The Secret of Atlantis

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

Richard Eden was in Elysium’s Memorial Garden with his eyes closed and his mind whirring. Situated in a quiet part of the island to the south of the complex it was a serene place guarded by a ring of palm trees and the name plaques of their fallen colleagues rested peacefully in the sun-dappled shade. From behind the safety of his sunglasses, his eyes settled momentarily on the latest three additions — Ben Ridgeley, Alfie Mills and Sasha Harding. It was hard to believe they were gone and now rested alongside Olivia Hart and Sophie Durand.

He came here from time to time to contemplate things when life grew too painful, or when ECHO business started to climb all over the top of him and make him feel like it was crushing him. Now was one of those times. The Mexican affair had proved costly — three of their own brutally murdered in the jungle and two more — Maria and Ryan — coming perilously close to being sacrificed in Mictlan by the lunatic Morton Wade.

Everyone in the team knew the risks but it still made him uneasy. He had come a long way since his army days — working hard to climb the ladder from senior officer to Member of Parliament and then finally his work in MI5. He had meticulously ticked boxes, crossed Ts and dotted Is all the way along and it hadn’t been easy.

With the exception of a few quiet chats with Lea Donovan, he never spoke about his personal life to any of the team members. It was need-to-know as far as he was concerned and they didn’t need to know. They didn’t need to know about his wife who had died, mercilessly taken from him by illness after so many years together. They didn’t need to know about his children — adults now and living their own lives. They didn’t need to know about his private life and who he was dating.

And they certainly didn’t need to know about the Consortium which had bought Elysium and set up the ECHO team. That was such a long time ago, he thought with a fading smile. He wished the years didn’t pass so quickly. They seemed to be piling up behind him faster than he could count them and the stockpile of future years ahead of him was growing ever smaller. He knew he had to make them count.

His eyes drifted from the tropical ocean horizon back to the plaques. He sighed, removed his sunglasses and gently rubbed his eyes. Maybe — just maybe, he considered — he was getting too old for all this. Right now, his mind was split in too many different ways and it was starting to get stressful. A desperate, clawing stress he hadn’t felt since his exam to get into Sandhurst and was trying to prove to his father he could make it as an officer in the Parachute Regiment.

As of right now, the team was heavily engaged in the search for the idol. At least they had a chance to redeem themselves in the eyes of the Mexican authorities by retrieving the idol, but the mission was a dangerous one and had just got a whole lot more unpredictable with the sudden deaths of Silvio Mendoza and Aurora Soto in the Munich U-Bahn.

The local German news was already reporting it as a failed mugging gone horribly wrong and maybe the public would buy that. But now the idol they’d stolen from Mictlan was in the hands of Dirk Kruger and that worried him more than anything. Eden had known Kruger decades ago when they were both young students. He’d always shown more interest in archaeology’s potential to make him rich than bringing light to world history.

Dirk Kruger. Hidden in the shadows while he learned his trade, and then exploded onto the scene in grand style when he looted the golden Dacian bracelets unearthed at Sarmizegetusa Regia in Romania. He followed the starter up with a very rich main course when he flew into Iraq after the war and looted dozens of valuable artifacts from sites like Umma and Aqarib.

Dirk Kruger, the man who told Eden to his face that he was luckier than a dog with two dicks and he meant it too — he was the luckiest bastard Eden had ever known, except for the night his luck nearly ran out in Iraq when a team of Dutch soldiers caught him raiding trenches in a site at Babylon and nearly blew his head off.

Dirk Kruger, a man entirely without ethics and a lethal triple obsession — wealth, power and diamonds.

And now he had the idol. The idol everyone wanted… he closed his eyes and turned his mind back to Mexico.

Deep beneath the Temple of Huitzilopochtli, Mictlan had been sealed since long before the Spanish conquistadors arrived in Mexico and that idol simply should not have been there. Ryan Bale and Alex Reeve had both assured him that it was impossible for it to be in Mictlantecuhtli’s sacrificial chamber and that meant questions he wanted answered.

That the Consortium wanted answered as well.

At least the team were on it, and he was confident that thanks to his contacts in the SIS, Hawke’s infiltration into Korać’s army should hopefully result in the return of the idol and the arrests of Dirk Kruger and the Serbian, but it was still early days.

He sighed and replaced his sunglasses, rising from the bench and slipping his hands in his pockets. For a few moments he wandered along the secret island’s South Beach as he tried to gather his thoughts, and then Alex called his cell phone.

“Anything new on Kruger?” he asked.

“Lea just called. They’re in.”

“Good, I think.”

“I don’t think it’s good,” Alex said. “I think it’s a stupid idea. Korać is a former commander in the Yugoslav People’s Army and after that the Serbian Army. He used to serve under Ratko Mladić, the former Bosnian Serb military commander. He’s dangerous.”

“I know all this, Alex. Hawke knows how to look after himself.”

“I’m not so sure, Rich. Korać is unpredictable. When he’s not drunk on Rakia in Belgrade strip clubs he spends his time coordinating one of the biggest private military companies in the world! Joe and Vincent could be in deep shit.”

“Let them do their job.”

Eden cut the call and let out a deep, long sigh. Maybe he really was getting too old for this. Maybe it was time to step aside and let someone else lead ECHO. He turned into the breeze and closed his eyes. At least the warm wind was stopping the mosquitoes from wreaking their usual havoc on his elbows and ankles.

Thank the heavens for small mercies, he thought, and headed back toward the ECHO compound.