by Seeley James
He took two steps forward and turned to face the screen. Amanow, a worried look on his face, had half-turned from the camera to watch a man at a table. The alabaster box lay open. The man extracted a stone, black as obsidian, the size of a large loaf of bread. He held it in his hands at an arm’s length. He raised it to the sky, then lowered it to his face as if looking inside it. He kissed it, brushed it against his cheek, then gently replaced it in the box. He put the cover back on and pressed down until they all heard an audible click.
The Knight turned to Amanow and spoke in their language. The man spoke with a pleading tone, his face penitent.
Amanow’s face first clouded with confusion, then shock, then horror as the Knight made his case.
The man who’d held the Poison Stone turned to the camera and spoke softly in English, “In all respect, most esteemed leaders, I must follow Allah. From today on, I am working for Islamic Charity Relief Fund to feed hungry and comfort sick.”
Amanow pulled his silver pistol and shot the man in the forehead.
Griffith gasped, unable to hide his shock. Not even the worst gang lords of the ghetto summarily executed people in front of their bosses. He turned to face the Protector, unable to close his mouth.
“Consider the Poison Stone proven, Mr. Griffith,” the Protector said.
CHAPTER 37
It was late morning when I returned to Chan Chich. The place was quiet since most of the Brotherhood was still a few miles behind me. They were nice. They never said a word. Not even Danny. So, I’d used my superior conditioning to run ahead of them. I wanted to face Jenny’s disappointment alone.
She would be angry. And why not? I hadn’t listened to her. She’d told me to include the Brotherhood and Ms. Sabel. I didn’t and the result was failure. Not a great start to the marriage. If the wedding was still on. I mentally prepared for being dumped. Not for failing the mission as much as not listening to her. Who could blame her?
Mr. Baldy was right. I should’ve ignored Cherry’s presence and killed him in Chicago.
When I reached the resort, I strode down the main stone path to the cottages. Each free-standing, hand-built cottage had been nestled into the jungle for privacy. It was hard to tell if Ms. Sabel picked this place to remind me how cushy things were in her employ or if the price and exclusivity were immaterial to her, but I appreciated it. The last thing I wanted was to have Jenny yelling at me in the thin-walled, sardine-packed kind of motel I could afford.
The wooden boards creaked with designer atmosphere when I mounted the steps to our cottage veranda.
Jenny looked up from a book on the far end. She jumped up when she saw me and ran to me. She wrapped her arms around me and squeezed as if I was the last lemon for lemonade. She buried her face in my shoulder and stayed there, hugging and holding me for a long time.
Then she said, “Thank god you’re back. I was worried …”
She broke off when she started to choke up. Backing up, she covered her face, broke down in sobs, and fell onto the sofa. I eased in next to her and stroked her back. After a few deep breaths, she turned around and snuggled under my arm. We sat like that, facing the lush green jungle for a long time. A little stone path wandered through the bushes from the main lodge.
When she’d composed herself, she said, “I wished I’d gone with you.”
“You’d have saved my life. Probably the mission.” I waited a beat. “As it is, I tried to help the Brotherhood and failed. There’s nothing more I can do here. We need to clear out.”
Surprised, she looked up at me without a word.
“This whole thing is a fight between Peng and Mr. Baldy,” I said. “We should’ve stayed out of it. If that guy and his Knights come to finish off the Brothers, we’ll just get caught in the crossfire.”
“You want to walk out on them? Now?” Jenny sat up, looking at me close enough to make me cross-eyed.
“I’ve seen Mr. Baldy and his Knights working like a finely-tuned military unit. They’re good in combat. And there’s twenty-eight of them and one of me. The Brotherhood has a whole different style of confrontation. I get that now. I didn’t think it would work, but maybe it will. If they’ve been around since the dawn of time, it must work better than I thought. Whatever’s going down between them is outside my skill set.”
She searched my eyes. “That doesn’t sound like you.”
“How did we get involved in this thing anyway? Peng and the Brotherhood of Claritas had a plan long before you and I came along. I had a plan, too—to start Stearne Security. So far, all I’ve done is mess up Danny and Peng. I need to call Yeschenko and find Yuri Belenov.”
As soon as the words left my mouth, I realized how bad they were. Jenny had put her faith in me for a reason. She believed helping Peng would establish us as a couple, separate from her mom the admiral, her dad the billionaire, and my former employer, Ms. Sabel. She was anxious to see us stand together.
I liked that concept. I liked that she had faith in me, even after this failure. But I didn’t see how it could work. The concept was based on mythology. When the ancients encountered the unexplainable, they invented explanations. Your civilization collapsed? Could it be because your leaders were psychopathic narcissists? No, of course not. He went mad because of a magic rock. Somehow, I had to break it to Jenny that Peng wasn’t going to free China. With or without the Freedom Stone.
Before I could find the right words, Rafael and Cherry came up the narrow path out of the rain forest. As he reached the veranda, he said, “We are delighted to see you safely returned.”
Trust is important to me and I didn’t trust Cherry. But her uncle was a welcome sight. They joined us, taking two chairs opposite our sofa. Cherry had the good sense to keep her mouth shut and her eyes averted.
“Why are you here?” I asked Rafael. “Shouldn’t you be teaching at a university somewhere?”
He said, “I go where my skills may be of use.”
“Do you believe in this Freedom Stone thing? And don’t give me that stuff about what other people believe. I’m asking you.”
Rafael sat perfectly still, staring at me while the women glanced back and forth between us. No one spoke.
Finally, the old man said, “Like everyone, I desperately want to believe in magic. But like Jenny, I believe only what is proven. I saw Carlotta’s personality change after touching the Stone. Was that because of the Stone? Or was it because a lifetime of anger and meanness, so exhausting to maintain, finally snapped?”
Perfect. This guy was as vague as my used deity.
“What do the Knights of Mithras want with what they call the Poison Stone?” I asked.
After an awkward silence, Rafael cleared his throat and said, “It is their belief that the Poison Stone causes people to go mad. While we have judged Carlotta to be in a better place, no doubt her heirs believe she has gone quite mad. After all, she’s giving away their inheritance. Anyone changing behavior from one extreme to the other is judged mad by those who knew them before. Consider, then, what would happen if an elected leader were to abruptly change her mind?”
I met his gaze. “They’d lose power.”
“Or seize it?” Cherry offered.
“Are you telling me the Knights of Mithras are planning the same thing as the Brotherhood of Claritas? They’re going to make people touch the Stone at the G20 Summit meeting?”
Rafael shrugged. Cherry nodded.
Mr. Baldy was driving me insane. If that box contained a means to turn democratically elected leaders into maniacal tyrants, the Knights could destroy the world as we know it. I couldn’t imagine how that would work, but, as Rafael keeps reminding me, what matters is what people believe. And a lot of people put their faith in the contents of the alabaster box.
I turned to my second-hand god. Earlier, he said the democratic Mayan cities survived the Stone. So why worry about it now?
Mercury carried a plate of canapes and stood behind Rafael. Dude, the bald guy didn’t raise that army o
vernight. What was he thinking before you dragged the Stone out of the deep?
I said, He must’ve had a plan to kill certain people within the democratic leadership to create a power vacuum.
Mercury said, How about that? You ain’t as dumb as Mars and Diana keep saying. And now that Mr. Baldy has the Stone?
I said, He creates the power vacuum and converts the leader. In one or two steps, a nice country like South Korea could wind up with a dictator controlled by the Knights.
Mercury said, And that’s not your problem because you’re too proud to ask for help?
That stung.
The tapping of a walking stick on the path announced Gu Peng as she marched through the jungle to our clearing. Her face was downcast and angry. No one said a word to her; we just watched her approach. She stomped up the steps and crossed, stopping with a smack of her stick on the wood. She glared at me.
“I failed.” I stood and faced her. “I’m sorry. There’s nothing more I can do here.”
“You turn down help from Brothers,” she snapped. “You turn down help from Pia—”
“I thought you didn’t want rich people,” I said. My beloved gave me a nasty glare for interrupting the old lady. But it hadn’t stopped Peng. She was still going.
“You not take any help. You not take any advice. You light no good. You light all darkness. You want all glory youself. You say you go only if everyone do as you say. Yes. And now, everyone do as you say.” She stamped her walking stick. “You fail. Now you say nothing more?”
I looked her over. “Lady, I’m not interested in getting killed for a mythological rock. I’m not going to beat the Knights. I went up against them and now they have the Stone.”
“You so proud,” she said. “You let Knight beat you. You quit. No good to Brotherhood.”
She turned and stormed away, pounding the stick into the boards as hard as she could.
Mercury appeared in front of me. What’d I tell you, homes? You failed because you went alone. You succeeded in the Army. You succeeded with Sabel Security. You succeeded because you had a team. By yourself, you’re not going to beat Mr. Baldy. Time to suck it up and talk to—
I said, I’m not going back to Ms. Sabel. She used me like a tissue and tossed me aside. I’m done.
Mercury said, You know that guy is a cold-blooded killer with plans to rule the world. If you patch things up with Pia-Caesar-Sabel you can take him down like a calf at a roping contest.
I felt Jenny rise behind me. She stood at my side and slipped her arm around me. “We have to make this right.”
CHAPTER 38
It’s one thing when god tells you to do something, it’s a whole new level of “have to” when your fiancé tells you.
Everyone left me alone to think. I took a long, hot shower. Then I sat on the veranda, staring into the endless green thinking up ways to bring Mr. Baldy to justice. Jenny left me a knot that read, I know you’ll think of something. Then she had room service bring me a glass of lemonade. I sipped and thought.
There had been no sign of my delinquent deity for hours. Typical.
If I was going to stop this guy, I had to figure out how Mr. Baldy planned his attack. The G20 meeting was scheduled at a research center at the top of a huge mountain called Zugspitze. There were three ways in: train, helicopter, or on foot. The train ran through a tunnel and would be guarded by roving bands of security from several different nations. The helicopter approach would require special clearance to land. The international security people would be crawling all over the place. I knew some of those guys; they would never fall the obvious ploys, like for a Knight embedded in a catering outfit. That only works in the movies.
I’d have to find Mr. Baldy’s stronghold and storm it before the meeting started. Except, I didn’t know where he would hole up before his assault on the G20 Summit. There were hundreds of hotels along the German-Austrian border. Thousands of private homes.
The next option was to figure out where we would attack and intercept him. Hiking in was a likely option. The trail was seven miles long with a mile-and-a-half elevation gain. Cliffs lined the route. The Knights had proved themselves fit enough to keep up with me through the Yucatán, so they could probably scale a mountain or two. Then I realized hiking couldn’t work either. The meetings were held at the top of ski slopes. From the tree line to the buildings, the Knights would have to cross a mile of snow. No one could cross all that bright white undiscovered.
I could explain all this to the security people and make it their problem, but what would I tell them? A bunch of crazed Turkmen with a magic rock are coming. I may as well tell them about my friend Mercury, winged messenger of the Roman gods. Either way, they’d have me committed.
I didn’t have enough people or drones to cover fifty square miles of rock and forest. That meant I needed Ms. Sabel and her resources. Which meant crawling back after refusing her many offers.
Mr. Baldy was right—defeat was worse than death.
I felt my chest tighten. How did I get into this? Why did everyone have such high expectations of me? You save the world a couple times, and everyone thinks you can leap tall buildings in a single bound. The pressure to solve this unsolvable problem made me feel like I was in a giant vise, having the life squeezed out of me.
I watched the leaves rustle. The endless sea of green was mesmerizing. I kept staring and sipping lemonade and thinking.
No matter what I thought, I kept coming back to my first conclusion: it was hopeless.
An unexpected sight stirred me from my thoughts. Ms. Sabel and Miguel carried a man slung from a pole stretched between their shoulders. They looked like game bearers from an old safari movie. They marched along the stone path and up the creaking steps and crossed to me. Their captive had the distinctive green Turkmen tattoo. He was awake, alert, and angry.
“Danny warned us about the cyanide capsule they keep in a false molar,” Ms. Sabel said. “We took that first.”
“No sign of Dhanpal,” Miguel said. “Maybe he switched sides.”
Neither of them said the Poison Stone had converted him. We were modern people of science and couldn’t imagine that was the case. Silently ignoring the facts, we opted for believing he went undercover. Except that Dhanpal never went under cover.
They dropped the Knight with a thump. He groaned.
A small crowd of gawkers followed them to the clearing in front of the cottage, Danny in the lead. Peng at his arm. They kept their distance as if Ms. Sabel and Miguel were something to be feared. Good call. Jenny pushed through the Brothers and came up the steps.
“I thought of a few ways to get information out of him,” Ms. Sabel said. She squatted next to him and looked him over. “I used Sabel Darts once. I knocked him out, then woke him up with smelling salts, then knocked him out again. It worked a little like truth serum.”
She turned to face me, her back to her captive, and gave me a look that spoke volumes about what she was doing. She was giving me a shot at redemption. If I could get some critical information out of him, I’d be on the path to regaining my hero status.
Miguel untied the pole and pulled it from the Knight’s hands and feet, then untied the gag.
The man exhaled with relief. I’d never been carried for miles hanging from a pole. I can’t imagine it’s comfy. He shrugged his shoulders and shook his legs. With his wrists and ankles still bound he wasn’t going anywhere.
Jenny put her hands under the captive’s shoulders and helped him to a chair.
Hate and anger spewed from his eyes. He took long deep breaths, imagining exactly how he would kill us all with each intake and promising himself it would happen with each exhale. Been there. Done that. Rarely works out. But it’s a nice distraction.
“We’re going to leave him to you.” Ms. Sabel tossed me a knife. “I need a bath.”
Miguel said, “Me too.”
They turned and walked back toward their respective cottages. The crowd of onlookers respectfully parted
for them, turning to watch the pair pass in awe and wonder. Carrying a hundred and seventy pounds of captured enemy dozens of miles was a feat of strength not lost on the Brotherhood.
Peng pivoted around her walking stick to give me a disapproving sneer. Her message was simple—why couldn’t I be more like Ms. Sabel? Peng was another relationship I needed Jenny to balance for me.
Rafael and his niece came forward as the rest of the crowd broke up and went back to whatever they were doing. Stopping below the veranda railing, he looked up at me. He said, “I cannot condone mistreatment of prisoners—”
“Hidalgo is dead. This man is complicit in mass murder.” I casually tipped the knife point in the Knight’s direction. “Don’t you care about your brothers in academia?”
Jenny caught my disdain for Rafael’s guidance. She tracked down the steps to where the old man was parked below me and took his elbow and tugged him away. He glared at me before nodding to Jenny and leaving.
As she walked away, Jenny pulled her phone. She texted me, “Feed him.”
I didn’t feel like showing any kindness to a Knight. They’d proved themselves ruthless in pursuit of their cause.
Then I considered what Jenny meant. I’d promised myself to give her ideas more consideration. It took a minute, but I understood.
I went inside the cottage, grabbed a menu and the room service phone. I tossed the menu on the small table in front of my captive. “I’m having the pork tacos. They’re to die for, bro. What do you want?”
He stared at me instead of the menu.
I said, “OK, keep staring at me like that, motherfucker, and you’re getting the vegan quinoa.”
“Tacos,” he said quickly.
I ordered for us, adding sopapillas and lemonade.
Repositioning the table and another chair, I made a cozy dining area for us. I sat and motioned for him to hold up his hands. When he did, I sliced through his bindings so fast it made him flinch. He examined his chafed wrists for knife marks. Not a scratch.