The Spirit Banner
Alex Archer
Genghis Khan carved out a legacy of bloodshed and conquered kingdoms that has lasted almost eight hundred years. But while his name and deeds live on in the annals of history, his tomb has never been located… until now.Not everyone is convinced that the diary and the map, said to lead to the great warrior's final resting place, are authentic. Archaeologist Annja Creed is among these doubters. The reality is that the body was lost to history. But despite her skepticism, Annja suddenly finds herself pulled along an increasingly complex trail of clues, each more remote than the last.And as she and her companions race to their final destination, one thing is clear–the only tomb she may find is her own….
“I’m considering putting together an expedition to find the Khan’s lost tomb.”
“Don’t bother,” Annja said, missing the quick flicker of surprise that flashed across Davenport’s face when she didn’t even glance up from her drink.
“Why not?” he asked.
“Because he more than likely didn’t have one.”
Davenport sat back and watched her for a moment. “What if I told you that the Mongols did build a secret tomb for their Great Khan? That they filled it with an amazingly diverse treasure trove, loot from the hundreds of cultures he conquered? And what if I said I had in my possession the journal of a man who had intimate details of the burial process and a map to the location?”
Annja smiled. “I’d say you better hire someone to authenticate the map and the writings pretty darn quick. Hell, I’d be happy to do it for you myself just to prove to you the ridiculousness of the very idea.”
Davenport nodded. “Good. You can start first thing in the morning.”
Annja stared at him blankly for a moment, and then it dawned on her that she had been neatly led right where Davenport wanted her to go.
Titles in this series:
Destiny
Solomon’s Jar
The Spider Stone
The Chosen
Forbidden City
The Lost Scrolls
God of Thunder
Secret of the Slaves
Warrior Spirit
Serpent’s Kiss
Provenance
The Soul Stealer
Gabriel’s Horn
The Golden Elephant
Swordsman’s Legacy
Polar Quest
Eternal Journey
Sacrifice
Seeker’s Curse
Footprints
Paradox
The Spirit Banner
Rogue Angel
The Spirit Banner
Alex Archer
www.mirabooks.co.uk (http://www.mirabooks.co.uk)
THE LEGEND
…THE ENGLISH COMMANDER TOOK JOAN’S SWORD AND RAISED IT HIGH.
The broadsword, plain 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 Arc died that fateful day in France, but her legend and sword are reborn….
Contents
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
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
1
Mongolia
1245
Father Michael Curran, Special Vatican Envoy from His Holiness the Pope Innocent IV to the People of the Felt Walls, stared at the waves of oncoming riders and did what he could to keep the fear from showing on his face.
Not that there wasn’t good reason to be afraid. They were at least three days’ hard ride from Karakorum, where Guyuk, the grandson of Genghis Khan and the current ruler of the Mongol Empire, held court over his subjects. In the years since the death of the Great Khan, the empire had fractured. More and more tribes were returning to the old ways, fighting and competing against one another. The Naimans were one such group and Curran’s party was deep in a contested area that the Naimans claimed as their own. The distance from the capital meant that no one was going to come charging in to save them. To make matters even worse, the honor guard that Guyuk had sent with Curran for this trip into the Hentiyn Nuruu Mountains numbered less than thirty men, while the Naiman warriors currently charging their position appeared to number in the hundreds.
As the enemy swept forward, Curran could see that each man stood high in the stirrups, guiding his mountain pony with his knees, leaving his hands free to use his bow with the unerring accuracy that had made the Mongol army so feared. True, these were not the famed warriors of the Great Khan—just a lesser khan’s raiding party—but he knew they were deadly just the same. The thunder of their horses’ hooves mixed with the screeching wind that whipped across the open plain, and the priest no longer had to wonder what hell might sound like. Now he knew, beyond the shadow of a doubt. Hell was the uncanny silence as the enemy thundered toward them. Hell was the thrumming of the enemy’s arrows as they filled the sky above him, so thick that for a moment he lost sight of the sun itself. Hell was the thump of the shafts as they met leather armor and human flesh. Hell was the cry of the injured and the dying as they fell into the snow around him.
The Naimans harbored years of resentment against the unification brought to the plains by the army of Genghis Khan some fifty years before. They had caught the small group in the open, crossing a wide valley between two separate mountain peaks, leaving them with few places to run and little to use as cover of any sort. Curran had to admit to himself that it was a marvelous piece of strategic planning. Volke, their group’s leader, had been too confident in his belief that no one would dare to attack a party under Guyuk’s protection. But the harsh winter and the lure of overwhelming odds had apparently filled the enemy with daring. Curran knew the old adage usually held true: desperate men will do desperate things.
Having been forced into a desperate move, it now seemed that this group of raiders was determined to make certain that no survivors were left behind to report their audacity to the ruling khan.
Volke shouted something in Mongolian, but the wind whipped his words away before Curran could make sense of them. It didn’t matter, though; they hadn’t been directed at him, anyway, but at the other Mongol warriors in their small group. As one, the soldiers around him wheeled about and sent their sturdy ponies charging for the mountain pass they’d emerged from a half hour before. The priest would have been left behind if one of the warriors hadn’t snatched the reins of Curran’s horse out of his hands as he thundered by, forcing him to follow suit.
As they raced away, Curran fought to remember the man’s name.
Tamaton?
Tanguyuk?
Tamarak!
That was it. Tamarak was one of the older, experienced warriors assigned to the expedition by the khan himself and ordered to personally see to the safety of the envoy. Curran had resented it at first, seeing Tamarak’s presence as a sign that the Mongols still did not trust him. But now he was thankful to have the man at his side.
Curran knew that if they could reach the pass behind them, they could lose their pursuers in the mazelike passage across the mountains or take shelter in the many caves lining the passage walls. Either one would more than likely grant them the time and safety they needed to regroup and restore their wounded. If they could hold off until dark, they might then be able to sneak across the valley without the Naimans being the wiser.
Curran’s group was tired—they’d been traveling for days already—while the enemy appeared to be fresh. It was obvious to Curran that the enemy had the advantage. That didn’t seem to matter to these hardy warriors, though. They would either succeed or die trying, apparently; and for the first time since he had come to live among them, the priest felt a sense of admiration for their tenacity and sheer courage in the face of overwhelming odds.
Their horses thundered on through the snow while the enemy closed inexorably from behind.
After a time, it was obvious to everyone, even Curran, that they were not going to make it. Volke shouted again and the small entourage turned to fight.
Curran watched their pursuers come on with fear in his heart but with courage on his face.
As the enemy closed the distance, they split ranks, sending half of their forces sweeping to the left while the remainder went right, enveloping Curran’s small group in a wide circle two ranks deep, with each rank moving in opposite directions. From out of those ranks the arrows came again. Curran watched Volke topple from the saddle with more than a dozen black shafts jutting from his now-still form. Kaisar and Jelme, his senior lieutenants, met the same fate seconds later. In moments, the enemy had effectively stripped the small band of its most experienced leaders. Curran had no doubt that the tactic had been intentional. Cutting off the head to kill the body was a strategy as old as war itself.
If someone didn’t do something soon, they were all going to die, the priest realized. Apparently the men around him felt the same way, for there was a sudden shout from one of the more experienced warriors and the troops spurred their horses and charged the enemy. Trained to act with the others, Curran’s horse followed suit. The Jesuit was about to meet the enemy whether he wanted to or not.
“Lord, protect your humble servant,” the priest whispered under his breath as he drew his sword and went to meet his death with his head held high in the manner of the Savior he revered.
The two groups slammed together with thunderous force. Men shouted, horses screamed, and Curran found himself slashing to and fro with his weapon, striking out at anything within reach, fighting for his life just as savagely as the enemy sought to relieve him of it.
For just a moment, he thought they might win. Their sudden concentrated attack had surprised the enemy and they burst through the first rank without stopping, surging forward, but in the next moment a heavily mailed fist holding the pommel of a sword smashed into Curran’s face, toppling him from his saddle. He struck the ground hard, and as he lay there unmoving, the wind knocked out of him, he felt a stabbing pain in his left leg. Curran screamed in agony. Darkness loomed and then swept over him like the tide.
H AVING FULLY EXPECTED to die when he’d lost his grip on his horse, Curran was surprised to regain consciousness sometime later. With consciousness, however, came an awareness of the pain his body was experiencing and surprise quickly turned to regret. In that first instant, he was convinced that death would have been a better alternative to what he was currently experiencing. He screamed aloud against the pain and passed out again.
The second time he regained consciousness, the cold had wrapped him in its chilly embrace, dulling the pain to a minor roar, and he was actually able to open his eyes.
He immediately wished he hadn’t.
The dead were everywhere. They covered the ground in front of him and as far as he could see on either side. After stripping the bodies of anything of value, the Naimans had followed the traditional steppes custom and left the dead where they had fallen. Now their eyes stared unseeing and their blood stained the snow in thick patches of crimson-black. The bodies of his companions mingled haphazardly with the corpses of the horses on which they’d ridden, neither man nor beast being spared in the midst of the fray.
He shifted his position and a lance of roaring pain shot up from his left leg and threatened to plunge him into unconsciousness once more. He fought against it, knowing that if he succumbed, he’d most likely freeze to death.
When the dizziness receded and he could think clearly again, he looked down at his leg. He turned away almost immediately. The sight of the dark shaft of an arrow jutting up from his thigh and his own blood staining the snow was almost too much for him to bear.
He couldn’t ignore it, though. He was going to have to deal with it, and soon, if only to keep from bleeding to death. Steeling himself, and taking a deep breath to keep from vomiting, he looked down at his leg again.
The arrow had hit him high on the back of the thigh and had gone all the way through his leg at an angle, exiting about an inch above the knee. He could see that the edges of the head were barbed, which meant he wasn’t going to be able to pull the arrow back in the direction it had entered. Nor could he remove it the other way; the feathered shaft would prevent it.
He was going to have to break the shaft on one side or the other and then pull the rest of it free.
The very thought of it made him shudder.
Why bother? he wondered. Even if he could get the shaft out and stop the bleeding, he was only trading one method of dying for another. There was no way he could travel in his condition, and if nightfall caught him here on the plain he was sure to freeze to death. It seemed God had saved him from a quick, sure death only to fall victim to a long, lingering one.
But Curran was not the type to go down without a fight.
The wind was picking up and the snowfall that had dogged their march earlier that morning had started anew. Never mind the brutal cold that threatened to steal his every breath. If he didn’t do something immediately, he wasn’t going to have the strength left to try anything at all.
He tore several strips of cloth off the shirt of a nearby corpse, folding some a few times to create makeshift compresses and laying the others out where he could reach them without difficulty. Working quickly so that he wouldn’t have time to think about it, he rolled partially on his side, exposing the feathered end of the arrow. Taking it in his left hand, he gripped his thigh tightly with his right, holding it steady. Curran took a deep breath and then snapped his left hand sharply to one side, breaking the wooden arrow in two just above the fletching.
He screamed against the pain, but managed to remain conscious. The motion had started the wound bleeding again. With shaking hands, he stuffed several of the compresses against the open wound and then tied it off with one of the strips.
He was breathing heavily now, the pain making it difficult to concentrate, but he pushed through it, knowing he had no choice but to finish what he had started.
Gingerly placing his leg flat on the ground, he took hold of the tip of the arrow, wrapping his fingers around the barbed edges to give him more leverage. He gritted his teeth and pulled.
With more than a bit of resistance, the rest of the shaft slid free.
He tossed the broken shaft of the arrow aside, packed the wound with some snow and the rest of the compresses to stop the bleeding, then tied the whole thing off just as he had the entry point.
When he was finished, he slumped on the ground, sweating, exhausted and in considerable pain.
After some time—he didn’t know how long—the pain receded to a manageable level. He pushed himself back up into a sitting position and took a look at his handiwork.
Blood had dried around the edges of the makeshift bandages, but it looked like as if the wound had stopped bleeding.
Maybe he was going to make it, after all.
A soft snort to his immediate right made him nearly jump out of his skin. He slowly turned his head, not wanting to jostle his injured leg but at the same time afraid of what he might see. To his vast surprise, he found the horse he’d been riding standing a few feet away, rooting through a partially opened saddlebag for something to eat.
“Thank you, Lord,” Curran whispered.
If he could get on the horse, he had a fighting chance at survival.
Like the other Mongol steeds, his was a short-legged, shaggy beast that had seen its fair share of death and was unmoved by the carnage around it. Losing interest in the saddlebag at its feet, it raised its head, catching sight of Curran in the process. It trotted over and nuzzled him, looking to be fed.
“Good boy,” the priest whispered, petting its nose with one hand while grabbing onto the straps of the saddlebags it still wore with the other.
Using the straps for support, he hauled himself upright, using the strength of his arms and his one good leg. It took several tries, but at last he was standing on one leg, his arms wrapped around the horse’s neck to keep from falling.
He rested in that position for a moment, praying the horse wouldn’t make any sudden moves and dump him back down on the snow. When he’d caught his breath again, he reached for the pack still hanging around the horse’s hindquarters, right where he’d loaded it earlier that morning.
Working slowly and carefully to limit jarring his injured leg any more than necessary, he untied the drawstrings of the pack and withdrew the ceremonial robe he’d worn when appearing for his audience with the khan in Karakorum. The material was quite thick, something he constantly complained about when wearing it, but now he was silently thankful. He slipped the material over his shivering form and slumped against his horse, already exhausted and he hadn’t even tried getting himself up into the saddle.
A sudden sound to his left drew his attention.
He straightened up, trying to see.
Only the dead stared back at him.
The sound came again, a low moan, but this time he saw the fingers of a nearby form twitch in conjunction with it.
Another survivor!
“Hey! Hey, you! Can you hear me?” Curran called out in the Mongolian he’d picked up during his two months in Karakorum.
The strange croaking sound that came out of his parched throat surprised him. Until that moment, he hadn’t even been aware of his tremendous thirst. He coughed, then used a handful of snow to wet down his lips and throat before trying again.
“Are you okay? Can you walk?”
There was no response.
He knew he hadn’t imagined it. That meant the man was either too injured to respond or simply couldn’t understand him.
Curran had no choice; he was going to have to go over to the injured man and take a look. He considered climbing astride the horse, but decided the effort required to get up and then back down again was probably too much for him. Instead, he got the horse moving slowly in the direction he wanted it, using the animal as a makeshift crutch for support as he hopped along on his good leg. When Curran was close enough, he pulled the horse to a stop and dropped down in the snow next to the wounded man.
He rolled the body over and discovered that it was the man who had saved him earlier, Tamarak.
The feathered shafts of two black arrows jutted from deep in the man’s stomach and a sword blade had taken a bite out of the left side of his head. Given the barbed tips, Curran had no way of removing them. He’d been able to remove his own only because the arrowhead had come all the way through his flesh. These were embedded deep in the muscle. Pulling them out was likely to cause more damage than leaving them in. The best he could do was to make Tamarak as comfortable as possible and to stay with him until the end.
An end that could come faster than either of them wanted if they didn’t find some shelter and protection from the cold.
He dragged the other man closer to the horse, where, to his surprise, the animal got down on its knees, allowing Curran to haul both himself and Tamarak’s unconscious form onto the horse’s back.
The beast climbed to its feet, and for the first time since the Naiman war party had been sighted, Curran felt optimistic about his chances for survival.
As if in answer, the wind swirled around him and the falling snow began to thicken. The storm was here to stay, apparently.
Curran took a moment to get his bearings and then turned the beast about to face the direction in which they had been fleeing. There were caves back in the pass itself and it was Curran’s intention to hole up inside one for shelter from the storm.
He’d worry about how to get back to Karakorum in the morning.
First, they had to survive the night.
S EVERAL HOURS LATER Curran sat in a cave that was deep enough to filter out the winds howling outside. There had been a few sticks lying just inside the entrance. He combined them with some of the extra clothing from his pack, and made a small fire to keep them warm. It was still cold, though not as bad as it would have been had they been trapped outside. It would serve to keep them from freezing to death.
At least until the fuel ran out, he thought, and then just as quickly pushed the image away. The Lord will provide, he told himself. The Lord will provide.
At least we won’t starve to death, Curran thought, with a glance at the corpse of his horse where it lay just within the entrance tunnel. The poor beast had collapsed after carrying so much weight through the freezing cold weather without rest. Curran hadn’t yet managed to get up the nerve to start carving up the carcass. He didn’t mind eating horseflesh. He’d been forced to do so during other missionary journeys he’d been on and it hadn’t been all that bad. It was just that this particular horse had been instrumental in saving his life and it felt disrespectful to treat its remains in such a fashion.
Still, when the time came, Curran had little doubt that his reticence would quickly vanish. Starving to death wasn’t on his list of endings to this saga.
The dead horse was proof of what they had endured to reach this point. The trail had been difficult to find without the Mongols to guide him. The ever-increasing fury of the storm had cut their already-slow pace to a crawl, as did the times that Curran lost his grip and toppled off his patient mount. Thankfully, the horse had traveled this way before, and when he finally stopped trying to control it and just gave it its head, it took him where he wanted to go.
With the help of the firelight, Curran had cleaned Tamarak’s head wound and had broken off the jutting ends of the arrows to keep the wounded man from accidentally driving them deeper into his body.
After that, there wasn’t anything to do but wait.
The snow had continued to fall and the entrance to the cave was half-covered from the heavy accumulation. Curran didn’t mind, as it served to keep the heat from the fire trapped in the cave, warming him and his unconscious companion, while still allowing the smoke to escape.
Unable to sleep, Curran took out his worn leather journal and began to write, recording the events of the past several days in as much detail as possible to ensure that there was some record of what had happened to him should he not make it back to Karakorum. He’d been doing the same thing since his mission had started many months before, and what had once been an annoying chore had turned into a soothing balm for his spirit.
At the very least, it gave him something to think about other than the pain in his injured leg, he thought ruefully.
It wasn’t long before Tamarak, delirious with fever and pain, began raving aloud. At first Curran ignored it, knowing there was little he could do for the man, but then something Tamarak said caught his attention and he listened more carefully.
What he heard amazed him.
If it was true, he was being given the secret of the ages!
I really need a miracle now, Lord, he prayed, as he turned to a clean page of his journal and began writing frantically, trying to get it all down just in case the good Father decided to deliver on his request.
2
Mexico
Annja Creed was knee-deep in sacrificial victims when the shooting started.
At first, there was only a single gunshot, which was easy enough for her to ignore. After all, the sound of isolated gunfire was relatively common at a dig site this deep in the jungle. Someone fired off a weapon at least once a week. The reasons for doing so varied, but they usually had something to do with the local wildlife. Just last week, Martinez had found a twelve-foot python in his bed and had fired off four shots before he managed to hit the thing. A few days before that, the cook—a guy by the name of Evans—had used his shotgun to drive off the howler monkeys he’d caught raiding the food larder. The monkeys still managed to get away with the chocolate bars he’d been hording.
But when the first couple of shots were followed by an entire volley of gunfire from several different weapons, Annja knew something was seriously wrong.
For the past three weeks, Annja and the rest of the dig team working on behalf of the Bureau of Cultural Studies had been carefully excavating the ruins discovered at Teluamachee, about a hundred and fifty miles outside of Mexico City. A recent earthquake had cut a swath through the jungle, knocking down trees and natural earth formations with equal abandon, exposing a set of long forgotten ruins hidden in a narrow valley deep in the jungle. A scout for a local logging company had discovered the site and, thankfully, had enough respect and admiration of his heritage to report the location to the bureau rather than selling that information on the black market. The bureau wasted no time in assembling a team of experts—including Annja—asking them to come down and take a look at what they had found.
Annja had been in between assignments when the call had come in and she’d wasted no time in agreeing to join the team.
The main dig site consisted of a large three-story temple complex in the standard step pyramid formation, with several smaller buildings lining the east and west sides of the courtyard extending south from the base of the pyramid itself.
A few hundred yards to the west of the main structures was the site’s cenote, a deep, water-filled sinkhole that the Mayans considered a link to the rain gods, or Chaacs. Sacrificial victims and precious objects had been tossed into the sacred well as offerings during the site’s heyday as a way of protecting the populace and bringing good fortune. To the dig team’s delight, the earthquake that had uncovered the primary dig site had also drained the cenote, exposing its secrets to the light of the sun for the first time in centuries.
Annja was down in “the hole,” as they had come to call it, erecting a grid made of nylon rope and stakes across the entire area. This would allow them to record the precise depth and location of every object they removed from the muck-covered bed at the bottom of the sinkhole. That information would then be fed into a 3-D simulation program that would provide them with a computer model to work with in analyzing the artifacts.
It was important work, which was one of the reasons Annja had volunteered to do it, despite the ankle-deep puddles and stinking muck that covered the bottom of the cenote. From where she stood she could see the skeletal remains of at least five different individuals and more than a handful of ceremonial objects, such as knives, bowls and statuettes. The items they recovered from the cenote would probably tell them more about daily life at the site than the ruins themselves. It was like a window into the past, one she looked forward to peering through.
But right now she needed to forget about the past and focus on the present.
She looked up toward the rim of the cenote, expecting to see Arturo, her partner for the afternoon, peering over the edge and frantically signaling for her to come up, but there was no sign of him.
Had he run off? Gone for help? She didn’t know. Thankfully, the rope she’d used to climb down into the hole was still where they had left it, hanging against the interior wall of the cenote. It was tied off at the top around a nearby tree trunk and so Arturo’s help wasn’t required for her to get back to the surface. It would have been helpful, but not necessary.
She slogged over to the far wall, being careful not to step on any of the remains scattered about her feet, and took hold of the rope. Planting one foot against the interior wall of the cenote, she began to pull herself up hand over hand, walking her feet upward as she went.
She hadn’t gone more than a few steps up the wall when a shadow blotted out the light from the setting sun above. Startled, Annja looked up. She was just in time to see Arturo hurtling down toward her, his arms and legs flailing wildly, his mouth open in a silent scream.
Annja let go of the rope, dropped the few feet to the bottom of the cenote, and flattened herself against the wall, trying to make herself as small as possible.
Arturo’s body missed her by mere inches and then hit the bottom with a loud, mud-filled splash. His sightless eyes stared back at her, accusing. So, too, did the bullet hole in the center of his forehead that was leaking a thin stream of blood into the muddy water where he lay.
She could hear voices above, shouting in Spanish. She couldn’t make out everything that was said, but the word cenote came through loud and clear a few times and she knew they were headed her way, either to see if Arturo had been alone or to be certain he was dead.
If they looked in and caught her here…
Annja didn’t need to finish the thought to know she was in deep trouble. She had only seconds to find a place to hide. Any moment now someone was going to stick their head over the edge and see her.
Her chances of surviving for even a few minutes after that were slim to none.
Without hesitation she took a deep breath and threw herself down into the water at her feet, burrowing into the mud and muck beneath and throwing it over her body, trying to cover herself up as much as possible. There wasn’t anywhere else she could hide. The dark fatigue pants and top she was wearing would help, she knew, as would the deep shadows accumulating with the close of day near the walls of the cenote itself. If she could just stay out of sight for a few moments, she might be all right.
For the time being, at least.
She kept one ear turned to the side, listening, and just as she suspected, she heard two voices talking together somewhere above her. An argument ensued for a moment, the voices rising and falling rapidly, and then they fell silent.
Annja didn’t move from her place of concealment. She was unable to tell if they had left or not and didn’t want to take the chance of being caught unexpectedly in the open.
Her caution saved her life.
Bullets suddenly thumped into Arturo’s unmoving form and it took all she had for Annja not to flinch as the gunshots echoed around the enclosed confines of the cenote. The rope she’d intended to use to reach the surface was thrown down a few moments later. Laughter drifted down from above and then moved off until she couldn’t hear it anymore.
Annja pulled herself out of the muck and took a deep breath, not only to fill her lungs with air but to keep her startled wits about her, as well. It wouldn’t do anyone any good if she lost it now. There were too many people in the camp above who’d need her protection.
And that was precisely what she intended to do.
She reached out and placed her finger tips on Arturo’s throat, checking for a pulse, wanting to be sure. She would have been highly surprised if he’d survived the fall, never mind the gunshot wound to the head, but stranger things had happened and she didn’t want to leave without being certain.
In the end, it turned out to be wasted effort.
Arturo was dead.
Gently, she brushed the side of her palm down over his eyes, closing them, and then stood. A glance upward told her she was alone and she suspected it would remain that way. By now the handful of people working the dig site had either been rounded up or slaughtered as Arturo had. There was no reason for the assailants, whoever they were, to examine the cenote a second time unless they wanted to dredge the bottom for themselves.
She figured that wasn’t too bloody likely, given the pile of artifacts that the team had already unearthed that were just sitting around in the research tent above.
Annja wasn’t about to let the lack of a rope hinder her, either. Her colleagues were up above, friends who were clearly in trouble, and she’d go through hell and high water to get to them.
The walls of the cenote were formed from limestone and, thanks to the constant erosion of the water that had filled the hole, were pockmarked throughout, providing all sorts of hand- and footholds for those who knew how to use them.
Having done her fair share of rock climbing, Annja was one of those people.
She grabbed a hold and started climbing. She’d learned that those unfamiliar with the sport often tried to pull themselves upward using the strength of their arms alone. That causes lactic acid to quickly build up in their muscles, cramping them, and tiring the climber faster than necessary. Annja knew what was necessary. With more than a hundred feet of climbing to go, she had to be sure to conserve her energy, which meant using her hands primarily for balance and doing the majority of the work with her legs. She was careful where she put her hands and feet, knowing that the pockets of eroded rock might still be damp or even full of water. Without a rope, one slip could be fatal.
Slowly, carefully, she worked her way to the top.
Once there, she cautiously peeked over the lip of the cenote and then, not seeing anyone nearby, pulled herself up and onto solid ground.
As silent as a stalking cat, she rolled smoothly to her feet and slipped into the thick foliage of the nearby jungle. The sun had set during her assent of the sinkhole, something for which Annja was thankful. The darkness would provide additional cover for her as she moved through the dense undergrowth in the direction of the dig’s main encampment.
3
She smelled him first. The thick odor of cheap cologne, unwashed human body and hand-rolled cigarettes clashed with the humid scent of the jungle around her and gave him away about half a moment before she blundered directly into him. Annja froze in place, waiting for her peripheral vision to pick him out in the gathering darkness.
He stood a few feet up the trail, his back to her. The rifle he carried was slung over his shoulder while his hands were busy in front of his body. The sound of liquid splashing in a thick stream against the broad leaves of the bushes in front of him reached her ears a second later and clued her in to what he was doing.
Taking a deep breath, she put her right hand into the otherwhere and drew her sword. Incredibly strong and unsurprisingly deadly, the ancient broadsword had once belonged to Joan of Arc, but when Annja had reunited the last of its pieces, it had become mysteriously bound to her in some kind of mystical fashion. She could summon it at will and release it back into the otherwhere when it was no longer needed. Reversing it in her grip so that the blade hung downward, she approached on silent feet. A quick snap of her wrist, the solid thunk of the pommel of her sword striking the back of the soldier’s head, and then he was tumbling to the ground, his hands still on the zipper he’d been pulling shut when she’d struck.
Annja rolled him over, made sure he was unconscious and then took a good look.
The briefing they had received before arriving at the dig site had mentioned that members of a revolutionary group had been seen moving through the region, but Annja hadn’t paid much attention to the warnings. In Mexico and most of Central America, insurgency was a way of life, and if they fell into a tizzy every single time a group was spotted by local villagers, nothing would ever get done.
Apparently she should have paid more attention this time.
The rebel soldier was dressed in a faded set of old fatigue pants and a dirty T-shirt. A new green cap with the emblem of his group emblazoned on it lay close to his unconscious form. He carried an assault rifle, an AK-47 to be exact, but unlike the rest of his uniform the weapon was new.
Someone, somewhere, was arming the troops.
She shrugged off the thought as soon as it came. It was not her problem and certainly not one she intended to get involved in. Right now, her only concern was rescuing the rest of her team from this guy’s buddies.
Annja considered taking his weapon, knowing she might need a bit of firepower, but while she knew how to use it, she felt better with her sword in hand. In the end, she ejected the submachine gun’s magazine and shoved it into the cargo pocket of her pants, then jammed the muzzle of the weapon into the mud at her feet, stuffing the barrel so that it couldn’t be used again without being cleaned. She also took the time to peel off the man’s shoelaces and used them to bind his hands and feet. Between the smack on the head and the bindings, he should be out of the fight for some time.
Satisfied, she moved off into the darkness again, slowly continuing to make her way toward the wide clearing where they had set up their main encampment a few weeks earlier.
The path ahead grew lighter, the glow coming from the portable lights strung up over the eating area outside the mess tent, and she knew she was close. As there were sure to be guards posted at the top of the pathway and she didn’t want to blunder into another one unexpectedly, she decided to slide off the path into the thicker foliage and approach at an oblique angle.
When she came to the edge of the jungle, she stopped and peered out at the camp.
Their tents had been grouped haphazardly, without any real plan or design to how they had been set up. After all, this was an expedition, not a Boy Scout camp. Whenever someone new arrived, they just selected a patch of ground and set up their tent wherever they wanted. Portable lights had been strung up here and there on poles throughout the camp, as well. While they didn’t light up the camp like broad daylight, they did do their share to banish the darkness around the most commonly used paths and in front of about half of the tents. From where she crouched Annja could see that she was to the right of the mess area and about halfway along the maze of tents.
She could also see several soldiers moving through the camp; she counted four in all. They were stomping in and out of the tents, kicking aside piles of equipment and supplies, looking for anything of value. She could also hear someone yelling something in Spanish at the other end of the camp, where the larger mess tent and command center had been set up.
She couldn’t see who it was. No matter. She’d find out soon enough.
First, though, she had to deal with the soldiers in front of her.
Annja waited until they were all either inside a tent or facing the other way, and then, when no one was looking, she left the cover of the trees behind and ran in a crouch to the nearest tent that hadn’t been searched yet. Using her sword, she cut a long slit into the rear panel and then squatted at its edge, waiting.
It didn’t take long.
The rebel came into the tent as she expected he would, head down, eagerly anticipating another iPod, cell phone or laptop computer to claim as his bounty. When he bent over to paw through a backpack someone had left open on the cot, Annja made her move. Slipping through the hole in the back of the tent she headed directly toward the soldier’s unprotected back.
She had almost reached his side when he straightened and turned. Seeing her, his eyes opened wide in fear.
“¡Madre de Dios!” he whispered, frozen in place.
Annja could only imagine what she looked like to him with her hair, face and body covered in drying muck, and a sword almost as long as she was grasped in one hand, like some vengeful spirit come back from the grave to right some ancient wrong. She didn’t give him a chance to make sense of what he was seeing, either, but rather jammed the point of her sword up under his chin and held a finger to her lips to indicate he should be silent.
“Give me your gun,” she said in Spanish.
Stiff with fear, he complied.
“How many others are there?” she asked.
His voice trembled as he said, “Five plus the captain.”
That meant she’d already taken care of the captain’s only companion, since she’d counted four men looting the tents.
Too bad for them that the odds were in her favor.
“What are you doing here?” she asked.
The soldier shrugged.
Annja pushed the sword blade a bit harder and a thin trickle of blood ran down the man’s neck in response. “Don’t mess with me,” she told him. “What are you here for?”
The soldier explained that they had stumbled upon the excavation while fleeing from the police. With no money and a need to resupply themselves with both food and ammunition, the captain decided that a quick raid was in order. If they discovered that the excavation had yielded gold or other precious artifacts, so much the better.
She could hear the other soldiers laughing nearby and knew she didn’t have much time left. She was going to have to act and hope for the best.
“Give me your shirt and hat,” she told her captive.
Once he had, she made him turn around and then struck him hard on the head with the butt of his own weapon.
Two down, four to go.
Releasing the sword back into the otherwhere, she pulled his shirt on over her own muddy T-shirt and shoved her hair up under the hat. The shirt was bulky and hung down to midthigh, which should help hide her shape and size from casual view. She only needed to pass for the other man for a few moments, just until she was close enough to carry out her plan. In the dark, and with the soldiers feeling secure that they were not in any danger, it just might work.
She left the man lying there unconscious and stepped out of the tent, the soldier’s rifle slung over her shoulder and the hat pulled down low over her face.
The other soldiers were several tents away, a long stretch of darkness between them and her. They saw her emerge from the tent, but didn’t think anything of it, her disguise apparently good enough at this distance to keep them from noticing anything was wrong.
The one in the middle turned to her, shouted for her to hurry up and gave a “come on” gesture with one hand.
Annja grunted something indistinguishable, waved to show she’d heard him and then held her breath.
This was the moment of truth. If they were going to notice something was wrong, it would most likely be now, while their attention was on her and they were addressing her directly.
The soldier hesitated.
Annja tensed.
The soldier turned back to his companions, apparently satisfied with her response.
They waited for her there in the center of the camp’s main thoroughfare as she approached. The men laughed and joked among themselves, their attention on one another and not on her.
It proved to be a fatal mistake.
She considered simply gunning them down where they stood as she moved closer; after all, they’d certainly killed Arturo and probably several others at this point, as well. She didn’t owe them anything. But the sound would easily carry across the camp and she wasn’t ready yet to let the captain know that his pack of hired guns had been taken out of the equation. Instead, she kept her right hand down at her side, ready to snatch her sword out of the otherwhere the moment she needed it. Thanks to the fact that they were standing directly in a pool of light cast by one of the overhead lamps, Annja was able to approach quite close to them while remaining shrouded in shadow the entire time.
The man who’d spoken to her earlier turned as she approached, his eyes widening in surprise as she passed from shadow into light, revealing herself at last. His hand fumbled for the gun at his side as he pushed himself backward into the other two.
Annja called her sword to her and thrust forward in the same motion, skewering him where he stood.
By now the other two men had noticed she wasn’t who they’d been expecting and the fact that they were in danger was just registering in their surprise-addled minds. Using the precious seconds that surprise had given her, Annja spun to her left, withdrawing her sword from the body of the man she’d stabbed while at the same time bringing her elbow around in a vicious arc that connected with the head of the man on the far right, dropping him senseless to the ground.
The man she’d stabbed dropped to his knees, his hands cupped across the savage wound in his gut.
As often happened whenever she was in a fight for her life, Annja’s senses suddenly became hypersharp, giving the effect that she was moving incredibly fast in a world where time had suddenly slowed to a crawl. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw the third man had managed to get his hands around his gun and was bringing it up in her direction. Without stopping her momentum she planted her foot and continued her spin, the hand holding the sword coming up and down again, her weapon whistling through the air like the keening of a hungry ghost. The edge of the sword struck the man’s arm just below his elbow.
The gun dropped into the dirt at his feet.
The soldier was opening his mouth to scream when Annja silenced him with one final blow of her sword.
Heart beating madly thanks to the adrenaline coursing through her system, Annja took a few deep breaths to get herself under control. She collected the soldiers’ weapons and tossed them into the darkness. She stripped the belts from the bodies and used them to bind the hands and feet of the unconscious man, assuring that he wouldn’t make a sudden appearance and cause her future difficulties.
When she was ready, she picked up her rifle once more and headed toward the mess area on the other side of camp. As she drew closer, the captain’s voice came to her clearly.
“¿Donde esta el tesoro?”
None of the hostages answered him. Annja knew that the vast majority of those working the dig spoke Spanish and she was surprised that they seemed to be pretending otherwise, but she was glad they were. It meant there was still some fight in them and that was good. The sudden attack hadn’t broken their spirit at least.
The captain tried again, this time in English.
“Where is the treasure?”
By now Annja had reached the edge of the wide area that served as the camp’s main meeting place. Floodlights set up on the front of the mess tent lit the place up well, allowing her to get a good look at the rebel leader.
He was about her height, with that wiry look to him that told her not only would he be fast in a hand-to-hand fight, but that he’d have the strength to match his speed, as well. A wide scar started beneath his right eye and curled down to the edge of his mouth. Unlike the other soldiers, he was only armed with a handgun, a handgun that was currently pointed absently at the rest of the dig team who were kneeling in a semicircle in front of him. He did not appear to be happy with the cooperation he was getting, but he was clearly distracted, as well, glancing back repeatedly over his shoulder at the trailhead that led to the cenote.
Annja smiled grimly to see his unease.
Sorry, buddy, but there won’t be any help from that direction.
She knew she was going to have to use the gun this time, for the sword would be far too conspicuous and there would be too many questions about it afterward. While it wasn’t her preference, she’d handled guns before and shouldn’t have any problems.
As the captain began shouting in anger at the captives, Annja checked to see that her weapon was ready to fire and then strode out of the darkness and into the light.
4
“Put down the gun!”
Annja stood just inside the circle of light, the automatic rifle in her hands pointed unerringly at the rebel commander standing in front of her.
He started in surprise at the sound of her voice and turned in her direction, the gun in his hand coming up slightly toward her.
Annja didn’t wait to see what he was going to do with it, but stitched a row of bullets across the dirt at his feet.
“I said put down the gun,” she said, “or I’ll fill you full of holes.”
It surely wasn’t the first time the captain had had a weapon pointed at him and his sense of machismo wouldn’t let him surrender to a woman that easily, it seemed.
He didn’t drop the weapon, but neither did he raise it any higher in her direction. Instead, he glanced behind her while trying to stall.
“You are making a mistake, señorita . A very big mistake.”
Annja shook her head. “I don’t think so. And you can stop looking over my shoulder. They aren’t coming.”
“Pardon?”
“Your troops. They aren’t coming.”
He scoffed, but after a moment or two more of silence, he frowned. As more time passed and help still didn’t arrive, he began to realize that he was on his own.
Here it comes, Annja thought.
The rebel leader had been backed into a corner. He could either surrender to a woman, something his masculine pride objected to strongly, or he could try and fight his way out of his current predicament.
Annja had little doubt which option he was going to choose.
When he made his move, she was ready for him. He snapped his arm up toward her as he turned to the side, hoping to present a smaller target for her to shoot at while giving him enough time to kill her and thereby save himself.
Anticipating just such a move, Annja put two bullets into his upper chest before he could complete his turn.
An expression of surprise crossed his face and then he fell to the ground, dead on impact.
Silence covered the scene in its heavy embrace and then her companions were shouting her name and cheering. She dropped her weapon and moved to their sides, untying them and then directing those who were free to do the same for the rest.
Under Annja’s supervision, the rebels were rounded up by the archaeologists and other camp staff, the hands and feet of those soldiers who were still alive tied securely with the ropes that they’d just taken off their own wrists. They were placed under the lights by the mess tent, where they could be watched until help could arrive. The dead were brought over, as well. Annja caught more than one of her dig mates watching her when they thought she wasn’t looking—after they saw what had been done to the soldiers. Annja didn’t care. She’d done what she’d had to given the circumstances. She’d spared lives when she’d been able to and so her conscience was clear.
When they were finished, everyone gathered in front of the mess tent, arguing about what they should do next. Annja had just managed to get everyone settled down so they could discuss things rationally when Evans, the cook, pointed back over Annja’s shoulder and shouted, “Look!”
Annja turned to see multiple sets of headlights coming down the narrow dirt track that served as the only entrance to the camp. They were moving rapidly and it only took a few minutes before they were close enough to see the vehicles were American-made military Humvees painted in green camouflage.
As the trucks braked to a stop, armed soldiers in blue jumpsuits, black flack vests and helmets poured out and took up defensive positions around the camp while Annja stared openmouthed in surprise.
A short, muscular man in an officer’s uniform climbed down from the passenger seat of the lead vehicle, looked at the rebel soldiers, all carefully bound and gagged, and then marched over to where Annja stood. He stared at her for a moment, his expression grim, and then said, “Who is in charge, please?” in heavily accented English.
Annja had no idea who these men were, what they were doing here, or even if they might be allied in some way with the rebels that she’d just defeated. Her hand curled ready to summon her sword, but she didn’t draw it. Not until, at least. Not till she knew who they were or what they wanted.
Deciding her friends and teammates had had enough for one night, Annja bit the bullet and answered his question. “I am,” she replied.
His grim expression broke into a toothy smile. “Then my compliments to you, señorita . You and your people have saved me considerable time and energy in tracking down and detaining these dogs.”
As he explained, the officer in question was Major Enrique Hernandez, of La Policia Mexicana, and he and his squad had been tracking this particular group of rebel soldiers for the past several days. Unfortunately they had lost them a few miles to the south of their present position. Hernandez had been trying to pick up the rebels’ trail again when they had intercepted an emergency radio signal from the camp indicating it was under attack. The major explained that it had probably been just bad luck that the rebels had stumbled onto the excavation site, but their leaders weren’t fools and the chance to add any artifacts that could draw good money on the black market had likely been too good to pass up.
Surprisingly, Hernandez didn’t ask many questions about what had happened to the rebels or how a few archaeologists and graduate students had managed to overpower six soldiers armed with heavy weaponry. He seemed happy just to have the problem dealt with and in so final a manner. Perhaps he felt he was better off not knowing.
Either way, Annja wasn’t going to complain. The last thing she wanted was more attention from the law enforcement community, in this country or any other. She’d certainly had her fair share of that lately.
As the major began ordering his men to secure the weapons and pick up the bodies, Annja excused herself and went looking for a hose. She could stand the stench of the muck she was covered in for only so long.
5
“They say that you single-handedly defeated the rebels. Is that true?”
The voice was male, with a clipped British accent, and decidedly unfamiliar to her.
Annja used one hand to shield her eyes from the glare of the floodlights and looked toward the speaker.
The newcomer was tall and good-looking, with dark curly hair and a five-o’clock shadow that somehow made him look more carefully groomed than if he had been simply clean shaven. His white shirt and tan suit had yet to pick up any of the telltale streaks of red dust that quickly covered anyone who had been on location more than a few minutes, which meant that he’d just arrived.
He stood in a relaxed, easygoing manner, but something about him still set her radar to tingling.
Ever since coming into possession of the magically restored sword that had once belonged to Joan of Arc, her life had been full of dangerous situations and even deadlier enemies. She’d been forced to fight for her life in more than a dozen places around the world, from the jungles of the Amazon to the sands of New Mexico, from the snows of Siberia to the waters of Indochina. She’d quickly learned to recognize the wolves moving among the sheep, and the man standing before her was definitely not one of the latter.
Given the close relationship between Mexico and the U.S., Annja pegged him for some kind of government adviser who had come in with the troops. Probably CIA or Department of Defense. It had to be something like that. His complete indifference to the police troops moving about the camp was a dead giveaway.
Having sized him up, she turned away, no longer interested.
“Yeah, well, you shouldn’t believe everything you hear,” she said dismissively, as she continued to hose herself down in an effort to get the blood and muck off her clothing. When she straightened back up, she found him still standing there, watching her, in turn.
“Can I help you with something?” she asked, with more than a bit of frustrated exasperation in her voice. The last thing she needed was some government flunky ogling her.
“That would depend. Are you, by chance, Annja Creed?”
Annja frowned. Aside from her producer, Doug Morrell, she hadn’t told anyone where she was going when she’d left Brooklyn three weeks before. And while it wasn’t unusual for fans of the television show she worked for— Chasing History’s Monsters —to recognize her in public, it was strange to find a fan in the middle of the Mexican jungle at a dig site that only a handful of people were even aware of.
She used his words back at him. “That would depend. Who’s asking?”
He chuckled. “Touché, Ms. Creed. Touché. Forgive me. My name is Mason Jones, though my friends call me Mason. I’m here with an invitation from my employer, John Davenport.”
Annja wasn’t certain if she’d heard him correctly.
“John Davenport?”
“Yes.”
“ The John Davenport?”
Jones cocked his head to one side and looked at her as if he were examining some fascinating new species of insect. “Is there some other John Davenport I should be aware of?”
“No. No, of course not,” Annja said quickly, caught more than a little off balance by the way the situation was unfolding. So much for the government adviser theory. And Jones was right. There was only one John Davenport worth talking about. Davenport was to Britain what Gates was to America or Murdoch to Australia. All three were incredibly wealthy, but only Davenport had an active interest in ancient cultures and used his immense wealth to regularly sponsor major archaeological expeditions to all kinds of unusual locales.
Of course, none of them had the kind of wealth her mentor, Roux, or even his former protégé, Garin Braden, had acquired during their long existence, but that was neither here nor there. It wasn’t actually a fair comparison for one thing. Both Roux and Garin were tied to the mysticism surrounding the sword of Joan of Arc, just as she was. She had met them both during that fateful excursion in the mountains of France, when she had been hunting the Beast of Gevaudan. She’d found the beast, but she also found something else—the final missing piece of Joan’s sword, shattered by her English captors before they burned her at the stake. It was only later, after the sword had mysteriously reforged itself as if by magic, that she had discovered both men had been contemporaries of Joan. Roux had been one of Joan’s protectors. Garin, in turn, had been his squire. Something mystical had happened when Joan’s sword was shattered, something that had kept them from aging or dying for hundreds of years. Comparing Davenport’s wealth, obtained over a single lifetime, to theirs was like comparing apples and watermelons. Still, the fact that Davenport even knew she existed was frankly astounding to Annja, never mind that he had sent someone to find her in the middle of nowhere.
With nothing else looming on the horizon, she had gladly accepted when the dig’s director had come calling. Several weeks in the jungle unearthing the treasures of the past had sounded like just the thing to escape the hustle and bustle of Brooklyn and the pop culture version of archaeology she was often forced to serve up in the name of ratings or Chasing History’s Monsters .
Now, it seemed, the world had come looking for her again.
“What can I do for Mr. Davenport?” Annja asked. She was suddenly acutely aware of how she must look—her hair still full of the muck from the bottom of the cenote and her T-shirt and pants now wet from the hose.
Jones reached inside his suit jacket and came out with a cream-colored envelope. He handed it to her. The envelope was sealed with a dollop of red wax, in the middle of which had been pressed the Davenport company logo. The seal was unbroken, but Annja didn’t leave it that way for long. Inside was a note on a small white card. It was handwritten in a smooth, flowing script that spoke of the confidence inherent in the man who’d penned it.
Dear Ms. Creed,
It would please me greatly if you would accept my invitation to dinner this evening at my home outside Mexico City in order to discuss a particular business proposal. Mason is authorized to provide anything you require, including transportation to and from the estate, and I am willing to pay you a consulting fee of $5,000 just to hear me out, no strings attached. At the very least, you can be assured of having an excellent meal.
Sincerely,
John Davenport
Annja looked up from the note to find Mason waiting patiently for her answer.
She thought about it for less than a minute and then shrugged, “Sure. Why not?” she said.
A FTER CHECKING IN with the site coordinator to let him know that she would be leaving, Annja changed into clean clothing, gathered what little gear she had from her tent and returned to the main encampment to find Mason standing next to a newer model Land Rover. The black exterior seemed to soak up the tropical sun, but Annja had little doubt the air-conditioned interior would provide a cool refuge from the heat. Jones opened the passenger door for her, stowed her bag in back and then climbed in behind the wheel. Mexico City was at the other end of a three-hour drive down a poorly maintained dirt track and Annja settled in for the trip, only to be surprised when Mason pulled off the main drag onto a side road that amounted to little more than a goat trail.
“Mexico City is that way,” Annja said, pointing back in the direction they’d just come from, thinking he might have gotten turned around in the dense jungle.
Jones nodded. “You are correct, Ms. Creed,” he said, glancing at her, his expression noncommittal. He turned his attention back to the road before him.
Annja gave him a moment to explain further, but when it was clear he wasn’t going to do so, she asked, “Then why on earth are we going this way?”
“Because this is where I left the helicopter,” he said.
“Oh,” Annja replied.
They bounded over a few potholes, skirted a fallen tree trunk and emerged suddenly into a small clearing recently cut from the undergrowth.
In the middle of the clearing sat a Bell JetRanger helicopter, its sleek black frame looking like some kind of giant insect in the midst of that primeval landscape.
“Right. The helicopter. How silly of me,” she said.
This time, Jones couldn’t keep a straight face and actually grinned.
T HE FLIGHT DIDN’T TAKE LONG and her companion turned out to be enjoyable company. They talked for a time and then Mason asked the one question that inevitably came up.
“How do you like working in television?”
Annja hesitated. “You’ve seen the show?” she asked cautiously, trying to feel him out to see what he thought. Chasing History’s Monsters wasn’t for everyone. The weekly show was focused around the exploration of legends, myths and the possible existence of strange creatures like the Loch Ness Monster and Sasquatch. Every episode featured two or three different stories, presented with a mix of facts and fiction. Being the scientist she was, Annja’s role usually involved shooting down the more outrageous claims, especially those of a supernatural sort. Her field of expertise was on the historical basis of even some of the most ridiculous stories and she tried to show how myths and legends grew out of factual events that were often distorted or misunderstood over time.
Of course, using hard science to prove that things like vampires and werewolves didn’t exist only gave the true believers more reason to shout, “Cover-up!” and go on believing all the same.
Luckily, Mason wasn’t one of those.
“I’m a regular fan,” he said. “In fact, it was because of your work on the show that the boss decided to seek your advice.”
“Oh,” Annja said, thinking that one of the world’s richest men watching her show on a regular basis was just a bit…weird. She couldn’t quite wrap her head around it.
That little voice in the back of her head spoke up. Maybe he’s watching it for some other reason, it said.
Almost as if he were reading her mind, Mason said, “Gotta tell ya, though. I don’t care much for that other host. Kristen? Kathy?”
“Kristie. Kristie Chatham.”
“Right. I mean, my Lord, could they hire a bigger bimbo? She can’t even string three coherent sentences together and the wardrobe malfunctions became tiring after the first time or two. Do we really need one every other episode?”
Mason was banking the chopper, paying attention to the controls rather than looking her way, and so he missed the expression of shock on her face, shock that quickly turned to delight as he went on.
“Do they think every guy watching the show is a complete moron?”
Yes, Annja thought, but didn’t say. She decided right then and there that she and Mason Jones were going to be very good friends.
“Tell me more,” she said with a smile.
By the time he set the chopper down on the landing pad at Benito Juárez International Airport in Mexico City about forty minutes later, they were on a first-name basis.
A car was waiting for them when they disembarked, a uniformed chauffeur standing beside the open door.
Mason introduced Annja to the driver, whose name was José, and told her that José would take her to her hotel so that she could freshen up prior to her dinner with Davenport.
“What about you?” Annja asked.
Mason jerked his thumb over his shoulder at the helicopter behind them. “Someone has to put away the toys,” he said.
Satisfied that she was in good hands and things were proceeding the way they were supposed to, something she had learned the hard way not to take for granted, she climbed into the air-conditioned vehicle and let José drive her to where she needed to go.
The hotel turned out to be the Four Seasons on the Paseo de la Reforma, or, as the locals called it, Reforma, just a few blocks from Chapultepec Park—the oldest national park in North America—as well as the National Museum of Anthropology and History. The hotel staff was expecting her, José obviously having called ahead, and she was quickly whisked away to a luxury suite on one of the hotel’s upper floors. The porter who carried her bag upstairs and deposited it in the walk-in closet passed on the message that all gratuities had been taken care of and that the car would be back for her at six. He shut the doors softly as he exited the room, leaving Annja to take in her posh surroundings.
The suite consisted of a spacious living room area, complete with a wet bar, a flat-screen TV, a stereo and DVD player, all carefully arranged amid the couch and several armchairs. The bedroom contained a king-size bed and another television artfully mounted on the wall, as well as a walk-in closet and private dressing area. But it was the master bath, with its oversize soaking tub, that did it for her. Annja wasted no time in filling it with hot water and scented bath oil, then stripped off her dust-covered clothing and settled in to enjoy a long soak.
When she had scrubbed away the last of the dirt and grime of the jungle and her muscles had unknotted enough that she was again feeling human, she rose from the water and slipped into the thick terry-cloth robe the hotel provided its guests. She sat in the dressing area and brushed out her long hair, then, noting it was almost five-thirty, decided she had just enough time to get dressed for her meeting with Davenport.
But when she stepped into the closet to retrieve her bag, she found a selection of quality clothing of different colors and styles hanging on the racks.
She whistled long and low.
A peek confirmed her suspicions—all of them were in her size. How Davenport had known that was beyond her. While she appreciated the thought and attention he had obviously put into this meeting, it also made her feel uneasy. Just what did the man want? And why the show? She didn’t know, but there was one way to find out.
She ran her fingers over the fabrics of the dresses hanging in the closet, admiring their cut and the feel of each garment, then turned away and pulled some clothes from her own bag. By the time the porter called up to tell her that her car was waiting, she was comfortably dressed in a pair of tan cargo pants, a white linen blouse and her sturdy hiking shoes. She wasn’t here to play dress up for Davenport and she hoped her choice of clothing would convey that message without making her seem ungrateful. She added a native bead necklace that highlighted her amber-green eyes and decided it would have to do.
With a last glance in the mirror she headed for the elevator, her curiosity over being summoned to dinner by one of the richest men in the world nearly overwhelming her.
6
Davenport’s note had said they would be meeting at his home, but Annja didn’t expect that meant anything casual, so she wasn’t surprised when they pulled up to an estate that looked as if it probably doubled the entire state of Rhode Island. A thick protective wall ran around the entire complex, and entrance to the property was gained through a tall iron gate, complete with a set of armed guards.
Inside it was like entering another world. Wide green lawns stretched out as far as the eye could see, with the grass and the endless variety of bushes and trees all carefully tended and landscaped. In the distance a group of horses grazed and Annja had no doubt that the bloodlines of those beasts were as pure as money could buy. The driveway twisted and turned, occasionally obscuring her view of the horses behind the trunks of age-old oaks, and then they rounded a corner and the house itself was revealed ahead of them, a vast sprawling structure in Saltillo tile and whitewashed stucco, complete with a flower-draped fountain in the center of the driveway.
As José brought the car to a halt, the door opened and Mason Jones appeared at the top of the steps in the company of an older gentleman with silver-gray hair and a long, narrow face. The severity of the man’s features, however, was broken by the deep blue of his eyes and the playful smile that splashed across his face.
Annja recognized him at once.
John Davenport.
The two men descended the steps and waited for José to help her out of the vehicle. Mason performed the introductions.
“It’s a pleasure to meet you,” Annja said, extending her hand.
Davenport’s smile seemed to grow wider, if that was at all possible, as he took her hand. “I assure you, lovely lady, the pleasure is all mine. Thank you for coming and welcome to my humble home.”
Home, maybe, humble, no, Annja thought, but simply smiled at her host.
“I hope you like beef,” Davenport said, as he turned and led her into the house. “I’ve had my chef prepare some fresh steaks from our organically fed Argentinian cattle. It is absolutely fabulous.”
Dinner was excellent and through it all Davenport kept the conversation light and entertaining. It wasn’t until well into the meal that Annja realized he would make an excellent interrogator. Davenport had subtly drawn her out on all manner of subjects, from her taste in music to the difficulties of working a dig in the midst of the jungle. She hadn’t even been aware she’d been letting him direct the conversation for so long. Talking to him felt like the most natural thing in the world and Annja could see why he’d become as wealthy as he had. Anyone who spent five minutes in a room alone with him would come out feeling like they were old friends and it was simply human nature that friends wanted to help each other. She had little doubt that Davenport had built his empire on the strength of that personality.
Once the table was cleared and the servants had left the room, Davenport finally got down to business.
“Thank you for coming tonight,” he said. “I’m sure you’ve been wondering why I’ve asked you here. The truth of the matter is that I could use some help with a special project, and after our conversation this evening I’m more convinced than ever that you’re just the person to provide it.”
Annja inclined her head graciously. “I’d be happy to help you in any way I can,” she said honestly.
“Tell me. How familiar are you with Genghis Khan?”
Annja smiled. “Born in Mongolia in 1162. His given name was Temujin and he was named for a warrior slain by his father, one who exhibited bravery in that final confrontation. Declared himself ruler of the Mongol Empire in 1206 and died in 1227. In between, he created an empire four times larger than that of Alexander the Great, stretching from the Chinese coastline in the west to the Black Sea in the east, from the cold of the Arctic Circle in the north to the heat and humidity of India to the south. He was an innovator who assembled a nation out of a handful of warring tribes in perhaps one of the harshest locales on the face of the planet and held them together with nothing more than his iron vision and will. A man to be reckoned with in my view.”
Davenport laughed. “I should have known better than to think I’d catch the host of Chasing History’s Monsters without the facts at her fingertips.” He took a sip of his wine and his voice took on a teasing quality. “Since you’re the expert on monsters, tell me, was Genghis Khan the bloodthirsty conqueror that the media today has made him out to be? A man bent solely on rape, murder and mayhem?”
“Conqueror? Yes. Bloodthirsty? That depends on your viewpoint, I guess,” Annja said, answering his question seriously. “Legend says that he once slaughtered an entire city—men, women, children and livestock—in retaliation for the death of his grandson. It also said that he made a habit of using the bodies of captured enemy soldiers to fill the siege trenches dug to keep his troops from reaching the walls of the cities he assaulted. But was that any different from what the Crusaders did at the siege of Jerusalem or at the slaughter at Béziers?”
“I guess not. But we don’t generally think of the Crusaders as savage marauders hell-bent on ruining civilization,” Davenport said.
“No, but perhaps we should. They did more damage and far less good than Genghis Khan did, and yet his people have come down through the ages being referred to as the Mongol horde. How’s that for an epitaph?” Annja asked.
“Not one I’d choose for myself, that’s for sure.” Davenport paused as the servants came back into the room to serve coffee.
Accepting a cup, Annja inhaled the heady aroma and took a sip, then sighed in contentment. It was strong enough to knock your socks off, which was just the way she liked it.
Once the help had withdrawn, Davenport continued. “I’m considering putting together an expedition to find the Khan’s lost tomb.”
“Don’t bother,” Annja said, without even glancing up from her drink. Because she didn’t do so, she missed the quick flicker of surprise that flashed across Davenport’s face.
“Why not?” he asked.
“Because he more than likely didn’t have one.”
Davenport laughed, but when Annja glanced at him without joining in, he looked at her expression more closely. “You seem pretty sure of yourself.”
“I am.”
“Why is that?”
“Because, in the first place, the Mongol people didn’t believe in tombs.” Annja paused to gather her thoughts and to figure out the best way of passing on what she knew without seeming to preach at him. “Remember that the Mongols were a nomadic people, both before and after Genghis Khan united them as a single political body. They had few cities and those they did have were oriented toward storage of war booty rather than for any community-minded purpose.”
Davenport nodded. “Go on.”
“Because the Mongols moved from place to place, their religious beliefs evolved very much along similar lines. They considered the natural world to be full of spirits, much like the animists of feudal Japan. For instance, they were forbidden from bathing in rivers or streams because such places were considered the life blood of the earth itself and doing so would have been a horrible affront to the land.
“A Mongol warrior’s greatest possession was his spirit banner. It was made by tying strands of hair from his best horses to the shaft of a spear. Whenever he made camp, the warrior would place the spirit banner outside the entrance to his tent to show his presence and to stand as a perpetual guardian. Over time, the union between the warrior and the banner became so strong that, upon the warrior’s death, his soul was considered to reside in the banner and not the body.”
“But Genghis Khan was not just any warrior,” Davenport protested. “He was the spiritual father and warlord of the Mongol people. Just like people today, they would have wanted a place to remember him.”
Annja shook her head. “They had one—the spirit banner. It rode with the Khan’s descendants until 1647 when it was placed in the Shankh Monastery for safekeeping.”
Davenport seemed fascinated with her story. “So you’re saying the Mongol people didn’t need a tomb because Genghis Khan’s very soul rode alongside them wherever they went?”
While it wasn’t a perfect explanation of Mongol religious beliefs, it was close enough that she nodded in agreement.
“Interesting,” Davenport said, sitting back and watching her for a moment before continuing. “What if I told you that the legends were true, that the Mongols did build a secret tomb for their Great Khan? That they filled it with an amazingly diverse treasure trove, loot from the hundreds of cultures he conquered? And what if I said I had in my possession the journal of a man who had intimate details of the burial process itself, a journal that contained a map to the location of the tomb?”
Annja couldn’t help but smile. “I’d say you’d better hire someone to authenticate the map and the writings pretty darn quick, because whatever you paid for it, it was too much. You’ve been had. Hell, I’d be happy to do it for you myself, just to prove to you the ridiculousness of the very idea.”
Davenport smiled. “Good. Then that’s settled,” he said with a laugh. “You can start first thing in the morning.”
Annja stared at him blankly for a moment, and then it dawned her that she had been neatly led right where Davenport had wanted her to go.
Well, she’d just have to take the job and show him how wrong he was. After what had happened she knew the dig was all but finished for the season; she’d simply give them a call and let them know she was going home early.
A map to the tomb of Genghis Khan? Ridiculous!
7
The next morning Annja rose shortly after sunrise and decided to get some exercise before she returned to Davenport’s estate to view the artifact he claimed showed the way to Genghis Khan’s tomb. Digging a pair of shorts and a T-shirt out of her bag, she threw on her sneakers and headed out to Chapultepec Park for a run.
Maybe it was the early hour, or possibly the anticipation of the work she was going to do that afternoon to prove Davenport wrong, but whatever the reason, Annja failed to spot the tail she picked up the moment she walked out of the hotel.
The man assigned to watch her was good; he stayed out of her visual area, sticking to the blind spots to the sides and the rear, and hung back enough that were she to stop suddenly he’d have plenty of time to react to the change of pace and act accordingly.
He needn’t have worried, however, for the woman was too distracted to even notice him.
When she wandered into the park and began a series of stretches intended to loosen up her muscles for a run, the man knew it was now or never. He pulled a cell phone out of his pocket and dialed a number.
B ACK IN THE LOBBY of the hotel, a second individual answered the call, listened briefly, then hung up and headed for the elevator.
It took the operative less than ten seconds to pick the lock on the woman’s hotel room door and slip inside, closing the door gently behind him. He stood with his back to it for a moment, listening. His partner had said the woman was alone, but it still paid to be careful.
He hated these rush jobs; too little information meant too many potential ways that things could go wrong. You didn’t argue with the boss, though. When he wanted something done, you did it, no questions asked. Simple as that. He’d seen what happened to people who questioned orders, and once was all it took to convince him never to do anything so foolish.
The suite was quiet; the only sounds were the faint hum of the air conditioner and the drip of a faucet that hadn’t been turned off fully. Satisfied that the woman was staying alone and he wouldn’t be interrupted, the operative threw caution to the wind and went to work, quickly and efficiently tossing the place, searching for the objects he’d been instructed to find.
He was an old hand at this kind of work and he took his time, methodically moving from room to room, mentally noting the position of every object before he moved it and putting it back in the exact same spot when he was finished. He’d come in like a ghost and he intended to go out again, as well, leaving nothing behind, not even the slightest clue, to indicate anything out of the ordinary had happened.
By the time his partner called, letting him know the woman had finished her run and was getting ready to leave the park, he had covered every square inch of the suite and was confident that he’d missed nothing.
The trouble was, he hadn’t found what he was looking for, either.
Reluctantly, he withdrew his cell phone from the inside pocket of his jacket and dialed a number.
The phone rang several times before his employer’s deep baritone voice came down the line.
“Yes?”
“They’re not here.”
“You’re certain?”
The operative didn’t need to be told what would happen to him if he turned out to be wrong; the implied threat in the man’s tone was somehow more frightening than if he’d come right out and said something.
Swallowing hard to clear his throat, the operative said, “Yes. I’m certain.”
He listened for a moment, nodding in agreement with what was said even though there was no one there to see him do it, and then lifted the business card he’d found among the woman’s personal effects.
“Creed,” he said into the phone in answer to his employer’s question. “Annja. A-n-n-j-a . Annja Creed.”
He listened for another moment and then closed the phone. There was no need to say goodbye; his employer had already hung up.
The operative took one last look around to make certain he hadn’t left anything out of place and then slipped out of the room as quietly as he had entered.
A NNJA ENTERED HER HOTEL ROOM in a rush, knowing she had very little time left to get cleaned up before Davenport’s car arrived to take her to the estate. She’d only gotten halfway across the living room, however, when she stopped abruptly, her senses screaming.
Someone had been in her room.
Nothing was disturbed; everything looked as if it was right where it had been when she’d left for her run half an hour earlier.
Yet she had the definite sense that someone had been there in her absence. Call it a gut hunch, a sixth sense, whatever. She knew it as surely as she knew her own name.
She stood still and listened, trying to determine if anyone was hiding in the bedroom just beyond, but all she could hear was the low hum of the air conditioner she’d left running earlier.
She reached out with her right hand and drew her sword out of the otherwhere. Having the weapon in hand made her feel more confident to face whoever might have invaded her space.
Cautiously, she walked forward and peeked around the door frame into the bedroom, ready to pull her head back at a moment’s notice if there was anyone there.
The room was empty.
You’re getting paranoid, she told herself. No one even knows you’re in Mexico City.
Still, she checked the bathroom and the closets, just to be safe. When they turned out to be as empty as the bedroom, she at last allowed herself to relax and released the sword back into the otherwhere. Probably just the maid, she told herself, and turned her attention to getting out of her sweaty clothes and into something more suitable for a long afternoon of doing what she loved best.
M ASON WAS WAITING when she arrived at the estate, and after a quick hello, he led her upstairs to a room on the second floor where Davenport was waiting. A long table stood in the center of the room, surrounded by a variety of scientific equipment. Annja glanced at them and then made a beeline for the glass case sitting in the middle of the table.
Inside was a small, leather-bound book, with yellowed pages and a cracked and faded cover.
“Is this it?” she asked, turning and acknowledging her employer for the first time since entering the room.
“And a good-morning to you, too, Annja,” Davenport said with a laugh. “And yes, that is it , as you say. That little volume is going to lead us to the treasure of the centuries.”
She smiled at his enthusiasm. “If it’s authentic,” she said. “What can you tell me about it?”
Davenport’s tone became a bit more formal, as if he were reciting information he’d just learned and wanted to be sure to get it correct.
“In 1245, Pope Innocent IV, suspicious of the lingering power of the Mongols, sent a diplomatic party to the court of Guyuk, Genghis Khan’s grandson, at Karakorum. Leading that party was a friar by the name of Giovanni di Plano Carpini.”
Annja nodded. She was aware of Carpini’s journey and the book he’d written upon his return, The Story of the Mongols Whom We Call the Tartars. It was one of the first European accounts of life in the Mongol Empire, and though it was later relegated to a secondary position when Marco Polo published the accounts of his own journey among the people of the steppes, it was still considered an important historical document.
“With Carpini went a priest by the name of Father Michael Curran. Curran was a rising star, one of the Vatican’s inner circle, if you will, and was there at the direct order of the pope himself.”
“To do what?” Annja asked.
Davenport grinned. “Spy on the Mongols, of course. Remember, it had been less than twenty-five years since Genghis Khan’s army had turned back at the Mohi River rather than continue his conquest of Hungary and the rest of Eastern Europe. I’m sure more than just the pope was wondering when, or if, Guyuk was going to try again.”
“So this book—?”
“It is Curran’s personal account of his time among the Mongols,” Davenport said.
Annja frowned. “If Curran reported what he learned to the pope, why has the tomb remained undiscovered all this time?”
“That’s just it. Curran never had the chance to tell anyone what he learned, least of all the pope. He never made it out of Mongolia,” Davenport said.
Mason took up the story from there. “Apparently the group Curran was traveling with was attacked by a rival clan while deep within the Forbidden Zone, an area deep in the heart of the empire that the relatives of Genghis Khan had set aside forever as a monument to his glory. Curran managed to survive the attack itself, along with one other man. Badly wounded and left for dead, the two of them sought shelter in a mountain cave. That’s where Curran learned the location of the Khan’s tomb from his dying companion. Unfortunately for Curran, a winter storm trapped them in the cave for several weeks and he eventually succumbed from his wounds before he could make his way back to Karakorum.” Mason gestured at the diary. “It’s all in there—his impressions of Karakorum, his audience with Guyuk, the attack on the convoy, his ruminations as he lay dying all but alone in that cave.”
Knowing that the little book in the case before her contained the last thoughts of a man who had died cold and in a place far from home made her view it with even more respect than she had before. Still, something about Mason’s story bothered her.
“How do you know Curran’s companion wasn’t lying? That it wasn’t all some fever dream brought on by his impending death?” she asked.
Out came the hallmark Davenport grin. “Actually, I don’t. But nor do I have to prove that, at least not yet. All I need to know right now is whether or not the diary is the right age to actually be Curran’s. Once we determine that, we can worry about the rest. First things first.”
Annja thought about it for a moment. “Fair enough,” she replied. “I guess that means I’d best get to work.”
With the two men watching, Annja placed her backpack on the table next to the case and unzipped it. Inside were a digital SLR camera and a laptop computer. Both pieces of equipment had seen their fair share of adventures at her side and she’d come to rely on them in more ways than one.
She took out the laptop and started it up, then connected the camera to it. She fired off a few shots of the lab around her, just to test the connection. Satisfied that all was working the way it should, she put the camera down and turned back to her pack.
Annja fished out a pair of white cotton gloves from a side pocket of the bag and pulled them on. The soft material would protect the brittleness of the pages, as well as provide a barrier between them and her skin, keeping the damaging oil from her fingertips from doing the journal any harm. She might think it was a fake, but she’d treat it as authentic until she could prove otherwise. For the same reason, she laid out a wide piece of silk on the tabletop in front of her.
“May I?” she asked Davenport.
“Be my guest.”
She opened the small brass clasp holding the case closed and lifted the lid. Reaching inside, she drew out the slim volume and set it down in the area she had prepared.
Just like that, she was lost in the work. She might be a minor television celebrity—and a fierce adventurer, thanks to Joan’s sword—but that didn’t mean she’d lost her love of archaeology and the mystery and suspense that came with it. Discovering a new artifact, tracing its lineage, verifying its authenticity—it still moved and inspired her in ways that few other things could. Her awareness of the other people in the room faded as she gave herself completely to the task in front of her.
Annja picked up the camera and used it to take a full-size color photo of every single page in the book. She did the same with the inside and outside cover pages, both front and back. The pictures were immediately downloaded on to the laptop and organized sequentially. This would allow her to view the entire work without the need to handle the book itself, eliminating the possibility, no matter how slim, of it being damaged in the process. It would also let her magnify various sections, something she couldn’t do if she were working solely from the original.
Once she was finished, she put the camera away and replaced the journal in its protective case. Pulling up a chair, she settled in front of the laptop and began reading.
8
Annja was quickly engrossed in her work, so much so that she never even noticed when Davenport gestured to Mason and the two of them slipped out of the room behind her back.
The book had been handwritten in Latin in a thin, spidery script. The pages were faded and, in some cases, heavily stained, making it difficult to understand certain passages, but for a seven-hundred-year-old book it was remarkably well preserved.
She began to read.
The book was exactly what Davenport had claimed—the personal journal of a man who’d endured a long and arduous journey deep onto the Mongolian steppes on behalf of the church. Curran was an excellent writer and she soon found herself drawn into the story itself. She could sense the man’s loneliness, could feel his determination to do the job right and return home. She even ached along with him when his only companion succumbed to his wounds and died in the middle of the night. Curran’s death must have been sudden, for he hadn’t made any reference to the coming end in his journal. One day he was writing about trying to dig himself out and then the next, nothing.
She read through the entire work once, start to finish, looking for glaring problems that would instantly tell her the document was a fake. When she didn’t find any, she settled in for a more intricate examination.
The first thing she did was look for historical inaccuracies. She’d once examined a manuscript supposedly written by a Catholic priest who’d accompanied Vasco da Gama on his famous journey around the Cape of Good Hope. It had been an excellent forgery; the paper had passed the radiocarbon test, the text had been written in the dialect spoken in the area where the priest had supposedly lived at the time, even the ink had been correctly aged. The whole charade had only fallen apart when Annja reached the last page of the manuscript. The forger had added the words Societus Iesu , Latin for Society of Jesus, after the writer’s signature. Apparently he hadn’t done his homework on that little addition, for the Jesuits, a Catholic order founded by St. Ignatius of Loyola, wouldn’t come into being until fifty years after the events portrayed in the manuscript.
The trouble was that not only were Curran’s observations historically correct, as nearly as she could tell, such as the location of Guyuk’s summer encampment and the establishment of trade with parts of China, but they contained many small details that the average forger more than likely wouldn’t be aware of at all. Things like the stench that hung over the Mongol army at all times in the field due to their reluctance to bathe in rivers and streams, or the way Mongol horsemen would smear their exposed skin with yak grease to take the bite out of the winter wind on the high plains.
She stopped looking for historical errors after a few hours and turned instead to linguistic ones. Language grows and changes, just like any other organic element, and a good historian can also spot a forgery by the way certain words or phrases are used within a text.
Annja struck out there, too.
Her doubts about the authenticity of the manuscript were starting to take a beating in the face of what she was reading. So far, the manuscript had passed every test.
Knowing she’d been at it for hours, she got up and stretched a bit. She noticed a small serving tray had been left by the door at some point, and lifting the lid she discovered a plate of turkey sandwiches, complete with cranberry sauce and a bed of lettuce, along with a soft drink that was still icy cold. She gratefully dug in.
When she finished eating, she decided to give the text a rest and turn her attention to the map that had been hand drawn in the back of the journal.
She was in the midst of rereading the document for the sixth or seventh time when she saw a key piece of the puzzle. Several words on the page started with a funny little curlicue, as if the writer had left the pen on the page for a few seconds too long. At first, she thought it was just an artifact of the particular pen the author had used. Perhaps its point hadn’t been cut properly and the ink had pooled where it shouldn’t have. But then she began to notice that there wasn’t a consistency to its appearance. On one page a word starting with the letter T would have the little curlicue, but two pages later the same word would not.
Curious, she went back to the beginning and began to flip through the images of each page, looking for the strange little mark. Her trained eye began to pick out a pattern to its occurrences, something a little less than random.
“That’s interesting,” she told the empty room around her.
Grabbing a piece of paper, she went back to the beginning of the text again, but this time she wrote down every word where the strange mark appeared. She listed them in a vertical column, one after another, until she had reached the end. Scanning down the list, she quickly noted that the words seemed to form sentences and so she rewrote them in horizontal lines instead, guessing where one sentence left off and another one began. When she was finished, she was left with several paragraphs of text.
Her eyes widened as she realized what they were.
9
They came over the wall like ghosts.
Unheard.
Unseen.
They didn’t hesitate once they were on the ground on the other side but rather set off immediately for their objective, unconcerned with any of the defensive measures that had been put into place to prevent just the kind of thing they were attempting.
The mastiffs caught their scent within seconds of their appearance on this side of the wall. Trained to silently advance and render intruders immobile, the massive dogs moved through the darkness, intent on teaching their prey a lesson about trespassing where they were not wanted.
The lead man caught sight of the dogs as they came around the corner of the house. They were large, a good hundred and eighty pounds if an ounce, and they were coming on fast, but he kept his concentration on his objective, the south wing of the main house, and trusted his companions to handle their part of the job.
The dogs were quick, but the two men stationed in the trees outside the estate were quicker. Seconds after the dogs came into view, the sniper team went into operation, adjusting for distance, windage and the animals’ oncoming speed, and then firing.
Two shots.
Two hits.
The tranquilizer darts took another few seconds to work, so the dogs had closed to within fifteen feet of the lead man before they faltered and then crashed to the ground, unconscious.
Ignoring them, the team raced on.
The intruders made it halfway across the lawn before the dogs’ handlers came around the side of the house on their usual patrol route. The handlers had only just begun to process the fact that their charges were nowhere to be seen when the team in the trees fired again.
Unconscious, the handlers dropped into the grass before they even knew what hit them.
The motion sensors and floodlights came next. A swath of earth twenty feet in width had been seeded with pressure plates attached to a series of high-intensity lights that were intended to blind and disorient intruders who made it past the dogs. The specific section of the lawn containing the sensors looked no different than any other and an ordinary intruder would have been hard-pressed to get beyond it.
But as they had already demonstrated, this was no ordinary group of intruders.
The lead man never slowed. He charged into the designated area, his eyes on the wall that was getting closer with every step, confident that the sensors had been disarmed.
No sirens split the night.
No lights forced back the darkness.
The lead man reached the outside wall of the manor house. Unslinging the grapple gun from where he carried it across his back, he took aim and fired. The small steel hook shot upward, arced over the edge of the roof and embedded itself in the tiles high above. A sharp tug on the climbing rope attached to the hook confirmed its placement.
Hand over hand, the lead man and two others climbed to the roof, while the final two men in the team took up positions at the bottom of the rope, guarding the escape route for the others.
Once on the rooftop they followed the route that they had all committed to memory, moving from their initial entry point at the end of the south wing to a section of the roof above the main manor house. Their leader used the four chimneys to orient the team and then advanced to a spot midway along the roof’s western edge.
At his signal, his two companions began pulling up the roofing tiles and stacking them to one side. When they had created a space large enough for a man to fit through, one of them stepped to the side. The lead man, who by now had assembled a portable cutting rig from parts removed from his pack, passed the rig to his waiting companion.
The item they had come for was less than fifteen feet away, separated from them by just a thin section of plaster and wood.
The leader glanced at his watch.
They were right on time.
He gave the signal for his teammate to start cutting.
A NNJA FOUND M ASON and his employer in Davenport’s study on the first floor. She wasted no time in getting to the point.
“Something about the journal has been bothering me since this morning and I’ve only just now figured out what it is. If Curran died in that cave, who found the journal and how did you come to be in possession of it?” she asked.
Mason glanced at Davenport and the other man nodded, giving permission for him to answer the question.
“I handle a variety of jobs for Mr. Davenport. One of those happens to be scouting out new business opportunities. I was in Mongolia recently with a geological team, looking for mineral deposits. While investigating a series of caves a few days outside of Karakorum, we stumbled upon the mummified remains of two men. The journal was on a shelf near one of the bodies.”
“And so you took it?”
Mason shrugged. “I thought it might be important and taking it with me seemed the best way of preserving it.”
Annja frowned. “But now that you’ve had time to examine its contents, surely you understand that the site, and anything it contains, could be of historic importance to the Mongolian people?”
Davenport stepped in. “Of course we do, Annja. But we also want credit for finding the site and permission to excavate it. That is why we intend to apply for the proper paperwork to sponsor an expedition to do just that in the spring.” He spread his hands, as if to say, Can’t you see we’re doing the right thing here? “Determining the authenticity of the journal seemed an important step in that process.”
Annja wasn’t sure if that was the whole story or not, but she recognized that it was all she was going to get at the moment.
“Good enough,” she said, with a shrug of her own that clearly said she wasn’t going to make an issue of it. “Then I guess it’s okay to tell you…I think it’s real.” Annja couldn’t keep the smile from spreading across her face as she admitted it.
Davenport let out a whoop of joy. “I knew it!” he shouted. “I just knew it.”
Mason was up, shaking his employer’s hand, congratulating him, the two of them laughing and talking, when Annja broke in again.
“I said I think the journal is real. Unfortunately, the map is not.”
That brought both of them up short. Davenport’s voice held a trace of steel as he asked, “What do you mean the map is not? ”
Annja brought her laptop over to the table in front of the chairs where they’d been seated and turned it around to face them.
“Look,” she said. “This is a full-scale image of the map from the back of the journal.” The map appeared on the screen before them. “I cleaned it up some, but otherwise it is exactly the same. No image enhancements or anything like that.”
The two men nodded to show they were following her.
“Now this,” she said, calling up another image, “is a modern-day map of the same area. I’ve reduced it to scale to match the other one.” The two maps appeared side by side.
Davenport glanced between them. “I don’t see…Oh.”
Annja grinned. “Yeah. Oh.” She tapped the keyboard and they all watched as the two images slid over each other. Doing so allowed them to see that Curran, or whoever had drawn the map, had deliberately introduced errors into the positioning of many of the major landmarks. For instance, the Onon River had been moved slightly to the east while the Hentiyn Nuruu mountain range had been relocated a good distance to the south. The other errors were similar in nature; Annja had counted eleven in all.
Davenport stared at the map in confusion. “Why would he do that?”
Annja opened her mouth to reply but Mason beat her to the answer.
“He wanted to pass on the information but didn’t want to make it easy in case it fell into the wrong hands. Remember, there’s no way for anyone at that time to verify the map short of going there themselves. So a few subtle alterations and, voilà—the secret is safe.”
Davenport frowned. “So the map’s a fake? It won’t lead us to the tomb?”
Annja smiled. “The map’s authentic all right, in the sense that it is as old as we expected it to be, and more than likely penned by the individual we think penned it. The thing is, it just doesn’t give accurate directions to the tomb. At least, not directly. The location of the tomb is in there, we just have to break the code to get it.”
Davenport’s eyes shone with curiosity. “Code?” he asked.
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