Spellman tried to tough it out, glaring and glowering, but his face had gone dead pale and he couldn’t sell it.
Into the troubled silence, Mr. Church said, “I’ve placed several calls to the Oval Office, to the chief of staff, and to the director of the Secret Service. None of those calls were taken and none have been returned. Perhaps in the interest of cooperation and adherence to chartered protocols you might see what you can do about that.”
Before the attorney general could organize a response, Church ended the call. He finished his cookie, sipped some water, and sighed.
Auntie kicked the desk. “What in the Technicolor hell is going on with that clown college in D.C.?”
Instead of addressing the question, Church said, “You spoke highly of Captain Ledger.”
She scowled. “Well… he may be a mouth-breathing Neanderthal, but for something like this, he’s one of us.”
“Even so, Auntie, you were effusive in your praise. Did it hurt?”
“Bite me,” she snarled.
INTERLUDE FIVE
Valen saw the woman and knew it was her right away. Dr. Marguerite Beaufort was a French national who had, according to her Facebook page, “grown up all over the world.” The daughter, granddaughter, and great-granddaughter of scholars, she had an air of bookishness and introspection that put a toe across the introversion line. She was a pretty and well-dressed thirty-something who sparkled with intelligence.
“Dr. Beaufort,” he said, offering his hand as he approached the table.
“Mr. Oruraka,” she said, “what a pleasure to meet you.” Her hand was cool, strong, and dry.
“It’s Valen,” he said as he sat across from her. “May I call you Marguerite?”
“Oh, please do.”
After the waiter came to take their order and brought wine for her and an Armorik French single malt for him, she said, “I was rather surprised to get your e-mail. How did you know about me? And how did you know I was here in Lucca?”
“You’re an academic, Marguerite,” he said, “and academics are always tethered to their universities. I played that game long enough to know how to find who I wanted.”
She nodded. “I looked you up, of course. Geology and seismology, with a minor in structural engineering. Are you planning on building a dam?”
Archaeologists were often brought in during large-scale construction to assess the cultural or historical significance of items uncovered during excavation. However, Valen shook his head.
“No,” he said. “I’m working on a very special project, and one that, I’m afraid, comes with a rather ponderous stack of nondisclosure agreements. Are… you familiar with NDAs?”
Marguerite sipped her wine and rolled her eyes. “I’ve written a mountain of grant proposals. So, yes.”
“Yes. This is a little different than that.” He sipped his whiskey. “There are a few things I can share with you before asking you to sign an NDA. Call them ‘bait.’ Tell me, have you ever heard of Lemurian crystal?”
That made her lean back, and she sipped more wine as she considered him. “That depends on what you mean.”
“Tell me what you think I mean.”
She smiled. “Well, first off, it’s not Lemurian. Lemuria was part of a theory postulated by the nineteenth-century Darwinian taxonomist Ernst Haeckel, as a way of explaining some anomalies in biogeography — the natural spread of animal species. He theorized that Lemuria was a land bridge that connected existing land masses in the Indian Ocean but which has since been submerged. But that has been entirely discredited by modern theories of plate tectonics. Unfortunately, the Theosophists of his day grabbed onto the idea because that lot love the possibility of lost civilizations, especially those that leave no artifacts to prove or, more significantly, disprove their wild claims. It’s no different than Atlantis or—”
“Okay, you can stop right there,” said Valen. “Let me shift my question. Tell me something about the Roman festival of Lemuria.”
Marguerite shrugged. “That was real. It was an important festival in which specific rites were performed to exorcise the lemures, the evil and restless dead who haunted their homes. During the rise of Christianity, Pope Boniface IV consecrated the Pantheon in Rome to the Virgin Mary and all of the Christian martyrs, effectively supplanting the old religious holiday with a new one.”
Valen smiled. “Now tell me why I asked about that celebration?”
“Well, what most people do not know, Valen,” she said, “is that the nickname of Lemurian quartz is not tied to a faux lost continent, but to that old Roman feast. At least when they refer to the green variety of Lemurian quartz. The white quartz is a label used by the New Age crowd, and actually is tied to their belief in an actual island nation of Lemuria.” She waved her hand dismissively. “For what we’re talking about, people in Rome would use pieces of rare green quartz to ward off the evil spirits. They made small fetishes from it in the shape of weapons — swords, knives, arrows, cudgels — and placed them in their homes for a full day, while gathering together in tents or lean-tos in the streets. On 13 May they would send the bravest and purest person from each town or village to go from house to house and collect the quartz weapons. These would be wrapped in blessed cloth and buried in a lead box in a place known only to the priests, safe until the following year.”
Valen finished his whiskey and signaled the waiter for a refill. While he waited, he took the wine bottle from the table and poured more for Marguerite.
“What would you say if I told you that it is my belief that many of these fetish weapons were made from quartz mined, not in Rome, but elsewhere?”
She shrugged. “I read something to that effect. Some were found hidden in a mine near Santorini, which suggests that the Romans may have borrowed the practice of making such fetishes from an older culture, Greek or possibly Minoan ruins.”
“I know. I’ve read that paper,” said Valen. “But the mine I’m talking about is not in that region.”
“Then where?”
Valen sat back, sipped his whiskey, and smiled. “That’s where the nondisclosure agreement comes in.”
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
They descended into a green hell. Harry was three steps behind Violin, wishing he was ten thousand miles away from where they were going.
Once they were below the level of the floor it was immediately apparent that this was not some cramped hidden chamber, or even a roomy basement. No, the stairs zigzagged down out of sight, and Harry reckoned that it was forty or fifty feet to the floor.