The Sacred Vault (4 page)

 

‘Your wife’s calling for you,’ Mac said.

‘Hmm?’

‘Your wife. About five-five, red hair, very pretty, famous archaeologist?’

‘Oh,
that
wife.’ Eddie glanced back, but the people surrounding Grant and Jessica blocked his view. ‘I didn’t hear her.’

‘Trust me, that’s an excuse you’ll only get away with once.’ Mac gave him a wry smile, which faded at the lack of response. ‘Something wrong?’

‘No, nothing.’ said Eddie a little too quickly, looking round the room. Mac raised an eyebrow, but didn’t comment further. ‘Pretty good turnout. Pity not everyone I invited could make it, but I suppose you can’t expect everyone to fly halfway round the world for cheese and pickled onions on sticks.’

‘Yes, a shame,’ Mac agreed. Another smile, this time decidedly cheeky. ‘I was rather hoping to catch up with TD . . .’

Eddie groaned in only partially feigned dismay at the thought of his former commanding officer and the far younger African woman together. ‘Behave yourself, you dirty old sod. Christ, I can’t think what she ever saw in you.’

‘Oh, I imagine things like charm, chivalry, wisdom . . . Perhaps you’ve heard of them.’

‘Tchah! I ought to kick out your tin leg for that.’ He swung his foot at the older man’s prosthetic left limb, stopping an inch short.

‘Well, if you think you need to even the odds . . .’ They both chuckled, Mac raising his glass. ‘Anyway, here’s to a successful marriage, Eddie.’

‘Thanks.’ They clinked glasses.

‘So how’s domesticity treating you so far?’

‘Sort of normal. But we need one of those signs saying how many days it’s been since we last had someone try to blow us up. We’re up to about five months at the moment.’

‘Let’s hope you break your record by a long, long way.’ Behind Eddie, Nina approached, calling his name again. Mac deliberately raised his voice so she would catch it. ‘Although I expect you’ll soon start missing being shot at.’

‘He’d damn well better not,’ said Nina as she reached her husband, taking him by surprise. ‘Didn’t you hear me?’

He shrugged. ‘It’s a bit noisy in here.’

‘So what are you two old warhorses talking about?’

Eddie looked offended. ‘Oi! Less of the “old”.’

‘We were just having a toast to a happy marriage,’ said Mac. Nina beamed at Eddie and put an arm round his waist. ‘And Eddie was also saying how glad he was that so many people made the time to come tonight.’

‘I know,’ she said, looking round at the guests. ‘Isn’t it great? Although I’m a bit disappointed that Peter Alderley didn’t even reply. What did he say when you gave him the invitation?’

Mac blinked. ‘Invitation?’

‘Yeah. I put it in with yours because I didn’t know his address.’

The Scot was still puzzled. ‘I didn’t get an invitation for Peter.’

‘You didn’t . . .’ Nina gave her husband a look of deep suspicion. ‘Eddie? What did you do with Peter’s invitation?’

‘Oh, that,’ Eddie said nonchalantly. ‘It dropped out of the envelope before I licked it. And then it somehow . . . fell down a drain.’

Nina pulled away from him. ‘Eddie! I can’t believe you did that! Especially after everything he’s done at MI6 to help us.’

‘Alderley’s a tosser, and he can’t stand me anyway.’

‘That’s not the point!’

‘Is Eddie causing trouble again?’ said Elizabeth, joining them. ‘Somehow I’m not surprised.’

‘Afraid so,’ Nina sighed.

‘Nan’s getting tired, so it’d be best if she went up to her room,’ Elizabeth told her brother. ‘But she’ll want to say goodnight to you before she goes.’

‘Well, yeah,’ said Eddie, smirking. ‘Since I’m her favourite grandchild, an’ all.’

‘God knows why. But come on over. You too, Nina, so she can have all the family together.’ She led them across the room, adding a sharp aside to Eddie as Nina detoured to put down her glass: ‘Almost.’

‘Right. Weird cousin Derek’s not here, is he?’ said Eddie.

Elizabeth had no intention of giving up. ‘You know exactly who I mean.’

‘Oh, don’t fucking start,’ he muttered.

‘You haven’t spoken to Dad for over twenty years, Eddie. His son’s got married, for God’s sake. I’m not saying you should have some big Hollywood tearful reconciliation in front of everyone—’

‘Good, ’cause
that’s
not going to happen.’

‘—but you could at least phone him.’

Eddie’s face was a cold mask. ‘Why? I’ve got nothing to say to him.’

‘And what if you and Nina have kids? Are they going to grow up never knowing their grandfather? He’s not getting any younger. Nor are you, for that matter.’

‘Tell you what,’ he said, irritation breaking through, ‘how about we end this discussion before it pisses all over, you know, the special day?’

‘Just think about it, Eddie,’ Elizabeth said as they reached Holly and Nan, waiting near the doors.

‘Already have, a long time ago. Hi, Nan!’

‘Come here, Edward!’ said Nan, and he bent to hug her. ‘Oh, my little lambchop. Married again!’ She wagged a finger in mock reproach. ‘I’m still cross that you didn’t invite me to the actual wedding, though.’

‘We didn’t have time, Nan,’ said Eddie as Nina caught up. ‘It was a bit rushed.’

‘Yeah, sorry about that,’ said Nina. ‘You forgive us?’

‘Of course I do,’ said Nan. ‘Come on, let me hug my granddaughter-in-law.’

‘You want me to walk you up to your room, Nan?’ Eddie asked.

She waved a hand at him. ‘Oh, don’t be silly! You should be enjoying your night, both of you. Holly can take me.’

Holly shot a stricken glance towards Grant, from whose company she had just been forcibly removed, promoting her mother to sigh and step in. ‘It’s okay, Nan, I’ll take you. No more champagne,’ she added sternly to Holly.

‘We’re off to San Francisco the day after tomorrow,’ Eddie said to Nan as Elizabeth ushered her to the doors, ‘but we’ll see you again before we go.’

‘It’s been so lovely to see you both,’ said Nan. ‘And I hope you have an absolutely wonderful marriage. In fact, I know you will.’

‘Thank you,’ Nina said. Nan gave them a last wave as Elizabeth escorted her out. More people were lurking outside; news of Grant and Jessica’s attendance had spread through the online social networks. The moment the doors closed again, Holly made a beeline back to Grant’s group, where she found herself in competition with both Jessica and Macy for his attention. Nina turned to Eddie. ‘What were you and Elizabeth talking about?’

‘Nothing important.’

She knew him better than that. ‘Family matters?’

‘Only one part of the family.’

‘Three guesses which?’

‘Like I said, nothing important.’ Keen to change the subject, he gestured across the room. ‘Oh, hey, there’s Rowan.’ He waved him over.

‘Careful, Eddie,’ said Nina teasingly as Rowan approached. ‘He might charm me away from you.’

‘Anyone who takes you away from me’ll regret it,’ Eddie rumbled, before giving the taller man a faintly insincere smile. ‘Hi, Rowan. Glad you could make it.’

‘Glad to be here!’ Rowan replied. ‘Sorry to have monopolised Nina recently.’

‘Yeah, it’ll be good to finally have some time alone with her tonight. That’s if she doesn’t bring a big bloody bundle of work home with her.’

‘Yes, she always has been rather obsessive when it comes to Atlantis, hasn’t she?’ said Rowan. ‘While we were setting up the exhibition, she wouldn’t even take time out for a tour of San Francisco. She’s a real slave-driver.’

‘Tell me about it,’ said Eddie. He grinned at his wife, who was struggling not to rise to the bait as the teasing was turned on her, and attempted a falsetto New York accent. ‘ “Eddie, can you move these boxes? Eddie, can you jam this booby trap? Eddie, can you kill these bad guys?” ’

‘I don’t sound like that,’ Nina objected. She looked at Rowan. ‘Do I?’

He winked at her. ‘Not at all. But I’d just like to say, Eddie, you’re a very lucky man. Congratulations. To both of you - Nina’s lucky charm obviously works for other people too.’

Nina touched her pendant, made from a broken scrap of what had turned out to be an Atlantean artefact discovered on an expedition with her parents as a child. ‘Let’s hope it keeps on doing, huh? I’d like the Treasures of Atlantis exhibition to be a huge success.’

‘It will be - and it won’t have anything to do with luck, Nina. It’ll all be down to you.’

‘And you too.’

‘Thank you.’ Rowan smiled, then kissed her.

‘Oi, oi,’ said Eddie, nudging Nina away from him. He gestured across the room. ‘Want to dance?’

The DJ was playing Ricky Martin’s ‘She Bangs’. ‘This isn’t really tango music.’

‘So, we’ll improvise. Come on.’

He led her to the dance floor. Nina put her arms round his waist. ‘Thanks for doing all this.’

‘Hey, any excuse for a booze-up.’

‘Sentimental as always, huh?’ But she could tell that under his bluff exterior, the broken-nosed, balding Englishman was enjoying the celebration as much as she was.

A
few hours later, the party was over, and Nina and Eddie returned to their apartment on Manhattan’s Upper East Side. ‘God, I’m exhausted,’ said Nina, stifling a yawn as she entered. ‘And there’s still loads to do tomorrow.’ She dropped heavily on to the couch and kicked off her shoes.

‘Well, at least you don’t have to deal with it on your own,’ Eddie said.

She smiled at him. ‘Aw, thanks, honey.’

His tone became sarcastic. ‘I didn’t mean me. I meant your boyfriend, Captain Perfect. He’ll give you a helping hand . . . and try to cop a feel with it.’

‘Oh,
Eddie
! You’re not really jealous of Rowan, are you?’

He grinned, exposing the gap between his front teeth. ‘Don’t be daft. I’m just taking the piss.’ A beat. ‘Mostly.’

‘You don’t have anything to worry about. Rowan and I broke up a long time ago.’ She thought about it for a moment. ‘God, it’s been twelve years. I was only twenty. I can’t believe how much has happened since then.’

‘And how old was he?’

‘Twenty-six.’

‘So he was a cradle-snatcher?’

‘And what does that make you?’ she asked with a smile. ‘You’re the same age as Rowan.’

‘Yeah, but you’re older now. Half the man’s age plus seven years, that’s how old the woman has to be to stop the bloke from being a creepy perv.’

‘He was twenty-six, I was twenty. Do the math.’

He worked it out. ‘Bollocks! Although, hang on,’ he continued as she laughed, ‘how old were you when you
started
going out?’

‘Nineteen.’

‘Ha!’

‘And Rowan was a year younger as well.’

Another few seconds of mental arithmetic. ‘Definitely on the dodginess borderline. Anyway, I still think he’s got his eye on you.’

‘Only as a friend, Eddie.’ Her mood became one of reverie as her husband sat beside her. ‘He was a great friend, actually. He helped me through a really tough part of my life, when my parents died. I honestly don’t know what I would have done without him. Or what I’d be doing now.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘I almost gave up on archaeology. I mean, it got my parents killed - if they hadn’t been obsessed with finding Atlantis, they’d still be alive. I almost dropped out because for a while I didn’t want anything more to do with it. Rowan changed my mind. So I stayed on, got my degree and then my PhD, and, well, here I am.’

Eddie shook his head with a wry expression. ‘Can’t imagine what you’d be doing now if you weren’t an archaeologist.’

‘I dread to think. I once had a summer job in an office and I hated every minute of it. And what about you? Where would you be if you hadn’t met me?’

‘Christ knows. Running around the world getting into trouble, probably.’

‘Oh, so no change there.’

‘Ha fuckin’ ha. I’d still be doing the same kind of work as I was then, though. It’s what I’m best at.’ He looked at a shelf across the room.

Nina followed his gaze. ‘Thinking about Hugo?’ she asked softly. The shelf contained mementos of their pasts; propped against a Cuban pottery figurine of Fidel Castro was a photograph of Eddie and another man, who had a long face and a prominent nose.

‘Yeah,’ said Eddie. ‘Wish he could have been at the do tonight.’ Hugo Castille, his friend and comrade from his troubleshooter days, had been killed during the hunt for Atlantis. ‘Other people too. Like Mitzi.’ He shook his head. ‘Shit, maybe I’m getting old. Starting to lose more friends than I’m making.’

She gave him a sympathetic look. ‘You’ve made a friend of everybody you’ve helped, Eddie. And there have been a lot of them. Trust me, I’m one of them.’

‘Thanks, love.’ He kissed her cheek. ‘So I’ve kind of got Rowan to thank for us getting together? I suppose that makes him an okay bloke.’

‘High praise indeed, coming from you.’ Another reminiscent smile. ‘You know, when I was a teenager and he was helping my parents as a grad student, I had
such
a crush on him . . .’

‘Yeah, I really needed to hear that.’

She stroked his face. ‘Don’t worry. I made my choice. And I think it was the right one. Usually . . .’

He swatted at her playfully as he stood and headed for the kitchen. ‘I’m going to put the kettle on. You want anything?’

‘No thanks,’ she called after him. ‘Just a decent night’s sleep. The exhibition opens in two days, and there are still a hundred and one things I need to sort out.’

‘What?’

‘I said, there’s loads still to organise. I’ll be on the phone all tomorrow. Oh, the joys of management.’ She leaned back, then remembered something. ‘Eddie?’

No answer. ‘Eddie!’ she said, more loudly.

He appeared in the doorway. ‘Yeah, I heard you. What?’

‘Actually, it’s about you hearing me. Or not. Is everything okay?’

‘Why wouldn’t it be?’

‘Because a couple of times at the party you didn’t hear me - even when I was right behind you. And I’ve noticed it a few times recently. Maybe you should see a specialist, get your hearing tested. After all,’ she said, lightly humorous, ‘you’ve been close to a lot of loud bangs over the years.’

A conflicted look crossed his square face, immediately making her regret her levity. She sat up, concerned. ‘Eddie, what is it?’

He sat beside her. ‘The thing is . . . I
did
see a specialist.’

‘What? When?’

‘About two months back. I’d been having trouble on and off since that bloody room in the pyramid with the big pipe-organ thing.’ Nina remembered it all too well, an ancient booby trap deep within the Pyramid of Osiris designed to deafen intruders with an unbearable blast of sound. ‘So I made an appointment to have my ears checked out.’

‘Why didn’t you tell me?’

He shrugged; not dismissively, but in a kind of resignation. ‘’Cause I thought it’d go away on its own. It always did before - like you said, I’ve heard a lot of loud bangs. Only this time . . . it didn’t.’

‘What did the specialist say?’

He stood and went into the study, returning with a manila envelope. ‘Let’s see,’ he said, taking out a sheet of paper. ‘ “Permanent threshold shift due to repeated damaging levels of noise exposure . . . sensorineural hearing loss to a moderate degree in the high frequencies . . .” In other words, my hearing’s fucked.’

Nina felt suddenly cold, the happiness of the evening evaporating. ‘ “Permanent”?’

He held her hands to provide reassurance. ‘It’s not like I’ve gone stone deaf, and he said it wouldn’t get any worse for now. It just means I can’t hear as well as I used to, and it’s worst with high-frequency sounds, like voices. Well, women’s voices, basically.’

She wasn’t sure how to respond. ‘Oh, God. Eddie, that’s . . .’

He smiled crookedly. ‘You’ll just have to nag me in a deeper voice if you want me to hear you.’

Nina wasn’t amused. ‘Why didn’t you tell me?’

‘Well . . . you know what I’m like. Not big on owning up to being less than one hundred per cent at anything.’

‘Yeah, I’ve noticed.’ She managed a slight smile.

‘Tchah. But yeah, it’s made me think a bit. If one thing starts going, then what’s next?’

‘Is that why you’ve been spending so much time at the gym? Fending off the inevitable ravages of age?’

‘Oi!’ he protested. ‘Thirty-eight’s not old. And I’m still in top nick - going to the gym’s just a way to keep from getting a fat arse from sitting in an office all day. You should come with me.’

‘Are you saying
I’ve
got a fat ass?’

He made a show of examining it. ‘Your arse is a thing of beauty. And women always look better with curves anyway.’

‘You
are
saying I’ve got a fat ass!’ They exchanged smiles, then Nina’s face became more serious. ‘So what are you going to do?’

‘Not much I can do. It’s not like when I trained back up after breaking my arm - I can’t lift weights with my ears. I just need to stay away from loud noises.’ A rueful look. ‘It’s funny - the doctor asked me if I’d been near anything loud in the past few years. I was thinking, Christ, where do I start? Underneath a jet while it was taking off, running out of an exploding power station, having a stealth bomber drop bunker-busters on me . . .’

Nina patted his shoulder. ‘Y’know, I’m more than happy for us to have a quiet life.’

‘I suppose . . .’

She snorted. ‘Oh, Jesus - you really do miss the action, don’t you?’

‘No, no,’ he insisted. ‘Well, a little bit. I mean, it’s sort of what I do, innit?’

‘Perhaps, but I wish it didn’t go to such extremes. Exotic travel, amazing historical discoveries - that’s the kind of excitement I’d be happy with. No need to add tanks and bombs and machine guns as well!’ She kissed his cheek. ‘You looked after me during everything we’ve been through in the last four years. You can take things easy from now. You deserve it.’

‘Aye, well . . .’ He returned the kiss. ‘Just so long as things don’t get boring.’

‘I’ll try to find a happy medium.’ She kissed him again, and stood. ‘Come on, let’s go to bed. I’m sure we can find something exciting to do there.’

‘I’ve got some ideas, but you always call me a pervert when I suggest ’em!’ He had started to follow her across the room when his phone rang. ‘God, who’s this?’ he muttered, fishing it from his pocket. ‘Hello? Oh, Nan, hi. I thought you’d gone to bed?’ He listened, tapping a foot with mild impatience as his grandmother ambled towards her conversational destination. ‘What? No, Nan, you have to pay extra for the movie channels. That’s why you can’t see them. And trust me, you won’t like any of Grant’s films anyway.’

‘I’ll be in here,’ said Nina, smiling as she entered the bedroom.

Eddie gave her a resigned shrug. ‘No, Nan, no - you definitely don’t want to watch
those
channels! Just go to bed, okay? Yeah, yeah, we’ll see you tomorrow. Okay, Nan, night. Night-night. Bye.’ He ended the call. ‘Bloody hell. Can’t even get any time to ourselves in our own home.’

‘Only a couple more days and we’ll finally be able to have a nice, relaxing break,’ she assured him.

 

As Nina had gloomily predicted, a large part of her next day was spent on the phone. The Treasures of Atlantis exhibition, displaying a plethora of ancient artefacts the International Heritage Agency had recovered from the sunken ruins of Atlantis, was about to begin its four-month tour of sixteen cities in fourteen countries. Even delegating much of the organisation to Rowan Sharpe and others, the IHA’s director was finding it a major - and draining - addition to her workload.

‘Oh, God,’ she sighed, rubbing her eyes at the conclusion of one especially long call. ‘Next time I have to work with the Secret Service, please just phone them anonymously and tell them I’m a communist or something, so they’ll blacklist me and I’ll never have to deal with them again.’

‘Clearance hassles?’ asked Eddie, who had been sitting with his feet up on her desk, waiting for her to finish.

‘You’re not kidding. Interpol suggested that the UN ought to beef up the exhibition’s security because everyone’s paranoid after Michelangelo’s David got stolen, but now the Frisco city council’s complaining because they don’t want to pay their half of the extra costs,
and
the Secret Service threw a fit because they have to vet the extra staff. Plus, the mayor’s office keeps adding to the VIP list because obviously everybody wants to meet the President, and the Men in Black need to clear all the new guests too. And for some reason, they’ve decided it’s all my fault.’

‘It’s tough at the top.’

‘Damn right. And get your feet off my desk.’ Nina glowered at the offending extremities until they returned to the floor. ‘Is everything ready?’

He nodded. ‘The flights and hotel are all confirmed, and Lola’s going to bring those Egyptian reports you needed to check. Oh, she says she needs higher clearance to get them, though. The Egyptian government wants some stuff kept classified. They’re down in secure storage.’

She made a sour face. ‘The only way that’ll get approved before we fly out tomorrow is if I go and stand on the security supervisor’s desk until he signs it off. She can just use my clearance, she’s got the code.’

‘Christ, you don’t even let
me
use your security code.’

‘She’s my PA, not my husband. It’s a whole different degree of trust.’ She smiled at his exaggeratedly offended expression. Her phone rang; she picked it up. ‘Hi, Rowan! Back in San Francisco, then? Are you wearing flowers in your hair?’

Eddie watched her face fall as her old friend spoke. ‘I’ll wait,’ he said, putting his feet back on the desk.

Nina flapped an irate hand to shoo them off. ‘Okay, I’ll talk to them,’ she said, exasperated, after some time. ‘I’ll see you there tomorrow. Bye.’ She hung up and buried her face in her hands. ‘Ugh.’

‘Problems?’

‘Of course. The mayor’s changed the VIP list again. Which means the Secret Service will be calling to yell at me in about five minutes.’

‘You want me to tell ’em you’re a communist?’

‘Don’t tempt me.’

‘Still,’ Eddie said reassuringly, ‘after tomorrow it’s out of your hands and you can stop worrying about it. You just have to fly to Frisco, show off all the stuff from Atlantis, meet the President . . . then you can finally get back to what you really love. Digging bits of old junk out of the ground.’

It was her turn to look offended. ‘Ha ha. Although it
will
be good to get back to some real archaeological work.’ She glanced at a display case in one corner. ‘Maybe I’ll finally figure out where Prince came from.’

Eddie grinned, going to the case. ‘Prince. That still makes me laugh.’ He peered at the small purple figure within. The statuette, crudely carved from an oddly coloured stone, had been discovered inside the Pyramid of Osiris, but it bore no resemblance to any known artefact from ancient Egypt, and even after five months of analysis nobody at the IHA was any nearer to identifying its origins. ‘Tell you what, give me a hammer drill and ten minutes alone with him, and I’ll find out everything he knows.’