Antonia had been so excited she’d repeated the test – both times had registered positive. There was no doubt. She’d wanted to tell Steven, but had composed herself and resolved to sit down with him once she returned – she knew enough about men that you didn’t just announce you were going to have a family and then hit the road to a party. This was a serious step; one they’d discussed, but it had never seemed like exactly the right time…eh, well, it’s the right time now, no?
After all they’d been through together, after she’d almost died in his arms, to create a life together – and see both of themselves in their baby's eyes – was almost too much to hope for. The circle of life was complete. They were safe, secure, healthy, prosperous, and Steven would be a perfect father…
Antonia was lost in her thoughts as she wound her way through the slopes north of Barberino de Mugello. As she twisted down the tortuous mountain highway her fuel light blinked and then illuminated. Damn. She’d forgotten to fill up. No matter, there was a station in a few miles, she was sure. Antonia passed a tanker truck making its way cautiously down the steep incline; as she swerved around it, she nearly collided with an old pickup that was barely crawling – in the fast lane, of course. She stomped on her brakes to avoid crashing into it, but the pedal went to the floor without any resistance. She slalomed around the pickup, nearly slamming through the guardrail, and checked her speedometer – 92 MPH. Her mind racing, Antonia downshifted, and the car gradually slowed. At least she could use the transmission to brake – it was just her luck that something would go wrong on a Saturday, when most mechanics were closed for the weekend.
Antonia pushed the thought aside. She could make arrangements once she’d found a gas station. At worst, she could have Dante send a car for her. It would be annoying and inconvenient, but sometimes that was how life was.
She downshifted again, slowing the little car to 60 MPH, then 50, and pulled off at the exit she thought led to a fuel station. She coasted along and glanced to her right – she could make out a service station sign through the olive trees. At least that’s what it looked like – she couldn’t be sure, but she thought it must be. She studied the map on her in-console GPS, looking for the icon that signified a fuel stop. Aha! She was right. There was one an eighth of a mile away.
Temporarily engrossed with the GPS, by the time Antonia registered the overloaded semi-rig hurtling down the frontage road at her, it was too late to do anything but scream. She instinctively pumped her non-functional brakes, and then, instantly realizing her mistake, tried to accelerate.
She almost made it.
Antonia only had a split second before the massive truck rammed sideways into her little roadster, crushing it like a soda can. Her final thoughts were that it was too soon, that it wasn’t fair, and that the precious life inside her would never see the light of day.
Then everything went black.
~
Steven pulled back into the driveway of his home, his impatience and anxiety at the upcoming meeting with the rare parchment dealer blunted by the physical exertion from his martial arts workout. He checked his watch and realized he only had twenty minutes to prepare for his guest.
He threw open the front door, tossed his bag onto the entryway hall table and hurried to the bedroom, stripping off his damp top as he went. He grabbed a button-up shirt and a pair of khaki pants from the closet, and cranked the handles on the shower, knowing it would take a couple of minutes for the water to reach a comfortable temperature. The plumbing of the old house had been a continual source of annoyance and was next on their list of items to be redone – they’d been holding off on it because they wanted to be gone when the floors and walls were gutted to replace the ancient pipes. As with most projects in Italy, what should take two weeks would inevitably take two months, so one had to get used to it and become resigned to the reality of the pace of the country.
Steven stepped under the stream of tepid water and quickly and efficiently rinsed himself clean. He heard the sound of a car moving up the drive as he exited and hurriedly dried off, ran a comb through his hair, and pulled on the shirt and slacks. He was still tucking in his shirt when the front knocker sounded the early arrival of his guest.
Steven opened the door and greeted the old man, who stood outside the entryway clutching a battered metal toolbox to his chest. Behind him was a new Peugeot sedan with a lanky driver leaning against the front fender, a cigarette dangling from his lips as he scanned a newspaper he’d brought for diversion.
Steven welcomed the dealer into his study and moved the accumulated books from his large rectangular table, making space to examine the ancient man’s trove. The old man carefully placed the box on one edge of the workspace and opened the top before removing five parchments, each lovingly ensconced in a clear plastic sheath for protection. Steven studied each hand-crafted treasure in turn. All were obviously genuine and very old. The first was a Greek document from approximately 800 A.D., and the following four were from the twelfth and fifteenth centuries. All the documents were written in cyphers, which was why Steven was interested – his collection was exclusively encrypted parchments from the seventeenth century and earlier, with a preponderance of work originating from Italy and England.
Steven spent a half hour discussing the various parchments with the dealer, all of which had been in his family’s custody for several centuries. The initial asking price was multiples higher than what Steven had calculated the true value to be, which was not unexpected. He invited the wizened dealer into the dining room to partake of some vintage port, and they sipped the seventy-year-old wine with approval as they negotiated back and forth. Eventually, they arrived at a price both could live with – considerably more than Steven had hoped, but still within reason. Delighted that he’d struck a bargain so quickly, he ducked back into his study and wrote a check for the dealer, who exchanged the toolbox of parchments for the payment.
Their business concluded, Steven bade the old gentleman farewell and walked him to his car, where the driver was still standing in the same position as when they entered the house – the only giveaway of the passage of time, the seven cigarette stubs collected around his feet. Steven and the dealer said their goodbyes by the side of the vehicle, which were cut short by the jangling of the phone in the kitchen. Steven waved at them and sprinted back to the house, but the phone had gone silent by the time he reached it.
That was sort of how his whole day had gone – he felt like he’d been running a few minutes late since he’d woken with Antonia an hour past their usual time. He returned to his study and surveyed the parchments, ruminating over which one he would begin to decrypt first. The phone started ringing again. This time he made it into the kitchen by the fourth ring and snatched the handset from the cradle of the heavy mid-Seventies base station.
Outside, the olive trees stirred in the careless breeze as the day’s warm light faded. The flocculent clouds drifted lazily across the mackerel sky as the sun made way for the encroaching night. It was an idyllic dusk in the valley, a thing of tour book photos, travel brochures and chocolate boxes.
Inside the house, the telephone handset clattered to the floor, and an otherworldly moan echoed around the rustic stone walls; an animal sound of raw, tortured pain.
Purchase The Voynich Cypher
Excerpt from JET
Prologue
The rainy gray of the morning had grudgingly relented to a patchwork of blue peeking between the clouds. Moisture dripped from the dense vegetation onto the encroachment of asphalt, evaporating within seconds of contact. Humidity was a constant this far inland – the nation’s seat had been relocated to this position of relative safety following the hurricane that destroyed the seafront capital forty-something years before.
The bus station at the main junction was a sad affair, as were most of the nearby structures, surrendering to entropy even before the paint had dried on their shabby walls. The terminal was surrounded by a group of ramshackle booths fashioned
from tarps and cast-off wood, a squalid tent city that housed vendors hawking tacky artifacts and articles of second-hand clothing.
A retired Greyhound coach creaked as it entered the muddy lot, carrying a handful of intrepid tourists and commuters from the coastal suburbs. The tired air brakes hissed their protest as it pulled to a stop and disgorged its cargo, the rusting, graffiti-covered sides shuddering in time with the idle of the engine.
In the near distance, hulking concrete bunkers, ugly and indifferent, held back the jungle’s creep. Lethargic bureaucrats in shirtsleeves seeped steadily across the expansive open plaza, mopping their brows with hand towels as they shuffled to their offices for another long day of doing nothing.
Three men emerged from the largest building and stood on the steps by the heavy glass entry doors, shielding their faces from the fierce shafts of sun piercing the overcast. After a few parting words, they shook hands, and two of them headed to the parking lot. The third man watched their departure, his coal-black skin glistening with sweat that already threatened to ruin his lightweight navy-blue suit. He glanced at his watch then walked towards a multi-story edifice across the common. The fountain in the middle of the square, thick calcium deposits crusting the pitted centerpiece, hosted a squabble of sparrows intent on bathing in the rainwater accumulated in its base. Drawn by their raucous chirping, he slowed to watch them enjoy their brief reprieve from the oppressive heat.
A sharp crack startled the birds, causing them to take noisy flight as the lone man’s skull exploded in a bloody splatter. His body crumpled to the concrete, dead before what was left of his head hit the ground with a melon-like thud. The few witnesses nearby froze in their tracks, eyes darting around in alarm.
On the top floor of an abandoned motel three hundred yards away, the shooter edged from his vantage point, cradling his rifle as he padded down the deserted stairs that led to the waiting Ford Expedition.
The driver put the vehicle into gear as the rear door opened, scrutinizing the chaos at the government buildings in his rearview mirror. The shooter slid the rifle into a compartment under the cargo mat then gave the vacant parking area a quick scan before climbing into the passenger seat. After fastening his seatbelt, he fumbled a cigarette from a pack in the glove compartment and lit it, adjusting the air vents to direct cold air on his sweating face as the driver pulled onto the road leading out of town. He exhaled in satisfaction, then lowered the window a few inches, and made a hurried call on his cell phone, speaking in a harsh, heavily-accented whisper before hanging up.
With a practiced motion, he flipped the phone’s case back off and tossed the single-use sim chip and the battery through the open window, into the tangle of brushwood. The driver eyed him without comment then returned his attention to the wheel.
The shooter took another drag and cracked a feral grin.
“One down.”
Chapter 1
Turquoise water lapped at the powdery sand on the leeward side of Trinidad, caressing the shore with a tranquil surge. Decrepit fishing skiffs with single outboard engines floated a dozen yards from the beach, tugging gently at their moorings as their captains lazed in the shade, passing rum bottles and familiar stories back and forth.
Music and the heady aroma of exotic food drifted on the evening air as the annual Carnival festival lurched into full roar. Excited groups of young children tore up and down the waterfront, peals of glee and laughter battling with the din of adult celebration. From far and wide, revelers packed the streets, beers hoisted high to the setting sun, welcoming the untamed night that was to follow. Flashes of coffee-colored skin, strong white teeth and long, smooth legs hinted at the weekend’s delights as a tremble of simmering promise pervaded the atmosphere, of possibility and inebriated hope. Drums pounded hypnotic tattoos as the flamboyant costumes and masks paraded, the natives and visitors alike bubbling with a giddy sense of abandon.
The chime of the little internet café’s front door sounded, jolting Maya’s focus from the computer screen at her desk in the rear office. She pushed her long, black hair from her face with a listless hand and clicked the mouse with a sigh, noting the onscreen time. There had been no visitors for at least an hour, and she was getting ready to close. Her assistant had taken off at five, eager to join the bash, leaving her to clean up at the end of the day. Now, four hours later, there was little hope of any more revenue with the town in party mode. Anyone on the streets would have a more tangible kind of entertainment in mind than the sort found in cyberspace.
As she shouldered through the hanging beads that separated the back from the storefront, a garrote looped over her head, and she barely got her left hand up in time to keep it from closing around her throat. She sensed the raw strength of her assailant as the wire bit into her hand and instinctively stomped on the top of his foot, trying to break his hold. Had Maya been wearing her boots, she would have broken metatarsal bones, but with tennis shoes, all her effort bought was a grunt and a momentary relaxation of the deadly pressure.
Blood ran down her wrist as she threw herself back, driving her attacker against a granite counter supporting a bank of monitors. A screen tumbled to the floor and shattered as she groped along the edge of the computers for anything she could use as a weapon.
Her fingers found the neck of a Fanta bottle, and she swung it back to where his head would be. It connected with a satisfying thunk, and she swung it again, this time feeling it break against his skull. Ignoring the pain from the garrote, she stabbed behind her head with the jagged edge of the broken bottle, again and again, then heard a muted exclamation as a warm gush sprayed against her upper back. The grip on her loosened, and she swung around, bringing her knee up in a fluid motion as she flung the garrote away. She felt her leg connect with the soft flesh of his groin and caught a brief impression of a hardened middle-aged face with blood streaming from the man’s lacerated cheek and right eye. He swung at her with a fist, but she ducked to the right, and the punch went wide. She slashed at him with the bottle again, then feinted with it as she kicked him in the abdomen with all her might.
The attacker’s legs buckled, and he stumbled, hitting his brutalized head against the counter as he dropped to one knee. Stunned, he reached into his pocket and extracted a switchblade. The blade snapped open – he lunged – she dodged the knife and kicked him again. This time he was ready for it; she felt the stiff muscles of his stomach tighten for the blow. As he crashed against the counter again, she flung the bottle at him then grabbed a flat screen monitor and swung it against his head, connecting with his cheekbone. The screen splintered as she continued to beat him with it, savaging what was left of his face.
But he still held onto the knife.
He threw himself against her, and she felt a stab of pain as the blade nicked her lower back even as she twisted to stay clear of it. She kneed him again, pulled a mouse free from the devastation and wrapped its cable around his neck, improvising a stranglehold.
The muscles in her arms bulged as she pulled against both ends of the wire, and the slashing of the knife gradually became feebler even as she stayed out of its reach. Maya ignored the blood streaming from the slice in her left hand as she strained to maintain her grip, watching as consciousness faded from the killer.
Aware that he was losing the struggle, he wrenched himself away, tearing the mouse cord from her hands. She rushed towards the cash register, hoping to grab one of the heavy metal pitchers she used for water and juice, but he swung a foot at her legs, bringing her down against the register before he spun, leaning against it for support as he lurched towards her, knife at the ready. She knew he was blinded by the blood streaming down his face, but that wouldn’t do her any good now that she’d lost the momentum and he was on the offensive.
He slashed at her again with the blade, catching her loose shirt but missing her ribs. She twisted and groped for the scissors she kept by the register, but her fingers felt a different, familiar shape. Chest heaving from exertion, she grabbed i
t and smashed it against his head with all her might.
His eyes widened in puzzled surprise before he dropped to the floor, twitching spasmodically.
She watched his death throes, eyeing the base of the receipt holder she had used, its six-inch steel spike driven through his ear into his brain. When he stopped convulsing, she fell back onto one of the swivel chairs, trembling slightly, and quickly took stock. The hand was messy, but when she flexed her fingers, they moved, so it was superficial. She could tell that the cut on her lower back was trivial, even though it stung a little. Most of the blood on her was from the dead man.
She stood panting for a few moments then, after glancing around, grabbed one of the shop T-shirts she sold to tourists and wrapped it around her hand. Returning to her attacker’s corpse, she leaned down and felt in his clothes for a weapon, but he’d carried nothing other than the garrote, the knife and a wallet with a no-name credit card and a few hundred dollars.
A noise at the back of the shop snapped her back into the moment. Someone was trying to get through the locked back door.
If they were professional, it wouldn’t stop them for long, she knew.
~
A gloved hand pushed the door open, the lock having proved a minor impediment easily overcome with a strategically placed silenced gunshot that shattered the doorjamb with a muffled crack. The cramped hallway was dark, so the intruder moved cautiously through it until he arrived at the small office. Leading with the barrel of his gun, he felt for the light switch on the wall, which he flicked – nothing happened.
Return of the Assassin (Assassin Series 3) Page 26