The Eye of God: A Sigma Force Novel sf-9 Page 24

  Vigor was adamant about continuing on this path. If so, he would need logistical support and protection. Everyone faced Gray waiting for a final decision.

  He still balked, and for good reason. “But you’ve lost that last relic, which held the only possible clue to the location of the cross.”

  “Then we find it again,” Vigor said.

  “How? You don’t know where it was taken or the identity of this mysterious clan leader. With the timer counting down, it seems a better plan to pool our resources and go after that satellite together. At the moment, the wreckage of the spacecraft is our best chance of learning more about this pending disaster. And that knowledge could be our best weapon to avert it, not this cross.”

  Even Jada sank back in her seat, clearly accepting the wisdom of his plan. But then she was a scientist, accustomed to following the dictates of logic.

  Vigor, on the other hand, was a man of faith and heart. He simply crossed his arms, unconvinced. “I am no use to anyone on this search, Commander Pierce. And I made a promise to Father Josip that I won’t break. I will still pursue the cross with every effort. Even on my own.”

  Rachel caught Gray’s eye, clearly worried about her uncle. They both knew how stubborn Vigor could be, and she did not want Vigor pursuing this alone. The danger of that path was evident enough in all their bruises, scrapes, and cuts.

  She looked to him to sway her uncle against this course.

  To that end, Gray turned to Sanjar. This local man could better express the futility of that path.

  “Sanjar, you’ve already stated that you have no clue as to the identity of this clan leader named Borjigin—the Master of the Blue Wolf—but you know how resourceful and ruthless he can be.”

  “That is true,” the man said solemnly. “His core followers, like my cousin Arslan, will do anything to serve him. To them, Genghis Khan is a god, and the clan leader Borjigin is their pope, a conduit to the glories of the past and a promise of an even brighter future.”

  Gray heard the echo of that same nationalistic passion in the man, but Sanjar had failed to drink all of that madman’s Kool-Aid.

  “Borjigin claims to be a direct descendant of the great khan. I remember once, he even wore—”

  Sanjar’s words abruptly stopped. He sat straighter, his eyes wide. He pressed a palm to his forehead. “I am a fool.”

  Vigor turned to him. “What is it, Sanjar?”

  “I only just remembered it now.”

  He bowed his head toward Gray as if thanking him—but thanking him for what?

  “As proof of his claim,” Sanjar said, “Borjigin once displayed a gold wrist cuff, a treasure he said once belonged to Genghis himself. I doubted it at the time, thought it was mere boasting. So I never gave it much thought.” He turned to Vigor. “But then I overheard what Father Josip confessed in Kazakhstan yesterday. I knew Josip sold a treasure to finance his search, but I never knew what it was until that moment.”

  Vigor’s voice grew sharper. “You’re talking about the gold cuff found in Attila’s grave, the one with Genghis’s name on it. Could it be the same one?” He reached and clasped Sanjar’s forearm. “Did the cuff you saw Borjigin wearing have images of a phoenix and demons on it?”

  Sanjar cast the monsignor an apologetic look. “I did not get a close look at it. Only from a distance and only that one time. That’s why I failed to connect the two until now.”

  He slipped his arm from Vigor’s.

  “And I may still be wrong,” Sanjar admitted. “Antiquity dealers across Ulan Bator have shelves of items said to be tied to Genghis. And wrist cuffs are nothing unusual. The tradition of falconry is still prized here. Many wear such cuffs as a token of our illustrious past. From something simple, like the leather one I wear.” He bared his wrist, exposing a thick piece of scarred leather. “Or something ornate, worn as jewelry.”

  “But how does this revelation help us?” Gray pressed. “If what Josip sold to finance his dig is the same cuff worn by the Master of the Blue Wolf, how does that bring us closer to identifying the man?”

  Sanjar ran fingers through his hair. “Because, though I didn’t know what Father Josip had sold until last night, I knew who he sold it to.”

  Rachel stirred. “I asked that very question of Josip.”

  Vigor looked stricken. “And I dismissed it as unimportant.”

  “Uncle, you were just trying to protect Josip’s feelings. We could not know the importance of such information.”

  Gray stared hard at Sanjar. “Who bought the priest’s treasure, this gold cuff?”

  “Workers talk, tell stories, so even this might not be true. But everyone seemed convinced it was sold to someone important in the Mongolian government.”

  “Who?”

  “Our minister of justice. A man named Batukhan.”

  Gray considered this new information, recognizing the thin nature of this line of conjecture. Maybe it wasn’t the same gold cuff. Maybe Batukhan wasn’t the one who bought it. And even if both were true, the minister could have sold it to someone else long ago.

  All eyes were upon him.

  “It’s worth checking out,” Gray finally admitted. “At least we should pay this guy a visit. But if this minister is Borjigin, he’ll likely know all your faces.” He nodded to Monk’s side of the table. “But he won’t know mine. Nor Seichan’s.”

  Excitement drove Vigor to his feet. “If we can recover that last relic—”

  Gray held up a hand. “That’s a big if. And I’m not willing to delay the hunt for the wreckage of the satellite on this long shot alone.” He pointed across the table. “Monk, you take Duncan and Jada and head into the mountains with Sanjar. You’ve got the latest GPS waypoints from Painter that mark off the search grid, right?”

  The team at the SMC had further refined the trajectory estimates of the crashing satellite, narrowing the parameters to as small a region as possible.

  “It’s still a lot of terrain to cover,” Monk conceded.

  “So we’ll get started immediately. In the meantime, I’ll investigate this minister with Seichan and leave Kowalski to guard Vigor and Rachel here at the hotel. If nothing pans out, we’ll join you in the mountains as soon as possible.”

  With a nod, Monk stood, ready to go.

  Kowalski stretched and mumbled, “Yeah, it’s always a good idea to split up. That’s worked so well for us in the past.”

  12:02 P.M.

  Seichan paced her room. She had come in here to take a fast nap after Monk and his group headed out to begin their trip into the mountains.

  In the next room, Gray worked with Kat back at Sigma command. They were putting together a profile on the Mongolian minister of justice, including where he worked and lived and the schematics of both places. They also gathered financial records and a list of known associates, business partners, anything that might prove useful before approaching the enemy.

  If he was the enemy . . .

  No one was ever who they seemed to be. It was something she had learned long ago, thrust as a child into the realities of the harsh world, where everyone had a price, and faces were as much of a façade as the clan leader’s wolf mask. She had learned to trust only herself.

  Even around Gray, she could not totally let her guard down.

  She wasn’t afraid of him seeing her true face. Instead, she feared she had no face. After so many years, playing so many different roles to survive, she feared nothing was left. If she dropped her guard, would anything be there at all?

  Am I just scar tissue and instinct?

  A knock at the door drew her from her thoughts. Glad for the interruption, she called out, “Yes?”

  The door opened and Rachel poked her head inside. “I didn’t know if you’d fallen asleep yet.”

  “What do you want?”

  It came out more brusquely than she intended, revealing some of that scar tissue. She felt no animosity toward Rachel. While they could never be friends, she respected the woman’s
abilities, her sharp intelligence. But she could not discount the spark of jealousy when she first saw Rachel today. It was mindless, a feral instinct to protect her territory.

  “I’m sorry,” she tried again. “Come on in.”

  Rachel took a tentative step inside, as if entering a lion’s cage. “I wanted to thank you for agreeing to help my uncle. If he had gone out on his own . . .”

  Seichan shrugged. “It was Gray’s decision.”

  “Still . . .”

  “And I like your uncle.” Seichan was momentarily surprised how true those words were. Upon entering the hotel room earlier, Vigor had touched her arm with affection, knowing full well her dark past. That simple gesture meant a great deal to her. “How long has he been sick?”

  Rachel blinked a few times at her question and swallowed.

  Seichan realized Rachel hadn’t fully accepted that reality. From the pending tears, Rachel must know it down deep, but she hadn’t truly faced it.

  At least not out loud.

  Seichan waved her farther inside and closed the door.

  “He won’t speak about it,” Rachel said stiffly and moved to a chair and sat on the cushion’s edge. “I think he believes he’s protecting us, sheltering me.”

  “But this is worse.”

  Rachel nodded and wiped a tear. “I’m sorry.”

  “It’s okay.”

  “He’s been going downhill for a while. But it’s been so gradual, each small decline easy to dismiss and excuse. Then suddenly you truly see him. Like on this trip. And you can no longer deny the truth.”

  Rachel covered her face with her hands for a long breath, then lowered them again, struggling to keep her composure.

  “I don’t know why I’m burdening you with this,” she said.

  Seichan knew but remained silent. Sometimes it was easier to open one’s heart to a stranger, to test emotions upon someone who means little to you.

  “I . . . I appreciate you helping to watch over him.” Rachel reached out and took her fingers. “I don’t think I could have done this alone.”

  Seichan involuntarily stiffened, wanted to yank her hand back, but fought against it. Instead, she whispered, “We’ll do it together then.”

  Rachel squeezed her fingers. “Thank you.”

  Seichan slipped her hand away, awkward at the intimacy. She knew Rachel wasn’t only thanking her for shouldering the burden of her uncle, but also for allowing her to share her fears. Silence fueled anxieties, gave them their true power. Expressing them aloud was a way of releasing that tension, of letting go, if only for a brief time.

  “I should get back to my uncle.” Rachel stood up. As she headed out, she paused at the door. “Gray said you found your mother. How wonderful that must be for you.”

  Seichan froze, weighing how to respond. She considered taking Rachel’s example, of telling the truth, of attempting to share her own fears and trepidations with another, a near stranger to whom she could test what it would feel like to open up.

  But she had been silent all her life.

  It was a pattern hard to break—especially now.

  “Thank you,” Seichan said, hiding behind a lie. “It is truly wonderful.”

  Rachel smiled at her and left.

  As the door closed, Seichan turned to the bright windows, ready to face what lay ahead, glad to put thoughts of warring Triads, her mother, and all of North Korea behind her.

  Still, she felt an ache deep in her stomach.

  Knowing her silence was wrong.

  1:15 P.M. KST

  Pyongyang, North Korea

  “What is she doing in Mongolia?” Hwan Pak asked.

  Ju-long followed the North Korean scientist out of one of the administration buildings of the prison. Ju-long was still at the camp, not as an inmate, but for his own protection.

  Or so he had been informed.

  Once he’d been freed from the interrogation room in the middle of the night, it had taken hours to settle matters, to discover their captive had escaped out of North Korea, whisked away by American forces, not that this event would ever be officially acknowledged.

  It had put Ju-long in a precarious situation. The North Koreans, especially Hwan Pak, needed someone to bully, someone to blame. Ju-long was a convenient target.

  Still, from long experience, he never entered hostile territory without a secondary plan in place. Years ago, as a precaution, he had taken to tagging his merchandise, including sales like this. It was only sound business practice to keep track of your inventory.

  While the pretty assassin had been in his custody and drugged, Ju-long had planted a micro-GPS tracking device on her. She had been significantly abraded and lacerated following the ambush in the streets of Macau, when he’d slammed his Cadillac into the bike she had been driving. He had the microtracker—a postage-stamp-sized wafer of electronics—sutured beneath one of her wounds. Eventually it would be found or the battery would die, but in the short term, it worked wonders at keeping tabs on his merchandise.

  Earlier this morning, he had played this card, informing Pak about this ace up his sleeve. Ju-long suspected it was the only reason he had been treated so well after last night’s events. They had even offered him a bed in the officers’ quarters, where he caught a couple of hours of fitful rest. Before retiring to bed, he had placed a call to Macau and had the tracker activated. It had taken longer than he would have liked to discover the escaped prisoner’s whereabouts, mostly because no one expected to search so far afield.

  “I don’t know why she’s in Mongolia,” Ju-long admitted as they reached the same building where all this had started, the prison’s interrogation center.

  Pak had said he left something important here, something to help them capture the woman. Ju-long followed the man through the building to the back. They entered the same room where he and Pak had been trapped last night.

  A new prisoner sat strapped to the chair, his head hanging listless, blood pooled beneath him. Cigarette burns blistered his arms. His face was so badly bruised and swollen that it took Ju-long a moment to recognize him.

  He rushed forward. “Tomaz!”

  It was his second-in-command.

  Hearing his name, Tomaz groaned weakly.

  Ju-long swung to Pak, who stepped forward with a smile. It seemed the North Korean had been denied his pain last night and took it out on another this morning.

  “Why?” Ju-long asked, furious.

  As if taking cruel joy in punctuating his point, Pak lit a cigarette, drawing deeply until the tip glowed a fiery red.

  “As a lesson,” Pak puffed out. “We don’t tolerate failure.”

  “And this loss of the prisoner was my fault?” He pointed to Tomaz. “His fault? How?”

  “No, you misunderstand me. We don’t blame you for her escape. But we will hold you accountable for her capture. You will continue to track her and accompany an elite Spec Ops team to retrieve her. The Americans rescued her for some reason. My government wants to know why.”

  “I don’t handle lost merchandise,” Ju-long said. “In good faith, I delivered her to you. She was in your custody when she escaped. I don’t see how this is my responsibility.”

  “Because you did not screen your merchandise as thoroughly as you should have, Delgado-ssi. You delivered what my government considers to be a bomb onto our soil, one that was still armed. If we had known this woman was so important to American forces, we would have handled this differently. So you must make amends for this grievous error and embarrassment to our country.”

  “And if I refuse?”

  Pak removed his pistol, set it to the side of Tomaz’s head, and pulled the trigger. The shock as much as the noise made Ju-long jump. Tomaz fell limp within his restraints.

  “Like I said, this is a lesson.”

  Pak reached for his phone and held it out to Ju-long.

  “And this is your incentive to succeed.”

  Stunned, he took the phone and raised it to his ear. A vo
ice came immediately on the line, trembling with fear.

  “Ju-long?”

  His heart clenched with recognition, and all it implied. “Natalia?”

  “Help me. I don’t know who these—”

  Pak snatched the phone back, keeping his pistol pointed at Ju-long’s chest. A wise precaution, as it took all of Ju-long’s control not to break the North Korean’s neck. But he knew it would do his wife no good.

  “We are holding her . . . and I suppose your son, too . . . in a location in Hong Kong. Neither will be harmed as long as you cooperate. At the first sign of insubordination, we will have a doctor remove your son and mail his body to your home. We’ll keep your wife alive, of course.”

  If that happened, Ju-long knew his son’s death would be a kindness compared to what they’d do to Natalia.

  Pak smiled. “So do we have a deal?”

  19

  November 19, 1:23 P.M. ULAT

  Rural Mongolia

  Duncan crossed a span of centuries in a matter of hours.

  After he and the others had left Ulan Bator in an older-model Toyota Land Cruiser, they passed through a small mining town to the east, a postapocalyptic landscape of coal pits, heavy machinery, and soot-coated Soviet-era buildings—but then a sharp turn to the north cast them into a valley thick with poplars, elms, and willows.

  Farther ahead, a silvery river split the rolling grasslands of the higher steppes, all colored in shades of winter amber. Tiny white yurts—which Sanjar called gers—dotted those brittle waves, looking like boats in a storm-swept sea.

  As he stared out at the spread of nomadic tent-homes, Duncan imagined the countryside had changed little since the time of Genghis Khan. As they climbed out of the valley, though, he saw evidence of the modern world encroaching upon this ancient way of living. A satellite dish sprouted from a yurt. Next to it, a small Chinese-made motorbike had been secured to an oxcart.

  Winding their way slowly higher, they aimed for the mountains rising ahead, the most distant to the north capped with snow. Under them, the road changed from asphalt, to gravel, eventually to dirt. The gers grew less frequent, more authentic, with goats in pens and small horses tethered outside. As their SUV trundled past, a few short-framed, sun-wizened folk in sheepskin jackets and fur-flapped hats came out to watch.