Cassidy cracked ten knuckles in a row. “Just choose a bone, my friend.”
“Not like that, Cass. I went through hell with Jack. We bled together. I have to know why.”
“He threw you in prison and left you to die.” It was black and white for Cassidy Coleman.
“He was my father for more years than my real dad,” Bodie said. “That counts for something.”
Cassidy shrugged, sticking her face into a sandwich. The train pulled up and the team stepped aboard, locating their seats and falling silent. The train was at least half-full, and they knew ears always pricked up when a juicy conversation began.
Jeff sent a group message to say he was researching the Antiquity Lodge in London. Gunn piped up too, by text, to say he was already on it. The train rattled through some pre-dawn English countryside, the fields often uniform and flat, the roads narrow and twisting. A barely discernible announcement went out regarding the food cart, stops and arrival times, but Bodie was wholly unaware, sifting through the snippets and patches of life that he had been a part of this last few days and weeks. Life could certainly turn on a dime. Whoever said that got it spot on.
Live your life while you can. Who knows what’s around the corner?
He wondered if he’d actually been doing that. Foster families had poisoned him against friendships, turned him into a singular man that shunned social media and found socializing quite tough. He was standoffish, closed about his past with anyone except the tight circle that was his team.
Was that living?
They were winging it now, he knew. Heidi was away on some kind of side-mission, God knew what. Jeff’s memory of the map was imperfect. The best thing in their favor was that the Illuminati were unaware of how far they’d progressed.
Otherwise, Hell would be waiting for them.
Bodie tried to relax as the train carved through the coming day.
CHAPTER THIRTY EIGHT
Xavier Von Gothe sat alone, at the head of an enormous, eighteenth century table, his arms outstretched along its pitted surface to their fullest extent, his head lowered close to the dark oak, lost in a jumbled patchwork of thoughts.
First, Bavaria was compromised. Agent Moneymaker’s new team had found something at the museum, something his men could not find. Then all trace of them vanished and Xavier felt something new steal into the darkest recess of his soul.
Fear.
Where were they? What did they find? The map, what he had learned from it, led from waypoint to waypoint, carefully keeping the locations secret. Footnotes they had found were little help. He already knew the history of the statue and the history of this blasted archaeologist that had turned out to be a crown of thorns around his neck. In the end, he knew, it was arrogance and procrastination that had put the Order in this position. If they’d never moved the statue — for their own pleasure — in 1910, nothing would have come to light. It was purely the moving of the statue that had triggered small events that eventually made the archaeologist aware. Then they had expelled a man, a traitor Xavier now knew to be called Thomas Kilby. It was he that had helped the old archaeologist by opening doors.
As if in mockery, the door opened. An amazingly tall woman entered, her height exaggerated by her willowy figure. She wore a floor length black robe, the hood thrown back and her black hair hanging free.
He glared. “What do you want, Calypso? I asked not to be disturbed.”
His third-in-command didn’t flinch even a little. She was an incredibly hard, tough woman with an unbreachable exterior. Unique in the Order, she had once been a Hood before being elevated to a leader. Xavier had smoothed the promotional process and now sometimes wished he really hadn’t.
“Calypso?”
Her eyes were ice. “We have learned, through our American contact, that Agent Moneymaker’s team were recently inside the York Lodge.”
Xavier stared at her. “Why then have we heard nothing?”
“The York Lodge has no idea,” she said. “Still.”
Xavier could barely believe it. It was a rare event that left him tongue-tied, but he could barely find words. “No idea? But… how?”
Calypso came further into the room, her svelte figure moving gracefully beneath the long robe. “Our investigative team came back with the answers. Apparently the CIA are using a crack team of relic hunters to help them track down the statue.”
Xavier stared.
“It gets worse. This team, they’re more than just glorified thieves. They are covert infiltration specialists, possibly the best on the world. I have their files right here.” She waved a collection of Manila folders in the air and then placed them on the table, sliding them over to him with one long finger.
Xavier was shocked to the core, but knew he couldn’t let that show. Not to a subordinate and especially not to a subordinate so close to his position of power.
“I’ll review and get back to you. In the meantime delve into their histories, their family, their friends. Leave no stone unturned. Leave no weak and fragile place untapped. They started this war but we will finish it. And Calypso?”
The beauty sent a chiseled glance straight through his eyeballs. “Yes?”
“They are heading to London now, yes? At least the map is clear on the third waypoint. Tell our brethren at the Antiquity Lodge to be ready. Tell them to prepare an event.”
Calypso nodded. “And the scale?”
“Oh, make it incalculable. Immense. Make it horrific. My patience is now at an end.”
Xavier somehow managed to calm himself a little while later. Slowly, he flicked through the folders Calypso had brought — meeting digital versions of Guy Bodie, Eli Cross, Jemma Blunt, Sam Gunn and Cassidy Coleman. The team was unique, containing all the elements a comprehensive unit of “audacious, adept, victimless crimes” demanded. Bodie was a loner, taught by the best, always careful to ensure the innocent never became tangled up in his crimes but unconcerned as to the welfare of worse criminals. Cross was a career thief with a wealth of experience and the nounce to get out of almost any scrape. Jemma Blunt was a top-notch cat burglar come outstanding mission-planner. Some of her operational tactics and blueprints were copied, implemented and improvised by thieves and authorities worldwide. Sam Gunn was a tech genius, no doubt handy with security systems. And then there was Cassidy Coleman — a paradox in herself.
Xavier was both impressed and appalled by her. An only child, she left a safe home at seventeen, a home in which he presumed she’d not really been welcome. She never saw her parents again, fell in with a bad boyfriend, became homeless for a few years and was helped by an older man with perfect intentions who then died of a sudden heart attack at a comparatively young age.
Cassidy must have tried to turn her life around, Xavier mused, finding a full-time job and using her streetwise, hard-learned skills to get noticed. She studied the art of fighting, using new skills to grab bit parts in movies, showcasing her abilities and her natural beauty. She wanted to get ahead; driven by past failures, driven to rise above. In the end though, he saw, she reverted a little to type. The movies dried up, or the offers degraded, and Coleman entered the underground street fighting scene, making quite a name for herself before meeting a man named Guy Bodie.
And here they were, many years later.
Xavier trusted Calypso to plan the London event. It would have to be good enough to take out a great team. They didn’t know the Illuminati were coming.
Victory was assured. He picked up a phone to warn just a few of his London friends to avoid a particular area. No need to be rude.