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

then he questioned if Providence guided Kimball Hayden the same way He had shielded him.

But with Salt having the luck of the devil on his side, Mr. Spartan could only lay there and hope, since hope was all he had left.

Wrapping himself against the biting cold, Mr. Spartan waited for the aid he knew was coming. After all, the explosion of a mountaintop often drew the curious.

 

CHAPTER EIGHTY-ONE

Kimball Hayden was forty feet above the valley floor when he noted that the snowbank on Salt’s side of the line had been disrupted, as though it had taken the brunt of a fall. The impact took the shape of a snow angel, something Hayden accepted as highly peculiar for someone like Salt who often played with the devil. Perhaps the image in the snow and the man who made it was in itself an oxymoron, he considered.

As he reached the bottom with utmost caution, he wondered if Salt was lying beneath the pile or hiding in the shadows close to it, until he noticed a blood trail extend off into the distance. Salt had the ability to slow his descent upon impact, which was enough to damage but not enough to kill. The blood drops, like breadcrumbs, eventually disappeared under the brewing and swirling blizzard that was gaining strength.

Kimball Hayden, feeling the power of the universe upon his back like Atlas, would carry this great weight of responsibility directly into the hands of those who would guarantee its safety from the likes of Elias Caspari.

 

CHAPTER EIGHTY-TWO

Six Days Later

In Paris, a man sits at dinner holding hands with his family praying and giving thanks unto their Lord for the ‘bounty of food.’ His hair is dyed black to hide the absolute whiteness it used to be. And he wears contact lenses, the type of brown that’s the color of newly minted pennies to give a hue to eyes that were so pale that they appeared without color. On his leg, he wears a specialized medical boot from a recent ‘accident.’

In London, Mr. Plato is on leave after his duties of surviving a mission where the cost of ‘winning’ was too great for him to completely accept. Around him are tavern chairs, which are empty because he has no brethren to fill their vacancies. He now sits in this bar alone drinking fine liqueurs.

In Germany, Mr. Spartan lies in bed debating between the darkness he continues to feel in his heart and the ‘Light’ which saved him. It is a path he knows he must walk, which happens to be the ‘Gray’ area that fills the ‘Between’ that divides Darkness from Light. Do I now work in the ‘Dark’ to serve the ‘Light’? He asks this because he knows that Salt was never found, his body never discovered.

Somewhere inside the Consortium Fortress in Cochem, Germany, a man is seated within the shadows of his Study admiring a crucible that once belonged to Nostradamus, which now sits within its glass dome under a shedding cone of light. The polished brass of the bowl shines ethereally like a halo. But Mr. da Vinci, who was elated to hold such a possession to keep its secrets safe, did not feel complete satisfaction since the cost to retrieve it was quite heavy. The lives of good men had been lost. But that was always the case in war, the risks of battle, or the gambles needed to maintain the balance between good and evil. And it would be a war that would never end as Evil will always try to gain the staff of rule, no matter the cost of lives involved in order to obtain it. Then Mr. da Vinci becomes overwhelmed with heartache, though he marches through his grief.

Inside a vault deep beneath the Basilica in Vatican City, lies a chamber that now houses the Ark of the Covenant. It is concealed behind newly pressed walls of three-foot steel, as is the ceiling and floor, with an impenetrable door. A bishop of the Holy See, with gloved hands, gingerly places Aaron’s rod inside the Ark with reverence, as the crystal cocoon glows with the life of the particle. The staff is rejoined with the two tablets of the Ten Commandments, and a bowl of manna whose contents had turned to dust long ago. And then the lid is properly secured to blacken out the light of the crystal.

Inside the Apostolic Palace where the pontiff keeps the company of his own as he stands upon the balcony that overlooks St. Peter’s Square, he pounds that stone banister repeatedly with the heal of his hand in anger. He had intentionally sent Kimball on a mission as a man without his team of Vatican Knights, hoping that this weakness would also spell his demise. But the man was among the three survivors out of many within the unit who had gone into combat. Continuing to pound at the railing until he could pound no more, Pope Clement XV returned to his office with darkness in his heart.

In Maryland, along a lakeside front cabin, Shari Cohen is delighted to learn that Kimball was making his way back to her. With a short stop in Rome and at the Vatican that lasted three days to keep company with his Vatican Knight brethren, Kimball had said his goodbyes and caught a flight to Washington, D.C. Shari, who couldn’t wait to see the man she loved, and within those three days while he was in Rome, had fulfilled one of his desires, a surprise, something she knew would please him.

It would.

EPILOGUE

Lakeside Cabin in Maryland

After spending three days in Rome to say goodbye to his team of Vatican Knights, Kimball Hayden remained undecided about his future as he walked the long and winding road that led to the lakeside cabin. But more importantly, it was a direct path to the woman he loved.

The day was beautiful due to an abnormal warm front that was coming in from the east, though there was heavy