Tomb of the First Priest: A Lost Origins Novel

by A D Davies

  Harpal selected two rubber cases to fit the laptops but was clearly listening. “He’s cold. He hasn’t got a social bone in his body. Right now, I bet he’s got his feet up, planning how to cut Valerio off alongside that stuck-up idiot. Not a thought for us.”

  Bridget was about to deny that, to say it wasn’t true, but Dan’s pale face stopped her. He seemed worried to bring up the subject of Jules. Perhaps her desire to avoid judging Jules was being misinterpreted as something deeper.

  The lady doth protest too much?

  Still, as they walked on toward the next items on Charlie’s list, she could not let it lie entirely. “Let’s not put him on a kill list just yet.”

  Dan let his head drop as if he’d been ready for this. When he met her eyes again, he acted even more apprehensive. “I don’t have a kill list. I mean, I’ll drop Valerio and Horse in a heartbeat, but... Jules isn’t a bad kid. He’s just mixed up. Charlie was right. A guy that obsessed with an outcome for so many years, without even understanding why he wants what he wants... it was a gamble.”

  “And we lost big,” Toby said. “That’s on me. I apologize.”

  Harpal located the new burner phones, as per Charlie’s list, and as the assistant placed the boxes of laptops behind the counter to ring up, he smiled at Harpal’s silent request for six cells.

  Bridget rubbed Toby’s back. “You couldn’t have known how he’d react. After being so close, and... he did what he does. He calculated. He came to a conclusion and followed it.” She turned to Dan. “Fine. He’s not on our side. But we give him a chance to come back if he wants it. Okay? He needs a therapist, not a beating.”

  The AC hummed, blasting cold all around them, the loudest noise in the store when the voices paused.

  Then the salesclerk spoke: “Sir?”

  Harpal stalked toward a collection of high-end toys, and the assistant followed.

  Bridget broke the silence. “Can we at least focus on the biggest threat?”

  “Valerio,” Toby said.

  “Right.” Dan almost looked happy to change the subject. “New hobby now—killing indiscriminately.”

  “He is taking a lot of pharmaceuticals, so that may contribute to an escalation in his natural mental issues. He’s dying. His last hurrah. Either something he must achieve, or he really believes some magical tool can heal him.”

  “Either way, it’s an endgame.”

  “And although Colin is better resourced than we are he lacks our understanding of Valerio. He will underestimate the man.”

  Bridget picked up on the fear from the two men as they strolled toward the checkout, catching up with Harpal and his new best friend. When a psyche expert and a hardened soldier are afraid of someone, it pays to listen.

  Dan went on, “Valerio’s tactics remind me of warlord enforcement. People of means who take advantage of war and profit from it. Or like a religious fanatic faking that he follows the true faith, and recruits uneducated or easily manipulated people. Valerio’s using money and black-market mercs, but the principle’s the same. Promise something big at the end. High risk, high reward.”

  Bridget ran her finger along a shelf of tablet computers, stopping at the final item on Charlie’s list, a powerful Android device that she would wipe and install Linux on. “I can’t believe he’d be so cruel, though.”

  “He has a target,” Harpal said, returning to them, “and the last years of his life have all built to it.”

  Bridget paused by the checkout. “But what target? Christians believe the body parts of saints can have miraculous properties, so maybe he believes Saint Thomas’s tomb will help him.”

  They all considered it.

  Toby said, “I don’t think it’ll be as simple as straightforward ‘belief.’ But whatever it turns out to be, when it fails to heal him or someone takes away what he sees as his final chance, he will be at his most dangerous. If he expects to die, he’ll take as many enemies with him as he can.”

  “And we’re not equipped for that level of confrontation,” Dan said. “Unless you want to use a chunk of Alfonse’s money to recruit an army like his.”

  “I think we can probably come to a more reasonable accommodation.”

  “What I mean is...” Dan held his tongue, an admission teetering on being voiced.

  Bridget took over to spare him. “We should quit.”

  “What?” Toby said.

  “Quit,” Dan said. “Part of my job is knowing when to fight and when not to. We can’t win against those numbers, those odds.”

  Bridget placed her hand on Toby’s back. “Maybe we lose this time.”

  “Perhaps,” Toby replied reluctantly. “We investigate. We get the lay of the land. If we cannot handle it... Dan, you’re our man-at-arms. If you assess a situation isn’t within our ability to survive, I promise, we’ll turn straight back around. But not yet. Not until we know for sure we are outclassed. Fair?”

  “Fair,” Dan said. “But consider and alliance with people better equipped.”

  Toby grumbled to himself as he moved forward to pay at a counter much like a supermarket checkout. While Dan and Harpal had the teller ring up the goods and Toby flicked through a wad of American money, Bridget wandered alone to the exit.

  She pushed out into the hot night and listened to the city: engines, people talking, people shouting, the thrum of electricity in the air. It was humid too, must have rained while they slept. It was common in the region to experience a five-minute downpour most days, even outside the rainy season.

  Something vibrated in her pocket. She checked and found her phone, down to one bar of power. She should have charged it. But the odd thing was that it was Toby calling her.

  She searched for him through the storefront window and pinpointed him using a phone to calculate something, probably the exchange rate in pounds sterling.

  He must’ve swapped phones in Mongolia, charged the other, and was using it now.

  He swapped it with...

  She answered the call. “Jules?”

  “We landed,” Jules replied. “In India. And I got a problem.”

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Delhi, India

  Colin did not recognize the number flashing on his phone’s screen, but it was still a number, not a blocked caller ID. He ignored it. The only people worth speaking to were those he already knew, and he could not be distracted in this. Sally had been unable to crack most of the manuscript’s language, and since it had long been treated as a curiosity in the Queen’s collection rather than a useful historical document, no one had even tried to translate it before. While Sally’s colleagues back in the UK attempted to confirm the Sibeko boy’s information, they were riding along on what the turncoat told them. Colin meanwhile set up at a military airfield north of Delhi to await the verdict since Conchin had significant holdings and property here.

  But it was damn hot. In the middle of the night. That god-awful wet hot that penetrated one’s clothing as soon as a person ventured out.

  They had been granted leave to use the tarmac. What had been promised as “offices” were in fact prefab cabins on bricks, such as a foreman might occupy on a building site, with no air conditioning. When Colin inquired after such a luxury, their sole host pointed at a fan in one corner.

  The former military pilots didn’t grumble at the chance of forty winks in there, but Colin could not rest in such conditions. As soon as the plane refueled, they would return inside, run the engines for a while, and cool off.

  Outdoors, even approaching midnight, the heat was quite unbearable, so he wasn’t looking forward to daylight. For now, he removed his tie and used a paperback novel to fan himself on the cabin’s stoop. Sally and Henry paced gently around the deck while two former SAS gentlemen shadowed Jules Sibeko.

  Not a difficult job at the moment; the boy was happy to sit on the lawn out front, using a cushion he had removed from the plane without asking.

  Colin had permitted him to roam as long as he took the close-
protection officers with him. If he thought of further information to add, he should go through Colin. No one else.

  It didn’t seem that Jules Sibeko was fully on board, though. He even appeared surprised when Colin sent the photos back to HQ in London. He’d been under the impression that the on board computer worked like a common touchscreen device, requiring screenshots to acquire the images. He had not considered Colin might record the whole affair, including audio from everything said during the flight. The fact Jules tried to conceal his surprise was what made Colin tighten security around him.

  Deception meant that Mr. Sibeko needed to be controlled.

  Colin’s phone rang again. Same number.

  “Sally,” Colin called. “What country starts their numbers zero-three?”

  “Not a country,” Sally replied, approaching. “It’s a VOIP number.”

  “VOIP?”

  “Voice over internet protocol. One routed through the internet. Like Skype or something similar.”

  Colin held the phone at arm’s length to read the number again.

  An internet call.

  He answered. “That wouldn’t be Toby, would it?”

  The electronically disguised voice said, “What... how... ?”

  “Let’s drop this, shall we? Talk normally? I’m not tracing or recording you. Frankly, you matter so little to anyone in the security services, I’d have a hard time simply persuading them to track your signal let alone tap into it.”

  A series of clicks sounded, followed by Toby’s real voice. “I do not wish to keep on fighting you.”

  “Because you’ll lose.”

  “Because we want the same thing.”

  “No, I’m here to benefit Britain. My country. You are looking to make money. Now you lack a cause, that’s all you have.”

  “Colin, we’ve had our differences, and I understand your stance on the UK’s plundered artifacts. But this isn’t about us. Or money. I do not wish to keep you from retrieving your manuscript, but we must intercept Valerio.”

  “And what, you want a truce? After Mongolia? Toby, you might evade the law with the aplomb of a ballet dancer, but as far as I am concerned, you are an enemy of the state.”

  Toby made a sharp intake of breath. “And you are an ass. A self-entitled kiss-up of an ass. But Valerio is dangerous. Even if you get cooperation from the Indian government, he won’t hesitate to kill you.”

  Colin found his old mentor’s desperation amusing. It wasn’t a nice feeling, though, more a pitying hollow in his throat. He wished things had been different between them, but the man was a traitor, consorting with common pirates in search of buried gold.

  “Goodbye, Toby.” He hung up.

  Jules watched with interest as Colin chatted on his phone, the man sweating like a water balloon with a slow leak. As soon as Colin stepped out of the cabin, moisture practically squirted from his pores. The woman and the older man, Henry, appeared less afflicted, but after half an hour, they were clearly drained. The only thing that apparently annoyed Colin more than the heat was that Jules had taken a red cushion from the jet and was using it to sit on the floor.

  The last thing Jules needed, on top of everything else, was ants crawling up his butt.

  Sally, the language “expert,” didn’t have a tenth of Bridget’s ability, so while she’d managed a few simpler interpretations, she hadn’t worked out a location. She recognized the name Zephon as the angel sent by God to sniff out Satan, but neither she nor Colin managed to attribute it to a star. That was up to Jules to relay, purely to sound smarter than them rather than cooperate, and the satisfaction that bloomed within him was short-lived. They sent the images back to a larger team with computers and access to a wider array of paid academics to work through it.

  That Jules hadn’t even considered the notion they might record the entire session annoyed him. It was an obvious possibility that he hadn’t factored in, too eager to trust a man who was as untrustworthy as you could get. They’d figure it out pretty soon, meaning they’d have no need for Jules. That’s why he had phoned Bridget.

  They had taken his earbud back in Ulaanbaatar, but since Colin kept it himself, it wasn’t hard to pick the man’s pocket after he hung up his jacket and changed his watch yet again.

  So Jules reinserted the bud, and when he first sat down here, he’d slipped Toby’s phone from his pocket, showed his guards the sudoku puzzle app, then quickly and quietly used the voice-recognition software to patch himself through.

  He expected Bridget to hang up. When she didn’t, he could barely speak, forcing out, “We landed. In India.” He outlined what had happened and explained that he needed to know whether she’d decoded the rest of the manuscript.

  She had but wasn’t sure about sharing, not after what Jules had done to them.

  He got the sense that she was expecting him to say more. In the lull, he said, “I’m sorry.”

  She left the line open. It sounded like she was in a city. She said, “I don’t believe you,” and hung up.

  So he was stuck. His choice was between fleeing now or awaiting the inevitable decision for Colin to ditch him once they established the tomb’s, or Valerio’s, whereabouts.

  The problem was that the pair watching him were not simple rent-a-mercs. Everything about them demonstrated precision and expertise, from the way they carried their guns to the fact that they never stepped out of a subtle fighting stance.

  No element of surprise with them.

  A matter of seconds after watching Colin hang up, Jules’s phone rang. He heard it through the earpiece only and stretched, feigning a yawn to answer vocally. Any words would have to come in short bursts. He’d listen while his minders could see his mouth, then turn away to speak.

  “Yeah.”

  “It’s me,” Bridget said. “Colin won’t compromise with Toby.”

  Jules glanced Colin’s way. “No. He’s on a mission. Bigger picture type a’ guy.”

  “Okay, then, I don’t have much choice. I’ve worked out more of the message. An approximate region.”

  “India?”

  “Yes, but not where we thought. It’s not Kerala.”

  Jules felt eyes on him and made the most innocent face he could at the gruff bearded guy. Fluttered his eyelids. The guy shrugged and made a quarter turn, keeping Jules in his peripheral vision.

  Jules said, “Toby okay with you giving me this?”

  “He doesn’t know. We’re back in the apartment, but it’s not working. None of this is working.”

  “Slow down. What do you mean?”

  “I mean we’re not soldiers. Apart from Dan, but... even he’s nervous. We don’t go out looking for trouble. We’re archeologists. Treasure hunters sometimes. But we avoid conflict. Dan’s killed more people this week than... well, since we started. But you need to hear this.”

  “Okay, hit me.”

  She told Jules about Valerio’s “Brandon” HQ in the middle of Gujarat, the region bordering Rajasthan and Pakistan. Charlie had discovered the ID and property months earlier. Nine thousand square miles was a lot of area to cover, but Bridget suspected Valerio had more accurate directions. She’d only decoded a few pages, translating the ancient Hindi precursor through online manuals, while Valerio must’ve have time to process the entire book.

  I will rest for all time in the light beneath the midnight gaze of Zephon.

  “It’s also known as Zendor in both ancient Sumerian, and Indus,” Bridget said, as if it were some big breakthrough. When Jules waited, hoping for more, she obliged. “Both Zephon, in Indus, and Zendor, in Hebrew, mean Life Giver. They’re the same.”

  “It directly connects Saint Thomas’s writing with the dialect and legends of the region.”

  “Adding weight to my theory that he’s transcribing other works, not just writing a journal.”

  Okay, Jules thought, not quite a breakthrough but a relevant thread.

  “The area is militia controlled,” Bridget went on. “Not terrorists, just f
iercely territorial, and savage when they believe they are threatened. Harpal says they’re suspected of dozens of killings in the region, and they’re not above kidnapping for ransom. Like the cartels in Colombia.”

  “Then we’ll start there and work out.”

  “‘We’?” Bridget said. “You’re coming back to us?”

  “Valerio must have contacts. Someone inside the militia.”

  “We think it’s a guy called Sanjeev Kaur. India doesn’t use mayors very often, but in this case, there is a central point to the town, and he’s been connected with breakaway groups before. If he’s in with anyone, it’s them.”

  Jules kept his voice low, his manner languid. “So he’s there?”

  “That’s the thing,” Bridget said. “Even without Charlie around to go deep on this, we just Googled Sanjeev Kaur. He’s in Mumbai tomorrow night, a gala opening of a new marina. And his guest of honor will be none other than—”

  “Valerio Conchin.” Jules spoke too loudly, and the bearded guy tramped over. “Gotta go.”

  “So you’ll work with us?”

  Jules stood and backed away.

  They guy held out his hand. “Give it up, beanpole.”

  Jules had seconds at most to say the right thing. To alleviate the hurt he was sure Bridget felt at his actions to date. On the other hand, she admitted that this wasn’t their way, that they were ill equipped for such a mission.

  Jules was too, though, meaning someone risked a fall.

  As much as he’d grown to enjoy Bridget’s company, to respect her and even the other institute members, some things were more important than feelings.

  He said, “Stay away.” Although he looked at the guard, he was addressing Bridget.

  She picked up on it. “What? No. After what I just shared?”

  “You don’t need to put yourselves in more danger. I’m getting the bracelet back.”

  “Bangle,” she said.

  The pair of muscleheads glanced at one another with a fraction of a frown.