by Alex Archer
“Like what?”
“When he finds something like this, he gets consumed.”
“An artifact, you mean?”
“Yes.”
“Like the sword?”
Garin nodded.
“What’s so special about the painting?” Annja asked.
“It contains a map.”
“To what?” Annja asked.
Garin shook his head. “I don’t know. Roux has never told me.” He paused. “That alone tells me how powerful whatever he’s looking for is.”
“It has the power to change the world,” Charlie said. “He mustn’t be allowed to possess it. It’s going to provide a temptation like he’s never before dealt with. Not even in his long years.”
Annja looked at the old man for a moment, and Garin could see that she was troubled by what Charlie said. She was still new to the oddness in the world that Roux drew to him. And he realized the sword probably attracted it, as well.
“If I get dressed,” Annja asked, “can you get us a plane to Istanbul?”
Garin nodded. “I’ve got one standing by.”
“How soon can we leave?”
“Let me make a phone call and we can be cleared for takeoff as soon as we arrive there,” Garin said.
The sword faded from Annja’s hand, and she turned back to the bedroom. “Let’s do that.”
* * * *
Salome sat in the bar across the street from the hotel where Drake’s private security team had trailed Annja Creed when she’d abandoned her loft the previous night. Frustration chafed at her, and she hated the fact that she was trapped and unable to act.
Drake, however, sat like a statue and looked as though he could sit there for days.
It was a skill, Salome knew. She’d learned it, as well, but it had been a reluctant skill and she still didn’t enjoy employing it. However, breaking into the hotel wasn’t an option because the security was too good. Drake had assured her they could work something out in less than twenty-four hours. If they had to. That was one of the last plans Drake wanted to put into action.
But sitting there was hard. Especially after they’d seen Garin Braden arrive almost an hour ago. Something was going on.
Drake’s head turned toward Salome. “Annja Creed and Garin Braden are leaving the hotel.”
Excitement flared within Salome. It was early in the morning, too early for movement to be a casual thing. She reached up and turned her earpiece back on. Listening to monosyllabic chatter among Drake’s troops was in no way entertaining, and it got on her nerves.
She listened to the men work through the containment structure Drake had established. Annja and Garin were in the hotel lobby. When the men inside the hotel announced their departure from the hotel’s interior, Salome saw the three of them emerge from the hotel.
She still couldn’t figure out what the old man had to do with anything. Drake’s team had taken the old man’s picture, but none of their research had thus far indicated any possibilities of identification. Their sources within the NYPD indicated that the police were coming up against the same thing.
“What do you want to do?” Drake asked.
Salome was torn. She was tempted to allow Garin Braden and Annja Creed to go wherever they were going and follow them. But the city was large and there were too many variables. If Drake hadn’t been able to put someone on Annja Creed as soon as she got off the flight from Prague, they might not have her now. The hotel security would have protected her.
A valet brought around a luxury car.
“The car’s armored, love,” Drake said.
Salome had suspected that. The car sat lower than it should have due to the extra weight, and she knew Garin wasn’t one to drive around unprotected.
“If we don’t take them now,” Drake said in an almost conversational tone, “it will be harder once they’re under way.”
Salome stood up from the table and reached into her handbag for the pistol that she carried. Getting armament was no problem for Drake. All of them had weapons permits.
“All right,” she said as she headed for the door. “Take them.”
34
“Annja, get in the car.”
Even before Garin’s growled command reached her ears, Annja knew something was wrong. Too many people, too many vehicles, converged on the front of the hotel at one time.
Garin shoved Charlie into the backseat, then slid behind the steering wheel himself.
Annja stood at the passenger’s side with the door open. She held her backpack by the straps in one hand. A van bore down on the front of Garin’s car.
“Annja,” Garin called urgently.
Immediately, Annja dropped the backpack on the floorboard in front of her seat and slid into the car. The van grew closer.
A man with an assault rifle leaned out of the van’s passenger’s window.
The hotel valet staff scattered and ran back inside the building.
“Are the windows bulletproof?” Annja asked.
“Yes. Why?” Garin asked.
“Because they need to be.”
The assault rifle suddenly danced in the man’s hands as muzzle-flashes lit up the man’s dark features. The bullets turned out to be a decent grouping over Garin’s side of the windshield. The glass spiderwebbed, but it held.
Annja let out a tense breath.
“Hold on,” Garin ordered. “He’s going to ram us.” Smoothly, he shifted the gear selector into Reverse and the transmission bucked.
Then the van met the luxury car head-on. Annja braced herself, one hand gripping the handle above her head and the other on the dashboard in front of her. The impact rocked the luxury car, but Garin maintained his grip on the steering wheel and kept backing up. The van’s momentum added to the car’s velocity.
The air bags deployed with thunderous booms and filled the interior of the car with the scent of gunpowder. Incredible force slammed into Annja’s chest and knocked the breath from her lungs. The air bag shoved her against the seat, but she fought against it.
Almost immediately, Garin had a knife in his fist. He thrust once into his air bag, then the one holding Annja. Both deflated.
Gratefully, Annja sucked in a deep breath.
Garin cursed as a delivery truck rocketed along the street at the rear of the car. Annja understood immediately that the second car was supposed to strike the rear of their vehicle and pin them against the raised wall in front of the hotel.
Garin stomped the brakes and shifted gears again. The car jumped as the tires fought for traction on the pavement. Shrieks of tortured rubber filled Annja’s ears, and the acrid burning stench stabbed her nose.
The delivery truck clipped the back end of Garin’s car and sped behind. Even though it missed smashing them into the raised embankment, the van tore across the back bumper and effectively boxed them in.
Garin cursed again, shifted gears to try to go backward but couldn’t. The tires whined against the movement as they spun without gripping.
Calmly, though she knew she had to hurry, Annja twisted and pulled up the door lock. She yanked on the lever and shoved the door open with her shoulder. By the time she slid out of the car, she had the sword in her hand.
“Annja!” Garin cried. “No!”
Ignoring the call, Annja ran to the back of the Mercedes while staying low. A man thrust an assault rifle through the window and fired at her. Bullets skipped across the Mercedes’s trunk.
In three quick strides, Annja was behind the delivery truck. When she glanced back at the side of the truck, she noticed the shadow of a man coming toward her position from the vehicle’s side. The man was unmindful of the streetlight behind him.
At the same time, a strong arm reached from under the canvas covering the rear deck section of the delivery truck. The arm closed around Annja’s neck before she knew it and lifted her off the ground. Annja acted out of instinct, curling her body around and planting both knees into where she judged the man’s face was.
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The man crumpled and went down. He dropped Annja unceremoniously as he staggered back.
Annja twisted and landed on her outstretched left hand and both feet. She dropped the sword. Movement sounded above her. When she looked up, she spotted a rifle barrel poking through the canvas.
She reached for the sword without looking. Even though she didn’t know where she’d lost it, it materialized in her hand. With a quick push, she gained her feet and brought the sword around in a vicious arc that sliced through the rifle barrel at the time the man fired his weapon.
The rifle blew apart in the man’s hands, and he fell back screaming. Three other men bailed from the back of the truck.
At full speed Annja swept the sword around and knocked rifles from two of the men’s hands. Still in motion, she pivoted on her left foot and drove her right foot into the face of the third man as he tried to aim his weapon. He flew from his feet and thudded against the truck.
The man on the passenger’s side of the truck arrived faster than Annja was prepared to deal with. He had his rifle up and grinned, knowing she was aware she was done.
Then two quick cracks sounded and the man’s head exploded. As the man dropped, Annja glanced back at Garin and saw him leaning from the open door.
“Hurry!” he yelled.
One of the men reached for his weapon. Annja caught him by the collar of his coat and rammed him into the truck’s bumper. Unconscious, he dropped at her feet. She backhanded the remaining man hard enough to dislocate his jaw and whip his head around. He toppled without a sound.
She ran to the front of the truck, caught the pistol the driver thrust through the window and wrenched. The pistol dropped away as the man screamed in pain.
Still holding on to the man, Annja popped the door open, then released her hold on her opponent’s arm and yanked him out of the truck cab. With a leap, she pulled herself into the vehicle. The controls were familiar to her. She’d driven big trucks while at various digs.
After cranking the engine over and listening to it catch, she put the transmission in Reverse, shoved down on the accelerator and released the clutch. The truck bucked and rolled backward. She stopped it as soon as it cleared Garin’s car.
Garin raced the luxury sedan out from the hotel driveway. He slid to a tire-eating halt in the middle of the street. Traffic going both ways had halted.
The van tried to follow Garin. Annja shoved the transmission into first and powered forward. She hit the van and muscled it into the raised flower bed.
Other men raced on foot across the street. Garin pulled a machine pistol from under the car seat and sprayed the advancing troop. The line broke as the attackers took cover.
Another group of men fired at Annja. The truck’s windshield vanished in a deluge of broken glass. Chunks of the square-cut safety glass peppered her back as she slid out the door. She ran for the sedan.
The front passenger’s door was on the other side. She threw herself across the hood in a baseball slide and dropped to the street. Her hiking books thudded against the pavement. Headlights from the stalled cars played over her.
I hope there aren’t any photographers out there, she thought as she pushed herself up and toward the open door. Denying participation in a running gun battle in Brooklyn was hard to do. Especially if there were pictures or video footage. She’d learned that from experience.
She slid into the seat and closed the door. Bullets hammered the glass, spiderwebbing it, and beat a tattoo on the metal door.
Garin didn’t wait for her to fasten the seat belt. He applied his foot heavily to the accelerator and shot through the stalled traffic.
Annja looked over her shoulder and spotted a car racing after them. “There’s a car.”
“I see it.” Garin was calm. “It’ll be taken care of. I have to admit, the attack at the hotel was unexpected. Since no one had bothered you, I thought we might get out of there uninterrupted.”
“You brought them there,” Annja accused.
“No, I didn’t.”
At that moment a man with a rocket launcher settled over one shoulder stepped forward and took aim. The rocket leaped from the tube and struck the car, turning it into a roiling ball of flame that slammed into the side of an office building.
“If we got lucky,” Garin said, “Salome was in that car.”
“Do you think she was?”
Garin shook his head. “She’s too good to take chances out on the battlefield.” He sped through traffic.
Annja kept watch as Garin sped through the Brooklyn streets. There were no more signs of pursuit.
“How do you know you didn’t bring them with you?” she asked. “You said she was over in the Netherlands with you and Roux.”
“She was. They didn’t have time to arrange an elaborate setup like this since I arrived.” Garin took a hard left and reduced speed. “Remember, your loft had been burgled.”
“You said they didn’t take anything.”
“They were looking for you.” Garin looked at her. “They knew where you were. I’d say they had someone on you as soon as you got back from Prague.”
“And Salome isn’t linked to Saladin?”
“They’re bitter enemies.”
“So we have two groups after us?” Annja asked.
Garin nodded.
Annja sighed. “The more the merrier, I guess.”
“In your endeavors,” Charlie said, “you’re going to find that you have any number of enemies. You’ll certainly have many more enemies than friends who will be drawn to your calling.”
Annja settled in her seat. “Have you and Charlie met before?” she asked Garin.
“No. I thought he was your friend.”
“Not until recently.”
Charlie sat happily in the backseat. “Other than the ambulance the other night, it’s been a long time since I’ve ridden in an automobile. It’s much more exciting than I remembered it being.”
Garin looked at Annja. “You make strange friends.”
“Personally, I think it all started when I met you and Roux,” she said.
35
Annja carried her backpack to the spacious cabin area in the private jet. She took her computer out and hooked it into the aircraft’s communications array.
Charlie appeared utterly thrilled to be on the private jet. Questions flowed out of him, and they were all directed at Garin. Annja was pleased to see how much that annoyed him.
When Charlie mentioned that he was hungry, Garin took him forward to the kitchen and placed the old man in the capable hands of the young female chef he’d hired to cater for the flight.
Garin dropped into a seat beside Annja. “Why are we going to Istanbul?”
“Because Tsoklis wasn’t the only artist who worked on the Nephilim painting.”
“When I left Roux in the Hague, he told me he intended to pursue the forger who made the painting we were chasing,” Garin said.
“Why?”
“Roux said that the forger had to have a source he worked from.”
Annja agreed with that logic. “If the painting was good enough to fool Roux for a time—”
“It was. You should have seen his face when he thought it had been destroyed.” Garin grinned, but Annja knew his heart wasn’t in it. Worry showed in his face.
“Roux never explained the painting to you?”
“No.” Pain flickered in Garin’s black eyes. “He raised me, Annja. He was a father to me in so many ways. But even fathers don’t always tell their sons everything.”
“No parent does,” Charlie agreed. He strode back into the cabin area carrying a large platter filled with food.
Where does he put all that? Annja wondered. Eating that much just doesn’t seem humanly possible.
“Now that we’ve heard from Dr. Charlie,” Garin said disdainfully, “perhaps you’d like to finish what you were saying.”
“If the painting was good enough to fool Roux with all that he knows about it,” Ann
ja said, “then someone else has to know a lot about it.”
“The forger.”
Annja nodded. “Was it an old forgery or a new one?”
“Roux believed it was recent.”
“Why?”
“He didn’t say. I have to assume it was because of the materials involved.”
Annja tried to shrug off the frustration that scratched at her nerves.
“You said there was another artist who worked on the Nephilim painting,” Garin said. “Could he have been the forger?”
“No. His name was Jannis Thomopoulos. He lived about two hundred years after Tsoklis.”
“So?”
“At one point Thomopoulos touched up the Nephilim painting for the man who owned it in Constantinople.”
“Before the city fell?”
“Yes.”
Garin sat back. “Two hundred years later.”
“Two hundred sixteen, to be exact,” Annja said.
“Why did he touch up the painting?”
“Some older paintings required touching up because the materials the artists used didn’t last. A lot of pieces in private collections and museums have been restored. If the original is found, I’d be surprised if it hasn’t been touched up since.”
“So why is it we’re trailing Thomopoulos?” Garin asked.
“He had to have had reference to work from,” Annja said. “I’m hoping that reference might still be in some of his materials.”
“What kind of reference?”
“Sketches.”
“You think Thomopoulos may have made sketches of the original painting?”
“It’s how it’s usually done.” Annja had studied quite a bit about art during her university days, as well as after. Too many archaeological records resided in artwork to ignore it.
“And you know where Thomopoulos’s materials are?”
“I do.”
Garin smiled. “Now, wouldn’t that be interesting?”
“What?”
“If we—not having the original painting—are able to figure out the map before Roux does. And if the answer to the puzzle he’s worried about for hundreds of years was actually there in front of him the whole time.”
Annja frowned and bristled a little. “It wasn’t exactly in front of him. He may not know Thomopoulos was involved—”