Cash Cassidy Adventures: The Complete 5-Book Series (Plus Bonus Novels)

by K. T. Tomb

  “We’re all wondering what happened to them. We were really hoping that they were with you guys.”

  “Unfortunately, that’s not the case, John. Cartwright’s gone missing as well. We already reported it to the police but any follow up you could give to the matter would be appreciated, especially since we strongly feel that they were kidnapped. We can’t follow their case at the moment; we’ve had to go underground ourselves.”

  “Oh dear, oh dear,” he said, not quite knowing what else to say. “I was going to let the envelope I received from university administration stay on his desk until he got back but its addressed to both of you and in light of the news I think its best I get it to you as soon as possible.”

  “What envelope, John?” Chyna asked.

  “I found it in the museums’ drop box this morning. I just put it in the “IN” tray on Cartwright’s desk.”

  “I’m sending someone over there for it right away John,” she replied quickly. “His name is Demitri.”

  “Okay Chyna,” he said. “You take care of yourself.”

  “I will. Thanks John.”

  About an hour later there was a ding as the elevator opened into their living room and out stepped Oscar with his cases of equipment. Demitri followed him and handed a large yellow envelope to Chyna.

  “Set up over there,” Lana instructed Oscar sharply.

  “Good day to you too, Miss Ambrose,” he replied wittily. “So nice to see you.”

  Lana stuck her tongue out at him and continued to stir the risotto she had going on the stove. Fariha looked up from the cutting board where she was attending to some plump shrimp to find Oscar staring at her. She blushed and quickly returned to what she was doing. No one had told her he was so good looking, they had all but summed him up as a red headed, computer geek who she had immediately assumed was scrawny, pock faced and maybe even had a hump on his back. She laughed to herself at the visual and looked up to steal another look at him. Again, their eyes met as she caught him looking at her as well. The olive skin of her cheeks flushed an even deeper hue of red and she averted her eyes again.

  Oscar was anything but what she had pictured. He was tall and well built, but not too tall or too well built. Fariha had found that those types of men, especially the Greek ones, always seemed to have the ego to match. His hair was actually more a reddish blond than really red. What did they call that again? she wondered. Ginger, yes, he was a ginger. He wore a well-kept moustache and beard and closely cropped hair which accentuated his clear, creamy skin. Such a fair complexion, he wouldn’t do well in the Mediterranean sun. What a handsome man.

  “So what are y’all cookin’,” he asked suddenly, making Fariha jump. She looked up to find Oscar standing on the other side of the kitchen counter from her. She was so startled she could hardly speak. She looked at Lana who was watching her intently and motioning to her to answer him.

  “Um, Shrimp risotto,” she finally managed.

  “That sounds awesome,” he said, looking her straight in the eyes. “Do y’all need any help?”

  Fariha couldn’t say another word; she dropped her gaze back to her cutting board and concentrated very hard on carefully cleaning and dissecting her shrimp one by one.

  “Sure Oscar,” Lana finally replied. “Make us some of your super delicious sweet tea and stop scaring my friend. She’s probably never seen someone as ugly as you before.”

  They all laughed at Lana’s joke, even Fariha, but before they could start up the conversation again, Chyna spoke up.

  “All right, enough of that guys. You won’t believe what came in that envelope from Cartwright’s office.”

  “What was it? Is it anything helpful about where he or the students are?” Fariha asked, happy to have a change of subject.

  “Not exactly, but I think it’s a clue. I thought it strange that a letter addressed to the professor and I would arrive in an envelope from his set of personal stationery but the contents explains that well. There’s a letter in the professor’s handwriting but his fraternity ring is also in it.”

  “Why would he send that to you?’

  “I think it’s to prove that it’s really from him and that it wasn’t written or sent under duress.”

  “Okay, so what does it say?” Oscar asked.

  “The letter says that he’s realized someone has been following him since he left my hotel room the day before yesterday and that he tried to tell me when he called me in the middle of the night but he had spotted the car following him again. He sent the letter from the airport when he was trying to get on the plane to Heraklion but if I was at any point reading it that meant he never made it back to Athens.” Chyna paused and the others all looked at one another, puzzled. Clearly their friend was in serious trouble.

  “He then says that we’re to go to his office at the university, use the code inscribed on the inside of the ring and open the safe there. A large file which is labeled “Artemesia the Traitoress”, not to be confused with “Artemesia I of Caria”, contains all the clues that we need to find him, the perpetrator, the wreck of the Battle of the Heracleidae and of course, the Minoan Mask.”

  “Okay, so let’s get over there and get it,” Oscar said enthusiastically, reaching for his jacket.

  “Oscar, please,’ Chyna admonished. “We’re operating on code red right now. High alert. Demetri will retrieve the file. I’ll just call John and ask him to let Demetri into the professor’s office.”

  While Chyna made the call Lana called downstairs and gave Demetri his instructions. He returned a half hour later with the file in hand.

  “Thank you Demetri. Would you call down to Thorin and let him know that dinner is ready?”

  It was strict Found History procedure that when the team was on high alert, they did all their shopping at random large chain supermarkets and cooked their own meals, including the meals of their bodyguards. They never risked a possible poisoning or location compromise by ordering takeout. Even hotel room service was off limits, at the moment the only person on staff that knew who was in the penthouse was the hotel manager, a long time attaché of the U.S. Embassy. The rest of the staff could only see from the reservation system that the suite was occupied and by a guest named “Private Executive” whose express instruction was do not disturb under any circumstances. Even the service elevator that housekeeping would normally use had been shut down and only Chyna had the access card for it, there was only one way in and one way out for everyone except her team.

  After dinner, Demetri and Thorin went back to their posts. At around 11p.m., they would check the locks on the shutters of the parking bay, come upstairs and shut down the elevator, then they would take shifts and while one of them slept, the other would watch the surveillance camera footage and guard the team.

  “Oscar, did you set up your magic machine yet?” Chyna joked.

  “Yes Ma’am. I’m just about ready to do the first sweep for the professors’ cell phone. You got the IMEI?”

  “Actually, I’ve got a few,” Lana replied, handing him the piece of paper. “Apparently our friend carries two phones. One’s personal and the other is university issue, one iPhone and one Blackberry. But he’s had the Blackberry upgraded several times over his tenure; apparently the University of Athens likes to keep their professors up on the latest technology. No one was sure which of those three was the most recent.”

  “Alrighty then,” Oscar said in his signature southern drawl. “Let’s get ‘er done!”

  While Oscar started clacking away on his keyboard, Chyna turned her attention, and that of the others, to the huge file that had been retrieved from the professor’s office. It was absolutely overflowing with ancient maps, modern charts and pages and pages of research which made it painfully obvious that Professor Cartwright had not been completely truthful with them during their discussions on the topic. He knew way more that he had been telling them; no wonder he had been taken. Whoever had the professor knew that he could lead them straight to the sit
e of Artemesia’s ships if he wanted to.

  They sorted all the papers in the file into smaller batches: wreck location, history of the Battle, maps and charts and personal theories. When they got to the last of them, Chyna noticed a piece of the professor’s personal stationery jutting out from a pocket in the cover of the docket. She took it out and read it.

  “I’ve found our clue boys and girls!” she announced triumphantly. “It seems that our dear friend was being threatened.”

  “Oh, dear gods!” Fariha cried. “By whom?”

  “By our other dear friend, Mr. Doyle.”

  “That rat!” Lana chimed in.

  “Um, who’s Doyle?”

  “Don’t you read the dossier anymore Oscar?” Lana admonished. “He’s the guy who Cartwright kicked off the dig for trying to force himself on Fariha.”

  Fariha blushed and lowered her head. She was wringing her hands in anguish.

  “Sorry Fariha,” Lana replied immediately. “But he should read his dossier before he gets to a job. That’s what the long flights are for, not for stretching out and sleeping in the First Class reclining seats.” Then she turned to Chyna and said, “Be sure to book him coach from now on.”

  “Right, it seems that ever since his expulsion from the site, Doyle had been threatening to destroy the professor’s career. He was planning to use the professor’s own research to locate the ships himself, and then imply to the Greek authorities that the professor had sold their claim on the Minoan Mask out to the Turks, while he kept the mask for himself. “

  “Hmmm!” Fariha scoffed. “Does it give us anything apart from implicating Doyle?”

  “Well there’s the name of a company and an address. It’s in Izmir, but the address is clearly residential, not commercial.”

  “Let’s check it out.” Lana suggested.

  “Oscar, could you look up Reneseree Industries please?” Chyna asked.

  “Re-nes-er-ee Industries,” repeated Oscar. “Seems like it’s a shipping company out of Istanbul, has offices in Izmir as well. They specialize in stationary carriers, you know the type that can keep cargo stationary at sea for extended periods of time like when the port gets too full or there’s a need to intercept another ship to consolidate a shipment.”

  “Interesting,” said Lana.

  “Check this address out,” Chyna said, handing the paper to Oscar.

  “That’s the address of a men’s shelter.”

  “What?” Lana asked. “How the hell is that supposed to help? It doesn’t add up.”

  “There’s something more to it than that,’ Fariha said, standing and beginning to pace the room. “It’s not a straightforward clue. The professor would know that anybody who got their hands on the file would find the note. What if it fell into the wrong hands? It’s a cryptic puzzle, like those ridiculously difficult crosswords he loved so much.”

  “You’re right Fariha,” Chyna said. “We’re going to have to think like Cartwright to solve this one.”

  They sat silently for a while pondering the clues while Oscar ran each cell phone IMEI code one by one and Lana did the dishes and cleaned up the kitchen. She loaded the coffee pot and started the brew when suddenly Fariha said, “Elementary, my dear Watson, elementary!”

  “What is it?” Chyna asked, as Oscar and Lana burst out laughing.

  There’s a company name and there’s the address of a men’s shelter.”

  “Yes, we already know that!” said Lana.

  “The professor is trying to tell us that we will find him or the kidnapper, or both of them at a residence that belongs to the man who owns Reneseree Industries.”

  “Hot damn!” exclaimed Oscar. Turning back to his keyboard, he added “Well, I’ll be a monkey’s uncle. Does anybody want to guess who that man is?”

  “Who is it, Oscar?” Fariha asked, saying his name for the first time and relishing the sound of it.

  “Its Ferdinand Doyle, Ethan Doyle’s father I’d assume.”

  “Get me that address!” Chyna said.

  The next morning found all six of them on their way to Athens International Airport to board a direct flight to Izmir’s Adnan Menderes International Airport. They moved quickly and boarded the plane ahead of all the other passengers; taking their seats in First Class and being vigilant of every other passenger who boarded the flight. Only after the flight crew had closed the doors, were Demetri and Thorin satisfied and took their seats. With no dossiers to read, they all tried to get some rest, even though the flight was less than an hour long. Demetri took first watch and Thorin took the second.

  In Izmir, they quickly settled into the top floor suites at the Izmir Palas Hotel. It was the safest and most diplomatically literate hotel in the city, according to Chyna’s sources at the United States Consulate. It also helped that it was right up the street from there. Once the men had done their routine security sweep, Chyna and her team moved in and started unpacking the gear. She took off her leather jacket and hung it in the closet as she always did. Then she opened the safe in her closet and placed the holster with her SIG, her tools and her tech bag inside it. She set the code and locked it. She placed the little folding suitcase stand inside the closet, put her suitcase on top of it and closed the closet doors.

  In the living room, Fariha was leaning over Oscar’s shoulder looking amazed at something he was showing her on the computer while Thorin spoke steadily into a two way radio to Demetri who was setting up the remote surveillance cameras at strategic locations. Lana was making tuna sandwiches for everybody’s lunch.

  “So boss lady, what’s our next move,” she asked, as Chyna joined her in the kitchen.

  “I think we had better lay low until Megamind over there gets a decent ping on the professor’s phone,” Chyna quipped. “How’s that coming along by the way?”

  “I just got started, Chyna. Can’t you cut a dude a little slack?”

  “You’re from the South, Oscar. Don’t you know what happens to a cowboy when his saddle’s got a little slack?” she paused a little before finishing the statement.

  Oscar turned bright red and he started to scowl.

  “He falls off the horse! Now getting hopping!”

  “Yes, Ma’am.”

  “Fariha, make yourself useful and set up the pin boards over there,” Chyna said, pointing at the sea facing windows. “I want that entire viewpoint blocked off solid,”

  “Yes, Ma’am,” she replied, mimicking Oscar which made everyone, even Thorin, laugh loudly.

  As the sun set over the canal that evening, Chyna sat at the table staring at the map they had singled out from Professor Cartwright’s collection. There was something about it. It seemed that whenever the light that was hitting it changed, some things would be highlighted and some things would be obscured. She had seen that phenomenon before but she just couldn’t put her finger on what it was. The bright orange and yellow and gold light of the setting sun filled the room, making well lit enough to still see but just unlit enough to succumb to the use of overhead lighting. Demitri hit the light switches and as the fluorescent tube over Chyna’s head popped to life, she saw it.

  “Oh! The gods!” she cried. “Oscar, did you bring the black light lantern?”

  “Of course I did,” he replied. “Need it?”

  “I sure do. Fariha, Lana, come see this.”

  When Oscar returned with the black light, Chyna took the chart from the pin board and laid it out on the table. She took the lantern and switched it on then positioned it over the portion of the map that showed the ocean off the coast near Cesme, Turkey. Right before their eyes, on the plain parchment, a cluster of dark shapes appeared. Beside the dark blobs was an even darker line which ran between the blobs and the coastline.

  “What is that?” Fariha asked pointing to the line, as Lana squealed with delight.

  “It’s the Chios-Samos ridge,” Chyna replied. “Ships have been sailing the canal over that wreck site since time immemorial and no one ever thought that they coul
d be there, no one except Professor Cartwright.”

  ***

  The next afternoon, they all left the hotel through a back exit and took the short drive down to the United States Consulate. Chyna and the bodyguards sat with a very intelligent and ambitious young C.I.A. agent named Ricardo Perez and made legal declaration of their firearms and submitted copies of their conceal carry licenses to back it up. They also confirmed that their credentials had been forwarded by the university so that the local antiquity authorities could be made aware of their expedition and grant the necessary licenses and permission to go ahead and dive the site. Now that they had an exact location, that whole process was anticipated to go a lot smoother.

  Ricardo was extremely interested in history and the work that Chyna’s group was doing. He even confessed to having applied for permission to attend the opening of the Minoan exhibition but sadly, he had been denied the leave to travel to Athens. Chyna regaled him with stories of the dig in Knossos and some of her other adventures and in the end it was certain that she had just gained a new admirer and certainly an ally. Oscar took the opportunity to use the consulate’s secure internet connection to check the ping he had got off the professor’s phone the night before. It was weak but it was definitely good and it hadn’t moved either. Lana made arrangements with a diving and salvage company in Cesme to take them out to the site in two days time.

  With all their business complete, the team made a quick stop at a grocery store about five miles from their hotel and then drove back to Ataturk Caddesi. It was 7pm and completely dark by the time they arrived. As soon as she walked into their suite, Chyna knew something was wrong. She stopped dead in her tracks and she quickly drew the pistol from its holster. Crouching slightly, she signaled to the others to step back and allow Demetri and Thorin to come close to her back. She signaled for Demetri to take the left and Thorin the right, and then they moved forward sweeping the hotel suite. Room after room they searched the apartment until they got to Chyna’s room. As they moved in through the door, Chyna caught sight of some movement in the living room. She tapped Thorin on the shoulder and they both turned back silently. As they did so, a figure in full black ran from behind the drapes, through the open sliding doors and sailed over the ledge of the balcony. They chased after the figure, unable to fire shots into the open night, but when they got there and looked over there was no one there, just a treble hook and rope hanging from the railings. A piece of paper was to her right caught in the branches of a palm tree that hung over the balcony. Chyna snatched it quickly and rolled it up, tucking it into her jacket. She was furious. She shut the sliding doors and locked them shut, the lock seemed lose; clearly it had been tampered with. Demetri pulled the thick drapes closed while Thorin turned the lights on and made his way back to the front door.