Black Scorpion (10 page)

One of Sterling's cell phones rang. Hong Kong, right on schedule.

“Good morning, Jin,” he said to his top trader there, where the market was about to open. “I have new instructions for you. Short every gaming stock you can, even in Macau, and keep scooping up every Tyrant Global bond you can get your hands on. Is that clear?… Jin, are you there?”

“I'm here,” the man said in perfect English. “But your insistence on this position sounds risky. Everyone else is in a stock buying mode.”

“Because they're fucking wrong. And don't ever question me again.”

“Apologies, Boss, apologies. I meant no offense. Consider it done. The trading floor opens in five minutes.”

“Good,” Sterling said, continuing while looking across the table at his father and hoping against hope the old man could understand what he was about to say. “And when you're done with that, review our position on the American dollar. Continue shorting that too. Then put the word out to the other Asian market traders we discussed to do the same and keep it under the radar. Use our funds in Luxembourg, Singapore, and Panama to avoid the prying eyes of the Securities and Exchange Commission.”

“Boss?” Jin posed tentatively.

“What?”

“Isn't such leveraging dangerous, given that the dollar has never been stronger against the rest of world currencies?”

“A fair question, Jin,” Sterling said, surprising the trader with his conciliatory tone. “But sometimes when you swim upstream, you catch the biggest fish.”

 

SEVENTEEN

R
ETEZAT
M
OUNTAINS,
T
RANSYLVANIA

Bernard noted the light and let his gaze linger on the magnifying glass. “You'll need one of those to spot what's left of your career.”

“Fuck you, Henri.”

“Do you always speak to your superiors that way, Ms. Swan?” he asked, barely suppressing a smirk as he glimpsed the contents of the hermetically sealed case.

“Only the ones I don't trust. Why don't you tell me what you're really doing here, why it was so important for the Romanian government to have you placed in charge?”

“To keep you under control, perhaps, since they don't trust Americans to do right by their own country. More than one precious find has found its way out of Romania onto the shelves of American and British museums.” Bernard's eyes fell on the case again. “This constitutes theft of intellectual property, Ms. Swan. I could have you arrested by the Romanian authorities now.”

“I didn't steal anything.”

“No. What would you call it then?”

“My job.”

“According to who?”

“The person paying for this dig,” she said, lowering herself from the stool stiffly to face him.

“Why don't you tell me what it is you think you've found there?”

“Why don't you tell me why the Romanian government would put someone like you, with minimal field experience, and none when comes to ancient Rome, in charge of this dig? We both know you haven't even been on one in over five years. So what's so important about this one?”

“You're digging your grave even deeper, Ms. Swan.”

“Digging's my specialty, unlike you apparently.”

Bernard glared at her. “Consider yourself suspended. If I see you anywhere near the site of the find or this tent, I'll have you arrested and deported. Give you more time to spend with those wretched gypsies.”

Some of those gypsies helped supply the team with food and had taken to providing laundry services. One teenage boy spent every afternoon selling water out of his overstuffed backpack, actually bottled from a mountain stream located somewhere nearby. The boy, whose name was Ilie, had been born deaf but was fluent in ASL, American Sign Language, in the most widely accepted version across the globe. Ilie had been taught to sign by missionaries, but Scarlett proved the only member of the archaeological team able to communicate with him, since her grandmother was deaf and she'd learned to sign practically before she learned to talk. She welcomed the opportunity to use the skill again, as much for the practice as the fond memories it brought to mind. And Ilie delighted in signing the Romanian word
lebădă
, which meant “swan,” when addressing her.

“Have I made myself clear?” Bernard resumed.

“Better make sure nothing happens to the remains of that manuscript, Henri.”

Bernard smirked again. “Of course, Scarlett.” His eyes seemed to twinkle. “I'll guard it with my life, while you're gone with the wind.”

She could only shake her head. “Like I've never heard that before.”

 

EIGHTEEN

I
STANBUL,
T
URKEY

Ismael Saltuk, bodyguard on either side of him, slid past the ancient remains of a Byzantine triumph arch and down a set of stone stairs leading to Istanbul's underground network of cisterns used centuries before to supply the city with water.

Flanked by his bodyguards, Saltuk entered the largest of these, known as the
Yerebatan Sarayi
or, more simply, the Basilika Cistern, although locals preferred to call it the “Sunken Palace,” and for good reason. Built in the fourth century, the Sunken Palace was a massive structure that had withstood the ages thanks to 336 marble columns arranged in a dozen neat rows from floor to ceiling. A convenient pathway allowed tourists to stroll past fish that dotted the dark waters.

Saltuk waited until no one else was around before ducking down a narrow, dark alcove with his bodyguards until he came to a section of wall outfitted with a latch he jerked one way, then the other, then back again.

Click.

The door to his secret domain opened and Saltuk entered, leaving his bodyguards on watch and closing the door behind him.

“Hello, Ismael,” a female voice called to him, as he threw the locks from the inside.

*   *   *

Saltuk looked at Raven Khan standing in the atmospheric half light of his beloved gallery, his unconscious guards slumped in the chairs on either side of her.

“I'm here to talk about the
Lucretia Maru
,” she told him.

“Was there a problem with the cargo?”

“The ship wasn't carrying copper piping, Ismael. It was carrying
people
, mostly women but children, too,” Raven said, not bothering to disguise the disgust in her voice. “A few stood out, a toddler hugging her mother most notably. Because she was dead. The little girl was hugging her and crying because she was dead.”

Saltuk's mouth dropped. He looked honestly shocked.

“They'd been at sea for several days, in port likely for several more,” Raven continued. “Enough time for some awful disease to begin spreading. In such tight confines…” She stopped there, not wishing to relive those images. “I think you get the idea.”

“Oh, I get that idea, repulsive as it is, just not why it has affected you so much.”

Raven glanced about the fully restored, palatial great room dressed with ancient furniture and priceless paintings hanging from walls covered in dark ironwood. The dull lighting came courtesy of sconces placed discriminately about the walls. They could have been fueled by kerosene, although Raven thought she detected the quiet hum of generators pulsing from somewhere beyond, likely powered by propane instead.

Ismael Saltuk's lair was just as she remembered when brought here by her own late mentor, Adnan Talu, various times when he had dealings with the man. It was one thing to be a high-end thief, quite another to be able to successfully move the most rare and priceless of stolen merchandise, given the limitations and peculiarities of that market.

Saltuk was also an established collector in his own right. His appreciation for the finer things in life allowed him to furnish his private hideaway with priceless treasures that added life and color to its otherwise dark, somber confines. He had more than his share of enemies in both the criminal underground and among various agencies of law enforcement from dozens of countries. As a result, he seldom ventured out of Istanbul, or even from his lair for that matter.

Saltuk's eyes flitted to the slumped forms of his guards, both veterans of the Egyptian secret service, who'd managed to keep Mubarak alive for decades in large part by assassinating his potential foes. And this woman had felled them, by all indications, without even raising a sweat.

“Human trafficking, Ismael. You sent me to a slave ship.”

“My intelligence was accurate as always, I'm sure of it,” he insisted to her.

He was a tall man, thin, with long legs that made him appear more than his inch over six feet. His face was gaunt and angular, featuring a protruding jaw and cheekbones that were a fine match for his overly broad shoulders which peaked on both sides. The darkness of his eyes and hair was further exaggerated by olive skin laced with a sickly pallor from lack of sunlight.

“The copper was a cover,” he resumed.

“Obviously.

“That both of us fell for.”

“Also obvious.”

“And if everything is so obvious, what brought you here?”

“I was raised in an orphanage, Ismael, an orphanage where older children disappeared from time to time. Do I need to draw you a picture?”

“I was about to ask you the same question, Raven, in view of the man who rescued you from that squalor: Adnan Talu, a man I hold in as high a regard as you do. A man both of us are indebted to for our very lives.”

Raven remained expressionless, her gaze noncommittal, but she couldn't deny Saltuk's assertion. Talu was the closest thing to a parent Raven had, and she still remembered the day he'd plucked her from the orphanage to be raised as his daughter. He sent her off first to a boarding school in England and then a college where she studied fine arts and antiquities. That in preparation for her following in his footsteps as a leader of the modern-day criminal organization that had grown out of the Cilician pirates whose legacy dated back over two thousand years.

After Talu's death, Raven had expanded the organization's interests. In her mind, the pirates of today controlled cyberspace the way their forebears once controlled the seas, the Internet rapidly becoming the greatest ocean of all and ripe for the picking. But the organization still shipped more stolen cars to the Middle East than new Mercedes and BMWs combined and continued to supply small propeller planes to the drug lords in South America, equipped with the top technology in radar interdiction. And, of course, cargo ships inevitably made for enticing and normally easy prey.

“Make believe I'm Talu and tell me what you're hiding, Raven. What is it about that toddler hugging her dead mother that moved that cold heart of yours?”

“Where can I find the man behind that cargo, Ismael?”

“I have no idea.”

“Yes, you do—I saw it in your eyes when I told you what the ship contained. If I didn't know better, I'd say you set me up. Wanted me to find exactly what I did.”

Saltuk looked away, speaking with his eyes fixed on one of his treasured paintings. “So many of these are fakes. Would you like to know why?” He turned back toward her, expression bent in bitterness. “Because the man responsible for that slave ship learned I had the originals and insisted I turn them over to him. They weren't even by famous artists, were hardly well known outside of select circles. But they were among my favorites and I did as I was told, Raven, because this is not a man you want to cross under any circumstances. We are his proxy because we have no choice—no one who works for him does.”

“A client of yours, then.”

Saltuk frowned. “One whose wrath and ruthless methods are what defines his power. And, by the way, you worked for him once, too.”

“What are you talking about?”

“The operation in Siberia you were paid handsomely for four years ago.”

“The old man, the professor I rescued from the gulag,” Raven reflected.

“The man behind that freighter's cargo? You were working for his organization without even realizing it.”

“What organization is that?”

“Black Scorpion.”

*   *   *

“I never believed they really existed, at least not to the degree rumor would have us believe.”

Saltuk nodded. “The greatest protection for truths desired to be kept secret lies in letting the world believe them to be legends. Black Scorpion is more powerful than most governments. Their reach is immeasurable, way beyond human trafficking alone which they control on a global scale. If there's money to be made from any crime anywhere, chances are Black Scorpion is either behind it or backing whoever is.”

Raven moved to the dark nightscape adorning the near wall. “This one looks real.”

“One of the few that has escaped Black Scorpion's attention.”

She drew a lighter from her pocket and flicked the flame to life, easing it close enough to the painting to lose the smoke in its vibrant colors. “Tell me where to find this man, Ismael.”

Saltuk's eyes bulged. He began to shake. “No, please!”

“Tell me where to find him, or see it burn.”

“Talu gave me that painting,” Saltuk pleaded.

“Then don't make me burn it.”

“All right, all right! Just move the flame away. I'm begging you, Raven, begging you!”

Raven released her finger, letting the flame die.

Saltuk moved his gaze from Raven to the painting and then back again. “You know what they say about the devil, that if you see him it means you're already dead? You've never met the man who runs Black Scorpion—no one still alive ever has. Trust me on that, Raven, for your own sake.”

“Oh, I trust you, but this man's never met me either.”

 

NINETEEN

L
AS
V
EGAS,
N
EVADA