The Tomb of Eternity (Joe Hawke Book 3)

by Rob Jones

  Hawke clenched his jaw as he shook his head in reluctant confirmation of her question. “No, she never told me. In fact, I find it hard to believe. You could be spinning me a web of lies for any number of reasons.”

  “I’m not. Please look at this.”

  Maria handed Hawke a Russian identity card and passport from inside her suit jacket. The passport was an old one, now many years out of date, but like the card, it contained a picture of a woman who was very clearly his wife.

  Subconsciously he shook his head as he stared at the documents. A shaft of sunlight shone through the window and illuminated the tiny images of his wife’s face as if to highlight the terrible deceit that was unfolding before him. “I just can’t accept this.”

  Maria pointed at the Cyrillic letters: Eлизaвeтa Комптон. “This is her name – Elizaveta Compton.”

  “Elizaveta?” Hawke asked. “Her name was Elizabeth… and for just one day it was Elizabeth Hawke.”

  “Her English name was Elizabeth, but her Russian name was Elizaveta. Your wife’s mother was Russian, Joe. She was an architect from Kaluga.”

  “That’s not right… Liz told me that before her mother died she’d spent her life in the south of England.”

  “No. Her mother was part of a Soviet trade delegation that travelled to the West during the détente period. She spent many weeks in England, and that is when she met William Compton. She defected out of love for her boyfriend, later her husband, but her heart was always with the Soviet Union.”

  Hawke looked into the Russian’s eyes but didn’t know what to say. He wanted her to say that all of this was an elaborate lie, some kind of terrible deceit designed to manipulate him and slow down the hunt for the map. He knew in his heart it wasn’t so.

  “Elizaveta grew up and joined MI6, Joe, long after the Soviet Union had collapsed. They thought her background was ideal, but with the influence of her mother she was easily turned by FSB agents and she became a double-agent, working for both sides. All of this was long before she met you.”

  Hawke’s heart began to pound in his chest. He’d tried to keep a lid on things while Maria was speaking, but now it was all getting too much. Here was a woman he had known for less than a few hours telling him more about his wife’s true life story than she herself had in all the years he’d known her.

  He got out of the seat and walked to the drinks cabinet at the end of the plane. After a few seconds opening doors and drawers he located a bottle of vodka and some ice and made a pretty unhealthy drink. He knocked it back and felt it burn its way south. He didn’t flinch. What, after all, was pain like this compared with what he was going through in his mind?

  He looked back up the slim jet and watched the Russian for a moment. She was sitting in her seat and staring forward, motionless. Perhaps her eyes were closed. Perhaps she was a liar. Sunlight poured through the tiny porthole and shone on her blonde hair.

  He poured two more vodkas and shut his eyes tight. He didn’t like to close his eyes anymore. That world was where Liz lived, and now he realized he had never known her it tore him up to see her face in his mind’s eye. Right now she was laughing at a joke he had just made while they were rowing on the Serpentine… Now she was standing beside him on a balcony in Madrid as they clinked glasses to toast their decision to move in together.

  Was it really all nothing but lies?

  He walked the vodkas up the plane and handed Maria one of them. “Some people drink to remember, others drink to forget. What kind are you?”

  She smiled and took the drink, but said nothing. Like other Russians and Poles he had known, she made short work of the vodka and set the glass down on the seat beside her. The smell of the spirit mingled with the scent of her perfume, and with the rush of the previous shot coursing through his veins and the shock of everything he suddenly saw her in another way – she was incredibly beautiful, for one thing, but she was smart, together, confident. A lot like Lea, except without the humor, maybe…

  “What?” she said, half a smile crossing her red lips.

  “Nothing. You just remind me of someone, that’s all. Listen, Maria. You told me that you knew about my wife’s murder, but all you’ve told me about is her background – that she was half-Russian, and her codename was Swallowtail.”

  Another sympathetic nod, another bewitching smile. “I know.”

  “Now I need you to tell me the rest.” He downed the vodka and swallowed hard. “I need to know about Operation Swallowtail.”

  She looked at him for a long time before replying. He saw sadness in her eyes, and braced himself for what was coming.

  “Joe, Operation Swallowtail was a highly covert mission to kill your wife, and I think you’ve already figured this much out.”

  He nodded grimly. “Yes. A good friend of mine with senior contacts in the British military told me the kill order came from within the UK. Is this true?”

  “Yes. The kill order was given by James Matheson.”

  The words hit Hawke like a jackhammer and a stunned silence filled the cabin. His mind spun into dizzy chaos in his attempt to process the information he had just been given.

  “James Matheson? Do you know what you’re saying, Maria?”

  She nodded. “Of course.”

  “James Matheson is the British Foreign Secretary.”

  “I know this.”

  A raw, burning rage rose inside him like acid. He had personally met Matheson in a hotel room in Switzerland. He had shaken that son of a bitch’s hand and taken orders from him, and the whole time he had been the man who had ordered his wife’s execution. Now, thinking back to that day in Geneva, he recalled how Matheson had seemed anxious and on edge during their meeting, particularly when speaking with him personally.

  He leaned closer to Maria. “Are you absolutely sure about this?”

  “Yes, of course, I have evidence if you need it. Remember, she was a respected and valuable FSB asset. When the British killed her it upset many people in Russia with great influence. Her killers were identified within days.”

  “Why did they kill her, Maria? And I want the truth.”

  “Because she was getting too close to the truth, Joe.”

  “The truth about what?”

  “About Matheson and the Athanatoi.”

  Hawke’s head began to spin. He felt almost drunk with confusion, dazed by the sheer amount of information he was supposed to digest and process and react to.

  “Matheson knows about all this?”

  She nodded. “We think so, yes. In fact…”

  “What?”

  “We think he might be a part of the Athanatoi.”

  “This is… insanity.”

  She moved closer to him and placed a hand gently on his arm. “Are you sure you’re okay?”

  He pulled away from her and scowled. “No, I’m not okay. But I will be, in time.”

  He walked to the window and watched the desert passing beneath them as they raced south to Luxor. For a moment he wondered if all this might be enough finally to bring him down, but then he remembered what his father had always told him – no matter what, never give in and never give up.

  He turned back to Maria. “I was told the killer was a Cuban assassin called Alfredo Lazaro, and that he was killed in a raid in Thailand.”

  Maria leaned back a little and narrowed her eyes in confusion. “The hit-man was Lazaro, yes, or the Spider as he calls himself, but he wasn’t killed in any ambush in Thailand. He’s not dead, Joe.”

  “Not dead? Are you certain?”

  “For sure. Because of what he did to Elizaveta, he’s on a lot of lists in Moscow. The sort of lists you don’t want to be on, you know? I can promise you he is not dead. He was last seen in Mexico about six weeks ago.”

  Hawke nodded. He knew well enough that governments kept hit-lists of enemies of the state, but if Moscow thought it was going to get to the Spider before he did then there was going to be a lot of serious disappointment in the Kremlin. As
for Matheson… that sort of treachery deserved the ultimate punishment.

  He breathed out slowly and took another shot of the vodka. He had to calm himself, but it was tough when the problems kept mounting. Lea was gone, snatched by Vetrov, and now he had just discovered that the two men responsible for his wife’s brutal murder were both alive.

  And that was a wrong that had to be righted.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  Luxor

  Hawke knew Vetrov’s plaything was the A380, and noted with dismay that Luxor Airport’s runway was, at ten thousand feet, more than long enough to accommodate the giant Airbus both at landing and takeoff. This was confirmed when he looked down from the tiny Gulfstream and saw the A380 parked neatly on the apron to the east of the airport.

  Vetrov had beaten them to it, and there was no way to know how far ahead they were. There was also no way to know if Lea Donovan and Bradley Karlsson were still alive. The anger rose in Hawke like a wave of lava as he thought about what he had seen Vetrov doing to Alex back at the dacha, and then imagined the same happening to Lea, somewhere out in the Nile.

  Making matters worse was Maria. He was battling hard to put his wife and her slaying out of his mind, but every time he saw the Russian woman’s face he lost another part of that battle and had to refocus all over again.

  The sleek Gulfstream hit the Luxor tarmac and deployed the reverse thrusters. Moments later it was taxiing to the airport and pulling up not far from the gargantuan A380. Hawke registered with disgust as he read the words VETROV INDUSTRIES written in black on the side of it.

  As they walked down the steps of the aircraft, Eden was already on the phone, organizing back-up.

  “Peter Henderson again?” Hawke asked him, referring to the British Ambassador.

  Eden was hard to read, but there was something strange about the way he looked at Hawke when he replied. “No, an old friend of mine from way back – an Egyptian named Arafa. He’s more than half-way up the greasy pole of the Egyptian Army – a Brigadier General. He’s going to send a few chaps to help us out, but it might take him a few hours to sort it.”

  “When we say back-up, we’re talking about…”

  “Between fifteen and twenty soldiers from the Field HQ of the Southern Military Region in Assiut.”

  Hawke nodded, always grateful for back-up. It often made all the difference.

  “Commander?”

  “Man named Koura. He’s a naqib, or captain, which makes you the ranking officer in command of the mission.”

  “I was a sergeant, Rich.”

  Eden gave him a knowing glance. “We both know you were a major before you got demoted. You’ll carry that rank today.”

  “Come off it, no one’s going to take orders from a burned-out English Special Forces sergeant out here.” He looked up at the Egyptian sun. “Koura can lead his own men.”

  “Naturally, but he knows literally nothing about what’s going on here, Hawke. No idea of the big picture at all. I’m not arguing the point with you. You’re the OC today and that’s the end of it.”

  Hawke backed down. Maybe he could lay some other ghosts to rest today as well – like the day those bastards knocked him down to sergeant. But something was bothering him. “Why this Arafa bloke? Why not just call Henderson?”

  “We’ll talk about that later.” Eden put his hands in his pocket.

  “Looks like there’s going to be a lot of talking later.”

  Eden’s reply was short and clipped, in his usual style.

  “If we survive the day, yes.”

  Hawke laughed. “I mean it, Richard. I want answers.”

  “And you’ll get them but for now we’re behind Vetrov, so let’s get on with it.”

  They clambered into a couple of hired SUVs and went their separate ways. Sir Richard Eden, Alex, Ryan and Maria went to the Hilton Luxor to set up a base camp while Hawke, Scarlet and Lexi tooled up and headed straight to the Karnak Temple.

  It was time to say hello to Osiris.

  *

  Maxim Vetrov watched eagerly as Kosma placed the explosives on the ancient wall. With Dario Mazzarro’s help, it hadn’t taken long to work out that the other half of the map was in a secret chamber beneath the Tomb of Osiris in the Karnak Temple. They were now standing at the entrance to this chamber, sealed up countless centuries ago by unknown hands.

  Kosma finished his work while Kodiak kept Lea and Karlsson covered with a compact machine pistol. He wanted to kill them, and had told them so, but Vetrov had ordered him to keep them alive. They may turn out to be useful, he had said.

  “Do it!” barked Vetrov, sensing his destiny drawing ever closer. “Blow the wall!”

  Kosma obeyed and detonated the explosives, blasting the ancient stones to smithereens with the modern technology. When the dust settled, they made their way into the hidden recess behind the wall and descended into the darkness.

  The tunnel quickly narrowed and the ceiling grew ever lower until they had to crouch to make their way through to the end. The walls were covered in glyphs and constructed of solid blocks of limestone, perfectly fitted together in a way even modern tools would struggle to replicate. Vetrov slid his hand along them in awe as he studied the workmanship and the hieroglyphs.

  He could feel his fate racing toward him like a new dawn. Here, deep beneath the surface of Luxor, far below the Temple of Amun, was the Tomb of Osiris – a real man-god who walked the earth for countless millennia. But like Poseidon, he had been killed and his powerful rule brought to an end, and Vetrov knew who had done it.

  The Athanatoi.

  They were the ones responsible for Poseidon’s death, and they too had killed Osiris, and all the others.

  But not him.

  He would never let them kill him, because he knew who they were, and the power they wielded. He also knew he was about to seize that power for himself. Dealing with the Athanatoi would be a pleasure he would savor, but it could keep for now. Now, he had more urgent concerns, like securing the final piece of this most ancient of puzzles from Osiris’s cadaverous grasp, and sacrificing Donovan and Karlsson to the real gods. Those who had to be appeased.

  After that Hawke and his pathetic, indigent army of drop-outs and mavericks could easily be wiped out. Then there would be nothing between him and the greatest destiny any mortal man could ever dream of.

  Nothing.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

  Hawke scanned the area around the main temple at Karnak. He had never seen anything like it before in his entire life. The site was immense – the ruins he was looking at were all that was left of the ancient city of Thebes, and included the great Temple of Amon. To the west he saw the Nile Quay, which once stretched out into the river when the Nile was higher. Today, the Nile was half a kilometer away through the suburbs of Luxor.

  The sandstone and red granite of the ruins was a bright orange in the sunset, and the heat of the day drifted in shimmers into the early twilight. It was late now, and they had arrived at the site as fast as they could, but judging by the dead security guards, it wasn’t fast enough and Vetrov was already inside the hidden chamber.

  “We have to get in there,” he said, still surveying the surrounding area for useful strategic points that might come in handy during the fight. “There’s still no sign of Lea and Brad, but while there’s a chance they’re still alive we can’t waste any time. What’s the quickest way there?”

  “Through there,” Scarlet said, pointing at the Precinct of Amun-Ra. “If we go that way there’s natural cover, and then we just cut through the east part of the complex and we’re in the fight.” She lit a cigarette and cocked her pistol.

  Lexi turned to Scarlet. “Do you have to smoke those damn things all the time?”

  “Why don’t you…”

  “Listen,” Hawke said, cutting Scarlet’s reply dead. “We don’t have time for arguments. We’re going to get Lea and Brad back and take Vetrov out. Everyone clear on that?”

  They readied th
eir weapons and moved forward. The usual silence fell on their conversation as they prepared for the fight, each thinking things through in their minds to avoid any mistakes.

  They made their way through the dusty ruins, now bereft of the usual horde of tourists because of the late hour. Hawke watched Scarlet and Lexi with pride as they put their differences away and worked together. Lexi’s commitment to the mission since her arrival in Venice was clear, and he had decided to take her word for what happened in Xian. He knew Scarlet was less convinced, but then that was her – always the cynic.

  They rounded the east wall of the Temple of Ramasses II and then sprinted between the Sacred Lake and the south wall of the great Festival Hall of Thutmose III as they approached the Temple of Taharka.

  “It’s just through there, Scarlet said, jabbing the muzzle of her gun toward an immense wall covered in Egyptian hieroglyphics. “That’s the Cachette Court, and just through there is the part of the complex we’re after – the Ramasses III Temple.”

  “And you know this, how?” Lexi asked.

  “Because I studied a map of the place on the way here. It’s called pre-mission planning and the SAS are rather good at it. We’re not all just guns and smoke grenades you realize, Lex.”

  Hawke suppressed a smile, and not just at the thought of Cairo Sloane studying maps of the Karnak Temple Complex. Despite their superficial differences, he knew they were a lot more like each other than either would ever admit.

  As they drew closer to the Amun Temple they heard a loud explosion and felt the ground rock beneath their feet. The shockwave was so great it toppled some of the stones at the top of one of the ruins and they came crashing down into the colonnaded courtyard.

  “Bastards are blowing their way into the hidden chamber,” Hawke said.

  They reached the entrance to the temple, and immediately saw the devastation caused by the explosion. Rubble and dust lay all over the floor of the entrance and in the far wall, and where once had been impressive glyphs of Osiris himself, was an enormous, ragged hole with smoke drifting out of it. Among the rubble, like rubbish, were the corpses of half a dozen security guards, some crushed by the rock that had been blown out of the wall by Vetrov’s explosives.