“He stopped being my boss the second he tried to kill me,” Chase said coldly. “Think I’ll have to have words with the bastard about that.”
“You never did take betrayal very well, did you?” said Starkman pointedly.
Chase regarded him silently for a long moment. “Not really.”
“Still not the forgiving type?”
“No. But,” he added, “there’s some things I can forget a bit more easily than others. Temporarily.”
Starkman’s good eye watched him warily. “I never touched her, Eddie. Whatever she may have told you, I never screwed around with your wife. I’d never do that to a friend.”
“You know, Jason,” said Chase, holding out his hand, “I actually believe you.”
“You offering a truce, Eddie?”
“For now.” Starkman took his hand; Chase pulled him up. “I think we both want the same thing-to get that bastard Frost for what he’s done. And I’ve got to rescue Nina.”
“You stopped being paid to protect her at the same time Frost stopped being your boss.”
“Money stopped being the reason I was protecting her a while ago,” Chase told him, getting a raised eyebrow in response.
They both looked around at a new noise. Early morning light glinting from their windows, Frost’s helicopters rounded the mountain, rotor noise booming down the valley as they sped into the distance. Chase stared after them, then turned back to Starkman, holding out his hand again. “Even with Qobras dead, do you still have access to the Brotherhood’s resources?”
“Some of them,” replied Starkman. “What do you have in mind?”
“I fancy a trip to Norway. You interested?”
“Definitely.” They shook hands. “Fight to the end, Eddie?”
“Fight to the end.”
Starkman looked around. “Just one slight problem-we’re stuck in the Himalayas with no transport and no equipment.”
Chase managed a half-smile. “Good thing I looked at a map before coming here.” He pointed down the valley. “If you’re up for a yomp, there’s a village that way. We should be able to reach it by tonight.” The half-smile became a full one. “I know a girl there…”
TWENTY-SEVEN
Norway
The stark beauty of Ravnsfjord stretched out below her as the Gulfstream descended, but Nina barely noticed it.
Her mind was elsewhere, thinking back over the events of the past days. Despite all Kari’s efforts to help, she still felt a sadness, an underlying core of loss. The resurgent grief she’d felt on seeing the bodies of her parents, Chase’s death… and the destruction of Atlantis itself, every last trace of the civilization finally wiped out by Qobras. All buried, irretrievable, the search that had defined her existence brought to an abrupt end.
In a way, her life as she had known it was over. Everything in her world had changed.
“Are you all right?” Kari asked.
“Hmm? Yes, I’m fine. Why?”
“You looked a little… distant.”
“Did I?” Nina considered it. “I suppose I did. I was just thinking.”
“About what?”
“About how I found what I’d been looking for all these years, I found Atlantis… but now it’s gone. Everything’s different. And I don’t… I don’t know what I’m going to do now.”
Kari smiled. “What you’re going to do, Dr. Nina Wilde, is take your place with us. You’re one of us, and we always look after our own.”
“I haven’t really thanked you for that. For everything you’ve done.”
“You don’t need to thank me. And you haven’t lost Atlantis.”
“How so?”
“Because now we can build a new Atlantis. We don’t have to look to the past anymore, because we’ll be creating the future.”
Nina cocked an eyebrow. “Just out of interest, when are you going to tell me exactly how you’re going to be creating this future? I still don’t see how a sample of eleven-thousand-year-old DNA can change the world.”
“It will, trust me.” Kari leaned closer. “I think you’re ready.”
“Ready for what?”
“It’s time I showed you what we’re going to do. How we’re going to remake the world.”
The plane made its final turn, dropping towards the long runway.
Chase gave Starkman a dubious look. “If you had this operation planned all along, why didn’t you just bloody do it and save everyone a lot of trouble?”
“We didn’t know for sure what Frost was doing. And Giovanni didn’t want to risk an attack unless it became absolutely necessary,” Starkman explained. “It would have exposed the Brotherhood-there would have been no way to keep the organization secret anymore.”
“I think the time for sneaking about’s over.” Chase rose from his seat and walked across the aircraft’s hold to peer out of a porthole. The plane, a twin-prop C-123 Provider cargo aircraft, had crossed the Norwegian coast a few minutes earlier, and was now cruising north over the snow-streaked landscape.
They would soon be making a steep descent, however.
Chase looked back at the other passengers in the hold. Twelve of Qobras’s-now Starkman’s-men, all members of the Brotherhood, assembled following the four days it took the two survivors of the Golden Peak to return to Europe.
He just hoped twelve men was enough.
“Far,” said Kari, entering Frost’s office above the biolab with Nina at her side. Frost was at his desk, the vista of Ravnsfjord spread out behind him through the windows. “I think it’s time. Nina’s ready.”
Frost’s expression suggested to Nina that he wasn’t himself sure, but he said nothing.
“What is it you want to tell me?” she asked. “What’s the big secret? Kari’s been very mysterious about it.”
“The big secret, Dr. Wilde…” Frost began. Kari gave him a look. “I mean, Nina. If that’s all right with you?”
“Fine by me,” Nina said with a grin.
Frost smiled back, then stood up. “The big secret, as you say, is that… well, today we are going to change the world. Forever.”
“That’s quite a big challenge.”
“Indeed it is. But it’s a challenge I have been working on all my life-and thanks to you, it can now be accomplished. Your discovery of Atlantis made it possible.”
“But everything was destroyed,” said Nina. “Maybe we can recover some relics from under the sediment at Atlantis itself, but all the intact structures we found, all the artifacts they contained… they’re gone.”
“That doesn’t matter,” Frost said.
“It doesn’t? But…”
“The DNA samples I recovered from the bodies of the last king and queen are worth more than any amount of gold or orichalcum. They are what will change the world. Save the world, even.”
“How?” Nina asked. “Are you using them to create some sort of vaccine or something?”
“Something,” replied Frost, smiling again, this time with an air of mystery. “Come with me and I’ll show you.” He rounded his desk, and was about to join Nina and Kari when his intercom beeped. Clearly irritated at the interruption, he pushed a button to answer the call. “What is it?”
“Sir,” said Schenk’s voice from the speaker, “the control tower just informed me that a plane has requested permission for an emergency landing. They have engine trouble, and can’t make it to Bergen.”
“Where are they now?”
“About ten minutes out, coming from the south.”
Frost’s lips tightened. “Very well, give them permission to land. But… watch them.”
“Yes, sir.” Schenk closed the line.