The Venice Code Read Online Free Page B

his head, his face grim.
    “If he can’t remember that he’s Triarii, he’s forgotten far more than he realizes.”
    “Have you mentioned it to him?”
    “No, that was the first hint I had at it. I nearly shat my pants when he called them glass skulls.” Reading shook his head again as he pressed the button for the elevator. “Only time will tell I guess.” The doors opened and he held them for Laura then Acton. “How ’bout some food?”
    Acton’s stomach grumbled in agreement and plans were quickly made. As they exited the elevator Acton noticed a television flashing to a breaking news report.
    Assassinated President’s Son Kidnapped.
    “Jesus Christ,” he muttered and they all turned to see what he was looking at. On the screen footage showed two bodies lying on the ground, covered by sheets, one with the victim’s left hand still visible.
    Clearly showing a small tattoo on the inner wrist.
    “Is that what I think it is?” asked Reading.
    Acton nodded. The tattoo was clearly Triarii.
    “Why would they kidnap him?” asked Laura.
    “Until a few minutes ago, I would have said they wouldn’t,” replied Reading.
    “Something’s wrong,” said Acton. “Very wrong.”
    And he had a strange feeling that whatever secret message was locked in Chaney’s scrambled brain had everything to do with what had just happened back home.
     
     

 
     
    Fleet Street, London, England
    Present day, one day after the kidnapping
     
    Proconsul Derrick Kennedy of the Triarii sat at the head of the long conference table, sucking back hard on his favorite vice, a Cuban La Corona cigar, its aromas intoxicating and apparently annoying to some of the younger generation of leaders lining the table. Which was why a special “smoke eater” had been installed during the rebuild after the Delta Force attack on their headquarters. He assumed it worked since he was no longer glared at by some of the more vocal complainers.
    On the wall at the far end were a series of large plasma displays, several showing various news feeds from around the world, the panel embedded in the table allowing him full control, the BBC feed of the world’s top story currently being listened to.
    Behind him, carved in the slate wall was the very symbol he had frozen on one of the screens, though many orders of magnitude bigger. It was the ancient symbol of their organization founded from the surviving members of the third and most experienced line, the Triarii, of the famous Roman Thirteenth Legion, dispatched from Rome by Emperor Nero himself with orders to take a crystal skull found in Judea and exile it to the farthest reaches of the empire, at that time Britannia.
    For two thousand years they had kept the crystal skull away from Rome, and when additional skulls had been discovered around the world, they had taken them under their protection. But after a devastating explosion nearly flattened London in 1212 AD when three skulls were placed together, they realized that the skulls could be dangerous and enacted protocols to prevent it from ever happening again.
    But today they had been betrayed, as they were once before. There was a split within the Triarii over a decade ago, a small sect at one time agitating from within that the skulls should be brought together to unleash their full potential, the sect’s thinking that technology today would allow them to safely do so. The sect was led at one time by a very wealthy and well-connected American named Stewart Jackson. To further his plans of uniting three skulls, he stole the Smithsonian’s Mitchell-Hedges skull—the very skull he was assigned to protect—before leaving the Triarii, hiding it away in an unknown location, replacing the genuine article with a fake, unbeknownst to the museum. His power and influence eventually led him to the highest office in his homeland, President of the United States.
    Which made him untouchable.
    Until he went too far, ordering his elite Delta Force to capture a