by Alex Archer
“So how did the legend put it? The blacksmith fashioned the necklace with the tears of the goddess that he’d collected once they’d fallen to earth, right?”
“Right…”
Sebastian got up from his stool and began pacing back and forth, his excitement rising. “So, just for the sake of argument, let’s say that the blacksmith actually did collect something that fell to earth and used it to make the torc. What could that have been?”
Something that fell to earth… Then she had it. “A meteorite!” she exclaimed.
“Maybe even more than one,” he agreed. “That has to be it.”
“But I thought meteorites were mostly just stone and nickel?” Annja said.
Sebastian waved his hand back and forth in a so-so gesture. “Meteorites fall into three basic categories—stony, stony iron and iron. They’re your basic chondritic meteorites, the kind that were formed during the early days of the solar system and as such have the closest relationship to your average Earth rock. These kinds of meteorites are made up of mostly iron, with a little nickel and stone thrown in. The easiest way to tell if they are meteorites is to test for the amount of nickel in them. Earth rocks either have a lot of nickel or very little, while the amount of nickel found in a meteorite falls within a very specific range.”
Frowning, Annja said, “But I thought we decided that the torc wasn’t made from iron?”
“We did, and it’s not,” Sebastian replied. “I’m getting there, just bear with me. Along with chrondritic meteorites, we also have achondritic meteorites, the kind that were formed long before the solar system even existed.”
He paused, to be certain she was following his explanation. “Achondritic meteorites are much more rare and sometimes fall so far out of the usual expectations that we have trouble even classifying them as meteorites. There was one found in Antarctica last year, nothing more than a speck of a rock really, but its chemical composition was so unique that they couldn’t conclusively identify it.”
Annja saw where he was going now. “So you’re suggesting that the blacksmith in the legend found a meteorite, extracted the metal from it and used that to make the torc?”
“Yes!” he cried. “It makes sense, doesn’t it? You’ve got this metallic substance that neither of us can immediately identify, which means it’s pretty rare, and given the nature of the legend surrounding the necklace even makes sense.”
“So how do we prove it?”
“Simple, really,” he said. “We just run a sample of it through the spectrograph and look at the results.” He turned to face her. “All I need is a small sample and with that I could probably tell you exactly what it is.”
Annja winced. “How small is small?”
“Just a few grains, really, that’s all.”
A few grains? That she could handle.
“I say we do it, then!”
Sebastian brought the torc over to a weird-looking device that resembled an enclosed incubator of all things and put the torc inside it on a little shelf.
“I’m going to shave off a few grains from the outside of the torc with this laser,” he said as he closed the lid and began to calibrate the device to get the smallest possible beam. “Once we have that, we’ll take the resulting sample over to the spectrograph and see what we get.”
“Good enough for me,” Annja said with a smile.
36
Roux was enjoying a nice cup of Kenyan coffee the following morning when there was a knock at his door.
“Come,” he called.
It was Henshaw, as he knew it would be.
“I have that information you asked for, sir,” Henshaw said, crossing the room and laying a file on Roux’s desk.
Roux glanced at it, noting its thickness. “Why don’t you give me the highlights,” he suggested.
“Very good, sir. With respect to the news conference last night. The man’s name is Ian Beresford. Detective Inspector Ian Beresford. He’s a twenty-year veteran of the force, primarily with the Specialist Crime Directorate, handling high-profile cases and working multijurisdictional task forces. A few years ago he was transferred to Special Operations, specifically the CTC.”
Counter Terrorism Command? That’s interesting, Roux thought. Why would someone like that be looking for Annja?
“Several nights ago an archaeological dig site in the West Midlands just north of Arkholme was attacked by armed intruders. The local office of the regional police received a call from a woman identifying herself as Miss Creed. She informed them of the attack and asked for immediate assistance. When the officer in charge tried to obtain more information, the call was abruptly terminated.
“At first the call was considered a hoax. Why would armed insurgents attack an archaeological site? Then someone decided to check into the name and discovered Annja’s background as a television personality and host. That prompted them to send out a patrol to look into the situation.”
Roux frowned. “And by the time the patrol got there, the intruders were long gone, right?”
“Yes, sir. To make matters worse, when the patrol arrived they discovered the call hadn’t been a hoax at all. The site personnel had been murdered and their bodies dumped in a nearby bog. An initial report incorrectly listed Miss Creed among the deceased and then later, when it was clear she was not, there was some speculation that she might have been in league with the perpetrators.”
The very idea was preposterous, so Roux brushed it aside with barely a thought.
“Do we have any idea where she is now?”
Henshaw shook his head. “No, sir, though she is clearly alive. She contacted you twice, and she has apparently been in contact with her producer, Doug Morrell, as well. He held a press conference in New York recently claiming to have the inside story on exactly what happened at the Arkholme site.”
Roux doubted that, doubted it highly. He’d met Annja’s young acquaintance and hadn’t been all that impressed.
“Suspects?”
“The police haven’t released that information. Unofficially speculations are running rampant, from al Qaeda to resurrected bog mummies. The latest reports out of—”
Roux interrupted. “Did you say bog mummies?”
Henshaw colored slightly. “Yes, sir. Oddly enough, the suggestion came out of the press conference Mr. Morrell recently gave in New York. A few of the more liberal news organizations have apparently decided to run with that as their lead theory.”
And to think he said that all with a straight face, Roux marveled. Aloud, he said, “I think we can dismiss that possibility, don’t you?”
“Of course.”
His majordomo took a moment to compose himself again, and then said, “The latest reports out of New Scotland Yard claim that they have several suspects in the case, but they aren’t releasing any more information than that. Miss Creed is still wanted by the police, but as a witness rather than as a suspect.”
Roux wondered how much of that was true and how much was simple posturing. If the Met really had a suspect, they wouldn’t want to tip them off before they could take action. On the other hand, if they didn’t have a suspect, perhaps claiming that they did would cause those responsible to panic and make a mistake, bringing them to the police’s attention. It was impossible to know which was more accurate—which, he supposed, was the point of it all, anyway.
“There’s something else,” Henshaw began. “I’m not sure of its relevance, but it seems like too much of a coincidence to ignore.”
Roux raised his eyebrows, indicating Henshaw should continue.
“In the first few days following the massacre at the Arkholme site, Detective Inspector Beresford was called out to look at two other homicide scenes, one on the highway south of Arkholme and the other in a run-down hotel on the outskirts of London.
“There were two bodies recovered from each crime scene, all men in their late twenties or early thirties, all with criminal records of one kind or another. In each case the men had been
identified as alleged members of the Red Hand Defenders, an Irish terrorist group with the goal of freeing Ireland from British rule and oversight.”
“Do the police consider the three events to be connected in any way?” Roux asked.
Henshaw shrugged. “I’m not entirely sure. My contact inside the MPS didn’t want to dig too deeply and risk tipping his hand to anyone who might be watching. But he was able to tell me that at least one individual at each crime scene had been killed with some kind of bladed weapon, most likely a sword. There’s also a report from a clergyman who claims to have been saved by a ‘dark-haired angel wielding a holy sword’ on the highway earlier that afternoon.”
The combination of events made Roux sit up and take notice. The connection between them all was obvious, once you had the right cards in your hand. A quick shuffle put the cards into the proper order and let him see them the bigger picture.
An unknown group attacks the dig site at Arkholme. Annja witnesses the assault but is unable to do anything about it—hence the call to the regional police. Before she can finish the call she’s interrupted, perhaps even discovered by the enemy. Despite this she manages to escape capture but ends up being confronted by her pursuers again on the highway not too long after that, this time in full view of the traveling clergyman.
Forced to defend herself, Annja uses the sword and leaves the two men dead on the road in her wake. Somehow she makes it to London, where she rents a room, believing she’s escaped her pursuers. The latter turns out to be untrue, however, and she must flee for a second time, leaving even more bodies in her wake.
So if the Red Hand Defenders were after Annja, then it stood to reason that they were the ones who had attacked the archaeologists at Arkholme.
But what had they been after?
That was what was bothering him about this whole scenario. The idea that an Irish terrorist group would have an interest in something unearthed from a peat bog in the middle of…
All of a sudden the connections came together in his head.
He glanced at the calendar in his head, then turned to Henshaw. “When was the attack on the dig site?”
The other man told him.
Just as he’d suspected, it was the same night that Shaw had announced that he would be auctioning off a one-of-a-kind Celtic torc that he’d recently acquired. If it had been any more obvious it would have sat up and hit him in the face.
How could he have missed it?
The implications were staggering.
He needed to get in touch with Annja and he needed to do it quickly.
“Do we have a number for Mr. Morrell?”
Henshaw nodded.
“Let’s get him on the phone. Perhaps he knows how to contact Annja.”
The first two times they tried to reach Morrell the call went straight to voice mail, which irritated Roux to no end. It was only when Henshaw offhandedly reminded him that he’d inadvertently done the same thing to Annja that Roux was able to stifle his irritation and wait with a bit more patience.
Then, on the third try, almost an hour later, someone finally picked up.
“Morrell,” a young man said.
Roux wondered if he’d ever sounded that young and decided that no, he never had. Even if he had, centuries of life had certainly burned the memory out of him.
“Hello, Mr. Morrell. My name is Roux.”
“Roux? That’s it? Just Roux? Like Prince or Madonna?”
Roux gritted his teeth. “No, Mr. Morrell, I am nothing like one of your so-called American pop stars. You might remember me as a friend of Annja’s?”
“Yeah, I’ve heard the name before,” the other man said cautiously, “but how am I supposed to know it’s really you?”
Roux was taken aback for a moment. “Who else would it be?”
“There are a lot of people looking for Annja right now, Mr. Whoever-You-Are. If you think I’m just going to turn her over to the first person claiming to be a friend of hers, you’ve got another think coming.”
“Do you have caller ID, Mr. Morrell?”
“Of course. Doesn’t everyone?”
The know-it-all tone was starting to get to him. It must have shown, too, for Henshaw was now staring at him quizzically from the other side of the room. Roux ignored him, concentrating on keeping his temper, something he wasn’t very good at.
“If you do, then you should see that I am calling you from Paris, France. Perhaps you might remember Annja mentioning that is where I live the last time we met?”
Morrell snorted. “That doesn’t mean anything. You could be any Joe Blow calling me from France.”
That did it. Roux finally lost his temper. Snarling into the phone, he said, “Why you little cur! When I get my hands on you I’ll have you whipped and then tied to the back of my horse for an energetic ride around the estate until you’ll wish that I’d simply gutted you on the spot! You will help me find Annja!”
There was a moment of silence and then Morrell said, “Hello, Roux. I thought that was you.”
If he’d been in the same room with him, Roux probably would have killed him. As it was, he needed a moment to regain control.
“Roux? You still there, Roux?”
“I am,” he said through still-gritted teeth. “It is urgent that I speak with Annja—her life may be in danger. Do you have a way of reaching her?”
“Did you try to call her cell phone?”
Roux paused again as he fought to keep from yelling a second time. When he was reasonably confident that he could do so without losing his cool, he answered, “Yes. It seems to be out of operation at the present time.”
“Oh,” Morrell said with a little laugh. “Not that cell phone, her other cell phone.”
Dear Lord, granted me patience… “Her other cell phone?”
“Yeah. She lost the first one when the bog mummies attacked. Or, at least, that’s what we’re going to show on the episode. It’s going to be incredible! I’ve already got special effects working out this fully articulated bog mummy replica that we can—”
“Morrell!” Roux said sharply, stopping the other man in midsentence. “The cell phone number?”
“Oh. Right. Hang on, I’ve got it right here.”
Roux could hear some rustling in the background and then Morrell was back, reading off a phone number from the piece of paper that he must have been holding in his hand.
He was still chattering away about something or other when Roux hung up on him.
37
Shaving a few grains of material from the torc proved to be a simple task with the help of the laser. Sebastian collected the sample and moved over to the mass spectrometer that Annja had seen earlier upon entering the room.
Sebastian placed the sample inside the device and then fired up the computer that was a part of the unit. As he worked, he explained to Annja what was going to happen.
“The first thing we’re going to do is vaporize the sample, producing a gas that includes all of its component elements. The gas will then be exposed to an electron beam, which will charge the molecules of the gas and convert them into ionized particles.”
There was a brief flash of light from inside the spectrometer as the first step he’d mentioned was carried out. He barely acknowledged it, continuing his explanation while manipulating various controls through the computer.
“The ionized particles will be exposed to a series of magnetic fields that will sort the ions by their masses. The detector will then provide a quantitative analysis of the ions that are present.”
Good-looking and intelligent, Annja thought as she watched him work.
“In the end, we should know exactly what our legendary blacksmith used to manufacture the torc.”
He set a few more switches and then sat back to wait. They spent the time sharing a bit of background information about each other; Annja talked about some of the projects she’d been involved in while filming Chasing History’s Monsters while Sebastian entertained her with
tales of being a mineral scout in some of the most remote places on earth while working as a contractor for the big petroleum companies that were his bread and butter.
Finally, after almost an hour of waiting, though it only seemed like ten or fifteen minutes to Annja, the spectrometer churned out its results.
Sebastian picked up the report off the printer and began paging through it.
“Pretty consistent with an achondritic meteorite, just as we suspected. Iron, nickel in limited quantities, some silica formations and various assorted minerals.”
He got quiet all of a sudden.
“Sebastian?” Annja asked.
He didn’t seem to notice, his attention absorbed in whatever he’d found there on the page.
“Sebastian?” she said, a bit sharper that time. “What is it?”
He looked up from the paper, a dazed expression on his face.
“Plutonium.”
“What?” she asked. She wasn’t sure that she’d heard him correctly. Couldn’t have heard him correctly.
“Did you say plutonium?” she repeated.
Sebastian nodded, his attention still on the report in front of him. He was tracing the lines of information with one finger, then double-checking the numbers against a reference volume he’d pulled from a nearby shelf. “No doubt about it. In fact, it is probably one of the purest samples I’ve ever seen outside of a nuclear laboratory.”
“But plutonium is virtually nonexistent in nature,” Annja protested. “You can sometimes find it in uranium, but only in the tiniest trace amounts.”
“I know, Annja, I’m a geologist, remember. But I’m telling you, the torc has one hell of a lot of plutonium in it.”
That just didn’t make any sense to her. Bewildered, she sought an alternative solution. “Can the spectrometer be malfunctioning? Or calibrated incorrectly or something?”
“There’s one way to find out.”
Sebastian got up and began digging through the cabinets on a nearby wall. After a few minutes of searching he returned with a small handheld device about the size of a waffle iron. A small wand was attached to the device.
