The prime — in fact, the only — suspect was Eddie Chase. Her husband.
That would have been bad enough on its own. But things were worse: she had been a witness. And despite her unwillingness to believe it, the only conclusion she could draw, no matter how many times she replayed events in an attempt to find evidence to the contrary… was that Eddie had cold-bloodedly murdered Kit.
The memory returned, unbidden. Peru, three months ago to the day. A gas pipeline in a pumping station south of Lima had ruptured and flames spread rapidly to the rest of the facility. The catwalk on which Eddie and Kit were standing had partially collapsed, leaving the Indian dangling above a searing jet of fire. As Nina reached the scene, she saw Kit struggling to hold on, grasping for a handhold on a pipe—
And Eddie kicking Kit in the face and sending him plunging into the inferno below.
She snapped back to the present. The image was as clear and vivid as if it had just happened.
No gun.
Eddie had insisted that Kit had tried to kill him, that he had being going for a gun. But there was no gun in her memory, just Kit trying to save himself from a deadly fall. A fall that came anyway, just moments later.
Beauchamp’s email was an update on the search for the wanted man. Somehow, her murder suspect had managed to escape Peru undetected, and been sighted in England, India, South Africa and most recently Zimbabwe — but never in time for local Interpol agents to catch him. He was always a step ahead: a shadow, a ghost. It hadn’t taken long for the investigators to suspect that he was receiving help.
That didn’t surprise Nina in the least. From their first meeting, Eddie had astonished her with the sheer number of his friends and contacts around the globe, all of whom seemed willing to do him favours far beyond simply picking him up at the airport. Some would be more useful in his current situation than others: the forger, for example, an Australian ex-military colleague, could have provided him with a fake passport. But she couldn’t bring herself to pass on her suspicions to Interpol.
Eddie was still her husband. And she knew him well enough to be sure that whatever she had witnessed, he believed that Kit had a gun. Since he wasn’t prone to hallucinations or confabulation, that had provided her with the seed of doubt she needed to think that he was telling the truth. That he was innocent.
And if he was innocent, she couldn’t help his hunters track him down.
Other facts had arisen in Beauchamp’s investigation which suggested that more had been going on than anyone had realised. Kit had told Nina that he was going to the pumping station on Interpol authority to meet a representative of mercenary leader Alexander Stikes. The British former soldier had stolen archaeological treasures from the ruins of the lost city of El Dorado; according to Kit, he was willing to return them in exchange for legal immunity.
Kit had been lying. Interpol knew nothing about it.
Eddie had gone to the gas plant after him because he believed Kit and Stikes were working together — thereby directly involving Kit in the murder of Eddie’s friend and mentor, Jim ‘Mac’ McCrimmon. And Nina herself had glimpsed a man who might have been Stikes fleeing the burning station in a helicopter. Could Kit have been corrupt? It seemed unlikely — Stikes had tortured him for information after doing the same to Nina to learn more about the search for El Dorado — but now that the seed had been planted…
She leaned forward, head in her hands. Suspicions didn’t help Eddie. While he was ahead of the police for now, they were catching up. Eventually he would be caught. Charged with murder. Tried.
And based on the evidence to date, found guilty.
Her phone rang, an internal call. With another sigh, she picked it up. ‘Yes?’
‘Nina?’ Lola Gianetti, her personal assistant. ‘Matt asked me to tell you that they’re waiting for you in the conference room.’
She looked at her watch. Damn! There was an important meeting scheduled on the hour, and it was now ten past. ‘I’ll be right there.’
One good thing about being the director of the International Heritage Agency, she mused as she hurried from her office, was that meetings had to wait for her rather than the other way round. All the same, she tried to hide her embarrassment as she entered the conference room. ‘Sorry I’m late.’
‘No worries,’ said Matt Trulli. Of the group, the tubby, unkempt Australian, on secondment from the UN’s Oceanic Survey Organisation, knew her best, and was well aware of the stress she had been under.
Another man was decidedly less sympathetic, his impatience clear. ‘Thank you for coming,’ said Dr Lewis Hayter with barely restrained sarcasm as Nina took her seat. ‘So, if we’re all ready?’
‘Go ahead,’ said Nina. ‘Anything to do with these excavations always gets my full attention. Once I’ve dealt with my other IHA responsibilities,’ she added, a little poke to remind the thin-faced archaeologist that she was his boss. ‘So, you’ve found something exciting?’
‘We’ve found something very exciting.’ Hayter picked up a remote control and switched on a projector. A screen displayed a map of a number of buildings. Even in simplified cartographic form it was clear that they were ruins, the illustration showing where parts of the structures had collapsed and strewn debris nearby.
These were no ordinary ruins, though. Even through her gloom, Nina felt her heart quicken with a thrill of expectation. The map was of the very heart of the lost civilisation of Atlantis — the sunken capital she had discovered five years before.
Her work at the IHA had since taken her down other historical roads, leading to more incredible archaeological discoveries. But there was something special about Atlantis. It had vindicated her theories, catapulted her to international fame… and allowed her to finish the journey her late parents had begun.
Simply locating the city was far from the end of the work, though. Atlantis had more secrets yet to be uncovered — even if she now had to rely on others to discover them vicariously. Hayter indicated one of the ruined buildings with a laser pointer. ‘We used the new high-resolution sonar to look through the sediment at the palace’s western wing. We found the entrance to what we think is a royal burial chamber. My recommendation is that this is our next primary objective.’
Nina checked her notes. ‘What about the Temple of the Gods? I thought you were planning a full excavation of that.’ The small ruin, close to the palace, had so far been explored only to a limited extent.
‘It was an option,’ Hayter said sniffily, ‘but to be honest, I doubt it’ll be worth the effort. It’s much more badly damaged than most of the other buildings, and the initial survey didn’t turn up anything particularly unusual.’
‘You don’t consider a single structure dedicated to every single god in the pantheon, even the ones who already have temples of their own, unusual?’
‘I’d call it a minor mystery, nothing more. The burial chamber is a much bigger prize, certainly for this leg of the expedition.’
Nina considered his words, then reluctantly nodded. ‘I’ll want to see the list of alternatives, but okay, yes, the burial chamber it is.’ With the archaeological dig taking place eight hundred feet beneath the surface of the Atlantic, most of the work had to be done from submersibles; ensuring that the expensive-to-run machines made the best possible use of their time was crucial. ‘Matt, will your subs need any extra equipment to get in there?’
‘Nah, we’ll be able to handle it,’ said the maritime engineer. ‘Sharkdozer II should be able to clear most of the rubble, and even if it’s too tight for divers in deep suits, Gypsy’s still got the two ROVs. We’ll find your crowns and sceptres, or whatever they hid down there.’