Secrets Of The Serpent's Heart (The Arkana Archaeology Mystery Series Book 6) (18 page)

Joshua Metcalf and Chopper Bowdeen waited in the darkened corridor outside Abraham Metcalf’s office. Both men were armed with pistols and silencers. It was nearly midnight. A light glowed through the crack at the bottom of the door, indicating that the Diviner was still busy doing paperwork. With the exception of the guards at the front gates, the rest of the brotherhood and their families had retired for the night. No one disobeyed the ten-thirty curfew without express permission from the Diviner.

Bowdeen glanced nervously at the surveillance camera suspended from a corner of the hallway ceiling.

Noting his gaze, Joshua whispered, “Don’t worry. I disabled it. The guards are watching looped footage of an empty corridor. I also disabled the cameras in my father’s office.” Warily, he added, “Are you clear on what needs to happen tonight?”

The mercenary nodded. “I’ll go in first and take the shot. You back me up in case anything goes wrong.”

The spymaster added, “You understand why, don’t you? I can’t be the one to kill my own father. If one of my brothers should ask, I couldn’t lie about a thing like that.”

Bowdeen placed a reassuring hand on Joshua’s shoulder. “I understand, son. You just make sure you get me out of here, OK?”

“Of course. I’ll sneak you out of the compound before I raise the cry that my father’s been murdered. I’ll have no difficulty shifting blame to one of the malefactors who were brought here for chastisement. Be assured, nobody will ever suspect it was you.”

“Sounds better than any other option I had going for me,” Chopper muttered ruefully. “I’ll be damn glad to be done with the Nephilim once and for all.”

“I give you my word,” Joshua said solemnly. “You’ll never have to see any of us again after tonight.”

The mercenary checked the magazine of his pistol. “Let’s do this.” He quietly turned the handle of the office door and stepped inside.

Joshua hung back in the shadows.

Abraham looked up from the documents he’d been inspecting. Narrowing his gaze when he recognized his visitor, he demanded, “What do you want?”

“My severance pay,” Bowdeen remarked coldly.

Abraham rose to his feet to face the intruder. The expression of disbelief on his face proved that he’d noticed the gun in the mercenary’s hand. “What do you think you’re doing?”

“I’m making sure I don’t have to spend the rest of my life looking over my shoulder.” Chopper shrugged. “Nothing personal.” He raised his pistol, aiming it at the old man’s chest.

Before he could fire, a dull thud sounded. Bowdeen grabbed his own chest and whirled around. “Joshua?” He gasped in disbelief before crumpling to the floor in a heap.

The spymaster emerged from the darkened corridor. Stepping over the mercenary’s lifeless body, he grabbed the Diviner by the arm to steady him.

The old man listed to one side.

“Father, are you alright?”

“I... I...” Metcalf stuttered.

“Here, sit down.” Joshua helped him back into his chair.

The Diviner rubbed his forehead, confused. “I don’t understand. Why did he try to shoot me?”

Joshua poured his father a glass of water from the carafe on the desk. “Please, drink this.”

The old man silently obeyed.

“I was afraid something like this might happen. In Australia, Mr. Bowdeen was talking wildly. He had convinced himself that the Nephilim would never let him leave because he knew too much. He suspected you would have him killed once he’d outlived his usefulness.”

“I would do what?” Metcalf’s eyes grew wide with surprise.

“Of course I told him his fears were groundless but he wouldn’t believe me,” Joshua protested. “That’s when I decided to keep tabs on him personally. Tonight, I saw him disable the surveillance cameras in the guard shack. Realizing his intentions, I armed myself and followed him. When I saw him approaching your door, there could be no doubt that he planned to kill you. I did what was necessary to stop him.”

Metcalf’s eyes never left his son’s face as the younger man spoke. It was as if the Diviner had never truly seen him before. “Joshua, you certainly have a cool head in a crisis.”

“Thank you, father,” the spymaster replied modestly.

“You just saved my life,” the old man added in wonderment.

“As head of the Order of Argus, it’s my duty to protect you at all times.”

Abraham rose shakily. “Yes, but you did more than that. You not only saved your father’s life but you preserved the glorious destiny of the Nephilim. If I had died, all my plans and hopes for the brotherhood would have died with me.”

“Then perhaps you need to confide in someone to make sure that doesn’t happen,” Joshua suggested softly. “Daniel ought to be party to whatever—”

Abraham cut him off. “No, not Daniel. He hasn’t the temperament. Perhaps...” The old man hesitated. “Perhaps, I was hasty in naming my successor. I must pray on the matter further.” He glanced at the spymaster. “I shall reveal the full nature of my plans to you, my son. In due time, when the day of reckoning draws near.”

Joshua adopted a solicitous manner. “We must not talk of such things now, father. There will be time enough once you’ve recovered. Sit down and let me attend to the intruder.”

He settled Abraham comfortably.

“Thank you, my boy.” The Diviner took another sip of water.

Joshua smiled. “I’ll always be here for you, father. You can depend on me.”

The old man, weakened by shock, sank his head back against the cushions and closed his eyes.

The spymaster went to the desk phone and called the guard shack. “Send a detail to the Diviner’s office immediately. Mr. Bowdeen has just tried to kill my father.” He paused to listen to the question coming from the other end of the line. “Yes, that’s right. He’s dead. We’ll need to dispose of the body tonight.”

Chapter 33—Keyless Entry

Cassie paced to and fro beside the window in Griffin’s hotel room.

The Scrivener sat hunched over the desk scribbling notes and referring to his computer screen. “You’re going to wear out the carpet if you continue at that rate,” he commented without turning around.

She wheeled toward him. “Are you done yet?”

“Very nearly.” He consulted the display again and made a few more notes. “Yes, I believe I’ve got it.”

At that moment, a knock was heard at the door.

“That’s got to be him.” Cassie rushed to answer.

Their visitor was a muscular Asian man in his mid-twenties.

“Rabten! You made it in record time.” She gave him an enthusiastic hug.

The field agent dropped his duffel bag and returned the greeting. “It’s good to see you again, Cassie.”

Griffin rose to shake hands. “So glad you arrived quickly.”

“I was waiting for your call,” the agent confessed. “Hopped on the first flight I could get out of O’Hare.”

“How’s life in the States?” the Pythia asked.

“A lot duller than what’s going on around here, that’s for sure. By the way, Rinchen sends his regards. He called me to say he met Zhang Rou today.” Rabten gave a knowing grin. “That sort of assignment is right up my brother’s alley.”

“What do you mean?”

“He likes rescuing damsels in distress. You have to keep an eye on him. He’s a heartbreaker.”

“Good to know,” the Pythia murmured, now worried on Rou’s behalf.

 
The agent’s gaze swept the room. “Did you snag the artifact already?”

“There it is.” Cassie gestured toward the desk where the Minoan relic lay next to the Scrivener’s computer and notes.

“May I?” The Arkana agent hesitated before picking up the find.

Griffin handed it to him. “Please.”

The artifact stood about a foot high and a foot wide. It was a Minoan labrys—a double-headed axe—made entirely of gold.

“It’s pretty unusual for the haft of a labrys to be shaped like the figure of a woman,” Rabten observed.

“A goddess actually,” Griffin corrected him. “The goddess with upraised hands—an image of benediction which predates the Minoans by forty thousand years. There are cave paintings in France showing female divinities in this exact posture.”

“She looks like she’s giving the hand signal for a touchdown in American football,” Rabten joked.

“I think she looks like a butterfly with the axe blades as her wings,” Cassie remarked.

All three of them paused to study the elongated figure of the goddess. She wasn’t dressed in the typical Minoan costume of bare bodice and ornate flounced skirt. Only the outline of her form and skirt were represented. Her arms were raised at right angles to her body and pressed against the axe blades in bas-relief. She wore a crown of rubies on her head.

“Why rubies?” Rabten asked.

“In all likelihood, they’re meant to represent poppies,” Griffin replied. “That was a typical Minoan motif. Opium poppies have been cultivated as far back as the Neolithic period. The drug was used in religious rituals as a means of communicating with the goddess through altered states of consciousness.”

“Like shamans used snake venom,” Cassie said helpfully.

“Exactly,” the Scrivener concurred.

Rabten ran his finger across the axe. “What do you think these are supposed to mean?” He pointed to four gems affixed to the blades—two on each side and spaced equidistantly from one other. In the upper left quadrant was a topaz, beneath it an emerald.
 
The opposite blade held a sapphire and below it a ruby.

“We’re not sure yet,” the Pythia said. “One thing is certain. They don’t stand for constellations like the gems on the other artifacts we found.”

Rabten frowned in bewilderment. “Does the riddle help explain what they mean?”

“I wouldn’t know.” Cassie stared pointedly at the Scrivener. “Griffin was still translating it when you got here.”

“Correction, I finished translating it.” The Scrivener picked up his notes and read from them. “‘Past the golden road of Boreas, where his islands kill the sea, seek the great river’s mother. Her reliquary holds the key.’”

“Hey, you made it rhyme,” Rabten noted appreciatively.

“Reliquary?” the Pythia echoed with suspicion. “Your secret Minoan decoder ring came up with a word like ‘reliquary’?”

“Not precisely. It was the closest word in English which matched the intent of the riddle. A reliquary is a container or depository for sacred objects. During the Middle Ages, reliquaries were used to house the bones of saints.”

“Or, in our case, the Bones Of The Mother?”

“Yes, I think that’s what the Minoans were implying.”

“So maybe all five artifacts have to be collected together in the same place before we can get to the Sage Stone,” the Pythia speculated.

“The riddle does say ‘the reliquary holds the key’,” Griffin concurred.

“But the riddle doesn’t help explain the gems,” Rabten noted.

“It doesn’t help explain much of anything.” Cassie tried not to sound too crestfallen.

“I understood only one word—Boreas.” Griffin tossed his legal pad back on the desk.

“You mean like the north wind?” the Pythia asked.

The Scrivener nodded. “I see you remember.” Turning to Rabten, he said, “In a previous riddle, the Minoans made reference to the anemoi—deities who control winds which blow from the four cardinal directions. Boreas is the god in charge of the north wind. In terms of our current riddle, the allusion to Boreas may simply mean that we must search north of our current position.”

“There isn’t too much real estate south of where we are now,” Cassie said.

“But the clue refers to the original location of the artifact at Lugu Lake,” the Scrivener pointed out.

Cassie raised her eyebrows skeptically. “I don’t think that helps. Even if we travel north from Lugu, that still leaves Europe, North America, most of Asia and the top half of Africa.”

“Obviously, a large area to cover,” Griffin agreed.

“This is kind of odd.” Rabten was once more scrutinizing the artifact.

The bottom of the goddess statue wasn’t flat. Instead, it terminated in a series of five rectangular prisms of a grayish cast. They were all bundled together though each one was a different length.

The agent studied the relic intently. “Aside from the weird shape, the base is made of a different metal.”

“It’s an alloy of some sort,” the Scrivener explained. “I suspect it’s much harder than gold.”

“The first time I picked that artifact up, I got a vision,” Cassie elaborated. “I knew that the bottom of the statue was meant to be a pressure point key. When we get to the right location, the key slides into a recessed lock. That’s how we open the secret compartment where the Sage Stone is hidden.” She sighed regretfully. “I tried half a dozen times to get more information by reading the artifact, but this little butterfly goddess doesn’t believe in oversharing.”

“Even though we only have a limited understanding of the artifact itself, the first step is to get a duplicate made.” Griffin’s voice took on a note of concern. “The latest communication from Maddie tells us that the Nephilim will soon be on their way. We have very little time.” Turning to the agent, he asked, “Can you help us?”

Rabten smiled. “It’s what I do. The minute I knew I was coming here to meet you, I started lining up resources. I found somebody in Padang City who can turn the job around in less than a week.”

“Excellent! That is good news indeed.” The Scrivener looked toward Cassie for confirmation but she was staring at the artifact and scowling. “Cassie, did you hear? Less than a week.”

“What?” She gaped at him blankly. “Oh, jeez, I’m sorry. I was just thinking about something.” She transferred her attention to Rabten. “Could you make one modification to the copy?” She picked it up. “Cut off the bottom.”

Both men registered surprise.

“You mean lop off the key?” Griffin sounded appalled.

“Exactly. I mean duplicate the artifact down to the last detail but make it stand upright so it looks like a statue.”

“Why?” Rabten still seemed puzzled.

“Guys, think about it. This isn’t just another artifact. It’s the artifact that will take us to the Sage Stone. The Nephilim have been hot on our heels since Day One which means we’ve never gotten a comfortable lead in this race. Do you really want to take the chance that they beat us to the finish line?”

“But surely tampering with the artifact will arouse their suspicions,” the Scrivener objected.

“How?” the Pythia challenged. “None of the other relics had keys attached. The Nephilim won’t think something is missing when they get this one.”

“She has a point,” Rabten admitted.

“At the very least, this will buy us a little time. I don’t even like to think about the possibility that they get to the right spot before we do but Murphy’s Law—”

“Yes, yes, I’m well acquainted with your views on Mr. Murphy, his laws and their various codicils.” Griffin rolled his eyes. “You’ve certainly been living up to your namesake quite a lot lately.”

“Huh?” The field agent looked from one to the other.

“The Cassandra of Greek mythology after whom Cassie is named,” the Scrivener explained. “Apollo, captivated by her beauty, gave her the gift of prophecy. When she rejected his advances, he cursed her so that no one would believe her dire predictions.”

“Yeah, but the takeaway is that even with zero cred she was usually right,” Cassie countered. “All I’m saying is that we’re better off preparing for a worst case scenario. If the Nephilim don’t have the key, it will take them time to figure out how the lock works and how to pick it. Maybe long enough for us to swoop in and grab the Sage Stone.”
 
She glanced questioningly at Griffin.

The Scrivener still appeared unconvinced. “Very well but I do hope you’re right.”

Cassie handed the artifact to Rabten. “Have it made just like I said.”

The agent opened his duffel bag and deposited the relic inside. “I’ll get on this right away.”

“And hurry!” both Cassie and Griffin shouted as he slipped from the room.