Carpathian

1

As she reached for the small piece of broken block her hand lightly rubbed against the stronger hands of a man she hadn’t felt the touch of in nearly a year. All thought of that long-ago Hong Kong night vanished during the daylight hours only to reappear when sleep claimed the eighty-four-year-old woman. As the small rubber boat bobbed up and down in the cold waters outside Hong Kong harbor she remembered the feel of the piece of stone block and the touch of Garrison Lee’s fingers as the dream continued. In her sleep the woman wanted to cry out that she didn’t want the relic, she wanted him. As always in her dream all Lee would do is smile and wink that irritating wink he always did to make her think everything was all right — she knew it wasn’t. This was the same dream Alice had been having for the past six days and it always ended the same way — with the feeling of massive loss and the sharp pain of her heart breaking every time she saw Garrison in the dream.

“Hamilton, you’re obviously dreaming this for a reason—now wake up!”

The voice of a man gone for a full year woke her as she lay at her small desk in her bedroom. She had fallen asleep again at her computer terminal and as she looked at the screen she saw the jumbled words in one long and continuous sentence, the result of her head lying on the keyboard.

Alice Hamilton reached out and angrily punched at the keyboard and cleared the screen of all the nonsensical words. As she yawned she looked at the clock on the wall. It was four-thirty in the morning and for the fifth straight night she had fallen asleep while in the midst of her research, and that in turn brought on the dreams of Garrison Lee and the time they spent together in China in the forties. Alice straightened in her chair, finally remembering what had prompted this dream in particular. She frantically searched the scattered papers on her usually neat desk.

“Where is it, where is it!” she asked herself, almost fearing the letter itself was part of her sleeping remembrances.

“Calm down and think,” came his voice. This was a tool she used many times. Garrison always told her think and then act.

Alice stopped her searching and then squeezed her eyes closed and thought. She opened them suddenly and reached for her robe’s front pocket. She took a deep breath as her fingers touched the two-page letter that had been overnighted from Rome.

“Thank you,” she said as she pulled the letter from her pocket and opened it, sitting back in her chair as she did. Alice again closed her eyes realizing that she just thanked a man gone from her for what seemed an eternity. She swallowed and then caught herself and mentally shook the tears from her eyes before they fully developed and then opened the letter. She read it once more for the umpteenth time in the twenty-four hours since receiving it.

“Europa, am I still signed in?” she said aloud as she folded the letter but this time held it tightly in her hand as she forced herself to relax. Alice was finally feeling her age after many years of keeping up with the best of them.

“Yes, Mrs. Hamilton, User 0012 is still logged on,” came the sexy Marilyn Monroe — voiced Cray supercomputer located at the secure center inside the Event Group complex underneath Nellis Air Force Base ten miles from her house.

“My apologies for being rude and dozing off on you,” Alice said as she pulled her robe tighter around her.

“Computer center activity is light, access should be uninterrupted until 0600.”

“Well, thank you anyway, Europa. Now, can you…” Alice stopped briefly to stifle a yawn, making herself realize she was getting far too old for these all-night research digs. “Excuse me, can you give me the status of security element Goliath please?”

“Security element Goliath has not reported in as of this time.”

“Europa, I am expecting a package through the complex communications system and I want that e-mail package to come straight to me and is not, I repeat, is not to be entered into the incoming communications log. Is that clear?”

For the first time in many years Europa didn’t answer right away. Alice thought maybe her systems were still being disrupted from the troubles a few months earlier when her mainframe was attacked from an outside source.

“Mrs. Hamilton, your request cannot be granted due to security regulations.”

Alice closed her eyes knowing that she could seal the incoming e-mail off from everyone — except one man, and that was the head of Event Group security and the smartest man outside of Garrison Lee and Director Niles Compton that she had ever known — Colonel Jack Collins. As far as she could see there was no way around Jack not seeing the e-mail, especially from a source as important to Department 5656 as anyone could ever remember — Goliath, a code name for one of the security departments and Director Compton’s most guarded deep operatives. The information this agent gives the Group is as important as any historical intelligence they had ever received from any one source. Goliath was deep — the deepest any security element had ever been before, and only Jack, Niles, deputy director Virginia Pollock, Captain Carl Everett, and Alice knew who it was and where he, or she, was buried.

“I understand, Europa, but no one else gets copied on the package. I hope I can handle Colonel Collins on this one security oversight.”

“Incoming packet has arrived, Mrs. Hamilton.”

Alice was stunned at how fast her requested data from their deep operative came as a follow-up to the first communication, which had set Alice on a course of action she had wanted to take since 1951.

“Put it through, please,” she said.

The coded pictures sent by Goliath slowly started coming up on her monitor as fast as Europa could decipher them. As she scanned the screen trying to figure out what the coded pixels were starting to form, her eyes started to widen and then recognition struck and with her usual self-control lost for the moment, Alice clapped her hands together and let out a yelp. She stood and hopped once as she picked up a picture of Garrison Lee that sat upon her desk. She kissed it, knowing in real life that gesture would have caused an immediate rebuke if it had not been done in private. She looked at the pictures once more as Europa broke them down into a four-square shot and they all clearly showed the item she had for so long searched.

“You were right, damn you, you were right! This would have been something that had to have been covered up. And it was your idea to get someone inside — oh, not for this, you old goat, but I figured our agent was in place anyway so why not have him do a little private searching for me?” She kissed the picture again. “Now I’ve got to kiss Jack and Niles for getting our agent placed!” Alice stopped dancing and then looked at the picture of the one-eyed love of her life. “Jack and Niles are going to hang me out to dry for this one,” she said sadly, and then she suddenly smiled. “But what the hell, Europa, I’m fully vested so they can’t take my retirement away.” This time it was Alice who winked at Lee as he grimaced back from his eight-by-ten glossy.

“Mrs. Hamilton, should I code-name and secure the file in your private program?”

“Yes, Europa, I also want you to place all files developed on the contents of Vault 22871 with this new file and secure it.”

“Yes, Mrs. Hamilton. Do you wish a code name for the new combined file?” Europa asked in her sexy voice that Alice never quite noticed any longer.

“Yes, code it — Grimm.”

The young Vatican counsel held the door open for a young woman. He nodded as she went past. Once outside he placed the black hat on his head and looked around the building. The cybercafe wasn’t as crowded as it would be when the students hit just before classes started in less than an hour.

As he turned toward Vatican City a mile distant he felt the eyes on him just as he had the day before and then again this morning — both times coming to and from his office and then from his office to the cybercafe. Now he was feeling it again. His training was either kicking in or he was starting to lose it. He dipped his head as he passed another young lady on the street. As he did he used the opportunity to glance in the storefront window to his right. Beyond his own reflection of black robe and collar he saw a lone woman about fifty feet behind him. Her gaze seemed just a little too intent on him. He quickened his pace.

Crossing St. Peter’s Square he felt more secure as the crowds grew thick with tourists and others seeking the comfort of the city. He no longer felt the eyes upon him as he had. As he made his way back to his office inside the Vatican archival building he stopped and leaned down to tie a shoe that needed no tying. He again looked around and his heart froze. Not twenty feet away from where he had stopped that same young woman he had seen on the street was staring right at him. He was tempted to turn and walk toward the girl just to see what reaction he would get, but his training told him to cut and run and then report, let others far above his pay grade make the decisions. He did however reach his cell phone and then he brazenly straightened and started taking pictures like he was a normal tourist. He framed the young woman in his fourth shot of the milling crowd. For good measure he took another just as her face went stern and she turned away. The young Vatican archivist smiled and turned away himself.

The man deep undercover at the Vatican, United States Army Second Lieutenant Leonard DeSilva, knew he would have to report to Colonel Collins in Nevada, because if his cover inside the Vatican was blown there was going to be hell to pay.

The young priest, who had spent the past year and a half after graduating from Notre Dame fighting for his assignment at the Vatican, knew he would have to call home for instructions — and that entailed a call to Department 5656—the Event Group.

Lieutenant General Addis Shamni slowly laid down the report from his agent at the Vatican and then slammed his hand down upon it. He raised that same hand to his forehead and then cursed his bad luck.

“With everything going on in the world I have to deal with this!” he said aloud as his hand left his furrowed brow and slammed into the report once more. “How in the hell did someone get a man inside the archives when the Mossad couldn’t get into the damn lobby just for a research paper!”

Lieutenant Colonel Avis Ben-Nevin sat silently in his chair as he listened to the general angrily curse the file in front of him. The colonel with his meticulously trimmed pencil-thin mustache saw the fear in a man’s eyes that up until now had never known the feeling. He knew this involved the Vatican, an area the lieutenant colonel had a special and vested interest in. Ben-Nevin was known as the religious factor inside the Mossad. Anything and everything that had to do with religion inside the state of Israel, Ben-Nevin had a firm grasp of it and the event happening at this moment in Italy had a firm hold on the colonel’s imagination.

“Colonel, you may have to get on a plane to Rome and find out exactly what is going on here. I need someone on station that knows just what in the hell they’re doing. Young Sorotzkin is one of the best but she may be out of her element where Ramesses is concerned.”

“Perhaps if I could be briefed on Project Ramesses I could—”

The general looked up with an arched graying eyebrow.

“You could what, read something that could possibly get you killed by someone higher in rank than myself? Colonel, outside of this office that code name is never to be mentioned. Your father knew of it and took it to his grave.” The eyes of the general bore into the younger Mossad officer. “You are to evaluate the situation with Major Sorotzkin, then report back to me. Nothing is to be done with this American spy. This may be our chance to get into the archives and find out exactly what the Holy Roman Church knows about our history.”

Ben-Nevin knew he was on the trail that his father had discovered four decades earlier in Hong Kong and the trail just got a little warmer.

“You are not to bring your normal religious zeal into this mission. Get to Rome, evaluate, and report back.”

“General, I know I am considered the religious laughingstock around here, but anyone who believes that our religion has nothing to do with how we are viewed, or even perceived in our world, especially our near world, well, that’s a bit naive on your part. Our heritage is what makes us strong and any evidence of that heritage we can uncover will go a long way to proving we should reign in this part of the world.”

General Shamni slowly stood and placed his thick arms on his desk and then leaned forward. “Reign, Colonel Ben-Nevin? We are just trying to survive here. If we can be friends with our neighbors through cooperation and mutual respect then that is our goal. Not to point to them and say, ‘See, we were right and you were wrong and God is on our side.’” This time the general smiled but the gesture was not meant to be sincere in the least. The general hated Ben-Nevin and the colonel knew it. “If there’s one thing our young state has learned, Colonel, is the very real fact that God has never been on anyone’s side. As a matter of fact I have come to the conclusion that if he ever was, he’s cut the apron strings on us — as the Americans like to say. We are too far along to be killing people over these ancient tales.”

This time Ben-Nevin smiled. “This stuff is the manna of our history, proof that we were meant to be here. If Operation Ramesses could prove the world wrong in that regard, why we could—”

“Enough!” This time the hand came down and its impact shook the desk lamp. “Colonel, you have pushed and pushed on this very closed loop matter far too long, and the funny thing is I couldn’t give you the details of Ramesses even if I knew them. Our policy on the operation has been in place since the time of David Ben-Gurion. And your assertion that Ramesses can save the situation in the Middle East is highly dubious at best, especially since you know nothing of its details. From what I understand Ramesses would do, at least according to our experts, is ignite a wave of religious fundamentalism the likes of which the world has never seen. That cannot happen and will not happen as long as this administration is in place — and every administration of whatever political stripe after. Now get to Rome.”

Ben-Nevin gave the general a halfhearted salute and then turned on his heel. The general didn’t see the small smile lift his thin mustache.

“Sergeant Rosen!”

“Sir?”

The general looked up as his assistant popped her head inside the door.

“Get me the prime minister,” was all he said as he inadvertently picked up the field report again and cursed his eyes for reading the words. He didn’t acknowledge his assistant as she ducked out of the office.

“The prime minister is on line one, General.”

With a minimum of motion the general snatched up the phone and hit the flashing button.

“Mr. Prime Minister, a trail to our heritage may have been discovered by unknown sources.” The general paused to rub the throbbing that had just started coursing through his temples. “Sir, we have a problem — a three-thousand-year-old nightmare from the past kind of problem.”

After the general’s conversation with the prime minister’s office was completed, exactly thirty-two minutes later the elite commando arm of the Israeli Defense Forces; the Sayeret — one of the best trained killing forces in the world — went on full combat alert.

As the colonel stepped from the general’s office he looked around the deserted hallway and then stepped to the nearest door where he took out his private cell phone and punched in a preprogrammed number.

“There has been movement on Project Ramesses. I’m not sure, but the report was generated by General Shamni’s wunderkind inside Vatican City.” The colonel nodded at a young man as he quickly slipped by Ben-Nevin with a file report. He waited as the man disappeared. “Look, if I do this my career in Mossad is over. If I get caught that will be the least of my problems. My father had his life ended when he discovered the old antiquities in China and reported them to his superiors. I will not make the same mistake. You have your religious principles and I have mine, and my principles include enough wealth to retire somewhere that the general, the prime minister, and any other left-wing government official cannot track me down and hang me for this small betrayal. I’ll get the location of Ramesses, but then I’m on my own. You can take your holy relics and I’ll take what’s important to me. Then we’re finished … I will no longer be a citizen of this country and that is where you and your Knesset friends come in. You make sure that after I kill the Gypsy major, that Mossad soon forgets the name Ben-Nevin.”

The small smile slowly made its reappearance and then Ben-Nevin closed the cell phone. The mystery his father uncovered that night long ago in Hong Kong had finally come home to roost and Colonel Avis Ben-Nevin was finally going to collect payment for lies and cover-ups by the Israeli government as far back as three thousand years. As he started to walk away to pack his bags for the last time as an Israeli agent, the colonel heard the yelling coming from the general’s office.

The 2005 Jeep Cherokee bounced into the parking lot beside the Gold City Pawn Shop. Luckily the parking spaces for the business were near empty due to the earliness of the hour — even in Vegas people slowed down pawning their lives away at six A.M.

Alice Hamilton took a deep breath before opening her door. She looked at the package of research material piled on the passenger seat next to her: the culmination of sixty-three years’ worth of research and another lifetime of bitter disagreement with men Alice Hamilton respected more than any two men in the world — Niles Compton and Garrison Lee. They both had always failed to see the direct connection she proposed between the magnificent animals she proclaimed had once lived amongst man and the changing theory of how exactly a few of the more celebrated and ancient biblical battles were really won. Her theory she knew always lacked the necessary proof so an Event mission had never been called. There just wasn’t enough evidence, both Compton and the late Senator Lee had told her. Oh, she knew both Niles and Garrison wanted to believe in the animals, and she thought they did. As a matter of fact she was positive Garrison believed it as he saw the relic himself, but being the bureaucrats they were they were handcuffed about calling an Event with such a small sampling of evidence. Alice had sworn to Garrison Lee that she would continue to search for that proof and let Niles decide if it was enough.

Alice set her lips and then reached for the nine-inch-thick folder, and unlike the other red-bordered top secret folders used at the group, this folder was a standard size manila type — nothing special, and surely nothing secret — until this morning that is.

She stepped from the Cherokee and made her way to the glass-encased front door of the Gold City Pawn Shop. Before grasping the old-fashioned thumb depression plate she looked closely at it. As soon as she took hold of the handle and her right thumb went down upon the thumb plate, Europa, the Cray Corporation supercomputer, would read the minute valleys and swirls of her thumbprint. That image would be studied by no fewer than five security men inside the building at all times. Five was the minimum number of U.S. Marines, Army, Air Force, and naval security personnel needed to secure and guard Gate 2 of the most protected federal reservation in the United States — the Event Group complex, the home to Department 5656.

Alice took hold of the handle, knowing that Europa would send an automatic report to the Security Department notifying them that she was at Gate 2 and would soon be passed on to the complex itself. Alice only hoped that at six A.M. Jack Collins and Carl Everett, the two men in charge of that department, were out running or eating breakfast. She opened the door and stepped into the pawn shop.

Captain Carl Everett had showered, shaved, and dressed after his four-thirty A.M. run around the indoor track facilities on Level 18. On most mornings the captain was joined by the director of Department 5656 security, Colonel Jack Collins, but today, as well as for the past several weeks, the colonel had been missing from their morning runs. As a matter of fact, Everett had noticed that Jack Collins was MIA at most anything not directly related to his military duties at the Group, and Everett knew the reasons behind it.

The captain now stood at the door to the main security office on Level 8. He took a deep breath in anticipation of a conversation that was weeks in coming. He went in.

The staff duty officer this morning was Sergeant Gabriel Sanchez, an Air Force enlisted man now in his second year of duty at Group. He looked up from his shift paperwork just as Everett stepped inside the still quiet office.

“Tell me he’s still in bed and hasn’t reported yet,” Everett said as he noticed the closed door to the colonel’s office.

Sanchez slowly shook his head in the negative. He used his ballpoint pen to point at Jack’s door.

“Never left. He’s been in his office all night and Europa says he’s been logged on his terminal since 2250 hours last night.”

A grim and determined line formed at Everett’s mouth as he moved past the several rows of desks yet to be filled by the day shift of the Security Department in less than an hour. He figured now would be the best time to confront an old friend about a serious problem, and that problem was Jack Collins himself.

“Sergeant, take ten and get some joe down in the cafeteria,” Everett said as he paused at Jack’s closed door.

“I don’t drink coffee, Captain, I—”

The words fell short as the sergeant saw the stern look on the captain’s face.

“But a donut would be nice,” Sanchez finished as he stood and left the office.

Everett without hesitation knocked twice quickly and then went through the door.

“Good morning, Jack, restful night?” Carl said as he perched himself on the front edge of the colonel’s desk.

Jack was studying a printout from Europa and still hadn’t looked up at the U.S. Navy SEAL and a man that had, over the many years, became the colonel’s closest friend.

The colonel, without looking up from his printout, replied, “Restful enough, Carl.” Collins finally looked up as if he had been waiting for this conversation as much as the captain had. Jack laid a yellow highlighter next to the printout and then waited for Everett’s size thirteen shoe to fall.

“Anything?”

Jack held Everett’s gaze, his face neutral, and the captain couldn’t read what was behind the mask. He was relieved when Collins visibly relaxed.

“No.” Jack lowered his head and folded the printout and placed it in his desk drawer and then looked at his watch.

“Jack, let me in, will you, you can’t do this on your own.”

“The murder of my sister by someone in government service is what I consider a personal matter, Carl. As much as I appreciate the offer, this is something that I have to do on my own. Can you understand that?” Jack’s blue eyes bore in on Everett’s and didn’t waver.

“No, Jack, I can’t. I can’t justify you doing this alone. We all knew and liked Lynn. I think Sarah McIntire, Will Mendenhall, and Jason Ryan, and even this dumb swabby captain need to be a part of tracking down whoever did this to your sister. It’s not just you, Jack.”

Collins once more with flair looked at his watch and then back at Everett. “I appreciate the offer, but no. I have to do this and will not risk one more individual of this organization to track her killer down. Stay out of it.” Once more the watch was glanced at. “We have a departmental meeting in an hour. I have work in another department so I’ll need you to cover that staff meeting.”

Everett watched as Collins stood, placed a hand on Everett’s shoulder.

“The lives of you, Sarah, Will, or even Ryan will not be put at risk.” He looked directly into Carl’s eyes. “I appreciate your offer, but this has to be done without you.”

Everett watched Jack leave the office without another word. As he stood from the top of Jack’s desk he noticed that the colonel hadn’t logged off from Europa. With little shame and far less hesitation Carl leaned over and looked at the computer monitor. As Everett saw the picture on the screen his heart leaped in his chest. Colonel Henri Farbeaux was the face staring back at him. The Event Group’s most feared enemy and the world’s greatest antiquities thief had been in custody as early as the month before right here at the Event Group facility. Circumstances however soon dictated that Farbeaux be set free due to personal reasons between Jack and Sarah. The entire incident was kept quiet out of respect for the couple’s privacy. He saw the flashing message just under the picture of the arch-criminal. “Message received from Avignon, France, at 0235 hours this date, Farbeaux, Henri R.”

Everett reached out and tapped the power button for the computer’s monitor and then slowly stood and rubbed a hand over his chin. To have an open communication with a man the FBI considered the second most dangerous man in the world and speaking with him was a treasonable offense. Everett knew Farbeaux had been blamed for many despicable things in the past in his work to gather the world’s greatest antiquities, but thus far he and Colonel Collins could come up with no concrete evidence that he had ever done an American citizen harm. He realized that Henri could be, and on occasion was, a cold-blooded killer, but only when the need arose and only if his life depended upon his aggressive actions. For Henri Farbeaux killing was just too expensive a commodity for his line of work. As he turned for the door Everett became more afraid than ever for Collins.

“What are you and old Henri up to, Jack?”

Alice stood at the security arch leading to the vaults on Level 63. The entire level was dedicated to artifacts that were deemed interesting on an individual basis, but they were also items that held little value to the security of the United States as a whole. This level of vaults was the junk closet of the Event Group.

“Ma’am, are you feeling all right?” asked Marine Lance Corporal Freddy Allen.

Alice stood before the security arch, holding the thick file clutched close to her breast as if it were in danger of jumping free. The lance corporal looked into the tired face of a woman that held sway over Department 5656 as a living legend, right up there with Lincoln, Wilson, FDR, Ike, and Garrison Lee.

Alice didn’t answer the security man’s question. Instead she slowly leaned over the duty desk and placed her right hand on a glass pad. The scanner glowed green, flashed red and then green again; the color remained steady.

“Finger, palm, and pad print confirmed. Now if you’ll please step to the security arch and place your left eye to the scanner.” Alice did as requested.

Suddenly the archway illuminated with a soft blue light; this indicated the laser and gas security systems had been “safed” for Alice’s entry into the vault level after the device correctly read her scanned and stored retinal data on file with Europa.

“Thank you,” was all she said to the blue-clad Marine as she moved into the vault level.

“You’re welcome, ma’am,” the corporal said as she disappeared beyond the security arch. With his eyes on the slow-moving figure of Alice the security man reached for the phone. “Captain, this is Lance Corporal Allen on Level 63. I think you need to come down here. Mrs. Hamilton just checked through security and she looks … well, sir, she looks exhausted.”

Second Lieutenant Sarah McIntire was just leaving the large and very well appointed mess hall, or as the civilians at group called it, the cafeteria, when she saw Jack speaking in hushed tones with the director of Department 5656, Dr. Niles Compton. She saw the stern look on the director’s face and she also noticed that Jack was doing all the talking. The director shook his head from time to time and then the conversation was over. Collins briefly looked up and noticed Sarah just outside the glassed double doors of the cafeteria. He nodded his head once and then turned to leave the now crowded hallway. Sarah decided that the silent treatment from the man she loved was getting to be too much for her. With everything that had happened to the Group in the past two years she was tired of being the last to know everything, especially from a man who used to be able to tell her anything of a personal nature.

“Colonel, do you have a moment?” she asked when she caught him at the elevator tube.

“Lieutenant?” Jack said without turning to face her.

“You didn’t come to see me last night at the Ark. You stood me up, Colonel Collins — again.”

Jack finally turned to face Sarah. He forced a smile and knew it had been a miserable attempt.

“Short stuff, I was just swamped last night,” he said, the lie easily flowing from his lips, something he had never developed a talent for over the years, even for security-oriented situations, much less those on a more personal level. “That’s not true,” he corrected his lie quickly. “We’ll talk later, okay?” With that he attempted to smile and again failed.

The elevator hissed to a stop and the doors opened. Collins stepped back to allow the passengers off and then quickly stepped in and then the door closed on Sarah.

Sarah McIntire slowly lowered her head as others in the hallway passed by on their way to breakfast. After a moment she turned away from the closed doors of the elevator.

“McIntire!” came the call from down the curving corridor.

Sarah turned toward the voice and saw Captain Everett and the deputy director of the Event Group, Professor Virginia Pollock. The tall but beautiful assistant director looked worried as she and Carl approached. It was strange seeing Virginia out of a lab coat while on duty.

“Come with us, Lieutenant.” Virginia didn’t wait for Sarah as she stepped quickly into the next empty elevator. The trip to the vault area was silent as they rode the air-cushioned elevator to Level 63.

“We’re losing Jack,” Sarah said as she leaned her head against the polished aluminum of the elevator doors.

“I know,” Carl answered as he pulled McIntire back from the doors. “He won’t let any of us inside.”

“His sister’s murder has reacquainted Jack with his recent combat past and no one is going to stop him from finding out who the traitor was at either the CIA or FBI,” Virginia Pollock said as she looked at Sarah, and then tried to give her a reassuring smile, but like Jack a few moments before it failed. The doors slid open to Level 63.

The sister of Colonel Jack Collins, Lynn Simpson, was murdered three weeks before and the only clue left behind was a memo generated from either a computer desk at Langley and the CIA, or D.C. from the J. Edgar Hoover Building and the FBI. Someone in one of those two dark agencies had lured Jack’s sister to her death because she may have uncovered something at one, or even both departments, and Jack was determined to track down the killer and administer his brand of justice to the scum that ambushed his sister in Georgetown.

“We have to let him play this out for now and then we’ll see if he comes back to us,” Everett said and looked down at Sarah and knew that was a point she didn’t really care to hear about. Carl reached out and squeezed her small shoulder. “And he will come back. Besides, I think there may be more to his shutting me out than either you, Mendenhall, or Ryan. I can’t place it but he’s pushing me away from him even harder than he is you or the others.”

Sarah nodded. She had noticed the distant way Jack treated Carl since his sister’s murder. As the three reached Vault 22871, indicated by the illuminated light blue numbers to the left of the vault, it stood open, and they entered to see Alice Hamilton on her hands and knees retrieving papers that had spilled to the tile floor. Lance Corporal Allen was assisting her.

“What’s up?” Everett asked as Virginia and Sarah entered one of the smaller vaults on this level.

“I’m afraid I startled Mrs. Hamilton when I came inside the vault. She was engrossed in looking at the specimen and I must have caught her off guard.”

Everett leaned over and gently helped Alice to her feet. “Come on now, the lance corporal can get those. What are you doing here this early, Alice?” Carl asked as he looked her over. The captain shot a quick look at Sarah and Virginia and then gestured by a dip of his head that he needed their help with her.

“Oh, I’m all right, just startled me is all. I wasn’t expecting someone to come up behind me when I’m looking at that,” she said with a nod of her head toward the specimen inside the glass enclosure.

As Everett released Alice into the more familiar arms of Alice’s closest friends at the complex, he glanced at the contents of a vault he had never been in before. He saw what looked like a display of bones laid out inside a hermetically sealed Plexiglas enclosure. His eyes went from the bones to the lance corporal as he handed the captain the large file.

“She was carrying this file like she had nuclear launch codes stashed in here,” the Marine said quietly.

“Thank you, Corporal, you can return to your duties.”

“Aye, aye, sir.”

Everett looked over at Alice, who was being helped into one of the many seats lining the interior of the vault. She was shaking and insisting to her two friends that she was fine, repeating that she had just been startled by the sudden appearance of the corporal. Carl then glanced at the file he held in his hands. He opened it, not really wanting to see anything of a private nature but he considered Alice the mother he had never had and his worry drove propriety out of his thoughts. His brow furrowed when he saw the first few pages. After reading it he shot Alice another look. Everett shook his head and then walked over to where Alice was sitting and knelt down in front of her.

“How are you doing?” Carl asked, slapping her knee lightly with the thick file.

Alice started to answer and then saw the file in Carl’s hand. She reached out but Everett simply moved the file a few inches away.

“Alice, I need to know what you’re doing here,” he said pointedly with a glance toward the open vault door — it was empty.

“I … I need to make a presentation to Niles and the other department heads … I…” Alice’s words trailed off and she looked confused and then just as quickly snapped out of it. “This is important,” she finished, looking first into Carl’s eyes and then Sarah’s and Virginia’s in turn. The sadness and determination were set deep in Alice Hamilton’s face. “Can I talk to Niles?”

“Well, of course you can, why in the hell would you think he wouldn’t see you?” Virginia asked, angry at the thought that Niles Compton’s oldest friend in Alice would ever think that.

“Of course she can see me anytime she likes.”

Everett squeezed his eyes closed. Even though it was on his orders that Niles be notified about Alice’s presence in the vault area when she wasn’t scheduled to come in at all for the next three weeks, he realized now it had been a huge mistake. Now there would be no way to keep the contents, or at least the pages he quickly scanned over, out of the chain of command. Niles Compton stood in the doorway. His white shirt and black tie were freshly cleaned and pressed and everyone could see that he was getting ready for the start of the day at the Event Group complex. Beneath his glasses all could see that his eyes were focused on Alice. As they looked up, Jack Collins stepped into the vault right behind Niles. He looked at Alice, Carl, Virginia, and then Sarah in that order. She could see his jaw muscles clenching and she knew something wasn’t right.

Everett stood and faced Collins. He held up the file and everyone saw Alice flinch and almost start to reach for it once more.

“Colonel, I think you need to see what’s—”

“Carl, we’ll be placing Alice into protective custody. For the time being she will be restricted to the complex. Her house will be secured by our personnel.”

“What?” Everett asked, incredulous at what he had just heard. Carl was so highly trained it was a shock for everyone watching how fast his reaction to Jack’s order was. Never had he questioned a command from Collins in front of anyone.

“This is a joke, right?” Sarah asked as she stood to face Jack.

“No, Lieutenant, it’s no joke. The action is on my orders.” Niles Compton walked into the vault and most noticed him give the specimen enclosure a look; then his eyes moved quickly away and he walked over to Alice. He smiled down at one of his closest friends and the woman who had trained him in the art of running a federal facility unlike any in the world. Niles held out his hand and Alice nodded as if in resignation, and then allowed Niles to help her slowly to her feet. He placed an arm around her and turned her away from the other shocked occupants of the small vault.

“You’re angry, Niles,” Alice said. “You and Garrison have that same I’ll disarm them with kindness approach.”

Niles squeezed her closer to him as they walked to the vault door. “Angry? Not at all, and I know better than anyone here that I would never try to psych you into submission. Hell, Garrison knew that also.” He glanced up at Jack as they slowly walked by him. Collins’s look softened and at the same moment he reached out and also squeezed Alice’s shoulder as they passed by.

“Jack’s pretty hot too, I can tell,” Alice said quietly as she stepped over the threshold of the vault and into the curving corridor.

“Not mad, Alice. He’s just concerned with certain activities you’ve been up to lately.”

As the soothing voice of Niles Compton slowly faded away in the hallway outside, Collins turned to Everett.

“Carl, get that file up to the conference room. Also get three security men dispatched to Alice’s house. I want her Europa link to the complex severed. Her off-base security clearance is hereby suspended until further notice.”

“What in the hell is—”

Jack held up his hand while not looking at Sarah as he cut her off. “Look, Alice and a few others may have compromised security. They also may have placed an agent in jeopardy. This is just temporary until we find out what she’s up to.”

The look on Sarah’s face and also that of Virginia made Jack cringe.

“Short stuff, she’s not under arrest, she’s in protective custody.”

“Yeah, a nice euphemism, Jack … I fail to see the difference.”

“Damn it, Lieutenant, Alice just may have compromised the most important deep cover agent the Group has ever placed, and to tell you the truth that operative is in a rather unforgiving place to be caught and accused of being a spy.”

“Jack, it’s Alice Hamilton for crying out loud.”

Collins lowered his head and didn’t wait for Sarah to catch up as he headed for the vault door.

2

The medieval castle was nearing completion. The magnificent one-half-scale stone structure was built right into the solid but craggy face of the mountain. The stone had been aged by the artisans at a cement and stone plant in Bucharest, making the facing look as if the ancient defenders of Walachia would rise to the parapets to do the bidding of their prince, Vlad Dracul, or as he was known to history: The Impaler. One of the many items that immediately smashed the illusion was the eight cable car lines running from giant tower to giant tower as it snaked its way a mere three miles to the art deco nightclub and restaurant that would entertain guests the year-round, snow or sunshine. The new cable car system was one of the more expensive developments of the massive main project far below in the small valley — The Edge of the World Hotel Resort and Casino.

The castle-nightclub was the only element of the project that was behind schedule. With the opening a mere three weeks away electricians were still fighting to get the power on and stable. Running the thick electrical lines up the side of the mountain had cost money and, much more importantly, time. With the lines placed dangerously close to the cable cars the safety factor had been ignored due to those very same time pressures. Presently there were sixty-two workers housed directly inside the castle to save the time of moving them about at the end of every work shift by cable car. The makeshift plan for the electricians had worked and it looked as if Dracula’s Castle would be online and on time.

As over fifty of the workers slept on cots inside the massive nightclub, several of the men were still completing some last-minute work on the outside floodlights that would highlight the scarred cliff face the castle was pressed into. Two of these men walked silently to the patio stairs and hopped over the old-fashioned wooden railing that was actually tube steel and made their way out of the glare of the floodlights. One of the men pulled out a small bottle.

“Here, this ought to help you sleep tonight.”

The second man accepted the bottle and, tilting his hat back on his head, turned up the container of fiery liquid. The Romanian equivalent of American moonshine called Ţuică burned its way down the small man’s throat. He held the bottle up until the second, much heavier man pulled it away.

“I said help you sleep not put you in a coma,” his friend hissed as he wiped his dirty sleeve over the mouth of the bottle and then capped it. He looked around at the ancient rock face. “This wouldn’t be the place to be if half that mountain decided to come down on top of this damned monstrosity.”

“Landslides and avalanches in the winter aren’t the real danger here and you know that. As beautiful as this place is, the valley below, the pass above, even the villages scattered throughout both mountain and valley can’t hide the fact that something is wrong here.”

“Ah, it’s just rumors and old wives’ tales the old-timers inside told you about that’s got you going. Stop staying up late listening to those old beards and you’ll find sleeping may come a little easier. Now,” the man burped and then slapped the smaller man on the back, “we better get back up there before they cut the power to the lights.”

The two electricians looked at the deep shadows cast by the lighting hitting the crags and deep scars in the face of the small mountain, and at that moment you could understand the tension the workers at the makeshift construction site felt when the old stories were repeated. Even the old Hollywood films from Universal Studios were brought up and why those old films had always turned their nation’s legends into running jokes. The old-timers said the entire world had always underestimated the tales coming out of Romania and that the world most definitely had it wrong about this area of the Carpathians.

As they started to make their way up the small incline of loose rock to the railing above to pull themselves back onto the outdoor patio they both heard the sound of falling rubble from above them in the darkness of the mountain. It wasn’t a large slide, but enough that it echoed in the crags and minute valleys of stone above their heads.

“Maybe it’s a few more of the men leaving in the middle of the night — it’s always on this shift that they quit and make their way down to civilization.”

The younger man was clearly frightened and just hoped that was the case. His friend knew just like everyone else that indeed several of the night shift work detail had quit and moved on, with several leaving their small bags, backpacks, and a suitcase or two — one even left some very expensive tools behind in his haste to leave the mountain and the hard conditions working inside the castle.

As the large electrician reached the rail a few feet above his head, the floodlights illuminating the mountainside went completely out.

“Damn it!” hissed the man as his hand missed the rail on his first attempt. “We’ll be lucky if we don’t break our necks out here.”

“Hurry up, it’s not that dark, I can see your hand, it’s only—”

Suddenly a shape that was just a blacker spot on the black night shot out from the patio deck and grasped the large man by the wrist, snapping it in five places. Then to the horror of the second electrician the man was pulled straight up and over the railing of the darkened patio. The action only took three seconds and not a sound was made outside of the snapping of bone and the sharp intake of breath from the man that was now gone.

The smaller man’s eyes were wide and he felt the shivers start as he neared a state of shock brought on by the suddenness of the assault on his friend. The young Romanian swallowed and then slowly started shaking as he reached up and removed his hat just to keep his hands busy.

As he placed one foot in front of the other he allowed the hat he held in his left hand to fall to the loose shale at his feet. He held tightly to the stone facing of the fake blocks making up the castle walls as he slid first one, and then the other foot along. His left hand rubbed the wall as the night seemed to get even darker than it had been before. His hand touched something that wasn’t the fake veneer of the stone blocks. Whatever it was it moved and that was when the floodlights above flickered and then came back on. The man closed his eyes, refusing to see the thing that he knew was blocking his path to the front of the castle. He heard some soft clicking noises that moved to his front and then disappeared above him. The man opened his eyes to nothing ahead of him except for the shadows cast by the bright light from above.

“God,” the man whispered in his native Romanian. And that was all he could say in his relief at being alone. He turned his head back toward the patio to make sure there was nothing there staring back at him.

The small electrician took a deep breath when he saw that the night was perfectly normal behind him at the rear of the castle. As he turned his head to start forward again he felt the wetness as it struck his hatless head. He reached up and felt his hair and pulled it away. A clear substance was running off his shaking fingers as he looked up to see what exactly had drooled on him. His eyes again widened as he came face-to-face with his own personal nightmare. The beast was actually hanging upside down, its claws dug so deeply into the stone veneer that it held itself perfectly straight above the frightened man.

“Oh,” was all that was uttered in shock before the claws and teeth went to work.

Another two workers were unaccounted for at breakfast the next morning. It was assumed that they had quit after their shift and like the others had made their way back down the mountain to save them the embarrassment of admitting that the dark, foreboding countryside frightened them.

The newly built nightclub that would service the brighter gem of the project below in the valley had claimed a new chapter in the sordid history of the Carpathians.

As in the time of Prince Vlad Tepes, the new Castle Dracula had been christened by blood.

Janos Vajic stood on the blade of a Japanese-made bulldozer and surveyed the hotel, casino, and hot springs garden dome that covered the nearly forty-square-mile resort and was satisfied that the $2.7 billion project was nearing completion and he would be open on time and under the budget forced upon him by his partners — partners with a history of being unforgiving toward failures where their investments were concerned.

Vajic watched on satisfyingly as the last bit of Italian marble was placed around the 72,000-square-foot hot springs bath, gardens, and the magnificent tropical Environ Dome that would bring many thousands of visitors to see the most exclusive plant life in the entire world located in one place. The dome was his personal architectural wonder and actually disguised the control housing for the massive cable car system that ran up the mountainside well enough you couldn’t even tell there was a system. Tourists would board the cable car one hundred feet in the air at the top of the magnificent glass dome.

As he watched the final phase of construction nearing completion he spied the black Mercedes as it approached along the new highway built by the Romanian government so the public could get to the remote location at the southern tip of the Carpathian mountain range. He shook his head as he deftly jumped from the blade of the bulldozer. He was immediately approached by his assistant, Gina Louvinski, a Russian-born, Cambridge-educated general manager who spied the cursed vehicle at the same moment as Vajic.

“Well, this is it,” Gina said as she approached her boss and friend with her clipboard held firmly, ready for any and all questions as far as budgetary matters were concerned. “Shall we meet inside the hotel? I’m sure we can find a quiet ballroom somewhere where there aren’t a thousand workers still lingering.”

“No, the reason this magnificent hotel was built here was because of the beauty of the mountains. I will let the Carpathians do the intimidating,” Janos said as he made sure his coat jacket was buttoned. He looked at the clearing sky knowing that he would indeed be open before the fine summer weather started in this, the part of Romania that used to be known as Transylvania.

The two watched the Mercedes as it approached slowly, obviously so his main investor could see the progress that had been made since his last visit in January. As he watched the progress of the Mercedes, Janos looked over at Gina. She was dressed as a woman, not a woman trying to fight for legitimacy from a male-dominated Eastern society. Her business skirt was just above her knees and her white blouse was no-nonsense. Her gray jacket was devoid of any design save for the small pendant she wore on her lapel. The pendant was designed after the hotel’s main attraction, after the gaming aspect of the property of course: three mountains with the largest in the center lined with small golden flowers — this was the symbol for the multibillion-dollar hotel and casino project known by the name The Edge of the World Hotel and Resort Casino.

The Mercedes pulled to a stop and two men stepped from the front seat. One, from the passenger side, placed a hand inside his coat pocket and scanned the area around the car. The large man’s eyes settled on Janos and Gina and then moved on. He soon nodded to the second man, who then reached over and opened the rear passenger door of the black luxury car. A medium-sized man with a black-on-gray Armani suit complete with turtleneck stepped from the car and smiled widely as he scanned the area. He placed a large pair of expensive sunglasses on and then looked over at Janos and Gina. He raised a hand in greeting and then slowly approached, followed closely by the big man, whose hand was never far from his inside coat pocket.

Russian-born Dmitri Zallas was head of the investment group that supplied the funds and the bribes needed to complete the most luxurious hotel and casino this side of Monte Carlo, and one with a much better view. Zallas had come to Romania during the height of the rule of Ceausescu and never left, having stolen his spoils from the enslaved population during the reign of communism.

“My brother Janos, I see we are well on our way,” he said while ignoring the extended hand of the 35 percent owner of the Carpathian resort. Vajic lowered his hand, embarrassed that Gina had witnessed the disrespect the Russian had toward anyone he considered weak — which was everyone who wasn’t Russian.

“Yes, we will make the grand opening in three weeks on time and on schedule.”

“Magnificent,” Zallas said as he removed his sunglasses. He looked over at his limited partner. “By the way, friend Janos, we will be having a special gala affair the weekend prior. For three days we will host the most influential people in all of Europe.”

“The week prior, we won’t be ready!” Vajic quickly stated, which elicited a withering glare from Zallas.

“Oh, I think you will be.”

“Who are these people and how many are we to accommodate?”

“They are very special guests that look forward to a long weekend without worry or interference from the government.” Zallas cleared his throat. “Any government.”

“Russian and Romanian gangsters are what you mean,” Gina put in.

Zallas shot Gina the same look he had with Janos a second earlier, only this time the look remained.

“Ms. Louvinski, for a Russian-born patriot I am surprised you would think that.” The smile came on but the brightness of that gleaming gesture never reached his dark eyes. His teeth were actually showing underneath the well-trimmed beard. “After all, there is no such thing as a Russian mob, and most assuredly not Romanian.” He chuckled. “I don’t believe they are capable of organizing anything, much less crime. No, Ms. Louvinski, they are just tourists looking for a relaxing stay before the official grand opening.”

“Dmitri,” Gina objected, “the cell phone towers will not be up that weekend, the German contractors cannot adjust their schedule. There will be no phones with the exception of the landline and you know the phone service inside Romania is spotty at the best of times.”

“Oh, the guests will be warned to leave their business behind and just enjoy the resort.”

“But—”

The look from Zallas stopped the hotel’s general manager cold from persisting with her questions to Zallas and his suspect weekend guests.

“There will also be several friends of the Edge of the World Reclamation consortium from the Interior Ministry of your country, men that made this land grant possible. Men we have invested inordinate amounts of cash to.”

“The men who took land protected since the time of the Boyars and Vlad the Impaler and turned it over to a foreign national, men who—”

“You bore me, madam, to no end, and I don’t like to be bored in the slightest. Leave me and my friend to speak in private, please.” The “please” was purely a habit on the part of the most ruthless drug kingpin and organized crime leader in the history of the Russian people.

Gina turned on her heels and left the two men, all the while Zallas’s bodyguard kept a close eye on her shapely figure.

“I want no more distractions. The work is to be completed and the hotel in full operating mode. The casino will remain open and at our guests’ disposal twenty-four hours a day for the entire weekend. Full staff, I don’t care about the budgetary concerns you may have. The hotel will be reimbursed many times over by the favors that will be granted to us in our endeavors here in the Carpathians.” Zallas looked around him and took a deep breath as his eyes took in his pride and joy embedded in the side of the mountain, the reimagined Castle Dracula, the jewel in this Carpathian crown. “This is truly a magnificent location and I must say that is a fantastic site, my friend.”

Janos’s eyes followed Zallas’s as he scanned the rocky mountain range above them and the meadows of flowers leading up.

“What of the troubles you have been having at the castle?” Zallas asked while replacing his sunglasses.

“Every time we send men into the mountains to survey the terrain to ensure there will be no rock slides or avalanches during the snow season, they either come back with tales of terror or of being stalked and watched. Just last night we had two night shift electricians who didn’t come back at all and the rest of the crews are starting to make noise about it.”

“Give the missing men, or surviving families, a complete compensation package, or kill the damn families, I really do not care, Janos.”

The stunned look on Vajic’s face elicited a much larger smile from the Russian.

“Surely you’re joking?”

The smile remained. “Surely.”

“My point of all of this is that the castle will remain behind schedule if we do not get the main cable cars operating. We need them not only for the last of the kitchen equipment delivery, but also food and beverage. These items cannot be manhandled up the mountain or travel by the small cable car; we need the four resort cars for transport. The men are frightened out of their minds by old wives’ tales and the isolation of working seven days is driving these workers mad. That is the reason they vanish in the middle of the damn night. It has to be the local villagers and those damn Gypsies that roam through this area constantly. And to tell you the truth we don’t need that sort of realism for the castle. I mean Gypsies, real Gypsies. I thought they were extinct in these parts.” He looked self-consciously at a man with little sympathy for frightened workers, or junior partners for that matter. “We need security posted at the castle with my workers for the remaining days we have left to complete the project.”

“Oh very well, I have a few men that have experience at this sort of activity. I believe all you’re dealing with here are a few peasants and transients, maybe even student protesters mad at us for using once protected lands. Kids, or Gypsies, or mama and papa villagers that are angry their mountain range and precious sheep meadows are no longer a sanctuary for backward people made possible by two thousand years of inept and clueless government.”

“What of them?” Janos asked as his head dipped toward the mountain.

“Who?” Zallas asked as if he was annoyed.

“The Gypsies in the villages up there.”

“Gypsies? Please, Janos, Gypsies? They dress differently than the other mountain people for sure, but to call them Gypsies? That’s a little much.” He smiled. “I think you’ve been listening to some of those tales these peasants tell around here.” He smiled. “Gypsies — that’s funny, friend Janos, perhaps one too many American and British Dracula motion pictures, you think?”

At the insult to his intelligence and his country, Janos closed his eyes momentarily. When he opened them again Zallas was stepping into his Mercedes.

“A man will contact you immediately about your mountain peasant problems.” The door was pushed closed without another word.

Once inside the Mercedes, Zallas stared up the mountain in the direction of the unfinished castle. Then his eyes moved upward from there to the Patinas Pass covered in clouds. As he watched he knew the cursed Gypsy was also up there watching him. He knew what the attacks at the castle were about and he would have to put a stop to it. He removed his satellite phone and made a call. As he looked at the phone in his hands he decided to bring in his own communications equipment for the opening weekend, that would cure the problem with no cell phone towers.

“Yes, I need you here by tomorrow and bring some men with you. No, not a hunt but you will want to be protected while you’re in the mountains. No, just a payment delivery.” Zallas placed the satellite phone back in its cradle as he watched the mountain above him as the car drove away. “Yes, I received your message loud and clear,” he said as he spied the clouds above the pass where he knew the Gypsy was watching. He looked away from the window. “In a few days you will receive my message, my backward Gypsy inbred.”

One mile up into the low foothills, eyes watched the progress of the hotel and the land surrounding it. Then the bright yellow eyes dimmed as they moved to the castle above. From the shadows of the thin line of trees a low growl was heard. The eyes then settled on a lone figure that was clearly seen in a grayish haze caused by the daylight hours. The object of the growl was looking back at the mountains. This time a much louder growl rumbled and shook the loose earth around the stand of trees — then the tree line became silent once more as shadow melted back into stone.

For the first time in their long and ancient history, the inhabitants of the region — sheep men, dairymen, and huntsmen of the Carpathian highlands — were afraid, and when they became afraid bad things would start to happen in the world of men.

Alice sat in the office she had spent her entire adult life working in and at the moment felt as uncomfortable as if she were in a hospital waiting room. As Niles went about canceling the morning’s departmental meeting and field assignment assessment teams in lieu of the recent security developments — Alice herself — she looked about the office once occupied by the man she had loved since the end of World War II — Senator Garrison Lee, whose new portrait hung on the wall in a place of honor next to the oil painting of Abraham Lincoln, the creator of Department 5656. The painting of Lee was a portrait she had never seen before and one obviously made without her knowledge. She found she couldn’t look at the man she faced every day of her life for the past sixty-five years until his death in South America the previous summer.

Known as the strongest personality in government service, Alice Hamilton had intimidated presidents from every decade of her service. Now she was basically under house arrest and was also sitting in her friend’s office like a student caught cutting class—Well, maybe a little more serious than that, she thought to herself. Alice knew this was going to be the end result of her using the asset Jack and Niles had placed so carefully inside the Vatican but she knew she had to take the chance and ask the agent known as Goliath to search for the items she so desperately needed for her Event package.

Alice looked up as the double doors opened and Niles Compton, Jack Collins, and then finally deputy director of Department 5656 Virginia Pollock all came in and then sat around the smaller of the two conference tables in the large office of Director Niles Compton. The exception was Collins, who knelt beside Alice.

Alice confidently looked up and into Jack’s blue eyes. He placed a kind hand on her knee and looked into her eyes.

“Been busy?” the colonel asked.

“Jack, I’m fine. I know I went against protocol but I have good reasons for doing so.”

Jack nodded and then straightened. He glanced at Niles, who hit the intercom switch to his outer office.

“Please tell the security element of Lieutenant Commander Ryan to go ahead and remove the Europa link from Ms. Hamilton’s house and then secure the location for hardware removal. Tell Ryan that Pete Golding will be assisting.” Niles turned the intercom off and then took a deep breath.

Alice would not blink nor would she shy away from Niles’s saddened features. She knew everyone in the room was thinking the same thing — that she had gone over into Alzheimer’s land never to return.

“In 1947 you and Director Lee forged the rules of secrecy here at Department 5656. In the ninety-five-year history of the Event Group there has never been a prosecution for treason or dereliction of duty.” Alice hung her head but when she looked back the old fire was back in her eyes. “Usually these things are dealt with in-house and never make it to the courts as you all well know.”

“This is Alice Hamilton we’re talking about,” Virginia interrupted, “and in case you hadn’t noticed, Niles, she’s right here in this room.”

“If I may finish, Virginia?” Niles said as he forced his anger down once again, mad as hell that no one but he and Jack was seeing that an absolute and serious security breach had occurred. He quickly walked over to his desk and replaced his glasses.

“Apologies,” Virginia said and then looked over at Alice, who was taking this thing far better than herself.

“Alice, you know as well as anyone in the world what could have happened if the Europa system had been compromised by using her capabilities outside of the complex. I gave permission for your home link to Europa be made available to you in your retirement, but since you are who you are, a legend here at Group, Dr. Pete Golding didn’t place any constraints on your activities at home as far as the use of Europa was concerned. He gave you full access to the Cray system. Dr. Golding and I will discuss this after we are through here. Colonel Collins, your department will prepare an incident report and list Dr. Golding as responsible for the massive security failure. He is hereby suspended from active duty until I figure a way to hang him without actually killing him.”

Jaws dropped around the table, with again the exception being Jack Collins.

“Europa, are you online?” Niles asked, looking at the large eighty-five-inch monitor in the center of the conference room.

“Yes, Dr. Compton.”

“List the names of departmental personnel who have signed onto the home terminal of Alice Hamilton, please.”

“Date of user login 12/3/2013 1350 hours — Hamilton, Alice, Jean — Executive Director, Department 5656. User login 12/3/2013 1415 hours — Ellenshaw, Charles, Hindershot III — department head — Cryptozoology. User login 12/3/2013 1510 hours — Golding, Peter, Maxwell — Director, Computer Sciences Division, Department 5656.”

“Thank you, Europa. Were there any more names listed as active on the home system of Mrs. Hamilton?”

“No, Dr. Compton, the only other user login was made 6/23/2012, Lee, Garrison, Donner, former director, Department 5656—deceased.”

With the name mentioned Alice perked her head up and then looked over at the portrait of Lee, which was staring back at her with that “I told you so” look that always infuriated her. The others felt horrible that the name was mentioned by Europa. They all looked at Alice, who had a change come over her as she straightened in her chair and then actually slid it up and placed her hands on the tabletop and folded them. She looked up at Niles and the fire in her eyes was palpable — this was the face they all knew from Alice Hamilton.

Niles placed his hand on the thick file and then sat down next to Alice. He shook his head and took a deep breath.

“Do you see what your persistence in this quest has done? I’m leaving it up to Jack on what to do with Charlie Ellenshaw, but I believe a year’s suspension is in order — the same for Pete Golding. Of all the personnel who know the importance of keeping Europa secure it is Dr. Golding. If the president had a mere suggestion of what happened here we would all be looking for work, if he lets us off that easy. This is a major crime. You just didn’t break a rule; you may have compromised an agent of this department. A man it has taken Jack, Senator Lee, and me six years to get into place.”

“I know how long it has taken; it was I who suggested the young man in the first place.”

“Alice, we have a man inside the Vatican archives who may have to cut and run, and that action by a member of the Vatican staff would surely leave the Swiss Guard and even the Italian Carabinieri to conclude that he was an agent. And if they ever found out it was not only an American agent, but a second lieutenant in the United States Army, well, I don’t know how the president of the United States could ever explain that one to the Catholic faith. And with the recent religious developments in the world this country does not need to antagonize another religion. They already think the president is against all religion, which he is most definitely not.”

This time Alice did hang her head.

“The only people who knew about our man in the Vatican archives were Niles, Virginia, me, and you,” Jack said.

“All for a possible Event that we have not been able to prove since all of us have been here,” Niles said as he opened the folder. “The only consensus on that animal in that vault since the day it was found buried in France in 1918 is that it cannot be real. Our own people believe it was a hoax perpetrated on the people of Bordeaux in 1187. That is the science here, Alice. Even your co-conspirator, Charlie Ellenshaw, doesn’t believe an animal like that ever existed.”

“Damn it, Niles, do not dare to sit there and quote me the fossil record data. Was what we found in South America listed in the fossil record? No. Were the animals of the Stikine River in Canada listed in the fossil record? No. And were the symbiants’ life-forms we found deep in the Marianas Trench and the Gulf of Mexico in any fossil record? No. Of anyone in this room I have earned the right to believe in the impossible after working in this basement menagerie for over sixty years.”

The room became silent as the tension hung in the air between Alice and Niles Compton. It seemed that Alice, who suddenly had come to life and back to the strong woman who used to run the Event Group like she was Genghis Khan, had been reborn in just the few seconds it took to get riled up after her project was basically called a fairy tale.

“I think we need to know what Alice here is subscribing to, Dr. Compton,” Jack said as his curiosity came to full boil when he saw how adamant Alice was. For the first time in many weeks he was not thinking about the murder of his sister. The colonel was now fearful that he was losing a great friend, and he wanted to give Alice every break possible and allow her to explain why she would risk so much.

“Alice, in her compromising of our man at the Vatican, thought she hit the jackpot with what our agent found buried in the archives.” Niles chose a picture out of the file and then slid it toward Collins, who picked it up and looked it over.

“A dog’s skull?” he asked.

Alice reached out and removed the photo from Jack’s fingers. “No, not a dog, but an exact duplicate of the specimen we have preserved in Vault 22871. Niles, I had convinced both you and Garrison, and now I have the proof, and what’s more, I think we may have a real problem with ancient artifacts that have been showing up on the black market.” Alice looked at one of her oldest friends. “Niles, you believed in this once also.”

“Believing is one thing, Alice, but you know we move and act on proof. Alice, I do believe you. I know the things we’ve seen here defy description. But I cannot justify an Event call based on an animal carcass. I need proof. For right now the issue is closed — there is not going to be an Event declaration on this.”

Niles saw Alice set her mouth in that straight line that always announced she was about to dig in her heels and not budge while he was pushing. Niles closed the file and then slid the folder down toward where Jack was sitting.

“But I will have Jack take a look at your new evidence.” Niles nodded toward the colonel. “He’s unbiased and will give you a fair shake. I have to step back from this call.”

“I do apologize for jeopardizing our agent. But when you see all that has changed in the past few days you will know why this has to be evaluated immediately.”

Niles nodded and then smiled.

“Your apology still won’t save your partners in crime.”

“Niles, leave Pete and Charlie alone, you know how scared they get when someone threatens them, and I did mention a little something about killing them if they didn’t help me.”

Most in the room smiled as Alice finally lightened a little. Even Niles smiled and then nodded.

“I’ll leave that up to the colonel also. But I think a little more fright need be placed on those two. Don’t you think, Colonel?”

Jack raised his brow. “You bet.”

Alice silently nodded and then with a last look at the file in Jack’s hands left the conference room.

“So you have believed Alice and her tale of strange animals all along?” Virginia asked Niles.

Compton laughed. “After Alice reminded us of what we have run across on our missions? Yes, I have always believed. When someone like Alice Hamilton says something is out there, you damn well better believe there is something out there.” Niles looked at Jack and then smiled wider. “Besides, she needs to sweat a little for placing our Vatican man in danger.”

“And that’s not why we are angry, Virginia,” Jack said as he hefted the thick file and stood. “It’s that she didn’t come to us and tell us she was doing it. Our man is buried at the Vatican archives for a reason, and Alice using him is what we have him there for. She just has to inform us so our young lieutenant can take the appropriate precautions.”

Both men could see that Virginia, after shaking her head at the two men, was also embarrassed as she left the conference room.

As the doors closed behind the nuclear sciences director, Niles looked at Jack with a far more serious face.

“Colonel, I’m afraid I have to ask you to postpone your trip to Washington to meet with your contact there about your sister. This,” he pointed at the thick folder, “has to take priority, because if Alice thinks it’s important enough to break security protocol over then we better check it out. And frankly, Jack, I need you here.” Niles stood and reached out and hit the intercom for Europa. “The pictures that our man at the Vatican took of his tail in Rome, well, Europa got a hit on her identity, and our problem, Colonel, just went into the red. Europa, place the information you received via secure link from Goliath please.”

Jack knew his agent at the Vatican, Lieutenant DeSilva, was code-named Goliath.

On the large monitor a picture of a young girl came up. She was beautiful, more of a student look about her than anything.

“Europa, have you identified the subject centered on the screen?” Niles asked.

“Affirmative, Dr. Compton. She has been identified through facial analysis derived from photos and cross-referenced with the CIA Ice Blue program at Langley. The subject’s name is Mica Sorotzkin, a Russian-born female of Jewish heritage now living in Israel. Employment verification through the offices of the National Security Agency listed as intelligence gathering — Mossad.”

“Well, that just about does that — damn it!” Collins said as he realized they had just lost their cover inside the Vatican archives. “Mossad.” Jack knew the Israeli intelligence arm was one of the best in the world. “How in the hell did they tag him?”

“We need to get Everett to Rome and prepare to bring our operative out of the Vatican. While Carl is in Italy,” Niles tapped the file folder with Alice’s evidence, “I need you to look through this with a fine-tooth comb and see if there’s anything else that has been compromised over this. And also check Alice’s evidence and see if there’s anything there we can move on.”

Jack knew the request by Niles placed his personal investigation into the murder of his sister on hold. He looked at the file in his hands.

“Why is she so obsessed with that damn vault? If Sarah hadn’t told me about the thing inside it I would never have known it was even there.”

“Jack, she didn’t believe it either for the first few years she worked here. But she slowly became obsessed with the cryptozoology issues as far as animals’ walking upright were concerned.”

“Walking upright?” Jack pulled the picture of the skull received from the Vatican archives and looked it over. “She believes this thing walked upright?”

“That’s not only her belief, but, damn,” Niles started but looked embarrassed, “I believe it too. But I’m a little more practical. Show me the proof and then I can act.”

Collins placed the photo back into the file. “I’ll look it over,” he said as he stood and left the conference room. As he did Niles slammed the intercom button down once again.

“Get me Professor Hindershot Ellenshaw III out of his dungeon on Level 82 and get him up here, and while you’re at it bring his accomplice, Dr. Peter Golding when he returns from Mrs. Hamilton’s house.”

It was time to put the fear of God into both of the wacked-out geniuses.

Carl Everett was in the process of inventorying the components removed from Alice’s home computer system. The link had been destroyed and all relevant hard drives removed. Several hundred files, most of them unclassified departmental investigations, had been recovered. Everett slammed one of these files onto the table, making both Will Mendenhall and Jason Ryan stop what they were doing and stare at the captain.

“If Alice believes this, why in the hell can’t the director? I mean if she believes, that settles it for me.”

Both Mendenhall and Ryan were silent as they let Everett get it off his chest. They knew it wasn’t just the situation with Alice. It was more Jack cutting everyone out of the loop as far as finding his sister’s killer was concerned. Will looked at Jason wanting to know if they should comment. Ryan, the one usually to shoot his mouth off, just shook his head for Will to leave the matter alone and then went back to cataloguing files.

The door opened to the Security Department and Collins walked in. He looked at the mess on the large table as everything Event Group related had been removed from the house on Flamingo Road. Jack reached out and slowly picked up an eight-by-ten photo of Garrison Lee and Alice at a small birthday party. Alice had her arm around Garrison and was kissing his cheek. The eye patch was askew and his face held a picture of pure annoyance as he was smooched by his longtime love. Collins swallowed and then placed the picture and frame back down. He tucked the thick file folder that once belonged to Alice Hamilton under his arm as he faced Everett.

“Mr. Everett, get to your quarters and pack. Europa will have State Department identification waiting for you. Get to Nellis. Ryan, you will fly the captain to Rome.”

Everett looked at Jack and knew what was wrong.

“So the rumor is true, Goliath has been compromised, it’s a fact?” Carl asked.

“Get there and get him out. No computer communication or cell phone. Make contact and get him to the plane. Access the situation, but more than likely you’ll have to pull him out.”

Jason looked at Everett first and then nodded his head. “Yes, sir.”

“This is a priority. In the meantime I’ve been ordered to go through this file and see if Alice dug up anything that can be used to back her theory — whatever that is.”

Everett nodded as Collins turned for his office door and then entered without another word to his best friends in the world.

“There he goes again. Now he’ll be on the phone and communicating with Europa until tomorrow sometime.” Will Mendenhall placed a folder on the table and looked at Everett and Ryan. “I’m telling you he’s talking to the Frenchman. I saw his face when he talks for hours with the man. He’s planning something regarding the death of his sister and Farbeaux is in on it.”

“In lieu of us, are you kidding? He hates that man,” Ryan said.

“The colonel respects Farbeaux and you know it. He believes just like all of us that the Frenchman has been blamed for a lot around here that he didn’t actually do. Jack is willing to bet his reputation that old Henri isn’t as bad a man as he likes to make out sometimes.”

Everett looked at Ryan. His theory about Henri Farbeaux was nearly correct. But there were one or two things that Ryan and Mendenhall didn’t know that he himself did — Henri might be respected by Jack Collins but to use the word friendly in conjunction with Farbeaux was another issue altogether. That and the fact that the French antiquities thief was in love with Sarah McIntire placed the whole situation into the realm of the surreal.

Everett suddenly placed his hand to his temple and closed his eyes in thought. “Mr. Ryan, I see a Learjet 60-220 Executive Air in your near future.”

Ryan nodded and smiled at the way Carl had closed the conversation about Jack. “Shall we go to Rome, Captain, and leave this peasant Mendenhall to cover us while we vacation?”

Everett smiled for the first time in hours. “Yes, let’s do leave the Army peasant to do the easy work while we toil away in Rome.”

“You guys can kiss my—”

“At ease, Lieutenant, and get to counting,” Ryan joked as he cut off Mendenhall’s curse. Both he and Everett left the security office as Mendenhall tossed a pencil at Ryan.

Mossad Major Mica Sorotzkin had retraced the American priest’s steps back to the cybercafe he had used on no fewer than three different occasions. She had first used one, and then two, and then finally the third computer she had noted the young priest had used during his visits. In just minutes and without any of the five people currently in the small café, Mica had successfully removed all three of the hard drives from the PCs without being noticed by anyone but the counter clerk, who just admired the beautiful woman with the carefree ponytail as she sauntered past with over a thousand dollars’ worth of his equipment. Mica Sorotzkin batted her two differently colored eyes and smiled as she nonchalantly left the building.

Three hours later the hard drives were being forensically studied by no fewer than six Israeli computer technicians at a Mossad safe house two miles from Vatican City. As she waited for further orders, Mica studied the file on the man the Israeli intelligence arm suspected had infiltrated the hardest area of Vatican City to get into — the archival department. It was so vast and so closed to the outside world that most authors of fiction get the description of its depths and contents totally off the mark. Mossad had been trying to get an agent placed for the past fifty years with no success. Now they suspected the American CIA had penetrated the most guarded religious archives in the world—Yes, she thought — either the CIA or another arm of the American government.

“Major, the general is on the secure line, it sounds urgent,” said one of the safe house security men.

“When isn’t it urgent with General Shamni? I swear the man sees Palestinians coming out of his oatmeal in the mornings.” She picked up the phone at her desk. “Major Sorotzkin.”

“Your priorities in Rome have changed, Major. Your concentration is to be focused on whom the young priest works for and to whom he is secretly sending information regarding Project Ramesses. Your mission to possibly turn this young man and make him work for us is off for the moment.”

“Sir, I don’t have any intelligence on that particular project, what is it?”

“Listen, Major, your computer forensics team believe they will have the hard drives broken down in a few hours, they will give you the information this covert priest is sending out. We want that information and if it leads to certain … sensitive projects we will have to act and act strongly in defense of Israel, is that clear?”

“No, General, not at all.”

“Major Sorotzkin, I am ordering you to pack your bags. You are hereby on alert for assignment change if and when we find out if Project Ramesses is compromised. I am sending Lieutenant Colonel Ally Ben-Nevin to debrief you and to evaluate the importance of this young American. He will take command of the station when he arrives.”

“General, that religious zealot can only mess this up, I want him—” Mica leaned forward with a slap onto the file compiled on her American priest. “General, I have been working this man for the past year and I’ll be damned—”

The silence on the other end of the phone told the Mossad intelligence major she was talking to no one. The general had given his orders and had nothing else to say or hear, it was just that simple. Mica hung up the phone as gently as she could to control her need to throw the instrument through the window.

“Damn it!” she said with her one green and one brown eye, and then not being able to contain her anger at the obvious misstep by her superiors any longer, the major slapped the desk and then angrily slid the file she had put together piece by painstaking piece on the actions of the archival priest off her desk and onto the floor.

“Are you all right, Major Sorotzkin?” one of the technicians asked, looking around nervously at the scattered file.

“I hate this damn job sometimes.”

Janos Vajic and Gina Louvinski sat at one of the two thousand tables inside the massive restaurant named Vlad’s. It was a name that Vajic absolutely hated but had no choice in using. He didn’t consider it very good advertising for one on the world’s foremost kitchens to be named after Vlad the Impaler. They were going over the recent wine, liquor, and food delivery. The food and beverage manager had just taken away a large folder of added expenses for the long weekend planned before the private grand opening.

“Mr. Vajic, you have a visitor here to see you, sir.”

The Romanian-born Janos looked up from his work and he and Gina both saw the worried look on the trainee manager’s face as he stood before them wringing his hands.

“Well, bring them in,” Vajic said in annoyance.

The man looked back through the large plate glass window that separated the giant restaurant from the large bar.

“What in the hell is the matter with you?” Gina asked when the manager trainee didn’t speak. “Show whoever the hell it is in.”

“The gentleman is in the bar with some rather unscrupulous-looking men. I … I didn’t think you would want their kind in the restaurant.”

“Oh, for Christ sake,” Janos said as he tossed his pen down and stood and started to follow the man. “You would think you had Frankenstein’s monster in the barroom.”

Janos froze at the large sliding glass door that connected the restaurant with the barroom. The five men were standing at the bar dressed in black pants, black leather jackets of varying styles and lengths, and they all wore sunglasses. Vajic saw four men standing separate from the fifth, who leaned against the bar drinking from a glass slowly and deliberately while his companions were loud and boisterous.

As Gina slid in beside him and started to move forward trying to buffer her boss from these rather dubious-looking locals, Janos took her arm and stilled her. He nodded to the items leaning against the bar railing. Several large cases held what must have been very powerful weapons. There were more than fifteen different cases.

“I believe Mr. Zallas’s solution to our problems in the mountains has arrived,” he whispered.

Gina froze as she realized she was looking at men who were sent here by the Russian mob.

Janos took a deep breath and approached the five men. As he did, the solitary drinker looked up and into the gilded mirror behind the bar. He raised the large glass of water and drank. To Vajic’s surprise the ruffians were all drinking water. He had thought the men were tossing down vodka at an incredible rate. The man standing by himself straightened and turned to face his approaching host and hostess. His eyes lingered only a moment longer on Gina than on Janos.

“You are Janos Vajic?” the man asked, his face hidden behind a thick beard and mustache. The eyes were nowhere to be found hidden underneath the thick-lensed sunglasses. Vajic wondered how the man could see at all.

“I am he. And you are obviously Russian,” Janos said, not holding out his hand for the official introductions. “This is Ms. Louvinski, my general manager. We have many—”

“The general manager,” the man asked in passable Romanian. “So you are the person I am to see when this problem in your high country is solved?”

Gina looked from the small man with the beard to Vajic, who nodded his head that she should answer.

“Yes, whatever that problem is of course.”

“I suspect the men are frightened of the mountain dark. It is a dark that never ends.”

Gina looked at Vajic once more and rolled her eyes and stepped back.

“As I said, you are Russian,” Vajic repeated. “What makes you think you know this area well enough that you can solve something we don’t even know needs solving? This could be just a case of men working away from home and becoming homesick, it happens all the time.”

The man reached over and retrieved his black fur hat and then placed it on his head.

“As you said, I am indeed Russian, but my companions here are not. They are Romanian like yourself and Ms. Louvinski here. They are all former Departamentul Securităţii Statului, the now defunct department of state security. All of these men used to work directly for President Nicolae Ceauşescu. I admit that they failed to protect him in the end, but then again it wasn’t really their job. What they do is special. These men, like me, hunt for a living. I admit that we usually hunt men,” here the small brute smiled for the first time, “but we can be persuaded to hunt myths and legends … or just see if every Romanian worker is scared of the darkness.”

“I take it you will start your search in the high country above Dracula’s Castle?”

The men all smirked at the name of the project they were sent here to protect.

“That is our concern, not yours,” the large Russian said as he reached over and gathered four of the gun cases and slung them over his shoulder.

“Well then, I guess we’ll leave it to you to do whatever it is you do,” Janos said as he half turned and then stopped. “By the way, my friend, I wouldn’t advertise the fact that these idiots used to work for one of the largest mass murderers in Romanian history if I were you, or there may be five more men missing in the high country. Nicolae Ceauşescu wasn’t too popular, even in an inaccessible place like this. A lot of people are still angry at the deaths he caused just to remain in power — like another country I could mention.” Janos Vajic couldn’t help it. Romanian citizens just weren’t that fond of their former partners in communism and he had to get in a dig at the small man for his country’s transgressions against his nation.

The man just smiled and then moved toward the door.

“The main cable cars are now functional and moving up the mountain so that will save you time in your climb to the castle.”

At first both Janos and Gina thought the man was going to leave without comment to Gina’s information, then the man stopped amid his companions and they all looked back at Janos and Gina.

“No cable cars and no hot meals at the castle. We will walk, study, and learn more in our travel up the mountain than you have ever known about this region in your years of building here. No, we walk.”

As the men filed out of the bar Gina shook her head.

“I hate those goddamn secret police bastards.”

“Cheer up, maybe they’ll find what it is they seek.”

The Russian and his men were going to a region of Romania once known to the world at the time of the dark ages as the Transylvanian Ridge, a little known name for the most inaccessible area that hosts the bleakest, darkest mountains in the entire world — a place where men have always feared to tread. This was the ancient mountain that guarded the southern approach to Romania from the Danube River. In the Old World tongue of ancient Wallachia, the language of the Boyars and Vlad himself, it was also known as the Land of the Blood Moon.

3

Niles Compton watched as Professors Pete Golding and Charles Hindershot Ellenshaw III slowly walked out of his expansive office as if they had just witnessed their puppy being put to sleep. Niles had read them the riot act, but despite his earlier promise to crucify them both for assisting Alice with her Vatican break-in, he let them off with a written warning and a write-up in their 201 file. The one thing Niles realized about both brilliant men, neither one refused to say that they would not help Alice in the future, nor would they refuse anyone in their small group of managers. To Compton that was good enough. He allowed them to leave with the warning to stay clear of Colonel Collins for a while, and it was that alone that hurt their feelings more than anything.

After his punishment had been meted out, Niles turned and went back to his desk to finish his paperwork. He looked down at the forms on his otherwise clean desk and then he threw off his glasses once more and placed his hands so they covered his face as he realized how badly he had hurt Alice by his refusal to move on her Event. He just hoped Collins could find something in her files to help him help her.

Niles needed Jack Collins to help him find the provenance to move on this possible Event; if not he would seriously have to consider retiring Alice Hamilton. And that would eventually lead to Niles Compton resigning from the Group.

Jack Collins looked up from his chair at a small table inside the Group’s single place to relax and have a drink after their working hours: the Ark, named after Department 5656’s most prized and the very first artifact ever collected by the Event Group in 1864.

Jack reached for the cup of coffee he had allowed to go cold in front of him. He closed his eyes and then pushed the cold coffee away. He reached out and opened the thick folder and what Alice thought was evidence of either a lost or extinct animal or proof of a massive hoax perpetrated by a long-ago prankster. The first picture he saw was the photo that had been forwarded through their man, Second Lieutenant DeSilva, inside the Vatican archives. He examined the skull and read the exhibit note under the skull.

Collins then picked up Alice’s notes on the Italian find. He noted that the report had been written in 1966.

After exhaustive on-site research and unauthorized archaeological digging, it is concluded at this time that Roman senator Marcus Paleternus Tapio was indeed a Roman senator from year AD 19 to 27. Further research has shown that Senator Tapio was also a military leader who achieved the rank of centurion before family wealth pushed him into the Senate and the life of politics. Further notes as more information becomes available as to Marcus Paleternus Tapio’s military campaign assignments: it must be noted that the animal skull, which I believe to be a species of large timber wolf, may have been a gift to Tapio when he was a senator. However, it is my theory that Centurion Tapio, not Senator Tapio, recovered the skull on one of his many military excursions for Emperor Augustus Caesar.

Collins shook his head after reading Alice’s beautiful handwriting. He once more looked at the picture of the wolf skull that for some reason the Vatican archives, or maybe even the pope himself, had sealed away and buried among whatever else they had hidden from the rest of the world.

Jack was ready to close the folder and head for the Europa clean room to better understand what it was he was supposed to be reading, when a small padded plastic box fell out of the thick file. Collins picked it up and examined it. The case contained a small chunk of stone. It was only seven inches square and looked as if it were a carving of some kind. Jack read the words on the tag that had been attached to the plastic box since 1949.

Recovered by Senator Garrison Lee the night of April 1, 1949, aboard the vessel Golden Child inside Hong Kong harbor. Special note to self — the bone inside the relief has been proven to contain residue of bone marrow. Must have further analysis done to determine gene structure when and if possible.

Jack examined the piece of stone. He turned it over in his hand and then once more. The piece looked as if it had been broken from something far larger, and what was the most amazing thing about this small stone was the fact that where the break in the stone had been severed from its parent stone to his astonishment there looked to be a bone underneath the broken area of petrified skin and hair.

“What the—”

“Can I join you?”

Collins had been so intent on studying the small piece of stone that he failed to see Sarah McIntire walk up to his table. He smiled at her and then self-consciously slid the small stone back into the file folder. He looked Sarah over. She was wearing her blue military jumpsuit.

Jack held Sarah’s eyes for the longest time. He knew the confrontation was upon him over the nonuse of Event Group personnel in the search for his sister, Lynn’s, murderer. The real conversation with Sarah would not be just the exclusion of his friends in his personal search for killers, with Sarah it was her relationship with one Henri Farbeaux. The man had been a pain in the side of every Event Group security director since 1992. Garrison Lee announced before his death that the Frenchman was a direct threat to the security of the United States due to his proclivity of stealing the world’s heritage. The problem with Sarah was that she had become attached to Farbeaux in a special way. Without moving, Jack lightly kicked out the chair opposite him with his shoe. The invitation to sit was offered.

Sarah kept her eyes on the man she had fallen in love with the first time she had seen his gruff exterior. The small scars etched on Jack’s face like a road map declared to anyone who met him that yes, indeed, Colonel Jack Collins had done his thing for king and country. She slowly slid into the chair.

Jack watched Sarah as he moved Alice’s thick file aside.

“I thought you were teaching a class at five this afternoon?” Collins asked.

“I had my assistant take it for me. We need to talk about Henri.”

“I don’t think I want to discuss the Frenchman at the moment, short stuff. Whatever the reasons you may have for wanting to help him is your discussion.”

“Because the man went to Mexico and saved my life, and I ask you for a favor that shouldn’t have been asked and you allowed Henri to escape — for me. I appreciated it, but all you had to say was no. And now I suspect…” She stopped and rubbed a small hand over her face and then slowly looked into Jack’s blue eyes. “You didn’t even do it for me, you did it because you need him. You didn’t let him go because he saved my life, Jack, you let him go because you need him more than you need us to find Lynn’s killer. How’s that for a forensic analysis?”

Collins didn’t respond. He reached out and took the thick file folder from the tabletop while pushing his chair back.

“We just want to help, and I deserve to be let in.”

“I think we need to be somewhere we can discuss this in private.”

With that Jack took Sarah by the arm and instead of going out the front door Collins escaped with his charge through the back.

Seven hours later Jack awoke. Sarah was lying next to him and he couldn’t help staring at her sleeping form. Collins had just broken a cardinal rule of the Group and especially the military — no private liaisons will be tolerated at the complex, and surely not with a junior officer, as Sarah was. As he looked at Sarah he knew there were no rules when it came to the small geologist. He knew he had been far too hard on her and he also knew there was no way around it — he loved the woman sleeping in his bed more than anything in the world and he didn’t know how to handle it. He studied her breathing and smiled when she snored a second, rubbed her nose, and drifted back off.

Jack had relented as far as Sarah was concerned, but he wouldn’t give an inch as to allowing the men and women of this Group to become entangled with what he knew he had to do in regard to his sister’s mysterious killing. He wouldn’t involve them in murder, and that’s what Collins knew it would come down to. People who murdered CIA personnel rarely if ever made it to trial. This was Jack’s plan and the reason he was using the talents of Henri Farbeaux to gain access to the seedy world of double agents — if anyone knew how to catch a rat in the cupboard it was another rat who wanted the cupboard all to himself, and that was the Frenchman, Colonel Henri Farbeaux.

Collins leaned over and kissed Sarah on the forehead. He saw her hiccup and then cry for a minute and then fall back into her dreamworld. Jack knew he had almost pushed away the only woman he had ever loved. He shook his head and then slowly removed himself from the bed, trying not to awaken Sarah. He threw on a pair of white boxer shorts and then walked over to the desk. He reached down and snapped on his desk lamp and rubbed his eyes. When he opened them they fell on the file Alice had so meticulously cared for over the years. He shook his head and sat down at the desk and opened the history once more. He removed the photos stolen from the Vatican and then came to a rather lengthy report Alice had typed out on an old-fashioned typewriter. His eyes scanned the pages and then he realized he was looking at Alice’s follow-up report on the centurion who once upon a time became a Roman senator. Jack yawned and then looked the story over. As he read he became just a little more awake the further he read. After he was done he went deeper into the file. He soon came across two pieces of rotted cloth encased in plastic shielding. He picked them up and examined them. One small piece of cloth was trimmed with what used to be fringe. Jack read the small tag Alice had attached many years before.

Collins retrieved the second section of cloth and brought his desk lamp down and looked the material over more closely. The designs were the same — four vertical stripes that were once red in color. The weave looked the same and the age close also. He read the tag.

Jack, instead of figuring out what it was Alice had put together, the more he read and saw, the more confused he became. What in the hell kind of trail was Alice on? Was this ancient fashion she was interested in or was it an animal that absolutely no one scientist at the Group believed in but Alice?

Collins replaced the sealed and protected cloth and then brought out something that made him lean closer to see. The photos were of two women. One was young and raven-haired, the other older — far older. The only thing written on the small tag Alice had written was a name and that wasn’t much at all. On the photo of the older woman, Jack placed her age anywhere from eighty to a hundred, was the small description:

“What in the hell is this?” Jack mumbled to himself, “Gypsy Queen? What are you getting at, Alice?” Jack placed the photos back in the file and then picked up the next typewritten notes.

Jack had a quick flash of memory as he rummaged through the file until he found the piece he was looking for — none other than the small chunk of rock he had examined before at the Ark — the small block of hewed stone with the petrified specimen inside. The tag read: 131-c. Collins played the stone in his hands as he thought about what was in the file — a file that made no sense as to the direction Alice Hamilton was taking with her investigation.

Collins made a decision and reached over for his phone. “Europa, Colonel Collins 5785 clearance — give me the locations on Professor Ellenshaw, Dr. Golding, and Alice Hamilton, please.”

“Professor Ellenshaw is currently in Laboratory 1344 on Level 81, Dr. Golding is currently in the Ark, and Alice Hamilton is in her personal quarters.”

“Thank you.” Jack hung up and pushed another button. “Will, gather up Alice from her quarters and Doc Ellenshaw in his lab and get them to Level 63,” he said quickly and then hung up.

He closed the file and that was when he noticed the code numbers and name Alice and Europa had given the file. It was strange he hadn’t noticed it before, which proved he was thinking of his sister’s murder too much for his duties at the Group. The code was File 890987—code name — Grimm.

“So, you’re helping Alice figure out her little problem?”

Jack felt the small arms encircle his neck and he relaxed as Sarah kissed his cheek.

“Get dressed, short stuff, and go to the Ark and drag Pete Golding out of there and get him down to Vault 22871.”

“Ordering your woman from your room at this early hour can force me to stop handing out the kind of loving you received last night for a very long time.”

Jack smiled for the first time in what seemed like months as he turned and kissed Sarah and then slapped her on her rear end. “Now get some clothes on and get Doc Golding.”

Sarah straightened and went for her jumpsuit, which was crumpled on the floor by Jack’s bed.

“What has you so worked up after the workout I gave you — I must not be that good if you have this much energy.”

“Baby, you’re that good, I would promote you to major if I could, but for right now let’s go help out a friend who everyone thinks has gone off the deep end about her wolves.”

“You believe her about her animals?” Sarah asked as she zipped up.

“Not just yet, but I think I may have found someone who changed his mind somewhere along the line that adds far more weight to her argument — someone with the credentials that not even Niles could argue with.”

“Who is that?” Sarah asked as she ran her fingers through her hair in lieu of a comb.

“Senator Garrison Lee.”

Everett reached over and hit Ryan on the shoulder as the taxicab came to a stop just outside St. Peter’s Basilica. Ryan jumped at the sudden stop and the impact of Everett’s muscled hand. Almost two hours of postflight, refueling and then getting a private hangar at Leonardo da Vinci International, one of the world’s busiest airports, and then getting through customs, had placed an even harder burden on the naval aviator than just jet lag could produce. With Everett acting as his copilot on the nineteen-hour flight his sleep was off and on as Everett had to be checked on during his turn at the controls, even though most of the flight over the Atlantic had been flown by autopilot.

“Are we there already?” Ryan asked as he yawned and looked out the cab’s filthy window.

Everett paid the driver and then looked at Jason. “Yeah, it only took us an hour and a half through Rome’s midday traffic.” He sat back in his seat as he opened the door. “If we have trouble we may have to find a different route back to da Vinci.”

As Ryan looked at the crowds meandering through the wide walkways leading to the large square he shook his head.

“Our best bet on that occasion would be to walk out of here.”

Everett nodded that he thought Jason was right. “Well, maybe we’re just being paranoid about life in general lately. Let’s go get our boy.”

The two U.S. Navy men stepped into the thickening mass of humanity on their way to find their Goliath.

Mica Sorotzkin watched as the young American priest sat on the steps in front of the Basilica. His long black robe was easily played out at his sides as he opened his brown paper lunch sack. Major Sorotzkin had picked the priest up that morning as she spied him leaving his apartment on the east side of the massive property that was its own city inside of Rome — the Vatican housing area. She had been ordered to pick him up there and then again after he left work or at any time he was not in his highly classified office at the archives building.

As the major watched the young priest remove his sunglasses and wipe them on a tissue, she saw that he was actually far younger than he looked at the cybercafe the several times she had followed him there. She sat three rows of steps back from the American. She used a large carry-all and pulled out a small thermos and poured herself a cup of tea.

Mica had received a very urgent call from the general and that call now made her wonder why General Shamni had suddenly ordered constant surveillance on the priest after the hard drives taken from the cybercafe computers had been analyzed and the results sent straight to Tel Aviv. It had been at three that morning that Shamni had called personally and ordered the “eyes on” until further notice — instructions would follow.

Mica didn’t like the connotation of that last message. As she watched the young American she became worried that the general would order something other than an attempt to turn him into a working associate of Mossad.

The young American cleric known to his superiors at the Event Group as Goliath bit into his cheese sandwich as he watched the thousand milling tourists in the square and thought about how the day had changed not long after he had awoken.

That very morning he had received a coded message from Director Compton himself that came through his secure phone link bounced off several NSA communication satellites. He was going to be contacted at one this afternoon Rome time. He was to meet his contact at the steps of the Basilica and it would be Captain Everett himself coming in for the field evaluation. Everett had assisted in his covert training and DeSilva knew the captain well enough to know that something big was happening if they sent him all this way. He chewed on his sandwich. Behind his dark sunglasses the University of Notre Dame grad and U.S. Army second lieutenant scanned the crowd for the impressive form of the Navy SEAL, Carl Everett.

Major Sorotzkin flinched when her cell phone vibrated in her breast pocket. She reached into her lightweight blazer, past the Israeli-made, polymer-framed BUL Cherokee nine-millimeter in its nylon holster and retrieved the vibrating cell phone. She angrily hit the receive button.

“Yes?” she said easily into the phone as she took a sip of her lukewarm tea. She grimaced and was tempted to pour the tea onto the stone steps but held off as two highly visible Corpo della Gendarmeria walked past. The Corps of Gendarmerie of Vatican City State were highly trained at spotting trouble in crowded situations. She averted her sunglasses-covered eyes as the two uniformed guards walked past with just an appreciative look at the beautiful woman taking her lunch on the steps of the Basilica.

“Major,” said the familiar voice of General Shamni, “are you in visual contact with the American agent?”

“He’s about ten meters in front of me eating his lunch in the square, as he does every day the sun shines.”

“We were unsuccessful in tracking the location of his contact. We suspect it’s the American CIA or National Security Agency, or maybe even their FBI, but that has all become a moot point. The photographic material removed from the Vatican archives directly affects the security of Israel. Am I clear on this point?”

“Again, you’re not clear at all, General. I need to know certain things if I am to perform my mission correctly. How is this man a threat and what about the written report filed with the photos to this American’s contact?”

“Major, you are treading on harsh ground — ground that could collapse under you at any time if you step wrong. We suspect that his filing to his superiors can be found at Langley, Virginia, and that’s something that will have to be dealt with at another time, for now the American priest is to be brought into the Rome safe house as soon as you can safely commit to the act, and once there you and the American can be debriefed by Colonel Ben-Nevin. He will burn all evidence of this priest’s activities and that report filed with the photographs is to be burned. Are you the only person at the safe house to have read that particular report?”

“How can a report filed by a Roman officer be of any consequence to our security?” Mica knew the answer involved Operation Ramesses and she also suspected that the general knew she knew.

“Ben-Nevin will burn the documents and close the safe house down, and then your mission in Rome will be complete. If need be the American will be brought in for more detailed questioning.”

Sorotzkin could not believe what she had just heard. “Brought in?” she asked on the secure cell link through an Israeli satellite. “I have a chance to turn this man, that’s what I do. Counterintelligence, not snatching an unofficial allied agent off the street inside a friendly nation.”

“Major, that harsh ground I mentioned to you earlier is starting to cave in as you speak. The American has learned of a key piece of Project Ramesses and cannot be allowed to connect that piece with any other that may have surfaced. And we must know what else he has uncovered. And don’t even ask about the project, it’s a thousand miles above your and also my pay grade. Clear?”

Silence from Major Sorotzkin’s end.

“Colonel Ben-Nevin has been on-site for an hour and our American spy is being tracked as we speak. You will call from the safe house and let me know when Ben-Nevin starts his debrief of the American. Nothing is to happen to this boy; right now he is valuable for what he may know. And more to the point, Sorotzkin, there may be elements inside our own government — far more hard-line elements I may add — that want what the Ramesses project represents brought home. Get him to the safe house and the prime minister has guaranteed his safety.”

“General, I have your word no harm will come to this American operative?”

“Major, the naïveté of that question is why I think your future is destined to be outside Mossad. Maybe I was wrong for handpicking you and that a transfer back to Army Intelligence would be best for your career; they are a little more suited in playing fair with the other kids on the block. We are not. But we do not kill Americans when it is avoidable, and this is one circumstance where it is still avoidable with your cooperation.”

The phone went dead. Sorotzkin looked at her cell and then angrily closed it as she glanced up and saw the priest placing the remains of his lunch into his brown bag. Her differently colored eyes quickly scanned the area closest to the American but could see no familiar faces — and the pinched face of Ben-Nevin was easily seen and remembered.

Mica, like most field agents, absolutely hated men like the colonel due to the fact that they are blinded by the religion they profess to believe in. Men like him have slowly been weeded out of Mossad and mostly from political office thanks to the young people’s trend toward voting for national security over religious heritage.

The black-robed archivist got to his feet and fastidiously brushed at the dust on his behind. Mica saw the two men too late. One bent to a knee and tied a shoe that needed no tying and as she watched a second, smaller, dark-haired man in a polo shirt held up a map and asked the priest a question. Sorotzkin saw the American point to the streets to the south and then the man with the map pointed in the same direction. She saw them laugh together and then the priest looked as if he had made a decision. The two men with the taller one taking up the rear started to leave the square.

Mica was thinking that Ben-Nevin’s Mossad agents had arrived and there was little she could do to stop the abduction of the young American.

Major Mica Sorotzkin followed what she believed were the Mossad agents and the archival priest out of the square and into the darkest of hours that would conclude somewhere in the mountains of Eastern Europe.

Carl Everett kept pace ten feet behind Jason Ryan and United States Army Second Lieutenant Leonard DeSilva. Carl had been impressed on how easily the soldier playing a priest had taken his recall order, it was if the kid had been sensing he had been made before Everett informed him of the fact. When he felt he was being followed the day before he had acted quickly and got the evidence. The Mossad agent had been pinpointed from those grainy pictures taken from DeSilva’s cell phone camera. Underneath the desert sands of Nellis Air Force Base it had taken Europa all of ten minutes to nail her real identity as an agent for the state of Israel.

As the three wound their way through the midday crowds around St. Peter’s it was Everett who was the first to feel the prickling at the back of his neck. As he scanned the area through dark sunglasses he saw first Ryan, and then DeSilva become aware of the same feeling. They were being followed. Everett’s SEAL training always paid dividends when it came to combat nerves, and with Ryan and DeSilva it was the same from the intense training they received at the hands of Colonel Collins.

Ryan, understanding the procedure, quickly left the priest’s side and crossed the street where he vanished into the crowd of tourists and locals. He ducked low and then fought his way upstream to get behind Everett and the American contact. Ryan absentmindedly reached for his nine-millimeter Smith & Wesson but remembered this was supposed to be an extraction and not a gun battle. Everett had decided it had been too risky to try to get their personal weapons through customs. He grimaced and continued to try and come up behind the captain and their charge.

Everett was also mentally kicking himself in the ass for not going to the American embassy and meeting the Event Group contact there and getting some protection but had thought that would be unnecessary due to the fact that the extraction would take place in downtown Rome and close to Vatican City, so what could go wrong with getting the kid to da Vinci Airport? Maybe Jack was right, maybe he, Ryan, and Mendenhall weren’t good enough to help the colonel track his sister’s killer if he was going to make simple mistakes like underestimating a situation. He started walking faster. Just as he was about to approach from the back a child stepped up to Everett and held out a bag of oranges he was selling. Carl tried to sidestep the child but the boy stepped in front of Everett and then held out the plastic bag holding six oranges.

“Comprare le arance, la mia giornata è molto calda?” the boy said smiling up at the very large American.

Carl had been asked to buy the boy’s oranges on this very hot day. Everett reached into his pocket and pulled out a twenty-dollar bill and gave it to the boy, who stopped and stared at the strange money he had been given. Everett didn’t wait, he now stepped quickly to catch up with DeSilva even as the boy stood there with his small bag of oranges and the twenty-dollar bill.

Everett closed the gap between himself and DeSilva as the boy followed him with his eyes still looking at the unfamiliar money. Carl came up beside DeSilva and lowered his head as he slowly took a step past him as they neared a street vendor selling Vatican City T-shirts.

“We’ve been made, Lieutenant, it’s time to—”

“Hello, gentlemen, can I interest you in a T-shirt depicting the Basilica at its finest?”

Everett looked up at the smiling man and realized he had spoken English. But by the time he realized it another man had come up behind DeSilva and quickly maneuvered him into a small antique shop that the vendor fronted.

At that moment Ryan appeared out of nowhere and tried to take DeSilva by the arm before the second man could get him into the antique shop.

“That is not wise, young man. You and your friends have been covered by no fewer than two weapons at all times since you left the square. If you don’t want to see many innocent people hurt I suggest you step inside our small but trendy shop.”

Ryan became defiant at the same moment that DeSilva decided he would not be led into a darkened store. Everett saw what was going to happen and stepped between the vendor and his two men.

“That is wise. I am not familiar with these men but I do know the people they work for. I promise you no harm if you just step into the shop.”

Everett, Ryan, and DeSilva turned and saw the black-haired woman as she stepped up to the confrontational scene. It was the Mossad agent pegged by DeSilva and Europa — Major Mica Sorotzkin. Everett recognized her even with the oversized sunglasses on her face.

Carl had no choice. With a wary look to Ryan and DeSilva, he nodded that they should do as ordered. They were led into the store followed by the major and five men who had approached unobserved.

The small Italian boy of twelve years of age looked from the closing door to the paper money in his hand, and then at the bag of oranges the tourist forgot to take. The boy was lost as to his next course of action.

The safe house was strangely quiet as Sorotzkin entered, followed by the eight men. Carl was pushed to the far wall of the small antique shop as the last man through the door closed it and then pulled down the dark shade on its roller.

Major Sorotzkin made her way to the back of the shop and looked through the security curtain. Her computer technicians were not there. Everything looked normal with the one black fact that the safe house was never to be abandoned for any reason outside of a break-and-run order, which could only come from Tel Aviv. As they had with Everett and Ryan a moment before, the major’s hackles started to rise. As she turned and made her way back into the shop she heard a commotion.

“What are you doing?” she asked as she saw that the large blond American had been hit hard in the head and was just now trying to pick himself off the carpeted floor. Ryan was assisting Carl, but DeSilva had been placed on his knees with a Glock nine-millimeter pinned to the back of his head. With her fears confirmed, Major Sorotzkin slowly reached for her blazer and the BUL Cherokee semiautomatic. As she moved toward her weapon a hand coming from behind moved far faster and removed the gun. As the man to her rear pulled the weapon he intentionally allowed his hand to slowly press and glide over her left breast. She heard the sharp intake of breath from the man as he removed his hand and then stepped in front of her. Her eyes widened when she saw that it was General Shamni’s special projects assistant.

“Lieutenant Colonel Ben-Nevin,” she said as she gave the man a filthy and distasteful look. The pencil-thin mustache had a small line of gleaming sweat just above and below that made the major cringe. “The general will not like it if these men are mistreated,” she said as Ben-Nevin tossed one of his men Sorotzkin’s weapon and then turned and grabbed the major by the shoulders and brutally pulled the blazer from her body. He then turned her and slowly and perversely frisked her for other hidden weapons. Finally he stopped and ripped her sunglasses away. He smiled when he saw the two differing eye colors. He had always heard about the major’s strange eyes but never saw them before today.

“Ah, the general, the prime minister, the people of Israel, they don’t know what they like or dislike. It’s whatever wind blows that particular day from the direction of Washington that sways them. Threats of sanctions over the West Bank make them think. The prospect of defense cuts from America gets them thinking even more. But saving the heritage of the people, nah, can’t be bothered with that, no, no, no,” he said as his hands made their way to the front of her pants and then deftly slid inside making the major jump and scowl at his treatment of an agent from his office. She realized something was very wrong at the safe house. The colonel roughly probed the inside of the major’s pants and when he was satisfied that she carried no throw-away weapon he smiled and kept running his hand along her waistline.

Everett watched as he was helped to his feet. The blood that coursed down the left side of his head slowly made its way to his jawline. He shrugged off Ryan’s helping hands as he watched the strange confrontation in front of him — a conversation that wasn’t going this raven-haired woman’s way at all.

“Where is my safe house team?” she asked as she squeezed her eyes shut as the colonel completed his frisking of her. He removed his hand and then winked at the major.

“I’m afraid they have retired while still on active duty, along with the agents that General Shamni had sent in to debrief this American spy. We’ll be doing that,” he said as his smirk brightened at the prospect. “My specially chosen men are good at recovering data from the human element.”

“This is treason, Colonel. General Shamni will come after you like no agent in Mossad history. I had five brilliant technicians here, now what did you do with my people?” Her last few words came out far louder than she had intended. “Do you not think that the general has suspected someone in his office for quite some time was getting information to the extremist elements outside the Knesset?”

The major’s eyes went from the injured American to the young priest and then at the smaller man, who had his hands in the air but looked as if he were just playing the game — a game Mica knew these two Americans had played before. The young priest may be new to this backdoor game of thrones, but not the blond American and his smaller friend — they have been here before and danger didn’t really frighten them, and as she could see by the small dark-haired American it was a game they loved to play.

“After we find what we came for the general will have no choice but to become a part of what is happening. I daresay the people of our besieged nation will demand that the current left-wing regime take part in what we are going to do.”

“Everyone in the service knows your appointment was a political move by the prime minister to satisfy the religious hard-liners in his own cabinet and those even harder men inside the Knesset. As soon as this traitorous act has been exposed you will hang in public.” She looked around desperate for a way out of the situation she never saw coming. She needed time. “And what of these Americans, do you plan on killing agents of an ally state?”

The thin colonel looked over at Everett, Ryan, and DeSilva.

“Life is hard, Major, harder for some than others. But then again, we as a people know this, do we not? Now,” the colonel said as he walked over to where one of his men had DeSilva kneeling with a gun to the back of his head. “I need to know where the written report was sent on the animal skull you took such fine pictures of at the Vatican archives.” The colonel leaned over and patted the young priest on the back. “I think you know the one of which I speak. You sent it via computer to a secure source. Journal pages recovered from a villa in Greece describing a certain campaign of a Roman centurion later turned very important senator. Now, son, what was the name of that Roman soldier and senator, or better yet where was the campaign he was sent upon two thousand years ago? What country did he describe in his journal?”

“What?” the major asked loudly as another restraining hand held her in check. Her eyes took a quick glance at the taller American, who kept his eyes solely on her own.

“Look, I didn’t read the filing,” DeSilva said. “I don’t know what in the hell you’re talking about. I filed the report with the pages attached but I didn’t read it.”

Again there was a pat on the back from Colonel Ben-Nevin. “But I do not believe you, my young American friend. But we will get the truth out,” Ben-Nevin said as the weapon was pushed harder into the American’s skull.

Major Sorotzkin took a quick look at the front door and Ben-Nevin saw the movement.

“Major, there will be no daring last-minute rescue by the forces of good. I have arranged for an uninterrupted afternoon of thrilling historical discussion.”

At that exact moment the bell above the door tinkled and the door opened sending sharp shards of afternoon light into the small antique shop. Everett’s eyes widened and at the same moment one of Ben-Nevin’s three men pointed his weapon in his direction as the boy stepped over the threshold of the door with his bag of oranges clutched in front of him.

“Mister hai dimenticato la tua arance,” the boy said with his big brown eyes flitting from the much taller American naval captain and then over to Mica, who was still being held in place by the disgusting hand of the colonel. The child held up the plastic bag of oranges. The colonel released Mica and then the weapon was slowly aimed at the boy. Sorotzkin reacted.

“He only wants this man to take the oranges he paid for. He’s just a vendor. He’s harmless, Colonel.”

The boy didn’t flinch as he took a cautious step toward Mica, which elicited a threatening point of the colonel’s weapon at the twelve-year-old. Major Sorotzkin shook her head at the boy.

“No, no, le arance per la American man.” Mica explained that the oranges should go to the American who bought them.

The boy held eye contact with the major for a split second longer than was necessary. The boy then turned toward Everett. His eyes saw the blood on the man’s face and where it had dribbled down into the collar of his blue shirt where it stained a dark maroon in color. It didn’t seem to faze the boy as he took two steps toward the man. Everett felt the gun leave his back and knew his guard was going to shoot the boy.

“Hey, hey, my oranges, I thought you ripped this poor tourist off, kid,” Carl said, hoping to defuse the situation, at least where the kid’s safety was concerned. He felt the gun lower somewhat as Everett reached for the small bag of oranges. As he reached he saw the sparkle in the twelve-year-old’s eyes and then the small smile that only the captain saw.

As soon as Everett’s large hand closed on the plastic bag he felt the cold steel of something the child was hiding behind that bag. This was no ordinary child vendor. His eyes momentarily flitted over to Mica and he knew that the weapon had been purposely introduced into the store by the boy for express use by Mica. The street hawker was a plant, guard, and lookout, whatever the euphemism was these days for kids used by spies in their operations. As he saw the colonel and Mica looking at him he realized that the Mossad major had a look in her eyes that could only be related to excitement. He saw her slowly lick her red lips: this woman was watching and waiting for something that she was used to — extreme violence.

Colonel Ben-Nevin saw what had happened too late to react. The large American took the bag of oranges and the small pistol concealed behind the bulging bag and then swung the bag as hard as he could at the man to his rear catching him squarely in the face. Then without aiming Carl fired at the man holding Ryan at bay. The bullet struck the man in the side of the head and Ryan had his fallen weapon before his captor knew he was dead.

Mica realized that the American saved his friend first and that was about to cost him. As Ben-Nevin reacted slowly she brought her left wrist up and out catching the weapon just as it discharged, sending the bullet into the ceiling. The colonel swung back and caught Mica in the face as the third man in the small shop met his end when he tried to gain his feet from the staggering blow that had been delivered by the now broken plastic bag of oranges. Everett saw Ben-Nevin turn and break for the back of the store beyond the curtain. At that moment sirens started sounding as the loud reports of the guns had shattered the late afternoon solace of the tourists. Everett started forward after helping the small boy to his feet.

“Thanks, kid, now run like hell away from here,” he said as he started after Ben-Nevin. “Let’s go, Ryan.”

Mica tried her best to stop the big man from going after the colonel. She turned and followed the two Americans through the curtain. As she went past the scattered desks she saw what had become of her technicians. They were all piled in a lump of humanity in the far corner of the communications center. With a shake of her head she finally reached Everett just as he pulled the back door open.

“No!” the major shouted just as five bullets struck the old wooden door sending splinters in every direction. Carl went to his back side, knocking Ryan down, and then reached up with his leg just as two more rounds struck the framing of the door. He kicked out, slamming the door closed, and then rolled free of harm’s way.

“That bastard always has a plan,” she cursed as she reached up and pulled the boy to her, who was watching from the curtain. She kissed him on the forehead and then held him at arm’s length.

“Treceţi, stiti ce aveti de facut,” she said and then kissed the boy again on the forehead. The dark-haired child looked hesitant at first and then with a last look at the two Americans he ran for the front door and was gone. The sirens were getting closer.

“I was always terrible at languages, but one thing I do know for sure,” Everett said as he pulled the clip from the small .32 caliber weapon. “That wasn’t Italian you just spoke to the boy.” Everett reinserted the clip and just before Mica reached for a fallen weapon from one of her deceased technicians, Carl reached over and placed the barrel of the gun gently against the dark-haired woman’s temple. “Now I know not speaking Italian to an Italian kid isn’t a capital offense, but I’m willing to make an exception for you, gorgeous. Until I figure out just what language you and the boy were using I suggest you produce no more surprises for the rest of the afternoon.”

As Everett slowly allowed the major to rise from the floor, DeSilva stepped into the back room. He stood looking from Everett to the woman. Finally his eyes settled on Ryan, who saw a youthful look of arrogance come over the kid’s face.

“Captain, I think our young friend here has something to say,” Ryan said from the front of the store where he turned to look out the window by pulling out on the shade.

DeSilva stepped meekly into the back room with his head held firm.

“I want to go back,” was all he said as he took in the bloodied Captain Everett.

“No, your cover is blown and one foreign agency knows of your existence. We can’t take a chance that the Swiss Guard doesn’t know either.”

“Captain, I’ll take that chance. It’s worth the risk and you know it. I have to keep my job in the archives. If you could only see what I’ve seen inside, you wouldn’t believe it.”

Everett looked from DeSilva to Ryan, who turned away from the window with a large smile on his face at the kid’s naïveté. The young agent thus far had not been given the tour of the vault levels at the Event Group complex.

“I’m sure they have great stuff stashed in there, Lieutenant, but you need to come home now. It’s over.”

“With all due respect, Captain, I think it’s my call. My ass is on the line and I think the risk to that ass is acceptable.”

Everett used a handkerchief to wipe some of the blood away from his scalp. He looked over at Ryan, who nodded his head in agreement with the young Vatican spy. Carl then shot the Israeli Mossad agent a look. She just raised that left eyebrow of hers and stared at Everett. He stared at the two differing colors of her eyes and then nodded his head as he turned away.

“Okay, kid,” he said as he pocketed the bloody handkerchief. “The colonel and director will more than likely fry my ass for this.” He shook his head. “But you’re right, it took too long to get one of our people in there.”

“Who in the hell do you men work for?” Mica asked as she slowly eyed her possibilities of escape. She was starting to piece together the idea that these men may not have the same restraints that officers of the CIA or FBI would have — she was thinking these Americans were totally capable of killing her and dumping her body in front of Mossad headquarters in Tel Aviv. Yes, she thought, these men worked for someone other than an intelligence agency.

“We happen to work for people that don’t like ambushes, Ms. Sorotzkin,” Everett said as he reached out and removed the Glock nine-millimeter that DeSilva was holding.

“And how do you know my name? My own people don’t know me for the most part.”

“We have files on many bad guys that are really pretty impressive. As I see it you don’t rate up there with the bad people we do business with on occasion, you’re a little different, Major.” Everett gave her a dirty look. “You work for a supposed friend, and when you showed your true colors along with your Colonel Ben-Nevin, you made our decision making really very easy.” Carl made sure a round was chambered in the Glock.

Mica saw the handgun lower for a split second as Carl started to raise the weapon and that was the only window of opportunity the young Mossad agent could see for getting the hell out of her situation. Mica’s hand soon found an old-fashioned glass paperweight that lay on one of her technician’s desks. She didn’t hesitate as she grabbed it and threw the heavy silver inlaid paperweight, hitting Everett in the chest, making him automatically recoil and fire blindly at the blur of speed that had become the dark-haired woman.

Before Ryan could move past DeSilva, Major Sorotzkin had moved far too quickly and was through the curtain before Everett could react. He intentionally shot wide of his mark as he never wanted to kill the young woman. The round went through the flapping material of the curtain. The three men all heard the bell above the door jingle and then there was silence. The sirens drew closer to the small antique store.

“Damn, I lost two hostile agents in one day and now can’t prove anything,” Everett said as he looked over at DeSilva. “And now I’m going against orders and sending a kid back to face one of the harshest security teams in the world at the Vatican.” Carl slammed the slide home on the reloaded Glock. “Yeah, this is a red banner day for the Navy, Mr. Ryan. I’m beginning to think Jack’s been right all along,” he said as he pushed DeSilva toward the back door.

“About what?” Ryan asked as he placed his head out the door and looked to make sure the crazy Mossad colonel wasn’t lying in wait for the three men.

“That he would be better off hunting his sister’s killer without us being in his way.”

“Bullshit, he needs us,” Ryan said, looking back momentarily to make sure the captain heard what he had to say. “Now, I suggest we get this young man back to school at the archives and we get the hell out of here to try and explain how an ally state tried to kill us all.”

Everett nodded his head and then thrust his right hand out for DeSilva.

“Lieutenant, it will be noted for the record you refused to leave the post you were assigned.”

“Thank you, Captain.”

“Good luck, Lieutenant,” Everett said, as he released his hand. Then he watched Ryan do the same.

“Good luck, Army,” the naval aviator said, shaking DeSilva’s hand.

“Thank you, sir.”

Both Jason and Carl watched the boy leave through the back door after checking right and then left, and then one last look back at his two superior officers with a smile.

“The colonel does know how to recruit, doesn’t he?”

Everett ignored the statement, not wanting to admit that Collins could do anything right, at least for the moment. “Let’s get the hell out of here.”

Carl looked through the curtain toward the front door. He saw the milling crowd to gathering outside.

“What are we going to do about the woman and that crazier than a shithouse rat Mossad colonel?” Ryan asked as he held the back door open for Everett.

Carl stopped in the doorway looking straight ahead. The Navy SEAL captain moved his head ever so slightly toward the interior of the safe house.

“That colonel needs a little bit of killing done to certain areas of his body, but the girl, I don’t know, there’s something not right there.”

Ryan saw Carl smirk for the briefest of moments as if he knew an inside joke he didn’t. He heard Everett’s explanation as he started to run slowly down the alley.

“Her, I just want to talk to.”

4

The British-made Land Rover moved slowly up the winding road that twisted in and out of sunshine to darkness two miles above the newly built attraction below — Dracula’s Castle. The two teams of armed men wound their way through the second small village and the lead vehicle pulled to a stop. The leader of the motley group of huntsmen stepped from the vehicles and stretched as he took in the craggy rocks that lined the drive for the next mile up the side of the mountain to a spot that was rumored to be home to one of the hardiest groups of shepherds in all Romania. The Patinas Pass was a rugged but beautiful area that is usually not traveled by anyone outside of the tight-knit peoples of the high country. The tales of the Carpathian Mountains always fall far short in the description of the area. One of the more beautiful and scenic ranges in Eastern Europe, the Carpathians have been sorely and falsely depicted in literature and film. Instead of the brooding, sharp, and darkened sides of mountains that could hide anything of mythic proportions you had small valleys nestled into the sides of the mountains the further up you travel where people live a slow but comfortable life tending their large herds of milk cows, sheep, and goats and it was this life that the rest of the world didn’t realize was part of the mystical mountain range.

The man who had spoken briefly with Janos Vajic inside the resort knew his job was simple; wait until nightfall and he would be met and then he could deliver the message from Dmitri Zallas. The men he traveled with were just window dressing for the peasants that work at the castle and those below. As long as they thought the Russian was looking out for them while they were tasked with building the monstrosity below was all Zallas was concerned with. Their safety was not a priority but their work schedule was. The men thought they were to be hunting wolves even though the Russian knew there were none in this region of Romania. Zallas didn’t care about the animal life, he just needed his message delivered to the man responsible for the disappearances and that in and of itself would stop the killing around the castle — not hunting down something that couldn’t possibly be in the region — wolves indeed.

The Russian mercenary looked at an area of Romania that had been protected by governments both elected and those where the rule of one man was absolute. He looked into the village and the growing number of citizens watching from the cracked and worn cobblestone-lined street through the small enclave. The Russian sniffed through his bushy mustache as he saw at least two of the villagers had the old-fashioned shepherd’s staffs that looked as if they had jumped from a book of fairy tales.

The driver of the first Land Rover stuck a camouflaged arm out of his window and tapped the car door three times in rapid succession to get their employer’s attention. He indicated with a dip of his head that they were being approached from the small causeway over the fast running river that led into the village. The leader of the two cars and six men saw the villager with the white beard and brightly stitched vest slowly step over the small bridge. The mercenary squinted his eyes as he looked at the bright sun as it neared the western edge of the mountains. He was losing daylight and wanted to get closer to the pass where he would meet Zallas’s most silent of partners so he could deliver the envelope. He looked at the old man with the long white hair and equally long beard. The man from the small village held up his hand.

“Are you gentlemen lost? This is the village of Tyrell,” the old man asked in his native Romanian. The question was delivered with what seemed genuine concern in expression and voice that these burly, ill-dressed men in their new vehicles were actually lost.

The Russian took a moment to translate his limited Romanian in his head. He scowled when he failed to understand it clearly enough to answer the old man. He felt a moment of relief when his Romanian driver joined the two men. The old man crossed his arms over his chest and waited patiently.

“Tell this old fool that we have come to see and possibly hunt in the pass above. That we have been asked to do this by very powerful men from far below.”

At first the Romanian hunter looked uncomfortable as he thought about how to tell the old man what was said and not insult him with the “old fool” part. He said the words in Romanian slowly to the village elder. The interpreter saw the large cross around the man’s neck. The wind blew his white hair as he came to a rigid stance, lowering his arms to his side as the statement, once translated, made the small valley suddenly grow cold as a cloud passed over the setting sun. The interpreter looked uncomfortable, as he didn’t particularly care for the timing of the wind and temperature change.

“You cannot hunt the pass. Patinas Pass is not a place for that kind of foolishness. The only animals you will find there are sheep and goats and maybe some milk cows.” The old man looked from the two men in front of him to the two Land Rovers. “Nothing more threatening for men such as yourselves.”

“Wolves, old man, wolves.”

The villager needed no interpretation of the word wolf. He laughed and as he did turned and looked back over the small causeway at the men and women gathered in their small square watching the exchange. The old man shouted “Lup!” as loud as he could, enough to make the Romanian hunter jump.

The villagers, about twenty-five in all, started laughing. Some of the women raised their aprons and waved them as if the statement about hunting wolves was the funniest thing they had ever heard.

The Russian never wavered as he watched the demonstration by the men and women of the high country; he just turned his head and looked toward the pass only another mile and a half up into the clouds.

“There are no wolves in the high passes. They have been gone for a hundred years. They were hunted by our ancestors to protect what little we have here. We have always been left alone and they—” The old man nodded toward the high mountain and the Patinas Pass that looked down upon them. “Have always been left alone by us.”

“Tell the old man that we have no intention of speaking to more Romanians in the pass. We have come for the Lup, the wolf of the high country.”

The old man laughed once again at the mention of the wolves. He shook his head and was about to wave the men away from his village when some rattling sounded from around the bend in the road leading to the village from below. As they watched, five vehicles of several different makes and models slowly wound their way up the mountain. The lead vehicle was an old and battered Toyota Land Cruiser that had seen far better days. That was followed by four more all-terrain four-wheel-drives, all in battered and rickety condition. The lead vehicle slowed as it approached the small meeting by the causeway. As the three men saw the occupants there was a moment of clear recognition to all. The passenger had his arm crooked in his open window and his dark eyes were perched under a bright red kerchief, a much smaller version of the female head scarf, that was tied off in the back and held a long, black ponytail in place. The music poured from the open window and the Russian realized it was an American song from the sixties fouling the air of the mountains. As the man with the black eyes watched the meeting on the side of the road the old Jimi Hendrix cover version of the Bob Dylan song “All Along the Watchtower” blared and echoed throughout the small valley.

The old villager raised a hand nervously in greeting as the Land Cruiser moved slowly past the hunters and the last small village before the pass above.

The man in the passenger seat moved his black eyes only but made no movement to return the greeting. With his well-trimmed beard and mustache and clean-shaven cheeks and jaw, the man looked as if he were one of Satan’s henchmen. The Gypsy’s arm and bloused sleeve of purple material screaming out in an outrage to fashion simply looked away from the hunters with what amounted to dismissal as the five cars moved off.

“Gypsies,” the Russian said in English. He turned to the Romanian hunter. “Ask him how many Gypsies live in the pass.”

The old man again seemed not to need the interpreter as he turned and raised his hand as he walked away toward the small bridge and his village beyond.

“Why do you care how many there are, you’re here to hunt the great Lup, not hunt Gypsies. I wish you luck, gentlemen, with whatever is hunted.”

The interpreter said the exact words of the old man to his Russian boss and then lowered his head.

“Gypsies and backward Romanian peasants, the best of everything. Come,” he said as he retreated to his Land Rover. “Let us find the man we have come to see.”

The sun had set an hour before and the two vehicles still had not gained the pass. The Russian directed his driver to pull off to the side. As the man behind the wheel looked to his right he saw nothing but open space and the same to his left. The road had sheer cliffs on both sides. Now everyone in the hunting party was thinking the same thing — suddenly the Carpathians looked as menacing as the old tales said they were. It did not take much to become believers in the children’s nursery rhymes of their shared past.

The Russian pulled out his cased American-made .30–06 Springfield night-vision-equipped rifle. He unzipped the case and then waited until his men had gathered. The six looked at the barren terrain around them, which had changed in the very short distance between the small village below and where they now stood. The Russian switched on his scope as he raised the rifle to his eyes and scanned the area. The hue was green and captured the dark in a relief of grays and greens.

“We walk from here to the pass. We will not go into Patinas, there is no need. We will avoid the sheep men and Gypsies and then find the man I was sent here to see.”

“We are here to hunt, are we not?” asked one of the more experienced Romanian hunter-trackers.

“The only thing you will be hunting is the man I seek. You are here to guarantee my safety, nothing more. Now let us finish this business so I can enjoy my long weekend.”

Some of the Romanian hunters looked around nervously. The wind had freshened and it brought the smell of old wood to their nostrils. In the air was also the smell of wood smoke from the few ancient villages dotting the mountainside leading to the resort. The lights of the castle could still be seen below and they could even make out workers as they applied the finishing touches to the attraction. The men each uncased their rifles and then made ready to move up into the Patinas Pass. The Russian saw that the men were not concerned in the least that they had been lied to about the hunt; they looked far more concerned that the sun had just disappeared behind the western mountains.

The dark eyes watched the six men from high above. The man with the red kerchief and dark features saw the intruders and their weapons that had been parked at the village below and sniffed through his nostrils. He shook his head as he watched from behind a large, crookedly broken, and very dead tree.

“They will not be harmed.”

The man turned at the sound of the soft voice in the darkness.

“Grandmamma, what are you doing, do you wish to break your neck in the dark?” the man said as he saw the frail shape of the old woman as she leaned heavily against her old wooden cane. The man could see the thinly held together woolen wrap that covered her spindly shoulders. Her golden earrings gleamed in the light of the rising moon.

“I have been up and down these mountains for over eighty years; I think I can walk in the night without breaking my neck.” The old woman took a step toward the man, who nodded his head and then turned back to face the men who had intruded from the abomination far below. “The past two nights you were not at your home. Where were you, child?”

The man slowly turned and the moonlight caught his eyes and to the old woman they shone brightly, catching the light that is hidden in the dark, as had his father and his father before that.

“I have not been a child for some time now, you know that.” He watched the men far below as they started up the road in near darkness.

“Ah, yes, the child who will be king.” She laughed as she slowly sat upon the broken and crooked tree. She took a deep breath and then moved a strand of gray hair that had fallen free of her head scarf. “Patience, man-child, your queen is still among the living.”

The man finally turned and then went to the old woman and kneeled in front of her.

“And you will be among the living for many years to come. I am a patient man.”

The old woman placed her right hand on the man’s clean-shaven cheek. Her thumb lightly ran along his strict jawline. “Two lies in one breath taken.” She smiled at him. “A man truly destined to lead the people.”

The man of twenty-seven looked confused as he always did when his grandmother spoke in the old ways. He could never follow her train of thought as his younger sister was able to. The man knew he was the lesser of the two children, lagging behind his sister in intelligence and the desire to not be who they were meant to be.

“As I said, these, these hunters, they will go home without trouble from you, Marko, am I understood?” She patted the man’s knee but he stood so suddenly that it fell on empty space.

“They have come to the pass to see me, Grandmamma.”

“Or do they come to seek the beast that has murdered their own far below?” The old woman stood so suddenly that the man took an involuntary step back. She pointed her cane with the golden symbol on its handle into the man’s chest. “I know it was you and Stanus, he’s always been hard to control, much like my grandson. You have left our territory and have gone where the Golia is forbidden to go. If the rest of our people find that you have flouted the ancient laws I would have a hard time controlling their anger.”

“The ancient laws were made to blind the truly faithful and give those others, those sheep you call our people, an easy way out. We have been lied to. Our lands, our mountains have been invaded.” The man gestured wildly about him but his voice remained even as he spoke directly to his grandmother for the first time about his desires for the people. “I have taken an opportunity to secure our future. To make sure our lands stay ours—”

“We need no flatlanders to give us what has been ours. You need not make deals while I am still your queen.” She reached out after cutting off his words and gently laid a hand on his arm. “Child, we have but to await the return of sister, then we will start changing the old ways to new ones, we will—”

The man continued as if the old queen had never spoken.

“—this land that has been deeded ours since the time of the Impaler, these very mountains that our ancestors settled when the Hittites were still crawling out of the rocks. Invaded by them,” he nodded at the group of men, “and not defend ourselves? Perhaps the queen is too afraid of the men who come.” He looked down at her as she lowered her head. “You sit and wait for sister to give you advice. I need not await something that will never come. She is not coming back — ever! So I have taken it upon myself to make sure our people are left alone.”

The old woman leaned once more against the strength of the old wooden cane.

“We have been counseled,” she spoke, “that the men below are on ground that may be untenable on a legal basis. We may have a chance to see the intruders leave the mountains without exposing the Golia. If that fails, we will move the Golia and the people to a place deeper into the pass. I agree with my grandson that times dictate our changing. Now listen to me, man-child, your sister is soon finished with her long task and she will be coming home. I am making the arrangements now and an old friend is sending her back to us.”

“Grandmother, we play a fool’s waiting game. The more men that come the more chance there is of everything being exposed. I will not allow that. If the deal I made for the protection of the people fails, then I will accept your way of things. This is the way it must be and the Golia will side with me on this.” He half smiled. “I’m not sure you could convince Stanus to move his family anywhere — this is their home and they may fight with or without us.”

“And you know this as fact, my grandson?” she asked as she took a step toward him. “You have been with Stanus the past two nights, haven’t you? You and Stanus are the prey the men hunt. Tell me, does Stanus know you are speaking to men of the flatlands?”

“Yes, I and Stanus are the prey of those filthy flatlanders. Stanus is aware of what is happening and how it all could come to an end after three thousand years of hiding. Yes, Queen Mother, Stanus and the Golia are on the move to the lower climes. They sense the war that is coming to the pass and they are preparing. If the arrangement I made fails, the Golia will be uncontrollable.” The man leaned over so his grandmother could see his face clearly in the moonlight. “And if you would become one with the Golia as you have many times in your younger years you would have known that the beasts are frightened of the things happening. I am the calming factor here. Without me controlling the alpha male, Stanus would not wait, the Golia would kill every man, woman, and child near that resort. My way is the only way to keep us and the Golia safe. We need allies, Grandmamma. And those men represent the man we need to secure our home and future. The days of herding sheep and milking cows and our people wandering the earth with no home are over. After we make our deal with these men we will finally have a deeded document to show the world that these mountains are ours.”

“As long as I am queen the Golia will remain in and above the pass at all times. The sister, child, will have answers. When sister arrives she will find my answers. The gifts you are bestowing among the people, where do these expensive trinkets come from, Marko? How can a poor people such as us lavish such gifts as music players, violins, new clothing for the children of the pass and the villages below? Who supplies you with these gifts, or is bribes a better description? No, we will wait for sister before we move to stop this.”

“Sister is as big a fool as our queen,” the man said as he turned and left the old woman leaning meekly upon her cane.

The Gypsy queen watched her grandson move off into the rocks and the crevices, undoubtedly seeking Stanus. Little could she know that her grandson shed a tear as he walked away from the only woman besides his sister in his life. She did not know that the boy loved her and his sister but would not remain blinded by the old ways.

Somewhere high in the Patinas Pass the first howl of the night was heard. It echoed through the pass and down the mountain making the night animals scurry for the cover of burrow or nest.

The five men stopped and listened.

“Don’t tell me that was a dog, damn it, I know a wolf when I hear one,” one of the men hissed from his position across the hard-packed road.

“Silence!” the Russian hissed as he scanned the area ahead with his night-vision scope mounted on the Springfield. He could see nothing but swaying bushes caused by the wind. It was virtually impossible to see actual movement around them.

The men continued moving slowly up both sides of the road. Every six feet the Russian would hold the scope to his right eye and scan ahead. As he did, movement in the small batch of trees ahead caught his attention. He saw a flash of black on black as something he could not clearly see shot up a large tree and then vanished as if it had never been there. The man’s experience in hunting dangerous prey made his hackles rise as he sensed the danger. As he lowered the rifle and scope he saw that the Romanians were starting to bunch together. He had seen this before not only hunting but also when he was serving in the Soviet army in Afghanistan in the eighties: men tended to bunch together like frightened cattle.

“Two of you into the woods on your side, go on, get over there, and you take this side and you and I will take the middle of the road and cover both sides with the scope.” The man who had been doing the interpreting nodded his head, as he was relieved to be near the man with the night-vision capability.

The men stood their ground only for a moment and then decided it was probably safer to face a maddened sheep dog than the Russian. They did as ordered, only at their own slow speed.

The Russian paused as the men broke into their teams. Finally he raised the rifle and scope to cover the sheer walls of rock rising on both sides of the road. The man he was supposed to meet should have been here. His instructions had been clear — stop and wait before he arrived too close to the highest point — the pass itself. Zallas had warned him that if he went further it was on his own head.

“What is that?” the Romanian asked in a hushed tone.

“Music. Yes, it must be music from above us in the pass. Listen. I even hear a violin, bells, no a tambourine, guitars and … now it’s gone.”

“Are they having a village party up there? How can we hear the approach of anyone with that kind of noise—?”

The Russian felt the hot wetness strike the side of his face and the blast of air as something broke from the tree line and struck. He was knocked off his feet as he tried in vain to bring the muzzle of the Springfield to bear. The Romanian hunter was gone. One of his loosely tied boots was still in the roadway as the Russian fought to regain his feet. He swiped at the wetness that covered the whole of his right side. The blood smelled coppery, enough so that the large man slammed his hand into his pants to swipe the sticky liquid from his skin. He tried to raise the rifle but a loud thump from his left made him turn.

“Oomph,” was the only sound made as a man vanished upside down up a large, thick pine.

The frightened hunter next to him stumbled backward as he aimed quickly and fired his old rifle up the tree. The report was loud in the darkness but not so loud as you could hear the man taken scream in pain as the bullet struck him somewhere in the bowels of the giant tree. Still lying on his back, the hunter fired again into the tree. As he took aim for a third shot a loud thump was heard and he felt the ground move as his companion’s lifeless, headless body slammed the hard-packed ground. As the hunter opened his mouth in a soundless scream he heard the trees around them and the cliffs above them come to life with movement. Dark shapes darted in and out of the rocks and trees. Some of the shadows were the size of a normal man, while the others were far blacker shapes and were even larger.

The two men covering the right side of the road were frozen just a few feet off the hardpan track. Try as they might their eyes could not penetrate the thick woods and rocks. The moon was starting to play tricks on their minds and vision as it started to mix with the trees and the mist that was starting to settle onto the ground from the mountain above them. It was as if God had sent a cloud down to cover the hunters like a death shroud.

“The tales about these mountains are true, I knew it,” one of the men said as he aimed into the night.

“Wait until you see something, you idiot,” the large Russian said as he manhandled the man from the left into the group of two. “And make sure you shoot at an animal and not the man I have come here to see.”

“We are two men down here, I think shooting into the trees right now and running may be the best recourse available to us. Of course we don’t have your experience,” one of the more brave hunters said as his eyes went left, right, and then left again.

“Calm down!” the Russian almost screamed as he himself was losing his confidence about delivering the message in his breast pocket to the man who controls the pass. “We will head back to the vehicles. Zallas can deliver his own messages.”

The other three men didn’t need persuading; they turned as one and started back down the road.

Before ten steps were taken the Golia were seen for the first time. They came from cracks in the stone wall to the right and left of the frightened hunters. They jumped from a hundred feet high in the air from the treetops, bounding from tree to tree only to hit the ground hard and then scramble to their feet. As the Russian raised his rifle to shoot, the animals all vanished. The leader of the remaining men lowered the scoped weapon to get a broader view of the road and the ground mist as it started to cover everything.

“Oh my God,” said one of the men in Romanian.

All four turned and saw the shape rise from the rolling mountain mist. The beast rose until it seemed it was looking down upon them like some vengeful god making ready to vent its wrath. The darkened shape was completely upright and its arms were held at its massively muscled sides. The animal breathed in and out deeply, creating a hollow, boiler sound that made the men’s hearts freeze. Its yellow, inner-glowing eyes found each man in turn. As the muzzle opened and its teeth were bared the men could see steam roll from the open orifice. The beast laid its long ears back and the black shape dipped its knees and then let loose a howl that shook the earth and awakened men five miles away who were asleep soundly in beds.

As the men closed their eyes against the onslaught of noise it ceased as quickly as it had started. The men looked around and saw that the giant of an animal was gone just as if it had never been there. The night around them had become as quiet as any of the men had ever experienced.

The Russian swallowed and then looked down at his American-made rifle and decided that he wasn’t armed very well for this sort of action. As he lowered the powerful weapon he heard the deep voice from the woods and the rocks and it froze his blood. The Romanians heard their language being spoken and the Russian his native tongue. If any of them had figured out that they were each hearing differing languages they would never have stopped believing in the magic that was the Carpathians.

The Russian hastily reached into his fur coat and brought out the item he was given by Zallas. He held it in the air and then tossed it into the middle of the hardpan road.

“I have brought what you requested. It is signed by Mr. Zallas himself. You made your point and he now wants these attacks to stop. The papers for the ownership of these mountains will arrive in the next two days from the capital.”

“Tell the Russian he has been warned one last time. The transaction has to be complete before certain of my family members arrive back into the pass. If not, our deal is off and we will retake what has been given to us by God. Do you understand my words, Slav?”

“Yes … yes … we will give him your message.”

“Not we, Slav, the Walachians will remain here with me. They have crossed into territory forbidden to them and they will not live to tell the tale. Now leave, Slav, deliver unto Pharaoh that warning.”

Without hesitation and very confused over the reference to ancient Egypt, the Russian turned and started running blindly down the mountain. The Romanians saw this and froze as the night around them became a liquid sea of black shapes as they made their way down the craggy sides of the mountain. The hunters turned and started running after their employer.

The night once more turned silent and, far off in the distance, traveling the length of the mountain and filtering through the trees from the Patinas Pass high above, they all heard the sound of violins, tambourines, and guitars. Lost in the mix of sounds old, new, and very ancient, the men that had accompanied the message to the pass began to scream. The Golia did what they have always done — secure the safety of the people and themselves.

The Carpathian Mountains had truly awakened for the first time since ancient Rome ruled the known world.

Miles down the mountain, past the workers installing the last of the supplies for the new Dracula’s Castle, and even further down the mountainside to the resort — the Edge of the World — men and women turned to each other and for no other reason than an ingrained memory caught and expanded in their brains, they knew that something was out in the woods and mountains — things that men were not meant to see and the ancient memory of a time when man was not atop the food chain, things that once ruled the mountains were now loosed upon them once again.

Dmitri Zallas was being shown the interior of the casino and the plush accommodations of the hotel above. All the masonry was done in gothic-style prefabricated stone building materials that made the entire facility look as if it could have stepped from a novel of the dark ages. As Zallas was led on the tour by his junior partner, Janos Vajic, and his operations manager, Gina Louvinski, he was pleased with the staff training classes that were currently under way in the four-star restaurant and the inside the casino. The entire hotel staff was being flown in from Prague where Janos Vajic owned another property. Needless to say staffing a private party for twenty-two hundred guests was costing the partnership close to $18 million just for staff, food, and beverage, and that’s not counting the money the resort would lose in room revenue.

As the trio stopped just short of the waterfall that led into the giant dome and the world’s most expensive garden atrium, Zallas looked around at the private army of botanists and gardeners as they were also into their final preparations for the party two days hence.

“Now, how are we progressing on my pride and joy?” Zallas held up his hand when Vajic started to speak. “The short version, please, my friend.”

“The castle is complete. The food and beverage department delivered the last of their supplies this morning by cable car, whose operation made the final push to completion possible. We were wearing resort vehicles out running up and down that mountain.”

“Good, good. Now, may I see this marvelous cable car system that’s the engineering envy of every designer in the world?”

“Yes, this way to the elevator.”

As Zallas made his way past palms and many more plants that had no right to be in the desolate Carpathian Mountains, he saw the most expensive escalator system ever devised. It was wide at the base and narrow as it climbed the six stories to the top of the dome where the hotel’s guests could see the broad expanse of the atrium and the casino beyond through the eighty-five-foot-high glass partition. As they rode the glass elevator to the top Vajic and Gina could see that they had impressed their Russian gangster. The elevator opened and the trio stepped out onto a broad expanse that resembled something like a subway platform only far more extensively appointed.

“My goodness, brother Vajic, this is impressive.”

Zallas saw the richly decorated forty-five-foot-long car. Everything mechanical on the cable system was hidden with what looked like something out of an Indiana Jones movie. The sheer rock covering the opening to the four cable cars themselves looked as if it were a giant cave opening. Two long, rich mahogany-paneled cars were placed on the downhill side and two more on the opposite uphill side, which could not be seen from where they stood. The cars sat in what looked like one of the naturally formed cave systems the Carpathians are famous for. The caves were engineered to house the cars and give the hotel guests a small taste of Disneyland as they boarded the cars for the three-mile climb to the nightclub.

“You and your lovely assistant have done a splendid job, brother Vajic. I anticipate no problems this weekend; you have set my mind at ease.”

Vajic looked from his partner to Gina and then grimaced as he knew the subject had to be broached before the inspection of the property was complete. As Vajic pointed out the massively thick cable lines that were needed to support such heavy and richly appointed cars, he dared bring up the touchy aspect of opening in two days.

“Dmitri, I hesitate to ask but what of the attacks above the castle?”

“The supposed attacks you mean?” Zallas shot back as he stepped into the nearest cable car and walked over to the bar tucked in the corner and rummaged around and then found what he was looking for. He poured a drink of expensive vodka and then fixed the resort owner with a stare that had frightened many men from St. Petersburg to Chechnya.

“These men you have sent up the mountain, will they solve this problem or are we going to have to bring in added security for the one night the castle is open for your guests?”

Zallas downed the vodka and then poured another. He stepped from behind the bar and paced to one of the large windows at the end of the car. He slid the window open and took in a deep breath of the air that filtered in from the outside. If he leaned over just enough he could see through the rear of the cave’s opening and barely see Castle Dracula sitting three miles up the mountain. The lights were blazing and the night was still.

“I will have all of the extra security you will need. My guests…” Zallas hesitated and then smiled before downing his second large vodka. “My guests are the type of gentlemen,” he bowed toward Gina, “and ladies, that feel more comfortable away from authority but well protected in their pursuit of enjoyment. They will have their own security, but we will be covering their security with our security.”

“The attacks?” Vajic persisted, not showing how the information that every man and woman would be armed to the teeth inside his hotel scared him more than any children’s stories.

“Stop worrying about fairy tales, Vajic. I have made several inquiries, even before I sent the hunters up the mountain. There have not been any wolf sightings in these mountains for two hundred years. It seems the locals wiped them out because they favor sheep over monsters.”

“Then why did you send the hunters up there to hunt animals that don’t live in the mountains any longer?”

Zallas turned from the open window and took in both his partner and the general manager. The Russian gangster waved a hand in front of his face as if he were a magician.

“Ooh, the true mastery is one of illusion, my brother. Make people believe they are safe and it usually turns out they are. Give them confidence that they will be taken care of.”

“They don’t intend to hunt?” Vajic asked, looking from the ruffian Russian to Gina, who couldn’t believe what she was hearing.

“Hunt what, Janos? A sheep dog that’s mad at the world? A maniac that’s been driven mad by tending sheep for fifty years that lives in one of those remote villages up there? No, my man will deliver what was needed to another mere man up in the pass and there you have it, problem solved.”

“Dmitri, what we have here is a real problem with the staff: they hear the rumors and the people in this area tend to believe the old tales of the southern Carpathians.”

“Enough!” Zallas said as he tossed Gina his empty glass. “There is nothing mysterious up in those mountains. All you have is the superstition of a backward people that never knew the last century just ended. Vajic, there is nothing up there but men and women with the same weaknesses as everyone else in the world!”

As they stood by the open window of the cable car they all heard it.

Vajic looked out the window but the view from the small opening was limited. He could see the base of the castle but that was all. The tremendous howl of an animal that no longer existed in the deep mountains seemed to come from further up, closer to the Patinas Pass. Vajic straightened and then looked at his partner.

“That thing that can’t possibly exist just answered the question for us.”

“Can you feel it?” Gina asked as she stepped toward the open window.

“Feel what?” Zallas asked.

“Something has changed here. It’s like the mountains have come alive after many years of hibernation.”

“Oh, for the love of Stalin, am I going to have to get replacements up here for everyone who believes this crap?” an angry Zallas said as he turned and stormed out of the cable car. That left Vajic looking at Gina and they both knew that this was going to be a very stress-filled weekend ahead of them. The two followed the Russian. “Listen, the people we purchased these agreements from live up there. I am the only man here to handle them. I need certain information against these people and then we can move to secure the rest of the land.”

“The rest of the land?” Vajic asked as he tried to keep up with Zallas.

“Do you think we stop at the castle, my friend? No, no. I have visions of an all-encompassing resort with the finest ski runs in all of Europe.”

“The Patinas Pass?” Gina asked as she lowered her ever-present clipboard from her ample chest, sending the eyes of the Russian mobster down to her blouse. “It is my understanding that those villagers up there have no intention of selling or granting access to that area.”

“That is my worry, not yours. After this weekend I suspect that many attitudes in and out of the mountains will be changing for the better.”

Gina looked at Vajic and they both now realized that Zallas had plans they had never been aware of. To expand the resort into the pass not only would cause trouble with the locals, but also the government.

“Uh, Dmitri, the Romanian government has just signed the North Atlantic Treaty Organization charter. We are now a part of NATO, and they have designs on that pass for emergencies. They will have agreements in place with the locals of the pass that will secure their lands forever. As a matter of fact there will be NATO members in the mountains this weekend.”

“Then we will have to invite some of them to the grand opening of Edge of the World.” Zallas smiled and when he saw his small joke didn’t play well he lost that smile just as fast. “Politics are my problem, Janos. The securing of the land is also my problem, and everything is lining up perfectly. We should have not only a fine opening for many influential men and women, but also a very good time.”

Zallas walked away and the two Romanians once again exchanged worried looks as they both turned and looked out of the expansive dome toward the mountain above them.

Several loud reports were heard in the valleys of the mountain that night of mist and darkness. The gunshots faded to nothing after twenty minutes but the howling continued on throughout the night.

The Golia were on the move from the high peaks of the Carpathians.

The two desperadoes of the Event Group that night had broken regulations again. Charles Hindershot Ellenshaw III and Pete Golding had used illegal means to bypass security and broken into the Ark. The darkened drinking establishment was empty of all personnel at four-thirty A.M. and they had the run of the place. The rebuke they had received for assisting Alice had both scientists feeling hurt and bewildered.

Both men had tall glasses of something Ellenshaw mixed up that he claimed took the life of Jim Morrison back in 1971. After swallowing the multicolored drink Pete grimaced and forced his stomach to stay where it was designed to be anchored — in his body.

“God, that was awful,” Pete cried.

Ellenshaw looked nonplussed. He took another pull from his glass, then quickly set it down on the bar and started frantically searching for his glasses in his wrinkled lab coat.

A pair of hands magically appeared and then reached over Ellenshaw’s shoulder and pulled the scientist’s glasses down from where they had been perched on his head. The wire-rimmed spectacles were placed on his nose and that was when the clear vision of Will Mendenhall appeared to Charlie Ellenshaw. Both he and Pete had their eyes widen until the lieutenant thought they would pop from their heads. Standing next to him was a zoologist from the San Diego Zoo neither Pete nor Charlie could recall meeting personally but knew by reputation and from their copies of the academic roster.

“Doc, why didn’t you and Dr. Frankenstein come to Ryan or me with this Alice investigation? If you had you wouldn’t be in Director Compton’s doghouse right now.”

The computer genius looked almost as wounded as he did inebriated. “We … we thought … you and Ryan would tell on us,” Pete Golding mumbled as he tried to no avail to focus on Will’s face.

“Then you really don’t know me and Ryan all that well, do you,” Mendenhall said while staring at both men. “The difference is, boys, Ryan and I would never have been caught. You two were. Now get up and come with me, you have a meeting to attend.”

Ellenshaw’s head shot up from the bar. “It’s…” He looked at his wristwatch but couldn’t focus on it at all. “It’s … it’s … boy it’s early.”

“Come on, the colonel’s waiting for you.”

Both scientists exchanged worried looks as they resigned themselves to further humiliation at the hands of the man they respected — and feared — most in the world: Jack Collins.

“Come on, it will only hurt for a split second and then your minds will go blank, almost like they are right now,” Mendenhall said as he tried to hide his smile.

“Oh, God,” Pete and Charlie said simultaneously.

Jack was the first one to arrive at the vault. On his way down he relieved the security man at the arch and sent him away to other duties on the vault levels. This would be a private gathering of the Event Group’s best, or as Collins himself thought, the people most expected to go outside the lines of Group regulations. As Jack stepped over the steel threshold of the vault he looked to the center of the room and saw the glass enclosure that held one of the strangest specimens of animal life the Group had ever come across and the subject of the meeting.

He looked past the specimen and up into the darkness of the viewing gallery high above the floor of the vault. The area had seating for students numbering a hundred as did most of the vaults at the complex. Jack’s eyes lingered on the darkness there for a moment and then his attention was taken away by three people moving into the vault.

Alice Hamilton walked through the stainless steel opening and into the small enclosure. She was flanked by her closest friends, Virginia Pollock and Sarah McIntire. Jack nodded a greeting and then directed them to a table that had been set up on his orders. Collins smiled at Alice and then pulled out a chair for her. Alice returned his smile but the colonel could tell she was apprehensive. He was sure she expected to be set up by him and possibly Niles to convince her and the others that her proof of an animal that has existed alongside mankind for thousands of years just wasn’t enough for an Event to be called.

Jack looked up and saw a shaky Charlie Ellenshaw preceded by Pete Golding step into the vault. They both stood in the doorway with their eyes not focusing on any one thing inside the hermetically controlled environment. Collins shook his head.

“Lieutenant, escort Baby Face Nelson and Mr. Dillinger to their seats, please.”

Mendenhall smiled as did Virginia Pollock as Ellenshaw and Golding were led to two seats in the middle of the table as if to their own private inquisition.

Jack paced to the head of the table and retrieved Alice’s thick file. He walked to the enclosure that held the specimen recovered from Bordeaux, France, just after World War I. He opened the folder, took a deep breath, and then looked up at Alice, who held Jack’s gaze without shame and without flinching.

“Europa, Vault 22871—describe the history of its contents, please.”

“Specimen stored inside Vault 22871 was discovered in Bordeaux, France, on December 11, 1918, by American Expeditionary Forces after the close of World War I. Specimen is believed to be part wolf but verification has not been confirmed by Department 5656 staff. The object was recovered during excavations by American forces and returned to the United States for analysis. The specimen has been declared a hoax perpetrated on the villagers of that region three hundred years before. Said specimen is scheduled for decommission and storage at the Virginia depository for Department 5656.”

“Professor Ellenshaw,” Jack said in a voice somewhat louder than normal startling Charlie until everyone present thought he had a stroke. “Please step up to the enclosure and describe what you know about the subject matter inside.”

Charlie had seen this vault and examined the wolf no fewer than fifty times. The object always held a special place in the hearts of anyone who examined it. He also knew that the specimen had been ridiculed by every lettered academic in the Group and even some out of it to the point that he always voiced no opinion on it until Alice came to him and asked for his help. He himself was always afraid of even more ridicule toward his rather unorthodox department of Cryptozoology.

The remains of the animal were deposited on a white satin cloth inside the glass chamber. The beast was curled in a fetal position. There was very little of the deep black fur that once covered the animal. The skull, with the animal’s nose tucked under the front paws, made the skeletal remains look as if it had just curled up and died. What was amazing about the exhibit was that the wolf had to have been eight hundred pounds when alive. Although shrunken with age and diminished by decomposition, the animal would have clearly stood well over six and a half feet long, or as in this case, almost seven feet in height.

“What we have inside the specimen case is what is typically known as Canis lupus, a relative of the jackal, coyote, and even the domesticated dog. This particular specimen has been tested out no fewer than five hundred times and has been tagged with and most closely resembles the North American timber wolf. However, fossil analysis cannot pinpoint the exact species of wolf.” Charlie tried but could not stop the series of hiccups that erupted unbidden to his description.

“Europa, Slide 7879098, please,” Jack said as he shot a quick glance into the student seating above them in the darkened gallery and then looked away.

“Yes, Colonel Collins.”

Before Jack could thank Europa the entire wall illuminated with slides of X-rays and CAT scans that had been done on the animal for the past one hundred years. The slides were placed on a continuous circle of high-definition monitors. As the slides came up the lights dimmed and that afforded Collins a quick look at Alice, who sat stoically between Sarah and Virginia. She had the look of a woman sitting at a defense table and that made Jack nervous — that perhaps the old woman had given up and that didn’t suit Collins at all.

“Professor Ellenshaw, what is the most obvious anomaly on this particular specimen?”

Charlie held a hand to his mouth as he tried to control his hiccups.

“Well, to anyone who has ever studied how the wolf works, plays, and eats, they can easily see that this particular specimen was born with two pelvic bones and two differing hip bones. Both made to easily slide one bone from the hip socket to easily slide into another. In other words we have two very distinct hip and pelvic bones. These bones are supposed to act like a snake’s jaw, unhinging itself so it can consume prey larger than its mouth. Well, these particular hip and pelvic bones act in the same way. You see the socket that is empty on this X ray just forward of the rear socket. Well, this leg bone is supposed to remain intact at all times because the wolf is a quadruped. It is designed to run on all fours. Now this animal,” he switched positions and pointed to a clear X-ray of the beast, “if we are to believe what we see has the capability to dislocate its upper thigh bone from its socket and then slide that thigh bone into the secondary socket forward of the original. As a model you can actually see the grooves that have been made by the constant movement of leg and hip bones into varying sockets.”

“Bringing the leg into proper alignment with its body, making the beast capable of walking and running upright,” Alice said with a defiant look in her eyes that Jack was pleased to see.

Charlie nodded toward Alice. “Yes, ma’am, that would be the result.”

“But you disagree?” Collins asked, knowing that Charlie’s blind faith in Alice would not stop him from voicing what he really thought of the animal and its validity.

“I … I … yes, I disagree. This is not a species of animal that ever walked the earth. There is nothing in the fossil record that shows any animal in history with this capability. The closest resemblance is with the bear, which is capable of walking upright at times of defense, but the animal of course cannot maintain that posture for an extended time.”

“Because it wasn’t designed to,” Alice put in. “This animal obviously was. Through many millions of years they have adapted to use this magnificent ability to survive in harsh conditions and terrain.”

All turned toward Alice as the light of the slides reflected off her eyes.

“I am quoting your own notes, Alice, and you have listed a professor of zoology from the University of Toronto. ‘No animal was ever designed to do what this beast would have been capable of doing. If it did what we would be looking at is what our legends described as a werewolf,’” Jack said and then turned his attention back to Ellenshaw. “What other anomaly stands out to you, Professor?”

“Well, this particular scan of the animal’s paws, or in this case camouflaged paws. As you see this is also a very big impossibility as there has never been any animal outside of science fiction that has an articulated digit system. The very same system we humans and primates have. Only this is perfect. You see in this X-ray how the bones curl inward until it forms a paw shape. On the outside of the fingers when they are curled in for running, we assume anyway, are what we describe as pads, just like the toes of your dog, thick pads for protection against the rough terrain in which an animal like this would run. When the wolf would supposedly walk upright these particular paw pads are not needed, so the beast had the capability of extending actual and very articulated fingers.”

Collins stopped in front of Alice and then nodded his head.

“Okay, Alice, this is your chance. Convince me.”

Charlie and Pete exchanged glances but Alice looked at Jack with defiance in her eyes and then she smiled her old smile. It was like she was going into teaching mode, a job she handled often in her years at the Group. She stood and relieved Jack of her file. She opened it and then placed it on the glass top of the enclosure.

“I never thought about this vault twice, even when I first saw it in 1946. It didn’t hold any interest for me. Then everything changed one night in Hong Kong. Garrison and I were…”

Collins listened to Alice tell her tale of the yacht Golden Child, and how the disaster came about that long-ago night in the cold waters of the Pacific. She ended her talk by showing around the small chip of block with the animal bone inside the petrified specimen.

“And it was that night which sparked your interest in this supposed hoax?” Collins asked.

“Yes.”

“Doctors Ellenshaw and Golding, as men of science I know you both are not believers in this animal. But I see doubt in your reactions … why?”

Pete and Charlie exchanged a look and then Pete turned and spoke. “Because Alice believes it.” He looked at her again and nodded. “And because I believe she is the most intelligent woman I have ever met. That’s why we are now doubting the fossil record. We may not fully believe in the animal, but we do this lady.”

Jack turned to Ellenshaw again. “Professor, you believe in some wild things. You have even gone as far as proving the existence of some these animals we discovered on varying missions around the world. Charlie, I will ask you point-blank if you believe in werewolves?”

The question took everyone in the vault off guard. Sarah for her part looked furious that Jack could be so cavalier about the subject that he had turned this into a joke just to show how foolish Alice has been. Virginia Pollock went so far as to stand up in protest, but Alice laughed and then waved Virginia back into her seat.

“No. I believe in many things,” Ellenshaw answered, “but an animal that has the ability to change appearance into something it is not, not just in camouflage or the changing of skin colors, it is impossible.”

“And yet because it is Mrs. Hamilton you believe?”

“Yes, as Pete said, I believe in her.”

“Thank you, Charlie.” Jack looked at Alice and pointed to the file. “Alice, what you did when you placed our agent in jeopardy is open a closet that should have remained closed. To take a chance on exposing our man at the Vatican over something that is not a national security issue for which reason we, including yourself, placed him at the Vatican in the first place, is an act that could end this department for now and all time. The president would shut us down in a moment if he knew we may have sacrificed an agent in the field for what, werewolves?”

With a glance at Sarah he could see that she and everyone else was growing a little furious at the attack on Alice. He continued.

“But then again it’s not just werewolves you’re after here, is it?” He moved to his left and looked up at the darkened gallery above, and then at Alice. “There is something pushing you, Mrs. Hamilton, something you’re covering up by this wolf aspect. There’s more to this fairy tale, am I correct? There is a legitimate reason that would send this immediately into an Event declaration, but because you have even less evidence of this particular aspect of your case you chose to go the animal route to that declaration. But now you see that’s not enough.” He looked at the older woman and locked his eyes with her own.

Alice finally realized what it was the colonel was attempting. She smiled so only Jack could see and he returned the gesture with a wink. Alice momentarily glanced into the darkness of the upper gallery. She raised her left eyebrow and shook her head, and then nodded at Jack.

“Yes, much more to the fairy tale.”

“Let’s start in the middle of this thing. What is in that report filed by agent Goliath at the Vatican?” Jack asked as he reached into his pocket for the message sent by Captain Everett less than an hour before this meeting started.

Alice opened her extensive file and then pulled out a three-page report.

“This was found in Greece. It is an account by a Roman soldier who later became a powerful senator. This account gives credence to the beast that lies under this glass. Europa will read the account as listed by this soldier. You will have to suspend your belief while you piece this together in your minds. This account was uncovered in the ruins of the senator’s house in Macedonia sealed in jars and stored as if the senator wanted the tale told, but was ashamed to have it publicly recorded in his lifetime. The original report was later criticized by the Papal See and the Holy Roman Empire and done away with, until our agent found it among the list of items we wanted searched for. This keyword ‘wolf’ was inserted by me. Goliath searched and found this from the eyewitness account of Centurion Marcus Paleternus Tapio, future senator of Rome.”

Jack leaned against the wall and watched as the report came up on the circular monitors that ringed the vault along with a Renaissance rendering of the famous Senator Tapio.

“This is factual history, as Roman officers never fudged a report of resistance anywhere in the empire. So what you read is an account of that night. It started in some of the worst weather seen in that region in a hundred years and…”

… The rain was unrelenting. The water refused to soak into the hard scrub of the mountains and the result was that small lakes developed from the massive runoff and all stood in the path of the eighty-eight men of what was left of the expeditionary force of the V Roman Legion. They had been ordered detached from the whole of the legion and sent north from the Danube River thirty-five days hence.

The men of the Fifth were in ill temper as the deadly attacks had continued against their ranks after moon-fall the past three nights. They would await the coming of the sun, if it chose to show itself at all to the Romans, and then they would tally the dead from the previous night’s horrors. During the darkest hours of the previous night there had been sixteen men butchered and left hanging on the scrubby small trees of the region, a reminder that the Romans, or anyone else for that matter, were trespassing on land that would be defended to the full capability of the local inhabitants of this bleak mountain range.

Centurion Marcus Paleternus Tapio was the commander of the expedition sent to the unmapped wilds of Dacia to punish the people of that region for their support of co-counsel Pompey Magnus against his onetime friend and brother Gaius Julius Caesar during the four-year civil war that ravaged Rome and its legions. Thus far in two months of campaign they had yet to come across a village or even one single man that had ever heard of Gaius Julius Caesar, or even of the Roman Empire that had invaded their country. The centurion’s conclusion was that the people of the Carpathian region had not been involved in their homeland’s ill-advised alliance with Pompey Magnus. The punishment campaign had been ordered by the legal heir to Caesar’s fortune and power, Octavian, or as he was now known, Augustus Caesar, emperor of the Roman Empire and thus the most powerful man in the world.

Thus far they had burned over fifty small villages on their trek northward from the Danube. It had been that way until six nights before when they entered the mountainous region known to the locals as the Patinas Pass. The area was situated high in the Carpathian Mountains and was once thought to be controlled by the traitorous Dacian king, Burebista, but they had discovered that the Patinas region in the Carpathians belonged to no one man. The peasants here paid tribute to nothing but the land, the sky, and the animal life that existed in the rough mountainous range. It was in this place that they started to hear the screams of Roman sentries being murdered in the night. No matter the size of the stockade, moat, tangle foot, or sharpened barbs of spear or arrow erected for the night’s camp security, none could keep at bay whatever nightmare was attacking and tearing his men apart.

Centurion Tapio looked at the list of men he had lost. The expedition was now down from eighty-eight to forty-nine men of the Fifth. The experienced Roman commander knew when it was time to cut and run from the region.

The centurion looked up at first spear of the cohort and his second in command, Julius Antipas Cricio. The man was well scarred from his many campaigns in support of first, Julius Caesar, and now he murdered in the name of Augustus. The large soldier stood at attention barely Bible in the shadow-inducing tallow-fueled lamp as it spit out its weak light.

“This campaign ends tomorrow. We burn the stockade at dawn. I want the fires hot enough that every man, woman, and child in the region knows that we are leaving this place of evil. They can have it and take it to hell with them.”

The first spear centurion looked at his commander. Instead of sending for at least another cohort of legionaries or cavalry detachment, this element of the Fifth would tuck its tail between its legs and run back to the south, defeated, embarrassed, and disgraced among their peers of the Fifth Legion.

“There are but three or four men in the attacking party. If we are patient we can ambush them as they come in for their nightly attacks. We need not retreat in the face of this thing. We dishonor the eagle standard of the Fifth Legion,” Cricio countered, hoping the thought of the golden eagle’s shame would change his commander’s mind.

“Then place a wheat sack over the damn eagle as we retreat, First Spear Centurion. I do not care about the honor of the eagle. I want what’s left of my men out of these mountains. There is no honor to be found here.”

“We run from peasants? The Roman Empire will be chased away by mere men that have a tendency for the dramatic in their way of killing. We can never live this down, Centurion, and I wish my protests to be placed in your report that I do not agree with your decision to retreat. We must stay and fulfill our orders from the Senate, the people of Rome, and Caesar Augustus.”

“I will not do that, old friend, but I will allow you to take the rearguard action as we leave this pass. With these duties you can try and thwart this evil that has enveloped us since entering these mountains.”

“I will heed your orders, and if I do manage to thwart these attacks in the night, may I expect a change of those orders?”

The centurion smiled for the first time in days. “You kill the evil that has befallen us and you will be in command of the expedition, not I. You will have proven your worth to Emperor Augustus.”

The first spear returned the smile. “How many men am I to have in the rear guard?”

“Take with you the four Berserkers. We’ll see if the natives of this backward land are as frightened of their legends as we. The Danube Berserkers may be better suited to fight whatever dwells in the night in this devil’s region.”

“The Berserkers it is.” Antipas Cricio replaced his red cloak against the chill of the damp evening and then before leaving he faced his old friend. “That’s all it is, you know, an old legend that only a fool would believe in. Animals that walk upright?” He laughed against the bitter feeling he was having against his own words of strength. “I think we’ll find five or six old soldiers out there that have learned what it is that frightens the mighty Roman Empire — the unknown. I will be back by dawn. Don’t move the remnants of the cohort too far down the mountainside, as I will bring you our silent enemies’ heads.”

The centurion only nodded as he turned away from the falling rain with a last look.

“I will wait until dawn and then I move out with what’s left of my men.” Again he looked his old friend in the eyes. “Bear witness to the night, First Spear Antipas Cricio, for there is something out there that is a silent and swift killer of men. Now leave me to worry this list of my dead soldiers.”

As Tapio watched his old campaign warrior leave he knew he would never see him again. With a deep breath he called his aide.

“Sir,” the aide said as he slammed his right fist to his chest.

“I want the camp broken in less than an hour. We move before the rise of the moon, full equipment, no tents or cooking material.”

“Sir!” the aide said and then hurriedly left.

Centurion Tapio watched as the rain began to fall in earnest. Just as he reached for the tent’s flap he heard one of the many wolves that roamed the region loose a howl that sent chills into Tapio’s fragile system.

“Beware the beast in the night and be afraid for he knows what frightens you.” Tapio shook his head in memory of a local saying that had been passed on to him before he was sent north from the Danube as he pulled the tent flap firmly closed against the chill of the evening. As he thought about the saying another deep-throated howl rent the night sky.

This time the cacophony was coming from the mountain high above them. The darkest of nights grew closer to the Romans.

The horns and drums had started an hour after he and the four Berserkers had taken up their ambush points. Cricio tried to peer into the blackness of the night to spy the locations of the men from the Danube River region of Dacia. They were known for their fierce bearing and unforgiving way of battle. One man would stake himself in front of an enemy and just wait for them to attack. While that was happening the other three Berserkers would strike from their concealed locations. As he watched he could discern no movement. As he looked on he saw that the rain was finally relinquishing its hold on the southern region.

The horns were blasting the night air somewhere miles up the winding pass of the mountains. As the first spear listened he was reminded of the battle horns used in Syria and Thrace. They were meant to frighten and confuse an enemy, and that meant, at least to his military thinking, that this was not some supernatural or magical event taking place against their men. It was nothing more than an experienced commander that knew how to fight a guerrilla war. He smiled at the thought. If they knew how to fight in that manner, they were mere men and not the devils every legionary had nightmares about. In the end Cricio knew they could be killed.

Suddenly the rain had ceased and to Cricio’s consternation the moon broke free of the black clouds swirling around the mountains. He had just lost 50 percent of the advantage he had just a moment before. The horns suddenly stopped after a final flurry of drums and cymbals. The night became still.

Cricio slowly withdrew the gladius at his side. The coldness of the leather-covered hilt felt good in his hand. As the first glint of moonbeam caught the sharpened edge of the sword, Cricio heard sounds that were not natural to the forest. A low growl that seemed to weave its way in and out of the thick woods around them. Suddenly he saw a flash of movement in that same moonlight. One of the Berserkers charged from his hiding place with battleaxe high, breaking the point of being what he was, a Berserker who would wait until the exposed man was molested. Evidently Cricio thought the Berserker must have seen a clear advantage in his attacking posture. The Berserker’s sudden move was swift and silent. There was no scream from the small bundle of muscle and sinew. Cricio heard the loud grunt as the man from the Danube struck out at something Cricio himself could not see in the darkness. There was an animalistic scream and then he heard the man yell something in his native language he didn’t understand.

As he started to move forward, Cricio saw another of the Berserkers charge through the growing ground fog to strike at the same target. The four Dacian Berserkers were not following their own rules of attack. They were not allowing the ambush to unfold — they were striking fast and hard. Even as these thoughts struck, a third Berserker joined the fray. Cricio charged forward at the sound of heavy battle.

First Spear Cricio held up by the trunk of a thick tree and listened to the night. The three Berserkers were battling something in the dark that spit and snarled, yelped and growled. Then a sound came that froze his blood. A howl rent the night sky and reverberated through the pass until it dwindled away high in the craggy peaks above them. Then the howl was repeated at least thirty more times in thirty different directions. Cricio lowered his sword as the howls faded into the night. As he entered a small clearing that had been soaked through with the relentless rain, Cricio saw the three Berserkers. One was lying on his back; the other two basically ignored their comrade and were knelt by a dark form. As Cricio approached he saw the injured Berserker as he held his insides in place with both his hands. Blood and gore oozed out with every beat of the crazy man’s heartbeat. His head was shaking wildly and Cricio knew that the man was soon dead and suspected the Berserker knew at least that much himself.

Cricio kicked away the dying man’s hand grabbing at his boot. As he approached the two Danube men he saw one of the battleaxes embedded deeply into the back of an animal. As Cricio knelt down to examine their, until now, unseen enemy, he was amazed to see one of the enormous paws of the beast. At first the human fist-sized paw looked normal, then when the moon broke free of the encircling clouds Cricio saw that the paw itself was malformed.

“This is no wolf,” he said as he reached out and lightly touched the massive paw of the dead animal. He looked up as another burst of light from the now exposed moon illuminated the area. He used the tip of a small knife and slid the blade into the folds of the beast’s fingers. As he pried at the malformed shape, his stomach turned over. He lifted, first one clawed finger, and then another. He saw that these were not the normal paw pads of an animal. As he continued to pull at the claw a long and elegant finger uncurled. The top of the clawed finger had a pad, like that of a dog, so when the animal ran the fingers would curl under.

He heard the sudden jabbering of the Berserkers as they saw the same thing as he.

“Quiet!” he hissed through clenched jaw. He slowly started to rise from the eight-hundred-pound animal at his feet. He looked around him and saw the Berserkers come rigid. Cricio used his booted foot to turn the animal’s muzzle up until he could see the features. The mouth was open and he could clearly see the animal’s weapons of choice. The teeth were long and curled and the muzzle itself looked as if it could easily slice through the steel of his sword. The ears were long and came to cruel points until they nearly resembled horns. The eyes were half closed and he could see the lifelessness there. As his eyes looked down upon the enemy the claws were clearly seen; eight inches long and as thick as a man’s thumb. He estimated that this particular animal would have stood close to seven feet in height if it didn’t run on all fours.

“Golia … Estaisasurfas … Golia,” the smaller of the two Berserkers said while looking around the dark forest with wild eyes.

He had more ancient tales of terror to frighten children? “I think it is just a wolf,” Cricio responded, “a strange wolf to be sure, but just a wolf.” He again withdrew the gladius. “And a wolf that can be killed, so allow us to…”

The head of the fourth Berserker, whose absence had gone unnoticed until then, flew into the midst of the three men and bounded off the body of the dead animal. The head had been ripped, not sliced, but torn from the Berserker’s body.

Before anyone could react the beasts were upon them. Cricio ducked just as a clawed hand swiped through the growing fog and ripped free his dark red cloak. He swung blindly. The blade struck something that was rock hard and just as unyielding. He heard a sharp intake of breath, then a short animal grunt of pain and then he found himself airborne. He hit the ground next to the first body of the Berserker who had slid into the afterlife some moments before. As Cricio tried in vain to catch his breath he saw the animal leap from a cluster of trees. As the screams and yells of the Berserkers sounded around him, Cricio knew the beast was going to crush him to death with its weight, and then use claws and teeth.

Cricio was frozen with fear and just before the massive animal reached him and just as he threw his arms up to protect his face, an arrow thumped into the side of the giant wolf. It yelped and then turned toward its new threat. Suddenly the area was alight with torches and yelling men. Cricio was pulled to his feet as the sound of battle flowed around him.

“Form circle! Form circle!” came the shouted order of Centurion Tapio as he held his second in command by the arm while waving his sword with the other. The gold helmet and red brush made Cricio realize that his commander had indeed come back for him. As the men of the Fifth surrounded the shaken Cricio and their commander, the forest became alight with heat and flame. “More pitch, more pitch!” Tapio shouted. “Burn it all!”

Cricio shook off Tapio’s grasp when he suddenly realized what had happened.

“You used me as bait?”

In the flames Tapio looked at Cricio and then gestured to the rear. “As you said, old friend, we must not tarnish the gold of the eagle standard of the Fifth. And now I do believe it’s time to make a hasty retreat from this god-awful region.” Tapio suddenly let the stunned Cricio go and he knelt down beside the animal. With a grimace of disgust the centurion studied the features of the beast. Then he removed his sword and started hacking at the thick neck of the wolf. It took six hard blows to sever the head. Tapio removed his red cloak and wrapped the head inside. “No one can fault this cohort of the Fifth for cowardice in the face of this.” He held the dripping cloak up for his men to see.

The forty-eight men of the Fifth Legion cheered and then went quickly back to work as even more howls started filtering down from the mountains.

“We’ll need a lot more than just fire to escape this evil place,” Cricio said, still angered at being used as bait by his old general.

“I am prepared to burn this whole country if it means a chance of escape. Archers!”

Ten men stepped forward and ignited their ten arrows. As the howling through the pass became more insistent, the flaming arrows were loosed into the trees beyond their position. They struck the pitch-soaked trees and a burst of flame ignited the woods around them. The howls became more insistent as the flames started running the lengths of the imposing trees that surrounded the legionaries.

“Form! Form!” Tapio called out loudly.

Men fell into order and started moving south, down and away from an advancing enemy that in their minds and memories of the real world could not possibly exist.

The remaining men from the detached element of the Fifth Legion escaped that night of nights and made a fighting retreat to the Danube where the tales of the battle for Patinas Pass would fade from memory just as would the wild tales of animals that stalk their prey upright would fade from Roman history.

Everyone around the table was silent as each conjured their own picture of the event two thousand years ago in a place called the Dacian Kingdom. The actual field report given to the emperor was a document three wide pages long — a meticulous account of the action involving the detached element of the V Legion. They each had their own thoughts after filling in the gaps to the report of Centurion Marcus Paleternus Tapio, future senator of Rome.

At the specimen case Alice pulled out the eight-by-ten glossy sent from the Vatican. As she did this, Europa placed the same picture on the circular screen. The image of the skull recovered from the Vatican archives was the exact duplicate of the one they were all looking at inside the specimen case. The only difference being in this photo you could see just how lethal this animal would have been if it did truly exist. The teeth were long and sharp. The canines were at minimum six inches long. There was even a chip in one of the larger front teeth. The skull itself as measured by the ruler in the picture was a broad seventeen inches wide.

“This was the proof I needed,” Alice said as she stepped away from the case and watched differing views of the skull come and go on the large screens.

“But our proof…” Sarah said, and everyone noticed that she had said “our proof,” automatically aligning herself with Alice. “… is right here in the case.”

“And to risk a young man’s covert cover, and possibly his life, for evidence we already had minus the field report of a long dead Roman officer,” Jack said to Alice’s back, “is pretty weak stuff.”

“The proof I speak of isn’t the skull, although the report helped confirm my own research, it was the link I needed — the trail of provenance that’s required to declare an Event.” Alice turned back to the case. “Europa, bring the lighting up 80 percent please and place Items 4564 and 4565 from the file coded Grimm.”

“Yes, Mrs. Hamilton,” replied the Cray supercomputer and before she was finished with her response the ring of monitors came alive once again with alternating pictures of two items, both looking as if they were some sort of cloth.

Jack nodded his head only slightly as he knew exactly where Alice was headed with her proof because he had studied the same pictures and read the same Roman report as she, and that was exactly why this particular meeting was taking place.

“The two items you see are what is known as homespun. The weave itself is common enough throughout the known world for the time and place these two pieces of material were in actual use. These items were recovered from a sepulcher of ancient Egypt — northern Egypt to be precise. The dig was sponsored by the American University in Cairo five years ago. The material was commonly used by a shepherd or herdsman. The two swatches of cloth were recovered from the ancient site known to the modern world as the land of Goshen, the Hebrew city located northwest of the Nile.”

“A sepulcher? So you’re saying that these items came from a Hebrew crypt that was located in Goshen?” Virginia Pollock asked as she stood to get a closer look at the weave and the design of the pattern.

“That’s exactly what I’m saying. Now if you will notice as Virginia already has, the distinct pattern woven into the swatch. Red, although faded, and a darker red, also in the same condition. This pattern was worn by the tribe of Levi, who served the other tribes of Israel and did particular religious duties for the entire nation. This particular pattern, designated by the second stripe here,” Alice pointed to the second of the three red-dyed stripes, “was worn by the men who were the suppliers of meat, milk, and grain for that particular tribe.”

“So you have made a connection between the petrified animal specimen you saw in Hong Kong to this?” Virginia asked. “I don’t see it. Where was this petrified animal bone recovered? You didn’t answer that.”

Alice smiled and looked at everyone around the table and ended with Jack.

“The ancient city where this specimen, the small piece of hewn stone encasing the flesh and bone of the animal, was recovered and then stolen from was the city of Jericho. A more exact location was the diggings at Tell es-Sultan in Palestinian-controlled territory.”

“Jericho, the city supposedly destroyed by the archangel Gabriel with his horn?” Jack asked.

“The same, but I suspect that there may have been a little more to the story.”

“Meaning what?” the colonel persisted.

“That maybe the attacking army laying siege to Jericho had a little more help in their assault than just Gabriel and his horn.”

Virginia looked at Jack and shook her head just enough so that he saw the disbelief in her eyes, and if he and Alice lost the deputy director that meant that Niles Compton would never accept Alice’s theory.

“That petrified bone was from a complete animal that Garrison Lee and I both saw on board the Golden Child. The damage to the remains had been great because it had been crushed between the two massive blocks that were widely known to have made the city impenetrable. The blocks had scorch marks dating back thousands of years.”

“Alice, I believe you saw what you saw,” Virginia said, “but actually saying this is a connection, well, that’s pretty slim.”

Jack had to agree with Virginia even though he knew different — was already convinced, whereas Virginia was not.

“Yes, slim until you put two and two together with the design of that material on the screen. That is a Levite section of cloth, there is no doubt of that. The city of Jericho was conquered by the Israelite army, which is a historical fact. An animal that is the exact match for the beast inside this case was found among the ruins of that city, entrapped at approximately the same moment as the city’s downfall. This second pattern on the screen — not the cloth depicting the hierarchy of the Levite tribe — but the second tier tribe that served the Levite known as the Jeddah.”

“I’ve never heard of them before,” Sarah said, looking at the difference between the two swatches of woven homespun.

“There’s good reason for that, Lieutenant. The Jeddah are one of the Ten Lost Tribes of Israel, only the Jeddah tribe became lost long before the other nine.” She paused for effect. “At the same time as the fall of Jericho.”

There was silence around the room. Jack glanced at Ellenshaw and Golding, who were following the same trail as he had earlier when scanning the file. Now he could see how Alice convinced the two scientists to help her.

Alice could see she was losing Virginia and possibly even Sarah. She acted quickly.

“The proof of that particular timeline is confirmed by none other than Joshua himself as he listed the Jeddah as destroyed many years after the battle of Jericho in one of the first citizen censuses of the new Hebrew nation.”

Alice walked toward the specimen case once again. “Europa, replace the exhibits on the screen with Artifact 5657—Grimm, please.”

Again, Europa complied. On the screen was what looked like the exact same picture as before. The weave in this material was exactly the same as the one previous. This was the exact same pattern as the sub-tribe known as the Jeddah.

“The same cloth design and the exact same weave, so I assume this is the Jeddah?” Virginia asked.

“Yes,” answered Alice as she waited for Virginia’s next obvious question.

“Where was this material recovered and when?”

“The material is the exact same weave, color, and design as the Jeddah tribe with the one exception; this vertical stripe right here. This is a warrior’s mark. So we have another sub-tribe of the Levites. Still Jeddah, but this tribe was known as warriors that once guarded the northern gates of the Lower Kingdom of Egypt. They battled Libyans on a constant basis and are well documented through Egyptian accounts. This symbol and this design disappeared over three thousand years ago. This material in this photograph was recovered three weeks ago through a close contact Senator Lee and I have in Eastern Europe.”

Everyone inside the vault, including Jack, heard Alice use Senator Lee’s name in the present tense.

“This material is only one year old and is still in use in the high Carpathian Mountains of Romania, by villagers in the remote mountain passes of that country.”

“And it is connected by…” Jack prompted.

“By this,” Alice said, holding up a facsimile of the Roman action report filed by Centurion Marcus Paleternus Tapio. “It says the battle took place in a pass known then as Lup Pass, or in English, Wolf Pass, today known by the name Patinas. It was once protected land handed down since the time of Vlad Tepes, or as many of you know him, the Impaler, who sanctioned the area and kept hands off by every ruler on down the line as a reward by Vlad for aid rendered by that region’s inhabitants during the invasion of the Ottoman Empire in 1456 through 1462. What that aid was to Prince Vlad is unknown, but well documented by none other than the Holy Roman Church, another small connection, or coincidence.”

“The Patinas Pass is in—” Virginia started to ask.

“The Carpathian Mountains, located in a region once known as ancient Walachia, or otherwise known as Vlad Tepes Dracul’s Transylvania. The land of vampires and werewolves,” Alice said in a mysteriously mocking tone as she glanced at Charles Hindershot Ellenshaw III, who nodded his head in appreciation of her inflection.

“Perhaps you can explain why you think this region is noteworthy for the existence of your wolves,” Jack urged as he looked closely at the cloth depicted on the many screens inside the vault.

“Because of this.” Alice smiled at Jack, silently thanking him because now she realized what his game was. “Europa, display Exhibit 6758—Grimm on the screen please.”

On the monitors around the vault appeared a hundred pictures of an old woman. They were differing views in a number of locations.

“She looks like an old-time Gypsy in some of the pictures, and in others she looks quite regal, not Gypsy-like at all.”

Alice smiled at Virginia, who never missed anything. “Correct, she is a Gypsy, and she is regal indeed. Her name is, or was, Madam Ladveena Korvesky. In 1946 she was known as the queen of Gypsies. She was hunted by soldiers of Germany during the war and protected by soldiers of communist puppet Ceauşescu during the Cold War. She is an enigma. She had strange enemies and even stranger allies.”

“What have you learned of her?” Virginia asked.

“What I’ve learned is what prompted me to involve our friends here, Professor Ellenshaw and Dr. Golding. We managed to track her movements by Europa’s prowess at breaking and entering into other systems.” Pete Golding beamed but stopped when he saw the scowl on the colonel’s face. He just looked down after that. “The census for the last communist count inside Romania listed her in the region known as the Patinas Pass.”

“Coincidence?” the assistant director asked.

“Not hardly. This woman here is the key. We know absolutely nothing about Gypsies unlike what we do of the other peoples of Europe and America, but we do know this woman is respected by every band of Gypsies around the world. The reason for this is unknown.”

“Also because Gypsies have been long rumored to be one of the Lost Tribes of Israel,” Charlie Ellenshaw interjected.

“Yes, along with the American Indian and also the Ethiopians, all ridiculous hypotheses,” Virginia countered.

“Yes, on the surface, but couple everything with the fact that this woman and her granddaughter went on board the Golden Child for the specific reason of destroying that stone block with the remains inside of it, and to me there’s too much coincidence here.”

“And this is the granddaughter?” Virginia asked as she looked closely at the dark-haired woman.

“Yes, she actually admitted to the sabotage of the Golden Child as she mocked us afterward.”

Jack looked closely at the picture of the young granddaughter that Alice had uncovered in her research. That was the face that had awakened him in his quarters after he saw those same facial features in another photo he had been sent. He listened as Alice continued.

“Look, the evidence is here, there are no coincidences. There are two mysteries here on why I believe an Event designation should be declared. Declared because I think history is changing right before our eyes. The answer to the riddle of the animals is tied to their role in helping and then hiding something that has been an actual legend for three thousand years — the location and circumstance of one of the Lost Tribes of Israel — and that, ladies and gentlemen, is why a history-altering Event needs to be declared.”

This time the room fell silent. Even Charlie Ellenshaw and Pete Golding looked up with pounding headaches and saw that Alice had actually requested an Event. All eyes went to Jack, who stood looking at Alice.

“And what do you propose, Mrs. Hamilton?” he asked.

Alice looked from face to face and then glanced into the darkness of the viewing gallery above. She smiled and looked at Collins.

“This old lady thinks we should get to the Carpathians and see what sort of animal and Gypsy-style life may be hiding up there.” She kept her smile in place as she looked again to the darkened gallery above them. “And maybe discover one of the hiding places of a tribe of Israelites that supposedly vanished sometime after Moses led his nation out of Egypt. That’s all.”

The stunned silence overwhelmed the small vault. No one could really talk, as proof as thin as this had never been accepted for an Event. Charlie was the first to lower his head.

Jack met the eyes of Sarah and slowly shook his head.

“Europa, monitors off, please.”

The dim lighting held the vault in shadows as the monitors with the pictures of the two Gypsies from Alice’s tale vanished. The room was silent as Collins looked at Alice and then turned toward the darkness of the student seating gallery.

“What do you think, Mr. Director? Does Mrs. Hamilton have enough proof to call an Event?”

“No, Mrs. Hamilton does not.”

All eyes turned and looked up.

“Europa, lighting up one hundred percent please.”

As the gallery lights came on to full power everyone in the vault saw Director Niles Compton as he sat stoically with one leg crossed over the other and his fingers steepled under his chin. Niles slowly stood from his seat and walked to the railing and looked down into the vault. His white shirt had its sleeves rolled to his elbows in his usual mode of dress, as was the tie halfway unknotted as he placed both hands on the railing in front of him.

“You know how long I have wanted to believe in this theory? Hell, I believe everything Alice has said. But everyone here knows what kind of pressure it takes to declare an Event. There’s just not enough here.”

“Niles, I—” Alice started to say but Niles held up his hand. Even Jack was now feeling uncomfortable, thinking this may have been a bad plan.

“Please, Alice, allow me some time here.”

Alice lowered her eyes and nodded.

“Thank you. I have hated that thing, that pile of bones and fur, since I first laid eyes on it. It went against everything my education told me was possible. Even after all we have discovered in just my time here. It’s unbelievable I could have had such a closed mind when it came to … well, what amounted to a werewolf. Even Charlie here thought the possibility was ridiculous many years ago.” Ellenshaw again nodded his head. “But Alice, you got to the professor and eventually convinced him, and then Pete, and now Colonel Collins.”

Jack looked at Niles and wondered where the director was going with this.

Compton removed his hands from the rail and put them in his pants pockets and started pacing along the railing over their heads.

“I can’t fight everyone. It’s an intriguing story, I will grant you that. I am also impressed with your research, Alice, but why should that surprise me? But until I get something that ties all of this together other than a few pieces of old cloth and a rock that has a petrified bone in it and a story about how a bunch of Gypsies have a connection to an ancient tribe of Israel, I have to say no. This is not an Event, and thus far there is no indication that history took a turn at that point … sorry, just not at this time.”

The vault fell silent on the last word on Alice’s Event.

“Colonel,” the director said, “this situation may change if we come across more on this Mossad quest to find out information on Alice’s wolves.”

“I would like to present one more piece of evidence if I could that is related to that very subject,” Alice interjected.

Niles pursed his lips and then nodded his head.

“Europa, bring up secure File 22167—Goliath, please.”

On the screen the picture of the exact same young woman came up, only this one was in color and looked far newer. Alice turned to Jack and her face was a mask etched with questions.

“This can’t be! How old is this picture?” Alice finally asked. “It’s the same girl from the Golden Child, the granddaughter!”

“Well, if you’re correct, Alice, the young woman you’re looking at in this picture, the same woman you met in 1949 and caught in a picture that was taken just yesterday afternoon, is quite spunky for her age.”

“How old is she, Colonel?” Sarah asked.

“The young lady would have to be well over eighty-seven years old.”

5

Mossad Lieutenant General Addis Shamni sat patiently in an overstuffed chair outside the prime minister’s study. He felt uncomfortable having been led through the back reaches of the residence in order to avoid the constant throng of press and protesters that occupied most of the front area of the residence at the corner of Balfour and Smolenskin streets. Shamni adjusted his uncomfortable behind in a chair that seemed to swallow him whole.

“General, the prime minister will see you now,” the stern-looking assistant said as she stepped from the study and held the sliding doors open for the general.

Shamni adjusted the civilian sport coat and plain blue shirt he wore in place of his usual army uniform and stepped through the threshold and into the chamber of the most powerful man in the Middle East. The general saw the prime minister as he sat at his desk with his head down and was writing furiously, with his nose only inches from the paper. Shamni stood at attention through force of habit.

“Relax, General, I know how you hate being drawn out of your lair in Tel Aviv, but no one’s going to shoot you here for not acting like a soldier,” the bespectacled man of sixty-eight said and finally stopped writing long enough to look at a man he had known for over thirty years. They had served in the same company during the war of ’73 and had remained close ever since. “Besides, being a soldier here doesn’t matter much because any infiltrator to the residence would go after me first and that would give you time to get out.”

The general finally saw the smile he had known since the seventies and he did relax.

“So our problems in Rome seem to have gotten away from us, yes?” the prime minister asked as he returned to his writing after asking the direct question.

“I have to say I never expected that old lady to get one over on us like that.”

“Not on us, General,” the prime minister said as he looked up. He wasn’t smiling this time. “But the Mossad. Your Mossad. The agency I placed into your most capable hands just for situations such as this. We were handed this shit plate bequeathed to us generation after generation and it has fallen on us to keep the lid on this thing.” He tossed the pen he had been using onto the blotter of his desk. “How were they able to infiltrate the Mossad, Addie?”

“It’s not like we were well briefed on this mess from the previous administration. We didn’t know how brilliant that old witch truly was.”

“Well, I guess you were well schooled this afternoon weren’t you, General?”

“How she penetrated our screens and heritage checks is beyond me.”

“This Major Mica Sorotzkin, do you think she’s in on the selling of the people’s heritage?”

“All we know is we started making the push on the Vatican archives because we had artifacts turning up that could not have come from anyplace else on earth other than where we know they are. It just so happens that Major Sorotzkin was the best expert we had on the ancient artifacts we knew existed at that time. It was just a stroke of luck that she came across the American agent and what he discovered, and that truly was just a coincidence.”

“So, we may have been undone by a coincidence? If the press gets ahold of this and the religious right finally discovers where the temple is located we may have to go the extreme route. Agreed?”

“I have been begging for that since I learned of this Project Ramesses. If this is exposed we won’t have peace in this country for a thousand years. It’s now a matter of national security. Let’s put this mess to bed for all time. The protected lands are no more. Someone is selling off artifacts that probably financed this conglomeration being built beneath the lands in question. I say we send in the Sayeret immediately and without a moment’s hesitation and bring the temple down into the earth.”

The prime minister slowly pushed back his large chair and then turned and faced the dead fireplace. He took a deep breath and placed his hands into his pants pockets.

“That wouldn’t look too good on the evening news for our people to learn that we have invaded a sovereign nation because their government is selling off its own protected lands. No, General Shamni, let’s see if we can find out if that old Gypsy is playing cards we didn’t know were in the deck in the first place. If they have decided to sell off the treasure to finally get their just rewards, then we act. In the meantime we need to know what’s happening and I fear that this Colonel Ben-Nevin of yours has really put a crimp in things.” The prime minister turned and looked at the general. “If he finds out what land this Major Sorotzkin is really from the whole thing will be exposed. He’s a rogue and he needs to be attended to. That man and the maniacs he works for in the Knesset will bring this nation down faster than any Palestinian insurgence. Am I clear on that, General?”

“Yes, sir, I believe if we wait he will come to us. In the meantime I have a plane to catch. We need to find out firsthand who’s in charge in those mountains and if they have decided to get rich.”

“I will order the Sayeret into the country. They will be at your disposal if needed.”

“Thank you, Mr. Prime Minister.”

“Old friend?”

“Sir?”

“Have you ever thought about us? I mean you and I being responsible for destroying everything that is dear to our people? To destroy the greatest objects in the Hebrew world has to be the gravest of sins.”

The general felt for his friend and answered the only way an old soldier could.

“If it means saving thousands of lives from a fundamentalist push from our own people, I say bring the entire Carpathian mountain range down around their ears. I love my people and my country and will not see the progress we’ve made these past few years undone by ancient history that will never have a bearing on our position in the world.”

“Then see to it, old friend. Find out if the old Gypsy has turned on the people. If she has, destroy everything.” The prime minister held his gaze on the general. “Everything, General, and if resistance is met from the Jeddah—”

“Don’t say it, Moshe, don’t ever say it aloud. I know what I will have to do.”

The vault was silent as all eyes were still intently looking at the woman Jack claimed would have to be well over eighty since it was obviously the same woman Alice had met in 1946 in Hong Kong.

“If that’s the same woman, I’m firing my Avon representative,” Alice said as she slowly took a seat and Sarah placed a hand on hers and smiled.

“Well, the problem as I see it, Colonel, is that you can’t prove it and the president will say this is too flimsy,” Niles said as he looked at the dejected form of Alice in her chair. “So, that’s where you come in, Pete. I want you and Charlie to do some work and I need it done now.” Niles looked Alice’s way once more. “We need it done now,” he corrected himself and he saw that his words helped as Alice slowly nodded her head.

Both Ellenshaw and Golding looked up with renewed enthusiasm. It seemed they may not be in the basement of that doghouse they now found themselves in.

“I need every single scrap of information you can dig up on that entire region. Myths, legends, fact, rumor. I want to know about the people of the Patinas Pass. Charlie, you take the zoology aspect of the research. I want to know if there is any way this animal could exist and why in the hell it is so equipped through evolutionary means to be the way it is. If this beast evolved like that I want the reasons why. Pete, the land, the history, who owns it.”

Both men nodded as they took their notes. Niles looked down at Collins and they had a moment between them that said enough was enough. Niles wanted to help but he needed their help in order for him to meet them halfway.

“Colonel, get a team together and get me everything you can on why the damn Mossad is so interested in the activities of our agent, and why in the hell they would attempt to kill him over that information. Is it the animals, the region, is it anything that Alice has connected to. I also want this Lieutenant Colonel Ben-Nevin tracked down and handed off to the FBI and Interpol. We don’t need this traitorous bastard anywhere near where we may have to go.”

Everyone in the vault took a sigh of relief when they heard the words “we may have to go.”

“Okay, Mrs. Hamilton, you have your wish. This is your call and for right now we are a go.”

“That means you’re declaring—” Alice started as she stood from her chair while looking up at the director.

“An Event — you have met the minimum criteria in my opinion and I will get the president to see it our way. It shouldn’t be too hard when I inform him about the Israeli government’s interest in Romania and what lives there.”

“Okay, we move as soon as Charlie and Pete come up with the information we need. Now get to it. Virginia, Colonel Collins, and Alice, please meet me in my office — we have been handed something that may be a connection here.”

Jack, Virginia Pollock, and Alice Hamilton were sitting in three chairs facing the director. Niles looked at each in turn and shook his head.

“I was just handed this report five minutes before the colonel called me to the vault level.” Niles handed the paper to Jack from across his desk. “This may be one of the reasons everyone is so concerned about Mossad agents and their defectors and moles.”

“What is it?” Jack asked as he handed the picture to Alice, whose eyes took in the object in the photograph.

“This is Midianite pottery,” Alice said, “and not just shards, but the whole vessel. Never has a complete relic been found intact.”

“What is a Midianite?” Virginia asked.

“Alice?” Niles asked, wanting her to quickly explain why this was so significant.

Alice smiled at the color photo of the pottery and its straight laced striped design. “Biblical scholars believe Midian was located on the Arabian Peninsula, or possibly modern-day Sudan. Midian was where Moses spent the forty years in voluntary exile after murdering the Egyptian. He married the daughter of a local tribal elder. Then he supposedly returned to Egypt and you know the rest of the story.”

“And this is significant because?” Virginia asked, her scientific mind never relaxing when there were questions to be answered.

“Because of these,” Niles said as he slid photos of more pottery and small golden objects of Egyptian design. Golden scarabs, small idols of gods, and even several Bronze Age weapons glimmered under a photographer’s light.

“Where did all of these come from?” Alice asked. “There have never been items like this unearthed and in such pristine condition. These have to be copies.”

“They were sold at auction five years ago. There are many more items that were contracted for the bidding process through a company called Perry Deiterman and Associates Limited, out of Cologne, Germany. Thus far close to two hundred pounds of gold and artifacts like these have been selling quite nicely to the seamier side of Eastern Europe. These six items alone brought in close to $78 million.”

The office went silent.

“That is why I accepted Jack’s offer to join you in the vault. The border patrol in the Czech Republic recovered these from a Russian national. They even found a bill of sale when they found these items hidden in the trunk of a car. The rather seedy character was questioned and it was discovered that he was the highest bidder on a prayer tablet, one that was carbon-dated to 1557 BCE. Ladies and gentleman, nothing this fragile has ever been recovered intact. We have nothing remotely like it in our vaults. The only reason Europa filed the report with me is because Alice had placed her keyword search into the system twenty years ago. And now we have this stuff turning up in the oddest places.” Niles waved his hand over the photographs. “Did someone suddenly decide to sell off their world’s foremost collection of Egyptian artifacts? Or are we looking at items that have long been lost to the world and are just now miraculously showing up to the highest bidder?”

“I see your point,” Virginia said.

Niles shook his head. “Not yet you don’t. Look at this one.” Niles handed Virginia a larger photograph. It was a complete robe and the design integrated into the weave was the exact match for the weave and design of the swatches Alice had uncovered in the Carpathians.

“Looks like an oversized foul weather poncho,” Jack said as he looked at the photo.

“Carbon-dated to 1521 give or take ten years and authenticated by the University of Cairo. It went at auction for $125 million. This, ladies and gentlemen, is something the entire world would never have recognized — the design is from that Lost Tribe of Israel everyone around here is so hot on — this is a Jeddah tribal robe.”

“Possibly — the design is off somewhat,” Alice said as she raised the photo and looked at it more closely. “What is that smaller design inside the red-dyed stripe?” she asked.

Niles smiled and then handed Alice a magnifying glass. He could have used Europa for the demonstration but Niles still liked the old-fashioned hands-on approach, especially when it came to Alice Hamilton.

As everyone watched they saw Alice freeze and then look off into the corner of Niles’s office. The photo slipped from her hand. Jack picked it up and then pried the magnifying glass out of Alice’s tight grip. He raised the glass and looked closely at the picture but could see nothing. Then his trained eye saw what was indeed shocking to Alice. Embedded in the stripe was a weave that looked as if it didn’t belong. It looked like a dog’s head.

“The Egyptian god Anubis?” Jack asked while lowering his glass and handing it to Virginia.

“No, that is not Anubis,” Alice said, looking at Compton, who still stood behind his desk. “Another coincidence, Niles? The Jeddah, a tribe no one in history outside of the ancient Hebrews knew about? Now the robe coupled with the animal head weaved into the design of a robe? That is a wolf, Jack — one of my wolves. This is far more significant than just an artifact from one of the Lost Tribes; this is something that could alter the history of not only the Exodus, but of the entire world.”

Niles sat hard into his chair. He looked at Alice and then at Jack.

“As a close advisor to the president I am allowed access to the National Security Council and the minutes of their meetings with the president. I found this by accident. It seems we have had a small movement of troops from the Middle East heading north. Specialized commandos you may know something about, Colonel. It seems Tel Aviv is a little concerned about something in the region and the NSA picked up an alert and movement order. Recognize that unit, Jack?” Niles asked.

“The Sayeret,” Collins said and took a deep breath. “If these fellas are on the move somewhere, whoever is at that somewhere is in for a world of hurt. These men are killers. That’s what they do.”

“Can you explain, Jack?” Alice asked.

“No. Our intelligence on the Sayeret is highly classified. They are the Israeli army’s best, I mean the very best of their crop of young men. They go, do, and kill whoever is placed in front of them. If they’re moving there’s a reason for it.”

“Well, the president has been brought up to speed on Alice’s hunch. That coupled with our trouble in Rome involving the Mossad, and now with this movement of a unit that never moves unless the enemies of Israel need some ass kicking in a covert manner, and now we have word from our State Department in a memo that was read by practically no one that the Egyptian minister of antiquities and their Foreign Office have filed a complaint against Romania for the theft of Egyptian artifacts. The sale of these artifacts was traced to a broker who was listed somewhere in the fine print of the sales contract, a Russian national who just happens to be opening one of the most luxurious hotel-casinos in Eastern Europe. Worth in the neighborhood of two and half billion dollars, it is a surprising amount from a man the former KGB said never amounted to much in the world of Russian organized crime.”

“That alone should—”

Niles held up his hand to stay Alice’s complaint.

“To make a long story short, the president has given me the leeway needed to start operations. The Event has already been declared — target is the southern Carpathians — the area known as the Patinas Pass.”

Alice lowered her head and then suddenly looked up at Niles.

“Yes, Alice, you’re in the lead. It’s your last Event, so make it count or the senator will never let you live it down when he sees you again. And you know he’s watching.”

Everyone looked at the spot in the office Niles was looking at. It was the new oil painting of former director Garrison Lee scowling at them from the gilded frame that sat next to Abraham Lincoln’s picture.

They all stood to start the massive process of moving Department 5656 into Event mode, which would bring every departmental element inside the complex under the desert into the initial phases of getting a plan together. All personnel were now on full alert for a possible history-altering change in the human timeline — exactly what Department 5656 was created for — recognizing that change in history and sorting it out.

Alice lagged behind with Niles as she looked upon the portrait she absolutely hated. Not because of the scowl that everyone agreed was Garrison Lee in a nutshell, but because she knew Lee hated anything having to do with memorializing him or his life’s work at the Group.

“I believe this is yours.” Niles held the thick file Alice had worked on for almost half a century.

“Thank you, Niles.” She placed a hand on Compton’s chest and patted it twice as she headed for the double doors.

Compton placed his hands in his pockets and walked over to the large oil painting. He looked at his old friend and mentor and shook his head.

“The times they are-a-changin’, my old friend.”