Читать онлайн книгу "Eternal Journey"

Eternal Journey
Alex Archer


After shooting an episode of Chasing History's Monsters at a dig in Australia, Annja Creed is left feeling mildly unimpressed. The artifacts being uncovered are considered fringe by experts who doubt their authenticity.Annja is disappointed by the general lack of mystery involved. But her boredom is quickly replaced with fear when all that's left of her cameraman is a drop of blood on his hotel-room carpet.As she looks for her friend, Annja narrowly escapes an attack by gunmen. She realizes her cameraman must have captured the image of something so valuable that someone would kill them for just having dared look at it. When it becomes clear that everyone on the dig is at risk, Annja begins to think they're in danger not because of what they saw, but who…









Who’s involved with this? Annja wondered.


Someone beyond the university, certainly, otherwise she wouldn’t be the target of Arab martial-arts masters. University of Sydney professors didn’t strike her as the types to bring in hired assassins.

She stepped into another chamber, this one much smaller than the first one. It smelled ghastly, and a pan of the light showed why. The ceiling had spiderweb cracks in it. Water had trickled through and ruined the goods arrayed on the floor—long-rotted animal hides, bodies wrapped in cloth, which from their outlines looked to be nothing more than skeletons, jars that had been filled with grain and other foodstuffs and that now contained only mold.

“Ugh,” Annja pronounced. Now it was definitely time to leave.

She spun and blinked furiously, meeting another beam of light—this one aimed right at her eyes.

“Put your flashlight down and put your hands up!”

Because the light had practically blinded her, Annja couldn’t see the speaker, but she guessed it was the man she’d followed. He’d gotten behind her and hidden, waited for the right time to approach.

“Drop it now!” he ordered.

Annja had no choice but to comply.





Eternal Journey


Rogue Angel







Alex Archer







www.mirabooks.co.uk (http://www.mirabooks.co.uk)


Special thanks and acknowledgment to Jean Rabe for her contribution to this work.




THE LEGEND


…THE ENGLISH COMMANDER TOOK

JOAN’S SWORD AND RAISED IT HIGH.

The broadsword, plan and unadorned,

gleamed in the firelight. He put the tip against

the ground and his foot at the center of the blade.

The broadsword shattered, fragments falling

into the mud. The crowd surged forward,

peasant and soldier, and snatched the shards

from the trampled mud. The commander tossed

the hilt deep into the crowd.

Smoke almost obscured Joan, but she continued

praying till the end, until finally the flames climbed

her body and she sagged against the restraints.

Joan of Art died that fateful day in France,

but her legend and are sword are reborn….




CONTENTS


PROLOGUE

CHAPTER 1

CHAPTER 2

CHAPTER 3

CHAPTER 4

CHAPTER 5

CHAPTER 6

CHAPTER 7

CHAPTER 8

CHAPTER 9

CHAPTER 10

CHAPTER 11

CHAPTER 12

CHAPTER 13

CHAPTER 14

CHAPTER 15

CHAPTER 16

CHAPTER 17

CHAPTER 18

CHAPTER 19

CHAPTER 20

CHAPTER 21

CHAPTER 22

CHAPTER 23

CHAPTER 24

CHAPTER 25

CHAPTER 26

CHAPTER 27

CHAPTER 28

CHAPTER 29

EPILOGUE




PROLOGUE


Henenu’s heart raced as he watched the slab fall and split, so much of it crumbling into worthless gravel. He swore that he could feel the last pulse leaving his body as he dropped to his knees, eyes locked on the ruined stone. The prayer that he’d painstakingly carved on its polished surface to honor the mistress to the entrance of the valley was destroyed.

All those long, long hours wasted.

His brother and five other men had been fitting the slab in place above the temple entrance. It was to be the crowning piece to the structure they’d all labored so hard to build.

“Fools, you!” Henenu spit when he regained his breath. “The mother goddess curse you all and send your souls to a dark place for your clumsiness!” Then softly he added, “Curse the lot of us for coming to this escapeless hole.”

He ground his fist against the earth so hard his knuckles bled, closed his eyes and begged the mother goddess’s forgiveness. He promised to carve another, more magnificent slab—one that would be placed by all of his men. There would be no risk of failure next time.

“A fool, me,” he said. Henenu directed his anger inward now. “The fault is with me. The blame is all mine.”

Perhaps the mother goddess was furious that they had spent their time erecting buildings rather than trying to get home. No, Henenu thought, they had tried so often to rebuild the boats and sail away, and had been thwarted at each attempt.

Perhaps this temple was not large enough, and in her irritation at the slight the mistress to the entrance of the valley had caused the stone to break, displaying her displeasure.

Certainly this was not as large as her temple in Henenu’s home city. He looked at the building through narrowed eyes, seeing the sharp angles and planes and the squat, wide steps that led up to an entranceway that yawned black like the maw of a hungry beast. It was a beautiful building.

Again he stared at the broken slab and felt his chest grow tight.

Stone was plentiful in this land, and so Henenu could order more pieces cut, knock down a wall and make the temple larger. That might appease the mother goddess. But his men were not as numerous as the builders he’d commanded back home. It had taken several years to accomplish this much.

And what would appeasing the goddess bring them?

A bigger temple would not grant the promise of a rich afterlife. This land they’d found would forever prevent them from joining the gods.

This land would consign them to the abyss.

“Brother.” Khentemsemet had come down the temple steps and stood in front of Henenu, bowing respectfully and blocking the view to the entrance and the ruined slab. “The responsibility—I take it, Henenu. My fingers ached in weakness, and I lost my hold on the prayer stone. I will accept whatever punishment you—”

Henenu rose and shook his head, looked around his younger brother and to the temple entrance again. His ire had cooled somewhat, seeing Khentemsemet’s penitent face and tear-filled eyes, and he let out a low breath that sounded like dry leaves rustling in a lazy wind. “No punishment, brother. I will carve another slab.”

“The mother goddess…”

“It was merely a piece of rock, dear Khentemsemet.”

“But, Henenu…”

“The next prayer I inscribe to Hathor, our mother goddess, will be more eloquent,” Henenu said. “In it I will pay better homage to she who is the wife of Horus. She is our only mother goddess.”

Khentemsemet’s shoulders relaxed and he turned to regard the temple, his eyes avoiding the broken stone. The setting sun painted the walls a molten bronze, and the shimmering waves of heat that rose from the ground made the carved images on the building’s sides appear to move. The majority of creatures and the men and women depicted had cows’ heads or ears or horns. Hathor’s was the largest. Her bovine visage was enfolded in a sun-shaped disk, and her arms stretched up as if she were trying to grab her beloved Horus, the god of the sky and the noon sun.

Similar figures were displayed on the handful of smaller buildings that spread away to the north, the etchings all deep, as there was little age to the structures and the wind had not had a proper chance to weather the stone.

A few of the images on the temple were incongruous to the rest; they were smaller than the carved Egyptian deities, and they formed a line like a border along the base. They were of quadrupeds with large, muscular back legs, tiny front legs, long tails, and pouches where young ones poked out their heads.

Henenu and Khentemsemet looked to the west to see a quartet of the sun-tinged animals hop across the horizon.

“This escapeless hole,” Henenu pronounced again. “It will keep us from ascending.”




1


A wide-brimmed hat the color of wet sand shielded the archaeologist’s eyes from the sun and made it difficult for the cameraman to get a good shot of his face. The man worked steadily and carefully, sifting dirt and picking out what looked like unremarkable shards of pottery, all the while oblivious to the film crew around him.

“Wes, look up once in a while, okay?” Annja Creed stood back far enough so her shadow would not encroach. “We’ve been over this a few times,” she reminded her colleague.

“Yeah, yeah. No worries.” The archaeologist tipped his head up and smiled, showing an even row of bright white teeth that contrasted sharply with his well-tanned skin and scruffy beard. He winked at her.

“Ah, sometimes I don’t know Christmas from Bourke Street, Miss Creed,” he replied. “I get my head into this and I forget all else.”

Annja put Wes somewhere between thirty-five and fifty, his hair graying, but his face unlined and his eyes bright. He was dressed in the traditional khaki pants most archaeologists wore, but his shirt was a brilliant lake-blue, new and with sharp creases; he’d worn a new shirt each day of the shoot, and had polished his shoes. He’d stubbornly refused to give his age and many other details about his personal life, saying, “I don’t need the world to know all of that, Miss Creed. I’m not important. This site is, though.”

She could have gotten all the biographical information she wanted for her piece from the foundation funding the dig—about Dr. Wesley Michaels, his wife and the handful of other archaeologists. She could have gotten Wes’s age, weight, favorite beverage, and even the name of his first pet if she’d pressed. But he was right…the site deserved the spotlight.

“Besides, don’t you have enough pictures of me, Miss Creed? I thought you finished up yesterday.” Wes gave her another wink and returned to his sifting, the angle of his hat again obscuring his face.

Annja loved to hear Wes talk. He had a thick Australian accent, perhaps exaggerated for her benefit.

“Just about finished, Dr. Michaels,” the cameraman pronounced. “A few more pans, Annja, and it’ll be a wrap, as they say.”

“Thanks, Oliver.” Annja pointed to the north. “Could you get some more on the skeletons, please. That fellow working over there by himself. He’s uncovered quite a bit this morning. You can see the whole skull now.”

Oliver made a face. “More bone shots. Sure.”

The archaeologists labored in a long bowl-like depression, concentrating on a section of midden at the base of a hill, a layer of soil that was stained dark by the decomposition of refuse left behind by people who lived a long time ago. The southern section had fragments of stone tools, bits of crude jewelry and pottery chips, the latter of which obviously fascinated Wes. He was attentive with even the smallest piece.

Annja watched him with detached envy. It was a fascinating dig, and a part of her wished she was working it, not just hosting a television segment highlighting the site. Three and a half days of filming and interviews for a one-hour slot on Chasing History’s Monsters. She held back a laugh; there’d been no monsters here in this desolate stretch in a forest preserve northwest of Sydney, but she knew her producer would fabricate one. He’d come up with some beast that supposedly either lured the ancient Egyptians to Australia or prevented them from leaving—some creature that had enough myths and legends swirling around it to attract good viewing numbers.

The features of the midden drew Annja’s thoughts back. Discolorations spoke of the human impact here, such as spots where posts had been set for houses and hearths had been dug for cooking. Most fascinating were the unearthed stones covered with carvings.

Egyptian hieroglyphs, these archaeologists were certain. Others disputed it, claiming they were merely unusual aboriginal petroglyphs. She’d seen plenty of petroglyphs in books and on various Internet sites, and pictographs—paintings on rocks that usually held some religious meaning. She had to side with Wes. They certainly did look like Egyptian hieroglyphs. One of the more distinct carvings was of a slight woman with the head of a cow. One of her arms was stretched above her head; the other arm had been chopped off when the stone broke.

“Hathor,” Wes had explained. “The wife of Horus. She was an ancient goddess, dating to dynastic times, maybe earlier. Nothing aboriginal about her and Horus.”

Annja and her crew had agreed not to give the exact location of the dig. Wes and the foundation had been adamant about that. They had enough problems with errant hikers trudging over out of curiosity. Too much publicity would mean they’d have to up their security to protect against looters and tourists, and that would cut into what Wes called a “damn scant budget.”

There was a second dig about a mile away, on the other side of the ridge in a lightly wooded section. Smaller and not nearly as interesting as this, Annja thought, though certainly part of the same ancient city. University of Sydney graduate students were working there to uncover more hieroglyphs. A third Egyptian dig was taking place near Brisbane, and Annja had lobbied to visit that site, too, as it was the most recent. But her producer cited timing and money, and so she had grudgingly settled solely on Dr. Michaels’s team.

“This is all considered fringe archaeology anyway,” Doug Morrell had argued, because not all the experts agreed it was Egyptian. Not worth too much airtime, but certainly worth some, he had said. Normally, the hint of some monster triggered her assignment. This time, it was a leak that a rival television show was going to send a team to the dig. Doug had admitted wanting the scoop on the place.

Annja breathed deep, smelling the age of the things being unearthed, the dryness of the ground and the tinge of sweat from the archaeologists. She thought maybe she’d come back here on her own before the year was out and see what progress had been made.

Wes Michaels hoped to get the results of some radiocarbon dating before Annja and her crew finished. Using the known half-life of carbon 14, and measuring the amount of undecayed carbon in a plant specimen his wife had uncovered at the bottom of a bowl, Wes hoped to determine the age of the features of this site. Annja knew geochronology would also help—dating artifacts by the age of the geological formation they were discovered in. But those test results were still hanging.

Wes had explained to Annja that a handful of curators and computer programmers were cataloging what had already been taken away from the site and were storing them in a museum in Sydney. He had offered to show her some of the more interesting specimens locked away there. She thought maybe she’d take him up on that during her return trip.

“Fringe nothing, Miss Creed. I’m not an Egyptologist, but I don’t need to be to tell me that’s indeed Hathor.” Wes held up a curved piece of pottery on which was painted a complete image of the cow-headed woman. “Look, she’s on several pieces here.”

Annja watched her cameraman work at the far end of the midden, where an archaeologist who looked little more than a teenager continued to brush the dirt away from a skeleton. The rest of her crew was packing up.

“What do you know of Hathor?” Annja knelt next to Wes Michaels and noted his gaze lingering on her lithe form. He might be a married man, she thought, but that didn’t prevent him from looking.

“The mistress of turquoise, she was called. Mistress of the entrance to the valley, queen of the west, lady of the sycamore, lady of all the gods, the gold of the gods. There were more than a few names for her.” Wes returned his gaze to the pottery piece. “Goddess of women, music, beauty, love, joy…all the important things in this world were her purview. They believed she blessed women with fertility. Some say the Greeks recognized her, as well, some sort of relation to Aphrodite.”

“The primal mother,” Jennifer said as she joined them. Hair tucked under a bushman’s hat, and nose smeared with sunscreen, she was equally difficult to pin an age to. Annja thought she was overly thin, elbows and wrist bones protruding. “Hathor was said to have some erotic significance to the Egyptian culture.” She playfully nudged her husband.

“Say no more. Say no more,” he shot back.

Jennifer continued, “Her symbols include the sistra. It’s sort of a rattle, and we’ve found two of them here. Hathor was especially prominent in Ta-Netjer.”

“The Land of God,” Wes translated.

“Which is modern-day Dendra in northern Egypt.” Jennifer pointed to another image of Hathor on a stone. “Her priests were male and female, dancers, musicians. Some were midwives, and it was said Hathor’s oracles could interpret people’s dreams.”

Wes passed Annja the pottery piece he’d been studying. “Careful with it,” he instructed. Then he shook his head and frowned, realizing he need make no such admonition to her.

“Primal mother, you called her?” Annja mused.

Wes opened his mouth to answer, but Jennifer clicked her teeth, as much as telling him this question was hers to field. “The Egyptians believed that the world began when the great floods retreated, and at that time Hathor slipped from the reeds and stood on the first patch of dry ground. The first day of the ancient year was considered her birthday, and they celebrated it with a lavish festival. Before dawn, they’d tote her statue onto the roof of her temple at Dendra.”

Annja nodded. “So that the rays of Horus, her husband, could shine on the statue, thus representing the marriage of the sun and the sky.”

Jennifer beamed at Annja’s knowledge. “But it wasn’t all light,” she said.

“No.” Annja scowled. “If I remember my studies, she had a few dark roles, too. Some say she was also the goddess Sekhmet, and in that guise she exacted a blood toll on mankind.” She returned the pottery piece to Wes. “A temple at Kom el-Hism in the Middle Kingdom was dedicated to Sekhmet-Hathor.” Maybe there was the monster angle. Sekhmet down under, Annja mused.

“Indeed!” Jennifer said. “In one of Tutankhamen’s shrines, they discovered a carving that tells how Hathor became Sekhmet at her father’s, Ra’s, urging. She nearly wiped out humanity, but she finally went back to being Hathor and stopped the massacre. A smart one, you are, Miss Creed. Too bad you can’t stay longer.”

Annja politely ignored the invitation. “Wasn’t Hathor said to accept the dead at the gates of the west?”

“Now, that role wasn’t dark!” Wes snorted. “The goddess greeted them at the gates with bread and beer. Hope it was a pint of Tooheys.”

Annja couldn’t help but laugh with him. “I will be back,” she told him. “Without a cameraman.”

After a few moments she drifted away to another section of the dig, leaving Wes and his wife to discuss the pottery shards and the mother goddess. “And maybe I’ll try a Tooheys myself tonight,” Annja called back to them.

Three members of the five-man film crew were leaving on a red-eye flight. But she and Oliver were scheduled to fly out the next day around noon. So tonight she’d settle back with her laptop in her hotel room in Sydney—after a good meal, of course, and that Tooheys—and search her favorite archaeology Web sites for more tidbits about Hathor. Maybe she’d search the fringe sites, too.

She made a mental note to also look into the Brisbane dig. The theories she’d already read about the Australian sites suggested that thousands of years ago Egyptians had sailed here looking for gold, and that the aboriginals who lived here at the time were said to have heard the beating hearts of all the ships, likely the drums that kept the oarsmen in time.

Could Wes Michaels come up with enough evidence to silence the skeptics and prove that the Egyptians really did reach Australian soil before Captain Cook?

Lost in thought, Annja nearly tripped over one of the archaeologists.

“No room for bludgers here, eh, cobber?” A lanky archaeologist raised his eyebrows when Annja caught herself from falling. His face was as smooth and flat as a shovel, and it glistened with sweat in the late-afternoon sun. It wasn’t a warm day, it being early fall in Australia, but his shirt was heavy and long-sleeved, and the sweat stains were dark under his arms.

“No bludgers,” Annja admitted. It was Australian slang for a layabout, someone who let others do the work for him.

“Your cameraman caught Josie napping yesterday, Miss Creed, and that’s been sitting in my craw. I complained to Dr. Michaels about it, but I bet he didn’t say anything to you. Did he?”

Annja shook her head.

“It’ll make us all look like lazy louts. Not one of us is a bludger. Josie’s just got a touch of the flu is all. Still under it, she is.” He wiped the back of his hand across his forehead, smearing the dirt.

Annja offered the archaeologist a weak smile. “Oliver’s just wrapping,” she said. “We’re heading back to Sydney within the hour.”

“He didn’t need to film Josie taking a little snooze,” the man persisted. He gestured to the largest tree at the dig site, a fifty-yard tall stringybark that was mostly dead. Josie, the oldest archaeologist, was sitting against the trunk. “Josie there is gonna make us all look—”

“I wouldn’t worry about it.” Annja poked out her lower lip and let out a long breath that fluttered her hair. “It’s a one-hour show, and we’re interested in the hieroglyphics, nothing else.” Annja wouldn’t go so far as to promise that the snoozing archaeologist wouldn’t appear in the segment. She’d long ago learned not to make any promises regarding Chasing History’s Monsters.

“One hour’s all?” the man asked.

She nodded. She’d thought she’d explained that to everyone.

“Dr. Michaels’ll be mad as a cut snake, Miss Creed. I’ll wager he figures that as many days as you’ve been out here you were putting together some sort of series like those Alaskan crab fishermen have. Make him a local celebrity. Get him all kinds of publicity on the National Geographic Channel or…”

Annja feigned interest in something on the rise and headed in that direction. “One hour is all,” she called out. There was a tinge of irritation in her voice—both at the archaeologist’s complaints and the shortness of the segment. This site was worthy of much more than a one-hour piece—many of the places she visited were worthy of more. But television had its limits, she realized. She just didn’t have to like them.

She spied Oliver at the top of the ridge, taking a few shots of the student dig in the distance. Probably going to compare its small size to the professional dig here…if there was room, she thought. “Yep. Only one bloody hour,” she mumbled.




2


Annja got up early, packed her suitcase and jogged down six flights in the hotel tower to knock on Oliver’s door. The cameraman had a room on the smoking floor, and the nicotine that permeated the walls set her nose to wrinkling and settled uncomfortably in her mouth.

“C’mon, Ollie. Answer the door. It stinks out here. Get up. C’mon,” she shouted.

She’d slept poorly, snatching only minutes here and there, her dreams filled with fire and with the notion of the mother goddess’s other self nearly wiping out humankind. How would one of Hathor’s oracles interpret such nightmares?

“I need coffee, Oliver. C’mon. Let’s get some food.” She intended to coax the notoriously late-sleeping cameraman to join her for breakfast, but he wouldn’t stir. The rest of the crew gone on the red-eye. She knocked once more and then resigned herself to breakfasting alone.

“Good thing Oliver’s sleeping in,” she whispered several minutes later as she perused the menu in the restaurant off the lobby. The cup of coffee in front of her had so far done nothing to rejuvenate her. “I don’t have to hold back ordering.” She was famished and decided it was better that her cameraman didn’t see her gorge herself.

“I’ll have the creamy Bircher muesli with kiwis, and the strawberry-and-blueberry soy shake for starters,” she told the waiter. “Give me a little time with that, then I’ll have the free-range eggs, three of them poached on whole wheat, with tarragon hollandaise sauce, a slice of this baker’s special—” she pointed to a line on the menu “—banana-and-macadamia nut cake—better make that two slices—and a side of chipolata sausage and onions. Oh, and bring more coffee.”

There were a lot of words in her order, but not terribly much food, she thought, looking at the beautiful presentation that was shortly set before her.

On second thought, it was a lot of food, she decided when she was halfway through. Good thing that she was eating alone. Aside from Oliver not seeing this mountain she was inhaling, the solitude let her think about one of the esoteric archaeology sites she’d visited via her laptop last night.

Wes Michaels had told her not a single mummy had been found so far at any of the Australian digs, which was one of the factors that led some of his contemporaries to argue they were not Egyptian finds. But in ancient times only the pharaoh and his family were so preserved; it was believed important for their journey to the afterlife, where they would join with the gods. The regular folk had no chance of ascending that high. In later centuries, however, the wealthy were also mummified, and some time after that it became common practice for Egyptians from all levels of society—including their cats.

So, Annja thought, based on the age of the site north of Sydney, there’d either been no relatives to a pharaoh there worth mummifying, or something had wiped all of them out in one fell swoop before a single body could be preserved.

“Hathor’s wrath? The monster the segment needs? Or maybe there was no natron,” she mused aloud. Jennifer had mentioned the lack of natron yesterday, and Annja, knowing nothing about it, did a little surfing and learned that natron was a naturally occurring mix of soda ash and sodium bicarbonate, salt and sodium sulfate. The Egyptians used it in their mummification process. No natron, no mummies.

And if a body was not preserved, the Egyptians believed the soul that had inhabited it could well be consigned to a wretched afterlife.

“Like being damned, I guess,” Annja said as she played with the salt shaker. “Not a pretty thought if you’re an ancient Egyptian. No natron, no heaven.”

She shoveled down the rest of her breakfast, put her hands on her stomach and leaned back in the chair, tipped her head up and studied the ceiling. She wouldn’t need to eat anything on the plane. “Maybe I won’t eat until next Tuesday,” she said. “Ooph. Talk about my eyes being bigger than…” She let her words trail off when she saw a table of tourists watching her.

Annja sat straight and glanced at her watch. She’d spent more than an hour in the restaurant, and that left only two hours before she and Oliver had to catch the shuttle to the airport. Time for a quick swim to work off some of the calories, she thought—not that she’d ever needed to worry about her weight or had ever bothered to count calories.

“Excellent tucker,” she told the waiter on her way out, using the Australian slang for food.

She stopped in her room to dig her bathing suit out of the suitcase and put it on. Had she more time, she would have visited one of the city’s beaches, even though it might be a little on the cool side. She’d seen one of the largest out the window of her plane coming in, and it looked so beautiful and inviting. All the more reason for a return trip, she thought. She really did intend to come back, and not just for the Michaels dig.

Everyone she’d met in Australia had been so friendly, and only a scattered few of them had recognized her as a celebrity from Chasing History’s Monsters. She hadn’t had time to visit Circular Quay or ride the ferries, or to get down to the Canberra military museum she’d heard so much about.

Annja rarely had time to do any tourist activities during her globe-hopping. She’d stay a few extra days now if she could, but her schedule was too tight. From here she was going home to New York, where she would put the polish on the fringe piece, as it had been labeled. Two days after that she’d be on a flight to Peru for her next assignment.

Fossils of five-foot-tall penguins with long spearlike beaks had been found in the mountains, dating back forty million years. Her producer postulated that there was a link between the giant penguins and odd-sized skeletons with overlarge craniums that came from much later periods. “Mutant Creatures of the Peaks,” Doug intended to call the segment. She suppressed a giggle.

She threw a towel over her shoulder, snugged into the only pair of jeans she’d brought and stuck her wallet in the back pocket; out of habit she never left her money in her hotel room. She slipped into her flip-flops, which she made a mental note to toss when she was done rather than repack them, and headed out, pausing in front of the mirror. It amazed her that she could look this good given the way she often stuffed herself silly. But then lately the problem had been keeping her weight up; she was so active, between jetting here and there for Chasing History’s Monsters and fighting the assorted clusters of toughs she’d encountered since inheriting Joan of Arc’s sword. She tucked her hair behind her ears. Dark brown, it glistened in the sunlight streaming through her hotel room window. She remembered how pale it used to make her look, contrasting sharply with her then-scholar’s complexion. Now her skin was ruddy from all the hours outdoors, and her white bikini top made her look even more tanned.

“I look pretty good.” Annja, for once, wasn’t embarrassed to admit it.

Maybe Oliver was up finally and would join her for a dip. If he wasn’t awake, she’d roust him and drag him along. No use her being the only one with something sodden in the suitcase.

She took the stairs again, this time at a slow pace, as she didn’t want to stub her toes or catch her flip-flops on the metal strips edging each step. She knocked louder at his door this time.

“Come on, Ollie.” A pause. “Ollie!”

She let out a sigh, the air whistling between her teeth.

Oliver wasn’t the best of company, but still…breakfast alone, a swim alone. A swim would benefit him more than her. She pounded on the door, then after a moment tried the knob.

The mechanism that registered the keycard had been sprung, and the door opened.

“Ollie?”

Annja stared at the spotless, empty room.

The bed was made, as if he hadn’t slept in it. No suitcase, no mussed towels in the bathroom.

Her breath hissed out. So he’d taken the red-eye back with the others. A seat must have opened up. He could have told her, though, she thought angrily.

“You should have told me,” she said, shaking her head. But she knew Ollie wasn’t the most considerate sort. An excellent cameraman, he was less than excellent in the social department.

“Breakfast alone, swim alone. Fine.” Annja stepped back into the hall and was about to close the door when something caught her notice. She pushed the door wide and tiptoed in, nearly tripping when her flip-flops caught in the thick carpet.

There, at the foot of the bed, near the hem of the quilt, was a spot of blood.




3


It’s probably nothing, Annja told herself. But the hairs on her arm prickled and indicated otherwise. She crept around Oliver’s room and this time eyed everything in a more careful light.

Yes, the bed was made. But there was a crease in the middle that a good hotel maid would have smoothed flat. The chair by the lamp had been moved from its usual spot because the depressions in the carpet showed where it usually rested. The lamp shade was slightly askew, too.

Annja sniffed the air, finding only the smell of cigarettes and a touch of flowery spray that the cleaning staff no doubt used to help mask the smell of cigarettes.

She looked in the bathroom. Not a single rumpled towel, and the glasses were turned upside down on doilies, as if Ollie hadn’t used them. No toothbrush by the sink, no razor, no toiletry bag. No smudges on the faucet or mirror. No heavy towel on the floor to act as a bath mat, and no spots of water anywhere that would indicate someone had used the room recently. She pushed aside the shower curtain and saw that the tub was dry. The sink basin was dry, too, evidence to her that Ollie hadn’t been in here for at least a few hours.

Annja sucked in a breath and went to the closet. It was empty, too, save for a fluffy white robe, an ironing board propped up against the back wall and an iron and extra feather pillow on the top shelf. Next she checked the drawers, not sure why she was doing this, and all the while trying to tell herself that indeed Oliver had caught the red-eye.

Telling herself that the blood spot was nothing.

“Oliver’s just fine,” she said. Then she noticed that one of the knobs was missing from the television.

“I’m operating on too wild an imagination and too little sleep. That’s all.” But her words weren’t working to quell her rising fears. She reached for the phone and called the front desk. “Hello. Has Oliver Vylan checked out? Room 312? No? Thanks.”

She slapped the heel of her hand against her forehead. “Just call Oliver,” she said. Annja knew his cell phone number by heart and quickly punched the buttons. One ring. Two. “C’mon, Oliver. Answer.”

If he was on the plane, maybe he couldn’t, she thought. At certain times some airlines wouldn’t let you use your cell phone. They’d flown American. She’d remembered using her cell phone all the time on American flights.

Eight rings. His voice mail message came on.

“Oliver, this is Annja. Call me.” She let her voice sound urgent, so he’d return the call right away. She’d have to go up to her room and grab her cell phone in case he did call.

She depressed the switch hook and started dialing Doug Morrell. Halfway through, she stopped. The time difference, she thought. “To hell with the hours.” She finished the number and let the phone ring, then left another message when an answering machine kicked in. “Doug, this is Annja. Has Oliver checked in with you? Call me, please.”

The blood spot could be something.

She called the front desk again. “Hello. Would you please contact the police.” Annja didn’t know the Sydney equivalent of 911, or she would have handled that herself. “Send them up here as soon they arrive. And send someone from hotel security now, to Oliver Vylan’s room. Yes, room 312. I believe something…bad…has happened to him.” She replaced the phone in the cradle, ignoring the questions of the now nervous front-desk woman.

Had Oliver gone pub-crawling? she wondered.

He’d mentioned that possibility at dinner last night. Had he gotten himself into trouble at one of the bars? Had he come back bloodied from being on the receiving end of someone’s fist? That might explain the blood spot. But it wouldn’t explain his absence. While her cameraman wasn’t the politest of fellows, she hadn’t known him to be the type to get into a brawl, nor was he the type to drink to excess. But then how well did she know him? They’d worked together for several months, but never socialized more than sharing meals after shoots. He had family in New York, she recalled from conversations, two sisters, and he had a fiancée he mentioned often. Annja didn’t want to have to call any of them to report bad news.

“Oh, think, Annja! Calm down.” He could well be in the restaurant having breakfast! And the lack of suitcase and camera equipment might mean that he left them with the concierge in preparation for checking out.

There might be nothing wrong at all.

She let out a tentative sigh of relief and called the restaurant and described Oliver. “Are you sure he’s not there? Check one more time, please. It’s important.”

She felt her chest growing tight with worry and her heart racing. She was used to danger and had come to accept being shot at and kicked, but she would never get used to people around her finding trouble. The fatigue she’d felt from lack of sleep rolled off her, and again her eyes locked on the blood spot. Her breath caught.

The maître d’ came back on the line and interrupted her thoughts.

“You’re certain he’s not there? Yes. Thank you,” Annja said dully, and hung up the phone. “Oliver, what’s happened to you? What sort of trouble did you manage to find?”

She could have gone with him on the pub crawl, hadn’t really needed to turn in so early to surf the archaeology Web sites. Should have gone with him, she admonished herself, stopped him from drinking too much, getting into a fight, getting blood on the carpet of his hotel room, from worrying her so.

She knelt at the foot of the bed, fingers hovering above the blood spot, senses registering the smell of nicotine that clung to the carpet and the quilt.

Leave the spot alone, she told herself. You’ve called the police. Don’t interfere. Let them…She touched the edge of the spot anyway, finding it congealed but not crusty. Maybe only an hour or two old, she guessed. Maybe Oliver had been here when she knocked the first time before going to breakfast. Maybe if she’d been persistent then she would have found him safe.

“Should have tried the door then.” She chewed on her lower lip. “Ollie, Ollie, what trouble did you—?” She heard the elevator open out in the hall. “Police can’t have gotten here this quick,” she muttered. She jumped up, thoughts brightening. Maybe it was Oliver, coming back to the room to make sure he hadn’t left anything. Annja darted outside and nearly bumped into a long-nosed man with a hotel security badge on his dark blue suit coat.

“You’re the one who—”

“Called the front desk? Yes, I—”

“Reported trouble with one of our guests? A Mr. Oliver Vylan from the United States?” He didn’t have as pleasing an accent as the archaeologists she’d spent the past few days with. He sounded more British than Aussie, though there were similarities to both accents.

“Oliver Vylan, yes. My cameraman. He’s gone missing,” Annja said.

She stood there only a moment more, looking between the open hotel room door and the security man, and then she stepped around him and to the elevator and thumbed the up button.

“He’s gone missing, I say again, and I’m worried,” she continued. “I found a spot of blood. It’s at the foot of the bed.” She was certain now that some harm had come to Oliver, and that despite her best thoughts the cameraman wasn’t ready to check out and head to the airport.

“Miss…” The security man beckoned, clearly wanting more information about the situation.

“Creed. Annja Creed, room 914. I’ll be right back. I have to go get my cell phone.” Annja slipped into the elevator and pressed the button for the ninth floor, shifting back and forth on the balls of her feet, her flip-flops making squeaky sounds. “After I call home one more time. Try to call Ollie again.” And after I worry some more, she thought. “Ollie, Ollie, Ollie, what’s happened to you?”

The airport? Maybe she should call American just to make sure that he hadn’t caught the red-eye flight to LaGuardia. One final time she told herself that all this worry was for nothing, and that she was wasting the hotel security man’s time and soon the police’s time. She prayed she was wasting everyone’s time and that Oliver was all right.

But he wasn’t all right, she confirmed when the elevator doors opened onto her floor and she stepped out. At the end of the hall, the door to her room was open, and a thumping, bumping, crashing sound came from within. Someone was ransacking the place.

Annja didn’t panic. Danger was nothing new to her. In fact, it had been her constant companion since she inherited her sword and began her battle against whatever the forces of darkness decided to throw at her.

She reached for that sword now, touching the pommel with her mind and calling it from the ephemeral pocket of nothingness where it resided. She felt her fingers close on it, then just as quickly she dismissed it. Assess the situation first, she admonished herself. Don’t let worry rule you. She sprinted down the hall, flip-flops slapping against the soles of her feet as she went. She vaguely registered a door opening behind her, and then another, heard the curious whispers of hotel guests poking their heads out.

A heartbeat more and she was in the doorway of her room, staring at three dark-clad men who were tearing her things apart.

“That’s the woman,” the tallest of them said. He was standing on her shattered laptop. “That’s the one who was with the photographer. Kill her!”




4


Situation assessed, Annja thought. She mentally called for her sword again, in the same instant drawing it back as she leaped into the room, bringing the blade down decisively at the first man she came to, a swarthy, barrel-chested thug with deep wrinkles around his eyes. He was just beyond the doorway—the other two were farther back in the room, and he snarled at her and spit and fumbled at his back.

He was going for a gun, she knew instinctively, and she managed to turn her sword at the last second so she struck him hard in the side of the head with the flat of the blade, knocking him senseless. She would try to take them alive, at least one of them, she decided. Dead, they certainly couldn’t tell her what they’d done to her cameraman…or what any of this was about.

The barrel-chested man shook his head and continued to fumble at the small of his back. She released one hand from the sword and struck his throat with her palm, watching his eyes bulge. He was the oldest and appeared the most out of shape, the least threat, she judged. She turned her attention to the other two.

The slightest was a young man standing close to the window. He’d been pulling things out of her suitcase and tossing them every which way.

What was he searching for?

He’d dropped a pair of her shoes and gaped at her when she’d entered. He said something softly in a foreign language. She didn’t catch any of it, but she registered that his face was severely pockmarked, as if he’d had an illness or a bad case of acne in his youth.

The tallest, the one who had danced on her laptop, was near the desk. “Kill her!” he repeated. “Kill her!”

Clearly the leader, Annja thought.

“Are those the only words you know?” Annja instantly regretted her quip as he cursed and dug his heel into what was left of the hard drive.

The barrel-chested one, still doubled over from the second blow she’d delivered, made an attempt to regain his wind, but eased back against the wall and looked almost helplessly to the leader.

At first glance Annja had thought them all in some sort of uniform, but that wasn’t the case. Each wore black pants, the tallest in tight-fitting jeans, with the other two in slacks that one might wear to an office. The tallest had on a black polo shirt, with something embroidered over the pocket. He was moving now, and so she couldn’t read it because the fabric bunched. The wiry one wore a simple black T-shirt, while the wheezing man had a sport shirt with the buttons pulled tight across his middle. Two wore black leather shoes, the wiry one in a pair of new-looking gray running shoes.

All of them were slightly dark skinned, but not black or suntanned.

Not Aussies or aboriginals. Arabs? she wondered.

The barrel-chested man finally caught his breath, bolted upright and grabbed her arm, still grimacing in pain from her blows. His grip was strong and he maliciously dug in his fingers.

“She’s got a sword!” he hollered.

The tall one growled as he pulled a gun from his waistband. “I think we all can see that, Zuka!”

Zuka—she had the name of one, not that the tidbit was very useful at the moment. An unusual name, though.

“What should I do, Sute?”

Two names now. Annja knew Sute was an Egyptian name, a derivative of Sutekh, the name of the evil god of chaos said to have slain Osiris.

“Surrender, all of you,” Annja said, though perhaps too softly for the wiry one to hear.

“Kill her, I said! Kill her and we’ll be gone from here!”

Annja’s hotel room was not a small one, but it was confining to fight in, which worked to her advantage, as the men could not circle her. Zuka, the barrel-chested man, pulled her toward him, fingers digging in even harder. She didn’t resist. In fact, using his momentum, she slammed herself against him, pinning him to the wall. Once more the breath was knocked from him, but he stubbornly refused to release his grip.

Better he hold on to her, she thought, as that was keeping him from drawing a gun.

She drove her heel down on his instep and jabbed her right elbow into his gut. He wasn’t a soft man, she realized, just big, but neither was he well trained in physical combat. She slung him around just as the tall man fired.

The gun had a silencer, making a spitting sound followed almost instantly by the soft thud of the bullet striking Zuka, whom she’d inadvertently used as a shield. He sagged against her, and she jumped back, losing a flip-flop and bumping into the door frame.

The tall man fired again, grazing Annja’s shoulder. Then she was moving, thrusting the stinging pain to the back of her mind and bringing the sword around until it was aimed at his heart.

“Thrice damn you!” he cursed. His gun jammed, and he threw it at her.

Annja sidestepped the hurled gun and adjusted the grip on her sword.

“You will join Zuka, Annja Creed. Join him in hell, as my master commands!” In a flash the man reached behind his back again, retrieving a second gun as she lunged forward, the sword’s blade gleaming in the sun coming in through the window. A streak of flashing silver hit the barrel and knocked the gun away. “The pit for you, Annja Creed!”

Why? she wondered as she dropped beneath a punch aimed at her face. Why the pit for me? What have I done to you? I don’t even know you. And who is your master?

Then everything seemed to speed up, and she dismissed her questions and concentrated only on the fight. The tall man backed away to buy himself a moment, kicking aside pieces of her laptop and drawing a dagger. Small, it was nonetheless deadly.

The wiry one had a gun, too, but it wasn’t aimed at her. He was looking beyond Annja and to the doorway behind her, his hands shaking. She couldn’t risk a glance over her shoulder, but from the sound of hushed voices she could tell that curious hotel guests had spilled out into the hall and were looking inside.

“Get out of here!” she called to them.

“The police,” someone said, a young man from the tone of his voice. “Someone should call them.”

“I hear sirens,” another said.

“Bloke’s got a gun,” a third said. “And the sheila’s got a sword!”

There was a scream as the wiry man started firing.

Annja spun like a top and instinctively darted close to the man called Sute, plunging her sword into his stomach before he could use the dagger. A curse died on his lips as the blade slipped from his hand.

There were more screams, and Annja pulled her sword free and whirled as the wiry man vaulted past her and across the bed, nearly tangling his feet in the covers. He was firing his gun into the crowd gathered in the hallway. The shots were wild, intended to scatter the people, she could tell. But one of the spectators outside her door had been hit and was twitching and gasping in pain and disbelief. A few people hovered over him, but the rest fled toward the elevators, shouting and screaming, their feet thundering dully against the carpeted floor.

The wiry man took advantage of the panic and rushed into the hallway, turning down the far corner, away from the panicked people and waving his gun to keep anyone from following him.

“Call an ambulance!” Annja shouted. “Someone call an ambulance!” She knew that she had to catch the wiry man to find out what happened to Ollie…and to find out why these men had attacked her. She couldn’t afford to wait for the police and paramedics and risk this one getting away.

She registered everything in a single glance as she leaped over the wounded man. There were four people still outside her door, two of them kneeling by the wounded man, another standing in shock, staring at the bloody sword in her hand. The downed man had been hit high in the right side of his chest. There was a good chance he would survive if help came quickly. She could do nothing to aid him.

But if she’d reacted faster to the three men ransacking her room, killed the first outright rather than trying to subdue him, the bystander might not have been hit in the first place. Her breath caught at the thought.

She saw a police officer step out of the elevator and wedge his way through the panicked hotel guests. Shouts hinted there were more police behind him. In that instant she willed the sword away. The police didn’t need to see a woman with a sword; she knew it would distract them from the true villains. Also, they would want her statement right now. Her target darted around the corner of an intersecting hallway, and from the clanking sound she could tell he’d pushed open the door to the stairwell. She churned after him, the flip-flop on her left foot slapping madly, her bare right foot striking the well-worn carpet.

She’d catch up to the young man, question him and then she’d return to her hotel room, hand him over to the police and answer their questions. If the gawkers mentioned a sword…well, there’d be no sign of such a weapon. And, as always, she’d deny using one.

She turned the corner and thrust the heel of her hand against the door. It flew open, striking the wall behind it with a resonant clang. She heard footsteps and followed him down the stairs, taking three steps at a time. Above and behind her people were shouting, one in a commanding voice that could have belonged to one of the police officers.

“Take everyone’s name,” she heard.

“What’s this about a woman with a sword?” another asked.

“Who are these men? Seen them before?”

Then the door clanged shut and deadened everything save for the rapid click-clacking of her target’s feet.

One landing later she caught sight of him. Leaning against the railing, he fired upward, the bullets ricocheting harmlessly off the bottoms of the steps above him and the wall. Then he vaulted over the railing, dropping to the next lower level, and she did the same, only a few dozen steps behind him now.

Annja was so determined to catch him that she gritted her teeth and ignored the biting pain in her shoulder and the ache of her bare foot—she was scraping it against the rough sandpaper-like metal strips that had been nailed to the steps. From somewhere above her a door clanged open, followed by curious shouts. The police or hotel security, she suspected, come to join in the chase. She ignored those noises, too, and increased her speed.

A superb athlete, Annja knew the only reason she hadn’t yet caught the young man was that he was obviously in excellent shape and he was in shoes that gave him better traction on these stairs. But she would catch him.

Just another minute, she told herself.

Annja was just beyond the landing for the fifth floor when the door clanged open directly behind her. Police was her first thought, but the spitting sound of a silenced gun ended that notion. She glanced over her shoulder, the gesture nearly costing her balance, as the toe of her flip-flop caught on a metal strip. She kicked off the shoe and dropped to a crouch as the gun continued to spit bullets.

Two guns, she corrected herself, as she spun to face the new adversaries. Two men had burst onto the fifth-floor landing, these also dressed in black.

The color of the day, she thought.

But these men looked a little different, with broad shoulders and thick arms, like bodybuilders or professional muscle. They conversed rapidly in a language she didn’t recognize as they continued to fire. Annja somersaulted down to the fourth-floor landing, then rounded the stairwell and headed for the third floor.

The wiry man stood down there, blocking her way and holding his gun out, both hands clamped so tight his knuckles looked pale. His fingers trembled, and sweat beaded heavily on his face.

“Stop!” he commanded.

“Why? So I’ll be an easier target?” Annja flattened herself against the outer stairwell wall as he squeezed the trigger. The staccato shots were loud. More spitting came from the two silenced guns above her, bullets striking the concrete wall just above her head.

She willed the sword to her, the mental gesture coming easily. The hilt fit into her grip as if it were an extension of her arm. Her fingers held it tight as she pushed off from the step, body arcing down as if she was diving off the side of a pool. She tucked herself into a ball and rolled, straightening her legs when they pointed down to the third-floor landing and feeling the impact of the wiry man’s face against the balls of her feet. His cheekbones cracked from the impact.

Annja dissected the sounds—the man’s painful gasp, his gun clattering to the floor, his body following it with a dull thud, more gunfire from above, bullets striking the concrete, several bullets striking the torso of the wiry man, from whom she just pushed herself off. She continued down the next flight of stairs, registering that the third floor was where Oliver had stayed.

The two men raced behind her, chattering in a foreign language. Annja was fluent in many languages—French, Spanish, Portuguese, Italian, Romanian—and she had some command of Russian. What the men spoke wasn’t any of them. She couldn’t understand a single word, save the few English terms sprinkled in—American, photographer, and Creed.

This had to have something to do with the dig, but what? And what about the other members of her crew who had left on the red-eye? Had they truly left? Or had these men gotten to them?

No, they were safe, she told herself. She would’ve heard something at breakfast about shootings or kidnappings, or would’ve picked up on trouble at the hotel. No, these men hadn’t gotten to the hotel in time to stop the rest of her crew. Just in time to stop Oliver. And now they were trying to stop her.

More doors clanged opened and closed from floors above, and more shouts followed. Two guns discharged, these without silencers. The police, Annja was certain, hoping they would nail one of the men pursuing her.

But only shoot one, she prayed; she wanted one alive to question.

Halfway down to the first floor, she stopped and whirled as more gunfire erupted. It was followed by the sound of a body tumbling down the stairs. A heartbeat later, only one dark-clad man appeared on the steps above her, one hand on the railing to balance himself, the other holding a gun—a Glock 17. Odd that something like that would register, Annja thought, given the dire situation.

She feinted to her right, toward the outer wall of the stairwell, then dipped and pivoted to her left. He fired at where’d she’d stood a breath before. Pushing off the step, she flew up at him, executing a hammering block when his leg came out to defend himself.

“What is this about?” she shouted. “What have you done with Oliver?”

He grunted and tried to draw a bead on her, shooting the railing instead. Only one step below him now, she grabbed his raised leg and tugged, setting him off balance. Agile, he didn’t fall. He swept the gun at her, the barrel striking her face. He brought it back for a second strike and pulled the trigger in the same motion. Annja reacted with an inward parry, a kenpo blocking method. One hand wrapped around the hilt of her sword, she opened her other hand and redirected his next blow by riding with the force of his swing. He hadn’t anticipated that and scrambled to maintain his hold on the gun.

“Kiai!” Annja shouted, as she used her diaphragm to purge the air from her body. The kenpo technique fortified her body and clearly shook the man. She rammed the heel of her hand into his stomach and felt his breath rush out. “I don’t want to kill you,” she said to herself as much as to him. “Though that’s clearly what you intend for me.”

But why do you want to kill me?

“There’s one more shooter down there!” This came from well above her. “Call it in that one’s dead.”

Annja had to finish this quickly. Having the police here was all well and good, she thought, but they would tangle her up for hours in questioning. She needed to call Doug, alert the crew who took the red-eye that they might be in danger for God knows what reason and try to call Ollie again. She desperately wanted to sort all this out before letting the authorities commandeer her time.

“Kiai!” she repeated, following it this time with a swipe of her sword. The blade sheered into the man’s fingers, forcing him to release the gun.

He grabbed his injured hand with his good one and stared at her, his eyes angry daggers.

“Gahba!” he spat at her. “Kelbeh!”

“No doubt you’re calling me something terrible,” she said.

“Khanzeera al matina!” Clearly in pain, the man nonetheless refused to quit. He lashed out with one leg, and then the other, clipping Annja once but causing her no real harm.

She had been a superb athlete before acquiring the sword. She’d since become even better, drawing on its power and honing her skills to an almost unbelievable level. That she’d lived through all this so far—and so much more in other countries before this—was a testament to her training and determination.

“I…said…I…don’t…want…to…kill…you!” The words steamed out as if she were a kettle left too long on the stove. “But you’re not going to be able to answer my questions, are you? Know any English?”

The police nearing, she again dismissed the sword, in the same motion reaching up and grabbing her attacker’s shirt, pulling him toward her and finally setting him off balance.

She lifted him and spun him so he was on the step below her now. Then she pushed him and rode him down the rest of the steps like a bobsled, the back of his head cracking hard and making her wince. For a moment, she feared she might have indeed killed him, but he spit at her and feebly tried to knock her off him.

She jammed her knee into his stomach.

“Where is Oliver? What have you done with him?”

“He saw! You saw!” the man cried, finally speaking so she could understand him. She shook him, and his head rolled to the side.

“Saw what? What did we see?”

“I see them!” Again this came from above. “The woman and a man. The man might be dead. She’s throttling him!”

“He’s not dead.” Annja groaned and pushed herself off him and jumped down the last few steps and out the exit door, the footsteps of the police clacking behind her. A heartbeat later she was in the lobby. A heartbeat more and she was through the revolving doors and onto the sidewalk, sucking in the cool fall air.

I should stop and talk to the police right now, she thought. Clear this up, tell them about Oliver. She couldn’t get any more out of her attacker until he came to, and that would be under police guard in a local hospital—and that would be provided he could speak enough English to make sense. The police would take her in, too, as she was disheveled and bloodied, and no doubt they’d connect her to the reports of a woman in jeans and a bikini top swinging a sword. She’d work through it all; she had before. She’d done nothing wrong.

But it would take time.

Maybe the police would let her call her producer first, or try Oliver again.

Not likely.

But necessary, she decided as she ran, her bare feet striking the cool concrete and sending needles of pain into her because she’d scraped them raw against those metal strips. She had to tell Doug about the attack and ask him to check on the rest of the crew. He needs to know what’s going on. I need to figure out what’s going on.

What had she and Ollie seen?

I need to think! Leaving the scene of the crime wasn’t a good thing, she knew, but she needed space.

Annja spied a pay phone on the street corner. She sped toward it. Just past the hotel parking lot, it cast a shadow on the sidewalk that looked like the pendulum of a clock. She hoped she had enough coins to make it work.

The breeze was cool and tugged the bad scents from her as she ran, the smoke from Oliver’s hotel room, the cordite from the gunshots, the blood. The breeze carried the smell of car and bus exhaust and of redfish that was grilling in a restaurant nearby.

People on the sidewalk called out to her, most in concern, seeing blood run from her shoulder and from her face where the gun had struck her. But some called to the police, as much as telling her that at least one officer had come out of the hotel in search of her or anyone else involved in the mayhem.

“One phone call,” she said to herself. “Just one and then I’m yours until this is all resolved.”

Her hand closed on the receiver and she lifted it, reached for her wallet and cursed. The phone cord had been cut. Sydney had its vandals just like anywhere else. She dropped the receiver and whirled, expecting to see a police officer jogging up to her, but instead spying another dark-clad man cutting through the pedestrians.

He drew a gun, and the passersby screamed and parted, giving him a clear shot at Annja.

“How many of you?” she hollered as she dropped into a catlike pose. She mentally reached for her sword, but stopped herself. Too many spectators, and in broad daylight she couldn’t risk it. Her life was one big secret, and it didn’t need to be exposed on a sidewalk in downtown Sydney. “Just how blasted many of you are after me?”

A bullet whispered through the air from behind her, striking the side of the pay phone and letting her know another assailant was near. She sprung up, past the phone and off the sidewalk, over the curb and onto the street, where a bus was just pulling away.

The driver was closing the doors in a panic, not wanting his passengers endangered. She managed to squeeze on.

“A brass button,” he told her, oblivious to the fact that she’d been the target of the shooters. The door hissed closed behind her.

“We’re being shot at! Just get this bus moving for the love of God!” she shouted.

The bus lurched out into traffic as the wail of a multitude of sirens cut through the air.

She found a small coin in her wallet, tugged it out, held it up and then dropped it in the slot. The Australian dollar was about the size of a U.S. dime, but thicker, nicknamed a brass button.

“Here? Happy?” She mentally rebuked herself for being snide to the man.

“You’re hurt, miss?” The driver noted the blood, but didn’t keep his eyes on her; he was intent on speeding away from the scene.

“I’m fine. Really.” Annja threaded her way down the center of the bus to the back, sagging into an empty seat and avoiding the curious stares of the dozen passengers.

“Pig’s arse!” said an elderly woman who peered over the back of her seat to ogle Annja.

“You’re bleedin’,” another passenger pointed out. “And you’re in your underwear.”

“It’s a bikini top,” Annja fumed.

“Pig’s you’re fine,” the elderly woman persisted.

Annja closed her eyes and pictured Oliver. “I’ll wager I’m in better shape than my cameraman,” she said.




5


Annja heard the sirens’ wail subside as the bus moved farther from her hotel. She sensed the other passengers staring at her. She knew she certainly must be something to look at—a fright in jeans, a bikini top, blood spatters everywhere and filthy bare feet. She tucked her feet up under her and felt the bottoms with her fingers. The skin was practically shredded on the heels.

Shoes, she needed shoes and socks, she thought, a long-sleeved shirt and maybe a sweater. And her cell phone—any phone—so she could call Doug and try Oliver again. She needed to call the police, too.

She needed to think.

Annja let the bus rock her, hoping it would relax her, but instead she felt more anxious. In her mind’s eye she saw Oliver’s empty room and the spot of blood. She saw the faces of the men who’d attacked her, their hard, cold eyes, and then the lifeless bodies of the ones she’d killed. The tall one called Sute loomed large in her memory. Something about him bothered her—beyond her killing him. She didn’t regret what she’d done. She’d had no choice. Sadly, killing had become somewhat commonplace in her life. At least she hadn’t become so inured to it that she didn’t feel anything. She felt sorry for the dead men’s families. And she was sorry she had not been able to capture one and ask him questions.

She focused on the sounds around her and tried to clear her mind. The spot of blood faded, and instead she called up the image of Hathor on the piece of pottery Wes Michaels had passed to her. Smooth and warm, she remembered the shard feeling, somehow, comforting.

The sirens had receded completely now.

She heard someone on the street hollering for a cab, heard a vendor calling to passersby, “Avos! Ripe avos here.” A car horn was honking, music spilling out a window. The roar of a piece of construction equipment was the loudest; on the shuttle to the hotel a few days ago she’d noted a parking garage going up and an old furniture store being torn down. They must be passing that spot, she thought.

A few moments later the bus slowed, then squeaked and belched exhaust before shuddering to a stop. She could tell they were at a traffic light from the clacking of heels and chattering of all the people crossing the street.

The smells of the city intensified. From herself, the scents of blood and sweat hung heavy in her nostrils. There were warring perfumes from the women in the seats ahead of her. Added to that were the acrid aromas of the bus’s fumes and those from other cars, and the general miasma of any big city’s pollution. She thought she might have picked up a tinge of salt from the ocean, as Sydney was on the coast, but she suspected that was her imagination.

What have I done? Leaving a crime scene? she wondered. She respected the authorities, had certainly dealt with them in many foreign countries, and if she’d stayed in the hotel she wouldn’t have encountered the two thugs on the sidewalk. Seven in total, all dressed in black, all foreign and all wanting to kill her.

Again she saw the face of the tall one.

They probably killed Oliver because of whatever he’d seen. And they’d dumped his body somewhere.

“And they think I saw it, too,” she whispered. “Saw what he did. But just what did we see?”

She dismissed the etched image of the goddess Hathor and her missing arm where the shard was broken, and Annja tried to replay the past several days in her mind, focusing on what Wes Michaels had uncovered at the dig.

There was nothing extraordinarily valuable, she thought, although extraordinary in the fact there were Egyptian relics on Australian soil. Nothing on the scale of Nefertiti’s resting place, she thought, or King Tut’s tomb.

Nothing worth killing over, certainly.

“I’m missing something,” she mused. “Something important, obviously. What did I see?”

One of the bus’s rear wheels hit a pothole and bounced her harshly against the seat.

“Got a bingle over there!” This came from the elderly woman two seats ahead.

Annja opened her eyes just as the bus found another pothole, this one even deeper. Her teeth clacked together, and she managed to bite both the inside of her cheek and her tongue.

Something else to add to the list of aches, she thought.

“Yep, it’s a big bingle, all right!” This came from another passenger, a middle-aged man who got up out of his seat and pressed his face to the window for a better look. “Someone’s goin’ to the hospital, I’ll bet.”

“A bingle?” Annja asked.

“An accident.” A young woman with a streak of pink in a shock of otherwise jet-black hair had sidled back to sit across the aisle from Annja. She was dressed in tight green leather pants and a purple shirt that was a little too short for her long arms, and red tennis shoes without laces—everything clashing. She pointed out the window at a late-model station wagon that had plowed into the back of something that looked like a Mini Cooper. “Probably some tourist not used to driving on the left. Both cars are cactus.”

Cactus? Dead, Annja guessed. The bus had slowed, no doubt so the driver could get a good look, too. Steam was pouring out of the station wagon, the hood crumpled and the left front tire caved under, and the driver of what was left of the little car held his head in his hands. There was a man in black on the corner, staring at the bus.

One of the men who’d chased her? One of their associates? Or was it her imagination taking a vivid turn?

Annja turned so she could get a better look at him. No, he didn’t look anything like the others. Blond hair and a pale complexion, listening to something on an iPod, nothing to worry over, she told herself. She let out a sigh of relief, and then froze. Running along the sidewalk and pushing his way through the people watching the bingle, was a swarthy-looking man dressed in black. She made a move to rise, intending to jump off the bus and confront him. But the bus wheezed away into traffic, and she lost sight of him.

A loud cough startled her. “I said, you’re a tourist, too, ain’tcha?” the woman with the pink streak asked.

“Yes.” Annja gave a slight smile and nodded. The gesture hurt; her face was sore from where the gun had struck her, and a headache was starting to crescendo behind her eyes. She wanted to get a look in the mirror to assess the damage, especially to check out her shoulder wound. Her skin felt tight and warm there. Again she cursed herself for bolting instead of speaking with the police and getting a little medical attention.

“Get in a fight?” Pink Streak persisted. “A car accident?”

No, I always look like this, Annja mentally retorted. “Some men chased me.”

“Oh! Yeah, I saw.” She popped a stick of gum in her mouth and started chewing noisily, grabbing the seat back when the bus lurched around a corner a little too sharply.

Annja had no trouble balancing herself.

“Guy on the sidewalk, shooting at you. I saw him just before the bus left the stop. All Die Hard and Lethal Weapon like. Wow, you know. None of my bizzo, really, but why was he after you? I mean, you look pretty spunk and all. Was he wanting to have a go at you? Did you pinch something of his?”

Annja shook her head. “I didn’t steal anything. And I don’t know why they were after me,” she said honestly.

“Yeah, you don’t look like the pinching type. Where you from?” Pink Streak was looking Annja up and down more closely. “You look familiar.”

“New York.” Again Annja was honest.

“Never been there.” Pink Streak smacked her gum, made a face at the old woman two seats up, said, “Mind your bizzo,” then slapped her palm against her leg. “TV. That’s it. I’ve seen you on TV.”

Annja inwardly groaned. She’d not expected the punk girl to have watched something like Chasing History’s Monsters.

“A model, I bet, a tall poppy, you! Got the body for it, you have, and…”

Annja opened her mouth to reply, but the hiss of the bus drowned her out. It eased to the curb and the doors opened.

“Darlinghurst!” the driver called out.

Annja got up and hurried down the aisle.

“Watch yourself!” Pink Streak called after her. “Keep to Potts Point!”

Potts Point? Annja had no idea what that was, or where. However, within a heartbeat she did know where she stood.

Kings Cross. Annja realized it the moment she stepped onto the sidewalk and looked down the street. She’d grabbed a stack of pamphlets the first morning she ate breakfast in the hotel restaurant—something to look at while she waited for her food. The first pamphlet she’d skimmed was about Kings Cross. She recognized some of the buildings pictured in the advertisement. The waiter told her the Cross was painted by the Australian media as the drug and red light district of the entire continent, but that it had cleaned up its image in the past two decades. The waiter also said it was a must-see spot, one of the most densely populated areas on the continent, and was admittedly a bit of a tourist trap.

It certainly was colorful. Even on this sunny day, neon lights glowed bright and hung from practically every building. Convenience Store, one read, 24 Hours. Annja noted there were a lot of 24 Hours signs. Many of the businesses on both sides of the tree-lined street—and along the street behind her, she noted with a glance over her shoulder—were a mix of adult bookshops, dingy-looking nightclubs, seedy bars, burlesque shows and strip clubs. There were some trendy cafés and respectable-looking shops here and there, but the neon of their bawdy neighbors clashed with their sedate exteriors.

Adult Gifts, one neon sign advertised. Live Nude Dancers, another read.

“Like anyone would want to see dead nude dancers,” Annja muttered.

The ground floor of the buildings mostly looked the same—dark, shadowed by awnings and overhangs, lit at the edges by the neon. The second and third levels were glossy black stone sitting next to bricks painted white and pink that stood out across from fronts festooned in pale yellow, beige, orchid and a surprisingly subdued orange. Apartments, Annja guessed, or maybe offices for the places below. Window boxes were filled with flowers that were holding on in the still reasonable weather. Iron grates covered up some of the widows, looking artful while being protective.

She spied a sign that read Backpackers Welcome, hanging lopsidedly over a weathered wooden door. On a storefront window next to it flyers were taped announcing AIDS testing, health clinics and a place where intravenous drug users could inject themselves under supervision.

The sidewalks were filled with people. Many were tourists; she could tell by their attire and the way they gaped openmouthed at some of the establishments. Some were regulars to the businesses, she noted, because of their obvious familiarity with the neighborhood. A drunk leaned against a sex-toy shop window a few businesses down; he stared at Annja and smiled, showing a smattering of yellowed teeth. At the next shop two heavily made-up girls in skimpy skirts and high boots chatted with a pair of well-dressed businessmen.

She spied a heavily tattooed man. A purple-and-green serpent twisting down his arm and wrapping around his wrist was the mildest of the images. A gaunt-looking fellow in black leather, skin pulled so tight across his face his head looked skeletal, stopped to talk to the tattooed man and passed him a small white envelope.

“Satan made Sydney,” Annja whispered. Mark Twain was sometimes credited with saying that after he took a world tour in 1895 and passed through Australia. Annja had read plenty of Twain and knew the quote was wrongly attributed. “But Satan might have had a hand in crafting Kings Cross,” she said to herself.

Annja shivered. Her feet were sore. She looked down to see that the sidewalk was made of a patchwork of maroon bricks, grime and discarded cigarette butts looking to be the mortar. She wrapped her arms around herself and looked for a pay phone. One more attempt to call Oliver and Doug. Then she’d make a call to the police and come up with a reason why she’d run from the hotel. The police had to know who she was, from the tag on her luggage or from checking with the hotel.

The convenience store first, and then she’d make some calls, she decided, starting across the walk when the signal changed. In the block running east she saw that no cars were allowed on the street, that it was limited to pedestrian and bicycle traffic. A frumpy-looking woman on a ten-speed stopped and stared. Annja would not have been out of place, given the wild assortment of people and their dress in this neighborhood, but the blood spatters and bare feet were raising eyebrows.

No Shirt, No Shoes, No Service, the sign on the convenience store said. Annja ignored it and went inside, tugging down her jeans so they hid the tops of her feet. A banner at the back said Chemist, so she headed for it. She knew it meant the equivalent of a pharmacist, and the things she needed would be there. She spied an aisle with ribbons and hair ties, and went down it, finding a bin with fuzzy socks at the end. She rooted through it and selected a purple pair that looked the least fuzzy, then bought gauze, alcohol, first-aid tape and a pair of scissors.

She ignored the clerk’s concerned expression, took her purchases outside and darted through the doorway of a tiny Japanese restaurant.

The restroom was the dirtiest she’d seen in some time, and Annja couldn’t help but wrinkle her nose at the myriad disagreeable smells. The air was at the same time thick and close, and she sat on the back of the toilet and put her feet on the seat as she cleaned them with the alcohol.

“Wow, that hurts,” she whispered. “What a horrible day this has been.”

Day? She suspected not much more than an hour had passed since she’d found Oliver’s room empty.

She worked quickly, wanting to get out of there and get to the task of solving this wretched mystery. Her feet bandaged, she slipped the socks over them, then went to the sink. The mirror was chipped and filmy, and Annja was thankful for that, as it helped to mask her appearance. She thoroughly cleaned her shoulder where the bullet had grazed it.

“Thank God he wasn’t a better shot.” The wound was superficial, but it had bled enough to make a good bit of her bikini top pink.

After scrubbing the dirt off the little piece of soap she found, she washed the blood off her arm and tried to get some of it out of her top, and then she dried off with some paper towels and smoothed her hair behind her ears. She splashed her face and gingerly touched her scraped cheek. It would be bruising soon.

Annja stared at her hazy reflection. Her eyes, amber-green, showed neither anger nor sadness. But when she blinked and moistened them they showed that she was suddenly deep in thought. A few moments more and she tossed the paper towels onto the top of the overflowing trashcan and left the restroom, pausing at the take-out counter to order a small coffee and swallow it down.

She was so very tired and hoped the caffeine would at least give her a psychological boost.

Out on the street again, she stopped in a boutique that accepted American credit cards and bought the only pair of shoes that fit—baby-blue leather sneakers with silver laces—and a long-sleeved silky beige shirt with an aboriginal design of a kangaroo splayed across the front.

Feeling better than she had since breakfast, she headed toward a pay phone on the far corner of the block. It was near the famous El Alamein Fountain, a huge globelike water display that she would have considered pretty were her circumstances different.

Annja hadn’t taken more than a dozen steps when a man with a hand like a ham grabbed her arm and pulled her into a shadowed doorway.




6


Jon looked as if he wasn’t quite old enough to drive, but he was a second-year graduate student in anthropology with an emphasis in archaeology. His round baby face and mass of curly red hair hid some of his years, as did the fact he’d made no attempt to move out of his parents’ house and didn’t care that all his friends knew it. He sat cross-legged on a small rug he’d brought with him—a futile effort to keep the dirt off his pants—and he stared at a slab of stone he’d just brushed off.

The first image in the upper left corner was of a cane crooked to the right, with a tilted square sitting halfway up from its base. Next to it were four circles stacked on top of each other, like a snowman without features, and a legless creature that looked like a cross between a walrus and a dog. There was also a setting sun, a cow-headed man holding an ankh, a three-legged owl, parallel wavy lines, stiff-looking birds, a narrow pyramid and a heavily lashed eye. The symbols were at the same time crude and elegant, and he tentatively touched the walrus-dog.

“Amazing,” he breathed. “Thousands of years old. This is just glorious.”

The images had been weathered by the salty sea air and the dirt that had shifted above them for centuries. Still, there wasn’t a single figure that couldn’t be made out. Translating them was another matter.

“Hey, Jon-Jon. No one at the uni could make much of that last piece you dug up.” This came from Cindy, a classmate whose sun-leathered face made her look quite a bit older than her twenty-four years. She leaned over Jon’s back to get a better look at the slab, hands on his shoulders and breasts grazing the top of his head. Unlike Jon, she’d made no attempt to keep the dirt off her clothes, which had been eggshell-white when she started the day’s work.

“None of the profs at the uni could figure out any story from it,” she continued. “But they were using newer translation texts.” She pushed off Jon and came around to squat in front of him, the slab between them.

Despite the cooling weather, she’d worn shorts. Jon stared at her knees.

“Doc figured it out, though,” Cindy said. “The only prof who could. He showed me his notes this morning. They’re on the clipboard over by the cooler if you want to take a look.”

Jon dropped his gaze to the slab. “I want to finish here first.”

The wind gusted and Cindy made a brrring sound. Jon looked at her knees again and noted the goose bumps.

“I’ll tell you what his notes say, then.” She let a pause settle between them, to let Jon know that what she was about to say was important. “Doc used the old translation guides on the slabs, says they talk about an expedition looking for yellow metal. That would be gold. Says they were also looking for a new world to explore. Says an oracle of Hathor directed them to come this way. Who cares about an oracle’s vision. Think about it…gold!”

Jon looked her in the face now. Cindy was pretty, definitely, and with plenty of curves. But there were creases around her eyes and at the corners of her lips…too much time spent suntanning, and the pale blond color she chose to dye her hair was unflattering and brittle looking.

“Yeah, gold,” he said. “I know. The Egyptians used gold on some of their sarcophaguses.”

She licked her lips. “So anyway, Doc says your slab goes on to say that while the Egyptians were exploring around here, their leader was bitten by a poisonous snake and died. Prof thinks maybe there’s a tomb around here somewhere, and that maybe it’s on this side of the ridge. Maybe somewhere down through the crevice.”

“So it’d be our find,” Jon said, suddenly very interested. “The uni’s, I mean. Not Dr. Michaels and his team over yonder.” He scratched at his skin. “It’d be a kick if the uni found a tomb, while Dr. Michaels and his so-called professional team picked the wrong spot to dig.”

She smiled, the invisible braces on her teeth showing. “Doc wants us to keep quiet about it. Not to traipse over the hill and breathe a word to Dr. Michaels. Not to—”

“I could write my thesis on—”

Cindy made a growling sound. “I don’t care who gets credit for what, Jon, or if the uni makes headlines. I don’t give a rat’s ass about your thesis.”

Jon cocked his head.

“Don’t you get it?” She dropped her voice to a conspiratorial whisper. “Gold. If the Egyptians were looking for gold…and found it…well, it’s probably buried in the tomb.”

Jon groaned. Just when it looked as if Cindy was taking archaeology seriously her magpie complex kicked in.

“Gold, treasure. Maybe some pretty little pieces don’t have to be cataloged. Know what I mean? Maybe I might just get compensated, and then some, for all the clothes and shoes I’ve ruined on this blasted project. ’Sides, we both know I’m not going to get an A out of this. I’ll be lucky if I pass. I figure I might as well get something.” Like gold, she mouthed.

Jon watched her sashay away, hips swinging more than they needed to. He groaned again. How did she ever make it this far at the university? There were twelve graduate students assigned to this dig. Next semester it would be a different twelve. A part of him hoped it would be next semester’s batch that uncovered the tomb; he didn’t want to deal with Cindy’s sticky fingers.

“I should report you,” Jon muttered. “I should tell.” But that would be juvenile, he decided. He returned his attention to the slab, then pulled a notebook out of his pocket and fluttered the pages to knock the dirt out. He thumbed through his scrawl about this particular site.

Originally it had been heavily overgrown with vegetation and rock. The soil line had been higher. It was considered a tertiary site, compared to the larger site Dr. Michaels’s professional crew was digging just over the rise. There’d been previous excavation attempts at the very spot where Jon sat, but nothing much had come of it—not even when a philanthropist had brought in expensive laser scanning equipment. That was why the university in Sydney had been given the go-ahead to send their graduate students to this place. There were some interesting pieces, but nothing spectacular was expected to be found. It was just a place to train would-be archaeologists.

To Jon’s knowledge, this was the first time the university had been involved in something considered a fringe project. Even some of the professors scoffed at the notion of Egyptians on Australian soil. But Jon knew it was more than likely Egyptians actually had come here—beyond the evidence that was directly in front of him.

Australia appeared on a Greek map dated earlier than 200 years B.C., and Sumerian and Mayan writings referenced a lost land in the Pacific. Then, more than twenty years ago archaeologists in Fayum, Egypt, discovered fossils of kangaroos. And eighty years ago things looking suspiciously like boomerangs were found in Tutankhamen’s tomb.

So ancient peoples from far away, worlds away, knew about Australia, and in Jon’s view certainly had been here…even before the aborigines.

Especially the Egyptians.

“Fringe nothing,” Jon grumbled. “This is all fair dinkum. And screw the gold. Hello award-winning thesis and a free ride in some doctorate program.” Maybe Dr. Michaels across the ridge would beg him to join that team. “Indiana Jones, eat your ever loving heart out.”

A “harrumph” startled Jon and made him bolt upright to his feet.

“Doc, sorry. Didn’t hear you.”

Jon knew their project head detested the Indiana Jones films.

“Cindy said she told you about my translations.”

“Um, yeah.” Jon was always nervous around instructors.

“Walk with me,” the professor said.

“Sure.”

Doc was a small man, at little more than five feet and slender. Most of the students dwarfed him. He was a tidy man, somehow staying clean despite sifting and digging alongside his charges. Jon admired him because Doc didn’t ask the students to do anything he wouldn’t do himself.

He was always in a broad-brimmed hat to shield his face from the sun. He had several in his jeep, and was wearing an olive-green one today with a tie that disappeared into his thick black beard. Jon guessed that Doc dyed the beard since the short and always neatly combed hair on his head was a mix of gray and black.

Doc rubbed his hands together as they walked and pursed his lips in a pensive expression. He mumbled about seeking more funding from the university, perhaps in the form of grants; the words were meant for himself, and Jon politely pretended not to listen.

Their course took them past the students around the sifting table and beyond the tents where they passed the nights. They came to a rock cleft, where a piece of split sandstone had formed a crevice. Spikes held a rope ladder that led down into it. The crevice couldn’t be seen from a distance. Because of the sandstone and the shadows that extended from the ridge, you almost had to be on top of it to notice.

Jon hoped he was being given permission to climb down. Doc was careful about the university’s liability, and only allowed students down there under careful supervision. There were more hieroglyphics down there. A lot more.

“Tomorrow,” Doc told him. “You and I and Cindy…”

Jon made a face.

“You and I and Matthew will go down and take many more photographs, bring some things up. There’s important work to do.”

“We could go down now.” Jon couldn’t keep the excitement out of his voice.

“Tomorrow, when we’ve a full day of it.” Doc’s voice was kind but stern. “I’ve got some lights coming in the morning that will make it much easier to see. I need the light to better translate.”

Jon anxiously shifted back and forth on the balls of his feet. “I just knew you’d be able to translate that first tablet. And the one I’m still cleaning. You’ll read that one, too.”

Doc nodded. “These hieroglyphics,” he began. He tipped his head up and inhaled the cool fall air, and his gaze followed a noisy flock of birds heading west, farther into the forest preserve. “They are very ancient, archaic, from the early dynasties. Most Egyptologists would not be able to translate them, Jon. They’re all schooled to read what’s called Middle Egyptian. Very few—myself one of them—can read the formative styles.”

“Because these hieroglyphics look a little like Phoenician and Sumerian,” Jon supplied, puffing out his chest a little.

Doc nodded. “And that’s one of the reasons not everyone thinks these hieroglyphics are Egyptian.”

“So much the fools, them,” Jon said.

“Fools indeed,” Doc agreed.

“Think I’m gonna dux this class, Doc?” Jon cringed, realizing he shouldn’t be asking something like this so soon in the session.

Doc crossed his arms and placed his hands on his elbows. He didn’t answer.

“Presumptuous of me, huh?” Jon rocked back on his heels and shook his head. “Sorry.”

“You’ll dux this class,” Doc said after a moment. “We both know you’re my best student.”

Jon’s eyes gleamed and he opened his mouth to say something else, but stopped when he heard a muffled chirping sound. Doc disentangled his arms and reached into the deep pocket of his jacket. He retrieved a satellite phone and thumbed a button.

“If you’ll excuse me, Jon.” Doc continued walking.

I’m gonna ace this, Jon thought. He happily headed back to clean his slab.



DOC WAITED until he was well out of earshot of any of the students, then he held the phone to his ear.

“This must be important.” He paused and swallowed hard. “Had better be important to bother me here while I am with the students.” He cocked his head and listened intently. Then he dropped his voice. “Annja Creed? The American? You have her, yes?”

He scowled, all the lines of his face drawing together so that his expression looked pinched and pained.

The voice on the other end came through. “She escaped us, but we killed her cameraman. He put up little fight, and no one will find his body.”

“Go on,” Doc said.

“We have his cameras and his computer. They’re on the way to your office now.”

The lines on his face deepened.

“I put them in a packing crate, just as you told me, labeled it so anyone looking will think it’s filled with books.”

“What else?”

“The rest of the television people, they left before we got to the hotel.”

Doc clicked his tongue against his teeth, waiting for the speaker to finish.

“Likely they are of no consequence. It was the cameraman and Annja Creed. They’re the only ones who saw.”

“And you let her get away.”

A hiss of static came across the phone.

“Yes, she got away. Sir…Master. She had a sword. She killed Zuka and Sute and—”

“Where is Annja Creed now?”

There was another hiss of static.

“Where, I say?”

“Master, she got on a bus. I could not read the words. I do not know its destination. The police came to the hotel, and we had to leave. We could not take the bodies with us, Zuka and Sute and…”

Doc held the phone away from him and stared at it, the shadow cast by the big brim of his hat obscuring the buttons. Finally, he brought it back to his ear.

“I suggest you find her or you may also be among the casualties.” He ended the connection and replaced the phone in his pocket, stood quietly and stared at the rise that separated the two digs. After several minutes he turned and retraced his steps, stopping at the slab Jon still busily and carefully cleaned.

“You can translate this, right?” Jon didn’t look up; he fixed his gaze on Doc’s shoes.

“Of course,” Doc returned. “Let me read it to you.”




7


“American, yes?” The man who’d tugged Annja into the doorway released her and beamed, revealing a large gold tooth amid a mouthful of polished white ones.

She’d nearly struck him, her reflexes were that honed and she’d become so used to being threatened. But she’d caught herself and relaxed her hands. She stepped back, ready to offer a verbal jab instead.

He was too quick for her and continued, “A lovely day this is, American lady. A tourist, I can tell. I know tourists.” He smiled even broader. “I like tourists!”

His eyes twinkled merrily, somehow putting her at ease. He was overdressed in a purple tuxedo so dark in the shadows it looked black, with lavender satin piping up the legs and an emerald-green cummerbund that bulged slightly with his paunch. He had makeup on; his long, narrow face was paler than his neck and hands, a little rouge was visible on his cheeks and he batted eyelashes that had to be false, judging by their exaggerated length and curl. Annja thought he looked like a circus clown going to some formal affair.

“How do you know I’m American?” Annja had intended to ask why he’d rudely tugged her off the sidewalk, but the other question came out first.

“I’m not your average Cross spruiker, you know! I’ve got keen eyes. I can tell Americans.” He clapped his hands. “Besides, you don’t have the look of a local, or a pommy. English,” he translated for her benefit. “You don’t have your chin tipped up to catch the better air, and you don’t have that English swagger, if you know what I mean.” He paused. “And you’re walking alone. Americans don’t seem to require company in the Cross. Brave and curious, the lot of you are.”

She raised an eyebrow, a little taken aback by the odd-looking fellow, but deciding he posed no threat.

“And since you’re curious, and obviously a tourist, you simply must come in and see the show.” He waved with a flourish to the door behind him. “What say you, mate?”

She shook her head. “I have to make a phone call.”

“There’s a phone in the lobby.” He pointed to the sign above the door. The Purple Pussycat.

She caught a whiff of him, a cologne that was musky and flowery and would have been overpowering were she not outside on the sidewalk where the scents from the Japanese restaurant next door intruded. Her feet ached, and the headache that had started on the bus was getting worse.

She could sit for a few moments, inside this place, collect her thoughts and then call Doug and the police on the pay phone he mentioned. She wanted to rest her feet briefly.

“A spectacular show we have this late morning,” he persisted. “And it’s just about to start. You wouldn’t want to miss the opening number.”

Annja had a sense that he used the same spiel on anyone who came close enough for him to grab.

“Old Broadway show tunes, like you’ve never heard them before. Better than Broadway, because they’re Australian.”

“How much?” she asked.

“For you, dear lady, only eight dollars.”

“And for everyone else?” She offered him a weak smile.

“Eight dollars.” This time he bowed as he gestured grandly to the door, the color of which nearly matched his tuxedo.

Just a few minutes, she told herself, to rest my feet and to think. God, but I need to think. And thinking wasn’t happening out here on the sidewalk, and hadn’t been possible on the bus.

He opened the door, and she went inside, instantly assaulted by more smells—incense, perfume, fried potatoes, popcorn, something terribly sugary. They all warred for her attention. She went to the counter. It was stainless steel and glass, reminiscent of one from an old movie theater she’d attended once in a while near the orphanage in New Orleans where she grew up.

An elderly woman with a heart-shaped face and a tired expression emerged from behind the popcorn machine.

“G’day!”

Annja took in the rest of the lobby, hoping to find a bench to sit on, and seeing nothing but movie-style posters of women in flouncy gowns. She spied the pay phone, an old thing…or perhaps it was made to look old. The place definitely had a retro ambience, as if she’d stepped back into 1940 or 1950.

“One ticket?” The woman’s voice was high and soft, sounding like crystal wind chimes. “Eight dollars. Show’s about to start. You’d best hurry to get a good seat.”

Annja retrieved a five-dollar bill and three one-dollar coins out of her wallet, pausing to look at the face on the bill before she passed it over. Australian money was much more colorful than American, and the bills had a parchment feel to them.

“Popcorn?” the woman asked.

Annja shook her head.

“Iced coffee? Soda? Perhaps—”

“No, thank you.” Annja headed toward a heavy curtain, above which a sign said Auditorium. She’d collect her thoughts for a few minutes. Rest her feet. Try to lessen the pounding in her head. Then she’d come back out to make the calls.

She looked at the time before going inside. On the wall behind the concession counter was a large purple cat with a twitching tail, its belly the clock. Less than an hour had passed since the men had tried to kill her at the hotel.

She pushed aside the curtain and let the darkness swallow her.

It took a few moments for her eyes to adjust. She stood in an aisle that stretched between two banks of movie-theater-style seats. The only light was what spilled out beneath the hem of the closed curtain at the stage down front. Her eyes picked through the shadows, seeing only a dozen other people inside an auditorium that could hold well over one hundred. Most of them were close to the stage. Annja selected a seat in the last row. The seats were upholstered in dark red velveteen, though some of the cushions had been replaced and covered with various colors of vinyl. The seat squeaked when she sat, causing the other patrons to turn around and try to spot the newcomer. She leaned against the high back and it squeaked again.

The floor was carpeted, the nap worn thin and the pattern lost where sections of the canvas backing showed through. It was clean—Annja was struck by the cleanliness of the place. There was still the hint of popcorn in the air and a vague fustiness just because of the age of the building. But there was nothing objectionable.

She tipped her head back and closed her eyes. Annja knew several martial-arts relaxation techniques, any of which would help the tension melt away as she balanced and centered herself. She breathed deep and slow, imagining a point of light in the distance and focusing on it.

Suddenly speakers crackled on the walls and George M. Cohan’s “Give My Regards to Broadway” began playing, with “Remember me to Kings Cross” in place of “Remember me to Herald Square.”

Her eyes opened wide as the curtains parted and a single bright spotlight struck a lanky torch singer in a black sequined gown. The woman threw her head back and began singing “If He Walked into My Life” from Mame. Something didn’t seem quite right about the singer, and so Annja leaned forward and studied the woman.

Not a woman, Annja decided after a moment. The singer sported an Adam’s apple, as did the next one who came out singing “Whatever Lola Wants,” from Damn Yankees. Annja recognized this warbler as the man in the purple tuxedo who’d lured her into this place. Female impersonators, the lot of them, and they weren’t terrible, Annja decided, a bargain for eight bucks. She watched only one more number—an eight-member chorus line singing about a “singular sensation,” before she closed her eyes and resumed her breathing exercise and focused on an imagined speck of light.

What did Oliver see? What did I see? What relic was so valuable someone would kill for it?

She forced out the sound—the taped orchestra coming from the speakers, the lyrics being crooned by the singers on the stage, the click-clack of the tap shoes, the muffled cough of someone several rows ahead of her. There was only her breath now, regular and relaxing, almost hypnotic. She put herself in a trance and started to relive the past few days.



ANNJA HAD TRAVELED considerably, but primarily to Europe, as her main interest in history was there. She’d never been to Australia before and had been immediately struck by the similarities to the United States and England in the way the people dressed and the city looked. The more closely she observed everything, however, the more pleasant differences she noted, and she had a yearning to come back for a longer stay.

She’d had barely enough time to throw her bag in the hotel room and head out to the dig the first day. The shooting schedule would be fairly tight. There were forms to sign in the van—the standard one for liability, stating that the dig financiers would not be held accountable if she was injured at the site. And then there was an agreement that she would not disclose the precise spot where the archaeologists worked.

“Oh, there’s enough folks already who know the general vicinity,” Wes Michaels had told her. “Some of the local papers have done features on us before. But we’ve not had any television coverage.”

It was clear from the beginning that he was dressing up a little for the camera; she’d spotted his wife cutting off the price tag from his shirt. Annja was pleased he bothered to buy something new.

On the ride to the site she had noticed the countryside air. It was achingly clean, with just a hint of salt from the ocean. The closer the van got to the dig, the more other scents intruded…from the trees primarily, as the site was in a forest preserve, and from the earth the archaeologists had been peeling away to get to the relics beneath.

One of the first things Dr. Michaels and his wife had uncovered was still at the site because of its size and because the corporation funding the project hadn’t yet decided whether to leave it there for posterity or bring it back to Sydney for storage. It was a carving of an ape, or something that looked like a squatting ape, taller than a man and as broad across as two, and chiseled out of a stone that had a high iron content.

“The Egyptian god Thoth, probably,” Wes had said. “My best guess, anyway. Three thousand years old or thereabouts. Looks similar to one found on the old Wolvi Road property some forty years back. Folks scoffed back then, too.”

He showed her a smaller, similar statue that Oliver shot as it was being crated up. It was badly weathered from time and the sea air, and she could barely make out the cross of life clutched in the ape’s fingers.

“Thoth was sometimes depicted as an ape,” Wes had explained. “Then about two thousand years after this one was made they started carving Thoth as a bird-headed man. Like I said, Miss Creed, I’m not an Egyptologist. But I’m a damn good archaeologist. I know my stuff.”

Annja liked him immediately.

“Our best find,” Jennifer said, “is a cross of life. Wes wasn’t sure it should go on your television program, but I’ve talked him into it. Haven’t crated it yet—kept it out just for you.”




Конец ознакомительного фрагмента.


Текст предоставлен ООО «ЛитРес».

Прочитайте эту книгу целиком, купив полную легальную версию (https://www.litres.ru/alex-archer/eternal-journey/) на ЛитРес.

Безопасно оплатить книгу можно банковской картой Visa, MasterCard, Maestro, со счета мобильного телефона, с платежного терминала, в салоне МТС или Связной, через PayPal, WebMoney, Яндекс.Деньги, QIWI Кошелек, бонусными картами или другим удобным Вам способом.



Если текст книги отсутствует, перейдите по ссылке

Возможные причины отсутствия книги:
1. Книга снята с продаж по просьбе правообладателя
2. Книга ещё не поступила в продажу и пока недоступна для чтения