Eddie dropped on to the couch. ‘Or a good time for one of us to start doing things without her?’
She eyed him. ‘That was definitely accusatory.’
‘What can I say? Yeah, it was nice to get out last night and do summat different, but that’s not the same as you going back to work for the IHA. That place never brought us anything but trouble.’
‘I’m not going back to the IHA,’ she said, sitting facing him across the coffee table. ‘I want to follow up on my mom’s research, that’s all. Being able to check the IHA’s database just makes it a hell of a lot easier. Besides, that,’ she indicated her mother’s notes, ‘isn’t work. It’s personal, it’s my family’s history. How could I not look into it?’
‘Yeah, I suppose,’ he said, with reluctance. ‘Well… go on then.’
‘Go on then, what?’
He jerked a thumb at the desk. ‘Go and do what you want to do. I can tell you’re absolutely desperate to get started.’
‘Are you sure?’
‘If I don’t let you, you’ll probably explode, and then I’ll have to clean up the mess.’
She scurried past him towards the desk, pausing to kiss the top of his shaved head. ‘Have I mentioned lately that you’re the best husband ever?’
‘I’ll remind you of that next time I want something,’ Eddie told her, smirking.
She opened her laptop and went straight to her email. Lola’s message contained the promised login instructions. Quickly clicking through, she soon had access to what she sought.
The Secret Codex.
The IHA had already done most of the translation work, amongst other things producing a list of the places where Talonor’s forces had established outposts. This was the reason for the agency’s secrecy; were the translations freely available, some locations — ports, peaks, passes — would be readily identifiable today, allowing anyone to set them as landmarks that could be used to find, and raid, potentially priceless archaeological sites.
Right now, though, Nina was only interested in identifying one of them: the Midas Cave. Atlantis, the greatest, richest, most powerful empire of pre-history, had not sent Talonor on his missions of discovery simply out of imperial greed, the endless need for more. He had been tasked with searching for something specific.
And now she was going to find out what it was — and where.
7
‘That should be it,’ Nina muttered, comparing the satellite image on her laptop’s screen with her mother’s annotated map. ‘That has to be it. So… why isn’t it?’
‘Why isn’t what?’ said an irritable voice behind her.
She turned to see Eddie, carrying a yawning Macy, enter the lounge. ‘Why isn’t the Midas Cave where it ought to be?’ she replied, frustrated. ‘I located mountain peaks that match the bearings Tobias took, as well as my mom’s work and the records of Talonor’s journey from the Secret Codex. And I also factored in shifts in magnetic north over time, the Atlantean measurement and numerical system, even the video you got of that map in the temple, and everything I know about the region’s history. It all points to the cave being here.’ She jabbed at a point on the map. ‘But it can’t be!’
‘What’s Mommy talking about?’ Macy asked, concerned.
‘Before you were born, this is what she used to do,’ Eddie told her. ‘All the time. She’d get so involved in some archaeological bol— thing that she’d forget to do other stuff. Like sleeping.’
‘I know it’s late, but I needed to—’ Nina checked the laptop’s on-screen clock and gasped. ‘Wait, it’s morning?’
‘Yeah, it’s morning!’ said her husband sarcastically. ‘You didn’t come to bed!’
‘No, that can’t be right. I don’t feel tired.’
Eddie regarded an empty mug beside the computer. ‘How many coffees did you have?’
‘I dunno, three, four? Oh. Yeah, that might explain it. Oh my God, I can’t believe I worked through the whole night!’
‘Is Mommy okay?’ Macy whispered to Eddie. ‘She’s talking weird.’
‘She does that,’ he said. ‘Come on, let’s get you some brekkie. Hopefully she’ll have sorted herself out by then.’ He headed for the kitchen with his daughter.
Nina followed. ‘But I should have found it, that’s the thing. In the Secret Codex, Talonor says the Midas Cave is on what the locals called Dragon Mountain. There’s a place in Nepal that’s sometimes called that even today, and it’s exactly where the cave should be. But it can’t be, because the only possible route up the mountain has a monastery on it — the same one my mother wrote to. Tobias couldn’t have missed it… therefore he couldn’t have gone that way. Which means I’m back at square one.’
‘What’s a monstery?’ Macy asked as she took her seat.
‘Where monsters live,’ said Eddie.
‘Ignore Daddy; it’s where monks live,’ Nina corrected.
He chuckled, then started gathering Macy’s breakfast. ‘So this Midas Cave is definitely a real thing?’
‘Yes. Talonor named it to honour his friend Midas — the prince. Midas made some sort of sacrifice to find it, but the Codex doesn’t say what. It wasn’t his life, though; he travelled on with Talonor afterwards.’ She glanced back at the map. ‘It was the farthest point of that expedition, actually. They returned to Atlantis after finding the cave.’
‘So they were specifically after whatever was inside it?’
‘Looks that way. Talonor left a contingent to guard it and prepare for the arrival of something called “the Crucible”, but he doesn’t say what that is. The people he was writing the Codex for would already have known, so he didn’t need to explain it. It was mentioned in Mom’s notes too, but she didn’t explain it either.’
Eddie sat with Macy and gave her a bowl of cereal. ‘That’s the end of that, then.’
Nina eyed him. ‘You sound almost relieved.’
‘It’ll mean you’ll come to bed at a non-ridiculous time. Or actually come to bed.’
‘I don’t see how I could have been wrong, though. Everything fits, until it all falls apart at the end.’
‘Maybe your mum was wrong,’ he suggested.
‘I doubt that,’ she snapped.
‘Blimey, no need to get defensive. Everybody makes mistakes. Even me.’
‘Yeah, I can think of one or seventeen.’
Macy was following the conversation with an ever-furrowing brow. ‘Why do monkeys live on a mountain? I thought they lived in trees.’
Nina laughed. ‘Not monkeys, honey — monks. They’re men who believe in a god so much that they live in a special house called a monastery, where they can spend all their time thinking about it.’
‘That’s silly. Why would you build a house on a mountain? It might fall off.’
‘Maybe they didn’t want visitors,’ suggested Eddie. He started on his own breakfast, pausing when he realised his wife had fallen unnaturally silent. ‘Ay up. What?’
‘I was just thinking,’ Nina said.
‘Yeah, that’s never a good sign.’
‘Oh Daddy’s so funny, isn’t he?’ she snarked to Macy, who giggled. ‘But why would they build a monastery on a mountain?’
Eddie shrugged. ‘Monks do weird stuff. We went to a monastery way up a mountain in India.’
‘Yeah, but when Tobias came back to look for the cave, the monastery he’d originally set out from had been destroyed. What if the monks hadn’t been killed — but had moved?’ She hurried back into the lounge, finding the letter her mother had received from Nepal.