The Venetian Betrayal

Malone spotted Zovastina and pushed his way through the stinking animals toward her and Cassiopeia.

The herd retreated into the woods.

He arrived just as Viktor slid from the saddle, gun in hand. Zovastina stood with her knife, but Viktor was holding her at bay, a few feet from the ropes that anchored the two bent trees.

“Drop the knife,” Viktor said.

Zovastina seemed shocked. “What are you doing?”

“Stopping you.” Viktor motioned with his head. “Free her, Malone.”

“Tell you what,” Malone said. “You free Cassiopeia and I’ll keep an eye on the minister.”

“Still don’t trust me?”

“Let’s just say I prefer to do this my way.” He raised his gun. “Like he said, drop the knife.”

“Or what?” Zovastina said. “You’ll shoot me?”

He fired into the ground, between her legs, and she recoiled. “The next one’s in your head.”

She released the knife.

“Kick it this way.”

She did.

“What are you doing here?” Cassiopeia asked him.

“I owed you. Goats?” he said to Viktor, as the other man untied Cassiopeia.

“You use what you have. Seemed like a good diversion.”

He couldn’t argue.

“You work for the Americans?” Zovastina asked Viktor.

“That’s right.”

Fire boiled in her eyes.

Cassiopeia shook the ropes free and lunged toward Zovastina, swinging her fist and catching the other woman square in the face. A kick to the knees and Zovastina stumbled back. Cassiopeia continued her attack, planting her foot into Zovastina’s stomach and slamming the woman’s head into the trunk of one of the trees.

Zovastina shrunk to the ground and lay still.

Malone had calmly watched the assault. “You get all that out of your system?”

Cassiopeia breathed hard. “I could have given her more.” She paused, rubbing her wrists from the ropes. “Ely’s alive. I talked to him on the phone. Stephanie and Henrik are with him. We need to go.”

Malone faced Viktor. “I thought Washington wanted your cover protected?”

“I had no choice.”

“You sent me into this trap.”

“Did I tell you to confront her? You didn’t give me a chance to do anything. When I saw your problem, I did what I had to.”

He didn’t agree, but there was no time to argue. “What do we do now?”

“We’re going to leave. We’ll have a little time. No one will disturb her back here.”

“What about the gunfire?” Malone asked.

“It won’t be noticed.” Viktor motioned around him. “This is her killing field. Many enemies have been eliminated back here.”

Cassiopeia was lifting Zovastina’s limp body from the ground.

“What are you doing?” Malone asked.

“Tying this bitch to those ropes, so she can see what it feels like.”

STEPHANIE DROVE WITH HENRIK IN THE FRONT SEAT AND ELY IN the rear. They’d had no choice but to commandeer the guard’s car since theirs had four flat tires. They quickly left the cabin, found the highway, and began the trek south, paralleling the Pamir foothills, heading toward what over two thousand years ago had been known as Mt. Klimax.

“This is amazing,” Ely said.

She saw in the rearview mirror that he was admiring the scytale.

“When I read Ptolemy’s riddle, I wondered how he would convey any message. It’s really clever.” Ely held up the scytale. “How did you figure it out?”

“A friend of ours did. Cotton Malone. He’s the one with Cassiopeia.”

“Shouldn’t we go see about her?”

She heard the anticipation in his question. “We have to trust that Malone will handle his end. Our problem’s here.” She was talking again like the dispassionate head of an intelligence agency, cool and indifferent, but she was still rattled from what happened at the cabin. “Cotton’s good. He’ll deal with it.”

Thorvaldsen seemed to sense Ely’s quandary. “And Cassiopeia is not helpless. She can take care of herself. Why don’t you tell us what we need to know to understand all this? We read in the manuscript about the draught, from the Scythians. What do you know about them?”

She watched as Ely carefully laid the scytale aside.

“A nomadic people who migrated from central Asia to southern Russia in the eighth and seventh centuries before Christ. Herodotus wrote about them. They were bloody and tribal. Feared. They’d cut off the heads of their enemies and make leather-bound drinking cups from the skulls.”

“I’d say that would build you a reputation,” Thorvaldsen said.

“What’s their co

“In the fourth and third centuries BCE, they settled in what became Kazakhstan. They successfully resisted Alexander, blocking his way east across the Syr Darya river. He fought them fiercely, was wounded several times, but eventually made a truce. I wouldn’t say Alexander feared the Scythians, but he respected them.”

“And the draught?” Thorvaldsen said. “It was theirs?”

Ely nodded. “They showed it to Alexander. Part of their peace with him. And he apparently used it to cure himself. From what I read, it appeared as some kind of natural potion. Alexander, Hephaestion, and that physician’s assistant mentioned in one of the manuscripts were all cured by it. Assuming the accounts are accurate.

“The Scythians were a strange people,” Ely said. “For example, in the midst of one fight with the Persians, they all abandoned the battlefield to chase a rabbit. Nobody knows why, but it’s noted in an official account.

“They were gold co

She could see his face in the rearview mirror and realized there was more. “What is it?”

“Like I said, only a few of their words survived. Pata meant kill. Spou, eye. Oior, man. Then there’s arima.” He shuffled through some of the papers he’d brought. “It didn’t mean much, until now. Remember the riddle. When you reach the attic. Ptolemy fought the Scythians with Alexander. He knew them. Arima means, roughly, place at the top.”

“Like an attic,” she said.

“Even more important. The place the Greeks once called Klimax, where we’re headed, the locals have always called Arima. I remember that from the last time I was there.”

“Too many coincidences?” Thorvaldsen asked.

“It seems all roads point here.”

“And what do we hope to find?” Stephanie asked.

“The Scythians used mounds to cover their kings’ tombs, but I’ve read that mountain locations were chosen for some of their most important leaders. This was the farthest reach of Alexander’s empire. Its eastern border. A long way from home. He would not have been disturbed here.”

“Maybe that’s why he chose it?” she asked.

“I don’t know. The whole thing seems odd.”

And she agreed.

ZOVASTINA OPENED HER EYES. SHE WAS LYING ON THE GROUND and immediately recalled Cassiopeia Vitt’s attack. She shook confusion from her brain and realized something was tightly gripping both wrists.

Then she realized. She was tied to the trees, just as Vitt had been. She shook her head. Humiliating.

She stood and stared out into the clearing.

The goats, Malone, Vitt, and Viktor were gone. One of the guardsmen lay dead. But the other was still alive, propped against a tree, bleeding from a shoulder wound.

“Can you move?” she asked.

The man nodded, but was clearly in pain. All of her Sacred Band were tough, disciplined souls. She’d made sure of that. Her modern incarnation was every bit as fearless as the original from Alexander’s time.