The Babylonian Codex

by C. S. Graham

  Frowning, she flipped through articles on the World Economic Forum in Davos. The images of narrow snow-filled streets lined with steep-roofed chalets felt familiar. But was that because she’d seen them in her viewing, or because she remembered them from the nonstop TV coverage of Hamilton’s sudden death?

  She couldn’t say.

  She found herself staring at a photograph that had been taken just moments before the Vice President’s death, as he paused to speak to a man outside the frosted oriel window of a small restaurant. The caption beneath the photograph identified the man as journalist Noah Bosch.

  Noah.

  A coincidence? Maybe. Maybe not.

  Tobie studied the grainy image. The man looked to be in his late twenties or early thirties. Lean and fine-featured, he reminded her of a young John Lennon, with his wire-framed glasses and earnest expression.

  She typed in “Noah Bosch” and hit SEARCH.

  Jax’s computer made a strange whirling noise and froze.

  “Oh, no. Not now,” she wailed.

  Tobie had a bad reputation—well deserved—for interfering with or destroying any electronics that came within a certain radius of her body. Her sister liked to say she was radioactive; her brother refused to let her walk through the door of his apartment or ride in his Mercedes. DVD players, the fuel-injection systems of cars, Bluetooth headsets—all were at risk. But PCs seemed to be particularly vulnerable. She hit CONTROL-ALT-DELETE and prayed.

  Nothing.

  She hit it again and breathed a sigh of relief as the laptop hummed back to life.

  The search engine pulled up literally hundreds of articles with Bosch’s byline. He’d written an entire series on something called “dominionism,” whose titles she skimmed past rapidly. But at the bottom of the third page she came across an article that made her breath catch.

  Early Christian Treasures Stolen from Iraq.

  Clicking on the link, she found herself staring at a photograph of a large Syrian Cross, cast in gold and studded with precious stones. A paragraph halfway down the page leaped out at her.

  Noah Bosch had written, “According to Father Saverius Adel, an Assyrian priest formerly of Dora, Baghdad, now staying at the Holyland Franciscan Monastery in Washington, D.C., one of the most precious items lost in the chaos of the invasion was an ancient papyrus known as the Babylonian Codex. Recently discovered buried in an early Christian church in a village near the ruins of Babylon about an hour’s drive south of Baghdad, the book is believed to date back to the first or second century A.D. ‘Early analysis of the text suggests it may be an alternate version of one of the books of the New Testament,’ says Adel, ‘and may even prove to predate the canonical text.’ ”

  Trembling now with excitement, Tobie was just typing “Babylonian Codex” into the search engine when she heard a strange squeak, followed by a barely perceptible thump, as if something soft had knocked against the sailboat’s stern.

  Her gaze flew to the hatch at the top of the ladder leading to the cockpit. She’d left it unlocked.

  The computer slid off her lap. Surging to her feet, she scrambled up the ladder to secure the sliding door’s latch with trembling fingers. But she knew she’d bought herself only an extra minute, maybe two.

  She was trapped.

  Jax noticed the black Crown Victoria when he was on the Capital Beltway, headed west.

  The Crown Vic was being careful not to stay too close. But then, it didn’t need to, thanks to the tracking device silently beeping beneath Jax’s right fender. As he turned onto Route 123, he spotted the second Crown Victoria, also black. There were two men in each car.

  They weren’t going to be easy to lose.

  Pulling into the massive shopping complex known as Tysons Corner, he parked near Macy’s and entered the mall. He did not glance behind him or give any indication he knew he was being followed.

  He bought Tobie a new pair of jeans and a navy turtleneck at a small boutique on the piazza, seemingly oblivious to the big, dark-headed guy with a strong jawline who loitered just outside. If the guy had a partner, he was more discreet.

  Leaving the boutique with a large shopping bag, Jax turned toward the nearest anchor store and headed up to lingerie on the third floor. There were few things more obvious than a male FBI agent in a lingerie department.

  Politely declining the sales clerk’s offer of assistance, Jax cut between a densely packed rack of lacy black bras trimmed with satin ribbons and a row of red silk nightgowns with plunging necklines and thigh-high slits. Glancing back, he saw the dark-headed guy draw up at the edge of the lingerie department as if he’d slammed into some kind of dangerous force field.

  Beyond him, looking equally uncomfortable, hovered a wiry, sandy-haired agent Jax recognized as Mark Kowalski.

  Their partners had obviously stayed with the Crown Vics.

  Jax pushed deeper into the racks of seductive little wisps of nothings. The FBI agents nodded to each other and split up, Kowalski staying near the top of the escalators while his darker companion swung around the perimeter in a wide arc to take up a position at the opposite end of the department.

  Both stood with their shoulders hunched, their gazes darting left and right, as if in terror that someone they knew might see them here.

  Jax eyed a nearby display of cream silk teddies trimmed with black lace. Nice. Lifting one of the teddies off the rack, he scanned the nearby aisles, assessing his fellow shoppers. There was a slim woman in a camel-hair coat pushing a baby in a stroller. Beyond her, an older woman was eyeing what Jax’s Irish grandmother liked to call “foundation garments.” And then there was the twenty-something girl in a fluffy white jacket who had a mouth full of chewing gum and a rope tattooed around her neck.

  Jax studied her more closely. She was wearing a short denim skirt and black tights with silver studded black ankle boots. A matching silver stud glinted in her left nostril and a silver hoop pierced her right eyebrow. Her short red hair stuck out from her head in artfully gelled spikes. Her lipstick was purple, her skin deathly pale—except for the tip of her nose, which was red. She kept sniffing as if she had a cold. Or did cocaine.

  Perfect.

  “Excuse me,” he said with an easy smile as he walked up to her. “I’m wondering if you could help me?”

  She turned her head to look at him, her brows drawing together in suspicion, her jaw working her gum hard. “Whatcha need?”

  He nodded toward a distant rack of terry cloth robes, beyond which Kowalski had taken up his stand. “I’d like to play a joke on my friend there. He wants to buy his wife something for her birthday but he’s too embarrassed to come in here. I’ll give you fifty bucks if you’ll go ask him if he thinks your boyfriend would like this teddy.”

  The girl’s eyes widened. “Are you for real?”

  Jax held out a fifty-dollar bill and the teddy. “The money’s real enough.”

  She sniffed, her native caution obviously at war with her desire for the money. “That’s all I gotta do?”

  “That’s it.”

  She took the teddy—and the money—and gave him a saucy smile. “You got it.”

  Jax watched from behind a rack of knit pajamas as she sauntered up to the FBI agent, gum smacking loudly.

  “Hey, dude,” she said. “Help me out here?”

  Kowalski startled and looked behind him.

  “Yeah, I’m talking to you,” she said. Planting herself in front of him, she held the teddy up under his nose. “You think my boyfriend would like this?”

  Jax didn’t stay to watch. Hunkering low, he slipped out through the nearby children’s department. The last thing he heard was the girl’s triumphant voice, saying, “Dude! What is it with you? If I can go into the plumbing department at Home Depot, why should this place freak you out?”

  Chapter 25

  Standing just inside the mall’s entrance, Jax scanned the parking lot.

  He could see one of the black Crown Victorias idling two aisles over an
d three cars down from where he’d left the BMW. The second FBI vehicle was nowhere in sight; if the teams were following procedure, it would be parked on the far side of the mall, its driver no doubt yawning as he watched the stationary little bleep coming from the tracking device on Jax’s car.

  Stripping off his peacoat, Jax shoved it into his shopping bag. FBI agents were like cops: if they were looking for a bare-headed guy in a dark jacket, they tended not to pay attention to guys in pale sweaters with baseball caps.

  Pulling the Washington Nationals cap he’d bought from a vender in the mall’s piazza low on his forehead, he pushed through the heavy glass doors.

  The sun might be shining, but the wind was brisk and strong. Ducking his head as if in response, he strode quickly up the lane behind the waiting Crown Vic. As he passed the idling black car, he could see the FBI agent sitting behind the wheel, his gaze fixed on Jax’s car, his head tipped to one side as he cradled a cell phone against his shoulder.

  Keeping his face turned away, Jax eased one of the black cardboard cylinders from his pocket. He waited until he was just past the white Audi parked on the far side of the Crown Vic, then swerved right. Pulling the cylinder’s pin, he tossed the canister over the Audi’s white hood as if throwing away a crumpled cigarette pack.

  A smoke grenade charged with hexachlorethane, the canister went off with a loud boom that sent a massive cloud of foul black smoke billowing up and out. The Audi’s burglar alarm went off, its horn going beep beep as the smoke whooshed out, rapidly obliterating visibility for a good twenty to thirty feet.

  Shit. This time, the last thing he wanted was a damned alarm.

  Quickly tossing the second cylinder, he cut through the aisles of parked cars and backtracked to his BMW. Throwing up a crooked arm to protect his nose and mouth from the spreading smoke, he felt beneath his wheel well until he found the FBI’s tracking device. His eyes were stinging. He could hear sirens and shouting as the mall cops descended on the scene. But the smoke was too thick for Jax to see them.

  Detaching the tracking device, he transferred the FBI’s little black transmitter to the sleek silver Mercedes S-Class parked beside him.

  Then he slid behind the BMW’s wheel, eased the convertible into reverse, and drove off.

  Davenport was leaving his meeting when the second call came through from Kowalski.

  “We lost him.”

  “What the fuck?” snapped Davenport, ducking into the backseat of his waiting car. “How the hell did that happen?”

  “He went into Tysons Corner. Me and Welch followed him, but he gave us the slip.”

  “I thought you said he had no idea we were watching him? What about Mundy and Jackson?”

  “Jackson lost sight of the jerk’s car when he set off a smoke grenade. Mundy was waiting on the other side of the mall, watching the GPS signal. But it didn’t move.” There was a pause. “The son of a bitch found the tracking device and stuck it on another car. He was gone before we knew what had happened.”

  “Put out an APB on the asshole. I want him brought in. Now.”

  “I thought we wanted him loose so he could lead us to the girl?”

  Davenport nodded to his driver, who pulled away from the curb. “The girl is being taken care of.”

  Her heart pounding hard, Tobie backed away from the cockpit hatch.

  Over the gentle lapping of waves against the hull, she caught a strange brushing sound, as if someone were climbing the ladder at the stern. Then came the scuff of footsteps in the cockpit overhead.

  Whirling back to the saloon, she scrambled to grab Jax’s gun off the table. Holding the Beretta in one shaking hand, she tried to rack it, only to discover the slide was so stiff she could barely get it to shift.

  “Oh, God, no,” she whispered. “Come on.”

  Spinning back toward the hatch, she saw a shadow darken the door’s smoked Plexiglas window. As she watched, the latch began to lift.

  Gritting her teeth, she transferred the 9mm to her left hand, grasped the slide with her right, and yanked. The slide eased back and a round entered the chamber with a satisfying click.

  Holding the Beretta in a two-handed grip, she aimed the muzzle at the cockpit hatch. The handle jiggled a second time, then stilled, as if the men above had realized it was locked.

  A silence fell, so intense she could hear her own breathing. Then, through the thinly curtained windows that ran along the top of the saloon, she saw a shadow.

  One of the men was slipping down the side deck, toward the bow.

  For an instant, she couldn’t think what he meant to do. Then she remembered the skylight hatch in the ceiling of the forward cabin.

  Her gaze jerked back to the cockpit hatch. One of the shadows was still there, no doubt to make certain she didn’t slip out while his friend broke in through the forward cabin.

  Still clutching the Beretta, she backed toward the narrow hall that led from the main saloon to the aft cabin. She’d just reached the door to the engine room when she heard the pop of the hatch in the forward cabin being forced, followed by the thump of a man’s weight hitting the berth beneath it.

  They were inside.

  By now, the blood was pounding through her veins so hard her hands were tingling. Peering around the corner to the saloon, she saw a darkly clothed figure with a nasty-looking silenced Glock materialize in the doorway from the forward cabin.

  Tobie aimed at his chest and pulled the trigger, twice. One of the brass instruments mounted on the wall near his head shattered in an explosion of glass and metal.

  Shit.

  With a curse, the guy jerked back and fired off four shots in quick succession as Tobie ducked behind the engine room. She could hear the bullets thumping into the bulkhead beside her.

  “FBI. Nobody needs to get hurt,” called the man in an amazingly calm, clear voice. “Just throw down your weapon and come out.”

  “Fuck you,” shouted Tobie, and fired off another three rounds in the general direction of his voice.

  “Mason?” shouted the guy in the cockpit overhead, slamming his foot against the hatch.

  She heard the wood of the door splinter. Shifting her angle, she fired a couple of rounds up through the deck and heard a yelp.

  “Son of a bitch! What the hell is going on down there, Mason? Take her out!”

  Tobie sucked in a deep, frightened breath . . . and smelled gasoline.

  Looking down, she saw a pool of liquid leaking out from beneath the engine room’s door and running across the deck. One of the slugs must have penetrated the bulkhead and ripped through the generator’s fuel supply.

  Backing quickly into the aft cabin, she leaped up on the bed, unlatched the skylight hatch above it, and jumped down again. She figured that what she was about to do would either save her life or kill her. But at this point, she was going to die anyway. Holding the Beretta’s muzzle in the gasoline puddle, she closed her eyes and pulled the trigger.

  She’d been afraid the gasoline would go up in a giant whoosh. Instead, it caught fire with a soft blue flame that flickered, then slowly began to spread across the floor.

  She didn’t stay to watch.

  Scrambling back onto the bed, she levered herself up through the aft skylight hatch. She could see the dark back of the asshole in the cockpit. He was still kicking at the latch and hadn’t heard her. She fired off a quick round in his direction and then dove off the stern into the wind-whipped gray waters of the Potomac.

  She plunged deep, her body screaming in shock as the icy river closed around her. Arcing up, she broke the surface almost at once, gulping in air and shuddering with fear and insipient hypothermia.

  By now, flames were leaping out of the aft hatch. Sucking in a quick breath, she dove again, deep, just as the sailboat exploded in a huge, percussive whoomp.

  Chapter 26

  Jax could see the oily smoke roiling into the sky even before he parked the four-door gray Toyota sedan behind the marina’s clubhouse.

 
; He had rented the Toyota under the name of James Anderson. Mr. Anderson had graying hair and a mustache, and he wore a cheap suit that seriously offended Jax’s sensibilities. His only consolation was the knowledge that no one he knew would recognize him if they saw him.

  Closing the car door with a quiet snap, he watched the red and blue lights of the emergency vehicles splash across the clubhouse walls and bounce off the surrounding trees. He counted two fire engines, an ambulance, and a half dozen police cars. But it was the coroner’s van that drew and held his attention, his footsteps echoing dully in his ears as he walked out on the dock.

  A half-grown kid in a navy-and-white-striped jersey dashed past. Jax reached out and snagged his arm. “What happened?”

  “The Hallberg-Rassy just blew up!” said the kid, practically trembling with excitement.

  Jax nodded to the black body bag being wheeled toward them on a gurney. “Who—” His voice cracked and he had to try again. “Who got killed?”

  “I don’t know. They’re both burned pretty bad.”

  “Both?” Jax stared at the blackened, submerged wreck of the sailboat, and felt his phone begin to vibrate in his pocket.

  He dug it out. Only two people had this number: Matt and October. He flipped open the cheap phone with a hand that was not quite steady. “Hello?”

  “Jax?”

  “October.” He squeezed his eyes shut and let out a soft laugh. “Where the hell are you?”

  “Listen, Jax . . . I—I’m sorry, but I’m afraid I kinda blew up your ex-stepdad’s boat.”

  Madrid, Spain: Saturday 3 February 6:05 P.M. local time

  Noah was still trembling.

  Three hours later, and he was still trembling. Some ballsy investigative reporter he turned out to be.

  Afraid to surface at the train station in case it was being watched, he’d caught a ride back to Madrid with a family of Germans who’d stopped in Medinaceli to have their picture taken in front of the village’s famous triumphal arch. Now, his hands shaking and his ears still ringing, he set his laptop on the table of a coffee shop near the plaza mayor and started looking for Wi-Fi service.