by K. T. Tomb
When the dance was finished the crowd cheered loudly but none so loudly as Ishtari. She was particularly fond of dance performances and the troupe had pleased her immensely. She stood from her chair and trays of dried honeyed dates were brought for her to throw to the dancers by the handful. She threw tray after tray until finally satisfied, she returned to her seat. The dancers kneeled and gathered the sweet treats by the handful into the skirts of their sheer dresses.
It was at that point that Kashira lost what little composure she had managed to retain. Unable to bear her grief any longer, she threw herself at Hammurabi’s feet, crying hysterically. But instead of comforting her, he grew enraged at her feeble effort to manipulate his emotions. Frustrated and angry and still disappointed at her initial treachery of rallying her father’s forces against him, he confronted her.
“Kashira, it is not true that you do not feel that you are here in Babylon to serve the pleasure of my queen as much as to serve my own?” he asked, accusingly.
“Yes, Master. It is true. She is only a woman and I am your concubine. It is your pleasure that I administer, not hers. She poisoned me and was not admonished for it. One could wonder; Is she your equal, Master?”
Kashira stood up, emboldened by her insolent remarks and flashed chastising looks at both the king and queen.
“Kashira, what you speak is hatred for your queen and hatred for your queen is treason. It is law that I must give you the opportunity to recant such careless statements for it is common knowledge that people say things in error, especially when not thinking clearly. So, will you recant your statement or make it stand firm?”
“I will not recant!” she shouted at him and turned to Ishtari, hurling insult after insult at the queen while crying hysterically.
Suddenly fed up with her nonsense, Ishtari stood up from her chair and kicked Kashira in the stomach throwing her from the top step. The entire crowd watched silently as her body rolled and bounced all the way to the bottom of the steps where her head struck the Stone of Nineveh, breaking her neck.
As the crowd had watched Kashira’s body rolling to the street, Ishtari had begun to descend the stairway. At the bottom, she stood over Kashira’s body looking into the dead girl’s face. Then, she stepped into the pool of blood that was flowing from Kashira’s head and stepped on the girl’s face with her bloody sandal.
The crowd gasped, then began cheering loudly again.
She had stepped on the concubine with the sole of her shoe; the greatest form of disrespect that anyone could show another person.
Satisfied, Ishtari turned and sauntered back up the stairs. When she reached the top step, she kneeled before Hammurabi to offer her apologies for ruining his property without his permission.
She touched the palms of both her hands to his feet and lifted them to her forehead. He in return touched the top of her head in acceptance. She flashed a stern look in the direction of the other concubines as she resumed her seat beside her husband; may they take heed and be warned, no concubine would ever receive precedence over her as long as Babylon stood or she continued to draw breath.
A few weeks later the temple was ready to be dedicated. The altar idols had been carefully prepared according to Hammurabi’s strict instructions but he had not been allowed to oversee their production. In Babylon, the carving and painting of the images of divine entities was stringently reserved for the members of the priesthood. Still, the king hardly had a doubt that the temple would look exactly as he had envisioned it. When he had returned from Nineveh, he brought a caravan of stone, marble and hematite to add to the construction materials for the temple complex, but now that it was complete he was anxious about how it would look.
A particular item of concern was the last minute addition he had made to the diorama. The priests had been stunned to silence when he had told them of the inclusion but as he described what his vision for the display as a whole was, they were intrigued by the idea.
When Hammurabi led Ishtari into the temple for the first time, they were both speechless. It was easy to say that there had never been such an altar constructed in all of Babylonia.
There were two great idols facing each other; one of the goddess Ishtar who was created to bear a fair resemblance to Ishtari herself, and there was Ninurta, who was undoubtedly fashioned from the image of Hammurabi. Ninurta stood tall with his four wings spread wide about his shoulders and torso. Both his hands were raised high in attack and in both he carried the pronged fork of the War God. His feet were astride; set in a fearsome and powerful stance as he fought a large monster that sought to swallow the kingdom of Babylon.
The real spectacle, however, was the goddess Ishtar. She stood boldly, which was not a common stance for her image to be presented in. She was usually pictured seated. Her legs were astride, like a man’s, symbolizing strength and firmness. Both arms were outstretched in praise and support of Ninurta in his efforts to slay the beast. Beneath the sandal on her left foot is the statue of a large black basilisk which is being subdued and defeated as she crushes it.
The entire scene at the new altar is glorious and they stepped back to admire it in its totality.
“What a glory to the gods you have created, husband,” Ishtari said in astonishment. “You have truly captured their incomparable strength and beauty.”
“Ishtari, you never cease to amaze me,” Hammurabi said, laughing. “When you should see things for the sheer vanity that they are, you instead see the divine and are ready to walk straight into the fields of heaven. This altar is dedicated to us as much as it is to Ninurta and Ishtar. This is the defeat of the creatures that seek to destroy the good in the world, but it is also telling of how we destroyed the evil that was Assyria.
Chapter Nine
When they landed at Charles de Gaulle airport, Chyna felt drained.
She was happy to have her friend back safely and the other hostages out of harm’s way, but she was frustrated. On and on, the assignment seemed to drag and just as she felt she was beginning to understand what was happening around her, the entire ball game seemed to change.
Her cell phone rang almost as soon as the she had exited the aircraft. It was Nigel and he sounded distressed.
“Hey Boss, how are things going?” he asked quickly.
“We just landed in Paris. There’s no telling yet, Nigel. What’s up?”
“Well, since I found Lana’s uploads on the server, I’ve been keeping an eye out for any newly added data from all our field personnel and searching all server levels for information that might prove important to the case.”
“Yes?” Chyna said, impatiently.
“I noticed that your secure line had new voicemail recordings and I decided to pull the call details. You have three calls that originated from an unknown Paris number and all three were recorded the evening of Director Le Gal’s disappearance.”
“Ilea is one of the very few people who have that number.”
“That’s what I realized when I cross referenced your number against the company security disclosure list. Do you have the phone with you?”
“Of course I do, Nigel.”
“Then I’d suggest you check those messages before you get to Place de Fontenoy.”
“I agree. Thank you, Nigel and keep up the good work.”
“Thank you, Boss.”
Chyna ended the call and slid the phone back into her jacket pocket before she turned to Oscar.
“Could you hand me the encrypted phone, Oscar? I put it in your tech bag for safe keeping.”
“Sure thing.”
He stopped to swing the bag around and took the sturdy Blackberry® Bold from the bag, handing it to Chyna. She turned it on and dialed the number to retrieve her voicemail. As soon as the message started she knew that Nigel had been right. Ilea’s tense voice came over the speaker to Chyna’s ear as clear as a bell.
She was obviously frightened and distressed as she said frantically into the phone:
“Chyna…This is I
lea. I just found a trace has been placed on my email account and for the last few days every email I have responded to has been blind copied to Petrovik’s I.P. address. I don’t know why he would be spying on me but I dare say it might have something to do with our missing people. If anything else comes to me or anything new develops on my end, I’ll let you know. If you have made any headway in Iraq, do give me a call.”
There was a beep signaling the end of the recording and Chyna took the phone from her ear. She looked at the screen questioningly for a minute.
That son of a bitch, Petrovik!
She pressed the button to move to the next message and returned it to her ear, listening again.
“Hi Chyna, I really hope you’re getting my messages. I’m beginning to get very worried. I just walked past Moira’s desk…that’s our office intern…and noticed a new tablet on it. It’s exactly like the type we executives receive for our meetings and I wondered what she was doing with mine, so I picked it up and brought it into my office. As soon as I swiped the screen to wake it up, I realized it wasn’t mine and would have returned it to her desk but it opened to an email account and I read one of the emails she had just been sending out. I’m so scared, Chyna.
“She was issuing instructions to someone to move both ‘packages’ to a set of coordinates because the ‘Boss’ had sent ‘Ghosts’ to retrieve them and that it was suspected that the ‘Ghosts’ had a fixed location on a ‘Casper’ that was with the ‘Euro package’. They should shake the ‘Casper’ down and find her tail.
“I think she meant that they should move the hostages to another location and find out what Lana had on her which was allowing us to track her because you and your team were on the way to Baghdad. I really don’t like this, Chyna. I’m going to get out of the office as soon as I can and go home but before I do, I’ll give Morris a call and have him send a few guys over to keep an eye on me and the house. Take care.”
Well, it seemed that Ilea’s mistake had put her in the know about what had been taking place in Iraq but she had also just implicated both Petrovik and the intern, Moira. Aziz had readily given up a close associate of Ilea’s during his interrogation but no name yet and he had never mentioned the intern. Did he hide that from us? Or was it that he didn’t know Petrovik had a partner in the office? Could it be that Moira found out about what he was doing and managed to insert herself into the deal?
Chyna sighed and signaled to the others to go ahead of her in the line to immigration while Demetri and Thorin held firm at the rear. She pressed the button again to go the third and final message and this where Chyna got her mind completely blown.
“I’ve just been caught by Moira with the tablet on my desk. I managed to avoid explaining how I had it in my possession and curiously, she didn’t even ask about it. She just freshened up my coffee, took the device and left. I just spoke to Morris and he said that he would send a couple of guys to wait downstairs for me. They’d follow me home and watch the house for the night.”
“I’m so sleepy…must have worn myself out today trying to avoid any of this leaking to the press before I absolutely…have to…”
She yawned deeply and her words began to slur.
“Ch-Chyna? Something’s wrong…I don’t feel…”
The call went dead in Chyna’s ear.
What the hell? she thought, close to panicking.
Demetri touched her on her shoulder, causing Chyna to look up. She was next in line and was being beckoned to the desk by an impatient immigration officer.
“Business or pleasure, ma’am?” he asked mechanically in a thick French accent.
“Business,” she replied.
“Papers, please.”
Chyna took out the diplomatic contract and invitation letter as well as her firearms permit and handed them to the man.
He pretended to read them and handed them back to her, picking up her passport from the desk and flipping through it for a moment. She wondered what he was looking for, since her passport was American and there were no restrictions for Americans entering France. A few moments later, he stamped the passport, handed it back to her and waved her through.
They tumbled into the little shuttle bus that would take then to the rental car lot just outside the airport and it was obvious that Chyna was disgruntled.
“What’s up, Boss?” Oscar asked curiously.
She didn’t answer him at all and he let it slide.
When they were safely ensconced in the Land Rover they’d rented, Chyna looked in the rear view mirror at the rest of her team and finally she spoke to them.
“I just listened to three messages that Ilea left for me just before she was abducted.”
There was hushed murmuring from everyone.
“She fingered her assistant, Petrovik Rebane as being Aziz’s UNESCO contact. Also, it seems that an intern, Moira, got herself mixed in with Petrovik’s plan and drugged Ilea when she thought she had found her out. The intern had been sending emails to Aziz instructing him on what to do.”
“Oh, dear,” Sirita said, “That’s no good.”
“Not at all,” Chyna agreed. “We’re going to have to move on Petrovik ourselves and we have to do it before anyone knows we’re in Paris.”
It was obvious from the determined look on her face that Chyna had spent the past hour since they had passed through immigration thinking up her plan. Now, she was ready to issue their orders.
“Demetri, Thorin; I need you to arrange for the weapons. We don’t have embassy operatives or the military to stock us out this time. I know you have people in the city that will be more than happy to help; rented and legal is preferable.”
Both men nodded appreciatively and smiled.
“Oscar, I’m going to need an address and schematics for his house. We need to know what we’re doing before we even think about doing it. Locate the breaker too. I want to go in under darkness and we have to be prepared in case things get hot in there.”
“Already on it, Boss,” he replied as he flipped open his laptop.
“Lana and Sirita, you two have to get on your phones and get us into an embassy or consulate or safe house or whatever right away. There’s no way we can check into a hotel without the risk of being detected, unless one of you knows a really, really secure one.”
“On it,” Sirita replied immediately.
With everyone busy making the arrangements, Chyna turned her concentration to the road, they would keep driving until the girls had found somewhere for them to base the team. The first ones to reap success were Demetri and Thorin. They had arranged with a friend of theirs that owned a military surplus store in the Latin Quarter to give them the pick of his used merchandise. Of course, he was curious what they needed such heavy artillery for, but Demetri had ensured him that they would be able to provide adequate credentials to keep him on the right side of the law.
Gun laws in France were just about as rigid as in the United Kingdom but with both the bodyguards’ credentials as well as their UNESCO clearance papers, Chyna had no doubt that they could legally arm themselves for what was to come. Still, she wondered if they should alert the local police.
Almost immediately, she dismissed the thought. It wasn’t an option. Petrovik was a man who had made strong links with Iraqi paramilitaries and a less than kosher Ukrainian billionaire. Chyna was more than aware that people like Petrovik’s buyer, who commanded that kind of money, had a way of getting everything they wanted; even if it meant someone had to disappear.
After they left the surplus store, they went to the La Défense area of Paris where Sirita took Oscar’s thumb drive up to an architectural firm that she used to freelance for and got the plans of Petrovik’s house printed for them. They drove around for another half an hour before deciding to stop for a bite to eat.
As Chyna had hoped, before they had finished their meal, the call they had all been waiting for came through on Lana’s phone.
“We’ve got a safe house right in the city we can u
se. It’s on the Rue de Rosiers,” she announced proudly. “The locks are electronic and we’ve been assigned codes for both the doors and the alarm system to use while we’re here.”
“Awesome!” Chyna exclaimed, “Alright people, let’s go find our home away from home. I don’t know about you guys but I could use a hot shower in more ways than one.”
That night, when they were all refreshed and adequately rested, they stood hunched over the dining table studying the plan of the house. They had all agreed that the best thing to do was to go in just before the man went to bed. They would cut the lights to the house from the external breaker and ambush him in the dark. The whole operation was meant to be non-violent, but they would be prepared for the worst-case scenario.
The whole extraction happened in less than ten minutes. It was clearly one of the easiest operations that Chyna had ever participated in. The man was a coward who ran and hid under his bed when they broke down the back door to his house. Demetri and Thorin couldn’t stifle their laughter as each of them grabbed one of Petrovik’s ankles and hauled him out from under it. They handcuffed him and just to pay him back for his ridiculousness, they cuffed him in the back of the head, knocking him out for the entire trip back to the safe house.
Chyna had debated long and hard about whether it was wise to conduct the interrogation there until she had stepped into the eight by eight safe room that was built into the middle of the main floor of the townhouse. That’s where they brought Petrovik, blindfolded and gagged. When he had regained consciousness, they had handcuffed him to a chair and left him there in the dark for four hours until he had started screaming and crying like a baby for them to turn on the lights. At that point, the two bodyguards knew he was ready for questioning.
They turned on one light in the room and went in. Chyna had thought it best for Demetri and Thorin to interrogate Petrovik; they knew what they were doing and he didn’t know who they were. He was so scared that it didn’t take long for them to get everything they needed out of him. The one question he couldn’t answer was about Ilea.
