The Vengeance of the Tau (6 page)

“I had expected so much more from a man who calls himself McCrackenballs,” the dandy taunted, in total control.

“Really?”

His position solidified, Blaine snaked his legs up across the too-soft face before him and trapped the man’s thin neck between his knees. The dandy’s face reddened. He fought to break the hold, but leverage was against him now. McCracken jerked him forward and the dandy pitched forward off the rail. His legs kicked at the air, as he grabbed on tight to Blaine’s knees. With the little man’s features purpling, McCracken knew he could either let him drop to his death or strangle the life out of him. Considering the dandy’s death grip on his legs, Blaine opted for the latter.

He thought it was over when the little man let go with one of his hands. But then he noticed the life rope dangling thirty feet down from the girder directly overhead. The dandy caught it with his free hand and twisted abruptly out of Blaine’s leg hold. Swinging on the rope, he propelled himself up to the catwalk McCracken was standing on.

The dandy’s face was still purple, though with rage now. He stormed forward, launching a blinding flurry of blows Blaine’s way. McCracken managed to block or deflect all of them, his defensive posture precluding any opportunity to launch any decent strikes of his own in response. His back pressed up against the outermost support beam on the bridge’s superstructure. Then the momentum of a furious kick from the dandy drove both of them backward onto another motorized scaffolding platform.

Blaine nearly tripped on the high-pressure painting equipment that had been left upon it. He drove himself upward, pushing off a control panel that sent the platform climbing high for the Golden Gate’s center span. He managed to right himself, but the little man drove a knee square into his groin. McCracken pounded the man’s face with a trio of hard blows. The dandy deflected the fourth, then came up and under Blaine’s outstretched arms.

Before McCracken could respond, the dandy was behind him, grabbing his head and neck in a death hold. Blaine heard him scream triumphantly before he felt his air seize up en route to the brain. His limbs became feathery and numb. He could feel his legs starting to give way.

As the platform continued rising, Blaine cast his eyes about for a weapon of some kind. The only thing he could see was one of the high-powered bridge-painting devices lying just beyond his grasp. McCracken willed the feeling back into his left hand. Breath bottlenecked in his throat, and his oxygen-starved brain denied him focus. He grappled desperately for the nozzle, but it remained barely out of reach.

With loss of consciousness only moments away, and the dandy’s grip forcing his head downward, Blaine now saw that the control box for the ascending platform was just beside his left foot. He kicked out toward it, aiming as best he could. The
OFF
button depressed beneath the pressure of his shoe, and the platform jolted to a halt, left to the whims of the wind.

The abrupt stop loosened the dandy’s grip enough to allow McCracken to sweep down and out with his hand. He located the paint hose and closed his hand on the control nozzle.

The dandy screamed again and wrenched Blaine’s neck to secure the last of his lock.

“What do you see, sweetie? Look at death and tell me what you see. …”

All in the same motion, McCracken got the nozzle up behind him and activated it. Orange paint flew out and swallowed the little man’s eyes, particles of it splashing back against Blaine’s shirt. The dandy released his grip and wailed horribly, hands flailing about his face.

“Why don’t you tell
me
what it looks like?” Blaine asked. Then, as oxygen flowed back into his lungs, he smashed his adversary twice in the stomach and once in the face.

The little man launched a wild blow in response. When Blaine ducked under it, the blow’s momentum carried the dandy’s upper body over the safety rail that rimmed the platform. McCracken threw himself at the little man with all his force and power, angling his thrust upward. The impact pitched the dandy headlong over the rail, still flailing for something to grasp when McCracken tossed him forward with a final burst of strength.

“Have a nice flight,” Blaine said as the little man’s snarling face disappeared toward the blue waters below.

McCracken saw him hit with a spraying splash and nothing more. Still, he stayed on the platform for a brief time, as if expecting the dandy to rise. When he didn’t, McCracken moved off, anxious to open the manila envelope that was still in his pocket and learn what inside it could have caused all this.

McCracken waited until he reached San Francisco International Airport before calling Sal Belamo from a private room in the American Airlines Admiral’s Club.

“Why do I always hate hearing from you?” the pug-nosed ex-boxer greeted him.

They had worked together on several occasions, although not so much recently since Sal had been appointed chief troubleshooter of the Gap, the organization Blaine had recently helped throw into a shambles. Belamo looked more like a cheap thug than the sharp operative he was, courtesy of an undistinguished boxing career that had left his face looking the worse for wear.

“Because you’re jealous of my charm and good looks.”

“You ask me, we spent too much time at the same salon, the both of us. What’s up?”

“Need you to check on someone for me. Hired hand. Little guy with lots of martial arts in his background. …” McCracken provided as complete a description of the dandy as he could manage.

“Don’t have to go to the computer for that one, McBalls. Guy’s name is Billy Griggs, alias Billy Boy. One deadly son of a bitch. Hand specialist in more ways than one.”

“So I gathered.”

“Yeah, Billy Boy’s ’bout as queer as a three-dollar bill plus change. You whack him?”

“Sent him for a swim.”

“Your sake, I hope he doesn’t come up for air.”

“Five-hundred-foot dive off the Golden Gate.”

“You ask me, don’t count him out until the fish eat his eyeballs. Like to hear what he did in ’Nam?”

“Not really.”

“Dressed himself up as a gook, little shit that he was, and took Charlie out from the inside that way. Got himself transferred to Special Forces and even they couldn’t deal with him. What I hear, he went home and accepted his medal in gook makeup and black pajamas … you make of that.”

“Sorry I iced a war hero.”

“Don’t cry yourself to sleep. Griggs’s nickname over there was ‘Charlie Cat’ on account of he had so many lives. Plenty have tried to put him down before. None been very successful.” Belamo paused. “So what’s next?”

“You have someone meet me at Kennedy Airport with a passport complete with entry visa for Turkey.”

“Turkey?”

“Night flight to Istanbul, Sal.”

McCracken had inspected the contents of the manila envelope in the backseat of the cab that had taken him to the airport. Just a single sheet of paper, obviously a photocopy of something larger that had been reduced to a more manageable size.

It was a map, of all things!

Judging by the poor print quality, the original must have been old and tattered. The photocopy included handwritten instructions in German scrawled in the blank space near the bottom to further supplement the map’s directions. The site was Turkey, specifically the southwestern part near the Aegean Sea known to be rich in archaeological treasures:

Ephesus.

Chapter 6

BENSON HAZELHURST’S JEEP
had threatened to give out on at least three occasions and had finally quit two miles from the find.

“Try it now, Daddy,” his daughter urged, pinching something with a pliers underneath the raised hood.

Hazelhurst turned the key, and the jeep’s engine grumbled, then shook to life.

“That’s got it,” Melissa said. She pulled out from under the hood and slammed it back into place.

“What would I do without you, Daughter?”

“Die of heat exposure, for starters. Want me to drive?”

“No need. We’re almost there. Driving will occupy my mind. I don’t think I could endure this last stretch without something else to concentrate on.”

Melissa Hazelhurst closed the passenger door behind her and frowned.

“Speak your mind, Melly,” her father urged.

Benson Hazelhurst was almost seventy years old now, but he still had most of his hair and much of the muscle of his youth. Hazelhurst had married a much younger woman thirty years back, and they had wasted no time conceiving their only child. Melissa had inherited her father’s greenish-blue eyes, and her auburn hair was the same shade his had once been. She was tall enough to have been taken for a model on numerous occasions and in good enough shape to have been mistaken for a professional swimmer and runner. Melissa’s mother had died when she was four and she had been paired with her father ever since.

“I think you’re getting your hopes up,” she warned. “That’s all.”

Hazelhurst pulled back onto the road. “I’ve seen that frown before. You don’t believe it exists, do you?”

“No,” Melissa admitted.

“I see,” her father returned, obviously hurt.

“I want to,” she tried to explain. “I mean, I’ve tried. But every time I start to believe, something pulls me back.”

“Reason, perhaps?”

“Yes, reason.”

“Then what about the claims of the Phoenicians, the ancient Egyptians, the Persians, and the old priests? Different cultures that all described virtually the same thing, all searching for it at different times through history.”

“And never finding it.”

“Not to our knowledge, anyway.”

Melissa slid her arm to her father’s shoulder. He stiffened slightly at the touch. “Father, I’ve never questioned or doubted you before. I’m not sure I am now. It’s just that, well, I know how much this means to you and I don’t want to see you disappointed.”

“Winchester’s message left little reason to expect I will be.”

“He’s not an expert.”

Hazelhurst chuckled humorlessly. “He was the best student I ever had. Doesn’t say much for me as a teacher, does it?”

“That’s not what I meant and you know it!”

His hand touched the one of hers still resting on his shoulder. “Of course. I’m sorry. You’ve been good to have humored me for so long. Lord knows you had no reason to before I located those maps.”

Melissa eased her hand away. “You never told me where they came from.”

“Yes, I did. The museum.”

She hesitated. “No. I checked.”

“
Through the
museum, then. At least that was how the contact was made.”

“What contact?”

“The possessor of recently discovered archives in Germany that the museum knew I would have interest in.”

“Germany?”

“The archives contained materials from World War II, my dear. They belonged to the Nazis.”

Melissa was shocked.

“Makes perfect sense,” Hazelhurst continued. “Think of your history, Melissa. Hitler was obsessed with the mystical: astrology, the power of ancient artifacts, the occult. He had scores of archaeological teams scouring areas all over the Mideast in search of any object even remotely thought to possess some sort of spiritual or supernatural power.”

“Which led them here.”

“But the war ended before they had a chance to determine whether their findings were correct. The maps were stowed away and hidden, in all probability by parties already planning for the Fourth Reich.”

Melissa stared at her father for a long moment. “And now we’re picking up right where they left off.”

Benson Hazelhurst kept driving.

The drive took another ten minutes, their jeep bouncing and tilting along the uneven terrain. Winchester’s dig site was located in a secluded valley protected by small hills playing the role of time’s centurions. The area near Ephesus was for the most part composed of lush, fertile plains. But here there was barely any trace of green, as if all the flora had browned and died. Dirt and chalk dust blew about in the afternoon sun.

As the jeep drew closer, Winchester’s dig took shape in the form of layered piles of neatly excavated stone and dirt. The only vehicle present was a four-wheel-drive parked just beyond the heaps. The dust thickened against the windshield of the Hazelhursts’ jeep and, as if in a final act of protest, the engine sputtered and died a good hundred yards from the other vehicle. Melissa climbed out with canteens in hand and waited for her father.

“I don’t see anyone,” she said, stiffening.

“They could be, should be, down inside the excavation.”

“Winchester knew we were coming. He would have had someone waiting. And, besides, someone would’ve heard us coming.”

Hazelhurst rewrapped his bandanna over his brow to add protection for his eyes. “This wind can steal the voice of the man next to you, never mind a raspy engine. And I never advised Winchester of our plans.”

To reinforce his assertion, Hazelhurst plodded forward toward the site. Melissa lingered slightly behind him. She squinted her eyes against the flying dust, the leather of her well-worn boots chipped by the onslaught of the unforgiving ground.

“Damn,” she muttered.

“Shield your eyes,” her father called back to her.

She had been on digs before, but had never experienced anything quite like this. It was almost as if there was some sort of force intent on keeping them beyond the piles of excavated rubble. Hazelhurst reached the stationary four-wheel-drive vehicle and leaned against it for protection from the wind. Melissa nestled near him. One of her hands slid onto the hood.

“It’s still warm, Father. Winchester or someone in his party must have returned within the last hour.”

Hazelhurst turned away from the vehicle and headed for the excavation.

“Dad!” Melissa called after him, trying to keep pace.

Hazelhurst reached the rim and peered down.

“Good lord,” he rasped.

Melissa saw the body an instant after her father did. It lay facedown not far from a yard-square rectangular opening in the ground, created when what looked like a massive stone tablet had been slid backward. The dust and dirt had already showered the body, soon to render it invisible.