Roberts & Maclay
Thriller
Copyright © 2020 by Roberts & Maclay (Roberts & Maclay Publishing). All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the authors, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
Translator: Edwin Miles / Copyeditor: Philip Yaeger
Imprint: Independently published / ISBN: 9798577863845
Cover Art by reinhardfenzl.com
Cover Art was created with photos from: depositphotos.com (steveheap, czuber, tribal, y6uca, dleindecdp, iLexx) and https://www.neo-stock.com
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.
www.robertsmaclay.com
[email protected]
Contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Chapter 45
Chapter 46
Chapter 47
Chapter 48
Chapter 49
Chapter 50
Chapter 51
Chapter 52
Chapter 53
Chapter 54
Chapter 55
Chapter 56
Chapter 57
Chapter 58
Chapter 59
Chapter 60
Chapter 61
Chapter 62
Chapter 63
Chapter 64
Chapter 65
Chapter 66
Chapter 67
Chapter 68
Chapter 69
Chapter 70
Chapter 71
Chapter 72
Chapter 73
Chapter 74
Chapter 75
Chapter 76
Chapter 77
Chapter 78
Chapter 79
Chapter 80
About the Authors
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“The more perfect, the more pain.”
Michelangelo (1475-1564)
1
The Villa of Nikolaus III, Count Palffy von Erdöd, in a suburb of The Hague
The man watched the beautiful black woman for a few moments as she strolled away. He knew her name, of course—Ossana Ibori—and followed her, keeping his distance.
He watched as she climbed into her car, which was parked two blocks away, and drove off. He waited five minutes, wanting to be certain that she did not return and take him by surprise. Only then did he return to the villa. In contrast to Ossana, he did not have to climb over the wall. He had a key. With gloved hands, he unlocked the wrought-iron gate and, as Ossana had done some fifteen minutes earlier, he walked three hundred yards up the tree-lined, cobblestoned driveway until he reached the villa. The garden around him was pitch black. Ossana, presumably, had switched off the old London street lamps that would otherwise have lit the well-tended grounds.
The villa also lay in darkness. The man unlocked the entrance door, crossed to the alarm system and typed in the seven-digit code. He went into the study and snapped on a light. He looked down at the floor and nodded appreciatively: Ossana had done a thorough job. She had closed the safe that was set into the wall above the chimney, hidden behind a Kandinsky painting. But the safe was not what interested him. He left the study, crossed the entrance hall and went up the large marble staircase to the floor above. He made his way along the first-floor hallway to the last bedroom and switched on the light. A closet stood open, and clothes lay on the bed and the floor. A closed suitcase stood on the floor, an open one lay on the bed. Someone had certainly been planning a quick exit from the country. The man smiled grimly: he could understand the impulse only too well. He walked around to the side of the antique oak bed that faced the window and pushed aside the heavy old nightstand. One had to look very closely to see the irregularities in the wood grain of the bed frame. He pressed against a part of the base where the wood was a little lighter. With a soft click, a section about twelve inches long and four inches high moved a fraction of an inch inward. The man pushed the loose board to the side, opening up a gap about the size of a mail slot. He reached inside and retrieved three loose hand-written sheets of paper. He fished a pair of reading glasses out of his jacket and rapidly scanned the pages, then nodded. He closed the compartment and pushed the nightstand back into place, then exited the bedroom, switching off the light as he went. On his way back to the entrance he paused, then returned to the study.
So far, he had acted calmly and without haste, but now his actions betrayed a sudden disquiet. His eyes strayed nervously around the room. He went to the desk, opened the drawers and cupboards, searched the document trays and papers lying on the desk. Then he looked up at the Kandinsky, pushed it aside and opened the safe. Empty. The man sighed. Apparently she had taken it with her. He did not like that at all; it should never have found its way into anyone else’s hands. But he knew he would get it back. All in good time. He left the villa and got into his car. He twisted around to the back seat and picked up an envelope that lay there, addressed to “Hellen de Mey.” The man slipped the three loose pages into the envelope and sealed it. He checked that there was enough postage, then got out of the car again and walked to the next intersection, where one of the red post boxes so typical of the Netherlands stood. He slipped the envelope through the slot and returned to his car.
2
Washington D.C., USA
Thomas Maria Wagner squinted against the blinding sun. He could not afford to lose his orientation, not now. There was too much at stake. He swung the aircraft hard to the left to get out of his adversary’s firing line. The incessant beeping, now getting faster and faster, told him that his pursuer was hard on his tail and trying relentlessly to get a lock on him. Tom knew that if the beeping merged into a continuous tone – like a heart monitor flatlining – it would mean the end for him, too.
He swung the F4 Phantom hard again, now in the opposite direction. The airplane tipped one hundred degrees onto its side, rattling every bone in Tom’s body. A flick of the joystick sent it back the other way at punishing speed. The plane flipped upside down, tipped to the left, to the right, and barrel rolled several times. Any normal
person would have left their lunch all over the console, and would most likely have blacked out by now. But Tom found it all . . . fun.
He was an adrenaline junkie of the purest kind, enthusiastically tackling every absurd or dangerous pursuit ever invented by God or sponsored by Red Bull. The tedium was also the reason he’d left his old job. Originally, he’d thought that line of work would keep him supplied with the necessary dose of action, but he had been monumentally disappointed. Being an officer with one of the world’s best antiterror units had sounded exciting, but it had turned out to be one big letdown. His last official assignment with Cobra, as the unit was called, had been as an in-flight security officer, an air marshal—by far the most boring task associated with the job. He had earned it on account of his being prone to a certain . . . creative re-interpretation of his orders.
A shrill warning signal ripped him out of his maudlin thoughts.
No way, Tom thought. He simply could not shake off his pursuer, let alone turn the tables on him. He had only one chance left.
With no time to think, he shut the throttle down and leaned straight back on the joystick. The result was a kind of midair emergency stop: the Phantom’s nose tipped up almost ninety degrees, and for a brief moment his speed was cut in half. But his pursuer didn’t shoot past underneath, as Tom had expected. Guiding the nose back down, he opened the throttle wide.
Where the hell did he go? He was right on my tail, Tom wondered.
The next moment, the high-pitched signal sounded again. This time, however, it was not the intermittent beeping, but the continuous beeeeeep that Tom had feared. He clenched his eyes shut and released the controls, surrendering himself to his fate.
“Game Over. Please exit the simulator to the right. Thank you for visiting the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum. We hope you enjoy the rest of your visit,” he heard through the speakers inside the small cockpit.
He climbed out of the simulator and trotted down the steps, where his uncle, Admiral Scott Wagner, was waiting for him.
“Beers are on you,” the admiral said, smiling victoriously. He threw an arm around his nephew’s shoulders and gave him a quick hug. Uncle Scott was Tom’s uncle on his father’s side. After Scott had helped him out of a life-or-death situation about six months earlier, Tom had decided it was time to pay him a visit.
“So you really used to fly an old tin can like that?” Tom asked.
“Sure did. Desert Storm. The F4s may be fifty years old, but they’ve still got it,” Scott replied.
“So do you. There was no way I could shake you off.”
“Your PlayStation experience ain’t enough to outfly me.”
“When are you going to take me up for a spin in the real thing?” Tom asked optimistically.
“I’ll ask around, see if I can swing it. But keep in mind that one hour in a fighter jet sets the U.S. taxpayer back a solid thirty thousand dollars.”
Tom’s eyes widened.
“Thirty grand? For one hour? That’s a pricey joy ride. Maybe I’ll stick to the PlayStation.”
The two men laughed as they made their way out of the simulator room at the Air & Space Museum and ambled on through the enormous halls.
From the Wright Brothers’ first plane to every kind of flying machine imaginable, and onward to modern space flight, the entire history of aerospace technology was documented in meticulous detail, in one impressive display after another. Aircraft were suspended overhead, and Tom had spent the last few hours moving through sections of the space shuttle and admiring space suits, scale models and thousands of other things.
An announcement droned through the museum’s PA system: “Ladies and gentlemen, the museum will be closing in a few minutes. Please make your way to the exits. Thank you for visiting the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum. We hope to see you again.”
“Thanks for the guided tour, Uncle Scott. It’s been a blast,” said Tom as they left the museum among the last to exit.
“My pleasure.”
They walked westward along the National Mall parallel to Jefferson Drive, heading back toward their car. The immense national park was strewn with the buildings of the Smithsonian complex, spread across 150 acres and with a breathtaking view of the Washington Monument, the enormous obelisk that was just one of the city’s famous landmarks. Behind them, the majestic United States Capitol shone in the late-afternoon sunlight. And although the two structures might look very close on a cinema screen, the impression was misleading: the Washington Monument stood a good mile and a half from Capitol Hill.
Off to their left, the Smithsonian Castle, the main building and present-day information center of the Smithsonian Institute, appeared between the trees. Tom and his uncle stopped at a hot dog stand—and then watched, hot dogs in hand, as two black SUVs screeched to a halt across the road and eight men jumped out. They were dressed in civilian clothes, but their movements were unmistakably military. Each man carried a black sports bag. They did not run, but strode rapidly toward the rear entrance of the Castle, pulling masks over their faces as they went. They reached into the sports bags, pulling out automatic weapons fitted with suppressors, and marched into the building.
3
Amoun Hotel, Alexandria, Egypt
Hellen de Mey’s sleep that night was more restless than it had been for a very long time. Her gut feeling had never let her down. As young as she was, she had taken part in a surprising number of excavations. Since giving up her job with Blue Shield—a subsidiary of UNESCO charged with the protection of heritage around the world—her feelings had become less frequent, but they were still never wrong. When they came, they unfailingly meant the discovery of something special. Adventures weren’t really the norm for archaeologists and historians, but in recent years it had been a different story for Hellen—and she liked tackling history this way. Tomorrow was a big day; she was about to follow up on a lead that had reached her in a very unusual way: someone had sent her an actual letter. An anonymous letter to boot, about a subject that had preoccupied her father all his life: the Library of Alexandria.
No ancient object was more wrapped in myth and legend than the Library of Alexandria, except perhaps for the Holy Grail or the Ark of the Covenant. The entire knowledge of antiquity, both Eastern and Western, was said to have been collected within its walls. Though the actual number is no longer known, the library had accumulated an enormous number of scrolls by the standards of the day, including both literary texts and a large number of scientific treatises from many different fields. Since its founding by Alexander the Great, at the start of the third century B.C. in the city of Alexandria, the collection was said to have become practically unmanageable down through the ages. However, the location of the treasures once housed in the library was a mystery: at some point the library had simply disappeared from the public record. The actual date of its demise was unknown, although estimates range from 48 B.C. to the seventh century AD.
Hellen’s father had told her all about it when she was still a child, and about the many myths surrounding its disappearance. There were many theories, but none had ever been proven, and so far no remains of the actual library had been found. Clues lurked in the works of many ancient writers, but none had led to a definite location. Hellen smiled sadly as she remembered the enthusiasm with which her father had told her about the treasures in the library, and the countless antique riddles whose solutions were said to be found there—Atlantis, for example, and the secret of the pyramids.
Tomorrow, perhaps, a huge step toward locating the fabled library would be revealed to her. The handwritten letter she had received contained unprecedented clues. It claimed knowledge of hidden passageways in the Necropolis of Anfushi, close to the historical port of Alexandria. One of the many legends surrounding the city told of a system of underground canals that had been used in the battles against Gaius Julius Caesar during the Siege of Alexandria. Ganymedes, a eunuch and educator under the Ptolemaic king’s daughter Arsinoë, sister
of Cleopatra, had ordered the passages flooded, drowning many of Caesar’s men. The letter claimed that treasures from the library were hidden in the canal system; now it was up to Hellen to verify the truth—or otherwise—of the information.
She had quickly found a sponsor for the excavation: still dreaming of Alexandria, she glanced at the man who lay beside her in bed. She smiled, because for the first time in a long time she felt protected. Arno embodied everything she wanted in a man: he was intelligent and good-looking and, most importantly, reliable. He strived for stability and security, and she appreciated that quality in him very much. He opened his eyes. The calm he radiated was like a heavy, warm, woolen blanket enveloping her. Without a word, Hellen kissed him. She had to forget that other man once and for all. She was with Arno now.
The Library of the Kings (A Tom Wagner Adventure Book 2) Page 1