The Atlantis Code (11 page)

Inside the lab, Gallardo peered down at the dead woman. The bullet had ruined her face. He compared what was left of her face to the image inside the plastic pocket on his sleeve. He had no doubt the woman was the professor he’d been sent to terminate if necessary.

Kneeling down, Gallardo called out to one of the men who’d followed him inside the room. He held the cymbal out. The man gingerly took the cymbal and packed it into the protective case they’d brought to transport the artifact.

Gallardo quickly went through the dead woman’s pockets. He took everything out and dropped it into a large plastic bag. When he had everything, he sealed the bag. He doubted there would be anything worthwhile in the clutter, but there was a Zip drive that looked promising.

Standing, Gallardo waved to the room. “Burn it,” he ordered.

Two of the men ran through the lab and knocked flammable liquids onto the floor. The burning stink of alcohol filled the still air.

A third man stood near the door with an assault rifle.

Gallardo walked back to the small office in the back, drawn by the blue glare of the computer monitor. Inside the office, he looked at the screen.

The e-mail client showed a list of messages. Some were in Cyrillic, but others were in English.

A name caught Gallardo’s eye.

Thomas Lourds

Gallardo cursed, remembering the uncanny luck the professor had back in Alexandria. Now the man’s name had turned up here.

Gallardo didn’t believe in luck, good or bad, but he hated the insistence of fate. Lourds’s constant turning up in the chase for artifacts for the Society of Quirinus wasn’t something he was prepared to tolerate.

He listened to the gunshots, then spoke into the microphone. “What the hell is going on out there, Farok?”

“It’s the woman,” Farok replied. “The archeologist.”

“The archeologist is down here,” Gallardo corrected him. “She’s not going anywhere.”

“Then who is this one?”

“Her sister. She’s a police inspector.”

“She’s deadly as anything with her pistols,” Farok said. “She’s killed two of our men and injured three others.”

Gallardo couldn’t believe it. The mercenaries he’d hired for the assault on the college were good. “Is she dead?”

“No. In fact, she’s headed back toward your position.”

Cursing again, Gallardo said, “Get the bodies and the wounded loaded up. I’ve got what we’ve come for. We need to get out of here.”

Farok hesitated.

Gallardo knew that Farok hated to walk away from a fight. “If she’s a police inspector, then there’s every chance she’s called in reinforcements. It’s time to clean house and get out of here.”

“All right,” Farok said, his reluctance clear in each word.

At the doorway, Gallardo took an emergency flare from his combat harness, armed it, then tossed it onto the floor. The flare sparked only a moment later, then caught the spilled alcohol and chemicals on fire. The wavering blue haze quickly spread across the liquid pooled across the floor.

Natasha saw that the men were pulling back as she reached the back of the medical building. She was torn for just a moment over the thought of pursuing them. But there was no choice. Even if it meant they escaped, she had to find Yuliya.

The back door was locked.

Stepping back from the door, Natasha took deliberate aim at the lock and fired three times. The bullets ripped through the metal in a flash of sparks. She was aware that the muzzle flashes clearly marked her position, so she kept low to the ground.

A warning Klaxon roared to life.

She tried the door again, and this time it opened. Yanking the door wide, she dashed inside just as a brief flurry of bullets struck the door and the alcove.

Staying low, Natasha sprinted down the hallway, looking for a stairwell that led to the basement level. She told herself to slow down, that the men might still be inside the building. But all she could think of was Yuliya.

When she found the stairwell, she hurled herself down it, crashing against the back wall of the landing. The impact hurt her shoulder, but she forced herself to keep moving.

At the bottom of the stairwell, she stepped through a door with her pistols crossed over her wrists. Her breathing rasped in the emptiness of the hallway.

No one moved.

For a moment Natasha stood frozen, not certain which way to go. Then she spotted the gray pallor of smoke pouring from a room to her left.

Yuliya!

Natasha ran, unable to control the fear that thrummed through her. Shoving her left pistol into her duster pocket, she grabbed the knob and pulled the door open.

Smoke roiled from the room, pressing toward Natasha and clinging to her. The acrid smell of burning chemicals pinched her nose. Holding her duster sleeve over her mouth, she breathed through the fabric and ran into the room, desperately searching for her sister.

Flames danced across the floor, licking at the alcohol spilled across the tiles. Fire covered the back wall. Several glass containers along the shelves to the left exploded.

A quick inspection of the office revealed that Yuliya wasn’t there. Looking at the blazing inferno continuing to gain strength, Natasha thought that it was possible the men had taken Yuliya prisoner. She hoped so.

Then that hope died as she moved around the room and spotted Yuliya lying on the floor. The blood that had seeped from Yuliya’s head held back a line of flames.

No!

Natasha ran to her sister. One look at the grievous injury done to Yuliya’s head told Natasha that there was no hope for her sister.

Tears, from the burning chemicals as well as from the emotional pain, blurred Natasha’s vision as she dropped beside her sister’s body. Firelight danced across the smooth pool of blood. The heat blackened the blood at the edges.

Natasha put her pistol down on the floor and cradled Yuliya’s head. Crying, Natasha thought of all those mornings when there had only been her sister and her after their father had gone to work. If not for Yuliya—

The door rasped open behind her.

Whirling, Natasha plucked her pistol from the floor and pointed it at the dark figures that entered the room. The men were dressed in uniforms that identified them as campus security.

“I’m Inspector Safarov of the Moscow Police,” Natasha said loudly.

“Inspector,” one of the men said, “I’m Pytor Patrushev. I work security here at the college.”

“Keep your hands up.”

The man complied. “You need to get out of here. I’ve called the fire department, but these chemicals—”

“Come closer. Let me see your identification. Use only one hand.” A coughing fit tore at Natasha’s words.

Patrushev approached her and proffered the clip-on ID attached to his coat lapel.

Blinded by tears from the chemicals, denying the pain, physical as well as emotional, that raked at her, Natasha could barely see the rectangle. She felt that the man offered no threat and trusted her instincts.

“We’ve got to get her out of here,” Natasha said.

Together, Natasha and the man carried Yuliya’s body from the room before the fire or the smoke could take them.

Firemen carried Yuliya’s body to a waiting ambulance. Natasha steeled herself, pulling herself from the abyss of despair. The scene was like too many she’d gone through in Moscow. Shoot-outs with Mafiya members, confrontations with drug dealers, and hunts for murderers all spun into a surreal confection that bloated her skull.

The Ryazan’ police arrived with the fire department. The police, however, stayed back from the area the firemen had roped off. But a few of them were starting to ask questions of the spectators.

Natasha sat with Yuliya. She felt certain the men who had killed her sister were gone.

The fire lit up the first floor, but the powerful streams of water gradually beat it back.

A cell phone rang.

Automatically, Natasha reached for hers, but when she brought it from her hip holster, she saw that it wasn’t her phone ringing. She turned to Yuliya and tracked the shrill tone to the pocket of her sister’s lab coat.

She pulled the sat-phone to her face and shielded the mouthpiece with her body. She spoke in Russian. “Hello?”

“Yuliya?” The voice was distinguished, speaking Russian with a slight American accent.

“Who is this?” Natasha continued in Russian.

“Thomas Lourds,” the man replied. “Look, I’m sorry to call at such a late hour, but it’s important. I just saw the cymbal you’ve been working on. It ties in with an artifact I recently came into contact with.” The man hesitated.

Natasha forced herself to be calm. The man didn’t sound like he would be one of the men who had killed Yuliya and hunted her. There was something familiar about the man’s name. She felt certain Yuliya had mentioned him to her.

“What I wanted to tell you,” Lourds went on, “is that there could be some danger attached to your artifact.”

“Excuse me,” Natasha said. “What did you say your name is?”

Lourds didn’t answer immediately. “You’re not Yuliya,” he accused.

“My name is Natasha Safarov. I’m—”

“Yuliya’s sister,” Lourds replied. “She’s often talks of you.”

For a moment the pang of hurt that lanced through Natasha’s heart stilled her tongue. She struggled to speak.

“I’m a colleague of Yuliya’s,” Lourds said. “May I speak to her?”

“She can’t come to the phone.”

“It’s important that I speak to her.”

“I will give her a message.”

Lourds didn’t speak for a moment. “Tell her that I think her life may be in danger. I’m in Alexandria, Egypt. I was—briefly—in possession of an artifact that might tie in with the cymbal that she’s contacted me about. A few days ago, men attacked us and took it. They killed two people during the theft. These are dangerous men.”

“I’ll let her know.” Natasha forced herself not to look at Yuliya’s body. “Do you have a number where she can call you back?” She pocketed her pistol and took out a pen, quickly jotting the number down on her notepad while she balanced the sat-phone on her shoulder.

“Ask her to call me at her earliest convenience. And let her know that I apologize about being remiss in not responding to her e-mails.”

Natasha made a note to check Yuliya’s e-mail as well. She promised that she would, then hung up.

Looking through the crowd, Natasha spotted a young police officer in uniform. She called him over and showed him her identification, asked the name of the inspector in charge and where she could find him, then ordered the officer to watch over Yuliya’s body.

“You’re sure you wounded some of the men, Inspector?” Captain Yuri Golev asked politely. He was a blunt, squared-off man in his late fifties. His hair was silver, but his mustache and eyebrows remained black. He put a cigarette to his lips and took a deep pull. The flashing lights of the fire trucks and police cars carved deep hollows under his sad eyes.

“I killed at least two of those men,” Natasha said.

Golev gestured with his cigarette, waving at the college grounds where uniformed policemen searched the dark landscape with flashlights. “Then where are their bodies?”

“Obviously they took them with them,” Natasha replied.

“Obviously,” Golev echoed, but he didn’t sound sincere. “Why did those men come here looking for your sister?”

“I don’t know.”

Golev looked at her. “Or perhaps they were looking for you.”

“No one knew I was going to be here. Yuliya had been here for days.”

“Did anyone wish your sister ill will?” Golev asked.

“Not that I’m aware of.”

Golev smoked in silence for a moment while staring at the medical building. The fire department had gotten the chemical fires out. “Your sister was an archeologist?”

“Yes.”

“Sometimes those people find interesting things.”

The statement was deliberately leading. Natasha knew what Golev was thinking, and she knew he was aware that she did.

“She was working on a state assignment,” Natasha said. “She wasn’t working with anything valuable.”

“Something this highly organized, especially if they took their dead with them—an unusual occurrence in the sort of bottom-feeding criminal I generally come in contact with—wouldn’t be initiated on a whim.”

Natasha agreed but didn’t say anything.

“She gave no indication that she feared for her life?” Golev asked.

“If she had,” Natasha said as evenly as she could, “I would never have left her.”

“Of course.” Golev sighed and his breath plumed gray in the night. “This is a very bad business, Inspector.”

Natasha didn’t reply.

Golev looked at her then, and his gaze was softer. “Are you sure you want to be the one who tells her family?”