Carpathian (26 page)

When the villagers had all left the old Gypsy looked around her at what they had built over the years. She slowly stood and leaned on the wooden cane with the Eye of Ra inlaid in the handle. She slowly turned and looked at the mountain behind her that encircled the beautiful but small valley and pass that was Patinas. Her two different colored eyes fell upon the temple that only she could see. She shook her head. The steam escaping from several open vents along the mountain road leading to the pass high above was a constant reminder that somewhere far beneath the surface of the earth mother nature was cooking up quite a cauldron of fury that someday would be released into the valleys far below—a wrath of prehistoric power that could eventually level the 250-million-year-old mountain range. The hot water vapor from the hot springs that coursed through this particular mountain actually produced enough heat to change the weather conditions during the winter months as the vapors brought a false warmth to the village and the pass above them.

“We should have brought the entire mountain down upon you before it was ever completed.” She jabbed her cane at the darkness above and the mountain it hid in the night. “You are a curse that we should never have dared to lay claim to.” Suddenly her strength was gone and she turned and sat back into her chair.

“It would take more than that rickety old cane to bring down the temple, Grandmamma.”

The old woman closed her eyes and placed her forehead on the cane.

“There was death last night on the road to the pass. You disobeyed me, man-child.”

“No, one still lives. The message I wanted to deliver was delivered and the men that were with the filthy Slav paid the postage on that message. There will be no man allowed above that ridiculous castle. Never again will men come this way without invitation.”

The old Gypsy raised the cane an inch off the ground and then brought it down again as she turned to look at her grandson. The man was dressed in a bright red shirt with his ever-present head scarf, this one royal blue in color. His black beard and leather pants gleamed in the light of the rising moon. As he watched, the old woman forcibly calmed herself.

“You have been missed at the fire lately. You seem unaware that your family misses you. And for one who has delivered such magnificent gifts to the people it would seem you would be more interested in the activities here than down there,” she said as she jabbed her cane down the mountainside.

The young man snorted and then shook his head. “To sit around and sing old Gypsy songs that are just as much a lie as the ones we tell of the ancient times? No, I have no more interest in lies. It’s far past the time to be mere caretakers to riches and the knowledge of the old ones. It’s time we take what we have earned. And giving out a few small gifts as you call them is what a future king of the Gypsies does for his people.”

The old woman couldn’t argue the point.

“How many of our young men have you taken from the villages below?” she asked, fearing the answer.

“Enough to protect what is ours.”

“You have been in the temple recently.”

The man laughed. His grandmother always knew his fascination for the temple and what that place of magic held for him. Even as a small child he would wander into the mountain and sit for hours, sometimes days, just to speak with the guardians of the temple, his friends, the Golia, and marvel at the temple and plaza that surrounded it. She knew his love of the massive building blocks the ancient artisans built for a people that would never see it. He always thought about the sacrifice of his people for the good of men and women that had shunned the Jeddah since a time before the Exodus.

“Do not bother to hide your activities with another lie. Sister arrives on the morrow and she will discover what it is you’ve been up to, Marko.”

The man turned and the smile was gone.

“Yes, for the first time in many years we will see the sister, child, and the truth will be found out. I do not know what deal with what devil you may have made but sister will know what to do. I pray to God you have not been lying to me, Marko—or the Golia.” She smiled as she took in her grandson. “They are not quite as forgiving as this old woman.”

“You send her away for years to learn the ways of the Jewish state and to keep an ear to the ground about the temple and what’s hidden there. But I am left here to never see the real world. Never will I venture into the cities and live the real life that my sister was chosen for.”

“Marko, she was better equipped, more even-tempered to do the duties I have laid out for her. It’s not that I do not—”

Marko held up a hand, stopping his grandmother’s lie from continuing. He did manage to force a smile.

“It will be good to see sister again.” He turned and started walking away while looking up at the camouflaged temple. “It has been a very long time and I have indeed missed her.”

As she watched Marko walk away with his fists clenched into tight balls of anger, a small lamb that had come into the village from the flock outside the main gates bleated as he approached. Her grandchild kicked the small animal and it squealed and fell to the ground.

The old woman slowly got to her feet and went to the lamb and placed her aged hand upon it and stopped its hurtful bleating. The old woman stopped petting the frightened animal when the lamb’s eyes grew wide and the lamb regained its feet and bounced away toward the open gate. The old woman knew the beast was poised right behind her. She slowly and carefully turned.

The black-furred Golia was sitting on its hind haunches and was looking straight at her with its long ears up in a nonaggressive stance. As she examined the giant wolf she saw the yellow eyes take her in also with just as much curiosity.

“You have grown so, Stanus.” She slowly took a step forward and raised her hand to the animal’s jawline and used her short, broken fingernails to scratch the new leader of the Golia.

Stanus tilted its huge head to the left as the old woman scratched lightly. The eyes never left her age-lined face. As she scratched the alpha male as she had done on a million other occasions her hand slowly started to rise toward the left side of the animal’s face just below the ear. Stanus saw the movement and lightly growled and then raised its right paw to its face. She watched as the fingers slowly curled open and extended outward and was so large that the slim fingers and razor-sharp claws wrapped completely around her small wrist and hand. As the beast lowered the offending hand from its muzzle it came up on all fours and backed away a step and then sat once more on its haunches. The yellow, intense eyes never left the old woman’s face.

“Your trust is as empty as your den in the pass. Do you even know what Marko is up to, or are you just going along because you finally get to vent that stored rage you have deep inside—not unlike my grandson?”

The wolf tilted its large head to the right this time as it listened to the woman speak. She could see that the respect the animal had toward her was still present. She suspected that Stanus was conflicted. She was even receiving small bursts of knowledge streaming from the new leader of the Golia but she couldn’t understand the animal’s consternation. She smiled at Stanus as she looked up into those yellow eyes that stood a whole head higher than her entire height.

“How are the babies?”

The wolf whined deep in its chest.

“You haven’t been to the pass, have you? You’ve been with Marko.”

The low growl sounded once more.

“Whatever he is doing is against the will of his queen, and also against the family of Golia. I need you, Stanus, in the days ahead. We have to—”

The Golia suddenly jumped from its place. The giant leapt over the old woman and then jumped again and cleared the stone wall that lined the small village and vanished silently into the night.

The Gypsy queen turned and listened as the mountain came alive with the sound of many Golia who were not inside their dens or in the temple. There were more and more howls coming from the dark in recent months as more and more Golia defected to Stanus and Marko. It was not the fact that Marko wanted better for his people—as she was responsible for her grandson’s rebelliousness because truth be told she herself had been fighting with tradition and ancient superstition for most of her years to allow the people to be free of the curse placed upon them three and a half thousand years before. She and Marko just clashed as to the best way to free their people.

The ground shook and the night became a silent and bleak artwork of desolate landscape that screamed against the sign of the times. The howling awoke the night world of the Carpathians and brought every villager for miles around to their windows to close the shutters of their humble homes and farms.

PALILULA, SERBIA, THE DANUBE RIVER CROSSING

The woman known to Israeli intelligence and the Event Group as Major Mica Sorotzkin was sitting and watching her reflection in the train’s filthy window. She saw the bloodshot eyes accompanied by the dark circles underneath and then she closed them against the worn and tired reflection. The raven-haired woman turned away from the nighttime countryside of Palilula, Serbia, as the train passed over an ancient trestle across the Danube. She closed her eyes and felt much safer as she entered Romania for the first time in nine years.

The car in which she rode remained virtually empty even though at the last stop before the Danube the train had made an unscheduled stop as over a hundred soldiers were escorted onto a few of the forward passenger cars. They were Romanian and they carried full field gear and packs and looked as if they were going on manuevers. The soldiers settled into their seats three cars forward and the weary woman thought nothing of them again.

Behind her closed eyelids she tried to bring to mind the memory of her last day in Patinas. How she had cried with a broken heart when her grandmother sent her away. First she had missed four years sacrificing her childhood for schooling in Prague under an assumed name. When that was complete her grandmother awarded her with another painful banishment—under her new name she would enter the military academy and finish her last two years of higher education. The academy just so happened to be in Israel. She was accepted with her new identity into the top secret military program called Talpiot. The academy is Israel’s most selective institution and accepts only fifty students a year. The school trains its students in physics and other sciences that most military-funded academies skim over. Its mission is to produce future leaders of the Israel Defense Forces who are not only capable of changing the “act first” attitude of a hard-line military, but to finally transform their armed forces into a model of efficiency.

She had performed so well in her two years at the Talpiot Academy that she drew the attention of the Mossad. The chance meeting was in the plan the whole time with the guidance of her grandmother, who seemed to be wiser than her years and always claiming that she was sending her to do the work of the people and it was something that her grandmother had had to do when her age so many years before, the only difference being that the queen had studied at Oxford and Cairo. They both had left home to learn the ways of the modern world to help protect the people.

She opened her eyes and looked out the window once more toward the distant mountain range hidden in the darkness beyond the clean and cold waters of the Danube. As her eyes scanned the darkness the dimly illuminated farmhouses along the train tracks slowly started coming to life for the hardworking folk of the soil-rich Danube valleys.

Mica half smiled as she realized that she was nearing her home and felt happy for the first time in years. She didn’t turn away from the smile that was returned in her reflection but did notice that the face had changed over the nine years she had been gone. Not that it had aged badly, but because her face was now showing the worries for her people far more than when she had been a child. Now she was slowly learning that the mountains could no longer be protected. She would have to break this news to her grandmother.

The worry over the fate of the temple and the men and beasts who protected it faded as she thought about setting foot in the pass once more. It was a place where she used to run and play with animals that lived in myth and legend. The Golia awaited her return and she anticipated rekindling the friendship that was lost when she was sent away.

Lost in thought, she was taken aback when she felt someone slide into the seat next to her.

“The general never realized just how good you were. But I knew as soon as I transferred you to Rome and put you on the trail of the lost legends you would dig up something to assist the righteous and bring what is ours back home.”

Mica turned away from the outside world and looked right into the face of Lieutenant Colonel Ben-Nevin. The pistol he held was low and aimed upward; its barrel, as well as his crooked smile, never wavered.

“Colonel, you and the people you follow have been listening to fairy tales that never had a basis in fact. Your kind has left Israel backward and alone in the world, and if it weren’t for the power of a few carefully chosen friends Israel would be nothing but a barren dustbowl today.”

“And this is coming from a tried-and-true patriot? I think not, Major.” The gun came up a little further. The woman slowly moved her eyes to better assess her situation, which was not a good one. The train’s car was nearly empty with the exception of a young boy and of all things he was accompanied by a goat. Welcome home, Anya, she thought to herself as she looked at the small boy at the front of the car and immediately regretted leaving her small cousin back in Rome, but she had thought it safer for the seller of oranges to stay safe for the time being.

The colonel watched her as she studied her situation and he smiled wider than before.

“Do not attempt it. I have over fifty men awaiting our arrival. You will lead us to the treasures of the Exodus so the true patriots of Israel can take back the people’s heritage.”

Anya Korvesky didn’t bother to look at the weapon because she knew how ruthlessly men of the colonel’s religious bent acted toward women. They were backward and only thought about their precious religious tilt. Most Israelis were now content to live in harmony with those around them, but others were far more resistant to making peace with people who didn’t care for the heavy-handedness of Jewish rule in the occupied territories. The colonel was part of an organization called Masada’s Patriots, named after the small mountain once laid siege to by the Roman army to settle a small revolt two thousand years before. She wondered if the colonel realized that every one of those long-ago patriots had committed suicide to escape Roman justice. Perhaps it was time to refresh Ben-Nevin’s memory on that point.