The King's Tomb

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

Hawke strolled along a side street in the center of Athens. The sun was setting over the Theater of Dionysus and couples walked together, hands clasped as they stole kisses in the twilight. It was a city he loved and after a long trip involving US Navy aircraft carriers and RAF transport planes he was glad to be here.

He thought back to his first mission with ECHO, before he even knew what that meant. They had come to the city in pursuit of a man named Demetriou. His ultimate betrayal of Hawke’s trust didn’t come close to spoiling this charming place for him.

Returning to his hotel, he crossed the lobby and spoke with the woman on the reception desk. Yes, the rest of his team had arrived from Pretoria around an hour ago and were waiting for him in their suite. He thanked them and made his way to the elevators, scanning all around him to check for anything out of place.

Old habits die hard.

And so did his pride, but tonight, die it would.

He owed Lea Donovan the mother of all apologies and now there was no getting out of it. She was upstairs with everyone else and his strategy of avoidance had worked about as well as he thought it might.

So get on with it and stop being such a bell-end…

Thanks, Cairo.

He opened the hotel door and there she was, right in front of him. She was on the bed, leaning up against the headboard and watching the TV with a bottle of water in her hand. She looked beautiful, as usual, if a little tired. He swallowed his pride and stepped over to the bed.

“Fancy meeting you here,” he said, feeling like a fool. “All right?”

“I might be.”

“You might be?”

“Sure,” she shrugged. “Depends on how sorry you are.”

Hawke realized every pair of eyes in the house was fixed firmly on him and he felt himself redden. Pulling his collar loose, he made a crack about it being hot in here and then asked Lea to step outside onto the balcony with him. When she agreed, a groan of disappointment filled the room. “Please no,” Scarlet said. “I’ve been waiting for ages to watch this.”

“Bugger off, Cairo,” Lea said.

Hawke closed the sliding door behind them and surreptitiously flashed Scarlet his middle finger as he did so.

Out here, on the balcony with Athens crumbling away beneath them, all lit amber and red in the setting sun, Hawke was stunned all over again by how beautiful she was. A gentle breeze lifted the ends of her long hair and trapped the sun in it, creating a halo effect. Her eyes, which ignored him and looked out over the bustling city, sparkled in the dying light. He waited for her lips to move, to signal that she was about to say something but they stayed still and silent and offered no hope of redemption for his sins.

The sun dipped below the skyline. He contemplated a gag. Humor was a device he had used to great effect many times in the past to get himself out of trouble. It was a defense mechanism that had saved his bacon on more occasions than he could count but the stony expression on her face told him it was a poor strategy, so he bit the bullet.

“I’m sorry, Lea.”

He heard the words as if someone else had said them and she was still ignoring him. Her eyes were tracing the path of a jet as it flew over the mountains to the west of them. While the rest of the ancient city was now fading into darkness, the plane’s high altitude meant it was still catching the sunlight and it shone like a pink diamond on a dark blue canvas.

“I said I…”

“I heard what you said.”

She turned now and faced him. He had missed this face. After London he had gone to ground. Enraged and humiliated, he had spent time dossing down with old SBS friends on England’s south coast before being recalled by Eden for the Beijing mission. By the time he’d got to the ECHO leader’s London HQ, Lea and the other team had already been dispatched to South Africa to retrieve the Sword of Fire. He hadn’t seen her since the bust-up and now she was just a few inches away from him. He reached out with his hands and held her shoulders. “I mean it. I was a total idiot.”

“Yes, you were. An arse, in fact.”

“Yes, I was an arse.”

“Was?”

“I am a total arse.”

She turned her face back to the city and smiled at a million strangers. “Better.”

He saw a glimpse of the old Lea and moved in for the kill. “Am I forgiven?”

“You’re around five percent there, Josiah,” she said with a sly smile. “Keep working on it.”

Before he could reply, she kissed him on the cheek and slid open the suite’s heavy glass doors. Stepping back inside the room, a sea of expectant faces turned to her. She glanced back at Hawke. “Oh, get inside, ya stupid eejit.”

Back to business, the mission could be going better. The rescue of Lexi Zhang from the heart of the Chinese military-industrial complex had rapidly turned from covert ingress into farce and back out the other side into the realms of serious diplomatic scandal. The British and American ambassadors in Beijing had both been summoned to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs to explain themselves and rumors of sanctions were swirling in the loftier circles of international government.

South Africa had gone better. They had retrieved the Sword of Fire and had the pleasure of annihilating one of Dirk Kruger’s major business ventures but it wasn’t all champagne and strawberries. The man himself, along with his business partner Mr Blankov and a small number of his men including Venter were still alive and knew about the Shield of Pridwen. Now they had to watch not only for the surviving member of the Zodiacs, Tiger and the Athanatoi, but a band of former South African commandos.

One of Eden’s diplomatic contacts in Westminster, Simon Underhill, could probably see off the Chinese and being on first-names terms with the sitting President of the United States would also help grease the wheels as well, but things were still dangerous.

On the other hand, they knew from the deciphered sword symbols that they were looking for its matching shield and only then would they have all the information they needed to locate the King’s Tomb.

“Early start everyone,” Hawke said.

Reaper stubbed out his cigarette. “Oui, and I must call my family in France.”

“And I must go and find some more ceegarettes,” Scarlet said in a French accent.

They split up and returned to their rooms, all except Hawke and Lea. She looked at him with a wicked sparkle in her eyes. “So, what number’s your room then?”

“Well, I…”

“You what?”

“I was hoping to stay in here tonight, with you.”

“That is hopeful, what with considering…

They embraced and kissed and as they fell onto the bed, Hawke reached out and killed the lights.