Moon Mask (39 page)

“It is the toll of history,” she whispered before he could reply. Then she glanced at the gun in his hand before fixing on his eyes. “You’re here to torture me, then?” It wasn’t so much a question as it was a statement.

“The men that attacked you,” Raine said, his voice steady, flat. “They took the Kernewek Diary . . . and two of my friends.” His haunting blue eyes bored into Marley’s own. “You know where they’re going.”

“I know no such thing, young
mon
.”

“You’re lying.”

“It seems you are an adept at that yourself.”

Raine hesitated for a second, considering how much to tell her. “The secret that the book protects,” he said. “It could be used to kill hundreds of thousands of people. We’re here, under the authority and command of the United Nations, to stop them.” He studied her, trying to read her, but her face remained impassive. “You had the book, the diary, all your life. You must have read it. You must know its secrets.”

She laughed bitterly and shook her head. “I know nothing.”

“Do you really want the blood of innocent people on your hands?” Raine demanded. The old woman seemed to snap, his words striking something within her. Her face twisted angrily.

“Get out of my house!”

“Not until I have what I need to find my friends.” He made a display of unlatching the safety of his gun. “I’ve explained myself. I’ve asked you for your help.” His eyes darkened. “I won’t ask again.”

“And what will you do?” she snarled. “Shoot an unarmed old lady?”

Raine’s icy eyes never left hers. His tone was flat and even. Honest. “I’ve done a lot worse.”

Mrs Marley studied his handsome, chiselled face and noticed that he did not waver in his resolve. But neither would she. She responded by hacking up a glob of mucus and spitting it in his direction. “You won’t do it!”

A moment later, Raine pulled the trigger.

Airborne,

Location Unknown,

High
in the sky above the Caribbean, Benjamin King was jolted awake by a powerful hand which slapped him around the face. He just about stumbled out of the seat to which he had been tied but the restraints held him in place.

He was disorientated. Flashes of memory assaulted him, as though he was waking from a bad dream. One moment he was in Lagos, General Abuku’s gun searing into the flesh of his forehead, branding him. Then he was at the Wassu Stone Circle with his father, hearing the tales of Kha’um and the Bouda. He remembered running through the hellish realms of Xibalba, dodging razor-sharp balls and lunging caiman. And then he was back in the Hand of Freedom building, falling from a great height, an agonising pain in his chest. Then nothing but random visions of men in black, of racing through cobbled streets, things exploding all around, people screaming-

His head swam, his brain thundered with the most incredible headache he had ever experienced and for a moment he thought he was going to vomit all over the deck of the Catalina Flying Boat.

He took several deep breaths, gathering his senses, and glanced at his surroundings.

The hold of the decommissioned airplane had been gutted out of its original furnishings and redesigned with state-of-the-art military equipment. It looked more like an Apple Store than an airplane.

Three black motorbikes were stashed by the aft section, in a hold designed for five, just within the closed rear cargo door, while arranged in a methodical manner, strung in combat webbing in the rear hold, was a small arsenal of some of the meanest looking weapons the archaeologist had ever seen.

The main cabin, where he was held, had been kitted out to look like a scene from a science fiction movie, the bulkheads adorned with flat, touch-screen, high durability computer monitors, microscopes and all manner of other equipment, some of which he recognised, others which were utterly alien. It was like a flying laboratory. No, he realized a second later: a flying war room. From here, it looked to him like his captors could organise a military operation anywhere in the world.

“Wakey, wakey,” a voice broke into his thoughts, redirecting his attention to the not unhandsome face of a man in black combat clothing. In his younger years, King suspected he would have attracted the attention of many women with the hard lines of his face and jaw bone and his grey eyes which held an intensity not dissimilar to Nathan Raine’s. But this man was older, the grey stumble of his leathery skin, lacerated by too many wounds, merged seamlessly into his equally grey buzz-cut. He had the twang of an accent, Australian perhaps, but it was faded, mellowed by years away from home. He also had the bearing of a soldier. Not the mindless ‘yes-sir, no-sir’ automatons he had seen wandering the halls of Fort Leavenworth days earlier. This man held himself with the same confidence he had seen in each of Gibbs’ men. He was Special Forces. Australian SAS, perhaps.

King pulled against his restraints, though he knew it would prove fruitless. “What do you want?” he demanded.

“What?” the man said, “no pleasantries, Doctor King? No demanding to know who I am and who I work for?”

“I don’t give a toss who you are or who you work for,” King admitted.

The man glowered at him. “At least you’re honest.” He shrugged. “Well, for conversation sake, why don’t you call me . . .” he seemed to pluck a name out of thin air “. . . Bill.”

“Bill?” King said, deadpan, his mind plucking at memories of watching ‘
Bill and Ben, The Flower Pot Men
’ on TV with his sister as children. It was strange how his mind kept flashing back to long forgotten moments from years ago. He considered the possibility that it was a side effect of his head injury but then realised he had been thinking about the past an enormous amount these last few days.

Ever since laying hands on the Moon Mask.

“Okay,
Bill
,” he said, pushing aside his thoughts. “What do you want?”

‘Bill’ smiled insincerely. “Your help, Doctor King,” he replied, pulling a dirty brown leather-bound book from a pouch on his combat webbing.

“You want me to help you find the mask?” King laughed. It was pointless playing games. He’d known, of course, from the moment he woke up, what his captors wanted from him.

“That’s right, Ben,” Bill replied, then added, as an afterthought: “May I call you Ben?”

King ignored his last question, confident that the man would call him whatever he wanted to. “And if I don’t help you, I suppose you’ll kill me?” Again, the threat was too obvious to bother tiptoeing around.

But Bill threw him a curve-ball. He laughed, sincerely this time. “No,” he shrugged. “I’ll kill her.”

King followed Bill’s direction to the far end of the hold, just outside the doors of the cockpit. Obstructed by a large soldier in black combat gear, he hadn’t seen Bill’s second hostage. Until now.

“Sid!”

Port Royal,

Jamaica,

Mrs
Marley hit the rooftop in a spray of blood, letting out a startled scream. Raine was at her side instantly, pulling her enormous bulk away from the rooftop’s edge so that she wouldn’t accidentally topple.

Had that been her plan anyway? To jump? Why else would she have been on the roof?

He slapped his hand over the gunshot wound in her shoulder, tightly applying pressure.

“You . . . you shot me,” she gasped, her dark Jamaican skin paling.

“I told you I would,” he replied, fixing her with a serious gaze.

Whatever jovial man with an ever-ready sense of humour Mrs Marley had seen earlier was gone. This man was cold, humourless.

“The bullet has shattered your collar bone and punctured an artery. If you don’t get to a hospital, you will die.” His voice was a serious growl. Intense and dangerous.

Mrs Marley felt a terrified shudder swell up from the pit of her soul. Nevertheless, she remained defiant. “What do you want from me?” she growled, teeth gritted against the pain.

“I want to know where the diary leads.”

“I don’t know-”

Raine’s index finger dug inside the bullet would, grazing at the torn nerve endings. Marley screamed in agony and tried to throw her bulk away from him but she was pinned down by her own weight.

“I can’t tell you anything!” she cried.

“
Can’t
?” He dug deeper and new spasms of pain assaulted the woman. Her eyes were rolling upwards so he slapped her across the face, bringing her back into the moment. “Or
won’t?
”

With a renewed surge of determination a twisted snarl warped her features. “Won’t!” she spat. “I
won’t!
”

Raine withdrew his hand from the wound and the sight of so much blood terrified the old woman. Raine gripped her face with his blood soaked hand, smearing it over her chin. “My friends are going to die, Mrs Marley,” he hissed, his voice barely even discernable. “I don’t want them to die. I don’t want
you
to die. But if I have to choose between you and them-”

“I took a vow!” she stated forcefully, tears streaking her face.

“A vow to whom?”

She hesitated. “My father,” she said. “My grandmother. Her father. To every generation that has lived since that goddamn book came to my family!”

“A vow to protect its secrets?” Raine asked.

Marley laughed. “You’re pathetic!” A shudder of pain. A grimace. “You and all your other little treasure hunters. Is it the gold you’re after? The jewels? Or just the glory?”

Raine finally realized what it was that Marley was protecting. “The mask,” he answered and from the look on her face he knew she understood.

“What mask?” she asked flippantly. Her head was spinning and she felt nauseous. Pain, the likes of which she had never felt, racked through her enormous bulk.

“You took a vow to protect the location of the Moon Mask. The location which is hidden in that book.” He sat back onto his haunches and glanced at the bloodied old woman. His hands did not tremble nor did his mind reel at the horror of what he had done to her. That would come later. It always did.

“Mrs Marley,” he said. “The people who took my friends are after the mask. And if they get it. . .” he shook his head. “If you once took an oath to protect its location, then you
must
tell me!”

Mrs Marley studied the young man for several very long moments. Her skin was pale, almost green, her bloodshot eyes raw with tears and her trembling body drenched in sweat. Yet, for all Raine’s dishevelled appearance, the resolve in his features made something click inside the stubborn old woman.

His face softened. His tact altered. “You’re not going to die,” he told her and the words, strangely, hit Mrs Marley with more of a blow than her death sentence, only moments before, had. She realised, for the first time in as long as she could remember, that she actually
wanted
to live.

“It was a clean shot,” he admitted. “A bit of muscle damage but you’ll be good as new in no time.”

“There’s a lot of blood,” she stammered, out of breath. It was like an epiphany had struck her out of the blue. After so many years of hating life, her brush with death, fake though it may have been, had opened her eyes.

Raine ripped a strip of cloth from his black shirt and began to pad the wound. Neither of them said anything for a moment, but then the old woman broke the silence, surprising even herself.

“Forever more, the bearer of my name shall hold my piece of the map in their hand,” she intoned cryptically

“What? What did you say?”

Airborne,

Location Unknown,

“
I
never again saw my beloved Kha’um
,” Bill read the final passage from the Kernewek Diary with a sarcastic tone in his voice. King tried to blot out the sarcasm. Despite the circumstances, this was a pivotal moment in his academic life. He was about to find out how the story of Kha’um ended. As he listened, it was not his captor’s voice that he heard, but that of Emily Hamilton, echoing out from the ages.

“
Without his piece of the map, the vast wealth we have concealed shall remain forever lost, yet I do not weep, for I know that amidst the treasure of a pharaoh’s tomb lies a darkness which is best kept from this world. My friend, Abubakar, agreed and, after many months, when we at last gave up hope of Kha’um’s homecoming, he returned to that land of frozen sand which he so loved and I know in my heart of hearts that he found the peace he always cherished. As for me, I cannot weep for the love I have lost. My life has been full and blessed. But now, as I write this final passage, now that time, that enemy Kha’um fought so hard against, has finally caught up with this old lady, I still fear what we buried in that cave.

“Kha’um called it a gift from the gods and perhaps it was. But in the hands of man, it brought only evil. Its curse killed all those aboard the
L’aile Raptor
so very long ago. It turned Edward Pryce into a hideous monster, deformed and insane. And even Kha’um, the noblest man of all, succumbed to its insidious curse. No man, not even Kha’um, should have the power of god and the Moon Mask is such a power. One day, perhaps, mankind will have evolved enough to harness that power to its true potential, but until that day I must entrust these memoirs and the secrets they hold to my descendants. For the mask must only be unveiled when the
time
is right.

“Kha’um’s map is lost, but not forever I fear. Abubakar took his piece with him to his new life at the world’s end. As for mine? Forever more, the bearer of my name shall hold my piece of the map in their hand
.”

With an overly dramatic flourish, the mercenary slammed the book shut. “So what the hell does that mean?”

King’s mind was reeling as he struggled to decipher that for himself. A strange mixture of boyish excitement collided with an ominous dread. Even back then, the Moon Mask exuded some menace which Emily Hamilton had obviously been privy to. She had known then exactly what he knew now: the Moon Mask couldn’t be allowed to fall into the wrong hands.

“Damned if I know,” he shrugged.

“No, Ben,” Bill said casually, strolling up the length of the cabin. “
She’s
damned!” He slapped the barrel of his handgun against Sid’s forehead, squeezing the trigger.