A rushing current swept past him as a stone slab fell into the space where he had just been.
His arm grazed a wall as he was thrown off course. He corrected, looking ahead to see Cellini passing over the rubble pile. The Englishman followed, manoeuvring the bulky Codex ahead of him.
The first barricade lay above, Cellini squeezing into the opening above the broken slab. The Italian’s damaged suit bashed against the ceiling in his haste, clipping shards off the casing. He backed up to try again. More loud booms came from below. Eddie looked back.
A roiling wall of silt was surging up the tunnel. After ten years, the overturned statue had finally hit the floor, forcing the water beneath it out along its only escape route — straight at the two fleeing men. ‘Go, go!’ he yelled, shoving Cellini on before powering through the narrow space after him.
A dull whump as the shock wave hit the barrier, dislodging the broken block — followed by louder crunches as the ceiling gave way and fell into the tunnel.
Cellini was a human torpedo just ahead of Eddie, the turbulence from his thrusters buffeting the Yorkshireman. Lights rose ahead, the altar room coming into view—
They burst into open water as the churning wave hit and sent them both tumbling. The Codex slipped from Eddie’s hands. Blinded by the silt, all he could do was let himself be carried along and hope he wasn’t on a collision course with the surrounding masonry.
He gradually slowed and kicked upright, restarting the propellers to rise out of the swollen mass of sediment. The circle of lights returned to view, now broken where some had been knocked over.
‘Eddie!’ A voice in his ear: Matt. ‘Can you hear me?’
‘Yeah, I can,’ he replied, recovering his breath. The submersible was some way above him, directing its lights downwards. ‘Can you see Nerio?’
A tense pause, then: ‘I got him! Lower than you, off to your left.’
Eddie caught sight of the other diver’s lights. ‘He looks okay.’
‘Thank God!’ exclaimed Nina. ‘What about you?’
‘My suit’ll need some filler to patch up the dents, but I’m all right.’
She let out a relieved sigh. ‘Okay. I feel kinda bad asking this, but… what about the Secret Codex?’
‘I dropped it, but it’s around here somewhere. When the water clears, we should be able to find it. Although,’ he continued with a sudden weariness, ‘to be honest, I’d rather get back up top. And Nerio probably would too.’ He looked towards his companion — only to see him descending back to the altar room. ‘Oh, you’re kidding me! He’s already gone to look for it. You archaeologists really are all as bad as each other!’
‘We can’t stop being who we are,’ Nina said, amused. ‘But you’re right, you should get topside. And back home! Macy missed you this morning.’
‘Let’s not tell her about the whole “Daddy almost died” part of the day, shall we?’
‘Yeah, probably best.’
Matt cut into the conversation. ‘Hey, Eddie. Looks like Nerio found that book.’
Eddie saw the Italian ascending with the Codex. ‘Great, we got the list of all the places where Talonor dug latrines. Now can we go? That’s more than enough archaeology for me.’
Nina smiled at her husband’s complaints. ‘I’d be perfectly happy to keep going, but…’ She checked her watch, eyes widening. ‘Oh crap! It can’t be that late already!’
‘You haven’t missed picking Macy up from nursery, have you?’ Eddie asked.
‘No, but I need to get moving soon. Like, now.’
‘Okay, then I’ll talk to you when I’m at the airport. Which’ll be a while, seeing as I’ve got to get up to the ship and then take a chopper back to Portugal first.’
‘I’ll wait up. All right, I have to go. Love you.’
‘Love you,’ Eddie replied.
She smiled again, then took off her headset microphone.
‘Well, thanks for coming in, Nina,’ said Blumberg.
‘No problem at all, Lester. If you need me for anything else, I’m more than happy to help. Although Eddie might be a bit reluctant! But if you want me to assist with the translation of the Secret Codex, I—’
He shook his head. ‘That won’t be necessary, thanks.’
‘Are you sure? I know the Atlantean language as well as anyone, and—’
He cut her off again, more brusquely. ‘The Secret Codex is now an IHA security matter. You’ll be able to read the abstracts as they become available, of course, but we need to keep the actual translations classified for now. Talonor visited a lot of places; we can’t afford to have treasure hunters ripping potential sites apart before we have a chance to investigate them. You know the rules.’
‘Yes, I know the rules,’ she snapped. ‘I wrote most of them!’
Blumberg puffed out his chest. ‘That’s as may be, but you don’t work for the IHA any more, so you don’t have clearance to see the Secret Codex before we’ve determined what’s safe for public release. I appreciate your help today, but you’ve done everything you can for us. So you should probably go pick up your daughter. You wouldn’t want to be late.’ He gave her a smug little smirk.
Nina stood, scowling. ‘You know you’re kind of a patronising jerk, Lester?’ One of the IHA technicians stifled a giggle.
Her host was not amused, however. ‘Thank you for stopping by, Nina.’ He turned away, issuing commands to those aboard the research ship.
‘Asshole,’ Nina muttered as she headed for the operation centre’s exit.
Despite her best efforts to rush through Manhattan, she still arrived fifteen minutes late at the Little Petals nursery. The elevator was old and slow and frequently out of order, the building undergoing renovation work, so rather than wait for it, she simply ran up the stairs to the second floor.
‘Oh hi, Nina,’ said Penny Lopez, as the redhead hurried into the cloakroom. Even though the teacher was smiling, there was still a critical undercurrent to her greeting. ‘Look, Macy! Here’s your mommy.’
‘Hi, Mommy!’ squealed Macy Wilde Chase, running to meet her mother. Nina hugged her, noticing to her dismay that her daughter’s coat was the only one left on the hooks. ‘We painted pictures today! I painted a ship, because Daddy’s on one. Do you want to see?’
‘I’d love to, honey,’ Nina replied. Macy skipped away to get it. ‘I’m so sorry I’m late,’ she told Penny. ‘I was helping with my old job at the United Nations, and Eddie…’ She remembered the couple’s discussion after he escaped the temple. ‘I had to make sure he finished what he was doing.’
‘That’s fine,’ said Penny. ‘But it’s not going to be a regular problem, is it? We’re more than happy to have some flexibility around parents’ schedules, but we need to know in advance.’
‘No, no, this was a one-time thing. It seems.’ She tried not to sound too despondent about being cut out of what had been her profession.
‘Have you considered hiring a nanny? I can recommend some good people.’
‘I don’t think we’re quite ready for that, thanks,’ Nina said as her daughter returned bearing a large sheet of paper. ‘Is this your painting?’
‘Yes, it is!’ Macy said, pointing out aspects of her finger-painted masterwork. ‘That’s the sea, and that’s the boat Daddy’s on, and that’s a fish, and that’s a sumb… sub… submarine!’
‘Wow, that’s really good,’ Nina told her. For a three-year-old, it was quite advanced, everything Macy indicated a distinct object rather than a splodgy agglomeration, though rough circles and triangles were the limit of her artistic talents. ‘Is Daddy there too?’