The herod conspiracy, p.1
THE HEROD CONSPIRACY, page 1
The Herod Conspiracy
The Vatican Knights, Volume 30
Rick Jones
Published by Rick Jones, 2023.
This is a work of fiction. Similarities to real people, places, or events are entirely coincidental.
THE HEROD CONSPIRACY
First edition. June 30, 2023.
Copyright © 2023 Rick Jones.
ISBN: 979-8223859383
Written by Rick Jones.
THE HEROD CONSPIRACY
by
Rick Jones
© 2023 Rick Jones. All rights reserved.
This is a property of EmpirePRESS & EmpireENTERTAINMENT, LLC
The Vatican Knights is a TRADEMARK property.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are products of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously and should not be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews. For more information e-mail all inquiries to: rick@rickjonz.com
Visit Rick Jones on the World Wide Web at: http://www.rickjonz.com/rickjonz.com
Table of Contents
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
Chapter Twenty-Two
Chapter Twenty-Three
Chapter Twenty-Four
Chapter Twenty-Five
Chapter Twenty-Six
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Chapter Thirty
Chapter Thirty-One
Chapter Thirty-Two
Chapter Thirty-Three
Chapter Thirty-Four
Chapter Thirty-Five
Chapter Thirty-Six
Chapter Thirty-Seven
Chapter Thirty-Eight
Chapter Thirty-Nine
Chapter Forty
Chapter Forty-One
Chapter Forty-Two
Chapter Forty-Three
Chapter Forty-Four
Chapter Forty-Five
Chapter Forty-Six
Chapter Forty-Seven
Chapter Forty-Eight
Chapter Forty-Nine
Chapter Fifty
Chapter Fifty-One
Chapter Fifty-Two
Chapter Fifty-Three
Epilogue
ALSO, by Rick Jones:
Vatican Knights Series
The Vatican Knights
Shepherd One
The Iscariot Agenda
Pandora's Ark
The Bridge of Bones
Crosses to Bear
The Lost Cathedral
Dark Advent
Cabal
The Golgotha Pursuit
Targeted Killing
Sinners and Saints
The Barbed Crown (a prequel)
The Devil’s Magician
The Nocturnal Saints
The Brimstone Diaries
Juggernaut
Original Sins (a prequel)
In Between God and Devil
The Sinai Directive
The Barabbas Connection
The Eye of Moses
The Crimson Dagger
The Goliath Chamber
The Vladorian Keep
The Baal Manifesto
Archangel
The Venetian Code
The Necrology Report
The Herod Conspiracy
The Eden Series
The Crypts of Eden (A John Savage/Alyssa Moore Adventure)
The Thrones of Eden (A John Savage/Alyssa Moore Adventure)
City Beneath the Sea (A John Savage/Alyssa Moore Adventure)
The Sacred Vault (A John Savage/Alyssa Moore Adventure)
City Within the Clouds (A John Savage/Alyssa Moore Adventure)
City Beneath the Ice (A John Savage/Alyssa Moore Adventure)
City at Ocean’s Edge (Pending)
The Hunter Series
Night of the Hunter
The Black Key
Theater of Operation
Stand Alone Novels
The Menagerie
Jurassic Run
Mausoleum 2069
with RICK CHESLER
First Strike
CHAPTER ONE
Los Angeles, California
Four Days Ago
The priest entered the parlor of a clairvoyant who professed to be a stigmatic, a person that bears the religious stigmata wounds of Christ who bleeds from openings in the palms and feet. The room was small, and the walls were covered with red velour curtains to blot out the light from the windows. A rectangular-shaped table with two chairs sat in the middle with the familiar glass ball serving as the centerpiece. Above the table was a Tiffany-style lamp that gave off a dim glow of light that barely kept the shadows away. At the table sat a wiry-thin woman who smiled at him with a deceitful grin, something he’d seen many times before with self-proclaimed mystics.
“Welcome.” Her voice was thick with an accent, perhaps Croatian, Polish, or Herzegovinian, but definitely Slavic. “Please . . . come closer. I won’t bite.” When her smile widened, it took on that Cheshire Cat grin, that of mischievous intent.
When the priest stepped into the light, she immediately noted the scar tissue running laterally across his face, the remnant red and angry looking. Then she fixed on the cleric’s Roman Catholic collar and realized that her client was a minister of faith. “You didn’t tell me you were a priest,” she said, her smile fading, but not enough to dispel her lying veneer. “So, tell me, Father, tell me why a man of God would come to me to seek his future when his future has been forged by the choices he has already made, that of serving God? Do you question where your faith is directing you?”
“Perhaps within your question, Madam, is your answer,” he told her with a hint of an Irish brogue. “What I seek is the truth in God’s name.”
The fortuneteller, who wore the ubiquitous sparkling turban that was designed with crescent moons and Babylonian stars, offered a one-sided grin that had the curve of a fishhook. “Of course,” she said. “You’re a nonbeliever in regard to my wounds. Perhaps you think I’m a charlatan, yes?”
“Are you?”
The woman pointed to the vacant seat at the opposite end of the table. “Please,” she told him in invitation.
“Thank you.” After taking his seat, he gazed at the clairvoyant with a stamped and artificial grin.
Then from the soothsayer, “You want to see for yourself that God connects to those He sees as his divine vessels, is that it?”
“I would like to see your palms, please.” His smile remained, but there was something neutral in his tone and manner, the man wooden by nature.
When she raised her hands and held her palms out to him in the feeble light, there were no injuries, scars, or anything to indicate that she had been the recipient of stigmata wounds.
“I see nothing,” he told her. “Nothing at all.”
And then: “What church do you come from?”
“From the church of churches.”
“From the Vatican?”
“I was sent to validate your claims that you are what you claim to be, a true stigmatic. As I sit here, I see nothing that would support this to be so. What I do see, however, is a person who values profit through deception, to advise those who so desperately want to believe in the divine miracle of stigmata, that you will provide them with spiritual fulfillment that can only be created by trickery and, of course, separation from their hard-earned wages.”
“So, you believe me to be a fraud, is that it? And now you’re here because you want proof.”
“I’m here to give you the opportunity to prove me wrong. Show me that you are a true stigmatic as you claim to be.”
“Yeah, well, proof costs, Father. Twenty dollars in the pot will open up a new world of insight for you.”
“Is that so?”
“Twenty dollars.”
The priest, with his smile neither waxing nor waning but remaining locked, reached for the pocket inside his cleric’s jacket, removed his wallet, withdrew a twenty-dollar bill, and held it up against the weak light with the bill pinched between his thumb and forefinger.
“Place it into the bowl that’s directly to your right, please.”
The priest, keeping his eyes steady on the woman, dropped the bill into the small copper bowl.
“Very good,” said the woman. “Now, all I ask is that you remain seated as I channel the world of Light and Loving Spirits. Please do not interrupt the process.”
The woman started to roll her eyes until they showed nothing but slivers of white. Then she started to chant nonsensical words. As she did so, the light above the table began to dim, the shadows deepening.
The priest laughed inwardly thinking how sophomoric the clairvoyant was with her methods and mode of operation unchanged for decades, that of calling spirits by detaching themselves from this reality to reach an unseen elsewhere. The chanting, the warring tics against her face as though she was fighting her way through a wall to enter another realm, seemed over the top to the priest.
Are you trying to call upon Jesus? he wanted to ask her. Or perhaps the Heavenly Father?
But when she raised her hands slowly with her palms facing him, he saw points of blood establishing themselves in the center of both hands. Then the blood raced towards her wrists, two viscous lines. When she appeared entirely spent, the woman dropped her hands and took deep breaths as if the event, though short, was thoroughly exhaustive. “There,” she told him. “As you can see . . . my wounds are quite real.”
“Are they now?”
With speed that was too fast for the clairvoyant to register, the priest was across the table, and on top of her, the cleric reaching for her arm.
“What the hell are you doing?” she cried out.
The priest, with his ever-present—albeit fake—smile, asked, “What happened to your accent? All of a sudden you sound quite American. East Coast, I would say. New York, New Jersey, or Boston.”
“Get off of me!”
As soon as the priest grabbed the woman’s arm, he peeled away a fiber-thin strip of flesh-colored tape that hid a tube that ran from a bladder beneath her armpit that was filled with a mixture of corn syrup and red food coloring—a Hollywood blend that replicated blood—that when the bladder was squeezed, the fluid would be pushed down the tube to a well-hidden opening on the palm. In the room’s dim lighting, the hoax was well concealed.
The priest, tossing aside the woman’s arm in disgust and backing away from the table with an accusing finger pointed at her, said, “You’re a fake as I thought. Nothing but a dime-store psychic.”
“Get the hell out of here!”
“A method as old as the Trickster, yes? Though effective enough for the desperate to be so easily parted from their money.”
“I said, get out of here!”
The priest reached inside his coat and produced a sidearm whose suppressor was as long as the Glock’s barrel, then aimed it at the woman.
Her eyes flared in alarm not quite registering the incongruity of the moment when she looked at the priest's white collar, and then at the mouth of the gun's barrel, a perfect circle filled with absolute darkness. She started to wonder why the priest was armed, only to never finish the thought.
. . . Phfttt . . . Phfttt . . . Phfttt . . .
Two shots to center mass and another to the forehead, the hallmark shooting of a trained assassin.
After returning the weapon to his coat and grabbing the twenty-dollar bill from the copper bowl, the priest exited the soothsayer’s den.
CHAPTER TWO
Tent Revival
Greenville, Tennessee
Same Day, Early Evening
“And God anointed few to serve on Earth as His minions to show His children the wonders of His gloooooooorious powers. And I . . . have . . . been . . . anointed!”
Inside a tent that seated nearly three hundred people in Greenville, Tennessee, Pastor George W. Alden was galvanizing the masses to cheer openly with ‘amens’ and ‘hallelujahs,’ his traveling revival a common hallmark of spiritual enlightenment in the south.
“I have seen His Light! I have seeeeeeeen His Glory!”
More amens.
More hallelujahs.
“And He has shown me the signs of a coming apocalypse. So now, I have come to you as a servant of God to enlist you as part of His great army and to serve alongside His angels. Pray against the evil that has consumed countless souls while you . . . remain . . . pure . . . of heart. Battle alongside Archangel Michael to defeat the Darkness that is plaguing every corner of our planet.”
Amen.
Hallelujah.
“Follow me, for I will wield the Sword of Light to vanquish the Sinners of Darkness. And together, you and I will assure that the Light of God shall outshine the Shadows of the Abyss.”
More shouts and cheers—all amens and hallelujahs.
Pastor Alden paced the stage wearing a white suit, white tie, white loafers, and, along with snow-white hair to cast the image of outright purity, he nodded to his members in approval of them, the man a true showman. These were his followers, he thought, people he could shape to follow his commands by dictating to them a way of life in exchange for the salvation of His Light. He was their path to Glory, the Pied Piper of weak souls who were looking for direction and guidance.
Stopping at center stage, Pastor Alden raised his hands so that his palms were facing his newfound flock. “Lo and behold the power of God! And know through me that He shows His divine power, for I am His humble servant!”
Closing his eyes, Pastor Alden said, “Hallelujah! Hallelujah! Halle—” Beaded points of blood began to appear in the centers of both palms. “Lo and behold . . . The miracle of stigmata!”
People went to their knees with their hands clasped together in an attitude of prayer and sobbed. Others raised their hands skyward as though they were surrendering themselves directly over to God. And as people of Alden’s congregation whipped themselves into a spiritual frenzy, two priests were observing the assembly while seated in the last row.
“Can I have a Hal . . .Lay . . . Loo . . . Yah!”
. . . Hallelujah! . . . Hallelujah! . . . Hallelujah! . . .
As blood coursed down the pastor’s palms to the cuffs of his shirt, bloodying them, he lowered his hands and spoke into his lip mic. “Have you seen, my brothers and sisters?”
WE HAVE SEEN!
“Do you not believe in the power of the Almighty?”
WE BELIEVE!
“Am I the spiritual being in your lives who will guide you to the Light?”
YOU ARE!
“Am I your Savior?”
YOU ARE!
“Then pray! Pray to the Lord! Pray for His forgiveness and join my crusade to battle the demons of Darkness! Can I have an amen?”
AMEN!
“Amen!”
AMEN!
When the crowd calmed themselves, Pastor Alden, took on a dour look, one of incredible sadness. “My friends,” he began, “with a heart that weighs heavily inside me, I implore all of you to give not only from your hearts but to offer donations that will benefit the Lord’s causes. To give to one is to give to all. So, when you give, understand that your wages serve not only to pass along the words of Almighty God, but it allows me to display His powers through me, His spiritual vassal. So, I humbly ask, my friends, that you donate from your heart. You will find donation vats throughout the tent, each marked with a dollar sign.” And then: “Can I have an amen?”
AMEN!
“Can I have a hallelujah?”
HALLELUJAH!
Waving to his flock, Pastor Alden, along with four beefy sidekicks who were well-dressed, exited from the stage where they disappeared behind the tent’s flap.
* * *
The two priests sat idle as they observed people remove their wallets and purses, plucking a few bills free and dispensing them into the donation vats. Those employed by the pastor stood next to the barrels and wore artificial grins and spoke a scripted ‘thank you’ to each of those who contributed by saying ‘Have a blessed day’ to the point of sounding automated.
. . . Have a blessed day . . .
. . . Have a blessed day . . .
. . . Have a blessed day . . .
The priests, both wearing long robes with red buttons and piping, got to their feet. They were polished in their demeanor, the two moving with elegance and grace as they made their way to the front of the tent. In the hand of one priest was a leather briefcase that had the stamped emblem of the Vatican on one side, that of crisscrossing keys—one gold, one silver—beneath the pope’s mitre.
