by Alex Archer
From the haphazard arsenal pile spilling out of the truck, Garin fished a dusty AK-47. The folding stock swung out freely. Sand spilled from the barrel. Something rattled inside the receiver. And it smelled like...gasoline. This was not good.
He shook his head. He hadn’t expected pristine secondhand weapons, but this was pushing his idea of acceptable. And while the assault rifle was a favorite among the military for its durability and ease of use, these weapons were more than a decade old, which shouldn’t matter, but Garin guessed they had never seen cleaning oil.
“This is crap,” he said, turning to his host.
Knit Cap waved his hands in a salesman’s protest. “Oh, no, no, the weapons work perfectly well. Just give it a shake.”
“A shake?”
He grabbed a magazine from inside an opened cardboard box stuffed among the weapons and jammed it into the receiver. An easy fit. Expected. These weapons were designed to be durable, if not long-lasting.
Swinging about, Garin aimed at Knit Cap. The man didn’t flinch.
Exactly.
Garin ground his back molars together. He was in no mood for this today.
“Your unflinching stance tells me you’re confident this one won’t fire,” he challenged. “I don’t like that.”
Knit Cap shrugged.
Garin tossed the gun aside. It landed on the pile of weapons in a clatter, sending not only AK-47s sliding to the ground, but also a spill of fine sand he assumed had originated in the deserts of Kabul, which is where this shipment had supposedly come from. “Is this all you’ve got?”
“It is what you requested! Quality goods. They are in working order, I swear—”
Angered that the man should continue to insist what he was selling was anywhere in the same galaxy as a quality used weapon, Garin lunged and grabbed the machine gun he’d loaded with the magazine. Swinging wide and high, he fired. The bullets scattered, piercing the tin roof and sending the pigeons squawking—then abruptly stopped. The magazine dislodged with a pop, clattering onto the pounded-dirt floor. Despite the wood grip, the weapon burned above his fist where flesh met steel.
Slamming it to the ground, Garin swung around and grabbed Knit Cap by the scrawny throat.
The seller’s guards made a move, hands sliding inside their jackets. Garin’s bodyguards snapped up their pistols and stopped them, prompting the opposition’s guards to raise their empty hands to their shoulders.
“Your definition of quality is skewed,” he hissed at the audaciously fearless Bulgarian. “Where did you get these playthings? Your little boy’s sandbox?”
“You expect mint condition for these prices?”
“I expect something that works.” Shoving him hard to stumble against the door of the truck, Garin marched away to the sounds of fists meeting jawbones as his bodyguards cleaned up the mess.
“Having a bad few days,” he muttered.
The hijacked shipment last night and now this?
He had a phone call to make to a New York auction while they traveled on to Liberec. That call had better lift his spirits.
* * *
“I’M SORRY, MR. BRADEN, but there seems to be a problem with your credentials,” the woman on the other end of the line said calmly and professionally.
Normally by now, he would have complimented her in a charming tone, but the Germany to New York connection was static, so Garin had to strain to hear her, and couldn’t judge if she was young enough to make charm worth it, or old enough to appreciate his efforts.
“We can’t allow your bid through until matters have been cleared up.”
Item number seventeen sat on the auction block as they spoke. Clearing up credentials would take longer than it required for the auctioneer’s hammer to hit the block and close the sale.
Sitting in the passenger seat of the Mercedes SUV, watching the landscape soar by in streaks of green, Garin caught his forehead in his palm. A tumbler of Irish whiskey sat within reach in the cup holder. He wasn’t sure whether to tilt it back or throw it out the window. The past twenty-four hours had not included his finer moments.
“Mr. Braden?”
“I’ll look into it,” he said, and hung up. He tucked the cell phone into a breast pocket.
The priceless black pearl, rumored to have belonged to the Sultan of Brunei—who had made his mistress wear it in a delicate place at the apex of her thighs—during the Ottoman reign would go to someone else. And he had a good idea who that someone else would be.
“Roux,” he muttered.
About the only other person on this planet who had an interest in pretty little bits tied up with fantastical histories was Roux.
Garin didn’t need the pearl. His goal had been to keep it out of the Frenchman’s hands. Hell, he had to keep the old man on his toes. But now that he’d been denied the opportunity to bid on it, he felt as surly as if he’d been denied the whiskey a hand’s reach away.
His credentials? His papers did have a tendency to color into various shades of gray.
Sucking down the whiskey, he then poured another two fingers and tilted that back in a couple of swallows. Raking his hands through his dark hair, he stomped the floor of the vehicle with his boot. He was being childish, he knew that. He didn’t care.
He had one last appointment this evening. Routine check on an operation that ran smoothly without him, but required his presence on occasion to keep everyone in line.
“Canov, don’t screw with me tonight.”
He’d gone beyond patience. The next bad thing to happen would push him over the edge.
* * *
THE NEEDLE THE nurse wearing the pink dress stuck into his arm hurt. What she wore didn’t look like a nurse’s uniform, but rather like something one of his father’s girlfriends might wear to their house. When he got sent to bed early. She smiled and patted his head, cooing reassurances and reminding him of his nana. Except she was about his father’s age. Her hair was blond and her eyes were tired and edged with creases in her darkly tanned skin. He would sleep, she said, and he felt his eyelids flutter as she taped cotton to the inside of his elbow.
When they’d removed the blindfold from his eyes, he’d craned his head to take in the room where he’d ended up. Looked like a doctor’s office, but old and dirty. A dingy yellow insect strip, thick with black flies, hung from the exposed lightbulb. The room didn’t have a bright light or shiny steel fixtures like the one in Liberec he’d been in last year when his stomach had hurt and his father had rushed him to emergency care in the city. It only had one of those hanging lamps like his father used to see inside the hood of the car when he was working on the engine. And it didn’t smell like the hospital, but like the sewers.
He didn’t like it here. But he could no longer keep his eyes open. He wanted to scream. Maybe Pa would hear him and come wrap his arms about him?
Opening his mouth, the boy only sighed, and then blacked out.
* * *
THE CINDER-BLOCK warehouse was used to store weapons en route to other countries. Munitions passed through the warehouse in a matter of days and were usually trucked out in larger shipments. Nothing remained for long.
Canov ran a tight operation, and had never given Garin reason to question his allegiance. Though Canov took his own pay from the profits before they were siphoned to a bank in Switzerland, if the man was greedy, he kept his greed in check.
Yet this evening, Garin felt a strange niggle at the back of his neck. Something wasn’t right in this big almost-empty warehouse. They were forty miles from the nearest town and surrounded by a forest of gnarled oak trees. And there were too few munitions for all the muscle he saw standing around.
If Canov was managing a job on the side, he didn’t want to know about it. But neither did he want it to interfere with this operation.
“You’ve never questioned me before,” Canov said, casting a glance to one of the men, likely security, who stood behind Garin near a sheet of white plastic that hung from ceiling to fl
oor.
Garin wasn’t sure why the plastic was there. The warehouse was big enough that they didn’t need to partition off areas in such a manner. Its very presence made him want to look behind it.
“You know I am faithful to you, Monsieur Braden.”
The man wasn’t French, but he’d lived in Toulouse most of his life, and while he’d lost the accent, he hadn’t dropped all of the words.
“Smells wrong in here.” Garin glanced again at the plastic sheet, which he could not see through. “What’s going on back there?”
“It is not your concern. I do as you request and never miss a shipment. You should allow me some freedom to attend other business matters.”
“Not on my property.” Garin turned and started toward the sheet.
A security guard put himself between Garin and his destination.
“Out of my way,” Garin demanded.
The man, who matched him in height and girth, set back his shoulders and had the audacity to lift his chin and look him directly in the eye. One of his own? Or one of Canov’s hires?
He was the boss here. And the way his day had been going, no one wanted to piss him off.
The bodyguard placed a palm under his cotton jacket. Unbelievable. The man was prepared to defend whatever was behind the plastic curtain with firepower.
Wrong move.
Garin’s anger spilled over like a volcano spewing lava. He swung his left fist, meeting the man’s block with the sound of cracking bone. The man did not waver, instead bringing up an uppercut that missed Garin’s chin by a few hairs.
A blow from the left staggered him. Another guard must have joined in. Garin swayed. He slashed through the plastic sheeting with his arms and got tangled in plastic tubing attached to a tall steel rod. An IV stand. A bag of blood wobbled near Garin’s face before falling and bursting open. Blood spattered his face and he spat out a mouthful, catching a glimpse of someone lying on a wood pallet, prone, unconscious.
Grabbed by the back of his shirt, he was whipped around and tossed toward the guard with the newly broken wrist. Garin fisted him in the jaw, dropping him to the ground. The guard scrambled away. He didn’t want this fight? Smart man.
Incensed, Garin turned on his heel and growled at his aggressor. The blood on his face managed to ramp up his anger even more. The guard put up his palms in placation.
Wrenching a look toward his employee, Garin barked, “What the hell are you doing here, Canov?”
“It is a side job. Not your concern,” he pleaded.
“I’ll show you what is my concern.”
Garin charged the bodyguard, using his weight to bring the man down. He punched his jaw, over and over. Knocking the man beneath him out cold with a final punch to his kidney, Garin stood. He didn’t see Canov.
He headed for the side door. Whatever was going on behind the plastic curtain, he’d investigate later. He wanted to put his hands on Canov first.
Canov’s white Jeep pealed away from the warehouse stirring a brume of dust in its wake.
Garin’s man called out from the waiting Mercedes, “What is it, boss?”
“We need to pursue!”
He blinked and something blurred his left eye. Garin swiped a finger across his eyelid. Covered with blood. From the IV bag. That’s when he remembered he’d seen a person attached to the IV.
He turned in the doorway, eyeing the plastic sheeting, rippled now along the edge where his body had mangled it. Whatever was behind there, Canov was right, it wasn’t his business. And it wasn’t something he wanted to make his business.
Whether or not he’d approved the operation, he was allied and associated with the dirty dealings.
“Blood?” He wiped his face.
The Mercedes engine revved. Canov wouldn’t get away with this. Garin dashed outside for the vehicle.
Chapter 2
Annja Creed had never been to Garin Braden’s estate in Berlin. Last time she’d met up with him in Germany, it had been at his apartment. The man was a world traveler, so she’d never expected him to settle into something this...permanent. She judged the three-story mansion to be from the Tudor era because of the row of redbrick chimneys jutting from above the prominent cross gables. Not to mention the main door was centered beneath what was known as the Tudor arch. The setup was ritzy and the grounds were groomed, from what she could determine in the midnight gloom—she’d expected this of Roux, Garin’s former mentor, but not of Garin Braden. She shook her head in disbelief that he was finally putting down roots. It had taken him quite a number of years to reach this adult life stage. She smiled at the thought of just exactly how many years.
A yard light flashed across the trimmed emerald grass as Annja parked the rental car before the mansion’s steps and got out.
Drawing in a breath of fresh, jasmine-scented air, she stretched her neck. She needed a shower and sleep, but was running on the fumes of two candy bars and a Diet Coke she’d consumed at the airport. Not the healthiest meal, but it had been convenient and fast. As soon as the flight from New York had landed, she’d hopped in the rental and headed straight here. She had an appointment tomorrow morning, six sharp, so this might have been her only chance to pop in and visit her friend. A friend who wasn’t always a friend.
Frenemies? Yeah, she could get behind that better. Every girl needed a man they liked to hate and hated to like, right?
A year or so ago, when they’d met up while either adventuring or dodging bullets—or both—Garin had mentioned he had an artifact he wanted her to look at if she was ever in his neck of the woods. A mysterious artifact owned by a five-hundred-plus-year-old man? Annja hadn’t let that enticing invitation slip her mind. Now that she was here in his jasmine-scented woods, best to grab opportunity by the throat.
Annja jogged up the curving limestone steps in front of the house two at a time, finding the more she moved the less the jet lag pulled at her exhausted muscles. She knocked on the front door, foregoing the brass lion’s head knocker because...did anyone really use those things?
After several long moments, a butler greeted her with a yawn. As his mouth closed, his eyes opened wider in recognition and he invited her in. Interesting. She guessed Garin must have mentioned her....
“We were not aware you had arranged a visit,” he said in a clipped tone.
She almost laughed out loud and had to bite her tongue to hold it in. A British butler? Garin Braden had a British butler and a mansion. Just like his former mentor’s setup in France. Except Garin couldn’t stand Roux’s lifestyle—the two were at each other’s throats more often than not. So when had Garin patterned himself after his sometime enemy?
“In the neighborhood and thought I’d stop by,” she offered, barely suppressing her enjoyment of this insight into the man she thought she’d known pretty well.
The butler glanced up at the full moon as he closed the door behind her. “Wait here,” he instructed. “I’ll see if Mr. Braden is available.”
Why was it all the butlers Annja had happened to meet were stuffy and British? Did no one but the English aspire to butlerdom?
Annja strained to see along the foyer’s dark paneled walls, hung with ancient paintings, each one worth more than a decade’s rent on her apartment in Brooklyn, she felt sure.
“Tell him it’s Annja Creed,” she thought to call out, just in case.
“I know,” the butler called back.
She’d never been here before, or met the butler, but she assumed Garin had availed the help with the necessary details regarding all the people that may “stop by.” Though, apparently, stopping by simply wasn’t done this late at night.
Annja leaned forward to inspect the signature on what looked like a Renoir, and found it was indeed by the nineteenth-century impressionist. She wasn’t familiar with this painting of a woman with a red bow in her blond hair, and that gave her a thrill. Could Garin possess art the modern world wasn’t aware existed? If indeed he’d been alive since before Joan of Arc’s d
eath in 1431, he may very well have received it directly from the artist.
A man who had lived five centuries offered enough hands-on history to interest Annja endlessly.
“Some day,” she muttered, “I will pick the man’s brain.”
She strolled to the next painting and tried to guess its artist before checking the signature. Small dots made up the entire canvas, pointillism, and she had to step back to take in the full picture. Georges Seurat was the only name she associated with the style. Art history wasn’t her strong point. She preferred medieval studies, and old bones and pottery to canvas and paint.
Checking the signature, she read a German surname she wasn’t familiar with. Well, wasn’t like only one artist had cornered the market on the style.
Long minutes had passed when suddenly she heard an angry growl and a door slam somewhere in the vicinity of the second floor and around a corner. Garin’s voice carried down to the foyer. “Tell her I am in no mood! I’ll see her in the morning.”
“Is that so?” She could have taken the train straight to the Czech Republic, her destination. She was sacrificing valuable sleep time to make this visit. And it wasn’t as if she owed the man anything.
When the butler reappeared, she put up a hand. “I heard. I know when I’m not welcome.”
“He’s had a trying day,” the butler offered.
“Right. Poor guy. Trying must test his every nerve. Give him my regards. Tell him next time I’m in town, I’ll call first. Apparently I’m not on his list.”
“If you could return in the morning?”
“I’m headed to Chrastava. Archaeology always trumps a date with Mr. Charming. I’d tell you to give him my regards, but...save that.”
She strode out, and instead of driving for more exhausting hours, decided to hop the train south to Liberec, so she could catch some valuable sleep before jumping into a new and exciting adventure. Or at the very least, an intriguing archaeological dig.