Van Der Hausen swallowed nervously, forcing down the impulse to protest. “Very well.” He knew what to look for. He would stop at the first sign of propagation.
As they descended the hillside, they were once more engulfed in the jungle thicket. Van Der Hausen scanned the vegetation, looking for any signs of new growth. After just a couple of minutes of pushing through the foliage, they reached the edge of the clearing. Though still a good hundred yards from the nearest hut, Van Der Hausen could hear the sounds of daily village life — children playing and babies squalling in their mothers’ arms.
Something was wrong.
“There may have been a malfunction in the aerosol devices,” he said, his tone more hopeful than disappointed. That explanation was preferable to the alternative. Yet, he had placed four of the devices — one at each corner of the building that had been set aside for use as a clinic — and the likelihood that all of them had failed was marginal at best. Which meant that the problem was with the organism itself. “Or possibly some environmental counter-agent that I didn’t account for.”
“I’ve seen enough,” the old man replied. “Rohn, I have need of you elsewhere. Get to Athens as soon as possible. Kenner believes we may be on the verge of a breakthrough.”
“What about him?” Rohn’s eyes flashed toward Van Der Hausen.
“A bad investment. Cash him out.”
Van Der Hausen was quick to protest. “Now wait just a minute. This is a minor setback. The whole point of a large scale test is to work out the—”
The words caught in his throat as he spied the glint of sunlight on the knife in Rohn’s other hand. He brought his own hands forward in an instinctive gesture of self-preservation, even as the blade slashed toward him. He felt something tugging at his shirt, but then Rohn took a step back and sheathed the knife.
Van Der Hausen sagged in relief. Rohn’s display of menace was only a reminder of the stakes in this dangerous game he had decided to play, nothing more, and unnecessary at that. Van Der Hausen hardly needed an incentive. He wanted to know what had gone wrong even more than Rohn and the old man.
A strange sensation hit his gut, a hollow feeling, similar to the experience of a rapid ascent in an elevator. Then he heard a wet sound as something hit the ground at his feet. He realized Rohn’s slash had not been a mere threat after all. Darkness swelled at the edge of his vision, and pain bloomed in his abdomen. As he crumpled to the ground alongside his entrails, it occurred to Van Der Hausen that his worst fears had caught up with him. He was going to die in this horrible place.
2
The black-clad figure scrambled up and over the top of the six-foot high, metal fence, dropping down into an isolated corner of the wooded courtyard behind the Heraklion Archaeological Museum. He crouched there for a moment, concealed in the shadows, where the glow of streetlights did not quite reach. Then he extended a hand in a beckoning gesture.
On the other side of the fence, eighteen-year old Fiona Sigler took a deep breath, glanced around to make sure there were no witnesses and then launched herself into motion. Two seconds later, she was hunkered down in the shadows beside the first intruder, her uncle, George Pierce.
He was not really her uncle, just the best friend of her father, Jack Sigler…who was not really her father either, but such distinctions meant little to someone whose life to date was as screwed up as hers.
“See,” Pierce whispered from behind his black ski-mask. “That wasn’t so hard.”
“Climbing the fence? Piece of cake,” she replied, with just a hint of sarcasm. “It’s the trespassing that’s going to take some getting used to.”
“Don’t worry,” he promised. “It gets easier.”
“And so begins my life of crime.”
Strangely enough, she was enjoying herself. Her heart hammered in her chest. She was terrified that a policeman or security guard would appear from out of nowhere, flashlight in one hand, gun in the other. But the fear was oddly exhilarating, like the thrill of a roller coaster ride. Given the sort of life she had led, a little late-night breaking-and-entering was actually pretty tame. If getting busted in the Greek Isles was the worst thing that happened to her tonight, she could deal. She had been through a lot worse.
They stole across the courtyard to the back of the building. The museum was housed in an unremarkable modern-looking structure at odds with the rest of the picturesque port city. They had spent the last two days in Heraklion, familiarizing themselves with the museum. ‘Scoping the place out,’ was the phrase Pierce had used. Being in the town was like traveling back in time. There were statues and fountains, old fortresses, churches and mosques, crumbling ancient walls sitting side-by-side with modern high-rise buildings.
Fiona thought the museum — which had been designed to withstand the frequent earthquakes that rocked the region — was ugly by comparison to the rest of the city. It had all the charm of a high school campus. But what did she know? Architecture really wasn’t her forte. She was fascinated by languages, and while she was by no means fluent in Greek, she could read the Greek alphabet almost as easily as traditional Latin letters. The best part about the walking tour had been trying to decipher the signs, though surprisingly, many of them were in English.
She wondered which language would be on the signs in the local jail.
Pierce led her to an unmarked metal door, then he knelt before it, illuminating the doorknob with a flashlight clenched between his teeth. The intensely bright LED bulb in the MagTac tactical flashlight was muted to a warm red glow by the addition of a snap-on filter lens. Enough light to work by, but much harder to detect from a distance. Pierce produced a slim black wallet and took out a strip of metal that Fiona recognized as a lock-pick. He held the pick up to the keyhole, but then stopped and raised his eyes to her, mumbling something around the flashlight. “Awn oo eye?”
It was not a foreign language, but she had no trouble interpreting. Want to try?
Hell, yeah, she thought, but she merely shrugged, worried about appearing overly eager to engage in this criminal act, even with his approval. “Sure.”
Pierce passed over the tool set and then moved aside, removing the light from between his teeth and holding it low, to illuminate the lock.
“Tell me about the Herculean Society while you do it,” Pierce said, flashing a grin.
“What? Why?”
“Since tonight is an initiation of sorts, your first field mission, I want to be sure you know what led us here.”
“You want a history report while I pick a lock?”
“Mind and body on separate tasks.” He nodded. “It’s an important skill.”
Fiona inserted the pick. “The Herculean Society was formed in 800 BC, maybe earlier, by Hercules, hence the name. But he wasn’t a demi-god. He was a man who used science to extend his life, tapping ancient secrets — and DNA, long before modern scientists even discovered it — to make himself immortal.”
She raked the pick’s tip along the keyway, feeling the pins move against the springs. She then removed a small tension lever from the kit and placed it in the cylinder, applying gentle but steady pressure, just enough to hold the pins in place as she teased them up, one by one.
“Over time, Hercules witnessed how mankind abused certain powers, and he realized that most of us couldn’t be trusted with certain knowledge, artifacts or creatures. So he created the Society to hide, alter and protect history from humanity, and sometimes humanity from history. And he protected his own existence by exaggerating the truth about his life until it reached mythological proportions.”