Seeker's Curse. Alex Archer

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СКАЧАТЬ eye. “Come,” he said.

      He turned and stalked into an oblong of blackness in the ratty building behind him. To Annja’s relief Duka followed him straightaway, bending his knees considerably to get through the door. His shoulders squeezed against the frame.

      The other goons in view now stood seven or eight yards away toward both ends of the block. She had the option to follow or not.

      She followed.

      Inside was dim. It was cool to the edge of chill. A musty smell hit her in the face. Dust, mold, general antiquity and—

      Pigeon droppings streaked down the sides of water-warped crates and decaying cardboard boxes and big vases Annja hoped weren’t ancient amphorae. They were caked in lumpy pale sedimentary layers on every horizontal surface and at the edges of walkways across the hardwood-plank floor of the warehouse. As her vision adjusted she saw it was a warehouse filled with unsteady-looking shelves laden with boxes and objects of uncertain nature.

      Following her sketchy hosts, Annja advanced into the crowded interior. It wasn’t cave-black; a grayish illumination came from somewhere, like fog. Everything that wasn’t horizontal and caked in droppings, it seemed, was draped with cobwebs.

      The narrow aisle ahead of Annja was blocked almost entirely by the mountainous mass of Duka, who progressed by leaning side to side, endangering the groaning, sagging shelves at every step, and teetering forward, as if he lacked knees or his legs were very short. Bajraktari was completely hidden by his massive underling.

      Annja wondered how the huge henchman did it. She had to focus on walking down the very center of the wooden floor, with her shoulders unaccustomedly hunched forward to keep them from brushing anything, which might cover her in dust, inspire something awful to leap out at her or simply bring a whole overburdened rack of shelving down upon her head. Her shoulders, although broad for a woman even of her height, were nothing to Duka’s. Yet he managed to avoid mishap.

      At the end of ten yards or so a space opened, seven or eight yards on either side. In the middle stood a large crate covered with some kind of dark cloth. A single lightbulb in a not very reflective reflector cone hung from a cord that led up into blackness so complete it might have gone on forever into the heart of infinite night. It spilled a yellow illumination upon the objects arranged on the cloth-covered surface.

      Annja’s breath stuck in her throat. They were artifacts: statues, plates, bowls, coins. All gleaming bright gold. A mound of the stuff. A foot-high seated Buddha presided jovially over the lot.

      “Samples,” Bajraktari said.

      If it was all real—meaning both authentically ancient and actual solid gold, not just gold-washed lead, a trick the ancients were perfectly hip to—Annja was looking at upward of one hundred thousand dollars in plunder in the value of the metal alone. If you took into account the historic value, its price became incalculable.

      Annja strode forward. As it happened that fit the role she was playing, but that had been driven right out of her mind by the sight. All she could think of now was confirming that she confronted evidence of a truly massive crime against archaeology. And circumstances suggested this was only the tip of the iceberg.

      Reaching the makeshift display table, she snatched up the nearest item. Any evidence as to context was long lost already, especially if the loot had been polished, as appeared likely. Her finger oils weren’t going to damage the gleaming artifact if it was gold.

      Annja stared down at the thing she held. It was a slightly irregular disk—a coin, imprint eroded by its passage through many previous hands. And time. She could almost feel the years adding to its not in-substantial weight. It showed the blurred image of the head of a youthful-looking, somewhat plump man.

      To her amazement the letters stamped in it, faded though they were, were unmistakably Greek.

      She turned to Bajraktari, who stood to her left with his shadow, Duka, looming as always behind him. “What’s a Greek coin doing here?” she demanded. “I thought these artifacts were Nepali.”

      Instead of responding directly to her question, Bajraktari raised his head and said something sharp in Albanian. Annja sensed movement behind her.

      Hard hands clamped like vises on her upper arms.

       2

      “What the hell do you think you’re doing, Bajraktari?” Annja demanded. She became aware of a grayed-out oblong glow farther back in the warehouse heights—a time-and-pigeon-grimed skylight. “Don’t you know who you’re dealing with?”

      She knew even as the words left her mouth that she wasn’t going to like the answer.

      Bajraktari smiled. “There has been a change of plan,” he said.

      “Says who?” she demanded.

      His coal-smudge brows twitched toward one another. “Do not try my patience, woman,” he said. “For in the end you are only a woman.”

      It occurred to her this was not a good time to debate feminism. She settled for an angry toss of her head and a glare. “We had a deal,” she said.

      He nodded. “So we did. But all things are subject to negotiation in this world, are they not?”

      “I represent a very important figure in American business.”

      “Just so. All Americans are rich. If your boss is rich by American standards, he must be really rolling in it, no?”

      Annja’s lips compressed to a line. She could see where this was going.

      “It occurred to us, therefore, that Allah had delivered into our hands a most wonderful opportunity. If your employer would pay handsomely once for our artifacts, then would he not pay handsomely twice for the treasure, as well as for the return of his very lovely assistant?”

      “You’re making a mistake,” Annja said.

      Bajraktari said something in Albanian. Around him, unseeable in shadow, his men laughed.

      “It shall be as Allah wills,” the pack leader said. “If you are a religious woman, you should pray that it is not your employer who makes the worse mistake.”

      Annja glared at him. She felt the men holding her shift their weight to drag her away. She drew in a deep breath. And prayed forgiveness for the grave sin she was about to commit against archaeology.

      Then she kicked the relic-topped crate for all she was worth.

      Annja had extensive training in martial arts, Asian and Western. She had hundreds of hours of practice and no little practical experience at using those techniques. And she was far stronger than most women her size.

      The crate, though loaded down with tens of pounds of golden wonders, was empty. It rolled right over. Glittering priceless objects flew everywhere.

      Shrill voices yipped. Men flew from the shadows like bats, clutching at the lovely tumbling golden things. The hard hands on Annja’s arms relaxed their grip.

      Driving with her long strong legs and turning her hips, Annja wrenched her right arm free. She continued her pivot to slam a shovel hook with the heel of her right palm into the ribs of the man who СКАЧАТЬ