Map of Bones/Chapter 4

Chapter 4 Dust to Dust

July 24 12:14 P.M.
Washington D.C.

The Mission was assigned crimson priority, black assignation, and silver security protocols. This kind of mission had one meaning: Do not fail. Painter sat at his desk and reviewed his ops manager’s report. All seemed in order. Credentials established, safe-house codes updated, equipment checks completed, satellite schedules coordinated, and a thousand other details arranged. Painter ran a finger down the projected cost analysis. He had a budget meeting next week with the Joint Chiefs. This mission was not given the usual operations manager but himself in anticipation of an audit of the security protocols.

Painter had to choose the details. He had asked Kara Kensington to help them. She lent a jet.

Monk Kokkalis and Kat Bryant came in.

Along with Pierce, who returns after going to his parents place.

The mission brief.

Painter tells them the mission. He mentions the attack on the cathedral. The only items stolen were the shrine’s contents. The supposed bones of the biblical Magi. “Jason Pendleton. American. Age twenty-one. He was found hiding in a confessional booth. He was barely coherent when first discovered, but after a regimen of sedatives, he was able to give a tentative report. The party involved were robed and cloaked as monks. No faces were ID’d. They stormed the cathedral. Armed with rifles. Several people were shot, including the priest and archbishop.”

“And how does this involve Sigma?” Kat asked. “There were other deaths. Inexplicable deaths. To break into the security vault, the assailants employed some device that not only shattered the metal and bulletproof cage, but also, at least according to the survivor, triggered a wave of death across the cathedral.”

Full autopsy reports were included. Initiall believed to be some extreme convulsive event coupled with sever hypothermia, affecting other organs. Painter noted the only ones to suffer were the ones who had partaken of Communion service. The Vatican had contacted them because it fears the repercussions if the information was published that some group may be targeting Communion service. The team would be working with peple in the Vatican. Their e nd goal: to find out who perpetrated the crime and what device they employed.

Gray points out there are two factors: an extrinsic factor and an intrinsic factor. The device, - extrinsic factor triggered the mass seizure. Only those who participated in the Communion had been affected. So therere was an intrinsic factor. Gray points out it was the Communion bread that must have been poisoned. Painter says there were bread sent over to labs across the EU and all analyses showed nothing but wheat, flour, water, and the usual bakery ingredients for unleavened bread wafers. The labs at DARPA had found something that the other labs didn't. After everything was stripped away, there was a bit of dry weight: a whitish powder. It was sitting on scales, but was determined to be nothing based on the machines. After a chemical processes, the powder was annealed back to its original form: Gold.

6:24 P.M.
Rome, Italy Rachel sat in the Carabinieri patrol. She could not shake a feeling that her Uncle Vigor was dead. The patrolman was the first on the scene. Rachel refused medical care and used her authority as a lieutenant to order the man to take her to the Vatican. Asa they got closer, they see the a column of black smoke coin up in the indigo sky from the Tower of the Winds. Vigor was there. She tells the patroman to go for St. Anne's Gate. However, they only got to three blocks away as all traffic forward was blocked. Carabiniere Norre, as he was called, handed her his service weapon. Rachel walks forward.

Crows filled the sidewalks to watch. Rachel walks up to the Gate and goes past the Swiss Guard, now no halbers, but assault rifles. Emergency vehicles came and issuing jets of water. Someone came and told the guards to let them through and directed her to the groundskeeper cart. Her destination was a eliport, orders from Cardinal Spera. Rachel continued to focus on one concern:Uncle Vigor. The cart zipped through the grounds. They arrived at destination:airfield. A single helicopter rested on its skids. It was powering up. There was Cardinal Spera. Stepped out was her uncle Vigor. Sadly, Jacob had died. They get in, and the helicopter moves. Away from the Vatican and over the Tiber. Rachel was briefed. The sole survivor of the Cologne massacre described something for a sketch artist, as it was embroidered on the chest of one of the attackers. It was the coiled figure of a red dragon, wings blazed out, tail twisted and serpentine, wrapped around its own neck. An ancient symbol of the Dragon Court. It was spawned from the time of the antique era.

Rachel recalled and was familiar with the reign of the Vatican antipopes, men who sat as head of the Cartholic Churgch but whose election was later declared uncanonical. 40 antipopes occurred over the years. The most turmultuous era was during the 13th century when the legitimate papacy as driven out of Rome and into France. For seventy years, popes regained in exile while Rome was governed by a series of corrupt antipopes.

The Dragon Court is still active, and its sovereignty is recognized by the EU, similar to the knights of Malta, who hold observer status at the nited States. It admitted to having members withint he Catholic Church. A few years back, there was a scandal. Father Malachi Martin, a Jesuit priest, wrote of a 'secret church' within the churgch. He was a scholar who spoke seventeen languages, authored many scholarly texts, and an associate of Pope John XXIII, having worked for 20 years. His last book, written before he died, spoke of a cult within the Vatican itself, performing rites in secret. Knowledge of the Court is little. By the twelfth century, a resurgence in Gnostic or mystical belief began to arise, taken up in secret by the same emperors who had once beaten it down. A schism slowly formed as the Church moved toward the Catholicism we know today, while the emperors continued their Gnostic practices. Holy Roman Emperor Sigismund of Luxembourg backed the Vatican and abolished Gnostic practices among the lower classes. The aristocracy was spared. He created a secret society. The Ordinis Draconis, the Imperial Royal Dragon Court that continues to the modern day. They wanted control and the goal of all madmen: Armageddon.

4:04 P.M.
Airborne over the Atlantic. Gray is happily enjoying the confortable seat.

The team would be landing in 4 hours and at 2 A.M. German time. Kat Bryant was a secretive person whose past is unkown. They don't know a whole lot but it was the work of the Dragon Court. It is surmised the attack is intended to send a message.

The logistics of the attack was interest. After getting information together, they get ready.

10:24 P.M. Lausanne Switzerland
Chateau Sauvage] sat in the mountain pass of the Savoy alps like a stone giant. It was one of the oldest privately owned castles, belonging to the Suvage family. The current master Baron Raoul de Sauvage descended the stairs that led below the castle, followed by a massive Bernese mountain dog. He had matters to settle. He passed the dungeon level of the castle. Wine, and several items. His family had helped several Nazi leaders escape out of Ausria after World war II, families with ties to the Hapsburgs. As payment, his father had kepts ome money. Now at age of 33, Raoul, would surpass him.

Going further down, he entered the wid subterranean grotto. It was a cave with carvings. He tells his dog to stay. He walked forward. The Sovereign Grand Imperator of the Court waited before him before the altar. Raoul dropped to a knee before the Imperator. He was the head of the Court's adepti exempti, the military order, an honor going back to Vlad the Impaler. The Imperator says something. The Americans are already under way. Allies to are sent and they have to clean up their failure in Germany. There was one survivor. He had to return after his mission to get the bones. IT was another trip to Germany.