Avenging Angels (Bad Times Book 3) Read online

  Purpurio strode through the settling cloud of dust raised by the hobnailed passage of his men toward the temple doors. His aquilifer, sweating beneath a wolf’s head cowl, trotted after. His prime centurion, a gruff old lifer named Bachus, met him at the foot of the temple steps.

  Bachus climbed the steps, drawing his sword. He beat upon the doors with the butt of his sword. The waiting Romans were rewarded a moment later by the creak of hinges. A bent old Jew shambled blinking into the sunlight. He wore a simple robe and a ludicrous cap balanced on his head. He was heavily bearded and appeared to Purpurio to be peeping from within a snowy hedge. He shared this thought in Latin with his aquilifer, who chuckled. Following the old man was a younger man with dark hair worn long under a skullcap of white cloth. This one had eyes as alive as the old man’s were dim. The elder was the high priest and de facto headman of this town, but the tribune suspected that it would be this younger man with the eyes of a hungry wolf that he would be speaking to.

  “Greetings from Emperor Tiberius and the people and senate of Rome,” Purpurio said by rote. He was already tired of this farce.

  “What brings the armies of the emperor to our city?” the younger man said. The old man remained mute.

  “City?” Purpurio scoffed. “We are here on the order of Valerius Gratus, the prefect of Judea, to see to the collection of all men within this city between the ages of fourteen and twenty years.”

  “Collection?” The young man spoke passable Latin for a native Jew. “To what purpose? You know that Jews are exempt from military conscription under edict from Herod Antipas.”

  The centurion snorted at that.

  “Conscription?” Purpurio sneered. “As if I would pollute my ranks with your kind.”

  “Herod Antipas—” the young man began. “Enough with your Herod,” the tribune shouted.

  The Jews despised this Herod and his brothers as traitors to their faith yet invoked their names whenever they felt they were wronged. And they were perpetually wronged in their own eyes and never failed to be vocal about it. Purpurio always found Greeks the most argumentative people, until, gods help us, he met his first Jew.

  “You will call the men of ages fourteen to twenty years as though to prayers,” the tribune said. “You keep rolls of your followers along with their ages accurately demarked. I know this. I want those rolls presented to me. I shall check your numbers against the total of the men we count.”

  “Will we not be told of the reasons for this?” the young priest said.

  “How old are you, lad?” Purpurio said, smiling.

  “I am twenty-two in years,” the young priest said, his dark eyes flashing.

  “I hope you can prove that,” the tribune said, turning away.

  A ram’s horn was blown from the roof of the temple, and the people of the town came to the temple square to gather at the steps. It was a mob of several hundred men, women, and children. They shifted uneasily under the gaze of the surrounding soldiers leaning on heavy shields all about. The sight of a cloaked Roman officer standing atop the steps by their rebbe and his young student did nothing to calm them. The student held a book open in his hands that all recognized as the town ledger of Nazareth. This was all looking more ominous with each passing moment. A shouted order from behind the ranks of soldiers and the armored men took one step forward to further hem the crowd in.

  The tribune stood on the highest step and looked over the mob pressed before him. He took a rough mental tally. He barked at the young man who called for silence in their language. When they had hushed, the tribune barked again, and the young student called out again telling all women and children beneath the age of fourteen to return to their homes and school. When the square was occupied by men only, a Roman with a high-crested helmet called out an order and the surrounding troops, as one man, took another step forward. Those that remained were pressed closer in upon one another.

  The young man echoed another order from the Roman atop the steps that sent all men over the age of twenty back to their homes or mills or tanning. The crowd shrank by a third, leaving perhaps near a hundred men standing in a loose collection. The centurion called once again, and the troops stepped three paces closer, forming a seamless hedge about the men.

  “These rest go with us,” tribune Purpurio stated flatly and descended the steps.

  The young man stood silent.

  “Tell them!” Purpurio growled.

  The young man left the old priest and walked down into the square and shouldered through the encircling soldiers. He joined the men and boys waiting there. He spoke to them in their own tongue. They would go with the Romans without protest or attempts to flee. Any trouble to their Roman masters would result in reprisals against their families.

  The soldiers formed up in two columns before and behind the crowd of men and, following a series of bayed orders, marched to the town gate with their charges between them.

  The dark-haired student priest stepped along with the Nazoreans, offering prayers and comforting words. He walked with the village ledger beneath his arm.

  The prisoners were brought into the Roman camp. The tents had been struck to create an open space. The men and boys were gathered at the center with soldiers standing at ease about them. A table was brought from the prefect’s tent and set up with a camp chair for Titus Brocious, the prefect’s new lictor, to sit. The ledger was taken from the young priest by the tribune and offered to the lictor, who opened it to the current tally of male villagers with their birth dates marked in a column by their names. The young priest stood at his side, offering assistance with the pronunciation of names and the numbers of the obtuse Jewish calendar. Lictor Titus had a sheet of vellum prepared to set down his own tally of the captives.

  The prefect remained in his tent with his boys. Purpurio wondered if he was awake even though the sun was climbing to its highest point.

  Names were called and written on the vellum sheet in Titus’s careful hand. The soldiers were spelled by ranks and allowed a cup of watered vinegar and a handful of dried fruit. The tribune sipped diluted wine poured by his aquilifer. It was as tedious a process as Purpurio had anticipated.

  In the end, after the last name was called and the final Jew had stepped forward, there was a discrepancy of six names between the ledger and the freshly penned list on the lictor’s sheet.

  The young priest was questioned but had no answers.

  The tribune summoned old Bachus forward and told him to take three centuries into the town and find the six fugitives. The prisoners were ordered to sit on the ground. The remaining soldiers stood guard over them, leaning on shields and speaking quietly. The young priest was in agitated conversation with the lictor. Troublesome damned Jews, thought Purpurio, and repaired to his tent until Bachus returned with the slackers.

  The troops dispatched to the town returned at sundown with only four of the missing six. Bachus reported that they indeed found all the fugitives but were forced to kill two as they resisted capture. A third man and a woman were killed as well when they protested the taking of their son. Bachus candidly added that the town was in a bit of an uproar since their young men were taken. The soldiers left under a hail of stones thrown by some of the town’s children. The centurion decided to withdraw his men rather than make an issue of it.

  “Best that you did,” Purpurio agreed. “You’d be half the night pursuing the little bastards through that labyrinth. And even then not come up with even one of them.”

  “Aye, sir.” Bachus nodded. “What of the four we found?”

  “Ligatures for them,” the tribune sniffed. “They’ll be the first to die.”

  The four miscreant Jews were dragged before the others and strangled with bowstrings until their tongues turned black and legs ceased kicking. A moan of terror rose amongst the Jews, and they backed from the executions until halted by the spear points at their spines.

  “What is this?” The young priest rushed forward spouting his atrocious Latin.


  “What did you think this was?” Purpurio snarled. “I told you they were not to be conscripted. To what other purpose do you think we would put this filthy lot? They are to be executed.”

  “By whose order? What have they done?” the young priest cried, turning to the lictor crossing six names from his list with the stroke of a stylus.

  “It is by order of the prefect Gratus, and therefore the Syrian legate, and through him the command of Tiberius Rex himself!” Purpurio said heatedly.

  “I would speak with this prefect!” the young priest proclaimed.

  “What is your name, Jew?” the lictor asked, stylus poised above vellum.

  “I am Yusef Kayifas.”

  The lictor spelled the name as best he could at the bottom of his tally.

  Joseph Caiaphas.

  Titus wished to recall the name of this Jew. He was intelligent yet pliable, qualities valuable in the law and politics. A political Jew of some standing might be of use one day to Titus either in his service as lictor or in any higher post he sought.

  “I am of the priestly course of the Sadducees, and so passively interested in the affairs of Rome. I offer no offense other than to ask for what crime these men will be murdered!” Kayifas demanded.

  “Executed,” came a quavering voice.

  Valerius Gratus exited his tent, walking like a man twice his age. His eyes shone black as polished ebony, and his skin appeared like candle-lit parchment in the failing sun.

  “They are to be executed for crimes against the Empire,” Gratus said, stepping up to Kayifas and holding himself in a parody of the decorum expected from a man of his station.

  “What crimes?” Kayifas demanded.

  “They are Jews. And Jews cause no end of trouble. These will be done away with as a reprisal for those crimes, as an object lesson in the dangers of defying the will of Tiberius and all who hold his imprimatur.” Gratus’s voice trailed away at the end into a wracking cough.

  “But execution.” Kayifas stepped closer to the prefect. Purpurio made to grab the Jew’s arm but Gratus waved him away.

  “Allow him to speak, Tribune. These Jews provide me distraction with all their talk, and his accent is amusing for now.” Gratus tittered. “Tell us, Jew. What alternative do you offer?”

  “They might be sold as slaves,” Kayifas offered. “Near a hundred able young men you hold here. They are worth a fortune to flesh traders.”

  Gratus’s eyes swam in his head at this. He put a hand to the back of the lictor’s chair to steady himself.

  The wily young Jew had discerned the weakness in their prefect, Purpurio realized. He suspected this current action was motivated by payment of some kind. Now Gratus’s mind was whirling with the possibility of compounding the graft in his purse with the sale of these captives.

  “You speak well and you speak plain, Jew.” Gratus nodded slowly. “I will sleep upon this decision. These prisoners live until morning at the very least. We shall see with the sun’s rise whether my mercy will be further strained.”

  With that, the cagey old pedophile stumbled back to his tent.

  Kayifas turned to the huddled men and spoke honeyed words. Each man dropped to his knees, keening prayers in their mongrel language until shouted into silence by Bachus. The soldiers laughed at this. Purpurio ordered the prisoners to be hobbled with lengths of rope and be fed a single bowl of watered gruel. A full watch would be kept that night to prevent escape.

  Late the following morning, prefect Gratus stepped from his tent to pronounce that the captives would be marched across Galilee to the slave market in Philippi. Three centuries of the Twenty-third would take them there, along with the lictor Titus to see to the sale. Those men would be paid a bonus from the proceeds of the sale with the balance going into the coffers of the prefecture. The remainder of the legion, under the command of the tribune Purpurio, would see the prefect and entourage safely back to his palace.

  The young prisoners, tanners, metalsmiths, orchard workers, students, and carpenters, were unhobbled and marched from the camp under guard to follow the road north to Syria and slavery.

  The prefect watched the growing dust cloud with what Purpurio thought was a fragile smile of avarice.

  8

  The Ocean Raj, Somewhere South of Cyprus

  Morris Tauber was incredulous at the level of credulity his sister expected from him.

  “You expect me to believe this?” He laughed.

  “With everything we’ve been through the past year,

  I would have expected you to have a more open mind,” Caroline said.

  “Having an open mind doesn’t mean I can’t still be analytical, Sis. I can be broad-minded and still know sheer insanity when I hear it.”

  “Samuel saved us from those Harnesh guys who took us to the future. To the future, Mo! You believe that, right?”

  “I believe it. As incredible as it is, that’s the only explanation that makes sense.”

  “It’s not an explanation,” Dwayne put in. “It happened. To us. In the future.”

  They were down in Morris’s lab below decks aboard the Ocean Raj. It was fashioned from the walls of Conex containers and reinforced by girders welded in place by the ship’s crew. To any casual inspection, the main deck and holds below were filled with stacks of the steel cargo containers. But they formed a shell that covered a multi-level lab complex including a control center, mainframe computer cold room, a shielded mini-reactor, and the large chamber where the Tauber Tube rested around its raised walkway.

  While the rest of the team vanished to the four corners of the world, Dr. Tauber remained on board to take advantage of the solitude to fine-tune the time-challenging device he and his little sister had created. And, in any case, someone with the knowledge needed to keep an eye on the mini-reactor had to be on hand. Parviz and Quebat, the expat Iranians with a fatwa on their heads, were taking a train tour of Scandinavia, and Morris monitored their stolen nuclear device.

  The big container ship was anchored in international waters well away from the shipping lanes. Boats and his mostly Ethiopian crew were here as well and collecting their paychecks for doing light maintenance and spending the rest of their days loafing.

  “So, Samuel knows things, Mo,” Caroline said. “He’s from the future. He’s seen stuff we can’t imagine, and he already knows how the movie ends if we don’t act.”

  “If he can travel through time so easily, then why doesn’t he do this himself? Why does he need the help of a bunch of wildcat treasure hunters?” Morris said and took at a seat at his computer console and began fiddling with connections inside a CPU tower he’d taken apart.

  Caroline grabbed the seat back and yanked him away from the console. She spun him in the chair and leaned on the arms to put her face inches from his.

  “We’re off the grid, brother. Our movements through space and time are not accounted for by Sir Neal and his people. They know about Samuel, and it’s all he can do to stay one step ahead of them. I’m not asking you to believe anything. But this is major, or I wouldn’t be asking you to set it up. It’s important, and we need to do it.”

  “But those men on Rhodes who took you and Dwayne,” Morris said quietly. “They knew about us.”

  “And they’re dead,” Dwayne said. “For them, the trail went cold right there. That timeline is a dead end for Harnesh and his group. We are still off their radar.”

  “Have you asked the other Rangers if they want to involve themselves in this? There’s no treasure this time,” Morris said.

  “We haven’t put it to them yet.” Dwayne shrugged. “But they have plenty of cash. They might agree to a freebie. I know Jimmy will. He’s still disappointed he bailed on our last outing.”

  “Well, we still have operating capital. So, if you can convince the others, okay” Morris said.

  “I love you, bro!” Caroline leaned closer and kissed him on the forehead.

  “Only because I always give in to you eventually,” he said
as she stood up, releasing his chair to roll back.

  “It’s the basis of our relationship.” She grinned.

  “If this Samuel really knows about future events, did you ask him any questions?” Morris asked.

  “Like what?” Dwayne said.

  “Like whether Sis is having a boy or a girl.”

  With a groan, Dwayne smacked himself on the forehead.

  9

  Bern, Switzerland

  The guys agreed to meet Dwayne in Bern, and Caroline finally agreed to check into the private clinic there.

  “I don’t like hospitals,” she said.

  “It’s more like a resort, babe,” he assured her. “You put your feet up and concentrate on making our baby.”

  “I like making our baby, but I don’t want to be babied,” she said before he left her in the lobby in the care of a concierge.

  “Give it a chance. I’ll be back in three hours,” he promised and went back to the limo.

  After being shown around her private suite, a needle hot shower followed by a massage, a pedicure, and a lunch of fruit cup, mahi-mahi bruschetta, and herbal tea, Caroline decided that being babied wasn’t so bad after all.

  Lee Hammond booked the Rangers a sub-basement conference room at Von Spettenfried Privatbanc, a very, very private bank in the city. None of them had an account there, but the bank’s state-of-the-science secure meeting rooms could be rented at ten thousand euros a day. The intense privacy that was once guaranteed by Swiss banks was being slowly eroded by world intelligence agencies and changing finance laws in the United States and other cash-starved world economies. So a lot of the banks were adding to their bottom line by monetizing their greatest asset, secrecy. They opened their super-shielded offices and meeting rooms to high-roller consumers who wanted the nature and attendees of their meetings kept from prying eyes and ears. “You can never be too careful,” was their unspoken motto.