Текст книги "Cradle of Solitude"
Автор книги: Алекс Арчер
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Текущая страница: 16 (всего у книги 18 страниц)
Is someone else out here? she wondered.
The sound came again and she could see the ranger growing more agitated by the moment. The muzzle of the gun jerked back and forth, seeking a target.
Then two things happened simultaneously.
The ranger’s light fell on the white-tailed deer that had come down into the cemetery to graze. It was standing just a headstone or two away from where Annja was doing her best to squeeze herself down into the earth to keep from being seen. The ranger’s light caused the creature to bolt, and the ranger, seeing the deer’s big eyes staring back at him out of the darkness, pulled the trigger of his revolver in surprise.
The deer leaped over the grave Annja had spent the past few hours digging and disappeared into the darkness.
The bullet bounced off a nearby headstone and embedded itself in the earth near Annja’s face.
It happened so fast she didn’t even have time to flinch.
“Stupid deer!” the ranger shouted after the already departed animal. “You’re lucky you didn’t get shot!”
That, at least, was a sentiment that Annja could heartily agree with.
She remained where she was as the ranger flung a few more choice words in the direction the deer had run and then got himself under control. Once he had calmed down, he climbed back astride his horse and rode off, leaving Annja alone with the dead.
She waited a few minutes to be certain, but when the ranger didn’t return she climbed slowly to her feet, picked up the chest and fled as quickly as caution allowed.
37
Annja drove straight back to her motel. She parked her car out of sight between a pair of oversize pickup trucks at the back of the lot and then carried the chest up to her room.
The light in the bathroom was brighter than that in the bedroom, so she took the chest in there and set it on the counter next to the sink. There was still a thin patina of dirt covering the outside of the chest so she grabbed a washcloth from the towel rack and used it to clear as much of it off as possible.
It wasn’t anything to look at, really. It was just a simple metal box with a circular indentation in the lid. Aside from that there weren’t any other markings or decorations of any kind.
Functionalwas the word that came to mind.
After all the time it had spent in the earth, she hoped it still remained that way, as well.
She took the Jeffersonian Key out of her pocket and, with more than a bit of trepidation, placed it into the indentation on the lid.
With a deep breath and a silent prayer to whoever might be listening, Annja placed a finger against the center of the star and pushed down on the disk.
There was an audible clickand a previously unseen seam opened up along the outline of the disk. Then she heard the whir and ticking of a clockwork mechanism and the disk sank half an inch into the top of the chest.
Taking hold of the eight-pointed star that sat atop the disk, Annja put her ear next to the box and slowly began to turn the star to the right, like a safecracker listening for the correct number on the dial. She was afraid she would miss it and there was no telling what would happen if she did. She’d encountered her fair share of reliquaries and other storage devices in the past that had been rigged to cause damage to their contents should the opening sequence not be performed correctly. She’d seen them all—everything from acid baths to sudden bursts of flame. It wouldn’t do Garin any good for her to have come this far only to screw it up at the last minute.
She needn’t have worried, however. The minute the dial had been turned the right distance, it clicked loudly into place. Annja pulled back at the sound and watched as the top third of the box extended outward in all directions, the pieces twisting and turning in individual squares like the parts of a Rubik’s Cube. The ticking came again and then the parts rapidly reassembled themselves until the top of a cylinder with the same circumference as the key jutted out of the upper third of the device.
Annja’s pulse was pounding in her ears as she reached out and turned the key back in the other direction, just as she would if dialing the combination on her locker at the gym.
The star spun in the other direction, all the way around past the first location once, twice, and then, as the main point of the star came around to true north for the third time, there was another click. Just as before, the box underwent a strange mechanical transformation, rearranging itself into the center section of the cylinder. One more turn of the dial, this time back in the original direction, another surge of activity, and Annja was left with a vertical cylinder about the size of a cookie jar, with the eight-pointed star as a lid. The letters CSAstretched down the front of the cylinder in faded red paint.
“All right, Parker,” she said to the container. “You’ve led me on a merry chase, now it’s time to give up the ghost and tell me what you did with that treasure.”
She tugged the lid free and looked inside.
There was nothing there.
She put the lid down on the counter and frantically ran her right hand around inside the cylinder, looking for a hidden catch or something that might reveal a final secret not quite visible to the naked eye.
The second time around she told herself to go slower, to take her time and be as thorough as possible. These kinds of things could be delicate, she knew, and she might miss something in her excited state. She took a few deep breaths to calm her anxious heart and then tried again.
After the third attempt she had no choice but to admit the obvious.
The cylinder was empty.
She stared at her reflection in the mirror over the sink. Was that accusation in her eyes? All that effort and nothing to show for any of it. Where had she gone wrong?
And, more importantly, what now? How was she going to rescue Garin without the treasure?
Her head sagged forward in resignation and as it did her gaze fell on the reflection of the interior surface of the cylinder lid in the mirror in front of her.
There was something written there!
She snatched up the lid and turned it around. What was written made little sense until she realized that not only was she holding the lid upside down, but that it had been written backward, as well. Flipping it over and holding it up to the mirror allowed her to read it.
34 44 23.1
83 23 42.8
Grabbing the bar of soap from the dispenser next to her, Annja used it to scrawl the numbers on the mirror in front of her.
Despite the absence of the symbols noting degrees and minutes, the numbers were easily recognizable as latitude and longitude notations and could be nothing less than the location of the treasure.
All she had to do now was determine where, exactly, those notations indicated.
She didn’t have her computer with her, so she couldn’t just look it up. The motel she was staying in didn’t have public internet access, either.
She thought about her options.
She knew it was a risk. The bodies aboard the Kelly Mayhad probably been found by now. That would have led to a thorough examination of Jimmy Mitchell’s contacts over the past few days, which would have turned up the delivery of the equipment Doug had arranged to borrow from the university. Her name, and possibly Garin’s, too, were no doubt known to the police at this point. Right about now the authorities were either dredging the river looking for her corpse or, more likely, were looking for her as the prime suspect in the deaths of Jimmy and Bernard.
If that was the case, they might even have Doug under surveillance and any attempt to reach out to him could put the police right on her tail.
She thought it was worth the risk, though. She needed to find the location of these coordinates and Doug was the fastest means of getting it done. If Doug was under surveillance, the worst the police could do was trace the call to her motel. It would take time for the New York authorities to inform the local Pennsylvania authorities. By the time the locals arrived at the motel, she should be well on her way somewhere else.
Decision made, Annja picked up the phone. She dialed Doug’s office number but then changed her mind and disconnected before it rang through. His cell would be harder for the police to trace and so she tried that instead.
The very fact that you know that shows what kind of life you’ve been living lately, she mused.
Ignoring the voice of her conscience, Annja punched in the number, keeping her eyes on the clock as she did so.
It rang quite a few times before being answered.
“Doug Morrell.”
He sounded tired, as if she’d woken him up. Given that it was four o’clock in the morning, she wasn’t surprised. She knew he would recognize her voice so she didn’t bother with the usual niceties. “It’s me. Can you talk?”
There was a slight pause and then Doug replied, “I’m sorry you must have the wrong number.”
Damn!
“Have the police been to see you?”
“Uh-huh. Well, have you tried his office number?”
It took her a second and then Annja understood. She grabbed the pen and paper off the motel nightstand and said, “Go ahead.”
“I’d give him a half hour or so, but after that you should be able to reach him at…” Doug replied, and rattled off a different telephone number.
Annja wrote it down and hung up.
The call had lasted less than two minutes. It always took at least three minutes for the cops to trace a number on Law and Order,and while network television dramas weren’t always the most accurate, it was the only gauge Annja had to go by. She hoped they’d gotten it right.
She sat down on the edge of the bed to wait.
The thirty minutes Doug had suggested she wait felt like forever and she spent most of the time pacing across her tiny motel room floor. When the half hour was up she snatched the receiver and dialed the number he’d given her.
He answered on the first ring. “Jeez! Give me a heart attack, why don’t you?” Doug said. “Where have you been? Are you all right? Do you realize how many people are looking for you?”
Annja didn’t have time to explain everything that had happened, so she said, “I’m fine but I need some help.”
She could hear street noise in the background and realized that he must have given her the number for the pay phone on the corner near his apartment. Why he had that number in the first place, she didn’t know, but she was thankful that he did.
“We’ll get you the best lawyer we can, Annja. Right now I think it…”
“Doug?”
“…best if you just turn yourself in to the nearest police—”
“Doug!”
“What?”
“I’m not turning myself in. I didn’t do whatever it is they’re saying I did.”
She could hear the hesitation in his voice as he responded. “I’m not sure that’s such a good idea, Annja. The police are looking for you and I think it’d be better if—”
“Listen to me!” she yelled, the stress of the past few days finally getting the better of her. “Lives are in danger here, Doug! I need your help!”
That shut him up. Into the silence, she said, “The men who killed Jimmy Mitchell and Bernard Reinhardt are holding others captive. I’ve got to find a specific location in order to help them and all I have are latitude and longitude numbers.”
“Why don’t you just plug them into a GPS?”
She gritted her teeth. “I don’t have a GPS unit, Doug. That’s why I’m calling you.”
“Oh, okay, hang on. I’ve got one right here on my cell phone.” There was a moment’s pause and then he said, “Give me the coordinates.”
She read the degrees and minutes off the mirror where she had written them earlier.
It took him less than thirty seconds to come back with the information she needed.
“The Genoa Mine in Tallulah Gorge.”
Annja scrawled it on the paper in front of her. “Tallulah Gorge? Where the heck is that?”
“Hang on… Would you believe Georgia?”
Yes, she thought wearily, yes, she would believe Georgia. This had all started in Georgia so it made sense that it would end there, as well.
“Where in Georgia?” she asked.
Doug gave her the details. Tallulah Gorge was located in a state park of the same name at the very northeastern edge of Georgia, about ten miles north of the town of Tallulah Falls and roughly eight hundred miles south of where she now stood.
Annja had another decision to make.
She could call Michaels, give him the coordinates as agreed and hope he’d live up to his word to release Garin once she had located the treasure.
It was the easiest thing to do and would also ensure that she accomplished the goal before the deadline.
She knew that doing so, however, would be an act of sheer stupidity.
Both she and Garin had seen Michaels have his men execute Reinhardt and Mitchell. There was no way that Michaels would let them go free as a result. There was a chance that Garin was already dead, but Annja doubted Michaels would throw away his ace in the hole easily. With Garin alive he could force her cooperation. With him dead, there was nothing stopping Annja from going to the police with everything she knew.
No, she suspected that Michaels would live up to his end of the agreement, at least until he had the whereabouts of the treasure guaranteed.
When that happened, all bets were off. There was nothing stopping Michaels from putting a bullet in both of them at that point except Annja’s own ingenuity. She had to find a way to get Garin out into the open before turning over the coordinates. That way she’d have a chance of getting them both out of this mess alive.
Perhaps Tallulah Gorge was the answer she’d been looking for in more ways than one.
With the police actively seeking her, there was no way she could risk getting on a flight. She was going to have to make the trip from Pennsylvania to Georgia by car, a drive of about twelve hours, if she did it without stopping.
She glanced at the clock and did some quick mental arithmetic. If all went well, she’d arrive at the Gorge with barely an hour to spare before the end of Michaels’s deadline.
Theoretically speaking, it was doable, but that didn’t take into account the events of the past few days. The constant travel combined with her need to be up all night in order to recover the chest from the cemetery had left her dead on her feet. There was no way she was going to be able to make a twelve-hour drive without getting some sleep first. But doing so meant she would fail to meet Michaels’s deadline.
In order to pull it off, she was going to need some help.
“…it’ll be the best episode we’ve ever had!”
She realized with a start that Doug had been speaking to her the whole time. She hadn’t heard a word he’d said nor did she have time to deal with whatever cockamamie plan he’d come up with, so she did what she always did when Doug went off on one of his rabbit trails; she ignored him.
“I’m going to need you to arrange for a car and driver for me, Doug.”
“I know I can get the network’s approval and…wait a minute! What?”
“I need a car and a driver. There’s no way I can make the drive to Tallulah Gorge on my own. You’re going to have to arrange to have someone meet me somewhere. Maybe Richmond?”
Doug tried to catch up with her line of thought. “Tallulah Gorge? Why are you going there?”
“I don’t have time to explain, Doug. Can you get me a car and driver or not?”
He hesitated. “I don’t know, Annja. The cops are already crawling all over me because of that diving equipment I arranged for you. I spent half the day at the police station answering questions and for all I know they’re bugging my telephone!”
That explained the pay phone.
Still, time was ticking and she didn’t have any to waste. Michaels’s deadline was looming closer with every minute.
“A man’s life is at stake, Doug. I need that car!”
“All right, all right. Give me a minute,” he said.
The street sounds got louder as he took the pay phone receiver away from his ear and then she could hear the beeping of his cell phone as he clicked through different screens. She could hear him start speaking to someone on the other line and she tapped her foot impatiently.
There was a rustle as he picked up the phone again and said, “You said Richmond, right?”
“Yes.”
“That’s, uh, in Virginia, right?”
Annja sighed. “Yes, Doug, that’s in Virginia.”
“Cool. Hang on…”
It took him another couple of minutes, and a few more questions, but in the end the arrangements were made. She would meet her driver in the parking lot of the Marriott Hotel just after seven that morning, as the drive to Richmond would take Annja about two hours. A phone call to the rental car company would inform them of the location of their vehicle and the driver would then chauffeur Annja the rest of the way to Georgia. Once in Tallulah Falls, the driver would leave the vehicle with Annja and she could use it for as long as she needed.
“Thank you, Doug,” she told him, when he’d finished relaying the details. “You’re a lifesaver. Literally.”
“Yeah, sure. Just get this squared away quickly, will ya? Once you do we can get started on the fugitive episode. I can’t wait!”
Alarm bells began ringing in the back of her mind. Just what had she missed earlier when she hadn’t been listening?
“What are you talking about? What fugitive episode?”
Apparently she wasn’t the only one with selective hearing. “Good luck! Call me once you catch up with the driver,” he said, and then hung up.
That was twice now that he’d gotten the better of her. Clearly she was slipping.
38
Two hours later Annja found herself driving through downtown Richmond, right past the very house Jefferson Davis had used to run his presidency. The White House of the Confederacy, as it was now called, was the centerpiece of a museum devoted to the era and Annja found herself wishing she had the time to wander through the halls, to see with her own eyes the artifacts and exhibits on display there, to try and better understand the man who had ordered the treasury moved in the first place.
But she wasn’t here as a tourist and she drove past, telling herself that she’d return some other time, when her life was less hectic.
Whenever that might be.
She found the Marriott Hotel without difficulty, parked her car and went inside. She was thinking of approaching the concierge and asking for assistance in locating her driver when she spotted two young guys in their early twenties, dressed in dark suits, one of them carrying a hand-lettered sign that read Chasing History’s Monsters.
So much for keeping a low profile, she thought. She hoped she could get out of there quickly before anyone noticed her.
Annja strode over to the pair and introduced herself. The two men, David and Andrew, were complete professionals and it wasn’t long before Annja was resting comfortably in the back of a Cadillac, David behind the wheel, while Andrew drove her rental car back to his apartment. He would hold on to it for twenty-four hours before returning it to the Richmond airport in her name. By then things would have unfolded one way or another with Michaels, and she’d no longer be worried about the local authorities getting a fix on her location.
Good or bad, it would all be over by then.
She intended to use the time to get some sleep, but first she had to set the stage for Garin’s eventual rescue.
She pulled out the phone she’d taken from Michaels’s henchman in the airport—what felt like a lifetime ago—and dialed the number she’d memorized.
It rang several times before being answered. “Yes?” said a gruff French voice.
“Get me Michaels.”
The man in question must have been sitting right there, for the pause was only a few seconds.
“Do you have what I need, Miss Creed?”
Damn right I do, she thought as an image of her sword loomed large in her mind, but she answered with a simple, “Yes.”
“Excellent. I have lived up to my part of the bargain, as well. Your friend, Mr. Braden, is alive and well.”
Mr. Braden? Garin had given his real name. She wondered what that meant and what other surprises Michaels might have in store for her, but knew she’d find out soon enough.
“How do I know you’re telling the truth?” she asked, putting everything else out of her mind for the time being. One thing at a time, Annja, she thought, calming her anger.
There was silence on the line for a moment and Annja was just about to repeat her question when she heard a muffled sound as the phone changed hands.
“Annja?”
It was Garin; she knew it as surely as she knew how to draw her sword.
“Are you all right?”
“Fine. I’ve survived far worse in my day.”
Given the length of “his day,” she thought it was probably the understatement of the year. She was about to answer him, only to hear the menacing voice of Michaels come back on the line.
“As I said, Miss Creed, your Mr. Braden is just fine.”
“Good. See that he stays that way. Meet me in the parking lot of the Tallulah Gorge State Park in Tallulah Falls, Georgia, in two hours. Have Garin with you.”
“I hardly think you’re in a position to dictate terms to me,” Michaels said.
“Who asked you to think?” Annja replied, and then broke the connection.
Michaels wanted the treasure; Annja had no doubt that he would follow her orders.
