by Alex Archer
He scowled, all the lines of his face drawing together so that his expression looked pinched and pained.
The voice on the other end came through. “She escaped us, but we killed her cameraman. He put up little fight, and no one will find his body.”
“Go on,” Doc said.
“We have his cameras and his computer. They’re on the way to your office now.”
The lines on his face deepened.
“I put them in a packing crate, just as you told me, labeled it so anyone looking will think it’s filled with books.”
“What else?”
“The rest of the television people, they left before we got to the hotel.”
Doc clicked his tongue against his teeth, waiting for the speaker to finish.
“Likely they are of no consequence. It was the cameraman and Annja Creed. They’re the only ones who saw.”
“And you let her get away.”
A hiss of static came across the phone.
“Yes, she got away. Sir…Master. She had a sword. She killed Zuka and Sute and—”
“Where is Annja Creed now?”
There was another hiss of static.
“Where, I say?”
“Master, she got on a bus. I could not read the words. I do not know its destination. The police came to the hotel, and we had to leave. We could not take the bodies with us, Zuka and Sute and…”
Doc held the phone away from him and stared at it, the shadow cast by the big brim of his hat obscuring the buttons. Finally, he brought it back to his ear.
“I suggest you find her or you may also be among the casualties.” He ended the connection and replaced the phone in his pocket, stood quietly and stared at the rise that separated the two digs. After several minutes he turned and retraced his steps, stopping at the slab Jon still busily and carefully cleaned.
“You can translate this, right?” Jon didn’t look up; he fixed his gaze on Doc’s shoes.
“Of course,” Doc returned. “Let me read it to you.”
7
“American, yes?” The man who’d tugged Annja into the doorway released her and beamed, revealing a large gold tooth amid a mouthful of polished white ones.
She’d nearly struck him, her reflexes were that honed and she’d become so used to being threatened. But she’d caught herself and relaxed her hands. She stepped back, ready to offer a verbal jab instead.
He was too quick for her and continued, “A lovely day this is, American lady. A tourist, I can tell. I know tourists.” He smiled even broader. “I like tourists!”
His eyes twinkled merrily, somehow putting her at ease. He was overdressed in a purple tuxedo so dark in the shadows it looked black, with lavender satin piping up the legs and an emerald-green cummerbund that bulged slightly with his paunch. He had makeup on; his long, narrow face was paler than his neck and hands, a little rouge was visible on his cheeks and he batted eyelashes that had to be false, judging by their exaggerated length and curl. Annja thought he looked like a circus clown going to some formal affair.
“How do you know I’m American?” Annja had intended to ask why he’d rudely tugged her off the sidewalk, but the other question came out first.
“I’m not your average Cross spruiker, you know! I’ve got keen eyes. I can tell Americans.” He clapped his hands. “Besides, you don’t have the look of a local, or a pommy. English,” he translated for her benefit. “You don’t have your chin tipped up to catch the better air, and you don’t have that English swagger, if you know what I mean.” He paused. “And you’re walking alone. Americans don’t seem to require company in the Cross. Brave and curious, the lot of you are.”
She raised an eyebrow, a little taken aback by the odd-looking fellow, but deciding he posed no threat.
“And since you’re curious, and obviously a tourist, you simply must come in and see the show.” He waved with a flourish to the door behind him. “What say you, mate?”
She shook her head. “I have to make a phone call.”
“There’s a phone in the lobby.” He pointed to the sign above the door. The Purple Pussycat.
She caught a whiff of him, a cologne that was musky and flowery and would have been overpowering were she not outside on the sidewalk where the scents from the Japanese restaurant next door intruded. Her feet ached, and the headache that had started on the bus was getting worse.
She could sit for a few moments, inside this place, collect her thoughts and then call Doug and the police on the pay phone he mentioned. She wanted to rest her feet briefly.
“A spectacular show we have this late morning,” he persisted. “And it’s just about to start. You wouldn’t want to miss the opening number.”
Annja had a sense that he used the same spiel on anyone who came close enough for him to grab.
“Old Broadway show tunes, like you’ve never heard them before. Better than Broadway, because they’re Australian.”
“How much?” she asked.
“For you, dear lady, only eight dollars.”
“And for everyone else?” She offered him a weak smile.
“Eight dollars.” This time he bowed as he gestured grandly to the door, the color of which nearly matched his tuxedo.
Just a few minutes, she told herself, to rest my feet and to think. God, but I need to think. And thinking wasn’t happening out here on the sidewalk, and hadn’t been possible on the bus.
He opened the door, and she went inside, instantly assaulted by more smells—incense, perfume, fried potatoes, popcorn, something terribly sugary. They all warred for her attention. She went to the counter. It was stainless steel and glass, reminiscent of one from an old movie theater she’d attended once in a while near the orphanage in New Orleans where she grew up.
An elderly woman with a heart-shaped face and a tired expression emerged from behind the popcorn machine.
“G’day!”
Annja took in the rest of the lobby, hoping to find a bench to sit on, and seeing nothing but movie-style posters of women in flouncy gowns. She spied the pay phone, an old thing…or perhaps it was made to look old. The place definitely had a retro ambience, as if she’d stepped back into 1940 or 1950.
“One ticket?” The woman’s voice was high and soft, sounding like crystal wind chimes. “Eight dollars. Show’s about to start. You’d best hurry to get a good seat.”
Annja retrieved a five-dollar bill and three one-dollar coins out of her wallet, pausing to look at the face on the bill before she passed it over. Australian money was much more colorful than American, and the bills had a parchment feel to them.
“Popcorn?” the woman asked.
Annja shook her head.
“Iced coffee? Soda? Perhaps—”
“No, thank you.” Annja headed toward a heavy curtain, above which a sign said Auditorium. She’d collect her thoughts for a few minutes. Rest her feet. Try to lessen the pounding in her head. Then she’d come back out to make the calls.
She looked at the time before going inside. On the wall behind the concession counter was a large purple cat with a twitching tail, its belly the clock. Less than an hour had passed since the men had tried to kill her at the hotel.
She pushed aside the curtain and let the darkness swallow her.
It took a few moments for her eyes to adjust. She stood in an aisle that stretched between two banks of movie-theater-style seats. The only light was what spilled out beneath the hem of the closed curtain at the stage down front. Her eyes picked through the shadows, seeing only a dozen other people inside an auditorium that could hold well over one hundred. Most of them were close to the stage. Annja selected a seat in the last row. The seats were upholstered in dark red velveteen, though some of the cushions had been replaced and covered with various colors of vinyl. The seat squeaked when she sat, causing the other patrons to turn around and try to spot the newcomer. She leaned against the high back and it squeaked again.
The floor was carpeted, the nap worn thin and the patt
ern lost where sections of the canvas backing showed through. It was clean—Annja was struck by the cleanliness of the place. There was still the hint of popcorn in the air and a vague fustiness just because of the age of the building. But there was nothing objectionable.
She tipped her head back and closed her eyes. Annja knew several martial-arts relaxation techniques, any of which would help the tension melt away as she balanced and centered herself. She breathed deep and slow, imagining a point of light in the distance and focusing on it.
Suddenly speakers crackled on the walls and George M. Cohan’s “Give My Regards to Broadway” began playing, with “Remember me to Kings Cross” in place of “Remember me to Herald Square.”
Her eyes opened wide as the curtains parted and a single bright spotlight struck a lanky torch singer in a black sequined gown. The woman threw her head back and began singing “If He Walked into My Life” from Mame. Something didn’t seem quite right about the singer, and so Annja leaned forward and studied the woman.
Not a woman, Annja decided after a moment. The singer sported an Adam’s apple, as did the next one who came out singing “Whatever Lola Wants,” from Damn Yankees. Annja recognized this warbler as the man in the purple tuxedo who’d lured her into this place. Female impersonators, the lot of them, and they weren’t terrible, Annja decided, a bargain for eight bucks. She watched only one more number—an eight-member chorus line singing about a “singular sensation,” before she closed her eyes and resumed her breathing exercise and focused on an imagined speck of light.
What did Oliver see? What did I see? What relic was so valuable someone would kill for it?
She forced out the sound—the taped orchestra coming from the speakers, the lyrics being crooned by the singers on the stage, the click-clack of the tap shoes, the muffled cough of someone several rows ahead of her. There was only her breath now, regular and relaxing, almost hypnotic. She put herself in a trance and started to relive the past few days.
ANNJA HAD TRAVELED considerably, but primarily to Europe, as her main interest in history was there. She’d never been to Australia before and had been immediately struck by the similarities to the United States and England in the way the people dressed and the city looked. The more closely she observed everything, however, the more pleasant differences she noted, and she had a yearning to come back for a longer stay.
She’d had barely enough time to throw her bag in the hotel room and head out to the dig the first day. The shooting schedule would be fairly tight. There were forms to sign in the van—the standard one for liability, stating that the dig financiers would not be held accountable if she was injured at the site. And then there was an agreement that she would not disclose the precise spot where the archaeologists worked.
“Oh, there’s enough folks already who know the general vicinity,” Wes Michaels had told her. “Some of the local papers have done features on us before. But we’ve not had any television coverage.”
It was clear from the beginning that he was dressing up a little for the camera; she’d spotted his wife cutting off the price tag from his shirt. Annja was pleased he bothered to buy something new.
On the ride to the site she had noticed the countryside air. It was achingly clean, with just a hint of salt from the ocean. The closer the van got to the dig, the more other scents intruded…from the trees primarily, as the site was in a forest preserve, and from the earth the archaeologists had been peeling away to get to the relics beneath.
One of the first things Dr. Michaels and his wife had uncovered was still at the site because of its size and because the corporation funding the project hadn’t yet decided whether to leave it there for posterity or bring it back to Sydney for storage. It was a carving of an ape, or something that looked like a squatting ape, taller than a man and as broad across as two, and chiseled out of a stone that had a high iron content.
“The Egyptian god Thoth, probably,” Wes had said. “My best guess, anyway. Three thousand years old or thereabouts. Looks similar to one found on the old Wolvi Road property some forty years back. Folks scoffed back then, too.”
He showed her a smaller, similar statue that Oliver shot as it was being crated up. It was badly weathered from time and the sea air, and she could barely make out the cross of life clutched in the ape’s fingers.
“Thoth was sometimes depicted as an ape,” Wes had explained. “Then about two thousand years after this one was made they started carving Thoth as a bird-headed man. Like I said, Miss Creed, I’m not an Egyptologist. But I’m a damn good archaeologist. I know my stuff.”
Annja liked him immediately.
“Our best find,” Jennifer said, “is a cross of life. Wes wasn’t sure it should go on your television program, but I’ve talked him into it. Haven’t crated it yet—kept it out just for you.”
Oliver was quick to record it, and Annja was equally quick to admire it. This cross of life, or Egyptian ankh, as some called it, was made of jade and had survived the weather and shifting earth that the years had heaped upon it. It was easily three or four pounds and carved from a single piece. Annja whistled lowly when—with gloved hands—she was allowed to hold it.
Wes chattered animatedly while she examined it. “In Toowomba years back they found more than a dozen granite stones with inscriptions in Phoenician. I read that one translated roughly into ‘Here is the place to worship Ra or worship the sun.’”
Jennifer continued. “Thirty years ago a man named Gilroy found some Egyptian symbols scattered in with aboriginal cave art, not terribly far from where an Egyptian sun disk was found carved in a cliff face. There was a faint outline of a chariot, too, but you can hardly see it anymore.”
“And if you’re talking about aboriginals,” Wes cut in, “there’s records of a cult in New South Wales that worshipped Biame, a sky-being. Biame has lots of parallels to Thoth. There’s some aboriginal rock art near the Hawkesbury River that has some folks looking like ancient Egyptians. Fringe nothing.”
Jennifer nudged her husband. “Tell her the good part, Wesley, about Grafton. She might not have read about him. I’m sure she didn’t have time to read everything.”
Annja had to concentrate on the couple’s exchange, as it was difficult to think of anything but the piece of jade in her hands.
Wes snorted. “Almost eighty years ago, there was an anthropologist from around here, name of Sir Grafton Elliot-Smith. He found some remains in a New Zealand cave and said the skull belonged to an Egyptian, said it was at least two thousand years old.” He spit at the ground and twisted the ball of his foot atop the spot. “Grafton’s papers were in the science library in Canberra but they disappeared a few decades ago.”
Annja reluctantly set the jade ankh in the padding material in the crate. “Beautiful,” she said. “That piece is truly beautiful.”
AGAIN, ALL ANNJA HEARD was her breathing, slow and regular, hypnotic. The jade ankh could be worth a fortune because of its age, its Egyptian ties and above all simply because of its size and weight. It was a true museum piece on many levels.
She replayed other things from the site—carvings on pieces of pots and vases, an intact vase that was worth more than a tidy sum, cow-headed figurines, simple tools, the skeleton. They hadn’t dated those bones. What if the skeleton wasn’t ancient? What if it was some murder victim? What if Oliver’s disappearance and the attack on her had nothing to do with the dig? She mentally chastised herself for letting her imagination run so wild.
No, it has to be the dig. Think, think, think. Annja scolded. What did I see?
Again her thoughts returned to the hefty piece of jade.
“Definitely beautiful,” she whispered. “One of a kind.”
But enough to kill over…and just because she and Oliver had seen it?
“No,” she stated with authority. Annja shook her head, the gesture rousing her fully from her trance. Valuable? Most certainly, that ankh was. But not beyond price, and not worth Oliver’s life, she felt deep in her gu
t. “It was something else we saw. But what?”
“Shh!”
She saw the craggy face of a pudgy man sitting directly in front of her. He’d turned around and set a doughy finger to his lips.
“Shh!” he repeated.
Annja had been so focused on her recollections of the dig that she’d shut out everything around her. The music coming from speakers intruded now. It was boisterous, and something she was not familiar with—not any Broadway tune she’d heard.
The female impersonators on the stage were in various states of dress and were performing a bawdy number. A heavy-set singer trying to cram too many pounds into a red dress that screamed at the seams was rushing back and forth, trailing a lime-green feather boa. The audience laughed, and Annja realized it was a comedy number.
The audience?
Annja gasped. When she’d entered the auditorium she’d counted one dozen people. Now there were easily five times that many. She’d concentrated so hard on her recollections of the dig site that she hadn’t heard all these people come in, hadn’t heard the numbers change or the scenery wheeled onto the stage.
The trance had helped her, though, even if she wasn’t satisfied that the jade ankh was the object behind today’s mayhem. The trance had chased away her headache, and her feet were not nearly so sore. Her stomach was another matter; it softly rumbled its hunger, and her throat was dry with thirst.
“Sorry,” she whispered to the craggy-faced man. “I’m leaving.”
She made her way to the aisle, feeling a little stiff from not moving in a while. Beyond the curtains the lobby was lit brighter than when she came in, and a different woman was behind the counter. Annja stared. Different was right—that was a man dressed as a woman.
She looked to the pay phone. Someone was on it, talking and gesturing with her free hand.
Annja sighed. She could wait for that conversation to finish, or she could use the pay phone at the end of the street.