by Robert Adams
Of
Chiefs and Champions
Robert Adams
PROLOGUE
Arsen Ademian was not in the least superstitious. Old tombs and dead bodies held no terrors for him: if he had lived and fought in proximity to too many corpses to consider them anything more than what they were—dead meat, sometimes stinky, but in no way harmful to the living. Therefore, he felt none of the atavistic terror that Simon Delahaye had experienced on his own descent down the stone steps of the ancient crypt.
The smoky fire sputtering on one of the steps gave precious little light to the interior below, but errant beams of sunlight which filtered through the trees above and about the glade also entered the doorway. Although he could see no other people down below, Arsen still stalked down the steps with light, cautious tread, the big knife he had taken from off the shaggy, smelly man held close by his right hip, as they had taught him in the Corps, pointed forward, its sharpened edge up, ready to either stab or lunge or slash at any surprise attacker.
Edging around the opened, coffin-sized silvery chest at the foot of the steps, Arsen meticulously reconnoitered the whole of the crypt before returning to examine the unusual find more thoroughly.
Only a brief look inside it told him it was probably not a coffin at all, but neither did it look like anything else he ever before had seen.
It was a bit over six feet long, inside, and closer to seven in outer dimensions. The metal was not silver, it looked and felt to the touch very much like a good grade of aircraft aluminum, but his tentative experiments with the point of the knife left no slightest trace of a scratch upon it, yet it was far too light, he thought, to be stainless steel.
"Alloy of some kind," he muttered to himself. "But the big question isn't what it's made out of, but what the hell it is and what it's doing down here in a goddam old tomb."
A sheathed broadsword caught his eye, so he laid the knife within easy reach, took the sword from its case, and hefted it. "Hmm, looks like a real damascus blade and all, but it's no better balanced than any of the one or two others I've gotten my hands on recently. A good foil or epee fencer with a modern sword would skewer anybody armed with a thing like this, and that damned quick, too."
The next item he took from the silvery casket was a foot-and-a-half-long wheel-lock pistol. Holding it up in a beam of sunlight, he could see that the thing was spanned, the spring wound down tight, so it probably was loaded, though he could find no powder flask or bullet box or even the spanner for it among the jumble of things in one end of the casket. Nonetheless, he laid the pistol beside the big knife; one shot was better than none, and if that one missed, well, the ball-butt would make a damned good skull-cracking club.
He found a suede bag of silver coins of two sizes, a smaller bag of assorted-sized gold coins, and a third bag of what looked to him like large, square wafers of glass with tiny wires poking out of them.
There was a dirk that was better balanced to his hand than the big knife, so he replaced the one with the other. There were a pair of matching daggers, shorter than either dirk or knife, double-edged, thin-bladed, deadly-looking things. There were also a half-dozen other knives of varying sizes and shapes.
When everything loose he could see was out of the case, Arsen began to feel about in the interior to find anything he might have overlooked in the uncertain light. Probing up near the opposite end from where the artifacts had been stacked when he came down, his fingertip struck something which went click, and then a whirring sound commenced. When it had ended, there was a soft, greenish-white glow emanating from both outside and inside the long casket, and he noted that the interior lining had somehow rearranged itself so that it now looked like the mold for the body of a slender man of average height, no bigger or smaller, seemingly, than he.
While he watched, staring in silent wonder, the casket arose from its place on the stone floor, rose lightly until its highest edge was a bit below his waist height, then stopped. Then the voice began speaking.
It took him a moment of confusion to realize that the voice was not really an audible sound, that whatever it was was not speaking words to him but was projecting—somehow—thoughts into his head. He stood shaking, terrified, yet piqued, intrigued, at the same time.
Then, putting himself in order, taking a few deep breaths, exerting the self-control he had worked for so long and hard to acquire, he began to really "listen," to comprehend just what the whatever-it-was was "saying."
It required his every ounce of available self-discipline and courage, but he did it. After tucking one of the thin daggers into his belt for insurance, he climbed into the casket and laid his body down, fitting perfectly into the hollows of the padding. He gulped when the lid descended and clicked on closing, but his frantic shriek did not come until he felt a cold, hard thing suddenly come from somewhere to encase the top of his head down to eyebrow level. And then, for all he could ever recall of it, he must have lost consciousness of pure terror.
In the glade, out of sight of the gaping maw of the ancient tomb, John the Greek had trussed up the shaggy, smelly stranger with his own and said stranger's belts. Arsen had demonstrated an ability to protect himself and John from the stranger's attempted assault, but John knew damned well that he could not do anything remotely similar, for while Arsen had been learning such practices in Marine boot camp and in the living hell of the war in Vietnam, John had been learning more peaceful, money-making pursuits in dental school.
No sooner had he gotten the still-unconscious, raggedy man fully tied than others of the party began to wander from out the brushy woodland.
Al and Haigh were the first. The eyes of both were wide with fear and their faces were white as fresh yogurt but with a bit of a greenish tinge, too. John knew exactly how the two younger men must feel, he figured.
"John," said Haigh Panoshian, in a hushed but very intense tone, "where the fuck are we, man? How'd we get here . . . wherever 'here' is? Goddam you, you Greek prick, tell me!" He almost screamed the last two demanding words.
A voice from somewhere nearby and unseen in the deciduous woods shouted something in what sounded to John like Arabic and French mixed, those words he could pick out being incredibly obscene. Shortly, the speaker, still spouting foul utterances in both tongues, stumbled from out the woods, tripping over the mossy root of an oak and making his arrival in the clearing chin and hands first, which occurrence brought forth a fresh spate of foreign obscenities, crudities, and blasphemies.
When he had at last gotten all of the dirt, dead-leaf bits, and chips of bark spat out of his mouth, Mike Sikeena savagely kicked the root that had tripped him with one heel, snarling, "Cochon! Ibn al-Kalb! Motherfucking asshole-sucker!"
The short, solid young man looked so comical sitting there on the damp loam on one thigh and buttock that John could not, despite everything, repress a grin and the comment, "A long name and, I must say, very unusual, buddy; I'm John the Greek."
"Very fucking funny, you pogue-hunting bastard," Sikeena snapped. "How the fuck did we get out of that castle and out here in the damn boonies, anyhow, huh?"
"Yeah, John," said Al Ademian, "and where the hell're the rest of us? Uncle Rupen and Arsen and the girls?"
John shook his head. "Rupen I haven't seen here. The girls, well, Arsen and I heard them shrieking somewhere in the woods a few minutes ago. Arsen went over to see what's in that stone hut there." He waved over his shoulder at the tomb squatting in the random patches of sunlight and shade. "That was just after this fucker here on the ground tried to brain us with thishere shillelagh or whatever it is. But Arsen put him down for the count. Christ, I never thought I'd ever see him and his beer gut move that fast."
Sikeena shrugged. "Shit, he
useta be a Marine, man. What you expect? The Corps teaches you how to take care of yourself, you know."
"What's taking Arsen so long, John?" queried Al. "When did he go over to that hootch, anyway? Maybe we should oughta go help him, you know."
"Christ on a crutch!" snapped John, after a brief glance at his expensive gold wristwatch. "He hasn't been gone five minutes. He can look out for himself if any of us can, and besides, he had a great big knife he took off this fucker here, too." He pointed a shoetoe at the sizable now-empty sheath still fastened to the belt securing the man's ankles.
Haigh was beginning to come out of his funk, hearing the familiar, crude exchanges of his fellow band members, most of whom had always taken great, childish delight in picking at and needling each other, sometimes to the point of actual fisticuffs.
"Hey," he put in, "where're Greg Sinclair and Mikey? Reckon somebody oughta go back in the woods and look for them? The girls, too?"
"Thank you, Haigh, but that won't be necessary." John recognized the voice emanating from out of the nearer woods as that of Rose Yacubian, but it sounded tight, strained, almost on the point of hysteria. "And why the hell not?" he thought. "This kinda fucking shit's enough to put any-fucking-body over the edge. Damn, I've been hanging around with these Armenian jarheads too long. I'm even beginning to think in dirty words, just like they talk all the fucking—there I go again, dammit—time."
Arsen just lay in the casket for long minutes after the metal cap had left his head and been drawn back into its recess. He now knew exactly what the casket was, how to use it, and how to use most of the items it had contained. He knew, now, that he could be back in his own time and world at any time he wished. "How 'bout right now?" he thought gleefully, then stopped with a finger poised at the control mounted in the lid above him. "But what about the rest of them? This carrier will only work for one person, the instructor said; for more than the operator, you need a Class Seven projector, and I don't recall having seen one around here, though I will look again, in a minute."
"Sweet Christ, I'm lying here thinking to myself pure science fiction crap. But it's real, I know it is, it's got to be, 'cause there's just no other fucking explanation that fits as good as this does. Unless . . . unless I've flipped my fucking gourd and imagined everything. Well, there's one surefire way to prove whether it's true or I'm nuts."
Kogh Ademian, Sr., President and Chairman of the Board of the far-flung conglomerate that Ademian Enterprises had become since the immigrant blacksmith Vasil Ademian had founded it in the depths of the Great Depression, had taken to working late—very late, sometimes all night—at his office since the mysterious and still-unexplained disappearance of his eldest son, his elder brother, and assorted other relatives some seven months before. Working himself into a stupor, keeping going on copious quantities of ouzo and one Havana puro after another, was just better than trying to have any peace and quiet at home anymore, where his wife could suddenly go into a screaming tizzy at the drop of a hat and start throwing things, clawing at his face and demanding that he find out what had happened to their son or else she would kill him and/or herself.
He had had to regretfully cold-cock the woman he still loved after all these years more than once in pure self-protection, and that pained him; his brother-in-law, Dr. Boghos Panoshian, was of the opinion that she should be placed in a private psychiatric facility and had recommended a few, and such thoughts pained Kogh even more, though as her fits became more frequent and more violent, he was beginning to seriously consider the well-meant suggestions.
He, too, wanted to know what had happened to Arsen and the rest, particularly Brother Rupen Ademian, but he had pulled every string he could—and that was quite a number, some of them reaching up into the very highest echelons of the United States Government and not a few other governments, worldwide, as well as governments in exile, intelligence groups, terrorist organizations, underground political parties, and even organized crime—and, seemingly, no one had any knowledge of how or why or where the missing men and women had been snatched or by whom. Not a one of their bodies or any of their effects had ever shown up anywhere; moreover, there had been not one demand for money or any other kind of ransom.
He was finally convinced, however, that the group of Iranians for whom the amateur Middle Eastern band and dancers had been performing at the time they had disappeared really were innocent. He was now convinced because certain men in his employ had spirited off some of those foreign professionals and subjected them to some highly illegal methods of interrogation, giving them the impression during their confinements and travails that their captors and interrogators were members of the dreaded Iranian secret police, SAVAK, and convincing them that they and their families would be killed in most unpleasant ways did they report their kidnappings, imprisonments, interrogations, or tortures.
Most recently, he had hired a guy from down in Richmond that had done some odd jobs for the Ademians in the past to try his hand at finding them. When Kogh first had met the man, years back, he had called himself Seraphino "the snake" Mineo; later, when the man had worked for Boghos as a chauffeur-cum-mechanic-cum-bodyguard-cum-whoknowswhatelse, he'd had a long Guinea name, Anonimo Betcha-something-or-other, that Brother Rupen had said once meant Nameless Sniper. Now he ran a private investigations and security company and called himself Sam Vanga. Knowing full well that Kogh had the bread, he had demanded and gotten a hefty retainer, but it and double or triple it would be worth it if he could turn up anything relating to Arsen and Rupen and the rest.
When Kogh had relit his puro, he picked up the lead-crystal old-fashioned glass and sipped at the pale-bluish liquid. Making a face, he leaned over and spat the watery stuff into his trashcan, shoved back his chair, and crossed to the bar for more ice and ouzo, thinking as he built another ouzo on the rocks.
"Christ, I'm getting as bad as Papa with my cigars and ouzo. He smoked those godawful-stinking Egyptian cigarettes, yeah, but it's just the same thing, really. That damn Boghos kept riding Papa's ass too, swore the old man was going to die of alcoholism or lung cancer or something godawful long before his time if he didn't stop smoking at all and switch from ouzo to water or milk, for chrissakes. Papa, he'd thank him for his concern, sound just as sincere as hell, and go right back to what he did all along, remarking if any of us said anything to back Boghos up that what he said might well apply to English people—which was what he always called white Americans—or Negros or maybe even Greeks, but that Armenians were of a far tougher stock than that."
"Well," Kogh chuckled to himself, "Papa sure as hell showed that damned Boghos a thing or two. That seventy-fifth-birthday blast we had for him at the old farm ran for four days and he ate and drank and danced and smoked for close to twenty hours a day every damn one of those days, too. It wasn't until a week later, when he was helping a traveling farrier shoe the Connemara pony, that he remarked that he thought he'd pulled something in his left arm and walked back up to the house and when I paid the farrier and walked up there myself, Papa was sitting in his easy chair, dead, with a glass of ouzo beside him. Hell, it's just like I told Rupen and Bagrat at the funeral: If you can't check out in the saddle, that's the way to go, just like Papa went."
"Now, Boghos is picking on me, just like he did on Papa. He keeps saying I gotta stop drinking ouzo or anything else, throw away the cigars and the roast lamb, and steaks, and pilaf and kibbe and any damned thing that tastes good, gotta live on nothing but plain salads and broiled fish and dry chicken meat and skim milk—eechh!—the way he and Mariya do. Fucking fuckheaded fucker!"
He turned from the bar, and the just-filled glass slipped from his hand unnoticed, to land on the thick carpet and splash its contents all over the leg of his trousers and his shiny shoes. All that he could look at was the shiny box with rounded corners and emitting a pale-greenish glow that had, within the few seconds he had been busy at the bar, appeared between him and his desk.
Greg Sinclair came out of the forest slowly,
half leading, half carrying chubby Mike Vranian, the side of whose head was crusted over with dried blood, the freckles all showing up prominently on his wan face.
"What the hell . . . ?" began John.
Greg explained as best he could. "All I know is, we was both asleep in two different rooms up in that castle we were in and then, bang, some bastard dropped me down on the hard ground in a whole pile of wet, smelly, half-rotted leaves and acorns and all. But I guess I come off better than poor Mike here—he landed right at the foot of a goddam big tree and busted the side of his head on a fucking root thicker than my thigh. What the hell you reckon that old white-headed fucker of an archbishop did us like this for, huh?"
John headed for the pair, but Lisa Peters got there first. "Lay him down . . . carefully, you idiot!" she ordered Greg in a no-nonsense tone that he could not recall having ever before heard from the tall, blond, lovely belly dancer. Heedless of the new and older blood, she examined the side of his head with light fingertips, nodded, then peeled back his eyelids and looked as fully as she could into his nostrils and ear canals.
Her examination completed, she rocked back onto her heels and said, "His skull isn't fractured, anyway, thank God. I don't doubt he's got a concussion, but how bad, how it will affect him, only time can tell . . . here. I don't know what we can do for him except to try to keep him still and warm and reasonably comfortable. We don't even have any analgesics, or water, for that matter."
Suddenly, Al and Haigh shouted as one, "Hey, there comes Arsen!"
Kogh Ademian, Sr., sat in his padded leather swivel chair behind his big custom-made zebrawood desk, clasping and unclasping his big hands in helpless frustration, staring across the desk at his long-missing son, Arsen David Ademian. At length, he spoke.
"Arsen, I . . . I don't understand what you've told me . . . any of it. And if I don't understand, how am I going to try to explain it all to your mother . . . and the others? Goddammit, son, tell me what the fuck to tell your mother! She's damned near fucking insane, worrying about you non-fucking-stop for seven fucking months, no exaggeration. Arsen, Boghos thinks I ought to have your mother committed, for Christ's sake, before she fucking kills herself or me."