‘Are there any good ways?’ asked Sarah quietly.
‘If you have lived a good life, you can die a good death,’ said Mikkelsson. ‘But I hope none of us will have to worry about this for some time.’ He glanced at Olivia, who as the oldest in the room by some margin was not enthused by the thought. ‘The question now is what to do about the Crucible.’
An animated discussion broke out around the table, the members of the Legacy clearly having strong — and differing — ideas. Mikkelsson tapped on the table again. ‘One at a time, please. Spencer?’
‘The answer’s obvious,’ said Lonmore. ‘We go ahead with my hedge fund proposal, and let Wall Street work its magic with the full remaining value of the Legacy. Only now, we have security. If we need more gold, we can have it. We can make it.’
‘Using what?’ demanded Olivia. ‘This place is a geothermal plant, remember, not a nuclear reactor.’
‘And the Midas Cave is on the other side of the world,’ Anastasia reminded him. ‘We can’t just drop by whenever we need more gold.’ She leaned towards the crystal. ‘There is another option. We sell the Crucible.’
Both Olivia and Lonmore regarded her in disbelief. ‘What?’ he gasped.
‘You can’t be serious,’ said Olivia.
‘I’m entirely serious. How much would a nation state, or even some ultra-wealthy individual, pay for the ability to produce unlimited gold? We could name our price. The Legacy would be secured for ever.’
Olivia shook her head. ‘That is unbelievably naive, Ana.’
‘It’d also be a one-time deal,’ Lonmore pointed out. ‘With my proposal, we keep hold of the Crucible—’
Nina couldn’t hold in her own opinion any longer. ‘Excuse me!’ she said loudly, waiting for all eyes to turn to her. ‘Hello, hi. Can I point out a few things? Firstly, the Crucible is a priceless archaeological relic, not your personal ATM. Secondly — and I could have gone with this first, as it’s the biggie — it’s not yours to use!’
‘It isn’t yours either,’ said Anastasia frostily. De Klerx edged up behind her, facing Nina, and folded his arms. The intimidating gesture did not go unnoticed by Eddie, who broke off from playing with Macy to move closer to the table.
‘If it belongs to anyone, it’s the monks of Detsen monastery,’ Nina insisted. ‘But their abbot entrusted it to me, so for now, I’m the person who decides what to do with it. That might mean handing it back to the monks, or turning it over to the IHA. But it definitely isn’t going to be put up on eBay! And as for using it to make more gold, you’ll find that kinda hard, since the Midas Cave was destroyed.’
That caused shock around the table. ‘What!’ cried Lonmore. ‘Why didn’t you tell us?’
Nina treated the question with richly deserved sarcasm. ‘Oh, I’m sorry, I didn’t realise I was your employee and was supposed to brief you the moment I arrived.’ Eddie laughed.
Lonmore was flustered, but Olivia responded with amusement. ‘She told me.’
‘And you decided not to tell us?’ he snapped. ‘It’s the same old story with you, isn’t it, Olivia? Control information, let it out in little trickles when it’s to your best advantage!’
‘Please, Spencer, be calm,’ said Mikkelsson in a placating tone. ‘Nina is right. Though it would have been better, Olivia, if you had shared what you knew before the meeting.’
‘I thought it best if Nina gave her account of events in her own time and as it suited her,’ Olivia replied, nothing but genteel innocence in her voice.
‘I can give you a very quick precis right now,’ Nina said. ‘Eddie and I went to Nepal, we convinced the monks to let us see the Midas Cave, then after we did, we were attacked.’
‘Attacked?’ said Lonmore, eyebrows rising. ‘Who attacked you?’
‘We don’t know,’ Nina admitted. ‘Most of them were Nepalese mercenaries, but the leader was a Greek called Axelos. We don’t know who he was working for, though.’
‘Greek?’ A look of perturbation crossed his face. ‘Wait — you weren’t joking about shooting down a helicopter?’ he asked Eddie.
‘Nope,’ said the Englishman. ‘There were two choppers, full of…’ He remembered that Macy was in earshot. ‘Bad guys. I took one out, but the other got away.’
‘With the big Crucible,’ added Nina.
‘How could anyone have known where you were?’ asked Anastasia.
‘That’s a question I’ve been asking myself. Very few people knew we were even going to Nepal. Now, I trust the people I dealt with at the United Nations, so the leak must have come from either inside the Nepalese government, or…’
‘Or?’ Anastasia demanded.
‘Or this end, I think she’s saying,’ Eddie finished on his wife’s behalf.
‘That’s absurd!’ Lonmore protested. ‘Why on earth would anyone here do that?’
‘I dunno, maybe to cut out the middleman — or the middlewoman, rather — and take the Crucibles for yourself.’
Lonmore reddened, about to object more forcefully to the accusation, but Mikkelsson interceded calmly. ‘I understand why you might think that, but there is a flaw in your reasoning. If we already had the large Crucible, we would not be interested in the small one. We would also have known that the Midas Cave had been destroyed. So there would be no need for you to come here.’
‘Yeah, that’s… actually quite a good point,’ Nina admitted.
‘There’s another reason why the leak couldn’t have been from the Legacy,’ said Olivia. ‘It’s a very simple one: I didn’t tell any of the other members enough to act upon it.’
‘You hardly told us anything at all,’ complained Petra.
‘I did as much as I needed to, according to our own rules.’
‘After you ignored those same rules when you brought Nina into this,’ said Mikkelsson acerbically.
‘Do you tell the rest of us every time you discuss something related to the Legacy with a member of your family? I’ve held the chair too, Fenrir; I know all the procedural games.’
‘The point still stands, though,’ the impatient Anastasia said to Nina. ‘None of us would have anything to gain from attacking you in Nepal. So who did?’
‘We all know a Greek,’ said Olivia. Though addressing the whole table, her eyes were fixed upon Lonmore. ‘Some of us better than others.’
‘What? Yes, I know a Greek,’ he spluttered, ‘but I’ve never told him anything about the Midas Cave, the Legacy — anything like that!’
‘He is your friend, though,’ Mikkelsson said.
‘And I haven’t spoken to him for… for almost a year. Olivia only got Dr Wilde involved in this less than two weeks ago.’ The others seemed unconvinced. ‘Oh come on! As you said, you all know Augustine. Just because one of these mercenaries was Greek doesn’t mean he hired him.’
‘Nina, do you know anything else that might identify the person who sent these men?’ asked Mikkelsson. ‘Or you, Mr Chase?’
Nina shook her head. ‘Axelos spoke to him — assuming it was a him — on a satellite phone, but we never heard his voice.’
‘In what language?’ said Anastasia.
‘Greek.’
All eyes darted back to the increasingly uncomfortable Lonmore. ‘That still doesn’t prove that Augustine had anything to do with this,’ he said, though with noticeably less conviction than before.
Mikkelsson addressed Nina and Eddie again. ‘What about the helicopters? Was there anything that might help trace them?’