The Cross of Sins (15 page)

He glanced to his right, quickly sizing up the location. Up ahead he saw a bridge spanning over the expressway. He snapped the reins in that direction.

"Yiddy-up!"

His camel obediently spun right and raced for the bridge.

"Come on, pal," Shane whispered. "We can make this... I think we can make this."

They hit the incline of the bridge and charged upward. Shane glanced left over his shoulder. In the speeding traffic on the expressway below he saw the BMW, weaving between lanes, soon to vanish under the bridge.

Shane snapped his heels again.

The camel pushed itself to the top of the bridge.

Shane caught one last glimpse of the Beemer in the second lane of the expressway, just before it disappeared somewhere beneath him.

"I can do this. I can do this."

He checked the gun was still jammed in the back of his jeans, and then steered the camel along the edge of the bridge railing, pulled his feet up onto its hump, and, with one mighty push, let go of the reins and launched himself into the air, diving over the edge of the bridge.

Shane Houston had done stupider things in his life.

When he was six, he thought it would be fun to try to catch a rattlesnake. Luckily the local doctor was only five minutes from his parents' ranch and had spare anti-venom on hand. When he was nine, he thought it would be cool to learn to drive his uncle's Jeep... blindfolded. Luckily, the point of the ravine where he crashed wasn't too deep, and the Jeep had taken the brunt of the fall. And when he was sixteen, he thought having a crush on Mike Hanson, his father's head ranch-hand, was enough reason to try to kiss him. Not so.

As Shane felt himself fly over the railing and saw the speeding cars rushing below him, he wondered whether this was another one of those truly stupid things he sometimes did.

The answer was yes.

Shane shut his eyes.

Then suddenly, he felt the clang and buckle of a car roof beneath him.

His hands grabbed desperately, locking onto the sides of the roof. His eyes shot open. And all he could see was red—metallic red.

He had landed on the roof of the wrong car.

It was a tiny red thing, and with the impact of his surprise landing, it suddenly started to veer crazily. He could hear screams from within. He pulled himself forward and peered over the edge of the windscreen. Two old women, upside-down in his vision, screamed hysterically at the sight of him. The car veered even more out of control. Shane held onto the roof as tightly as he could, his legs swiveling left, right, and then left again.

Other cars zoomed past, their drivers and passengers staring at him in amazement.

Then, in the lane to his right, the black BMW sped up alongside him.

The passenger window slid down, and Eric looked at Shane with a grin.

He pulled out a gun.

The first bullet ricocheted off the roof of the red car with a sharp clink, a mere inch from Shane's right shoulder. It was followed by the howls and shrieks of the women inside the car. They tilted the wheel left, and then right, in utter panic.

Shane could feel the gun still jammed in the back of his jeans, pressing hard against his butt, but he couldn't reach for it. There was no letting go of the roof now.

Chink!

Flakes of red paint flew off the roof of the car, right in front of his nose, as Eric fired a second shot.

Other cars on the expressway veered to get out of the way now. But for some reason, the two old women kept driving, careening uncontrollably from left to right.

"Brake!" Shane shouted. "Stop the car!"

All he could hear below him was a clatter of hysterical Turkish. But there was no stopping.

Eric fired again.

This time the bullet missed the car altogether.

The old women somehow managed to hold the car steady, just for a second.

Long enough for Shane to reach behind him and grab the gun from his jeans.

He held it out over the passenger's window of the car, aiming at the black Beemer, and for a second, he had Eric in his sights.

Then suddenly, an old woman's handbag appeared from the compartment beneath him, swinging violently at his hand.

He heard a deluge of abuse from below, and the handbag pounded his wrist several times until he lost his grip on the gun.

It clattered along the speeding expressway and was gone.

"Holy shit," Shane breathed, watching the gun spin and tumble under the wheels of a truck. "I'm tryin' to save us here!" he screamed through the roof of the car. "You wanna get us all killed?"

As if to answer that question for them, Eric fired another bullet, this time skimming the flesh on Shane's forearm, spraying blood into the air. A fifth bullet slammed into the top of the windscreen, shattering it into a million pieces.

The women squealed again as a million tiny cubes of glass rained over them.

Shane knew if he didn't do something now, the two old women were going to end up dead, not to mention himself!

He grabbed the chance to pull himself forward and swing himself through the shattered windscreen, landing very uncomfortably on the emergency brake, wedged between the two old women.

They screamed again.

Shane glanced right and saw Eric about to fire another shot.

He grabbed the old woman on his right and forced her head down, just as a bullet shattered her window and punctured the headrest inches behind her head.

Before Eric could fire another shot, Shane grabbed the steering wheel and turned it a hard left. Tires squealed on the expressway. Horns blared. Somehow he managed to steer the tiny red car out of the way of the truck that had pulverized his gun, across another two lanes of traffic, and into a side street that miraculously appeared before him.

The little red car with no windscreen careened into the dusty exit, Shane yelling at the top of his voice, "Brake! Brake! Brake!"

The old woman driving the car finally got the message and slammed her foot on the brakes. The car skidded to a halt, and a cloud of dust flooded the compartment.

The old women began spluttering at once, while Shane leaped out through the windscreen, slid across the bonnet and charged back up the side street toward the expressway.

His eyes scanned the fast-moving traffic, but the BMW was long gone. And so was Eric.

"Dammit!" he grunted through clenched teeth.

Behind him he could hear the cluck and howl of the two old women, scrambling out of their shot-up, beat-up, smashed-up car. It wasn't his wounded forearm that made Shane wince right now. It was the sight of two old ladies, storming toward him, fists shaking.

He glanced back to the bridge and saw the camel staring blankly about before the realization of its new-found freedom seemed to dawn on its big-lipped, dopey-eyed face. And with that, it trotted happily out of sight.

"Dammit, dammit!" Shane cursed.

A small group of Turkish policemen stood around the entrance to a large tent, smoking and laughing at a shared joke. They had looked sternly, authoritatively at Eden when he first approached, if only to assert some power of him. Once he showed them his credentials, however, they lost interest and more or less shooed him away in the direction of the crime scene.

Work had resumed on the dig site to a certain extent. Small sections of the site were still being excavated, buckets of sand and rubble were being hauled away, small instruments were being used by Turkish archeology students to brush away centuries of secrets.

But one section of the site was completely deserted, sealed off with barricades and police tape.

Eden climbed over the barricades.

He slipped under the tape.

Nobody batted an eyelid; if he had gotten this far, then he must have had clearance to be here.

The sun was high, and he wiped the sweat from his brow as he stepped up to the edge of a deep pit. He peered down inside. The sun shined directly in, illuminating the charred base of what looked like an ancient well. At the bottom of it, white spray paint had been used to outline the position of Doctor Hadley's long since removed body.

At that moment, Eden heard a small sniff somewhere off to his right.

He turned quickly and saw a young boy standing beyond the barricades, watching him.

"Hey kid," Eden said, smiling at the boy. "You okay?"

The boy looked upset.

"Do you speak English?" Eden asked.

The boy did not respond. Eden took a step toward him. The boy took a frightened step back. Eden stopped and held a hand up in some sort of gesture he hoped would stop the boy from running away. "It's all right; I'm not going to hurt you."

The boy's chin crumpled and tears began to well in his eyes. "They hurt Doctor Hadley..." he said in broken English. "They hurt him, and it's my fault."

"What do you mean it's your fault? Do you know the men who—"

But before Eden could finish his words, the boy turned and ran away.

Eden was about to follow him when his cell phone rang. It was Shane. Eden snapped it open. "I gotta call you back. There's a kid here. I think he knows something—"

"Eden, shut up. We gotta go. Right now! They know we're here."

"Are you all right?"

"Let's just say I've had my adrenaline rush for the day. Now get your ass back here. Now!"

X

The Chalet, the Austrian Alps

The fire crackled back to life as Elsa threw another small log onto the glowing embers. It was late. She had been checking on Jake for most of the night, making sure he was comfortable in his morphine-induced slumber. Now, she sat back in her chair in the living room with her dressing gown wrapped tightly around her and watched the flames dance.

"You're a doting mother hen. Have I ever told you that?"

Elsa jumped in her seat and turned to see Professor Fathom standing in a doorway behind her. "
Mein Himmel
, Professor! You frightened the life out of me! I might've screamed. I could've woken Mr. Stone."

"I'm afraid it's too late for that," the Professor said, gesturing to a doorway that led down a hallway on the opposite side of the room.

Elsa turned and saw Jake emerging from the hallway, the sheet wrapped once more around his waist. He stepped slowly, cautiously, groggily.

Elsa rushed to aid him, supporting him by slipping an arm around his waist.

"You should be in bed," she said firmly, yet with a great deal of concern in her voice.

"Where are my clothes?"

"I said, to bed with you."

"No. I wanna get outta here."

He pushed his way out of Elsa's grasp, but once in the living room, he had to steady himself by holding onto the back of a chair.

"Jake," said the Professor, "you need to give yourself time to recover."

"Enough with the bedside manner. What the hell am I doing here?"

The Professor paused a moment, but he knew there was no point beating around the bush. Jake was going to need a little convincing sooner or later. It might as well be now. "I need your assistance."

"If you think I'm gonna help you find whoever it was who killed your friend, I don't do that kind of work. I'm sorry for your loss, but this doesn't involve me."

"I think it does. You just don't realize it yet." Professor Fathom guided himself to one of the chairs in front of the fire and sat down. "This isn't just about the death of a friend," he said. "This is a complex matter. We need to find a treasure that has been lost for centuries. They call it
The Naked Christ
. Some call it
The Cross of Sins
. We need to risk everything right now, as did Dr. Hadley, not for money, not for glory, but for the sake of freedom. To keep alive the right to say and do and be whoever we are. It's a right most of us are fortunate enough to be born with. But sometimes that right is taken away. In some places, in some circumstances, who you are is considered criminal. But denying someone the right to be who they are is, in my opinion, one of the greatest crimes of all. I was hoping this wasn't something you would do for yourself, Jake, but rather for the greater good of what it represents."

Jake paused, and then said, almost reluctantly, "I'm afraid you hoped wrong, Professor."

The reflection of the flames seemed to dim a little in the Professor's blind eyes. "As a gay man yourself, I'm sorry to hear that. I think the rewards might have been greater than you imagined."

"Hey, my sex life is none of your business. It's my life."

"A life you might not be living right now if Eden hadn't found you in the South Pacific and given you the medical assistance you required."

"You can't tell me you don't have an agenda, old man. You did what suits your needs."

"Those needs are not mine alone."

"Listen, I get paid good money, sometimes by bad people, and I'm fine with that. You wanna save the world, go ahead. You do what makes you feel good about yourself. But if you're asking me to pull out my soft and tender side, sorry. There's no getting that genie out of the lamp, pal."

"What about Sam?"

"What about him?" Jake snapped.

"You keep mentioning his name. You love him like a son, don't you?