Storm Clouds Page 7

  “Can you cover it?” he asked Gretchen.

  The driver, watching them in the rearview mirror, flinched when she reached into her purse, but instead of the pistol, this time she withdrew a wallet. She fished a pair of twenties out and handed them to the driver, who looked relieved. He snatched them from her grip and stared out the windshield.

  John was slightly more coherent when Mako pulled him from the cab. He still needed assistance to walk, but at least he wasn’t fighting it. Just as they reached the door, the cab pulled away. He felt Gretchen by his side.

  “It’s an electronic lock,” she said.

  Mako nudged John. “What’s the code, Dad?” he asked. It took several seconds for John to realize where they were, and he rattled off a sequence of numbers. The first attempt failed, as did the second, and Mako wondered if his dad knew the code at all. Then on the third try a green light flashed, the mechanism buzzed, and the deadbolt slid back. Gretchen pressed the latch and pushed the door open.

  Mako followed with John in tow. Straight ahead was the living room. The two men barely fit side by side in the narrow hallway and banged against the walls several times before Mako was finally able to drop his father to the couch.

  Once John was settled, Mako scouted out the safe house. The next thing he needed to do was to photograph the contents of the file. He left John with Gretchen and headed upstairs. The second floor had a smaller sitting room, a bathroom, and a bedroom. He sat in one of the sitting room’s overstuffed chairs and set his bag on the coffee table in front of him. Extracting the old folders, he opened the top one.

  Mako held a nondescript map in his hands. It didn’t appear to be ancient or have an “X” to mark an important spot. Instead, it was a perspective drawing of a cliff. The next pages revealed the truth: these were maps of a tomb.

  Mako realized right away what was at stake and why John was involved.

  John Storm was a living relic of the Cold War. He knew where both the skeletons and the antiquities were buried. England had cooperated with the effort to repatriate ancient Egypt’s legacy of treasure. Germany was number two on the list and had also cooperated, at least regarding the treasures they knew about. The Nazis had been fanatical collectors and hoarded whatever they could get their hands on. The antiquities that were found in West Germany were more or less known, but in East Germany the opposite was true.

  That there were “lost” antiquities was no secret. The French, Italians, English, Germans, and Americans had all been pressured to return relics removed from Egypt back to the country.

  Mako continued through the file. Nefertiti’s famous carved bust was the next picture, with a note indicating that it was located in Germany. The other pictures showed a multitude of museum-quality pieces. Several of the photos had dates printed on the border. With the exception of Nefertiti’s bust, they were all dated in early 1943—the year the Nazis were driven out of Africa.

  The map and the eight-by-ten photographs spread in front of Mako told a story. Hoover apparently had known about these pieces, and Mako suspected his father did as well.

  Mako looked again at the first drawing. There were no roads, towns, railroad stations, or any other clues to pin down the location. The contour lines and features appeared to be as much of an artist’s rendering as a treasure map.

  But Mako didn’t need an exact location as his starting point. The pictures of antiquities told him the answers to his questions lay in Egypt.

  This newfound knowledge created an avalanche of questions: Which side were Alicia and his father on? How did Gretchen fit in? And what about the men following them? He used the burner phone’s camera to take a shot of each page. He was stunned by the richness of the relics. These were not clay amphora decorated by a merchant. They had the look of a king’s grave.

  Mako returned the pictures and map to the file folders, loaded them back in his messenger bag, and returned to the living room downstairs.

  Checking his watch, Mako realized several hours had passed since the injection was given to his dad at Walter Reed. He hoped that the drugs had worn off and John was now in a clearer state of consciousness.

  John’s head leaned back against the couch. His eyes were closed and he looked so serene that Mako had to check his breathing. He was still alive.

  Gretchen moved to his side. “I found the number for the vet in John’s phone. No one answered, but they called back. After I explained what happened, the woman on the phone said she expects John to recover, but she’s worried about dehydration. I’m hungry and there’s nothing but water in the house, so I thought I’d run down to the store on the corner. Maybe get something for us, too.”

  Mako knew Gretchen could be using the errand as an excuse to get away and contact her people, but he also needed some privacy. It was time to talk to Alicia.

  After Gretchen left, Mako sat across from his father and stared at the earbud in his hand. He knew that to turn it on was to open Pandora’s box, but he needed answers. There had been no sign of pursuit since they had ditched the car, so he expected they were safe for the time being. Once he turned on the earbud, Alicia would know where he was, but he planned to be long gone before she could send anyone after him.

  This wasn’t the first time that he and John had been after the same thing. Alicia had used John to back him up before. He thought they were past that mistrust. In a rare show of maturity, instead of confronting her, he decided to play it cool. Depressing the small power button on the earbud, he activated it and placed it in his ear.

  It took only seconds for her shrill voice to penetrate his eardrum.

  “Where are you?”

  “I have the files with me.” He knew fully answering her question was optional. Within a few seconds she would know the color of the chair he was sitting in.

  “I can send you pictures.” Mako figured there would be no harm in sending her what she already knew.

  “Yes. And anything else.”

  That meant she knew about the map. “I think we’ve been compromised on this end. I’ll be out of here just as soon as John is stable and I can get him somewhere safe.” He waited for her response.

  “What’s going on?”

  There was no hesitation in her voice and he even detected a hint of concern. Mako described what he surmised had been a handful of attempts on John’s life. He started with finding his dad at Walter Reed with a head injury. Then, how the renegade nurse had injected John with deadly drugs, and how they had escaped. Alicia was quiet throughout. If all these events were tied together, she was not planning on revealing it.

  The front door opened and closed. Mako peered down the hall and saw Gretchen carrying two grocery bags. The call to Alicia had proved futile. At most, if he judged her reaction correctly, she’d been unaware of what had happened to John, or that John had told Mako not to contact her.

  He shut off the earbud, effectively hanging up on Alicia, and pocketed it.

  “All good?” Gretchen called out.

  Mako stood and walked to the kitchen. “No time to unpack. Can you call another cab?” Alicia certainly knew where he was now, and he had to assume that Gretchen’s people did as well. Mako knew it was a risk to go to his father’s house, but right now, he was on his own. He knew the old man had a go-bag full of cash and documents there. They checked on John and tried to wake him. He came to enough to stumble outside.

  The cab pulled up to the house a few minutes later. The five-mile ride between the safe house and John’s condo allowed Mako time to think. John had come around when they moved him, but had gone straight back to sleep. Mako wondered about the severity of the head wound that had put John in the hospital. It was past time for the drugs to have worn off.

  Whatever. Answers from John would have to wait. Mako knew the bottom line was trust. He and his father hadn’t always gotten along, and though the end might not always justify the means, he trusted John implicitly. Alicia was different. People, even operatives, were just cogs in her machine. Mako knew
she was pragmatic. At first, he had been excited to become a partner in her and TJ’s venture, but as it turned out, there were often more drawbacks than benefits. If a contract was not completed, there was no pay, and he was automatically outvoted at every turn.

  11

  Cairo, Egypt

  Ahmed’s plan was set in motion, but that didn’t stop his frustration at having to deal with people like Beecher and Kosma. If you didn’t want to get your hands dirty, you had to hire the best. Both men excelled at what they did and they knew it. Meeting Kosma in Garbage City and watching Beecher eat were not high on his list of things to do, but there were few men who could handle their particular aspects of the job. Beecher would “find” the tomb and Kosma would provide the forgeries. Now it was up to Ahmed to secure a few authentic pieces to seed the grave. He needed the files to find the Nazis’ hoard, or his ruse would fail.

  Ahmed had been deliberately careful in his search. His secrecy owed more to his own enrichment than to finding the cache for the people of Egypt. Working through his sources inside the country would have provided too many opportunities for news of his search to find its way to the wrong ears. Instead, he had gone overseas. Ahmed had not yet obtained the antiquities he needed for the tomb, but he had uncovered the existence of a file that would help do so.

  The United States had taken its fair share of antiquities. These had been the easiest to repatriate, as the Americans, in their simplistic view of the world, hoped to trade them for appeasement and influence. The US, still trying to apologize for helping the Muslim Brotherhood seize power, wanted so badly to be liked they would do anything to make amends. Ahmed thought little of the Americans. They were an apologist nation who exercised their power to make themselves feel good. He found it interesting that the most powerful nation on earth paid countries to be its friend. That kind of policy worked as badly on the schoolyard as it did in the global arena. Powerful rulers and nations flexed their muscles and demanded tribute; they did not give handouts. It had been done this way in his part of the world since the ancient times. That was all the people understood.

  The Americans had gladly handed over the antiquities. In their transparent attempt to feel good and gain influence, they had opened themselves up to queries they would have preferred to avoid—the Americans didn’t know what they didn’t know.

  In 1943 with the Nazis just 150 miles from Cairo, Rommel and the Axis forces were driven out of Africa by the combined forces of the United States and Great Britain. The goal of the German offensive had been taking the Suez Canal, but in the process the Nazis had access to half the landmass of Egypt and the antiquities it held. With his supply line stretched thin and no available reinforcements, Rommel was forced to retreat. The Desert Fox’s undoing had been a small division of long-range desert raiders, who had crippled the German’s thousand-mile-long supply line.

  There was no reason to think the Germans didn’t have the same kind of presence in Egypt, although there with a different purpose. With the Third Reich’s obsession with antiquities, they could easily have discovered and then looted tombs. No mention had been made of any discoveries, leading Ahmed to suspect that there was a better-than-average chance that whatever the Germans had discovered was still here.

  In the early 1940s Egypt was in a state of turmoil. Anyone ahead of the Axis lines was partying. Anyone behind them was running for their lives. That left a void of information about the Nazi withdrawal that, if not for the most prolific documenter of the 20th century, the loot taken by the Germans might be lost to the world.

  Prior to its entry into World War II, the United States had little in the way of diplomatic intelligence. Hoover was omnipotent. Before the formation of the Office of Strategic Services, or OSS, in 1942, the FBI was the premier agency. President Roosevelt was aware that entry into the war was inevitable, and Hoover was happy to fill the intelligence void. Rumors of his extensive intelligence files had been just that—until Ahmed had asked what he thought was an innocuous question. The Minister’s rise to power was the result of the artifacts he had repatriated. In asking the Americans for Hoover’s files on Egypt, he was taking a shot in the dark. He had no idea it would bear fruit.

  Ahmed was no fan of the United States. Nor was he a dyed-in-the-wool Muslim who hated Americans to the point he wanted to eradicate them. He would, however, use them in any way he could to advance his own goals. They had not hesitated in answering his query into Hoover’s files.

  To Ahmed’s surprise, word had reached him that an operation was already in place to recover the FBI files. As he topped off his drink, he hoped there was reason to celebrate. He did have other options if the Americans failed, but they weren’t as appealing.

  Setting Rashi up to find the grave that Beecher was about to “uncover” would be the easy part. Ahmed was counting on her passion and desire to find the site would blind her to any inconsistencies—it was only human nature—and she was very much human. Ahmed sat back and sipped his drink, hoping the ruse might earn him the points he needed to win her over.

  With the forgeries in progress and the relics needed to seed the grave within reach, Ahmed turned his focus to the larger problem, which was the site itself. The Valley of the Kings had thirty known gravesites. Wadi el-Muluk was remote and any sign of the graves was eradicated after they were sealed. King Tutankhamun’s grave had remained undisturbed in modern times because several workers’ huts had been built right on top of it. Excavation continued in the valley, but there was only so much viable ground to search.

  The limestone peaks and cliffs enclosing the valley offered the answer. Several grave sites of queens and lesser nobles had been found in the sandstone caves.

  If everything went according to plan, Beecher was about to “open” the next one.

  12

  The Valley of the Kings, Luxor, Egypt

  Beecher stepped out of the passenger side of the truck and looked up at the edge of a small projection in the rock face above. He wiped his brow, drank from his water bottle, and shaded his eyes from the intense sun before double-checking his handheld GPS. Bringing the truck and trailer in during daylight was a risk, but better than at night. There were few roads here, and it wasn’t uncommon to see work vehicles transiting the hard-packed trails. There was some irony in the route he had chosen. Originating in the Valley of the Workers, the section referred to by desert travelers as “good going” paralleled the path that had been used by the original craftsman building the tombs to commute from their village to the grave sites.

  During the day, the camouflaged vehicles would either blend in or at least look like they belonged. At night, their headlights were visible from miles away.

  Less than a half mile from the valley floor where the majority of the tombs had been discovered lay a geological feature Beecher called the boot, a section of cliffs similar to the shape of the Italian Peninsula. Rising from the lower, river side of the valley, the hundred-foot-high cliffs formed a small peninsula before ending. From the grave sites, the feature was virtually invisible. What was important—if you knew your business—was the west-facing orientation of the cliffs. Rather than looking east over the valley, a tomb in the cliffs would face the setting sun, the path to the afterlife.

  Beecher had cut his teeth in this area and saw it from a different perspective than the academics. He was able to sit back and see the land as the original builders had seen it. It was hard to know what had changed over the millennia. The Nile had surely been closer, maybe reaching to these very cliffs. The only clue to the past were the numerous wadis, or dry tributaries, running through the desert. Many thousands of years ago the wadis had been rivers, keeping the surrounding area green. The nearby temple of Karnak in Luxor on the other side of the Nile was landlocked now, but paintings clearly showed the Nile once had been in very close proximity. The one thing he knew was that it took more than a few thousand years to cut a cliff into a dessert. The hills behind him might have changed, but a hundreds-foot-high cliff had been
here. And if he were a king, this was where he would want to be buried.

  That didn’t make it any easier. The site was a logistical nightmare. The closest paved roads lay a half mile in either direction. Beecher panned the desert floor, seeing nothing threatening, but he had no way of knowing if anyone had spotted the convoy from above.

  Now that he was here, he glanced at the horizon, wishing for darkness to blanket the area. That would allow him eight hours to do the job, and it would have to be completed. The site was relatively well hidden, except for the hour around sunrise when hundreds of tourists arrived in hot-air balloons floating over the valley, straining their necks for a bird’s-eye view of the area.

  Beecher’s eyes scanned the cliff face and soon focused on the small outcropping he had surveyed this morning. Ahmed’s coordinates had given him the general area, but it was his choice to where the tomb would lie. It was just the kind of feature he was looking for and a drone, outfitted with a ground-penetrating radar unit, had confirmed it.

  His team was eight men, including two who were expert in demolitions. They were all part of his regular crew. He trusted all of them. The demolition experts carried climbing gear and extra rope in their backpacks. He had them ascend to the small projection as he walked back into the desert for a better look.

  The cliff’s features looked different from further away, and without the silhouettes of the men against the sky, he would have missed it. That was a good sign. The last thing he wanted was a site that stuck out. He ignored the men waving down at him and studied the face of the cliff. When he was satisfied, he radioed them on the handhelds they carried and directed the placement of the expansive grout.

  There would be no explosions, only the cracking and displacement of tons of rock. The men dumped their packs and dropped ropes to the desert floor below, where the other men hooked up buckets, shovels, drills, water jugs, and the specially formulated grout. By the time Beecher had walked back to the trucks, the supplies had been hauled up to the projection.