Masks of the Lost Kings (Suzy da Silva Series)

by Tom Bane

  Christie was a general in the elite of the elite, the Special Operations Group, the secret army of the CIA, formed as a covert paramilitary group in the wake of World War II by President Truman. All operatives were drawn from the superior cadres of Navy Seals, Delta Force and US Marine Corps, training together in specialist study groups for knife fighting, explosives, assassination or evasive driving. They operated like a terrorist group, organized into cells of one to six individuals, their orders always relayed by a commander whom they never met and whose identity was never revealed, often through an intermediary senior general who had also never met the commander. In addition, all telephone calls were military encrypted and voices disguised as a failsafe. Nothing was ever written down because all operations were clandestine. Each cell’s commander was known simply as “the boss” and was never identified by name, so there could never be an identifiable chain of command that others could trace; every mission was deniable. These operatives were on their own if they were captured, and they were the only US soldiers who could be killed by their own country, when subject to extra-statutory assassination by another SOG cell. Within military circles they were known colloquially as the Waffen CIA for their ruthless reputation.

  Christie snapped the blinds shut and turned to face Colonel Mark Tweed, who waited seated with an earnest expression, behind her.

  “There are going to be too many bodies, Mark. It’s out of control.”

  She always called him by his first name when she was angry, but she insisted he always refer to her as “General,” even though they had worked for over ten years together.

  “Your operative, let’s see,” she mused, “three years in Special Forces, Green Beret with honors, trained in the martial art of Kali for five years at an enormous cost to the United States taxpayer, weapons expert, arms like Arnold Schwarzenegger … and he leaves his goddamn knife in the victim’s throat.” Christie took a deep breath, aware that she was in danger of ranting.

  “It was anticipated, General,” the colonel replied keeping his cool. “It lodged in Logan’s cervical vertebrae. It would have been impossible to extract it, so he waited for the bleed-out.”

  “Anticipated? Are you kidding me? Are mistakes anticipated? These guys get more training than fighter pilots, and cost a whole lot more too. You are on your last ticket out of here, Mark.” She paced up and down the office, arms crossed. “Tell me, ‘bleed-out’—is that a technical term?”

  “After an entry deployment with the edged weapon, it’s operationally prudent to wait so that the victim does nothing to try to stem the bleeding themselves. The operative monitors the victim until the cardiac pump does its work and the operative can get away cleanly.”

  “I understand that, Mark,” she said, her lips tight and her nostrils flaring. “But why use a knife in the first place? This is the military ops wing of Special Operations Group, not a Mexican titty bar in back street Cancun.”

  “The Luger jammed on firing, ma’am. The knife was the nearest weapon to engage the target.”

  “Your guys have got a blade obsession.”

  “No, ma’am, I don’t believe so.”

  “Look,” she said, walking to her desk and picking up a brown paper file, tipping a collection of photos out onto the surface. “They ripped out this one’s heart. This isn’t some drug-fueled jungle party for a bunch of Viet Cong captives, Mark. This was in Mexico in a Mayan temple, a tourist attraction—our next door neighbor!”

  The Colonel moved some of the pictures around with his fingertip. He had to admit they were gruesome. The assassins were clad in jaguar skins and covered in their victims’ blood. It was certainly not best military practice.

  “Those operatives no longer work for this unit, ma’am. I wouldn’t want to defend their actions but, sometimes under pressure, operatives—”

  “NO! NO! NO!” Christie slammed the flat of her hand down on the desk. “This is ‘black ops,’ Mark. That means discreet, subterfuge, no names asked, no one hears a whisper. I had to personally beg the Defense Secretary to keep this out of the media for the last two weeks. I had to get down on my knees and beg him, Mark.” The colonel very much doubted that the general had ever been on her knees to anyone, but he said nothing. “I’m really angry, Mark. And the boss is fit to kill someone.”

  “I understand, General.”

  “We’re taking out American civilians so we need to be as quiet as mice. Now we have to watch this professor’s son and the girlfriend as well. We shouldn’t even be here. We shouldn’t even be having to talk about it, Mark.”

  “No, ma’am.”

  “Are you onto the female yet?”

  “We reconnoitered her in Egypt. She has crossed the border into Israel now.”

  “Have the Egyptian authorities connected her to the pyramid incident yet?”

  “No, General, and I don’t think they will. We can put some counterintelligence in there to throw them off.”

  “Have you found out if there was an alien assassin operating in the Great Pyramid yet?”

  “No, ma’am, but we are working on it. We have an intelligence secondee from Langley with us and he has some promising leads. He’s also got some good contacts in Cairo.”

  “Keep it discreet. It’s not the primary task, I know, but why are Mossad following some Oxford archaeology student around?”

  “Our early intelligence is that, if it is anyone, it isn’t Mossad,” Mark said. “It looks like a private organization tracking her. Maybe a mercenary operation.”

  “Really?” She raised an eyebrow. “Just make sure it doesn’t go to level red again.” She sank into her chair, suddenly looking tired. “Look, Mark, the boss needs a tragic car crash, a missing person or an unsolved mugging. I want the grim reaper to be wearing his most respectable attire for this one, because if we go to red alert again we could get into a real mess. So nobody must ever notice it. Just like the good old days: termination without prejudice. Do you understand?”

  “Yes, General.”

  “I did not tell you this, but if you don’t get on top of the situation soon, you’re going to have to kill them if you don’t get it under control; that’s what’s going to turn it red again. You need to warn them off or scare the hell out of them, with nobody else around, and you need to do it fast. Wait until the boy’s father’s funeral is over and be real careful what you do in Israel. I don’t want the Israelis on the phone.”

  “OK. Thanks, General, appreciate it.”

  The colonel had no idea why they would need to scare two civilian students, but it wasn’t his job to ask. This was SOG’s black ops—he knew never to ask questions.

  “These are the direct orders from the boss. I can’t see how it will happen; you don’t need to know how. These kids are going to have to be Bonnie and Clyde to evade us, but if we don’t do something soon then I want their immediate liquidation back on, so you need a surveillance team on them all the time—and no Kali experts, they’re all too blade-oriented.”

  “Understood, General.”

  “In fact, Mark, I’m going to drop the whole damn Kali knife training for your operatives.”

  “But, General, we just signed a three-year renewal contract last month with Guro Keshav—”

  “It’s an order, Mark.”

  “Yes, General.” He saluted and turned to the door.

  “And Mark, don’t let me down. It’s my career as well as yours.”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  It wasn’t until the poker-faced Israeli border guard walked toward the car and signaled for her to turn off the engine that Suzy remembered she still had her attacker’s dagger nestling in her bag in the trunk of the car. If they searched her, they might assume she was some sort of political assassin trying to get into the country. She tried to think of a plausible explanation for possessing a lethal weapon. It was two in the morning, and she was exhausted after the long day and the tedious drive. The bored young soldier came up close to her
open window and peered inside, inspecting the vehicle.

  “Hi,” Suzy said, smiling as naturally as she could manage. “Beautiful night.”

  He leaned in through the window and looked around. Stepping back, he opened the back door and scanned around the backseat and floor before walking slowly to the trunk of the car, inspecting the exterior of the shabby car as he went. Suzy sat as still as she could, the palms of her hands sweating in her lap as she watched in the rearview mirror. The door at the back went up and he leaned in. He lifted out her bag.

  “Passport!” Another soldier had appeared at the window and was thrusting his open hand toward her. Suzy pulled her passport from the pocket of her shirt and handed it over. The trunk slammed shut but she couldn’t see whether the first man still had her bag. He was walking around the other side of the vehicle to rejoin his colleague, who was scrutinizing every page of her passport. Both of them were standing back at the window, but she still couldn’t see if the man was carrying her bag. Had he just thrown it back into the trunk? Finally, the second guard handed back the passport.

  “Enjoy your stay,” he said with a grin, his white teeth flashing in the darkness.

  Suzy gave what she hoped was a casual wave and watched in the mirror as the two of them stared after her until the dust and exhaust blocked her view. She was now safe and out of Egypt. A huge weight, she felt, had been lifted. She wondered if she was the first tourist ever to actually feel safer on entering the West Bank. After driving for several minutes, one eye kept on her mirror, she decided no one was following and pulled the car over. She opened the trunk and saw her bag still sitting there. She took out the knife from inside and slid it into her right shoe.

  The fumes were still lingering in the air when a white Land Rover approached the checkpoint. The vehicle was clean, unmarked and seemed in perfect condition. The driver was huge, his head almost touching the ceiling, and on his face was an unusual spider-like tattoo. Without exchanging words, the men showed their passports and the soldiers waved them through. Getsu turned the GPS tracking device back on and they proceeded at a moderate pace down the road Suzy had headed down moments earlier.

  Now that her mind was free to concentrate on what she was doing, Suzy had to make a decision. Piper had urged her to hurry because of his summer solstice idea that she was up against someone’s clock. He had warned her to go straight to Jesus’s tomb as quickly as possible but she needed to investigate Qumran first if she was to do her thesis research as she had intended. Could she trust Piper’s judgment, or should she follow her own instincts? Taking a deep breath she decided that she had to make her own decisions. She sent a brief text to Piper, saying she would stick to her original plan and go to Qumran, and then checked her map again before setting off for Qumran, praying that the engine would last out for the 200 or so miles and not leave her stranded in the middle of nowhere. When she at last, arrived at her destination, dawn was just breaking. Tired and hungry, her nerves were as frayed as the upholstery in the beat-up four-wheel-drive she’d rented. Anyone who even looked in her direction felt like a potential assassin.

  She found a small hotel and checked in. The moment she reached her room, she dropped onto the bed and fell into a deep sleep, waking four hours later to the sound of a text message beeping on her phone. It was from Piper, who had arranged for her to meet a Dr. Ari Salam, who would be her personal guide at the site where the Dead Sea Scrolls had been discovered by a humble shepherd boy. These were the scrolls that, according to cynics, were to shake the very foundations of the Christian Bible and faith, but Christianity had proved to be more robust than they had anticipated. The text instructed her to meet Dr. Salam at the western gates of the site. She dragged herself out of bed and into the shower. Less than ten minutes later she was feeling considerably more alert. The hotel provided her a boxed lunch, which she started eating as she walked out to the Jeep.

  She drove toward the hilltop citadel of the Essene priesthood, and glanced at Piper’s text message again, as she walked up the hill toward the gates. She spotted Dr. Salam as he headed straight for her, stepping forward to introduce himself. In his late forties, Dr. Salam was dressed in a casual western style and with only a hint of an accent. Piper had mentioned Salam had spent many years in England.

  “Call me Ari,” he said. “I understand from Professor Piper that you are seeking to find the links between Christianity and Egypt,” he said.

  “Yes, for my PhD thesis. And it seems I’m running out of time so any evidence you can show me would be very helpful.” Ari immediately led her off toward the archaeological site, and they headed for a ruined settlement that stood on the brow of a high hill. As Suzy looked down, she felt as if they were atop a Himalayan peak. The Dead Sea stretched out below them, its ancient waters resting in a deep hollow almost fourteen hundred feet below sea level, which added to the visual illusion of a fallen horizon. The skies glowed a soft shell pink, adding a faint sense of the surreal to the scene. This lost citadel was the home of the Essenes, and Suzy could see the appeal of living here, although it was a like a dusty moonscape, with only a hint of vegetation. The impressive vista and ascetic feel of being distanced from normal society must have given its inhabitants a spiritual lift. An aroma of fresh coffee and cheese wafted through the morning air. A few meters away, in a long ditch, a group of students slaved away, digging in the sweaty heat with trowels and twirling their brushes across the dust like artisans revealing a Renaissance fresco. The tiny outlines of many small rooms emerged from the sandy soil. Next to the ditch sat several bearded archaeologists, feasting on a traditional breakfast of sliced meats, breads and cheese borekas, cramped around a trestle table complete with white tablecloth. Suzy and Ari strolled across to where the students were excavating to take a better look.

  “This is the scriptorum,” Ari explained. “The archaeologists believe that the third story room of this building was the place where the scrolls were copied. The same type of pottery was found both here and in the caves with the scrolls.” He continued talking as they made their way further up the hill.

  “This is the biggest part of the whole settlement,” he said, indicating an array of graves and rock tombs, the waters of the Dead Sea still forming a glinting backdrop. “There are twelve hundred tombs here, fifty-five of them already excavated. There is one in particular I want to show you.” They walked around the dusty site to a long sunken stretch of grass, dotted with a few nondescript stones. Someone had laid a palm leaf with careful precision along it.

  “This is the grave of John the Baptist.” Suzy looked at Ari in surprise.

  “This? Really?”

  “In my opinion,” Ari said, “It has been deliberately kept quiet. The body of a headless man was exhumed from this grave in a wooden coffin, but the remains have been mysteriously lost somewhere within the Catholic institutions. John the Baptist was beheaded of course, and it was the Knights Templar who were thought to have retained the head.”

  Suzy was intrigued but it wasn’t a lead she could follow. To the archaeological establishment, any reference to the Knights Templar in her thesis would undermine the credibility of anything else she wrote.

  “You really think it could have been John the Baptist?”

  “Well,” Ari smiled, pleased to have caught her interest, “there’s a lot of strong evidence. His baptism ritual was identical to that of the Qumran Essenes. And the river Jordan, where he baptized Jesus, is only a couple of miles away, over there. Also, he commenced his ministry when he was thirty, the age for graduation at Qumran, and he spent his early life in the wilderness where Qumran is located. So all in all it’s quite likely he was an Essene priest and he may have initiated Jesus into his rituals.”

  They continued toward the caves where the scrolls had been found. The climb was steep and Suzy struggled several times not to lose her footing on the rocky scree slopes.

  “The Dead Sea Scrolls were made of papyrus,” Ari said, pausing to catch his breath, “but they also fou
nd a copper scroll which gives cryptic references to where Egyptian and Essene treasures are hidden. Some historians say it is a fake, but I know it’s not a fake. It’s just that they don’t like it because it doesn’t fit their worldview.” Suzy contemplated how often she had heard this message about the so-called establishment.

  Finally they reached the mouth of a large cave and, leading the way inside, Ari explained, “Some call this the Cave of the Column. It is often thought to have been used as a tomb.”

  Once inside, they scrambled downward, the roof mercifully high but the ground rough and covered with loose stones. Ari kept up a monologue as he went.

  “There is one passage in the copper scroll that describes a very large hole in an upper chamber and, in that chamber, a hidden doorway. And this is where we’ll find it.” They climbed down and down, and then onto a narrow, arched bridge, cut from the rock.

  “The scroll says ‘deep inside the column is something blue.’”

  “There’s nothing blue,” Suzy said, feeling her way across the bridge of stone in the gloom.

  “Ah! Look down,” Ari instructed, grinning.

  She did as he told her and there in the pitch black of the chamber, about ten meters down, was a glowing blue aura, distorting her vision like she was swimming beneath a shimmering turquoise sea.

  “What is it?” she asked, unable to tear her eyes away.

  “Very few people know, and only recently did I find out,” Ari said proudly. “I was told by a very clever American, Ben Sanders.”