Guardians of the Four Shields: A Lost Origins Novel

by A D Davies

  Again, Jules found no suitable reply, so remained silent.

  “If you can get through this and convince Massey you’ll do what it takes to keep your partner safe, you will be a fine cop. I assume you want to be a detective since you seem intent on solving the crimes for them?”

  “I only offered my observations. As the responding officer, it’s my duty to inform the detectives what I saw, and explain—”

  “You don’t need to draw conclusions for them. In fact, you shouldn’t.”

  “Was I wrong?”

  Demetriou sat back in her chair, her fingers interlacing again, resting on her stomach. “No. They were stealing bottles of whiskey and other booze. Imported illegally. If they got away, it wouldn’t even have been reported to us. The two hostages were also in on it. You concluded that by one line?”

  “They thought I was going to shoot them. Guilty conscience. Adding to the fact that they did not appear scared when I first observed the scene and two of the robbers were happy to reveal their faces during the crime, it was pretty obvious to anyone with half a brain.”

  He regretted the last ten words. He could have been more subtle.

  “And the CCTV?” the captain said.

  “If the low-level workers, and the supervisor who took Massey hostage, were all in on it, it stands to reason they would have to switch off the cameras. I believe the plan was for the suspects to remove the disc before fleeing the scene, so it looked like a planned operation. But of course, that’s up to the detectives to prove.”

  “Oh, good.” Demetriou pointed at him. “Do you think you could remember that next time?”

  Jules didn’t really understand what he’d done wrong. “I will, ma’am. Wouldn’t want to bruise a detective’s ego.”

  “It isn’t just an ego thing. Uniformed officers coloring their cases or giving them absolutes—which they can’t prove immediately—could lead to confirmation bias. And that’s a gift to a savvy defense lawyer.”

  Jules wanted to argue, but there was logic in what she said. “I’ll do my best to keep future observations neutral and not draw conclusions for the detectives.”

  “Thank you, Officer Sibeko.” She paused, a typical delaying tactic for most people when they had something uncomfortable to say. Unusual for her. “You are on mandatory leave for a few days, while the department investigates the weapon discharge. I don’t need to explain it to you, since you seem to remember everything anyway, but you are not in trouble over the shooting. It is standard procedure when an officer fires his weapon. Normally, I would put you on desk duty, but you have some things to sort out.”

  “Such as?”

  “Such as whether this is really for you. I’m not so worried about you stepping on detectives’ toes. It’s what Massey has been speculating in his reports. Nothing obvious. It’s clear between the lines, though. And today, using your baton instead of your sidearm… Do you want to be a cop? Can you show your training officer you won’t let him or any future partner down in a similar situation?”

  “You’re saying I need to kill someone when there’s a better alternative?”

  “I’m saying get your head straight. Objectively speaking, if you’d missed with your non-lethal approach, are you certain you and your partner would still be alive?”

  A few years ago, Jules would have answered with a resounding yes. Since interacting with more people, getting to know them on a personal level, he had learned this sort of response made him appear arrogant. That wasn’t good in social situations, and it was even worse before your captain.

  He said, “I understand. But I don’t need to be on leave.”

  “It’s your choice, of course. But you and Massey are grounded until the police shooting investigation is complete. Consider taking some time out, though.”

  She dismissed him with a nod and Jules stood. He remained straight for a moment, then took the formal march out. He paused at the door, and turned to her, seeing the woman who had been stern but understanding with him as a youth. She deserved the truth.

  He said, “I found my former life unsatisfying, even though it did a lot of good for people who’ll never know it happened. Being a cop, with rules and firm regulations, feels like the right fit for me. I’ll work on it.”

  “See you do, Sibeko.”

  Jules exited the office and returned to the watch captain who’d already received the paperwork for the early end to Jules’s shift, and had dismissed Massey in anticipation. He’d also called in the pairing of Laszlo and Whittington to cover.

  “No big deal,” the watch captain said. “Couple of hours overtime won’t break the bank. See you back here in the morning. Bring your favorite pen.”

  Jules showered and changed in the locker room, gathered his personal items, and left the building in his civilian clothes. Unlike many of his colleagues, he chose not to carry a firearm off-duty. Some worried about retribution after a shift, but Jules had not witnessed enough yet to warrant such a precaution.

  He had walked sixty-seven yards toward the subway when three men and a woman approached him. He’d clocked them ten yards earlier but hadn’t slowed. Now, they impeded his path, leaving him no option but to confront them.

  “No,” he said without a pause.

  The men blocking him were Harpal Singh and Dan Vincent. He halted rather than cause an incident.

  To the side, Charlie Locke said, “Give us ten minutes. Then kick us out if you have to.”

  “I don’t have to give you ten minutes.” Jules twitched toward the precinct sixty-seven yards away. “One shout, and you guys are facedown, getting your fake IDs examined. I assume you ain’t here legally.”

  “It’s important,” Toby Smith said, next to Charlie. “Ten minutes.”

  Jules stared, not budging. His heartbeat slowed to a sluggish clump… clump… clump.

  “We might need Bridget, too,” Toby added. “Please. Give us ten minutes.”

  Jules scanned his old friends’ faces. He shook his head. “I can’t get involved again.”

  Charlie was holding a box, a small metal case. “We thought we’d return these to their rightful owner.”

  She opened the clips and lifted the lid, showing him the two bangles that had brought him into these people’s orbit a couple of years earlier.

  “Ten minutes,” Jules said. “Then I’m done.”

  Chapter Four

  Jules didn’t drink, but sometimes he wished he did. The medicinal benefits of a swift shot of whiskey from the dilapidated room’s minibar might have shifted the ache in the back of his throat and relaxed him somewhat. He accepted the offer of water from Harpal, a fresh bottle on the side of one of the single beds.

  He was evidently sharing the room with Toby, a significant step down from what Jules would have picked, even when traveling incognito. The beds were made, although one was littered with clothing, which Jules pegged as Harpal’s. He perched on the edge of this one, undid the clasps on the case he now placed in his lap, and opened the lid.

  The two bangles were nestled in protective foam rubber. Jules ran his finger over the one on his left, making the tiny green flecks in the stone body glow. He touched the other, activating the red stones, dull in the harsh lights of the hotel room. He went back to the first bangle, selected it with his finger and thumb, and slid it out. Holding it before his face, he let it glitter, absorbing the minuscule vibrations through his fingertips.

  The Aradia bangle was the object that had brought him into contact with both Toby Smith’s group of unconventional archaeologists and Captain Demetriou. Or Detective Demetriou as she was back then. Demetriou was the cop who, with her partner, arrested the men who’d killed Jules’s mother and father in a botched pizza restaurant robbery, and snatched the stone jewelry from his mother’s wrist. It held no street value, and Jules had subsequently learned they pawned it along with the rest of the items taken that day for a bulk payment of a hundred dollars. Since the police were not interested in pursuing the trail of a trinket
of only emotional worth, it was up to Jules to track it down himself. As a fourteen-year-old boy with nothing but an exceptional brain and a near-supernatural memory in both his head and his muscles, he faced more obstacles than an adult would have. Such as foster parents being reluctant to let him out after dark.

  He’d learned far more skills than anyone that age should be capable of, and by the time he turned seventeen he was an expert in parkour, burglary, and possessed the level of knowledge of antiquities and black-market trading that the average university professor and FBI agent would be jealous of. Once he came of age, he was free to access the insurance payment from his parents’ deaths and continued to pursue the phantom trail of his mother’s bangle. Already skilled in more than one martial art, Jules set about educating himself further, in whatever discipline might aid his hunt, a hunt that extended to retrieving stolen artefacts for reward—since he still needed money to live on—and several pro-bono cases where it was morally right to relieve the current owner of an object of cultural interest and return it to where it belonged.

  A little over two years ago, his single-minded obsession led him to the Lost Origins Recovery Institute, a warped, sociopathic billionaire called Valerio Conchin, and several expeditions that revealed to Jules a history dating back thousands of years before conventional wisdom said human intelligence begun. It also made him believe he was capable of genuine friendship for the first time in his life, but it wasn’t to be.

  Jules no longer had any interest in that. He gave a heavy sigh and replaced the Aradia bangle in its slot.

  “Why are you here?”

  Toby and Harpal adjusted their stances, having been polite enough to wait in silence while Jules reminisced about the items before him. Dan and Charlie had remained outside, apparently to find something to eat, but Jules had picked up on more tension than hunger. He didn’t care to inquire, though.

  Toby said, “For you.”

  “You can’t believe I’m gonna say yes, can you?” Jules said.

  Harpal opened his hands. “It’s worth a try. And you said you’d listen.”

  “I can’t leave right away. I gotta work out a few things.”

  “Such as what?” Toby asked. “Can we help?”

  “Such as how to make life work in the real world.”

  “How does one do that?”

  Jules didn’t answer. When no one else spoke, he figured he was being manipulated in some mind game. Besides circumventing official channels to aid travel and diplomatic issues, Harpal was a former MI6 officer, skilled at getting assets to do what he needed.

  Jules shook it off. “It’s been almost ten minutes already, so you better be quick. You got some story I never heard or cared to learn? A legend made real? What is it this time?”

  Toby lowered himself to the edge of his own bed, leaned his elbows on his knees, and let his mouth hang open for a moment before speaking. “Yes, it starts with a legend. But it ends with me being here in New York, asking you to take a few days to visit an old friend. In the real world.”

  Jules snapped the lid shut. “Bridget.”

  “Getting the band back together,” Harpal said.

  Jules was vaguely aware that was probably a pop culture reference, new or old. Figured he might look it up later, if he was still curious. “Is this to do with the Witnesses? You need me to open some dangerous doorway? Shut down some ancient device that runs on… Whatever’s generated when I touch these rocks?”

  “No, no,” Toby said, as if it was the most ridiculous thing anyone had ever suggested. “This is something much more recent. It may have stemmed from our mysterious pre-ice age friends, but we are on an entirely fresh path.”

  “You’re doing it again.”

  “Doing what?”

  “You know what,” Harpal said.

  “Very well.” Toby put his hands together, flat, pointing towards Jules. “This is about a shield. Or possibly more than one. I assume you’ve heard of Achilles, and the battle of Troy.”

  Toby was used to the younger LORI members mocking him for his erudite recitals of facts and theories which they might find useful. Jules, whom he still stubbornly considered part of the team, rarely joked about being bored, instead stating outright that he had no time for useless small talk. The lad could walk out of here if Toby didn’t snag his attention right away. Mention of the Battle of Troy seemed to have done that.

  He went on. “Homer’s epic story depicts Achilles as the greatest warrior in the world. In the Trojan War, he donned his father’s magic armor, but after the gods took away his lover, he chose to give up fighting and loaned the armor to a friend, Patroclus. Although Patroclus fights almost as well as Achilles, the hero of the Trojan army, the man known as Hector strips Patroclus of the armor and defeats him. Hector parades the armor in his triumph, which triggers Achilles to return to the fray.

  “This time, Achilles’ suit of armor includes a spectacular shield. When Achilles meets Hector on the battlefield, Achilles is victorious. The Iliad ends with Hector’s funeral, not Achilles’.”

  Jules twirled his hand in a “get on with it” manner.

  “Yes, yes, I’m getting to that.” Toby felt under the mattress, and slipped out one of Charlie’s computer tablets, similar to an iPad but with the functionality of a satellite phone. He called up a screen but did not show it to Jules yet. “I’m sure you know the legend of how Achilles died.”

  “The poisoned arrow through his heel.” Jules spoke in a monotone. “The only vulnerable part of his armor.”

  “That is correct,” Toby said. “But it’s what happened afterwards that we are interested in. After Achilles died, there was a power struggle, a disagreement over who would inherit the armor and, more importantly, the shield.” He turned the tablet to show Jules the mural they had discovered in Mexico, a screenshot of the footage from Harpal’s chest cam taken before the room collapsed around them. “This, we believe, is the shield Achilles carried into battle.”

  Jules squinted to look at the pictures. “Who’s the big dude?”

  “We don’t know. But we have a fair idea that the artist, at least, considered him a giant among men. Or a ‘king of man’ as we have seen it phrased.”

  “King? Giant? Literally?”

  “If Toby’s research is close to accurate, yes,” Harpal answered. “I think it’s nuts, but hey, I’m just the hired help.”

  Jules lingered on Harpal a moment, then returned to the screen.

  Toby flicked to another picture, a document scan of the Codex procured before entering Mexico, the clues that led them to the Cathedral of Saint Bernard. “Alfonse funded our project to obtain this record made during the time of the conquistadors, or rather in the peaceful decades when they lived in the region after supplanting the natives. We assured Alfonse that the shield depicted in not only this book, but several frescoes, Greek records, and Roman texts known to the Vatican, could be real.”

  Jules’s brow had gained a few lines, sparking hope in Toby that the story actually intrigued him.

  “To date, all we have found are more clues.” Toby swiped to another photograph, this one featuring the Codex that Father Pandi loaned them. “Recognize this?”

  “Is that…?” Jules pointed at the screen.

  “We believe so.”

  The cover of the tome, much thinner than the one they transported from Europe, depicted a symbol similar to an elongated figure eight. It differed from the number by the two loops not crossing over. It was far closer to the shape made when someone connected the Aradia and Ruby Rock bangles together.

  “This book,” Toby said, “is of course far younger than anything we have dealt with in relation to the Witnesses.” He swiped to more pictures, taking his time, narrating each one. “Back when I was in the employ of Her Majesty, we were interested in a cache stolen by industrialists during the heyday of the slave trade, delivering people to America and Europe—”

  “Delivering?” Jules said.

  Toby had long come to
terms with the fact men of his age and background often minimized the impact of slavery, treating it as they would any aspect of history. It was easy to forget, for him and academics like him, that it was a dark chapter in humanity’s past that occurred far more recently than many could do well to remember.

  “Bad choice of words, I apologize. I of course meant people who were kidnapped and transported to America and Europe against their will, where they were forced to work with no renumeration under the threat of death.”

  Toby paused, aware that he sometimes sounded sarcastic when he meant to be contrite. With no further objection from Jules, he continued by showing a painting of what appeared to be black men in rags carrying a shield over their heads.

  “This is what intrigued me thirty years ago. I only rekindled my interest when I found the codex that Alfonse funded. Now, I see this picture currently hangs in a museum funded by the Carson Corporation.”

  “Bridget’s parents.” Jules gave nothing away, as if it were just another dull presentation in an office environment. “What do they have to do with it?”

  “We can’t be sure. Let me rewind a moment.” Toby switched back to the book obtained from Father Pandi. One of the earlier pages showed a map of the world. “You will see, much like the manuscripts we’ve encountered before, we believe this was transcribed rather than the original penmanship of the author. Or artist. These continents are accurate, but not in the current day. They show the plates as they were over a hundred thousand years ago, but later…”

  Toby swiped to more faded, hand-drawn pictures, narrating their importance.

  “Through the ages, legends feature in this purely visual journal. I believe whoever penned this was much like us, following a trail to the truth. Here, we see a knight deflecting fire from a dragon using a shield similar to that in the fresco. Here we see a Poseidon-like character, rising out of the sea, armed not with a trident but with a shield, defending those small people on the shore from a fanged sea creature. Note the similarity in the shield’s design.”