Blood Relics (A James Acton Thriller, #12) Read online

  “Gregory!”

  “Sorry, hon.” He turned back to Acton. “A crap-magnet.”

  “That’s much better, dear.”

  Milton turned his head slightly away from his wife and gave Acton a toothy grin.

  “Greg, I can see you in the hutch mirror.”

  “Shit.”

  “Keep digging.”

  Milton shook his head, his eyes bulging at Acton. “Save me,” he hissed.

  Laura entered the room, giving him the out he was searching for, Acton content to let him dig to Middle Earth.

  “So, any luck?”

  Laura nodded as she took her seat, placing her napkin on her lap. “All arranged. We leave at midnight, so that gives us time to finish our dinner and should put us in Rome for tomorrow afternoon with the time difference.”

  “Good,” said Sandra, picking up her fork. “I’d hate to see all Jim’s hard work go to waste.”

  Acton swallowed another bite. “Me neither. This stuff is almost as good as sex.”

  “James!”

  Acton held up his hands in mock apology. “Hey, I said almost. Sex with you is definitely better.”

  He caught Mai’s flushing cheeks out of the corner of his eye.

  “Sorry, Mai. Eventually you’ll get used to my sense of humor.”

  Milton grunted. “And when you do, you’ll know you’ve truly become a heathen.”

  “Hey, I resent that,” said Acton, jabbing the air with a speared piece of beef. “Who’s jetting off into the great unknown to try and save the Blood Relics of the Son of God? Not just any heathen would do that.”

  He popped the meat in his mouth, chewing slowly.

  Milton took the conversation to a more serious tone. “Why do you think they’re stealing these things?”

  Acton shrugged. “I’m guessing it has to do with the healing properties they’re rumored to have.”

  This seemed to pique Mai’s interest. “Healing properties?”

  Acton nodded, swallowing. “Yes. The belief is that the blood of Jesus can heal. The most famous example is the Roman soldier”—he snapped his fingers as he tried to remember—“what’s his name—”

  “Longinus. Saint Longinus now.” Laura for the save!

  “Right, Longinus. His actual name was Cassius—”

  “That you remember?” interrupted Milton.

  “But for simplicity sake, most texts refer to him as Longinus, his baptized name.” He shoveled some carrots into his mouth then took a sip of wine. “The story is that he stabbed Jesus in his side to make sure he was dead, and when he did so, blood and water poured out, some of it getting into his eyes. Did I mention he was blind?”

  Mai shook her head.

  “Yeah, according to the accounts he was either blind, or suffering some sort of affliction of the eyes. Some stories say he was blind in one eye, others say both, others say he just had an infection. Whatever the truth is, he was apparently cured right then and there, and from that point on became a believer.”

  “And the spear? You said it might not be the real one at the Vatican?”

  Acton shrugged. “No one really knows. There’re several places that claim to have the spear. Besides the one just stolen, there’s one in Vienna and one in Armenia.”

  “And Antioch,” added Laura.

  “Why don’t they test them to see if they’re even from the same era?”

  “Well, there’s a few reasons, not the least of which is people don’t really want to know. As long as it hasn’t been proven fake, then they can claim it’s real.”

  Laura gave him a chance to eat a few more bites. “The most famous example is the Shroud of Turin. Small pieces were given to scientists to carbon date and it was dated to at least a thousand years after Christ’s death.”

  “But a lot of people dispute those results. Some say that parts of the cloth many not be original, instead patches added after the fact to repair damage over the centuries, others claim that carbon from a fire in medieval times actually contaminated the samples. And that’s the problem. A negative when testing something like this doesn’t really prove anything, but people think just because there was a scientific test that it’s conclusive.”

  Mai’s meal was forgotten. And so were her nerves. “But why would anyone sew in another piece of cloth when they knew how important it was?”

  “Well, take King Tut’s mask. You know, the famous blue and gold king cobra?”

  “Yes, I’ve seen pictures.”

  “Well, just last year workers at the Egyptian Museum in Cairo broke off the beard and rather than tell anyone, they just glued it back on. That glue is now causing damage to the mask.”

  “Unbelievable!”

  “We see it all the time, unfortunately.” Laura put her fork down, her meal finished. “Many times we find artifacts or structures that we now consider priceless, but during the centuries or millennia were just things handed down over time. Imagine you have an antique table handed down through the generations. If something were to happen to it, you would fix it. In some cases, you might need to even replace a piece, let’s say one of the legs. Because it’s precious to you, you would insist the work is done properly so you could never tell that the leg had been replaced. Sometimes this even involves artificially aging the wood or stone. Now imagine five hundred years from now somebody finds that table and wants to carbon date it. If they take a portion from the replaced leg, they’ll find out it was only five hundred years old instead of the actual seven hundred years. This is why the dating might be a science, but the selection of what to date can sometimes be an art.”

  “They actually broke the beard off of King Tut?” asked Sandra. “That’s incredible! How’d they find out?”

  Acton pushed his plate away, finished. “Somebody noticed a ring of glue oozing out in a photograph.”

  “So back to the original question of why,” interjected Milton. “Do you think someone could really be after these things for their healing properties?”

  Acton pursed his lips, leaning back in his chair, swirling his wine. He sighed. “I can’t think of any other reason. There’s so many other priceless artifacts kept with the two that were stolen, you’d have to think they’d have taken them as well if money were the motive.”

  “My God!” said Sandra. “Do you think it could actually work?” Her hand darted to her husband’s arm. “Do you think they might try to clone him?”

  Acton’s chest tightened slightly as a shot of nervous adrenaline shot through his system at the thought. “I-I don’t know.” He looked at his wife, memories of The Vault, a hidden chamber under The Vatican known to almost no one, momentarily overwhelming him. “Are we getting ourselves into something that we shouldn’t be? Something bigger than us?”

  Laura seemed to pale slightly.

  “Maybe you two shouldn’t get involved.”

  Acton looked at his friend and shook his head. “No, Hugh’s expecting us. And if this is some type of cloning effort, it needs to be stopped.”

  “But why?”

  Everyone turned to Mai who withered from the attention.

  “What do you mean?” asked Laura, gently.

  “Well, isn’t your entire religion focused on the second coming of Christ? Maybe this is how it was meant to happen?”

  Acton paused for a moment as he contemplated her words. They were a simple truth spoken by a Buddhist with no vested interest in something she didn’t believe in, which made her words all the more poignant. Could that be what this was all about? Some religious zealot trying to get a sample of DNA that they would then use to create a new baby Jesus?

  It was a fantastically terrifying idea, something he hoped no one would actually be foolish enough to try and do. All you would be doing was creating the body, and though he wasn’t terribly religious by any stretch of the imagination, even his own basic understanding told him it was the Holy Spirit that was actually the Son of God, not the flesh and blood that had walked the Earth.

 
; He looked at Laura.

  “I think we focus on the job.”

  She nodded. “Agreed. We help Hugh stop the murderers and thieves and use their motives against them. We’ll leave the ethical and metaphysical debate to others.”

  Acton sucked in a deep breath, grimacing.

  That could be easier said than done.

  Golgatha, Judea

  April 7th, 30 AD

  Approaching the Twelfth Hour

  “Are you okay?”

  He felt Albus’ hand on his shoulder, shaking him as tears filled his eyes at the sight of the man hanging above him, dead, water and blood still flowing out of the hole he had made only moments before, it now a trickle but still inexplicable. Turning toward his friend, he looked at him and smiled.

  “I can see.”

  Albus’ jaw dropped, a jaw he hadn’t seen clearly in years, the expression on his face one of pure shock. Shock he could discern with ease once again. The idea of seeing again was something that had never occurred to him. His thoughts on it had always been one of hoping that the shadows he could make out would continue to at least be discernable, it giving him at least some warning of something coming at him.

  But to see again?

  Never in a lifetime could he have imagined something so wonderful.

  His friend let go of his shoulder, dropping to his knees in front of him, looking at him skeptically. He held up two fingers. “How many fingers am I holding up?”

  “Two. And your hair is much grayer than I remember.”

  A smile broke out on Albus’ face as he grasped him by both shoulders, shaking him in excitement. “You can see! It’s a miracle!”

  They both looked up at the man, slumped on the cross high on the hilltop, the two other men on either side in their last gasps of life, their knees broken, their chests heaving as their lungs, straining to provide precious air, slowly failed as their bodies finally gave in to the inevitable.

  But he didn’t care.

  They were criminals.

  But not this man. He pushed himself to his feet, feeling remarkably well, though he was sure it was the rush of the moment, the excitement fueling his weary bones. Twenty-five years in the Roman Army didn’t leave the body in good shape, his body still beaten but his soul replenished, he now feeling a vigor he hadn’t since he was a boy.

  Life was worth living again.

  He stepped toward the cross, raising a hand and touching the foot of the man he had listened to for almost six hours, a man who was clearly everything he had said he was.

  He turned as the mourners approached and smiled.

  “He truly is the son of God.”

  “He’s my son.”

  The broken lady collapsed to her knees, several of the women, and the man who he assumed was the one Jesus had spoken of as her son earlier, rushed to her side.

  “I was blind and now can see.”

  “Even in death he saves,” said a younger woman, taking his hand and squeezing. “Now you see don’t you? Now you see he was an innocent man, a man who hurt no one, and in his final moments granted comfort to those around him, and sight to one who would see him dead.”

  Longinus felt a vicelike grip take hold of his chest, the excuse of only following orders seeming a weak one, but it was all he had.

  He decided to leave it unspoken, the woman not appearing to hold him any ill will.

  “Is it true?” Longinus turned to see the other soldiers he had been waiting with surrounding him. “You can see us?”

  He nodded, smiling. “As good as the day I was born.”

  “Unbelievable!”

  “It is unbelievable. Either you were lying before, or you’re lying now.”

  Longinus frowned at Severus, a hateful man if there ever was one. He had known him for over a decade and he was liked by few, hated by many.

  “You sneer at me while accusing me of being a liar?”

  Severus’ eyes flared for a moment, as if shocked his facial expression had been seen.

  “I can see now, plainly.” He looked at the four men, Albus standing at his side, ready to remove Severus’ head for having falsely accusing his friend. “You, Severus, have a patch over your eye, Tiberius a cut on your knee and Marcus, you remain as ugly as I remember you. No, uglier.”

  Marcus roared with laughter, grabbing him and hugging him, his hands thumping on Longinus’ back. “You can see! It’s amazing!” He felt the hands of the others slapping him with joy as he let go of Marcus, looking at Severus.

  Severus’ head was slowly shaking. “I don’t believe, but I must. You’ve been blind for years. No one would fake that for so long and stay in the army. You’d slip up at least once, someone would catch you, but…”

  Longinus put a hand on Severus’ shoulder. “It is a miracle.” He turned and pointed at Jesus. “Performed by him.”

  Severus dropped to his knees, clasping his hands against his chest. “What have we done?” he cried. “If he can do this, if he can give a man back his sight, then he must be what they say he is! His god will surely destroy us now! We’re condemned to burn in Hades for eternity!”

  “No, you are mistaken.”

  It was the mother who spoke, putting a comforting hand on Severus. “Our God is a god of love and compassion, my son taught us that.”

  “Join us, let us teach you his ways,” said the younger woman.

  Longinus’ head bobbed slowly as he realized his life had new meaning and a new purpose. He had been given a second chance, a chance to live again a whole man, unencumbered by an illness beyond his control, with all his faculties and abilities restored.

  And they would be needed.

  For he was now determined to spread the word that this man truly had been what he had said he was.

  The son of God.

  And no one could sway him from that opinion.

  “We must remove the bodies,” said Severus. “Our orders are to have this cleared away before Passover begins which is soon.” He pointed at the two criminals, none of whom had family or friends present. “They’ll be dead soon.” He nodded toward Jesus. “Let’s get him down first.”

  “I’ll do it,” said the man identified as the son.

  Longinus took him by the arm. “What is your name?”

  “John.”

  “You knew this man well?”

  “He was my teacher. My rabbi. My friend.”

  Longinus looked up at this teacher, seeing the crown of thorns for the first time, rivulets of blood now dried on the poor soul’s face from where the skin had been torn by the barbarians that had committed this tragic joke. He wanted to be enraged by this, to lash out at those responsible, his own fellow soldiers, but he couldn’t, he couldn’t summon the anger.

  Instead he felt an overwhelming sense of contentment that seemed determined to compete with the sorrow he was feeling.

  He dropped to his knees, beating his chest as he stared up at the body of this great man.

  “I pledge my life to your good name.”

  And as he prayed to this new god, Albus and the others joined him, their swords and spears discarded as they united with him in prayer, it evident they were as affected as him by these turn of events. The shaking of the earth and skies had made it clear that this man was indeed powerful, but the miracle performed just with the touch of his blood was undeniable.

  He was a force for good.

  The blood!

  He looked down at the large pool of blood at the base of the cross, it captured in a natural indentation of the stone, and wondered if it should be collected.

  How many could be cured by this?

  As if reading his mind, the loved ones of Jesus began to collect this precious fluid, transferring it into several jars, mopping up what remained with cloths.

  Imagine the good that could come of this!

  Imperial Treasury, Hofburg Palace, Vienna, Austria

  Present Day, One day before the Paris assault

  Dietrich Kruger strode toward th
e front entrance of the massive Hofburg Palace, its stark white façade now a gentle gold, the strategically placed lighting emphasizing its spectacular architectural elements. A steady flow of tourists walked past him, their visit finished, only a few late arrivals climbing the stairs to the entrance with him.

  He winced, a stabbing pain shooting up his leg forcing him to stop in his tracks. He massaged the pain out with a few quick squeezes, forcing himself forward.

  It’s only going to get worse.

  When he had felt the pain the first time it had terrified him, his father and grandfather before him suffering from the same affliction he now faced. In fact, if his grandfather were to be believed, his family had been suffering this affliction for at least six generations, it killing them all before their time, and striking them down in the prime of their lives, relegated to the sidelines of life as their bodies slowly withered.

  It was the Kruger family curse.

  He had known his fate his entire life, his family never hiding the truth from him. It had allowed him to live life to the fullest in his first thirty years on this Earth with the knowledge the last thirty, or much less, would most likely be lived in unproductive misery.

  But six generations of hopelessness had changed as technology rapidly advanced. His father was convinced that eventually a cure might be found, though too late for him. But it wasn’t a scientific cure he had become hell bent on acquiring.

  It was the miraculous.

  His family had long known of the Blood Relics, but there was nothing they could do about them, there no way to get their hands on them, nor to conceivably get any blood from them.

  But modern technology had changed all that.

  It was now possible to retrieve DNA from samples many thousands of years old, and his father was now convinced that if they could acquire the true blood of Christ, they’d be able to replicate it in a lab, enough that it might be used as a cure for their affliction.

  He had to admit he had been skeptical at first, and still was to a point, but the fervent ardor exhibited by his father whenever they discussed it was infectious, and when his father had taken a turn for the worse, he had rushed into action, using some of the many millions built up over generations to put together a team of mercenaries that would acquire every last Blood Relic known to man should it become necessary.