The Tomb Of Hercules

15 London

Look who it is,” said the bearded Scotsman in a soft burr, a mischievous twinkle in his eye. “Eddie Chase, international assassin.”

Chase smiled humorlessly. “Mac, I’m grateful for your help and everything, but seriously-sod off.”

“Good to see you again too.” He grinned, opening the door wider to admit Chase and Nina to the hall of the terraced Victorian town house. “And you must be Dr. Wilde. Welcome to London-my name’s Jim. But my friends call me Mac.” He shook Nina’s hand.

“Call me Nina. Glad to meet you,” she said. Mac was, she guessed, about sixty, six feet tall with bristling gray hair. Despite his age, he was still craggily handsome and in good physical shape. After Chase’s comment in Namibia she couldn’t help glancing down at his legs, but was unable to tell which one was artificial. “How do you know Eddie?”

Mac arched an eyebrow. “He didn’t tell you?”

“He’s very secretive about his past,” she said acidly.

He closed the door behind them, and Nina took a moment to look around. The hall was actually more of an atrium, two floors of balcony landings running around it above them, topped by a pair of beautiful old stained-glass skylights. Like its owner, the house had a crisp, spartan air, the few examples of ornamentation she could see clearly valuable antiques.

Mac ushered them into an adjoining living room. “I used to be Eddie’s commanding officer,” he explained. “Colonel Jim McCrimmon of Her Majesty’s Special Air Service. Retired now, of course. But I still work as a consultant for… certain agencies.”

“He means MI6,” Chase said with a disapproving sneer. “Bunch of tossers.”

Mac chuckled. “Eddie has a very low opinion of the Secret Intelligence Service, I’m afraid. But they’re not all bad-by spook standards, at least. You wouldn’t be here now if some of them hadn’t arranged a black bag flight to get you out of Namibia. Please, take a seat.”

Although there was a sofa in the room, Nina and Chase sat on separate armchairs. Mac noted this with a twitch of his eyebrow, but didn’t comment. “So,” he began, voice becoming more serious, “you both made it in one piece, more or less. Now, perhaps you care to explain why I just pulled an awful lot of strings to get you here?”

Chase did most of the talking, Nina occasionally chipping in to add information, or to correct him. The presence of his former commander seemed to temper his responses to her, though they still had a distinct sarcastic edge. It took some time for the full story to be explained, and when it was, Mac leaned back in his chair with an expression of concern.

“So, this man Yuen has a secret uranium mine…” he rumbled, steepling his fingers.

“And he’s kidnapped Sophia,” Chase reminded him.

“She is his wife. I don’t know if kidnapping is technically the correct term in the circumstances. But it’s the uranium mine that’s the most important issue here.” He frowned. “Though you do realize that I can’t act on what you’ve just told me?”

Chase was confused. “Why not? Just get the U.N. involved, they can send inspectors into the mine-”

“It’s not the mine, Eddie. It’s you! You’ve been accused of assassinating a government minister, for God’s sake! And I fully believe that you’re innocent,” he continued, waving a finger to forestall Chase’s objections, “but I can’t go to the head of SIS with a bizarre story about uranium mines and ancient parchments, and ask him to authorize an investigation when the source of the story is wanted for the murder of a minister of state! The man was even shot with that ridiculous hand cannon of yours!”

“We do have kind of a credibility problem,” Nina was forced to admit.

Chase was undeterred. “It won’t matter once somebody sees that mine. All it’ll take is one piece of uranium ore and Yuen’s up shit creek.” He leaned forward, hands open pleadingly. “Come on, Mac. I’m not asking you to go direct to the prime minister, but I know you can at least nudge things in the right direction. Get someone to check out the mine, and everything’ll snowball from there.”

“Hrmm.” Mac appeared to be agonizing over a decision. “Oh, what the hell,” he finally said. “I’m already in this up to my waist by getting you out of the country. Might as well go all the way to my neck, eh?”

Chase grinned. “That’s the spirit.”

“It could take a few days, though. I used up a lot of favors arranging your extraction, so I’ll need to take a softly, softly approach. But yes, one way or another, we’ll get somebody into that mine, and then we can take a closer look at this Yuen fellow.”

“Great.” Chase sat back. “And speaking of Yuen, I need to use your computer to do some Googling. Sophia told me that after he left Botswana he was going to Switzerland-I’m hoping he stuck to his plan. Once I find out where he is, I can catch him before he leaves with Sophia.”

“Wait, what?” Nina said in surprise. “You’re still going after her?”

His voice turned stony. “I promised I’d help her. I always see the job through.”

“This isn’t your job anymore, Eddie! Let other people handle it.”

“That’s not my style.” Chase stood. “Computer still in the study upstairs, is it?” he asked Mac, who nodded, the subtlest hint of warning in his eyes. Chase ignored it and headed for the door.

“Eddie!” Nina shouted, standing up. “Don’t do this, don’t be stupid!”

He rounded on her, angry. “Oh, is that what you really think of me, Doctor? That I’m stupid?”

“I didn’t mean it like that,” Nina backtracked, regretting her poor choice of words, but Chase pressed on.

“You think just because I don’t have a bunch of letters after my name that I’m an idiot? This is exactly the sort of crap I’ve been putting up with ever since you let your job title go to your head and started thinking you were better than me. No, I take that back-you always thought you were better than me, you just stopped hiding it!”

“That’s not true!”

“At least I knew where I stood with Sophia,” he growled. They regarded each other in silence for a moment before Chase dismissively turned away.

“Eddie,” Nina said, fighting to maintain a facade of reason and calm, “you work for the IHA now, you’re not a freelancer. What you want to do, it’s got nothing to do with the sinking of the rig or recovering the Hermocrates text. It’s a personal vendetta! You can’t do that, not as a member of the IHA.”

Chase kept his broad back to her for some seconds before he finally half turned, not quite looking at her. “Then I quit,” he said bluntly, and left the room.

Nina stared after him, paralyzed by the turmoil of her emotions. Somehow she knew that Chase hadn’t merely been talking about his job; that he had walked out on her in more than a literal sense. She tried to call after him, but her throat had clenched shut, lips trembling.

She heard Mac stand up behind her, suddenly filled with shame and embarrassment that he had witnessed the fight. “I-I’m sorry,” she managed to whisper.

“No need to apologize,” he said softly. After a moment, he put a reassuring hand on her arm. She looked around, and saw his sympathetic gaze. “I know that Eddie sometimes makes… rash decisions. But he usually comes to his senses.”

“It’s not just him, though,” Nina told him. “He’s not-he wasn’t wrong about me. I did let my job go to my head. I…” Even thinking of the confession was painful, never mind actually giving voice to it. “I stopped being an archaeologist, and started being a bureaucrat. No, worse than that-I started being a politician. It all became about playing power games to get what I wanted. And the worst thing was, I enjoyed it.” She looked away from Mac, drawing in a long breath as a deeper shame demanded admission. “No, the worst thing was…I really did think I was better than Eddie, just because of my job title. I hurt him without even realizing it.” Blinking away tears, she looked back into Mac’s eyes. “Oh my God, I’ve wrecked everything.”

“Perhaps you should tell him,” Mac suggested quietly.

“I can’t. Not when he’s… you know what he’s like. He won’t listen, he’ll just try to twist it so that he can claim victory.”

“Hrmm. Maybe he does need to cool off first,” Mac conceded. He took his hand off Nina, straightening purposefully. “I have a suggestion. You look as though you’ve had rather a rough few days.”

Nina managed a sad laugh. “You could say that.”

“In that case, why don’t you take a bath? A nice long hot soak, get yourself cleaned up, ease all your aches and pains. It always works for me!”

“I don’t know,” said Nina…but the idea did sound appealing.

“Trust me, it’ll help. And it’ll give you and Eddie some extra time to think things over as well.”

“Okay,” she said, defenses finally crumbling. “A hot bath it is.”

Chase looked up from the computer as Mac entered the study. “I’ve found where Yuen’s gone-he’s got a microchip factory in the Swiss Alps. I need to use your phone to get in touch with Mitzi. And I’ll need another favor from you-I’ve got to get there, as fast as possible.”

“I see.” Mac sat in a high-backed armchair, taking a book from a little round table next to it and opening it. He settled back as if about to start a long read.

Chase glared at him and waved impatiently. “Earth to Mac. Did you hear me?”

“Oh, I heard you,” said the Scotsman unhurriedly, not looking up from his book.

“So can you do it?”

“Well, of course I can do it. The question is, should I?” Mac’s eyes flicked up towards Chase, steel in his gaze. “You know as well as I do that when you embark on a mission, you need to have an absolutely crystal-clear objective. And to be honest, I don’t believe you do.”

“It couldn’t be any clearer,” Chase said, annoyed. “I’m going to rescue Sophia. That’s it.”

“But why are you going to rescue her? And more to the point, what are you going to do with her afterwards?”

“What do you mean?”

Mac lowered the book. “I had a talk with Nina.”

“Oh great.” Chase snorted. “Let me guess, she told you all about how I’ve turned into a pain in the arse because I feel stifled by my job, I show her up when she’s trying to network with all her new big shot friends, blah blah blah.”

“Quite the contrary. You know, she’s an extremely intelligent and perceptive young woman.” A pointed look. “You really should try talking to her once in a while.”

“Why, what did she say?”

“It’s not for me to comment. But you might want to consider doing so before you go rushing off across Europe after your ex-wife.”

Chase couldn’t help noticing a certain emphasis on the word ex. “There isn’t time,” he said defensively. “And whatever Nina says, this isn’t a personal vendetta. Yuen’s mining uranium, which means he’s selling it, which means some nasty little bastards are buying it. If I can get to Yuen…” He gave Mac a small, cold smile. “He’ll tell me all about it.”

His former commanding officer fixed him with a piercing stare, the trained lie-detector gaze of a practiced interrogator. “Are you absolutely sure that’s your only objective, Eddie?”

“Yes,” Chase said after a moment.

Mac’s eyes didn’t waver for several long seconds, but then he finally nodded. “Very well. If you insist on going through with this lunacy, I’m sure I can have a new passport waiting for you by the time you get to the airport. Whatever you may think of them, MI6 is actually rather efficient. In some areas.”

“Thanks, Mac. I owe you one.”

“You owe me more than one,” Mac reminded him as he put down the book and stood. Chase grinned and turned back to the computer.

“Sophia won’t take you back, you know,” Mac said quietly from the doorway.

Chase’s grin vanished. “I… never thought that she might.”

“Hrmm.” The little noise was a more damning accusation than any words could have been. “Eddie, you remember what I taught you in the regiment, about fighting to the end?”

“Yeah, of course. You went on about it so much, I started using ‘Fight to the End’ as a motto instead of ‘Who Dares, Wins.’”

For a moment Mac seemed amused, then his lined face took on an expression that Chase had never seen on him before. Sadness. “There’s only been one fight in my entire life that I didn’t see through until the end. At the time, I didn’t think it was worth the effort. But now, it’s the thing that I most regret.”

“What was it?” Chase asked. But he already knew.

“I’m an old man in an empty house, Eddie,” Mac said with a sigh. “But I wouldn’t be alone if I’d fought harder to save my marriage. Don’t let pride stop you from fighting for what you have. For what you both have.” He turned away. “Call whoever you need. I’ll take care of the arrangements.”

Chase watched him leave, but didn’t really see him go, too deep in thought. It was some time before he managed to compose himself and pick up the phone.

Nina awoke with a start, bathwater rippling around her. Lulled into a state of deep relaxation by a long soak in the steaming water-which was now on the brink of tepidity-she had dozed off. Briefly disoriented by the unfamiliar surroundings, she stood and took a towel from the rail, wrapping it around herself before stepping from the bath. It was an impressive piece of work, a giant of thick enamel and metal, standing on four cast-iron feet that looked like a lion’s paws. It wouldn’t exactly go with her New York apartment, but she had to admit it had its charms.

Drying herself, Nina checked her watch and was staggered to find she had been in the bath for more than two hours. She wrapped the towel around her head and donned the dressing gown Mac had provided so that her filthy clothes could be put in the wash. Considering their tattered state, though, she doubted they would be fit to wear again even clean. The five-hundred-dollar hairstyle was long past salvation; it looked as if she’d be going back to her traditional ponytail for the foreseeable future.

She let the water out of the bath and padded onto the landing. The bathroom, the larger of the two in the house, was on the top floor. She took a closer look at the ornate skylights, their colors dappled by clouds moving across the late afternoon sun, before hearing voices from below and peering over the balcony railing.

Chase and Mac were in the hall, talking. Nina stiffened, dismay and anger rising when she saw that Chase had a bag at his feet, ready to leave. Mac stood between him and the front door, his stance suggesting that he would prefer him not to go, but not enough to make an issue of it. She strained to listen.

“Any chance you could give me your exit code?” Chase asked.

“You know I can’t,” Mac told him firmly.

“I might need a quick getaway, especially if I’ve got Sophia with me. And it’s not like you need it anymore.”

“I do still travel on business, you know.”

“Yeah, I heard you were in Africa last year.”

Chase raised his voice in only partially mock agitation. “You and TD! What were you thinking? No, I can guess what you were thinking. What was she thinking?”

Mac sounded almost wistful. “What can I say? She’s a lovely girl. Very strong…”

“I don’t want to know,” Chase moaned. “Come on, Mac. Odds are I won’t need it, and nobody’ll ever know you told me. But if I get proof of what Yuen’s doing…”

“All right,” said Mac, conflicted. “Why not? I could only be any deeper in this mess if I’d gone to Botswana and shot the silly sod myself.” Nina couldn’t make out what he then said, but Chase nodded.

“Got it. Thanks.”

“Don’t thank me. I still think this is a very bad idea.”

“People keep telling me that,” Chase said, picking up the bag. “This bloke’ll have everything I need at the airport?”

“He’ll be there.” Mac held out his hand. “Good luck, Eddie. Fight to the end.”

Chase shook it. “Look, about that… tell Nina that I want to talk to her, I do want to sort things out. But it’ll have to wait until after I get back. I have to do this.”

“I’ll tell her,” said Mac.

“I’ll be back in no time,” Chase assured him as he opened the front door and walked out. It closed behind him with a dull funereal thump.

Mac regarded the door for a moment, then spoke. “You can come down now, Nina.”

Surprised, she leaned over the railing. “You knew I was listening?”

“I know every sound in this house-I heard the bathroom door creak.” He looked up at her. “I’m sorry. I thought I might be able to persuade him not to go.”

“You could have just not helped him,” she pointed out sharply.

“In which case he would have gone anyway, and probably ended up being arrested trying to get through customs. Which, in the circumstances, you have to admit would be an even worse alternative.”

Nina was forced to agree. “Goddamn it!” she wailed. “Why does he have to be so stubborn?”

Mac let out a muted laugh. “I’ve known Eddie for a long time, and that’s one thing about him that’s never changed.”

“You mean there are other things that he actually is willing to change?” It was intended as a rhetorical question, with more than a hint of bitterness, and she was rather taken aback to get an answer.

“You’d be surprised. I’ve seen quite a lot of changes in Eddie in the years I’ve known him.”

“Really?”

“Really. But,” he went on, “if you want to talk about them, I think it would be better-certainly for my neck!-if we didn’t discuss them over a balcony like Romeo and Juliet, eh?” He indicated the door leading to the kitchen at the back of the house. “Come downstairs and I’ll get you something to eat. Then, if you’d like, we can talk about young Mr. Chase.”

The sun had set on London, buildings silhouetted against the dying glow of the western sky. Streetlights illuminated the Belgravia terraces with a salmon-pink cast.

That same light fell on a white van as it pulled up opposite Mac’s house. Ignoring the double yellow lines, its flashing hazard lights came on, the traditional cloaking device of any British driver wanting to park where it was prohibited.

There were three men in the front of the van, and four more in the back. All were young, large, trained, and dressed entirely in black. They were also armed, six of them equipped with ultracompact Brugger & Thomet MP9 submachine guns, and other weapons besides.

The seventh man lacked an MP9, but in some ways he had the most powerful weapon of all. On his knees was a laptop computer, and connected to it by a cable was an unassuming white box attached to a makeshift frame bolted to the side of the van.

“Switching on,” he said. The laptop’s screen came to life, a random swirl of grays and whites against a blood-red background quickly taking on form.

The interior of Mac’s house.

The white box was the antenna for a millimeter-wave radar, working on a frequency capable of penetrating Victorian brickwork with ease. The operator used a small joystick to direct the antenna, slowly panning and tilting through the house, looking for signs of life…

“Got them,” he announced.

Nina looked more closely at the photograph. “Oh my God, is that Eddie?”

“That’s him,” Mac confirmed. After they’d eaten Nina had changed into a pair of slippers and one of his shirts, which came almost to her knees. While she waited for her own clothes to dry, he had taken her on a brief tour of the house, ending up in a library on the top floor-though it was as much a private exhibition of the Scotsman’s past as a repository for books. One wall was filled with framed pictures from different periods of his military career.

“He’s got hair!” Despite Chase’s military crop in the photo, he still had more follicular coverage than his present-day counterpart. “How old was he in this?”

“That was taken ten years ago, so he’d be about twenty-five.” Mac was also in the picture, as were several other men in desert camouflage. “I think it was his third year in the SAS.”

Nina moved on to the next picture, which looked as though it had been taken in a restaurant or a pub. A group of men around a table all cheerfully toasted the photographer, whom she assumed to be Mac himself. “Oh, wow! Is that Hugo?”

Mac peered at the picture, which included Chase and Hugo Castille, the latter sporting a very unflattering droopy mustache. “So it is. Took it just after we got back from a NATO joint op in the Balkans. You knew him?” Nina nodded. “Good man. Obsessed with fruit, though.”

“Yes, I remember.” Also in the picture was someone she recalled much less fondly. “Oh. And that’s Jason Starkman.”

“Yes,” said Mac disapprovingly, “shame about him. Having an affair with a fellow soldier’s wife, that’s the sort of thing a man should be horsewhipped for.”

“Actually…” Nina began, before pausing, not sure if she wanted to discuss the topic. Mac’s quizzical look encouraged her to press on. “Eddie told me that Starkman didn’t have an affair with Sophia. She made it up to hurt him.”

Mac nodded almost imperceptibly. “You know, that doesn’t surprise me. I always thought Sophia had rather a cruel streak. She had an inflated sense of entitlement, and got quite nasty if anything wasn’t exactly how she wanted it. Not that Eddie noticed it until it was too late, the poor sod.”

“Didn’t you or Hugo think to, y’know, drop a hint?”

“What could we say? He was in love with a rich, cultured and very beautiful young woman. I don’t think there’s anything we could have done to change what he thought about her. Only she could do that…and it still took a long time for him to admit it to himself. The whole experience changed him quite a bit, unfortunately.”

So Chase wasn’t as immutable as he claimed, Nina thought. “Hugo once told me that Eddie used to be… chivalrous?”

Mac laughed. “Oh good God, yes! A true knight in shining body armor. Went out of his way to help women in need, and never asked for anything in return. That’s the kind of behavior that wins a man a lot of admirers.”

“He does seem to have rather a lot of, ah, lady friends around the world,” Nina said.

“And with good reason. A lot of people owe Eddie their lives. But he was also enough of a gentleman to see that they were just friends-until Sophia. Then after that, while he still always tried to help people, he’d also developed a rather tiresomely crass attitude.”

“A defense mechanism.”

“I suppose.” Mac gave Nina a look. “But somebody was clearly able to break through it.”

“For what it was worth,” she said unhappily.

“You’ve been together for, what, eighteen months now?”

“More or less.”

“Which is longer than Eddie was with Sophia.” He left Nina to consider that as he crossed the library, a dividing beam on the ceiling showing where two smaller rooms had been knocked together into one, and reached up to brush a speck of dust off a set of bagpipes mounted on a large shield-shaped plaque of dark wood.

“Can you play them?” she asked, taking the opportunity to change the subject.

Mac smiled wryly. “Not a note. My family actually left Edinburgh when I was ten and moved to Chingford. But soldiers are rather unimaginative when they buy retirement presents. Either that, or they take the piss. I’m not really sure which case this was. But it’s the feeling behind it that counts.”

He smiled again, more warmly, then left the bagpipes and went into an adjoining room. Nina followed, finding herself in a game room, a full-size snooker table occupying most of the space. Mac picked up a white cardboard box from the green baize, snooker balls rattling inside it. He toyed with it for a moment as if about to lay the balls out for a game, then turned to face Nina.

“The thing with Eddie,” he said, “is that yes, he can be… let’s be generous and say annoying. Even before Sophia left him, there were times when I thought a bullet in the head would be the only way to get him to shut up.”

“He does kind of go on,” Nina admitted, half smiling.

“But at the same time, he’s quite possibly the most loyal, courageous and downright indomitable man I ever served with.” He took a cue from the table and tapped it against his left shin. There was a clack of plastic and metal against the wood. “Got this in Afghanistan. It was the reason I had to retire from active duty and go into spook work. Blown clean off below the knee by RPG shrapnel.”

“My God,” said Nina, wide-eyed.

“It was Eddie who got me out of there. Not only did he run into enemy fire to pull me out of a burning Land Rover, and then pick me right up over his shoulder-well, I was a leg lighter, I suppose-but he also took out the men firing at us. That’s the kind of man he is. When it comes to protecting the people he cares about, he’s determined and fearless, and will go to any lengths to do it. From what you said over dinner about how you met, I got the impression you know that from firsthand experience.”

“Yeah, I do,” she said, remembering how Chase had boarded a plane-while it was taking off-to rescue her.

“He’s a man of action,” said Mac, returning the cue to the table, “which unfortunately sometimes means that he acts without thinking. And speaks without thinking. I suppose for the people close to him, it’s a matter of balancing the negatives against the positives… and dealing with the negatives.”

“People like me, you mean?”

He gave her an innocent look. “Perhaps.”

She smiled. “You know, I never really thought of SAS men as relationship counselors.”

“Not every battlefield is out of doors,” he said, returning the smile-

A very faint noise came from above, a brief scrape. Nina barely registered it, but Mac’s head snapped up to search for the source, his smile instantly vanishing. “What is it?” she asked.

“Come with me. Quickly.” His voice was commanding, all business. He headed through the door onto the landing and hurried down the stairs to the first floor, Nina right behind him. “We’ve got to get to the study.”

“What is it? What’s wrong?”

“There’s somebody on the roof. I heard a footstep on one of the slates.” They reached the study. Mac dropped to a crouch, for the first time showing signs of awkwardness on his prosthetic leg. “Keep your head down. They might be watching the window.”

Nina ducked and followed him across the room to a cabinet. He opened it and took out a sinister black pump-action shotgun, which became even more menacing as he racked the slide. Ka-chack. The sound alone sent a chill down Nina’s spine.

“You make enemies in the SAS,” Mac offered by way of curt explanation. “Some of them have been known to make house calls.” The gun held in one hand, he kept low and made his way to the desk to pick up the phone.

Another noise, a dull whump from the street outside.

Mac instantly dropped the phone and dived at Nina, tackling her to the ground to protect her with his body.

The window broke, a neat round two-inch hole punched through it-

“Cover your ears!” Mac shouted. Nina just barely managed to bring her hands up to her head-

The stun grenade exploded with a deafening bang.