“Such as?” Kim asked.
“Such as certain inscriptions which imply Hephaestion, one of Alexander’s top generals and advisors is buried there, for one thing. Another is the grandness of the place. There are two enormous sphinxes made of marble guarding the tomb’s main entrance and some archaeologists say there’s a good chance the entire complex was designed by King Alexander’s chief architect, a man named Dimocrates, sometimes known as Dinocrates of Rhodes. All of this means they think they might have found the tomb of Alexander the Great, but only we know it.”
“Thanks to the sword and shield,” Devlin said.
“Exactly,” said Ryan. “Now we know that they’re digging in roughly the right place, but not deep enough and slightly to the west of the actual site of his tomb. With the information we have now we should be able to locate the tomb precisely.”
“These little quests just keep dragging us deeper and deeper down the rabbit hole,” Lexi said quietly from the Chevy’s second row near the front. “Idols, maps, treasure hunts, immortal men, cults, secrets and lies. We’re so deep now we might never get out again.” Her tortured hand was hidden inside a leather glove which she tried to keep out of sight as much as possible.
Hawke considered her words as he let Camacho’s smooth driving whisk them around the northern shores of the Strymonian Gulf. Part of the Aegean Sea, it was a world of olive tree-covered peninsulas stretching into the sparkling turquoise water and cirrus cloud-streaked skies.
Deeper into the rabbit hole.
He nodded with the thought and found himself working his way through all the men and women he’d been forced to take out on this crazy journey. Hugo Zaugg and his depraved henchman, the one-eyed Baumann. Sheng Fang and his insane belief that he was the Thunder God. Maxim Vetrov and his crocodile pit. Klaus Kiefel’s masterplan to wipe out the United States with an ancient bio weapon. Álvaro Sala and his crazy pursuit of the elixir of life to the very ends of the world. Morton Wade and his Mexican coffee plantation full of slaves… It almost seemed like a dream now, unreal and impossible.
And yet it was real.
And so were Dirk Kruger and the sick and twisted man who pulled his strings, the Oracle. Thousands of years old, was he a man or a god? A demigod? This creature who had been tormenting them for so long could be either and it drove him mad just to think about it. He glanced forward to the next row where Lea was sleeping.
If it felt like he was losing his mind in all this, then he couldn’t imagine what it was doing to her. This man Wolff, the Oracle, had ordered the murder of her father and had him slaughtered right in front of her eyes. If anyone here deserved closure from this nightmare, then it was her and he was going to make damned sure she got it, no matter what it took.
He looked down at his watch and sighed when he saw the shattered face. He’d smashed it on the rocks back at the Parthenon and broken it. He took it off and slipped it into his bag down at the bottom near the engagement ring. It was a present his mother gave him on his pass out parade. A long time ago now, to be certain and he would get it repaired as soon as some degree of sanity returned to his turbulent life.
Beside him, Reaper pushed his window open and fired up a cigarette. Some of the smoke blew back into the SUV, but no one complained. They were all smokers or ex-smokers of one thing or another and they let him enjoy the thing in peace. It settled the nerves, he said and Scarlet lit one up to join him.
“Just imagine,” Devlin said quietly. “Finally finding the tomb of Alexander the Great after all this time…”
Ryan turned around in his seat and faced the back. “Tell me about it. Archaeologists and historians have been searching for the tomb of Alexander the Great for centuries, hoping to find not only artefacts and relics relating to his life and conquests but also the vast amount of treasure he’s generally supposed to be have been buried with.”
Lea opened her eyes and sighed. “We want the idols,” she said bitterly. “Just the idols.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
Jessica Clark padded around her kitchen as she talked. She was scrunching her neck up to hold the cell phone at her ear the way a violinist holds their instrument, waiting impatiently for someone to get back on the line. It was late and dark and the LED under-cabinet lighting gave a calm, arctic blue glow to the neat and ordered room.
“Garcetti?” she asked.
“Aaand I’m back.”
“You get the details I need, or what?”
“Does the Pope shit in the woods?”
“Give me the details, please.”
“You got a pen or something?”
She sighed and fought to control her temper. “You think people who do what I do write shit down? Why do you think I’m talking on a pre-paid cell phone?”
“Just asking… As I explained before, there’s a new international terrorist group on the scene.”
“You already said that.”
“Just listen up, Cougar. This is the official line and you need to know it. According to Pegasus, my contact in the CIA, they’re called the ECHO team. That’s Echo, Charlie, Hotel, Oscar and it stands for the Eden Covert History Organization.”
“Doesn’t sound like a bunch of terrorists to me.” She woke her laptop up and accessed the FBI’s Most Wanted Terrorists website.
“If Pegasus says they’re terrorists, they’re terrorists.”
“They’re not on the Most Wanted Terrorists list.” She slid a box of full metal jacket nine mil pistol cartridges off the kitchen table and started to push the primer-end of the bullets into the back of the fifteen-round magazine. As the tension on the spring increased she slotted her speed-loader onto the top of the magazine and finished filling it up.
“And we both know that’s the public Most Wanted list, Cougar. The list on my desk right now is the list of the real problem children.”
“What are my orders?” Pushing a box of Cheerios away to give her more room on the table, she put the full magazine into her bag alongside her Glocks and started to fill another one. The second one was much older with a weaker, used spring so she set the speed-loader down in the bag and filled it up manually.
“It’s the full package.”
The words made her stop in mid-flow. “The full package?”
“Uh-huh. ECHO’s members and everyone they know. All family and close friends are to be wiped.”
“You know how big a job like that is?”
“I don’t give a damn. You asked what your orders were. Now you know.”
“Names.”
Garcetti tried not to sound bored as he rattled off the names of everyone she was to terminate. There weren’t many. Just ECHO for now. She would work her way out to their friends and family as she went along.
“Where are they now?”
“They just arrived in Greece.”
“What, are they on vacation?”
“No, they’re not on vacation. They’re on a mission to obtain some relics they have no business trying to obtain.”
“You want me to fly to Greece to do it?”
“No, I want you to pour yourself a bath with some Shizumi luxury salts and let the stresses of the day melt away. Of course I want you to fly to Greece, but you’re only tracking them. You don’t take anyone out until I give the final execution order, but it will be soon, so be ready.”
Be ready. What an asshole. She was ready every minute of the day or night. That was how she stayed alive. “You’re the boss.”