The Pretender's Gambit

A small smile twisted Bart’s lips and Annja was glad to lighten his mood. He took his work seriously, and he didn’t take too much time off from it. That was one of the things they had in common.

“Where are you in the Whoinverse?”

“Still missing David Tennant.”

“Aren’t we all.” Bart’s eyes narrowed as they neared the door. “I wish you didn’t have to see this. The ME’s office is backlogged tonight, so they couldn’t make it out here to get the body, otherwise I’d have the deceased moved before I called you in. But I want to proceed with this as soon as I can because I don’t want whoever did this to get away.”

“It’ll be okay.”

Bart hesitated just a second, then turned and ushered her into apartment 4F. The door around the lock had been broken. Pieces of the locking mechanism hung shattered. Other pieces had fallen onto the floor.

* * *

THE ROOM HELD crime-scene techs and Detective Joe Broadhurst, Bart’s current partner, and there was precious little room left over. Broadhurst was in his midforties, thin and fit. He had dark hair and dark eyes, a neatly trimmed goatee that—just for a moment—made Annja think of Garin Braden.

“Professor Creed.” Broadhurst smiled politely and nodded at Annja.

“Detective Broadhurst.”

“I would say it’s good to see you. Instead, I’m just going to apologize I’m seeing you again under these circumstances.”

Annja nodded and turned her attention to the room. The living area was small and neatly kept for the most part. “An older man lives here by himself?”

“Yes.” Broadhurst seemed a little surprised. “Somebody told you?”

Annja pointed to the foil remains of the TV dinner sitting on the coffee table. “Single guy.” She pointed to the small television in the corner. It was an older set, not a flatscreen. “Older guy who listens to the television more than he watches it.” She pointed at the wall where a single black-and-white photograph of a young man and woman hung. “I’m presuming that’s the guy at a much younger age. He lives alone or there would be more photographs.” She touched the green easy chair that had seen better days and an equally battered, nonmatching couch. “And better furniture that wouldn’t be so dusty.”

Broadhurst smiled a little more. “You could be a cop.”

“She’s better than a cop,” Bart said. “She’s going to be able to help us with the elephant.”

“Elephant?” Annja asked. “You’ve got an elephant in here somewhere? Now that would be a surprise. But if you’ve got an elephant in here, I’m sure that would have broken the lease. Maybe the floor.”

Bart gestured to the back of the apartment. “This is where it gets bad.”

* * *

“HIS NAME WAS Maurice Benyovszky,” Broadhurst said. “According to a couple of the neighbors, he ran a small mail-order business out of his home. He sounds like a little old guy trying to get by. From the looks of the apartment, unless he’s got a safe deposit box stuffed full of money somewhere, Benyovszky wasn’t getting rich.”

The dead man was in his seventies at least, and he might still have looked like the black-and-white picture in the living room if someone hadn’t beaten his face into pulp. Dressed in a faded red house robe and pajamas, the old man lay crumpled on the floor in front of a large desk covered with knick-knacks, a computer and a digital camera. Paper bags covered his hands, put there by the crime-scene techs to preserve evidence. He might have been five feet tall and weighed a hundred and ten pounds.

Blood stained the back wall and curtains over the room’s window and the ceiling in a surprisingly straight line.

“His killer beat him to death with what was probably a hammer of some kind.” Bart’s voice was calm and hollow, his professional tone when he was talking about a case. “We haven’t found the murder weapon yet, but that’s what we’re looking for. The cast-off blood tells us where the killer and his accomplice were standing.”

“There were two of them?” After the initial shock of seeing the body, Annja’s mind slipped into problem-solving mode.

“Yeah. The killer—” Bart pointed to large, bloody footprints that were far larger than the dead man would have made “—and the accomplice.” He indicated a second set of footprints that were smaller, yet still larger than the victim’s.

“Nobody saw anything?” Even though this was the metro area and early in the morning, Annja still struggled to believe no one had come to the old man’s aid. He’d had time to yell for help.

“Not till one of the neighbors came through and found the lock on the apartment door shattered. Then there was the blood in the hallway. He decided not to come in or announce himself, got back to his own apartment and called us. This is what we found.”

“When?”

“About twelve forty-five. When we found out about the elephant, I wanted to call you.”

“Where’s the elephant?” Annja asked.

Bart crossed the room over to the computer. “Here.”

Walking around the dead man, Annja joined Bart at the computer. He moved the mouse and the monitor came out of hibernation, clearing to reveal a photograph of a white jade elephant. The image gave no indication of how large the piece was, but it was exquisitely rendered with a lot of careful detail.

Taken from a side view, the elephant had its trunk curled in and sharp sheaths that covered its tusks. A thick rectangle lay across its back from its neck to its tail and hung down to almost the rounded stomach. Atop its back, a pair of warriors rode in a covered basket. One of the warriors held a spear. The other held a bow with an arrow nocked. A skullcap covered the elephant’s head. On the skullcap, a flowering plant stood out in worn relief.

Annja’s interest flared up at once and she leaned closer to the screen. “The elephant looks Persian or Indian.”

“How do you know that?” Broadhurst asked.

Bart said nothing, just took out his field notebook and started taking down information.

“The ears,” Annja replied. “Indian elephants have smaller ears than African elephants.”

“Maybe the guy who made this just liked small-eared elephants.” Broadhurst shrugged. “Maybe large ears were harder to make.”

Still amazed by the detail, certain that the piece she was looking at was really old and wishing she could examine it for real, Annja shook her head. “Whoever carved this went to a lot of trouble to get things right. Those ears are proportioned just right.”

“Okay, I’ve heard of Indian elephants and the small-ears thing, but I haven’t heard of Persian elephants.”

“That’s because the Persians used Indian elephants. Do you know much about war elephants?”

“No. We don’t see much of them in New York.”

“The Persians were the first to use elephants in wars. The first time historians know they were used was in the Battle of Gaugamela in 331 BC. King Darius II of Persia fielded fifteen elephants carrying mounted archers and spearmen at the center of his line. Seeing the elephants freaked Alexander the Great out, but it didn’t stop him from defeating the Persians and claiming Darius’s lands after he killed him. The Indians used war elephants a lot, too, but the possibility that this is a Persian elephant exists.”

Broadhurst grimaced and looked a little frustrated. “The history lesson doesn’t help us with our murder. Don’t put us no closer to the creep that done this.”

“Can I look through these files?” Annja asked.

“Sure. Our techs have already been through it. We’ll be taking the computer back with us, but you can look through what’s up there.”

Annja flicked through the photographs. There were nine more images of the elephant, all of them from different angles, none of them with any reference that would tell her how big the piece was.

Before and after the images of the elephant were images of other objects—cups, pottery and toys. All of them looked old, but none of them looked as old as the elephant.

“Can I have copies of these images?” Annja asked. “It’ll help me track down anything that might be out there in the archaeological communities concerning this piece.”

Bart glanced at Broadhurst, who hesitated only a second before nodding.

“Keep it on the down low,” Bart advised. “So far only we and the killers know about the elephant angle.” He let out a breath. “And the elephant’s only a clue if it wasn’t deliberately left on the computer as a red herring.”

Annja looked back at the computer monitor. “If this isn’t a lead, I should be able to find it pretty quickly for you.”

Bart’s cell phone rang and he answered it, spoke briefly, then looked over at Broadhurst. “That was Palfrey. They’ve got the nephews downstairs. Turns out they live on the second floor.”

Broadhurst nodded. “I’ll stay here with the body. Why don’t you question the nephews. Take Professor Creed with you. According to the old man’s daughter, the nephews had something to do with our vic’s business. Maybe they know something about this missing elephant she can help with.”

Bart glanced at Annja. “You up for this? You’re still the only antiques expert I have on hand.”

“Sure.” Curious, Annja followed Bart out of the room, but her mind was locked on the image of the war elephant and the mystery it represented.

Chapter 2

Calmly despite the tension that ratcheted through him and the knowledge that the NYPD was across the street, Francisco Calapez knocked on the door to apartment 5E and checked the hallway again. At this late hour, no one was there, but in this city it seemed no one slept. People were always moving, always doing things. He did not like being here, and he especially did not like knocking on a stranger’s door in the middle of the night.

Unfortunately, since he did not find the thing he had looked for in the old man’s rooms and he did not know where it had gone, he was forced to risk this to get more information. Fernando Sequeira did not take failure well.

“Open up, please.” He knocked again, dropping his knuckles heavier this time. His pulse beat at his temples as he stared at the window at the end of the hallway. The elevated heart rate wasn’t the result of fear. It came from readiness. Whirling red and blue lights from the police cars parked out in the street below alternately tinted the panes.

A few feet back from him, up against the wall and out of sight of the door’s fish-eye peephole, Jose Pousao stood waiting with a silenced pistol hidden under his hoodie. He was more slightly built than Calapez, and young enough to be his son, but he listened well and had a taste for killing. That was something that was hard to train into a man. Calapez had always felt that killing was in the blood, a talent a man either had or did not have. Calapez knew he was lucky to be partnered with the younger man. When things got dangerous, Pousao wouldn’t hesitate to kill someone. In fact, he wouldn’t hesitate to kill everyone who wasn’t Calapez.

Just as Calapez was about to knock again, a man’s voice answered from the other side. “Hello. Can I help you?”

“Police.” Calapez spoke with an American accent, hiding his native Portuguese. Doing something like that was not hard to do after watching bootlegged American movies. He had been a good mimic since he’d been a child.

“I didn’t call the police.”

“We know that, sir.” Calapez curbed his anger. Tonight had already been frustrating because he had not found what he had been sent for, nor did he know where he might find it. The easy thing Fernando Sequeira had asked him to do had turned out not to be so easy, and there had been only one location given. Killing a man—or a woman—was simple enough, but finding things was more difficult. If the elephant had been there, if the old man had not already been dead, the night would have gone more easily. As it was, he was stuck looking for the cursed thing. “We need to look out your window.”

A moment passed and Calapez knew the man inside the apartment was studying him. Calapez wore a nondescript coat over a shirt and tie and slacks. A suit in New York City was urban camouflage, like a Hawaiian shirt in Florida around the beaches. Calapez had learned how to blend in while in many places doing Sequeira’s business over the years.

“My window?”

“There was a murder next door, sir.”

“No one here saw a murder. I was asleep until all the commotion started outside.”

“Yes, sir. But there are security cameras on this building that might help us in the search for the killers.”

“How does getting into my apartment help you with that?”

“Your apartment is close to one of the cameras. We want to see what the view would be from here before we get the necessary paperwork going.”

“Can’t you do that from outside?”

“Not from five stories up, sir. We haven’t taken the killers into custody yet. They might still be in the neighborhood. They could be in this building. We would like to prevent anyone else from falling victim to them. Your assistance will be appreciated, and your safety may hinge on your cooperation.”

The man hesitated for a moment. “Could I see your identification?”

“Of course.” Calapez dug the badge and wallet out of his pocket. He’d purchased both from a street dealer who specialized in such things. The dealer had sworn no one could tell the difference.

Evidently the man in the apartment couldn’t. The locks snicked back one by one. He opened the door. Of medium height and pasty, myopic behind thick lenses and his gray hair in disarray, the apartment dweller looked like an accountant or a grade-school teacher.

Calapez put away the fake identification, then took out a small notebook and flipped it open with a practiced flick of his wrist. This wasn’t the first time he’d pretended to be an official and he’d encountered plenty of the real ones in his line of work.

“Could I have your name, sir?”

“Montgomery. Felix Montgomery.”

Calapez swept the living area with a glance. “Are you here alone, Mr. Montgomery?”

“I am.”

“Then if I can see your window, I will be only a moment.”

Montgomery led the way to the window. Pousao stood nearby and kept watch over the man.

Calapez pulled the drapes to one side and peered out the window. From his vantage point he could see the windows of the apartment where the dead man had lived, but curtains blocked the view inside the rooms.

“Do you know what happened over there?” Montgomery asked.

“A man was killed.”

Uneasiness made Montgomery fidget. “Was it a domestic situation?”

“No, sir. A break-in.” That much would be on the news in short order. Calapez continued watching.

“That’s terrible. There haven’t been any break-ins that I’ve heard about.”

“This sort of thing happens in the best neighborhoods, sir.” Calapez turned and looked at Montgomery. “Do you have a camera, sir?”

Montgomery hesitated. “I do. I teach photojournalism.”

“Would you mind if I used your camera? I left mine in the squad car.”

Montgomery frowned. If he was a schoolteacher, that was probably the same frown he gave students who showed up to class without a pencil or paper. “It’s a digital.”

“That’s fine. I’ll need a telephoto lens if you have one.”

After another brief hesitation, Montgomery walked toward the back rooms. Pousao trailed him, silent as the man’s own shadow. Only a few minutes later, while Calapez watched the group milling in front of the apartment building across the street, Montgomery returned with the camera. The telephoto lens was long and large, professional quality.

“Do you know how to use this?” Montgomery held on to the camera.

“I do.”

“I still don’t understand why you need to borrow—”

Calapez nodded to Pousao and the younger man drew a short, wide-bladed knife. With a practiced motion, Pousao shoved the blade into Montgomery’s neck at the base of the skull. A surprised look of pain filled the man’s face as life left him. Calapez snatched the camera from the dead man’s hands as the body sagged to the floor.

While the man quivered, Calapez returned his attention to the apartment building across the street. “Put the body in the bedroom. Find a few more things to steal and we’ll make this look like a burglary gone wrong.”

Pousao grabbed the corpse and pulled it away.

Focusing on the apartment building, Calapez looked through the camera and adjusted the lens to bring the apartment into focus. He couldn’t see anything, but he knew it would be a matter of time. Perhaps the police would find the elephant he had been sent there for. Then all he’d have to do would be to retrieve it. The task was more difficult, but he knew Sequeira would not accept anything less.

“Jose.”

“Yes.”

“I see television reporters out there. Turn on the television and find the coverage. We need to know who the chief investigator is and if they have found the elephant.”

Pousao turned on the television and searched the channels till he found one reporting live from the scene. “I have discovered the woman.”

“Who is she?” Calapez kept the camera aimed at the apartment building.

“Her name is Annja Creed.”

“Is she police?”

“No. She is an archaeologist.”

An archaeologist possibly meant the NYPD knew something about the elephant. Sequeira talked to people such as those. He had cultivated a number of resources within that circle. Calapez had visited with some of them himself, to get things Sequeira wanted. A few of those people Calapez had killed to obtain those things. Calapez didn’t understand what his employer saw in antiquities, but there was no denying Sequeira’s interest.

Calapez took down the archaeologist’s name in his official-looking pad, then he extracted his cell phone and placed a call to his employer. Despite the lateness of the hour, or the earliness, depending on a person’s point of view, the phone only rang twice before it was answered.

“Do you have it?” Sequeira sounded fully awake. His voice was deep and full-bodied, as if rumbling from a huge chest. Sequeira was a broad man in his forties and worked to stay in shape.

“There has been a complication.” Calapez hated giving his employer bad news. Sequeira was not one to easily accept such a thing.

“I have been watching the news. You killed the old man?”

“Not me. He was dead when I arrived there, and the elephant was not to be found.”

“Then you must locate it.”

“I will. I only wanted you to know where the situation stood.”

“I have faith in you, Francisco. Otherwise I would have sent another in your place.”

“I will get the piece for you when I can, but there appears to be additional interest in the old man’s murder. The police have summoned an archaeologist to the old man’s home.”

“Then they must suspect what the elephant means.”

“Perhaps.”

“Find out, my friend. I must know. Perhaps there will be another way to get at this thing.”

“I will.” Calapez heard the anticipation and frustration in Sequeira’s words. Calapez did not know why the elephant piece was so important. His employer kept him in the dark about many things. “I hesitate to ask, but would it be helpful at this point if I knew more about the elephant? What makes it so interesting?”

“There is a legend about the elephant, a thing I must know from it in order to pick up a trail that vanished hundreds of years ago. For me to explain would take hours. Know only that the elephant is but the key to a mystery that has lain buried for hundreds of years as that piece wandered through the hands of queens and warriors. And there is a treasure. I want that treasure, and to find it, I must solve the mystery of the elephant.”

“Then I will bring you the elephant.”

“See that you do.” Sequeira broke the connection.

Calapez returned the phone to his pocket and continued watching the apartment building.

* * *

NGUYEN RAO STOOD in the shadows that filled an alley across the street from the police cars and gawkers. The constant strobe of the flashing light bars had ignited a small headache deep within his skull, but that could have been the effects of the cold, as well. He wasn’t used to this weather. Cambodia, where he was from, was much more temperate.

He was tall and athletic, dressed in a dark gray business suit under a long coat that was not warm enough. His eyes watered against the chill, or it may have been because he had not slept. The plane ride from Phnom Penh had drained him. He had flown a lot during the time he had been getting his education in England, but he had never learned to relax during the flights.

The arrival at JFK International Airport had been delayed in England, and then there had been confusion with New York Port Authority security that had forced a longer postponement of his assignment. As a result, he had arrived at Maurice Benyovszky’s apartment too late to talk to the man regarding the sale of the elephant. Listening to the reporters and the gossiping people in the streets, Rao had learned of the old man’s death and was saddened. Life was something meant to be treasured, each a treasure to be enjoyed and to further a person’s education of self and that person’s place in the world.

He wondered if Benyovszky’s murder would in some way dim Vishnu’s Eye. Actions impacted many things. Then he wondered when he had started believing in the old legend enough to even question such a thing. He wasn’t given to idle fancy.

But there was something to the story. The fact that the elephant existed proved there was some validity to the myth.

A story is only a myth till it becomes part of history. At that point, myth turns into fact. Professor Beliveau had often stated that in his classes. And he would go on to state that they were in the business of separating myth from fact, yet maintaining both because sometimes it was important for a culture to have its myths and legends. Those things shaped generations and gave them a shared history.

If the elephant exists, then the way to the Lost Temple exists.

But the Eye of Vishnu? Would that truly allow a man to bridge the past and the future, to see the things that were and the things that would be?

That would be a very powerful thing. Rao felt guilty for not believing in the Eye more. His temple had discovered the legend years ago, almost lost in their records because of all the strife that had run rampant through his country for so long, but there had been nothing discovered in those ancient texts that would lead the priests to the Lost Temple. The priests had spent years looking for it. Only when the elephant was found on the internet did they find another crumb of the trail that had been left. Even that discovery had been by chance, not by deliberate research.

So much had been lost in all the years of upheaval and invaders. Even now, parts of Cambodia were not at peace, and the shadow of the Khmer Rouge continued to touch the country. A rough voice startled him from his thoughts.

“Hey! What are you doing here? Spying on people? Is that what you’re doing?”

Rao chose not to answer, though he stepped sideways to look at the speaker. As a Vietnamese man in this neighborhood, especially at this time of night, he stood out. He hoped that his silence could be mistaken for not understanding the language.

The man who addressed him looked to be around thirty, about Rao’s age. But the man was big through the shoulders, and powerful looking. A reddish beard covered his face under a black knit cap that fit tightly to his head. He wore fingerless gloves and a bulky coat. Three other men trailed behind him, all of them about the same age and scruffy looking. All of them held a vulpine gleam to their eyes, predators gazing upon defenseless prey.

“Did you hear me?” The man came closer. “You no speak English?”

Rao actually spoke English quite well. Better than the man standing in front of him as a matter of fact. The man confronting him spoke with a thick Slavic accent.

“I think he’s just ignoring you, Vladi,” one of the other men said with the same accent. The three of them circled around the bigger man like wolves preparing for a kill.