by Jay Stringer
“Like the Pacific Northwest.”
“If and when that goes, it could be above a nine. It could be the largest ever recorded and would be followed by a tsunami that would wipe out Seattle. And that’s before we think of the five active volcanoes they have in Washington State. The activity would trigger one or all of them.”
Hass nodded. “Okay, avoid Washington for the next fifty years.”
Then he thought, Isn’t that where Chase’s family is? Maybe she could call them…
Freema continued. “Here, as the plates drift apart and the land caught in the middle sinks, eventually the valley will drop beneath sea level and form a new ocean basin. Up until now, we thought this process would be very slow, millions of years, and the highest quake we were at risk of was a seven.”
“But now?”
Freema spread her arms wide: Who knows? “We need new theories. None of the data is making sense. We’re experiencing movement that should be taking hundreds of thousands of years. The seismic activity is much higher than anything we had anticipated.”
“How much higher?”
“The big one.”
“Maybe time I took a vacation,” Hass said, slipping into his briefs.
“Of course.” Freema shut the door. “The Cowboy’s answer to everything.”
It seemed to be Hass’s curse that everyone gave him nicknames. No matter how hard he’d worked to assert his own identity, people still wanted to choose new ones for him. He let Freema get away with it, just like he allowed Marah Chase to call him Doc. But whenever anyone else tried, he corrected them, politely at first, directly if needed, that his name was Hassan. Hass was acceptable.
In Freema’s eyes, he was the Cowboy because of his accent. He’d been lucky enough to earn a scholarship to an American college. While he was over there, first at Michigan and then at Berkeley, he’d changed the way he talked. Not just the dialect but the cadence, the sentence structure. He found he now thought differently, his brain somehow shaped by his hybrid accent, and he sounded like an American actor playing a Somalian in a movie. Hass didn’t like it. Above all else, he was Somalian, and proud of it. But when he tried to revert to his original accent, he sounded like a fake. It gave his family cover to distance themselves from him. They knew better now than to judge his transition. Outwardly, they accepted him as a man. But his accent, his “Western” style, gave them an excuse to complain about his choices and to keep him at arm’s length.
Freema still spoke the same way she had when they were young. For all her travels, and though she was the first to admit she didn’t feel any real link to her home country, she’d kept hold of whatever it was Hass had lost. And the real kicker was that she wasn’t even really Somalian. Ethnically she was Chaga, from southern Tanzania, where her family had grown coffee on the southern slope of Kilimanjaro. The coffee money had paid for her father to go to university, and that, in turn, had led to a teaching job in Somalia. The move had come when Freema was still a baby, but she’d never quite taken to seeing Somalia as her home. And yet, she still sounded authentic, and she knew it drove Hass crazy.
“Well,” Hass said, finding his shirt, “if you’re telling me this whole place is about to split right open, I think maybe I should go somewhere with no chance of a quake. Like California.”
“It might be a false alarm.” Freema was a terrible liar. “But maybe you should get your old job back.” She opened the bathroom door, fully dressed now in the business suit she’d been wearing when she’d dropped by the Royale bar. She was messing with her conference badge, trying to get it to stick to her jacket’s lapel. “I liked visiting you in New York.”
Hass helped her fix the badge, then slipped his hands round behind her, cupping her butt and easing her gently to him. “How urgently do they need to see you?”
“I’m telling you the world might be about to end, and you want sex?”
“You could tell me the universe was about to end and I’d want sex.”
“They’re sending a car.”
“The driver will wait.”
“Hass…”
“They already know the tremor happened. Another fifteen minutes won’t hurt.”
“That’s romantic.”
They kissed. It was easy. Comfortable. The two of them had always felt right together. Somehow, that had never been enough to make anything permanent. Hass couldn’t explain it. What he did know was that this was good, for right now, in this room. And they’d be good again, in whatever the next room was.
He could feel her breathing pick up beneath his touch.
“If I wasn’t in a romantic mood,” he said, “I would have said five minutes.”
SEVEN
Chase stayed in her seat long after the crew had opened the door at LaGuardia. There was no rush. After eighteen hours in the air, broken up with layovers in Germany and DC, she had already lost a whole day to traveling. An extra five minutes wouldn’t hurt. Especially now that the doors were open and real air was filling the cabin. This flight had been warm and stuffy, recycled air filling her lungs. She pushed back into the seat and watched everyone jostling for place. Grabbing their overhead luggage, hitting each other in the backs and heads, stepping into small spaces for some imagined advantage. And then standing there, waiting, until they were allowed to start shuffling forward toward the exit.
Chase watched the cabin crew thanking the passengers as they went by. One of the attendants was hot. A redhead who knew how to wear the uniform. She’d smiled at Chase a couple of times during the trip. It had felt like the right kind of smile, but with such a short flight from DC to New York, there hadn’t been time to find out.
Chase closed her eyes, thinking about dinner plans. Was it even dinnertime? Flying back to the US from Africa or Europe was always difficult. Traveling back in time. She’d spent more than twenty-four hours traveling, but where were those hours now? This had been her life for too long. Planes, cars, trains, boats. Time zones. Spending hours in the air that were wiped out of existence upon landing, only to reappear on the return trip.
As the last of the passengers disappeared from view at the front, Chase stood up and stretched. She took her battered messenger bag down from the overhead bin, shouldered it, and headed toward the door. The hot attendant smiled at her on the way past and said, “Welcome home,” and Chase hesitated for a second, wondering if it was worth finally ticking one fantasy off the list. But tiredness and hunger kicked in, so she smiled in return and stepped out onto the jetway. She headed up the ramp and out into the airport, then crossed the hall into the bathroom. Setting her bag down next to the sink, she pulled out her toiletries and brushed her teeth before spraying some cheap deodorant and applying fresh lip balm. Home was only a cab ride away, but she felt stale and dry after breathing processed air for so long. She stared at herself in the mirror, thinking of Nash’s words from the bar.
“We’re getting old, kid.”
Well, Nash had a head start. He’d always carried himself that way. Wanting to be older, to show off his extra experience. But now it felt like he was right. The years were adding up. Or the mileage. Or both.
Chase gathered her things together, pulling a scarf out of the bag. It would come in handy on the ride home, wrapped around the bottom half of her head. A trick she’d learned. Fewer people try to talk to you if your mouth is hidden.
Chase didn’t need to go by baggage claim. She’d left her suitcase in Ethiopia. The clothes had all been bought especially for the trip. The guns, and the leather belt she carried them on, were the only things she’d hesitated over. She could have arranged to have them shipped by the Royale. But what was the point? Maybe she didn’t need them anymore.
Chase’s thoughts cleared. Her field instincts kicked in. Something was wrong. She’d seen something, without seeing it. She slowed down and took a look around.
There was no crowd coming through, no line. Chase must have hit a rare quiet spot between flights. The last of the stragglers from her plane
were up ahead, pausing to look down at their phones. Off to her right, she could see a few people sitting on benches, reading books, drinking coffee. A cleaner was walking by, dragging a plastic mop bucket on wheels.
But there was someone else, too.
Someone who was looking for her.
He was a tall man, with blond hair and broad shoulders. He looked strong. Chase read him as trouble, as someone with the capacity to start trouble. But he was dressed in a suit, more chauffeur than executive, and there was an anxious look to his stance, like he knew he’d messed up. He was standing beside Chase, half turned away, scanning the other people. He held a sign down at his side, but it was facing toward Chase and she could see a name written on it.
Her name.
Well, a version of it.
Mara Chase. They’d missed the h, but she was used to that.
He’d been waiting for her, expecting she would be in the crowd coming straight off the flight. He hadn’t counted on her hanging back. She had only a few seconds to decide what to do before he turned back this way for another look.
Who was he?
She wasn’t expecting anyone to meet her. And who knew she’d been on that flight? Chase made her decision. She wasn’t stopping to find out what this was about. If someone wanted to talk with her, they could pick up the phone. And she’d just flown halfway across the globe, in three metal tubes. No way was she stopping to talk to anyone now.
She tied the scarf into place, like a bandanna, and tilted her head down to avoid anyone’s eye contact. She pressed on. As the big man turned slowly back toward her, she moved the other way, aiming past his far shoulder and passing behind him. She moved fast, but not fast enough to draw attention. Through the automatic doors, and out into the New York air, she turned toward the taxi stand. The wait there was always the opposite of what she expected. If she was in a rush, there would be a line back to the door. If she had all the time in the world, there would be only a person or two waiting there. Today, the gods of convenient getaway were smiling. There was only one other person ahead of her, an elderly woman who was already getting into a cab. Chase sent up a prayer to whoever and slipped into the back of the next cab in line.
The ride over to the Upper West Side took a shade over thirty minutes. Everything was falling right, and Chase started to get a good feeling about the thoughts she’d been having on the flight over. The decision she hadn’t voiced out loud yet, because saying it would make the whole thing real.
She climbed the stairs to her fourth-floor walk-up on West Eightieth, behind the Museum of Natural History. Usually, she felt each step and cursed having bought a place so high up. Today, she felt lighter as she climbed, weight dropping off her back, stress falling away from her joints. She fumbled for her keys in an outside compartment on the messenger bag and then let herself into the apartment.
It was small, but much larger than other places she’d looked at before buying. She had a main living room, with a kitchen area along one wall, and a bedroom separated off by two sliding wooden doors. The bathroom wasn’t much larger than a closet, but the shower had proved big enough for two people. The bedroom had stretched her budget, but the investment had been worth it to establish a home here, ready for her new life.
New life.
Chase laughed, looking around at the boxes. Books, clothes. Even furniture that she’d bought and never gotten around to building. She had a small sofa, a TV, and a coffee table piled with books and magazines. The bedroom was in a similar state, suitcases arranged around the bed, with an ongoing filing system of clean and dirty clothes.
New life.
There was a job waiting at the Museum of Natural History, working on a special exhibit they were putting together about Cleopatra. Chase was supposed to be working with a Puerto Rican archaeologist who was looking for the ancient queen’s tomb, just outside Alexandria. TV companies had made several documentaries about the dig, and the museum wanted to be ready to roll out a world-exclusive exhibition the minute news broke of them finding the tomb. And for once, Chase was supposed to be the desk worker in all of this, being the point of contact in the States. It had become almost a running joke. Every time she came home and started to prepare for the job, she would get offered a relic-running gig and ask the museum to wait a little bit longer. Chase knew they were trading to some degree on her reputation, using her involvement as a marketing gimmick. There was only one Marah Chase. They couldn’t go out and find another, and this gave her a lot of leeway. But fame hadn’t been her choice. She would have much rather stayed anonymous. When the Guardian journalist tracked Chase down, bringing the relic-running community into the mainstream, her life had changed forever. And she felt no guilt in using whatever perks came her way. Book deals? Hollywood options? Sure. Enough money to buy a place in Manhattan? Bring it on. A dream job at the museum? Hell yes.
But now, living like this, none of it really felt worth it. All the hassle. All the intrusion on her private life. Total strangers feeling like they owned a piece of her. Chase would trade back all the benefits of her new life in a heartbeat to be able to return to how things used to be. But until someone invented time travel, she was happy to trade on her own reputation just as much as the museum, and make them wait. Still, she was aware that their kindness was a limited resource, and they were running low.
She sat down on the sofa and stretched out, sighing, making a show for nobody in particular. There was a pair of cycling gloves on the cushion next to her. They belonged to Dani the Dominican, a bike messenger Chase liked to fool around with when she was in town. The last few times had started to get weird. A familiar tension had been there, underneath the fun. Chase could tell Dani was having those thoughts. The what-are-we-doing? thoughts. They always got in the way eventually.
Maybe it was time…
“I’m done.”
Out loud, just like that. The thing she’d been scared to say. This was it. The black market could eat a person alive. The longer you stay in the game, the shorter the odds get on getting hurt, imprisoned, or killed. Chase knew she was already pushing her luck. Fate had handed her a way out two years ago, and she’d only half taken it. This apartment was a monument to having one foot out the door. And there was no topping the Ark of the Covenant. Or finding the tomb of Alexander the Great. She’d moved here to set up a new life. It was time to get on with doing it.
She heard movement out in the hallway, and then someone knocked on the door.
Nobody had tried the buzzer. Must be a neighbor, come to check who was making noise in the apartment, see if it was a burglar, maybe. The co-op board had liked the idea of a celebrity living in the building and loved having someone from the museum. But then one of them must have learned how to use a search engine, because they’d started prying into her private life, her comings and goings. The retired teacher from 4D always somehow managed to be waiting out in the hall when Chase opened the door, ready with questions about Chase’s girlfriends, trying to invite herself in for a coffee. Before living in the city, Chase had thought Kramer from Seinfeld was unrealistic. Now she knew he was toned down.
Chase sighed again as she stood up, crossing over to the door. She opened it without checking the peephole.
The hot redheaded flight attendant smiled at her with ruby lips. “Hi.”
Chase’s head swirled with appropriate questions, but all she managed to say was “Uh.”
Red leaned forward a little. “I was hoping you’d come with us.”
Chase took a step back at that. “Us?”
The chauffeur from the airport stepped into view. He moved fast, setting his foot across the threshold. Chase knew she was already too late to slam the door. Up close, the guy looked like an overdeveloped teenager.
“You slipped out past me,” he said.
“We’re friends,” Red explained, leaning against the doorframe. “We’d like you to come with us.”
“I don’t think so.”
Chase was backing up. Looking fo
r something heavy, or her phone. There were weapons in her bag, if she could get to it.
“Five thousand,” Red said.
Chase paused. “What?”
“Dollars. Five thousand dollars, for an hour of your time. Actually…” Red looked up at Blondie, nodded at whatever thought she’d just had. “Two hours, in case traffic is bad.”
EIGHT
Nash had really run with Hass’s advice. He’d spent a whole night screwing and gambling away his drunk, but then found he wasn’t enjoying either of them as much without booze. He added it back into the mix and simply avoided going to bed, finally crashing the following evening after the casino had both cleaned him out and sobered him up.
After a long sleep and a large meal, he settled his bill at the Royale and thought about the next part of the advice. Face the next day ready to do better.
He wasn’t ready to quit. He just needed to find the next thing. Let Chase have this one. He’d find something bigger. Something better. He had no idea what it was yet, but he knew it was out there waiting for him, somewhere just beyond the door.
He shouldered his bag and turned to leave.
“I hear you had a bad day.”
The voice was low and laid-back. An Italian accent wrapped up in a slow purr. Nash turned to see Francisco Conte leaning against the wall beside the check-in desk. For as long as Nash had been a relic runner, Conte had been a fixture on the circuit. He was a raven, specializing in collecting and trading information. He was a small man, short and lean, with a taste for sharp suits and, preferably, an expensive overcoat. Rumors had him as everything from a retired spy to a reformed Mafia fixer. On the circuit, he was trusted to be neutral, cleaning up problems and enforcing the peace at the Royale. He often oversaw the deals and transactions, providing escrow services and safe storage for the artifacts until both parties were satisfied.
