by A D Davies
Bridget adjusted her position, already cramping up in the dark. “Why would it be intentional?”
“Bribery, maybe?” Toby suggested.
“Like I said,” Charlie replied. “Can’t tell. Wait...” The comms went silent for five seconds. “Something’s wrong here. That can’t be right.”
“What is it?” Toby asked in a whisper.
Then a more familiar voice arrived on the comms. Jules. Using the phone Toby slipped him upon his exit.
“It’s impossible,” Jules said.
Valerio was actually carrying the Aradia bangle. The one stolen from Jules’s mom. From her corpse. Taken by a clueless armed robber and pawned for five bucks before an antiques speculator picked it up for twenty whole dollars. For nine months, that was the only clue the cops revealed to Jules, and eventually admitted they’d never followed it up. The people who committed the murder were behind bars, and the city could no longer spare the resources to track property like that. For now, while not officially dead, the case was definitely—sorry, kid—comatose.
Even though it was just a rock, an ugly piece of jewelry that his mom refused to let him even touch while she was alive, he could not allow its theft to go unanswered. The prospect of strangers handling it festered deep inside him, a pain that boiled and swirled, and the only way he could drop off to sleep was to study the next step in recovering it, be that a new physical skill or an analytical assessment of his next target.
He had assumed whoever ended up with the bangle would protect it as if caring for an infant, but now Valerio held it before him. It had been on the airplane he was hiding in. A safe in the bedroom? Jules didn’t even entertain the notion. Now he realized Valerio wanted it nearby so he could move quickly as soon as he reunited it with the Mary bangle. The Ruby Rock bangle on Jules’s wrist.
I could’ve just taken it.
“This is the Ruby Rock bangle’s twin,” Valerio announced. “Not quite identical but still special.”
The mercenaries had spread out, two missing and two sighting down on Jules so they had him in an angled crossfire. He’d have to be fast to clear himself from their range. There was also the small matter of Horse, his gun ready by his side.
“No such thing as special,” Jules said. “Unusual, sure.”
“If it’s not special, why do you want it so badly? And don’t give me that line about a cash reward. It has no monetary value. And I saw it glow.”
Jules found no reason to lie. Not now. Either Toby’s plan would work, or it wouldn’t. “It was my mom’s. I just want it back.”
“Oh, come on! That’s worse than the lie about the reward. Fine, you don’t want to share, maybe you can tell me why they aren’t twins.”
“The red one’s slightly smaller.” Jules stepped forward again, tracked by the guns. The hostages all eyed him, hope spilling from each of them. Jules didn’t want to disappoint. He needed to stall. “Why don’t you just kill me? You could take it.”
“Because I like you. I mean, don’t get me wrong, I totally planned to do that, but our nice conversation gives me hope you might be smart. Almost as smart as me.”
“So what makes them special?”
“Thought you didn’t believe in special?”
No cops, no signal from Dan or Harpal.
“He’s stalling, boss,” Horse said.
“Is that right?” Valerio asked. “Are you stalling?”
Horse turned away, a hand to one ear. “Yeah. We need to be out of here in three minutes.”
“In that case, this is your final chance... young man. Come with us, be a part of this. Or die. Right now.”
“I ain’t joining you,” Jules said.
“Horse, kill him.”
Horse raised his gun, but Jules said, “Wait.”
Valerio waved a hand to stop Horse’s shot. “Why wait? Why should I?”
Jules’s shoulders sagged involuntarily. He pulled up his sleeve with one hand, met Valerio’s gaze, and pressed his finger to the stone bangle. The red flecks sparkled, dull in the bright daylight streaming through the roof.
Valerio opened his arms. “Oh yes! Yes, yes, yes! Jules, my friend, now there’s no doubt at all. I guessed there were more like you out there, but I didn’t think you’d just walk into my arms.”
Jules wasn’t too shocked, but he was suddenly aware that this had been a mistake.
“You are a part of this whether you want to be or not.” Valerio clicked his fingers, and the two mercs advanced, one holding a set of cuffs.
“Look.” Valerio presented the Aradia bangle less than five feet from Jules, end on so he looked down it like a telescope. “The angle of this cut, where it almost meets.” The ends of the C shape were angled in at forty-five degrees. “But look at yours.”
Jules turned his wrist to his face. The smaller piece on his arm was cut at the exact same angle, but mirroring the Aradia bangle. A tiny groove now showed too.
“That’s right,” Valerio said. “Imagine. Bringing these two items together. How do you think this might work?”
The two men who had approached awaited the final word from their boss.
Unable to move too quickly, Jules faked an emotion—confusion leading to devastation—and placed both hands to his ears, activating the earpiece to dial in Toby and the others. He hadn’t wanted them to listen in before.
“It’s okay.” Valerio sounded strangely kind. “Hand over the bangle, come with me, and we can solve this problem together.”
“It’s impossible,” Jules said.
“No. We will work together. You bring your special touch. I’ll provide the muscle. The money. The resources.”
“I had an offer like that before.”
“And you wisely turned it down, Jules. But you see it, don’t you? You see the connection?” His eyes were wide. That maniacal tone rising. “They are twins. Complimentary, but not identical.”
Jules looked again at the Aradia bangle, his mom’s jewelry, now literally within reach. He felt the Ruby Rock bangle on his arm. He’d worn them both and should have realized as soon as he slipped this one on. It was so obvious now.
He blamed the jet lag for his sluggish realization.
“The bangles aren’t jewelry at all,” Jules said. “They’re magnetic. They slot together. Like the symbol for infinity.” He swallowed, waiting to say it clearly, as much to counter his own disbelief as for Toby and Bridget to hear. “They’re not jewelry... they’re a key.”
Chapter Twenty-Three
As much as Toby valued Charlie, he worried sometimes at how cold she could be. She called it calmness, but Toby saw more similarities between Charlie and Jules than she would ever admit. As soon as Jules revealed that the two bangles formed a kind of key, Charlie told Dan and Harpal to hold off on the rescue.
“Why?” Toby asked. “Now is perfect. The police can surround this place and—”
“Your pal screwed us,” Charlie said.
“What do you mean?” Toby’s voice carried loudly in the closet, drawing a “shhh” from Bridget. He regulated his volume and said, “In what way has he ‘screwed us’?”
Before Charlie could answer, the door opened, and light flooded Toby’s eyes. His automatic reaction was to shield them with an arm. When he lowered it, two gunmen aimed MP7s at him and Bridget.
“Oh dear,” he said.
“They are the key to so much more than a door,” Valerio said. His fingers trembled, feet tapped. He hadn’t blinked for two minutes. “A key to the tomb of the first priest. And more importantly, the priest’s gospel. Secrets to awarding the finder untold power. The knowledge of the world.”
“Even if that’s true about the key,” Jules said, his arms still free, the cuffs on standby, “the gospel’s just another book. Intended for the other apostles to find. Not you, not me. Just other writers from the Bronze Age.”
“Jules, do you see what happens when you touch these trinkets? Magic exists in this world. Let me show you. Let me teach you. I’ll p
rove it, Jules. I promise.”
For the first time since holding a knife to the throat of the first antique dealer to whom he tracked that bangle in New York City, Jules wondered exactly why his mom had protected that thing so passionately. He’d long assumed it was sentiment. He even acknowledged a blind transference to him of its heritage, an acceptance of its importance to them as a family—a family that no longer existed.
Sentiment.
That was one thing he’d purged from his soul in his pursuit of it. He didn’t need sentiment fogging his thoughts. It had killed his parents after all.
Only now, if Valerio’s story were true, sentiment had nothing to do with their deaths.
Did she know? Did they both? Were they somehow protecting more than just a memory? More than a five-thousand-year-old artifact…? Or even thirty thousand if Amir Fong examined it accurately.
“All I want is my mom’s bangle,” Jules said.
Valerio laughed. A head-back belly-out laugh. A laugh that required him to breathe quickly, to take time to calm himself. When he did, he shook his head. “Either you are dumber than I thought, sticking to your story like that, or—if what you’re telling me is true—then you have a worse mental condition than my narcissism. You’re an obsessive. And I know from experience where all-consuming obsession can lead. You’ll never stop. Never give in. It’ll kill you, or you’ll win. Either way, whatever happens to you, I lose.” Now fully calm, he straightened his suit jacket and pulled his shoulders back. “Here’s my offer: come with me. Solve the mystery of the first priest. Let me meet him. Explore him. Figure him out. You do this one thing with me, and your obsession will be at an end. As soon as we open that door, when the first priest is before me... the Aradia bangle is yours.”
Jules could not envisage a scenario where Valerio would honor that. And they were down to one minute.
“The hostages,” Jules said. “Send ’em out, and you got a deal.”
A pause, then Valerio flicked his hand and said, “Do we need them?”
Horse shook his head. “Too late. Ruse is up. We’ve stuck around too long. They’ll know this isn’t a terrorist attack.”
“Then do as he says.”
“Boss?”
“He’ll comply. All he wants is this.” Valerio waved the Aradia bangle again.
Horse ordered the surviving staff and visitors to make their way to the rear instead of the front, where a fire exit would grant them freedom. “Keeps our own escape route free,” he explained.
Valerio extended one hand. “The Ruby Rock bangle. Pretty please.”
The two mercs aimed their guns.
Horse supervised the hostage evac.
Jules could surprise them:
Duck and spring forward at the same time.
Take Valerio hostage using the knife.
Move outside.
Relieve him of the Aradia bangle.
Disappear.
That would work. He was fast enough.
Why was he hesitating?
Before he could answer his own question, the other two gunmen returned to the scene, only now they were not alone. Hustled before them, Bridget and Toby emerged, hands on heads, providing Valerio with more leverage.
His last chance to get away clean was finished.
Greenwich, London, UK
Something was very wrong, and it wasn’t just that Toby and Bridget had been discovered. Charlie could no longer “see” the Mongolian cops that had been holding back from the museum since the first emergency calls came in, and that flash, that person she thought she caught a digital glimpse of... she couldn’t find him again. Ulaanbaatar wasn’t like London or New York or Paris; CCTV was rare, and CCTV connected to the internet was virtually nonexistent. With the bulk of Ulaanbaatar’s National Police Agency personnel five miles away, hurtling back toward the city, there was no way the cavalry would make it in time. They were relying on locals, but the man she spotted, or thought she did, was not a local.
And the scant police presence here had started acting strangely. As if their early tactic to observe and contain had been overridden.
Dan agreed. He saw it too, now that he was outside.
So, although there was no need for Charlie to vocalize it, she did anyway. “Sorry, boys. This is a scorched-earth evac.”
“Damn it,” Harpal said. “I hate scorched-earth evacs.”
“Me too,” Dan answered. “But there isn’t much choice right now.”
With her chest hammering and fingers riding hard on the keyboard and mouse, Charlie used the infinitesimal number of web-enabled cameras around the city to guide Dan and Harpal to where they needed to be. A lot of it was guesswork.
Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia
Jules regarded Toby and Bridget as they shuffled in behind Valerio, unable to refrain from glowering at their stupidity. “Should’ve gotten out while you could.”
“We couldn’t leave you,” Bridget said. “We thought it was under control.”
A shadow flickered outside the main doors, too far away to be a threat, but it was the first time Jules picked up on it. Too big to be a bird. Too small for an aircraft or ground vehicle. Dan wasn’t about to burst in at the helm of a tank.
“I don’t even care about this thing.” Jules slipped his hand out of the Ruby Rock bangle, which was tighter than his mom’s. It lit up for a moment, but he spread his fingers inside to keep it from dropping. The lights went out. “I only want my own back. I even risked losing it all so I could get those other people outa here, but you gotta come back in and mess everything up.”
More movement. Something outside was shifting. Overhead, too, a pressure change rippled on Jules’s skin.
Horse noted it too. “Boss. We’re out of time. Do it now.”
“Jules?” Valerio still had his hand out.
Jules cast another glance to Bridget and Toby. “It would’ve worked too. If you’d just stayed out of things. Left me to do what I had to.” He placed the bangle in Valerio’s palm.
The man’s bloodless yellow face darkened slightly, a reddish tinge to his cheeks as the smile spread to the corners of his eyes.
“Boss.” Horse rushed past, grabbing Valerio by the arm, and the two mercs retreated toward the entrance hall. “Execute ’em?”
“They live,” Valerio said. “As long as Jules comes with us.”
“You heard the man. Come this way, or everyone dies.” Horse pointed his gun at Jules. “Five seconds, retard.”
“Thanks,” Jules said. “But I only need three.”
A metallic canister sailed in through the front doors and clattered to the floor, immediately joined by two more.
Horse cried, “Flashbangs!”
The mercs ran, Horse shielding his boss.
Jules dived for Bridget and Toby. He landed over their faces just as the canisters flared impossibly bright and pulsed explosions that clanged inside his head. Even though he was prepared for it, had even subjected himself to the effects in an attempt to desensitize himself, he was still left dizzy, his vision fogged and blurry. He rolled off the pair, all three groaning.
Boots stomped.
Foreign voices yelled.
He made out SWAT-style paramilitary figures, cops maybe, breaching and spreading out.
“I could have done it,” Jules said, suppressing the tears that were trying to break through thanks to the flashbang. “I arranged it all. I could have done it. You just had to get out of my way!”
“Arranged what?” Toby asked, struggling to sit upright and check on Bridget at the same time.
She was blinking rapidly, trying to prop herself up. “What’s happening, Jules? What did you do?”
“What I had to,” Jules said. “My backup plan.”
Through the smoke, beyond the law enforcement figures stalking in, a tall, skinny man followed. Almost casually. Although he wore a flak jacket over it, his suit was plainly expensive, as was the watch peeking out from the cuff of his right hand. As he neared, his sallow face a
nd birdlike nose grew clear.
Colin Waterston had arrived. “Thank you so much for the tip-off, Mr. Sibeko. We never would have thought to look here.”
Chapter Twenty-Four
Even without the stinging brought on by the smoke grenades, Jules couldn’t have met Toby’s stare. Or Bridget’s.
Three medics checked them over, perched under the life-size Genghis model, where they rinsed the westerners’ eyes with saline and checked for concussions. They didn’t seem to speak English. The cops were a mix of the locals Charlie spotted and Interpol agents who had permission from the Mongolian government to execute an operation in conjunction with minimal backup. Unfortunately, Colin hadn’t known the target until Jules got in touch. They were expecting a remote location, not slap-bang in the middle of the capital.
“I followed your progress after Mr. Sibeko messaged me from Rome,” Colin explained, arms folded, head held high. His manner retained that rich-asshole poise of literally looking down his nose as he spoke. “We tracked Valerio’s plane too, and Interpol got us ready. I just needed to have faith that your high-functioning savant would come good. And he did.”
“I called ’em after I left you to bring the bracelet here,” Jules confessed.
Toby blinked the solution from his eyes. “How could you?”
“Your way wasn’t working. Just cause you accept mission creep, it don’t mean I have to.”
“Mission creep?” Bridget said.
“I came to Prague to find my mom’s bracelet. Then we’re in Windsor, then a gunfight in Rome. Now Mongolia. A manuscript, a second bangle. Only they’re not jewelry, they’re a key, and suddenly I’m needed to help some psycho find a tomb. Mission creep.”
“Key?” Colin said. “Tomb?
“Quiet,” Toby hissed.
“Come, my boy.” Colin attempted a smile, but it came out as a grimace. “We simply must chat more.”
“Boy?” Jules said.
