by Seeley James
Rafael looked like he wanted to take back his words. He regrouped and said, “Yes, there are seven individual stones known to have existed at one time. But let us remain focused on the Freedom Stone for now. The experts who’ve studied the legends believe it may have a different type of magnetism from the simple North-South polarity of the Earth’s iron core. There were references to extraordinary properties in an ancient Sumerian text, in some Roman scientific treatises, and the Mayan legends. Some have posited that the Stone may have a swirling form of polarity, one that changes the electrical signals of human synapses. Unfortunately, those references are mired in mysticism and prove difficult to relate in modern terms. The Keepers would relish the opportunity to study it should the current owner be so inclined.”
“You mean me?” I asked. “I offered it to you once. You turned it down.”
“You might be in possession of it,” he said quietly. “But the Knights and the Brotherhood are challenging your ownership.”
“Do you hear yourselves?” Jenny asked. “You’re talking about who owns a magic rock. Really? This is all some mumbo jumbo from the days when they used to burn women as witches. Get serious.”
“Very serious,” Peng said. “Brotherhood use it, bring down repressive regime. Called Freedom Stone for good reason.”
Rafael shrugged. “Sometimes myths are fairy tales, sometimes they hold a kernel of truth. The wise reserve judgement. To Peng’s point, you saw what happened to Carlotta when she touched it. She transformed from an authoritarian to an altruist overnight. Cause or coincidence?”
I fell back in the open chair while I contemplated that. We sat in silence.
“Random,” Jenny said after the silence grew uncomfortable. “Coincidence. A single event is not scientific evidence.”
“What is of no consequence,” Rafael said, “is the science of the Stone. What matters—”
“Is what people believe,” I said. “You mentioned that.”
“A doctor once told me,” Jenny said, “the most powerful drug is a placebo. You tell someone what it does, and if they believe you, it works a shocking number of times.”
Peng and Rafael stared at me, as if they were waiting for something. I pointed at Peng. “Your Brothers act like they’re helping us. But they haven’t been from the beginning. You’re after the Freedom Stone. Why don’t you just ask me to give it to you?”
“We not fool.” She stared at me. “You hid Stone. You not talk of it.”
“What makes you think he hid the stone?” Jenny asked.
I knew the answer, but I let Peng explain it.
“Strap on his shoulder not dig in so much when he leave forest as when he went. His pack much lighter now. Knights of Mithras know this too. They leave him El Remate, take Cherry instead.”
“Why do you want it?” I asked.
Gu Peng turned to me with a piercing stare. “To free China.”
CHAPTER 28
Jenny leaned back with an expression of enlightenment as if someone had told her the meaning of life. Her gaze connected with Peng. My fiancé finally found a cause to champion: liberating China.
I asked, “What do the Knights want it for?”
Someone knocked on the door. I looked at my guests as I reached for my pistol. Cautious to the end, I checked the peephole. It was Cherry. She wore blue jeans, a flowery print blouse under a light jacket—and a nervous expression. She patted beads of sweat off her brow.
I slipped the pistol back in the holster at the small of my back and opened the door. I pointed to the comfy chair.
Silently, with her shoulders drooped, she marched to her assigned seat.
I leaned against the wall next to the couch and faced her with my arms crossed. “Time to explain why you buddied up to Griffith.”
She gave her uncle a contrite glance. He opened his hands, palms up, inviting her explanation.
Cherry looked at me. “You figured out Uncle Rafael was a rebel. In 1982, the dictatorship of Ríos Montt accused him of masterminding the murder of fifty-five civilians. It was a lie. Montt was convicted of crimes against humanity in 2013. But the false charges against my uncle remained filed in the International Criminal Court in the Hague for nearly forty years. They prevent him from visiting his sister in the USA. He’s here today under a false passport.”
Rafael sat still, emotionless, as if he were waiting in a doctor’s office.
“What you do, child?” Peng asked. There was an edge in her voice that drew everyone’s gaze.
“My father has business dealings with the US government. He can’t associate with my uncle. They had to cut off all contact years ago. My mother’s been beside herself for years. She wouldn’t speak of him. I didn’t even know what happened until I decided to study my mother’s people, the Maya.”
“What you do?” Peng asked with an even sharper edge.
I pushed off the wall. “Griffith arranged your conversation with the ICC to get the charges dropped?”
Near tears, Cherry could only nod.
“Why Guardian of Knight do this for you?” Peng rose, her face red.
Cherry said, “I told him where I saw Jacob hiding the stone.”
Peng leapt at Rafael’s niece. Jenny scrambled to her feet to intercept the old lady. She held Peng’s wrists while the older woman’s fingers clawed the air. Peng’s face turned demonic.
“It’s just a myth,” Jenny said to Peng. “Just a stupid rock. Hidalgo said it was a fake.”
Peng looked at Jenny as a fanatic would look at a heretic. “It freedom for my people.”
I glanced at the professor. Unmoved through it all, he stared at his niece. I wondered what he was thinking because nothing showed on his face or in his posture.
Peng reached an accusing finger at Cherry. Jenny pulled it down and shook her head. She nodded toward the bedroom. Peng took a deep breath and silently agreed to go in the other room. Jenny closed the door behind them. They started talking, Jenny in calm tones, Peng in angry ones.
“It’s a fake, right Uncle Rafael?” Cherry asked.
He shrugged. His expression remained unreadable. “The glyphs match the legends. If anything is true, it is the Freedom Stone.”
He may as well have dropped an anvil in her lap. She sank her elbows to her knees and held her head in her hands.
We sat in silence, each contemplating Cherry’s betrayal.
Jenny stepped out of the bedroom; Peng waited behind her in the doorway. “Griffith left in a hurry. Where did he go?”
“To Guatemala,” Cherry answered. “I had a satellite phone with me when I saw Jacob that night. In case I got lost. He pulled the coordinates from it.”
“I ranged a long way from where you and I met up,” I said. “He’d have to cover twenty square miles.”
Cherry let out a long and heavy sigh. “He’s going to use LiDAR.”
Mercury tapped me on the shoulder. Dude, what the fuck is LiDAR?
I said, Could you watch your language? The god of eloquence should have … forget it. LiDAR means light detection and ranging. Lasers measure the distance from an airplane to the ground and back. Because they can reflect hundreds of thousands of beams per second, they get a clear 3D picture of everything. They take the data back to the lab and use a thousand computers to sort out leaves from rocks from man-made structures. That’s how they’ve found thousands of Mayan ruins.
Mercury yanked me around to face him. Say what? You mortals can see through trees now? Is nothing sacred? And these guys are going to find Seven-Death’s crib because of you?
I said, Me? You told me to hide it there.
Mercury said, How was I supposed to know you idiot humans worked up some newfangled magic to find a temple what’s been hid for a thousand years? Oh, brother this is bad. He’s going to bust out an oozing pox on your face. You’re going to look like maggot food, yo.
Jenny’s eyes were searching mine. She said, “Did you hear me?”
“Sorry, my mind is stuck on how Cherry m
orphed into Judas but no one seems to care.”
“You have to take Peng there so she can retrieve the Freedom Stone and use it to save China.”
Mercury dug his bony fingers into my shoulder and hissed, Don’t you dare, homeboy. You’re going down the same path as Hercules. He thought he was so smart going out and killing the centaur Nessus with arrows dipped in the poisonous blood of the hydra. As he died, Nessus gave his tunic to Hercules’s girlfriend and told her it worked as a love potion. Later, when Hercules was taking her for granted, she gave him the tunic. It was still covered in the hydra’s poison-blood and it killed the man. Ya see what I’m saying?
I said, No.
Mercury’s nostrils flared, his eyes wide and slinging daggers. Dude, what kills you is when you think you’re the shit. When you think China’s future is your call. When you run off to be the hero to impress your girlfriend. Homes, I’m telling you, leave the Knights of Mithras alone. Leave the Brotherhood of Claritas alone. Leave the Poison Stone where it is.
I said, LiDAR can lead the Knights to it. I can retrieve it before they get there. Seven-Death’s temple will remain hidden. And I can give the Stone to the Brotherhood. Everybody wins.
Mercury said, What makes you think the Brotherhood is more deserving than the Knights? You know how many people died freeing China in the last ten thousand years? And where did it get them? No, homie. I’m telling you, anything you do with that Stone, you be doing for your own glory. And that’s how Hercules died.
I focused on Jenny’s eyes. “I thought you didn’t believe in the Stone.”
“I believe in symbols. I salute the American flag. I love the Statue of Liberty. If this is a symbol that can free China, I don’t care if it’s a lump of coal or a magic meteorite. Think about it, Jacob. This is something we can do. This is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to do something great. We can earn our own reputations. Nothing to do with my dad. Nothing to do with my mom. Nothing to do with Pia Sabel. This is us overturning a dictatorship—and saving the day.”
I didn’t know what to say. So I didn’t say anything. Her eyes searched mine.
After a moment, she said, “If we can free China, don’t we have to? Didn’t you say, ‘He who can, must?’”
CHAPTER 29
Captain Amanow scratched at his wig. As much as he hated wearing a disguise while sitting in the Drake Hotel’s lobby, he hated Jacob Stearne even more. Amanow had come so far in life. From the poverty-stricken shores of the Caspian to the halls of British education, he now stood on the brink of becoming one of the elite. He had no intention of ever returning to the filth and squalor of his youth. The Protector had helped him, guided him, and urged him on. He would not let the Protector down. His mission would not be compromised by the likes of Jacob Stearne.
His stellar military career in Turkmenistan had been ridiculed by Joe Griffith’s guards after waking him from Stearne’s poison. The guards had disrespected his Knights. They’d laughed at him. They’d deserved his wrath. They’d brought it on themselves. Amanow only wished he could see the arrogant Guardian’s face when he returned to find his remaining guards lined up in cardboard boxes awaiting cremation.
The call came in. Amanow glanced around the lobby before he pressed his earbud to answer.
Joe Griffith wasted no time on pleasantries. “I gave you orders not to kill anyone in my house.”
“This is so,” he replied.
“Yet the security camera outside the Orange Room shows you firing a weapon at Jacob Stearne.”
“This is true.”
“And still he got the better of you!” Griffith’s voice thundered through the phone. “You cannot kill him in America. He is a hero. They’ll soon forget about him, but right now, he’s still a hero. Killing him, even wounding him, will bring down an investigation that can unravel decades of work. You cannot jeopardize our mission when we are so close to success.”
Amanow kept his reply in check. The late morning traffic circulating through the hotel lobby was thick. He said, “You ordered me to spare him in Guatemala. That has proven ineffective. Had you listened—”
“Don’t take that tone with me,” Griffith barked. “He would never talk. At least now we have two options to pursue instead of another failure by you and your murderous Knights. You must take responsibility for this series of failures. You must own letting Stearne slip through your fingers a second time. You had superior numbers and still you failed.”
Griffith continued to berate him, but Amanow’s attention turned to a striking couple marching through the Drake’s revolving door. A man as big as a bear with the dark-auburn skin of a Native American walked beside a tall, strong woman who had the silky confidence of a tiger. They passed the registration desk without a glance. The big man wore jeans and a denim shirt under a long leather jacket. Beneath the leather rode a holstered Glock 18C, just like Jacob Stearne’s. The woman wore a decadent, stretchy athletic outfit popular with American women in the gym. An open duster covered her without concealing the pistol strapped to her thigh.
The big man’s gaze absorbed everything in the lobby from the speck of lint beneath a potted fern to the dot of dust just settling on the magnificent chandeliers overhead. The woman’s eyes snapped like lasers from one person to the next, as if reading barcodes on their noses. When she turned her electric stare to him, Amanow shivered. They never broke their pace. They marched to the elevators and parked themselves there for a second while waiting for one to open. Amanow realized a short, wiry man of Indian descent had slipped past him and now waited with the taller two. The woman’s gaze wheeled back to Amanow.
He looked down at his phone. While Griffith’s diatribe continued in his ear, he searched for images of Pia Sabel.
“For these reasons,” Griffith said, “I intend to ask the Protector to replace your contingent of Knights.”
The elevator dinged; the three got on. When they turned in the small space, the woman’s piercing gray-green eyes bore through Amanow as the doors closed.
“We will come back to the Protector in a moment,” Amanow said. “Just now, I have identified Pia Sabel and two of her top lieutenants entering the hotel. No doubt they are to meet with Jacob Stearne.”
“That’s a serious problem.”
“Perhaps,” Amanow said. “Perhaps not. Does she have a position on the Poison Stone? Is she aligned with the Brotherhood or the Keepers?”
“She’s never been on any list,” Griffith said with a concerned grumble in his voice. “Certainly not on ours.”
“Respectfully, I submit it is time for the Guardian to do his job. If this American woman has no allegiance, it is your charge to propose one. Rather than cast about for scapegoats and lay blame for your passive and ineffective methods, you must contact her and entreat her. If nothing else, stop her from aiding the Brotherhood.”
Griffith stammered before finding his tongue. “Now you listen here, you—”
“No, it is you who will listen. The Protector heard my report twenty minutes ago. I explained to him how your intelligence failed to prepare us for such simple matters as Stearne’s sleeping darts. Your briefing on your property failed to reveal extensive passages for servants. He was gravely concerned that your detachment from the working class cost us an opportunity of great value. He will remind you that the role of the Guardian is not to order the Knights about as waiters in a café, but to guard our ability to operate. And, might I remind you, the Knights operate at the Protector’s direction.”
“You spoke to him?”
“And he is not happy with either of us, Mr. Griffith. He reminded me the mission culminates soon. In a matter of days, the leaders of the free world are to gather on a mountain in Germany. There will be no second chance should we fail. He believes your reliance on LiDAR will take too long. He approved my plan. I assure you; it is both aggressive and effective. He gave us one last chance to work together. He insists we return with the Poison Stone or face our fates—together.”
Griff
ith was silent for a long time. Amanow let him breathe and think. Humility is an attribute that takes time for the arrogant to internalize. He was willing to let Griffith take all the time he needed, provided he could count it in seconds not minutes. He heard Griffith take the penitent breath that presaged submission.
Griffith said, “Does your plan involve killing Jacob Stearne or any other American?”
“Those who oppose the rule of the Knights control their fates. We will neutralize resistance by any means we deem effective.”
CHAPTER 30
Jenny and Peng talked all the way through my nap. I’d been awake for most of the previous seventy-two hours. In my view, I deserved a little peace and quiet. Not in theirs. They held an excited war council with Rafael, Danny, Fiona, Mark, and the guy whose name I still didn’t know, in the suite’s living room. While the walls were thick and the bed was soft, they kept getting excited and raising me from my near-coma to that almost-cognizant stage just before awakening. Their voices would rise to a crescendo about some place in Germany, then sink after I’d groan.
Eventually, I gave up on trying to sleep. I showered and slurped a pot of coffee and ate a bagel before joining the others.
“Catch me up,” I said. “I recover the Whatever-it’s-called Stone and give it to you. Some period of time later, freedom rings in China. What happens in between?”
Jenny perked up. “We take it to Garmisch, Germany for the G20 Summit and give it to the Chinese president.”
“And we walk past an army of German guards, then walk through an army of Chinese guards, then sneak past the president’s staff, and say, ‘wanna pet my rock?’”
Everyone looked in different directions at once. Guess they hadn’t visualized the endgame. They planned themselves right up to the city gates and stopped there. As we learned in Iraq, the siege is the easy part. What comes after is the problem.
I tossed up my hands. “Even if you do get someone to touch it—and the magic works—Zhongnanhai is full of people who’ll take over instantly if something happens to the president.”