‘Whatever this stuff is, MOPP-1 can resist it.’ He carefully moved in the direction of the other man’s voice until his fingertips made contact with Cross’s suit. ‘I guess we’ve got our smoking gun. Saddam has got chemical weapons, and is willing to use them. We have to call this in.’ He reached for his radio before remembering that it had been attached to his discarded webbing.
‘I don’t think this was anything to do with Saddam,’ said Cross thoughtfully.
‘What do you mean? You saw it – one of that ’copter’s rockets blew up and released it.’
‘No, it blew up, but the gas came from something else.’ Cross suddenly gripped his wrist. ‘It came from the angel! We’ve got to find it.’
‘If it got hit by a rocket, there won’t be anything left bigger than your pinky,’ Rosemont pointed out. He made out the other man’s shape as visibility started to return. ‘Help me find the radio.’
‘This is more important. Don’t you see? Revelation chapter nine, verse two – “And there arose a smoke out of the pit—”’
‘I don’t give a damn what the Book of Revelations says!’ Rosemont barked. ‘This isn’t Sunday school; this is a Special Activities Division operation. You’re an agent, not a preacher; now shut the hell up and carry out the mission!’
Cross regarded him for a moment, his face unreadable behind the mask, then he turned away. ‘Don’t you walk away from – son of a bitch!’ Rosemont yelled after him. ‘You’re finished, you hear me?’
Cross ignored Rosemont’s angry shouts as he jogged back towards the ruins. The wind had shifted, wafting the yellow mass off the shore and out over the lake. The fires from the crashed helicopter and the burning reed beds cast a hellish glow across the landscape.
Appropriate, he thought. From the moment he first saw the angel inside the temple, he was absolutely sure, more than he had ever been about anything, that he knew what he had found – and what it meant.
But there had been only one angel. According to the Book of Revelation, there were three more. So where were they?
He approached the spot where the broken pillar had stood. The only thing there now was a rubble-strewn crater.
From which the gas was still rising.
He reached the edge of the gouge in the earth. A shallow pool of dark water was at the bottom. Amongst the debris around it, his light picked out a shape that was clearly not natural. Part of the statue. One of its wings was still attached, but the embossed metal that had been wrapped around the angel’s body was now twisted and torn where the figure had been smashed by the explosion, exposing a darker core hidden inside.
The strange gas was belching from this black stone. The wind was enough to blow it clear, though he resisted the temptation to remove his mask for a better look. The sight put him in mind of a smoke grenade, but . . .
‘Where’s it all coming from?’ he whispered. Smoke grenades contained enough chemicals to produce a screen for ninety seconds at most, but this was pumping out a colossal volume, and showed no signs of stopping.
He stepped down cautiously into the pit. A sound became audible even through his hood’s charcoal-impregnated lining, a sizzling like fatty bacon on a grill. The dark material at the statue’s heart almost appeared to be boiling, blistering with countless tiny bubbles, each releasing more gas as it burst.
Another wisp of the gas to one side caught his eye. A chunk of the broken statue, smaller than his little finger, had landed at the very edge of the pool. He crouched to examine it. There was a sliver of the dark material embedded in the cracked ceramic shell, partially beneath the water’s surface. The exposed section was burning away just like its larger counterpart, consuming itself in some reaction with the air. As he watched, the top of the splinter spat and bubbled to nothingness . . . and the thin line of yellow smoke died away.
Intrigued, Cross gently lifted the fragment from the water. It was warm, even through his glove. After a moment, the strange substance fizzed and puffed a new strand of yellow fumes into the wind. He dipped it back into the puddle. The reaction stopped.
A light swept over him. ‘Cross!’ called Rosemont from the crater’s lip. ‘What the hell are you doing?’
‘I found the angel,’ Cross replied, climbing out to meet him and indicating the larger hunk of the statue. ‘That’s where the smoke’s coming from. It wasn’t a chemical weapon; it was here all along, hidden in the temple. Waiting for us to find it. Waiting for me to find it.’
Rosemont shone his flashlight over the broken figure. It was still belching out its seemingly endless plume of oily yellow gas. ‘Damn. What the hell is that?’
‘It’s a messenger from God. Look.’ Cross illuminated the little pool. The dark water was revealed as a bloody red, the discoloration spreading outwards from the fragment like ink across damp paper. ‘“And the third part of the sea became blood . . .”’
The lead agent snapped his light at Cross’s face. ‘I don’t want to hear one more goddamn Bible quote out of you, okay? This whole situation has gotten way out of control.’
‘I know what we have to do. We have to take the angel out of here.’
‘Are you out of your mind?’ Rosemont protested. ‘It killed Gabe, it killed Kerim and all his men! We’re not taking it anywhere.’
‘Putting it in water stops the smoke. If we find a container, we can transport it—’
‘Water, huh?’ Rosemont jumped into the crater. Before Cross could intervene, he had hauled the remains of the angel from the ground. The toxic gas swirled around him as he stomped back out of the pit, heading to the lake’s edge.
‘What are you doing?’ Cross demanded as he followed.
‘Making this safe.’ He drew back his arm – and hurled the statue out into the water.
‘No!’ yelled Cross, but it was too late. The broken figure spun through the air, a poisonous vortex spiralling in its wake, before it splashed down some sixty feet from the shoreline. Both men stared at the water until the ripples subsided.
Rosemont turned back to Cross. ‘Right. Now we radio in and—’
He froze. Cross had raised his gun and was pointing it at his chest. ‘You shouldn’t have done that,’ said the Virginian in a voice that, while level, was straining with anger. ‘You’ve just interfered with God’s plan.’
‘God’s plan?’ said Rosemont, trying to control his fear. ‘What the hell are you talking about?’
‘The Day of Judgement. It’s coming. The first angel bound at the Euphrates has been released. The seals will be broken, the seven trumpets will sound, and . . .’ He paused, new realisation filling him with greedy wonder. ‘And the mystery of God should be finished . . .’
Rosemont shook his head. ‘You’re crazy. Lower your weapon, right now, or—’
Cross pulled the trigger.
A single bullet ripped through Rosemont’s heart and exploded out from his back. Eyes wide in shock behind his mask, he crumpled to the ground.
Cross stared at the dead man, his face unreadable, then bent to take his radio. He set it to an emergency frequency. ‘Wintergreen, Wintergreen, this is Maven,’ he said, using the operation’s code names. ‘Wintergreen, this is Maven. Come in.’
A female voice responded. ‘This is Wintergreen. We read you, Maven. Sitrep.’
‘Mission failure, I repeat, mission failure. We were ambushed – the Iraqis had a gunship on patrol. Rosemont and Arnold are dead. So are our contacts.’
A pause. When the woman replied, it was with clear concern even through the fuzz of the scrambled transmission. ‘Everyone’s dead?’
‘Yes, everyone but me. Our transport was destroyed. I need immediate evac.’
‘We can’t give you evac with a gunship in the air.’
‘It’s been shot down. I need to get out of here before they come to see what happened to it.’
A long silence as the controller conferred with a superior. Finally, she responded: ‘Okay, Maven, can you reach Point Charlie?’ A backup rendezvous poin
t some miles to the south. ‘If you hole up there, we’ll get an extraction team to you asap.’
‘I’ll make it,’ Cross answered. ‘I’ll contact you when I arrive.’
‘Roger that, Maven. Good luck.’ She paused again, then added in a softer voice: ‘I’m sorry about Mike and Gabe.’
‘So am I,’ said Cross, giving Rosemont’s corpse an emotionless glance. ‘Maven out.’
He switched off the radio, then surveyed the area. The cloud had now mostly dispersed, but he didn’t risk removing his MOPP gear; there were still drifting patches of haze in the air. Instead he returned to where he had donned the suit to retrieve his equipment webbing. There was a water flask attached; he took it, then went back to the crater.
The small sliver of the angel was still submerged in the blood-red water. He removed the flask’s cap, then carefully picked up the shard and dropped it inside before it started to smoke again. The thought occurred that he should find one of the dead agents’ canteens, as there was no way of knowing how long it would be before he was rescued, but he dismissed it. He knew he would find what he needed to survive. ‘“For the Lamb which is in the midst of the throne shall lead them unto living fountains of waters . . .”’ he said quietly as he firmly secured the cap.
His cargo secured, he set out into the wilderness.
1
New York City
Twelve Years Later
‘Has everything I’ve done in my life been worth it?’
Nina Wilde sat facing Dr Elaine Senzer, but her eyes were lowered, avoiding the psychiatrist’s gaze. Instead she fixated on small, irrelevant details – a scuff on the other woman’s shoe, indentations on the carpet where her chair had been moved – as she tried to put her fears into words. ‘That’s the question I’ve been asking myself recently,’ she went on. ‘And the thing that’s worrying me is . . . is that I’m not sure it has.’
Elaine leaned forward, adjusting her glasses. ‘I’m curious why you’d say that. You’ve already achieved more in your life than most people – I mean, it’s fair to say that you’re the most famous archaeologist in the world. You found Atlantis, you discovered the lost city of El Dorado and a hidden Egyptian pyramid, and all those other amazing things. That’s something to be proud of, surely?’
‘Is it?’ Nina caught herself leaning back in her seat, as if subconsciously trying to maintain the distance between them. ‘Yeah, I found all those things – and I got a lot of people killed in the process. Too many people.’
‘You didn’t kill them personally.’
‘Some of them I did.’ Even without looking directly at Elaine, she could sense the psychiatrist’s shock at the revelation. ‘They were trying to kill me, it was always in self-defence . . . but yeah, I’ve killed people. And you know what’s really scary? I’ve lost count of how many.’
Elaine hurriedly scribbled a note. ‘I see.’
Nina gave her a grim smile. ‘You’re not going to have me committed to Bellevue, are you?’
‘No, no,’ the dark-haired woman hastily assured her. ‘I actually think it’s good that you feel able to tell me about it at this relatively early stage. If you remember, when we started these sessions last month, it was quite a challenge for you to open up about anything at all. The very nature of post-traumatic stress causes sufferers to try to internalise it – there’s a great deal of anger, guilt—’
‘Tell me about it,’ Nina muttered.
‘I’m afraid it doesn’t work that way,’ said Elaine, with sympathy. ‘You have to tell me.’
‘You want me to tell you about my guilt?’ Nina snapped. ‘Okay – about four months ago, one of my friends was murdered right in front of me. And it was all my fault! Macy wouldn’t have been there if not for me . . .’ Her voice faded to inaudibility.
A long silence was eventually broken by the psychiatrist. ‘Nina . . . are you okay?’
‘If I was okay, I wouldn’t be seeing a shrink, would I?’ the redhead replied, wiping her eyes. ‘What kind of a stupid question is that?’
Elaine shrugged off the insult with professional calm. ‘Tell me about Macy. I know you’re reluctant, but I really think it would help. Please,’ she added, seeing her patient clench her fists. ‘In your own time; you don’t have to say anything if you don’t want to.’
‘For a hundred and fifty bucks an hour, I’m not going to sit here in silence. I could do that for free at Starbucks, and the coffee would be better.’ Nina took a deep breath, then a second, before continuing. ‘Macy . . . she was an archaeology student when I first met her. She had a case of’ – a brief smile at the memory – ‘hero worship.’ Her expression darkened once more. ‘Spending time with me soon cured her of that.’
‘But she was your friend,’ Elaine said.
‘Yes. She could be annoying – God, she could be annoying! – but yeah, she was. She was young, that was all. And she thought life was there to be enjoyed, so she went all out to enjoy it.’
‘Whereas you . . . ?’
A wry shake of the head, her shoulder-length hair swinging. ‘I’m not exactly a party animal. Never have been. But Macy threw herself head-first into everything. And that . . .’ Her voice broke. ‘That got her killed.’
‘How so?’
‘She invited herself along on my last job for the International Heritage Agency. I could have said no, sent her home. But I didn’t. I don’t know why, maybe because . . . maybe because I was afraid it might be the last chance I had to spend time with her.’
Elaine flicked back through her notebook. ‘Your illness – you thought it was terminal at that point?’
Nina nodded. She had been under a slow death sentence, poisoned by a toxin from deep within the earth. ‘Yeah. There was a treatment, but I didn’t know about it then.’ She kept the full truth to herself: that the ‘treatment’ was nothing less than the legendary fountain of immortality sought by Alexander the Great. After the horrors she had been through to find it, she had vowed to keep its location a secret, to prevent the inevitable further bloodshed if others fought to control it. ‘So I let Macy come with us, and . . .’ She choked up.
‘Are you all right?’ Elaine asked. ‘Do you need a Kleenex or something?’
Nina rubbed away a tear. ‘No, no. I’m okay. It’s just, talking about it . . .’
‘I understand.’
‘It’s . . .’ Nina sat sharply upright, looking Elaine straight in the eye for the first time. ‘It’s not fair! She was so young, she was practically still a kid! And this man, this bastard, killed her like she was nothing – just to get to me. If I hadn’t gotten involved, or if I’d done what I should have done and told Macy to go home, she’d still be alive! I got her killed!’
She slumped forward, head in her hands, trying to hold in her sobs. Elaine looked on with concern. ‘Nina, I’m so, so sorry. But you must know deep down that’s not true. You didn’t kill your friend. Someone else did.’
Nina forced out a reply. ‘If it wasn’t for me, she’d still be alive. The same goes for Rowan Sharpe, and Jim McCrimmon, and Ismail Assad and Hector Amoros and Chloe Lamb and – and so many others I can’t even remember all their names!’ She looked up in despair. ‘This is what I mean, Elaine. Yes, I made all those discoveries – but this was the cost. Hundreds of people have died because of me.’
‘It can’t be that many,’ Elaine said, though with uncertainty.
‘Trust me, I was there. My whole career, everything I’ve accomplished, has been surrounded by death and destruction. Even when I was still a kid, my parents died – were murdered – while they were hunting for Atlantis. Which is why I’ve been asking: was it all worth it?’ She looked down at her abdomen, where a small but distinct swelling revealed the presence of her unborn child. ‘Do I want to bring a kid into my world? What right have I got to put a baby at that kind of risk?’
‘But you’re not working for the IHA any more,’ Elaine pointed out.
‘Maybe, but you know what?’ Nina said with anothe
r flare of anger. ‘Last month, a Nazi tried to kill me, right here in New York!’
The psychiatrist’s eyes widened. ‘A . . . Nazi?’
‘Yeah, an actual goddamn Nazi. You see? I can’t get away from this shit! I tried to, I just wanted to stay out of trouble and write my book, but it keeps finding me!’
‘Your book,’ said Elaine, relieved at a chance to change the subject. ‘How’s that going? You told me last time that you’d been having difficulty maintaining focus . . .’
Nina huffed sarcastically. ‘Oh, it’s going super fine, better than ever. No, I’m now almost completely blocked. My publishers are gonna be thrilled that they’ve paid over half a million dollars for three and a quarter chapters. Some people I know in Hollywood want to buy the screen rights.’ Macy’s boyfriend, the film star Grant Thorn, had unsurprisingly withdrawn from the idea after the young woman’s funeral, but his business partner had since made tentative enquiries about reopening negotiations. ‘Right now, though, it’d make a really short movie.’
‘Why are you blocked?’
‘Why? Because every time I start trying to write about what I’ve discovered, it makes me think of the people who died in the process. It’s . . .’ She sagged, feeling emotionally drained. ‘I can’t move forward.’
‘In what way?’
‘In every way. With my life. All I keep thinking about is whether it’s all been worth it, and I don’t know the answer, and . . . and I’m stuck. Going nowhere.’
‘But you are going somewhere,’ said Elaine. ‘You’ve made progress over just the last month – you realised you were in denial over Macy’s death, and the fact that you sought help from a therapist shows that you’re able to start moving on.’
‘I might be able to start, but that doesn’t mean I have started. On that, or anything else. The book’s stalled, I can’t even do something as simple as come up with baby names . . .’
‘Do you know the sex?’
‘Yeah. I had an ultrasound last week, and they could tell what it was. My husband, Eddie, told them not to say anything – he wants it to be a surprise – but I snuck back in and asked. It’s a—’