The Tomb of Eternity (Joe Hawke Book 3)

by Rob Jones

  “Easy. First, you counted something on your fingers.”

  She looked confused. “Yes – I was telling him my room number, sixty-six.”

  “And you used your little finger for the six, instead of your thumb, which told me you were Russian.”

  She opened her mouth slightly in surprise. “I never even thought…”

  “Forget about it,” he continued. “If you’re going to worry about something giving you away then you should spend some more time on how you walk.”

  “On how I walk?”

  “I can tell from the way you walked over here you have a small firearm in your right-hand pocket – am I right?”

  “Well…” she looked a little embarrassed now. She nodded her head. “Yes, yes I do – but how did you know?”

  “Simple – your right stride is shorter than your left, and your right arm is swinging less than your left arm. Both of these things tell me you have a weapon in the right-hand pocket of your trousers.”

  She looked confused. “My what?’

  Hawke rolled his eyes. “Pants.”

  “Oh… then yes. If you mean pants then say pants.”

  “No, I meant trousers so I said trousers. Pants are what go under your trousers… Anyway, my guess is you’re carrying something super compact like a Beretta Pico or maybe a Sig P238.”

  She smiled and looked in his eyes. “Well there, Mr Hawke, you are wrong.” She flicked her eyes over the room to ensure they were alone and then pulled the weapon from her pocket for a second before sliding it back again.

  “Ah – of course – the Makarov. Should have known better – Russian.”

  “Reliable, accurate and lethal.”

  Hawke nodded. “It’s an excellent pistol, I agree.”

  Snowcat’s smiled faded. “I was talking about me, Englishman.”

  Hawke made no reply, but stayed alert as she rose from her seat and wandered closer to him. She sat beside him, so close he could smell her perfume – foreign, exotic.

  “Why did you ask me to meet you here in Cairo?” she asked.

  “Because I’m working here,” he said flatly.

  “You mean you’re tailing Maxim Vetrov, perhaps?” she said with a half smile.

  Hawke thought about lying, but saw no point. “Yes. You know him?”

  She nodded. “Of course. He is known to my government – he is a very powerful and dangerous man, and before you ask, yes I do know all about the Map of Immortality.”

  For a moment he was stunned and not sure how to respond. This woman had honey-trap written all over her in bright, flashing neon, and he knew he had to be careful about what he told her, on the other hand, no one was supposed to know about a map which had remained buried in a lost tomb in Greece for the last few thousand years.

  Now he was confronted with a choice – be straight with her or be guarded. If she knew anything about his wife’s murder he couldn’t risk her walking, so he went with being straight.

  “You know about the map?”

  “Of course. We have Maxim Vetrov under more surveillance than an airport and we’ve known about his search for the map for a long time. We’ve also been watching you since you decided to turn Geneva into a rally track.”

  Hawke cracked a smile and nodded in admiration. “I should have known.”

  “Don’t be too hard on yourself – you are a soldier, not a spy.”

  “Where is Vetrov now – do you know?”

  She shook her head. “We don’t know. He took off from Venice some time ago and is flying south, we think. We presume he is heading to Egypt.”

  “Have you heard of Dario Mazzarro?” Hawke asked her.

  She shook her head, and Hawke smiled. For once he had more information.

  “He’s the only man in the world who can translate the map properly, and Vetrov snatched him from Venice before taking off. If that weren’t bad enough, he took two of my people hostage, an American CIA man named Karlsson and a woman named Lea Donovan who means a great deal to me.”

  “I see... I will need to report this to my superiors and...”

  Without any warning, half a dozen men burst through the revolving doors of the hotel lobby and opened fire with submachine guns. The bullets smashed into marble, wood and glass, and in seconds had turned a peaceful, relaxed place into a horrifying scene of bloody carnage where people screamed and ran through the dust and chaos for their lives.

  Hawke and Snowcat immediately thought the same thing – a terrorist attack – but this changed when the men made an obvious move toward their table and fired on them personally.

  They dived for cover behind the leather couch they’d been sitting on and Snowcat extracted the Makarov and took aim over the top of the cushions using a rubber plant for cover. She took out two of the men in a second, causing Hawke to raise an eyebrow of appreciation.

  They turned to each other and at the same time said: “They must have followed you!”

  “Hey, they never followed me!” Snowcat said. “This is an outrageous slur on a Russian agent…”

  “Well don’t look at me!” Hawke said in reply. “I didn’t let anyone follow me here, either!”

  “Oh, fine,” Snowcat said. “Then we agree that the fairies brought them here, no?”

  Hawke rolled his eyes.

  “However they got here,” he said firmly, “it’s time we got out of here, agreed?”

  Snowcat nodded and after firing a few more warning shots in the direction of the armed men, they slipped out through the door at the rear of the lobby. They searched for a way out, and after running along a utility corridor lined with elevator shafts they burst through a fire escape and emerged into a bright Cairo day.

  “Which way now?” Hawke asked.

  “Follow me,” Snowcat said, pocketing the Makarov.

  Behind them, the sound of enemy gunfire drew closer.

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  Kosma Zhuravlev seemed to be enjoying his work as he dragged Dr Dario Mazzarro through the plush carpet of Vetrov’s airborne office and dumped him like a sack of potatoes at the Russian billionaire’s desk.

  Vetrov stared at the Italian academic for a few moments with a look of cold contempt in his eyes before speaking.

  “Welcome to my airplane, Dr Mazzarro. I apologize that we have not been properly introduced yet, but my man here was under strict orders to keep you safe from any interference that might be offered at the hands of these people here, or their friends.” As he spoke, he pointed disrespectfully with his chin at Lea Donovan and Bradley Karlsson, both now gagged and bound on Vetrov’s white leather couch.

  Mazzarro struggled to his feet and stared at the horribly scarred face of the man behind the desk.

  “Where are my manners…” Vetrov said, almost to himself. “Kosma, get our guest a seat, and a some refreshments… Dr Mazzarro, what would you like – whisky, perhaps, or wine – some water?”

  “I…I – who are you?”

  “Forgive me. My name is Maxim Vetrov, and we have more in common than you might think.”

  Kosma put a chair down opposite the desk as Vetrov swivelled in his seat and poured two big glasses of Scottish single malt whisky. He handed one to Mazzarro and took a large sip of his own.

  “I don’t understand what you want with me, Mr Vetrov,” Mazzarro said, flicking his head nervously at Lea and Karlsson for a moment. Lea wanted to urge him not to help Vetrov but she was helpless to do anything.

  Vetrov smiled at him. “Of course you do, Dario. As I say, you and I share a great deal in common. My father, like your father, spent his life in the search for the greatest secret our planet holds – a secret the planet has been keeping from us from the very beginning… a secret kept from us by not just Mother Nature – am I right?”

  Lea saw the indecision on Mazzarro’s face as he wrestled with what he should tell this man – the man who had kidnapped him by force, blasted the Doge’s Palace and now had three innocent people held against their will on his private j
et.

  “I don’t know what you mean,” he said at last, immediately dropping his eyes into his whisky glass.

  Vetrov nodded and smiled again, but colder this time. “I expected a little resistance, Dario. You are your father’s son after all. Not that I would know, of course – I never knew your father.” He sipped his whisky. “But my father knew him.”

  Mazzarro’s eyes widened and he looked up from the Scotch. Kosma took a step forward and stood immediately behind the Italian.

  Vetrov continued. “My father spent a great deal of time researching the elixir – like so many others, including Otto Zaugg, his great rival so many years ago. But Zaugg wasn’t up to the fight. Zaugg never knew about the work your father did on the Phaistos Disc – but my father did. My father knew all about it, and worked with your father for many months in his pursuit of the elixir.”

  “You are a liar! My father never worked with any Russian named Vetrov in all his life.”

  Vetrov laughed. “No, no he did not. But if I say the name Wojciech Kowalski to you, then…”

  Mazzarro’s eyes grew yet wider as the name hung in the air between them.

  “I can tell from your stunned silence that you recognize the name as the young Polish assistant who worked on your father’s Egyptian expeditions for many months – a long time ago now, of course. This was my father.”

  “But Kowalski was a verified academic – a real person.”

  “Yes, he was a real person, right up to the moment my father killed him and assumed his identity.”

  “This cannot be true…”

  “Why? Must the truth always be good?”

  “My father would never have worked with him if he’d known the truth!”

  “Your father was a fool who would not cooperate, which is why my father killed him too.”

  Mazzarro’s mouth opened when he heard the words, almost hissed from Vetrov’s mouth. He dropped the whisky tumbler to the ground and began sobbing. “No…no… my father disappeared on an expedition of the Upper Nile. His body was never found.”

  “I should think not. My father gave it to the crocodiles of the Upper Nile…”

  “No… no! Brutto figlio di puttana bastardo!” Mazzarro leaped from his chair to attack Vetrov but Kosma gripped his shoulders and forced him back into it, where he collapsed, sobbing once again.

  “Please, remain calm, Dr Mazzarro, or my man here will be forced to restrain you much more robustly next time.”

  Lea watched Mazzarro break down and cover his face with his hands. There was in his mannerisms something that reminded her of her father – something about the shape of his shoulders and the way he moved. Her father’s death was a catastrophe to her, happening when she was still a young teenager. For a long time she was sure Dr Henry Donovan was murdered, but her theories were dismissed as the ramblings of a teenager scarred by the premature and tragic death of her beloved dad.

  But it took a long time for her to see it that way, because she was there the day it happened. She was walking with him on the Cliffs of Moher in County Clare. It was a cool, fresh day, with no wind to speak of, and a bright sun in the sky. The two of them were walking along the path – Dr Donovan was hoping to take some pictures of the sea.

  Then he realized he’d left one of his lenses in the car, and Lea ran back to fetch it for him. She had told him that when she grew up she didn’t want to be a doctor like he was – she didn’t like blood and guts, as she put it – but a photographer. She got the lens from the back seat and ran back to give it to him, but he was gone. They found his body an hour later on the rocks. A terrible accident, they told her. But she remembered the man in black running along the coast path afterwards, the man everyone told her she’d imagined.

  Lea was shocked back to reality by the sound of Vetrov slamming his glass down on the desk. “It was a mistake, killing your father, of course,” he continued. “My father believed he’d already ascertained the location of the elixir and all that remained was to eliminate any competition or other annoyances, such as your father’s insistence on giving the United Nations the location so it could be protected for all mankind. Sadly, he had underestimated your father and was fooled. He died a broken man and I vowed to continue his struggle. I did much better, no?”

  “You are a psychotic!” Mazzarro finally managed, his voice breaking from the horror of his father’s unimaginably terrible death.

  “Wrong, I am a genius, and now you will translate this map with the knowledge your father and you accumulated from your research into the Phaistos Disc, or I will kill you.”

  Lea listened carefully – that was the second reference to this mysterious Phaistos Disc. She had never heard of it before but it could come in useful if she ever got out of here and back to Hawke and the others.

  As Vetrov spoke, he opened a drawer in the desk and extracted a neatly rolled parchment. He stared at it lovingly for a few moments and then carefully rolled it out on his desk.

  Mazzarro’s sobs receded as he beheld the Map of Immortality for the first time.

  “This… this is amazing!” he said, reaching out with trembling fingers to touch it like a drowning man reaching for a rope. “This cannot be real… the myths were real – the disc was real! The map exists…”

  Lea saw the amateur Egyptologist was immediately intoxicated by the strange papyrus before him, but then he sank back into his chair and began to shake his head, torn apart by cognitive dissonance – he could finally translate the map he had spent his life searching for, but it meant helping the man whose father killed his own beloved babbo. “No… non voglio aiutare. I will not help. Your father murdered my father. You will kill me as well – I know it. If I help you, you will kill me, if I don’t help you, you will kill me. Either way I die.”

  “Your logic is sound, Dr Mazzarro, but perhaps you will be more helpful if it is not your life depending on the translation?”

  Mazzarro turned his sweating face up to Vetrov. “I don’t understand.”

  Vetrov clicked his fingers and Kosma padded over to the couch.

  “Come now, Dario. There has been enough killing and my plane cannot stay up here forever. Tell me where we need to go and we will fly there – you can help me discover the elixir.”

  “Never!”

  “In that case, I will kill Miss Donovan. If you still do not tell me, I will kill the American, and then I will have my people in Italy track down your family. Believe me when I tell you – you will translate this map.”

  Kosma heaved Lea up out of the couch and slung her over his shoulder.

  “Tell the pilot to descend below pressurization altitude.” Vetrov glanced out of his window. “The Adriatic Sea is beautiful today, Miss Donovan, and you will soon be flying toward it at terminal velocity.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  Ryan increased the air-conditioning in the Cairo hotel room and moaned all the way back to his desk. They’d been working on the translation since first getting their hands on the notebooks back in Venice but were still getting nowhere fast.

  From looking at the complex notes, Alex was beginning to realize just how little information Mazzarro had given her when they had worked together over the past few weeks. Now she was able to see the full extent of his and his father’s research, she could see that the Italian had remained guarded and suspicious of her, and the information he had given her was very limited in its nature. Now, she and Ryan were side by side with their laptop screens flickering as they desperately sought anything that might point them in the right direction.

  Across the room, Sir Richard Eden was calm and in control, reassured by his visit to the British Ambassador. He’d known Peter Henderson since their days in the Paras together and trusted him to deliver the news of their progress, or lack of it, to the relevant authorities in the British Government. Henderson had been the Ambassador in Egypt for over ten years now and knew the place like the back of his hand. If Vetrov touched down anywhere in the country, he would know about it in shor
t order and tell Eden at once.

  Scarlet and Lexi, meanwhile, were arguing about whether or not they should have gone with Hawke as back-up when he went to meet the Russian Agent Snowcat. Lexi thought yes, that he would need the help, Scarlet said no, that Joe wasn’t a big girl’s blouse and could handle it himself. She had won the argument, but it was a Pyrrhic victory because Lexi had now made her start to worry about her old SBS friend.

  She knew that despite his denials, Hawke had never really got over the murder of his wife and the deaths of Sophie and Olivia in the Far East would be taking their toll on him, however much he tried to fight through it. Now his mind was divided at a dangerous time, with part of him desperately trying to rescue Lea while another part of him was trying to lay the ghost of Liz to rest. She just hoped he could keep it together at such a critical time for the mission.

  Ryan was still unhappy that he couldn’t be more specific than Egypt, but it was the best he could do in such a short time. He thought about the broken fragments which helped him lead the others to the vault of Poseidon, and the stolen portrait in Hong Kong which had given him the clues to help the team find the map itself in the tomb of Emperor Qin in Xian. They were both child’s play compared with this nightmare, and he knew he had the time it took Hawke to track down this Snowcat woman to come up with something better.

  “How you going?” Lexi asked at last, brushing past Sir Richard as she walked over to the desk. She sat up on the desk and tied her hair back.

  Ryan sighed and ran his hand through his hair. “Hard to say. Mazzarro’s notes are all over the place and almost illegible in some places – and yet… some of the drawings he’s done in here remind me of something, but I just can’t work out what it is....”

  Alex leaned forward and handed him some more notes. “Show them this stuff, Ryan.”

  “Oh yeah… shit. Forgot about this.”

  “What is it?”

  “Seems like this Mazzarro was a big fan of Jean-François Champollion.”