12

Annja sat in relative cool beneath the gaudy awning of an outdoor café a few blocks from the hotel. The white buds in her ears and a playlist of Medieval and Renaissance tunes kept the noise of midtown Panama City at bay. There wasn’t much to be done about the exhaust smells, especially thick in the heavy, humid air.

The coffee shop served excellent coffee and even better limeade. Annja reckoned she could stay there happily hydrating herself until her bladder gave out. It was all she could do at the moment anyway.

In keeping with Panama City’s somewhat self-conscious role as a modern financial center the café offered free wireless access. She was trying to find something online about the bones of a stray “very holy man” turning up—anywhere in history.

Luck had not gone her way so far.

On one Web site she did turn up a brief, tantalizing allusion to a treasure of more than earthly worth that was supposedly unearthed in Jerusalem by an order of knights under the command of the Holy Roman Emperor Frederick II, during the Sixth Crusade in the early 1200s. She had to chuckle at the historical irony of that. The Web site went on for pages about how the Vatican had conspired against the knights—beginning before there actually was a Vatican. But Annja knew Emperor Frederick II was a man against whom the Pope genuinely had conspired. And not just one pope, but a succession of them, excommunicating him twice and waging relentless war against him.

Regretfully she dismissed the whole thing. Frederick had been something of a rationalist for his day. He had only gone on Crusade when the Pope threatened him with excommunication, and one of the reasons the Pope excommunicated him anyway was that, instead of reconquering Jerusalem with the usual exemplary slaughter, he had simply rented it from his friend, the equally humanist Sultan of Egypt. He was hardly the sort to found a religious order. Much less to set them to searching for holy relics.

She sat back and sipped at her latest limeade. She was coffee’d out. If she drank any more she’d have to throw herself in the ocean and swim to Maui to have a prayer of winding down before next week. She gazed at the unhelpful screen of her notebook computer and sighed.

Why am I even involved? she asked herself. I’m an archaeologist. I’m bound to try to see artifacts properly conserved. Except in this case I’m not even sure there is a relic.

But telling her about the artifact’s existence had clearly cost Cedric Millstone his life.

Something had left a trail of dead bodies, including those Garin and Annja had been compelled to kill aboard the Ocean Venture, from the time Annja had come within unwitting proximity of it. Abenicio Luján had seen something—a crate whose dimensions suggested a casket, a box to contain a coffin—brought out of the boathouse turned charnel house in the Old Harbor district of Casco Viejo. So an artifact existed. And it must be of extraordinary value, for people go to such lengths to possess it.

She scratched an eyebrow. A waiter came by to see if she needed anything. She waved him off, aware only that he seemed awfully solicitous of her. He didn’t set any threat warnings ringing, so she paid him no mind.

I’m more than just an archaeologist now, though, aren’t I? she thought. Whatever lay behind it, the proliferation of dead bodies made it her concern. She was becoming a protector, maybe even an avenger. And there was much to avenge.

She felt a cold certainty that people would continue to be endangered, or even killed, until she tracked the mysterious artifact down. It gave her a sense of urgency, like a pressure inside the chest.

For now she operated on the assumption Millstone had told her the truth. At least as he knew it. Deathbed statements, she knew as a historian, were accorded special weight in the law. While she doubted Cedric Millstone had had specific foreknowledge of his death, he must have known he was squarely in someone’s sights. A rival, or rivals, whose identity she couldn’t even guess at.

“And if I hadn’t been so quick to dismiss the possibility of working with his group,” she said aloud, bitterly, “all that knowledge might not have died with him.”

“I beg your pardon, señorita?”

It was the handsome waiter again. She looked up and happened to meet his eye. He beamed.

Oh, my God, she thought, he’s hitting on me. Why would he do a thing like that?

“No,” she said, her own reflex smile curdling. “Thank you. I’ll let you know.”

His disappointment was clear on his olive features. But he nodded and went about his business.

What’s wrong with you, girl? she could almost hear Clarice ask. Why not let your hair down and live a little? You got away from the nuns, remember?

She sighed. “I don’t have time,” she said aloud, quite peevishly. She returned to her Internet search for clues into the nature of her mysterious objective.

She heard her cell phone’s ringtone. She picked it up. The caller ID said Dale.

It was the code name for one of her nerd contacts. Frank wasn’t the only one she’d set to trying to track the Solomon Kane.

“Hello,” she said.

“Hi, Annja,” a male voice said. “Something’s come up.”

“Oh?”

“Your friend’s ship has changed course. It happened early this morning, ship’s time. If one of my peeps hadn’t lucked onto a shot from a French bird of it pointed in a different direction we’d’ve lost it completely.”

She felt an all-too-familiar plummeting sensation inside her. Too close! she thought.

“I’m grateful to your friend for tracking it down,” she said.

“It, uh—it did cost some money.”

She sighed. “I’m good for it.” I’m going to need to take some more of Roux’s commissions, she thought, even though they smack of pothunting. And they’re a devil to reconcile with my work schedule on Monsters.

Oh, well. Nobody had told her her new life would be easy. Or cheap.

“I know you are, Annja. Just thought I’d say.”

Am I painting a big fat target on my back here? she thought, somewhat wildly. I mean, it’s not as if the NSA would ever think of monitoring cell phone traffic here at the Pacific outlet of the Panama Canal or anything.

“Why are you calling me,” she asked, trying to sound casual, “instead of handling this in e-mail?”

“Well…” She could hear his reluctance. “Something’s come up.”

“What?”

“Well, like I said, we’ve been pretty lucky so far. But our luck might be about to run out.”

“How so?” She felt a passing idle wish she could reach through the airwaves and shake the answer out of him. Nerds loved to dramatize.

“There’re some storm systems forming in that part of the world. If the skies cloud over your friend’s ship, we can kiss overhead imaging goodbye.”

Swell, she thought. “All right,” she said. “Can you at least give me a destination?”

“Not with any certainty,” her contact said. “They can always change course again. But right now they’re pretty clearly heading for the Marquesas, in the South Pacific. As a matter of fact—”

There was one of those pregnant pauses that suggested he was typing busily away on his own keyboard, looking for new data. “They’re making right for a particular island. One that has a surprisingly large airfield, from the overhead shots. Apparently there’s an astronomical research station there. I’m not sure the island even has a name, but I have a latitude and longitude. I’m e-mailing it to you right now.”

“Thanks. We’ll settle up later,” Annja said.

“Great, Annja. Always fun talking to you.”

She hung up and put her cell phone back in its belt holster. Then she surfed to a travel site to start looking for flights to French Polynesia.