Temple of the Gods

‘Call her. I want to talk to her.’

  The Kenyan wasn’t happy at the prospect. ‘I don’t know if that is a good idea.’

  ‘Flying all the way to Hong Kong to meet someone I don’t even know on your say-so isn’t a good fucking idea either. Make the call.’

  Strutter reluctantly acquiesced. After a brief exchange, he held his phone out to Eddie. ‘She’ll talk to you.’

  ‘Good.’ He took it. ‘Madeline Scarber?’

  ‘Speaking,’ came a dry, rasping voice. Scarber was clearly a chain-smoker; she sounded quite old.

  ‘I’m told you’ve got some information for me. About Alexander Stikes.’

  ‘You betcha. I know where he is now, and where he’ll be for the next couple of days.’

  The silence that followed became long enough for Eddie to think that the connection had been lost, until he heard Scarber cough faintly. ‘So . . . you going to tell me, or what?’

  ‘Or what, I’m afraid. For now. I’ll tell you how to find Stikes, but I want you to do something for me in return.’

  ‘My rates are two hundred quid an hour, and you provide the condoms,’ Eddie said irritably. ‘Kissing costs extra.’ Scarber made a sound that could have been a laugh. ‘Whatever you want me to do, I’m sure you could find someone to do it in Hong Kong. All I want is information.’

  ‘And you’ll get it. But only face to face. And I’d get here pronto, if I were you. When Stikes leaves, I don’t know where he’ll go. Call me on this number when you arrive. See you soon, kiddo.’

  ‘Arse,’ Eddie muttered as the phone went silent. He noted down the number, then returned it to Strutter. ‘Was she the only lead you had on Stikes?’ The other man nodded. ‘I might have fucking guessed.’

  ‘What did she say?’

  ‘She wants me to do some job for her before she’ll tell me anything.’

  ‘What job?’

  ‘I don’t know. And I doubt it’ll be anything good, either.’ He blew out a frustrated breath. ‘Looks like I’m going to Hong Kong. Phooey.’

  New York City

  Nina entered the restaurant with some trepidation. The last time she shared a meal with Larry Chase, the evening had not gone well. Eddie had been estranged from him for over twenty years, the reunion taking place only at Nina’s urging . . . and father and son immediately resumed old hostilities, to the point of almost coming to blows.

  And according to Eddie’s sister Elizabeth, when the two men briefly met again shortly after Eddie had gone on the run, their conflict indeed became a physical one.

  Nina knew that Eddie had met Larry in the Colombian capital a few days before the fateful night at the Peruvian pumping station. Whatever they had discussed, though, he kept to himself. But despite his closed mouth, it was clearly something Eddie had considered very serious.

  In all honesty, if not for this black hole in events, Nina probably wouldn’t have agreed to meet her father-in-law and his second wife at all. While she found Julie Chase pleasant enough, Larry’s arrogance was far less appealing. But there was the possibility of learning what had happened in Bogotá, which might provide new insight into subsequent events . . . and there was also a chance, however small, that Larry could have news about Eddie.

  Larry and Julie were already seated, and the maître d’ guided Nina to their table. ‘Nina, hi!’ Julie chirped. ‘Great to see you again.’

  ‘Hi, you too,’ she replied as Larry stood to greet her. She somewhat awkwardly accepted his kiss on the cheek, then sat facing the couple. Even the restaurant’s low lighting couldn’t hide the age gap between them; Julie was over twenty years younger than her husband. ‘This is, uh . . . kind of a surprise.’

  ‘We’re here on holiday,’ Larry announced. ‘Doing a quick tour – New York, New England, San Francisco.’

  ‘Sounds like fun. Though I’m not sure you picked the best time of year for it. September would have had much better weather than November.’

  ‘Well, to tell the truth,’ said Larry, leaning closer in an exaggeratedly conspiratorial way, ‘I’m attending an international logistics conference in Frisco, but I’m claiming the whole trip as a business expense. Just don’t tell the taxman, eh?’ He laughed, Julie joining in with a giggle. Nina put on a thin smile.

  ‘But I’ve wanted to come to the States for ages,’ added Julie. ‘We’re going skiing in Vermont, which sounds lovely.’

  ‘I’m flying us to the lodge,’ Larry bragged.

  Nina was surprised. ‘You’re a pilot?’

  ‘Oh, yes. Helicopters. Tremendous fun.’

  ‘He’s not a pilot,’ said Julie, teasing. ‘I bought him a flying lesson for his birthday last year, and now he thinks he’s Airwolf. He’s only done it four times.’

  ‘Five times,’ Larry corrected.

  ‘No, I’m sure it’s – wait, did you go on a flight without me?’

  ‘Yes, when I took Jim and David from the golf club up for a spin last month. I told you about it.’ Julie’s slightly hurt expression suggested to Nina that he hadn’t. ‘Anyway, yes, I’ll be flying us up there.’

  ‘I’m sure it’ll be great,’ said Nina, not especially caring. ‘But you came to New York first?’

  ‘You have to see New York when you visit the States, don’t you? I think it’s mandatory now, like having your fingerprints taken at immigration.’ He shook his head. ‘The stories I’ve heard from American immigration officers about how useless that whole system is . . .’

  ‘I’m sure Nina’s not interested in talking shop, love,’ chided Julie. She turned to the redhead. ‘So what have you been doing since we last saw you?’

  Despite her best efforts, Nina couldn’t hold back her sarcasm. ‘Well, I discovered the lost city of El Dorado, and then my husband disappeared and is now wanted for murder.’

  There was an awkward silence.

  ‘I’m . . . I’m sorry,’ Nina eventually said. ‘It’s just that the last three months have been . . . stressful. To say the least.’

  ‘No, no, don’t apologise – I shouldn’t have asked such a silly question,’ Julie said sympathetically. ‘It must have been horrible.’

  ‘It still is. But thanks.’

  ‘Have you . . . have you heard from Eddie? Or anything about him?’

  ‘No. Not directly,’ Nina replied, the sudden angry bitterness behind the words surprising even her. ‘According to Interpol he’s alive, but beyond that I don’t know.’

  ‘I’m sorry.’ Julie looked at her husband as if expecting him to follow up her question, but he offered nothing.

  A waiter glided over to the table, asking if they were ready to order. Larry shooed him away. Nina turned her gaze to her father-in-law. ‘You actually last saw Eddie after I did, in England. Elizabeth told me about it, but . . . what about you? Why did Eddie hit you?’

  Larry was annoyed to be reminded. ‘He caught me off guard,’ he said, unconsciously raising a hand to rub a long-faded bruise on his jaw. ‘Unbelievable. Right after Catherine’s burial service, too. I can’t believe he was so disrespectful.’

  Nina knew that was the last thing Eddie would have wanted to do; of all his family members in England, he had been closest to his late grandmother by far. ‘He must have had some reason to be so angry at you.’

  ‘God knows what,’ Larry said huffily. ‘He shows up out of the blue, starts ranting on at me, and then pow! Smacks me in the mouth.’

  Nina raised a quizzical eyebrow. ‘Ranting? About what?’

  ‘About some friend of his who’d died.’

  ‘Do you mean Mac? Jim McCrimmon?’

  ‘Yeah, him. He blamed me for it, for God knows what reason.’

  She gave him a deeply suspicious look. ‘And why would Eddie do that? Was it anything to do with when he met you in Bogotá?’

  Larry said nothing, but Julie rounded on him. ‘Wait, you met Eddie in Colombia? You didn’t tell me about that!’

  ‘I’m sure I mentioned it,’ Larry said uncomfortably.

  Scowli
ng, the blonde turned away from her husband to address Nina. ‘I’m trying to remember what Eddie said – I’m sorry, I was so surprised to see him, and the whole thing happened so fast, I didn’t really get it all. But he said . . .’ Her frown deepened with the effort of mental dredging. ‘He said Larry talked to someone about you, about El Dorado – and then this guy turned up there.’

  ‘Stikes?’ Nina suggested.

  ‘Yes, that’s it! Stikes.’

  Now it was Nina’s turn to round on Larry. ‘You talked to Stikes? About me?’

  ‘He was a client of mine,’ Larry replied defensively.

  ‘He was what?’ The last word came out as an angry yelp, drawing the attention of other diners. She dropped her voice to a furious whisper. ‘You were working for Alexander goddamn Stikes?’

  ‘I told Edward the same thing I’m going to tell you,’ said Larry, bristling. ‘He was just a client who asked me to arrange the shipping of some goods on behalf of his clients. His company was a legitimate British business, and none of the goods were illegal or on any international watch lists. So I did nothing wrong.’ He slapped both hands down on the table for emphasis. ‘Nothing.’

  Nina was already putting the pieces together, and not liking the picture they formed. ‘And these clients of his: they wouldn’t have been General Salbatore Callas and Francisco de Quesada, would they?’

  The answer emerged with considerable reluctance. ‘Yes.’

  ‘A murderer who tried to overthrow the Venezuelan president, and a drug lord?’

  ‘What they do for a living isn’t my business,’ Larry protested. ‘Do postmen carry out background checks before they give someone their mail?’

  ‘Postmen don’t pick and choose who they deliver to,’ Nina countered. ‘You do.’ She thought for a moment, still fuming. ‘I didn’t know about any of this – but Eddie must have, before he saw you in Bogotá. What happened?’

  The waiter reappeared. ‘Not now,’ Larry snapped, before continuing with bad grace: ‘All right, yes, I made a delivery to de Quesada in Colombia.’

  ‘Let me guess,’ Nina cut in. ‘Two Inca artefacts, one of which was made of solid gold and weighed about two tons?’

  ‘It was a hell of a job to transport, let me tell you,’ said Larry almost with pride, before the glares of the two women reminded him to stick to the point. ‘But I made the delivery and de Quesada was impressed at how quickly I’d arranged everything, so I gave him my card in case he might put any future work my way. But I didn’t think any more of it – until Edward turned up at my hotel. With my business card. He threatened that if I didn’t give my entire fee to charity, he was going to turn the card – with my fingerprints on it, obviously – over to Interpol and have me implicated in whatever the hell was going on.’

  ‘That would be murder, robbery, an attempted coup and drug smuggling,’ Nina reminded him. ‘Just to start with.’

  ‘None of which had anything to do with me! But do you have any idea how much being accused of involvement in that sort of thing could damage my business? Obviously I was worried – and I don’t take threats lying down, especially not from my own son. So I called Stikes to see if there was anything he could do to fix the situation.’

  ‘And . . . what? You told him that we were searching for El Dorado in Peru?’

  A pause, Larry choosing his words with care. ‘It came up,’ he admitted. ‘Stikes asked about you – I didn’t think anything of it,’ he said defensively as Nina’s look darkened. ‘He wanted to know where you were. I assumed it was because he might want to straighten things out with you.’

  While for the most part Larry did not resemble his son physically, being taller and thinner-faced, their eyes were all but identical, and Nina knew one of Eddie’s subtle expressions well enough to recognise the same on his father: he was dissembling.

  ‘But you must have known that Eddie and Stikes weren’t exactly old army buddies.’

  ‘Not until Edward told me,’ Larry insisted. ‘When Stikes first contacted me, he said he was actually a friend of his, and that Edward had recommended me to him for a job.’

  ‘And you believed him? After what happened when we had dinner at your house?’

  ‘I thought that maybe Edward was trying to apologise by sending me a potential client. Clearly I was wrong.’

  ‘But after Eddie told you, you still spoke to Stikes anyway?’ Nina’s voice became accusing. ‘Did you think that he might, I don’t know, make your problem go away?’

  It took Julie a moment to realise what she was implying, and when Nina’s veiled meaning struck her she gasped. Larry, on the other hand, got it immediately; the reason for his delayed response was pure outrage. ‘Of course that’s not what I thought,’ he said in a low growl. ‘That’s just – Christ, no, that’s not it at all! I can’t believe you’d even—’

  Nina’s own anger was rising. ‘That’s what happened, though. People died in Peru, Larry, a lot of people – because you told Stikes that I was there. Eddie’s friend – my friend too – was killed. Murdered.’ She rose from her seat, once again attracting the attention of other diners, but ignoring them. ‘So now do you know why Eddie was so mad at you? It was your fault, Larry! If you hadn’t called Stikes in order to cover your own ass, all those people would still be alive!’

  ‘But how could I know?’ Larry cried, the words somewhere between a demand and a plea. ‘I had no idea any of that would happen!’

  ‘Well, of course you didn’t. Because that would have meant thinking beyond yourself, wouldn’t it?’ She shoved back her chair. ‘Julie, every time we’ve met dinner’s ended in an argument. I’m sorry, it’s not your fault. But you, Larry . . .’ She gave him a look of utter disgust. ‘What you’ve done, it’s . . . unforgivable.’ Without a further word, she turned and walked away.

  Julie blushed crimson under the eyes of the other patrons, leaving Larry to shift awkwardly in his seat. The waiter hesitantly returned. ‘I, er, think we’ll call it a night,’ the Englishman told him, tossing a couple of bills on the table. Julie was already on her feet as Larry stood up to leave.

  5

  Nina emerged from the elevator and made her way to the IHA’s offices, still angry about what she had learned the previous evening. All the deaths at El Dorado, the destruction of a priceless archaeological site . . . everything had happened because of Larry Chase. A few words to the wrong person had ended dozens of lives. And for what? Nothing more than money. The mere thought stoked her fury once more.

  ‘Uh-oh,’ said Lola Gianetti from the water cooler.

  Nina stopped. ‘Uh-oh what? What is it?’ She gave Lola a worried look; her assistant was seven months pregnant and, judging from the size of her bump, the baby was impatient to leave its increasingly cramped accommodation. ‘Was it a kick? Or a contraction? It wasn’t a contraction, was it?’

  Lola laughed. ‘No, I’m fine. The “uh-oh” was for you. You’ve got that look again.’

  ‘What look?’

  ‘The look that warns everyone that they should stay out of your way.’

  ‘I don’t have a look,’ Nina protested as the big-haired blonde padded back to the reception desk. ‘Do I? What does the look look like?’

  ‘That was almost a tongue-twister,’ said Lola, sitting. ‘But . . . well, you’d know it when you saw it. Everyone else does.’

  ‘Everyone thinks I have a look? Oh, great,’ Nina said, exasperated. ‘I thought I was a half-decent boss, but apparently I’m some terrifying flame-haired Medusa stalking the halls with her deadly look.’

  ‘Only occasionally,’ Lola said with a teasing smile. ‘By the way, Mr Penrose asked me to call him when you arrived. He wants to see you.’

  ‘Tell him I’m here,’ said Nina, starting for her office.

  ‘Okay. Oh, by the way, how was your dinner with Eddie’s dad?’ Nina glowered at her. ‘There’s the look again,’ Lola said, hurriedly picking up the phone.

  Penrose was in Nina’s office less than ten minutes
later. ‘There’s been a development regarding the statues.’

  ‘What kind of development?’

  ‘They’ve been found.’

  Her eyes widened. ‘Stikes has been caught?’

  ‘I’m afraid not. But they’re secure, and apparently intact. They’re in Japan.’

  ‘Japan? Who’s got them?’

  ‘Do you know of a man called Takashi Seiji?’ Nina shook her head. ‘He’s a Japanese businessman, the head of Takashi Industries.’

  ‘Never heard of it.’

  ‘I’m not really surprised – it’s the kind of company that owns dozens of other companies which you probably have heard of. But that’s not important. What does matter is that he has all three statues. Here.’ He handed her a colour printout; it showed the trio of crudely carved figurines inside a display case.

  Nina examined the picture closely. As far as she could tell, the statues were in the same condition as when she had last seen them. ‘What’s his interest in them?’

  ‘He owns one of them.’

  She was startled. ‘What?’

  Penrose gave her another picture. In this there was only a single statue, the one discovered in the Khoils’ underground vault in Greenland. There was a date stamp in one corner; over ten years earlier. ‘He also supplied all the necessary certificates of ownership. It was stolen from him last year. Apparently by the same group who stole Michelangelo’s David and the Talonor Codex.’

  ‘Working for the Khoils,’ Nina remembered. ‘But wait – Interpol tried to track down the owners of everything they’d stolen, and nobody ever claimed the statue. If he’d reported the theft, they would have returned it to him. Why didn’t he say anything?’

  ‘No idea. But there was a Japanese connection, as I recall – that exporter in Singapore got something out of the country for the Khoils.’

  ‘The statue?’

  ‘Possibly. But this is why Mr Takashi wants to meet you.’

  ‘He’s coming here? Is he bringing the statues?’

  He hesitated. ‘Ah . . . actually, no. He wants you to see him. In Japan. He’s a recluse who doesn’t like travelling. Supposedly, he rarely leaves his penthouse.’