Weapons of the Gods

CHAPTER SIX

The following day, the morning was bright and crisp, the blue skies an unbroken dome above. Hyde Park was teeming with dog walkers, cyclists and joggers. Luckily, it was a considerably large place and the SPEAR team kicked their way across the glistening grass with morning dew on their boots, meeting Major Bennett and Captain Cambridge on the path that ran past the statue of Achilles.

Hayden held the Sword of Mars, wrapped in two supermarket carrier bags. Bennett couldn’t hide the smile when he saw it. “Really?”

Hayden shrugged. “Best we could do on short notice and all the sword-wrapping shops were closed last night.”

“Interesting place to meet.” Dahl eyed Achilles. “Topical.”

“We aim to please,” Bennett said. “It’s also tourist free at this time of a morning. Now, we do have much to talk about…” He paused and picked up two cardboard trays full of steaming hot drinks. Cambridge picked up another and offered them around.

“Civilized.” Luther nodded his thanks.

“Don’t get used to it. First things first — Tempest are totally hell-bent on gathering all the weapons of the gods. There appears to be no order to them, no clues on how to find them. We’re relying on getting close and then using this rare element to pinpoint the location. The point of that recap is to highlight the words ‘getting close’, which is the problematic part. So, what do we know about these weapons?”

Cambridge held up a thick folder. “Most of the gen’s in here.” He flapped it backward and forward. “Pages full of information on the Sword of Mars and the others. Read it.” He slapped it down on a bench right in front of Hayden.

She stared at the generous file with fear. “Jeez, dude, I haven’t read that much since high school.”

“Mars was, or is, the Roman god of war,” Bennett said. “Identified with the Greek god, Ares. These classical deities are now thought to once have been real men, or perhaps real gods that walked the earth. Some are even identified with the Atlantis myth and, it is said, were the kings of Atlantis, later worshipped by lesser races such as the Greeks and the Phoenicians, and thus their legends turned them into the gods we know today.”

“You’re telling me Atlantis is real now too?” Smyth grumbled.

“Well, no, my friend, but rumors are starting to surface, some new evidence has come to light. Who knows? Perhaps another team will chase that, but we must concentrate on finding the weapons, defeating Tempest and proving all your innocence.”

Hayden liked this man and the way he set his goals out quite clearly. She sipped strong black coffee and stood in the sunshine, letting its warming rays soothe her soul. It was good to take a moment to feel the sun on your face.

“Mars was the son of Jupiter. He was virile, a thriving life force. The spear of Mars is most associated with him, but the sword is a good second.”

“This raises a question,” Hayden butted in whilst Bennett took a breath and a sip of his drink. “If we’re scouring the planet for these weapons, presumably under fire, we need a safe place to send them when we find them. A secure network of contacts, so that we can ship them to you, Major, allowing you to store them with the Crown Jewels, or something. We can’t be lugging them around the world with us.”

Bennett nodded. “Yes, we came up with the same idea. We will provide for you a state-of-the-art communications system and have already tasked a special unit to shadow you at all times. Between all of you, and them, we should be able to extract the weapons without risk.”

“Sounds great,” Alicia spoke up and Hayden glanced at her. “Any ideas what’s up next?”

Her question raised most of the crew’s eyebrows, Hayden noticed, including Mano’s. She found her attention briefly fixated on her old flame. The big Hawaiian was as solid a home as she was ever going to get and, incredibly, was still interested in her. Hayden didn’t want to blow it this time, so she was taking everything slow, creating no expectations and offering no promises. The hope was that it would all just fall into place.

Wouldn’t that require a period of stability?

Sure, and that wasn’t even on the horizon. A network of criminals had to be taken down first, a network that had entwined its way through the power-halls of Washington DC. Its contacts would be formidable, its reach all-embracing. Even here…

“Let’s get on with it,” she said, snatching up the folder. “We’ll get savvy with this and be prepared for the next few weapons. Maybe a little knowledge of the gods will help us find them.”

“Well,” Bennett held out a hand as she prepared to wrap the meeting up, “we do have an idea as to the whereabouts of the next weapon.”

She stopped. “You do? Why didn’t you say so?”

“It seemed best to surprise you.” Bennett shrugged. “With no path to follow it’s like putting a pin in a map and going after the closest. We chose the Key of Hades first simply because it was originally found in the tomb you all discovered.”

“Which one?” Dahl asked.

“There was more than one? Ah, well, I suppose you have your secrets. The Odin tomb. The place where you found the bones of Odin.”

Hayden thought back momentarily to a time when she first met Drake and his friendly associate, Ben Blake, gone but never forgotten. At that time Alicia had worked for the other side and Dahl was a fixture of the Swedish government. Kinimaka had been involved in some other mission centering on the Blood King. So was Mai, for that matter. Karin had been involved also, kidnapped by a madman, and Kennedy Moore too — yet another lost soul.

“Feels an age distant,” Dahl said reflectively.

“Yeah.” Hayden hid her emotions and addressed Bennett. “Please go on.”

“The Key of Hades was discovered along with a whole host of other items inside your Icelandic tomb. Many of these items were removed before the tomb collapsed or exploded or whatever happened to it—”

“The Swords of Babylon,” Kinimaka rumbled. “That’s what happened to it.”

“Right, well, the Key of Hades is a small object about the size of a big man’s hand. Obviously, we don’t know its purpose for being or why it was inside Hades’ tomb, but we do know it’s on Tempest’s list. Now, after the key left the tomb under guard it was sent to a museum in Stockholm for study, and from there it was very quickly stolen.”

Drake glared at Dahl. “Typical.”

The Swede closed his eyes in a long-suffering way. “I remember an awful lot of archaeologists coming and going in those days. I guess not all of them were real.”

“It was a busy, frenzied few months. It’s always the same. Nobody knows who’s really in charge or who their actual superior is, and then the carrion swoops in to take a piece of it. Money talks, and in this case it talked the Key of Hades right out of that museum and into the hands of a thief known worldwide as Aladdin.”

Alicia gawped. “Fuck, don’t tell me he’s real too.”

“No, no, just a moniker given to him by some agency somewhere. Aladdin is known to steal without trace, a true ghost, but also never to properly tidy up the breadcrumbs that could lead to his benefactor. He leaves that to them. Some, of course, don’t realize or think they’re too important, and here we have one such individual.”

“You know who has the key?” Yorgi asked.

“We do, son. He’s a shipping magnate that owns the Gad Shipping Line and, specifically, the Enlargo yacht.”

“One of the biggest ever produced,” Cambridge added.

“Quite.” Bennett nodded. “This man — Gordon Demba — has lived aboard the Enlargo for a decade, sailing from port to port. He’s not especially troublesome, stays off all the main radars, and I’m guessing he has no idea that we know about the key.”

“Did you send the heavies in?” Smyth asked.

“Of course not. The key has to be taken covertly. We must leave Tempest guessing. And Demba will have his own security detail.”

Hayden had guessed they would be chasing the shipping magnate down. Smyth, of course, was hoping for a swift return to Washington. Lauren hadn’t been in touch for a while. She finished her coffee and threw the cup into a trash can.

“Where we headed, Bennett?”

“The Pacific Ocean,” the major said. “We’ll sort out the coordinates later. Are you ready to go?”

“Sure,” Hayden said. “But there is an issue. Is it wise to seek just one weapon? Won’t that let Tempest grab at least a few?”

“We don’t have the backup yet,” Bennett admitted and Cambridge nodded along. “We don’t know who to trust. Why do you think we’re meeting here instead of MI5 or 6, or somewhere closer? I want you people and a select team or two, soldiers I can rely on.”

“Honestly,” Hayden said. “We feel the same, and we can always split the team. But let’s stay together for now. This is what… a two-day op?”

“At the very most,” Bennett agreed. “And it’s relatively simple. In… out… Demba is no soldier and employs no mercenaries.”

“We need a thief,” Drake indicated Yorgi, “and a bodyguard. Take your pick. I guess it’s a go.”

“The Key of Hades is on that boat,” Bennett said. “And the jet is equipped with the retro-fitted GPR device you requested. It has been recalibrated and will seek out the one specific element we need. If it doesn’t beep, I’ve sent you on a wild goose chase.”

“It’ll beep,” Hayden said. “Have faith.”

“Oh, I have faith,” Bennett sighed. “But, right now, only in the people I see around me.”