The Golden Elephant

Annja had found a fairly deserted section of the windy, narrow streets winding gradually down the hill. That suited her mood.

The one reference to the 1913 German expedition had been it. Not just for the book. For such as she’d been able to check of the University of Paris collection until they booted her out of the reading room at seven-thirty.

The good news was that she now knew stories of a golden elephant statue in a vast lost temple emanated from a German expedition to Southeast Asia in 1913. The bad news was that wasn’t much to go on.

It hadn’t been enough to lead to any more information, at least so far. The various archaeological reviews and journals from the period she had read stayed resolutely mute concerning any such expedition. She would have thought there’d be some mention.

Walking along in air just too warm for her breath to be visible, with fallen dry leaves skittering before her like small frightened mammals, she wondered if chauvinism might have come into play. The Great War, as it was then naively known—and for a few years afterward, until an even greater one happened along—broke out a year or so after the expedition. Indeed, if it set forth in 1913 the expedition might well have still been in progress when the First World War began. And in 1913 the French were still grumpy over the Franco-Prussian War.

So it struck her as possible that mention of German expeditions might’ve been embargoed in French journals. But scientists of the day still would have considered themselves above such political disputes, cataclysmic as they might be. Wars came and went—science endured. So the Germanophobe angle might mean much or little.

I see two main possibilities, Annja told herself as she turned down a quaintly cobbled alley between steel-shuttered storefronts that reminded her of home in Brooklyn. One, that the expedition simply got lost in the shuffle of World War I. It was easy enough to see how that would happen.

And two, she thought, the frown etching itself deeper into her forehead, that it was all just rumor.

That made her bare her teeth in dismay. It was possible. Probable, even. Scientific anthropology and archaeology were rife with such speculations in the wake of Schliemann’s discovery of Troy—or a reasonable facsimile thereof.

So the whole Golden Elephant yarn could just be hyperactive imagination.

“There’s a third possibility,” she said quietly to herself. “Or make it a subset of the first possibility,” she said with a certain deliberateness. “That there was such an expedition—and the only mention of it that still exists anywhere on Earth is the sentence you read in that book today.”

She knew that was an all-too-real likelihood. The priceless ceramic relics Schliemann had sent back to Berlin had been busted in some kind of grotesque drunken Prussian marriage ritual. The Lost Dinosaurs of Egypt had been lost when the Allies bombed the museum where they were stored. Paris had famously been spared the ravages of WWII. But the expedition, of course, was German. That was not so good, from a preservation point of view. The whole country had been handled pretty roughly. And most artifacts went through Berlin—which, between relentless bombing and the Red Army’s European tour, had pretty much been destroyed.

Every last journal or other scrap of writing relating to the 1913 expedition stood a really excellent chance of having been burned up, shelled to fine gray powder.

She sighed again. “Great,” she said. She decided she’d give it at lest one more try in the University of Paris system. If that came up dry—

From behind she heard a masculine voice call out, “There she is!”

7

Annja stopped. She set her mouth. She sensed at least two men behind her. She braced to run. Then from the shadowed brickwork arch of an entry into a small garden courtyard she hadn’t even noticed before, a third man strolled out into the starlight before her.

She’d wandered, eyes wide open, into a classic trap.

Annja scolded herself furiously. Walking around like that and not paying attention to your surroundings! she thought. Doing a perfect impression of a perfect victim. What were you thinking?

Unfortunately, thinking was what she had been doing. In contrast to maintaining situational awareness. It was an unfortunate propensity of hers. And what really annoyed her was that she knew better.

“What have we here?” the man who had appeared in front of her said in nasal, slangy Parisian French. He was a bit shorter than Annja, wearing a knit cap and a long dark cloth coat against the autumn chill.

Annja looked around. The other two men came up on her left and right, winging out to the side. They were positioned to catch her no matter which way she might bolt.

“Careful,” one said in an Algerian accent. “She has long legs, this one. She could run fast.”

She was in a tight spot, she knew. They were very smooth, very tactical, coming on her from three directions, allowing her no options to escape. They radiated hardness, both in attitude and physically. Each one of them would be stronger than she was. Her skill in martial arts, not to mention real fighting experience, gave her an edge on a single man, if he underestimated her. These men almost certainly did. To them she was another American woman, a tourist or student, spoiled, soft and foolish.

Foolish enough to wander dark, deserted city streets with head down and eyes turned inward. A perfect victim, she thought again with a wave of self-disgust.

The first man stopped two yards from her. He seemed aware of the possibility of a long-legged kick.

“Not a good thing for you, missy, being out alone like this,” he said.

“Nice talking to you,” she said. “Now, if you’ll kindly step aside, I’ll be on my way.”

He pulled his head back on his neck like a turtle starting a retreat into its shell and blinked at her with slightly bulbous pale eyes. Then he laughed. “It’s a spirited one we’ve got here.”

“Yeah,” said the third man. “It’s a damned shame.”

“Shut up,” said the Algerian.

Annja’s blood chilled as the men flanking her each grabbed one of her arms.

She had been caught in a dilemma. She knew many people, even self-defense consultants, advised not resisting street robbery attempts. “Your watch won’t die for you,” the line ran. “Why die for your watch?”

But she had a practical objection to giving violent criminals what they wanted—rewarding their behavior. If you let them succeed, they’d just do it again and again. And next time their victim might not have the option of resisting—and next time they might want more than a wallet….

She was certain this was no mugging.

Whoever these bad boys were, and they were certainly bad, they weren’t common criminals. They were talent, Annja thought.

All these ideas flashed through her mind as her neuromuscular system more than her conscious mind evaluated her opponents. They were lax. They underestimated her, right enough, or they would have slammed her to the ground straightaway. They figured sheer masculinity would control her as effectively as physical techniques. Which was true of most people.

Annja waited for her moment.

The movements of the man on her right suggested he was about to press a knife to her neck to complete her submission. She sagged away from him, letting the guy on her left suddenly take almost her whole body weight.

The man on her left grunted in annoyance. The other, the Algerian, was pulled way off balance hanging on to her.

She thrust her right leg straight out behind his. With a powerful twist of her hips she swept his legs from under him. She used his own grip on her arm, still firm, as a handle to slam him to his back on the pavement.

He let go of her.

The other man was all over her, cussing her viciously in a blend of French and bad Italian. His right arm went around her neck.

He was interrupted when she jammed her right thumb straight back into his mouth. He was too dumbfounded even to try to bite. Then the opportunity was gone as her thumb started stretching out his right cheek.

Wishing she had long nails, for the first time since she’d actually grown them out when she was a teenager, Annja dug her fingers into his face with all her substantial strength. He squealed in agony.

Then she put her hip into his legs just below the hips and threw him over her shoulder.

He landed on the Parisian in the long black coat and the knit cap. Both went down in a tangle on the unyielding uneven stones. One began to screech like an angry chimp.

Both were out of the fight for the moment. But the Algerian wasn’t. After lying stunned for a moment he arched his flat belly into the air and snapped himself to his feet in the classic Hong Kong movie move. That confirmed to Annja he was trouble—probably a trained, seasoned killer.

Annja concentrated. The sword became a reassuring weight in her hands. She moved so quickly she barely felt any resistance as it slashed through the man’s neck.

The Parisian was back on his feet. The third man still thrashed around on the stones. Improbably and with horrific luck he had managed to impale himself on his partner’s lock-back blade when Annja threw him.

The sensible thing now was for everyone to run away as fast and far as their legs would carry them. Even in this dodgy and little-tenanted part of town the wounded man’s shrieking would attract attention. It was like an air-raid siren.

But the Parisian wasn’t having any of that. He launched himself in a rush straight for Annja.

She watched him for the second necessary to see he was coming high, going for a front bear hug, rather than low to take her by the legs and bring her down. In his anger and stupid machismo he still underestimated her.

Or maybe he had seen the sword and figured his best shot was to immobilize her arms before she could bring the three-foot gleaming blade into play. He was too close for Annja, fast as she was, to use the sword.

But she hadn’t always had the sword. Unlike a lot of people, even well-trained ones, she never forgot there were ways to fight that didn’t involve a weapon.

She met the man with a front thrust kick to the sternum. She rolled her hips to transmit maximum shock through her heel. It wasn’t the strongest kick, probably wouldn’t trip his switches and black out his vision the way a spinning back kick over the heart would—but it stopped him, stood him up straight. It also sent Annja back three semicontrolled steps.

It was still an outcome good for her, bad for him. She could use the sword.

His eyes widened as he noticed the broadsword she held in her hands. Most likely this was just the first time his brain was forced to actually accept the input of his eyes. It wasn’t possible for Annja to have carried such a weapon concealed. So his brain didn’t want to admit that she had.

Instead of doing the sensible thing—running—he jammed his hand beneath his coat, in the direction of his left armpit.

He wasn’t fast enough. Annja darted forward. The sword flashed.

Blue eyes stared at her in shocked incomprehension. Blood sprayed from his left carotid artery, severed by the stroke, which had slashed though his collarbone and into his chest. He mouthed a soundless word. Then he fell to his right.

His right hand, clutching a black 9 mm Beretta pistol, fell to the street. The Beretta clacked on the stones but didn’t discharge.

The man Annja had thrown was quiet, his lifeblood spreading in a pool beneath him. He didn’t even acknowledge her as she walked up to stand over him.

She made the sword go away. Walking quickly down the hill, she turned into the first alley to her right, and was gone from that place.

8

Harsh half-muted voices drew Annja’s attention to a tableau in the street below. Leaning over a concrete balustrade once white, now grayed and specked with city grime, she could hear no words. She made out three voices, two masculine and low, and one feminine. The woman’s voice was young, contralto. Just from its pitch and flow it was clearly as educated as the men’s speech was rough.

It was also very familiar. Easy Ngwenya! Annja thought.

Her heart sprang into her throat. She crouched to reduce her visibility from below. The three didn’t seem to have noticed her. That was good. She left the sword where it was. It was going to be hard enough explaining hunkering down here peering over the railing like a little girl playing hide-and-seek to any random passerby without trying to account for a large and deadly weapon.

Easy stood with feet apart just more than shoulder width, toes of designer Italian shoes pointed slightly outward. She wore a long black leather coat that looked expensive.

Easy’s hands were on her hips, under the tails of the long coat, hiking them up. The two men, who were dressed in a manner surprisingly reminiscent of Annja’s three recent acquaintances showed no sign of awareness of what she was about.

The woman’s voice rose, becoming sharp and peremptory. Annja made out an unmistakable “Non!”

The men’s hands moved fast and decisively.

Annja was too far away to do anything about what she knew was about to happen. She didn’t know whose side she’d intervene on anyway.

The man on Easy’s left shouted. His partner lunged suddenly for her from what he seemed to think was her blind spot. Metal glinted in his hand in the light of a streetlamp a block away.

Easy’s right hand came out. A gun fired. The man staggered and sagged as a bullet, apparently not even aimed, slammed into his midsection.

The other man tried to move. He dropped his knife and reached back in his peacoat. Easy’s left hand snapped up to shoulder height at her arm’s full extension. The muzzle-flash lit a feral, stubbled face.

Annja winced as a dark cloud puffed out behind the head. The man collapsed. Easy now turned her head toward the man on her right, who was still on his feet and waving what Annja took for a knife. Easy straightened her right arm, sighted quickly. Her Sphinx spoke again. The man pitched onto his face. The knife bounced on the sidewalk. His hands scrabbled at the pavement, spasmed once, went still.

Easy was walking away, briskly but not hastily, tucking her matched weapons back into their holsters.

Annja let out a long breath she hadn’t realized she was keeping in. She hurried down the steps.

The confrontation had taken place at a broadening of an otherwise narrow street. A retaining wall kept bits of Montmartre from falling on passersby on one side, and on the other were two-and three-story buildings, their lower floors armored by accordion-style steel shutters. Hurrying toward the scene of a recent, and loud, double homicide—especially when spattered with blood not her own—wasn’t the smartest thing to do, Annja knew. But there was something she had to know. If spotted, she could always claim she was trying to aid the victims.

No lights showed on any of the upper floors on the two nearby blocks, although Annja guessed some held residences and some were almost certainly currently inhabited, allures of Parisian nightlife notwithstanding. But this was also not the choicest neighborhood in the city. Residents might be somewhat accustomed to the sound of nearby gunfire. They were a lot more likely to lie on the floor for a spell than peer out and make possible targets of themselves.

Much less call the police.

Annja rushed to the nearest man. Easy had shot him in the face. He lay sprawled on his back with arms outflung.

She toed gingerly at the front of his peacoat. It slid aside enough to reveal a glimpse of dark metal and checked rubber. He carried a pistol in a shoulder rig.

It was all she needed to know. Sirens commenced their song, in the middle distance and getting louder fast. She picked a different direction from the one Easy had taken and walked away fast without appearing to hurry.

It was fast enough. No one stopped her.

T HE CENTER OF P ARIS itself is tiny, and can be walked around in a day, despite the vast and expanding dreary suburbs surrounding it. Walking to her hotel at a more leisurely pace, Annja breathed deeply into her abdomen in a basic meditation technique to soothe her heart rate and metabolism back to normal and bring her thoughts under control.

She lacked the luxury of blanking her mind for any protracted stretch, though. Nor was she sure she wanted to. She had just killed three men. No matter how justified that was, she had vowed she would never take that lightly. She had also seen two more men killed with ruthless efficiency.

Key to her mind was that she had bumped into notorious pot hunter and media personality Easy Ngwenya three times in her life in person. And twice had come in the past thirty-six hours. In that latter span six people had died in close proximity to the two of them. One, Sir Sidney, had been unquestionably and brutally murdered. The others appeared to have been making good-faith efforts to kill, in one case Annja, in the other Ngwenya.

What’s going on?

One thing she felt confident dismissing out of hand—those had not been standard street muggings. Annja’s had been a hired assassination from the get-go. But Easy’s?

The fibers of Annja’s being seemed to glow like lamp filaments with the desire to blame all this on the errant heiress. Could what Annja had witnessed at ground level below Montmartre have been a falling out among thieves or murderers?

Walking through the lights and the chattering camera-flashing throngs of the Champs-Elysées as the traffic hissed and beeped beside her in an endless stream, Annja had little doubt all five would-be assassins had been cut from the same cloth—hard men but not street-criminal hard. Pro hard. Dressed cheaply but in newish clothes. Flashing knives but carrying guns. Firearms weren’t rare in European crime, and were becoming less rare all the time as social order unraveled. But they were still fairly pricy items for Parisian street toughs.

No. These were hired killers. Something in the way her own attackers moved suggested to Annja they had been ex-military. Such men didn’t do such work for cheap.

Well, Easy’s rich, isn’t she? Annja thought.

It all came back to the Golden Elephant. Was it possible they were after the same thing? When Annja had barely learned of the thing’s existence—had yet to verify it really did exist?

“Put it this way,” she said out loud, attracting curious glances from a set of Japanese tourists. “Is it possible we’re not?”

She didn’t see how. What else could explain all the coincidences, not to mention the sudden attacks?

Wait, a dissenting part of her mind insisted. There’re plenty of reasons for Easy to be here. She was a jetsetter, a noted cosmopolitan, although the paparazzi were known to give her wary distance—possibly because of those twin Sphinxes. She had gone to school at Oxford and the Sorbonne, as well as Harvard.

“Right,” Annja said. “So she just happens to visit two of her almas mater just as I happen to be in the same towns and a bunch of people end up dead. Sorry.” The last was addressed to a young couple with a pair of small kids clinging to their legs, staring at her in mingled horror and fascination.

“I’m a thriller writer,” she said, waving a hand at them. “Plotting out loud. Don’t mind me.” She showed them a smile that probably looked as ghastly to them as it felt to her and walked on up the street, trying to figure out what a distracted novelist would walk like.

Now you’re scaring the tourists, she told herself in annoyance. If anything’s going to bring down the heat on you it’s that.

She sighed. I’m really trying not to leap to conclusions based on prejudice here, she thought. Prejudice as to her rival’s primary occupation—Ngwenya’s nationality and skin color meant nothing to Annja.

But I keep coming back to the strong suspicion Easy Ngwenya’s a conscienceless little multiple murderess.

I N HER HOTEL ROOM , a modest three-star establishment not far from the Tuileries with only moderately ruinous rates, Annja sat back and ran her hands across her face and back through her heavy chestnut hair, which hung over the shoulders of her black Chasing History’s Monsters crew T-shirt. Her notebook computer lay open before her crossed legs, propped on a pillow so the cooling-fan exhaust wouldn’t scorch her bare thighs.

She had been doing research not on the Golden Elephant—a quick check of her e-mail accounts showed no helpful responses to a number of guarded queries she’d fired off to contacts across the world—but on the Elephant Calf. Princess Easy herself.

She was a concert pianist, world-class gymnast, martial artist, model, scholar. Pot hunter. There was a quote from an interview with the German magazine Spiegel that jumped out at Annja: “To be sure I’m rich and multitalented. But that has nothing to do with me. Those are circumstances. I prefer to focus on my achievements.”

She rocked back on the bed, frowning. She badly wanted to toss that off as spoiled-little-rich-girl arrogance. Arrogant it was. But at base it made sense.

And Elephant Calf Ngwenya had achievements.

She had even been a celebrity as a little girl. National Geographic had done a spread on the official celebration of the birth of a royal first child of one of Africa’s most powerful tribes, and again on the party her father had thrown for her fifth birthday. At the latter Easy foreshadowed things to come, wowing the crowd playing Mozart’s “Eine Kleine Nachtmusik” on a concert grand piano, then ruining her pink party dress and shoes in a fistfight with the eight-year-old son of the ambassador from Mali. She won.

Her father was technically the chief of a tribe of South Africa’s Zulu nation and an outspoken critic of the ANC-dominated government. He accused them of repression and corruption, of leading the populous, resource-rich country down the same nightmare path to ruin as neighboring Zimbabwe. Repeated attempts had been made on his life. In one the then-fifteen-year-old Princess Elephant Calf had killed two would-be assassins with two shots from a colossal colonial-era double-barreled elephant gun. What got widely overlooked in the subsequent furor in the world media was the fact that the recoil from the first shot of the monstrous gun had broken Easy’s shooting hand. Yet she had coolly lined up a second shot and blown a hole through the midriff of an adult male wielding a Kalashnikov.

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