The Babel Codex Read Online Free PDF Page A

him
for the stone. Then you killed him and took it.”
    Dawit closed his eyes and panted in panic. “This is true. I was
weak. I made a mistake.”
    “I do not begrudge a man who tries to improve his lot in life.
If you had stuck to our deal—”
    “You would have killed me the instant I handed you the
stone.”
    “Yes, but you would have died quickly, painlessly. Now look at
all you have had to endure.”
    Dawit shivered and wept. He whimpered unintelligible prayers
that held no belief.
    Bhalla gazed around the street but saw no one worth his undue
attention. “Where is the stone, Dawit?”
    “In the dig under the hotel as I told you. The big American,
the one from the radio, he was looking for things yesterday to play a prank on
the woman, Annja Creed. I sold him the stone.”
    “The stone was still there this morning?”
    “Yes. I was told I could pick it up this afternoon.”
    “Mr. Bhalla?” The security man beside Bhalla tapped his
shoulder and pointed.
    Bhalla watched as a manhole cover shifted to one side and a
woman with striking chestnut hair pulled back into a ponytail clambered from
under the street. Passersby gave the new arrival a wide berth.
    Bhalla recognized Annja Creed at once, though their paths had
never crossed. He knew her mostly from the scholarly work she did, the books and
articles, but he also knew her from Chasing History’s
Monsters . He had heard that she was at the Italian archaeology
site.
    Did she have the stone? Or was she simply running for her
life?
    The woman turned back to the manhole and offered her hand to a
man, helping him climb out of the manhole, as well. Almost immediately, some of
the men Bhalla had sent into the dig raced across the street with guns in their
hands, yelling as they shoved pedestrians aside to get through the crowd.
    Bhalla turned to the man beside the car. “Go! Get her!”
    The man launched himself in pursuit.
    Turning his attention back to the old man, Bhalla fastened his
large hand around Dawit’s throat and choked the life from him. Then, satisfied
the man was dead, Bhalla stripped off the glove as the driver shut the trunk on
the corpse and got in the backseat of the Jaguar.
    The driver slid behind the wheel as the other security man took
the passenger seat.
    Bhalla looked into the rearview mirror, catching the driver’s
eye. “Follow the woman. She must not get away.”

Chapter Six
    Burris Coronet, for all his surfer-boy good looks, wasn’t in shape. Annja listened to the man hoarsely breathing like a bellows as he struggled to keep up with her. He was also larger and less adroit, so he didn’t dart through the crowd as easily.
    If he hadn’t been with her, Annja was certain she could have outdistanced her pursuers. But he was and they couldn’t.
    She peered over the crowd, trying to find the path of least resistance. Once tourists and shoppers figured out that Burris was running at them, they tried to scatter and get out of the way.
    Glancing over her shoulder to check his progress, Annja saw that five men had climbed out of the manhole and four more were joining those. Her peripheral vision barely picked up the man in the black suit as he closed on her with a gun in his fist.
    Annja stopped and spun, turning to face the gunman as a bullet split the air where her head had been an instant before. She reached into the otherwhere for her sword and pulled it into her hand. The blade was three feet of razor-sharp, double-edged steel with an unadorned cross hilt. The sword should have been terribly heavy, but in Annja’s grip it felt just right, natural.
    The sword had previously been carried by Joan of Arc against the British during the Hundred Years’ War. When Joan had been burned at the stake, the sword had been shattered. In some inexplicable way, the two men tasked with Joan’s safety had found unprecedented longevity in their failure and her death. One of them, Roux, had spent more than five hundred years in his quest to find all the