LITMIR.BIZ

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Flag pointed out, but there was no hint of malice or superiority in his tone. He turned the knife over once more in his white-gloved hands. “Do you have a workable translation of the text, Little Ant?” he asked.

      “I got most of it,” Little Ant assured him, “though it ain’t nothin’ pleasant. There’s a lot of lamentations, the destruction of an enemy’s family tree and some stuff about being returned to Tiamat.”

      “Tiamat,” Flag repeated, placing the strange stone knife back on the desk. “She was the great mother of the Annunaki, the family of gods from Mesopotamian and Sumerian mythology. Some myth fragments suggest that she kept her squabbling children in line as they waged their endless battles across heaven and Earth.”

      “Sounds like a tough old broad,” Little Ant remarked jovially as he replaced his modest notebook into his breast pocket.

      Abraham Flag’s amethyst eyes took on an eerie, distant quality as he turned to look out of the small window of the office. Sunlight streamed through the pane, its golden rays playing along the length of the odd stone knife. Out there, beyond the wire fence that surrounded the naval base, a lush jungle stood poised, brimming with the colorful plant life of Isle Terandoa. “If the stories are accurate,” Flag said finally, his voice low, “the Annunaki were beings of immense power, the likes of which have never been seen before or since.”

      Barnaby shook his head in disbelief, his tousled red hair flopping this way and that. “Gods, Professor?” he scoffed. “They’re just stories.”

      Flag turned back to his companions, his eyes playing across the dark-colored blade. “The artifact before us would suggest otherwise, Barnaby,” Flag stated, an ominous edge creeping into his voice.

      Both Little Ant and Barnaby B. Barnaby had worked alongside Abraham Flag for many years, racking up a score of adventures across the globe. Neither man had ever seen their de facto leader look as concerned as he did at that moment.

      Little Ant shrugged. “You really think a stone knife is gonna do much hurt to anyone, Chief?” he asked.

      Flag’s gaze met with Little Ant’s, and such was its penetrating quality that, even though the little linguist had known the impressive man of science for a dozen years, he found himself shying away. “If this blade belonged to the Annunaki, then we should presume that there is far more to it than meets the eye.”

      “Like what?” Little Ant asked, a quaver in his voice. “You think it’s got one of them death rays or something hidden inside?”

      “I held it for less than a minute,” Flag considered, “and in that time I could feel that something about it was different. Had you not noticed?”

      Flag’s companions looked disconcerted. They were familiar with his prodigious powers of observation, but the man was usually so sure of himself that it was a rare day that he would request confirmation from anyone else.

      “What kind of a ‘something,’ Professor?” Barnaby asked.

      “Yeah,” Little Ant added. “We been with this thing for a coupla days an’ I didn’t notice no ‘somethings.’”

      “It is subtle,” Flag admitted, “but the knife has a vibrating quality. Infinitesimal, I’ll grant you, but it is ever moving, as though in a constant state of flux.”

      “It looks solid enough,” Barnaby stated, “but what you’re describing sounds more like it’s made of gas.”

      “It does indeed have the appearance of a solid object,” Flag assured him, removing and pocketing his white gloves, “and yet I would wager that your description that it is made of gas is—at the subatomic level—a reasonable analysis.”

      Then the professor’s tanned hand reached forward, the fingers spread widely as they closed in on the knife. But he did not touch the curious weapon. Instead, Abraham Flag held his hand in what appeared to be an open grip, running his widespread fingers along the very edges of the blade, never once touching it. “It has an aura,” Flag confirmed. “I would need to perform a full analysis before I can be certain of what that aura is, but I can assure you that it is there.”

      Flag’s companions looked at each other, utterly baffled. Although Flag was renowned as a man of science, he was in fact a polymath, a scholar of many disciplines. In combining the many great bodies of knowledge that he had absorbed, Flag could bring his analytical mind to bear on the most esoteric of subjects. Even so, the words he was speaking now seemed to belong to an utterly different world view from the one to which he subscribed, and that paradigm shift caught his companions off guard for just a second.

      Little Ant was the first to speak, voicing his reservations in his famously cheery way. “It sounds like a load of old hooey to me, Chief.”

      Barnaby’s face turned red and he glared at the diminutive linguist. “‘There are more things in Heaven and Earth than are dreamt of in your philosophy’,” the archaeologist assured him angrily, quoting Shakespeare. “You buffoon,” he added, shaking his head.

      “Hey, who ya callin’ a buffoon, you dust-diggin’ goliath?” Little Ant snapped back.

      Flag ignored them. He had seen this argument played out a thousand times by his companions, and he knew that, despite appearances, it was an amicable way of letting off steam. Instead, it was the ancient knife that played on Flag’s thoughts. It had to have lain at the bottom of the ocean for thousands of years before being brought back to the surface with the shift of the tectonic plates that had revealed Isle Terandoa. Without proper study, Flag couldn’t be certain, but his instincts told him that this strange stone knife was incredibly dangerous.

      DEMY OCTAVO HURRIED through the dense undergrowth of Isle Terandoa, propelling herself with swift strides of her long, shapely legs. The U.S. Navy clearly considered the island to be secure, she realized as she pushed thick fronds aside and sidled close to the wire fence that surrounded the naval base. There was the occasional sentry patrol, but their movements were languid and unhurried, a sign that it was considered routine rather than a conscious act to protect the base from potential infiltrators. They may well be able to repel a fleet of warships, but they were utterly unprepared for a single interloper.

      The beautiful Signorina Octavo brushed aside the heavy leaves of a salmonberry bush, sweeping its rich pink flowers and yellowish fruit from her path. The wire fence stood barely six feet ahead of her now, and just a little beyond that, she could see the window to the small office where Abraham Flag consulted with his companions on the nature of the ancient Annunaki dagger. The window itself was closed, in spite of the heat of the day, and the dark-haired woman sneered with irritation at not being able to hear the discussion within.

      No matter. Flag had led her right to the priceless knife, and its acquisition was all that concerned Octavo now. Whatever the nature of that strange stone blade, it could be examined by the fascist scientists of her native Italy as soon as she returned with it.

      Her gloved fingers reached down, and Demy Octavo pulled one of the silver-handled Berettas from its resting place at her hip. She flipped the safety catch on the left-hand side, pulling it toward her to engage the weapon.

      A thin, heartless smile creased those luscious, falu-red lips as the glamorous Italian special agent aimed the pistol at the tall figure pacing back and forth behind the office window. In a moment, she assured herself, her hated enemy, Abraham Flag, would be no more.

      THE AIR WAS BECOMING noticeably warmer in the tiny office as Abraham Flag walked back and forth, weighing thoughts of the Annunaki blade with his razor-keen intellect. The uncomfortable warmth was the effect of three bodies in such an enclosed space, he knew, but that mild discomfort made him conscious of something else: his need for privacy while he studied this queer object from another time.

      “I shall take the stone knife to my laboratory,” Flag stated, his words cutting into the friendly bickering that was continuing between his two loyal companions.

      Even as the words left his mouth, Flag sensed something behind him. He spun on his heel, turning to face

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