The Crown that Lost its Head: A Historical Mystery Thriller (An Agency of the Ancient Lost & Found Mystery Thriller Book 2)

by Jane Thornley

22

  A bullet pinged at our feet. We dashed under the trees, heading toward the portico while I speed-dialed Sofia. She picked up immediately. “There’s a man on the walls shooting. Security has been breached!” I cried.

  “Where is Barco?” she asked.

  Ilda screamed, stopping to stare at Señor Barco facedown on the tiles. I didn’t need to roll him over to see bullet hole blooming blood under his chest. I felt for a pulse at his neck.

  “Dead,” I said into the phone. “We are heading back.” I grabbed Ilda’s hand and ran.

  Ilda was saying something to me in Spanish and my phone was offering a garbled translation. I thought it said that we couldn’t just leave Barco.

  “He is dead!” I told her. “Señor Barco is gone!”

  Sofia told us to gather in the workroom and await instructions. I patted my pocket even knowing that I’d left my gun on the bed.

  We burst into the hallway of our rooms scanning for infiltrators and security personal alike but how could we even tell the difference? They all work dark clothes. But then I saw one of our original drivers, Luis, running down the hall shouting while my app translated: “Gather your bags and follow me. Where is Señor Barrows?”

  Where was Señor Barrows? I ran to his room and found it empty. Even his bags were gone. Damn. Dashing back to my room, I grabbed my gun and bag. He wouldn’t have left without good reason and the moment I heard the first gunshot, I understood: Evan was at the far end of the hall firing at someone.

  I poked my head out, saw Ilda standing in the workroom doorway, and waved her back. Luis was in the room opposite mine, firing down the hall. He caught sight of me and tried to beckon me to hide while he stepped out with his gun aimed. It was just a second, that moment when he turned toward me yelling, that at the same time I saw Evan struggling with a man while another ran down the hall. I spied a gun aimed straight for Luis and my hand cocked the trigger, aimed, and fired. Just seconds, burned into memory. I watched in shock as the man fell to his knees.

  Luis cried, “¡Buen tiro!” and flashed me a smile before bolting down the hall to help Evan. By the time Ilda and I reached them, one man was trussed like a chicken while the other lay facedown, unmoving.

  Our guard was speaking rapid Spanish, Evan responding in kind.

  “Did I kill him?” I whispered, staring at the man splayed on the tiles.

  Evan slowly stood up nursing his jaw. He glanced at the fallen man. “Looks that way. Luis says you saved his life and that you’re a great shot.”

  “I killed someone!” I cried. “I don’t kill people!”

  But Evan wasn’t listening. He’d taken my arm and was steering me down the hall behind Luis, who had Ilda by the hand. “We have to get out of here. Luis says that Sofia will get a car ready to take us to Granada. But first we have to destroy those computers. They know we’re here.”

  I got his thinking. We entered our workroom only long enough to smash the computers with chairs.

  “They could still access the hard drives, but not easily. Let’s go. Put on your masks.”

  There was no time to talk. We wound through dark corridors and down long hallways decked with tapestries, scuttled along the sides of the old walls while keeping hidden beneath shrubbery. I thought we’d be heading for the carpark but instead Luis unlocked a small side door to the left of one tower and urged us out.

  “To the street?” I whispered.

  “They’d expect us to leave by car,” Evan told me. “Walk slowly.” He said something in Spanish and linked my arm in his. Ahead, Ilda did likewise with Luis, both of them slowing down to a stroll.

  Couples passed us exclaiming at the beautiful fortress with its palm-treed fringe so glorious against the spotlit wall. One group were obviously British tourists. No one gave us a second glance as we strolled the evening like the leisure travelers we weren’t.

  Meanwhile, all I could think of was that I had now killed a man and blinded two others—me. I had crossed a line that day, something I could never undo. Somehow tasering Noel didn’t seem half as bad, maybe because I knew that enemy well.

  We crossed a broad boulevard with no sign of pursuers. At a street corner, Luis paused to look back at the fortress before talking into his phone.

  “Salvi thinks we got away unseen,” Evan said. “He’s renting a car and says the coast is clear.”

  “But how does he know everything is safe?”

  “Run,” he ordered.

  So we ran down cobblestone lanes and along narrow streets until we arrived by a bridge. A little red car sat double-parked on a curb with Salvi wearing a peaked cap and manning the steering wheel. We crammed in, Ilda, Evan, and me in the back, Luis with Salvi up front. Luis passed us a couple of hats.

  I donned the baseball cap and Evan the broad-rimmed number. “Now I look like a battered matador,” he mumbled.

  “They breached security but how?” I asked as soon as we were zipping across the bridge.

  “No idea. I’m afraid they either hacked those computers, we were tracked, or we have a mole.”

  “A mole?” I whispered.

  “Perhaps. Luis and I heard gunshots,” Evan said. “He tapped into the CTC system and learned the bastards had cut the wiring to the central alarm. We were too late to save Señor Barco but thank God you two are all right.”

  “He was a good man,” I whispered. “Maybe my urge to take a walk led to his death?”

  “Stop the self-recrimination, Phoebe.” My name still sounded like “Fweebe.” If you hadn’t gone out, they would have ambushed us in our rooms.”

  “But I killed a man, Evan.”

  “Tell Luis that. He believes you saved his life.”

  So take a life to save a life? Why did that make me feel so depleted? Noel would be laughing at me wherever he was. Maybe I’d killed him, too, and he had really been my first.

  In so many ways I was ill-suited to be a warrior. At that moment, I just wanted to crawl away somewhere and paint pretty pictures and knit for the rest of my days.

  The car drove on for at least twenty minutes with me staring straight ahead, oblivious to the darkened streets zipping away around me. We’d all been sobered by the recent events, heartsick. I gathered from the conversation up front, which Evan summarized, that Señor Barco was a loved and respected member of the team and that the younger men mourned him. They also expressed bitter anger over his senseless killing and cursed the Divinios.

  We wound down into a little town with white stucco houses and blooming bougainvillea. The car pulled into a deserted parking lot and stopped behind a plain white rental van and Luis called for us to move. Out we tumbled, bags slung over our shoulders, and in seconds had transferred into a van. It took a few minutes for me to catch on that Sofia was behind the wheel.

  “I cannot believe this!” she cried. “How did they know you were there?”

  Dressed in leggings and a brown suede jacket with her hair all but hidden under a baseball cap, she was almost unrecognizable. Luis offered to drive but she waved him into the passenger seat while we climbed into the back seat and Salvi into the very back.

  “Is your phone tracked?” Evan asked.

  “Who knows? It is supposed to be secure but what is secure with these bastards?”

  I leaned forward. “Maybe they listened in on our discussion about the possible crown’s location or hacked those computers you thought were secure? Either way, they’re on to us.”

  Sofia swore, my app kindly translating a garble of words. “Maybe yes, maybe no. How do we tell? We must arrive ahead of them!” She slapped the steering wheel with her gloved palm. “They should never have found us! Barco was so careful!”

  She was furious—I got it. Her smooth exterior had cracked under the weight of fury. “We will stop these bastards, I swear we will!” she cried as the van peeled away from the lay-by onto a small paved road, the tires screeching beneath us.

  After a few minutes, she regained her composure and began speaking rapid Spani
sh through her hands-free phone system.

  “She’s calling for reinforcements in Granada and issuing directives to somebody named Raul,” Evan whispered while Ilda dozed on his shoulder.

  “What kind of reinforcements?” I asked.

  “Possibly police or army. I’m not grasping everything. It’s clear that her employer has the cavalry at his fingertips.”

  “Good, because nothing less will help us get that crown,” I remarked.

  After that we drove into the evening without speaking. No one appeared to be on our tail and the night remained dry and clear. But that meant nothing.

  After about an hour and a half, Sofia pulled into a roadside lay-by. Across the parking lot a truck stop convenience store washed a cold fluorescent light across the pavement. Eighteen-wheelers sat parked amid sedans.

  “We stop here. I have brought clothes for changing and wigs—bad wigs. Such a hurry! Please use the back and be quick.”

  We took turns changing in the back of the van, me pulling on a frilly blouse under my jacket complete with an ankle-length skirt. Fearing I looked like a reject from a masquerade, I tossed off the skirt, figuring that with the blond wig and a face mask I’d be unrecognizable. Evan, on the other hand, emerged looking like an eccentric guy from hippie past in a long gray wig and limp linen jacket. Ilda took my full skirt and just looked lovely.

  “Granada is ahead,” Sofia said minutes later as we zoomed down a highway. I stared through the windshield as another illuminated castle complex rose from a forested hill far in the distance. I grabbed Evan’s arm. “Alhambra amid the mountains!”

  “Mountains everywhere in Spain,” Sofia remarked.

  We wove into town minutes later, a mix of old and new with white stucco buildings and terra-cotta-tiled roofs dominating the architecture and the palace complex rising like a golden beacon far above.

  “I have called ahead the chief security officer for Alhambra to say you will spend the night but I have not told him the truth. I said that you are professors from Oxford who ask to sleep in the palace. Evan and Phoebe, you are doctors of history conducting research—married—who wish to capture—how do you say the environment of the place?”

  “The ambience?” I offered.

  “The ambience, yes. I said you are very well connected and pulled many strings. Ilda is your daughter studying Spanish and staying with me.”

  “My daughter? I’d have to have given birth at thirteen years old!”

  “It happens.” She shrugged.

  “And my daughter doesn’t speak English? And, I mean, two supposedly esteemed British professors of something or other suddenly dropping into a Spanish UNESCO World Heritage Site dressed like escapees from a costume party during a pandemic? How unlikely is that?”

  She laughed. “Unlikely? What is more likely—that we hunt for an ancient artifact that a fanatical brotherhood will use to destroy the world?”

  She had me there. I sat back and shut up.

  “However, we hardly look dressed for the part,” Evan pointed out.

  Sofia lifted one hand. “This does not matter,” she said. “In Spain we think the British very strange.”

  After that, he gave up, too. So we were eccentric professors of history who had pulled strings to stay overnight in a Spanish palace. Why not?

  “So, Dr. Barrows, married at last. Are you ready for this?” Evan asked, turning to me. “We can have our honeymoon in Alhambra just like Charles and Isabella.”

  “Yes, with our adult daughter along for the ride. And I’m Dr. McCabe, understand? I refuse to sacrifice my independence,” I told him.

  “And I would never ask you to.” He gave me his lopsided grin.

  Sofia glanced at us in the rearview mirror and shook her head.

  Soon we were driving upward, the lit fortress rising overhead—two round towers at one end, a square structure at the other, and myriad golden stone buildings with arched porticoed walkways and balconies in between, all revealed in spotlit splendor. Yet it was the hexagonal spired watchtower that caught my eye immediately.

  “Look!” I touched Evan’s arm.

  “The same one as in the painting?”

  “I’m sure of it. The crown is hidden in Alhambra!”

  “And all we have to do is find it.”

  “I need to stand in the vantage point where Queen Isabella stood in the Titian painting. Does the interior have the same layout?”

  “The Christian monarchs did not completely destroy the Arabic architecture but it fell into disrepair,” Sofia said. “Much has been restored and still exists, this palace the Moorish poets described as ‘a pearl set among emeralds.’ The architecture was appreciated by the Spanish monarchs, if not the Moorish conquerors.”

  “But there must have been many renovations over the centuries?” Evan asked.

  Sofia sighed. “Yes, of course—a Renaissance addition, parts altered to suit tastes, everything built outward in quadrangles. This is the same site where Christopher Columbus received his royal decree from the first Isabella and King Ferdinand in 1492 but in the Renaissance addition. There were changes, always changes, and Napoleon wrecked the site when he came through. Let us hope we will find this spot. Here we are. We will park and then walk up. This way is more protected. Come.”

  Sofia drove the van onto a grassy patch under tall cypress trees and we tumbled out, stiff from the drive. “Up,” she said, “way up.”

  “Sofia,” I said, touching her arm. “They know we’re here. I can feel it. Someone or something has been spying on us.”

  She frowned. “I know. I have requested reinforcements. Let us pray that they arrive in time.”

  Leaning back my head, my gaze scoured the walls of the imposing fortress, surprised to see that the bricks had an almost reddish cast this close. When I dragged my eyes back down, Sofia was talking to a man who seemed to have appeared from nowhere.

  “Señor Raul Saratoza, meet my good friends,” she began, “Dr. McCabe and Dr. Barrows, professors of history at Oxford, England, and their daughter, Ilda. Ilda has been staying with me while studying Spanish. They will be our guests overnight.”

  The man, balding, about sixty years of age and surprisingly fit, probably from climbing stairs all day, had obviously been dragged into duty at the last minute. It was 11:15 and the complex should have been closed to visitors. He nodded, shrewd eyes glittering above his mask as he said: “Most welcome to Alhambra. We will make you as comfortable as we can.”

  I could just imagine what Saratoza must be thinking. Even as eccentric academics, our attire didn’t cut it, and Evan’s sunglasses couldn’t quite hide the fact that he’d been in a fight. Still, Saratoza gamely played along. He opened an iron gate, deactivated a security system, and then unlocked another door while speaking into his cell phone. Soon Salvi and Luis were carrying our backpacks up a long narrow flight of concrete stairs.

  “I say, but I understand that it was rebuilt over Roman remains in the thirteenth century by an Arab leader who constructed one of the most beautiful royal palaces in the historic world,” Evan said in his most ponderous academic tone. Under ordinary circumstances, it might have been impressive but his lisp and inability to properly pronounce words ruined the effect. “When Ferdinand and Isabella assumed responsibility after the Christian conquest thus banishing the Muslims, it became one of their royal palaces.”

  “Yes, very true. A favorite royal palace, a pleasure palace, you might say, but it was still neglected for many years,” Sofia explained. “It’s since been restored.”

  “How thrilling,” I exclaimed, “to spend a night here!” I felt rather than saw Saratoza rolling his eyes. I nudged Evan to keep him from trying to speak again. “Don’t say my name, whatever you do,” I whispered.

  We climbed up the narrow stairway, through an iron gate, onto a plateau surrounded by the huge stone walls. Lighting picked out pathways and shone down on the mellowed stones and up on trees. Overhead, stars sparkled and somewhere water tinkled. My skin
tinged with anticipation. And fear.

  “Do I hear nightingales?” Evan asked, taking our bags from the men with a nod.

  “Yes, nightingales,” Sofia replied, turning to us. “Señor Saratoza has turned on the lights all over the property and will have a room where you sleep—nothing fancy, no bed. Just the floor and many blankets. It will not be comfortable but I know you wish to camp out like you do in Britain.” Our eyes met.

  “Oh, yes, we love to camp out in Britain,” I remarked while watching Saratoza march away, Salvi and Luis in tow. Had I ever camped out in Britain? There’d be no sleep for us that night, anyway.

  “Is Saratoza trustworthy?” Evan whispered once the men had disappeared. He sounded like a bass-toned Bugs Bunny.

  “We do not know who is trustworthy and who is not,” Sofia said. “We have no choice but to trust. He is in charge of the complex and has called his men to guard the property while we wait for my employer’s people. It is the best we can do until my employer sends help. Where do we begin to look? Do you need a shovel or another tool? We must hurry.”

  “I carry a portable shovel but something stronger may be needed—maybe even a pickax,” Evan said. “Where would Queen Isabella have spent time?”

  “Charles constructed his new palace over there in 1527.” She was pointing to the left. “That part would have begun by then but not finished when the pair were first married.”

  “No,” I said, gazing around at the walls, the trees, the spotlit ramparts. “We are looking for a garden where the king would have eventually planted his lady carnations. Our Damas were thinking of flowers.”

  “But there were many gardens in Alhambra!” Sofia threw up her hands. “One near the Puerta del Vino, another near the Square of the Cisterns, in the Generalife, in the Garden of the Ramparts, in the Court of the Sultana’s Cypress Tree—everywhere gardens!”

  “But which one would have been present during Charles and Isabella’s time?” I asked.

  “That we don’t know. Many buildings have changed, and gardens, too. Gardens especially would alter according to the tastes of the time,” she said.