A day had passed since they’d dispatched Maxim Vetrov and watched a mysterious earthquake come out of nowhere and bury the Tomb of Eternity under thousands of tons of Ethiopian mountain.
Lea had made a full and startling recovery. What surprised everyone was how fast it had been — within a few short hours of getting shot and almost dying she was up and running in full health without a sign of the bullet wound. That raised a lot of questions in everyone’s minds, most of all Hawke’s. When he asked her if she remembered anything after being shot, she shook her head and smiled.
Hawke himself still had battles to fight, even with Vetrov dead and buried and the source located — even if it was lost to humanity forever. For one thing, he had to arrange a meeting with James Matheson, the British Foreign Secretary. The two of them had a few things to discuss, and Matheson wasn’t going to like the subject of conversation.
He escaped the throbbing bass of the music coming from inside the suite and moved to the balcony for some peace and quiet. Looking up at the sun as it started to sink in the western horizon, he knew he was also owed an explanation from his new friends about why they had been lying to him, and it was to come sooner than he thought.
His mind turned to his family back in England. He hadn’t talked to them for a very long time, and some would say with good reason, but maybe now it was time to lay some ghosts to rest and talk again. Maybe he should introduce them all to Lea — or then again, maybe not…
Before he could consider the matter any further, Sir Richard Eden appeared on the balcony and stood beside him.
“Good work, Hawke,” he said in his usual business tone. “HMG is pleased Vetrov was taken out, even if it did mean destroying the tomb.”
Hawke sighed and shook his head.
“What’s the problem?” Eden asked.
“First, I don’t care what HMG thinks because I don’t work for them and I didn’t do it for them, and second, as I told you before, we didn’t destroy the tomb. I don’t know how it happened — maybe we triggered some self-destruct device like Indiana Bloody Jones or something — I don’t know, but we did not destroy that tomb.” He paused for a second. “And don’t think I’ve forgotten about what you said on the flight out of Cairo when you found out about my attackers being British.”
“That’s easy. It pains me to say it but I think we have a leak at the British Embassy. When we got to Cairo, as you know, I went straight to my old friend Pete Henderson, the ambassador. I apprised him of our situation and asked him to make things as easy as he could for us during our stay in the country. He said he’d help out. He was the only person I spoke to, Hawke.”
“You trust him?”
“I did, but not any more. I strongly suspect he leaked your presence in Cairo to Matheson — they were old friends in the Foreign Office for many years. After what you told me about Matheson being behind your wife’s murder, it all seems to fit together. Certainly that would explain the Apache and how the men in the Escalades were able to track you all over the city — working for Matheson they would have had access to real-time sat surveillance data. I also suspect he was the reason Maria was locked out of the Russian Embassy. He must have spoken to a contact inside the Russian Government and pulled some strings.”
Hawke listened carefully to the words as the old man spoke. It all made sense, he decided, and it all led back to Matheson. Inwardly he was ashamed he had doubted some of his closest friends, and he was grateful he hadn’t accused them of anything to their faces. Only Maria knew of his doubt, however fleeting it had been.
“All right, I accept that,” Hawke said. “It just makes me more determined to make Matheson pay for his crimes.” With lightning reactions he swatted a mosquito on his neck and its mangled body fell silently to the decking.
Eden sighed. “He’s the Foreign Secretary, Hawke. He has some of the toughest security on the planet. You’re not going to get anywhere near him.”
Hawke frowned. “We’ll see about that. Besides, he won’t be the Foreign Secretary forever, Richard, will he now? I know how to play the long game… but there’s more you’ve been keeping from me, am I right?”
Eden nodded but said nothing for a long time. Like Hawke, he was momentarily mesmerised by the sunset over the Sahara desert. Hawke, for his part, fought hard to control his curiosity and not look too keen in front of the other man. He had waited a long time to hear the truth, but he knew that the truth usually hurt more than lies.
“I’ll come straight out with it, Hawke, so listen up.”
Hawke leaned over the balcony and watched a boat moving up the Nile. As it passed north it broke the reflection of the setting sun in the water into a thousand ripples. Here it comes, he thought.
“You’re right about Scarlet never having been in MI5, and the same goes for poor Sophie Durand who we lost in Tokyo. She was never in the French DGSE either. Both of them worked for me.”
“I don’t understand,” Hawke said, turning to face Eden. “I was there in Geneva when Sophie burst in on us. It was obvious no one knew her.”
“An act I’m afraid. Sophie worked for me for many years. I was the one who told her to join you in Geneva as back-up when it looked like things were getting out of control in the Zaugg case.”
Hawke frowned, and felt the anger rising inside him. An act? They had deceived him right in front of his face and now Eden dismissed it as a simple act. “And Lea? She works for you — that much is true, right?”
“Yes and no. She works for me, but not, as you believe, as my personal security.”
“Excuse my French, Rich, but just what the fuck is going on here?”
“You have to remember we didn’t know anything about you back then and we couldn’t take any risks.” He sighed and sounded like he meant it. “Lea, Scarlet and formerly Sophie all worked for something called ECHO. There have been others but…”
Hawke shook his head. He couldn’t believe the level of deceit they had subjected him to. “And what the bloody hell is ECHO?”
“Eden Counter-Hostile Organization. I established it some time ago as a semi-autonomous unit to deal with threats like the ones you have been handling over the past few weeks. It is, as you will appreciate, extremely covert, and not even the British Government knows about it.”
“And not one of you trusted me enough just to tell me?”
Eden sighed. “It wasn’t like that, Hawke. People do not simply join something like ECHO. They are proposed by members and then tested. This is what happened when you gave chase to Zaugg’s men on that day at the British Museum.”
“I don’t believe this…”
“And don’t think about taking this out on Lea Donovan. She wanted to tell you from the start, but she was under my instructions not to say anything.”
“If you say so.”
“I do say so, Hawke. It’s nothing personal, but after the loss of Sophie Durand I felt the last thing the team needed was a new member to adjust to, and that is why I told Lea to keep it to herself. As it happens, everyone in the team, myself included, is highly impressed with you and we want you on the team.”
“Do you now?” He shook his head in disbelief.
“Yes, we do. Our headquarters are based on a private island in the Caribbean — it’s called Elysium, but we are a very fluid, and very rich, organization with safe-houses all over the world. You will be given these locations if you become one of us. If you do, you can expect to be up against the likes of Vetrov all the time. It won’t be easy, but I know you’re up to it.”
Hawke knew Eden was still talking but could no longer hear the words. Instead, his mind was full of anger and betrayal over the way they had kept him in the dark — all of them knowing they were a team and not telling him… and not an apology in sight.