The Babel Codex (5 page)

Chapter Ten

“This is not a request.” Garin Braden held the muzzle of the .500 Smith & Wesson Magnum against the Somali pirate’s head. Garin stood six feet five inches tall and was broad across the shoulders, and looked even bigger squeezed into the black scuba suit. As big as he was, the large-bore revolver still looked massive and deadly in his firm hand. “It’s an order.”

The young pirate stank of sour body odor and
khat
, the mildly narcotic plant many people in the area chewed. His eyes were wide with terror. Blood dripped from his bottom lip, cut halfway through and swollen from the blow Garin had dealt him earlier. The pirate wore khaki pants, an orange T-shirt and military boots that were too big for him.

Garin held his prisoner in the stern of
Tequila Blossom
, one of the cargo ships he owned under another name.
Tequila Blossom
sailed under a Panamanian flag. A lot of ships doing illicit business were registered in Panama even if they’d never been there. The country had very relaxed laws.

Tequila Blossom
carried a shipment of Russian weapons Garin had sold to various mercenary groups working in Africa. Munitions were still a big business for people that could move them. Garin could and did.

Although he made more money than he’d ever spend through legitimate businesses, old habits died hard. During the past five-hundred-plus years that he had lived, times had not always been so good. He remembered the bad times, the years he had spent during the French Revolution and the defeat at Waterloo, and he remembered what Germany had been like under Hitler. Garin had loved Germany, still did, but Hitler had been another matter.

Years ago, at the turn of the nineteenth century, Garin had fought the Barbary pirates, as well. Piracy in Africa was an old business. The Somalis had grown desperate and taken up the trade again. Garin understood the lengths desperation could drive men, but a man also had to be strong enough or clever enough or cruel enough to make that desperation pay. Garin had.

“They won’t listen to me.” The pirate sniffled and shivered. “I do not give the orders.”

“You were giving the orders when I came on board the ship.” Garin gripped the man’s shirtfront, pulling him tighter and screwing the gun barrel into his forehead.

“I was only giving the orders they were giving me.”

Unfortunately, Garin knew that was true. It wasn’t unfortunate for him. It was unfortunate for the pirate because Garin had to make an example of the man so that the others would understand who they were dealing with.

Garin pulled the trigger. The man had sensed what was about to happen and tried to escape, writhing with all of his strength. That strength left him when the 350-grain bullet shattered his head to bloody fragments.

Knowing that the other pirates were watching him, Garin flung the body over the cargo ship’s side. The salt-laced air blew through Garin’s wet hair. He gazed fiercely at the Somali boat two hundred yards away on the ocean. Moonlight-kissed waves rolled toward the distant shore.

Bending, Garin scooped up the dead man’s radio and listened as the sound of running feet approached. He spoke calmly over the earwig he wore.

“Friedrich, are you there?”

“I am.” The man was one of Garin’s private army, DragonTech Security. “I have them in my sights. How close do you want me to let them get?”

“I want them close, but I don’t want to get shot.”

Friedrich laughed. “Have I ever let you get shot?”

“There was that time in Barcelona.”

“Bah. The way you handled that, anyone could have shot you. And the Kevlar stopped the bullet.”

Garin strode to the ship’s railing and peered out at the pirates’ command vessel. The small powerboat sat in the darkness among the other ships anchored off the Somalia shore. The trade lane was important to several countries. The pirates aboard the small craft didn’t know they had been identified. They believed only the eight men holding the ship’s crew on
Tequila Blossom
were exposed.

They were wrong, and Garin was about to show them.

Out of the corner of his eye, Garin saw the three pirates closing on his position. One of them dropped to his knee on the deck. Garin resisted the impulse to turn to face the man, but his guts churned slightly in anticipation of the bullet he knew would be coming his way. He cursed Friedrich under his breath.

Then the gunman toppled over. The second pirate dropped in a loose-limbed sprawl before the sound of the first rifle shot reached Garin. Friedrich was using a .50-caliber sniper rifle so the carnage was visible and noisy. The third pirate turned to run, but Friedrich took him out before he’d gone two paces.

“Happy?” Friedrich asked.

“Ecstatic.” Garin grinned, knowing that at least some of the pirates on the boat had binoculars trained on him. He spoke over the confiscated radio. “My name is Garin Braden.” He knew that other ships’ crews were watching the encounter. “You have been holding this ship and this crew for three days. You were told to let them go. You didn’t and now you’re going to pay the price.”

He lifted the pistol. None of the men on the boat moved. At two hundred yards, they didn’t think he had a chance of hitting them with small-arms fire.

Men hunted big game with the .500 Magnum, though. Two hundred yards was well within the big pistol’s range.

Deliberately, Garin fired four times, moving from target to target. The first two pirates jerked back as the bullets took them, before the sound of the shots even reached them, then the other pirates ducked for cover. Garin’s third shot caught one of them, but his fourth only struck the ship.

Behind Garin, machine pistol fire signaled an end to the remaining four pirates about
Tequila Blossom.
Calmly, Garin dumped the empty brass from the big revolver and thumbed in more rounds as the pirates regrouped aboard the boat and brought their weapons to bear.

“Now, Evander.” Garin snapped the cylinder closed and watched as a rocket from one of the nearby ships his men had taken up positions on streaked across the water and detonated on the boat, turning it into a roiling mass of orange and black flames.

Fiery debris rained down. Gray smoke streaked the black sky, muting the starlight.

Applause broke out on several of the nearby ships as the crews realized what had happened.

“Well, that went well.” Garin walked toward the wheelhouse, intending to see to the crew. He knew the captain of this particular ship and wanted to make sure he was all right.

“Mr. Braden.” The voice over the earwig was feminine, polite and insistent. It belonged to an efficient woman back in Berlin who watched over some of his other interests.

“This isn’t a good time. I’m basking in my success.” Garin had wanted the physical release of the encounter, which was why he’d handled it himself instead of simply sending in a team.

“Understood, sir, but you wanted me to tell you any time I had news of Rafik Bhalla and his project.”

Garin had crossed paths with Bhalla in the past and promised himself he would kill the man someday. But only after Bhalla found the tower. If Garin didn’t find it first. Then killing Bhalla would be at Garin’s convenience.

“Well, I have news. Bhalla’s in Addis Ababa, and he appears to have tried to kill Annja Creed.”

Growling curses, Garin gave orders to bring a helicopter to him and for a flight to be booked to Addis Ababa. Annja could take care of herself. Garin had learned that and been surprised. However, her presence was problematic. He liked her, but he didn’t want to lose the tower to her.

Chapter Eleven

Annja stood in the center of the hotel room in sweat pants and a T-shirt, slowly going through t’ai chi exercises to loosen and warm her muscles, and to center her mind. She practiced
Wu Chien Chaun
today because the style favored form, pushing hands and weapons. She held the horse stance flawlessly, working out her legs.

“Are you going to get up or continue to lay in bed?” She pushed both hands to the side slowly, like she was striking an opponent in slow motion.

Burris lay in bed and didn’t reply.

“I know you’re awake.”

Silence

“Your breathing changed ten minutes ago.”

“Only because I got excited watching you do monkey fu. This is even better than watching women on the aerobics channel.” Not bothering to feign sleep anymore, Burris pushed himself up on an elbow and studied her with open interest. “You should do an exercise show. Charge for it. You’d make more money than you do from archaeology.”

Annja finished the form, then plucked a towel from the nearby chair. “I’m going to take a shower.”

“I can do your back. You know, since we have the partnership in the brick and all that.”

“If you come in that shower while I’m in there, the next place you’re going to be is the emergency room. Rafik Bhalla will find you there.”

“Who’s Rafik Bhalla?”

“The guy in the car yesterday who tried to kill us.” Annja paused in the bathroom door. “Now get up. We have to get moving. We don’t want him to find us.”

* * *

Burris was hungover and he’d lost his sunglasses sometime yesterday, so he peered out at the morning through slitted fingers over his eyes.

“Stop that,” Annja said at his side.

“My head hurts.”

“You’re a walking advertisement that screams,
Mug me!
”

Burris cursed. “So who’s Bhalla and why should I be afraid of him?”

“He used to be a priest at the
Syriac Orthodox Tewahedo Church
here in the city. Now he’s an art dealer and relic hunter supplying well-heeled collectors around the world.”

“By relic hunter, you mean thief?”

“Yes. And he’s a murderer, though he’s never been caught.”

“Why does Bhalla want the brick?”

“Because he believes it will lead him to the Tower of Babel and the treasure he thinks it holds.”

“What treasure?”

Annja shrugged. “The usual kind. Gold. Gems. Priceless artifacts. And some kind of device capable of converting all languages into the original language people spoke before God destroyed the Tower of Babel and made the world speak in different tongues.”

Burris thought about that. “So this thing, whatever it is, would let you talk to anyone? No matter what the language is?”

“That’s what Bhalla believes.”

“Why does he believe that?”

“He’s supposed to have found some scroll that mentions a prince named Joktan, the son of the king who first started building the tower, hiding the device somewhere near the original building site.”

Burris looked thoughtful and he even forgot to squint against the bright sun for a moment. “If I could talk to everybody in the world, just like I’m talking to you, can you imagine the audience share I would pull in? I would be even more amazing than I am now.”

“Contrary to your conceited opinion of yourself, not everyone is a fan.”

Burris waved away her comment. “Who told you about Bhalla and this Tower of Babel device?”

“One of my contacts in the community.” Annja walked through the
gebeya
, picking up fresh fruit and small dishes of food, paying for them as she went. Burris refused her help, and she left him to figure it out on his own.

“And this person would know how?”

“He knew about Bhalla, and he knew about Bhalla’s search for the Tower of Babel.”

“Do you believe in a device that would let you be understood by everyone?”

“That’s what you’re fixated on? It probably isn’t real.”

“Then why are you so interested in finding the Tower of Babel if you don’t believe in a device that will allow you to talk to anyone in the world?”

Annoyed, Annja swallowed a bite of
fir-fir
, shredded
injera
stir-fried with spices. “Aside from the fact that the tower has never been found and was at one time the greatest construction the human race ever undertook?”

“Don’t mean to break your heart, but you’ve only got lunatics interested in Atlantis and bigfoot and the Tower of Babel.”

“That’s good to hear. I was afraid you might want to hang around and I was going to have to dissuade you. This way you can grab a cab and get back to Los Angeles.”

Burris was quiet for a moment, then shook his head. “I can’t go back yet.”

“Why?”

“The only reason I’m out here is so my ex-wife can’t get to me.”

“Your ex-wife is the only reason you’re here?”

Burris stopped and looked at the food spread on a colorful blanket on the ground. The man minding the space talked with hopeful animation in broken English, hawking his wares with a passion and gleaming eyes. Burris shook his head and started walking again.

Annja apologized and purchased a cup of coffee from a
jebena
, the clay coffeepot most Ethiopian coffee was boiled in. She declined the offer of sugar.

Burris fell into step with Annja when she got under way again.

“I’m not afraid of ex-wives. I’ve got six. But my fourth one has a new, young attorney who thinks he’s in love with her and that she’s the most wonderful woman he’s ever seen, and that he’s gonna win her over raising my alimony payments. He doesn’t know her like I know her. By the time he does, he’s gonna lose half of everything he has. She’s great at getting around prenups.”

Annja couldn’t believe it. “You came to Ethiopia to get away from your ex-wife’s lawyer boyfriend.”

“Not the boyfriend. The boyfriend I could handle. It’s the boyfriend’s dad. Winston Churchill McArthur Patton IV is a force to be reckoned with. Hollywood studios break out in hives when he goes after them.”

“Surely Patton the father would have better things to do than come after you.”

“You’d think, wouldn’t you?” Burris looked glum. “It’s a nest of snakes, I tell you. So when Doogie—”

“Doug.”

“When he called, asked me about doing a piece on
Chasing History’s Monsters
, I thought, Why not? He sounded like a fanboy, and I needed to get out of town. Promised me Kristie Chatham—gave me you.”

“It doesn’t occur to you that telling me that might be hurtful or disrespectful?”

“Think how hurt I am. I figured the way Kristie falls out of her clothes, I had a shot. But you?” Burris shook his head.

“I’m glad we’re clear about that.” Annja stopped at another vendor and picked up a serving of
fatira
, a pancake filled with egg and drizzled with honey. She ate it with gusto.

“So what’s our next move?”

“We’re going to get you a cab, since you’re not interested in breakfast.”

“I am interested in breakfast, but I want something edible. Something American. Preferably with avocado.” Burris blew out a theatrical sigh. “And I’m sticking with you. I own half of that brick.”

Annja thought of ditching Burris then and there. Getting away from him would be child’s play. But then he’d be in the city alone and untended. “It would be better if you left.”

“Not leaving.”

“You’re an idiot.”

“I’m an idiot with half ownership in a brick that’s gonna take me to a thing that will let me speak to the
world
.”

Annja wanted more than anything to punch him. But that would be about the time Bhalla or his men found them.

She flagged down a cab for both of them at the corner.