The Complete Donavan Adventure Series

by Tom Haase

  “Our Emperor, Leopold I, wishes to welcome you in triumph tomorrow,” exclaimed the head of the delegation. “He requests that you follow our defense force commander in a tribute parade.”

  “The devil take you, I say. You and your commander can…” He paused to regain control of a temper about to explode. Unclenching his fist, he lifted his hand to stroke his salt and pepper beard before massaging his sore neck. He wanted to strangle these ungrateful bastards. They planned to put him behind the do-nothing defender of the city when he and his cavalry were the ones who charged into the mightiest army ever to assault Europe. The invading Muslim forces would, without doubt, have destroyed Vienna had his ferocious and bold attack into their ranks not routed them.

  “Your commander and defense forces shall follow me and my men!” King John declared.

  “But sire,” the alderman sputtered. “He is our military leader.”

  “And I am the victor, not he. I led my army of 70,000 men against twice as many Muslims and defeated them. I will lead my victorious troops through the streets of Vienna at ten in the morning. I expect every citizen to be out to welcome them. Good night, gentlemen.” He turned and strode into his private quarter of the massive tent.

  After a few minutes, he heard Cheslaw outside. “Your majesty?”

  “Enter,” he commanded.

  “Sire, we have secured the wagons the infidels abandoned in their flight and I placed them under guard.” Cheslaw, the captain of the cavalry, remained at attention after speaking. His face splotched with blood and his chest armor displayed dents from blows suffered that day.

  “At ease. Tell me, what is in the wagons?” King John asked.

  “There are eight holding gold and silver coins. I believe they used these treasures to buy items they could not steal on the march.”

  Delighted to learn about the gold, King John smiled, and then sat down on a wooden chair covered by a sheepskin. The money would provide a way for him to pay his men. Perhaps he could even undertake improvements he longed to carry out in Warsaw. “Anything else?”

  Cheslaw nodded. Relaxing his rigid stance, he said, “A wagon full of manuscripts. I cannot read all the texts. There is Arab scribbling on most of them, but some appear to be Latin or Greek. One of our priests examined them and speculated the documents may be booty from the fall of Constantinople.”

  “Well done. Keep the guards on the wagons and have them start for home at first light. Prepare the rest of the troops for a parade through the city at ten and then we will continue toward home. We have been away long enough.”

  “I will attend to it.” Cheslaw made a slight bow of his head and started to turn.

  King John stopped him. “Wait. I wish to keep what we need to pay the troops tomorrow. Transport the rest to Warsaw. Put the remaining gold in my personal wagons and give the manuscripts to some scholar or monk to untangle. I cannot procure money for paper manuscripts. To me, they are worthless except to start hearth fires.”

  He noticed Cheslaw smile as he turned to depart.

  1

  Present Day

  Ethiopian Desert, The Temple of Isis – A Greek Archeological Site

  With her small brush, Bridget Donavan swept the sand away from a line of the ancient Greek text engraved in the stone before her with strokes not unlike those of an artist. Every day for the last two months had been the same, clear and stifling hot. The tablet rose eight feet above the sand and rock surface of the desert floor. The artifact hadn’t always been so exposed. Many weeks of careful excavation led to this point.

  Bridget kneelt and then squinted her eyes, straining to read the weather worn text near the base. Taking a small notebook from her back pocket, she then copied the recent uncovered Greek writing. At the end of the day, she would transfer it to her computer as she did every day as part of her university project.

  Something made her pause while reading the text on the stone. A prickling climbed the back of her neck. Something was wrong. Bridget realized it was the lack of noise. No clanging of picks off stone, no helping voices. She could hear no sound, something she was not accustomed to from the helpers on the site. The silence disturbed her.

  Sweat trickled down her face and fell between her ample breasts. Her sweat drenched shirt clung to her back. Salty water streamed off her forehead stinging her eyes. Her trained combat senses now screamed an unmistakable warning.

  Before she could react to her instincts, her satellite phone rang, startling her. This phone was her singular way to communicate with the outside world and it to her. She stood up as she rubbed the sweat from her eyes, and then grabbed the phone from her belt.

  Bridget walked toward her small equipment table and looked at the phone. The caller ID on the face of the phone read ‘Unknown’. Scanning the area, she looked for her helpers, but saw none.

  The phone rang again, nagging at her. She calculated that it must be evening back in the States and the project manager at the university was the only one who ever tried to reach her. She intended to start her vacation tomorrow. Maybe he wanted to wish her a safe return to the States.

  Bridget punched the talk button. Before she could get out a hello, the sound of her brother’s voice boomed from the other end, “Bridget, you’re not going to believe what I found!”

  She hadn’t heard from Scott since attending his doctorate graduation. She tried to avoid hearing from him. Not after what he’d done. Her presence at the graduation was for the family’s sake. Bridget didn’t even want to think about Scott. Someone in the family must’ve sent him her phone number in case of an emergency.

  “Hello to you too, Scott. Where the hell are you? And why are you calling me?” As she spoke the last word, she heard a shuffling noise behind her, the sound of someone running in the sand.

  Whirling toward the unexpected noise, she confronted an African man holding a machete. He stopped his running, seeming surprised she’d heard him.

  “Bridget.” Scott’s voice called her name over the phone.

  “I’m busy now, Scott. Gotta go,” she shouted as she disconnected and then dropped the phone on a small oblong table holding her archeological hammers and brushes. The large African man now charged toward her, swinging the weapon, slashing the air, eyes wide open, whites showing. He screamed a loud belly-wrenching cry that made no sense to Bridget.

  Her heart pounded as the man closed the distance. She froze for a millisecond, sensing her death could be just seconds away. Move, she commanded herself, you’ve been in combat before, now move!

  As the man rushed headlong at her, time seemed to slow and Bridget noticed every tiny detail. She saw that her attacker stood about her height but where her frame was slender his maybe a hundred pounds over her weight. She could smell the stench of sweat and alcohol like a bow wave before him. Tattered remains of a military camouflage uniform barely covered the lower half of his body.

  Come on, stupid. Move! The words screamed in her brain again.

  Her initial shock melted. Just as the attacker reached her, she managed to sidestep his lunge in a rapid, yet fluid, movement. At the last possible second, she reached out and grabbed the man’s extended arm. With all her strength she twisted it, thereby maximizing the use of his forward momentum. He howled in pain. The weapon dropped. She used her instincts and stuck out her foot to trip him while using her left hand to force him to pitch forward, bellowing as he did.

  She breathed a sigh of relief now that her hand-to-hand combat training she’d learned in the Army kicked in. She now operated on automatic just as she did in the Iraqi desert during the war.

  Did the African have a gun? She scanned him. No, none visible.

  She scooped up the weapon, turned, and in one swift movement faced the machete-man, swinging the blade at her attacker. As he tried to regain his feet, she struck. The steel sliced a path across his stomach. His earsplitting scream of pain reached her as she again searched for a gun. None. He curled up, holding his stomach, a river of his blood flowing ou
t.

  Bridget needed to take this opportunity to flee. The grueling heat and her sweat didn’t enter her mind in the excitement of the fight. Her instincts told her to get away. Run. She understood one thing for sure, getting out of here would be the best part of valor. She clenched the machete tight, noticing the bright red blood on the shining blade. It didn’t bother her as much as the fear that the next blood let in this desert might be hers. Her anger boiled against her attacker. She was certain that he would’ve raped her if given a chance. But before she took more than a few steps, a second man appeared, taller, healthier and white.

  God, what now? A white man. He must have spent time taken care of her workers or he would have attacked her with machete man.

  This man held a knife. Shit, I hate knives, she thought.

  The knifeman grinned at her, teasing her with a long-bladed hunting instrument.

  She knew his type, him and his African buddy. They were rampant brigands, killers. These scoundrels were the worst dregs of devilish trash in this area of the world, outcasts from both ethnic groups. She knew they would kill anybody, especially Americans, to obtain a few dollars.

  The knifeman stopped a few paces in front of Bridget. She could see two parallel slash marks on his chest from at least one previous knife fight. He swished his blade back and forth in his hands. She backed into the small table next to her on which rested equipment for excavating the site.

  The attacker’s grin showed her his few brown-stained teeth. Her mind registered that he missed half of his left ear. He hopped a few steps to the right and then back. He seemed to delay his thrust as if waiting for machete-man to sneak up on her backside. He must not realize that she was the one who now held the machete behind her back, and his comrade not in any condition to help.

  The heat of pumping blood flooded her face, she could feel the rush and knew the complexion of her face would now match the fiery red color of her hair. Her eyes darted around.

  Where in hell are the men I pay to work on this dig?

  She realized she wouldn’t be getting any more help with this thug than she’d gotten with the first.

  “I’m going to have fun with you, big tits,” knifeman said.

  “I’m going to cut yours off, you bastard. Come at me if you dare. I’m ready,” she shouted as her anger reached a pitch and rage took over. She swore no man would do anything to her again without her consent.

  But rage wouldn’t help her fight. Bridget knew she must clear her mind. She took a long slow breath, remembering again her army training. This was going to be the real test of her martial art skills. Just focus on one thing—killing him. Kill him fast and don’t hesitate.

  With his right arm raised, slashing the blade through the air, the knifeman started forward taking his time, as he emitted a loud guttural sound.

  The sun gleamed off the blade and reflected into her eyes. Blinded for a second, she felt a visceral, gut-wrenching fear of impalement. Don’t think of what they might have done to the helpers. Don’t remember the unfulfilled plan to get a gun while out here in the desert alone. Concentrate on killing this thug before he gets me first.

  The knifeman started to lung. Just then her cell phone rang. His eyes slid over toward it, distracting him for the microsecond Bridget needed. She bent low. With his attention on the phone, she sprang forward with the point of her machete slicing into his chest. Thrusting upward with a twisting motion and then jerking the blade out, she used her momentum to spin toward a new sound behind her back. The machete-man she thought she’d dealt with rose and held a hand to his stomach wound. Would he try to attack again?

  Bridget wasn’t taking any chances. She stalked toward him with her weapon held high. She’d finish both these bastards.

  At the sight of her, the man turned and, with something between a stumble and a run as he held his hands over the deep wound to his stomach, he disappeared over a sand dune. She let him go.

  Stopping to recover her breath, Bridget let the sun beat down on her. The intensity of its rays pounded without mercy in the afternoon Ethiopian desert, but in that moment it emphasized her feeling of aliveness. Thank God for her military training. Her life hadn’t flashed in front of her during the moments she thought they might impale her, so maybe it wasn’t her time. Thoughts like that were helpful after the fact, but didn’t do her any favors during the fracas.

  God, she had killed this man. Bridget stared down at the bloody corpse and tried to regain some composure. It didn’t feel like the killing she experienced in combat, in the heat of a firefight. Her hands started to shake and she felt nauseated. Her stomach gurgled and she swallowed hard to keep whatever remained of her breakfast down.

  The cell phone rang again. She bent down, recovered it, and then pushed the talk button as she sat down on a nearby rock.

  “Come on, sis. What’s happening?” Scott demanded.

  Bridget scanned the area for other attackers in the vicinity. Holding the phone, she walked toward the main camp. In the distance, she noticed her hired hands flat against a sand dune. The outlaw renegades must have gagged and tied them up. Without doubt they had forced them down to ensure no noise of alarm came from them until after they attacked her. She remained behind at the site to close up for this season after her fellow American coworkers departed for the States. The attackers knew the remaining local assistants would own no valuables.

  “Bridget. Answer me.”

  “Sorry, Scott, uh…a few things I had to deal with here. Why are you calling?” she asked between large gulps of air.

  Bridget didn’t want to scare her younger brother with the details of the attacker’s demise. She might still be angry with him, but her brother, the academic, would freak out at any hint of violence.

  “Where are you?” he shouted.

  “Not so loud. I can hear you, dammit,” she said. “I’m on a dig in Ethiopia, deciphering some old Greek inscriptions on a temple to Isis near Gortas. What about you?” Her eyes wandered to the six beautiful columns with quadrangular capitals supported by the head of Isis, as a Denderah, visible from where she stood. No need to mention them. He wouldn’t have a clue what she meant.

  “I’m in Warsaw,” he replied. “Listen, I’ve found some old — I’m not able to decide any specific dating, but ancient— and maybe original—manuscripts in Greek and Latin. The curator, Mr. Wozniak, doesn’t even know about these texts. He thinks they’re all written in Arabic. Could be King John brought them back to Warsaw after the Battle of Vienna.”

  Bridget remained silent as she thought about the implications of Scott’s words.

  “Do you hear me?” he demanded in an impatient tone.

  “Yes,” she said. “But I’m having a disbelief moment. My skepticism meter is on red. Go on,” she ordered, glancing in the direction the attacker fled to make sure he didn’t return. The blood trail clear and the man must be losing a lot of it. Nevertheless, she kept the machete at hand.

  “Someone buried these documents in the bowels of Warsaw’s national museum and the curator, an old friend of my college mentor, asked me to take a look at them. The Arabic writing alone is from the seventh to the ninth century. I’m still working on dating the Greek and Latin. But it’s earlier.”

  “My God, Scott, you’re not for real?” Bridget’s voice conveyed her misgivings. Could her younger brother find something so significant in his first summer after graduation? Even if he could, and she doubted it, she didn’t believe it would make any difference to his career. She again scanned in the direction the attacker fled, but saw nothing.

  She also used the moment to realize that from her own experiences, she knew that the old boys of the academic world would endeavor to cut Scott out of any credit for any discovery he might make.

  “I’m calling you,” Scott continued, “because I also found two pages of Latin text that begins, Ego Petrus, Apostolus Jesu Christi (I am Peter, Apostle of Jesus Christ). Do you realize what that could mean, sis? This text could reveal whether Pet
er admitted Jesus married the Magdalene, that he faked the resurrection, or he had a son. I know that sounds crazy, but others have postulated such things. This document might confirm or forever silence the speculation. How about that?”

  Bridget rolled her eyes upward, trying to think of a way to counter Scott’s claim. She didn’t believe what he said and he hadn’t convinced her of anything. He needed to be much more careful of such wild academic claims. They could ruin him or get him killed by some religious fanatic. She waited for him to continue.

  “I’m more intrigued by the Arabic texts,” Scott said. “Something like those could potential cause a significant change in one of the world’s major religions — even start a war in Islam. Christianity might get a jolt from something Peter wrote if any of this can be authenticated.”

  “Don’t get carried away,” Bridget said.

  “Tone down your disbelief. Believe me, it’s for real,” Scott continued. “The curator doesn’t know what I’ve found. This is my doctorate field. I know what I’m talking about and I need your help.”

  She ignored his request and moved over to her truck where her assistants lay tied up on the ground. They had surrendered as soon as they saw the renegades, fearing for their lives.

  “I don’t see how this is possible. Not at all.” She held the phone in her left hand and sliced the binds holding her helpers. She then stuck the blood soaked blade in the ground. “Besides, why should I help you? I don’t even like you anymore.”

  Once she set free all the helpers, she signaled to them to get the truck ready to leave as she continued her conversation.

  “Come on, sis, give me a break. Please forget what happened. Would you quit bringing that up? It’s old news and never was all that big of a deal. But this— this is important.” He paused to let his plea sink in. “Listen, the real mystery is the Greek texts. These are, by my best guess, hundreds of years old. They may be copies of some more ancient text.”