Carpathian by David Lynn Golemon Read Free Book Online Page B

pulled it away, giving her another grandmotherly smile. “Bad things can come of it,” she continued, but her next action betrayed her warning as a lie as she herself reached out and lightly ran her old and weathered hand over the stone-hardened fur and teeth of the beast. Then the old woman’s spell seemed to break and she smiled and looked at Alice. “You seem not to belong amongst these people.” She looked around with distaste etched on her wrinkled features. She tapped her cane on the carpeted deck once, and then a second time. The old woman became serious and fixed Alice with a gaze that froze her blood.
    “You don’t seem to belong either,” Alice finally managed to say.
    “I belong nowhere, my lovely girl. We belong nowhere.” She leaned close to the American woman and whispered in a voice steeped in an East European accent, “You seem kind, not like these…” she gestured around her at the men and women eating, laughing, and preparing to buy the stolen items taken from an illegal archaeological dig at Tell es-Sultan, “… people, these scavengers of our shared history.” The old woman bowed her head and then looked up minus her warm smile. “Forget what you saw here tonight, and if I am correct and you have seen something like this before, tell no one and keep your secret buried…” She hesitated only a moment as she looked deeply into the eyes of Alice Hamilton. “Wherever that may be.” Her European accent vanished and her next words were spoken in unaccented English and were far deeper in bass than her voice had been a brief second before. “You have just twenty minutes to remove yourself and your one-eyed handsome escort from this ship, my dear. All of this,” she gestured with her wooden cane, even going so far as to accidentally poke another American woman on her rather ample derriere, which elicited a shocked yelp and angry look, “Because all of this is going to be at the bottom of the South China Sea momentarily.”
    “What?” Alice asked, shocked at the slowness of her reaction.
    The old woman had gone. She melted into the milling buyers as if she had never been there at all.
    *   *   *
    Lee was getting close to the explosion factor that made his early years in the Senate a legend, and one of the reasons it was suggested to him by his own party that he was maybe just a little too high-strung for politics. The general always found his temper hard to control when sheer audacity of privilege and corrupt people at every walk of life threatened his keen sense of justice.
    As his good eye counted the varying degrees of thievery, his limited vision fell on two small items on display that made his stomach roll. Lord Harrington had actually uncovered human remains at Tell es-Sultan. A cursed thing to do at any archaeological find was to openly display remains that have not been studied and guaranteed to be something from antiquity. It was also something that any well-bred museum curator would find hard pressed to put in any exhibit. He saw a few of the English-bred buyers grimace in distaste at the open display of remains. Lee shook his head and decided at that moment this secret auction would remain so forever. These items would not find their way to the private sector because he would destroy it all first if that need arose.
    “I see anger in that one, beautiful eye.”
    Garrison looked down to see the young woman who had been talking with Alice a moment before. Lee had seen her spying him from across the salon and was uncomfortable with the looks she was shooting his way.
    “Then you should look closer, young lady, because what I see is sadness that this is happening. And if you’re here to place your money on any of these artifacts, I would save it; I predict it’s going to be a bad investment.”
    “I was just speaking with your most beautiful companion. I see in her eyes that she adores you.”
    Garrison looked closer at the raven-haired beauty. Her gaze seemed to go right