Carpathian (55 page)

“You know I was hoping for a little bit more of an explanation about just who in the hell you really are. I mean are you…” Carl looked around to make sure no one was listening in to his conversation—they weren’t. “Are you Jeddah or are you Jewish? I mean Mossad, that’s a strange place for a country girl like you to end up.”

Anya didn’t exactly face him nor did she look away either.

“I am not Jewish, well, not in the sense that you mean anyway,” she said as she nodded at several well-wishers and admirers as they streamed past and the large blond-haired American. “Captain, we really can’t even claim to be Jeddah any longer.” She finally looked fully at Carl as the large bonfire in the center of town reflected off his tanned skin. Men and women were dancing and playing music and the laughter of everyone put Everett ay ease more than anything had in years.

“I’m not following you,” Carl said as he saw the way the firelight played off her black hair.

“I am not as angry at my brother as my grandmother is. I see what Marko is doing and I want him to succeed, but not the way he has planned by bringing outsiders into it. The selling off of … certain things cannot be allowed to happen.” She gestured around her at the men and women as they danced around the fire pit. “We are not like we were once upon a time. Marko is right, these people deserve to serve themselves, not some ancient promise made to a people that has forgotten them as surely as if we never existed. Marko should have done it another way. Now all of this may vanish, my grandmother will see to that.”

Carl stepped closer to Anya as he realized she was telling him all as if she had to release the pent-up emotions of her past.

“I have been gone for so long I have become cynical of my own kind. And there is another problem. I haven’t told my grandmother yet that I believe certain people in Mossad, besides Colonel Ben-Nevin, have much more knowledge of the Jeddah and our mountain than we initially thought. Why the knee-jerk reaction to a simple report about an American spy inside the Vatican archives? Someone panicked when they saw what was sent in that message.”

“The wolf’s skull?” Carl asked.

“As you said, back in Rome, Captain, I’m not a big believer in coincidence in this business. And now I have all this information and something else is happening that has me so angry that I want to spit.” She accepted an offer of a large wax-lined sheepskin bag. She squeezed something red-colored into her mouth and then slammed the bag into Everett’s chest. Everett drank.

“You will have to spit if you keep drinking this stuff,” Carl said as he held the bag out and looked it over.

Anya turned on Everett as if he were the cause of all her pain.

“I cannot be queen. I am not in the direct line of succession after her and never have been. My grandmother will be breaking the law by appointing me heir to her throne.”

“Maybe you can do some good, where your grandmother thinks Marko can’t.”

“My brother is not as stupid as most would like to make out. He can lead the people into a new future and my grandmother has to realize this.”

“What’s your solution?”

Anya bit her lower lip. “I would ask Marko to cut ties with this resort and its ownership. Then we can move into that future with a clear conscience. The selling off of the assets in the mountain will only bring discovery of the Golia down on our heads. I hope to say these things to my brother.”

“Well, why don’t we go find him and ask him, it can’t hurt, can it?”

“Believe me, Captain, with Marko it can hurt when you least expect it.” Anya took Carl by the hand, which surprised him. He stepped close to her as she studied him. “I am more worried about the Golia.’

“I know what you mean, they worry me also.”

She smiled for the first time and that made Everett feel a hundred percent better. For some unknown reason he felt he needed to make her smile and laugh, as if she had been missing that small joy for some time.

“I guess an outsider would see them that way,” Anya said as her smile grew with the warm feeling of the wine in her belly. “All the Golia ever wanted was to just live, Captain, that’s all. They hunt what we supply them so they never have to leave their sanctuary. They have their families to care for and they felt safe here. But now Marko’s plan has Stanus and the others acting like I have never seen them before. Stanus read something in Marko when he cast the joining spell and the Golia took something away from that coupling and has resented Marko ever since.”

“First I think you better explain just what in the hell a joining is.”

Again Anya turned her head and nodded. “I keep forgetting you know absolutely nothing about us.”

At that moment a small man with a barrel chest and impressive handlebar mustache danced his way toward Anya. He was sliding a bow across a small violin and smiling to beat the band. He stopped playing long enough to take Anya by the arm and spin her toward the large fire pit, and the gathered revelers erupted with adulation that their long-lost daughter had joined them.

Carl watched Anya as she stopped and then slowly started to dance around the fire pit. Everett stepped lightly between two older men who stared and clapped with the others as Anya moved around the fire. Someone tossed her a tambourine and she started hitting it in accordance with an old-world-sounding European tune. Violins and flutes played as she danced and spun and banged on the tambourine in time as she twirled, sending her bright blue dress flaring wide as a flower would opening up to the morning sun. Many more men, women, and children were starting to drift over from other areas of the village as they all wanted to witness the return of the first daughter of Patinas.

Will Mendenhall and several of the engineers from the 82nd stepped up to Everett as he continued to be mesmerized by Anya and the seductive way she could move.

“Wow,” was all the young lieutenant could say, his mouth agape.

As Anya spun around the fire pit she came close to Everett on a turn and their eyes locked. She was sweating and her black hair was laid flat on her forehead as she came to a sudden stop as the music slowed. She continued to look at Carl as her chest heaved with the effort to catch her breath. Everett had never witnessed such an innocent dance become so incredibly erotic. It seemed they faced each other over the two feet that separated them for an hour as everything inside Patinas slowed to a crawl and time stood still. Carl could barely hear the cheers of the men and women around them. He didn’t even flinch when Anya was finally picked up and carried away by her many admirers.

“Now that was something I assumed only happened in the movies,” Mendenhall said as the engineers moved off back to the long tables brimming with food. Will smiled and then looked over at the captain. Carl just stood watching Anya.

Mendenhall shook his head as he realized that Carl had not heard one word he had said. His blue eyes reflected the firelight as they followed the throng of people around the fire.
He was someplace other than here
, Mendenhall thought.

As Everett watched, Anya was finally placed on the ground and she spied Carl looking at her. As she breathed in and out still exhausted from her dance, she realized that her grandmother had been hinting in the right direction. There was something about this American agent that stilled her heart every time she looked at him. It had been that way since the first moment she had laid eyes on the large Navy man.

Anya finally broke away from the crowd and walked over to Everett, who just stood watching her. Mendenhall, never one to be slow on the uptake since his time hanging out with Ryan on his runs into Las Vegas, knew when to exit stage left.

“I’ll be over here with the vampires and werewolves eating supper.” With one last look at Everett, Mendenhall put his hands in his pockets and strolled away.

“Vampires and werewolves, right,” Everett said, not even realizing what it was he had repeated.

The former Mossad agent stepped up to Carl and brushed some wet hair off her forehead and then reached out and took Everett by the hand. Shocking him, she then started running through the crowd as if she were starting to feel strangled in the midst of the adulation by the Jeddah.

She and Everett ran until they were through the front gate of Patinas.

*   *   *

Alice, Niles, Charlie, and Denise Gilliam were in a straight line as they followed the two Gypsy men as they carried Madam Korvesky up the small sheep trail that wound away from Patinas and into the pass. The trail looked old and the dirt they walked upon had been worn to the bare rock of the mountain. As they neared a large granite-faced rock they started to see small symbols etched into the stone. Niles looked at Alice questioningly as he held a small gas lantern close to one of the symbols.

“Hieroglyphs of some kind,” she said as she too was intrigued.

“That is the language of the Jeddah,” Madam Korvesky said as the men carried her in her chair up the steep incline.

“Why in hieroglyphs? Didn’t the Jeddah speak ancient Hebrew?” Alice asked as she realized for the first time that the real schooling about the Jeddah and the Golia was about to begin.

“The Jeddah, the warrior clan of the tribes of Israel, did not speak the language of Abraham, Joseph, Moses, and Joshua. We had our own tongue,” she said as she was moved past stone and bush on their way seemingly to nowhere. “We were always separated from the rest of the tribes by the elders. We were feared for no other reason than we were warriors not only for Israel, but for Ramesses II and his fathers before him, and many other fathers before that.”

“So you developed your own language?” Alice asked.

They heard Madam Korvesky laugh. “Well, we have to assume that. It has been a while and quite a few of the old tales have vanished from Jeddah memory.”

Alice was about to ask further questions on the origins of this language but was stopped when she looked up and saw that Madam Korvesky and the men carrying her had disappeared from the trail.

“Just walk up to the large boulder and step inside,” came the old woman’s voice seemingly from nowhere.

Niles held Alice back as he and Charlie Ellenshaw stepped past the two women and up to a large boulder that seemed to block the path. Then their eyes widened when they realized that the giant boulder was nothing more than a gate into the mountain. From the angle of the trail it looked as if the house-sized boulder was intact, but upon closer inspection they saw the archway that had been carved in the stone many thousands of years before they had arrived in Patinas.

“Now this is camouflage, Jack would love to see this,” Niles said as he ran his hand along the boulder as they passed through. “You could walk right up on it and not know it was there,” Niles said but realized that Charlie wasn’t beside him, nor were Alice and Denise. As Compton looked back he saw that all three had stopped and were staring at something beyond. As he turned and looked, Alice slowly raised a finger and pointed with her eyes wide. Charlie had a smile on his face as if he had just caught Santa Claus pilfering cookies and milk. The director froze as he saw a giant Golia standing in the archway, blocking his entrance. The beast was breathing hard and its fingers gripped either side of the entrance as its bright, nighttime glowing yellow eyes watched Niles. The dark silhouette was enough to make Compton freeze.

“I think we have run into one of the temple guards,” Charlie said as he went to one knee to get a better angle.

“Nadia, leave them be, they are friends!” the voice of Madam Korvesky was heard saying loudly from the far side of the entrance.

“Nadia?” Denise asked in a whisper. “That six-and-a-half-foot animal is a female?”

The eyes of the Golia narrowed and then its ears came up in a more relaxed posture. The beast awkwardly moved aside but did not leave as the others slowly squeezed past.

Alice swallowed as she came nearest to the Golia. She could feel the heat of the beast’s breath and the feel of its fiery eyes as she moved along the stone entranceway.

“Easy, Nadia is in heat and that is why she has been left at the temple. Nadia, go to the babies now.”

The beast leaned over and with one hand outstretched and long fingers splayed, it touched Charlie’s wire-rimmed glasses, once, twice, three times, until they fell from his face. The Golia’s eyes went so wide at the shock of seeing Ellenshaw lose his eyes that the giant bounded away and then using the strength of legs and arms scaled the rock walls and vanished.

“Left behind? What do you mean?” Alice asked as they entered what looked to be a huge gallery of open stone carved ages before. It was the size of a theater lobby and was lined with old wooden torches that burned brightly as they illuminated the hieroglyphs on the walls. They were Egyptian in context and construction and without closer inspection neither Niles nor Alice could decipher what they spelled out

“That seems to be the mystery of the day,” Madam Korvesky said as she sat and waited for the newcomers to join her. The two men waited patiently beside the chair. They watched the Americans as they examined every area of the gallery. “It seems all of our adult Golia have been vanishing at night and we don’t why or where. It has something to do with Marko, but for the life of me I don’t know where the wolves are going at night. Nadia because of her condition was tasked to watch the baby Golia.”

“I must admit I’m somewhat disappointed in the temple structure,” Ellenshaw commented. “I thought after so many thousands of years that it would have been larger, maybe with more than just this one room.”

Madam Korvesky laughed and shook her head at Charlie Ellenshaw’s naïveté.

“The temple, no,” she said, trying to still her laughing at the poor American scientist. “This is not the temple. The temple is hundreds of feet inside the mountain. This is just the gallery, of which we could fit over a million of these in the cave system we utilized to build the temple.”

The two men didn’t wait for orders, they took the large arms of her chair and once more lifted up the old woman and then started down the massive staircase that had been hidden behind the giant Golia. They were silent as they continued down. The heat was tremendous the deeper along the staircase they went.