Nina supported Eddie, helping him limp down the rear ramp as both raised their hands. ‘I was hoping for a reception with, y’know, a lot fewer guns pointed at me,’ she said, blinking into the glaring spotlights. ‘Or preferably none.’
‘Wilde and Chase nuclear delivery service!’ Eddie called out as they reached solid ground. ‘H-bombs direct to your door. Don’t forget to tip!’
The soldiers did not respond well to the joke. ‘Get down on the ground with your hands behind your heads!’ one bellowed through the speaker. ‘Do it now!’
‘He’s hurt!’ Nina protested.
Eddie gritted his teeth as he lowered himself painfully to the runway and lay on his front. ‘They really don’t care, love.’
The Russians followed them out of the An-124, also lying face-down. A squad of soldiers in armoured hazmat gear ran to surround them. One man hurriedly passed a Geiger counter over the supine prisoners. It crackled, but not enough to cause alarm. ‘Where are the bombs?’ the leader shouted, voice muffled behind his face mask.
‘In there,’ said Nina, jerking a thumb towards the hold. ‘There’s a plutonium sphere tied to the floor; you might want to take care of that first. Long story,’ she added, sensing he was about to ask a question that would require a long and convoluted answer. He got the message and quickly led his team inside.
Boots tramped towards her. ‘Which of you is Nina Wilde?’ another man demanded.
Nina risked raising her head far enough to give the questioner, an air force colonel, a scathing look. ‘That would be me, with the breasts.’ Eddie had given the F-16’s pilot more information via Morse while the Antonov was in flight, including the nature of their mission.
‘And Eddie Chase?’
‘Me,’ said Eddie. ‘The one with the bullet in his leg. Which I’d really, really like someone to fix, because it fucking hurts!’
‘Stretcher!’ the colonel called to a medical team waiting beyond the circle of guns, before turning back to the couple. ‘The State Department confirmed your story that you were in North Korea as part of an intelligence-gathering operation. So how the hell did you end up in a Russian cargo plane with a hold full of nuclear weapons?’
‘Like I said,’ Nina told him wearily, ‘it’s a long story. Too long.’
Her husband chuckled as the medics carefully lifted him on to a stretcher. ‘It’ll make a great book, though.’
50
Oswald Seretse gazed out of the limousine’s window as it crossed the Queensboro Bridge into Manhattan, the afternoon sun shining on the rectilinear forest of brick and concrete and glass. ‘You have been through a great ordeal, that is for sure,’ he said, having listened to Nina and Eddie’s account of events in North Korea on the ride from the airport. ‘One for which I feel in large part responsible.’
‘Mm-hmm,’ Nina said stonily, nodding.
He turned back to them. ‘Again, you have my most profound and sincere apologies. Had I known that Fenrir was still in the country waiting for you… But,’ the diplomat went on, ‘it at least had a somewhat happy ending.’
Eddie rattled the end of his military-issue crutch against the floor. ‘Yeah, I’m smiling like the fucking Joker.’
‘I admit, more on an international level than a personal one. The illegal North Korean weapons facility was destroyed, the nuclear warheads it had already produced were captured, and an extremely dangerous escalation of tensions in the Middle East has been averted — to say nothing of the renewed diplomatic pressure that will be placed on North Korea from all sides. You may not appreciate that right now, but I assure you, you have done a tremendous favour for the world. Thank you.’
Nina nodded. ‘Has there been any word on Fenrir and the Crucible?’
‘Not yet. He seems to have travelled to China, but then we believed that before. The CIA and other agencies are still trying to track him down.’
‘Thirty million dollars and a crate of gold bars buys you a lot of anonymity, I guess.’
‘So it would seem.’ He shook his head. ‘I am still in a state of shock about Fenrir, as indeed are many others at the UN. The idea that someone we trusted could have betrayed his principles so completely…’
‘Some people’ll do anything for a shitload of gold,’ said Eddie.
Nina knew the comment was not referring entirely to Mikkelsson. ‘Yeah. But some of them might realise that other things are more valuable in the end. I hope.’
‘Maybe. Right now, though,’ he shifted, stretching his injured leg, ‘I just want to see our most valuable thing.’
‘Are you calling our little girl a thing?’ The couple grinned at each other.
‘I am returning to the United Nations,’ said Seretse, smiling again, ‘but my driver is at your disposal. He can take you home, or wherever you wish to go.’
‘Macy’s at her nursery,’ Nina told him, checking her watch. ‘I already spoke to our niece when we landed; she’ll be waiting for us there. They’ll be finishing soon.’
‘Then I shall delay you as little as possible.’ The limo reached the end of the bridge, turning on to 2nd Avenue to make its way southwards.
Seretse said his farewells and exited at the United Nations. Nina gave the driver the nursery’s address, and the limo headed back uptown. ‘We made it home,’ she said, watching familiar surroundings slide past outside. ‘I honestly thought we wouldn’t, that we’d never get to see Macy again, but… we did. We actually made it.’ She closed her eyes for a moment, but found the darkness filled with unwelcome visions of everything she had recently endured. ‘I’m never going to leave her again.’
‘I know how you feel,’ said Eddie, his voice filled with weariness. ‘But sooner or later, she’ll leave us. It’s what kids do. Holly’s out here doing her own thing. One day, Macy’ll be the same.’
‘One day. But not now. And definitely not today.’ She leaned against him, holding his hand. ‘Oh God, I’ve missed her so much.’
‘Me too, love. Me too.’
The journey to the nursery seemed to take as long as the flight from South Korea. At last they arrived. ‘Do you want me to wait for you?’ asked the driver.
‘Yes please,’ said Nina. ‘We shouldn’t be long.’
He surveyed the street. Parking spaces were, as ever in New York, at a premium, and a section of street alongside scaffolding erected outside the nursery’s building had been closed off by road cones. ‘I’ll circle the block until you come out, if that’s okay?’
‘No problem,’ Eddie told him as they pulled up. ‘Don’t pick up any hitchhikers, though.’
The driver pulled over and got out to open the door for them. A few passers-by looked on curiously, wondering if celebrities had arrived. ‘What, nobody recognises us?’ the Yorkshireman mock-complained. ‘Tchah! What’s the point of having a movie about us if we don’t get mobbed by fans every time we’re out in public?’
‘I’d rather not end up like John Lennon, thanks,’ said Nina, helping him out and passing him his crutch. The limo pulled away as they skirted the scaffolding and entered the building.