by Rob Jones
Hawke and Scarlet shared a glance. “Yeah... about that.”
“What?”
“When we arrived in Athens we split into two groups,” Scarlet explained. “Joe and I went to the museum, while our friends came here.”
“So today you rifle through my office, shoot at me in the museum and now as if that were not all bad enough you have people break into my apartment and go through my personal belongings? You break into my computer!”
The old woman began talking again, this time much calmer, steadied by the professor’s reassuring hands on her arms.
Demetriou turned to Hawke and Scarlet, confused. “She says three people were taken away at gunpoint. I’m sorry – these must be your friends.”
Hawke sighed. Scarlet surveyed the street for anything that might offer them a lead.
The woman spoke once more and handed Demetriou a cell phone.
“It’s Lea’s.” Hawke took the phone. “I recognize the cover.”
He flipped the screensaver off to see a picture of Lea with a gun to her head. She was trying to look unfazed, but Hawke saw the same look in her eyes that he’d seen that night in New York when she started to talk about her past.
“That picture was taken up there in my study!” Demetriou said, suddenly much more nervous than usual. “I recognize my books...”
Scarlet stepped away to make a phone call, and returned a few moments later: “All right – they traced the origin of the call. They tried to mask it but this is the location.”
“Good work, Cairo,” Hawke said. “What are the coordinates?”
He typed them into his phone as she read them out, the two of them standing together, working together just like old times. “Well, that’s unexpected!” he said.
“What is it? They’re not in bloody Antarctica or something are they?”
“No, according to these coordinates, they’re in the middle of the Ionian Sea. Must be a boat.”
“You think?” Scarlet said. “It could be Zaugg’s secret underwater base.”
Hawke glanced at her and offered a fake smile. “The cheeky bastard’s holding them on a boat.”
“I’ll get on to Eden and find out if he knows anything else,” Scarlet said, putting the phone to her ear.
“So what does it all mean?” Demetriou asked, walking his neighbor to her door and reassuring her it was all over.
“It means we have to get my friends back before those turdwipes hurt them.”
“Sorry, but what is a turdwipe?”
“Just an expression, professor. I wouldn’t use it at an academic conference or anything like that if I were you.”
Inside Demetriou’s apartment, the professor asked to see the golden arcs again.
“I think there is more to this than the riddle,” he said, turning over the two halves in his hand.
“What do you mean?” Hawke asked.
“The riddle is a problem in itself - Beneath the Highest City, Where The Samian’s Sacred Work Shall Guide – The Kingdom Of The Eldest Is Where What You Seek Doth Hide – I don’t know what this means yet, not fully at least – but look at the way the golden arc fits together to form a perfect disc.”
Demetriou placed the two pieces together, forming a whole. “If you look closely, the two halves of the sun wheel in the center align to form a kind of circular ridge, and the cross inside it is raised from the base – here, look closely at it – also please note the outer edge is made of polished ivory, elephant’s I should imagine.”
Hawke took the golden fragments in his hands and Scarlet peered over his shoulder as he pushed them together.
“I see what you mean,” he said, “but what’s the significance?”
Demetriou shook his head doubtfully, as if he were unsure of his next words. “It’s making me think of a particular book in Homer’s The Odyssey, where Odysseus hides his magnificent treasure from the world in his great storeroom. In that story, Penelope takes a key with an ivory handle and uses it to open the door to Odysseus’s storeroom – the place where he stored his gold and iron.”
“You think this is some kind of key, don't you?”
“I do.”
“You mean not only is it telling us the way to Poseidon’s tomb, but it’s also the key to gain entry once we get there?” asked Scarlet.
“Exactly!” Demetriou’s eyes flashed as he stared at the golden arcs in Hawke’s hands. “I think it is not really a simple golden disc, but a key disguised as one. It is a key! A key to the legendary vault of Poseidon.”
“And all we have to do is work out where in the entire world it is,” Hawke said skeptically.
“This cannot be so hard,” said Demetriou dismissively. “It must surely be in Greece, and even then we can narrow it down again – let me look at that riddle once more.”
Hawke handed him what they now knew was a key, and took a deep breath as the professor took it in his hands and ran his fingers over the ancient inscription.
“Ah – the kingdom of the eldest!” Demetriou said, rising from his chair and pacing excitedly up and down his study.
“What about it?” asked Scarlet. “You know what it means?”
“Possibly. I’ve been thinking about this part of the riddle since we left the museum.” He reached for a book on one of his shelves and opened it on his desk at a certain page. “Look here – you will see that Poseidon had two immortal brothers, Zeus and Hades.”
“And?”
“And each was given control of part of the world by their father, the mighty Kronos, the leader of all the Titans. Zeus was given dominion over the sky, Poseidon, as we all know, power over the oceans, and Hades was made god of the underworld.”
“Ryan was talking about this earlier,” Hawke said. “Kronos is the aftershave guy.”
“I’m sorry?” Demetriou looked confused.
“Ignore him,” Scarlet said. “It’s the best way.”
“Anyway,” Demetriou continued, “Hades was the eldest of the three. I think the kingdom of the eldest refers to the underworld.”
“Oh, excellent,” Hawke said. “We’re literally going to hell.”
“No, well...” Demetriou searched for the English words. “I think we can take it as meaning simply underground – that when it says The Kingdom Of The Eldest Is Where What You Seek Doth Hide, it really means that the vault of Poseidon is underground.”
Hawke sighed. “I didn't think it would be in the sky, professor.”
“No, of course not, but Greece is famous for its tunnels and caves. If you ask me, then this riddle is telling us the vault is in a cave complex somewhere.”
“All right, we’re getting somewhere,” said Scarlet. “What about the rest of the riddle?”
Demetriou returned his eyes to what he now believed was a key. Beneath the Highest City, Where The Samian’s Sacred Work Shall Guide – The Kingdom Of The Eldest Is Where What You Seek Doth Hide. “Perhaps this reference to the highest city – the acropolis – refers to the acropolis here in Athens – I don't know! But if it does, then maybe the Hades reference means beneath it. There is a tunnel network deep beneath the Parthenon – I know this much.”
Hawke looked uneasy. “It’s just a stab in the dark, prof.”
“I’m sorry?”
Scarlet’s eyes flicked from Hawke to the professor. “He means you’re inference is tenuous.”
“I don't think so! Just look at the words, they speak for themselves.”
“You’re not looking at all of the words though,” Hawke said. “We’ve worked out the bit about the highest city, and the kingdom of the eldest, but what about the other bit – the section about the Samian’s sacred work?”
Demetriou sighed deeply, obviously deflated. “I know, this bit I do not understand.”
“And that bit could lead us somewhere totally different. Without understanding the whole riddle we would just be on a wild goose chase.”
“So get your thinking cap on, professor,” Scarlet said. “Meanwhile, I
think we need to talk about Zaugg’s yacht and just what we’re going to do about getting our friends back.”
Hawke agreed, and they both starting making phone calls. Hawke had a powerful new contact in the form of Sir Richard Eden and no doubt Cairo Sloane could trawl her own urban underworld in search of assistance.
As they made their calls, Hawke noticed that once or twice his old SAS rival had caught his eye and kept the contact with him just a second too long than was normal.
He hadn’t seen her for so many years it was nice to be around an old friend, but to describe Scarlet Sloane as unpredictable was a gross understatement. Damaged goods was another phrase that sprang to mind. He hoped she wasn’t harboring any feelings for him.
Hawke first tried Eden but the line was blocked so he put through a call to his former commanding officer, the resourceful Olivia Hart.
He had worked under her when he was a sergeant and she was a lieutenant in the Royal Marines, but then she had her transfer request cleared and moved across to the Royal Navy. These days Olivia Hart was in the top brass and ran a highly covert sub-unit of the SBS referred to only as V Squadron.
“Not heard from you in a while,” Hart said.
“You love me really.”
“Seriously, Hawke. It’s been too long.”
“What can I say?”
“That you only call people up when you need to use them?”
“Don't be like that, Commander.”
“It’s Commodore now. I got promoted again.”
“You were always very good at that, as I recall.”
There was a pause. “What do you want, Joe?”
Her use of his first name put him at ease. “An early retirement in the Caribbean with my own private villa and an endless supply of banana daiquiries. How about you?”
“I’m a busy woman, Hawke.”
Back to Hawke, but he knew she was smiling.
“Listen, Olivia, I need some help.”
As he spoke, he watched Scarlet make her calls and chat into the phone, tracing her finger along the back of the sofa as she paced gently behind it, or twiddling her finger in Demetriou’s spider plant. Whoever she was speaking to she knew very well. Knowing her, she’d probably slept with whoever it was. Scarlet Sloane could be like that.
Now she was looking at him again, and then came that smile of hers. For a moment he felt something for her, but then he remembered who he was looking at. Cairo Sloane treated men in roughly the same way cats treat mice.
They ended their phone calls and looked at each other.
“All sorted,” they both said in unison, and offered each other a tentative smile.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
Lea and the others watched silently as someone rattled the lock of the hold door. Moments later the door swung open to reveal Baumann and two more thugs standing in the light and holding Uzis.
“It’s time,” Baumann said.
Lea’s eyes widened as she realized what he was talking about. Zaugg was going to hold good to his word and start executing them.
“Untie them!” he ordered. One of the men scuttled forward and cut off the cable-ties which were securing them to the inside of the hull.
“Now get up!” he shouted.
“What are they doing, Lea?” Ryan asked.
“They’re going to kill us,” Sophie said, her voice soft in the semi-darkness of the hold.
“I can’t believe this is happening,” said Ryan. “I haven’t even finished my Big Bang boxset. They can't kill me!”
“Believe it,” said Sophie. “It's the only way you have any hope of surviving.”
The men chatted casually in Swiss-German as they walked them through the yacht to the front deck, submachine gun muzzles jabbing in the smalls of their backs.
“Ouch!” Sophie said, doubling over.
“What’s the matter?” said Lea, concerned.
“My stomach – it’s... ouch!”
“Was ist das Problem?” hissed Baumann. “Move!”
Sophie fell to her knees clutching tightly at her sides. She began to sob.
Baumann sighed and flicked his cigarette over the side of the yacht. “I count to five and you get up, or I shoot you where you kneel. One.”
“I can't – it’s the pain, my baby...”
The other man looked at Baumann concerned. He shouldered his submachine gun and reached down to help Sophie.
In a flash she spun around, tiger-punched him the throat and stabbed him in the neck with the knife she had stolen from Zaugg’s table.
Without a pause she snatched his HK416 in one fluid movement and as part of the same action she continued spinning around. She fired a savage burst of fire from the submachine gun and struck the third man with a line of bullets from his groin to his shoulder. He dropped his gun and crashed over the side of the boat.
Baumann’s commando training kicked in immediately as he instinctively dived for cover behind a lifeboat, but the other man was slower, and Sophie’s bullets tore a line of holes in his chest and pummelled him over the rail into the sea below.
Half a second later, Sophie snatched the first man’s gun from the deck and tossed it to Lea, who straight away checked it was loaded and raised it ready to fire.
“Lea, behind you!” Sophie gasped as two more men, also armed with submachine guns, appeared at the top of the stairs and began firing bursts in formation as they snaked their way down to the lower deck.
Lea spun around, gun raised. She aimed and fired. Her single shot struck the leading man in the throat and the force of it spun him around in a shower of arterial blood which sprayed up the side of the white yacht. He tottered over the rail and crashed into the top of the foulweather gear locker with a sickening crunch.
Sophie fired at the man above him and hit him in the chest. He fell forwards, head-over-heels down the stairs. She turned and fired a burst above Baumann’s head, keeping him pinned down behind the lifeboat.
Lea ran to the dead man and snatched up his submachine gun, a Heckler & Koch 416 and a pistol.
“This should come in handy!” she said, shouldering it and throwing Ryan the pistol. “Safety’s on, Ryan. If you’re in a corner at least try and look like you know how it works.”
Sophie nodded to the rear of the boat. “We should go that way,” she said. “We know Zaugg likes to kill his victims on the front deck.”
Lea remembered the look on Grasso’s face when he finally realized he was going to die, but then she had a better idea.
“No, we need to find the engine room. If we can cripple this boat Zaugg will be a sitting duck.”
“Almost literally,” Ryan said, smiling for the first time since Baumann had dragged him out of the hold.
A rasping, crackling sound followed by a short howl of feedback emanated above their heads. Lea looked up and saw one of the many loudhailers dotted around the superyacht. Seconds later a guttural voice announced something in German to the crew.
“What did it say?” Lea asked Ryan.
He easily translated it and gave them the bad news.
“Just put it this way, entkommen means escaped and Töten Sie means kill them.”
“That’s just plain arsing fantastic,” Lea said, her mind racing with options. Then a loud siren started honking all over the yacht.
“In here!” Sophie said, opening a door to the lower decks. Inside they found a fire safety notice and a map of the yacht.
“The engine room is on the bottom deck in the center!” Ryan said, speed-reading the German.
“It won’t take them long to realize where we are,” Lea said. “Let’s go.”
They sprinted along a plush corridor lined with expensive-looking suites, and reached another staircase, this time leading down below decks.
Shots rang out from the bottom of the staircase, and Lea peered carefully over the banister to see several armed guards making their way up the carpeted steps. Seconds later the deck was crawling with Zaugg’s men.
&nbs
p; Pinned down in the corridor, with no cover except a heavy oak case full of antique books and manuscripts, Lea unleashed a savage volley of fire from the muzzle of the HK416, spraying polymer-case subsonic bullets across Zaugg’s pristine deco murals. Dusty explosions of atomized hardwood blew into the air like volcanic dust.
It had been a while since she had fired a gas system carbine and she was once again struck by the accuracy of it, thanks to a combo of the cold hammer forged 10.4 inch barrel and the tapered bore. Hell, I like this thing! she thought.
Ryan screamed and covered his head with an encyclopaedia for protection. He didn’t look as fazed as he was when Vetsch was trying to kill them back in New York, so he must be getting used to it, she thought.
Now Ryan was scrambling toward Sophie who was providing cover with her pistol, and then the two of them crawled back along the carpet through the dust and destruction of the firefight, as Lea in turn covered them.
Inside one of the rooms Ryan spotted something that belonged to him. “Hey! That’s my sodding MacBook!” He ran inside and snatched it up off the table, wrenching out the wires that had been used to connect it to another computer, now long-gone. “Bastards have been copying my hard disk.”
Back in the corridor, the fighting continued. Ryan now had his MacBook case slung over his back, and it took a couple of rounds which ricocheted off and landed with a grim thumping sound into the ceiling above him.
“Get that laptop out of here!” Lea shouted. “We’ll need it to find the tomb!”
“Some concern for me might be nice!” shouted Ryan. “And it’s a MacBook!”
“Get lost, Ryan,” Lea said, “and I mean that literally and in the best possible taste – Sophie, go with him to the engine room and try to stop this bloody boat! Then try and find somewhere to hide until Joe turns up.”
“If Joe turns up,” said Sophie doubtfully.
Lea saw them safely around the corner at the end of the corridor, and turned to see one of the guards struggling with a jammed weapon. A second later she planted a firm double-tap in his forehead and took him out of the equation forever. She was beginning to think they were getting on top of things.
