The Tomb of Eternity

CHAPTER SEVEN

Maxim Vetrov watched dreamily through the window of his luxury dacha as the snow fell in heavy sheets over the countryside. He contemplated with something approximating pride that this was the landscape that destroyed Hitler’s Panzer Armies. Behind him he heard the familiar deep, belly-growl of Osiris, or was it Anubis? Vetrov had trouble telling the difference sometimes, but after a short period of weighing up the probability he settled on Osiris. Osiris, after all, hadn’t been fed for a very long time.

He turned his back on the blizzard tearing through the pine forests of Barvikha, and cast a warm smile on the crocodiles as they lay on the artificial island in the center of the enormous enclosure. There were six in all, and all named after an ancient Egyptian deity. His favorite was the young female, Sekhmet, the goddess of fire and vengeance. He watched with pride as Anubis slid down from the island and disappeared into the salty brine with nothing left behind him other than a faint trail of bubbles, and then he was gone from the world again.

“Crocodylus porosus is a miracle of nature, Kosma.” As he spoke, the giant Kosma was dragging a young man into the room. He hurled him on the floor a few yards from Vetrov and took a step back, keeping an evaluating eye on the surface of the water.

“The largest reptile alive in the entire world, the saltwater crocodile is truly the greatest predator on earth.” He stopped talking for a moment to study his own reflection in the window with a mix of weariness and hope. It was true he was going gray, and the lines around his eyes were deepening every day, but unlike other men, Vetrov knew he wasn’t going to grow any older. He knew, for a fact, that not only would he not grow old, but that he would never die.

Which was more than he could say for the young man now cowering opposite him.

He gave himself one last narcissistic glance and turned to face Kosma, whose seven-foot frame was towering over him. His number two was nervously explaining about the fiascos in China and Berlin.

“And you lost them?” Vetrov drawled, and then sipped a glass of chilled mineral water. His eyes crawled to the sweating man on the floor.

Kosma nodded unhappily. “At Xian. Two of my men let her get away with Sorokin.”

“But he is dead now?”

“Yes. Ekel killed him in a cab outside Tegel in Berlin, but the woman got away with the map.”

Vetrov sniffed sharply and walked away from his chair. Ekel Kvashnin was the very best in the business. He was not a man to mess with, but failing to kill the Chinese woman and secure the map was sloppy. His next failure would be his last, no matter what his reputation.

Once again, he watched the snow falling across the bleak landscape in thick white waves. “So Ekel killed Sorokin, but the little Dragonfly still flutters…” He made a casual, rising gesture with his hand to mimic a butterfly.

“Not for long. Ekel is tailing her to a bank somewhere in Berlin where she has stored the map. When she retrieves it he will kill her and take the map.”

“And our American friend upstairs is still refusing to give up Mercurio?”

Kosma nodded in a businesslike manner.

Vetrov looked up at the giant man standing before him and considered his options. He wandered casually over to a large plastic box positioned by the fence surrounding the enclosure as Kosma dragged the man by the scruff of his neck closer to the water. “We call them hyper-carnivores because most of their diet is pure meat, but they are so much more than that. They are beautiful apex predators, to be respected, to be feared. Wouldn’t you agree, Anatoly?”

The young man crawled up to his knees and clasped his hands in a show of desperate supplication. “Please, Mr Vetrov, sir.” He broke down and began to cry without shame. “Please… I have children…”

Vetrov ignored his pleas. “In Ancient Egyptian bestiary, the crocodile was respected totally, for the entire economy was based on the Nile — the crocodile’s territory. They wrote poetry about them, they worshipped them.” He paused and raised his chin to look into the enclosure. “I wonder if Sebak will play today?”

“Mr Vetrov… please, I beg you…”

“Sebak was the crocodile god…” Vetrov opened the plastic box and the room was instantly filled with the sound and smell of chickens. “My darlings deserve a starter before the main course, naturally.”

Vetrov pulled a chicken from the box and without a second thought tossed it live over the enclosure fence. It squawked and flapped but before it hit the water a male crocodile fired through the surface like a ballistic missile and snapped its wide jaws with a thunder-crack. The chicken was gone, the only remnants a small cloud of white feathers drifting through the air like snowflakes.

Vetrov gave an evaluating nod. “Ah! Anubis is faster today.”

Anatoly turned white and began to tremble. Kosma took another step back.

“These beautiful specimens are from the Northern Territory of Australia, and they are the most formidable crocodiles on earth. They have the most powerful bite of any creature on the planet and can crush a buffalo’s skull as if it were paper, as you will discover for yourself as soon as you tell me why you passed my research to Yevgeny Sorokin.”

“I… I never…”

“Shhh,” Vetrov gently stroked Anatoly’s head. “Please, don’t tell lies, Tolya. You, a humble research assistant from Volgograd, were entrusted with the greatest research secrets the world has ever known. I offered you more money than your family has accumulated in five centuries, and yet you pass critical information to my rival — who is now dead, by the way. I want to know why.”

“I never even heard of Sorokin, Mr Vetrov, sir, please…”

“There are many ways to be killed by a crocodile, Tolya. If you are in the water, without a ripple on the surface, the next thing you know your head is crushed in its jaws. You wouldn’t even see it coming. Less than a second and your skull is crushed and he is propelling you deep beneath the waves…” Vetrov waved his hand forward to simulate the path of a crocodile.

Antoly’s reply was drowned in tears.

“And that is the good way, the fast way. Another way is Kosma here hangs you over the water from the rigging above the enclosure. That way my darlings will leap from the water and snap at your legs, each trying to make the kill. Now, how and why did you pass the information to Sorokin?”

“I swear, I never…”

Now bored with the game, Vetrov sighed deeply and snapped his fingers to bring matters to a close. Kosma moved reluctantly forward and took hold of Dr Anatoly Ivanov by the scruff of his neck and lifted the sobbing, broken man as if he were a simple cloth doll.

“One more chance, Tolya, and then you die.”

“I do not know anyone called Sorokin!”

With a casual nod of his head, Vetrov gave Kosma the signal. The giant man raised the screaming man effortlessly above his head like he might lift a twenty kilo barbell and hurled him into the water beyond the fence.

For a second, or maybe two, the professor of Egyptian hieroglyphics tried to swim for the shore, driven by the most primal of instincts, but even he knew it was pointless. In the blink of an eye the enormous jaws seized him, and as the yellow teeth of Anubis sunk into his flesh, he disappeared beneath the foam and froth, now turned a startling crimson by his own blood.

“The girl knows more, I know it…” Vetrov murmured.

In the enclosure, a ferocious battle was unfolding. Water splashed all over the paving and occasionally a man’s screams could be heard. Then a few short seconds later, Anubis dragged the still, silent Egyptologist into the brine and there was silence.

Vetrov chuckled and applauded as the water grew still again.

“Shall I get her?” Kosma was replying to his boss, but his eyes were firmly fixed on the horrendous scene that had unfolded in the enclosure.

Vetrov nodded his head and replied calmly. “Yes.”

Still tied to the chair with the bag over her head, Alex Reeve strained to hear if anyone else was in the room with her. She thought she was alone, and her mind turned to escape. From somewhere below her, she heard the sound of splashing and the most terrified screams of a man she had ever heard in her life. After a moment of silence there followed the sound of a man laughing, and then applause. She strained at the duct tape holding her to the chair but it was no good. She wasn’t going anywhere.

Then she heard the door open and a man walked in. Since being trapped in her new world of darkness behind the sack, she had learned to tell the difference in the sound of the footsteps. This was the footfall of the giant, and it was confirmed a second later when she heard his heavy breathing and felt his broad hands on her as he lifted her, still sitting in the chair, and carried her from the room.

The Gulfstream V cruised smoothly forty-thousand feet above the Norwegian Sea. On board, Lea and Ryan sat opposite each other and played poker, while Dempsey and his men sat up front and talked among themselves.

Hawke laid himself down on the long leather couch and painfully walked himself through the deaths of Hart and Durand for the thousandth time. Then, when that hell was over, he tortured himself some more over the kidnapping of Nightingale, a woman whose name he now knew was Alexandra Reeve, the estranged daughter of no less than the head of the Pentagon. All of this was starting to feel way above his pay grade and he wanted answers more than ever.

Lea’s contagious laugh shook him from his thoughts and he glanced over to see her pulling a pile of dollar bills to her side of the little conference table. Ryan sighed and folded his hand, and then turned in the leather swivel chair to look out of the porthole at the ocean far below. Somewhere ahead he would soon see the Kjølen Mountains of Trøndelag on the western horizon.

Inwardly, Hawke was still finding it hard to deal with his responsibility for the deaths of Olivia Hart and Sophie Durand, and seeing Ryan as a mere shadow of his former self made things a thousand times worse. The smart-mouth kid-genius was gone — replaced by a sad, bitter cynic. Hawke had seen it happen before, but that didn’t make it any easier to handle. Despite himself, he broke into a smile when he watched Lea take the money and crack some jokes — she was trying to make Ryan laugh, but his face was stone.

It had been no more than hours since the Chinese criminal kingpin Sheng Fang had fallen to his death in the hidden tomb of the Emperor Qin. Hawke could still see his terrified face as he plunged through the flames and crashed into the dirt beside a river of burning oil. Now, that was all tied up, except for Mr Luk… but they weren’t out of the woods yet — a new monster had risen and was threatening to seize the elixir for himself. He had to be stopped.

Lea got a text, and she swivelled in the chair to face the front. Either side of the aircrew cabin were two large television screens, and the Irishwoman activated them with a flick of the remote. A second later the lean, sharp face of Sir Richard Eden appeared on the screens. Dempsey and the other American soldiers turned to look.

“Lea, how are you?”

“All good, Richard.”

“Hawke?”

Hawke paused before replying, and rubbed the stubble on his chin. “Well…”

“Excellent, I want you all to listen carefully. I’ve had intelligence that the Russian hit man known as Kodiak, the man we now know killed Sorokin and attempted to kill Dragonfly, is on the trail of our people in Berlin. Presumably he has orders to kill them and retrieve the map.”

“We know…”

“You’re aware of this information?” Eden asked.

“Yes, you could say that,” Hawke replied. “We just got a briefing by Jack Brooke about the guy behind all this — his name is Maxim Vetrov.”

“Jack Brooke — you mean the Defense Secretary?”

Hawke nodded. “The very same. Agent Nightingale is his daughter.”

Eden was stunned. Hawke saw for the first time that Sir Richard Eden’s intelligence network obviously didn’t extend quite as far as he would have liked.

“Well, I’ll be buggered,” Eden said. “Didn’t see that one coming.”

“Neither did we, Rich,” Lea said. “But Jack Brooke knows all about us — and that includes you, too.”

“I see…” Eden was silent for a few seconds but quickly regained his composure and returned to the matter at hand. “All right, then we know for sure Nightingale’s kidnapping and the attempted murder of Dragonfly are connected — the link being Maxim Vetrov. He’s obviously our man so get after him.”

“We’re already on our way,” Hawke said.

Eden ended the call and Hawke gathered everyone for a briefing on the assault on Vetrov’s dacha. Now wasn’t the time for half-measures, and for the first time in a long time, he couldn’t wait until the shooting started. It was payback time, and he had a big score to settle with Maxim Vetrov.