The Sacred Vault

by Andy McDermott

Eddie grabbed at her, fingers tugging her sleeve before she twisted away. He elbowed through the crowd after her to find himself in an oval space amongst the bustle. The fire-eater, a big man in Arabic-style clothing, looked round in surprise, a burning torch halfway to his mouth. The woman glared back at Eddie with her good eye, the prosthetic staring blankly ahead.

  A stand near the fire-eater held other lit torches for his act - and a container of paraffin. She hurled the plastic bottle at her pursuers. Eddie darted aside, but it bounced off the younger man, splashing his arm.

  She threw the torches.

  The spilled fuel ignited. The crowd screamed and pushed back, people stumbling and causing a chain reaction as others tripped over them. A trail of flame rushed across the open space. Kit jumped away, but his sleeve was already alight. He swatted at the fire, trying to shrug off the garment. The fire-eater’s assistant scrambled for an extinguisher.

  Madirakshi took advantage of the panic to dive back into the crowd. Eddie ran after her.

  Neon flashed ahead, the shrill mosquito buzz of the holographic display getting louder. Behind, he heard the gushing hiss of the fire extinguisher. Madirakshi’s black bun had become partially unfastened in her flight, long black hair flapping behind her like a horse’s tail.

  Eddie reached out, grabbed it, pulled. She shrieked, then spun.

  The stolen pistol was in her hand—

  He ducked as she fired, the bullet hitting a man behind him and showering his companions with blood.

  Eddie sprang up before she could fire again, slamming his shoulder into her adbomen. She reeled. Metal clattered against paving as the gun was knocked from her hand.

  He grabbed for the fallen weapon, missed, tripped as someone ran into him, and found himself amongst a forest of trampling legs. A man stumbled over him, stamping on his hand. Eddie yelled and struggled to stand, realising through the sharp pain that he had lost sight of Madirakshi. He looked from side to side. No sign of the police uniform—

  Something lashed round his neck from behind.

  Eddie’s hand flashed up reflexively just as the garrotte pulled tight, crushing his fingers against his Adam’s apple. Choking, he tried to push the wire away, but it cut painfully into his flesh, blood oozing out. A knee crunched into his back. He struggled for breath as the wire drew tighter, sawing at his throat—

  Kit hurtled from the panicked crowd and tackled her. She lost her grip on one end of the garrotte as all three fell. He tried to pin her, but she elbowed him viciously in the face and jumped back up, about to run again—

  Sirens howled all round the square, a voice booming orders through a megaphone. The Lyon police were sealing off the Place des Terreaux.

  Eddie got up. ‘There’s no way out!’ he gasped. ‘If you give up now, I might not match your other eye up.’

  To her other side, Kit was also recovering. Madirakshi glanced between the two men, eyeing up possible escape routes - and finding none, blocked by the towering neon display and the pedestal beneath the holographic dancer. ‘We can make a deal,’ said Kit. ‘Testify against your employer, and we—’

  She was uninterested in deals. Instead, she ran to the neon sculpture - and started to climb it.

  ‘Get round the other side, cut her off!’ Eddie told Kit, but even as he spoke he realised she had no intention of jumping down. She kept climbing the ladder-like central frame, the spinning lighting effect seeming to sweep her aloft. What the hell was she doing?

  The answer hit him as she reached the pinnacle, over thirty feet above. She wasn’t planning on coming down. Alive, at least.

  ‘No, wait!’ he shouted—

  Too late.

  She thrust her hands into the wiring.

  The neon flickered, sparks sizzling from the sculpture’s summit as thousands of volts surged through her. People screamed at the sight. Smoke coiled from Madirakshi’s body as she shuddered uncontrollably, the vibrations shaking the whole tower . . .

  Something broke loose. With the searing lightning-crack of an electrical short, the display went dark, and the woman fell away.

  For a moment, it seemed as though the hollow man was trying to catch her . . . but he was just an illusion. High-powered lasers seared across her back as she dropped towards the holographic generator, uniform and hair bursting into flames before the blazing corpse smashed down spread-eagled on the pedestal. The operator hurriedly shut off the lasers, but the body continued to burn, rising smoke glowing in every colour imaginable as it passed through the beams of the giant projections.

  8

  New York City

  ‘What happened to her?’ Nina asked, wondering if she had misheard Eddie over the crackly international phone connection.

  ‘She electrocuted herself and fell on a hologram that set her on fire,’ he repeated. ‘Probably not what the local tourist board had in mind for their Festival of Light . . . Anyway, she was dead set - literally - on not being caught.’

  ‘I’ve heard of loyalty to your employer, but jeez,’ she said. ‘And Fernandez is dead?’ The thought was not exactly heartbreaking.

  ‘Yeah. She practically sliced his head off. We just got a preliminary report on her body - that glass eye of hers was a fake.’

  Despite the grim situation, Nina couldn’t help but smile. ‘They usually are.’

  ‘Ha fuckin’ ha. I mean, it was a trick eye - there was a garrotte wire inside it. Someone’s been getting ideas from Last Action Hero. And by someone, I mean Pramesh Khoil.’

  For the second time in less than a minute, she was astonished. ‘Are you serious?’

  ‘I saw that woman in San Francisco - she brought Khoil a phone just before we got attacked. So unless she was doing some really violent moonlighting, it’s a good bet that he’s connected with this. My guess is that he had Fernandez killed to stop him grassing.’

  Thinking back, she remembered the woman. ‘Maybe the phone call was to tell Fernandez to carry out the raid,’ she mused. ‘His Plan A was to ask me for full access to the Talonor Codex - but when I said no, he already had Plan B all ready to go.’

  ‘Just steal the thing.’

  ‘Right. So what happens now?’

  ‘Kit’s going to India to check out the Khoils - he’s willing to take my word that this woman’s the one from Frisco, and he thinks that makes them worth investigating.’

  ‘And if Interpol finds the Khoils really are behind everything?’

  ‘Dunno, but I wouldn’t want to be in their shoes. Probably be a race between the Saudi General Intelligence Directorate and Chinese External Security to see who can kill ’em first for nicking their countries’ treasures.’

  ‘What about you?’

  He yawned, almost setting her off in sympathy. ‘Doesn’t look like I’m going to get much sleep tonight. I’ve got to finish giving my statement to Interpol, then I’m flying back to New York.’

  ‘What time is it there now?’ She looked at her watch; it was past seven in the evening.

  ‘After one in the morning. When are you finishing work?’

  ‘I’m almost done. I had a fun day explaining to Sebastian Penrose and some State Department people how the director of the IHA got embroiled in another gun battle. You know, I really hoped we’d left this kind of thing behind us.’

  ‘No such luck, eh?’ He yawned again, then grunted in discomfort.

  ‘Are you okay?’

  ‘Yeah, just got a sore neck where she cut me.’

  ‘What? She cut you?’

  ‘Remember that garrotte? She got the drop on me with it. I’m okay, though.’

  Nina’s concern grew. ‘And how did she get the drop on you?’ ‘It wasn’t ’cause of my hearing,’ he said, irritation clear in his voice.

  ‘I didn’t say it was.’

  ‘You were thinking it, though. Christ, this is why I didn’t tell you about it before.’

  Now she too was annoyed. ‘I was just, y’know, worried about my husband. Jeez!’

  ‘Okay, okay, so
rry. I’m just tired, that’s all. Think I need another coffee or six.’ A further yawn. ‘I’ll let you go. I’ll either give you a call from the flight, or when I get in to JFK.’

  ‘Have a good trip,’ she said. ‘See you soon.’

  ‘You too. Bye.’

  She ended the call and unsuccessfully tried to suppress another yawn, stretching in her chair. While her day had hardly been as physically exhausting as Eddie’s had unexpectedly become, she still felt drained by the meetings and bureaucracy, and desired nothing more than to collapse into bed.

  She finished her last few items of paperwork, then headed out, taking the elevator to ground level and ambling across United Nations Plaza towards First Avenue. Normally she would walk the four blocks to Grand Central Terminal and take the subway, but tonight she just wanted to get home quickly. A cab, then. As usual, the streets around the UN were choked with yellow cabs, but finding one for hire was the tricky part . . .

  The roof light on one parked nearby came on. That was a stroke of luck; the driver must have just finished his break. She walked towards it, increasing her pace when she realised she was in competition with a middle-aged man. He saw her speed up and broke into a clumsy jog, both of them reaching the cab simultaneously.

  The man grabbed the rear door handle. ‘Sorry, lady.’

  ‘Hey!’ Nina protested. ‘I saw it first.’

  ‘Seeing it doesn’t count.’ He opened the door.

  The driver rapped on the bulletproof screen between the front and rear seats. ‘The lady was here first.’ His accent was Eastern European, gravelly.

  The man started to climb in. ‘Just take me to East 19th Street.’ ‘Hey!’ Another bang on the screen, this time with a clenched fist. ‘I said, the lady was here first. Get the next one, eh?’

  After a moment’s hesitation, the man retreated. ‘I - I’ll have your medallion for this,’ he bleated, then huffed sarcastically at Nina. ‘Enjoy your ride.’

  ‘I’m sure I will,’ she replied with a little smile. She got in, nodding to the driver. ‘Thank you.’

  She could see why her rival had backed off - the cabbie was imposing, hard-faced and heavily built, with hair shaved to a stubble. ‘No problem. So, where to?’

  Nina gave him the address and sat back as the cab moved off, thinking. Could Pramesh and Vanita Khoil really be involved in the thefts? They certainly had the money to finance Fernandez and his men. But it would be a collection they could never show off to anybody - and how did the Talonor Codex fit into it? It was valuable, yes, and historically important, but hardly on the level of Michelangelo’s David . . .

  A sudden wave of guilt washed over her. Thoughts of the Codex inevitably led to Rowan, not only bringing back her feelings of grief, but also the reminder that she had yet to speak to his father. She had been busy, sure . . . but had that just been a way to avoid something of which, she was forced to admit, she was afraid?

  She had to talk to him, she knew, however much she dreaded it. She was about to take out her phone, then decided that a cab wasn’t the best place for what would undoubtedly be an emotional call. More procrastination, an accusing voice said inside her head, but she needed calm, quiet, time to gather her thoughts—

  The cab braked sharply, jolting her back to the present. It had turned on to one of the crosstown streets - but there was no traffic ahead. So why were they stopping?

  The door to her left opened, a huge bearded man squeezing in beside her.

  Shit! She was being mugged!

  Grabbing her bag, she slid across to the other side—

  The right-hand door opened as well, a smaller, skinny man pushing her back. She was sandwiched between the two intruders. Both were dark-skinned - Indian? The cab set off again. The driver hadn’t reacted - he was in on it.

  But if they thought she was going to surrender meekly, they were wrong.

  One hand fumbling in her bag, she drove the point of her other elbow against the smaller man’s cheekbone, snapping his head back. The big guy reached for her with a rough, hairy hand - as she pulled out a can of pepper spray and squirted it in his face.

  He recoiled, eyes clenching shut - but in more of an instinctive flinch than the agonised thrashing she expected. Her own eyes stung horribly as the vapour reached her in the confined space. She tried to move away, but the second man was still pressed against her. Another swipe with her elbow—

  His hand clamped round it, stopping the motion as if Nina had just hit a brick wall. Startled, she tried to pull away, but the grip tightened and held her arm firmly in place. The smaller man was a lot stronger than he appeared. Fear rising, she looked round at him.

  A shark’s mouth grinned back at her from below malevolent dark eyes. His front teeth were filed to ragged points. He opened his mouth wide, leaning closer—

  Nina screamed as he bit deeply into her upper arm. She tried to blast him with the pepper spray, but the big guy had already recovered, barely affected by the hot capsaicin, and swallowed her hand in his own, squeezing hard until her joints crackled agonisingly against the can.

  ‘Don’t struggle, Dr Wilde,’ said the driver. They knew who she was! It wasn’t a mugging, but a kidnapping.

  The shark-mouthed man opened his jaws, Nina’s blood running down his chin. ‘Jesus Christ !’ she gasped. ‘What do you want?’ The bearded man released her hand, and the dented can clattered to the floor. In the flickering light of passing streetlamps, she saw that his lips were heavily scarred by what looked like burns, his cheeks oddly hollow.

  ‘You’ll find out soon. Here.’ The driver pushed a paper bag through the cash slot in the screen. The big man took it and tore it open; Nina saw that it contained a small bottle of antiseptic and several Band-Aids. ‘I wouldn’t want you to get an infection.’

  ‘Thanks for caring,’ Nina growled bitterly, snatching the bag from her captor.

  The cab headed north into upstate New York. The drive took well over an hour, Nina losing track of where they were once they left the main highway.

  Their final destination was a private airfield. The cab stopped beside a business jet, its engines already whining. Her captors pulled her roughly from the taxi and took her to the plane’s steps.

  A figure appeared in the hatch. Nina recognised him immediately. ‘Funny,’ she said defiantly. ‘I was just thinking about you.’

  Pramesh Khoil’s smooth, bespectacled face was as blank as it had been in San Francisco. ‘Hello again, Dr Wilde.’ He looked to the larger of the two Indian men holding her. ‘Bring her aboard. Was she any trouble, Dhiren?’

  She expected the big man to speak, but instead he responded with a gurgling grunt. Horrified, she realised the meaning of the facial scars and his sunken cheeks - he had no tongue. It had been burnt out of his mouth. The other man said something in Hindi, his filed teeth giving his voice a wet, lisping quality.

  ‘Thank you, Nahari,’ said Khoil. He stood back as they shoved Nina into the plane. She blinked at the change of lighting, looking down the luxuriously appointed cabin to see Vanita Khoil coldly regarding her from one of the plush seats. Another Indian man, square-jawed and wearing a black turtleneck, stood beside her, his alert stance that of a bodyguard.

  ‘What do you want me to do now?’ asked the cab driver from outside.

  ‘Follow the plan, Mr Zec,’ Khoil told him. ‘Dr Wilde, your keys.’

  ‘What? Hey!’ The sharp-toothed man rummaged in her bag and handed her keys to Khoil, who tossed them to the Slav.

  ‘Wait for Mr Chase at their home,’ said Khoil. ‘I am sure he will ask to speak to his wife.’

  ‘What do you want with Eddie?’ Nina demanded, covering her rising fear with anger.

  ‘Your husband is going to get something for us,’ said Vanita, voice as icy as her expression. ‘The Talonor Codex.’

  Nina gave her a mocking look. ‘Dream on. You know that Interpol already figured out you were behind the robbery in San Francisco, don’t you?’

  ‘They may susp
ect,’ said Khoil, dismissing Zec without a further word. A crew member closed the hatch. ‘But they will find no proof. Not until it is too late to matter.’

  ‘So why do you need Eddie? If you want the Codex, why not just make me get it for you?’

  ‘It would be too easy for you to raise the alarm. Besides, with you as our hostage, Mr Chase will be more malleable than you would be in the reverse position.’

  ‘You think you know us?’ she sneered.

  ‘Qexia knows you. All information about you and your husband has been collated and analysed. Mr Chase is more predictable than you, hence more controllable. His concern for your safety will ensure his compliance with our demands.’

  ‘He’s controllable, huh? I’ll tell him that when he calls - I’m sure it’ll give him a laugh.’

  ‘Bite your tongue,’ Vanita snapped, her dangling earrings swinging. ‘Pramesh, take us home. I have had enough of this country.’

  ‘As you wish, my beloved.’ Khoil turned and entered the cockpit. Nina expected him to issue orders, but was surprised to see him sit in the pilot’s seat and don a set of headphones.

  ‘Back there,’ ordered Vanita, jerking a dismissive thumb towards the rear of the cabin. The two men holding Nina pulled her with them. ‘Chapal, the drug.’

  ‘Drug? ’ Nina cried, seeing the man in the turtleneck raise a gun-shaped device - a jet injector, used to administer drugs without a hypodermic needle. She struggled and kicked, but her captors had too firm a grip.

  ‘I would advise that you take the drug, Dr Wilde,’ Khoil called from the cockpit. ‘Otherwise Mr Tandon will be forced to use his martial arts skills to render you unconscious. I understand it is excruciatingly painful.’

  The man in black gave Nina a broad, menacing smile. ‘There are a hundred and eight marma pressure points on the body. Twelve are instantly fatal when hit by a varma ati master.’

  ‘Let me guess,’ said Nina unhappily. ‘You’re a master.’

  ‘Oh, yes. But the deadly points are very close to ones that cause unconsciousness or paralysis. If you struggle, even I could hit the wrong one.’ The smile broadened. ‘Would you prefer the drug?’