The Sacred Vault

by Andy McDermott

  She clenched her jaw, reluctantly accepting defeat. For now. ‘Just . . . get it over with.’

  Tandon pressed the injector’s nozzle to her neck and squeezed the trigger. There was a sharp hiss of gas, and she jerked in pain as the drug was blasted through the pores of her skin. For a moment, nothing seemed to happen . . . then her legs turned to rubber. The two men hauled her to a seat. The engines’ whine rose to a shrill roar as the plane prepared to take off.

  ‘You guys are gonna be . . . so screwed . . . when my husband catches you,’ Nina managed to say before her surroundings swirled away into a dark void.

  His bruised muscles now tense and stiffened by the long flight, Eddie took a cab back into Manhattan. He tried to phone Nina, but was diverted to voicemail at the apartment, in her office and on her cell phone. Slightly annoyed, he called Lola.

  ‘Afternoon, Eddie,’ came the reply. ‘How was France? Did you see the Festival of Lights? I’ve heard it’s beautiful.’

  ‘It was . . . bright,’ he settled upon. Nina obviously hadn’t updated her on the previous night’s events. ‘Listen, do you know where Nina is? I can’t get hold of her.’

  ‘I’m not sure - I haven’t seen her today. She must be in another UN committee meeting.’

  ‘Stuck in a plane or stuck in a meeting? Not sure which is worse.’

  ‘At least on a plane you can watch a movie. Anyway, I’ll tell her you called when I see her.’

  ‘Okay. Thanks, Lola.’

  Finally reaching home, he lugged his bag to the apartment. ‘Nina, you in?’ he called as he opened the door. No answer. He dumped his luggage and headed to the kitchen for coffee.

  A man was sitting in one of the lounge chairs, pointing an automatic at him. ‘Don’t move, Mr Chase.’

  Eddie assessed him in a flash. Eastern European accent, probably Bosnian; big, well muscled, a face that had seen a lot of action. Definitely ex-military.

  One of Fernandez’s men? Here for revenge?

  Even though his travel-induced lethargy had been instantly blown away by a surge of adrenalin, he feigned tiredness. ‘Who’re you - and where’s Nina?’

  ‘Safe, for now. My employers want you to get something for them. Do it, and she will be released.’

  ‘Your employers? The Khoils, at a guess.’

  That surprised the man, but he quickly recovered, indicating a cell phone on a table. ‘Yes. They want to talk to you. The number is already entered.’

  Keeping a wary eye on the gun as it tracked him, Eddie picked up the phone and pushed the call button. The screen lit up, giving him a glimpse of the number before it was replaced by an animated ‘Dialling . . .’ icon: from the unusual prefix code, 882, he realised he was being connected to a satellite phone.

  A click, the ghostly echo of the signal being bounced off an orbiting relay . . . then a calm voice. ‘Hello.’

  ‘All right, Khoil, you fuckwit,’ said Eddie, recognising Pramesh Khoil’s flat, precise tones. ‘What d’you want?’

  A brief pause, the time-lag of the satellite transmission. ‘There is no need for rudeness, Mr Chase.’

  ‘I can do violence instead.’

  ‘Your macho posturing is exactly what I predicted. I am not intimidated. Now listen carefully. As Mr Zec has informed you, we have taken your wife hostage.’

  ‘Zec?’ Eddie glanced at the man in the chair, the unusual name echoing faintly in the recesses of his memory.

  ‘We want you to obtain the Talonor Codex and deliver it to Mr Zec. If you do this, your wife will be released. If you do not, she will be killed. Today is Tuesday; you have until the end of Thursday.’

  There was a background noise that was all too familiar after the last several hours: jet engines. Khoil was on a plane, which probably meant Nina was too . . . ‘You’ve fucked up, you know.’

  ‘Pardon?’

  ‘I can’t get the Codex for you. Nobody can, except Nina. You need her handprint to open the vault. And since I’m guessing you’re flying her away from the vault, well . . .’

  ‘I am aware of the vault’s handprint scanner. Your wife’s hand will be provided to you.’

  Cold clutched at Eddie’s heart. ‘If you’ve fucking cut off her hand I promise you I will hunt you down, and cut off your fucking hand, and use it to pull your fucking heart out through your arsehole!’

  ‘Fantastical threats are not necessary - you misunderstand me. Your wife’s handprint will be provided.’

  ‘It will, will it? Let me talk to Nina.’

  Khoil spoke to someone in Hindi. There was a faint hiss, followed by a nauseated groan.

  Eddie knew who had made it, and felt a rush of relief. ‘Nina!’

  ‘Ohh . . . Eddie?’ she said, groggy and confused. ‘What’s . . . oh, shit. Eddie, these assholes have kidnapped me - they drugged me!’

  ‘You’re gonna be okay. I’ll take care of it.’

  ‘Eddie, they want you to steal the Codex for them. You can’t let them get it.’

  ‘If it’s how I get you back, then yeah, I can.’

  ‘No, absolutely not! I don’t know why they want it, but it’s got to be for something bigger than just its monetary value. It’s—’

  ‘Shut that red-haired witch up!’ said a woman’s shrill voice. Vanita Khoil. The sound of a scuffle came over the phone.

  ‘Nina!’ Eddie shouted. ‘Khoil, put her back on!’

  There was another hiss. ‘Son of a bit . . .’ said Nina, her cry tailing away to nothing.

  ‘She is not hurt, only unconscious,’ Khoil said, retrieving the phone. ‘If you obtain the Codex for us, you will have her back. If you do not, or if Mr Zec tells me you have tried to contact the authorities - or he does not check in, for any reason - we will kill her. Now, give him the phone.’

  Raging impotently, Eddie did as he was told, then paced the length of the room. Zec listened to Khoil, finally saying, ‘Understood, ’ and ending the call.

  Eddie rounded on him. ‘So how the fuck am I supposed to get the Codex out of the vault? I can’t just walk out with the thing under my arm.’

  ‘Not my problem,’ said Zec, standing. ‘My job is just to deliver it to Khoil - and make sure you don’t try anything stupid.’

  ‘I’m not stupid enough to risk Nina’s life over some old book. You’ll get it - fucked if I know how, but I’ll work something out.’ He turned away again, pacing back down the lounge . . . until his gaze fell on the photo of his late friend. ‘Zec! Hugo Castille said he once worked with a guy called Zec, in Bosnia. That you?’

  Zec glanced at the picture. ‘Yes. I saw the photograph. Our profession is a small world, no?’

  ‘It’s not my profession any more. But Hugo wouldn’t have worked with you if you weren’t a good bloke. So why’re you working for this arsehole Khoil?’

  ‘Why does a mercenary work for anyone?’ Zec asked rhetorically. ‘I was Urbano Fernandez’s second in command. Khoil asked me to take his place.’

  ‘You know Khoil had Fernandez killed, right? That lass with the glass eye almost sawed his fucking head off.’ Zec seemed disquieted by the revelation, but said nothing. ‘That’s it? No loyalty to your mate, just take the cash from the people who killed him? I guess Hugo was wrong about you.’

  ‘I need the money,’ said Zec, annoyed. ‘I have a family now, a son - I want to give them a good life, somewhere better than Sarajevo.’ He realised he had perhaps opened himself up too much, and the inexpressive mask slammed back down. ‘But the only thing you should think about for the next two days is how to get the Codex.’

  ‘Oh yeah, that’ll be a doddle, getting something the size of a bloody paving stone out of a top-security vault without anyone noticing.’ He gazed at the picture of Hugo for a long moment, then turned back to the Bosnian. ‘I’ll need some help.’

  9

  India

  Nina awoke to find herself in a palace.

  She had expected the plane, or a cell. But she was lying on a four-poster bed draped in fine si
lk, in an airy room decorated by colourful friezes on the walls and ceiling. The doors and shuttered windows were all arched, the style distinctively - almost stereotypically - Indian.

  There was an odd feeling of artificiality to the place, as if she were in an Indian palace-themed hotel room rather than the genuine article. She went to a window, where bright daylight flared through the slats. Expecting it to be locked, she tried it anyway and was slightly surprised when the shutters parted to reveal an expansive sweep of immaculate lawns and gardens below. She could see other parts of the building; it was indeed a palace, domes topping the pillared white walls. Again, there was the too-clean, too-perfect sense of its being a theme park replica.

  ‘Dr Wilde,’ said Khoil’s voice from behind her, making her start. ‘Good morning.’

  The room had changed, a section of wall silently sliding open to reveal a giant screen. The Indian’s bespectacled face, three feet high, regarded her from it. She realised she was under observation, a lens glinting below the display. ‘Mr Khoil,’ she said tartly. ‘Been watching me sleep, have you? I didn’t realise you made your fortune through webcams.’

  He ignored the barb. ‘The room has a motion sensor. The house computers alerted me the moment you woke. Welcome to my home.’

  ‘Yeah, I’m so glad to be here.’ If her sarcasm had been any more acidic, it would have blistered the screen. ‘Where exactly am I?’

  ‘My estate, east of Bangalore. It combines styles of the Mysore, Kowdiar and Laxmi Niwas palaces, only updated with modern architectural elements. And integrated with the most advanced technology, of course.’

  ‘Well, of course. So are you just going to lecture me from your telescreen like Big Brother, or . . .’

  ‘You may “freshen up”, as you Americans say, then you will be driven to us.’

  ‘Driven?’ Nina raised an eyebrow. ‘Just how big is this place?’

  ‘The main building has a hundred and sixty-five rooms over five floors,’ said Khoil, taking her question literally. ‘But we are not in the palace at the moment; we are at the sanctuary.’

  ‘Sanctuary? For what?’

  A faint smile on the blank face. ‘Tigers.’

  Tandon, politely menacing, collected her from her room after she had showered. He took her to an elevator, which brought them to a large underground garage beneath the palace. Dozens of cars lined the space, from a nineteenth-century Benz Motorwagen tricycle to a brand new McLaren supercar in gleaming gold. It was an odd mix of vehicles, a little British Mini beside the rocketship bulk of a 1959 Cadillac, a record-setting Bugatti Veyron hunched next to a minuscule Tata Nano. Some facet of each vehicle’s design had apparently made them worthy of inclusion in the billionaire’s collection.

  The vehicle Tandon took her to was less impressive than any of the gleaming exhibits, however: an electric golf cart. They drove up a steep ramp into the open, following a tree-lined drive. About half a mile north of the palace was a huge enclave, encircled by a high concrete wall topped with chain-link and razor wire. A runway ran along one side of the enclosure, the long black strip showing Nina just how far the boundaries of the Khoils’ estate extended. The jet sat outside a hangar, the structure’s doors partially open to reveal a small, strange-looking aircraft. Its matt charcoal-grey fuselage, a propeller at its rear, seemed too narrow to carry any people - even a pilot. Then the jet obscured it as they passed.

  Abutting the wall was a two-storey building, an architectural sibling of the palace. Tandon took her to the upper floor. The sanctuary spread out before her through a glass wall. The view was dominated by a leafy tree canopy, though she could also see a more open area of grassland and bushes. Sunlight shimmered off a lake near the enclave’s centre.

  ‘Dr Wilde,’ said Khoil from one side of the large room. The tycoon was seated at a control station, a bank of monitor screens before him. The biggest showed a view from the upper branches of a tree. Beside him stood Vanita, bent over a control panel with her body language suggesting tension and concern - though the look she gave Nina was one of utter disdain. The tongueless giant and the shark-toothed man waited nearby, eyes locked on the new arrival. ‘Welcome to the sanctuary.’

  ‘Impressive,’ said Nina. ‘You must really like tigers.’ ‘They’re magnificent animals,’ Vanita said, passion clear in her voice. ‘And they’re being slaughtered by poachers. Two of the country’s reserves had every single tiger in them killed in the last few years.’

  ‘So you set up your own?’

  She smiled coldly. ‘Any hunter who tries to harm my tigers will regret it.’

  A voice crackled over a loudspeaker: ‘Ready at station three.’

  Khoil acknowledged via a headset. He examined a map on one screen, coloured markers slowly moving across it. ‘She has taken the bait,’ he told his wife.

  Vanita regarded the monitors excitedly. ‘Show me.’

  He tapped a keyboard. One of the secondary screens flicked to a new view. ‘Come and watch, Dr Wilde. You may find this interesting.’

  Despite herself, Nina couldn’t help but be intrigued. Tigers had been a favourite animal of her childhood, even if the closest she had ever been to one in real life was at the Bronx Zoo. The combination of sleek beauty and power was appealing to many children, of either sex; Vanita had obviously carried that fascination into adulthood.

  On the screen, a squat concrete bunker, partially camouflaged by vegetation, rose from the ground in a clearing. Adjoining it was an open-topped cage - in which stood a goat, tethered to a pole. Over the speakers she heard a faint bleat. ‘What are you doing?’

  ‘One of the tigers injured her paw,’ said Vanita. ‘We need to bring her inside so our vets can treat her.’

  ‘We have three tigers, two female and one male,’ Khoil added. ‘They keep to their own territories, so we have several stations linked by tunnels where we can enter the sanctuary and provide them with live prey.’

  Nina gave the goat a sympathetic look. ‘Sorry, Billy.’

  The billionaire turned back to the controls. The image on the main screen shifted as the camera moved. Nina saw that it was airborne, slowly descending into the clearing. Khoil touched a button, and a crosshair was superimposed over the centre of the screen. ‘Lower the cage.’

  A metallic rattle came over the speakers as the cage dropped into the ground, leaving the goat standing on a metal platform. Vanita indicated one of the markers with a long red nail. ‘She’s getting closer! Pramesh, let me see.’

  Khoil obediently adjusted the controls. The camera panned left, tilting downwards to show a patch of bush at the edge of the clearing. ‘Each tiger has a tracker implanted,’ he explained to Nina. ‘We can locate them to the metre. This one will come into view . . . now.’

  For a moment, Nina saw nothing. Then she spotted a slight movement in the undergrowth - and suddenly what she had taken to be patches of light and shadow took on graceful yet deadly form.

  A Bengal tiger, three hundred pounds of muscle, teeth and claws standing over three feet high and eight feet long. Even with a wounded paw, the animal moved with silent, precise purpose.

  ‘We would not normally tie up the goat,’ said Khoil as Nina watched, unable to look away from the spectacle. ‘We want the animals to keep their hunting instincts.’

  ‘Move the drone back,’ Vanita warned sharply. ‘If she hears it, it might scare her away.’

  ‘The vimana is eight metres away. The rotors are inaudible past six metres.’ But the camera retreated slightly after she glared at him.

  The goat finally saw the danger. Bleating in fear, it tried to run, but was jerked to an abrupt stop by the tether. The tiger responded, a black and orange explosion of action as it sprang across the clearing faster than Khoil’s camera could follow. By the time it caught up, the tiger had already reached its prey, slamming the goat against the side of the bunker and biting down hard on the unfortunate ungulate’s throat. Blood gushed over the grey concrete. Even with a lethal wound the goat was st
ill struggling; the tiger lashed out a paw, claws tearing open its abdomen and spilling its innards across the ground. Nina winced.

  Khoil worked the joystick controls. The drone descended towards the scene, crosshairs moving over the tiger’s body.

  ‘Don’t hurt her!’ Vanita warned.

  ‘I won’t, my beloved,’ Khoil replied, a hint of impatience in his flat voice. The camera drew closer.

  The tiger looked up, a noise catching its attention—

  He pulled a trigger on one of the sticks. A flat whap came over the speakers, the image jolting backwards. When it settled again, the tiger had released the goat and was trying to run back into the jungle - but only got a few yards before drunkenly flopping to the ground. A silver dart protruded from its flank.

  ‘She is down,’ Khoil reported into the headset. ‘Bring her inside.’ On the smaller monitor, the platform lowered into the ground. After a short pause it rose again, several men in white overalls stepping off and moving cautiously to the fallen predator.

  ‘Is she all right?’ Vanita demanded. One of the men felt the tiger’s body, then gave the hovering camera a thumbs up.

  ‘She will be fine,’ Khoil assured her. He pushed a button. The words Auto return flashed up on the big screen, the camera swinging round of its own accord and ascending above the treetops. ‘Now, Dr Wilde,’ he said, standing, ‘we can talk. I suspect it will be pointless, but Qexia projected a twelve per cent probability that you might be persuaded to work with me.’

  Nina shrugged. ‘Sounds like your projections have a thirteen per cent margin of error, but go ahead.’

  As he had earlier, Khoil missed the subtext and took the remark literally. ‘Less than five per cent, actually. But you are undoubtedly wondering why we want to obtain the Talonor Codex.’

  ‘It’d crossed my mind.’

  ‘Mr Zec has sent me scans of all the IHA’s research and translations from your apartment. They confirm everything I had hoped - that the Codex contains the information needed to reveal the location of the Vault of Shiva.’