by K. T. Tomb
“What’s for lunch?” he asked, sitting down at the table.
Sirita pushed a covered plate in his direction and said, “There are drinks in the fridge.”
“Did you bring the watch for Sirita?” Chyna asked him.
“Of course, along with a bunch of other stuff she’s going to need,” he replied. Then pointing to a black case that looked like the type a camera would be kept in, he continued, “Her entire personal cache is in that case.”
After they had eaten and put their things together, the five went back downstairs into the hustle and bustle of the airport and to the main security check point. All seven pieces of their firearms were turned over with the corresponding paperwork at that point for secure transportation to, and storage aboard, the aircraft.
When they were through all the procedures and had arrived at their gate, Chyna was relieved to see Asha and Eli waving animatedly at them from the counter of a coffee shop. Chyna and Sirita waved back at them and the group made their way over.
“It’s nice to see you two here. Are you ready for our adventure?” Chyna asked.
“Absolutely,” Eli said, answering for the two of them.
“Excellent. Well, let me make some introductions. Eli, Asha, this is Demetri and this is Thorin; our security detail and this is Oscar, our technical engineer.”
“It’s lovely to meet you all,” Asha said.
Sirita chuckled softly as she observed the two. Somehow they reminded her of the Tweedle Twins in Alice in Wonderland. One would answer one question, and then the other would answer the next. She assumed that it must come from so many years of working closely together.
It was still funny as hell though.
Soon enough, the details of their flight came over the loud speaker and boarding instructions were announced. They stood almost immediately; ready to get out of the noisy locomotion of the terminal and into their comfortable first class seats. Soon the flight was fully boarded and the flight attendants closed the door and made their safety demonstrations in preparation for takeoff.
When the aircraft reached cruising altitude, Chyna ordered a gin and tonic and turned on her laptop. The inflight Wi-Fi was reasonably fast and soon she was logged in to Found History and checking her secure email. There was a message from Nigel informing her that Lana had not been sending many emails in the last few days. This Chyna knew because they always communicated using an instant messaging app.
He went on to say that what Lana had done was consistently upload her notes from the cataloging exercise and the photographs she took of the items she was working with. There were even photos that she had taken of the other members of the team and group shots of all of them at work together or out on the dig site.
Chyna replied to the email telling Nigel thanks and that they were finally on the way to Baghdad. She also told him to be sure to keep a close eye on the signal from Lana’s tracking device. She would want to know immediately if anything changed at all.
When she went to the photographs, Chyna noted the people who were in the pictures with Lana. She didn’t recognize any of them, but she knew her lead investigator; if she had taken their picture, they were of some importance to the project.
Chyna forwarded those pictures to Oscar, Sirita and Ilea; asking the Director to identify the people for her. Then she went to the pictures of the artifacts. There weren’t many, which meant that Lana had not been very impressed with what she had seen. But then there came a series of about fifteen pictures of one particular item.
It was black and highly polished; made of what must be solid hematite.. The object was in the coiled shape of a snake that was hooded like a King Cobra. It seemed poised to strike but the head seemed too low as if it were bowed. In another picture, the top of the statue was shown to reveal a rough patch on the top of the snake’s head. It was evident that something had broken off from that spot.
Chyna went to the notes that Lana had archived regarding the idol and began to read:
‘I’ve studied the idol from every angle and there is nothing here that supports Dr. Linder’s theory that it may have been a singular idol; something from a temple alcove or originally made for someone’s house. I am convinced that the altar we uncovered had been plundered before this team arrived here. The Ninurta and the monster are intact and make sense in relation to each other, but what do they have to do with the basilisk? Whatever is missing from the top of the idol’s head will be the answer to the riddle. But because I am convinced of the theft beyond doubt I will inform the Director in the morning. Without an investigation and some testing done, there’s no way for us to know if whatever that was happened two thousand years or two weeks ago.’
“Oh, Lana,” Chyna sighed, shaking her head, “What did you do?”
***
“Aziz, I didn’t expect you of all people to be calling me with such petty complaints. You’re supposed to be the best at this sort of thing. Why are you so concerned about the Ambrose woman?”
“She speaks Arabic. This morning she took up the complaint from one of the scientists about the food we gave them for breakfast. I had to have a long talk with her. It was her behavior that upset me the most and I thought that I should call you. If I could get rid of her right away, things would go much smoother.”
“No!” the man hissed into the phone, angrily. “Listen to me Aziz; regardless of how much Lana Ambrose disconcerts you, we are not killing any of those people. We separated the Americans from the others for one reason only. Whereas the Europeans will pay to get their people back in order to avoid it coming out about how their precious artifacts got into their museums and collections; the Americans will not negotiate with terrorists, neither have they made the mistake of procuring anything that has been removed from Babylon.
“The Director is already very flustered over the situation and she is staying far from the media with it. So, we just have to stick to the plan. Send the message about the Americans to her today; it’s only a matter of time before the family members start asking questions at which point, it’s bound to be all over the news.”
“What about the Europeans and Lana Ambrose?” Aziz asked.
“I’ll let you know when to contact the United Nations about them. If I don’t get Ilea out of UNESCO by the end of this whole affair, I’ll be rather disappointed,” the man said, with a sinister laugh. “As for Lana, I think you can figure out a way to use her to manipulate the situation. Just be careful; she’s a clever one. Too much time spent with Chyna Stone, if you ask me.”
“By the way, didn’t Director Le Gal call her and her team in to retrieve the girl? She’s not going to become a liability to us now that her friends are on the way, is she?”
“They don’t have a clue where to start looking for her, Aziz. So, unless you’re planning to make it into a problem for us, we should be fine. Did you search her for devices? Take away the cell phones and weapons?”
“Of course we did,” Aziz replied, exasperated.
“Then you won’t be compromised by Chyna being in Baghdad. Be that as it may, I still don’t want you to take her for granted. She’s a better warrior than you and all your men combined. I’d suggest that you move the captives regularly and do it so they can’t get a clue as to where they are. Keep an eye on the Found History team, too. You won’t be able to outsmart them unless you know what they do.”
“Okay,” Aziz said, “We’ll stay alert.”
“Good.”
As the man hung up the phone, he let a wide smile spread across his face.
It was about time the regime changed around here. They had become inert, stagnant, and stale under Ilea’s leadership. She was way too unconfrontational; she hated a dispute, ran from an argument. There was no way the organization could be led in that manner and survive for much longer, he thought. But when I’m in charge, things will be a whole lot different and then maybe we can be known a little more worldwide for doing and not just sitting around looking.
He was very pl
eased with himself as he sat looking out over the Paris skyline from his office window. What he didn’t know was that if he had turned around at that second, he would have been in time to see Moira, the intern, step back out into the hall and silently close his office door.
Chapter Five
It was hard not to notice the large white van following them from the airport all the way into the city.
Chyna thought it lucky that at the airport she had decided to drive one of the Land Rovers herself and give the second to Eli. She took Asha, Sirita and Demetri with her, allowing Thorin and Oscar to go with Eli. Initially, it had been to ensure that each vehicle had one guide and one bodyguard, but with the van on their tail, her plan would allow them to split up and confuse whoever it was trying to follow them.
She took the chance that if they split up, the followers would choose to stick with her vehicle and she was right. With military precision, the two Land Rovers approached the next exit on the highway as if they were going to pass it and then at the last minute, Eli veered off onto the exit ramp. Chyna watched the driver falter for a moment behind the wheel of the white van before following her at a steady pace. She slowed down and moved over into the slow lane as she drove directly to the U.S. Embassy on the Tigris River. When she pulled into the gates, Chyna was relieved to see the other vehicle had already arrived, which meant that Oscar and Thorin were in position.
As she got out of the Land Rover and glanced towards the gate, she noticed the white van passing at a very slow pace and though she couldn’t see the occupants, she knew they were looking directly at them, wondering what they would do next. Chyna assumed that they would find somewhere to park close by and wait for them to come out of the embassy compound. At that moment, she saw a little movement in a tree that was just inside the embassy wall. The shaking continued until she saw Oscar drop from the lower branches with his long range rifle secured across his back. He jogged across the lawn towards them.
“Is it activated?” Chyna asked him.
“Sure is,” Oscar replied. “You should be able to track them right now with that app I put on your phone.”
Chyna took the phone from her pocket and opened the application. It took a few seconds for anything to happen but soon enough there was the little dot moving slowly along a road a few streets over from where they stood. She smiled at the image, satisfied with what she saw. They would stay in the embassy as long as it took for the van to leave the area and proceed to the place where they were holding the American group of scientists.
They were all painfully aware of what could possibly happen to the second group of hostages if they were to sweep into the building in Baiyaa and rescue Lana and the European archaeologists. They just couldn’t risk it so they would wait for the followers to lead them there.
Agent Hamilton was duly impressed with their little tagging exercise. He and a few of his operatives had surrounded Oscar to get a look at his equipment and the tracker that was up on his laptop screen showing that the van had parked a few streets over waiting for their departure from the compound.
“I definitely have to get me a few of those,” he said, laughing and clapping Oscar firmly on the back, as he listened to the engineer reel off the firing distances and tracking radius of the apparatus.
“Agent Hamilton,” Chyna called to him, as she approached the little group.
“Miss Stone,” he replied, extending his arm to her for a handshake. “It’s a pleasure to meet you. Agent Stewart has only the best things to say about you and your team and this young man here has certainly wowed us so far with that awesome tagging he did on your little tail there.”
“Yeah, they’re certainly a bunch of amateurs. I don’t think it’s going to be difficult to get our people back.”
“We’re here to help in any way we can.”
***
Moira sat at her desk feverishly firing off the emails she had been instructed to send.
How the hell did I still manage to become the intern in this whole thing? Hadn’t I been the one who had blackmailed him? She thought, as she typed furiously.
But she knew the answer to her question only too well. He had been completely blindsided by her brazen confrontation in his office that evening. He had no idea how much of his conversation with Aziz she had overheard and she planned to use that to his disadvantage.
“So, tell me sir,” she had started, as she closed the door to his office behind her and turned the lock. “Is this what the United Nations is all about?”
“What are you talking about, Moira?”
“Conspiracy with paramilitary groups, kidnapping, ransoms, blackmail? I really just thought it was a lot of boring paper-pushing up until now.”
“What are you talking about?” he had demanded angrily. “There’s nothing of the sort going on around here. What is it that you think you know?”
“I know your man Aziz was supposed to send Director Le Gal an email this afternoon with the ransom details for the missing group of archaeologists. So I made sure to intercept her incoming mail today by setting her inbox to automatically forward everything to my email address and lo and behold, there came the email from an anonymous address demanding one million Euros for each of the captives.”
“Oh shit!” he said, placing his face in his hands.
“That’s right. All I want to know is; what’s your share of that eight million?”
“Why would that be of interest to you?”
“Isn’t it obvious what I’m doing here? If you don’t give me thirty percent of your cut, all I have to do is pick up the phone and tell Director Le Gal everything I know. She’ll have your slick butt in La Sante prison faster than you can say ‘Hello’.”
“You think you can swim with the big sharks do you, Moira?”
“No, sir,” she replied, calmly. “I know that I can. Now tell me what your share is.”
It turned out that he and Aziz were splitting the ransom on the Europeans fifty-fifty, but the Americans were a different story. He would personally broker the deal between Aziz and the United Nations, save the group and get all the recognition for it by resolving the situation independently of the Director, making her look incompetent.
The little weasel was after Ilea’s job. Moira wasn’t sure how successful that part of his plan would be and she wasn’t a hundred percent sure she cared whether he did it or not. When she had her cut safely squirreled away, she would make that decision.
So, she sat there and sent every communiqué that he had asked her to. Clearly, he intended to make her earn her cut. It also occurred to Moira that by instructing her to take over the communication between him and Aziz, he was incriminating her as much as he was in the whole affair. She had taken some precautions with that however, by going down to the electronics store nearby and purchasing a new tablet with mobile internet capability and a disposable prepaid SIM card for it. She would be damned before she was caught with any of that information on a device she used for anything else.
When she finished, she stood from the desk and stretched. Why hadn’t she just left at six and gone home to do this? She wasn’t sure, other than wanting to get it over with as soon as possible. Regardless, she was done now and ready to go home for the night so she pressed the sleep button on the tablet and walked down the hall towards the restroom. It didn’t take her long use the toilet, wash her hands and freshen up her makeup, but when she returned it was clear that she had taken a little too long; the tablet was gone.
Frantic, she looked around the office. Her heart sank when she realized there was only one other person in the office with her.
“Dammit!” she said, trying to remember if she had initiated the password protect feature for waking the tablet up.
She couldn’t be sure that she had, so Moira dipped into her handbag and with drew a tiny brown vial which she palmed and walked to Ilea Le Gal’s office door. She took a deep breath, knocked and walked in. Quickly, she scanned the desk for the two things she needed, both of
them were easy to spot. Her tablet lay at the Director’s left elbow with the screen bright and the email application open.
Oh, fuck! she thought.
The other was the steaming cup of coffee that Ilea always drank when she was staying late in her office. Before she could look up from her computer screen, Moira went straight to the desk and scooped the half empty cup up. She took it over to the percolator in the corner of the office and refilled it from the hot coffee pot. Then she emptied the contents of the vial into the cup and picked up a stirrer from the canister. After adding the two packets of Splenda her boss always did to the cup and stirring it quickly, she placed the cup back on the desk. She turned to leave but Ilea stopped her.
“Moira, you left this on your desk.”
Moira turned slowly to face her, trying to keep a blank look on her face.
“What’s that, Boss?” she asked, steadying her voice.
“Your tablet?” Ilea asked inquisitively.
“Oh, yes. Thank you,” she replied, reaching for the device.
Ilea looked at her suspiciously for a moment before handing the device to her. Moira pretended not to notice and made a bee line for the door. She couldn’t be sure whether Ilea had read any of the emails or not; or if she now knew anything about what was going on. Either way, she had drugged the woman and she would wait until the drug took its effect and remove her as an obstacle, even if it were just temporarily.
She had the perfect place to put her.
Chapter Six
Hammurabi and Ishtari sat on their horses looking down at the fighting in the valley below them.
Their forces had taken Ishme-Dagan’s invading army by surprise near Asshur. They had been making steady progress towards Babylon for two days but none of them, not even the great king, had suspected that they had been set up from the very beginning; on the night that his bastard daughter had been bedded by King Hammurabi.
