The Eye of Moses - Vatican Knights Series 22 (2020), Rick Jones [learn to read books txt] 📗

As he sat at his desk with his fingers tented and bouncing them off his chin in deep thought, he was ruminating about Salt’s successful conquest in attaining the crucible and the staff, a coup that could have only been managed by few.

He had always been a powerful man because he had come from money. And money dictated a lot of what he could do by greasing the palms of the needy and the greedy in order to conform situations to meet his demands. Over time he had powerful people on his payroll, those who were willing to turn a blind eye to his activities. But those who eventually discovered a conscience and found his actions objectionable, summarily disappeared and were never seen again. So was the might of David who stood as tall as Goliath.

Now, at the age of fifty-two and having created a financial empire from illegal weapons sales, Elias Caspari was one of the wealthiest men in the world who had laundered his funds through several dummy corporations and hid his assets in offshore accounts that were far from Interpol’s reach.

His mode of operation had always been consistent and never strayed. He would have his techs hack through the firewall systems of major weapons and munitions facilities to misappropriate the blueprints to prototype weapons. Then his engineers would glean enough from these designs to develop state-of-the-art weaponry for the black market, long before the original architects of the blueprints could finalize their wares. His people were adept at what they did illegally and thoroughly sanitized their cyber-fingerprints so that nothing was left behind, not even a trace element.

But what he had in the lab beneath the topside facility was the Holy Grail of all weapons once the engineers were able to properly harness and utilize the power of the dark element. In his mind’s eye he could imagine warheads that contained an atom-sized particle that was more powerful than the bolide that had leveled more than 800 square miles of Serbian forest in 1908. In fact, he realistically pictured a circumference of destruction in the thousands of square miles. With such power, he could wield demands of his choosing with confidence to world leaders without being contested. And should the desire from certain government principals decide to flex their muscles against Caspari, he would retaliate by flexing an even larger muscle of the dark particle.

For years he had been obsessed by the self-destructive ways of the human race with wars and prejudices and religious hatreds all coming to a heated point of contention. So, he hastened the process by selling armaments to weaken governments, believing that the price of progress was destruction. Once man placed himself on the brink of extinction, that’s when he would become a savior and show the world a new way under one government, under one rule. Totalitarianism, in his view, was the way to global peace. The price, however, would be the collateral damage of lost lives amounting into the hundreds of millions. And the power of the dark particle would give him this staff that he could wield with a mighty swing, as though it was the trident of Poseidon.

Salt had done well.

Standing and walking towards the window that overlooked the purple chain of mountains in the distance and the glimmering surface of the lake below, Elias Caspari clasped his hands behind his back and admired the beauty of the scenery before him. If man did not correct his course, he thought, these mountains would eventually become black from nuclear fires and the lake a boiling cauldron. It was up to him to shift the trajectory of man’s continuous journey to this eventual end, even if government leaders labeled him to be mad, egotistical or a megalomaniac. But if there was one thing that Elias Caspari learned over a lifetime; it was that the people on both sides of war believed that their cause was the just one.

After nodding lightly in appreciation of the landscape, Elias Caspari returned to his desk. There was so much more that he had to do.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

Maryland

Shari Cohen was a strikingly beautiful woman who loved her lakeside cabin and the new life that was forming with Kimball by her side. Understanding that he was fated to perform certain duties, she did not voice her disappointment when he got the call from the Vatican. Though her concern became tantamount when she learned it was a solo mission and highly dangerous, this made her insides crawl as though a legion of ants were marching across her organs—her heart, especially. When she had fallen in love with Kimball for his unpresumptuous ways, she quickly realized the umbilical tie between them—that soulmate attachment. And when she could tell that he wanted to propose marriage to her but lacked the courage to do so, and not because of chest puffing or out of manly machismo, but because he was too shy, she couldn’t have been more blissful, more ecstatic, or more appreciative of their moments together, and decided to let Kimball ask for her hand when he felt the moment right. But fate, along with its cruel hand, always seemed to intervene at the most inopportune time and, in its way, was unjustifiable in her eyes. So, she prayed that Kimball would return to her, and that Fate would not stand between them and cruelly rip the rug out from under them.

Unable to concentrate on the book she was reading, Shari looked at the wall clock and noted the time. Kimball had been in the air for seven hours. Then closing her eyes and fisting her hands over her heart, which she believed was the seat of emotions and not just a muscle, she whispered, “Come back to me, Kimball. That’s all I ask . . . Please, come back.”

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

Lake Lucerne, Switzerland

Salt had slept so deeply that he felt fully rejuvenated. His wife was on the balcony sitting on a lounge chair reading a magazine. The kids were