Chasing the White Lion James Hannibal (essential reading TXT) 📖

blizzard in Vienna delayed his flight. He landed in Athens five minutes ago, three hours late.”

“We’re done, then. Without Pell, we don’t have the numbers.”

Val grabbed the back of his seat. “What? You can’t call this off. You’ll be signing Marco’s death warrant.”

“And we do have the numbers,” Talia said. “I can cover Finn’s role. I have the time.”

Darcy raised her hand. “Or I could do it, yes?”

“No.” Talia gently pushed the chemist’s hand down. “You’re throwing the locks and setting the detonators. It has to be me. I have the skills. I learned B&E at the Farm.”

Tyler lowered his chin and gave her his Really? look. “You’re talking about the equivalent of a weekend learning annex course versus Finn’s PhD.”

“It’ll be enough.”

He closed his eyes, either thinking or praying. When he opened them again, he put the van into drive. “Eddie, tell Pell to hurry up as best he can. We’re pressing forward.”

TYLER AND EDDIE DROPPED Talia, Val, and Darcy off at the church façade. As the boys drove away, the girls took the worn limestone steps down into the Catacombs.

Darcy had chosen a white satin evening gown, while Talia had gone with black. Both dresses were simple and elegant. Val shimmered between them in red sequins. At the shops, she had justified her selection with psychobabble about shallow hypnosis and color associations.

“I don’t believe you,” Talia had countered. “I saw the grin on your face when you tried it on.”

Val hadn’t argued.

Their clutches were red, white, and black as well, but of the same style and material—slightly large for a fancy evening out and completely interchangeable.

A raised walkway passed above the flooded limestone deep in the tombs. Red lights below the waterline cast a wavering glow on rows of columns on either side. Silhouettes watched from the darkness beyond, skeletons in the alcoves. Talia pulled her wrap about her shoulders. The air had grown cold.

“With a little help from yours truly,” Eddie said, offering a final briefing over the comm link, “the TACRON team found their way onto the Terrorist Watchlist. The top of the Terrorist Watchlist. They never left the States. And they won’t be talking to anyone for quite a while.”

Like any five-star establishment, no one entered Club Styx without a reservation. Jafet’s neutral sanctuary worked via tight access control. Earlier in the day, Eddie had stolen TACRON’s digital reservation package, and Val had passed the confirmation number to a fishmonger at the Milos street market. In exchange, she received a greasy paper bag with four tokens. Talia could feel her token burning like a coal in her clutch—not a pretty picture considering the rest of its contents.

The deeper they walked into the Catacombs, the worse the comm signal became. “Remember,” Tyler said through the static. “You’re heading into an extinct magma dome, a natural EM barrier. The only sig . . . going i . . . r out must pass thr . . . Jafet’s monitored network. We can’t talk . . . one . . . nother. We . . . an’t coordin . . .”

The static took over.

Talia removed her earpiece and tucked it away. “That’s it for SATCOM coordination. From this moment forward, every action we take is on a schedule. Our lives and Don Marco’s life all hang on the ticking of the clock.”

She fell silent. Up ahead, a wooden boat drifted up to the path, punted by a stolid figure in a leather overcoat and fingerless gloves.

“Those are the most sunken eyes I have ever seen,” Talia whispered to Val.

“Makeup,” the grifter whispered back. “Jafet has a flare for the dramatic.”

Talia spoke for the group, using a code phrase from the reservation package. “Mr. Charon, I presume?”

The ferryman kept his gaze fixed on oblivion and held out an open palm.

She dug out the token, a golden drachma, and placed it in his hand. He offered a slow, deliberate nod, and she stepped into the boat, taking a seat on a bench of quilted black velvet. Val and Darcy gave up their drachmas and did the same.

The boat drifted through the columns, well off the tourist path. The red lights faded behind. And as Talia’s eyes adjusted, the skeletons in the alcoves took on more definition. A few were complete, set into the plaster, bone fingers splayed as if reaching for the passing souls. Most were not so well put together. Skulls, lying askew on piles of shanks and femurs, stared at her with empty eye sockets.

Val shivered. “Nice place. Lovely decor.”

The cold had not affected Darcy. She glanced in every direction like a child on an amusement ride. “I like it.”

Presently, they passed into a tunnel, and the air grew warm again, as if a furnace waited at the far end. The darkness became complete. Talia had to clutch Val’s arm to counter the vertigo. More to settle her nerves than to correct his dramatic detail, Talia thrust her chin at the ferryman. “Not to be a stickler for detail, but the ferryman’s price was an obolus, one sixth of a drachma.”

To her surprise, he answered. “I get that a lot. Blame it on two thousand years of inflation.”

“He speaks,” Darcy said.

“I do now, for we have crossed into my domain.”

Light returned to the tunnel, orange and flickering, and the black walls gave way to a huge domed chamber. Sporadic flames burst from torches on carved arches and lava-rock bridges, and occasionally from the water itself. Guests sat at tables along seven stories of obsidian balconies. And at the center of it all, on an island of gaming tables, the most adventurous and foolhardy among them drank and gambled.

The ferryman punted past the island toward a half-moon dock. “Enjoy Club Styx, wandering souls. Seek me out when you are ready to return to living lands.” A smile touched his thin lips. “Should that time ever come.”

Hard to say at this point, Talia thought. She palmed her phone and glanced at the clock. The readout switched from 10:29 p.m. to 10:30. Zero hour for this mission. At midnight, or zero plus ninety