A pause. When the woman replied, it was with clear concern even through the fuzz of the scrambled transmission. ‘Everyone’s dead?’
‘Yes, everyone but me. Our transport was destroyed. I need immediate evac.’
‘We can’t give you evac with a gunship in the air.’
‘It’s been shot down. I need to get out of here before they come to see what happened to it.’
A long silence as the controller conferred with a superior. Finally, she responded: ‘Okay, Maven, can you reach Point Charlie?’ A backup rendezvous point some miles to the south. ‘If you hole up there, we’ll get an extraction team to you asap.’
‘I’ll make it,’ Cross answered. ‘I’ll contact you when I arrive.’
‘Roger that, Maven. Good luck.’ She paused again, then added in a softer voice: ‘I’m sorry about Mike and Gabe.’
‘So am I,’ said Cross, giving Rosemont’s corpse an emotionless glance. ‘Maven out.’
He switched off the radio, then surveyed the area. The cloud had now mostly dispersed, but he didn’t risk removing his MOPP gear; there were still drifting patches of haze in the air. Instead he returned to where he had donned the suit to retrieve his equipment webbing. There was a water flask attached; he took it, then went back to the crater.
The small sliver of the angel was still submerged in the blood-red water. He removed the flask’s cap, then carefully picked up the shard and dropped it inside before it started to smoke again. The thought occurred that he should find one of the dead agents’ canteens, as there was no way of knowing how long it would be before he was rescued, but he dismissed it. He knew he would find what he needed to survive. ‘“For the Lamb which is in the midst of the throne shall lead them unto living fountains of waters…”’ he said quietly as he firmly secured the cap.
His cargo secured, he set out into the wilderness.
1
‘Has everything I’ve done in my life been worth it?’
Nina Wilde sat facing Dr Elaine Senzer, but her eyes were lowered, avoiding the psychiatrist’s gaze. Instead she fixated on small, irrelevant details — a scuff on the other woman’s shoe, indentations on the carpet where her chair had been moved — as she tried to put her fears into words. ‘That’s the question I’ve been asking myself recently,’ she went on. ‘And the thing that’s worrying me is… is that I’m not sure it has.’
Elaine leaned forward, adjusting her glasses. ‘I’m curious why you’d say that. You’ve already achieved more in your life than most people — I mean, it’s fair to say that you’re the most famous archaeologist in the world. You found Atlantis, you discovered the lost city of El Dorado and a hidden Egyptian pyramid, and all those other amazing things. That’s something to be proud of, surely?’
‘Is it?’ Nina caught herself leaning back in her seat, as if subconsciously trying to maintain the distance between them. ‘Yeah, I found all those things — and I got a lot of people killed in the process. Too many people.’
‘You didn’t kill them personally.’
‘Some of them I did.’ Even without looking directly at Elaine, she could sense the psychiatrist’s shock at the revelation. ‘They were trying to kill me, it was always in self-defence… but yeah, I’ve killed people. And you know what’s really scary? I’ve lost count of how many.’
Elaine hurriedly scribbled a note. ‘I see.’
Nina gave her a grim smile. ‘You’re not going to have me committed to Bellevue, are you?’
‘No, no,’ the dark-haired woman hastily assured her. ‘I actually think it’s good that you feel able to tell me about it at this relatively early stage. If you remember, when we started these sessions last month, it was quite a challenge for you to open up about anything at all. The very nature of post-traumatic stress causes sufferers to try to internalise it — there’s a great deal of anger, guilt—’
‘Tell me about it,’ Nina muttered.
‘I’m afraid it doesn’t work that way,’ said Elaine, with sympathy. ‘You have to tell me.’
‘You want me to tell you about my guilt?’ Nina snapped. ‘Okay — about four months ago, one of my friends was murdered right in front of me. And it was all my fault! Macy wouldn’t have been there if not for me…’ Her voice faded to inaudibility.
A long silence was eventually broken by the psychiatrist. ‘Nina… are you okay?’
‘If I was okay, I wouldn’t be seeing a shrink, would I?’ the redhead replied, wiping her eyes. ‘What kind of a stupid question is that?’
Elaine shrugged off the insult with professional calm. ‘Tell me about Macy. I know you’re reluctant, but I really think it would help. Please,’ she added, seeing her patient clench her fists. ‘In your own time; you don’t have to say anything if you don’t want to.’
‘For a hundred and fifty bucks an hour, I’m not going to sit here in silence. I could do that for free at Starbucks, and the coffee would be better.’ Nina took a deep breath, then a second, before continuing. ‘Macy… she was an archaeology student when I first met her. She had a case of’ — a brief smile at the memory — ‘hero worship.’ Her expression darkened once more. ‘Spending time with me soon cured her of that.’
‘But she was your friend,’ Elaine said.
‘Yes. She could be annoying — God, she could be annoying! — but yeah, she was. She was young, that was all. And she thought life was there to be enjoyed, so she went all out to enjoy it.’
‘Whereas you…?’
A wry shake of the head, her shoulder-length hair swinging. ‘I’m not exactly a party animal. Never have been. But Macy threw herself head-first into everything. And that…’ Her voice broke. ‘That got her killed.’
‘How so?’
‘She invited herself along on my last job for the International Heritage Agency. I could have said no, sent her home. But I didn’t. I don’t know why, maybe because… maybe because I was afraid it might be the last chance I had to spend time with her.’
Elaine flicked back through her notebook. ‘Your illness — you thought it was terminal at that point?’
Nina nodded. She had been under a slow death sentence, poisoned by a toxin from deep within the earth. ‘Yeah. There was a treatment, but I didn’t know about it then.’ She kept the full truth to herself: that the ‘treatment’ was nothing less than the legendary fountain of immortality sought by Alexander the Great. After the horrors she had been through to find it, she had vowed to keep its location a secret, to prevent the inevitable further bloodshed if others fought to control it. ‘So I let Macy come with us, and…’ She choked up.
‘Are you all right?’ Elaine asked. ‘Do you need a Kleenex or something?’
Nina rubbed away a tear. ‘No, no. I’m okay. It’s just, talking about it…’
‘I understand.’
‘It’s…’ Nina sat sharply upright, looking Elaine straight in the eye for the first time. ‘It’s not fair! She was so young, she was practically still a kid! And this man, this bastard, killed her like she was nothing — just to get to me. If I hadn’t gotten involved, or if I’d done what I should have done and told Macy to go home, she’d still be alive! I got her killed!’
She slumped forward, head in her hands, trying to hold in her sobs. Elaine looked on with concern. ‘Nina, I’m so, so sorry. But you must know deep down that’s not true. You didn’t kill your friend. Someone else did.’
Nina forced out a reply. ‘If it wasn’t for me, she’d still be alive. The same goes for Rowan Sharpe, and Jim McCrimmon, and Ismail Assad and Hector Amoros and Chloe Lamb and — and so many others I can’t even remember all their names!’ She looked up in despair. ‘This is what I mean, Elaine. Yes, I made all those discoveries — but this was the cost. Hundreds of people have died because of me.’