by Aiden James
Most likely the truth, but a multitude of other looters are far worse than I could ever be. Yes, I have amassed a small fortune doing what I do, though what I’ve taken for myself is a very small percentage…. Just some trinkets, coins, and a few figurines.
Why am I bringing this up now?
Because Marie was right. Completely.
“Oh my God!” whispered Ishi, reverently, as I came up behind him and Marie at the mouth of a large cavern filled with organized piles of gold objects—many of them encrusted with jewels. And the figurines I expected to see were there in abundance.
Also, figurines I didn’t expect were also present. These were very similar to the Celtic deity depictions we encountered when we first arrived. They were made of gold, forming a half-circle in the middle of the cavern. The intricacy of the sculptor’s work made all thirteen statues look real. But the fact that each one was nearly as tall as the doorway we had just passed through made them stand out even more, amid the piles of priceless artifacts.
Though not known as a Celtic goddess, Morag was the largest statue. Literally head and shoulders taller than any of the others, it would be untrue if I were to state here that Ishi’s and my gazes weren’t drawn to the serpent-mermaid’s voluptuous features.
“Men!” huffed Marie, playfully. “Let’s start taking pictures and marking the site for when we visit the foreign ministry to pursue our bona vacantia claim, either tomorrow or next Monday.”
She didn’t wait for us, moving down into the trove. It was especially amusing for me to watch her wade through cobwebs with nary a concern. Then again, insects and spiders wouldn’t likely be present this time of year.
“Can you believe this place, Ishi and Nick?” she asked, when she reached Morag’s statue. The details were even more impressive up close. The statue seemed quite authentic to what a living representation of Morag would be like. “I bet you’ve never seen anything quite like this before, have you, Nick? Papa talked about the artistry before he died, and it truly rivals anything I’ve ever seen from ancient Greece, Rome, and Egypt…. But even if these statues were made of bronze or a metal more common, they would be priceless—strictly from their age and what they tell us about the ancient druids….”
Suddenly, the room shook, and rock debris accompanied a pair of stalactites plunging toward the cave floor.
“Did you hear that?” Ishi asked
“The explosion, you mean?”
Before he could respond to me, another smaller explosion followed the first. Meanwhile, Marie appeared to be in private consultation with her invisible Papa again, based on her excited hand gestures.
“Yes….”
Ishi didn’t finish. Instead, his gaze was fixed upon one of the statues—either the depiction of Lugh or Cuchulain, if I correctly recalled what Marie told us earlier about the Celtic pantheon. I was afraid to venture a guess as to what he noticed. But something had changed since we first arrived moments ago.
“It moved,” he said, quietly, taking a wary step backward while keeping his eyes glued on the statue that appeared to be looking intently in our direction. “The arms were by its side… now one is raised and holding a sword.”
I couldn’t confirm what Ishi noticed, since I was too busy surveying everything else in the room. However, I was fairly certain the statue in question was ‘looking’ toward another area of the cavern…. Now its solemn gaze faced us.
“Papa says….”
Marie’s latest advisement from her dear old dad died in its infancy, as the echoed announcement of multiple footsteps approaching this cavern from the opposite side drew her attention instead. Excited voices speaking in the Masri dialect told us that our Egyptian enemies were on the way.
“No frigging way!” I hissed. And just like that it was time to go. I motioned for Marie and Ishi to follow my retreat out of the treasure room.
“We can’t leave this stuff here, Nick!” Marie pleaded. “We have to stand our ground. Papa says—”
“I don’t give a flying… wait a second. I don’t suppose your amulet could make all of this shit disappear, or become invisible, can it?” The ideas were rolling, but how long did we have before it became too late?
“I don’t think so,” she said, frowning. “I don’t think it works like that. There might be just enough time to hide us.” She clasped the amulet and closed her eyes, but as it started to glow, a light cough startled us all.
“Not necessarily true, Ms. Da Vinci and Mr. Caine,” a familiar, menacing voice chided from behind us.
What in the hell?!
Yassir Ali and three heavily armed mercenaries stepped out of the shadows in the tunnel behind us. His knowing smile announced that he’d been observing us since our arrival into the treasure room.
“The Ambrosius Amulet would have to do a lot more than that to save any of you…. Looks like you’re out of miracles!”
Chapter Ten
“How in the hell did you get in here?”
Having expected one day to meet up again with the unscrupulous minister of Egypt’s foreign affairs, I never expected it to be near a remote Scottish loch and inside a forgotten cave.
“GPS is an amazing product, Mr. Caine—you should try it,” taunted Yassir Ali. “But we have enjoyed a head start on looking for what a thief like you might be interested in finding here in Scotland. And, unless you were going to stage a robbery at the Tower of London for the Crown Jewels, the only thing worth stealing from the UK would be the legendary treasure you and Ms. Da Vinci have talked so openly about. Of course, if we had not had the head start on finding what you might be looking for, modern technology would’ve likely left us a day behind and millions of Euros short.”
It turned out that Ali’s men figured out what had happened after we boarded the train from London heading north. He didn’t state exactly how they knew we were on the way to Edinburgh, but my hunch was they tracked Ishi’s credit card information somehow—likely from the car rental agency in Salisbury. Using the Egyptian’s rumored network of contacts that includes the UK, it was just a matter of time before Ali’s sources honed in on our whereabouts—likely again due to our next rental being held by Ishi’s MasterCard at Picardy Place.
Hell, now that I thought about it, the London police could’ve made the same connection based on the car we abandoned near the Kings Cross train station. And if that information was immediately added to their database, then the ‘paper’ trail to our whereabouts could’ve come from London’s finest, as well. Either way, it would’ve been an easy deduction that we had taken the train to Edinburgh. Since Ali’s men were combing the entire country for us, a phone call would’ve been all it took to have a welcoming party waiting to strike as we attempted to pick up our next rental.
“But here’s what is the most fun about this,” my portly nemesis advised. Dressed in a traditional gallibaya beneath a thick parka and wearing a white skullcap, his light brown eyes glowed coldly as he drew nearer to where Ishi, Marie, and I sat on our knees, our hands bound tightly behind our backs. The smell of sweat and cheap tobacco filled my nostrils as he focused on me, with only a slight grin on his bearded face revealing his amusement. “We never intended to kill you that day, although we have tried to end your lives several times, as you know—and justifiably so. Knowing that you had swindled me out of my fair share of Sekhmet’s gold without any remorse told me you would do it again to someone else. So, your presence in the United Kingdom could mean only one thing… that you had found one of the famed druid treasure troves… or, you would find it very soon.”
I nodded thoughtfully, still trying to picture the breach in our cover. The exposed credit card information was one thing, but it certainly didn’t account for how we kept running into these assholes—or how they had figured out we would be here, in this specific hillside….
Suddenly, it dawned on me. I glanced at Marie, who seemed to be listening to her father’s invisible presence, and for the moment I envied her fragile psyche on the verge of crumbling. If we wer
e to be tortured first, she might miss it all in some ‘Never-Never Land’ with the ghost of ‘Papa’ to keep her pleasantly entertained while Ishi and I screamed in agony, probably from the latest Middle Eastern version of brutal punishment. When I looked at Ishi, his sadness emanated strongly toward me. He seemed resigned to the fact he wasn’t going to get to see his beloved mother and family at Christmas, or ever again. My heart ached for his profound sorrow.
“How did you track us here?” I asked Ali.
“Ahhh, Nicholas….” He sounded disappointed that I wasn’t inclined to hear the lengthy version of how it happened. “May I call you Nicholas?”
“Does it matter?” I asked, irritated at myself for not being more careful in how we had handled our business affairs the past two weeks, after we finally seemed to have eluded the assassins searching for us throughout Europe.
“No… no, I suppose it doesn’t,” he said icily. “But, since I am calling all the shots now, I will call you ‘Nicholas’, as it pleases me to do so.”
I met his penetrating gaze with a defiant one.
“Okay… go on then,” I said.
He laughed quietly and motioned for one of his mercenary companions to hand over their automatic rifle. After checking to make sure it was loaded with a fresh ammo clip, Ali laid it on the ground with the barrel pointed at Ishi, who flinched slightly. Not that it mattered, really, since whether he shot us right then, or the trio of ‘guards’ protecting his vile ass did the deed—or even if the fatal shots came from the dozen other ‘hit men’ who kept their weapons trained on us while a few of their comrades sifted through the cavern’s glistening bounty—we were destined for to die that evening.
“As I was saying,” he continued, almost cheerfully. “We didn’t want to kill you while you possessed some usefulness. When we allowed you to take our guns, we slipped a tiny recording device into Ms. Da Vinci’s purse.”
Marie looked up sharply. Despite her seemingly insane paternal obsession, she was still in the game with us.
“Oh, you mean you didn’t know?” Ali asked, feigning sadness. “Perhaps you would like to see it, eh?”
Not that we had a choice. He motioned for one of the men behind us to bring Marie’s purse to him. Yassir Ali instructed the man to use a small machete to hack the purse to pieces, and amid the pile of shredded leather and the purse’s contents that fell onto the cave floor, a small black ‘button’ rolled away from the pile and toward me. All three of us stared stupidly at it, shamefully surprised that we never detected the bug’s presence.
“It is quite wonderful,” he advised, obviously delighted and ready to resume his narration. “Frankly, we are surprised that you, Mr. Caine, never looked for it. We likely wouldn’t have tracked you to any of the lochs, and certainly not to this place without it, since it operates as a powerful microphone transmitter and GPS sensor. Certainly, we wouldn’t have known specifically what you sought…. Would you like to hear the best part?”
I stared straight ahead, as did my companions.
“I will tell you, anyway,” he said. “By virtue of your conversations about the landmarks you looked for, we knew this hillside was the right one to explore, and we knew it two days ago, when you made the decision to come here next in your search. Just as you later decided to do, we had to alter the coordinates when at first we found nothing. Heat-sensitive images delivered from one of our satellites revealed hollow areas along the backside of this hill…. My best scientists and engineers gave us a significant head start. But as you know, we were a little behind on blasting through the rock to reach this particular cavern.”
“So… what will you do when the Scots find out you’re about to plunder their homeland’s treasure?” I asked, feeling a twinge of guilt, since on a smaller scale we were going to personally confiscate a few items from here, too.
“Well… that’s where you come in!” he announced, beaming. “We have a number of vehicles that will arrive in shifts the next few days, and each will be filled with enough gold to make me forget about what happened in Egypt…. Well maybe not, but it will make me forget until we complete the legal confiscation of the gold you stole from our homeland, that remains for now in your Geneva safety deposit boxes.
“The important thing for you three is that the local authorities will soon find your crushed bodies beneath one of the immense statues in this fabulous cave,” he continued. “We can’t possibly take them with us, due to their size; and, once we clear out our fair share from what’s here, under the bona vacantia that Ms. Da Vinci mentioned this evening, no one will be the wiser….”
He stopped talking, abruptly, and picked up the rifle, his expression surprised and suddenly worried as he looked beyond us. The men with him began to murmur, and two of them trained their weapons on something unseen by Ishi, Marie and me… at least at first. Marie looked over her shoulder, and gasped. Since she had been acting a little weird the entire time, Yassir Ali didn’t react to her…. But I wasn’t so sure the same consideration would be extended to me. With his right hand’s index finger nervously poised upon his rifle’s trigger, I didn’t want to risk getting cut to pieces by bullets just yet.
“It’s moving again!” Ishi whispered to me, after glancing over his shoulder, his tone excited.
Ali brought his rifle down and held the barrel pointed at Ishi’s face, and my surprised Tawankan buddy immediately trembled from terrible fear. If not for the sound of a solid thud that shook the cavern’s floor, it might’ve been two of us fighting to survive instead of three. The distraction caused the Egyptians—including their kingpin boss who traveled this far to oversee our execution—to train their weapons on whatever was moving, or shuffling, through the artifact piles behind where the three of us knelt.
“Holy shit…. No frigging way!”
My voice was a hollow breath once I turned to see the Celtic god from earlier approaching with sword drawn, slowly working its way toward us. Beyond incredible—ridiculously so—and without any logical explanation. Perhaps the biggest clue to what was going on came from the Ambrosius Amulet, which still hung from Marie’s neck. The sapphire’s brilliant blue glow radiated with spider-like tendrils extending in every direction, and the golden dragon that held the jewel tightly in its talons appeared to also be moving.
Closing my eyes and looking at the necklace again confirmed the craziness I had just witnessed. It was either very real, or I was experiencing the most lucid dream or hallucination I had ever had.
Yassir Ali stood and shouted for his men to open fire on the statue, which couldn’t avoid the hundreds of bullets that pockmarked its smooth surface. No doubt the gold used in its construction was as pure as any the ancients had to work with more than two millennia ago, and the slugs easily tore through the gold. Whether or not, some sort of spell was responsible for the fact the statue seemed alive now, its creators obviously couldn’t bestow reflexes that could aid it in a battle such as this.
Ali must have sensed this as well, ordering his men to step up their assault on the angered ‘god’ that regarded them with inflamed emerald eyes that smoldered brightly within narrowed eye sockets. Speaking excitedly in the Masri dialect, which I could only pick out a few words from, he shouted a command and waved to a trio of his men holding rocket launchers. They responded by aiming their weapons at the golden giant that cast a casual gaze their way.
The first rocket missed, exploding loudly against the wall beyond the statue that suddenly picked up its pace, as if incensed. We were all in danger….
“Marie! Ishi! Roll to the left—it’s our best chance!” I shouted, motioning with my head to a small crawl space along the base of the cavern wall closest to us. Meanwhile, the second rocket struck the statue. It staggered, and a gaping hole in its left shoulder forced it to lower its arm. The sword slipped from its grasp and landed loudly on the floor. “Roll now!”
Perhaps Yassir Ali should’ve killed us right then, since we were a bigger hindrance than help—especially since the sta
tue crouched and then flew through the air in our direction. We barely avoided being crushed, and if the third rocket hadn’t torn the top of the deity’s head off, it might’ve used its immense arms to try and destroy everyone in its path.
The statue fell to its knees and then facedown, just a few feet from Yassir Ali. Things grew eerily still, as the last bullet ricochet echoes against the cavern walls faded. No one moved or said anything, keeping wary eyes upon the fallen deity.
“I believe it’s time for me to take ownership of the Ambrosius Amulet,” Ali told Marie, who rolled faster to avoid his reach while Ishi and I fought to keep up. “Don’t make this harder, you conniving bitch, or I will kill you first to get it….”
He stopped again, and this time deeper fear and uncertainty was revealed in his steely eyes. Groaning metal announced that new movement erupted from the remaining half circle of statues…. This time, all of the other statues appeared to awaken from a deep slumber. Unlike the previous golden god, these moved much more fluidly—especially the one Marie called Morag.
To the Egyptians’ surprise, the remaining eleven golden gods and goddesses of the ancient Celts sprung upon them, while Morag slithered toward their leader. Her sultry lips were pulled back to reveal long sharp fangs, along with her hiss of acute displeasure and rage.
Chapter Eleven
“Nick—watch out!” Marie cried out.
She had slid into the crevice and Ishi and I were almost there. But in addition to trying to avoid Yassir Ali’s deadly aim or that of his men, the statues had continued their metamorphoses from stiff figures of solid gold into something impossible. They were now living, breathing entities—if moving from inanimate objects to something organically viable was possible. The stuff of fantasies, although confronting the living goddess Sekhmet the past summer should’ve prepared me to not be surprised about anything ever again….
But, I was indeed surprised… and more than a wee bit alarmed.