Spies, Lies & Naked Thighs

But no treasure lies hidden here. None.

Voices of a different nature play over and over in my head, their rich timbre giving me a headache, ominous voices commanding attention, telling me I’m a fool. Robbers long ago ravished whatever artifacts were buried here, but it could have been a royal tomb. The elaborate wall drawings and statuary decorating the antechamber attest to my theory. I have to admit to a major disappointment taking up residence in my mental adobe, but that doesn’t stop me from continuing my search.

Determined to validate the objects I’ve unearthed, my crew and I set to work, and within a few days, I’ve recovered several broken amphoras and gathered up the pieces of human bones scattered around the floor of the chamber and in a pile against a wall. I’ve found no jewelry fashioned of silver, gold or lapis lazuli, though I do recover a lump of iron, possibly from a meteorite, as well as ceramic vessels, some containing animal bones that may have been part of funerary animal offerings. Still, it’s a fascinating discovery, though disappointing not to have found any intact human remains or evidence the knights stopped here on their journey homeward. No doubt the tomb was plundered long before I tumbled down the sinkhole.

Yet still I hear the voices.

I’m a stubborn woman to the point of obsession when it comes to my work, treating every excavation like a crime scene, making certain my crew wears white hospital masks to keep the dust out of their lungs, plastic gloves to examine the pieces, and I never give up. Never. I go over every inch of that vault, the beam of my flashlight painting white streaks of sheer light from end to end, like a painter illuminating a celestial canvas, and somehow I miss it: a faint square about three feet in size outlined on the wall painting and nearly invisible to the naked eye. I would never have found it if I hadn’t been curious about the stones embedded in the faded mosaic of a beautiful woman in a swirling chemise, her hand outstretched and beckoning, as if calling out to me.

“Ahmed!” I call out. “Come quickly!” My team leader leaves his work gathering up pottery and hurries over to where I shine the flashlight on the wall. “What do you think of her?”

He nods. “Beautiful lady. Like you, Missy Breezy.”

I smile at his compliment, then point to the faint square outlined with my flashlight. “Look closer. Do you think that could be a door?”

He flicks on his flashlight and the double beams focusing on the spot confirm what I believe. “Yes. Another room?”

“Let’s find out.”

He calls for two men to help us, and, using a crowbar, we pry open the small door. It moves easily, which surprises me, as if it’s on a track. I train my flashlight beam through the wide fissure, Ahmed and his two workers peering over my shoulder and chatting with excitement. We all gasp at the same moment. The sight of a small side chamber or annex beyond makes me weak at my knees; the sight of two human skeletons lying side by side on the floor makes me lean closer, hoping to hear the whispers. Soft at first, then louder, the sounds lift me until I’m virtually beside myself with anticipation.

“This may be what I’m looking for, Ahmed,” I say in a soft voice so as not to disturb the dead. “Follow me.”

“I go anywhere with you, Missy Breezy,” he says with-out hesitation, then he adds with a catch in his voice, “You save my son.”

I nod, smiling, then with Ahmed behind me, I crawl through the opening to the other side. I shine my flashlight on remnants of clothing, chain mail from armor and a helmet that completely covers the face with a faded heraldry inscribed on it that I can’t identify. Thirteenth-century Crusaders wore such helmets, I tell Ahmed. At the same time, a story I read when I was a teen races through my mind, bringing up the same excitement I knew when I’d sneak off to read stories of history and lore, mummies and queens. My sister, Peyton, would hide my books, then dare me to tag along with her and her friends. I couldn’t. She never understood I felt different from other girls and I wasn’t interested in gossip and shopping. I wanted to travel to exotic places and break bread with the past to taste it, to embrace it and to understand it.

Now I’ve found my dream.

I hear Ahmed draw in his breath. “May Allah be praised, we’ve found a secret room.”

“We’re not the first to discover it. Look.” I shine my light on the smaller skull, most likely female, covered with dirt and deteriorating cloth fragments. She wears a necklace with fine, round, dark gray objects. With black dust billowing up around me every time I move a piece of the female skeleton, I tap on the round objects, one at a time, their tinny sound echoing in the chamber like footsteps marching back through the centuries. “Hand me a brush, Ahmed. These pieces might be silver.”

Not taking his eyes off the skeleton, he draws a paintbrush from his pocket and hands it to me. I kneel down beside the female skeleton and, with a gentle touch as if I were opening a book with thin, delicate pages, I begin dusting the dirt away. Little by little, I see glints of color.

“It’s gold, Ahmed.” I hold in my hand a gold necklace and a gold headband with thin layers of gold covering her features in the shape of a grape leaf. “That doesn’t make sense,” I ponder out loud. “If the grave robbers took everything of value, then why didn’t they take the gold jewelry off this woman? Unless—”

She took refuge in here years, centuries afterward, I finish in silence. Who was she? What were her last thoughts before death claimed her? A tightness grips my chest and the weight of my responsibility to preserve this woman’s final moments becomes real to me. I’m determined to tell her story.

“Over here, Missy Breezy!”

“Have you found something, Ahmed?”

He speaks as if he’s reciting a prayer. “Yes.”

I spin around to see him moving his flashlight jerkily over a moon-faced object lying on a small slab. It looks like a mask, the glimmer of azure then deep red then green flickering ever so brief ly in the demanding glare of his light, as if unwilling to wake up from their somnolent centuries-long sleep.

What can it be? I flip through the files in my mental catalog, bringing up what I can remember about lost Byzantine artifacts, many known to archaeologists because they’re mentioned in ancient texts or painted on tapestries and mosaics. I remember being enchanted by the story of a gold mask that belonged to an empress, a gift from her husband that was stolen from her tomb during the Crusades.

Do I dare dream this mask can lead me back centuries to the time of the cradle of civilization and give me the opportunity to pad out the bones of a beautiful courtesan who became an empress? And to recover a treasure taken from the famed city of Constantinople and lost for a thousand years?

“Hold my flashlight,” I say, handing it to him. “And keep it pointed on the mask while I remove the dirt.”

Using the paintbrush, I wipe away the layers of centuries with a reverence I’ve never felt before settling into my bones. I revel in the even flow of my movements, experiencing an emotional high, and though I’m involved in a physical act, I have no feeling in my fingers, as if they’re moving without effort. The tremendous power of my belief presses me to continue, enlightening me, until I become one with the object, my own self vanishing into the depth of the mask’s rich history. Even before the first golden sparkle warms the cold, damp vault with its shine, I know what it is.

A gold mask crafted in the likeness of this powerful woman and set with pearls, rubies, sapphires and emeralds mounted in gold, which hung in festoons from her temples to her breasts. A treasure worth untold millions.

The Mask of Darkma.

8

Present day

I start to shiver and light perspiration dribbles over my lips. Whatever the Russian drugged me with, I can’t shake it. It’s pulling me back and forth in a replay of events that haunt me. I’ve no doubt finding the Mask of Darkma was the beginning of my ascent into hell, a spiraling of events I couldn’t control, but that doesn’t lessen the fear I have of my present predicament. Where am I?

I detect a steady shaking under my body, and is that an AC vent blowing cool air in my face? I touch my hair, damp and sticking to my cheeks. My beaded black wig is gone. A sharp pain bounces from my head to my shoulders down to my pubic area. Without hesitation, my hand shoots down to my crotch to soothe the nagging ache in my groin. I hesitate when my long nails catch on a smooth fabric covering my legs, my hips. I tug on it. What’s this? I’m wearing wide jersey pants? And a T-shirt? I assume the clothes are courtesy of whoever brought me here. I’m tempted to bend my knees, kick my feet in frustration, but a more pressing need to know where I am and what happened gnaws at me. I shift my weight on the hard bunk beneath my butt as the wall—

Vibrates? Before I can drag open my eyes to survey my surroundings, my ears pop and a loud whoosh shakes me.

I don’t move. Take slow, deep breaths. Focus.

I know where I am, but I can’t believe it.

I’m on a train.

I always feel the pressure in my ears when another train passes the opposite way at a high speed. We must be traveling more than a hundred and fifty, sixty miles an hour. Train à Grande Vitesse, a high-speed train. I didn’t realize it before because I don’t hear the usual clickety-clack as the train wheels go over the tracks. The TGV rails are longer and fit close together between the joints.

So I’m on a train, the prospect of which intrigues me.

But where am I going? And who is the man laughing?

What the hell happened to me?

“He’s dead,” I hear him say. Who’s dead? He must be speaking into a cell phone, or so I assume. He can’t be talking to me.

“No, I got there too late,” he continues, hesitating, then: “Yes, he was alone.”

Deep baritone, slight accent. Sexy. Listening to him speak, it’s as if I’m hearing an echo, spreading out in waves to various parts of my body and making me shiver. Who is he?

I open my eyes only far enough so I can see him. A soft butter glow from an overhead light illuminates his broad shoulders emphasized by a white T-shirt. His back is to me, his black-crow haircut coming to a point in a sharp V at the base of his neck. And do I see a gun stuffed into the waistband of his jeans? He’s standing and looking out the train window. I can see his face in the ref lection in the window, though not clear enough to make a positive ID. The glass glimmers an unholy blackness, as if this denizen of the night has cloaked the train in darkness to hide his nefarious plans. Do those plans include me?

I hear him take a breath.

“MI6 agents were waiting for him at the hotel.” Pause. “How the hell do I know? Didn’t you say he had connections to an insurgent group based in London?” He clears his throat. “His neck was broken—”

I flinch. Now I recognize that voice and that face.

The one-eyed Jack.

Edgy, I lift my head up to get a better look at him. Tall, masculine stance with his legs spread wide apart, his gelled black hair seems to vibrate and spark, as if electricity instead of blood runs through his veins. I tingle when I see a black band stretching in a diagonal across the back of his head. An eye patch. It’s him, all right.

I dig my fingers into the thin red-and-white-plaid blanket underneath me. His words disturb me. He killed the Russian and he’s spoofing his boss and putting the blame on the British secret service.

Liar.

Why is he doing that? And where does this stud get off ruining my operation? He makes me angry in a way that has nothing to do with surveillance or intelligence. I should smother him with my nude breasts over his face. Why not? It only takes four minutes for a mark to suffocate, though more than one subject has died with a smile on his face and a hard-on in his pants when I take him down. I’ll make this one-eyed Jack wish he never met up with me.

“—no money on him,” he says. “They picked him clean.”

I claw my nails over the thin blanket, ripping it. Like hell they did. I left ten thousand dollars stacked on the table in that hotel room. Now I get it. He stole my money. Okay, so the dead presidents belong to the Bureau, but it’ll come out of my salary if I don’t get it back. The government doesn’t cut me any slack when it comes to the disbursement of payout cash. TA special agents have a rep for dipping their long nails into the money pot for “extra” expenses. Not me. I’m not in this business for money. And I don’t like killing. I only kill professionals and only then when my butt is on the line.

“Yes, I understand, a car will be waiting for me. Where?” Pause. “Got it. Ciao.”

Ciao? He spoke to me in German, now this Italian BS. Who’s he talking to? Why didn’t he kill me? As if I don’t know. Pussy galore is the motto for this thief in tight jeans. I smile. From this angle, the man’s got an ass packed tighter than a bag of cement. Sweet.

I turn my head and reach for my choker. My microphone. It’s gone. My rings, bracelets, all gone. Where’s my backup, anyway? Screwing in the van, I bet, when they should be helping me. If they’re dipping their dicks into a Swiss miss, how are they going to find me? I can’t put up a signal. As if I’m going to leave a chalk mark on a telephone pole when I’m streaking through the countryside at high speed.

I close my eyes. My hands shake and my stomach is in revolt, the taste of bile spurting up my throat and leaving a foul taste in my mouth. I’ve got to concentrate on coming up with a plan. I have no idea where I’m going, who this jerk with the black eye patch is or how I’m going to explain to Rork the Russian is dead.

I do know the one-eyed Jack is armed. And dangerous. And yes, I could kill him now. Fast, easy. Sure, he’s handsome and built like a superman, but I feel nothing for him. I must adhere to my code of owing no allegiance to anything but getting the job done. I refuse to back down, yet I need to vet my chances of success in view of my less-than-perfect situation. Lying horizontal on a hard bunk, faintly aware of a nagging headache dulling my brain as well as my sluggish motor skills, I consider for a moment whether I’m making a mistake. For a reason known only to him, the one-eyed Jack saved my life.

A sensual heat wiggles through me, down to my toes, warming my body in a tiny orgasm for the briefest of moments. I can’t help but bask in that feeling, though I can’t forget or ignore the fact that sexual attraction played a part in his decision to keep me alive. Does he want to make love to me? The reason a male is drawn to a woman is different in every man. No one physical attribute, mental awakening, scent or touch is common to all experiences, for each woman is unique. Though the one-eyed Jack may find my dominatrix persona a challenge to his alpha-male personality, I have reason to believe he’ll kill me after he takes me to his bed.

Should I surrender my womanly anxiety and wait to see what happens? Let go of my controlling thoughts and be aware of a different emotion revving up my power? Desire for sexual stimulation. I’ve been too long without the extreme pleasure a man’s touch can give me, whether he’s caressing the back of my neck or arousing me with a probing finger. I yearn to bathe in the essence of his touch, my sexual energy revitalized in the smell and taste of him, our bodies pressed against each other, his hands playing with my breasts.

I make my decision. The one-eyed Jack is key to my plan. I can’t wait for him to make his move. It’s imperative I find out why he killed the Russian.

With a smile, I run my gaze up and down his body, assessing his strength. His caramel-tanned skin has a satin sheen emphasizing his bulging arms. Strong. I can handle him. I’m not only trained in the art of seduction but also the martial arts. I’ll take him down and then I’ll see if he’s man enough to endure what I have planned for him.

And I know exactly how to do it.

Keeping so still hardly a puff of air escapes my lips, I open my eyes and survey the sleeper compartment, my gaze darting from corner to corner in the small single-berth room. I see a washbasin, brown Formica paneling and luggage racks attached to the walls. His backpack is confined in the metal luggage frame overhead. I twist my head from side to side, noting a door behind me with the latch locked. Good. No one will disturb us.

Squinting through the drips of perspiration streaking down my face, I reach down to my waist and my fingers wrap around my hemp rope. I don’t have more than a few seconds to overcome him, then restrict his movements with my two-meter-long rope. It won’t be easy. He’s a big guy.

I pull up my ki, my energy. Spiritual, mental and physical all work together to give me the accuracy I need to strike. Where? The back of his neck at the base of his skull is good, or the side of his neck at the carotid artery. Or each of his collarbones.

Hurry up. Pick a spot. If I have to strike twice, I may not get the chance.

I’ll already be dead.

He clips his cell phone to his belt and, with his back still to me, he reaches up to the luggage rack to open his backpack.

Now’s my chance.

I pull myself up to my knees on the hard bunk, then stand up so slowly I’m in slo-mo. Assuming a fighting stance in my thigh-high boots, I turn my left side forward, bending my knees so I can move quickly and easily, keeping my head and shoulders back to maintain my center of gravity. I flatten out my hand, keeping my thumb against it, my wrist straight as I raise up my hand toward my left ear and—

Before I make my move, the train whistle blows as another TGV passes us. Whooosh! The train jolts sharply, catching us both off guard, though lucky for me he braces himself against the luggage rack to keep the backpack from slamming to the floor. At the same time, gravity shifts under me and I nearly lose my balance.

Quick, strike.

Before he turns around, I bring my hand down at a forty-five-degree angle, clubbing him against the back of his neck with the edge of my hand. Perfect. He grunts loudly before he drops to the floor, unconscious.

I jump off the bunk and grab his gun, his cell phone, and stuff them into my waistband. Bending down, I check the pulse on the side of his neck. Strong, steady beat. He’s alive. I grin. Seeing him helpless and at my mercy ignites a delicious desire in me that tempts me to reach into my sexual arsenal, a longing to take this relationship to the next level. I turn him over and take a long, hard look at the bulge between his legs, aching to get my finger on his trigger. My eyes widen. Even unconscious, he carries a big stick. My question is, does he know how to use it?

I trace my finger over the dark stubble running down his cheek. Prickly hairs sting the pads of my fingers, but I don’t stop. I want to memorize the sculpted planes of his face. His sweat anoints my fingers and dribbles of perspiration edge along his black eye patch, tempting me to peek under it. I don’t. Not now. I want to see the surprise in his other eye when I do.

A sexual longing races down to my groin, making me hot. He’s mine to do with as I please. I run my fingers over his chest, my black nails ripping his T-shirt. He’s sweating, his wet shirt clinging to his broad chest; even the spiked black hair on the top of his head droops. I inhale his now-familiar scent. Only one way to cool him off.

Strip him naked.

9

I like to play sex games with the mark. It turns me on, the anticipation growing until I can hardly bear it and he’s pushed to the limit of his endurance. Sensory deprivation is the game I enjoy the most since it involves challenging my favorite sexual taboo: bondage. The shrink at TA headquarters says it’s because I have a distrust of men and I want to be in control. I’m not denying that. Before I became a TA agent, I had limited experience with sex, having spent much of my adult life studying and working for my degree. Yet I hungered for a man’s touch. I didn’t see why the male species didn’t understand women like sex, need sex, and we can give as well as receive.

On the other hand, I have to take some of the blame for my failure to maintain a lasting relationship. For years, I kept my emotions pent-up inside me, preferring instead to fan-tasize about my sexual desires rather than acting upon them. I was a loner in school and uncomfortable with boys’ comments about my body. How many times did I wish I had a boyfriend holding me in his arms, his hands sliding down my jeans, hearing him moan when he realized I wasn’t wearing panties, his fingers demanding entry into me? No one knew I fantasized about being a Frankish captive in a harim, the Arabic word meaning forbidden. A harem.

To feed my fantasy, I ravished book after book about the walled seraglio of the Caliphate, wildly romantic stories like the tale of a Persian entrepreneur who bought captives from the slave traders coming down from the Turkish border, how he trained the girls in the arts, clothed them in diaphanous, amber-scented gowns and lined their eyes with black kohl, sparkling with powdered pearls. Then he sold the most beautiful, the most talented girls to the Caliph for more than the equivalent of two prized racehorses.

No wonder I enhanced the fantasy when I found the Mask of Darkma and formed my own theory about what happened in the ancient vault. They say the past and the present are intermingled in the thoughts of those who write history. I could think of nothing but the past and what happened to the fleeing lovers. Their fear, confusion, relief, then acceptance of their fate.

The Turks are attacking, my lord.

Quick, woman, we must hide.

Down there, my liege, in the open vault.

You’re not frightened?

Not as long as I’m with you.

I found comfort in their whispers, knowing I’d unearthed not only the physical evidence of the existence of this brave knight and the woman he bedded, but the spiritual fulfillment of their quest.

I can still remember the thrill I felt racing through me when I held the mask in my hands. Crouching down on my hands and knees in a pile of dirt, I closed my eyes and I could hear the clanging swords echoing in my ears, men shouting battle cries, horses neighing, the Turks striking along the knights’ flanks, separating them from their foot soldiers, then knocking them off their horses covered in bright silk trappings and attacking them in their heavy mail armor.

And nearby the women watched and waited, their wails desperate, their hearts breaking, their tears flowing.

All save one.

A beautiful woman on horseback raced up behind her knight, screaming when she saw the horse and rider go down in a splay of sand, his saddle emptied. Who was she? Most likely, a consort. Spaniards took their women on campaigns, as did the French; even the sultan bade women from his harem ride with him. But this woman was different. She showed courage, focus and commitment. In the middle of the flaying, hacking and stabbing, she tended to her knight’s wound, then she grabbed his sword and on and on she fought beside her lover like a creature possessed, remembering the eve before battle, how her body had a will of its own when she removed her chemise in his tent and let it drop to the ground, both excited and at the same time eager to lie with her lord, how she cried out when he pressed into her soft flesh. I’ll never leave you, she swore, even when he insisted she mount his horse and save herself. She refused and together they escaped through the Roman ruins before taking refuge together in a vault left open by grave robbers when—