The Mongol Objective mi-2

by David Sakmyster

  “Police and museum officials are cooperating,” Renee said. “Giving us two hours. They’re telling the tourists and workers that the site is undergoing a minor repair and will reopen shortly. So we’ve got to get in and out quickly.”

  Caleb considered the massive medieval architecture, the conglomeration of turrets and courtyards, crenellated walls, the statues and heraldry marking the approach.

  He whistled, touching a few eroded birdlike figurines as they passed under the gate and into the main courtyard. Here and there he saw larger granite blocks, some tinted green, denoting their volcanic origin. “Stones from the Mausoleum,” he whispered, then stopped before the main hallway. “Okay, I go in alone from here.”

  “But there’s no one inside,” Renee said. “Turkish police have searched the whole place, and we’ve got agents on boats in the harbor, snipers where we talked-”

  “Alone,” he said again. “I think you’re right. He’s not here, but he could still be watching. Seeing if I disobey orders. I don’t want to risk anything happening to Alexander.” It had occurred to him, of course, that this could be a trap, another chance to kill him after failing in Antarctica. Maybe that was all this was. Xavier and Nina wanted him dead the Morpheus Initiative gone.

  But why? Just so they wouldn’t stand in Xavier’s way? See his plans, cut him off and recapture the tablet? Caleb held his head. It was too much, like trying to understand a time travel paradox. It was impossible to outsmart someone who could see the future, someone who could change the rules during the middle of the game.

  “I’ll see you soon,” he said to Renee, patting his cell phone. “We’re just a phone call away.”

  “Be careful,” she said, touching his arm for just a moment before pulling back, and then he was gone, heading off into the darkness toward the first gallery.

  The castle had been converted to a museum for maritime archaeology, showcasing some of the region’s magnificent relics recovered from a number of major shipwrecks and dredged from the sea floor. Byzantine artifacts, earthen jars, jewelry, and in one room-sized glass case, a reconstructed merchant ship from the twelfth century BCE. Caleb lingered in the first dimly lit gallery, marveling at the treasures plucked from Neptune’s grasp and stored here for years, at a site partially built from the stones of the greatest tomb in the ancient world.

  He wished he still had his ability so he could RV some of these pieces to get a glimpse into the ancient past and see what sort of tragedies had left these relics at the bottom of the sea. But he pressed on, heading toward the section of reliefs that the curator told him were taken directly from the Mausoleum’s ruins in the fifteenth century.

  As he descended another set of stairs, he looked out over a lush garden, and further back he saw a minaret atop a Moslem shrine. He had a moment of stillness, of clarity. He thought of Phoebe and Orlando and could almost see out to the section of Bodrum a half mile away where they must be exploring the ancient foundations of the Mausoleum, looking for visions. And clues.

  He touched the walls, hoping to get a glimpse into the past, anything to part the veil and burst through the blockage erected by his consuming guilt.

  But nothing came, nothing but the empty silence of the dead.

  Phoebe and Orlando were at the site, an open hillside, with flowering shrubs and wild grass peeking out from under the fragments of rounded columns and rows of misshapen blocks layered out over the land as they might have been positioned eight hundred years ago, before the devastating earthquakes. All around the site, apartment buildings scaled the hills like ungainly climbers tethered together by a haphazard network of telephone poles and wires. The blaring of horns and creaking of buses sounded sporadically, and the scent of juniper mixed with exhaust fumes.

  Phoebe let her hand linger on the stones in passing, watching Orlando do the same. “Well,” she said, taking a seat cross-legged in the middle of a set of broken columns. Pulling out a pad of paper, she smiled as Orlando took out his iPad and powered it up. “Let’s see what we can see.”

  Two minutes later she dropped into a trance, tumbled back through the centuries, and opened her eyes to a similar hillside…

  … except for the half-finished monolithic construction, the hundreds of workers-carpenters, sculptors, draftsmen and artisans-all laboring on the Mausoleum.

  Surveying the work from her porch on a raised platform stands a regal woman with olive skin and melancholy eyes. “How long?” she asks the two men working at a table, studying unrolled scrolls depicting the graphical representations and measurements for the construction, including the statues, the columns and the roof. She points to one robed man, the closest. “Satyros?”

  “ Another year, My Queen. The structure may be finished by the Saturnalia, but the sculptors will still be finishing their work. So many statues, the reliefs of the Amazon frieze alone will take years. But rest assured, Leochares will get the job done. And the bas-reliefs presenting the battle of the Centaurs-”

  “ There will be no deviation from my husband’s wishes. Especially regarding the depiction of the centaurs. Or its construction.”

  The other man turns around. His eyes look her over. “How is your health, Lady Artemesia?”

  “ Not your concern,” she responds with a wave, leaning over suddenly and suppressing a cough. “I was strong enough to repel the Rhodians in their attempt to capture Halicarnassus. I will be well enough to see this project finished.” She let her gaze linger on the massive columns, the second tier poised and prepared for the lifting of the roof and the immense golden chariot that would in time house their statues.

  “ Soon, My King. Soon, we’ll be together again.”

  Phoebe blinked and slowly let her consciousness return to the shining sunlit present where mundane elements pricked at her senses. The barking of a dog, the blast of a cab’s horn, the ticking of Orlando’s fingers on his iPad. She opened her mouth to call out to him, but saw his eyes, white, the pupils lolling back in his head. His fingers moving rapidly while his lips moved, whispering something unheard.

  “Orlando?”

  Overcome by need and immediacy, the fullness of the experience nearly knocked him over. No matter how many times Orlando had experienced this, it always took his breath away with its suddenness. Its raw power, colliding with his psyche, at the same instance gently gliding over his perceptions…

  In light chain mail, colorful heraldic symbols blazing on their chests, the knights rise up in a victorious cheer. Under the English tower named the Lion, the men roar and taunt the fleeing soldiers of Sultan Mehmed II.

  Cannons smoke and men lean against the walls, dropping their crossbows. Flags wave from the other towers, each one constructed in its own style, and the knights from Italy, Spain, France and Germany cheer each other in repelling this latest offensive. Below, the passages twisting through narrow turns and successfully defended gates bear witness to the strength of this castle’s design. The bodies of the invaders litter courtyards and lie in arrow-pierced piles on the steps.

  The captain surveys the fortifications, then eyes the wounded forces retreating into the descending twilight. “They will return,” he says to his men, then points ahead to the smoking holes blown through sections of the walls by the enemy cannon.

  “ We must thicken the walls facing the mainland. Take a team in the morning. Gather more stones from the Mausoleum.”

  Another flash, and Orlando reeled, reaching out and scraping the flesh of his palm against a greenish-hued stone…

  A different commander, with a Fleur-de-lis on his tunic, stands atop the tallest tower. He speaks in French, but the words are understood through some other means. “Suleiman will try again, and the walls are weakening. Gather more blocks from the ancient site and put them to use.”

  “ There are not many stones left, Grand Master,” says a wide-eyed youth, a knight with blood spatters on his face. “But what of the statues and the reliefs? There are still more that have not been smashed or crushed for lime.
”

  The Grand Master considers the sprawling layout of the Castle’s interior, the blank walls, empty alcoves. “Take them as well. They deserve a place of honor.”

  Orlando half-emerged from the vision, clinging to it just barely, straddling this world and the other, as he reached for the iPad.

  Phoebe moved closer, crawling on her good leg, moving around his side to watch. She put a finger to her lips, stifled a gasp, and stared as he drew a chaotic battle scene-what looked like half-men, half-horse creatures savagely attacking townspeople, and getting more than a little amorous with the women.

  Just then, her cell phone rang. She flipped it open.

  Caleb’s voice. “Phoebe. I’m no good up here. Nothing. I’m not seeing anything.”

  “Don’t worry, we’ve got it covered.” She studied the rendition. “Hey, is there some kind of wall carving there? Mythological? With centaurs?”

  “Yeah, on a wall in the French section. Hang on, just walked by it.”

  “I saw something, and it looks like Orlando’s drawing the same thing right now. He’s still in a trance.”

  “Okay, I’m looking at it now, but I don’t see anything obvious. Tried touching it, hoped for a vision, but got nothing. Not even a daydream.”

  “What I don’t know is what it means. Why the centaur?”

  Caleb took a moment to respond. “The battle symbolized nature versus civilization. Lapithe and Centaures were twin sons of the god Apollo. Centaures was born deformed and later mated with mares, creating half-human, half-horse hybrids. This scene shows a legendary battle between the brothers’ descendents, all started over some alcohol abuse at a wedding.”

  “Why would that have anything to do with the Books of Thoth, and those keys?”

  “I don’t know, but it might fit-in the sense of reconciling man’s nature, both sides of what we’re seeking here: the raw physicality of what we’ve become versus our psychic potential. This scene represents the conflict and the overthrow of one by the other.”

  “Whatever, but we still need to know where the key is. Maybe Orlando can figure it out.”

  “He’d better draw fast.”

  “Why?”

  “I don’t think I’m alone in here.”

  Caleb had been kneeling in front of the marble carving of the classic Greek scene, the battle of the Centaurs and the Lapiths, when he heard something. Two heavy scansions and a thick rope set off the ancient artwork from the walkway, but Caleb had stepped over it to scrutinize the carvings more intently. Pulling his fingers away from the most prominent centaur, he snapped the phone shut and backed away toward the northeast corner of the room.

  He had heard a step, a scuff, someone trying to be stealthy. He ducked around a corner, into another room with a red coat of arms hanging on the wall and a glass case full of spearheads, axes and maces discovered in a Phoenician wreck. There was one exit straight ahead, which he kept an eye on as he opened the phone and called Agent Wagner.

  “Renee here,” she answered. “What did you find?”

  Whispering, he said, “Not sure yet, but-are any of your people inside?”

  “No, why?”

  A shadow flitted across the light in the doorway. “Have them look in on my location. I think I’m being tracked. Someone’s here.”

  Caleb backed further into the shadows while keeping a clear view of the corridor.

  “Nothing, Caleb. My snipers aren’t seeing a thing, and I’m tracking you with the GPS signal on your phone. We can see you in that room through the western window.

  “There’s someone in the hallway behind me.”

  “Impossible.”

  “Maybe someone hid during the evacuation, or there’s a secret passage or something. Someone waiting for me. Maybe it’s him.” Or worse, Caleb thought. It’s Nina, and I’m as good as dead.

  “Okay, listen Caleb. If you think you can chance it, run through the other door and keep running. It’s a long hallway, but with a lot of windows, and-”

  Another sound, and a silhouette filled the doorway.

  Caleb hoped Renee knew what she was doing. He snapped the phone shut, ducked his head and started to run for the door-just as a dark figure eased into the room before him.

  Caleb froze, raising his hands, still holding the cell phone. Completely covered in black like a ninja, the intruder glided toward him. It said something incomprehensible from under a black facemask and then did a strange thing. It stopped, and bowed.

  Caleb didn’t know how to react. Should he run, laugh or return his bow? Instead, he shifted a foot to his right, concealing the scansion behind his back.

  When the stranger’s head raised, his gloved hands rose, and were now holding long curved daggers.

  Caleb reached behind him, gripping the cool metal. “Wait, let’s talk a sec.”

  The attacker leapt. Caleb ducked and spun around, hauling the heavy scansion up with him and taking his unaware foe in the chest.

  A dagger dropped as he grunted, fell, but then sprang right back up. Only two feet away, the dagger beckoned within Caleb’s reach as he let go of the scansion, but he had already made his move toward the door and the long passage.

  He ducked and lunged forward, just as something clanged off the granite wall where his head had just been. Then he was sprinting, weaving slightly side to side. Panting, passing each window and getting a glimpse of the towers and walls, the trees, the hills.

  Come on, somebody take a shot.

  The footsteps behind him were gaining. Maybe preparing another knife for the back of his head. Caleb crossed in front of another window, the last one before the next doorway and a steep winding staircase inside the German tower.

  He lunged like an Olympic sprinter at the finish line just as he heard the distant pop and, as he skidded into the tower, angling for the stairs, he heard a grunt and a flopping sound.

  Behind him, his pursuer was down, his mask half-blown off, brains and bits of skull obscuring what was left of his face.

  Caleb turned, biting his hand and wheezing for breath. He reached for the cell phone, flicked it open. “Good shot,” he said when he finally found his breath. “Thanks.”

  “That’s it. We’re getting you out of there. Sit tight, there may be more.”

  He glanced out the windows where he half-expected to see the Sultan and half the Moslem army massed at the front gate. “I’ll be back in the Centaur room. Give me cover and another ten minutes.”

  “It’s not safe, we have to-”

  He hung up, then was about to redial Phoebe when he saw something on the assassin’s neck, above the collar and the torn mask: a gold tattoo that looked like a trident, except with nine flowing things attached to the staff. Frowning, Caleb stared at the configuration for a moment before positioning his phone, pressing the camera function, lining up the shot and taking a picture.

  He stood up, then called Phoebe as he stepped over the body and headed back down the hallway. “Sis?”

  “Yeah, you okay? Feared we lost you there.”

  “I’ll be better if you tell me you’ve got something.”

  “About the centaurs? Hang on.”

  He kept walking, past the windows where now he saw agents converging, running over the ramparts, seeking out hiding places, working their way toward him.

  “Big brother?”

  “Yeah?” He entered the room and stepped back to the bas-relief of the Centauromachy.

  “Orlando’s just coming out of it, and-what? Ah, all right, here.”

  “Hey, boss. You there?”

  “Yeah, Orlando, but as I said before, I’m not your boss.”

  “You pay me for this gig, so that makes you a boss in my book.”

  “Then I’m going to fire you if you don’t tell me what you saw.”

  “Okay, do you see the main centaur, the big one raising his arms?”

  “Yep.”

  “Is the head still intact?”

  “Yes, but not all of the body. Rear legs are b
roken off.”

  “Not a problem. I think you’re good to go. See his right horn?”

  “Yes.” Caleb moved in closer and stared. It was slightly larger than the left, about the width of two fingers, and maybe six inches in length. But it was a little darker, greener than its mate, as if the sculptor had used a different material, something only noticeable up close. “Wait, this frieze was originally on the second tier, rather high up if I recall. Even if visitors came to admire it, they’d need a ladder to see the discoloration.”

  Orlando coughed. “You need to trust me here.”

  “Go on.”

  “Twist the horn clockwise; it should release.”

  Footsteps approached, agents with submachine guns drawn, coming from both entrances. Caleb moved quickly, turning the horn, which at first refused to budge. But then it gave, turned and screwed off. Caleb turned it upside down, looked into the hollow space inside. He held the phone between his ear and his shoulder, then tapped the horn against his palm.

  “Is the key in there?” Orlando asked.

  Agent Wagner came to a skidding halt, leading two agents from the eastern passage. She held a gun with both hands and wore a bullet-proof vest. “You find it?”

  Caleb showed her his palm, which held only a single rolled up piece of paper. He tugged at the edge and flattened it out. Then his heart sunk, along with his hopes to save Alexander, as he saw the words written there in fresh red ink.

  No prize for second place.

  10

  “They were here,” Caleb told her. “We missed them.”

  Renee holstered her gun, a black Walther. 45 with a walnut grip, a weapon Caleb had noticed earlier and thought was a little flashy for an FBI agent. “So,” she said, “Montross managed to do in minutes what Alexander the Great failed to do all his life?”

  Caleb offered a weak smile. “The Great Conqueror didn’t have our gifts.” Well, at least Phoebe and Orlando still have access to those gifts.