The Orpheus Legacy

CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN

Ezra Haven’s safehouse turned out to be located in Dolapdere. This is one of Istanbul’s more dangerous districts to the north of the oldest part of the city, but the house turned out to be just what they were looking for — anonymous and secure. None of this had done anything to dispel the fears swirling in Lea’s mind like a maelstrom. Francken’s reliability as a paymaster and Alex’s kidnapping and imprisonment were chief among them.

When Francken paid them for the lyre, they would have enough to repay Sooke’s loan and set up a rescue operation to save President Brooke and Alex. It seemed straight-forward enough but doubts nagged at her all the time. What if Francken reneged on his deal? There would be little they could do about it. What if he was tricking them, somehow working with Dimitrov? What if Alex and Jack Brooke were already dead? Her mind was spinning so hard, she wanted to scream.

“Cold one?”

She started in her chair, flicking her head up to see the lean, smiling face of Joe Hawke in the window beside her. Outside, the sound of car horns and smell of exhaust fumes drifted in past the tattered curtains.

“You’re standing there with two beers, Josiah,” she said with a smile. “Looks like you knew my answer before you even asked.”

He handed one over and sat beside her. “All good?”

“I’ve been going crazy, Joe.”

“Why?”

“What if Francken’s just having us on?”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean, what if he’s just using us to get the lyre back and when we deliver it, he double-crosses us?”

“You have a lurid imagination.”

“Seriously, though.”

He sipped his beer and stretched his long legs out in front of him. “He knows Sooke, right?”

She nodded.

“And Sooke knows Rich.”

“And?”

“I think that’s enough for us to trust him. If he rips us off, then we’ll get the money out of him, one way or another. How hard can it be to shake someone down for a million bucks?”

“Is there anything at all you take entirely seriously?”

“Only not taking things entirely seriously.”

“Eejit.” She shook her head and rolled her eyes, but inside she felt a wave of warm reassurance that whatever the hell happened in this world, the man sitting beside her was as solid as the Rock of Gibraltar.

“Besides,” he added, “right now, have bigger fish to fry. We have to find out where Kashala plans on making Ground Zero, and when we’ve put that to bed, we need to be focussing on Alex and her father, and just how the hell we’re going to get them back.”

Lea took a deep breath and lowered her voice. “What if they’re already dead, Joe?”

“No way,” he said. “We can’t think like that while there’s a chance they might be alive.”

“I know, you’re right.”

“Besides, we don’t have to rely on wishes and hope.”

“What do you mean?”

“Faulkner’s a strategist, a master of the long game. Look at how skilfully he manipulated his way into the White House. Just think about how much effort and time that must have taken. There’s no way he would ever squander a trump card like this by harming President Brooke or Alex. He’s holding them back just like in a poker game, waiting to use them at the critical moment.”

“Which is?”

“That’s what we don’t know, but I suspect a trial.”

“That would be insane.”

“I think we crossed the insane line when we discovered Poseidon’s trident, don’t you?”

She smiled again and swallowed a laugh. “I guess so. You always know what to say to me… wait — Sooke’s calling me.”

She took the call and stepped into the hall. Lexi passed her on the way from the kitchen, stepping into the room with more beers and offered them around. Nikolai held up his hand and gave a solemn shake of the head. Reaper grabbed one and practically downed it before Ryan had taken his first sip.

“C’est bien ça!”

“Just what the doctor ordered,” Ryan added. “I’m going to enjoy this little baby like it was the last beer on earth. Who knows when the next time will be that we’ll get any peace and quiet?”

When Lea returned, she looked visibly shaken. “Sooke got word from Titanfort via Agent Raynes. They know where Ground Zero is.”

“Where?” Kamala asked.

“The Hagia Sophia.”

The team were stunned. The former Greek Orthodox cathedral in the center of the city was one of the most sacred places in the county, not to mention one of the most famous landmarks on earth.

“Makes perfect sense,” Ryan said nonchalantly. “Right in the heart of the old city. When that fucker goes off it’ll take out everything within a fifty mile radius.”

“That fucker isn’t going to go off.” Lea’s voice was terse and stressed. “That’s what we’re here for, remember?”

He shrugged. “That’s what I meant, obviously. I’ll get on and find some schematics of the place. They’re not going to be walking through the front door and setting the antimatter device down on the altar, are they now?”

“No.” Turning to Lea, Hawke said, “Is the Blood Crew already there?”

“Not yet. Sooke says Titanfort picked up some electronic chatter just outside the city. They’re heading there now.”

“Then we need to get a move on.”

Camacho peered outside the window. “Wait — looks like this might be our arms dealer.”

They heard the door open and a muted Turkish conversation followed in the hall. Then a short, unshaven man appeared in the door. “I am Berat. Ezra told me you would be here at this time.” He looked down at his watch and then nervously over his shoulder. “We have weapons in the basement, but then you must go. We have other,” he paused a beat. “Guests that we need to accommodate.”

Hawke put his beer bottle down on top of the old TV with a clunk. “Lead the way.”

The former English SBS sergeant looked around the basement and was not impressed by the range of weapons. He thought back to the days when Eden could supply whatever they needed to complete their missions, and wondered if life would ever be like that again. With the boss under house arrest in England and only the cautious Sooke bridging the gap between their new lives as fugitives and the rest of the world, he wasn’t so sure.

Giving the old guns and tattered tactical vests one last look, he faced his team. “This is all we’ve got, so we have to make the best of it.”

Scarlet picked up one of the rifles, a Beretta light machine gun dating from the late nineteen-seventies. Weighing it in her hand, she threw it at Ryan. “Catch, boy — and look after it. It’s older than you are.”

Ryan caught it easily and raised an eyebrow. “We’d have to find something from World War Two to say the same about you.”

Hawke chose his weapons — a 1971 Heckler & Koch, a SIG Sauer P220 from 1975, and an old Soviet combat knife. The others made similar choices, but Reaper loaded up with a number of East German fragmentation grenades, which he stuffed in the pockets of his tatty tactical vest.

“Any word on the transport?” Hawke asked Lea.

She nodded. “Sooke texted. Chevy Express arriving right now. He also says they picked up more chatter about what the terrorists are calling Eschaton.”

“There’s that word again,” Hawke said. “You remember Zhivkov said it?”

Lea nodded and Ryan gave them both a look. “I never heard him say that. Are you sure?”

“Totally,” Lea said. “Why?”

“It’s Greek. Means the final event… the end of times.”

“Do you have to sound so casual when you talk about that?” Lexi said. “We are talking about the end of the world, after all.”

“Except we don’t know what we’re talking about,” Lea said. “Eschaton could mean anything at all.”

“I’m not sure about that,” Ryan said. “We have Orpheus’s lyre, the hunt for Hades, and now a terror group talking about Eschaton, which just happens to be the ancient Greek term for world’s end time. I’m thinking some very nasty shit is getting cooked up and we’re going to be the first to taste it.”

“So, what’s new?” Scarlet said. “That’s sort of what we do.”

“Except this time, we’re on our own,” Ryan said.

“C’est vrai,” Reaper said. “We are fugitives. We have no back-up, no network… nothing.”

Scarlet scoffed. “You’re not going to let a simple little thing like that stop you, are you darling?”

Reaper gave his famous Gallic shrug. “Of course not, but it makes our job harder.”

“What else did Sooke say?” Hawke asked.

“Not much,” Lea said. “He just said it’s a word coming up a lot in all the nastiest places — Project Eschaton. I don’t think he knows any more than he’s telling us, but I’m not sure it’s limited to Kashala and the antimatter device. Whatever it is, for now, we know part of it is going down in the Hagia Sophia. This is it guys.”

“Yeap,” Ryan said. “It’s balls out on this one, no expense spared.”

“But we need to stay cautious,” Nikolai said. “If we get caught, we will face severe punishment, especially if we are blamed for the Osprey attack as well.”

“No, Ryan’s right,” Lea said. “Nothing matters anymore. Our fugitive status now means we’re outlaws, and that means not just outside the law of the United States, but outside the law of nearly every country in the world.”

“So?” Nikolai asked.

“It means we have nothing to lose,” she said. “We’re damned if we do and we’re damned if we don’t. We have to push through this. Our only hope of getting out of this nightmare is to put Jack Brooke back in the White House.”

“That’s not possible,” Kamala said. “However good you are, I can’t see how you can take on the US military-industrial complex and win.”

“That’s because you’re seeing it as one problem,” Hawke said. “You need to break it down and then it becomes easier to see a way through.”

“I still don’t get it.”

“It’s simple. At no single point are we going to just defeat Davis Faulkner and his network of spies and soldiers. First, we’re going to complete this mission and get the money we need for our next mission — to locate and rescue Alex and President Brooke. When we’ve done that, we’ll work on a plan to get to Faulkner. Small steps, one at a time.”

“And those small steps add up to our freedom,” Lea said. “Ryan, what’s up with the schematics?”

Ryan was sitting behind them, his face lit by the gentle blue glow of his laptop screen as he went over the Hagia Sophia’s schematics one more time. “I’ve been over them so many times, it’s like I built the place. What do you want to know?”

“Everything.”