Black Harvest

CHAPTER SEVEN

Elizabeth Harker considered the implications of the murders. The killings were coordinated within 24 hours of each other. Only an organized group could pull off something like that.

The full team except for Lamont Cameron was assembled in her office. Lamont was at Bethesda undergoing a final check on his arm, shattered by a bullet in Khartoum months before.

Ronnie Peete was back from a week on the Navajo Reservation. He had on one of the Hawaiian shirts from his collection. This one was black, with white plumeria blossoms all over it. Subdued, for Ronnie.

Ronnie's skin was light brown with a hint of red. He had dark brown eyes that could spot a rabbit in the desert glare where others saw only rock and cactus. His tracking skills were legendary in Marine Recon. His large nose could have graced a bust from ancient Rome. Ronnie was broad shouldered, narrow hipped, 180 pounds of rock hard sinew and muscle.

Elizabeth picked up her pen.

"Selena, how are you coming with the translation?"

Selena wore a sleek tailored outfit of some green material that shimmered when she moved. The clothes looked comfortable. Harker wondered how she did it. Sometimes she felt a twinge of jealousy. No one should look that good. I bet she can't cook, she thought.

"It's done."

"And?"

"One part is a partial accounting of the treasury of Darius III. It mentions gold and silver coins, gold statues and the golden urn. The urn is supposed to contain the curse of the Greek goddess Demeter in her wrathful aspect. Alexander told someone called Aetolikos to escort the treasure back to Greece and return the urn to Demeter's temple. He gave him part of the treasure as a reward."

"Nice pay, if you can get it. A piece of the greatest treasure in history. What's the curse of Demeter?"

"That's spelled out in the other part. It's a fragment from a long epic of the period, a variation on the story of Persephone's descent to the underworld."

"Wait a minute." Nick interrupted. "Who's Persephone?"

Nick wore a light sport jacket of gray, a dark blue shirt and black slacks. No tie. Casual. He didn't look either casual or relaxed. He looked like he was wound tighter than spring steel, but he always looked like that. Elizabeth could tell by the way he moved that his back was hurting again. It had been that way on and off since the jump into Tibet.

"Persephone is Queen of the Dead, the daughter of Demeter. She was kidnapped and raped by Hades, king of the underworld. Sometimes she's linked with sexuality and war. The black horse on the urn was one of her symbols. It's where the word nightmare comes from."

"Sex and war, that figures. They kind of go together."

"You're hopeless." Selena shook her head. "There were a lot of bad consequences from the rape."

"Consequences?"

"Demeter is the goddess of the harvest and fertility. When she finds out Hades has taken her daughter, she goes into a rage. She shifts into her vengeful aspect as Demeter Erinys and makes everything stop reproducing. The crops die. There's famine, disease. No children. All the animals are sterile. She won't let anything grow or reproduce until Persephone is freed. One thing about Greek gods and goddesses, you didn't want to piss them off."

One of the things Nick liked about Selena was her earthy language. It wasn't something you expected from a background like hers.

"That's the curse?"

"Yes. She makes a deal with Zeus. In return for Persephone's freedom, she puts things back to normal and agrees not to do it again. All that is pretty standard. But in this version she hedges her bets. She hides her power to stop everything, just in case."

Ronnie said, "I'll bet I know where."

Selena waited.

"In a golden urn."

"That's right."

Harker picked up the silver pen that had belonged to FDR. She began tapping. Thinking.

"Sometimes there's a historical basis for these stories, something real. I wonder if there's something behind this one?"

"Campbell thought there was," Nick said.

"Campbell, Weinstein and McCullough had two things in common. They knew about the story on the tablets and they were experts in the same field. Campbell and Weinstein also had high security clearances."

"Why would they need high clearances?" Selena asked.

"They were working on something secret for the Pentagon," Elizabeth said. "It wouldn't be the first time CDC was involved in a bio-warfare program."

"The Greeks used bio-warfare. They'd throw dead plague victims over the walls of a besieged city, or catapult poisonous snakes onto enemy ships. Poison the water supply with dead animals."

"Never seems like there's anything really new, does it?" Harker rolled her pen around on her desk. "Campbell thought the urn was important. But we don't know what happened to it."

"We know Alexander gave it to Aetolikos," Selena said. "I followed up on him. He turns out to be a cousin of Alexander, one of his sub-commanders. Family."

"Did you find out where he took it?"

"He dropped off the treasure in Pella and went home to Dion. There's no record of him after that. Dion was in Macedonia and had a big temple dedicated to Demeter. It was overrun when the Persians invaded. That might be where Xerxes found the urn."

"You think Alexander's cousin took it back to Dion?"

"It makes sense. He would have seen it as returning something of the goddess to it's rightful place."

"It doesn't seem likely it would still be around," Nick said.

Selena shrugged. "No. But the town is still there."

"We have to try and find out what happened to that urn." Harker turned to Selena. "How's your Greek?"