Free Carpathian by David Lynn Golemon

fleeing ghostly image of the Chinese junk.
    “What are you thinking?” Alice asked as she slowly pulled the expensive gown over her head and then tossed it into the boat. Her slip was soaked through and Lee could see that Alice was in no mood to care who could see her body underneath the thin material—especially Garrison Lee.
    As the small boat bobbed in the water and searchlights started to poke through the mist, Lee reached into his jacket pocket and pulled out the piece of stone he had torn from the block after it had fallen through the deck. He looked it over and then pressed the large piece into his palm and closed his fingers around it.
    “I’m thinking we had better take a closer look at what we have in Vault 22871 when we get back to the complex.”
    Alice tilted her head as she also tossed the wide-brimmed hat into the sea. She shook out her long brunette hair and then caught the item Lee tossed to her.
    “Because I have never seen anyone go that far to create a hoax.”
    As Alice brought the chunk of block closer to her salt-encrusted vision, her heart froze. “Yes, I think we may have something a little more to investigate at Jericho than just the ancient ruins of the city, because something else was happening a few thousand years ago that isn’t recorded in the Bible.”
    As the small piece was rolled in Alice’s hand the bone was clearly seen underneath the petrified fur of that long dead animal. What antiquities forger would think to do that, place bone under the petrified skin of a hoax?
    Alice Hamilton and Garrison Lee of the Event Group had learned that night for the first time that things do go bump in the night and there is always the beast under the bed and in the closet. So yes, Mrs. Hamilton , Lee thought, there really may be monsters in the world .

 
    PART ONE
    OLD SCORES
    We cry “Our Father!” we that yearn
    Upward to some divine embrace,
    And dimly through the mist, discern
    At times a lovely awesome Face,
    Whose darkened likeness haunts our race.

    —Caroline Spencer, “On the Dark Mountains”

 
    1
    2577 FLAMINGO BOULEVARD, LAS VEGAS, NEVADA—PRESENT DAY
    As she reached for the small piece of broken block her hand lightly rubbed against the stronger hands of a man she hadn’t felt the touch of in nearly a year. All thought of that long-ago Hong Kong night vanished during the daylight hours only to reappear when sleep claimed the eighty-four-year-old woman. As the small rubber boat bobbed up and down in the cold waters outside Hong Kong harbor she remembered the feel of the piece of stone block and the touch of Garrison Lee’s fingers as the dream continued. In her sleep the woman wanted to cry out that she didn’t want the relic, she wanted him. As always in her dream all Lee would do is smile and wink that irritating wink he always did to make her think everything was all right—she knew it wasn’t. This was the same dream Alice had been having for the past six days and it always ended the same way—with the feeling of massive loss and the sharp pain of her heart breaking every time she saw Garrison in the dream.
    “Hamilton, you’re obviously dreaming this for a reason— now wake up!”
    The voice of a man gone for a full year woke her as she lay at her small desk in her bedroom. She had fallen asleep again at her computer terminal and as she looked at the screen she saw the jumbled words in one long and continuous sentence, the result of her head lying on the keyboard.
    Alice Hamilton reached out and angrily punched at the keyboard and cleared the screen of all the nonsensical words. As she yawned she looked at the clock on the wall. It was four-thirty in the morning and for the fifth straight night she had fallen asleep while in the midst of her research, and that in turn brought on the dreams of Garrison Lee and the time they spent together in China in the forties. Alice straightened in her chair, finally remembering what had prompted this dream in particular. She