by N. J. Croft
He dropped the empty carton in the trash. “I have to go.”
“I know you do. But Luce and Daniel don’t understand. They’re babies, and they miss Mom, and they need you.”
Christ, how could an eleven-year-old make him feel like a complete bastard? Maybe because she was right.
He crossed to stand in front of her. “Look, there’s some stuff going on right now. But I’ll try and do better. Okay?” She nodded, but he wasn’t sure she was convinced. “Talk to Luce and Daniel, decide what you’d all like to do this weekend.”
“With you?” He could hear the disbelief in her voice.
“Yeah, with me. We can all go out. We can—” Hell, he had no clue. He shrugged. “We’ll think of something. Hey, I’m still learning this kid stuff.”
“I know.” She drained her glass of milk and slid off the stool. “Have a good day at work.”
“I’ll try.”
He was still feeling guilty as he let himself out of the building.
Since his first day on the job, he’d made it a habit to run the six miles into the office from home and back again in the evening. It took about forty minutes and was almost as quick as the tube—sometimes faster and far more pleasant. Plus, it was the only way he could fit in any exercise. He left clothes at the office and could shower in his private bathroom.
The streets were quiet this early in the morning. Although the sun wasn’t yet up, it was already warm. As he spent most of the day in an air-conditioned office, he appreciated the heat.
He concentrated on the thud of his feet hitting the pavement but slowly became aware of a prickle down his spine. His inner radar was picking up something. Someone concentrating on him. His heart rate shifted up a notch, the muscles of his stomach contracting. He glanced over his shoulder as subtly as possible but could see no one. Then his gaze caught on a black SUV with tinted windows parked across the road. The license plate was different from the vehicle he had spotted the other night.
Easing down his pace, he peered inside the vehicle as he passed but could make nothing out. For a brief moment, he considered stopping, banging on the windows.
But he was unarmed—that was going to have to change—and he had no clue what he might be facing.
If he was facing anything at all.
An overactive imagination? He no longer believed that. The prickle persisted. He tensed, making a rapid review of his surroundings, his mind instantly identifying the available cover.
The parked vehicle disappeared behind him as he ran on, his shoulder blades twitching and sweat sliding down his back.
He needed to up his game. He’d gotten sloppy.
Jerry was on night duty. He opened the door as Noah approached and nodded. “Morning, sir.”
“Morning.”
Instead of heading for the private elevator that would take him up to his office, he veered off and took the door leading to the stairwell. He ran down a flight of stairs to the basement. A second security officer stood at the door to the shooting range. He looked like a Jerry clone, and Noah was guessing he was another ex-military. The man nodded and opened the door before Noah could get out his ID.
He’d been meaning to come down here but hadn’t gotten around to it yet. He’d always found shooting…therapeutic. He’d taught Eve to shoot. He’d thought it might empower her, help her get over her fears. She’d been a natural. She’d also hated it. Maybe if she’d had a gun, she would still be alive.
What had she been scared of that night in Russia? She had tried to call him. Why?
An image of her burned body flashed in his mind.
He pushed it away and turned his attention back to the security guard. “I’d like to use the shooting range. Is that okay?”
“We have instructions to get you anything you need, sir.”
“A gun?”
“Yes, sir. You need to register it with the local police if you plan to take it out of the building, but we can do that for you. What would you like?”
Noah smiled. “What do you have?”
The man grinned. “Follow me.”
The place was a goddamn armory. They had more guns down here than the U.S. Army. The vault was lined with shelves of weapons. Mainly pistols but also some semi and automatic rifles.
He whistled.
What the hell did they need all this stuff for? Were they expecting World War Three?
He scanned the shelves. There was every type of pistol he could think of and a few he’d never come across before. He selected a Sig Sauer, tried it, but didn’t like the feel. Tried another. And another. He found one he liked at number five. A Glock 19.
He spent half an hour on the shooting range getting the feel of the pistol. It was a nice weapon, a 9mm, more compact than he was used to, but then it would have to somehow go under his running gear. That had never been a consideration before.
“Holsters?” he asked John.
“Through here, sir.”
Tom was already at his desk when Noah walked through to his office still in his running gear, with the pistol in one hand and a couple of holsters in the other. The man raised a brow but didn’t say anything.
“Give me ten minutes,” Noah said.
He was showered and changed by the time Tom appeared, the gun locked in his desk drawer. And he’d only just opened his system. He stared at the email.
Your wife was murdered for information in her possession. You and your children are in danger. The people responsible will stop at nothing.
He gritted his teeth. Always before it had been his life on the line. He’d been the one in danger. He’d been okay with that—hell, he’d thrived on it. This sick churning in his gut was something totally different. How the hell dare they threaten his children?
That was the thing with terrorists—they tended to target the innocents.
Was this a threat or a warning?
And what information? Had whoever supposedly killed Eve recovered it? If they were in danger, it seemed unlikely.
Tom cleared his throat, and Noah dragged his gaze from the screen to where the other man stood in the doorway.
“Is something wrong?” Tom asked.
He made a snap decision. “Yeah, something is wrong. Take a look at this.”
Tom read the email over his shoulder. “Jesus. Who sent it?”
“I don’t know. It’s anonymous.”
“Not possible. Do you mind?”
Noah scooted his chair back to give Tom more room. “Go ahead.”
As his fingers flew over the keyboard, a frown formed on his face. “There’s nothing. I would have sworn that couldn’t be done. This isn’t the first?”
“No. I received something similar on my first day.”
“That’s why you asked.” He stared at the screen for a moment. “Are you okay with me asking our tech guys to have a look at this?”
He didn’t need to think about it. His own contacts hadn’t been able to find shit. “Can you do it without giving them the actual contents of the email?”
“Of course.”
“Then please do. As soon as possible.”
Tom nodded. “Do you mind me asking—do you think it’s true? Is that why you had the gun this morning?”
Hell, yes, he was starting to believe it was true. The emails alone maybe he could have discounted as someone messing with him, but combine them with the fact that he was under surveillance and they took on a more sinister tone. “It doesn’t matter. Either way, I would very much like to know who sent them. When I find out, I’ll decide what to do with the gun.”
Tom raised a brow. “Right. I’ll get on it.”
Once he’d left, Noah sat back in his chair. Anger coiled in his gut. They’d threatened his goddamn family. He was ready to strike but had nowhere to aim.
What he needed was more
data. He was sitting at the center of a veritable spiderweb of information networks. There had to be a way to harness that and dig out the truth.
He still couldn’t believe that anyone would care enough about an eight-hundred-year-old grave to murder someone over it. So, right now, he was guessing that if someone had killed Eve, then it was more to do with his work than hers. He needed to find the motive. Revenge, maybe, or someone had wanted him out of Project Arachnid. If that was the motive for Eve’s death, then it had worked miraculously well.
All the same, he couldn’t discount Eve’s work completely. He’d been trained not to disregard anything until it was proven to be of no worth.
Leaning forward, he sent off a quick email to Don asking if he knew the names of the other archaeologists Eve had been working with. Maybe he could find out more from them. At least what lead she’d followed to Russia.
The answer came back within minutes.
Have we got you hooked?
Here’s what I know. There would likely have been others on the team, but the people she worked with regularly were a Russian archaeologist, Yuri Vasiliev, and a Mongolian scholar and expert on Genghis Khan, Tarkhan Ganbaatar.
Eve was also working with a space archaeologist, but that was unofficial. Most of them are. They don’t live in the mainstream world. They’re usually computer nerds, technicians, geeks who spend their whole lives staring at a screen, and they like to use code names. Eve referred to the woman she worked with as Star. That’s all I know.
Professor Coffell, Eve’s superior at the university, might be able to tell you more.
Bring the children to Oxford sometime soon.
Don.
Noah sat thinking for a moment then wrote an email to Professor Coffell, who he’d met and spoken briefly to at Eve’s funeral, and asked for any information on Eve’s trip to Russia. Why she had gone and with whom.
Then he opened up the company’s security system, ran a search on the Russian first, and came up with a whole load of information. Born in Moscow in 1976. He’d been head-boy at his boarding school. What he ate for breakfast each Sunday morning. Jesus, how the hell did they know that? There was also a picture of a big, dark-haired, dark-eyed man. He looked Russian—whatever that meant—but Noah would have tagged him straight away.
He sifted through the information. Found a cell phone number and an email address. He tried the cell first and got no response, just a continuous beep, so he dropped the man an email, explaining who he was and that he’d like to talk, adding his cell number.
Vasiliev was a professor in Archeology at the University of Moscow, and Noah tried there next. He eventually got through to an admin who spoke passable English and who explained that Professor Vasiliev was away from Moscow at the moment, but they would give him a message next time he checked in. Noah asked when that would be, but she had no clue. Vasiliev had been out of contact for two weeks now.
Noah pressed his finger between his eyes. He was getting a bad feeling. These days, it was almost impossible for anyone to be out of contact.
He went through the whole process again with Tarkhan Ganbaatar with just as much success. Tarkhan was eighty-three years old and appeared to have vanished off the face of the planet. Noah left messages everywhere he could come up with. That bad feeling was still nudging at his mind.
Next he typed in “what is space archeology” and scanned through the results.
What is Space Archaeology? The use of underground or beneath the sea discovery techniques taken from the air. Such techniques include LIDAR, image interpretation (using ultraviolet, x-ray, light spectrum, etc.), Space Ground Penetrating Radar, and even simply studying Google Earth! All these techniques happen from the air with images or readings taken, with equipment transported, from a balloon, a drone, a plane, or satellite. ~ Andrew Barker.
He typed in “Star, Space Archaeologist” but came up with nothing he could use. He’d get Tom to allocate one of the analysts to dig deeper—if this Star was out there, they would find her. In the meantime, he had work to do. His salary to earn. Terrorists to stop.
By the end of the day, he had heard nothing from Eve’s co-workers, but he had found something in the information flooding into his office. He tracked the last piece on the world map and sat staring at the screen.
There was his pattern. A global network of terrorist activity radiating out from a single point. Who was at the center? It was only a matter of time before he discovered the answer. In the meantime, he had a good idea where the next terrorist attack would happen. He sent an email to the senator. Then he put in a call to Peter, got his voicemail, and left a message.
“There will be an attack in Germany. Soon.”
…
It was after midnight when he got home. The house was quiet, though Jenny had left the hall light on and some lasagna in the oven “in case he was hungry,” according to the note on the table. He was starving, and he wolfed the food down straight out of the dish. Afterward, he placed it in the dishwasher—he was sort of learning to be domesticated—and headed up to his room.
As he was taking off the holster, a noise made him whirl around. He drew the pistol without conscious thought.
“Dad, I—” Harper stood in the doorway, mouth open, staring at the gun in his hand.
He dropped his arm to his side. Took a deep breath. “What is it, sweetheart?”
She frowned at the endearment. “Are we in danger, Dad?”
“Of course not.”
Her eyes narrowed. Her lips tightened. “Then why do you have a gun?” Without waiting for an answer, she turned around and disappeared.
Shit.
Chapter Eight
Ex-MI6 agent, Zachary Martin, had a good idea of where the next attack was going to take place. He also had a good idea of what the end game was. Actually, the end game had given him the location of the attack.
In two weeks’ time, there was to be a summit, hosted in Russia and attended by all the world’s leaders. The Agenda: a unified global strategy to fight terrorism.
So far all the main countries were committed, except one—Germany.
Which was why Zach was sitting in a bar in Heathrow airport waiting for a flight to Berlin.
He needed to make someone listen, and fast. He reckoned he had a couple of days at the most and a list of contacts he needed to confront in person.
Unfortunately, the word had gone out. He was unreliable, the rumors said, not to mention unstable and not to be trusted. Apparently, he was seeing conspiracy theories where they didn’t exist. Every call he made was met with the same questions. Why didn’t he come in? Give himself up? Trust in the system?
He’d stopped trusting in the system a long time ago.
The latest rumor he’d heard was that he was responsible for the death of his own partner. That one really pissed him off. Probably because they weren’t far wrong. Lauren had died in a suicide bombing in Paris the day after they’d gone to their boss and told them Zach’s theory about a centralized conspiracy to use terrorism to take over the world. Coincidence? Fuck that. Zach didn’t believe in coincidences.
So while he hadn’t actually killed her, Lauren’s death had been down to him.
Now, Eve was dead as well. Also down to him.
He’d dragged her into this thing, and then he’d failed her.
He’d been pissed off at her. Their last meeting had been in a hospital room in Ulaanbaatar, where she’d been recovering from a bullet wound. He’d left her with strict instructions to get on a flight to the U.K. as soon as she was released. Instead, she’d slipped her bodyguards and vanished, only to call him from some obscure town in Russia the night before she died. She’d been panicking because she’d spotted John Chen loitering outside her hotel room. Last time she’d seen John Chen, he’d tried to kill her.
Zach had been too far away to be of any help, and m
ost of his contacts were not returning his calls. In the end, he’d called Tarkhan, the Mongolian scholar who had been with them on the hunt for the spear. He was the only person Zach could think of who might have the contacts to help. He’d promised to try, but after that, Zach had heard nothing. Until he got the report that Eve Blakeley was dead.
The news had been a gut punch.
He’d liked her. More than liked her.
So his next move was to hunt down that bastard John Chen and rip his fucking throat out.
Which he’d do as soon as he got somebody to listen to him.
They called his flight number, and he finished his beer and got to his feet. As he passed the bar, something on the TV screen caught his attention. A news flash.
Breaking News.
Reports are coming in of a terrorist attack in Berlin. The city’s primary water source has been poisoned. Deaths are expected to be in the thousands.
He screwed up his boarding pass and tossed it on the floor.
He was too late.
Chapter Nine
It was close to midnight. Noah was heading for home, trying to shake off the sense of frustration gnawing at his insides. He’d heard nothing back from either the Russian or the Mongolian and was no closer to identifying Eve’s space archaeologist, Star.
Tom had gotten Eve’s phone records, but they showed nothing of use. There were a number of calls to the Russian’s cell phone over the last months. Otherwise, the calls were to her parents and presumably the children. If she’d been in contact with Star, she’d been doing it by some other means. Maybe pay phones or hotel phones? It all seemed a little cloak and dagger for Eve.
The credit cards had given a little more. Eve had actually flown into Mongolia, not Russia. That had been a little over two weeks before she had died. What had she been doing in that time? No payment showed how she had made her way from Mongolia to Russia, though the credit card had been used to pay for the flight she had died on. He’d talked to the company, and the booking had been made over the phone by someone identifying themselves as Eve Blakeley.