Temple of the Gods (53 page)

‘Nina!’ Larry cried, but she was gone.

Trees rushed up at her. She screamed, the mercenary beneath her doing likewise as they plunged into the snow-laden foliage. Branches broke, the cracks louder and deeper as the limbs thickened further down the tree – then suddenly the man slammed to a stop, Nina bouncing painfully off him and tumbling, winded, the rest of the way to the ground. Blinding by spraying snow and thrashing boughs, she hit the hillside with a thud.

Warden looked out of the cable car in horror. ‘My God! We’ve got to get her back – she could be hurt, or even dead!’

‘Wouldn’t that be a shame,’ Sophia said quietly.

Stikes took out his radio. ‘This is Stikes! Chase and Dr Wilde are in the hotel grounds, about five hundred metres from the village. They’re directly below the cable car line near a burning tree. Dr Wilde
must
be taken alive – she may need medical attention. My orders regarding Chase stand; I want him killed on sight.’ He checked the scene behind. A figure was lolloping away from the fire towards the site of Nina’s touchdown. ‘He’s
still
alive!’ He slammed the door shut in barely contained rage.

‘A sentiment I’ve felt all too many times,’ said Sophia.

Larry spoke up unexpectedly, all eyes turning to him. ‘What can I say? That’s my boy.’ He smiled at the hostile gazes of the other passengers.

Eddie moved as quickly as he could down the hill, the steep slope and deep snow tough to negotiate even without an aching ankle. He reached the still-quivering tree, seeing no sign of his wife. ‘Nina! Can you hear me? Nina!’

‘Ow . . .’ came a muffled voice. He followed the sound, discovering a cartoonishly perfect Nina-shaped hole in a snowdrift. Its maker was spread-eagled at the bottom.

‘Fuck me, I’ve found a snow angel,’ he said, clearing away the snow. ‘Are you okay? Can you move?’

‘No, and I dunno, in that order. Agh, Jesus . . .’ Nina struggled to sit up, hair festooned with bits of branches and needles. ‘God
damn
it! Feels like my head’s coming off,’ she said, pressing a hand against one temple – then looking round in alarm. ‘Eddie! The guy I pushed out of the cable car – where is he?’

Eddie hurriedly surveyed their surroundings. ‘I can’t see anyone . . . oh, hang on.’ There was a dark patch beneath the tree, standing out against the snow even in the dying light. ‘Okay, I’ve found him. Don’t think he’ll give us any problems.’

Nina blearily followed his gaze to see the mercenary impaled on a branch thirty feet above like some grotesque Christmas ornament. Blood dribbled down the boughs below him. ‘He’s gone out on a limb.’

‘Hey! Shit puns are my department.’ He lifted her out of the snowdrift. ‘Where’s Dad?’

‘In the cable car.’ The gondola was now out of sight behind the trees. ‘And they’ve still got the statues too.’

Eddie looked in the other direction. Lights were descending the mountainside from the hotel. ‘They’re coming. We’ve got to get to the village.’

‘But they’ll be waiting for us,’ Nina objected.

‘Better than us waiting for them. Come on.’ They set off through the snow.

The village soon came into view, the cable car’s elevated lower station standing out above the houses. The gondola had already reached its destination, but it would take Eddie and Nina another couple of minutes to wade through the snow to the edge of the hotel’s grounds, never mind the village proper. ‘Damn it!’ said Nina. ‘They’ll be long gone when we get there.’

Eddie had other concerns. The main entrance to the grounds was marked by a large gate at the end of a bridge over the railway – and he had just spotted more lights spreading out from it. He looked uphill. The mercenaries from the hotel were now following their trail through the snow, torches bobbing as they yomped down the slope. ‘Shit! They’re catching up. Go that way.’ He pointed to the right, beyond the village’s edge.

‘What’s over there?’

‘Not men with guns, and that’ll do me for now!’

Nina heard something over the crump of snow and their own panting, a deep rhythmic huffing like the breath of some giant animal. ‘It’s the train!’ Past the bridge, glowing embers from the steam locomotive’s funnel swirled in the air as it headed back down the valley. ‘Eddie, the track goes right along the bottom of the grounds – if we can make it stop, we can get aboard.’

He was already judging distances and speeds: of the train, himself and Nina . . . and the two groups of mercenaries closing on them. ‘There won’t be time for it to stop.’

‘Then how are we going to get on it?’

‘Jump!’

‘
Jump?
’

‘What, you’ve never train-surfed before?’

‘No, because it’s insane!’

‘You never want to try anything new. Come on, hoof it!’ They reached the fence and climbed over it.

The men coming from the gate had obviously been in radio contact with their comrades higher up; the dots of torchlight were all now heading along the bottom of the grounds. The group following Nina and Eddie’s trail were less than a hundred metres behind – and closing the gap.

The train was rapidly approaching, the clanking of the loco’s running gear growing louder. Another jab of pain stabbed through Eddie’s ankle, but he forced himself to run faster as the train came into view, travelling through a shallow cutting below. The carriage roofs were a couple of feet higher than the upper side. ‘There!’ he shouted, pointing at a slight rise on the cutting’s edge. ‘Get ready to jump!’ He grabbed Nina’s hand.

The locomotive surged past, belching steam and hot, sooty smoke. ‘Oh God!’ Nina cried as they ran the last few yards. ‘We’re gonna
diiiie
—’

They leapt, clearing the gap – and landing hard on a metal roof. Nina staggered, but kept her footing – just. It was Eddie who stumbled, one foot slipping out from under him. He skidded across the roof, legs flailing over the side . . .

Nina still had hold of his hand. She gripped it with all her strength and wedged a heel against a domed ventilator cover. The jolt as she caught his weight felt as though her arm was tearing from its socket, but she fought through the pain and held on. Eddie dangled before managing to catch the carriage’s rain gutter with his boot’s ice-shredded toe. He forced himself back on to the roof.

Nina dropped on her butt with a bang. ‘Jesus!’ she gasped, releasing his hand. ‘I thought you were going over!’

‘So did I,’ Eddie admitted, gasping for breath – and then coughing as a dirty cloud rolled over them. ‘Bloody hell! Let’s get off here before we end up smoked like fucking hams.’

He crawled along the roof, Nina behind him, and looked down. Like the locomotive, the carriages were vintage, with open platforms at each end. Eddie lowered Nina down, then thumped on to the platform himself.

A door led inside. They went through – to find the tourists taking the last train of the day staring at them in astonishment. Their touchdown on the roof had been far from quiet.

‘What?’ said Nina, deciding that nonchalance was as good a response as any. ‘I’ve got a ticket.’ She fished inside her clothing to produce it; it was indeed a return fare.

‘I don’t,’ Eddie complained.

She flopped down in a seat and smiled. ‘Well, if the conductor comes along, you’ll just have to hide in the john.’

‘They did
what
?’ Stikes barked into his phone.

‘Let me guess,’ said Sophia with a resigned sigh, ‘they got away from your men.’

He shot her an irritated look. ‘They jumped on the train.’ Leaning forward, he addressed the driver of the Range Rover in which he, Sophia, Warden and Larry were travelling. ‘Can we get to the next station before them?’

‘Not on this road, sir,’ came the apologetic reply. ‘The train goes through a tunnel, but the road goes the long way round.’

Stikes sat back, fuming. ‘Oh, that’s too bad,’ said Larry mockingly.

‘We still have Chase’s father,’ Warden said from the front seat, regarding the man in question with disapproval. ‘Chase and Dr Wilde came here to rescue him – they’ll do the same again.’

‘Only if we can contact them to issue an ultimatum, and I doubt they’ll be going back to the IHA to wait for one,’ Sophia told him. ‘They’ll try to find the meteorite.’

‘So they can destroy it,’ Stikes added.

‘But we have the statues,’ said Warden. ‘She can’t locate it without them.’

‘And we can’t locate it without her,’ Stikes pointed out. ‘We only know it’s somewhere in Ethiopia. And Wilde probably got a much better idea where from this . . .
vision
.’

Warden nodded. ‘So what do we do?’

Stikes straightened in his seat. ‘The first thing I need’, he said imperiously, ‘is total and unrestricted access to the Group’s resources worldwide. Men, information, money – everything, from all the members.’

The American eyed him suspiciously. ‘Why?’

‘If we’re going to beat Wilde and Chase to the meteorite, we can’t afford to waste time discussing how to proceed. We have to act quickly and decisively. There’s still a chance we can catch them before they leave Switzerland, or at least before they reach Africa, but unfortunately they’re very resourceful – as you’ve just seen. If we can get people and equipment in place in Ethiopia as soon as possible, we still have a chance of beating them. We can either capture Wilde and force her to locate the stone for us . . .’

‘Or let her lead us to it,’ finished Warden.

‘Exactly.’

The American nodded again. ‘All right. I’ll give you complete access.’ He took out his phone – then fixed Stikes with a warning look, raising a finger. ‘Don’t screw this up.’

‘I won’t,’ Stikes replied firmly. ‘I’m not going to let them win.’

P
eter Alderley dabbed sweat off his drooping moustache as he warily surveyed the street outside the ramshackle café. ‘I shouldn’t even be here, you know,’ he said. ‘MI6 generally isn’t too happy about its officers taking unscheduled trips to foreign countries. If anyone finds out—’

‘Hey, everyone!’ Eddie suddenly cried, pointing excitedly at him. ‘British secret agent, right here! It’s Peter Alderley! Come on, quick, get his autograph and listen to him drone on about restoring his 1973 Ford Capri!’ None of the passing residents of Dubti, some forty miles from the border with Djibouti in Ethiopia’s northeastern corner, seemed remotely interested in the revelation, or even found anything particularly unusual about the presence of three Westerners in their town. While the country in general was hardly a tourist trap, the wildlife reserve and national park to the south meant that international visitors were not uncommon.

‘Eddie,’ Nina chided. He laughed and sat back.

‘Very funny,’ Alderley muttered. ‘And it’s a 1971, actually.’

‘We do appreciate this, Peter, really,’ Nina assured him. It was two days since they had left Switzerland, having contacted Alderley and on his advice travelled first to Slovenia before flying on via Egypt to the eponymous capital of Djibouti, where the MI6 officer met them for the road trip into the neighbouring country. Alderley’s contacts in both African nations had allowed them to make the journey without any official hassles – for a modest fee.

‘And we appreciate this little lot too,’ added Eddie, nudging a rucksack beneath their table.

Alderley winced. ‘Be careful with that!’

‘Why? It’s not going to blow up.’

The MI6 man’s expression didn’t inspire confidence. ‘Is it?’ Nina asked.

‘The actual explosives should be stable. But they’re . . . well, past their sell-by date, put it that way. I couldn’t exactly requisition them from the quartermaster at Vauxhall Cross! They’ve been tucked away here for years by someone I know. So I wouldn’t throw them around.’

‘What about the detonators?’ said Eddie.

‘Standard RC units – you’ll have used them before in the SAS. They’ve all got new batteries, but there’s still some risk of deterioration, and since they’re one-use items there’s no way to test them in the field – other than actually firing them, I suppose. As for the trigger –’ he took a device the size of a chunky mobile phone from the rucksack – ‘it’s as reliable as any other electronic device in sub-optimal conditions, so . . .
caveat emptor
.’ He gave Nina an apologetic smile.

Eddie took the trigger unit from him. ‘What’s the set-up?’

‘Simple enough, even for you.’ The Yorkshireman made a sarcastic face. ‘Five channels, controlled by the dial.’ Alderley indicated the control, around which were marked the numbers one to five and the words ‘Full’ and ‘Safe’. It was currently set to the latter. ‘The numbers are for individual detonators, obviously, and “Full” blows everything simultaneously. Just switch it on and push the red button. Boom. The range is up to about a mile.’

‘What about the blast radius?’

‘I’d say you want to be at least fifty yards clear – more if you’re taking out something that might produce shrapnel.’

‘We’ll definitely want to be more than fifty yards away, then,’ said Nina.

‘I see.’ Alderley took a sip from his bottle of Coca-Cola. ‘You’re really not going to give me any more than that? Even after everything I’ve done to get you here?’