The lead cop threw back his rain cape — revealing a compact MP7 sub-machine gun, a bulky suppressor attached to its barrel. ‘Sorry, I don’t speak German,’ said Trant as he fired.
The guard fell backwards, blood spouting from three tightly spaced bullet wounds in his chest. His companion fumbled for his holstered handgun, but another man had already brought up his own MP7. A second trio of rounds tore into the younger guard’s ribcage.
Trant gave both bodies a brief glance to confirm that they were dead, then marched across the lobby. ‘There’ll be more guards. Spread out and find them.’ He tossed away his cap, then donned the camera headset he had worn in Rome. ‘We’re in,’ he announced.
‘Good,’ said Cross through the earpiece. ‘Secure the building, then find the angel.’
Eddie watched as an image formed on the monitor. ‘God, I thought it was hard to work out what I was looking at on Nina’s ultrasound,’ he said. All he could see was a shimmering grey fuzz.
‘This will not give such a clear picture as a medical ultrasound,’ Derrick told him as he edged a pencil-like probe across the rear of the carved stone block. ‘Marble is hard to penetrate. But if this is hollow, we will soon know.’
Rothschild looked on, fascinated. ‘This is a much more advanced model than anything I’ve seen before.’
‘It is German, of course,’ he replied, smiling. ‘I am not the expert, but I have used it to look for cracks and flaws inside pieces of the frieze. And… there is a flaw.’ He pointed at the monitor.
Eddie saw only a slightly different shade of grey. ‘What is it?’
‘That is where someone used another material to patch a hole. It is probably marble dust mixed with pitch.’ He adjusted a dial. ‘Now we are looking deeper inside. The patch is still there; this flaw also goes deep. But… yes, there!’
A dark smudge appeared amidst the electronic haze. ‘Is that a hole?’ asked Eddie.
‘Yes, it is hollow,’ confirmed Derrick. More movements of the probe expanded the shadowy gap in the image. He muttered in German as he tweaked the scanner’s settings again, and something far brighter leapt into view. ‘That is not stone,’ he said. ‘That is metal!’
‘Metal?’ echoed Rothschild. ‘The Gigantomachy frieze doesn’t have any metal pieces, does it?’
‘No, it does not.’
‘Then this isn’t part of it,’ Eddie concluded. ‘It’s like you said,’ he told Rothschild, ‘this sculpture was made by somebody else. Whoever they were, they did it to hide this angel — and they hid it inside the Throne of Satan. Maybe they liked the idea of giving the Greek gods a kick in the nuts by putting a symbol of their own religion right in the middle of them.’
‘That is an interesting way of putting it,’ said Derrick, amused, ‘but yes, there may be something to it.’ He turned his attention back to the monitor. ‘These white areas are definitely metal, surrounding… I am not sure. Pottery, perhaps, but there is something else — something very dense. Lead? I cannot tell.’
‘So get out the hammer and chisel,’ said Eddie.
He shook his head. ‘No, no. We have to study it, decide how to proceed—’
The Englishman’s patience was wearing thin. ‘I know how to proceed. Get the bloody thing out of there! The longer we piss about arguing, the more chance the bad guys’ll force Nina to tell them that it’s here.’
Derrick was still not convinced. ‘This is a priceless historical relic! There are procedures that must be followed. I shall have to—’
‘The same people who kidnapped Nina kidnapped me too,’ Eddie said. He indicated his bruised face. ‘They did this to me, and more — and they killed two people in Rome. They might kill more here. Please, open it up.’
Support came from an unexpected source. ‘This is an IHA investigation, Markus,’ Rothschild said quietly. ‘It’s what the agency was created to do — find and protect archaeological finds that may have global security implications.’
The German put down the probe and stared at the stone block for several long seconds. ‘If the IHA wants to take charge,’ he said at last, his displeasure plain, ‘then the IHA can take responsibility for any damage. The German government supports the agency, so I am sure it will back you. But I will not let this fall on me, Maureen. I am sorry.’
‘I’ll call Oswald Seretse to confirm,’ Rothschild told him. She took out her phone.
‘While she’s doing that,’ said Eddie, ‘how about you get started?’
Derrick gave him a dirty look, but stood. ‘I will get the tools.’
‘Dr Wilde,’ said Cross as Norvin brought Nina into the control room. ‘My team has entered the Pergamon Museum in Berlin. Now: where is the angel?’
Nina didn’t reply at once, gazing in mortified sadness at the monitor screens. Several showed live headset feeds — one looking down at a uniformed man sprawled on the floor. She had no doubt at all that he was dead. ‘You bastards,’ she finally said. ‘You didn’t need to kill anyone.’ She glared at Dalton, who had an unsettled expression. ‘You’re just as guilty as he is.’
‘If they’re worthy, they’ll sit with God in heaven on the day of judgement.’ Cross turned back to the video wall. ‘The angel. Where will it be?’
‘I have absolutely no idea,’ she said. ‘I’ve never been to the Pergamon Museum, and I’ve never studied the Altar of Zeus, so I don’t know.’ Simeon, standing to Cross’s right, glared at her. ‘Really! I don’t know. Just because I’m an archaeologist doesn’t mean I have total knowledge of every artefact from every period of history.’
Anna was on her leader’s left. ‘Then what use are you, Doctor?’ she demanded, sneering.
‘Anna,’ Cross warned, before addressing Nina again. ‘You found the first angel. I’m sure you can find the second, if only to save your husband any more pain. Think! What do you know about the altar that we haven’t already found out online?’
Nina blew out a frustrated breath. ‘I don’t… Okay, let me think. Built in the early second century BC, surrounded by a frieze showing the war between the Olympian gods and their enemies the giants…’
‘Giants could be a reference to the giants in Genesis,’ suggested Simeon. ‘Or the Nephilim?’
‘It’s not the Nephilim,’ Nina countered. ‘I’ve met them. Okay, not “met” — they were long-dead — but… anyway, that doesn’t matter,’ she said on seeing the questioning looks aimed at her. ‘The altar’s been on display in Berlin for over a century. If there was anything obviously non-Greek about it, we’d already know — it would be mentioned in every piece of literature about the altar, and probably the subject of a dozen Discovery Channel specials linking it to ghosts and UFOs and Bigfoot.’
‘Then what about the parts that aren’t on display?’ said Dalton.
‘It’s still being restored, so yeah, something might have been overlooked. But I can’t tell you what, because I just. Don’t. Know. Okay?’
Cross regarded her with cold annoyance, but nodded. ‘All right. So where would they keep these other pieces?’
‘I don’t have a floor plan!’ she cried. ‘They probably have storage and archives somewhere off-limits to the public.’
He turned back to the screens. One of his men was still in the lobby, having dragged the two corpses out of sight of the main doors. ‘Ellison, check the security station. See if there’s a plan of the building.’
Ellison’s camera darted around as he searched before locking on to a display board for the fire alarms. ‘Found it,’ came a voice from the speakers.