by K. T. Tomb
It was, mostly, to escape that last discussion that Phoe caved in. She didn’t know whether that was why her mother had started into it or not, but it had worked. She’d let her aunt Sylvia’s nineteen-year-old, barely an archeological student, tag along.
Simon had sent her on another one of his research projects; one of the ones that was supposed to be in and out with no problems. Even Phoe didn’t see any danger involved in going to the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York—everybody ought to visit there at least once in their life—so she finally agreed; more like, caved into the pressure.
Phoe didn’t remember being so lazy when she was a teen… well, not past about sixteen, anyway. She had her moments, no doubt, but she had a tendency to always be charging ahead. That’s part of the reason that she had a home on the Grand Canal of Venice as well as one in Taos, New Mexico. That’s why she had private jets, nice cars and people who took her places in them. Those things came at a price and that price had been the sweat of her brow and very nearly her own blood on several occasions. She was well paid, but she earned every penny of it.
“That’s the problem with your generation,” Phoe started in. “You want everything that your parents or the other people who’ve gone ahead of you have, but you don’t want to do anything to get it. You want to earn what I earn? You want to be a kick ass archeologist that makes the big bucks? Then get your lazy ass out of bed, take a shower and be ready to go down to breakfast in 20 minutes.”
Phoe walked away, wondering why the hell she was starting to sound like a 75-year-old curmudgeon down at the bingo hall. She needed to lighten up or she’d be just like her mother inside of a year. She’d gotten a suite in the Carlyle Hotel on the Upper East side, so that Casey could stay with her, but they’d have separate rooms. It was also pretty close to the Met. That, of course, impressed the hell out of him and he’d been more than eager to tag along and ask close to 150,000 questions the night before. She’d indulged him, for a while; up until he’d started getting into that wide-eyed, Indiana Jones stuff.
“It isn’t nearly as romantic as it looks like it is in the movies,” she grumbled. “When people are out to kill you, they’re usually not following a script.” She’d cut him off after that, heading toward her bedroom; he’d followed her to the door, still asking questions. “You’d better go to bed. We’ve got work to do in the morning.”
To be fair, the Met didn’t open until 10:00 and there was more than enough time for him to sleep in for another hour or two, but since she was in charge, she felt an obligation to be hard on him and teach him at least a portion of the reality of being an archeologist. Consequently, she’d decided to wake him up earlier than necessary.
She sat down at the dining table of the suite, holding the mug of steaming coffee in her palms as she looked down at the notes that she had taken when she’d talked to Simon Kessler a few days before. He was sending her to look at some items in the Egyptian Collection dating back to around 1961 to 1917 B.C., during the reign of Senwosret I. In particular, there was a papyrus that was a part of a larger collection that had been found in the tomb of Harhotep, which was an accounting of grain. On the other side was some sort of religious text that was thought to be a spell. There was a prominent name in the text, that of Seth, the third son of Adam and Eve.
What Simon was wanting her to try to decipher was whether or not the document referred to that same particular Seth, who, according to Josephus, had erected two pillars, known as “the pillars of the sons of Seth.” The pillars were said to have been inscribed with many scientific discoveries and inventions, notably in astronomy. In the 18th century, there was some doubt placed on the origin of those pillars by one William Whiston, who believed that it would have been impossible for the pillars to have survived the flood in Noah’s time some eight generations later. Whiston believed that Josephus had confused Seth with the Egyptian king Sesostris, who had erected the pillar of Siriad.
Phoe had already started to figure out where Simon was going before she’d even left New Mexico, where she had been visiting her family and trying to unwind after the last adventure that had nearly gotten her blown to pieces, not just once, but twice. She was pretty sure that her next assignment was going to be to find the Pillars of Seth and she was starting to put together a plan for that venture. As obscure as the pillars were, she was relatively certain that if Casey was going to accompany her on a venture, at least it would be a tame one.
She was shocked to look up from her notes about fifteen minutes later to see Casey, though only partially alive, coming out of his bedroom and toward the kitchen and coffee pot. Maybe the kid would make it after all. In any case, she decided that she needed to back off from being the hard ass that she’d started out to be and let the kid in on what was going on.
“Okay, so, are you ready to get started?” she asked when he had a mug of coffee in his hands and slumped into the chair across the table from her.
“I guess,” he muttered. “Aren’t we going to the museum?”
“Yes,” she said. “But it doesn’t open until 10:00.”
“So, why did you wake me up so early?” he groaned. “I could have slept another couple of hours.”
He was trying the patience of her new decision, but she swallowed another lukewarm sip of coffee and ignored what he said. “Part of being an archeologist…”
As she was speaking, a knock at the door interrupted her. She wrinkled her brow as she considered who might be calling on her at that hour and went to look through the peephole.
“Yes?” she called through the door.
“I have a delivery for you from a Mr. Kessler?”
That was rather odd, but the messenger looked legit and it wouldn’t be the first time Simon had sent something to her when she was out in the field. She opened the door and was immediately wrapped up in a pair of strong arms and a rag with the sweet smell of ether was held over her mouth and nose. In seconds, everything went black.
Chapter Two
Brendis Kraus leaned back in his chair, reclining after having received a phone call from Engel that Thalia Phoenix and the young man that was accompanying her had been subdued and were in transport to the Edelweiss, a cargo ship in his fleet, which was sitting at anchor in New York Harbor. He had sent Engel and Heinrich—along with two other assets, both women posing as hotel maids—to retrieve the two at their earliest convenience and to do so without anyone else knowing that they were missing.
Since Phoenix worked for Simon Kessler, that wouldn’t be an easy thing to pull off. However, if things worked out right, he’d be well ahead of Kessler and would have slipped away without Kessler knowing what he had done. He would go meet with Phoenix personally and deliver the proposition that he had for her. He chuckled at his own cleverness as he repeated a line from one of his favorite mobster movies: “I’ll make her an offer that she can’t refuse.”
Running his fingers through the thick curls on his head, he reached out and pressed the intercom button. “Yes, Mr. Kraus?” his personal assistant Hedda Graf responded.
“Hedda. I need you to have my plane waiting for me ASAP and to have someone ready to carry me out to the Edelweiss on a helo once I arrive in New York.”
“As you wish, Mr. Kraus,” she replied. “I will let you know the moment that the plane is ready.”
“Go ahead and call the car to come get me right now. The plane needs to be ready when I get to the airport. Tell them to get a move on.”
“Yes, Mr. Kraus.”
In spite of the fact that the very curvy and seductive blonde often provided additional services of a more personal nature to him, she remained professional while in the office; well, unless she happened to be providing those personal services in his office. When you got right down to it, the boss/employee role playing was a turn-on to the both of them. He pushed thoughts of their last encounter out of his mind and remained focused on the task at hand.
If he was going to pull off what he had set out to pull off, he
would have to stay well ahead of Simon Kessler. That wasn’t going to be easy. Simon had assets everywhere and had the uncanny ability of knowing where to start looking for a problem before the person who was going to create it had thought of it yet. That was an exaggeration, of course, but that was the sort of challenge that Kraus was up against when he’d decided to get into the game against Kessler.
Kraus was no slouch in his own right. He had a significant amount of power and influence over certain assets of his own. He was of an elite class that had not only the wealth, but the mental skills and audacious will to actually compete in the world with the likes of Simon Kessler and the Vatican. Less than a dozen people could boast of the same; therefore, he would have to move quickly, because Kessler would move through that short list very rapidly and would eventually draw the correct conclusion.
“Your car is waiting,” Hedda announced, interrupting his thoughts.
He rose from his chair, went to the private bathroom that was attached to his office, relieved himself and then made certain that he was presentable. Keeping the car waiting was just one of the many ways that he let those who worked for him know that he was someone of great importance and that they needed to put aside any of their own thoughts or emotions in order to carry out his bidding.
Determined that he was ready, he opened up his closet, pulled out the hangar with his custom Armani suit jacket on it and slipped it on before heading toward the door. When Hedda looked up at him as he came out of his office, there was no disguising the lustful look that she gave him, but he ignored her and headed directly to the elevator. “Make certain that you hold things together here and have those tasks which were assigned to you completed by the time that I return,” he ordered as he walked away from her.
Inside the elevator, he sent her one quick glance, admiring those large, blue eyes, her perfectly kept, platinum hair and, most of all, the ample breasts that were close to spilling out of her tight-fitting blouse. The door closed, blocking his view of her, and he did as every other human being on the planet would do inside of an elevator: he looked up at the numbers counting down to the garage level where the car was waiting.
The moment the doors opened, he was greeted by his driver. “Good morning, Mr. Kraus.”
He grunted an unintelligible response. That aloofness was another way of letting his employees know that he chose when and with whom he would speak. One had to keep their employees in a constant state of discomfort in order to get the very best out of them.
The driver, being used to Kraus’ idiosyncrasies, moved quickly alongside his boss, grasping the door of the limousine, opening it for him, waiting until he was seated comfortably and then waited the exact amount of time that he’d been trained—rather harshly—before closing it.
“You were about 3 seconds early on closing the door,” Kraus snarled when the driver was seated and beginning to pull away. “About 30 Euros removed from your pay ought to be a rather stark reminder of what is expected of you.”
The driver knew better than to respond or even wince at the sting that his income had just taken. He knew that Kraus was alert for any and every sign that he thought or felt that the penalty was unjust and remained completely passive and expressionless.
Kraus, once he was satisfied that the driver wasn’t going to react to the penalty that he’d just enforced, sat back in the comfortable leather seat of the car. The climate was set to the precise temperature that Kraus required; another lesson that had taken some time and cost the driver close to a thousand Euros to learn. He focused his thoughts on Thalia Phoenix and what he wanted from her.
He knew her to be the quintessential leader in her field and was looking forward to actually greeting her for the first time. Though the circumstances surrounding their meeting were less than ideal from either perspective, he was convinced that his charm, once he had a chance to make use of it, would win her over to carrying out the task to which he was about to assign her. Failing that, he was prepared to go a step further and make it impossible for her to refuse him. In essence, it wasn’t a great deal different than how he treated his other employees, but he was offering Thalia a showing of respect for her level of professional status.
His car drove through the gates of the private runway access to the airport without being stopped, something that Kraus had made quite clear to those in authority over airport security in the past. He was saluted as he rode through the gates, though no one would ever know if he saw the gesture or returned it because of the tinting of the car’s windows. He didn’t even notice nor care.
His jet was fueled and waiting to be boarded and taxi out onto the runway the moment that the car pulled onto the tarmac. The driver stopped at the precise distance from the jet that was required of him and had the back door perfectly aligned with the stairway that led into the jet. The captain of the jet and the female attendant stood at stiff attention to take his first orders as he stepped from the car and started up the stairs.
“Lunch,” was all he said as he passed by the two waiting for him.
Chapter Three
The taste of ether was of a sickening-sweet nature and it was all that Phoe could do to keep from vomiting when she awakened some time later from her drug-induced coma. There really wasn’t much to wake up to, but she looked around her new surroundings anyway. In the far corner of an otherwise empty room, Casey was still out from the effects of the same treatment that she’d received.
“So much for a tame adventure,” she muttered. She was once again in some sort of a mess, but she had no idea why. Who had kidnapped them and what were they after? There was no way that they were after the Pillars of Seth. It wasn’t possible for anyone to know that she was even looking for them. She didn’t even know that she was looking for them, she was just doing research on the possibility of their existence. It had to be some other reason.
“You alive over there?” she said in a louder tone.
Casey began to stir. He tried to raise himself from the floor, felt the effects of the ether and immediately started smacking his lips and making a horrible face. “What the fuck?”
“It’s ether,” she answered, knowing exactly what the question was.
“It tastes like ass,” he replied.
“Welcome to my world, Indiana Jones,” she laughed.
“Who were the dudes that grabbed us?”
“You probably know more about them than I do,” she replied. They’d hit her first and she was completely out of it before they had grabbed him.
“Two dudes and two bitches. Bright blue eyes. They talked funny. Sort of like Arnold Schwarzenegger.”
“Germans?” she asked.
“How the hell would I know? They were two big, blonde dudes and the two bitches were just as buff.”
So, they were northern European or Russian. That typically meant Germans, especially with the blue eyes and blonde hair. The only reason that it even mattered was because she was trying to figure out who could possibly want to run the risk of having Simon Kessler’s organization coming down on them. There were a limited number of persons that would have the intestinal fortitude to even dance with that particular demon.
She’d assumed since she was unharmed that he was too, but it was better to check on him anyway. “Are you okay?” she asked.
“Other than the horrible taste in my mouth, yeah. Of course, I feel like shit for something else,” he responded.
“Yeah, what’s that?”
“I didn’t do anything. I just froze when they took you down. I watched them do it and did nothing.”
“What exactly would you have done?”
“I don’t know, just something.”
“Well, don’t feel bad,” she said. “Anything you had done might have gotten you hurt or killed. Besides, it was your first time.” She smiled at him as she said the last sentence. She might as well try to cheer him up a little.
“So, this shit happens to you a lot, then?”
“A lot more than I’d lik
e it to, yes.”
“What do we do? How do we get out of this?”
“You do nothing,” she replied. Perhaps her tone was a little too harsh, but she wanted to drive home the fact that she didn’t want him to try anything stupid. There was always a way out of situations like the one that they were in, but most often, they took some brain power and a cool head. She doubted that Casey was up to the task. “They’ll come check on us in a little bit and then I’ll start getting some information. Once I know a few things, then I’ll know how to deal with them. Not to mention the fact that when I don’t check in with Simon, he’s going to start looking for me. Trust me, Simon will find us.”
She was pretty certain that he would find them, but, of course, she had no idea whether he would come in time to find them alive. She didn’t add the second part of that thought. There was no point in scaring him.
It wasn’t Phoe’s first time being kidnapped. It had become something of a regular occurrence, actually. Though it was hard to say that she’d gotten used to it, it was something that didn’t have the same terrifying effect on her that it had the first time that she’d been nabbed. Coming out of all of those others alive certainly helped boost her confidence, but there was no way that she could count on that being the final outcome, especially since she had no idea who she was dealing with.
“So, what do I do?” Casey asked after a few minutes.
“Just sit tight and try to think positive thoughts.” It was pretty empty advice.
“Positive thoughts? Are you high? We’ve been kidnapped and…”
“You’re awake then.” A large, blonde man, just like Casey had described, pulled the door open and addressed them in a thick English accent of German origin. “We need to move you to another location. I would prefer that you just came along quietly, but I will take additional measures if need be.”
“We’ll come quietly,” Phoe replied. If she played her cards right and didn’t resist, she might begin to get a better handle on who nabbed her.