‘The angel! Get the angel!’ Simeon barked, clutching his injured hand. One of the other men snatched up the bag, while his companion with the tyre iron moved past him towards the Englishman, whipping the length of metal from side to side.
Eddie retreated, watching the bar flick before him. The man holding it was built powerfully enough to break bone if a blow landed. Behind him, the other three attackers were hurriedly returning to the Honda with the bag.
The big man lunged. Eddie jerked aside as the tyre iron stabbed past his head, glimpsing Nelson scrambling from the taxi behind his attacker. Another strike, this a savage horizontal swipe that whooshed past just inches from his nose.
He flinched back – and staggered as his heel dropped into a deep rut.
The man bared his teeth in a malevolent smile, raising the bar to smash Eddie’s skull—
And screamed, one leg giving way as Nelson stabbed a long serrated knife into his thigh.
Eddie punched the hulking thug hard in the face, sending a gush of blood from his nostrils. He toppled backwards into the mud, weapon forgotten as he clutched the stab wound. The Englishman grabbed the tool, about to finish the fight permanently before deciding that a murder would not endear him to the Antiguan authorities. He settled instead for viciously kicking his opponent’s crotch. The big man convulsed, every muscle in his body drawn tight, before slumping unconscious.
The Honda’s engine roared. Eddie scrambled for cover, expecting his attackers to mow him down, but instead it reversed sharply before skidding back on to the main road. Within seconds it was out of sight behind the bushes, heading back towards St John’s.
He turned to Nelson. ‘You okay?’ The Antiguan nodded, staring almost in bewilderment at the blood on his blade before hurriedly wiping it on the downed man’s shirt. ‘Thanks for that – I’m glad you had that knife.’
‘Mos’ taxi drivers do. I tell you, you only think this place is paradise.’ He regarded the motionless figure with dismay. ‘They were gonna kill you!’
‘They’d have killed both of us.’ Eddie spotted a glint of metal in the undergrowth and retrieved the gun. ‘Come on, let’s go. Somebody might have heard that shot, and I don’t have time to piss around dealing with the police.’
The taxi driver didn’t move. ‘What we gonna do with this guy?’
Eddie snorted. ‘He started it – and I bet he won’t go to the cops. You didn’t hit the artery, so he’s not going to die. Leave the bastard there and let him limp home when he wakes up. You coming?’ He went to the cab.
Nelson examined his vehicle. ‘Look at this! Look at this!’ he complained, poking a fingertip into the bullet hole. ‘How I gon’ explain that to me wife?’
‘Just remind her that this place isn’t paradise,’ Eddie said with a grim smile.
Nelson frowned, then recovered the keys. ‘I come get you as a favour to Tom. Now he better do me a favour!’ He got back into the taxi. ‘They took your bag, man,’ he said, regarding the empty rear bench. ‘Took your bag!’
‘Yeah, I know,’ said Eddie as he returned to his seat, then leaned back – with an expression almost of satisfaction. ‘Real shame, that . . .’
Nelson gave him a disbelieving look, then, muttering under his breath, reversed the cab to the road and set off again for Jolly Harbour, leaving the dazed man lying in the mud.
20
‘Ee bah gum,’ said Tom Harkaway in an exaggerated attempt at a northern accent. ‘It’s Eddie Chase!’
‘That’s Lancashire, not Yorkshire, you thick southern bastard,’ Eddie replied, grinning up at the large bearded man on the deck of the motor yacht. ‘We say “Ay up!” not “Ee bah gum!”’ He shook his head. ‘E. B. G. Chase? You daft twat.’
‘Whatever, you’re all bloody barbarians as far as I’m concerned.’ Tom tramped down the gangway to the wooden dock, shaking his fellow Englishman’s hand before clasping him in a bear hug. ‘So, how’s things?’
‘Right now? Been better,’ Eddie replied as he extricated himself. ‘In the past few days I’ve been Tasered, waterboarded and shot at, I’ve driven a Porsche off a bridge, and just since I arrived on this island someone’s tried to kill me. Oh, and my wife’s been kidnapped by a bunch of religious nuts.’
Tom cocked his head to one side. ‘Business as usual, then.’
‘Yeah, more’s the fucking pity. Thanks for agreeing to help me out.’
‘Us SAS boys have to stick together,’ replied his old squad mate. He gave Nelson a concerned look. ‘Someone tried to kill him? You okay?’
‘Fine, both fine,’ said Nelson, sounding aggrieved. ‘But my taxi got a bullet hole! Who gon’ pay to fix that?’
Tom’s eyes went to Eddie. ‘Don’t look at me,’ he said. ‘You’re the one with the yacht.’
‘Yeah, and you arrived on a private jet!’ The older man sighed, then told Nelson: ‘I’ll sort it out. Take it to Viv at the boatyard.’ He gestured across the harbour at a cluster of industrial buildings. ‘He’ll patch it up for you. Elena doesn’t have to know anything about it.’
The taxi driver looked relieved. ‘Thanks, Tom.’
‘Cheers for the lift,’ Eddie said as Nelson departed, before turning to take in the moored yacht beside them. The name Flirty Lady was painted on the hull of the seventy-foot white and blue vessel; he was no nautical expert, but from its decided lack of sleekness compared to the other craft nearby, he guessed it was a good few decades old. ‘Never imagined you as a navy man. Go cruising with Seaman Staines and Master Bates, do you?’
‘Ha ha. Fuck off, Eddie. This is how I make a living now – tourist trips. We go out around the island, drop anchor off some of the nicer beaches and let ’em go snorkelling before partying on the way back.’
‘Sounds like really hard work,’ Eddie joked, surveying his surroundings. Jolly Harbour was an attractive and clearly wealthy enclave with rows of houses right on the waterline, many having their own docks. Steep little hills rose around the bay, providing a backdrop of lush tropical vegetation. ‘Nice place. My mum always wanted to come here. You’ve got a tough life.’
‘You can joke, but you try keeping up with the payments on a ship this size, even a third-hand one,’ Tom told him as he ascended the gangplank. ‘Then there’s the insurance, fuel, berthing fees, all that crap. It’s not exactly a licence to print money.’
Eddie followed him into the main cabin. ‘So,’ said Tom, with a penetrating look. ‘You ring me last night, tell me you’re coming to Antigua on some kind of urgent mission for the UN, I agree to help you . . . and now I find out that your wife’s been kidnapped and someone wants you dead. Kept that part quiet, didn’t you? What the bloody hell’s going on?’
‘I’m not exactly sure myself,’ Eddie admitted.
‘Okay. And do you know who these people are?’
‘Nope.’
Tom pursed his lips. ‘Riiiight. Do you even know where they’re keeping your wife?’
‘Nope again. Although,’ he added, taking out his phone, ‘if I’m lucky, I’ll find that out soon . . .’
Even locked in her house with a pair of guards posted outside the door, Nina couldn’t miss the clatter of a helicopter coming in to land. Soon afterwards, Cross’s disembodied voice summoned her. A clack from the door lock, and two men entered to escort her through the compound.
Some of the Mission’s white-clad residents were rushing about, excitedly passing on news to their neighbours. Nina saw someone familiar. ‘Miriam?’ she called. ‘What’s going on?’
The young woman hesitated, nervousness plain on her open face. The current news wasn’t the only gossip; Nina’s attack on Norvin had also done the rounds. But whatever had happened was so exciting, she couldn’t hold it in. ‘They’ve found the third angel!’
‘It’s here?’ The redhead looked towards the helipad in alarm. If Cross’s people had taken it from Eddie already . . .
‘Yes! One of the Witnesses just delivered it to the Prophet.’
‘I g
uess I’m going to see for myself,’ said Nina as her guards directed her onwards.
‘It’s wonderful!’ Miriam called after her. ‘There’s only one more angel to find, and then the seventh trumpet will sound!’
‘You say that like it’s a good thing,’ she offered in parting. She had now studied Revelation enough to know what followed the last trumpet: war, destruction and death on a colossal scale.
She tried to hide her foreboding as she was brought to the church. The Fishers emerged in a rush as she arrived. Simeon’s left hand was clamped tightly around his right, blood oozing between his fingers. Anna ushered him along, face full of concern for her husband. Both glared at Nina as they passed.
Their anger gave her a perverse feeling of hope. Even if they had taken the angel from Eddie, he had certainly put up a fight.
The cult leader was waiting inside with Dalton. The two men smiled when they saw her, though in the former president’s case it was decidedly gloating. Cross, however, was almost ecstatic. ‘Dr Wilde! This is one of the most important days in the history of the world – and it wouldn’t have happened without you.’
‘I’m absolutely thrilled to have helped,’ she replied, in a tone acidic enough to peel paint.
Dalton’s smile slid into a smirk. ‘Cynicism’s so unbecoming in a mother-to-be.’
‘Oh, cram it up your ass, Mr President.’ Nina reached them, seeing a carry-on bag on the front pew. ‘Where’s Eddie?’
‘Still alive, unfortunately.’ She wasn’t sure which gave her more pleasure: the news itself, or the former politician’s discomfiture at announcing it.
‘It doesn’t matter,’ said Cross. ‘What does matter is that three angels are now accounted for. The one destroyed in Iraq, the second from the catacombs in Rome, and now the third.’ He indicated the bag. ‘There’s only one more to find – and we know where to look. We’re already making preparations for the search. You’ll join us, of course,’ he added. ‘You’re right: we might still need an archaeologist on the ground.’
‘Trekking around a desert while pregnant? Boy, I can’t wait.’
‘You won’t have to wait long. We’ll be leaving tonight.’ Cross opened the bag. ‘But first I wanted you to see this.’
He donned white gloves, then carefully lifted out an object cocooned in bubble wrap. One end had been pulled open, revealing a hint of what was inside. ‘The third angel – the eagle,’ he said, showing it to her.
Nina couldn’t help but feel a thrill at the sight. However dangerous it might be, the angel was still an incredible find. But the feeling passed almost immediately at the thought of how Cross intended to misuse it – for devastation, not discovery. ‘Is it intact?’ she asked. ‘After everything it went through, you were damn lucky it didn’t get broken in Berlin.’
‘You can blame your husband for that,’ said Dalton.
‘If it had broken, it would have been God’s will,’ Cross said as he started to peel away the wrapping. ‘It doesn’t matter where the angels are released, just that they are.’
‘Although some locations are better than others, obviously.’ The ex-president seemed to be enjoying some private joke.
Cross paid no attention, fixated on freeing the statue. ‘Here,’ he said with reverence as the last wrapping came away. ‘At last.’
Dalton came to see for himself. ‘Three down, one to go.’ He turned to Nina. ‘What do you think, Dr Wilde?’
Nina didn’t answer, her attention fixed on the statue. Something was wrong, she realised. Compared to the second angel, it was different – the way it caught the light, the tint of the ceramic, the arrangement of the metal wings surrounding the body . . .
Cross caught her confusion. ‘What are—’ he began, before looking sharply back at the relic. He ran his gloved fingertips over its surface, then turned it to examine the inscribed text, almost squinting as he tried to make out details.
‘What’s the matter?’ Dalton demanded.
‘It’s . . . it’s not real,’ whispered Cross. He gave Nina a frenzied glare, as if it were her fault. ‘It’s a fake! Look at the lettering! It’s stepped – like a low-resolution copy!’ He tugged off one glove to scratch the statue with his fingernail. Tiny flecks of the surface broke away.
Nina almost laughed. ‘I think you’ve been scammed. Or scanned, rather. Eddie must have put the real angel into that laser scanner at the museum and 3D-printed an exact copy. It’s nice work, though. Somebody’s even gilded the wings to make them look like real metal.’
‘But . . . but why?’ asked Dalton. ‘He must have known we’d realise it was fake, so he couldn’t have exchanged it for you.’
‘He wasn’t going to exchange it,’ said Cross. He turned the statue upside down, examining its base. A small length of metal was set into the flat surface – something that had not been present on the angel taken from Rome. ‘It’s an antenna!’ Fury filled his voice. ‘It’s a tracker, a GPS beacon. He wanted Simeon to take it from him. Now he knows where we are!’
He raised the statue as if about to smash it on the marble floor, then forced back his anger, regarding the replica for a moment before lowering it again. ‘We need to move up our schedule,’ he said more quietly, calculating.
‘Wait – where’s the real angel?’ said Dalton.
‘Chase must still have it, or has gotten someone to bring it to Antigua for him. He needs it to get his wife back.’ Cross looked at Nina. ‘He’ll be coming here. But we’ll be ready for him.’
Eddie zoomed in on the map on his phone to a small island off Antigua’s eastern coast. ‘That’s where they are – where Nina is.’ He had bought the GPS tracker and its phone app from a spy shop in Berlin that morning, getting the bruised but otherwise unharmed Derrick to conceal it inside the replica. ‘You know it?’
Tom nodded. ‘Elliot Island. Never landed there, though – it’s private property. You get too close, and the residents turn up and wave you away. Not a big deal; its beaches aren’t great, so it’s not a prime tourist spot.’
‘Know anything about the people who own it?’
‘Some religious commune, I think. There’s a church. Apart from that . . .’ He shrugged.
‘I need to get out there, without them seeing me. It won’t take ’em long to realise that wasn’t the real statue – oh, and there we go.’ The tracker’s dot vanished, a message popping up to announce that the signal had been lost. ‘Still, it told me what I needed.’
‘When you say you need to get out there,’ said Tom warily, ‘I’m assuming you want me to take you?’
Eddie smiled. ‘That’d be helpful, yeah.’
‘I told you, they’ll see us coming. The Flirty’s not exactly a stealth boat.’
‘That’s why it’s perfect. How quick can it get out there?’
‘At full pelt? An hour and a half, maybe.’ He looked through a porthole at a call from the dock. ‘Who’s this?’
‘That’s for me,’ said Eddie. He went out on to the deck to find Maureen Rothschild at the bottom of the gangway. ‘Hi, Prof! You made it, then.’
‘Yes, I did,’ she replied, with a distinct lack of enthusiasm. ‘I waited in the plane for ten minutes before going through customs, as you asked, and by that time, a jumbo jet full of tourists had arrived! I had to wait in line behind three hundred people. And when I finally got out, it took an age to find a cab. Why couldn’t I have come with you?’
‘Trust me, you wouldn’t have wanted to be in my taxi,’ he told her, marching down the walkway to pick up her travel case. ‘I had a reception committee. And they weren’t there to give me cocktails in a hollowed-out pineapple.’
Rothschild’s eyes went wide. ‘You were ambushed? Are you all right?’
‘I didn’t know you cared.’ He ascended the gangway.
‘I’m displaying simple human decency, Mr Chase,’ she replied tartly as she followed. ‘Something in which you apparently still need lessons. What about the statue? Did they take it?’
‘Y
eah, just like I’d hoped. So now I know where they are.’ He helped her on to the yacht. ‘You’ve got the real one?’
Rothschild huffed. ‘No, I left it on the plane. Of course I brought it!’
‘Sarcastic, snappy . . . you’re more like Nina than either of you’d want to admit.’ Eddie put down the case. ‘Tom, this is Maureen Rothschild. Prof, this is Tom Harkaway, an old mate of mine.’
‘Nice to meet you,’ said Tom, extending his hand.
She shook it dubiously, eyeing a pouting pin-up girl painted on a bulkhead beside the vessel’s name. ‘Thank you. This is a . . . nice boat.’
He chuckled. ‘It’s seen a fair few parties.’
‘Speaking of which,’ said Eddie, ‘how fast can you drum up some passengers? A party boat without partiers’ll look a bit suspicious.’
Tom pointed beyond the houses along the harbour’s western edge. ‘There are two big resort hotels just over there, the Tranquility Bay and the Jolly Beach. It shouldn’t be too hard to find some people who want a cruise.’ He paused. ‘You want me to give them a free cruise, don’t you?’
‘Quickest way to fill up the boat, innit?’
‘And who’s going to pay for all this?’
‘There’s a bloke at the United Nations called Oswald Seretse . . .’
Rothschild shook her head. ‘Poor Oswald. He’s in for a shock.’
‘Not as much as the arseholes who took Nina.’ Eddie took the gun from inside his jacket and checked the magazine.
‘Jesus, put it away!’ cried Tom, eyes wide. ‘You don’t want to get caught with that. The Antiguans had a big crackdown on guns after some tourists were murdered a few years ago. Shoot someone and you’ll get anything from twenty-five years to the death penalty.’
‘Didn’t seem to worry the bloke who took the statue,’ Eddie replied, slipping it back out of sight. ‘You know any local cops?’
Tom nodded. ‘I’ve got some friends.’
‘Could be worth bringing ’em in. Pretty sure I’ll need backup.’
‘But the police won’t land on a private island without a good reason.’