Return to Atlantis: A Novel (25 page)

Not that they made much sense.

“Okay,” said Nina, still turning over what she had learned in her mind, “so this … this Group has some plan in mind that requires the statues—and me—in order to work. Harald Glas was a member of the Group, turned against them, and is now trying to sabotage their plan.”

“By killing you,” said Eddie.

She smiled thinly. “Again, thanks for that. But Takashi was a member of the Group, Stikes gave them the statues, and Sophia … I honestly have no idea how she fits in. You said that in Peru she seemed to be working for the Group—so why was she with a guy who tried to kill me? And then she killed him. So is she with them, against them, or just taking a murder vacation in Italy?”

“Buggered if I know,” he said. “I suppose if we knew what this plan was, it’d help.”

“Takashi said it was about bringing peace and stability
to the world, whatever that means. But I don’t know how the statues would accomplish that.”

“You said something weird happened to you when you put them together,” Eddie reminded her. “Like what?”

“It’s hard to describe. Just that I felt … 
connected
to the world somehow. And that I knew where to find something important. But it’s gone now—it’s hard to remember.”

“The Group probably wants this important thing, then.”

“And Glas and Dalton want to stop them.”

“Which makes them the bad guys, I guess.”

“Stikes is working for the Group,” she reminded him. “And based on past experience, when billionaires start making plans for the entire world I get a bit nervous.” She gazed into her drink. “They knew what would happen when I brought the statues together. Part of that they got from the Brotherhood … but what about the other part? Where did that come from? Popadopoulos said that some governments have their own secret archives, and you said Dalton told you that the Group has influence over governments …” She looked up at her husband. “Maybe that’s how they got the rest of their information.”

“Dalton might know,” Eddie suggested. “I could have another little chat.”

Nina shook her head. “It’s too risky. Hell, you’re taking a huge risk just coming back to New York—back to the States, even. All it takes is one cop to recognize you from a watch list …” She sat up, determination entering her voice. “We’ve got to clear your name—prove that you were acting in self-defense when you killed Kit. Otherwise you’ll be spending the rest of your life running. And I’m not going to let that happen.”

“I like the thought, love,” Eddie said gloomily, “but fuck knows how we’ll do it. We’ve got a video that doesn’t show the important bit, those numbers I found
in Kit’s flat in Delhi that don’t mean anything without solving some puzzle …”

“What did it say again?”

“Something like
and the best of the greatest
. Alderley thinks that if you add the answer to the original number, you’ll get whatever Kit was trying to hide.”

“So all we have to do is figure out
what
Kit thought was the greatest. Or who.”

“He was a Hindu,” suggested Eddie. “Who’s the greatest Hindu god?”

“Shiva, I think. Although actually he’s considered to be one of a triumvirate—Brahma and Vishnu are equally powerful. But …” Another shake of her head. “It’ll probably be something more personal, something only Kit would know. The clue isn’t a riddle—it’s more like an aide-mémoire. The answer must be something he would immediately know, a significant number. A date, a time, an address …”

“A score,” said Eddie quietly.

Nina could tell that he thought he was on to something. “What kind of score?”

“A
cricket
score. Kit was mad keen on cricket, remember? Him and Mac were always banging on about it.” The thought of Kit’s murderous betrayal of the Scot caused a flare of anger inside him, but he suppressed it. “They were once arguing about who was the greatest player of all time—Kit thought it was an Indian guy. Can’t remember his name, though.”

Nina took out her iPhone. “Well, that’s why we have the Internet. Let’s have a look …”

A brief search produced an answer. “Sachin Tendulkar,” Eddie read. “Best score in a test match, two hundred and forty-eight runs. So if we add two hundred and forty-eight to the number I found …” He took the phone from her and switched to its calculator, tapping in a figure.

Nina looked at the screen. “You remember the number?”

“Something that important, I burned it into my fucking mind. Okay, so add two hundred and forty-eight …”

“The last three numbers are six-zero-nine,” she said before his finger reached the
EQUALS
key.

“Smart-arse.” But she was correct. “Okay, Alderley said it might be a Greek phone number. Let’s give it a try.”

He entered the new number and made the call, switching the phone to speaker. But to their disappointment, the only result was a flat, continuous tone: number unobtainable. “Well, cock,” Eddie muttered.

“Maybe there’s a different score we could have used,” said Nina, taking back the phone.

“No, I don’t think so. Kit thought Tendulkar was the greatest player, and two hundred and forty-eight was his best score. Maybe it isn’t a phone number at all.”

“Then what is it?”

“No idea.” He swilled the last dregs of beer around in his glass before downing them. “Let’s go back to that video for now. Where is it?”

“On my laptop at the UN.”

“Probably not the best idea for me to stroll in and watch it there,” Eddie said with resigned amusement.

“Well, we probably can’t risk going to the apartment either. But we need somewhere private. Who is there in the city that we can trust not to run screaming to the police the moment they see you?” She thought for a moment, then smiled. “I think I know …”

“N
ina?” said Lola as she opened her apartment door. “My God, where’ve you been? We heard what happened in Rome—everyone’s been so worried! Are you okay?”

“Yeah, I’m fine,” Nina replied. She glanced along the corridor to make sure nobody was around. “Listen, there’s a really huge favor I need to ask you, but first, Don isn’t here, is he?”

Lola’s fiancé was a firefighter. “No, he’s working night shifts at the moment.”

“Okay, good. Now, I need you to promise me that you will keep this an absolute secret for now. You can’t tell anyone, not even Don—and definitely not the police. If you think that’s going to be a problem, then don’t worry, I’ll just leave.”

“Nina, it’s me,” Lola said firmly. “You know you can trust me. You saved my life! We Gianettis, we remember that kind of thing.”

Nina smiled. “That’s good to know.” She checked the corridor again, then waved her increasingly intrigued PA back from the door. “Okay,” she called, “come on.”

The stairwell door opened and Eddie poked his head
out before hurrying down the hallway into the apartment. “Hi, Lola,” he said casually as he passed her.

Lola stared openmouthed after him. “Oh, my God. Oh my God!”

“Yeah, yeah, yeah,” said Nina, following Eddie inside and closing the door. “Now you see why you need to keep this quiet?”

“Uh-huh,” Lola said, nodding. She went to Eddie, regarding him with amazement. “Where’ve you been? What have you been doing? How did you get back here without the police catching you?” A more quizzical look. “Why did you grow a beard? It doesn’t suit you.”

“There’s nowt wrong with my beard,” Eddie insisted jokily. “Tchah! Anyway, they don’t give you razors in Zimbabwean prisons.”

Lola’s eyes widened. “You were in—”

“Let’s save the travelogue for later, huh?” Nina cut in. “There’s something more important to deal with first—namely, Eddie’s innocence.” She extracted her MacBook Pro from a bag.

“I
knew
you were innocent!” Lola exclaimed.

“Well, we’ve still got to actually prove it,” Eddie admitted. “But thanks.” He looked down at her baby bump. “So, either the pregnancy’s going well, or you’ve been eating a lot of pies.”

“Eddie!” Nina chided.

Lola giggled. “Both, actually.”

“How far along are you now?”

“Seven months.”

“You know if it’s a boy or girl?”

“No, we want that to be a surprise.”

“If it’s a boy, Eddie’s a good name,” he said with a grin before turning to his wife. She had put the laptop on a table and opened it. “You all set there?”

“Nearly,” she replied. “Lola, we need to watch a video. It might help prove Eddie’s innocence, but … you probably won’t want to see what happens in it.”

Lola looked uneasy. “Is it the one Interpol sent you?”
Nina nodded. “Oh. Okay, yeah, I
definitely
don’t want to see it.”

“I’m sorry about this.”

“It’s okay. I’ll be in the bedroom. Or the bathroom. It’s where I seem to spend half my time anyway.” She glared at her belly. “Bad baby! Very bad baby. Stop squishing Mommy’s bladder, okay?” She headed for another room. “If you need me, just shout.”

“Will do,” said Nina as she left. “Wow, Lola’s gonna be a mom. That’s such a weird thought. Exciting, though.”

“We could have tried for one by now if you’d wanted,” Eddie said.

She snorted sarcastically. “Are you kidding? Can you imagine me going through what I have lately if I’d been pregnant?”

“You’d have survived. And so would the baby. I’ve seen pregnant women in war zones who’ve been through Christ knows what, and still gave birth to healthy kids. People are always panicking about every little thing that might go wrong, but the whole pregnancy process is pretty reliable. If it wasn’t, humans would have died out before we even got out of Africa.”

“Thank you, Dr. Chase, ob-gyn. Bet you wouldn’t be so casual if it were
your
baby,” Nina said, giving him a sly smile. “Anyway, this is the video.”

Eddie regarded the screen. It showed a grainy still frame from the Peruvian gas-pumping station, a catwalk with a multitude of pipes and valves beneath it cutting diagonally across the camera’s view. Near the left of the screen, a ladder ran from ground level to the gridwork walkway.

He remembered the scene well. “That’s where I climbed up,” he said, pointing at the ladder. “Kit and Stikes were farther along here”—he indicated a point out of frame—“talking to Sophia.” There was a timecode at the bottom right. “How long before I turn up does it start?”

“Not long.” She tapped the trackpad, and the video started to play. It was immediately clear that the pipeline
monitoring system was not employing the latest technology. The image occasionally flickered with lines of static, looking as though it had originally been recorded on a well-used VHS tape rather than digitally.

The only things that moved for several long seconds were video glitches—until a figure, bent low and creeping stealthily through the shadows, appeared at the left of the frame. “There, that’s me,” said Eddie.

“Yeah, I kinda guessed that,” Nina replied. He made a rude sound.

The Eddie on the screen, carrying a SCAR assault rifle, reached the base of the ladder and began to climb. “There isn’t any sound, is there?” his present-day counterpart asked. Nina shook her head. Past-Eddie cautiously peered over the top of the ladder, watching something offscreen, then made a quick ascent to the walkway and brought up the rifle as he disappeared from view.

“It’s a few minutes before anything else happens,” said Nina. She was about to fast-forward through the recording, but Eddie stopped her. “What?”

“If there’s anything in this that can help me, it has to be in the boring bits everyone skips through. Otherwise someone would have seen it by now.”

“Interpol will have watched the entire thing.”

“I’ve done surveillance work. It’s the most bloody mind-numbing thing imaginable, and it’s easy to miss something, even with other people looking as well. You can go over a tape again and again, and not catch something until the third or fourth time. So let’s keep watching.”

They did so. Apart from video flickers, nothing seemed to happen for over two minutes, and then a wash of light swept over the scene. “That’s me and Macy arriving,” said Nina. “And—”

“And now everything kicks off,” Eddie said as two figures came back into view: himself and Kit, wrestling for control of the SCAR. Staccato flames burst from its barrel as it fired down into the pumping machinery. The pair continued their desperate brawl—then the image
was momentarily wiped out by an explosive flash from below, video afterimages fading to reveal a jet of bright flame blasting out horizontally from a damaged pump.

Both Eddie and Kit had been knocked over by the blast, the Indian landing on top. He landed a couple of blows on Eddie’s head, then finally managed to pry the gun away from him, turning it around to fire—but Eddie kicked it upward as he pulled the trigger, the last bullets searing just over his head.

Even though she had seen it before, Nina still winced. “Jesus, that was close.”

“Feels even closer when you have a gun fired in your fucking face,” said Eddie.

Another explosion flared as a second pump blew apart, starting the chain reaction that would soon consume the entire gas plant. The men on the screen were still fighting, Eddie slamming Kit’s head against a railing—then the section of catwalk on which they were battling suddenly collapsed, tipping like a trapdoor to drop them toward the burning gas jet below. Eddie hit a stanchion and swung for a moment before pulling himself up.

Kit had fallen farther before catching the edge of the catwalk, dangling above the flames near a cluster of pipes. He tried to haul himself higher, but couldn’t get a firm enough grip. Eddie hesitated, then used the stanchions like stepping-stones to get closer.

“I was going to pull him up,” said Eddie. “Honest to God. I needed him alive to find out what the hell was going on.”

“I believe you,” Nina reassured him. On the screen, her husband reached Kit, who had at last managed to find a more secure hold.

Eddie started to bend down, extending his hand—

Then abruptly drove a boot into Kit’s face, sending the Interpol officer plunging into the inferno below.

The sight shocked Nina as much as when she had witnessed it in person. And despite what Eddie had told her,
she still couldn’t see a gun in Kit’s hand. She looked at him questioningly.