Zachery rubbed his chin, thinking. Finally, he said, “All right, find out who paid the Fox to steal the staff, and why, and what it all has to do with the Ark of the Covenant. And how all of it ties up with engineering a freaking sandstorm in the Gobi Desert. This is your first assignment. Make it count. You don’t need the entire team to go with you to Venice, it would be too unwieldy. I need both Gray and Ben here in New York. If you need their expertise, you can tap into the secure video con.
“Now, I know you’ll want to rescue her—”
Mike said, only a quiver in her voice, “—and her husband—who happens to be a Brit.”
Savich laughed. “Right. To make this legit, let’s plan on you bringing her back here for a nice long stretch in jail, if you can manage to keep your hands on her, which could be a bigger challenge than engineering the weather.” He nodded at Nicholas and Mike. “Good luck with that.”
Nicholas said, “I’d like to take Adam Pearce, our young über hacker. He’s staying with his sister here in New York, so it won’t be a problem getting him to the plane. Lia and Louisa should come, too.” Actually, he’d already texted Adam. He’d meet them at Teterboro.
Zachery said, “Fine. I see this as a quick in-and-out. Keep it simple.”
When the door closed, Zachery said to Savich, “Those two are like puppies. If they don’t have something death-defying to do they’ll chew up all the shoes and tear the stuffing out of the couches.”
Savich laughed. “I’d say this assignment could qualify.”
“As for the Fox, this Kitsune, I think they’ll do what’s right in the end. I’d better call Callan Sloan to get her approval. The vice president’s agreement will mean we’re all covered.”
Savich looked at his Mickey Mouse watch. “It’s time I headed out.” The two men shook hands.
Zachery said, “Have a good flight back to Disneyland East. Savich, do you think they told us everything?”
“Of course not.” Savich paused. “But I’d trust Nicholas Drummond and Mike Caine with my life. If anyone can get to the bottom of this, it’s them. Also, I have a feeling that if we want to know what they’re up to all we’ll have to do is turn on the TV for the news bulletins.”
CHAPTER SIX
At Teterboro, there were three Gulfstreams on the tarmac, two painted white with blue stomachs, the American flag on the tail, and UNITED STATES GOVERNMENT printed along the side above the windows. Mike knew one of the blue-and-whites was meant for Savich to travel back to D.C.
They walked past the fancy ones to the Covert Eyes plane.
Mike said, “I like ours, it’s more down and dirty. Look at the white with the red racing stripes—gets me all revved up.”
“At least it doesn’t look like a cargo plane.”
Their FBI pilot was standing by the stairs, Adam grinning at them over his shoulder. The pilot was several years older than Nicholas and looked like a fireplug with a big smile. Nicholas didn’t think he’d like to go three rounds with him.
“Greetings, Agent Drummond, Agent Caine. I’m Agent Robert Clancy, your new pilot, call me Clancy. I come to the FBI by way of the Air Force. I flew sorties over the Middle East for ten years until I mustered out and came on board with the FBI.”
He patted the fuselage like a proud papa. “This puppy isn’t quite Raptor status, but she can barrel-roll if I need to wake you up from time to time. Welcome aboard.”
Nicholas saw another pilot coming around the edge of the plane, running her hands along the hull—a tall, lean woman with short dark hair. Clancy gave a loud whistle, and she turned. “That’s my copilot, Agent Kimberley Trident, doing a final check.”
She called out, “Call me Trident or Poseidon, makes me feel superior.”
“She’s been with the FBI longer than I have,” Clancy said. “The director believes she could fly in and out of a teacup in a pinch. We’re both excited to take on this detail. I hear we’re headed to Venice today?”
“That’s right,” Nicholas said. “How long is the flight?”
Clancy was bouncing on the balls of his feet to get going. “About eight hours, unless you’re in a rush, then I can shave off thirty minutes or so. Let Trident and me show you the plane. Ah, I see the rest of your team is here. Why don’t we all go inside for introductions?”
The inside wasn’t Raptor status, either. Mike took in the dark brown leather seats, the rounded windows and natural wood. It looked pretty swank to her. She gave Nicholas a grin. “Slumming it, are we?”
Trident, along with Lia and Louisa, go-bags in hand, joined Mike and Nicholas and Adam in the cabin. They all shook hands.
Nicholas said, “Good to meet you, Agent Trident. Welcome to Covert Eyes.”
She had a touch of a Southern accent, not nearly as heavy as Clancy’s. “That was a hell of a save with the president, Agent Drummond, Agent Caine. When Mr. Zachery put out the call, Clancy and I were first in line to request the duty.”
Clancy said, “You’ll see this baby has all the bells and whistles. The onboard equipment is nearly as good as what’s in the director’s plane, but don’t tell him I said that. The comms system is completely encrypted, so don’t worry about taking or making calls, and the Wi-Fi is bouncing off a couple of NSA satellites configured for our own use, so that’s totally secure as well. Food and drink are in the galley. No attendant for you, hope you can fend for yourselves.”
“We’ll be fine,” Nicholas said. “Let me introduce you to the team going to Venice. This is Special Agent Louisa Barry, our forensics expert. She’s been known to pull DNA off a toothpick. She’s a marathon runner and has to chow down carbs so she won’t disappear into a shadow.”
Louisa said, “Trident, you’re a runner, too, right? I recognize a fellow asphalt-slapper.”
Trident nodded. “Big-time, though I hear it’s tough to run in Venice, unless you’re being chased.”
Mike said, “This is Special Agent Lia Scott, in charge of communications. You want to communicate to Sergei in Siberia with no bars on his cell, don’t worry, Lia will figure out a way. She’ll want to check out your encryption system. If she likes you she might loan you one of her earrings.” Today Lia wore six studs going up the shell of each ear. No nose ring today, never when she was on duty, but Nicholas wouldn’t be surprised if she had a belly button ring. He admired Zachery for not caring about a dress code when an agent was as valuable as punk rocker Lia Scott.
Trident said to Lia, “I was admiring your T-shirt. I recognized the double helix on the back, but who’s Rosalind Franklin?”
“Don’t ask her until you’ve got a couple of free hours,” Mike said.
“And this is Adam Pearce,” Nicholas said, “our own private guided missile and computer expert. He doesn’t have piercings and he doesn’t run, but he could hack into the Bank of England and leave a crumpet so all would know he’d been there.”
Trident looked at the lanky youth, with his dirty-blond hair and sharp brown eyes. “You could be my kid,” she said, and shook Adam’s hand.
“He turned twenty last week,” Lia said. “We’re all grateful he’s no longer a teenager.” She gave Adam a pop on the arm.
Nicholas said, “Adam’s not an agent yet, but we’re hoping he’ll take the plunge one of these years. Hey, Adam, you look taller than the last time I saw you.”
Adam said, “It’s the boredom. I’ve had nothing to do but grow. Are we really going after the Fox?”
Now how did Adam know that? “The Fox is only the tip of this iceberg. I’ll tell you everything. Now, buckle up, everyone. Clancy, Trident, let’s get this bird flying east.”
CHAPTER SEVEN
The Genesis Group Headquarters
Rome, Italy
Cassandra stood on the podium, composed, charmingly patient, as the media sorted themselves out. Not once did she blink against the flashbulbs. She’d been trained by the best. She knew media meetings were important because she was the face and spokesperson of the Genesis Group. It didn??
?t hurt that the cameras loved her face.
Ajax stood by her right elbow. He was looking restless and bored, and that would never do. She pinched the back of his arm, and he shot her a smile that wasn’t at all friendly. But he straightened, even managed a smile, of sorts. Women thought he was sexy and dangerous. They weren’t wrong about that. Men believed he was smart and ruthless, and they weren’t wrong about that, either.
The beautiful Roman sun beat through glass walls of the media room. At last Cassandra waved a hand to quiet the horde and looked down a last time at her notes. She stood for a moment, looking out at all the faces, making eye contact with each one of them, no matter how brief, as she’d been trained to do. She cleared her throat and said in her cultured, elegant voice into the microphone, “Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for coming today. We’re here to honor the memory of the founder of Genesis, a man with a great vision, our great-great-grandfather Appleton Kohath. On this day nearly one hundred years ago, he established the Genesis Group. I’m very proud to say that we continue to carry on his mission all over the world.
“I’d also like to announce today that we continue in his vision. We’re granting ten million euros to Nezabylice in the Czech Republic, the site of the Marcomanni tombs, to further the excavations of ancient Germanic artifacts that will provide us an invaluable look into these long-ago civilizations.
“The Genesis Group is first and foremost focused on unearthing the past.” Cassandra leaned closed, her lips nearly touching the microphone, again, making eye contact. “We are all one earth, all one people. We will not allow those cultures that came before us to remained buried and forgotten. We want to understand how we’ve come to be here, and understanding our forebears, no matter who they fought with, or for, is the only way to do so.
“The science of archaeology must continue to be married to the other sciences if we want to make these discoveries. I am thrilled today to announce this joint venture with our Polish counterparts, and give the microphone over to Agnieszka Půlpánová-Reszczyńska, who will give you a brief history of the project. But first—”
A young man dressed in all black handed her a bottle of champagne and two glasses. She uncorked it, poured out two flutes, and handed one to Půlpánová-Reszczyńska, a tanned, fit woman who looked perfectly at ease on the stage beside her. She smiled at her. “To the past,” she said, “and the present, and to our future,” and drank deeply. Her Polish counterpart smiled and followed suit.
Cassandra walked offstage to applause, tuning out the Pole even before she started to talk. Ajax joined her, and together they disappeared into the hallway behind the conference room.
Ajax said, “You are so antisocial, and yet, put you in front of cameras and you dazzle the world. Mother trained you well. The press loves you.”
“We’ll see how much they love me if they ever find out what we’ve been up to.”
A trill sounded, and Ajax checked his text message. “Lilith is waiting for us. She has news.”
“It better be good news.”
Cassandra looked out at the rounded edge of the Pantheon dome outside the bank of windows as she walked the long hallway to their offices. The sky was a bright, clean blue today, unlike Beijing’s, which was choking under an ocean of sand. Some were calling it a prelude to the end of days; some believed it retribution, but against whom, no one ventured a guess, at least in China.
She was surprised at an unexpected stab of conscience. So many thousands dead in Beijing, suffocated. She quashed it for the moment. A large portion of the Gobi Desert now resided in Beijing, exactly what they’d needed to happen. And now they would find the Ark, with the real staff of Moses, and all its power, inside.
She’d believed as a child that her mother would find the Ark, but Helen Kohath had died in the effort. That was a pain deep in Cassandra’s heart she knew would never go away. She and Ajax had their grandfather, but he was outliving his usefulness. He would die soon, and that would leave them alone, with no more family, unless, of course, if one of them married and had a child. It was strange, but she knew, deep down where fears resided, and knowledge, that she would never birth a child, nor would Ajax father one.
And that meant she had to accept whatever casualties happened. Did Ajax even care about all the deaths in Beijing? She looked briefly at his profile. Outwardly, he seemed well controlled—but not always. He was, however, a computer genius like their grandfather. She was her mother’s daughter—focused, resolute, committed. Neither of them were anything like their worthless, greedy father.
Lilith was waiting in Ajax’s office, seated on the edge of a white leather sofa. She stood when they came into the room.
Cassandra saw the smile bloom on her brother’s face at the excitement in Lilith’s eyes. “You’ve done it?”
Lilith pointed to a small satellite phone in the middle of the glass coffee table. “Dr. Gregory and his team are on-site. There’s news.”
The twins sat down side by side. “We’re ready.”
Lilith keyed in the microphone on the sat phone, and the screen popped up. A man’s face swam into focus, a face that looked older than his thirty-four years, seamed and lined from years spent outdoors, in all weather. His thinning dark hair looked gray from the swirling sand.
“Vincent Gregory here, Mysore Base. Ajax? Cassandra? We are at the site, and we’ve uncovered a treasure trove of material—two tents, a couple of bags of tools, all with the old G we used to have in the logo on the outside. We thought it was sterile soil and we’d missed the right location, but something told me to do a shovel test pit, and boom, I found the mother lode.” He paused, drew in a deep breath. “I know we’ve found your mother’s lost dig site.”
Cassandra didn’t think she could speak. They’d finally found the last known whereabouts of her mother. The last place on earth Helen had been. She saw the pulse pounding in Ajax’s neck, heard the excitement in his voice.
“Send me photos, Gregory.”
“Photos should be in your secure email now.”
Lilith handed Ajax a laptop. He opened it so quickly he nearly broke the hinge. Such a small thing, but it proved to Cassandra how deeply he felt about locating their mother’s last dig site. The email was waiting, and he took a deep breath before he clicked it open.
The scene was just as Gregory had described: dark blue bags half-buried in sand, the sun shining on the tools left out, a cable wire from a tent.
The phone crackled to life again. “Ajax, I’m sending a second photo now—we uncovered some bones. No way to tell who they might belong to. We’re going to have to excavate the site, and fast. We’ve done our best to create a stable platform here, but I don’t know how long we’ll have. You know these sands like to blow around.”
All Cassandra heard was “bones.” She took her twin’s hand, squeezed his fingers until they were white.
The second photo came, so many bones, all jumbled together, impossible to sort out what was what. Or who.
Please not Mother, please not Mother.
Another email came through. Gregory said, “You should be receiving a live feed right now.”
Cassandra was so afraid of what that live feed would show, she could scarcely speak. She swallowed. “Yes, Dr. Gregory, let’s see everything.”
They’d been searching for their mother’s last known dig site in the Gobi for nearly a dozen years now. Would she recognize her mother’s skull? No, it wouldn’t do to think about that. Stay focused on the prize, on what their mother had died for. The Ark. Was it still buried in the sand, waiting to be found, the staff of Moses inside?
The site was awash in sunlight, the bare rock exposed, the last remnants of sand that remained from their mega storm swirling in the air behind them. The camera slowly moved over the flags they’d hammered into the ground to mark where each artifact had been found.
There wasn’t much to see except—the camera panned right, and suddenly there it all was, a pit opening into the earth. It looked organized, a
grid meticulously set up. Their mother had done that, Cassandra was sure of it. Was their mother buried in that pit? Her mother’s bones. Cassandra didn’t know if she could bear the reality of finding proof of her mother’s death.
The camera focused on a large skull, clearly a man’s. Her mother had been delicate, beautiful and fine-boned. Cassandra closed her eyes and gave a thank-you to a god she wasn’t sure she believed existed.
“Show me the bags, Dr. Gregory,” she said, pleased she sounded strong, in control.
Gregory shifted the view to a stained burlap sack. “See, here’s the old G, and here are the orange tents, we moved to yellow five years ago. This is the site, I’m sure of it.”
Ajax met his twin’s eyes as he said, “Excavate it, Gregory. Don’t leave a grain of sand unturned. Our plane is standing by. We’ll be there tomorrow morning.”
“I’ll report back later tonight with more footage of our progress. Congratulations!”
The camera feed ended abruptly and with it, Dr. Vincent Gregory’s face.
Lilith was amazed at how calm the twins appeared. She knew what a great force their mother had been in their lives, yet they’d just seen the place where she’d probably died.
Ajax finally spoke, and Lilith heard wonder, not sadness, in his voice. “This is our mother’s lost site. And the Ark could be there. Imagine what this will mean to the foundation. Think of it, Cassandra, when we find the Ark, everything will change. Think of the power it holds, and it can only be ignited by our family. A century of work, a century of effort.”
Ajax sat back on the couch. “I admit I doubted we’d find it. This is a banner day.” His mood changed on a dime. He rose and walked to Lilith. He took her hands in his. “Tell me you also have word of the Fox?”
“Sadly, no. The Venetian police are looking for her. Interpol has a red notice out for her, their highest level. She can’t go far or stay hidden. Add to that, we have her precious husband. I understand there is great love between them—”
“To be expected,” Cassandra said, “given they’ve only been married for a matter of months.”