by Alex Archer
13
Annja entered her hotel room, opened her laptop and went online. There was an entire page of replies to her uploaded pictures and she scanned through them. Most replies suspected it was an effigy of Baal, but had no proof and hadn’t seen the exact object before. One suggested it was a party favor for one of Hugh Hefner’s blowouts and thought she should try to crack it open to see if a room key fell out.
Not everyone lurking on the loop was helpful or, apparently, sober. Annja had to chuckle at that.
One reply stood out, addressed from Rockford LePlante.
She’d heard that name before. Some kind of Indiana Jones who lived off the land and refused to take money for adventures or movie deals. “Must have a trust fund,” she figured. How else to support a habit of world travel and dangerous adventure?
She read his email.
Miss Creed, it is a pleasure to communicate with you after hearing so much about your adventures, and yes, I admit, I follow your television show whenever I’m near electricity (which isn’t often). The pictures you’ve posted may seem to represent just another bronze statue, but I am especially excited to see an actual photograph of it. So much so, I’d rather not discuss details online. Could you please give me a ring? I’m traveling toward
Pukapuka and will be in and out of cell-phone reception, so do try to make contact today if possible.
The email had been sent six hours earlier. He listed a phone number, which she promptly entered into her cell phone and pushed Send. The call was answered on the second ring with a scatter of static.
“Miss Creed! Wish you would…called…sooner.” Each word was punctuated by horrible static. “—entering dead zone.”
Pukapuka, one of the first islands to be sighted by the Europeans, was a coral atoll in the Pacific Ocean’s Cook Islands. Extremely remote, it was barely more than three kilometers of land area so she wasn’t surprised at the lack of reception.
“Thank you for giving me your number,” she said quickly. “You know about the bronze bull statue I posted online?”
“Ye—” a long buzz indicated he had entered a dead zone, but as quickly sound returned “—won’t believe what’s hidden inside. Or so I believe.”
“Inside the statue? Our connection is awful, Mr. LePlante. Maybe I should call back later?”
“No! —off grid for a month. Take this down. Louis XIII. Austrian princess. Dowry.”
Annja started making notes as his words came through between a scrabble of static. “I got it. Anything else?”
“—idden treasure—uby.”
The line went dead, and she waited but he didn’t return. That was all she would get from Rockford LePlante.
“Have fun in Pukapuka. Wish I was there.” In one of very few places that was still generally untouched by civilization. Though even then the island did have a small air-landing strip.
She tapped the pen on the notepaper. “Louis XIII? And his Austrian princess?” She thought over what she knew about the French king who had ruled in a time when Versailles had been considered the capital of France. The princess Anne of Austria had been daughter of Philip III of Spain. It was a time when Cardinal Richelieu reigned more than the king and musketeers went on daring escapades for the queen.
A hidden treasure? Inside the bronze bull? But what was uby?
She muttered the nonsense word over and over until it came to her. “Ruby. There’s a ruby inside the statue?”
This case suddenly got very interesting.
She had to look up Louis XIII and Anne of Austria. Somehow the bull statue was related to those two, and that LePlante had said princess instead of queen indicted they’d not yet been married.
She slid a finger across the mouse pad when a ninja yell erupted outside on her patio. Annja sat upright on the bed.
The patio door slammed open and suddenly two hands clutched her neck, painfully squeezing her carotid artery. The attacker knew what he was doing. He didn’t need to apply too much pressure for more than five or six seconds, before she would pass out.
She swung her backpack up and managed to clock the attacker in the side of the head. It was enough of a surprise to loosen his grip. With an elbow to his ribs, she gained her freedom, lunged forward to land her palms on the end of the bed and pushed back forcefully, spinning around with a roundhouse that connected with his jaw.
He wobbled, but with a shake of his head, grinned and pulled out a nunchaku. The tiny olive-skinned man with a bad case of acne performed a flashy figure eight with the weapon. Tricks were tricks. And Annja wasn’t about to take a hard oak nunchuck to the side of the head.
He backed her toward the bed. She leaped onto it, which caused the laptop to slide off and land on the floor with a crunch. No time to lament the lost technology as she lured him around the side of the bed, then jumped off the opposite side. As she did, she called the leather-hilted sword to her grip.
A nunchuck whooshed by her ear. Annja swung around, cutting the air and a few inches of hair from her attacker’s stick-straight buzz cut. Using his small stature to his advantage, the attacker ducked and swung out the nunchucks, sweeping low so Annja had to leap to avoid taking them to the side of her knee. He came up holding both sticks in one hand and blocked Annja’s sword with one of them. A good, solid blocking weapon, she decided as the blade reverberated back to the hilt in her hand. She wondered if he was aware the weapon had originated as a farming tool to thresh wheat. He probably didn’t care.
“Who sent you? Why are you here?” she demanded. She immediately guessed César Soto, for reasons she couldn’t quite justify.
Her next swing caught him on the shoulder, slicing cleanly through his loose-fitting leather jacket and spattering blood across the pale bedspread.
The man yelped, yet did not drop out of attack mode. He swung and hit the back of Annja’s thigh with the hard wood as she jumped to the floor.
“Get out of Cádiz!” he cried in Spanish.
“Says who?” She swung up the sword, not under his throat, but instead pressing the tip into the gaping slice in his shoulder. “Tell me who sent you.”
The man rammed his shoulder against the blade. It was such an incredible move, Annja dropped her guard. In that second the nunchuck swung around and hit her against the back of the head. The inertia of the blow spangled stars in her vision. She wobbled, but maintained consciousness. She’d been lucky it was the back of the skull and not her nose or jaw. Sweeping the blade blindly, she managed to block another oncoming blow.
Adrenaline coursed through her system, working to eliminate the blackening effects of the intense hit to her skull. On a high, she dodged the next blow and managed an undercut to the man’s rib cage. This time he gripped the wound and stumbled toward the open patio door. He ran out the doors and, with a kamikaze yell, leaped over the balcony.
She raced to the wrought-iron balcony and saw that he’d landed on the back of a trailer stacked with cardboard cartons of melon. Rolling off onto the street in a clutter of broken cantaloupe, he took off running, leaving a trail of blood-spattered melons in his wake.
“Time to find a new hotel,” Annja muttered, rubbing the back of her head. “And some aspirin. Ouch.”
Swinging out her sword arm, she dismissed the blade back into the otherwhere and went to gather up her things.
* * *
ANNJA SLID ONTO a patio chair at the café across the street from the Hotel Argantonio, which wasn’t far from the museum and the Plaza de Mina. She intended to check in at the hotel, but first wanted to gather her wits about her. Besides, she was hungry after the tussle at the Hotel Blanca. She was gradually moving up in hotel class and stars, which she hoped would deflect further in-room fights with unknown hit men. Powering up the laptop—which wore a new dent on the corner, among many other dents, but which was also no worse for wear—she decided to cybersurf before she completely forgot what Ava Vital had told her earlier.
Sipping coffee while she waited for her meal, she looked
up the bullfight, the final act, in particular.
The faena was a series of passes made before the bull, to square it up in preparation for the kill. To make the kill, the matador thrust the estoque between the bull’s shoulder blades, which must go through to the aorta or heart. The act must be made by charging head-on toward the bull and allowing as close as possible connection to the horns while avoiding getting gored. It was the moment when most matadors did get gored.
A quick, clean death was preferred, and the crowd would let the matador know with boos or seat cushions tossed into the ring if he hadn’t placed the sword well. Placing the sword was called the estocada, as Ava had referred to the act that had killed Diego.
Sometimes, if death was not instant, the matador would perform the descabello with a second blade to sever the spinal cord. Annja had seen that done during the fight yesterday afternoon. If that failed to kill the bull, then the matador’s assistant must move in for the coup de grâce with yet another cut to the spinal cord at the base of the brain.
The bedspread had barely been wrinkled in Diego’s hotel room. Someone not experienced with placing the blade certainly may have struggled with his victim. On the other hand, a professional would have worked quickly and cleanly.
Annja paused to let the idea of an actual matador having killed Diego sink in. Such a man, who would kill for an artifact, would likely already have many artifacts of immense value in his home.
Had it been a business exchange gone bad? Why would the matador kill the delivery person and then not take both artifacts?
“He’d only wanted what was in the wooden crate,” she murmured.
Pressing a palm to the back of her head, she felt the tender bruise, which had started to swell. She was lucky she hadn’t gotten a cracked skull out of the deal.
Her thoughts went immediately to the votive crowns in Manuel Bravo’s sanctuary. They were the right size to fit the crate. Which would make Ava Vital’s assumption correct. But that still didn’t explain why the dancer had it in for El Bravo.
Or how a bull statue possibly containing a valuable treasure was connected to it all. She switched her search to the seventeenth century.
“Louis XIII and Anne of Austria were both fourteen when they were married. Tough luck, kids. I can’t imagine representing a nation so young, and to be forced to the conjugal bed? Ugh.”
Anne’s father, Philip III of Spain, sent along a dowry of jewels and a wardrobe worth half a million crowns.
She searched for more information on the dowry, perhaps a list of its contents, but there was nothing like it online.
Anne of Austria had traveled in a caravan from Spain to Versailles, where her future husband met her. The retinue possibly carried the dowry, but it could also have been sent by an armed guard preceding or following that first ostentatious meeting, Annja decided.
She clicked over to a Rumors of History site and after sorting through the bibliography of seventeenth-century articles was thrilled to find a scanned sketch very similar to the bronze bull. The article had been written by Rockford LePlante himself and stated the bull was merely a delightful ruse, which hid an even greater treasure. Anne’s father, Philip, had enjoyed puzzles and secrets and often had valuable objects made that hid inner workings or treasures. The piece could well have been intended as a gift to King Louis XIII.
The scan was of an old document, so it didn’t look like something LePlante could have drawn in contemporary times, and it was intricate even though the actual statue was rather plain. It indicated an open belly in the bull, which hid something inside. The scan was blurred there, and Annja bit her lip because she couldn’t make out exactly what was inside.
“A ruby?” she wondered.
Her cell phone rang. When she picked up, James Harlow started right in, expressing his surprise she was still in town. He kept saying that, as if she should have left already. Why did everyone want her out of town?
“I’m just trying to help,” she said. “But it’s hard to do that when strange men wielding nunchucks jump me in my hotel room.”
“Are you all right, Annja? Did you call the police? Where are you now?”
“I’m fine, though the back of my head hurts like a mother. I suspect the police wouldn’t be too pleased to hear from me again.”
“Any idea who sent the guy? Did he say?”
“No. Between dodging his weapon and watching him leap over my balcony to make his escape, he didn’t take the time to mention who was behind his visit. I tell you, people have lost all etiquette nowadays.”
“At least you’re not hurt seriously. You aren’t, are you?”
“I’ll survive. But I may need to wear a crash helmet for a while.”
“Ouch, that sounds bad. Did you go to the emergency room?”
“I’m exaggerating. I’ll be fine.”
“Good.” Hardly an empathetic response, more rote, if anything. “Where are you staying?”
Providing that info didn’t feel right. Not to someone who seemed to want her out of town as much as the next guy. “I’m looking for a new hotel at the moment.”
“So no luck on your search?”
“No luck, but a bit of serendipity. I spoke to the woman who tried to kill El Bravo.”
“I’m ever surprised by the circle in which you travel, Annja. How did you manage that meeting?”
“I have my ways. She’s led me to believe Diego Montera’s killer may have been a matador or a man with the skills of a matador. And there’s a certain local matador who has an amazing collection of artifacts displayed in his home.”
“Manuel Bravo,” Harlow said. “I’ve been to his place.”
“I wasn’t aware you two were friends.”
“Acquaintances. A few years ago I was invited to a party and only spoke to him briefly. Did you see the Scythian Baal god he’s got in the main room? You can’t lay your hands on those anymore. He admires the bull as totem as much as I do.”
“You don’t seem too upset the man has a collection of illegal artifacts.”
“That’s only an assumption, which is probably true. But what can I do about it? To speak against a local hero would be insanity. You watch yourself, Annja. El Bravo is loved by everyone. Don’t throw stones unless and until you’ve got facts. Do you have facts?”
“No. And don’t worry, I’ve no intention of accusing the man of anything. Have you had any luck locating possible warehouses where the bronze statue may have passed through?”
“I apologize but I’ve been busy with work.”
“Of course.” Though when she’d been in the museum photographing the Hercules coins, Harlow had spent most of his time walking the museum floor, chatting with patrons, and he tended to take a couple hours for siesta. “Does the name Rockford LePlante mean anything to you?”
The pause on the line indicated yes, so Annja was surprised when Harlow bluffed his way to a no.
“Why do you ask?” he finished.
“It came up while I was doing some research on the statue online.”
“Wait a minute, perhaps I do know about him. Some kind of adventurer, isn’t he? A crazy, live-off-the-fat-of-the-land archaeologist who would rather dance with pygmies than hold a civil conversation.”
“Sounds right.” She was about to mention her phone conversation, but didn’t. The vibe she was getting from Harlow cautioned her, and she always paid attention to her intuition. “It didn’t net any information, but I thought his background was fascinating.”
“Indeed. Though I can tell you more about Jonathan Crockett.”
Annja felt Crockett wasn’t related to the artifact theft and had struck him off her list. Yet Harlow continued to keep him front and center. He was deflecting the conversation from LePlante. That was curious. “Go ahead.”
“I did a deeper search on the internet. The most recent scholarly article he published was in 2002. It’s as if he’d fallen off the earth after that. He left the University of London to go ‘on sabbatical.’ Whi
ch probably means he’d gone through a nasty divorce and was now living it up with a younger woman, had decided dirt-sifting wasn’t for him and was swabbing decks on a luxury cruise line, or he’d gone off the grid and was living with the pygmies in Africa.”
None of which was true. As far as Annja knew.
“Professor Crockett has never been married,” Harlow confirmed, “so we can rule that out as possible means to gain income. Divorce payments are a bitch, coming from someone who knows. He’s been working on small digs around the Cádiz area for at least two years. A few digs were financed by the university in Madrid, which I verified with Roberto Aguirro in acquisitions. Or rather, his assistant, since Aguirro never takes my calls. There are a few digs that don’t list the contributor.”
“That’s not unusual,” Annja said. “I sense Crockett has a ready supply of funds, perhaps a personal fortune.”
Usually operations like this tended to get shady, she’d learned from experience. So why hadn’t she suspected as much during her few days on the dig?
She’d been in the zone. When squatting over freshly dug dirt, trowel in hand and boonie hat shading her eyes from the sweltering rays, Annja Creed left the real world and found her Xanadu. She could pass an entire day without uttering a word to her fellow dig mates, and that day soared by like mere hours. Weeks moved by swiftly, and she always regretted leaving a site, no matter if it had been a successful dig or muddling through broken pottery pieces.
“That’s all I’ve found, Annja. Sorry. It’s been over a decade since Jonathan and I worked alongside each other.”
“Right, Egypt.”
“Yes. I did chance to speak to him once at a fundraiser a few years ago. I found him droll as ever.”
The two men were exact opposites, Crockett being laid-back and seemingly private, while Harlow was the epitome of button-down, yet fiercely protective of his work and the museum. Of course Harlow would find Crockett offensive to his very nature.
“Okay, thanks. One more question. Have you ever had the opportunity to see any Visigothic votive crowns pass through the museum?”