Return to Atlantis: A Novel (18 page)

The fist rose to his head, opened, clamped around his face—

There was a horrible crackling snap as Eddie twisted hard and broke the man’s neck. He let the limp body drop, ignoring the helpless choking gurgles from the agent’s crushed windpipe as he took the SD9 from inside his jacket, then collected the bag before moving at speed into the next carriage.

He headed for the first-class coaches. The body would soon be discovered, so he had to get off the train as quickly as possible. But he also had to find Scarber.

One way or another, she was going to give him answers.

He reached car number ten, immediately noticing a breeze as the sliding door opened. A window had been smashed. Scarber’s escape route. He hurried to it, gun at the ready. The train was on a long viaduct over a bowl of farmland. The lights of towns shimmered in the distance ahead and behind, but he was searching for something nearer …

Movement on the tracks, a scurrying figure picked out
by the glow from inside the train. Scarber. Eddie jumped down and ran after her. She was crossing the other line, heading for the broad concrete maintenance path along the viaduct’s edge.

He followed, closing quickly. He would catch up well before the end of the bridge, leaving her with nowhere to run.

Which meant she would fight. The former agent wouldn’t give up easily.

He passed the
shinkansen
’s streamlined nose, now only a hundred yards behind her. Tough and resourceful Scarber might be, but she was a decade older than Eddie, and a chain-smoker to boot. Fifty yards. With the rumble of the train’s motors fading behind her, she would soon hear him …

Forty yards—and Scarber looked back.

Eddie dropped the bag, taking careful aim as the woman spun and raised her gun. He couldn’t risk killing her, not yet.

Scarber had no such restraints. She fired three rapid shots. Bullets cracked against the concrete, closer to him each time—

Eddie pulled the trigger. One shot, but it was all he needed. Scarber shrieked and staggered, dropping her gun and clapping her left hand to her right shoulder.

Keeping the SD9 fixed on her, he ran the rest of the way. “You fucking little
shit
!” Scarber hissed.

He kicked her gun away. “You’ll live—
if
you tell me who you’re working for. Otherwise I’ll shoot you right here.”

Her voice became tremulous. “You’d shoot a defenseless woman?”

Eddie almost laughed. “Defenseless? You just tried to fucking kill me!”

The tremor disappeared. “No, I didn’t think you’d buy that.” She screwed up her face in pain, looking down at her injured arm. “All right. But do I have your word that you’ll let me go if I tell you?”

“Yeah. I just want to know who wants me and Nina
dead.” Behind her, a new light appeared in the far distance—another bullet train, coming the other way. The service path was wide enough for them to keep safely clear, though he expected it would be horribly loud. “Think we should move back a bit first, mind.” He retreated a couple of steps.

Scarber followed, coming closer to him. “There are two people. One of them is only interested in seeing your wife dead—you’re not even on his radar. It’s the other who has a personal grievance.”

“Who?”

“Victor Dalton.”

The name sent a shock running through him. Victor Dalton—the ex-president of the United States. The man who two years earlier had tried to have Eddie and Nina killed to cover up his involvement in a conspiracy, and in return had been forced to resign from office in utter humiliation when a video of him having sex with Eddie’s ex-wife Sophia Blackwood hit the Internet.

Which would explain his grudge, certainly.

“Dalton?” echoed Eddie, stunned.

Scarber took her hand from the bullet wound. “Hell of a thing, huh, kiddo?”

All kinds of questions sprang to his mind, but one was far and away at the head of the list. “So who’s the other per—”

A flat
snick
, and Scarber’s hand suddenly slashed at his throat. He instinctively whipped up his gun arm to block it—then jumped back with a pained yell as something stabbed into his forearm. Before he could recover, another swipe knocked the Smith & Wesson from his hand with a clack of metal against metal.

The former agent still had a trick up her sleeve—literally. A slender blade jutted out from beneath her wrist: a spring-loaded weapon strapped to her arm. She jabbed it at Eddie’s face again, forcing him to stumble back or be blinded.

The approaching train was now much nearer, racing toward them at full speed, but Scarber’s focus was entirely
on the fallen gun. She bent to retrieve it, then whirled and pointed it at Eddie—

He drove a fearsome spin-kick into her stomach, sending her flying backward—into the path of the oncoming train.

The
whump
as its pointed prow hit her at 180 miles per hour was audible even over the thunder of motors and the scream of displaced air. The
shinkansen
’s white nose suddenly became a bright red.

Eddie dropped to the concrete, shielding his ears as the train blasted past. Even if the driver reacted instantly to the collision and slammed on the emergency brakes, it would still take a mile for the express to come to a stop. The moment the rearmost car passed, he hurried back to collect the bag, then ran for the end of the viaduct. With two bullet trains now halted and bodies littering the scene, a major police operation would soon begin, and he needed as big a head start as possible.

Once he was clear, though, he knew his next step. He had to get back to the United States.

And deal with Victor Dalton.

R
eturning to New York via Italy hadn’t been Nina’s plan, but she had been left with more than enough time while waiting to deal with the Japanese authorities to think about the full implications of the events in the Takashi building.

Foremost on her mind was her husband. Three months without even an attempt to communicate, then he appeared out of the blue? She didn’t know whether to be overjoyed or furious—though his accusing her of being in league with Stikes tipped her feelings a little toward the latter.

Stikes’s presence was itself a concern. She was sure Takashi had lied about the mercenary’s being a mere delivery boy; he was involved with whatever was going on. As for what that might be, though …

Could she believe Takashi’s claims about the goals of his mysterious organization? That Stikes was connected to it at all made her doubt its true commitment to ending global conflict, for a start—as a gun for hire, his livelihood depended on that. But someone else was opposed enough to take action to stop him. Drastic action.
The helicopter attack had been intended to kill her, Takashi, and Stikes alike.

And Eddie. Somebody wanted him dead too. But why? What was the connection?

The statues were the key, she was sure.

Takashi had known what to expect when the figures were brought together. But nothing Nina knew of suggested even remotely that the statues could use the planet’s own energy fields to counter the force of gravity—to say nothing of her extraordinary mental experience.

Which meant that someone, somewhere, had information that outstripped even the IHA’s discoveries. She only knew one group that might fit the bill. And that was why she had come to Rome.

“Dr. Wilde,” said Nicholas Popadopoulos, turning her name over in his mouth like a piece of slightly unpleasant food. She had dealt with the stooped old man before. The Brotherhood of Selasphoros possessed an enormous trove of ancient texts concerning Atlantis; the organization’s purpose had been to suppress knowledge of the lost civilization.

It had done so by trying to kill anyone who got too close to the truth, which was why Popadopoulos’s antipathy was more than matched by Nina’s. She had been targeted, as had her parents. She had survived. They had not. The thought still caused a knot of anger to tighten within her.

She tried to suppress it. Her life might now depend on something in the Brotherhood’s archives. “Mr. Popadopoulos,” she replied, voice studiedly neutral. “Good to see you again.”

“And you,” he said, less than convincingly. “This visit is unexpected, though. We have cooperated fully with the IHA in providing anything it requested, so why you felt the need to come here in person …”

“Your definition of
full cooperation
isn’t quite the same as ours,” Nina said with a thin smile.

“We are doing everything asked of us!” Popadopoulos’s resentment was clear in every word. “We are the
only people who know everything in the archives. It would take outsiders years just to understand how it is cataloged. Perhaps you think you can do it without us?”

Her smile turned colder. “I dunno, maybe we should try. You could have a nice long vacation … paid for by the state. What do you think?”

He glowered at her through his little round spectacles. What was left of the Brotherhood after the battles leading to Atlantis’s discovery had been forced to open its records under threat of being held to account for the organization’s past crimes. “I will see if things can be done more … expediently,” he conceded.

“Thank you. Although that isn’t actually why I decided to pop in.”

“What? Then why
are
you here? Just to bully and harass us?”

“No, I want some information. Expediently.”

The old man was annoyed at having his words turned back at him. “What information?”

“I want to know if you have anything in the archives about Nantalas.”

“The priestess?”

Nina arched an eyebrow. “Then I guess you
do
have something.”

“She was an important figure prior to the sinking of Atlantis.” He leaned thoughtfully back in his seat. “She claimed to have visions, I remember. Of war, usually, but that was the major occupation of the Atlanteans. She also claimed to have magic powers.”

“These powers—they wouldn’t have been connected to three statues, by any chance?”

Popadopoulos sat back up, surprised. “Yes. How did you know?”

“We excavated some of the texts from the Temple of Poseidon.”

“Ah, I see.” His face tipped into a frown. “It would be nice to receive updates on the IHA’s progress in Atlantis. Anyone would think you did not trust us.”

“Really,” said Nina scathingly. “So what else do you know about the statues?”

“It is many years since I last read the text, but I think they were how she received her visions. They were the keys to her powers … No, the powers were not actually hers. The statues were how she channeled them, but they came from something else, a stone … Wait, the
sky
stone, that is it.”

“And what were these powers?”

He shrugged. “I don’t remember. It was all magic, nonsense. I paid it no mind.”

Nina fought to keep her frustration in check. “And you didn’t think it might be worth telling the IHA this? You must have known that we had two of the statues.”

“We provide exactly what is asked for,” Popadopoulos told her. “Nothing less—and nothing more.”

“Well, you might want to feel a bit more of the volunteer spirit in future,” she snapped. “But in the meantime, I want to know everything about the statues. Even the stuff you think is nonsense.”

“I told you, I would have to read the text again.”

“Well, I’m not busy right now, and if you’ve got time to see me you can’t be either. So let’s go.”

“You want to see the original text? In the archive?” He appeared horrified by the suggestion.

“Yep, pretty much.”

“That was never part of the deal! It was agreed that the Brotherhood could maintain the secrecy of its archives.”

“I don’t give a damn about your secrets. What I do give a damn about is that somebody else knows about the power of these statues—at least two groups of somebodies, in fact, and they’re already fighting over them. Did you see the news about that skyscraper in Tokyo?”

“Yes, of course. They said it was attacked by a helicopter.”

“I was in the penthouse!” He regarded her in astonishment. “I had the statues, all three of them, in my hands. And something happened, something I didn’t
understand—but something incredible. I need to know what it means. I think the answer’s in your archive.”

Popadopoulos sat back again, deep in thought. At last, with a decidedly conflicted expression, he stood. “Very well, Dr. Wilde. But these are exceptional circumstances, yes? I am not willing to have other members of the IHA
pop in
, as you say, whenever they want.”

“Just show me what you’ve got on the statues and I’ll be out of here.”

For the first time, he liked something she had said. “Come with me.”

The Brotherhood’s activities in Rome were hidden behind the cover of a law firm, its offices within sight of the high walls of the Vatican. Popadopoulos led her through the narrow corridors to one particular door on the ground floor. “In here.”

Nina eyed the interior dubiously. “Seriously?” It was a closet containing shelves of cleaning products, a tiny barred window high on one wall.

He sighed and entered, waving her inside. She squeezed into the cramped space as the Greek closed the door and reached for a light switch. Instead of flicking it, though, he took hold of the casing and gave it a half turn. A click, a muted hum from somewhere below—and Nina gasped as the floor began a slow descent of a shaft of dark old bricks.

Popadopoulos chuckled at her uneasiness. “Do you like our elevator?”

“It’s, uh … different.”

“It was installed over a hundred years ago. The Brotherhood has owned the building since it was constructed in 1785—but the archives have been here for far longer. I hope you appreciate that I am actually giving you a very rare privilege,” he went on. “The number of outsiders who have seen them in, oh, the past five hundred years can be counted on both hands. Even members of the Brotherhood were rarely allowed to enter if they were not involved with record keeping.”

The elevator stopped around thirty feet below street
level. A passage led off to one side, dim bulbs strung along its length. Heavier-duty electrical cables ran along the walls. “Follow me,” said Popadopoulos.