by James Becker
The man listened intently for about thirty seconds, then stepped forward. His casual clothes — jeans and a T-shirt — were covered in dust and cobwebs, and his limbs were cramped from remaining in the same position for the previous three hours, ever since he’d sneaked in through the front door and crept up into the attic to hide.
The man made his way down the main stairs to the ground floor and walked into the huge reception room on one side of the front hall. He strode across to the closest of the tall windows and cautiously looked out, checking that there were no cars left on the gravel parking area.
Then he nodded, pulled a nylon bag out of his pocket and opened it on the floor near the door. He walked over to the closest packing case and started pulling out the contents, his movements urgent, but careful and concentrated. The room was enormous and the number of boxes and packing cases huge.
Within fifteen minutes he’d selected about a dozen high-value silver objects and placed them in his bag. Ten minutes later he climbed out of a ground-floor window at the back of the house, and walked unhurriedly over to the boundary fence on one side of the property, where he’d parked his car earlier that afternoon.
With any luck, he thought, he could probably repeat the operation three or four times that night, and then do the same thing tomorrow. If he picked his prizes carefully, he’d be able to make a tidy sum from their sale. It wouldn’t be anything like as much as that devious old bastard Oliver had promised him the last time they’d talked, but it would be a big help to his bank balance.
But the antiques he was stealing were only a part of the story. The big prize, the thing he’d really like to get his hands on, was a few words written on a tattered piece of parchment. He’d never seen it, or even met Bartholomew — the old man had died several years before he was born — but Oliver had always been going on about it, back in the days when he’d been a welcome guest at Carfax Hall. He knew that Bartholomew had been incredibly secretive about the relic, but it had to be somewhere in the house.
Once he’d stashed his acquisitions in the car, he’d start searching in all the places that Oliver might have missed — and there were plenty of them.
He reached his car, popped open the boot and carefully placed his prizes inside it. He pressed the lid closed carefully, making as little noise as he could, locked it and then headed back towards the old house.
‘Up yours, Oliver, you mean old bastard,’ he muttered, as he climbed over the boundary fence again. It was a still, clear moonlit night, and the house and its belongings were all his.
9
Jesse McLeod looked across the table at the man sitting opposite him.
Killian had worried him from the moment they first met. It wasn’t the man’s general appearance he found intimidating, just his eyes — black, dead eyes, seemingly able to pick apart your very soul and lay bare your thoughts. And there was a kind of suppressed energy about him, like a tightly coiled spring, that always seemed about to explode into sudden violence, probably extreme violence.
But McLeod knew he had something Killian wanted, and this gave him a powerful lever to use in his negotiations. He didn’t see why Killian would baulk at the fairly modest payment he had in mind. And the consequences of him not paying up were real serious. McLeod knew that Killian would realize this.
‘I want it now,’ Killian growled, referring to the information McLeod had accessed.
‘I can give it to you right here, on a memory stick,’ McLeod suggested.
‘You have it with you? On your laptop?’
McLeod nodded. ‘It’s right here,’ he confirmed, patting the leather bag beside his chair. ‘There’s just the matter of payment to discuss.’
Killian’s face clouded. ‘I’ve been paying you a retainer for two years. Why do you think this information entitles you to more?’
‘I think when you see it you’ll realize why it’s so important.’ McLeod was choosing his words with enormous care. ‘It’s directly related to the previous data I gave you — that stuff about the “treasure of the world” — you remember? That article in the magazine about the old guy in England, and how he thought he’d finally worked out where the treasure had to be hidden?’
Killian stared at McLeod for a few seconds, then nodded for him to continue.
‘I found a report in a county newspaper. It seems somebody croaked that old man, whipped him until his heart gave out. That means somebody must have read that article, and maybe they’re looking for the same thing as you.’
Killian still said nothing.
‘There was one detail in the story that I thought was real interesting, so I did a little more digging. I hacked into the local police database and checked out the forensic reports and a bunch of other stuff. I downloaded it all, and there’s a couple of details there I think you need to see.’
‘OK,’ Killian said slowly. ‘Let me have it and then we’ll talk figures.’
McLeod nodded and pulled a small laptop computer from his bag. He switched it on, and a few minutes later extracted a slim memory stick from the USB port on the side and put it on the table in front of him.
‘That’s it?’ Killian asked.
‘Yep. That’s the whole thing. It seems like the old man didn’t die too quietly. The forensic examiners found quite a lot of blood in his mouth — blood that wasn’t his own, I mean, and traces of flesh. The investigating officers guessed he might have bitten his attacker. They’ve got samples of that blood and tissue and they’re just waiting for the DNA analysis results to come back from their labs, which will give them a DNA profile of the killer.’
He let his gaze rest for a few seconds on the bandage wound around Killian’s head, and the heavily padded area over the man’s left ear, then switched his attention back to the screen of his laptop.
‘You told anyone else about this?’ Killian demanded.
McLeod shook his head. ‘No, but a guy has to take precautions, if you know what I mean. So there’s more than one copy of what you got there — just in case that data gets lost or corrupted, that kind of thing.’ He leaned back in his chair, trying to look relaxed and in control. ‘So how does fifty grand sound for the data and all the copies?’ It was, he thought, a reasonable enough figure.
Killian’s smile didn’t get anywhere near his eyes. ‘Like about fifty grand too much, McLeod. I’ve got a much cheaper, and a whole lot more permanent, solution.’
He pulled a small semi-automatic pistol out of his jacket pocket, the weapon made ugly by the bulbous suppressor attached to the end of the barrel.
McLeod’s eyes bulged in terror, and he strained backwards in his seat. ‘Hey, man, don’t do this,’ he said, his voice shrill with panic. ‘I’ll deliver everything to you. You can have it all for free.’
‘You should have stuck to computers,’ Killian said, his eyes dark, his face expressionless. ‘You’d never make a blackmailer in a million years. You’re just an amateur, and not even a good one.’
‘But the other copies of the data — if I don’t make contact, my friends will-’
‘I’ll risk it, McLeod, and if your friends come knocking I’ll kill them too. This isn’t about the money. This is about security, about sealing loose ends. I have to make sure you won’t talk to anyone else about this.’
‘I won’t, I promise,’ McLeod said, standing up.
‘I know you won’t.’
The report of the pistol was little more than a cough, but McLeod’s body was flung backwards by the impact of the shot. His chair toppled over and he crashed to the floor, limbs splayed, his mouth opening and closing, his eyelids flickering.
Killian stood up and walked around the table to where his victim lay. The shot had taken McLeod almost in the centre of his chest, probably just missing his heart, but it was still a fatal wound.
Taking careful aim, he fired again. The bullet smashed into the left side of McLeod’s chest and bored straight through his heart. His body twitched once, then lay still.
Ki
llian slipped the pistol back into his jacket pocket, and almost without thinking he touched his forehead lightly and then his chest three times, making the sign of the cross. He bent down and emptied the dead man’s pockets, then he turned away, picking up McLeod’s computer bag and the memory stick.
He had a lot to do, and now the clock was ticking.
10
‘Do you know this man?’
JJ Donovan shivered, and not just from the chill of the mortuary. Lying motionless on the table in front of him was a sheeted figure, only the head and face visible.
‘For the record, sir, can you please identify him?’
‘His name is. .’ Donovan paused and swallowed. ‘His name was Jesse McLeod. He worked for me. At NoJoGen.’
‘And that’s what, sir? Again for the record.’
‘NotJustGenetics Incorporated. It’s my company, here in Monterey. Why did you call me? He’s not a relative of mine. He just works — worked — for me.’
‘A business card bearing your company details was found in his possession. Calling you seemed a good place to start to try to get an ID on him.’
Donovan looked down at the face of the man he’d worked with for more than a decade.
‘How did it happen?’ he asked the police sergeant. ‘Where did you find him?’
‘A couple of guys in a patrol car spotted his body on a vacant corner lot in downtown Monterey. It looks as if he was mugged, because his wallet is missing.’
‘Did he have a bag with him? A computer bag, I mean?’
The sergeant shook his head. ‘No. Apart from a comb and a handkerchief, the only thing we found was the card. No bag, no wallet, no phone, no keys, even.’
‘But Jesse lived down near Carmel, and spent most of his spare time on the beach. If he went out in the evening, he normally stayed in Carmel because he didn’t much like Monterey. So what was he doing there?’ Donovan scratched his head. It was all too much to take in.
‘I can’t help you there, sir. What we seem to have is a mugging that went wrong, and the only unusual thing about it is the weapon used.’ The sergeant pointed down, at the sheeted corpse. ‘This body has two small-calibre bullet wounds in the chest. We won’t know for sure until the doc does the autopsy, but it looks like he was hit by a couple of point two-fives, maybe even twenty-twos. Most of the bad boys around here use thirty-eights or bigger. A twenty-two isn’t your usual mugger’s pistol of choice. It’s not a serious weapon.’
‘Maybe that’s all the criminal could find,’ Donovan suggested.
‘Maybe. Sometimes, a small-calibre gun could mean a professional hit, because with a suppressor fitted the weapon’s pretty near silent, but it doesn’t look like that was the case here.’
‘Why?’
‘Because a pro would go for a head shot every time. And this guy was shot in the chest.’
‘You said you didn’t find any keys on him either,’ Donovan said. ‘Could you do me a favour and send a car out to Carmel to check his apartment? He had a lot of expensive electronic equipment out there, and some of it belonged to my company. If the mugger took his keys, he might have burgled his home as well.’
‘We’ll do that today, sir, if you can give us the address. And do you know who his next of kin is?’
‘His parents live somewhere in Utah, I think,’ Donovan said, writing down the address of McLeod’s apartment in Carmel, together with his own mobile number. He passed them to the sergeant. ‘I’m going back to the office. Call me if you find anything.’
Donovan climbed back into his Porsche, started the engine — and just sat there, staring through the windscreen at the street ahead of him. So much had happened in such a short space of time. Two weeks earlier, McLeod had come to him with the first, tantalizing snippet of information. He’d found a report in a monthly magazine published in an English county called Suffolk about someone who was trying to raise money to fund an expedition to the Middle East to search for a lost treasure, a relic he’d referred to as the ‘treasure of the world’. The old man had been following some clues originally found by his father and, according to the magazine, he finally believed he had worked out where he should start his search.
That single expression — the ‘treasure of the world’ — had electrified Donovan, because he’d seen it before, in an entirely different context, and he believed he knew exactly what it referred to. That was why he’d turned to Jesse McLeod. If anyone could locate any other references to the man or his quest, he could.
And then there had been the report of the Englishman’s brutal death. Now McLeod was also dead; murdered in a way that didn’t seem to make sense. McLeod had clearly been murdered: Donovan was certain of that. This was no mugging.
Was there a connection here? That was one other thing that disturbed Donovan: he now knew he wasn’t the only person looking for the treasure. Suddenly, what had started out almost as an academic curiosity had turned into a dangerous race. But in spite of McLeod’s death, Donovan was determined to find the treasure first, no matter what it took — the potential rewards were simply too great to ignore.
He pulled out in to the busy morning traffic. The search had begun.
11
It was lunchtime by the time Donovan got back to the office and very quiet, which suited him just fine. He’d gone straight to McLeod’s workstation, telling his secretary he didn’t want to be interrupted, and opened up his computer. Now he leaned back, faintly surprised. He hadn’t expected his scan of the hard drive to reveal any useful information at all, but in fact he’d found an entirely unprotected folder named ‘Suffolk’ in the root directory. Inside it were the statements and forensic reports prepared by the Suffolk Police in their initial investigation into the murder of Oliver Wendell-Carfax, information that McLeod had obviously obtained recently, but which he’d failed to share with Donovan.
He copied the whole lot on to a memory stick, then read the reports on-screen. The old man had obviously died a hard, painful death, and common sense suggested he would have told his killer whatever he needed to know. His injuries were so severe that he would probably have died from them anyway, even without the heart attack that had actually killed him.
But the blood and tissue found in the corpse’s mouth pointed to an alternative scenario. It meant the killer’s face must have been right next to the old man’s mouth, and that implied that the killer was listening intently to what he said. So maybe Oliver Wendell-Carfax hadn’t blurted out everything?
Obviously, there was no way of telling now, but that detail from the forensic report at least gave Donovan hope that the other man searching for the relic might not have obtained all the information he sought. The playing field, so to speak, might still be level.
As Donovan shut down the computer, his mobile rang.
‘It’s Sergeant Hancock at the MPD, Mr Donovan. We sent a team over to Jesse McLeod’s apartment and it’s been cleaned out, at least as far as electronic devices are concerned. No computers, cameras or even mobile phones. Whoever did it left all the cables in place, but the hardware’s gone. You’ve no idea who the intruder could be, I guess?’
‘Absolutely none at all, Sergeant,’ Donovan said. But he knew he had to find out — and quickly.
Back in his office, Donovan cleared everything off his desk, then walked across to the wall beside the door where a single piece of modern art hung. He didn’t particularly like the picture, but it was exactly the right size to conceal the safe that was set into the concrete wall directly behind it.
He pressed the bottom left corner of the picture to release the spring-loaded magnetic catch and then swung the frame back on a piano hinge to reveal the wall safe and control panel behind it. With the ease that comes from familiarity, he entered a six-digit code on the control panel keypad that unlocked the thermostatic controls and gradually adjusted the internal environment of the safe to allow the air inside it to reach room temperature and humidity, and permit the door to be opened. It would take a little o
ver three minutes, but he never minded the wait.
As soon as the light on the control panel changed from red to green, he inserted a slim steel key in the adjacent lock, turned it twice, and swung open the door. Inside lay a zipped plastic bag containing a piece of papyrus with ragged, frayed and uneven edges, and a single sheet of paper. He picked up both and carried them over to his desk.
Pulling on a disposable mask and a pair of thin cotton gloves, he unzipped the plastic bag and carefully, almost reverently, he slid the parchment out and placed it gently on the bag. For some moments he just stared down at it. He couldn’t read the closely written Aramaic script in its entirety, though he knew enough of the language to translate the odd word, but a complete translation — in fact, three complete translations prepared by three different but very experienced ancient-language specialists — was typed on the sheet of paper in front of him.
Those translations had sparked his all-consuming passion and ongoing search for any other clues that might tell him where he should be searching for the relic he believed still had to exist. They were all subtly dissimilar, because each translator had interpreted the Aramaic script in a slightly different way, but there was no mistaking their meaning. The dozen or so Aramaic words in front of him, written in faded black ink, referred to the greatest lost treasure of all time, an object that even now quite literally had the power to change the world.
Just under an hour later, Donovan checked the contents of his leather carry-on bag for the second time, then pulled the zip closed. His didn’t need to undo his suitcase — he kept two of them permanently packed with everything he’d need for a two-week stay, one for cold countries, and the other for the tropics. This time his destination was London, Heathrow, so choosing the correct case for the trip hadn’t been difficult.
He also had a carry-on bag that contained a small Dell notebook computer, one partition on the hard drive hidden, encrypted and password protected. In that partition were the reports McLeod had copied from the Suffolk Police files, as well as telephone numbers and contact details he’d pulled off his own computer, plus an automatic destruct routine that would repeatedly over-write the contents with random characters if an incorrect password was entered three times. The bag also held a couple of external hard drives and memory sticks, and a selection of chips of various sorts, some of them of an unusual specification. Donovan wasn’t a computer expert, but before he’d started NoJoGen he’d worked for a specialist Los Angeles electronics company, which had contributed to the breadth of his technical knowledge.