Temple of the Gods

14 New York City

The arrivals area of John F. Kennedy Airport’s Terminal 7 was far from welcoming, but to Nina reaching the huge, impersonal structure felt oddly like coming home. Since joining the IHA five years earlier, she had done so much international travel that she imagined her total mileage would stretch to the moon — yet no matter how far-flung her travels, at the end the comforting sight of Manhattan was always waiting for her.

There was the usual rigmarole to endure first, however. Standing in line at immigration control, the interminable wait for her baggage… and then she would still have to battle for a cab.

Which was why the sight of a card reading DR NINA WILDE was such a pleasant surprise when she reached the concourse. It was held by a mustachioed man in a chauffeur’s uniform and dark glasses, who stepped forward as she approached. ‘Dr Wilde?’ he said. His accent had a European tinge, but she couldn’t place it precisely. ‘Mr Penrose sent me to bring you to the United Nations.’

‘Oh. Huh. Y’know, I was kind of hoping to go home first. I’ve had a long couple of days.’ She had attempted to sleep on the flight, but despite her exhaustion from the chase in Rome her rest had been fitful. And now Penrose probably wanted to drag her into another lengthy meeting with senior UN officials to explain how death and chaos had followed her to two foreign capitals… ‘Well, guess not,’ she said, on the chauffeur’s silence. ‘Okay, let’s go.’

She waited for him to take her luggage, but instead he started to turn away before halting, as if belatedly remembering that his duties extended beyond simply driving a car. ‘May I… take your bags?’

‘You certainly may.’ Nina relievedly passed them to him, then followed him through the concourse.

He led her to the sprawling parking structure beyond the AirTrain light rail station. Nina stifled yawns on the way. Fortunately, her chauffeur didn’t seem inclined to be talkative.

The chauffeur had his own reasons for not wanting to engage her in conversation. Large amongst them was that he was not actually a chauffeur.

His left arm nudged with every step against the gun concealed beneath his jacket. He was sweating, the perspiration due in varying degrees to the weight of the bags, the wig and false moustache he was wearing to shield his identity from the airport’s surveillance cameras, and the enormity of what he was about to do. He was no stranger to violence, but straight-up assassination was something new and troubling.

He knew it had to be done, though. He had complete faith in his boss, and if Harald Glas said that the innocent-looking redhead was a threat to the entire world, he believed him.

She was famous, wasn’t she? Some kind of scientist. Pretty, too, for an egghead…

He forced himself not to think about her. All he had to do was get her into the back of the blacked-out limo, then draw the gun and fire. Three shots to the head would do it. She wouldn’t even have time to be scared.

They descended through a stairwell. He had parked in a quiet corner with limited CCTV coverage — the limo was sound-proofed and his gun silenced, but anything unusual could still attract attention. A couple of people passed them on the stairs, but neither gave a second glance to a driver and his passenger.

His heart began to race as they reached the lower level. The limo was a long dark shape in the concrete gloom about fifty metres away. He headed for it, the gun hard against his ribs.

‘Jeez, could you have parked any farther off?’ said Nina, trying to hold in another yawn. She had expected her ride to be waiting near the terminal’s entrance with the buses and cabs.

The chauffeur mumbled a vague apology, then opened the rear door for her. She climbed inside. ‘Thank you.’ He didn’t acknowledge her, instead closing the door and putting her bags in the trunk. Nina checked her watch. If the traffic were favourable, she might reach the UN in around forty minutes. No telling how long Penrose’s meetings would drag on, though…

The trunk lid slammed. The chauffeur walked back to the driver’s side door. He opened it, but didn’t immediately get in, instead reaching inside his jacket with a gloved hand.

Turning away to make sure his target couldn’t see what he was doing, the assassin drew his gun. He started to enter the limo—

Someone hit him hard from behind, smashing his face against the edge of the roof.

Nina jumped as a loud metallic bang echoed through the limo. The driver was struggling with somebody—

She glimpsed a gun as the two men fought.

Jesus! It was a carjacking!

She tried to open the door — and found to her horror that the handle refused to move. Child-locked. The other door was the same. She stabbed at the window switch to lower it, but without the key in the ignition the mechanism was inert.

The driver slammed against the limo’s side, his attacker delivering a punch to his stomach before grabbing his arm. The gun clacked against the rear window. A thwat as it fired, the bullet hitting the concrete floor and ricocheting away with a whine. Another shot, and a car’s windshield shattered, setting off the vehicle’s alarm.

The chauffeur struck back, and the other man lurched away. The gun came up — but not pointing at the assailant.

It was aimed at Nina.

Trapped, all she could do was dive into the footwell—

The gun fired — just as the second man hurled himself bodily at the chauffeur. The window shattered from the force of the bullet at point-blank range, the round tearing into the leather upholstery beside Nina. She shrieked.

The new arrival twisted the chauffeur’s right arm savagely behind his back. The driver let out a strangled cry of pain, free hand clawing over his shoulder at his opponent’s eyes. The wig slipped off his head as he tried to break loose, knees bashing against the limo’s door—

Another muffled thwat, a spent casing clinking off the floor. The chauffeur convulsed, face twisted into an anguished grimace by the pain of the bullet that had just ripped into the back of his calf. Before he could even scream, the other man slammed him face-first against the top of the door frame. He dropped to the concrete, unconscious.

The victor stepped over him and tugged at the door handle. The lock released with a clunk. Nina stared up at her saviour.

‘So this is what you get up to while I’m away, is it?’ said a Yorkshire voice.

She gawped at the dishevelled, bearded figure. ‘Eddie?’

Her husband smiled. ‘Last time I checked. Come on, open the boot so I can dump this twat in it before anyone sees him.’

He extended his hand. She hesitantly took it, and he helped her out of the limo. The chauffeur lay at her feet. ‘Son of a bitch!’ she suddenly cried, booting him again and again.

Eddie pulled her back. ‘What the hell are you doing?’

‘I’m kicking his ass, like I promised I would!’

‘Er… okay,’ he said, bewildered. ‘Now you’ve done that, can we shift him?’ He glanced warily towards the stairwell in case anyone was coming to investigate the alarm.

Nina opened the trunk. Eddie dragged the driver to the limo’s rear and dumped him inside. He quickly searched his pockets, producing the car keys, then slammed the lid and retrieved the gun. ‘There might be more of them — we need to get out of the airport.’ He got into the driver’s seat and started the car.

Nina joined him in the front passenger seat. ‘Eddie?’

‘Yeah?’

‘What the fuck is going on?’

‘That’s a bloody good question,’ he replied as he put the limo into gear and made a hurried exit from the car park.

An hour and a half later, having abandoned the limousine — after wiping it clean of fingerprints — in Queens and taken a cab into Manhattan, the couple faced each other over a table in a darkened corner of a Midtown bar. ‘We should have gone back to the apartment,’ Nina grumbled.

‘Trust me, there’s nothing I’d like more,’ said Eddie. ‘But it might not be a good idea me being seen around there.’ He shook his head. ‘Christ, what a mess.’

Right now, Nina didn’t want to think that far ahead. She took in her husband’s less than pristine appearance. ‘That’s not the only thing that’s a mess.’

Eddie gingerly touched his jaw where the assassin had landed a blow. ‘That guy got in a couple of punches.’

‘No, I meant in general. What is with the beard?’

‘You don’t like it?’

‘Would you be offended if I didn’t?’

‘N—’

‘I hate it,’ she said, before he could even finish the word. ‘I don’t know if you were trying for a Commander Riker look or something, but it’s definitely more towards the Charles Manson end of the beard spectrum.’

‘First chance we’ve had for a proper chat in over three months, and that’s all you want to talk about?’

Her change of expression warned him that was far from the case. ‘God, no, Eddie,’ Nina said with a long sigh. She spread her fingers, putting the tips to her temples. ‘There’s so much I want to say that it feels as though it’s all going to burst right out of my skull. I mean, Jesus Christ, Eddie. Jesus Christ!’ She hit his arm, far from gently.

‘Ow,’ he said. ‘What was that for?’ She did it again, harder. ‘Ow!’

‘What was that for?’ she echoed incredulously, voice rising in both volume and pitch. ‘For God’s sake! You disappear and leave me for three months, not a word the whole time, the police and Interpol and God knows who else are scouring the globe for you — then you turn up out of nowhere at the top of a Japanese skyscraper, which then gets blown up with me inside it, and when I finally get back home after being chased and shot at in Rome, you pop up again as if by magic to save me from some asshole who was apparently trying to kidnap and murder me! The least I deserve is some kind of goddamn explanation!’

‘Oh. Yeah. All that. So what happened in Rome?’

‘Don’t change the subject!’ she snapped, raising her fist once more.

‘All right, fucking hell! Just don’t hit me again, okay? I’ve had people laying into me for the past week, and I’m getting pretty pissed off with it.’

‘Sorry,’ she muttered. ‘I’m just… I’m so happy to see you again, you wouldn’t believe it. But I’m also so mad at you.’

‘Okay, so stick with the happy part for now, all right?’ said Eddie. ‘You want to know what I’ve been doing? I’ve been looking for Stikes, for one thing. I had to bust someone out of a Zimbabwean prison to track him down, but I finally found him… and you were there with him.’

‘I was not “with” him!’ she protested.

‘Yeah, I know that now. But he got away, and I’m not going to get any more help from the person who told me how to find him. Seeing as she tried to kill me.’

Nina sighed. ‘What is it about us? Why are we incapable of having a normal life that doesn’t include regular assassination attempts?’

‘Dunno. But I don’t remember breaking any mirrors, walking under ladders or not saluting magpies, so it must all be your fault.’ He managed a half-smile at her outraged look, then became serious again. ‘But as well as that, I was trying to find out what happened in Peru. I didn’t murder Kit, Nina. He was trying to kill me. What I did, it was self-defence… whatever you thought you saw me do.’

She said nothing for several seconds, causing an unexpected apprehension, even fear, to rise within him. But her reply made it vanish. ‘I believe you.’

His face lit up. ‘You do?’

‘Yes. I believe you’re innocent. But…’ The single word instantly crushed his elation. ‘I need to know you’re innocent. And so does everybody else — Interpol, the IHA, everyone. Otherwise, what? You go on the run again? Or you get caught and sent to prison — or worse? Eddie, I…’ She buried her face in her hands. ‘I can’t go on like this. Without you. It’s just… destroying me.’ A tear rolled down her cheek.

‘I’m not exactly keen on it either,’ he replied. But despite his attempt at forced levity, he too felt his eyes welling. ‘Oh, Christ, look at me. Getting all emotional.’

‘You do that a lot more than you like to pretend,’ Nina told him, wiping her face.

‘I’ve had a lot to get all emotional about lately,’ he admitted. ‘Losing Mac, losing Nan…’ Now it was his turn to rub his eyes. ‘Losing you.’

She shuffled around the booth to sit beside him. ‘You didn’t lose me, Eddie. I lost you. For a while. But I got you back.’

‘Thanks,’ he managed to say, almost overcome. He put his arm round her. ‘Thank you.’

‘I’m still completely furious with you, obviously,’ she said after a pause.

He half laughed. ‘So what else is new? You’re always furious about something. Bloody redheads.’

‘Yeah, we’re the best.’ They sat in silence for a while, simply enjoying being together again.

‘So what changed?’ Eddie eventually asked. ‘When I left you in Peru, you… well, you flat-out accused me of murder. Why do you believe me now?’

Nina straightened. ‘A few things. First, Kit lied to me about Interpol authorising him to negotiate with Stikes to get the statues back. So that made me start wondering if he’d lied about anything else. And the second thing is… well, you.’

‘Me?’

‘I know you, Eddie. I think pretty well by now. And the more I thought about it, the more it seemed… wrong. I know how angry you were that night — but kicking a helpless man to his death? I know the things you can do when you feel you have to, but that’s not one of them.’

‘I was actually trying to get Kit out of there,’ he said, thinking back to the chaos of the impending conflagration. ‘He was the only way I could prove what was going on. But he would have shot me if I hadn’t… well, you were there. Even if you didn’t see the gun.’

‘It wasn’t on the video either,’ she told him glumly. ‘The angle was wrong, and it was too dark. I watched it over and over, but I couldn’t see anything. Interpol didn’t either.’

‘There’s a video?’

‘Yeah, from a surveillance camera. Renée Beauchamp sent me a copy to see if I could tell her anything new.’

Eddie became thoughtful. ‘How long is it?’

‘Ten or twelve minutes, maybe. Nothing happens for a lot of it, though; you climb up on to the catwalk, then you’re out of shot until you and Kit are fighting.’

‘I’ll need a look at it. But there wasn’t anything showing Stikes or Sophia?’

‘Afraid not. Oh, oh!’ she added excitedly. The shock of the attack at the airport had pushed events in Italy to one side. ‘Sophia was in Rome!’

‘What?’

‘I don’t know what she was doing — I don’t even know how she’s still alive. But she was there, and she…’ Nina tailed off, still not quite able to accept what had happened.

‘What did she do?’ he demanded.

‘She, ah… You’re not going to believe this, but she saved my life.’

He stared at her. ‘You’re right, I don’t believe it. How?’

She explained what had happened outside the Vatican. ‘So,’ said Eddie when she was done, ‘she shot her own man in the back to save you, then got all cutesy and “don’t tell anyone” about it? Why would she do that? She hates you even more than she hates me!’

‘Thanks for that, Eddie. I always like being reminded that a murdering psychopath has a grudge against me. But no, I don’t know why she did it. I’d guess she was there to make sure Agnelli didn’t blab to me about whoever paid him to raid the Brotherhood’s archives. And so was the other guy — only she double-crossed him.’

‘Sophia stabbing someone in the back? No!’ said Eddie sarcastically.

‘But whose side is she really on? Apart from her own, obviously. She didn’t save me because she wants a bridge partner — she needs me alive for something.’

‘Something to do with those bloody statues, probably. Even Dalton mentioned them.’

‘Dalton?’ said Nina in surprise. ‘As in, out-on-his-ass president?’

‘Yeah. Turns out he set me up to be killed in Japan. Sophia’s not the only person who holds grudges. I popped round to his house to have words.’

She put her head in her hands again. ‘I need the Cliffs Notes to follow all this. What the hell is going on?’

He patted her shoulder. ‘Well, you tell me what you know, I’ll tell you what I know, and maybe between the two of us we’ll get a clue.’

‘I’d be happy with even half a clue,’ she said.

It took some time to exchange stories, long enough for the barman to cast annoyed looks in their direction, compelling Eddie to buy some drinks to justify their stay. But eventually they had all the pieces.

Not that they made much sense.

‘Okay,’ said Nina, still turning over what she had learned in her mind, ‘so this… this Group has some plan in mind that requires the statues — and me — in order to work. Harald Glas was a member of the Group, turned against them, and is now trying to sabotage their plan.’

‘By killing you,’ said Eddie.

She smiled thinly. ‘Again, thanks for that. But Takashi was a member of the Group, Stikes gave them the statues, and Sophia… I honestly have no idea how she fits in. You said that in Peru she seemed to be working for the Group — so why was she with a guy who tried to kill me? And then she killed him. So is she with them, against them, or just taking a murder vacation in Italy?’

‘Buggered if I know,’ he said. ‘I suppose if we knew what this plan was, it’d help.’

‘Takashi said it was about bringing peace and stability to the world, whatever that means. But I don’t know how the statues would accomplish that.’

‘You said something weird happened to you when you put them together,’ Eddie reminded her. ‘Like what?’

‘It’s hard to describe. Just that I felt… connected to the world somehow. And that I knew where to find something important. But it’s gone now — it’s hard to remember.’

‘The Group probably want this important thing, then.’

‘And Glas and Dalton want to stop them.’

‘Which makes them the bad guys, I guess.’

‘Stikes is working for the Group,’ she reminded him. ‘And based on past experience, when billionaires start making plans for the entire world I get a bit nervous.’ She gazed into her drink. ‘They knew what would happen when I brought the statues together. Part of that they got from the Brotherhood… but what about the other part? Where did that come from? Popadopoulos said that some governments have their own secret archives, and you said Dalton told you that the Group has influence over governments…’ She looked up at her husband. ‘Maybe that’s how they got the rest of their information.’

‘Dalton might know,’ Eddie suggested. ‘I could have another little chat.’

Nina shook her head. ‘It’s too risky. Hell, you’re taking a huge risk just coming back to New York — back to the States, even. All it takes is one cop to recognise you from a watch list…’ She sat up, determination entering her voice. ‘We’ve got to clear your name — prove that you were acting in self-defence when you killed Kit. Otherwise you’ll be spending the rest of your life running. And I’m not going to let that happen.’

‘I like the thought, love,’ Eddie said gloomily, ‘but fuck knows how we’ll do it. We’ve got a video that doesn’t show the important bit, those numbers I found in Kit’s flat in Delhi that don’t mean anything without solving some puzzle…’

‘What did it say again?’

‘Something like “and the best of the greatest”. Alderley thinks that if you add the answer to the original number, you’ll get whatever Kit was trying to hide.’

‘So all we have to do is figure out what Kit thought was the greatest. Or who.’

‘He was a Hindu,’ suggested Eddie. ‘Who’s the greatest Hindu god?’

‘Shiva, I think. Although actually he’s considered to be one of a triumvirate — Brahma and Vishnu are equally powerful. But…’ Another shake of her head. ‘It’ll probably be something more personal, something only Kit would know. The clue isn’t a riddle — it’s more like an aide-memoire. The answer must be something he would immediately know, a significant number. A date, a time, an address…’

‘A score,’ said Eddie quietly.

Nina could tell that he thought he was on to something. ‘What kind of score?’

‘A cricket score. Kit was mad keen on cricket, remember? Him and Mac were always banging on about it.’ The thought of Kit’s murderous betrayal of the Scot caused a flare of anger inside him, but he suppressed it. ‘They were once arguing about who was the greatest player of all time — Kit thought it was an Indian guy. Can’t remember his name, though.’

Nina took out her iPhone. ‘Well, that’s why we have the Internet. Let’s have a look…’

A brief search produced an answer. ‘Sachin Tendulkar,’ Eddie read. ‘Best score in a test match, two hundred and forty-eight runs. So if we add two hundred and forty-eight to the number I found…’ He took the phone from her and switched to its calculator, tapping in a figure.

Nina looked at the screen. ‘You remember the number?’

‘Something that important, I burned it into my fucking mind. Okay, so add two hundred and forty-eight…’

‘The last three numbers are six-zero-nine,’ she said, before his finger reached the ‘equals’ key.

‘Smart-arse.’ But she was correct. ‘Okay, Alderley said it might be a Greek phone number. Let’s give it a try.’

He entered the new number and made the call, switching the phone to speaker. But to their disappointment, the only result was a flat, continuous tone: number unobtainable. ‘Well, cock,’ Eddie muttered.

‘Maybe there’s a different score we could have used,’ said Nina, taking back the phone.

‘No, I don’t think so. Kit thought Tendulkar was the greatest player, and two hundred and forty-eight was his best score. Maybe it isn’t a phone number at all.’

‘Then what is it?’

‘No idea.’ He swilled the last dregs of beer around in his glass before downing them. ‘Let’s go back to that video for now. Where is it?’

‘On my laptop at the UN.’

‘Probably not the best idea for me to stroll in and watch it there,’ Eddie said with resigned amusement.

‘Well, we probably can’t risk going to the apartment either. But we need somewhere private. Who is there in the city that we can trust not to run screaming to the police the moment they see you?’ She thought for a moment, then smiled. ‘I think I know…’