Chase Baker and the Da Vinci Divinity (A Chase Baker Thriller Series Book 6) (4 page)

“I’m Deputy Inspector Eric Millen,”
he says. “You’re already familiar with my associate, Andrea Gallo.”

I smile. “Extremely familiar. Isn’t
that right, Andrea?”

Poseidon Brother Bear shoots me the
evil eye.

“Your reputation precedes you, Mr.
Baker,” Millen says. “Now you know why we brought you here the way we did. We
couldn’t take a chance on your saying ‘no.’ Not when the sit rep is as
desperate as it is.”

“Sit rep?” I say. “Meaning.”

“The state of the world is rapidly
deteriorating.”

“Terrorism? ISIS? Al Qaeda? Boko Haram?
Pick a terrorist group … any terrorist group.”

Andrea leans in, places both her
palms flat on the table.

Shaking her head, she says, “Soon,
those evil organizations will be dismantled, crushed, and destroyed. Given
enough time, enough firepower, enough resolve on the part of the free world
leaders, radical Islam will be effectively neutralized. Of that, we have no
doubt. But what Deputy Inspector Millen and I are concerned with involves a
force with far more staying power, far more fire power, and far more resources
than those murderous Islamic bastards in Syria and North Africa.”

I sit back in my chair. “Who the
hell are you people?”

Andrea looks at Millen. He looks
back at her.

“Ever heard of MI16?” he says.

I feel the short hairs on the back
of my neck rise up.

“James Bond,” I whisper.

“Bond is MI-6,” Andrea points out. “But
close enough.”

“And who are these bad guys you’re
talking about?”

“The Russians,” she says with a
smile. “Naturally.”

“Before we go on,” I say, “is it possible for me to grab a cup
of coffee? Shaken, not stirred?”

Millen nods emphatically.

“My apologies again,” he says. “Of
course, you can have some coffee. I’ll have my men gather coffee all around and
something to eat with it.”

He turns, issues the orders to the
Poseidon Brothers. Both of them don’t look too happy about being gophers.
Especially on my behalf. Hope they don’t spit in my Maxwell House.

“Oh, fellas,” I say, as Poseidon
Jackie places his meaty hand on the door opener. “I’ll take a chocolate frosted
and a plain cruller … chop chop.”

Poseidon Jackie slips his hand off
the handle, raises his middle finger high, flips me off. The finger is about
the size of my forearm. He then storms out along with his big twin brother.

“You really know how to make
friends,” Andrea says.

“You and I got along pretty well,”
I say. “I’m hoping that we can get out of here soon and pick up where we left
off.”

Millen clears his throat, opens his
file.

“We really must get down to
business,” he insists.

The photo on top isn’t a photo at
all, but an old sketching. A very old sketching.

“Do you recognize this man, Mr.
Baker?”

“Of course, I do,” I say. “I live
in Florence part time. It’s Leonardo da Vinci. He owns the joint. So to speak.”

Millen raises his head, peers up at
the ceiling.

“Run it,” he says.

“You got it,” replies a piped in
voice. “Killing the lights now.”

The lights dim. A screen that’s
just as translucent as the glass walls descends from the ceiling. Displayed on
it is a panoramic view of Florence, Italy, the famous Duomo which covers the
altar of the Florence Cathedral taking up the center of the still shot.

Andrea stands.

“Florence, Italy,” she says. “Ground
zero of the Renaissance which lasted approximately 1300 to 1700 AD, and gave
birth to such artistic and scientific geniuses as Michelangelo, Galileo, and,
of course, Leonardo da Vinci. A literal interpretation of Renaissance is
rebirth. In this case, Europe was arising out of the ashes of the Dark Ages and
beginning to redefine itself in a new age of enlightenment that mirrored
ancient Rome and Greece some fifteen hundred to three thousand years before.
The creative groundswell was nothing less than a revolution artistically,
scientifically, financially … and, also, politically and militarily.”

I’m listening to her, and I
appreciate the history lesson, but what does this have to do with me? Why the
hell did it necessitate my kidnapping?

A new photograph takes up half the
screen. It’s what I recognize as the black flag of ISIS or what some might
refer to as ISIL. On the other half of the screen is a video of the black clad
radical Islamists in action, driving through some portion of a bombed out and
concrete shattered Iraq, or maybe Syria, in heavy equipment ripped off from the
retreating US Army.

“I’m sure you recognize this band
of thugs,” Andrea says.

I nod.

“And I’m sure you recognize these
people also,” she adds.

Next up, on the left half of the
screen, is Vladimir Putin standing before the Russian national flag and, on the
right, a video of Russian forces invading what I take to be the Crimea in the
Baltics.

“And, finally, these nice
individuals as well.”

Putin and his flag are replaced by
the Ayatollah Khomeini who stands at a podium, his fist raised defiantly in the
air, the Iranian national flag blowing in the wind behind him. On the video
beside the robed and bearded Islamist leader, Iran Kud forces working side by
side the Russians to take out Syrian Rebel forces. Forces backed by NATO attempting
to oust the current dictator-in-chief, Assad.

“Yup, it’s the more recent big
three of global malcontent,” I say.

Next, the digital screen lights up
with video of fighter jets taking out targets, troops firing from trenches, the
remains of a Russian jetliner blown out of the sky over the Sanai by an ISIS
IED made out of a soda can, a Russian fighter jet being fired upon and downed by
Turkish forces, US special forces liberating a stone house, dragging a
terrorist out by the head of his hair, ISIS members blowing up precious
antiquities and archaeological sites in Iraq. The Paris November ISIS terrorist
attack, bodies strewn outside a café, President Obama addressing a press
conference looking both defeated and angry.

The video goes on and on.

“What’s your point?” I say, my eyes
shifting from Andrea to the now quiet, but still tense, Deputy Inspector Millen
and back to Andrea again.

“You’re not the type to mince
words, Chase,” she says. “So, I’ll just say it. At present, the world order, or
sit rep, as DI Millen likes to say, is molto fucked up. World War Three is
literally at our doorstep while an isolationist United States of America and
our NATO allies pretty much sit back and watch it all play out.”

“Okay,” I say, “I’m not going to
get into
why
you kidnapped me, Andrea. But I am wondering what the connection
is between Leonardo da Vinci, the Renaissance, and our new and improved enemies.”

Millen leans forward.

“We’re undergoing a new Renaissance,
Mr. Baker,” he says. “You see, for Russia and Iran, in particular, this is a
new age of enlightenment. A new age of financial riches, national pride,
political strength on the world stage, and a rapidly growing military might.
You might even include the Chinese and North Korea in the mix, but, for now,
let’s focus on what we know to be true.”

“Okay,” I say, “I’m with you there.
Unless NATO makes a concerted effort to stop these emerging powers now, there’s
no telling what damage they can do.”

“Chase, if things continue the way
they are going, it’s not hard to imagine the Iranian or Russian or even, God
forbid, the ISIS flag hanging over number ten Down Street within a year.”

We sit in a heavy, ear-piercing
silence for a few long beats while the violence on the screen is replaced with
a sea of refugees fleeing war-torn Syria.

“So, tell me, Andrea, what do you
want from me … besides my body?”

“Have you ever heard of da Vinci’s
cave?” she says.

The words strike home, because I
have heard of the cave, and I tell her so.

“It’s the stuff of legend,” I add. “The
story goes that a young da Vinci stumbled upon it one day while tending to his
father’s sheep. Being the ever-curious kid, he entered into the cave only to be
confronted with something so frightening yet, at the same time, alluring, he
was said to never be the same.”

“However,” Millen interjects, “some
scholars believe that whatever he encountered inside that cave changed him
radically. He became a genius overnight. He became the man who would go from
normal boy, to a mastermind of unfathomable proportions. A man who would create
not only magnificent works of art, but works of engineering so ahead of their
time that the Renaissance era world could not possibly build them with the
resources and technological knowhow at hand.”

“Listen, Chase,” Andrea interjects,
“some scholars think it’s possible that when da Vinci entered into that cave,
he entered into a kind of star gate, or space-time portal, that allowed him a
vision some five or six hundred years into the future, and that the engineering
designs he was to create in his notebooks, were his fifteenth and sixteenth
century interpretations of what he witnessed.”

On the screen now, da Vinci’s hand
drawings of a tank that allowed for a three hundred sixty degree spread of fire
power. A screw-like flying apparatus that mimics today’s helicopters. A
rapid-fire machine gun. A snorkeling device that is easily the precursor to
modern scuba equipment and, of course, dozens of wing-like designs for
airplanes and gliders. The sketches are replaced by others showing creatures
that possess human bodies, but heads and faces so distorted they might as well
be out of this world. Those are followed by super-detailed dissections of human
bodies.

“What about those?” I say. “The
dissections. The grotesque heads.”

“Once he emerged from the cave,”
Millen says, “da Vinci became obsessed with the human body, how it worked.
Could be his experience inside the depths of that cave led him to believe the
human body contained many secrets. He performed illegal dissections right under
the Pope’s nose down in the depths of the Vatican. If he’d been discovered,
they would have burned him at the stake. That’s how obsessed he was with finding
out some secret information hidden inside the body.”

“My personal opinion,” Andrea goes
on, “is that what da Vinci encountered inside the cave was out of this world.
Extraterrestrial, if you will.”

I can’t help but smile. “You mean, da
Vinci found E.T.?”

Even Millen cracks a hint of a
smile at that one.

“It’s true,” she insists. “There
are numerous accounts of strange occurrences in the skies above Europe during
the fifteen hundreds, in particular. Just take a look at many of the paintings
that exist from that day.” Now on the monitor, a familiar painting from the
Renaissance period. She brings her hand up toward the painting on the monitor. “Here
we see the infant, Jesus, and his mother, Mary. Hovering above them is clearly
a disk-shaped metallic object, bright white lights shining down from it, bathing
the two.” Another painting. “And here we have an illustration of the crucified
Christ while two spaceship-like machines make a fly by. One of them even
contains a star insignia, just like modern military aircraft will prominently
display its country of origin.” A third painting. “And in this painting, the Virgin
Mary and Baby Jesus clearly dominate the foreground, while in the background
you can see a man, his hand shielding his eyes against the bright lights
emanating from a spacecraft that’s hovering above him.”

“These images are curious,” I say. “If
not uncanny. I’ll give you that.”

“But perhaps the most convincing
evidence of a painting hiding something out of the then known world can be
evidenced in one of da Vinci’s own masterpieces housed inside Florence’s Uffizi
Gallery. Rather, a painting he finished for his master, Verrocchio. Titled, the
Annunciation
, Verrocchio painted the mother Mary and the entire
background, while da Vinci later painted the angel Gabriel, who not only bears
the wingspan you might find on a modern jet fighter, but he’s also capable of
complete stealth.”

“I’m not following you on the
stealth part,” I say.

“Just watch what happens when you
view the painting through X-ray vision.”

The painting comes back up, this
time in a video.

“As the X-rays are applied,” Millen
explains, “Gabriel not only begins to fade out, he disappears completely. Just
like a stealth aircraft of today.”

My stomach constricts, hardens. I’ve
seen this painting a dozen times before and had no idea that it possessed a
message as strange and important as a disappearing angel. Maybe da Vinci had
been exposed to something out of this world inside that cave after all.

E.T.

“How did he do that?” I ask.

“While Verrocchio painted his
portion of the canvas in lead-based paint, da Vinci painted Gabriel in
non-lead-based paints so that they wouldn’t show up under the proper
conditions.”