Relic_An Iniquus Romantic Suspense Mystery Thriller

by Fiona Quinn

  “What does the punishment look like? Prison time? And are Nadia and Sophia part of that investigation?” Titus asked.

  Finley shook his head. “Could go in a bunch of directions. The Gilchrests might have to forfeit the tablets. They might be required to pay a fine. While it’s interesting to the FBI to stop the theft of cultural heritage items, it’s more interesting to us to stop the funding of terrorism. Nadia and Sophia are not implicated in the tablet case. But the Gilchrests didn’t stop with that shipment. We believe that they continue to buy artifacts on the black market and are importing them for their museum, investing huge amounts of money, which in turn goes to fund ISIS. It’s not the art theft, per se, that has us interested. We’re looking to shut down the black market fundraising. We’re focused on the Gilchrest family because they’re getting their intel somewhere. We’re trying to run down that source. This case extends beyond Crafts&More. It’s probable that world collectors are looking for certain items to place in their archives. It’s also probable that there is someone who knows what’s on their list and is keeping an eye open, sending that information along to the buyers, so that as soon as a piece is located they can make a bid.”

  “Also, that someone has to have enough knowledge that they can spot a fake,” Andersson said. “That kind of information would command a premium price. There are very few people with the antiquity expertise and the operational access that is enjoyed by Sophia and Nadia—as a matter of fact, they are positioned to commit this crime better than anyone else in the world. As you find out more about what they do and how they operate, you’ll be amazed by their scope of information.”

  Brian had met Finley in the hallways of Iniquus before. The FBI and Iniquus had a good working relationship. As a private entity, Iniquus contracted with the various alphabets when egos and career-track ambitions got in the way of playing nicely together. And Iniquus could operate in places where the US needed to keep its nose clean for geo-political reasons. Brian was fairly sure that that was why Iniquus was involved here.

  This was the first time Brian was meeting Andersson. Her clothes were tailored to perfection and buttoned up tightly. Her feet were lined up directly under her knees. She held her body rigid, like a soldier at parade rest. There was nothing soft or vulnerable about her. She was tense while Finley was much more at home in the war room. Brian wondered if Andersson would relax a bit with familiarity.

  Her demeanor heightened the tension in the room. Panther Force typically liked to keep things low key. A calm mind was a useful mind—a stressed brain made mistakes. Maybe it was Andersson’s tightly wound, hyper-controlled composure that set adrenaline flowing through his system, or maybe it was the thought that Sophia might be a terrorist sympathizer. Could his instincts be that far off the mark? Brian squared his shoulders and focused on the information.

  “I know the women touched on this, this morning,” Andersson said. “But here are some more details. We are focused on ISIS funding. ISIS has a variety of ways that it funds itself, including kidnapping for ransom. As we speak, your Rooster Honig is in Iraq working on negotiations to free an American energy consultant captured by ISIS insurgents.”

  The men nodded their affirmation. There was a shift in the room’s atmosphere. A fellow Panther Force member, known by the call sign Honey, hadn’t been heard from in over twenty-four hours. He’d missed two of his scheduled check-ins.

  “Robbery, extortion, human trafficking, and oil smuggling all help to pay the fighters wages and keep their ammunition well-stocked. We’re focused on artifact theft here, which is their biggest revenue producer,” Andersson said. “And particularly the way that Americans are helping ISIS, whether it’s their direct intention or just short-sightedness. Criminal selfishness.”

  “How much money are we talking about?” Titus asked.

  “We estimate that they’re taking in about three million dollars a day in art,” Finley responded. “They have about two billion dollars in the bank at any given time.”

  Gage let out a low whistle.

  “These items are thousands of years old. There isn’t really a way to value them, is there?” Titus asked.

  “Exactly,” Andersson said. “The exporters know their clients and who’s looking for what, as well as the price they might be willing to pay. Crafts&More, for example, is acquiring items that have a direct connection to biblical scholarship. Those items might bring in a higher price. As ISIS figured out how lucrative the relics were, they’ve made a business of unearthing them. There are more and more available, saturating the market and driving down the price, which in turn, leads to more pillaging to maintain their income flow.”

  Finley looked Andersson’s way, and when she didn’t continue he said, “On the business side, there are three basic ways that paramilitaries get involved in the arts trade. As you can well imagine, there aren’t a lot of ways a man can earn a basic living in Syria. Right now, they view looting as a job, much like fur traders did in early colonial America. They are given coordinates by ISIS, which indicate the specific area that they’re allowed to exploit. After the artifacts are removed and sold, they pay a tariff back to ISIS—twenty percent if the looters use their own equipment. Forty percent if they use ISIS equipment.”

  “Equipment like what?” Brian asked.

  “Bulldozers, mostly. Shovels, metal detectors, trucks. The tariff is one way to earn money. The others include running the trafficking networks and offering other services like finding services. This last leg of the business model is where we think Nadia and/or Sophia come in. The trafficking networks often follow the drug routes already in place, and are worked by families who are familiar with moving illicit goods to international markets. The finding services are paid to those with specialized knowledge.”

  “Like the knowledge possessed by Nadia and Sophia,” Thorn said.

  “Exactly.” Finley stood. “Let me give you an example. Because we knew what was going on with Crafts&More, we sent in a special agent to gather firsthand information on the underground world. He made contact with a Syrian living in Turkey who Interpol had identified as being in the artifacts trade. The trader had a picture of a mosaic that had just been unearthed. It was an amazing piece that seemed to tell the biblical story of John the Baptist. We had our agent on camera receiving a phone call from Gilchrest family representatives who offered $200,000 if the mosaic could be authenticated and authorized—which means they had provenance that would make it okay to have in their collection, signed by a reputable source.”

  “How did the Gilchrests find out about the piece?” Titus asked.

  “Good question. We’d like to know that too. What I can tell you is that our field office sent photos to an expert—the piece was the real deal. Imagine, our agents are in this rundown apartment in the city, there are two young Syrian men, boys, really, who were hanging onto a Roman mosaic that was at least fifteen hundred years old.”

  “Did you get ahold of the art?” Titus asked. “What was the next step if you did?”

  “The boys dropped the price to $6,000 when they got spooked. We secured the piece to repatriate at a future date. And guess who developed the satellite pictures for AACP that were used to find that art?” Finley asked.

  “Sophia Abadi and Nadia Dajani,” Thorn answered.

  Finley swung his head around to catch Thorn’s eye. “Now guess who was involved in identifying and dating the John the Baptist mosaic that was being offered up by the Syrian boys to our special agents.”

  “Sophia Abadi and Nadia Dajani.”

  Finley pointed his finger at Thorn. “Bingo.”

  Chapter Six

  Sophia

  Monday p.m.

  As soon as she heard an engine pull up to her curb, Sophia jumped up from her desk and ran out the door. She knew she’d eventually need to let Brian into her house; that’s where her office was set up. But she needed another day, one with a little less stress, before she felt comfortable doing that. Maybe tomorrow. Maybe not,
she thought as he opened her car door and unfolded his tall frame.

  Sophia was close enough now to see a bemused look on his face. His focus was on his phone. As she approached, he turned it her way. “Who is this?” he asked, laughter in his voice.

  Sophia looked at the picture of her neighbor who lived just around the corner. She was dressed in a flesh-colored bikini and high heels and was posed like a model on the hood of a convertible parked in the middle of her driveway. “That’s Marla. I saw her too.” Sophia pulled her phone from her pocket and opened her photo album. “I took this when I was heading home from the doctor’s office right around eleven.”

  “That was five hours ago.” Brian looked up the road in the direction of Marla’s house, though it was hidden behind a copse of pine trees. “That’s crazy.”

  “Pretty much. Welcome to my neighborhood, a treasure trove of unstable individuals. With any luck, you won’t meet any of them.” Sophia held out her hand for her keys.

  Brian looked past her to where a wide black puddle stood out against the weathered grey length of her driveway like a pen that had exploded on a piece of paper. Yellow plastic tape stretched across the drive, keeping people from diving on to the surface until the blacktop sealant cured. Brian squinted as if he were processing why in the world someone would do that. It was hard to fathom even for Sophia, who knew that splotch was covering up the murder victim outline that had been painted there in the wee hours of the morning. Why Penny and her crew decided that this was “fixing things”, she hadn’t a clue. It was a problem that could be put off for another day.

  Brian pulled his focus back to Sophia, looking for an explanation, which she didn’t offer up. He settled on, “Do you have my keys? I’ll help you move the car seats back over to your vehicle.”

  “They’re on your dash,” she said, moving toward her van. It was spotless on the outside. She walked around to look at her tires, and two new ones were plump and functional on the right-hand side. She saw through the back window that her tire was still in the back. Sophia popped open the side door. She barely recognized the minivan as hers. There was a box that held her kids’ debris, crayons, daycare art, and that light up Bubble Guppies shoe she’d been looking for for the last week. The seats and carpet were free of dirt, spills, and the general schmutz that normally decorated the backseat. It smelled—Sophia stopped mid-thought to inhale the fresh citrus scent that replaced the odor of stale vomit she’d never found a way to remove—so good.

  Her skirt hung on a hanger, cleaned and pressed. She searched the front where the chai puddle had saturated the cloth seat. Gone. Sophia wasn’t sure that her van had been more pristine, even when she drove it home from the used car lot. Sophia was vaguely disoriented as Brian ambled over with the two car seats dangling in his hands. She stepped out of the way.

  “Everything okay?”

  “I think you brought me the wrong car.” She lay a cool hand on her forehead.

  “Iniquus likes to impress our clients. Our automotive team is stellar.”

  “They cleaned my skirt.”

  Brian leaned in to reattach Turner’s seat. “I think they could tell you were having a bad day. I hope this makes it a little nicer.” He sent her a warm smile that stalled her.

  Sophia refused to acknowledge a single thought. She hung there in space and time, aggressively seeking a sense of nothingness, because the emotions that hovered in the air between them were reckless. She held herself in the void while Brian’s expression turned quizzical. She only released herself when he turned to push a knee into Turner’s seat and pulled the safety belt taut, like he’d done it a thousand times before. Sophia wondered how he knew to do that. There. That’s a safer line of thought.

  “I wish I could have thanked them in person.” Sophia picked up Chance’s seat, wincing as it hit the burns on her thighs. Before she could do anything more, Brian took it from her and went around to the other side of the car to maneuver it into place.

  Sophia stood there awkwardly with Brian hunched over his task. “I should apologize to you.” Her voice was so soft she wasn’t sure Brian could hear her. “I left without telling you goodbye. I had my reasons.” She rubbed her hands together as if in supplication, thankful he couldn’t see her. “I was thinking about your best interests when I decided…” She caught her lower lip in her teeth to stop it from trembling. She wasn’t good at confrontations. She deserved his resentment, at the very least. She couldn’t imagine what he’d thought when he discovered that he was assigned to her security team.

  Brian pulled himself from the doorframe, turning slowly. “Sophia, I’d like to apologize to you. I got caught up in the moment when we first met. I thought we were on the same page—that we were experiencing the same things. I was trying to be honest about my feelings. It was too much. I get it. No hard feelings.” He extended his hand for a shake. “Let’s let bygones be bygones and start fresh.”

  Sophia had wrapped her arms around herself and was shivering, though it was over eighty degrees in the sunshine. She blew out a breath through pursed lips. She should stop him from taking the blame. And she should tell him the truth—she couldn’t keep him safe. And she couldn’t bear the thought of destroying yet another life. It was better that she’d walked away. If they had to work together, she hoped he’d stay angry with her, or at least leery. Certainly, he needed to keep his distance.

  “Shake my hand, Sophia. Let’s pretend this is the first day we’re meeting.”

  Sophia forced herself to slide her hand into his.

  “Now invite me in to see your computer,” Brian said, turning and plucking the hanger with her skirt from the hook before he shut the car door.

  Inside, she walked directly to the dining room that she had converted into an office space. It was big enough that Nadia and she could work together without getting in each other’s way. One wall was floor-to-ceiling bookshelves with reference texts and file cabinets. She had a wraparound desk, and her computer systems—a series of wide screens—were arranged in a semi-circle, so she could compare visuals with ease.

  Brian scanned the room, then turned toward the stairs. “Are your children here?”

  “Chance is sleeping upstairs. Turner didn’t want to come home, he was having fun with the clay volcano project his teacher had going on. I’ll need to go get him in a little bit.” Sophia checked her watch. “Would you excuse me for a minute?” She lifted a house phone and dialed a number, moving into the kitchen to speak. “Lana, I’m at home with Chance and have someone here, I was hoping you might be able to get Turner for me.”

  “I’m so sorry, I can’t. Remember my car’s at the mechanic? And I’m running out the door. Jeff’s boss is in town, and I’m going out to eat with them. I’m waiting for my Lyft.”

  “Do you need me to watch your kids?”

  “I have a babysitter here. I’m sorry I can’t help.”

  “Not a problem. I can figure this out. I’m thinking positive thoughts for you and Jeff tonight. Do you think he got the promotion?”

  “No idea but I—oh, the car pulled up.” Sophia could hear the excitement in Lana’s voice. “Keep thinking those good thoughts. I’ll catch you up tomorrow. Bye.”

  Sophia moved back to the office to find Brian examining her digital code creator.

  “Security?” he asked.

  The device gave her a new pin number every forty-five seconds. The idea being that as long as no one got hold of the display, they wouldn’t be able to hack her files. As Iniquus had pointed out that morning, her data was highly sensitive. Sophia blinked at the device. She had been sure it was in its hiding place that morning. Maybe Nadia had run by on her way in to Iniquus to check on something last minute.

  Sophia reached out her hand to take it from him. “Where did you find this?”

  “On your desk. You didn’t leave it there?”

  “As you might have noticed, neither Nadia nor I are comfortable talking in front of groups. We lead introverted lives. One of
us must have missed it this morning in our anxiety.” Even as she said it, the story sounded off. She’d have to remember to check in with Nadia. “As my security liaison, maybe you can help me find a better way to handle the computer safety issue.” She pocketed the coder. “Are you going to teach us some basics in self-defense before we head down to Peru?”

  “What were you thinking of?”

  “I don’t know.” She looked at the floor for a moment, then up to catch Brian’s gaze. “Maybe some basic ways to get away. Punches and kicks. Maybe you could teach us how to handle a gun.”

  “Do either of you own a gun?”

  “No.”

  “Have either of you ever shot a gun?”

  “No.”

  “You’ve been going out on digs for a long time. What was your strategy before?”

  “I haven’t been on a dig since 2011. My strategy? Scream really loudly. Possibly run.” She tipped her head. “Well, run if safety isn’t too far away.” She sent him a smile. “And it’s not uphill.”

  Brian smiled back. “There. That’s the Sophie I met. You have the most beautiful eyes when you’re sincerely smiling.” The startled look Sophia sent him must have made him realize he’d stepped over the line. He cleared his throat. “You’re right, we need to consider your home security. The intelligence you have on your computer is bound to be of interest to lots of different people.”

  Sophia’s brow furrowed. “Like who?”

  “Pirates? Treasure hunters? I’ll get a better idea as I learn more about your job.”

  The phone rang and Sophia snatched it up to keep the sound from waking Chance. “Dr. Abadi,” she said.

  She heard five staccato beeps followed by a dial tone. Sophia replaced the receiver and grabbed her keys. “Sorry. I need to make a phone call. Will you excuse me for a minute?” Without waiting for an answer, she walked to her kitchen. She slid open the battery compartment on her keychain flashlight to reveal a code creator and waited for her cell to ring.