Nina’s lips tightened. ‘Why her?’
‘She vouched for us, basically. That twat in the snakeskin jacket blowing someone’s head off in front of half the NYPD made it pretty obvious who the bad guys were, but we’d still have been in trouble if she hadn’t stood up for us.’
‘Stood up for you, you mean.’
Eddie knew the tone. ‘Oh, God. What?’
‘You know what, Eddie. That woman, Amy - you were with her the other day when you said you were with Grant Thorn!’
He held out his hands in exasperation. ‘Yes, I admit it! But there’s nothing funny going on - she’s just a friend. I’ve got loads of other female friends all over the world, and you’ve never had any problems with them.’
‘That’s because you didn’t lie to me about them! How many other times did you tell me you were working while you were seeing her?’
‘For fuck’s sake,’ he sighed, ‘I’m not seeing her, okay? We’re not meeting up in secret to bang each other’s brains out, if that’s what you think.’
‘Then what should I think?’ Nina demanded, but before she could get an answer the door buzzer rasped. She went to the speaker. ‘Yes?’
‘Dr Wilde? It’s Macy.’
‘Come on up.’ She pushed the button to unlock the outer door, then turned back to Eddie. ‘We’ll discuss this later.’
‘There’s nothing to bloody discuss,’ he said. ‘She’s just helping me with something, all right?’
‘So why didn’t you ask me to help you? That’s what husbands and wives are supposed to do - y’know, help each other.’
‘It’s not that kind of thing.’
Nina was about to ask what kind of thing it actually was when there was a knock at the door. She opened it to find Macy, still in her skimpy clothes from the previous night. Eddie automatically checked her out, earning a scowl from his wife. ‘Macy, come in,’ she said.
‘Thanks, Dr Wilde,’ she replied, entering the apartment. ‘I’m glad you’re okay.’
‘Yeah, me too. Are you okay? Is your friend all right?’
‘Joey? He’s fine, just a bit banged up. I called him after I found a hotel for the night. Oh, here’s your phone.’ She handed it back to Nina. ‘What about you?’
‘We spent most of the night being questioned by the police, which was fun. This is my husband, by the way,’ Nina said, indicating Eddie. ‘Eddie. Chase. Who lives up to his surname when it comes to skirts, apparently.’
Eddie made an irritated noise, then went to Macy. ‘Hi. Yeah, I’m Nina’s husband - and part-time bodyguard. For all the thanks I get.’
‘Hi.’ Macy gave his hand a perfunctory shake, giving him a look-over that was equally brief. Nina could tell what she was thinking - too old, too bald - and smirked.
‘So,’ he said, sitting down, ‘now you’re here, maybe someone can finally tell me what the hell’s going on? Like why something in Egypt meant I had to nick Grant Thorn’s Lamborghini and chase you halfway across town?’
‘You know Grant Thorn?’ Macy asked. ‘He is so hot. Wow. That’s cool.’
‘Grant Thorn’s not who we should be talking about,’ said Nina, seeing that Macy’s opinion of Eddie had just been revised upwards. ‘It’s those guys who were after you. Were they the same ones who chased you in Egypt?’
‘Only the guy with the bad hair and the terrible jacket.’
‘Thought his jacket was pretty cool, myself,’ said Eddie. He frowned, a memory tickling his mind.
‘What?’ Nina asked.
‘I saw someone with the same jacket, just recently . . .’ His frown deepened as he tried to recall the image. ‘Shit! It wasn’t just the same jacket - it was the same guy! He was at that cult thing Grant dragged me to.’
‘The Osirian Temple?’
‘Yeah, that’s it. He was in a limo with the head guy, some ex-actor. There was another bloke too, this miserable-looking sod with a big burn scar—’
‘Oh, my God!’ Macy interrupted. She tapped her right cheek. ‘The scar, was it here?’
‘Yeah, right across his face.’
‘He was there too!’ she told Nina excitedly. ‘He was at the Sphinx - he was in charge of the whole thing!’
‘What is this thing at the Sphinx?’ asked Eddie. ‘What are they after?’
‘You know those TV commercials that get me so mad?’ said Nina. He nodded. ‘They’re after that.’
‘They’re trying to dig in before the IHA so that they can steal what’s inside,’ Macy elaborated.
‘Which is?’ Eddie said.
Macy took out her camera. ‘I’ll show you.’ She saw Nina’s laptop. ‘Can I connect it to that?’
Nina rummaged in a drawer for a connecting cable, then plugged the camera into her MacBook Pro so Macy could copy over the relevant files. A minute later, she was able to take a proper, detailed look at the images she had seen in miniature on the camera’s screen. ‘So those are the three scrolls that were given to the IHA . . .’
‘And that’s the one that wasn’t,’ said Macy, pointing at the fourth of the ancient pages. She zoomed in. ‘This part here describes the north entrance to the Hall of Records - it would’ve been reserved for the pharaohs’ use, ’cause the Egyptians had a big thing about the Pole Star symbolising royalty and the gods.’ She flicked through to the next picture, showing the blueprints of the Sphinx compound, and pointed out the two tunnels. ‘Everyone else would have used the eastern entrance.’
‘The one Logan’s excavating,’ Nina said, nodding. ‘What else does it say?’
Macy returned to the first picture and scrolled down it. ‘Something about a map chamber . . . here! There’s a zodiac in it, which if you know the secret tells you how to find the Pyramid of Osiris.’
Nina’s scepticism returned. ‘Are you sure that’s what it says?’
Macy sounded almost peevish, before remembering to whom she was talking. ‘Yes, I’m sure, Dr Wilde. I thought it was weird too, but that’s what it says. The zodiac’s some kind of map.’
Nina regarded the screen. The first three scrolls about the Hall of Records had proved accurate, and if the fourth were as reliable . . . ‘This could be huge. If the Pyramid of Osiris really existed, it’d change everything we thought we knew about Egyptian history.’ She looked at Macy. ‘And the guys after you obviously believed it’s real enough to kill for.’ Her gaze returned to the papyrus. ‘What else does it say?’
Macy read on. ‘The tomb of Osiris, the immortal god-king, keeper of . . . of the sacred bread of life.’
‘Not much of an immortal if he’s in a tomb,’ Eddie pointed out.
‘It’s complicated,’ said Macy. ‘He was murdered by being trapped in a coffin, resurrected, murdered again, became immortal but could never come back to the living world . . . kind of an ancient daytime soap opera.’
‘It’s a bit more than that,’ Nina said tartly. ‘The Osiris mythology is the foundation of the entire Egyptian religion. But does this text tell us how to find the pyramid using the zodiac?’
Macy scanned through the rest of the papyrus. ‘No. I guess that’s a need-to-know thing for the priests or whoever. But it definitely says the zodiac’s the map to the tomb.’
Eddie leaned closer to the screen. ‘So if this pyramid’s real, what’s inside it that’s worth blowing up half of Times Square for? Are we talking Tutankhamun’s treasure?’