‘Uh, no sir, I was not,’ Nina answered, startled.
‘She has my total confidence and support, as well as that of the United Nations. Are you saying that support is misplaced?’
‘I, er . . . Yes, quite frankly, Mr President,’ she said, a shudder running through her as she realised she had just challenged the most powerful man on the planet.
‘Then,’ said Dalton, tone even harder, ‘we’ll have to disagree, Dr Wilde. Professor Rothschild has my full backing. If her decision inconveniences you—’
‘Inconveniences?’
‘—then that’s unfortunate. But as Director, she has full authority. If you have a problem with that, you should take it up through proper UN channels, rather than trying to take advantage of your past service to this country for personal gain.’
‘That - that’s not why I—’ Nina began, but Dalton cut her off.
‘We both know that’s exactly why you called me, Dr Wilde. Now, I appreciate everything you’ve done in the past for the United States - I would hardly have awarded you the Medal of Freedom otherwise - but that does not grant you a hotline to the Oval Office to solve your personal problems. Do I make myself clear?’ When Nina couldn’t find an answer immediately, he sternly added, ‘Dr Wilde? Am I clear?’
‘Yes, Mr President,’ Nina mumbled, chastised.
‘Good. Now, I have business to attend to. Goodbye, Dr Wilde.’
The phone clicked, leaving Nina trembling in anger and humiliation, feeling as though she’d just been punched in the gut.
Dalton put down the phone, then turned his chair towards the windows looking out over the White House’s rose garden, a small but satisfied smile on his lips.
Nina Wilde and her fiancé had made themselves his enemies four months earlier, without even knowing it, by destroying a secret weapon controlled by his black-ops agent Jack Mitchell. In the overall scheme of things they were very minor enemies, with no power to harm him in any way, but Dalton had still taken a certain pleasure in arranging for the vast apparatus of the United States government to bedevil their lives. Tax audits and overzealous immigration checks had been petty compared to depriving the couple of their jobs, however. The moment he’d learned about Nina’s enmity with Rothschild, he’d seen an opportunity for something more hard-hitting.
Now it was done, he could focus on more pressing matters - in which, like the proverbial bad penny, Nina Wilde and Eddie Chase had turned up. With them out of the way, that left the Covenant of Genesis.
His smile vanished at the mere thought of the organisation. Now there was a dangerous enemy - and one that even with his vast resources he couldn’t yet deal with, not without being destroyed himself. How they had obtained such politically - and personally - damaging knowledge he had no idea. But they had, and as their representative, an Israeli, had calmly explained, they would use it without hesitation if he did not agree to their . . . request.
And what a request. If the public ever learned what he had done to appease the Covenant, it would end his career more quickly than the release of any of the organisation’s other information about his dealings.
Fortunately, he had at least been able to persuade the Covenant to let one of his operatives join them. One of his best operatives. A man who would find any possible opportunity to eliminate any threats to him . . . and maybe even shift the balance of power to where it belonged.
In his favour.
He turned back to his desk and picked up one particular phone. ‘Get me Michael Callum.’
The tall, granite-faced man, hair a bristling pure white, pushed a button on his secure cell phone to end the call. ‘That was the President,’ Callum told the other occupant of the luxurious Washington, DC hotel suite.
‘So I gathered,’ said Uziel Hammerstein, unimpressed, as he lit a cigar. Callum looked pointedly at the ‘no smoking’ sign by the door. The Israeli made a vaguely amused noise. ‘What, are you going to have me sent to Guantánamo for smoking?’
‘So what did your esteemed leader have to say?’ came an English-accented voice from the phone on the glass coffee table between the two men.
Callum frowned at the voice’s undisguised sarcasm. ‘You’ll be glad to know, Professor Ribbsley, that Nina Wilde is no longer a problem. She’s been fired, and the digital images of the tablet have been erased.’
‘Good,’ said Ribbsley. ‘I doubt she would have been able to translate any of the text, but once I knew I was looking at a navigational chart, it didn’t take long to work out where it led. She might have been able to do the same. Of course,’ he went on, his cutting tone returning, ‘if Hammerstein’s goon had done his job rather than letting her throw him out of a window . . .’
Hammerstein bared his teeth, the cigar clenched between them. ‘Careful, Professor. Just because we’ve agreed to your demands doesn’t mean I have to put up with any of your crap. Goldman wasn’t just a colleague, he was a friend.’
‘My condolences on your loss,’ said Ribbsley, in a deliberate monotone.
Callum regarded the Israeli coldly. ‘Your man shouldn’t even have been operating on our turf.’
Hammerstein leaned back in the leather armchair, blowing a smoke ring across the table at him. ‘The Covenant works wherever it has to, Callum. Our mission is more important than your politics.’ The white-haired man narrowed his eyes.
‘Speaking of your mission,’ said Ribbsley, ‘have the preparations started yet?’
‘Vogler is in Australia already,’ Hammerstein told him. ‘Zamal is on his way. Your flight is being arranged right now.’
‘First class, of course.’ Not a question: an expectation.
‘Yes, first class,’ said Hammerstein, sharing a contemptuous look with Callum.
‘Excellent. In that case, I’d better finish packing. See you down under, gentlemen.’
‘You shouldn’t have caved in to his demands,’ snapped Callum the moment the call ended.
‘We had no choice. We needed him to translate the tablet Vogler recovered from Indonesia - and we’ll need him to translate any new finds at the site.’
‘Even so, if it’d just been money he wanted, it wouldn’t have been a problem. Not even Ribbsley could be that greedy. But this . . .’
‘Ribbsley’s a man of very particular tastes. Unfortunately. Which is why we’re allowing you to act as . . . caretaker.’ A faint smile. ‘I assume Dalton has already authorised you to take care of things when the mission is completed.’ The Covenant leader stood. ‘I have to go. There’s a lot of work to do, and Australia is a very long flight away.’ He left the suite without any pleasantries of departure.
Callum stared at the door after it closed. Dalton had indeed granted him licence to take care of the problem of Ribbsley’s demands . . . and more besides. The Covenant had gone too far. This was a direct threat to the authority of the President of the United States, and had to be dealt with.
But subtly. The Covenant had enormous power behind it. He had to wait for the right opportunity, pick his moment, or the consequences could be ruinous.
When that moment came, though . . . he would be ready.
12
Chase entered the apartment and flopped down on the couch. ‘Hi, honey, I’m home. Don’t I get a kiss hello?’
‘Thank God,’ said Nina, hurrying in from the kitchen and kissing him. ‘I think we’ve both got a lot of catching up to do.’
‘Yeah,’ Chase said, taking in her cuts and bruises with a concerned expression. ‘You want to go first?’
‘No, you,’ she said, sitting beside him. ‘Why the hell were you in Cuba?’
‘Don’t worry, I wasn’t getting another of those.’ He nodded at the Fidel Castro figurine on a shelf, a ceramic cigar-box holder now used to store loose change. ‘No, I had words with those pirates - Bejo’s fine, by the way - and saw some bloke paying them off.’
‘What about the tablet?’
‘He took it. And your laptop.’
‘Damn. So this guy, wa
s he Cuban? Did you follow him there?’
‘No, I was taken - by a bunch of your guys.’
‘My guys?’
‘Yanks. Three goons dressed like Agent Smith. They stuck me on a plane to Guantánamo Bay.’
‘What?’ Nina gasped. ‘Why would they take you there?’
‘Because I know someone there. So do you. Sophia. She’s . . . she’s dead.’
‘Oh,’ was Nina’s only immediate response. She had absolutely no love for Chase’s ex-wife, but could tell that however stoic he seemed outwardly he was affected within. ‘What happened?’
‘She tried to escape and got shot. They wanted me to see the body. It was a mess.’
She put her arm round him. ‘Oh, Eddie, I’m sorry . . . Are you okay?’
He didn’t answer for a moment. ‘I’m . . . I don’t know,’ he admitted, shaking his head. ‘It’s weird. I couldn’t stop thinking about her on the flight back.’
Nina’s face twitched in disapproval, but she managed to keep it from Chase, barely. ‘In what way?’
‘I’m going to miss her, in some weird way. I didn’t think I would after everything she did, but . . .’ He sighed, to his surprise feeling a weight growing on his heart the more he spoke. ‘She didn’t use to be like that. Not when I first met her - hell, I wouldn’t have married her if she had been. And I know that she blamed me for some of how she turned out.’
‘That’s crazy,’ Nina told him firmly. ‘You don’t believe that, do you?’
‘No, but . . .’ Another sigh, and he stared down at the floor. ‘I’m pretty sure she did.’
‘Oh, Eddie . . .’ She hugged him sympathetically. ‘You can’t blame yourself for what happened to her. Any of it.’
Another moment of silence, then he looked at her. ‘So what about you?’ he asked, glad to change the subject.
Now it was Nina’s turn to recount recent events. ‘Wait, I got fired?’ asked Chase when she finished.
‘You weren’t fired, you were suspended,’ Nina corrected. ‘Although I kinda get the feeling Rothschild wants to make it the same thing. Miserable old bitch.’
‘Sod her - what about this bloke who tried to kill you and Lola? Have they found out who he was?’
‘No, nobody’s identified him yet. I’m not even sure what part of the world he was from; I didn’t recognise his accent.’
‘I recognised mine,’ said Chase. ‘The guy who paid off the pirates was Swiss.’
‘Swiss?’
‘Yeah. His name was Vogler. And he’s part of something called the Covenant of Genesis.’ He noticed Nina’s reaction. ‘You know what it is?’
‘Only in a biblical context,’ she said, sitting up thoughtfully. ‘In the Book of Genesis, God made a pact - a covenant - with Abraham. In return for acknowledging God - Yahweh, or Jehovah, depending how you translate the original Hebrew Tetragrammaton - as the one true and supreme deity, Abraham’s descendants would be granted everlasting ownership and rule of the land on which they lived.’
‘This Abraham’s not the one who sang about the Smurfs, I take it.’
‘Hardly. Didn’t you ever go to Sunday school when you were a kid?’
‘My nan tried to make me a few times. I’d just hang about until she’d gone, then bugger off to play with my mates.’
‘Y’know, that explains a lot . . . Anyway, Abraham’s a key figure in all three major religions that came out of the Holy Land: Judaism, Christianity and Islam. In fact, they’re collectively called the Abrahamic religions, after him.’
‘That’s what I like about you,’ said Chase. ‘It’s always an education.’
‘I do my best. Even if it’s an uphill struggle.’
‘Tchah!’
Nina grinned, then continued. ‘The three Abrahamic religions actually share a lot of common elements. The Jewish Torah is essentially the same as the first five books of the Old Testament, and the Koran regards the Torah and the Bible as holy books. As far as Genesis goes, the Koran has quite a lot of differences in the specifics, but the fundamental story’s the same - Adam and Eve, the expulsion from paradise, the Great Flood, Abraham . . . they’re all there, just interpreted differently by the three religions.’
‘Yeah, and hasn’t that caused trouble over the years.’
‘My fiancé, master of understatement. But as for what the Abrahamic covenant’s got to do with an artefact we found on the other side of the world, I’ve got absolutely no idea.’ She glanced at the memory card, which sat in the Castro cigar-box holder, half hidden by coins. ‘The language on the tablet wasn’t related to any used by the three religions, even the most ancient forms of Hebrew. And besides, the depth we found it at shows that it predates any of them by a long way. So why the Covenant of Genesis?’
‘Maybe they were big fans of Phil Collins,’ Chase suggested.
Nina managed a small laugh, then shook her head in puzzlement. ‘I don’t get it. What did the tablet say that was so dangerous to them that they’d try to kill us over it?’
‘You said it was some sort of chart,’ Chase reminded her. ‘Maybe we can figure out where it goes.’
‘But I don’t know how they measured distances. The numbers could be feet, miles, stadia, moon units . . . anything!’
‘Won’t know unless we try, will we?’ He stood, took Nina’s hand and led her to the small room she used as a study, picking up the memory card along the way.
Once Nina’s iMac was booted up, she copied the photos to it. ‘Maybe we should put that in a safety deposit box or something,’ she said of the card, not entirely joking.
‘Why’d you tell Rothschild that it got blanked?’
‘Because I don’t trust her. And not just because I don’t like her, either. She’s a friend of Ribbsley’s, and she did everything she could to play down the idea that he told someone I had the text. I wouldn’t put it past her to let him know that I still do. Oh, oh, and get this,’ she added excitedly, ‘I tried calling Ribbsley myself. And guess what? He’s suddenly become “unavailable”. Not even his college knows when he’s coming back. Kind of a coincidence, huh?’
‘He’s probably scared you might go to Cambridge and deck him.’
‘I was tempted, believe me. Okay, let’s see . . .’ She opened the close-up of the tablet, pointing out the different elements she had noticed. ‘These are the Atlantean numbers, with the compass bearings in front of them, and then I think these sections of text describe each successive destination. Only problem is, I’ve got no clue how to translate them.’
Chase examined the image. ‘Have you got that sea level program on here?’
‘GLUG? Yeah.’
‘Bring it up, put in the sea level from a hundred and thirty-five thousand years back. If it’s directions, it’ll help if we’re looking at the right map.’
Nina gave him an admiring glance. ‘Smart man.’
‘I’ll remember you said that, next time you tell me off for watching action movies.’
She ran the program and entered the figures, the sea level round Indonesia dropping by a hundred feet and causing islands to rise and swell, then placed a marker at the co-ordinates where the tablet was discovered. ‘All right,’ she said, flicking back to the digital photo, ‘if we assume for now that the dig site is the start point, then the first direction is between south and southwest.’ A look at the other bearings on the tablet narrowed things down. ‘These dots, they appear in groups of a maximum of eight, just like the Atlantean system. So if there are eight sub-bearings in each compass octant, that makes eight sets of eight, plus the eight cardinal bearings . . .’
‘Seventy-two,’ said Chase. ‘Just in case you needed any help.’
‘I think I can manage. So their navigational system worked to an accuracy of seventy-two “degrees” to a circle, meaning each dot equals five degrees. In which case,’ she said, going back to the map, ‘the first number takes you on a bearing of two hundred and ten degrees, which takes you . . .’
‘Here.’ Chase i
ndicated a point. ‘That’s the first place where you’d reach land.’ He took a large atlas from a shelf and found the pages covering Indonesia. ‘Nearest town today would be this place, Merak.’ It was west of Jakarta, a headland marking the boundary between the Java Sea and the Sunda Strait, which separated the Indonesian islands of Sumatra and Java. He compared the paper map to the one on the computer. ‘The strait was a lot narrower back then.’
‘A hell of a lot,’ Nina agreed. ‘There’s only really one place where you’d be able to sail through, this channel here.’ She compared the two maps. ‘And it’s right on a bearing of two hundred and ten degrees from where we found the tablet!’
‘That’s a good start. So where next?’
Nina worked out the next bearing. ‘This direction, to the triangle-thing.’
‘What triangle-thing?’ Chase asked.
Nina moved the mouse cursor to it. ‘This triangle-thing. With the flower or the tree or whatever on top of it.’
‘You mean the volcano?’
She looked at him, surprised. ‘What?’
‘Well, it’s obviously a volcano, isn’t it? It’s a drawing of a mountain with smoke coming out - what else could it be?’
Nina slapped herself on the forehead. ‘I am such an idiot! How did I not see it?’ She zoomed in on the image. ‘I was so fixated on the idea of its being a symbolic character that I didn’t even think it might just be a simple pictogram.’ Another comparison of the two maps. ‘So, a volcano, which volcano . . .’
‘The really famous one?’ Chase suggested with a smile. ‘Krakatoa.’ He pointed it out in the atlas. What remained of the obliterated volcanic island lay at the centre of the southern half of the Sunda Strait.
‘That works for me.’ Nina quickly found another book and leafed through it to show Chase a nineteenth-century woodcut illustration: an almost cartoon-perfect volcanic cone, smoke rising in a plume from the summit. ‘The largest volcano on Krakatoa used to be huge. It’d make an unmissable landmark if you were travelling by sea.’
‘Well, if it really is using Krakatoa as a landmark,’ said Chase, ‘then you can work out all the distances, can’t you? If it says Krakatoa’s three hundred zogs or whatever from where we started, it should be a piece of piss to convert that into miles. Seeing as you’ve already got the directions, you’ll be able to work out exactly where it takes you.’