The Vengeance of the Tau, page 5
“Because you’re jealous of my charm and good looks.”
“You ask me, we spent too much time at the same salon, the both of us. What’s up?”
“Need you to check on someone for me. Hired hand. Little guy with lots of martial arts in his background. …” McCracken provided as complete a description of the dandy as he could manage.
“Don’t have to go to the computer for that one, McBalls. Guy’s name is Billy Griggs, alias Billy Boy. One deadly son of a bitch. Hand specialist in more ways than one.”
“So I gathered.”
“Yeah, Billy Boy’s ’bout as queer as a three-dollar bill plus change. You whack him?”
“Sent him for a swim.”
“Your sake, I hope he doesn’t come up for air.”
“Five-hundred-foot dive off the Golden Gate.”
“You ask me, don’t count him out until the fish eat his eyeballs. Like to hear what he did in ’Nam?”
“Not really.”
“Dressed himself up as a gook, little shit that he was, and took Charlie out from the inside that way. Got himself transferred to Special Forces and even they couldn’t deal with him. What I hear, he went home and accepted his medal in gook makeup and black pajamas … you make of that.”
“Sorry I iced a war hero.”
“Don’t cry yourself to sleep. Griggs’s nickname over there was ‘Charlie Cat’ on account of he had so many lives. Plenty have tried to put him down before. None been very successful.” Belamo paused. “So what’s next?”
“You have someone meet me at Kennedy Airport with a passport complete with entry visa for Turkey.”
“Turkey?”
“Night flight to Istanbul, Sal.”
McCracken had inspected the contents of the manila envelope in the backseat of the cab that had taken him to the airport. Just a single sheet of paper, obviously a photocopy of something larger that had been reduced to a more manageable size.
It was a map, of all things!
Judging by the poor print quality, the original must have been old and tattered. The photocopy included handwritten instructions in German scrawled in the blank space near the bottom to further supplement the map’s directions. The site was Turkey, specifically the southwestern part near the Aegean Sea known to be rich in archaeological treasures:
Ephesus.
Chapter 6
BENSON HAZELHURST’S JEEP had threatened to give out on at least three occasions and had finally quit two miles from the find.
“Try it now, Daddy,” his daughter urged, pinching something with a pliers underneath the raised hood.
Hazelhurst turned the key, and the jeep’s engine grumbled, then shook to life.
“That’s got it,” Melissa said. She pulled out from under the hood and slammed it back into place.
“What would I do without you, Daughter?”
“Die of heat exposure, for starters. Want me to drive?”
“No need. We’re almost there. Driving will occupy my mind. I don’t think I could endure this last stretch without something else to concentrate on.”
Melissa Hazelhurst closed the passenger door behind her and frowned.
“Speak your mind, Melly,” her father urged.
Benson Hazelhurst was almost seventy years old now, but he still had most of his hair and much of the muscle of his youth. Hazelhurst had married a much younger woman thirty years back, and they had wasted no time conceiving their only child. Melissa had inherited her father’s greenish-blue eyes, and her auburn hair was the same shade his had once been. She was tall enough to have been taken for a model on numerous occasions and in good enough shape to have been mistaken for a professional swimmer and runner. Melissa’s mother had died when she was four and she had been paired with her father ever since.
“I think you’re getting your hopes up,” she warned. “That’s all.”
Hazelhurst pulled back onto the road. “I’ve seen that frown before. You don’t believe it exists, do you?”
“No,” Melissa admitted.
“I see,” her father returned, obviously hurt.
“I want to,” she tried to explain. “I mean, I’ve tried. But every time I start to believe, something pulls me back.”
“Reason, perhaps?”
“Yes, reason.”
“Then what about the claims of the Phoenicians, the ancient Egyptians, the Persians, and the old priests? Different cultures that all described virtually the same thing, all searching for it at different times through history.”
“And never finding it.”
“Not to our knowledge, anyway.”
Melissa slid her arm to her father’s shoulder. He stiffened slightly at the touch. “Father, I’ve never questioned or doubted you before. I’m not sure I am now. It’s just that, well, I know how much this means to you and I don’t want to see you disappointed.”
“Winchester’s message left little reason to expect I will be.”
“He’s not an expert.”
Hazelhurst chuckled humorlessly. “He was the best student I ever had. Doesn’t say much for me as a teacher, does it?”
“That’s not what I meant and you know it!”
His hand touched the one of hers still resting on his shoulder. “Of course. I’m sorry. You’ve been good to have humored me for so long. Lord knows you had no reason to before I located those maps.”
Melissa eased her hand away. “You never told me where they came from.”
“Yes, I did. The museum.”
She hesitated. “No. I checked.”
“Through the museum, then. At least that was how the contact was made.”
“What contact?”
“The possessor of recently discovered archives in Germany that the museum knew I would have interest in.”
“Germany?”
“The archives contained materials from World War II, my dear. They belonged to the Nazis.”
Melissa was shocked.
“Makes perfect sense,” Hazelhurst continued. “Think of your history, Melissa. Hitler was obsessed with the mystical: astrology, the power of ancient artifacts, the occult. He had scores of archaeological teams scouring areas all over the Mideast in search of any object even remotely thought to possess some sort of spiritual or supernatural power.”
“Which led them here.”
“But the war ended before they had a chance to determine whether their findings were correct. The maps were stowed away and hidden, in all probability by parties already planning for the Fourth Reich.”
Melissa stared at her father for a long moment. “And now we’re picking up right where they left off.”
Benson Hazelhurst kept driving.
The drive took another ten minutes, their jeep bouncing and tilting along the uneven terrain. Winchester’s dig site was located in a secluded valley protected by small hills playing the role of time’s centurions. The area near Ephesus was for the most part composed of lush, fertile plains. But here there was barely any trace of green, as if all the flora had browned and died. Dirt and chalk dust blew about in the afternoon sun.
As the jeep drew closer, Winchester’s dig took shape in the form of layered piles of neatly excavated stone and dirt. The only vehicle present was a four-wheel-drive parked just beyond the heaps. The dust thickened against the windshield of the Hazelhursts’ jeep and, as if in a final act of protest, the engine sputtered and died a good hundred yards from the other vehicle. Melissa climbed out with canteens in hand and waited for her father.
“I don’t see anyone,” she said, stiffening.
“They could be, should be, down inside the excavation.”
“Winchester knew we were coming. He would have had someone waiting. And, besides, someone would’ve heard us coming.”
Hazelhurst rewrapped his bandanna over his brow to add protection for his eyes. “This wind can steal the voice of the man next to you, never mind a raspy engine. And I never advised Winchester of our plans.”
To reinforce his assertion, Hazelhurst plodded forward toward the site. Melissa lingered slightly behind him. She squinted her eyes against the flying dust, the leather of her well-worn boots chipped by the onslaught of the unforgiving ground.
“Damn,” she muttered.
“Shield your eyes,” her father called back to her.
She had been on digs before, but had never experienced anything quite like this. It was almost as if there was some sort of force intent on keeping them beyond the piles of excavated rubble. Hazelhurst reached the stationary four-wheel-drive vehicle and leaned against it for protection from the wind. Melissa nestled near him. One of her hands slid onto the hood.
“It’s still warm, Father. Winchester or someone in his party must have returned within the last hour.”
Hazelhurst turned away from the vehicle and headed for the excavation.
“Dad!” Melissa called after him, trying to keep pace.
Hazelhurst reached the rim and peered down.
“Good lord,” he rasped.
Melissa saw the body an instant after her father did. It lay facedown not far from a yard-square rectangular opening in the ground, created when what looked like a massive stone tablet had been slid backward. The dust and dirt had already showered the body, soon to render it invisible.
“Is that—”
Melissa interrupted her question when she saw her father locate the rope ladder and begin to climb down. It wobbled, and the old man clutched a rung for dear life, his bones brittle from decades of exposure to the calcium of limestone.
“Hold it steady, child.”
“Let me go first.”
“Do as I say!”
She obliged and then followed her father down, joining him near the body he had just flipped over.
“Winchester,” Benson Hazelhurst muttered, kneeling over his ex-student, who stared up at him now with eyes glazed over by death.
In the center of Winchester’s forehead was a small black hole. It was jagged, as if someone had jammed in a thick Phillips-head screwdriver and twisted it around a bit. Beside the bullet hole’s dried edges, there was no blood.
Hazelhurst’s eyes wandered about. “There should be workers here. Winchester hired over a dozen, perhaps more by the look of things.”
His gaze fell on the rectangular opening that accepted the blowing dust and dirt like a vacuum. The thick stone tablet had obviously been parted from the slot it must have occupied for centuries.
A shuffling from above made Hazelhurst break off his thinking. He grasped Melissa and drew her behind him as he gazed upward into the sun and blowing dirt. A figure was standing at the rim above, directly over the rope ladder.
“Who are you?” Hazelhurst screamed up, while behind him Melissa cursed herself for not bringing a rifle with them from the jeep. “What do you want?”
“Professor Hazelhurst?” the confused reply followed in English.
“Yes,” he yelled, his own echo blown back at him. “Who are you?”
“I am the foreman—Kamir. What has happened?”
Hazelhurst felt himself relax. “You’d better come down here.”
“Sayin Winchester sent me to Izmir for more men and—”
“Come down here,” Hazelhurst repeated, “but leave the men up there.”
Kamir said a brief prayer over the body.
“Who did this to him?” he asked, looking up at Hazelhurst and Melissa.
“I thought it might have been you.”
Kamir’s eyes bulged indignantly. “No, Sayin Hazelhurst. I left Sayin Winchester here and went to hire new workmen after the others fled this morning.”
“Fled? Why?”
Kamir gestured toward the massive tablet. “The work frightened them. The warning …”
Hazelhurst exchanged glances with Melissa and then moved toward the tablet. With his hand he brushed away the dust and dirt that had collected atop it and traced the carvings with his fingers as well as his eyes.
“I’ve seen this before—only a few times, but I recognize it. Dates back to an ancient religion that predates Christianity by over a thousand years.”
“One of the men who fled insisted the words were a warning, that we had already gone too far and must turn back before it was too late.”
“And then they fled.”
Kamir’s eyes darted briefly to the rectangular opening. “But not before Sayin Winchester ordered us to move the tablet. They were gone in the morning.” His eyes grew fearful. “I do not blame them.”
“Why, Kamir?”
“It, it is difficult to explain, Sayin.”
“Just out with it, then.”
Kamir’s lips trembled. “When the tablet was moved, I … felt something.”
“Felt what?”
He shrugged. “I … do not know. It brushed by me, icy and hot at the same time.”
Hazelhurst looked at the guide very closely. “Did you share this with Winchester?”
Kamir shrugged. “I did not have to, Sayin Hazelhurst—he felt it, too.”
“And then?”
“This morning Sayin Winchester sent me to get new workers.” Kamir’s voice lowered. “I left him here alone. If I had stayed …”
“You drove off in one of the vehicles.”
Kamir looked confused. “We’ve only had the one truck, since the other broke down last week.”
A chill swept through Hazelhurst. “That jeep not far from the rim …”
“I thought it was yours, Sayin.”
Hazelhurst turned to Melissa, his eyes speaking for him.
“Sayin Hazelhurst, what is it? You must tell me.”
“Winchester’s killers must have come here in it,” Hazelhurst said to his daughter.
Kamir felt for the sheathed knife wedged through his belt. “Then where are they, Sayin Hazelhurst?”
The old man’s eyes moved to the opening in the earth that Winchester seemed to have been clutching for as he died.
“Let’s get the equipment,” he said to Melissa.
“Dad, you’re not going to—”
“Yes, Daughter,” he interrupted, still peering downward. “I am.”
Chapter 7
“NOW, DAUGHTER,” BENSON HAZELHURST said two hours later, “you’re quite sure you don’t want me to strap a ray gun onto my side?”
“What I want,” Melissa Hazelhurst told her father, “is for you not to go down there at all. If you’re right about what this place is, you can’t go down until you’ve had time to take precautions, obtain the proper equipment.”
Hazelhurst couldn’t believe his ears. “More equipment than we have already? What more could we need?”
“Please, not another speech about finding the treasures of Tunis with a pickax and a chisel.”
“As I recall, it was a hammer.”
“You know what I mean.”
“What I know is that a dozen workmen ran away from here this morning, which means that the truth of this find will be all over Turkey by tomorrow at the latest. This place will be swarming with curiosity seekers and tourists mucking about. I can’t have that. I’ve worked too long to take that risk.”
“The biggest risk lies in going down there.”
The old man’s face softened. “My last dig, Melly. Let me retire to the drudgery of academia with memories of my own choosing. Now, are you ready yet or not?”
Melissa was too busy checking the volume meters on her recording equipment to pay his remark any heed. She slid the headphones briefly off her ears.
“Would you mind repeating that, Father?”
Benson Hazelhurst merely raised his eyebrows in response. He knew he must look as absurd as he felt, far more like an astronaut than a sixty-nine-year-old professor of archaeology. The white suit covering him from neck to foot was thermally warmed and cooled, adjusted automatically by body temperature. An oxygen tank with a twenty-minute supply was strapped to his back. The hose running from it snaked up over his shoulder and finished in a mask attached to his equipment vest at lapel level. The vest was equipped with special pockets that held two flashlights angled downward to provide as good a view of his descent as possible without tying up his hands. He would need them to steady himself and feel his way in the darkness for walls and corners, Melissa knew.
Her father’s helmet, meanwhile, looked at first glance like a motorcyclist’s. Actually, though, it was equipped with an infrared visor to maximize vision. And built into its crown was a miniature video camera that, over a limited range, would beam pictures of everything he saw up to a recorder at ground level. This would allow her to monitor his progress, as well as preserve the step-by-step process of whatever he uncovered.
His gloves were reinforced with Kevlar to prevent scrapes to his hands. His shoes were fitted with special rubberized soles that prevented slipping when the total weight of the wearer was brought to bear. A microphone and receiver were built into his helmet.
“I feel like a fool.” Hazelhurst sighed.
“A safe fool.”
“Yes.”
“Don’t forget, I’m bringing you up at the first sign of trouble.”
“Then you’re still expecting some.”
“Whoever killed Winchester must have run into it.”
Her father seemed maddeningly unmoved. “Perhaps.”
“Knowledge won’t protect you, Father.”
“Ignorance couldn’t have helped those who descended before me.”
“Turn around,” Melissa ordered.
As he crouched at the edge of the chasm, she fastened the winch holds into the two slots in her father’s vest, which was tailored for them. The winch apparatus would serve as Hazelhurst’s express elevator up when it came time for his return, or in the event of trouble. It would also lower him at a slow, careful pace that he could control with a remote transistor box. Additionally, the mechanism was fitted with mercury switches that snapped the line taut in the event of a sudden drop, responding much faster than the reflexes of any standard line bearers could ever hope to.
