by Alex Archer
The operative had been hired by a local fixer, who in turn had been contacted by an acquaintance overseas, who himself was a secondary cut out from the man who actually wanted the work done. The operative liked it that way; if things went sour and he ended up across the table from a couple of cops looking to send him up-river for a few years, he really didn’t know squat, which meant that there was only so much crap they could hang around his neck and make stick.
He was always the type to face things head-on. None of this sneaking about in the middle of the night garbage for him—no, sir. At night, you had to deal with alarm systems and security cameras, never mind the guards themselves. You couldn’t finesse technology—at least, not easily, the operative told himself.
But people? People you could finesse.
And that’s what he specialized in. Finessing people. As he marched over to the reception desk, the woman behind it took one look at him and dismissed him as anyone interesting before he’d even opened his mouth. The operative knew that people saw what they wanted to see and very rarely ever looked any deeper than that. To the receptionist, he was just another computer geek from the IT department downstairs; she was probably hoping that if she ignored him, he wouldn’t mumble something about how rad his latest massively multi-player online role-playing game was and ask her out, like the last tech who’d been sent up to fix a problem with the firewall. The operative used this tendency to his advantage. Act like you were supposed to be there, dress the part, and nine times out of ten they just sent you on through without a word.
The switchboard phone rang just as he got ready to give his spiel and the receptionist simply hit the buzzer and waved him on through, like he’d been there a hundred times before.
It was exactly what he’d expected to happen.
Once past the reception area, the operative wandered through the warren of cubicles until he found the office he wanted. He knocked and then opened the door without waiting for a reply.
His target, a producer named Doug Morrell, looked up from behind his desk. “Yeah?”
The operative held his ID card away from his chest for Morrell to see and then let it flop back again.
“IT department,” he said with that tone of bored indifference tech guys cultivated the world over. “I’m supposed to check the phone jacks as prep for the fiber optic install next week.”
How you said it was far more important than what you said, the operative knew. Just the right amount of arrogance, that little bit of superiority that said, “You need me far more than I need you, Jack,” and that was often all it took to get them to do just what you wanted them to do.
Which, in this case, was to leave the room.
“How long are we talking about?” Morrell asked with a glance at his watch.
The operative shrugged. “Ten, maybe fifteen minutes? I gotta pull out the wall plate, test the circuits, make sure you’ve got room for when they lay the dual cabling next week….”
Morrell’s eyes were already glazing over. “Okay, fine. Fine. Do your thing. I’m going to go get a cup of coffee and I’ll be back in fifteen minutes.”
“Sure, man, whatever,” he replied, already dumping his bag on the small conference table near the desk and pretending to dig through it for the right set of tools. By the time he looked up again, Morrell was nowhere in sight.
Works every time, he thought.
He leaned over the desk and took a look at the handset for Morrell’s telephone. It was like a thousand others he’d seen in offices the world over; two pieces of dark-colored plastic glued together around the internal components. Easy to produce and cheap as hell, too. He’d seen factories in Malaysia that churned out a couple of thousand of them a day for pennies each, only to sell them to business execs back in the States for $64.95 or something equally ridiculous.
Shaking his head at the craziness of it all, the operative opened his bag and dug around inside it for a moment, until at last he found the receiver he was looking for. It was a near-perfect copy of the one attached to Morrell’s phone, with one major exception.
This one had a listening device already installed in the midst of the internal wiring.
Rather than trying to crack open Morrell’s handset and implant a bug before he got back from his coffee jaunt, all the operative had to do was calmly unplug the existing handset, toss it in the bag and plug in the new one in its place.
Just minutes after arriving, the job was done.
To keep up appearances, the operative actually removed the phone jack’s wall plate and pulled the wires out of the recessed box behind the plate, pretending to be sorting through the various pieces until he heard Morrell coming back down the hall, talking on his cell phone.
By the time the young producer came back through the office door, the operative had just finished screwing the wall plate back into place.
“All set?” Morrell asked.
“All set,” the operative said with a smile.
It took him less than ten minutes to exit the building and disappear into the crowd outside, with no one the wiser. When he was a few blocks away, he pulled out his cell phone and dialed his partner’s number.
“You’re good,” he said simply, and then ended the call. Even if Morrell left the office that very instant, his partner would still have plenty of time to get inside the man’s apartment, bug the telephones there and get out again long before Morrell could make the trip over to the other borough.
Everything had gone according to plan, which was just how the operative liked it.
22
Annja waited as long as she could stand it the next morning, then called Doug. She could tell from the fuzziness of his voice that she’d woken him up.
“What did you find out about the torc?” she asked.
“Huh? Find out about the what? What time is—”
“Focus, Doug,” she said sharply, not wanting to give him a chance to start complaining about the early hour. Once he got going, it would take a steamroller to stop him. “You were going to get me information on the torc, remember?”
“Yeah, the torc. Right. Okay, hang…agh!”
His unexpected shout made her jump in surprise.
“Doug? Are you all right?” she asked with some apprehension, visions of New York police detectives busting down his door to take him into custody were floating in the forefront of her mind.
“It’s still dark out, Annja!” Doug said.
He didn’t sound happy about it either.
Annja smiled, glancing at the clock on the desk beside her. It was 9:00 a.m. London time so it was just about 4:00 a.m in New York. Revenge can be so sweet.
“I know it is, Doug. After all, the sun still hasn’t come up on your side of the world, but over here it’s getting busy and I need to get going. So quit whining about the hour and tell me about the torc.”
“Fine. But don’t think I won’t remember this.”
“I’m shaking in my boots. The torc, Doug.”
There was a pause and then he said, “The research team struck out. They tried the usual sources, but didn’t find anything to match what you were looking for. The best they could come up with was to recommend that you talk with a guy by the name of de Chance, at the National History Museum in Paris. He’s supposed to be the resident expert on Celtic culture, now that your friend Craig has been, uh, passed away.”
Being reminded of Craig’s murder took some of the wind out of her sails. But at least she had some confirmation that de Chance was someone worth talking to, so that was good news.
“And the tattoo?” she asked wearily, not expecting much more success than the team had had with the necklace.
Doug surprised her, though.
“Well, the research team did dig up some information on that, but I’m not sure you’re going to like it. And I have to say, I don’t see how it’s even relevant.”
“Tell me,” she said.
He hemmed and hawed for a minute, then did what she asked, sound
ing as if he was reading directly out of the research team’s report, which he probably was.
“The Red Hand of Ulster, also sometimes known as the Red Hand of O’Neill or the Red Hand of Ireland, is an Irish Gaelic symbol that originated in pagan times. It is often associated with a legendary figure known by several different names, including Labraid Lámh Dhearg, Labraid Lámderg and Labraid of the Red Hand.”
“Go on,” she said.
“There are two stories associated with the symbol. The first states that at one time the kingdom of Ulster had no rightful heir, so a boat race was staged to see who would be king. The first man to lay his hand on the soil of Ulster would take the prize. One competitor, a man from the Uí Néill clan, loved Ulster so much that he couldn’t let the crown go to anyone else. When it looked like one of the other competitors might win the race, this man cut off his hand and threw it ahead of the other boat. Since his severed hand reached the soil of Ulster before anyone else’s, the Ui Neill kinsman was named king.”
“Gross. What’s the other story?” she asked.
Doug snorted. “Two giants were engaged in battle on the shores of Ulster. One of them cut his hand and left a bloody handprint on the rocks along the shore. The men of Ulster took it as their standard to show how powerful they were.”
Annja frowned. Giants? The Ui Neill clan? Ulster? What did any of that have to do with Big Red or the black torc?
“Is that it?” she asked him, her anger momentarily forgotten as she tried to see the connections between everything.
“Yeah, except for the terrorist thing. Personally, I think—”
“Wait! What terrorist thing?”
“Didn’t I tell you about that already?”
The urge to hit something reared its head, but she took a deep breath and simply said, “No, Doug, you didn’t mention that.”
“Oh. Okay, then, hang on a sec.” She heard him flipping the pages of the report in his hands.
“The red hand, specifically a tattoo of a red hand, has also been used in recent years as a symbol of the Red Hand Defenders, or RHD, a loyalist paramilitary terrorist group linked to the Ulster Volunteer Force in Northern Ireland.”
She stared at the wall of her hotel room, lost in thought. What on earth would Irish terrorists want with a two-thousand-year-old necklace? It just didn’t make much sense, from a practical standpoint. Sure, there was a burgeoning black market for rare archaeological pieces, but an unknown piece like this one wouldn’t command big dollar amounts by any stretch of the imagination. And if wasn’t about the money, why else would they want it?
Doug’s voice brought her out of her reverie. “I wouldn’t concentrate on that if I were you, though. Even the police seem to think that the RHD doesn’t really exist. There’s a quote here from a senior Irish official that says, ‘The title Red Hand Defenders has been used to claim murders on all sides and is not thought to represent any real organization.’ I’d think they’d be the ones to know.”
“Could be,” she answered, but she had a feeling they were finally on the right track. After all, if she’d run into just one gunman wearing the tattoo, she wouldn’t have given it a second thought. But the two men in the Mercedes had also had the same mark. That made it more than a coincidence for her.
There was something there. She was just going to have to figure out what.
She thanked Doug for the help and told him she’d be in touch. He started complaining again that the sun hadn’t even come up yet when she hung up the phone.
THREE BLOCKS AWAY from Doug Morrell’s apartment, two men sat in the back of a van parked at the side of the street. They’d been there since early the night before and the air inside the vehicle was thick with the smell of body odor, stale coffee and the various cartons of take-out food that were piled in one corner of the cargo space in back.
As soon as Doug had picked up the phone in his apartment, the two men in the van had gone to work. Sophisticated computer equipment had begun the process of tracking where the call had originated. One man listened to the actual conversation, looking for clues to the caller’s location in what was said, just in case the call didn’t last long enough for the trace to go through. From the time references, it was clear that the caller was somewhere other than North America and the listener made a note to that effect on the yellow legal pad in front of him. As he worked to glean something from the conversation itself, his partner monitored the computer tracking program. It pinpointed the continent first, which turned out to be Europe, and then, a few minutes later, narrowed that down to the country, England. The man and the woman on the phone continued speaking and so the computer continued working, pinpointing the city the call was coming from as London. Finally, in the very last few seconds of the conversation, the computer was able to pinpoint the location right down to the building the call originated from.
By the time Annja hung up the phone, not only did the two men in the van know she was calling from a hotel on the outskirts of London, but they even knew the floor she was calling from.
The two men compared notes, agreed that they had reliable data to pass on to their employer and then sent a copy of the trace as well as a written report of the call to their employer.
Though neither one of them said it aloud, they were both thinking how funny it was that the woman their employer was searching for was right under his nose.
HALF AN HOUR LATER, Annja was sitting in a shadowy pub a few blocks from her hotel, staring at the greasy menu and trying to decide if she really trusted a place like this to cook something that wouldn’t give her food poisoning, when her cell phone rang.
She glanced at the caller ID.
Museum d’histoire naturelle…it said.
Annja answered it before it could ring a third time. “Hello?”
“Is this Annja Creed?” asked a rich, warm voice.
“Yes, it is. Thank you for getting back to me so quickly, Dr. de Chance.”
For a moment, he was confused. “How did you…oh, I see. Caller ID, correct?”
Annja smiled. “Yes, that’s correct. I don’t know anyone else at the Paris Museum of Natural History, so…”
De Chance chuckled. “Quite right, quite right. Silly me. Now what can I do for you, Miss Creed? Your voice mail mentioned something about a black torc?”
Relieved at both his receptiveness as well as the fact that he apparently hadn’t heard the authorities were looking for her in conjunction with the events at the dig site in Arkholme, Annja explained that she’d recently been involved in an excavation that had uncovered an unusual specimen of torc that seemed to have come from the early Iron Age and that she was looking for any information relative to such a find that might help her pinpoint its origin and purpose.
It wasn’t exactly why she wanted the information, but it was close enough to the truth that he shouldn’t question her motives.
He didn’t.
“Well, I’d certainly be willing to see what I could do to help you. Are you here in Paris? Could you make a three o’clock appointment tomorrow? I’ve had a cancellation and could fit you in then.”
“Three tomorrow would be fine, Dr. de Chance. Thank you.”
He told her he’d have a security pass waiting for her at the museum’s information desk and gave her directions from there to his office.
When she hung up the phone, Annja felt hopeful for the first time in days. She had several leads now and that, more than anything else, told her that she was making headway. She would get to the bottom of this, no matter what it took.
23
Trevor Jackson reviewed the report of Annja Creed’s whereabouts. It had taken several hours to pass from the two men in the van in New York, through three successive layers of cutouts, before it reached his ear. That was fine with him; he’d rather sacrifice a little time in the interests of security than have men knocking down his door at night and arresting him for actions against the Crown.
Treason wasn’t something the authorities took
lightly.
Shaw had made it clear that he didn’t care what happened to the woman; it was the torc that mattered. Recover that and everything else was just a bump in the road that would either be smoothed over, or hammered flat, depending on the issue, once the torc was in their hands.
With that in mind, Jackson selected three men from the RHD’s roster, good solid men with experience in this kind of thing. All of them had seen action before, both on behalf of the RHD and elsewhere, but he still wasn’t totally convinced that they could handle the Creed woman.
He turned and picked up the file lying nearby, the one he’d assembled as soon as they realized who it was that had taken the torc. He’d read it thoroughly several times and still didn’t understand how this woman had managed to escape from him and his men, not once but twice now. The two men who’d reported seeing her on the road had been professionals, men who’d been active during the Troubles, who’s seen action against armed soldiers every bit as trained as they were. Somehow she’d beaten them.
Not just beaten them, he thought with chagrin, but made them look like total fools, their bodies left lying in a ditch beside the road for the police to find.
Never mind the fact that they still hadn’t found the car the two men had been driving.
It pissed him off just thinking about it.
Still, he didn’t have anyone better available, so these three would have to do.
He pulled the photo of Annja out of the file and stared at it for the hundredth time, as if it might contain some hidden clue to the woman’s success, but there was nothing there he hadn’t seen before.
And yet…
His instinct told him he was missing something.
Something important.
But what?
He considered what he’d read in the file. The many adventures the woman had been involved in. The many times she’d escaped at the last minute, slipping away from death’s bony grasp. It didn’t matter if the threat was a natural disaster, like the tsunami in India she’d miraculously survived—or man himself, like the Albanian terrorists she’d supposedly tangled with in Nepal recently; every single time she’d been able to snatch success at the last second from the yawning jaws of defeat. If he was a different kind of man, he’d almost believe she had a guardian angel watching over her.
