by K. T. Tomb
“So?” he said, rushing forward to help Sirita with the heavy bags.
Oscar almost fell to the pavement when she pushed the silk veil, that had fallen over her face, aside and looked up at him with the clearest grey eyes he had ever seen.
“You must be Oscar,” she said straightening herself and extending her hand for him to shake. “We’ve never actually spoken but I’ve heard so much about you.”
Her Goan accent was so entrancing, he could barely think straight to shake her hand.
“Nice to meet ya’ Ma’am,” he stuttered finally.
Lana came swiftly to the rescue. She had never seen Oscar so completely ga-ga over a girl before.
“Hey, Siri. How was the flight?”
“It was smooth, I was so glad you could get a direct flight. Things aren’t very smooth on the Arabian Peninsula.”
“Yeah, I know what you mean but it wasn’t hard, the airlines don’t want to stop either.”
They laughed cheerfully at that and hugged.
“Oscar, why are you just standing there? It’s the bags I brought you to carry, if you hadn’t worked that out yet,” Lana teased. “Come on, boy.”
Oscar glowered at her for a minute and then grabbed the bags and loaded them effortlessly into the Range Rover. Lana jumped into the driver’s seat while Oscar ran around to open Sirita’s door for her, then he got in the back seat.
“I hope you don’t find the SUV intimidating,” Lana said, making conversation.
“Not at all, I’m used to driving whatever I can get my hands on.”
“Good, because it’s what Chyna picked out for office use. You’ll have it most of the time.”
“That’s very cool. I’ve never had a car at my complete disposal before.”
“What do you want to do first Siri? Do you want to see the apartment and drop off the luggage, or do you want to go straight to the office? Chyna should be there by now with the decorator.”
“I’m dying to see her. Let’s go to the office.”
In the back seat, Oscar raised his eyes to the roof and thanked the gods. He would convince Lana to let him take Sirita home later and maybe have the chance to get to know her a little better.
***
Demetri was just about to lose his temper with Marko. Thorin had already gone through the other two guys and gotten everything there was to be had out of them. They didn’t know anything about the stolen artifacts or who Marko actually worked for. They had been hired by him to shoot up the party at the Damascus Museum and were just excited to get a chance to possibly kill some rich, important foreigners. Mindless violence; they were just common thugs. Thorin had already released them back into the custody of the F.B.I. and they were holding one-way tickets directly back to Damascus and long prison sentences on terrorism charges.
It was Marko that had the real intelligence they were after; and the man would not talk.
“I’m out of ideas,” he finally confessed to Thorin.
“Let me try something,” he said, smiling mischievously.
Demetri went to a corner and lit a cigarette.
Thorin bent close to Marko and said to him, “If you don’t know anything, I guess I’ll just have to let you go and stop wasting everybody’s time, yes?”
“Yes, I don’t know anything, let me go.”
“Are you sure?”
“Yes, let me go. I’m sure.”
“Have you thought about what the others are going to do to you when they find you? I have and I think you’d be safer here with us.”
“What do you mean? They aren’t going to do anything to me, I didn’t tell you anything. I’m no snitch.”
“Says you!”
Suddenly he was silent. He knew that what Thorin said was true. Xavier, especially, wouldn’t be interested in anything he would have to say. He shook his head slowly from side to side and then suddenly he broke down crying.
“He’s ready!” Thorin announced.
Demetri was pissed off. He had been working that scumbag for hours and Thorin had stepped in and broken him down in fifteen minutes. He hauled Marko up from the chair and dragged him into the next room. Agent Stewart was sitting across the table from him and Demetri and Thorin stood to the side.
“So, you’re ready to talk?”
“Yes, I’m ready to talk.”
“Then go ahead: talk!”
Marko told Anthony the entire story and every little detail about the smuggling operation. They attached an operative to the key archaeological sites around the world to scout out what was being unearthed. Their main focus was jewelry, vessels and other artifacts made of precious metals. As long as those types of items were coming out of the ground then they stuck around and either they dug at night to recover items for themselves or the robbed the storage facility. With the falcon, Marko had gone ahead and dug for himself. When he had seen the size of the ship they had almost finished excavating, he realized that it must have been the burial mound of a raider or a chieftain, maybe both. And what he knew for sure was that in an instance like that, there would be pure Roman gold there and lots of it too. He was right, the first night he went out on his own to the site he found the falcon. Marko didn’t bother to stick around after that, he packed up and quit the camp. The falcon was clean because no one knew that it had ever been there so no one could say that it was missing. He smuggled it to Syria in some crates belonging to NATO peacekeepers that were headed for Homs. When it got to Homs, he was supposed to pass it off to a buyer but they never showed up at the meeting point. Marko got desperate because he didn’t want to be caught carrying a statue of solid gold around the place.
He knew of a restricted area in Hamah, just north of Homs, which had been slated for excavation for over ten years now and had never been touched. It was unguarded and undisturbed, perfect. He took the falcon there and buried it inside the perimeter fence. He thought that at least no one would go in there to disturb it but a week later, the excavation of the site began and Marko just couldn’t believe his bad luck. He tried to steal it back several times but, Epstein and his team were paranoid about violence in Homs so they always had excessive security protecting the site.
He’d cased out their warehouse in Damascus instead and moved on to a ruby deal in Burma. Even with the complicated nature of moving such precious contraband, that sale had been a walk in the park compared to the gold statue. By the time he had made it back from selling the gems to a dealer in Japan, Chyna Stone and her people were in charge of the warehouse, entering the information on the relics into a government database and setting up an exhibition at the Damascus Museum. As far as he knew, the statue was still there but they must have realized by then that it had absolutely nothing to do with the other things that were coming up out of the ground there. For the first time in his career, he couldn’t buy an inside informant or get himself inserted in the operations and Marko started to get worried. It was just a matter of time before Xavier and Greame started putting some pressure on him.
Sergio was his only hope. He had hired the hacker to steal any computer equipment that might have accompanied the Found History team, while he was busy in Burma. The plan had been for him to hack into their systems and find out exactly what they knew about it so far and possibly any information they had about its location. Stealing the case had been easy but hacking the equipment had been disastrous. When Sergio booted up the server brain, torrents of firewalls, security password and encryptions dead-bolted him multiple times and he was at a loss. Outside of getting the computer online to dial into the main servers, he had tried everything he knew how to do and he still couldn’t get past their military grade security and he gave up on the project. Marko had never heard of Sergio giving up on a hack before. The case was returned to the airport as if it had never been lifted in the first place; again that had been easy. But Sergio was careless; Marko would have followed the airline delivery personnel to get a fix on Chyna Stone’s location. By then, they knew even less than they had in the
beginning. His hacker had let him down; he had to take care of that permanently.
When he got back to Damascus, Marko decided to break into the mainframe at Found History himself to try and regain some ground. That’s when he went and used the computer station at the internet café to get online access to their server. His presence had been detected almost immediately and the feed interrupted before he could copy all the data he wanted. They must have had some computer whiz hotshot keeping an eye out for possible breaches because once the data had started being replicated; he was onto Marko like a bullet.
So many missteps had been made along the way, laced with the worst luck he’d had in his entire career as a treasure thief. All of it had led to that very moment where he was handcuffed to a chair in a badly lit room, probably at an F.B.I. black site in Timbuktu. He was sure that no one knew where he was; hell, he didn’t know where he was. When they caught him at the museum he had been hooded before they took him out of there and put him in the vehicle. Marko had no idea how long they had traveled or in what direction. After a while, the agents in the vehicle with him had knocked him out with chloroform. When he woke up he was sitting on that very chair and had been for the last three days.
As he listened to the F.B.I. agent who he now knew as Stewart, Marko realized that it was time to give up. If he stuck it out and didn’t tell them anything, several things could happen. They could simply make him disappear; people don’t like to think about it but it happens all the time, there wasn’t anyone taking roll call at Gitmo. They could decide to let him go but Marko was sure that would be worse. Xavier would probably have a sniper waiting to take him out at his mailbox the next day. The final option seemed to be the best to him, it made the most sense and it ended with him keeping his brains inside his skull.
“I’ll tell you everything you want to know, but you’ve got to do something for me,” he finally relented.
“What’s that, Marko?”
“I want to be incarcerated in Sweden.”
“Why’s that?” Anthony asked, curiously.
“They don’t put terrorists in front of a firing squad like I’ll probably get in Syria and as far as I know my people don’t have any connections inside the prison system there.”
“I see.”
“I’m just trying to stay alive at this point, Agent Stewart. I’m gonna die one day, I’d just rather that happens on my terms.”
“Understood,” Anthony replied, “I’m sure we can work that out, especially since the initial crime took place there. I want you to realize that I plan to press Interpol to charge you with international terrorism for the stunt you tried to pull at the museum, which means you’re going away for a lot longer than you might have thought.”
“I’m okay with that, as long as it’s Sweden.”
“I’ll make the arrangements, but you have to do something for me too.”
“How can I help you, Agent Stewart?”
“You’ve got to help me catch your partners.”
“Oh, I don’t think that’ll be a problem at all. I’ll be happy to.”
***
Marko stepped out of the black sedan and pushed the door shut. There was a strange echo in the alley as the hollow metallic sound bounced off the surrounding walls. He smoothed his new suit out and walked around to the trunk of the car. Just as he was about to open it, another car pulled up. Xavier and Greame stepped out and walked towards him. It was clear that they were on their guard. He had been missing for two weeks and they were sure he had been taken in and probably confessed everything about their operation to his captors. But then suddenly he had turned up again and contacted them to say the he had recovered the falcon and the sale had gone through. Now they were meeting him to exchange the money.
“How’ve you been, Marko,” Xavier asked.
“It’s been rough, boss, but I managed to pull through.”
“How much did you have to tell them to let you go,” Greame asked, bluntly.
“Not much, they didn’t know anything about us being after the bird. Their concern was us wanting to shoot up the museum with those rich assholes inside. I just gave up the Iraqis and they were satisfied with that.”
“You got lucky then, finally.”
“Seems so,” Marko replied. “Are we going to do this or what? Driving around with all this cash has had me nervous for days.”
“Yeah, let’s get this over with,” Xavier agreed, stepping forward.
Marko opened the truck and pulled out the briefcase, placing on top of the trunk after he had slammed it shut. He opened it and showed them the crisp U.K. pound notes inside.
“Impressive, Marko. You really came through,” Greame said, closing the case and taking it off the car.
Suddenly, Xavier pulled a handgun from under his jacket and pointed it at him.
“I thought about this for a long time, Marko, and I’m sorry it has to be this way, but the mistakes you made brokering this deal put me in a difficult position. It’s possible the F.B.I. know more about our little operation than I’d prefer they did and the word is out there that my team isn’t as dependable as we used to be. None of that sits well with me, Marko and I’m sure you understand why.”
“Come on, Xavier. None of this was my fault. I had no way of knowing how things would go down in Syria.”
“That’s true, but you also didn’t do your homework.”
“You got greedy too, Marko,” Greame added. “You were burning the candle at both ends by setting up the gold deal so close to your Burmese trip. That screwed you big time.”
“That’s not the way I see it though, guys,” He said loudly and he made a dive for the pavement and scrambled around to the driver’s door of the car.
Before Xavier could pull the trigger, a voice came over a loud speaker advising him to drop the gun or they would be shot. Marko peeled out in the black sedan, leaving them standing in the alley with their hands in the air and F.B.I. agents in full black, carrying high-powered assault rifles surrounding them from every angle.
***
Anthony pulled out the chair for her and Chyna took her seat at the table, looking around at all her friends and colleagues seated there chatting among themselves. She was happy that they all came to celebrate with her; she knew it had been a rough three weeks for all of them. Fatma and Dr. Epstein had been at the center of a PR nightmare after the attempted shooting on the opening night of the Phoenician exhibit. Their security protocol had been put through the wringer especially with civil unrest in the country looking as if it would soon escalate into outright war. She had done her best to help them by presenting a security proposal to the museum board on their behalf, outlining how they could implement new anti-terrorism measures at the institution. By the time Chyna had completed the presentation, the board had fully realized that they had been just as lax about securing their guests as the management had been, considering that Fatma’s team had requested permission to purchase metal detectors for the main entrance two years prior and her request had been denied repeatedly.
She noticed that Oscar and Sirita were engaged in a rather animated conversation at the far end of the table. They looked delighted with each other. Although she wasn’t the sort to inject herself into the personal lives of her employees, Chyna made a mental note to talk to both of them about the implications of engaging in office romances. Although she respected their judgment and they seemed to be genuinely just getting to know each other, she also wanted them to be aware of the painful existence they might be setting themselves up for. She should know; it had been the same kind of painful affair she and Anthony had had for the last fourteen years. Granted, her story was finally getting its happy ending; but what were the odds of theirs having the same?
Rashid had been gracious enough to join them in their celebrations. He had brought Shakira Mendes along with him. Chyna wasn’t sure if there was anything going on between them but they sure did make a cute couple. Anthony reached out under the table and took her hand in
his, squeezing it slightly. He always did things like that just to let her know everything was going to be alright. As long as he was close enough to touch her like that, she knew that he was right. Lana was smiling broadly at Oscar as she made one of her famous jokes about his Tennessee accent over the table. Sirita wrinkled her nose at her and then burst out laughing too. Chyna wondered where Ted was, he had been invited to join them for the occasion but she wasn’t sure if he had made it to Istanbul.
“Lana,” Chyna called to her, “did Ted catch his flight?”
“He sure did, Chyna,” she replied smiling widely.
“So where is he?”
“He’ll be down in a minute,” she said cheekily. “He’s suffering from a little bit of, umm, jet lag.”
Everyone at the table started laughing. Lana blushed a little and took a sip of the lemon water in her glass.
“Well I hope he joins us soon, dinner is going to be served momentarily,” she announced.
Everyone at the table cheered, they had been looking forward to it all day. Chyna had booked them a private dining room at the Ottoman Imperial, their favorite hotel in the city. They had enjoyed the time they had spent there on their last adventure.
Soon, platters of food began to arrive. There was a whole roasted lamb and many different types of poultry. Chyna saw duck, chicken, pheasant and Cornish hens; some roasted and some stewed, all to perfection. Fish, steamed and whole, were added to the feast. As was customary, the meats were placed on a side table while the side dishes were placed in front of them to be served family style. Vegetable biryani, roasted vegetables in olive oil, flat breads, pasta, fresh vegetables and every condiment imaginable were set down on the table. When Chyna nodded her approval to the maître d’, the waiters began to serve the meat dishes to each of her guests in turn. Ted soon arrived at the table and all was perfect in their little world.
It was a wonderful dinner and they relaxed and had after dinner drinks and talked well into the night. None of them knew when they would have the chance to be together like that again; it would certainly not be soon.
