Gold of Kings Read online

  “She’s had to declare where she stands,” Harry said. “And she’s come down on our side. Haven’t you?”

  “I’ve been ordered to arrest you both.”

  Storm demanded, “For what?”

  Harry said, “It doesn’t really matter all that much.”

  “Selim Arkut has been murdered. Dauer wants to hold you responsible.” Emma gunned around a slow-moving truck. The tires’ thunder almost smothered her words. “You’ve got to take the next flight out. Get good and lost before Dauer catches wind you’re gone.”

  Storm said, “Jack Dauer is insane.”

  “You won’t get any argument from me on that point.” She fished in her pocket and came out with a card, which she gave to Storm. “That’s got all my numbers: home and cell and Interpol. Tell me when you arrive. I’ll try and catch up with you.”

  Her phone rang just as she pulled onto the Dulles Access Highway. She opened it and said, “Webb.” She handed the phone over her shoulder. “Make yourself useful back there.”

  “Aye, aye, ma’am.”

  She passed back her purse. “Pen and paper in the side pocket. And wipe that grin off your face while you’re at it.”

  “Sure thing.”

  Watching Harry scribble away, Storm said to Emma, “We made some interesting finds today.”

  “I need to hear all about it. But not now, okay? I’m scheduled to fly out with Hakim tomorrow, something he wants us to check out together. Soon as we’re done, I’ll try and catch up with you.”

  Harry slapped the phone shut and announced, “Air France to Paris. Three hours layover. Tickets to Istanbul and hotel info will be waiting for us at the information desk. Under the highly original name of Smith.”

  Emma entered the short-term lot and pulled into a yellow-banded emergency-vehicle space. “This is as far as I go. Get through passport control as fast as you can.”

  As they clustered by the trunk, Storm reached into her purse and came out with the velvet pouch. “Can you keep this safe for me?”

  Harry said, “Good thinking.”

  “It’s very valuable. You can look at it if you want. It’s called a—”

  “Right now, the name doesn’t matter. I’ll set up a lockbox at my bank, the Georgetown branch of Wells Fargo, and leave the key and instructions with the branch manager.”

  Emma stowed the triptych away, then looked Storm square in the eye and said, “Before we first met in your grandfather’s shop, I already knew you were as genuine as they came.”

  Storm was still digesting that latest item when Harry stepped between them and said to Emma, “I never thought I’d ever say this to a cop. But you’ve just moved to the tippy top of my list.”

  Emma’s face twisted as though she was trying to smile and keep from weeping at the same time. “Tough guys don’t say tippy top.”

  “Maybe not.” Harry gripped the woman and held her so tight Storm heard the breath whoosh from Emma’s body. “They don’t hug cops either.”

  He released her and turned to Storm. “Back in the game, lady. We’re off and running strong.”

  TWENTY-THREE

  HARRY BOARDED THE PLANE BEHIND Storm and trooped all the way to the last row, the only two seats they’d had available in moo class. Harry didn’t mind. Especially not after Storm slipped into her seat, watched the other passengers settle, and shivered when the Air France flight attendant started his preflight announcements in French. She gave him a look that was part Sean in feminine guise and part wide-eyed wonder. Then she leaned over and kissed his cheek. Same place she’d smooched him back in her kitchen, just north of his jawline. She said, “I’m glad Sean chose you and I’m glad you came.”

  Harry didn’t say anything, basically because he had no idea how to respond. Storm apparently didn’t mind his silence. She settled back and was asleep before the plane left the ground.

  Harry stared out the side window, his thoughts drifting with the clouds. He found himself recalling early days, back after his parents had died and he got to play shuffle ball inside the Pennsylvania system. His last foster mom had been a woman named Agnes who’d packed as many as seven foster kids into her double-wide. Harry had always assumed the county kept her on their list because she never turned down a kid or kicked one out. To Agnes, they were all just so many sheep. Even the wolves.

  Agnes’s greatest talent was dispensing hopelessness. She stained her charges with small driblets of poison. Her favorite comment was, “You don’t stand a chance.”

  Which was why, at fifteen, Harry had robbed a bank.

  It wasn’t like he’d spent months planning it out. Truth be told, Harry didn’t even know what was going down until he was standing there on the sidewalk. He’d been chasing a buddy with this water pistol shaped like a .45 Magnum. At least, it looked enough like a Magnum that when he stuck it in the teller’s face, her trembling fingers spilled as many bills on the floor as she managed to stuff into the Burger King bag.

  Harry had watched enough television to know what came next. The bank had cameras in every corner, and naturally Harry hadn’t thought to cover his face. He didn’t even bother to run. Instead, he sauntered out the bank’s front doors and slipped into a fancy steak house down the street, a place he knew from standing outside the kitchen and devouring odors of char-grilled steak and delivery truck fumes. Harry passed the maître d’ a bunch of tens and asked for a table by the window. He feasted on shrimp cocktail and a fillet well done while cop cars screamed into flanking position and a train of uniforms ran in and out of the bank.

  Even then, Harry was blessed with an overdose of dumb luck.

  The cops never thought to check downtown’s fanciest restaurant for a teenage bank robber. Harry tipped the waiter fifty bucks and asked if the place had a rear entrance.

  He reached the end of the alley and realized he had no idea what came next. Then he spotted the doorman in the double-breasted coat and the matching top hat standing outside the city’s top hotel.

  In for a twenty, Harry thought to himself, and pushed through the revolving doors.

  He managed to enjoy three nights of room service and Egyptian cotton sheets before the cops finally wised up. They actually laughed as they cuffed him.

  The judge thought it was mildly hilarious as well. He rewarded Harry with three years in juvie.

  Put a kid in Day-Glo orange and rubber sandals, and adults all see just one thing: trouble. By his eighteenth birthday, Harry had earned a rep for being less than a stellar example of the juvie system. He was given two choices: sign up for the men’s dance school, or take a two-year stint in the state pen.

  Harry went navy because the one jailer he almost trusted said they had the best food and the safest berths. Harry figured, how hard could it be?

  The answer was, extremely. On account of two items Harry had failed to factor into the equation. The first was the Gulf War. The second was that Harry found himself volunteering for the Seals. A decision he still to this day cannot understand.

  MIDWAY ACROSS THE ATLANTIC, THE whole deal became almost too much for Storm to hold inside. To release it fully meant giving in to a scream of pure pleasure. That was how good it felt.

  Harry asked, “You cold?”

  “No. I’m fine.”

  Harry reached under his seat, came up with a blanket, and pulled it from its plastic pouch. “Here, put this around you.”

  She had dozed through the flight’s initial hours and woke not refreshed but rather able to balance the solemn lump of pain and loss from the funeral against the flight and the world and the mystery ahead. She let Harry slip the blanket around her. Like a brother might do for his little sister. Like they’d known each other for years.

  “I’ve got something to show you.” She reached for her purse. As she drew out her phone, her fingers touched the envelope holding Sean’s letter. For an instant, she felt the old man intensely close, like he had managed to squeeze into a seat between the two of them. Storm opened the phone, scrolle
d through the photographs, then swiveled the screen so that it faced Harry. “This is the chalice Sean left me.”

  Harry squinted over the screen. “Interesting shape. Looks old.”

  “It is.”

  “Shame about the lack of markings.”

  “There is one.” Storm scrolled to the next photograph. “This was inscribed on the interior of the base.”

  Harry bent closer. “Are those letters?”

  “Ancient Hebrew. It’s what I was searching out in the Smithsonian. And this is what I found.”

  Harry studied the last photograph set into her phone’s memory. “Looks like the same markings to me.”

  “Identical. This set was carved into the face of a royal coffin.” She closed the phone and stowed it away. “The Smithsonian archeologist who discovered the coffin died while working on a dig they thought might be the lost city of Herodium. His assistant wrote up the preliminary report I read in the Smithsonian’s journal. The dig was on the border of the Judean Desert, inside the West Bank. The archeologist was killed in one of the uprisings, which is why the Smithsonian blocked the assistant from returning and finishing their work. Herod the Great basically built Herodium City from scratch.”

  Harry took two waters from a passing flight attendant and handed one over. “This is the same king who rebuilt the Second Temple.”

  “Exactly. The markings you just saw are the name ‘Herod,’ carved into a sarcophagus of pink Jerusalem limestone. The name was surrounded by an expertly carved floral motif. Exactly what you’d expect to see on a king’s coffin.”

  “And the chalice?”

  “I’ve been examining the drawing of the arch that doesn’t exist. I’ve found three chalices.”

  “Show me.”

  She reopened her phone and found the picture. Harry leaned in so close the screen’s illumination carved his face into a craven image. His face was not so much grim as hungry. “Herod didn’t rebuild the temple out of the goodness of his heart. He was a cruel despot, loathed by his own people. Herod was obsessed with greatness. He was just the sort of man who would carve his name inside a temple chalice. Like donors putting a plaque on the wall of a church to make sure everybody knows about their donation.”

  Harry shut the phone. Handed it back. Took a long pull from his water.

  “This is real, Harry.”

  “I’m not doubting that for a second. But like I told you, people have hunted the Second Temple treasures for five hundred years. Longer. And salvagers have scoured the Med for centuries, hunting the headland carved into your triptych. If that design represented anything along the Cypriot coast, it’d have been found a long time ago.”

  “There were earthquakes. Morgenthal just said the capital was destroyed by one—what was it called?”

  “Salamis.”

  “Couldn’t these promontories have been demolished by a big quake?”

  In reply, Harry gave her the sort of grin that would have worried her on another man. “This is some high, isn’t it.”

  “You’re saying I could be right?”

  “Hey, I’m just your basic treasure dog. I’ve bet my chips on a lot less than this.”

  TWENTY-FOUR

  RICHARD ELLIS HAD LONG CONSIDERED himself a pastor without a home. Coming as it did from the number-two guy at the biggest church in one of America’s richest cities, some people might have called that a little twisted. But working this place was sort of like living inside a diamond-studded cocoon. Richard had never been comfortable with the distance wealth put between himself and real life. Which was why he was happy staying relegated to the church’s basement operations. And also why he had been so drawn to Sean Syrrell. The man had been as avaricious as a pirate.

  Sean had never been held by the trappings of wealth. For Sean, money was just part of what it took to obtain the next prize. Given his surroundings, Richard had considered this a healthy disregard. He had found himself willing to overlook the man’s shortcomings, which in Sean’s case would have filled the National Archives. Memories of the man still brought him to a boil. Even though his heart limped from the loss.

  Richard was the last to leave the church’s activity building. He could have let the custodian lock up the place. But it was as good an excuse as any to hold back and let the crowds swirl away, chattering as they did over his latest gaffe. Tonight had supposedly been his night off, but the AA leader had phoned in sick. Which meant that Richard had been there to greet a reformed alcoholic who had arrived completely smashed. Richard’s tirade had drawn an audience from two floors up. The man had departed a good deal more sober than he had arrived.

  Richard locked the doors and turned toward the night. He was becoming more angry more often these days. It happened every spring around this time, in the run-up to the anniversary of his wife’s death. He had met Sean for the first time this very same week. Sean had snapped at him on the way out of church and Richard had blasted back. Then he’d been forced to explain why. Every spring that followed, Sean had made it a point to come down and treat Richard to a fine meal. Which made for another reason he missed the most irritating man Richard had ever known.

  Then he saw the shadow flitter between the palms.

  He didn’t know who the shadow belonged to and he didn’t care. What he did know was that the local newspaper was still headlining Palm Beach’s version of the OK Corral. Richard had seen enough of the city’s underbelly to have a healthy respect for shadows that flittered. He ran.

  Richard’s passion was long-distance running. He had done the Boston Marathon five times, and twice finished within an hour of the leader. Which was why, when he dropped his briefcase and jinked right before heading back across the lot, he thought if he could just make the front lawn he’d be safe. Few people could catch him in open-field running.

  He almost made it. The oleander border that would have granted him shadows of his own was three paces away when the night became a fist and slammed him hard from behind.

  Only after he hit the earth did he realize he had also heard a bang.

  He fell on his side. It was an immensely uncomfortable position. Almost as uncomfortable as his inability to draw a decent breath.

  The shadows did not fully coalesce. Instead, the moon overhead simply vanished, and in its place came a shape. Small and fast and strong. Richard felt hands grip his jacket and flip him onto his back. Which was the first time he actually felt pain.

  A dark voice spoke with an accent so strong Richard could not make out the words. Not that it mattered.

  Hands lifted and shook him hard enough for the pain to make him focus. The voice spoke more slowly, spacing out the words. “The woman Syrrell. Where has she gone?”

  Richard blinked. Of course the night spoke with an uncommon accent. It made all the sense in the world.

  The man shook him again. But this time the pain could not reach him. To his right he had noticed another change to the gathering night. One that thrilled him so much he let go of the pain and everything else that held him down.

  He knew with a certainty beyond all his dimming senses that his wife was standing and waiting for him.

  He was shaken again. Hard. Richard knew this only because what was left of his vision passed through more tremors. He felt nothing at all.

  He opened his mouth and tried to say, Into your hands I commend my spirit. Perhaps he actually spoke the words. It no longer mattered. Nothing earthly did.

  TWENTY-FIVE

  STORM WOKE TO THE SOUND of throbbing. She opened her eyes to brilliant sunlight. The throbbing noise came from just outside her windows. A boat passed by, momentarily cutting off the sunlight. Storm swung her feet to the floor and rubbed her eyes. The boat passed. Sunlight sparkled off the water that began just beyond her hotel windows. She padded to the bathroom, passing beneath a domed ceiling. She washed her face and returned to the bedroom. The water and the sunlight and the boats were all still there.

  She picked up the phone and hit O. A voice came on
and said, “Effindim.”

  She stared out the window at another passing boat. “Harry Bennett’s room.”

  A pause, then, “Please?”

  She remembered then. “Sorry. Mr. Smith.”

  The line clicked, the phone rang, and Harry picked up like his hand was poised over the phone.

  “We’re really here, aren’t we.”

  “How did you sleep?”

  “So well I don’t know what day it is.”

  “You’ve been out almost fourteen hours.”

  They had arrived at Charles de Gaulle Airport just after eleven in the morning. As promised, a packet had been awaiting them at the Air France information desk. In it were two economy class tickets to Istanbul and the name of a hotel. Harry had noticed her expression and asked what was the matter.

  Storm had replied, “The tickets are one-way.”

  Harry had put it down as bureaucratic penny-pinching. But as Storm dressed, she found herself recalling that moment, and the sensation of holding a pass to some new and unnamed destiny from which there was no return.

  After breakfast they walked down to the village harbor and boarded the ferry to central Istanbul. Storm sat on one of five long benches that ran the length of the boat’s upper deck. The wind was both hot from the sun and chilled by the water. Harry stood by the bow reading a newspaper, swaying easily as a passing trawler rocked their ferry, totally in his element. Dark eyes observed her every move, but she did not feel threatened. A pair of hawkers plied the ferry passengers with tulip glasses of tea and sweetmeats. Their hotel gleamed on the retreating shore, a miniature palace built by an eighteenth-century emir. Their ferry passed beneath the first bridge spanning from the hills of Europe to the hills of Asia, a simple link that defied three thousand years of war and distrust and lies. Storm wrapped her arms about her middle and whispered a name to herself, trying to make it real.

  Istanbul.

  THE FERRY ROUNDED SERAGLIO POINT and entered the Golden Horn, an inlet of the Bosphorous Sea that divided Istanbul and formed a natural harbor at the city’s heart. Harry folded the International Herald Tribune and stowed it in his pocket. An article about North Cyprus had caught his eye, one of those odd little human-interest items that might pay off down the line.