by Alex Archer
He surprised her by recovering almost immediately. Even as she was bringing the sword back around for another strike, he spun around and delivered a near-perfect ax kick to her shoulder, the heel of his foot hammering into the nerve junction near her collarbone and causing the arm holding the sword to go numb. The sword clattered to the floor and Annja willed it away into the otherwhere as she skipped backward, out of reach of another strike.
Watch it. He’s quick and he knows what he’s doing.
He hesitated, clearly confused as he searched the floor for her sword.
Her right arm was still numb, useless for a few seconds, but that didn’t stop her from pushing the attack once more while her opponent was still trying to work things out in his head. She lashed out with a savage front kick, followed immediately with a roundhouse punch with her good arm to his head. She’d been training for years prior to becoming the bearer of the sword and she was confident in her ability to handle herself. If she could just delay him long enough, one of the other museum patrons was sure to report their confrontation to security.
Her opponent, however, apparently realized this, as well. He quickly parried her attacks while trying to maneuver into a position where he might be able to incapacitate her long enough to disappear into the crowd in the large atrium beyond.
The gunman threw a left at her face while at the same time targeting her knee with a short, sharp side kick. Annja pulled her head back, letting the fist slide past less than an inch in front of her nose. She turned slightly and raised her leg, taking the kick on the side of her thigh. It hurt, a lot, but it was far better than letting him pulverize her kneecap.
The constant shifting and maneuvering for position had put them several feet from their original positions and Annja now found herself being forced on an angle to the entrance of the gallery, so she only became aware of the fact that they were no longer alone when a man suddenly bellowed, “What the hell’s going on here?”
The sound startled her, breaking her concentration for the barest of moments. That split second was all her opponent needed.
Stepping forward, inside her reach, he caught one of her hands in both of his. Pivoting sharply on one foot, he twisted around and heaved her over his shoulder in a classic judo throw. Her momentum carried her several feet across the floor until she fetched up hard against one of the display cases with a loud crash.
From her position on the floor she watched the gunman turn toward the newcomer, a tall, dark-haired man in the casual clothes of a tourist who looked familiar, though she couldn’t say why. The gunman delivered a hard right to the man’s solar plexus, paralyzing his diaphragm and sending him to the floor as he fought for breath. A glance over the gunman’s shoulder revealed several museum patrons headed in their direction.
She had to end this and end it quickly.
As Annja scrambled to her feet, her opponent turned to the display case next to him, raised his elbow and brought it down into the top of the case. Alarms began to howl as the glass shattered beneath the impact of the blow but the gunman didn’t seem to notice as he reached inside the case and withdrew the ancient clay tablet inside.
Annja was horrified, far more so now than when he’d been pointing a gun at her head. The tablet in his hands was no doubt thousands of years old and to see him handling it with bare hands made her want to scream. Oil from his fingers could cause incalculable damage to the artifact.
What he did next was worse.
He smiled, said, “Catch,” and then threw the tablet about forty-five degrees to her right.
“No!” Annja was first and foremost an archaeologist and something deep inside cried out for her to save the tablet. All thought of stopping the gunman was forgotten as she leaped for it.
Someone, somewhere, must have been watching over that tablet. As Annja hit the floor on her stomach, sliding forward, she managed to catch the fragile piece before it could smash against the unyielding surface of the floor.
Bernie Williams, eat your heart out! she thought as she came to a stop against a display case like a baseball player against the center field wall. She tore her gaze away from the tablet she held gingerly and looked up in time to see the gunman snatch his gun off the floor and slip out past the small crowd that was beginning to gather near the entrance.
Oh, no, you don’t.
Laying the tablet carefully on the floor, she jumped to her feet and took off after the gunman. The crowd parted before her as she reached them and she ran forward into the larger atrium, turning this way and that as she tried to find him.
Come on, come on, where did you…there!
She caught a glimpse of him as he approached a door on the far side of the atrium and headed in that direction, trying not to draw too much attention to herself. He was walking at a brisk pace but she knew she’d be able to catch up with him provided she didn’t do anything to spook him. All she had to do was keep from giving herself away.
“There she is!” someone shouted from behind her. “That’s her!”
Annja turned and found herself staring down the barrel of a pistol for the second time that day. This time, the gun was in the hands of a museum security guard who looked like he was just begging for a reason to use it. A young man stood beside the guard, and, as Annja watched, he jabbed his finger in her direction. “That’s the woman who tried to steal the tablet!”
This is so not my day.
She raised her hands over her head, glancing over to where she had seen the gunman. The door he’d been headed for was just shutting behind him and Annja knew she had lost her one chance of catching him. It was going to take hours to work through this mess with the police, and by the time she convinced them they were chasing the wrong individual, the gunman would be long gone.
With a sigh, she turned her attention back to the guard. It was going to be a long afternoon.
The day had one more surprise in store for her, however. When the guard led her back to the gallery to await his superiors, she found the man who had tried to help her calmly talking to several men in finely tailored suits. Annja pegged them as senior museum officials. As she approached, her rescuer turned and said, “Ah, here’s Ms. Creed now. I’m certain she’ll back up everything I’ve said.”
Annja glanced quizzically at him, wondering how he knew who she was, and then realized with a start that she knew him, as well. Or rather, knew of him. They hadn’t met personally but she’d been studying him and his business strategies for the past several days.
The man who had come to her aid was none other than Mitchell Connolly.
Chapter 5
Her guess had been correct; the men in suits turned out to be the head of security and one of the museum directors. They took her aside and asked her to explain her side of the story. She told them the truth—how she’d come to see the Copper Scroll exhibit, how the gunman had waited until she was alone in the gallery before attempting to abduct her. She had no intention of mentioning the “extracurricular” activities she’d been involved in since taking up the sword, so when she was asked why she thought she had been a target she fell back on a reason as old as the city in which she stood. She was a good-looking woman alone in a foreign place and must have seemed an easy target.
Her story must have matched up with whatever Connolly had told them, because their attitude toward her quickly moved from suspicion to solicitousness. They thanked her for saving the tablet and offered to have their medical staff check her over for injuries, which she declined. As they waited for the police to arrive, Annja took a moment to speak to her would-be rescuer, who was sitting on a folding chair a few yards away.
“Thank you for getting involved, Mr. Connolly,” she said after walking over to stand next to him. “Most people wouldn’t have had the courage to.”
He rose to his feet and waved away her thanks with a self-conscious g
rin. “It was the least I could do, Ms. Creed. Couldn’t leave a fellow American in distress, now could I?”
“I guess not,” she said with a laugh. “It was fortunate that you were here to help.”
“Well, I must confess that it wasn’t entirely by accident, Ms. Creed.”
“Oh?”
“I stopped by your hotel this morning, looking to speak to you, and the concierge told me you’d just left for the museum. As I’d been meaning to see the exhibit myself, I thought I’d kill two birds with one stone.”
Annja thought back to when she’d left the hotel that morning. Had she told anyone where she was going? Ah. She had asked for directions to the museum.
“What was it you wanted to speak to me about?”
“I was impressed with the way you handled the negotiations yesterday. So much so that I’d like to discuss a particularly urgent situation I believe you are well-suited to assist me with.”
Annja was already shaking her head. “I’m sorry, Mr. Connolly—”
He put a hand on her arm. “Please, Mitchell is fine.”
She tried again. “I’m sorry, Mitchell, but my schedule for the next few months is rather tight and I’m not sure I can fit anything else in.”
He flashed a smile. “At least hear me out. Let’s discuss it over dinner this evening, if you don’t have any plans? I assure you it will be worth your while. I wouldn’t bother you with trivialities.”
Annja thought it over for a moment. The truth was that her schedule really wasn’t full at all. In fact, she was kind of surprised at herself for her automatic rejection of his offer. Connolly’s wealth wasn’t an issue for her. After hanging out with Roux and Garin Braden for so long—who had to be among the world’s wealthiest, given how their fortunes stretched back over five hundred years of investments—she had grown, if not comfortable, at least capable of moving in the rarified circles of the extremely wealthy. A point in his favor, the meal would no doubt be absolutely exquisite. If there was one thing Annja appreciated, a fine-cooked meal was it.
A fresh commotion at the entrance of the gallery heralded the arrival of the police and Annja knew their time was up.
She was going to need to unwind after all this and a fine meal sounded like just the ticket.
“All right,” she said suddenly. “Dinner, it is.”
“Excellent! How about Canela, say around seven?”
Annja hid her smile at the mention of one of Jerusalem’s top five restaurants. After all, it was nothing less than she’d expected. “Canela, then,” she said. “I look forward to it.”
* * *
CONNOLLY’S LAWYER MET him at the police station, expediting procedure, and less than an hour later he stepped out the door into the afternoon sunshine. His driver was standing beside his limousine and, after thanking his attorney, the mining magnate gratefully slid inside the cool interior. The charade at the station had been necessary, but he was tired of wasting time and was ready to get back to work.
Connolly pulled out his cell phone and arranged a meeting not far from the Knesset building.
Traffic was light and they reached the desired location inside of fifteen minutes. Connolly instructed his limousine driver to pull the vehicle over to the curb and wait. The car had barely come to a stop before the back door opened and the bearded gunman from the museum slid in opposite Connolly and pulled the door shut behind him.
As the driver got under way again, the newcomer reached up and tugged off the beard he was wearing, revealing the clean-shaven face of Martin Grimes, Connolly’s senior exec and right-hand man.
“Damn, that thing itches,” Grimes said absently as he took an alcohol-soaked cloth out of a plastic bag lying on the seat next to him and used it to wipe the leftover adhesive off his face.
Connolly waited for him to finish and then asked, “What happened?”
“What happened?” Grimes repeated. “She tried to take my arm off with a sword, that’s what happened.”
Connolly frowned. “A sword?”
“Yes, a sword,” Grimes answered, reacting to the doubtful tone in his employer’s voice. “A freakin’ medieval broadsword, if you want to be exact.”
“Tell me.”
Grimes did. Connolly listened without interruption, and sat back to think it over once Grimes was finished. The whole story was incredible. A sword that was there one minute and gone the next. If they had been discussing anyone else Connolly would have dismissed it as hogwash, but he’d heard some interesting rumors regarding the Creed woman and part of today’s exercise had been to see if there was any truth to them. Connolly had known Grimes for too many years to think he was making the story up. If he said he saw a sword, then that’s exactly what he saw.
“Could she have snatched it from a nearby display case, perhaps?” Connolly asked, doing the reasonable thing and looking for a logical explanation.
Grimes shook his head. “The Shrine of the Book is devoted exclusively to the scrolls recovered at Qumran. They don’t even display the camphora jars that many of them were discovered in, never mind any other artifacts. Weapons would be entirely out of the question.”
Nor could she had secreted it on her person and carried it into the museum. The entrances were protected by metal detectors. Grimes had been forced to hide the silencer inside a cane he’d ditched once he’d made it inside and had then stolen the gun he’d used from the locker of an off-duty security guard.
How…interesting. Connolly turned the situation over again in his mind.
He was walking a tightrope with this one and he knew it. Later that evening he was going to ask Ms. Creed to lead an extremely important expedition and his decision to do so hadn’t been made lightly. Her reputation was unparalleled. If you wanted to find something that history had done its best to make the world forget, then Annja Creed was the one you wanted in charge of your team. Her archaeological successes in recent months had been astounding. Even more important in his eyes was her seemingly natural affinity for artifacts of an unusual nature. It was that…connection…for lack of a better word, that made him want to bring her on board.
This morning they’d tested Creed’s reactions under pressure. Connolly was not the type to leave anything to chance. He also wanted to play a bit of reverse psychology on her. By having Grimes confront her, and warn her off accepting the expedition before it had even been offered to her, he wanted to generate a deeper level of interest and make her more inclined to accept when they did sit down to discuss it. Neither of them had expected the woman to be as resourceful as she had so obviously turned out to be and they’d been forced to improvise to provide Grimes with a way out of the situation she’d put them in.
The treasure they were going after was vast. But hidden within that treasure was an even greater one, an object whose value was simply incalculable by modern standards. He intended to make that object his own and he believed that Annja Creed could help him do so. Now he wondered if another perhaps equally valuable object might already be in her possession. It certainly bore thinking about.
“I don’t see how we can solve the sword issue at the moment. Keep your eyes open, and perhaps we’ll uncover a little something extra to go with our search for the staff. In the meantime I want people watching her hotel to see if she meets with that pain-in-the-ass Roux again. She and I will be dining at Canela tonight at seven, so have your people there at least a half hour in advance. I don’t want anymore surprises like we had today.”
“Understood.”
Grimes rapped on the privacy partition separating them from the driver and a moment later the car pulled to the curb and he got out. He shut the door behind him and walked quickly away without a backward glance.
As the driver pulled away from the curb, Connolly’s thoughts returned to Annja Creed and her mysterious sword. He had a hunch he would see it
again before their adventure was concluded….
Chapter 6
Annja arrived at the restaurant promptly at seven. She’d spent several hours at the police station that afternoon, just as she’d expected, but hadn’t been able to pinpoint her assailant in any of the hundreds of mug shots. The police had repeatedly asked if there was any reason for someone to target her, but she’d stuck to her original story, leaving them little to go on. It wasn’t that she didn’t want her assailant to be caught—she did—she just didn’t want the police to pry into her life any more than necessary. Thankfully no one had reported seeing her use the sword, which saved her from having to explain just where it had come from in the first place.
By the time they wanted to go over her story for the fifth time, Annja feigned exhaustion and informed them she was returning to her hotel to rest. Because she wasn’t a suspect, the detectives had no choice but to let her go.
She spent the afternoon in her hotel room, catching up on email and watching the news. There was no mention of the events at the museum. Connolly probably made sure it wasn’t mentioned, she thought, and for once didn’t mind that someone had used their influence to kill a story.
The question of who had tried to kidnap her weighed heavily on her. The truth was that she had disrupted quite a few criminal enterprises in her role as bearer of the sword and any one of them could have decided to try to even the score. The gunman’s own words seemed to suggest as much.
When evening came she took a shower and then swapped her shorts, T-shirt and boots for well-tailored pants and a cotton blouse. The cream-colored shirt complemented her tanned skin and made her green eyes stand out sharply. She surveyed herself in the mirror, decided it would have to do and caught a cab to Canela.