King Solomon's Curse

21

‘Okay,’ announced Howie, ‘that’s everything backed up.’ He disconnected a solid-state hard drive from one of the team’s laptops and returned it to a waterproof bag.

‘Oh, that’s great,’ said Lydia sarcastically. ‘We’re going to die, but at least all our data’ll be intact!’

‘We’re not going to die,’ said Eddie wearily. They had been inside the palace for some hours now, and the New Zealander’s negativity was like a wet cloud filling the first chamber, fraying already strained tempers still further.

But if she was fraying them, Mukobo was actively tearing. ‘Oh, but you are,’ he intoned. Eddie had tied his hands behind his back and dumped him in a corner with a promise that if he tried to leave it, he would be shot. The warlord had taken him at his word — but that hadn’t stopped him from making the occasional threat. ‘My people will come for me, and when they do, you will beg for—’

He broke off with a pained gasp as Eddie delivered another savage kick to his stomach. ‘I’m getting pretty fucking tired of this, Mucky. Another word, and I will just shoot you.’

Even winded, Mukobo still managed to strain out a retort. ‘You would kill me for talking, Chase? And I thought you believed yourself a good man, a man of honour. Where is your honour if you are afraid of mere words?’

‘I’m not bothered about words,’ Eddie snapped. ‘I’m bothered that you actually mean them.’

The warlord’s lips curled into a mocking smile. ‘Ah. You are afraid. So afraid that you do not dare even use the word.’ He raised his voice to address the others. ‘And this is your protector? A coward who is scared of the words of a bound and helpless man?’

‘Yeah, whatever.’ The Yorkshireman turned away, fuming inwardly that Mukobo had called his bluff. Both men knew that for the team to have any hope of leaving the City of the Damned alive, they would need to use the militia leader as a bargaining chip.

‘Hey, Howie,’ said Rivero. The cameraman’s wounds had been cleaned and rebandaged as best as the team could manage. ‘You got my camera there?’

Howie brought the Sony to him. ‘What do you want that for?’ asked Fisher. The director was huddled with Lydia, his left arm folded over the stump of the right as if hiding it could negate what had happened.

‘I’m gonna do my job,’ Rivero told him. ‘I want the world to know what happened to us. If I die here, then maybe the footage’ll still get back to civilisation. And if we do get out…’

‘You’ve got something that might win you an award,’ Lydia noted, voice cutting.

‘Not what’s at the front of my mind, but hey, if it does that’d be cool.’

Fisher chuckled, without any humour. ‘Well, if an opportunity comes, I guess you’ve got to grab it with both hands.’ A long sigh. ‘Get it?’

‘Jesus, Steven,’ said Lydia quietly.

‘If you let me go,’ said Mukobo, ‘that hand will be the last thing you all lose. You will go free.’

The blonde raised her head. ‘Really?’

‘All I ask is that you give Chase to me. The rest of you can leave.’

‘Don’t listen to him,’ said Eddie. ‘This twat doesn’t know mercy. He probably doesn’t even know merci.’

‘Think about it,’ Mukobo went on. ‘You would return safely to your homes, to your families. You would even have your television show. Perhaps you really will win awards, no? You would be famous, even rich.’

‘Enough of this bollocks,’ said Eddie, not liking that some of the documentary crew — Lydia foremost, but even Rivero — seemed to be considering the warlord’s proposal. He pointed the revolver at Mukobo. ‘Get your arse up.’

‘Where am I going?’ asked the Congolese.

‘Long term? Hell. Short term, somewhere you can’t stir the shit.’ Keeping his gun trained on Mukobo, the Yorkshireman went to the passage. ‘How are things out there?’ he called.

Fortune had remained on guard at the entrance, though Paris had taken over from Ziff. Despite the loss of his hand, the mercenary had assured Eddie he could still use a gun, resting the Kalashnikov’s wooden foregrip in the crook of his right elbow. ‘Quiet here,’ the scruffy man replied.

‘I have seen a couple of scouts in the ruins,’ Fortune added, ‘but nobody has dared come close. They probably still think we have the Shamir with us.’

‘Maybe we should’ve kept it up here,’ suggested Howie. ‘Guns are one thing, but that was like a death ray.’

‘Nina thought it was best to put it back in its box, and considering what it can do, she’s probably right,’ Eddie told him. He did not entirely agree with her — his own opinion could have been decided by a coin toss — but had decided that presenting a united front was the only way to hold the already fragile group together. ‘If we need it, we can get it.’

‘Sure, so long as we don’t need it in a hurry,’ sniped Lydia. ‘Since it’s all the way down in the damn basement!’

Mukobo was now standing. ‘You see? If you trust in Chase, he will get you all killed. He cannot save you. Only I can. Let me go, and—’

Eddie pointed the Magnum at his head and thumbed back the hammer. ‘Move it. Through there.’ He nodded towards the booby-trapped tunnel. ‘Don’t tempt me to turn that thing back on while you’re inside it.’

Mukobo reluctantly set off, giving the other expedition members a last meaningful look. ‘Remember what I said.’

Eddie collected a torch and followed him. ‘Fortune, Paris?’ he shouted. ‘Keep an eye on things here.’ He hoped it was clear that he meant inside the palace as well as out.

‘We will, Eddie,’ Fortune assured him.

Keeping Mukobo at gunpoint, he headed deeper into the building. ‘Do you really think you will get out of here alive, Chase?’ said the warlord as they crossed through the second chamber. ‘You are a man of violence, as am I. We both know how this will end for you. Whether your friends meet the same end is your choice.’

‘Yeah, maybe I am a man of violence,’ Eddie replied, angered, ‘but the difference is that I only use it if I have to. You use it because you fucking get off on it, you sick bastard.’

Mukobo shrugged. ‘I use it because it achieves what I desire. As does every true ruler. That you do not understand this is why you were always a follower, and not a leader. Even in the SAS, you were only a common soldier, Corporal Chase. And when you became a mercenary, you again worked for other men, to achieve their goals. And now… ha! Your wife gives the commands. Where she goes, you follow.’

‘You can shut the fuck up about my wife,’ Eddie growled. ‘And I was a sergeant, actually.’

‘Until you were demoted.’

He frowned. ‘Brice been telling you about me, has he?’

They reached the third of Solomon’s challenges, Eddie ushering the Congolese into the cage before entering and rotating it so they could pass through. ‘Mr Brice has been very informative,’ said Mukobo. ‘I know all about you, Chase.’

The Yorkshireman tried to conceal his discomfort at the revelation. ‘Great, can you tell me my Facebook password? I forgot it ages ago. Now shut up, or you’ll go down to the bottom of the cave the quick way.’

Mukobo fell silent, though he clearly considered himself the victor in their little war of words. They entered the great cavern and picked their way down the steep steps. Lights were visible at the bottom, voices becoming audible as they neared the Chamber of the Shamir. ‘Nina?’ Eddie called as he approached.

Nina came to the doorway, concern on her face as she saw who was with him. ‘What’s going on? Is everything okay upstairs?’

‘Brought him down here before he offers Lydia thirty pieces of silver,’ he replied, pushing Mukobo inside. Ziff looked up in surprise from an inscription.

‘I don’t think she’d take it. Not after what he did to Steven.’

‘Well, I wasn’t going to give her the chance.’ He flicked the gun towards a high-backed stone seat. ‘Sit down, dickhead. No, arms over the top,’ he added as the warlord sat. ‘I’m going to tie you to it.’

Mukobo grimaced as he forced his bound arms over its unyielding back, then awkwardly lowered himself. ‘You really are afraid of me, aren’t you, Chase?’ he sneered as Eddie took a strap from one of the tripod lamps that had been set up in the room and used it to secure him to the throne-like chair. ‘I am already bound — what could I possibly do?’

‘More than you can now,’ said the Yorkshireman as he pulled the restraint tight. Mukobo held in a grunt of pain. ‘Hurts? Tough shit.’

Ziff regarded the new arrival with unease. ‘Isn’t there anywhere else you could keep him? We were working in here. And making good progress too.’

‘Oh, sorry, Doc,’ Eddie said with pointed sarcasm. ‘Is the civil war interfering with your archaeology?’

The Israeli scowled at him over his glasses. ‘That was uncalled for.’

‘So was this fucking maniac chopping off people’s hands.’

‘Eddie,’ Nina chided. ‘I’m sorry, David.’

The older archaeologist shook his head, then headed for the exit. ‘I need a rest anyway. Let me know when I can get back to work without any… distractions.’

The redhead watched him leave, then turned to her husband with an exasperated breath. ‘Dammit, Eddie.’

‘Well, I’m right. We’ve got more important things to worry about than reading Solomon’s blog.’

‘Actually, I’m not sure if that’s true,’ she told him. ‘David managed to translate quite a lot of the text in here. We found out why Solomon built the Palace Without Entrance, for a start.’ She went to one of the inscriptions on the rear wall.

Eddie joined her, positioning himself so he could still observe the African. ‘To piss off door-to-door salesmen?’

‘Not exactly.’ She indicated a particular passage. ‘This describes what he was told by Makeda and the historians of Sheba about the people who once lived here. The mine down there’ — a glance towards the excavations below — ‘was literally the source of the empire’s power. The Mother of the Shamir is a vein of… well, they didn’t know exactly what it was, and nor do we. I’ve been wondering if it’s related to the Sky Stone from Atlantis, or the meteoric material that became part of the prophecy in the Book of Revelation: an arrival from the wider universe. Or maybe it’s produced by the earth itself, like eitr or the water from the Spring of Immortality. Either way, it’s something beyond conventional science that we don’t fully understand yet.’

‘We seem to find a lot of stuff like that,’ Eddie noted wryly. ‘But even if they didn’t know what the Shamir was, they knew what it could do. Blow shit up, in this case.’

‘Yeah — and extremely well. The bigger the piece, the more extreme the effect. The Shamir that Solomon used to build the First Temple was tiny, but it could still split stone and metal. That one, though?’ She turned towards the altar, where the Shamir had been returned to its lead box. ‘Well, you saw for yourself. The story of the Battle of Jericho from the Bible, where Joshua used a horn to blow down the city’s walls? I think that’s what we’ve found.’

‘I thought you two said this place was much older than that.’

‘The stories were probably conflated over time, one mythology absorbed into another. Like the way the story of the Great Flood long pre-dates Hebrew lore. But once the people here found the mineral vein, the Mother of the Shamir, they used the pieces they were able to break off against their enemies. They got greedy, though.’ She gestured at the mine beyond the windows. ‘They wanted more Shamirs, bigger — and more powerful — ones. So they dug out this whole place to make the mineral vein easier to reach, built all the bridges and passages down to it. But something went wrong.’

‘What happened?’

She went to another section of the inscriptions. ‘They used the Shamirs they already had to cut away the rock down to here. When it was fully opened, though, when the Mother of the Shamir was exposed to daylight for the first time… it had the same effect as when Mukobo’s men brought that one,’ a glance at the lead box, ‘outside. Only hundreds of times more powerful.’

‘What, it blew up the city?’

‘Not quite — but it caused an earthquake. Most of the city was flattened, thousands of people killed. And parts of the new cave they’d dug out collapsed. According to what the historians of Sheba told Solomon, as soon as the Mother of the Shamir was covered again, the destruction stopped.’

Eddie regarded the box thoughtfully. ‘So it really does only work in daylight? Cut it off and it stops?’

She shook her head. ‘There was a mention somewhere that the Shamirs still had their power at night, so I don’t think it’s light that activates them. But they do seem to have to be outside to work, or at least not under too much cover. Lead blocks, or at least reduces, the effect, so maybe it’s cosmic radiation or neutrinos, something that can penetrate solid matter more deeply.’

He smiled. ‘Didn’t think particle physics was your thing.’

‘Kind of a hobby after all the weird science artefacts I’ve found. But even after their city had been destroyed, the first thing they did was go back down and clear the rubble so they could reach the Mother of the Shamir again.’

‘And let me guess, they got another earthquake?’

‘Smaller, but yes. This time, it stopped when the bottom of the cave flooded. Water blocking the effect is something else that makes me think the cause might be some sort of radiation. We saw it in Nepal with the Midas Cave, where the water in the natural reactor stopped the radiation from reaching us.’ She went to the altar, staring at the dark grey casket. ‘The thing is, once they opened this place up, the genie was out of the bottle. Enough cosmic rays or whatever could now reach the mineral seam to keep the effect constantly active at a low level. Obviously Solomon’s texts put it in terms of curses and God’s wrath, but the results were pretty clear in modern terms.’

‘What were they?’

‘You saw the jungle outside. The vegetation has been… twisted, mutated. Long-term exposure to the effect caused genetic damage, which got worse over time. And the same thing happened to the people. Remember what Solomon said about the people who didn’t become sterile giving birth to monsters? That’s why they died out. They weren’t willing to give up the source of the Shamirs, and it ended up making them extinct.’

‘Holding on to their ultimate weapon even though it’s killing them?’ said Eddie. ‘There’s a metaphor there somewhere.’

She smiled. ‘Once the empire of Sheba found the lost city and discovered the secret of the Shamirs, they tried to reopen the mine for themselves, but the same thing happened again. They were smart enough to learn from their mistake, though. They kept the small Shamirs they’d found, but left their source alone. When they learned that Solomon had somehow gotten hold of one and was using it to build the First Temple, Makeda travelled to see him to determine if he could be trusted to use it properly. If he couldn’t, she apparently had an army ready to take it by force.’

‘I guess he passed the test, seeing as they got married.’

Nina nodded. ‘The marriage was as much to unite and strengthen their two powers as out of love. After the wedding, Solomon went with her to Sheba to see his new domain — but he also wanted to see the source of the Shamir itself. Once he learned what had happened to Zhakana and its people, he ordered the Palace Without Entrance to be built to contain it — like the sarcophagus that’s been built over Chernobyl. He also put in the challenges so that only the wisest visitors, or those to whom he’d already entrusted the knowledge, would be able to get inside. This Shamir,’ she tapped the box, ‘is basically a weapon of last resort, one that’s only supposed to be used when all else fails. Solomon realised that any empire which used it as a first resort would eventually bring about its own downfall. History repeating itself.’

‘Solomon was wrong.’ Nina had almost forgotten about Mukobo’s presence, his words taking her by surprise. ‘Whoever used such a weapon would win a war very quickly.’

Eddie put a hand to his chin in exaggerated deep thought. ‘Hmm, who should I listen to? The bloke who was so wise he actually has a saying about wisdom named after him, or a murderous rapist arsehole who’s going to get his head kicked in if he keeps talking?’

The warlord sneered at him. ‘Here is some wisdom for you, Chase. We are in the jungle. Only power matters here. If you do not use force, use violence, to protect your power, it will be taken by others.’

‘That’s not true,’ Nina insisted. ‘There are other ways to transfer power — peacefully.’

‘Democracy?’ It sounded like a mocking insult coming from Mukobo’s lips. ‘This country claims to be democratic, so much so that the word is even in its name, but it is a joke! Men with guns control the vote, control the country.’

Eddie shook his head. ‘Don’t let him drag you into some political debate,’ he told Nina. ‘He’s not a politician. He’s just a psycho.’

‘You think that because you come from a rich country, the rest of the world is the same?’ Mukobo nodded towards the revolver in Eddie’s hand. ‘You are using force to hold power over me, Chase. You are proving that I am right, but you are afraid to admit it. When the situation changes, I will have no such fears.’ A hint of anticipation turned up the corners of his mouth.

‘The situation isn’t going to change,’ said the Yorkshireman firmly. ‘Now shut up.’ The African fell silent, but his expression did not alter.

‘How do you even know this guy?’ Nina asked her husband. ‘You said you’d met him before — where?’

‘First time was in 2006, before I met you,’ he said. ‘I was working as a troubleshooter across the border in Rwanda, bodyguarding aid workers and refugees. There was a war going on between Rwanda and the DRC, and Mukobo was leading one of the militia groups running around the place killing people. The convoy I was protecting ran into him, totally by fluke. We outgunned him, so he didn’t have any choice but to surrender.’

Nina looked at Mukobo, whose face revealed clear anger at the memory. ‘So what happened?’

‘We didn’t realise who he was, ’cause he’d been very good at keeping his picture out of the news. Thought he was just some mercenary. So we confiscated his guns and let him go.’ A small sigh. ‘That was a big fucking mistake. Not long after, he massacred another aid convoy. And that was on top of all the local people he murdered or chopped the arms off. They’d still be alive if I’d stopped him.’

‘By “stopped”, you mean…’

‘Killed? Yeah. I could have done it — one of the guys with me was all for it, because even while we had him at gunpoint he was threatening us, saying he’d hunt us down and find our families, lots of nasty shit. But I didn’t, because it was… against the rules of war.’

‘There is only one rule in war,’ said Mukobo. ‘Do what you must to win. If you pretend there are more, then you have already lost.’

‘I didn’t find out who he was or what he’d done until later,’ Eddie went on, deliberately not responding to the warlord. ‘So, when I had a chance to put things right, I took it.’

‘When was that?’ Nina asked.

‘When I went to Tenerife. Peter Alderley said MI6 had tracked him down, but they needed someone who’d seen him before to confirm his ID before they moved in. So I helped out. Things got a bit out of hand, but eventually we caught him.’

She frowned. ‘So that’s what you were doing there? Hunting down a war criminal? Why the hell didn’t you tell me?’

‘Because first of all, you would probably have thrown a fit. And second, because…’ He hesitated before making the admission. ‘Because I didn’t want you to know that I’d fucked up by letting him go in the first place.’

Nina was taken aback by both reasons, though her offence at the former took second place to her dismay at the latter. ‘But… you couldn’t possibly have known. I wouldn’t have blamed you for it — it wasn’t your fault!’

Eddie shook his head. ‘Mac taught me in the SAS that if something goes wrong, someone’s got to take responsibility — so they can set it right. It took eleven years, but I finally got the chance to do that. I caught Mukobo, and turned him over to the cops so Interpol could deal with him.’ He looked across at the Congolese, who stared back with disdain. ‘He was supposed to be going to the States on trial for killing the aid workers. But somehow, he ended up back here.’ He returned to his prisoner. ‘How the fuck did you manage that, “Le Fauchet”?’

Mukobo let out a nasty laugh. ‘You were afraid of your wife? That little woman? You are no man, Chase!’

Eddie smashed his boot heel on to the other man’s kneecap, making him thrash in pain. ‘Answer the fucking question. You should be dead! You were on the 747 that went down in the Atlantic last year — I saw a news story about it. Everyone else on the plane died, so how come you’re still shitting up the world?’

Breathing heavily, Mukobo glared at him. ‘I had help. From Mr Brice.’

The Yorkshireman was startled. ‘Brice? How did he help?’ There was no reply beyond a look of smug defiance. ‘How the fuck did Brice get you off a plane at thirty thousand feet?’

‘When my people rescue me, you can ask him yourself,’ said Mukobo. ‘Before I kill you, I will let him tell you how completely you have failed, Chase. Not just here, now, but ever since we first met.’ He leaned as close to Eddie as he could. ‘All the people who have died since then, at my hand or those of my followers, every single one is on your head — because you were too weak to kill me when you had the chance!’

Eddie brought up the gun. ‘I’ve still got the chance.’

Mukobo made a spitting sound. ‘Which you will not take. I am unarmed, I am tied to a chair — I am a helpless prisoner! To you, it would be murder. And you do not believe that you are a murderer, do you, Chase? You believe in your laws, your rules of war. Your conscience cowers behind them. But even though I am the one who is tied, I am stronger than you — because the only rules I follow are my own. In the jungle, the law is for me to make, not obey.’ He drew back. ‘And this whole country will be my jungle.’

‘What about your friend who runs the LEC?’ Nina asked, sensing that Eddie was too furious to speak. ‘Won’t he have his own ideas?’

‘Kabanda?’ The name emerged as a sarcastic snort. ‘I tolerate him, that is all. As I do Mr Brice. He thinks I am some tin-pot warlord he can control, but I am ahead of him. They are both useful to me now, but when the time is right, I shall sweep them away.’ He looked back at Eddie. ‘You know that time is coming, Chase. It is inevitable. One way or another, I will rule this country.’

‘Thought you just wanted to rule the eastern half,’ Eddie growled. The gun lowered, but did not move away from the warlord.

‘To begin with. But unlike you, I see no reason to limit myself.’ Mukobo sat as straight as he could, a small smile appearing. ‘And as the future ruler of the Congo, I am prepared to make you a most magnanimous offer, Dr Wilde.’

‘And what would that be?’ Nina asked suspiciously.

‘It is very simple. Let me go, and return my gun. I promise you that the only person I kill will be Chase. I have no interest in the others. You can all go free.’

‘You’ll forgive me if I don’t believe you.’

The warlord shrugged. ‘Whether you do or not, the offer is real.’

‘Yeah, right,’ Eddie muttered.

Nina was more vocal. ‘You’re seriously suggesting I let you go so that you can murder my husband?’

‘Is one life not worth it to save more?’ asked Mukobo. ‘You, Dr Ziff, the others in your team will all live to return home. I am sure the other woman, the one who complains so much, would certainly take my offer.’

‘Maybe she would, but I wouldn’t. It’s not going to happen.’

His expression became darker. ‘Then you are condemning yourself to death, Dr Wilde. All of you. When the militia come for me, they will kill everyone they find. Should any of you survive, I myself will remove you from this world. After I have had my way with you, and all of my men have done the same.’ Nina felt a sickening chill at the threat, but tried not to let her fear show.

‘You should probably stop talking now,’ said Eddie with an unnerving calmness. ‘Before you say something you’ll really regret.’

‘I have no regrets,’ Mukobo replied, getting louder. ‘For nothing I have ever done, nothing I will ever do. I have killed men, women, children — burned babies in their beds! And I will do it all again, I promise you. Anyone who opposes me will be slaughtered like pigs. If you do not let me go, now, then your friends in this place will not be the only ones who will be killed. Your little girl, your precious Macy, will die too!’

Shock hit the couple at his use of their daughter’s name, Eddie as still as a statue while Nina went pale. Now fear entered her voice. ‘How — how do you know about her?’

‘Why, from Mr Brice, of course,’ said the warlord, cruelly pleased at her reaction. ‘He has told me much about you. Your family, where you live — New York, 78th Street, yes?’ Nausea roiled in Nina’s stomach at the revelation that he knew how to find their home. ‘He has powerful friends in the world of spies. They will bring your girl to me. She is five, yes?’ He closed his eyes, drawing back his head as if smelling a delicious meal. ‘So fresh, so innocent. So… undefiled.’ The last word was drawn out, savoured, before he opened his eyes again. ‘She will be most popular with my men. And the last thing she sees before I let her die will be your severed heads! Unless,’ he said, fixing them firmly with his unblinking gaze, ‘you let me go, right now.’

Nina was too horrified to speak. She tried to retreat, but almost stumbled as her legs shook.

Eddie, in contrast, remained utterly still, looking back at Mukobo with equal intensity. Finally, he spoke. ‘You’re right. Yeah, you’re right. It is worth one life to save more.’

The warlord smiled. ‘I knew you would agree with me in the end, Chase. Now. Give me my gun.’

The Yorkshireman nodded. ‘Here.’

He lifted the revolver again — and fired it at Mukobo’s groin.

The Magnum’s echoing boom was like cannon fire. Nina jumped in shock — first at the near-deafening noise, then at what her husband had done.

Mukobo himself was no less stunned. He stared at Eddie for a moment, wide-eyed as blood gushed over the seat… then the pain hit him. He screamed, thrashing against his bonds and howling French obscenities.

Eddie was unmoved. ‘You’re not going to touch my daughter. Or anyone else. Ever.’

Mukobo looked back up at him, realising what he meant—

Five more Magnum rounds erupted from the gun as the Englishman emptied its cylinder into the warlord’s chest. The bullets ripped right through him, cracking bloody craters in the chair’s stone back. Mukobo shuddered, then slumped forward, dead.

The rolling thunder of the gunshots faded. Nina slowly lowered her hands from her ears as she gaped at the quivering corpse. ‘Oh… oh my God, Eddie. Jesus Christ! What did you do?’

‘What I should’ve done back in 2006,’ he replied, opening the revolver’s cylinder and tipping out the spent brass.

‘But — but holy shit, Eddie! He was tied up! You murdered him!’

‘And how many people’s he murdered?’ he demanded. ‘Hundreds, probably thousands if you count all the people he ordered killed. And he would have gone on to kill a load more.’

‘That — that’s not the point!’ she stammered. ‘We captured him, he should’ve gone on trial—’

‘You see any judges around here?’ Eddie snapped. ‘Any cops? You heard what he said — the only law he follows is the law of the fucking jungle. Well, I played by his law. And in case you weren’t listening, he threatened to rape and kill our daughter. Fuck him!’

Nina had felt the same horror and rage as her husband when Mukobo made his threat, her natural instinct as a parent being to protect her child by any means — but was still unwilling to justify a cold-blooded execution. ‘If he’d been about to hurt Macy for real, I’d have blown the bastard away myself. But he wasn’t, he was tied to a goddamn chair on a different continent! Yes, it was a threat, but it was an empty one!’

‘You think? Brice told him where we live! And Mukobo was the kind of sadistic fucking maniac who’d follow up on a threat like that. The aid workers he murdered, the ones he was going to the States to be put on trial for killing — you know why he went after them? Because their leader called him a “dangerous man” in a newspaper interview. That was all, but it was enough. And if I’d known who he was when I first met him, I could have saved their lives.’ He flicked the empty cylinder, sending it spinning. ‘I could have saved hundreds of lives… but I didn’t.’

‘That wasn’t your fault,’ she insisted. ‘You can’t blame yourself for that!’

‘Yeah, I can, and I have. But he won’t be killing anyone else now.’ He stared down at the slumped figure. ‘Fourteen years late, but I stopped him. And if you think I did the wrong thing, if that’s changed the way you look at me… then I’ll just have to live with it, because I don’t regret it.’ He faced Nina again. ‘I did it to save Macy, and you. And everyone else in this place. And fuck knows how many more people in the rest of the country, because without Mukobo, this revolution’ll go nowhere. He was the one holding it together. So by killing him, I’ve just stopped a civil war.’

‘Maybe you have,’ said Nina. ‘And maybe you did do the right thing—’

‘There’s no maybe about it.’

‘—but we can debate that later.’

‘And I’m sure we will,’ he said sardonically. ‘But I’m not going to apologise for it. The world’s better off with this bastard dead.’

Her shock was replaced by anger and exasperation. ‘That might be true. But you just shot our only bargaining chip! Without Mukobo as a hostage, there’s nothing to stop the militia from killing us.’

Eddie gestured towards the lead casket. ‘There’s that.’

‘Yes, if we want to risk bringing the rest of the palace down on top of us. Look, Eddie, I–I understand why you did what you did to Mukobo. But with him dead, our situation’s just got worse, because now there’s no way out of here. What are we going to do?’

Any answer the Yorkshireman might have had remained unspoken as Ziff shouted from outside. ‘Nina! Eddie! Are you okay?’

Nina hurried to meet him, not wanting anyone else to see the grisly scene. ‘We’re okay, we’re fine,’ she assured the Israeli as he scuttled down the last flight of steps. ‘Nothing to worry about.’

‘We heard shots!’ shouted Howie from a bridge higher up. ‘We thought Mukobo’d escaped!’

‘He’s not going anywhere,’ Eddie replied as he emerged. ‘Go back up. Fortune and Paris might need your help if the militia make any moves.’

The young man hesitated, then started back up the chasm. Ziff was less easily persuaded, though. ‘Is there any chance you could take Mukobo somewhere else so I can get back to translating the inscriptions?’ he asked hopefully.

Eddie shook his head. ‘Definitely best if he stays put for now.’

Ziff’s eyes went to the revolver in his hand, its empty cylinder still open. ‘I’m… getting the feeling there’s something I should know about.’

‘Everything’s fine, really!’ said Nina with forced brightness. ‘You could always explore the other buildings instead?’

Ziff gave the couple a look of concerned suspicion, but before he could question them further another voice echoed down the rift. ‘Eddie!’ cried Paris. Even at the top of his lungs, his words were barely audible by the time they reached the mine. ‘We have a situation!’

The older archaeologist looked up in alarm. ‘The militia — are they attacking?’

‘Paris wouldn’t have left Fortune to face ’em on his own,’ said Eddie, taking out a box of Magnum rounds he had confiscated from the warlord earlier and reloading the golden gun. ‘It’s something else. We need to get back up there.’

He and Nina ran for the stairs. ‘What about Mukobo?’ Ziff asked.

‘Like I said, he’s not going anywhere. Come on.’ With the confused Israeli trailing them, they began a hurried trek back to ground level.