Black Harvest (The PROJECT)

by Lukeman, Alex

  Selena pointed at a photo. "The building has a great workout center. There's a pool on the roof. The price is good, too."

  Nick read the price, discreetly printed near the bottom of the page. Seven figures, financing available. Three bedrooms, three baths, "well appointed kitchen", pantry and an enormous living room. The condo had a view that almost reached to the Rockies.

  If Selena decided to buy it, she could write a check. It reminded Nick of the unbridgeable money gap between them. It hadn't come up much until now. The beautiful polished floors and sweeping views in the pictures made him feel his middle class roots to the bone.

  "A bargain. Must be the lousy economy."

  If Selena caught the irony in his tone she didn't show it.

  "Now that I'm in D.C. all the time I thought I should get something permanent. Those rooms at the Mayflower are nice, but it's always been a temporary thing."

  "What about your place in San Francisco?"

  "Oh, I'll keep that. I love it. I'll pull a few of the art pieces and lease it out. I know someone who can handle that for me. I'm not using it now, but I don't want to let it go."

  Some of the art pieces she referred to were priceless. One was a Paul Klee original. Nick supposed it would look as good in Washington as in San Francisco. He liked Paul Klee. He glanced at the reproduction Klee hanging over his couch. That one had cost ninety-nine dollars, ninety-five cents. Plus shipping.

  "I think it's nice. I like the pool on the roof thing."

  Selena picked up her glass, sipped. She watched him over the rim. "We could live there together."

  "What's wrong with the way it is now?"

  "We spend a lot of time running back and forth to each other's places. Why not make it simple? This is a beautiful place. It's near everything, it's got good security and it has a private garage. I get two parking spots."

  Nick studied the view from the window. "It is nice. You should buy it if it's what you want."

  "You don't want to live there with me." It wasn't a question. He heard the disappointment in her voice.

  "It's not that."

  "Then what is it?"

  He turned to her. "It will change things between us. And it would always be your place."

  "It would be our place. We can make it our place."

  With two cats in the yard, he thought. A ghost of Megan. But Megan was gone. Why was he fighting the idea?

  "I've got my habits. You have yours. You really think we can live together without messing it up?"

  "We're never going to find out if we don't try."

  Nick stared out the window. His own view wasn't bad. "It's not the habits, or whatever."

  She waited.

  "Look at what we do. God damn it, Selena, I'm afraid you'll get killed. Like Megan. I can't do that again."

  "I'm not Megan."

  "No, you're not." He stopped and started again. "When that bomb was going to go off, I thought how I hadn't told you how I felt."

  She didn't have to ask which bomb. She wanted to ask him what he meant. She kept quiet.

  God damn it, why was it so hard to say? What was he afraid of? If he said the words, things would change. He clenched the glass. Pain stabbed him behind his left eye. The hell with it.

  "I love you, Selena. I haven't said that to anyone since Megan."

  She froze, the wine glass half way to her lips. The words were an electric wave through her body. She realized she'd thought he'd never say it. Now he had.

  "It took a bomb to make you say that? You haven't told me because you think I'll get killed?"

  "Yes."

  Selena set her glass down on the counter. "That's about the dumbest thing I've ever heard you say. What if you get killed? How do you think I'd feel about that?" She took a breath. "If we love each other, we should live together."

  "So you love me."

  "Nick. You are so fucking dense, sometimes."

  She reached up and kissed him, a long, deep kiss. "Do you get it, now? Yes, I love you."

  After a minute she backed away, her thoughts running into each other. One step at a time.

  "What about this place?" She gestured at the pictures spread out on the counter.

  Nick glanced at the pictures. Too many thoughts. "It's expensive."

  Her uncle had been a very wealthy man and he'd left a lot of it to her. Nick never asked her about it. She never talked about it. She did now.

  "I can afford it. Some of the money my uncle had went south with the economy. Some of it is tied up in the courts. The Chinese are being difficult about his investments over there. The rest is invested here. Half the interest goes to charity and I live on the other half. It's enough."

  "It doesn't feel right. I'd have to pay my share."

  "Does that mean you want to do this? Move in together?"

  Nick felt a headache coming on. Maybe he ought to find out if it would work or it wouldn't.

  "I'm not sure. Let me think about it."

  "You don't have to be so enthusiastic."

  He set his glass down and put his arms around her waist. "I can be enthusiastic."

  The kiss tasted like wine. A few minutes later they were in the bedroom. The clothes came off and they fell on the bed. He kissed her, held her to him, felt the warmth of her, the beat of her heart, her breasts under his chest. He ran his fingers through her hair, over her body. She grasped his buttocks, squeezed.

  "Nice," she whispered, her breath warm in his ear. He entered her.

  They took a long time together. Somehow making love to her felt different. Maybe it had been the words.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  Elizabeth Harker considered the implications of the murders. The killings were coordinated within 24 hours of each other. Only an organized group could pull off something like that.

  The full team except for Lamont Cameron was assembled in her office. Lamont was at Bethesda undergoing a final check on his arm, shattered by a bullet in Khartoum months before.

  Ronnie Peete was back from a week on the Navajo Reservation. He had on one of the Hawaiian shirts from his collection. This one was black, with white plumeria blossoms all over it. Subdued, for Ronnie.

  Ronnie's skin was light brown with a hint of red. He had dark brown eyes that could spot a rabbit in the desert glare where others saw only rock and cactus. His tracking skills were legendary in Marine Recon. His large nose could have graced a bust from ancient Rome. Ronnie was broad shouldered, narrow hipped, 180 pounds of rock hard sinew and muscle.

  Elizabeth picked up her pen.

  "Selena, how are you coming with the translation?"

  Selena wore a sleek tailored outfit of some green material that shimmered when she moved. The clothes looked comfortable. Harker wondered how she did it. Sometimes she felt a twinge of jealousy. No one should look that good. I bet she can't cook, she thought.

  "It's done."

  "And?"

  "One part is a partial accounting of the treasury of Darius III. It mentions gold and silver coins, gold statues and the golden urn. The urn is supposed to contain the curse of the Greek goddess Demeter in her wrathful aspect. Alexander told someone called Aetolikos to escort the treasure back to Greece and return the urn to Demeter's temple. He gave him part of the treasure as a reward."

  "Nice pay, if you can get it. A piece of the greatest treasure in history. What's the curse of Demeter?"

  "That's spelled out in the other part. It's a fragment from a long epic of the period, a variation on the story of Persephone's descent to the underworld."

  "Wait a minute." Nick interrupted. "Who's Persephone?"

  Nick wore a light sport jacket of gray, a dark blue shirt and black slacks. No tie. Casual. He didn't look either casual or relaxed. He looked like he was wound tighter than spring steel, but he always looked like that. Elizabeth could tell by the way he moved that his back was hurting again. It had been that way on and off since the jump into Tibet.

  "Persephone is Queen of the Dead, the daughter of Deme
ter. She was kidnapped and raped by Hades, king of the underworld. Sometimes she's linked with sexuality and war. The black horse on the urn was one of her symbols. It's where the word nightmare comes from."

  "Sex and war, that figures. They kind of go together."

  "You're hopeless." Selena shook her head. "There were a lot of bad consequences from the rape."

  "Consequences?"

  "Demeter is the goddess of the harvest and fertility. When she finds out Hades has taken her daughter, she goes into a rage. She shifts into her vengeful aspect as Demeter Erinys and makes everything stop reproducing. The crops die. There's famine, disease. No children. All the animals are sterile. She won't let anything grow or reproduce until Persephone is freed. One thing about Greek gods and goddesses, you didn't want to piss them off."

  One of the things Nick liked about Selena was her earthy language. It wasn't something you expected from a background like hers.

  "That's the curse?"

  "Yes. She makes a deal with Zeus. In return for Persephone's freedom, she puts things back to normal and agrees not to do it again. All that is pretty standard. But in this version she hedges her bets. She hides her power to stop everything, just in case."

  Ronnie said, "I'll bet I know where."

  Selena waited.

  "In a golden urn."

  "That's right."

  Harker picked up the silver pen that had belonged to FDR. She began tapping. Thinking.

  "Sometimes there's a historical basis for these stories, something real. I wonder if there's something behind this one?"

  "Campbell thought there was," Nick said.

  "Campbell, Weinstein and McCullough had two things in common. They knew about the story on the tablets and they were experts in the same field. Campbell and Weinstein also had high security clearances."

  "Why would they need high clearances?" Selena asked.

  "They were working on something secret for the Pentagon," Elizabeth said. "It wouldn't be the first time CDC was involved in a bio-warfare program."

  "The Greeks used bio-warfare. They'd throw dead plague victims over the walls of a besieged city, or catapult poisonous snakes onto enemy ships. Poison the water supply with dead animals."

  "Never seems like there's anything really new, does it?" Harker rolled her pen around on her desk. "Campbell thought the urn was important. But we don't know what happened to it."

  "We know Alexander gave it to Aetolikos," Selena said. "I followed up on him. He turns out to be a cousin of Alexander, one of his sub-commanders. Family."

  "Did you find out where he took it?"

  "He dropped off the treasure in Pella and went home to Dion. There's no record of him after that. Dion was in Macedonia and had a big temple dedicated to Demeter. It was overrun when the Persians invaded. That might be where Xerxes found the urn."

  "You think Alexander's cousin took it back to Dion?"

  "It makes sense. He would have seen it as returning something of the goddess to it's rightful place."

  "It doesn't seem likely it would still be around," Nick said.

  Selena shrugged. "No. But the town is still there."

  "We have to try and find out what happened to that urn." Harker turned to Selena. "How's your Greek?"

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  The hotel bed was uncomfortable. The room was stuffy, the red drapes on the windows dark and heavy. The thick smog of Athens made her eyes water. She was glad when her plane lifted off and she left the city behind.

  Dion was a long way north of Athens, at the foot of Mount Olympus. The nearest airport was Thessaloniki. At Thessaloniki Selena rented a car and wound her way 70 kilometers north to her next hotel. The desk clerk was eager to please. Guests were few, even at this five star resort. The beautiful beach outside her hotel window was almost deserted. A man strolled with his dog. A young couple huddled under a shared blanket against a steady breeze coming off the Aegean.

  Her first solo assignment. You're not in Kansas, anymore, she thought to herself. You're on your own. It felt good. It also felt a little scary, without the team around her.

  She wasn't armed. This was just a research trip, no different from trips she'd taken in the past to research some point of language or culture. She didn't expect trouble, but Nick's words echoed in her head.

  Never think things are what they appear to be. Always watch for the false word, the hidden knife, the gun. Trust no one.

  Trust no one.

  It wasn't a new thought. It had taken a long time to trust again after her parents and brother died. She'd been ten years old. Then she'd grown into an attractive woman and learned not to trust men. She still didn't trust most of them. Nick was an exception. She'd trust him with her life, that wasn't a problem. Trusting him with her heart, that was another matter. He'd said he loved her. She knew he meant it, in his own way, but that didn't mean it was trustworthy. There were a lot of different levels of trust. She brushed the confusing thoughts aside and considered her mission.

  Aetolikos had come home a long time ago. He was related to Alexander, he'd been important. Something might have turned up about him during excavations in the area. The archeological museum in Dion was the best place to start. If that didn't work out, she'd ask around the village. There could be something in local oral traditions.

  The hotel restaurant smelled of the sea. It was large and almost empty. She ordered dolmades, a salad, a bottle of mineral water, some bread and oil. A middle-aged man read a newspaper over coffee at a corner table. Four older couples, probably from a tour, sat near the windows looking bored.

  Two large men in boxy, dark suits came in and sat down. They glanced her way, then ignored her. They ordered lunch in stilted English, along with a bottle of retsina, the strong Greek drink she thought tasted like turpentine. They began talking business. It took her a moment to place the language as Georgian. Selena couldn't speak it, but she understood the basics. From what she could make out, the men were talking about importing olives. Or maybe they were selling them.

  Selena tuned them out and ate her meal slowly, thinking about Nick and what it would be like to live with him. Maybe it would be better to leave things as they were. She finished, signed her bill and walked past the table with the two men. Their eyes followed her out of the room.

  It was Saturday, already after noon, and the museum closed at 2:30 on Saturday during the winter months. She decided to go now. She got directions to the museum at the desk.

  The day was beautiful and chill, with the clear blue sky and crystalline quality of sunlight she'd found nowhere in the world except Greece. For Selena, it was one of the most beautiful and interesting places in the world. Snow-capped Mount Olympus dominated the spectacular scenery.

  Olympus, the home of the gods. She wondered what the gods would think of modern Greece, mired in a sea of opportunistic corruption and impossible debt. Even Ulysses would not have been able to sail those waters.

  The museum was modern, two stories high. She paid a modest fee and began exploring. The first floor was given over to artifacts and sculpture. A nice statue of Dionysius, god of wine. A display featuring coins and relics from early Christian and Roman sites in the area. Interesting, but none of it useful. She went upstairs.

  The prime exhibit was a hydraulic water organ over two thousand years old. She wondered what the music had sounded like. The rest of the floor dealt with life in classical Dion. Tools. Pottery. A child's toy horse, small statues of the gods, everything displayed in glass cases that ran along the walls or stood on plinths on their own.

  Selena came to a new section. The centerpiece of the display was a full scale cast taken from the lid of a tomb. It was perfect, unmarred by weather and time. A young and handsome face was carved on the lid in bas relief, helmeted and confident and haughty, the lips full and voluptuous. Even in the cold white of plaster the face was astounding, beautiful, perfectly proportioned, as if the lips would suddenly open and speak. Selena looked at the inscription engraved below an
d translated in her mind.

  Aetolikos

  Safe in Elysium

  CHAPTER NINE

  "You found his tomb?"

  Harker put Selena's call on the speaker. Nick and Stephanie listened.

  "Not his tomb. A cast taken from inside it. The tomb was only discovered last fall. The archeologist in charge sealed it and stopped excavation during the winter rains, but he's about to start up again."

  "How did you find that out?"

  "I had coffee with the curator of the museum. He was thrilled to have someone to talk to and very enthusiastic about the tomb. It's built into the side of a hill with several rooms. The connection to Alexander makes it a priority dig. There could be something there."

  "Can you get into it?"

  "I don't know. I've got some names and I've got the location. Nothing's going to happen until Monday."

  "What's your plan?"

  "Go out there, introduce myself, use my credentials. Butter up the chief archeologist and hint at good publicity for him. Everyone wants academic recognition. Tell him I'd appreciate a guided tour. I think he'll go for it."

  "And?"

  "If I see something, check it out."

  Harker picked up her pen, twirled it in her fingers. Nick waited for the tapping to begin and breathed an inward sigh of relief when she set it down.

  "Is anyone else showing interest?"

  "Not that I've noticed." The connection hissed with atmospherics. "This place is like a ghost town. There aren't many people staying here. The ones I've seen don't strike me as unusual. A couple of businessmen from Georgia. A couple of honeymooners. Some older folks."

  "What are American businessmen doing in Dion?" Nick asked. His ear began itching.

  "Not Georgia like Atlanta. Georgia as in the nation. I didn't pay much attention. They were talking over lunch, something about exporting olives to Russia."