Black Harvest (The PROJECT)

  Black Harvest

  by

  Alex Lukeman

  Copyright 2012 by Alex Lukeman

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed or transmitted in any form or by any means except by prior and express permission of the author.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, organizations, places, events and incidents are either the product of the author's imagination or used as an element of fiction. Any resemblance to actual persons living or dead is entirely coincidental.

  The PROJECT Series:

  White Jade

  The Lance

  The Seventh Pillar

  Black Harvest

  Acknowledgements

  As always, the patience of my wife, Gayle. She sees many things I don't. Gloria, Penny, Tony-Paul, all of whom took the time to read and comment on earlier versions. Sandy Bresnahan read an early version and made very timely suggestions.

  Special thanks to Andrew Marino, who went beyond the call of duty. He used his writer's eye to look at the MS and share excellent ideas that helped me create a better book.

  Thanks to readers. You make it worth the effort.

  Blog: http://www.alexlukeman.blogspot.com

  Website: http://www.alexlukeman.org

  CHAPTER ONE

  Sometimes it's better not to find what you're looking for.

  The last gasp of a bitter New England winter clenched the campus at Dartmouth College in arctic cold, but inside Rauner Library it was warm and comfortable. James Campbell peered through a magnifying glass at what he'd found.

  Nine reddish-brown clay tablets from ancient Persia, covered with writing. The marks were as clear and sharp as the day they had been pressed into the clay, almost 2400 years before. Campbell made a final note on his laptop computer and closed it down.

  Campbell was a stout man in his 60s. He had gray hair thinning back in a widow's peak from a face creased with years of peering though microscopes at tiny life forms that heralded death and destruction. He'd seen nothing alive under his glass tonight. Only the tablets that he'd found buried in the archives. They held a clue to the fulfillment of a dream. Or a possible nightmare.

  It could be the key, he thought.

  Campbell made pictures of the tablets with his smart phone and composed two messages. A touch on the screen sent the emails and pictures on their way. He placed the phone and a copy of the writing in the case with his laptop. The tablets went back to their drawers in the restricted archives. He shrugged on his heavy coat, picked up the laptop and headed for the exit. It was late, but Campbell's status gave him access at any hour. A tired watchman rose from his chair and unlocked the door. There was a whiff of bourbon about him. Campbell stepped into the frigid night.

  The ground crackled under his feet. The sky was a sea of brittle stars. Each breath of frozen air felt like the kiss of a razor, sharp and hurtful. He walked to his car, parked in the deserted lot. The windows were fogged. Odd, he thought, in this dry air.

  The rented Volvo protested and started. Campbell waited for the engine to warm. He thought about the tablets.

  Something sharp pressed across his throat. Adrenaline flooded his body.

  "Don't move." In the rear view mirror, Campbell saw a dark face. The bones were narrow, the eyes hooded and dark.

  "What..."

  "Don't speak unless I tell you. Understand?"

  "Yes."

  "You've been researching something. Answer, yes or no?"

  Campbell swallowed. The blade made a thin pain against his Adam's apple.

  "Research. Yes."

  "What have you found? I'll know if you lie. If you lie I'll cut off your ear. You believe me?"

  "Yes." Something primal coursed down his spine, left over from an age when humans lived in caves. Fear.

  "What have you found?"

  "Records from Alexander's conquest of the Persian Empire, after he entered Babylon. Accounting from the King's treasuries."

  "Nothing else?"

  "No." Sweat started on his forehead.

  Campbell screamed as his ear flew onto the floor. Blood poured down his neck. Before he could move the knife was back at his throat, wet with his own blood.

  "You're not a historian. You lied. Don't do it again. Tell me what I want and you walk away."

  The man hadn't hidden his face. Campbell knew he was going to die. He thought of his wife, ill at home. Sudden sadness brought tears to his eyes. What would she do?

  Impotent thoughts of survival flooded his mind. Maybe he could twist away. Use the laptop or car keys as a weapon. Pull the knife from his throat before it cut him. Scream, open the door, roll away.

  All useless.

  Pain seared the side of his head. Blood ran down under his collar. He felt dizzy. The voice from behind was quiet. "I'm going to ask one more time. What have you found?"

  Stall him. Maybe I can get my arm up in time.

  "I swear, just lists of stores, what was in the treasury before the conquest. Records demanded by Alexander." That part was true. "Nothing of importance. It has all been seen before."

  "Do you have the tablets with you?"

  "No, they're in the library."

  "In the library."

  "Yes."

  White fire slashed across his throat, through flesh and arteries and bone. Blood spurted over the windshield. Campbell grasped his throat with both hands, trying to stem the flood, choking on his life. He thrashed and gurgled and fell forward and died.

  The man got out of the car, ignoring the mess slumped over the steering wheel. He went around the back, opened the front passenger door, took the laptop from the seat and walked away into the frozen night.

  CHAPTER TWO

  Nick Carter was done sleeping for the night. He'd had the dream about the grenade again. Now it was five in the morning. He waited for the sun to come up. Already on the third cup of coffee. He sat at the kitchen counter in his apartment and wondered why the dream kept coming back. It wasn't like he didn't understand why he had it.

  Nick was Director of Special Operations for the Project, a black ops intelligence unit that reported only to the President. The title was a fancy way of saying he got to plan missions and call the shots in the field. He didn't get to say anything about how or when people might shoot at him. The real Director of the Project was Elizabeth Harker.

  Right before Harker recruited him into the Project, back when he was recovering from the grenade that almost killed him, the shrink told him the dream was a way for his mind to try and work out an irresolvable inner conflict. That helped about as much as telling him the reason he had the dream was because he had the dream. The shrink had another term for it: cognitive dissonance. What happened when reality rammed head-on into belief and won. Shrinks always had a term for something.

  He knew goddamned well why he had the dream. Since he knew it, why did he keep having it? He'd been down this road before, playing out the loop in his head. It never got anywhere.

  To hell with it.

  He got up, took eggs from the refrigerator, bread from the pantry. He got a pan from the drawer, turned on the stove and dropped butter in it. He popped the bread in the toaster, scrambled the eggs and dumped them in the pan.

  As he ate he thought about the dream again.

  They come in fast over the ridge, the rotors chop-chop-chop overhead, toward a miserable village baking in bright Afghan sun. A rough dirt street runs down the middle between the houses.

  He's first out and hits the street running, M4 up by his cheek, his Marines stringing out hard behind him. Houses line both sides of the street, the walls pocked with holes from some long forgotten firefight. On his left is the market, a makeshift c
ollection of ramshackle bins and hanging cloth walls. The butcher’s stall is engulfed in flies.

  He's in the market. He can smell the adrenaline sweat of his fear. He keeps away from the walls. A baby cries. The street is empty. Where are they?.

  The rooftops fill with bearded men armed with AKs. The market stalls explode in a blizzard of splinters and plaster and rock fragmenting from the sides of the buildings.

  A child runs toward him, screaming something about Allah. He has a grenade. Carter hesitates, it's a child. The boy is maybe ten years old. Maybe twelve. He cocks his arm back and throws as Nick shoots him. The boy's head explodes in a cloud of blood and bone. The grenade drifts toward him in slow motion...everything goes white...

  Nick came back to the kitchen. He was sweating. He looked down at his hand, white knuckled around the coffee cup. His eggs were cold. The coffee was cold. He'd been gone, back in that village. That hadn't happened for awhile, not since Pakistan, right before Selena got shot.

  That had been bad luck, running into a Taliban unit in a snowstorm after a bloody encounter in the high country of the Hindu Kush. Her armor had saved her. Barely. He'd carried her back to the LZ, hoping she'd be alive when he got there. She'd survived. That was what mattered.

  Selena. He couldn't sort out his feelings about her and he was tired of thinking about it. He decided to go to work early and hit the gym. Before the traffic got bad.

  The gym in the basement of Project headquarters smelled of sweat and stress and dry air from the heating system. Gyms weren't much fun anymore but his old wounds waited in the wings. If he didn't work out he'd lose his edge. The gym required no introspection. It was something he understood.

  After an hour on the machines he began jumping rope. He caught himself in the big mirrors. Hard looking, six feet of tension, 200 pounds. Looking in the mirror he thought that if he didn't know who he was he might have scared himself. He wasn't going to win any awards for beauty, that was for sure.

  He looked away from the mirror. His sweats were dark, he'd built up a good burn. His back was sore, but nothing he couldn't handle. No need to think about anything except the simple rhythm of his body, the smooth blurring of the rope.

  It was good not to think.

  Selena Connor came in. She watched Nick for a moment. A big, tough man. Not pretty, not ugly. Eyes that were gray with an odd fleck of gold. His face was tight with concentration. The scar on his left ear was red. It always got that way when he exercised. It got that way in the bedroom, too. She set her gym bag down on a bench and began stretching. He watched her as the rope circled in a figure eight around him.

  "Hey," she said.

  "Hey yourself. Almost done." He stepped up his pace. Selena looked good, even in dark blue sweats. Nick envied the athletic grace she brought to every movement. She finished her warm up and came over. A wisp of red blond hair fell across her forehead. Her violet eyes held a hint of mischief. Nick slowed and stopped.

  She looked up at him. "Want to learn a few tricks? Brush up a little?"

  Nick caught the challenge in her tone. He was good at unarmed combat, but Selena was way out of his class.

  "If you think you can handle it."

  "Me? Or you?"

  Nick had sixty pounds and two inches on her. The sixth or seventh time Selena brought him to the mat, the thought crossed his mind he was getting a little old for this kind of brushing up. He ached all over from the beating he was getting.

  "Okay, I give up. That's enough."

  "You don't want to practice the wrist locks again?"

  "I practice anymore, I won't have a wrist left to practice with."

  She smiled. The corners of her mouth crinkled at the corners. It was a good smile. She picked up a towel, dabbed at her face. She'd hardly worked up a sweat.

  "You're getting better. You almost had me once." The phone in her bag signaled a message. She went over to the bench, took out the phone and listened. After a minute she hung up and put the phone back in the bag.

  "That was a friend of mine over at Georgetown, Kevin McCullough. He wants me to translate some pictures of cuneiform tablets."

  Selena had a world reputation in ancient languages. Not many people could recite Beowulf in Anglo-Saxon. Not many would want to. Selena wasn't like most people.

  "It figures you read Cuneiform. Any good books back then?"

  "No books but good stories. Right up your alley. You might like them, they're full of blood and murder." She picked up the bag. "I'm going over there as soon as I shower. Want to come along?"

  "To the shower?"

  "Smart ass. No, to Georgetown."

  "Sure. Harker will call if she wants us."

  They took Selena's Mercedes down the Memorial Parkway, crossed the Key Bridge into Washington and drove to Georgetown University. They parked near Healy Hall, where Selena's friend has his office.

  The hall would have looked right at home in London during the days of empire. It was massive, five stories high, built from blocks of gray stone. It had turrets and two large towers. Long rows of windows fronted the structure.

  "Some building." Carter looked up at the central tower. He assumed it had bells. "Quasimodo would like it here."

  "It does have a heavy feeling, doesn't it?"

  "The turrets are a nice touch. Gives it that contemporary look."

  McCullough's office was on the fourth floor. Nick could see something was wrong as soon as they went in. Professor McCullough was in his late fifties or early sixties. He was short, about five nine, with sparse red hair and a soft, pale face. He wore a soft brown jacket of fine wool. Watery blue eyes peered at them through bifocals.

  "Selena, thank you for coming."

  "Hello, Kevin. This is Nick Carter. We work together."

  McCullough's palm was moist when Nick shook hands. The room was stuffy and hot. A large window looked out from the front of the building. It was closed. Papers were everywhere, in files, in boxes. A floor to ceiling bookshelf took up one wall, struggling with the weight of too many books. The room smelled of dust and dry paper. Looking at the chaos was enough to make Nick's eyes hurt. McCullough gestured at two battered chairs.

  "Sit, please."

  He took the chair behind his desk and gathered himself.

  "Selena. The police called me." He twisted his fingers together.

  "What's the matter, Kevin?"

  "The pictures I want you to look at were sent by a friend, Jim Campbell. He was murdered last night. After he sent the pictures. Well, of course it was after. The police are calling his colleagues."

  Selena and Nick glanced at each other.

  "Kevin, I'm sorry."

  "Jim was a good friend. We were in the same field."

  "What is your field, Professor?" Nick scratched his ear.

  "Microbiology. I specialize in crop viruses. Jim was one of the world's leading authorities. He was researching a collection of artifacts at Dartmouth College." He shook his head. "I can't get it through my head that someone killed him. Why would anyone want to do that?"

  "What was he researching?" Selena asked.

  "Cuneiform tablets found in Iraq. He was looking for clues to ancient famines, crop failures. Some of those killed hundreds of thousands of people. Jim worked for CDC in Atlanta. He was quite brilliant. He spent several years studying ancient languages just so he could work directly from the old sources."

  Selena nodded. "I can understand that. Was there a message with the pictures?"

  "Well, yes, there was. It's very odd. Jim said he was on the trail of something. He said I should have the writing translated and I should be careful."

  "Why would he say that?"

  "I haven't any idea. That's why I called you, to find out what's on the tablets. Right after that I heard from the police." McCullough was agitated.

  "May I see the pictures?"

  "I printed them for you." McCullough fumbled through papers on his desk and handed them to her. They were in black and white on cheap copy pa
per. Nick glanced over. The writing reminded him of ordered rows of chicken tracks.

  She looked at the first page. "This style is from the fourth century BCE."

  "That would correspond to Alexander's conquest of the Persian Empire."

  "I'd need time for an accurate translation, but this looks like a fragment from one of the epic poems." She turned a page. "This part is different. It's from the treasury of Darius III in Babylon."

  She traced the marks with her finger. "It's an accounting or inventory. Darius had an enormous treasure. Alexander used it to pay his troops."

  "What would it be worth today?" Nick was curious.

  "A lot." She turned a page. "Let's see...100,000 talents of gold and silver."

  "What's a talent?"

  "It's how they measured coins. By volume. A talent is around 25 liters."

  She turned another page. "Whoever wrote this was very detailed. This is interesting. A golden container or urn, two cubits high, sealed, graven with a black horse and an inscription saying the urn contains the Curse of Demeter Erinys."

  Nick opened his mouth to ask, but Selena beat him to it.

  "A cubit is about eighteen inches."

  "That's not what I was going to ask. Who's Demeter?"

  "Demeter is the Greek goddess of the harvest."

  She came to the last page. "I need to study this, but it looks like Alexander sent the urn and treasure off to Greece with someone. I wonder if any of it still exists?"

  "Two and a half million liters of gold and silver and a big gold pot?" Nick looked at her. "If it did and Campbell knew something about it, people would kill for that."

  McCullough seemed uncomfortable. A light knocking interrupted them. A student opened the door.

  "Excuse me, Professor. This just came for you." He held an express delivery package in his hand.

  "Thank you, William." McCullough took the package and placed it with the clutter on his desk.

  "Selena, could you take this copy and translate it for me? Write it down?"