The Devil's Chord

by Alex Archer

  The man was dressed in black; even his face was wrapped, ninjalike. He bounced on his feet, clad in black athletic shoes, ready for another lunge or even a kick. Seeing no weapons in either of his hands, Annja reacted with a roundhouse kick that skimmed her attacker’s shoulder just as he tilted his hips and bent backward to avoid the connection.

  Her opponent kicked out a leg and connected with the side of her knee. Pain vibrated up her thigh and down her shin, but she didn’t buckle. Leaning forward, she bent to avoid a return swing from the man, and coming up at his side, she turned and clawed her fingers down the attacker’s face, gripping the black mask. The mask did not give way, but she used it to manipulate him. Annja used the momentum to hoist him from his feet. She tossed the guy aside, and he rolled away, coming up onto his feet.

  He immediately charged, head bent and aiming for her torso. An intense tobacco scent permeated the air. Annja swung a fist that was expertly blocked with a high forearm. She kicked up a knee and hinged out her leg, catching him at the jaw with her boot. He huffed out a groan, then toppled backward against a wall.

  Using his brief incapacitation, Annja punched him in the kidney. He was still bent over to breathe through the blows, so she caught his cheek with her elbow. Swinging an uppercut toward his face, she smashed her fist into his nose. Blood bled over much of the mask.

  “I just wanted a sandwich,” she muttered. “You, signore, have spoiled my appetite.”

  Gripping him by the wrist, she swung him around. A foot jammed against the back of his knee buckled both legs, and she was able to slam his body to the ground. Kneeing him in the spine to pin him down, she rotated his arm at the shoulder, wrenching it backward to bring on the pain. His shout indicated extreme displeasure.

  “Who are you and who do you work for?” she asked.

  He swore at her in Italian.

  So Annja switched to Italian, demanding the name of his employer. With a brutal twist of the arm, tweaking the muscles at his shoulder, she forced out a few bits of information from his tightly clenched jaws. His employer sought the lost Leonardo treasure. Her attacker had been ordered to divert her from the dive.

  “So you could dive for it?”

  “I do not even swim!”

  “So there are others already searching?”

  “I don’t know. I do not go in the water. I don’t know any details.”

  “What about Scout Roberts?” she asked. Because shouldn’t both she and Roberts be on this nameless thug’s hit list?

  “I do not have that name,” the man said.

  “The other man I’m diving with? You were sent only to attack me?”

  “Yes, the woman archaeologist with the long hair and pretty face.”

  Flattery would not gain him any favor. He struggled and managed to twist his body over, screaming as Annja wrenched his arm out of the socket. It had been because of his move that she’d been able to do such a thing. Stupid man.

  Releasing his arm and stepping back, Annja watched the man drag himself up to sit against the wall, clutching his injured arm. A dislocated shoulder was a nightmare; she knew that from experience. He spat at her and cursed at her in Italian.

  “Originality always impresses me. Not. I don’t believe you don’t know the name of your employer.”

  Rising against the wall, he again spat at her. Annja had come to expect no manners from thugs, but this was completely uncalled for. She stepped back, hand to hip. The man staggered off, and she let him leave. Wasn’t as if she would get anything else from him.

  And when you let the sheep go, they usually returned to the flock.

  Tailing the man, Annja passed the sandwich shop. It was dark; must have closed for the night. She should have expected as much. Now she was angry and hungry.

  She followed him through dark alleys, over two city bridges and finally to a gondola parked a block away from the canal where she had been diving. He didn’t get on the gondola; instead he exchanged words with the gondolier. They spoke so rapidly, and in low tones, that she couldn’t make out any of it from her position two houses away.

  A peek around the corner of the building where she was seeking cover and she spied the gondolier looking in her direction. He made her and pointed. The man who had attacked her made a nasty gesture at her. He got into the boat, gripping his wounded shoulder, and the gondolier pushed off from the dock, heading away from her and across the canal to the opposite side.

  She was inclined to follow—gondolas were not speedy getaway vehicles—and so she took the sidewalk away from the direction they traveled, to a wood bridge with wood railings that allowed her to cross the canal without being seen.

  She waited, concealed by the bridge as the gondola stopped and both men got out. They scanned the area before walking down an alley. A car waited at the end of that alley.

  Annja raced down the alley but by the time she’d reached the street the vehicle was no longer in sight.

  Retracing her steps to the gondola, she hopped in and looked around. No clues.

  “Back to the police,” she said. But again she wondered why she was drawing the rogue pseudo-ninjas and outboard propellers, and Scout was not.

  * * *

  IAN TATE SCROLLED through footage he’d filmed the past two days and couldn’t help but feel disappointment. He’d gotten much better footage out by the San Michele island years ago. Certainly there was a difference between the open seawaters and the canals snaking through the city. The waters flowing through Venice were much too murky to provide anything more than muted shots. His headlamps had shone on sediment and abandoned refuse and concrete and wood pilings.

  A few shots of Annja and Scout gliding through the water illustrated their underwater quest.

  “Nothing usable,” he said with disgust.

  He liked working with Chasing History’s Monsters and appreciated the credit for his résumé, but he wasn’t going to get any more jobs with the program if he couldn’t make the film look half-decent. He knew the producer, Doug Morrell, liked the sensational stuff. But how to make a quest for a lost artifact sensational? If a sea monster were to swim by, he’d be in the money. Hell, he’d celebrate if there was a stray octopus. There was a lot Photoshop could do with tentacles.

  Laughing to himself, Ian tried enhancing the shots from day one and decided the technique improved the light depth markedly without washing out the picture too much.

  “Wait.”

  Suddenly noting something out of the ordinary on one of the slides, he zoomed in on the clip. Something shiny glinted from between a closely spaced row of wood pilings. It wasn’t an engine part or tin can, either.

  Ian tilted his head, trying to discern the shape of the thing, but it was only a segment he saw between the two wood pillars. “Is it possible?”

  He wasn’t expert at knowing what to see in the waters on an expedition. He just filmed. But he suspected Annja and Scout would want to see this, so he cued it up and then headed out for the morning dive.

  Chapter 10

  Annja leaned over Ian’s shoulder to view the laptop’s monitor. He’d arrived just as she’d been climbing top deck after suiting up. The gleam in his eye had spoken more than he’d said the past two days. When he’d excitedly told them about his find while going through the footage this morning, she had felt the same familiar hum of excitement. It was comparable to dusting off the edge of a deep-buried bone and not knowing what lay beneath. Just an old bone? Or a complete piece worthy of much study?

  Scout joined them as Ian cued up the shots.

  “It just flashed at me,” Ian explained enthusiastically. “I don’t know why I didn’t recall seeing it while filming. Sometimes you have to look at something twice or more before you see what’s really there.”

  Scout met Annja’s gaze, and she had the distinct feeling she should take
Ian’s words more personally. As in, why could she only see what was on the surface where Scout was concerned? What was really going on with him? Did she need a few more times to look before she saw his truth? And why hadn’t she found out more about him yet?

  Perhaps because she’d been fighting a thug on an empty stomach? She hadn’t mentioned the encounter to Scout. Would he even be concerned? She doubted it.

  “There.” Scout tapped the screen and leaned in to get a better look. “Can you increase the size without losing the resolution?”

  “A little.” Ian tapped a few keys, blowing up the shot to 200 percent, which, in the process, lost some resolution, giving it a grainy appearance, but the object was apparent. Definitely silver and with a smooth edge to it.

  “That’s got to be it,” Scout said. “The Halliburton case. This was taken on the first day? So that was right back where we started, south from where we are now.”

  “Yes,” Ian agreed.

  Scout told Kard to fire up the engine and motor down the canal to their starting point. Within twenty minutes the dive flags were out and the crew dived.

  The water was warm this afternoon, and Annja sensed had she not been diving for treasure, she could have spent some leisurely time picking through the underbelly of Venice, exploring, mapping out the unique footprint of a city that had grown up from the water. There was so much to discover.

  For some reason today the water was less murky. The tides were high; that could be the reason. Her headlamp beamed twice as far. As she swam, her gloved fingers traced over jagged concrete and seaweed-coated rocks. She avoided a snarl of fishing line not for fear of getting tangled but rather snagging a flipper or part of her wet suit on a rusty hook.

  Behind her Ian had been following closely—he suddenly came forward and gave her the signal that he was moving ahead. He didn’t stray far; he was required to document what she and Scout discovered, but he was growing bolder in his explorations and that didn’t bother her. He had been the one to make a breakthrough.

  Scout’s flashlight caught her attention. She and Ian veered and followed his lead. They had swum about twenty feet when she saw the glimmer of silver under Scout’s roving light beam. Keeping his beam steady, the light illuminated the entire underside of the structure and the concrete pilings that had crumbled measurably.

  Not a secure structure by any means. The case was wedged in about three feet beyond the wood pilings. Just far enough to make it out of arm’s reach. Scout again pointed upward, twirling a finger to indicate he would surface. He swam upward, leaving Annja and Ian behind. Likely going to find something to assist them in retrieving the case. An oar would be perfect, she thought, though it was difficult to discern how wedged the case was.

  She swam over to Ian and gave him an underwater high five. Deserving, for he had been the one to bring them back to this spot. They might have never returned to this area, having already marked it off their list.

  Scout returned with a handheld spear about five feet long. The rubber strap was wrapped about his hand, and the opposite end sported five stainless-steel barbs. He might not be able to hook the barbs into the metal case, but if he was lucky he could snag the handle.

  Annja stayed out of the way while he finessed the barbed end through the wood pilings. Ian filmed. What she was really doing was keeping an eye out for falling debris from the building overhead. And she was keeping another eye toward the water’s surface. In their position, they were tucked far enough away from the surface, so she didn’t expect a motored boat to get close enough to scalp her again, but she wasn’t about to take any chances.

  With his face mask pressed right up to the wood pilings, Scout fished for the prize. When he retracted the spear with the case dangling from the end of it, he turned to them and pumped his fist. He swung the spear around toward her, and Annja carefully removed the case from the barbed end. It wasn’t as heavy as she’d expected the case to be, so that gave her some hope that it was indeed watertight.

  It was a great prize. Immediately, she imagined them opening it right away, although the digital code had likely been destroyed after being in the water for so long. A thin steel chain was wrapped twice about the case. Annja wasn’t sure why. If it didn’t slip off easily, it could be cut away in seconds.

  She exchanged the case for the spear with Scout. He patted his find and then, guiding his light beam across the low ceiling, they navigated out to the open water and surfaced thirty yards from the boat.

  “This is it,” Scout said. “We found it.”

  “Race you to the boat,” Annja cried.

  “Race you to the champagne!”

  * * *

  SCOUT HAD KARD bring them to the San Marco sestiere. Ian had wanted to return to his hotel room to properly clean his equipment, but promised he’d be with them in about half an hour. He made Annja promise they wouldn’t attempt to open the case until he got there, and she did. She wanted the reveal on film.

  The San Marco sestiere featured the Doge’s Palace and Saint Mark’s Square, which was currently packed with tourists. Annja followed Scout to an eighteenth-century palazzo hugging the inner curve of the canal opposite the San Polo sestiere. Scout strolled into the palazzo, tossing his gear to the floor by the door. Annja couldn’t help but stand in the entryway and marvel at the non-hotel-like decor. No cheesy reception area. No nosy tourists humped over piles of battered luggage. Not even a snotty bellman who would ding your suitcase if you didn’t tip him correctly.

  “If this is Roux’s idea of a hotel,” she said, “I’ve been going about it all wrong,”

  Scout, who carried the titanium case, which was still dripping canal water, paused at a door on the right at the end of the vast stone-tiled foyer. “Not a hotel, Annja. Roux offered, but I refused. I’ve a, er, friend who travels a lot. We trade houses when we’re in each other’s respective hometowns. Dude owns a ski lodge in Vail and a little fishing cabin in Wisconsin.”

  “And what do you offer him in exchange?”

  Scout shrugged as he opened the door. “A pied-à-terre in Paris.”

  “Nice,” Annja muttered. Maybe she could try being a little nicer to the man. She traveled a lot, and hotel rooms tended to get old after a while.

  A halogen light lured her gaze to the room to the right.

  “Check it out,” Scout commented as her eyes fell upon the artifact under glass.

  A gold pendant about the size of her palm featured a lion’s head surrounded by flames detailed in fine gold granulation. Gold wire spiraled around the edges. “Fifth century,” she decided. “Etruscan?”

  “Yep. An original, too.” He rapped the glass. “Not even wired. Do you know how easy it would be to nick this little beauty? This place is filled with valuable artifacts.”

  “But your friend would know who to come after.”

  “There is that.”

  He gestured for her to precede him into an adjoining room. Annja could smell the musty dirt and dust before she was all the way through the door. An archaeologist must live here. Or else a collector.

  The dark room grew brighter as Scout pulled aside the heavy, lined draperies to let in the sun that glinted off the canal just outside the window. This side of the canal didn’t sport a sidewalk, only the narrow, foot-wide ledge up against the buildings. She suspected it must have a drive-in dock, and couldn’t wait to explore the palazzo’s layout if given the chance.

  Scout laid the case on a massive granite-topped desk, which also displayed an intricate 3-D–printed globe that Annja recognized. She hissed as the case almost knocked the globe off its polished maplewood stand.

  “Chill, Creed. I saw it.”

  Also on the desk were thick volumes with faded gilding on the spines. She spied a few titles and wondered if they were first editions. Couldn’t be. The owner wouldn’t keep them stacked, unprotected,
on the desk like that, would he?

  “You should set the case on a towel,” she commented. “I’m sure the owner, no matter how good friends you may be, would appreciate you not getting water on the valuables sitting so near.”

  Scout winked at her and headed out the door.

  “Take a look around,” he called back. “I’m going to put on some tea. It’s a bit chilly this afternoon, what with the rain coming in.” He rubbed his palms together briskly. “Then we’ll open the case.”

  “Take your time,” Annja called after him. “We do have to wait for Ian.”

  She could spend all day in this room.

  Running her fingers along the balding emerald velvet edge of a coin tray, she quickly determined the coins sitting within were medieval. Gold and silver. They were not pristine, either, which lent to their appeal, at least to her. Meant they’d been dug out of the ground. Most likely hadn’t been bought but rather found and handled often. Pored and preened over. They were a personal treasure to admire whenever the owner wished.

  It then gave her pause.... Had the proper authorities been contacted regarding the find? Likely so, if the coins were sitting here on someone’s desk. Of course, she had no idea who owned this home; could be an archaeologist who worked at a university.

  Or he could be a treasure hunter. He was friends with Scout, after all.

  Disregarding the niggle of frustration over a treasure-hunter’s booty, Annja strolled to the bookshelf that lined the entire back wall of the spacious office. Artifacts were nestled among books in need of dusting and re-covering. A volume of Shakespeare stood out, but only because it was leaning against an ancient Greek mask styled in leather and depicting a rabbit with one broken ear and pinholes for which the wearer could look through.

  “Nice.”

  With the proper care, the mask could be oiled and perhaps the ear restored to nearly its original state, but Annja was getting the “leave it as is” vibe from the room’s eclectic collection.