She had to do it, though. Kroll and the others had been trying to escape the world’s notice. But if they found the spring and shared it with their wealthy backers, they would regain influence around the globe.
She couldn’t let that happen. If she did, Macy and many others would have died for nothing…
‘This is it,’ said Hafez, bringing her back to immediate concerns. A muddy track to one side headed into the thick forest.
Eddie was immediately on alert. ‘Someone’s been up there recently,’ he said, spotting tyre marks in the wet earth. ‘Hafez, pull over.’
The back doors were flung open even before the van fully halted. Zane and the other Israelis jumped out and dispersed rapidly into the trees, guns readied. Eddie drew his own weapon, a nine-millimetre BUL Cherokee pistol provided by the Mossad agent. He examined the tracks. ‘A jeep, plus… three trucks,’ he reported. ‘Pretty heavily loaded an’ all. They’ve gone into the woods — but they haven’t come out.’
‘I suppose it’s too much to hope that they were full of lumberjacks?’ said Nina.
Zane joined the Englishman. ‘Four-by-fours, big ones,’ he said. ‘Most likely Neynava troop trucks. Three of them would be enough to carry Kroll’s forces. The jeep was probably a Safir — the Revolutionary Guard commander’s ride.’ He saw Eddie’s impressed expression. ‘I might not be as experienced as you, but my intel’s right up to date.’
‘So now what?’ Nina asked.
‘We can’t risk taking the van any further,’ Eddie replied. ‘They might hear it.’
‘I do not want to leave you behind,’ Hafez protested from his vehicle.
‘I’m not saying you should go back home. But you’ll need to get out of sight. There was another track about a mile down the hill; use that.’ He surveyed the cloud-shrouded peaks to the south. ‘Nina, how far are we from the spring?’
Nina checked a map. ‘Six kilometres, at least.’ She had marked the search area; it was higher up the slopes. ‘That way,’ she said, pointing. ‘The tallest mountain could be the one from Andreas’ text.’
‘They won’t get trucks up there,’ Zane noted. ‘They’ll have to go on foot.’
Eddie went to the van. ‘Hafez, we’ll go on from here. Wait for us where I said.’
The Iranian reluctantly agreed. ‘For how long?’
‘Fucked if I know, mate. Jared, you got any walkie-talkies?’ Zane nodded. ‘Okay, give one to Hafez.’ He turned back to the older man. ‘We’ll give you a squawk when we come back. If we come back.’
‘You do not sound confident.’
‘There’s ten of us, and about thirty of them. And they’ve got one of our friends hostage. I’ve had worse odds, but…’
Hafez got out and embraced him. ‘Allah be with you, my friend. And you too, Nina,’ he added over Eddie’s shoulder. ‘I will wait for you. Well, until I run out of cigarettes!’
‘Go on, bugger off,’ Eddie told him with a grin. The Iranian detached himself, accepting a radio from Zane and climbing into the van. A quick U-turn, and the vehicle headed back downhill.
Nina took off her headscarf. ‘I just hope we won’t need to get out of here in a hurry…’
‘Yeah, me too.’ Eddie gazed back at the mountains. The tallest peak was well over a kilometre high, the uppermost section of its southern face a near-vertical wall dropping down to the steep forest below. ‘Okay, we’d better get started. We should stay clear of this track, though. Just in case someone comes back along it.’
‘Definitely,’ Zane agreed. ‘Which way?’
Eddie checked Nina’s map before indicating a rise about a mile distant. ‘Over there. We can go along that ridge. It’ll be a hell of a lot easier than climbing straight up its side.’
The Israeli nodded, then told his men to move into the trees. ‘You ready for this?’ Eddie asked his wife.
‘Not really,’ she said, ‘but… I’m doing it anyway.’
He smiled, then kissed her. ‘Come on, then.’
Hand in hand, they followed the others into the dense, damp forest.
The going soon became harder than expected. Not because the terrain was particularly difficult, though it was quite steep in places. What was wearing the party down wasn’t physical. Under the thick, obscuring canopy of the trees, the atmosphere was oppressive, the very air thick and cloying. With clouds blotting out the sun, there were not even shafts of light through the trees to relieve the twilight gloom.
‘What was this place called in the Alexander Romance?’ Eddie asked as they trudged up the slope.
‘Alexander first knew it as the Land of the Blessed,’ Nina replied. ‘But once he was inside, he started calling it the Land of Darkness — or the Region or Kingdom, depending on the translation. Andreas called it the Kingdom of Darkness on the relic. It’s an accurate description, whichever way. There’s a passage in the Romance where it got so dark even in daytime that Alexander and his men couldn’t go any deeper without risking getting lost.’
‘So how did they get through?’
She smiled. ‘Wisdom. There was an old man in Alexander’s army who told him they should only ride mares who had foals. They left the foals behind, so when they eventually returned after exploring, the mares led them back to their children. Alexander was so impressed that he gave the old man ten pounds of gold as a reward.’
‘See, Jared?’ Eddie called to the Israeli, who was a short distance ahead. ‘Age and experience win again.’ He turned back to Nina and asked more quietly: ‘Would that actually work?’
‘I haven’t a clue. I’m not a horse expert. But it was while they were exploring that Andreas found the Spring of Immortality, so if it still exists…’ She let the words hang in the stifling air.
Zane slowed to let them draw level. ‘What did it say about the spring in the Alexander Romance? What exactly are we looking for?’
‘There wasn’t much description in the Romance itself,’ Nina told him. ‘Alexander and his men had a choice of paths; the left one turned out to be impassable, so they went right even though it was darker — actually, Alexander later left a message for travellers that to get through the Land of the Blessed, they should always take the right-hand path. They eventually found a place where the water “flashed like lightning”, which Andreas discovered to be the Spring of Immortality. As for what Andreas said on the inscriptions on the fish,’ she glanced over her shoulder at her backpack, which contained the bronze artefact amongst her other gear, ‘the spring is through the Gate of Alexander, which is in the shadow of the area’s tallest peak. The mountain we’re heading for seems to fit the bill, but beyond that, all I can hope is that we’ll know it when we see it. If we see it.’
‘And if we’re not too late to get to it,’ Eddie said with a sudden urgency as he saw the men ahead react to something. ‘Get down.’
They crouched behind a tree. ‘What is it?’ Nina asked.
‘I can hear an engine,’ Zane whispered. ‘It must be on the track.’ He produced a pair of compact binoculars and peered downhill.
The sound of a vehicle jolting along rough ground reached them. But nothing was visible for several seconds… until a flicker of movement appeared between the trees, heading towards the road.
‘It’s the jeep,’ said Zane, tracking it. ‘A Safir; I was right,’ he added with a little smugness directed at the Englishman. ‘Looks like an officer in the passenger seat… Revolutionary Guard.’
‘What about the other trucks?’ Eddie asked.