Alabastros Cratir - The Relics of the Templars Book 3: The Relics of the Templars, #3

By Lanfranco Pesci

ALABATROS CRATIR (The Relics of the Templars Book 3)

A THRILLER NOVEL

After centuries of searching across Europe, the important revelation... THE HOLY GRAIL, the wonderful relic that entire generations have searched the length and breadth of the world for is in Italy...find out where!

Before everyone's eyes for centuries...too blind to see it.

ALABASTROS CRATIR, Lanfranco Pesci's NEW NOVEL reveals the exact location of the HOLY GRAIL and reconstructs its 2,000-year history.

Third and final chapter in the trilogy "The Relics of the Templars."

Mark 14:3 - Jesus was in Bethany in the house of Simon the leper. While he was at table, there came a woman with an alabaster jar, filled with fragrant oil of genuine spikenard of great value; she broke the alabaster jar and poured the ointment on his head.

John 12:4 - Judas Iscariot, son of Simon, the one who was about to betray him, said, "Why was not this oil sold for three hundred denarii and the proceeds given to the poor?"

Jesus therefore said, "Leave it; she has kept it for the day of my burial."

The broken alabaster jar, kept for the day of burial, was brought by Mary Magdalene to the tomb.

How did the blood of Christ end up in that alabaster jar?

How did that vase become the infamous Holy Grail?

Where is that vase today?

Before everyone's eyes for centuries...too blind to see it.

Wait no longer!

 

Scroll up, click on "Buy Now" button and access an extraordinary novel, full of heroes and villains, false prophets and warriors that fight for their ideal!

• Language: English
• Publisher: Lanfranco Pesci
• Release date: Feb 23, 2024
• ISBN: 9798224986811

Book preview

Chapter 1

Limoux, Languedoc-Roussillon, France

The streets of the small town were packed with people. The patron saint festival had attracted visitors from neighboring villages, and the town was buzzing. Countless stalls lined the roadsides offering all sorts of goods at an incredible range of prices. Street performers held small impromptu shows, always making sure their offering plate was clearly visible.

Two shady figures meanwhile were making their way through the crowd, seemingly uninterested in all that was going on around them, the hoods of their cloaks were pulled over their heads so as to hide their faces too.

All that chaos contributed favorably to helping them get to their destination unnoticed.

The great hubbub of street vendors, people and children chasing each other on the sidewalks was drowned out for a few moments by the loud ringing of the bells of the church of Notre Dame de Marceille.

The two individuals stopped under a porch in front of the front door of a rather old building. The green shutters on the windows that faced the street were all closed, it looked as if the building was uninhabited.

Quickly one of them forced the lock on the door while his friend kept guard.

A few moments later they entered the building. The room they found themselves in was devoid of furnishings, there were only a few rays of light that managed to make their way through the dents and cracks in the shutters coming in through the windows. They looked around, trying to figure out which direction they should go to locate their target.

Some noises from the upper floors caught their attention.

Creeping up the stairs, they continued to listen and look around. Both of them held a razor-sharp knife firmly in their right hand, their intentions certainly didn’t seem to be friendly.

Again, a noise alerted them, it came from a room in a corridor on the right side of the building, on the first floor.

They were a few feet from the door of that room in a matter of seconds.

The taller of the two took something out of his pocket. He had some thin pins, good for picking the lock. Slowly, holding his breath he slipped them into the slot. The slightest mistake could be fatal.

The other kept an eye on the corridor, on the lookout for any unpleasant surprises.

Suddenly they heard a clanking sound from inside that room. No doubt it was the sound of a chain being dragged.

Perhaps the occupant of the room had noticed their presence in the hallway and grabbed the first thing he could find to defend himself from an attack.

It didn't matter. They had to move on.

After a few moments the man forced the lock and the door began to slide.

Abruptly they burst inside, ready to hurl their blades at the slightest hint of hostility.

What they saw before them left them stunned.

A girl wearing only a bra and a pair of panties was lying on the floor. From her wrists and ankles hung four chains attached to the wall. Only a couple of feet long, they did not allow her much movement.

Not far from her was a light blue bucket, no doubt a makeshift container that allowed her to dispose of her physiological needs. The intense foul smell wafting through the room confirmed this hypothesis.

The walls were completely lined with cardboard egg cartons, which made that room absolutely soundproof. That girl knew it well. Only she could know how long she had screamed for help before she realized no one would ever come running.

Her white underwear and pale skin gave the impression that she was helpless prey in the wolf's den. Fortunately, her ordeal would soon be over.

Faint with hunger and cold, the girl looked up trembling. Neither of the men in front of her was the same as the one who periodically went to her and subjected her to all kinds of violence, physical, mental and sexual.

Tears began to well up in her eyes, she felt a glimmer of hope that the nightmare was nearly over.

One of the two men removed his hood and showed her face. In his hand he still held the knife firmly.

Don't worry, we don't want to hurt you. That's not why we're here. Just let us finish our work and then we'll send someone to free you.

The girl stretched her arms toward them and burst into tears. The big, muscular man's warm voice reassured her. The nightmare was over.

The man covered his head with his hood, hiding his short blond hair.

Without further delay they retraced their steps and closed the door again. Their mission was not over. They had to check the upper floors. They were certain that their man had entered the building. They had to be right.

More noises came from upstairs, this time they were much more distinct. They heard a woman’s moans mixed with crying. Surely that pig was abusing yet another helpless girl.

They quickly got to where the noises were coming from, a room on the side of another corridor. This time the door was open; there was no need to pick a lock. On this floor, the windows did not let in any light; the darkness was thick and impenetrable.

Inside the room the light was much brighter and flickering, there must have been candles burning.

The two approached quietly and positioned themselves on one side of the door.

At the four corners of the room were candelabra, on the walls strange symbols praising the devil. In the center was a mattress with crimson sheets touching the floor. Above it lay a naked woman, a gag tight around her mouth, her hands and ankles bound with ropes. Her face was filled with tears, sobbing as she could hardly breathe.

The man stood behind her, fatigued, his breathing heavy. In all likelihood he had just finished abusing the woman in a satanic ritual.

He rose slowly, staggering over to a bench with strange ornaments. There was a wrought iron pentacle, a skull, a display with a goat's headed dagger.

It seemed pretty predictable what was about to happen.

The man grabbed the dagger and turned back to the woman.

She stood there, still curled up on the mattress, shivering. She refused to look at what that horrible monster was doing.

He knelt beside her and placed a hand on her hip, stroked that smooth skin for a few seconds, then lifted the hand that held the dagger.

The two assassins came out into the open and stood right in front of him, about five meters away.

The monster looked at them stunned.

Two dark figures stood before him, wearing black cloaks and balaclavas.

He knew in that instant that his life was about to end, but first he was going to make his last sacrifice. He raised his hand with the dagger even higher, ready to strike with force.

Two knives ploughed through the air of the room.

The first one lodged in his throat, making him open his mouth wide in search of a last breath. The second one went straight through his heart, causing a gush of blood to spurt out and land on the girl's breasts.

As his strength quickly left him, his arms lay at his sides and his head reclined forward, his eyes still wide. In a desperate gesture he gathered all the strength he still possessed, clutching the dagger in both hands. He turned it toward himself and plunged it into his belly. He himself would be the sacrificial victim of his last ritual.

His now lifeless body slumped over the girl, who stood there in disbelief at what was happening before her suffering eyes.

The two assassins relaxed. Their work was done.

Chapter 2

October 2016, Damascus, Syria

The strong wind lifted the fine dust from the ground and sent it into every nook and cranny of that iron and concrete wreckage. A mixture of earth, stucco and ash, the result of the continuous bombardment that had afflicted that godforsaken land for months now, the very land where two thousand years ago the deeds of a man proclaiming himself to be God’s son had taken place, a man who raised the dead and cured diseases with the simple laying on of hands. That land was impressed on printed and bound sheets of parchment paper, kept with indifference on the shelves of the homes of half the planet.

Janette was driving the ambulance that sped through piles of rubble in most bombed neighborhood of the city, which had been deserted for months.

The Damascus police had alerted the field hospital located in the southern suburbs to the presence of a wounded man in the ruins of the building where one of the city's most luxurious hotels once stood, almost ten kilometers away.

They hadn't been able to give more detailed information. The police were no longer patrolling the abandoned areas of the city. After the constant ambushes of police controls, the local authorities had interdicted some areas of the city, where a strict curfew had been established, and where only the armed forces carried out occasional gunfire checks.

Amir had not gotten behind the wheel of the rescue vehicle because his right hand was still bandaged; the previous week he had devoted body and soul to digging under the rubble of a newly bombed house, trying to save Indila from death by suffocation. The barely thirteen-year-old girl had been buried under a pile of debris and her mother was desperate for help to pull her out. Amir's hand had got stuck in a steel spike, crushed by a heavy concrete block.

Through sheer willpower he broke free and continued digging heedless of the blood gushing from his hand. He threw the dirt behind him that separated him from the weeping of that trapped little girl. After almost half an hour of frantic and constant digging, finally a glimmer of light penetrated the niche that had protected the little girl from certain death. An angel had been watching over her that day.

The wounded man was lying on the ground, both of his femurs were broken and he had breathing difficulties from his crushed chest. As soon as he heard the roar of the sirens and saw the red crescent painted on the side of that sand-colored van, he knew there might still be hope.

Janette and Amir approached him, cautiously enough to avoid being injured as well.  In the blink of an eye they could tell what had happened. It was not uncommon to have to intervene in the ruins of bombed out buildings to rescue looters who had been injured by falling through the rubble while trying to recover valuables abandoned by the building's former inhabitants.

As deplorable as the man was, their professional ethics obliged them to care for him as they would for anyone else, regardless of skin color, gender, or any political or religious ideology.

Quickly Janette immobilized his legs using Israeli compression bandages and tried to lift the front of his chest to make it easier for him to breathe.

The man must have flown some distance before he hit the ground, breaking his legs against a beam lying on the ground. His pale face did not bode well for his recovery. The internal bleeding since the fall didn't leave him much hope for his life.

After a few seconds Amir returned with a stretcher, laid it on the ground beside the man and watched Janette waiting for instructions.

On the count of three. One! Two! Three!

They synchronized their movements in order to transfer the wounded man to the stretcher. They placed him in the back of the ambulance and went back to the field hospital.

After six of the city's hospital facilities had been targeted by Western coalition bombing, Emergency and Doctors Without Borders had opted to set up field hospitals on the outskirts of the city, with operating theaters with the bare essentials to save the lives of the innocent people caught up in that power struggle.

They came speeding up the track in front of the tent used as an operating room, they had no time to lose.

Two nurses rushed out to retrieve the stretcher with the dying man.

Janette and Amir rushed to the tent adjacent to the operating room to prepare for the delicate surgery. They had to stem the internal bleeding and then patiently fix his femurs and chest.

Not even five minutes later they already had the needles in their hands and were untying the knots in the bandages attached to his legs.

Amir was adjusting a bag of zero-negative blood to the IV pole to get at least some of whatever he'd lost back into his system.

Just as he was getting the dying man's forearm into position, a hand stopped his arm and prevented him from inserting the tube into the cannula needle.

Amir didn't understand.

Janette turned with a look which was a mix of anger and astonishment.

Marcus, the new doctor who had only been in Damascus for two weeks, had stopped Amir, there was nothing more he could do for that thief.

In his hands he had an empty syringe, slipped it into the cannula needle and took a sample of the man's blood.

A whitish froth was already coming out of the mouth of the man lying on the operating table. He had just gone into a state of shock. Slowly he began to tremble, opening his eyes wide and biting his tongue in convulsions.

Janette stuffed gauze into his mouth, while Marcus had already prepared three syringes of self-injecting morphine. She administered them almost simultaneously two into his legs and one on his left pectoral. The man's gaze quickly calmed, the spasms ceased, and his bright eyes gave away a state of inner peace he had certainly never felt until that moment.

A few seconds later his eyes closed and he took his last breath.

Janette angrily removed her latex gloves and slammed them onto the nearby container. She exited the tent and headed for her quarters without uttering a word.

Amir understood Marcus' behavior.

They should have accepted from the start that the man would never make it, he had lost so much blood that no transfusion could ever save him, they would have wasted precious blood for no reason.

That senseless war was straining everyone's nerves.

When Janette had decided to volunteer in war-torn areas, she could not have known that in most of the cases that she would work on, she would have to do nothing more than accompany patients in their last moments of life, whether elderly, women or children. The war made no difference. For every young man they saved there were ten children who died, more often than not for lack of medicines and equipment to treat wounds.

When she had decided to leave home, she had not given the slightest thought to all this, even though her colleagues had tried to reason with her. Her vocation had brought her there, in a world where anyone who possesses a minimum of rationality loses it after being overwhelmed by the situation.

Marcus wasn't like that.

He was cold and emotionless. He recognized death when it began to show up in the eyes of his patients. He knew very well how to prepare them for their meeting with Azrael.

Amir admired him greatly. During one of their fleeting conversations, they had joked that the angel of death had been very busy around there lately.

Marcus understood that Amir had only started talking about Azrael to test his knowledge of Islam. From that day on, in fact, having ascertained that he knew the Islamic tradition very well, he had been less suspicious of him and had almost made friends with him.

With Janette, on the other hand, relations were not very harmonious.

The new doctor had swooped into the war-torn area after the hospital's previous director was injured in a bombing raid.

When Janette saw him coming, a chill had run down her spine. Tall, muscular, with short blond hair. He was taciturn and extremely confident. He never spoke an unnecessary word and never showed a moment of weakness. During a bombing in the old hospital, just two days after his arrival, he hadn't given a second thought to his own safety. He had gone around the facility picking up old people and children and leading them to safety in the basement. After he closed the heavy iron door of the bunker-turned-basement, he had taken a quick look around to see if the doctors were safe. He counted them off one by one until his gaze met hers. They stared at each other for a few seconds, then he went back to check the condition of the ceiling, to see if it needed to be propped up with beams to prevent it from falling on their heads from the constant explosions.

Within a few days Janette had already fallen in love with him, but Marcus didn't give the slightest indication of whether he felt the same way.

After almost four months of service in Syria, Janette felt the physiological need to have a relationship without having to worry about catching who knows what infection or disease. This man who had just arrived from southern France could be the right companion with whom to share that experience in the field hospital, in that war-torn area.

Janette had often heard of love stories born among volunteers in hospitals in war zones and although she had previously disagreed with their motives, now she understood how important someone's support and affection could be in the midst of all the violence.

A few nights earlier, finding themselves alone in the leisure tent they used to take breaks in, with satellite television and table football, Janette offered Marcus a beer and tried to kiss him.

His reaction was completely unexpected. He stopped her by putting a hand around her neck squeezing lightly almost suffocating her without saying a word. He just looked deeply into her eyes.

She broke free and ran away, bursting into tears.

They had not spoken to each other since that moment. Janette hadn't understood his reaction, while Marcus knew full well why he had behaved as he did.

He could have made love to that woman for hours on end, but in this situation, he couldn't risk emotional involvement, it would have been the stupidest move he could have made. Only one month and then he would be back in France at his normal job. Everything had to go smoothly.

Janette had just entered the lab tent, where Marcus was doing some research on the blood sample taken from the man who had just died in the operating room.

She looked at him annoyed, when there were no emergencies to deal with, he was always there analyzing blood samples. What on earth he found interesting about that, only he knew.

For a moment Janette thought he might be some sort of geneticist looking for who knows what trait in people's DNA. She had seen him cataloging hundreds of samples, putting a few on ice to preserve them.

At that moment he was extrapolating the blood type from the sample he had just collected. AB positive.

As soon as he saw that result Marcus tilted his head left and right making the bones in his neck crunch.

He turned to look at Janette, but said nothing.

He hadn't heard her come in, but he'd smelled the scent of her deodorant wafting through the air.

She leaned in closer to get a better look at what he was doing, she had done this before and Marcus hadn't denied her permission to do so, he had only told her not to ask too many questions, just watch.

The man grabbed a slide from the counter and dropped on it a drop of blood from the syringe in his right hand. Then he placed it into the instrument in front of him. He was comparing the blood sample with the World Biometric Data Database to see if that individual's DNA had ever been on file.

NOT MATCH. The result was negative.

The printer went live and printed the test report on the blood sample.

Of the many pieces of information on that paper only one caught Marcus' attention. Middle Eastern strain.

He had finally found him.

He took the syringe again and injected its contents into a sterile glass bottle, sealing the cap.

He picked up the other three flasks that were in the freezer and tossed them into the medical waste container, then placed the flask he had just sealed in place of those three.

Janette was dying to ask him what that blood was for, but she already knew she'd never get an answer, so she preferred to keep quiet.

She collected two cans of beer from the refrigerator.

She opened one and handed it to Marcus, then opened her own and took a long gulp.

Thank you Marcus thanked his colleague for the beer.

Thank you for opening my eyes to the patient from earlier. I should have known from the start that he wasn't going to make it. His clinical state was pretty clear.

Yes, but not everyone is as cynical as I am. I see that you put your whole self into this profession. For you it is a vocation, so you reject the possibility of classifying a dying person as incurable, because you would try to save him if he still has some air in his lungs.

Janette felt flattered by those words. It was exactly what she felt every time she was faced with an injured person. To do what she could to save him up until his last breath.

I'm leaving tomorrow. You'll be in charge of the hospital until the new director arrives.

Janette was shocked. It couldn't be possible. Now that she was finally connecting with the man, she would have to say goodbye.

She turned and walked outside the tent, clutching her can of beer in her right hand.

Marcus stood up and followed her outside.

"I understand how you feel, but believe me when I