Annja rose the next morning with the dream still fresh in her mind, which was unusual for her. More often than not, she forgot her dreams upon waking, but something about this one stuck in the forefront of her mind and wouldn’t leave her alone. All through breakfast her mind worried at it, the way your tongue will worry a loose tooth.
It was as if her subconscious was trying to tell her something.
While the others were still finishing their food, she excused herself and made her way through the trees and down to the excavation. Once there, it only took a few seconds for her to understand why the dream was bothering her so much.
The location of the ceremony in her dream matched the location of the dig.
The bog, the rock cairn, even the remains of the massive oak tree were right where they’d been in her dream. A glance at the excavation grid showed her that the four heads had all been found in the same general locations as she’d seen the High Druid toss them in the dream.
Her dream, it seemed, had come to life.
Now hang on a minute, she told herself. Don’t get carried away. You saw the site yesterday; you spent several hours working right in the middle of it all. Is it any wonder that you saw it again in your dream?
Of course not.
She’d taken her excitement about the day in the field, her first in weeks, and carried it with her in her dreams that night.
That was it; it had to be.
Still she lingered, her eyes going again and again to the shell of the ancient oak rising in the middle of the peat. In her dream, someone important had been buried nearby.
Ignoring the voice of reason that was quietly protesting in the back of her mind, she grabbed a shovel from the pile of tools nearby and headed for the oak.
That’s where Craig found her ten minutes later. She’d eyeballed the distance from the tree as best she remembered it from her dream, telling herself she was crazy all the while but unwilling, or unable, to give it up without at least looking first. After all, she told herself, what harm could it do?
Craig, however, had a different opinion.
“Annja! What on earth are you doing?” he shouted in dismay when he saw the trench she had begun digging into the peat. “I can’t believe that you, of all people, are ignoring procedure like this! We haven’t photographed or measured that section of the site, and we’re not even close to being ready to begin excavations….”
Craig’s tirade suddenly fell silent. Annja followed his gaze to where he was staring at the ground a few inches from her left foot. A shout of triumph almost passed her lips when she saw what he was staring at.
A hand was thrust upward through the peat, as if reaching for the light of the sky above.
T
HERE WAS ROOM
for three of them to work the find so Craig brought in Paolo Novick, a professor from the University of Turin and an expert on pre-Roman Gallic cultures, to help them. Most of the rest of the team gathered about to watch. Little by little, the peat was peeled away, exposing another inch of the man’s remains.
It took them almost four hours to bring the chieftain’s body into the light of day for the first time in millenia. Unlike the remains they’d uncovered to date, this one was completely intact. Everything from the shoes on his feet to the tunic he wore beneath his long coat of mail was in excellent condition, seemingly none the worse for wear after their years of submersion in the bog. Even the small piece of twine that bound his long red hair in a ponytail had survived.
A quick measurement put his height at seventy-four inches, and that was after the bog’s natural preservation process had shrunk the body slightly. In life, he’d probably been closer to six and a half feet tall, which Annja knew was a literal giant for that day and age. His size, combined with the massive knot of red hair that still hung from his skull, quickly earned him the nickname Big Red.
Photographs were taken, covering Big Red from every angle possible so that a record would be preserved of how and where he had been found before the laborious process of removing him from the peat could begin. The previous night’s thunderstorm had Craig worried that the weather would take a turn for the worse soon, however, and he didn’t want the body left exposed to the elements. The decision was made to cut a block out of the peat, body and all, and move that back to the camp where it could be studied and worked on at leisure, away from the potential damage the elements could inflict.
As Craig sent several members of the team back to the camp to organize the tools they would need to pull off their plan, Annja bent over the body with a set of hand tools. She was still shocked that Big Red had been there at all; she’d almost convinced herself that everything she’d seen in her dream had been just that, a dream. Obviously it had been something more. She wondered just what part Joan’s sword had played in it all. It wouldn’t be the first time its powers had surprised her, that was for sure.
Using a miniature pick and a small brush, she began to work at the peat still covering the front of Big Red’s throat. She remembered the strange gleaming necklace the chieftain had worn around his throat during the burial ceremony and wondered if that, too, had been real.
A chunk of peat cracked and fell away from the rest, partially revealing the gleaming surface of the tribanded necklace Big Red was wearing around his throat.
“What have you got?” Professor Novick asked from his position at her side.
“Looks like a necklace, maybe a torc of some kind,” she said, and leaned back to let him take a look.
He whistled at the sight of it. “What is that? Obsidian?”
She shook her head. “I don’t think so. It looks metallic to me. It seems too shiny but maybe it’s iron. We’ll have to wait until we can get him into the lab to examine it more closely.”
As the day wore on and the hard work of removing Big Red from his resting place got under way, Annja was forced to forget about the necklace and concentrate on the task at hand.
The damage, however, had already been done, though Annja didn’t know it.
The block they cut out of the peat reminded Annja of one of the stones used in the building of the pyramids; it looked that big. It was also heavy enough that they had to use two different winches to get it up out of the earth and into the front of the Bobcat they’d had brought up from London to serve as their transport vehicle. Once the peat slab was secured in place, the Bobcat made its way up the hill and down the path through the woods to the camp that part of the team had spent the afternoon clearing.
A new tent had been erected in their absence—a thick tarp rolled out in the center of the floor—and it was on this that the peat block was finally placed. Seeing Big Red’s body partially protruding from its surface reminded Annja of
Star Wars;
Han Solo encased in carbonite was far less interesting to her than this ancient Gallic warrior, however.
She, Craig and Paolo worked through the afternoon, slowly chipping away at the heavy peat surrounding Big Red’s body, freeing him inch by inch from the preserving matter. By the time they called it a night, the sun had long since set and many of the camp’s other residents had gone to bed.
As they were leaving, Craig pulled her aside.
“How’d you know?” he asked. “How did you know to dig there, of all places?”
She answered him as honestly as she could. “I saw it all in a dream.”
He laughed. “Right,” he said. “And I suppose tomorrow you’ll wake up and tell me you’ve discovered the location of Genghis Khan’s long-lost tomb.”
Annja smiled. “Nah. Been there, done that.”
The look of shocked surprise on his face was the perfect end to a perfect day.
Shortly after midnight a man slipped out of a tent in the middle of the camp and quietly made his way across the clearing to the tree line just beyond. At the edge of the woods he stopped and turned, looking back the way he’d come. He waited, one long moment, then another, watching, listening, making certain that no one had followed him.
Assured that he was unobserved and alone, the man disappeared into the woods, following a faint path through the trees until he reached the deadfall he’d selected as a landmark. There he turned and traveled for another hundred yards before stopping beside a huge boulder that had probably been there since the last ice age.
Again he paused, listening, sweeping the path behind him with his peripheral vision, searching for anyone who might be on his tail. While it was unlikely, it never hurt to be careful, and with something like this he didn’t want to be wrong.
Finally satisfied, he reached into a cleft in the rock and pulled out a satellite phone. Switching it on, he waited for it to power up and then dialed a number. When it was picked up on the other end, he said, “It’s Novick. I need to speak to him.”
There was a pause. Novick figured the man on the other end of the line was considering the wisdom of waking their joint employer at this hour of the night, and so he said, “It’s about the torc.”
That seemed to convince the other man, for he said, “Just a moment,” and put the receiver down.
Several minutes passed.
Finally Novick heard the phone on the other end being picked up.
“You have something for me?”
Novick swallowed the sudden hesitation he felt at the sound of that voice and answered him. “Yes. At the new site in the West Midlands. We found a body in the bog this morning, an Iceni warrior.”
“And?”
“And he was wearing a torc that fits the description of the one you’ve been seeking for the past several years.”
“You’re certain?”
“Absolutely.”
“What about the test?”
Sneaking into the artifact tent with the device in hand had been easy. “It was positive.”
There was a long silence as the other man considered the implications, then he said, “Very good. I will dispatch someone to meet you tomorrow afternoon.”
With thoughts of the reward money he’d been promised for finding the torc dancing in his head, Novick said that he understood and ended the call.
David Shaw rose the next morning with anticipation thrumming through his veins. He’d been searching for the Tear of the Gods for more than a decade. Many had scoffed at his dedication and focus. It’s just a legend, they’d told him. Nothing more than a myth, like the Holy Grail or King Arthur’s Excalibur. You’ll never find it because it doesn’t actually exist. But Shaw had believed differently and now, in less than twenty-four hours, he was going to be holding that so-called myth in his own two hands.
Shaw was in his mid-forties, with brown eyes and a sharp nose set in a narrow, aquiline face. The combination of his facial features and his shoulder-length dirty-blond hair often resulted in others mistaking him for the actor Sean Bean, a suggestion that Shaw would publicly chuckle over but which infuriated him to no end. That he could be mistaken for an actor, of all things, was an insult to all he’d worked to achieve since graduating from Oxford at the top of his class and founding the Vanguard Group.
To say Shaw was driven would make one guilty of a gross understatement. He had ambitions and dreams the likes of which not even his board of directors were aware and obtaining the Tear of the Gods was just the first step in a process he’d been planning for years.
After a leisurely breakfast he had his driver take him to the Vanguard offices. Several men were seated outside his office waiting for him, as he had known they would be. His executive assistant had sent word to them all the night before, requesting their presence in the office by nine this morning, and if there was one thing his people knew, it was not to disobey his orders.
Shaw pointed to one of them, a man named Trevor Jackson, and the former SAS commando and current Red Hand Defenders strike team leader followed him into his inner office, shutting the door behind them.
“I’ve got a job for you,” Shaw began as he took his seat behind his desk and waved Jackson into the chair before him. “A particular artifact was uncovered at an archaeological dig in the West Midlands last night. I want it.”
He handed the other man a thin folder. Inside were an assortment of documents, including aerial photographs and topographical maps of the surrounding area, dossiers on Stevens, Novick and other personnel they could expect to encounter at the dig site, as well as a snapshot of the torc that looked like it had been taken quickly with a cell phone.
“The photo was taken by my source on the ground,” Shaw explained. “It’s not perfect, but it should be good enough to let you verify it when you arrive on-site.”
Jackson glanced through the materials, lingering on the photograph. “What kind of opposition can we expect?” he asked.
“Little to none,” Shaw replied. “They’re a bunch of academics. Somebody might have a gun with which to shoot snakes, but that would be about it, I’d think.”
“So we go in, recover the necklace and get out again. Sounds simple enough.”
But Shaw was already shaking his head. “You need to take any steps necessary to ensure that no one knows the artifact was recovered from the site.”
Jackson had worked with Shaw long enough to know what the other man was talking about. “And the bodies?”
Shaw shrugged. “Dump them in the bog, for all I care. Just be sure there aren’t any survivors. I don’t want someone turning up at a later date to counter the official report.”
“What about your man on the inside?”
Shaw didn’t hesitate. “Get rid of him, too.”
“Fair enough,” Jackson said with a smile. “Consider the problem solved.”
W
ITH THAT TASK
behind him, Shaw could turn to the other major item he had on his agenda for the day—informing the Committee about the discovery of the torc.
The Committee was a group of wealthy collectors that he’d put together slowly and carefully over the past several years. Each of them was interested in the discovery and acquisition of ancient artifacts for one of two reasons—either to add to their own personal collections or to sell them on the black market to the highest bidder in order to fund some other project or ideology. Shaw didn’t care which it was, provided he was paid on time and in the proper currency as agreed. Whenever Shaw found an item worthy of their consideration, he called a meeting of the group and presented it to them. A bidding war would usually ensue, with Shaw taking ten percent of the asking price plus expenses to cover the costs of acquisition.
There were five members of the Committee—six, if he considered himself. Conrad Helmut was a German financier with a gift for the international commodities exchange who saw the artifacts solely for their monetary value. He had no interest in the past, whether it was yesterday, last year or last century. He treated artifacts recovered from tombs untouched by human hands for more than four thousand years the same way he’d treat something picked up at a rummage sale. It was all just merchandise to him—something to be bought and sold but never desired.
Allison Brennan was the opposite extreme—a fanatic who made no bones about her intention to craft a truly legendary collection. She was always trying to get a leg up on the others, beat them to the choicest prices. Standing in her way was the Frenchman, Roux. Just thinking of the man brought a scowl to Shaw’s face. The arrogant bastard didn’t use a first name; it was always just Roux. As much as he disliked him, Shaw had to admit that Roux had access to some first-rate intelligence and had helped them find some choice items over the years.
Sebastian Kincade had inherited his fortune at the ripe old age of nineteen, when his parents had died unexpectedly in a car crash. He’d added to it through a series of almost breathtakingly audacious financial moves in the decade since. He was as ruthless as Genghis Khan himself and twice as greedy. Rumor had it that the accident that killed his parents hadn’t been an accident at all; Sebastian had supposedly wanted access to his part of the family fortune before dear old mom and dad were ready to give it to him.
The fifth, and final member of the Committee, Saito Yamada, owned one of the largest telecommunications entities in the Asian market and, like the others, was regularly listed as one of the top fifty most wealthy individuals in the world. Shaw knew that Yamada’s legitimate fortune was dwarfed by his illegal one; as one of the major yakuza bosses in all of Japan, Yamada had his hands in a lot of different pies. He didn’t buy all that often but when he did it was usually for big money.
It was going to be an interesting morning.
Shaw stepped over to his desk and settled into the high-back leather chair behind it. Glancing at his watch, he saw that it was time for the meeting to begin. He purposely waited several more minutes before activating the videoconferencing link.
When the link was established, four windows opened on his monitor, each one showing the video feed from the four committee members who were on the line. Brennan, Roux, Helmut and Kincade stared out at him. Only Yamada was absent.
Four out of five’s good enough, he thought. Something so European probably wouldn’t have appealed to the yakuza boss, anyway.
Shaw put a smile on his face, activated his own camera and said, “It’s a pleasure to see you all again.”
Thanks to the wonders of modern technology, each of the Committee members could see and hear Shaw through the conferencing link. Their identities were kept secret from one another, however. They could hear when others chose to speak, but they didn’t have access to the video feeds and could never be certain just how many others were on the call with them.
Fear, uncertainty and doubt, Shaw thought. The key to any successful sale.
Since the Committee was well aware that Shaw only scheduled meetings when there was an item in play, he got right down to business.
“Near the end of the first century, Rome nearly lost control of Britannia when a warrior queen named Boudica staged a revolt,” Shaw began. “Despite being outnumbered and underequipped, Boudica’s forces overwhelmed the Roman legions.
“Some say it was because she caught the Romans napping. Others, that she was a military genius the likes of which the Romans hadn’t ever encountered among the tribal Celts before or since. But there are those who believe that Boudica’s power came from an external source, a strange and unusual necklace, or torc, that she wore about her neck at all times.”
The Committee members had long since learned how to keep their emotions off their faces, but Shaw had been studying them carefully over the past several years and thought he’d identified some of their tells, those non-verbal cues that they couldn’t control when they were excited about something. Like the way Helmut’s right index finger would tap on the arm of his chair a few times before settling down again. Or the way Brennan would cross her legs in one direction, then quickly switch them to another position, as she was doing now.
“The Tear of the Gods, as it is known in certain circles, has been lost to history for almost two thousand years. Lost, that is, until today.”
He tapped a key and the photograph Novick had sent to him last night appeared on the screen in front of each of the callers. He left it there for only a few seconds—just a short, tantalizing tease—then sat back and waited for a reaction, knowing that he who spoke first ultimately ceded power to the others.
Brennan was the first to break the silence, as Shaw knew she would be. The chance to add something actually carried by one of Boudica’s chieftains, perhaps even by Boudica herself, was a prize too good to pass up for a woman who considered herself a modern-day warrior queen.
“It looks just like every other torc I’ve ever seen,” she said derisively. “What makes you think this is the—what did you call it? The Tear of the Gods?”
Shaw smiled. Her interest was so obvious. Did she honestly think she was fooling anyone with her feigned disbelief?
“The torc was found around the throat of a Celtic warrior who’d been ceremonially buried in a bog in the West Midlands region,” he told the group. “Four sacrificial victims surrounded the body, proof that the warrior was more than just an ordinary soldier or low-ranking chieftain, for such sacrifices required the presence of a druid, perhaps the High Druid himself, and would not be wasted on anyone less than the royal family or their close companions.”
Brennan frowned, apparently uneasy with Shaw’s quick answer. “But that still doesn’t prove that this is the torc you are claiming it to be,” she said stubbornly.
Shaw surprised her a second time by agreeing. “You’re correct. That alone is not proof enough. Which is why we turn to more, shall we say, personal sources?”
He pulled a book off his desk and held it up to the camera. “A copy of Tacitus’s
Agricola,
which I’m sure we will all agree is a reasonable source.”
Turning to a marked page, he began reading. “‘This necklace, or torc as it is known among the Britons, was fashioned of the most unusual metal, unlike any other I have seen in all my years. It gleamed in the darkness, as if lit by an internal fire, and in the light it reflected the many hues of the rainbow. It was neither gold nor silver, copper nor bronze, iron nor cold hard steel, but something new and different under the sun. Three bands it was made of, twisted about one another like the coils of a snake, though no wider than a man’s first two fingers at its thickest point.’”
Shaw snapped the book closed and looked at the group with a triumphant smile. “Given what we’ve seen today, I’d say that’s pretty conclusive, wouldn’t you?”
Roux caught Shaw’s attention with a quick lift of his finger. “You have the artifact in hand?” he asked.
Shaw lied without missing a beat, the smile still plastered on his face. “Of course,” he said. “It is being packed up for transport to my offices as we speak.”
The Frenchman looked skeptical, but sat back as if satisfied enough by the answer.
“Bidding will commence within the next forty-eight hours through the usual methods, with a minimum starting bid of ten million dollars. You will be notified via cell phone five minutes before the auction begins and bids will be accepted for just seventy-two hours.”
Shaw looked at each of them in turn, trying to gauge their reactions, to figure out just who would bid and who would not. Helmut was listening to someone offscreen, so Shaw took that as a lack of interest in this particular piece, but he was pretty sure that both Brennan and Kincade were in. Brennan for sure, he thought. Roux, on the other hand, was as inscrutable as always.
It didn’t really matter, though. The auction was just a front to raise some extra cash for the final phase of his plan. He had no intention of turning over the torc; if the legends were right, it would be far more useful to the Red Hand Defenders and his ultimate cause if it remained in his possession. By the time the winning bidder realized that he, or she, had been had, he’d be long gone with both the money and the torc. Shortly after that, England, and the world itself, would have far more pressing issues to concern themselves with.
After reminding them that they’d only have seventy-two hours to cast their bids once the auction began, Shaw wrapped things up and ended the call, a smile of satisfaction on his face.
W
ITH THE CLICK
of his mouse, Roux ended the videoconferencing session, but left the tunneling program he’d activated while in the middle of the call running in the background. That particular piece of software had cost him a small fortune, but it had been worth every penny he’d spent on it so far. By creating a virtual private network between the two computers via the videoconferencing link, it turned the other computer’s microphone into a two-way listening device. The connection would be severed when Shaw turned off his monitor, but until then, Roux was privy to everything being said inside Shaw’s London office.
He’d first begun spying on Shaw to get a leg up on the various artifacts and items of interest that he uncovered. The man was a cretin, no doubt about it, but he had an uncanny sense for locating some truly unique treasures and Roux wasn’t shy about using that to his advantage. Lately, however, he’d begun to suspect that Shaw was involved in something darker than illegal artifact smuggling. There was something there, just beneath the surface, like a shark in blood-infested waters, and Roux was determined to expose it to the light.