Sophia shrugged. ‘What do you want me to do, cackle maniac-ally and proclaim that the world has not seen the last of Sophia Blackwood? I had a plan. It failed. I was caught. By you. Obviously I was . . . rather angry about that at the time.’ She gave them a dark look that made it clear embers of resentment still burned within her. ‘But that was then - and there are other people I’ve had more reason to be angry at since. Specifically . . . Victor Dalton.’
‘The President?’ asked Nina, puzzled. ‘Why him?’
‘He put me in Guantánamo - even though I’d already been kept in a regular high-security prison for months. Hardly the nicest surroundings . . . but it was like a stay at the Dorchester compared to Camp 7. And it was practically the first thing he did after his inauguration. Do you know why?’
‘He thought you needed to work on your tan?’ Chase suggested.
‘Ah, that rapier wit. So there is something you and Nina have in common,’ said Sophia. ‘No, Eddie. The reason he sent me to Guantánamo is that I was a threat to him. I could destroy his presidency, just like that.’
Nina eyed her dubiously. ‘Oh, yeah? How?’
‘Do you remember the night we first met?’
‘Sure. René Corvus’s yacht.’
‘Yes. I was with Richard Yuen. And Victor - Senator Dalton, as he was at the time - was there as well.’
Nina nodded, remembering the evening. ‘Yeah. And?’
‘And later that evening, he and I had a . . . private meeting in one of the cabins.’
Chase coughed on his coffee. ‘You shagged the President?’ he blurted. The waitress glanced up from her book.
‘Eddie!’ Nina cried, batting his arm.
‘Eloquently put, as ever,’ Sophia said. ‘But yes, I did.’
Chase shook his head. ‘Bloody hell. And you did it with your ex-husband, current husband and future husband all on the boat at the same time. Just can’t get enough, can you?’
‘Oh, Richard knew about it. And so did René. They just didn’t know about each other knowing.’
Nina’s head was spinning. ‘Why? Why did you do it?’
‘Business, of course. He hadn’t won the party’s nomination yet, but he was by far the leader in the polls. So both Richard and René thought - once I put the idea into their heads - that having a little, ah, influence over the next President of the United States would be very useful.’
‘You recorded it,’ Chase realised. ‘You hid a camera somewhere and taped the whole thing.’ He made a face. ‘That’s really, really . . . gross. I mean, I’ve met the man. He’s not exactly George Clooney.’
Sophia smirked. ‘It’s funny, Eddie - a lot of my friends said exactly the same thing when I married you.’
Nina shook her head. ‘No, this is insane. There is no way that you enticed Victor Dalton into bed and recorded the whole thing. He had the Secret Service with him, for God’s sake!’
‘The Secret Service doesn’t just protect the presidential candidates,’ said Sophia. ‘It protects their secrets. Why do you think it’s called that? All men of power have their lusts, their addictions, their perversions - they come with the kind of personality that craves power in the first place.’
‘Perfect match for you, then,’ said Chase.
‘Can we stop talking about - about lusty addicted perverts?’ Nina demanded. ‘So you made a recording. Then what?’
‘Then, I kept it very close to me,’ Sophia continued. ‘Do you remember in Shanghai, Eddie, that I took us to Richard’s office to open his safe?’
‘He had your passport in there,’ Chase recalled.
‘Yes, but I could have got it at any time. I really went to pick up a memory stick with a list of all Richard’s less-than-legal campaign contributions, not just to Dalton but to several other politicians as well - and also the digital recording. I had it with me in New York and Botswana, and then when I went to Switzerland with Richard I put it in a bank deposit box.’
‘And it’s still there, I bet,’ said Nina.
‘Yes. Which is why Dalton wanted me as far out of sight as possible. If I were in the normal system, I’d have visitation rights, access to counsel, lawyers - people I could conceivably tell about the recording and use to arrange its release to the media.’
‘Which would kill Dalton’s career stone dead. The President, having an affair with the terrorist who tried to nuke New York . . .’
‘Exactly. But since Dalton declared me an enemy combatant as soon as he took office, he could ship me off to Cuba where I was denied all those things. Which was why when Gabriel got the Covenant to demand my release, Callum came as well - as my executioner. I have knowledge that can bring down the President, so I can’t be allowed to live.’ She smiled, a broad, mocking grin. ‘Oh, by the way, now that you know about the recording, the same applies to you. You’ve just become enemies of the most powerful man in the world. Congratulations!’ She took in their stunned expressions with smug satisfaction. ‘Although from what I picked up from Callum, I gather that you already were.’
‘What?’ Nina gasped.
‘I don’t know the details - he didn’t exactly confide in me. Something to do with you sabotaging a black operation.’
Nina and Chase exchanged worried looks, thinking back to the events of four months earlier. ‘Dalton knew about it?’ Chase asked.
‘Of course he knew,’ said Sophia with a hint of impatience. ‘Presidents always know, otherwise why bother having them? The man at the top gives the orders.’
‘Except when the Covenant do,’ Nina said, fixing Sophia with a questioning stare. ‘You said you’d tell us about them. So, who are the Covenant? And how do they have the power to tell the President what to do?’
Sophia took a long sip of coffee, the silence in the room broken by the crackle of the jukebox changing records. ‘Obviously, I don’t know everything,’ she said at last. ‘They don’t exactly regard me as a confidante. Even Gabriel was reluctant to tell me too much. But,’ she went on, leaning closer, ‘I have my ways.’
‘Yeah, we know,’ Nina muttered. ‘Just the facts, okay?’
‘Very well,’ said Sophia sourly. ‘The Covenant of Genesis is a black operations unit - but one that doesn’t belong to any country. It was established to protect the mutual interests of three very old, very powerful and very wealthy . . . well, organisations isn’t quite the right word.’
‘Do you mean, like the mafia or something?’ Chase asked.
Sophia laughed. ‘I suppose there are some people who’d say that. But no, the right word is actually . . . faiths.’
It took Nina a moment to take in Sophia’s full meaning. ‘Wait, what? You mean, faiths as in religions?’
Sophia nodded. ‘Three religions - all different, but with a common origin. Three leaders, one from each religion, sharing control. Vogler represents Christianity, specifically the Roman Catholic Church. Hammerstein is an Israeli, representing Judaism. And Zamal, a Saudi, comes from the fount of Islam. Between them, they have one mission - to suppress all knowledge of something that threatens everything they believe in.’
Chase leaned closer, intrigued. ‘Which is?’
‘I, ah . . .’ Sophia hesitated. ‘I don’t actually know.’
‘You don’t know?’ Nina snapped.
‘Gabriel wouldn’t tell me,’ said Sophia, folding her arms huffily. ‘That was something I couldn’t get out of him. I was only helping him with the translations. All I know is that it’s very old, it involves people he calls the Veteres, and that the Covenant is using him to locate all traces of them - so they can be destroyed.’
‘How long’s he been working for them?’
‘A long time; longer than I’ve known him. At least fifteen years. But the Covenant’s been around for a lot longer, more like fifty years.’
‘That means that whatever it is they’re trying to hide, they’ve been very good at it,’ Nina realised.
‘Very good - and very ruthless. They kill anyone who finds any evid
ence of the Veteres. I was with Gabriel at a site in Oman about eight years ago; I didn’t know what was going on at the time, but now I’ve realised that the Covenant must have destroyed it, and killed the people who discovered it.’
‘Doesn’t sound very religious,’ said Chase. ‘What happened to the whole “Thou shalt not kill” thing?’
‘I imagine they pay it about as much attention as we do.’
‘Hey!’ Nina protested. ‘I haven’t killed anyone!’ Chase and Sophia looked at her. ‘Well, not deliberately . . . And they were all trying to kill me!’
‘I’m sure Saint Peter will accept that as an excuse,’ said Sophia.
Chase put a reassuring hand on Nina’s back. ‘So now what do we do? If three really powerful religions want us dead, and now the President of the United bloody States wants us dead too, then we’ve got a big problem!’
‘The way to stop Dalton is simple enough,’ said Sophia. ‘Go to Switzerland, get the recording, and release it to the media. He’ll be out of the White House within a week.’
‘There’s an easier way,’ Chase said. ‘You just walk into the nearest TV studio and say, “Hey, guys, I’m still alive! You’ll never guess who let me out of Guantánamo . . .” ’
She frowned. ‘Just one slight problem with that plan, Eddie. I’d be arrested. And then I’d be killed. Getting rid of Dalton doesn’t help me if I’m dead.’
‘I dunno,’ said Nina, ‘I don’t see any downsides.’
Sophia glared poisonously at her as Chase chuckled. ‘Even if we get the recording,’ he said, ‘and get rid of Dalton, that still leaves the Covenant. How do we get them off our backs?’
‘The same way as Dalton,’ said Nina decisively, sitting upright. ‘We find what they’re afraid of before they do, and expose it to the world.’
‘That simple, hmm?’ Sophia said, raising an eyebrow.
‘That simple,’ Nina repeated. ‘We’ve got the photos I took of the inscription; we’ve got your knowledge of the language; we’ve got . . . whatever the hell this is,’ she added, taking out one of the grooved clay cylinders and holding it up to the light. ‘That’s just as much as the Covenant.’
‘Gabriel will still be able to translate the text,’ said Sophia. ‘I was only assisting him - he knows much more than me.’
‘You mean you’re actually admitting to an inadequacy?’ Nina scoffed, leaning back in her seat - only to jump in pain. ‘Ow!’
‘What?’ Chase asked.
‘Son of a . . . I just sat on where that needle jabbed me in the ass!’
‘So it wasn’t a bite from a funnel-web spider?’ asked Sophia. ‘What a shame.’
There was another crackle from the jukebox as the record changed again. ‘A funnel-web?’ Nina growled, rubbing her aching backside. ‘I’d have thought your kind of spider was a black . . . widow . . .’ She tailed off, holding up the cylinder - then whirling to look at the jukebox. ‘Jesus!’
Chase followed her gaze as the next song started. ‘Is that “The Safety Dance”? Bloody hell, I haven’t heard that in years.’
‘Not the record!’ Nina exclaimed, staring with growing excitement at the cylinder. ‘I know what this is!’
‘You do?’ Sophia asked.
‘Yes! But I need somewhere I can work - we’ve got to find a motel, get a room.’
‘Three in a bed, eh?’ said Chase suggestively.
‘Eddie! And we need something else.’ She called across the room to the waitress. ‘Excuse me - can you tell me how to get to the nearest hardware store?’
Travelling south towards Perth, they reached a small town that was home to a motel - and a hardware store.
Nina worked at their motel room’s small desk, which soon resembled a cross between a craft fair disaster and a mad scientist’s lab. The trip to the store had resulted in the purchase of several sheets of card, duct tape, a length of wooden dowel, a lamp stand, an electric screwdriver . . . and a set of large needles of the kind used to repair canvas and other heavy fabrics.
‘You think it’ll work?’ asked Chase.
‘Soon find out. I’m almost finished.’ She tore off a piece of tape and used it to fix the screwdriver to the side of the desk with its empty chuck pointing upwards, then pushed a short piece of dowel on to one of the screwdriver’s bits, having previously drilled a hole into one end. When it was on as far as it would go, she used another piece of tape to secure it, then inserted the bit into the chuck. Switching the screwdriver to its lowest setting, she experimentally pulled the trigger. The dowel spun with a low whirr.
‘Okay,’ she said, ‘that part works. Now, let’s see about the rest . . .’
She picked up a cone made from a sheet of card, taping it to the metal stem of the lamp stand by its narrow end. Once it was in place, she took one of the needles and carefully inserted it eye-first into the point of the cone before using more tape to hold it there. Then she slid the lamp stand across the desk, poising the needle above the piece of dowel . . .
‘All we need’s a dog,’ said Chase, with some pride at what Nina had managed to assemble, ‘and we’ve got His Master’s Voice.’
Sophia regarded the construction incredulously. ‘You’ve built a gramophone?’
‘That’s right,’ Nina replied, picking up the cylinder. ‘That’s what this is - it’s an audio recording! The groove’s like the one on a record, or more like an old wax cylinder, I suppose. There have been examples of pottery accidentally recording ambient sounds while they were being inscribed with a stylus on the potter’s wheel - I think the people who made this developed the technique into something with practical applications.’ She indicated the cone. ‘They used copper rather than cardboard, but the principle’s the same - the cone’s used to pick up the vibrations of sounds and transmit them through the needle on to the soft clay when the recording’s being made, and then amplify them like a loudspeaker when the fired, hardened cylinder is played back. And I know the size of the needle they used because, well, I got one stuck in my butt.’
Chase peered at the second cylinder on the desk. ‘So what did they record on them?’
‘Voices, presumably. Religious sermons, speeches by their leaders . . . maybe even songs.’ Nina carefully lowered the cylinder on to the makeshift turntable, sliding the dowel into the hole at its base. ‘Soon find out.’
For once, Sophia actually seemed unsettled. ‘So you’re saying that if this works, we might hear a hundred-thousand-year-old voice?’
‘A hundred and thirty thousand, if my dates are right. That’s well over half as long as humans have even existed.’
Chase grinned. ‘Who says it’s human? Maybe it’s aliens talking.’
‘It’s not aliens,’ said Nina in professional exasperation. She moved the lamp stand until the needle’s tip lightly touched the start of the groove near the cylinder’s top. ‘Okay. Here we go . . .’
Holding her breath, she switched it on.
The cylinder rotated, the screwdriver’s motor whining and grumbling at the extra weight . . . but even over the noise, they clearly heard something emerge from the improvised loudspeaker.
A voice. But like nothing they had ever heard before.
‘Fuck me,’ said Chase, suppressing an unexpected shiver. ‘Are you sure that’s not an alien?’
Nina had a similar response to the unnatural sound, a low, almost sinister moaning - but the sensation running up her spine was as much a tingle of excitement as it was the shock of the unknown. ‘It’s not at the right speed,’ she realised, stopping the motor and adjusting the settings before moving the needle back to the starting point. ‘Let’s try again.’
This time, the voice sounded more like the product of a human larynx, though still slurred. It formed four distinct sounds - words, Nina assumed - before pausing, then speaking again.
‘It’s still not at the right speed,’ said Sophia, now fascinated. ‘It needs to go faster.’
Nina increased the screwdriver’s speed and restarted
the motor. The voice spoke again, now revealed as male - though with a strange sonorous reverberation to it. She strained to listen, picking out another sound beneath the speech, a faint, almost mechanical squeaking or groaning.
The speech lasted for a minute before the needle finally reached the end of the groove and scraped across the cylinder’s base. Nina hurriedly switched off the screwdriver.
‘What was he was saying?’ Chase wondered.
‘Hopefully I’ll be able to figure that out - and that it’ll be something useful,’ Nina told him as she delicately lifted the cylinder from its makeshift spindle. ‘Give me the other one.’
The recording on the second cylinder lasted slightly longer, recorded by a different man with a faster pattern of speech - though still with the same odd, throaty echo to his words. It began with three words rather than four, followed by a pause before the speaker continued.
Nina played the beginning back, then regarded the cylinder thoughtfully. Inscribed around its top were three words in the ancient language. ‘What if . . . what if the first words on each recording are like a title?’ she thought out loud, removing it from the screwdriver and laying it beside the first. ‘So that whoever’s listening knows they’ve got the right cylinder?’ She thought back to the chamber. ‘Ribbsley knew what these symbols were; he translated them. What did he say?’
Chase tried to remember. ‘Something about the sea. And wind.’
‘Sea of wind,’ said Nina, Ribbsley’s words coming back to her. She examined the first cylinder more closely. ‘Wind! Damn it, I should have figured that out already. Look!’ She pointed. ‘This symbol, the three horizontal lines with the top one curling back on itself - it’s a representation of the wind!’
Sophia was dubious. ‘In a cartoon, perhaps.’
‘Maybe, but that visual shorthand came from real life originally - it’s how dust or sand look if they’re being blown along a plain. Or a beach, and we know these people lived along the sea. Which means that this wavy line is, well . . . wavy! It’s their symbol for the sea. Wind and sea, together - sea of wind.’ She examined the remaining characters. ‘The last one is also wind, and the third one’s not symbolic, it’s a word.’ She tried to recall what Ribbsley had said. ‘Seasons! “Sea of wind, seasons, wind.” Whatever that means.’