Wolfgang grimaced, recalling the sand dune and the skulls he’d touched. It wasn’t a memory he was eager to relive.
“Of course,” Edric continued, “Dr. Pollins’s real concern wasn’t the bones, but the mummies in the next room. Mummification is a very precise art that preserves a body to an incredible degree. The concern is that the disease may have been preserved, also.”
“That’s absurd,” Kevin snorted.
Edric shrugged. “The Egyptians disagree, apparently. That’s why they called us in, after all, and it’s why they denied that there were photographs of the scroll.”
“Was the scroll ever found?” Wolfgang asked.
Edric shook his head. “Not yet. They might find it, but it may have been incinerated when the truck blew up. In context of the discovered tombs, it’s a small loss.”
“They should’ve told us the truth from the start,” Kevin said.
The plane’s engines wound up, and then the nose began to rise.
Wolfgang tried to ignore the throb in his head. He cast a quick look at Megan, hoping she wouldn’t notice, but their gazes met. Wolfgang flashed a quick smile. Megan smiled back, just a little, then rolled her eyes and looked away.
“Let the record state,” Lyle said, “that once again, it was my gadgetry that saved the day.”
Megan snorted. “Your gadgetry can go to hell. I better never see that damn drone again.”
Kevin laughed. “Nobody would’ve had to save the day if Wolfgang hadn’t gone jumping into tombs for no reason at all.”
Wolfgang smiled but didn’t bother to defend himself. The plane climbed, and Egypt faded, and he looked out the window and thought about Amelia and her sister, reunited in the hospital. Two innocent lives saved, a little money made, and few bad guys banged up and locked up. Sure, his entire body hurt and he would never again set foot in a basement, let alone a cave, but all things considered, it was mission accomplished in his mind.
He leaned back in the seat and thought about Megan again, allowing himself to imagine that the look in her eyes when she leaned over him in the desert wasn’t generic—that it was just for him. The thought may have been a fantasy, but it was enough to block away the rest of the pain and pave the way into exhausted sleep.
Wolfgang Returns in…
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That Time in Moscow
A Wolfgang Pierce Novella
November, 2011
The inside of the dealership smelled like the interior of a country club—or, at least what Wolfgang imagined a country club smelled like. Truth be told, he’d never set foot inside a club of any sort, or even a restaurant fancier than a Longhorn Steakhouse.
But Elite Motorcars of Kansas City had that ambiance—that sort of low-light, vaguely smoky, even-if-nobody-was-smoking vibe that brought to mind images of men in suits sitting around a poker table and swapping jokes about compound interest while deciding the fate of the world. It was the kind of place where Wolfgang expected to be offered a snifter of bourbon, not a bottle of water. The kind of place that he never in his wildest childhood memories imagined he would set foot, let alone set foot with a wad of cash in his pocket the thickness of a Bible.
“Good afternoon, sir.”
Shoes snapped against the polished tile floor to his left as Wolfgang glanced around the glistening showroom at an array of expensive cars—Maseratis, Mercedes, Jaguars, Land Rovers, and Porsches. He indulged in a boyish grin and turned to the approaching salesman.
“Hey, there. I’d like to buy a car.”
The salesman—maybe he called himself an automotive concierge—wore a suit that cost ten times the value of Wolfgang’s entire wardrobe. Pinstriped, with an understated tie, and shoes with leather soles. The man was tall, bald, and carried himself with the attitude of somebody who was accustomed to addressing people by their last names and was comfortable doing so. He wore narrow glasses with metal frames and squinted at Wolfgang with a gaze that was both pitying and condescending, all at once.
“You’d like to buy a car . . .” the man said, then stared at Wolfgang’s feet.
Wolfgang nodded, then glanced down to see if there was gum on his shoe. He looked past his washed-out jeans from Walmart to his scuffed sneakers from the sneaker warehouse in Chicago—buy two pairs, get a third pair free.
Wolfgang looked up and nodded. “Yeah, a car. I was thinking a two-door, maybe a convertible.”
“A convertible.” The man said the word as if it were an ancient racial slur he was only semi-familiar with but still offended by. “You mean a cabriolet?”
Wolfgang shrugged, looking back at the cars. His eye was drawn to a sleek coupe in bright yellow. It was a Mercedes coupe, small and agile-looking, with a retractable hard-top. “Sure, whatever.”
The salesman sighed, at once a patient and exhausted sound. “I’m not sure we have the sort of motorcar you’re looking for, young man. I feel compelled to say that the vehicles we stock are in the moderate to significant price bracket.”
Wolfgang frowned. “Huh?”
Again the salesman stared at his shoes. Again Wolfgang checked for gum.
“Our cars are expensive,” the salesman said, lowering his voice as if he were divulging nuclear launch codes.
“Oh, yeah.” Wolfgang dug the stack of hundreds from his pocket and ran his thumb over the end, then tossed it to the salesman. “I’m not sure if that’s a moderate or a significant amount. What do you think?”
The salesman’s eyes bulged as he caught the wad. He blinked, ran his own thumb over the end of the wad, then looked up with a smile
