by Alex Archer
“Agreed, but Gris said that the map was on the third casting created by Janos Brankovic. That came before the statue.”
Racz shook his head. “The name means nothing to me outside its mention in Gris’s log.”
“You know who Pal Kinizsi was.”
“Of course. He was the Hungarian general who defeated the Black Army when it went rogue after Matthias Corvinus died.”
“Right, and he was also cousin to Janos Brankovic.”
“How do you know that?”
“I ran across Brankovic’s name while I was doing research on the Black Army.” Annja remembered a lot of history, but the most important thing about research was remembering where it was found. “I think we need to find Father Janos Brankovic’s third casting of the Virgin Mary.”
A forlorn look darkened Racz’s eyes. “How?”
Annja reached into her backpack and took out her tablet PC. “The old-fashioned way.” She paused. “Not exactly the old-fashioned way. The old-fashioned way never included the internet.”
She sat down and made herself comfortable. The answers were out there. That was what made the hunt for them so compelling. Finding things out was just a matter of asking the right questions.
Even if finding out about Janos Brankovic wasn’t the exact right answer she needed, finding out what she could about the artist put her one step closer to the right question.
28
SEEKER4318 stood in the dark room and tried to remain calm. Too many things were happening all at once, and he felt what little control he had left to him slipping away. This was his search. Whatever the Merovingian treasure was, it belonged to him.
He forced himself to take a deep calming breath.
In the streets, he spotted some of the men from the Hollywood security team. Somehow those men had managed to trail after Annja Creed in spite of her friend’s private jet.
Or maybe the old man was part of the plot to snatch away the treasure. That thought left him alarmed. His bloodlust rose in him. If there had been time, he would have sought out a young woman and found the answers to these problems within her flesh. That need burned within him so hot that he was barely able to suppress it. He banked it for the moment, telling himself there would soon be time and that he would find the answers.
The Merovingian treasure was right there, almost within his grasp. He just couldn’t reach out and close it in his hand. Not yet. But soon. He peered out at the city on the other side of the window. He was alone now, but he wouldn’t stay that way. Events were pushing everything in on top of him.
He closed his eyes and remembered the woman crying before him in the hotel room, begging for her life. He had killed her because he’d needed the answers that she had held locked up inside her.
Gradually, he’d peeled her open and discovered the promise of the good fortune that would soon be his.
What he sought would soon be his and his alone. Despite all the odds against him, he knew that there could be no other outcome regarding the Merovingian treasure. He just had to choose his allies carefully.
He smiled, knowing that flesh and blood never lied.
He took out his cell phone and called, then listened to the connection ring. In the back of his mind, though, he heard the cries of all the women he had left scattered in pieces around this city on earlier searches. All of them had been false oracles. They had put him on the trail of different pursuits, but they hadn’t located the Merovingian treasure for him.
Ligier de Cerceau answered at the other end of the phone connection. “Hello.”
“You need to hurry. The Creed woman has discovered the location of an artifact that may reveal the treasure’s whereabouts.”
When the mercenary leader responded, he sounded sour and short-tempered. “Getting here took time. We’re behind the Hollywood people. If we’d had more information sooner, that would have helped us. Don’t complain when you’re unable to keep us on task.”
Impatience grated at SEEKER4318 like a saw-toothed blade. “Get ahead of them. I’m not paying you to come in second best.” He ended the call and glared out into the street as the black-clad security team closed in.
* * *
DE CERCEAU TOOK a deep breath and put the sat phone back in a thigh pouch in his pants. He cursed his unknown employer.
“Is there a problem, Colonel?” Gerard looked at de Cerceau through the rearview mirror of the SUV he drove.
“Not for much longer. Once we get our hands on the Creed woman, we can wash our hands of the idiot we’re doing business with.” De Cerceau looked forward to that moment. In the beginning, he’d been happy taking the man’s money—until the operation began running so rocky. After the exposure at the university, he would have backed out of the arrangement and not risked further legal attention.
But now there was the possibility of treasure in the offing. Too many people were involved for something not to come of it.
“Stop there.” De Cerceau pointed at the alley only a short distance away from the map museum.
Gerard eased the SUV to a stop in the narrow alley and remained behind the wheel as de Cerceau and three armed gunmen got out.
“Audio check,” Jamal Orayyed called over the headset.
The team quickly responded, confirming that all of them were linked in to the frequency.
“Control, can you pick up the other team’s communications frequency?” De Cerceau jogged along the alley, turning left at the end and moving along the street. Like the rest of his team, he wore a long lightweight coat that covered his body armor and weapons. He kept a fist on the H&K MP5 slung at his right hip.
“Negative. I’ve attempted to breach their firewall but I haven’t gotten through.”
Three blocks down, two red, yellow and blue police vehicles blocked the street. Traffic had come to a standstill in front of the police cars. Some of the drivers honked their horns in frustration, but others found ways to double back the way they had come.
“Why are the police here?” De Cerceau kept to the shop fronts, drawing attention as he went, but no one tried to interfere. Soon, though, someone would call out to the local law enforcement because he was moving toward the hot spot, not staying back from it.
“A private security outfit called DragonTech set up the operation. I just cracked through the local police department’s firewall and found that out.”
The name seemed familiar to de Cerceau. “We know these people.”
“We’ve dealt with them tangentially before. They usually handle big corporate jobs. Both times we’ve encountered them, they were providing security for people other than our targets. They’re very good at what they do.”
“Today we’re going to be better. Get sniper teams up on the roofs.” De Cerceau’s heart rate elevated. He remembered DragonTech now. It was a big-money, high-powered mercenary corporation that catered to wealthy clients.
“On their way,” Orayyed replied.
“Do we know why DragonTech is here?” De Cerceau took a left into an alley, mentally charting his course to the museum and knowing he could never reach the building on foot without being seen. But there was another way.
“Negative, but I have learned that Sabre Race used to work for DragonTech.”
De Cerceau stopped at a manhole cover in the middle of the alley. He gestured to two of the men behind him, pointing to the manhole. “How did you miss that?”
“Sabre Race wasn’t the name he used while working for DragonTech. Or while he was in the American military. He changed his name to Sabre Race just before his arrival in Los Angeles.” Orayyed paused. “I wasn’t looking into his background. Sabre Race wasn’t our target.”
“Well, he’s one of them now. Find out what you can.”
“Of course.”
The two men lifted the m
anhole cover and shifted it aside. The heavy iron wheel clanked slightly when they placed it on the ground.
De Cerceau unclipped a flashlight from his bulletproof vest, flicked it on and shone it into the utility hole. A sour stench reached his nostrils from below. He stopped breathing through his nose and opened his mouth.
The beam trailed across iron handrails set into the stone at the side. The utility-hole floor lay nine or ten feet below. The area looked at least six feet wide, leaving plenty of room, but he didn’t like the idea of being trapped in a tunnel.
However, approaching the museum along the street would have been costly.
“I’m looking at an access tunnel at my twenty.” Orayyed would know where de Cerceau was. “Will it take me to the museum?” He was certain it would. All of the utilities would be tied in together in this area, but he didn’t want to go stumbling around clueless in the dark.
“A moment, please.”
De Cerceau waited impatiently, keeping his gaze moving to either end of the alley.
“Affirmative. The access point in the museum is in the basement. There are a couple of cross tunnels, but I can get you there if these city schematics are accurate.”
“Let’s hope they are.” De Cerceau waved one of the men accompanying him down into the hole, then followed, climbing down the handrails quickly.
On the ground inside the access tunnel, de Cerceau drew his machine pistol and tapped the shoulder of the man ahead of him. The man took off, trailing his flashlight cone into the darkness.
* * *
ANNJA’S PHONE RANG, pulling her attention away from the tablet PC and the information she’d been tracking concerning Janos Brankovic. She glanced at the caller ID, then realized this wasn’t her usual phone and wondered how anyone would know the number.
Then she saw Roux’s name in the viewscreen. She answered the call. “If you’ve called to tell me you and your new lady friend have discovered a quaint little bed-and-breakfast—”
“Garin is outside the museum. I think you need to be more concerned about that than any romantic congress I might be having.” Roux sounded irritated.
Standing, shouldering the phone, Annja shoved her tablet into her backpack and hurried to the nearest window that overlooked the street facing the museum. Moving slowly so she wouldn’t be as likely to attract attention, she peered around the window frame.
Black SUVs flanked by brightly colored police cars sat in the street. Armed men and policemen held a cordon around the area.
“Garin called the police?” Annja couldn’t believe it.
“He or Sabre Race did. I’ve also identified that man in the crowd, as well.”
“What is Sabre doing here?”
“I assume he is with Garin. That’s really not the point now. The point is how we’re going to get you out of there.”
“Garin’s got the police out there. That means he has to play by the laws. He can’t just take me.”
“He’s filed a report that you’re in possession of stolen intellectual properties. The Ordizia police will take you into custody readily enough until things get sorted.”
“They can’t hold me.”
“Holding you isn’t the goal. They want your research. That’s why Garin filed for intellectual property.”
Annja thought of all the notes she’d uploaded to the cloud. It would take Garin time, but he could figure out as much as she had. And by the time she extricated herself from the legal situation she was currently facing, Garin and Sabre Race would be light-years ahead of them in finding the treasure.
If Garin could make heads or tails of that research. But she didn’t want to risk that. Garin had been a tomb raider and opportunist for centuries. He was good at ferreting out secrets. Not only that, but he had an international firm of investigators at his beck and call.
“Annja?” Roux called.
“I’m here. Thinking.”
“Maybe you should turn yourself in. Even if you get out of the museum, being hunted through the streets of this city isn’t—”
“When I get out of this building—and I will—we can leave Ordizia.”
“You found what you were looking for.” Interest flickered in Roux’s words, reminding Annja that the old man was something of a treasure seeker himself.
“Not exactly.” Annja watched the activity out on the street. A clump of men in riot armor advanced toward the museum behind bulletproof shields. “What are they doing? They’re acting like I’m some kind of terrorist threat.”
“Garin likes his drama.” Roux paused. “You don’t have a lot of time, and Evita has concerns about the museum in case the situation turns ballistic.”
“Okay.” Annja took a deep breath and settled herself. “Ask Evita where I can hide Dr. Racz.”
“Where you can hide Dr. Racz?”
“Yes. Surely in a place this big, there’s somewhere he can hide for a time.” Annja glanced around the museum. She could almost feel the seconds ticking off the time she had left.
“What are you going to do?”
“I’m going to give Garin and Sabre Race, and the local police, a reason not to look for the professor in here.”
“Annja, I have lawyers. This matter can be—”
“Dealing with lawyers and court means lost time, Roux. We’re close to this thing. I can feel it.” Annja left the window and sprinted through the stacks, looking for Istvan Racz. “I’m not going to let him get that time. When the coast clears at the museum, get the professor and get back to the jet.”
“The jet? We’re leaving?”
“Yes.” Annja caught a corner of a stack and wheeled around it.
“Where are we going?”
“I’ll tell you when we reach the jet. Now tell me where I can hide the professor.”
The muffled voices of Roux and Evita conferred for a moment. Then Roux returned to the phone. “Evita says there is a janitor’s closet on the second floor. It’s out of the way and most people don’t find it unless they know where it is.”
“That’ll do. Garin’s not going to waste time looking around the museum when I’m not here anymore.”
“Where are you going to be?”
“Give me the directions to the janitor’s closet.”
Roux did, then started to repeat them.
Certain she knew where she needed to go and that she didn’t have much time to make her escape, Annja broke the connection and pocketed the sat phone. She lifted her voice and yelled for Racz.
“Annja?” Racz sounded puzzled from off to her left.
Tracking the man’s voice, Annja rounded a final corner and almost ran into him. The professor stepped back and nearly fell. He carried water bottles in both hands. He smiled, but that faded when she grabbed him by the elbow.
“What’s wrong?” Racz asked.
“We’ve been followed.” Annja pulled him toward the room’s wide entrance. The stairway to the second floor lay just beyond.
“Followed?” The professor dragged along behind Annja. “By whom?”
“Garin and Sabre Race.”
“They’re here?”
“Definitely here. Outside in the street and headed this way.”
Racz stopped dawdling and broke into a run.
29
Less than two minutes later, with Istvan Racz safely ensconced in a narrow janitor’s closet that reeked of mildew and high-powered cleansing agents, Annja stood on the museum’s roof and peered down into the street.
Garin and his men had reached the building’s front doors and stood ready in an organized assault formation with guns bristling. Even when he was dressed in Kevlar, Annja easily recognized Garin. His powerful build and his handsome, devilish features made him stand out. Sabre Race was a good-looking man, as wel
l, but where Garin was primordial, Sabre was sleek and metrosexual.
Too bad Garin could be a jerk and Sabre was a competitor.
Annja was considering calling down to get their attention, only holding back because she knew that a direct action might tip her hand, when one of the uniformed men below spotted her and pointed. She hesitated only long enough to look down at Garin and see the grimace that told her he’d seen her.
His displeasure made her want to grin in spite of the seriousness of the situation. The attraction between them was mutual, but it was something Annja never intended to follow through on, because Garin just couldn’t be trusted.
She took in that look for just a moment. Then a glint of sunlight on glass on a nearby rooftop caught her attention. A warning flared inside her head as she recalled the other times she’d been on the wrong end of a sniper scope. Shoving herself backward, she felt the tug of a bullet pass through her blouse. Then the sharp crack of the rifle followed almost immediately, letting her know how close the unseen marksman was.
Turning, Annja sprinted for the other end of the building. She took advantage of cover provided by air-conditioning units dotting the rooftop. Two other shots rang out in quick succession. They dogged her tracks, slapping into the roof ahead of her and ripping through one of the big air-conditioning units behind her. The spang of the bullet careering away from the metal echoed around her.
Immediately, a storm of gunfire erupted from the street in front of the museum. Glancing briefly over her shoulder, Annja watched a body slide down a sloped rooftop and tumble over the edge. The corpse disappeared from view. Then metal crunched and glass shattered below and a strident car alarm blared to life.
Turning her attention to the rooftop again, Annja steadied her stride and focused on the adjacent rooftop. When she reached the edge of the building, she pushed off with her right foot and hurled herself across the empty space, knowing instantly she had misjudged the distance and wasn’t going to reach the other roof. She stretched out her hands and tried not to think of the long way down.
