Riddle Of The Diamond Dove (The Arkana Archaeology Mystery Series Book 4) Read online

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  RIDDLE OF THE DIAMOND DOVE

  by

  N. S. Wikarski

  Riddle Of The Diamond Dove

  Book Four Of Seven—The Arkana Mystery Series

  http://www.mythofhistory.com

  Copyright © 2013 by N. S. Wikarski

  All rights reserved. No portion of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the author except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to any persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  TABLE OF CONTENTS

  Chapter 1 – Dirty Deeds

  Chapter 2 – A Naming Convention

  Chapter 3 – Cold Case

  Chapter 4 – The Riddler

  Chapter 5 – Baggage

  Chapter 6 – Plagued With Difficulties

  Chapter 7 – School Daze

  Chapter 8 – Food Fight

  Chapter 9 – Head For The Hills

  Chapter 10 – Stoned

  Chapter 11 – Tea And Rookies

  Chapter 12 – The Reel World

  Chapter 13 – Traveling Worst Class

  Chapter 14 – Who’s Who

  Chapter 15 – Sitting Pretty

  Chapter 16 –Thumb Place

  Chapter 17 – Accomplice After The Artifact

  Chapter 18 – Winging It

  Chapter 19 – Eyes And Heirs

  Chapter 20 – Nativity Seen

  Chapter 21 – Bad Blood Brothers

  Chapter 22 – The French Connection

  Chapter 23 – Don’t Hate The Playa

  Chapter 24 – A Lack Of Intelligence

  Chapter 25 – First Tango In Rabat

  Chapter 26 – Rude Awakening

  Chapter 27 – Polygamous Perversity

  Chapter 28 – Dunes Day

  Chapter 29 – Trash Talk

  Chapter 30 – The Arrow Of Their Ways

  Chapter 31 – The Rattler

  Chapter 32 – The Lady Banishes

  Chapter 33 – Serpentine Logic

  Chapter 34 – Starry-Eyed

  Chapter 35 – Sounding Bored

  Chapter 36 – Just Deserts

  Chapter 37 – Tyro Maniac

  Chapter 38 – Pinnacle Of Success

  Chapter 39 – Unsitely

  Chapter 40 – The Ups And Downs Of Treasure Hunting

  Chapter 41 – Cache Out

  Chapter 42 –Light At The End Of The Tunnel

  Chapter 43 – Two’s Company

  Chapter 44 – The Odd Couple

  Chapter 45 – Underhanded

  Chapter 46 – Price Check

  Chapter 47 – A Tall Tale

  Chapter 48 – MMIA

  Chapter 49 – Testing The Subject

  Chapter 50 – Fugue In The Key Of M

  Chapter 51 – Crossroads

  Chapter 52 – A Tame Wild Card

  Chapter 53 – Clean Getaway

  Chapter 54 – Connecting Flights

  Names You Should Know

  Author Bio

  Books By N. S. Wikarski

  Useful Info

  FOR READERS NEW TO THE SERIES

  A list of Names You Should Know is appended to the end of this book.

  Chapter 1 —Dirty Deeds

  Right Now—Halfway Across The World

  The truck came to an abrupt stop in a trackless expanse of nowhere. The driver cut the engine and climbed out of the cab. He surveyed the landscape. It was a moonless night and that was a good thing. He could scarcely see his hand in front of his face but it didn’t matter much. This terrain was so familiar to him that he didn’t need to. He switched on a flashlight and walked to the back of the truck. Opening the canvas flap, he motioned for the occupants to come out. Two men jumped down, each one carrying a shovel.

  The driver walked several yards away from the vehicle. Taking a quick glance over his shoulder to make sure nothing was moving out there in the dark, he pointed his flashlight at the ground. “Here,” he commanded. “Dig here.”

  The two others complied. The driver stood motionless, pointing his flashlight at the bottom of an ever-increasing hole in the ground. None of them spoke. The only sound was the relentless scoop and swish as dirt fell into a pile beside the depression in the earth.

  “Wait!” the driver hissed. He thought he’d heard a car engine. He flipped his light off—turning his head this way and that to catch the faintest sound in the distance.

  His companions leaned on their shovel handles and waited too.

  After a few minutes, the driver switched his light back on. “Just the wind,” he muttered.

  The others resumed their task. The hole grew bigger—a rectangular shadow even darker than the night sky. When the pit was about five feet deep, one of the workers paused.

  “Is this enough?” He peered up at the driver for confirmation.

  The man with the flashlight nodded.

  Needing no further instruction, the other two crawled out of the trench and walked to the back of the truck. One clambered inside and shoved a heavy wooden crate toward the edge. It was bound with thick strands of knotted rope.

  Both men heaved and strained to slide the object off the truck bed. Staggering under the full weight of the box, they carried it to the hole. The driver threw them two more coils of rope which they slipped around the box to carefully lower it into the ground.

  “Good,” said the driver with satisfaction. “Close it up. It will be dawn soon. We need to get out of here.”

  It took far less time to fill in the hole than it had taken to dig it. The two men pounded down the hill of dirt with their shovels to make it less conspicuous.

  “A fair night’s work,” the driver thought to himself as he stepped inside the cab and started the motor. He was an expert at hiding things out here where nobody ever came—objects that weren’t meant to be found. He would wait a while until things cooled down and then he and his friends would return. In the meantime, he doubted anybody in the world would ever think to look here for what they’d just buried.

  Chapter 2 —A Naming Convention

  Cassie Forsythe stood back at the edge of the clearing so she could better observe the collection of oddly-dressed people filing up the front steps of the old schoolhouse. The evening air was frosty and steam issued from their mouths as they spoke to one another. It had been a long time since she’d attended an official meeting of the Concordance—the Arkana’s governing council. The late-winter sun was just sinking behind the pine trees that surrounded this little gap in the woods. It all looked so peaceful and harmless. A country schoolhouse in a forest glade—just like a Currier & Ives print. Cassie smiled wryly at the thought of the Vault beneath the school that housed the global records of the secret organization for which she worked. This job had taught her how deceptive appearances could be.

  Someone tugged playfully at her coat sleeve. She turned quickly. “Oh, it’s you, Griffin.”

  “You needn’t sound so disappointed,” the lanky brown-haired young man teased.

  Cassie appraised her companion suspiciously. “What are you so happy about? You’re practically grinning from ear to ear.”

  “I’m smiling because this afternoon I had my last check-up with the Vault physician. Though technically I haven’t needed it for the past month, she told me to
discard my wheelchair. I’m officially fit for active duty.”

  Oh, my goddess, Griffin, that’s great news!” She gave him a swift hug. “Congratulations.”

  The Brit smiled and blushed with pleasure. “Now that I’m ambulatory again, we can start planning our next field mission.”

  “Yo, what’s up,” a laconic voice joined the conversation.

  “Hello, Erik, we were just about to step inside,” Griffin offered. He added pointedly, “You’ll notice I said ‘step’.”

  The Security Coordinator sized the Brit up. “Right, I heard you left the land of the lame today.”

  “At least he’s left the land of the lame, dude.” Cassie emphasized the word “left.” “That’s your permanent address.”

  “My ankle healed up weeks ago,” Erik protested.

  “I wasn’t talking about your ankle.”

  “You two have begun rather early.” Griffin made an elaborate show of checking his watch. “Less than five minutes and you’re already at one another’s throats.”

  “Oh we’ve been at each other’s throats since this afternoon,” Cassie replied, glaring at Erik. “We spent the last four hours at the shooting range. I nailed every target. Every single one and he still won’t let me carry a gun on our next trip.”

  “He won’t let me carry a gun either,” Griffin countered.

  Cassie gave her colleague a pitying look. “That’s because you couldn’t hit the side of a barn with a pickup truck. You have terrible aim.”

  “Point taken,” Griffin admitted.

  Erik intervened, turning to Cassie. “I already told you that I’ll let you carry a stun gun, all right?”

  “Oh great,” Cassie snorted. “I’d have to be up close and personal with a bad guy before I could do any damage.”

  “That’s exactly why I’m not giving you anything with more range than that. Your reaction time is way too fast. If you had a real gun, you’d end up killing one of us from twenty feet off.”

  Cassie scowled. “Right this minute, I’m gonna have to agree with you.”

  “Take two stun guns. Take a dozen. I don’t care. But no guns that shoot bullets!”

  “What are you three plotting now?” A booming female voice rang in Cassie’s ears.

  They all turned guiltily as if caught with their hands in the cookie jar.

  Cassie gave a rueful sigh. “Nothing, Maddie, but it’s amazing how paranoid we all get when you ask that question.”

  The Operations Director grinned. “I like to keep you on your toes.”

  Griffin rose on tip toe.

  Maddie looked at his feet, unimpressed. “Yeah, yeah I got the news. The wheelchair’s been decommissioned. Kudos.”

  Cassie turned to the Operations Director and pleaded, “Maddie, help me out here. I’m a great shot but Erik won’t give me a gun for the next leg of our relic hunt.”

  The resident Amazon paused to light up a cigarette. She wafted the smoke away from her companions before replying. “Sorry, kiddo, no can do. I don’t let Erik make too many unilateral decisions because that’s how things get blown up or set on fire. But when it comes to arming the three of you, weapons are his call.”

  “See, I told you she’d say that.” Erik smirked in triumph.

  “Nerts!” Cassie folded her arms truculently.

  Griffin looked anxiously toward the foyer of the schoolhouse which was nearly empty by now. “We should go inside before all the seats are gone.”

  After taking a few more hasty drags on her cigarette, Maddie crushed it out in the frozen grass.

  The four hurriedly climbed the stairs that led to the main hall of the schoolroom which was abuzz with life for a change. Usually the room was quiet and empty—merely a transition space to the elevators in the back vestibule which led to the secret Vault beneath. Tonight all the chandeliers were blazing with light and the stained glass windows shimmered in the glare. The tiered box seats lining the walls were filled with two hundred of the oddest specimens of humanity ever assembled under one roof.

  “It’s like a United Nations of fashion victims,” Cassie murmured. As she recalled from her last experience with the assembly, trove-keepers from around the globe tried to incorporate some item of their native costume into their clothing. The results were usually bizarre.

  After hanging their coats on racks near the door, the four scurried to the box seats. Cassie dived for the first available space she could find on the bottom tier next to a woman wearing a little black dress and a capelet of parrot feathers. Her headdress looked like a Smurf hat made entirely of red and yellow plumes.

  Although Cassie did a double take at the headdress, none of her companions seemed to notice.

  “Scoot over,” Erik demanded.

  All four were able to squeeze in and settle themselves just as the proceedings commenced.

  The low rumble of conversation in the hall died to a whisper when a tiny elderly woman in a gold brocade coat dress and matching pillbox hat made her way to the center of the room.

  “Faye always reminds me of visiting royalty when she gets decked out for one of these meetings,” Cassie whispered to Erik.

  He nodded in agreement. “Hard to believe her usual outfit is a housedress dusted with cake flour.”

  The Memory Guardian of the Arkana came to a halt in front of a huge circular table which was already occupied by thirty oddly-dressed dignitaries. Her own high-backed wooden arm chair remained empty. She preferred to stand to address the gathering. Smiling briefly as her gaze travelled around the room, she said, “My thanks to all of you for coming here on such short notice. Our reason for assembling this evening has only happened a few times before in the long history of the Arkana. I’m glad so many of you could join us for the ceremony.”

  “Ceremony?” Cassie repeated. “What’s she talking about?”

  Erik shook his head, Griffin looked perplexed and Maddie shrugged her shoulders.

  Faye continued speaking. “You’ll recall the last time we all met in grand assembly. It was to debate sending an expedition to recover a legendary artifact—the Sage Stone.”

  Whispers of acknowledgement traveled around the hall.

  “At least some of you are aware that the team I picked to undertake that mission includes Griffin our Chief Scrivener, Cassie our Pythia, and Erik our Security Coordinator.”

  All eyes turned to the trio seated in the bottom row. Those sitting above them leaned forward to get a closer look.

  Cassie squirmed in discomfort at the scrutiny. “This had to happen on a bad hair day,” she mumbled under her breath.

  Faye’s gaze came to rest on the fourth member of their party. “In addition, our Operations Director Maddie has taken charge of overseeing their activities from home base. She has accepted this duty along with her responsibilities as manager of Global Operations. A heavy load, to be sure.”

  “Global Ops is nothing compared to riding herd on you three,” Maddie whispered pointedly to the trio. “I’ve got the gray hairs to prove it.”

  They pretended not to hear her and focused intently on the tiny woman standing at the round table.

  “The quest to discover the location of the Sage Stone has taken our team from Crete to Turkey to Spain to America. During that time, their lives have been repeatedly endangered by operatives of the Blessed Nephilim. Griffin is even now recovering from a gunshot wound received during their last field mission.” Faye paused for a moment. “Throughout the course of this quest, they have all shown extraordinary bravery. Thanks to their determination, we have now acquired two of the artifacts necessary to reveal the ultimate hiding place of the Sage Stone.”

  Spontaneous applause erupted from several corners of the room and soon everyone was giving them a thunderous ovation. Cassie was blushing. Griffin looked dumbstruck and even Erik reddened but the applause didn’t faze Maddie. She smiled and waved in acknowledgment.

  Faye waited for silence before proceeding. “The Concordance Circle met in private session a
week ago. We debated how best to reward the service each of these individuals has rendered.”

  “So this meeting is all about us?” Cassie gasped.

  “Shhh!” Erik warned.

  “There is a rare past precedent for the action we take tonight.” Faye turned to face the four very surprised individuals sitting in the bottom tier of seats across the room from her. “Would all of you please rise and approach the table?”

  They looked uncertainly at one another.

  “Oh, what the hell!” Maddie got up and strode forward.

  The trio followed her lead until they all stood in a row facing Faye.

  Cassie noticed an odd collection of objects resting on the table directly in front of the Memory Guardian. She had no time to consider their meaning.

  Faye was speaking again. “Maddie, step forward please.”

  The Operations Director towered over her diminutive chief.

  The old woman gazed up at her. “In the event an individual renders extraordinary service in your position in the organization, she is accorded the title of Chatelaine—castle protector and keeper of the keys.” Faye selected one of the objects on the table. It was an old-fashioned gold-plated key on a gold ring. She handed it to Maddie. “Take this as a symbol of your new title.”

  Applause echoed around the room.

  For once in her life, Maddie was speechless until she managed to stammer, “Th... th... thank you.” She then rejoined the other three.

  Faye’s gaze traveled across the group and came to rest on the Security Coordinator. “Erik, you’re next.”

  The blond man cleared his throat, betraying the only sign of nervousness he was likely to show.

  When he stood in front of the Memory Guardian, her eyes twinkled mischievously. She addressed her comments to the Concordance as a whole. “Many of you already know Erik’s penchant for distinguishing himself by getting into trouble.”

  An appreciative chuckle rose from the crowd. Erik grinned unabashedly, proud of his bad boy reputation.