Kingdom of Darkness

by Andy McDermott

  Still gripping the jug, she clambered up the steps. The viaduct trembled again, deep splashes echoing through the cavern as stones broke away and fell into the pool below. She stumbled, the onrushing water threatening to throw her back into Kroll’s sunken tomb . . .

  A hand clamped around her wrist.

  She looked up in fear – which became relief as she saw Eddie. ‘Nina!’ he said. ‘Thank God! Are you okay?’

  ‘Yeah,’ was all she could say.

  ‘Where’s Kroll?’

  ‘Drinking his fill.’

  He helped her up, starting towards the tunnel. Somehow she forced her leaden legs into motion. Ahead, Banna waited anxiously at the end of the corpse-strewn bridge. ‘Where’s Jared? Did he make it?’

  ‘Yeah, he went after Rasche—’ Eddie broke off as the viaduct shook as if hit by an earthquake. Booms and cracks erupted behind them as the section beneath the steps disintegrated. ‘Oh shit! Déjà fuckin’ vu! Run!’

  Fearful adrenalin gave Nina a new surge of energy. They sprinted along the bridge as it crumbled behind them. What was left of the statue of Alexander sheared from the cavern wall, the smaller figure of Andreas briefly watching it disappear before falling too as the tomb shattered beneath it. The pair raced towards the exit, the wave of destruction following them. ‘Run, run!’ shrieked Banna.

  ‘I bloody am!’ Eddie gasped.

  They kept running, thirty feet to go, twenty—

  The viaduct bucked underfoot – then fell away.

  Nina and Eddie both screamed and flung themselves into a last desperate leap for safety. They landed hard on the final few intact feet of the bridge, tripping and rolling as the rest of the structure dropped into the frothing pool below. Banna dragged them clear as the thunderous cacophony subsided.

  ‘Thanks,’ Eddie wheezed. ‘Fuck me! That was bloody close.’ He crawled to his wife. ‘Are you all right?’

  She opened her eyes, surprised that they were still alive. Her hand was clamped tightly around the silver jug. ‘Yeah, I . . . I think so.’ Falling debris had disturbed whatever caused the spring water’s sparkling glow, but there was still enough light to see that the bridge and the great statue had been obliterated, only rubble remaining. ‘What about the Nazis? Did we get them all?’

  ‘No, one got away,’ said Banna. ‘The Israeli went after him.’

  ‘It was Rasche,’ said Eddie. He stood. ‘I’m not letting him escape.’

  ‘Nor am I,’ Nina said, determined.

  They hurried into the huge chasm. Eddie saw two torch beams flicking along the rising path above. ‘There!’

  Zane pounded after Rasche. The pain from the stab wound was like red-hot iron burning into his leg, but his desire to catch Benjamin Falk’s killer seared even hotter, driving him onwards.

  Rasche was now only twenty metres away, slowed by a treacherous section of pathway. The German shone his light downwards, picking his way along step by step. Zane swept his own torch beam ahead, taking in the missing slabs in a flash, and kept running.

  The other man’s light flicked back at him. ‘Scheiße!’ Rasche hissed. He increased his pace, caution overcome by fear.

  Zane raced in pursuit. He glimpsed lights in his peripheral vision: Eddie and Nina starting up the ledge below. He gained on the Nazi, jumping over a gap without even looking. Rasche glanced back—

  And stumbled on a loose stone.

  The SS man let out a sharp gasp of fright. He clutched at the wall to stabilise himself—

  The Israeli tackled him.

  They fell, Zane landing on top – and then both went over the edge.

  The Nazi shrieked, fingers scrabbling at the cliff before catching a ragged outcropping just beneath the path. Zane slithered past him, jerking to a stop as he grabbed Rasche’s jacket with one hand. Threads in the seams popped and snapped, but the fabric held . . . just.

  Rasche tried to shake him loose. The Mossad agent tightened his hold – then clenched his free hand into a rock-solid ball and ploughed it into the other man’s stomach.

  The impact made Rasche convulse. ‘No!’ he gasped. ‘What are—’ Another brutal blow left him breathless. Zane pulled himself higher, gripping the Nazi’s shoulder, then drew his fist back again. ‘Verrückte! If I fall, we both die!’

  ‘Then we die,’ Zane snarled. ‘But I’ll take the last Nazi with me!’

  He smashed a knuckle-splitting punch into Rasche’s face. ‘This is for Benjamin!’ he cried as the German howled, blood gushing from his nose. A second blow brought a dull snap of enamel from inside the war criminal’s mouth. ‘And every Jew you’ve ever killed!’ The Israeli wound up for a final attack—

  Rasche lost his grip with one hand, lurching as the other took the full weight of both men. His jacket slipped around his shoulder – and a seam ripped. Zane dropped several inches, only the garment’s silk lining holding it together. He flailed, fingertips scraping the rock face in a fruitless search for support.

  Even straining to keep his hold on the cliff, Rasche saw a chance for survival – and revenge. He reached down to snatch his SS dagger from its sheath.

  The blade stabbed at the young man’s throat—

  Zane’s hand snapped to intercept it, clapping around the Nazi’s wrist.

  But he had only halted the knife, lacking the leverage to force it away. Rasche’s face contorted into a furious grimace as the shuddering dagger crept towards Zane’s neck. ‘You think you can kill me, little Jude?’ he snarled. ‘The Allies couldn’t in the war. The Mossad couldn’t after the war . . .’ The point pressed against the Israeli’s skin – then sank into it. ‘And you will not now!’

  A choked grunt of pain and fear escaped Zane’s mouth. Blood ran down his neck, at first only an ooze, but within a couple of heartbeats it became a thicker, faster flow. Rasche growled with sadistic glee—

  ‘Jared!’

  Eddie’s voice echoed around the chasm. A torch beam locked on to the two men. The Nazi flinched, momentarily dazzled—

  The instant of distraction was enough. Zane pushed the knife away with rage-fuelled strength. More blood ran out, but he ignored the wound as he twisted Rasche’s hand up – bringing the blade towards the war criminal’s chest.

  Rasche tried to resist, but the quivering dagger edged ever closer. ‘Nein!’ the Nazi shrieked. ‘Don’t do it!’

  ‘You’ve killed your last Jew,’ snarled the Israeli. The trembling dagger’s tip slowly penetrated Rasche’s shirt – then sank through flesh, between ribs. The arrogance and hatred that had defined the Nazi’s expression vanished, replaced by a single emotion: raw terror. ‘Now you know what they felt.’

  Rasche opened his mouth to scream – as Zane thrust the dagger into his heart.

  The cry died in the Nazi’s throat, only a choked gurgle emerging. He shuddered . . . then his hold on the cliff weakened, and released—

  Eddie dived and grabbed Zane’s arm as the two men fell.

  Rasche clawed at the Mossad agent, making one last attempt to drag the other man down with him, but his grip was too weak. He plunged into the darkness. The scream finally came, only to be cut off by the wet crunch of breaking bones and rupturing organs as he smashed on the rocks a hundred feet below.

  The Englishman lay on his front, upper body over the edge as he gripped Zane’s arm. ‘Nina, give me a hand!’ he gasped. She and Banna helped him haul the Israeli up. ‘Jared! You okay?’

  Zane slumped against the wall, exhausted. ‘Actually, yes,’ he gasped, pressing a hand to his bloodied throat. ‘Mission accomplished.’

  ‘Great,’ said Nina. ‘Then let’s get the hell out of here.’

  The climb back to the surface was considerably slower than the descent. But eventually they reached the entrance, even the grey daylight of the forest dazzling. The group stag
gered out through the archway and collapsed on the damp ground. ‘Hope Hafez hasn’t buggered off,’ said Eddie, looking downhill. ‘It’s a bloody long walk back to the boats.’

  Zane’s gaze turned to the shrine’s entrance. He spoke softly in Hebrew. ‘A Kaddish,’ he told the others. ‘For those we have lost. All of them,’ he added to Nina.

  She nodded. ‘Thank you.’ Banna closed his eyes and bowed his head.

  Eddie left a moment of respectful silence, then took the battered silver jug from his wife. Most of its contents had been spilled during the escape, but there was still a small amount of water inside. ‘They all died because of what’s in here. We should pour the bloody stuff away and be done with it.’

  ‘Maybe,’ said Nina. ‘But . . . it’s the last surviving relic of Andreas, the only proof that the Alexander Romance was true. It should be preserved just for that – even if we’re the only ones who know the full story.’

  ‘Yeah, ’cause we’re the only ones who got out of there alive.’ A pause, then he regarded her questioningly. ‘How did you know the statue was a trap? Where was the real spring?’

  ‘That was the real spring,’ she replied. ‘The whole place was a trap – Andreas never meant anyone to get it.’

  ‘Then why have a bloody treasure hunt with clues telling you how to find it?’ Eddie demanded.

  ‘It was a test. The whole thing, not just the clues leading to it.’ She gestured at the arch. ‘When he first found the spring, Andreas thought he’d made a mistake by not immediately telling Alexander what he’d discovered. But that was when he was a young man – and also just a humble cook serving the greatest king in the known world. He was overawed by Alexander, full of hero worship. But as he got older, and wiser . . .’

  ‘He figured out the truth about Alexander,’ said the Yorkshireman, realising where she was leading. ‘He was just as big an arsehole as any of the kings he defeated. Maybe even more so. He actually tried to take over the world.’

  ‘And came as close to succeeding as anyone ever has,’ Banna pointed out.

  Nina nodded. ‘Andreas started out thinking that he should have given the Spring of Immortality to Alexander. After he died, his empire very quickly fell apart – but imagine what he could have accomplished if he’d lived for another thirty, sixty, a hundred years! But as Andreas used the water to live longer himself, and saw other rulers continuing the same old cycles of conquest and all the pointless death and destruction that came with them, he changed his mind. If Alexander had been given essentially eternal life, he would have become the world’s greatest tyrant. Imagine if Hitler had ruled unchallenged for a century. Or Stalin, or Mao.’

  ‘Or the men who paid Kroll millions of dollars for the water,’ said Zane. ‘They want to stay in control of their business empires, but the reason’s the same: they never want to give up their power.’

  ‘That’s right. Death’s the great equaliser; it doesn’t matter how much you’ve achieved, or how big your kingdom is – you lose it all when you die. But if you can delay death, then you’ll keep accumulating more and more power and wealth.’

  ‘Compound interest’s great if you’re already a rich bastard, innit?’ said Eddie. ‘I still don’t get why he didn’t just brick up the spring and be done with it, though. Why did he make it into a test?’

  Banna’s eyes widened. ‘Because it is a test that you do not want to pass!’

  Nina grinned. ‘Yeah. If you fail the test at any stage, then you’re not Alexander’s equal – so not a threat to the world. If you don’t realise that you have to sacrifice the statue of Bucephalus to get the artefact hidden inside it, if you can’t figure out how to use the fish to locate the spring, and if you can’t tell the fake spring behind that arch from the real one, you’ve wasted a lot of time and effort . . . but at least you stay alive. Anyone smart and resourceful enough, and therefore dangerous enough, to get all the way to Andreas’ tomb, though . . .’

  ‘You go to fill up the bowl, like Kroll did, and bam!’ crowed Eddie. ‘You get a Nazi surprise.’

  She sighed at the pun. ‘Although Andreas still gave you one last chance to turn around and leave. All along he kept saying that only Alexander’s equal is worthy of immortality . . . but also that nobody is Alexander’s equal. Even his own coffin had a clue. It said that Andreas was humble, and so was everyone else compared to Alexander.’

  Banna nodded. ‘“Remember this if you seek to take what I had denied him.” He meant the water from the spring.’

  ‘But the statue itself basically said, “If you think you’re as great as Alexander, then step right up and claim your prize.” It contradicted everything Andreas had said before. And that’s when I realised it was a trap,’ Nina told them. ‘You have to be smart and resourceful and dangerous to reach the spring – and then arrogant enough to ignore what Andreas said over and over by claiming it. That proves you’re as much a potential tyrant as an immortal Alexander would have been. And it gets you killed.’

  ‘There was still a load of water in the pool, though,’ Eddie pointed out. ‘Andreas was taking a gamble that someone wouldn’t just drop buckets on ropes.’

  ‘The whole place was designed to channel people right to the statue,’ Nina countered. ‘Even if I hadn’t pointed Kroll there, he would have gone to it anyway. How could he resist? And like I said, it targeted arrogance, hubris. No self-respecting Alexander wannabe would waste time lowering buckets when they can literally wrest control of the Spring of Immortality from his hands. And Andreas knew that.’ She looked up at the arch. ‘For good or bad, there’s only one man of Alexander the Great’s stature in all of history – and Andreas wanted to make sure that remained the case. He and his followers built the whole place to honour him and his achievements . . . while at the same time eliminating anyone who might become the next Alexander.’

  ‘The question is,’ Zane said, ‘what do we do now? About the spring, I mean. The cave has collapsed, but the water’s still down there. We stopped the Nazis from getting it, but I don’t want the Iranians to have it either.’

  ‘We leave it down there,’ Nina said firmly. ‘Close the secret door and bury it. If anyone finds it again, they won’t realise its significance – it’ll just be an archaeological curiosity.’

  ‘But what if somebody comes looking for the Nazis?’ asked Banna.

  ‘Like who?’ hooted Eddie. ‘The Revolutionary Guard won’t give a crap what happened to them. They took their money and left. If they think about ’em at all, it’ll be like they disappeared in the Bermuda Triangle.’

  ‘A new legend – thirty men come into the forest searching for the Spring of Immortality, and are never seen again,’ said Nina. ‘The Last Nazis. I quite like the sound of that.’

  Zane gave her an approving smile. ‘It has a nice finality to it. Hopefully it’ll be the CSU’s last ever operation.’

  Eddie stood and went to the entrance. ‘Come on, then. We’ve got some digging to do.’

  They dragged the bodies of the Nazi sentries into the inner tunnel, then pushed the hidden door closed and shovelled soil back into the excavated opening. When the arch was finally covered again, they set off down the hill, leaving behind the secret of the Kingdom of Darkness.

  Epilogue

  Miami, Florida

  Seventeen Days Later

  ‘I’m not sure I can do this,’ Nina whispered.

  ‘You’ll be okay,’ Eddie assured her as they approached the casket following the service. The line of mourners in the chapel was long; Macy had been a popular and sociable young woman, while her parents were wealthy and well connected in Miami and beyond. ‘I’m sure the funeral people made her look . . . good.’

  ‘No, I don’t mean seeing her in – in the coffin.’ Grief clenched Nina’s throat at the thought of saying her last goodbye. ‘I meant . . . her mom and dad.’ She glanced a
head, to where Amir and Isabel Sharif were waiting. ‘How can I face them after this? After what I—’

  ‘You didn’t do it,’ he said, gently but firmly. ‘They know that. They’ve been told what happened.’

  ‘But what if they blame me? What if they think I got their daughter killed?’

  ‘Then they’re wrong.’ But he had no more advice to offer, his own heart as heavy as hers.

  They reached the casket. It took all of Nina’s will to raise her gaze to the figure inside it. Macy lay with her eyes closed as if in a serene sleep. Eddie had been right about the work of the funeral directors: they had made her as beautiful as she had been in life. ‘I’m so sorry,’ she whispered, eyes filling with tears. ‘Oh God, I’m sorry . . .’

  Her husband stood by her in stoical silence, though his own shimmering eyes revealed his true feelings. Both looked at their friend for the last time, then reluctantly moved on.

  Nina took Eddie’s hand and squeezed it tightly as they approached Macy’s parents. Isabel regarded them uncertainly before recognition sparked in her eyes. ‘You’re Nina, aren’t you? Nina Wilde?’

  ‘Yes, I am,’ Nina replied. ‘I am so, so sorry about Macy. She was . . . she had so much energy, she helped me see things in new ways. She was – she was my friend. I’m sorry,’ she repeated, bracing herself for the worst; despite Eddie’s attempts to convince her otherwise, she still felt responsible. Macy’s mother and father could well blame her too . . .

  But there was no explosion of fury or outrage. ‘Macy told me so much about you. She . . . she idolised you,’ Isabel said, her emotions clear despite her soft, controlled voice. ‘She said you helped her decide what she wanted to do with her life.’

  Amir was more open with his feelings, anger underlying his grief. ‘A man from the United Nations, Oswald Seretse, gave us the official report on what happened to Macy,’ he said. ‘But that didn’t tell us what we wanted – what we needed to know.’ He fixed Nina with an intense gaze. ‘Our daughter – did she . . . suffer?’

  Nina was silent for a long moment. ‘No,’ she finally said, shaking her head. ‘No, it was very quick. I don’t think she did.’ She closed her eyes, seeing Macy’s fear-filled face looking back at her, and tried not to sob.