“Heads up,” Hawke said. “Captain’s on the bridge.”
Lea set her drink down and glanced over her shoulder. She saw a tall, thin man in a beige linen suit and a Panama hat crossing the road adjacent to the café. “That must be Sooke,” she said.
Ryan sipped his beer. “He sticks out like a turd in a punchbowl… ouch!”
Scarlet stopped pinching him and straightened up in her chair. “This turd is our only hope of saving our friends, so wind your neck in.”
The English business magnate reached their table and without saying a word pulled a chair out and took a seat. “You must be the ECHO team.”
“How did you know that?” Lexi asked.
“You stick out like a sore thumb,” he said quietly. “Not many people dressed like you drink in a place like this.”
“Rich might have mentioned we were on the run,” Lea said defensively. “Sorry if we didn’t have time to dress for dinner.”
“You’re forgiven,” he said with a warm smile. “But don’t let it happen again. I’m Orlando Sooke.”
“We’d worked that much out,” Hawke said. “Funnily enough, there aren’t too many people around here dressed like the Man from Del Monte either.”
Sooke fixed his eyes on him and raised an eyebrow as he summoned a waiter. “Touché. Now, I understand lunch is on me.”
Lea smiled. “Sorry, but yeah… We’re what you might call cash-strapped.”
“I prefer in-between jobs,” Hawke said.
“Not me,” Scarlet said. “I’m like an actor… I’m merely resting.”
The stranger eyed the glasses on the table. “So how were you going to pay for these?”
“We have our ways,” Scarlet said.
“And what might they be?”
“This and that, but don’t worry — we won’t compromise your ethics.”
He smiled and they ordered lunch. Sharing some chit-chat until it arrived, Lea brought the conversation back to business. “If we can get to why we’re here, Mr Sooke?”
“Of course.” Eyes shaded by his Panama hat, Orlando Sooke set the gin and tonic down and steepled his fingers. “Apparently, a cargo ship called the Electra was out in the Aegean yesterday. These ships get used by the highest bidder, and in this case, it was a Belgian treasure hunter named Guy Francken. He has spent most of his life searching for shipwrecks around the world and right now he’s working on an area around the Fournoi Archipelago.”
“I’m not surprised,” Ryan said, mouth full of pizza. “That’s one of the most lucrative areas for shipwreck searches because its location used to be a major hub back in the ancient world. Marine archaeologists have found literally dozens of wrecks there in the last few years alone.”
“So what does this Francken want?” Hawke asked. “For us to go swimming around with the fishes looking at shipwrecks?”
“Is that really what you guys do?” Kamala asked.
“Yes and no,” Ryan said.
Nikolai held up his hands as if apologizing. “I have never scuba-dived in my life and I am not a strong swimmer, so…”
While Zeke laughed, Orlando shook his head and sipped his G&T. “No, that’s not it at all. Francken had already found his treasure, but when he was pulling it out of the water, a group of masked men raided his ship and stole some of it. He’s willing to pay well upon its return.”
Scarlet lit a cigarette, waved the match out and leaned back in her seat. “That’s more our cup of tea. I’m officially interested.”
“And God knows we need the money!” Lea said.
A ripple of grim laughter went around the table.
“And while we’re on the subject,” Scarlet said. “How fat is the paycheck?”
Sooke raised an eyebrow. “Mr Francken is a very rich man and he is prepared to pay handsomely for the return of the stolen item.”
Reaper fixed his eyes on the cool, calm Englishman. “Exactly how handsome?”
“One million dollars.”
“Woah!” Ryan said.
“There are eleven of us,” Scarlet said immediately. “That’s…”
Ryan rolled his eyes and sighed. “Forget it — you haven’t got enough fingers. It’s $90,909 each.”
“Doesn’t sound as amazing…” Scarlet’s words were muffled by the glass of vodka that she raised to her lips. “I’ll drown my sorrows right now, I think.”
“It’s more than enough to get our arses out of the fire,” Hawke said. “And enough left over to track down the sniper and make a start on rescuing Alex, Jack Brooke and Brandon from this Tartarus place.”
“Tartarus?” Sooke asked.
Lexi, who had been mostly silent during the conversation, eyed him carefully and said, “That’s what the man said.”
“Why?” asked Reaper.
“I’ve heard of it,” Sooke replied. “But only dimly and in the very darkest circles.”
Hawke regarded the stranger for a moment, but decided he was trustworthy. “Sounds about right — what else can you tell us about this place?”
Sooke paused a beat while he searched his memory. “The name came up a few years ago during an Eden Consortium briefing with the CIA. Only mentioned very briefly and all my subsequent attempts to find out more about it totally failed. The only thing we learned about the place was that it’s the most highly classified secret base in the entire US global network and next to no one knows its location. It’s Dulce Base to Guantanamo Bay’s Area 51, if you catch my drift.”
Ryan drank some cold beer. “We catch it.”
“Dulce Base?” Nikolai asked.
“It’s a secret base under the Archuleta Mesa on the border between New Mexico and Colorado,” Ryan replied. “It’s where the seriously classified stuff happens while thousands of tourists and conspiracy theorists set up their cameras outside Area 51.”
“Right,” Sooke said. “And if you think Dulce is classified then you need a whole new level of understanding to get where Tartarus is. There are even rumors it’s intergovernmental.”
“That’s insane,” Lea said. “The US Government share the base with Russians and Chinese?”
He shrugged. “Who said it’s run by the US Government? At this level things get seriously murky.”
“All right,” Hawke said, “this is all very interesting but we’re not going to find the location of Tartarus unless we have the funds to do it and that means earning some serious cash.”
Lea closed her eyes and leaned back in her chair. Tipping her head back and blowing out a long sigh of despair, she said, “And that only happens if we get this treasure back and return it to Francken.”
Turning to Sooke, the former Texan tank commander Ezekiel Jones spoke for the first time. “So what exactly was taken during this raid?”
Sooke shifted uneasily in his seat. “Mr Francken has thus far been somewhat reluctant to share too many details about what he was searching for off the Fournoi coast.”
“Helpful,” Scarlet said.
“But he wants to meet you at his apartment in Athens,” Sooke continued. “I’m sure he will brief you more fully when you are there.”
“And how are we going to get there?” Kamala said. “We have no money and can’t travel under our own passports.”
“She’s right,” Camacho said. “For at least fifty miles of eastern Turkey we drove in the back of a chicken truck.”
Sooke had an answer for everything. “A good friend of mine who used to work in the Foreign Office has knocked up some false passports for you all.” He lifted his attaché case onto the table and clicked open the tiny brass locks. “I’m sure you’ll have lots of fun learning your new identities.”
“This is all good and well, darling,” Scarlet said. “But how are we supposed to get to Athens? We haven’t got two lira to rub together.”