“She wanted to check out Kaspar Vetsch’s interior design and ask him a few tips,” Scarlet said. “What do you think she wants here?”
“And you’ve been following us since when?” Lea asked.
“Since your little escapade all over Genève,” she replied. “The Swiss are watching you too.”
“But they don’t know you’re here?” Hawke said.
Sophie shook her head. “Of course not. I am very good at what I do.”
“We’re going to need some ID here,” Lea said.
Sophie opened her jacket so they could see the inside and slowly pulled out a thin black wallet. She held it forward and Scarlet casually took it and flipped it open. “In the old days this would have been enough,” she said, passing it to Hawke. “But these days…”
“Cairo’s right. Lea, take her picture and email it to the boss.”
Lea snapped a picture of her face and moments later a text came back from Sir Richard Eden.
“He says she’s legit,” she said.
They lowered their weapons and Hawke patted her down. In her shoulder holster he found a nine millimeter semi-automatic PAMAS G1s.
“Anything else?” Lea asked.
“Just a Beretta.” Hawke pulled it out of the holster and took a step back. “You can have this back when I trust you, and that’s going to take some time. You can start by telling us everything you know and why you’re here, exactly.”
Sophie sank into the sofa opposite Scarlet, who then kicked Ryan’s leg.
“Eh — what was that for?”
“Coffee, boy,” Scarlet said, flicking her head at the kitchen.
“I’m not your coffee bitch, you know,” he said.
“Sorry,” she said, “but you really are.”
“Just get some freaking coffee, would you, Ryan?” Lea said.
“And try and find some of those little French madeleine biscuits,” Hawke said. “I like those.”
Ryan flounced up from the MacBook and stormed into the kitchen, muttering to himself. He made no secret of his displeasure by slamming cupboard doors and cursing as he prepared the coffee.
Across the room, Sophie sat in the low light and started to talk.
“Paris knows Hugo Zaugg is up to something, but we also know how limited our understanding of him and his plans are. I have been cleared to make contact with you and ask if we can work together. My government has grave concerns about why Zaugg is so keen on finding the vault of Poseidon…”
Hawke and Lea shared a look at the mention of the Greek god. How much did other governments know about this? What were they keeping secret from the public?
“…and more particularly about what he might find inside it. And so when we detected your chatter — the buzzwords you used — I was put on your tail and so here I am. That is my story. What about yours?”
The others looked at each other for a moment. Hawke shrugged his shoulders and sighed. “Here,” he said, handing her the folder. “As if my day could get any weirder than living Greek gods and trident superweapons. Knock yourself out.”
“What is it?” she asked.
Hawke said: “It’s a folder containing the hitlist of Kaspar Vetsch. You obviously know him from what you said when you made your introduction.”
“Somewhat melodramatic introduction as well,” Scarlet sighed, raising an eyebrow.
“Of course we know Vestch. All the security services know him, and Baumann too. They are both thugs, but Baumann is more strategic shall we say, and Vetsch was more tactical.”
“In that folder is a list of all his hits, or what we presume to be his hits as they’re all crossed through with red pen.”
“This is true,” Sophie said, pointing at one of the files. “This man is Bernard Dupont, a big hitter in the Marseille underworld — crack cocaine, prostitution — you name it. Last week he was found dead in his apartment, shot through the heart.”
Hawke frowned. “Sounds like Vetsch. If you look at the back you’ll see a file with a picture that hasn’t been crossed out yet. His name is Yannis Demetriou and he works in Athens as a professor of classical antiquities. We think he was Vetsch’s next job.”
Lea spoke next. “He was probably going to kidnap him and torture him for information relating to the tomb. They did the same thing with an English professor called Lucy Fleetwood. They shot her through the heart and killed her.”
“He was an absolute pyscho,” Ryan said, arriving at the table and giving everyone an unimpressed look as he handed them the coffee mugs.
“If you think he was a psycho, you need to stay away from Heinrich Baumann,” Sophie said, sipping the hot coffee. She peered into the cup and frowned.
“Don’t blame me,” said Ryan. “It was all he had, and sorry, Joe — but no madeleines. I did find a packet of macaroons, so you can try your luck on those. They’re six months out of date.”
“It’s tempting, but no thanks.”
“I’m going to have one,” Ryan said, pulling the packet off the tray.
Hawke slurped his coffee. “Damn that’s hot, Rupert.”
“An inevitable consequence of having boiling water in it.”
“Didn’t you say the biscuits were six months old?” Hawke asked as he watched Ryan munching through one.
“That’s nothing to him,” Lea said. “You should see the fridge in his flat. They’ll need to irradiate it before they dump it.”
Ryan laughed. “It’s not that bad, Lea.”
“Nonsense — there’s more culture in there than Geneva.”
“You’re so funny,” said Ryan.
Hawke turned to Lea. “Any luck with Demetriou’s address?”
“Not really, just his phone number at the university but it’s too late for him to be at work now.”
“We need to get our arses to Athens,” Hawke said, finishing his coffee with a single gulp and setting the cup down on the table with a hefty smack. “We know the vase with the second half of the riddle is there and now we know Zaugg is somehow on the trail too because he was about to set Vetsch on Demetriou. He won’t stop until he gets what he wants and that means Demetriou is in grave danger.”
“How can we get there this time of night?” Ryan said.
“Leave that to me,” Sophie said.
“So let's do it then,” said Hawke.
“We’re making progress!” Ryan said.
Hawke looked at him doubtfully. “I think the war with Zaugg is just about to start.”
On the way to the airport, Hawke sent a text to Nightingale.
“I think that’s our ride,” Hawke said, pointing to a long, white jet. Some men in boiler suits were uncoupling a fuelling nozzle from its wing while the captain was conducting the pre-flight inspection of the aircraft, checking for fluid leaks and casting an expert eye over the pitot tubes.
The plane was a Cessna Citation X, a long-range jet with the distinction of being the fastest civilian aircraft on earth. How Sophie had obtained one at such short notice had not gone unquestioned by Lea, but she decided to leave it for later.
The main entry door at the front of the cabin featured an integral three-step airstair design and as they climbed up them the solid titanium blades of the twin Rolls Royce engines began to whir to life.
Inside, to the left, the first officer was beginning the flight plans and to the right was the passenger cabin. Eight white leather seats in dim blue lighting and a walnut-veneer drinks cabinet. The co-pilot pushed a button and all of the porthole covers gently opened.
They strapped in and the engines powered up. A few moments later they were racing from the ground, gear up. The Citation banked right hard and as the city lights of Geneva slipped away behind the aircraft, it straightened up and head southwest to Athens, soaring high above the clouds and racing toward the rising sun.