King Solomon's Curse

  28

  Eddie’s hunch proved correct. Once he and Nina had boarded Luaba’s boat and set off in pursuit of the British agent, Fortune’s craft was soon left behind.

  He stared ahead for his quarry. The flood wave had diminished in power the farther it rolled from Zhakana, the riverbanks this far downstream not having burst. That meant Brice couldn’t take any shortcuts across flooded land, so the speedboat would eventually catch up. ‘What’s the plan, then?’ said Nina.

  ‘Catch the bugger and shoot him is about as far as I’d got,’ he replied. ‘After that . . . I dunno. I don’t think letting anyone get hold of the Shamir would be a good idea, though.’

  ‘Not even the IHA? It would fall under their remit, after all – it’s the Horn of Joshua, a biblical artefact.’

  ‘You think they could keep it safe? Hell, where could they keep it? The UN building’s not lead-lined, so if they put it in that vault in the basement, the whole building’d probably come down by Tuesday morning. And besides,’ he went on grimly, ‘I’m not sure I’d trust ’em to keep hold of it. Think how many different countries’d love to get their hands on a weapon like that.’

  The IHA’s former director felt distinctly defensive about ‘her’ agency. ‘The IHA’s an independent organisation under UN jurisdiction,’ she insisted. ‘They don’t have to release anything under their protection if it would endanger global security. When I was running it, I had requests – demands, even – from governments to grant them unilateral access to various discoveries. I always turned them down. My argument was that if something we found was safe for one nation to have, then all nations should have the same access. Funnily enough, none of them liked that, but the IHA’s charter gave me full right to control how the things we were protecting were used – or even if they were allowed to be used.’

  ‘Yeah, but you’re not running the IHA now, are you? You think Lester Blumberg was picked because of how he stands up against the same bloody governments that fund him?’

  ‘So what are you suggesting? Destroy the Shamir, smash it into bits? All you’d get would be a whole load of little Shamirs, like the one King Solomon used to cut the stones for the First Temple.’

  He shook his head. ‘I dunno. I mean, giving it to the IHA’d be better than letting one country get hold of it for themselves, but—’ He broke off. ‘There he is!’

  Nina glimpsed a distant flicker of colour through the trees. ‘He must be over half a mile ahead of us.’

  ‘Maybe – but that waterfall’s a few miles from here,’ he remembered. ‘It’s too high for him to go over. He’s trapped!’

  They swept through more bends, the speedboat’s sides brushing against undergrowth along the banks as Eddie carved around them. The other boat reappeared ahead. ‘There!’ said the Yorkshireman excitedly. ‘He’ll be in range in another minute. You take over so I can shoot him . . .’ He trailed off.

  A new sound reached them over the outboard. At first Nina thought it was the waterfall’s rumble, before realising it was too regular, mechanical. She looked up. ‘Eddie, there!’ she cried, pointing.

  A helicopter was sweeping towards the jungle.

  Brice spoke to the approaching aircraft’s pilot via the satphone as he guided his boat downriver. ‘Yes, I’ve just seen you,’ he said. ‘I don’t know how far I am from the waterfall, but I assume you can see it from up there. There was a clearing two hundred metres upstream. You should be able to land and pick me up.’

  ‘Yeah, we saw the waterfall,’ replied the pilot. His accent was South African, and he sounded decidedly irate at being rushed into the jungle to perform an extraction, covert operations not being part of his job description. ‘It’s about three kilometres ahead of you. But you said you’re the only person being picked up, right?’

  ‘That’s right,’ Brice said impatiently.

  ‘Then it looks like you’ve got some hitch-hikers.’

  The MI6 agent looked back upriver. His eyes widened as he saw another boat following him – and even at this distance he could tell its occupants were not Congolese. ‘Unbelievable,’ he muttered.

  He saw the Yorkshireman switch places with his wife. There was only one possible reason for the change of seats . . . ‘I’m about to come under fire,’ he told the pilot.

  ‘You’re what? Hey, no one said anything about guns!’

  ‘I won’t have time to stop,’ Brice went on firmly, ‘so you’ll have to lower a line to pick me up. The weight will be—’

  ‘What am I, a stunt pilot? I’m not—’

  ‘Oh, do be quiet,’ he snapped. ‘Your orders are to do exactly what I say, yes?’ The sullen silence from the other end of the line confirmed it. ‘Then lower a line and fly overhead to pull me up. The weight will be roughly that of two adult men, so be ready for it.’

  He brought the boat around a bend – and the river beyond straightened, stretching out towards the distant edge of the waterfall.

  An edge that was getting closer every second.

  He looked back up at the descending helicopter. ‘How far away am I now?’

  ‘Uh – two klicks, I’d say?’

  ‘Then you’d better bloody get on with it!’

  Eddie readied the replacement AK Paris had given to him as he watched the helicopter drop towards the river. ‘He’s not going to do what I think he’s going to do, is he?’

  ‘I think he is,’ said Nina as one of the cabin doors opened – and someone inside pitched out a rope ladder. It unfurled like a banner, falling towards the boat below.

  ‘Bloody spies! They really do all think they’re James sodding Bond!’ He took aim at the chopper – but held his fire.

  ‘What are you waiting for?’

  ‘The ride’s too bumpy to hit anything at this range.’ The river was picking up speed as it approached the falls, whitecaps forming. ‘Keep after ’em!’

  ‘Where else would I go?’ she said sarcastically. The speedboat was at full throttle; all she could do was follow the other craft.

  The chopper matched pace with Brice’s boat, the ladder flapping beneath it. Eddie fixed his sights on the fleeing agent and took an experimental shot. A tiny white speck puffed from the river behind the vessel. He adjusted his aim for a second attempt – which missed by a wider margin, thrown off by the churning waters.

  His target would have to be the helicopter. He wasn’t happy about that – it was a civilian aircraft – but he couldn’t let Brice escape with the Shamir. A couple of rounds hitting the chopper might be enough to scare off its pilot, though. He raised the rifle—

  The snaking ladder hit Brice’s hull. The spy grabbed a rung with one hand – and hauled up the lead box with the other.

  No time left for second thoughts. Eddie opened fire, shots clanging against the helicopter’s fuselage. The pilot immediately increased power to gain height, the ladder yanking tight beneath the aircraft—

  Pulling Brice out of the boat.

  The slipstream spun him around as he was hauled upwards. Eddie kept shooting. Smoke coughed from one of the helicopter’s exhausts – but it continued climbing, angling away from the river to seek cover behind the jungle canopy.

  Brice and his cargo went with it. Eddie switched targets, unleashing his remaining bullets at the swinging man in a last-ditch attempt to send him plunging to his death.

  It failed. The final round cracked from the barrel, but the MI6 officer remained on the ladder as he swept over the trees. ‘Buggeration and fuckery!’ Eddie shouted, throwing down the empty gun. ‘The bastard’s got away!’

  ‘You hit the helicopter,’ said Nina. ‘It might not make it out of the jungle – or the Shamir might get too heavy for him and he’ll fall off.’

  ‘Yeah, he might. And I might fart angel dust, but it’s about as likely – oh, shit! Turn!’

  She looked ahead – as the empty boat hi
t rocks on the lip of the falls and corkscrewed over the edge. A boom of disintegrating wood and fibreglass loud enough to be heard even over the water’s roar reached them a moment later. Nina jammed the outboard hard over—

  The boat turned – but the swollen river’s current had caught them, sweeping it relentlessly towards the precipice. The stretch of bank where the expedition had refloated their vessels after hauling them uphill whipped past. ‘We won’t make it!’ she cried.

  Eddie scrambled on to the bow. ‘Jump for those rocks!’ he said. Some boulders lay half submerged close to the bank. ‘If we land behind ’em, we’ll be out of the current!’

  Nina unwillingly followed him. ‘They’re too far!’

  ‘We’ve got no choice! Now!’ He pulled her with him and leapt from the prow.

  Nina’s cry was cut off as they hit the water and went under. She lost her grip on her husband’s hand. Blinded, she flailed back to the surface, gulping in air – only to choke as a wave hit her face.

  The jungle whirled around her. She glimpsed the bank and swam towards it, more waves assaulting her. The boulders loomed ahead. Eddie had been right; the current’s grip was lessening. But she still had to reach them . . .

  She struggled onwards, her waterlogged clothing and boots pulling her down. The river was still dragging her towards the falls. In the corner of her eye she saw the abandoned speedboat plunge over the precipice after Brice’s vessel.

  She would soon follow it if she didn’t reach safety—

  One foot banged against something. Was it just a large stone, or shallows? Nina couldn’t tell – but had to gamble that it was the latter. She thrust both feet downwards, probing for solid ground . . .

  And finding it.

  She thrust herself forward. The nearest rock was ten feet away. She swept her arms through the water to pull herself closer, six feet, three—

  Her palm clapped against stone. She gripped it, pulling herself nearer. Where was Eddie?

  ‘Nina!’

  He was behind her, being dragged inexorably towards the waterfall as frothing waves rolled over him. A few more seconds and he would be past the boulders, beyond any hope of escape—

  He resurfaced, thrusting a hand out of the water—

  She was there to catch it.

  Their fingers hooked around each other. His weight threatened to tear her loose, but she kept her hold through sheer force of will, refusing to surrender him to nature. He swam closer, Nina hauling him in, until his feet finally touched down on the stony river bed.

  He waded to the shore, Nina staggering after him. ‘God, that was a bit close,’ he gasped, slumping on the bank. She flopped down beside him, exhausted. ‘Are you okay?’

  ‘I’m fine,’ she replied with a half-hearted smile as she squeezed a waterlogged pocket. ‘I’m just glad I kept all my important paperwork in a sealed baggie!’

  ‘Might have to put my passport through a mangle,’ he said ruefully – then remembered that someone else would be leaving the Congo well before them. ‘Fucking Brice!’ he said, glaring after the departed helicopter. ‘He’s got the Shamir.’

  ‘But what’s he going to do with it?’

  ‘Won’t be anything good.’ Eddie stood, shaking off water. ‘You heard him talking about regime change and bringing down government buildings – and that was just off the top of his head.’

  The distant thrum of an engine caught their attention. The other boat came into sight upriver. Eddie waved until he got a response. ‘They’ve seen us,’ he told Nina with relief.

  ‘Great,’ she said, trying to wring water from her clothes. ‘I don’t think I’ll ever have been so glad to leave somewhere.’ She saw his far from enthusiastic expression. ‘What’s wrong?’

  ‘I just get the feeling we won’t have an easy time getting out of the country. We know enough to cause Brice some big problems. And not only him – the people who sent him too.’

  Nina sighed. ‘Wonderful. Just what we need.’

  They wrapped their arms around each other, waiting for the other survivors to arrive.

  29

  ‘We should reach Nakola in half an hour,’ Eddie reported, checking a GPS unit. Rather than risk stopping to make camp, they had travelled through the night, he and Fortune trading shifts at the outboard. A misty dawn rose through the trees ahead.

  Lydia, sitting sullenly on her own, snorted. ‘Yeah, and then it’s another day to the airport. If we don’t get stopped by the militia again. And if our buses are even still there!’

  ‘They will be there,’ said Fortune. ‘The people there know me, they will not let anything happen to them.’

  ‘Yeah, well, the guys at the lost city didn’t care about your reputation, did they?’

  ‘Hey, Lids, lay off,’ said Rivero tiredly. He had finally put down his camera, using Lydia’s laptop to back up the contents of its memory card to a solid-state hard drive. ‘It’s not his fault.’

  ‘Oh, I know exactly whose fault it is,’ she replied, glaring at Nina. ‘And for what? For a fucking television show! We rushed into this whole bloody thing just to satisfy your ego, Nina! And now people are dead!’

  Nina’s patience had worn to its limit. ‘Shut up, Lydia. Just shut the hell up. You think I wanted any of this to happen? Do you think I would even have come here if I’d known it might?’

  Lydia was unrepentant. ‘I think you’d go anywhere for a chance of finding some archaeological crap and getting your face in the news. And you don’t care who gets hurt along the way.’

  ‘If you think that’s what drives me,’ said the redhead, anger rising, ‘then you don’t know me at all.’

  ‘I don’t want to know you. I wish I never had. Even before you dragged us into this, you were a horrible person to work with – you’re rude, bossy, you don’t give a shit about anyone else’s feelings, and in all honesty?’ Lydia’s voice rose as she continued her tirade. ‘You’re not even that good a presenter! You’re stiff, and boring. But no, you’re famous, so the network has to have you. And look where that got us!’

  Eddie gave her a warning look. ‘Think now’d be a good time to stop talking.’

  ‘Or what? You’ll throw me overboard?’

  ‘Don’t fucking tempt me.’

  Lydia bridled, but said nothing more under his cold stare. Instead she made a sound of disgust and turned away. ‘Well, this is . . . jolly,’ muttered Rivero to break the uncomfortable silence.

  Nina gazed disconsolately at the floor. Eddie gestured for Fortune to take his place at the tiller, then joined her. ‘Don’t listen to her,’ he said quietly, putting a hand on hers. ‘She’s just angry, she’s talking crap.’

  ‘She’s saying what she really thinks,’ countered his wife.

  ‘If you were like what she said, I wouldn’t have married you. I mean, you can get a bit obsessive about stuff, but that’s not the same as—’

  ‘Stuff like Zhakana, right?’ She wiped tears from her cheeks. ‘Lydia’s right about that part. I pushed to come here; I used my influence to get the network to fund the expedition. And I was so pleased about my . . . my cleverness at finding the map room that I thought finding the City of the Damned would be just as easy – and the whole documentary would show off how smart I was to the world. Well, guess what?’ She let out a long, miserable breath. ‘Nobody likes a smart-ass. And because of me, David and Howie and the rest are dead. Oh, God.’ Nina put her hands over her face. ‘It’s happened again, hasn’t it? People have died because I went chasing after another archaeological find – they’ve died because I put stones and statues ahead of their lives!’

  ‘They’re dead because of that fucking arsehole Brice,’ Eddie insisted. ‘Him and Mukobo. They’re the bad guys, they did all the killing.’

  ‘Not all of it.’ She finally looked up at him. ‘I . . . I still can’t believe what you did to Muko
bo, Eddie. You just – you shot him!’

  ‘Yeah, and I shot a load of his goons an’ all. We’d all be dead if I hadn’t. How many people have I had to take down to protect you before now?’

  ‘That’s not what I meant. You know it’s not what I meant. None of the other people you killed were bound prisoners.’

  His voice developed an angry edge. ‘None of ’em had threatened to rape and kill my daughter either. After killing me – and you as well. The world’s better off without that piece of shit in it, and I don’t know how you can deny it.’

  ‘I’m not trying to deny it. What I’m saying is . . . Jesus, Eddie.’ A pause before she spoke again, even more quietly. ‘You murdered him.’

  ‘Not how I see it,’ he replied firmly. ‘Far as I’m concerned, he was a threat – not just to my family, but to loads more innocent people. By killing him, I’ve saved their lives, as well as ours.’

  ‘That wasn’t your choice to make, though.’

  ‘Then whose was it?’ he snapped. ‘The UN’s? America’s? I know it wasn’t Britain’s, because my own fucking country was backing him!’ He shook his head. ‘God. Fucking spooks . . .’

  Nina glanced at the equipment. The laptop holding Brice’s confession was beside Lydia’s, but they had no way to know if the recording was retrievable; the machine was too damaged even to power up. ‘Maybe we’ll be able to get the proof off the laptop when we get out of here,’ she said, glad of the chance to move away from a deeply uncomfortable subject on which they would never find agreement.

  ‘Maybe. But we’ll probably have more than just Brice trying to stop us.’

  ‘MI6?’

  ‘Maybe the whole government. British politicians’ll do anything to cover their own arses – and their mates’ arses an’ all. They’ve protected fucking paedophiles who’re part of the old boys’ network. And there’ve been plenty of convenient “suicides” and “accidents” taking out people who could’ve caused ’em trouble. Remember when I was talking to Brice, about the Increment and the Removal Men?’

  ‘Yeah?’