The Curse of Medusa

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

Alex Reeve was relieved to see Ryan’s face when he walked through the door. It hadn’t taken him long to make the short flight in the Gulfstream and she was impressed. She understood the agony he’d gone through after Sophie died in Japan, but now he looked different somehow — calmer, more at peace. Maybe the time he’d spent kicking back in the Caribbean had worked some magic on him.

“Hey,” he said, and walked confidently over to her.

She looked at his clothes and shook her head. He was wearing a pair of black jeans and a black and red Spiderman t-shirt under a black denim jacket.

“What?” he said, smiling as he noticed her staring at him.

“Didn’t you just spend the last few weeks on Elysium?”

“Yeah… so?”

“So I was expecting you to be dressed a little different than your usual funereal look, is all.”

He shrugged his shoulders as he tossed his jacket over the back of a chair. “Why would I do that?”

“No reason, I guess. I just wondered what a Tropical Ryan would look like.”

“He’d look like an even bigger wanker than miserable Emo Ryan,” boomed a voice from the corridor.

Alex looked up and was more than a little surprised to see Scarlet Sloane enter the room.

“Oh yeah,” Ryan said. “Eden insisted on my personal security tagging along.”

“Your personal security, my arse,” Scarlet said. “I’m here to save America. Where do I start?”

Alex rolled her eyes and returned her attention to Ryan. “You really should try the tropical look.”

Ryan laughed. “Can you honestly see me in a pair of Bermuda shorts and a Hawaiian shirt?”

She looked at him for a few seconds, tipping her head to one side and pursing her lips, pretending to be in deep contemplation. “Sure…” She laughed.

He smiled. “Thanks for the call — I was getting cabin fever on that island.”

“I’ll say,” Scarlet added.

“Just thought you might like to help,” Alex said. “Surprised Eden didn’t send you all up here.”

Scarlet looked at her. “He said it ‘wasn’t in our remit’. Exact quotation.”

“Okay… but where’s Lea?”

Ryan sighed. “Chasing ghosts in Ireland.”

“The silly cow,” Scarlet added.

Alex looked confused for a second but let Ryan’s enigmatic comment pass. “Anyway, listen up. I need you here right now but let’s keep it between us. Hawke is pretty pissed about everyone keeping him in the dark about the ECHO thing.”

Ryan looked indignant. “Hey! I never kept him in the dark! I found about it the same time he did.”

“Eden had his reasons,” Scarlet said. “We’re not like the US military you know. ECHO is covert and highly specialist.”

Alex gave her a look. “Well, whatever happened, I know he just wants to be away from it all for a while, so just keep your presence here between us, all right.”

Ryan puffed out his chest. “When the President of the United States needs me to rescue him I can do whatever it takes, including keeping out of Joe’s way.”

Alex sighed and rolled her eyes. “I said I need you here, Ryan. The President did not ask for you to rescue him.”

“Sure, but that’s not what’s going on my Facebook update.”

She shook her head and whistled. “You put any of this on Facebook and you’re the one who’s going to need rescuing — from Gitmo Bay, probably.”

Ryan laughed and sat beside her. “I take your point… now then — what have we got?”

Alex frowned and swivelled her laptop screen. “Thanks to facial recognition software, I can tell you that our man is one Klaus Kiefel, born in Dresden, in the Deutsche Demokratische Republik in 1951. He claims his mother was Elfriede Kallweit, the notorious spy who was executed in Los Angeles in 1955.”

Scarlet sniffed. “Never heard of her.”

“It was big here at the time, believe me. It was just after the whole McCarthyism thing was getting started. She worked for a defense contractor in San Diego and was busted passing blueprints to a Soviet agent. They were both members of a yacht club and used to meet off the coast of Catalina where no one knew what they were doing.”

“Catalina?”

“It’s an island off the coast of LA.”

“Gotcha.”

“Big, big scandal at the time.”

Ryan snapped the ring-pull on a can of Pepsi Max and took a swig. “I’ll take your word for it.”

“Anyway, she was charged with conspiracy to commit espionage and passing classified communications to the Soviets. She got the chair in fifty-five.”

“I’m guessing by that last remark you don’t mean she was awarded a professorship at UCLA?” asked Ryan.

Alex rolled her eyes. “I do not mean that, no. I mean she went to the electric chair.”

“I know what you mean, Alex,” Ryan said, smiling.

“So anyway, this guy Kiefel claims he is her son and that the time for America to pay for killing his mother has arrived.”

“Ah that old spiel…”

“Right, but he’s very serious, and claims he has… and I quote… ‘some kind of ancient doomsday weapon that will shock the world to its foundations’… so this Medusa thing, in a word.”

Scarlet spoke next. “What’s Joe doing right now?”

“Following a lead in Ivy City.”

Ryan cracked his knuckles and sat down beside Alex, firing up his laptop. “In that case, we better get to work.”

“You can start by analysing the latest video.”

Ryan and Scarlet shared a glance. “What video?”

“You mean you never saw it?”

“Saw what?”

Alex frowned and played them the film of Partridge’s death. Like everyone else in the Pentagon, Alex was still struggling to make sense of the depraved horror show she had witnessed on the internet.

As the short film ended, Ryan ran a hand over his tangled hair and took a step back from the screen. “Holy crap.”

“Seconded,” added Scarlet, wincing.

Ryan immediately hit the keys and started looking into what might have happened, not believing for a second what his eyes had told him.

“Whatever the hell did happen,” Alex said coolly, “that guy didn’t just turn to stone because that’s plain old-fashioned impossible, right?”

“Agreed, I think…” Ryan said. “And I say that even after the last few weeks have really made me question what ‘impossible’ means.”

Scarlet drew up a chair. “You can say that again.”

Alex looked at Ryan. “So where do we go from here?”

“We start with Medusa. That’s the obvious starting point,” Ryan said, pushing his glasses up the bridge of his nose.

“Medusa?” said a passing staffer. “What the hell are you talking about? That video was CGI… Medusa is a myth!” He leaned in closer to Ryan. “Ever heard of Greek myth-o-logy, son?”

“You could say that,” Ryan muttered, and shared a smile with Alex and Scarlet.

The staffer narrowed his eyes. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Listen, Trent,” Alex said, peering at his name badge. “Ryan has forgotten more about Greek myth-o-logy, as you put it, than you will ever know, so just back off.”

“That’s pretty inappropriate behavior for an office like this,” Trent said.

“Hardly,” Scarlet said coolly. “I’d have told you to fuck off, so why don’t you just do that instead?”

Trent looked at Scarlet for a moment, horrified. It looked like he was considering a range of responses, but in the end he went with the one based on the fact he was talking to his boss’s daughter, his boss being the Defense Secretary of the United States. “Listen, whatever the hell that thing was, it sure as hell wasn’t the mummified head of someone who never existed.”

Scarlet grabbed his tie and pulled him toward her. “We know better, so go and fetch us some coffee, darling, yeah?”

Trent snatched his tie back and tried not to look embarrassed. They watched him walk away and shared a glance before erupting into laughter. “And pour some whisky in mine!” Scarlet shouted after him.

“I’m glad you came,” Alex said. “Dad’s under a lot of pressure and he needs all the help he can get. I know you’re both very good at what you do.”

“No problemo,” Ryan said, beaming at the compliment. “There’s only so many banana daiquiris you can drink on a tropical beach, although watching Scarlet fall off a windsurf board never gets old.”

“Sounds like fun.”

“If you think that’s fun, you should have seen the time Ryan couldn’t find the brake on his jet ski. I laughed for an hour.”

Ryan turned to Alex, suddenly serious. “So why not come down when all this is over? Eden invited you both to join us, after all.”

“I don’t know… Like I said, Hawke was pretty pissed about not being included from the start.”

Scarlet smiled. “That’s just Joe. He’ll get over it, believe me… anyway, since when did he make your decisions?”

“Since never, but it’s not that simple. I only just started talking to my Dad again. We didn’t talk for a long time — years, really…” she looked away, her eyes settling on some half-forgotten memory of childhood in the middle-distance. She wiped an incipient tear from her eye. “I can’t just walk away now.”

“I understand, but the offer’s always there…” Ryan’s voice returned to flippant mode. “It’s not just pissing about on jet skis, you know. We’re always busy down at ECHO HQ. As we speak, Eden has people in Mexico monitoring unusual activity at an archaeological site in the jungle. We might be needed to spring into action at a second’s notice.”

She laughed.

“What?”

“Just thinking about you springing into action, that’s all.”

“What’s funny about that?”

“Ryan… Hawke springs into action, you kind of slide into it.”

Ryan feigned offense, putting his hand on his heart and pretending to cry. “I can’t say that didn’t hurt me, Alex.”

“She shouldn’t have said you slide into action,” Scarlet said, placing a comforting hand on Ryan’s shoulder.

“Thanks, Scarlet.”

“You have to be dragged into action kicking and screaming.”

Ryan gave a fake laugh, and Alex let a few seconds pass before changing the subject. “So how’s things with Agent Snowcat? Last time I saw her she was using you as a sun bed.”

“That is so funny, Alex,” Ryan replied, trying to look nonchalant but clearly pleased she had brought the subject up.

“Well?”

“She’s fine, thanks.”

“Back in Mother Russia?”

“Hardly… after James Matheson made his little phone call when she and Hawke were on the run in Cairo that’s the last place she’d be. As far as the Government of the Russian Federation is concerned Maria Kurikova is persona non grata.”

“So she’s with you on Elysium?”

“Sure is,” Scarlet said, raising her eyebrows. “Now we get borscht on Tuesdays. Yummy.” She pretended to vomit.

Ryan nodded, ignoring the former SAS woman. “She sure is, and we’re getting along just fine. She has excellent offensive techniques in the Sambo and Systema schools of Russian martial arts.”

“And you would know that how?”

He looked at her and winked.

“Oh… that’s gross, Ryan,” she said, but half-returning his smile. “Keep your disgusting little bedroom habits to yourself in future.”

“Sorry… it’s just a joke.”

“Which is exactly what Maria said when she saw inside Ryan’s underpants for the first time.”

“Hey!”

Alex suppressed a laugh. “So why isn’t she here keeping an eye on you?”

“Eden only wanted to send a couple of us up here, so…” Ryan glanced at Scarlet who had now grown tired of the conversation and crossed the room to harass Trent. “So you got the short straw…”

She smiled, and was happy that he had found someone to help him get over the terrible loss of Sophie Durand. She wondered if she would ever find someone who would make her happy. She knew who that man was, but she knew he was in love with someone else. She kept the thought to herself and decided to change the subject. “Okay, Mr Bale… let’s get to work. That crazy son-of-a-bitch is somehow using the severed head of an ancient monster to turn people to stone, and we’re going to find out just how the hell to stop it!”

“I bet you never thought you’d say that sentence in your whole life.”

“Never!” She held out her hand to shake. “Deal?”

Ryan smiled and shook her hand firmly. “Deal!”