The Tomb of Eternity

CHAPTER FIVE

Scarlet Sloane switched off the Passat’s engine and watched the hotel for any signs of Lexi Zhang. This was the place where the renegade Chinese assassin had told Eden she would meet Scarlet — the Waldorf Astoria on Berlin’s Hardenbergstrasse, but the Englishwoman wasn’t taking any chances. She wanted to take a good look at things before stepping into any trouble — that was how she’d survived all these years.

Beside her, the former American Seal Bradley Karlsson dipped a bear-like paw into a bag of potato chips and jammed them into his mouth before snapping open the ring-pull on a can of Vanilla Coke.

Scarlet shifted over in her seat and brushed the crumbs from her leg. “It’s like watching a gorilla at feeding time.”

“Hey!” As he spoke, he exhaled a shower of potato crumbs over his lap.

Scarlet gave an exasperated sigh and stared at him. “Do you think you could try and get at least a quarter of them in your mouth next time?”

“Well, you know what you can put in your mouth…”

“I don’t even want to know what that means. I presume something vulgar and American, but if you think… hey — there she is!” Scarlet pointed to the unmistakable figure of Lexi Zhang as she walked along the sidewalk outside the hotel. Their view was blocked for a second by a man walking with his young daughter, who was holding a bright red helium balloon on a little string, but then she was back in view for a second before stepping inside out of sight.

“That’s the Dragonfly all right,” Karlsson said, placing the bag of chips into the foot-well and pulling out his gun.

“Put the shooting iron away, Bradley. Do use your loaf.”

“Use my what?” he said, confused.

“I’ll explain later, darling,” she said. “Americans…”

They left the car and jaywalked across the wide boulevard. The temperature had dropped below freezing, allowing them to see their breath as it condensed in the frozen air around them. Karlsson belched loudly.

“Was that strictly necessary, Brad?” Scarlet said reproachfully. “Any louder and they’d have heard you in Frankfurt.”

“What can I say?” he said, grinning. “I’m a big guy and I don’t hold back, as you well know.”

Scarlet rolled her eyes. “Oh please, do spare me the innuendo. You weren’t that good.”

“I’m not going to say that doesn’t hurt, Scarlet.”

“You’ll get over it, He-Man. Now, shall we do our thing?”

They linked arms and entered the lobby, pretending to be just another couple staying in Berlin for the weekend. They held back while Lexi crossed the floor to the elevators. She was the only one to enter, so they watched the lights above the door to see at which floor she got off. They had already been told, but they wanted to make sure nothing funny was going on.

A few moments later they were in the elevator, shooting up to her floor. When they arrived, the corridor was quiet and plush, and Scarlet wasted no time in tapping on Lexi’s door, gun in hand.

Lexi Zhang opened the door and raised her arms. She took a tentative step back and beckoned them inside. “Please, come in,” she said quietly. “I was expecting you.”

“Yeah, right,” Scarlet said, and waved the gun in Lexi’s face. “Ladies first.”

Lexi turned and stepped back into the luxurious hotel room.

“And hands up, if you please.”

Lexi obliged them, and sat on the edge of the bed. Scarlet and Karlsson sat opposite her on comfortable leather chairs. Several moments of silence followed until Karlsson spoke up: “Well, this is awkward…”

“We heard a nasty rumor that you stole our map,” Scarlet said, her eyes glancing over the large room. “And then pretended to be dead.”

“Well…”

Scarlet scowled at her. “If I had my way you wouldn’t have to pretend.”

“I’m sorry about all of this… like I said to Richard, I was blackmailed. I never stole the map!”

“Save it, Lexi,” Karlsson said.

Lexi stared at Scarlet, imploring her to believe what she was saying. “It’s the truth, Scarlet, I swear it. Sorokin was blackmailing me — he said he’d kill my parents if…”

“I’m not buying any of it,” Scarlet said, “so stop wasting your breath.”

“But it’s true,” Lexi insisted. She held her phone up and showed them the photo of an elderly couple being held at gunpoint. They didn’t need to know it was taken less than an hour ago by two of her colleagues just to give her a cover story. That was the way this business rolled — deceit and dishonesty for the greater good.

Scarlet took the phone and stared at the image. It was dark, but she could easily make out an older Chinese man and woman sitting on plastic chairs. They were blindfolded and gagged and seemed to be in what looked like a kitchen.

She sighed and handed the phone back to Lexi. “It’s possible you’re telling the truth,” she said, reluctantly. “But I’ve never trusted you in the way Hawke does, so any funny business and you can expect trouble from me — all right, darling?”

Lexi looked like she wanted to say something, but thought better of it, and simply slipped her phone back inside her jacket without saying a word.

“Hawke’s too soft on you,” Scarlet continued, still not entirely convinced by Lexi’s story. “Don’t make the mistake of thinking I’m like him.”

“You know I won’t,” Lexi replied in an ambiguous tone.

“And where’s the map, hun?” Karlsson.

“It’s in a bank.”

“How very convenient.”

“It is! After I had time to think, I realized how vulnerable I was.”

“You?” Scarlet said in disbelief. “You’re about as vulnerable as a cobra.”

“Listen,” Lexi said, trying to calm the situation. “It’s true… after they killed Sorokin I knew I would be next — you didn’t see the hit outside the airport. Whoever did it was incredibly professional, totally ruthless.”

“It was Ekel Kvashnin,” Scarlet said coolly.

Lexi gasped. “Kamchatka?”

“The very same,” Scarlet said, “or Kodiak, if you’re an American like Bradley darling, here.” She smiled at him.

“She loves me!”

“I wouldn’t go that far, Brad,” Scarlet said. “Let’s say you’re on probation.”

“Ouch,” Brad said, smirking, but Lexi was unmoved by the banter, her face deadly serious.

“It was really Kamchatka?”

Scarlet nodded. “Yes.”

“Then I was right to be so concerned and take the map to the bank.” Her words seemed to trail into nowhere.

Scarlet didn’t reply. She was too busy thinking about the next strategy. Lexi had looked surprised enough when she had told her about Kodiak being the hit-man who had killed Yevgeny Sorokin in the botched attempt to secure the map, but who Kodiak was working for was still a mystery to them.

She hoped Hawke had made progress with retrieving Nightingale, and like the former SBS man she too had presumed early on that her kidnapping must be related to the search for the elixir of life. It was just too much of a coincidence for it to be anything else, but she did allow for the fact that Nightingale was a former CIA agent and would certainly have made many serious enemies over the years — the kind of enemy more than capable of orchestrating a successful snatch from a New York apartment and making someone simply disappear.

Scarlet Sloane tried to focus. It would be easy to see things as spinning totally out of control right now. First, as far as she was concerned, Lexi Zhang was now even less trustworthy than she was before, and that really was saying something. She had faked her own death and stolen the map, and was now claiming that all of this had happened while she was under the coercion of a Russian criminal by the name of Yevgeny Sorokin. The image of her hostage parents had looked real enough, but it would be simple to fake such a scene, especially if you had the experience, contacts and morals of the Dragonfly — and she’d certainly had the time to cook it up as well.

Then there was the fact that their team was dangerously divided again. Joe Hawke was chasing ghosts in New York City, and Lea Donovan and Ryan Bale had insisted on going with him to give him back-up. While Nightingale’s disappearance was almost certainly connected to the map, Scarlet never counted her chickens until they were running around her garden.

Her SAS training kicked in as usual — bang on time. She knew what she had to do — retrieve the map from the safety deposit box while keeping a cautious eye on Lexi at all times, and then contact Sir Richard Eden and report her progress. He was the center of operations and would brief her on the next phase. The risks were high — she knew Kodiak was out there somewhere in Berlin, and that a man of his particular talents would be closing in on them fast.

When she spoke, her tone left no room for debate. “All right, we’re going to need that map now, Lexi, and you’re going to take us to it.”

The man known to the Russian underworld as Kamchatka, but more familiar to Western intelligence agencies under the codename Kodiak, pushed back in his seat and stretched his arms. It had been a long wait, but as the old Russian proverb went, patience and labor will grind everything, and that was certainly the case now as he watched the beautiful Chinese woman leave the lobby of the Waldorf Astoria and make her way along Hardenbergstrasse.

The only problem was that she was no longer alone. Now, she was being accompanied by two others — a large man who looked like he knew his way around a gym, and someone whose role-model he presumed was Catwoman. Neither looked like they could stop Kamchatka from completing his mission. They walked to the road where someone from the hotel parking service pulled up in a BMW 7 Series and handed the man the keys.

Thanks to the laser microphone on the lap of the dead taxi driver beside him, he knew they didn’t have the map on them, and that it was in a safety deposit box at a bank, but unfortunately they hadn’t given the name of which bank, so he would be obliged to follow them all the way to the precious treasure. He couldn’t risk any more mistakes after failing to kill the Chinese woman the first time and securing the map back at the airport. He knew his failure would have been reported by now, and he also knew only too well the folly of failing his leader.

Now, his targets climbed into the BMW and pulled gently away into the Berlin traffic.

Kamchatka pushed down the window and flicked his cigarette butt into the icy air. A moment later he fired up the Merc’s ignition and rolled the heavy car out into the traffic a hundred yards or so behind his targets. They would lead him right to the map and then he would have redeemed himself.