‘Get rid of him. You should never have hired him in the first place.’
‘I’ll see to it.’
‘What?’ snapped Stikes, standing sharply.
Warden waved him to silence. ‘Give me your number,’ said Nina. ‘I’ll be in touch. And if we could get back to New York as soon as possible, I’d appreciate it.’
‘I’ll have you flown there,’ the Group’s chairman told her. ‘My driver will take you to the airport. But please, Dr Wilde . . . don’t take too long to reach a decision.’
‘You’ll know as soon as I’ve made it. Come on, Eddie. Let’s go.’
Eddie said nothing, silently fuming as they left the room. Once they were gone, Stikes rounded on Warden. ‘You’re not going to do what she wants, are you?’
‘Why not?’ he replied. ‘She’s vital to us, and if indulging her obsession with archaeology is the price of her cooperation, it’ll be well worth it.’
‘I meant about firing me!’
‘Relax, Stikes.’ Warden took a seat. ‘You’re useful. For now.’
‘Thank you,’ Stikes replied caustically. ‘In that case, I have some useful advice: don’t believe her. She won’t go along with it – and Chase definitely won’t, however much money you wave in front of them. I know them.’
‘We’ll see.’
‘I’m sure we will. So we should have a contingency plan in place.’
‘Do you have something in mind?’
Stikes’s cold gaze turned towards the door through which Nina and Eddie had exited. ‘As a matter of fact, I do.’
It wasn’t until they were back at their apartment in New York, away from anyone who might report what was said to Warden or his people, that Eddie finally felt free to unleash what had been bottled up inside him for the past hours. ‘Have you gone fucking mad?’ he erupted at Nina the moment the door was closed. ‘What the hell are you doing, going along with them?’
‘Eddie—’
‘You know you can’t trust ’em, especially not Stikes!’
‘Eddie—’
‘And it’s because of them that Mac’s dead! They hired Kit, he was working for them – and now Stikes is too!’
‘Eddie—’
‘This is what you call us sticking together, no matter what? I can’t fucking believe that you’d even—’
‘Eddie!’ She grabbed his arms, getting right in his face. ‘Of course I don’t trust him! I said all that because I needed to buy some extra time.’
‘Yeah?’
‘Yeah!’
‘Oh.’ His shoulders slumped. ‘I feel like a bit of an arse now.’
She smiled and briefly kissed him. ‘I’ll let you feel the whole of one when we go to bed. But no, I don’t trust Warden or this Group of his any more than you do.’
‘So you wanted to buy more time, okay. But for what? Warden’s going to want an answer pretty soon – and there’s still Glas to worry about.’
Nina paced across the room. ‘We need to find out the truth about the statues – and, more important, the meteorite. What it can really do, how it does it – and how dangerous it might be. Not second-hand, like the Kallikrates text, or whatever Warden says about it. I’m sure Glas would have his own opinion too. No, we need to go to the source.’
‘Where’s that?’ Eddie asked.
She stopped and faced him. ‘Atlantis.’
22
The Gulf of Cadiz
The North Atlantic in November is an inhospitable place. Even though the weather on this day was not particularly bad, there was still enough of a swell to cause the research vessel Gant to pitch unsettlingly beneath the wet-slate sky. The helicopter’s landing on the pad at the ship’s stern was bumpy, to say the least.
‘Welcome aboard!’ called Matt Trulli, waving as Nina and Eddie hurried through the drizzle to meet him. ‘Great to see you both. Been up to anything exciting?’
‘You could say that,’ Nina replied with a pained smile. ‘You know, the usual.’
‘Ah, right,’ Matt said knowingly. ‘So what got destroyed this time?’
Eddie started to count items on his fingers. ‘A skyscraper, a helicopter, a secret US base . . .’
‘Jesus, mate, I was kidding!’ He shook Eddie’s hand firmly. ‘Seriously, though, I’m glad to see you again. I knew you were innocent.’
‘Thanks,’ said Eddie, smiling. ‘Would be nice if that were the end of it, but nope, we’ve still got problems.’
‘Which is why we’re here,’ said Nina. ‘Can we go inside?’
‘Sure.’ Matt brought them through a hatch into the ship’s interior, then headed down a passage. ‘Should warn you, Hayter’s about as happy as you’d expect that you were coming.’
‘How’s progress been on the excavations?’
‘Pretty good, I’d say. He can give you the details, but the biggest problem’s been that there’s a fairly