Hawke looked at Ryan, impressed once again with his determination to get to the truth. “So basically, Osiris must have double-crossed Poseidon and made a copy of the map before they tore it in half?”
“Pretty much, only we could never have found it without Poseidon’s half of the map because only on that was there a reference to Osiris. Poseidon probably had no idea he’d been duped by Osiris.”
“Wow,” Lexi said, walking over to them and yawning.
“Quite, and when you consider just how old this thing is — so old it had Osiris and Poseidon arguing over it and tearing their map in half — I think it really deserves a double wow.”
“Double wow,’ Snowcat said, her words drifting into the stunned silence.
“But there’s one thing that bothers me,” Ryan continued. “I was poring over Lexi’s picture of the Poseidon half of the map when I noticed there was a slight discrepancy with the Osiris copy on the palette.”
Eden looked concerned. “What sort of discrepancy?”
“It’s not much — just a few simple glyphs, but they seem to be referring to something that doesn’t make much sense to me.”
“Great,” Scarlet said. “If it doesn’t make much sense to you then the rest of us are properly fucked.”
“So what doesn’t make sense?” Lexi asked.
“It just seems incongruous in the context of the other details, which are basically a treasure map. It reads… let me see if I’ve got this right… the golden mean is your measure.”
“Any idea what it means?” Snowcat asked, moving closer to Ryan.
He shook his head. “Not really, and the thing is I’m struggling to see the relevance of it to be honest. It’s not got anything to do with the location of the source, whatever it is, and was clearly added much later after Osiris had made his copy.”
Eden cleared his throat and straightened his shirt. “If you’re happy that it has no relevance, then it’s time to ask the big question.”
Everyone stared at Ryan. They knew what Eden was about to ask him, and they knew Ryan already had the answer.
Eden raised his chin and spoke without emotion. “Mr, Bale, where is the elixir of eternal life?”
“Beyond Upper Egypt, without a doubt.”
Lea cursed. “Damn it, we just came from there, right?”
“Eh?” Ryan said, perplexed. “What are you talking about?”
“Cairo — we just came from the Upper Nile.”
“Upper Egypt means the south,” Ryan said patiently, trying to suppress a second face-palm.
“But north is more up on a map,” Lea said. “That’s just obvious, right?”
“To you, maybe, but upper and lower are references to the Nile, not which way up Lea Donovan is holding an iPhone.”
“I miss this kind of pillow talk, Ry.”
“Yes, thank you both for that,” Eden said. “But ‘beyond Upper Egypt’ is not precise enough, Mr Bale. Where, exactly?”
Ryan flicked on Google Earth and zoomed in on an area he’d already marked with a pin. He spun around in the chair and grinned at his audience before speaking.
“The source of eternal life, Sir Richard, is there.”
He pointed the tip of his pen at the laptop screen.
The Ethiopian Highlands.
After the revelation they had been waiting to hear for so long, they decided the best thing to do was get some sleep before loading the choppers and heading south. It was dawn now, and they were exhausted. The journey from the British Museum to here had been long, demanding and dangerous. Their three dead colleagues were a testament to that, not to mention the narrow escape Lea had endured back in the Moscow fire.
They went back to their rooms, Hawke leading Lea by the hand. It was a strange and unusual moment of quiet the two of them rarely enjoyed together, and neither really knew what to say.
She went to draw the curtains but he stopped her. She watched him as he drew closer, the way the sun struck the thick stubble on his chin and wide jaw line. She felt like she fell in love with this man all over again with every new day, and now it was happening once more. Times like this, she thought, are when we get to forget about the killing and carnage. Times like this, she thought, are when I can really lose myself, just for a moment in time.
He stood in front of her, his broad shoulders blocking the Egyptian sunlight which shone low over the city behind him. He lifted his hands to her face and brushed her cheek. She had seen those big hands in a fight, and sometimes struggled to believe he could be so gentle with them.
“Don’t stop,” she whispered, and moved closer to him.
He made no reply, but simply lifted her off her feet and carried her back to the bed, lit soft amber by a flickering candle in the dawn’s low light. She felt his heavy, scarred body press down on her. He lowered his head and kissed her neck and her eyes widened with pleasure. Now, he ran his fingers trough her tangled hair and she closed her eyes.
Hawke opened his eyes and woke to feel Lea beside him, still asleep. She was resting her head on his chest and using it as a sort of pillow, the way she did sometimes. The morning sun was higher now and streamed through the thin voiles. Everything looked different in the daylight.
He smiled as he recalled the day they met in London, and when they had shared the ski chalet in Switzerland that night. Just one solitary night with each other beside the fire. When all this was over, he promised himself, the two of them really had to get away from it all.
Beside him, Lea awoke.
“Hot or cold?” he said quietly.
She turned to face him, her hair bunching up on the pillow. “What?” She smiled.
“When all this is over,” he said, turning onto his side so they were face to face. “We should get away somewhere. Where do you fancy — somewhere hot or cold?”
“After Egypt, I’m going to say somewhere cold. Maybe we could get back to our little ski chalet in Zermatt?”
“Why are you grinning?”
She shrugged. “No reason. It’s just that was the place you seduced me…”
“You seduced me, more like!”
Hawke smiled and turned on his back. The ceiling fan whirred slowly above them. He didn’t care which way around it was. He hadn’t been this content for years, not since the second before his wife’s murder. Yes, it was true he had unfinished business — James Matheson would pay the ultimate price for his crimes, but it wouldn’t be easy — Eden was right. Matheson was the British Foreign Secretary and had some of the chunkiest and best trained security in the West. No, Hawke knew he would have to bide his time on that one… but in the meantime, he had Lea, and that was enough for him.
He turned to her but she had fallen back to sleep.
Rangers he thought, with a smile.
He climbed out of bed and started to get dressed. Today was the day he ended this war. Today was the day he found the elixir of life.
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
When they got to the airport they saw Vetrov’s A380 parked on the apron, glistening white in the hot sun, but with the addition of several dozen armed soldiers crawling all over it. Arafa had delivered on his promise to Eden. In addition to the men guarding Vetrov’s plane, there were around twenty soldiers waiting for them, headed up by Captain Koura, a short, lean man with a serious moustache.
The sight of Vetrov’s aircraft in quarantine had sent up a cheer among the group, but it was short-lived. Koura explained that witnesses had already told him how Vetrov, Kodiak, Mazzarro and a team of his best men had left the airport hours earlier in three heavily armed Kazan Ansat choppers which he had transported to the desert himself in his Airbus. Koura explained that the witness had claimed Vetrov had gone south with what he described as a small army. Hawke was unfazed.