“You never thought about me?” Cross sounded dejected.
“Don’t be silly. Of course I did. Every damn day. You, Eli Cross, are the one that got away. Everyone has one, am I right? You were mine.”
“And you . . .” Cross held out a hand. “Were mine. Often remembered, never retold.”
She took the tips of his fingers in her hands. “Yes, Eli. Because the memories are too precious, and too fragile.”
“And too devastating.”
Sadness fell across both their faces. Viktor, observing the conversation, became increasingly impatient before he finally issued an irrefutable order. “We are leaving. Come, now.”
They walked apart, backing away. Cross looked like he couldn’t tear his gaze from her. Still, he hadn’t noticed Bodie’s plight. It was the first time in Bodie’s recollection that Cross’s mind hadn’t been completely in the game.
Viktor raised his Uzi. “But be warned,” he said to the others. “If I see any of you again, the result will not be so friendly.”
Cassidy saluted. “Count on it.”
Viktor regarded her for a moment, as if debating whether to escalate the situation. Then he shivered, pulled his suit jacket tightly around him, and spun. “Let’s get out of this terrible place. I can stand it no more.”
Bodie waited until the last possible moment. The distant thump of an approaching chopper finally registered with some of the Bratva before it came into view, shooting across the top of the nearby highest peak, blasting through drifting snow, its rotors hurling icy particles in all directions. In moments, a large black Predator was hovering over them, bristling with weapons aimed at the Bratva.
“You can go!” a familiar female voice cried over the chopper’s loudspeaker. “And leave Bodie right there.”
Guns were aimed upward by the Bratva soldiers. Viktor and the spindle-armed man shielded their eyes. Bodie carefully backed away from his captors.
“We got you covered!” Heidi shouted. “We could shoot you all. Don’t be stupid. Just leave.”
It was a gamble, Bodie knew. If the gunfire started, the Bratva would probably lose, but casualties would be taken on both sides. Hopefully a Bratva soldier like Viktor would see he was covered from an elevated angle as well as having threats to the side.
Bodie continued to back up.
It took a while but Viktor finally waved his arms to send his minions back to their cars. Four minutes passed before the road was clear. Bodie used the time to converse with Heidi.
“Just drive back to the runway,” she said with grit in her voice. “We’re on the wrong friggin’ side of all this now.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
The plane journey that followed was not as comfortable as the last.
It transpired that the paragliders had been piloted by a Chinese Special Forces team who also tortured and killed Carl Kirke. This news came from the surveillance net that Heidi had set up around Kirke’s house when the team infiltrated it. The same surveillance that had originally warned them of the approaching force. It was safe to say that, by now, this Chinese faction knew as much as the Moroccan Bratva and Bodie’s team about Atlantis, even though only one group held the real compass in their hands.
DC was furious. The Chinese government denied all knowledge of the incursion and consequent attack. But they would, wouldn’t they? Heidi spent precious hours fielding time-wasting questions from DC stuffed shirts wanting to vent their gratuitous wrath. By the time she finished, their plane was among the clouds with nowhere to go.
“So we took a hit,” she said when she’d finally found time for them. “Mr. Kirke got himself killed and you met the Moroccan Bratva, an offshoot of the friendly bunch who tried to abduct Jack Pantera’s family. You lost the compass”—she sucked at her teeth in disappointment—“but you redeemed yourselves by taking a photo of it. Clearly, the best course of action here is to let Lucie examine the photos. Jemma?”
Bodie bristled at the rebuke. It wasn’t simply that Heidi was correct; it wasn’t that she deliberately ignored the circumstances; it was mostly that none of them wanted to be under her thumb anyway. They were here through blackmail, and they were doing their goddamn best.
“If you think we’re below par,” he said quietly, “call in a fucking special forces team to help you.”
“Ah, but then you guys will be superfluous and headed to prison. Is that acceptable?”
Bodie gritted his teeth. “So much for the bond I thought we’d made.”
Heidi inclined her head. “Look, I realize you’re not soldiers and don’t have military training. I understand you’re doing your best. You just . . . have to do it better.”
A minute later and the pictures on Jemma’s cell phone had been uploaded to the plane’s computer. Lucie approached the screen and started to take notes.
“And as for you”—Heidi stared down the aisle straight at Cross—“is there anything we need to know?”
Cross hadn’t spoken a word since they vacated the scene. Now, he latched on to the inquisitive faces as if seeing them for the first time in a week.
“How do you mean? Sorry, no. Yasmine is a long-lost friend. Very long lost. I couldn’t imagine meeting her now in the Swiss Alps. I had . . . forgotten about her.”
Bodie wanted to respect Cross’s privacy, but saw right away that Cassidy would not. The redhead was itching to get down to the raw, penetrating questions.
“Is that it?” he asked.
Cross nodded, more distracted than Bodie had ever seen him. In the end, though, the career thief closed his eyes and let out a long sigh. “Damn, I realize you need to know this. We work primarily from information. We need information. It’s wrong of me to hold it back, but . . .” He trailed off, lost again in another world, another time.
Cassidy stepped in, handling the situation in her own inimitable way. “Dude.” She walked down the aisle until she stood right before Cross. When he didn’t look up immediately, she reached out, caught hold of his shirt, and shook him.
“Who’s the old flame, Eli?”
Cross snapped out of it. “Stop fishing. I’m thinking it through. Just . . . just give me a minute. I’m not zoning out; I’m putting the story together.”
“Yeah, you appeared to zone out for a while, mate,” Bodie said, worried for his closest friend. He’d never seen Cross so upset, so obviously off-kilter.
Cassidy laughed. “I’ve seen men zone out during battle, in the ring, on the streets when their courage gets tested, but I’ve never seen a man zone out after meeting a woman. And what was all that stammering, spluttering claptrap? She got you tongue-tied?”
Cross took the barrage and then sat back. Eventually, he eased around Cassidy and poured himself a stiff drink. With the whisky glass half full, he faced them with an awkward, strained expression.
“Right, I guess you guys deserve some kind of explanation. I love my family, you know I do, but before them, before everything, there was Yasmine. She was eighteen, fiery, hot as hell, and wise as the world. I was in my early twenties and completely bowled over. First time I’d ever been in love.” Cross drained the glass and poured another, three fingers high. “We shared a year, I guess. One of those times that passed me by when, later in life, you look back and see all the big opportunities you missed. But that’s just part of living. We all have those. And it wasn’t just for fun.”
Cassidy sat herself down in an aisle seat. Bodie wasn’t sure whether to feel pleased that Cross was sharing or uncomfortable because he felt he had to.
“This wasn’t just Morocco—Marrakesh, Casablanca. It was Seville and Lisbon. Gibraltar, mostly. Memories everywhere.”
“And what were you doing there?” Cassidy asked. “I mean apart from the obvious?”
“I’m a career thief, Cass.” Cross took a sip. “You figure it out.”
Jemma spoke softly. “At that age I’m guessing you learned the trade with her. You figured out the ropes.”
“I lived and died with her. To
ok it to the next level. Failed and failed some more and barely escaped prison, twice . . . It became . . . incredibly complex. We did everything together.”
“You never speak about your family,” Jemma said. “Ever. For a year I thought you’d never married, let alone had a son. I understand this must be very personal, Eli.”
“Damn right.” Cross stared into his glass. “Damn right. But everything passes, doesn’t it? The good and the bad. Change is always just around the corner.”
“What happened?” Cassidy, when she spoke this time, was as gentle as Bodie had ever heard.
“Maybe it was the age gap, I don’t know. She was eighteen, flighty, still in love with the world and all it could offer. But later, I noticed she wasn’t quite the same. I noticed it for almost two months. Something was on her mind. In itself, that was odd, because we shared everything. I pressed her, but she never told me. I came home one day to find her gone. I waited, and she never came back.”
“You didn’t try searching for her?” Cassidy’s question was laced with steel.
“Of course I tried . . .” Cross paused, then finished his second drink and turned toward the small window. “But I never found her. Since then, many times I’ve been forced to wonder what happened to Yasmine. But now”—he held out his free hand—“I can find out.”
Bodie regarded his old friend compassionately. “If I can, I will help you,” he said.
“Right!” Lucie Boom’s voice cut across the profound, sad silence. “Now that’s out of the way, can we get to work?”
Bodie winced. “So, Lucie, in addition to your other striking traits, you also have little access to emotions?”
“Emotions are for children, Mr. Bodie, not historians. And what other traits do you mean?”
“Nothing. I’d rather help the CIA one more time and then get back to my life. It sounds like you have an idea?”
“Our big question—was the compass made by the same man? Very probably, but the runes upon it are completely indecipherable.”
Bodie hadn’t expected that. “What? You’re kidding me! The same man wrote in a different language?”
“I didn’t say that. It’s not an entirely different language. You have to remember the earliest known alphabet is Phoenician, known as the Proto-Canaanite alphabet. It was derived from Egyptian hieroglyphics, Greek, Aramaic, Hebrew letters, and more. Latin stemmed from Phoenician. But”—she checked to make sure the students were all watching—“if your theories about Atlantis are true, we have to assume they developed what we call the Phoenician alphabet many thousands of years before that.”
“It makes sense,” Gunn said, relaxed and back to his normal self now that they were safe.
“Good to hear we’re on the same page. Well, Danel was clearly an educated man. I believe he carved these runes with vagaries to purposely test those who chased his secret. He changed the script. Deliberately. To make the cipher harder to crack.”
“Vagaries?” Heidi questioned.
“Yes, vagaries. It means there are slight modifications to the Phoenician alphabet, but those differences are crucial to help us figure out the text.”
“So that’s it?” Gunn looked like he wanted to open his laptop and start a new search for “vagaries.”
“Luckily, historians never give up.” Lucie tugged at today’s woolly sweater, all black and sporting the head of a moose. “I know an ancient-language expert who lives in Milan.”
Heidi looked dubious. “I’d prefer to do this in-house.”
“That does surprise me.”
“Civilians add risk, not only to the mission but especially for themselves. The Chinese Special Forces team, working in Europe, remember, had no qualms over committing murder. Their government gives them deniability and, even if they were caught, would never admit sanctioning their actions. So . . . they’re a splinter group. That’s how it has to be. And a damn deadly one at that.”
“Then tell me . . . who in the CIA can decipher a ten-thousand-year-old language created by a culture that never existed?” Lucie crossed her arms expectantly.
Heidi kept her mouth shut, knowing the answer and exactly why Lucie had asked the question.
“Wait,” Bodie butted in. “You’re not making sense. How could your Milan guy know the language?”
“A good question,” Lucie acknowledged. “Alessandro is widely regarded as the leading expert in Egyptian hieroglyphics, Phoenician, and Hebrew. It’s his calling, his lifelong career. If anyone can help us, he can. Even better, I know him and can arrange a meeting.”
Bodie stared at the computer screen and the mix of runes. Would this potential dead end fool both the Bratva and the Chinese, put them out of the chase? Were the Bratva even bothered about Atlantis, or was it just Bodie they were hunting? He wasn’t surprised when Heidi acquiesced to Lucie’s demands and asked her to arrange a meet.
“Change of plan,” Heidi told the pilot. “We’re going to Italy.”
Cross nodded his agreement. Cassidy leaned forward expectantly. Bodie sighed and tried not to think of all the things that could go wrong, as the pilot acknowledged the change of course.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
Milan’s Galleria and Duomo cathedral sat at the heart of the city, surrounded by bustling crowds all day and through the better part of the night. A vast open square helped draw the eye to the details and immensity of the buildings that proudly rose up around and within it—the cathedral in all its Gothic glory, which took six centuries to complete, and the Galleria, opened in 1877 and famously known as the world’s oldest shopping mall.
Bodie jumped out of the taxi facing the entrance to the cathedral, then realized he couldn’t actually see the doors or anything at ground level due to the mass of people wandering through the square. The building itself rose magnificently toward cloudless blue skies, with the great arch leading to the resplendent Galleria on the left.
“This noise level is gonna affect the comms,” Heidi said. “Could we have come at a busier time?”
Lucie joined her at the side of the road as the taxi eased away. “Somebody mentioned civilian security.”
Bodie believed she was being honest, straight, and informative rather than sarcastic. He wondered if there was any way to get Lucie Boom to let her hair down. Heidi scanned the crowds.
“Stick together, people, and keep your wits about you.”
Lucie nodded. “Alessandro is a well-known language guru. I hope you don’t think your enemies will come too.”
“He’s not the only language guru capable of translating the text, though, right?” Jemma questioned. “I mean, if our competitors wanted to decipher the text, they could go elsewhere?”
“No. He’s not the only one. But he is the best.”
Carefully, they threaded through the crowds. The Italians and the local tourists certainly weren’t shy, brushing past heavily and manhandling each other out of the way. Those who didn’t move quickly enough were barged aside, and yet everyone who paused for a snapshot was mysteriously given their own space, the human traffic flowing around them.
Bodie gazed up at the cathedral and the surrounding architecture. An incredible vision, it made him feel humble. Who really needed the legend of Atlantis when they had wonders like this to admire?
They came to the steps at the foot of the cathedral. Bodie smelled coffee and sweet pastries on the wind and noticed the restaurants all around the square. His head whipped to the right as he heard Lucie’s name being called.
“I am here!” A man he assumed to be Alessandro waved and held up a bottle of water. Bodie saw Lucie walk toward an older man, maybe sixty, with thin, smooth hands and salt-and-pepper hair. He was dressed in a suit, with the shirt undone down to the chest hair, and clearly kept himself fit. When the rest of the team approached, he ceased shaking Lucie’s hand to address them.
“It is good to meet you.”
After the introductions, Lucie explained more of what they required. The group sauntered to the edge of t
he square opposite the entrance to the Galleria. Cassidy, Cross, Jemma, and Gunn were tasked with watching the crowds and remained silent, taking it all in. Lucie and Alessandro spoke carefully.
“I will need to study the compass,” the Italian said. “The text will likely be heavy. Dense. I will need to be sure of my translation.”
Lucie nodded, but Heidi broke in. “We don’t have time for that. What we need is a quick feel.”
“A quick feel?” Alessandro studied her. “Is that not American locker-room talk?”
Heidi smiled, seeing the amusement in his sparkling eyes. “Yeah, I guess so. But we need your best theory, Professor, and quickly.”
“If it ever existed, Atlantis has been there for ten thousand years,” Alessandro said. “What is the rush?”
“We want to find it first.”
“Oh, of course you do. Americans.” Alessandro shook his head. “Will you save the world?”
“No, but we might change the world,” Bodie said. “Imagine the right technology, ancient or not, getting into the wrong hands.”
“That depends on your definition of the right hands,” Alessandro said. “But you are the people who found the Zeus, yes?”
Bodie nodded, watching nearby windows and doorways.
“I respect that. It was done properly, and the artifacts allowed to benefit the Greeks. I do wonder what happened to the Illuminati, though. Did the American government make you release them?”
Bodie was surprised at the question and at the assumptions people generally made. “No,” he said. “We took down everyone we could find.”
But not the boss, he thought. Who escaped.
“Good, good. Like I said, I respect the way you handled it and I will try to help you.” He glared at Heidi. “Posthaste.”
“Thank you.”
They found a table and ordered drinks, while the others continued to scan the crowds. Lucie fished her tablet out of her bag. Alessandro took it from her and studied the images of the runes. Bodie expected a lot of professional awe, perhaps even expressions of admiration or suspicion, but the professor didn’t utter one word.
The Atlantis Cipher (The Relic Hunters Book 2) Page 14
