by Tom Wilde
Sometime in the depth of the night, I was woken by the harsh, beating staccato drone of a helicopter lifting off from somewhere close by. After that, my dreams were a collage of dark, ruined castles and the sound of wolves in the distance.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
“We have company.”
Caitlin’s voice made me open my eyes, blinking away sleep. I slowly raised my head and saw Rhea standing near the foot of the large bed, backlit by the early morning light from the balcony. She was dressed in comfortable-looking jeans and a dark blouse, and she was holding a flat bundle in her hands. One of Vanya’s uniformed guards pushed in a cart loaded with silver-domed trays that exuded an inviting aroma of food and coffee. Bowing with the affectation of a geisha, Rhea said, “Forgive the intrusion, but it’s time for Mr. Blake to prepare to leave.”
“Thank you,” Caitlin said in a fair imitation of graciousness, then added, “Now get out.”
Rhea smiled and bowed. “Please be ready in sixty minutes, Mr. Blake.” She placed her bundle at the foot of the bed and then silently left the room.
When the coast was clear, I regretfully left Caitlin, took the bundle of clothes that Rhea had left, and retreated into the bathroom. I hurried through a quick routine of shaving and showering, sorry that I couldn’t relax and enjoy the luxury of the decadently appointed furnishings. I saw that my damaged ribs had picked up an extra layer of color, like a pair of circular rainbows, but they hurt less than before. Marginally, anyway.
The clothes Rhea brought were a pair of tan pants and a shirt that had a distinctly military styling, and I suspected that they were donated by Commander Vandervecken. I dressed and left the bathroom, picked up my meager collection of pocket gear, and found Caitlin sitting up in bed with the sheets gathered about her. As I went toward the breakfast trays, I had an unwelcome feeling I was being fattened up for the kill. I asked Caitlin, “Join me?”
She shook her head. “No. You go ahead.” So I just went about the business of refueling my body as Caitlin kept silent and watched, and I would have given any of the treasures I’ve found over the years to know what she was thinking about.
When I finished, I stood at the foot of the bed. Caitlin and I shared a look for a time, and then I said, “Well, I guess I’ve got to go to work.”
“Just make sure to come back in less than twenty years. I’m not nearly as patient as Penelope. Come here.”
I did. And she gave me a long, warm reminder to return. Soon.
When I left the suite, Rhea was waiting for me in the hall with a black leather shoulder bag that had a matching jacket folded over it. She consulted a gold Lady Rolex. “Close enough,” she said, then her dark eyes narrowed as she asked, “Is something wrong?”
I just dumbly shook my head while I fought an impulse to back away from her. In the hallway light I saw the thin chain-link belt she wore, loosely tied in the front, each end of the chain terminating in a teardrop-shaped metal weight, and her midnight-black hair, pulled back sleek and tight with a pair of long, silver-colored metallic pins the size of chopsticks woven in. These decorative accoutrements were nothing less than potentially lethal weapons, ones that would be invisible to the untrained eye, and I had seen firsthand how dangerous this woman could be. She was a venomous predator hidden within perfect camouflage, a creature you’d never see coming for you until it was way too late. In short, she was a creature very much like me. And that scared me.
I realized she was awaiting some reply, so I murmured, “Sorry. Didn’t have time for a second cup of coffee.”
She nodded understandingly. “No need to apologize, but I’m afraid we must hurry.”
I nodded and followed her to the elevators and down to the main lobby. She brought me out to the seaside front of the building, where I saw the sandy beach bracketed by the dark rock clefts. The morning was warm and bright, which made me envious of the sunglasses Rhea placed on her face as she walked to an electric-powered, open-topped Jeep parked in front. Rhea tossed her bag and jacket in the back and took the wheel, driving us down a bumpy, unpaved road that wound along the island’s coastline. I cast a look back and saw that Vanya’s complex looked like a fortress in its own right from the outside.
After a short, winding drive I got my first bad surprise of the day. Rhea had driven us to a cove with a boat dock, where I got a tantalizing glimpse of a pair of fast-looking inboard motorboats and a cleared area where a white Sikorsky helicopter rested on a concrete landing pad. I’ve had more than a passing fancy with the history of transportation and an undying love of ships, from Phoenician triremes to Spanish galleons to the last great passenger liners of the mid-twentieth century. As for aviation, I’ve always been sorry I missed the chance to travel the skies in a Zeppelin airship. But as far as I’m concerned, the idea of the damn helicopter should have been abandoned right after the first autogiro. Unfortunately in my line of work, I have to ride in the noisy, cantankerous contraptions far too often for my liking.
Rhea brought the little Jeep to the edge of the landing pad and waved to the pilot, a dark-skinned man in a dazzlingly white uniform, who smiled and waved back as he stood by the open side hatch to the passenger compartment. Rhea grabbed her bag and jacket and I followed her, climbing up the stairway and into the helicopter. I had to admit the fact that this was the most luxurious example of flying deathtrap I’d ever been inside, furnished with a pair of soft leather bench seats facing each other. I took the forward-facing starboard side and Rhea sat opposite. We strapped in while the pilot closed and locked the hatch, and before long I felt the engines start up, scattering a flock of seagulls near the water. I was just admiring the sound-reduction systems when we took off, dropping my stomach into my lap.
Rhea sat across from me, and smiled as she said, “You don’t like to fly?”
“Flying’s fine. It’s the falling I hate.”
“Funny, you didn’t seem to mind that last time you were a passenger here.”
She was obviously alluding to when Caitlin and I were brought to the island while unconscious. “If I’d known we were flying in one of these things, I’d have asked to be knocked out again,” I said.
Once we leveled out, I looked out the windows and tried to get my bearings. I got a quick aerial view of Vanya’s complex—roughly U-shaped against a scrubby tree-covered hillside, with the garden in the middle. I also saw, on the other side of the living quarters, the oblong shape of the combination amphitheater/colosseum Caitlin told me about. The apex of the little island sported a series of antennas and radio dishes at the highest point.
We were traveling north across dazzling water with the rising sun on our starboard side, and within ten minutes I could see green, hilly land out the port-side window. Thirty minutes later the chopper veered to port and I spotted more terra firma and signs of civilization nestled within rolling green hills as we shed some altitude, flying over a small, square-shaped, tree-studded island. The helicopter flew in a circular vector, and I caught a glimpse of commercial airplanes arrayed on a tarmac as we came in for a landing.
I decided it couldn’t hurt to ask my hostess, “Where are we?”
Her eyes were unfathomable behind her smoke-dark glasses. Finally, she answered, “Corfu.”
Ah, the major island west of the Grecian mainland. Which put Vanya’s private island well to the south in the Ionian Sea. Not that the information was helpful—it was still far beyond swimming distance—but it did bring to mind those powerboats I saw at Vanya’s dock. It also brought to mind an old and honorable enemy of mine, Niko Konstantinopoulos, a member of the Greek police. Although I couldn’t be sure that he’d be willing to help me in my current predicament, even if I could get word to him somehow. Niko was convinced that I was some kind of artifact looter, which I suppose is one way of looking at my profession. He and I clashed a few times, and I once sent him a peace offering in the form of a small headpiece from a marble frieze looted from Greece by the British Earl of Elgin in the early 1800s. Niko wrote back
and said while he appreciated the head, the one he really wanted was mine. Still, at the moment, I missed the sight of his big, mustachioed face smiling at me over a cup of Turkish coffee while we talked about history, art, and how he was going to send me to prison someday.
When we exited the Sikorsky, I saw that Corfu Airport was a small, 1960s-style terminal, and I noticed a twin-engine Olympic Airline plane in the distance. Rhea, with her leather bag over one shoulder, led me away toward a smaller section of hangars, where I saw a sleek-looking private jet was waiting. We walked over and climbed aboard, and once again, I was in the lap of airborne luxury. The twin-engine jet was plain white on the outside, but the interior space was plushly carpeted, with ten individual light brown leather seats, and the cabin was richly inlaid with dark wood paneling. “Strap in,” Rhea advised. “We’re leaving as soon as we get clearance.”
I selected one of the forward-facing chairs, and Rhea strapped in right across from me, despite all the available room we had. Her jasmine scent washed over me, and I was starting to wonder if the smell would now and forever be associated with poison somewhere in the back of my mind. One of the uniformed crew, another Mediterranean type, though younger than our helicopter pilot, gave Rhea a brief nod and smile of welcome as he secured the passenger hatch, then went and locked himself into the pilot’s compartment. The engine noise was far less than I would have expected in a small craft, and after a brief time taxiing into position, we accelerated smoothly and leapt off into the blue Grecian sky.
The cabin was pressurized, but my ears were still getting quite the workout from all the air travel. Once we leveled off, Rhea unbuckled her belt and said, “There’s a small galley up front. I take it you can make your own coffee?”
“Yeah. It was part of my survival training. You want some?”
Rhea moved over to a wood-topped table that had a flat-screen monitor attached. “No,” she said as she plugged her smartphone to a connecting wire. “I don’t drink coffee.”
That settled it, I thought as I made my way forward, the woman just wasn’t human. The pocket-sized galley had way better accommodations than my hotel room back in New York, and I was tempted to sample some of the exotic snacks in the tiny refrigerator, but I decided to keep things simple for my stomach as I braced myself against the roll and pitch of the flight while I brewed up some Sumatra and used one of the thick ceramic mugs secured in the rack.
With coffee in hand, I joined Rhea at the table. She swung the monitor screen so we could both see it, displaying a reproduction of the French castle. “We came up with a plan after you left us last night,” she said.
I stared at the castle’s outline, shaking my head again at the haphazard montage of fortifications. “A plan,” I echoed. “Something tells me I’m really going to hate whatever it is you have in store for me.”
Her beautiful golden-hued face lit up with a smile. “Well, we do expect fair service in return for that Egyptian scroll you want.”
“With my luck, that scroll is probably nothing more than Cleopatra’s shopping list, but do go on.”
Rhea tapped her phone, and the image was replaced by a photograph of Ombra. It almost looked like a postmortem shot. “Simply put,” Rhea said in a matter-of-fact tone, “we want you to approach whoever is in charge at the castle and tell them that we are willing to exchange Ombra for all the information they have in relation to the Fouché document. Specifically, all information relating to Egyptian treasure Fouché refers to in his letter.”
“The treasure you assume will also contain the remains of Alexander,” I said. “Great. Except for the fact that Ombra’s people appear to be total religious fanatics. For all we know, Ombra’s already considered a martyr to the cause. What’s to stop them from just killing me? After they laugh themselves silly, of course.”
Rhea shrugged. “They probably don’t have that much sense of humor. But we do have contingency plans, of course.”
“Like what? Something that doesn’t include me getting killed?”
“As a former agent of your government, I’m sure you’re familiar with things being on a ‘need to know’ basis. What you don’t know, you can’t reveal to the enemy.”
My right hand tingled, like it had a memory of its own. “I think it’s only fair to tell you,” I said, “that I don’t do well in captivity.”
“All the more reason to not let you know all of the plans. But I think you underestimate your resilience. You were certainly able to resist my attempts at persuasion, as I recall. Or is it that you don’t care for older women?”
“Au contraire, I adore older women. Cleopatra, Boudicca of the Iceni, Zenobia, the list of my former crushes is almost endless. So, see? You’re just too young for me.”
“I’m not as young as that wife of yours.”
“Well, let’s just say she’s a remarkable woman.”
Rhea’s dark eyes took on a speculative cast. “Yes, she must be. She’s being remarkably calm about all this. Far more so than I’d expect a pampered American princess to be.”
It was high time to get Caitlin off of Rhea’s radar. “Well, that’s why I married her. So, where are we going now?”
“I see,” Rhea said, with just a hint of suspicion. She glanced at her watch. “We’ll be landing in Geneva in less than three hours. I suggest we try to rest. We’ll have a long day ahead of us.”
Resting was far more easily said than done. I couldn’t keep the vision of the castle from looming in my imagination. I occupied myself by checking out the jet, and noted the fact that I was flying in a Dassault Falcon 2000EX, just in case the Argo Foundation ever decided to invest in some decent aerial transportation, then spent the balance of the flight cursing my fate and longing for the days when I was a simple thief and smuggler of antiquities. Throughout all this time, Rhea sat still with eyes closed, apparently oblivious to the world.
Sooner than I would have liked, the jet began its descent. I saw the airport laid out below us, looking like a giant aircraft carrier set near the waters of Lake Geneva. The pilot was skilled and the landing smooth. Just as smooth as the reception we received from the guys at customs. The uniformed officers practically fell all over themselves to be accommodating to Rhea, barely giving my beat-up old passport a second glance. This was a novel experience for me, as I was used to either sullen suspicion or outright bribe pandering from the border guards I usually had dealings with. Rhea, who chatted with the uniformed officials in conversational French, was receiving the majority of the attention, and I speculated that the Swiss agents probably believed she was some kind of Japanese movie star. I also tried to get a look at her red-and-gold passport to see what name she was traveling under, but I wasn’t quick enough or close enough.
We were escorted to a courtesy van and whisked away to a small, private automobile garage, where I was introduced to our latest conveyance—a sleek gray BMW Z-4 Coupe. I checked my watch, which was now back in synch with the current time zone, and saw that it was just a little after 11:30, Sunday morning. I’d been flung halfway across Europe before lunchtime. Rhea opened the driver’s side door, activated the rear hatch release, then tossed her bag in and slammed the trunk lid shut. “Can you drive?” she inquired.
“I’m American. Driving is our sacred birthright.”
She grinned. “Then here’s to hoping you drive better than James Dean. Get in, I’ll tell you where to go.”
“Most women do,” I muttered. I slid behind the wheel, and fell in love even before I engaged the engine. Nick Riley had the forethought to send me to an evasive driving school in Colorado, a place that catered to professional bodyguards and diplomatic security agents, and I wondered what I could really do with a machine like this. Hopefully, I wouldn’t have to find out in a hurry.
Rhea directed me out via a gated security point and onto a street that merged with the regular airport traffic. She kept busy between consulting her cell phone and waving me off in various directions as I tried to speed-read the traffic signs, un
til we hit a major roadway that was designated A-1. When we finally got to the point where I wasn’t avoiding playing bumper cars with my fellow motorists, Rhea seemed to visibly relax as she said, “Try to keep it at one hundred kilometers per hour. And keep an eye out for the route toward Bern. We’ll be staying on the Swiss side of the border for a while.”
“Aye, aye. How far to the castle?”
“Not far. We should be there in an hour and a half or so.”
I began to relax a bit and appreciate the magnificent view of the snowcapped Alps in the distance. Just over an hour and a couple of tollbooths later we were waved across the French border and we climbed into the lush green Jura Mountains. Rhea pointed ahead to a turnout. “Pull over there.”
I did as directed, easing the car over next to a fence that bordered a green meadow where some oddly colored red-and-white cows lounged about, probably some special breed of bovine bred to produce overpriced French cheese, I thought to myself. Rhea opened the door and got out, putting on her leather coat in the process. I joined her, and then regretted it—I wasn’t dressed for the spring Alpine weather. Rhea apparently noticed my discomfort. “Open the trunk,” she said.
I reached back in and activated the release. Before I pulled my head out of the interior, I heard the lid slam shut. Rhea walked toward me bearing a black leather jacket. “Here,” she said. I took the coat, slipped it on, and nodded thanks. The coat felt a little stiff around the torso, and I could feel it had a heavy interior lining. “There’s a layer of Kevlar inside,” Rhea explained. “It should protect you from most handgun rounds.”
“Really? Damn. Thanks. This makes me feel warm in more ways than one.”
Rhea bowed, then graced me with a beautiful smile. “And now, Mr. Blake, I think it’s time for proper introductions. My true name is Suzume Saito.”
This new tack took me by surprise. “Well, hello, Ms. Saito.”
