Return to Atlantis: A Novel (24 page)

Nina jumped as a loud metallic bang echoed through the limo. The driver was struggling with somebody—

She glimpsed a gun as the two men fought.

Jesus! It was a carjacking!

She tried to open the door—and found to her horror that the handle refused to move. Child-locked. The other door was the same. She stabbed at the window switch to lower it, but without the key in the ignition the mechanism was inert.

The driver slammed against the limo’s side, his attacker delivering a punch to his stomach before grabbing his arm. The gun clacked against the rear window. A
thwat
as it fired, the bullet hitting the concrete floor and ricocheting away with a whine. Another shot and a car’s windshield shattered, setting off the vehicle’s alarm.

The chauffeur struck back, and the other man lurched away. The gun came up—but not pointing at the assailant.

It was aimed at Nina.

Trapped, all she could do was dive into the foot well—

The gun fired—just as the second man hurled himself bodily at the chauffeur. The window shattered from the force of the bullet at point-blank range, the round tearing into the leather upholstery beside Nina. She shrieked.

The new arrival twisted the chauffeur’s right arm savagely behind his back. The driver let out a strangled cry of pain, free hand clawing over his shoulder at his opponent’s eyes. The wig slipped off his head as he tried to break loose, knees bashing against the limo’s door—

Another muffled
thwat
, a spent casing clinking off the floor. The chauffeur convulsed, face twisted into an anguished grimace by the pain of the bullet that had just ripped into the back of his calf. Before he could even scream, the other man slammed him face-first against the top of the door frame. He dropped to the concrete, unconscious.

The victor stepped over him and tugged at the door handle. The lock released with a clunk. Nina stared up at her savior.

“So this is what you get up to while I’m away, is it?” said a Yorkshire voice.

She gawped at the disheveled, bearded figure. “Eddie?”

Her husband smiled. “Last time I checked. Come on, open the boot so I can dump this twat in it before anyone sees him.”

He extended his hand. She hesitantly took it, and he helped her out of the limo. The chauffeur lay at her feet. “Son of a
bitch
!” she suddenly cried, booting him again and again.

Eddie pulled her back. “What the hell are you doing?”

“I’m kicking his ass, like I promised I would!”

“Er … okay,” he said, bewildered. “Now you’ve done that, can we shift him?” He glanced warily toward the stairwell in case anyone was coming to investigate the alarm.

Nina opened the trunk. Eddie dragged the driver to the limo’s rear and dumped him inside. He quickly searched his pockets, producing the car keys, then slammed the lid and retrieved the gun. “There might be more of them—we need to get out of the airport.” He got into the driver’s seat and started the car.

Nina joined him in the front passenger seat. “Eddie?”

“Yeah?”

“What the
fuck
is going on?”

“That’s a bloody good question,” he replied as he put the limo into gear and made a hurried exit from the car park.

An hour and a half later, having abandoned the limousine—after wiping it clean of fingerprints—in Queens and taken a cab into Manhattan, the couple faced each other over a table in a darkened corner of a Midtown bar. “We should have gone back to the apartment,” Nina grumbled.

“Trust me, there’s nothing I’d like more,” said Eddie. “But it might not be a good idea me being seen around there.” He shook his head. “Christ, what a mess.”

Right now, Nina didn’t want to think that far ahead. She took in her husband’s less-than-pristine appearance. “That’s not the only thing that’s a mess.”

Eddie gingerly touched his jaw where the assassin had landed a blow. “That guy got in a couple of punches.”

“No, I meant in general. What
is
with the beard?”

“You don’t like it?”

“Would you be offended if I didn’t?”

“N—”

“I hate it,” she said, before he could even finish the word. “I don’t know if you were trying for a Commander Riker look or something, but it’s definitely more toward the Charles Manson end of the beard spectrum.”

“First chance we’ve had for a proper chat in over three months, and that’s all you want to talk about?”

Her change of expression warned him that was far from the case. “God, no, Eddie,” Nina said with a long sigh. She spread her fingers, putting the tips to her temples. “There’s so much I want to say that it feels as though it’s all going to burst right out of my skull. I mean, Jesus Christ, Eddie. Jesus
Christ
!” She hit his arm, far from gently.

“Ow,” he said. “What was that for?” She did it again, harder. “Ow!”

“What was
that
for?” she echoed incredulously, voice rising in both volume and pitch. “For God’s sake! You disappear and leave me for three months, not a word the whole time, the police and Interpol and God knows who else are scouring the globe for you—then you turn up out of nowhere at the top of a Japanese skyscraper, which then gets blown up with me inside it, and when I finally get back home after being chased and shot at in Rome, you pop up again as if by magic to save me from some asshole who was apparently trying to kidnap and murder me! The least I deserve is some kind of goddamn explanation!”

“Oh. Yeah. All that. So what happened in Rome?”

“Don’t change the subject!” she snapped, raising her fist once more.

“All right, fucking hell! Just don’t hit me again, okay? I’ve had people laying into me for the past week, and I’m getting pretty pissed off with it.”

“Sorry,” she muttered. “I’m just … I’m so happy to see you again, you wouldn’t believe it. But I’m also so
mad
at you.”

“Okay, so stick with the happy part for now, all right?” said Eddie. “You want to know what I’ve been doing? I’ve been looking for Stikes, for one thing. I had to bust someone out of a Zimbabwean prison to track him down, but I finally found him … and you were there with him.”

“I was not
with
him!” she protested.

“Yeah, I know that now. But he got away, and I’m not going to get any more help from the person who told me how to find him. Seeing as she tried to kill me.”

Nina sighed. “What is it about us? Why are we incapable of having a normal life that doesn’t include regular assassination attempts?”

“Dunno. But I don’t remember breaking any mirrors, walking under ladders, or not saluting magpies, so it must all be your fault.” He managed a half smile at her outraged look, then became serious again. “But as well as that, I was trying to find out what happened in Peru. I didn’t murder Kit, Nina. He was trying to kill me. What I did, it was self-defense … whatever you thought you saw me do.”

She said nothing for several seconds, causing an unexpected apprehension, even fear, to rise within him. But her reply made it vanish. “I believe you.”

His face lit up. “You do?”

“Yes. I believe you’re innocent. But …” The single word instantly crushed his elation. “I need to
know
you’re innocent. And so does everybody else—Interpol, the IHA, everyone. Otherwise, what? You go on the run again? Or you get caught and sent to prison—or worse? Eddie, I …” She buried her face in her hands. “I can’t go on like this. Without you. It’s just … destroying me.” A tear rolled down her cheek.

“I’m not exactly keen on it either,” he replied. But despite his attempt at forced levity, he too felt his eyes welling. “Oh Christ, look at me. Getting all emotional.”

“You do that a lot more than you like to pretend,” Nina told him, wiping her face.

“I’ve had a lot to
get
all emotional about lately,” he admitted. “Losing Mac, losing Nan …” Now it was his turn to rub his eyes. “Losing you.”

She shuffled around the booth to sit beside him. “You didn’t lose me, Eddie. I lost you. For a while. But I got you back.”

“Thanks,” he managed to say, almost overcome. He put his arm around her. “Thank you.”

“I’m still completely furious with you, obviously,” she said after a pause.

He half-laughed. “So what else is new? You’re always furious about something. Bloody redheads.”

“Yeah, we’re the best.” They sat in silence for a while, simply enjoying being together again.

“So what changed?” Eddie eventually asked. “When I left you in Peru, you … well, you flat-out accused me of murder. Why do you believe me now?”

Nina straightened. “A few things. First, Kit lied to me about Interpol authorizing him to negotiate with Stikes to get the statues back. So that made me start wondering if he’d lied about anything else. And the second thing is … well, you.”

“Me?”

“I
know
you, Eddie. I think pretty well by now. And the more I thought about it, the more it seemed … 
wrong
. I know how angry you were that night—but kicking a helpless man to his death? I know the things you can do when you feel you have to, but that’s not one of them.”

“I was actually trying to get Kit
out
of there,” he said, thinking back to the chaos of the impending conflagration. “He was the only way I could prove what was going on. But he would have shot me if I hadn’t … well, you were there. Even if you didn’t see the gun.”

“It wasn’t on the video either,” she told him glumly. “The angle was wrong, and it was too dark. I watched
it over and over, but I couldn’t see anything. Interpol didn’t either.”

“There’s a video?”

“Yeah, from a surveillance camera. Renée Beauchamp sent me a copy to see if I could tell her anything new.”

Eddie became thoughtful. “How long is it?”

“Ten or twelve minutes, maybe. Nothing happens for a lot of it, though; you climb up onto the catwalk, then you’re out of shot until you and Kit are fighting.”

“I’ll need a look at it. But there wasn’t anything showing Stikes or Sophia?”

“Afraid not. Oh, oh!” she added excitedly. The shock of the attack at the airport had pushed events in Italy to one side. “Sophia was in Rome!”

“What?”

“I don’t know what she was doing—I don’t even know how she’s still alive. But she was there, and she …” Nina trailed off, still not quite able to accept what had happened.

“What did she do?” he demanded.

“She, ah … You’re not going to believe this, but she saved my life.”

He stared at her. “You’re right, I don’t believe it. How?”

She explained what had happened outside the Vatican. “So,” said Eddie when she was done, “she shot her own man in the back to save you, then got all cutesy and ‘don’t tell anyone’ about it? Why would she do that? She hates you even more than she hates me!”

“Thanks for that, Eddie. I always like being reminded that a murdering psychopath has a grudge against me. But no, I don’t know why she did it. I’d guess she was there to make sure Agnelli didn’t blab to me about whoever paid him to raid the Brotherhood’s archives. And so was the other guy—only she double-crossed him.”

“Sophia stabbing someone in the back? No!” said Eddie sarcastically.

“But whose side is she really on? Apart from her own,
obviously. She didn’t save me because she wants a bridge partner—she needs me alive for something.”

“Something to do with those bloody statues, probably. Even Dalton mentioned them.”

“Dalton?” said Nina in surprise. “As in, out-on-his-ass president?”

“Yeah. Turns out he set me up to be killed in Japan. Sophia’s not the only person who holds grudges. I popped around to his house to have words.”

She put her head in her hands again. “I need the Cliffs-Notes to follow all this. What the hell is going on?”

He patted her shoulder. “Well, you tell me what you know, I’ll tell you what I know, and maybe between the two of us we’ll get a clue.”

“I’d be happy with even
half
a clue,” she said.

It took some time to exchange stories, long enough for the barman to cast annoyed looks in their direction, compelling Eddie to buy some drinks to justify their stay. But eventually they had all the pieces.