The Covenant of Genesis

It was not the weapons that made the statues so startling, though. It was their faces - plural. Each figure’s head had four faces around it, looking in different directions. The one facing forward was similar to the long, stylised features of the Veteres’ god figure, though with its almond-shaped eyes narrowed threateningly. To its right was what seemed to be the face of a lion, teeth bared in a snarl; opposite this was the horned head of a bull. One of the statues was angled away from the entrance, revealing that the remaining face was an eagle, beak open, ready to attack.

Sprouting from each figure’s back were what looked like wings, formed from copper plate and gold filigree, stretching straight up to touch the metal-plated ceiling. Another set, similar in design but smaller, extended downwards from the statues’ chests to the floor between their four feet, which resembled the hooves of a cow. The legs themselves were wrapped in narrow bands of copper.

Chase was the first to speak. ‘Just to check that I haven’t just gone completely mental - those wings . . . they’re meant to be angels, right?’

‘They’re more than just angels,’ said Nina. ‘They’re cherubim. “And he placed at the east of the garden of Eden Cherubims . . .” ’

‘ “And a flaming sword which turned every way, to keep the way of the tree of life”,’ continued Sophia. ‘If I remember correctly.’

‘Genesis, chapter three.’ Nina turned her light to the metal floor. There were scrapes and indentations, as though something heavy had moved across it.

‘Okay,’ said Chase, taking out the Browning, ‘why am I suddenly getting a really bad we-just-walked-into-a-deathtrap feeling?’

‘Probably because we just did.’ The torch beam settled on something lying on the floor. It was little more than dust, decayed fragments giving a hint of its former shape.

A human shape.

‘There’s another one,’ said Sophia. Nina illuminated a second long-crumbled form. People had once entered the chamber . . . and somehow fallen to its guardians.

‘Oh, great,’ Chase snorted. ‘I always thought cherubim were little fat angel kids playing trumpets, but now you’re telling me they’re like God’s bouncers?’

‘Those are putto,’ said Sophia. ‘They appeared a lot in Renaissance art. You can blame Donatello and Raphael for the confusion.’

‘What, the Ninja Turtles?’

Both Nina and Sophia sighed as one. ‘A lot of traditional art - not just in the Abrahamic faiths, but earlier ones like Babylonian as well - portrays cherubim as having four faces and four wings,’ said Nina. ‘And often the legs of an animal as well.’ She lit the nearest statue’s feet. ‘Although I’ve seen some medieval illustrations that show them standing on a wheel . . . or a bearing.’ She crouched, seeing that the hooves didn’t quite touch the floor; the bottom of a sphere was visible in the narrow gap.

‘They move?’ Sophia exclaimed sceptically.

‘Don’t sound so surprised - you’ve seen similar things yourself, in the Tomb of Hercules. The traps that were used to protect it from robbers.’

‘Don’t remind me,’ Chase muttered.

‘I don’t see how,’ said Sophia. ‘Those had machinery moving them. These are just sculptures. Even if those swords somehow turn, there’s plenty of room just to walk around them.’

‘Dusty there probably thought that too,’ said Chase, gesturing at the nearer of the remains.

‘Maybe he did - a hundred thousand years ago. Do you seriously think anything could possibly still be in working order after all this time?’

Nina extended a hand towards the statues. ‘You want to test that? Be my guest.’

‘I think I will.’ With a dismissive shrug, Sophia stepped through the entrance on to the metal floor. Nothing happened. ‘You see?’ she said, turning to face Nina as she backed off a low step circling the room’s perimeter. ‘Absolutely nothing to—’

The chamber flooded with light.

Lightning bolts flashed across the room, crackling round the wings of the cherubim where they touched the copper-plated ceiling. Sparks crackled from the statues, a sharp ozone-like tang filling the air. With a hideous grinding noise, the blades began to move. The sculpted hands of the statues were actually part of the swords, turning at the wrists and rapidly picking up speed to form a circle of death like an aircraft propeller - and then the statues’ arms moved too, swinging back and forth in scything arcs.

Another metallic groan, a great weight shifting—

One of the statues jolted out of the indentations its bulk had pressed into the floor over the untold centuries and advanced on Sophia. The others did the same, swords whirling.

Sophia gasped, about to run back to the entrance - when she saw something at the other end of the passageway. ‘Eddie!’

Chase whirled - to see silhouettes crawling through the low tunnel beneath the colossal statue.

The Covenant had found them.

35

‘Get inside!’ Chase shouted, pushing Nina into the chamber. She resisted, even as she saw the danger behind. ‘What about the statues?’

‘They’re slower than bullets! Go on!’

They ducked round the corner of the entrance, Sophia running to the other side. The statues continued their grinding advance, sparks cracking from their wings where they brushed along the floor and ceiling, but at less than walking pace.

Their slowness didn’t make Nina feel any safer, though. There was an inexorability about them, a feeling that they would keep on coming until their targets were dead.

But how were they moving? What was making them work?

Chase leaned round the corner, firing the Browning. The first Covenant soldier, movement restricted by the confined tunnel, had no chance to dodge, the bullet hitting his forehead. He slumped into the dirt, dead. The figure behind him rapidly scrambled backwards, pulled out by one of his comrades.

‘Eddie!’ Sophia called, holding up both hands. He tossed her the Lee-Enfield. ‘How many are there?’

Chase saw movement on both sides at the other end of the bottleneck. ‘At least three.’ All it would take was one of the soldiers to fling a grenade into the chamber to kill them all.

And there were other dangers, getting closer. ‘Uh, I think we should move,’ said Nina, tugging his arm. Two of the statues were bearing down on them, the third angling towards Sophia.

Chase fired another shot at the nearest statue’s head. There was a ringing clang, a dent appearing between its frowning eyes as the bullet bounced off, but it was otherwise unaffected.

‘Eddie, can you not waste bullets trying to kill the inanimate objects?’ Sophia chided.

‘They look pretty fucking animate to me!’ He followed Nina as she ran round the outside of the room. The cherubim changed direction, tracking them, but did so without turning, the heads of the bulls now facing in the direction they were moving.

‘They’re like dodgems,’ Nina said, looking up at the ceiling. Chase regarded her as if she had gone mad. ‘The way they work, I mean. The floor and ceiling must have different polarities - the wings complete the circuit and make them move.’

‘How? And where are they getting the power?’

‘“Earth sky-fire” - that’s what that inscription meant. It’s earth energy, it must be! All those things made of copper above the statue? They’re antennas, energy collectors - just like the ones we saw in Russia.’ The Veteres had been able to harness the lines of energy running through the earth itself, using them to power crude - but effective - electric motors, in Antarctica working the recording devices, here both moving the statues and spinning their swords. The blades themselves were aglow with an eerie blue light, suggesting to Nina that they had the same nigh-unstoppable cutting edges as Excalibur. ‘Keep away from the swords!’

‘How ever would we manage without your advice?’ said Sophia with understandable sarcasm.

They were almost at the chamber’s rear doors, and the metal bowls. Chase looked at the entrance. The Covenant were still holding back on the other side of the tunnel, but he was sure they would be trying to find good sniping angles.

He saw Sophia crouch and lean round the corner to search for targets through the rifle’s scope - and the third cherubim’s blades getting dangerously close to her. ‘Soph! Watch out!’

Fear flashed across her face as she saw the threat and dived out of the chamber to land on the stone floor outside. The cherubim shuddered, then reversed direction, now heading for the nearest other person - Nina.

But Sophia was still in danger. Gunfire echoed up the passage, bullets chipping the floor as she rolled. She reached the opposite wall and threw herself back into the chamber - only for the retreating cherubim to change direction once more and head back towards her.

‘They’re homing in on us!’ Chase yelled. ‘How the fuck are they doing that?’

‘I don’t know,’ said Nina, seeing familiar symbols painted on the bowls, ‘but I know what to do with this!’ She reached into her pack for the clay cylinder she had taken from the map room in Antarctica and pointed at the inscription round its top. ‘It’s the same words - “the song of the prophet”! We need to play it.’

‘I don’t think it’s going to charm those things to sleep - and if you stand at that record player, you’ll be right in the Covenant’s line of fire!’

She quickly took in the positions of the cherubim, the speed at which they were moving . . . ‘Eddie, go back round to Sophia.’

‘What? Why?’

‘Just do it!’

He reluctantly turned and hurried back round the room. ‘What about you?’

‘I’m . . . gonna run right through the line of fire,’ she said, trying to psych herself up. ‘Nothing to worry about!’

‘What?’ Chase stopped. ‘Nina, don’t—’

But she was already breaking into a fear-driven sprint across the chamber, passing in front of the closed metal doors. A volley of shots tore through the room as one of the Covenant troopers opened fire. Bullets smacked into the doors just behind her as she ran, fragments of metal spitting from the impacts. A piece hit one of the bowls, causing it to ring with a deep, sonorous note. Nina now knew exactly what the bowls were for, but put it to the back of her mind as she tried desperately to stay one step, half a step, ahead of the spray of gunfire . . .

It stopped. She was out of the shooter’s sight.

But the cherubim was still following her, screeching along on its giant ball-bearing ‘feet’. All she could think was that they were electrically charged, somehow in opposition to the human body. Like poles repel, keeping the similarly charged cherubim from demolishing each other with their spinning blades - and unlike poles attract. As long as a person was in the room, the statues would be drawn towards them. It wasn’t magic, or malevolence: just magnetism.

Individually, the heavy, sluggish cherubim weren’t hard to avoid. But between the three of them, and their swinging, whirling blades, it became all too easy to become hemmed in. Spend too long in one place - such as at the doors - and you would be dead.

Chase reached Sophia. ‘What the hell are you doing?’ he shouted to Nina.

‘Wait, wait . . .’ she called back. Her cherubim was still moving across the room . . .

It crossed in front of the entrance.

Nina ran back towards the doors. The colossus haltingly changed direction to follow her, animal faces leering. More gunfire came from the tunnel—

It hit the statue, bullets clanking against its legs and body.

She raced to the bowls and put the cylinder on the spindle, taking advantage of her new cover. As long as the cherubim kept moving in a straight line towards her, it would shield her from the Covenant’s fire.

But every second she stood there brought the whirling swords closer.

A shout from outside: Zamal issuing an order. With Chase and Sophia forced away from the chamber’s entrance, the Covenant soldiers could advance through the tunnel.

Chase backed round the perimeter, followed by Sophia. The purpose of the small step was now clear - it was just high enough to stop the cherubim from hitting the wall. ‘We’ve got to get back to the entrance.’

‘Easier said than done,’ Sophia replied.

‘If we can stop ’em from moving . . .’ He paused, staring at the top of the wings where they sparked against the ceiling - then aimed the Browning at one of them and fired. The bullet went straight through the copper sheets. More sparks flew, an electrical bolt sizzling angrily across the room, but the wing stayed in contact with the metal above.

‘What are you doing?’

‘Nina said they’re like dodgems - so we need to cut their power poles.’ One of the cherubim was close to the step, the other coming from the centre of the chamber. He watched the nearer one, judging the grinding swing of its arms, the distance between the tip of the blade and the wall . . .

The cylinder was in place, the needle positioned at the top of the groove. Nina hunted for a clue as to what to do next. Simply spinning the turntable by hand wouldn’t work: if the bowls served the purpose she thought, the ancient recording had to be played at precisely the right speed. She looked back; the cherubim was getting closer.

And behind it, she saw shadows playing across the wall of the passage. Covenant soldiers were crawling through the tunnel. ‘Crap, crap, crap!’ She tried to remember how she had released some residual spark of earth energy in the frozen city . . .

Metal gleamed through the dust and cobwebs. A contact—

She touched it.

With a reluctant creak, the turntable rotated, picking up speed. The copper cone amplified the clicks and hisses, the strange voice reciting the name of what was to follow . . .

Then the song began.

The haunting voice echoed through the chamber, holding a note in perfect pitch for several seconds . . . and one of the bowls began to hum as well, the same note ringing out with increasing volume, shaking off the covering of dust. It was responding to the singer’s voice, resonating. For a moment, Nina forgot about the danger, entranced by the purity of the sound.

Another sound reached her. A click.

Part of a lock. The sound of the bowl, vibrating at a very specific pitch and frequency, had caused something else to resonate, shaking loose.

‘It’s a key!’ she cried. ‘A musical key!’ The note from the cylinder changed, the singer’s voice rising an octave - and the next bowl, smaller, also hummed with the same wondrous sound.

Music was not the first thing on Chase’s mind, though. ‘Nina, move!’ he yelled. The cherubim was almost upon her.

She shrieked and leapt away from the bowls, running round the edge of the room. The moment she took her finger from the metal contact, the turntable wound down, the song’s note dropping and dying. There was another click from the door - but there were still another two bowls, two more locks to open.

‘Oh, fuck this,’ said Chase, glaring at the nearest cherubim. He had timed the movement of its arms - he thought. ‘Give me the gun!’ He and Sophia swapped weapons. She looked puzzled. ‘On three, run across the room! One, two, three!’

Sophia skirted the statue coming for her and ran across the chamber - as Chase threw himself into a diving roll against the curving wall.

The blade whipped past, barely missing him as the statue’s arm swung around - but he was clear, gripping the Lee-Enfield by its barrel and swiping the wooden stock at the cherubim like a baseball bat.

It hit the bottom of one of the wings. Sparks spat up - but the metal was bent back by the blow, no longer touching the floor. Cutting off part of the current.

The other wing was still in contact, though, and Chase was forced to jump clear as the sword swooshed back towards him.

But it was slowing, and the cherubim itself seemed to be moving more haltingly . . .

He ran to the entrance, seeing one of the Covenant troopers pulling himself clear of the tunnel, a second man not far behind. He flipped the rifle back over and fired. A bloody rosette exploded across the wall directly behind the first man’s head, and he collapsed. The two corpses now blocked more than half of the low tunnel. The other man fired a burst from his SCAR in response, the bullets sizzling past Chase as he retreated.

Nina’s cherubim was still grinding after her. She kept moving, trying to repeat the same trick as before. ‘Eddie! I need to run across the entrance - can you give me cover?’

Chase pulled back his rifle’s bolt to load the next cartridge, aware that the sparking cherubim was getting uncomfortably close. He backed away. ‘Not with this thing coming at me! Sophia?’

She was edging away from her own statue, the Browning raised. ‘Do it fast.’

‘Okay, get ready,’ said Nina. The cherubim drew closer, off to one side of the line of fire. ‘Ready, ready . . . now!’

Sophia whipped round the corner as Nina ran across the entrance behind her. She saw the man in the tunnel raise his SCAR, and fired - but the bullet hit only the corpse he was sheltering behind. Sophia jerked back as another burst splintered the stone wall.

One of the cherubim was almost on her - and the only way she could get clear of its blades was to run across the opening.

Into the trooper’s sights.

Nina paused, waiting for the cherubim to cross the room’s centreline - then sprinted back towards the doors. The metal figure jerkily changed direction to follow. She had her shield.

But would she have long enough to play the rest of the song?

She slapped her hand on the metal contact. The turntable rotated again, the unearthly voice rising in pitch as it reached full speed. Again, a sustained note filled the chamber, the third bowl starting to hum in sympathy . . .

Chase saw that Sophia was about to be pinned down. His own cherubim was blocking the way to the entrance: he couldn’t give her any cover without making a wide circle round it. ‘Sophia, move!’

One of the statue’s arms swung at her, the blade slicing through the air at chest height. She hesitated - then dived towards it.

She rolled, passing just beneath the quicksilver slash to land at the cherubim’s feet. She swung the gun at one of the copper wings—

Crack!

A blue spark burst from the metal as she touched it. Chase had been insulated by the rifle’s wooden body; the Browning’s metal frame gave Sophia no such protection. She was thrown away from the cherubim, sprawling across the metal floor several feet away. Unconscious. Her gun skidded away to stop in front of the entrance.

Nina looked round, but couldn’t move, her fingers pressed against the contact. A clunk from the wall as the harmonic vibrations released another lock - but there was still one more note to play . . .

The cherubim advanced on Sophia. Chase swore: no choice but to run across the room to save her. He dropped the rifle and grabbed Sophia by one limp arm to drag her away from the lethal circles of steel.

The damaged cherubim was still following him, more slowly than Sophia’s statue. Chase dragged her in a curve, trying to guide them into a collision.

The blades almost clashed together - and then the two statues lurched apart, repelling each other.

The damaged one was in the lead. A sword tip clipped the Lee-Enfield, slicing it in half and sending the pieces spinning across the chamber.

The fourth note began. Nina didn’t take her eyes off the advancing cherubim as it drew closer.

Behind it, she saw more shadows on the walls as the Covenant members advanced.

Chase was running out of room, backing towards the wall, pulling Sophia with him. Whether he went left or right, the undamaged cherubim would round its slower companion to form a wall of spinning death. With Sophia down it was three against two. He needed to even the odds.

A way came to him.

He pulled Sophia against the wall, then rapidly shrugged off his leather jacket, holding it up like a matador’s cape . . . then tossing it to the floor directly in front of the lead cherubim.

It landed flat, the swords scything over it as the statue rolled on. The bent wing passed over it, the tip of the other for a moment snagging on the leather and pushing it along—

Then running it over.

The result was instantaneous. The cherubim stopped abruptly, the circuit broken, the earth energy feeding the crude motors cut off.

And with the power removed, so was the statue’s electrical charge.

With nothing to repel it, the second cherubim lurched forward, heading straight for Chase and Sophia - and its blades smashed into the inert statue with a horrendous clash of metal. The recoil sent the moving cherubim spinning back across the chamber, while the dead figure was thrown to the floor in pieces. One of the blades stabbed a foot deep into the wall beside Chase. The statue’s severed head came to rest at his feet, the lion face glaring accusingly at him.

He lifted Sophia. She was starting to recover from the electric shock. ‘Nina! How much longer?’

‘Not goddamn much, I hope!’ Nina cried. The fourth note was still playing, the bowl humming, but the final piece of the lock still hadn’t opened - and the cherubim was almost upon her.

Scuffling footsteps in the passageway. The Covenant were through the tunnel—

A click.

‘Eddie!’ Nina shouted as a crack appeared between the doors, the metal panels slowly swinging apart. ‘It’s opening!’ She kept her hand on the contact until it was just wide enough to fit through. The moment she lifted her fingers, the doors jolted to a stop. ‘Come on!’ She yanked the cylinder from the spindle and leapt through the gap just ahead of the cherubim’s glowing blades.

She was clear - but now that she was out of the room, the statue immediately changed direction towards new targets.

Chase pulled Sophia up. ‘Can you run?’

‘I’m not sure,’ she mumbled.

‘Get sure!’ They could go to either side of the cherubim near the door - but one way would put them dangerously close to its swords, and the other would expose them to gunfire.

He made his choice, and pulled Sophia with him towards the blades.

The cherubim rumbled towards them. One of its arms swung round to block their path.

‘Duck!’ Chase dropped beneath the blade as the other sword, a blur of cold light, slashed through the air behind them.

Almost clear . . .

One of the cherubim’s feet bumped against the little step round the chamber’s edge.

The statue jolted, throwing off the timing of its swinging arms. Sophia saw it coming and dropped lower, but Chase barely had time to react.

He flattened himself against the wall - but the very tip of the sword caught the side of his shoulder. A fine spray of blood splattered the wall behind him, though the pain of the cut was nothing to the burning as a fat electrical spark spat from the point of contact.

The glowing blade swung back at him—

Sophia shoved him forward, throwing herself flat against the floor where it met the wall. The spinning sword buzzed over her head, lopping off a clump of bleached hair. ‘Eddie, go!’ she shouted, pushing at his legs. Clutching his shoulder, he staggered upright as Sophia crawled beneath the arc of the blade.

The door was not far away. He could see Nina’s worried face on the other side. A glance at the entrance: the Covenant forces were not yet in sight, but he could hear them cautiously advancing, not knowing that their prey was now unarmed.

But they would realise any moment . . .

Sophia was on her feet. The cherubim was already reversing course, the eagle face sneering. The other statue was also grinding back across the chamber. ‘Run for the door!’ Chase told her. She didn’t need any prompting, rushing past him before he’d finished speaking.

He followed, looking down the passageway. Three men in desert camouflage, Zamal in the lead, recognition then anger crossing his bearded face.

Sophia was through the gap. Chase dived after her, clothes tearing on the door’s edges as a fusillade of bullets clanged against the thick panels just behind him. He landed hard on the stone floor and rolled away.

The moment he cleared the room, the flashes of earth energy across the ceiling ceased. The two cherubim stopped moving, their swords winding down.

‘What happened?’ Chase demanded, sitting up. Nina peered through the opening to see Zamal running into the chamber, his two men behind him.

The cherubim remained still.

‘Oh, crap,’ she gasped. The act of getting safely through the door had deactivated the trap - which meant Zamal and the others had a clear run at them. ‘Shut the door, quick!’

She shoved one of the doors. Chase braced himself and pushed the other, Sophia joining him. The mechanism moaned in complaint, offering stiff resistance on top of the sheer weight of the metal panels. The gap narrowed, inch by sluggish inch, as Zamal sprinted past the cherubim, yelling in Arabic, about to hurl himself against the bullet-dented doors—

The doors closed. Something clunked; a fraction of a second later came a bang as Zamal barged against them, but the lock had re-fastened.

And as the lock closed . . . the trap came back to life.

The two troopers reached Zamal, flanking him as they tried to force the doors open - then all three looked up in surprise as crackling energy bolts flashed across the ceiling. Sparks spat from the wings of the two cherubim, their swords glowing with the unnatural rippling blue light as they started to spin once more. The massive figures ground towards the soldiers, terrifying angels straight out of ancient mythology, a sight fearsome enough to freeze even Zamal for the briefest moment before he fired his SCAR at the nearest behemoth.

To no effect. The bullets punched straight through the thin copper plate of the wings, unable to do anything more than dent the thicker metal of its body.

The other troopers also fired, but with no more success - and now they were trapped against the doors as both cherubim closed in, fiery swords turning every way . . .

Nina heard the men’s screams, which were cut off abruptly by a series of wet thunks as pieces of their bodies splattered over the doors. The cherubim bumped against the step, shifting back and forth in inanimate confusion as the objects to which they had been drawn were suddenly spread out over a much larger area.

But the electrical charge generated by living bodies quickly dissipated, and without it the trap shut down. Silence and stillness returned to the chamber.

Nina recoiled from a trickle of blood running under the doors. ‘I don’t think we want to go back out that way.’ In the light of her torch, she saw Chase’s face tight with pain as he held his shoulder. ‘Eddie, are you okay?’

‘Won’t be going to the world juggling championships.’ Wincing, he opened his fingers slightly to examine the wound. A three-inch slash had been cut through his shoulder muscle, blood seeping from it.

‘I’ll get some bandages,’ she said, opening her pack.

‘Work on the move,’ said Sophia, striding past her. ‘There’ll be more of them on the way. And I think,’ she announced, looking up, ‘we have quite a climb ahead of us.’

Around them rose the steep face of the plateau. Part of the cliff had been cut away by the statue’s builders; a stepped a stone path zig-zagged precariously up to the summit, doubling back on itself multiple times before finally reaching the top.

For a moment, Nina forgot about the bandages as she stared at the clifftop above.

Whatever the Covenant had been fighting to keep from them, whatever the secret of the Veteres . . . it was waiting up there.

36

Two Humvees emerged from the tunnel into the enormous chamber and stopped near the edge of the ravine. Vogler, at the wheel of the first vehicle, struggled to contain his astonishment. Even as a devout, lifelong Christian, a true soldier of God, he had been forced to admit that in an age where new scientific discoveries pushed the boundaries of human knowledge further on a daily basis, there were aspects of the Book of Genesis that seemed more likely to come from the fallible interpretations of ancient man than to be the flawless word of the Almighty.

But this . . . this reaffirmed his faith in a moment. The Garden of Eden was real. Undeniable. And if the stories of Eden were true, then so too were all the other events of the Bible.

The question was, he thought as he spotted the vast idol: what did the Garden of Eden hold that was not in the Bible?

Callum was less impressed by the wonder of their surroundings. ‘So where’s Zamal?’

Vogler picked up the radio handset. ‘Zamal, this is Vogler. Zamal, come in.’ No response but the faint hiss of static. He repeated the call, still with no result.

‘They’re dead,’ the American said bluntly. He let out a dismissive snort. ‘Muslims. Huh. If they spent less time praying and more training . . .’

‘Be quiet,’ Vogler ordered. Muslim or not, abrasive and arrogant or not, Zamal had still been a comrade. He scoured the surreal landscape of the pocket jungle with binoculars. His adversaries would almost certainly have headed for the statue . . . ‘I see them,’ he announced at the sight of three small figures slowly picking their way up a narrow path behind it. ‘Chase, Dr Wilde . . . and Blackwood.’

Callum took out his handgun. ‘Time for a reunion, don’t you think?’

‘I do.’ Vogler turned the wheel and set off, driving the big 4x4 into the jungle.

Nina reached yet another hairpin twist and stopped, leaning exhaustedly against the rock wall. ‘I think I’m gonna throw up.’

Chase, ahead of her, paused in his ascent of the path. ‘Ah, come on, this is nothing. You walked up more stairs than this when the lift broke down at our old apartment, remember?’

‘Yeah, but I hadn’t been chased and shot at and blown up then, had I? And I almost threw up that time, as well.’

‘If you’re going to be sick,’ Sophia said as she caught up, ‘at least have the courtesy to let me get above you first.’

Nina irritably brought up a hand as if about to stick a finger down her throat. Sophia sneered, but still quickened her pace as she passed. ‘How much further?’

Chase peered upwards. ‘Looks like another six zig-zags.’

Nina groaned. ‘Six?’

‘Maybe seven.’

‘Seven? Oh, great. And I thought—’ She broke off, hearing a distant sound over the dripping of condensation.

Sophia heard it too. ‘Trucks. It must be those Humvees.’

Chase looked past the statue’s outstretched arm across the jungle, but saw no sign of movement. He could hear the noise, though: powerful engines revving. ‘They’re racing Humvees through the bloody Garden of Eden? Who’s driving, Jeremy Clarkson?’

‘Will they be able to get them across the ravine?’ Nina asked.

‘Even if they can’t, they can still get out and use that log,’ said Chase. ‘Either way, it won’t take ’em long to get here. We need to shift.’ He moved back to Nina and took her hand. ‘If you’re going to hork, just don’t do it down my back.’

They set off again, increasing their pace as much as they dared along the precarious winding path. It took close to fifteen minutes before they finally rounded the last hairpin, the path curling up to the top of the plateau. To one side, a narrow stone bridge led across the gap to the statue’s shoulders.

‘Finally,’ Nina gasped. Both her legs ached, a rod of hot pain through the wound in her right thigh.

‘Better be something good up here after all that,’ Chase said, the bandage on his shoulder damp with sweat.

Sophia blew out a dry breath. ‘I could certainly use a source of life right now.’

Nina overtook Chase, the pain subsiding beneath her urge to find out what awaited them. The Source of Life, the most sacred, best-protected part of the Veteres civilisation; entombed in ice in the Antarctic, guarded by ‘angels’ here. But what was it? She broke into a clumsy jog, hurrying up the last few yards of the path to see . . .

Beauty.

The summit was a swathe of glorious colours, a field of wild flowers. White, red, yellow, purple, sunset orange, vivid blue, all gently swaying in the breeze circulating round the cavern. The floral carpet spread across most of the plateau - leading Nina’s gaze to something at its centre.

A building.

Like much of the ancient civilisation’s architecture, it was a stone dome, but it seemed older, heavier, built to last for all time. And there was something else, almost hidden beneath the dazzling petals. Small stone markers rose from the ground, arranged in concentric circles around the building.

She moved to the nearest, pushing the flowers aside to reveal a rectangular slab about eighteen inches high. Letters were carved into the surface. The Veteres language.

‘They’re gravestones,’ she realised. ‘This whole place . . . it’s a cemetery.’

‘What?’ said Sophia, sounding almost outraged. ‘This is what we came to find? A graveyard? How can a graveyard be the source of life?’

‘It’s obvious, innit?’ said Chase. ‘They die, they’re buried, they go back to the earth . . . and new life comes from them.’ He flicked a hand at the flowers.

Nina smiled at him. ‘Right. All life comes from death, in a manner of speaking. Life forms feed off other life forms. And every single atom in our bodies was created by the death of a star.’ She stood, facing the building. ‘It’s another piece of metaphorical language. The source of new life . . . is the death of the old. And if they believed in an afterlife, then this - being buried according to religious ritual - could have been where they thought it started.’

‘So if this is a cemetery,’ said Chase, indicating the dome, ‘what’s in there?’

‘Or who,’ Sophia added. ‘It could be a mausoleum, for rulers or important families.’

Nina regarded the structure thoughtfully. ‘If the Veteres buried their dead in the earth, there’ll be nothing left in these graves after all this time. But if that’s a mausoleum, and they used stone rather than wood or cloth to contain the bodies . . .’ Her heartbeat quickened. ‘There might be remains.’

‘Of who?’ asked Chase. ‘Adam and Eve?’

Nina nodded enthusiastically. ‘Yeah. Maybe!’ She set off for the stone dome, leaving a trail through the flowers as she weaved between the gravestones. Chase and Sophia exchanged looks, then followed.

The light level fell as she approached: this close to the edge of the cavern, the reason was simply that less daylight was coming through the holes in the ceiling, but it still felt disturbingly ominous. As she got closer, she saw an entrance, a single tall, thin opening with blackness beyond. She lit her flashlight and slipped inside.

‘Nina, wait—Why do I fucking bother?’ Chase muttered. He went through after her.

The interior was divided into three rooms. The first and largest was a pie-slice shaped chamber with the entrance at the centre of the curved outer wall, two smaller rooms leading off diagonally from the straight sides. Several stone benches were arranged within, on which dirt and fungus had built up over the millennia. The walls were also grubby - but Nina was already brushing away the filth of time to reveal the inscriptions beneath. ‘Sophia,’ she said, ‘look at this.’

‘It’s the same language,’ said Sophia, examining the ancient text, ‘but some of the characters are different.’

‘If this is where the Veteres originated, that’d make sense - this is the primal form of their alphabet. How much of it can you read?’

‘Enough to think that you were probably right about this being their entrance to the afterlife.’ She indicated one particular section. ‘This is something about their god - “the source of all things”. And he’s mentioned again here, and here . . . it’s a god-heavy room.’

‘Maybe it’s a chapel,’ Chase suggested.

‘Could be.’ Nina moved to one of the other doorways, shining her light into the room beyond. ‘There are more inscriptions in here . . .’ She stopped as she lowered the torch beam.

There was more in the room than mere inscriptions. At the centre of the dark inner chamber was a long stone object raised off the floor on carved blocks. A sarcophagus.

The last resting place of one of the Veteres.

‘So what do we do now?’ Chase asked, after a silent moment had passed. ‘When we found that Atlantean coffin, you weren’t happy about it being opened—’

‘We open this one,’ Nina interrupted. He gave her a questioning look. ‘I know, I know. Normally I’d never do anything like that without a proper survey, but if we at least know what’s inside the sarcophagus, it might give us a bargaining chip when the Covenant get here.’

‘Good point.’ Circling the sarcophagus, he saw that the lid was hinged at the back. ‘Here, give me that bag.’ He came back round the coffin and took the backpack from Nina, pulling out a claw hammer. ‘Okay, I’ll try to lift up the lid a bit. If you two can hold it up for a couple of seconds, I’ll prise it open more. Give me some light.’ Nina aimed the torch at the side of the sarcophagus. He ran his fingers along the edge of the lid before finding a slight imperfection and jiggling the claw end of the hammer into it. ‘Ready?’ The two women moved into position and nodded. ‘Okay, here goes . . .’

Straining, he pulled the hammer’s shaft back and down with all his weight. The lid rose about half a centimetre as the hammer’s head crunched against the stone. Nina pushed up as hard as she could. Sophia did the same; the gap widened to over two inches, a slit of blackness visible beneath. Chase quickly jammed the hammer in deeper and pushed down again. ‘Push it, push!’

Nina and Sophia both strained to lift the lid higher. A rasp of stone from the sarcophagus made Nina cringe, but she somehow found an extra ounce of strength, and with an involuntary cry was able to open it wider. The hammer slipped, spitting stone chips into Chase’s face, but the women held the lid up long enough for him to grip its edge and shove it upwards. It swung past the vertical, then came to a stop with a bang, just beyond the tipping point.

Chase and Sophia stepped back as Nina shone the torch into the sarcophagus. Inside was a figure, tightly wrapped in a surprisingly well-preserved cloth shroud. The stone coffin must have been practically airtight; once the body’s decomposition processes had run their course, the remains had stayed more or less intact, no weather effects or organisms to disturb them.

She waited for the dust to settle before taking a closer look. The figure inside the shroud was tall. Very tall - at least seven feet.

‘So I guess they were great at basketball,’ said Chase.

Sophia wafted dust from her face. ‘Some African tribes are very tall. Maybe these people were their ancestors.’

‘We’ll find out in a second,’ said Nina. ‘If someone’s got a knife, that is?’

Chase produced a penknife and snicked open the largest blade before handing it to her. Hesitantly, she reached down, the blade’s tip hovering just above the cloth as Chase held the torch. ‘Let’s find out what the big secret is.’

She made the first cut.

The blade slipped easily through the shroud as she carefully moved it in a sawing motion down the figure’s chest. Once she had opened it to roughly waist level, she moved back to where she started and began cutting upwards, slicing more delicately along the long neck and round the side of the head to the top of the skull.

She pocketed the knife and took hold of the edge of the cloth. Very slowly, very carefully, she lifted it away, gradually peeling the covering off the corpse’s face to reveal . . .

‘Oh, God,’ she said in a quiet voice, free hand to her mouth as she saw the exposed features.

They were not human.

37

‘I told you,’ said Chase, somewhere between shock and vindication. ‘I fucking told you they were aliens!’

The skull was close to human - two eyes, a nasal cavity, a mouth with a few small teeth still remaining - but nevertheless different enough for it to be instantly obvious that it was not a member of the species Homo sapiens . . . and also to be somehow disturbing. The forehead was higher, the top of the skull noticeably larger than any human’s, while the lower jaw was narrower and more protruding. The nasal cavity was longer and thinner. The eye sockets, empty but for desiccated shreds of tissue, were higher on the face and distinctly almond-shaped, slanting upwards. Nina had no choice but to admit that it looked like the popular image of a ‘Grey’ alien, the black-eyed, expressionless face of otherworldly life from over half a century of UFO mythology.

But she knew this was no extraterrestrial.

‘For the last time, Eddie, they’re not aliens,’ she said, taking back the flashlight and holding it closer to the ancient corpse.

‘You’re kidding, right?’ he said in disbelief. ‘I mean, look at it!’

‘I am looking at it. And what I see evolved right here on earth. It’s just that . . . it evolved before humans did.’

‘A different species?’ Sophia asked.

‘Exactly. A species that was related to humans, just as humans are related to Homo rhodesiensis or Homo neanderthalensis. But they weren’t humans. They’d established a civilisation at a time when Homo sapiens had only just evolved into its current form. They were the first people to spread across the planet - not us. That’s why the Covenant of Genesis was created, and why they’re so determined to destroy any evidence of this. The Veteres were monotheistic, they worshipped a single god . . . which means that by definition they worshipped the same god of the Torah, the Bible and the Koran, because they all say there is only one god. But we’ve seen the Veteres’ god, in the giant statues - and he looks like them. Not like us.’

‘So much for God creating man in his own image,’ said Sophia.

Chase shook his head. ‘Hang on. The Veteres lived here in the Garden of Eden, yes?’ Nina nodded. ‘So how come they’re not in the Bible?’

‘Maybe they were,’ said Nina. ‘Right there in Genesis, all along. “There were giants in the earth in those days . . .” ’ She swept the torch beam down the seven-foot-plus length of the body. ‘Maybe they were the origin of the stories about the Nephilim.’

‘So then what happened to them? They were advanced, they were smart - so why’d they disappear?’

‘The beasts killed them,’ Sophia said.

‘What beasts?’ Chase demanded. ‘What are these beasts?’

Nina now knew, and the realisation chilled her to the core. ‘We are.’

Chase was confused. ‘What?’

‘We’re the beasts. Humans.’ Images flooded Nina’s mind as she imagined the African plains of two hundred thousand years earlier, at the very dawn of Homo sapiens as a species. A new creature spreading across the lands that had been home to the Veteres for millennia, in every way genetically identical to modern man, but feral, still animalistic in thought and action, no language or laws or culture to restrain them. Until . . . ‘Oh, my God.’

‘What is it?’ asked Sophia.

‘I just realised what the inscriptions in Antarctica meant. About their god punishing the Veteres for giving “the gift” to the beasts. The gift was knowledge. They thought they could train the early humans, domesticate them, turn them into servants. But they were wrong. They screwed up. What they really gave them was the means to destroy their masters. They taught them how to build, how to grow food, use medicine, a thousand and one other things . . . including how to use weapons. And once they had that knowledge, the humans used it. We drove them from their lands, chased them across the world, and eventually wiped them out. Completely.’

‘They must’ve been able to put up a fight, though,’ objected Chase. ‘Look how big he is.’

‘Size doesn’t necessarily mean strength. All the statues we’ve seen of the Veteres are tall and thin.’ Nina brought the torch closer to the skull. ‘They had the advantage in intelligence - look how much bigger the brain must be than a human’s. It’s like comparing our brain to a chimp’s. But his teeth are small, the incisors are blunt - the Veteres were probably omnivorous, like us, but these teeth are closer to a herbivore’s.’

‘So they had the brains,’ said Sophia, ‘but we still destroyed them.’

‘We had something they didn’t - or they didn’t have enough of it,’ Nina realised. ‘Aggression. They were smarter, but we were more vicious.’ She gave Sophia a cutting look. ‘More willing to kill.’

‘Spare me the sanctimony,’ Sophia replied. ‘If they hadn’t been, none of us would be here. It was survival of the fittest, Darwinism in action.’

Nina couldn’t deny that. But she still felt sadness as she regarded the shrouded corpse. Whether their motives had been selfish or altruistic she would never know, but the Veteres had still given the knowledge of their civilisation to the early humans . . . and in so doing, brought about their own destruction as surely as if they had handed a gun to an angry child. Forced to flee, the Veteres had used part of their knowledge that they hadn’t passed on to their attackers - shipbuilding and sailing - to cross the seas and set up new homes, but eventually the cycles of climate change had lowered the waters and opened the way for the humans to pursue.

And kill.

‘Wait a minute,’ said Chase. ‘If the Garden of Eden and the cherubim and all this were made by these guys, why are they in the Bible?’

The answer was now clear, but at the same time Nina had to struggle even to contemplate it. Although her own upbringing in New York by scientist parents had been anything but evangelical, the seed of religion had still inevitably taken root within her psyche simply through cultural osmosis. But the evidence before her had to be acknowledged. ‘Because . . . because the Veteres taught the humans their beliefs. Our religions are based on theirs - one god, one creator. And the story of Genesis is a distorted race memory of what once happened here. Some of the Veteres must have made a last stand to protect what was most holy to them. This place.’ She gestured at the walls around them. ‘Their sacred ground. And the library, their “tree of knowledge” - which the humans “ate” from. And they were cast out of Eden for it.’

‘So they chased the Veteres all the way to Australia? Bloody hell, talk about holding a grudge.’

‘Darwinism again,’ Sophia said. ‘If you have two species competing for the same ecological niche, eventually one of them will destroy the other.’

‘Maybe they weren’t entirely destroyed,’ said Nina. ‘They survived as memories, at least - they might have lived on at a genetic level too. Maybe there was some interbreeding, just as there was between humans and Neanderthals. It might explain why I could affect the earth energy fields and you couldn’t. Like I could with Excalibur.’

Sophia sneered. ‘Oh, are you also saying your superior intellect comes from you being a descendant of these creatures?’

‘No,’ Nina replied tightly. ‘But there’s obviously some connection between the Veteres and the Atlanteans, because they used the same numerical system. And I am descended from the Atlanteans. So in answer to your question: bite me.’

Chase moved between them. ‘Okay, so what do we do now?’

‘This is our proof,’ said Nina, indicating the body. ‘DNA and carbon-dating tests will provide absolutely irrefutable evidence of an intelligent species that pre-dated humanity. If we can get this out of here and keep it out of the Covenant’s hands, then we still have a chance to expose them to the world—’

‘It sounds,’ said a Swiss-accented voice, ‘as though you are going back on our deal, Dr Wilde.’

Nina, Chase and Sophia whirled to see Vogler in the doorway, a gun in his hand.

‘I thought you didn’t make a deal with them,’ Chase said accusingly.

‘Not the time or the place, Eddie,’ Nina replied as she raised her hands.

Vogler stepped into the room, regarding the sarcophagus and its contents with interest. ‘So they really were another species.’

‘You knew?’ Nina asked.

‘After the structure of DNA was discovered in the 1950s, the Vatican secretly had the remains obtained by the Covenant’s predecessor organisation analysed. Even though the tests at that time were primitive, the evidence pointed towards it - which led to the creation of the Covenant itself. But they were only small samples; we never found a complete body - until now.’

‘And now that you have one . . . what are you going to do with it?’

Vogler stared at the corpse. ‘A good question. But for now, come with me.’ He waved them towards the door with his gun. ‘Professor Ribbsley is about to arrive.’

Vogler took them back into the field of flowers, where Callum was waiting, along with two more Covenant troopers. Trampled trails led to the edge of the plateau, where Chase saw several carbon fibre hooks on the rocky edge. Rather than running the gauntlet of the temple, Vogler’s team had fired grappling hooks up the cliff and scaled the lines attached to them. ‘This all you’ve got left?’ he asked mockingly. ‘The Covenant’s goon platoon must be pretty short-staffed by now.’

‘There will be more to replace them,’ said Vogler. He looked at Nina. ‘But . . . there may be no need.’

A loud noise caught everyone’s attention: a helicopter hovering above the largest hole in the ceiling. The gap was tight, at one point little more than a metre’s clearance to each side of the blades, but the pilot skilfully brought the aircraft through. As it turned towards the plateau, a flash of white clothing in the cockpit revealed the pilot’s identity: Ribbsley.

Petals whirled like a scented snowstorm as the helicopter descended, settling near the top of the cliff path. Ribbsley emerged and walked through the flowers as if out for an afternoon stroll. ‘I must say,’ he called as he approached the waiting group, ‘this is rather impressive. The actual Garden of Eden, an entire self-contained ecosystem, right in the middle of one of the most awful wastelands on the planet. Remarkable!’ He gave Vogler a quizzical look. ‘Your numbers seem to be rather thinned, Killian. And where’s Zamal?’

‘Dead,’ Vogler told him.

‘Ah. Terrible shame.’ There was not even the pretence of sincerity in Ribbsley’s voice. ‘Good job I decided to stay in Khartoum until you found this place, then.’ He turned to Nina. ‘Or, I suspect, until you found it, Dr Wilde. Congratulations.’

Nina’s reply was equally insincere. ‘Why, thank you, Professor. That makes it all worthwhile.’

He smiled, barely giving Chase a glance before moving on to Sophia, his relieved response now genuine. ‘Sophia, thank God. Are you all right?’

‘A little bruised,’ she said with a smile, ‘but still alive and kicking.’

‘Thank God,’ he repeated, taking her hands in his and gazing into her eyes with a mixture of longing and lust before embracing her tightly and whispering something into her ear. She replied in kind; Nina couldn’t make out what either had said, but as they moved apart she caught a flicker of expression on Sophia’s face.

Anticipation?

Nobody else had noticed, Ribbsley blocking their view. He turned back to Vogler. ‘So, I understand that we have an interesting find. Show me.’

‘This way,’ said Vogler. He gestured for his men to bring the prisoners before heading back to the mausoleum. Ribbsley followed, Callum at the rear of the line, briefly reaching into his jacket.

While the soldiers watched over Nina, Chase and Sophia in the main room, the others went into the burial chamber to examine the body, emerging a few minutes later. Ribbsley turned his attention to the inscriptions on the walls. ‘So the story of the expulsion from Paradise in Genesis really was true . . . from a certain point of view. I suppose we’ll never know how much of the distortion of events was deliberate and how much was down to Chinese whispers, but it’s not important right now. What is important,’ he said to Vogler, ‘is what the Covenant plans to do about it. You’re the only member of the Triumvirate still alive, so it seems to be entirely your decision.’

‘So it does,’ said Vogler. He stared through the doorway at the body before turning away - not to Ribbsley, but to Nina. ‘In the past, things would have been very simple. The Covenant had a specific purpose: to locate and destroy all evidence of the Veteres and their civilisation - anything that could undermine the creation story in the Bible and the other holy books. We would simply have obliterated this entire place.’

‘So what’s stopping you now?’ Nina asked, challenging.

‘I think you know.’ Vogler pointed at the doorway. ‘Out there is the greatest, the holiest place in history. The Garden of Eden, Dr Wilde! Paradise on earth, where God himself once walked! Destroying it would be . . . blasphemy. A mortal sin.’

‘What, worse than all your others?’

He prickled at the barb, but didn’t respond to it. ‘The discovery of the Garden of Eden doesn’t undermine Genesis,’ he said. ‘It confirms it. If Eden is revealed to the world, then it will show the faithful that they were right to believe.’

‘You might be right,’ said Nina. ‘Except for one minor inconvenience.’ She indicated the ancient body. ‘The Garden of Eden was his paradise, not ours.’

‘Which is why I have a dilemma - and why you may be the one to help me solve it.’

‘Why her?’ Ribbsley demanded. ‘In fact, why is she even still alive?’

‘A good question,’ Callum added. His gaze fixed on Sophia. ‘Why are any of them still alive, Vogler?’

‘Because she will be believed,’ said Vogler. ‘The world’s most famous archaeologist, the discoverer of Atlantis, and the tombs of King Arthur and Hercules? If she is the one who reveals that Eden has been found, everyone will accept her story.’

Nina gave him a humourless half-smile. ‘But if I tell the world about finding Eden, I’d tell the whole story - including the part about the Veteres being its original occupants. It’d be kind of hypocritical otherwise.’

‘But you’re already a practised hypocrite, Dr Wilde,’ Vogler countered. ‘You lied to the world about the real reasons behind Kristian Frost’s search for Atlantis. And I’m sure you lied in your official report to the UN about Excalibur being lost at sea.’

‘That - not telling the whole story about Atlantis was for security reasons,’ said Nina, wrong-footed, and trying to avoid Callum’s accusing stare. ‘If I’d announced that the discovery of Atlantis led to the world coming this close,’ she held her thumb and forefinger a bare inch apart, ‘to having a plague unleashed on it, there would have been total chaos!’

‘And what do you think will happen if you tell the billions of people who follow Christianity or Islam or Judaism that you have undeniable proof their beliefs are wrong?’

‘I—’ Nina began, before stopping as she considered the question. ‘Wait, you’ve seen the proof, and your beliefs haven’t changed,’ she said, changing the subject to avoid having to give an answer.

‘My beliefs are unshakeable. I would not be able to do what I do if they were not. Accepting the existence of the Veteres does not mean denying the existence of God. But there are many who will feel angry and afraid at having their beliefs challenged. And when people are angry and afraid . . . that is when order breaks down.’

‘Order, and obedience,’ Sophia said cuttingly. ‘Which is what religion is really all about, isn’t it? It wouldn’t be good to have people questioning what they’ve been told to believe.’

‘Mr Callum, if she speaks out of turn again, you can shoot her,’ said Vogler. Callum’s expression made it clear that he thought the decision was long overdue. Ribbsley watched the American closely, face tight. ‘Dr Wilde, do you remember what Cardinal di Bonaventura told you about the way the Vatican dealt with controversial scientific theories?’

‘Yeah. It accepted them.’

‘Over time. The Big Bang, evolution . . . the Church now accepts such things as fact. But that acceptance took years, even decades. Not because those within the Vatican resisted the ideas, but because the faithful would resist them if they were thrust upon them all at once. But if they are gradually introduced . . .’

‘. . . they’re believed,’ Nina concluded.

‘Yes. They eventually become part of catechism, and cannot be denied. But when the truth will seem so controversial, so dangerous, that truth needs time to be accepted.’ He looked back at the entrance. ‘You have found the Garden of Eden. I . . . I cannot allow it to be destroyed. It must be revealed to the world. But the Veteres are an integral part of Eden - yet I cannot reveal them to the world without risking chaos. Do you see my dilemma?’

‘Yeah. But I’m starting to see what you’ve got in mind for a solution.’

‘And do you approve?’

‘No. But I approve of the alternative even less.’

‘Mind filling the rest of us in?’ Chase asked.

‘He’s giving me two choices,’ Nina told him. ‘I tell the world about finding Eden, but don’t mention anything about the Veteres - for years. In the meantime, the Covenant gradually introduces the idea of them into the public consciousness, while they get theologians to work out ways to explain their existence that don’t contradict Genesis. Then, by the time their existence is actually revealed, the idea’s been around long enough to neutralise the shock value. Am I right?’ Vogler nodded.

‘And option B?’

She glanced at Vogler’s gun. ‘Bang, aargh, thud.’

‘Yeah, I thought so.’

‘So what is your decision, Dr Wilde?’ said Vogler. ‘One way or another, Eden must be revealed to the world . . . but whether by you or by someone else is entirely your choice. Make it now.’

Nina turned to Chase. ‘Eddie? This affects you too - what do you think?’

He shrugged. ‘Either cave in to these arseholes and lie to the world, or be dead? They’re both crap options, but the second one’s definitely crappier.’

‘I know.’ She squeezed his hand sadly, then reluctantly turned back to Vogler. ‘I don’t have much choice, do I? I . . . I accept your offer. At least this way, some truth will come out. Eventually.’

‘A wise decision,’ said Vogler.

‘Hardly!’ Ribbsley spluttered. ‘Do you really think she’ll go along with it?’

‘I think she’s a person of her word, yes.’

‘It doesn’t matter what you think,’ said Callum. ‘It’s the wrong choice.’

Vogler rounded on him. ‘That is not for you to decide, Mr Callum.’

‘Actually, it is.’ He drew his gun - and shot Vogler.

38

Nina gasped as Vogler fell to the floor, blood gushing from his abdomen. Before anyone could react, Callum unleashed a rapid-fire spray of bullets at the remaining Covenant troopers, felling them.

Vogler’s rifle landed near Chase. He was about to drop and grab it, but Callum had already seen the danger and was jabbing his gun at him. ‘Don’t even think about it!’ He gestured for Chase, Nina and Sophia to move towards the doorway.

Ribbsley retreated to the other side of the room. ‘Some explanation, please, Mr Callum?’

‘I’m correcting the Covenant’s bad choice.’ He reached into his jacket, flicking a switch on something within. ‘Mr President, did you hear all that?’

‘Loud and clear, Mr Callum.’ The voice was rendered hollow and metallic by the radio’s small loudspeaker, but it was still unmistakable: Victor Dalton, President of the United States of America. ‘Report your situation.’

‘All remaining Covenant forces are dead or,’ he glanced at Vogler, who was weakly clutching the bullet wound, ‘disabled. Still here are Chase, Professor Ribbsley, Dr Wilde . . . and Sophia Blackwood.’

‘Hello, Victor,’ said Sophia, almost chattily. ‘It’s been a while.’

There was a pause before Dalton spoke again, choosing to ignore her. ‘Mr Callum, I take it that the Garden of Eden contains what we feared?’

‘Yes, sir. Definitive proof of a non-human civilisation pre-dating mankind - which influenced the story told in the Book of Genesis.’

Another pause. ‘I see. In that case, Mr Callum - codeword: Revelation.’

‘Understood, sir,’ said Callum. Still covering Nina, Chase and Sophia, he adjusted a setting on the radio. ‘Abaddon, Abaddon, this is Archangel. Do you copy?’

‘Roger, Archangel,’ came a distorted Texan voice, ‘this is Abaddon. I read you.’

‘Abaddon, you have authorisation to proceed with the operation, these co-ordinates. Give me estimated time to initiation.’

‘Archangel, I estimate fifteen minutes to initiation. Will that give you sufficient time to egress area?’

‘Affirmative, Abaddon. Begin operation now. Archangel out.’

‘Confirmed, Archangel. Commencing operation. Out.’

Callum flicked the switch back. ‘Mr President, the operation is under way.’

‘What operation?’ Nina demanded.

Dalton sounded faintly amused. ‘Abaddon, Dr Wilde, is the codename of a B-2 stealth bomber that took off from our base in Uganda about an hour ago and is now circling over Sudanese airspace at sixty thousand feet. Mr Callum just gave the order for it to drop two MOPs on what the pilots have been told is a high-value terrorist target.’

‘MOPs?’ Nina suspected she wouldn’t like the meaning of the acronym.

‘Massive Ordnance Penetrators,’ said Callum. ‘Thirty-thousand-pound bunker-busters.’

‘Earthquake bombs,’ added Chase.

‘Ah. But - but why? What do you gain from destroying Eden?’

‘That’s not your concern any more, Dr Wilde. Mr Callum, I’ll let you get moving. But one last thing - you know your orders. Carry them out . . . starting with Sophia Blackwood.’

‘My pleasure, sir. Callum out.’ He switched off the radio, then stepped forward, shifting his gun from Chase to Sophia.

‘Kill me, and Victor’s career is over,’ she said. ‘The recording of us together will be released.’

‘You’re already officially dead,’ he reminded her with a cold grin. ‘Nothing happened. The president’s position is secure.’

‘Oh, nice job with the blackmail,’ Nina muttered as Sophia’s face fell. ‘You didn’t think of that?’

‘Actually, I did. But I was rather hoping nobody else had.’

Callum’s smile widened as he took aim at Sophia’s heart—

Blam!

The gunshot echoed round the chamber - but it hadn’t come from Callum’s gun, which flew from his hand to land inside the burial chamber. The white-haired man yelled in pain.

‘Sorry, old chap,’ said Ribbsley, his own smoking pistol tracking Callum. ‘But I can’t let you do that.’

‘Good shot,’ Chase said in sarcastic admiration.

‘Before I entered academia, I was an officer in the Rhodesian army. Not a skill-set I draw on very often, but it can be useful.’

Sophia gave him a relieved smile. ‘You cut that rather close, Gabriel.’

‘I knew I could trust you when you gave me back my laptop in Australia, so you could trust me too.’

‘You gave him back his laptop?’ Nina said, angry.

‘Just hedging my bets,’ said Sophia, joining Ribbsley. ‘After all, my long-term prospects for survival with you and Eddie weren’t really any higher than with the Covenant.’

‘Well, you’re safe now,’ said Ribbsley as she picked up a dead soldier’s rifle. ‘Everything’s worked out very well. We found Eden, we have a surprisingly intact Veteres body, and Callum even took care of the Covenant for us.’

‘We also have a stealth bomber bearing down on our heads, and less than fifteen minutes to get clear.’ She looked at her watch. ‘Less than fourteen, in fact.’

‘Once we reach the helicopter, we’ll be out of here in two. Keep them covered.’ He picked up Vogler’s SIG, then entered the burial chamber, reaching into the sarcophagus and tearing at the shroud.

‘What are you doing?’ Nina asked.

‘An insurance policy. And a retirement policy,’ Ribbsley told her as he ripped away the last of the cloth, then gripped the corpse by its neck. ‘The Covenant may have lost its leaders, but it still exists. With this - or rather, with the threat of the DNA evidence it’ll provide - I’ll be able to renegotiate my terms with the new leaders.’

‘Trade the proof for money?’ said Nina in disgust.

‘Something like that.’

Everyone reacted in momentary surprise as Vogler spoke, his quavering voice revealing the intense agony he was suffering. ‘Not . . . the deal . . . we made . . .’ He went limp.

‘The deal you made is no longer relevant,’ Ribbsley told him, straining at the skeleton. ‘Because soon you’ll be dead, and so will Dr Wilde, and this entire place will be a smoking hole in the ground. A shame, a waste, but one has to make the best of changing circumstances.’ With a last grunt, he tore the skull from the body with a dry crack. He looked into its decayed face, then wrapped it in the torn piece of shroud and returned to the larger chamber. ‘Time we were going.’

‘One minute, Gabriel,’ said Sophia. She smiled again, this time with a cat-like malice. ‘There are some people I’ve waited a long time to deal with. And so many choices! Who should I kill first?’ She pointed the gun at Callum. ‘My charming chaperone, perhaps? I’m really going to enjoy watching your boss squirm. Or . . .’ the weapon came round to Chase, ‘the last - and least - of my ex-husbands? ’

‘Hey!’ said Chase, offended.

The muzzle settled on Nina. ‘Or you, Nina?’ Sophia fingered the scar on her cheek as she moved closer. ‘You’ve already given me so much to remember you by.’

‘Glad I won’t be forgotten,’ said Nina.

‘Oh, I won’t be giving you much thought. The media will, though, what with such an ignominious end to your career. The discoverer of Atlantis, fired from her post in disgrace before disappearing and dying in anonymity. Unmourned. Sad, really.’

‘At least she won’t have people lining up to piss on her grave,’ Chase said.

‘They can do whatever they like to my grave, as long as I’m not in it. Unlike our religious friends here,’ said Sophia, ‘I believe that you only get one life, and all that matters in it is winning. I’m legally dead - a spot of plastic surgery, a deal with the Covenant, and Gabriel and I will be free to do exactly as we please. The best revenge, as they say, is living well . . . and I intend to live very well.’

Ribbsley walked towards the main door, looking back impatiently. ‘Neither of us will be living if we don’t get out of here, Sophia. Just kill them and let’s go.’

‘Oh, very well,’ sighed Sophia, for the briefest moment glancing at him—

Chase’s hand lashed out, trying to knock the gun from her grip.

He wasn’t quite close enough, only catching the weapon a glancing blow. Sophia instinctively fired, the bullet slicing past Chase to hit the wall behind him. Startled, then enraged, she whipped the gun round at his chest, about to fire at point-blank range—

Nina whipped the penknife from her pocket and stabbed its blade deep into the back of her wrist.

Sophia shrieked and jumped away, trying to fire - but the blade was jammed between the bones of her forearm, paralysing the tendons.

Chase was about to lunge at her, until he saw Callum diving for one of the dead troopers’ rifles. Ribbsley was also bringing up his own pistol. He immediately changed tactics, grabbing Nina and leaping with her into the burial chamber. He shoved her away from the entrance as he searched for Callum’s fallen gun.

Sophia had also seen Callum snatching up the rifle. She hurled herself over one of the stone benches and took cover behind it, pulling the blade from her wrist. ‘Bitch!’ she hissed as she tossed the bloodied penknife away and painfully flexed her fingers.

Callum was about to fire at her, but Ribbsley got off the first shot as he found cover behind another bench near the entrance. Callum was left with no choice but to throw himself into the second, unexplored, burial chamber, disappearing into the darkness.

Chase found Callum’s gun, a Smith and Wesson Sigma 40P, and snatched it up before pressing his back against the wall beside the entrance. He examined the weapon. Ribbsley’s shot had dented the slide, the steel buckled forward of the ejection port. He racked it experimentally, hand over the port to catch the unfired bullet. The slug plopped coldly into his palm as he pulled the slide fully back - but it was extremely stiff, not moving smoothly along its rails. If he fired, there was a very high chance of a jam. He would have to rack the slide manually for each shot. Quickly ejecting the magazine, he clicked the stray bullet into its top before slapping it back into place.

‘Sophia!’ Ribbsley shouted. ‘Are you okay?’

‘That bitch stabbed me!’ she yelled back.

‘Get over here, I’ll cover you!’ Crouching, the professor looked round the side of the bench, gun fixed on the entrance to the second burial chamber.

Chase risked a look round his own doorway. He caught a glimpse of Sophia as she shuffled quickly between two of the benches, but not enough of her to take a shot. He leaned out slightly further, trying to spot Callum - and jerked back as Ribbsley changed targets and took a shot at him, the bullet pitting the stone beside his head.

Another gunshot - but this was closer. Callum darted out to take a shot at Ribbsley, forcing him to duck. The American was about to make a run for the cover of another bench when Chase fired at him. The bullet went wide, but the startled Callum still flinched back into the dark room.

Chase looked at his gun. The spent casing had ejected, but the slide was stuck in the locked-back position, even though there were still bullets in the magazine. Cursing, he forced it forward until he felt the mechanism chamber the next round.

Sophia took advantage of the distraction to hurry to Ribbsley’s position, picking up another SIG assault rifle from one of the dead men en route. Ribbsley looked in dismay at her blood-soaked wrist. ‘My God, you’re—’

‘Never mind that,’ she snapped. ‘Get to the chopper and start it up - I’ll keep them pinned down here until you’re at takeoff speed.’ He looked about to object, but her barked order of ‘Go on, go!’ silenced him. Instead, he waited until she was ready to fire, then made a run for the exit as she blasted two shots at Callum’s position and a single one at Chase’s before dropping down again.

Nina jumped as the bullet hit the burial chamber’s back wall. ‘What’s happening?’

‘Got a bit of a Mexican stand-off,’ said Chase, peering cautiously round the doorway. ‘I’ve got Callum pinned, he’s got us pinned, and Sophia’s got a good angle on us both.’ He could see Sophia’s shadow in the light coming through the mausoleum’s entrance, but she herself was in full cover.

‘How long have we got left?’

‘Twelve minutes, give or take.’

‘How are we going to get out of the cave in twelve minutes?’

‘Let’s worry about getting out of this room first.’ He peered round the doorway again; the brief glance revealed a rifle pointing at him from inside the second chamber and he pulled back as Callum fired, the bullet slamming a chunk of stone from the wall. A moment later, Sophia took a shot at the American. Chase took another look to see Callum retreating into the shadows. He fired at him, the Sigma’s slide jamming again. ‘This is fucking ridiculous!’ he growled as he reloaded. ‘None of us can move!’

‘Sophia will in a minute,’ said Nina, hearing a rising sound from outside. The helicopter’s engine.

‘Great, and we won’t be able to go after her because Callum’ll shoot us, and he can’t go after her because I’ll shoot him!’

Callum had reached the same conclusion. Nina and Chase heard him speak urgently into his radio. ‘Abaddon, Abaddon, this is Archangel, urgent! This is a code alpha hold, repeat, a code alpha hold order.’ The response was too muted for them to make out.

‘What’s he doing?’ Nina asked.

‘Telling the stealth not to drop its bombs,’ said Chase.

‘Well, that’s great! Isn’t it?’

‘Yeah, until he tells ’em to start the clock again. It’s still on its way.’ Another glance; Sophia had raised the SIG. She fired two shots at Callum’s position, and Chase unleashed one at hers, the bullet cracking stone as she dropped.

He racked the slide again. The helicopter sounded almost at takeoff speed - which meant Sophia would be about to move. With nobody to give her covering fire, he could guess her tactics: switch the SIG to full auto and spray both doorways with bullets as she retreated.

If he could catch her as she rose to fire . . .

He moved back into firing position, saw Sophia jumping up from behind the bench, took aim—

And was forced to throw himself back into cover - Callum was fixing his sights on him!

Grit sprayed into his face as another rifle bullet cratered the stone. ‘Twat!’ Chase snarled, a rattle of automatic fire and a hailstorm of lead against the walls telling him he’d missed his one chance.

The firing stopped. Sophia had made it out of the mausoleum.

Which still left Callum to deal with.

The only thing stopping him from escaping was Chase, and vice versa. They would have to face off against each other—

Now!

Chase sprang round the doorway at almost the same moment Callum came into view in the other chamber. The Englishman had the advantage that his Sigma was quicker to aim than the assault rifle, but the other man had firepower on his side . . .

Chase fired first - but his damaged gun’s sights were slightly off. The shot zipped past Callum to impact inside the other burial chamber. Callum returned fire as Chase pulled back, struggling to cycle his recalcitrant weapon. ‘Come on, you fucking thing—’

The next bullet was chambered. He whipped back out, instinctively compensating for the misaligned sights as he fired, a moment too late to catch Callum.

The American reappeared - but not lining up another shot. Instead he ran out into the open. He had realised Chase was having trouble with the gun, and used the vital few seconds to reach one of the dead troopers and snatch a hand grenade from his webbing as Chase fumbled with the Sigma.

The slide cycled; bullet loaded.

Too late.

Callum had pulled the pin, lobbing the grenade through the doorway.

Chase instantly forgot about shooting him. He had less than four seconds to find cover before the grenade exploded, filling the room with a storm of shrapnel.

He pulled Nina with him.

Three seconds.

Hiding behind the sarcophagus wouldn’t be enough to save them.

Two seconds.

The only protection was inside it.

One—

Nina half jumped, was half thrown into the ancient stone coffin as Chase leapt in on top of her and pulled the edge of the heavy lid.

Zero.

Sophia heard the explosion as the helicopter took off, dust and smoke swirling from the mausoleum a second later. Either Chase or Callum had got hold of a grenade and used it against the other - but who was still standing?

Not that it mattered. Callum might have ordered a postponement of the bombing, but since Dalton wanted Eden destroyed, it wouldn’t be long before the attack resumed, whether Callum was clear or not.

She still had the rifle, keeping it fixed on the entrance as Ribbsley manoeuvred the chopper towards the cavern’s ceiling. Seconds passed. No sign of anyone. Beside her, Ribbsley frowned in concentration as he watched the narrowing gap between the rock and the tips of the rotor blades.

Movement in the entrance. White hair. Callum.

Sophia fired a burst, forcing him back inside. Ribbsley winced at the noise, but held the chopper steady, guiding it into position directly beneath the hole. Callum reappeared, trying to bring his own rifle to bear, but Sophia’s last bullets made him retreat again.

Ribbsley brought the helicopter to full power. Backwash from the rotors against the rocky ceiling buffeted them, and then they were clear, emerging into the bright desert sunlight.

Sophia took a final look down at the Garden of Eden as the helicopter turned east, towards Khartoum. A brief glimpse of the statue and the plateau, the mausoleum at its heart amidst the carpet of flowers - then it was gone as they moved away.

Ribbsley let out a relieved breath. ‘We did it. We did it!’ He glanced at the wrapped skull in Sophia’s footwell. ‘I think that should give us plenty of leverage over the Covenant. We’ll be able to get a new identity for you . . . and a substantial sum of money, of course.’

‘Can you trust them?’

‘If di Bonaventura becomes the acting head of the Catholic contingent, which I’m sure he will, then yes. If I pitch it to him as a business opportunity rather than full-on blackmail, I think we’ll get what we want.’

Sophia smiled. ‘Marvellous. And then, I think a little petty revenge on Victor is in order.’

‘I thought it might be,’ said Ribbsley with a grin. ‘Who were you shooting at, by the way? Chase or Callum?’

‘Callum.’

‘So Chase is dead? And Dr Wilde too, presumably. Not before time.’

‘I know. Although I would have preferred to kill them myself . . .’ She looked back at the retreating mesa.

‘What is it?’ Ribbsley asked.

‘Something I once said to Eddie. That I wasn’t going to make the mistake of assuming he was dead until I actually saw his body.’

‘Even if Callum didn’t kill him, he’s still going to be blown to bits when the bombs hit. There’s no way he’ll get out of that cave in time.’

‘Let’s hope.’ All the same, she stared back at the mesa until it was obscured from view by the fuselage as the helicopter turned. ‘Goodbye, Eddie,’ she said quietly.

Callum glared up at the opening, then shook off his anger at Sophia’s escape. He had more immediate problems.

He looked back into the mausoleum. Dust was still swirling, but the air was clear enough for him to tell that there had been no movement from the burial chamber, no sounds of life.

Shouldering the rifle, he ran across the plateau, feet decapitating flowers as he headed for the grappling lines. Below, the two Humvees were parked beside the lake almost underneath the giant statue’s outstretched hand, their tracks leading back into the jungle. The 4x4s had flattened most of the obstacles they encountered on their way round the far end of the ravine and through the jungle; by retracing the route, he could reach the tunnel before the bombs hit.

He tossed all but one of the grapnels over the edge of the cliff, taking hold of the remaining line and rappelling down it. Once at the bottom, he shook the line until the grapnel came loose, clanking down the rockface. On the extremely slim chance that anybody was still alive, they now had no way down except by the long and precarious path behind the statue.

They wouldn’t even have time to get halfway. He reactivated the radio. ‘Abaddon, Abaddon, this is Archangel.’

‘Archangel, we copy,’ the B-2 pilot answered.

‘Give me your current estimated time to initiation.’

‘Estimate ten minutes, Archangel. But we are still in a code alpha hold. Do you wish to resume operation?’

Callum ran to the nearest Humvee. ‘Confirm, Abaddon. Resume operation. Take this place out.’ He started the engine, and set off in a spray of soil.

39

‘Well,’ said Chase, ‘this is cosy.’

‘Three’s a crowd, though,’ Nina replied, horribly aware despite the total darkness that she was lying on top of a headless corpse.

The crack of the grenade explosion and the boom as the sarcophagus’s stone lid slammed down had come simultaneously. The body’s ribcage had collapsed beneath them with an unpleasant crunch, stubs of bone poking at Nina’s chest.

‘Depends who the third one is. But it’s definitely not this bloke.’ Chase shifted, trying to arch his back against the stone slab. ‘Let’s get this open.’

He strained, pushing himself up. There was a faint rasp from the lid, but no light entered the sarcophagus. ‘Bollocks,’ he muttered. ‘Shift over a bit, I need more room.’

Nina tried to move, but to one side was nothing but solid stone, and on the other a rattling collection of dry bones. ‘Sorry . . .’ She instead attempted to push herself up underneath Chase to give him an extra boost.

‘Yeah, that’s hot,’ he said, pushing again, ‘but . . . nnrgh! Not much help. Can you turn on your back?’

‘Eddie, I can barely turn my hands over in this space.’ She tried anyway, but was unable to do more than twist a little.

‘Have to make do, then. When I say, push up against me as hard as you can. Ready?’

‘Just a sec, I’ve got a bone stuck in me.’

‘That’s my job.’

‘God, Eddie!’ She fidgeted until the offending fragment dropped away. ‘Okay, ready.’

‘All right . . . Push!’

They both forced themselves upwards. The rasp was louder this time, the heavy cover moving slightly, but still not enough. Chase leaned as far as he could towards the side opposite the hinges and pushed even harder. The lid grated again, for a moment a thin line of pale light appearing along its edge . . . before the sheer weight forced him down again. In the confined space, he couldn’t get enough leverage.

‘Buggeration and fuckery!’ he spat. ‘I almost had it.’

‘It took three of us to open it before,’ Nina pointed out.

‘Maybe we can call Callum back,’ replied Chase, pain flaring in his knees as he pushed again. The faint line of light reappeared, widening slightly before wavering, then narrowing once more. ‘Shit, come on, come on!’

The light became a razor-thin slit, then vanished . . .

And suddenly widened again.

Nina and Chase both gasped as some of the pressure on their bodies was released, the lid rising by several inches. Chase slid one knee forward, able to brace himself and push harder. He shoved an arm through the gap, working his head and shoulders after it . . . to see Vogler, face twisted and sweating, holding up the stone slab.

He didn’t have time to ask for an explanation. Instead, he pushed up with all his might. Vogler cried in agony and slumped against the sarcophagus as the lid passed the tipping point - but instead of coming to a stop as before, kept going. There was a nerve-scraping crunch as the hinges broke, and the lid crashed to the floor, one corner breaking off.

Chase slumped, breathing heavily. ‘Nina, get out.’ She clambered from the sarcophagus, looking at Vogler with puzzlement - and suspicion. Chase did the same. ‘All right, I’ll bite - why’d you help us?’

Vogler pressed a hand against his bullet wound, the agony on his face easing slightly. ‘Dalton betrayed the Covenant,’ he said, voice little more than a choked whisper. ‘So did Ribbsley. Somebody’s got to tell the Cardinal what happened. I don’t think I’m going to make it out of here.’

‘I don’t think we are, either,’ Nina said, looking at her watch with dismay. ‘Nine minutes! It’ll take us longer than that just to get down to the temple!’

‘We need a quicker way,’ said Chase, climbing out. ‘Those grappling lines - no, shit, Callum’ll have chucked them.’

‘Could we jump into the lake?’ Nina suggested.

‘We wouldn’t be able to jump far enough.’ His eyes widened. ‘Unless we get a boost!’ He rushed round the sarcophagus to the fallen lid. ‘Vogler! Are you going to die any second, or can you help us kick Callum’s arse?’

Vogler gave him a strained rictus grin. ‘What do you want to do?’

‘This lid - we need to get it to the statue, fast as we can!’

Nina looked at the cracked slab. ‘What for?’

‘Quick way down. Nina, give him a hand.’

‘He’s . . . he’s kinda got blood squirting out of his stomach, Eddie.’

‘I can do it,’ Vogler rasped, moving stiff-legged to the lid.

‘Okay,’ said Chase. ‘I’ll lift this end; Nina, get that end as high as you can so he doesn’t have to bend down too much. Soon as you’ve got it, we move and don’t stop until we get to the statue!’

Nina, still uncertain what he intended, crouched and took hold of the broken corner. Neck muscles bulging, Chase let out a strangled roar as he lifted the slab. Her end lighter because of the missing corner, Nina managed to do the same, but it was still heavy enough to hurt. ‘Can’t - hold it!’ she gasped.

Vogler stepped forward and gripped the slab - and screamed in pain.

‘Put it down, put it down!’ Nina begged, seeing more blood gush from his wound.

‘No!’ Vogler croaked. His whole body shuddering, he twisted to push one of his elbows against his abdomen. Another noise of agony escaped from his mouth - but he kept hold of the slab.

‘Okay, go!’ Chase shouted. Step by clumsy step, they swung the lid round and carried it through the doorway into the outer chamber.

‘You holding up?’ Chase called. Vogler gurgled something that might have been an affirmation, but Nina could tell that he was close to breaking point.

They couldn’t stop, though. They were running out of time.

They reached the entrance and moved out amongst the flowers. No chance to appreciate their beauty one last time as they trampled them, weaving to avoid the gravestones. The back of the statue loomed ahead, the little bridge leading to its shoulders. ‘Okay, get it across,’ Chase grunted.

Nina looked down. The switchback cliff path dropped vertiginously away below. ‘Hope it can take the weight.’

Chase went first, shuffling on to the narrow stone crossing. Nina shifted position at the other end of the slab so she and Vogler could both fit on the bridge at once. Her arm and shoulder muscles were ablaze, but she tightened her grip and moved step by step after Chase.

He was halfway across. Two-thirds. The surface of the bridge was covered in dirt and bird droppings. Detritus fell from the edges as he advanced, some dislodged by his feet - and some shaken loose as the stone blocks rocked under his weight.

‘Oh, shit,’ he said. ‘Come on, faster, faster! I don’t think it’s gonna hold!’

Nina tried to move more quickly, but Vogler gasped and spat out blood. The movement of the stone lid had momentarily pulled his arm away from his body, releasing pressure on his wound. ‘Oh God, I’m sorry!’ she cried, slowing again.

Vogler forced an unconvincing smile, his face a ghastly white. ‘Not a problem . . . just get us across . . .’

Chase reached the far end, the last block dropping half an inch with a clunk as he stepped on to the statue’s shoulders. He brought the slab round towards its outstretched left arm. ‘Just a couple more feet, come on!’

Nina and Vogler followed, bumping against each other as the slab turned. Nina made footfall on the statue, the Swiss Guard a step behind—

The stone block beneath his foot gave way.

It slipped sideways, smaller blocks ripping loose and falling away. Unsupported, the rest of the bridge broke apart and tumbled down the cliff to smash on the ground far below.

Vogler fell. The heavy slab dropped from Nina’s hands, the broken end barely missing her feet. The impact jarred the other end from Chase’s grip, sending him reeling backwards. He caught the statue’s carved ear, just stopping himself from going over the edge.

Vogler dangled by his fingertips from the broken stub of the bridge. Even as Nina watched, one of his straining fingers lost its grip. ‘Eddie! He’s going to fall! Help me!’

‘No!’ Vogler gurgled as she grabbed his sleeve, blood bubbling from his mouth. ‘No - time! You have to - tell the Cardinal!’ He looked Nina in the eye, fear and panic and pain suddenly replaced by the serenity of self-sacrifice. ‘Tell the Cardinal,’ he repeated.

He closed his eyes.

And let go.

Nina couldn’t keep hold, already weakened by the effort of carrying the slab. Chase seized her from behind to stop her from toppling after him as Vogler plunged, not even screaming. A wet thump echoed up the cliff face.

Chase pulled Nina upright. ‘Oh, Jesus,’ she whispered as she saw Vogler’s twisted body below.

‘We’ve only got six minutes,’ said Chase, drawing her away from the edge. ‘We’ve got to get that stone to the top of the arm. Now!’ He moved to the slab’s unbroken end and pulled it inch by inch across the statue’s shoulder, gouging a furrow through the dirt.

Nina pushed the other end. ‘How’s this going to help us?’

‘We can ride it down the arm like a sledge!’

She regarded him as if he’d gone mad. ‘What?’

‘Trust me! I’ve done it before.’

‘What?’

‘Well, not exactly like this. But I once went down the side of a skyscraper in Shanghai on a sort of sledge, and that was a lot steeper.’ He looked down as he reached the top of the arm. ‘Although the drop at the end was only about five feet, not fifty,’ he added, biting his lip. ‘But the principle’s the same!’ He jumped over the slab to land beside Nina, helping her push it over the edge.

The statue’s arm was dirty and moss-covered, its open palm overflowing with dangling creepers and spindly plants. Beyond it stretched the lake. Nina heard the roar of an engine; in the distance, she saw trees swaying as Callum ploughed his Humvee through the jungle, taking a long, dogleg route to pass round the end of the ravine near the cavern’s northern wall.

She looked back at Chase as she felt the slab shift, teetering on the edge of the slope. ‘If by some miracle we survive this, to hell with waiting until May - we are going to get so married.’

Chase grinned, and they kissed. ‘First things first, though,’ he said as they parted. ‘Kneel on the back end.’ Nina did so, bringing the see-sawing slab back to the horizontal. He straddled the stone in front of her, lowering himself until he was almost touching it. ‘Now grab my waist - and don’t let go.’

‘I’m not gonna enjoy this, am I?’ Nina said as she took hold of him.

‘Nope - but it’ll be a really good bit for your autobiography.’

‘If I get to write it.’

‘You can start after the honeymoon. Okay. Here . . . we . . . go!’

He dropped on to the slab, grabbing its edges - as his weight tipped it over the edge.

Stone rasped angrily against stone, a terrible grinding assaulting their ears. But the moss and dirt acted as a strange form of lubricant. The slab quickly built up speed, throwing up a spray of soil from its front edge. They hit the slight bend at the giant elbow with a crash, the slab slithering sideways, threatening to fall off the carved arm - but they were moving too fast for gravity to claim them, already at the hand—

There was a colossal explosion of soil and vegetation as they ploughed across the statue’s palm, shooting up its splayed fingers and flying out into open space . . .

Nina screamed as the slab fell away - and she lost her grip on Chase. The lake whirled below. They had been flung past the shore, falling towards deeper water - but too fast, gravity eagerly reclaiming its prizes.

She saw Chase twist in mid-air, trying to hit the water feet first. She did the same.

They hit the water.

The impact felt to Nina like landing on concrete - but it was nothing to the much harder blow a moment later as she hit the lake’s muddy bottom. The stone slab smashed down behind her, a shockwave pounding her back. Her breath was knocked from her in a froth of bubbles as silt swirled round her, obscuring her vision.

How deep was she? Her feet brushed the bottom, sending a painful bolt through her legs. She tried to swim upwards, but seemed engulfed in quicksand, her waterlogged clothes slowing her movements to the pace of a nightmare.

A sound. A voice, muffled, muted. Chase, calling her name.

Nina still couldn’t see, surrounded by mud - and he couldn’t see her. She brought her arms as high above her head as she could, but they didn’t breach the surface. He could be just feet away, but it might as well be miles.

With her last dregs of air, Nina screamed. Bubbles roiled up her face - then stopped. Water filled her mouth. She tried to scream again, but there was nothing left . . .

A hand clutched at her hair, her face - then grabbed her collar and pulled as Chase swam down to scoop her up. They broke the surface, Nina spitting out brown water and gasping for air. To her shock, she realised she had been on the verge of drowning less than fifteen feet from the shore.

Chase kept swimming until he was able to put his feet down, then carried Nina the rest of the way. ‘Are you okay?’

‘Hurt my legs,’ she panted. ‘Couldn’t swim . . .’

They splashed out of the lake, Nina in Chase’s arms. ‘Can you walk?’

She tried to move one leg, the result making her wince. ‘I dunno.’

‘Okay, just hang on. I’ll get you to the Humvee.’ The 4x4 waited at the foot of the cliff, the tracks of its sister vehicle disappearing into the trees. Streaming with water, Chase carried Nina to it. She opened the passenger door for him, and he placed her inside. ‘Oh, cock,’ he said as he checked his watch.

‘How long?’

‘Four minutes.’ He climbed into the driver’s seat, starting the engine. The 6.5 litre turbo-diesel growled as he made a U-turn to face along the shore.

‘We’ll never make it,’ said Nina, a chill running through her. ‘Callum had that much of a head start on us, and he hasn’t even got round the end of the ravine.’

Chase pushed down hard on the accelerator. The Humvee’s wheels spun, slipping sideways in a spray of mud and earth before finding grip and surging forwards. ‘We’re not going round the ravine.’

‘We’re not?’

They charged through a stream, kicking up a massive shower of crystalline droplets. ‘Taking a short cut.’

Nina gripped her seat as the Humvee bounced back on to dry land. ‘I don’t think this thing’s gonna fit over that log!’

‘I’m not going for the log.’ Chase swerved round a tree, wheels carving through the water before he straightened out and smashed the 4x4 through some bushes on to a small hill.

‘What are you going for?’

Despite the rockier terrain, Chase kept the pedal down, building up speed as they approached the top of the rise. ‘You remember The Dukes of Hazzard ?’

Nina blanched. ‘You’re going to jump the ravine?’

‘If we go the long way round, we’ll never make it!’

‘And we’ll never make it if we jump! We’re not in an action movie, and this thing must weigh five tons!’

They reached the top, the western side of the Garden of Eden opening out before them. Verdant jungle lit by shafts of sunlight to the right, the dark crack of the ravine slashing across the landscape ahead—

‘There he is!’ Chase yelled, catching a flash of reflected light on the far side of the ravine. Callum’s Humvee was bounding along the edge of the cliff, squeezed between the trees and the near-vertical drop. He pushed the pedal to the floor, the engine surging. ‘How long?’

‘Three minutes!’

The log bridge was off to the right; almost directly ahead was the large, slanted rock Chase had noticed earlier, protruding over the side of the chasm. Callum was still short of the log, but would reach it in seconds. ‘Soon as we stop on the other side, no matter what happens, you run for the tunnel!’ he told Nina.

‘And if we don’t reach the other side?’

The Humvee picked up speed as it descended the rise, flattening everything in its path. Chase aimed for the rock, then looked at Nina. ‘Then this is your last chance to say I love you!’

‘I love you,’ Nina said, grimacing. ‘But I hate the way you driiiiiive!’

The Humvee hit the rock at over fifty miles an hour and shot up the impromptu ramp—

And flew across the ravine.

40

Callum glimpsed movement to his left as he passed the log. He looked round - and froze at the sight of the black colossus arcing across the gap at the head of a trail of dust and dirt from its still-spinning wheels.

Fear snapped him back to life as he realised that the other Humvee was not only going to make it over the ravine, but would collide with him if he didn’t stop—

He slammed on the brakes. His Humvee slewed on the damp ground as the other vehicle smashed down in front of him.

Even with the soft earth absorbing the impact, its suspension collapsed, one wheel ripping away. Amidst a whirlwind of churned soil and shredded creepers, the Humvee tore through the tangled net of vines hanging from the trees before slamming sidelong into the trunks and bouncing back towards the cliff . . .

Smashing into Callum’s skidding vehicle.

Glass shattered and metal tore with a banshee screech. The colliding 4x4s swept over the edge, teetering on the brink before starting to fall—

And abruptly jerking to a stop.

The wrecked suspension of Nina and Chase’s Humvee was entangled in vines and creepers. It hung sideways over the edge of the cliff at a forty-degree angle - as Chase discovered when he opened his eyes to find that the steep tilt of the world around him wasn’t solely down to his dizziness.

He saw blood on the steering wheel where he had banged his head against it. Below him, Nina was crumpled in the footwell.

Pulling himself upright, Chase forced open his door, immediately seeing how perilous their position was. Even as he watched, the vines holding them vibrated like plucked guitar strings, the weaker creepers twisting . . . and snapping. The little pops and cracks sounded like someone stepping on bubblewrap - but each break put more strain on the others. It was only a matter of moments before the Humvee fell.

‘Nina, get up,’ he said, reaching down to take hold of her arm.

She raised her head, looking dazedly at him. ‘Did we make it?’ she asked absently. He nodded. ‘Oh, good.’

‘We’re not safe yet. We’ve got - shit, two and a half minutes.’

‘Until what again?’

He pulled at her. ‘You know? The bomb?’

‘What bomb?’ Her eyes finally focused on him. ‘The bomb! Oh, shit, the bomb!’ She tried to stand, only to gasp in pain. ‘Oh, God, my leg still hurts!’

‘Think you can walk?’

‘I’m gonna have to! No, wait,’ she added as she forced herself up, ‘I’m gonna have to run!’

A much louder snap from outside was accompanied by a jolt. One of the thicker vines had just given way. ‘This thing’s going to fall! Come on!’ Chase put both feet against the high transmission tunnel between the seats and straightened his legs, lifting Nina up. ‘Climb over me!’

‘But—’

‘Quick!’ He shoved her through the door. More snaps. The Humvee lurched.

Nina scrambled clear. Chase gripped the door frame and pulled himself upwards, using the steering column for a step as he dived out—

Several vines snapped at once. The battered Humvee swung round, tipping over the edge - and plummeted into the ravine, bouncing off the rockface and cartwheeling into the darkness below.

Nina hobbled to Chase, who lay at the lip of the chasm, both legs hanging out over nothingness. Despite the pain, she pulled him clear. ‘Jesus! Are you okay?’

Chase could hardly speak, his heart slamming in his chest. He managed a thumbs-up, before seeing they were not alone.

Callum’s Humvee hung almost vertically over the cliff edge, nose down at what seemed like an impossible angle until Chase saw it was suspended from a pointed rock, its tip wedged under the 4x4’s rear axle. The engine was still running, and its front doors were both open, extended like stubby wings - revealing Callum slumped over the wheel inside.

Unconscious.

‘Get to the tunnel,’ Chase said, standing.

‘Not without you,’ Nina said. ‘What are you doing?’

‘I can use his radio to delay the strike - I remember the code. Look, go!’ he said, seeing that she was about to object. ‘There’s only two minutes left!’ He waited until she reluctantly turned and began a limping run towards the exit, then bunched together several creepers and used them to climb down the cliff.

Not sure how much weight the passenger-side door could take, he kept hold of the creepers as he gingerly put his feet on it. The hinges creaked. Wincing, he eased himself into the cabin. The armoured windscreen was cracked, loose gear strewn across it. Not sure if it would support his weight, Chase instead stood on the dashboard and looked more closely at Callum.

The white-haired agent still seemed out cold, a deep cut across his cheek. His jacket hung open. There was no sign of a radio in the equipment on the windscreen, so it was probably still in his pocket.

Chase edged closer, alert for any noises or movements warning that the Humvee was about to fall. It swayed as he crossed the cabin, but the rock supporting it seemed solid - for now.

He reached Callum. The American was still breathing. Chase hunched lower, carefully slipping his arm through the steering wheel to reach Callum’s inside pocket. His fingers touched the fabric; something hard and heavy inside. He edged his hand up, feeling plastic, switches . . .

Callum’s eyes opened.

He grabbed Chase’s outstretched arm and slammed it against the wheel, sweeping his other hand across to deliver a crunching backhand blow to the Englishman’s face. Chase tried to pull back, but Callum bent his wrist backwards over the wheel’s rim until the joints crackled, pinning him as he swung at Chase’s head again, catching his jaw.

Chase retaliated with a punch of his own, then gouged Callum’s eye with his thumb. Callum jerked away, releasing his grip on Chase’s arm.

Chase stumbled back, one foot slipping off the dash on to the windscreen. Fractured glass squealed, cracks spreading out from beneath his boot like thin ice. He hurriedly lifted his foot—

Callum hit him in the chest. Caught off balance, Chase staggered . . . and fell backwards.

He landed on the open door - which buckled, one of the hinges snapping. With a yelp of ‘Oh, shit!’ Chase slid down it and was pitched into the chasm below—

His hand clamped round the window frame.

The jolt as he stopped his fall almost wrenched his arm from its socket. He slammed against the Humvee’s mangled front wing, swinging helplessly. More cracks came from the door’s overstressed hinge as it was bent past its limit.

Callum crossed the cabin. He saw Chase’s hand gripping the frame, knuckles white. A nasty smile crossed his lips as he edged closer - and smashed his heel down on the door. The hinge groaned. Another strike, and another. Metal strained, split—

Snapped.

The door dropped into the ravine - just as Chase caught the Humvee’s wing with his free hand. He slammed face first against the wheel as the door fell past him, hitting his shoulder and almost tearing him loose. Blood seeping from his fingers where he clutched torn metal, he kicked and flailed before finally finding a second handhold.

Callum leaned out of the doorway above him. Their eyes met. For a moment Chase thought he was going to lower himself out and stamp on his hands, but then he retreated into the cabin.

He knew why. The Humvee was hanging from a single rock; a couple of kicks would send the entire vehicle plunging to its doom. If Callum reached the top of the cliff before he did—

The thought spurred him to action. He pulled himself up, climbing hand over hand until he managed to get a foothold on the bumper.

Callum heard him moving as he was about to climb out through the driver’s-side door. He halted, spotting something in the footwell. A pistol.

Chase kept climbing. He reached the doorway, looked inside—

To see Callum bringing up a gun.

He ducked as Callum fired. Two shots zipped just above his head, a third striking the door frame. The Humvee shook as Callum climbed across the cabin, coming to finish the job.

Nowhere to go . . .

Except down.

Chase released his grip - and dropped.

He caught the front wheel, hands slipping over the mud clogging the tread before finding purchase. Without a pause, he swung himself underneath the Humvee, grabbing the front axle and clambering along it like a monkey bar.

Callum returned to the doorway and looked down again. No sign of Chase. With a satisfied smirk, he peered up the cliff, comparing the vines Chase had used to climb down to the ones on the other side of the vehicle. Deciding that the latter appeared stronger, he turned back across the cabin.

Reaching the other end of the axle, Chase hauled himself round the wheel and pulled himself up beneath the open door. Through the window, he saw Callum negotiating the steering wheel, not wanting to stand on the damaged windscreen.

Chase grabbed the dangling vines beside the door and rapidly climbed upwards. Callum, halfway through the door, heard the noise - as Chase pulled up both legs and booted him back into the cabin. The gun clattered on the windscreen. Chase dropped on to the door, the hinges screeching. He grabbed the door frame - and smashed a nose-breaking punch into Callum’s face.

The American fell, sprawled over the dashboard. Chase stepped inside and plucked the radio from Callum’s jacket. He pulled back, reaching for the vines outside.

Callum’s hand closed round the gun. Eyes narrowed to pain-filled slits, he brought it up, taking aim—

Chase stepped on the accelerator.

The Humvee’s wheels spun, finding grip even on the cliff face - and wrenching the rear axle off the pointed rock.

Clinging to the vines with one hand, Chase yanked his leg out of the cabin as the Humvee fell. Callum’s scream echoed up the canyon as the vehicle disappeared into shadow - then was cut off by a huge crash of metal on stone.

‘Fuck you, whitey!’ Chase gasped, shoving the radio into the waistband of his jeans before gripping the vines with both hands and climbing. He could feel the plants straining under his weight. Only six feet to go, five, the edge of the cliff tantalisingly close—

A loud snap. One of the larger creepers gave way, the smaller vines bunched with it in his hand also ripping. He snatched at others, but they had been damaged by the Humvee when it ground over the edge and broke instantly. He swung, the vines in his other hand tearing . . .

Hands gripped his flailing wrist. Startled, he looked up.

Nina.

‘I got you,’ she said.

She pulled. Toes scrabbling against the rocks, Chase forced himself upwards until he was able to get one hand over the edge. He dragged himself on to solid ground, staring up at Nina as he panted in relief. ‘I told you to get out!’

‘Like you say, I never listen to you.’ She helped him sit up. ‘I wasn’t going to leave you here.’

‘Thanks.’ He examined the radio. He didn’t recognise the type - some kind of spook special, he guessed - and hoped Callum hadn’t changed the frequency. ‘Okay, let’s give this a try.’

‘You’re not going to do your John-Wayne-with-brain-damage voice, are you?’ said Nina as he switched it on.

‘Shh.’ He put on his best attempt at an American accent, trying to remember the codes Callum had used. ‘Abaddon, Abaddon, this is Archangel, urgent. Code alpha hold, repeat, this is a code alpha hold!’

Silence. Nina and Chase looked at each other in concern. Then: ‘Archangel, this is Abaddon.’ Chase pumped his fist in silent triumph. The B-2 crew thought he was Callum, and would stop the drop—

‘We, ah . . .’ The pilot’s hesitant tone vaporised his jubilation in an instant. ‘We released the bombs five seconds ago.’

‘What?’ Nina yelped. She looked up at the cavern’s ceiling. ‘Son of a bitch!’

‘Say again, Archangel?’

Chase jumped up, grabbing Nina’s hand and pulling her after him. ‘Leg it!’

‘Ow, ow, ow!’ Nina gasped with every step on her injured leg. ‘How long have - aah! - have we got?’

‘Not long!’ From sixty thousand feet it took a person in freefall over five minutes to reach zero altitude - but the GPS-guided Massive Ordnance Penetrators each weighed fifteen tons, and their terminal velocity would be supersonic. They would hit the ground in a fraction of the time.

They reached the edge of the jungle, emerging on the dry river bed. The tunnel was a dark arch directly ahead. They entered it, running footsteps echoing through the curving passage. Light ahead. The Covenant had cleared the entrance to accommodate the Humvees. ‘Come on, we can do it!’ Chase cried, running faster. Nina responded, increasing her pace as they sprinted for the open desert, and safety—

The bombs hit the cavern.

The first MOP speared through the roof as if it were wet paper, hitting the ground just outside the temple walls. The combination of its weight and speed punched the reinforced bomb casing almost a hundred and fifty feet into earth and solid rock.

The second bomb went deeper, by fluke dropping through one of the holes in the ceiling and plunging into the ravine.

Body broken, organs ruptured, Callum was nevertheless still alive, lying in the Humvee’s mangled wreckage. Through pain-racked eyes he could see a circle of sky high above - in which a black dot appeared, rushing at him before he even had time to scream—

The MOP hit the Humvee, utterly disintegrating it and its occupant as it slammed through them and dug deep into the ground - before detonating.

Each bomb carried three tons of high explosive. The power of the blast added to the sheer kinetic force of the impact was enough to pulverise solid rock, sending out a massive shockwave that acted like a localised earthquake.

The whole mesa shook as the ground pulsed, bulging upwards beneath the impact points before smashing back down again in two huge craters. The temple walls collapsed, the stacked archives shattering. The statue’s outstretched arm broke off and exploded into stone shrapnel as it hit the ground, the rest of the enormous figure toppling into the jungle.

But there was worse to come. A tsunami surged from the lake, sweeping away everything it touched and causing a huge swathe of the southern wall to fall. For a moment, the whole of the Garden of Eden was lit by bright daylight - before the rest of the great chamber collapsed.

Chase and Nina were almost at the exit when the subterranean shockwave blew them off their feet, a vaporous wall of compressed air surging down the tunnel and blasting them out into the open. They tumbled across the sand, the ground reverberating with more enormous impacts as the mesa fell in on itself. Nina couldn’t even hear herself scream as she curled into a ball, trying to protect her head from the noise and debris.

Finally the tumult faded.

Nina risked opening her eyes. Dust and sand swirled round her, but even through the haze she could see that the entire shape of the mesa had changed, the high walls and flat top replaced by ugly, jagged peaks and mounds of boulders.

The Garden of Eden had been destroyed.

She slumped in defeat, barely able to believe the sheer pointlessness of the devastation. The most significant archaeological find in history, to say nothing of the world-shaking anthropological revelations it had contained . . . and now it was gone, wiped from the face of the earth. Not by the wrath of God, but by the will of man. One man: Victor Dalton.

Why? She couldn’t even begin to think of a reason. Why had Dalton suddenly turned on the Covenant? How would he benefit from Eden’s destruction?

Coughing nearby. Chase. ‘Eddie?’ she called. ‘Where are you? Are you okay?’

‘Tip fuckin’ top,’ Chase grumbled, crawling to her. ‘You?’

‘I’ve . . . been better.’ She slumped against him. ‘Jesus, Eddie, this is, this is . . . I can’t even begin to describe it. Everything’s . . . it’s all gone. The greatest find ever, and it’s gone. And it’s my fault.’

‘How’s it your fault? You didn’t drop the bomb.’

‘But I gave them the target. They never would have found it without me. If I hadn’t been so obsessed, if I hadn’t been so determined to prove how goddamn great I was . . .’ She put her head in her hands, voice quavering with exhaustion - and misery. ‘Rothschild was right. And so was Sophia. And you. I was doing all this for myself, for my own glory.’

‘Yeah,’ said Chase. ‘You were.’

‘Oh, thanks, Eddie,’ Nina replied, despondency deepening.

‘But so fucking what? Why does any explorer do anything? Columbus didn’t discover America for shits and giggles - he did it for fame and fortune. And I bet Rothschild didn’t take the IHA job for the benefit of all humanity either.’ He put an arm round her shoulders. ‘At least when you go looking for this stuff, you’re doing it because you want to show it to the world, not because you want to steal all the treasure or blow everything up.’

She lifted her head. ‘What you said on the way here, about me going too far . . . do you still think that?’

He glanced back at the ruined mesa before looking into her eyes. ‘I think that, yeah, sometimes you go overboard. But other times . . . the stuff you find is worth it. You found the Garden of Eden, for Christ’s sake.’

‘And lost it again. It’s all been destroyed. And we’ve got nothing.’

‘Not all of it’s gone,’ he reminded her. ‘Sophia and Ribbsley’ve still got that head.’

‘Yeah, and they’re going to trade it with the Covenant - who’ll destroy it. And we haven’t got a chance of catching up to them.’

‘Hey, hey,’ said Chase, resting his head against hers, ‘it’s not over yet. We’re still alive, aren’t we?’ He pointed; the last of the Covenant’s Humvees was parked not far away. ‘We’ve got a ride out of here - and if it’s got a satellite phone, we can call TD and get her to pick us up.’

‘And then what?’ Nina asked gloomily. ‘We still have to find Sophia and Ribbsley. They’re probably halfway to Khartoum already, and after that we don’t even know where they’ll be going.’

Chase didn’t answer at once, but Nina could tell from the movement of his facial muscles against her head that he was smiling. ‘What?’

He leaned back, grinning. ‘I think I do . . .’

41

Switzerland

Moonlight glistened on the snow-capped peaks above the valley, the constant rumble of a waterfall rolling through the clear Alpine air.

Sophia looked over the edge of the viewing platform as the churning waters dropped away into a lake hundreds of feet below. The scenic point she had selected for the meeting was some thirty miles from Zürich, a popular tourist spot during the day, but now, at night, completely deserted. The nearest village was in the valley below, over two miles away by winding road, and past the surrounding trees she had a clear view of the route to the top of the waterfall. Nobody could approach without being seen.

‘Someone’s coming,’ said Ribbsley.

Headlights were moving along the road. ‘Is it him?’

Ribbsley watched the car through binoculars. ‘I think so.’

‘Is he alone?’

‘As far as I can tell.’

That wasn’t as much of an assurance as she would have liked, but there was certainly nobody else in sight. They had only told di Bonaventura that the meeting place would be in Switzerland that morning, and given him the exact location less than forty minutes earlier. There was still the possibility the Cardinal might try to take what they possessed by force, but with the Covenant’s forces seriously depleted, the odds of that seemed long.

Besides, she thought as she fingered the revolver in her coat pocket, the weapon having been kept in the same safe deposit box as the object she had come to Switzerland to collect, she and Ribbsley were prepared for trouble.

She stood beside him as the car got closer. At his feet was an unassuming leather case the size of a bowling bag. Inside it was the skull: the last piece of proof that an intelligent, but non-human, civilization had existed on the earth before man. In whose hands it ended up depended entirely on whether di Bonaventura was good to his word.

The car, a sleek silver Mercedes, turned on to the short spur leading to the beauty spot and stopped beside Ribbsley’s rented BMW. Di Bonaventura stepped out. He was alone.

The Cardinal approached them, giving Ribbsley a baleful look. ‘Gabriel.’

‘I’m sorry this means the end of our friendship, Jonas,’ said Ribbsley, ‘but it isn’t the first time a woman has come between two men.’

‘Perhaps so. But that woman, Gabriel? You know what she has done.’

‘I believe that sins are traditionally forgiven upon death. And officially at least, Sophia Blackwood is dead. With the Covenant’s help, we can ensure nobody ever knows that’s not the case.’

Di Bonaventura regarded Sophia sourly. ‘There is one quick and simple way to make certain of that.’

‘Our way is better for everyone,’ said Sophia, sliding the gun from her pocket and making sure di Bonaventura saw it. ‘Except Victor Dalton, of course.’

‘You have it?’ asked the Cardinal.

She took something from another pocket and held it up: a small white plastic stick. A flash drive. ‘Video proof of the President of the United States not only committing adultery, but doing so with . . . well, you know my reputation. Only eight minutes long - Victor was another short-term politician - but it should be more than enough to have 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue sending out change-of-occupier cards.’

‘And . . . the other item?’

Ribbsley nudged the bag with his foot. ‘Physical proof of the true nature of the Veteres, ready for DNA testing. Or incineration. As long as you agree to our terms, I don’t care which.’

‘Your terms,’ said di Bonaventura with distaste. ‘Ten million euros, a new identity for her, and the Covenant’s . . . protection. ’

‘We won’t need your protection if you use this,’ Sophia said, turning the flash drive in her hand. ‘It’s the only copy - but I’m willing to give it to you. It’ll take down Dalton, and all his cronies like Callum will go down with him.’

‘Actually, Callum’s dead,’ said a new voice.

All three whirled to see Nina emerging from the nearby trees. ‘Oh, for God’s sake!’ said Sophia in exasperation as she raised her gun. ‘She’s more resilient than a bloody cockroach!’

‘Ah-ah,’ Nina warned, waving a finger. ‘Try anything and Eddie’ll blow your head off. He’s in the trees with a sniper rifle.’ Sophia reluctantly returned the pistol to her pocket, but her hand remained hanging over it like a Wild West gunslinger. Ribbsley raised his hands.

‘I’m surprised to see you again, Dr Wilde,’ said di Bonaventura. ‘I’d been told you were dead.’

‘Your man Vogler saved us. He wanted to save Eden too - he decided that its value to the faithful, to the world, would outweigh any damage that the truth about the Veteres might cause. As long as that truth was revealed gradually.’

He nodded. ‘I would probably have reached the same conclusion.’

Nina came to a stop facing the trio. ‘It was kind of a least-worst option, but I agreed to go along with him. Until Callum decided to blow up Eden on Dalton’s orders. And then Ribbsley took the opportunity for a little blackmail. So here we all are.’

‘How did you find us?’ Ribbsley asked.

‘Because Eddie knew Sophia,’ she replied with a small smile. ‘When she “died” and he got all her paperwork, he saw she had a Swiss deposit box. After she told us about the recording,’ she glanced at the flash drive, ‘we figured that must be what she kept in it. So we got out of Sudan by persuading the head of the UN relief effort in El Obeid to fly us to Egypt, then came here, and staked out the bank until you turned up. Then we followed you and waited to see what happened. As Eddie would say, doddle.’

‘So now, what does happen?’ said di Bonaventura. He indicated the bag. ‘I assume you want that.’

‘That depends on you. You said you would probably have done the same as Vogler - is that still the case now Eden’s been destroyed? Because if it is, I’m willing to make the same deal with you that I did with Vogler.’

‘How very mercenary of you,’ Sophia sneered.

‘I’m not asking for money,’ said Nina. ‘I just want the truth to be revealed . . . however long it takes. And, y’know, I’d prefer to be alive when it happens.’

‘And President Dalton?’ asked di Bonaventura.

‘Screw him,’ said Nina after a moment. ‘Although not in the way that Sophia did. But he betrayed everyone - including the Covenant - and tried to kill us. Callum’s dead, but I bet there’s a dozen more like him. The only way Eddie and I can be safe is if Dalton’s removed from office.’

The Cardinal stood in thoughtful silence for several seconds before speaking again. ‘Until now, it was easy for the Covenant to suppress any discoveries of the Veteres. But now that we know the scale of their civilization . . . sooner or later, they will be revealed, and the Covenant will not be able to stop it.’ He looked at the bag, then back at Nina. ‘Vogler was right. If this is to become known, then it should be on our terms. We have to prepare the world for it. Dr Wilde . . . if you agree to work with us towards that goal, then I will grant you protection.’

‘And Eddie, too,’ Nina said.

‘And Mr Chase, yes. What do you say?’

‘Excuse me,’ Sophia snapped, ‘but we were here first.’

‘Sophia,’ Ribbsley said tersely, ‘we’re not arguing over a parking space here. Your ex-husband has us in his gunsights.’

Sophia gave Nina a suspicious look. ‘Does he, though?’

‘You want to find out the hard way?’ said Nina.

‘I think I might. Gabriel, take out your gun.’

‘You must be joking!’ Ribbsley protested. ‘You know that I’d do almost anything for you - but getting shot is definitely one of the exceptions.’

‘You won’t get shot. I’m sure Eddie’s here somewhere, but he doesn’t have a gun. And nor does she.’ Sophia fixed her eyes on Nina’s, calculating. ‘You can’t have arrived in Switzerland much before we did - we didn’t come directly from Khartoum, but we weren’t stopping for picnics en route either. I know Eddie has friends all over the world, but I find it hard to believe they could furnish him with a sniper rifle - but not get you a gun as well.’

Nina put a hand in one pocket. ‘I assure you, I’m armed.’

‘Then Gabriel won’t have to feel guilty about shooting a defenceless woman, will he?’ She turned to Ribbsley. ‘Gabriel, take out your gun. Nothing will happen, I promise. I know Eddie - and I know Nina as well.’

‘Your call,’ Nina said.

‘Your bluff,’ Sophia replied. ‘Do it, Gabriel. Now!’

Ribbsley hesitated, eyes scanning the dark forest - then pulled out his gun and pointed it at Nina.

Nothing happened. No gunshot came from the trees, the only sound the endless thunder of the waterfall.

‘Well,’ said Sophia, ‘I told you.’

Ribbsley let out a relieved breath. ‘I wish you could have found a less stressful way of proving it.’

Sophia nudged the bag. ‘Cardinal, our original offer still stands. I recommend that you take it. Otherwise we’ll have to fall back on Plan B - blackmailing the President of the United States. Which would be messy for everyone. As for you, Nina . . . I think it’s time we said goodbye, once and for all. Gabriel, shoot her.’

Nina tensed. ‘Don’t you want to know where Eddie is?’

The question was enough to give Ribbsley pause, though the gun remained locked on Nina’s heart. ‘All right,’ Sophia sighed impatiently, ‘where’s Eddie?’

‘Right behind you.’

Sophia looked annoyed at the attempted distraction, but Ribbsley turned his head—

To see Chase vault over the railing and smash a fist into his face.

Ribbsley crashed nervelessly to the ground, the gun spinning away. Soaked by the waterfall’s spray while he climbed round the viewing platform’s supports, Chase whirled to face Sophia—

She shot him.

‘Eddie!’ Nina screamed as he fell, blood splashed across his chest. He let out a strangled moan, convulsing before falling still.

‘Hold it!’ said Sophia as Nina ran to him, pointing the smoking .38 at her. Nina stopped. ‘Gabriel, are you all right?’ Her concern went unanswered. ‘Gabriel!’

Nina was unable to take her eyes from Chase’s motionless body. ‘Oh, Jesus, Eddie!’ she gasped, shocked tears streaming down her cheeks. ‘Oh, please, get up, get up . . .’

Sophia cast a dismissive sidelong glance at him. ‘I think,’ she said, ‘that marks the end of the Chase.’

Hatred exploded inside Nina. ‘You fucking bitch,’ she snarled, all fear vanishing in her fury, ‘I’m gonna fucking kill you!’

‘No,’ said Sophia, with a smile of malicious pleasure, ‘you’re not.’

Di Bonaventura jumped forward, arms held wide as if pleading. ‘No! You don’t have to—’

Sophia fired just as the Cardinal moved in front of Nina. The bullet caught him high on his chest. Sophia froze as he collapsed, realising she had just shot the only person with whom she could make a deal.

Nina leapt at her.

Driven by rage, she smashed the gun from Sophia’s hand before slamming a brutal blow into her face. Sophia shrieked in pain, the flash drive in her other hand dropping to the ground, but Nina was already striking again, and again, fists crunched tight like blocks of stone. Blood smeared her knuckles as Sophia staggered.

Nina pulled back her arm, winding up for a final punch, swinging—

Sophia caught it.

‘Whore!’ she hissed as she gripped Nina’s hand in both her own, twisting. A spear of agony shot through Nina’s wrist as the Englishwoman pulled her closer, wrenching harder as she raised an elbow, ready to smash it into the back of Nina’s arm to break it at the joint—

Nina struck first. One of Chase’s moves: crude, savage - but effective. Sophia’s nose broke with a snap of cartilage as Nina headbutted her, spraying both women with blood.

She tried to pull free, but Sophia still had a solid grip on her arm despite the pain. Gasping, Nina raked her fingernails at the other woman’s eyes.

Sophia jerked her head back - and kicked Nina hard in the stomach. Choking, Nina stumbled, the wound in her leg searing with resurgent pain. Sophia tried again to break her arm, but the kick had thrown her off balance, forcing her to let go to avoid falling.

But Nina was already past the point of no return. She fell heavily beside di Bonaventura. For a moment their eyes met, the Cardinal’s gaze full of pain and regret, before an almost infinitesimal relaxation of the tiny muscles around his eyes marked the moment when life became death. Di Bonaventura was about to find out if his beliefs were true.

Clutching her aching stomach, Nina got to her knees and looked up.

The gun was pointing at her head.

Sophia’s enraged face was behind it, rivulets of blood running from her nose. Her finger tightened on the trigger—

A terrifying roar made both women whirl.

Chase had staggered upright, one hand clutched to his bloodied chest. He launched himself at Sophia, tackling her as she fired again and slamming her back against the railings.

They toppled over them, and were gone.

Sophia’s piercing shriek of terror vanished beneath the waterfall’s rumble as she fell. Chase made no sound as he plunged into the darkness with her.

Nina stared at the railings in stunned disbelief before running to the spot and looking down. The waterfall was a silver streak in the moonlight, the lake at its base a pool of pure black speckled with froth. Of Chase and Sophia there was no sign.

‘Eddie!’ She couldn’t accept that he was gone, leaning out to look beneath the platform. He must have managed to grab its supports or a rocky outcropping as he fell, she told herself, was dangling just below her, saving himself at the last moment yet again . . .

But he wasn’t. There was nobody there.

She had lost him.

Nina stumbled away from the railing with a moan of despair, tripping and landing by the bag. She didn’t feel the pain of the fall, a far greater agony overpowering it.

Chase was dead.

‘No,’ she whispered. ‘No, no, no . . .’ She couldn’t accept it. She wouldn’t. He couldn’t be dead. It wasn’t possible.

Click.

A mechanical noise: a gun’s hammer being cocked. Ribbsley had recovered, had found his gun, was pointing it at her with his bloodied face twisted by rage—

A hole exploded in his chest as a high-velocity bullet blew right through him in a bloody shower. The force of the impact sent the professor rolling over several times before coming to a stop, leaving a ragged red trail like a child’s hand painting.

Some fearful instinct made Nina grab the bag and clutch it to herself as she scrambled back against the railings. There was nobody in sight. Who had fired the shot?

And was she the next target?

She looked in panic across the valley. The distant lights of the village glowed below, but she couldn’t see any sign of the sniper . . .

A dazzling blue-white light pinned her from above. A helicopter - but she couldn’t hear any rotor noise, or see anything except the blinding spotlight as it approached.

‘Dr Wilde,’ said a man’s voice, American-accented but unfamiliar. It didn’t seem to be coming from the helicopter, but from all around her - or inside her head. ‘Do not move, remain still. I repeat, do not move, or you will be killed.’

‘I’m not going anywhere,’ she whispered, frozen with fear. Some remaining rational part of her mind dredged an explanation from her memory: a few years earlier, an advertiser had experimented with a hypersonic loudspeaker in New York, only people standing in a small area able to hear the commercials it played while others just feet away heard nothing. She had even gone to experience it for herself. This was something similar, the helicopter’s occupants not wanting to rouse the entire valley.

But who were they?

The light came closer. Nina could now feel the downdraught from the rotors, but still couldn’t hear any noise until it was almost upon her, when a low-frequency thrum filled the air. The light flicked off as the helicopter swept overhead and moved to land behind the cars, cutting off her escape route.

Not that she was planning to move. A strange numbness rolled through her body, as if something within her had switched off to escape the pain. She watched the helicopter almost with disinterest, noting that it was a very strange-looking aircraft, unlike any chopper she had seen before: a flat matt black with a sharply pointed, seemingly windowless nose and an odd rotor assembly within a ring that rose above the fuselage like a halo. Some kind of stealth prototype? Whatever. She didn’t care.

A hatch opened in the helicopter’s featureless side, several men in all-black combat gear jumping out and rapidly securing the area. Two more men, faces hidden behind black masks and night-vision goggles, advanced on her, silenced compact rifles flicking between her and the two bodies nearby. Once it was clear that neither Ribbsley nor di Bonaventura would be moving again, they came to a stop ten feet from Nina and fixed their guns on her, laser spots dancing over her chest.

Another man emerged from the helicopter. No mask, no camouflage; she saw he was wearing a suit and tie as he passed one of the lamps illuminating the platform, the light catching his face.

A face she knew well.

Victor Dalton. The President of the United States.

He stopped between the two men in black. ‘Dr Wilde, hello again. You probably won’t believe me, but I’m glad to see you.’

‘Go to hell,’ Nina growled.

‘No, really - I’ve been watching what was going on down here. I didn’t think you’d be the last person standing, but it’s worked out fairly well.’ He walked to the railing near where Chase and Sophia had fallen and picked up a small white object - Sophia’s flash drive. ‘I even heard Sophia say this was the only copy.’ He looked back at the helicopter. ‘It’s a hell of a machine, by the way. One of DARPA’s latest toys. Full array of surveillance gear, almost totally invisible to radar, and ninety per cent quieter than a normal chopper. Lucky for me it was in Germany for NATO evaluation, or my trip would have attracted a lot more attention - officially, I’m on vacation at my estate in Virginia. I wanted to keep this whole thing quiet.’ He took a step towards her. ‘Personal.’

Nina crawled away. ‘Stay back! What do you want?’

‘This, for one,’ he said, holding up the memory stick. ‘For another, what you’ve got in that case there. May I see it?’ She didn’t respond immediately; one of the soldiers flashed his laser sight over her face. ‘Don’t expect me to ask twice, Dr Wilde. For anything.’

Reluctantly, she opened it and took out a large plastic ziplock bag - inside which, still wrapped in the remains of its ancient shroud, was the skull. ‘Open it,’ ordered Dalton. ‘Let me see.’

‘Why do you want it?’ she demanded as she unfastened the seal and began to peel away the cloth.

Dalton didn’t answer at first, watching as she carefully removed the shroud. The skeletal face was revealed beneath. She turned it towards the President. To her surprise, he appeared visibly discomfited. ‘So, it’s true,’ he said. ‘The Covenant was right.’

‘Yeah, it’s true,’ said Nina. She got to her feet. Both soldiers tensed, rifles tracking her. A nod from Dalton and they eased off, slightly. ‘So why did you turn against them? And why did you destroy Eden?’

‘Because it was in Sudan. Do you really think I’d let a group of backwater barbarians lay claim to it? Especially when it would give the foundation of the Christian faith to the Muslims.’ He sneered in distaste. ‘Better no one has it than they do. As for the Covenant, every politician has skeletons in their closet, and the Covenant has taken advantage for decades. It was time that situation ended. I should thank you and Chase for that much, at least - between you, you’ve decapitated the entire organisation.’ He glanced at di Bonaventura. ‘There’ll be others to replace them, but right now the Covenant’s in total chaos. It’ll take a while for them to recover - and by then, it won’t matter.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘You were making a deal with him,’ said Dalton. ‘Well, now you get to make that same deal with me. Only there won’t be any pussyfooting around, gradually preparing the world for the Veteres. As soon as the DNA analysis confirms what that thing really is, you’ll be back at the IHA announcing what you’ve discovered - a non-human race that was the basis of the Book of Genesis.’

Nina regarded him with growing suspicion. ‘So . . . what’s the catch?’

‘Catch number one is that if you don’t agree, you die right here and we find someone else to do it. But we’d prefer it to be you; you’ve got the credibility.’

‘Who’s “we”?’

‘Catch number two,’ he went on, ignoring her question, ‘is that in making that announcement, you’ll become the most hated person on the planet.’

Some of her old defiance returned. ‘What, even more than the President of the United States?’

A brief smirk. ‘Presidents are hated for political reasons. With you, it’ll be personal. You’ll be telling billions of people that their deeply held beliefs are wrong, that the basis of their entire religion is false, and you can prove it. They won’t like that.’

‘If I can prove it . . .’ Nina began, before realising where he was heading.

‘There are people who believe the earth was created in 4004 BC, that fossils are fakes put there by God to test their faith, that there were dinosaurs aboard Noah’s Ark, that they can talk to ghosts, that a UFO crashed in Roswell. It doesn’t matter what “proof ” you show them otherwise: they have their beliefs, and they won’t change them. These are the people who will consider the revelation of the Veteres as a personal attack on their faith. Not just in America, but all over the world.’

‘And what does that gain you?’ she asked. ‘Sounds like you want to stir up the Danish cartoon riots, times a thousand.’

‘More than that. We want to stir up the entire world. Religion against science. Religion against religion. Believers against atheists. Individual countries against the United Nations. And the outside world against the United States. And you, as a scientist, a part of the UN, an American, will be the lightning rod for it all.’

‘I don’t think I like your deal,’ Nina said quietly.

‘You don’t have a choice. Either you do what we say, or you die.’

‘But why?’ Nina cried, the numbness swept away by a resurgence of emotion. ‘This is insane! Why would you want to turn the world against America?’

‘To protect it!’ said Dalton, a flash of fervour in his eyes. ‘There are too many people pulling in too many different directions, and in the end they’re going to tear the country apart. But this will splinter the outside world - and bring America together. The silent majority will finally speak with one voice. A God-fearing, American, Christian voice. Not Catholic, not Jewish, and certainly not Muslim.’

‘Last I heard, Catholics are Christians.’

‘Who give their loyalty to Rome, not their country. It’s time America was unified against threats from inside and out. One voice, one God, one people.’

‘You actually have the arrogance to say you speak for every Christian in America?’ Nina held up the skull. ‘And you think all that will happen just because of this? You think the American people are that frightened and gullible?’

Dalton looked smug. ‘The people believe whatever they’re told because they have faith in something else - the system. They want - they need to believe it works, that their faith is justified. So what the leaders say, the followers accept.’

‘Because it’s easier and safer than having their beliefs challenged, huh?’ said Nina. ‘Well, you know what I put my faith in? I put my faith in the people. To be better than that.’

‘You’re going to be sorely disappointed, Dr Wilde.’ He took another step towards her. ‘But enough philosophical discussion. You’re either with me or against me. And believe me, you don’t want to be against me.’

‘I sure as hell don’t want to be with you.’

‘Your choice.’ He nodded at the soldiers. Their rifles came back up, laser spots rock-steady over her heart.

She whipped out one arm and held the skull over the edge of the platform. The shroud fell away into the spray below. ‘If I drop this, you’ve got nothing. No proof of the Veteres, so no way to set the world on fire.’

Dalton shook his head. ‘I’ll be in exactly the same place as before. The Covenant’s been crippled, and I’ve got Sophia’s recording. And what I’ve told you will happen, will happen, one way or another. This was just an unexpected bonus, a way we can advance our timescale.’

‘There’s that “we” again,’ Nina said. ‘Who are “we”?’

‘As I said, there are leaders and there are followers.’

‘So which are you?’

That seemed to sting him, his superior expression turning to irritation. ‘I warned you I won’t ask twice, Dr Wilde. Face it: you’ve lost everything. Your job, your fiancé . . . Do you want to lose your life as well?’

The laser points moved up to her face. She closed her eyes - and just for a moment saw Chase, smiling at her from the darkness. Everything they had shared over the past three years flowed through her mind: the adventures, laughter and tears, exhilaration and fears, the highs and lows of the roller coaster ride that had been their relationship. And through it all, the love underpinning it all. Whatever differences they had, in the end he had always been there for her. A friend, a lover . . .

A guide.

She knew what she had to do. What he would do.

Nina opened her eyes, and met Dalton’s. Her gaze was unwavering, resolute. Fearless.

For the briefest moment, his eyes flickered with the realisation of failure.

She opened her fingers.

The skull dropped into the void. There was a faint crack as it hit a protruding rock and shattered, the fragments caught by the wind and vanishing into the empty waters.

Nobody moved. The soldiers still had their guns fixed on Nina, who stared unblinkingly at Dalton. He looked back, until finally turning away with a small grunt almost of amusement. A gesture, and the two men lowered their weapons.

‘Well?’ Nina demanded, breathing heavily.

One of the soldiers turned questioningly to Dalton. ‘Sir?’

‘Leave her,’ said Dalton. He met Nina’s eyes again. ‘You’ve got nothing, Nina. No concrete proof, just a few photographs - and they’ll be debunked as fakes, I can guarantee that. The news networks will make you a laughing stock before you even open your mouth. You’ll just be another crank, a has-been who had her moment - then went off the rails.’ The smug smirk returned. ‘Living with that will be worse than killing you.’

‘This isn’t over,’ Nina insisted.

‘Oh, it is.’ He spoke to the nearest soldier. ‘Get rid of these bodies and clean up.’

‘And her?’ the man asked.

‘Like I said, leave her.’ He started towards the helicopter, before delivering a parting shot over his shoulder. ‘There’s a two-seat F-15 waiting for me in Germany - I’ll be back in Virginia before breakfast. As for you . . . I wouldn’t be in any rush to get home. You won’t enjoy the reception. Goodbye, Dr Wilde.’

He disappeared into the black helicopter’s red-lit interior. The soldiers quickly scooped the two corpses into body bags, one man using a high-pressure spray of some pungent chemical to disperse the blood. The guns were retrieved, even the leather case and ziplock bag taken away. The whole process took barely two minutes before the last soldier boarded the chopper, which left the ground before the hatch had even fully closed. The aircraft swung over Nina’s head, blasting her with a hot wind before being swallowed by the dark sky, the thud of its rotors fading within moments.

She stared after it, left alone.

Completely alone. Dalton was right. She had nothing. No proof.

No Chase.

Slumping against the railing, she began to weep.

Epilogue

New York City

Nina blankly watched the endless bustle of Manhattan passing the coffee shop’s window with a feeling of complete disconnection. Even though she was surrounded by crowds, she was isolated, alone. Hollow.

It was now three weeks since she faced Dalton at the waterfall, two weeks and six days since she had endured a hostile interrogation at JFK and an unpleasant confrontation with a press pack of mocking jackals as she emerged from the gate, all prepped with questions about her suspension - now permanent - and the deaths she had caused and her crazy theories that were an insult to every decent American. Dalton’s people had done their job well, a pre-emptive smearing to make her look a fool, a dangerous crank, a joke.

She didn’t care. About anything. Nothing mattered any more.

The media interest died down quickly, simply because she had nothing to say. Cable news pundits still reviled her every so often, but the mainstream media had moved on. Disgraced scientists were less of a draw than drunken actors or pregnant singers or the contestants in the latest talent show. It had been two days since anyone had recognised, or insulted, her in the street. Dr Nina Wilde was old news. Forgotten.

She stared into her coffee cup, swirling the last dregs around its bottom. Her reflected face looked back at her without expression.

That, she knew all too well, was just a façade, a shell. She couldn’t allow herself to feel anything. Because if she did, she knew what emotion would consume her.

Despair.

She had thought her anguish would fade over time. She had been wrong. Instead it had mutated, a cancerous tumour in her psyche, poisoning every moment. It took all her willpower not to give in to it . . . but in moments of loneliness, she couldn’t stop the awful darkness from rising.

She gulped down the final mouthful of coffee, then summoned the strength to return to the apartment. The empty apartment. Sometimes she kept walking the streets of Manhattan for hours to avoid having to go back to it, but in the end she always had . . . because she had nowhere else to go.

Nina was walking to the door when something made her pause. Dalton’s name.

It was hardly the first time she had heard it since returning, loss and loathing flooding back at each occurrence. But there was something different about it now, a buzz as it spread through the customers. She turned. People were talking on phones, scanning news pages on laptops, spreading the word. She tried to pick out details through the growing hubbub.

‘- the President -’

‘- he slept with -’

‘- terrorist -’

‘- might have to resign -’

‘- a video -’

‘- all over the Internet -’

‘- I found it, I got it here!’

People clustered round one man, who tilted his laptop’s screen so they could watch. Nina hesitated, then joined them. She could barely see the screen through the throng, but a glimpse was enough.

She turned away, heading for the exit as the grainy video of Sophia Blackwood and Victor Dalton, faces and naked bodies clearly visible, played.

‘Where did it come from?’

‘I dunno, but it’s all over the place. YouTube already pulled the original, but there’s hundreds of copies up, it’s on the torrents, everywhere!’

‘Is that - that’s her, isn’t it? The bitch who tried to nuke us?’

‘Is that really the President? It can’t be. Can it?’

‘It’s him, it’s really him!’

The voices faded behind Nina as she left the shop and stood on the street. The word was here too, a verbal virus leaping from person to person. Shock, laugher, disbelief, intrigue - everyone had a different reaction.

But everyone had a reaction. Everyone knew.

Nina hurried towards her apartment, the tiniest seed of an emotion she hadn’t felt for some time taking root inside her.

Hope.

By the time she reached home, every shop window TV, every radio blaring from a passing cab, every overheard cell phone conversation was about the same thing.

The President of the United States had been filmed in flagrante. That he hadn’t been president at the time was immaterial; that the woman with him not only was not his wife, but had almost succeeded in detonating a nuclear bomb in New York, most certainly was. The video had spread across the Internet in a matter of hours, a digital hydra spawning new heads exponentially. A news story so big that whatever a network’s political biases, it could not be ignored.

Nina rushed to the TV. She had avoided the news channels since her return, but now sought them out. There was only one story.

A caption told her she was watching a live broadcast from the White House press room, the familiar blue curtains behind a flustered man in a suit: the White House press secretary. Questions were being shouted at him, voices overlapping. ‘One at a time, one at a time!’ he cried, almost pleading. ‘You, Pete. One at a time.’

‘Is the President going to resign?’ someone yelled.

‘The Pres - the President will make a statement concerning this - this fabrication later today,’ the press secretary stammered. ‘That’s all I can say right now.’

‘That’s the official line, that it’s a fabrication?’

‘It is, yes.’

‘It’s a fabrication, or it’s the official line?’

Another voice chipped in with a loud aside of, ‘If it’s a fake, it’ll win the Oscar for special effects.’ Laughter erupted around the room.

‘Will the President resign?’ someone else boomed. The question was repeated with minor variations from what seemed like the entire press corps. The man visibly quailed.

Nina stepped back from the TV. ‘Gotcha,’ she whispered as she switched it off. If Dalton had Sophia’s recording, then the only way a copy could have been made was . . .

A reflection in the blank screen told her she was not alone.

‘Ay up,’ said a familiar voice. ‘Don’t I get a kiss hello?’

‘Eddie!’ Nina screamed in delight as she spun to see Chase sitting casually on a chair in the corner, looking as if he’d just come back from the 7-11 rather than the dead. She ran to him. ‘Oh my God, oh my God! Is it really you?’

‘Course it’s bloody me! What, you think I’m a zombie? Ow, don’t hug me there, ow!’ He grimaced and pushed her off his chest. ‘I’ve got a bust rib and a fucked-up lung, so don’t go poking at ’em!’

‘What happened?’ Nina asked, emotions whirling. ‘I thought you were dead!’ Tears rolled down her cheeks. ‘Oh, God, I thought you were dead . . .’

‘Yeah, I did too, for a bit. When Sophia shot me she hit a rib, but I still got a fragment in the lung. I don’t remember too much, just trying to keep my head above the water, but I think I ended up a couple of miles downstream where someone found me. Got taken to hospital, and they patched me up.’

‘What happened to Sophia?’

‘Now that I do remember. I, ah, used her as an airbag. She hit a couple of rocks on the way down.’

‘Is she dead?’ Nina asked hopefully.

‘Dunno. After we hit the water, I lost her. But if she isn’t, I doubt she’ll be running any marathons for a while. I definitely heard a couple of bits of her go snap. See, I told you there weren’t any feelings left between us.’

‘Throwing your ex off a cliff’s kind of an extreme way of proving it. So when did you get back to New York?’

‘Couple of days ago.’

‘And you didn’t tell me?’ she shrilled.

‘First thing I did was check you were okay!’ he said, holding her arms so she couldn’t hit him. ‘But I had something to sort out first.’ He glanced at the TV. ‘Looks like it worked.’

Her outrage faded. ‘But how did you get the recording? Dalton took the only copy.’

He grinned. ‘He took Sophia’s only copy. You know when I went into that bank in Zürich to check if she’d already been there?’

She nodded. ‘Yeah?’

‘Well, it occurred to me that seeing as she was legally dead and she’d named me as her next of kin or whatever, that’d mean I had the right to open her deposit box. Took a bit of wheedling, but they eventually let me look inside. And there it was. So . . .’

‘You made a copy.’

‘Yup. Had to buy a memory stick off some clerk, but I made a copy. And it even survived falling off a cliff into freezing water.’ He held up a small orange flash drive. ‘Might have it framed, actually.’

‘So you put a copy of the recording on the Internet.’

‘I put lots and lots of copies of the recording on the Internet. Got in touch with some old mates. Then this morning, all at the same time, they sent it out to every news agency, all the TV stations, papers, YouTube, all of those places. Spammed the world so everybody’d see it. And it looks like they did.’ Another smile. ‘Ain’t technology grand?’

‘Why didn’t you tell me you’d made a copy?’

‘I didn’t have time. Sophia and Ribbsley turned up at the bank right after I left, remember? If I’d been another couple of minutes farting about, she’d have caught me.’

Nina raised an eyebrow. ‘And they didn’t tell her that you’d just been rifling through her safety deposit box?’

‘Well, you know those Swiss banks. Very discreet.’

She laughed, for the first time in three weeks, then kissed him, long and hard. ‘So now what?’ she asked.

‘Well, we can sit back and watch Dalton get fucked in slow motion.’

‘Eddie, that’s gross.’

‘I don’t mean with Sophia!’ he hastily qualified. ‘I mean on the news. There’s no way he’ll be able to slime his way out of this one. He’ll have to resign, otherwise he’ll get impeached. That’s something I always found funny about you Yanks. Your politicians can lie, cheat, steal, kill, and they’ll still probably stay in office. But one whiff of dodgy sex, and bam, they’re up shit creek! You’re such bloody puritans.’

She huffed in mock offence. ‘Oh, you think I’m a puritan, do you?’

‘Well, not so much since I bought you that book . . .’

They both laughed, Nina taking his hands in hers and lifting them - then looking at her engagement ring. ‘You know what?’

‘What?’

‘I think a ring’d suit you too.’

He considered, then a broad smile spread across his square face. ‘I think it might. What, right now?’

Nina could hardly contain her rising excitement. ‘Yeah, right now. Come on!’ She jumped up, helping Chase stand. He winced at the pain in his chest - but it didn’t take the smile off his face.

They hurried down to the street. ‘Taxi!’ Nina yelled, waving down a yellow cab.

‘Where are we going?’ Chase asked.

‘Oh, crap, good point. New York’s got a twenty-four-hour waiting period on marriages. Oh, I know!’ The cab stopped and they climbed in. ‘Take us to Connecticut!’

The driver, a Central Asian man with a stubbly beard, gave her a dubious look. ‘Where in Connecticut?’

‘The nearest place with a Justice of the Peace!’

‘It’s your dollar,’ said the driver with a shrug, starting the meter. ‘Hey, you heard about the President?’

Nina and Chase smiled at each other. ‘Yeah, we have,’ Nina said, laughing.