God Of Thunder

“Yoda?” Agent Smith held up his captured prize in surprise.

Nikolai had once coerced Annja into accompanying him to a local sci-fi event. As it turned out, Annja had discovered she had a fan base among the convention goers. She was surprised that Nikolai had shoved his prized plate into the package.

One of the other men spoke rapidly in a guttural language that Annja thought was German. She spoke the five Romance languages fluently, a little Russian and even less German, but she could make her wants known in those languages. The man below spoke too quickly and quietly for her to understand what was said, but she gathered that he wasn’t a happy guy.

Agent Smith argued with the man, evidently protective of the plate. That made Annja wonder if they even knew what they had been sent after.

Abruptly, a cell phone chirped for attention. Annja realized it was her phone in the side pocket of the backpack. She pulled her head back just as the men looked up and one of them pointed his weapon at her. The bullet cut through the air where her head had been.

She fished out the phone, hoping it was Bart returning her earlier call. But she didn’t recognize the phone number on Caller ID. The string of digits logged there were too long to be domestic, and she knew it was an international number.

The country prefix was 371. She didn’t recognize that, either. Curious, not hearing anyone running up the fire escape and thinking that the call might be from Mario Fellini, Annja answered the phone.

“Hello.”

“Ms. Creed?” a woman’s voice asked in a professional manner. There was an accent, too, but Annja couldn’t place it.

“Speaking.” Annja crept across the rooftop and took up another position. A siren screamed in the distance. She hoped that Nikolai had gotten hold of the police.

“You don’t know me, Ms. Creed,” the woman said, “and I’m sorry to trouble you. Am I calling at a bad time?”

“If you’re trying to sell me something, yes.” Annja peered over the roof. The four men, satisfied with their ill-gotten gain or not, had elected to leave.

They know who I am, Annja realized. It’s not like they’re going to have trouble finding me again if they want to.

That wasn’t exactly a happy thought. In fact, it made her angry to think she couldn’t go back to her loft. Her work was there. Her life.

I am not going to be afraid of going home, she told herself as she watched the men flag a cab. She took her small digital camera from her backpack, focused on the men and snapped off captures in rapid succession.

“I’m not trying to sell you anything, Ms. Creed,” the woman said. “I’m looking for Mario Fellini.”

“You didn’t say who you were.”

“I’m Erene Skujans.”

Annja tried to place the surname as she watched two of the men climb into the cab. One of the other two crossed the street and flagged down another cab headed in the opposite direction.

A feint at misdirection? Annja wondered. Are they going to separate places, or are they going to meet up somewhere?

She memorized the cab companies and identification numbers on both cabs. Both were medallion cabs fully licensed by the state of New York.

“I’m afraid I haven’t seen Mario,” Annja said.

“It’s important that I speak to him, Ms. Creed.”

Annja felt irritated. The woman acted as if Annja was being deliberately evasive about Mario Fellini.

“You did hear the part about me not seeing him, right?” Annja abandoned her post and jogged across the rooftop to the fire escape.

She started down, taking the steps quickly.

“I’m afraid Mario may be in trouble,” Erene Skujans said.

Me, too, Annja thought. Especially since a package he sent me has got guys shooting at me.

“What kind of trouble?” Annja asked.

“I don’t know the extent of it.”

Lie or truth? Annja wondered. She had no way of knowing.

In the alley, Annja sprinted for the street. She ran toward a line of cabs in front of the theater. Evidently the cab companies had heard about the shooting and had massed in an effort to pick up extra fares desperate to get out of the area.

“Again,” Annja said, running down the line of cabs, “I haven’t seen Mario. I just got back into New York. I’ve been out of state.”

“Mario said he was going to contact you.”

“Did he say why?” Annja found a cab that belonged to the same company that two of the men had taken. She shoved two twenty-dollar bills up against the window, fanning them so the driver could see them both.

He was young enough that her looks probably captured more of his attention than the money. He waved her in.

“No.”

That, Annja thought as she opened the rear passenger door and slid across the seat, is probably a lie.

The driver peered at her through the security glass and smiled. “Where to?”

“Why didn’t Mario try to call me?” Annja asked.

“He left the country suddenly. He didn’t want anyone to know where he’d gone.”

What country? Annja wanted to ask.

“Hold on,” Annja told the woman. She covered the cell phone’s mouthpiece and looked at the driver. “Another one of your cabs just picked up a fare on this street. Just a couple minutes ago. I got the number of the cab. I missed a meeting and I’m trying to catch up to a client. If I don’t at least try to close this deal, I’m going to be looking for a new job.” She tried to look desperate.

Some of the smile left the driver’s face and he didn’t look so friendly. “Hey, lady—”

Oh, great! Now I’m “Hey, lady,” Annja thought. So long sex appeal.

“I got this thing about hauling around psychotic ex-girlfriends,” the driver said. “No offense.”

“If I was a psychotic girlfriend,” Annja said evenly, “I’d wait for him at his apartment.” She took another sixty dollars from her jeans with her free hand and held the full hundred against the safety glass. “Now the question is, do you want a big tip or should I find another cab?”

The driver eyed the money and shrugged. “You know, psychotic or not, it’s really none of my business. What was the number of the cab?”

Annja gave it and they got under way. The driver called for dispatch and asked about the other cab’s fare destination.

“Okay,” Annja said into the phone, “I’m back.”

The woman was gone.

Thinking the signal had been dropped, Annja called the number back and listened to the double ring tones.

No one answered.

Annja closed her phone, wondering what Mario Fellini could possibly have gotten into that would have involved men with guns and no hesitation about killing. And why would he have brought that to her?

She sat back quietly in the seat and watched the congested traffic around her. They rolled through the Brooklyn-Battery Tunnel and into Manhattan without stopping because the cab was equipped with an E-ZPass that automatically paid the toll.

“I gotta charge you for the toll,” the driver said, shrugging.

A hundred-dollar tip and you want to be chintzy? Annja bit back the retort and said, “Fine.”

The radio DJ interrupted the music to relay the news about the shooting in Brooklyn at a local theater. The driver eyed Annja suspiciously in the rearview mirror.

Don’t look psychotic, Annja told herself.

“So what kind of business are you in?” the driver asked.

Annja put her smile and conversation on autopilot. The driver wanted reassurance that he wasn’t making a mistake. “What kind of business would you expect?”

The driver eyed her a little more deliberately. “You’re fit. Young. Obviously aggressive or you wouldn’t have me chasing after your client right now. But you’re not dressed like a stockbroker.”

“I’m not a stockbroker. That’s close, though.”

“How close?”

“I work for a guy who’s in business putting talent together.”

“Like rock bands?”

“Not that kind of talent. He’s a corporate headhunter. Raids other companies of their employees. If they’re good enough.”

“So the guy you’re after…”

“Wrote some kind of computer application my boss thinks is mind-blowing. Now he’s not going to rest until I manage to put the two of them together in the same room and he has a chance to pitch him.” The story sounded good to Annja. She’d watched something like it on the Discovery Channel while she’d been in Florida. “If we land him, I get a vacation.”

“Cool.” The driver smiled and nodded.

By the time they’d finished the discussion, the cab rolled to a stop in front of the Sentry Continental Hotel.

“This is it,” the driver said.

Annja peered up at the eight-story structure as a uniformed bellman advanced on the cab.

“You’re sure?” Annja asked.

“Yeah.”

Annja paid him and allowed the bellman to help her out. Settling her backpack straps onto her shoulders, she walked into the hotel, wondering how she was going to find the two men she’d come there looking for. While her mind was occupied with that, her phone rang.

Caller ID showed a number that she was all too familiar with. The number belonged to Doug Morrell.

Annja chose to ignore the call as she entered the hotel’s lobby. The decor was marble the color of old bone and had brass ornamentation. Brass planters held arboricola trees, triangle palms and philodendron plants.

The guest registry was tucked away to the right, quietly blending into the wall. A young woman stood at the desk and watched the action at the bar area a little farther back into the hotel.

Annja’s phone rang again, but this time it was a text message.

Hey Annja.

Some guy named Marty Fenelli keeps calling. If you ask me, the guy sounds desperate. Maybe he’s just a rabid fan?

Anyway, give me a call when you get this.

Doug

4

Crossing over to the hotel bar, Annja slid the backpack off and sat at a table obscured by a palm tree. The bartender’s attention was focused more on the television in the corner than on his clientele. It was almost spring and baseball was starting up again.

Annja gazed at the screen wistfully and wished she was home instead of in a hotel she had no business being in. A cup of hot chocolate, made from real chocolate and scalded in a pan, sounded like heaven.

Her stomach rumbled at the thought. Some kind of lunch wouldn’t be a bad idea, either. Breakfast had been consumed on the run, a biscuit in the Miami airport that she hadn’t bothered to finish.

She read the text message again, then settled back behind the big plant and called Doug Morrell.

“Annja!” Morrell greeted on the first ring. “What a pleasant surprise!”

Annja shook her head. Morrell was in his early-twenties, working at the first job he’d gotten after graduating college. He’d told her on several occasions that all he’d ever dreamed of was working in television. Annja had asked him once how he felt about producing a syndicated show devoted to legends and lore that were often misrepresented. He’d claimed it was the greatest job in the world, and she hadn’t been able to doubt his sincerity.

The false representation wasn’t done by Annja. She kept her stories concrete, rooted in the bedrock of history and the facts as she found them. Thankfully, the audience for Chasing History’s Monsters seemed devoted as much to real archaeological work as they were to the fantastic.

The fact that Kristie Chatham wore skimpy and tight clothes, then climbed out of them at every opportunity, probably bought a lot of indulgence on the part of the viewer. Although Doug had told Annja on more than one occasion that if she didn’t look the way she did the audience wouldn’t have fallen in love with her, either.

“You’re not surprised,” Annja accused. “You sent that text message knowing I’d call you back.”

“Hoping,” Doug admitted. “I didn’t know. What I do know is that when you choose to ignore your phone, it gets ignored big-time. But I am curious about what Marty Fenelli has that I don’t.”

“Mario Fellini,” Annja said.

“Marty has Mario? Now I’m not so sure I want to hear about this.”

“His name is Mario. Mario Fellini.”

“Great. So what’s he to you?”

“Someone I knew a long time ago.” Annja dug out her camera and notebook computer, placing both on the table. “Did you talk to him?”

“A couple of times, yeah. Seems like a nice guy.”

“He is.” Was, Annja reminded herself. Whatever Mario was, he now had dangerous men after him. “What did he want?”

“To talk to you.”

“Did he offer any hints about what?”

“Not a word.”

Annja connected the camera to the computer by USB cable and uploaded the pictures to the hard drive. “And you didn’t press him for answers? That’s not like you.”

Doug, like Annja, had an insatiable curiosity, but he had no desire to go out into the world beyond New York in general and Manhattan in particular. He claimed that everything he needed was there in the city.

“This guy is good, Annja,” Doug said. “I questioned. He avoided. It’s like he had some fantastic mutant ability.”

Great. The Mario Annja had known hadn’t been secretive. Archaeology was all about getting information and spreading it around. Mario loved sharing theories. “Did he leave a message?”

“Yep.”

Annja flipped through the photos until she found the best shot of the two men she was following.

“I need to talk to you about your last story,” Doug said. “The phantom shark.”

“We can do the postmortem on that one tomorrow morning like we have scheduled.”

Doug hesitated, then cleared his throat. “We’re going to need more than a postmortem on that one. There are some problems.”

That temporarily took Annja’s mind off Mario Fellini and the gun-toting goons. The mystery she was currently tracking could take time to solve, but the piece submitted was going to be put into production in a couple of days. Once it was, she couldn’t touch it.

She was proud of the work she’d done on the Calusa Indians segment. Their history had been relatively new to her and she’d enjoyed exploring it.

“That was a good piece,” she said.

“Sure,” Doug agreed. “The Indian stuff was great. Really interesting. And your presentation was awesome.”

“Then what’s wrong?”

“The phantom shark looks fake.”

Annja sighed in exasperation. “The phantom shark was fake. That was mentioned in the piece.”

“I feel like maybe we need to fix the shark.”

“Fix the shark?”

“Yeah. You know. Make it look better. More—I don’t know—sharky?”

“That’s how the shark looked, Doug.” Annja couldn’t believe it. “The shark looked fake. It looked fake because it was fake,” she repeated.

“Fake’s not gonna cut it in the ratings.”

“Like I said in the piece, the phantom shark is a local legend. A lot of people treat it like a joke. It’s there to draw the tourists. The guy who built the shark told me he started pulling the shark around as a prank, and to give the tourists a little excitement. He said not even kids are scared. They know it’s fake, but it’s all done in fun.”

“Our show isn’t about fun,” Doug said. “It’s about creepy. The creepier the better. Marketing loves creepy. And scary is even better.”

“There’s nothing creepy or scary about a phantom shark carved out of driftwood and painted with airplane paint,” Annja said.

“You’re telling me.” Doug sighed. “Look, we can fix this.”

“It doesn’t need to be fixed.”

Doug ignored her and went on. “I talked to a friend of mine who does special effects for music videos and direct-to-DVD horror movies.”

“Terrific.” Annja sighed. “Just what I wanted to hear.”

“He tells me he can fix the shark. He says when he gets done with it, you’ll be afraid to go into the water all over again. According to him, Spielberg would love the shark he’s gonna do for us. Postproduction, it’ll look sixty or eighty feet long.”

“This was a dumb story, Doug.” Annja dug her heels in. “You gave me this story.”

“Marketing gave you this story. I just went along for the ride. They thought they were getting Jaws .”

“What did they think? That I was going to go down there and find a sixty-or eighty-foot shark no one has ever seen before?” Annja asked.

“I think maybe they were hoping. You have to admit, you’ve found some pretty weird stuff before. While you were looking for other weird stuff.” Doug tried to sound upbeat. “Everybody here knows that when it comes to finding weird stuff, nobody delivers like you do. You just naturally attract weirdness.”

Annja didn’t say anything.

“Okay,” Doug said. “Maybe that didn’t come out like I’d intended.”

“The story was stupid. The only reason I went was because of the work being done with the Calusa Indians.”

“I know. That stuff is awesome. We’re not going to touch it.” Doug paused. “Well, except we may have to edit it a little to add the extra shark footage.”

Annja imagined her piece shot through with sightings of the monstrous shark. She fought to keep her voice under control. She was tired from the flight and from being around too many people in the airports and the plane, from being herded through security like an especially stupid bovine.

Getting jumped by Agent Smith and his buddies might have been a lark on any other day. Maybe I am weird, Annja thought. Then she concentrated on defending her work.

“I already edited the piece,” Annja said. “We don’t need any more footage of the shark. It was just one little piece of the whole story I was telling.”

“Marketing thinks the shark is the story.”

“They’re wrong,” Annja said.

“Annja, look, without people buying commercial time on Chasing History’s Monsters, there is no Chasing History’s Monsters. You and I will be chasing unemployment checks.”

“Not me,” Annja said stubbornly. “I’ve had a few other offers.”

“I’m sure you have,” Doug said good-naturedly. “But we both know that if you had someone else who would give you the budget this show does you’d have departed with a smile on your face that day.”

Annja sighed. It was true.

“Look, I know this stinks. I’ll be the first to agree with you. But, like it or not, we’re stuck with the shark.”

“But we’re not stuck with the wooden shark carved out of driftwood and painted with airplane paint,” Annja said.

“Right. We’re not stuck with that one. Annja, I’m asking you to come in tomorrow so we can recut the segment. I need some voice-overs for the new shark segments.”

“Oohs and aahs and a bloodcurdling scream or two?”

“I thought that was too much to ask for, but if you’re willing to—”

“Doug,” Annja interrupted.

“Yeah?”

“It’s not going to happen.”

“I figured you were just leading me on. That’s okay. You’ve got a few shots coming. I don’t hold it against you.” Doug cleared his throat. “We’re gonna have to deal with the computer-generated shark. It’s going to happen. But I’d like to save as much as we can of what you want to show.”

“This really stinks.”

“It’s a fact of life. Gigantic killer sharks are a lot more interesting than Caboosa Indians.”

“Calusa.”

“That proves my point. People will remember the shark. I remember the shark more than I remember the Indians.”

“You know,” Annja said sarcastically, “maybe you should tell the marketing guys the shark was really an alien robot that disguised itself as a shark.”

“And it can take other forms? Like a Transformer?” Doug perked up and Annja knew she’d made a mistake. “That’s totally cool. Man, they’d go crazy over that.”

“Doug?”

“Yeah?”

“No Transformers.”

“I’m telling you, you should rethink that.”

“No.”

“All right. Are you coming in tomorrow?”

“I don’t know.”

“If you don’t, Editing will do the cuts without you.”

Annja didn’t want to deal with that. It would just be an exercise in frustration. She focused on Mario Fellini. “Did Mario leave a number where he could be reached?”

“I don’t know.”

“What do you mean you don’t know?”

“I couldn’t understand his message.”

“He sent you a message? I thought you talked to him.”

“I did talk to him. He spoke English when he talked to me. When he left a message on your answering service here at the—”

Annja broke the connection and dialed the studio number, quickly going through the electronic filters to get to her voice mail. She should have remembered it, but she never used it.

Only occasionally did she even go through the messages. Usually they were spam. Most of the people she had contact with, including fans of the show, used her e-mail addresses.

A few exchanges later, she had the message and triggered the playback.

5

“Hey, Annja. This is Mario Fellini. Don’t know if you remember me, but we worked Hadrian’s Wall together a few years ago.” Fellini spoke his native Italian.

Despite the tension of the situation, Annja couldn’t help smiling as she thought of him. Mario had always carried boyish charm with him and he wasn’t forgettable.

Then Annja remembered the woman who had called. She wondered who Erene Skujans was to Mario.

“I got your number from a professional list,” Mario went on. “Seems you aren’t listed in the White Pages anymore.” He laughed at that.

There was a reason for that, Annja thought. Her life had been crazy dealing with the television show even before she’d inherited Joan of Arc’s sword.

“You’ve gone off and gotten famous.”

Despite the good-natured and relaxed tone Mario had in his voice, Annja also detected tension. It sounded as if he was calling from a street pay phone. She heard traffic in the background.

That meant that even if the studio had Caller ID on her line or kept track of the incoming calls, the number she got wouldn’t help.

But calling from a public pay phone didn’t make sense unless Mario was trying to hide.

From Agent Smith and his fun boys? Annja wondered. Or was someone else involved? Maybe a woman with a sexy voice?

“I see you all the time,” Mario said. “I ordered the Chasing History’s Monsters DVDs and I’ve started recording the show. It’s good stuff. I don’t know how you work under those conditions, though. And I have to admit, that other woman gets on my nerves.”

But do you have one of her posters? Annja wondered. She’d met professors of archaeology who had Kristie Chatham posters on their office walls. A few museum curators in Florida had them as screen savers on their computers.

“You’re probably surprised to hear from me,” Mario continued. “Or maybe now that you’re famous, you’re getting calls all the time from old associates.”

The traffic noise in the background shifted, and Annja imagined Mario looking around for anyone who might be watching him.

“I hate to bother you with this, but I think I’ve gotten myself in a bit of trouble.” Mario’s voice took on a more somber tone. “In this business of digging up the past, sometimes you find things other people would do anything to possess. But sometimes you find things that you aren’t supposed to find, and there are people who don’t want that, either.” He paused. “I’m afraid that’s what I’ve done.”

Remembering the men with the guns, Annja knew whatever it was had turned deadly. But where was Mario?

“Anyway, I mailed you something that I’d like you to take a look at. It got here a few days ago, ahead of me. I’ve been here two days, but I haven’t heard from you. I can’t give you a phone number, I’m afraid. I’m changing hotels every night. And I don’t have a cell phone with me. I’ve been told people can track you through those if they get hold of your records.” Mario took a breath. “The people involved in this, they can do things like that.”

Annja looked around the bar, feeling momentarily vulnerable. Following the two men to the hotel probably wasn’t the brightest thing she could have done. But it had felt right. If she’d called the police, she’d have been stuck answering questions for hours.