Rogue Angel 51: The Pretender's Gambit

by Alex Archer

  The Elephant reached the mountain again and stopped once more, seemingly defying gravity because it should have tipped over.

  “Some of the current thinking is that lodestones are charged by magnetic fields that occur from lightning-bolt strikes.”

  “Lightning strikes cause the magnetite to become magnetic?” Rao asked.

  Annja nodded. “Some scientists think so. Not just magnetic for a little while, but magnetic permanently. Lodestones, not magnets, were originally used in compasses. Lodestone in Middle English means leading stone, which is where the name came from, because they led compass users home.”

  “The men who put this board together were very clever,” Klykov said with a note of appreciation.

  “Definitely.” Annja stared at the Maze. “If we can find this location, if we can find this mountain, chances are good that we can find the hidden temple.”

  “It should not be too difficult,” Rao said.

  “Shirasaki couldn’t find it, and he was using satellite imagery.”

  “Several hundred years have passed since the temple was hidden.” Rao rested his hands on his knees while he sat in a full lotus position with ease. “The land has changed.”

  “That’s the problem.”

  “However,” Rao went on, “the monks I am working with have maps that go back to those days. They will show the land as it was then. We have access to those.” He nodded at the Maze. “Now that we have this, we can find this valley…and hopefully that mountain.”

  One of the young monks entered the small room and addressed Rao. They spoke quickly, then Rao got to his feet. “We need to go. The brothers tell me that men who, judging from their description, are men serving Sequeira are searching the neighborhood for us.”

  Dissatisfied with the amount of time they’d had to devote to understanding the board and the statue, Annja dissembled the Maze and packed the pieces away, then got to her feet, slung her backpack over her shoulder and picked up the case. “How are they finding us so quickly?”

  “That is a question we’ll have to address later.” Rao pointed toward the door. “For now we must once more escape. There is a back way out of the temple.”

  * * *

  SEQUEIRA STRODE INTO the temple and looked around the dim rooms. His men had secured the small structure and stood conspicuously with drawn weapons.

  “Who’s in charge here?” Sequeira demanded.

  One of the old men stepped forward. His face was weathered and blotchy from age. A large birthmark marred his forehead over his right eyebrow. “I am most senior among our brethren.”

  “Where is Annja Creed?” Sequeira moved menacingly next to the man.

  The old man shook his head. “I know no one by that name.”

  “Nguyen Rao brought a woman and an old man here with him,” Sequeira stated. “Don’t bother lying to me. This is true.”

  “It is true. Brother Nguyen brought visitors to the temple.”

  “Where are they?”

  “They have gone.”

  “Where did they go?”

  The old man shook his head. “Several minutes ago they left the temple. That is the last I have seen of them.”

  Sequeira cursed and lifted his pistol, pointing it at the birthmark. For a moment, he held that position. The old monk never batted an eye and waited calmly to see if he would live or die.

  Finally, Sequeira realized killing the old man might bring down even more trouble for him here in Nagasaki. Shirasaki wouldn’t be helpful with the local police.

  Sequeira lowered his pistol and put it away. Turning, he walked out of the temple and fished his sat phone from his pocket. He texted Brisa.

  CREED’S GONE. DO YOU STILL HAVE A FIX ON HER?

  YES. SHE’S A HUNDRED AND TWENTY-SIX METERS FROM YOUR PRESENT POSITION. SHE’S STAYING PUT.

  SEND ME THE LOCATION. Excited again, thinking that Annja Creed and her companions believed themselves hidden, Sequeira called his team together and they climbed back into their vehicles.

  * * *

  FRANTICALLY, ANNJA SEARCHED her backpack, knowing a tracking device had to be there somewhere. That was the only idea she could think of to explain Sequeira’s ability to know her location. Klykov and Rao had instantly agreed.

  She’d changed her clothing and she had already checked her coat. Even though she hadn’t found the device on her coat, she’d decided not to take the chance that two tracking devices weren’t being used. She’d hung the coat in a noodle shop they’d passed, then kept walking, searching the backpack.

  “It’s got to be here.” She ran her hands along the outside of the backpack, feeling for any irregularity. With as much rough handling as the backpack had been victim to over the years, the surface was also intimately familiar to her and the idea of losing it pained her. She liked old things, and her backpack was one of those.

  Klykov held her elbow and guided her along the street, avoiding collisions with pedestrians. Rao kept watch for Sequeira and his stormtroopers, who had to be closing in on them. The thought that they were only seconds away was unnerving.

  “Perhaps you should abandon the backpack,” Klykov suggested.

  “Not until I have to.”

  “It’s a backpack, Annja. It can be replaced.”

  “This backpack and I have been through a lot together. Plus, I’m not going to be able to find another one that holds everything I carry the way this one does. It was handmade for me.”

  “Would you forfeit your life—our lives—for a vanity?”

  “No.” Annja strengthened her resolve, knowing she would lose the backpack before she let anything happen to Klykov or Rao. “If I don’t find it in the next— ah!” Her fingers quickly dug out what looked like a straight needle with a crystalline bead about the size of a stylus point at one end. A trace of circuitry gleamed in the stem.

  She stopped and looked at the device. “I’ve never seen anything like this.”

  Klykov glanced at it, then tugged on her sleeve and got her moving again. “It is indeed a tracking device. It has a GPS locater. A very clever gadget.”

  “You’ve seen these before?”

  “Da. A few times. In the business I do, I find myself sometimes involved in situations where you have to know about such things.”

  Annja stared at the tracking device. “When was this put on my backpack?” The past several days had been so busy that she couldn’t remember. There had been plenty of opportunities at the Seventh-Kilometer Market when she’d come into contact with Sequeira’s enforcers.

  But then she had to wonder how they had found her there in the first place. The mystery was maddening.

  She dismissed the question, knowing that she wouldn’t figure that out anytime soon. And that wasn’t the most intriguing conundrum facing her. The Temple of the Dreaming Rumdul was in Cambodia awaiting discovery.

  Focusing on that, she tossed the tracking device into the gutter and kept going.

  * * *

  WALKING QUICKLY ALONG the sidewalk, shoving through pedestrians that didn’t get out of his way fast enough, Sequeira scanned the street where Brisa said Annja Creed was located. Brisa had insisted the American woman was there, surely within view.

  “Does anyone have eyes on Creed?” he barked over the comm.

  There was no answer.

  Incensed, Sequeira stood in the middle of the sidewalk. “She’s here! Find her!”

  His men spread out, moving quickly along both sides of the street. Their vehicles waited at either end of the block. They had already started to draw attention. Sequeira knew it wouldn’t be long before police officials came to inquire as to what their business was.

  “Sir? I’ve found something.”

  Sequeira spotted one of his men kneeling in the street. The man picked up a small object and held it out. He was too far away for Sequeira to see the object clearly, but Sequeira felt certain he knew what it was.

  “She found the tracking device. She’s in the wind.”

>   Cursing, driving away pedestrians through the sole strength of his anger, Sequeira spun and searched helplessly for any sign of Annja Creed. Many people walked along the shop-lined street. None of them were Annja Creed or her companions. Sequeira felt helpless.

  He’d lost. She had the Elephant, the Maze and her freedom.

  His phone buzzed for attention. He peered at the screen, seeing the text from Brisa.

  THORN HAS BREACHED THE MONKS’ COMPUTERS IN PHNOM PENH. WHEN NGUYEN TALKS TO THEM AGAIIN, AND HE WILL, WE CAN TRACK HIM. WE CAN STILL FIND THEM.

  Sequeira smiled, and the deep hunger to kill ignited within him again. The hunt was back on.

  Chapter 38

  Behind the wheel of the Land Rover, Annja followed the tenuous, seldom-traveled trail through the verdant growth atop the Damrei Mountains. The range ran along the western shoreline of Cambodia. Annja and Klykov had traveled to Phnom Penh with Rao and been greeted by the monks of the temple Rao served.

  While they had stayed there, the monks had been kind, giving their guests rooms to stay in and delicious meals to eat. Discovering the region where the temple was believed to be located had taken three days. Three days of hard searching through hundreds of maps by nearly forty monks and the hunt had become more tense.

  Annja had guessed that Rao was forced to make a case for herself and Klykov to continue pursuing the temple because the elder monks hadn’t wanted them to be allowed involvement. Rao had reluctantly affirmed that when they had talked the night before they had left.

  “They do not fault you, Annja,” Rao had told her. “They recognize your efforts and your cooperation with us, but the elders do not trust many people.”

  Annja couldn’t blame the monks, either, but she had been happily relieved to know they were allowing her to participate in the rest of the search.

  Rao had grinned at her then. “They also know that you will not simply walk away at this point, and that you would search for the temple on your own if you had no other choice. They would rather you were somewhere they could watch over you.”

  “Somewhere being with you?”

  “That was my suggestion.”

  As suggestions went, being with Rao was a good one. Of course, there was the matter of the nine other monks that had accompanied them from Phnom Penh. Two of the monks rode with Annja, Rao and Klykov—who had refused to be left behind or go home, and who was proving to have an indomitable constitution.

  The other seven monks rode in two more Land Rovers with the camping gear and supplies. They had come fully equipped and armed with ancient as well as modern weapons. As it turned out, Rao’s temple beliefs revered life, but they had no problems fiercely protecting their own when threatened.

  Steadily, the caravan rolled into the dank heart of the mountains. So close to the coastline, the climate remained temperate and muggy.

  Annja drove because she was more skilled with the Land Rover than Rao, and she led the expedition because she was a better judge of the terrain. The monk drivers had reluctantly learned that lesson when both of them had gotten their vehicles stuck while attempting to lead, causing the expedition delays that had added hours on to the trip.

  As the grade grew steeper, Annja downshifted and the transmission groaned in protest. Even with four-wheel-drive, the tires occasionally grabbed hold of loose ground and spun out, throwing dirt and rock in vicious sprays. Klykov clung to his seat belt with white knuckles but didn’t speak. With wide eyes, he stared out over the broken countryside that plunged on the western side of the mountain ridge. Farther west, the Gulf of Siam gleamed in the afternoon sunlight.

  Finally, after several instances of churning tires and grinding gears, Annja coaxed the Land Rover to the summit and pulled ahead to allow the other two vehicles to slide in behind them. She let the engine idle for a moment as she reached for the water canteen between the seats next to her backpack. The hot tropical climate drained moisture from them like a sauna. She drank deeply and searched the surrounding jungle for the landmarks they’d found in the Maze.

  The histories kept by the monks were amazingly complete. Still, finding the right maps had taken prodigious effort. Matching them up against satellite imagery hadn’t taken quite as long to accomplish, but that had required a different skill set and they’d been aided by computer programs. The monks proved surprisingly proficient with technology.

  Annja felt confident they were in the right area.

  After she finished drinking her fill, she capped the canteen and put it back between the seats. Then she picked up the binoculars from her backpack and started searching out the next route.

  “I think I see the mountain.” Rao sat in the passenger seat with another pair of binoculars.

  “Where?” Annja asked.

  Rao pointed and Annja followed his direction, spotting a familiar-looking mountain peak perhaps three miles away. The land looked much different than the Maze had portrayed it, but the tall precipice appeared pretty much as it had been depicted on the Maze model.

  But the distance between looked almost impossible to cross, like landscape from another world. The jungle was an impenetrable wall of overflowing growth. Miles away in the distance, Phnom Bokor, the tallest mountain of the Damrei range, stood above the other spires.

  “Is this the mountain we are searching for?” Klykov asked as he bent foward between the seats.

  “I think so.” Annja pulled her hair back from her face and banded it into a ponytail. She put the Land Rover in gear again. “We’ll know soon enough.”

  * * *

  WHAT THEY HAD been calling a road played out over a mile from the mountain, growing steadily less apparent till at times Annja hadn’t been certain she was actually following it. But her navigation had been good and they’d picked up remnants of it short distances later on till it finally just became nonexistent. The going had been made harder by intermittent streams and muddy ground that remained almost invisible till they’d arrived in the middle of them.

  Annja got out and saw to her gear and Klykov’s, while Rao and the monks divvied out what they considered to be necessary supplies. What they couldn’t carry, they left with the Land Rovers. In addition to her backpack, Annja carried a small bedroll and two-man tent, a chest pack with a week’s rations, water canteens, a medical kit and water purification tablets.

  Klykov carried his own bedroll and supplies. He also packed two pistols and a Dragunov sniper rifle, a Russian weapon he swore he put faith in. He hadn’t had a munitions contact in Phnom Penh, but he’d had a friend of a friend who had.

  Annja carried a 9mm Sig-Sauer and AK-47 because Klykov had gotten the weapons for her and insisted she carry them. She’d hesitated until Klykov had reminded her how dangerous Sequeira had been so far, and that the country they were in sometimes had bandit trouble.

  Rao and his temple brothers hadn’t hesitated about carrying weapons either, though Rao didn’t seem as comfortable being armed. He was obviously competent with the rifle and pistol he was given, just not relaxed. The pith helmet he wore looked somewhat ridiculous, but it provided shade and a modicum of comfort.

  Once everyone was set, they marched into the jungle with Annja in the lead.

  * * *

  SEQUEIRA LOUNGED IN short-tempered impatience in the air-conditioned comfort of the Eurocopter Super Puma. On the laptop he watched footage of the jungle expedition winding through the Damrei Mountains only a few miles away. The Super Puma was one of three that Sequeira had hired for transport to the site when he was certain Annja Creed had discovered the lost temple.

  Each of Sequeira’s leased helicopters carried two pilots and twelve men, giving him a small army of gunmen ready to venture into the jungle to claim whatever lay in the lost temple. The drones used to watch over Annja Creed’s progress had been easy to procure, as well. Brisa continued to have amazing connections.

  The hardest part for Sequeira was the waiting. The helicopter sat in a clearing near the Bokor Hill Station. The French had built the
Bokor Palace Hotel & Casino on the site, flanked it with a small town to provide a necessary labor pool, then abandoned the whole lot during the First Indochina War in the 1940s, then left the site permanently when the Khmer Rouge took control of the area in 1972.

  Had the casino still been operational, the waiting might have been tolerable, but the cramped space aboard the helicopter was claustrophobic. And the anger Sequeira felt over the way Annja Creed had managed to escape him time and time again churned through his guts.

  Not this time, he promised himself. This time there will be no escape.

  All they needed was the exact location of the temple.

  He drank a chilled glass of champagne, never completely giving up the creature comforts he insisted on, and watched Annja Creed closing in on the mountain that appeared to be her destination.

  Her final destination. Sequeira intended to carve that on Annja Creed’s headstone and kick dirt over her body. Her death and the location of her grave would be one of those mysteries her viewers fawned over.

  * * *

  THE STEEP AND treacherous grade of the mountain prevented a straightforward ascent. Annja followed the ridges carved into the face by wind and water, zig-zagging back and forth. She also insisted that they use ropes to keep the climb safe.

  The monks were sure-footed, but not used to vertical ascents. Strangely, Klykov seemed to have less difficulty than the younger men because he made no assumption about the worthiness of a prospective step without first testing it.

  Drenched in sweat, Annja worked steadily, pausing to hydrate and watch over the monks and Klykov, who all trailed in her wake. She checked the time on her sat phone against the approaching sunset.

  “We only have a couple hours of light left,” she told Klykov and Rao. “We’ll travel another hour, then set up camp.”

  Both men nodded in agreement.

  Annja went back to the climb, searching for any signs of the hidden temple, but it looked as if no one had come by here in a long time. She chose to view that as a positive thing.