Victory of Coins (The Judas Chronicles, #7) Read online

  “Open and honest? The hell you say!” I seethed. “How dare you claim to be anything noble, you worthless piece of shit—”

  A loud explosion ripped through the air behind me, coming from the continuation of the alley on the other side of the street. Amid shattered glass, splintered wooden beams, and crumbled stone and bricks were the remnants of what appeared to have been a small bazaar an instant ago. Heartrending screams of the innocent rang through the air. Something I had witnessed all too often in the presence of Viktor Kaslow.

  A glance over my shoulder to where he had recently stood confirmed the Russian was long gone. With tears filling my eyes, I sprinted to the carnage, begging The Almighty for His mercy upon Kaslow’s latest victims, and that I might be able to save someone.... To do what I couldn’t accomplish the last time this unholy monster set off a bomb in my presence.

  Chapter Eleven

  “It’s not your fault,” Rachel told me, compassionately, as we prepared to leave the crowded alleyway. She and Roderick had shared tears with me soon after they beheld Kaslow’s latest handiwork. “He was going to kill someone regardless of where he was... and he will kill again.”

  She tried to move closer, perhaps to offer a hug or to simply pat my shoulder, but I waved her off. Not meanly, and not out of loathing for her, since seeing the torn bodies of a young mother and her two children—a beautiful boy and girl—had destroyed the last of my animosity toward her. Especially after I witnessed Rachel’s genuine sorrow in response to these latest senseless killings. I hated only one human, if Kaslow could still be considered as one. I despised him to the point of danger to myself.

  Jesus’ cousin, John, long ago preached that ‘One cannot hate another too deeply, lest it destroy the spark of God within himself.’ But I almost didn’t care. My rage against this cowardly fiend was like a fusion-borne flame that couldn’t be extinguished, and I was helpless to watch it consume my spirit and the energy that fed the regeneration of my flesh. I felt weakness I hadn’t known since I was mortal, as if the life force feeding my cells was being drained away. But of course, the moment I would turn my thoughts to something other than Kaslow, the perpetual healing of my body would resume. Still, I was beginning to think that destroying Kaslow went far beyond the call for personal revenge. The monster would keep on terrorizing the world until he was stopped. It seemed logical that an immortal would be the only one to end the reign of wanton bloodshed by another immortal.

  I desperately wanted to be the vehicle for Kaslow’s demise.

  “Be careful what you wish for, Judas,” Roderick advised, while Rachel nodded in response to my latest heated thoughts. “You might get the confrontation you seek... but there is no guarantee victory will follow. Only if you are responding truthfully to Almighty God’s prompts, and not your own.”

  “So, I suppose I should wait until He gives us a sign that these lost lives are worth redeeming?”

  “You know better than to ask a question like that,” he replied. “We’ve witnessed inhuman acts for many centuries that are on a much grander scale than what has happened here today. No divine intervention came for those victims, as well as no heavenly declarations directing us to pursue vengeance.”

  “Then what should we do now?” I asked, testily. “Should we wait to find out where he strikes next? Perhaps by then Kaslow will have already recovered the coin and will return to gloat of his triumph.”

  “No, Judas,” said Roderick, lowering his voice to a whisper when a handful of adolescent males from the crowd of onlookers that had recently flocked to the alleyway turned menacing gazes toward us. “Kaslow hasn’t made a move to collect the coin yet, which adds credence to what Rachel told me while we were in the Jewish Quarter, and right before you called me on my phone.”

  “What did she tell you?” I asked him while eyeing her suspiciously.

  “I believe he will show up east of the city, most likely Qumran,” she advised. “Yes, it’s a guess, since both Rod and I can’t sense his presence any longer.”

  “He has returned to Bochicha’s realm, I believe,” Roderick added. “Yet, it doesn’t make sense for him to stay there long.”

  “Unless he has the coin already,” I said. “If he does, then it would make perfect sense to leave us... to leave me in my wretchedness.”

  “You can’t give up on a victory, Judas—not this time,” said Roderick, motioning for Rachel and me to follow him. “My heart and mind tell me that Kaslow hasn’t found the coin. Otherwise, do you really believe he wouldn’t be taunting your ass for days about it?”

  He had a point, but still.... “Why Qumran?”

  “Because that is where Dr. Geoffrey Anderson spent most of his time, when he wrote about the Damascus Coin,” said Rachel. “If he wasn’t in Syria, he was in Israel digging near the caves at Qumran.”

  “That place has been picked over for decades—no wonder he never found my coin,” I said, finding it harder to not give in to a looming cloud of depression that hovered above me.

  “Dr. Anderson must have found something,” Roderick countered. “Why else would Kaslow single him out with Dr. Cirillo—who also spent time at Qumran—from a host of other knowledgeable historians, according to Rachel?”

  “Even though it could end up being a dead end, it makes sense to try and tie up as many loose ends while we are here in Israel, before we move on,” added Rachel, pausing when Roderick again drew our attention to the youths from earlier. Three of them had stepped away from the morbidly curious crowd and were moving toward us. Despite their rough look, perhaps the trio was harmless, and simply curious about Roderick’s height, or the patches of translucence in his pale skin that the MAC failed to cover. Or, maybe they were hoping to score some points with the ‘hot babe’ with us—God only knows what the restless youngsters of today fantasize about in their cyber-fed imaginations. But then the scowling punks picked up their pace.

  “We can talk more about it in the car,” said Roderick. “Do you want to handle this, Judas, or should I?”

  “I’ve got it,” I assured him. “I’ll catch up to you in a moment.”

  Roderick and Rachel began their trek back to the car at a modest pace, which drew the attention of one of the young men. But the others continued to eye me sullenly—likely aware that I had been left behind to stall them. When I laughed meanly and loud enough for them to hear it, all three focused their attention on me alone. The tallest one—a blonde who ironically favored Kaslow in his much younger ‘mortal’ days—produced a stiletto knife, clicking it open as the three rushed toward me.

  Were these young thugs recent disciples of the Russian, who had been similarly attired in retro Gothic motif? I could only assume so for the moment, and prepared to deal with all three in brutal fashion.

  It appeared their plan was for the shorter, dark-haired youths to attack me from either side, to restrain my arms while their buddy either tried to gut me like a fish or simply menaced me as he delivered a malevolent threat from my most-hated enemy. I debated whether to allow the blonde bastard to filet me while the wounds healed before his startled eyes. That would make great theatre, as they say... but it would also surely cause a scene. The last thing we needed was for someone else in the crowd to capture the restoration of my body to full health on a cell phone camera and then broadcast the event moments later across the Internet. Such an outcome could cause a host of problems and unwanted attention, and likely before Roderick, Rachel, and I made it out of Jerusalem’s city limits.

  Instead, I relied on decades of ‘fun’ hand-to-hand combat skills I had developed while working for the United States Government. Before any of the three bastards knew what hit them, the dark-haired youths were knocked to the stone walkway, turned over and pinned face down near where Kaslow had taunted me earlier. Their arms were held fast beneath my knees once I had immobilized the blonde, his stiletto knife poised precariously close to his carotid artery.

  “Do you love your mother?” I sneered into his ear, aware th
at I had less than a minute to make my point and get the hell out of there. I let the blade draw a thin line of blood when he didn’t respond. “Do you?!”

  A small swarm of onlookers were approaching, eyeing me as if I was the bad guy, and I feared I would have to let the three go and make a run for it empty handed. Fortunately, the leader of this miscreant pack nodded in response.

  “Forget about your new Russian friend. Forget you have ever seen me, or my friends.... If you attempt to follow us, I will see to it that the next grocery delivery to your mother’s flat contains your severed head—you got that, asshole?”

  Another nod and it was time to go. I shoved him down while throwing the knife into a nearby gutter as I got back to my feet. I ignored the calls from what I assumed were local police officers as I sprinted to catch up to Roderick and Rachel.

  As I had hoped, they had picked up their pace to a brisk walk and were nearing the area we had parked by the time I caught up to them.

  “Impressive,” said Roderick, smiling admiringly. “And here I worried you might be a little rusty in unarmed combat.”

  “You... you saw what happened?” I asked, pausing to catch my breath. It would take a moment for the regeneration process to catch up to the slight fatigue from my quick jaunt of nearly a mile. I took this as another cue to not hate so deeply.

  “We both watched,” said Rachel, leading the way to our rental. A quick scan around us revealed nothing to be overtly out of place... but I checked the Volvo’s underside for good measure and Roderick popped the hood. As far as we could determine, Kaslow and anyone else in his employ had left the car alone.

  “I think Kaslow hired those three clowns to harass us,” I said, once we were on our way out of the Old City. “I didn’t think he viewed us as a threat... guess I was wrong.”

  “I would be surprised if he has actually ever truly considered us to be threats,” said Roderick, glancing at me in the rearview mirror. “At least not since his time in Bolivia’s alternate universe.... Unless, as I’ve mentioned before, he is no closer to finding the Damascus Coin than we are. If that’s the case, then all competitors for the prize would definitely be viewed with hostility.”

  Surprisingly, Rachel had deferred to Roderick’s desire to drive, but insisted in riding up front. Relegated to the back seat again, I kept a keen eye out for anyone pursuing us until Jerusalem had disappeared into the horizon behind me, and we were well on the way to Qumran.

  “So, what inspired you to play the kid’s mother as an angle?” Roderick asked, after we debated on where to begin our search for the next meaningful clue at Qumran, since we would arrive in the next ten minutes. “For all you knew, he could be an abandoned orphan—the negativity and bitterness surrounding him that I detected within his aura spoke to no familial ties.”

  “I don’t know.” In truth, it was an instinctive thing, as was the slice into the kid’s throat to enforce my seriousness. Neither action was planned. “Maybe he actually hates his mom and was merely frightened by my physical threat to do him harm.”

  “Would you have killed him, Judas, if he hadn’t cooperated?” asked Rachel.

  “Probably not, and I wouldn’t have injured him seriously unless he came after me a second time,” I confessed, hating the rage within me that might’ve taken the life of a teenage boy who could well turn out to be a decent man if placed upon the right path. But anything or anyone associated with Kaslow’s wickedness fueled my ire at this point. “I’m glad no one else got hurt... but there’s a family now torn asunder. A husband without his beloved wife and children....”

  I couldn’t finish and looked away, while heated tears filled my eyes. I had already cried for nearly an hour earlier, and in addition to the three victims there were nearly a dozen other patrons of the bazaar who needed medical attention—four of those being hospitalized. Their cries of agony from crushed arms and legs tore at the very core of my soul. Such senseless carnage—and for what reason?

  I thought of my own loss of Beatrice, and my friends Amy and Jeremy Golden Eagle.... Kaslow was now Lucifer in the flesh as far as I was concerned. His long career of violence and disregard for the lives of the innocent made him just as insidiously evil as any other personification of wickedness could ever be.

  “All of the confusion back there kept us from finding the building you spoke of on the plane, Rachel. Was there anything to that after all, or was it an intuitive false alarm?”

  Honestly, I wasn’t trying to be an asshole this time. But our presence in Jerusalem was intended to find the place Kaslow sought before he did. Granted, Kaslow’s unexpected conversation with me validated Rachel’s vision that he would be there.... But once she and Roderick mentioned the fact we should move on to Qumran, it was as if the mysterious building’s location that likely inspired Kaslow’s latest violence no longer mattered.

  “We can go back and find it if you’d like,” she replied, coolly. Apparently, I managed to prick a hole in her pride with my latest comment. “I now can see the place clearly, and in fact if you had looked up the alley where you encountered him earlier today, you would’ve noticed a tall wooden door standing open, less than thirty meters away.”

  I looked over at Roderick, hoping for a confirmation. But he remained focused on the road ahead, since by then we were just a few miles away from Qumran. Perhaps he chose to ignore Rachel’s and my latest little spat, since it would likely die before it could escalate.

  “I can tell you this: My guides are telling me that Kaslow left in a bigger rage than he arrived with,” she continued. “My vision of him angrily retreating to Bochicha’s realm affirms the correctness of our visit to Qumran right now.... He didn’t find what he ventured to Jerusalem for, and his anger has been fueled by the suspicion Dr. Anderson misled him.”

  “Really?” She surprised me by this revelation. “Surely Dr. Anderson witnessed what had happened to Dr. Cirillo, and knew any sort of deceit would be handled harshly by Kaslow once he found out about it.”

  “Yes, that’s true,” she said. “I can’t tell you why the professor decided to betray Kaslow’s trust.... Maybe he knew Kaslow would kill him regardless of what he revealed. If he witnessed the horrible torture and death of the elderly Adlelberto Cirillo, then he certainly knew that in the end there would be no mercy for him either—regardless of how much he cooperated.”

  “I just hope that our mutual impression to come here is well founded,” said Roderick, glancing at Rachel. “Otherwise, I fear we have reached a dead end in our search for the Damascus Coin.”

  She and I nodded thoughtfully, and it was the last thing mentioned before we arrived at Qumran. After paying a fee for each of us to enter the national park, Roderick set out to find a reasonably safe place to leave our vehicle. The dashboard’s clock read 1:12 p.m., and to my dismay there were a number of tourists mulling about nearby. And once we stepped out of the Volvo, I could tell there were at least a few hundred people scattered throughout the area, with many in the company of tour guides.

  “From what I understand, the guides you see here are privately funded,” Roderick advised, as we prepared to begin our survey of the area—a search that was appearing more and more pointless by the minute. “Try not to let any of this distract you from our task. What we’re looking for should be quite small—if my instincts are right—and the item isn’t so much a deliberate clue from Kaslow as it is something he inadvertently lost while here. It might be an item unimportant to him, but could prove helpful to us.”

  “A true needle in a haystack,” I lamented. “And, you and Rachel can’t come up with anything more specific to look for?”

  They both shook their heads.

  “Great. Just frigging fabulous!”

  “You’ll only make things worse with an outlook like that, Judas,” Rachel reproached me. “What is here for us to find won’t be available much longer—that’s what my guides are telling me. A single rainstorm will wash the item free from where it’s lodged.... Could be stuck betwe
en rocks or in a tree or bush. Luckily, there aren’t many plants in this arid region.”

  “Is it smaller than one of my coins?”

  The only thing I had personally eliminated at this point was the Damascus Coin being anywhere in this area. I continued to feel nothing in the way of tingling along my left side.

  “It should be slightly smaller, but when you mentioned your coins, I felt it could be something round like a coin,” she said. “Perhaps it is a piece of jewelry, but don’t hold me to that... be open to anything.”

  Roderick was already moving down a pathway toward the caves, trying to appear nonchalant. Rachel soon followed close behind. He waited for her and placed his arm around her shoulders and she wrapped hers around his waist. I knew it was a ploy, but they really did play a romantic couple quite well.

  Meanwhile, I did keep my eyes open for anything—including another sudden visit from Kaslow. We could no longer assume he wouldn’t be back. Of worse concern was the fact I felt completely lost, clinging to a desperate hope that whatever Roderick and Rachel had picked up on would be worth the time and effort to search for it.

  They were moving closer to the caves and about to join a line waiting to get a closer look at the one most famous for the 1947 discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls. I’m not sure why I decided to pull up and avoid also joining this group, but I did. Instead, I moved out into the parched landscape away from the main path. And, that’s when I saw something briefly glisten in the sun’s light.

  It could’ve been anything, and likely a piece of glass or a small metal shard. A casual glance to either side told me that no one else noticed it, and until then Rachel and Roderick appeared unaware of this latest development.

  I approached the object, noticing recent disturbance to the soil not far from where it sat. After bending down to pick it up, I was astounded to discover the glint was gold, and that the object was in fact a ring. And, not just any ring, but one that belonged to a member of the Vatican’s cherished inner circle: The College of Cardinals.