by A D Davies
Amir did so, his chin high, eyes darting, and lowered his hands slowly as directed.
Getting up in Amir’s face, Valerio’s expression was fixed in a rictus grin. “Take me to what I want. Now. Or everyone here dies.”
Chapter Twenty-Two
Dan froze fifty yards from the hostages, one gun leveled on him, another on Harpal. They were caught, and Dan saw no way out. He wasn’t sure what stung the most: that he was about to die, or that he’d miscalculated the force of their enemy.
A total of four gunmen joined those already in the museum, rounding up staff. Plus Valerio and Horse. Bad odds. At least they’d ceased murdering people at random, a ruse Dan suspected they planned to blame on a terrorist attack—either Islamic jihadis or whatever local groups made their political points by killing innocents.
The staff were gathered in one group, with Bridget and Toby hunkered among them, the remaining tourists in another.
Valerio’s attention rested on Amir. An arm around the curator’s shoulder, he pointed at the tour guides and back office personnel sitting cross-legged on the floor, hands on their heads.
Valerio said, “Pick one.”
“One?” Amir looked puzzled.
“Who will die first?”
“I... I cannot pick someone to die.”
“Oh.” Valerio bowed his head. “Disappointed! Horse? Would you be so kind?”
Valerio’s bodyguard pointed a handgun at a lab-coated man and fired. The man’s chest bloodied, and the report echoed around the space, its noise still ringing after the victim ceased writhing in pain and lay flat on the floor, unmoving.
Dan flinched internally but remained stone on the outside.
“Hwang,” Amir said, about to run to the dead man.
Valerio grabbed him by the shoulder and twisted him around. “Now choose a different person.”
Amir alternated his view between his colleagues—many now weeping openly—and Valerio himself. “You want something. To stop killing my people.”
“Ten points to the Mongol!” Valerio slapped him on the back. “Yes, I want something, and the presence of these people...” He pointed at the LORI contingent. “Them being here means you know exactly what that is.”
Amir nodded so hard it was a wonder his neck didn’t snap.
“Then let’s go.” Valerio beckoned, and Horse shoved Amir away from his boss. Following, Valerio clicked his fingers and added, “Have them kill the tourists and the competition before we get back.”
Horse barked in Russian, calling one of the men “Capitan,” presumably the independent group’s leader. The captain replied, “Da.” Meaning “yes.”
Dan’s Russian wasn’t fluent, but he could get by with a few words.
As soon as they were on their way, the captain ordered his men to spread out. Two aimed their submachine guns at the grouped tourists—thirteen of them—while the captain separated Bridget and Toby from the staff, all trying to stay out of the dead scientist’s blood.
“It is important.” Amir stopped in his tracks.
Dan’s chest sank, his stomach fluttering with anticipation. Going by Amir’s sagging body language and resigned expression, he sensed something bad was about to happen.
At Valerio’s confused frown, Amir fixed his gaze on Toby. “Do not let them discover the Ruby Rock bangle’s secrets.”
Sometimes, Dan hated being right.
Amir swung an elbow at Valerio’s gut, winding him. Horse brought his gun up and popped a single shot in the man’s head. Amir slapped to the floor, and Dan wondered whether the smile on his face was satisfaction or just a motor response as he died.
More shots sounded from the north corridor. Single cracks, forcing the bad guys to take cover without hitting any of them.
Jules.
Those guarding Dan and Harpal flicked their attention to their employer, and Dan deflected the nearest guy’s gun aside and planted a flat hand through his windpipe.
Harpal reacted too, a combination of punches to his guy’s gut, a jab to the eyes, then a heel through his temple.
Easier than with some urban jihadi fighter in a similar situation. Those guys could explode at any moment. The museum attackers had no such commitment to the afterlife. But that didn’t mean Dan wouldn’t send them there.
Dan and Harpal secured the downed men’s weapons and immediately spread out, spraying bursts of three at judicious points. They missed, but it scattered the killers, allowing Toby and Bridget to run their way.
“Is Charlie back online?” Toby said over the racket.
“Yeah, got her before we dropped in,” Dan said. “She’s getting the lay of the land, but it isn’t easy here. Stay close, we’ll get out of here. Harpal, three o’clock.”
Harpal laid down covering fire at a right angle to Dan, pressing Horse into a retreat, unable to fight and maneuver his injured boss out of harm’s way.
“The bangle.” Toby pointed in the direction from which Jules had fired and then quickly disappeared.
Without spare ammo, Dan switched to single rounds, picking off one overly ambitious scumbag who tried to flank them. The last three grunts were too close to the hostages for Dan to attack directly.
They made it out of the entrance hall and into the section featuring bones and furry beasts. After there, they reached a section full of knickknacks, mostly behind glass. One display was utterly destroyed.
The one Toby was gawking at. “It’s gone!”
“Right here.” Jules’s voice came to them from higher up.
He was standing on a cabinet eight feet off the floor where he’d propped the small window open with a statue. “This way.” He rolled up his sleeve to flash the rock bracelet. “Hurry, I can get us out.”
Jules thought they’d have been elated, but Dan and Harpal took cover and aimed back the way they’d come, utilizing the bottleneck to their advantage. He told them his phone was dead and so he hadn’t been able to communicate his plan. They seemed reluctantly satisfied.
Toby shook his head. “I can’t get up there.”
Jules crouched and lowered his hand. “I’ll pull you up. Dan can shove below. You’re a bit wide, but we can squish your gut through.”
Even on the run for his life, Toby placed both hands on his stomach and sighed.
“Now would be good,” Jules said. “This drops to an evac point they ain’t guarding, and—”
The PA system screeched with feedback, then crackled, and Valerio’s voice reverberated around the building. “Hello? Can you hear me?”
“Valerio,” Toby said.
“You got away,” Valerio continued. “Well done. No doubt you have the bangle already. With the approach to your hidey-hole being so gosh-darned narrow, you’ll pick our guys off. Or escape the building before we can send a couple of rockets your way. But let’s not forget about the hostages.”
“I’m outa here.” Jules ducked toward the window. “I’ll meet you back at the hostel—”
“Where are you going?” Bridget demanded.
“You see, I get to decide their fate,” Valerio’s voice boomed, its echo all around. “Kill them probably. But let’s try negotiating first.”
“I got what he wants,” Jules answered. “I’ll draw them away. Hole myself up, ransom the Ruby Rock bangle for my mom’s, and—”
“In exchange for the bangle,” Valerio went on, “I will give you half the hostages. When I am safely away, I will order the release of the remaining ones. That sounds fair, doesn’t it? Yes, I’m certain it does.”
Jules groaned. “Those people’re dead anyway. We could follow every instruction, every command, but Valerio can’t leave witnesses. It’s a trick to draw us out.”
“Are you absolutely sure about that?” Toby said. “Or are you just blinded by your crusade?”
Jules took out the radio he snagged earlier and flicked it on. Thumbed the button. “You hear me?”
“Yes,” Valerio replied over the PA system. “I hear you. Don’t mind if
I continue using this do you? I kind of like it. Makes me feel all... godlike. I know, I know, a psychologist would have a field day with that one, but it’s fitting, don’t you think?”
“Sure.” Jules perched on the edge, then dropped to the floor. He was eye level with Toby for a moment as he rose from a crouched landing, his thumb on the button. “Narcissism and god complex go hand in hand.”
He was now resigned to doing things Toby’s way. He could live with someone else killing those people; Jules didn’t ask Valerio to be a murderous sociopath, and he doubted there’d be anything he could do to save the billionaire’s victims. But this group seemed to squeak out of tight spots by sticking together.
He said, “I’m coming out. Hold your fire. I ain’t armed.”
As he lowered the radio, Bridget said, “Don’t just give yourself up.”
“Yeah, that’s dumb,” Harpal added.
“Make your minds up,” Jules said. “Either I go out or I don’t.”
“Stop being an asshole and listen,” Dan said. “They didn’t cut comms entirely. Isn’t as easy in a place where there’s less access over the web. So we got Charlie on the line, and she’s mapping out an escape. Just gotta hold tight.”
Jules stepped toward the exit. “Trust me, I can do this.”
Toby placed a hand on Jules’s arm. “We’ve been in more than one bad situation. How about you trust us for once?”
Up by the window, Jules had persuaded himself to do it their way. It went against every fiber of his being, but... fine. He relaxed his stance, fell in beside Bridget, and waited to see what they came up with.
If Valerio hadn’t been so furious, he would have been impressed. Horse had never failed him before, and the non-demise of this Lost Origins group had triggered Valerio’s decision to turn up here in person despite the obvious risk of revealing his identity to the world. Not that it would matter pretty soon anyway.
The original plan fell flat, presumably in part because of them. With a jihadi-style terror strike on heathen relics and people who worshipped those relics, no one would be any the wiser. And since he’d tipped off the National Police Agency regarding an active cell of Mongol Nationalists several miles from here, he didn’t expect to be bothered for at least another ten minutes. Another reason he couldn’t afford a protracted firefight.
One thing was for certain, though: he was genuinely enjoying lying on the reception desk and speaking into the mic that projected his words throughout the building.
“Narcissists are interesting creatures,” he said, regaling the whole building. “Even self-aware ones don’t really care what label you give them because they don’t care about your world. Or your labels. It’s their world. You just live in it. If they think the world revolves around them, that’s because it does. It’s the nature of the affliction. I believe myself to be godlike, so therefore I am godlike. The difference between me and the kind of narcissist who denies he has any sort of mental condition is that I don’t believe in my greatness just yet. I believe I will be great once I’ve proven myself.
“Even Mongolia’s favorite son, Genghis Khan, knew he could not simply demand people worship him. He had to do more than rampage and pillage and threaten. He absorbed the tribes he conquered, inspired them to follow him, not out of fear but out of a promise of a better future. And he gave them that.
“And look at Alexander, literally, the Great. He only lived to thirty-two, but he dominated half the known world. Again, he did not achieve that through force alone. He provided for the people whose lands he took. Better than his predecessors.
“And then we have the first priest. A man who assimilated, who provided for those he ruled over. Gave counsel, gave hope. But who was he? Have you even got that far yet?”
“Saint Thomas,” came the reply from the radio on Horse’s belt, the American who liked rooftops and knew how to move. “He learned what we wanna learn and scattered the knowledge. Hoping his pals from the Jesus fan club would find their way back. But it ain’t them.”
An intruder drew all guns toward the center of the entrance hall. The young black man strode in, hands out to the side.
“The Saint Thomas Christians from Kerala,” the intruder said. “They see him as the first priest, and you’re lookin’ for his tomb.”
Although Toby didn’t have time to map it out in full, Jules appeared to take little convincing to go along with them. For once. But, then, Jules’s cooperation lasted for approximately a minute and a half.
Jules said Valerio was starting to sound manic, like he was building to something. It was the same as a guy he once encountered in Puerto Rico, a drug runner who’d turned his hand to acting as a middleman for the blood diamond industry. That guy, Jules told them, was on meth a lot of the time, and although he’d not witnessed Valerio snorting or injecting, he was definitely on a number of drugs. Prescription, maybe, but they could have side effects that exacerbated certain triggers.
Like killing innocents.
As soon as Jules took off against their wishes, Toby contacted Charlie again, who wanted to alert the authorities. But with Amir dead, Toby might well be implicated in the proceedings. More important, they would lose both bangles. And possibly Jules too.
“Dan, Harpal, go,” Toby said, meaning the window Jules had opened. “Be subtle, though. We can still save the artifacts too.”
“What about us?” Bridget asked.
“We may be needed here. But we won’t be out in the open long.”
“Jules,” Valerio said after the guy answered the question of his name. “Right, right, I have heard that name here and there. You were in jolly old England recently. Trying to grab my manuscript. And you were in Rome, of course. Do you even know what you’re chasing?”
“Some piece a’ jewelry.” It was the usual line when someone asked about his motives. “I got a guy wants to pay for it.”
“Money, hmm?” The yellow businessman-come-gangster-come-terrorist paced, tapping his chin with undisguised amusement. “So you’re all about the money?”
“It’s how I make a living.
“So... if I were to offer you a million bucks right now, you’d hand over the bangle Mr. Fong gave his life for and go away?”
“Got it on you?” Jules asked.
“Yes. Well, it’s in a helicopter not far from here. Do we have a deal?”
“You’ve interpreted the whole manuscript.” Jules observed the two guns pointed at him and Horse holding his weapon low, working out the speed it would take to reach Valerio and whether it would be out of the question to simply leave via the front door. “You know the location of the tomb. The priest’s resting place.”
Valerio’s eyes narrowed, his amusement now mingling with suspicion. “And... ?”
“And there’s more there. More than just a random tomb. There’s information. Power. Something more than what we’ve been lookin’ at.”
“What, though?”
“Christians believed that parts of saints’ bodies had power. That’s why they got bits of ’em in their altars and churches. You think Thomas’s body is in that tomb, not the cathedral in India, and it can cure...” Jules waved his hand up and down, indicating Valerio’s form. “You think it’ll cure whatever the hell is wrong with you. You really believe the Aradia bangle and the Ruby Rock bangle do some hokey supernatural whizz-bang-bang, and boom—you’re all pasty pink again.”
Valerio grinned widely and gave a little hop. “Ooh, I spy with my little eye the newest member of my team! You worked all that out from the information at hand? Gosh, that’s clever. Yes, yes, we always knew the approximate location, and now it’s much more specific. Used to be thousands of square miles, which we can’t even cover with LiDAR, but now we’ve whittled it down to hundreds of square miles. And you know what? I could do with a hand over that final hurdle. Someone with a brain as fast as yours. I’ll share the credit as well as the money. Not quite fifty-fifty, you understand. I do have overhead. Come on board, my boy, and—”
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“Boy?” Jules said.
“I mean that in the generic sense.” Valerio’s wide mouth, his “smile,” Jules supposed he called it, wavered. Then died. “I’m sorry, did ‘boy’ sound racist? Maybe it did. Like one of those southern cops on TV.” He pressed his hands together. “Sincerely, Jules, I apologize. I was referring to your youth, not your race. Please forgive me.”
“You for real, dude?”
“Yes. And note it was a proper apology. Not one of those fake ‘sorry for any offense you took’ apologies. I should have chosen my words more carefully, and I see they caused you some hurt. I would hate for you to think I was one of those racists who falsely believe words have no power. Now...” He ran his hands over his lustrous hair, pinning it to his scalp before letting it go so it sprang back into position. “Hand over the bangle, or I’ll kill everyone in this building. Including you.”
It wasn’t the greatest hiding place, but Bridget was thankful she could stop pretending to be brave. A broom closet sounded like somewhere one of those cannon fodder teens in a slasher movie would meet their end, but she could not risk exploring too far. Dan insisted that Valerio would have dispatched people to look for them, so when he and Harpal escaped using Jules’s plan, Toby found this hidey-hole. It might have only delayed their discovery, but if Charlie’s intention to turn the cops from their current distraction worked, they would need spotters. Dan and Harpal could provide that. They just needed to retrieve a couple of items first.
They’d now also reestablished full comms with Charlie. According to her explanation, she identified which frequencies were inaccessible and circumvented the wave, returning them to full capacity.
Whatever all that meant.
“Ten minutes at least,” came Harpal’s voice.
“Yeah,” Dan added. “They got beat cops all over the place. They know something’s wrong at the museum, but the commanders seem to be holding ’em back.”
“No way to tell if it’s intentional, though.”
