Free A Passing Curse (2011) by C R Trolson Page A

Blackhawk helicopter. Another five hours on the 737, with a stop in Hamburg, had put her at Heathrow.
    Medics had bandaged Ambassador Harrington’s head, and he’d flown with her on the Blackhawk to Bucharest. On the flight, Harrington had explained through headphones, talking over the whirring turbines was impossible, that the Petazi district police, acting on an anonymous tip, had originally found her underground in an open-stone coffin, lying on her back, bandaged and unconscious.
    The police had also found three headless soldiers. When she told him for the tenth time that she hadn’t cut off any heads, that she could recall, Harrington nodded politely, but when she reached over to adjust his bandage, he jumped like she was making for his throat.
    For a month now she’d been hiding in London, trying to figure out who’d pulled her out of the freezing snow. Who’d saved her life? Leading suspect - Ajax.
    And who’d cut off the heads? No matter how ridiculous a notion, had Ajax been waiting for her inside the casket, carved with a face that could have been his twin? And for what reason?
    After landing at Heathrow and taking a cab into London, after withdrawing five thousand dollars on Cirrus Industries’ credit card, she’d spent four weeks in a travelers’ hotel, bathroom down the hall.
    Four weeks trying to relax, going to museums and antique shops, jogging along the Thames each morning, trying not to think about Romania or Ajax or Radu or almost getting gang-raped and shot against a lonely hospital wall, but it hadn’t helped.
    She’d not called Ajax to tell him how she was or what had happened. That was Harrington’s job. In fact, she didn’t care if she ever spoke to the billionaire again. His inept planning and the slip-shod way he’d prepared the trip had nearly gotten her killed. Radu had been killed, but he was no innocent and might have been letting her walk into a trap of Ajax Rasmussen’s design. The big question remained, What had Rasmussen been up to?
    And if he’d been waiting for her, how had he gotten there? Private jet? Maybe. Would there be records of Ajax landing in Bucharest? Probably not. Ajax had the money to buy any amount of discretion, especially in eastern Europe.
    She walked past the luggage carousels and outside to the cab rank. She put her bag down while the attendant whistled her up a cab.
    She gave the driver her address and settled back as he wheeled out of the terminal and got on 101 heading south. The driver, a Pakistani or Indian, perhaps, looked a lot like the driver who had taken her to Heathrow. It was funny how the cab drivers of the world all looked the same. So did the rich and the poor and the stupid. So did Ajax Rasmussen and a fifteenth-century knight.
    Hours earlier, somewhere over the Atlantic on the red-eye flight to New York, she’d woken herself and everyone else on the plane with a long scream. While she’d sat there wondering if she was losing her mind, the stewardesses henned up at the rear of the plane, eyeing her and shaking their heads. One of them later brought her a drink, brightly saying that fear of flying was normal, but she had nothing to worry about, planes were actually safer than cars.
    She gave the driver a twenty for the fifteen-fifty fare and walked up the stairs to the studio apartment. She lived on a street of Chinese elms and poplars, a quaint street with bungalows starting at a half-million. She’d paid one year’s rent ten months ago and had spent a total of six weeks living here. Three good weeks living with Clark, three hell weeks after losing Clark in Syria.
    She and Clark had picked Burlingame because of its closeness to Stanford where Clark, an English citizen and Oxford graduate, had been awarded an archeology fellowship.
    She remembered the death call she’d made to Clark’s mother, her screaming and dropping the phone, more screaming and furniture falling. His father picking up the phone, finally, and saying