The radio was annoyingly loud, but not enough to blot out any sudden noises or shouts of alarm. He heard neither. A peek through the kitchen window. No one there.
Drawing Ana’s gun, he slipped inside, senses on full alert. A faint sound somewhere deeper in the house. A sob. One of the children.
Suppressing anger, he crouched and looked through the doorway at the large dining room. The sound had come from a door ajar at the far end. The family were being held in the lounge. But by how many men?
He crept through the dining room to another door. This led into the main hall. He peered around the frame.
A scruffy Moroccan stood by the front door, staring out at the street through a small window. That meant at least two bad guys, one on watch and the other guarding their prisoners. Two he could handle; three would complicate things . . .
Hoping fate would keep his life simple for once, he went to check the lounge. The sobs grew louder. He dropped low again and slowly leaned around the door.
Maysa and her children were huddled on a long sofa against the far wall. None saw him, all their attention on their captor. Only one, thankfully, a rangy, scraggle-bearded man perched on a chair. He had a gun in his hand, but it was not aimed directly at them, rather a constant reminder of his power.
Eddie retreated and returned to the hall door. The lookout still had his back to him. Hoping the radio would mask the sound of his movements, he pocketed the gun and slowly advanced.
The guard shifted to look further down the street. Eddie moved up wraith-like behind him, both hands rising—
One clamped tightly over the unsuspecting man’s mouth and nose, blocking all sounds as the other delivered a brutal knuckle-punch to his larynx. He hauled the guard backwards, punching his throat again before trapping his bruised neck in a chokehold. The man struggled for several seconds before going limp.
Eddie lowered him to the floor, listening. No shouts, no running footsteps. He released the unconscious man and searched him, taking a grubby snub-nosed revolver.
While simply stepping around the door and firing would now be the simplest way of handling the situation, the Yorkshireman didn’t especially want to blow the remaining kidnapper’s brains out in front of four children. Instead, he went back into the dining room and positioned himself beside the lounge door. Judging by their lack of coordination, the gang who had tried to kill him at the restaurant weren’t a close-knit group, many possibly never having met before. So there was a good chance the two men here were also strangers . . .
He dredged some half-forgotten Arabic from his memory and called out in a loud whisper: ‘Mahla! Huna!’ Hey! Over here!
The reply was beyond his ability to translate, but the tone was clear – impatient concern. ‘Huna!’ Eddie repeated, hoping his low voice would disguise that he was not the other kidnapper – or even a native speaker. The chair creaked as the Moroccan stood, then approached the door. The last thing he did before reaching it was turn his head to check on his prisoners.
When he looked back, Eddie was right in front of him.
The Englishman’s fist slammed into his face, snapping his nose and bursting both lips with a spray of blood. The Moroccan staggered backwards, blindly raising his gun – only for Eddie’s revolver to crack against his skull. He fell. Maysa shrieked. ‘With you in a second,’ Eddie assured her, dragging the downed man out of the family’s sight before pistol-whipping him into unconsciousness. He stepped over the slumped kidnapper, concealing the gun before returning to the living room. ‘Are you all okay?’
‘Eddie!’ Maysa cried. ‘Where is Karim, is he—’
‘He’s fine, he’s outside. Did they hurt you?’
She hugged her children, tears streaming down her face. ‘No, no. We are okay. Who are they, what do they want?’
‘They want me, I’m afraid,’ Eddie told her grimly. ‘But you won’t have any more trouble with them. I’ll get Karim.’
He dumped the bloodied man beside his companion, then opened the front door and signalled. Karim was there in seconds. ‘Where are they, are they all right?’ he cried as he jumped out of the car.
‘They’re okay, don’t worry.’
‘Thank you!’ Karim saw the unconscious kidnappers. He spat at them before hurrying into the house. ‘Bring the woman inside, quickly.’
Eddie lifted Ana from the rear seat. Her eyes were still closed, body limp. That she had been out cold for so long was not a good sign; there were no outward signs of major trauma, but she had taken a hard blow to the head. He couldn’t take her to a hospital, though. He still needed to find Nina.
The Yorkshireman carried her into the house. ‘I’ll put her in my room,’ he called to Karim, who was having a tearful reunion with his family. ‘Then we’ll get rid of these two arseholes.’
‘I recognise one of them,’ the Moroccan told him. ‘And I knew some of the others at the restaurant. They have made a very big mistake. I will tell my friends in the police who they are, and they will find them.’
‘Tell ’em to start by looking in the nearest hospital. There’ll be a big queue,’ Eddie told him as he took Ana upstairs.
He laid her on the bed. She didn’t stir, the only movement her breathing. He sat beside her. ‘When you wake up,’ he said darkly, ‘you are going to tell me who you’re working for. And then I’m going to find them.’
16
Seville
Nina stared at the face in the bathroom mirror, almost refusing to recognise it as herself. Her long red hair was gone, cut short into a ragged crop and dyed black. Below it, her face seemed nearly as unfamiliar: not because she had done anything to conceal her features, but out of fatigue and fear. Dark circles ringed her eyes, her lips pale. Normally people said she did not look her forty-two years, but right now she felt she was showing every one of them, and more.
It was the first time her hair had been so short. Even though she didn’t consider herself to be particularly concerned with her appearance, the change was still a shock. She gave her shorn locks in the waste bin a regretful look, then went back into the bedroom.
She had used a chunk of her remaining cash to pay for a room in a pensione, a small hostel across the river from the bus terminal that offered a bed, a roof above it and little else. The owner was used to backpackers and other transients drifting through; he had not asked to see Nina’s passport, or even any questions more probing than how long she would be staying.
The marker sat on the bed, surrounded by her few other belongings. The hours spent making her way through Seville had been fraught, every sighting of a police uniform treated as an immediate threat forcing a change of direction. She had ended up in a clothes shop, replacing her crumpled and dirty dress with a cheap outfit meant for someone much younger and less modest, and a floppy sun hat. Whether the disguise had worked, or whether she had simply been successful at avoiding the cops, she didn’t know, but she had made it here.
Safe . . . she hoped.
She draped a towel over the pillow to protect it from dye, then flopped on to the bed. Her weight on the soft mattress caused the marker to nudge against her. She raised it and slowly turned it over in her hands. Despite her tiredness, she still couldn’t help but be intrigued by the ancient relic. What secrets was it hiding? How did it work? The pattern of holes in the disc was the key, but what did it mean?
A flash of light through them from the single ceiling bulb triggered a thought. She turned the marker to examine the hoop on the end of the arm, then looked through it. A holder for an eyepiece, as had been suggested? Possibly. When combined with its sibling, many, if not most, of the little holes would be blocked; if it were then placed in the right position on some as-yet-undiscovered chart or text, any letters or symbols that showed through could be clues to the locations of the spearheads.
But why would an eyepiece be needed to read them? Unless it was a magnifying lens, or some kind of coloured filter, or a gem cut in a particular way to combine different kaleidoscopic fragm
ents into a legible whole . . .
She shook her head. That was pure supposition. And unlike her theory about the spearheads, which had been based on the texts of the Atlanteans themselves, there was nothing to support it.
A closer look at the disc’s inscriptions. She knew some words, but they didn’t lead to any insights. She instinctively reached for her phone, on which were several gigabytes of research material on Atlantis and other historical topics, before remembering she had discarded it. ‘Goddamn it,’ she grumbled. Stuck in a poky room with no company, no Wi-Fi, not even her phone to pass the time . . .
That meant the marker itself was her only distraction. As much as she hated being separated from her husband and daughter, it was some time since she had been alone with an archaeological puzzle. If she had to endure solitude, she could at least make the best of the situation.
She looked back at the light bulb through the holes. It was only visible through a few at a time. They were angled so as to radiate outwards from a point at the hoop’s centre, and she recalled that those on the stolen marker were similarly canted. The only way to see everything the two relics were designed to reveal was indeed by looking through the metal ring.
But something about the light still prodded her subconscious. The holes were small and would be relatively deep once both discs were put together. Not only would it be like trying to read a book through a drinking straw, but looking through the hoop would blot out most of the illumination needed to see the letters in the first place. The reader would need another light source between their eye and the marker. How would that work?
It wouldn’t, she realised. She was going down the wrong track. But if the light source was placed in the hoop, and was strong enough . . .
She sat up, suddenly excited as a new theory formed, and turned the marker back over so the arm was on the upper side. The disc’s shadow was solid, bar a few faint patches of light near its centre. This far from the bulb, only those holes running near-vertically through the artefact were at the right angle to let any illumination through. But if she brought it closer . . .
She hopped up and stretched to hold the top of the marker’s arm against the bulb. The shadow expanded over the bed – and more points of light appeared within it, a fuzzy galaxy forming on the sheets.
‘That’s it,’ she whispered. ‘That’s it!’ The hoop wasn’t for an eyepiece: it was a torch holder. Fit both markers together, shine a strong light through them, and it would create a pattern revealing . . . what?
That was as far as her discovery could go. Without the other marker, there was no way to create the correct pattern, so it would be impossible to deduce its meaning. On the plus side, the raiders couldn’t find it either without the relic she was holding. Both sides had reached stalemate—
No! Nina realised she could create the right pattern, something the men who had stolen the first marker could never do. And the answer literally had her name on it.
But she couldn’t follow up the revelation. It was already late in the day, and the chances of finding what she needed before Seville’s shops closed were slim. She would have to wait until tomorrow.
But that gave her time to plan what she needed to do. Despite being hunted by every cop in Seville, despite being cut off from Eddie and Macy, she felt oddly enthused. She might have been forced back into her old world of archaeological discovery, but now that her freedom – and if she was right about the spearheads, the fate of the world – depended on it, she was damn well going to solve the puzzle.
She sat cross-legged, examining the marker again as her mind whirled into overdrive.
A hundred and fifty miles to the south, Ana’s mind slowly clawed its way out of a deep, glutinous bog. She had been in a fight, trying to flee from . . . who? She wasn’t sure. Half-recalled faces whirled before her, one in particular coming into focus . . .
Right in front of her. ‘Ay up,’ said Eddie coldly. ‘Wakey-wakey.’
‘What . . .’ moaned the Brazilian, trying to sit up, only to flop painfully back on to the bed. ‘Ow.’
‘Here.’ Eddie held out a cup of water and a couple of pills. ‘They’re just paracetamol, but they’re the best thing to have after getting knocked out.’
She took them gratefully. ‘Where am I?’
‘My friend’s house. The one whose restaurant we just wrecked.’
Her eyes widened in alarm. ‘He set us up!’
Eddie shook his head. ‘They were holding his family hostage. I rescued ’em.’
‘Are they okay?’
He noted her concern; if her motivations were purely mercenary, she wouldn’t have asked the question. ‘Yeah. What about you?’
‘I . . .’ She tried to sit up again, this time managing to prop herself on her elbows. ‘What happened? I was with you, we went up the stairs . . .’
‘Someone clonked you on the head. You’ve got a bump the size of a tennis ball, but I don’t think you’ve got a skull fracture or concussion.’ He leaned closer to check her eyes, waving a finger from side to side. Her gaze instinctively followed it. ‘You’re focusing and your speech isn’t slurred, so that’s a good sign. Do you feel dizzy? Sick?’
‘No. My head hurts, but . . .’ She gingerly touched the bump, wincing. ‘I’ll live.’
‘Good.’ He leaned back, folding his arms. ‘So now you can answer my questions – you know, the ones you wouldn’t answer before someone tried to kill us. You knew the bloke in charge of that gang of fuckwits?’
‘Yes, Musad. I met him once, briefly. He was with some people working for my employer.’
‘And who is your employer? Was your employer, I mean. If my boss tries to kill me, I usually take it as a sign that the contract’s been terminated.’ A grim smile. ‘Amazing how often that’s happened to me.’
‘You should take more care when you accept a job,’ Ana said. ‘But perhaps so should I.’ She took a deep breath before overcoming her professional resistance. ‘I was working for Gideon Lobato.’
‘Lobato?’ Eddie echoed. ‘Jesus, Macy was right. Another fucking evil billionaire!’
She regarded him curiously. ‘Another?’
‘Yeah, there was a run of ’em. This is the first one for a while, though. So what does he want – and why did he frame Nina?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘Really.’ Though delivered flatly, the word contained no shortage of threat.
‘He didn’t tell me, and I didn’t ask!’ Ana protested.
‘But you dealt with him directly?’
‘Yes, on the ship before you arrived.’
‘So what exactly did he want you to do?’
Another moment of reluctance before replying. ‘My job was to make sure your wife left the ship and went on the run. So I told her the Dhajanis were going to put her on trial for the robbery, and then I worked with the Frenchman to scare her into taking a boat to Spain.’
‘By faking your death.’
She nodded. ‘Blanks and a blood pack.’
‘So why set her up? You must know something.’
‘I don’t, really,’ Ana insisted. ‘I was paid well not to ask – at least, I thought I was going to be. Until Lobato decided to kill me rather than give me my money,’ she added bitterly. ‘I just had to get her into the boat. Once she left, my job was done.’
Eddie frowned. ‘Well, it worked. And now I can’t get hold of her to tell her who’s behind all this. Fucking great.’
‘If it’s worth anything, I liked Nina. I’m sorry I’ve put you and your daughter through this.’
‘No, it’s not worth anything,’ he snapped.
‘I am sorry, even if you don’t believe me,’ she said.
He gave a dismissive shrug. ‘Well, it doesn’t matter anyway. I’ve got what I wanted from you, Lobato’s name, so now you can fuck off home and not worry about it any more.’
Ana lowered her head. ‘I can’t go home,’ she said quietly.
‘Why not?’
‘If I go
back to Brazil I . . . I will be dead within twenty-four hours. I am a wanted woman.’
‘Criminal?’
She looked up again, fixing him with a look of defiant pride. ‘No. Cop.’
He was surprised. ‘You’ve had a bit of a career change.’
‘Not through choice. I was an officer in BOPE – Batalhão de Operações Policiais Especiais, the elite police unit in Rio. I worked undercover against the drug lords. I helped take down one of the big men, but my cover was blown, and the others put a price on my head. Literally. One million American dollars, for whoever brings my head to them in a bag. And many people want that money. If I return to Brazil, I will be killed.’
‘And you’re not worried I might claim it, especially after what you’ve done to Nina?’
‘I read your file. I think you are a man of honour.’
‘There’s a lot that’s not in my file,’ he said, in a tone dark enough that for a moment she looked fearful. ‘But no, I’m not going to. Got bigger things to worry about. Like how the fuck to get Nina back.’
A thoughtful moment, then: ‘I will help you. If I can.’
‘And why would you do that?’
‘Lobato betrayed me. He tried to have me killed – and you too. That makes him an enemy to both of us.’
‘My enemy’s enemy is my friend, right?’
‘If you like. But I have been betrayed before.’ An edge of pain entered her voice. ‘The man who sold me out was another cop, someone I trusted. Before I left Brazil, I made him regret it.’
‘You killed him?’
‘No. He has a wife and children, I could not have hurt them that way. But he is not a cop any more. You cannot walk the streets when . . . you cannot walk the streets.’
Eddie decided not to enquire further. ‘So you want to help me?’ he asked instead. ‘How?’
‘I . . . I don’t know,’ she sighed. ‘I need to think.’
‘Think fast, ’cause the longer Nina’s out there, the more trouble she’ll be in. The woman’s a catastrophe magnet.’
The Spear of Atlantis (Wilde/Chase 14) Page 17