It still gave him the heebie-jeebies.
“As you can see, it’s form-fitted for the skull, so we’re hoping they’ll just use it rather than transfer it to their own case.”
Acton snapped it shut. “Unlikely.”
“Perhaps not. Each skull is a little different, and since they’ve never seen this one, they won’t have a case that fits as well. They’ll want to keep it as safe as possible, so they could very well use it.”
“They’d be fools if they did. They’ll know you’ll try to plant a tracking device inside.”
“Oh, absolutely, they’ll scan for tracking devices, but it will be turned off. When you arrive, they’ll open the case to confirm its authenticity. When that happens, a timer will be activated. Ten minutes later the tracking device will be activated unless the case is closed, at which point the timer will reset to another ten minutes.”
“Why?”
“Just in case they leave it open, we want the tracker to activate so we at least know where you are. Our hope is that they will use the case, so we want to delay the activation to give them time to scan it for signals.”
Acton nodded. “I see. If they find one, they’ll know we’re working for you.”
“They won’t find it. The tracker will be turned off, but if something goes wrong and they do find it, just plead ignorance. If you stole the case from us, then it’s a very plausible story that you wouldn’t know it was bugged.”
Acton glanced at Laura. They hadn’t yet had time to talk about it, to come to some sort of agreement on whether they should actually go through with this, or to simply wash their hands of the entire affair and hunker down until the Triarii and the Deniers figured things out among themselves.
Yet they could be in danger. If the Deniers were now killing, and they thought they could use them to get to Chaney and the thirteenth skull, then there may be no escaping getting involved and helping to bring down the Deniers. It might put an end to the Triarii in their lives.
Laura squeezed his hand, he knowing her well enough to know she was having the same thoughts. He turned to Chaney. “Okay, so the case is bugged. They’ll scan it for signals then hopefully decide it’s clean and use it to transport the skull, you hope to the location where they have the others.”
“Exactly.”
Laura leaned forward. “But what if they scan the case again?”
Chaney smiled. “They’ll have to get lucky. The tracker will only activate for a thirty-second interval every five minutes. After a few scans, I’m sure they won’t bother.”
Acton let out a long sigh. “So you’re hoping to get lucky.”
Chaney’s head bobbed. “Yup.”
“And what happens with us?” asked Laura.
“They should take the skull, hear your story, then let you go. There’s no reason to harm you, and at that point they won’t care about me anymore, so there’s no point in following you. They’ll have what they want.”
“Let’s hope you’re right.”
“So you’ll do it?”
Acton looked at Laura, who nodded slightly.
“Brilliant!” Chaney handed him a phone. “Time to make the call.”
Nubian Desert, Egypt, University College London Dig Site
Cameron Leather peered through his sunglasses, the glint of light in the distance exactly where he expected it to be. He raised his binoculars and peered through, the image of an Egyptian soldier immediately popping into focus. The man waved, Leather returning it before continuing his patrol.
It had been quiet here since the attack on the camp by extremists hell bent on destroying anything they considered blasphemous. Good men had been lost, including from his own security detail, though the children, the students, had been saved.
As a soldier, he had seen a lot of death, especially in the British Special Air Services. He had retired a Lt. Colonel and formed his own company, mostly hiring ex-Special Forces from around the world to provide private security to the rich, powerful or famous.
Though never the infamous.
He had his standards.
Laura Palmer, who fell solidly in the ‘rich’ category, had hired him several years ago to provide security after an incident in London, with a stipulation in the contract that he had been reluctant to agree to, it meaning he’d be out of the action, action he thrived on.
She wanted him to provide the security whenever possible. She felt since she was hiring his firm, she should get him. He had refused, but the remuneration she offered had been huge.
And he had been wrong about the action.
The woman had a propensity to get herself in trouble along with her new husband. It had meant he’d been in more intense firefights than he had ever dreamed of after retirement, so he was more than happy to stick where she wanted him.
He was rarely bored.
Things were still slightly tense here at Professor Palmer’s archeological dig site. Students from her former school of University College London worked the dig expertly, grad students Terrence Mitchell and his new wife Jenny running it when Laura was away. She was supposed to have returned by now, but a gunshot wound in France had taken her down and mostly out for a while, she not yet fully recovered.
He looked forward to her return.
Then there might be some action.
Though he doubted it.
Their little patch of the desert attracted little attention, and with a permanent Egyptian military guard stationed less than a kilometer away, funded by her, he had little doubt things would remain quiet.
I wonder who’s richer, the Queen, or Laura Palmer.
He had a funny feeling it would be the latter, with most of it being liquid assets.
His satellite phone vibrated on his hip. He extended the antenna and took the call. “Go ahead.”
“Colonel? This is Agent Reading.”
Leather’s eyebrows rose slightly, his spine tingling as he sensed he was about to get in on some of the action he and his men were so desperately craving. “Hello Agent, if you’re calling me, I assume there’s a problem?”
“Yes. Jim and Laura have been kidnapped.”
Leather froze, then began to jog back to the dig. “From where?”
“A mall parking lot in Maryland.”
“Any ransom demand?”
“Not yet, and there won’t be. It looks like it’s a breakaway sect of the Triarii known as the Deniers.”
Leather frowned. “Christ, those bastards again?”
“It looks that way.”
“Okay, do we have any idea where they might be headed?”
“No, but my money’s on London.”
“Why?”
“Because that’s where three of the skulls they want are located, and they’re the only ones they don’t have.”
“Okay, I’m leaving inside of ten minutes. I’ll meet you in London, but it’s going to take me almost a day to get there.”
“That’s fine. I’m getting on a plane now to go to Maryland to see if I can track down any leads from that end.”
“Understood. I’ll contact you as soon as my team arrives.”
“Good. And colonel?”
“Yes?”
“Be prepared for a firefight. These people are armed and dangerous and possibly large in numbers.”
“Understood, we’ll be ready.”
Leather ended the call as he arrived in the camp, his men joining him.
“Problem?” asked his second-in-command, Warren Reese.
Leather grunted. “Isn’t there always?”
Reese laughed. “I love this gig.”
Motel 6, Annapolis, Maryland
Acton read the coded sequence on the back of the card Chaney had given him, his chest tight, his stomach in knots as he was once again about to be thrown into the fray against his will. Triarii business had tortured his life and that of his wife’s over the past several years on too many occasions, and after retrieving the thirteenth skull for them, he had assumed it
was over.
Until the man across from him had disappeared.
Then he had known, someday, somehow, he’d be pulled back into it.
It was just the way his luck seemed to go.
His life had always been fairly routine, at least for an archeologist. He loved going on digs, spending weeks or months on his hands and knees digging the dirt to unlock the secrets of the ancient world. He loved shaping young minds, teaching them about the past so they might better understand the world today and where it was headed, as their leaders seemed to ignore the lessons learned at such a high price, sometimes only decades ago.
He had never anticipated being in regular gunfights. He glanced at Laura as he heard the call being put through, his code accepted. Part of him might link her to his bad luck, though the discovery of the skull in Peru was before he had ever met her. If anything, he was the unlucky one.
She just made it bearable.
God I love that woman.
He gave her a quick wink when a voice was finally heard. He tapped the screen, putting it on speaker.
“Professor Acton, this is an unexpected surprise. Are you okay?”
Acton frowned, glaring at the phone. “Yes, no thanks to you.”
“I’m not sure what you mean.”
Acton shook his head. “Listen, I know what’s going on. Martin told us everything.”
“Did he now? And are you certain he told you the truth?”
Acton glanced at Chaney, suddenly wondering if putting the call on speaker had been wise. “He had no reason to lie to me. Either way, I want out from under this. He saved my life, you’re trying to take it.”
“We’re trying no such thing—”
“Stop. I don’t want to hear it.”
“Then what is the purpose of this call?”
“I have something you want.”
“And what is that?”
“The thirteenth skull.”
There was a pause. “I’m sorry, I don’t understand. You have the thirteenth skull?”
“Yes.”
“How, may I ask, did you acquire it?”
Acton looked at Chaney, the man nodding with a smile, urging him on. “Martin trusted us and showed us the skull. I realized that the only way to protect my life and that of my wife’s was to prove to you that I’m not a risk, so I took it from him.”
“How?”
“I’m well-trained, so is my wife, you know that.”
“Yes, Colonel Leather has done an admirable job with you both. So what now?”
Acton inhaled. “I want to meet and give you this damned thing, then we part our ways. You’ll have no reason to be after us since Martin will never trust us again, so will never be found near us, and he’s a good man, so he won’t take revenge on us.” Acton glared at the phone. “I want the Triarii out of our lives once and for all.”
There was a pause, Acton beginning to wonder if the signal had been lost.
“Professor Acton, I think that can be arranged.”
British Airways Flight 289, London, United Kingdom
Reading buckled his lap belt, trying to get comfortable, it an impossible achievement with his long legs and the ridiculously inadequate legroom found on most planes today. He could have gone first class, hell, he could have chartered a private plane and Acton and Laura wouldn’t have questioned it for a moment, but that wasn’t him.
He felt guilty enough having paid a ridiculous amount for a last minute flight.
Why do they feel they can jack the last minute fares when they have the seat available? Don’t they want it filled?
He growled slightly, the young girl sitting beside him staring at him curiously. He winked at her. “Might have been my tummy.”
She giggled, burying her head in her mother’s side.
He stared down the aisle, his right leg stretched out in it, giving at least half his body some reprieve as he continued to obsess over the cost of his ticket. Why was it when the price of jet fuel went up, ticket prices went up, but when fuel prices dropped, the ticket prices remained high? It was the same with gasoline for the car, groceries, or any other bill nowadays.
But he knew damned well why it was happening.
Consumers had shown they were willing and able to pay the inflated prices.
He didn’t fault companies for raising their prices when their own expenses went up. The problem was they no longer seemed to pass on the savings when things changed. Now they would lower the price slightly, then edge it back up to the full price consumers had been forced to pay previously.
It was highway robbery.
He wasn’t anti-one-percenter, anti-capitalist, or overly political, but it cheesed him off every time he ordered something and there was a fuel surcharge that hadn’t been there before, or a delivery charge when none had existed before oil prices had run up.
He had taken to lowering his tip, he feeling a bit guilty about it at first, his own son delivering food part time for some extra spending money. But he told the delivery boy every time what was going on. “I tip ten percent less any surcharges. Talk to your boss about getting those included in your tip.”
They never went away happy, and he sometimes wondered if his food was spit on the next time he ordered, but he didn’t care.
It was the principal.
He was being ripped off, and he was going to fight back in some little way.
Like when gas prices spiked the first time. He had refused to pay it, instead putting five or ten quid in the tank, and immediately switching to regular from premium, a mechanic buddy of his telling him modern cars didn’t need premium, even if the manual said they did.
It’s a hedge against the car being driven in the third world where the octane is very low.
He hadn’t used premium in almost a decade and his car was none the worse for it.
And it had saved him thousands, meaning the gas companies had lost thousands. If they hadn’t tried to rip him off in the first place, he’d have kept pumping premium.
But no more.
He was one man in an ocean of consumers, but he was doing his part to fight back against the unchecked greed that seemed to be the norm today. He often thought of some of the “lectures” Acton would give about history, and how what was happening today in many instances echoed the collapse of many an empire throughout it, not the least of which was the Roman Empire. It was Acton’s opinion that Western civilization as it was today was on the decline, and risked disappearing this century if voters and their leaders didn’t smarten up.
And it wasn’t corporate greed behind it.
That was just a symptom.
Society had changed from trying to build something better, to trying to get its share of what had been built.
Reading pulled his laptop out of the pouch of the seat in front of him as they reached altitude, putting his hand on the top of the seat, pushing gently so the person in front of him couldn’t lean back. The man poked his head around to see what was going on, though not before Reading removed his hand. The man sat back down, trying again, Reading’s hand already blocking the seat.
The man’s head whipped around again, Reading opening his laptop.
“Are you pushing on my seat?”
“No mate, I guess it’s just not working. Mine isn’t either, but I don’t believe in making the person behind me uncomfortable for an eight-hour flight. Do you?”
The man glared at him but said nothing, returning to his seat.
He didn’t try again.
The mother sitting at the window grinned at him, leaning closer. “I wish I had the courage to do that. For the life of me I don’t understand why they allow these things to recline, not with the tiny amount of space they now give you.”
Reading motioned toward his knees, his left one pressed against the seat back. “Sometimes it’s necessity, not bravery.”
She smiled, her daughter suddenly occupying her lap, peering out the window at the lights below. Reading turned his attention to the
latest reports on the kidnapping. The FBI was treating it as a kidnap for ransom since Jim and Laura were wealthy. He didn’t bother mentioning that it was probably a breakaway sect of a two-thousand-year-old cult descendant from the Roman Empire behind it because they thought once again the Actons might be able to help with a missing crystal skull.
It just didn’t sound believable.
He snapped the laptop shut, returning it to the pouch, then popped his shoes off, the trick to comfortable air travel given to him by probably the best friend he had left in the world.
A friend he was worried sick about.
Domus Tiberiana, Rome
July 21, 64 AD
Flavus stood at a respectful distance, his stance straight and respectful, his eyes fixed on a distant point and not at any of those present.
For staring at the emperor could be dangerous.
His legate, Quintus Caesennius Catius, had selected him to join him when summoned by the emperor, the palace a place he had never been, nor imagined he ever would. He was young, ambitious, though too close to a commoner ever to hope to gain any real rank. He was a Roman citizen, which counted for a lot, yet as in any empire, there were the rich and there were the poor. His service would guarantee he’d end up somewhere just above the bottom, though if he could rise far enough in rank, his share of any bounty his legion may earn would increase, affording him a more luxurious retirement.
In twenty-five years.
His best friend, Valerius, had promised him a position when he himself had the power to do so. Valerius would be a force to be reckoned with, he of a more noble station, especially with Pliny having taken him under his wing.
It’s all about the connections.
Yet as he watched the proceedings in front of him, he took some satisfaction in knowing his friend had yet to visit the palace, and had yet to be in the presence of the emperor.
“Follow me.”
Flavus followed the emperor and Legate Catius into another room, Flavus battling to keep his eyes under control at the sight. Dozens of seers surrounded what appeared to be a skull carved of glass, all on their knees praying to various gods for forgiveness and protection.
The Thirteenth Legion (A James Acton Thriller, #15) (James Acton Thrillers) Page 7