12.21.12: The Vessel (The Altunai Annals) Page 9

  Fine, if he wasn’t going to cooperate ...

  It was a risky move. With so little energy to go on, she prayed the effort wouldn’t send her into a coma. Victoria relaxed her consciousness and let her own mind expand outward, bumping first into the air that surrounded them, before honing in on Terrance. Even feeling the heavy stares on her and thoughts of others shooting like missiles in her direction, she forced herself to concentrate, pulling to the surface all his hidden truths.

  She threw off the effects of the hypnotic state as soon as he’d given up the goods. “So, a tip from the Plaxis Corporation.”

  Terrance’s eyes went wide, then narrowed.

  “More to it than that, isn’t there?” Victoria continued. “A little quid pro quo, it seems. Are you guys so easily bought off these days? Kronastia gives a tip on Jaguar leaving out of Mexico City on a morning flight to London, and in exchange MI-6 gives him a free pass through immigration when he flies in following us?”

  “What the hell?”

  Truth like water flowed from his mind, and Victoria drank it down. Terrance was dumbfounded, on the other hand. The look of utter confusion and alarm in his eyes was one she’d come to recognize over the eons.

  “Terrance, or should I say Christopher,” the name he kept thinking as an automatic correction whenever she said his cover’s caller, “let me give you some props. Yeah, I’m a little surprised I didn’t see this coming. Congratulations. It’s not often someone sneaks up on me the way you did. Probably my own vanity’s more to blame than your cunning, but whatever. Point is, you did it. Hate to tell you, ain’t going to work.”

  “Save it for the hearing,” he muttered. How she knew so much, he couldn’t give a flying leap at the moment. What he did know was that he had just been insulted, and that game wasn’t going to provoke him.

  Victoria continued as though he had said nothing, “Of course, being on a plane, it will be harder to get away. Dmitri would think of that, wouldn’t he? Oh, I’m sure he could have had some of his goons waiting for me at Heathrow, but this way makes it difficult for me not to cause a scene, and he does know how I hate causing scenes.”

  The agent leaned in and whispered in her ear, “Face it, puddy tat, you’re caught. Just sit and stew until we get to London, okay? Nice knife by the way. Concealed weapon without permit on an international flight? That should tack a few more years on to your sentence.”

  With a chuckle, he dropped the knife back into the sack and put the bag over her hands, concealing her bound condition from the other passengers.

  “Christopher, I understand you’re just doing your job. I’m really sorry about this,” she apologized, though her tone hardly seemed remorseful. “You do seem like a really nice guy.”

  He inwardly recoiled when he felt Victoria’s fingertips bend around his wrist, but couldn’t shake her. “The seduction game isn’t going to work. Too bad, because you …What the ...”

  He looked to where her hand rested on his with confusion. The way the pallor of his skin grew paler by the second was impossible. Was it shock? Was she squeezing so hard that she was actually forcing the blood from his hand? But she was barely touching him. Then the feeling of ice began to flow up his arms, slowly snaking its way toward his chest. He tried pulling back without success. She had him pinned. He looked up with pleading eyes.

  “Dmitri assumes that because I no longer need to kill to feed, that I’m unwilling to. Sadly, that’s just not true. Do you know how much energy teleportation requires? And here I am, already cruising on fumes, because I tried to do the noble thing and leave all his thugs alive,” she said. “I am truly sorry about this, Chris, but it’s just part of my job. You’ll understand someday.”

  The ice climbed up his jugular, finally hitting the base of his brain. As he felt the first seizures overcome him, he was vaguely aware of a great flash of light. His body was practically stone now, every ounce of heat stolen. With his last living thought, he wondered how she had done it.

  The stewardess screamed, not because of the dead man in Seat 4C, but because a woman had just disappeared before her eyes.

  12.17.12

  Chapter 10

  “All of the objects you found belong to her,” Kronastia repeated when both men begged his pardon.

  In an odd sort of way, Shep was relieved to see Hector snap to attention. The laughter that rang out from his friend’s mouth brought with it some color back to his face. “¿Cómo es eso posible? First, Jaguar has been active since the late 70’s. Victoria wouldn’t even have been born then. Second, the site appeared to have been undisturbed for a thousand years, and I refuse to believe someone as inexperienced as Vick could have faked that.”

  Kronastia’s face flickered into a half grin. “Victoria, as you call her, is not as young as she looks, and by no one’s definition is she inexperienced.”

  Shep picked up on a bit of disdain, and perhaps regret, in the way Kronastia described her. As though he had the very experiences that evidenced just how un-inexperienced she really was.

  Still, he didn’t get it. “Okay, some women look really good for their age, and perhaps Jaguar uses plastic surgery to stay incognito. But those legs. I’ve never seen legs like that on anyone over the age of thirty.”

  Kronastia laughed like he was the exclusive party to an inside joke. “Until now.”

  Shep’s smile evaporated. Kronastia wasn’t joking, though it was possible he was affluent enough to be a free-range crazy person. Shep decided to play along and see just how far off his Russian rocker the mobster was. And, perhaps, to stall his probable and impending death.

  “So just how old is she?”

  “That, dear doctor, is classified. Let’s just say, she’s been around. And those objects she stashed here? That’s just the beginning. She’s got things buried from Tunisia to Timbuktu, though I daresay none so precious as these. I can tell that by the fact that she buried them here, where she grew up.”

  Hector’s features went stoic. “Wait a minute. You actually believe that Victoria, what, buried those things here herself?” He swallowed his nerves in one hard gulp. “In ... 1100 CE?”

  Kronastia mused and nodded vaguely. “Give or take a lifetime or two, but yes.” He clearly sensed the learned men’s skepticism. “I have no proof to offer you specifically about the Olmec site. I know you are both men of science, and scientist always want undeniable proof, or at least overwhelming evidence. I trust you are both familiar with the statistical concept of an outlier?”

  They nodded. Anyone who analyzed data in a professional environment was. Outliers were data points, ones not necessarily untrue, but too far from the normalized cluster to be considered valid. In short, anomalies.

  Kronastia continued, “Well, Victoria Kent is the most outlieriest of outliers. You might have to look outside your current conceptions to see her, but I assure you, gentlemen, she’s worth the journey.”

  Giving a nervous chuckle, Shep crossed his arms over his chest. “Okay, let me review. First, you’re saying that Victoria Kent is actually the international black market trader, Jaguar. All right, if you say so. I’m sure odder things have happened. But now, on top of that, you want us to believe she’s a thousand years old and buried a stash of objects she collected from ancient Europe, Asia, and Africa before the advent of transoceanic travel in a Mayan settlement because she felt it was safest that they be stored at home? In the Mayan Empire? A thousand years ago? When she was alive?”

  Shep approached every question with a deeper tone of accusation.

  The Russian simply shook his head and laughed wryly. “No, Professor, the Mayan Empire wasn’t her home.” Shep felt a momentary sense of relief and a certain air of I-told-you-so before Kronastia slashed it away. “She’s an Olmec.”

  Hector’s scoffing laugh degraded into a coughing fit. Doubt in his patron’s sa
nity seemed to embolden him. “Mr. Kronastia, where to begin? She’s way too tall, she’s too pale ... Most telling, she’s alive.”

  Kronastia was not deterred. “There are reasons for those discrepancies. As I said, outlier.”

  He grinned as he slid his hand into the recesses of his jacket. Shep and Hector both tensed and bit their tongues, fearing that the Russian was finding what might later be labeled—if they were lucky enough to have their bodies discovered—Exhibit A.

  Kronastia read the fear on their faces. Jollity alit his features as he withdrew not a pistol, but an alligator-skin wallet from his inside pocket. “Relax, gentlemen, it isn’t lethal any more. Not even in my hands.”

  He pulled another photo, this one black and white, from one of the wallet’s flaps and handed it to Shep. Hector came to sit by him and examine it.

  “Marilyn Monroe?” Shep asked.

  It was a simple picture of the famous bombshell seated at some club, dressed to the nines, a martini in one hand and a smile on her lips. However, he looked more closely, and saw another familiar face, partially obscured by a cascade of light brown hair, seated to her right.

  Victoria.

  Shep scoffed. “Photo manipulation. Half the fifth graders in America could do that.”

  Kronastia nodded, but seemed no less confident. He presented another photo, and Shep’s body went numb. Victoria’s smiling gaze wasn’t obscured this time, though her hair tied up in ponytails gave her a more youthful demeanor. The brunette around whom Victoria’s arm was draped threw him for a loop, however. In the background, a banner painted in brilliant colors welcomed visitors to the Delta Sigma Nu. If Shep closed his eyes, he could still recall the memory of his wife’s sorority pendant, tethered to a gold chain, bouncing on her chest the first time they’d made love.

  “Victoria knew Christine?” he muttered in disbelief. “How? You didn’t even know I was coming until ... There’s no way you could have ...”

  His pulse echoed in his ears. Passing out was one option his brain was considering to stop him from going into an all-out nervous breakdown. Sweat glistened across his brow. Kronastia had tried to continue telling him the story, but frankly, Shep heard little. Words clumped together like autumn leaves falling to the ground. Ancient, warrior, traveler ... All arbitrary terms, like someone had set the dictionary on random.

  He had tried to find some modicum of sanity in the reality. Repeatedly, Shep reminded himself that Kronastia was a rich, criminal mob boss. Surely if he wanted a photo manipulation of Winston Churchill frenching Rush Limbaugh, it would just take a phone call, ten minutes, and wiring funds into the proper account. But Christine wasn’t Churchill or Limbaugh or anyone famous—she was just Christine. So why would he have a picture of her with ... Well, what evidence was suggesting was a ...

  Truth be told, he didn’t know exactly what Victoria may be.

  His motions blurred as Kronastia’s valet received instructions to accompany Shep back to his shelter to prepare his bag. He’d never gotten around to unpacking, but he took advantage of the opportunity to pull out the bottle of whiskey he’d purchased the day before from duty free. His liquescent friend embraced him as they all loaded into the Humvee and set out to the airport.

  -Ψ-

  The stinging sensation turned out to be caused by light beaming across the cabin from a half-shaded window. Shep’s mouth tasted like a hangover, and his muscles ached from the unorthodox sleeping position. Altogether, the feeling was way too familiar.

  “Feeling better, Professor?”

  The tempting legs of a woman came into focus as his eyes adjusted. It was the stewardess—if that’s what you called them on a private jet—leaning over slightly and literally presenting relief to Shep on a golden platter. He shifted and pivoted, pulling himself up as his hands massaged his pounding temple before moving down to rub the sleep from his eyes. He graciously took the ibuprofen and glass of water offered.

  “What happened?”

  “You drank yourself into a stupor, then passed out,” Kronastia informed him stoically. “Probably a good thing, too. You missed Dr. Gonzalez’s near emotional collapse when my crews dismantled the site.”

  Shep heard Hector’s voice grumble in response, but his vision was still coming online. “There was no reason to shut down the project over this. We were still finding pottery shards and other artifacts, some of them even Olmec.”

  Kronastia snapped toward the back of the plane. “The only Olmec artifact I’m concerned about is on a plane somewhere over the Atlantic.”

  Shep looked across the galley to see Kronastia’s eyes trained on him, a slightly amused smirk on his face. Shep downed the pills before turning to his insistent host.

  “Anything a little harder than water on this bird?”

  Kronastia chuckled and shook his head. “I don’t partake of alcohol myself. It makes me a rude host, I suppose. Then again, I don’t often have guests. I apologize, but we should be landing in a few hours. I’ve been led to believe there’s plenty of alcohol in London.”

  That took Shep aback. He wasn’t sure exactly when they had left the Veracruz airport. The sun was definitely shining brightly now, and it seemed to him as if they should have been in Jolly Ole England some time ago.

  As though reading the very question in his mind, Kronastia added, “We had to make a quick stop over after you passed out. Dr. Gonzalez needed to retrieve something for me in Mexico City.”

  Shep’s eyes searched out Hector and saw him sitting at the back of the cabin, silent, his gaze fixed unwaveringly out the window. No doubt he was trying to rationalize ... No, trying to decide whether or not to rationalize Kronastia’s wild yarn. While Shep’s comfort to confusion was usually 60-proof, Hector’s involved utter silence and introspection.

  And, it seemed, induced the sniffles. As Shep’s eyes focused, he saw that Hector had prepared himself a cocoon. He sat, swathed in a cotton blanket.

  “What’s wrong with him?”

  Kronastia gave a passing glance to Hector, then shrugged. “I’ve read that stress induces cold-like symptoms in some. Air travel doesn’t seem to agree with him either. He threw up both times we took off.”

  “What did we stop for?” Shep picked his brain for what would have been deemed worthy of a delay. The patchy memories he had before the alcohol had made everything blissfully irrelevant failed to inform. Kronastia had been hell bent on getting to London, that much he could recall, as he seemed to know inexplicably where Victoria was bound.

  “The amulet.”

  “That figures into this whole wild goose chase just how?”

  Almost as if he had timed it exactly to coincide with a question Shep was actually quite eager to have answered, an electronic chirp permeated the air. Kronastia held out one finger to Shep and opened his cell. “Excuse me, Dr. Smyth.”

  What followed was a rapid-fire conversation in elegant Arabic, though Kronastia’s dialect seemed old and refined to Shep’s ear, which was accustomed to the crude vernacular of manual laborers in the Egyptian sands. Shep had spent enough time in the Middle East to have a basic working knowledge of the tongue, but Kronastia spoke with the grace and fluidity of an upper class native. So much fluidity, in fact, that Shep found it difficult to follow. He was getting some sort of news, and whatever news it was wasn’t pleasant judging by the pissed off look on his face.

  “Problem?”

  Hector stretched his arms and legs out as he, too, took notice of the odd tension and air of frustration radiating from Kronastia’s direction.

  The Russian nodded. “They found out which plane she was on,” he answered as he closed down his phone. “Was, that is. We’ve confirmed from security cameras that she did indeed board in Mexico City, but unfortunately, they failed to apprehend her. Seems she was no longer on the plane when it landed.” />
  That didn’t make any sense. Not that much had for about the last forty-eight hours or so. He hadn’t expected for anything involving the cast of characters he had encountered since arriving in Mexico to be humdrum, but he had expected it to be possible.

  “You know what I think?” Hector suddenly piped up from the back of the cabin. “I think you’re a sick bastard who’s trying to mindfuck a couple of helpless innocents before you tire of the game and kill us both.”

  So much for the Queen’s English, but if Kronastia took offense to the accusation, he never showed it. He kept his gaze fixed on Shep, whom he seemed to have decided was the more approachable of the two.

  Working through a post-binge hangover wasn’t the professor’s specialty, but he was trying. “So, okay. She got on the plane in Mexico City. The plane landed in London, and she’s not on it. So, logic tells us that one of two things explains the disconnect. One, one of our assumed facts is wrong: either she never got on in Mexico or she did indeed get off in London. Maybe she slipped past security or had some way of changing her appearance on the plane. Or, two, she got off the plane somewhere in between the two and …” He searched for a scenario that would allow the second hypotheses to prove true, because, damn it, he needed something to make sense. “… parachuted into the Atlantic Ocean, apparently.”

  The Russian’s smile fell, as though he had been so proud of his child making excellent progress, only to have him reach the same, ultimately wrong conclusion. “I wouldn’t put it past her, but jumping out of a commercial airliner at forty thousand feet is hardly Tlalli’s style.”

  “Not to mention that no human could survive the jump,” Hector grumbled, drawing momentary glances from both the men, neither of which Hector chose to engage.