Rogue Angel: Gabriel's Horn

by Alex Archer

  “He doesn’t or he would have mentioned him before now,” Garin stated confidently.

  “It’s possible that Thomopoulos’s work hadn’t been gathered up in a collection.”

  “However it goes,” Charlie said, “you can’t allow what Roux seeks to fall into his hands.”

  Garin looked at the old man. “You know what it is?”

  “Of course.” Charlie wiped his hands on a napkin.

  “Then tell us.”

  “No.”

  Anger, hard and frightening, flared to life within Garin. It was a part of him that Annja knew she would always have to be wary of, and she knew it would always be a part of him. Whatever had marked Garin in his early years had marked him forever.

  “I could make you tell us,” Garin threatened.

  “No,” Charlie stated, “you can’t.” He smiled. “And even if you tried, Annja would stop you.” He picked up a chocolate chip cookie.

  Garin looked at Annja. “My way would be easier and faster.”

  “We’re not going to torture him.”

  “He’s old. It won’t take much. He may talk tough, but he’s not going to be hard to break.”

  “No.” Annja tried to rationalize the way Garin had been in Prague when he’d taken her out and how he was now. It was impossible. Garin had two sides to his personality, and both were equally strong and passionate. She had to wonder which he would choose to be when they took up the trail on the map.

  Garin cursed in disgust.

  “You need to have open minds when you find it,” Charlie said. “Otherwise your expectations will affect how you treat it. Roux already has his expectations, and his needs, and that’s why it’s so dangerous for him to be near it.”

  “Can you tell us anything about it?” Annja asked.

  “I’ve told you, Annja,” the old man said patiently. “It has tremendous power. With it, the sleeping king can destroy the world.”

  * * * *

  “The door’s locked.”

  Roux glanced at the ornate doorknob in front of him. “Is it?”

  “Yes.” Hamid stood in the hallway outside the large condominium they’d come to burgle. Roux had known the man for over twenty years, and their business together had never been legal. He was small and dark, and his eyes moved restively and fearfully at all times. “And there will be alarms.”

  “I thought you took care of the alarms,” Roux said.

  Hamid shrugged. “I took care of some of the alarms. The men you can buy these days, they aren’t all trustworthy.”

  Roux grinned at the little thief. “Not like you, eh, old friend?”

  Hamid smiled. “Exactly.”

  “Then it’s a good thing for you that I didn’t just count on your skills.” Roux turned and nodded at Jennifer.

  With a quick look around the luxurious hallway, Jennifer reached into her coat and brought out an electronic device. She attached it to the electronic lock and activated a sequence.

  “If we’re caught out here with that,” Hamid said, “they’ll put us in prison forever. They don’t suffer thieves over here.”

  Roux knew that. “It’s fascinating, though,” he said as Jennifer worked with the device, “don’t you think? We’d be viewed as thieves for breaking into Vilen Bogosian’s residence. Yet, in certain circles, he’s known as quite the artiste of forged paintings.”

  “He’s accepted here,” Hamid explained. “He hasn’t run afoul of anyone in Istanbul.”

  “I’m sure that’s only because no one has yet discovered his crimes. I hardly think he’s living the life of an angel here.”

  Jennifer straightened up with a frown. “I can’t get the combination. It’s not going to open.”

  Anger seethed through Roux. He’d spent two days trolling the seamier side of the Hague to find out who was responsible for the forgery that had been sold at the art auction. Getting that information had taken time, money and many favors he’d called in.

  Jennifer had accompanied him, but she’d remained tense. They didn’t talk about Garin’s decision to leave or the fact that they hadn’t been able to replace what Garin would have brought in the form of men and matériel.

  Just go slowly, Roux thought. You’ve almost found the prize you seek.

  Unless it was lost and gone forever. Part of him would have been relieved, he knew. But part of him would have gone ballistic.

  “Try it again,” Roux said.

  Jennifer hesitated only a moment, but she applied the device once more.

  Roux hated trusting such things, but it was the way of the world these days.

  This time the lock clicked and sounded like a pistol shot in the quietness of the hallway.

  “Very good,” Roux said.

  “I don’t understand,” Jennifer said. “It should have worked the first time.”

  “You’re too edgy. Just be glad that it worked this time.” Roux pulled the door open and slid a pistol out from under his jacket. He stepped inside as Jennifer put the device back into her jacket and took out a pistol of her own.

  Despite her misgivings, Jennifer had thrown her lot in with him. He still didn’t know if it was because she cared about him, in spite of what he’d done, or because she was curious about what secrets the painting held.

  “This could be a very bad mistake,” Hamid said.

  “Quiet,” Roux ordered in a raspy whisper. He entered the room. Even though it was cloaked in darkness, he knew his way around.

  Hamid had arranged to get the blueprints of the condominium. For all of Hamid’s lack of a spine, he was quite the ferret when it came to getting necessary things.

  Voices came from a room on the other side of the large and elegantly furnishing living space. Roux identified the room as Bogosian’s work space. Quietly, he crossed the room. His heart pounded in anticipation. There were other things he’d chased over centuries, but nothing like what he was after now. He calmed himself with effort.

  Bogosian was in his early thirties, a bull of a man with a broad chest and curly black hair. Black leather pants encased his legs and hips. The black shirt was open to midchest and tailored to reveal his biceps and musculature. He laughed and joked with a model on the small stage in the workroom.

  Lights flashed as Bogosian snapped pictures.

  Roux vaguely recognized the woman. She was an American actress whose career had started to accelerate her to the A-lists. Roux couldn’t remember her name.

  She held her long brown hair back off her naked shoulders as she flirted with Bogosian and his camera. Roux knew that the painter supplemented his forgeries with legitimate work. But even painting American actresses in the nude didn’t pay as well as forged masterpieces.

  “Don’t worry about the tattoos,” Bogosian said in accented English. “I can airbrush those out. Just relax and have fun.”

  The actress saw Roux as he stepped into the room. Her eyes rounded in surprise and she reached for the dark blue robe on the floor.

  Even so, Bogosian kept shooting pictures and took a moment to turn around. “What are you—”

  Unable to stop himself, Roux crossed the distance and grabbed the man around the throat with his free hand. Bogosian struggled and tried to get free. Roux’s anger and desperation gave him incredible strength. He lifted the man to his tiptoes with one hand and shook him.

  “Quiet,” Roux advised. He showed the painter the pistol. “Quiet, and you may yet live in spite of all that you’ve done.”

  Bogosian nodded.

  Arm trembling from the effort of holding the man, Roux released Bogosian. “Now,” he said in a voice clotted with rage and need, “we’re going to talk, you and I. And if you lie to me, you’ll never paint or look at beautiful women again. Understand?”

  “Yes.”

  “Tell me about the Nephilim,” Roux ordered. “How can I find it?”

  36

  “Ms. Creed,” Elton McPhee greeted as Annja entered the Holy Constantinople Museum of the Apostles. From the way he
’d rushed up to her, he’d been waiting for her arrival. “It’s so good to meet you. I never miss an episode of your show. Fascinating. Simply fascinating.”

  “Sure,” Annja said. Even after many similar encounters, she still wasn’t quite certain how to respond when dealing with the attention Chasing History’s Monsters brought her.

  McPhee was a heavyset man with thinning blond hair and round-lensed glasses that matched his round face. He looked pale enough that Annja assumed he rarely went outside.

  The museum was a simple affair and had a modest selection of exhibits. A large mosaic of Constantinople as it had been before the Ottoman invasion filled one wall behind the counter.

  “And who are your companions?” the museum curator asked.

  Charlie stepped up before Annja could say anything.

  “I’m Charlie,” the old man announced, and took McPhee’s hand, though the curator seemed somewhat loath to let him have it.

  “It’s very nice to meet you, Professor Charlie,” McPhee said.

  “He’s not a—” Garin started to say, but Annja quieted him with a look. Garin sighed in displeasure, then turned and walked away.

  “Thank you,” Charlie said. “It’s a pleasure to meet you, too. We’re here to save the world.”

  For a moment McPhee stood frozen. Then he noted the medical bracelet on Charlie’s arm.

  “Of course you are,” McPhee said quickly after his discovery.

  Annja ignored all of it. As long as they got to see Thomopoulos’s sketchbooks, nothing mattered.

  Charlie folded his arms behind his back. He walked away and began inspecting the exhibits out in the main hall.

  “Is he all right?” McPhee asked in a quiet voice.

  “He’s fine,” Annja assured the curator.

  McPhee tapped his wrist. “Because he, uh…”

  “A private joke,” Annja said. “He can be a little eccentric.”

  McPhee nodded. “Sure. Sure. I understand. Many people in the field tend to get that way after a while. Can I get you anything?”

  “I’d really love to see the Jannis Thomopoulos collection.”

  “Of course. I’ve already moved everything we have to a viewing room.” McPhee swept an arm forward. “This way, please.”

  McPhee was organized. Annja saw that at a glance. The workroom was small, but the curator had made the best of it. Books and statues shared table space. Paintings, the few the museum had, hung carefully on the walls.

  Annja walked through it all to get a sense of it and to see if anything leaped out at her. The paintings seemed to be generic, as did the statues.

  “Our collection of paintings and statues is modest, of course,” McPhee apologized. “But we’re fortunate in some respects. Thomopoulos’s real worth hadn’t been discovered before the museum had most of these pieces. Later, they became harder to acquire.”

  Garin picked up a statue of an archer.

  “Please,” McPhee said tensely as he rushed over to take the statue and place it once more on the table. “Please, don’t touch anything.”

  For a moment Annja thought Garin was going to strike McPhee. She stepped forward to block any attempt, but Garin blew out an impatient breath and nodded.

  Annja settled into one of the chairs and donned a pair of gloves McPhee provided. There were at least fifty sketchbooks, all hand bound with paper that had survived hundreds of years without yellowing. That particular secret of making paper seemed to have vanished somewhere in time.

  She turned the pages reverently. She knew she held history, unique and important, in her hands. The thoughts and ideas that were passed on from one generation to another were as important as a piece of pottery or armor. No artifacts told history and the lives of people like a book.

  She had to focus on what she was there to find because each turn of the page threatened to lose her in history.

  * * * *

  Nearly three hours later, her back stiff and hunger gnawing at her stomach, Annja found the journal that contained the sketches of the Nephilim. She’d almost missed it because there wasn’t a fully drawn sketch on the pages. Rather, it held pieces of the finished painting. If Annja hadn’t seen the representation of the one that Ilse Danseker had been murdered for, she wouldn’t have found it.

  Breathing shallowly, her head about to explode from excitement, her eyes burning from strain, Annja leaned forward, placed the book on the table and took her digital camera from her backpack.

  “You found something?” Garin asked. He sat at the head of the table, a position he’d automatically assumed.

  “Yes.”

  Garin came to join her. Charlie did the same.

  “Where?” Garin demanded.

  “Here.” Annja took pictures with her camera.

  “There’s no painting there.”

  The page only held bits and pieces of drawings.

  “You’re trying to see the whole painting,” Annja said. “Thomopoulos didn’t render his sketches that way.”

  “He drew separate images of them.” Charlie grinned. “You did very well, Annja.”

  “Thank you.”

  “This is stupid,” Garin growled. “I still don’t see what either of you are talking about.”

  Charlie leaned forward. “May I?”

  Annja nodded and handed him the book. She dug her computer out and attached the camera to it through a USB cable. Then she brought the computer on-line.

  “Here,” Charlie said. “This is the face of the Nephilim.” He pointed at the coldly handsome face that sat disembodied on the page.

  “All right,” Garin said grudgingly, “I’ll admit there is some resemblance.”

  “There’s more than a resemblance,” Annja said. “It looks drawn to scale.”

  “How do you know that?” Garin asked.

  “The thumbprint beside the face.” Annja brought up the pictures she’d taken and quickly saved them.

  Garin had to lean close to see it. But it was there. Annja had noted the ghostly image and Charlie had seen it, as well. Finally, so did Garin.

  “All right, there’s a thumbprint,” Garin admitted. “That doesn’t mean it was drawn to scale.”

  “But it does,” Charlie said. “Artists often use their thumbs or a brush as a measuring tool to calculate sizes. There’s no other reason for the thumbprint to be there.”

  “Is that important?”

  “It tells us these other drawings are drawn to scale, as well,” Annja said. “And that is very important. If you’re going to draw a map, as you said Roux believes this picture holds, then scale is everything.”

  “I saw that painting,” Garin said. “There was no map.” He looked over her shoulder at the image she was using.

  Annja had captured the image from a CNN headline broadcast that had covered the Ilse Danseker murder. She’d lifted it from a repeat broadcast online that had been saved in high definition.

  After she captured the Nephilim’s face from the photo she’d taken, Annja superimposed it over the image of the Nephilim she’d taken from the television broadcast. She had to shrink the image down to get it to fit properly. She paid attention to the percentage of shrinkage she’d had to employ.

  Then she grabbed one of the pieces that had been around the face at the center of the page.

  “What are you doing?” Garin asked.

  “I think this belongs on the painting.” Annja shifted the piece around on the painting image.

  “Why?”

  “Because it was on that page.”

  “That doesn’t mean anything,” Garin said.

  “I think it does. I think all of those images were drawn to scale for a reason.”

  Garin looked at the painting image. “It’s not part of that painting.”

  “Not now,” Annja agreed. “But I think it once was.”

  “You’re wasting time and—”

  “There,” Charlie interrupted quietly. He pointed to a corner of the screen. Part of a design in the st
one floor matched part of the image on the piece Annja was trying to manipulate.

  Annja moved the piece into position, shrank it down and grabbed the next piece. It held a matching design in the painting, as well.

  Garin became silent.

  “I’m very good at puzzles.” Charlie smiled.

  There were nine pieces in all scattered around the painting. It only took Annja a few moments to blend them into the digital capture of the forged painting Ilse Danseker had purchased.

  “Whoever created the forgery saw the original painting,” Garin said.

  “I think so, too,” Annja agreed. “However, the original painting is no longer original.” She nodded at the adjusted image she’d created. “Thomopoulos, for whatever reason, painted over the original and hid these pieces.”

  “He did it to hide the legacy that was contained in the painting,” Charlie suggested.

  “What legacy is that?” Garin demanded.

  “One of the most powerful objects in the world,” Charlie said.

  “What?”

  “It’s not for me to say,” the old man replied.

  “Gabriel’s Horn,” Annja said, remembering Dr. Krieger’s research.

  Charlie looked at her. Then he smiled. “Yes.”

  “What does Roux want with it?” Garin asked.

  “The horn,” Charlie said softly, “has the power to unmake the world.”

  37

  “Roux,” Jennifer said, “you need to slow down and think things through.”

  Roux regarded the woman. He remembered all of their years together, and some of the happiness they’d had. It had been hard to leave Jennifer. She was fiercely proud and extremely confident.

  But the time had come those years ago, and it was either move on or reveal more about himself to her than he was comfortable doing. If he’d looked younger, he might have been able to give her more years.

  In the end, though, Roux knew from experience, it would only have gotten harder to leave her.

  “I am thinking things through,” he told her as he shoved another pistol into the pocket of the coat he wore. “I know where the painting is, Jennifer. I can’t leave it out there.”