Rogue Angel 51: The Pretender's Gambit (24 page)

Chapter 36

Standing outside the museum on Dejima Island, Fernando Sequeira held the AK-47 rifle and took cover beside the door. He wore a protective vest and helmet with a bullet-resistant faceplate.

Three of his men had charged into the room and the gunfire had started immediately.

Brisa had provided information about the man who owned the museum. Judging from Shirasaki’s criminal background and his interest in history, Sequeira had known immediately that the
Yakuza
warlord wouldn’t have been interested in any kind of a deal.

That had left only force as a means of acquiring the elephant. Sequeira had planned on ambushing Shirasaki and his people when they came out of the building. Then this mysterious
Maze
had been brought up. Sequeira hadn’t expected that, and he didn’t want anyone else to know where the temple lay. That prize belonged to him and he intended to claim it.

When the shooting slowed, Sequeira risked a glance around the door frame. All three of his men walked forward in crouches. Two Japanese guards lay prone on the floor amid a shambles of dinosaur bones. Shattered glass from display cases lay strewn across the tiles.

“Espallargas, where is Annja Creed?” Sequeira demanded. Espallargas was the sniper Brisa had assigned to the team after the debacles at Seventh-Kilometer Market and in Moscow. The Portuguese mercenary had a reputation and he’d come at once when Brisa had called.

“She is still in the back room.” Espallargas’s response was quiet and controlled.

The distinct sound of the .50-caliber sniper rifle carried over the comm.

“Two of Shirasaki’s people are no longer a threat.” Another rifle shot punctuated the response.

“No one escapes,” Sequeira stated.

“Understood.”

Sequeira plunged into the building, leading the second wave of mercenaries.

* * *

N
O
SOONER
HAD
the dead man hit the floor than Klykov pulled his pistol and fired at the driver, who had already drawn his weapon and took aim at the Russian. Both men started firing at what seemed to be the same time. The driver got off two shots. Klykov staggered back a moment but never stopped shooting. Annja believed all of Klykov’s rounds struck the driver in the chest, and at least one of the bullets hit the man in the face, snapping his head back.

Another heavy-caliber round punched through the wall, creating another fist-size hole, then caught another of Shirasaki’s guards in the chest.

The man who had assembled the Maze hurriedly worked to take the artifact apart. Annja went to him, placing the pieces into the protective case, like they were engaged in some macabre board game.

Ishii turned to run, but another round from the heavy-caliber weapon blasted through the rear wall of the building and caught him in midstride. He dropped, his forward momentum slowed but unchecked.

Shirasaki fired at Klykov as he retreated from the room through the doorway. The other guard tried to follow him, but Klykov cut him down. Gunfire from the outer room drove Shirasaki into hiding amid displays of samurai armor, reducing all the artifacts to ruin in seconds.

When the final piece of the Maze was in the protective case and the latches were snapped closed, the man went for the pistol holstered at his hip. Annja placed both hands on the table and vaulted across, swinging her leg around in a roundhouse kick that caught the man on the jaw. He staggered and tried to recover, but Annja landed on her feet, swept his pistol from his grip with one hand, and snap-kicked him in the face hard enough to bounce him off the nearest wall.

He shook his head and pushed himself at her as blood streamed down his face. Annja raised the pistol to back him down, then another heavy-caliber round exploded through the wall and smashed into him, sprawling him dead before her.

Grabbing the case containing the pieces of the Maze, Annja ducked, knowing that wherever the sniper was, he could somehow see into the room. They weren’t safe there, and the bullets exchanged outside the back room let her know they weren’t safe out there either.

Desperate, Annja glanced at the walls, realizing then that three of the walls were prefabricated. She looked over to Klykov, who had dropped down into a crouch in the corner.

Staying low, Annja slipped a multi-tool knife from her backpack. She slashed a large
X
across the wall, slicing deeply into the Sheetrock to score it. Balancing on one foot and her hands, she kicked the wall, shattering it. On her knees, she battered the broken surface and yanked the pieces away, exposing the studs and the opposite wall.

The cratered opening let out into another room, this one an office with a window.

The wall studs were sixteen inches apart. Annja shimmied out of her backpack and shoved it into the office, following it quickly with the case that held the Maze. She slipped through, then turned back for Klykov.

“Come on.”

Klykov looked at the wall studs doubtfully, but took off his coat and tossed it through. Then he followed, getting stuck only for an instant.

“Smart,” he said as the din of gunfire echoed around them.

“Lucky,” Annja replied. “But unless we find a way out of here, we’ve just gone from one mousetrap to another.”

Klykov took up a position beside the hole. Blood leaked from his left shoulder.

“How badly are you wounded?” Annja asked.

“A scratch. Find a way out of here while I keep watch.”

Knowing that Klykov’s wound didn’t matter if they didn’t find a way out, Annja scanned the office. Her immediate thought was that this was Shirasaki’s personal space. A large desk with an executive chair in back, two smaller chairs in front and several shelves filled with small artifacts.

The only door led into the main museum, but there was a window on the side. Annja rose up and looked outside at the narrow alley that separated the museum from the building next door.

“There’s an alley. Maybe fifteen feet across. It’s made of stone and should provide some cover from the sniper.”

Klykov nodded. “Then we go. We cannot stay here. Shirasaki and whoever is fighting out there both want us dead.”

Annja stood and picked up one of the chairs in front of the desk. “We go fast.”

“Of course.” Klykov stood and pulled his hat on tightly.

Twisting her hips, Annja threw the chair through the window. A shower of broken glass spun out over the alley. Grabbing the small area rug from the center of the room, she heaved it over the windowsill to provide protection from the glass shards.

She pulled her backpack over her shoulder and picked up the case in one hand. Heaving herself through the window, she landed on her feet on the other side and immediately sprinted for the building, hoping that the sniper hadn’t yet spotted them making their escape.

Klykov came through the window immediately after her. He landed wrong, though, and fell, scrambling at once to get to his feet. As he shoved himself up, a large-caliber bullet hit the alley pavement and left a cracked crater where his head had been only a moment before.

At the corner of the building, Annja spotted the rooftop sniper a hundred yards away, well beyond a reasonably accurate pistol shot. Klykov reached the building, but a bullet chewed a chunk off its corner.

“The other men the sniper is working with will know we have escaped.” Klykov searched the area. “They will come after us.”

Annja knew they couldn’t outrun the gunmen if pursued on foot. She was too burdened and Klykov was wounded. She pointed to the closest of the three SUVs parked in front of the museum.

“There.”

“A driver may have been left behind.”

“I know.” Annja freed her captured pistol and, carrying the case in one hand, sprinted for the vehicle. She hoped that the keys had been left in the SUV. Hot-wiring on the fly wasn’t anything new to her, but they had absolutely no time for that.

The driver stood on the other side of the vehicle with a pistol in his hand. His attention was divided between the front of the museum and the street. He heard Annja and Klykov running toward him and turned, swinging the pistol around.

Annja didn’t know if she fired first or Klykov did. The gunshots, several of them, cracked in quick syncopation. The driver went down. Annja passed her pistol to Klykov, then reached for the door, yanking it open and breathing a sigh of relief when she saw the keys in the ignition. She pulled herself up into the seat as Klykov opened the door behind her and clambered in.

Tossing her backpack and the case onto the floorboard in front of the passenger seat, Annja started the engine and yanked the transmission into Drive as a handful of gunmen bolted from the entrance to the museum.

“Hang on.”

“Drive,” Klykov responded. He had both guns up and was firing methodically, hitting the gunmen but not doing much damage because they were wearing vests. Bullets raked the SUV’s side, knocked out the windows, but didn’t penetrate the body.

One of the SUVs suddenly exploded, turning into a fireball. Shrapnel and the concussive wave slammed into the gunmen, knocking them down and ending the lethal spray of bullets.

Amazed, Annja glanced in her rearview mirror as she passed, and spotted Nguyen Rao running after their SUV. At the street’s edge, she tapped on the brake and slowed the vehicle so Rao could catch up.

Klykov was already tracking Rao with his weapons.

“Don’t shoot him,” Annja said. “He’s on our side. I think.”

Klykov nodded grimly and held his fire. Rao reached the other side of the SUV and opened the door, sliding in beside Klykov. Annja accelerated into traffic, leaving the museum behind and trying to think of where she could ditch the SUV and where they were going to hide.

“You turned their vehicle into a bomb?” Klykov said to Rao.

Rao nodded. “I knew the two of you were trapped in the building. I thought I would create a distraction, perhaps split their forces, and that somehow I could find you in the confusion. Before I could do that, I saw you run across the alley. I put a rag in the gas tank of one of the SUVs, thinking I would put that vehicle out of commission and maybe injure some of them. Then you stole this vehicle.” He nodded. “You work very fast.”

“Sequeira and his people work very fast, too,” Annja said as she negotiated a lane exchange in heavy traffic. “We need a place to go to ground.”

“I have a place.”

Chapter 37

“This is your
place
?” Annja stared at the small temple ahead of them. Traditional naga heads stood out in bold relief on either side of the double doors covered in red lacquer. Brightly colored Shiva lingams brandished swords and snarling faces. The style of the temple was more Khmer than Japanese Shinto.

After ditching the SUV in Nagasaki a short distance from Shirasaki’s private museum, certain they hadn’t been followed, Annja, Rao and Klykov walked a few blocks, then caught a taxi. They’d changed taxis three more times as they’d driven to Kitakyushu in Fukuoka Prefecture, spending hours to complete the relatively short drive.

Rao had been adamant that they not bring trouble to their final destination.

“This is the Temple of Small Streams,” Rao said. “We will be welcome here. Wait, please.”

Annja studied Klykov as he took up a post beside her. He looked a little grayer than he normally did, but he was standing on his own two feet and was alert. She had dressed his wound and bought him a fresh shirt while walking through a market. The damage wasn’t life threatening, but she knew he was in pain.

“How are you doing?” she asked.

“I am fine, Annja. Thank you for your concern, but you needn’t worry. It will take more than a scratch to kill me.”

“Are you still happy about coming along?”

Klykov grinned at her. “I would not have missed this. I will have many stories to tell my comrades when I return. They will all be envious of me. And do not worry. I will continue.”

Although she knew he was pushing himself and exhausting his reserves, Annja didn’t bother trying to argue with him. Being near the end of a particularly twisty pursuit of archaeological lore filled everyone involved with nervous excitement.

“Do you trust this man?” Klykov nodded slightly toward Rao, who was still conversing with the monks.

Annja thought seriously about that, then she nodded. “Bart does, and I’m pretty sure I do, too.”

“Why?”

“The same reasons I feel like I can trust you.”

Klykov scowled. “You trust too easily. So does your friend.”

Amused, Annja smiled. “Bart told me he trusts you, too.”

“Well,” Klykov said, “the detective is at least fifty percent correct.”

* * *

I
NSIDE
THE
TEMPLE
, the monks showed Annja, Rao and Klykov to a tiny room where Rao said they could stay until they made other arrangements. Although the monks displayed keen interest in what had brought the group there, no one asked questions. They did, however, bring food, all of it Cambodian cuisine featuring fish paste, mixed with pork and served with cucumbers, squash soup and sticky rice.

As they ate at a low table and sat cross-legged on the floor, Annja reassembled the Maze and brought Rao up to date on what they had learned from Ishii and Shirasaki. Rao sat quietly and listened, his eyes watchful as the Maze took shape. For the first time, Annja noticed how some of the wooden pieces seemed attracted to each other while others didn’t fit together so easily. She ignored that for now and concentrated instead on the assembly.

“I cannot believe I am seeing this.” Rao stared at the completed construction. “The elders in the temple had believed the Maze lost or destroyed. It disappeared before the Elephant of Ishana vanished.”

“Speaking of the Elephant, what if it’s not the genuine article?” Klykov was picking up where he had left off earlier.

Rao’s lips twitched. “Rumors suggested that many copies of the Elephant had been made to throw off anyone who came looking for it.”

“Replicas?” The possibility gave Annja pause. “I haven’t heard anything about replicas of the Elephant.”

“I have never seen a replica,” Rao replied.

“There’s only one way to find out if this statue is the real Elephant.” Annja reached for her backpack and took the case from within. “Ishii didn’t get to the part about how the Elephant is supposed to find its home.”

“According to the legends that were handed down to my temple elders,” Rao said, “the Elephant was crafted from rock embued by a gift from Shiva. After receiving this gift, it is said that it would always know its home when it was within the Maze.” The golden light from the candles the monks had supplied to light the room played gently over the planes of his face.

“How is it supposed to do that?” Annja tapped the assembled Maze with her forefinger. “There isn’t a groove or any method to attach the Elephant.”

“Once the two are together, the story recounts that the divine will of Shiva will drive the Elephant to the location of the Temple of the Dreaming Rumdul.”

Gently, Annja placed the Elephant in the center of the Maze along one of the trails represented there.

The Elephant sat and did not move for a moment, then the statue quivered and slowly began sliding across the Maze. Not believing what she was seeing, Annja had to resist plucking the Elephant up from the Maze. Tensely, she watched it continue across the terrain, winding through hills and valleys, through the jungle—though it actually slid through or over the representative pieces, and began to climb one of the mountains.

Halfway up the mountain, the Elephant came to a stop. It stood tilted slightly sideways.

Staring at the statue, Annja felt certain it had gotten stuck. She attempted to remove the Elephant from the Maze and discovered that some force held it to the wooden construction. Gingerly, she pulled it free, then ran the Elephant over the surface slowly. She felt the attraction then, but the farther she got away from the mountain, the attraction grew steadily less.

Understanding then, Annja grinned in amused appreciation.

“What is happening?” Klykov asked.

“The whole Maze has lodestone built into it. Probably beads of it worked into the wood, with increasing density in the layers to pull the Elephant along till it reaches the strongest magnetic point on the board.” Annja placed the statue back on the lacquered wooden surface at a different starting point and the Elephant shivered and once more began its trek across the Maze.

“Magnets?” Klykov watched the Elephant with bright interest.

“Not magnets,” Annja said. “Magnets as we think of them are artificially created with electricity, usually pieces of steel or iron, something that can be given a permanent magnet charge. Lodestone, on the other hand, is a naturally occurring magnetic substance that also retains a permanent magnetic charge. The strongest of those is a mineral called magnetite. Judging from the strength of the magnetic field, what’s embedded in the wood of this Maze has got to be magnetite.”

The Elephant reached the mountain again and stopped once more, seemingly defying gravity because it should have tipped over.

“Some of the current thinking is that lodestones are charged by magnetic fields that occur from lightning-bolt strikes.”

“Lightning strikes cause the magnetite to become magnetic?” Rao asked.

Annja nodded. “Some scientists think so. Not just magnetic for a little while, but magnetic permanently. Lodestones, not magnets, were originally used in compasses. Lodestone in Middle English means
leading stone
, which is where the name came from, because they led compass users home.”

“The men who put this board together were very clever,” Klykov said with a note of appreciation.

“Definitely.” Annja stared at the Maze. “If we can find this location, if we can find this mountain, chances are good that we can find the hidden temple.”

“It should not be too difficult,” Rao said.

“Shirasaki couldn’t find it, and he was using satellite imagery.”

“Several hundred years have passed since the temple was hidden.” Rao rested his hands on his knees while he sat in a full lotus position with ease. “The land has changed.”

“That’s the problem.”

“However,” Rao went on, “the monks I am working with have maps that go back to those days. They will show the land as it was then. We have access to those.” He nodded at the Maze. “Now that we have this, we can find this valley…and hopefully that mountain.”

One of the young monks entered the small room and addressed Rao. They spoke quickly, then Rao got to his feet. “We need to go. The brothers tell me that men who, judging from their description, are men serving Sequeira are searching the neighborhood for us.”

Dissatisfied with the amount of time they’d had to devote to understanding the board and the statue, Annja dissembled the Maze and packed the pieces away, then got to her feet, slung her backpack over her shoulder and picked up the case. “How are they finding us so quickly?”

“That is a question we’ll have to address later.” Rao pointed toward the door. “For now we must once more escape. There is a back way out of the temple.”

* * *

S
EQUEIRA
STRODE
INTO
the temple and looked around the dim rooms. His men had secured the small structure and stood conspicuously with drawn weapons.

“Who’s in charge here?” Sequeira demanded.

One of the old men stepped forward. His face was weathered and blotchy from age. A large birthmark marred his forehead over his right eyebrow. “I am most senior among our brethren.”

“Where is Annja Creed?” Sequeira moved menacingly next to the man.

The old man shook his head. “I know no one by that name.”

“Nguyen Rao brought a woman and an old man here with him,” Sequeira stated. “Don’t bother lying to me. This is true.”

“It is true. Brother Nguyen brought visitors to the temple.”

“Where are they?”

“They have gone.”

“Where did they go?”

The old man shook his head. “Several minutes ago they left the temple. That is the last I have seen of them.”

Sequeira cursed and lifted his pistol, pointing it at the birthmark. For a moment, he held that position. The old monk never batted an eye and waited calmly to see if he would live or die.

Finally, Sequeira realized killing the old man might bring down even more trouble for him here in Nagasaki. Shirasaki wouldn’t be helpful with the local police.

Sequeira lowered his pistol and put it away. Turning, he walked out of the temple and fished his sat phone from his pocket. He texted Brisa.

CREED’S GONE. DO YOU STILL HAVE A FIX ON HER?

YES. SHE’S A HUNDRED AND TWENTY-SIX METERS FROM YOUR PRESENT POSITION. SHE’S STAYING PUT.

SEND ME THE LOCATION
. Excited again, thinking that Annja Creed and her companions believed themselves hidden, Sequeira called his team together and they climbed back into their vehicles.

* * *

F
RANTICALLY
, A
NNJA
SEARCHED
her backpack, knowing a tracking device had to be there somewhere. That was the only idea she could think of to explain Sequeira’s ability to know her location. Klykov and Rao had instantly agreed.

She’d changed her clothing and she had already checked her coat. Even though she hadn’t found the device on her coat, she’d decided not to take the chance that two tracking devices weren’t being used. She’d hung the coat in a noodle shop they’d passed, then kept walking, searching the backpack.

“It’s got to be here.” She ran her hands along the outside of the backpack, feeling for any irregularity. With as much rough handling as the backpack had been victim to over the years, the surface was also intimately familiar to her and the idea of losing it pained her. She liked old things, and her backpack was one of those.

Klykov held her elbow and guided her along the street, avoiding collisions with pedestrians. Rao kept watch for Sequeira and his stormtroopers, who had to be closing in on them. The thought that they were only seconds away was unnerving.

“Perhaps you should abandon the backpack,” Klykov suggested.

“Not until I have to.”

“It’s a backpack, Annja. It can be replaced.”

“This backpack and I have been through a lot together. Plus, I’m not going to be able to find another one that holds everything I carry the way this one does. It was handmade for me.”

“Would you forfeit your life—
our
lives—for a vanity?”

“No.” Annja strengthened her resolve, knowing she would lose the backpack before she let anything happen to Klykov or Rao. “If I don’t find it in the next—
ah
!” Her fingers quickly dug out what looked like a straight needle with a crystalline bead about the size of a stylus point at one end. A trace of circuitry gleamed in the stem.

She stopped and looked at the device. “I’ve never seen anything like this.”

Klykov glanced at it, then tugged on her sleeve and got her moving again. “It is indeed a tracking device. It has a GPS locater. A very clever gadget.”

“You’ve seen these before?”

“
Da.
A few times. In the business I do, I find myself sometimes involved in situations where you have to know about such things.”

Annja stared at the tracking device. “When was this put on my backpack?” The past several days had been so busy that she couldn’t remember. There had been plenty of opportunities at the Seventh-Kilometer Market when she’d come into contact with Sequeira’s enforcers.

But then she had to wonder how they had found her there in the first place. The mystery was maddening.

She dismissed the question, knowing that she wouldn’t figure that out anytime soon. And that wasn’t the most intriguing conundrum facing her. The Temple of the Dreaming Rumdul was in Cambodia awaiting discovery.

Focusing on that, she tossed the tracking device into the gutter and kept going.

* * *

W
ALKING
QUICKLY
ALONG
the sidewalk, shoving through pedestrians that didn’t get out of his way fast enough, Sequeira scanned the street where Brisa said Annja Creed was located. Brisa had insisted the American woman was there, surely within view.

“Does anyone have eyes on Creed?” he barked over the comm.

There was no answer.

Incensed, Sequeira stood in the middle of the sidewalk. “She’s here! Find her!”