5

Nina emerged from the elevator and made her way to the IHA’s offices, still angry about what she had learned the previous evening. All the deaths at El Dorado, the destruction of a priceless archaeological site . . . everything had happened because of Larry Chase. A few words to the wrong person had ended dozens of lives. And for what? Nothing more than money. The mere thought stoked her fury once more.

‘Uh-oh,’ said Lola Gianetti from the water cooler.

Nina stopped. ‘Uh-oh what? What is it?’ She gave Lola a worried look; her assistant was seven months pregnant and, judging from the size of her bump, the baby was impatient to leave its increasingly cramped accommodation. ‘Was it a kick? Or a contraction? It wasn’t a contraction, was it?’

Lola laughed. ‘No, I’m fine. The “uh-oh” was for you. You’ve got that look again.’

‘What look?’

‘The look that warns everyone that they should stay out of your way.’

‘I don’t have a look,’ Nina protested as the big-haired blonde padded back to the reception desk. ‘Do I? What does the look look like?’

‘That was almost a tongue-twister,’ said Lola, sitting. ‘But . . . well, you’d know it when you saw it. Everyone else does.’

‘Everyone thinks I have a look? Oh, great,’ Nina said, exasperated. ‘I thought I was a half-decent boss, but apparently I’m some terrifying flame-haired Medusa stalking the halls with her deadly look.’

‘Only occasionally,’ Lola said with a teasing smile. ‘By the way, Mr Penrose asked me to call him when you arrived. He wants to see you.’

‘Tell him I’m here,’ said Nina, starting for her office.

‘Okay. Oh, by the way, how was your dinner with Eddie’s dad?’ Nina glowered at her. ‘There’s the look again,’ Lola said, hurriedly picking up the phone.

Penrose was in Nina’s office less than ten minutes later. ‘There’s been a development regarding the statues.’

‘What kind of development?’

‘They’ve been found.’

Her eyes widened. ‘Stikes has been caught?’

‘I’m afraid not. But they’re secure, and apparently intact. They’re in Japan.’

‘Japan? Who’s got them?’

‘Do you know of a man called Takashi Seiji?’ Nina shook her head. ‘He’s a Japanese businessman, the head of Takashi Industries.’

‘Never heard of it.’

‘I’m not really surprised – it’s the kind of company that owns dozens of other companies which you probably have heard of. But that’s not important. What does matter is that he has all three statues. Here.’ He handed her a colour printout; it showed the trio of crudely carved figurines inside a display case.

Nina examined the picture closely. As far as she could tell, the statues were in the same condition as when she had last seen them. ‘What’s his interest in them?’

‘He owns one of them.’

She was startled. ‘What?’

Penrose gave her another picture. In this there was only a single statue, the one discovered in the Khoils’ underground vault in Greenland. There was a date stamp in one corner; over ten years earlier. ‘He also supplied all the necessary certificates of ownership. It was stolen from him last year. Apparently by the same group who stole Michelangelo’s David and the Talonor Codex.’

‘Working for the Khoils,’ Nina remembered. ‘But wait – Interpol tried to track down the owners of everything they’d stolen, and nobody ever claimed the statue. If he’d reported the theft, they would have returned it to him. Why didn’t he say anything?’

‘No idea. But there was a Japanese connection, as I recall – that exporter in Singapore got something out of the country for the Khoils.’

‘The statue?’

‘Possibly. But this is why Mr Takashi wants to meet you.’

‘He’s coming here? Is he bringing the statues?’

He hesitated. ‘Ah . . . actually, no. He wants you to see him. In Japan. He’s a recluse who doesn’t like travelling. Supposedly, he rarely leaves his penthouse.’

‘Who does he think he is, Howard Hughes?’ Nina frowned, weighing up her options. On the one hand, she was already busy enough without adding a trip across the Pacific; on the other, it meant the possibility of finally uncovering the secret of the statues . . . ‘How did he get hold of them?’

‘Via the black market, it seems.’

Disgust entered her voice. ‘Can we even trust this guy? Buying stolen antiquities on the black market isn’t exactly ethical.’

‘Mr Takashi might be reclusive,’ said Penrose, ‘but he’s also a major contributor to a number of United Nations charitable programmes. The UN certainly trusts him. Besides, he’s told us that he’ll return the other two statues to their countries. But first he wants you to examine them, to confirm that they’re genuine – and also to tell you what he knows about his statue.’

‘There are these marvellous new inventions called telephones. Has he heard of them?’

Penrose smiled. ‘What can I say, Nina? Maybe he’s just a fan of yours. But we definitely think you should go. Securing the statues will ease the minds of a number of concerned people, and you might even learn something new about them.’

He was right, Nina decided reluctantly. ‘He’s definitely willing to give the other statues back to Egypt and Peru? No conditions?’

‘Apparently so. His main concern was reclaiming his own property, but he said he bought the others as well to get them back into the right hands.’

‘How much did he pay for them?’

‘I don’t know, but . . . a large sum, I imagine.’

‘Which is probably now in Stikes’s pocket. Great,’ she said glumly. ‘When does he want to see me?’

‘He said that’s up to you,’ said Penrose, ‘but from the IHA’s point of view, the sooner the better. If the statues are off the market, that’s one security issue we no longer need worry about.’

She considered it. ‘Okay, I’ll go see him. Once this is wrapped up, I can focus on the Atlantis excavations.’

Penrose nodded. ‘A sound choice. I’ll let Mr Takashi know.’

He left the office, and Nina picked up her phone. ‘Lola. I need you to book a flight for me.’

Half a world away, Eddie had completed a flight of his own, and was making a taxi journey through the bustling streets of Hong Kong. He had visited the former British colony several times before, and was always amazed by the island’s energy and vibrancy, a hothouse for deal-making and fast action. It was a vanguard for the new China, raw entrepreneurial capitalism working at a merciless pace that shocked even Americans. Anyone who wasn’t constantly clawing their way up like the ever-climbing skyscrapers very quickly got trampled.

But this time, the city’s rush was nothing more than a background hum. There was only one thing on his mind. The taxi deposited him at a corner near the address he had been given, and he carved his way like an icebreaker through the crowds filling the narrow, advertising-banner-filled street to reach one particular door. He found the buzzer for the apartment and pushed it. After a pause, a female voice spoke in Cantonese.

‘It’s Eddie Chase,’ he said.

The voice switched to English. ‘You made it. Come on in. Sixth floor, on the left.’ The door latch clacked, and he entered the building.

There was no lift, so he pounded up the cramped stairwell to the sixth floor. A woman opened the door as he reached it. ‘Come inside.’

There was no mistaking Madeline Scarber’s sandpaper-throated voice, but its owner was very different from Eddie’s preconceptions. For a start, her name had led him to assume that she was Caucasian, but the short, skeletal woman with the helmet-like black bob was of Chinese descent. She was also younger than he had imagined, around fifty rather than the pensioner her gravelly growl suggested. ‘Not what you expected, huh?’ she said as she ushered him inside. ‘My mother was Chinese–German, and she married a Dutch American. I’m a one-woman melting pot.’

More like a one-woman ashtray, Eddie thought as the all-pervading reek of stale cigarette smoke hit him, but he kept it to himself. Scarber closed the door and followed him into a lounge. The room was expensively furnished in stark black and white, a glimpse of the harbour visible through the window between two much taller apartment blocks. She waved for him to sit on a stylish but, as it turned out, not especially comfortable leather couch. ‘So you’re here, kiddo. I guess you want to know what I want from you in return for telling you how to find Alexander Stikes.’

‘It’d crossed my mind.’

Scarber lit a cigarette, then almost as an afterthought offered him one. ‘We’d like you to do something for us.’

‘We?’ Eddie asked as she held out her expensive lighter.

‘The people I represent. We have a mutual enemy.’

‘Stikes?’

She shook her head. ‘Stikes is part of it, but no big deal to us.’

‘He is to me.’

‘I know. Which is why my proposal will benefit us both.’

He leaned back and blew out smoke. ‘So get to the point, then. What’s the job?’

Scarber slowly paced across the lounge, a line of smoke trailing behind her. ‘Stikes stole something from your wife – three stone figures.’

Eddie stiffened. ‘Those statues?’ he snapped. ‘For fuck’s sake! You know how many people have died because of those fucking things – and now you want me to get them for you?’

‘No. We don’t want you to get them. We want you to destroy them.’

It took him a second to get over his surprise. ‘Now that’s more like it.’

‘We both know that the statues have unusual properties – properties that could be very dangerous if they fall into the hands of the wrong people. That can’t be allowed to happen.’

‘And how do you know that?’

‘I’ve got access to certain classified information. Including the IHA’s files on earth energy.’

He shot her a mistrustful look. ‘You’re a spook, aren’t you? CIA?’

‘Former spook,’ Scarber replied. ‘Now, I’m what you might call a freelancer.’

‘Not a big fan of spooks. Been fucked over by them a few times. They tend to lie about what they’re really doing.’

The accusation didn’t bother her. ‘Nature of the business, kiddo.’

‘So what is your business? Why’re you so keen to destroy the statues? Who are you working for?’

‘That doesn’t matter.’

‘Oh, it bloody does.’

She abruptly crossed back to him, face hardening. ‘Do you want to know where Stikes is or not? This is the situation: we want the statues destroyed. Stikes has the statues. You want to kill Stikes. It’s a simple enough proposition – we tell you where he is, you find him, destroy the statues . . . and then you can do whatever you want with him. We’ll even pay you. How does half a million dollars sound?’

‘I’d kill Stikes for free . . . but yeah, half a mil sounds pretty good,’ said Eddie. He had spent the last three months hunting for Stikes, and this was by far the closest he had come to tracking down his nemesis. However, there were too many aspects of the deal he didn’t like, not least Scarber’s secrecy about her employer. ‘But . . .’

‘There’s something else we can offer,’ she said, seeing his hesitancy. ‘We can make the charges against you go away. Completely. You’ll be able to go home. To your wife.’

Eddie was silent for a long moment. ‘How can you manage that?’

‘Let’s just say my employers have a lot of influence.’

His suspicion returned. ‘Then why do they need me to do this job?’

‘Because you’re very highly motivated. I’ve read your IHA file too; you’re extremely good at what you do. If anyone can get to Stikes, you can.’

‘So I take it he’s not just hanging out by a pool somewhere. Where is he?’

‘Do we have a deal?’

He considered it . . . then nodded. ‘Where’s Stikes?’

‘Japan. Tokyo, specifically. But he’ll be hard to reach. We can get you into the building, but you’ll have to make your own way to him from there.’

‘What building?’

Scarber finished her cigarette. ‘The headquarters of Takashi Industries.’