The Milestone Protocol Ernest Dempsey (best short novels of all time .txt) 📖

Sean kept driving, leaving the outskirt villages of Moscow behind. They passed farms dotted with cattle or alpacas. Horses loitered by the fence in one of the pastures. Some of the fields were barren, perhaps the summer home to wheat or corn.

No one cared much about the scenery at the moment. Blank eyes peered through the windows and windshield, barely even noticing anything outside.

“Okay,” Tommy said finally. “Let’s think about this.”

“What’s to think about?” Tabitha said. “You came here to find some gem, and all you got was an empty tube. I can’t believe I wasted my time with this. My supervisor is not going to be happy.”

She took out her phone and began typing a text message about how the lead was a dead end and that she would be heading back to headquarters soon.

Tommy reached over and stopped her. “Hold on,” he insisted. “Everything is figure-outable. There has to be a rational explanation behind this tube being empty.”

“Yeah,” Tabitha argued. “Like the people who tried to kill us at the hotel found it before we did.”

Sean and Adriana listened closely from the front seat. Feeling the intensity of the moment building, Sean decided it was a good time to take a break.

He spotted a sign for a roadside restaurant and turned on the blinker.

“What are we doing?” Adriana asked in a hushed tone, wary of interrupting the two in the back.

Tommy and Tabitha stopped arguing and looked to the front.

“Thought it might be a good time to get something to eat,” Sean said in half-truth. “I’m hungry. Any of you guys hungry? I can keep going, but it’s been a while since we ate, and given the circumstances, I don’t even know which direction I’m supposed to be headed. The airport is the other way.”

The blinker clicked like a hammer, emphasizing the dramatic heaviness of the moment.

“Yeah,” Tommy surrendered. “I could eat.”

“Me too,” Adriana said with a smile.

“Fine,” Tabitha joined in.

Sean guided the sedan off the road and into an empty parking spot around the back of a building with wooden siding and a tin roof. It reminded Sean and Tommy of little barbecue joints back in the United States. Those kinds of places dotted the South from North Carolina and Tennessee all the way to the West Texas border.

With the car parked, the group exited the vehicle and made their way into the restaurant. Sean held the door open for the others while he scanned the road and parking lot for potential trouble. There were no silhouettes in any of the vehicles, and at the awkward brunch hour, there were no people going in and out of the building.

Sean and the others were immediately embraced by the intoxicating aromas wafting from the kitchen. Inside, a young brunette girl with bright blue eyes greeted them with a half smile. She asked how many were in the group, a question Sean always found amusing.

“Just us four,” he answered in Russian.

The girl’s smile stretched at his reply. “This way, please,” she said and led the way through a maze of tables with red-and-white-checkered tablecloths shrouding the surfaces.

After the girl sat the group in a dark, corner booth, she placed menus in front of each before returning to the hostess stand at the front.

Everyone perused the list of offerings with semi-disinterest, though Sean quickly decided on an order of mushroom pies and vegetable shchi. He helped the others with their decisions, primarily Tommy and Tabitha, whose Russian was less than conversational.

“So,” Sean said, eyeing the metal tube Tommy cradled in his hands atop the table. “I guess they have these kinds of tablecloths everywhere.”

His joke only invoked a snicker from Adriana and a “humph” from Tommy.

“There must be a factory that makes these and ships them all over the world. Like, it has to be their thing, right?” He mocked a conversation with himself.

“Hey, what do you do?”

“You know those red-and-white tablecloths? I work at the factory that makes all of those for the entire world.”

“You done?” Tommy asked, only slightly amused.

Sean wasn’t. And he boldly pushed onward. “I bet it’s the same place that makes those disgusting candy corn things. You know that there’s only like one factory in the world that makes those. I heard they haven’t made any in years, and that there’s a finite supply of candy corn.”

Tommy finally chuckled. “One can only hope.”

“There he is,” Sean said with a slap on the table.

A waitress with a black apron over black pants and a white shirt walked up to the table. She passed out glasses of water and asked if the group wanted anything else.

Sean gave her the order, taking the liberty of giving her Kevin’s request as well. When she had it all written down, the young woman disappeared back into the kitchen and left the group to their conversation.

“Now that we’ve broken the grumpy streak, can we get back to business?” He didn’t wait for an answer. “That tube was in the reliquary.” He indicated the cylinder with his index finger.

“Yes,” Adriana said. “There wasn’t anything else out of the ordinary. In fact, that being the only item in the box with the bones struck me as odd. Usually, venerated people have several items kept with them in their internment.”

Tommy knew better than to ask Adriana if she was certain.

“Okay,” he said instead, “there has to be an explanation. One plausible theory is that the cult beat us to it.”

“Except that wouldn’t make sense for them to leave this tube”—he pointed again at the object—“in the reliquary. You saw how difficult it was to open.”

“That’s true,” Tommy admitted. “It was sealed shut. I thought I was going to need pliers to get the thing open.”

“Right. And Adriana,” he looked over his shoulder at his wife, “as far as you could tell, was that protective glass tightly sealed against the adjacent walls, floor, and ceiling?”

Adriana saw where Sean was going with his line of questions. “That glass hadn’t been tampered with, not since it was