“If you’re involved with Wolff then you’re a bigger fool than I imagined, Kruger,” Hawke said. His eyes were drawn to the bag containing the sword. It was parked innocuously on a long leather couch running under one of the bay windows.
Kruger saw him looking at the bag and his smile grew wider. “You want it, don’t you? You want to know what it really is, and what it does! You want to know about the gateway.”
“You’re a bastard, Kruger,” Lea said defiantly. “How could you work for a man like the Oracle?”
Kruger took more of the vodka while he and Vermaak shared a glance for a few seconds. “He has taught me a great deal. For a long time I thought diamonds and gold were the most precious things in this world. How wrong I was… how wrong I was.” His voice started to trail away, but then he came back sharp and loud. “The question you have to ask yourself, young Miss Donovan, is whether or not the Oracle really is a man.”
“There’s an obvious joke there,” Lea said, never taking her eyes off Kruger. “But I’ll leave it till the company’s better.”
“I’m not interested in your pithy one-liners, Donovan,” Kruger said, rounding on her. “Tell me, any luck working out who killed your daddy?”
Lea lunged for him, cursing his name as she rushed forward but Hawke grabbed her arm and stopped her. “Leave it, Lea. He’s baiting you and you should know better.”
Kruger laughed and finished his drink. “Quite the temper on that one, indeed. Quite the temper…” he tutted. “Very sharp.”
Lea scowled at him. “You join me in a fair fight and you’ll find out just how fucking sharp.”
Kruger ignored her comment. “When the Oracle has this sword, he will be able to open the gateway to the king’s tomb. After that, your fight will be over.”
“What do you mean gateway?” Reaper asked.
“Yeah,” Lea said. “And what king’s tomb?”
Kruger cackled. “I’m loving this. The great ECHO team begging me for information. It doesn’t get any better than this.”
“Oh, it does,” Lea said. “Like when the Oracle works out he’s used you for all he needs and then has you snuffed out. I just hope I’m there to see it.”
Reaper nodded. “Et moi, aussi.”
“The Oracle is very generous to loyal servants,” Kruger said. “And as for the second part of your little fantasy — you’ll all be dead within the hour, and about fucking time too.”
“People have threatened that before, mon ami,” Reaper said. “And yet here we all are.”
Hawke pointed at the dead men on the floor. “What happened to these men, Kruger?”
“Ah — yes, very sad… they tried to wield the sword, but unfortunately it turns out the legend is true.”
“What legend?” Lea said.
Hawke sighed. “Where the hell is Ryan when you need him?”
“The legend of the Sword of Fire states that only a person of innate goodness can wield it. Those with an evil lurking within are, apparently, char-grilled. It has something to so with negative and positive ions.”
“And you haven’t given it a try yet, ya lavvy heid?” Mack said. “Good to see you rate yourself as highly as the rest of us do.”
Kruger looked at him with disgust. “No, I haven’t tried it. What I need is someone new to try it for me.” His eyes crawled up to Lea and a second later a grin spread on his tanned face. “That is why you’re going to wield the sword next, Lea Donovan.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN
Ryan faced the two men. The mechanic was closer to him and swung the wrench, but he remembered everything the others had taught him and he ducked out of the way and sidestepped the blow. Still in the moment, he powered his left fist up into the man’s ribs and winded him hard, forcing him to drop the wrench.
The only thing faster than Ryan snatching up the wrench was the smile dropping from Bruno’s smug face, but it was too late to save his friend. Ryan spun around three-sixty to gather speed and momentum and then smashed the mechanic in the temple with the wrench, knocking him clean out.
Bruno cursed in Italian and rushed the young man, swinging a chunky punch at him. He was faster than the mechanic and this time Ryan’s only evasive manouvre failed and the blow hit the target.
He felt the strike on the side of his head and then a boot curled around the front of his ankle and hooked his foot out from under him. He lost his balance and fell backwards, helped on his way by another colossal punch on the side of his head.
The young hacker hit the smooth hard floor and nearly got knocked out with the impact. Hearing the Italian’s boots as they slapped down on the polished concrete, he scrambled up to his feet and reached out for anything he could get his hands on. The closest thing with any value as a weapon was a countersink cutter perched on the edge of a workbench.
Ryan snatched up it up and swung it at Bruno. The Italian flicked his head back to dodge the two kilo rivet shaver and both men realized at the same time that the saw was still connected to the mains.
Ryan pulled the trigger and the business end of the tool whirred around at over twenty thousand revs per minute.
Bruno desperately scanned the workshop for something he could use to fight back, and the answer came in the form of a high-speed panel saw down on the floor beside the unconscious aviation mechanic. The Italian snatched it up and gave his opponent a fiendish grin as he pulled the trigger. The diamond cutting wheel spun around at twelve thousand revs per minute.
Ryan took a sidestep and evaluated the situation. Both tools would kill the other man in an instant and make a damned bloody job of it too, but he knew that the Italian had a massive physical advantage. Since Maria’s death he had been working out but he was nowhere near ready to take on an ex-military man like Bruno.
At least he had the rivet shaver, and he revved it in his hands as he scanned around to see if anyone else on the team was near, but there was no one. This was a fight to the death, and if he made one mistake it would be his own, but Bruno was nothing like the overweight mechanic.
The Italian moved like lightning, and before Ryan knew what had happened he had kicked the rivet shaver out of his hand and punched him to the floor. He tried to roll away but Bruno jumped on top of him, pinning him down with his knees, and then the man from Naples revved the diamond cutter. “This is going to hurt you a lot more than me.”
Lea looked at Kruger with nothing but contempt. She thought she had hated him enough after what he had done to Ryan on the Seastead, but now she had learned about his teaming up with the Oracle as some kind of lackey she realized there was a whole new level of hate in her heart.
Kruger grinned like an old crocodile. “Take the sword to Miss Donovan, Adem!”
Lea watched Vermaak pick up the old leather bag and walk it over to her as if it contained nothing more than some tennis rackets. He set it down beside her and after giving Hawke a scowl he padded back over to the space behind his boss.
Kruger sniffed and shifted in his seat. “So there it is.”
Zito took a step back and moved around behind the desk.
“Why is it glowing like this?” Lea said.
Kruger shrugged. “I don’t know, but I know a man who does.” He laughed, and then the gang of men around him joined in for a moment. They hushed up when he spoke again. “It has something to do with the way static electricity becomes current electricity in a thunderstorm, only this sword magnifies the process like a motherfucker.”
“You mean like a Van de Graaff generator?” Hawke said.
Kruger gave Vermaak a nod and the South Afircan commando piled a machine pistol into Hawke’s stomach and sent him to the floor, gasping for air. “If I’d meant that I would have said so, you bastard.”