Carpathian: Event Book 08

by David L. Golemon

  “If we don’t get his broken ankle set and spelled before too long Mikla will die,” Anya said as she stepped forward. Her eyes momentarily locked with Carl’s as if in apology for her grandmother’s words a moment before. She finally reached Mikla and the beast lowered its head in pain and frustration as it allowed Anya to take it back to the bedroom.

  “We must get Mikla into the temple, the spell will have to be cast soon,” Madam Korvesky said. “Anya, we will discuss my words to your friend later,” she looked at Everett, “when we are alone. For right now I will take Mikla into the temple. You are to stay with the people and show yourself to them. They will be needed when the time comes to face your brother about my decisions.”

  “This cannot be your decision, Grandmother. This is my life and I have done everything for the Jeddah that you have required and enough is enough. Marko is king and will lead the Jeddah forward. His offense cannot be as grievous a crime as you claim.”

  “You will do as I say, Anya. This is why you have been brought home. Marko has the Golia so confused and angry that Stanus and the others cannot be trusted any longer to do right by the Jeddah. He has lied to them and they will not forgive. You are the only person that will correct the wrong that has been done to them by Marko.” She held up a hand when Anya stopped with Mikla hanging on to her to prevent the disagreement from becoming a full-blown argument between granddaughter and queen. “If our burden inside the mountain has come to light we will have to act, and Marko cannot be trusted to do this. His position with the Jeddah and their safety has been compromised.”

  The door opened and several of the village men stepped in. Mikla growled as the men reached for him and the beast actually took a weakened swipe at the lead man, who easily dodged the long sharp claws. They were all lucky that Mikla was worn out and too drained of energy to defend itself. The Gypsy men took Mikla and placed him on the door that had been utilized as a bed and lifted the Golia for the trip into the temple where he would either be healed and live, or suffer a bad spell casting and die horribly. Mikla sensed this and was troubled.

  “You will all come with me, Mrs. Hamilton; I will show you and your friends where real secrets are kept.”

  “The temple of gold and Egyptian finery,” Alice said, repeating the legend of the Lost Tribe and its temple of riches.

  The old woman smiled and then laughed aloud.

  “Yes, exactly, Mrs. Hamilton, the treasure of the Exodus and the palace built to keep it safe, all wrapped up inside our most magic of mountains.”

  Everett looked at Anya and found she could not look up and face him.

  “Man from the Sea, stay and watch over my granddaughter. If you truly feel about her the way I know that you do you will make sure she is undeterred from what has to be done for her people.” She took a painful step in his direction by using the cane to lean on. “I assume you have the dignity to allow over three thousand years of history to play itself out without interference?”

  “Madam Korvesky, I assure you—” Niles began to speak for Everett but she didn’t allow him to.

  “The West has done quite enough interfering by allowing your NATO hooligans to sell my land to an outsider, a Russian outsider at that. No, you and your people have harmed mine enough, Man from the Sea. Amend some wrongs and keep Anya safe until I return. Now, go inside Anya’s marriage chest there,” she smiled when her granddaughter blushed, “and hand me a quilt, young man.”

  Carl swallowed and then with a last look at Anya nodded his head as if he were afraid his voice would fail him at this most inopportune time. He walked a few steps toward the foot of the small bed and saw the large trunklike box. He did as he was asked and pulled an old comforter from the five-foot-by-four-foot-square box that had seen far better days.

  As Carl lifted the blanket he saw something square wrapped in another old, moth-eaten quilt. He saw part of what looked like a headstone and before he closed the lid he looked at Anya and wondered just what kind of woman would keep a chunk of stone in her hope chest. Everett closed the top of the box and then attempted to slide the chest back against the bed. Whatever was inside wrapped in the old quilts was as heavy as a dozen gold bars. Carl again pushed it against the bed and this time the chest moved. He straightened with a curious look on his face and then placed the blanket in the old woman’s hands.

  “Mrs. Hamilton, if you and the others will come with me I will take you to the place you came to see and the very special life that protects the heritage of the Jeddah.”

  15

  THE EDGE OF THE WORLD HOTEL AND RESORT CASINO

  As Pete and Ryan walked through the connecting hallway leading to the hotel’s lobby, Jason spied Collins and McIntire as they stepped off the elevator. With a look at the way he was dressed and with mud covering half of his pants, Ryan decided that the information he had to pass to the colonel was far more important than his desire to impress.

  “Come on, Pete, there’s the colonel and Sarah,” he said as he tugged on the computer genius’s elbow.

  Pete lowered his glasses from where they had been perched on his forehead and squinted toward the elevator area. Pete shook his head.

  “No way. I have to get to that restroom, Commander, or my legs will itch right off my body.”

  Jason glanced down at Golding’s burr-encrusted pants and shook his head.

  “Okay, Doc, you stay right in there and don’t go to the room until I’m finished telling the colonel why everyone is out to get rid of us.”

  “Right,” Pete said in haste and then turned and practically ran toward the men’s restroom.

  Ryan again shook his head in wonder at how uncomfortable these academic types became at the least little bit of irritation to their physical being.

  He turned and made his way toward the restaurant.

  Pete pushed the restroom door open and stepped inside not noticing or caring if anyone was present as he was in such a hurry to get into a stall. He immediately closed the door and sat upon the toilet and started removing his shoes and socks. As he pulled he felt the tearing of his skin as the burrs and foxtails slowly relinquished their hold on him. As the socks finally peeled away, relief flooded his system. He stood and raised the toilet seat and tossed the socks inside and then flushed. As he closed his eyes relishing the pain-free feeling, he became aware that something wasn’t right. He felt water rushing at his feet.

  “Oh, crap,” he said when he saw that his socks had clogged the toilet and water was flooding from the top and splashing at his feet. “Damn!” Pete said as he reached inside with a grimace and fished around until he pulled first one and then finally the other sock from the clogged toilet. Pete felt the cold water still flowing around his feet as the bowl started to empty, but still he closed the lid and then hopped on the stool to get out of the rush of freezing water.

  Pete cursed his luck as he watched the water finally stop flowing onto the tiled floor. He sat and felt like an idiot instead of a graduate from MIT and Stanford. He heard the bathroom door open and at least two men step into the restroom. He was about to call out a flood warning to the unsuspecting restroom users when a voice spoke up that he recognized immediately. It was the man from the night before and the same roguish gentleman that had received orders to keep him and Ryan under wraps not a half hour before. Pete froze when the men headed his way and stopped before the sinks on the opposite wall.

  The men were speaking in Romanian and Pete was lost as to what it was they were talking about. He thought he was safe when the two men had finished washing their hands and sounded as if they were moving off when one of the men stopped talking. Pete heard some splashing and then silence filled the restroom. Golding squatted on the toilet lid as silently as he could. He felt his chest start to burn as he held his breath. He heard footsteps and his heart froze as he looked up and saw that he had not locked the stall door. As he reached for the slide lock, the door suddenly opened and the man he had confronted in the restaurant the night before was standing in
front of him. A smile slowly creased the man’s bearded face.

  “Ah, a little shithouse rat. Are we trying to hide among the overflowing toilets?”

  Pete slowly lowered his legs and placed his feet in the cold water that was slow to drain from the floor. The large Romanian thug stepped back and held the stall door open.

  “Running into you was fortunate—we don’t have to scour the hotel looking for you. Now we will find your little smart-ass friend, who I want to speak to very badly.” The man gestured for Pete to step out of the stall. “Come, I have instructions to take you to a place where you can do no more damage to Mr. Zallas’s hotel. Please come with us.”

  “Pete didn’t know how the rest of the field teams did this without getting into as much trouble as he and Charlie Ellenshaw did the few times they had been allowed out of the complex. Now here he was being taken away by two very large Romanian men that looked as if they ate Ph.D.’s for breakfast, and on top of that he was now barefooted.

  He knew Charlie would never let him live this down.

  * * *

  Jack and Sarah had just turned the corner of the lobby when they saw the person they needed desperately to speak to. She was the one employee who looked as if she wasn’t happy about Zallas and the way he ran things. As they didn’t know how close her operations partner, Janos Vajic, was with Zallas, they could only hope that the general manager of the resort, Gina Louvinski, would be approachable with their rather bizarre request.

  Jack took Sarah by the arm and moved toward Gina, who was instructing one of her staff on something. She looked up and saw them approaching and hurried the employee off. The general manager looked around nervously for a moment and then smiled as Jack stepped up to her.

  “Colonel, I would have thought that you and Miss McIntire would have found a safer holiday weekend somewhere else.” She looked around with the false smile still on her face. “I mean with the trouble from Mr. Ryan and all, I thought staying someplace else may have been preferable to … certain things.”

  “You’re blathering, Ms. Louvinski. What made you think we would be leaving? Because of a small altercation? No, we have business here and we think you’re the only one that can help us.”

  Gina looked around nervously. She nodded her head at Janos as he walked past on the far side of the hotel. He moved on without a second’s thought to the two people she was speaking to.

  “Help you do what?” she asked without really moving her lips or breaking her fabricated smile.

  “My friend here thinks your resort is going to blow up or something and she would like to look at your original geology reports on this land the resort sits on.”

  Gina was shocked Jack had said all of that in one breath.

  “I guess that took you a little off guard,” Jack said with a little smile. “But I had to get your attention. Ms. McIntire here needs to see the original geologist’s report on the valley.”

  “Ms. Louvinski, the entire Patinas area is getting severe and continuous movement in an area not known for seismic activity,” Sarah said, cutting in. She quickly explained the situation.

  The general manager was speechless. She looked from Sarah to Jack and that look was a lost one.

  “Uh, uh, those plans and reports would be in Mr. Zallas’s engineering office adjacent to his own. He would never allow an outsider.” She thought for a second. “Not even me, anywhere near there.”

  Jack smiled, taking Gina by the arm, and then he and Sarah walked her clear of a few of the guests as they made their way to the restaurant.

  “Look, we can do this now and maybe stop something terrible from happening, or we can wait until we can contact NATO command in Germany and have this whole area sealed off, but that would take time, Ms. Louvinski, time we don’t have.” Jack looked around with the smile still on his face and then he looked back down at the general manager. “We have a selfish reason for asking this. We have friends lost on that mountain somewhere and we don’t know where they are or if they need help. We can’t look for them or help them with this seismic event hanging over our heads.”

  Gina swallowed and looked around. The surroundings seemed unfamiliar as her heart raced. She knew these people were serious but she also knew that Zallas would kill her if she allowed them access to his office.

  “I’m sure if you explain to Mr. Zallas your suspicions he would—”

  “Your boss is a criminal and our original intent was to prove he is an antiquities thief and to discover where these artifacts were coming from. Now that has to take a backseat to what my geologist friend here has discovered.”

  “You are police?” Gina said as she involuntarily took a step away from the two Americans.

  “No, not exactly,” Sarah said as she closed the distance between herself and Gina. “My friend is telling the truth. We need to see the geology report and we need to see it soon. Mr. Zallas would not allow that, so you have to, or you will be just as responsible as your employer if what I’m sure is happening, happens.”

  Sarah’s words hit home but Gina was still frozen because of her fear of Zallas. Without a word Gina turned and pushed her way past Jack and then brushed by an approaching Ryan without taking notice to him.

  “Well, that didn’t go at all well,” Jack said.

  “What did you expect,” Sarah said, “with that bare-my-soul tactic of yours? You could have been just a bit more subtle, GI Joe.”

  “Well, we don’t have a lot of time here, we have to—”

  “Boy, do I look and smell that bad, or did someone tell her I was a cad of the first order?” Ryan said as he glanced back at a very frightened Gina as she walked away.

  “No, I’m the one that scared her off. We may have a bigger problem than antiquities theft on our hands here, Mr. Ryan.”

  “Yeah, I think we may. I think the owner of this place wants us out of the way.”

  “Any more good news?” Sarah asked Ryan as she angrily stepped between the two men.

  “Well, until a second ago, no, but as of this very second, yes,” Ryan said as he pointed to his right in the direction he had come.

  As they watched, Pete Golding was led out of the men’s restroom and herded toward the elevators. Jack lowered his eyes when he realized who was escorting the good doctor away. He could see the large Romanian smiling as they waited for the elevator and poor Pete Golding looked horrid with no shoes and filthy clothing.

  Sarah looked at Jack and he shook his head in disgust at allowing the doc to be taken right under their noses.

  “Commander, we have to get into the engineering area of Zallas’s office. Sarah thinks there’s a significant problem with the geologic makeup of the ground here.”

  “Well, from what we overheard outside that may be hard to research if we’re dead and buried someplace. I don’t think our host is all too thrilled with us being around, it’s like he knows we’re not invited guests.”

  “Boy, I wonder where he got that notion,” Sarah said, looking at Jack with a raised brow.

  “This is certainly turning into a banner day,” Jack said as he started to move forward toward a shaken-looking Pete Golding but was stopped by an outstretched arm. Ryan shook his head at Collins.

  “You and Sarah do what you have to do, Pete’s my responsibility. I’ll get him out of whatever trouble he’s in and meet you back at the rooms later.”

  “And how do you plan on doing this, Mr. Ryan?”

  Jason took a deep breath and then smiled. He then aimed himself at the bank of elevators.

  “Like you, Colonel, I’m making this up as I go.”

  As Jack’s eyes followed, Ryan made a beeline for the men waiting for the elevator to arrive. Collins shook his head and then took Sarah by the arm and they made their way to the main lobby.

  “Well, I think now would be about the best time to head to the office area before we go into the restaurant.” Jack looked around and then nodded toward the front desk where a lone employee stood at a computer terminal. “
I guess we can assume the managerial areas are back there.”

  “What do we do, just stroll up to the front desk and ask for the key to Dmitri Zallas’s offices?”

  “That wouldn’t be the best course of action in this case.”

  Jack and Sarah turned and saw the resort’s general manager as she returned. Gina slowly removed her glasses and they could both see she was frightened by what she had been asked to do. Sarah saw the hand holding the glasses shaking almost uncontrollably.

  “Mr. Zallas is out on the grounds and his goons are with him, with the exception of those two men there.” She nodded behind them. “I don’t know where Zallas is exactly and since he has scheduled dinner with you, you will only have a few minutes inside the offices. I suggest one of you do your artifacts search and the other take the engineering office for the geological report. If we are caught we can expect … well … I have heard stories about Zallas and his business practices.”

  Jack looked at Gina and reached out, and with his own hand stilled her shaking one. “He’s the kind of man that promotes his own legend, it’s business, it’s meant to frighten. The man is a fool, but these sorts of men we have discovered are the most dangerous and unpredictable. He thinks we’re a part of NATO and that will make him a little less likely to off us while we’re here. You let us in and then disappear, go eat dinner, and we’ll be out before you know it.”

  Without another word Gina gestured by nodding her head and then she walked toward the far end of the front desk and was through before Collins and McIntire could move. Gina turned and smiled in their direction and held her hand out toward the rear of the front desk area, as she attempted to act normal for the desk clerk’s benefit.

  “Right this way and we’ll get you started looking at our honeymoon packages,” she said with her large and very false smile in place. Her eyes moved to the front desk clerk and she winked at the young man, who returned her smile and then turned back to his work.

  “Don’t get your hopes up, Jack,” Sarah said as she haughtily walked past him to a waiting Gina Louvinski.