by Joanne Pence
The smaller gunman’s eyes darted, shocked, at his partner. Michael sprang at him, knocking his arm upward, then grabbing it and twisting it in a way that caused the gun to drop, and the gunman to flip head-over-heels onto the floor. At the same time, Hasani and the tea-carrying monk wrested away the big man’s gun as three more monks ran in to help.
The two gunmen, both disarmed, struggled to break free from the monks holding them down.
“Call the police,” Michael said. “They should be arrested for this.”
Hasani shook his head. “We don’t want trouble here. No police. We had enough of them in Iraq, and no good ever came of it.” He faced the two men. “We don’t have what you want, and if you bother us again, more than hot tea will be used against you.” He nodded at the monks. “Let them go.”
The gunmen ran from the room.
Michael rubbed his bad shoulder and grimaced. “I’m sorry if those men followed me here. I never meant to bring you trouble.”
Hasani’s thick brows rose.
“Father Berosus told me dangerous people would want his pearl,” Michael said. “But he never said who, or why. He said the pearl was evil and it could not fall into the wrong hands.”
“In that case,” Hasani said, holding a grim, steady gaze on Michael, “I’m glad we know nothing about it.”
The night train brought Michael within a few blocks of his apartment.
The rain left the air heavy and humid, and only increased his foul mood. Now, on top of strange “feelings” he was being followed by gun-toting maniacs. At least they were fairly incompetent maniacs—so far.
A certain rhythmic pattern broke into his reverie, and he listened carefully. He knew that pattern; he’d heard it many times as a kid with pets: the trot of four legs, the click of claws over a hard surface.
He stopped, and the trotting stopped.
He turned around slowly, some part of him knowing what he would find. He was wrong about it being a dog or a jackal. It was a fox, its eyes glowing green and ominous in the moonlight. The image unsettled him and sent shivers up his spine, just as it had last night on his roof.
It stood less than a yard away.
He knew better than to stare back at a wild animal, but he couldn’t avert his gaze. No foxes were believed to be in Florence’s city center and those in the countryside ran when humans approached. They weren’t animals to stand and fight, but this fox curled its lips in a snarl.
He saw a policeman at the corner, and shouted to him, pointing at the beast. The policeman gasped, and put his hand over his firearm, ready to pull it from the holster if needed, as he ran towards Michael.
The fox backed away from Michael, then ran in the opposite direction down the street.
“Signore, what was that?” the policeman asked Michael in Italian as he approached.
“A fox.”
The policeman switched to English and said, “But there are no foxes in this city.”
Michael eyed the now empty street. “So I understand.”
Chapter 12
—He doesn’t know it yet, but he’s coming to us.
—I’m glad to see the end of that foolish old priest.
—So tedious, that constant praying.
—And no sex. This one should be much more interesting in that area.
—Watching is nothing. Killing him, that’s where the fun comes in.
Michael’s cell phone began to ring as he entered his apartment.
“I found out about the men in the photo,” Jianjun said when Michael answered.
“I knew you would.” Michael sat down at the table.
“Yeah, well it almost didn’t happen. I had to darken and sharpen the image, but my equipment wasn’t quite up to the task, so I had to go and buy some new, top of the line hardware and programs to get the image crisp enough to work on. The prices are ridiculous. China’s jerking all our chains over rare earth elements.”
“Rare what?” Michael asked.
“Earth elements. That’s what they’re called. They’re metals, not alloys or amalgams, but pure metals from the ground that are now being used in all kinds of high tech equipment from computer chips to lasers to nuclear reactors. They’re real big in smart phones, and—”
“Send me the bills,” Michael said impatiently. “What did you—”
“Believe me, I will. But I want you to understand it’s not me. It’s China!”
“Why are you picking on your motherland again?”
“Not my fault where I was born, bro!” Jianjun cried. “Now, I’m a Canadian. It’s just that China undercut the price of rare earth elements so mines in other countries couldn’t compete and shut them all down. Now that China has a monopoly, the prices are skyrocketing. One went up from fifteen dollars per whatever, to five-hundred dollars!”
“Jianjun! Enough with the money already!”
“I know, I know. You archeology types only pay attention to what’s old, you’ve got no idea about what’s new in the world.”
“And that’s how I like it. So, tell me, what did you find out?”
“With my new equipment for restoring pixels, I could read a name tag on one of the duffle bags.”
“You’re shitting me!”
“I’m not, bro, which is why I had to buy—”
“Were you able to do anything with the name?”
“Need you ask? Of course! How many times have I hacked into the military database? Piece of cake!”
“And?”
“Once in, I learned the guys were on the U.S.S. Saratoga. They patrolled waters in the Indian Ocean, Arabian Sea, the South Atlantic, and they saw action in Lebanon and Angola. Not that any of it made the news, but what else is new? Anyway, in the photo, it looks like the sailors were on shore leave in Egypt—but I guess you already knew that with a pyramid behind them.”
“Not a pyramid—the Great Pyramid.”
“Whatever,” Jianjun muttered. “Anyway, I tried a facial recognition scan against the Navy’s data but their pictures weren’t there, which means they never rose very high, probably left after their term was over. I’ll have to check other databases one by one. But keep in mind, there’s a good chance none of them have photos in any database. Most people don’t. They simply go about their lives.”
“True,” Michael said, “but I know you’ll give it a try.”
There was a pause on the line before Jianjun said nervously. “I will, but … the last time we had anything to do with a pyramid, pyramid shape at least, it was in Idaho, and had to do with alchemy. We were nearly killed.”
Chapter 13
The call came into the FBI at 10:22 a.m. the next morning. Kira sat at her corner desk, looking over material from Gene Oliveros’ home, and thinking of how furious she was that her father not only refused to answer her phone calls, but wouldn’t even acknowledge her text or voice messages. A few other agents were at their desks in the big open office space, but most were already out of the office. A couple of young, attractive file clerks stood by the coffee pot, talking about their dating life.
When the phone rang, something made Kira look up at the clock, and then at the agent taking the call, the agent she most often rode with, Peter “Scoggs” Scoggins. He could have been an FBI agent poster boy with his short hair and well-toned physique covered by an inexpensive two-button suit, white shirt and tie. A wife and two kids in the suburbs rounded out the picture. He held the phone to his ear, but then his head snapped towards her with both shock and pity on his face. His look scared her.
He hung up the phone and stood. She stood as well, her heart pounding.
She couldn’t believe his words. Her father had been found dead in his home. Because he was a Federal judge, the FBI had been immediately contacted.
“Dead?” she whispered. Her mind raced. When he hadn’t returned her calls last evening that was par for the course. She hadn’t worried. But now, grief and guilt surged through her. If she had gone to his house, had checked on him, could s
he have helped him, possibly saved him? “What happened to him?”
“They aren’t saying, but they’re treating the house as a crime scene.”
The news rocked her. “My God! Why?”
Scoggins put his cell phone and badge in his pocket, then checked his gun. “I’ll let you know as soon as I find out anything.”
“I’m going with you,” she said.
“I don’t think—”
“He’s my father,” she interrupted.
He looked at her closely and she kept her shoulders firm, doing all she could to show him she wasn’t about to fall apart even though, inside, she wanted to scream that it couldn’t be true, that Daniel Holt could not be dead.
Scoggs nodded his consent.
She said nothing, her expression flat as she sat in the passenger seat while he drove up to Laurel Heights. He did most of the talking, as always. He made small talk about yesterday’s earthquake, how fortunate it was that no serious damage had been done, and even gave a blow-by-blow of waking up to the quake and how his seven- and nine-year-olds were pissed off because they had slept through it.
Kira scarcely listened. She understood why he was chattering nonsense and felt glad she wasn’t being asked to speak. She kept her gaze riveted on the sky as she tried her best not to think about her father and all the unhappiness between them. The day was bright and sunny, the kind of southern California day that made people who lived in the area congratulate themselves for putting up with all the usual crap just to experience weather like this.
She shivered.
She was the first one out of the car and up the few steps to the front door of the small but elegant home and then waited impatiently as Scoggs told the cops who had secured the crime scene that they were taking over the case. The police blustered and fumed for a while, but she could tell they were relieved. That worried her.
As soon as Scoggs gave the okay, she suited up, including gloves, booties, and a head covering. He told her to wait, that he should go in first, but she didn’t listen and dashed into the familiar house, the house she had grown up in. She turned from the foyer directly into the living room. There, she froze, scarcely able to comprehend the sight before her.
Her eyes took in the entire scene in one quick movement. She had thought, working with the FBI, dealing with serial killers and other sickos, that she had hardened, that she could handle pretty much anything. But she was wrong.
His eyes had been ripped out; his throat torn open. A bloody fireplace poker lay beside the body. He seemed to have bled to death. But the strange thing, the unbelievable thing, was that not only were his hands bloody, but that one of them held an eyeball in its grasp.
The room began to swirl, to turn black and purple …
She felt sick and placed a gloved hand against a wall for support. The way the scene was staged, it could have been a macabre suicide. But her father could never have done that to himself. Never. Someone had done it to him and made it look like self-mutilation.
Scoggs’ arm clamped tight around her waist. Her feet barely touched the floor as he whisked her out of the living room to the kitchen and had her sit, then handed her a glass of water.
“Who would do such a thing? Who could possibly hate him so much?” she whispered, staring at the floor, at the vinyl pattern from her childhood.
“I knew I shouldn’t have let you come here,” he said, standing over her.
She shook her head and then looked up at him. “I’ll be all right.”
“No, you won’t. Not for a while, not after seeing … I’m sorry, Kira. I had no idea it would be that bad. I’ll get a uniform to see you home.”
“I’m not leaving.” She took deep breaths. “I can help, and I will.”
Her thoughts suddenly turned to the photo of her father at Gene Oliveros’ house. The two deaths couldn’t be connected, could they? Her father had never mentioned Oliveros and had never said anything to her about his days in the Navy. But two men in the same photo, both involved in suspicious, grisly deaths within one day of each other, were too much of a coincidence to be ignored.
She bent forward, burying her head in her hands. She couldn’t coldly analyze this case and pick over the bones of the deceased’s life as if he were no more than a carcass after Thanksgiving dinner. This was her father. The man she had both worshiped and loathed.
Her ex had once told her that no man, no mere mortal, could live up to her desire that he surpass her father in everything. Ben claimed Daniel Holt was the reason their marriage failed. She had denied it, but deep down, she knew Ben was right.
She always assumed that she and her father would have time to work out their differences, time to learn to understand each other. Time to tell him she loved him and time to hear him say he loved her. But now that dream was gone. Those words had never been spoken, and never would be.
Chapter 14
Vancouver, British Columbia
Jianjun gave himself a virtual pat-on-the-back as he sat in front of his computer and successfully hacked into the FBI’s Next Generation Identification, NGI, the national facial recognition system. It felt good to be hacking again. He enjoyed the challenge, and he was able to concentrate hard enough to block out his wife’s nagging and complaints that he didn’t have a “real” job.
He made good money—far more than he ever had working for Microsoft, especially since some of the archeological finds included riches that the finders were able to legally possess and sell. But since he didn’t have a nine-to-five job, nothing else mattered to her. They lived in a small, plain ranch-style house in a nondescript subdivision near downtown Vancouver. His wife wanted something bigger and newer, with all the latest conveniences, but Jianjun saw no reason to move. A fancier house wasn’t going to fix the problems the two of them had.
He went back to work, took the scanned photo, separated out each sailor individually, and then ran them one-by-one through the NGI. It was a time-consuming process. None of the men was found in the criminal system.
Poking around the innards of the software as any good hacker enjoyed doing, he discovered that the photos-of-criminals section was the “public” portion of the system, but the database was far more extensive than that.
It had a “persons of interest” section, which seemed to consist of potential terrorists, suspected drug lords, mobsters in the making, and extremists or “potentially” extremist groups of any sort from environmentalists to neo-Nazis to PETA. Another section dealt with politicians, major campaign contributors, and heads of large corporations. A few small files grouped miscellaneous people—everyone from IRS cheats to scientists to university professors. Jianjun was stunned to find him and Michael in it. Knowing that any deletion of files might trigger some alerts, he simply rewrote them into candidates for citizen of the year awards.
All those paranoids who worried that the government was watching them were right.
This was the mother lode of spy data.
He ran the photos through the massive data bases, and then went into the kitchen to make himself some lunch, knowing it would take a while. After a tuna salad sandwich on Wonder Bread, some Cool Ranch Doritos and a Diet Coke, he hurried back to his den. To his surprise, every one of the men in the photo had a hit.
He read the search results with amazement, then muttered, “Holy shit.”
Scoggs had sent Kira home less than fifteen minutes after she entered her father’s house that morning. Back at her townhouse, she walked around in circles all afternoon, trying to get over the shock. She had no tears, though. And she wasn’t even sure why.
By nightfall, however, she needed to return to her father’s house. She wanted to look it over carefully. She pleaded, and Scoggs eventually consented. She knew the routine with the gloves, booties, and all, and he realized that she, more than anyone else, would know if something was out of place or had been taken. Her father hadn’t changed anything in the house for years. It remained the same as when she lived there, the same as when her
mother lived there before the divorce.
One of the police officers standing watch over the crime scene accompanied Kira as she entered the house. Walking through her father’s home, his body gone, memories flooded over her.
She knew her parents hadn’t been happy, but as a teenager, she had blamed her mother for their divorce. To hear her father tell it, Darlene Holt hadn’t bothered to keep up her looks. But as Kira thought back, she remembered her mother constantly dieting, tanning—natural or otherwise, and dying her hair to hide the gray. Moisturizers made her look like she had bathed in a vat of baby oil, Botox left her expressionless, while tummy tucks and breast firmings were painful. But no matter what she did, how hard she tried, her body sagged, her skin wrinkled, and she couldn’t prevent herself from looking years older than her husband.
During the last ten years of their marriage, Darlene refused to have her picture taken with the Judge. She had been a beauty in her day, yet Kira remembered once going to a fancy party with her parents when her father was elevated to an appellate court judge. A couple of people mistook Kira for Holt’s younger sister, and Darlene for a cougar who managed to get him to marry her. Darlene nearly died of embarrassment. Dan, however, was well pleased.
Eventually, Dan, too, acted as if he was too young for Darlene, even though he was two years older.
Kira hadn’t really paid that much attention to Dan’s looks—after all, he was her father—but he did appear young for his age. At the time of his divorce, in his mid-forties, he looked to be in his early thirties at most. And at sixty-two, he was as slim, trim, and spry as someone in his forties.
Since Kira was fifteen at the time of the divorce, her choice to live with her father carried much weight with the judge over the custody proceedings—a colleague of her father’s.