Read Online The Other Tree by D. K. Mok - Free Book Online

someone who didn’t have a can of Mace.”
    The woman didn’t reply, but there was something slightly odd in her eyes as she glanced at Luke.
    “So what were you going to pull out?” asked Luke.
    “Yes, Mace.” The woman buttoned up her bag firmly.
    For a moment, Luke thought he saw something move inside the bag. He subtly took note of the woman’s heavy boots beneath her summery dress.
    “Thought it’d be fun to check out the slums?” asked Luke.
    “I got lost.”
    “I’ll walk you back to your hotel.”
    “Thanks, but I’m fine.”
    She gave Luke a quick smile before jogging away down a side street.
    “I thought you said you were lost,” said Luke.
    “I’m okay now.”
    “What’s your name?” called Luke, as the woman retreated down the dim laneway.
    Her voice carried back from the alley.
    “Thena!”

5
    Money wasn’t everything.
    There was intelligence, stealth, brute force, and allegedly, feminine wiles. Chris was favouring the second option, and had decided there were insufficient resources for the third or fourth.
    Chris slowly circled the halls of St Basilissa’s Museum for the umpteenth time, raking her gaze across the lighting rigs and security cameras, willing the receptionist to take an extended tea break, or perhaps to just spontaneously pass out.
    Docker and his team had gone through the door behind the reception desk—the Sumerian tablet had to be somewhere through there.
    Chris paused near the front desk to examine a display featuring a two-thousand-year-old piece of dental floss from South America. According to the information plaque, it had been painstakingly reconstructed from seventeen different pieces of fibre. Chris tried to look interested.
    The receptionist, Fabian, was trying not to fidget. He adjusted his nametag again, then nervously clenched his hands on the desk. He quite liked his job, although he had aspired as a child to be a cameleer. However, he had discovered that camels disliked him marginally more than he disliked eye infections from flying sand, so museums it was. He liked the order of the museum and the wonder he occasionally saw in people when they viewed a particular display. There was a certain gratification to sharing marvellous things with the public.
    Which was why it grated when certain parties swanned in, expecting rare items to be made available, demanding exclusive access to valuable pieces. This was a museum, not Rodeo Drive. Fabian remembered the time an advertising company had rented a rare Cambodian clay chalice for a beer ad, and it had come back chipped and smudged with lipstick stains. He had heard the Assistant Curator crying in her office for days.
    The telephone on his desk rang, and Fabian scooped up the receiver.
    Chris watched surreptitiously as Fabian spoke softly in Italian, his tone clipped and unhappy, in the manner of employees everywhere when being given instructions they were not disposed to follow, and which they would invariably recount in their exit interviews. Fabian replaced the receiver stiffly and strode over to the security door, pressing a short code into the control pad.
    Chris held her breath, wrapping her fingers around a business card in her pocket. She watched closely as Fabian opened the door and disappeared through it.
    As the door began to swing shut, Chris lunged past the desk and slipped the business card into the locking mechanism. She tried to look inconspicuous as she held the card tightly, listening as the footsteps died away. Glancing casually around the reception hall, she took a deep breath and slipped through the door.
    Life is full of classic choices, many of them clear dichotomies. One or the other. Left or right. Right or wrong. And often, of such simple choices, great historic changes are made, or wonderful opportunities lost.
    The corridor was carpeted in rich, verdant green, and the walls were panelled in polished teak. At the end of the short hallway lay a staircase curving upwards, and another