Ark of Fire

by C. M. Palov

  Methodically, the killer’s gaze moved from target to target: blue Dumpster, green condenser, white service van. And then his gaze zeroed in on the furniture pile.

  These may very well be the last few moments before my death.

  Edie envisioned her bleeding body sprawled beneath a pile of discarded chairs put out for the trash. No doubt, that’s who would find her—the orange-suited guys in the sanitation department.

  Holding her breath, Edie slowly counted backward from ten.

  Ten, nine, eight, seven—

  The killer’s gaze suddenly swung to the other side of the alley, where a group of recycling bins overflowed with aluminum soda cans.

  She’d gone undetected.

  Surprisingly light-footed for such a large man, the killer walked all the way down the alley toward Twenty-first Street before turning around and heading back to the fire escape. As he did, a police cruiser pulled into the alley from the opposite direction.

  Relieved beyond words, Edie released a pent-up breath. Opening the door to the fire escape had obviously triggered a silent alarm, and the D.C. police had arrived to investigate.

  Although for some strange reason the killer didn’t seem the least bit perturbed by the sudden appearance of the cop car, actually raising his hand to flag down the cruiser.

  Why would he do that? she wondered. Might as well announce that he set off the alarm.

  A few seconds later she had her answer. A uniformed police officer got out of the cruiser and approached the killer, who removed a duffel bag from his shoulder and handed it to the cop.

  The bejeweled breastplate.

  The cop was in on the murder.

  The cavalry had come to kill her.

  “Looks like the op is a go,” Edie overheard the cop say as he took custody of the stolen relic. “We fly to London at nineteen hundred hours.”

  The killer shook his head. “We’ve got loose ends dangling. Someone else was in the museum besides Padgham and the two guards. The little shit escaped down the fire escape.”

  A resounding bang ensued as the cop pummeled his fist against the hood of the police cruiser. “Shit! We’re fucked! The English fag was supposed to have been the only staff person in the building.”

  “It gets even worse,” the killer said. Reaching into his breast pocket, he removed the same notepad that Edie had seen earlier. “Padgham e-mailed photos of the breastplate. I notified the tac team at Rosemont. They’re hunting down the person at the other end of Padgham’s e-mail.”

  Watching the exchange, Edie took slow, deep breaths, willing her cramped legs to stop quivering, her body protesting the straitjacket confinement.

  “This was supposed to have been a simple snatch-and-go,” the cop muttered.

  “And sometimes a mission gets bogged down in the mire. What we need to do is find this fucker—what’s his name?—E. Miller and get things tidied up.”

  Thank you, God. She’d caught a small break. They mistakenly thought she was a man. That’s who they would be looking for—a man, not a woman. They also didn’t know that Padgham never sent the e-mail. But that wasn’t her problem. Her problem was getting free and clear of the alley.

  “So far, there’s been no calls made to 911.”

  “When Miller does call, I want to know ASAP.”

  “Don’t worry. I’m on it,” the cop said before getting into his police cruiser.

  At hearing that, Edie felt the knot in her stomach tighten painfully. If she contacted the police, the killer would know where to find her. And because one of the killer’s cohorts—maybe more—wore a police uniform, she’d have no way of distinguishing the good guys from the bad.

  More scared than ever, Edie watched as the police cruiser drove away. The exchange ended, the killer walked over to the service entrance of the museum and punched in a code to buzz the locked door open. As if he owned the place, Padgham’s killer went inside the museum.

  Edie hurriedly backed out of her hidey-hole. Standing upright, she took a big gulp of air. The alley reeked of old urine and rotting garbage, the stench so strong her eyes welled with tears.

  Hearing a loud mechanical rattle, she spun on her heel.

  Across the alleyway a garage door slowly opened. Meaning she could exit the alley without having to go past the museum.

  No sooner did a black BMW emerge from the underground garage than Edie broke into a run. Or at least tried to. Severely hobbled by cramped leg muscles, she awkwardly lurched forward.

  The driver turned his head and glanced at her—a wild-haired terrified woman with an ungraceful gait—then just as quickly glanced away.

  “Obviously, one of the apathetic multitudes,” Edie mumbled under her breath as she dodged into the garage.

  Seeing an elevator, she headed toward it. Not until she was safe inside the elevator, the doors closing with a melodic chime, did she permit herself a sigh of relief. Although in actuality it was more like a sag of relief as her body went into an old-lady slump, her legs barely able to support her weight.

  A few seconds later, the elevator doors opened onto what looked to be an upscale apartment building lobby. Straight ahead, a pair of plate glass doors beckoned. Overcome with a sudden burst of giddiness, she limped toward those beautiful glass doors with their big beautiful brass handles. Yanking the door on the right side wide open, Edie barely restrained herself from running up and hugging the mailman in the vestibule who was busy inserting mail into rows of identical-looking postal boxes. Instead, she smiled at him. A big, toothy, glad-to-be-alive smile.

  Just then, a cab pulled up to the curb in front of the apartment building.

  Free at last. Thank God Almighty, she was free at last.

  CHAPTER 5

  ROSEMONT SECURITY CONSULTANTS THE WATERGATE COMPLEX

  Like a man who’d just been baptized in the cool waters of the Jordan, retired Marine Corps colonel Stanford J. MacFarlane stared at the jewel-encrusted breastplate.

  The Stones of Fire.

  Arguably one of the most sacred of all biblical relics, third only to the Ark of the Covenant and the Holy Grail.

  Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord.

  Stan MacFarlane knew from his Bible studies that the twelve inlaid stones had originally been entrusted to Lucifer when he was still God’s favorite. After Lucifer’s expulsion from heaven, God retrieved the stones and later gave them to Moses, who created the breastplate according to God’s specific instruction. Worn only by the Hebrew high priest, the breastplate came to be known as the Stones of Fire. Hidden within the sacred confines of the Jerusalem Temple, the breastplate was plundered by the Babylonians when Nebuchadnezzar’s army sacked the holy city in the sixth century B.C. For the next twenty-six centuries, the holy relic had remained hidden in the deserts of Babylon, in what is now modern-day Iraq.

  When the U.S. military forces liberated Iraq, Stan had ordered a special-ops team to find the relic. Much to the team’s chagrin, someone beat them to the prize. Shortly thereafter, he learned from paid informants that Eliot Hopkins, the director of the Hopkins Museum of Near Eastern Art, had uncovered the Stones of Fire in Iraq. Not about to let the relic elude him a second time, Stan sent his most trusted aide to retrieve the breastplate.

  Except his trusted aide had made a very careless mistake.

  “ ‘And the serpent cast out of his mouth water as a flood after the woman that he might cause her to be carried away of the flood,’ ” he hissed to the man who stood at attention in front of him. His temper bridled with a loose slipknot, he stared down the red-faced subordinate. “So tell me, Gunny, how did this Miller woman get away from you? Do you think she hitched a ride on Satan’s dinghy?”

  The penitent, former gunnery sergeant Boyd Braxton, shook his head. “I told you, sir, I don’t know what happened. I didn’t even know that she was a woman until I found her purse in the museum.”

  “The weaker sex, yet still she eluded you.” MacFarlane stepped toward the gunnery sergeant, jabbi
ng him in the chest with his finger. “Boy, you’re not going soft on me, are you? I hate to think that you’ve been pussy whipped.”

  “No, sir. You don’t need to worry about that, sir.”

  “You make certain of it, Gunny. Each and every day, you make certain.”

  His subordinate properly chastened, Stan MacFarlane stepped back. Such discipline was necessary to keep order in the ranks—a lesson he’d learned during his thirty-one years in the Corps.

  A full-bird colonel when he left the service, he’d still be in uniform had his career not been abruptly derailed two years ago by the Pentagon watchdog group Freedom Now! The godless cabal made up of left-wing lawyers and activists had targeted him soon after he’d been promoted to the intelligence office of the Undersecretary of Defense. Hypocrites one and all, they claimed their purpose was to protect religious freedom in the U.S. military. Because of his strict adherence to the word of God, Freedom Now! branded him a religious fanatic bent on converting the whole of the U.S. military to the evangelical faith.

  Well, guess what, you godless hippie freaks? It was already happening.

  When Freedom Now! caught wind of the weekly prayer meeting he held in the Pentagon’s executive dining room, they wasted no time blowing the whistle, somehow getting their lily-white hands on a photo of him standing in a prayer circle with other uniformed officers. The photo made the front page of the Washington Post. In the accompanying article, several junior officers claimed that he’d personally harassed them, told them they would eternally burn in hell if they didn’t attend the prayer meetings.

  The left-wing pundits had had a field day, and the Washington politicos and military-bashers were unwilling to let the story drop. Soon thereafter, he’d been relieved of command.

  God, however, worked in mysterious ways.

  No sooner did the furor die down than Stan founded Rosemont Security Consultants. In recent years private security firms had become the mercenary might behind the U.S. military; tens of thousands of private fighters had been hired in Iraq alone. With his top-level Pentagon contacts, he was soon making money hand over balled fist. Made up of entirely of former special-ops soldiers, Rosemont numbered twenty thousand strong. As leader of this well-armed flock, Stan had made certain that there wasn’t a pluralist or atheist or agnostic among them. Holy warriors, each and every one.

  “Sir, what do you want me to do about the woman?”

  MacFarlane glanced at his subordinate; the former gunnery sergeant was a member of his handpicked Praetorian Guard. This elite team, which served as his eyes and ears in the nation’s capital, was embedded in law enforcement agencies all over the city. Contemplating how best to clean up the mess, he opened the satchel that had been retrieved from the museum and removed a leather wallet. For several seconds he stared at the driver’s-license photo of a thirty-seven-year-old curly-haired woman.

  “You heard the gunny . . . what shall we do with you, Eloise Darlene Miller?” he contemplatively murmured.

  A quick background check uncovered the fact that the Miller woman had been arrested in 1991 for protesting the first Gulf War. In his book, that made her a Chardonnay-sipping left-wing tree hugger. Like the bastards who’d derailed his military career.

  Nothing like a “terrible swift sword” to keep an unruly woman in her place.

  “Any word on the whereabouts of”—Stan glanced at the name scrawled on a sheet of paper—“Caedmon Aisquith?” A similar background check had turned up a noticeable dearth of information, prompting Stan to order his intelligence team to dig deeper.

  “Aisquith managed to slip out of the bookstore undetected. We’re keeping a close watch on his hotel, but he’s yet to show up,” the gunnery sergeant informed him.

  “Hmm.” Stan MacFarlane contemplatively rolled the silver ring that he wore on his right hand, the intertwined crosses worn smooth over the years. “This man Aisquith is another loose end we can’t afford to let dangle.”

  “I hear ya, Colonel.”

  “Then hear this.” Stanford MacFarlane looked his subordinate straight in the eye so there would be no misunderstanding. “You will search. You will find. And you will destroy.”

  The order clearly to his liking, the gunnery sergeant smiled. “By day’s end, sir.”

  CHAPTER 6

  Feeling like she’d gone fifteen rounds with a heavyweight champ, Edie Miller dragged herself out of the cab. From her skirt pocket she removed a crumpled ten-dollar bill and handed it to the driver. If the dark-skinned man with the turban thought it odd that she’d made him pull into the alley behind her Adams Morgan row house rather than dropping her at the front curb, he gave no indication.

  Relieved to be back on familiar terrain, Edie raised a weary hand, letting the cabbie know that no change was necessary. Small recompense for whisking her to safety; the driver of the plum-colored cab had been a godsend. Her Mini Cooper, her purse, and her keys had all been left behind at the museum. But she’d gotten out with her life and the digital camera she’d stuffed in her vest pocket right before Jonathan Padgham had been killed. And that’s all that mattered.

  What a nightmare, she thought, still in a daze. What a surreal, unbelievable nightmare. The cops were actually in on the murder. Moreover, she had no idea how many people were involved in the gang that had stolen the ancient breastplate. All she knew was that they had no inhibitions about resorting to murder to achieve their objectives. And right now their objective was to “get things tidied up.”

  Shuddering, she bent down and lifted a long-dead chrysanthemum out of a clay pot. Holding it by the stem, she shook a silver key out of the clump of brown peat moss. With a quick backward glance, she scurried up the patio steps. Unlocking the back door, she stepped inside her kitchen.

  Spirulina. Barley grass. Psyllium husks. She took one look at her kitchen countertop and the neatly lined-up containers of vile-tasting health concoctions that were supposed to ensure a long life, and bitterly laughed aloud. Such precautions were a wasted effort if the Grim Reaper, dressed in a gray janitor’s uniform, came a-calling.

  Although she wanted to stuff her face with Häagen-Dazs ice cream, she couldn’t afford the luxury of emotionally collapsing. She had to quickly gather her things and get out. Before they found her. Before they did to her what they’d done to Jonathan Padgham.

  Edie snatched a canvas grocery tote from the wooden peg on the back of the kitchen door. Bag in hand, she opened the freezer, removing a box of spinach. Not bothering to open the box, she tossed it into the canvas bag. Having learned at a tender age the importance of keeping a ready cash supply on hand, she always kept three thousand dollars hidden in the freezer.

  Money stowed, she grabbed a vintage motorcycle jacket from the next peg. Pulling off her bloodstained khaki fisherman’s vest, she stuffed it into the bag. Hurriedly she donned the jacket.

  Next she strode down the hall into the small home office she maintained in the front of the house. Yanking open a file cabinet, she thumbed through the dog-eared files until she found the one marked Personal Documents. Inside was her passport, her birth certificate, the title to the house, the results of her last Pap smear, and an official copy of her college transcripts. She unceremoniously dumped the contents of the file into the canvas tote bag.

  About to head upstairs to gather her toiletries, Edie stopped in midmotion. Peering through the window, she saw a dark blue Crown Victoria pull up to the front of the house. Behind the wheel was the buzz-cut killer. At his side, the dirty cop.

  Quickly she ducked away from the window.

  They must have found the purse that she’d left in her office cubicle.

  Knowing she had only a few seconds to escape through the back door, Edie closed the file cabinet. She then slung the canvas bag over her shoulder and retreated to the kitchen, where she grabbed her BlackBerry out of its charger. She then snatched a set of keys out of the brightly colored ceramic fruit bowl, a souvenir from a fun-filled vacation in Morocco.

  Keys in
hand, she let herself out the back door, taking a second to lock the deadbolt. She didn’t want anyone to know she’d been on the premises. She then tiptoed down the circular staircase that led to the alley below. She paused a moment, listening. She heard Spanish music emanating from the apartment building opposite. But no voices. So far, so good.

  Not knowing how long her luck would last, Edie sidestepped her neighbor’s parked Jeep Wrangler and hurried up the adjoining set of stairs to the same neighbor’s house. Garrett was in Chicago on business. He was frequently in Chicago on business. And when he was, she watered his plants and fed his cat. Good friends, they each kept a set of keys to the other’s house.

  Grateful for the well-oiled lock, she opened the back door and rushed inside, ignoring the huge marmalade cat asleep on the kitchen counter. She then ran down the hall to the living room, taking up a position at the double-hung window that overlooked the street.

  Standing in the crease of a full-length velvet drapery, she pulled back the purple fabric a scant half inch, giving herself a sliver of a peephole.

  The two men were already out of the Crown Vic, the cop halfway to her front stoop.

  Edie held her breath as he banged on the door.

  “Open up! D.C. police!”

  When he got no response, he banged again.

  Then he did exactly what Edie expected him to do—he unlocked her front door using the house keys they’d undoubtedly found at the museum.

  Because the two residences shared a common wall, Edie could hear the soft reverberations as the cop charged up her wooden staircase. That was followed of the slamming of several doors. Then he stomped back down the stairs. She wasn’t sure, but she thought she heard the back door open. All the while, the killer stood sentry beside the Crown Vic.

  A few moments later, the cop emerged from the house, stepping onto the porch.

  “She hasn’t been here,” he announced to his partner, who joined him on the porch. As they stood side by side, Edie could see that the two men were near equal in height, giants the both of them.