Eternal Journey

Annja retrieved a five-dollar bill and three one-dollar coins out of her wallet, pausing to look at the face on the bill before she passed it over. Australian money was much more colorful than American, and the bills had a parchment feel to them.

“Popcorn?” the woman asked.

Annja shook her head.

“Iced coffee? Soda? Perhaps—”

“No, thank you.” Annja headed toward a heavy curtain, above which a sign said Auditorium. She’d collect her thoughts for a few minutes. Rest her feet. Try to lessen the pounding in her head. Then she’d come back out to make the calls.

She looked at the time before going inside. On the wall behind the concession counter was a large purple cat with a twitching tail, its belly the clock. Less than an hour had passed since the men had tried to kill her at the hotel.

She pushed aside the curtain and let the darkness swallow her.

It took a few moments for her eyes to adjust. She stood in an aisle that stretched between two banks of movie-theater-style seats. The only light was what spilled out beneath the hem of the closed curtain at the stage down front. Her eyes picked through the shadows, seeing only a dozen other people inside an auditorium that could hold well over one hundred. Most of them were close to the stage. Annja selected a seat in the last row. The seats were upholstered in dark red velveteen, though some of the cushions had been replaced and covered with various colors of vinyl. The seat squeaked when she sat, causing the other patrons to turn around and try to spot the newcomer. She leaned against the high back and it squeaked again.

The floor was carpeted, the nap worn thin and the pattern lost where sections of the canvas backing showed through. It was clean—Annja was struck by the cleanliness of the place. There was still the hint of popcorn in the air and a vague fustiness just because of the age of the building. But there was nothing objectionable.

She tipped her head back and closed her eyes. Annja knew several martial-arts relaxation techniques, any of which would help the tension melt away as she balanced and centered herself. She breathed deep and slow, imagining a point of light in the distance and focusing on it.

Suddenly speakers crackled on the walls and George M. Cohan’s “Give My Regards to Broadway” began playing, with “Remember me to Kings Cross” in place of “Remember me to Herald Square.”

Her eyes opened wide as the curtains parted and a single bright spotlight struck a lanky torch singer in a black sequined gown. The woman threw her head back and began singing “If He Walked into My Life” from Mame. Something didn’t seem quite right about the singer, and so Annja leaned forward and studied the woman.

Not a woman, Annja decided after a moment. The singer sported an Adam’s apple, as did the next one who came out singing “Whatever Lola Wants,” from Damn Yankees. Annja recognized this warbler as the man in the purple tuxedo who’d lured her into this place. Female impersonators, the lot of them, and they weren’t terrible, Annja decided, a bargain for eight bucks. She watched only one more number—an eight-member chorus line singing about a “singular sensation,” before she closed her eyes and resumed her breathing exercise and focused on an imagined speck of light.

What did Oliver see? What did I see? What relic was so valuable someone would kill for it?

She forced out the sound—the taped orchestra coming from the speakers, the lyrics being crooned by the singers on the stage, the click-clack of the tap shoes, the muffled cough of someone several rows ahead of her. There was only her breath now, regular and relaxing, almost hypnotic. She put herself in a trance and started to relive the past few days.

ANNJA HAD TRAVELED considerably, but primarily to Europe, as her main interest in history was there. She’d never been to Australia before and had been immediately struck by the similarities to the United States and England in the way the people dressed and the city looked. The more closely she observed everything, however, the more pleasant differences she noted, and she had a yearning to come back for a longer stay.

She’d had barely enough time to throw her bag in the hotel room and head out to the dig the first day. The shooting schedule would be fairly tight. There were forms to sign in the van—the standard one for liability, stating that the dig financiers would not be held accountable if she was injured at the site. And then there was an agreement that she would not disclose the precise spot where the archaeologists worked.

“Oh, there’s enough folks already who know the general vicinity,” Wes Michaels had told her. “Some of the local papers have done features on us before. But we’ve not had any television coverage.”

It was clear from the beginning that he was dressing up a little for the camera; she’d spotted his wife cutting off the price tag from his shirt. Annja was pleased he bothered to buy something new.

On the ride to the site she had noticed the countryside air. It was achingly clean, with just a hint of salt from the ocean. The closer the van got to the dig, the more other scents intruded…from the trees primarily, as the site was in a forest preserve, and from the earth the archaeologists had been peeling away to get to the relics beneath.

One of the first things Dr. Michaels and his wife had uncovered was still at the site because of its size and because the corporation funding the project hadn’t yet decided whether to leave it there for posterity or bring it back to Sydney for storage. It was a carving of an ape, or something that looked like a squatting ape, taller than a man and as broad across as two, and chiseled out of a stone that had a high iron content.

“The Egyptian god Thoth, probably,” Wes had said. “My best guess, anyway. Three thousand years old or thereabouts. Looks similar to one found on the old Wolvi Road property some forty years back. Folks scoffed back then, too.”

He showed her a smaller, similar statue that Oliver shot as it was being crated up. It was badly weathered from time and the sea air, and she could barely make out the cross of life clutched in the ape’s fingers.

“Thoth was sometimes depicted as an ape,” Wes had explained. “Then about two thousand years after this one was made they started carving Thoth as a bird-headed man. Like I said, Miss Creed, I’m not an Egyptologist. But I’m a damn good archaeologist. I know my stuff.”

Annja liked him immediately.

“Our best find,” Jennifer said, “is a cross of life. Wes wasn’t sure it should go on your television program, but I’ve talked him into it. Haven’t crated it yet—kept it out just for you.”

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