The Tomb Of Hercules

9 Botswana

Well, hey,” said the towering African woman, arms folded sternly. “If it isn’t Edward Chase.”

“Tamara Defendé,” Chase replied as he walked up to her. They regarded each other with apparent mutual suspicion for a few moments… before she swept her arms around him.

“Eddie!” she cried, squeezing Chase tightly, creasing his leather jacket. “Great to see you!”

“It’s been awhile,” Chase wheezed. “Okay, TD, you can let go now. I need my lungs.”

Nina and Sophia exchanged glances. “Was it like this for you too?” Nina whispered.

Sophia nodded. “Mysterious women all over the world? Mm-hmm.”

“TD,” said Chase, making introductions, “this is Dr. Nina Wilde”-Nina couldn’t help noticing that he had omitted any mention of their relationship-“and Sophia Blackwood. Nina, Sophia, this is a good friend of mine, TD.”

TD’s curious expression indicated that she knew of Sophia’s past connection to Chase, but she didn’t comment on it. Instead, she shook their hands, her grip strong. “Good to meet you both.”

“How do you know Eddie?” Nina asked.

Chase shot her a warning look-more military secrets he wanted to keep, Nina guessed-but TD simply smirked at him before answering. “I’m a pilot, I have my own plane. Eddie and his chums have hired me to fly them to…” She grinned again at Chase, who seemed to have developed a facial tic. “… various workplaces around Africa. You know what his work is like, I’m sure!”

“Not so much now,” Chase cut in. “I usually sit behind a desk these days.”

“Oh, what a shame!” TD’s accent was a melodious mélange of West African intonations, hints of French and Dutch blended in. “I hope you’re not getting rusty in your old age!”

“I’m keeping my hand in,” said Chase, not amused at the “old age” remark. “You got everything I asked for?”

“In my plane. Come on.” TD jerked a thumb at a battered open-top Land Rover waiting nearby. The temperature was warm, in the midseventies, but not oppressively hot. “I got your parcel as well. I was impressed-I didn’t know you could send handguns by courier flight!”

“Working for the U.N. has the occasional perk. Like customs waivers and ‘do not x-ray’ stickers.”

They headed for the Land Rover, Nina at the rear of the little group. She looked TD up and down as they walked. She was not the first of Chase’s helpful international “girlfriends” Nina had met, and while it didn’t seem that his relationships with any of them went beyond friendship, she couldn’t help wondering what it was about him that inspired such loyalty. Especially when he could be so infuriating at times.

Maybe that was it, she thought. He never stayed around long enough to drive them mad.

TD certainly stood out among the others. She was easily over six feet tall, her height increased by a pair of chunky-heeled cowboy boots. And she dressed to draw the eye, wearing a pair of shorts that were only an inch of material away from qualifying as hot pants and a cutoff shirt that exposed her well-toned midriff. Her long hair was braided, the strands flowing down her back through a red baseball cap with its top cut out. Nina had no doubt that she attracted a lot of male attention-and also that she could handle it on her own terms. TD’s sole piece of clothing that could be described as “modest” was a faded denim jacket-under which, Nina was certain, was hidden a holstered gun.

They climbed into the Land Rover. TD drove them across Gaborone airport, her hair flapping in the wind. “You didn’t give me a lot of time to prepare for you,” she told Chase. “Twenty-four hours-it was tough!”

“But you managed it, right?”

“Of course! Have I ever let you down?”

“Only romantically,” Chase said, smiling.

TD laughed. “But the media passes, they were the hardest part,” she continued, serious again. “I would never have been able to get them without the information you gave me-not without a much bigger bribe than I could have managed at such short notice, anyway. How did you get it?”

“That was my doing,” said Sophia. “I still have friends within my husband’s company, and some access to its computer network. I was able to set things up for you.”

“Well, thank you! I always like it when someone makes my life a little easier-especially on a job like this!”

They reached a hangar section, windblown old structures housing light aircraft. TD pulled into one of the buildings. “This is my plane,” she said proudly.

Nina wasn’t sure that the plane actually was anything to be proud of-the twin-engine aircraft, its fuselage painted a time-scoured taxicab yellow, looked at least forty years old. “Oh, don’t worry,” TD told her, correctly reading her expression, “I take very good care of her, and in return she takes very good care of me!”

“Piper Twin Comanche,” Chase added. “Small enough to land pretty much anywhere, even on bush strips-and big enough to carry a team and their gear. And this one’s got a few extra tricks in case we need to make a quick getaway. Which after we have words with Yuen, I think we might need to.”

“Try not to kill President Molowe in the cross fire,” TD warned as she unlocked the plane’s hatch. “I voted for him.”

“Don’t worry, I’ll be careful. I’ve already got a death sentence on me in two African countries; I don’t need another one.”

“You’ve got what?” Nina yelped.

“Nothing to worry about,” Chase quickly assured her.

She spotted something on the aircraft’s wing. “Is that-is that a bullet hole?”

“Nothing to worry about!”

TD flew them some 450 miles north by northwest from Gaborone. Their course took them over the vast desert plains and dry bushlands of the Kalahari before they descended towards a private airstrip fifty miles west of the town of Maun.

Chase sat in the copilot’s seat. Nina looked over his shoulder in amazement at the view to the north. Beyond the dusty desert was a vast swath of vibrant greenery stretching over the horizon.

“The Okavango Delta,” TD piped up. “Biggest inland delta in the world. And a huge wildlife reserve, as well. If you weren’t here on business, I’d give you a tour!”

“Maybe later,” said Chase. “Besides, you’ve seen one pissed-off hippo, you’ve seen ’em all.”

TD smiled, then spoke to somebody on the ground over her headset to receive final landing instructions. The plane banked, turning westwards. The distant beauty of the delta was replaced by…

“Bloody hell,” muttered Chase. “That’s an eyesore.”

“I’m afraid environmentalism and diamond mining don’t mix,” Sophia said.

Nina couldn’t agree more. Ahead, growing rapidly as the plane descended, was Yuen’s diamond mine, a colossal crater gouged out of the earth. Nina could make out yellow vehicles moving up and down the long paths spiraling down to the base of the giant pit; she did a double take when she realized they were still miles from the hole. The trucks were enormous, in keeping with the terrifying scale of the mine itself.

Beyond the pit were numerous warehouselike buildings and cylindrical towers, all on the same massive scale. The whole complex of pit and support buildings spanned over a mile, and the distant fences around the mine suggested plenty of room for expansion.

The Twin Comanche made a bumpy landing, taxiing to the end of the runway and being directed into a large parking area off to one side. There were already numerous other aircraft on the ground, ranging from small chartered props to corporate jets. It was clearly a major event.

With equally major security.

Chase, Nina and Sophia-TD remained in the plane-were met at a cordon by a group of unsmiling armed men. Private security, not Botswanan armed forces. It took Chase only a moment’s observation to tell that they had military training. Their stance, alertness and hold on their weapons a dead giveaway. As he approached, he deliberately relaxed his own stance, trying to look as undisciplined as possible as he shambled up to the checkpoint with two heavy bags of equipment.

One of the guards held up a hand, his companions subtly shifting position to cover the new arrivals. “Good afternoon, welcome to the Ygem diamond mine,” he said mechanically. “May I see your visitor passes and identification, please?”

Sophia spoke for them, aristocratic accent to full commanding effect. “Good afternoon. I’m Sophia Black, from the CNB news bureau in Cape Town. This is Ed Case, my cameraman, and Nina Jones, my sound engineer.” She gave the guard the documents that TD had obtained.

He checked them against a list on a clipboard and made an approving noise. “Thank you,” he said, returning the documents. Another man ran an electronic wand over their bodies, detecting innocuous items like keys and coins. The first man went through their luggage. “Can you switch this on, please?” he asked of the bulky video camera he took from one of Chase’s bags.

Chase obliged, the camera coming to life. The guard peered through the viewfinder to be sure, even opening the tape door to check inside. “Camera, battery packs, spare tapes, boom mike, sandwiches,” Chase said, pointing out each item in turn. “Hey, you mind if I get some footage of you guys? You know, for background color?”

“Yes, I do mind,” the guard told him firmly. As Chase repacked his gear, the man looked through Nina’s little backpack, finding only the binder. He flicked through the first few pages of her handwritten notes with no interest, then returned it and went on in a bored voice, “It is the policy of the Ygem diamond mine to remind all visitors that diamond theft is an extremely serious offense, which will be punished by the full force of Botswanan criminal and civil law. Thank you, you can now enter. Please wait over there for the bus.” He pointed to some covered benches beside the nearby road, where other people were already sitting.

“Cheers, mate,” Chase said, picking up his bags. “Ed Case?” he hissed to Sophia as they walked away. “Very bloody funny. Makes me sound like a nutter.”

“Just my little joke.”

“At least they got us in,” Nina said.

“Yeah, I suppose.” Chase put a hand on Sophia’s shoulder. “Good work.”

She smiled. “Thank you.”

After a few minutes, a bus pulled up, and those waiting-all members of the international press corps-boarded. Chase took a seat near the back of the bus, and Sophia sat down next to him. Feeling slightly left out, Nina settled in the row behind. A few minutes later, another small group of people boarded, and the bus moved off.

Once he was sure that nobody was watching, Chase took the long tubular boom mike from his bag and pried it open to reveal that it was hollow, his disassembled Wildey pistol and its holster crammed inside. He quickly reassembled the big gun, then donned the holster, slipped the weapon into it and put his leather jacket back on to hide it.

“I thought you were trying to cut down on shooting people,” said Sophia.

“Well, it’s kind of like a diet-you know, you stick at it for a while, then…” Chase joked, before his face hardened. “And after what happened to Nina, somebody deserves to get shot.”

Nina said nothing, somewhat affronted that it had taken him this long to remember she was with him.

The bus slowed. Looking ahead, she saw they were approaching a checkpoint, a high corrugated metal fence topping a berm of bulldozed earth running off in each direction. But that wasn’t what seized her attention. “Tanks?”

“Must be here as part of the presidential guard. Bit of a show of force to let everyone know how seriously they look after their diamond mines,” Chase observed. The two tanks in mottled brown desert camouflage flanking the gate were Leopards, a relatively old German design long since superseded in the West by more modern weapons, but still formidable.

“I’m not surprised,” said Sophia. “Three-quarters of Botswana’s export earnings come from diamonds.”

Chase grunted. “Never saw the appeal myself. ‘Ooh, look, it’s so sparkly!’ Yeah, that’s well worth a month’s pay. Might as well polish up a bit of glass.”

“Right,” Nina said sarcastically. “Nothing says ‘I love you’ like a glass ring.”

“I didn’t know you were bothered about stuff like that. I didn’t think you were, anyway.” Chase’s tone was cutting.

“Eddie,” Sophia warned. Chase frowned and fell silent as the bus passed through the gate, Nina fuming behind him.

Inside the fence, the bus drove along a road skirting the side of the enormous pit. Nina could barely take in its sheer size-or its utter ugliness, countless millions of tons of earth just ripped away as the massive excavators dug ever deeper. Mine workers in vivid orange safety jackets directed the bus well clear of the other traffic using the road-giant dump trucks. Calling them house-size wouldn’t be an exaggeration, Nina decided.

Almost twenty-seven feet high and barely short of fifty-three feet long, with a fully loaded weight of well over six hundred tons, the Liebherr T282B was one of the world’s largest trucks, costing over three million dollars. And the Ygem mine had more than thirty of them, a constantly moving convoy making its laborious way up the huge spiral path from the bottom of the mine to the processing plant at the top, then returning to be loaded up once more. In diamond mining, bigger was always better; the more raw earth and rock that could be moved in one go, the more diamonds could be extracted at a time-and the more money could be made.

Chase watched one of the empty juggernauts rumble past on its way back into the pit, moving surprisingly quickly for something so huge. “Bloody hell. Better than a Tonka toy any day.”

The bus passed under a huge banner bearing the Botswanan flag, the Ygem logo and the slogan “The Biggest, the Best: United in Prosperity.” Beyond was their destination, a covered stage that had been erected close to the mine’s administration buildings, faced by rows of stadium-style seats. An enormous marquee stood off to the side, waiters and waitresses in white uniforms bustling in and out between it and several catering trucks parked alongside.

Chase checked his watch. “What time’s this whole thing supposed to kick off?”

“Two o’clock,” Sophia told him.

“So we’ve got about an hour to find Dick before he gets up onstage with the president, which is when it gets kind of hard for us to have a word in private. I’m guessing he won’t be hanging about afterwards.”

“Hardly,” said Sophia. “If I remember our original itinerary, my husband wanted to get out of Botswana so quickly that he even had a helicopter laid on just to get back to the runway and the company jet as soon as the official function ends.”

“Where were you due to go next?” Chase asked. “I mean, if we miss him here we’re probably buggered, but we might get a second shot.”

“Switzerland. But he may have changed his plans since I left.”

The bus stopped beside the marquee’s main entrance. Chase picked up the bags. Leaving the vehicle, they were directed into the huge tent. Its walls were lined with large poster displays showing off the mine’s technological prowess; the giant trucks, the even bigger excavators that filled them, the security systems monitoring and protecting the precious stones, even an airship used to survey the Okavango for more diamond veins. Around two hundred people were already inside, buffet tables set out and staff serving drinks. There was also a clear social division: two-thirds of the interior was occupied by the attending media and the apparently less influential attendees, with a smaller roped-off VIP area at the far end.

“Uh-oh,” Chase said quietly as they moved through the throng, lowering his head and gesturing for Sophia to do the same. “You see who I see?”

“I do,” she replied. Nina looked down the tent and spotted Yuen through the crowd, standing laughing with a small group of men in the VIP section.

But it wasn’t Yuen who caught her eye. “Shit,” she whispered, lowering her own head and summoning Chase closer. “That’s him. That’s the guy who took the other pages!”

Chase cautiously followed her gaze. “The guy with the ponytail?”

“That’s Fang,” said Sophia. “Fang Yi, my husband’s… I suppose enforcer would be the most accurate term.”

Nina tried to get a better look. Fang was standing slightly apart from Yuen, something about his body language suggesting suppressed impatience, waiting for his boss to finish his conversation. He had his black cane in one hand, and in his other was a briefcase-which, Nina saw with a sudden jolt of excitement, was handcuffed to his wrist. Exactly how the Brotherhood had brought the Hermocrates text to New York.

“Oh my God,” she said quietly. “I think he’s got the pages in that briefcase.”

“He’s got something important in there, that’s for sure.” Chase surveyed the rest of the tent. “Bollocks. I don’t see an easy way to get to him. There’s too many goons around.” The rope dividing the marquee was guarded by several security men, all with pistols on their belts.

“We might be able to catch Richard before the tour,” Sophia suggested. “I know him: he’ll want to take a few minutes to meditate and put on a clean shirt for his speech. He’ll probably get changed in the administration building.”

“Which means we need to get out of here and into the admin block,” Chase said. “Okay, let’s check out the catering entrance over there, see if we can sneak out. Say we need to use the loo or something.”

“Subtle as ever,” said Sophia with amusement as Chase led the way across the tent. None of the other guests or staff seemed interested in them. He checked that nobody was watching, about to dart through the door-

“Wait, wait!” Nina said. “Look!” She indicated the VIP area. Yuen had finally ended his conversation, and Fang was taking him off to one side. He held up the briefcase and opened it. Inside was…

Nina’s breath caught as she watched Yuen carefully lift something out of the case, turning his back to shield it from the sight of the other people nearby. But she didn’t need a good view to know what it was.

The missing section of the book. The stolen pages of Plato’s Hermocrates.

The rest of the map that would lead her to the Tomb of Hercules.

“That’s it, that’s the book!” she said in a high-pitched whisper, barely able to contain herself. “It’s here, he brought it!”

“All right, calm down, you’ll have an aneurysm,” Chase told her dismissively. She huffed, then looked back at Yuen and Fang. Yuen examined the pages, then returned them to the case and said something to his henchman. Fang nodded, closed the case and walked away. A guard stepped aside to let him through an exit at the rear of the marquee.

“We’ve got to go after him!” said Nina. “We’ve got to get the other pages!”

Chase frowned. “Wait, we came here to get Yuen, remember?”

“No, Eddie, she’s absolutely right,” Sophia said. “Fang has the book-and he doesn’t have any guards. All the security will be concentrated around my husband, and the president when he arrives. We can get the book-and then we don’t need to do anything else, except get back to the plane.”

Chase looked from Yuen to the exit through which Fang had departed, then let out a breath between his teeth. “Okay, let’s bag him. But we’ll have to shift to catch him.” He put down the bags, then ducked through the door.

They emerged by the catering trucks. A couple of uniformed staff looked at them disinterestedly before carrying on with their food preparation. The reason for their lack of surprise soon became obvious. The marquee was a no-smoking area; from the number of cigarette butts on the ground, this was the only place where the media could grab a smoke.

Chase led the way along the side of the tent and peered around the corner. There was another security guard outside the exit through which Fang had left, but his back was to Chase as he watched a pair of men carrying a set of wooden steps into an open area marked by a circle of white tape. They were preparing for the arrival of a helicopter, presumably President Molowe’s.

Chase spotted Fang, heading for a line of white Toyota Land Cruisers alongside the nearby administration building. “I see him,” he told the two women. “Looks like he’s going for a drive.”

“What if he’s leaving already?” asked Nina, worried. “If he drives back to the airfield-”

“Follow him,” Sophia said. Chase checked that the guard was preoccupied, then crossed the few yards to take cover behind a parked bulldozer at the end of a row of similar machines. Sophia and Nina quickly joined him.

Fang got into one of the Land Cruisers and reached up to slide the keys out from the sun visor. He started the 4×4, orange warning lights on its roof flashing.

Keeping low, Chase hurried along the row of earth-movers until he reached the last one. He leaned out from behind it to watch as Fang set off. The Land Cruiser skirted the landing area-there was a second helipad farther away, occupied by a Jet Ranger sporting the Ygem logo-and passed out of sight behind the marquee.

Chase popped open the leather strap holding his Wildey in its holster, then gestured for Nina and Sophia to hurry to the nearest Land Cruiser. He kept his eyes on the guard as they crossed the gap, one hand on his gun, but the man’s attention was still elsewhere. Once the women were in cover, he ran to join them.

“Okay,” he said, opening the driver’s door, “I’ll drive.” Sophia went to the front passenger door, again leaving Nina to sit on the row behind. Once inside, Chase tipped down the sun visor, the keys dropping into his hand. “Guess they don’t have much of a chav problem around here. Do this in England, your car’d be gone in six seconds, never mind sixty.”

“We are twenty miles from the nearest town,” Sophia pointed out. Chase grinned and started the engine.

“Ahem,” said Nina. Chase and Sophia looked around to see her holding up two white hard hats. “These might make us a bit less conspicuous.”

Sophia looked impressed. “Good idea.” She donned one of the plastic helmets, Chase grunting as he tried to force the other onto his head. Nina took a third hard hat as Chase set off.

He was briefly worried that he might have lost track of Fang, but the other Land Cruiser came back into view once they were past the marquee and the neighboring stage. They didn’t seem to be attracting any undue attention from the mine workers they passed.

Chase followed Fang’s vehicle, keeping down to the thirty-kilometer-per-hour speed limit and staying well clear of the passing dump trucks. When they approached the road leading to the airfield, he was surprised when Fang didn’t turn onto it. “Hello, where’s he going?”

Nina followed the path of the road. “Down into the mine, it looks like.”

Chase reduced speed slightly as he continued after Fang, not wanting to get too close. Not that it would be possible to hide that he was following him-apart from the giant trucks, there was little else in the way of traffic. He looked at Sophia. “What’s down here?”

“I have no idea,” she said. “Wearing a hard hat doesn’t make me an expert in diamond mining.”

They continued down the long spiral deeper into the pit. The dump trucks took the longest, shallowest route, but Fang guided his 4×4 down steeper inclines cutting between levels. Chase followed a few hundred yards behind. They were getting close to the bottom of the crater, which was a scene of constant mechanized activity.

Giant mobile excavators, dwarfing even the dump trucks, tore away at the walls of the pit with enormous rotating scoops resembling the blade of a circular saw. The rubble was transported back along conveyors to be collected in hoppers, which then spewed out hundreds of tons at a time into the back of each waiting truck. The noise was horrendous, and clouds of dust swirled in the vortex of wind caused by the crater itself. “Jesus,” said Chase, carefully following Fang’s path between the colossal machines. “They should have these on Robot Wars.”

“Just don’t get too close,” Nina said, cringing at the thump of rock on metal as a boulder larger than their Land Cruiser dropped into the back of one of the trucks. “I don’t want to end up as a red spot on somebody’s wedding ring.”

“A literal blood diamond,” commented Sophia, making Chase laugh. Despite all her other concerns, Nina couldn’t help feeling annoyed that she hadn’t thought of the joke first.

It had been awhile since she’d made him laugh…

All such thoughts vanished in an instant when Chase said, “He’s stopping.” She squinted through the patina of dirt now smearing the windshield to see the other Land Cruiser pull up by a tunnel entrance at the muddy bottom of the pit, away from the roaring machines.

“A mine shaft,” said Sophia, puzzled. “Why would there be a mine shaft? This is an open-cast mine.”

“I thought you weren’t an expert,” Nina said, hardly concealing her sarcasm.

“I’m not, but I do know the definition of ‘open-cast.’” Sophia’s tone was similarly derisive. “This shouldn’t be here.”

“Well, it is,” Chase stated, “and he’s going into it.” They watched as Fang, still holding the briefcase, put on a hard hat and went quickly to the tunnel entrance, where he was met by another man. They exchanged words, then disappeared inside.

Chase stopped next to Fang’s 4×4. “So, what do we do? Wait for him to come out so we can grab the map, or go in after him?”

“We go in,” Sophia said firmly. “Whatever’s in there, it must be connected to whatever my husband’s doing. It’s too out of place to be a coincidence. And Fang might have gone in there to give the pages to someone else. If we lose track of them, we may never get them back.”

“All right. But you two should wait for me in here.”

“I don’t think so,” Nina protested, pointing at the excavators.

“What if the foreman comes over to ask what we’re doing? If someone calls for security, we’re screwed-there’s only one way out of this hole.”

Chase nodded begrudgingly. “Okay, okay. Just… be careful. And if it looks like there’s going to be any trouble, run right back to the car and get out of the pit.”

“What, and leave you behind?” said Nina.

He took out his gun and gave her a patronizing look. “I can take care of myself.”

“And I can’t? Not that I had much choice the other day, seeing as how you’d run off to the other side of the planet-”

“I don’t think this is the appropriate time,” Sophia interrupted sharply. She opened her door and stepped out, forestalling any further discussion. Chase frowned at Nina, then got out himself.

Left alone, Nina banged her fists on her seat in exasperation before she too exited the Land Cruiser.

The tunnel entrance before her was about ten feet wide, an almost perfectly circular hole disappearing into the dusty brown earth. Faint, widely spaced lights hung from the ceiling. It brought back unpleasant memories of the tunnels beneath New York. She tensed at the thought.

“You all right?” Chase asked. He put a hand lightly on her arm.

“I’m fine,” she said, shrugging him away and shouldering her backpack. “Come on. Let’s get my map.”