Alpha Adventures: First Three Novels

by K. T. Tomb

  Travis shook his hand, and the Scottish pilot left. Travis looked at his note. He thought he’d have to run it by Thyri, but then he realized that she had effectively relinquished leadership of the team to him. It was up to him now, where the Alphas went, if they went at all. It was something to think about for sure. Crystals. Swarovski crystals, no less. Immensely valuable. Undoubtedly the danger would be hidden, and plentiful. Sounds like it was right up his alley, after all.

  The End.

  The Alpha Adventures returns in:

  “C” is for Crystal

  An Alpha Adventure #3

  Return to the Table of Contents

  “C” IS FOR CRYSTAL

  An Alpha Adventure

  #3

  by

  K.T. TOMB

  “C” is for Crystal

  Published by K.T. Tomb

  Copyright © 2015 by K.T. Tomb

  All rights reserved.

  Ebook Edition, License Notes

  This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

  Dedication

  The author wishes to dedicate this book to the late

  Tom Clancy.

  ‘C’ is for Crystal

  Chapter One

  Austria, 1914

  “It’s truly a shame, isn’t it?” Florian asked the other two men in the room.

  “Yes, yes, and yes again,” Maximilian replied. “It truly is.” And he raised a glass of brandy into the air. “Here is to fifty good years in the printing business. Who knew we’d last this long?”

  “Christ,” the third man said.

  The other two men looked at him, agape. It was the 20th century, but it was still uncommon to hear someone use that name in casual conversation.

  “Christ knew!” he said. “Sorry—bad joke? Anyway, yes, here’s to us. Three friends, three successful entities, one successful business.” He saluted each of the other men with his own snifter. “By the way…” he said and was cut off by Max’s intervening statement.

  “On that note, if you make a Holy Trinity joke, I swear I’ll take that fine crystal glass of yours, hit you over the head with it, and leave your body by the curb, Luca.”

  Luca glowered at Max for a moment; slowly, his heavy eyebrows rose, his gaze softened, and before any of the three men knew what was happening, they all started laughing. At first it was just a slow chuckle here, a light snort of barely contained joy there, but soon the three men had an arm around each of the other men’s shoulders, laughing uncontrollably.

  They were quite drunk. Each had contributed a significant part of his life, his talent and his time to their publishing firm. Maximilian Liebowitz, Florian Rodange and Luca Gaston, also known as Liebowitz, Rodange and Gaston, Inc. The “Inc.” idea came from Gaston—always quick with a cheesy, good-natured pun, he thought that it was very humorous that “Inc.” be a part of the name of their printing, publishing, and newspaper outfit because they used so much ink in the course of their business. Maximilian was the business brains and acumen behind the firm; much of their success could be attributed to him. Naturally, he was also their lead reporter on a myriad of affairs, including the blossoming world economy and the political happenings within, and occasionally beyond, the Austrian border.

  Rodange was their productions manager—a high-level thinker, always one step ahead of their competition and, in some cases, the downfall of said competitors. Then there was Luca Gaston. Honest, self-deprecating, and funny in a very quirky sort of way. He was a natural fit for the sales operations. Recruiting new routes and deliverymen for their newspaper, as well as having a way with aspiring young authors, were both particular specialties of Luca’s. The firm not only ran its own newspaper and printing operation, they were also a publishing firm.

  As the three men laughed, thinking about the past fifty years they had put into their brain-child-turned-cash-cow, Luca’s eyes slid down to the Swarovski crystal snifter he was holding, and then over to the trio of vases in the north window of the shop. He loved the way those three vases looked together—the lightest of blues, paler even than a robin’s egg; the soft pink of a sunset over water; the crystal-clear, pure-white sun reflecting off the snow on a clear-sky day in January. Twenty-five years ago those vases had been commissioned, during the peak of the firm’s success, and they had remained displayed in that window for the last two-and-a-half decades. Constantly cleaned, spotless beyond belief, he would regret seeing the three vases split up. On an especially long day, the light from the sun would run through all three, scattering blue and pink and what Lucas thought of as white—but was actually a drop of prism—all over the office, giving it a much more pleasant feel. He looked back at his snifter and sighed.

  “I’ll be sad to split them up, but I suppose what must be done must be done,” he said under his breath.

  “What was that, Luca? I didn’t quite catch what you said.” Rodange managed to keep his slurring to a minimum, despite the amount of French brandy his body was absorbing.

  “I said, I’ll be sad to split them up,” at which point he indicated the three familial vases, “and that I suppose what must be done must be done.”

  “Well, I suppose so,” said Liebowitz, the thought of splitting up the three one-of-a-kind pieces of a one-of-a-kind collection was quickly having a sobering effect on the aging Austrian.

  “Hmmm,” Rodange mumbled. “What if we don’t split them up?”

  Liebowitz and Gaston both looked at him incredulously.

  “Hear me out.” Rodange’s speech was getting worse by the moment, and Gaston could not help but giggle a little bit at his friend’s drunken antics. “Why don’t we chance it?”

  “Chance? Chance? Chance?” stuttered Liebowitz.

  “Yes,” Rodange slurred out. Rodange was a bit superstitious by nature. He always did things a certain way, arranged things a certain way, even to some extent, wore specific clothes because he thought it improved his chances of getting the outcome he wanted from a situation. His friends—who also happened to be his colleagues and business partners outside of one or two other people, and he was not sure if his wife was included in that other group or not—found it very peculiar but, since Rodange typically got what he wanted, no one really questioned him.

  “Look, this is what we do. We each write our name on two pieces of paper. Then, we put our slips in a hat or a bowl—something of that nature. Then we each draw twice. First person to match his name gets to keep the set?”

  Liebowitz looked at Gaston, who looked back and forth between the other two. Silence filled the air. Normally, the buzzing, whirring, clickety-clackety, day-to-day operations of a medium-sized printing and publishing would be filling any silent space it could find. But since the company had been bought out by a foreign entity, it would be one of the last times all three men would be in the office at the same time. The silence weighed heavily on each man as he considered the possibility. The smell of old tobacco smoke, hot-pressed paper and the ferro-metallic smell of the ink added their now-depressing odor to what, just moments before, had been a very cheery moment between the friends.

  “Look.” Rodange managed to get the word out from between his teeth, but not without some serious help from his tongue. “Look,” he repeated, “we should probably make a choice on what we’re going to do. I mean, they’re tearing this place down soon and whatever happens, I think the vases should be kept together.”

  “I... I…” Gaston stammered, then: “I need to sleep on it.”

  “Good idea,” Liebowitz said. “I’m going to sleep on it too.”

  Austria, Present Day

  The rumble of the diesel engine was loud, Franz thought. Then again, it was a diesel. An old Volvo, if he remembered correctly. Which he did. The truck was a short one, only a twenty-footer, but there, high in the mountains, he had to pull the trailer with his—or rather his employer’s—articulated tractor. It helped him maneuver more e
fficiently and with greater safety around the hairpin turns where his routes often took him.

  Why can’t I work somewhere nice and flat? he wondered to himself.

  Then he pulled around a corner, and scattered below him were the quaint houses particular to the central area of the Austrian Alps. He could see for miles from his vantage point, and though he kept most of his focus on the road, he immediately appreciated the beauty of the valley below him.

  “It’s beautiful down below, isn’t it?” he said to Simon, the tall, young, blonde Swiss boy—at least, Franz considered Simon a boy. He was only twenty-one years old, fresh out of his mandatory service to the Swiss Guard, and his protégé of sorts. Franz was planning on retiring soon.

  “Keep your eyes on the road, Herr Faber,” Simon replied in a joking, almost sing-song voice. He had the clipped, almost too-short way of saying words that came with speaking a multitude of languages. Simon could converse easily in Swiss, French, German and English, with a smattering of Italian thrown in for good measure.

  They may be extremely passive across the border, Franz thought to himself, but at least they educate their kids. And teach them discipline to boot. It’s too bad the rest of the world doesn’t follow their example and demand some kind of military training. It’s good for young men.

  “Listen, kid,” Franz knew Simon hated the nickname, but Franz had been doing this a long time. “I didn’t get this job because I’m a careless driver,” Franz said, eyes locked on the road in front of him. “I’m one of the best drivers out here, and that’s why they give me the hard stuff. I didn’t get that way by ‘taking my eyes off the road.’”

  Simon always teased Franz about his pride in his job—he was almost sixty after all; his pride and a small pension were the only things Franz had to show for his years of dedicated service. Franz knew Simon had been jesting, but he took the opportunity to impart some well-earned knowledge to Simon nonetheless.

  “I’ve heard it all before,” Simon replied sheepishly. “I get it. Eyes on the road. TNT, as you like to say.”

  “That’s right, two eyes on the road 'n two hands on the wheel. No exceptions.”

  Franz smiled, then took one hand off the wheel and gulped some coffee.

  Another benefit being this close to the Swiss-Italian-Austrian border. Good coffee, all the time, Franz thought to himself.

  Simon gave him a look that clearly said, ‘Quit showing off and try not to get us killed on these icy mountain roads, wouldja?’ Franz just chuckled to himself quietly.

  “What’s back there, anyway?” Simon asked.

  “You don’t know?” Franz asked, his feeling of superiority showing in his voice in a smug sort of way.

  “You know full well I haven’t a clue. All I know is that we’re taking three long, relatively light boxes all the way across the country, driving like mad to get them somewhere in time for the weekend, and there’s nothing else in the truck,” Simon responded. Typically, on a trip like this, the truck would be fully loaded going both directions. People pay well for their antiquities to get from point A to point B without incident.

  “Well, how about this? We have a long way to go before we get to our destination. How about I give you the location, and the event we’re going to, and you can help me while away the remaining hours by guessing what’s in the boxes?” Franz proposed happily.

  “Sure, Franz,” Simon replied. This was a game they sometimes played.

  It helped Franz keep his eyes alive, as he liked to say, and it gave Simon’s naturally inquisitive mind something to work on to keep him awake and alert as well. They always rode together. Franz insisted on it because having someone else in the truck kept him from glazing over mentally on long drives when he needed to be on his toes.

  Franz took another swig of coffee, and launched into his explanation of their destination.

  “These boxes are going to a very special show. There is a… specific maker of… items of a specific… material… and this is a one-of-a-kind collection of all three one-of-a-kind pieces of that set. They are extremely fragile and extremely valuable.”

  “That’s not much to go on, Franz,” Simon replied.

  “Think about it, kid,” Franz shot back.

  Simon racked his brain for anything he could think of going on near the German border. Music played softly in the background—jazz from the mid-1900s—and Simon put his mind to work.

  “The material these items are made of,” Simon started to ask, “are they glass? Are they made of some kind of stone? And how old are they?”

  “Over a hundred years old,” Franz replied. “And they are not made of glass.”

  “Very helpful.” Simon’s reply dripped sarcasm.

  “Ok, one other hint. These three pieces were made for three very wealthy families that owned a printing and publishing firm that was in business from the late eighteen-hundreds through the early twentieth century. The manufacturer is still in business. However, these three pieces were hand carved with the familial crests—one crest in each piece—one for each of the three families. And, they were made by a manufacturer that is still in business. Rather successful internationally and still in business.”

  “So,” Simon thought out loud. “Famous manufacturers of something other than glass, large enough to have a family crest hand-carved into them before most of our modern-day etching tools, and they’re made of something extremely fragile.” Simon thought for a moment. “The only thing I can think of that is that fragile, and not glass, is crystal of some kind. But I can’t figure out the rest of the puzzle.”

  “Correct, Simon. What lies behind you in very firmly packed bedding are three Swarovski crystal vases. Each vase was made—custom, mind you—for the families Liebowitz, Rodange and Gaston. They owned a printing and publishing firm, and a newspaper to boot. Three extremely wealthy, extremely successful families. And we are taking them to the Swarovski crystal expo in Luxembourg, Luxembourg.” Franz had always hated that the largest city in Luxembourg was also called Luxembourg. It made things confusing and redundant.

  “Wow,” Simon said. He faintly remembered hearing the three families mentioned before, but he could not remember where, when or why. He did, however, know of the Swarovski crystal expo. It had been all the buzz in the Austrian tabloids. It was to be an exposition unlike any other. Wealthy Swarovski collectors would be putting only custom, or very minimally-produced pieces on display. Some of the items would be for sale, but most would only be available for viewing.

  “Do you know any more of the story of the vases?” Simon asked.

  “Now that you mention it, yes, I do,” Franz replied. The smugness of superior knowledge was back in his voice.

  “Will you share it with me?” Simon could barely contain the eagerness for the history lesson he anticipated would follow.

  “I will indeed,” Franz said.

  Austria, 1914

  All three men were nursing cups of strong black coffee at the local café. The waitress had been by a few times with refills, but since Rodange, Liebowitz and Gaston were regulars—especially after a copious amount of liquor had been consumed the previous evening—she knew better than to offer them food. They would order if they wanted to.

  “Did you gentlemen have a chance to think over my proposition from yesterday evening?” Rodange rasped. He almost always lost his voice after drinking brandy; a phenomenon not one, but three separate physicians were unable to explain.

  “I did,” Gaston said. “As much as I hate to say it, it seems to be the only fair way to proceed. The pieces are too symbiotic to split up. It would give me no satisfaction to see them so treated. As much as the thought of losing my share pains me, it would do my heart no good to have only a third of their beauty.”

  “I agree wholeheartedly.” Rodange smiled approvingly.

  “I’m not sure,” Liebowitz responded. “They are truly beautiful as a set; that said, their beauty is not diminished if they are apart.”

  Always looking t
o get the upper hand, Rodange thought to himself. So be it, I suppose.

  “What do you propose, then?” Gaston asked.

  “I propose we rotate ownership…” and was cut off by Rodange.

  “What in the hell does that mean?”

  “It means that each of us would take all three vases for a year’s time,” Liebowitz replied curtly, clearly displeased at being cut off. “We would rotate which year each of us received ownership of all three vases. It would be relatively simple.”

  “No, it would most certainly not be simple,” Rodange replied.

  “I agree,” Gaston said. “It would be too easy for one of us to misplace the vases in an attempt to retain ownership. Besides, I have not spent nearly enough time with my family these past five decades—I plan to rectify that.”

  “Yes,” replied Rodange, “I too feel that it would be too easy for some sort of… mishap… to befall our beloved crystal. Then where would we be?”

  “Excellent points. However, I trust both of you would be intelligent enough and responsible enough to maintain the vases in safety while you had them in your possession.”

  “We can’t plan for everything, Max. All it takes is one greedy low-life looking to make a quick score, and poof the crystal is gone,” replied Gaston.

  Rodange, being opposed to Liebowitz’s game of chance, wisely allowed Gaston to fight his battle for him. The two went back and forth a few times, each of Liebowitz’s objections more and more easily overcome by Gaston.

  “Tell you what, Max,” Rodange finally interjected, “you can have first pick of the names. Would that help?”