Chyna Stone Adventures: First Three Novels Page 3

  Fariha looked puzzled and she hesitantly took her phone from her pocket and handed it to Chyna. She opened the phone and removed the SIM and Media cards then threw it to the ground and stepped on it. Fariha gasped in horror.

  “I wouldn’t be surprised if we’ve been bugged so now we have to be more careful and take some extreme precautions.”

  Chyna went into her bedroom to retrieve the contents of the room safe. She took her motorcycle jacket from the hanger it was on, slid it over her shoulders and entered the digital code. She pulled out two small black cases and a tiny tool kit which she set on the table before them. Lana joined them at the table. From the first kit she took out a Blackberry® and placed Fariha’s electronic chips inside it.

  “Military grade security,” She said as she handed it to Fariha. “No one can track that GPS unless they work for the C.I.A. and as soon as it’s activated they will know to place a full security block on it.”

  “Aren’t you changing yours as well?’ she asked.

  “We don’t need to,” Lana said smiling. “We’re always flying under the radar. Precautions.”

  “I am going to sweep our phones for external bugging devices though. Just in case someone decided to get smart.”

  Chyna pulled a tiny device from the tool kit and ran it several times over both her and Lana’s phones. They were clean. From the second bag, Chyna took out a SIG Sauer®M-11 pistol and unceremoniously loaded it. She placed it on the table and stood to strap the holster to her left shoulder, then holstered the gun. She took her firearms license, a spare clip of bullets and a wad of cash from the bag and placed them in the inside pocket of the sporty leather jacket she wore.

  “Y’all ready?” she asked both women as she picked up her things from the table and stood.

  Chapter Two

  They arrived at the hotel under the cover of night, bypassing security and were let up to their penthouse rooms by way of private elevator from the exclusive underground parking lot.

  Lana and Fariha were amazed that Chyna had found such secure lodging almost instantaneously that morning but Lana less so that Fariha. She knew how resourceful her boss was and even more so, how well connected. When they alighted from the elevator they were ushered straight into a living room by two bodyguards in black suits who had already swept the suite for bugs and intruders. One would remain stationed inside the elevator while the other manned the private parking bay and the elevator doors.

  When they had left, Chyna turned to the others and said, “Well ladies, let’s get down to business.”

  She rolled out two corkboards from the storage closet in the entryway and positioned them side by side in front of the living room windows, essentially blocking the view in and also protecting any information they would have spread out on the table or pinned up for study. Lana pinned up Fariha’s more detailed satellite image of the supposed wreck site on one board and the photos of all the missing members of their team on the other.

  “When is Oscar going to get here?” she asked Chyna.

  “He should be here within the hour,” she replied, checking her watch.

  “Who’s Oscar?” Fariha asked, pouring herself a glass of Coke from the refrigerator.

  “He’s our tech guy from Found History,” Lana replied.

  “We are hoping that since the kidnapper didn’t have the opportunity or the technology to bug Lana’s and my phones, that he hasn’t thought to use the GPS feature to locate us and therefore won’t expect us to use it to locate the professor.”

  “We’re pretty good with computers and that stuff but since we might be dealing with international espionage here, we didn’t want to take any risks so we called in the big guns.” Lana added.

  “I’m impressed,” Fariha said. “I’m thinking of sending in my resume and application to Found History now. The professor was right; archaeology isn’t as boring as everybody thinks.”

  The girls laughed, but their light-hearted moment was cut short by the sharp ringing of Chyna’s cell phone. She dug into her pocket and answered. It was John Lightyear, the exhibition curator at the University of Athens.

  “Hi John,” she said. “What’s going on?”

  “Chyna, I really don’t know how to tell you this but I just got word from the university administration that the students from Professor Cartwright’s team never made it to their hotel or back to their office this morning.”

  “Yes John,” she said softly, “we know. They went missing yesterday, right from the airport. That’s where their trail went cold.”

  “We’re all wondering what happened to them. We were really hoping that they were with you guys.”

  “Unfortunately, that’s not the case, John. Cartwright’s gone missing as well. We already reported it to the police but any follow up you could give to the matter would be appreciated, especially since we strongly feel that they were kidnapped. We can’t follow their case at the moment; we’ve had to go underground ourselves.”

  “Oh dear, oh dear,” he said, not quite knowing what else to say. “I was going to let the envelope I received from university administration stay on his desk until he got back but its addressed to both of you and in light of the news I think its best I get it to you as soon as possible.”

  “What envelope, John?” Chyna asked.

  “I found it in the museums’ drop box this morning. I just put it in the “IN” tray on Cartwright’s desk.”

  “I’m sending someone over there for it right away John,” she replied quickly. “His name is Demitri.”

  “Okay Chyna,” he said. “You take care of yourself.”

  “I will. Thanks John.”

  About an hour later there was a ding as the elevator opened into their living room and out stepped Oscar with his cases of equipment. Demitri followed him and handed a large yellow envelope to Chyna.

  “Set up over there,” Lana instructed Oscar sharply.

  “Good day to you too, Miss Ambrose,” he replied wittily. “So nice to see you.”

  Lana stuck her tongue out at him and continued to stir the risotto she had going on the stove. Fariha looked up from the cutting board where she was attending to some plump shrimp to find Oscar staring at her. She blushed and quickly returned to what she was doing. No one had told her he was so good looking, they had all but summed him up as a red headed, computer geek who she had immediately assumed was scrawny, pock faced and maybe even had a hump on his back. She laughed to herself at the visual and looked up to steal another look at him. Again, their eyes met as she caught him looking at her as well. The olive skin of her cheeks flushed an even deeper hue of red and she averted her eyes again.

  Oscar was anything but what she had pictured. He was tall and well built, but not too tall or too well built. Fariha had found that those types of men, especially the Greek ones, always seemed to have the ego to match. His hair was actually more a reddish blond than really red. What did they call that again? she wondered. Ginger, yes, he was a ginger. He wore a well-kept moustache and beard and closely cropped hair which accentuated his clear, creamy skin. Such a fair complexion, he wouldn’t do well in the Mediterranean sun. What a handsome man.

  “So what are y’all cookin’,” he asked suddenly, making Fariha jump. She looked up to find Oscar standing on the other side of the kitchen counter from her. She was so startled she could hardly speak. She looked at Lana who was watching her intently and motioning to her to answer him.

  “Um, Shrimp risotto,” she finally managed.

  “That sounds awesome,” he said, looking her straight in the eyes. “Do y’all need any help?”

  Fariha couldn’t say another word; she dropped her gaze back to her cutting board and concentrated very hard on carefully cleaning and dissecting her shrimp one by one.

  “Sure Oscar,” Lana finally replied. “Make us some of your super delicious sweet tea and stop scaring my friend. She’s probably never seen someone as ugly as you before.”

  They all laughed at Lana’s joke, even
Fariha, but before they could start up the conversation again, Chyna spoke up.

  “All right, enough of that guys. You won’t believe what came in that envelope from Cartwright’s office.”

  “What was it? Is it anything helpful about where he or the students are?” Fariha asked, happy to have a change of subject.

  “Not exactly, but I think it’s a clue. I thought it strange that a letter addressed to the professor and I would arrive in an envelope from his set of personal stationery but the contents explains that well. There’s a letter in the professor’s handwriting but his fraternity ring is also in it.”

  “Why would he send that to you?’

  “I think it’s to prove that it’s really from him and that it wasn’t written or sent under duress.”

  “Okay, so what does it say?” Oscar asked.

  “The letter says that he’s realized someone has been following him since he left my hotel room the day before yesterday and that he tried to tell me when he called me in the middle of the night but he had spotted the car following him again. He sent the letter from the airport when he was trying to get on the plane to Heraklion but if I was at any point reading it that meant he never made it back to Athens.” Chyna paused and the others all looked at one another, puzzled. Clearly their friend was in serious trouble.

  “He then says that we’re to go to his office at the university, use the code inscribed on the inside of the ring and open the safe there. A large file which is labeled “Artemesia the Traitoress”, not to be confused with “Artemesia I of Caria”, contains all the clues that we need to find him, the perpetrator, the wreck of the Battle of the Heracleidae and of course, the Minoan Mask.”

  “Okay, so let’s get over there and get it,” Oscar said enthusiastically, reaching for his jacket.

  “Oscar, please,’ Chyna admonished. “We’re operating on code red right now. High alert. Demetri will retrieve the file. I’ll just call John and ask him to let Demetri into the professor’s office.”

  While Chyna made the call Lana called downstairs and gave Demetri his instructions. He returned a half hour later with the file in hand.

  “Thank you Demetri. Would you call down to Thorin and let him know that dinner is ready?”

  It was strict Found History procedure that when the team was on high alert, they did all their shopping at random large chain supermarkets and cooked their own meals, including the meals of their bodyguards. They never risked a possible poisoning or location compromise by ordering takeout. Even hotel room service was off limits, at the moment the only person on staff that knew who was in the penthouse was the hotel manager, a long time attaché of the U.S. Embassy. The rest of the staff could only see from the reservation system that the suite was occupied and by a guest named “Private Executive” whose express instruction was do not disturb under any circumstances. Even the service elevator that housekeeping would normally use had been shut down and only Chyna had the access card for it, there was only one way in and one way out for everyone except her team.

  After dinner, Demetri and Thorin went back to their posts. At around 11p.m., they would check the locks on the shutters of the parking bay, come upstairs and shut down the elevator, then they would take shifts and while one of them slept, the other would watch the surveillance camera footage and guard the team.

  “Oscar, did you set up your magic machine yet?” Chyna joked.

  “Yes Ma’am. I’m just about ready to do the first sweep for the professors’ cell phone. You got the IMEI?”

  “Actually, I’ve got a few,” Lana replied, handing him the piece of paper. “Apparently our friend carries two phones. One’s personal and the other is university issue, one iPhone and one Blackberry. But he’s had the Blackberry upgraded several times over his tenure; apparently the University of Athens likes to keep their professors up on the latest technology. No one was sure which of those three was the most recent.”

  “Alrighty then,” Oscar said in his signature southern drawl. “Let’s get ‘er done!”

  While Oscar started clacking away on his keyboard, Chyna turned her attention, and that of the others, to the huge file that had been retrieved from the professor’s office. It was absolutely overflowing with ancient maps, modern charts and pages and pages of research which made it painfully obvious that Professor Cartwright had not been completely truthful with them during their discussions on the topic. He knew way more that he had been telling them; no wonder he had been taken. Whoever had the professor knew that he could lead them straight to the site of Artemesia’s ships if he wanted to.

  They sorted all the papers in the file into smaller batches: wreck location, history of the Battle, maps and charts and personal theories. When they got to the last of them, Chyna noticed a piece of the professor’s personal stationery jutting out from a pocket in the cover of the docket. She took it out and read it.

  “I’ve found our clue boys and girls!” she announced triumphantly. “It seems that our dear friend was being threatened.”

  “Oh, dear gods!” Fariha cried. “By whom?”

  “By our other dear friend, Mr. Doyle.”

  “That rat!” Lana chimed in.

  “Um, who’s Doyle?”

  “Don’t you read the dossier anymore Oscar?” Lana admonished. “He’s the guy who Cartwright kicked off the dig for trying to force himself on Fariha.”

  Fariha blushed and lowered her head. She was wringing her hands in anguish.

  “Sorry Fariha,” Lana replied immediately. “But he should read his dossier before he gets to a job. That’s what the long flights are for, not for stretching out and sleeping in the First Class reclining seats.” Then she turned to Chyna and said, “Be sure to book him coach from now on.”

  “Right, it seems that ever since his expulsion from the site, Doyle had been threatening to destroy the professor’s career. He was planning to use the professor’s own research to locate the ships himself, and then imply to the Greek authorities that the professor had sold their claim on the Minoan Mask out to the Turks, while he kept the mask for himself. “

  “Hmmm!” Fariha scoffed. “Does it give us anything apart from implicating Doyle?”

  “Well there’s the name of a company and an address. It’s in Izmir, but the address is clearly residential, not commercial.”

  “Let’s check it out.” Lana suggested.

  “Oscar, could you look up Reneseree Industries please?” Chyna asked.

  “Re-nes-er-ee Industries,” repeated Oscar. “Seems like it’s a shipping company out of Istanbul, has offices in Izmir as well. They specialize in stationary carriers, you know the type that can keep cargo stationary at sea for extended periods of time like when the port gets too full or there’s a need to intercept another ship to consolidate a shipment.”

  “Interesting,” said Lana.

  “Check this address out,” Chyna said, handing the paper to Oscar.

  “That’s the address of a men’s shelter.”

  “What?” Lana asked. “How the hell is that supposed to help? It doesn’t add up.”

  “There’s something more to it than that,’ Fariha said, standing and beginning to pace the room. “It’s not a straightforward clue. The professor would know that anybody who got their hands on the file would find the note. What if it fell into the wrong hands? It’s a cryptic puzzle, like those ridiculously difficult crosswords he loved so much.”

  “You’re right Fariha,” Chyna said. “We’re going to have to think like Cartwright to solve this one.”

  They sat silently for a while pondering the clues while Oscar ran each cell phone IMEI code one by one and Lana did the dishes and cleaned up the kitchen. She loaded the coffee pot and started the brew when suddenly Fariha said, “Elementary, my dear Watson, elementary!”

  “What is it?” Chyna asked, as Oscar and Lana burst out laughing.

  There’s a company name and there’s the address of a men’s shelter.”

  “Yes, we already know that!
” said Lana.

  “The professor is trying to tell us that we will find him or the kidnapper, or both of them at a residence that belongs to the man who owns Reneseree Industries.”

  “Hot damn!” exclaimed Oscar. Turning back to his keyboard, he added “Well, I’ll be a monkey’s uncle. Does anybody want to guess who that man is?”

  “Who is it, Oscar?” Fariha asked, saying his name for the first time and relishing the sound of it.

  “Its Ferdinand Doyle, Ethan Doyle’s father I’d assume.”

  “Get me that address!” Chyna said.

  The next morning found all six of them on their way to Athens International Airport to board a direct flight to Izmir’s Adnan Menderes International Airport. They moved quickly and boarded the plane ahead of all the other passengers; taking their seats in First Class and being vigilant of every other passenger who boarded the flight. Only after the flight crew had closed the doors, were Demetri and Thorin satisfied and took their seats. With no dossiers to read, they all tried to get some rest, even though the flight was less than an hour long. Demetri took first watch and Thorin took the second.

  In Izmir, they quickly settled into the top floor suites at the Izmir Palas Hotel. It was the safest and most diplomatically literate hotel in the city, according to Chyna’s sources at the United States Consulate. It also helped that it was right up the street from there. Once the men had done their routine security sweep, Chyna and her team moved in and started unpacking the gear. She took off her leather jacket and hung it in the closet as she always did. Then she opened the safe in her closet and placed the holster with her SIG, her tools and her tech bag inside it. She set the code and locked it. She placed the little folding suitcase stand inside the closet, put her suitcase on top of it and closed the closet doors.

  In the living room, Fariha was leaning over Oscar’s shoulder looking amazed at something he was showing her on the computer while Thorin spoke steadily into a two way radio to Demetri who was setting up the remote surveillance cameras at strategic locations. Lana was making tuna sandwiches for everybody’s lunch.