Star Harbor Nights

The name is Song.

Orchid Song.

Dr. Orchid Song, in fact...  only don't come to me with a cold or anything, because if you're not already in the ground, you're not a patient of mine.

I'm an archeologist, funded by the Pandora Foundation. They're the biggest name in archeology that you've never heard of. Anything dangerous, they bury. Anything useful, they use. The other ninety-five percent of the crap that gets dug up... bits of pottery, harmless statues, pieces of somebody's great-great grandmother... they let regular museums have.

I don't always enjoy having Pandora calling the shots, but all their shadowy bullshit pays for an awful lot of legitimate archeological work... and if the truth be known, the shadowy bullshit usually ends up being a lot more fun. You know the type of movie where the boring overstuffed professor type lectures his students about how archeology is such a dull, painstaking process and then he goes and blows up a bunch of Nazi bastards' heads, saves the world, and gets the girl? That's kind of what my life is like.

Actually, it's exactly what my life is like... even down to the getting the girl, apparently. I'd just woken up laying on my side, with my face buried in cleavage of leading lady proportions. I was wondering what the hell I was doing there when I became aware of another figure at my back and it all came flooding back to me. Adrian. I knew him by his smell, and by the feel of what was pressed up against the back of my thigh. Even asleep, it was a credit to him.

Or maybe I'm just such a petite little Asian thing that it seemed that way. Either way, waking up trapped between two snoring Anglo giants was not how I wanted to spend my first full day as a woman of... one year older than I'd been the day before.

Oh, and don't ask how a three-way with only one penis in it was supposed to be a treat for me. Adrian just had a sort of way with having his sort of way. Like most people with such an ability, though, he usually pushed it a little too far and got himself in trouble. Case in point: me waking up the day after my birthday slowly suffocating between a pair of boobs, I resolved that if we were by some miracle together when his birthday rolled around, I was going to make him eat a dick.

I'd even tie a ribbon around it for him.
 
I gave the sleeping beauty a gentle nudge, and when that elicited no response, a harder one... it was nothing against her. I just wasn't in a position to shove Adrian. She stirred, and slowly got up and swung her legs over onto the floor. I was out of bed like a shot; I just couldn't stand being trapped for long.

"Three hundred," she said sleepily.

"Beg pardon?"

"You owe me three hundred dollars," she explained. Her English was good, with a slightly muddled American accent.

"Adrian?" I said.

"Can you get this, babe?" he mumbled, not even opening his eyes. "I'll owe you."

Yeah, sure," I said, fumbling the money clip out of my trousers on the floor. "Happy birthday to me."

"Can I ask you a question?" the hooker asked me as she made a show of counting the three bills I handed her.

"Sure."

"Are you Chinese, or...?"

"I'm half Japanese," I told her.

"Oh. What's the other half?"

"Japanese-American," I said. At her blank look, I added, "It's sort of a family joke."

"Oh," she said. "I'm from America, originally, myself. I was brought over here when I was ten."

"Your folks move here?" I asked.

"No, I mean, as a prostitute."

I gave her another hundred. What can I say? I'm a soft touch.

"I need a shower," I said.

I'd paid too much for a room with its own bathroom. The place was hardly the Milton, but I trusted the owners. A big international chain would have top-of-the-line security, but as they say, a chain is only as strong as its weakest link. You can always find somebody you can bribe to look the other way at a big hotel. I speak from experience.

A small, locally owned place, on the other hand, depended entirely on its own reputation rather than the brand name cachet. If it became known that the owners don't take care of their guests, they'd fold.

Thus, I had every confidence that no uninvited guest would get up to my room, at least not without me hearing them fight their way in.

Invited guests were another matter altogether. As I came out following a long, hot shower, my eye went immediately to the spot where the satchel should have been... the satchel containing the artifact we'd been sent to Turkey to reclaim in the first place: the bronze breast plate of Achilles.

"Fuck!" I shouted. "The armor!"

"Huh... what?" Adrian asked.

"That overpriced bitch ran off with the armor," I said. "Why weren't you watching her?"

"You said that thing was worthless!" he said.

"From a mystical or practical standpoint, yes," I said. "Being as the person it was made for was functionally invulnerable. In terms of being a surviving artifact of a three-thousand-year-old war? It's priceless."

I was scooping up clothes as I spoke. I got as far as pulling my pants on backwards before I realized the girl was likely long gone.

"Damn," I said softly.

"She didn't take your money, too?" Adrian asked.

"No, she didn't," I said. "But that hardly matters... I can always get more cash, but I can't ring up my bank and ask them to wire a mythical bronze age relic from my account!"

"Christ, Orchid... we'll get your ancient thingy back," Adrian said. "We always do. You know that. I can’t remember the last time we did a job that didn't take a turn like this... why are you getting so upset over this?"

"How would you feel if it was your birthday and all I gave you was a sticky-fingered gigolo and a bill?"

"My birthday was three weeks ago," he said. "We were in Verona. You never said a word."

"Oh."

That shut me up.

"She'll need to fence it somewhere," Adrian said, getting dressed. "I know most of the local buyers, so..."

"Chances are she already has a buyer," I said. I just didn't ask. "Though it could be one of your guys, so it wouldn't hurt to check around if you can do it without pissing anybody off."

"How do you figure?"

"She saw where I keep my money, but she took the satchel," I said. "Until she picked it up, it could have been nothing but dirty clothes. That is, unless we were drunk enough to talk about it last night..."

"Don't think so," Adrian said. "But who the hell would have known what we were after here?"

"Anybody you blabbed to..."

"I didn't talk to nobody."

"...and Pandora," I said. "Why don't you go ask around with your contacts while I make a few calls. There's too much about this that doesn't make sense. The plate's a serious find, but it's not mystical and not dangerous... which means this should have been a legitimate expedition, not a sneak-and-grab."

"You sure you're supposed to talk about Pandora business in front of me?" Adrian asked. "They gave me the boot, remember?"

"At this point, I'm not sure of anything... except the fact that I don't give a rat's ass what anybody thinks I'm supposed to do," I said. "Go. Do your thing. I'll do mine."

I called the Foundation headquarters and left a long, angry message... it was two o'clock in the morning California time, so this didn't really accomplish anything except to make me feel better.

I meditated to clear my head... flush out as much of the anger as was humanly possible... and then got out my chalk and drew a circle on the ground. It didn't need to be elaborate, since I was going to be dealing with friendly forces. Normally, I would have used four different stones and candles for correspondences along the compass points and all that horseshit, but of course, my proper kit had also been in the satchel. I had a bit of an "in", anyway, but I figured I should probably go all out in my summoning chant to make up for the lack.

"Earth, fire, wind, and water, hear the call of Gaia's daughter. Water, earth, fire, wind, a messenger unto me send," I intoned. TV shows had got exactly one thing right about magic: the primordial elements of nature respond best to cheesy doggerel verse. There was more than one reason I didn't do this stuff in front of Adrian. "Wind, water, earth, fire, heed the call of my desire. Fire, wind, water, earth... um... hear my call and know its...worth?"

Immediately, a swirling mist took shape within the circle. I cursed under my breath. Mist wasn't what I was going for. The vapor coalesced into a foggy but shapely female upper torso and face.

"Greetings, Arcana, daughter of the elements and guardian of the balance," the spirit said in a breathy whisper. "And congratulations on your summoning ritual. It was terrible and you should be ashamed of your lack of proper ritual elements. I liked the bit about worth... you should write it down. And then tear up the paper and throw it away."

"Yeah, um... I was really hoping to talk to Earth," I said. Of the elemental incarnations I'd met, Earth was the only one who could carry on anything resembling a normal conversation. She took a long time to come to the point, but at least she had one. Wind was beyond flighty. Every time the wind shifted, so did she... and the wind was always shifting somewhere. "Is she available?"

"Oh, she's really, really busy," Wind said. "Busy, busy, busy. Got loads to do. Weight of the world on her shoulders, you know? Lazy bitch never does anything... always sending me to do the real work while she lounges around. Anyway, it's always nice to see you, whatever the reason. What are you bothering me for?"

"I need information," I said.

"Oh, well, that's my domain," the elemental said. "Why are you asking me?"

"It's about the breast plate of Achilles," I said. "Do you know anything about it?"

"Achilles? My darling little nephew... never heard of him," Wind said. "Is he still around?"

"He died, around the thirteenth century B.C.," I said. "But I got sent by my... other employers... to recover a piece of his armor. I don't know why they wanted it... they usually don't bother with non-magical stuff... but it got stolen. I don't know by who or for what."

"So, what do you want to know... why Pandora wanted it, or who stole it, or what they wanted it for?" Wind asked. "You mortals are so annoyingly inconstant... it's refreshing."

"All of the above," I said. "You're supposed to aid me in exchange for my services... you're not a damned djinni with built-in limits to the number of requests you can grant."

"No, but I can only talk about one thing at a time," she said. If only, I thought. "The Foundation never wanted it, she has it, and she's keeping it for the king who was and will be."

"She who?" I asked.

"What?"

"You said 'she has it'," I said. "Who is 'she' in this case?"

"I haven't the faintest idea what you're talking about," Wind said impatiently. "We're done here. Are we done here? Goodbye."

"Wait!" I cried. "I need to find that breast plate. Can you tell me where it is?"

"It's sort of... up in the air at the moment," she said.

"You could be a lot more specific than that," I said.

"Night has claimed it, and you have a better chance of ordering the stars in the heavens than you do of recovering it from her," Wind said. "I have every confidence that you'll succeed. Bye!"

"Can't you tell me anything more than that?" I asked.

"Oh, yes," she said. "Happy birthday!"

With that, she puffed away into nothingness.

"Fucking wonderful," I said. I made a few more calls to the Foundation's board members' home numbers, but got no answer. I wondered if they were screening their calls. I wondered if I'd been set up. I wondered if I was getting paranoid.

I had a bit of an answer to the last question when I found myself aiming my gun at the door as Adrian came back into the room some time later. He flinched but said nothing as I put it away.

"What the hell have you been up to?" he asked, looking at the circle.

"Playing marbles," I said. "You came up empty, too, right?"

"I wouldn't say that," Adrian said, with a twinkle in his eye. "I missed the armor, but I know where it is: on a plane for Istanbul."

"Not Constantinople?"

"Huh?"

"Never mind," I said. "What's it doing there, and how did you find this out?"

"I just asked around in the souk... I didn't represent myself as the rightful owner, of course," Adrian said. "I merely said I knew somebody who was looking for such an item, and there would be enough money involved for everybody to profit handsomely, including whoever could put me in touch with the rightful owner. I only had to make two inquiries before everybody I would have asked knew what I was after, including one who said the item in question had passed through his very shop."

"He could have been blowing smoke," I pointed out.

"He described the breast plate in detail," Adrian said. "Anyway, it's like you said... the buyer was already lined up: 'a very nice, very respectable Greek lady' was how he described her... and that's all he'd say. He didn't know the messenger... our thief... but had been told to expect its arrival any time today. He had a courier waiting to get it to the airfield, and a plane waiting there, ready to take off at a moment's notice. By the time I got there, it was gone."

"So this bastard was in on it..."

"Whoa, whoa... Doc Hakim's just a businessman, okay?" Adrian said. "Yeah, I'm sure he has plenty of reason to suspect it's stolen, but half his trade is probably in questionable antiquities, and before we start throwing stones we should remember that we'd have a hard time answering official questions if we were caught at the border with it ourselves."

"We didn't steal it," I said.

"And neither did Hakim," Adrian said. "I know this guy. We go way back. If he knew that this treasure had been stolen from me, it would break his heart... and seal his lips. He'd cry all the way to the bank. That's the way things work here. You should know this, Orchid."

"I do," I admitted with a heavy sigh. "I honestly don't know why I'm taking this so personally."

"Well, at your age..."

"Don't start," I warned him.

"So what do we do now?"

"I've put a couple calls in with the Foundation," I said. "The only person I could get a hold of said something about them never wanting the armor in the first place, which puzzles me, but there's a good chance she didn't know what she was talking about. There's not much else we can do on that end until California wakes up."

"So, we're just going to wait here?"

"Hell no," I said. "Let's get to that airfield. We're going to Istanbul to find a 'Greek lady', before the trail gets colder."