“How ya doin’?” he asked, causing her to jump.
She turned, her eyes flashing. “Don’t you have something to do?”
Orlando shrugged, sat back and took a swig from his water bottle — water, mixed with Red Bull. He glanced out the windows. “Not really. Just enjoying my first time in a damned desert. Could you turn up the AC?”
“It’s fifty degrees outside.”
“Really?” Orlando rolled the window down halfway and stuck his hand out. “How about that? Some desert. Hey, so I’m sorry you got stuck with us misfits. I bet you wish this was just a typical domestic abduction thing, something where you could just bring in the SWAT team and take out the perps.”
“Seventy-five percent of all kidnappings end in the murder of the abducted person.” Renée looked back to her laptop screen. “And one hundred percent of the ten cases I’ve worked on.”
“Oh.”
“So no, I don’t wish I was back there. But I can’t say this one is making me feel any better. In fact—”
“You feel like you’re out of control.”
She blinked, stared at his reflection in her screen. “Again, don’t you have anything to do? Shouldn’t you be trying to remote view something?”
“Oh, I already did. While you were driving.” He smiled. “I was in the zone. Saw some interesting things.”
Renée shrugged. “So do another one. Or go in the mausoleum yourself, or out back and get some of that Mongolian beef I smell. I think they’re cooking it up in the field for some kind of re-enactment.”
“Mmmm, sounds good, but no. I want to stay and bother you.”
Renée turned. “I’m still wearing my gun, you realize. Annoy me again and I won’t be responsible if it happens to go off.”
Orlando crossed his arms, considering her. He looked back toward the mausoleum, then to their right, to the jeeps which held the second team of three local agents, a guide and a field officer. Should I risk it?
“Why not?” he said under his breath. “So, Agent Wagner, I’d like to ask you something.”
“Make it quick, I’m busy.”
“Okay, well, here it is. How did you get this case?”
She stopped typing. Turned around. “What?”
“I know a little something about FBI procedure. Studied up on it quite a bit before we left the States.”
“You studied procedure?” Her eyes were dark, flat stones.
“Seems all this was a little rushed. You guys coming onto the scene so fast.” Not backing down from her stare, Orlando continued. “A little unorthodox. And it also seems that your selection as lead agent came from much higher up.”
Silence. Then, “How could you know that?”
Orlando gave her a loopy grin. “You know how.”
Her eyes darkened. “I see.”
He took a deep breath, suddenly aware of the jeep beside them, the three faces pressed against the windows. He swallowed, noticing that the light on Renée’s cell phone, on the passenger seat, was on. Speakerphone? Walkie-talkie connection? It didn’t matter, he had already taken this past the point of no return and had to continue. “Does this — your interest in this case — have anything to do with that necklace you wear under your shirt?”
The doors on the other vehicle popped opened all at once and the black-suited agents leapt out just as Renée shook her head and reached for her gun.
“You should have gone out for the beef.”
Before leaving, Caleb decided to take Phoebe into the West Hall to see the relics.
“These are all replicas, right?” she asked, pushing past the visitors, some of them kneeling before the glass-encased pieces. A curved sword, a milk-pot, headgear.
Caleb walked up to the only item not protected by glass — a weathered-looking leather saddle. “Yes, except for possibly this one. There’s an account I read on the way up here, an interview with one of the Darkhad several years ago. Asked about the destruction of the relics during the Cultural Revolution, he inferred that the saddle alone might have escaped the zealots’ wrath.”
He approached it, glanced around at everyone else involved with the other pieces, reading the descriptions or leaving offerings.
“Want me to cop a feel?” Phoebe asked with a lopsided grin.
“Well, since I still think I’m kind of…”
“Impotent?”
He looked down as she whispered, “Don’t worry, I’ve got it.” She reached for the saddle, brushed her fingers against it, closed her eyes and stepped back.
And as Caleb watched with pained jealousy, her visions took her away.
3
Nina Osseni darted around trees, dove through brush, ducked and ran from cover to cover as she ascended the mountain, following the trail of the white stallion and the fleeing Darkhad woman.
But after about thirty minutes, the trail had gone cold. Too many rocks, boulders and paths overrun with horse prints for her to determine which were new. And the light was fading, the bright blue of the sky leeched out by hungry violets and grays.
“Damn,” she whispered, stopping with her foot it mid-step. Catching her breath, she looked down. In the hazy twilight she had just seen the barest outline of a wire.
She stepped back, following the wire with her eyes, seeing where it ended up a tree on a mechanism controlling a raft of sharp stakes, all pointed down at her. “Diabolically impressive.”
Nina scanned the shadows on the mountainside, seeing all the nooks and crevasses. She put on her night-vision goggles and let the world jump into green and white, but it was still no use. No wonder the Darkhad have been so successful. She backed up slowly, expecting to hear the thwang of an arrow zipping toward her.
She would wait for Colonel Hiltmeyer’s team, his men and his supplies. Flak jackets and automatic weapons. Floodlights and flares. Grenades. But they’d have to be careful, and even then… She glanced at the trap again and imagined what else lay in store on the way up.
Best to send up the grunts first, one at a time. It was the only way they might make it to the top.
Frustrated and growing angrier by the minute, she made her way back down toward the camp.
On the descent, her thoughts turned to Caleb, imagining where he might be right now. Was he remote viewing her this very instant? For a moment she paused, feeling naked, exposed even more than being on this mountain at the mercy of an expert marksman. She narrowed her eyes, then quickened her pace.
Best to get back to Montross, and to the tablet. It had some kind of psychic deterrent built up around it, a kind of cloud that made its presence, and those around it, invisible to scrying eyes. Part of the reason it had gone undetected for so many centuries. And of course, Montross had something else, something like it — a sphere he had stolen from the Smithsonian archives years ago. It had shielded him from any prying eyes while he prepared for this mission. Now, they were doubly protected.
But as she got close to the camp and saw the men suiting up, preparing for the ascent, she found herself wishing their situations were reversed, that she was the one remote viewing Caleb. Seeing his every move, voyeuristically laughing, or cheering at his progress.
“We can make the Threshold before dark, if we move now,” Colonel Eric Hiltmeyer said. He was fitting on his vest over his camouflage threads and supervising his team of fifteen soldiers, all loaded with gear and weapons.