The Crimson Dagger - Vatican Knights Series 23 (2020) by Rick Jones (romantic novels to read txt) 📕

worked their way through the myriad corridors that led from the hotel’s docking bay to the higher levels. It took nearly fifteen minutes for the entire team to gather inside of Ali Mustafa’s suite on the seventieth floor.

Once assembled, it was Abd-al-Mumin who handed over the Holy Lance into the hands of Mustafa, as though it was a holy scepter. And Mustafa, with his eyes too thick with tears because his gratitude was overwhelming, ritualistically accepted the relic with both hands.

The Holy Lance; the Spear of Destiny; the Crimson Dagger, once dipped in the blood of one of God’s greatest messengers, was now within his grasp. Weighing the spearhead, he thought it had heft to it, which he believed it should have when taking into consideration the massive power it wielded. But he was also surprised that it did not exercise anything godly to the touch. There was no prickling of the skin or the marginal charge of static power. Nor did it exude an all-encompassing warmth or gentle eclipsing of the soul. It simply felt . . . plain.

Nevertheless, Ali Mustafa held the Holy Lance skyward to show Allah that he was in full possession of His gift. With the Holy Lance, he would now rule a great army from the seat of a great nation. And he would do so with the Spear of Destiny fashioned and equipped at the end of a jeweled scepter, which would reign dominant for millennia under One Rule under the One True God. The spearhead would be the tip of the ruler’s staff, which he would pass down to his sons and his sons’ sons.

“With this Crimson Dagger I now begin the line of my birth right. Allah will watch over me and my descendants. And together, as we serve as your vessels, we will rule under the tenets and the laws of the Koran. With the bounty of Your holiest treasures, I will command a great force in Your rule. See me, Allah, as a mere vessel to fulfill Your wishes, Your demands, and allow this Holy Lance to grant me the power necessary to act as Your servant.”

To see this play out, at least in the eyes of the common man, one would see this as voodoo magic or an archaic ritual. But Mustafa remained steeped in old customs while at the same time trying to embrace evolution, which was somewhat of an oxymoron. To combine the old with the new would prove to have its difficulties. To mesh old ideologies while expecting new philosophies to work in tandem often proved disastrous. Nevertheless, Ali Mustafa was focused on altering old beliefs by turning them into workable and acceptable principles under Shia Law. With Allah’s guidance, his military legion would be able to promote the rule of Allah under similar codes of Shia ethics, although the conventions of the ancients had to be altered.

Evolution.

Without adapting to the progression of time, then there could be no ultimate victory.

Mustafa then placed the Holy Lance close to his heart and hugged it as though it was a precious child. Here was the power of God, he thought. The power that would grant him the right to command armies that would overwhelm and overtake with a mere raising of his staff.

Even the Great Satan will have no control against the power of Allah.

And then from Ali Mustafa, whose voice remained firm, he said, “Allahu Akbar!”

In chorus, everyone provided the cheer of ‘Allahu Akbar!’

While Mustafa continued to cradle the relic close to him, seventy floors below and in the streets of Austria, a massive storm was brewing. Soon, Ali Mustafa would be given the opportunity to test his newfound power.

CHAPTER TWELVE

Kapsch TrafficCom Control Center

Vienna, Austria

The Kapsch TrafficCom Control Center (The KTC) is headquartered in Vienna and manages intercity traffic and road infrastructure. The system was developed to monitor a vehicle, or a fleet of vehicles, through telematics, which is achieved through a combination of a GPS receiver and an electronic device installed in each vehicle along with a web-based software. The data is then turned into information by management reporting tools in combination with a mapping software. So, through the Kapsch TrafficCom telematics system, a vehicle, as long as KTC has the real-time GPS address, can be tracked via a satellite system to an accuracy of five feet. When a stolen vehicle has been reported, data is forwarded to the KTC by law enforcement authorities for investigative matters. So, when a geospatial satellite captured the van that was parked close to the Hofburg Palace in real time after the alert, the telematics system was initiated so that the communication system between satellite and the vehicle’s GPS software began to speak to one another. On screen inside the Kapsch TrafficCom Control Center, the vehicle showed up as a blip on the monitor against the wall. The names of streets were listed on the map as the vehicle made its way southbound. On a second screen, the van was captured as a live feed as it raced within the range of one CCTV camera and into the range of another, with the cameras tracking the vehicle until it had stopped close to the Kristallpalast, about fifty feet away. The KTC operators then utilized additional traffic cameras to survey five men exiting the vehicle, who then entered the hotel from different points.

Jonathen Mayer was the executive operator who often worked in collusion with law enforcement after receiving sensitive red-alert issues. But on this particular matter where a potential act of terrorism may have been committed, Anselm Gruber, who headed the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution and Counterterrorism, and Sebastian Baeder, who was the chief officer of the Directorate General for Public Security, remained within the communication loop regarding the van’s movements.

Mayer had been in constant contact with the authorities by reporting that the vehicle, which had been stolen two days prior, was captured leaving the Austrian Imperial Treasury with its