‘There’s some sort of picture under here.’
They redoubled their efforts, scooping away mud to reveal the ghostly outline beneath. Eventually, they’d cleared a hole about a metre square. Joost brought a water bottle and splashed it over the stones. The tide carried away the last residue of mud, revealing the underlying mosaic as clear as the day it was laid.
They all stared. It looked like a knot, but with straight lines and sharply geometric corners that radiated out like the points of a star or a crown. There was a symmetry to it, almost mathematical, as if it plotted some unknown equation.
‘It’s a labyrinth,’ said Doug. ‘On mazy paths … This must be it.’
‘But it isn’t a maze,’ Ellie objected. ‘There’s no path. The lines criss-cross each other all over the place.’
She knelt in the mud and tried to scrape the edges of the mosaic clean. She took a nail file out of her bag and scratched at the stone, feeling for any sort of crack or lip she might lift.
A shadow fell over her. Joost held the camera pointed at the floor, his face screwed up as he stared at its screen.
‘What are you doing?’
‘Documenting the site. This is art, right? It’s valuable.’ Joost edged around to get a better angle. ‘We’re in France. If the politicians don’t care that Talhouett fucked the environment, maybe they care about the culture.’
Scratching it to pieces with a nail file isn’t going to look too great on TV. Ignoring the camera, Ellie kept prying at the stones. They wouldn’t budge. The mosaic tiles were almost seamless.
‘Maybe there?’ Still filming, Joost pointed to the middle of the design where the lines made a blocky cross. ‘X marks the spot, right?’
But try as she might, she couldn’t get them loose. She was concentrating so hard she didn’t hear the throb of engines, not until Joost grabbed the collar of her coat and pulled her up. He dragged her to the glassless window. On the far side of the lake, a black 4x4 and two red pickup trucks jolted down a track between the trees.
‘Did you bring them here?’
Ellie was trembling so hard she barely managed to speak. ‘They want to kill us.’
The absolute terror in her voice dispelled any doubts Joost might have had. He let her go. On the far edge of the lakebed, the vehicles pulled up at the top of the slope. Half a dozen men jumped out: they surveyed the wasteland below, then began sliding down the embankment towards the mudflat.
‘Are those guns they’re carrying?’
‘I told you, what they’re doing here is very illegal.’ Joost stuffed the camera into the backpack and slung the rifle over his shoulder. ‘If they get caught, it costs hundreds of millions of euros. You think your life is worth more to them?’
‘What about the mosaic?’ Doug scrabbled on the floor, desperate. ‘We haven’t found anything yet.’
‘You want to be around when they get here? Be my guest.’
Ellie peered out the window again. The guards were still stuck on the shore, tentatively testing the mud to see if it would hold them. They’d come down on the far side of the lake from the stepping stones: it would take them a while to work their way round.
‘Is there another way to get here?’
‘Not unless they have a helicopter.’
From somewhere unseen, a low tremor disturbed the air. It echoed around the bowl of the lake like gunfire. Ellie stared at Joost.
‘I hope you were joking.’
A small helicopter in Talhouett colours swept over the ridge and touched down next to the cars. Two men clambered on to the skids.
‘Now what?’
In the corner, Joost was fumbling something out of his bag. It looked like a pistol, though with an absurdly wide barrel, like something out of a cartoon. He tucked it into his waistband.
‘Excuse me, but I think we should get the fuck out of here.’ He ran to the walls and made a stirrup with his hands. ‘Through the window. They see us if we go out the door.’
Doug took a last look at the mosaic. Ellie didn’t wait. She put her foot in Joost’s hands and let him lift her up to the sill. She squeezed through the narrow Norman window and dropped down on to the rock. Doug followed a moment later, pausing in the gap to help Joost after him.
The church blocked their view, but the sounds told their own story. Ellie could hear the pitch of the rotors rise as the machine lifted off; the whomp-whomp of the blades as it flew low over the lakebed towards them. It seemed impossible that she could outrun it, but she knew she had to try.
The stepping stones seemed further apart than before and more treacherous: each time she put a foot down, she thought it would skid out under her and pitch her into the mud. She looked back, to check that Joost was still with them.
Joost hadn’t come. He was crouching behind the church wall, fiddling with his outsize pistol. Ellie hesitated. The helicopter noise was all around them now, almost on top of her. But Joost still had the backpack.
A wall of air hit her as the helicopter came up over the church. It almost knocked her flat on the ground. One of the men perched on the skids saw her and aimed his rifle. She put up her hands. I surrender.
But they hadn’t seen Joost. Tight against the wall, almost directly below the hovering aircraft, he was invisible to them. The helicopter banked, looking for a place to set down. Joost stepped out from his cover.
A bright light whooshed out of his hands, straight into the helicopter. The cockpit lit up like a supernova. Time seemed to slow down. The helicopter thrashed the air like a dying bird, then plunged to the earth.
Hypnotised by the dying aircraft, Ellie didn’t see what hit her. All she felt was the impact — the next thing she knew she was flat on her back. Wet mud sucked her in; it seeped up her back; it trickled in her ear. The ground shook. A bright light seared the sky and a crashing roar enveloped her. Hot breath blew against her.
Then Doug was over her, reaching down, putting an arm under her back and hauling her up. Joost was there too. Behind him, a pillar of flames and black smoke seethed out of the shell of the church. The Normans had built to last, but even they couldn’t withstand that impact. The old walls, eroded by their long immersion, collapsed. The fire swallowed them, belching out the fragments it couldn’t digest in a series of secondary explosions. A piece of rock the size of a fist flew past Ellie’s head, inches wide. A smaller one grazed her face.
She crawled forward, bounding from stone to stone like an animal. Debris peppered her back. Shielding her face with her arm, she glanced over her shoulder. Through the smoke, she saw the men from the cars had come down to the shore. Light flashed from the muzzles of their guns.
‘Don’t shit yourself!’ Joost called. ‘From this range, they’re shooting wild!’
More shots came. Not far away, Ellie saw the bullets cutting plumes of mud out of the lakebed.
‘Keep moving.’
They leaped off the final stone and staggered up the incline to the trees. Ellie’s lungs ached; blood was pounding in her ears. She thought she heard a car up the hill to her right, but she carried on regardless. Joost’s hand on her shoulder spun her round.
‘Our car’s that way!’ she shouted.
‘So are the bad guys.’ Joost slipped off the backpack and gave it to Doug. ‘This is too goddam heavy. I need my arms free for shooting, OK?’
‘How are we getting out of here?’ Ellie had been so fixated on crossing the lake, she’d forgotten about the fence.
But Joost was already heading through the trees. She followed blindly, hoping he knew where he was going. A car door slammed in the distance; a minute later a volley of sub-machine-gun fire ripped through the forest. Branches snapped; lumps of wood erupted from the dead trees.