She scrolled further inland. ‘Somewhere like that.’ Above the eastern end of the small bay was a gently sloping plain. ‘If you were building a settlement, it’s got everything you need - water, farmable land, sheltered access to the sea . . .’ Enthusiasm rose in her voice. ‘It was above sea level back then, and it’s still above sea level now . . . so if there was a settlement there, we might still be able to find it!’
‘You think it’s buried there?’
‘Yes! Absolutely! If we go there, we might be able to excavate it!’ She leaned back, already compiling a mental list of everything she might need.
‘Not wanting to piss on your chips,’ said Chase, ‘but I don’t think the IHA’s going to go for that right now.’
Nina snorted. ‘Who needs the IHA? This’d be proper archaeology, just a map and a shovel and a brush, no need for computers or submersibles or millions of dollars of hardware. I’ll show that shrivelled old bitch what being an archaeologist is really all about,’ she added, more to herself than to Chase.
‘Calm down, Lara,’ he said. ‘So you want to jet off to Australia to find the lost city of . . . of whoever the hell these people were?’
‘Why not? It’s not as though we’ve got anything else to do right now. We’re both suspended, remember?’
‘Yeah, but there was one thing the IHA was handy for - paying for everything!’
‘That’s what credit cards are for,’ said Nina. Chase decided not to tell her how much his flights had cost. ‘Come on, we can do this! We fly to Australia, check out the site, do some digging - the worst that can happen is that we don’t find anything, and even then at least we had a vacation to take our minds off everything.’ She stood, hands pressed together eagerly. ‘Whaddya say?’
He could tell from the almost manic glint in her eyes that she was not going to take no for an answer. ‘You do remember that there’s someone else trying to find it as well, right?’
‘The Covenant of Genesis? Maybe, if they’re even capable of figuring out where to look.’
‘We just did it in half an hour,’ he pointed out. ‘They’ve got the original tablet to work from, and you even told that Ribbsley guy about the numbers on it. What if that was the only thing they were missing?’
‘All the more reason to find it before them. Come on, Eddie! A few days, that’s all I’ll need. If there’s nothing there, then fair enough, that’s the end of the line. But if there is something there . . .’
‘Great. More flying,’ Chase complained. But she had a point; if there really was anything at the new site and the Covenant found it first, they would presumably destroy it, making all the deaths aboard the Pianosa even more meaningless. ‘Oh, all right. Let’s go to a land down under.’
Nina kissed him. ‘Thanks, Eddie.’
‘Just one thing, though - I’m not doing all the bloody digging!’
13
Australia
Shielding his eyes from the sun’s glare, Chase stepped out of the Land Rover Defender and surveyed the landscape. ‘As the Aussies say . . . crikey.’
Nina joined him, tugging down the brim of her baseball cap until it almost touched her sunglasses in order to shade her pale face. ‘I can see why.’
It was three days since their decision to make the long trip across the Pacific to Australia; three days of intensive preparation and expensive travel arrangements. But now they were finally there, having driven north from Perth, turning westwards off the main highway on to a rough track . . . and into a spectacular desert landscape. The rolling sands were a vivid yellow, almost like a child’s crayon drawing, and protruding from the dunes were dozens of angular limestone pillars, ranging from knee-height to some that towered over Chase. ‘They look like film props,’ he said, touching one to check that it wasn’t made of polystyrene and plaster.
Nina consulted her guidebook. ‘We’re fairly close to the Pinnacles Desert. It says it’s full of these formations - some of them are four metres tall. Must be a hell of a sight.’
‘We could take a detour and have a look,’ Chase suggested.
She regarded the strange rocks for a moment before shaking her head. ‘Let’s find the place we’re looking for first. Besides, it’s a national park - they might not want us carving it up in a jeep.’
‘Oh, so when you want to look at bits of old rock it’s a national emergency, but when I do . . .’ He grinned at her as they climbed back in. ‘Okay, so how much further to this place?’
‘The map says about . . . seven kilometres. Just over four miles.’
Chase looked at the track, which though winding and bumpy had so far been relatively easy for their 4x4 to negotiate. ‘Shouldn’t take us too long. What was the name of the place again?’
‘Trouble Cove,’ she said, with another look at the map. ‘Australia has such great place names! Hangover Bay, Useless Loop, Billabong Roadhouse . . .’ A cheeky glance at Chase. ‘Bald Head . . .’
‘Oi,’ he warned, swatting at her with one hand as he started driving. She giggled. ‘So what do you want to do when we get there?’
‘We should have plenty of time before sunset to look around before putting up the tent.’ Nina examined her notes, serious again. ‘If we concentrate on the area near the edge of the bay, that’s the most likely site.’
They continued along the track, desert sand gradually giving way to patches of vegetation as they drew closer to the coast, heathland speckled with bright flowers and low, wind-sculpted trees. Wildlife also appeared, a small group of kangaroos pausing in their leaping travels to watch the passing vehicle, and an emu popped its head up suspiciously from behind a bush before scurrying away. Though hot, it was certainly one of the most picturesque wildernesses they had travelled through.
Finally, they crested a rise, and saw the shimmering turquoise ocean. ‘Wow, look at that,’ said Nina, taking off her sunglasses for a better look. ‘That’s really—Aah!’ She jolted forward in her seat as Chase stamped on the brake, bringing the Defender to a sudden crunching halt. ‘Eddie! What the hell?’
He hurriedly reversed over the rise and pulled to a sharp stop. ‘Remember how I said the Covenant would be trying to find this place too?’
‘Yeah?’
‘I think they already have.’ He jumped out and hurried to the rear door, opening it to take a pair of powerful binoculars from their gear. ‘Come on. But keep low.’
Nina nervously followed him back up the track. Near the top, he dropped to his stomach and crawled under a scrubby bush. She did the same. One hand shading the lenses to prevent the sun from reflecting off them, Chase took a closer look at Trouble Cove.
‘What is it?’ Nina asked. ‘What do you see?’
‘That I won’t need to do any digging.’ He handed her the binoculars.
Nina scanned the area ahead. To her shock, it was bustling with activity. Grubby yellow excavators were digging out large trenches, men moving in behind them to clear away more sand and dirt with shovels. Parked nearby were several 4x4s and heavier flatbed trucks, presumably used to transport the earthmovers across the desert, as well as a rather incongruous Winnebago recreational vehicle. She also spotted several large tents on one edge of the dig. ‘Jesus.’
‘That’s a pretty serious operation,’ said Chase.
‘You’re not kidding.’
‘We need to get closer.’
‘We need to do what now?’
‘I want to get a better look at them,’ he clarified. ‘See if that guy Vogler’s there, if they really are these Covenant people.’
‘I don’t think they’re there to build vacation condos,’ Nina muttered. It was hard to tell from this angle, but there seemed to be something in the trenches.
‘Come on.’ Chase took back the binoculars and crawled down the other face of the slope, Nina behind him. They carefully made their way closer, staying low behind the patches of vegetation. The ground became rockier, the track entering a winding gulch marking the path of a long-dry river. Nina expected
Chase to enter it to take advantage of the cover, but instead he crawled between the boulders along the top, following a ragged line of small bushes.
He stopped suddenly and flattened himself on the ground, gesturing for Nina to do the same. She heard the raucous sound of an engine.
‘Quad bike,’ said Chase, warily raising his head. Nina peered through the bushes. About a hundred yards ahead, she saw a man in desert camouflage bounding through the dunes on a fat-tyred little Kawasaki 4x4. A rifle was slung over his back. ‘He’s running a patrol - there’re more tracks on the ground. That must be their perimeter.’
Nina looked past him to the dig site. They were now about half a mile from its centre, close enough to make out the rattle and roar of the machines. ‘Eddie, give me the binoculars.’
She focused first on the trenches, seeing the remains of buildings at the bottom. Even through the encrustation of sand and soil, the similarity to the underwater ruin in the Java Sea was clear: the same curved walls, the same large, carefully placed bricks.
But her thrill of recognition was immediately blown away by her horror at what was being done to the ruins. The excavators weren’t merely clearing the dirt around them - they were ripping them apart. Even as she watched, another toothed steel bucket smashed one of the walls. As the machine pulled back, men came in to continue the destruction by hand.
‘Jesus,’ she hissed. ‘They’re just wrecking everything. They must be looking for something specific . . . and they don’t care what they destroy to find it.’ Panning across the site, she suddenly stopped when she saw an unmistakable figure standing at the edge of a trench. ‘Son of a bitch!’
‘What?’ Chase asked.
‘It’s Ribbsley!’ Dressed in a white suit and a Panama hat, the Cambridge professor was sipping from a plastic water bottle as he gazed at the devastation below. ‘The guy in white - that bastard’s overseeing the whole thing! And I led him right to it by telling him about the Atlantean numbers on the tablet.’ She let out a frustrated growl.
‘It’s not your fault,’ Chase assured her. ‘You didn’t know he was working for these arseholes.’
‘But I shouldn’t have trusted anyone, not after what happened. Shit!’ She returned the binoculars to him. ‘That’s archaeology by bulldozer, not anything I’ve ever done.’
‘Ay up,’ said Chase, finding the figure in white, then examining the men standing with him. ‘Vogler’s there too. Take a gander.’ Nina peered through the lenses once more. ‘The blond guy, right of your mate the Man from Del Monte. That’s him.’
She saw a man in desert camouflage, wearing sunglasses. He seemed to be about Chase’s age, mid-thirties. Two other men, similarly dressed, also stood nearby. They were both older than Vogler, one olive-skinned with cropped black wavy hair and a cigar in his mouth, the other goateed and apparently Middle Eastern, wearing a black military beret. ‘Who are the other guys?’
‘Dunno, but I’m guessing they’re in charge. They’re not getting their hands dirty.’
‘What are we going to do?’ Nina asked. ‘They beat us to the site. And the way they’re working, there won’t be anything left by the time they leave.’
‘Then we’ll have to get in there before they finish.’
‘Y’know, I think the guys with guns might have something to say about that.’
‘If they catch us. I think I can get us in there without being seen.’
‘And then what?’
He grinned. ‘What do you think? We’re going to find whatever it is they’re after. Before they do.’
Nina had expected the digging to stop at sunset. But it continued, glaring floodlights on poles casting a stark light over the excavators as they continued tearing open the ground. From the amount of earth that had been cleared since she and Chase arrived, she estimated that the dig had been going for at least a couple of days. Ribbsley and the Covenant had assembled their operation even more quickly than they had - and put vastly more resources behind it.
Lurking in the bushes, Nina and Chase observed the Covenant’s pattern of activities. There were always two men on quad bikes circling the perimeter, coming close to their position at one extreme and going right up to the edge of the cliffs at the other. It took slightly under two minutes for each man to complete half an orbit; two minutes to find a way into the site without being seen.
The sound of digging suddenly stopped. Nina saw some of the excavators pulling back. She took the binoculars. Another structure had been partly exposed at the end of the trench; one of the scoops had knocked a hole in the curved wall. A man shone a torch into it, then clambered through. ‘They’ve found something,’ she said.
‘Must be important,’ said Chase, seeing the other machinery stop. ‘Everyone’s downed tools.’
Nina kept watching. After a minute, the man emerged and climbed a ladder out of the trench, hurrying across the site to be met by Vogler and the two other leaders of the group. Some animated discussion followed, and then the trio went to the Winnebago. She had seen Ribbsley retreat to it earlier; he emerged again . . . but not alone. ‘Looks like Ribbsley’s got a girlfriend.’
A woman with short, spiky blond hair had also emerged from the RV, standing beside the professor with her back to Nina. A moment later, someone else entered her field of vision - a hard-faced, white-haired man. Unlike the other members of the Covenant, who all wore desert camouflage, he was dressed in nondescript civilian khakis. ‘And there’s someone else, some guy with white hair.’ There was something vaguely familiar about him, but she couldn’t place what.
‘Let me see.’ Chase took a closer look through the binoculars. ‘She’s got a nice arse, whoever she is.’
‘Eddie!’
‘What? She does. Huh, Whitey doesn’t think so, though. He’s pretty pissed off, telling her to get back inside.’
Nina looked at Chase, surprised. ‘You can lip-read?’
‘A little bit. It’s handy when someone’s trying to tell you something while you’re being shot at.’ He tried to make out Ribbsley’s reply, but the brim of the Panama hat covered most of his face. ‘Looks like Ribbsley’s arguing with him.’ He looked briefly over at Vogler and his two companions. ‘Vogler’s saying . . . something about not wasting time, they need to . . . I think he said “translate the find”.’
Nina’s heart jumped. ‘They’ve found another artefact.’ She glared at the white-suited figure. ‘That son of a bitch lied to me. He knew what the language on the tablet was - he was probably already translating it when I spoke to him. All he needed to find this place was the numerical system.’
Chase watched as the white-haired man took out a pair of handcuffs. The woman raised her hands in protest. His expression darkened - then he lunged forward and punched her hard in the stomach. She dropped to her knees. Before she could recover, the man roughly yanked up her arms to cuff them behind her back.
Chase’s hands tightened on the binoculars. ‘The bastard just hit her,’ he growled as the blonde was dragged upright. Ribbsley was also angry - but not enough to intervene. Chase looked back at the trio. Vogler had an expression of mild distaste, while the cigar-smoking man’s face was carefully neutral. The bearded Arab, on the other hand, wasn’t bothering to conceal a cruel smirk. ‘And none of the others are trying to stop him. Fuckers.’ Half dragging the struggling woman back to the Winnebago, the white-haired man slammed her against the side of the vehicle before entering it and pulling her after him.
Ribbsley said something to Vogler, obviously complaining about his companion’s treatment. He received no sympathy, the Swiss man gesturing towards the newly uncovered structure. Trying to salvage some degree of authority, Ribbsley strode past Vogler, waving arrogantly for the others to follow.
Nina saw the white-haired man emerge from the Winnebago and go after the others. The blonde woman remained inside. ‘I’ve got to see what they’ve found. Once Ribbsley’s translated it, I don’t think they’ll leave it intact.’
Chase searched
for the quad bike riders, seeing one of them coming into view off to the right. ‘Soon as this guy goes past, follow me down to that rock. Keep as low as you can.’ They waited as the rider continued his circuit. ‘Okay, go!’
He slithered quickly out from the bush. Nina followed more awkwardly, crawling in his wake as fast as she could. They dropped into a shallow, dusty ditch where Chase rose to a crouch, scurrying along until he reached another tangle of bushes. He popped his head up to check the way was clear, then shoved through them, snapping off a large branch to make Nina’s passage easier.
‘Okay, keep crawling,’ he said as he dropped and headed for the boulder, Nina following. ‘If I go “Hssst!” then drop flat and don’t move until I say - or someone starts shooting at us.’
Nina didn’t like the sound of that - but she liked the rising noise of the second quad bike even less. The rock loomed ahead, a ragged crescent lit from one side by spill from the floodlights.
She looked to the right. The quad bike’s headlight came into view, jolting over the sandy ground. Getting closer.
Chase was almost at the rock. Nina scrambled after him. Plants scratched her face as she brushed past them. The headlight grew brighter.
He would see them at any moment—
‘Hssst!’
Nina dropped flat. The headlight was coming straight at her. It got closer, closer, the engine a strident roar . . .
The Kawasaki veered away to pass on the other side of the boulder.
‘Roll!’ Chase ordered.
She did, plants crunching under her. Chase did the same, rolling round the rock after her. The quad bike’s rear lights cast an unreal glow over the ground; he stopped inside the boulder’s shadow, waiting until the red light faded before moving.
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