Empire of Gold_A Novel

by Andy McDermott

“No. It shouldn’t.” There was an odd, almost mechanical feel to Eddie’s eventual response, rusty gears slowly grinding to life.

  “If he hadn’t decided to destroy the helicopter, if he hadn’t been in that place at that time … it wouldn’t have. He’d still be alive. If he hadn’t gone after Stikes …”

  “Stikes.” The word was a growl. “You shouldn’t talk to me about Stikes.”

  A cold fear swept through Kit’s body. Eddie couldn’t possibly know about the phone call—could he? “Why not?”

  “Because you’re a cop. And I’m going to murder that fucker.”

  He tried to conceal his relief. “I think this is one occasion where I would be willing to look the other way.”

  Eddie nodded, then sank back into silence. Kit felt compelled to keep speaking. “He was a good man. Brave and honorable.” He looked down at the floor, shaking his head.

  Someone tentatively cleared their throat. Kit turned to see one of the villa’s staff, a pretty young maid, standing in the doorway holding a cordless telephone. “Excuse, please, Mr. Jindal?” she said. “Telephone for you.”

  Kit glanced at Eddie, then went to her and took the phone. “Hello?”

  “Jindal.” It was Stikes. “Have you discussed my proposal with your superiors?”

  He took a breath before answering. “Yes.”

  “And?”

  Another look at Eddie, this time surreptitious, to make sure he wasn’t listening. But he appeared completely detached from the rest of the world. “Yes, they agree.”

  “Good. And did you tell them I want to meet one of their representatives in person? Not an errand boy like you.”

  “I did,” Kit said through his teeth. “Someone is on the way.”

  “Excellent. In that case, there’s a town called San Bartolo, twenty miles south of Lima on the Panamerica Highway. About two miles past it is a pumping station for the gas pipeline, number fourteen. Meet me there in one hour.”

  “San Bartolo, station fourteen,” Kit echoed. “All right, I’ll be there.” He returned the handset to the maid. “Eddie, I have to meet some people from Interpol. I think we might have a lead on the statues. Will you be all right?”

  The Englishman remained still, not even moving his eyes to look at him. “I’ll be fine.”

  “Okay. I’ll see you later.” He turned to leave, then paused at the doorway. “Again, I’m so sorry about Mac. I’m sorry.”

  Eddie didn’t reply.

  Freshly showered and in clean clothes, Nina left her room and went downstairs to look for Eddie. Instead she found Kit in the villa’s hall, donning a jacket. “Are you leaving?” she asked.

  “I have to meet someone.”

  “Interpol?”

  A conflicted look crossed his face. “Not exactly,” he replied after a moment. “Look, don’t say anything to Eddie, but … it’s about Stikes. He’s offered to hand over the statues.”

  “What? You’re kidding!”

  “No, I think he really means it. He wants to make a deal—in exchange for immunity.”

  Nina frowned. “I don’t think the Venezuelans will be thrilled about that.”

  “I’m not happy about it either. But nothing has been finalized. I’m on my way to meet … his representative, to see what his terms are. If Interpol accepts them, he’ll give us the statues.”

  Nina was torn by the prospect. “As much as I want them back, I don’t like the idea of that son of a bitch getting an amnesty. But …”

  “If there is a chance we can recover the statues, I think we should take it. At least that way, the people who died trying to find them won’t have given their lives for nothing.”

  “People like Mac,” she said unhappily. “Is that why you don’t want to mention this to Eddie?”

  “Yes. I was talking to him a few minutes ago, and he got angry just at the mention of Stikes’s name. If he found out we were negotiating with him, I think his reaction would be a lot stronger.”

  “I don’t doubt it.” She looked down the hall. “Is he in the lounge?” Kit nodded. “Let me know what happens. And good luck.”

  “Thank you.” Kit departed, and Nina headed for the lounge.

  She found Eddie still in the same chair where she had left him, contemplating the sunset. “Hey,” she said, perching on the chair’s arm and gently resting her hand on his chest. “You okay?”

  This time, at least he didn’t pull away from her touch, but neither did he respond to it. “I know what you’re feeling right now,” she continued. “I’ve been there; I’ve lost people who were close to me. I just want you to know that I’m here for you, and I always will be. Whatever you need, just ask me.”

  He stirred, jaw muscles tightening. “I didn’t lose Mac,” he said in a low voice. “He was taken.”

  “I know. And I know what that’s like too. It happened to Rowan, remember?”

  “It’s not the same. It’s—” He stumbled, struggling to put his thoughts into words. “Mac was different. You don’t know what it was like, what he meant to me.”

  “He was my friend too, Eddie. I’m going to miss him just as much.”

  Now there was a distinct edge to his voice. “No, you won’t. Mac wasn’t just a friend. I would’ve—” He choked off, taking a sharp breath. “I would have died for him. That’s what he meant to me. And he would’ve done the same for me. You wouldn’t understand.”

  Nina tried to suppress a flare of anger. “I do understand. And I do know what it feels like. My parents were murdered, remember?” She experienced a sudden resurgence of loss, rising on the back of her current feelings. “I know. Believe me, I know.”

  They both fell silent. For a couple of minutes, the only sound was their breathing. Then: “Excuse, please?”

  Nina looked around to see the maid. “Yes?”

  “Telephone, from IHA.” Nina held out a hand, but the maid shook her head. “For Mr. Chase.”

  Slightly surprised, Nina passed the phone to Eddie. “Hello?” he said. “Lola, hi. What is it?”

  He listened to Lola. “But it’s the middle of the night over there,” he objected. Nina could faintly hear her assistant’s voice as she replied; even at this level, she detected a worried urgency. “Okay, thanks,” Eddie said, disconnecting, and punching in a new number.

  “What’s wrong?” Nina asked.

  “Lizzie’s been trying to get hold of me. Lola said it’s urgent.”

  “Nan?”

  Eddie’s look said as much as any words. He stood and put the phone to his ear, anxiously awaiting an answer. “Lizzie, it’s me,” he finally said. “I just got your message. What is it?”

  He paced back and forth before the windows as he listened to his sister. Nina watched with growing concern as his expression became increasingly stony, his interjections more terse—a sign that he was putting up his shields as a reaction to bad news. Finally he stopped, and with a simple “Okay. Right,” ended the call.

  Nina almost didn’t want to ask the obvious question, because she was sure she already knew the answer. But she had to. “What did Elizabeth say?”

  “She said …,” Eddie began, before his voice shrank to a dry croak. He swallowed, then spoke again. “She said that Nan died today.”

  Even though it was expected, the news was still a painful shock. “Oh God,” said Nina. “Eddie, I’m sorry.”

  “It wasn’t her lungs,” he went on quietly. “They thought she was responding well to the oxygen therapy. But apparently there’s some side effect of emphysema, something about blood building up in the liver—I dunno, I didn’t really understand it. But that suddenly got worse, so they took her to hospital, and that’s … that’s where …”

  Abruptly, he hurled the telephone at the wall. It shattered. The maid shrieked in fright, then fled as Eddie grabbed the chair and flung it across the room. It hit a small table, wood flying as both pieces of furniture smashed. “Fuck!” he roared, running after the chair and stamping on its remains in a fury.
>
  “Eddie, stop!” Nina cried, hurrying to him. “Please, stop! Please!”

  He dropped to his knees among the wreckage. “Oh, God!” he gasped, voice trembling. Tears rolled down his cheeks.

  Nina crouched, putting her arms around him. “I’m here, I’m here. It’s okay. Everything’s going to be okay …”

  “No it’s not—it’s not going to be fucking okay!” He pulled away from her and stood, kicking away debris. “You know what one of the last things Nan said was? Just before she died? She asked where I was. She wanted to know why I wasn’t there with the rest of her family. I should have been there—I could have been there if it hadn’t been for your fucking statues!”

  Nina recoiled, shocked, as his rage was turned on her—then stiffened as the injustice of the accusation stoked her own suppressed anger. “That’s not fair.”

  “Isn’t it? If you hadn’t been looking for them, Mac wouldn’t have come to South America, and I would have been able to stay in England with Nan.”

  “We had to find them. That’s part of the IHA’s job—making sure things like that don’t fall into the wrong hands.”

  “And Stikes is the right fucking hands?” he yelled. “If we’d just left everything alone, things would have been fine! We had two of them, Callas didn’t give a shit about the first piece, and nobody would ever have found the second one! What’s all this got us, except for people killed?”

  She struggled to keep her temper under control, knowing that he was under immense emotional pressure. “We’ve been here before, Eddie. When Mitzi died, while we were looking for Excalibur. Remember?”

  “ ’Course I fucking remember. And you know who got me through it? Mac! Who’s going to get me through this?”

  “I will!”

  “But it’s your fucking fault!”

  Nina felt as though she had been slapped. “I can’t believe you said that.”

  It looked for a moment as if even he knew he had gone too far … but then his gaze snapped to something behind her. “What?” he demanded.

  Nina turned to see the maid waiting almost fearfully in the doorway, clutching a replacement telephone handset. “I’m sorry, but … another telephone call. For Dr. Wilde.”

  “Tell ’em to fuck off,” Eddie snarled.

  “No, but … it is the president of Peru!”

  “And? Tell him to fuck off!”

  The young woman seemed on the verge of tears. Nina shot Eddie a furious look, then went to her. “I’ll take it,” she said.

  “Work always comes first with you, doesn’t it?” Eddie said bitterly. Nina held in an angry reply as she took the phone.

  The call was short, but straight to the point. “I have to go,” she told Eddie with reluctance. “The president wants to see me.”

  “Now?”

  “Yeah.”

  “You should have said no.”

  “I can’t face having two arguments at once.” She returned the handset to the maid, who made as rapid an exit as etiquette would allow. “They’re sending a car. I’ll be back as soon as I can. We can talk then. If you’ve calmed down.”

  “Never been calmer,” rumbled Eddie, tapping a piece of the broken chair with his foot as she left.

  The sky over Lima had darkened, the city coming alive with sparkling pinpoints. But Eddie now had his back to the view, sitting on a couch in the fading half-light. The smashed furniture was still strewn across the floor, the maid not having dared return to clean it up.

  He heard footsteps and raised his eyes to see Macy at the doorway. “Eddie? Why are you in the dark—jeez!” She saw the wreckage. “What happened?”

  “I had words with the chair,” Eddie said drily. He had managed to recover his composure since Nina’s departure, but was still simmering inside, grief and anger and confusion all swirling in a toxic mix.

  “Uh-huh …” Macy entered cautiously. “Where’s Nina?”

  “Busy.” He said the word with a caustic sourness. “She went to talk to the president.”

  Her eyebrows shot up. “Of America?”

  “Of Peru.”

  They fell again, considerably less impressed. “Oh.” She went to the window, twitching fingers betraying her awkwardness before she finally spoke her mind. “I, ah … heard you two arguing. While I was in the shower, so I guess it must have been a big one.”

  “You could say that.”

  “What was it about?”

  Tact and subtlety had never been Macy’s strong points, but Eddie managed to hold back a scathing reply; she was also genuinely concerned. “Doesn’t matter,” he said instead. “All started because I got some bad news.”

  “What?”

  He took a deep breath. “My nan died.”

  “Your nan? Oh!” exclaimed Macy, as she remembered she had met her. She hurried to the couch and sat beside him. “Oh no, I’m sorry. That’s terrible. She was so sweet!”

  “Yeah, she was,” said Eddie.

  “God, I’m really sorry. And right after Mac as well—” She clamped her mouth shut, appalled at her own insensitivity. “Sorry,” she mumbled. “I didn’t mean …”

  Eddie gave her a small, sad smile. “Don’t worry about it. This really has been a fucking shitty day all ’round. At least it can’t get any worse.”

  “I’m still sorry,” she said. “Can I—Is there anything you want?”

  “My nan back. And Mac.”

  Macy wasn’t sure how to react to that, until Eddie eased her mind with another faint smile. “Mr. McCrimmon really meant a lot to you, didn’t he?” she said. “How long have you known him?”

  “A long time. It was …” He worked it out. “Christ, over sixteen years, when I first joined the SAS. God knows why, but he took me under his wing.”

  “He must have seen something good in you,” Macy suggested.

  “Again, God knows why. But yeah, he sorted me out. I was a bit of an arsehole when I was younger. Bad attitude, aggressive …”

  She glanced at the demolished chair. “You don’t say.”

  “Oi! You want me to have words with you too?” But it was said lightly, not with anger. “He got me through a lot of stuff. I’d be dead ten times over if it hadn’t been for him—not just when I was in the Regiment. He taught me pretty much everything I know. And I don’t mean about being a soldier, I mean about … about being a good person. About doing the right thing.”

  “I don’t think that’s something you can teach,” Macy said quietly. “It’s something that’s there already.”

  “But he brought it out, taught me to never give up. Fight to the end, that was his motto. It—” He broke off, voice catching. “It was the last thing he said before he died.” He lowered his head. “Christ. I shouldn’t have left him. I shouldn’t have let him come at all, but …” He sat up, misery returning with self-recrimination. “If I’d gone with Kit to find him instead of going after Stikes, he’d still be alive. I had an AK, I would have been able to take out Pachac, and Mac could have blown up the chopper before it took off. But I didn’t, and Pachac shot him and Kit—so Stikes got away. It’s all my fault.”

  “It wasn’t,” Macy insisted. “You can’t blame yourself. And it couldn’t have …” She paused, frowning.

  “What?”

  “I’m not sure, but …” The frown deepened as she tried to remember the sequence of events in the lost city. “Pachac couldn’t have done what he did until after Stikes got away.”

  “No, he must have,” Eddie countered. “Mac told me he was about to take out Stikes’s chopper when he got shot. Kit said so as well—Pachac caught them by surprise.”

  Macy shook her head. “No, that’s wrong. I met Kit just as the chopper was going out of the cave, and he hadn’t been hurt yet.”

  “You sure? Maybe you got things mixed up.”

  “A helicopter taking off is kind of memorable,” she said testily. “It was already in the air when I met Kit. And he definitely hadn’t been shot. But he said—” Her confused loo
k returned.

  “What?”

  “He said that Pachac and his men had just gone past—up to where we found him and Mr. McCrimmon.”

  “But Mac wasn’t with him?”

  “No. Actually, he said he hadn’t seen him.”

  “And this was after the gunship took off?”

  “Yes, I’m sure of it.”

  He leaned forward, thinking. If there was one person in the world he trusted to give a completely accurate account of events, even on the brink of death, it was his former commanding officer. Mac was right. Therefore Macy had to be wrong.

  “That doesn’t make any sense,” he said. He hadn’t meant to say it angrily, but the image of Mac’s bloodied, pain-twisted face as his life ebbed away put a harsh edge to his voice.

  Macy pulled away. “I’m not lying! I know what I saw.”

  “Sorry. I didn’t mean it to come out like that. I wasn’t saying that you were lying …” He trailed off.

  Mac. Kit. Macy. Three different accounts of the same events. But two of them contradicted each other. He had assumed that Macy’s was the odd one out.

  What if it wasn’t?

  To him, Mac’s version was the inviolable truth. What about the others?

  Macy first. She saw the helicopter take off and leave the cavern, then encountered Kit, who told her he was looking for Mac. The next time she saw him, he had been shot—and so had Mac.

  Now Kit. He was with Mac when Pachac and his men attacked, shooting the Indian in the arm—and the Scot in the back.

  But Mac had been shot before the gunship took off.

  The idea that someone might have lied about events simply hadn’t occurred to him until Macy put it into his mind. Why would anyone lie? It made no sense.

  But neither did the contradiction. And Pachac had denied killing Mac. He’d had every reason to, considering his situation at the time … but his confusion at the accusation had been genuine.

  And the revolutionary leader and his men had already escaped the cave and reached their vehicles by the time Eddie started in pursuit—but the gap between his hearing the gunshots and finding Mac had been maybe thirty seconds. Even taking into account the time he spent with the Scot as he spoke his last words, Pachac couldn’t have gotten so far ahead so quickly. Which meant he had to have left earlier.