Plague of Coins (The Judas Chronicles #1) (2 page)

But all in all, if one considers the previous millennium’s host of travesties visited upon this small area, I have to consider the likely source: a single coin. Buried somewhere, and likely hidden from the light of day for centuries. Meanwhile, hundreds, if not thousands of lives have been ruined—either killed, homeless, or both. The last article I looked at talked about a rare blizzard from thirty years ago. That event took place in May, when things begin to heat up near the Alborz Mountains. More than three feet of snow fell upon the town, and the temperatures plummeted deeply enough to destroy livestock and crops.

The people believe they’re cursed, that somehow they’ve offended Allah. If only they knew that something there—likely buried beneath the soil—was indeed offensive to God, they might burn everything to the ground and leave. Forever.

My gut instinct was telling me a single silver shekel was responsible. One that bears Caesar’s notorious beak of a nose on one side and a proud eagle upon the back. Just like twenty-nine others I once accepted as payment for my evil deed. A moment of folly, and to think it could’ve been forty pieces of silver if Caiaphas hadn’t tried to cheat me by offering half-shekels instead.

Anyway, I was certain my assumption was one hundred percent correct. As I studied the latest stories and pictures on the screen, my left hand began to tremble. This familiar sensation always confirms the truth of what my intuitions tell me.

Silver ‘blood-coin’ number twenty-two is within reach.

Satisfied, I turned off the viewer. I then returned the older film to the correct cabinets and the newer CDs and flash drives to their file drawers.

It was time to request some vacation days, and make arrangements for a little trip overseas.

Chapter 2

Prowling the streets of D.C. after midnight is probably not a brilliant idea...at least for most folks. But for an immortal human being, the fear of injury or death from some hard-up junkie or other low-life miscreant has long since left me.

Perhaps the biggest miracle for most folks—at least those who have become more than mere acquaintances over the centuries—is the fact that my cells are in a continuous process of immediate regeneration. I can’t age because my body won’t let it happen. It’s the same for injuries—even the most extreme amputations anyone can concoct. Not that I intend to present details that will make the faint of heart squeamish. But, obviously, if nothing can hurt me, then I can’t die. Since it’s been so long since I haven’t felt well physically, I don’t even remember what it’s like to be sick.

The only things I
do
remember are the brief moments when I have experienced physical pain. Like when I first tried to strangle myself after betraying my buddy Jesus long ago. Or, the two dozen times I’ve been executed during the past two millennia. Not a lot of fun. Fortunately, each death has come with some sort of benefit, although not all have been altruistic enough to profit my soul or my coin-collecting journey.

I’m sure that many of you have questions about this, and I’ll get around to explaining more about it all. But for now, my purpose for mentioning any of this stuff is to set up my midnight rendezvous with my boy, Alistair.

“Ali, it’s me—your dad!” I whispered, harshly, into the intercom system provided by his posh condo building near the Capitol. “I think I’ve found Number Twenty-two.”

“Okay, Pops...come on up!” he said, after a moment’s hesitation. I must have roused him from a wonderful dream. The main door buzzed open, and I moved inside the building.

Harold Mathis, the night watchman, smiled and gave me a nod as I passed by his station.

“Hey, Mr. Barrow, I see you’re burnin’ the midnight oil again!” He chuckled, and his light gray eyes seemed to glow within his smooth ebony skin. “You keep that up and you’ll start lookin’ like me and your old man!”

His smile widened, revealing a perfect set of veneers. To me, Harold doesn’t look a day over forty-five. But he’s only a year or two younger than my boy, who’ll be sixty-one in about a month from now. Not only does my kid get to hear about how his African-American pal looks a helluva lot younger than him, he’s also in real danger of one day soon looking like he’s my grandpa instead of my dad.

It’s one of the reasons I keep Alistair stocked up with either plenty of Jack Daniels, or my preferred brand of imported Scotch, Dewar’s.

“Yeah, that’d be an awful sight, wouldn’t it?” I returned Harold’s smile as I headed for the elevator. “Hopefully I can catch up on some sleep in the next week when I go on vacation!”

“Vacation?
You??”
He craned his head around the corner to watch me step inside the elevator car. “Alistair tells me that you’re
always
workin’—even when you’re supposed to be
on
a vacation!”

I laughed along with him until the elevator door closed and the car began its labored climb to the top floor. Alistair resides in a penthouse unit, which would be quite a sum each month on his income, even as substantial as it is. But I’ve accumulated a nice fortune over the years, with bank accounts spread throughout the world. Picking up the tab for this extravagance was my idea, and after he had allowed me to bring in a first-rate decorator sensitive to my boy’s tastes and other preferences, Alistair relented to staying there.

It’s the least I could do to make up for my absence in his life from puberty until shortly before his thirty-fourth birthday.

***

“Do you think you will ever learn to control the impulse to wake me up in the middle of the night when a wild idea hits you?”

Gruffer than usual when I’ve awakened him, Alistair seemed especially irritated that I buzzed him out of the world of dreams to hear about a hunch, instead of fact. These things always start as hunches...but to be honest, sometimes the hunch goes ‘poof!’ before I’ve finished making plane reservations. Something about Al-haroun felt much more promising than other hunches, and it definitely was stronger than anything else in the past year.

“It’s different this time. I’m sure of it, son.”

I followed him into his spacious living room. The walls bore an assortment of items from Africa, South America, and the Himalayas. All were artifacts from our joint expeditions.

He motioned to the bar, where he had already poured me a glass of Dewar’s, circa 1981, which was a fairly decent year. He held a small mug with what looked like hot chocolate. Knowing Alistair’s habits as well as I do, whatever was steaming in his cup certainly contained some sort of sleep aid, natural or enhanced. I wouldn’t have long to talk about my findings from earlier that night.

“So it isn’t like the ‘sure thing’ in Denmark, I take it?” He snickered.

Ouch! Yeah, that one stung a little. With his eyebrow raised, he reminded me so much of his mother. My son was born and raised in Glasgow, Scotland, where I met his mom, Beatrice McGregor, back in 1948, right after the war. He is the perfect blend of she and I. As he has grown older, he draws many comparisons to Sean Connery. He bears the same Scottish brogue in the accent, along with prominent dark eyebrows and intense brown eyes that twinkle with mirth. Especially when he savors a pipe, like the one he just picked up from the coffee table while awaiting my reply.

“Hell, no!” I said, perhaps more meanly than warranted. But no parent reacts well to a smart mouth—regardless of the fact my kid has been an independent adult since he was seventeen. I picked up my glass of Scotch before continuing, and sat down on the sofa across from the overstuffed chair he preferred. “Not only are all the signs that we look for present in this location, but it’s a place I’ve considered before. I’ve just never gotten around to actually checking it out.”

“Hmmm.” He sat down and lit his pipe, and then waited for the pungent cherry almond scent to waft toward me.

No doubt, he enjoyed seeing my face flush from rising indignation fed by my impatience. It’s a trait that women have often told me sets off my handsomeness. Something about my blue eyes becoming sapphire chips of icy fire. I believe it’s the quality that once made the fairer gender compare me to Errol Flynn back in the 1920s and more recently Pierce Brosnan. Not to mention my infectious charm and toned physique have never hurt my allure to women or men.

“Okay...where is this place?”

“It’s in Iran, in a very small town not far from the Caspian Sea, near Tabriz and the Russian border,” I explained. “Getting there will be a little tricky, but we can use our clearances to make the trip with minimal resistance from Tehran.”

“So, you want
me
to come along with you on this wild goose chase?” He snickered again, but this time he frowned. “Without considering that I might be very busy? I’ve got preparations for next fall’s session to take care of. My syllabus is due before the Fourth of July holiday begins.”

“It’s early June, son, which means you’ll still have a week or two by the time we get back to wrap that up.” My mood immediately lifted. If it had been a definite ‘no go’, he would’ve said so already. “Besides, I can help you get your fall plan together like I did the last time, in case you end up being pressed for time.”

“Humph! You nearly cost me my post as a result of that fiasco, I might add!” He pointed his pipe at me as if it were a small Derringer.

My son looked adorable right then, dressed in his bathrobe and house slippers while trying to muster some sort of malice at me. I couldn’t help picturing him as a young boy, pointing a popgun at me Christmas morning when he was five.

“And you underestimated my influence on the Dean and Chancellor’s office.” I chuckled at both his harmless accusation and irritated appearance. “Do you really believe they would be so bold as to bite a hand that feeds them, again?”

“No, I suppose not.”

Hard to tell if he saw the situation from my point of view, or realized it would do no good to argue with his dear old dad. But I worried he might be getting tired again. I needed to get to the point of this visit
quickly.

“I’m submitting a vacation request for two weeks, beginning this Friday.” I lowered my tone to reinforce my seriousness. “I would really like for you to come along, since you are more skilled in Arabic and Persian dialects than I am these days—at least with the modern ones. You can leave the Hebrew to me.” I added an assuring smile to sell this, to close the deal.

“Oh joy,” he said, feigning dread. But the impish twinkle in his eyes told me otherwise. Alistair had accompanied me on finding the latest eleven pieces of silver, which made us both hopeful that the quest to find the remaining nine could still happen in his lifetime. “But, are you sure we can’t just wait until there is a more opportune time to pursue this? You haven’t been given a ‘feel’ for someplace closer, say like up in Nantucket or inside the Gateway Arch of St. Louis?” He laughed, weakly.

“No, son, I believe the two we found here in the states last year are it for this continent.” I rose to my feet in confidence that what I sought to achieve was indeed a success. Alistair would join me on my latest quest. “Even so, I do hope this new one turns out as easy as finding a rare shekel in a pawn shop like the one in Mobile, Alabama or that we meet up with another collector like the guy in Missoula, Montana.”

“That guy almost cleaned out your U.S. bank account,” said Alistair, rising to his feet to show me the door. For a moment, I worried the excitement I saw dancing in his eyes would keep him from going back to sleep after I left. “I wonder what would happen if the Iranian government finds out about this and acts as unscrupulous as Mr. Ivan Sutter from Montana.”

“Hopefully, they would be smarter and more worried about the consequences for their immortal souls.” I hoped this didn’t come across as pious and insensitive. News about Mr. Sutter’s sudden passing from a terrible accident after I paid his thirteen-point-five million-dollar price tag for that particular coin has made us both reconsider the gravity of what we’re dealing with. It’s vitally important to keep our own souls unsullied and consciences clean.

If nothing else, living for two thousand years has taught me this: Greed will never be tolerated by the Almighty. I sometimes worry that my own haste to gather the last coins might be perceived in a less than flattering light. After all, it took nearly nineteen hundred years to find the first eleven coins, and a mere thirty to recover the last ten. I just pray my eagerness as of late to complete the arduous task will be seen more as humble expectance that my Lord will return soon....