The Relic Hunters

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

In London, a man with thick hair and the kind of gaze that never stops shifting, walked out of an overpriced coffee shop with a hot drink and a muffin balanced precariously on one hand. He loved his morning ritual — the fast, calorie-burning, fifteen-minute walk there and back, the cappuccino and the blueberry feast. All this before returning to what he saw as a humdrum existence chained to an office desk and party to only one-fifth of a large window that overlooked a busy road and a few straggly trees that were well past their sell-by date. People-watching passed time and offered a small diversion, but the desk, the lab and the computer screen were George Stroup’s lot in life.

A day rarely passed when he wasn’t bored out of his skull, and today was one of those days. George took in the fresh air and the sights as he made the painful journey toward his working day. The cappuccino tasted sweet, the muffin soft and moist.

This was as good as it got.

Wondering if he should start considering a lifestyle change, George saw the entrance to his building and slowed down. The museum could wait. The artifacts could wait. The endless computer entries could wait. It occurred to George then that some of the people he worked with might not even know he existed. Was that possible?

He sniggered softly to himself. Possible? More like a sure thing. Perhaps if he had a wife… a family… but that side of life had passed him by.

George paused beside a black trashcan, finished off the coffee and the muffin in one last sweet mixture of ecstasy, and deposited the empty cup and wrapper inside. Said goodbye to happiness and freedom for the next eight hours, and looked up. The path was busy, the roads crammed. Diesel fumes curled the air and a big London sightseeing bus cut up a cyclist without a moment’s thought just as a delivery driver weaved through crawling traffic with inches to spare on either side. Business as usual then. A thought struck George — he’d been meaning to take a look at the email that had come over from Athens a few days ago. Lethargy had prevented him, lethargy and a severe, untreatable case of ‘can’t-be-arsed.’ That was the worse, and might have contributed to this year’s substantial weight gain. Interestingly, the bigger he got the less people noticed him, especially bosses.

That could be your work ethic.

George shrugged, largely uninterested, and made his way to his desk. The first thing he did was to turn his computer on; the second to nod at various colleagues that barely noticed him. Inwardly, he cursed them. Outwardly, he was about to take a slow meander over to the water cooler when he noticed that the computer screen wasn’t doing what it normally did. A horrifying collection of images filled it, pictures he’d never imagined let alone browsed for. At that moment something wrenched deep inside his gut, something fundamental and, without too much surprise or regret or even an iota of fear he understood he was about to die.

That’s odd. Why? These things happen. Bloody cappuccino.

The new guy…?

The final thoughts of a man that would not be remembered nor defended.

In Paris, a middle-aged woman settled her overlarge spectacles onto the bridge of her nose and tried to read the ingredients in her microwave croissant. It felt wrong, it was wrong. Who the hell microwaved a croissant, especially in Paris? She’d lived here eight years and had never considered such lunacy. She knew of three lovely bakeries within easy walking distance.

Why then?

Well, from past experience of other microwave delicacies such as popcorn and corn-on-the-cob she knew it was simple, forgetful and stupidly easy. And today — that was exactly what she needed.

Joy, she said to herself. Get a fucking grip.

Never again. She shoved the croissant inside, slammed the door and set the timer. Walked over to the window and sipped her instant coffee. Bloody disgusting. In this direction, many miles distant, lay her homeland. The sweet sharp hills and narrow twisting lanes of the Lake District, in the UK. It had been a while. She missed the place, her parents and her old boyfriend — George. Seven years since they last saw each other, they kept together now only through mutual work, and then infrequently. But George was on her mind of late — he had been copied in the email from Athens, two days before the terrorist attack.

Weird? No. Coincidence. Terrible, unreasoning coincidence. Joy considered the email that she’d received, the picture attachment showing the old map and the chance that it might show the whereabouts of one of the world’s ancient wonders.

Shit, we have to be so careful. There’s a career killer right there.

It wouldn’t do to look stupid.

Joy wandered over to the computer and switched it on. Their mutual friend — a man that gladly referred to himself as ‘Niki for short’—emailed four people the map, in confidence. Joy was pleased she had been included.

The microwave dinged. The freak was ready. She opened the fridge to grab margarine.

The click barely registered. The whirr was louder and made her frown. The explosion occurred right in her face, obliterating her from existence before traveling at incredible speed throughout the apartment, destroying everything in its path and causing damage to the apartment next door. Windows blew out, walls collapsed. The computer was swept away by the fire, already cleansed, the Hood long gone through the darker watches of the night.

In Milan, an old man sat at an old desk, staring at the screen of one of the oldest working computers in the museum. Like him, it was slow. Like him, it developed odd issues with its inner workings. Like him, it should be retired.

He enjoyed his job. He loved the pace of the computer. He would rather tinker here than head home and be nagged by an unstoppable shrew. The first thing he noticed this morning was that the computer was sluggish even for its own standards. The second thing he noticed was that the museum was oddly quiet today. He hoped nothing else terrible had happened to the world; prayed not to see the staff clustered around a TV screen.

Not today.

Today was his birthday.

Sixty eight and counting. The old man still had all his faculties, but most of them were diminished now. Thus, he didn’t hear the creeping footsteps nor see the burgeoning shadow. He felt a lance of cold pierce his heart — a premonition — but assumed it was the by-product of a conversation with the shrew this morning. Such things never went well, and he tried to avoid them at all costs.

The first thing he knew was the hand across his mouth. The second an agonizing pain through the ribcage. After that the shadow fell across him further as gloved hands reached out toward his keyboard.

He died wondering how a man that had lived such a long life, experienced sixty eight years, had always been fated to die at the hands of a silent killer. All that life, that understanding — for what? For this…

He fell off his chair, his fall cushioned by his killer. The job was already done and, like the other Hoods before him, he’d also checked to see if their target had forwarded the Athens email on to any others.

The old man was left, dying. It didn’t matter now. Only the Master’s command mattered.

In Warsaw, Gabrielle said goodbye to her family and headed out the door. A biting wind greeted her, and that was okay. She barely felt it, so consumed was she with the events of last night. Her cheating boyfriend had confessed his third one-night-stand in two years. The next few hours were volcanic, fraught. The final few hours she spent with her mother and father, lamenting the end of one more failed relationship.

The walk to work was short, and barely noticed. Gabrielle couldn’t remember taking the bus nor crossing the busy road junctions. She ended up standing outside her place of work, looking up at the blank windows, wondering if there might be more to life than all this. A career in archaeology had sounded impressive, exciting. The real truth wasn’t quite in the same league as the thought.

The man came out of the museum, actually holding her computer. Gabrielle knew it was hers as she recognized the yellow ‘happy face’ emoji stuck to the side alongside a postcard sent from Athens by her friend Niki.

She opened her mouth to talk to what she assumed was an engineer. Had something happened during the night?

The silenced revolver filled her mouth, the taste metallic, hard and revolting. She saw a quick glimpse of gloved hands pulling the trigger and then knew no more.

The killer didn’t even break pace.