by Jay Stringer
“Caliburn is going to be looking for Eades,” Chase said.
“Indeed.”
“And you’re looking for Caliburn.”
Conte’s smile was clear in his voice. “You know where she is.”
“I can help you set a trap. But the bait is a friend of mine. I need to get to her first, make sure she’s okay, and then we can draw Caliburn out.”
“This sounds like you’re laying out terms on a deal. I thought we weren’t playing?”
It was Chase’s turn to smile. “Maybe a little playing, now that we understand each other.”
“Okay. What are your terms?”
“First, I need you to send me all the files you recovered from Bobby and Eades. There might be information in there I need. We’re planning to spring a trap on Caliburn, but until we do, I’m making myself a walking target. I need to have as much information as I can get.”
“Agreed.”
Chase could hear him pressing keys on his computer. Her phone buzzed a second later to announce she’d received data.
“Second, I’ll go get Eades and bring her to London.” She looked at Hass. “Where I can call in some favors to keep her safe. Then I’ll work with you to get word out, set the hook.”
“Yes. And I believe you’ve already got our mutual friend Hassan in London with you. Is he there now?”
Chase and Hass shared a look. Of course.
“I’m here,” Hass said.
“Excellent, excellent. Hassan, I trust you will help Marah in every way you can. And once it is done, I will give you both the location of the Ark.”
Chase hesitated, looked at Hassan again. They were friends. He was one of the few people in the whole world she really trusted to any degree. But the Ark was the Ark. And giving them both the location at the same time could pit them against each other. Conte knew that. One last little spin in the tale.
Chase nodded, then said, “Deal.”
“Marah, bella, today you played my game as well as me.”
TWENTY-SIX
Nash climbed up the metal steps that had been hurriedly wheeled out to the Gulfstream jet. He was on a private airstrip two miles south of Northampton. The plane had landed only moments before and waited on the runway for him. His new employer clearly had friends in high places, as there had been no security check, no customs process. An American billionaire had simply entered the UK without any official record and was now preparing to fly north to Scotland after picking up two passengers.
Nash was greeted at the top of the steps by a tall blond man with a strong build and a presence that said he had no idea how to use it. He was wearing an expensive pinstripe suit but made it look like an act, like he was mimicking something he’d once seen a grown-up do. He looked to be in his early twenties, and trying hard to hide his nerves.
“Mr. Nash,” the big guy said, offering a hand to shake. “I’m Ted.”
“You got a second name there, Ted?”
Already, Nash could see he’d thrown the guy off. “Uh, yeah, McCallister.”
“Nice to meet you, kid. I guess you know Danny?”
Nash turned as he spoke, to gesture at the wiry Irishman behind him. He could tell from Danny’s tensed shoulders and set facial expression that he hated Ted almost as much as he hated Greg Richards. Nash filed that away.
“I do,” Ted said, nodding at Danny. “Good to see you.”
Danny grunted.
Ted stepped back inside the jet and gestured for them to follow. The space inside could have been the waiting area outside a Wall Street office. Plush carpet, leather chairs, and a door at each end. The one at the front, he guessed, was for the cockpit. The other would lead deeper into the plane. Ted pulled the jet’s door closed and locked it. All sounds from outside fell away. They were in a completely soundproofed room. Ted pressed a small intercom next to the door and said they were ready to go, then waved for Danny and Nash to each take a seat. The three of them settled in as the plane began to move. It was fast and smooth. Nash could feel the moment they left the ground, and everything tilted sharply for around sixty seconds as they climbed into the clouds, but then they leveled out again and there was no indication they were in a jet at altitude.
“Mr. Nash,” Ted said, “I was just reading up on you.”
“If you’d done that before, you wouldn’t have hired Greg Richards.”
The smile disappeared. Ted nodded at something, a thought he was keeping to himself. “That was a mistake.”
Nash followed up. “Yours?”
He glanced at Danny. The Irishman’s cool gaze was fixed on Ted, giving nothing away.
“That’s not important,” Ted said.
“It’s vital,” Nash countered. “Hiring him was a stupid move. Amateur. You’ve got Danny here on staff, and he’s clearly got some game. Whoever decided to bring Richards in over him is an idiot, and I want to know if that’s you or your boss.”
Nash caught Danny smiling.
Ted’s mouth opened and closed. Nothing came out, but Nash thought he heard a faint squeak somewhere down in the kid’s throat. Ted touched his ear, and Nash guessed there was a communication device in there. Ted mumbled an acknowledgment.
He nodded to Nash. “Come with me.”
Ted stood up and made for the door that led deeper into the plane. He ushered Nash through into another room that looked like an expensive office. The walls had wood paneling, covered in a soft, honey-colored finish. There were sofas, chairs, a large television screen, and a desk. There was another door at the back, set off to the side, somehow giving the impression it wasn’t important. He recognized the young woman rising out of the sofa to meet him. Lauren Stanford. She was blond and very sure. Her suit matched Ted’s but was infinitely more expensive, and she wore it like she owned it, leaving the kid looking like her tribute act.
She turned her attention to Ted first. “Go wait outside,” she said.
Her accent was New York. Expensive New York.
“What? But…”
“We’ll be fine.” She turned a smile on Nash. “I’m sorry, he didn’t offer you a drink. Would you like anything?”
“Some cold water would be nice.”
“Of course. And food? When was the last time you ate?”
Nash got the feeling he’d be hungry as soon as he saw food. But it was something he could hold off and deal with later. “No, I’m good.”
She nodded, turning to Ted and tilting her head toward the door at the back, indicating he should go deal with the drink. Ted hesitated. He gave one last frustrated look at Nash, then walked off. Nash heard the door open and close, but his full focus was on Stanford.
“That was quite a show you put on,” she said.
“You too. Kept him in his place.”
She turned to glance back at the door Ted had gone through. “He’s hard work.” Then to business. “You know who I am?”
“Yes.”
“Tell me.”
“Lauren Stanford. You run Dosa Cola and about five other large companies that I know of. You’ve been on the cover of every major business magazine since your parents died, and the tabloids have tried digging into your personal life, which I would assume is why you get people like Ted and Greg Richards to do your dirty work for you. And I just killed your ex-boyfriend.”
He threw that in as a challenge. How would she react? Was she driven by emotion, or was she serious about the game? As he watched, she smiled and gestured for him to take a seat on the sofa. She eased down next to him.
After a moment of silence, Nash leaned forward and started again. “You fund R18, and you clearly have some friends high up in the government over here, because you landed a plane on British soil without any kind of customs check. You’re looking for a missing journalist, Ashley Eades, because Danny out there tried to kill her and missed.”
She bowed her head. “Close enough. Yes, Ashley Eades has information I need. I’m looking for something, and I think she knows where it is.”
> “The Fountain of Youth.”
“You know about that? Okay. Yes. My family has been after the Fountain for a long time.” She smiled again, paused. “And I know where Eades is.”
The door opened and closed. Footsteps. Ted set a pitcher of water on the table, along with three glasses. Stanford picked up the third, handed it back to Ted, and told him again to wait outside. After another show of frustration, this one larger than the first, Ted left.
The woman shook her head. “Such a shame. He basically came with the deal. He’s younger than me, the son of my mother’s best friend, and while I always saw him as my little brother, my family had other ideas. We always had very…”
Her words trailed off. She stood up and poured the water into two glasses, handed one to Nash. Their fingers touched. She sat back down, closer to him this time. Nash could read these signals. He’d need to be a fool to miss them. She’d just turned up the volume from zero to eleven. He reminded himself of what Greg had said. She’s insane. Clearly, she was manipulative, too.
“I’d like to trust you. Can I trust you?” She didn’t wait for an answer before continuing. “My family has always had a problem. We have very particular beliefs. For an idea to stay pure, you need a small group. Focus. So, my parents, and their parents before them, and all the way back, I suppose, have to look for fellow travelers. They really wanted me and Ted to be a thing, but… he’s an idiot.”
Nash felt the need to push back, show he couldn’t be flirted into submission. “Well, you’re the one who let him handle this.”
She smiled, showing teeth now. “True. I heard what you said before. You were right. It was my decision to trust Ted. My decision to hire Greg. In my circles—the business side, I mean—we tend to give trusted jobs to people we know. The old boys’ network, I guess. So those decisions are on me. I was new to the game, and there’s no textbook. There’s nothing that tells you how to spot the real deal, how to tell them from a poseur.” She paused. Tilted her head at Nash. “Now I know the difference.”
“Whose idea was it to use the Caliburn name?”
“I wanted the real Caliburn. That part was me. I left the hiring up to Ted and Greg, and Greg ran with using the name. My turn for a question. Tell me about Marah Chase.”
That stopped Nash in his tracks. He’d been in control of the conversation until that moment, doing all the pushing, making Stanford back off, concede ground. But with one name, she’d gone back on the attack.
“Chase?”
She smiled. Knowing. “You have a history?”
“We’ve gone around a couple times, beating each other to relics.”
“There’s more than that.”
Nash nodded. “When she first came on the scene, she was really green. Really green. It’s such a different world, our trade. She was really tough for a normal person. Grown up on a farm, taken knocks, didn’t trust easily. But that’s not enough for the black market. You need an extra layer, and she didn’t have it. She came from academia. She wasn’t going to last five minutes. So I helped her, trained her.”
“That’s very generous.” She touched his hand again, for just a second. “Did you get what you wanted out of it?”
She’d read him right away. Seen through his help to what he’d expected in return. “No.”
She leaned back, nodded like she understood his feelings exactly, and sipped her water. “She’s a problem.”
“What’s she got to do with this?” Nash asked the question, already feeling that he knew the answer.
“I hired her,” Stanford said. “Marah Chase and Ashley Eades are both problems that need solving. Keep your friends close, your enemies closer.”
Enemies. “Why do you hate her?”
She set down the glass on the table. Gave him a very serious look. “Can I trust you?”
“Are you going to pay me?”
“Name your price.”
“Then you can trust me.”
“You picked the name Caliburn. I assume you know what it means?”
“It’s a sword.”
“Right. I want you to be my sword. And for that, you’ll need to know the truth. But first, I’m afraid, I do need to know you’re the right choice.”
Nash nodded. He didn’t say anything. A test was coming. Whatever it was, he would make sure to pass. She extended her wrist to reveal a white smartwatch beneath the cuff of her jacket. She tapped the screen twice, and the door at the end opened. Ted stepped back into the room.
Stanford leaned in to Nash, like she was whispering a playful secret, and said, “Kill him. Right now.”
Nash waited for Ted to reach the sofa before springing to his feet. He punched Ted lightly in the gut, just enough to surprise him, not enough to double him over. In that moment of shock, Nash stepped around behind Ted, wrapping his right arm around his neck, crushing his windpipe. Nash brought his left arm up to the side of Ted’s face, using it to lock his right forearm in place in a sleeper hold. Ted rocked and pushed back, trying to shake free, and slapped at Nash’s arms.
The punch had already knocked too much wind out of his lungs, and he hadn’t started from a solid defensive base to begin with. With his throat sealed off, Ted couldn’t speak or grunt. Nash’s forearm was tucked under the chin, meaning Ted couldn’t open his mouth much, either. The only sounds were his feet scraping the carpet, his hands slapping on Nash’s arms. A faint clicking as Ted’s tongue moved around, smacking off the inside of his mouth.
Stanford stood up to face both Ted and Nash. She ran a soothing hand down Ted’s cheek. “Shhhh. It’s okay. I know you’re scared, but if you just accept this part, it all gets easier.”
She repeated her gentle words a few more times, and slowly Nash could feel the fight going out of Ted, and the younger man became a heavier weight. Nash pressed on, knowing the drift into unconsciousness was only the start. As Ted started to slip away, Stanford’s eyes grew wide with excitement. She was smiling, drawing power and adrenaline from watching death. A part of Nash, a voice he’d stopped caring about a long time ago, told him she was dangerous. Greg’s words tried to find purchase again. She’s insane. Sure, but in that moment all he could do was focus on how red her lips were.
Once Ted was gone, Nash lowered the body down into one of the chairs opposite the sofa. Stanford stayed close to him.
She said, “That was impressive.”
Nash smiled. “You’re crazy.”
“I’m Lauren.”
“August.”
“Caliburn.”
Lauren’s eyes flicked down to Nash’s lips. She wanted him to see that. For a second, he thought she was going to kiss him. Then she smiled and regained her earlier poise, sitting back down. Nash followed her lead.
“Chase,” Lauren said, after sipping water. “She caused a lot of trouble for some friends of mine a couple years back. I had a whole plan laid out. Let them do their thing, then step in and take over once the hard work was done. But she ruined it.”
“The London attack?”
“R18 is not a front. You now are not a front. My family has always believed in the cause. Purity. But my parents, they grew spoiled and soft. Let money get in the way. Wall Street. Corporate interests. They needed to move over, so that I could get things back on track.” She smiled at him over the glass. “Does that bother you?”
Nash looked at Ted’s corpse and then at Lauren. Even the voice that had warned him about her was now silent. “No.”
“Something my father once said—like, the only time he ever trusted me with a business conversation. He said the trick is to find out what motivates people and work with that. Doesn’t matter what it is. If it’s love, trust, sex, patriotism, money. Find out what it is and you can motivate them, and then you can always trust them to do the work, once you know.”
“Money makes the world go ’round.”
“Yes, it does.”
“But how can you be so sure this thing exists? It’s a myth.”
Lauren stood u
p to grab a laptop off her desk. She sat back down next to Nash, their thighs touching. “I only gave Chase enough information to find Eades. I have way more.” She clicked the mouse, loading what seemed to be a database. “Chase knows about a team of Brits who went missing searching for it, but she doesn’t know about a Nazi expedition that went missing fifty years later. I have all their research, right here, leading up to their last trip. I’m sure whatever Eades knows, I can add it into this, and it’ll tell us where it is.”
“And why do you want it?”
Nash really meant, What motivates you?
“Imagine a two-tier Fountain of Youth,” Lauren said. “Controlling who gets to live forever and who doesn’t. To the pure people, and the people who can pay, we offer a utopia. Eternal health. To the impure, to the underclass, we offer… something else. And imagine you, being paid more money than God, making that happen.”
Nash leaned back, thinking about motivation as Lauren ran her hand up the inside of his thigh. “I think I can see that.”
“Of course you can. You’re like me. You have vision. And imagine you getting to know ahead of time exactly where Chase is going to be, without her knowing you’re coming. I knew she’d find Eades quicker than I could, but she’s already led me to someone who has the answer. So, once we land, I don’t need her anymore.”
Nash smiled. “Deal.”
“Well, then.” Lauren unzipped his pants. “We better hurry.”
TWENTY-SEVEN
Hass took a turn at the wheel as they passed through the north of England and over the Scottish border. It gave Chase an opportunity to look through the documents Conte had sent. She was sure he had tagged them with tracer software, turning her cell into a moving beacon, but she was relaxed about it. The plan was to lead Conte to Caliburn, so she didn’t mind if he knew where she was.
