: marriages and births, even infidelities and children born out of wedlock. It mapped out the genealogy of the Gant family clan, stretching back two centuries. It was less a family tree than an interlacing matrix, so complicated it required being diagrammed out in three dimensions.

Clicking and dragging, he spun the matrix in a slow turn, a spiral galaxy of power and influence going back to before the founding of this country. And it was still incomplete. He had historians and genealogists from around the globe working piecemeal on the puzzle, to keep the project secret, building a picture of the true breadth and extent of this ancient clan. He doubted anyone had ever performed such a comprehensive analysis of the Gant clan.

He also noted lines that crossed into and out of the matrix, distant cousins marrying back into the family-not an unheard-of situation in such a powerful, aristocratic family. It seemed, generation after generation, no one wanted to drift too far from that wellspring of power and wealth.

And what a wellspring it was…

Painter had lost count of the number of inventors, scholars, statesmen, and leaders of industry that shone like stars amid the lineage. Not to mention rogues and several persons of ill repute.

But every family had its bad apples.

He frowned at the screen, seeing his faint reflection superimposed over the matrix. Was the truth of the Guild hidden here or was it all a wild-goose chase?

To remind himself of the true nature of his adversaries, Painter clicked on an image file and brought up a symbol onto the screen-or rather a nested set of symbols.

It represented the Guild.

At the center stood a tiny crescent moon and star. It was one of the oldest symbols in the world, going back to an esoteric order out of ancient Egypt. Enclosed around that, the more familiar square and compass, representing another secret fraternity: the Freemasons. And at last, circling them all, the shield of the Knights Templar, a medieval order infamous for its hidden mysteries.

“‘The secret in all secret societies,’” he whispered, repeating the dying words of a Guild associate. That was the significance of the nested symbols. It was said to represent the Guild’s path, tracing its treacherous footsteps deep into the past.

The same dying man also suspected there were more levels and tiers-other secret societies-beyond those revealed in the old symbol, secrets continuing into modern times, leading at last to what he called the True Bloodline, the ultimate masters of the shadowy Guild.

“One family,” Painter mumbled, staring at the vast lineage of the Gant clan.

To survive the scrutiny of time, the Guild had hid itself within one secret society after another. Was he staring at the same subterfuge here? Was the true heart of this shadowy organization buried within the breadth and majesty of this family dynasty?

If so, how many were involved?

He studied the three-dimensional map, sensing he was missing something, that it stared him square in the face. But whatever nagged him refused to come to light.

A knock at his door interrupted him. A tall, auburn-haired woman in dress blues stood at the threshold. Painter tapped his keyboard and wiped the Gant genealogy off the screen.

It was meant for his eyes only.

“Kat,” he said and waved the woman inside.

Captain Kathryn Bryant was his second-in-command, specializing in intelligence-gathering services for sigma.

Painter pulled his attention fully to the present, to the matters in Somalia. “Have the Brits settled down after the mess in Boosaaso?”

“Barely. But the SRR has agreed to keep things under wraps and to offer their assistance out there.”

“Very good.”

“But that’s not the only reason I stopped by,” Kat said. “I brought someone to see you.”

She stepped aside and a familiar face, draped by blond hair, peered coyly around the corner.

“Lisa!” he said, delight filling his voice. He stood up and crossed around his desk. “I thought you weren’t getting back until tonight.”

Dr. Lisa Cummings slipped inside, dressed in jeans and a loose pale-blue blouse. She tapped her wrist. “What time do you think it is?”

As usual, he’d let the day escape him-but he wasn’t going to do the same with his girlfriend. He pulled her into a warm hug, kissing her cheek, appreciating how right this felt.

She sagged into him, expressing a similar thought. “It’s good to be home.”

They lingered in each other’s arms for another breath until finally falling away, leaving only their hands clasped together. Lisa had been gone a week at a medical symposium. He had not realized how much he missed her until this moment.

He guided her to one of the chairs and settled her there before letting go of her hand.

“I heard about the president’s daughter,” Lisa said dourly. “I remember her from one of those black-tie affairs at the White House several months ago. She had just found out she was pregnant.”

“Speaking of which…” Kat took the other seat. “Director, you asked me to gather information about Amanda’s pregnancy.”