Read The Navigator for Free Online Page B

thousands of gold and silver coins. I’d guess about ten thousand excavated artifacts are missing. Hundreds of boxes were left intact, praise Allah.”

    They filed through a doorway into a larger space filled with antiquities of every size and shape. “These are objects that were given a preliminary identification and were to be absorbed into the main collection as work allowed. Some have been stored here for years.”

    “The footprints lead in here,” Carina said.

    “The thieves evidently thought there was something of value in this room. We would have no way of knowing until we go over our inventory. We are far too busy trying to retrieve more precious items.”

    “I heard there was an amnesty,” she said.

    “That’s right. It has somewhat restored some of my faith in human nature. People have brought in thousands of items, including the mask of Warka. I expect that objects will continue to be returned, but, as you know, the most valuable ones are probably in the possession of some wealthy collector in New York or London.”

    Carina sighed in agreement. The thefts had been carefully planned. The invasion took weeks to gear up. Unscrupulous dealers in Europe and the United States could take advance orders for specific objects from rich clients.

    The antiquities business had become almost as lucrative as drug trafficking. London and New York were the main markets. Stolen antiquities from illegal excavations in Greece, Italy, and South America were often laundered through Switzerland, where objects can gain legal title after only five years in the country.

    Carina stood in silence amid the empty boxes, apparently lost in thought. After a moment, she said, “Perhaps I can speed up the amnesty process.”

    “But
how
? We have spread the word far and wide.”

    She turned to the marine. “I’ll need your help, Corporal O’Leary.”

    “I was ordered to comply with any request you asked for, ma’am.”

    Carina spread her lips in a mysterious smile. “I was
counting
on that.”

     
CHAPTER 2
     

    THE PAVEMENT SHOOK UNDER the treads of the twenty-five-ton Bradley Fighting Vehicle, warning of the troop carrier’s approach long before it rumbled into view. By the time the vehicle had turned the corner and rolled down the boulevard, the man who’d been making his way along the deserted storefronts had slipped into an alley. He ducked into a doorway, where he would be invisible to the vehicle’s night vision scope.

    The man watched the vehicle until it disappeared around another corner before he ventured from the alley. The thud of bombs that had presaged the advance of the American-led forces had stopped. The rattle of small-arms fire was constant but sporadic. Except for the firefights that ensued as the invaders mopped up pockets of resistance, there had been a pause in the battle as the coalition and the remnants of the defenders considered their next step.

    He passed a defaced statue of Saddam Hussein, and walked another ten minutes until he came to a side street. Using a penlight that cast a thin red beam, he studied a city map, then he tucked the map and light back into his pocket and turned down the street.

    Although he was a big man, several inches over six feet, he moved through the pitch-dark city as silently as a shadow. His stealth was a skill he had developed through weeks of training at a camp run by former members of the French Foreign Legion, U.S. Delta Force, and British Special Ops. He could infiltrate the most heavily guarded installation to carry out his mission. Although he was adept in the use of a dozen different methods of assassination, his weapon of choice was the crushing strength in his large, thick-fingered hands.

    He had come a long way from his humble beginnings. His family had been living in a small town in the south of Spain when his benefactor found him. He’d been in his late teens and working in a slaughterhouse. He enjoyed the work of dispatching everything from