Fast-paced, edgy, and action-packed, the perfect read for anyone who loves the novels of Steve Berry or James Rollins, Ryder: American Treasure marks the return of Ayesha Ryder, a woman digging into history’s most dangerous secrets—and hiding some of her own.
During of the War of 1812, British troops ransacked the White House and made off with valuables that were never returned. Two centuries later, a British curator finds a vital clue to the long-vanished loot. Within hours, the curator is assassinated—and Ayesha Ryder, a Palestinian-born antiquities expert, is expertly framed for his murder.
Who could be behind such a conspiracy? And why do they want Ryder out of the way? To find out, she picks up a trail leading from a mysterious nineteenth-century letter to the upcoming presidential election. As Ryder dodges killers in the shadow of hidden alliances, sexual blackmail, and international power plays, she finds that all roads lead to the Middle East, where a fragile peace agreement threatens to unravel . . . and another mystery begs to be discovered.
Ryder’s rarefied academic career and her violent past are about to collide. And her only hope of survival is to confront a powerful secret agent who has been waiting for one thing: the chance to kill Ayesha Ryder with his own two hands.
Praise for Ryder
“[Nick] Pengelley sets an unconventional story loose on and below the streets of London. With his unusual heroine, the author rejects the clichés of action-adventure thrillers and delivers a surprisingly entertaining read.”—Library Journal (starred review) “An exciting thriller with characters that you can’t help but like . . . a thrill-a-minute story . . . well worth reading . . . Pengelley has a hit with the character of Ayesha Ryder.”—Fresh Fiction
“This fast-paced crime/political thriller not only is timely for today’s Israeli-Palestinian conflicts, but it delves into historical events that helped shape the way the region’s political climate has evolved. . . . Get ready for an edge-of-your-seat ride featuring a kick-butt heroine bent on justice . . . I had a blast reading Ryder.”—Popcorn Reads
“An Indiana Jones–type adventure . . . Ryder has an Angelina Jolie–esque quality about her. . . . She is strong, both mentally and physically, and she was an amazing character to read. . . . [Ryder is] a literary roller-coaster ride I truly appreciated!”—Read-Love-Blog
Release date:
January 20, 2015
Publisher:
Alibi
Print pages:
240
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The child, a girl, was sprawled on her back in the gutter, a teddy bear clutched in one tiny hand. One of its legs had been ripped off by the force of the explosion. Her frilly pink dress was shredded and daubed in the blood that seeped from too many wounds to count. Even as Ayesha watched, the child’s little chest heaved once, then stilled forever. The child’s mother, her own face a mask of blood, scooped her up, keening an unnatural high-pitched sound that tore Ayesha’s heart. She took a step toward the woman and her dead daughter.
“I’m sorry—” The words caught in her throat as the woman swung her shocked gaze in Ayesha’s direction. “We didn’t mean—”
“Pardon me, Dr. Ryder?”
Her heart pounding, Ayesha stared into the face of the young man, a footman dressed in the royal livery, who held out a silver tray laden with champagne glasses. She frowned, her mind grappling for the present, for something to hold on to. The room swam. She closed her eyes, then opened them. Memory returned. The past receded.
“Yes, please.” She forced a smile. She lifted a glass from the tray. Drank deeply. Then, as the footman moved away, she checked the time on an ornate clock, a gift from Kaiser Wilhelm II to Queen Victoria. She sighed. Royal protocol demanded she stay for another half hour. She threaded her way across the crowded reception chamber and took up a position in front of a large painting, a Rembrandt, one of the queen’s collection. It depicted a middle-aged man and a woman dressed in dark garb, against a dark background. Ayesha hoped her own black Dolce & Gabbana suit, heels, and hair might blend with the scene so a casual observer would fail to notice her. A touch on her arm destroyed that hope.
“Imogen.” Ayesha liked the auburn-haired head of MI5, the United Kingdom’s internal security service, although she unsettled her. It was hard to get by the fact Imogen Worsley was one of the small number of people who knew about Ayesha’s past as a member of the Palestinian fedayeen. She’d thought that past buried, along with the dead—friends and enemies—and the guilt. Recent events had proved otherwise.
“I wondered where you’d got to.” Dame Imogen Worsley accepted a glass of wine from a footman. “What are you doing skulking in the shadows? This is your party, you should be enjoying yourself. You deserve it,” she added, with a nod in the direction of the slim black box tucked under Ayesha’s arm. It contained the George Cross, the nation’s highest honor for civilian gallantry, with which she’d just been honored by the queen.
Ayesha turned away, embarrassed by the praise. Her gaze lighted on two men on the far side of the chamber. They were looking her way. She knew one of them: Noel Malcolm, the deputy prime minister. The other, a florid-faced man with short-cropped fair hair, was a stranger. A woman, blond, very tall, striking looking and clearly athletic, joined them.
“Do you know them?” Dame Imogen asked her.
“Noel Malcolm. I don’t know the other one, or the woman.”
“The man’s name is Yael Strenger.”
“And?”
“He’s with the Embassy of the Holy Land. According to them he’s a diplomat.”
“But you know different?” The Holy Land. Even now, six months after the creation of the new federal state from what had been Israel and Palestine, Ayesha mentally pinched herself whenever she heard the words. That the world equated her with the deed was something she found hard to accept. It was Lawrence. All I did was find his treaty.
“Strenger was Mossad. One of their best field agents. Ruthless. I’m betting he’s the London station chief for the Holy Land’s new foreign intelligence service.”
“Why would he be talking with Malcolm?” Mossad, short for HaMossad leModi‘in uleTafkidim Meyuḥadim, Israel’s Institute for Intelligence and Special Operations. Long ago Ayesha had matched wits with their operatives.
“Why indeed?” Dame Imogen’s gaze flicked past Ayesha’s shoulder. “Our prime minister approaches,” she warned.
At five foot ten, Susannah Armstrong stood almost as tall as Ayesha, her long dark hair a match for her own, although where her skin was a light olive, the prime minister’s was pale white, reflecting her Welsh heritage. She was accompanied by a woman whose honey-blond hair was cut into an internationally known bob. Dressed in a canary-yellow Jackie Kennedy–style suit complete with pillbox hat, Diana Longshore, the U.S. secretary of state, turned heads wherever she went.
“Dame Imogen.” Susannah Armstrong nodded to the head of MI5, then rested a hand on the secretary of state’s arm and turned her hazel-eyed gaze on Ayesha, eyes that always seemed to hold a glimmer of amusement. “I don’t think you’ve met Diana Longshore, have you?” she asked.
“Actually Dr. Ryder and I have met before.” The American stared at Ayesha with the direct gaze before whom even heads of state had been known to quail. “Although we weren’t properly introduced. Last December, at the Tower of London. Do you remember?”
Ayesha did remember their encounter at the Tower. Forcing her way through the crowd of VIPs surrounding Israel’s prime minister, desperate to prevent his assassination by Shamir terrorists, she’d shoved Diana Longshore out of the way and knocked her to the ground.
The American held her gaze for a moment longer, then her mouth broke into a warm smile that spread to her eyes. She extended her hand. “It’s an honor to meet you properly, Dr. Ryder. I hope you’ve recovered from your injuries.”
Ayesha accepted the handshake and opened her mouth to reply, but the secretary hadn’t finished. “I’d like to offer you a job,” Longshore said.
Ayesha frowned. “I already have a job.”
“Ayesha, please,” Susannah Armstrong cut in. “I know you can’t wait to get out of here and look for the Ark, but I’d like you to hear Diana out.”
Ayesha bit her lip. She was annoyed the prime minister had mentioned the Ark in front of the American. Dame Imogen also knew about the hunt that consumed her every waking moment. But Ayesha didn’t want to widen the circle.
“The Ark?” Diana Longshore asked Ayesha.
“The Ark of the Covenant.” The prime minister ignored the black look Ayesha shot her.
“The biblical Ark? I thought that was just a story.”
“No. It really existed. Still exists, Ayesha thinks.”
“Amazing! So where is it?”
“It was hidden below the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem,” Ayesha got in before her prime minister could divulge anything she didn’t want known. “But it was moved.”
“To where?” Longshore was fascinated.
“That’s what I’m trying to discover.” She had no intention of telling the American about the clue she possessed to the whereabouts of the Ark. Lot of good it’s done me. Weeks of puzzling over it and she’d got nowhere.
“I hope you find it,” Diana Longshore said firmly. “I really do. The job I’d like you to take on is also a treasure hunt.”
“What sort of treasure?”
“The treasure the British looted from Washington in 1814.”
“I don’t—”
“You do know what I mean?”
“Yes, but . . .” Ayesha had read the news report. A British Museum curator had discovered an artifact that could only have come from the Capitol Building in Washington, D.C.—the capitol the British had looted and burned in 1814, during the War of 1812, when Britain and the young United States had fought a particularly pointless war. “Is it true no one knows what happened to the treasure?” Dame Imogen asked.
“It’s a two-hundred-year-old mystery,” Longshore replied. “Most people who’ve looked into it think it’s at the bottom of the sea, lost after the ship carrying it to England sank during a storm. This discovery might change all that. If one object has turned up in London perhaps there’s more.”
“I can see why you’d be excited,” Dame Imogen said.
“I am!” Diana Longshore’s eyes sparkled. “If it still exists, the treasure could include priceless artifacts of early American history. Things from the White House belonging to George Washington and the early presidents. Books, papers—who knows what else?”
“Why me?” Ayesha asked. Shit! “Why would you think I’d have any idea how to find this treasure? I’m a Middle East specialist. I know little about the history of your country.” There’d been a mistake, she told herself. She’d set them right and they’d leave her alone.
Ayesha had become close to her prime minister since that day at the Tower of London when she’d saved the life of Israel’s prime minister not once, but twice, allowing him and Sayyed Khalidi, the Palestinian leader, to declare the new joint state of the Holy Land. She’d never seen Susannah this excited. It had to do with the American, Longshore. Susannah kept glancing at her and smiling. She wants Longshore to be president. If the 1814 treasure was found and returned to the United States, it would be a great boost to her in the forthcoming primaries, and the election itself.
“You may not know anything about the Washington treasure,” the prime minister said, “but you are an expert on Lord Kitchener, aren’t you?”
“Kitchener?” What could the great field marshal of the British Empire, Queen Victoria’s hero general, have to do with the treasure of 1814? Kitchener had become world famous when he’d avenged the death of General Gordon in the Sudan, at the Battle of Omdurman in 1898, where Winston Churchill had participated in the world’s last great cavalry charge. Commander in chief of the British Army in India. Nemesis of the Boers, during the South African War at the end of the nineteenth century when, less famously, he had created the concentration camp to help control the rebellious population. Sirdar—commander in chief of British forces in Egypt. Then, as the Great War had broken out across Europe in 1914, he was appointed secretary of war, from which imperial position he had almost single-handedly created “Kitchener’s Army,” the all-volunteer British force that had helped stem the German tide as it washed across France, before it was halted at the very gates of Paris. Kitchener’s heavily mustachioed visage, finger pointing at the viewer, had adorned thousands of recruiting posters over the admonition, britons! join your country’s army! Still did, in multiple iconic replications. She had one framed on her own office wall at the Walsingham Institute.
“Yes,” Ayesha replied. “I’ve published several papers on Kitchener. He had a major influence on the modern history of the Middle East. The United States though?” She shook her head. Kitchener hadn’t been born until half a century after the end of the War of 1812. “I don’t understand.”
“You’ve read about the artifact found by Peter Hendry, the British Museum curator?” Diana Longshore asked her.
“It’s been all over the news. Nobody’s saying what it is.”
“We’re keeping it quiet for now. It was in the Capitol at the time the British burned Washington—that’s certain. Hendry found it in a box of personal belongings that had been sealed up for nearly a hundred years.” Diana Longshore smiled. “Kitchener’s personal belongings.”
Ayesha’s heart sank. She was trapped.
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