“I would see all of Russia burn in the fires of hell and damnation before I ever raised a finger to help them!” The ice was gone from her voice. The fire burned. “My precious Russia, to whom I have betrayed you, killed my father and raped and abused me! Perhaps you should have done your homework more thoroughly before you started pointing fingers, Nate!”
“Come on,” Garcia said, shoving her roughly away. Gibbs and West followed, keeping their weapons trained on her. On the far side of the hanger, Sid was dragging in deep breaths in an effort to calm herself.
“You have made a mistake, Nathan!” Nadia shouted back to him as she was ushered into the office. “And now, I think, you will die because of it!”
39:
The Mummy’s Curse
“Which way now?”
“Uh… that way.” King pointed down the left most tunnel out of the selection of three. Raine stepped ahead, the torch beam affixed to the helmet of his NBC suit slicing through the gloom while his handheld torch darted around the walls and ceiling of this latest tunnel.
As with the other tunnels they had trekked down for the last twenty minutes, the wooden support beams put in place centuries ago by the ancient tin miners had rotted away. Much of the wall had sagged, the damp soil slouching down to the ground, covering the tracks of whatever antiquated system of carts had once prowled these depths of the earth, ferrying ore to the outside world. In some places the ceiling had caved in completely but narrow gaps had allowed them to squeeze through into the tunnels beyond. Nevertheless, it had been a precarious adventure since they had been lowered down through the shaft which they had discovered and ventured deeper and deeper into the depths of the earth.
Moisture glistened from the walls, large drops echoing loudly as they splashed into stagnant pools. The shards of rotten wood creaked under the pressure of three hundred feet of earth above their heads.
Preparing for his and Raine’s mission into the mine, King had read up on the history of Cornish mining. Now, he wished he hadn’t, because of all the statistics he’d read about — about mines with around forty miles of tunnels dropping to depths of almost 3,000 feet — it was, unsurprisingly, the accident rates that had wedged themselves into his memory. Tale after tale of cave-ins, explosions and gas leaks. And those mines were kept in comparatively good condition, maintained to some degree at least by the miners. He guessed that this however, perhaps a southern extremity of Poldark Mine, had been long since abandoned even in Kha’um’s day. Despite Poldark’s modern visitor centre and underground tours and ghost hunts, he guessed that this branch had been cut off from the main network centuries before. Abandoned, lost and forgotten about.
Which meant, of course, no maintenance whatsoever.
Their booted feet sloshed through the muddy ground as Raine led the way cautiously down this latest tunnel. King held a tablet computer in his hand. Small, flat and compact, its touch screen now displayed an enhanced image of the route etched into Abubakar’s dagger but trying to juxtapose it into his real life surroundings was proving to be very difficult.
Raine had barely said a word since they had started their descent, except for the odd instruction to assist with overcoming some of the obstacles. But King knew it wasn’t just the oppressiveness of the low and crumbing ceiling that kept him quiet.
“You know, it doesn’t make sense.” King had to break the silence. The sense of claustrophobia had been slowly gnawing at him.
“What doesn’t?” Raine’s voice came back to him through tinny-sounding speakers set into his clumsy helmet. His breathing sounded not dissimilar to Darth Vader. As well as offering some limited protection from the tachyon emissions— despite Nadia’s assurances that their bodies were immune to the effects — the suits also protected them from any potentially fatal gases which had been trapped down here for the past three centuries.
“Well, Bill — the mercenary leader — didn’t sound the remotest bit Russian. Surely—”
“It makes perfect sense. You said it yourself, Benny. He was a merc. Nadia fed Moscow our itinerary and Moscow relayed it to their hired help. If the Russians had sent their own team and they’d been discovered, they’d be in the same boat as the Chinese right now.”
“So you’re saying that by using mercenaries, the Russians have got plausible deniability?”
“Something like that,” Raine replied, non-committal. “I guess they figure one international incident is enough at the moment, and it’ll take a lot of people’s bank balances to go through to find the paper trail linking the mercs to Moscow.”
“But we’ve got the proof of the data-bursts.”
“Yeah, but to use that as official evidence means sacrificing the CIA’s ‘asset’ in Moscow, which I guarantee you won’t happen.”
“So, what? Nadia’s going to walk?” There was a longer pause than he had expected. “Nate?”
“She won’t walk,” he replied. “And she won’t talk.”
His words sent a chill running through King. “What do you mean by that?” Raine didn’t answer. “Nate?” Still nothing.
King grasped the other man’s arm and swung him around. A flash of anger flared across Raine’s features and King thought for a moment that he was going to hit him. Then his expression mellowed again.
“There are… ways of governments dealing with… sticky situations.”
“What do you—” He cut himself off. “You don’t mean. ?”
“Moscow will deny all knowledge of her. Washington won’t be able to let her go. So, she’ll be… absorbed, I guess you could say.”
“Absorbed?” King was disgusted. He tried to read Raine’s expression behind the glass face plate but found, once again, that he was unreadable.
“She’ll vanish into the bureaucratic regime of two supposedly peace-time nations, pushed out of existence, forgotten about. Too dangerous to release, too embarrassing to keep.”
“We can’t let that happen. Whatever she’s done—”
“Nadia knew the risks,” Raine replied harshly. “Just as I did.” He laughed bitterly. “We’re pawns to them, Benny. To Washington, Moscow, London, Beijing. You name it. We’re nothing more than pieces to be moved across the playing board. And if sacrificing a pawn to save the king is the only option…” He didn’t need to finish his statement. Without another word, he turned and continued down the tunnel. King stood glued to the spot for a moment more, watching the other man’s silhouette fade into the gloom and, once again, he wondered about his history.
He was dangerous, that was for sure. Yet he had also shown an honourable side. But he was branded a traitor. Even O’Rourke had confirmed that. And King suddenly realised, with a sense of dread, the irony of a convicted traitor producing evidence to implicate another right at the moment of achieving the mission’s goal.
If anyone had something to gain by jumping into bed with the Russians, it wasn’t the woman whose family had been massacred by them. It was the man who had been imprisoned and sentenced to death by Russia’s greatest rival.
Alone, trapped beneath hundreds of feet of crumbling earth with a hardened killer, Benjamin King suddenly realised that he could be in a lot more trouble than he’d realised.
What if Nadia wasn’t the traitor?
What if it was Raine?
Alexander Langley watched the video feed which was streaming from a camera mounted on Raine’s helmet, now almost three thousand feet below ground, three and a half thousand miles away. The audio feed had been cut while Raine and King made their way through the treacherous labyrinth. Occasionally, Raine’s voice would crackle over the com-link, checking in with the rest of the team posted at the entrance to the mine shaft.