Carpathian (6 page)

“You will have to excuse my granddaughter, things related to our distant past do not impress her the way that they should.”

Alice heard what the old woman was saying but nothing was registering in her head. A well-dressed and appointed lady in a light but elegant white gown with pink highlights. Alice placed her age at somewhere in the eighties. Her cane looked like an old twisted wooden walking stick complete with what on closer inspection looked like the Egyptian Eye of Ra embossed in gold on the handle. Not an ordinary walking stick. Her clothes were beautiful. The dress satiny and fine and her gold jewelry sparkled in the salon spotlights. Alice looked closer and saw a tattoo that began at the woman’s neck and disappeared into her dress. The top of the tattoo was that of a pentagram, the five-pointed star, but Alice couldn’t see what the rest of the tattoo held below the neckline.

“I am Madam Korvesky.” She turned to look at the stone block and the animal that had been crushed to death by it more than three thousand years before. “We have come a great distance to denounce this … this abomination.” The old woman smiled and then looked at Alice with her aged eyes. “But I can tell that you have seen this sort of trickery before my dear, am I correct?” The old woman stepped closer to the young American. “Yes, I see the recognition in your eyes, young one.”

Alice didn’t say anything at first; she just raised her white-gloved hand and slowly reached out and touched the petrified image of the beast.

“Don’t do that.” The old woman reached out and lightly took Alice’s hand and pulled it away, giving her another grandmotherly smile. “Bad things can come of it,” she continued, but her next action betrayed her warning as a lie as she herself reached out and lightly ran her old and weathered hand over the stone-hardened fur and teeth of the beast. Then the old woman’s spell seemed to break and she smiled and looked at Alice. “You seem not to belong amongst these people.” She looked around with distaste etched on her wrinkled features. She tapped her cane on the carpeted deck once, and then a second time. The old woman became serious and fixed Alice with a gaze that froze her blood.

“You don’t seem to belong either,” Alice finally managed to say.

“I belong nowhere, my lovely girl.
We
belong nowhere.” She leaned close to the American woman and whispered in a voice steeped in an East European accent, “You seem kind, not like these…” she gestured around her at the men and women eating, laughing, and preparing to buy the stolen items taken from an illegal archaeological dig at Tell es-Sultan, “… people, these scavengers of our shared history.” The old woman bowed her head and then looked up minus her warm smile. “Forget what you saw here tonight, and if I am correct and you have seen something like this before, tell no one and keep your secret buried…” She hesitated only a moment as she looked deeply into the eyes of Alice Hamilton. “Wherever that may be.” Her European accent vanished and her next words were spoken in unaccented English and were far deeper in bass than her voice had been a brief second before. “You have just twenty minutes to remove yourself and your one-eyed handsome escort from this ship, my dear. All of this,” she gestured with her wooden cane, even going so far as to accidentally poke another American woman on her rather ample derriere, which elicited a shocked yelp and angry look, “Because all of this is going to be at the bottom of the South China Sea momentarily.”

“What?” Alice asked, shocked at the slowness of her reaction.

The old woman had gone. She melted into the milling buyers as if she had never been there at all.

*   *   *

Lee was getting close to the explosion factor that made his early years in the Senate a legend, and one of the reasons it was suggested to him by his own party that he was maybe just a little too high-strung for politics. The general always found his temper hard to control when sheer audacity of privilege and corrupt people at every walk of life threatened his keen sense of justice.

As his good eye counted the varying degrees of thievery, his limited vision fell on two small items on display that made his stomach roll. Lord Harrington had actually uncovered human remains at Tell es-Sultan. A cursed thing to do at any archaeological find was to openly display remains that have not been studied and guaranteed to be something from antiquity. It was also something that any well-bred museum curator would find hard pressed to put in any exhibit. He saw a few of the English-bred buyers grimace in distaste at the open display of remains. Lee shook his head and decided at that moment this secret auction would remain so forever. These items would not find their way to the private sector because he would destroy it all first if that need arose.

“I see anger in that one, beautiful eye.”

Garrison looked down to see the young woman who had been talking with Alice a moment before. Lee had seen her spying him from across the salon and was uncomfortable with the looks she was shooting his way.

“Then you should look closer, young lady, because what I see is sadness that this is happening. And if you’re here to place your money on any of these artifacts, I would save it; I predict it’s going to be a bad investment.”

“I was just speaking with your most beautiful companion. I see in her eyes that she adores you.”

Garrison looked closer at the raven-haired beauty. Her gaze seemed to go right through him. “Again, you better go take a better look, and study my companion a little closer. Soon enough she will reveal her cloven hooves, horns, and vipercated tail.”

The young girl looked confused for the briefest of moments and then smiled and laughed—a disarming and innocent sound that made Lee look twice at the woman standing in front of him with her arms crossed over her breasts. Her one brown and one green eye took Garrison in from head to toe. The eyes lingered momentarily on the bright red cummerbund.

“Ah, I see how the game is played with you Americans. Even though you are emphatically in love with someone, you deny it and show nothing but contempt at the mere suggestion of it, even in the face of something so obvious.”

Garrison Lee was stunned for a moment. He wasn’t used to bandying words with someone so young, but this girl had a way of getting into his thoughts that was just a little unnerving.

“If I may be so bold, you were a soldier, am I correct?” she asked as she watched Lee’s lone eye for a lie.

“I and many others.”

“Not many aboard this pirate ship I think. If the rest of England knew about this very unscrupulous man they would hang him in Trafalgar Square,” she said as her eyes left Lee for the briefest of moments to study some of the human waste that were the bidders of the world’s past. Her double-colored eyes turned back to the general and this time she examined him as if she were looking for a disease. She tilted her head and Lee saw the beginning of a tattoo at the base of her neck that wound its way down into the black dress. “You are a keeper of secrets.”

“Excuse me?” Garrison said as his smile tried to cover up his consternation at the girl’s prognosticative prowess. “I think your crystal ball may be a little cracked, my dear.”

The woman placed her small hand on Lee’s lapel. “Leave this ship—immediately, Keeper of Secrets,” she said as her smile was replaced with a seriousness that Lee found disturbing. He slowly pulled the girl’s hand free of his jacket. Her smile slowly returned as Alice joined them, her eyes on the girl.

“I see, you espouse cryptic things to complete strangers like me and then you go off and flirt with a man that is old enough to be your father.” Alice looked from the girl and then back to Lee. “Or your grandfather.”

Lee’s brow furrowed once again, only this time without much enthusiasm or threat behind it.

The young girl who reminded Lee of the Gypsies he met while on assignment during the war smiled even wider as she turned to look directly at him.

“My crystal ball isn’t as cracked as you would like to believe.” She bowed toward Alice and then to Lee. “Mrs. Hamilton, Senator Lee.” The young woman turned and left without another glance.

Lee and Alice watched the young girl take her grandmother’s arm and with one last smile at the both of them, the two strange guests of Lord Harrington left the salon.

“Strange, I don’t think I—”

“Told her you were a former senator,” Alice finished for Lee.

“And I don’t fancy being lectured to by a twenty-year-old girl on the politics of world history.” Lee looked down at Alice. “Or anything else for that matter.”

Alice patted Lee’s thick arm. “Calm down or your good eye will pop out of your head.” Alice smiled at some guests standing near them when she leaned into Lee. “I got a tip that we should leave this ship posthaste unless we want to see this boat turn into a submarine.” Alice looked right at Lee. “And for some reason I believe my source.”

“I saw you looking at the block of stone.” He turned and faced his assistant. “Get it out of your head. There is no relationship to Vault 22871.” He held up his hand, his cane dangling as he stopped Alice from speaking. “Are you surprised I noticed? Who in the hell could miss that? That block of stone is a hoax—a forgery. I heard some genius in the peanut gallery say it was Anubis, the jackal-headed god that held sway over the dead, until old Anubis was ousted by Osiris, at least according to the Egyptian priests at the time. I don’t think the god Anubis got slammed between two rocks during the actual historic siege of Jericho. This petrified monstrosity is as fake as that thing the Group has in Vault 22871.”

“That is your opinion; everyone else thinks the animal remains in 22871 are viable. Our best people say there have been no postmortem alterations to the bones—the same alterations that would have had to have occurred to this animal right here. The articulated hips can clearly be seen under the petrified fur. The fingers and claws, Garrison, look at the fingers and claws for God’s sake; they are exactly the same as the remains the U.S. Army recovered in France after World War I!”

Lee looked around as other guests started to pay them unwanted attention.

“Calm yourself, Hamilton, I believe
you
believe it. But this is ridiculous, Anubis, for crying out loud?” Lee wanted to walk Alice to the ancient stone block and take a hammer and chisel to it and prove that this display was nothing more than a curiosity that no one should take seriously. “There is one thing that really tears at my ass when it comes to our own science departments, and that’s the fact that there has never been one of these animals ever found in the fossil record the world over.”

“After inventorying every item we have in the Event Group vaults you have the guts to say that to me? No fossil record? Just when does that prove the nonexistence of an animal? You of all people should know there are things out there we know nothing of, even the great General Garrison Lee is capable of being wrong once in a few hundred damn years.”

Lee saw the anger in Alice’s eyes and her words were scathing, almost the same exact speech he had given, no, shouted at his people at the Group since he took directorship of Department 5656.

Garrison looked around and nodded as people were passing by with their secret bidding envelopes and giving them looks that were making the American feel extremely uncomfortable.

“Okay, I’ll give you that one, Hamilton, but—”

“Good evening, I couldn’t help but overhear your conversation, as well as that of many other men and women here.”

Lee and Alice looked over at a small man wearing the traditional headdress of the Palestinian people of the Gaza Strip—the kuffiyeh, the checkered head scarf seen on every male of the region. That was where the similarities fell off sharply, however. The tuxedo the small man wore was cut perfectly and fit the bearded man to a T.

“Mr. Kilroy,” he said and then smiled as he turned to appraise Alice. “I don’t think I have had the honor.”

“Alice, this is Mr. Hakim Salaams Saldine, our resident Palestinian authority on ancient Jericho—Saldine, Mrs. Alice Hamilton, also an authority it seems on ancient Jericho and the animal life contained behind its ancient walls.”

Alice ignored the small insult and held her gloved hand out as the man kissed it, making sure not to touch the hand itself.

“So, you are an authority on Jericho. What is your opinion on the talk of the auction?” she asked.

The man looked confused at first and then smiled. “I do not offer my opinion on things that are irrelevant, and believe me, my young friend, that is the most irrelevant piece I have ever examined—it is a hoax.”

“You have been to Tell es-Sultan?” Alice asked as she looked deeply into the newcomer’s reaction.

“Yes, many times have I ventured to Yeriẖo, I mean Jericho, I’m afraid it has never held that much value to us as a people. It was after all, a place of defeat for us.”

Alice smiled and nodded at the man, and then she looked at Lee and the smile vanished. The man continued to insult her intelligence and she was getting seriously sick of it. It was time to put General Garrison Lee in his place.

“You do know where you made your mistake don’t you, Mr. Saldine, if that is your name?”

“Excuse me?” the man said, trying to keep his features neutral.

“The ancient word Jericho is thought to derive from the Canaanite word Reaẖ, which you obviously should know already. I mean, since you are an authority and all and obviously a Palestinian.” Alice smiled again. “This little Virginia farm girl learned at an early age in Bible school taught by her uncle, that Reaẖ in Arabic, or Jericho if you will, is pronounced totally different. It’s spelled with a Y, not a J, which was clearly enunciated when you said the word very crisply.” Alice smiled as she made a show of looking around the room. The man shifted from one foot to the other. Lee rolled his good eye, knowing Alice was hanging them both out to dry.

“What is your point, madam?” the man with the headdress asked, looking over at Lee, who just grimaced, waiting for the other shoe to fall.

“Mr. Saldine, you are no more Palestinian than Garrison Lee here. You are Israeli intelligence, maybe just a policeman, but definitely no Palestinian. When you pose as another nationality, at least make sure you stick with their language, not your own.” Alice dipped her head and moved away.