The Secret of the Stones by Ernest Dempsey (good e books to read .txt) 📗

Ulrich scanned the workstation for the parcel. He’d taken a big chance coming here. It was fortunate that Atlanta’s finest had never received a level of training to deal with his skills. Still, had there been a larger force, things may have got sticky.

A stack of envelopes sat at the edge of the desk. Setting the blade down on the black wooden surface, he picked up the letters and shuffled them through his gloved fingers, not sure what he was looking for. He arrived at the bottom of the stack, having found nothing but ordinary junk mail and statements from various service institutions. Frustrated, he let the bunch fall back to the surface of the desk next to his knife.

Had he been tricked? He’d considered the possibility that Schultz had sent him here knowing full well there would be police around the area. Perhaps the archaeologist had underestimated the talents Ulrich possessed. Then again, surely his captive would not be so foolish as to trust that the police would be able to subdue him. No. It had to be here. He picked up the envelopes again and scanned them more meticulously. About halfway through the pile, he stopped at one that seemed peculiar. It was from a financial institution he’d never heard of. Granted, there were a million financial advisers out there, but this one struck him as odd. It had already been opened, whereas the rest were still sealed. Unconsciously dropping the other mail, he removed a piece of paper from within the frayed top. At the bottom of the correspondence he recognized the name of the professor he’d killed a few nights before. It was a letter from Dr. Borringer, and on it were the translations of the disc Schultz had found in North Georgia. The words were still in the form of a riddle: “The chambers will light your path.” A chill went up his spine as he read the last few words. This had to be it.

Suddenly, a noise came from downstairs. The front door closed. Ulrich tucked the letter into a cargo pocket in his black pants as he shifted over to the door of the study. Below, he could hear the careless footsteps of someone who had no idea what had happened and what was about to. As the sound of the shoes on the hardwood moved toward the kitchen, Ulrich took a few precipitous steps downward, pressing close to the wall. Even though this flatfoot beat cop was surely no match for his level of talent, the blond assassin still preferred to always use the element of surprise if it was available, a policy that had probably saved his hide more than once.

In the kitchen, the refrigerator door opened, the light flooding the kitchen with a mixture of natural and florescent light.

“Hey, Billy!” The gruff voice of the cop froze Ulrich on the bottom step of the staircase. “This guy’s got some Cokes in here. You want one?”

The Southern accent grated against Ulrich’s European ears. The hapless cop, probably about five feet ten inches tall, looked more like a reject from a junior varsity offensive line. Ulrich judged his weight to be around 250 pounds and from the looks of him. He watched as the chubby man reached into the refrigerator and grabbed two red cans from the bottom drawer. Receiving no response from his partner on the back porch, he called out again, “Hey, Billy! You thirsty?” Silence.

Setting down the cans, the cop stalked toward the dining room where the door to the back deck was located. “Dadgummit, Billy! If you’re on that cell phone again, I’m gonna kick your…” The officer stopped in midsentence as he stared out through the glass door at the prostrate body on the other side. “What the…Billy?!” Panic flooded his face as he reach for the handle of the sliding door.

Abruptly, he felt something thin and cold run across the breadth of his neck.

With fleshy hands, the blubbery cop clutched his throat and turned around to see a tall blond-haired man holding a knife. Blood gushed from the open artery and vein, his fingers doing little more than filtering the flow. The man’s beady eyes quickly clouded, and the room began to spin. Finally, his heavy body crashed to the floor, torso and head leaning up against glass. After only a few seconds, the head toppled onto a shoulder, lifeless.

Ulrich simply stood for a moment watching the last few ounces of life spurt from the wound. Then, turning, he strode swiftly toward the front of the house, concealing the blade in its jacket sheath. He closed the front door of the house casually and returned to the quiet suburban sidewalk, unaware of the eyes that watched him from a black luxury sedan nearby.

17

Atlanta

Allyson handed the envelope to Sean. “Would you like to do the honors?” She smiled at him like a kid who’d just found the last Easter egg.

What he took from her hand looked, on the outside, like an ordinary correspondence to a financial advisement company. The men who had come in to the Borringer house looking for something profoundly significant would have passed it off to be a typical everyday letter.

They would have no way of knowing that the institution to which the letter was addressed did not exist. In fact, the only people that might recognize the initials were the two people looking at it at that very moment. In the center of the envelope, the words SMW Financial Advisers were the send-to address.

Sean stared at the envelope. “That clever dog,” he laughed. “A purloined letter with my initials on it, no one else would have ever realized.”

Allyson smiled proudly.

He