The Vault of Poseidon (Joe Hawke Book 1)

by Rob Jones

  Ryan flounced up from the MacBook and stormed into the kitchen, muttering to himself. He made no secret of his displeasure by slamming cupboard doors and cursing as he prepared the coffee.

  Across the room, Sophie sat in the low light and started to talk.

  “Paris knows Hugo Zaugg is up to something, but we also know how limited our understanding of him and his plans are. I have been cleared to make contact with you and ask if we can work together. My government has grave concerns about why Zaugg is so keen on finding the vault of Poseidon...”

  Hawke and Lea shared a look at the mention of the Greek god. How much did other governments know about this? What were they keeping secret from the public?

  “...and more particularly about what he might find inside it. And so when we detected your chatter – the buzzwords you used – I was put on your tail and so here I am. That is my story. What about yours?”

  The others looked at each other for a moment. Hawke shrugged his shoulders and sighed. “Here,” he said, handing her the folder. “As if my day could get any weirder than living Greek gods and trident superweapons. Knock yourself out.”

  “What is it?” she asked.

  Hawke said: “It’s a folder containing the hitlist of Kaspar Vetsch. You obviously know him from what you said when you made your introduction.”

  “Somewhat melodramatic introduction as well,” Scarlet sighed, raising an eyebrow.

  “Of course we know Vestch. All the security services know him, and Baumann too. They are both thugs, but Baumann is more strategic shall we say, and Vetsch was more tactical.”

  “In that folder is a list of all his hits, or what we presume to be his hits as they’re all crossed through with red pen.”

  “This is true,” Sophie said, pointing at one of the files. “This man is Bernard Dupont, a big hitter in the Marseille underworld – crack cocaine, prostitution – you name it. Last week he was found dead in his apartment, shot through the heart.”

  Hawke frowned. “Sounds like Vetsch. If you look at the back you’ll see a file with a picture that hasn’t been crossed out yet. His name is Yannis Demetriou and he works in Athens as a professor of classical antiquities. We think he was Vetsch’s next job.”

  Lea spoke next. “He was probably going to kidnap him and torture him for information relating to the tomb. They did the same thing with an English professor called Lucy Fleetwood. They shot her through the heart and killed her.”

  “He was an absolute pyscho,” Ryan said, arriving at the table and giving everyone an unimpressed look as he handed them the coffee mugs.

  “If you think he was a psycho, you need to stay away from Heinrich Baumann,” Sophie said, sipping the hot coffee. She peered into the cup and frowned.

  “Don’t blame me,” said Ryan. “It was all he had, and sorry, Joe – but no madeleines. I did find a packet of macaroons, so you can try your luck on those. They’re six months out of date.”

  “It’s tempting, but no thanks.”

  “I’m going to have one,” Ryan said, pulling the packet off the tray.

  Hawke slurped his coffee. “Damn that’s hot, Rupert.”

  “An inevitable consequence of having boiling water in it.”

  “Didn’t you say the biscuits were six months old?” Hawke asked as he watched Ryan munching through one.

  “That’s nothing to him,” Lea said. “You should see the fridge in his flat. They’ll need to irradiate it before they dump it.”

  Ryan laughed. “It’s not that bad, Lea.”

  “Nonsense – there’s more culture in there than Geneva.”

  “You’re so funny,” said Ryan.

  Hawke turned to Lea. “Any luck with Demetriou’s address?”

  “Not really, just his phone number at the university but it’s too late for him to be at work now.”

  “We need to get our arses to Athens,” Hawke said, finishing his coffee with a single gulp and setting the cup down on the table with a hefty smack. “We know the vase with the second half of the riddle is there and now we know Zaugg is somehow on the trail too because he was about to set Vetsch on Demetriou. He won’t stop until he gets what he wants and that means Demetriou is in grave danger.”

  “How can we get there this time of night?” Ryan said.

  “Leave that to me,” Sophie said.

  “So let's do it then,” said Hawke.

  “We’re making progress!” Ryan said.

  Hawke looked at him doubtfully. “I think the war with Zaugg is just about to start.”

  On the way to the airport, Hawke sent a text to Nightingale.

  *

  “I think that’s our ride,” Hawke said, pointing to a long, white jet. Some men in boiler suits were uncoupling a fuelling nozzle from its wing while the captain was conducting the pre-flight inspection of the aircraft, checking for fluid leaks and casting an expert eye over the pitot tubes.

  The plane was a Cessna Citation X, a long-range jet with the distinction of being the fastest civilian aircraft on earth. How Sophie had obtained one at such short notice had not gone unquestioned by Lea, but she decided to leave it for later.

  The main entry door at the front of the cabin featured an integral three-step airstair design and as they climbed up them the solid titanium blades of the twin Rolls Royce engines began to whir to life.

  Inside, to the left, the first officer was beginning the flight plans and to the right was the passenger cabin. Eight white leather seats in dim blue lighting and a walnut-veneer drinks cabinet. The co-pilot pushed a button and all of the porthole covers gently opened.

  They strapped in and the engines powered up. A few moments later they were racing from the ground, gear up. The Citation banked right hard and as the city lights of Geneva slipped away behind the aircraft, it straightened up and head southwest to Athens, soaring high above the clouds and racing toward the rising sun.

  Lea Donovan drifted in and out of her nightmares as she watched glimpses of the Adriatic Sea through breaks in the cumulus far below. She felt a terrible sense of foreboding.

  She looked over her shoulder and saw that Hawke was asleep. He looked younger now, taken away from reality by the soft glow of unconsciousness. She could see what his wife must have seen in him, but wondered whether a man like Joe Hawke could ever be happy in a real relationship.

  He had mentioned Liz, but never discussed anything about her except the most casual detail, and then there was this mysterious woman in New York whom he claimed he knew only by her former CIA codename – Nightingale.

  Even though she was more than a little intrigued by this strange American woman with no real identity, she would never give Joe Hawke the satisfaction of asking anything more about her than he had already volunteered. But that didn’t stop her wondering if his story about not knowing her was a lie and whether they had ever slept together.

  Next to Hawke was Ryan, her former husband – now a disillusioned dropout and hacker extraordinaire, who used his unfathomable computer skills to keep the wolf from the door. He was several years younger than her and the divorce had hit him like a truck, throwing him off the rails in a big way. Before that he was different somehow, more out-going and confident, but after their marriage collapsed he had changed. It was then he turned inwards and started hacking.

  Lea once again blamed herself for everything that had happened between them and slowly fell asleep.

  *

  Hawke woke from his sleep and stared out the window of the luxury jet, but all he saw was Liz’s kind, loving face. She had not found it easy to adjust when he moved from the commandos to the SBS. The demands were different, and so were the hours.

  Worse, most of the missions he went on had secret or top secret security classifications so he couldn’t talk to her about them, which made it hard on both of them as the years wore on.

  But she loved him enough to marry him, and they were married in a small church on the southern English coast. They could never have known what would unfol
d twenty-four hours later in Vietnam.

  When everything changed.

  Hawke squeezed the soft leather armrest of his seat on board the Citation and nearly tore the stuffing out. His attention snapped back to reality. Somewhere forty thousand feet below them was the Adriatic Sea. Above a thin layer of cirrostratus clouds the light of the moon reflected back out into space, where thousands of bright stars sparkled more brightly than anything he had seen from the ground.

  He turned back to Lea to see she was falling asleep. What was she thinking about, he wondered? Somewhere behind them he heard Ryan begging Scarlet for his MacBook back. Sophie was up front talking to the pilots.

  Then his iPhone rang.

  Nightingale.

  “N, hi.”

  “Buenos noches, Joe.”

  “You’re calling to teach me Spanish?”

  “I’m calling because I’ve got that info you requested on your new friend.”

  “I didn’t realize you could phone me on the plane,” he said.

  He heard her sigh. “Sure,” she said. “High-capacity ka-band satellites have been in operation on commercial jets for ages. You can have phone calls, internet, whatever you like.”

  Hawke got up from his seat and smiled at Lea, mouthing the word Nightingale as he walked past her to the rear of the plane. Lea rolled her eyes and nestled into her seat to go to sleep.

  Hawke leaned against the toilet door.

  “She has an interesting past. Last name Durand, born 29th June 1985, making her thirty years old. Former officer with the Direction générale de la sécurité extérieure, which is the French version of CIA or MI6.”

  “I know all this – I’m not a complete idiot.”

  “You’re right, I’m sorry. You’re only partially an idiot.”

  “We seem to be veering from the point…”

  “Ah yes – Durand. She worked for DGSE for ten years, ending up a very senior rank, but then she left and I’ll be damned if I can find where.”

  “She left the DGSE? When exactly?”

  “About six months ago.”

  “So she’s lying to us.”

  Hawke thought for a few moments, and frowned. “She never said anything to me about this – in fact she told us she’d been cleared by the DGSE to work with us.”

  “So maybe she’s working alone.”

  “No way. She got us a private jet with no notice at all. She’s working for someone powerful and now we know it’s not the DGSE. Anything else?”

  “Not really – both her parents are French, all from Marseille in the south – her address is Rue de Berceau in La Mulatière, and not much else, except – wait a minute.”

  “What have you found?”

  There was a long pause.

  “It could be nothing, but given what you’re doing right now it could be relevant. I just took a look at her foreign missions that she undertook for the DGSE before quitting and it looks like she volunteered to work jobs in Switzerland and Greece. Like I said, it could be nothing, but then again…”

  “It could hardly be a coincidence that those places are all related in some way to the search for Poseidon’s tomb.”

  “Just what I was thinking – from Zaugg’s pad in Switzerland, all the way to Athens, it matches up perfectly.”

  “You’re not just a pretty face, N,” Hawke said, deciding to keep the information she had just given him to himself for now. “Why won’t you tell me your name?”

  “Ah! This again…”

  “We could have dinner. I promise I won’t bring my Glock.”

  “What sort of use would you be without that?”

  “You might be surprised. I’m serious. Tell me your name.”

  “How are you going to stop Zaugg, Joe?”

  “You’re changing the subject.”

  “Just interested.”

  Hawke sighed.

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  Athens

  The journey from the airport into Athens was laborious and time-consuming, but it was warmer than Geneva and Lea was able to wind down the window of the cab and enjoyed the breeze until Ryan complained about the engine fumes. She knew what Hawke’s response would be but he was on his way to the museum with Scarlet Sloane.

  The taxi driver carelessly negotiated the gridlocked traffic and a couple of student demonstrations, slowly twisting into the ancient city and by the time they arrived at Demetriou’s apartment the sun was high and it almost felt like a summer’s day. She paid the driver and turned to look up at the white stucco façade of the apartment block. A few pots of red geraniums hung from one of the balconies above. It looked peaceful.

  They climbed the steps and rang the bell. No one answered the door, but it took Sophie less than two minutes to break into the hall, and they were inside.

  “This place is awesome!” Ryan said, marvelling at the bookshelves all around the expansive apartment. “There’s his computer,” he said, rubbing his hands together. “Should I?”

  “I see no reason why not,” Lea said. “We know Zaugg has an interest in Demetriou, and we know he’s not answering his phone. There’s no sign of him so either he’s at the museum or maybe Zaugg’s already got to him and we’re behind a step.”

  “So let’s get going,” Sophie said.

  “Agreed. Ryan – you get into the computer and Sophie can watch the door.”

  Lea watched Ryan turn on the computer and connect up the MacBook. Sometimes she wondered what she had ever seen in him, but other times she remembered what it was, and this was one of those times. He was out of his depth, surrounded by ex-military or secret service, in a dangerous environment, and yet he stepped up to the mark and got stuck in.

  “Have you found anything yet?” Sophie asked. “We need to hurry things along.”

  “There’s everything in here – loads of published articles in what look like highly respected peer-reviewed journals to me – all on subjects like the origins of Persian pottery and even one here on the early Roman oil trade.”

  “She means anything of use to us today, Ryan.”

  “Oh, sorry. Yes, I think so. I’m in a private folder – pretty rudimentary security, actually, which took me less than a minute to crack – anyway, some of it looks like his original research – all the stuff you might expect – ancient Greece, antiquities, artifacts of various kinds and also a pile of stuff on Ancient Greek – the language itself.”

  “That must be why Zaugg’s so keen to get his hands on him,” Lea said.

  “You think?” Sophie said sarcastically.

  Lea ignored it and leaned over Ryan’s shoulder, squinting at the Greek letters on the screen, unintelligible to her. She leaned closer and touched the screen gently with her index finger. “What’s that there – the one marked Fabula – it’s written in English.”

  “It means fable, or legend in Latin,” Ryan replied.

  “A good place to start then.”

  Ryan clicked open the file.

  “Shit – it’s all written in sodding Latin,” Lea said. “I thought it was going to be in English.”

  “It’s his research into the Poseidon myth,” Ryan said, casually reading the Latin as if it were his own mother tongue.

  “Anything else?” she asked, once again impressed with Ryan’s capacity to hold otherwise useless information in his head.

  “Let’s see…” he said. “It starts off simple enough – positing that Poseidon was more than a mythological figure, and that consequently his trident was also real.”

  “Not sure this is good news or not,” said Lea. She sighed. “We know all this. Isn’t there anything new?”

  “Actually, yes – and this is weird.”

  “What does it say?” Sophie asked. She walked to the window and peered outside into the street.

  Ryan translated. “He writes something here about the number seven having some important part to play in all this – something to do with seven levels.”

  “What’s the significance of the number
seven?” Lea asked, casting a suspicious eye across the room to Sophie.

  Ryan’s eyes crawled over the screen as fast as he could translate the Latin. “From Pythagoras onwards, the ancient Greeks were obsessed with numbers and numerology – and created something called isopsephy, where they attributed numeric value to letters and added them up to induce meaning,” he said.

  “So?”

  “The number seven represented mysticism and magic. Clearly the Ancients knew they had something of terrible power in their grasp and perhaps in deciding to hide it behind seven levels they were obviously hoping to protect themselves from the wrath of the gods – presumably Poseidon himself.”

  “They thought that would protect them?”

  “It’s not so silly,” Ryan said. “Using numbers in a divinatory way or a superstitious way like this was very common then. Even today some people are very superstitious when it comes to numbers – look at the way some people choose lottery numbers. The Ancients believed numbers were sacred, and that they formed a sort of bridge between mortals and the divine.”

  “But does it give us any more clues?” Lea asked.

  “She’s right, Ryan” Sophie said. “We need anything we can get our hands on.”

  Ryan continued to scroll though the chunks of Latin on the screen.

  “Not really – it’s just his thoughts on the subject which are surprisingly rambling, actually, and...” he slowed down and peered closer to the screen. “But this is odd.”

  “What?” Lea and Sophie asked in perfect unison.

  “He’s quoting Homer here, but I don’t recognize it. I’m not altogether up to date with Herodotus but I know my Homer. He’s from a much earlier period, of course.”

  “Of course,” Lea said, smirking.

  “But this isn’t right – Homer never wrote this, I’m convinced of it.”

  “What does it say?” Lea asked, placing her hand on his shoulder. He looked up at her and smiled in return.

  “Well, if my translation is correct it means – is that the ablative or locative declension?”

  “We don’t have time for this, Ryan!” Lea said. “We have to make sure we get ahead of Zaugg. For all we know Demetriou has already told them everything.”