by Rob Jones
“Are you sure you don’t want to tell me something?” Hawke said.
“Only that if it really is Zaugg behind this then watch out. He has extensive contact with the European underworld and among his associates are these two men.”
Eden swivelled the computer monitor on his desk and showed Hawke and Lea grainy black and white photos of two men taken from a distance. “The man you see coming out of the gambling den is Kaspar Vetsch. He’s a dangerous psychotic with no fewer than three European arrest warrants out on him. His speciality is torturing people for information and he's been known to work for Zaugg.”
“He looks like a proper psycho,” Hawke said.
“Creeps me out,” said Lea, sincerely hoping their paths would never cross, but knowing if they did that he would come off worse.
“The other man – the one climbing into the back of the cab in this picture here is Heinrich Baumann, former Kommando Spezialkräfte – the German Special Forces. A sergeant with a lot of experience and a penchant for killing people in amazingly original ways.”
“He looks even worse than Vetsch,” said Lea.
“He has one eye?” Hawke asked.
Eden nodded. “Lost the other in a knife fight in Mexico City. The attractive metal hand is courtesy of a machete-wielding people trafficker in Budapest. We know more about these two than we do about Zaugg himself, so that’s the only briefing I can give you at this time.”
“I’ve had worse,” Hawke said.
Eden rose from his desk. “When you arrive in New York, you’re going to have to work fast. I’ve already asked a contact in MI5 if they’ve heard any chatter regarding any of this, but they’ve drawn a blank so whoever it is knows how to dodge the security services. That tells me they’re powerful, rich and clever, which makes a formidable enemy. My money’s on Zaugg.”
“The bigger they are, the harder they fall,” Hawke said.
Lea looked at him. “Maybe not this time.”
“She’s right – don't get cocky or you’ll get dead,” Eden said bluntly. “We don’t know who they are, but we do know they’ve killed an innocent woman, stolen the Ionian Texts and their translations, and are probably already on their way to New York to search for the vase.”
*
“I just need to make a call,” Hawke spoke as they waited for a taxi. He stepped across the road and sent a text to an American cell phone number: Are you there, Nightingale?
A few seconds later came the reply: “What do you want, Joe?”
He texted back: “Can you do something for me?”
“Oh God.”
Hawke could almost recognize the tone behind the text – she was in one of her moods. He only knew the woman by the codename Nightingale. She was former CIA in the way he was former SBS. They had worked together on many cases back in the old days, but never met, and she remained a mystery to him. But she had saved his life more than once, and he had saved hers once in Cartagena, so they trusted each other totally.
“Please?” Hawke texted. “I almost just got killed.”
“Rlly? Cool,” came the reply. She was infuriating.
Hawke needed this to move faster, so he dialled her number and two seconds later she picked up the phone.
“You nearly just got killed? Really? I was going to say I miss that…” she said, and paused, “but I don’t think so.”
“Just check something out for me, Nightingale.”
“Sure. I’m just about go to bed. What time is it in England?”
“Daytime.”
“Cute. You know, I have a terrible headache and maybe the flu and I just had the day from hell. Literally just a second ago I just said to myself that I really, really hope Joe Goddam Hawke calls me and asks me to check something out for him.”
“Thanks, I need you to get me some info. Not the sort you can pull off Wikipedia if you get what I mean.”
She sighed. “What is it?”
“I’m working for a man named Sir Richard Eden.”
The sound of typing.
“Okay, here it is: Member of the British Parliament, works for various national security subcommittees and has close links to MI5. Served fifteen years in the British Army and an obsessive collector of archaeological artifacts. You’re not risking your life for this guy are you, Joe?” She sounded unusually concerned.
“What about a Lea Donovan, his personal security. Is there anything else you can tell me about her?”
More typing, this time accompanied by sighing.
“Sure – I just hacked her CIA file.”
“She has a CIA file?”
“She surely does, Joe.”
“That doesn’t sound right to me. She works security for an MP.”
Nightingale laughed. “You’re so naïve, baby.”
Hawke ignored this. “You were telling me about her CIA file?”
“She was involved in some anti-terrorism operations when she was in the Rangers.”
“The Rangers?”
“Sure, the Army Ranger Wing of the Irish Army – they’re called the Sciathán Fiannóglaigh an Airm. I probably didn’t pronounce that right but in English they’re called the plain old ARW. They’re an elite special operations force into sabotage, ambushes, gathering intel, you name it.”
“They let women in that?”
“You are such a sexist bastard, Joe Hawke. As a matter of fact she was one of just three women with them, according to what I’m reading right now.”
“She told me she was in intelligence, so I assumed an intelligence corps officer.”
“And you know what they say about assuming…”
“Yeah, yeah.”
“I bet she could kick your ass.”
“And that’s why the CIA has a file on her?”
“Because she could kick your ass?”
“Funny. I mean because she was in the Rangers?”
“Uh-huh. Listen, gotta go, Joe. Call me if you need me.”
She disconnected, and the taxi pulled up.
Hawke crossed the street and opened the taxi’s door. They both climbed in and the taxi joined the traffic. “What are you doing?” he asked as Lea took out her mobile phone. She quickly jabbed a number into the pad and held it to her ear.
“Now it’s my turn to make a call.”
“Who are you calling?” Hawke asked.
“A friend. We’re going to need all the help we can get and Ryan’s a sharp cookie.”
“Who’s Ryan?”
“My ex.”
An hour later, the taxi pulled up outside a large gray factory where a lone man dressed in a black trench coat and scarf was patiently waiting for them.
“What the hell is this place?” Hawke asked.
“They used to make paint here, a long time ago, but today it’s occupied by squatters. It’s where Ryan lives. That’s him right there.”
“And what does Ryan do?” Hawke asked sceptically.
“Sort of a student, I guess you could say. Oh yeah, also hacks computers.”
Ryan opened the door and climbed in. A cold breeze of icy air blasted against them through the open door.
Lea glanced at him. “Ryan, hi.” A kiss on the cheek. Cold and quick.
Ryan Bale climbed into the back seat beside Lea and offered everyone an awkward smile. He had scruffy, curly hair cut just above his shoulders, and Hawke turned to see he was wearing a Mickey Mouse t-shirt beneath the trench coat.
Hawke laughed. “You have to be kidding. He’s fifteen.”
“I’m not fifteen,” Ryan said indignantly. “I just have a young face.”
“A face they could use to sell nappy rash cream.”
“Better that,” Ryan replied calmly, “than a face that looks like a welder’s bench.”
“Hey!”
Ryan simply smiled, gave a condescending nod of the head and turned to Lea. “When you called you said nothing about bringing another one of your monkeys along.”
“He’s not a monkey, Ryan. His name i
s Joe Hawke and he’s a security guard.”
“Oh God, you’re finally slumming it. I knew this would happen – but so soon after we broke up?”
“Cut it out, Ryan. We saw a woman murdered this morning, if you must know.”
“You did?”
“People shot at us, Ryan.”
“With guns?”
Hawke sighed. “No, with peashooters. Can we move this along please?”
“Oh no,” Ryan said, sighing dramatically. “Another He-Man compensating for his lack of IQ with aggression and steroids.”
Lea sighed. “This is why I divorced him.”
“You divorced me? What a joke! I was the one who divorced you!”
“Yeah, you tell yourself that, Ryan.”
“You two were married?” Hawke asked in disbelief.
“Sure, why not?” Ryan said smugly.
“It’s not a part of my life I like to think about,” said Lea.
Ryan peered out the window as they joined the M25 and drew closer to Heathrow Airport. He leaned closer to Lea and lowered his voice. “This guy got any cameras on him, or wearing any wires?”
“Oh, not this again.”
“What’s up?” Hawke asked.
Lea sighed. “Ryan’s a bit of a conspiracy theorist.”
Hawke laughed again. “A tin foil hatter?”
“You can laugh all you like,” Ryan said, offended. “But like the mighty Kurt Cobain said, just because you’re paranoid doesn’t mean they’re not after you.”
“If you say so.” Lea rolled her eyes.
“Well they are after you, now,” said Hawke.
Ryan looked nervous. “What do you mean?”
“Are you not following the narrative, Ryan?” Hawke said. “We’re racing to New York to stop the people who just killed a professor from getting their hands on what has been vaguely described to us as the tomb of an ancient god. That’s not the sort of thing you do without upsetting people and they’re not going to take it lying down.”
“Don’t be absurd,” Ryan muttered. “Gods don’t have tombs.”
“That’s what we’re going to find out.”
Ryan, now uncharacteristically quiet, paled slightly and sank silently into the folds of his sumptuous silk scarf. In the front seat, Hawke was desperate to get to the airport.
CHAPTER FIVE
New York
Hawke peered out the window of the Boeing 777 as it banked to starboard and descended into the clouds above Long Island. According to the screen on the back of the seat in front of him, they were at five thousand feet and would be on the ground in La Guardia in less than twenty minutes.
He turned to Lea who was still sleeping beside him, and nudged her awake.
“Time to reset your watch to East Coast time,” he said. “We’re here.”
“Didn’t you sleep?” she asked, rubbing her eyes and hoisting herself up in the seat. “I always sleep on planes.” She glanced surreptitiously at Ryan.
“I never sleep on planes,” Hawke said. “Especially if I’m expected to do a halo jump out of one.”
“What’s a halo jump?” Ryan asked. He was sitting on the aisle seat on the other side of Lea, ogling one of the flight attendants.
“High Altitude Low Opening,” Lea spoke before Hawke had a chance to respond.
“Sounds cool, actually,” said Ryan.
Hawke smirked. “It usually is. At thirty thousand feet it’s around minus thirty-five degrees or thereabouts.”
“No, I meant...”
“He knows what you meant, Ryan.”
“Ah... well, I knew that,” Ryan said, embarrassed.
“Of course you did,” Hawke said. “To be honest your lecture about ancient Greece and the Ionian Texts back over the Atlantic almost put me into a very deep sleep.”
“Hey, you asked me if I knew anything about it.”
“And the problem with that,” Lea said, smiling wearily, “is that Ryan Bloody Bale knows everything about everything.”
“Except about how to keep a woman happy, apparently,” Hawke muttered.
“What was that?” Lea asked.
“I was just saying that ancient Greece is a fascinating subject.”
“Ah – yes, indeed!” Ryan piped up. “Especially the gods. Poseidon, of course, was one of the twelve great Olympian immortals of the ancient Greek Pantheon. The people feared him so much they called him the earth-shaker because of his ability to create earthquakes and massive tsunamis with his trident.”
“So not a great bloke to invite to your average beach party then?” Hawke said.
“The gods are not to be mocked,” said Ryan, pushing his glasses up on the bridge of his nose. Hawke wasn’t sure if he was being serious or not.
They left the airport and hailed a cab. Moments later they were driving through a crisp New York afternoon. Lea instructed the driver to go to the hotel Eden had booked for them before their flight.
Hawke was already switching back into SBS mode and wondering if the people who killed Professor Fleetwood and stole the Ionian Texts might have prepared a welcoming committee for them here in America.
Presumably they had the same information that Fleetwood had given to Eden and possibly much more, but when they arrived at the Hotel Plaza Athenee there was no one waiting except the front desk clerk and a young bellhop.
Upstairs, Hawke was less than impressed.
“Hang on – so Eden only booked two bloody rooms?”
“Government budget.” Lea shrugged her shoulders and smiled.
“You’re sharing with your ex, right?” Hawke protested, nodding his head in the direction of Ryan, who was struggling to open the window.
“Get out of it, Joe Hawke! You two are sharing, and that’s my room over there.” She pointed across the corridor at the door opposite theirs.
“Talk about motivation to get out of here before nightfall...”
Ryan sat at the table by the still-closed window and took a MacBook Air out of his luggage.
“So what do we know, then?” Hawke asked.
“Not much,” said Lea. “All we have is a vague reference to New York, and the fact a potter left a map to the tomb inside some of his work thousands of years ago.”
“And don’t forget Fleetwood’s cryptic last words,” Hawke said.
“I’ve been thinking about those,” Ryan said. “Her reference to the ‘ultimate power’ probably has something to do with Poseidon’s trident.”
“The trident?” Hawke asked. “Maybe that’s what Eden was being so coy about. What about the vase – anything on that?”
“The vase in question is probably one called the Poseidon Vase by this Vienna Painter Eden told you about. Greek Attic vase creators are named after various things, one of which is often large collections around the world. The Vienna Painter is named after an amphora in the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna.”
Hawke smiled. “I wouldn’t want to say that after a couple of pints.”
“Like I said,” Lea muttered. “Not as funny as you think you are.”
Ryan continued without replying. “It’s one of a pair, the other featuring Amphitrite. They make a set because the scene is one of Poseidon fishing, and then the other has Amphitrite holding the fish. The obvious corollary is that the Vienna Painter hid the location of the vault in either one or both of these vases.”
Hawke mouthed the word corollary to Lea behind Ryan’s back and winked.
Lea smiled at him as Ryan continued, oblivious. “Amphitrite – who would have thought it?”
“So who was Amphitrite?” Hawke asked.
Ryan stared at the MacBook for a few moments as he flicked through a few pages before winding up on Wikipedia. “Amphitrite was an ancient goddess, originally the wife of the great sea god Poseidon, one of the twelve great Olympian gods of the ancient Greek Pantheon. She was a nereid, which was a sea nymph a little like the sirens.”
“The ones that used to sing sailors to their deaths by making t
hem sail into rocks?” Lea asked.
“Uh-huh, but nereids were good and they used to help sailors make safe passage through dangerous storms. According to ancient Homeric scripture, all this starts with Kronos.”
“Who?” Hawke said. “Sounds like an aftershave.”
Lea sighed. “Only the kind you would buy.”
Ryan sighed and shook his head in disappointment. “Kronos, he was a Titan who descended directly from the ultimate divine beings – Uranus, who was the sky, and Gaia, who was the earth. Kronos had three divine children, Poseidon, Zeus and Hades.”
Hawke frowned. “This is getting complicated.”
“Hardly. Poseidon inherited divine power over the sea, Zeus got the sky and Hades got the underworld. Simples.”
“What else does it say about Poseidon in particular?” Hawke asked.
“With the exception of his father Zeus, king of all gods, he was the most powerful god the earth has known. As I say, he was once called the earth-shaker because of his ability to cause earthquakes and tsunamis. He was also known among the ancients for his unpredictable temper and wild nature. He was not a god to displease, it seems.”
“But the ancient gods were myths.” Hawke said. “This is what I’m just not understanding.” He walked to the door and checked the spyhole to make sure the corridor was still empty.
Ryan continued. “According to this, the myth of Amphitrite is...” he squinted through his glasses at the screen. “Er... the process of deification in reversal. In the earliest days she was understood to be a sea-goddess, but the Olympian pantheon reduced her status to Poseidon’s consort – a bit like when Princess Diana was stripped of her HRH status.”
“Nice topical analogy, Ryan.” Lea shook her head and sighed.
“He likes keeping it simple, I can see that,” said Hawke.
“Hey, if it helps proles like you to understand, then I’m happy with it.”
“Hey, Hawke is not a prole,” Lea said. “He’s a pleb.”
Ryan continued. “Anyway, much later, the ancient poets and storytellers reduced Amphitrite once again to a metaphor for the sea itself and – wait – this is important.”
Lea looked at him. “What?”
“We need to make sure Hawke knows what metaphor means.”