The Tomb of Hercules

by Andy McDermott

  Now it was Chase’s turn to sound excited. “Did he have a radio?”

  “I think so. But it’ll only be short range, surely?

  Unless you were planning to ask Sophia for a ride in her helicopter.”

  “Don’t worry about that,” Chase assured her. “You just try to remember how to get us back through the maze. I don’t want to survive all this only to make a wrong turn and fall down some bloody pit…”

  To Chase’s relief, Nina was able to guide them back through the labyrinth.

  By the time they finally emerged from the tomb, the sun was low on the horizon behind the hill. The temperature was still searingly hot, however, heat haze rippling the endless dunes.

  Nina stayed in the shade of the rock passage as Chase warily emerged with the F2000 rifle he’d taken from the dead man in the chamber of Hippolyta, in case Sophia had left anyone lying in wait for them. But there was no sign of life other than flitting insects.

  “So now what do we do?” Nina asked. “It’s a long way to the nearest town, and this”—she held up the man’s half-liter water bottle—“isn’t exactly going to see us through. Unless you know some kind of super SAS desert survival techniques?”

  “I know something even better,” said Chase with a sly grin, switching on the radio and setting it to a particular channel. He looked skyward as he pushed the transmit key and spoke into it, Nina becoming more puzzled with each word. “Bravo, Romeo, Delta, Sierra, Whisky, Romeo, Delta. The pipes are calling. I say again …” He repeated the bizarre message twice more.

  Nina’s eyebrows rose in utter incredulity. “What the hell was that?”

  “That,” said Chase, “was Mac’s MI6 exit code. Every spook’s got one—it’s a sort of absolute last resort, ‘I’m in deep shit, get me the fuck out of here!’ message. Soon as MI6 hears one, they do whatever they can to extract whoever sent it. And since we’re not in the middle of a war zone or in some country with massive border defenses, hopefully they shouldn’t have too much trouble getting to us.”

  Nina pointed at the walkie-talkie. “But how are they going to hear it on that little Radio Shack piece of crap?”

  “They won’t. But the National Security Agency in the States will. American spooks are usually even bigger dickheads than British ones, but their technology’s bloody amazing—they can hear a sparrow fart on the other side of the Atlantic. They’ll have pinpointed where it was sent from by satellite, and they’ll know it’s an exit code, so they’ll pass it right on to their poodles at Vauxhall Cross.” He squinted up at the deep blue sky as if expecting to see one of the satellites passing overhead. “I’ll repeat it every hour, but they’ll have got it already. We just need to sit tight and wait for ’em to show up.”

  “I’ll remember that the next time I don’t have money for a cab ride home,” said Nina.

  “Well, not with that code—they’re a one-shot deal. But it’s useful to know.” He returned to the shade, sitting down next to Nina. “So, we’ve got a bit of time to kill. Anything you want to talk about?”

  “I think there’s something we both need to talk about,” Nina said. They looked at each other for a long moment.

  “Actually,” said Chase, “I don’t think you need to say anything. I do, though. About how I’ve been acting like a complete twat for the past few months.”

  “I wouldn’t say complete…” Another exchange of looks, and they both smiled. “But I haven’t exactly been the model of understanding either. I got so obsessed with finding the Tomb of Hercules that I wasn’t paying any attention to anything—or anyone—else. And it was purely for my own gratification, as well. Just because I couldn’t go public about finding Atlantis, I ended up fixating on something that I could brag to the world about discovering. And look where it got us.”

  “You did find it, though,” Chase reminded her.

  “For what it’s worth. You were right, I was putting it above everything else. And I’m sorry. And not just for the whole evil-ex-wife-steals-gold-and-nukes thing either.”

  Chase sighed. “Yeah, well, I’m sorry too. This whole bloody mess is my fault. If I hadn’t gone running off to help Sophia…Christ.” He banged his head against the rock. “All this ’cause I thought my girlfriend wasn’t paying enough attention to me. Any normal bloke’d just go to a strip club with his mates, but no, I have to start World War fucking Three.”

  “Sophia was right,” Nina said sadly, prompting Chase to look questioningly at her. “We weren’t communicating. I was obsessing, you had cabin fever…and it wasn’t that we didn’t tell each other. We just didn’t listen.”

  “Well, I’m listening now. Just hope it’s not too late to make a difference.”

  Her tone became hopeful. “I don’t think it is. What about you?”

  “I think…” His voice filled with barely contained emotion. “There was a moment back there, after the roof fell in, that I thought I’d lost you. And … I think that was the worst moment in my entire life.”

  “Really?”

  He nodded. “We’ve had some problems, but fuck it. Once we get out of this, I want to fix them. Whatever it takes.”

  She rested her head on his shoulder. “Me too. Whatever it takes. I don’t want to lose you again either.”

  He kissed her forehead. “Great. Then we’re in agreement.”

  “It’s been awhile.”

  “Too long. So let’s keep it this way.”

  “I agree.”

  Chase managed a tired laugh, stroking her arm. “Now all we’ve got to do actually is get out of this. Just hope MI6 are more reliable than last time.”

  Nina looked up at him. “Last time?”

  He grinned. “Long story.”

  She smiled back. “I think you’ve got time to tell it.”

  Night had fallen.

  Nina and Chase huddled together between the rocks, out of the wind. The stars overhead shone with an almost unnatural brilliance, sparkling like the gems strewn throughout the Tomb of Hercules. Nina shifted position to gaze up at the spectacle. “You were right.”

  “About what?”

  “Stargazing in the Grand Erg. It really is amazing.” Chase chuckled, putting his arm around her. “I love you.”

  Nina gave him a look of delighted surprise. “Where did that come from?”

  “Thought I owed it to you. Should have said it a long time ago.”

  She hugged him. “Better late than never. And I love you too.”

  “Glad to hear it.” Chase smiled, then rubbed his bare arms. The heat of the day was gone, the temperature having plunged enough to give him goose pimples. “God, I really miss my jacket,” he grumbled. “Went through all kinds of stuff in it. Never thought it’d be melted by acid.”

  “I’ll get you a new one,” Nina assured him.

  “It won’t be the same.”

  “It’ll be better, I promise.”

  He smiled. “Is that like a metaphor or something?”

  “Could be …” Suddenly, she felt him tense. “What is it?”

  “I can hear something.” They both stood, Chase picking up the rifle, and stepped out of the stone passage.

  Nina could now hear it too, a distant rumble. “Chopper?”

  “Sounds like it. Can’t tell from where, though.” He pointed to the south. “See if you can see any nav lights.”

  Nina scanned the horizon, but saw nothing except stars. “What if it’s Sophia?”

  He hefted the F2000. “Then I’ve got twenty bullets with her name on them. And ten spares for that body-pierced bastard.”

  After a minute, Nina called out to Chase, who was watching the sky to the north. “Over here!”

  He ran to her, seeing flashing lights low over the horizon to the southeast. “Coming right at us, whoever it is.” He looked thoughtfully at the approaching helicopter, then switched on the rifle’s spotlight and aimed it at the aircraft.

  “You sure that’s a good idea? If it’s Sophia, you’re leading her right to u
s.”

  “I don’t think it’s a Sikorsky. Too small. But wait in the tunnel entrance, just in case.”

  The next minute passed with rising anxiety as the helicopter closed in. When it was four hundred yards away, it slowed to a hover and turned sideways-on to them, whipping up sand in its downwash. Chase locked the crosshairs onto the pilot, but nobody within the craft was aiming weapons back at him. The helicopter only had two people aboard, neither of whom was Sophia or Komosa. In the copilot’s seat, he saw a man staring at him through binoculars.

  Chase lowered the rifle and waved. The chopper drifted closer. “Looks promising,” he called to Nina, “but stay out of sight for now.”

  The helicopter set down two hundred feet away, Chase shielding his eyes against the blowing grit.

  A man jumped from the cabin. Head low until he was clear of the spinning blades, he jogged towards the tomb entrance. “Mac!” he shouted. “Mac, is that you?”

  “Oh, Christ,” Chase muttered. He thought he knew the voice, and a glance through the sights—during which time he was very tempted to pull the trigger—confirmed his suspicions. “Hold it, Alderley! Of all the fucking people they could send, it would be you, wouldn’t it?”

  The man froze. “Well, blimey. Eddie Chase.” His right hand slipped into his jacket.

  “Don’t even think about it,” Chase told him, raising the gun and shining its spotlight to reveal a thin-faced, middle-aged man sporting what Chase could only think of as a 1970s porn star’s mustache.

  Alderley hurriedly raised his hands. “You know, Chase, misuse of an SIS extraction code is a pretty serious offense. Unless Mac’s hiding back there somewhere, you’re in a lot of trouble.”

  “Nothing new there. And Mac’s dead.”

  “What?” Alderley seemed genuinely unsettled for a moment, before suspicion crept on to his face. “You didn’t kill him, did you?”

  “Of course I bloody didn’t! The people who stranded us here did, though.”

  “Who’s ‘us’?” Alderley asked, looking around.

  “Nina!” Chase called. Nina cautiously emerged from the tomb. “Alderley, this is Dr. Nina Wilde, director of operations for the U.N.’s International Heritage Agency. Nina, this is Peter Alderley, MI6 spook and absolute bell-end.”

  “Hi,” said Nina, waving politely. Alderley halfheartedly returned the gesture with one of his raised hands. “Eddie, are you really going to keep pointing the gun at the guy who’s come to rescue us?”

  “I came to rescue Mac,” said Alderley. “Not some sanctimonious ex-squaddie. I ought to just leave you here, Chase. Freelancers aren’t any of my business. But…” He looked at Nina. “I can’t really leave a lady in distress, can I?”

  “Thank you,” said Nina. “I’m very grateful. And so is Eddie,” she added. Chase grunted.

  “All right.” Alderley sighed. “This is entirely against protocol, but since I’m out here anyway, I may as well do my good deed for the day. Just get rid of the rifle, Chase. I don’t want you sitting with a live weapon aimed at my back for the whole trip.”

  Reluctantly, Chase tossed the F2000 aside. For a moment, Alderley hesitated as if about to draw his own gun, but then he lowered his arms. “What are you doing out here, anyway?” he asked. “This is supposed to be nothing but open desert, but when I checked the latest satellite image before setting off, there was a bloody huge smoking crater with a helicopter sticking out of it!”

  “There was an ancient tomb under the hill,” Nina said, “but it collapsed.”

  Alderley gestured at Chase. “And I imagine he was the cause of that?”

  Chase gave the MI6 agent a nasty look. “At least when I blow stuff up I try to minimize the collateral damage!”

  “Two minutes,” said Alderley, rolling his eyes. “I’m amazed it took so long for that to come up.”

  Chase took an angry step towards him, but Nina took hold of his arm. “Whatever problem you two have, could you maybe put it on hold? Until we’re, y’know, not stranded in the desert?”

  “I suppose,” Chase said irritably.

  “Good. So, Mr. Alderley? Can we go now?”

  Alderley’s base of operations was across the border in southern Tunisia, a small drilling rig in a bleak region of rocky desert.

  “Natural gas exploration,” Alderley explained after they had landed and he had taken Nina and Chase to the cabin housing his office. “It’s really a cover so we can keep an eye on what’s going on next door in Libya, but the funny thing is that it’s actually been quite successful. Always nice to have an intelligence operation that turns a profit.”

  “Great,” said Chase, unimpressed. “You’ll be able to buy another crappy old Ford Capri with it.”

  “The Mark One 3000GT is a classic!” protested Alderley in what seemed to Nina to be automatic defensiveness, before he composed himself and sat at his desk to log on to his computer. “Okay. Now, let me check what you told me on the flight…” He hunched forward, pecking at the keys with two fingers.

  Nina and Chase sat on a small, worn couch. “So, what’s your problem with this guy?” Nina asked quietly.

  Chase glared at Alderley. “SAS and MI6 sometimes do joint ops, with a spook as a sort of overseer. We went after some al-Qaeda wanker who was hiding out in a village in Pakistan—it was a secret op since Pakistan’s supposed to be an ally. Went in and bagged the guy without any trouble, but then this twat”—he jabbed a finger at Alderley—“decides to cover our tracks by blowing up half the fucking village!”

  “It was an entirely normal false flag operation so we could blame al-Qaeda for making bombs in a civilian area and lose them Pakistani support,” said Alderley patronizingly, barely looking up from the computer. “And it was hardly half the village, it was three houses at most, and they were probably terrorist sympathizers anyway. You were the only person in the unit who objected.”

  “Yeah, and I bet your nose still hurts.”

  Alderley self-consciously rubbed the bridge of his nose, which Nina noticed for the first time had a prominent bump, the relic of an old break. “Anyway,” he said, “I have some news for you.”

  Chase sat up. “Let me guess. Good kind and bad kind?”

  “Actually, yes. The good news is that Mac isn’t dead.”

  “He’s okay?” Nina asked excitedly.

  “That depends on your definition of okay. Apparently he jumped out of a window just before his entire house blew up. He’s in a coma.”

  Nina gripped Chase’s hand. “Oh no…”

  “And the bad news, for you two at least, is that as soon as I put your names into the system all kinds of warnings came up.” He leaned back in his chair, resting his right hand across his chest—just an inch from the shoulder holster now visible beneath his jacket. “You’ve been busy. Diamond theft, assassinating the Botswanan minister of trade… Mac must have pulled some very long strings just to get you back to England. And then you follow that by blowing up his house and murdering a Chinese American billionaire!”

  “We didn’t kill anybody!” Nina cried, before thinking about it. “Okay, maybe a few,” she corrected. “But they were all bad guys!”

  “Sophia Blackwood’s behind the whole thing,” Chase said.

  Alderley gave him a dubious frown. “You mean Lady Sophia Blackwood?”

  “Yep.”

  “Your ex-wife?”

  “And Richard Yuen’s ex-wife as well. And René Corvus’s, seeing as he was just shot through the heart, and she’s to blame. Although I bet she hasn’t made that public yet. Having two billionaire husbands die in four days might make people a bit suspicious.”

  Alderley checked the computer, raising his eyebrows. “You’re right—it says here that she married this Corvus chap the day after the other one was killed. Nothing about him dying, though.”

  “She did it to gain control of both their companies,” Nina told him. “Yuen was using uranium he was secretly mining in Botswana to make atomic bombs that he planned to s
ell to terrorists. Sophia killed him so she could marry Corvus and he could start up his own little nuclear-armed Fantasy Island … but then she killed him too!”

  “And now she’s got a nuke,” Chase continued. “Problem is, we don’t know where she’s taken it or what she wants to do with it.”

  “Something to do with the financial markets,” said Nina. “That’s why Corvus wanted the contents of the Tomb of Hercules, to act as security. Presumably Sophia wants it for the same purpose—but with a different motive.”

  “The Tomb of Hercules, hmm?” Alderley said, pursing his lips dubiously. “As in the Greek god?”

  “Well, technically just a demigod, as he didn’t actually ascend to divine status until after he died—”

  “I don’t think he wants a history lesson,” said Chase.

  Alderley tapped a finger on his chin. “This all sounds, ah, quite insane, actually. Uranium mines? Nuclear bombs? Ancient tombs? Hercules?” He turned to Chase. “And you’re saying that your ex-wife is behind it all?”

  “Mac believed us,” said Chase firmly. “He was going to persuade MI6 to check out the uranium mine.”

  “Too bad he’s not in any condition to confirm that. Or maybe that’s a good thing, from your perspective.” The MI6 agent’s right hand slid towards his holster again.

  “He believed us enough to get us out of Africa,” Nina said. “And enough to get Eddie the documents he needed to go to Switzerland. I’m sure you’ll be able to confirm that much.”

  With a wary eye on Chase, Alderley worked the computer. “So he did. And he must have used up a few favors to pull it off so fast…”

  “Mac trusted us,” Nina pleaded. “If you can too, then we have a chance of stopping whatever Sophia intends to do. Before she sets off her nuke.”

  Alderley looked conflicted, but also exasperated. “It’s your word against hers,” he said. “And to be honest, she has a lot more credibility than you do. She’s titled, she’s a member of the establishment—and you’re both wanted for murder!”

  “Having a title doesn’t stop you from being dodgy,” Chase reminded him. “There’s a couple of lords who’ve ended up in the slammer.”