The Opal (Book 2 of the Matt Turner Series)

by Michael Siemsen

  “The government doesn’t look twice at educators and their research assistants, as long as they stir up no trouble.” Rheese’s face hardened. “And as for the former question, there most certainly is more. So if you report otherwise, I’ll know you’re lying.”

  “Okay, yeah, I get that,” Matt said. “You would suspect something like that. But what if there really is nothing more? I mean, is that just so impossible for you to accept that you think there’s zero chance of it?”

  Fando, in the front passenger seat, glanced over at G. G was paying attention, too, glancing at the rearview mirror as he drove, apparently awaiting Rheese’s answer.

  “Trust me,” Matt continued. “I didn’t hit pay dirt on the first try. I went through quite a few source objects before I found the one that had what I needed.”

  “I have no such concerns,” Rheese said, pulling out Matt’s iPad.

  “I don’t think you quite understand how my ability works, either. I don’t get the whole story on an artifact. It’s not only limited to when it was in physical, skin-on-skin contact, imprints only stick when the person feels strong emotions, good or bad.”

  Rheese put the tablet aside and began digging around in his bag.

  Matt went on. “There’s the very real possibility that essential clues are missing from the thing. Because the person had it in a sack, or they were just walking along and indifferent to the world and, therefore, not imprinting, or it was in their pocket, or . . . really, any number of other possibilities. The odds are never in my favor.”

  Rheese sat up with the opal in his hand. “Well, lad, only one way to find out, eh? We’ve still a bit of a drive.”

  Matt sighed. “Do you just have me read things to shut me up when we’re traveling?”

  “That’s just an added bonus. Your silence when unconscious is indeed golden.”

  ELEVEN

  I am female. It’s my twentieth year. My name is Tadinanefer, daughter of Bes of Swenet. I’m running. I reach the edge of the city, turn. Must run . . . he said I have to. I stop and crouch in between a tree and the city wall. The City of Amun. My chest burns. I’m out of breath. My chest stings—I’m jabbing the enormous stone against bone. I pull it away, look at it again. It changes everything.

  She thinks she’ll be caught any second, Matt observes. Two voices shouting in her head.

  One of the voices says, “You did what you were told,” and images of elaborately gowned officials flash in her head. Names whiz by with associated faces. They don’t look worried but have a definite sense of urgency.

  The other voice says, “This doesn’t happen without a price.” And she sees angry guards tearing through her father’s things, beating him, beating her little sister. But these images are illusory, whereas the previous ones are real memories. The face of the man who pried the gem from the golden crown and thrust it into her hands. His name is Sen-mes.

  “Take it! Sell it in Tyre or farther north. Let no one in this city see it!”

  A thought consisting only of words repeats in her head: How did this happen?

  It’s meditation for her. We are . . . she is rocking back and forth as she thinks it. At the very least, the motion centers her.

  It’s late, and the moon not yet risen. The city is quiet but for the distant sound of striking stones. Tok . . . tok . . . . tok . . . tok . . .

  She wipes her eyes because the tears sting. She knows what they are doing. The memories of less than an hour ago are vivid in her head: men scaling statues with ropes pulled by others on the ground. They chisel away the faces. She had run past the old temple, where a man sat on the shoulders of another, who, in turn, sat upon another’s. The one on top was scraping away the last bits of a name. They shifted to the next carvings of the name and began chiseling these away, as well. Tik . . . tik . . . tik . . .

  This girl knows it’s the name of Hatshepsut—the symbol for her name—and her statues, all being defaced. Hatshepsut used to be the pharaoh. Why is she being erased all over the city? She’s been dead a long time. Why the sudden destruction of her legacy? Who ordered it? Tadinanefer wonders the same thing; she doesn’t know why.

  Her eyes dart right and left, still fearful that someone will see her, demand to know what she’s doing: “And what have you got there?” But no one is about. She looks down at the perfect gem, a stone that only a living god could possess. She rubs her index finger over its surface in circles, thinking this could be the last time she gets to touch it before someone takes it away from her, back to where it belongs or to others who are allowed to possess things of such beauty. That may be the best outcome. She thinks of throwing it away from her, kicking dirt over it, but what if the officials change their mind and come looking for it?

  “I got rid of it . . . I threw it away . . .” They would never believe her. Her father’s imagined beating returns to the foreground of her thoughts. More tears flow. She glances around again, inhales deeply. She gets up, hops a bush, and breaks into a run again. Several houses farther, she remembers the jewel in her fist and places it in the draping linen under her arm, twisting it before tucking the mass into her waist belt. This was the worst thing that could ever have happened to her family.

  She thinks, We’re going home. Father will be livid . . .

  Dark space. We’re still in the car. Rheese’s heavy breathing beside me. I can feel my body again. The opal’s in my hand.

  Matt called the space between imprints “dark space.” It always felt the same. The previous imprint faded away, including not only the view through the eyes of the imprinter but also the thoughts and the sensations of the imprinter’s physical body. Usually, a few seconds later, he could feel his own body again. Matt didn’t understand exactly why he couldn’t feel both sets, but his father theorized that his nervous system couldn’t handle the input overload from four arms, four eyes, twenty toes, and so on. But Dad had always believed the boy could do more—break the rules that, to Matt, seemed carved in stone. And in the beginning, Dad was right; Matt’s skill improved at a fairly consistent rate. But at a certain point, the new discoveries ended, and his understanding and control over the experiences hadn’t changed much in years. It didn’t matter. Dad would tell him, almost shouting, “Take control of it, boy. Don’t let it control you.”

  As if I had a damned choice, Matt thought, hearing his father’s words in his head.

  The next strongest imprint would arrive any second now. He had no idea how long it would last, and he didn’t have his timer on. Without dark space, he was completely dependent on Rheese to take the opal away. But he didn’t think Rheese knew about the dark space. It could work to his advantage at some point.

  Matt risked a quick peek through his right eye. Rheese was playing Angry Birds on the iPad. Poorly. But at least he appeared to be enthralled. Matt decided to shimmy the opal off his hand—pretend it fell off while he was under. Since his hand lay hidden between his legs, it proved fairly easy, and he made a good show of groggily waking up.

  “Wha . . . ” he moaned, blinking rapidly.

  “What the . . . ?” Rheese leaned over to grab the stone.

  A fantasy action plan entered Matt’s head: grab Rheese by the ear, yank back, get him in a headlock, snatch the opal, roll down the window, toss it out, and let it smash all to hell when it hit the asphalt at sixty miles per hour.

  Rheese had already sat up, opal in hand. He quickly examined it as if in fear that it had been damaged. His eyes snapped to Matt. “Well?”

  “I . . . uh, it’s Egyptian.”

  Rheese’s shoulders slumped. “Well . . .” He scratched his freckled pate and smiled. “A revelatory breakthrough, indeed. Perhaps a more thorough retelling would be prudent. Pretend I’m your Amazon tart, seated across an RV table.”

  That stung. Matt feigned indifference, but Tuni was very much on his mind.

  “A young peasant woman has it. It was given to her by an Egyptian official. All through the city, people are defacing statues of the previous
pharaoh—chiseling her name off monuments and whatnot.”

  Rheese’s eyes widened. “Hatshepsut,” he said in a tone almost of reverence.

  “Yeah, her. Somebody ordered it. So this girl is hiding with it . . . doesn’t know what to do, worries about what will happen to her, her family, et cetera.”

  Rheese nodded. “Go on . . .”

  “That’s . . . that’s it. Then, you know, I came out of it. She was hiding for a while, then ran again before tucking it away.”

  Rheese sat back, deep in thought. He sighed, though perhaps more in wonder than in frustration.

  Matt went on. “This is usually how it goes. It’s a lot different from what you’re thinking, the way imprints work. Sometimes I spend weeks with an artifact before I get anything more than a date out of it.”

  “The date!” Rheese blurted. “What was it?”

  “It was . . .” Matt thought back. She was roughly aware of a day, but not a year. That far back, few cultures were, but there had often been other markers that he was able to give the museum, which enabled them to piece things together. “Does ‘ipip’ help at all? She was aware it was the middle of ipip—summertime, I guess? Didn’t really have a firm date in her head.”

  Rheese’s head swayed side to side, as if he were recalling a long-forgotten tune. “Of course, of course—how would she? It’s irrelevant, anyway. Doesn’t help us here. Is there more from her, though?”

  “I don’t know,” Matt said. “She was heading home.”

  “Hatshepsut—just imagine,” Rheese said again under his breath. He turned back to Matt with excited eyes, spoke quickly. “That’s one of the great mysteries of Egypt, you know. Why someone tried to erase her from history. The power that you hold—it’s . . .”

  “It can come in handy, yeah . . .”

  “Bloody shame it’s wasted on you, is what I was going to say. But it’s neither here nor there. Not my field any longer.”

  Matt shrugged. Probably best not to respond.

  “Hmm, right. Well . . .” Rheese turned the opal over in his palm, then looked to the front of the car. “How much longer to the airport?”

  Garza glanced down at the seat beside him, then back at the road. “Twenty or thirty minutes.”

  Rheese looked back at Matt. “Have any trouble sleeping on planes?”

  “Nuh-uh, not this time. You need to understand that reading an imprint doesn’t count as sleeping. I’m frickin’ exhausted.”

  “It’s a five-hour flight, Turner. You want to waste the entire time sleeping?”

  “‘Waste’ . . .” Matt said. He just doesn’t get it. No, that’s not it—he just doesn’t care. “Look, I really need to sleep, Rheese. Maybe just a quick one before we’re in the air.”

  Rheese smiled. “Of course, lad! Whatever you like. Just know that the longer it takes for you to find what we seek, the longer we stay in the jungle.”

  Was the man ever interested in anything that was not in a jungle?

  * * *

  Matt fast-forwarded past Tadinanefer’s imprint and found himself in someone new: a Norwegian man . . . lying atop of a pile of dead bodies.

  TWELVE

  Beth Turner reached over to the end table and answered the phone on the second ring. “Hello?”

  “Beth, this is Tuni.”

  Beth stiffened. Tuni’s tone was ominous, her voice shaky. “Oh, God, tell me, hon. What is it? Just say it.”

  “It’s Matt. He’s . . . he’s been taken. It’s Dr. Rheese, Beth. He’s the one from—”

  “I know who he is. Is my Matty okay, though? Do you know if he’s okay?”

  “I got to hear his voice on the phone earlier today. I’m sure Rheese won’t hurt him. You know, he wants to use him to find something, is my best guess. I’m with some officers from Inter—what’s that? . . . Why the bloody hell not? Well, I need to let—”

  “Rog!” Beth cupped a hand over the phone as she yelled toward the garage door.

  Tuni was still arguing with a muffled male voice. “Well, that sounds bloody asinine,” she said. “But okay, whatever. Beth, I’m at the airport right now. We’re going to try to find him and bring him home safe. I’ll update you constantly, okay?”

  Roger came in from the garage, saw Beth on the phone, and yelled, “What happened?”

  “Tuni, hold on. Roger’s here. Tell him everything you know. It’s Matty, hon! That son of a bitch Rheese has him somewhere!”

  “What?” He snatched the phone out of her hand.

  “Tuni, tell me everything. And speak slowly.” He motioned to Beth to grab him a pen and notepad.

  “I’m so sorry, Roger, I have to go through security—need to put my phone in the thing. I’ll . . . I’ll call you back.”

  He held the phone at his side and began pacing.

  “What happened?” Beth asked.

  “I guess she’s at an airport. Said she has to go through security. Calling back. What did she tell you?”

  Beth relayed what little was said. Roger’s neck muscles pulsed, and his nostrils flared.

  “Jesus Christ!” he shouted at the silent phone. “How long does it take to go through security?”

  “Call her back!”

  “She’ll call. Who’d she say she was with, again?”

  “She said officers with something, but then someone cut her off. It sounded like they didn’t want her to say.”

  “What? That makes no sense. There’s no police force that would do that. What did she say, exactly, before she was interrupted?”

  “I don’t know—that’s it!”

  “That’s not it! You’re giving me bullshit paraphrasing! Say the goddamned words!”

  Beth scowled as the tears streamed. “I . . . told . . . you . . . already.”

  Roger growled and hit the cordless phone’s callback button.

  “Hello, I’m afraid you’ve reached Tuni’s voice mail. Be a dear and leave an actual message if you need me. Cheers!”

  “Tuni, call us back, please,” Roger said. “Do not go anywhere with anyone until you speak with me. You might be in danger.”

  * * *

  “Where’s my phone?” Tuni asked the short, round security agent as she balanced on one foot to put on her other shoe. “My passport was with it, too.”

  He glanced around lazily and shrugged. Her purse waited at the end of the conveyer, but there was no little blue basket with her things. She looked around and spotted Abel Turay and his fellow officers behind a clear plastic panel. He was waving to her and pointed at his other hand, which held her phone and passport. She grabbed her purse and walked to them.

  “Sorry,” Abel said as he handed them to her. “They were just sitting there while you were stuck behind that woman.”

  Tuni waved off the apology as she powered the phone back on. “Which gate are we?”

  “This way,” he said. “Number three.”

  She walked behind them as her phone booted up. It seemed to take an especially long time, or perhaps it was just her impatience. When it reached the home screen, though, she had no signal, and a message popped up: “INSERT SIM.”

  “Damn it! Why now?”

  Abel glanced back as they walked. “Problem?”

  “My stupid phone won’t work. How do I check the SIM card?”

  “Uh-oh. Hopefully, the X-ray didn’t mess it up. I’ve heard of that happening before. Try taking out the battery and putting it back in.”

  “That didn’t happen on the way here,” she said as she slid open the back and popped the battery out with a fingernail. “Or with the thirty some-odd other scanners it’s been through.”

  She spotted the SIM card and slid it out, looked it over, and fitted it securely back into its slot before reinserting the battery. The phone again began the booting process.

  “We are boarding, miss,” Abel said, gently guiding her to the ticket taker. “Please, take your ticket.”

  “Just hang on,” she said as the home screen appeared once more.
r />   “INSERT SIM.”

  “Bloody heap of shit!”

  She looked around for a pay phone and caught a nearby woman turning her child away and shooting Tuni a dirty look.

  “Don’t know if it was your intent, ma’am,” Tuni said with saccharine tone and a smile to match, “but that face makes you look like a bat.”

  “Ms. St. James,” Abel said sternly, “please hand in your ticket and come.”

  Tuni huffed, dropped her phone into her purse, and gave her ticket to the waiting hand.

  As they strode down the Jetway, she said, “It’s still fritzing. Can I use your phone to call Matt’s father back?”

  “No service here, sorry,” Abel said in a tone of earnest regret. “Our phones are not international, and the trip was so sudden, I didn’t have time to check out one that works everywhere. We’ll be able to call everyone you need to when we stop in Panama. Now, we’re going to need a list of Matthew’s bank accounts and credit cards, plus any of yours that he might have cards for. We’ll put a flag on the accounts, and if anything is accessed, we can trace it. You have this information?”

  “Some, yes, but I doubt I know of all of them.”

  They found their seats, and Abel gave her a small pad and pen to write down the information.

  “Also, does he have any devices with him we can trace besides his phone? Portable gaming device, tablet, laptop?”

  “Yeah,” she said, fishing a pen out of her handbag. “I’ll resurrect what I can.

  THIRTEEN

  Atli rolled his filthy thumb across the jutting surface again. Was that a jeweler’s cut? A gift from the wise god Njoror, he thought, his eyes widening at the multicolored stone. He wedged his hand in and wrested the sword from the heap of still-warm Saracen warriors. It looked like an opal, a stone that some women wore in their hair, though he had never before seen one cut with facets. The gem had been set in the pommel, enhancing an already beautiful sword. He turned the grip around and observed the many other gemstones embedded within. A quick glance at the blade itself, and his smile widened. A Damascus sword! The wearer was a wealthy man, for certain. It would be a shame to leave such a masterpiece in a pile of corpses.