The Treasures of Saint Germain

CHAPTER TWELVE

“So what the hell is all this crap?”

Alicia kicked at a chipped table leg, clearly bored. Drake studied the underground room which looked like it hadn’t been visited in decades before tonight. Alicia kicked again and moved the table, wood dragging across the concrete floor and plumes of dust taking to the air. The small room felt cramped and the team looked stressed out — they had taken precious time finding this place and now every moment of it appeared to be a waste.

Kenzie flicked through the old book, fingers leaving prints in the grime. Kinimaka almost dropped a glass vial in his efforts to read its label. Smyth leaned glumly in a far corner, waiting for someone to tell him what to do. Mai said she felt a little exposed and wandered out of the room, to a few baffled looks. Drake knew she just wanted to be useful, and since there was nothing she could do down there she decided to guard the perimeter. Smyth went with her, and then Beau too. Not a bad border guard.

“So what do we have here?” Hayden asked the obvious rhetorical question. “Let’s put it all together.”

“It would take weeks to sort through,” Yorgi said.

“Liquids.” Kinimaka pointed at a stuffed shelf. “Potions maybe? Medicine? I’m not sure.”

“A book.” Kenzie slammed it down. “Full of masonic symbols and spidery, smudged handwriting. Old stick drawings.”

“Chemical paraphernalia.” Dahl pointed out a burner, test tubes and several other items.

“So many containers you could sink a ship.” Alicia indicated the haphazard clutter of shapes.

“Tells us very little,” Hayden said. “But this is all we have to go on, guys. We can’t rely on facial rec the next time. This was our best chance to find Webb when we knew he was here. The man’s a ghost again.”

“There’s nothing obvious,” Drake said. “A map would be nice. Or a set of clues.”

“Not exactly a treasure trove,” Dahl said. “More a collection of grunge. C’mon, Drake. I’m sure there’s a Yorkie expression for it.”

“I’d just call it a shithole,” Drake remarked.

“All right.” Hayden looked like she agreed with the overall consensus. “Only the experts can root through all this—”

“Crap,” Alicia added in helpful fashion.

“Yeah, that. What else can we do?”

“Head back up top,” Kenzie said. “Give me my katana and one of those uncooperative mercs. I’ll make him sing like Shakira in concert.”

“Would we have to pay five hundred for a family ticket?” Dahl wondered.

“Probably, yeah.” Kenzie stalked out of the room.

The team made their way out into the night once more, despondent and a little desperate by now. What appeared to be their best lead had quickly vanished almost as fast as their prime suspect. An Interpol agent saw Hayden and came over, gesturing with a cellphone.

“Take this please.”

“Sure. Who… oh, hi Armand.”

Drake listened to her one-sided conversation with Argento, the gist being that they needed more information and by any means. Argento had an awful lot riding on this, as did his superiors.

Including the SPEAR team’s involvement.

Hayden nodded at Kenzie. “Choose your man.”

The Israeli looked surprised and pleased. “Really?”

“They tried to kill us and the French cops. They fired randomly across a busy street. I’d choose the leader, but it’s your call.”

Drake watched as Kenzie considered her first real directive as part of the team. With a snarl she hauled the leader to his feet and dragged him by the collar nearer the shadows that surrounded the house. No sounds emerged, no screams or muffled thuds, but something was going on in there. Drake could see a constant shift of the darkness.

He heard Kinimaka’s whisper, “You gave her the job you wanted.”

And Hayden’s reply, “Leave it, Mano.”

Kenzie returned, an injured look on her face. “I honestly believe they don’t know anything.” The merc crawled along at her side, unable to stand.

Smyth surged forward, muttering angrily. Clearly, the soldier had had enough of waiting in the wings. His victim struck out, but Smyth subdued him with a simple punch. A broken rib and jaw soon followed, the soldier’s anger getting the best of him.

As Kinimaka leapt in to pull him away an aggrieved voice shouted, “Dubai! They’re in Dubai, but that’s all I know!”

Smyth paused and so did Kinimaka. The soldier stepped away. Lauren caught his shoulder.

“What was that?” she hissed. “You scared me.”

Smyth turned away.

“Now you’re scaring me more.”

“Interesting,” Smyth said. “That I scare you more than a Pythian terrorist.”

“Oh, give it a rest. And hey, you’d better not have hurt him before we left.”

Smyth looked like he wished otherwise.

“You’d better not hurt him, Smyth.”

“And how could I do that?” Smyth rumbled. “He’s in lockdown.”

Lauren clammed up, staring up at the skies.

Drake was busy wondering if he’d heard correctly and nodded at Yorgi. “He said Dubai, right?”

The Russian widened his eyes. “Oh, dah. I heard that too.”

“That just makes everything weirder,” Dahl stated. “Dubai? I mean how do you connect that with… this?”

“Guys, we have to focus,” Hayden urged them all. “Right now, Webb is in the wind and we’re nowhere.”

“He’s getting desperate though,” Beau said quietly. “Webb. The man I guarded and worked for all those months would not make mistakes like this unless…”

“What?” Smyth cut in quickly.

“He is nearing the end. Anxious. Webb is almost at his ultimate goal.”

“And, I’d like to point out,” Hayden said. “That’s something else we’re practically clueless about.”

“Chemistry. Versailles palace. Transylvania. What’s the connection?” Dahl shrugged.

Hayden brandished the cellphone. “Let’s head out,” she said. “There’s nothing more here for us to do. Get some rest guys, because when this all plays out I’ve a feeling we’re gonna need it.”

Argento came through the old fashioned way. He called Hayden and she called the team together, and they traipsed down from their hastily acquired rooms to a cold, empty conference room. They all sat about the dusty table, staring at the bare floor and shivering, watching the windows grow brighter as dawn began to rise.

“You mentioned he’d get desperate.” Hayden nodded at Beau. “You were right. Webb is now on the trail of something else, another part of the quest. The guy’s injured, hounded by whoever those mercs are working for, and now hunted by us. Not to mention half of Europe.”

Beau nodded. “He has no choice.”

“He also knows the Dubai-run group will be waiting for him at every stop,” Drake pointed out. “I hope he’s a sniveling bloody wreck.”

“Not Webb,” Beau said. “He truly believes he is owed something. The man will assume he’s able to dodge bullets until this is over.”

Hayden laid her cellphone on the table and hit the speaker. “Go, Armand.”

The Italian Interpol agent let loose in characteristic fashion. “So, this Webb, he is running around like a boy chasing a mouse, yes? He seems to be following a trail, a map maybe, who knows? But until Versailles he kept it all very quiet, on the down-low as you Americans say.”

Hayden nodded agreeably. Drake stared at Alicia and then at Dahl, eyes wide and lips about to start flapping. Then the Swede chuckled. “Now,” he said. “Now you see what it’s like.”

Argento’s word-storm never abated. “So he’s back on the map, this Tyler Webb. Most wanted scum-sucker in the world, you say. I say there’s worse, but it matters little. Ever heard of the cannibal cult of Peru? No, well, never mind. Interpol knows all. You will catch up. Webb is no longer sneaking, he is in full-tilt, fully-exposed, pressurized mode, hounded everywhere. He needs every ounce of assistance, every last morsel of help he can muster. Clearly, he still has money, influence, a network of sorts.” Argento paused to draw breath before he died of asphyxiation.

The team realized they’d been holding theirs too and gulped air.

“And thanks to your pet Pythian — Nicholas Bell — we now have names, contacts, locations and files for all of them.”

Drake couldn’t help glance over toward Smyth and Lauren, conscious of their differences. The soldier sat tight-faced, eyes fixed dead ahead whilst the New Yorker made a point of shifting in her seat to stare right at him.

“Don’t say it,” Smyth mouthed.

“What? That I told you so?”

“Yeah, that.”

But Argento was forging ahead. “Everything’s monitored. Everything. Webb recently used fake IDs to buy a flight to Barcelona. We can’t intercept that because he only made contact after he landed to arrange something else, something very worrying for Interpol. We have no facial recs so he’s now hiding successfully. My friends, you have to get to Barcelona. Fast.”

“Why?” Hayden asked. “What’s so worrying?”

“He bought tickets and arranged to meet a contact at the Camp Nou tomorrow night. And knowing Tyler Webb, the distractions he arranges… well, that could be catastrophic. He has no sense of morality.”

Alicia was looking blank, and so was Mai. But Drake sat bolt upright. “The Camp Nou? As in the football stadium? Oh shit, is there a match planned?”

“Yes, mi amico. A big one. The stadium — it will be full.”

Drake was already on his feet. The rest followed as Hayden headed for the door, Argento’s voice urging them on like incessant machine gun fire. The pictures he painted were truly shattering.