Tomb of the First Priest: A Lost Origins Novel

by A D Davies

  He could not bear to look at it now. Could not watch someone take it from him the way it had been taken from his mother.

  “Nothing special?” the yellow man said curiously.

  Jules held still for a long moment until he realized the bracelet wasn’t virtually vibrating. It really was humming between his fingers. And when Jules steeled himself enough to turn his head in that direction, the green flecks were lit up, glowing, as they had when he’d spat on it and removed it from the girl’s minder.

  It wasn’t a trick of the light after all.

  His heart raced. He struggled to keep his face neutral. The prospect of parting with it now hurt even more.

  Just what was my mom into?

  “Now that’s interesting,” the yellow man said. “And really quite unexpected. But whatever. Larry.”

  One of the fake cops from a Range Rover came forward with a white cloth sack and held it open. Jules released the bracelet, and it landed in the bag, the lights dying instantly.

  “Sir?” Horse flicked his gun toward Jules.

  The yellow man took possession of the bag. “Can we sweep the murders of a couple of Americans under the carpet here?”

  “Done it before, sir.”

  The yellow man sighed. “Fine, do it quickly.”

  Horse shoved the girl forward. She stood beside Jules, frozen. The big man’s gun came up.

  Jules had already palmed a throwing knife, though, waiting for the girl to get clear. He snapped his hand forward and launched the blade.

  It thunked into Horse’s gun arm, making him drop the weapon.

  Then Jules deployed two smoke bombs in Horse’s face, swept the girl up, planted her behind him, and opened up the bike. While the mercs gathered themselves, Jules dropped the remaining smoke bombs to obscure their escape.

  Before a single shot came their way, they were around the corner and gone.

  Chapter Three

  After patching up his wrist using his field kit, Dan Vincent steered the stolen van, following the sluggish GPS function on his phone to the freeway north of the city.

  The only clues about what happened after the alleyway came from a drone camera intended to monitor their handover of the bangle. Unfortunately, since he was not affiliated with any government agency, the “drone” was nothing more than a $1,000 store-bought quadcopter equipped with a camera that streamed via a jerry-rigged smartphone. It had followed their Range Rover on the roads, monitoring fore and aft to check for tails, but it did not possess the range to cover rooftops with the efficiency of a $10 billion spy satellite.

  “Who tails a target by rooftop, anyway?” he asked aloud.

  He had no field intel beyond the direction in which the weird vigilante guy had fled and the fact that Valerio Conchin’s men had bugged out with Bridget the same way. When the shooting started, he ushered Bridget aside, but she screamed when a second barrage opened.

  They had become separated.

  The drone, controlled remotely from their base of operations, stuck with Bridget’s abductors for as long as possible, but it was more the sort of kit used for semi-pro filmmakers, so wasn’t up to the task of following a speeding motorcade.

  He had told Toby that Bridget wasn’t ready for this, but with Harpal delayed, she was the only decoy on hand.

  Damn it.

  He slapped the wheel with his good hand. She was his responsibility.

  Sure, she was a capable kid, gusty and passionate about their work. But he was almost twice her age and fifty times more experienced. He should have aborted and risked missing the handover.

  Verification could wait.

  Securing the item was the priority, not working out what it did. That was a luxury for Bridget and Toby to enjoy once the danger was over. Then, Dan could drink a beer and pretend to look interested as their faces lit up with the realization that it was far more valuable or “impossible” than they expected.

  Everything they recovered lately seemed impossible. Until it wasn’t.

  This new player, though, he hadn’t seemed at all shocked when the Aradia bangle lit up. Barely even noticed. Meaning the criminal was intimately familiar with the artifact. And that made him as much of a threat as Valerio Conchin.

  Dan risked a check on the Uzi he secured from the lone guard whom Conchin’s ragtag mercs left to watch over him. It had already been fired, so although it was black market junk he knew there was no jam, leaving the number of bullets as the only variable. He ejected the clip and weighed it in his hand.

  Between five and ten rounds.

  Not that it mattered much.

  The guy who took the bangle was fast, and he had skills, had even caught Dan off guard. But Dan was an ex–Army Ranger. He wouldn’t be sucker-punched like that again. And no amount of skill could dodge a bullet. Even if there were only one left, it’d be enough.

  But Bridget was the priority now. He could not lose focus on that.

  The phone sent him wrong twice, stuttering with the dodgy app, so that by the time he reached the on-ramp, the standoff was in full swing: Bridget held hostage by the lump called Horse, Valerio himself handling the negotiation, and the Spider-Man wannabe was pausing, delaying the handover.

  Do it and they’ll kill you both.

  Damn it. Amateurs always screw things up.

  Dan parked around the corner and crouch-ran up the adjoining street. In thirty seconds he was ready to launch himself from a bush, fire one round into Horse’s head and another into Valerio Conchin’s jaundiced heart, and snatch Bridget while the rent-a-bad-guys cleaned up their pants.

  He’d drop the Spider-Dude too if he interfered.

  Dan had faced worse odds, but Bridget hadn’t. This was all new to her, and she wouldn’t understand Dan’s signals—when to duck, when to bite or shove or stamp on her captor’s foot. And her window for escape was shortening.

  Horse shoved Bridget toward the thief, and Valerio made a gesture that could only mean one thing: kill them.

  Dan rose, adopted a shooting stance with the Uzi’s folding stock planted firmly in his shoulder, and drew down on Horse. He was ready, despite the junk gun he was having to use.

  Then it all went south.

  The kid on the motorcycle—and he was a kid, not much older than Bridget—threw something that hurt his would-be killer, then did his trick with the mini flashbangs, and before Dan could get his bearings, they were speeding around a corner, leaving the goons and their bosses confused. Conchin’s men formed a convoy and chose to flee with their prize of the bangle rather than give chase, which left Dan with a decision of his own.

  Follow the artifact or secure his friend?

  He ran back to the van. The motorcycle’s tire marks betrayed their route, leaving Dan to anticipate where the stranger was taking Bridget and at which point he could take the guy out as quickly as possible.

  When it was clear that Horse and the others were not following, Jules pulled up in the parking lot of a suburban bar still pumping music from within. He knocked out the kickstand, opened his visor, and ordered the girl off.

  “I’m—” the girl started.

  “What, you’re sorry?” Jules said.

  She looked down. “I’m Bridget.” That Alabama twang extended her vowels, which kept Jules watching her lips as she spoke. “And yes, I’m sorry we lost the bangle. But thank you for saving me. Perhaps we can—”

  “What? Perhaps we can what, Bridget? Work something out? You know how long I been looking for that? Nine years. You any idea what I gave up?”

  Jules kicked the stand back up and revved the engine once, his whole body drained of energy. No anger, no frustration. Just a crushing emptiness.

  A blue van trundled past; the only traffic they’d seen since stopping.

  “What will you do now?” Bridget asked.

  “What I always do when I get close and fail.” Unable to summon the energy to leave in a huff, Jules’s shoulders slackened and dropped. “I’ll start all over again.”

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p; Bridget stepped up and touched his arm. Her freckles had not been apparent before but up close she bore the character of a porcelain doll, her copper hair once again shining under halogen lights. “Let me help you.”

  Dan spotted them in the parking lot of a club. Bridget, ever the gentle soul, appeared to be chatting to the stranger. She had no idea how much trouble men like that could cause her, no matter their intentions, no matter how much they claimed to be good people. Dan knew, though. Dan knew what darkness lay beneath the most pleasant-looking shells.

  Protocol dictated he should use caution since the subject hadn’t used, or attempted to use, lethal force against anyone yet. But this might still count as kidnapping.

  As Dan pulled to the curb out of sight, he told himself it was legitimate to take no chances with this one. That the guy with Bridget was dangerous, and lethal force was justified.

  That might have been his ego talking.

  He gave the gun a final check and stalked toward them from the side.

  “Your mother used to own the Aradia bangle?” Bridget asked. “How did she come across it?”

  “I don’t know. And I don’t care. I just know I have to get it back.”

  “Why?”

  Jules swallowed, forcing an acidic mix back into his chest. “Because now she’s gone, and—” He was sharing too much. “That’s my business.”

  From around the side of the club, the guy from the alley, Bridget’s minder, sprang forward, an Uzi raised and pointed Jules’s way.

  “Bridget, get down!” the guy shouted.

  Jules instinctively ducked at an angle, but before he could dive sideways and arm himself with a throwing knife, Bridget spread her hands and stood between him and the shooter, a voluntary human shield.

  “What are you doing?” the man demanded. “Move!”

  “No, Dan,” Bridget said. “Let him go. He’s no threat. In fact … he’s more than likely lost more than we did tonight.”

  Slowly, the man lowered the weapon.

  Bridget relaxed.

  Jules pulled the Suzuki upright, eyes holding on the gunman, the knife ready in his palm. No one moved on him. Bridget had the situation under control, and the guy—definitely a pro—seemed to respect her word.

  So Jules simply nodded once to the pale redhead.

  Without another word, he flipped down his visor and accelerated as hard as he could toward Prague’s center, screaming his lungs out as he went.

  Chapter Four

  Chateau Caché, La Tranche-sur-Mer

  Brittany, France

  Throughout Toby Smith’s former career, he had engaged in more situations similar to this than he could count.

  Bundled at gunpoint into one of Valerio’s vehicles, which sped off into the night, the youngest member of the institute was the brightest researcher and analyst he’d ever hired. But no matter her qualities, Bridget Carson was not a field operative. It would be his fault if she died.

  When Dan transmitted confirmation of her safe retrieval, Toby’s legs turned to jelly, the air in his lungs grew thin, and he had to sit down. There was no chair nearby, so he planted himself on the floor in his new beige suit. He wanted to cry. If it hadn’t been for Charlie’s calm analysis, her firm way of monitoring the airwaves, of tracking Dan’s movements... well, let’s just say she kept Toby sane during that hour.

  Was it a whole hour?

  It felt like both minutes and several hours at the same time. The speed of events, the drawn-out uncertainty.

  Throughout the initial op, Charlie operated the drone via the wonders of the internet, using a game-console controller by way of a smartphone, observing both the camera view and the GPS read on two screens side by side. When that had gone down and Toby demanded answers he knew she could not give, the concentration on her face never wavered, her expression barely altering. She simply placed the controller aside and fired up the Demon Server—not quite a supercomputer, but far superior to most server farms—where she hunted for mention of anything that might offer a clue as to Bridget’s fate. She may have frowned a couple of times when nothing popped up immediately, but that was her only indication of concern.

  “The police scanner, paramedic frequencies, even social media,” she assured him, her Welsh tones offering no concession to failure. “Twitter, Facebook, Snapchat, Instagram—all great resources. The firefight in central Prague… it’s already all over the net, but the cops can’t respond.”

  “Why on earth not?”

  “You know why, Toby. Please don’t waste your breath yapping.”

  He did know, of course. They’d covered it during prep. Dozens of cops were engaged in a standoff with a gunman in the south of the city. Plus, in a separate incident, two uniformed officers suffered gunshots to their legs, inflicted by people wearing gang colors.

  As in Britain and the States, the cops in Prague give short shrift when one of their own goes down, so tonight they were spread far and wide to hunt down the shooters. The fact all this occurred half an hour before their handover indicated that it was no coincidence, but Toby pressed ahead anyway.

  Against Charlie’s advice.

  Slowly, after the good news about Bridget reached them, Toby’s thigh muscles felt connected to his body again, so with little else for them to do, he and Charlie adjourned from the ops room in the chateau’s east wing to the teak-paneled study. Here, they poured healthy measures of brandy in crystal glasses, which Bridget claimed were a gift from the Sultan of Brunei.

  Neither spoke for at least a minute.

  Charlie watched him, causing him to pace, his legs now the opposite of jelly, a need to move coursing through him. Even his fingers were jittery. Eventually, he halted and sipped the alcohol.

  Charlie did likewise.

  The institute’s tech specialist was a head taller than him, but then so were most people, and at forty, she could easily have passed for early thirties. Or maybe that was just Toby’s own age showing. In his midfifties, he was learning that policemen and doctors and, yes, engineering savants really did look far younger than they used to. Ultimately, she was more a partner to Toby than a subordinate, despite supposedly quitting the institute three times in the past five years.

  “She should never have been there,” Charlie finally said.

  “I know.” Toby downed his drink and poured another. “But this third party intrigues me.”

  The institute had never heard a whisper of another’s involvement until that moment. Despite Valerio taking down the traffic cams—usually a great source of intel and a simple hack for someone like Charlie—they’d managed to snag a few partial images of the stranger’s face from CCTV at the club where he released Bridget. Low-res, but it had taken Charlie a shade under thirty minutes to pull out a name while Toby was trying not to blub on the operations room floor.

  She produced a phone in one hand, swirling her drink in the other. “Ready to be educated?”

  Toby sat heavily on a leather couch.

  The furniture in the room reminded him of the cigar-laden gentlemen’s clubs from the 1970s back in his native Britain, where Members of Parliament and heads of industry would plan the future of the country and often the futures of other countries too. Modernity punctuated the throwback interior design, with a forty-inch TV screen opposite the couch in which Toby’s reflection was somewhat distorted and gnomelike.

  “Ready,” he said.

  Charlie remained standing and hit several keys, which activated the screen. Dan and Bridget appeared, congregated in a single, low-rent room. Dan was still in his ops gear with his guns close at hand, while Bridget had showered and changed into sweats and an oversize woolen pullover, her hair still damp. Like Toby and Charlie, she was imbibing a large tipple, medicinal bourbon if Toby wasn’t mistaken.

  Toby’s third drink turned his head into a thick stew. He set it down for now.

  “Our gate-crasher is Julian Sibeko,” Charlie announced.

  “What is he?” Dan asked. “CIA? Military?”
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  Charlie shook her head, reading from her phone directly to the TV’s webcam. “Looks freelance.”

  “He must have a service record somewhere. No one’s that good without real training.”

  “I concur,” Toby said. “The ease with which he took out Dan… that wasn’t a fluke.”

  Dan’s lips thinned, clearly still embarrassed.

  “It’s true, Dan,” Toby added, noting the reaction. “Anyone who can take out our man-at-arms like that needs acknowledging.”

  “Mr. Sibeko isn’t a complete ghost,” Charlie continued. “Twenty-three years old, born and raised in Brooklyn, New York. He’s a keen traveler. Hasn’t been home much at all. The last time was for a week to sell his family home two years ago. Netted him a nice cash flow, which he has almost exhausted.”

  “So he has family?” Toby asked.

  “It’d be easier if you didn’t interrupt.” Charlie returned to her screen. “His parents were killed in a robbery. A pizza place on Staten Island. I can’t access the full police files yet, just media reports. Julian’s dad was ex-army, so I guess his alpha genes went a little wild.” Charlie flicked her fingers over the screen again. “Julian Sibeko is listed as a material witness and reports a ‘stone bracelet’ as one of the items taken.”

  All paused to absorb it.

  Bridget blew out her cheeks. “He was telling the truth.”

  “Indeed.” Toby lifted his glass on instinct but held it still, not wanting to drink but wishing to avoid looking indecisive. “And he’s searched for the bangle ever since?”

  “Looks like it.” Charlie scanned more headlines on the reports for anything relevant. “His dad was a martial arts champ for the US Army, scoring gold against Israel in Krav Maga, so he was handy with his fists—”

  “Sorry to interrupt,” Dan said, “but an American beating the Israelis at Krav Maga is the equivalent of a Brit team beating the US at baseball.”