Stones of Fire

Holding her breath, Edie slowly counted backwards from ten.

Ten, nine, eight, seven —

The killer’s gaze suddenly swung to the other side of the alley, where a group of recycling bins overflowed with cans.

She’d gone undetected.

Surprisingly light-footed for such a large man, the killer walked all the way down the alley towards 21st Street before turning round and heading back to the fire escape. As he did, a police cruiser pulled into the alley from the opposite direction. Relieved beyond words, Edie released a pent-up breath. Opening the door to the fire escape had obviously triggered a silent alarm. The DC police had arrived to investigate.

For some strange reason the killer didn’t seem the least bit perturbed by the sudden appearance of the cop car, actually raising his hand to flag down the cruiser. Why would he do that? she wondered. Might as well announce that he set off the alarm.

A few seconds later she had her answer. A uniformed police officer got out of the cruiser and approached the killer, who removed a bag from his shoulder and handed it to the cop.

The breastplate.

The cop was in on it.

The cavalry had come to kill her.

‘Looks like the op is a go,’ Edie overheard the cop say as he took custody of the stolen relic. ‘We fly to London at nineteen hundred hours.’

The killer shook his head. ‘We’ve got loose ends. Someone else was in the museum besides Padgham and the two guards. The little shit escaped down the fire escape.’

A resounding bang ensued as the cop slammed his fist down on the bonnet of the police cruiser. ‘Shit! We’re fucked! The English fag was supposed to have been the only staff person in the building.’

‘It gets even worse,’ the killer said. Reaching into his breast pocket he removed the same notepad that Edie had seen earlier. ‘Padgham may have emailed photos of the breastplate. I notified the tac team at Rosemont. They’re hunting down the person at the other end of Padgham’s email.’

Watching the exchange, Edie took slow, deep breaths, willing her cramped legs to stop quivering, her body protesting the straitjacket confinement.

‘This was supposed to have been a simple snatch and go,’ the cop muttered.

‘And sometimes a mission gets bogged down in the mire. What we need to do is find this fucker — what’s his name — E. Miller and get things tidied up.’

Thank you, God. A small break. They thought she was a man. They would be looking for a man, not a woman. They also didn’t know that Padgham never sent the email. But that wasn’t her problem. Her problem was getting free and clear of the alley.

‘So far, there’s been no calls made to 911.’

‘When Miller does call, I want to know ASAP.’

‘Don’t worry. I’m on it,’ the cop said before getting into his cruiser.

The knot in Edie’s stomach tightened painfully. If she contacted the police, the killer would know where to find her. And since one of the killer’s cohorts — maybe more — wore a police uniform, she’d have no way of distinguishing the good guys from the bad.

More scared than ever, Edie watched as the cruiser drove away. The exchange ended, the killer walked over to the service entrance of the museum and punched in a code, the locked door buzzing open. Like he owned the place. Padgham’s killer went back inside the museum.

Edie hurriedly backed out of her hidey-hole. Standing upright, she took a big gulp of air. The alley reeked of urine and rotting garbage, the stench so strong her eyes welled with tears.

Hearing a loud mechanical rattle, she spun on her heel.

Across the alleyway a garage door slowly opened. She could exit the alley without having to go past the museum. No sooner did a black BMW emerge from the underground garage than Edie broke into a run towards the door. Or at least tried to. Hobbling on her cramped leg muscles, she lurched forward. The driver turned his head and glanced at her — a wild-haired terrified woman with an ungraceful gait — then just as quickly glanced away.

‘Obviously one of the apathetic multitudes,’ Edie mumbled under her breath as she dodged into the garage.

Seeing a lift, she headed towards it. Not until she was safe inside the elevator, the doors closing with a melodic chime, did she permit herself a sigh of relief. Although in actuality it was more like a sag of relief, her body going into an old-lady slump, her legs barely able to support her weight.

A few seconds later the elevator doors opened onto what looked like an upmarket apartment building lobby. Straight ahead a pair of plate-glass doors beckoned. Overcome with a sudden burst of giddiness, she limped towards the beautiful doors with their big beautiful brass handles. Yanking the door on the right side wide open, Edie barely restrained herself from hugging a postman in the vestibule, who was busy inserting letters into rows of identical-looking mailboxes. Instead, she smiled at him. A big, toothy, glad-to-be-alive smile.

Just then a cab pulled up to the kerb in front of the apartment building.

Free at last. Thank God Almighty, free at last.

5

Rosemont Security Consultants, the Watergate Complex

Like a man who’d just been baptized in the cool waters of the Jordan, retired Marine Corps Colonel Stanford J. MacFarlane stared at the jewel-encrusted breastplate.

The Stones of Fire.

Arguably one of the most sacred of all biblical relics, third only to the Ark of the Covenant and the Holy Grail.

‘Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord.’

Stan MacFarlane knew from his Bible studies that the twelve inlaid stones had originally been entrusted to Lucifer when he was still God’s favourite. After the expulsion from heaven, the stones were retrieved by God and later given to Moses, who created the breastplate according to God’s specific instruction. Worn only by the high priest of the Jews, the breastplate came to be known as the Stones of Fire. Hidden within the sacred confines of the Jerusalem Temple, the breastplate was plundered by the Babylonians when Nebuchadnezzar’s army sacked the holy city in the sixth century BC. For the next twenty-six centuries the holy relic had remained hidden in the deserts of Babylon in what is now Iraq. More than one treasure hunter lost his head attempting to find the breastplate, learning, too late, that the caliphs, sultans and dictators who ruled Mesopotamia did not take kindly to foreign trespassers.

All that changed when the American army marched into Baghdad.

Knowing he would need an expert, Stan hired an Iraqi archaeologist more interested in making a buck than safeguarding his country’s national treasures. Before the conquest the archaeologist had been in charge of a site where a cache of ancient Hebrew objects had been uncovered. Stan was certain those were some of the holy relics stolen from the Temple and that more digging would unearth the Stones of Fire. But he wasn’t the only man searching for the breastplate. Eliot Hopkins, director of the Hopkins Museum of Near Eastern Art, beat him to the prize. Not about to let the relic elude him a second time, Stan sent his most trusted aide to retrieve the breastplate.

Except his trusted aide had made a very careless mistake.

‘ “And the serpent cast out of his mouth water as a flood after the woman that he might cause her to be carried away of the flood,”’ he hissed to the man who stood at attention in front of him. His temper rising, he stared down his red-faced subordinate. ‘So tell me, Gunny, how did this Miller woman get away from you? Do you think she hitched a ride on Satan’s dinghy?’

The penitent, former Gunnery Sergeant Boyd Braxton, shook his head. ‘I told you, sir. I don’t know what happened. I didn’t even know that she was a woman until I found her purse in the museum.’

‘The weaker sex, yet still she eluded you.’ MacFarlane stepped towards the gunnery sergeant, jabbing him in