The Lost Angel

by Sierra, Javier

  After that day, I never again saw a symbol appear inside the adamant.

  36

  Nicholas Allen suddenly opened his eyes.

  “Air!” he gasped. “I need air!”

  The colonel instinctively grabbed his chest, begging for oxygen. Every cell in his lungs seemed to be screaming for breath. And then, a pain where his heart should have been, an uncontrollable spasm. It felt like he’d been shot in the chest and he actually felt around for a phantom bullet. He coughed, hard, and sat up despite a sickness in his stomach, until he was resting against a brick wall. He tried to gather himself but was disoriented.

  “Oh, God . . .”

  Someone had dragged him across the floor and left him slumped over like a rag doll. He looked around in the fading light, trying to figure out where he was. And then he saw the lifeless, frozen expression on the waiter’s face.

  “What . . . what the hell happened here?”

  The small café was still. The dim beams from emergency lights bounced off the surrounding furniture. And even though his instincts told him he was alone, he instantly tensed up, every muscle in his gigantic arms and face tightening at the thought of whatever knocked him out still being in the room. Then, he again felt the buzzing of his cell phone in his pocket, which had awakened him in the first place.

  “How could I have been so stupid?” he said, rubbing his aching temples as he brought the phone to his ear.

  “Allen? Can you hear me?”

  The colonel straightened up, still dizzy. He felt cold, frozen to his core. Even his phone felt like a block of ice.

  How long had he been out?

  “Colonel Allen! Please respond!”

  At hearing his name a second time, Allen cleared his throat and answered.

  “N-Nick Allen here . . . ,” he stammered.

  “Colonel? Is that you?”

  “Affirmative,” he said, wincing.

  He noticed a bruise on his forearm. Then his phone beeped, signaling it was running out of power.

  “Finally! This is Owen. Where the hell have you been? What’s going on? I’ve been trying to reach you for over an hour. An hour, Allen! Your goddamn phone was off. You know the satellites can’t track you if your phone’s off. Are you all right?”

  “Yes, sir, I . . . I think so.”

  He could almost feel the NSA director’s hot breath through the phone and imagined him stewing behind his desk, almost crushing the phone in his hand. “You think so? Where the hell are you?”

  Allen looked around, trying to remember what had happened. He was sitting on the floor at La Quintana café, pain shooting throughout his body and a migraine drilling into his temples. When he reached for his service weapon, he realized someone had been there while he was passed out. Someone had emptied the clip of the pistol and had rifled through his wallet. His iPad was gone and the contents of his leather briefcase were spread all over the floor.

  What’s worse, Julia Álvarez was gone.

  “Wha . . . what time is it?” he groaned.

  “Time? Jesus, Colonel. It’s almost five thirty in the morning in Spain. Do you know what time it is here in Washington?”

  Allen’s stomach lurched.

  “Eleven thirty at night! Where the hell have you been all night, Colonel?”

  Allen remained silent. He was numb. Dirty. And his mouth was dry.

  “Give me your coordinates, Colonel. I need to get to a meeting but first I need to know exactly where you are.”

  “Fuck . . . ,” Allen grumbled as he tried to lift himself but came crashing back to the ground. “Someone got the jump on me, sir.”

  “What . . . ?” Owen’s voice was muffled on the other end of the line. “What do you mean, Colonel?”

  Allen finally picked himself off the ground, despite the dizzying nausea. His old scar was hurting again, and even this dizziness, he thought, seemed familiar. “Your friends, Mr. Director,” he said. “Your old friends were here. And they’ve got Faber’s wife.”

  “How the hell—”

  Allen didn’t get to hear the rest of Owen’s indignation. His phone’s lithium battery finally ran out. But the NSA’s director already knew what he had to do. His agents at the US embassy in Spain had to find Allen right away.

  37

  I never figured out how long I spent on the “other side.” Or why I had stepped back through the light. I only know that when I finally returned to my body, I felt sick. Really sick. The soothing peace I’d experienced was now shattered, and I seemed to have lost all track of time. When I returned to my earthly body, my brain suddenly switched on every last pain receptor.

  The first few seconds of this new life were sheer torture. Indescribable pain.

  I felt an explosion in my head, and the jolt traveled to the ends of my toes, cramping every muscle in between. A million pins and needles stabbed me in spasmodic waves. Oh, God . . . ! And then, it was my lungs’ turn to suffer. They filled with oxygen for the first time in God-knows-how-long, and each time I inhaled, it felt like I was breathing fire.

  I prayed to God that I could just die again, so I wouldn’t have to feel any more. But no one heard my pleas.

  I don’t know how long I begged for death. But it was long enough for me to understand that I was, in fact, alive again. Alive. And I realized it was time to fight to stay that way.

  A thousand disjointed thoughts flashed through my mind, but one stood out above all others: the last image I saw before I crossed into the world of the dead. It was the profile of a man, the man who had come to Santiago solely to tell me Martin had been kidnapped in Turkey and that his captors were now coming after me. More specifically, they wanted the one thing that I had no idea where to find.

  Dee’s adamants.

  One of those goddamn stones.

  The conduit for speaking to angels.

  Still dizzy and unable to open my eyes, I reached up and tousled my hair, a habit I’d picked up from my grandmother. Rotating my head back and forth and massaging my skull was a way of regaining my composure. But that wasn’t going to cut it on a day like today. I needed food and a hot shower. And I needed them bad.

  But I finally willed my eyes open.

  Good God . . .

  I’m not sure what scared me more: discovering I was no longer in La Quintana café or finding that someone had taken me from the café and strapped me to a seat. Where, I knew not.

  A hand waved in front of my eyes.

  “Are you all right, miss? Are you dizzy?” said a shapeless form. Still, I thought I could make out that it was holding a syringe.

  His voice sounded muffled, almost synthesized.

  I tried to focus my eyes and could see he was wearing a white helmet. He was sitting, facing me, and making a ridiculous gesture toward his ears. Does he want me to touch my ears? I couldn’t think straight and when I reached up toward them, I felt myself weraing some kind of headphones. I pulled them off, trying to figure out what the hell was going on, but was nearly deafened by a thundering noise.

  “Can you hear me?” he yelled above the din. But he didn’t even wait for my answer.

  “You’re okay, miss. You’re aboard a helicopter,” he yelled. “Don’t be alarmed, you have nothing to worry about. We’ve given you a shot of lidocaine to resuscitate you. The dizziness will pass. Now put your headphones back on so I can talk to you better.”

  “A helicopter? Lidocaine . . . ? Resuscitate me?”

  He nodded while my head spun.

  My head pounded with pain. Why was I on a helicopter? And who was this guy?

  My headphones crackled to life. This man’s voice was now clear in my ears.

  “Welcome aboard, Ms. Álvarez,” he said in accented English.

  “Where . . . where am I?”

  I tried to get up, forgetting the seatbelts holding me in my seat.

  “Don’t overexert yourself, miss. You need to rest,” he said. “We’re friends of yours. Actually, we just saved your life.”


  I may not have recognized him, but he seemed to know me. Back in the cathedral, Colonel Allen had spoken to me the same way, but this wasn’t him. I looked around to see if he was on the helicopter, too. But I could only see this man in front of me, the one smiling through a thick, bushy mustache, who seemed happy to see me. But for the life of me, I couldn’t remember where I’d seen him before, him or the two young men who were at his side. They studied me like I was some kind of oddity. Each was carrying a machine gun with a scope. And when I looked at them more closely, I made a startling discovery: One of them, the one closest to the cabin . . . was the young man with the tattoo on his cheek!

  When he realized that I had recognized him, he just stared at me without saying a word.

  “Hey . . . you . . .” I struggled against my seatbelt. “Who are—”

  “Please, Ms. Álvarez, settle down.”

  “I know . . . I know that kid.”

  The man with the mustache looked amused.

  “Who are you?” I shouted. “What do you want from me?”

  “Ohhh,” he said, feigning injury. “Don’t tell me you don’t remember me.”

  “Do I . . . Do I know you?”

  If he was hoping to confuse me further, he succeeded.

  “You’re breaking my heart, Ms. Álvarez,” he said, smiling. “My name is Artemi Dujok. And I can’t tell you how glad I am we found you when we did.”

  “Artemi Dujok?”

  It had been five years since I saw him for the first and last time, but my still-numb brain put it all together: I’d just seen him in a deathly dream.

  Surprised and curious, I looked at him suspiciously. Yes. It was him, after all.

  “Artemi Dujok,” I said. “I do remember you. Yes. But—”

  “I’m glad. I was at your wedding in Wiltshire. I’m a good friend of Martin’s.”

  “Martin! Oh, my God!” My eyes shot open. “Do you know he’s been—”

  “I know everything, ma’am.” Dujok handed me a tissue. “Just try to stay calm. I know what you’ve just been through. You’ve been in a coma for more than twenty minutes. Someone who’s been blasted with delta brain waves shouldn’t be overexerting herself.”

  “What . . . what do you want from me?” I asked. I had no idea what he was talking about. “What are we doing in a helicopter? The police said Martin’s been kidnapped!”

  “And that’s exactly what I need to talk to you about. Have you seen the proof of life video that his captors made?”

  “The video?”

  Dujok nodded. “I’ve figured out what Martin was trying to tell you, Ms. Álvarez.”

  I was frozen.

  “Your husband cleverly got a message to you. A message that only his wife could decipher—”

  “Or someone like you?” I said, sarcastically. “What about the colonel? Colonel Allen said he knew Martin too, that they had worked together years ago. Where is he, anyway?”

  Dujok ignored my question. “Yes, miss. Someone like me. A friend. A good friend. Someone who knows Martin holds a very coveted stone. And together we’ll recover that stone and save your husband.”

  “You know where he is?”

  The helicopter jostled in turbulence as it entered a cloud.

  “We’ll be on the ground in a few minutes,” he said. “Just try to relax.”

  38

  He hadn’t given that order! He was sure of it.

  That’s why, when Antonio Figueiras saw the darkened silhouette of his helicopter rising above the rooftops, he realized there was something else going on that was out of his control.

  “You’ll have to excuse me,” he said, quickly shaking the archbishop’s hand before turning to dash off. “You, too, Father. I’ll call you later to get your statement . . .”

  Figueiras took off in a sprint. God, he hated to do that—not curtly cutting off someone midconversation, mind you, but having to do any kind of physical activity. He was getting too old for this. He didn’t have the lungs for it, either. But he had to do it if he was going to catch the helicopter before it took off. Heads are going to roll today, he thought. I swear to God . . .

  The path to the front of the cathedral dropped steeply. Figueiras arrived at La Plaza del Obradoiro—panting, his shirt soaked through with sweat—only to discover that the helicopter wasn’t one of his. How had he not realized that before? The chopper now gaining altitude was many times larger than the police station’s tiny bird. The blades alone—three of them—were longer than any he’d ever seen. It seemed to have no registration number or markings of any kind and was painted black.

  He ducked his head to cut through the downward hurricane the helicopter was causing to get to the patrol car he’d left to guard the square. But when he peeked inside, he couldn’t believe his eyes.

  “Oh, fuck!” he yelled, instinctively reaching for his gun.

  His two young officers sat motionless, a single gunshot wound to each of their foreheads, bleeding against the headrests. Clearly, they’d never seen it coming. Figueiras whipped out his pistol and turned toward the helicopter, but it was already out of range. He’d bet a year’s salary that the suspect who slipped right past them was the murderer . . . and that he was aboard that helicopter.

  His adrenaline pumping and lungs still burning from a flat-out run, Figueiras was just about to call for backup when his cell phone screen came to life: “Incoming Call.”

  “Figueiras here.”

  “Antonio, it’s Marcelo Muñiz. I hope I’m not catching you at a bad time.”

  “I can’t talk now!” he yelled to his jeweler friend as he looked over the patrol car. “I’ll call you later.”

  “Whatever you say.”

  “Wait, why the hell are you calling me at five in the morning?”

  “I’ve been up all night trying to find out something about those stones.”

  Figueiras didn’t want to waste any more time. But he couldn’t bring himself to hang up. If Muñiz was calling him at this time, it must be important. “Okay, fine. So what did you find out?”

  “I’ve figured out what kind of stones they are. And you’re not going to believe it.”

  39

  It was hard to get used to the helicopter’s soft shifting. Fortunately, when it finally leveled out and my stomach was no longer jostling around, I started to feel like my old self again. I had to relax; there was no other choice. Fear and confusion weren’t going to help. So I swallowed them down and let my arms and legs hang loose as if I were in my yoga class. It seemed to work a little. But I still felt the blood pounding in my temples and my eyes were still tearing from the pain it took to return to the world of the living.

  I tried to distract my mind from the pain that death would have spared me. What did Dujok say about my body being bombarded with . . . what kind of waves? And why did he take on the task of rescuing Martin when Nick Allen and the embassy are already involved?

  Sitting across from me in a leather seat, Artemi Dujok watched me with an unblinking stare. He offered me something to drink as the rest of us just tried to keep from losing our lunch every time the chopper hopped over a cloud.

  “Tell me something, Ms. Álvarez. Did your husband tell you why he was going to Turkey?” he asked.

  “More or less,” I said, trying not to give too much away. “He said he wanted to study the world’s melting permafrost mountain peaks. And since I was going to be busy with the cathedral restoration, we figured it was a good time.”

  “Then he didn’t tell you . . .”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Martin went to Mount Ararat to return his adamant. The stone originally came from there. Did you know that?”

  “Sure,” I lied.

  “Ms. Alvarez, this is important. Your husband and I have been working together for years. We’ve been trying to find and bring together the few adamants throughout the world. We both know how extraordinary they are, but you can’t imagine how powerful they can be when they are all brought to
gether. In fact, we’ve been seeing signs that very soon we might need their power to protect us from another global catastrophe. A blow against the biosphere that your husband is well aware of. That’s why it’s so important that we work together and are honest with each other. Do you understand what I mean?”

  “Are you trying to scare me?”

  “Actually, yes. Martin is working on a high-level operation, and if he didn’t give you all the details, it was only to protect you. Now he’s in danger. Circumstances have changed and together, we’re going to save him. But I need you to trust me, Julia. I know you barely know me, but I promise, you won’t regret it.”

  “You’re going to help me rescue my husband?”

  He nodded. “Of course. But to do that, we need your adamant. Do you remember when he asked you for it?”

  “It’s been a month, give or take.” I sighed. “It was just before he left. Actually, we had an argument about it and I told him to take it back.”

  Dujok nodded as if he already knew that part of the story.

  “Then he must have hidden it somewhere safe,” Dujok said, thinking out loud. “A special hiding place, where the earth’s energy is strong. Somewhere it would be not just safe but charged with power.”

  “You think so?” I asked, unsure.

  “Most important, he would’ve hidden it someplace where someone like the man you were with earlier could never steal it.”

  “You think he wanted to steal my adamant? Colonel Allen?” I asked.

  “I know it. It was the only reason he was interested in finding you. If he had managed to find the adamant, you probably wouldn’t be alive, sitting in that seat.”

  I felt the helicopter lean to one side, and the blood rushed to my head. Outside the window, I could see the skies lightening, hinting at daybreak. Dujok still had not told me where we were headed.

  “And how do I know I can trust you, Mr. Dujok?”

  “You will,” he said, smiling. “It’s only a matter of time. Martin told me all about your relationship and all of your . . . let’s say adventures with the adamants. And he made me promise that if anything happened to him, I would make sure you were safe. I was worried about you. Because I know things about your marriage that maybe even you weren’t aware of . . .”