The Tomb of Eternity

CHAPTER SIX

The holding room was small and uncomfortable. Typical government hospitality, Hawke considered philosophically. They were sitting around a table in handcuffs and their only distraction was two small windows, one of which looked out on a brick wall a few yards away — which Hawke had already dismissed as a potential egress point — and the other was an internal window through which they could see part of a long corridor.

On the other side of this narrow window, a man in uniform was standing with his back to them, presumably their guard.

“Hey,” Lea said. “Check that out — we have company.”

“I’m not checking anything out,” Ryan said. He was leaning back in his chair with his eyes closed. “I don’t care who it is. They’re all tossbags.”

But Hawke followed Lea’s gaze and immediately saw what all the fuss was about.

“Woah! I didn’t see that coming,” he said.

“Me neither,’ said Lea, leaning forward in her chair. “I haven’t been this excited since our divorce came through, Ry.”

“I’m not opening my eyes,” Ryan said. “I know you’re just trying to get me to open my eyes and I’m just saying that I’m not going to.”

“I really think you should, mate.”

“Joe’s right, Ry. You should definitely open your eyes.”

“Nope.”

Lea gave a frown. “I’m guessing this means we’re in deeper shit than we thought.”

Hawke laughed. “I would say you’re a good guesser.”

Lea nudged Ryan playfully in the side with her elbow. “Are you absolutely sure you don’t want to know who’s about to walk into your life, Ry?”

“As I said, you’re just messing with me, so no. You two losers probably have a bet going or something. I open my eyes and the freaking janitor’s coming, and so on.”

“Have it your way, mate.”

Lea bit her lip as she cast her mind back. “I’m also guessing this means the big boys had Nightingale under some pretty chunky surveillance.”

Hawke nodded. “Another good guess, I’d say, but then not massively surprising since she was a former CIA asset and had done more hacking than a coal miner.”

Lea shook her head in amazement. “But this…”

Hawke shrugged. “Just goes to show, you never know.”

“Looks like it’s show-time,” Lea said. The group in the corridor were now at the door to the holding room. The guard snapped to attention and saluted. “Last chance, Ryan.”

He sighed dramatically. “Nice try, but no cigar. Eyes are staying shut.”

Hawke rolled his eyes.

The door opened.

Agent Dempsey walked in first and a second later several men in suits were standing in front of them, imposing, unsmiling.

“You already know me,” Dempsey said, businesslike, “and I’m sure you know Jack Brooke, the US Secretary of Defense.”

Ryan’s eyes opened wide like saucers and he nearly fell off his chair.

“We know the Secretary,” Hawke said.

“And now I know you all,” Brooke said firmly, with no hint of a pleasantry in sight. “Especially you, Mr Hawke. Former SBS, British Special Forces, and now some kind of globe-trotting action-man wannabe, am I right?”

Hawke suppressed a smile and kept his cool. “And you’re Jack Brooke, former Delta soldier, and now some kind of pen-pushing President wannabe, am I right?”

Agent Dempsey and the other BDS men looked to Brooke for a reaction, but when the Secretary cracked half a grin and nodded in appreciation of the response, they relaxed and took a step back.

Brooke sat down opposite Hawke and put his hands on the table. “Mr Hawke, I want you to tell me why you were in Agent Nightingale’s apartment.”

Hawke looked at the man. He had seen him enough times on the television news but he looked different up close and personal — older, more wrinkles, and a cast-iron slate-gray stare.

“Because she called me and asked for help just before they took her.”

Secretary Brooke frowned deeply. “I see. And how does she know you in the first place?”

For a short moment, Hawke thought about spinning the Pentagon chief some kind of yarn. They weren’t just talking about Joe Hawke, he contemplated, but also Agent Nightingale. For all he knew she didn’t want the details of her relationships spilled all over the floor, no matter who was asking, but this was one of the most senior men in the American Government, and at this point Hawke was fresh out of ideas about how to save his friend. He knew his best play was to try and get Brooke onside as soon as possible, and you didn’t do that by kicking things off with a bunch of lies.

“She saved my life when she worked for the CIA. As I say, I was in her apartment because I was trying to help her. That’s all — and it’s the truth.”

“I believe you,” Brooke said,

“You’d take our word just like that?” Ryan said, still shocked that one of the most powerful men on the planet was now sitting opposite him.

Brooke stared him down and fixed his eyes back on Hawke. “Of course I wouldn’t take your word for it.” He produced Hawke’s phone from a pocket, confiscated from the Englishman earlier when they were arrested back in Tribeca. “But I would take Agent Nightingale’s word for it.”

Hawke looked down at the message she had sent him. The image of the man with the knife was right there again, mocking him, enraging him. He raised his eyes from the phone back up to Brooke.

“For this reason, I know you’re legitimate and not lying to me, so I’m prepared to hear you out and give you a chance.”

Hawke nodded. “Good, but what I don’t understand is what any of this has got to do with you. Just what do you know about all of this?”

Brooke hesitated for a moment before replying. It looked like he was debating with himself just how much information to give them, and Hawke guessed that was exactly what was going on. After a few seconds of heavy silence, Brooke responded.

“I know more than you can imagine — I’m the US Defense Secretary, Mr Hawke.”

“I understand that, but why were your men at Nightingale’s apartment?”

Another pause. “She was under surveillance.”

“Some great surveillance…” Lea said, but shut up immediately when Brooke turned his slate gray eyes to her.

“Who took her?” Hawke asked.

Brooke got straight to business. “We think a Russian citizen named Maxim Vetrov is behind the kidnapping, and that it has something to do with some work the agent was working on in relation to you.”

“Me?” Hawke was stunned — his fears had been confirmed. He had put Nightingale’s life in danger.

“Yes, you and your team working under the British politician, Eden.”

“You know about Sir Richard?” Lea asked, concerned.

Brooke nodded gravely. “This goes higher than you can possibly imagine, any of you, including Sir Richard Eden.”

Hawke, Lea and Ryan shared a concerned glance.

Brooke continued. “Unfortunately what we’re dealing with here is so highly classified that only a handful of people know about it in the entire world, so you’ll understand when I tell you that I can only release certain information to you and no more.”

“Of course,” Hawke said. “Who is this Vetrov character?”

“Maxim Vetrov is the original Russian oligarch. He has everything you can think of and then ten times more — the luxury apartments, the private islands and the yachts. He’s even been to space three times on the Russian Space Program just for the hell of the ride up there.”

Lea sighed. “Sounds like he has money to burn.”

“If he burned his money he’d have enough to power New York City…” Brooke said, still no hint of a smile. “Our profilers tell me he exhibits the classic signs of a sociopath and an egomaniac, and we know for a fact he has personally killed dozens of people, mostly enemies but some of his own just for recreation purposes.”

“What an asshole,” Lea said.

Brooke ignored her. “Of course, we always have people like Vetrov under surveillance, but things got more interesting very recently when he had another Russian businessman named Sorokin killed in Berlin.”

“Who?” Hawke said.

“Yevgeny Sorokin was a drugs kingpin from Moscow. Not the kind of person we’d waste too much of our precious time on, but we started paying more attention to him recently when he started communicating with Sheng Fang, with whom I know you are acquainted.”

“Don’t remind me,” Lea said.

Hawke looked at her and knew she was thinking about Luk. It had bothered him too that they were unable to take the Hong Kong psychopath down, but now wasn’t the time to worry about it. He returned his gaze to the Secretary. “Go on, please.”

“Sheng hired Sorokin to deliver our stolen Tesla device into Tokyo Bay, as you all know.”

Ryan lowered his head and covered his eyes. Lea turned and put an arm around his shoulder.

“For that, Mr Bale, we all have a great deal to thank you for. I will tell you in confidence that the President of the United States is aware of the role you personally played in retrieving the device and is truly grateful to you — to you all. It’s another reason why you’re talking to me right now and not in Sing Sing waiting for your lawyers.”

Brooke turned to Hawke. “To say Sorokin was a double-crosser is an understatement. He always planned on betraying Sheng right from the start, but unfortunately for him, Maxim Vetrov has had long-standing plans of his own to locate the source of eternal life.” He looked at their shocked faces. “Yes, I know all about that, of course.”

“I see… and that’s why he killed Sorokin?” Hawke said.

Brooke nodded. “Yes, outside the airport in Berlin. His plan was to kill both Sorokin and the Chinese agent Zhang Xiaoli, but she got away with the map.”

Hawke frowned. It was beginning to sound like Dragonfly wasn’t the traitor he had thought she was. “But what I don’t understand is why Vetrov kidnapped Agent Nightingale — it can’t be just for her research into the map, surely.”

Brooke cleared his throat and glanced around the room uncomfortably.

“Agent Nightingale calls herself Alexandra Reeve.”

Hawke looked at the Pentagon Chief and almost smiled. He’d known the enigmatic former CIA agent for many years and in all that time she’d played many games with him about her name. Now, at last, he knew. “I didn’t know that,” he said. “I never knew her real name.”

“I said she calls herself that, it’s not her real name, Hawke.”

“I don’t understand.”

“Her real name is Alexandra Brooke.”

“You mean…”

Secretary Brooke’s eyes narrowed with emotion for a moment and the silence in the grim holding room grew heavier. “That’s right, Hawke. Alex is my daughter.”

The news hit Hawke like a sledgehammer. All those years and Nightingale had never told him her name or anything else about her personal life, and yet her father was the American Secretary of Defense, and a serious contender for President at the next election. For a second he had a hard time believing any of this was really happening. “But she never said anything to me…”

Brooke sighed. “My daughter and I are estranged. She never forgave me for divorcing her mother — Katie. She turned her back on me after that day and never said another word to me. It tears me up. That’s why she uses her mother’s name. I’d do anything to get my baby back, Hawke.”

“I don’t believe in any of this… this is getting mad.” Hawke’s voice trailed to a whisper.

“You’d better believe it,” Brooke snapped, and returned to business. “After you contacted Alex about this Poseidon affair, she started looking into it in her usual extremely competent and determined way.”

“How do you know that?” Lea asked. “I mean, if you were estranged and all?”

Brooke levelled his eyes at Lea. “I had her computers hacked.”

“That is just terrible!” Lea said.

“That’s between me and my daughter, Miss Donovan, and when it comes to my family I’ll thank you to keep your opinions to yourself in future.”

Lea blushed with embarrassment. “I’m sorry…”

“The point is she used her considerable skills, and exploited her relationship to me, to get hold of some information that she should never have seen.”

“That only a handful of people know about, you mean?” Ryan said, recalling the Defense Sectary’s mysterious earlier comment.

Brooke stared him out with the frown from hell and returned to Hawke. “She managed to get the details of a man who will be instrumental in translating the map. His name is Dario Mazzaro. He’s reclusive and writes under the name Mercurio, and now he is in grave danger, just like my little girl. If Vetrov gets this man’s details, he will not only secure the only way to decode the Map of Immortality, but he will no longer have any use for Alex.”

“Why can’t you send some people out to protect Mazzarro?” Ryan asked.

“As I say, he’s a recluse and we have no idea where he is. I’m guessing my daughter knows which is why Vetrov took her.”

“I understand,” Hawke said.

Brooke’s lips tightened and the slightest glint of a tear welled in his eyes. A second later he snapped back into the moment. “Anyway… the fact is she has knowledge she shouldn’t have and this is the reason why Vetrov took her.”

Hawke looked Brooke in the eye. “We shall just have to get her back again then, won’t we?”

Lea frowned. “Excuse me, Mr Brooke, but the way you just talked about the map and the handful of people with this mysterious knowledge…”

“What?”

“There’s more to this than we know, am I right?”

A long silence. Now, Brooke turned his attention on the Irishwoman. “Yes.”

“And what would that be?” Ryan said.

“That would be what only a handful of people know,” Brooke said. “And it’s going to stay that way. All you need to know is that Vetrov has Alex, and is currently arranging to kill Agent Dragonfly, after which he will have not only my daughter and her knowledge of how to get to Mazzarro, but the Map of Immortality. The US Government is not prepared to allow that to happen, so we’re organizing a team to put an end to it.”

“Sounds fun,” Lea said.

“There is nothing fun about any of this, Miss Donovan,” Brooke said, ashen-faced. “Another comment like that and you’re on a one-way trip to an early retirement in Dublin.”

“Sorry…”

Ryan lowered his voice to a whisper and leaned closer to Lea. “You sure do spend a lot of time saying sorry these days.”

“Who’s on the team?” asked Hawke.

“Mack Dempsey, here, a former Green Beret, and two of his best men. Also, I know a former SEAL named Bradley Karlsson is working with your people in Berlin — I presume you’re familiar with him.”

“I wouldn’t go that far,” Hawke said.

Brooke ignored him. “And they will be putting their own people together. Given how much experience you’ve had in this, I want you to work with them. As I say, Karlsson is already in Germany working alongside an agent named Scarlet Sloane.”

“I’d still like to know what it is you’re keeping from us about all this,” Hawke said.

“I bet you would, Mr Hawke, but that’s never going to happen. Just you focus on getting my girl back from that asshole. I want her safe. After that, stop the asshole from getting to the source of eternal life, wherever the hell that is.”

Ryan laughed. “Easy to say, but where the hell do we start?”

Another stony glance from Brooke. “A few hours ago I had a briefing from the CIA on the whereabouts of my daughter. We re-tasked a satellite watching the Baltic States and used it to track Vetrov’s snatch squad. After landing in Domodedovo Airport in Moscow they flew out of the city in a private helicopter belonging to Vetrov.”

“These egomaniacs sure do love their helicopters…” Lea whispered.

“It landed a short while later in the grounds of a private residence to the west of Moscow in a village called Barvikha. It’s where much of the Russian elite own their second homes. Now we know that’s where they’re holding Alex, I want you on it right away. You’ll have all the clearance you need, and there’s a jet at your disposal waiting at La Guardia.”

“We have our own transport,” Lea said. “Our boss sent a plane over. It arrived in New York an hour ago.”

“I see, then there’s nothing stopping you.”

Hawke nodded. He was already putting together a strategy for what was looking like his most complicated mission yet.

“One thing still bothers me,” he said. “Why wasn’t this all done when she was first kidnapped? I flew here as soon as I got her message but, you could have acted on this hours ago.”

“As a matter of fact, we only just found out three hours ago. As I said, my daughter and I are estranged, Mr Hawke, but she’s very close to her mother, whom she speaks with every day. They share a great deal. When Katie called Alex earlier today and there was no reply she grew fearful and contacted me. You’ll understand now you’ve see the wheelchair — Alex has the mind of a genius, but she is physically frail and vulnerable, especially in a place like Manhattan, not to mention whatever hellhole Vetrov is keeping her in.”

Brooke stopped to light a cigarette and blew the smoke out hard. He stared at the ceiling for a few seconds. Then he looked back down and saw Lea was watching the tiny burning embers, and she began to cough. “Excuse me, Miss Donovan,” he said, raising his cigarette hand. “Bad habit I picked up in the Delta Force before I went into politics.”

“Please, I understand. This must be very stressful for you.”

“You could say that.” He drifted for a second then fixed his eyes on Hawke. “Anyway, Katie asked me to look into it so I sent Dempsey and the others around to her apartment about three hours ago. That was when we found the place all smashed up and I feared the worst. If you had a daughter you’d know how I felt. I pulled every string at my disposal and had the satellite surveillance footage checked until we found who’d taken her.”

“We’ll get her back,” Hawke said, and raised his wrists. “Probably a bit easier with these off, though.”

Brooke waved at Dempsey and the BDS man walked forward with the keys to unlock the three of them.

They waited for the Pentagon chief’s lead, but for a few seconds there was nothing but silence. Then he sighed and closed his eyes. “I’ve been a terrible father, Hawke. When my daughter was kidnapped the first person who sprang to her mind was you, and not her father. You don’t think that kills me? I want a chance to put all these years of hurt and pain behind us. You got that?”

Hawke looked at Brooke’s anguished face. He got it.