The King's Tomb

CHAPTER FORTY-THREE

Hawke leaned on the edge of the wall and looked out across Galway Bay. The sunset was lighting the sky in pinks and ambers and a new hush was descending over the world. A swallow dipped and dived and twisted in the twilight. It landed on a telephone wire above his head and chirped in the dying light.

He considered Danny Devlin and how he had died fighting alongside him for the good of the team. He wasn’t quite sure what to feel when he thought about what had happened. He’d barely known Devlin but in the short time they had worked together he’d seen how brave he was and he felt a wave of guilt when he realized how badly he had misjudged the man when he’d hugged Lea in London.

Everyone in the ECHO team except Sir Richard Eden had attended the funeral in Dublin. Over a hundred friends and family had been there, including former colleagues from his army days and relatives from South Africa. No one could believe the great Danny Devlin was dead, but they raised many good glasses at the wake in his memory before the day was done.

That was a week ago and the rawness was starting to fade now. Scarlet and Camacho had travelled to visit her brother Spencer at Rytchley Manor in England and Ryan had returned to London to spend some time with a few friends from his hacking days.

Reaper had taken Lexi back to Provence where they planned to go to his summer home with his wife and twin boys. Her time at the hands of the Zodiacs had left her drained and she needed time to recover. Reaper’s wife knew a good plastic surgeon who had promised to help mend her tortured hand.

As for Kim, she had returned to Washington DC and her job with the President. Hawke knew in his heart that was where she really longed to be and he guessed she wouldn’t be coming on many more ECHO missions.

And there was Lea. After the funeral, when everyone had flown away and it was just the two of them, they had walked on the cliffs around Galway Bay and visited places she knew as a child. He’d watched her come back to life as she spoke in Irish to the older people in her family and realized just how damaging the lives they led really were.

Devlin’s murder had been hard on her. They’d lost team members before and this time it was no less painful. Lea was visibly crushed when he was killed, but she had been too focused on the mission to think about it. He knew it would hit her later, like a ton of bricks. The former Irish Ranger was an old friend of hers and they had once been lovers. There was no way she could process his murder without going through a lot of pain and asking a lot of questions.

And if that weren’t bad enough, she hadn’t even begun to deal with the impact of her grandmother’s letter. Or who she had thought was her grandmother, but turned out to be her sister. The stunning revelation of her father’s discovery of the elixir of life had shaken her to her core but the events of the last few days had shielded her from its brutal truth and enabled her to hide from it. They both knew that soon she would have to face all of this and much more.

Some people cruised by on a boat below in the bay. They looked happy and peaceful and completely ignorant of what was really going on in the world. They carried none of the burdens he felt pressing down on his shoulders morning, noon and night and he envied them for it. They could laugh without fear and enjoy their lives. Relax with loved-ones and pursue their lifetime ambitions, when he was compelled to risk his life day in and day out to protect them from the likes of Mr Blankov and Dirk Kruger. And Otmar Wolff and the Athanatoi.

And what drove that compulsion?

He didn’t know. He didn’t want to know.

They had killed Kruger and Blankov and their goons, but something told him there would be more bloodshed and death before they finally took the Oracle down. He glanced over the ocean and felt a shudder when he considered which of the team would die next in the cause. It was too dark to contemplate and when Lea walked over to him he put the thought out of his mind. It was what they did and that was all there was to it.

“Hey,” she said and peered over the cliff.

“Hey.”

“Thinking about jumping?”

He gave her a sideways glance and smiled. “I’m sorry about Danny.”

Her face straightened. “Me too, but he knew what he was getting into.”

She was putting on a front which he knew would crack sooner or later and when it happened he wanted to be there for her.

“Why’s your hand moving around in your pocket like that? Ireland’s not that pretty.”

She could still joke. A good sign.

He pulled out the box and she gasped. He didn’t need to say anything. Before he had even opened it, she said yes and kissed him on the mouth. The swallow leaped from the wire and flew away into the sky. The sun finally slipped below the watery horizon and a chill wind whipped up from the water.

She wiped a tear from her eye and laughed and he put the ring on her finger. “And about bloody time, too.”

They laughed and kissed again. She was right — it was about time and now as the stars came out over the bay he knew he’d made the right decision.