The Tomb of Hercules

by Andy McDermott

  “I have to say, it makes me think more of Dr. Frasier Crane than of you. Well, except for that.” She glanced disdainfully at the Castro cigar-box holder on the counter. “I remember that awful thing all too well.”

  “Well, interior decorating was never really my thing, was it? A settee and a decent TV was pretty much all I was bothered about.”

  “Yes, I know.” There was a hint of sharpness in her words. “I take it she was in a different kind of job before she took on her position at the IHA.”

  “I suppose,” Chase told her. “Same line of work, archaeology, but she was at a university rather than the U.N. Why?”

  She shrugged airily. “Oh, no reason.”

  “No—I know that voice, there is a reason. What?”

  Sophia looked mildly annoyed at being challenged. “Oh, all right. It’s just that this apartment, the decor, all the little accoutrements”—she waved at the rack of Henckel knives on the counter by Chase—“they just come over as being rather… nouveau, if you know what I mean.”

  “As in nouveau riche?” Chase’s frown deepened. “Well, I’m sorry our flat doesn’t live up to your standards, your ladyshipness.”

  She jumped to her feet. “Eddie, I didn’t mean it like—”

  “Forget it.” They regarded each other in silence for a moment. Then the kettle began to whistle. Chase took it off the stove.

  Sophia gave him a hesitant smile. “Americans. They have a labor-saving gadget for absolutely every trivial task, yet they’ve never seemed to grasp the concept of the electric kettle. Ridiculous lot.”

  Chase smiled back. “Yeah, I know. And you try getting hold of marmite over here! Nightmare!” They both laughed.

  “Eddie?”

  Chase looked across the room to see Nina standing in the bedroom doorway, wrapped in a dressing gown and looking bleary and bedraggled. He had no idea how long she’d been there. “Nina! I rang about five times. I thought you’d gone to work!” He hurried over to her.

  “I was asleep, I had kind of a stressful day yesterday.”

  “Yeah, Hector told me.” He hugged her, then sniffed her hair and jerked his head back sharply. “Ugh!”

  “Don’t,” she snapped, in the tone of a first and only warning. Chase got the message. “I’ve had three showers and I still can’t get rid of the smell.” She looked past him at Sophia and lowered her voice. “What’s she doing here?”

  Chase took a breath, bracing himself for trouble. “Okay. Nina, you remember Sophia Blackwood, right? Sophia, Nina Wilde?”

  “Hello again,” said Sophia politely.

  Nina nodded in disinterested acknowledgment before turning back to Chase. “What’s going on?”

  “Hector told you that I went to Shanghai to get some IHA files stolen from the rig that sank at Atlantis, right?”

  “Yes. He said you thought they were stolen by Richard Yuen.” Nina looked back at Sophia, somewhat accusingly.

  “That’s right. The thing is, Sophia’s the one who told me Yuen had the files in the first place. I went to China to get them—and also to rescue her.” “Rescue? From what?”

  “My husband’s a very dangerous man,” Sophia said, stepping closer. “I had no idea when I married him, of course, but since then I’ve learned some things about him that I wish I hadn’t.”

  “It’s a good job you did, though,” Chase told her. “Otherwise we’d never have found out that our rig was sunk deliberately. And whatever it is he’s up to, he’d have been able to carry on doing it without anyone knowing.”

  “So what is he doing?” asked Nina.

  Sophia shook her head. “I’m still not entirely sure. All I know is that he apparently had a lot of people killed to get hold of the IHA’s files on the Tomb of Hercules—and from the sound of it, tried to kill you as well.”

  “Think I’ll have to have words with him,” Chase rumbled, one fist clenching.

  Sophia put a hand on his arm. Nina blinked in surprise at the contact. “Eddie, please don’t rush into anything. You saw how much security my husband had in Shanghai, and now he’ll have even more.”

  Chase smiled mirthlessly. “Trust me, it won’t be enough. If I’d known what I know now when you gave me that note, I would have killed the bastard right there on the boat.”

  Nina tapped his other arm. “What note?”

  “When we were at the party the other night, Sophia stuck a note in my jacket.”

  “And why did she give the note to you in the first place?” Nina looked back and forth between Chase and Sophia. “Y’know, I got the impression that there was some hostility between you. Which seems to have completely disappeared now, by the way.” Sophia withdrew her hand.

  “Oh boy,” Chase said to himself, before facing Nina. “Okay. Nina. This is the thing. Sophia and I, we know each other because… we used to be married.”

  It took a couple of seconds before Nina managed a response. “What?”

  “I’ll go and make the tea while you discuss it,” Sophia said, quickly heading for the kettle.

  “She’s your ex-wife?” Nina flapped a disbelieving hand after her. “Lady Blackwood, I believe she was introduced as? You were married to—to—to royalty?”

  “She’s not royalty!” Chase corrected. “Her dad was a lord, and after he died … Look, I don’t know how it works. I never cared about that side of things!”

  “But you didn’t think it was worth mentioning? You know, maybe in passing?”

  “What difference does it make? It didn’t work out, we got divorced, I didn’t see her again until the other night. I mean, I don’t ask you about all your past boyfriends.”

  “Those were boyfriends, Eddie. Not husbands. There is a difference. Especially when your ex is a member of the English aristocracy!”

  “God!” Chase rubbed his forehead, exasperated. “Okay, you want to know one reason why I never talked about it? In case exactly this happened! You Yanks, you keep going on about how great it was that you kicked out the Brits and now everybody’s equal and all that, but one whiff of a title and you start cringing and fawning like you’re still part of the bloody colonies!”

  “We do not!” Nina protested.

  “But I bet you’re already comparing yourself to her, aren’t you? You’re thinking ‘She’s Lady Blackwood, not Ms. Blackwood or Dr. Blackwood,’ like that automatically means she’s better than you.”

  “She is standing right here,” said Sophia in a chilly tone as she poured the tea.

  Chase ignored her, looking deep into Nina’s eyes. “Tell me honestly that you haven’t been comparing yourself to her, and I’ll admit I was wrong not telling you about us.”

  Nina looked away first, drawing her robe more tightly around her. “I need to get dressed,” she said sullenly, retreating into the bedroom and closing the door.

  “Fuck,” Chase muttered under his breath.

  “I don’t mean to be rude, Eddie,” Sophia offered from across the room, “but you really haven’t gotten any better at defusing arguments since we were married.”

  “Shut up. Sorry,” he added after a moment. “Christ! Why the hell didn’t I tell her? She already knew I’d been married before, so why didn’t I just get the whole thing out into the open?” He slumped heavily onto the couch.

  Sophia came out from behind the counter, bearing two cups of tea. She placed one on the table in front of him. “Because you never expected it to become an issue. This whole thing is my fault. I’m sorry.”

  Chase gave her a look as she sat next to him. “Well, that’s something you’ve gotten better at since we were married. You, apologizing?”

  “A lot of things have changed since then,” she said, sounding sad. “Not all of them for the better.”

  They sat in silence for a few minutes, sipping tea. Then they looked up as Nina emerged from the bedroom. She was dressed in unassuming jeans and a T-shirt, red hair tied back in a ponytail.

  “Okay, Eddie,” she said with an all-business air, “we ca
n talk about this later, because right now we have more important things to worry about. Sophia, I apologize if I was rude to you just now.”

  “That’s all right,” said Sophia. “I can understand that it must have been something of a shock. I’m sorry.”

  “Thanks. So.” She sat in an armchair, facing them. “I guess now we need to figure out why your husband is so interested in the Tomb of Hercules.”

  The Atlantic at dawn was a beautiful shade of deep, almost iridescent blue far below the 747, but Nina was in no mood to appreciate the view from the porthole. Instead she flicked through the pages of Hermocrates—now sealed in plastic sheets clipped into a binder, a far cry from the solid and heavy Victorian album in which they had formerly been preserved—and checked her notes as she tried to ignore the conversation taking place on the opposite side of the first-class cabin.

  She, Chase and Sophia were the only passengers in the compartment; it seemed that the tourists making up most of the half-filled plane’s passengers were already spending so much on their African safari vacations that the thousands of extra dollars required to go first class were an extravagance too much. They were an extravagance too much for the IHA as well, which had originally only paid for economy tickets to Botswana. Sophia had arranged for the upgrade, one phone call from Nina’s apartment the previous day prompting a replacement black American Express card to arrive via motorcycle courier within hours. Apparently Yuen hadn’t thought to cancel his wife’s credit cards.

  Nina was grateful to her for that much at least, as the big reclining seat made working much easier than if she’d been jammed into economy … but she still resented Sophia’s presence. All the more so as she glanced surreptitiously across the cabin. Chase and Sophia were sitting together, talking quietly, easily. From the occasional snippets she could overhear, they were talking about their past.

  The past Chase had never bothered to tell her about. She clenched her jaw at the thought and turned away from them as far as she could without it looking obvious, then began another read-through of the ancient Greek text.

  Chase, sitting by the opposite window, looked past Sophia to see Nina turning her back on them in a huff. Great. He sat back and sighed.

  “Nina?” Sophia asked him.

  “Yeah. Oh, hellfire, this is a mess.”

  “It’s my fault. I’m sorry.”

  Chase exhaled slowly. “No, it’s not. We were having problems before you showed up.”

  “What kind of problems?”

  “Same kind we had,” he said.

  She looked puzzled. “What do you mean?”

  “Come on, she’s a Ph.D.—a scientist, an intellectual. She knows about art and literature and stuff; she can do the New York Times crossword in twenty minutes. I can barely manage the quick crossword in the Sun!”

  “Maybe you should switch to sudoku,” Sophia suggested teasingly.

  “You know what I mean. She’s different from me. A lot different. We’ve got different backgrounds, different lines of work, like different music and films and telly … we’re not even from the same country, for God’s sake!”

  “I suppose we at least had that much in common.”

  “Not a lot else, though.” Chase looked away, gazing at the ocean below. “But it’s the same thing all over again, isn’t it? I come in as the rescuer, the white knight who shoots the bad guys and saves the beautiful woman. Then when she gets to know me, the real me, she realizes that I’m not the white knight, I’m not a superhero. I’m just some bloke from Yorkshire who’s good with a gun and his fists … and not a lot else.”

  Sophia said nothing. After a moment, Chase faced her again. “Yeah,” he went on, “that’s what I thought. It just took you awhile to realize, didn’t it? Your dad knew it right from the start, though. He couldn’t stand me. He thought I was just some squaddie yob, his daughter’s bit of rough.”

  “That’s not fair,” said Sophia.

  “No? Then how come all the time we were married he hardly spoke to you? Especially about his business. I mean, Christ, you saw what was coming, but he wouldn’t listen to you even when he was ill because he was so pissed off about me!”

  “And by the time he did listen, it was too late,” Sophia said, almost to herself.

  “Too late for us by then as well, wasn’t it? And you didn’t waste any time moving on. There was that slimy ponce from the City, and—”

  She gripped his arm. “Eddie, please don’t. I know what I did. I was just… I was angry with you, and I was angry with myself, and my father… I was lashing out. I wanted to hurt somebody. And you were the easiest person to hurt. Which I deeply, deeply regret. I’m so sorry.”

  Chase remained still, not wanting to look at her. “Just tell me one thing. Why did you lie to me about having an affair with Jason Starkman?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I know that you two never did anything. He told me.”

  Sophia seemed surprised. “When?”

  “Doesn’t matter. He’s dead now. But he said nothing ever happened between the two of you, and I believed him.” He fixed her with his gaze. “Why’d you lie to me, Sophia? I mean, I already knew you’d had an affair. So why did you tell me you’d had one with Jason as well? One of my best friends?”

  She took her hands off his arm and rested them in her lap, looking down at them shamefaced. “As I said,” she began, voice barely above a whisper, “I wanted to hurt you. Jason had already left, gone rogue or whatever it was he did; he couldn’t contradict me. So… I lied. I wish I hadn’t, but I can’t change the past. I’m sorry, I really am.”

  Chase regarded her silently, his face expressionless except for a brief twinge of sadness around his eyes. Then he turned away, operating the controls to recline his seat. “You know, I’m knackered,” he said in a neutral voice. “Done a lot of flying in the past few days. I’m a bit jet-lagged. There’s still another four hours before we land, so I think I could use a nap.” He turned on his side, back to her, and lowered the blind over the porthole.

  “Okay,” Sophia said softly. “I’ll… I’ll let you sleep.” She stood and walked to the rear of the cabin.

  Across the aisle, Nina looked across at them, unsure what had happened—or how she felt about it.

  About ten minutes later Nina was surprised when Sophia returned, bearing two drinks, and sat down in the empty seat next to her.

  “It’s just tonic water,” Sophia explained, handing her one of the cups. “I thought alcohol might interfere with your work.”

  “Thank you,” Nina said automatically as she took it.

  Sophia nodded at the binder. “Have you managed to find out anything new?”

  “Not beyond the map, which isn’t much use until we have the other pages. There are still some phrases within the text that I’m convinced are clues of some kind, but so far I haven’t been able to work out what they mean.”

  “Perhaps I can help?”

  Nina regarded her dubiously. “Can you read ancient Greek?”

  “As I said at the party, it’s not my speciality,” she replied with a thin smile. “But ancient history is a hobby of mine. Blame Indiana Jones for that—I forced my father to pay for me to visit all kinds of ancient sites around the world looking for everything from the mines of Solomon to the Garden of Eden when I was younger!”

  “Well, it’s not a hobby to me,” Nina told her, trying not to sound too withering, “it’s my profession, just like it was for my parents. It’s what I do.”

  “I understand. But as I said, I’m not ignorant of the subject. And Plato’s dialogues were required reading during my studies at Cambridge, of course.”

  “Of course,” said Nina stiffly.

  “Actually having the chance to read a previously undiscovered one is rather exciting. So, what have you found?”

  Reluctantly, Nina turned to the appropriate page. “The phrase I think is most significant comes here, when Critias is talking to Hermocrates. There’s an earlier paragr
aph where Critias mentions the Tomb of Hercules, which is where the clue regarding the map was—he had a line about finding the path by turning an empty page to the heat of the sun. Then here, there’s another line—’By these words we relive the Trials of Heracles; yet just as the wondrous erubescent glass of Egypt shows the world in startling new form, so too may the words of our friend Hermocrates reveal still other words within, and in so doing safely show the way as if through the Underworld.’ Which on its own doesn’t stand out as anything unusual, but as a part of the rest of the paragraph doesn’t feel quite right. The fact that Plato has Critias specifically mention the Tomb again just beforehand makes me think it’s another clue.”

  “But to what? If the map’s already been found …”

  “I don’t know.” Nina leafed to the back of the binder and a glossy photo of the assembled map. She tapped on the symbol at the end of the path. “There’s definitely more to it, though. Maybe once you reach the Tomb, you still need to know how to open it, or something. I don’t know. Yet,” she added quickly. “I don’t know yet. But I’m sure I’ll figure it out. Then all we’ll need is the missing part of the map.” She closed the binder and faced Sophia. “Are you sure it’s your husband who has the other pages?”

  “I’m positive,” she replied. “The files I found, the ones Eddie brought to Admiral Amoros, they prove that my husband is somehow connected to the sinking of your rig, and that he was after information on the Tomb. The first time we met you, on the yacht, he even brought it up. He already knew that you were studying the text of Hermocrates to find it.”

  “Yeah, he must have,” Nina admitted, thinking back. “Still doesn’t explain how his men knew about the Brotherhood’s safe house, though.”

  “All sorts of ways. Your phones could have been bugged, your computer hacked; he could have had people following you, maybe even paid off someone within the IHA itself. Believe me,” Sophia sighed, “he’ll stop at nothing to gain the advantage in business. Or any part of his life. My husband always gets what he wants …and he wants the map to the Tomb of Hercules.”

  “Unless we get the rest of the map from him first. You think the guy who attacked me will have taken it to him in Botswana?”