Seeker's Curse. Alex Archer
of infinite night. It spilled a yellow illumination upon the objects arranged on the cloth-covered surface.
Annja’s breath stuck in her throat. They were artifacts: statues, plates, bowls, coins. All gleaming bright gold. A mound of the stuff. A foot-high seated Buddha presided jovially over the lot.
“Samples,” Bajraktari said.
If it was all real—meaning both authentically ancient and actual solid gold, not just gold-washed lead, a trick the ancients were perfectly hip to—Annja was looking at upward of one hundred thousand dollars in plunder in the value of the metal alone. If you took into account the historic value, its price became incalculable.
Annja strode forward. As it happened that fit the role she was playing, but that had been driven right out of her mind by the sight. All she could think of now was confirming that she confronted evidence of a truly massive crime against archaeology. And circumstances suggested this was only the tip of the iceberg.
Reaching the makeshift display table, she snatched up the nearest item. Any evidence as to context was long lost already, especially if the loot had been polished, as appeared likely. Her finger oils weren’t going to damage the gleaming artifact if it was gold.
Annja stared down at the thing she held. It was a slightly irregular disk—a coin, imprint eroded by its passage through many previous hands. And time. She could almost feel the years adding to its not in-substantial weight. It showed the blurred image of the head of a youthful-looking, somewhat plump man.
To her amazement the letters stamped in it, faded though they were, were unmistakably Greek.
She turned to Bajraktari, who stood to her left with his shadow, Duka, looming as always behind him. “What’s a Greek coin doing here?” she demanded. “I thought these artifacts were Nepali.”
Instead of responding directly to her question, Bajraktari raised his head and said something sharp in Albanian. Annja sensed movement behind her.
Hard hands clamped like vises on her upper arms.
2
“What the hell do you think you’re doing, Bajraktari?” Annja demanded. She became aware of a grayed-out oblong glow farther back in the warehouse heights—a time-and-pigeon-grimed skylight. “Don’t you know who you’re dealing with?”
She knew even as the words left her mouth that she wasn’t going to like the answer.
Bajraktari smiled. “There has been a change of plan,” he said.
“Says who?” she demanded.
His coal-smudge brows twitched toward one another. “Do not try my patience, woman,” he said. “For in the end you are only a woman.”
It occurred to her this was not a good time to debate feminism. She settled for an angry toss of her head and a glare. “We had a deal,” she said.
He nodded. “So we did. But all things are subject to negotiation in this world, are they not?”
“I represent a very important figure in American business.”
“Just so. All Americans are rich. If your boss is rich by American standards, he must be really rolling in it, no?”
Annja’s lips compressed to a line. She could see where this was going.
“It occurred to us, therefore, that Allah had delivered into our hands a most wonderful opportunity. If your employer would pay handsomely once for our artifacts, then would he not pay handsomely twice for the treasure, as well as for the return of his very lovely assistant?”
“You’re making a mistake,” Annja said.
Bajraktari said something in Albanian. Around him, unseeable in shadow, his men laughed.
“It shall be as Allah wills,” the pack leader said. “If you are a religious woman, you should pray that it is not your employer who makes the worse mistake.”
Annja glared at him. She felt the men holding her shift their weight to drag her away. She drew in a deep breath. And prayed forgiveness for the grave sin she was about to commit against archaeology.
Then she kicked the relic-topped crate for all she was worth.
Annja had extensive training in martial arts, Asian and Western. She had hundreds of hours of practice and no little practical experience at using those techniques. And she was far stronger than most women her size.
The crate, though loaded down with tens of pounds of golden wonders, was empty. It rolled right over. Glittering priceless objects flew everywhere.
Shrill voices yipped. Men flew from the shadows like bats, clutching at the lovely tumbling golden things. The hard hands on Annja’s arms relaxed their grip.
Driving with her long strong legs and turning her hips, Annja wrenched her right arm free. She continued her pivot to slam a shovel hook with the heel of her right palm into the ribs of the man who held her left arm. The strike delivered force straight along the bones of the forearm; it was little less powerful than a closed-fist punch and presented a fraction of the danger of breaking your own hand.
A squeaking grunt blew out the man’s lips and he doubled over. He released her.
Annja was already spinning back. Her elbow smash caught the man on her right on the point of his bristle-bearded chin. She’d been aiming for his nose. The miss was fortuitous. His teeth clashed loudly together. As she followed through, his eyes rolled up in his head and he toppled straight over backward like a chainsawed tree. He wouldn’t be unconscious, she knew, and from personal experience she knew knocked out almost always meant stunned, not out cold.
She sensed movement rushing on her from the left. Again she spun counterclockwise to meet the man whose ribs she’d cracked. Roaring with pain-induced fury, he bore down on her with arms outflung to catch her and crush her in a bear hug.
She drove her right hand into his solar plexus and heard a crunching sound.
Bajraktari reached into his coat and came out holding a handgun. His stiffened arm rose straight up over his head.
Annja was already diving away as Bajraktari fired. She briefly considered summoning the mystical sword she’d inherited from Joan of Arc but, useful and lethal as it was, it wouldn’t stop bullets. She tucked a shoulder and rolled neatly into an aisle.
A whole row of heavy clay pots on a shelf to her left exploded as Bajraktari hauled the weapon down and triggered another shot. Pale pink dust enveloped her as flying potsherds raked her calves. Annja kicked off her shoes straightaway. She hated it in movies when women tried to flee or fight in heels. It was as absurd as it was unnecessary. And anyway, it was a relief to lose the accursed things.
She got her stocking feet beneath her, pushed up with her hands and launched herself down the aisle like a sprinter off the blocks. Bajraktari didn’t have a clear shot at her back but she wanted to get out of the narrow passage before somebody did.
She was still coughing and blinking dust from her eyes. It caked in her unfamiliar mascara, blurring everything beyond. The figure that abruptly blocked the lane ten feet ahead of her was no more than a shadow.
There weren’t a lot of things the shadow could be. Except for a gangster. Almost certainly aiming a gun at her. She launched herself into a forward running dive, throwing her arms out to keep from doing a skidding face plant and hoping she wouldn’t break anything.
Gunfire erupted like thunder behind her. At the same time she felt the pulsing concussion of a nearby muzzle-blast, powerful and full-auto. A dragon’s-breaths of muzzle-flame swept over her as she hit the ground.
She skinned both palms and did a sort of belly flop on the wood floor. In front of her she saw motion. The smuggler who had popped up in front of her was collapsing like a suit of clothes falling from a hanger. She knew in an instant what had happened—he and his fellow gang member behind her had neatly cross-fired each other when she dropped