The Decrypter: Secret of the Lost Manuscript (Calla Cress Techno Thriller Series: Book 1) (24 page)

Having never fought anyone let alone an opponent twice her weight, Calla’s adrenaline soared to new levels with her new might.  “Give up?”

Nash’s jaw dropped as he cast an incredulous stare at her vigor.  “Looks like you’ve got the situation under control—”

Her aggressor struggled under her force, writhing on the ground underneath her weight. She angled his arm with heightened tenacity, never before unleashed. Not knowing what to do with him, she glanced up at Nash, who stared dumbfounded at the impressive hold she had over her opponent.

The man stopped struggling as she loosened his arm a little at a time. 

“Okay!” he said.

Calla relaxed complete grasp over him and vaulted to her feet.

Following suit, the man shot up and stretched upward backpedaling a few feet away from them. 

For the first time, Calla and Nash considered his true stature.  Close to the height of a closet, the manlike figure towered over them, possibly at seven feet.

His tone was low and breathy.  “I’ve waited a very long time for you.”

“Me?  Who are you?” Calla said.

“Call me, Watcher.”

Unable to see his face, Nash pushed forward and drew his semi-automatic pistol, aiming with precision at the man’s head.  “Don’t you move an inch—”

The man leered at his firearm.

Calla held Nash back.  “It’s okay.  He’s not going to hurt us.”

Nash resisted and kept his gun steady.  “That’s not what it looked like earlier.” 

Watcher pulled off his helmet.  His eyes glowed like a slow furnace. Something told Calla he was anything but ordinary.  His complexion shone in the sun’s rays, giving his whole form a tinted ruddiness. 

She squinted as the sun burned through the clouds, and reflected off Watcher’s countenance.  Everything about him suggested authority.  “What are you?  Where did you come from?”

Watcher studied both of them.  As he spoke, his glow disappeared and his radiance dimmed.  Looking to the sky, in one elegant movement, he reached back with both hands and pulled out a rounded, dark wood container.

He placed it in Calla’s hand.  “Take this.”

He then withdrew the journal from under his robe.  “I believe this is yours.  I had to be sure.”

Calla took the items and held them with a steady hand.  “What’s this?”

“I sat there in that room and studied those inscriptions on the wall.  Day and night I wondered if you’d ever come.”

With a protective hand on her shoulder, Nash raised his chin and took a skeptical step forward. 

Calla sensed a shiver of unease deep inside her as she glared at Watcher’s intimidating height.  “What do you mean?”

“You’re the first to correctly read the symbols in over two thousand years.”

Calla lifted the lid of the opulent box, its weight nearly dragging her hands down.  Nestled inside was a dark rock.  Porous and charcoal in color, it was comprised of millions of cramped crystals, clustered together.

 She lifted the rock out of the box and held it against the afternoon sun.  Rays of violet, amber and scarlet reflected off its serrated edge.

Nash relaxed his shoulders.  “What is it?”

Watcher turned his back to them and strode towards the building.  He suddenly zipped round. “You’ve begun on a course that’s not easy.  If you choose to seek all that it offers, you’ll find what you are looking for.”

“And what’s that?” she asked.

“You’ve only got a few days to gather the other two rocks.  If not, their energies will be utterly useless.  They need to be reunited.”

Watcher resumed his steps towards the lake.  “Be careful. Many will try to stop you, especially him - the extrasensory one.  He must not take possession of anything you find.”

“Who?”

Watcher leapt up into the air and vanished with the briskness of lightening.

Calla and Nash gaped skyward, half expecting Watcher to return.

Nash pursed his lips. “Are you sure you wanna go on with this?”

With every ounce of courage she possessed, Calla straightened her shoulders.  Even now, she knew Nash would accompany her each step of the way if she asked.  She gripped the rock tightly and studied his confident eyes.  “I’m not sure what just happened, but I have to find out, Nash.”

For a moment he appeared too stunned to move. Returning her gaze, he exhaled as he secured his gun.  “I’ll come with you.  After what we just saw, who knows what may come next.”

Her heart sighed in gratitude. “Thanks, Nash.”

Something behind Nash grabbed his attention.  He angled his head slightly, focusing on an object several hundred meters away.

Distracted for a moment and with a hint of admiration, she studied his austere body. He did not move a muscle of his deftly sculpted arms and what had to be a set of healthy, washboard abdominal muscles that slenderized to a firm, thirty-four inch waist. Tossing away her distraction, she followed his fixed stare.

With his jaw tightening, Nash remained in an attitude of frozen calmness.

And then stillness.

Stagnant air settled around them.

More stillness.

Without any warning, a rapid bullet zipped past Nash and launched itself straight at Calla’s heart.

Nash broke her fall, cradling her weight in his able arms. 

The container loosened out of her hands, releasing the black diamond onto the cool grass.

She stopped breathing. 

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

4:55 P.M.

North London

 
The cymbals clashed.  The trumpets made their discernible entrance and engulfed the humble room.  The string section floated in the background like vapor seizing time and space.  As the trumpets burst into dominant allegro, they imprisoned the heart, escalating to a terrifying crescendo.

The pace of Gustav Holst’s
Planets
continued in a tumultuous jumble, floating through the top floor apartment where Slate reclined on a sofa, his feet resting on the coffee table. 

His eyes were closed and his hands nestled behind his head.  He took in every note and bar of the tantalizing symphony. 
What was on Holst’s mind when he composed this piece?

The blinking vibration of his cell phone interrupted his thoughts.  He reached for the remote control and silenced the music that had infatuated his mind.

He glared at the phone.  It lit up blue whenever there was movement from Cress’ handheld device, a prime indicator as to whether she was using the application he had bugged on her smart phone.  He slid open the top cover to check for activity. 

She could not have survived that bullet. 

He closed his eyes and turned the music back on, reflecting on his last encounter with Cress. 
What was that thing that had followed her to the library?

Whatever expertise it employed had been extraordinary.  He was not moved by the unexplainable.  To him, everything could be justified logically and rationally.  He believed in technology and science.  This person had plenty of it.  What was it Mason had said?  “Cress should be quite easy to eliminate.”

One down, one to go.

Why had Mason not let him just kill her in Berlin? 

Easy and fast.  That was simple enough. 

A simple curator with a linguist gift. A gift that he knew Mason coveted more than life itself.  What was so special about her gift? 

Slate really did not care.  It didn’t really matter now did it?

The phone buzzed again.  He checked it once more.  There was movement on his tracking device.  He silenced the music again and scrambled to his feet.
Damn it!

From the voices on the recorder, he could hear a man talking.  He was plotting something.  Must be the soldier type she had been with earlier.  He heard another man’s voice.  Had they taken her phone?

His receptor had been slightly damaged at the library.  Slate listened intently but all he could gather was Cress was in trouble. 
Hurt? 

She should be dead!

Impossible.

He shrugged it off.  The bullet had gone straight into her heart.  No one could have survived his accurate shot. 

Slate never missed or wasted a bullet.

He would check again in an hour.  Right now, he had better things to attend to. Slate owed his life to Mason, the only father figure or family for that matter that he’d ever known.  Somehow, he could not help but conclude Mason was a self-seeking, egocentric man who used and abused whomever he pleased.

  Over the years, Slate had made quite an affluent living serving Mason’s dishonest assignments.  It all sat in box 6207 in an offshore bank account in the Cayman Islands, mounting up interest.

He’d done enough and would not be Mason’s errand boy any longer.

How many years had it been?  Too many to count.  Most of his life it seemed.  He had sacrificed his own dreams for Mason’s and essentially turned into the one thing his mother would wince at, a common-place criminal.  The sacrifice had come at a price too, but was not entirely wasted.  He had seen the master in action and had learned a few things along the way.

He reached for a steel ring wrapped around his right middle finger.  Nothing about it spoke of elegance or beauty.  But to Slate it was of more value than anything he owned.  He pulled it off his finger and placed it on the table near him.  Locating his electronic tablet, he reached for the Swiss Army knife lying on the table.  With the corkscrew tip, he stabbed at a black point on the ring.  The top shell slid off revealing a series of microscopic, electronic chips. 

He forced out one chip, no bigger than a baby’s fingernail and found the custom-made, memory device he’d ordered from a foreign supplier. 

He slid the chip inside and placed the memory stick within the electronic tablet. 

It lit up and the application he sought loaded.

He scrolled through a list of classified names, a list of all the clients Mason secretly concocted with.  These were not in the interest of the ISTF.  He should know
,
since he’d helped do most of the clandestine work himself.  But it was his bargaining chip, should he ever need it.

The afternoon when Slate had left Mason’s office, he had seen three new names on Mason’s screen.  Unfamiliar with any of them, he flinched.  Slate was always privy to everything concerning Mason.  Still, Mason had never mentioned these three names to him. 

A day would come when Mason would no longer need him.  He would not to be caught off guard.  Even he had intents, selfish as they may be.

Slate memorized the names. Samuel Riche, a name he’d seen in the newspapers, Margot Arlington and Rupert Kumar. 

What did Mason want with them?

The blue light on the phone flashed in rapid blinks.  He shut the program and replaced the chip in his ring.

His attention turned to the phone.  “What’s wrong with this damn thing?”

His marksmanship had never let him down. 
There’s no way Cress could’ve survived that bullet..

* * *

5:03 P.M.

Shoreditch, East London

Calla gripped her arms, digging her shattered nails in her bare skin.  Where had the cold come from? 

The immense fatigue?

She rubbed her arms, yearning for warmth.  Her bare feet soaked in a pool of blood.  An ice-cold sensation began a slow agonizing decent through her veins, close to sub-zero temperatures.  She tried to stand, but her legs resisted.  Her immobile knees, now weakened, locked together, stiffening with a chill as the wind swept over her drenched skin.  Snowflakes caressed her cheeks, perhaps the only upside in the gloom.
 
Her thoughts spun round and round, trying to arrest any recognizable memory.

The cold eased and heat seeped into her aching muscles.

She slowly opened her eyes, making out undetectable images and movement in the near distance.  She heard voices. 
What happened?
 
Where am I?

Her hazy vision became clearer, until she could make out decipherable forms.  Meanwhile, the voices around her grew louder and more distinct.  She lifted her head and glared upward.

Jack and Nash sat across the room in debate over an item resting on a cluttered table.

“I can’t believe you guys found this!” Jack said.

“Well actually, it was given to Calla,” Nash said.

“Do you know how many people are looking for this?”

“I'm not really sure.  Could you examine it?  I don’t think it's like any carbonado diamond we have on file.”

Calla turned her head towards the discussion.

Nash sensed movement behind him.  “Calla. Thank God you’ve come to?”

Her chest still heaved with ferocious pain.  But, as she moved her limbs, the stiffness and discomfort eased.  She could scarcely recall what had led to such a substantial headache.