Annja peered around the underground room. A large furnace filled the opposite wall. A coal bin sat adjacent to it. Rotting coal filled the bin and spilled across the floor. Broad coal shovels covered in dull orange rust lay on the floor.
What caught Annja’s attention most, though, were the bodies strewed across the floor. The dank subterranean environment had contributed to the growth of dark mold on the bones. The clothing had largely rotted away, leaving only scattered pieces.
Sixteen skeletons lay in disarray, spread outward from the furnace as if they’d been tossed by a big hand. All of them were burned and blackened, twisted by incredible force. Rock fragments lay among them.
“Have you moved the bodies?” Annja slid out of her backpack and took out a miniflashlight. She switched on the light. The powerful halogen beam stabbed out, penetrating the darkness more strongly than the electric bulbs.
“No, we haven’t touched them yet,” Hallinger said as he squatted against the wall near the opening.
Annja breathed shallowly. After 150-plus years, the bacteria that triggered decomposition had done its work. All trace of a death odor was gone. But the musty thickness of the air was still filled with particulates. She took a disposable filtered mask from her backpack and fit it over her face.
“I’m not an explosives expert.” She aimed her beam at the furnace. The metal sides had been warped in the explosion.
“One of the students advanced the theory that the explosion was the result of some kind of coal-gas buildup.”
Annja knew coal gas was frequently the cause of mining accidents involving explosions. It gathered in pockets, and just the slightest spark could set it off. That was one of the reasons coal miners didn’t carry metal objects like rings or buttons down into a mine.
“No.” Annja played the beam around.
“Why?”
“With the furnace working, coal gas couldn’t build up. The flames would burn it off,” she said.
“They could have shut down over the weekend. Or a long holiday.”
“With the South warring with the North over the textiles market with England, I doubt the mill closed down much for holidays or weekends. Time was money. Most mill owners worked as much as they could. Even if the furnace wasn’t kept fed to warm the building, it would have been banked. I don’t think a buildup of gas was likely.”
“Do you think it was an accident?” Hallinger asked.
Annja shook her head. “I don’t.”
Hallinger sighed. “Neither do I. These people were murdered.”
Playing the flashlight beam over the skeletons, Annja saw some of them couldn’t have been much more than children. They hadn’t had a chance inside the room.
Hallinger sounded tired when he continued. “It’s bad enough finding these bodies after all these years, especially with them being slaves, but having to confirm to those people out there that they were murdered is going to make things even worse.”
Annja silently agreed. “Why did you ask me about the Hausa people?”
Hallinger directed his flashlight beam to a large stone lying on one side of the room. The rock was as big as two of her fists together. Someone had taken time, years probably, to smooth the rock’s surface until it looked polished. Then they’d carved images with a sharp point and rubbed some kind of dye or stain into them.
Drawn by the images, Annja knelt and inspected the stone. She recognized the letters. “Hausa had its roots in the Chadic language, which is Afro-Asiatic in origin.”
“I knew that much. It’s also an official language of several West African countries these days.”
“Have you touched this?”
“No, and it’s been killing me not to.” Hallinger rubbed his forehead in frustration. “Everything about this place speaks of something beyond just the Civil War.”
“Why?”
“These men were carrying weapons.” Hallinger raked his flashlight over the bodies.
“I saw those,” Annja admitted. She studied the makeshift weapons, some of them no more than hoe handles inscribed with more Hausa writing. There were also three axes, their handles marked with more of the language. Close inspection of one of the ax heads revealed that it, too, had been marked.
“Escaping slaves didn’t carry weapons.” Hallinger frowned. “Getting caught with one usually meant getting hung from the nearest tree when pursuers caught up with them.”
The presence of the weapons told Annja what they were looking at. “This was a war party.”
“I think so, too,” the professor said.
Annja put the miniflashlight between her teeth and lifted her digital camera. She focused on the rock, then on the weapons, finally taking pictures of the bodies.
Hallinger waited patiently until she was done. “Can you read the writing on the stone?”
“Some of it.” Annja put the camera away. “The stone tells a story of an exodus. Of a long travel, from what I gather.”
“There was a slave market not far from Dakar, Senegal.”
“I know. Ile de Goree. It was one of the primary contact points of the Triangle Trade,” she said.
“Slaves, rum and sugar. Those are the things that built the New World. That and the search for riches.” Hallinger sighed. “People think cotton is what brought the slaves to the New World, but that was only what developed out of the slave trade.”
Annja knew that was true. The early Atlantic trade had started a history of hundreds of years of pain and suffering. She pushed that out of her mind for the moment, wanting to concentrate on the dig and the unanswered questions she and the professor both had. “I’m ready to start if you are,” she said grimly.
Hallinger nodded. “I’ll get the crew together.”
THE EXCAVATION, even though there was no digging involved, was slow work. They always were. Annja had no problem with that. She loved her chosen field. As an orphan, she’d had no real sense of connection or family. As an archaeologist, she connected not only people but also years.
In a map of the past, everyone had a place. It was just a matter of finding the proper pieces, she thought.
Like the piece of the sword she’d found in France while looking for the Beast of Gévaudan. That piece had brought a number of things together. All of the other pieces of the sword that had been sought after since Joan of Arc’s death on a burning pyre over five hundred years earlier had come together. Once she’d touched those pieces, the sword had reforged itself.
Magically.
She disapproved of the term, but there was no other explanation. Annja had seen it happen. In the blink of an eye, she’d held the sword—suddenly whole—in her hand. It had never been out of her reach since.
Out of that experience, she’d begun forging new relationships. One with Roux, who claimed to have witnessed Joan’s death and been charged with finding Joan’s sword. Another with Garin, who had at one time been Roux’s protégé but now sought to kill him and take the sword from Annja. Garin was afraid that whatever power had enabled him to remain relatively ageless for those years would fade now the sword was once more whole.
Annja still didn’t know if she believed her bloodline tied her to Joan of Arc. Whatever chance she might have had of ascertaining that had been destroyed during the flooding of New Orleans. The orphanage where she’d grown up had been washed away. The nuns who raised her were dead or scattered. Most of them hadn’t been concerned with the pasts of the children in their care; they’d been grooming them for the future.
But Annja believed the sword had been Joan’s. Now it was hers. It had changed her life. She was still learning what all that meant.
ANNJA AND HALLINGER worked well together, directing the expertise of the retired couple who had worked dig sites before, and training the university students. Using soft rope and pitons they drove into the ground with small sledges, they laid out a grid over the recovery site. Since the bodies had been scattered by the blast, the whole floor of the furnace room was designated the recovery site.
Once the grid was laid out in twelve-inch squares, Annja and Hallinger took turns working the recovery. They moved square by square, cataloging and videotaping everything they took out. The other dig workers labeled the recovered items and packed them out.
“I’m surprised the police released this site to you.” Annja searched through a pocket of a shirt fragment she took from the latest square.
“Are you kidding?” Hallinger snorted and shook his head. “They didn’t want this. You saw that crowd outside. As soon as the story hit the news, people poured in from Atlanta and other nearby towns. They called the university and got in touch with me almost immediately.”
“You said construction workers found the bodies.”
“Yeah.”
“Did they take anything?”
“I asked. For a moment I thought I was going to get thrown out. But the police chief stepped in and made it clear that my team and I were going to excavate the remains and see that they were handled with respect. The police chief reiterated my question. They said no.” Hallinger shrugged. “You never know. Maybe they didn’t. Most people are reluctant to touch the dead.”
The pocket Annja explored yielded a folded piece of paper that had browned over the years. She didn’t try to open it. That would be done under laboratory conditions to help preserve the paper and the ink.
Three coins slid from the folds of the paper. All of them were of similar design, showing a woman with braided hair under a crown surrounded by stars and a circle of wheat stalks around the words Half Cent. United States Of America circled the wheat. The dates on the coins were 1843, 1852 and 1849.
Annja dropped them in Hallinger’s waiting palm.
“Liberty braided-hair half pennies,” Hallinger said as he examined them. “The full penny at the time was the size of a half dollar now.”
“Those were minted between 1840 and the late 1850s,” one of the students said. Brian was calm and easygoing.
Hallinger glanced at his student and smiled. “We didn’t cover that in class.”
Brian grinned shyly. “I’ve been into coin collecting since I was a kid. My dad bought me a metal detector as soon as I was big enough to carry it. We spent our weekends tramping through battlefields all over the South.”
“Your father was a treasure hunter?”
“Still is. Drives Mom crazy. But he’s making serious money on eBay with the stuff he finds. Coins, jewelry, stuff like that. He’s made enough from his hobby to buy an RV so he’s not camping in a tent on weekends anymore. Mom’s okay with that. She gets to work on her genealogy stuff.”
Hallinger glanced at his watch. “Maybe we should think about taking a break. It’s almost nine. We’ve been working for hours.”
Annja nodded. She was still ready to work, but she knew she would be until she fell on her face. The idea that the group of men in the furnace room was some kind of war party wouldn’t leave her thoughts. Where had they come from? Where were they going? Who had killed them? She was curious, definitely hooked on the mystery that had been dropped into Hallinger’s lap.
But the professor and his crew had been on-site since early that morning.
Hallinger looked at her, and Annja knew he read what was on her mind. “Just a break. We’ll be back.” He turned to the students. All of them were covered in grime and sweat. They looked tired and hungry. “I’ll even spring for pizza. I’m sure I can get the university to pick up the tab.”
“Sure. Just let me get this.” Annja reached for the large stone covered in Hausa writing. A long journey. She couldn’t help wondering what that meant. Were they starting a long journey? Or coming back from one? Why had the men been armed when they knew it would mean death for them? Had they been on the same journey when they’d been killed?
Out in the hallway, someone yelped in pain.
“Get down!” a gruff voice roared. “Get down on the ground on your face and you won’t get hurt!”
Annja put the rock aside as she stood. Unconsciously, she reached into otherwhere and felt her sword at her fingertips. She kept it ready but didn’t pull it into the world with her. In two quick strides she reached the opening and peered out into the low tunnel.
THREE MEN in ski masks, maybe more, hurried along the tunnel. They all carried semiautomatic pistols sporting thick, stubby silencers. They blinded the students with high-intensity flashlights.
One of the students wheeled around and shoved a girl behind him. He reached for the lead invader. The masked man barely moved the pistol he held in close to his side. The muzzle-flash briefly flared in the tunnel, and only a slight coughing sound reached Annja’s ears.
The bullet struck the student in the upper chest and forced him backward. Blood spattered the wall and coated the nearby electric bulb. The crimson liquid hissed and smoked for just a moment, then the bulb burned out and went dark.
“Sit down,” the masked man ordered, “or I’ll put the next bullet between your eyes.”
The student was too stunned to move. In disbelief, he put a hand over his chest against the wound.
The masked man reached the student, shoving out a hand that hit the young man in the throat and knocked him off his feet. The young woman was screaming.
Annja held on to the sword hilt. It felt solid and sure in her hand. All she had to do was pull and the blade would be there in the tunnel with her.
And the big guy with the gun will shoot you. Or someone else, Annja thought. Reluctantly, she released the sword.
“You!” The masked man waved at Annja. “Get down! Now!”
Annja lay on the ground. Ahead of her, the young woman held the gunshot victim. He quivered and jerked, but Annja thought it was shock setting in. He was still breathing, so she chose to remain optimistic.
The masked man reached her. “Where’s the stone?”
Annja kept her voice level, holding the fear and adrenaline that filled her at bay. “What stone?”
“Don’t play games with me. The Spider Stone.”
She chose not to answer. It’s nine o’clock. Maybe it’s dark outside, but these guys couldn’t have gotten in here unseen. Someone has to have seen them, she thought.
The masked man pointed the pistol at the young woman holding the gunshot victim. She cried out in fear and tried to crawl away, but there was nowhere to go in the narrow tunnel.
“I’ll ask you one more time, then I’ll kill her. Where is it?”
“It’s in the other room.” Annja pointed.
The masked man stepped over her, following the pistol into the furnace room. Stepping into the room, tearing through the grid they’d strung so carefully, he stooped and picked up the stone in one gloved hand.
Annja waited for the police to arrive. She hoped they would, but she dreaded it, too. Police might mean gunplay, and gunplay could mean a lot of dead university students.
“No, it’s here. I got it.” The masked man looked at the stone. “It’s covered in writing. I can’t make it out. It’s not in English.”
For a moment, Annja thought the man was talking to himself, then she saw the outline of the cell phone earbud under the ski mask.
The masked man tossed the stone to one of his compatriots and turned to Annja. “Where are your notes?”
“I’ve got a microcassette recorder in my pocket,” she said.
The gloved hand flicked impatiently. “Gimme.”
Annja dug the device out and handed it over. She hated feeling helpless, and she was scared. But she didn’t let the fear take over.
The masked man shoved the cassette recorder into a thigh pocket of his camouflage pants and sealed the Velcro tab. Seeing the military-style pant and thinking about the way the guy moved and wasn’t squeamish about shooting other people, Annja thought maybe he was—or had been—military. The black boots looked like military issue, too.
The man’s eyes focused on hers through the slits of his mask. “What does it say on the stone?”
“I don’t know,” Annja said honestly.
“The professor held up operations here till you arrived. Don’t tell me you can’t read the stone.”
“I can. Some of it.”
“What does it say?”
“I didn’t get a chance to decipher all of it. It mentions something about a journey.”
“To where?”
“I don’t know. I wasn’t the first choice for the job. I’m doing the best I can. We were working the room first. We were going to address the stone later.”
Frustration glinted in the man’s cold eyes. He swung his pistol toward one of the students again.
“I’m telling you the truth.” Panic knotted Annja’s stomach. Violence was something she still wasn’t used to even though she’d been through quite a lot of it lately—since she’d acquired the sword—but she could deal with it. The possibility of watching the man shoot someone through the head to prove his point made her sick. “I could lie to you. I could tell you anything I wanted. You wouldn’t know the difference.”
“I’d know if you were lying to me,” he said.
“Then prove it.” Annja looked directly into those cold, hard eyes. She spoke slowly. “I haven’t finished translating the stone yet. I don’t know any more about what’s written there than I’ve told you.” When she finished, her heart was hammering inside her chest. Part of her knew that the student was about to die.
Then the masked man lifted the pistol. “All right. You don’t know what it says.”
Annja released her pent-up breath.
“But you can translate it.”
“Maybe.”
“That’s why Hallinger brought you in.”
“Yes.”
“Fine. Let’s go.” The masked man caught Annja’s left arm, yanked her to her feet and twisted her arm behind her.
Pain shot through Annja’s arm, but she stubbornly refused to cry out. She also resisted the impulse to attempt to break free. While at the orphanage, she’d gotten involved in martial arts, then continued her studies in college and after graduation. When she was home in Brooklyn, she still took classes in various dojos and even did some boxing.
Wait, she told herself. Don’t react until you have to, or until you can make a difference. She looked around at the students and hated seeing the fear in their eyes. None of them had signed on for what they were currently dealing with. She didn’t want the men responsible for that to escape.
SHOVED AHEAD of the masked man, Annja hurried down the tunnel. In seconds they reached the warehouse. The plywood covering the broken windows didn’t quite block out all the light. Enough remained that Annja knew at least some of the crowd still remained outside. There were probably even a few reporters waiting to do remotes for the last news shows of the evening.
The masked man shoved Annja toward a side door that had been boarded shut. A fine spray of sawdust showed on the scarred wooden floor.
One of the men opened the door, and Annja’s captor shoved her through to the dark, narrow alley on the other side. In the alley, Annja heard car engines idling out front, letting her know the police hadn’t deserted their posts, either.
A rope ladder dangled from the building opposite the warehouse.
“Up.” The masked man pointed toward the ladder.
Annja went, moving along the ladder quickly. Too quickly as it turned out.
The man grabbed her leg. She looked down at him, one hand over the top of the two-story building. Moonlight shone against her hand, washing away all color.
“Slowly.” The man held on to her and aimed the pistol at the center of her body. “Try anything and I’ll drop you.”
Annja waited until he released her leg, then she went up.
Another man with a rifle equipped with telescopic sights hid on the rooftop. In the distance in front of the warehouse, two police cars with spinning lights stood guard. Two men sat on the hood of one of the cars drinking from paper cups.
Annja tried not to feel angry with them. Someone had been out in front of the warehouse since the bodies had been discovered. She was certain everyone involved was getting tired of the duty.
In short order, the five men who had invaded the dig site joined Annja and the sniper on the rooftop. All of them were heavily armed.
“When do we blow the building?” one of the men asked.
“Now,” the big man said.
Ice water filled Annja’s veins. She couldn’t wait any longer. Reaching into the otherwhere, she gripped the sword and ripped it free just as the first man started to take an electronic detonator from his chest pack. She swung at him even before the sword was completely in her reality.
“Look out!” one of the men yelled, lifting his pistol.