Carpathian (4 page)

The roar of the giant wolf was followed by the sound of howling that coursed through the valley of Moab as every remaining animal left of the family of Golia mourned the loss of the two irreplaceable males.

The Jeddah, along with God’s last magic found on earth—the Golia—moved into the distant, barren, and foreboding lands far to the north.

The Lost Tribe of Jeddah would forever dwell in the land of darkness beyond the lands of the Hittites—in the lost world of the stone mountains of the great north.

HONG KONG HARBOR, APRIL 1, 1949

The gleaming white yacht sat anchored in the bay of Hong Kong glistening in the illumination cast from a full moon and the festive multicolored lights that had been strung from bow to stern. The largest yacht inside the harbor was hard to miss as it sat motionless at a minimum of two miles from any fishing or harbor patrol boat, creating an island unto itself in the great expanse of the harbor. The only vessels allowed near the gleaming white hull of the
Golden Child
were the rented whaleboats that had been cleaned and lined with satin pillows for the invited guests as they traversed the busy waterway on their way to the largest auction of Palestinian and ancient Canaanite antiquities the world had ever seen.

Golden Child
was owned by a man known as Charles Sentinel, a Canadian commodities broker of some ill repute. It boasted accommodation for forty overnight guests and had an interior salon that measured 182 feet in length and could handle a party of hundreds. Tonight however, the salon would only accommodate thirty. The remaining space would be taken up by the items everyone on the
Golden Child
had come to see. The evening belonged to Lord Hartford Harrington, who had agreed to the astronomical lease price for the ship of $2 million for the weekend. There could be no other more secure location for the greatest antiquities sell-off in a hundred years.

As the third to the last whaleboat wound its way around the tied-up water taxis made famous in Hong Kong, the woman saw the
Golden Child
in the distance for the first time. As her green eyes roamed over the shape and silhouette of the ship her mind raced. This was the first time she had assigned herself a field operation, and also the first time she had disobeyed an order from the director. If he knew she was four thousand miles from home with no field security team in place she may as well find somewhere to live inside China because she could never go home again.
“Garrison would kill me,”
she mumbled to herself as the whaleboat slowly made its way to the large staircaselike gangway that had been set up on the starboard side of the three-hundred-foot-long
Golden Child
.

Twenty-one-year-old Alice Hamilton was outfitted in the finest dress her limited bank account could cover. She had to borrow the wide-brimmed white hat that matched the dress. The gown itself was a satin turquoise one-strap item that made her feel a tad uncomfortable. It was almost embarrassing that her field equipment was listed as one party dress and one borrowed hat while the other field units in her department had to settle for desert camping gear and weapons hidden among their picks and shovels. If she were lucky, Alice thought, she might be able to come up with a fingernail file for protection. She wondered once more for the hundredth time if she knew what she was doing.

Alice tried to hide the large intake of breath as a line was tossed to one of the deckhands waiting on the bottom platform of the yacht’s gangway. Here she was getting ready to step into the den of some of the most ruthless dealers in ancient art and antiquities ever assembled and she was going in with possibly a nail file and a knockout dress. But Alice knew she had to chance it once word had reached her desk at the Event Group that something unusual in the antiquities world was about to take place. Alice had used every contact, informant, and had even called in favors owed to her by the FBI and the new CIA to get the location of the auction. This was her baby and not even General Garrison Lee could bully her into not taking this chance to stop some of the theft of the ancient world.

Alice Hamilton was the widowed wife of one of Garrison Lee’s men from his old Office of Strategic Services days during the war. After the surrender of Japan the young widow had gone to work for the new director of Department 5656 in September of 1946. The man named Garrison Lee was a beast and by far the hardest man in the world to work for. The former senator from Maine was a thinker who covered every aspect of field operations, and one of his staunchest rules was that no office, lab, or academic personnel could go on field missions without a covert military police escort. She smiled at the standing order. Alice knew she was none of those. She was the personal assistant to one of the most ingenious men she had ever known. And now she wished he were with her.

As she was assisted to her feet by the white-coated helmsman of the whaleboat, she thought about Lee and what his reaction would be when he found out her little vacation to visit her mother back home in Virginia had turned into a weeklong trip to the South China Sea in search of stolen artifacts. She had fought for the assignment but Garrison Lee had said no—that it was not part of the Event Group charter to retrieve stolen antiquities. She knew this to be the largest lie that Lee had ever told her. He took chances time and time again to recover items from not only the past of the United States, but that of the world.

Department 5656 of the National Archives, or better known to its scientists, archaeologists, teachers, professors, and military personnel as the Event Group, was a creation of President Abraham Lincoln in 1863. It became a chartered section of the National Archives in 1916 and signed into American law (albeit secretly) in that same year. Its mission was to discover the true history of the world’s past. The Group’s job was to ensure that the United States avoided the pitfalls stumbled into by mankind throughout history by learning the truth about how we got to where we are, and to learn where the world was going. The Event Group protected the United States from committing the same sins as our forefathers and their ancient European or Asian ancestors.

Alice loved the concept but had found the actual work chosen for her by her boss, Garrison Lee, mundane and boring, more that of an academic investigator than team leader, and that was not Alice and Lee knew that. The general could not keep her caged up as he had the past four years: he was overprotective of her and that infuriated the twenty-one-year-old widow no end. Thus this one chance to prove she could be a field operative and handle the very worst of people.

Alice adjusted the stole around her shoulders and the fishnet, large-brimmed white hat that half covered her beautiful eyes. As she made her way up the gangway she experienced her first hint of nervousness as she spied the two men at the top of the gangway who were watching her move slowly up the steps. Their eyes saw the shapely body beneath the expensive dress and the subtle movement of her breasts that were hidden very badly in the French-designed fashion. Alice felt so humiliated knowing the dress was not anything like her. She was far more comfortable in men’s pants and shorts and far happier with a shovel and pickax.

As she reached the top of the steps she saw that the two men were armed with weapons poorly hidden in their waistbands. She knew the men
wanted
her to see that they were armed.

The first man half bowed and held out his hand. Alice swallowed and then pulled the invitation from her handbag. The gilded, gold-embossed invitations were numbered and a security code printed on the front ensured that no one uninvited would be allowed to board this ship. Again Alice swallowed hard but managed a smile as she handed the forged invitation to the large guard. The security man looked it over and without hesitation handed the invitation back to the young American.

“Welcome to the
Golden Child
, Mrs. Hamilton, your host eagerly awaits your opinion on his collection. Please, follow Mr. Chow into the salon.”

Alice was about to speak but her words caught in her throat as she realized that she was far more frightened about what she was doing than she thought she would have been. Instead she nodded her head and followed the largest Chinese man she had ever seen onto the boat deck. As she did she heard the engines of the
Golden Child
start and then the sound of the anchor being raised and felt the rattling of the teak deck. She stopped momentarily as the great yacht surged forward in the calm bay of Hong Kong.

“Don’t worry, ma’am, the
Golden Child
will anchor ten miles out to sea for…” The Chinese brute smiled down at Alice. “Security reasons.”

Alice knew then that if she needed help of any kind it wasn’t going to be found beyond the territorial limits of Hong Kong. That meant if for any reason her true intent was discovered she would find it hard swimming the ten miles back into the bay, especially with a few bullets in her back and sharks stalking her. She knew then that she may have made the biggest mistake of her young life.

The
Golden Child
put to sea.

*   *   *

Alice Hamilton, a girl of twenty-one from the town of Manassas, Virginia, who until this year had never been farther from home than Nevada, found herself being escorted to the fantail of the magnificent yacht. As she rounded the corner she took a deep breath and told herself to relax. As she told herself this she felt the slow movement of the
Golden Child
heading for the open sea. The departure wasn’t noticed by the many men and women on the fantail standing and sipping drinks as waiters and other servants wound their way through the expensively dressed guests.

Alice momentarily froze as she stood looking at the white dinner jackets and budget-breaking gowns. As they stood with martinis and other drinks in their manicured fingers, she realized that as soon as she opened her mouth to any one of these people they would know immediately that she didn’t belong. They would eventually see right through the forged invitation that had been prepared for her by the intelligence element inside Department 5656, another little item Garrison would be furious about. She swallowed, wanting to jump off the fantail before the ship was too far out to sea.

“The water is extremely cold and you would more than likely get run over by a water taxi—that is if the sharks don’t get to you first.”

Alice felt her heart catch at the sound of the thick and even voice behind her. Masked beneath the dark veil of her hat, her eyes closed as she tried to gather her courage. She opened her eyes and turned.

“And I hope that dress didn’t come out of the petty cash drawer in your desk.”

Alice looked up and into the face of Garrison Lee. He was dressed in a white dinner jacket, bow tie, and of all things horrid in the world, a bright red cummerbund. His eye patch was over his right eye but that didn’t stop Alice from seeing that the scarred brow itself was arched in that way Lee had of intimidating those who worked for him. The brown hair was perfectly combed and the small touch of gray at his temples made him look far more menacing than she had remembered.

“We don’t have a petty cash box, and if we did I would have told you to use it to buy another tuxedo—or at least a cummerbund that doesn’t look like you’re wearing a stop sign,” she said with as much indignation as she could muster, trying to get the upper hand for the battle she knew was coming.

His brow furrowed even more as he self-consciously looked down at his waist as Alice walked past him and toward the group of high-stakes antiquities players. She deftly reached out and took a glass of champagne from a passing waiter without missing a step.

The six-foot-five-inch Garrison Lee watched her leave and then looked down at the bright red cummerbund once more. He was now actually confused as to how Alice had turned the tables on him before he could get her into a corner about vanishing like she had from her desk at the Event Group complex. He grimaced and then followed her into the milling crowd.

“Well, we’re here so I suspect you have a plan?” Lee asked the retreating form of Alice. “Most field agents have a plan before going in. Or at the very minimum ask their director to assist in formulating that plan.”

“Champagne?” She suddenly turned and thrust a glass into Lee’s hand. As he reached for it she suddenly pulled it away. “Oh I forgot you’re a bourbon man,” Alice said as she turned for the bar near the far stern railing.

Lee smiled and nodded at those few guests that had heard the brief exchange. He nodded and embarrassingly made his way toward Alice, who had her back to him while standing at the ornate bar. He stepped to her left and leaned against the bar, letting his cane dangle uselessly at his side, his anger spent for the moment. A few of the high-priced guests near the couple looked up and saw the scarred, very large man leaning next to them and then they smiled uncomfortably when they noticed Lee’s facial scars and ducked away.

“You know, Hamilton,” Lee said as his eyes followed the three guests as they exited the bar area of the fantail, “I counted no fewer than four suspected murderers, two known antiquities thieves, and a well-known and respected British lord who purportedly was raiding dig sites throughout the Middle East during the British occupation. And I noticed all of this in just the past few seconds walking over here. You, Mrs. Hamilton, are out of your element. And that will get people killed.” Lee didn’t turn to face her; he just reached out and took the proffered drink from the bartender.

“How am I supposed to learn anything stuck in that underground hell you call a complex?” she hissed as she smiled at the bartender as he passed her another glass of champagne.

“Listen, I—”

“Ladies and gentlemen, welcome aboard the
Golden Child
. I believe we have a very special evening in store for your pleasure.”

Lee and Alice turned at the announcement. The man was impeccably dressed in a white tuxedo with a black cummerbund.

“I told you, red cummerbunds are so tacky,” Alice said softly through the side of her mouth.