The Secret of Excalibur_A Novel

by Andy McDermott

  Two thousand feet. The lights were still distant, but getting closer, the constellation taking on tantalizing form. Smaller than the Aurora, maybe nearer than Chase had thought. A trawler?

  Closer. Fifteen hundred feet. Nina was now held as much by the rope as by her own efforts, grip weakening, heart slowing. He had no feeling in his face, barely any in his outstretched hands. A thousand feet. The spaces between the lights began to fill with solid colors, the ship fading in from the blackness as if in a movie. Five hundred. Closer. Four hundred, three …

  Nina went limp. He fought to hold his position as her arms and legs dangled in the slipstream, slowing them. Two hundred, one hundred, dropping fast—

  The ship rushed at him, a mast springing out of the darkness directly ahead. Chase twisted, losing lift. Something on the deck, a pile of nets and glistening silver within. He aimed for it, last chance before overshooting and plunging into the waters beyond—

  They slammed into the nets. The wings cracked and broke off, but Chase had already wrapped his arms around Nina to protect her as they slithered through a huge pile of fish, scattering freshly caught cod everywhere. The other side of the net was being winched up off the deck; they skidded up it before rolling back into the flapping shoal.

  “Bloody hell!” Chase gasped. His sense of touch might have been numbed, but his sense of smell was working all too well. “Stinks!” The net stopped. He looked around to see a group of shocked fishermen staring at him.

  Nina moved feebly in his grip. “Nina! Are you okay? Nina!”

  “Eddie …” she whispered drowsily, moving again—this time to rest her head against his chest with an expression almost of contentment, eyes closed. It didn’t last long, though. Her nose twitched, and she frowned. “What’s that smell?”

  Chase laughed in relief, hugging her. He looked back at the trawlermen as they clambered onto the net. “Ay up, lads!” he said. “You going anywhere near England?”

  THIRTY-SIX

  England

  So it’s my great honor to be here with the discoverer of King Arthur’s tomb, a woman who has rewritten the history books more than once … Dr. Nina Wilde.”

  “Thank you, Prime Minister,” said Nina, blushing at the applause as she limped to take his place at the microphone. Her wound had been treated and she had been assured of a full recovery in time, but it was less than a week since it had been inflicted, and the leg was still stiff and painful.

  The small stage on which they stood had been set up at the foot of Glastonbury Tor. Behind it, a cordon marked the entrance to the tomb, a full-scale archaeological survey now under way. She looked out across the crowd, which was larger than she had expected; as well as the inevitable press corps and the entourage of police, security and bureaucrats accompanying Britain’s prime minister, there was also a throng of ordinary people wanting to witness one of those rare moments when myth was revealed as fact.

  But for all the faces looking up at her, Nina’s attention was fixed only on one. Chase stood near the stage. Despite all the cuts and stitches on his face, he still managed a grin as he clapped. With him were Elizabeth, Holly and his grandmother, and Mac. She smiled back, then lifted her head to the crowd.

  “Thank you,” she repeated, waiting for the applause to die down. “I’m honored to be here. But the first thing I should say is that I didn’t discover the tomb alone—I had lots of help from other people. And unfortunately, too many of them are no longer with us. Great treasures from the past can inspire awe and wonder, but they can also inspire greed and violence, which cost some of my friends their lives. Before I go on, I’d like to take a moment to remember them.”

  She looked down, hands clasped in front of her. The noise of the crowd fell almost to nothing, birdsong from the surrounding countryside briefly the only sound. Then she raised her head again, seeing Chase giving her a sad but appreciative smile. She returned it, then continued.

  “Thank you. The prime minister just said I’ve rewritten the history books—and I know that for some people that can be a very frightening thing, when everything they thought they knew gets turned on its head. And I’ve been guilty of that myself; I’ve had my own preconceived beliefs. But I’ve also learned that, sometimes, having your beliefs challenged is the only way that new discoveries can be made, that knowledge can be advanced. And because of that challenge, I’m here with you today as what was once just legend now becomes something greater: truth. A truth that has yet to be fully explored, but the path starts here—at the resting place of Arthur, king of the Britons.”

  More applause, even cheering. But Nina was once more looking only at Chase, and his expression of pride.

  • • •

  “So why weren’t you up on stage, Uncle Eddie?” Holly asked.

  “Ah, you know me,” Chase said modestly. “Camera shy.”

  “Not from me, you’re not.” She held up the phone Chase had bought her and took a picture of him and Nina. “I want a good picture of my hero.”

  “I don’t think it’s possible to take one,” said Elizabeth, but with humor in her voice. “Eddie, I’d say thank you, but I don’t think it would be enough. You saved …” She trailed off, overcome by emotion.

  Chase put his arm around her. “It’s okay, Liz … E-lizabeth.” They both smiled. “I mean, come on. You’re family. What else would I do?”

  “Maybe you should go and see Dad, tell him that.”

  “Let’s not get ahead of ourselves!”

  Chase’s grandmother bustled up to them. “Come here, my little lamb chop. I’m so proud of you!” She reached up and pinched his cheeks.

  “Ow. Ow, Nan!” Chase protested. “You’ll pop a stitch!”

  “Oh, don’t be silly.” She kissed him, then turned to Nina. “And I’m so happy you’ve finally set a date!” She kissed Nina as well. “Welcome to the family!”

  “Don’t forget to send Peter Alderley his invitation,” said Mac mischievously.

  “Alderley can f—” Chase began, before looking at his grandmother and niece.

  “Find one in his mailbox soon?” Nina suggested.

  Mac chuckled, then stepped closer, lowering his voice. “By the way,” he said, glancing across at the prime minister as he spoke to a TV news crew nearby, “there are some people in London—and Washington—who are rather keen to find out what happened to Excalibur.”

  “Lost at sea,” Nina and Chase quickly replied in unison. “Went down with the ship,” Nina added.

  “Glug glug,” Chase said, making a spiraling downward motion with a finger.

  “Hrmm.” Mac regarded them both intently for a moment, then his face creased into a wry smile. “Terrible shame. Still, probably for the best. So what are you going to do now?”

  “We’re going back to the States,” Nina told him. “I have to make a full report to the IHA and the U.N. And we need to see Hector Amoros’s family.”

  Mac nodded sympathetically. “I wish you all the best, then. Are you heading back to Heathrow? I could give you a lift.”

  “That’s okay,” said Nina. “We’ve got a rental car.”

  Chase grinned. “And we’re going to take the scenic route.”

  • • •

  They stood at the edge of a small lake deep in the English countryside, sunshine giving the rolling green landscape a hazy glow, peaceful and romantic. There was nobody else in sight, no cars or houses, just trees and fields and birds drifting through the warm air.

  “It’s beautiful,” said Nina. She moved closer to the bank, looking down to see her reflection in the rippling water. A little fish rose almost to the surface to peer up at her, then darted into the safety of the depths with a flick of its tail.

  “It’s nice,” Chase agreed, “but not as good as Yorkshire. God’s own county—I’ll have to take you up there.”

  “Maybe next time.” She regarded the view for a moment longer, then turned and picked up an object wrapped in a towel.

  “Sure you want to do this?
” Chase asked.

  “Not entirely. Something of this historical importance should be in a museum. But …” She shook her head. “We can’t let anyone like Jack get hold of it again. And besides, according to legend Excalibur ended up in a lake, waiting to be found again when the time was right. It feels appropriate.”

  She unwrapped the towel, revealing Excalibur gleaming within. The blade glowed almost imperceptibly when she took the hilt, no invisible lines of earth energy nearby. After regarding the reflections in the metal for a moment, Nina carefully handed the sword to Chase. “Me?” he asked. “Oh, I get it—if you’re King Arthur, then I’m the loyal knight who casts away the sword, right?”

  “No,” Nina said with a smile. “You can throw a lot farther than me, that’s all!”

  Chase laughed, then weighed the sword in his hands before drawing back one arm to throw it. “Sure?”

  “Yes.”

  “Okay.” With a grunt, he hurled the shining weapon out across the lake. It spun end over end, sunlight flashing from the blade, and arced down to land with a splash some distance from the shore, dropping out of sight into the deep waters beneath. “Huh. You know, I almost expected someone’s hand to pop out of the water and grab it.”

  “Some moistened tart, maybe?” Nina asked him, grinning.

  “Yeah, that’s enough Monty Python,” Chase said, taking her hand and starting the walk back to their car. “So, we’d better start thinking about the wedding, I suppose. I know—how about getting married in Vegas by Elvis?”

  She laughed. “Keep thinking.”

  EPILOGUE

  Washington, D.C.

  The white-haired man handed the folder to the man seated behind the desk and stepped back respectfully. “That’s everything we’ve got so far, sir.”

  “The ship?”

  “Based on the GPS track of its last known position, it’s approximately eight thousand feet down in the Norwegian Basin, just inside the Arctic Circle. Reachable, given time, but there’s no way to tell how much would be recoverable.”

  “What about the sword?”

  “According to Dr. Wilde and Chase, it went down with the ship. Whether that’s true or not is another matter, but considering her public profile right now, rendering them for interrogation might be a problem.”

  “Damn it. Mitchell should have had the superconductor analyzed and duplicated before testing the weapon. He rushed it, and we lost everything!”

  “With respect, sir,” the white-haired man said, “he was acting under your orders. He wanted to take advantage of the stand-off with the Russians, and you personally authorized him to sink the Enterprise as a false flag—”

  “I know what I authorized!” A fist banged on the desk. “We would have eliminated the Russians as a competitor for polar resources for a decade, but now all that’s gone because of some—some archaeologist and her Limey boyfriend!” He flicked through the pages inside the folder, stopping at a pair of photographs: Nina and Chase. He threw the folder down on his desk with a slap. “All right, Mr. Callum. You can go.”

  “Yes, Mr. President.” The white-haired man nodded, then marched crisply from the Oval Office.

  President Victor Dalton turned to look out across the White House’s rose garden beyond the high armored windows. Jack Mitchell had known that failure would see him castigated as a rogue agent misusing DARPA’s black budget for his own ends. Like a true patriot, he had accepted the risk and taken that responsibility in order to protect the man whose orders he was actually obeying. There would be no link to the White House … but that didn’t change the fact that the operation had failed. The earth energy weapon had been destroyed, and Dalton’s long-term plans had been derailed.

  He scowled at the photographs of Nina and Chase. “I won’t forget this,” he promised them.

  THE COVENANT OF GENESIS

  will stop at nothing to protect the world’s biggest secret…

  READ ON FOR AN EXCLUSIVE SNEAK PEEK AT THE NEWEST ADVENTURE-PACKED NOVEL BY ANDY McDERMOTT

  Off the coast of Indonesia, archaeologist Nina Wilde and her fiancé, ex-SAS bodyguard Eddie Chase, make an explosive find: an artifact that will completely rewrite everything that’s known about human history. But as they embark upon a dangerous worldwide search to expose the incredible secret, will the Covenant kill in order to conceal it?

  On sale May 2010

  ONE

  Indonesia

  Shark!”

  At almost a hundred feet beneath the Java Sea, daylight was diffused to a dusky turquoise cast, but there was still more than enough illumination for Nina Wilde to see the predator turn toward her. “Shark!” she repeated, her voice rising in pitch. “Eddie, do something!”

  Eddie Chase swept past her, using the thrusters of his deep suit to place himself between his fiancée and the shark as he brought up his speargun. He aimed the .357 Magnum cartridge forming the spear’s explosive power-head at the approaching creature … then lowered it again.

  “What are you doing?” Nina asked, green eyes wide with fear. “It’s coming right at us!”

  “It’s only a thresher. Don’t worry, it won’t do anything.”

  “But it’s fifteen feet long!”

  “It’s not even six. I know the helmet magnifies things, but Jesus!”

  The shark came closer, mouth gaping to expose ranks of sharp triangular teeth … then turned its head almost dismissively and powered off into the murk.

  “See?” said Chase. “Nothing to worry about. Now if it’d been something like a tiger shark, you’d know about it.”

  “How?”

  “’Cause I’d be shouting ‘Shit, it’s a fucking tiger shark, aargh!’ and firing off spears as fast as I could load ’em!” The balding, broken-nosed Englishman turned so that the lights on his deep suit’s polycarbonate body lit up the redhead’s pale face through her transparent bubble helmet. “You okay?”

  “Yeah, fine,” Nina answered, with a slightly embarrassed smile. She had undergone dive training off the coast of Long Island, near her native New York, and was still getting used to the enormously more varied marine life of Indonesia. “It’s just that to me, ‘shark’ equals ‘severed head popping out of a boat.’”

  Chase chuckled, then a hint of concern came into his voice, even through the distortion of the underwater radio system. “How’s your leg?”

  “It’s … okay.” It wasn’t technically a lie, as the bullet wound she had received to her right thigh four months earlier, now more or less healed, wasn’t actually hurting, but it had definitely stiffened up during the dive.

  “Uh-huh.” He didn’t believe her. “Look, if you want to go back to the ship …”

  “I’m fine, Eddie,” Nina insisted. “Come on, let’s carry on with the survey.”

  “If you’re sure.” Chase managed an approximation of a shrug through the deep suit’s bulky casing.

  Nina gripped the flexible control stalk on her suit’s chest and engaged the thrusters to lift herself off the sea bed, using her finned feet to bring herself to a horizontal position before zooming away, Chase behind her.

  • • •

  Their survey led them along a circular route, taking twenty minutes to complete. Nina was disappointed that she failed to discover anything new—but that feeling vanished as they returned to the center of the circle.

  Almost a year earlier, a local fishing boat had, by chance, dredged up a handful of wood and stone artifacts from the sea floor. The Indonesian authorities quickly realized they were very old and hence potentially extremely valuable; the lucky fishermen had received a payment to persuade them to “forget” exactly where they had made their discovery, so the site could be properly examined before opportunistic treasure hunters picked it clean.

  The job of exploration fell to the United Nations International Heritage Agency. Nina, at the time the agency’s director of operations, had already been engaged in a project to chart in detail humanity’s expansion across the world in prehi
story; the Indonesian find had the potential to pinpoint a date with great accuracy. It had taken several months for everything to be arranged, but now they were here.

  And had made a discovery.

  “Nina, look at this!” called Marco Gozzi over the radio. He and another scientist, Gregor Bobak, were using a vacuum pump to clear away the layers of sediment and vegetation that had built up over millennia.

  “What is it?” Nina asked. She switched off the thrusters and swam the last few yards to join them: stirring up the bottom would wipe out visibility and cost them valuable time. The deep suits could operate underwater for longer than traditional scuba gear, but they still had their limits—and on an operation like this, time was money. The research vessel anchored a few hundred feet away, the Pianosa, was privately owned, other clients waiting to use it after the IHA.

  Gozzi aimed a light at what had been exposed. “It’s a net!” said the Italian.

  “It is,” Nina said in awed agreement. “Wow, this is incredible!”

  Chase, hanging back, was less impressed. “Ooh. A net. Just like the thing that found this lot in the first place.”

  “Eddie,” Nina chided. “This isn’t exactly a nylon drift net we’re talking about here.” She reached out with a gloved hand, gently brushing sand off the crudely knotted strands. “Looks like they wove it from the local rainforest plants. Palm strands, maybe?”

  “Or vines,” said Bobak in his strong Polish accent. “Strangler figs, perhaps. There are many on the islands.”

  Gozzi dug a finger into the grey sediment. “The mud must have buried it and stopped it from rotting. Could have been caused by a tsunami, or a volcanic eruption.”

  “Mark the position,” Nina told them. “If it’s a fishing net, they would have kept it close to the shore.” She checked the little display in her helmet to get their exact depth. “Ninety-eight feet. If I put that into GLUG, I’ll be able to work out exactly how long ago this spot was last above water.” She saw a yellow mesh bag on the ground nearby. “What else have you found?”