by Rob Jones
“Afraid, Hawke?”
He turned and saw Kruger moving through his men.
“Why don’t you go ahead of me, Dirk?” Hawke said. “Ladies first, after all.”
Kruger leaned into Hawke, making sure he had a tight grip on his gun. He pushed the muzzle into the Englishman’s stomach. “Get over the fucking bridge, cuiter.”
Hawke stared back into his eyes and never blinked or flinched. His team were looking to him for leadership, and getting shot in the stomach and left to bleed out inside a mountain wasn’t what they needed right now.
“Take care, Joe!” Lea said.
He cautiously crossed the bridge, his hands gripping the frayed rope cables either side as he made his way to the far ledge. It swayed violently as he passed the middle, but came under control again when he drew closer to the other side.
The others followed and when they reached the other side they followed a crumbling tunnel until they pulled up at another set of stone steps. “Christ,” Kruger cursed. “This is like Lord of the fucking Rings. Move on, you bastards!”
They obeyed, and at the bottom of the second staircase was a running river. They were hundreds of feet inside the mountain now, and the sight of the sparkling water surprised them all. Looming behind it was an enormous door, built into the rock and firmly closed. Dust and cobwebs obscured much of it and it was clear it hadn’t been opened for hundreds of years.
Kruger greedily pushed his men out of the way, including Giancarlo Zito whom he nearly knocked into the river. “Looks like we’re in business.” He turned to Kloos who was still being held up by Bruno, one eye badly swollen. The professor was mumbling to himself through a mouth frothing with blood. “Looks like Teach here isn't going to be much use.” His men shared a low, humorless chuckle. “But you all remember what that insane crackpot told us – get the sword at all costs. Prepare the Eryx.”
“Wait – what?” Lea said.
“Are you crazy?” said Scarlet.
Kim said, “Crazy? This dude is weapons-grade crazy.”
“You’ve beaten Kloos so hard you now have to fire the world’s biggest shoulder-launched missile to open a door,” Hawke said. “That’s not just crazy, it’s stupid, ignorant and short-sighted.”
Kruger snapped, and raising the stock of his rifle he smashed Hawke in the face and knocked him into the dust beside the river bank. “Any more fucking shit out of you and your bones are staying down here forever. Got it, you stupid bastard?”
Lea ran to him, and with Reaper’s help they hauled him to his feet. It took a second to get his balance back and after he spat a wad of blood into the river he was back again. His mind was buzzing with the pain of the blow, but also with the off-hand comment Kruger had just made about working for an insane crackpot.
As the South African surveyed the door and watched his men load the Eryx, Hawke turned to Lea. “Did you hear what he just said?”
“About you being a stupid bastard?” Scarlet said. “We all heard that, yes.”
Hawke gave her a look and then returned to Lea. “No – about him having a boss – he’s working for someone else. He described him as a crackpot.”
“That hardly narrows things down these days,” Scarlet said.
Kruger raised his eyebrows. “Yes, I’m working for someone, and yes, the man I work for is definitely crazy, but what do I care? I’m just a greedy bastard from Cape Town. Now shut the fuck up and let my men break this door down. Somewhere in here is my destiny. I will be great man!”
“You’ll never be the man your mom is, Dirk,” Kim said.
Kruger ignored her comment, now fully occupied with the progress the men were making with the Eryx. There was a grim silence in the chamber as Bruno loaded the shoulder-launcher.
“Everyone take cover!” Kruger yelled, and seconds later, they fired the missile into the arched doorway. A massive explosion tore through the chamber and blasted smoke, dust and flames in every direction.
When the smoke cleared and the doors were blown off their ancient iron hinges, Lea Donovan gasped. The explosion had revealed a second, larger chamber that reminded her of a cathedral’s nave.
At the far end of the chamber there was something still partially obscured by the remnants of the smoke. With the smell of the detonated warhead lingering in the damp, musty air, they moved forward into the cavernous nave.
As they walked through the chamber they saw the object could only be one thing: a sarcophagus, and it was surrounded by other, smaller cadaver tombs. They gathered around it in solemn silence, and for a moment even Dirk Kruger looked awestruck as his eyes danced over the ancient stone coffin.
Neatly carved into the slate tomb lid was a dragon with two wings behind it and a snarling face, all fangs and forked tongue. Below the dragon were the words: HIC IACET SEPULTUS INCLITUS REX ARTURIUS.
“Oh my God,” Kloos said. “This is unbelievable.”
“What is it?” Kruger said.
Ryan saw the words and knew at once. “King Arthur’s tomb.”
Kruger’s eyes sparkled like two solitaire diamonds. “Are you fucking with me, Kloos?”
“No, he’s not,” Ryan said. “It says Here Lies Buried the Glorious King Arthur.”
“So the legends were true after all,” Kloos said. “Not only was Arthur real, but the Sword of Fire was Excalibur.”
“I thought the legend says that King Arthur never died?” Kim asked.
“Not by the looks of this coffin,” said Devlin.
“If he’s inside it,” Hawke said.
“Does that make this place Avalon?” Ryan asked the professor.
The old man shook his head. He looked confused. “Legend says Arthur was buried in Avalon, but it also says he will come back to lead the Britons to freedom, so...” he shrugged his shoulders and gave Ryan an apologetic look. “The problem is that all of this happened so long ago the records are very vague and sometimes totally contradictory.”
“I thought Glastonbury was Avalon,” Scarlet said. “That’s what they said when I got stoned there back in ninety-four.”
“Some say Bardsey Island, just off the coast not far from here,” Kloos said. “But it’s entirely possible the area above us right here is Avalon, and this mountain leads to Annwn. This is... I don’t know what to say. My entire life has been for this moment.”
“You got that right,” Kruger said, and fired his hunting rifle into the Dutch professor’s chest.
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
Tiger listened to the sound of the ringing phone up against his ear. The gentle electronic tone reminded him in a strange sort of way of his songbirds back in his garden. He was making a call to Zhou Yang, his boss and the second in command of the General Office of the Central Investigation Department, but as usual Zhou was making him wait.
What was it his mother used to tell him about patience?
Young plants can't be forced to grow by stretching them.
Yes, that was it; and mother was always right.
A watched pot never boils, as the Westerners put it.
The phone continued to ring, but he could not hang up. He had already spoken with Zhou’s stern personal assistant who had put him through, so the boss knew he was on the line. He closed his eyes and turned the ringing tone back into his songbirds – the ones he kept in the little bamboo cages hanging from his plum tree.
Pig dreamed of retirement in the south, but not Tiger. For him, the perfect retirement away from all this deceit and killing was simply to be among his plum trees and Sichuan Bush Warblers. His wife and daughter laughing in the kitchen as they made dinner together; the evening sun sliding through the blinds and scattering on his living room wall. He could atone for past sins right there among the small domestic comforts of his Shunyi home.
“Report.”
It was Zhou, and his voice sounded harder and colder than usual.
“We have the parents under arrest.”
“Where?”
“At their apartment.”<
br />
“And the rogue agent?”
Zhou was talking about Agent Dragonfly, although in this small apartment she was probably better known as Zhang Xiaoli. “I had the mother contact her. She was told her father is gravely ill. She said she was to fly home at once to see him before he died.”
“Good.”
“Am I still to execute her?”
Zhou paused before replying. Tiger had long given up trying to read his boss’s mind. He had never been able to predict him or his moods, and today was no exception.
“No. I have been given new orders. She is to be kept alive and taken for interrogation. We can use her as a pawn in a much bigger game. The ECHO team are up to something and I want to know what it is.”
“I understand,” Tiger said, drawing a long breath. “And the parents?”
“Kill them, of course. They are witnesses and can identify you and your men.”
“Understood.” Tiger spoke casually, as if he had been asked to do nothing more than file a report. To him it was all just bureaucracy.
“Report when you have the rogue.”
“Yes, sir,” Tiger said. He was already screwing a suppressor into the muzzle of his pistol as the line went dead and the disconnect tone rang out. Tiger heard his songbirds once again in the electronic bleeping, but they flew away when he hung up the phone and slid a round into the chamber of his gun.
“What did the old bastard have to say this time?” Pig said, looking at the newly-suppressed pistol with interest but no fear.
“Dragonfly is to be taken alive. The parents must be killed.”
“You want me to do it?” Pig asked, moving to get up from his chair. The legs squeaked on the linoleum tiles. Monkey was sleeping on the couch with a folded newspaper over his face.
“No,” Tiger said calmly. “It’s my job.” And it was his job. Zhou had ordered him to lead the team, and asking one of the others to do it would make him look weak. “Where are they now?”
“I put them in the bedroom,” Pig said. “They are tied up and gagged. Quite safe, and Rat’s outside their door.”
Tiger stepped along the small apartment’s narrow central corridor and made his way toward the bedroom. On the walls hung family pictures of happy times spent together – a black and white photo of smiling people on a beach, a laugh around a picnic table. He saw Dragonfly as a child, standing between her parents. Her father’s hands were on her shoulders. They all looked so happy.
Tiger moved on. He had no such memories. His childhood was no picnic. He was raised by a hateful uncle who used him as punching bag during his frequent drinking binges. He had fled domestic beatings for the wilder violence of the streets before finally being sucked up by the Ministry. Such was life, he thought with a shoulder shrug as he reached Rat and the bedroom door.
Rat saw the electric light glint on the barrel of the suppressor and knew at once why Tiger had paid the old couple a visit. He pushed his chair out of the way and took a few steps back. He yawned. “I’m going to get more of those noodles,” he said, and walked back down along the corridor. “Hungry?”
“No.”
Tiger heard Rat shuffle down the corridor and then he opened the bedroom door. It was dark inside. The curtains were drawn but the light from the hall stretched across the carpet and lit up the end of the bed. The old couple were under the sheets. It sounded like they were sleeping.
He raised his gun and without emotion he fired at the bed. The first few shots triggered quick, sharp jolts as the Zhangs reacted to the bullets, but by the time he had emptied the magazine they were still and the room was silent; the only movement was the smoke drifting from the tip of the suppressor.
He closed the door and walked back along to the kitchen. As he gently unscrewed the suppressor and slipped it in his suit pocket he smelled the noodles and decided he was hungry after all. Dragonfly would be here soon and who knew when he would get to eat again.
*
As Davis Faulkner walked into the dark, smoke-filled office, he had to remind himself he was the Vice President of the United States, and this was his turf. A telephone call with Otmar Wolff had an unsettling effect on him, but things were different in here, and everyone at the conference table knew it.
He walked to his seat with a confident swagger and occupied the leather swivel chair at the head of the table with all the gravitas his office endowed upon him. Among a handful of trusted, administrative lackeys, seated around the table were Colonel Frank Geary and Karen Conrad, both of whom had changed their schedules to be here as per the Vice President’s earlier instructions.
“There’s a war raging, people,” he began pompously. Faulkner was tall, and tanned and despite never having served, he moved with the easy, commanding grace of a senior military officer. The parting in his silver hair ran along the left-hand side of his head with lader-guided precision. It all came together to tell the world: I am a man you had better not fuck with.
“A war, Mr Vice President?” Conrad asked.
His eyes sparkled. “A war like we have never seen before and using ancient forces none of us know how to control.”
“Like what?” Geary said.
“Like Poseidon’s trident, for one thing.”
A heavy silence occupied the room. They had read Faulkner’s Top Secret briefing on the weapon but hearing words like this was still shocking.
Faulkner revelled in the power his words held over his underlings. He knew how they felt; he felt that way in the presence of the Oracle. “We’re going to need that trident. Not now, but soon.”
“And where is it?” Conrad said. She crossed her legs and Faulkner fought the urge to stare as the low-lighting shone on the sheen of her pantyhose.
“In the Smithsonian,” Geary said, shifting his eyes from Conrad to Faulkner to let the Vice President know he was part of the loop.
“Wrong,” Faulkner said bluntly. “The trident was in the Smithsonian, in a special section referred to as Archive 7. Now it’s in a highly restricted black site along with all the other treasures we’ve gotten our hands on these past few years. You wouldn’t believe the stuff they were hiding in Archive 7. Some of it surprised even me. Poseidon’s goddam trident is like a water pistol compared to some of that ancient stuff, believe me, and a great deal of it is still undiscovered all over the world.”
“I still find this very hard to accept,” Geary said.
Conrad broke in. “It was moved, sir?”
A shallow nod was just visible behind the cloud of cigar smoke. “There was some trouble over in Archive 7 and an item of vital strategic interest to the United States was stolen.”
“Medusa’s head?” Conrad said.
Faulkner gave a brief nod. “It was retrieved by the Alphabet Boys over in Langley, headed up by our friend Edward Kosinski under somewhat notorious circmstances.”
“We all remember when the President was kidnapped.” Geary spoke as if he had personally known him. “Just terrible.”
“But back to business,” Faulkner said, cutting him off. “The meat and potatoes of why we’re here... what I couldn’t talk about on the video conference.”
“Sir?” Geary asked.
“Operation Crossbow, Frank,” Faulkner said, his voice almost a whisper.
“I never heard of that,” Conrad said.
“You wouldn’t have,” said Faulkner. “It doesn’t exist – not officially, at least. It’s my own little baby. I cooked it up to save this country. Someone has to give the American people the leadership they deserve, Frank.”
“My God,” Geary’s face paled. “You can’t be talking about…”
“President Brooke is a disaster for the United States, Frank. We all know he has to go.”
Geary looked around at the small number of people in the room with growing concern.
“Relax, Colonel,” Faulkner said. “These are all my people. Good people. People who know that Brooke has to go.”
“We’re talking about treason, Mr Vice Preside
nt.”
“Wrong. I’m talking about treason. You’re just listening.” Faulkner flicked through a manila folder on the desk. “It says in here that your career is just about washed up, Colonel Geary. Something about embezzling army funds.”
An unexpected rush of anger flooded into Geary’s voice. “That was a set-up!”
“Hush, Colonel,” Faulkner said. “And tell me, how do you like the sound of General Geary?”
“Well, I…”
“Because when I’m president that’s what your new title will be.”
Geary settled down. Faulkner knew he had no cards left to play. “Count me in.”
“I thought as much,” Faulkner said.
“When?” Conrad asked.
“Sooner than you think,” said Faulkner.
“Is it an assassination?” Geary asked.
“No,” said Faulkner. “We don’t want to make a goddam martyr out of him.”
“So, what then?”
“That’s above your paygrade, Frank,” Faulkner said icily. He looked over at Karen Conrad. “Leave the fine details to us, right?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Now, you’ll have to excuse me. I have a meeting at the Pentagon.”
“Of course.”
“It’s going to be a piece of cake,” Faulkner said. “We just have to hold our nerve.”
Conrad nodded. “We’ll have to work hard to keep it from turning into a serious three-ring circus.”
“We can do it, Karen,” Faulkner boomed as he got up from his chair. “I know we can. You, me, Kosinski, Cougar, and the soon-to-be General Geary right here are going to work together, take out ECHO and put me in the White House. Then things are going to change.”
Two men in black coats started to speak into their palm mics as the Vice President strode over to the door. Another man opened it but Faulkner stopped and turned around to address the room once last time. “And when I say change, I mean Big Time.”
And then he was gone.