The Templar Stone – Chapter 1 – A Sunday Story

***A very fictional tale***

Introduction

Chapter 1

“Stand back, please, give her some air!” Commanded Officer Petralze (also known as Screen to his coworkers at Portugal’s National Police – GNR). His right arm outstretched in a crowd control stance, and while not taking his eyes of concern from Isabella’s unconscious body in a heap on the platform, Officer Petralze clicked on the radio strapped to his right shoulder.

“Officer ID-76661 here! Urgent. Send an ambulance. Location: Trindade train station platform A. For God’s sake tell them to hurry!”

***

Pain had become an inexplicably excruciating burden for off-duty CIA Station Chief, Isabella, ever since that day when at age five she was struck by a car when she rode accidentally out into the neighborhood street on her tricycle.

Isabella’s rare “golden” blood type had few donors worldwide. Therefore, when, because of the accident, she needed blood Isabella’s now late grandmother feared the worst.

As the story goes…what happened next has fueled neighborhood rumors and juicy gossip ever since. Apparently much later, in the hospital in the dead of night “someone” set up an intravenous in little Isabella’s arm, and mysteriously provided a direct person-to-person blood transfusion of the exact type that she required.

Witnesses claimed to have seen a strange form, which quote “was not humanlike” at Isabella’s bedside inside the glass-enclosed Emergency ward all night until sunrise. For some reason, all attempts to breach the Emergency ward’s door where Isabella lay were unsuccessful.

But, at Sunrise the next morning the Emergency ward’s door unlocked, on its own. Inside, Isabella was found alive and healthy sitting up in bed demanding chocolate ice cream and a new tricycle.

****

Because of Isabella (a.k.a. “Navigator,” in the elite espionage circles she frequented)’s sensitivity, the sting of the train station’s lone police officer’s stun gun’s 100K volt prongs on her ankles, registered in her nervous system like ten thousand bullet ants stinging all at once. The result was that Isabella slumped from atop the roof of the 12:05 pm train to Lisbon…unconscious and unresponsive.

A concerned crowd exiting the now-stopped bullet train to Lisbon encircled her.

****

Twenty minutes later at Hospital da Ordem’s Emergency ward …

“Can you hear me, Miss? What is your name? What day is it? May we call someone for you—an emergency contact?” Asked Head Nurse Haverly-Jao standing at Isabella’s bedside at Hospital da Ordem, a stone’s throw from the Trindade train station.

“So many questions Nurse. Yes, I can hear you, obviously. My name: The Queen of Sheba. The day…well it is today, of course. And yes, if I may call my aunt Virginia, please and thank you.” Replied Isabella, never one to lose her sense of the dramatic, nor her penchant for philosophy.

Frowning at Isabella’s cheekiness but smiling internally at her refreshingly lively spunk, Head Nurse Haverly-Jao pointed Isabella to the grey phone on the small nightstand beside her bed and departed.

“Agent 39.3999. Request secure?” spoke Isabella into the outdated phone receiver in her hand, as she tore off the laminated hospital band on her left wrist labeled “Name: ‘unknown female‘.”

A voice on the other end of the call answered immediately-

“Confirmed 39.3999. Connecting. Hold Please.”

The voice of Isabella’s superior, code-named Aunt Virginia, Head of International Covert Operational Supplies at CIA headquarters in Langley, Virginia answered:

“Hello Navigator, I’m so sorry for your loss. What can I do for you?”

“Thank you. The Templar stone is gone. From the apparent thief’s “abilities” I suspect—you know who. They made sure that I knew that “Atlanta” was involved.”

“Umhmm…so tell me, Navigator, why are you calling from a hospital room according to our phone trace of this call? What happened?”

Isabella paused, groping her mind for the correct words afforded her nuanced vocabulary courtesy of a Harvard education.

“I $%#& up!”

“Go on.”

“I had been pursuing the possible suspect in the onyx stone’s “disappearance” into the train station when local police commanded me to cease. I uh… declined his request and attempted to continue my hunt. Therefore, he tasered me…”

Then, there was a long pause on the line…as if it had gone dead…

“Hello… are you there Auntie?”

“All right, apology accepted, that’s water under the bridge. What do you need? I will arrange it.”

“I will need, little Sisyphus as well as my usual bag of goodies sent to the crypt, asap.”

“Um…did your grandmother suspect?

“She was very wise. I am pretty sure she suspected something. However, she did not let on, to me or to anyone to my knowledge.”

“Anything else Navigator? Were you seen…I mean the real you?”

“Well, I was temporarily unconscious at the train station. No telling if anyone took a selfie of the incident/me.”

“Consider it handled. We can’t have you, in any form making CNN International’s evening news, Navigator. And, I will arrange for Haanna to smooth things over at the Portugual embassy in Washington. You are a guest in their country, despite your family’s influence over there.”

Then Isabella’s Superior, the only other “family” Isabella felt she had in the world, ended the call with her usual maternal undertones:

“And, watch your six, good luck kid.”

Isabella looked down at the rather scant hospital gown on her body. It appeared as though out of spite…or urgency someone had selected the smallest and shortest gown they could find, leaving little to any onlooker’s imagination or to modesty, and strapped the handkerchief-sized hospital gown onto her six foot (1.85m) frame.

Reaching out to an old magazine on the tattered and way too heavily disinfected hospital nightstand’s top lid, Isabella thumbed through the 2016 November issue of Vogue Portugal.

She then projected her thoughts into the ether of space and time, at least the very small portion over which she had command, and dressed herself in a real version of the Dior pantsuit and running shoes pictured on the magazine’s center page…

Now, suitably attired, Isabella departed the hospital slipping out via the Emergency Exit stairwell…

****To Be Continued Next Sunday****