Tear of the Gods Read Online Free PDF

money he’d been promised for finding the torc dancing in his head, Novick said that he understood and ended the call.

6
     
    David Shaw rose the next morning with anticipation thrumming through his veins. He’d been searching for the Tear of the Gods for more than a decade. Many had scoffed at his dedication and focus. It’s just a legend, they’d told him. Nothing more than a myth, like the Holy Grail or King Arthur’s Excalibur. You’ll never find it because it doesn’t actually exist. But Shaw had believed differently and now, in less than twenty-four hours, he was going to be holding that so-called myth in his own two hands.
    Shaw was in his mid-forties, with brown eyes and a sharp nose set in a narrow, aquiline face. The combination of his facial features and his shoulder-length dirty-blond hair often resulted in others mistaking him for the actor Sean Bean, a suggestion that Shaw would publicly chuckle over but which infuriated him to no end. That he could be mistaken for an actor, of all things, was an insult to all he’d worked to achieve since graduating from Oxford at the top of his class and founding the Vanguard Group.
    To say Shaw was driven would make one guilty of a gross understatement. He had ambitions and dreams the likes of which not even his board of directors were aware and obtaining the Tear of the Gods was just the first step in a process he’d been planning for years.
    After a leisurely breakfast he had his driver take him to the Vanguard offices. Several men were seated outside his office waiting for him, as he had known they would be. His executive assistant had sent word to them all the night before, requesting their presence in the office by nine this morning, and if there was one thing his people knew, it was not to disobey his orders.
    Shaw pointed to one of them, a man named Trevor Jackson, and the former SAS commando and current Red Hand Defenders strike team leader followed him into his inner office, shutting the door behind them.
    “I’ve got a job for you,” Shaw began as he took his seat behind his desk and waved Jackson into the chair before him. “A particular artifact was uncovered at an archaeological dig in the West Midlands last night. I want it.”
    He handed the other man a thin folder. Inside were an assortment of documents, including aerial photographs and topographical maps of the surrounding area, dossiers on Stevens, Novick and other personnel they could expect to encounter at the dig site, as well as a snapshot of the torc that looked like it had been taken quickly with a cell phone.
    “The photo was taken by my source on the ground,” Shaw explained. “It’s not perfect, but it should be good enough to let you verify it when you arrive on-site.”
    Jackson glanced through the materials, lingering on the photograph. “What kind of opposition can we expect?” he asked.
    “Little to none,” Shaw replied. “They’re a bunch of academics. Somebody might have a gun with which to shoot snakes, but that would be about it, I’d think.”
    “So we go in, recover the necklace and get out again. Sounds simple enough.”
    But Shaw was already shaking his head. “You need to take any steps necessary to ensure that no one knows the artifact was recovered from the site.”
    Jackson had worked with Shaw long enough to know what the other man was talking about. “And the bodies?”
    Shaw shrugged. “Dump them in the bog, for all I care. Just be sure there aren’t any survivors. I don’t want someone turning up at a later date to counter the official report.”
    “What about your man on the inside?”
    Shaw didn’t hesitate. “Get rid of him, too.”
    “Fair enough,” Jackson said with a smile. “Consider the problem solved.”
     
     
    W ITH THAT TASK behind him, Shaw could turn to the other major item he had on his agenda for the day—informing the Committee about the discovery of the torc.
    The Committee was a group of wealthy collectors that he’d put