King's Crusade (Seventeen) Read online

  Alexa leapt onto an adjacent balustrade and climbed along a parallel path. She reached the flat terrace at the top of the edifice seconds later.

  The monk had already cleared the gap to the next apartment complex. She went after him.

  The chase was silent but for the sound of their breathing and their rapid footsteps. They dropped and climbed across the ice-covered rooftop landscape of the city, crossing buildings, leaping over shadowy alleyways, and dancing along the edges of balconies. All the while, Alexa could not shake the strange feeling that the monk was toying with her. She smiled grimly and gathered speed.

  The distance between them shrank.

  She was a dozen feet behind him when he suddenly disappeared. Alexa rocked to a standstill on the edge of a fifty-foot drop and stared down. The monk had vanished. She looked up and scanned the shadows of the surrounding rooftops. Although her every instinct told her he was close by, the saffron-robed figure was nowhere to be seen.

  She gazed thoughtfully at the lights along the Bosphorus while her heartbeat slowed down. Finally, she turned and made her way back to Istiklal.

  Jackson was sitting on the hood of the Taurus when she reached the side street where she had parked the car. His body was rigid and his eyes were dark.

  ‘Are we done here?’ he asked.

  Alexa got in the car wordlessly. He joined her and slammed the passenger door forcefully. They sat and stared at the avenue a hundred feet ahead.

  The busy crowd from earlier had scattered. The majority of the pedestrians had shifted a safe distance from the scenes of the incidents; a morbidly curious few had moved closer to get a better view of the action. Sirens blared and lights flashed against the frontage of buildings as patrol cars and ambulances raced into the neighborhood.

  ‘If Reznak and you want my help beyond this, we’re gonna have to lay down some ground rules,’ said Jackson in a low, flat voice. ‘No more secrets—or I walk.’

  Alexa remained silent. It was the first time she had heard genuine anger in Jackson’s voice. This was hardly a surprise after what he had just experienced. Still, it troubled her.

  She switched the engine on and pulled away from the curb. After heading down the hill and crossing the Galata Bridge, she turned left toward Seraglio Point. Moments later, she stopped the Taurus on the seafront next to a lighthouse beyond the defensive sea walls that once protected Istanbul and Topkapi Palace. Grabbing the satellite phone from her bag, she climbed out of the car and crossed the road to the promenade that looked out over the bay. At this late hour, the concrete walkway was practically deserted.

  Jackson got out of the Taurus and leaned against the hood while she made the call.

  ‘It’s Alexa,’ she said bluntly when Reznak answered.

  ‘What’s wrong?’ said her godfather tensely at her tone.

  She gave him a brief rundown of the events of the last twenty-four hours, starting with the attack in Port Said and ending with her chase of the monk. Now that the excitement of the recent fight had abated, the gravity of the situation impressed itself upon her once more.

  ‘Do you have a name for this…sect?’ Reznak asked after she finished her account.

  ‘No. Jackson’s friend didn’t know either, nor do the Crovir techs,’ said Alexa. ‘The only thing we can be confident of is the Rose Croix connection.’ A ferryboat drifted past slowly less than half a mile from where she stood, its thrusters churning the waters of the Sea of Marmara. A phosphorescent glow tipped the waves in its wake. It started to snow heavily.

  ‘I’ve come across a few of these esoteric societies in my time,’ said Reznak. ‘Some of their members were not the most...balanced individuals I have ever met.’

  ‘Did you ever encounter one with associations with the immortal societies?’

  ‘No,’ said Reznak firmly. ‘That I can be certain of.’

  She stared into the night and recalled cold gray eyes and an inscrutable face. ‘The red-haired man I fought an hour ago knew I was an immortal.’

  ‘He won’t be the first or last human who is aware of the existence of our races,’ said her godfather steadily.

  ‘And the monk?’

  Static travelled down the line. ‘Do you think he meant you harm?’ asked Reznak.

  Alexa pondered the question for silent seconds. ‘No,’ she replied. ‘I don’t believe he’s part of the group who raided the tombs either.’

  ‘Hmm,’ murmured Reznak. ‘I wonder—’ He lapsed into silence.

  ‘Is there something you’re not telling me?’ she asked in clipped tones.

  ‘I think I might know who the monk is,’ said Reznak in an enigmatic voice. ‘I’ll have to look into it further.’

  She glanced across the street to where Jackson was leaning against the hire car. She could feel the heat of his gaze on her face. ‘We have a problem,’ she said quietly into the mouthpiece. ‘Jackson saw the immortal I killed rise again. He won’t cooperate unless we tell him the truth.’

  Reznak’s breathing froze at the other end of the line. ‘Damn it,’ her godfather muttered, exhaling sharply. ‘You’re certain he won’t buy—’

  ‘He’s too smart for that,’ she interrupted brusquely.

  ‘What do you want to do?’ said Reznak after several seconds.

  Alexa was startled by his words. ‘You’re happy to leave this decision to me?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Reznak. He sighed. ‘Frankly, I wish we could do without the man, but I fear we’re going to need his skills even more in the coming days.’

  She stared blindly at the falling snow. ‘I agree,’ she said slowly. There was no denying that Jackson’s presence was crucial to her mission. He was better than any database system she had ever had access to and was an expert hacker to boot.

  ‘But bear this in mind,’ said Reznak in a warning tone. ‘If you do decide to tell him about us, he will have to keep it a secret for the rest of his life.’ Her godfather paused. ‘You more than anyone know the potential ramifications if he doesn’t. The Crovirs do not forgive easily.’

  Alexa mulled over his words silently. ‘Will you talk to the First Council?’ she asked finally. ‘This recent incident exceeds the remit of the Immortal Culture and History Section.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Reznak. Another sigh left his lips. ‘I have no choice, though I sorely wish I did. We’re about to appoint a permanent Head of the Order of Crovir Hunters. I guess now is as good a time as any to broach the subject.’

  She frowned at this latest news. ‘Is this likely to affect the mission?’

  ‘No,’ said Reznak adamantly. ‘It’s in our interest to secure those tombs.’

  Her gaze shifted to the dark waters washing onto the rocky shore fifty feet away. ‘Have you got anything on Dragov?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Reznak. ‘A man matching the description you gave was spotted in Budapest and Rome in the last month. I have people on the ground making enquiries.’

  Alexa digested this information thoughtfully. ‘Budapest is closer,’ she murmured absent-mindedly.

  She felt the shift in Reznak’s mood. ‘Stay put,’ her godfather said curtly. ‘I’ll have more information in the next few hours. In the meantime, you need to lie low.’ He ended the call.

  She lowered the phone and studied the white curtain of sleet for a moment before walking back to the car.

  ‘Well?’ said Jackson, raising his eyebrows. Snow had melted in his hair and soaked through his clothes.

  She glanced at his injured arm. ‘We need to see to that.’

  Chapter Twelve

  Alexa drove to a small hotel in the Sultanahmet district of Istanbul and booked them into a suite. The receptionist overlooked their unkempt attire and smiled diplomatically while he took down the details of the fake passports.

  Jackson whistled
appreciatively when they entered the room. He crossed the polished parquet floor and dropped onto a beautiful, silk-upholstered, gilded chair. The duffel bag thudded dully to the ground next to his feet. A sigh left his lips and he closed his eyes.

  Alexa locked the door and closed the curtains on the French doors and windows that overlooked the old city. She removed her medical kit from her bag and turned to Jackson. ‘Strip,’ she said.

  His eyes snapped open. ‘Huh?’ His surprised gaze darted to the king-sized bed that dominated the room before focusing on her face.

  ‘Your wound. I need to examine it,’ she said steadily.

  ‘Oh.’ A faint look of what might have been disappointment flitted across his features. He shrugged out of his jacket and unbuttoned his shirt. She pulled a bed end stool across to the chair.

  The bullet had carved a gash in the flesh of his outer arm. He would not need any stitches. She set about cleaning the injury quickly and efficiently.

  A faint hiss escaped Jackson’s lips when she dabbed the wound with an antiseptic preparation. His breath washed over her cheek, making her skin tingle. She tensed slightly and tried to ignore the dusting of freckles across his shoulder.

  ‘Thanks,’ he murmured when she finished applying the dressing.

  Alexa looked up. His face was inches from hers. The blue eyes had darkened to cobalt. His eyelids lowered as his gaze dropped to her mouth.

  A hot, unfamiliar feeling uncoiled inside her chest. She stood and strode to the bed.

  ‘You should be fine in a few days,’ she said, her back to him while she put away her kit. She thought she heard him sigh.

  ‘What did you and Reznak talk about?’ he asked. ‘I hope you told him I’m not gonna play ball until you guys come clean about whatever it is you’re so determined to hide from me.’ His tone hardened on his last words.

  Alexa turned and watched him guardedly. She had played out this conversation several times in her head during the drive to the hotel.

  A crucial aspect of all the assignments she had ever undertaken for the Crovir Councils had been to keep the existence of immortals a secret from the eyes of ordinary humans. Deliberately having to expose the reality of her race was a novel and disturbing experience for her.

  Yet, as she was coming to realize, Jackson was no ordinary human. He possessed one of the most brilliant minds she had ever encountered in her three centuries of existence to date.

  He was also one of a handful of people who had ever managed to elicit an emotional response from her.

  With that in mind, she walked to the French doors and moved one of the curtains aside slightly. Golden light from the Ottoman mosque on the other side of the road spilled across the darkness outside. ‘What were you looking for when Reznak sacked you from his project in ancient Mesopotamia ten years ago?’ she asked.

  Jackson grunted. ‘He told you about that, huh?’

  ‘Yes.’ She turned to stare at him.

  He ran his fingers through his hair. ‘I always felt there was something off about Reznak and the organization that financed that dig,’ he said finally. ‘I can’t be more specific about what triggered my initial suspicions. Call it a gut instinct if you must,’ he added with a shrug. ‘I didn’t find much at the time. Reznak’s security people were pretty sharp. The only thing I came up with was that this organization had a major base somewhere in east Germany.’

  Alexa kept her expression neutral. The Harvard professor had come unerringly close to the truth; the headquarters of the Crovir First Council was in Dresden. She replayed his words in her mind. ‘You didn’t find much at the time? Does that mean you’ve uncovered more since?’

  Jackson did not reply immediately. Instead, he reached inside his duffel bag and took out a book. A black and white photograph fell out from between the pages and landed on the parquet floor. He picked it up and handed it to her.

  She froze when she saw the picture.

  The photograph had been taken on an archaeological site in ancient Numidia, or what was now modern Algeria, in North Africa. Two Caucasian men stood talking animatedly in the foreground next to a large excavated pit; from their expressions, they had probably been unaware that they were being photographed. Several dark-skinned laborers were visible in the trench behind them. A carefully laid collection of pottery sat on the dusty ground next to their feet.

  The two white men wore Norfolk jackets over breeches and sturdy boots. One of the bridges of the city of Constantine rose against a cloudless sky behind them. The figure on the left was Reznak.

  ‘That dig took place in 1895,’ said Jackson. ‘I checked.’

  Alexa’s gaze shifted from the picture. ‘Where did you get this?’ she asked stonily. She was certain Reznak did not know of the existence of the photograph. Immortals were notoriously camera shy in the presence of humans.

  Jackson leaned against the wall next to the French doors. ‘I came across it five years ago, when I was going through some stuff one of my professors left to me in his will,’ he said. ‘Needless to say, I was stunned when I saw it. I tried to pass it off as a striking resemblance or one of life’s little coincidences, but I got curious after a while. All my efforts to solve the mystery of that photograph were in vain. I hit so many obstacles and dead ends, it felt as if a higher authority was at play behind the scenes and was determined to stop me at every turn.’ The corners of his mouth tilted in a wry smile. ‘The Dean of the Faculty even walked into my office one day and asked me to stop whatever private research project I had going on the side, or else he’d show me the door.’ His expression sobered. ‘I don’t think he was kidding. Strange thing was, I hadn’t told anybody what I was doing at the time.’

  Alexa remained quiet. What Jackson had just described fitted the modus operandi of the Crovir operatives whose task it was to preserve the anonymity of the immortals.

  ‘After a while, I stopped that line of questioning: I didn’t want to lose my job. Instead, I decided to go and look in a place where no one could interfere with my research, because the facts would be indelibly carved in stone.’ He gazed at her unwaveringly. ‘I turned to the past.’

  She felt her scalp prickle at his words.

  ‘Did you know that I majored in history at Princeton?’ he continued, unaware of the chilling effect his words had on her. ‘Funny thing, history. Some take it as an art, others consider it a science. I view it as both. What dawned on me at the time I was doing my dissertation were certain…irregularities that cropped up at various points in the historical timeline of the world. At that stage in my career, I wasn’t intrigued enough to pursue the matter further; anthropology was fast becoming my main interest. When I found that photograph, something told me to go take a closer look at the history books.’

  Jackson’s face became inscrutable. ‘It took me a while to figure it out. When I did, I was so dumbstruck by my findings, I went and drank myself into a stupor for two days. You see,’ he said, staring at her with such an intense look his eyes turned cobalt blue again, ‘what I discovered were patterns. They were faint and carefully hidden within the plethora of records and archives, but nevertheless there. To put it simply, it seemed to me that at every major turning point in human history, events occurred that were never completely or satisfactorily explained. What really happened to the last king of the Assyrians? How did Alexander the Great die? How could the son of a Mongol chief become the ruler of one of the largest empires in the world? These inconsistencies were strangely repetitive and seemed to coincide with the rise and fall of great leaders. It was as if an external force was determined to shape the very course of human civilization.’ He inhaled deeply and ran his fingers through his hair again. ‘The conclusion I reached was this: I believe there is another race of intelligent beings that walks the Earth besides humans. I think they’ve been around for millennia.’ A grimace crossed his face. ‘A
nd I suspect they are incredibly powerful.’

  Alexa was not aware she had been holding her own breath until she released it in a soundless rush of air. She wondered whether Reznak had any idea how close Jackson had been to uncovering the existence of the immortals. The answer was quite likely that he did not; her godfather would never have approached the Harvard professor for this mission otherwise.

  ‘You believe Reznak belongs to this…race of beings?’ she asked, her tone calm despite her racing heart.

  ‘Yes,’ said Jackson.

  ‘What about me? Do you think I’m one of them as well?’

  His eyes widened slightly. He cocked his head to the side and studied her for a moment. Alexa could practically hear the wheels spinning in his mind and felt curiously exposed under his scrutiny.

  He nodded. ‘Yes. Possibly.’

  She turned and looked at the brightly lit mosque across the street, her fingers clenching unconsciously at her sides. ‘After what you’ve just told me, I should technically be putting a bullet through your brain,’ she said. She felt Jackson go rigid at her side. Her gaze shifted to his wary face. ‘However, Reznak gave me a choice in this matter. You are more useful to me alive than dead, so I will tell you what you want to know. But realize this now: you will have to keep what I’m about to say a secret for the rest of your life.’ She looked at him steadily. ‘It won’t be an easy task. The few humans who know of our existence are kept under close surveillance by our operatives.’

  Jackson was quiet for some time. ‘Okay,’ he eventually assented with a nod.

  ‘You’d better sit down,’ said Alexa.

  She spent the next hour telling him about the two immortal races. She described the long and bloody war between the Crovirs and the Bastians and how the emergence of the Red Death, the plague that killed more than half of the immortals on Earth in the fourteenth century, finally compelled the two races to reach a truce that proved to be vital to their survival. She related each race’s ability to survive up to sixteen deaths, how crows came for most of them at the end of their final life, and acknowledged their influence on the course of human history, cultures, and religions for over two millennia. She finally narrated Reznak’s findings in the caves in Egypt and how the latter suspected that the artifacts they were after were quite likely the tombs of the original Crovir and Bastian.