Robin Burcell: The Bone Chamber

“No one ever suspected her?”

“One of his scientists did, but she managed to convince him that the test sample he was viewing had been contaminated. She said it was a matter of days before they would have realized that she was working against them. Regardless, Adami had enough material down there to cause some serious damage, even without creating a super-plague. Her fear is that Adami will find this new source and start over again.”

“Any chance he’ll succeed?”

“Since he has very little of the map, I’d say no. Not that we’re about to take any chances, should he have another lab equipped to pick up where he left off. Thanks to Dr. Balraj and Zemke, we have a fair idea where that lab might be,” he said, slowing behind a bus that pulled out from the curb. “Our next step is to recover the lost part of the map from Adami, before he or his associates attempt to discover the location it leads to. And once we discover that location and what the map leads to, our team of scientists will go in and assess exactly what it is we’re dealing with. In other words,” he said, glancing over at her, then back to the road, “nothing that we can’t handle on our own, which means you are no longer needed.”

“You could at least wait until after I’m on the plane to gloat.”

“Trust me. I won’t be gloating until you are well across the Atlantic. Past experience tells me I’ll need all my wits about me to get you on that plane and home for Thanksgiving.”

“Aren’t you the funny one.” She leaned back in her seat, thinking that if truth be told, she was glad to be going back to San Francisco. “What about you? Who are you spending Thanksgiving with?”

“I’m not-” His phone rang and he pulled it from his pocket, answered it. Suddenly he slowed, turned a corner, and pulled over, and Sydney knew that whatever news he was being told, wasn’t good. When he disconnected, he looked troubled. “That was McNiel. They picked up Harden this morning. Apparently he was denying any involvement with Adami, until they finally mentioned that his daughter had been a part of ATLAS. McNiel says he turned white as a sheet, then broke down.”

“So it was true,” Sydney said. “The ambassador was feeding Adami info.”

“Info that probably got his daughter killed. But Harden also implicated someone pretty high up the political ladder. He asked for a lawyer, and promised that once he had a chance to speak with his counsel, he’d tell us the name of the person he was working for.”

“That’s good, then.”

“Except that he and his attorney were both killed in a vehicle collision on their way to Langley a few hours ago.”

It was a second before the implication of it all hit her. “I take it that it wasn’t an accident.”

“McNiel’s fairly certain it wasn’t. Unfortunately for the parties involved, Harden’s lawyer had a written confession in his briefcase, and it survived intact. Harden implicated Jon Westgate.”

“Who is that?”

“He used to be a low-level crime boss who hailed from Adami’s hometown in New Jersey. And you’ll never guess whose number popped up several times on Westgate’s cell phone. Martin Hoagland.”

“Hoagland?” Sydney repeated. “As in Congressman Hoagland?”

“The same. He always felt he should have headed the committee for ATLAS.”

Sydney couldn’t believe what she was hearing. “This was out of spite?”

“Trust me,” Griffin said, pulling away from the curb, then back out to the main street. “If Hoagland did it for anything, it was for control. He and Adami are cut from the same cloth. Power and domination.”

“And what better way to dominate world powers than having inside intel into an organization such as ATLAS.”

“Exactly,” he said. “Only now he’ll have to attempt doing it from a federal prison cell.”

At the airport, Griffin and a carabinieri contact escorted her through the security entrance at the airport, where she’d be flown home on the ATLAS jet.

Their contact waited a discreet distance from the door that led out to the tarmac, and Griffin held out his hand. “I never did thank you for what you did to help Tex.”

She shook hands with him, said, “I sort of owed you one. I’m only sorry it wasn’t as dramatic as that night at Adami’s villa. Now that would make for a good war story at the bar. You’re sure I’m not allowed to talk about any of this?”

“Sorry.” He looked down at her hand, seemed to realize he was still holding it, then let go. “You know, if you ever get tired of the Bureau…”

She smiled. “Sorry. I have a job.”

“At the FBI Academy?”

“I like it. For a reason.”

“To hide.”

“Wrong. It’s giving me time to think where I want to go next.”

“If you change your mind,” he said, handing her bag to her, “you know how to reach me.”

“I do.”

They stood there for several seconds, the silence turning awkward, until Griffin said, “I don’t need to personally walk you to that plane, do I?”

“I’m going. I’m going.” She started toward the jet, thinking about everything that had happened since she’d left Washington. She was damned lonely at times, and hell, life these past few days had been more exhilarating than anything she’d done in a long time. She glanced back, saw that Griffin had turned to leave, was walking toward the security door where the carabinieri contact was waiting.

“Griffin!”

He stopped, turned, a bemused expression on his face. “You have a real problem getting on planes.”

Suddenly she was uncomfortable, not sure what he’d say. What she was even going to ask. She’d be on that plane tonight, alone.

He tilted his head, waiting.

“You never did say what you were doing for Thanksgiving…” she finally ventured.

“No plans.”

“Well, if you find yourself in San Francisco, you could stop by my mother’s house. She cooks a mean turkey, and with your connections, I’ll bet you have no trouble finding the address.”

Griffin stood there a moment, his hands shoved in his pockets, as though mulling it over. Suddenly he smiled. “Tell her to set an extra place. I’d like that. A lot.”

One of the more infamous conspiracy theories is that of the Freemasons running a shadow government in the U.S., and controlling the global economy. Proof of this can be found on the back of a dollar bill: the Illuminati’s “all-seeing eye” over the pyramid, which forms one half of a six-pointed star, with five of those points touching the letters to form the anagram that spells MASON. According to these theorists, that same shadow government that originated with our country’s Founding Fathers who were Masons, is still in power today.

Conspiracy theories aside, in this day and age it would be damned difficult to infiltrate and corrupt an entire country’s government, installing criminal networks in with the politicians and the national bankers, all to control the global economy.

Or would it?

In the early 1980s, the Italian government and banking system nearly toppled because of the infiltration and corruption from one Freemason lodge, Propaganda Due, or P2. P2 became a clandestine lodge from 1976 on after being expelled by the Grand Orient of Italy. Counted among its ranks in the lodge before and after the expulsion were prominent journalists, parliamentarians, industrialists, and military leaders, as well as the heads of all three Italian intelligence services. There were also high-ranking members of the Catholic Church listed in the membership, which perhaps explains how the Holy See’s bank became involved in the scandal with Banco Ambrosiano, becoming a major shareholder in a bank used by both the Mafia and P2’s shadow government-as well as the American government, which used the bank to funnel covert money from the United States to the Contras, among other things.