Tear Of The Gods

After a leisurely breakfast he had his driver take him to the Vanguard offices. Several men were seated outside his office waiting for him, as he had known they would be. His executive assistant had sent word to them all the night before, requesting their presence in the office by nine this morning, and if there was one thing his people knew, it was not to disobey his orders.

Shaw pointed to one of them, a man named Trevor Jackson, and the former SAS commando and current Red Hand Defenders strike team leader followed him into his inner office, shutting the door behind them.

“I’ve got a job for you,” Shaw began as he took his seat behind his desk and waved Jackson into the chair before him. “A particular artifact was uncovered at an archaeological dig in the West Midlands last night. I want it.”

He handed the other man a thin folder. Inside were an assortment of documents, including aerial photographs and topographical maps of the surrounding area, dossiers on Stevens, Novick and other personnel they could expect to encounter at the dig site, as well as a snapshot of the torc that looked like it had been taken quickly with a cell phone.

“The photo was taken by my source on the ground,” Shaw explained. “It’s not perfect, but it should be good enough to let you verify it when you arrive on-site.”

Jackson glanced through the materials, lingering on the photograph. “What kind of opposition can we expect?” he asked.

“Little to none,” Shaw replied. “They’re a bunch of academics. Somebody might have a gun with which to shoot snakes, but that would be about it, I’d think.”

“So we go in, recover the necklace and get out again. Sounds simple enough.”

But Shaw was already shaking his head. “You need to take any steps necessary to ensure that no one knows the artifact was recovered from the site.”

Jackson had worked with Shaw long enough to know what the other man was talking about. “And the bodies?”

Shaw shrugged. “Dump them in the bog, for all I care. Just be sure there aren’t any survivors. I don’t want someone turning up at a later date to counter the official report.”

“What about your man on the inside?”

Shaw didn’t hesitate. “Get rid of him, too.”

“Fair enough,” Jackson said with a smile. “Consider the problem solved.”

WITH THAT TASK behind him, Shaw could turn to the other major item he had on his agenda for the day—informing the Committee about the discovery of the torc.

The Committee was a group of wealthy collectors that he’d put together slowly and carefully over the past several years. Each of them was interested in the discovery and acquisition of ancient artifacts for one of two reasons—either to add to their own personal collections or to sell them on the black market to the highest bidder in order to fund some other project or ideology. Shaw didn’t care which it was, provided he was paid on time and in the proper currency as agreed. Whenever Shaw found an item worthy of their consideration, he called a meeting of the group and presented it to them. A bidding war would usually ensue, with Shaw taking ten percent of the asking price plus expenses to cover the costs of acquisition.

There were five members of the Committee—six, if he considered himself. Conrad Helmut was a German financier with a gift for the international commodities exchange who saw the artifacts solely for their monetary value. He had no interest in the past, whether it was yesterday, last year or last century. He treated artifacts recovered from tombs untouched by human hands for more than four thousand years the same way he’d treat something picked up at a rummage sale. It was all just merchandise to him—something to be bought and sold but never desired.

Allison Brennan was the opposite extreme—a fanatic who made no bones about her intention to craft a truly legendary collection. She was always trying to get a leg up on the others, beat them to the choicest prices. Standing in her way was the Frenchman, Roux. Just thinking of the man brought a scowl to Shaw’s face. The arrogant bastard didn’t use a first name; it was always just Roux. As much as he disliked him, Shaw had to admit that Roux had access to some first-rate intelligence and had helped them find some choice items over the years.

Sebastian Kincade had inherited his fortune at the ripe old age of nineteen, when his parents had died unexpectedly in a car crash. He’d added to it through a series of almost breathtakingly audacious financial moves in the decade since. He was as ruthless as Genghis Khan himself and twice as greedy. Rumor had it that the accident that killed his parents hadn’t been an accident at all; Sebastian had supposedly wanted access to his part of the family fortune before dear old mom and dad were ready to give it to him.

The fifth, and final member of the Committee, Saito Yamada, owned one of the largest telecommunications entities in the Asian market and, like the others, was regularly listed as one of the top fifty most wealthy individuals in the world. Shaw knew that Yamada’s legitimate fortune was dwarfed by his illegal one; as one of the major yakuza bosses in all of Japan, Yamada had his hands in a lot of different pies. He didn’t buy all that often but when he did it was usually for big money.

It was going to be an interesting morning.

Shaw stepped over to his desk and settled into the high-back leather chair behind it. Glancing at his watch, he saw that it was time for the meeting to begin. He purposely waited several more minutes before activating the videoconferencing link.

When the link was established, four windows opened on his monitor, each one showing the video feed from the four committee members who were on the line. Brennan, Roux, Helmut and Kincade stared out at him. Only Yamada was absent.

Four out of five’s good enough, he thought. Something so European probably wouldn’t have appealed to the yakuza boss, anyway.

Shaw put a smile on his face, activated his own camera and said, “It’s a pleasure to see you all again.”

Thanks to the wonders of modern technology, each of the Committee members could see and hear Shaw through the conferencing link. Their identities were kept secret from one another, however. They could hear when others chose to speak, but they didn’t have access to the video feeds and could never be certain just how many others were on the call with them.

Fear, uncertainty and doubt, Shaw thought. The key to any successful sale.

Since the Committee was well aware that Shaw only scheduled meetings when there was an item in play, he got right down to business.

“Near the end of the first century, Rome nearly lost control of Britannia when a warrior queen named Boudica staged a revolt,” Shaw began. “Despite being outnumbered and underequipped, Boudica’s forces overwhelmed the Roman legions.

“Some say it was because she caught the Romans napping. Others, that she was a military genius the likes of which the Romans hadn’t ever encountered among the tribal Celts before or since. But there are those who believe that Boudica’s power came from an external source, a strange and unusual necklace, or torc, that she wore about her neck at all times.”

The Committee members had long since learned how to keep their emotions off their faces, but Shaw had been studying them carefully over the past several years and thought he’d identified some of their tells, those non-verbal cues that they couldn’t control when they were excited about something. Like the way Helmut’s right index finger would tap on the arm of his chair a few times before settling down again. Or the way Brennan would cross her legs in one direction, then quickly switch them to another position, as she was doing now.

“The Tear of the Gods, as it is known in certain circles, has been lost to history for almost two thousand years. Lost, that is, until today.”

He tapped a key and the photograph Novick had sent to him last night appeared on the screen in front of each of the callers. He left it there for only a few seconds—just a short, tantalizing tease—then sat back and waited for a reaction, knowing that he who spoke first ultimately ceded power to the others.

Brennan was the first to break the silence, as Shaw knew she would be. The chance to add something actually carried by one of Boudica’s chieftains, perhaps even by Boudica herself, was a prize too good to pass up for a woman who considered herself a modern-day warrior queen.

“It looks just like every other torc I’ve ever seen,” she said derisively. “What makes you think this is the—what did you call it? The Tear of the Gods?”

Shaw smiled. Her interest was so obvious. Did she honestly think she was fooling anyone with her feigned disbelief?

“The torc was found around the throat of a Celtic warrior who’d been ceremonially buried in a bog in the West Midlands region,” he told the group. “Four sacrificial victims surrounded the body, proof that the warrior was more than just an ordinary soldier or low-ranking chieftain, for such sacrifices required the presence of a druid, perhaps the High Druid himself, and would not be wasted on anyone less than the royal family or their close companions.”

Brennan frowned, apparently uneasy with Shaw’s quick answer. “But that still doesn’t prove that this is the torc you are claiming it to be,” she said stubbornly.

Shaw surprised her a second time by agreeing. “You’re correct. That alone is not proof enough. Which is why we turn to more, shall we say, personal sources?”

He pulled a book off his desk and held it up to the camera. “A copy of Tacitus’s Agricola, which I’m sure we will all agree is a reasonable source.”

Turning to a marked page, he began reading. “‘This necklace, or torc as it is known among the Britons, was fashioned of the most unusual metal, unlike any other I have seen in all my years. It gleamed in the darkness, as if lit by an internal fire, and in the light it reflected the many hues of the rainbow. It was neither gold nor silver, copper nor bronze, iron nor cold hard steel, but something new and different under the sun. Three bands it was made of, twisted about one another like the coils of a snake, though no wider than a man’s first two fingers at its thickest point.’”

Shaw snapped the book closed and looked at the group with a triumphant smile. “Given what we’ve seen today, I’d say that’s pretty conclusive, wouldn’t you?”

Roux caught Shaw’s attention with a quick lift of his finger. “You have the artifact in hand?” he asked.

Shaw lied without missing a beat, the smile still plastered on his face. “Of course,” he said. “It is being packed up for transport to my offices as we speak.”

The Frenchman looked skeptical, but sat back as if satisfied enough by the answer.

“Bidding will commence within the next forty-eight hours through the usual methods, with a minimum starting bid of ten million dollars. You will be notified via cell phone five minutes before the auction begins and bids will be accepted for just seventy-two hours.”

Shaw looked at each of them in turn, trying to gauge their reactions, to figure out just who would bid and who would not. Helmut was listening to someone offscreen, so Shaw took that as a lack of interest in this particular piece, but he was pretty sure that both Brennan and Kincade were in. Brennan for sure, he thought. Roux, on the other hand, was as inscrutable as always.

It didn’t really matter, though. The auction was just a front to raise some extra cash for the final phase of his plan. He had no intention of turning over the torc; if the legends were right, it would be far more useful to the Red Hand Defenders and his ultimate cause if it remained in his possession. By the time the winning bidder realized that he, or she, had been had, he’d be long gone with both the money and the torc. Shortly after that, England, and the world itself, would have far more pressing issues to concern themselves with.

After reminding them that they’d only have seventy-two hours to cast their bids once the auction began, Shaw wrapped things up and ended the call, a smile of satisfaction on his face.

WITH THE CLICK of his mouse, Roux ended the videoconferencing session, but left the tunneling program he’d activated while in the middle of the call running in the background. That particular piece of software had cost him a small fortune, but it had been worth every penny he’d spent on it so far. By creating a virtual private network between the two computers via the videoconferencing link, it turned the other computer’s microphone into a two-way listening device. The connection would be severed when Shaw turned off his monitor, but until then, Roux was privy to everything being said inside Shaw’s London office.

He’d first begun spying on Shaw to get a leg up on the various artifacts and items of interest that he uncovered. The man was a cretin, no doubt about it, but he had an uncanny sense for locating some truly unique treasures and Roux wasn’t shy about using that to his advantage. Lately, however, he’d begun to suspect that Shaw was involved in something darker than illegal artifact smuggling. There was something there, just beneath the surface, like a shark in blood-infested waters, and Roux was determined to expose it to the light.

Hence, the eavesdropping worm.

So far, though, it had yielded little in the way of worthwhile results. He’d caught a few snatches of conversation here and there, but nothing that helped him narrow down what Shaw’s overall plans were or the true nature of whatever it was he was involved in. The minute Shaw shut down his monitor, the bug went inactive, so its use was by nature limited.

Today was one of those days. Roux could hear Shaw shuffling things around on his desk, heard the snap of a briefcase lid closing down and then nothing more as the monitor was switched off on the other side.

But after living through the centuries, Roux had learned to be patient. Shaw would let something slip one of these days, and when that happened Roux would be ready for it.

7

While Craig and Paolo got back to work the next morning excavating Big Red from the midst of the block of peat they’d cut from the bog, Annja turned her attention to the necklace that she’d removed from around the warrior’s neck the night before. The artifact had been soaking in a chemical bath overnight and she went directly to it after breakfast, removing it from the solution and washing it under a gentle flow of cold water. Slowly, bit by bit, the dirt, silt and hardened peat that had encrusted it began to fall away, revealing the artifact to the light of day for the first time in almost two thousand years.

It was a torc; she’d been right about that. The braided strands of metal were easy to see now that the gunk had been cleared away. What struck her as strange, however, was the fact that this one hadn’t been fashioned from gold, as almost every other one she’d ever seen had. Rather, this one was made from some kind of darker metal that threw off a scintillating array of colors when the light was shined on it just so. She’d thought it might be iron at first, but closer examination revealed that it was much too refined for that.

Perhaps a combination of various metals?

There really was no way to tell until they had a chance to get a sample of it into a gas spectrometer to analyze the component elements. And that wouldn’t happen until they got the necklace back to Craig’s lab at Oxford. For now, she’d just have to wonder.

Annja didn’t know all that much about torcs; Iron Age civilizations hadn’t ever really been her specialty. That was one of the reasons she was so excited to be taking part in this excavation. The chance to break ground, literally, on a new site coupled with the opportunity to learn more about a period of history she wasn’t all that familiar with was like winning the lottery for her. She did know that, in general, the wearing of a torc was usually a sign of nobility or high social status. The time and cost in creating them almost made it so by default. That fit with the events she’d witnessed, if she could call it that, in her dream from the other night. Big Red had clearly been a warrior of some renown; otherwise, they never would have had such an elaborate burial ceremony. But exactly who he was or why he’d been honored in such a fashion might never be known. It was up to Annja and the rest of the team to try to answer those questions, and others like them, as they worked with the body and the artifacts that had been buried with it.

As the cleaning continued, Annja noticed that each end of the torc was adorned with a small sculpture in the shape of an eagle’s head. The ornaments were made from a hard white substance, perhaps bone or even ivory, and it looked as if the beaks once fit together in a certain way to form a clasp that kept the torc secured around the wearer’s neck. Annja marveled at the design; it was quite ingenious.

They broke reluctantly for lunch and were back at it again within the hour. More artifacts were turning up as Craig and Paolo continued the slow but steady process of freeing Big Red’s earthly remains from the peat that surrounded them. A beaded necklace was first, followed by a pair of chain-mail gauntlets and an assortment of coins, their faces blackened from the tannic acid of the bog. As each one was unearthed, they were passed over to Annja for cataloging and cleaning.

Throughout it all, Craig and Paolo shared with Annja stories of prior digs they’d been on and she, in turn, told them about some of the remote places and legends the cable show had sent her to investigate. It was a companionable afternoon and Annja thoroughly enjoyed herself.

Late in the day they heard several shouts coming from the center of camp. The occasional raised voice was common in camp—friends shouting after friends, that kind of thing—but this went on for several minutes, which was unusual and caught their attention.

Craig frowned, then got up from his stool, setting the tools he’d been working with down on the table in front of him. “What’s the heck’s going on out there?” he said, though it was clear he wasn’t expecting an answer from either Paolo or Annja.

He crossed the tent and disappeared through the flap, apparently intent on finding out. Paolo followed him a moment later.

Annja ignored the interruption and kept working, at least for a few minutes. But when the others didn’t return, she began to get worried. The sense that something was seriously wrong stole over her, like a chill wind blowing through an open door, and she shivered in response. The shouting had stopped, but the silence that had replaced it only made her more concerned.

Something was clearly wrong.

She could feel it in her bones, like that sense of unease just before a sharp summer storm.

Annja stepped away from the worktable, intending to go and see what was happening for herself, when her gaze fell upon the torc. Something told her that leaving it behind would be asking for trouble, so she snatched it up and slipped it into her pocket before leaving the tent. On any other day she would have been appalled to treat an artifact so cavalierly, but she was somehow convinced that it was the right thing to do.

She could always put it back afterward, if it turned out to be nothing.

She drew back the flap of the tent, intending to step outside, but stopped short when a man with a pistol in hand stepped into view, leading two of the dig workers forward at gunpoint. They were headed for the center of camp, just as Craig and Paolo had done, and it didn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out that there was probably more than one of the intruders in camp at that very moment. That realization kept her from immediately going to her coworkers aid; she didn’t want to draw attention to herself until she knew exactly what was going on.

She waited for them to move out of sight, then slipped out and looked around. There didn’t seem to be anyone else about. Even if she hadn’t seen the gunman, that in itself would have been unusual. People were always moving about the camp. Now that she was outside and the tent walls were no longer acting as a sound baffle, she could hear several angry voices coming from the center of the camp. She cautiously made her way in that direction, slipping in and out between the tents rather than walking openly down the main path. As she drew closer to the center of camp, she crouched down beside one of the tents and peered around the corner.

From where she crouched she could see that most of the dig team had been herded into the open area in front of the mess tent. Craig stood alone in front of the group, facing a bearded man in dark fatigues who was pointing a pistol at Craig’s head. Behind the newcomer were several more men, all dressed the same way and all holding firearms of their own, pointing them indiscriminately at the rest of the dig team. Annja recognized the guns as MP-5s, the stubby machine pistols that in recent years had become the weapons of choice for more than a few special-operations units across the world. They were effective little things, capable of firing eight hundred rounds per minute on full auto.

If the armed men opened fire, the archaeologists would be cut down in seconds.

Craig glared at the men in front of him.

“What do you want?” he asked.

The leader looked past Craig as if he didn’t matter and addressed his words to the rest of the dig team huddled behind him. “I’m looking for a necklace. A black one. Surrender it now and there won’t be any trouble.”

Annja couldn’t believe what she was hearing. How did they know about the torc? Craig hadn’t even reported it to the trustees from Oxford overseeing the dig yet, never mind to anyone else.

Craig stepped forward, causing the gunman to turn his attention back to him rather than the others.

“I don’t know what anyone has told you, but we haven’t uncovered anything of value here. There’s no gold. No treasure. Certainly nothing to make you rich.”

The man laughed. “I want the torc,” he said. “We can do it the easy way or we can do it the hard way. I don’t really care. Now where is it?”

There was a look in the gunman’s eyes that Annja didn’t like. Almost as if he was eager for a confrontation.

Tell him, Craig, Annja thought. Tell him what he wants to know.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Craig replied.

The man shrugged. “That’s too bad,” he said.

Then he pulled the trigger.

The shot took Craig in the forehead, knocking him over backward to the ground. He was dead before the sound of the gunshot had finished echoing over the campsite.

Silence fell as the rest of the dig team stared in stunned horror at the body in front of them.

The gunman seemed to drink in their fear and terror like a fine wine. A slow smile spilled across his face as he watched them stare at the dead body in front of them and then, almost casually, he said, “Okay. Now that we’ve established that I’m not screwing around, I’ll ask again. Where is the torc?”

The need to charge out and avenge her friend screamed through Annja’s bones, but she fought the urge back down, knowing that to do so right now would be tantamount to suicide. Running out into the open and confronting the mercenary leader—for that is what she guessed them to be, mercenaries—would only get her killed. That would serve no one, least of all the people she needed to help. If she was going to get the rest of the team out of this alive, the next few minutes were crucial. She would need all her wits about her if she was going to succeed.

She slipped slowly backward until she was out of sight behind the nearest tent and then reached into the otherwhere, summoning her sword to hand. It slid smoothly into existence, appearing with the speed of thought, fully formed and ready for use, the hilt fitting her palm as if it had been made for her and her alone.

Sometimes she even thought that it had.

Her life hadn’t been the same since that fateful day when she’d brought the broken, scattered pieces of the sword together again for the first time since their original owner, Joan of Arc, had been burned at the stake centuries earlier. The sword had miraculously reformed in a flash of power right before her very eyes and, in some strange way she still didn’t quite understand, had chosen her to be its next bearer.