The Devil Colony (15 page)

He could guess why. He recognized that guarded stare all too well, half challenging, half wary. Orphaned himself, he knew what it was like to be raised alone, taken in by an extended family that still held you at arm’s length and shuttled you from one home to another.

It was that knowledge that tightened Painter’s chest. He should have done more for her when he had the chance. If he had, maybe they wouldn’t be standing here now.

“Thank you for coming,” Professor Kanosh said, cutting through the tension. He waved Painter to the table. “Maybe with your help we can clear up this mess.”

“I hope so.” Painter eyed the professor’s colleague, not sure how freely he could speak in front of him.

Recognizing his rudeness, the man held out his hand. Still, it was less a welcome than a challenge. While the man looked to be as old as Professor Kanosh, his gray hair had thinned to wisps atop his head, and where the sun had baked Kanosh’s skin to hard leather, his colleague’s face sagged and hung loose, bagging heavily under his eyes. Painter wondered if the man might have had a stroke in the past year or so. Or maybe it was simply a matter of being holed up in this basement lab for most of his working career, far from sunlight and fresh air.

Painter could relate to the wear and tear that put upon a body.

“Dr. Matt Denton,” the man said. “Chair of the physics department.”

They all shook hands. Painter introduced Kowalski as his “personal aide,” which caused the big man to roll his eyes.

Professor Kanosh was polite enough not to question it. “Please call me Hank,” he said, perhaps sensing Painter’s guardedness. “I’ve explained our situation to Matt. I trust him fully. We’ve been friends since high school, going back to when we first served together on a church mission.”

Painter nodded. “Then why don’t you explain the situation again to me.”

“First, let me assure you. I don’t think Kai had anything to do with the blast. The explosive charges she dropped were not the source of that tragedy.”

Painter heard the catch in his voice at the end. He knew the professor had been close to the anthropologist who had died. Kai placed a hand on the older man’s arm, seeming both to thank him and to console him at the same time.

Kowalski rumbled under his breath, “Told you it wasn’t C4 . . .”

Painter ignored him and faced the professor. “Then what do you think caused the explosion?”

The professor stared at him full in the face as he answered. “Simple.” His next words were firm with conviction. “It was an Indian curse.”

10:35
P.M.

Rafael Saint Germaine allowed himself to be assisted from the helicopter. Rotor wash flattened the spread of manicured lawn surrounding the landing site. While other men might blush at needing such help, he was well accustomed to it. Even the short hop from the height of the cabin to the helipad risked breaking a bone.

Since birth, Rafe—as he preferred to be addressed—had suffered from
osteogenesis imperfecta,
also known as brittle bone disease, an autosomal defect in collagen production, leaving him thin-boned and short in stature. Due to a slight hunch from mild scoliosis and a clouding of his dark eyes, most took him to be decades older than his thirty-four years.

Yet he was no invalid. He kept himself fit enough with calcium and bisphosphonate supplements, along with a series of experimental growth hormones. He also exercised to the point of obsession, making up in muscle for what he lacked in bones.

Still, he knew his greatest asset lay not in bone or muscle.

As he was lowered from the helicopter’s cabin, he raised his eyes to the night sky. He could name every constellation and each star that composed them. His memory was eidetic, photographic, retaining all the knowledge that crossed his path. He often considered his fragile skull as nothing more than a thin shell enclosing a vast black hole, one capable of sucking in all light and wisdom.

So despite his disability, his family had had high hopes for him. He’d had to live up to those expectations, to make up for his shortcomings. Because of his defect, he had been mostly pushed aside, kept hidden away, but now he was needed at this most auspicious moment, offered a chance to bring great honor to his family.

It was said the Saint Germaine lineage traced back to before the French Revolution, and that much of the family fortune came from war profiteering. And while this continued through to modern times, the family company now extended into a multitude of businesses and enterprises.

Rafe, with his exceptional mind, oversaw the Saint Germaines’ research-and-development projects, sequestered and isolated in the Rhône-Alpes region near the city of Grenoble. The area was a hotbed for all manner of scientific pursuits, a melting pot of industry and academic research. The Saint Germaine family had its fingers in hundreds of projects across various labs and companies, mostly specializing in microelectronics and nanotechnology. Rafe alone held thirty-three patents.

Still, he knew his place, knew the darker history of his family, of its ties to the True Bloodline. He fingered the back of his head, where, hidden under a drape of hair, there was a freshly shaved spot, still tender from a recently drawn tattoo. It inked his family’s role—his pledge—to that black heritage.

Rafe lowered his hands, staring out. He also knew how to take orders. He had been summoned here, given specific instructions, reminded of the cold trail of history that had led to this moment. It was his chance to truly make a mark in this world, to prove himself and bring untold riches and honor to his family.

As the helicopter door closed behind him, he caught his reflection in the glass. With his black hair cut rakishly long and his fine aristocratic features darkened by a perpetual shadow of beard, some considered him handsome. He’d certainly had his share of women.

Even the strong arms that assisted him out of the helipad belonged to a member of the fairer sex—though few would call his caretaker “fair.”
Fearsome
would be the better term for her. He allowed himself a shadow of a smile. He would share this observation with her later.

“
Merci,
Ashanda,” he said as she let go of his arm.

One of his men came forward with his cane. He took it and leaned on it, waiting for the rest of his team to offload.

Ashanda stood stolidly at his side. More than six feet tall and with skin as black as shadows, she was both nurse and bodyguard, and as close a member of his family as anyone who shared the Saint Germaine bloodline. His father had found her as a child on the streets of Tunisia. She was mute, a result of having her tongue cut out; she’d been brutalized and sold for sex—until she was rescued by his father. He had killed the man who offered her to him as he passed along the street on business. After that, he stole her back to the family château outside the fortified French city of Carcassonne, where she was introduced to a boy in a wheelchair, becoming both pet and confidante to that fragile child.

A scream echoed over to Rafe. He stared across the rolling lawn to a dark mansion—on whose grounds they’d landed. He didn’t know who owned this estate, only that it was convenient to his plans. The home sat on the slope of Squaw Peak overlooking the city of Provo. He had handpicked this spot because of its proximity to Brigham Young University.

A muffled gunshot silenced the cry from the mansion.

There could be no loose ends.

His second-in-command, a German mercenary named Bern, formerly a member of the special forces of the Bundeswehr, stepped before him, dressed all in black. He was tall, blond, blue-eyed, Aryan from head to toe, a mirror image to Rafe’s darker self.

“Sir, we’re ready to proceed. We have the targets isolated in one of the campus buildings with all access points watched. We can take them on your orders.”

“Very well,” Rafe said. He despised using English, but it had become the common language among mercenaries, fittingly enough considering the crudeness and lack of true subtlety of the tongue. “But we need them alive. At least long enough to secure the gold plates. Is that understood?”

“Yes, sir.”

Rafe pointed his cane toward the campus. He pictured the girl and the older man, fleeing on horseback. While his team had been outfoxed by a clever ploy, it was only a momentary setback. From video of that hunt and by means of facial-recognition software, he’d identified the Indian on horseback. It hadn’t taken long to determine that the historian had returned to where he felt the safest, to the bosom of his university. Rafe smiled at such simplemindedness. While the pair had escaped his snare once, that would not happen again.

“Move out,” he ordered, and hobbled toward the mansion. “Bring them to me. And do not fail this time.”

10:40
P.M.

“What do you mean by
an Indian curse
?” Painter asked.

Professor Kanosh held up a palm. “Hear me out. I know how that sounds. But we can’t dismiss the mythology surrounding that cavern. For ages, the Ute elders, those who passed shamanic knowledge from one generation to another, claimed that anyone who entered that sacred burial chamber risked bringing ruin to the world for their trespass. I’d say that’s pretty much how it unfolded.”

Kowalski made a scoffing noise deep in his throat.

The professor shrugged. “I think there must have been a kernel of truth in those old stories. A proverbial warning against removing anything from that cave. I believe that something unstable was hidden there for centuries, and our attempt to transport it out caused it to explode.”

“But what could it be?” Painter asked.

Across the table, Kai shifted in her seat. The answer to that question was plainly important to her, too.

“When Maggie and I first lifted the golden skull from its pedestal, I found it to be unusually cold, and I felt something shift inside it. I think Maggie felt it, too. I suspect something was hidden inside that totem, something valuable enough that it was sealed inside a fossilized skull.”

A corner of Kowalski’s lips curled in distaste. “Why pick a skull for that?”

The professor explained: “In many Indian gravesites, prehistoric fossils have been found buried with the dead and were clearly revered. In fact, it was an Indian who first showed the early colonists the location of rich fossil beds, where the remains of mastodons and other extinct beasts sparked the imagination of the scientists of that era. There were heated debates among the colonists, some even involving Thomas Jefferson, about whether such beasts still lived out west. So if these ancient Indians needed a vessel to secure something they considered sacred—and possibly dangerous—a prehistoric skull would not be an unexpected choice.”

“Okay,” Painter said. “Assuming you are correct, what might that be? What were they hiding?”

“I have no idea. At this point, it has yet to be determined if the mummified bodies found in the cavern are even Native Americans.”

At Painter’s side, the physics professor cleared his throat. “Hank, tell him about the carbon-14 dating of the remains.”

Painter’s gaze shifted from one professor to the other.

When Kanosh was slow to answer, Professor Denton spoke in a rush, impatient and excited. “The archaeology department dated the bodies to the early
twelfth
century. Well before any Europeans ever set foot in the New World.”

Painter didn’t understand the significance of this information or why Denton seemed so worked up about it. The dating simply lent credence to the fact that the bodies were Native American.

Denton reached to the table and slid the old dagger toward Painter. He remembered the physics professor gesturing with the same blade earlier.

“Take a closer look at this,” Denton said.

Painter took the knife and flipped it over in his hands. The hilt was yellowed bone, but the blade looked to be steel, with a handsome, almost watery sheen across its surface.

“The dagger was recovered from the cave,” Kanosh explained.

Painter looked up sharply.

“The local boy who escaped the chamber after the murder-suicide fled with this knife in hand. Afterward, we confiscated it from him, as it’s illegal to remove relics from an Indian burial site. But the unusual nature of the blade required further investigation.”

Painter understood. “Because Indians of that time didn’t have the technology to make steel.”

“That’s right,” Denton said, staring significantly at Kanosh. “Especially this
type
of steel.”

“What do you mean?” Painter asked.

Denton returned his focus to the dagger. “This is a rare form of steel, identifiable alone by its unusual wavy surface pattern. It’s known as Damascus steel. Such metal was forged only during the Middle Ages in a handful of foundries in the Middle East. Legendary swords made from this steel were prized above all others. It was said they held the sharpest edge and were all but unbreakable. Yet the exact method of their forging was kept secret and eventually lost sometime during the seventeenth century. All attempts to replicate it failed. Even today—while we can produce steel as hard, if not harder—we still can’t make Damascus steel.”

“Why’s that?”

Denton pointed to the towering electron microscope humming in the neighboring alcove. “To make sure my initial assessment was correct, I examined the steel at the molecular level. I was able to verify the presence of cementite nanowires and carbon nanotubes within the metal. Both are unique characteristics of Damascus steel and give the material its high resilience and toughness. Universities around the world have been studying samples of this steel, trying to figure out how it was made.”

Painter fought to make sense of this news. He was familiar with nanowires and nanotubes. Both were by-products of modern nanotechnology. Carbon nanotubes—artificially created cylinders of carbon atoms—demonstrated extraordinary strength and were already being incorporated in commercial products from crash helmets to body armor. Likewise, nanowires were long, single chains of atoms that showed unique electrical properties and promised coming breakthroughs in microelectronics and computer-chip development. Already the nanotech industry had grown into a multibillion-dollar industry and was continuing to expand at a blistering pace.