Tear Of The Gods

“What have you got?” Professor Novick asked from his position at her side.

“Looks like a necklace, maybe a torc of some kind,” she said, and leaned back to let him take a look.

He whistled at the sight of it. “What is that? Obsidian?”

She shook her head. “I don’t think so. It looks metallic to me. It seems too shiny but maybe it’s iron. We’ll have to wait until we can get him into the lab to examine it more closely.”

As the day wore on and the hard work of removing Big Red from his resting place got under way, Annja was forced to forget about the necklace and concentrate on the task at hand.

The damage, however, had already been done, though Annja didn’t know it.

The block they cut out of the peat reminded Annja of one of the stones used in the building of the pyramids; it looked that big. It was also heavy enough that they had to use two different winches to get it up out of the earth and into the front of the Bobcat they’d had brought up from London to serve as their transport vehicle. Once the peat slab was secured in place, the Bobcat made its way up the hill and down the path through the woods to the camp that part of the team had spent the afternoon clearing.

A new tent had been erected in their absence—a thick tarp rolled out in the center of the floor—and it was on this that the peat block was finally placed. Seeing Big Red’s body partially protruding from its surface reminded Annja of Star Wars; Han Solo encased in carbonite was far less interesting to her than this ancient Gallic warrior, however.

She, Craig and Paolo worked through the afternoon, slowly chipping away at the heavy peat surrounding Big Red’s body, freeing him inch by inch from the preserving matter. By the time they called it a night, the sun had long since set and many of the camp’s other residents had gone to bed.

As they were leaving, Craig pulled her aside.

“How’d you know?” he asked. “How did you know to dig there, of all places?”

She answered him as honestly as she could. “I saw it all in a dream.”

He laughed. “Right,” he said. “And I suppose tomorrow you’ll wake up and tell me you’ve discovered the location of Genghis Khan’s long-lost tomb.”

Annja smiled. “Nah. Been there, done that.”

The look of shocked surprise on his face was the perfect end to a perfect day.

5

Shortly after midnight a man slipped out of a tent in the middle of the camp and quietly made his way across the clearing to the tree line just beyond. At the edge of the woods he stopped and turned, looking back the way he’d come. He waited, one long moment, then another, watching, listening, making certain that no one had followed him.

Assured that he was unobserved and alone, the man disappeared into the woods, following a faint path through the trees until he reached the deadfall he’d selected as a landmark. There he turned and traveled for another hundred yards before stopping beside a huge boulder that had probably been there since the last ice age.

Again he paused, listening, sweeping the path behind him with his peripheral vision, searching for anyone who might be on his tail. While it was unlikely, it never hurt to be careful, and with something like this he didn’t want to be wrong.

Finally satisfied, he reached into a cleft in the rock and pulled out a satellite phone. Switching it on, he waited for it to power up and then dialed a number. When it was picked up on the other end, he said, “It’s Novick. I need to speak to him.”

There was a pause. Novick figured the man on the other end of the line was considering the wisdom of waking their joint employer at this hour of the night, and so he said, “It’s about the torc.”

That seemed to convince the other man, for he said, “Just a moment,” and put the receiver down.

Several minutes passed.

Finally Novick heard the phone on the other end being picked up.

“You have something for me?”

Novick swallowed the sudden hesitation he felt at the sound of that voice and answered him. “Yes. At the new site in the West Midlands. We found a body in the bog this morning, an Iceni warrior.”

“And?”

“And he was wearing a torc that fits the description of the one you’ve been seeking for the past several years.”

“You’re certain?”

“Absolutely.”

“What about the test?”

Sneaking into the artifact tent with the device in hand had been easy. “It was positive.”

There was a long silence as the other man considered the implications, then he said, “Very good. I will dispatch someone to meet you tomorrow afternoon.”

With thoughts of the reward money he’d been promised for finding the torc dancing in his head, Novick said that he understood and ended the call.

6

David Shaw rose the next morning with anticipation thrumming through his veins. He’d been searching for the Tear of the Gods for more than a decade. Many had scoffed at his dedication and focus. It’s just a legend, they’d told him. Nothing more than a myth, like the Holy Grail or King Arthur’s Excalibur. You’ll never find it because it doesn’t actually exist. But Shaw had believed differently and now, in less than twenty-four hours, he was going to be holding that so-called myth in his own two hands.

Shaw was in his mid-forties, with brown eyes and a sharp nose set in a narrow, aquiline face. The combination of his facial features and his shoulder-length dirty-blond hair often resulted in others mistaking him for the actor Sean Bean, a suggestion that Shaw would publicly chuckle over but which infuriated him to no end. That he could be mistaken for an actor, of all things, was an insult to all he’d worked to achieve since graduating from Oxford at the top of his class and founding the Vanguard Group.

To say Shaw was driven would make one guilty of a gross understatement. He had ambitions and dreams the likes of which not even his board of directors were aware and obtaining the Tear of the Gods was just the first step in a process he’d been planning for years.

After a leisurely breakfast he had his driver take him to the Vanguard offices. Several men were seated outside his office waiting for him, as he had known they would be. His executive assistant had sent word to them all the night before, requesting their presence in the office by nine this morning, and if there was one thing his people knew, it was not to disobey his orders.

Shaw pointed to one of them, a man named Trevor Jackson, and the former SAS commando and current Red Hand Defenders strike team leader followed him into his inner office, shutting the door behind them.

“I’ve got a job for you,” Shaw began as he took his seat behind his desk and waved Jackson into the chair before him. “A particular artifact was uncovered at an archaeological dig in the West Midlands last night. I want it.”

He handed the other man a thin folder. Inside were an assortment of documents, including aerial photographs and topographical maps of the surrounding area, dossiers on Stevens, Novick and other personnel they could expect to encounter at the dig site, as well as a snapshot of the torc that looked like it had been taken quickly with a cell phone.

“The photo was taken by my source on the ground,” Shaw explained. “It’s not perfect, but it should be good enough to let you verify it when you arrive on-site.”

Jackson glanced through the materials, lingering on the photograph. “What kind of opposition can we expect?” he asked.

“Little to none,” Shaw replied. “They’re a bunch of academics. Somebody might have a gun with which to shoot snakes, but that would be about it, I’d think.”

“So we go in, recover the necklace and get out again. Sounds simple enough.”

But Shaw was already shaking his head. “You need to take any steps necessary to ensure that no one knows the artifact was recovered from the site.”

Jackson had worked with Shaw long enough to know what the other man was talking about. “And the bodies?”

Shaw shrugged. “Dump them in the bog, for all I care. Just be sure there aren’t any survivors. I don’t want someone turning up at a later date to counter the official report.”

“What about your man on the inside?”