King's Crusade (Seventeen) (7 page)

‘What is it?’ said Jackson curiously.

She passed him the glasses.

‘It’s a communications tower,’ he said after a while. ‘There’s a chain-link fence below it.’

‘They have cameras,’ said Alexa.

While Jackson shifted the binoculars to have a better look, she took a slim, hardback case out of her backpack. She booted up the computer inside and removed a satellite smartphone from a side compartment. The Harvard professor turned and stared at her while she dialed a number.

‘This is Alexa King,’ she said once the connection was made. The Crovir tech at the other end acknowledged her. ‘I need level-one access to the network. Team leader is Dimitri Reznak.’ She waited a minute, ignoring Jackson’s puzzled frown. ‘Can you confirm my GPS location?’ she finally asked. ‘Good. There’s a mine about half a mile east of my position. I want access to their camera feeds.’

‘You mean you’re
hacking
into that mine’s computer system?’ said Jackson. Alexa shrugged. His shocked gaze switched to the laptop. ‘Not that I’m condoning your action,’ he said uneasily, ‘but I could probably do that from here.’

She shook her head. ‘The guys I’ve called won’t be traceable. This device is.’

‘Good point,’ said Jackson with a grave nod. ‘We don’t want the mine owners to know we’re doing something illegal now, do we?’

Alexa ignored his sarcastic remark. ‘You’ve got them?’ she said into the phone moments later. ‘Send the pictures from eight to six weeks ago to this address.’

The laptop beeped after several seconds. She opened the new file.

They spent the next fifteen minutes studying the hijacked security feeds. The images spanned a period of fourteen days starting before Reznak’s scientists arrived at the site where they would eventually discover the caves. Alexa could sense Jackson’s quiet disapproval at her side. Despite it, he stared intently at the computer as she skimmed through hours of film.

‘Gotcha,’ she finally murmured. She froze an image on the screen.

They stared at the picture. ‘Those are trucks,’ said Jackson.

The cameras had captured four vehicles driving past the mine three days before Reznak’s team had set up camp. One of them was a large crawler crane.

‘The third truck is riding low,’ he added thoughtfully.

‘You’re right,’ Alexa concurred, surprised that he had picked up on such a minor detail. ‘It was carrying something heavy.’

‘The tombs Reznak suspected were in the cave?’ wondered Jackson, glancing at her.

‘Maybe.’ She zoomed in on the crawler. ‘Balcher Cranes,’ she said slowly as the lettering on the side of the gantry became clear. She got back on the satellite phone and brought up a map of Egypt on the screen while she waited for the connection to go through. ‘I need information on a crane company by the name of Balcher,’ she said to the Crovir tech. ‘I want to know where they operate in this area.’ She waited quietly while he searched the databases. ‘Saudi Arabia? You’re sure?’ she queried with a frown.

‘Check the shipping manifests from eight weeks ago,’ said Jackson. Alexa glanced at him. He pointed at the map. ‘There’s a port in Duba, in the Tabuk province, on the north west coast of Saudi Arabia. There’s also a port in Safaga, two hundred miles from here and across the Red Sea from Duba.’

Alexa looked at the screen. He was right. She told the Crovir tech where to look. Ten minutes later, they had the cargo manifest for a ship that arrived at Safaga from Duba seven days before the cameras at the mine had captured images of the trucks. A Balcher crawler crane was listed among the transported goods.

‘Why Saudi Arabia? They could have gotten a crawler crane from any city in Egypt,’ she pondered with a thoughtful frown after ending the call.

‘Visibility.’ Jackson indicated the map again. ‘They would have had to travel on the main roads to get here. You don’t exactly want to be noticed if you’re looting treasure.’

Alexa had to agree with him. She started the Jeep and continued driving north. Less than an hour later, they rolled onto an asphalt road and headed for a motorway that ran along the Egyptian coastline.

Night was falling by the time they saw the cluster of lights that was Safaga. Alexa guided the vehicle through the old city and eventually turned in the direction of the port. She negotiated a couple of narrow side roads before finally parking the Jeep next to a derelict warehouse.

One hundred feet away, lights were still on in the two-storey edifice that housed the offices of the company that owned the Ras Abu, the ship that had transported the crane from Duba. Several people left over the next hour. The parking lot in front of the building gradually emptied until a single car remained.

Alexa opened the door of the Jeep and stepped out onto the warm asphalt. Jackson joined her.

‘I’m not sure this is a good idea,’ he said, following her across the road.

‘What isn’t a good idea?’ She scanned their surroundings briefly.

‘Breaking and entering,’ said Jackson.

She glanced at him. ‘It’s more discreet than walking in and asking them for the information.’

The front door of the building was locked. Alexa removed a lock pick from her jacket and inserted it in the keyhole. It clicked open a couple of seconds later.

‘You’re a woman of many worrying talents,’ said Jackson drily, as they entered a small lobby.

Alexa shone a pen torch on a signboard on the wall to their right. El Bashir Shipping Ltd. was on the second floor of the building. She headed up the stairs and turned down a narrow corridor, Jackson on her heels.

Light was coming from under a closed door at the end of the passage. Alexa ignored it and entered a large room on the right. It was the main office of the shipping firm. She switched a desk lamp on and looked around. A series of filing cabinets occupied the west wall. The drawers were labeled by month and year. Jackson opened the one for October, and they went through the files together.

There was no mention of the Balcher crane in any of the paperwork.

While Jackson continued to search the other cabinets, Alexa turned her attention to the old computer sitting on one of the desks. Ten minutes later, they still had not found any trace of the Ras Abu’s October shipping orders.

‘Now what?’ said Jackson.

Alexa turned off the desk lamp and headed back into the corridor. She stared at the door at the end. A shadow moved across the light that shone through the gap at the bottom.

Jackson raised his eyebrows. ‘Tell me you’re not thinking of going in there?’

A grim smile crossed her lips. She strode down the passageway, turned the handle of the door, and pushed it open.

A short, portly, dark-skinned man with a beard stared at them blankly from the other side of the room beyond. His stubby, multi-ringed fingers froze in the process of placing a document in the wall safe in front of him.

‘Perfect,’ murmured Alexa. She crossed the floor toward him.

The stranger unfroze, reached inside the safe, and brought out a gun. Jackson shouted a warning behind her.

She raised her right knee, pivoted on her left foot, and kicked the Beretta pistol out of the man’s grasp. There was a loud snap as his thumb broke.

A strangled gurgle escaped the man’s lips when she closed her hand around his throat in a chokehold, lifted him bodily from the floor, and slammed him down on the desk next to the window. Her gaze shifted briefly to the papers beneath his head.

‘Mr. El Bashir?’ she said. The man struggled frantically beneath her, his heels banging against the side of the table while his fists tugged ineffectively at her arm. His eyes were like golf balls in his reddening face. Alexa increased her grip on his Adam’s apple. ‘A nod would suffice.’

‘You’re killing him,’ said Jackson darkly. He had picked up the Beretta and stood holding it as if it were a bag full of snakes.

Alexa ignored him. The stranger was nodding frantically. She let go, took a step back, and waited.

El Bashir sucked in air and tried to stand up. His knees buckled and he sagged against the desk with a groan. ‘Who—who the devil are you?’ he croaked after several seconds, rubbing the skin of his neck gingerly. His right thumb was red and swelling up visibly.

‘That’s irrelevant,’ said Alexa. ‘We’re looking for the October shipping orders for the Ras Abu. Where are they?’

The man’s eyes betrayed him. For a fraction of a second, his gaze shifted to the wall safe.

‘Search it,’ she told Jackson brusquely.

The Harvard professor frowned as he walked to the opening in the wall. He ignored the piles of foreign currency stacked neatly at the back of the metal box and inspected a pile of document holders. ‘Found it,’ he said after a minute. He pulled out a pair of sheets from a file and scanned the pages quickly. ‘It doesn’t say who ordered the Balcher crane.’

Alexa turned her attention to the fat man. Sweat stained the collar of his shirt, and beads of perspiration dotted his forehead and upper lip. She glanced at her watch. Almost fifteen minutes had elapsed since they had entered the building. They were wasting precious time.

She reached behind her back and brought one of her Sigs out of her body holster. El Bashir blanched when she placed the tip of the suppressor against his forehead.

‘You have ten seconds to tell me who hired you to bring the crawler crane from Duba,’ said Alexa.

The fat man’s lips opened and closed soundlessly. ‘These people—these people are dangerous!’ he finally stammered. ‘They said they would kill me if I mentioned a—’

She moved her hand and fired a shot into the desk. The fat man jumped, emitting a short cry. Across the room, Jackson audibly sucked in a breath.

‘Five seconds,’ Alexa said in a conversational tone. ‘Three, two, one. Goodbye, Mr. El Bash—’

‘All right, all right!’ the fat man shouted shrilly as she started to squeeze the trigger. She stopped. ‘The order was placed over the phone, with strict instructions not to record any of the details. The man who collected the crane called himself Dragov. Boyko Dragov. That’s the only thing I know, I swear!’

‘He didn’t give you a contact number or address?’

‘No! He always called me,’ said El Bashir shakily.

‘What does he look like?’ asked Alexa.

El Bashir’s eyes grew large with panic. ‘I really don’t want to—’

She fired another shot into the desk. Jackson took a step toward her.

‘He was—he was tall!’ The words rushed out of El Bashir’s mouth in a breathless stutter. ‘And big! Like that—that green monster from that American TV series!’

Jackson’s eyebrows rose. ‘You mean, “The Hulk”?’

‘Yes, that’s the one!’ said El Bashir, nodding wildly.

Alexa frowned. The man was holding something back. ‘What are you not telling us?’

El Bashir gulped and looked pleadingly at Jackson.

‘It’d be better if you talked,’ said Jackson, glancing at her.

El Bashir hesitated. ‘This Dragov—he—he wanted me to tell him if I knew of any fishing vessels that would travel to Port Said.’

‘You mean up through the Suez Canal?’ said Jackson sharply.

El Bashir nodded.

‘What did you tell him?’ said Alexa. El Bashir’s panicked gaze shifted to the desk. She lowered the gun. Wincing at his swollen thumb, the fat man grabbed a piece of paper and hastily wrote down three lines. He handed her the sheet.

She studied the names on the list. ‘Do you know whether he hired any of these ships?’

El Bashir shook his head vigorously. ‘No. Look, all I did was bring the crane across! I’m not involved in anything else that might be going on here!’

Alexa gazed at him for several seconds. ‘We’re leaving,’ she said finally.

El Bashir’s shoulders sagged, relief evident in his eyes.

‘But,’ she continued, ‘if you tell anyone about this, I’ll kill you. You’ll be under surveillance from now on.’ She turned and walked out of the room, leaving the fat man sweating profusely by the desk.

‘You were kidding about killing him, weren’t you?’ asked Jackson as he followed her out of the building. ‘And that surveillance thing was just to scare him, right? Hey, I asked you a couple questions!’

Alexa halted in the parking lot and looked at him over her shoulder. ‘If he were to pose a threat to our mission, I would not hesitate to dispose of him.’

‘I don’t believe that!’ exclaimed Jackson.

‘You don’t know me,’ she retorted, striding to the Jeep and climbing in the vehicle.

‘No, I don’t, do I?’ He got in and slammed the door forcefully behind him.

Alexa took the satellite phone out of the hardback case and called up the Crovir techs. ‘I need intel on three fishing boats,’ she said and quickly ran through the names on the piece of paper El Bashir had handed her. ‘I want to know if any of them docked in Port Said in the last six weeks.’ She stared blindly at the road ahead while she waited, aware of Jackson brooding at her side. ‘The Juzur Tawilah?’ she said finally, frowning at the windscreen. ‘Any chance of finding out where it unloaded?’

The Crovir immortal on the other end of the line went silent for a moment. ‘That information is not held in the Port Authority database,’ he replied. ‘They’re probably still using paper records. The only way to find out is to go there.’

It was Alexa’s turn to be quiet. ‘Can you find me a boat? A fast one?’ she said eventually. ‘No, further up the coast would be better. I want to be in Port Said by lunchtime tomorrow. Also, see what you’ve got on a Boyko Dragov. He’s probably of Bulgarian origin. I’ll wait for your call back.’

‘We could drive to Port Said,’ Jackson suggested in a distinctly reluctant tone as she disconnected.

She shook her head. ‘A boat will be quicker.’

The phone rang a while later. Alexa listened closely while the Crovir tech spoke. ‘The Abu Tig marina? Good. And Dragov?’ She scowled at the tech’s response. ‘Nothing? All right. I’ll be in touch if I need anything else.’ She ended the call.

‘The Abu Tig marina is fifty miles north of here,’ said Jackson.

She raised her eyebrows. ‘Have you been there before?’

‘No.’ He shrugged. ‘I read about it once.’

Alexa recalled Reznak’s words as she started the engine. It seemed her godfather had also been correct about Jackson’s eidetic memory.

Seconds after she pulled away from the curb, El Bashir exited the building that housed his shipping company. The fat man froze in his tracks when he saw the Jeep go by.