Regicide the Bitter End of the King of Hearts

By Matthew DaPonte

After stealing a diamond with a ghoulish legacy from a ruthless business man, the person Interpol has ranked as the King of Hearts (Larceny, theft, and antiquities smuggling) in their card deck of most wanted criminals, a person known only as N. Kermin finds that their customarily flawless getaway has been impeded by a shadowy man in a fedora with a pistol and an ultimatum: steal a state of the art computer encryption program for him, or else.
Shaken by this near brush with death, a longtime companion, William Cardinal takes notice of Kermins subtle but abrupt change in demeanor and soon discovers that his friend has been keeping a hidden avocation. Despite the breach of trust, Cardinal agrees to help seize the cipher and sabotage it with the aim of uncovering anything they can use to their advantage and hopefully deal lethal blow to the fedora topped man and whatever organization he represents.
Struggling to define their friendship in light of this revelation, the two must now rely on one another if they wish to survive not just the heist of a lifetime but evade an army ex special forces security agents, out wit potential spies in their midsts, elude a pair of the finest private dicks a billionaire can buy, fend off the wrath of an invisible criminal empire and dodge an assassins cold retribution.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Dec 26, 2014
• ISBN: 9781493153060

Book preview

Copyright © 2015 by Matthew DaPonte.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to any actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Rev. date: 12/12/2013

Xlibris

1-888-795-4274

www.Xlibris.com

144437

Contents

Chapter I When two phantoms meet

Chapter II Resolution of the king of hearts

Chapter III Pandora’s flash drive

Chapter IV The Chinese dragon

Chapter V Romance of the three fools

Chapter VI The Bastille

Chapter VII Ballad of the fallen 4⁴th

Chapter VIII When the saints go marching in

Chapter IX The king’s gambit

Chapter X Be wary the twains doth meet

Chapter XI Battle of the Broken Buddha

Chapter XII Three card Monte

Chapter XIII Soliloquy of the Soloist

Chapter XIV For Those in Peril on the Seas

Chapter XV Dissent of the Valkyrie

Chapter XVI Ockham’s Razor

Chapter XVII Should old acquaintance be forgot and never brought to mind

While it is customary to dedicate this hallowed position to someone like ‘my muse’, ‘my flame’, ‘the love of my life’ or something equally ambiguous to that effect that can be used to describe whomever my personal romantic interest at the time may be; I would like to take this opportunity to break from this time honored tradition. Instead, I wish to dedicate this admittedly poor excuse for a book to all of the Artisans, Authors, Composers and Actors, who’s great labors have affected my life so. While this work of fiction does not belong in the same breath as the ones I love, I can only hope that you will find some color and warmth herein as I have found in those I idolize. And of course, to all my friends and family; too numerous to name and who’s support is too vast to adequately pay tribute.

Having just said that, please forgive and omit the following . . . .

To my muse, my flame, the love of my life. This and all I have is for you . . .

Chapter I

WHEN TWO PHANTOMS MEET

A pair of well polished boots glided eerily above the ground, completely indifferent of such earthly concerns as gravity. They continued to hover for an unnatural length of time until finally they landed at a run, and quickly came to a stop just shy of a thirty story precipice. The owner of the boots was dressed in the black military fatigues of a member of a police special operations division and had the name KERMIN boldly embroidered over the top left pocket. Kermin yanked down on a metal buckle attached to a harness which, in turn, released the black rectangular parachute, having served its purpose so faithfully, into the cold night air.

The mock officer watched the parachute sail away, then looked down over the edge of the building with a long whistle. The SWAT disguise had proven to be less useful than the thief would have had hoped for, however it didn’t really matter. After all, Kermin was now far away from any danger, and it would be hours before anyone would be even remotely suspicious.

Though impersonating an officer of the law may not have been a particularly wise decision, the figure on the roof was confident of a clean escape. The other factor that compelled the criminal to add this accessory charge to the night’s events was the warm thought of the look on the inspector’s face when he realized that the act of larceny was committed by one of his own men sent to protect it. Kermin was only curious as to whether the intrepid Inspector Gregson would be more disappointed by this point, or the fact that his wristwatch was now in the thief’s left pocket.

I wonder if he knows it’s not a real Rolex, questioned the brigand aloud. "He must… hell; it says ‘Honcho en Mexico’ on the back. There’s no way anyone could possibly be that dense. I’m doing him a favor by taking the tacky thing… he’s embarrassing himself by wearing it in public. Maybe I’ll mail him back a genuine one to make up for all the trouble tonight. I think the mayor has a real one that looks like this . . ."

Although the imagined expression on Gregson’s face would provide enough entertainment to outlast any prison sentence, the theft of Gregson’s timepiece was not the bandit’s primary aim. Kermin withdrew a small, innocent looking object from a pants pocket and held it up against a symphony of lights. The thief’s palm could barley contain the hefty white box. Kermin then offered a long exhale that clung onto the early winter air and flicked open a knife blade which glinted in the moonlight. With it, Kermin pried the little box open, emptied the contents and played with the newly revealed object, gently tossing it back and forth and holding it up to eye level to watch in awe as a million points of light refracted red deep within.

In the midst of the light show, the figure on the rooftop abruptly froze, realizing that something was desperately wrong. Something in the air, something intangible had unmistakably changed. The thief knew exactly what it was and feared the repercussions. But there was no avoiding it. The bandit took in a deep breath and gave no more resistance. In a sudden and savage burst of energy; the robber let loose a mighty sneeze and, in doing so, completely demolished the stealthy atmosphere that Kermin had spent the entire night meticulously cultivating.

Listening to the echo bounce across the buildings of the cityscape below, Kermin wiped a multitude of miniscule particles off of the gem and thought aloud Huh, feels pretty heavy for something so small.

The French Red Diamond. A precious stone biblical in size, unparalleled in clarity, unrivaled in value and morbid in history; it was overshadowed only in fame by its little brother, the Great Hope diamond or possibly its fictional counterpart, the Pink Panther. It was the history that its new owner had enjoyed the most when doing the research for the heist. And as the jewel shimmered in the early winter air, it was that gem’s ghoulish legacy that the bandit’s thoughts turned to.

The French Red was, in its earliest accounts, neither French nor red. It first appeared in about 90 BCE when a Nubian merchant stole it from a shrine to Oya, the bearded African goddess of, among other things, lightning, vengeance and death. Lore and superstition has it that the shrine’s shaman, upon hearing of the theft, placed a curse on the then clear crystal, and anyone who possessed it. From then on, for every proprietor it outlived, the diamond grew a little darker, until it eventually earned the blood red hue it sported this evening. The Nubian merchant sold it to the last of the pharaohs before suffering from a rather acute and ultimately fatal case of hippo induced disembowelment. The person who he sold it to, Pharaoh Cleopatra Philopator VII, set the diamond in a necklace and shared it with her two lovers, both of whom meet their demise facing the pointed end of a roman short sword. It is even rumored that Cleopatra first meet Julius Caesar by being smuggled into his quarters hidden inside a large rug, wearing nothing but a pair of shackles and the infamous gem. Cleopatra would later go for a swim with a venomous snake after losing her navy and kingdom, along with any hope of an optimistic future. But before she died, she had the diamond transported to trusted allies in Judea, where it went underground. It remained incognito until Sicarii rebels raided Judea in 73 CE.

Unfortunately for the Sicarii, the people they were rebelling against, the Roman Empire, were not the sort to take insurrection lightly, and the resulting clash lead to one of the most famous last stands in history; the siege of mountain fortress of Masada. This, in turn, led to one of the most infamous mass suicides in history, when all but one of the Jewish freedom fighters were ‘felled to the sword’ in order to avoid Roman retribution.

Once again the French Red melted into time, resurfacing in 1095, when it was found and presented to the Syrian ruler Abu Sa’id Taj ad-Dawla Tutush (the first). King Tutush found himself dead within a year, his kingdom conquered by European shock troops of the first crusade. When the order of the Knights Hospitller sacked the Syrian capital of Damascus, their spoils, including the stone, made their way the Island fortress of Rhodes in the Aegean Sea. Shortly thereafter, the order was smashed by an armada under the command of Suleiman the Magnificent. But before their ultimate defeat, the knights managed to sneak their treasures to their sister order, the Knights Templar. The Templars faired little better, being declared heretics by the corrupt French crown and disbanded with an excessive amount of force and gratuitous violence on Friday, the 13th of October, 1307. The monarchy confiscated all Templar holdings, including the diamond, and gave the stone its final name and distinctive triangular cut.

It stayed in the House of Bourbon for years and was a favorite of the Spider King Louis XI, as well as Marie Antoinette, who often sported the diamond on her pet dog Thisbe. However, just before the storm clouds of the French revolution struck, Louis XVI and his family attempted a desperate midnight run for the Austrian border. Their luggage, including the French Red, made it to safety. The royal family did not. The King and Queen of France meet their respective fates face down, staring at the bottom of a bloody wicker basket beneath the national razor. Their son was thrown into a cross between a medieval dungeon and the seventh circle of hell called an oubliette (French for ‘to forget’), and made to regret ever being born with royal blood. As for poor little Thisbe, she drowned herself in the river Seine, apparently grief stricken over the loss of her master. And the jewel once again disappeared somewhere in Austria until 1911, when the country’s archduke, a superstitious man by the name of Franz Ferdinand, had the French Red incorporated into a lucky charm. Unfortunately, the charm proved to be only marginally fortunate. He was wearing it three years later when he barely dodged an assassination attempt, courtesy of a disgruntled member of the ‘Black Hand’ terrorist group, by getting himself lost in the streets of Sarajevo. The charm’s luck soon ran out, however, when less than an hour later as he stumbled upon the very same conspirators outside a local deli, one of whom placed a .32 slug in the duke’s chest. This chain of events would trigger the ‘war to end all wars’ costing the lives of millions, both on and off the battlefield. During this conflagration, the White Russians managed to capture the jewel, and it was presented to the Tsar, who, in turn, gave it to the infamous mad monk Grigorii Rasputin as a gift for healing his hemophiliac son. The crazy clergyman possessed his prize for exactly six months and seven days. Historians don’t know exactly how Rasputin died but they certainly have plenty of means to choose from as he was poisoned, assaulted, shot multiple times, stabbed multiple times, drowned and flash frozen, all in the space of about an hour. His benefactor, Tsar Nicholas II, along with his entire family, ended up being held hostage by his own subjects and eventually gun downed in the basement of a small Siberian home, earning the diamond its other moniker: ‘the killer of kings’. The October Revolution and end of the First World War left the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics in poor shape and records became less than reliable. Some accounts have the French Red diamond being looted by Schutz-Staffel (SS) officers of Germany’s Army Group North during the opening moves of Operation Barbarossa, only to be reclaimed from the smoldering carcass of the third Reich by NKVD agents three years later. Other sources infer that the Reds managed to hold on to it for the duration of the great patriotic war, keeping it safely stashed in Comrade Stalin’s personal offices deep within the besieged ramparts of the Kremlin. Either way, the gem ended up in the same place. After the fall of communism, the son of a high-ranking member of the Politburo, a young man named Drake Volkov, immigrated to the west with a small fortune and a very large diamond.

Volkov was by no means a philanthropist. He ruthlessly carved out a financial empire by questionable and often semi—legal means. This was what originally drew Kermin to the challenge of depriving Mr. Volkov of his most precious possession. Now, after two revolutions, a pair of world wars, half a dozen dead sovereigns, including, but not limited to, the last of the pharos, last of the Bourbons, last of the Tsars, and in general more than two millennia of carnage and havoc in its wake, the French Red diamond was now on the top of a thirty story building in the middle of the night and in the hands of the person Interpol ranked as the king of hearts in their card deck of villainy.

The thought had crossed Kermin’s mind that perhaps the jewel was indeed a beacon of misfortune. This notion however, was quickly buried beneath an avalanche of rationality and self-assuredness. All of those bodies were either the result of external factors, criminal negligence, or raw coincidence; certainly not the product of a two thousand year old deity with a grudge to settle.

After all, Kermin was seeking justice by fining that monster his favorite and most valuable asset. The robbery was nothing personal, in that Kermin had no contact or personal relationship of any kind to Mr. Volkov or his business. It was more of an overpowering distain for disgustingly rich pricks who so willingly sold their soul, along with any shred of humanity, for more money than a person could possibly hope to spend in a lifetime. The Universe would understand.

Kermin was amused, however, by the image of a bearded African goddess cackling as she flung lightning bolts at guys like the archduke Ferdinand, and getting drunk off her ass with her cohorts Jupiter and Thor on top of whatever mountain forgotten gods dwell upon.

The rooftop figure concluded that there was nothing to fear, save the off chance of an electrical storm, as the faint smell of ozone slowly enveloped the scenery. A sly grin began to graze Kermin’s face as the bandit began to contemplate that, within a few hours, news of the urban raid would make headlines around the world: Million Dollar Diamond Looted!, Volkov’s Trademark Treasure Targeted by Theatrical Thief! French Red Gone Without a Trace! Kermin Strikes Again! Notoriety may not be the same as fame, but it couldn’t possibly be more rewarding. Kermin relished reading the headlines almost as much as the challenge of the heist itself. But for now, just making them up would provide ample enjoyment. That, and the utter rage Volkov will endure once he finds out his favorite trinket was gone seemed somehow so incredibly satisfying. Ho, ho, ho The bandit gave a small but audible chuckle at the thought of all the money Volkov would sink into the apprehension of the audacious thief. Hundreds of thousands, if not millions of dollars would likely be invested into the mobilization of an investigative army superior to that of many small countries, and all of it in vain. Kermin was a master of the art, making a career of enraging plenty of powerful enemies, and was not overly concerned by Volkov’s particular brand of backlash.

Convinced that no man, group, or application of funds could trace neither the prize nor the thief’s trail, Kermin gave a big stretch, and looked up for one final glance. Not all of the bandit’s escape routs allowed for so stunning a vista, and the thief didn’t particularly want to leave. But there were still a few odd ends to clean up, and one didn’t get a reputation like the one Kermin enjoyed by being careless. Slightly reckless perhaps, but not for lacking in care. The increasingly pungent sent of ozone convinced the thief that it was no longer safe to be standing on such a high structure, and on a whim the bandit gazed downwards to marvel at the massive hunk of crystallized carbon in hand one last time before moving on.

Kermin didn’t realize the small pinpoint of green light until it struck the blood red jewel and shattered into a thousand columns of light that shot of in every conceivable direction. Kermin watched in odd curiosity as the laser blazed a slim trench across the surface of the diamond, continuing to move upwards until coming to rest on the bandit’s chest. It didn’t take the thief long to realize what the mysterious light was, or what it meant.

Trying not to breathe, the bandit rapidly began to plan out the actions that would either result in the closest getaway yet or an ignominious end. This wasn’t the first time Kermin had faced the business end of a gun. But this was the first time Kermin didn’t know who was on the other end or where they were. Because of this sense of mystery, it was the first time in many years that the cold finger of fear ran down Kermin’s spine. There was something amazingly unnerving in being threatened by the unknown; that one’s life was legitimately endangered by some unseen force with ambiguous intent.

The blood in the thief’s veins turned to ice. Kermin quickly worked out an escape plan with an almost whispered internal monologue. Okay, stay calm. First, raise your right hand as a distraction. Next; slowly and very carefully withdraw the flash-bang on the left hip. Work the pin out with your thumb and give it a good five count. Then, the hard part; throw left and dive right towards the safety of the service entrance wall. Brace for the explosion, and finally—step five: pray you recover your senses. The plan finalized; there was nothing left to do but put it into action. Ok, on the count of three… One: arm up. Two: work the grenade out of the holster. Thr… wait—why is this sniper taking so long? Why haven’t they fired yet? Did they mean to give themselves away by hitting the diamond first? Is this some sort of trap? Kermin’s eyes widened. Pin’s out—too late!

With the speed and grace of a fox, the thief executed the mentally rehearsed moves, throwing and diving in opposite directions in a single seamless motion.

On queue, the white cylinder exploded in a blinding light.

Almost a mile away, the sniper clenched his eyes shut, angered by the pain of a quarter million candle power being focused through a high-powered scope aimed straight into his retina. But he was significantly more angered at himself for having fallen for such a cheap trick. The sniper cursed under his breath, blinking hard in a futile attempt to regain his vision. After a few seconds, the rifleman peered back through the reticule of the futuristic-looking M-200 sniper rifle, ignoring the bright sparks impeding his sight, as he desperately tried to reacquire his prey. Not where he was… door still closed… not on the visible face of the building, the shooter mumbled to himself as he swept the scope downrange. "Gone. Damn. Where the hell did you run off to?" The rooftop appeared utterly void. Just then, a small red light began to glow in the shadows, just for a moment, before fading back into the black velvet background of the night sky. A wolfish smile slowly crossed the sniper’s face.

Kermin’s vision was gone; replaced by a wall of white static. "That was not a smart idea, groaned the thief slowly under a painful sigh. How long is it gonna’ take until my senses return? Will they return? Am I dead? Did he get me? Is this what death is like? I’ll be damned; maybe that stupid little rock really is cursed. Christ! My head! Why does my head hurt so much? What the hell?! Wait—is this hell? Am I in Hell? Is that it? Sure I’ve done some distasteful things in my time, but I don’t deserve eternal damnation, do I? Well as far as hell goes, this really isn’t that bad. I wonder how long before they find my body? I hope I look dignified. What will the headlines say? Ha ‘Kermin’s Body Found; Shot Dead Like a Chump!’" In actuality, the bandit was alive and panting; braced in a prone position behind the wall of the service entrance. Slowly, Kermin’s vision faded from sheer white to sheer black. This at first reinforced the ‘You are dead’ theory haunting the robber’s mind. But Kermin’s eyes soon began to focus; first on the monotonous, crimson flash of the aircraft strobe lights about four feet away, then on the general shapes of the machinery on the roof, the inverse silhouette of the brightly lit skyline, finally distant stars and a large waning crescent moon. The ringing in Kermin’s ear soon subsided, and was replaced by an astonishing silence.

Not dead. Not even shot. The thief gave a half hearted laugh more from amazement than from humor. I knew it would work… but now what? Kermin managed to sit up and look around. "Ok, make for the door. No. Wait. He’s still there, right? How long was I out? Do I play dead, or make a break for it? Over the side, of course! Over the far wall and through a window. It’ll draw attention, but I’ve got more immediate problems right now. No, that won’t work; no way could I rig a repelling line without exposing myself. Damn! If there’s one thing I hate, it’s a bad cliché, especially when I’m on the wrong side of it. Who the hell is this bastard? Is it the Police? One of Volkov’s hired goons? No, that doesn’t make sense. But who? Are they still there?"

Kermin looked up and made sure there was room enough to stand and still remain behind the cover of the low block wall. Then, with tentative difficulty, got up and mustered the courage to steal a glance around the corner. The bandit was resolved, ready to face death for the second time in as many minutes, all the while questioning how long it would take the sniper to reacquire and take another shot. Kermin tried breathing in deeply, in through the nose and out through the mouth in an attempt at calming the nerves but ended up coughing on a lung full of smoke. The thief sniffed again to be sure. It wasn’t a figment of the imagination, something was on fire. Out of the corner of the eye, Kermin saw the source.

The thief’s body stiffened against the cold, porous concrete blocks and slowly turned to face the fire. A single point of red light from a lit cigarette briefly flared up to illuminate the face behind it, then faded back to a dull red embers with the exhale. Kermin only saw the face for an instant in the eerie crimson glow, but was able to take it all in. It was like the face of