The Cradle of Life (10 page)

“I think so.” She was going on conjecture now, based on what she knew of the man, but it all made sense to her. “Found it, and realized the box was too powerful to be trusted to any man. So he returned it to its home—at the cradle of life. It's never been seen since.”

“Is this still a story? Or is any of this fact?”

“That's the question, isn't it?”

“And this cradle of life is where?” Calloway asked.

“I don't know. But Alexander did. He found a map that led him to it. The name he gave this map was
mati
.” A literal translation of the word
mati
is—eye.”

Lara picked up the fax Stevens had shown her of the Orb.

“The Orb is the map, hidden in the Luna Temple by Alexander. Reiss wants it to find Pandora's box. When he does, when he opens the box, he'll unleash a weapon more terrible than any you can imagine.”

“Good Lord,” Calloway said.

Hillary exhaled. “I'll go fetch that tea now.”

Lara looked at the pale white faces of the two MI6 agents in front of her, and managed a smile.

“I should think something stronger than tea,” she said.

Calloway looked up at her and nodded weakly. “Yes. Much stronger, if you've got it.”

Hillary cleared his throat and Lara knew he was about to launch into a detailed description of the contents of their liquor cabinet.

She clapped Bryce on the shoulder. He looked up at her quizzically.

“You. Come.”

A half hour later, she and Bryce had downloaded and cataloged all the still images from her digicam onto his laptop. They were in the library, him sitting at Lara's desk, her leaning over his shoulder, watching as he arranged the shots she'd managed to take of the Orb into a rough semblance of order.

Lara heard the door open, heard the rattle of silver on a tray, and spoke without looking up.

“How are our friends from intelligence?”

“Gone outside to make more phone calls.” Hillary stepped over to the desk, set the tray down next to the laptop. Tea and scones. “Thought you two might like some sustenance.”

“Ah.” Bryce looked up and sniffed the air. “Cinnamon walnut, yes?”

He reached for one of the scones.

“No,” Lara barked. “Focus.”

He grumbled and bent over the laptop again. Hillary came around behind the desk, stood next to Lara.

“What do you have so far?” he asked.

Bryce pointed at the screen. “The markings are definitely a pattern, but even if I figure out what they represent, we won't be able to read the full map because we don't have a full view of it…see?”

Hillary nodded. Lara shook her head impatiently.

“Full view or not—get to work on how to read it.” She straightened, turned to Hillary. “I have to start packing.”

A noise at the door made her turn.

Calloway and Stevens were back.

Before Lara could open her mouth to speak, Calloway stepped forward.

“On behalf of Her Majesty, we formally request you find and recover this box before Doctor Reiss.”

“Oh. Well.” Lara smiled. That was just what she was planning to do. Find Reiss and the Orb. A worthwhile mission in and of itself, with an added bonus: where the good doctor and the Orb were, there she would find the men who'd killed the Petrakis, as well.

“Now that I have Her Majesty's permission,” she said, “tell me where to find the Orb.”

“Last we heard, it was still with Chen Lo and the Shay Ling. Somewhere in China,” Stevens said.

Lara cursed under her breath. She'd thought the Orb would have made its way to Reiss by now. Taking the Shay Ling on in China, that would be tantamount to a suicide mission, the only reason she'd even contemplated it before was because of the relationship she'd been in at the time, and it was only because of that person she'd been in the relationship with that she'd even been able to locate them; they moved from hideout to hideout, they had local help in every province, there was no way she could do it again, not without…

She cursed again, out loud this time.

“Lara?” Hillary asked. “Is something wrong?”

“I'm thinking,” she said, and she was, but she didn't like the direction her thoughts were going in.

Stevens cleared his throat and spoke.

“I suspect you're aware of the difficulties involved in locating the Shay Ling. You're right to be concerned—I'm afraid finding them will be next to impossible. But we'll assign you two of our best agents to help—”

“I don't want them,” Lara said softly, her hands resting on the back of Bryce's chair.

Calloway and Stevens exchanged a glance.

“With all due respect,” Calloway began, “expertise in archaeology doesn't qualify you—”

“I didn't say I don't need help,” Lara said, cutting him off. “But your agents will never get me to Chen Lo in time. I need an insider. Someone who knows the Shay Ling. Their methods, hideouts…” She sighed. There really was only one person who could help with this, could help her avenge Gus and Nicholas and Jimmy, and just realizing that cost her, but she didn't see any way around using him, the conclusion was inescapable, it had to be him, and only him.

“I need Terry Sheridan,” she said.

Bryce, in the middle of sneaking a mouthful of scone, spit up crumbs all over his laptop.

Hillary, standing next to her, used a four-letter word she didn't even know he could pronounce.

Calloway's expression hardened into stone.

“Not if he were the last man on Earth,” the MI6 man said.

Stevens looked puzzled.

“Someone fill me in on who Terry Sheridan is, please,” he said.

While Lara was debating how she wanted to answer that, Calloway spoke.

“Terry Sheridan. Formerly a commander in the Royal Marines. Quite possibly the finest, most lethal soldier ever to serve this country. Who one day, for reasons known only to him, disappeared. He resurfaced as a traitor—a mercenary selling his skills to the highest bidder.” He glared at Lara. “You don't expect me to put him on the trail of a weapon he'll turn around and auction?”

“I'm not any happier about the idea than you,” Lara shot back, “but Terry is the only man I know who can get me to Chen Lo in time.”

Calloway shook his head. “Lady Croft, some men are capable of betraying their friends, but Terry Sheridan is the only one I know who enjoys it.”

“Then it's lucky for us Terry's friends include Chen Lo and the Shay Ling, isn't it?”

Calloway had no response for that.

Hillary did.

“Ah,” he said. “May I point out that at one time, Terry's friends also included—”

Lara spun and silenced him with a glare. Then she pointed upstairs, in the direction of her bedroom.

“You'll recall what I said earlier? About packing?”

Hillary sighed heavily, and left the room.

Lara turned back to the MI6 agents.

“You'll get me to him?” she asked Calloway. “Or do you need to make more phone calls?”

“No more phone calls,” Calloway said, his expression grim. “We'll get you to him. But we want access to everything your man here finds,” he said, pointing to Bryce, “so that we have a backup in case Sheridan betrays you again.”

“When,” Bryce mumbled. “When he betrays you again.”

Lara thwacked him on top of the head.

“Focus,” she told Bryce.

“Agreed,” she told Calloway.

“I know what I'm doing,” she told Hillary a few minutes afterward, upstairs in her bedroom, as she changed for her journey.

On the landing pad an hour later, walking toward the helicopter MI6 had sent for her, Lara said her good-byes, trying to make them short and sweet.

Bryce and Hillary were having none of it.

“I know you may well hit me again,” Bryce said, handing her the digicam as he escorted her toward the waiting copter, “but a leopard doesn't change his spots, Lara.”

“I know,” she said, not breaking stride for an instant.

“You know,” Hillary said, coming up alongside her on the left, opposite from Bryce, “you know, and yet the first chance you get, you run and save him.”

Lara stopped suddenly, and both men stopped with her.

“I'll handle him,” she said firmly. “Now good-bye.”

She ducked low, under the whirling blades, and ran for the open chopper door.

Hillary's shouted response followed her.

“Even if it means killing him?”

Lara slammed the door shut without answering, without looking back. The copter rose immediately into an overcast sky, until the landing pad, Croft Manor itself, Bryce, and Hillary all disappeared from sight.

And yet the questions continued to echo in her mind.

What would she do when she saw Terry Sheridan?

Lara wasn't quite sure she knew the answer to that.

 

She drifted in and out of sleep, dreaming—daydreaming—about North Korea. And Terry Sheridan.

Five years ago. She had airlifted into Chasong, right along the Chinese border, to try and preserve what she could of an archaeological site dating back to the Silla dynasty, before alliance bombs started falling.

SAS had arranged for her rendezvous with the advance squad of marines on the ground already, working to pinpoint targets. Commander in charge, one Terence Patrick Sheridan.

“You must be Lady Croft,” he'd said, stepping out of the bush right as she was climbing out of her chute.

“No lady necessary. And you're Sheridan.” They shook hands. Sheridan was lean and muscled-—the veins on his arms stood out like ridges against this skin. The backs of his hands were calloused, and bruised—Lara had seen similar marks on other SAS soldiers, those on “special force” assignments the nature of which they could never talk about.

Sheridan had no doubt been on many such missions himself. According to her briefing, he'd gone through SAS training and come out with the highest markings ever given in unarmed combat.

He had a knife strapped to each forearm, and guns—decidedly nonregulation guns—hanging off his equipment belt. He looked dangerous. Lara had been impressed. Even a little intrigued.

Sheridan also had a very big scowl on his face.

“This isn't going to be tea and crumpets, Croft. You sure you're up for it?”

Lara had sighed heavily.

Might as well get this part over with, she thought, and dropped her pack to the ground. She assumed a fighting stance.

“Shall I knock you on your ass now—or later?”

Sheridan had smiled. He looked her over.

“Nice stance. But you've left yourself open here—” and as he'd spoken, he swung a leg and knocked her feet out from under her.

She rolled as she fell, landed both hands on the ground, and kicked back with her feet, catching him square in the mouth.

“Nice move,” she'd said, getting to her feet. “But you left your mouth open there.”

Sheridan rubbed his lip, and his hand came away bloody.

His smile got broader.

“All right, Croft,” he'd said, getting to his feet. “Let's see what else you've got.”

A week later, they were living together in her tent.

Four months after that, Terry had deserted his unit—and sold the most valuable pieces she'd found from her dig to the Shay Ling.

“We're here.”

Lara opened her eyes to see the copter was landing. It was twilight, and much, much colder. Men in uniform hustled her into a waiting half-track. The driver smiled at her as she climbed up into the cab alongside him.

Once they were underway, he turned to her and offered a gap-toothed smile.

“You're a beautiful woman,” he said in halting English. “I have much whiskey.”

Lara glared at him until he turned away, red-faced.

Nobody else spoke to her the entire trip.

Night fell as they drove deeper and deeper into rugged foothills, covered with snow, devoid of life. More snow was falling now, big flakes that danced in the headlights before fluttering down to the road and melting away. Then they began to fall harder, stopped melting at all. The road grew slick, the windshield white with accumulated flakes—the wipers couldn't keep up. Every few minutes, the driver had to open his window and clear the windshield by hand. A bitter, arcticlike wind entered the cab every time he did so.

Lara burrowed further into the fur coat she was wearing, and stayed warm.

Sometime after what was probably midnight, Greenwich Standard Time—if her internal clock was accurate—a light appeared in the distance, and grew closer. The truck slowed to a halt.

Lara climbed out.

She was standing on pavement, in the middle of a fenced compound. Soldiers patrolled in formations of three men, AK-47s at the ready. Half-tracks, marked with the red star of imperial Russia, were parked haphazardly around her truck.

Directly before her, in the center of the compound, was an old Soviet-era missile silo—a massive blockhouse of a building, albeit only a single-story tall. Above ground, that is. Below…

In the days of the cold war, not so long ago, upward of a half-dozen ICBMs had no doubt been hidden in this structure, buried beneath the ground, along with the requisite crew needed to send those missiles flying toward the United States of America should Moscow give the signal. The missiles were long gone, but the cavernous space they'd occupied still existed, in a slightly reconfigured format.

The silo was now a prison—Barla Kala, the locals called it. It housed the most feared, most wanted men and women on the planet. Abu Sayaaf, Hezbollah, Al Qaeda—this was the place where the civilized world sent those who would never learn to be civilized. Once they arrived, and were locked behind the massive steel doors in front of her, they were never heard from again. There were no parole boards or rewards for good behavior at Barla Kala, no such thing as easy time or exercise yards or movie night here. Prisoners at Barla Kala went in, and they never came out again.

Terry Sheridan had gone in five years ago, and Lara hadn't heard a word about him since.

A bearded, balding blockhouse of a man detached himself from a group of soldiers nearby and approached her.