The Spear of Atlantis (Wilde/Chase 14)

by Andy McDermott

  The boat hit the remaining plank, nearly flipping over before slamming side-on into the wall. The driver was hurled against the gunwales, his companion flying out to hit the stonework with a heavy thud before sliding almost cartoonishly back into the hull.

  Jared hurried to Eddie’s beached boat. ‘You okay?’ he gasped, breathless from his mad dash.

  Eddie clambered out. ‘You cut it a bit bloody close!’

  The younger man managed a grin. ‘You’re okay.’

  ‘What about them?’

  ‘Still alive, if that’s what you mean. Come on.’

  Phones had turned towards them. Jared raised a hand to block his features from the startled tourists’ lenses and started northwards at a run. Eddie gave the canvas sack a brief look, then followed.

  One of the bodyguards climbed up a ladder to the piazza. But there were too many civilians between him and his fleeing targets to risk a shot. Instead, he limped to the abandoned boat. The sack was still inside, its contents unmoving. ‘Mr Lobato!’ the man shouted fearfully. ‘Mr Lobato, are you okay?’

  He grabbed the cord holding the bag closed and tugged it open—

  The second bodyguard staggered to his shocked comrade. ‘What’s wrong?’ he said. ‘Is he . . . is he dead?’

  ‘No . . . I mean, I don’t think so,’ said the first. ‘I don’t know. I don’t know!’

  He pulled the sack from the boat. Its contents clattered on to the pavement.

  Pieces of a mannequin. Its blank head bore a child’s crude crayon drawing of a face. An adult had added a speech balloon: Suckers!

  Both men gawped at it. ‘Wait,’ said the second. ‘So if we were chasing this . . . where’s Mr Lobato?’

  26

  Eddie and Jared returned to the apartment. ‘Daddy!’ Macy cried as they entered. ‘Are you all right?’

  Her father embraced her. ‘I’m fine, love,’ he said, giving her a kiss. ‘Did you get out of the museum without any trouble?’

  ‘After Gideon went with Jared, we made our excuses and left,’ Olivia told him. ‘I assumed from the chaos a few minutes later that you’d managed to get out of there as well.’

  ‘Yeah, the quick way down. What about Lobato? Is Oleg back yet?’

  Ana gestured towards another room. ‘In there.’

  Eddie and Jared entered to find Maximov and Matt standing watch over the unconscious billionaire, who had been laid out on a bed. ‘Ah, Chase!’ said the scar-faced Russian, greeting him with an overpowering bear hug. ‘You are okay!’

  ‘Yeah,’ Eddie replied. ‘You have any trouble getting him here?’

  Maximov shook his head. ‘After I pull him up from boat, I just put sack over my shoulder and walk.’ Eddie’s stop beneath the first bridge had been just long enough for the huge former Spetznaz soldier to lower a rope, the Englishman to hook it to the sack, and the bag to be hauled up as if it contained nothing heavier than pillows. ‘No one even look at me.’

  ‘More likely they were too scared to look,’ said Matt, smiling. ‘I mean, an ugly two-metre-tall guy built like a brick shithouse? He could’ve been carrying the crown jewels and people would’ve still looked the other way.’

  Maximov glared at him. ‘Who is ugly?’

  ‘Ah – not you, mate!’ the Australian hurriedly backtracked.

  Eddie laughed. ‘We got him, that’s the main thing. Nice work with the flash-bang, by the way.’

  ‘Nobody got hurt, did they?’ Matt asked.

  ‘Nothing fatal,’ Eddie assured him, before turning his attention to the man on the bed. ‘Can’t promise the same for this twat, though.’

  He looked at his watch. Almost thirty minutes had passed since his escape from the Scuola Grande. If Alderley was correct, Lobato would soon regain consciousness. ‘All right,’ he said, returning to the main room, ‘everyone except Ana, it’s time to go. I don’t want Lobato seeing you.’

  ‘Are you sure?’ asked Jared. ‘I can help you interrogate him.’

  ‘Thanks, but I can manage. Macy, go back to the hotel with Olivia and wait for me, okay?’

  Macy shook her head. ‘I want to stay with you, Daddy.’

  Olivia gently took her hand. ‘No, no. Your father needs to . . . talk to Mr Lobato.’

  The little girl looked Eddie directly in the eyes. ‘Are you going to kill him, Daddy?’

  He didn’t break her gaze. ‘No.’

  ‘But he’s a bad man, and he tried to hurt you and Mommy.’

  ‘Just because someone’s bad doesn’t mean you have to kill ’em.’ That brought an assortment of disbelieving looks and mocking coughs from his friends. Eddie glowered at them. ‘Trying to set a good example for my daughter, thank you very much! But no,’ he went on to Macy, ‘me and Ana need to talk to him on our own. Nobody else needs to get involved.’

  ‘Bit late for that,’ Matt noted sardonically.

  ‘I’ll let you all know what’s happened once we’re done,’ the Yorkshireman assured the others. ‘But right now, you need to go – he’ll wake up any minute.’

  Reluctantly they started to leave. Jared paused at the door. ‘If you have any trouble with him . . .’

  ‘We won’t. Trust me. All right, come on, shift!’

  Everyone except Ana left the apartment, Eddie giving Macy a loving farewell before returning to Lobato’s room. The skinny man was beginning to stir. ‘Looks like Alderley was bang on with his timing.’

  ‘So what do we do?’ Ana asked.

  ‘Wake him up.’ Eddie hauled Lobato up by his collar – then slapped him hard across both cheeks. ‘Oi! Dickhead! Nap time’s over.’

  Lobato gasped in pained surprise. He looked blearily around as the room came into focus, only to freeze in terror, suddenly fully awake, as he recognised the man looming over him. ‘No! Don’t— Where am I? How did you get me away from my bodyguards?’

  ‘Knowledge and preparation are the key to success, some idiot once told me.’

  Lobato tried to adopt a defiant air, but his fear was impossible to mask. ‘You’ve kidnapped me! You’ll spend the rest of your life in prison for—’

  Eddie slapped him again, harder. ‘Talk without me telling you to, and you’ll start losing teeth. Now, Ana said she’d read my file, and I assume you did too. So you know what I’ve done to people who’ve tried to hurt my family. Yeah?’

  The billionaire’s eyes flicked towards Eddie’s clenched fist. ‘Y-yes,’ he whispered.

  ‘Good. So you give me answers, and maybe, just maybe, you’ll get out of this room without me breaking every bone in your body.’

  ‘Th-there are two hundred and six bones in the human body,’ Lobato stammered. ‘I doubt you could—’

  Eddie punched him in the mouth. ‘Did I ask for a fucking anatomy lesson?’

  ‘I’m sorry!’ Lobato feebly spat blood down his chin. ‘But the likelihood of your breaking every single bone is so small, I had to point it out! I couldn’t help it, it . . . it’s a compulsion.’

  His captors exchanged looks. ‘Great, he’s not just a sperg, he’s a pedantic one,’ the Yorkshireman rumbled. ‘All right, Mr Logic, let me make this clear.’ He leaned closer. ‘I. Can. Kill. You.’ As Lobato quailed, he went on: ‘Nobody knows you’re here, and nobody’ll be able to find you before I’m done. So just answer the questions without quoting Wikipedia, and you might stay alive for longer than the next five minutes. First one’s easy. Where’s Nina?’

  The wide-eyed Lobato licked his bloodied lips. ‘She . . . she is in Granada, in Spain.’

  Eddie frowned. ‘Granada? What’s she doing there? She was in Seville.’

  ‘The artefact she stole from the museum in Seville must have led her there. Agreste is following her.’

  ‘Why did you frame her?’

  The billionaire hesitated, before the Yorkshireman’s rapidly darkening expression convinced him to reveal the closely held secret. ‘So she would find the Atlantean spearheads, of course.’

  ‘Of course,’ came the sarcastic ec
ho. ‘Still waiting for the why part, though.’

  Lobato’s fear was not enough to fully hide his condescension. ‘If they still exist, and Dr Wilde’s theory about their nature – that they are some kind of trap and containment for particles of antimatter – is correct, they represent a source of potentially limitless power. My intention is to find and secure them.’

  ‘If they still exist,’ Eddie said pointedly. ‘Which they might not after over eleven thousand years.’

  ‘Dr Wilde found Atlantis after the same amount of time.’

  He gave the white-clad man a humourless smile. ‘Yeah, I do remember.’

  ‘Why did you need Nina to find these things?’ Ana asked. ‘You are rich. You could have paid anyone to find them for you.’

  Lobato shook his head. ‘Dr Wilde is the world’s foremost expert on Atlantis. She is therefore the person with the greatest chance of decoding the markers. But she had made enough of her theory public for others to follow through on her research, given time. So when she rejected my attempt to convince her to work with me willingly, I was left with no choice but to implement my plan.’

  ‘And set her up,’ Eddie growled. ‘You made it look like she’d helped steal the marker, got Ana to break her out of jail – and then she and Agreste faked a shootout to scare her into going on the run!’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ Ana said quietly.

  Lobato, on the other hand, offered no apologies. ‘It had to be done. Fear is a great motivator – as is,’ he went on, ‘the desire to prove oneself intellectually superior.’

  ‘I’m sure you’d know all about that,’ Eddie said sarcastically.

  ‘Yes.’ The response was matter-of-fact. ‘I created a scenario giving Dr Wilde no choice but to find the spearheads, both to prove her innocence and to prevent the “bad guys” – who were of course following my instructions – from obtaining them by locating them first, all while making her believe the actions she took were of her own volition. In reality, she was being directed at every turn.’

  ‘Bollocks,’ said the Yorkshireman. ‘You can’t have planned for everything she might have done.’

  Lobato became almost smug. ‘But I did. I used to design games, and the art of successful game design is forcing the player to follow the paths you have prepared, while making them believe they have total freedom of action.’

  Eddie shook his head. ‘Life isn’t a game.’

  ‘The basis of all human civilisation is the creation of systems,’ Lobato countered. ‘Systems of government, of economics, of morality. And all systems can be controlled and manipulated if you are aware of their mechanics. A game is merely an abstraction of reality – or conversely, reality is a more complex iteration of a game. The same logic can be applied to both, if you have sufficient intellectual prowess.’

  ‘Which you do, right?’

  ‘Yes.’ Again, there was no immodesty in the billionaire’s reply; he was simply stating what he considered an inarguable fact. ‘Aboard the Atlantia, I offered Dr Wilde multiple choices of action, and prepared responses for each. For example, when the raiders left the ship with the marker, a second boat was waiting which she could have used to pursue them. They would have led her to Spain, and from there to Seville and the second marker. She instead opted to stay aboard – so the scenario then became about framing her, giving her motivation to clear her name. When Ana freed her, Agreste then took on the role of a dangerous pursuer, to force her onwards – again, to Seville. There were many other potential branches, but every possibility had been planned for.’

  Eddie stared at him . . . then without warning punched him again. ‘Didn’t plan for that, did you, Nostradamus?’ he growled as Ana flinched and Lobato squealed in pain. ‘So you know exactly where Nina is right now? Then you’re going to call Agreste and get him to tell her she’s been set up. You’re also going to tell the Emir to call off Interpol and straighten things out with the Spanish cops.’

  ‘Interpol never were involved,’ Lobato whined. ‘That was a fiction, to increase the fear effect and add motivation.’

  Eddie was sorely tempted to increase Lobato’s own fear effect, but realised the revelation’s implication. ‘The Dhajanis lied to us? So they’re involved too?’

  The skinny man nodded. ‘I was already in partnership with the Emir on the solar energy plant and other projects. Once Dr Wilde made her theory public, we realised that if the spearheads were what she believed, they represented a source of antimatter in almost infinitely greater quantities than could ever be produced in a particle collider. That would provide a new source of energy for the world – and it would be one we controlled. We could ensure it would be used for the good of humanity, not as a weapon. That was why I could not allow Dr Wilde to work with the IHA,’ he added. ‘They cannot be trusted to keep the spearheads from those who would use them for the same purposes as the Atlanteans – destruction.’

  ‘I’d trust the IHA to look after ’em more than you,’ said Eddie. ‘Especially as you tried to have me and Ana killed in Morocco.’

  ‘I did not,’ Lobato objected.

  ‘Thirty-odd guys in hospital say otherwise.’

  ‘I did my job exactly as you asked,’ Ana told Lobato angrily. ‘But you betrayed me!’

  ‘I did not!’ the billionaire repeated, more agitated. ‘Why would I? You completed the task I asked of you exactly as required. ’

  ‘So if you didn’t want us dead, who did?’ Eddie demanded – but even as he spoke, he realised Lobato had already given him the answer. ‘Who else apart from you knew about the plan? Knew everything about it?’ He was not so much asking the other man as telling him.

  Understanding dawned on Lobato’s face. ‘Sheikh Fadil,’ he said. ‘The only other person who knows everything is the Emir!’

  27

  Granada

  The sun had fallen behind the mountains, the sky turning a lurid red. But Nina only belatedly registered the night’s arrival, so engrossed in her work that it wasn’t until she had trouble reading her notes that she registered her little room was in darkness.

  She switched on a bedside lamp. The marker’s two halves sat by her feet, her book and the atlas open before her and pages of her hastily scribbled deductions spread out around them. She had been busy for several hours, barely noticing the passage of time.

  But her hard work had paid off – almost.

  Comparing the stars highlighted on the Alhambra’s ceiling to those on the map in the Temple of Poseidon had given her the approximate locations of the vaults containing the spearheads. The Atlantean text on the marker had, once translated as best she could, let her narrow down their positions. There was nothing so clear as a place name, though; being an archaeologist sometimes required the talents of a detective, and this was one of those times.

  ‘The place where to our enemy we are unseen, yet we observe their every act, their city laid out before us’ had been the first riddle she solved. A veiled reference to hilltops, she deduced, suggesting the Damoclean weapons had been hidden higher than their targets, to prevent the blast from being blocked by terrain. The vaults were within line of sight of their targets, but not so close that the Atlanteans would be caught while planting the spearheads.

  The line ‘as many stadia distant as the Gardens of Pelnius and the Temple of Cleito’ seemed to confirm that. She knew from the underwater excavations in Atlantis that the Gardens of Pelnius, an Atlantean king, were roughly six miles from the Temple of Cleito, Poseidon’s wife, which in Atlantean terms was seventy-nine stadia, the ancient civilisation’s unit of distance. So the vaults were that far from the cities they threatened, near or at the highest point. But in which direction?

  The answer seemed to come from another inscription: one translating as ‘from the domain of Boreal’. Boreal was a god shared by the Atlantean and ancient Greek pantheons, the personification of winter and the north wind. His domain was, naturally, to the north. The Atlanteans had cloaked the vaults’ locations beneath riddles that would be
obvious to them but obscure to anyone else . . . except for obsessive archaeologists millennia later.

  So now she knew not only the regions where the vaults had been hidden, but how to pinpoint their exact positions. She made some final notes, then picked up the atlas to regard the spots she had marked on a map of the world.

  There were three, corresponding to the highlighted stars in the Hall of the Ambassadors that did not appear on the map from the Temple of Poseidon. And at two of them, she already knew, there would be nothing to find.

  The first was in the southern Aegean Sea, at the Mediterranean’s eastern end. She did not need precise coordinates to figure out exactly where. Its position, north of Crete and roughly equidistant between Greece and Turkey, meant it could only be one place: the island of Thera, now Santorini. An important hub of the seagoing Minoan empire, and with sketchy archaeological evidence suggesting it was home to another civilisation long before that, it had been obliterated by a massive volcanic eruption three and a half thousand years ago.

  Had the spearhead itself been responsible? It was possible. Nobody in the present day had been insane enough to use a nuclear bomb to set off a volcano, but she knew from a previous adventure just how large a hole a powerful nuke could rip into the earth. The biggest bomb of all time, the Soviet ‘Tsar Bomba’, had been fifty megatons of fusion fury unleashed, and despite detonating more than two miles above the ground it had still blasted a crater almost half a mile wide. The explosion of just three pounds of antimatter would be even more destructive.

  And the Atlanteans had used it as the ultimate leverage against their rivals. Obey, submit, surrender – or be utterly annihilated.

  It seemed unlikely they had actually carried out such a threat; Atlantis had sunk over seven thousand years before Thera’s eruption. But perhaps their doomsday weapon had remained in situ, forgotten . . . until something set it off. And the result had been one of the largest volcanic eruptions in human history.

  She looked across the map to the second cross at the site of another of the largest eruptions ever recorded.