Another command from Vetrov and Kosma picked Lea up and lowered her into the harness, tying her into the steering lines and risers so she was completely unable to move. Then he lashed the other end of the steering lines and the canopy haphazardly around the heavy metal container.
There followed a few moments of discussion where Kosma tugged on the knots and tested the lines. Her fate was clear when Kosma slowly opened the front port cargo hatch opposite the container box and pushed Lea over to the edge with his boot.
Mazzarro looked on, horrified.
Cold air rushed into the hold, but the lack of altitude meant the aircraft was no longer pressurized, and there was no danger of being sucked out.
Only pushed out.
At last, Vetrov spoke.
“Dr Mazzarro. You see what your intransigence has driven me to. You will now start work on the map translation or Miss Donovan here goes over the side. Let me remind you we are cruising at a little over eight thousand feet, doctor. That is two and a half kilometers. If she falls from here she will hit the surface of the ocean at two hundred kilometers an hour just thirty seconds after leaving the aircraft. She will have just enough time to consider her fate, but not enough time for anyone to do anything about it.” He laughed again, proud of his ingenuity.
“You’re a monster!” Mazzarro cried out, reaching desperately for something to cling to as he staggered away from the open door.
Lea’s eyes bulged as she strained in the ropes, unable to cry out because of the gag. She was good at getting out of tricky situations, but this time she knew she was out of luck.
“A monster who will kill everyone you have ever known, starting with this pathetic Irish troublemaker. Will you translate the map?”
“I…I already told you that I can’t…”
“Wrong answer!”
Vetrov snapped his fingers and Kosma booted Lea in the ribs, sending her flying out the open cargo hatch. She felt her stomach turn as she tumbled out of the aircraft and began to plummet toward the water, but then the steering lines lashed to the container inside the plane went suddenly taut and arrested her fall.
She swung violently beneath the aircraft and smashed into the underside of the main body. Then she swung back again like a human pendulum before the force of the aircraft’s forward motion swept her back in mid-air where she stayed, hanging behind the cargo door just a few dozen meters in front of the inner port engine. It growled hungrily in the distance. The blades raced at over three thousand revs per minute, and the white spiral painted on the fan hub was now just a blur. She felt sick and confused.
“Oh my God!” Mazzarro screamed, pointing at Lea. “Bring her in! Bring her in now, please.”
“The map, Doctor Mazzarro. You will begin translating it, or…”
He nodded at Kosma, and the giant pulled an old Soviet combat knife from his belt and began to hack away at one of the steering lines.
“What are you doing! She will fall to her death!”
Vetrov peered out the cargo door. “I hope so, Dario, because if she goes into engine Number Two I’ll have to get the pilot to shut it off.”
The academic recoiled with fear as he watched Lea suspended in the parachute canopy.
“Please, Dr Mazzarro,” Vetrov said gently. “I beg you to reconsider your position.”
The line Kosma was cutting broke, and twanged violently apart under the pressure. Lea slipped a little closer to the whirring engine’s fans blades.
Vetrov beamed. “There are not many more lines to cut through, as you see.”
Mazzarro broke. “All right, all right — I can’t stand it any more… bring me the map.”
Leaving Lea dangling from the aircraft, Vetrov ordered Kosma to fetch the map, and when he returned Mazzarro got to work. He translated the first few glyphs in less than twenty minutes.
“Well, doctor?” Vetrov asked.
“Yes… yes! I’ve done as you ask — please bring the girl back in!”
“What have you found?” the Russian asked him,
Mazzarro looked nervously from Lea to Vetrov. “The hieroglyphics on the map tell a story… They tell a story… it’s about Poseidon and Osiris warring over the source of eternal life. They tore the map in half — what you have in your hands is the half Poseidon kept for himself. Without the other half it is useless…”
Without Mazzarro explaining another word, a crooked smile spread on Vetrov’s lips. “Of course… and the other half is buried with Osiris!”
Mazzarro looked once again at Lea, lashed in the steering lines of the chute outside the plane. “Please, will God and the world forgive me…”
Vetrov turned to leave the hold. “Kosma, order the pilot to fly on to Luxor. We’re going on an excavation…oh, and pull our Irish friend back into the plane. She can die later on, the way the gods intended.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
Hawke and Snowcat emerged from the hotel on the eastern side and found themselves opposite a busy marina on the west bank of the Nile. The sun shone powerfully on the river’s broad surface, and the smell of exhaust fumes hung heavy in the air. The street was quiet with only a few taxis and the occasional delivery truck, but this was the up-market part of the city where the authorities liked to sweep any trouble out of sight.
“This way!” the Russian agent said, pulling on Hawke’s arm.
“Oh please, no more rivers!” Hawke said, thinking about Venice.
She looked at him, confused. “No! You think I’m crazy? No, this way!”
Hawke followed her south along the road running parallel to the Nile for a few hundred yards until they reached a building of peach and white plaster rising from behind a high wall.
“What the hell is this place?” he asked.
“Russian Embassy — here we will be safe.”
They moved along the road until they were at the entrance, and Snowcat rang the buzzer on the enormous white gates. Back at the Sheraton, the armed men were now spilling out onto the street and heading in their direction. Hawke watched as Snowcat stared at the intercom speaker, desperate, her heart beating hard in her chest with the breathlessness of the chase.
A man answered through the intercom. He spoke Russian, and his voice was muffled and hard to hear.
Snowcat spoke with him for a few moments, but the gates stayed shut.
Hawke watched the men advancing on them. “I hate to tell you this, Agent Snowcat, but our friends are getting rather too close for comfort.” As he spoke they had to duck behind the wall at the side of the gate for cover as the men fired in their direction.
“Shut up! I’m trying to speak.”
“All right, take it easy. Russians…”
More conversation followed in rapid Russian, totally incomprehensible to Hawke, who was now starting to have serious doubts about this particular exit strategy.
“What’s the deal?” he said urgently.
Snowcat turned to him, confused. “They won’t let me in.”
“What?”
“They say they don’t know who I am — I gave them my full name and codename and some other information we use to identify ourselves, but they claim not to know me and they say I must go away or they will call the police.”
Closer now, the men’s shooting had begun to cause a general panic on the street outside the embassy. “I think that ship’s already sailed, to be honest,” Hawke said, grimacing as another bullet traced over his head and thudded into the plaster of the gatehouse.
“I don’t know what to do,” Snowcat said, shaking her head in bewilderment.
“Then it’s over to me,” Hawke said, grabbing her hand. “Come on!”