Pandora's Temple (7 page)

“What do you think it’s worth?” McCracken asked.

At just over six feet tall, he towered over the diminutive Levy who bore a passing and unfortunate resemblance to the classic actor Peter Lorre. The shop, more of a museum-quality resale store, was located in the Garden District of New Orleans just off the main drag on a side street that sloped slightly upward. McCracken had known “Sir” Levander for any number of years and had serious doubts that he was a “sir” at all, or even a Brit for that matter. That, though, hardly detracted from the quality of the merchandise he’d obtained over the years to add to McCracken’s impressive collection of weapons always restored to full working order.

“Worth?” the portly, flabby-cheeked Levy asked, smoothing some stray hair that looked painted onto his scalp back into place. “Impossible to say. I can’t even estimate it.”

“If you’re trying to drive the price up, Lee, you’ve done it.”

Levy looked honestly hurt. “This is my gift to you, my friend, on the occasion of such a momentous birthday.”

McCracken wished he could feel happier about that, but even holding such a wondrous gift did little to brighten his mood. The shelves around him were lined with all sorts of historical artifacts, each and every one genuine. Levy seemed to specialize in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, and his tastes as well as his inventory ran the gamut from women’s jewelry to first-edition novels by the likes of Thackeray and Eliot, to collectible pieces produced by the finest craftsmen of their time. It left McCracken wondering how Levy’s small shop managed to thrive among tourists and revelers who came to New Orleans for different reasons entirely. But he guessed it was supported almost exclusively by private collectors like himself who dabbled in antiquities and maintained an appreciation for historical beauty.

“It’s too much,” he said, returning the blade to its rectangular wooden saya fitted to its precise specification and handed it back across the counter. “I can’t accept it.”

Levy took the sword reluctantly, looking even more hurt. “After all you’ve done for me . . .”

“That was a long time ago, Lee.”

“You saved my life. A man tends not to forget such things. You want to speak of gifts? Put a price tag on that one.”

“It’s what I do, Lee. I never expected anything in return.”

“Nor did you ask for it. Yet I have waited all these years for just a occasion like this to repay at least a measure of my debt to you.” With that he extended the sword back across the counter. “Please, my friend, I beg you.”

“Well, since you put it that way.”

Ever since McCracken had saved Levy from modern-day Turkish pirates who promised to kill him if he did not begin moving merchandise on their behalf, the trusty Brit had served as a wonderful source for all things pertaining to weaponry. And not just from a historical perspective either; Levander Levy was also a creative and masterful craftsman in his own right, capable of devising virtually anything McCracken requested made to his precise specifications. That relationship had led Levy to seek McCracken’s help after the Turks threatened Levy’s family as well, promising to kill his relatives in chronological order starting with the youngest. In response, McCracken and Johnny Wareagle had blown up four of the pirates’ boats and left a note on the fifth that blood would follow the flames if Levander Levy wasn’t left alone. The pirates never bothered him again.

The little man was smiling behind the counter. “So glad you’ve come to your senses, my friend.”

“I’m gaining a new appreciation for relics,” McCracken told him. “You know, things that are better fit for the past.”

Levy glanced at the samurai sword in McCracken’s grasp. “My good friend, just because something’s old doesn’t mean it can’t still be functional, especially when meticulously restored to its original condition.”

McCracken held his stare on his old friend. “On the surface, you mean.”

“On the contrary, this sword is as sharp and sure as the first time it was wielded.”

“If only the same could be said for flesh and blood, Lee.”

Katie DeMarco had clung to cover provided by the cargo pods, ships, and storage hangars at the Port of New Orleans until there was no sign of the men who’d been waiting when the supply ship returned from the
Deepwater Venture
that morning. She evaded them initially by exiting the ship behind a rolling pallet packed with shipping crates. She took solace only in the fact that at such an early hour it was doubtful her absence from the rig had been noted yet, meaning these were strictly precautionary steps. Men lying in wait for her expected flight, now that the ruse was up. A two-mile-long quay squeezed between Henry Clay Avenue and the Milan Street terminals offered plenty of concealment from the building heat as well, but fleeing the area before her absence from the
Venture
was noted remained her primary goal. Her jeans felt damp and sticky, and perspiration born of the unusual spring humidity glued her T-shirt to her back, while droplets soaked through the front in now widening splotches.

Katie had been aboard the rig for three weeks in the carefully scripted guise of administrative assistant to the operations manager. Yesterday, she’d intercepted a confidential e-mail to his second in command, the rawboned Paul Basmajian, with instructions to detain her; further information to be forthcoming.

Further information . . .

Such information, no doubt, would include a security team dispatched by Ocean Bore to take her into custody. She didn’t expect the company to involve the traditional authorities, at least not until ascertaining exactly what she knew about the
Venture
’s strange, if not inexplicable, mission in the Gulf.

Katie had seen the correspondence from Basmajian to Operations requesting clarification about the results of a series of geophysical surveys. If Basmajian’s e-mails were to be believed, there was little or no chance of striking oil where the
Venture
had been ordered to drill. Which made no sense and left her wondering if she’d stumbled upon something entirely different from what she’d been expecting upon infiltrating the rig.

Katie was part of the environmental activist group WorldSafe, the group’s specialty being to plant environmentalists like her in settings where they could get a firsthand look at how business was conducted in ways that continued to ravage the environment. Her assignment on board the
Deepwater Venture
had started out as routine, but that had changed the moment she’d read Basmajian’s series of e-mails demanding an explanation from Ocean Bore headquarters that never came. Cell phones had been strictly prohibited on board the
Venture
, leaving her with no way right now to contact WorldSafe’s leader, Todd Lipton, at the group’s remote location in Greenland.

Katie DeMarco wasn’t her real name, of course, and she couldn’t remember now exactly why she’d chosen it. She’d thought about Katie “Black,” because of the color of the hair that tumbled past her shoulders. Or Katie “Gray,” because of the unusual shade of her eyes. “DeMarco,” though, had seemed both generic and somehow romantic at the same time, so she’d gone with that.

Among other attributes, the Port of New Orleans was the nation’s premier coffee-handling port with fourteen warehouses and more than five and a half million square feet of storage space. Katie was making her way to that area when she noticed additional teams of uniformed harbor police scouring the docks and pier. Reinforcements, apparently, that could waylay her plans for flight for good.

“Over there!” she heard a voice cry out, followed by the blare of static over a walkie-talkie.

Katie took off, immediately conscious of footsteps pounding in her wake. Quick glimpses to the sides revealed harbor police converging on her from seemingly all angles until she darted into the labyrinthine array of pallets and storage containers packed with coffee and waiting for transport. She dipped one way, then the other, the police concentrated behind her when she spotted the open cargo hold of an eighteen-wheeler, packed with just-delivered bags of freshly harvested coffee beans. The truck was likely bound for New Orleans’s Dupuy Storage and Forwarding, home to one of the country’s largest bulk-processing operations.

Katie didn’t hesitate, launching herself into a mad dash that ended with a leap into the eighteen-wheeler’s hold. She stumbled upon landing, turning her ankle but still managing to squeeze herself between a pair of pallets packed to the brim with khaki-colored canvas bags of whole beans. The aroma was richer and stronger than any Starbucks brew she’d ever drunk. Stronger still once the hold door was yanked downward and sealed, plunging Katie into darkness.

She felt the rumble of the engine starting and a jolt as the truck pulled out of the loading line, heading toward the access road. Katie longed for a cell phone, a computer, anything she could use to contact Todd Lipton in Greenland.

Because if Ocean Bore had found her, it could well be they’d found WorldSafe’s base as well.

Katie needed to report what she knew to him, some secret mission the
Deepwater Venture
had been on in search of something other than oil.

But what?

Johnny Wareagle was waiting at a table well past the bar inside K-Paul’s Louisiana Kitchen on Chartres Street in the French Quarter when McCracken entered. Wareagle rose when he saw him approaching, his knees banging the underside of the table and nearly upending it. He looked distinctly uncomfortable so far from his wooded retreat in Maine, or more recent temporary home in South Dakota, but forced a smile nonetheless.

“Little late for Mardi Gras, aren’t you, Indian?” McCracken greeted, unable to disguise how happy he was to see the man he’d known for forty-plus years now. Their friendship dated back to serving in the same Special Forces unit in Vietnam, a covert-ops team specializing in behind-enemy-lines infiltration missions as part of Operation Phoenix. Phoenix had been the CIA and army’s dedicated attempt to lift the failing war from the ashes and, from an operational standpoint, it succeeded, though too late to have a measurable effect on the eventual outcome.

The thing that was an endless source of great pride to men like McCracken and Wareagle, though, was how much the current special-operations community owed to the lessons learned from their work in Operation Phoenix. Vietnam was justly credited with creating the entire concept of Special Forces “A” teams, small groups of professional specialist soldiers who were as attuned to training a local resistance or guerrilla force as they were mixing it up themselves. McCracken and Wareagle were hardly alone among other Vietnam-era SF veterans in marveling at the efforts of their descendants in equally hellish places like Somalia, Iraq, and Afghanistan. Now, like then, most of their work, with the exception of the celebrated SEAL Team 6, went unknown and unnoticed. Covert ops were called that for a reason, after all, and McCracken knew the operators of today willingly shunned the spotlight just as much as he and Wareagle had.

And still did, for that matter.

“But right on time to help celebrate your birthday, Blainey.”

McCracken laid the soft case containing the restored samurai sword down across an empty chair. “How’d you know I’d be here?”

“You come to K-Paul’s every year on your birthday,” Wareagle said, grateful to sit back down so the stares of the crowded restaurant’s occupants were no longer drawn to his seven-foot frame.

“Yet you never felt the urge to help me celebrate before.”

“This is a special year.”

“That because I’m turning sixty or since we lost a hostage last week?”

“We’ve lost hostages before, Blainey.”

McCracken clenched his fists and tapped his knuckles together. “Not with me on the verge of such a momentous occasion we haven’t. Not after two years of being away from the game.” He picked up his chair to move it farther under the table, then just set it back down again.

“Just what I thought,” Wareagle said, nodding.

“What’s that?”

“You’re still blaming yourself, still failing to consider the three hostages we saved and the fact that all four would’ve died if we hadn’t intervened.”

McCracken crossed his arms and gazed across the table at Wareagle who was struggling to find comfort in a chair that wasn’t built to accommodate his vast size. “So where’s my present?”

“Coming.”

“Dancing girl?”

“Better.”

“What?”

“The third of us left from the original group.” Wareagle hesitated for effect. “Paul Basmajian.”

Immediately after his initial meeting with Hank Folsom about the hostage college students, McCracken made the trek to Crazy Horse, South Dakota, where Johnny Wareagle had been holed up for months on his latest mission. Not reconnaissance, rescue, or extraction, but the completion of a monument to the greatest Sioux warrior of all time, Chief Crazy Horse.

Once completed it would be the largest sculpture in the world: a granite portrait of the famed warrior on horseback carved, blown, and whittled out of the imposing Black Hills. In scale as well as complexity, the final product would dwarf even the collection of presidential profiles on nearby Mount Rushmore, the portrait’s nose alone stretching to twenty-seven feet. Construction had actually started way back in 1948, subjected over the years to endless financial and political setbacks before suffering further stagnation in recent years despite eighty-five full-time staff members dedicated to its construction.

Wareagle’s involvement originated in the lack of an accurate rendering of what Crazy Horse actually looked like. Descended from a long line of Sioux warriors, Johnny had been the beneficiary of old drawings picturing subjects from his own warrior lineage standing with the legend himself: his great-grandfather and great-great-grandfather if memory served McCracken correctly. These were deemed the most accurate of any Crazy Horse portraits, with the added benefit of picturing him as both an old and young man, though he looked remarkably similar in both. But the level of Wareagle’s contribution changed as soon as he visited the site and proclaimed he could not, would not leave until he saw the portrait out of granite completed.