About Face

by Christian, Claudia Hall

  “It’s hard to believe this has been going on so long, I guess,” Alex said.

  “In my experience,” Bestat said. “This is only based in my experience, but I believe the Black Skeleton started around this time. It’s always been my opinion that the first rising of the Black Skeletons happened in Ai-Khanoum. The city was destroyed in 145 BC when Eucratides, the ruler at the time, died. It also experienced unfortunate destruction when the Soviets where there. After the Soviet’s retreated, vicious looters took bulldozers to the site in hopes of finding buried treasure. It was my opinion at the time that they were of the Black Skeletons. Of course, there’s no way to prove any of this.”

  “Do you have any idea why there has been so much attention to Ai-Khanoum?” Alex asked.

  “I have no idea,” Bestat said.

  “But you think the Black Skeletons started in Ai-Khanoum?” Alex asked. “Why there?”

  “The city was started by the Ambitum Rosa,” Bestat said.

  Alex scowled.

  “What is it?” Bestat asked.

  “I was going to ask you about this symbol,” Alex said. “I need to find it.”

  She clicked around on her computer before pulling up an image of a coin from Ai-Khanoum. She zeroed in on a symbol on the coin. The symbol was a circle with a triangle in the middle. On the base of the triangle sat a semi-circle. Bestat scowled at the image.

  “What is this?” Bestat asked.

  She became so still and intense that Alex turned to look at her. Bestat pointed to the image.

  “It’s symbol on a gold coin,” Alex said. “I’m sure you know that Ai-Khanoum means ‘Lady Moon’ in Uzbek.”

  “Face of the moon,” Bestat corrected. “People used to see a female in the face of the moon. Can you show me the whole coin?”

  Alex backed up from the photo. The gold coin came into view. On one side, there was the side image of a man.

  “This is Antiochas I,” Bestat said, pointing to the face of the man. “He was the Seleucid ruler around 275 BC. Can you guess who that is?”

  Bestat pointed to the other side of the coin, where a naked man held longbow in his left hand and arrows in his right.

  “Apollo?” Alex asked.

  “Good,” Bestat said. “Now where was the symbol?”

  “It thought to be the stamp to identify Ai-Khanoum as where the coin was minted,” Alex said.

  Alex pointed to the tiny circle with a triangle in it next to Apollo’s outstretched right hand. Bestat peered at the image and then sat back in her seat.

  “I have one of these coins,” Alex said. “It’s not in this condition, of course. But it does have this symbol on it. We saw it on bricks and in the mosaic. I was told that it’s the symbol of the city.”

  Alex drew a circle with a triangle in it. On the base of the triangle, she drew a semicircle.

  Bestat eye’s flicked between Alex and the symbol.

  “What is it?” Alex asked. She closed the image. “I am sorry to have upset you.”

  “You have not upset me,” Bestat said, quickly.

  “What is it?” Alex asked again.

  “I was wrong,” Bestat said. “I am rearranging my memories to adjust to this new discovery.”

  “Wrong?” Alex asked.

  “This is the symbol for the group you call the Black Skeleton,” Bestat said. “I’m not sure why I didn’t see it before. Too happy, I guess. This symbol was everywhere, throughout the city.”

  “It was?” Alex asked.

  She peered at the image again.

  “What is this?” Bestat asked. She pointed to the semi-circle at the base of the triangle.

  “The sun?” Alex asked. “Possibly the moon since the city is called ‘Lady Moon.’”

  “What is the sun or the moon?” Bestat asked.

  “Uh,” Alex looked at Bestat. “Planetary bodies? Um, I don’t know, really. I mean I read somewhere that the moon was an asteroid that bounced off the earth, but other people say . . .”

  “Fire,” Bestat said over Alex’s babbling.

  Alex turned in her seat to look at Bestat.

  “What?” Alex said in such a tone that Raz looked up.

  “What’s going on?” Raz asked.

  Alex and Bestat stared at each other until Bestat’s head went up and down in a nod.

  “If you put a triangle through this planet, what would you have?” Bestat asked.

  Alex gaped at her. Raz walked over to them.

  “Fine,” Bestat said. “Don’t answer. If you cut a triangle through this planet, you’d have . . .”

  “Molten lava,” Raz said. He put a hand on Alex’s shoulder. “Are you okay?”

  Alex looked up at him and nodded.

  “Show him,” Alex said.

  “Our lovely Alex was showing me a coin she found . . .” Bestat said.

  “Nathan found it,” Alex said. “From the Fey Special Forces Team.”

  “Alex’s teammate and Admiral Ingram’s brother,” Raz said.

  “Oh, I see,” Bestat said. “This symbol is the symbol of the people you call the ‘Black Skeleton.’”

  “On this old coin,” Raz said, in a voice laced with doubt. “They appropriated this symbol from them.”

  “No,” Bestat said. “This is their symbol.”

  “From 300 BC?” Raz asked.

  “This is more like 275 BC, but yes,” Bestat said. “Alexandra, why are you so upset?”

  “This symbol is on the old church site in the valley Joey and Máire own,” Raz said.

  “It’s like a seal,” Alex said. “Stamped on the site after its destruction. I thought . . . well, I don’t know what I thought. But we went here as a team. That’s how we met Nada and her family. That was long before Jesse found the book about churches.”

  Bestat and Raz watched her closely.

  “This symbol is familiar,” Alex said. “I’ve seen it on buildings, tattoos, . . . I’ve seen it recently . . . but I’ve seen so many naked men recently.”

  “Oh, yeah?” Bestat asked with a laugh.

  “Colonel Gordon wanted my assessment,” Alex said. “They had to strip down, show their scars, stuff like that. I sat in on probably ninety percent of those reviews. Someone had one of these. Or, I saw it in Afghanistan. Maybe. I think the Boy Scout had a tattoo like this, but I’d have to check to be sure. I mean, if you’d asked me, I probably could have related it to Ai-Khanoum, but so much of Afghanistan was built in the same time. I thought . . . I guess I thought . . .”

  Alex looked up to see Jesse watching her as well.

  “What did you call this?” Alex asked. “Rising sun? Setting moon? Certainly not Black Skeleton.”

  “At first, we called them ‘Cháros,’ Greek for death, because that’s what they brought to entire regions of the world,” Bestat said. “My kind — we fought them. We almost won a few times. By the time the Hellenic age was over, they called themselves ‘Incindium Revivius.’”

  “Fire revives,” Raz translated.

  “They asked us to join them,” Bestat said. “Truth be told, some of us did. They didn’t survive long. Then Incindium Revivius came after the oldest of us.”

  “You?” Alex asked.

  “You mean, ‘You, too?’” Bestat said with a smile. “And yes, they came for me. I only barely survived. I went into hiding for a few centuries.”

  As if she’d said too much, Bestat stopped talking and nodded. Alex touched Bestat’s shoulder, and Bestat hugged her.

  “I must tell you that I am sorry,” Bestat said. She looked from Alex to Raz. “I would never have asked you to be a part of this fight. Just as I wish that I was not a part of it. Somehow, we are both entangled in its web by birth or life circumstances. This darkness is ours. This struggle is ours to wage.”

  “Because we give off light,” Alex said.

  “This is true.” Bestat nodded.

  “Can I ask you a question?” Alex asked.

  “Of course,” Bestat said.

&nbs
p; “Last year, when you came to me in Paris, you told me that I would find the ‘key to opening the archives,’” Alex said. “I found a lot of different things — information, mostly. I never found the other two objects. At least I don’t think I have.”

  Alex looked at Bestat. She took a breath and gave a nod.

  “You want to know if I was wrong or if you are still missing something,” Bestat said. “The best I can tell you is that I don’t know. Then again, I didn’t know that Ai-Khanoum was built by these . . . creatures.”

  The disgust in Bestat’s voice sent a chill down Alex’s back.

  “What about this?” Alex asked. “You went to Ai-Khanoum.”

  “More than once,” Bestat said. “I spent many wonderful months there.”

  “And we think that this symbol . . .” Alex gestured to the triangle with the semi-circle on its base inside a circle. “ . . . is the symbol for this ‘Incindium Revivius.”

  “That’s correct,” Bestat said.

  “And there were a heck of a lot fewer people in the world,” Alex said.

  “True,” Bestat said. “Alex, what are you getting at?”

  “You would have had to meet the people who started this . . .” Alex shrugged. “Group. We know that the Ambitum Rosa is passed through families. What if this is also passed within families?”

  “That would mean that the people I knew at the time were ancestors of . . .” Bestat’s eyes pinched at the corners. “There’s an interesting thought.”

  She stared off in the near distance for a moment before nodding.

  “That’s good thinking, Alex,” Bestat said. “I actually . . .”

  Alex was sure that Bestat was going to say that she knew people from these families. But Bestat stopped talking for a few minutes. She looked up at Alex and smiled.

  “Let me look into it,” Bestat said.

  “Thank you for sharing your information with us,” Alex said.

  “If I can help, I am glad to,” Bestat said. “What is your next step?”

  “We are going to see if somewhere, somehow, I have a key that goes to that ugly bee,” Alex said.

  “A key?” Bestat asked.

  “I learned recently that the diamond-encrusted bee was once owned by the Greek Queen Elizabeth of Romania,” Alex said. “Joseph remembered that Nathan found a key on a broken chain when we were in the Wakhan Corridor a long time ago. It had a tiny honeybee etched in the side, so he gave it to me.”

  “I see — you think Nathan told his brother,” Bestat said. “Sent the men to find it.”

  “Something like that,” Alex said. “He definitely sent the platoons to specific places in Afghanistan where the Fey Special Forces Team had non-classified missions. The platoons went to the Wakhan, Ai-Khanoum, and the valley where Máire and Joey’s parents are buried. They ran into trouble at each location.”

  “Any idea why?” Bestat asked.

  “Lack of preparation?” Alex shrugged. “Unclear of the desired outcome?”

  Bestat nodded. She looked up when a young man came out from the cockpit.

  “We will land in five minutes, ma’am,” the young man said.

  “Thank you,” Bestat said.

  Raz went to pack up his belongings. Alex began stuffing things into her backpack.

  “I wish you all the luck,” Bestat said. “You deserve it. If I can be of assistance or you have use of any of my resources, it would be my honor to assist.”

  “Thank you,” Alex said. “You’ve already helped a great deal.”

  “How so?” Bestat asked with a chuckle. “I’ve mostly whined about my life.”

  “At least we won’t call them the Black Skeleton anymore,” Alex said. “Why didn’t tell us their name last year?”

  “I didn’t connect it all until just now,” Bestat said, and smiled. “I should have. I didn’t.”

  Bestat got up from her seat. She lightly touched Alex’s shoulder and went into the bedroom, where Zack and Neuth were resting. Alex finished packing her things, and Raz took Bestat’s seat.

  “What do you think?” Raz asked.

  Alex gave a quick shake of her head.

  “It gets clearer and muddier at the same time,” Alex said. “Mostly, I’m glad to be home.”

  “I was surprised at how much I was looking forward to this trip,” Raz said. “Spend time with you, of course.”

  “Sleep in our own beds,” Alex said.

  Raz nodded.

  “Would it be considered ungentlemanly to say ‘Eat my own food?’” Raz asked.

  Alex laughed. They caught each other’s eye and smiled.

  “See The Factory,” Raz and Alex said in near unison.

  Grinning, Alex took his hand as the private jet landed.

  F

  CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

  Fourteen hours later

  Friday night

  November 11 — 11:10 p.m.

  Denver, Colorado

  Hearing a noise, Alex looked up toward the open door of her secure office. She waited for a second, before she remembered that her usual middle-of-the-night visitors — Troy’s sons, Hector James and Hermes — were in California. She went back to cleaning up. Jesse appeared.

  “Hey, Jesse,” Alex said.

  “Look, it’s the magic hour of 11:11,” Jesse said. He gave a ghostly moan.

  “Very impressive.” Alex clapped. “You could get a role in A Christmas Carol.”

  Jesse laughed. He looked around the room. Everything from every cabinet was scattered around the office. Most of it was in the middle of the floor.

  “What happened here?” Jesse asked. “Did you get robbed?”

  “It does look like it,” Alex said, stepping over a pile of stuff. “Raz and I did this. We were looking for the key Nathan found in the Wakhan. You remember.”

  “The key that opens that ugly bee,” Jesse said. “Before you ask, I don’t remember getting it. But Nathan was always giving you things. I do remember the funny little guy who told you about it, may he rest in peace.”

  “Is he dead?” Alex asked.

  “It is that time of the night,” Jesse said.

  “That’s a shame,” Alex sighed. She silently said a prayer for his soul and nodded. “May he rest in peace.”

  She picked up a stack of books and started placing them back on the shelf.

  “You know, you could always make hot chocolate for yourself,” Jesse said.

  “Good thinking,” Alex said. “Problem is: I’ve lost the chocolate in all of this.”

  Jesse laughed.

  “Any ghostly idea if I still have that key?” Alex asked.

  “To the diamond bee?” Jesse asked.

  Alex nodded.

  “It’s not in any of this stuff,” Jesse said with a laugh.

  “Tell me something I don’t know,” Alex laughed and picked up a stack of papers. “I figure I can clean up while I’m putting things back.”

  “Why isn’t Raz helping?” Jesse asked.

  “He’s looking through our portion of the pile of crap they dumped from Buckley,” Alex said. “It was nice of him to leave me here.”

  Jesse nodded.

  “How’s Maria?” Alex asked.

  “Everything is really good there,” Jesse said with a nod. “Sometimes . . .”

  Alex looked up at him.

  “Oh, nothing,” Jesse said.

  “Sometimes what?” Alex asked.

  “Sometimes, everything feels the same,” Jesse said. “You and me, working together. Maria talking to me about her problems. I’m no more able to directly affect her life than I was when I was in nowhereistan with the Fey SF Team. I feel . . . full . . . complete.”

  Alex gave him a sad, soft smile.

  “And then my best friend in the entire world refuses to talk to me or hear me, and I feel . . .”

  “I couldn’t see you!” Alex said.

  “It’s never stopped you before,” Jesse said. “When did you give up hope?”

  “
Hope?” Alex asked.

  “How dare you doubt?” Jesse’s voice rose with anger. “You survived. So many other haven’t. I didn’t. Our team didn’t. You’re still there! Who fucking cares what this turd says he’s going to do? You’re still there! It’s up to you to determine what you will or won’t do, not some shithead Admiral.”

  Alex felt like she’d been punched in the stomach. She gawked at Jesse.

  “This just pisses me off,” Jesse said.

  “Pisses you off? You can’t imagine . . .” she started. She raised her hand and added immediately, “No, don’t answer that. I know this is different. It’s like I just shut off. Click.”

  She moved her hand like she’d shut off a light switch, and then she shrugged.

  “Okay, let’s pretend that Troy’s right for once in his life,” Jesse said. Alex grinned. “This was done intentionally to stop you from doing something. What would that be?”

  “I don’t know,” Alex said. “You were there when Joseph and I figured out that Nathan would have told Ingram about our trips to the Wakhan and Ai-Khanoum. I mean, Nathan told him about the key to the bee.”

  “That implies that Ingram knows about the bee,” Jesse said.

  Alex nodded. She dropped to her knees next to a pile of blankets and quilts on the floor. She started folding the blankets and putting them into the chest.

  “I think we have to assume that he knows everything,” Alex said.

  “Who?” a voice asked from the doorway.

  Alex looked up to see Steve Pershing. He was the leader of the team that included Trece and the White Boy. He was also her beloved friend who almost murdered her in this very office. He’d lost his eyesight to torture but none of his many abilities.

  “Admiral Ingram,” Alex said.

  She got up to greet him. They hugged at the door. Alex took his arm and helped him negotiate through the various junk on the floor. She sat him on the loveseat at the end of her office.

  “I’d offer you something yummy, but I don’t know where anything is,” Alex said.

  “Were you robbed?” Steve asked.

  “Raz and I were looking for something,” Alex said. “We had to shake everything out in case I put it someplace. He’s looking through our storage.”