She was standing with the man she loved and some of her closest friends, but inside her head her mind forced her to watch a never-ending motion picture of her childhood memories: her mother making a cake in the kitchen as the Irish sun pierced the mist outside; her brothers playing in the garden; her father showing her how to fit a lens to a camera.
Her father.
Simple childhood memories more important to her than all the gold and treasure in the world, and now the last remnants of a previous happiness were nothing more than dusty relics, destroyed by the monstrous animal on the other side of this room. A wave of revulsion crept over her like a cloth soaking up that poisoned wine.
“Give me what I want, you son of a bitch! Why won’t you just tell us what we want to know?” She took a step closer. “What happened to my father?”
“You want answers, I understand that… and you’re not alone. Your father was the same. He was digging too deep.”
Hawke saw the anger on Lea’s face and took a step forward. “You can start with who are the Athanatoi?”
“That cannot be answered. It’s like asking — who are humans?”
“I don’t understand.”
A long sigh from the man in the swivel chair. “You have caused me much trouble. I respect your courage, but you understand why I brought you here.”
“You’re full of shit,” the Irishwoman said, almost spitting out the words.
But the Oracle merely laughed.
And then he turned around.
Hawke, Lea, Scarlet and Camacho took a step back in shock. None of them could believe what they were seeing.
Lea spoke first. “I can’t believe it.”
“Better believe it,” Scarlet said in disgust. “We’ve been played like violins.”
“Otmar Wolff,” Hawke said coldly. “If that’s your real name.”
“It’s my real name… at least one of my real names.”
“You’re the Oracle?” Lea said.
He nodded once. “I’d shake your hands but we already did that back in Liechtenstein, plus you’re filthy and covered in blood.”
Hawke fixed his eyes on Wolff. “Bond got Hugo Drax and I get you — at least you’re wearing the Nehru jacket — nice touch, by the way!”
Wolff rose from behind his desk and walked to the window. It stretched three hundred and sixty degrees around his penthouse suite, with views over the Atlantic in every direction. Slipped his hands in his pockets casually. Sighed with irritation. “I brought you here to take the idol and kill you, and instead you destroy half my home.”
He picked up the idol and weighed it contemplatively for a few moments. “But I have her now, at least.”
Lea bristled with anger. “Why ask us to get it, you son of a bitch?”
The reply was cool and measured. “Set a thief to catch a thief, and all that. After the desecration at Mictlan and the Mexican’s thieving of the idol, I decided you must all die, but I knew I needed that idol first. I have resources, but they are mostly political. On the other hand your team has proved itself to be rather, shall we say adept at locating ancient relics.”
“True story. We found you, after all,” Scarlet said.
Wolff ignored her. “My plan was simple — invite you to Liechtenstein, find out what you learned in Mictlan before the Mexican Government sealed it off again, and have you retrieve the idol for me. I must say it worked like a dream. The consummate wild goose chase.”
Hawke took a step closer. “It’s not over yet, Wolff.”
He laughed. “It was the ultimate revenge — turn you into puppets to do my bidding and then when you have served me by furnishing me with this idol, execute you — oh, and you might like to know I had your little Caribbean island annihilated today.” As he spoke he caressed the idol in his hands. “She’s mine now. That is all that matters.”
“Using us was a pretty cheap trick, Wolff,” Camacho said.
“Not at all. In fact it makes perfect strategic sense. I realized that setting a team of my own men against you in a race to find the idol was inefficient and would waste my time and resources. I asked myself: why not simply use the ECHO team as my puppets and have them find the idol for me?”
“Such a nice man,” Scarlet said.
Wolff ignored her. “You had already proved yourself extremely capable, and it would only cost me five million dollars as well. I made more than that playing on the commodities market before breakfast today so you were very cheap to buy. All I had to do was sit back and wait for you to bring the idol to me, but when you stumbled across Atlantis I knew I had to intervene. Sadly, I doubt there can be much left there now for future surveys.”
“How kind of you,” Lea said.
Wolff smiled and tipped his head to one side. He reminded Lea of a chameleon looking at a fly a second before firing its tongue out and catching it. “In many respects it’s lucky you didn’t die when I destroyed the Tomb of Eternity in Ethiopia or I wouldn’t have been able to use you now.”
Lea could hardly believe the words she was hearing. So he had also been responsible for the destruction of that mountain. Now she knew she was closer than ever to learning the truth about this man and his powers. “What’s the significance of Atlantis in all this?” she asked. “Why did you destroy it?”
“Atlantis is nothing,” he snarled. “A burned-out husk of a colony that was annihilated during the wars. My destruction of it today was nothing compared with what put it under the waves in the first place.”
“A colony?” Lea asked. “What does that mean? And what wars?”
Wolff laughed. “If you thought Atlantis was the greatest civilization of all time, just waiting to be discovered and plundered then surely you were sadly mistaken. Atlantis was nothing more than a failed religious order of traitors, and not even unique — just one of many, all created by them.” He let a sour, bitter laugh escape from his clay-colored lips. “Created by them just as if they were playing a game…”
“I don’t understand,” Lea said. “Who created Atlantis?”
Wolff stared at the young Irishwoman for several awkward seconds while drumming his fingers on the desk. The relentless tapping filled the tense silence as the old man clearly wrestled with his own thoughts. “The story of human civilization is not at all as you have been taught. Everything you think you know about humans and the world we live in is a lie, and worse than that, your rulers know it.”
“Liar.”
“What you see in your world today has all happened before, and I will destroy mankind before I let you shine a light on the truth.”
“Now I know who you are, you bastard,” Lea said, spitting the last word out, “I’m going to bring an end to all this shit.”
He laughed, mocking her. “This isn’t the end, Donovan — only the beginning.”
Far below a tremendous explosion ignited the refinery and rocked the entire Seastead. Wolff grabbed hold of the side of the desk to stop himself falling over, and for the first time Lea thought she sensed something other than cool control on his face.
“Looks like the tide is turning,” Hawke said.
“You cannot destroy me,” Wolff said, a malevolent smirk spreading on his face.
Before any of them had a chance to reply, a second tremendous blast knocked them off their feet and flung them through the air like confetti. Lea felt the full force as the shockwave struck her. It felt like a horse had kicked her in the stomach and she hit the deck like a rock, rolling over several times before she hit the wall and stopped dead. When she looked up the room was filling with smoke.
“Is everyone okay?” Hawke yelled.