Chapter 17: "Important and urgent aren't the same things…"

"So, what happened to you?" Nikko nudged as he and Cal followed a route around the top, interior side and, where possible, buildings of the ancient ramparts of the old quarter of the town.

"Hmm?" Cal responded, apparently focussing entirely on the earthworks and mediaeval masonry.

"Your disappearing act when we arrived," Nikko elucidated, apparently paying absolutely no attention whatsoever to the task his father had allotted them. "Your bag is still lying on that sofa bed, by the way."

"I went for a walk, Nikko," replied Calvin, with a sigh. "It was a long flight and a cramped drive and I needed some air. Nothing else to it."

"Okay," conceded Nikko. "I mean, you're right about the flight and, man, as much as the idea of my Dad in a minivan amuses me, all six of us, plus our luggage, in the same minivan is another matter! And it seems Juliet, at least, agreed with you on the needing some air front! Turns out she was out in the gardens at the same time as you! Came back just five minutes before you did. From the same direction too."

"Is there a point to this?" Calvin asked, turning to Nikko. "Cause I'm not seeing the point in this conversation at all."

"Just wondering if you bumped into each other out there, is all," grinned Nikko, blithely continuing his stroll along the ramparts. Behind him he heard Cal's footsteps catch up.

"It's a big garden," he said, watching the earthworks again. "She could have been anywhere."

"Now, see, that's not a no," smirked his irksome companion. "And since it's not a yes either, that tells me you're trying to hide something."

"Maybe I just enjoy irritating you for a change," quipped Cal. "It's the simple things in life, you know?"

"How much to you want to sleep tonight?" Nikko queried.

Calvin stopped and glared at Nikko. From long experience, he knew the threat was real, even if the kid could only pull it off for one night. He replayed the events of the evening in his mind and picked out the key points. At least the ones he was willing to tell Nikko. "Fine: we bumped into one another in the garden. We chatted for a little while. Nothing of any interest to you, just about that parchment we found in Syria. Then we went on our separate ways and I didn't see her again until I got back to the house. Satisfied?"

Nikko narrowed his eyes in mock suspicion. He opened his mouth to speak and his pocket rang out the sound of the Indiana Jones theme tune. He held up a single index finger. "Hold that thought." Nikko fished the phone out of his pocket. "Hi Dad!"

Calvin folded his arms and waited. The first few exchanges made it obvious Professor Zond was relaying a new set of instructions, which Nikko would no doubt take great pleasure in passing on. Their circuit of the ramparts was maybe two thirds complete, though, and once he had heard that detail get passed to the professor, he was fairly sure he could guess what those instructions would be.

"Dad says they'll work their way round towards us and meet us at… uh… toor duh lah poo dree err."

Calvin ignored the abysmal attempt at French pronunciation. He knew what Nikko meant. It was the tower at the end of the still visible part of the earthworks that made up the bulk of the ramparts. "Your father's ringtone is the theme from Indiana Jones?"

"Who doesn't love a bit of classic John Williams? What? You think I should have made it Star Wars? I gotta admit: you'd make a great C-3PO!"

XXXX

"So what were you and Cal talking about in the garden?" Maggie asked, fastening the clasp on the small briefcase of preliminary samples and the equipment for taking them.

"What makes you think Cal and I were talking in the garden?" Juliet asked, without looking up from the camera in her hands.

"Solomon gets bored easily."

This reply was so far from what she had been expecting, it actually made Juliet look up and round at her fellow scientist in utter confusion.

Maggie laughed. "We sent Vincent to tell you everyone was waiting."

"What did Vincent say, exactly?" Juliet queried, still unwilling to admit anything.

"Oh, not much," smiled Maggie. "Only that he didn't think Anthony's little surprise visit did him any favours."

"Oh, uh…" Juliet's brows wrinkled. Vincent's cryptic and inscrutable remarks could be deemed charming. When Nikko was trying to get something out of him they could be highly amusing. Occasionally, they could even be lifesaving. Right now, they were worrying. "Well, he's not wrong."

"Is that a fact," said Maggie, opening the door to the eleventh century tower and waving Juliet out. "You know, I was Haley's best friend when she and Solomon met. Now if any man ever put a woman in need of a good listener it was Solomon Zond. Just so you know: I have had plenty practise."

Juliet put the camera away and fished a town map out of her bag. "By the look of things the quickest route to the tower is straight up this street, through the square that's more of a triangle, with a circle in the middle, past the town hall and look for a Rue de la Laine on the left. It should be about the third turning after the square."

"All I'm saying," Maggie continued, "is that if you ever need someone to talk to, about Anthony, Cal, or anything, you know where I'm spending my evenings this week."

Juliet smiled. "Duly noted. We just… We were just..."

"Good listeners don't judge," added Maggie. "Your choices are your own. I'm just a sounding board. You want advice, I'll do my best, but if you just want to vent, that's okay too."

"No, it's nothing like that," Juliet replied, curls bouncing as she shook her head. "Not really. I mean, not right now. I mean…" She stopped and huffed out her breath in a sigh. "Cal and I think Tony might be Dorna."

Maggie's eyebrows rose. "Are you sure?"

"No." Juliet shook her head again and resumed walking. "The day before yesterday, Cal mentioned something he'd overheard. I didn't think anything of it at the time, then the whole 'surprise visit' thing happened and ever since I've been going over things in my head trying to spot anything I've missed or any patterns that don't add up."

"And?"

"And do you remember when Dorna nearly found Cal and I in that set of catacombs in Syria?"

"You hid in a Crusader bank vault, the way I remember it," nodded Maggie. "That was where you found that parchment you two were arguing over, wasn't it?"

Juliet nodded. "I don't think they were there for us."

XXXX

6 ½ Months Ago – 6 days after the fall

"Do you think they're still out there?" Calvin murmured. He edged the last of the boxes back into its original resting place and turned round. Juliet was engrossed in studying the scroll of parchment they had discovered. Calvin's frown deepened. "I thought we agreed to look at that together when we got home?"

"I know, we will, it's just…" Juliet shrugged, palms circling outward in a gesture as much of impatience at her own memory as frustration at their current situation. "Something's bugging me. Something in this is familiar. Like I should know it, but I don't. I've been over and over every script I can think of and none of them are right, but I'm sure I've seen this, or something like this, somewhere before!"

Cal raised a hand to place on her shoulder, but stopped and let it fall again. "Hey, we'll figure it out," he said, his voice as soothing as he could manage. "We're right in the heart of the lands where writing first really took off, at least as far as we know. A lot of the scripts from this area have similarities and there are a lot of scripts from round here!"

Juliet edged the parchment back into a roll, and back into its holder. "You're right, I know, it's just…"

"What?" Cal asked, a flicker of concern tracing its way across his face.

"Ugh! I don't know! I don't know!" Juliet sighed heavily, the now closed scroll case still in her grasp. "If I knew, maybe it might give me a hint to where I've seen the similar script. I mean, with all the papers we've worked on and read and glanced at, it could be anything: it doesn't even have to be something we've handled ourselves; but there's this nagging little voice at the back of my mind saying it's something important!"

"Does it say it's something urgent?" Cal enquired.

Juliet looked up at him and blinked in confusion. "What?"

"Important and urgent aren't the same things," he continued. "Your birthday is important, but it isn't urgent because it's not until September. So does your nagging little voice think this scroll is urgent or just important?"

Juliet blinked again, frowning at the far side of the room. "Important," she decided, eventually. "Definitely important. Not so urgent."

"Then we take it with us. We look after it. And we will work it out at home," said Calvin, watching her. Juliet's head never turned his way once. "Okay?"

She nodded and he turned his attention back to the cabinet. Behind him, he heard a shuffling of feet.

"That's not where that box goes," mused Juliet, the frown so obvious in her voice Cal could picture her face without turning.

"I'm taller than you," he shrugged in dubious explanation. The look on Juliet's face when he glanced over his shoulder at her silence told him just how dubious. He decided further explanation might be good for his health. "I spotted something at the back of the… er… spot for this one. Looks like a button, if I can just…"

There was a click and a gust of cold air wrapped itself around their ankles. Cal removed his hand and stood back. The bottom half of the cabinet had sunk down into the stone floor.

"I did not see a crack there, did you?" Cal asked, dropping down to examine the newly visible edge of the floor. He grabbed the flashlight Juliet was handing him and aimed its beam into the chilly depths. There was another tunnel, heading who knew where, leading in one definite direction from the room. It could only be an escape route: there were no steps leading up to them, only a drop of a few feet onto solid rock leading out.

"So, bearing in mind that Dorna just dropped in on us yesterday and we've been here a week nearly and still hadn't found an end to the tunnels out there before we found our way in here," mused Cal, shining the light up their newly discovered exit. "On a scale of one to ten, one being no chance whatsoever, how likely do you think it is that Dorna are still wandering around out there?"

"Well, there are usually more of them than there are of us," considered Juliet, "so I think I'm going with nine."

"I think you're probably right."

"You sure we can't take anything else from here?"

"That's the only thing we found in its own case," shrugged Cal. "If we close everything up bar the base before we go, it'll be as safe as we can make it. The base of the cabinet probably has some mechanism like the doors where it closes on its own. I can't see Dorna hanging around trying to figure out how to open it, can you?"

Juliet shook her head. "Let's get packed up then."

XXXX

Vincent Siminou was many things and had been many more. Right now he was a colleague and protector of the man by his side. He was also that man's friend and confidante. In the years that he had worked with and watched over Solomon Zond he had come to respect the intelligence, tenacity and integrity that radiated throughout his person. From his conversations with de Molay, he had expected as much. He had expected a great leader, an inspired thinker, perhaps even a warrior. With his training, Solomon was certainly further along the road of the latter than most archaeologists. He had been aware of Nikko. De Molay had tasked him with keeping an eye on both father and son, even from the start of his mission, but it was not until Nikko joined the team, three years ago, that de Molay had told him all the circumstances of Haley's disappearance.

With de Molay, everything was need to know. That was, Vincent supposed, how he had survived playing both sides so long. Why, exactly, the Zonds were of such great interest to him, Vincent could make an educated guess at. He knew he didn't know everything, far from it, but he knew enough. He also knew enough to know that if Dorna caught wind of Nikko's awakening abilities, they wouldn't be quite so happy to sit back and wait for Solomon to lead them to the Ring. With Nikko in their grasp, the only use they would have for Solomon or the rest of his team would be as leverage. Vincent also knew that it was not Solomon who seemed to be leading anyone to the Ring. The Alaskan artefact was the first piece of the Ring the team had found in almost two years, and only then at the end of a long and drawn out scavenger hunt that only ever seemed to advance whenever Nikko rejoined the group. The last piece of the ring they had found before that had been the product of work Nikko had been a part of. The clue that sent them to Alaska had cropped up during spring break. They had returned from Alaska right in time to watch Nikko graduate. Now here they were, following the sparse breadcrumbs that seemed to follow the boy around like a stray cat.

The sound of distant bickering heralded Nikko and Cal's arrival long before either Vincent or Solomon could see them. Internally, Vincent placed a silent bet.

"Hey," Cal called, waving. "Maggie and Juliet aren't far behind us. We spotted them when we turned this way back there."

Vincent and Solomon peered round the end of the earthworks to look where Cal had indicated.

"You didn't wait on them?" Solomon frowned, glancing from the elder to the younger of the two.

"Wasn't much point in making them walk the distance twice," grinned Nikko. Silently Vincent counted down. Nikko backed away, beckoning for the others to follow. "We found something."

And there it was. Vincent smiled: he had won his bet.