The Bloodline by Robert J. Walker

Author:Robert J. Walker [Walker, Robert J.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2021-09-27T04:00:00+00:00

22

Stuart could hardly believe it when his father explained what the notes meant. “Dad, that’s about the craziest thing I’ve ever heard,” he said. “But it’s so crazy … that it just might be true. You know what they say about the truth being stranger than fiction.”

“I know, and believe me, when I first realized what these clues meant,” Jacques said, “I found it pretty hard to believe, too. But with everything that’s happened, all the evidence we have—it has to be the truth. This psychopath has been kidnapping boys and turning them into his own personal assassins … for decades.”

They were at Stuart’s house, sitting at his dining table, and over in the living room, Denzel sat on the floor, innocently putting together a new drone. Both men’s eyes drifted over to him and watched in worried silence for a while.

“Why twelve?” Stuart asked. “Why were all the boys—including the current kid—kidnapped at the age of twelve?”

Jacques shook his head. “I’m not sure. From the sound of it, these assassins from hundreds of years ago were older when Hassan ibn al-Sabba performed his trickery on them—I’d guess they were late teens. As for our mysterious Captain, I can’t say why he’s picking twelve-year-old boys specifically. But often, with psychopaths—as this guy clearly is—certain numbers have intense significance for them. Sometimes it’s connected to something that happened in their lives. It could be that something terrible happened to the Captain at age twelve. Or, it could be something to do with the occult; Jesus had twelve disciples, after all, and this might be some bizarre perversion of that. The original Hassan ibn al-Sabba did refer to his assassins as disciples. But until we get more info on this creep, it’s impossible to say.”

“Since he’s been operating for so long,” Stuart said, “another question we have to be asking is, who else has been one of his victims? There are probably others we don’t yet know about.”

“Absolutely,” Jacques said. “I’m going to start going through every source of records I have access to with a fine-toothed comb, looking for any twelve-year-old boys either abducted or who went missing in wilderness areas over the last forty years. I’m also going to look at records of attempted assassinations and attempted assassinations of prominent political figures over the last thirty years. I’m guessing if there have been more assassins, at least some of them have been successful, unlike Harry Hope and Jimmy Steele.”

“Yeah,” Stuart said grimly. “As messed up and evil as it is, you have to admit this guy’s methods are pretty damn smart. He makes these killers who can’t be traced back to him, who literally believe with every fiber of their being that they’re different people than who they actually are. There’s one more thing I’m wondering about, though.”

“What’s that?”

“Well, it seems the Captain releases his assassins after a couple years of captivity. Maybe five or six years, judging by the Hope and Steele cases—they both have records of living as Herbert Ford and Wade Stiles that go back as far as their twentieth and nineteenth birthdays.

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