The Sacred Vault

  The peaks on the heart monitor were closer together, rising higher. ‘I’m getting the nurse,’ Nina said, worried.

  ‘No, I’m okay, I - nghh! ’ His whole face twisted, body flinching. An alarm trilled on the monitor, Rowan’s heartbeats no longer silent as the machine recognised dangerous activity.

  Nina jumped up and threw open the door. ‘Hey! I need help in here, quick!’

  A doctor and a nurse ran in, the nurse checking the readings on the monitoring equipment while the doctor examined his patient. ‘It’s not his breathing,’ the nurse reported.

  ‘Pupils are dilated, left eyelid drooping . . .’ muttered the doctor, shining a penlight into Rowan’s eyes. ‘Dammit! We need to get him back to the OR, right now - get Dr Kyanka down here.’

  ‘What’s happening?’ Nina asked desperately as the nurse hurried to the room’s phone. ‘I thought he was all right!’

  ‘He was. We treated the gunshot wound - this is something else, looks like a cerebral aneurysm.’

  ‘What? Oh my God!’

  The nurse slammed down the phone. ‘Dr Kyanka’s on his way.’ Another nurse burst into the room to help her move the patient.

  Nina watched, helpless, as the pain-stricken Rowan was rushed away. ‘Help him, please!’

  ‘We’ll do what we can,’ said the doctor as he charged after them down the corridor. But his grim expression filled Nina with terror.

  Bandaged, limping slightly on a stiff leg, Eddie made his way through the hospital. He was mildly irked that Nina hadn’t returned to the ER; Rowan’s injuries were far more severe than his own, yes, but a bit more support from his wife would have been nice.

  He arrived at a small waiting area, and saw Nina hunched in a chair. ‘There you are!’ he called. ‘So you’d rather hang about waiting for your ex-boyfriend than watch your husband have splinters tweezed out of his arse . . .’

  He tailed off as she looked up at him, eyes red and puffy, cheeks streaked with tears. There was only one possible cause for her distress. ‘Oh, shit,’ he said, quickly sitting beside her and holding her hands. ‘Are you okay? Is Rowan . . .’

  ‘He - he didn’t make it,’ she said, throat raw. ‘He was okay, they treated the bullet wound, but then he, uh . . .’ Her voice began to quaver. ‘He had a . . . burst blood vessel in - in his brain . . .’ She broke down, sobbing.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ said Eddie, knowing all too well what it was like to lose a friend. He wrapped his arms protectively round her and held her close as she wept.

  6

  New York City

  The Talonor Codex rested on Nina’s desk. Around it lay dozens of photographs and page upon page of printouts - the IHA’s reference images and translations of the ancient document.

  None of them were helping. Nina had gone through the translations twice already that morning, but even as she began a third reading she suspected it would prove equally unenlightening. Talonor had been methodical in the accounts of his travels . . . meaning the sheer amount of information was overpowering. How could she pick out what she was looking for in a journal that spanned three continents?

  But no matter how much she tried to focus her mind on her task, no matter how many times she re-read the ancient text, she was unable to escape a constant, gnawing guilt. She knew that she was using work as a way to avoid thinking about the events in San Francisco, the analytical part of her mind attempting to box up and shut away the emotional. But the attempt was doomed to failure. The Codex itself was a reminder, a symbol of her loss. Rowan Sharpe had died because of it.

  That thought tore open the box. Its contents flooded her mind, memories of Rowan from throughout her life. As a colleague, as a friend . . . as a lover. But the one that hit her the hardest was the image of him with her parents when she was a teenager with a puppy-dog crush, all of them working together to solve the riddle of Atlantis.

  That riddle had taken the lives of her parents. And now, fourteen years later, even though she had solved it . . . it had taken Rowan too.

  Her eyes stung with tears.

  Eddie entered the office, walking rather stiffly. ‘Ay up,’ he said in casual greeting - then he read her expression, his own filling with concern. ‘You all right?’

  ‘No,’ she admitted, trying and failing to hold back a sob as she wiped her eyes. He crouched beside her, putting an arm over her shoulders. ‘Oh, God, Eddie. Rowan’s dead, and it’s all my fault . . .’

  ‘It’s not your fault,’ Eddie said firmly. ‘Why d’you say that?’

  ‘Because . . . because I brought him into all this. I hired him to be in charge of the exhibition. If it hadn’t been for me, he’d still be alive . . .’ She broke down, hands to her face to cover her grief and shame.

  ‘Nina, look at me. Look.’ He slowly pulled her hands down so he could meet her eyes. ‘I know I got a little bit jealous of Rowan, but it wasn’t serious. He was a good guy. But you didn’t kill him, okay? You have to tell yourself that. It was like . . .’ He paused, recalling the impact of a loss of his own a year and a half earlier. ‘Like when Mitzi died when we were looking for Excalibur. I blamed myself for that when it happened. You remember?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘But . . . but I realised as time went on that I didn’t kill her. Just because she was there with me didn’t make it my fault that she died - I didn’t pull the trigger. And I know this’ll sound harsh and horrible right now, but it’s the same for you. You didn’t kill Rowan. And you didn’t get him killed either.’

  ‘But he would be all right if—’

  ‘You didn’t,’ he repeated, more forcefully. ‘Okay? And they arrested the guy who did. They’ve got him. He did it, not you. Don’t blame yourself for it. That’s what I did with Mitzi, and . . . well, you remember. Things went bad for a while. I don’t want you to have to go through the same thing that I did.’

  ‘I can’t help it,’ she said. ‘And . . . and I know I should talk to his father, tell him what happened, but . . . I can’t face it. The hospital told him, he knows that Rowan’s dead, but . . .’ Tears rolled down her cheeks, her voice dropping to a whisper. ‘What if he blames me? If I think it’s my fault, what if he does too?’

  Eddie held her more closely as she buried her face against his shoulder. ‘Hey, hey,’ he said, stroking her hair. ‘He won’t blame you, because you didn’t do anything wrong.’

  ‘I . . . You’re right, I know. I know that, in my head. But I don’t feel that.’

  ‘It’s tough, I know. Believe me, I bloody know that! But you’ll get through it, and you’ll stop blaming yourself. I know that too. Look, you don’t have to do anything right now. You should go home.’

  Nina lifted her head and wiped her eyes again. ‘No . . . no, I’d rather keep working. An Interpol officer’s coming in to see me later. If I can figure out why the raiders wanted to take the Codex rather than anything else, it might help them find out who was behind the robbery - and the thefts of all those other treasures.’ She sat upright, taking a long breath as she forced herself back into a businesslike mindset. ‘I’ll be okay.’

  ‘You sure?’

  A half-hearted smile. ‘As much as I can be.’

  ‘That’s my girl.’ Eddie kissed her, then stood and stepped back to regard the contents of her desk. ‘So what have you worked out so far? Sussed it all out yet?’

  ‘Not yet,’ she sighed. ‘Maybe I should have taken that guy Khoil up on his offer to translate it.’

  ‘So what have you got?’

  ‘Mostly that as an explorer, Talonor’s a name that should be up there with Columbus and Cook and Marco Polo. The Codex only covers one of his expeditions, but we know that he visited South America as well - he discovered the site that would become the Atlantean settlement we found there. There might have been other expeditions, too; we just haven’t found his accounts yet.’

  Eddie flicked through a few pages. ‘Is the translation accurate?’

  ‘As far as we know. Why?’

  ??
?Just that I recognise the way it’s written. It’s like a military report, a tactical assessment - just the facts, ma’am. When he reaches somewhere, all he says about it is how many men old enough to fight live there, what the landscape’s like and where the high ground is, that kind of stuff. This Talonor bloke wasn’t an explorer - he was a scout.’

  ‘The Atlanteans were conquerors,’ Nina reminded him. ‘I suppose knowing a potential target’s strength was more important than their cultural heritage.’ She remembered something, and searched through the papers. ‘Although . . . here. He took more of an interest than usual in one group of people.’

  ‘Which ones?’

  ‘Some Hindu priests. He met them in the Himalayas when he was travelling up the Ganges. Afterwards, he carried on about a hundred miles northeast into Tibet and discovered the Golden Peak - the other major Atlantean site.’

  ‘Yeah, we had a lot of fun there, didn’t we?’ said Eddie, with a hint of sarcasm. ‘So what about these priests? Were there Hindus around that long ago?’

  ‘Hinduism’s been around for a long time - much longer than any of the Abrahamic religions. Even before we found the Codex and confirmed from this’ - she opened the Codex to the pages that had been on display in San Francisco and indicated the section of Vedic Sanskrit text - ‘that the ancient Hindus were contemporaries of the Atlanteans, there was evidence that the religion existed at least as far back as three thousand BC. And the epic Hindu texts described a civilisation that went back even farther.’

  ‘They weren’t talking about the Veteres, were they?’

  ‘I don’t know.’ Nina gave him a slightly pained look at the mention of the long-dead race she had unearthed a year earlier. ‘But let’s not go shouting about the possibility, huh? We already had fanatics from three religions trying to kill us over it - I don’t want to add a fourth.’

  ‘I’ll keep it to myself,’ he assured her. ‘What did Talonor say about ’em, then?’

  Nina read from the translation. ‘It says, “We were guided away from the river at latitude one north” - that’s using the Atlantean scale, obviously - “to a great temple. Though the inhabitants were not hostile, they were well prepared to defend their holy mountain . . .” He goes on about how hard it would be to mount an assault because of the terrain, so you were right - it’s a tactical report. Anyway, “The priest granted me the honour of entrance, where he showed me an image of their god - whom I recognised as the great Poseidon from the trident he held, though these men know him by a different name.” Then he wonders if these people are cousins of the Atlanteans with a common mythology - which is actually an interesting theory. I might have to look into that . . .’ She tailed off, musing over the idea.

  Eddie whistled sharply and tapped the Codex. ‘One thing at a time, love.’

  ‘Right, sorry. Where was I? “The priest was intrigued by my thoughts. He told me the knowledge of Poseidon might contain an answer, but because the texts were kept elsewhere for protection, I would have to wait to see them. When I asked how long, the priest said it would take one day for his acolytes to reach the sacred vault, but only one hour to return. When I asked how this was possible, he smiled and told me Poseidon had many secrets.” ’

  ‘What, did they teleport or something?’

  ‘No idea.’ Nina flicked through the translation. ‘But yeah, Talonor decided to stay, and a day later they came back with some stone tablets - which were written in Vedic Sanskrit.’ She indicated the text inscribed on the orichalcum sheet. ‘This section here is a copy of part of Poseidon’s knowledge . . . wait a minute!’ She snapped her fingers as disparate elements suddenly meshed together perfectly in her mind. ‘I’m a dumbass. Why didn’t I realise it before? It’s not Poseidon at all. It’s Shiva. He’s often depicted using a trident as a weapon.’

  ‘Shiva?’ Eddie asked.

  ‘One of the Hindu gods.’

  ‘I know that. I meant, which one? What’s his gig?’

  ‘Oh, nothing much,’ said Nina. ‘Just the Destroyer of Worlds.’

  He frowned. ‘So he’s a bad guy?’

  ‘No, not at all. Hinduism’s based around the idea of cycles, everything going through a never-ending process of birth, life, death, rebirth - even the entire universe. Shiva’s the god who ends each cycle through an act of destruction . . . but by doing that, he enables the next cycle to be created. He’s one of the most important figures in Hindu mythology. We translated it as Poseidon because Talonor was imposing his own beliefs on another culture - typical Atlantean arrogance. So when he described the priest talking about the knowledge of Poseidon, what he really meant was the knowledge of Shiva. And in Vedic Sanskrit, the word for knowledge is veda - but veda has another meaning. The Vedas are some of the oldest Hindu sacred texts, dating back to at least fifteen hundred BC - but these . . . Shiva-Vedas would be much older. And they were kept in this vault . . . the Vault of Shiva.’

  Eddie turned to the next page of the Codex, on which was scribed more Vedic Sanskrit text, before it reverted to the Atlantean language. ‘What does the rest of this say?’

  Nina checked another sheet. ‘It’s mostly about the cycles of existence. Destruction and creation. Talonor must have liked the idea.’ She went back to the transcript of the Atlantean text. ‘The priest also showed him the key to the Vault of Shiva - which is this thing, right here.’ Closing the Codex, she indicated the impression in the orichalcum cover.

  Eddie looked closely at the indentation. The width of a spread hand, it had at its centre an ornate relief of a man’s face, lips curled in an enigmatic smile. Five smaller faces encircled him, all female. ‘The priests must’ve been pretty trusting to let him stamp a copy of their key. What if he’d decided to rob the place?’

  ‘According to the text, they said that even if he found the vault, he’d never get in, because “only those who know the love of Shiva” can use the key,’ Nina told him. ‘They seemed very sure of that.’

  ‘They’d have been a bit less cocky if dynamite had been invented back then. Who are the women?’

  ‘Goddesses. Shiva’s wives, I suppose.’

  ‘He had five wives? Thought he was a Hindu, not a Mormon.’

  ‘He didn’t have them all at the same time.’ Nina indicated two of the faces. ‘I don’t know off the top of my head who they all are, but these are Shakti, the goddess of feminine power, and Kali, goddess of death.’

  ‘Oh, I know who Kali is,’ said Eddie, grinning. ‘From Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom, right?’

  Nina winced. ‘Yes, but if you’re ever talking to a devout Hindu, please don’t say that! I was once talking to an Indian scholar about the portrayal of archaeology in the media and mentioned Indiana Jones, and he wasn’t happy. Kali’s not a goddess you’d want to get on the wrong side of, but she’s definitely not evil either, and he was kinda pissed that the first things a lot of Americans think of in regard to his religion are human sacrifice and chilled monkey brains.’ The phone rang.

  It was Lola. ‘Dr Wilde? The Interpol officer you were expecting is here.’

  ‘Oh, good. Show him through, please.’

  Lola entered, followed by a tall man in a pale blue suit. ‘Dr Wilde? This is Mr Jindal.’

  ‘Hi, come in,’ said Nina, standing to greet him. As she had expected from his surname, the international police agent was Indian; mid-thirties, with angular yet handsome features and black hair styled almost into a quiff. ‘I’m Nina Wilde; this is my husband, Eddie Chase.’

  ‘Ankit Jindal, Interpol senior investigator,’ said the new arrival, shaking their hands and giving them a beaming white smile. ‘Pleased to meet you.’ Unlike that of the respectively robotic and uptight Pramesh and Vanita Khoil they had met two days earlier, his accent, while still distinctly Indian, was relaxed and warm.

  ‘I won’t mention Indiana Jones,’ Eddie whispered to Nina, who held in a faint grin.

  Jindal looked at the artefact on Nina’s desk. ‘The Talonor Codex?’

 
‘That’s it,’ she said.

  He nodded appreciatively. ‘I’m glad it survived unharmed. I can’t say that about all the treasures the Cultural Property Crime Unit recovers.’

  ‘So how can we help you, Mr Jindal?’

  ‘The first thing I wanted to do was give you some good news in person: we’ve identified the leader of the raiders. Urbano Luis Fernandez, Spanish, former member of the Grupo Especial de Operaciones - the Spanish police’s special operations unit.’

  ‘Pretty big career change,’ said Eddie.

  ‘It’s how he evaded capture for so long - he knows all the tricks. But we have him now, thanks to you.’

  ‘So what’s going to happen to the son of a bitch?’ Nina asked. An uncharacteristic hardness crossed her face. ‘He can fry as far as I’m concerned.’

  ‘He might. Although we don’t know where. A lot of diplomacy was needed to persuade the US government to turn him over to Interpol. He’s wanted in at least twelve countries, and they all want to put him on trial for the theft of their cultural treasures - and the murders of the people they killed taking them.’

  ‘I can imagine. Michelangelo’s David versus the terracotta warriors? The Italians and Chinese must be practically at daggers drawn over who gets their hands on him first, for a start.’

  ‘More than that. This has to remain classified,’ Jindal said, giving them both warning looks, ‘but there have been other robberies that haven’t been revealed to the public - either because it would be politically embarrassing, or because it could actually be dangerous. One of the stolen items is the Black Stone from Mecca. The Saudis have replaced it with a replica, but if that is discovered there’ll be chaos.’

  ‘You’re not kidding,’ said Nina, shocked.

  ‘The what?’ Eddie asked.

  ‘The Black Stone was supposedly put in place in the Kaaba Temple by Muhammad himself,’ she explained. ‘It’s a key part of the hajj, the Islamic pilgrimage - if it’s revealed as a fake, the entire country will explode.’