Temple of the Gods

18 Nevada

‘I don’t like this,’ Eddie muttered as he and Nina walked towards the security station.

‘Well, yeah, we’re taking a hell of a risk,’ she whispered. ‘We’re trying to get into a top secret government facility under false pretences — and that’s assuming we can trust Dalton not to have set us up to be thrown into prison for the rest of our lives.’

‘No, I don’t mean that.’ He tugged irritably at the too-tight collar of his US Air Force uniform, rented from a high-end theatrical costumiers in New York. ‘I meant me, dressed as a fucking crab!’

‘A what?’

‘It’s the army nickname for flyboys.’

‘Why crabs?’ Nina asked, puzzled.

‘Because their uniforms are the same colour as the ointment they used to put on soldiers’ tackle if they caught crabs.’

‘I wish I hadn’t asked. Okay, here we are.’

They were inside the ‘Janet’ facility at Las Vegas’s McCarran Airport, which served a private airline used to ferry workers to the military testing grounds in the desert far north of the city. ‘Janet’ was a jokey acronym from the days when the US government routinely denied that any such facilities existed: ‘Just Another Non-Existent Terminal’. Since it was now overlooked by the enormous black glass pyramid of the Luxor hotel, that degree of cloak-and-dagger secrecy had been rendered pointless — but the terminal was still off-limits to all but authorised personnel.

So far, the passes grudgingly arranged by Dalton had got them through the main gate, but more stringent checks awaited. Two armed security men manned an X-ray conveyor and body scanner; another pair of large guards lurked near the door leading to the tarmac. All eyes were on the new arrivals as they crossed the concourse. At this time of day, they were the terminal’s only visitors, the current shift’s workers having departed for the desert hours before.

They reached the checkpoint. ‘Can I see your passes and flight documentation, please?’ a guard rumbled, giving them both looks of institutional suspicion.

‘Certainly,’ said Nina brightly, taking out her paperwork. ‘I’m Dr Nina Wilde; this is Captain Tyler. We’re both going to Silent Peak.’ She said their destination as casually as if she commuted there regularly, but in truth, not only did she not know exactly what she would find at the facility, she didn’t even know where it was. Silent Peak did not exist on any maps — at least, not ones available to the public.

The guard took her papers, then turned to Eddie. ‘And you, sir?’

‘Here ya go,’ drawled Eddie in an abysmal attempt at a Texan accent as he produced his documents. Nina forced herself not to wince visibly. Fortunately, if the guard had any acting critiques, he kept them to himself as he ran a light-pen over the passes. His companion’s eyes flicked between the couple and his computer; after a moment, he nodded. Dalton had been good to his word, at least so far: the documents had been backed up by the government’s computer network.

‘Everything’s in order, sir, ma’am,’ said the first guard, returning their papers. ‘If you’ll put your case on the belt and step into the scanner?’

Nina placed her briefcase on the conveyor, then walked through the arch of a millimetre-wave body scanner. Again, the second guard scrutinised a monitor before giving a nod of approval. Eddie followed her, with the same result. ‘Okay, I’ll let your pilot know that you’re here,’ said the first man, picking up a phone.

‘Thank ya kaahndly,’ said Eddie. Nina wanted to deliver a sharp kick to his ankles to make him stop talking, but since they were being watched could only give a pointed glare.

The guard finished his brief call. ‘Okay, your pilot’ll meet you at the gate in a minute. Have a nice flight.’

‘Thank you,’ said Nina as she and Eddie headed for the exit. As soon as they were out of earshot, she hissed, ‘Will you stop that?’

‘Stop what?’ asked Eddie.

‘Your goddamn John-Wayne-with-brain-damage voice!’

‘I can’t exactly talk normally, can I? Might be a bit of a giveaway that I’m not really a Yank if I’m all “Ay up, by ’eck, look sithee”.’

‘Then don’t talk at all! Honey, you can’t do accents. Just accept it.’

Eddie huffed, but fell silent as they reached the gate and waited, the other two guards watching them. After a few minutes, a middle-aged black man in a civilian pilot’s uniform arrived. ‘Dr Wilde? Captain Tyler?’

‘That’s right,’ said Nina, with another warning glance at Eddie, who limited his answer to a nod.

‘I’m Samuel Abbot — I’ll be flying you today.’ He shook their hands. ‘Okay, if you’ll follow me?’

He led them out on to the parking apron. At this time of year the temperature in Vegas fell far short of the blistering heat of summer, but the combination of the high sun and an unbroken expanse of concrete meant that a wave of hot air rolled over them as they left the air-conditioned terminal building. Eddie tugged at his collar again.

Nina had bigger concerns than personal comfort. She looked around for any signs that their cover had been blown. No security vehicles screamed towards them, no guards raised guns. They had passed the first hurdle.

But there would be more to come.

A Boeing 737 airliner, white with the red stripe of the Janet fleet, was parked nearby, but Abbot took them to a smaller plane in the same livery, a Learjet 35A. Its twin engines were already idling. ‘Private jet,’ said Nina. ‘Nice to get the VIP treatment.’

‘Yeah, but if this goes pear-shaped,’ Eddie reminded her quietly, ‘our next flight’ll be with Con Air.’

The door was open; Abbot showed them inside. The plush six-seater cabin was empty, but Nina saw a co-pilot already in the cockpit. ‘If you’ll take your seats,’ said Abbot, closing the hatch, ‘we’ll get this show on the road.’ He joined the other man up front.

Eddie listened warily to the pilots and their radio communications, but heard nothing that suggested potential danger. He relaxed, slightly. The engine noise rose. ‘Okay, fasten your seatbelts,’ Abbot said over the intercom as the plane began to move. Nina nervously pulled her restraint tight, but Eddie left his belt loose — just in case he needed to make a move in a hurry.

The crew didn’t seem about to turn against them, however. Take-off was swift, the Learjet quickly ascending to ten thousand feet and heading north. A barren landscape of desert and mountains spread out below. ‘Hey,’ said Eddie after a while, indicating something through a window. ‘Guess what that is.’

Nina saw a stark, almost circular expanse of pale sand against the russet-browns of the surrounding terrain. A dry lake bed, she guessed; on its southern edge was what looked like an airfield, a long runway stretching all the way across the flat plain. ‘I don’t know. A military base?’

Eddie chuckled. ‘Yeah, you could say that. That’s Area 51!’

‘You’re kidding. What, the Area 51? Where they’re supposed to keep the aliens and flying saucers?’

‘That’s the one. I’d love to poke around there, just to see if any of the stories are true.’

‘You might get the chance,’ said Nina as the plane tipped into a descent. ‘You think that’s where we’re going?’

He pressed his cheek against the window for a better view ahead. ‘Don’t think so. Looks like we’re heading for the hills east of it.’ A frown. ‘Weird, I didn’t think there was anything out there.’

‘Oh, so you’re an expert on Area 51?’ Nina asked, teasing.

‘Had a bit of an interest back when The X Files and all that kind of stuff was big,’ he admitted. ‘Used to buy magazines called things like Alien Encounters. Hey, come on!’ he added, seeing her smirk. ‘Military secrets are a lot more boring in real life than on TV. It’s loads more fun to imagine you’re guarding a crashed UFO than a warehouse full of broken radio gear. And yes, I had to do that once. For a whole month.’

‘Poor baby. So what is down there?’

‘That’s the thing: nothing. That’s why they put Area 51 out here in the first place, ’cause it was fifty miles from anybody who might be watching.’

The plane slowed, engines easing back as it continued its descent. ‘Okay, folks,’ said Abbot over the intercom, ‘we’ll be landing at Silent Peak in five minutes. Put your seats and tray tables in the upright position, huh?’ He laughed a little at his aeronautical joke.

Nina wasn’t amused, though. The message had hammered home the reality of what they were about to do. ‘God, if something goes wrong while we’re out here…’

‘Bit late to start worrying now,’ said Eddie. ‘But we got this far okay. All we can do is keep pretending we know what we’re doing.’

‘Isn’t that what we always do?’

The Learjet kept slowing, dropping towards the rugged hills. Eddie looked for their destination. They were heading into a closed valley, a single large rocky peak beyond, but there was no sign of anywhere they might land…

He blinked as the truth suddenly sprang from the background like the hidden image in a stereographic puzzle. The valley floor had at first glance appeared desolate and empty — but as the plane drew closer the giveaway parallel lines of human activity were revealed. A runway ran along it, partly hidden beneath sand and dust. The concrete had apparently been made from that same surrounding sand, the colours matching almost perfectly.

Such camouflage wouldn’t conceal it from the infrared vision of satellites, though. That probably meant it had been built before they came into common use. Some kind of Cold War facility?

They would find out soon enough. The Lear adjusted its course for the final descent, lining up with the long runway. ‘This’ll be bumpy,’ Abbot announced, ‘so hold on tight.’

Nina’s nails were already digging into the leather of her armrests. ‘If I hold on any tighter, I’ll merge with the damn chair!’

The pilot had, if anything, underplayed the roughness of the touchdown, bumps and cracks in the dusty concrete making the jet judder like a bicycle riding over cobblestones. ‘Christ, I think I’ve lost a filling,’ Eddie said as the shaking eased to merely uncomfortable levels.

Nina took in the view outside. ‘Where are we going?’ she wondered aloud. There were no buildings along the runway, just the rising valley sides. ‘I don’t see anything here.’

‘Must be something,’ said Eddie. ‘If there isn’t, this is a really, really expensive version of the Mafia taking people out into the desert to kill them.’

‘Thanks, Eddie. You’re always so reassuring.’ But there were still no structures in sight…

The answer came as the Lear slowed to taxiing speed and made a turn, bringing the cliff at the end of the valley into view. Set into the rock at its bottom was a door.

A very large one.

It took Nina a moment to take in its sheer scale. An opening at least three hundred feet across and sixty feet high had been blasted out of the mountain. ‘Jesus,’ she gasped. ‘That’s a big-ass door.’

‘You should see their draught excluder,’ said Eddie, impressed.

The jet came to a stop. ‘Ladies and gentlemen,’ said Abbot, ‘welcome to Silent Peak.’

A military jeep took the couple from the stationary plane to the base’s entrance. The door itself didn’t open; rather, a part of it did, a smaller section hinging upwards like a cat flap to let the vehicle through. Even this opening was on a giant scale, easily large enough to have accommodated the Learjet. Worryingly, a sign beside the entrance warned of the sanctions that would be taken against unwanted visitors: Use Of Deadly Force Is Authorized.

But that concern quickly took second place to amazement. It was all Nina could do not to gawp at what lay behind the door. They had entered a vast underground hangar, at least seven storeys high and lit by rank upon rank of lights in the ceiling, made so small by height that they looked like perfectly aligned stars. Several C-130 Hercules transport aircraft were parked along one wall, almost lost in the cavernous space. ‘Wow. This is incredible!’

The jeep’s driver took them to a clutch of portable cabins opposite the line of aircraft. Men in the blue berets of the USAF Security Forces stood waiting for them. ‘Ay up, it’s the goon platoon,’ Eddie whispered to Nina.

‘Don’t talk unless you absolutely have to — and even then, don’t!’ she replied.

The jeep stopped, the military policemen surrounding it. Another man, a lanky officer in wire-rimmed glasses, stepped forward to greet the passengers. ‘Dr Wilde, welcome to Silent Peak Strategic Reserve,’ he said, holding out a hand to help Nina from the vehicle. ‘I’m the base CO, Colonel Kern — Martin Kern. It’s a great honour to have you here.’

‘Thank you, Colonel,’ Nina replied. Eddie climbed from the jeep beside her, remembering military protocol and saluting his superior officer. ‘This is my liaison from the Pentagon, Captain Tyler.’

‘Sir,’ said Eddie, making Nina cringe inwardly once more. Even that one short word sounded incriminatingly fake in his terrible accent.

But Kern was only concerned with his female guest. ‘Captain,’ he said with a noncommital salute of his own, before turning back to Nina. ‘I read about the role you played in saving President Cole’s life in India last year. That’s true heroism, if you don’t mind my saying. Something every American can be proud of.’

‘Ah, thank you.’ Nina’s awkwardness at the gushing praise was increased by the certainty that Kern would have a very different opinion of her if he knew the real reason for her visit. She changed the subject by presenting her pass. ‘Here’s my paperwork.’

‘This’ll just be a formality — I know who you are,’ said Kern with a smile. He briefly scanned the documents, then returned them before giving Eddie’s pass slightly longer scrutiny. ‘Okay, I imagine you’re keen to go down to the repository.’

‘Down?’ said Nina, surprised. She indicated the nearby cabins. ‘I thought those were…’

‘These? Oh, no, these are just the administration facilities. You don’t know about the base?’

‘No, everything was arranged at very short notice, and I didn’t think to ask. So, there’s even more of this place?’

Kern grinned. ‘Oh, there’s more! I’ll give you the tour personally. Log them in,’ he told one of the men nearby, before beckoning for Nina and Eddie to follow him. ‘Normally we’d take your phone and any other electronic devices, but you’ve got top clearance, so no need to worry.’ That raised a warning flag in Nina’s mind: why would Dalton have gone the extra mile for them? ‘This way, please. I think you’ll be impressed.’

He led them to a golf-cart-like yellow buggy nearby, the guards heading back to the cabins. Nina sat in the front passenger seat beside the officer, Eddie behind her. ‘So just how big is this place?’ she asked as Kern set the little electric vehicle in motion.

‘This level? One point two million square feet of floor space, more or less. And it’s not even the biggest. There are twelve levels in all.’

‘Fu— Gee, that’s a hell of a size,’ said Eddie — though it came out as ‘a hail arf a sars’.

Nina shot him a sharp look. ‘When was it built? For that matter, why was it built?’

‘They started construction in 1954,’ Kern told her. ‘It was designed as a way to ensure that the United States had a second-strike nuclear capability — no matter what the Soviets managed to achieve with a first strike against us, we’d have a backup bomber force able to be launched against them from a hidden base days or even weeks later. Problem was, by the time Silent Peak actually came online both sides had put ICBMs into service, making long-range nuclear bombers obsolete. So the base became a strategic reserve.’ He indicated the aircraft across the hangar. ‘Basically, it’s a storage facility.’

‘Lark the boneyaahds in Arizonah,’ said Eddie, referring to the huge desert ranges filled with mothballed planes.

‘Not quite — the vehicles there are just as likely to be scrapped or stripped for parts as returned to service. Everything stored here at Silent Peak can be made combat-ready within forty-eight hours, if needed. You’ll see our inventory on the way down.’

Nina looked ahead past lines of trucks and Humvees, but didn’t see anything that looked like a ramp or elevators, only a large black square on the hangar floor. ‘How do we get— Oh.’ Her eyes went wide as she realised what she was looking at.

The square wasn’t on the floor, but set into it, a separate entity. A gigantic elevator shaft.

‘Isn’t that something?’ said Kern, pride in his voice. ‘It’s two hundred and sixty feet on a side, and can bring a fully laden B-52 up from the lowest level in under five minutes. So I’m told, anyway. I’ve never seen it move anything that big myself — I only took command here last year.’

‘That’s… quite a thing, yes,’ Nina agreed. She wondered what future archaeologists, as far removed from the present as she was from the heyday of Atlantis, would make of Silent Peak. Would they have any comprehension of its original deadly purpose and the ideological conflict that spawned it?

She put such musings aside as Kern steered the buggy towards one corner of the open shaft. A metal cage marked a section roughly ten feet square. ‘Passenger elevator,’ the colonel explained as he pulled up alongside it. ‘There’s one at each corner of the shaft. It can be a bit unsettling, but it’s a lot easier than taking the emergency stairs. Okay, step aboard.’ The trio dismounted from the buggy, Kern opening a gate in the cage and walking through on to a platform with handrails round its edge. Once Nina and Eddie were on the platform, he closed the gate and went to a control panel. ‘The repository is on the lowest level.’

‘The depths of the earth,’ Nina remarked.

‘Yeah, you could say that. Some people say that if you listen hard enough, you can hear Satan himself at work underneath.’ Kern laughed briefly, then pushed a button. ‘Okay, here we go. Hold on.’

The platform dropped from the cage into a massive vertical shaft that fell away into oblivion. Nina instinctively recoiled from the edge, vertigo rising.

‘Don’t worry, Dr Wilde,’ said Kern. ‘It’s perfectly safe. Nobody’s fallen down it — at least, not on my watch!’

‘I think I’d still prefer more solid railings,’ she said. ‘Or, y’know, walls…’

The lift continued its journey. Great vertical tracks ran down the shaft’s sides; guides for the as yet unseen main elevator platform. At widely spaced intervals below were bands of light in the darkness marking the entrances to the base’s other levels. From the look of it, the repository could be almost half a mile underground. Even in the vastness of the shaft, the thought gave Nina a claustrophobic shudder.

The first level was approaching. ‘Take a look at that,’ said Kern, gesturing towards the hangar as it came into view.

It was full of aircraft. Bombers, the long, sinister charcoal-grey forms of a dozen, two dozen, more, B-52s packed into the space like lethal sardines. The eight engines of each plane were shrouded, the sleeping giants awaiting a new call to action.

‘That’s… that’s a lot of planes,’ Nina said. She hadn’t taken in the full meaning of the term ‘strategic reserve’ until now. Just because a weapon was old didn’t mean it was useless.

‘That’s only one level. We’ve got another three floors of Buffs—’

‘Buffs?’

‘Big Ugly Fat Fu— uh, Fellows,’ Eddie told her.

The colonel smiled. ‘Three more floors of them, plus we’ve got Eagles, Hornets, Warthogs…’

‘Sounds more like a zoo than a military facility,’ said Nina.

‘Ha! Yeah, I guess. And then we’ve got choppers, and a lot more general equipment — trucks, jeeps, bulldozers, that kind of thing. And more tanks than you can shake a stick at.’

‘My tax dollars at work.’ Even in 1950s money, the cost of excavating Silent Peak must have been as huge as the base itself.

They passed the hangar and continued down. The next level contained more B-52s, with Huey utility helicopters nestled in amongst the colossi; the hangar below was packed with fighter aircraft. Then more bombers, this time joined by a trio of coal-black SR-71 Blackbird spy planes. Never mind the base, Nina thought — the value of the mothballed hardware it contained was equally mind-blowing.

A sound reached them from below, the echoing rumble of an idling engine. Its source was revealed as they approached the eleventh level. The main elevator platform, an enormous metal expanse almost filling the width of the shaft, waited here; the hangar itself was filled with precisely lined rows of M60 tanks. One of the armoured vehicles was surrounded by portable lighting rigs, a pair of men working on its open engine compartment. Wide flexible hoses snaked across the floor, drawing its exhaust fumes into a large extractor vent. ‘Routine maintenance,’ Kern explained as they continued to descend, passing through the complex web of girders forming the platform’s supporting structure. ‘Like I said, everything here is kept ready for action. If we needed to, we could have a couple dozen of those babies rolling out of here by tonight.’

‘Let’s hope we never need to,’ said Nina. The elevator drew closer to its final destination. She moved back to the railing, eager to see what the lowest level contained…

The sheer scale of what met her eyes was astounding. Despite the size of the rest of the base, it was in essence nothing more than a very large parking structure. The twelfth floor, however, was home to something vastly more complex.

The repository was a library — but beyond anything Nina had ever seen. The stacks were arranged in a grid, stretching away seemingly to infinity. And the shelf units were not built on a human scale; they were easily thirty feet high.

It quickly became clear that the whole place was not intended to be directly accessed by humans at all. Between the stacks ran a network of tracks, along which ran towering robotic forklifts. She had seen similar devices before: Automated Storage and Retrieval Systems, designed to collect specific items from large archives and deliver them to a central point. But the system at Silent Peak was several orders of magnitude larger and more complicated than anything she had encountered in academia.

‘My God,’ she said, genuinely awed. ‘How big is this place? There must be miles of shelves!’

‘Something like three hundred miles, if they were all laid end to end,’ said Kern as the platform stopped. ‘But Dr Ogleby can give you the exact details. I just work here.’ He opened another gate so they could exit the elevator, then led them to one of several cabins nearby. It was marked with a sign: Reading Rooms 01–08. Kern entered, Eddie and Nina exchanging ‘what the hell have we got into?’ glances behind him. Another man in Security Forces uniform sat by the door, looking utterly bored. He stood and saluted them, then returned to his blank-eyed torpor. Kern called out, ‘Dr Ogleby! Are you here?’

A bald man popped up like a groundhog to peer at them over a cubicle wall. ‘Oh, it’s you, Kern,’ he said, annoyed at being disturbed. He padded out to meet the new arrivals. Unlike the other base personnel he was a civilian, wearing a threadbare suit and a garish yellow bow tie.

Kern started to make introductions. ‘This is Dr Nina Wilde from the International Heritage Agency, and Captain Tyler—’

‘Yes, I know, I know,’ said Ogleby dismissively. ‘I read the email.’ Beady eyes scrutinised Nina. ‘Waste of time and money your coming here in person. The material you want may be Eyes Only, but we could still have couriered it to you in New York.’

‘Really? We were told we could only view it here,’ said Nina, concealing her sudden nervousness. Dalton had been very specific that they would have to travel to Silent Peak to see the file.

‘Not for something of that classification. You were obviously misinformed.’ He turned his grouchy gaze to Kern. ‘Something else I can help you with, Colonel?’

Kern was evidently well used to Ogleby’s attitude. ‘Apparently not. Well, Dr Wilde, Captain, when you’re finished here I’ll arrange for someone to bring you back to the surface.’

‘Thank you,’ said Nina. Kern exited, leaving her and Eddie alone with the sour-faced librarian. ‘So, Dr Ogleby, this is a remarkable archive you have here.’

He didn’t even respond well to a compliment. ‘It would be if they gave me the staff and money to run it properly. Right, let’s see your papers, then.’

The pair produced their documents. Ogleby read them, then went to a computer to double-check their details. ‘No need for you to come here at all,’ he muttered as he pecked at the keyboard with one finger, logging the new arrivals into the system.

‘I’m curious about that myself,’ said Nina. ‘I mean, what we’re here to see is of historical importance, but it’s hardly a national security matter. Why keep it so highly classified?’

‘It’s not the material itself, it’s where it came from,’ Ogleby replied, still tapping away at the computer. ‘In this case, the Nazis.’

‘Nazis?’ said Eddie, in his surprise using his normal accent before hurriedly correcting himself. ‘Uh, I mean, Nat-zees.’

Fortunately, Ogleby didn’t pick up on it. ‘It was part of a scientific archive seized by US forces at the end of the war, some of which had been stolen from Greece during the German occupation there. A lot of the other material concerned what you might call “ethically questionable” Nazi experiments —’ he gave them a decidedly ghoulish smile — ‘so the whole collection was classified, including the material you want to see.’

‘Why?’ Nina asked. ‘It couldn’t possibly be connected to anything the Nazis did.’

‘It was connected just by association,’ said Ogleby in a patronising tone. ‘The Nazis were very good at filing. You release one file, people want to know where the others are, and what’s in them. It’s simpler just to classify everything so only people with a need to know can see it. That way, we still have the information without bleeding hearts bleating about our benefiting from “immoral knowledge”. There’s no such thing.’ He finished typing. ‘We can’t put the genie back in the bottle, but at least we can stop people from whining that someone removed the cork.’

Nina agreed with him in principle that knowledge itself could not be immoral — as far as she was concerned, the cliché that ‘there are some things man was not meant to know’ was an anti-intellectual crock — but that hadn’t stopped her from quickly developing a dislike for the librarian. ‘Well, we’re in the need-to-know club now, so if we could see it?’ she said spikily.

Ogleby’s nod was distinctly disapproving, but he signalled impatiently towards one of the cubicles. ‘Go on, in there. You can get a good view of the system at work.’

As well as a well-lit reading desk, the cubicle contained something that reminded Nina of a smaller-scale version of an airport’s baggage carousel. A large flap set into the cabin’s outer wall opened on to a set of steel rollers that would channel anything coming down it into a flat collection area; another set of rollers at the opposite end led back through a second flap. A window looked out into the hangar and its miles of shelves. ‘Your material is on its way,’ said Ogleby. ‘The shuttle should be here in a minute.’

Eddie and Nina moved closer to the window. The tracks criss-crossed the vast space between the stacks, points at alternate intersections allowing the shuttles to follow the most efficient course through the grid. As they watched, one of the towering machines trundled past, carrying a large container resembling a bank’s safety deposit box. Sparks crackled from its dodgem-like overhead power grid. It clattered through a set of points and turned down an aisle, disappearing from view. Other shuttles were at work further away.

‘The place looks busy,’ said Nina.

‘It always is,’ Ogleby replied. ‘We send out at least three hundred retrieval requests per day — and new material arrives all the time, of course. The Pentagon, CIA, NSA, even the White House — everybody has files down here. And we keep track of every single one.’ Pride briefly overcame grumpiness. ‘Nothing’s ever been leaked or stolen from Silent Peak. Not so much as a Post-it.’ His abrasive attitude returned. ‘How long will you need?’

‘I don’t know,’ she said with a shrug.

The gesture irritated their host even more. ‘Well, this isn’t a social club, so don’t waste time chatting about it. As soon as you’ve got what you need, put everything back in the box and push it down the belt, then you can leave. In the meantime, I have work to do, so if you need anything, ask the zombie over there.’ He cast a disdainful look towards the mind-numbed man by the entrance, then stalked out of the cubicle.

‘Thank fuck he’s gone,’ said Eddie.

‘I know. What a jerk!’

‘No, I meant I can finally talk again.’

‘With you, silence is golden,’ Nina told him. ‘Especially with that god-awful accent you were using. Seriously, what the hell was it? You’re married to an American — how can you not know what we sound like?’

‘Oh, I know what you sound like. Sort of shrill, and annoying — ay up.’ Their discussion was interrupted as another shuttle stopped outside the window. A hydraulic whine as it raised its cargo to the drop-off point, then the flap opened with a bang and a metal container skittered down the rollers to stop in the collection area before them.

Nina examined the delivery. It was somewhat larger than a standard box file, a barcode laser-etched on the brushed steel. Beneath it was a large label bearing an identification number, along with the cryptic line ‘SCI(G3)/NOFORN’. The more readily understandable ‘Eyes Only’ was printed beneath it in red. ‘What does that mean?’ she asked, tapping the jumble of letters.

‘NOFORN means “no foreign nationals”,’ said Eddie. ‘I’d better look away, then. Don’t want to break any rules.’

‘I think we’re past the stage of worrying about that,’ Nina said with a half-hearted smile.

‘Just a bit. And SCI stands for Sensitive Compartmentalised Information. Super-Top Secret, basically. The G3 part’s probably some particular need-to-know clearance. Which Dalton arranged for you, so you’d better start using it. The quicker we’re out of here, the better.’

She took the box to the reading desk. ‘Yeah. I didn’t like what Ogleby said, that we could have had this brought to the IHA. You think Dalton’s trying to set us up to be caught red-handed?’

‘I’m surprised we haven’t been arrested already, to be honest. Or shot.’

‘There’s a pleasant thought.’ Nina sat and opened the box, Eddie leaning over her shoulder to see what was inside.

It didn’t contain a great deal: a manila folder with thirty or so typewritten pages within, and a large padded envelope housing a flat and heavy object. She flicked through the folder first. The opening pages were a summary of where and when US forces had acquired the material from the Nazi archive at the end of the Second World War, and the bureaucratic decision-making process that had kept it hidden to this day. Following them were translations — from German to English, of the Nazis’ own records, and then from ancient Greek to English… of the material itself.

Nina put them aside and picked up the envelope. Inside was another folder, but this was metal bound in thick black leather, not a simple card sleeve. A brass zipper ran around three sides. She carefully unfastened it and opened the cover.

She immediately recognised the contents.

It was the rest of the torn parchment she had seen in the Brotherhood of Selasphoros’s archives in Rome.