“Oh, ye of little faith,” he called back.
He powered along the bridge until they were about halfway across, and felt Zara’s arms squeezing him tighter as they raced along the asphalt. Either side of him, angry drivers were honking their horns and winding down their windows to curse them as Mason weaved the Ducati in and out of the traffic on the busy bridge.
“I don’t know what the hell you’re planning, but it looks like we’re running out of options, Jed,” Zara said.
“We’re running out of lives, more like.”
He hit the brakes and brought the Panigale under control, dropping through the gears as he went. The massive engine growled beneath them as the revs shot up in response to the lower gears, but then fell to a low grumble. Mason steered the bike up on the sidewalk at the side of the bridge and they hopped off.
“Fancy a tour of the river?” he said, trying to slow his breathing.
Zara peered down at the murky brown water.
“It’s now or never, Dietrich!”
“You can’t be serious?” she said, shocked. “Swim in that?”
“Look behind,” he said. “Speedboat heading this way.”
He indicated behind them where a powerful speedboat was racing toward the bridge, its chrome rails and windshield sparkling in the Roman sun.
Zara shook her head in disbelief. “Oh, no, not that…”
He nodded and smiled. “When I say jump, we jump.”
“You’re shitting me, right? Please tell me that you’re shitting me.”
“I’m not shitting you, Z. If we time it right we’ll drop right down into the boat and leave the rozzers far behind.” He opened the pannier and snatched the codex and his bag.
“They’ll call the water police, or a chopper.”
“We’ll cross that bridge when we come to it.”
“Is that supposed to be funny?”
“In three, Dietrich. Three, two, one!”
They leaped off the bridge and dropped down through the air like stones, landing with a heavy crash on the rear deck of the luxury speedboat just as it emerged from beneath the bridge.
The captain turned, horrified, but Zara pointed the gun at him and told him to keep going, and to increase speed. “Just keep going, Capitano,” she said. “And I’ll cross your palm with silver. I’m no criminal.”
The man shrugged and pushed the throttles forward. “I cannot lie,” he said stoically. “This is not your typical day in Rome. Where are we going?”
“To the Aeroporto Militare south east of the city!”
The man gave an apologetic smile as Nichetti and his officers gathered on the bridge, cursing and shouting and making frantic radio calls. “This boat can only take you so far.”
“Just get us away from the cops,” Zara said. “That’s half the battle won.”
Mason sighed and rubbed his neck in the hot sun. “Something tells me the battle is only just beginning.”
CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR
The US presence in Egypt had a long and rich history, stretching back to the summer of 1830 when a merchant from Philadelphia named Charles Rhind signed a trade treaty with the Egyptian Government. Giving the US most-favored-nation status, the treaty allowed America to trade openly with the entire Ottoman Empire. The Consulate was opened five years later in Alexandria, and the use of the port exploded when demand for Egyptian cotton increased during the American Civil War. After a period of closure, the consulate reopened in 2016 in the Helnan Palestine Hotel in the city’s Montazah area.
Now, Jed Mason and the other Raiders were sitting in a non-descript office in the rear of the consulate, working on their plan to retrieve the Book of Spells and patiently waiting for Ezra’s “helping hand”. This turned out to be three former Delta officers, all of whom were on first-name terms with Caleb Jackson thanks to their post-army careers in the CIA and NSA.
Caleb and the men exchanged a quick smile and after a round of meaty handshakes, he introduced them to the rest of the team. “Meet John Garrett, Chuck Ikard and Don French,” he said. “Me and these guys go way back. Guys, meet my new crew. We call ourselves the Raiders.”
“You’re the guys who jumped off the bridge in Rome, right?” Garrett said, holding his iPhone up to show them the front page of the Italian newspaper, La Republicca. “Looks like you’re famous.”
Mason and Zara gave an apologetic shrug.
“Hey, we got the codex,” Zara said at last.
“Ezra’s not too happy about the publicity,” Caleb said.
Zara sighed. “Ezra can kiss my…”
“Anyway,” Garrett said. “Let’s move on.”
Following a few pleasantries and some jokes about life at Fort Bragg, the expanded team soon got down to the business at hand. Mason had full confidence that three NSA operatives and former 1st Special Forces Operational Detachment soldiers would have no trouble slotting into the team and he was grateful for the extra manpower. Maybe Ezra Haven had a use after all.
“Tell us, Dr Starling,” Garrett said firmly. “You had time to study the codex on the flight from Rome. What does it tell us exactly?”
Eva looked at the map in the rear of the codex once again, her eyes widening as she made sure she had the translation right. She had opened the codex on the plane with the help of the ankh, which she slotted into the hole in its cover. Seeing it for the first time in centuries was already one of her career highlights. “The first thing it told me was to come here to Alexandria. As we had speculated, the codex is mostly written by an ancient Egyptian priest named Parennefer, and he was very clear about it being in Alexandria.”
“Go on, please.”
“Since we landed I’ve had more time to study it, and I think I understand it now. Parennefer writes here that he moved the Book of Thoth somewhere where the new Christian authorities would never find it, and I can hardly believe I’m saying this, but he says he hid it inside Cleopatra’s tomb.”
“Cleopatra’s tomb?” Mason said. “Bugger me! That’s one of the greatest missing historical relics of all time.”
“Cleopatra wasn’t a saint, Jed,” Eva said.
“I’m sorry?”
“Relics are the personal belongings or even physical remains of saints. We’re talking about a tomb containing the body of Cleopatra, who was a queen.”
“This is the problem with having an archaeologist around,” Zara said with a wink. “Sooner or later they’re going to make you look like a total idiot.”
“Hey,” Milo said. “Jed doesn’t need Eva to make him look like an idiot. He can do that perfectly well on his own.”
“All right, all right,” Mason said. “Dial it down. I’m still the only one here who can pull off aviator shades. Remember that.”
“Aaaand, back to Cleopatra,” Eva said.
“Oh yeah,” Caleb said drily. “Let’s do that. Just imagine I’m like my old friend Jed, here, and run me through Cleopatra for Dummies.”
“First, she was Greek, and her full name was Cleopatra VII Philopator.”
“She was Greek?” Milo said. “You learn something new every day.”
“That’s not hard starting from your baseline,” said Virgil.
“Yes, she was Greek,” Eva continued. “But she spoke Egyptian too. She learned it for her people, along with all their religious rituals. Essentially she became a kind of Isis, a sort of goddess. Back then it was important for rulers to be seen as divine, or at least appointed by the divine.”
“Where’s the popcorn?” Milo said cynically.
“Zip it, Miles,” Zara said. “I’m interested in this stuff. Some of us never got a decent education, got it?”
“Sorry, Z.”
Eva continued. “And she wasn’t the only Cleopatra. Her mother was Cleopatra V of Egypt, for example, but history remembers her so much because of her relationships with Julius Caesar and Mark Antony, and the fact she was the last ruler of the Ptolemaic Kingdom of Egypt.”