Operation Rubicon Read online

  They were going to Alexandria now because it was the home of Cleopatra for quite some time and was even the place of her death. Nina always had a great deal of respect for Cleopatra. She was an extremely powerful woman in a time when men so often held all of the power. Nina only wished that Cleopatra hadn't let herself get caught in the middle of two men at war. Her relationship with Rome, with Caesar, Mark Antony, and their allies in particular, had led to immense success in her life; Rome had put her into a place of power, but it was those same ties to Rome that also led to her downfall and eventual death.

  The letter back at the Palzazza Nuovo was between her and Mark Antony; and if Mark Antony really did send the sword to her, then they needed to focus on Cleopatra if they wanted to track down the sword.

  Nina had been to Egypt a few times before, but it never felt quite like this. Now that she was following Caesar's trail, every step she took was stepping in the legendary man's own footsteps. She was treading in places that he’d been, though she was there for much less militaristic reasons. She imagined Caesar standing in the exact same spot that she was standing in, seeing the same places, even if most of the buildings she saw weren't there thousands of years ago. A great many things could change in over two thousand years.

  They managed to find a landing strip on the outskirts of the city. Using a few of the Order of the Black Sun's connections, they secured it as a place to land. It was a convenient spot that Nina was thankful to have. It was yet another example of why the Order of the Black Sun had become such a benefit to her instead of a pain in the ass like it used to be.

  “I just got to this part in my book,” August said, looking around with some surprising awe. “When Caesar got to Egypt.”

  “Pretty amazing, wasn't it?”

  “Yeah,” August said. “He's about ready to kick some ass to make Cleopatra queen.”

  “So what's the plan?” Riley asked. “We can't search the whole country.”

  “We're not going to search all of it, just the places Cleopatra and Mark Antony were most likely to have been in their time. If Antony really did send the sword to Cleopatra, or took the sword to Egypt with him, then those would be the best places to look.”

  “But after all of this time, would it really even still be around here?”

  “If it was never found, then it's possible, yes,” Elijah interjected. “You would be surprised by how many treasures are hidden in populated places all over the planet, right under people's noses. And for something that valuable...I imagine Mark Antony didn't want it falling into the wrong hands.”

  “Like Octavian's hands,” August said, putting it together.

  “Especially Octavian's, yes. It is important to make sure that priceless remnants of the past are put into the right place, wouldn't you agree, Nina?”

  Elijah asked the question with some sharpness. He was clearly still feeling somewhat bitter about her decision to give the sword to the museum. She just ignored him. She could deal with some passive aggressive animosity. It wasn't that much different than Elijah usually was. He wasn't a passionate enough person to display extreme anger. His frustration—probably even his rage—was a quiet, constant simmer.

  “The blades that were used to assassinate Caesar for instance...we’ve a few of them stored away in the deep vaults and they weren't easy to track down. One of them was hidden away in a slot in the forum's walls. Another was kept within one of the treasonous senators' families and passed down from generation to generation. A morbid heirloom but their ancestor's betrayal did alter the course of history, so I can see why they would hold onto it, I suppose. And from my understanding, they had no intention of giving it away willingly...”

  “They didn't,” August muttered. “I was one of the enforcers Julian sent to get that knife. I just knew it was some old knife at the time. And he took a beating before he gave it up...” August looked a bit ashamed, or at least uncomfortable.

  Nina was just glad that the Order of the Black Sun wasn't like that anymore. They wouldn't handle a challenge by just punching their way through it or hurt anyone who was inconveniencing them. If Julian Corvus was still running things, he’d burn all of Egypt to the ground if it meant getting him closer to Caesar's sword. Nina and her team would try their hardest, but they wouldn't go anywhere close to that far. There were lines that they wouldn't cross and limitations that they would adhere to. Getting Caesar's sword was going to be a challenge, but they wouldn't spill any innocent blood just to make it easier to find.

  August scratched his bald head. “So let me get this straight, Mark Antony was here with Caesar when Caesar was helping Cleopatra become queen of Egypt. I read that last night...but after Caesar's death, Mark Antony and Cleopatra started hooking up. So she kind of had a fling with Caesar and then went straight to his best friend...seems a bit...”

  “Oh, come on!” Riley giggled. “Scandalous? Sure. Romantic? Yes! Two mourning power players, bonding over their grief for a mutual loved one. It happens all the time. It's just a shame that their little love affair ended up biting both of them in their butts in the end...but hey, that's love sometimes. It doesn't always end in happily ever after.”

  “What do you mean? What happened to them?” August's limited knowledge of history was sometimes very obvious.

  Nina stepped in. “Well, Antony's closeness with Cleopatra and Egypt gave Octavian the perfect ammunition to use against him. They both believed that they were Caesar's true successors but Octavian was able to paint Antony as a traitor, who turned his back on Rome for some foreign queen. He turned all of Rome against Antony and a civil war took place...Antony and Cleopatra were defeated. Like Riley was saying...love conquers all, except when it doesn't.”

  “Such a tragedy,” Riley said. “Shakespeare wrote a whole play about it. I highly recommend it.”

  “So Octavian wiped the floor with his biggest rival when he came here. So couldn't Octavian have taken the sword when he beat Mark Antony? He probably considered it his, being Caesar's successor and all that...”

  “It's possible,” Elijah said. “But given how much that would have meant to Octavian when he was made Augustus Caesar, we probably would have heard all about it in the history books.”

  Nina went over what she knew about Mark Antony's final days, silently in her head. It was nice having people to bounce ideas with, but she found that sometimes quiet contemplation was the best way to problem solve.

  It was in 30 BC that Octavian invaded Egypt. The notoriously skilled general, Agrippa, led his legions to remove Mark Antony and Cleopatra. They were crushed by Octavian's forces and Mark Antony committed suicide by stabbing himself with a sword—maybe it was the sword?

  That was impossible to determine but the thought did cross her mind. If he was going to kill himself with a sword, maybe it was the one that had been wielded by his late best friend? Perhaps he felt like he failed Caesar? Maybe...too many maybes. They needed something more concrete to use.

  “Nina.” The sound of Elijah's voice snapped her out of her own head and that long, rickety train of thought. “Sorry to interrupt whatever you were cooking up in there, but as I recall, you’re leading this endeavor...have you decided where it is we're heading to next?”

  “Let's take a long look around the city. We'll stop at anything that has to do with Cleopatra or Mark Antony.”

  “That sounds pretty broad and vague,” Elijah said.

  “It is,” Nina said. “But we've got to start somewhere, don't we?”

  August managed to hail a taxi by waving his huge arms around on the sidewalk. They all piled in; Nina took the passenger seat beside the driver while her three companions crammed into the back. August was a big man so Riley and Elijah were being squished against the doors on other side of him in the backseat.

  “Where would you like to go?” The driver asked. He was a young man with a tan, shaved head, and striking eyes.

  “Anywhere that has to do with Cleopatra,” Nina replied casually.

  �
�You’re a fan of the queen?” The driver asked curiously. “There are many great places for tourists.”

  “I am, yes,” Nina said. “But we're not here as tourists. We're here for work.”

  “I bet your work is much better than mine,” the driver grumbled.

  “We're looking for something here in Egypt. We're hoping it's nearby.”

  The driver looked intrigued but just nodded, bringing his attention back to the congested road in front of him as he drove. They rode through Alexandria for quite some time. It felt like hours and Nina was beginning to suspect that the driver wasn't really familiar with places that had to do with Cleopatra. She was about to ask him why it was taking so long, but the driver turned the wheel very purposefully in one direction. Maybe he really was taking them somewhere specific?

  The car turned down an empty alleyway and Nina started to get a little nervous. The driver had already taken them in all kinds of directions and none of them—especially this one—seemed to be bringing them any closer to their destination, or even to a main road. There was nothing ahead but a dead end, an alley surrounded by nothing but the walls of buildings.

  “Um...Nina...” Riley said uneasily from the back seat, looking around out the windows. Nina followed her gaze and saw a group of people coming out of the shadows toward the car. When the vehicle stopped, Nina looked at the driver who was just nodding.

  The driver suddenly spoke, in a more hostile tone than he had initially. “We know who you are. We know what kind of people you all are. We’re so tired of treasure hunters coming here and leaving with things that don’t belong to them...with things that belong here, to us.”

  Elijah bumped his glasses up his nose but Nina could see that even he was somewhat afraid behind those spectacles. “What we're looking for never belonged to Egypt actually. Its origin goes back to Ancient Rome.”

  “Yeah!” Riley looked ready to turn her panic into furious resistance. We're not looking for any sphinxes, scarabs, mummies, or any of that! Keep them! We don't want them!”

  The man in the driver's seat glanced out the windows at his gang who looked ready to pounce but were just waiting for his command. He gave a nod, and they all backed away. He looked from Nina then to the others in the rear view mirror.

  “Then what is it you want?”

  “An old sword,” Nina said. “One that belonged to Julius Caesar. We’ve reason to believe that it was here at some point...so here we are, understand? We're not trying to take off with any Egyptian heirlooms. We're just looking for any clues that would help us find Caesar's sword. That's all.”

  The driver looked at all of them curiously, like he was trying to determine their truthfulness just by sight alone. Those striking eyes seemed to have seen a lot of things. He wasn't old by any means but there was a lot of experience written on his face.

  “Who are you?” Nina asked. “What is this?”

  The driver hesitated for a moment before taking a deep breath and speaking slowly: “My name is Odion, and I’ve been trying to protect the history of my homeland, the little bits of it we have left. I only wish I’d been able to much sooner. So many foreigners have come to this country to ravage it and take whatever they want. Filthy scavengers. I know that they’d even take the Great Pyramids themselves if given the chance. I could tell just driving by that you were here seeking something in Egypt. You had that same look that so many others have. Greed.”

  “We aren't here for the pyramids,” Nina reiterated. “Like we said, we're here to find Caesar's sword to bring it to the Palazza Nuovo in Rome. That’s all.”

  “And you think that sword is here? Why, because that man invaded these lands, had an affair with our queen, then got himself butchered by his own friends?”

  “You're well-versed,” Elijah muttered.

  “I’ve got to be, if I'm going to be able to protect what is ours. I never heard of a Roman sword being anywhere around here.”

  “So what were you going to do to us if we were looking for an Egyptian weapon instead of a Roman one?” August asked.

  “My friends and I would have convinced you to change your mind. We still might.”

  The threat didn't sound quite as menacing as it had before, at least not to Nina. They didn't seem like terrible people; they were just trying to protect what was theirs. She could understand that.

  “Please,” Nina said. “We just want to find the sword and then we'll leave. If there's any way you could help us, any way at all, it would be greatly appreciated. Even the smallest little thing might be able to help us find the sword.”

  Odion gave her a hard stare. “You’ll leave once you learn about the sword.”

  “Yes,” Nina said. “I swear to you, it's all we're after.”

  Odion slowly nodded. “There may be a place that mentions it.”

  7

  THE PROTECTORS OF EGYPT

  Odion had them put blindfolds over their eyes as they drove for quite some time. Nina could have sworn they were going in circles. Odion was probably deliberately doing that to scramble any internal navigation they had. He didn't want them to see how to get to their destination, that was for sure.

  The car pulled up to a warehouse. Odion let them all remove their blindfolds and they all filed from Odion's car, all sharing the mutual relief that they were no longer stuck in that alley, waiting to be beaten to death. Odion still seemed a bit intimidating, but that might have just been because he was still a bit suspicious of their motives. His men from the alley pulled up in a jeep a few moments after them, and that didn't make things any more comfortable.

  “You won’t take anything,” Odion said, addressing all of them. “You will not even touch anything. You can look. That is all.”

  “Understood,” Nina said. “That's fine with us. It's just what we said. We're looking for Caesar's sword, nothing else.”

  Odion nodded firmly and stared at Elijah, Riley, and August.

  “We agree, alright?” Riley blurted out, looking nervous. “Can you stop looking like you want to bite our heads off?”

  Odion grumbled and then led them toward the warehouse. The big front doors were locked with a chain and Odion pulled out a set of massive keys to get the chain off. He pulled the door open and led them inside to a large room.

  It wasn't the fanciest collection of artifacts Nina had ever seen. It wasn't as tidy and organized as a museum. It wasn't as gratuitous and self-promoting as David Purdue's old collection room used to be. It certainly wasn't as secure as the Order of the Black Sun's deep vault either. Items were strewn about, lining the room. They weren't piled on top of each other at least, but everything was kept messily side by side with no rhyme or reason to their placement. They were there to just be kept and enough room was left in case they found more.

  There were all kinds of things in the collection. Statues, old coin, weaponry, pottery, even a sarcophagus that was probably built for some long dead pharaoh. It was impressive, especially considering that this was an entirely independent operation. Most private collections like this belonged to rich people who could afford the items and the security to store them away; people like Purdue and the late Irishman, Galen Fitzgerald. Those were the people that Nina was used to seeing own these kinds of things. She wasn't expecting some unassuming little gang of Egyptians to have relics that some Egyptian museums would probably pay a good deal of money to acquire.

  “Where did you get all of this?”

  “Some of it was passed down through families. Some items were found buried in the dirt, or at the bottom of the river. Some treasures were rescued from people who tried to take them away from here. These are the possessions of our people and this is where they belong, safe in their original homeland.”

  That made sense to Nina, but the part about taking it back from people that tried to leave with it was a little worrisome. She still wondered how bad the beating would have been in the alley if they’d actually been after some Egyptian artifact and not a Roman one.

  Eli
jah looked around with that same expression he exhibited during their visit to the Palazza Nuovo; he wasn't impressed at all, and looked actually insulted by the conditions. He was probably imagining taking each and every one of those artifacts and bringing them back to the deep vaults with him, to store away in a much more secure environment.

  “Don't even think about it,” Nina whispered. “Don't touch anything.”

  “I wasn't going to,” Elijah said unconvincingly. “Just not an ideal place to store--”

  “Stop,” Nina hissed quietly.

  Riley and August looked much more impressed than Elijah did and Nina couldn't blame them for that. This was very impressive for a group of nobodies.

  “And ever come across anything Roman?” Riley asked, standing over a pile of old blades. She stood just out of reach so as not to alarm Odion or even risk being accused of touching anything. “Like the sword we're seeking.”

  “I don't believe so,” Odion said. “But that's why you're here. To see for yourself. And that’s all. You’ll check and then leave swiftly. Is that understood?”

  Nina didn't need to keep being reminded of the terms. It was like Odion was just showing off now, showing them that he had all of the cards. He just wanted them to see that he had all of this and they weren't allowed to have any of it; a taunt to a group of foreigners that he believed wanted to just rob him blind.