His wife quickly descended the stairs. ‘What about Rome?’ she demanded. ‘What the hell was going on there? Your buddy killed Agnelli, and was about to kill me when—’
‘When I shot him. Yes, I do remember – I was there,’ Sophia snarked.
Nina took the gun from Eddie. Checking, she found that it was fully loaded with a round already chambered. ‘And why were you there?’
Sophia gave her a patronising look. ‘It’s all rather complicated.’
‘Well gee, if only I were a PhD so I could understand. Wait, whaddya know!’ She put the magazine back into the weapon, making sure Sophia heard the click as it seated. ‘You can explain on the way to Glas.’
‘Oh, very well. If Eddie will let me take my hands off this door.’
‘Go ahead,’ he told her. ‘By the way, what’s with the gloves? The air in a submarine bad for your cuticles?’
Her expression became considerably more hostile. ‘Actually, I have you to thank for that. And this.’ She brought up her left hand to point with her index finger at the scar running down her face; her ring and little fingers remained strangely rigid beneath the expensive black leather. ‘When you threw me off that cliff in Switzerland—’
‘When he tackled you over it to stop you from shooting me,’ Nina reminded her.
‘Whatever. The point remains that my dear ex-husband used me to cushion himself on the way down.’ Acid on her tongue, Sophia opened the door. Eddie glanced through. The corridor was clear. ‘I came out of the experience rather worse off than he did.’
‘I broke a rib and punctured a lung!’ Eddie objected.
‘And I lost half my fucking hand!’ With a genuine flare of anger, she tugged off her left glove – revealing that a chunk the size of a large bite was missing from the edge of her palm, replaced, along with the two fingers above it, by a waxy prosthesis attached with an elastic strap. ‘It got torn off on a rock, and before I even had time to realise what had happened I hit another one – face-first.’ She turned the injured side of her face to them. Even after surgery to repair it, the scar was still ragged and deep. Despite her loathing for Sophia, Nina couldn’t help feeling a pang of sympathy.
But only a pang. The Englishwoman was a ruthless multiple murderer, killing without a qualm anyone who threatened to obstruct her goals. Both Nina and Eddie had been in her sights on more than one occasion. ‘Well, sorry to hear that,’ she said lamely. ‘Okay, let’s go.’
Eddie was tempted to make some tasteless hand-themed joke, but restrained himself. Like Nina he had found the sight shocking, though for different reasons. Sophia had been his wife, after all, and to see the face he had known so well ravaged by injury was unsettling.
Scar aside, though, it was not quite as he remembered. ‘Who arranged for the plastic surgery?’ he asked as Sophia put the glove back on and went through the door. He followed, keeping the gun fixed on her back; Nina cautiously took up the rear with the Glock at the ready. ‘Glas, I’m assuming.’
‘Yes,’ said Sophia, hands raised as she led them down the passage. ‘I knew him before I met you again in New York.’
‘When you say you “knew” him . . .’ said Nina suspiciously.
Sophia blew out an exasperated breath. ‘I seem to have acquired a reputation as a woman who sleeps with every wealthy and powerful man she meets.’
‘Oh, I wonder why?’ Eddie muttered.
‘But yes, I did.’
‘I might have bloody known!’
‘It was after my father died, and the jackals in the City stripped every last morsel of flesh from his company’s bones to leave me with nothing. I still had my title, so – to be bluntly mercenary about it – I was looking for a man with resources I could use to get my revenge. Harald was one potential suitor, as it were.’
Eddie made a disgusted sound. ‘Along with René Corvus, Richard Yuen, Victor Dalton . . .’
‘He wasn’t the best choice at the time, I’ll be frank. But he was still infatuated with me.’
‘What man wouldn’t be?’ Nina said sarcastically. ‘I mean, on average there’s only a fifty per cent chance that you’ll kill them.’
‘It’s not even close to fifty per cent,’ Sophia replied, irked at the accusation. ‘I didn’t kill Gabriel Ribbsley. Or Joe Komosa, or—’
‘Enough, Jesus!’ Eddie cut in. ‘I don’t need to hear the fucking list. The literal fucking list.’
She gave him a small cat-like smile, pleased to have needled him once more. ‘But anyway, I managed to drag myself out of the lake not far from the waterfall and broke into a nearby house. I didn’t know whom to call at first, but then I remembered that Harald had a residence in Switzerland for tax reasons. I had no idea whether or not he would actually be there, but as it turned out, he was.’
‘So he came and rescued you,’ said Nina. ‘Even knowing what you’d done – that you tried to nuke New York?’
‘The human heart is a very forgiving thing.’
‘Like you’d know,’ Eddie scoffed.
‘Cynicism is so unattractive in a man, Eddie. Up here.’ They reached a flight of stairs to the next deck. Eddie checked the passage and nearby doorways, but so far it appeared that Glas had been true to his word and ordered the crew to stay out of their way. They ascended. ‘But he got me medical treatment, without telling the authorities that I was still alive, and then for a while I was his . . .’ She hesitated, as if her mouth had suddenly gone dry. ‘His guest. But,’ she continued, brushing the odd pause aside, ‘you know me, I do dislike being out of the loop. So I persuaded Harald to let me get more involved in his work. Which is when I learned that he was a member of the Group.’
‘I gather they weren’t happy when they found out Glas had been protecting you,’ said Nina, remembering their conversation with Travis Warden.
‘They were not,’ Sophia replied, sounding amused by the fact. ‘At first, they wanted me dead. Fortunately, Harald has always been something of an iconoclast, so he stood up to the rest of the Group. Then, and now. He split from them over a matter of conscience.’
‘Some conscience,’ Eddie said scathingly. ‘Seeing as he wants Nina dead.’
She gave them a saccharine smile. ‘Every cloud, as they say. But I’ll let him explain his reasons himself.’
They continued down another hallway along the upper deck, heading for the submarine’s bow. ‘Glas rescued you and talked the rest of the Group out of killing you,’ mused Nina. ‘So after all that he did for you . . . why did you shoot his guy in the back in Rome?’
The smile returned, this time knowingly conspiratorial. ‘Let’s just say that it would be best for everyone, myself included, if you kept that to yourself for now.’
‘Glas doesn’t know?’
‘Maybe we should turn you in,’ Eddie suggested.
‘Maybe I should remind you that I saved Nina’s life in Rome.
I could have let Harald’s man kill her – I could even have killed her myself. But I chose not to.’
‘Without wanting to sound ungrateful,’ said Nina, ‘why?’
‘There’s a lot more going on than you think. But here we are, so remember what I just said.’ A set of polished wooden double doors marked the end of the hallway. She raised a hand to open them.
‘Careful now,’ warned Eddie, pushing the gun into her back once more.
‘For God’s sake, Eddie,’ she complained. ‘He agreed to talk to you, and believe it or not, that’s what he’ll do. He’s very much a man of his word.’
‘You’ll forgive us if we don’t entirely trust him,’ said Nina. ‘Or you.’
Sophia knocked. ‘Harald? Your hostage has brought your guests.’
‘Come in,’ came Glas’s voice from the room beyond. Sophia opened the doors.
Eddie used her as a shield, quickly checking for potential threats in what was revealed as an observation lounge, large circular windows looking out into the ocean’s depths. But visitors to the room were more likely to be wowed by the wond
ers within than outside.
Rarity was the theme of the small but incredibly valuable collection, Nina immediately saw. One stand contained coins arranged on red velvet, among them a gold 1933 Saint-Gaudens Double Eagle – one of the most sought-after and expensive pieces in the world, worth many millions more than its original twenty-dollar face value. Another stand held stamps, the Swedish Treskilling Yellow at its centre also priced in the millions. Further treasures were arranged around the room: bottles of vintage wine, a first folio of Shakespeare’s plays, a leaf of Mozart’s Sinfonia Concertante with annotations by the composer himself, and more.
Another, less obvious theme, she realised, was that everything was relatively small and easily transportable. Their owner was on the run; he had brought with him probably only a fraction of the rare items he possessed.
The man in question was waiting for them at the room’s centre. Their enemy. Harald Glas.
26
He was in his early fifties, with slightly unkempt greying hair, strong jaw blue with stubble. His tall, lean body had the build of a runner – but the Dane would not be racing again. He was confined to a wheelchair. Nina was startled; she’d had no idea that he was disabled.
‘I’m not armed, Mr Chase,’ he said as Eddie pointed the rifle at him. ‘And thanks to the Group’s assassins –’ his eyes flicked down at his immobile legs – ‘I am no longer a physical threat.’
The gun didn’t lower as the Englishman approached. ‘I’ll be the judge of that. Hands up. Nina, if Davros here tries anything, shoot him.’
Nina aimed the Glock as Eddie searched Glas, then the wheelchair. Satisfied that he had told the truth, Eddie finally lifted his finger from the ASM-DT’s trigger and rejoined Nina.
‘Thank you,’ said Glas. ‘Now, I imagine you have questions for me.’
‘Or we could just kill you,’ Eddie told him.
Glas was uncowed by the threat. ‘Then you will never find out what is truly going on – and the threat faced by the world.’ His gaze moved to Nina. ‘A threat that you are part of, even though you don’t realise it.’
‘Well, now’s your chance to enlighten me,’ said Nina, watching Sophia warily as she moved to stand beside Glas. ‘You’ve been trying to kill me. Why?’
‘Travis Warden has probably told you a tall tale about me, yes? That I am opposed to the Group’s plan to save the planet because it will wipe out my profits? And that by killing you I can prevent the Group from finding the Atlantean meteorite they need to channel earth energy.’
‘Something like that.’
Glas nodded. ‘What would you say if I told you that controlling such energy is only a minor part of the Group’s true goals?’
‘I actually wouldn’t be too surprised,’ Nina told him with a humourless smile. ‘I didn’t trust him any more than I trust you.’
‘Then you are perceptive, as well as a survivor. Warden is a leech and a liar – his only interests are power and money.’
‘But you were happy to be part of his little Super Best Friends club while it suited you.’
Glas leaned forward. ‘The Group is . . . an exceptionally powerful organisation. Its original members formed it from a collaboration of much older groups after the Second World War, with the aim of using global commerce to prevent such a conflict from ever happening again.’
‘It hasn’t exactly done a great job,’ said a disapproving Eddie. ‘There’ve been wars pretty much the whole time since 1945.’
‘But not massive wars,’ Glas countered. ‘Not the kind that can smash entire industrialised countries and destroy the global economy. The Group’s influence helped stop some of these flashpoints from starting larger fires. A word to the right person at the right time can cool even the hottest head. For example, the Cuban Missile Crisis was not stopped because both sides saw sense – it stopped because they were made to see sense.’
‘You’re trying to tell me the Group is a force for good?’ said Nina in disbelief.
He was unapologetic. ‘That was its original intent, yes. And for twenty or thirty years it was successful. But over time, power began to corrupt. An old and inevitable story. The Group stopped influencing the decisions of governments, and instead began controlling them.’
‘Buying power. People like Dalton.’
‘Yes, but on a greater scale than you can imagine. The Group holds power over senior politicians in over a hundred countries. If you have ever wondered why the so-called left and right seem increasingly similar wherever you go, it is because both sides have the same backers. The more alike people think, the less conflict there will be between them. That is the Group’s motivation. To end the wastefulness of conflict.’
Eddie pursed his lips. ‘And that’s bad because . . .?’
‘There are different ways to do so,’ Glas said. ‘The Khmer Rouge ended conflict in Cambodia by murdering anyone it considered a potential opponent – over two million people.’
‘So that’s why the Group wants control of earth energy?’ Nina asked. ‘To use as a weapon?’
To her surprise, he chuckled. ‘No, no. Nothing that crude.’ His smile rapidly faded. ‘Are you familiar with the theory of exogenesis?’
The sudden change of subject left her briefly bewildered. ‘Uh . . . the basics, I guess. It’s the idea that the earth was seeded with the building blocks of life by comets and meteorites. Or, if you take things a step further, there’s the concept of panspermia – that life itself was actually brought to earth after developing somewhere else.’ Eddie tried to contain a smirk. ‘Oh, God,’ she said impatiently. ‘What?’
‘Come on. Panspermia?’
His past and current wives were briefly united in eye-rolling disapproval. ‘He never changes, does he?’ Sophia sighed.
‘I’m afraid not,’ Nina replied. Eddie just shrugged. She turned back to Glas. ‘The “sky stone” that ultimately caused Atlantis’s destruction, the meteorite – you think it was carrying exogenesitic material?’
‘Is that even a real word?’ Eddie said.
‘Shush!’
Glas nodded. ‘Life, we believe, was brought to this planet four billion years ago by a meteorite. One single, very specific meteorite. It contained not only the naturally superconducting metal needed to channel an earth energy reaction, but also the proto-DNA from which all life on the planet evolved. The unmutated, pure, original form.’
The words gave Nina an uncomfortable feeling of déjà vu. ‘That . . . that sounds an awful lot like Kristian Frost’s plan,’ she said. ‘To use a sample of pure Atlantean DNA to create a biological weapon.’
‘I know.’
‘You know, or the Group knows?’
‘Both. The Group considered Kristian Frost for membership, but chose not to approach him – partly because we distrusted his motives, but also because we knew the Brotherhood of Selasphoros was working against him. If the Group had known his true intentions before you uncovered them, it would have eliminated the threat.’
‘Eliminated him, you mean. Like you tried to eliminate me.’
‘I’m afraid that was the most direct way of stopping the Group’s plan. They are well protected, but you were the weak link in the chain. I would apologise, but I was doing what I believed necessary for the future of the world.’
‘You’ve got one idea for the world’s future,’ Eddie said angrily, ‘and the Group’s got another. So what are they?’ He raised the gun again. ‘Give me a reason why yours is so great and theirs is so terrible.’
‘As you wish.’ Again, Glas seemed unconcerned by the threat facing him, suffused by a calm confidence: the air of a man who believed utterly in his views and expected others to fall into line with them. ‘It is about . . . freedom.’
‘Freedom?’ said Nina. ‘That’s . . . kinda vague. What sort of freedom? Freedom of expression, of movement, of thought, Jonathan Franzen’s book, what?’
‘Every kind of freedom. That is how the Group seeks to eliminate conflict, Dr Wilde. Its goal is
nothing less than the elimination of free will. Total control of every human being on the planet, now and for ever.’
Eddie frowned. ‘How? Using earth energy as a doomsday weapon – “do what we say or we’ll kill you”?’
‘As I said, they are not that crude. Earth energy is only of minor interest to them. It is the DNA in the meteorite that they want. It’s the key to their plans – to everything.’ His voice, his entire attitude, took on a new intensity. ‘The Group’s power does not come only from money. It comes from knowledge – from information. Some of that knowledge has come from people you have encountered. The creation of a genetically engineered virus by the Frosts. The earth energy technology built by Jack Mitchell. Khalid Osir’s life-prolonging yeast from the Pyramid of Osiris. Even the mass of data accumulated by Pramesh and Vanita Khoil’s computers passed through their hands. All of it has helped form their ultimate plan, a plan they are now ready to carry out . . . a plan that depends on you.’
Nina was unnerved by the list of enemies past – and the idea that even after their defeats, they were still dangerous in the present. ‘So they need me to find the meteorite before they can do whatever they mean to do. How about you tell us what that actually is?’
‘The implementation will be very complex, but the idea is extremely simple.’ Glas rotated his chair to face the ocean beyond the windows. ‘Every single organism on the planet descends from the DNA brought to earth by the Atlantean meteorite – the sky stone, as they called it. The genetic structures of modern life, everything from fish –’ he gestured towards a porthole as an example flitted past – ‘to humans, are far more complicated after billions of years of mutation and evolution, but locked inside them is still that original code. Just as Kristian Frost needed a sample of pure Atlantean DNA as a reference point from which to create his virus, so the Group needs to find the pure DNA of the planet’s first life to create theirs.’
‘They’re making a virus?’ said Eddie in alarm.
Glas turned back to his audience. ‘Not in the same way as Frost. His was a lethal weapon; theirs will be more subtle. It won’t kill people – at least, not intentionally. There will almost certainly be a percentage of people who suffer lethal side effects from the infection, however.’