1
New York City:
Eleven Years Later
Eddie Chase strolled into the office with his hands
behind his back and a knowing smile on his face. ‘Ay up,
love.’
His wife looked up
from her laptop with a faint frown. ‘Where’ve you been?’ asked Nina
Wilde, flicking a strand of red hair away from her face. ‘We’re
going to be late.’
‘We’ve still got ten
minutes. Anyway, I’m amazed you noticed I’d gone, since you haven’t
lifted your nose out of that lot all morning.’ He glanced at the
stacked paperwork on her desk.
‘Don’t be a
smart-ass.’ She eyed him more closely, noticing his expectant
smirk. ‘What have you got behind your back?’
He stepped forward.
‘Oh, nothing. Just . . . ’ With a flourish, he dropped a large
brown paper bag beside her computer. ‘Lunch.’
Nina did a
double-take as she recognised the logo on the bag. ‘Aldo’s Deli?’
Her frown was replaced by surprised delight. ‘Wait, you went all
the way to Aldo’s just to get me a sandwich?’
Eddie shrugged,
looking out at the view of Manhattan beyond the windows of the
United Nations building. ‘It’s only in the East Village. It’s not
that far.’
She opened the bag,
and her look brightened still further. ‘You didn’t.’
‘I did. Your
favourite. Extra-peppered pastrami on rye, with lettuce, tomatoes,
pickled onions, not regular ones . . . and Aldo’s special chilli
sauce. Just like you used to get when we lived down
there.’
Nina almost
reverently unwrapped the sandwich. ‘That was over four years ago. I
can’t believe you did this.’ She was about to take a bite when she
paused. ‘Why did you do
this?’
‘What, a bloke can’t
do something nice for his wife once in a while?’
‘Not when she knows
him as well as I know you.’ A sly smile. ‘This wouldn’t be a peace
offering, would it?’
‘Pfft, don’t be daft.
What’ve I got to apologise for? I’m right.’
Her green eyes
narrowed, the smile fading. ‘Don’t even start.’ A discussion the
previous night about the week’s main news story had somehow
degenerated into a full-blown argument, and the atmosphere had
still been frosty even over breakfast. A New Yorker named Jerry
Rosenthal was on trial for having killed the man accused of raping
his daughter after the case against him collapsed. To Nina it had
been an open-and-shut case of revenge-driven vigilantism, but Eddie
had very different opinions.
Which he still held.
‘What, so you’re saying that if it had been your daughter, you’d be
happy to let the guy walk the streets because of some forensics
cock-up? We know he did it, he just got away with it on a
technicality.’
‘We don’t know he did it,’ she said irritably. ‘You
weren’t there – you didn’t see what happened.’
‘Neither did
you.’
‘Which is why we have
courts to decide whether a person’s guilty or not. And why we have
courts to decide on the sentence – rather than some guy appointing
himself judge, jury and executioner. That’s not
justice.’
‘Sounds like it to
me. You know somebody’s done something bad and thinks they’ve got
away with it? Boom. Kill the
fucker.’
Nina huffed. ‘Eddie,
I really don’t want to get into this again. You know what? I’m just
going to eat my sandwich – for which thank you very much, by the
way. And,’ she added, ‘you are not
going to get the last word just because my mouth’s
full!’
‘As if I would,’ said
Eddie, who had been planning to do exactly that.
She was about to take
a bite when there was a knock at the door. Before she could ask who
it was, Macy Sharif entered. ‘Hey, Nina. Hi, Eddie.’ The
archaeology student, who had helped them discover the Pyramid of
Osiris beneath the Egyptian desert the previous year, had accepted
Nina’s invitation to spend part of her summer vacation as an intern
at the International Heritage Agency before completing her final
year of study. ‘Dr Bellfriar sent me to get you.’
‘Bet I know what he’s
going to say,’ said Eddie with a mocking grin. ‘Eight months of
looking at the things, and he’ll tell us . . . they’re made of
stone. Thank you, that’ll be fifty grand plus
expenses.’
‘Oh, he’s got way
more to say than that,’ said Macy, the Englishman’s sarcasm
fluttering past her unnoticed. ‘I should know. I had to make all
his PowerPoint slides.’
‘Not enjoying your
current assignment?’ Nina asked in an impish tone.
‘No, no, it’s fine!’
said Macy hurriedly, not wanting to seem ungrateful. ‘Just that I
was hoping to do something a bit more fieldworky. With
you.’
Nina patted one of
the stacks of documents. ‘Funny, I was hoping to do some fieldwork
too! But then some idiot tried to kill a bunch of world leaders,
and we made a find that changes the face of archaeology, and, well,
high-up people want to know about it. In triplicate.’
‘Maybe Bellfriar’s
found something that’ll give you an excuse,’ Eddie
suggested.
Nina looked hopefully
at Macy, who tried unsuccessfully to hide an apologetic expression.
‘Anyway,’ said the young woman, ‘you can see for yourself. He’s
with Mr Penrose and the others in the conference
room.’
Nina took a quick
bite from her sandwich before getting up from her desk. ‘What?’ she
asked Eddie as she chewed. ‘I haven’t had lunch yet; I’m hungry.
Come on.’
‘Do I have
to?’
‘If I do, so do you.’
She shooed him from the office.
Macy led the way to
the conference room. As well as Dr Donald Bellfriar, also present
were several United Nations officials headed by Sebastian Penrose,
who acted as liaison between the UN proper and its semi-independent
cultural protection agency. ‘Ah, hello, Nina,’ said the
bespectacled, officious Englishman.
‘Sebastian,’ Nina
replied. ‘I didn’t expect so many people.’
‘Everyone loves a
mystery,’ Penrose said. ‘I think they’re hoping Dr Bellfriar has
the solution.’
Nina shared a knowing
look with Macy. ‘We’ll find out soon enough.’
Everyone took their
seats, Macy working a laptop and projector as the Oregonian
geologist carefully smoothed his sweeping silver hair before
addressing his audience. ‘Good afternoon, everyone. Before I start,
I’d like to say how great it’s been to work with the IHA on this. I
suppose that when archaeology can’t provide the answers, it’s time
to call on the rock stars!’ He chuckled immodestly at his pun,
which was received with appropriately stony silence. ‘Rock stars? No? Anyway, thank you, Dr Wilde – and
thank you, Miss Sharif, for all your assistance. And for being
enjoyable company.’ Macy beamed.
‘He was probably
enjoying the view more than the conversation,’ Eddie whispered to
Nina.
‘Shush,’ she
whispered back, although he had a point. While Macy had spent her
internship modestly dressed by her standards, in the formal
surroundings of the UN the beautiful Miamian’s predilection for
tight designer clothing made her stand out like a bikini model in a
Saudi mosque.
Bellfriar began his
presentation proper, opening a case to reveal his subjects: a pair
of small statues, crude human figures carved from an odd purple
stone. The first had been found by Nina, Eddie and Macy inside the
Pyramid of Osiris; the second, stored with stolen cultural
treasures in a former Cold War bunker beneath the glacial ice of
Greenland. He summarised the circumstances of each discovery before
continuing: ‘Now, despite their best efforts, Interpol have so far
been unable to find out where the second statue was stolen from,
and since neither relic appears to be the product of any known
ancient culture that would seem to be a dead end in the search for
answers. Fortunately, other branches of science can provide a
different perspective. Miss Sharif ?’
Macy tapped at the
laptop, projecting the first slide on to the conference room’s
screen. It showed the two statues placed side by side. ‘As you can
see,’ said Bellfriar, ‘the statues are clearly part of a set, and
meant to fit together. Note how the arms are positioned so they’ll
interlock. But as you see here,’ he nodded, and Macy clicked on to
the next slide, ‘it’s obvious that the set is
incomplete.’
The new image showed
the statues from directly above. They had been positioned in such a
way that, facing outwards with one shoulder touching, they formed
two sides of a triangle – and, as Bellfriar had said, it was
evident that a third figurine would perfectly complete the group.
‘Using simulation software,’ said the geologist proudly, ‘I can
show you what the missing one would look like.’ Another slide, and
the two statues were shown flanking a computer-generated image of a
third. All three were broadly similar, the only appreciable
difference being the position of the arms. ‘And here’s how they fit
together . . . ’
The photos of the
figures were replaced by CG copies which began a showy animated
display, spinning round each other before slotting into a
shoulder-to-shoulder triptych. The UN observers seemed impressed,
but Nina was less so, having seen the IHA’s own computer simulation
of the missing figure over seven months earlier. ‘That was one of
the first things we realised when we received the second statue,’
she said. ‘There was – and hopefully still is – a third. The
question is, where?’
‘Well, before we can
ask where,’ said Bellfriar amiably, ‘we first have to ask what. As
in, what are the statues made of?’ He indicated the two figures in
the case. ‘As you see, they have an unusual colour, this strong
purple, with a rather vitreous lustre. Some form of bornite was my
first thought, but the copper content in the scrape sample I took
was far too low – almost non-existent, in fact. But the density of
the rock was surprisingly high, so it had an appreciable metal
content . . . ’
Nina glanced at Eddie
as Bellfriar launched into a detailed account of his mineralogical
tests. His eyes had glazed over. She tapped his foot with hers.
‘Sorry,’ he muttered. ‘Geology’s even more boring than
archaeology.’
She was about to jab
his foot again, this time with her high heel rather than her toe,
when Bellfriar’s words caught her full attention. ‘. . . which
brought me to my conclusion: the rock from which the statues were
carved was probably mesosideritic.’
It took a moment, but
the term produced a match from Nina’s mental database. ‘A
meteorite?’
Bellfriar was
impressed. ‘You know about meteorites, Dr Wilde?’
‘From an
archaeological standpoint. There was a dagger made from meteoric
iron in Tutankhamun’s tomb, and some Eskimo and Native American
tribes also made ceremonial weapons from it. And there was an East
African tribe that worshipped a fallen meteorite. But apart from
that, only really what I remember from Astronomy 101.’
‘Well, I can give you
a brief refresher course,’ said Bellfriar, chuckling again. ‘A
mesosiderite is a stony-iron meteorite, which as the name suggests
is made up of a combination of rock and metal. They’re very rare –
there are fewer than a hundred and fifty known examples, I
believe.’
‘You said it’s
probably a . . . a mesosiderite,’ said
Penrose, almost stumbling over the word. ‘Can’t you be
sure?’
‘Not without cutting
one of the statues in two to make a microscope slide, and I doubt
Dr Wilde – or the Egyptian government – would be happy about that!
But the tests I could do seemed reasonably conclusive. Although,’
he added, ‘if there’s any way at all I could get a larger sample,
I’d very much like to carry out further tests. The rock has some
unusual properties.’
‘In what way?’ asked
Nina.
‘The density, for one
thing – either the iron content is much higher than I’d expect, or
there are heavier metals in there as well. There are also traces of
organic compounds.’
Eddie gave the
statues a deeply suspicious look. ‘Wait, there was something
alive inside the meteor? Like the
Blob?’
Bellfriar laughed.
‘No, no. If a compound is “organic”, then chemically it just means
it contains carbon. Meteorites might have carried the precursors of
life to earth, though; there was a famous find in Australia, the
Murchison meteorite, which contained amino acids. I don’t know if
that was the case here – but I did notice something else.’ He
turned to Macy. ‘Miss Sharif, can you skip forward to . . . I think
slide seventeen?’
Macy tapped the
keyboard. Slides flashed on the screen, stopping at an image of one
of the statues’ surface taken through a microscope. At extreme
magnification, the stone was a fractal microcosm of a rocky
landscape, with what seemed almost like man-made features running
through it: a fine grid-like pattern.
‘Looks like a
developer’s laying the ground for a new subdivision,’ said
Nina.
‘It does, doesn’t
it?’ replied Bellfriar. ‘I wouldn’t want to live there, though –
not a lot of space. The lines are only about fifty micrometres
apart, less than the width of a human hair.’
‘What is it?’ Eddie
asked.
‘Some kind of carbon
matrix infused into the meteoric iron. Naturally formed, of course
– it looks artificial, but on this scale so do a lot of processes.
What’s interesting is that it’s greatly increased the hardness of
the rock, as if the whole thing has been reinforced with carbon
nanotubes. Normally, this kind of stone would be around a five or
six on the Mohs scale – diamond tops the scale at ten, by the way,’
he added for the benefit of the non-scientists. ‘The statues are
actually harder than the porcelain streak plate I initially tried
to use to test them, so on the Mohs scale they’re at least a seven
– stronger than quartz.’
His description had
sparked another of Nina’s memories – this time from personal
experience. ‘The rock,’ she began, her cautious, probing tone
immediately catching Eddie’s attention, ‘does it have any other
unusual properties? Like, say . . . high electrical
conductivity?’
‘Actually, yes,’ said
Bellfriar, surprised. ‘It’s down to the iron content, of course,
but it was higher than I expected. How did you know?’
‘It just reminded me
of something I’d seen before,’ she said, trying to sound casual.
‘But it’s not important. What else have you found
out?’
Bellfriar returned to
his presentation, but Nina was no longer listening, instead running
through theories of her own. When he finished, twenty minutes
later, she thanked him for his work, then waited for the United
Nations officials to conclude their pleasantries, trying not to
seem too eager for everyone to leave.
‘What is it?’
whispered Eddie.
‘I’ll tell you in
private,’ she replied under her breath, before calling across the
room. ‘Macy?’
Macy was shutting
down the laptop. ‘Yeah?’
‘Can you take the
statues to my office, please?’
‘Taking them back off
me so quickly, Dr Wilde?’ said Bellfriar in jovial mock offence. ‘I
hope you’re not disappointed that I didn’t pinpoint where they came
from?’
‘No, not at all,’
Nina told him as the puzzled Macy closed the case containing the
statues. ‘You’ve given me a lot to think about. Oh, Sebastian,’ she
added as Penrose was about to leave, ‘can I have a quick word with
you? We need to finalise the details of, uh . . . the Atlantis
excavations.’
Penrose covered his
momentary confusion – the IHA’s undersea archaeological work at the
ruins of Atlantis was already under way – and nodded as he left.
Macy, carrying the case, went out after him. Nina and Eddie
followed, and the four met again in Nina’s office.
‘Okay,’ said Eddie,
‘what the hell was all that about?’
‘A good question,’
said Penrose. ‘I take it you’ve realised something,
Nina.’
‘I think so,’ she
replied, shoving the papers – and the sandwich – on her desk aside
to clear a space. ‘Macy, put the case down here.’
Macy obeyed. Nina
opened the case and regarded the two crude statues. ‘When Bellfriar
mentioned carbon nanotubes, it made me think of something I’ve seen
before. Excalibur.’
‘Excalibur?’
exclaimed Macy. ‘What, the Excalibur?
As in King Arthur?’
‘That’s the one,’
said Eddie.
‘Wow! I knew you
found King Arthur’s tomb, but I didn’t know you found Excalibur as
well.’
‘We did, but we . . .
lost it,’ said Nina. That wasn’t quite true, as she knew exactly
where it was: she and Eddie had decided to hide it again to keep it
out of the wrong hands. ‘But it had some very special properties .
. . and they sounded a lot like what Bellfriar just described.
Eddie, can you close the blinds? I need the room as dark as
possible.’
Eddie began to lower
the blinds. ‘We’ve been married for a year and a half – we don’t
have to do it with the lights off any
more.’
‘Ha ha,’ said Nina,
not amused. ‘Ignore him, he’s joking,’ she added to Macy, sensing
that the younger, far less inhibited woman was about to ask a very
personal question. ‘But one of Excalibur’s properties was that it
was made from a superconductive metal – and it could conduct more
than just electricity.’
The blinds were now
closed, the office in a gloomy twilight. Nina reached for a statue.
‘Okay, let’s see if I’m right . . . ’
She picked it up –
and the stone glowed faintly, the light quickly fading to
nothing.
Penrose’s eyes
widened, and Macy gasped. ‘What was that?’ she said.
‘That was earth
energy,’ said Nina. ‘It’s a network of lines of natural power that
flow around the planet, and converge in certain places. If you’re
in one of those places and the earth energy is strong enough, you
can tap into it and use it – if you have a superconducting material
to make the connection.’
‘Should Miss Sharif
be seeing this?’ asked Penrose, a stern tinge to his voice making
it clear that he thought she definitely shouldn’t.
‘I’ll vouch for her,’
said Nina, giving Macy a quick reassuring smile. ‘Besides, she
discovered this statue, and I gave her the job of finding out more
about it – I think this counts. And it beats making PowerPoint
slides.’
‘Nice slides, by the
way,’ Eddie told Macy with a grin. ‘Almost no spelling
mistakes!’
Macy pouted as Nina
returned the first statue to the case and picked up the other.
Again, a shimmering glow ran briefly over the figure’s surface
before disappearing. Nina was about to put the statue back down,
then changed her mind and picked up the first once more. This time,
nothing happened – until she put the two figurines together,
linking them shoulder to shoulder in the same way as Bellfriar’s
slide. Both statues glowed, the light slightly stronger than
before. The effect lasted for a few seconds before
dwindling.
Macy hesitantly
touched the figures, but nothing happened. ‘Why did they do that?
And how come it never happened before? Dr Bellfriar had them for
months, and he never saw anything like this.’
‘It never happened
before because only certain people can cause the effect,’ said
Nina. ‘People like . . . me. I don’t know how or why – the best
theory is that it’s genetic – but there’s something about my body’s
bioelectric field that lets me channel earth energy through a
superconductor.’ She opted, for now, not to explain to her friend
that her genetic heritage went all the way back to the lost
civilisation of Atlantis, destroyed eleven thousand years before –
and that the actions of other Atlantean descendants had almost
brought about a global genocide. ‘We discovered it when we found
Excalibur.’
‘But you’ve held the
statues before,’ said Eddie. ‘Loads of times. They never lit up
like that.’
‘Maybe they did, and
we just didn’t notice. Open the blinds.’ Nina put down the figures
as Eddie did so, daylight flooding back into the room. She picked
up the statues again. If the strange glow had returned, it was
impossible to tell, the feeble effect overwhelmed even by indirect
sunlight from outside.
‘So how are we going
to proceed?’ asked Penrose. ‘The statues are somehow connected to
earth energy, it seems – and earth energy is an IHA security issue.
We know how dangerous it can be if the wrong person controls
it.’
Nina looked into the
roughly carved face of one of the statues, little more than a
child’s drawing in three dimensions with a bump for a nose and
vague indentations for eyes and mouth. ‘We’ve got two of the
statues. There might be a third . . . somewhere. If there is, we
have to find it. But first, we need to find out more about what
we’re dealing with – and what these things can do.’
Macy looked
surprised. ‘They’re just statues. What can they do?’
‘Excalibur was more
than just a sword. When it was charged with earth energy, it could
cut through literally anything. We know the Egyptian statue had
some great significance – it was considered important enough to be
sealed in the tomb of a god along with his greatest treasures.
Maybe Osiris could channel its power – maybe that’s why he was
regarded as a god. So we—’ She broke off as her desk phone rang,
putting down the statue to answer it. ‘Hello?’
It was Lola Gianetti,
Nina’s now four-months’ pregnant personal assistant. ‘Hi, Nina. Is
Eddie with you? There’s a call for him.’
‘Can it wait? We’re
in the middle of something.’
‘They said it was
very important.’
‘Okay, he’s here.
Hold on.’
She passed the phone
to her husband. ‘Yeah, hello?’ he said, eyebrows rising as he
recognised his sister’s voice. ‘Lizzie, hi. Haven’t heard from you
for a while. What’s up?’
He moved away to
continue the call with a modicum of privacy, leaving Nina, Penrose
and Macy to regard the statues. ‘What do you have in mind?’ Penrose
asked.
‘We need to find out
what the earth energy effect actually does,’ said Nina. ‘Which
means we need to take the statues to a convergence point.’ She
chewed her lower lip, thinking. ‘There are four places where I know
for sure that I can find earth energy. Problem is, one is in a
Russian military base, another’s in the middle of the Arctic Ocean,
and one’s buried under thousands of tons of rock out in the desert
in a country where I’m not exactly welcome.’
‘Jeez,’ said Macy.
‘So where’s the fourth one? Inside a volcano?’
‘Fortunately, no,’
said Nina, smiling. ‘It’s somewhere a bit easier to reach – and a
lot less hot. England. In King Arthur’s tomb at Glastonbury,
actually.’ She looked across at Eddie to see if the mention of his
home country had caught his attention, but he had his back to her,
holding his conversation in a low voice.
‘And you want to take
the statues there?’ Penrose asked.
‘Yes. I think the
glow we saw just now is only a residual effect – if there are any
lines of earth energy around New York, they’re either too weak or
too far away to produce much power. If I take the statues to
Glastonbury, with luck I’ll see what happens when they get a full
charge.’
Penrose shook his
head slightly. ‘I’m not sure the Egyptians will want their statue
to leave IHA security. Or Interpol theirs, for that
matter.’
‘We’ll work something
out. But we should do it fast. As you said, it’s a security issue
now.’
He thought for a
moment, then nodded. ‘I’ll speak to Dr Assad in Egypt and the
Interpol CPCU, see if I can persuade them to speed things along. I
think you’re right, though; we need to look into this – and if
there’s a third statue out there, we have to find it. When were you
thinking about starting?’
‘About ten minutes
ago,’ said Nina.
Penrose shot a rueful
glance at the paperwork on her desk. ‘And the backlog relating to
the Vault of Shiva? Or the meeting of the non-executive directors?
Mr Glas particulalry wanted to meet you.’
‘That’s what I like
about being in charge,’ she said with a broad grin. ‘I get to
delegate!’
‘I’m sure Bill and
Simone will be delighted to hear that,’ said Penrose, returning the
smile. ‘Okay, I’ll make the calls. Keep me posted.’ He tipped his
head to the two women, then left the office.
‘So you’re going to
England?’ said Macy excitedly. ‘Can I come?’
Nina was caught off
guard. ‘What?’
‘Well, you did give
me the job of finding out more about these little guys . . . ’ She
indicated the statues. When Nina didn’t respond immediately, she
adopted a pleading tone. ‘Aw, please, Nina. It won’t cost the IHA
anything – I can pay my own way.’
‘You mean your
parents can.’
‘Well, what are
parents for? And I’ll learn a hundred times more from you in the
field than I would in an office.’
Nina reluctantly
conceded the point; since Macy was an unpaid intern and not an IHA
employee, there was technically nothing she could do to stop her
from simply buying a plane ticket and tagging along. ‘Okay, I
guess.’
‘Awesome!’ Macy
clapped her hands together. ‘I’ve never been to England before.
I’ll need new clothes. What should I wear?’
Before Nina could
make a facetious suggestion, Eddie put down the phone. ‘Was that
Elizabeth in England?’ she asked.
‘Yeah,’ said Eddie,
voice oddly flat.
‘Kind of a nice
coincidence. I think the best place to find out more about the
statues is Glastonbury, so we can visit your folks while we’re over
there.’
‘I’d be going to see
them even if we were supposed to be flying to Timbuktu tomorrow,’
he said, grim-faced. ‘Nan’s in hospital.’