But that wouldn’t be long. Now, they cracked some beers, dressed their wounds and breathed a collective sigh of relief. Lea rubbed her temples and tried to force the stress away, but it wasn’t going anywhere.
In the notes containing Julius’s translation they had found references to an ancient shield that was made to match the sword. The Athanatoi scholar’s deciphering of the symbols on the sword described the shield in intimate detail and both Julius and Ryan had instantly recognized the item in question as being the Shield of Pridwen.
It was a relic from Camelot, much like they believed the Sword of Fire to be and both men knew where it was last seen: in the National Museum of Archaeology in Athens. Ryan was especially pleased.
He’d had time with the sword before when they found it in Wales, but not enough time to make a proper study of the symbols etched into it. This plus Julius’s hard work had yielded a fantastic result and they all felt like they were making real progress. It was a relief to all that the shield was in a museum and not at the end of a week-long treasure hunt.
But not all was great. They might have the information they needed about Athens, but so did Dirk Kruger and his psycho boss Ivan Blankov. It was true they had a good head-start on them, but there was still no sign of their puppet master, the Oracle. Lea felt the ominous signs of a migraine headache creeping around the sides of her skull.
Kim cut the call she was making and slipped her phone in her pocket. “I got some great news, guys — they got Lexi back!”
The relief was massive and they all shared a whoop of joy and a few high-fives on the veranda in the twilight. Lexi Zhang was not the closest member of the team, always keeping her emotional distance, but she was fiercely loyal and had risked her life many times to save them. The thought of her being tortured by the Zodiac assassins had given everyone a few sleepless nights and now it was over.
“Thank God,” Lea said.
Kim frowned.
“What is it?”
“But Alex just told me she was pretty badly messed up.”
“What do you mean?” Ryan asked.
“She didn’t say, but I got the impression they screwed her up pretty bad before Joe and the others got to her.”
Camacho punched the side of the wall. “Sons of bitches!”
“What about the Zodiacs?” Ryan asked.
“They got Rat in custody and Pig and Zhou died in a helicopter crash.”
“Tiger and Monkey?” Lea asked.
“She said Lexi took Monkey out, but Tiger got away.”
“So four down, one to go, in other words,” Camacho said.
“Right,” said Kim. “Tiger is still out there.”
“And how do you go about catching a man like that?”
Camacho mulled it over. “You catch more flies with molasses than you do with vinegar, right?”
Ryan sank a beer and watched a crane heave itself up into the air over the dust-dry landscape. “You tell him about the Shield of Pridwen and Athens?”
She nodded. “They’re flying there right away.”
“Great,” Ryan said. “We’re closer than we’ve ever been guys.”
They toasted their success in retrieving the sword, but in her heart, Lea knew the fight hadn’t even started yet.
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
Hawke strolled along a side street in the center of Athens. The sun was setting over the Theater of Dionysus and couples walked together, hands clasped as they stole kisses in the twilight. It was a city he loved and after a long trip involving US Navy aircraft carriers and RAF transport planes he was glad to be here.
He thought back to his first mission with ECHO, before he even knew what that meant. They had come to the city in pursuit of a man named Demetriou. His ultimate betrayal of Hawke’s trust didn’t come close to spoiling this charming place for him.
Returning to his hotel, he crossed the lobby and spoke with the woman on the reception desk. Yes, the rest of his team had arrived from Pretoria around an hour ago and were waiting for him in their suite. He thanked them and made his way to the elevators, scanning all around him to check for anything out of place.
Old habits die hard.
And so did his pride, but tonight, die it would.
He owed Lea Donovan the mother of all apologies and now there was no getting out of it. She was upstairs with everyone else and his strategy of avoidance had worked about as well as he thought it might.
So get on with it and stop being such a bell-end…
Thanks, Cairo.
He opened the hotel door and there she was, right in front of him. She was on the bed, leaning up against the headboard and watching the TV with a bottle of water in her hand. She looked beautiful, as usual, if a little tired. He swallowed his pride and stepped over to the bed.
“Fancy meeting you here,” he said, feeling like a fool. “All right?”
“I might be.”
“You might be?”
“Sure,” she shrugged. “Depends on how sorry you are.”
Hawke realized every pair of eyes in the house was fixed firmly on him and he felt himself redden. Pulling his collar loose, he made a crack about it being hot in here and then asked Lea to step outside onto the balcony with him. When she agreed, a groan of disappointment filled the room. “Please no,” Scarlet said. “I’ve been waiting for ages to watch this.”
“Bugger off, Cairo,” Lea said.
Hawke closed the sliding door behind them and surreptitiously flashed Scarlet his middle finger as he did so.
Out here, on the balcony with Athens crumbling away beneath them, all lit amber and red in the setting sun, Hawke was stunned all over again by how beautiful she was. A gentle breeze lifted the ends of her long hair and trapped the sun in it, creating a halo effect. Her eyes, which ignored him and looked out over the bustling city, sparkled in the dying light. He waited for her lips to move, to signal that she was about to say something but they stayed still and silent and offered no hope of redemption for his sins.
The sun dipped below the skyline. He contemplated a gag. Humor was a device he had used to great effect many times in the past to get himself out of trouble. It was a defense mechanism that had saved his bacon on more occasions than he could count but the stony expression on her face told him it was a poor strategy, so he bit the bullet.
“I’m sorry, Lea.”
He heard the words as if someone else had said them and she was still ignoring him. Her eyes were tracing the path of a jet as it flew over the mountains to the west of them. While the rest of the ancient city was now fading into darkness, the plane’s high altitude meant it was still catching the sunlight and it shone like a pink diamond on a dark blue canvas.
“I said I…”
“I heard what you said.”
She turned now and faced him. He had missed this face. After London he had gone to ground. Enraged and humiliated, he had spent time dossing down with old SBS friends on England’s south coast before being recalled by Eden for the Beijing mission. By the time he’d got to the ECHO leader’s London HQ, Lea and the other team had already been dispatched to South Africa to retrieve the Sword of Fire. He hadn’t seen her since the bust-up and now she was just a few inches away from him. He reached out with his hands and held her shoulders. “I mean it. I was a total idiot.”
“Yes, you were. An arse, in fact.”
“Yes, I was an arse.”
“Was?”
“I am a total arse.”
She turned her face back to the city and smiled at a million strangers. “Better.”
He saw a glimpse of the old Lea and moved in for the kill. “Am I forgiven?”
“You’re around five percent there, Josiah,” she said with a sly smile. “Keep working on it.”