by K. T. Tomb
Chyna looked directly at Thorin and tapped her ear once. A few seconds later, he walked past and placed an earpiece in her open palm.
“The others too,” she said softly.
She watched until he was back in position then glanced quickly around the room to assess the situation. Everyone was scanning the room trying to make out what was going on.
Chyna pushed the button on the ear piece once and whispered, “Blonde-haired man in the tux to my four o’clock, both waiters at the buffet line, possible others not yet identified.” She paused and looked around the room again. Her team looked informed and ready; the men didn’t look as if they noticed anything was going on.
“Call your team and tell them to open the doors now,” she said to Fatma.
“Marsha, Lawrence, can you hear me?” Chyna said.
“We read you loud and clear, Chyna,” Lawrence replied.
“We have a potential terrorist situation here. They might be planning to bomb the place or open fire on the people in this room. None of us can say the crowd in here wouldn’t be a prime target. We’re going to have Fatma’s people neutralize the room with an early start on the firework show outside while we apprehend the suspects. Hopefully, they’ll be so surprised by the sudden movement they won’t have a chance to initiate their plan.”
“Affirmative,” he said.
“Thorin and Demetri, you take down the wait staff. Lawrence and Marsha deal with ‘Mr. Suit’ over there. Lana and Oscar help move the people as quickly to the open doors as you can. I’ll make the announcement for the fireworks.”
“Okay,” everyone responded.
“Alright, Fatma will cue the firework display and we move on the first explosion.”
Fatma raised her radio and said, “Cue the fireworks!”
They watched the first rocket launch and climb into the sky. As soon as it exploded, they all sprang into action. Chyna jumped onto the podium and turned the microphone on.
“Everyone please make your way outside through the exits to the right for the firework display,” she announced.
Immediately, people started to move towards the doors. The guards held them wide open and Lana and Oscar were very successful in ushering the people swiftly out onto the terrace and across the lawn. Simultaneously, Chyna saw the bodyguards seize the two nervous waiters. They bound their hands behind their backs quickly with tie straps and patted them down. They placed an AK-47 rifle each on the buffet table in front of them. Marsha and Lawrence were leading the blonde man towards the front of the room in handcuffs. As he was walking towards her Chyna suddenly remembered where she knew his face from.
“Lana, Oscar,” she called across the room, “I think these fine agents just caught our hacker!”
Chapter Nine
“Welcome to BBC World News service. It is six o’clock Greenwich Mean Time and we’ll start with the international headlines. Reports coming out of the Middle East today are that the growing threat of civil unrest and military action in the Old City of Homs in Syria has prompted the Embassy of the United States of America to issue several advisories this morning.
The embassy advises that all travel to Syria, Lebanon and the southeast region of Turkey should be avoided at this time. It also states that the process of shutting down embassy operations in Damascus is already underway and that any citizens who are currently in the region should make immediate arrangements to return home or declare their presence to the embassy in case emergency evacuations become necessary.
At the moment, N.A.T.O. peacekeeping troops are on the ground in Damascus and additional support from the U.S. Navy has been stationed in the area to assist should an evacuation of citizens become necessary. We’ll have more on the situation in Syria when we return from the break…”
“What are we going to do, Chyna?” Lana asked.
“We’re leaving,” she replied, “as soon as Anthony gets here to transport those guys to Istanbul. I would have preferred to interrogate them here since part of the crime was committed in Syria, but even the authorities agreed that if we can take care of it somewhere else, they were willing to mark it off as a crime committed in Sweden and therefore an international matter. So we move out as soon as he gets here and secures the suspects.”
“I’ll be glad to leave,” Oscar said. “I’ve never felt this nervous in a country before.”
Just then Lawrence stepped out of the butler’s quarters with his packed suitcase ready to go.
“We’re leaving for the embassy in an hour,” he announced. “Agent Stewart just called in his ETA at the U.S. Embassy, so let’s get ready to rumble.”
***
“Why did you let him go back there by himself, Greame?” Xavier asked.
“Marko said he had it under control. How could I know he’d be so sloppy?” Greame replied. “He said he was sending a hacker, and then I find out he went and did the job himself.”
‘That’s all well and good, Greame, but he went to the one place in all of Damascus that still takes an ID from people who want to surf the net? Really?”
Xavier sighed deeply into the telephone; Greame could just imagine the look on his face.
“We’ve got to keep things underground right now,” he continued. “There’s no telling what he’s going to tell them about us.”
“Marko ain’t no snitch; he won’t tell them anything.”
“Under any other circumstances, I’d agree with you. Police, local authorities; Marko can handle them but he’s being held by the F.B.I., Greame, and now with Homs going postal over there, he’s being moved to Turkey. I’m sure they’re going to put him in one of those black sites for questioning until he gives us up. You can bet money on that, Greame.”
“He’s a dead man if he does.”
“He’s a dead man either way.”
Things didn’t usually get this complicated with the deals they made, but Marko just seemed cursed recently. It had been a miracle that the Burmese deal had gone off without a hitch, especially with ruby smuggling becoming such a priority for local government. He was just fresh out of luck with that damn falcon. Greame didn’t feel sorry for him; he had told him not to steal from the burial site, a Viking one at that. There were some things that Greame just wouldn’t ever do. Now it seemed Marko was being haunted by the Phoenician Falcon.
***
“Sirita!” Lana called out, waving her hands in the air.
The slender, olive skinned woman struggling with the three large suitcases stumbled a little and waved back at her. She wore a green and gold flowing Bollywood skirt and a plain grey tank top with the matching green and gold veil pinned into the bun in her hair.
“That’s her?” Oscar asked, dumbstruck. “Hot damn! She’s cute!”
“Down boy, she’s your co-worker.”
“So?” he said, rushing forward to help Sirita with the heavy bags.
Oscar almost fell to the pavement when she pushed the silk veil, that had fallen over her face, aside and looked up at him with the clearest grey eyes he had ever seen.
“You must be Oscar,” she said straightening herself and extending her hand for him to shake. “We’ve never actually spoken but I’ve heard so much about you.”
Her Goan accent was so entrancing, he could barely think straight to shake her hand.
“Nice to meet ya’ Ma’am,” he stuttered finally.
Lana came swiftly to the rescue. She had never seen Oscar so completely ga-ga over a girl before.
“Hey, Siri. How was the flight?”
“It was smooth, I was so glad you could get a direct flight. Things aren’t very smooth on the Arabian Peninsula.”
“Yeah, I know what you mean but it wasn’t hard, the airlines don’t want to stop either.”
They laughed cheerfully at that and hugged.
“Oscar, why are you just standing there? It’s the bags I brought you to carry, if you hadn’t worked that out yet,” Lana teased. “Come on, boy.”
Oscar glowered at her for
a minute and then grabbed the bags and loaded them effortlessly into the Range Rover. Lana jumped into the driver’s seat while Oscar ran around to open Sirita’s door for her, then he got in the back seat.
“I hope you don’t find the SUV intimidating,” Lana said, making conversation.
“Not at all, I’m used to driving whatever I can get my hands on.”
“Good, because it’s what Chyna picked out for office use. You’ll have it most of the time.”
“That’s very cool. I’ve never had a car at my complete disposal before.”
“What do you want to do first Siri? Do you want to see the apartment and drop off the luggage, or do you want to go straight to the office? Chyna should be there by now with the decorator.”
“I’m dying to see her. Let’s go to the office.”
In the back seat, Oscar raised his eyes to the roof and thanked the gods. He would convince Lana to let him take Sirita home later and maybe have the chance to get to know her a little better.
***
Demetri was just about to lose his temper with Marko.
Thorin had already gone through the other two guys and gotten everything there was to be had out of them. They didn’t know anything about the stolen artifacts or who Marko actually worked for. They had been hired by him to shoot up the party at the Damascus Museum and were just excited to get a chance to possibly kill some rich, important foreigners. Mindless violence; they were just common thugs. Thorin had already released them back into the custody of the F.B.I. and they were holding one-way tickets directly back to Damascus and long prison sentences on terrorism charges.
It was Marko that had the real intelligence they were after; and the man would not talk.
“I’m out of ideas,” he finally confessed to Thorin.
“Let me try something,” he said, smiling mischievously.
Demetri went to a corner and lit a cigarette.
Thorin bent close to Marko and said to him, “If you don’t know anything, I guess I’ll just have to let you go and stop wasting everybody’s time, yes?”
“Yes, I don’t know anything, let me go.”
“Are you sure?”
“Yes, let me go. I’m sure.”
“Have you thought about what the others are going to do to you when they find you? I have and I think you’d be safer here with us.”
“What do you mean? They aren’t going to do anything to me, I didn’t tell you anything. I’m no snitch.”
“Says you!”
Suddenly he was silent. He knew that what Thorin said was true. Xavier, especially, wouldn’t be interested in anything he would have to say. He shook his head slowly from side to side and then suddenly he broke down crying.
“He’s ready!” Thorin announced.
Demetri was pissed off. He had been working that scumbag for hours and Thorin had stepped in and broken him down in fifteen minutes. He hauled Marko up from the chair and dragged him into the next room. Agent Stewart was sitting across the table from him and Demetri and Thorin stood to the side.
“So, you’re ready to talk?”
“Yes, I’m ready to talk.”
“Then go ahead: talk!”
Marko told Anthony the entire story and every little detail about the smuggling operation. They attached an operative to the key archaeological sites around the world to scout out what was being unearthed. Their main focus was jewelry, vessels and other artifacts made of precious metals. As long as those types of items were coming out of the ground then they stuck around and either they dug at night to recover items for themselves or the robbed the storage facility. With the falcon, Marko had gone ahead and dug for himself. When he had seen the size of the ship they had almost finished excavating, he realized that it must have been the burial mound of a raider or a chieftain, maybe both. And what he knew for sure was that in an instance like that, there would be pure Roman gold there and lots of it too. He was right, the first night he went out on his own to the site he found the falcon. Marko didn’t bother to stick around after that, he packed up and quit the camp. The falcon was clean because no one knew that it had ever been there so no one could say that it was missing. He smuggled it to Syria in some crates belonging to NATO peacekeepers that were headed for Homs. When it got to Homs, he was supposed to pass it off to a buyer but they never showed up at the meeting point. Marko got desperate because he didn’t want to be caught carrying a statue of solid gold around the place.
He knew of a restricted area in Hamah, just north of Homs, which had been slated for excavation for over ten years now and had never been touched. It was unguarded and undisturbed, perfect. He took the falcon there and buried it inside the perimeter fence. He thought that at least no one would go in there to disturb it but a week later, the excavation of the site began and Marko just couldn’t believe his bad luck. He tried to steal it back several times but, Epstein and his team were paranoid about violence in Homs so they always had excessive security protecting the site.
He’d cased out their warehouse in Damascus instead and moved on to a ruby deal in Burma. Even with the complicated nature of moving such precious contraband, that sale had been a walk in the park compared to the gold statue. By the time he had made it back from selling the gems to a dealer in Japan, Chyna Stone and her people were in charge of the warehouse, entering the information on the relics into a government database and setting up an exhibition at the Damascus Museum. As far as he knew, the statue was still there but they must have realized by then that it had absolutely nothing to do with the other things that were coming up out of the ground there. For the first time in his career, he couldn’t buy an inside informant or get himself inserted in the operations and Marko started to get worried. It was just a matter of time before Xavier and Greame started putting some pressure on him.
Sergio was his only hope. He had hired the hacker to steal any computer equipment that might have accompanied the Found History team, while he was busy in Burma. The plan had been for him to hack into their systems and find out exactly what they knew about it so far and possibly any information they had about its location. Stealing the case had been easy but hacking the equipment had been disastrous. When Sergio booted up the server brain, torrents of firewalls, security password and encryptions dead-bolted him multiple times and he was at a loss. Outside of getting the computer online to dial into the main servers, he had tried everything he knew how to do and he still couldn’t get past their military grade security and he gave up on the project. Marko had never heard of Sergio giving up on a hack before. The case was returned to the airport as if it had never been lifted in the first place; again that had been easy. But Sergio was careless; Marko would have followed the airline delivery personnel to get a fix on Chyna Stone’s location. By then, they knew even less than they had in the beginning. His hacker had let him down; he had to take care of that permanently.
When he got back to Damascus, Marko decided to break into the mainframe at Found History himself to try and regain some ground. That’s when he went and used the computer station at the internet café to get online access to their server. His presence had been detected almost immediately and the feed interrupted before he could copy all the data he wanted. They must have had some computer whiz hotshot keeping an eye out for possible breaches because once the data had started being replicated; he was onto Marko like a bullet.
So many missteps had been made along the way, laced with the worst luck he’d had in his entire career as a treasure thief. All of it had led to that very moment where he was handcuffed to a chair in a badly lit room, probably at an F.B.I. black site in Timbuktu. He was sure that no one knew where he was; hell, he didn’t know where he was. When they caught him at the museum he had been hooded before they took him out of there and put him in the vehicle. Marko had no idea how long they had traveled or in what direction. After a while, the agents in the vehicle with him had knocked him out with chloroform. When he woke up he was sitting on that very chair and had been for the
last three days.
As he listened to the F.B.I. agent who he now knew as Stewart, Marko realized that it was time to give up. If he stuck it out and didn’t tell them anything, several things could happen. They could simply make him disappear; people don’t like to think about it but it happens all the time, there wasn’t anyone taking roll call at Gitmo. They could decide to let him go but Marko was sure that would be worse. Xavier would probably have a sniper waiting to take him out at his mailbox the next day. The final option seemed to be the best to him, it made the most sense and it ended with him keeping his brains inside his skull.
“I’ll tell you everything you want to know, but you’ve got to do something for me,” he finally relented.
“What’s that, Marko?”
“I want to be incarcerated in Sweden.”
“Why’s that?” Anthony asked, curiously.
“They don’t put terrorists in front of a firing squad like I’ll probably get in Syria and as far as I know my people don’t have any connections inside the prison system there.”
“I see.”
“I’m just trying to stay alive at this point, Agent Stewart. I’m gonna die one day, I’d just rather that happens on my terms.”
“Understood,” Anthony replied, “I’m sure we can work that out, especially since the initial crime took place there. I want you to realize that I plan to press Interpol to charge you with international terrorism for the stunt you tried to pull at the museum, which means you’re going away for a lot longer than you might have thought.”
“I’m okay with that, as long as it’s Sweden.”
“I’ll make the arrangements, but you have to do something for me too.”
“How can I help you, Agent Stewart?”
“You’ve got to help me catch your partners.”
“Oh, I don’t think that’ll be a problem at all. I’ll be happy to.”