Eden Relics (A Zac Woods novel #1): Author royalties for Cancer Research

by N Williams

  Both men were unconscious. The driver had suffered the worst of the impact and appeared to be trapped under the steering wheel. All the air bags had deployed, and the driver was moaning but still unaware of his surroundings. The passenger, who was the nearest to Zac, was totally out but otherwise looked unharmed.

  A quick check through the pockets of the leather jacket revealed the man’s wallet but nothing other than a twenty pound note. As Zac checked the other inside pocket, he found a shoulder holster containing a stubby 9mm Barak SP-21 pistol. Zac was, in one way, relieved. At least they now knew they hadn’t enticed an innocent person into a serious accident.

  ‘We were right Bill. They’re tooled up.’

  Bill Gates was looking through the back of the car. ‘You’re not kidding, mate.’ He held up a black Micro Uzi submachine gun. ‘This little fucker fires over twelve hundred rounds per minute. Nasty piece of shit! These are Israeli. I hope to fuck we’ve not incurred the wrath of the shitting Mossad.’

  Reaching across to the driver, Zac found another identical Barak in a holster inside his jacket. He took the weapon and checked it was safe before stuffing it into the waistband of his own trousers. Gates took the Uzi and tucked it under his coat. The rear hatch compartment also held some eye-opening merchandise: another Mini Uzi and several boxes of 9mm rounds. They didn’t want the truck driver seeing the weapons. The last thing they needed was a nervous and talkative lorry driver telling the police two men from a midnight blue Jag had left the scene with a load of guns.

  They walked back to their car and placed the weapons in the boot, out of sight of the driver and Sally.

  Zac quickly returned to the lorry driver. He wrote a fictional name on a piece of paper, and a license plate number that looked similar to their own but was sufficiently different to ensure the car wasn’t traced by the police any time too soon. Zac was confident that the lorry driver was so shocked that he wouldn’t double check the number.

  ‘We’ve got to go, we’re shipping a live heart to a hospital in Manchester, that’s why we were going a bit fast,’ he lied. ‘Give the police this paper and we’ll make sure we give them a statement clearing you of any blame.’

  The driver was clearly relieved and fished around for a pen to duplicate the details Zac had given him. By the time the truck driver realised the number was wrong they’d be roaring off northwards back towards Brecon. Now they were armed better than a small mercenary unit and fully prepared for any further eventualities.

  *

  Frederick Bourse sat up slowly. He ached all over. At least two of his teeth were broken, and one of his ribs was undoubtedly cracked. DeAngelo Tourrain stood over him looking about to explode. ‘The fucker’s got our gear.’

  ‘I underestimated our friend,’ Bourse grunted as he got to his feet.

  ‘What shall we do with this idiot?’ Tourrain gestured towards the lorry driver who was fussing around the front of his damaged truck.

  Bourse smiled, his broken teeth resembling a shark about to feed.

  The driver saw the two men approach. ‘Thank God you’re both all right. I was worried you were killed,’ he blurted nervously. ‘I’ve called the police and an ambulance. They should be here...’

  Before he could finish his sentence, Bourse had thrown his massive ham of a fist into his face, knocking the driver clean off his feet. The man rolled on the ground holding his smashed nose and wailing pitifully. Bourse walked over to him, bent down close and whispered in his ear.

  ‘Nothing personal, you understand. It just wasn’t your lucky day.’

  The driver looked confused for a second before the burly man grabbed him by the neck and twisted it to an unnatural angle. The sound of his vertebrae cracking was the last thing the driver would ever hear.

  Tourrain checked out the Cayenne. The car was totalled. They’d have to find another means of transport. The truck looked as if it had escaped any serious damage. It wouldn’t take two minutes to remove the buckled fender from the front wheel. He kicked the bent metal away from the wheel arch as Bourse dumped the body of the driver over a low bramble hedge.

  CHAPTER 31

  The promised pot of tea was ready by the time they arrived. Fenwick had been attending to personal business when Zac had called earlier and had picked up his recorded message and replied by text.

  The Stella smelled of freshly baked bread and diesel.

  Sally felt some of the tension wash away from her as she admired the chocolate-box scene. ‘Lovely,’ she said. ‘Great place to moor a boat.’

  They climbed down into the galley. The Melamine-faced cabinet doors were polished to a shine. The cooking utensils were lined up like soldiers on parade - patiently waiting their turn to join the culinary action.

  Fenwick smiled warmly. ‘Got some good news and some bad news for you.’ He waved the DVD in his hand.

  ‘Give us the bad news first,’ suggested Zac with a grimace.

  ‘Well, the pages we have from the disc don’t describe the location of whatever it is we’re looking for.’

  ‘Looking bemused, Zac asked, ‘So what’s the bloody good news?’

  ‘It may not tell us where the thing or things are, but it does hint as to what we’re looking for.’ Fenwick paused for a moment to judge the reaction of his guests. ‘As far as I can tell, the notes were clearly written by Adelina Patti and I’ve had a fair chunk translated.’

  Fenwick connected a cable from his laptop to a large plasma screen embedded in the wall of the galley.

  ‘I’ve cobbled together information from two sources. One, of course, is the little bit of information we've already got from the diary, and the other is the newspaper found with it.’ He held up the photocopy of the front page old Ben had given to Rachel. ‘This is the newspaper cutting and a screen-grab of internet research relating to a chap called Henry Carre. Now this is interesting.’ Fenwick scrolled through the information and summarised it. ‘It seems that Henry was a Member of Parliament for Leeds and a bit of a celebrated explorer, wrote a lot of stuff for the National Geographic Society.’

  ‘My dad used to collect the little yellow magazines,’ said Gates.

  ‘What sort of stuff?’ interrupted Zac.

  ‘Well, it looks as if Henry was also involved in something notable on one of his travels,’ he continued. ‘In 1897, he was in Egypt, part of a British delegation dealing with the increasingly valuable archaeological finds in and around Giza and the Valley of the Kings. His personal interest had probably secured him the gig. He must have met Madame Patti while he was there. She says he was...’ Fenwick read the quote: “…of great assistance in conveying the treasures to Wales.”’

  Holding up a photocopy of the newspaper he continued. ‘The article tells of the death of Henry and his younger brother Hayward. Hayward was a bit of an adventurer and made some pretty outrageous claims over the years. The newspaper tells of the death of Henry on board the Duchess of Dundee in 1897.’

  Sally sat up straight. ‘I know about that. The ship was hit by a coal steamer in the Med and sank. More lives were lost on that ship than on the Titanic fifteen years later.’

  ‘That’s right.’ Fenwick scrolled through a page of notes. ‘Sank in the early hours of May the 23rd 1897. And his brother Hayward was murdered aboard a freighter en route from Egypt to Liverpool on the same day.’

  ‘Bit of a coincidence,’ said Gates.

  ‘If you believe that,’ sighed Fenwick. ‘I made some further enquiries with some trusted acquaintances at a certain government agency - which shall remain anonymous.’ Fenwick smiled. ‘It seems that there is a record of him travelling to Cairo, but all of this is also in the realms of the conspiracy theorists so I don’t know how much of it is true. However, my source informs me that Henry was supervising the movement of antiquities from Cairo to Britain, on behalf of the British Government and that, because of his younger brother’s expertise in transporting antiquities to Britain, Hayward was dealing with the logistics. But the relics were n
ever seen again from the time they left Cairo until today. It was clearly something dodgy because there’s no direct mention of the contents, other than a listing of "Diplomatic Property" on the ship’s manifest. That ensured it would be free from any sort of snooping.’

  ‘That’s one hell of a journey,’ observed Gates.

  ‘We know the object or objects seem to have disappeared in transit.’

  ‘So the object, or cargo, or whatever it is, is definitely in the U.K?’ said Sally, getting frustrated.

  ‘I think so,’ said Fenwick. ‘But nothing is definite.’

  ‘Could it be part of Carre’s personal collection?’ suggested Gates.

  ‘I doubt that,’ replied Fenwick.

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Because if both the brothers failed to return to the U.K. It seems unlikely that they had any influence on the shipment of the object when it finally returned to Britain.’

  ‘Good point! Well that helps us a lot. What about the shipping manifests of vessels from Egypt around the date of the sinking of the Duchess of Dundee?’ suggested Zac.

  ‘My sources inform me that the manifest was deliberately vague to ensure it wouldn’t be easily traced and the name of the cargo ship was deleted from the records,’ sighed Fenwick. ‘To make matters even worse, it seems that the government have no record of the manifest after it reached port. It simply disappeared into thin air.’

  ‘It seems to me that the murder of the younger brother on board a cargo ship suggests that he might have been on board with it at the time. The ship must have been named in the article?’ said Gates, more in hope than expectation.

  ‘Strangely enough it wasn’t. The article was mainly focused on Henry, he being the Member of Parliament and all that. Hayward was just a wealthy amateur archaeologist. But I’m sure we can get that information from the internet,’ suggested Fenwick.

  ‘Leave that to me,’ said Gates as he fired up a nearby laptop.

  ‘So where does Adelina Patti fit into all this?’ asked Zac.

  ‘The diary explains her connection. I’ll get to that. But there’s something else on the disc,’ said Fenwick. ‘There’s a series of JPEG images of the diary, and sandwiched between a couple of pages is another small newspaper clipping, dated April 1897. It tells of a concert being performed on the Giza plateau at the behest of the region’s leader, a chap called Sa-id. It seems that this Sa-id character was courting the western leaders at the time and had arranged for one of the top international opera singers to perform at one of his social events. It also lists a few notable characters along with the archaeologists who were working on the Giza plateau. Just about everyone who was anybody was there, including our Henry.’

  Sally laughed. ‘No prizes for guessing the name of the opera singer?’

  ‘Well as you have correctly surmised, it seems that our Italian soprano - Adelina Patti, may well have met Henry or his brother at the gig in Egypt,’ offered Fenwick, peering over the top of his reading glasses. ‘There’s also the little matter of the clay recording disc found with the diary. It’s mentioned in the notes Rachel sent to you both, but that also seems to have gone missing with the original diary. It may well be insignificant, but one wonders why it should have been hidden in the castle. Perhaps the items were never taken from the castle? It could be that Rachel and her uncle copied the information there and hid them again. It wouldn’t be good for a museum curator to be caught with stolen goods, now would it?’

  Zac nodded; it made sense. ‘Looks like we may have to pay the castle a visit.’

  ‘It’s an impressive looking place,’ said Gates. ‘Bit of a fixer-upper though.’

  ‘Things are beginning to fall into place,’ Zac agreed. ‘I flew over her country pile when I came up to see you the last time,’ he said to Fenwick. ‘It’s near to where I grew up. I know it extremely well.’

  ‘Then perhaps our luck’s beginning to change?’ suggested Fenwick.

  *

  On the fourth attempt, MacKenzie managed to get through to Zac’s answer-phone. He hated talking into the bloody things, always felt self-conscious and never liked to leave anything which could incriminate him.

  ‘Zac? It’s me, Mac. Got some news for you and I need to speak to you urgently. I think you’ve got yourself involved in something far bigger than you imagine. This is some serious shit, man.’

  CHAPTER 32

  Fenwick clicked on a new page of notes, enlarged by a factor of ten on the large plasma screen. ‘Okay. This is the first part of the diary translation. I think this will help to make more sense of Adeina Patti’s involvement in all of this. ‘Are you all sitting comfortably?’ He began to read from the screen.

  “Mr Morgan claims the caves extend beneath the valley in all directions, some of which were cut away by the ice age. I haven’t told him what I know, but if it hadn’t been for his timely intervention I would be lost as to what to do with the cargo.”

  Gates was flummoxed. ‘So what does that mean?’

  ‘Well, I don’t know for sure yet. It seems as if Adelina was certainly handling the object associated with Carre. I haven’t had the rest translated yet, but I’m still working on it. I didn’t trust handing the document to anyone else, and decided I could do it online using translation software. It’s a bit slow though, and there may be some errors in the context. I’ll need a couple more days before I get to the end of it.’ Fenwick peered over Gates’ shoulder. His internet search for the name of the ship Hayward was travelling on when he was murdered was not progressing well. Most of the sites claiming to hold information required a subscription and Gates was rapidly losing patience.

  Meanwhile, the others used Fenwick's main computer system to look at the Craig-Y-Nos web site.

  ‘Curious,’ said Sally, as she clicked on the various links of the site. ‘Why would a famous opera singer from Italy end up living in a valley, miles away from anywhere? It’s pretty location but I don’t see the big draw to build a castle like that there.

  ‘Perhaps not so curious,’ suggested Zac. ‘She didn’t build the place. She was incredibly wealthy for her time, and she could afford more than one grand house. Craig-y-Nos was certainly an ideal escape from city life. Having said that, the road to the castle had to be laid by Adelina herself. It wasn't exactly an easy place to get to at the time.’

  ‘I have this strange image in my head of the woman in her fancy clothes hauling barrow-loads of tar,’ said Gates.

  ‘I don’t mean she literally laid it herself,’ Zac grinned. ‘I think the castle was built many years before she bought it. She did, however, build a theatre as an extension to the main building. There’s also a thrilling story of a curse affecting the family who originally built it. It’s said that the original owners had some sort of connection to India and Egypt too.’

  'That might make sense,' agreed Fenwick, studying an image of the castle he had saved to his computer. 'The original part of the building has four pyramid-shaped roofs; one on each corner of the main house. Perhaps the influence came from Giza?'

  ‘A curse, like the Lord Caernarvon and Tutankhamen nonsense? So do you think Adelina knew the original owner from her travels?’ asked Sally.

  ‘A reasonable assumption,’ said Fenwick. ‘There’s a page in the diary, which doesn’t need translating, that seems to outline costs to ship cargo from Cairo to Britain. Perhaps she helped to grease the palms of the authorities in Cairo, or paid all the shipping costs of whatever it is we’re looking for?’

  ‘But why would an Italian opera singer get involved in something like shipping an object that was probably stolen from the Egyptians in the first place?’ said Sally. ‘It doesn’t make sense. Adelina was obviously a real smart woman. She wouldn't be so stupid as to get involved in smuggling – surely?’

  ‘True,’ admitted Fenwick. ‘It does seem to be more than a little odd.’

  ‘Anyway,’ said Zac, ‘if Adelina was involved in all this, what part did she play? I noticed something strange when I flew o
ver the castle. There was a large rectangular slab of what looked like stone at the top of the building, on the flat roof, and a large cross carved into the middle of it. I’ve never read anything about that before. It’s not in any of the guidebooks I’ve seen, and it’s not mentioned on the web site. I know that Adelina was a devout Catholic. The web site shows that she built a small chapel at the castle because there wasn’t a Catholic church in the area at that time. I wonder if that has anything to do with it.’

  ‘It could be some Catholic sacrificial altar,’ suggested Gates.

  ‘I know I haven’t been to church in a few years, but even I find that offensive,’ said Zac.

  ‘Sorry!’ mumbled Gates, suitably chastised.

  ‘So let's assume her faith was so strong that she believed the object, or objects were of religious significance… that might get her interested. Do you think this cargo is some box of bones or something - something like a relic she wanted for her chapel?’ asked Sally.

  Zac thought for a moment. ‘I think we need to pay a visit to the old castle on the way back to Swansea to see what we can find out.’

  ‘Can we do it via a different route this time?’ Gates pleaded. ‘I don’t fancy going back past the wrecked Porsche.’

  Fenwick looked confused. ‘Wrecked Porsche?’

  Zac shook his head. ‘You really don’t want to know.’

  *

  It took Gates another twenty minutes before he found what he was looking for. ‘Look at this,’ he said, holding out a printout of some screen-grabs. ‘The date of the sinking of the Duchess was already known.’ Gates was clearly excited. ‘I then used a rough calculation of the time it would take to sail from Egypt to Britain and found a ship which docked in Liverpool… the Beaverbrook. It had come from the right place and was carrying a cargo. It was escorted into port by a Royal Navy ship. Now why would a Navy ship escort a cargo vessel unless there was something pretty important on board? What surprised me was that the records of the shipping line were still available online. I paid a small subscription to the site keeping the records, and all the cargo for the ship was listed - with destination addresses.’