Return to Atlantis_A Novel

“Stay down!” he shouted as he ran to the windows, opening fire with the Makarov. The gunner ducked back into the cabin as a bullet clanged off the fuselage, but the helicopter was almost a hundred yards away, and the Russian gun was sighted for much closer ranges—he couldn’t aim it accurately enough to hit a specific target.

  The chopper’s nose came around, the spotlight dazzling him. He could now barely make out the aircraft itself through the glare, never mind its pilot.

  But there was something closer that he could see, and hit …

  He snapped up the pistol and emptied the magazine into the wind turbine’s hub.

  Machinery blew out in a shower of sparks. The whirling blades juddered, their vibration rapidly increasing, loud clangs rising even over the helicopter’s roar. Another burst of sparks from the crippled generator—then with a screech the rotor sheared away from the hub.

  Still spinning at high speed, it dropped to the tier below—and bounced away into the night sky.

  Straight at the helicopter.

  The horrified pilot tried to take evasive action as it arced at his aircraft, but it was too late. The hefty blades sliced off the chopper’s tail boom as if it were made from damp paper. Without its tail rotor, the helicopter immediately went into an uncontrollable spin. Wobbling like a top, it whipped around faster and faster, losing altitude as it careened toward the skyscraper—

  Eddie hurled himself back into the garden as the tumbling aircraft crashed through the building’s outer wall six floors below and exploded. A huge fireball surged up the tower’s side behind him. He scrabbled to join Nina, shielding his face from the heat as the roiling inferno ascended. “You okay?”

  She nodded, still stunned by what had just happened. Oily black smoke boiled upward beyond the broken windows, leaving the edge of the carpet aflame. “Oh my God!” she cried. “What about all the people downstairs?”

  “Soon as the fire alarm sounded, they’ll have evacuated,” said Eddie, hoping that the Japanese reputation for efficiency extended to Takashi Industries’ emergency procedures. “And I think we ought to join ’em.”

  He helped her up, and was about to head for the exit when the ceiling sprinklers burst into life, drenching them. “Great,” Nina moaned, flicking strands of wet hair from her eyes. “What next, an earthquake?”

  The building shook.

  Eddie shot her an accusing glare. “That was not me tempting fate!” she protested as she retrieved the case. “I’m not a fate-temptress!”

  Another jolt. The sound of more windows splintering came from below—followed by a deep groan of buckling metal and crumbling concrete. The sprinklers died as pipes were severed. They both felt another movement, their inner ears warning them that they were leaning over—even though they were standing still. Through the smoke, the glowing Tokyo skyline slowly began to tilt. “The whole fucking building’s going over!” Eddie yelled.

  More noises of imminent collapse reached them as girders broke from their joints and concrete slabs sheared apart. The doors through which they had been about to leave creaked in distress as their frame warped—then they shattered, chunks of wood flying into the room. The ceiling behind the exit collapsed, ventilation hoses thrashing angrily amid the falling rubble.

  They were cut off from the stairs.

  The floor of the now visibly tilting room trembled. Another deep destructive boom from below and the lights flickered, then went out. The burning carpet provided enough illumination for Eddie to see, but even with that they still had nowhere to go …

  Nina grabbed his hand. “This way!” She pulled him down the ever-steepening slope toward Takashi’s office.

  “How’s that going to help?”

  “He’s got an escape pod!”

  “He’s got a what?”

  “Yeah, that’s what I thought too!” She reached the door and tried to open it. It didn’t move. Like the set at the other end of the room, the frame was warping under the structural stress. “Dammit!”

  Eddie solved the problem by kicking the doors open. “Go on!”

  Nina recoiled at the sight of what was left of Takashi and Kojima in the firelight. Suppressing her nausea, she crossed the blood-splattered floor to the booth. The bright orange capsule was still inside, door raised and a light glowing within. To her dismay, the padded interior only looked big enough for one person.

  “Get in!” Eddie barked, pushing her toward it.

  “I’m not leaving you behind!”

  “Too bloody right you’re not! I meant get in and shove over!”

  She clambered through the hatch and lowered herself onto a thickly cushioned seat. Eddie followed her. He bashed the case. “Can’t you just dump that fucking thing?”

  “No, I—aah!—can’t,” she grunted as he squeezed into the cramped space. “Okay, so how does this work?”

  Eddie spotted a small control panel. It had two buttons, the top one flashing. The crash of another section of collapsing ceiling told him that there was no time to figure out what they did. Instead, he jabbed at the lit button. The clamshell door descended with a mechanical hum, pressing him even more tightly against his wife.

  “Well, not quite the reunion I’d hoped for,” she mumbled into his butt—

  Eddie pushed the second button.

  Rockets set around the capsule’s door fired. More pyrotechnics on the window behind it shattered the safety glass a fraction of a second before the pod blasted through and sailed out into open air. The g-force squashed Eddie hard against the door, Nina screaming as she was jammed against him.

  A moment later, the skyscraper crumbled.

  A wedge-shaped chunk eight stories high sheared away from the top of the tower, sliding diagonally down the fault line created by the exploding helicopter before plunging toward the ground in a trail of smoke and dust. Evacuees ran screaming across the lawns as it fell. The mass of steel and concrete and glass smashed down, the shock of the impact destroying every window on the bottom twenty floors and sending a choking cloud of pulverized debris across the grass after the fleeing workers. More office detritus rained down on the mangled girders and rubble.

  The escape pod was also falling—but far more slowly. The rockets had burned out in seconds, their job of propelling the capsule away from the building completed. After a brief but terrifying period of free fall, a trio of parachutes deployed. Twirling gracefully like a sycamore seed, the orange sphere descended and thumped down on one of the lawns well clear of the scene of destruction.

  The door opened. Eddie fell out backward, a dizzied Nina crawling after him and flopping onto the grass. She regarded the smoking wreckage with horrified amazement as people staggered out of the billowing cloud like walking ghosts. “I think … I want my office moved to the first floor,” she gasped.

  Eddie sat against the pod, recovering his breath. “Are you all right?”

  “Yeah. Somehow.” She looked up at him, taking in his bruised face and torn, bloodied clothes. “My God! You look …”

  “Like I got beat up by ninjas?”

  “I was going to say weird with a beard.”

  “Tchah!”

  “But yeah, you need to get to a hospital.”

  “They might be a bit busy tonight.” He nodded toward the fleeing workers. “And anyway, that could cause me a few problems if the police want to ask me any questions.”

  Nina sat up. “I’ve got some questions. Where have you been for the past three months? What have you been doing? And why are you here—I mean, this exact place, right now, at the same time as me?”

  “In order? All over the place, tracking down Stikes—” He stopped midsentence, instantly angry.

  “Stikes?” Nina looked around nervously, as if the mercenary might suddenly appear and try to finish the job, but there was no sign of him.

  Eddie shook his head. “He’ll be gone. He’ll be fucking gone! Bastard, that—fuck!” He banged a rage-clenched fist against the pod. “I had him, I had my chance to fucking kill him, and
I missed it!”

  “That’s why you were here?” said Nina in disbelief. “To kill Stikes? Not—not what you told me in Peru, that you were going to prove you didn’t murder Kit?”

  Her disappointment, almost disgust, immediately poured cold water on his burning fury. Several moments passed before he spoke again, more calmly. “It doesn’t matter, ’cause I think I’ve been set up. We both have.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Someone told me Stikes would be here—in return for me doing something for them.”

  “Destroying the statues.” Nina pulled the case from the pod and opened it. The three stone figures inside were all intact.

  “Yeah. Only I don’t think it’s a coincidence, that chopper showing up as well. Somebody wanted all of us dead—Takashi, Stikes, you … and me. I need to find out who.” Flashing lights caught his attention, emergency vehicles racing along the nearby roads. Ambulances, fire trucks—and police cars. “Can’t talk about it now, though. I’ve got to go.”

  “No, Eddie, you can’t! Look, Interpol knows that Kit was up to something—if you come in, we can try to clear you—”

  “Sorry, love, but I can’t. Not yet.” He stood, searching for an escape route. The wind turbine’s rotor had stabbed into the grass like an enormous lawn dart; beyond it, streets led into Tokyo’s urban maze. “I need to have words with somebody.” He turned, about to run—then, before Nina could react, snatched the case from her hand.

  She jumped up, but he was already sprinting. “Eddie!”

  He looked back. “Remember something else I said to you in Peru? The last thing? I still mean it!”

  Nina was too shaken to pursue him. All she could do was slump against the pod and watch as he disappeared into the night.

  She did indeed remember his parting words as he fled the gas plant. They were I love you.

  “Oh God, Eddie.” She sighed. “What have you gotten involved in?”

  It was a question she could also ask of herself.

  TEN

  The shinkansen—better known in the West as the bullet train—was as much a symbol of Japan as Mount Fuji, the streamlined expresses hurtling between cities with incredible speed and clockwork precision. This particular one was heading southwest out of Tokyo, the last train of the night from the capital to its final destination of Hakata on the country’s west coast, five hours and seven hundred miles away.

  Eddie wasn’t going that far. His stop was Nagoya, a third of the way along the route, from where he would leave Japan via the international airport; security would be at a lower alert there than at Narita. His exit had been arranged by Scarber. Considering what had happened at the Takashi building, he was not the least bit surprised to learn when he called her that she was in the country. She had almost certainly been within sight of the skyscraper to observe events personally.

  And report the outcome to her bosses.

  A scrolling LED display overhead told him that the time was almost midnight. Scarber’s instructions had been that they not meet until then, after the train departed Shin-Yokohama station. Nagoya, the next stop, was an hour and fifteen minutes away. Plenty of time, she had said, for an undisturbed discussion.

  He had his own suspicions about why she didn’t want to be interrupted. And had taken precautions.

  In the meantime, his thoughts returned to what Nina had said to him after their landing. His relief and delight at seeing her again had been followed by dismay at her reaction on learning why he was there. She had been appalled to learn that his goal had been to kill Stikes … and, he now accepted, rightfully so. He had set out from Peru with the intention of proving his innocence, but somehow over time that had fallen away, replaced by a simpler, cruder, easier motivation. Vengeance, nothing more, taking his revenge on Stikes for everything he had done. He had always thought of such payback as unprofessional, but over the last three months he had fallen into the emotional trap. Uncovering whatever plot connected Kit, Stikes, and Sophia had proved harder and so far fruitless, and he had allowed another goal chosen by some reptilian, bloodthirsty part of his psyche to drive him instead.

  Now, though, his objective was investigation once more. He was going to find out who had set him up, and why.

  But when he did, he might well indulge the reptile within.

  There was something else to kill first, however: the last few minutes before his meeting. He flipped through the English-language edition of the Asahi Shimbun newspaper he had bought before boarding. “Interpol Widens Search for Fugitive Billionaire” was a minor headline that caught his eye; the name Harald Glas stirred his memory as being connected to the IHA in some role. The Dane had apparently fled his native country when faced with charges of fraud, money laundering, and drug smuggling. Eddie imagined that Glas’s life on the lam was considerably more luxurious than his own.

  Midnight. He put the paper aside and headed for the middle of the train, the “green”—first-class—section. Another reason to be wary: The more expensive carriages would be less busy, especially at this hour. More privacy—or fewer witnesses.

  There was another reason why the former spook had chosen her particular seat, as Eddie found when he entered car number ten to be greeted by the acrid smell of tobacco. Smoking was still permitted in certain parts of the shinkansen, and this was one of them. He had retrieved his belongings from a subway station locker and, after some rough-and-ready first aid to his injuries in a restroom cubicle, changed out of his torn and filthy suit into something more comfortable. Taking a pack of Marlboros and his lighter from the breast pocket of his leather jacket now, he moved down the aisle, looking for his contact.

  He found her quickly; there were only a handful of other people in the carriage, suited and bored-looking Japanese men. “There you are,” rasped Scarber from a window seat in the center of the coach, blowing out a line of blue smoke. “Come on, sit down.”

  Eddie dropped into the seat facing her and lit his own cigarette, then returned the lighter and pack to his pocket. “So, you’re here in Japan, eh?”

  “Keeping an eye on my employer’s interests.”

  “I don’t need to tell you what happened, then.”

  “No, I got a pretty good idea. Jesus, what a cluster fuck.” She took a long drag, the cigarette’s glowing tip crackling. “The main thing I want to know is: Did you destroy the statues?”

  “Not yet.”

  She frowned. “The deal was that you destroy them, kiddo.”

  “The deal was that I kill Stikes.”

  “We told you he was there, he was there. Not my problem if you fuck up the hit. Where are they?”

  “Safe.”

  “They’re not supposed to be safe. You had a bag when you boarded—are they in it?”

  Eddie shrugged. “I’ve got some questions myself first.”

  “I don’t give a crap. Where are the statues, Chase?”

  He fixed her with a cold stare. “Why’d you try to have me killed, Scarber?”

  She was silent for a moment, smoke wafting from the cigarette. Finally, she gave him a smile of patronizing admiration. “Figured it out, huh?”

  “The bit where some twat fired rockets at me was sort of a giveaway.”

  “Yeah, that wasn’t subtle, was it?” The smile chilled—then her right hand whipped into her handbag.

  Eddie was faster, snatching out the Makarov and aiming it at her chest. “Ah-ah.”

  “Would you believe me if I said I was just getting a tampon?” Scarber asked, slowly withdrawing her hand.

  “Not really. Now take out the gun. Slowly, thumb and little finger.”

  Glaring, she reached into the bag and extracted a pistol. Eddie saw that it was a Smith & Wesson SD9, a compact automatic—yet not so compact that Scarber could have easily smuggled it into the country. She must have picked it up in Japan, which meant she had associates.

  Associates who could bring modern weapons from the United States through the strict Japanese customs checks …
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  “Eject the mag, then chuck ’em under the table,” Eddie ordered. She did so, the gun and its magazine clunking to the floor. He kicked them under his seat. “Former spook, my arse. You’re either still active or you’ve got close mates in the CIA. So who are you working for—and why’d you go to all this trouble to put me in the building when your chopper started shooting it up?”

  Scarber sneered, parchment skin drawing tight. “You really think I’m going to tell a punk like you?”

  “If you don’t, that’ll be your last smoke.” The Makarov remained locked unwaveringly on her heart.

  She took the cigarette from her mouth and looked at it ruefully. “I was planning on quitting anyway … Okay, kiddo, strap yourself in. The people I work for wanted Takashi dead—your wife too—and the statues destroyed. Stikes was just an incidental bonus.”

  Eddie clenched his jaw. “Why do they want to kill Nina?”

  “Hell if I know. I’m just an operator—I don’t make the decisions. They’re on one side, my employers are on the other, it’s that simple. As for why they want you dead …” Scarber returned the cigarette to her mouth, a final lengthy draw burning it to ash all the way to the filter. She smiled like a skull. “Seems one of my employers has a beef against you personally. When he found out there was a chance to get you into the building with your wife, he asked me to arrange it. I guess you really pissed him off at some point.”

  “There’s a long fucking list of people I’ve pissed off,” said Eddie. “Shorten it. Who is he?”

  Instead of answering, she glanced down the aisle. Eddie turned his head—to see one of the other passengers pointing a gun at him. Another SD9. A second man approached from behind Scarber, similarly armed. “You took your goddamn time,” she snapped.

  “Sorry, ma’am,” said the first man. His accent was American. “We didn’t have a clear line of sight on the subject. If you’d sat in the aisle seat, as we suggested …”

  “Don’t you try to give me fieldcraft tips, kid,” Scarber said, irritated. “I was working undercover in China while your dad was still in diapers.”

  “More like his granddad,” Eddie said, grinning.