‘No, no, no,’ Eddie cut in, shaking his head sarcastically. ‘Here’s the deal. You tell me where you are, I turn up, you let Nina go unharmed and then I give you this little fella here. Otherwise, I’ll put it somewhere nobody will ever, ever get their hands on it again. There’s a lot of construction sites in Berlin — a lot of concrete being poured, if you know what I mean. Your man Irton told me you’re pretty desperate to have the full set of these things. So without this, I guess your plan’s fucked, right?’
Cross’s jaw muscles drew tight with anger. Simeon gripped Nina harder, making her gasp in pain. ‘Nobody dictates terms to us!’ he told his leader. ‘If we hurt her, he’ll back down—’
Eddie interrupted him. ‘Cops are almost here.’ The sirens were now much closer. ‘You want me to leave it for them?’
‘Antigua,’ said Cross, the word forcing its way free of his mouth. ‘We’re in Antigua. Bring the angel to the island, and we’ll make the exchange.’
‘Antigua, eh? Me and Nina’d been thinking about having a holiday there. Let me talk to her.’
Cross reluctantly returned the headset to Nina. ‘Eddie!’ she said. ‘You’re okay?’
‘Bit wet. What about you? Have they hurt you?’
‘Not yet.’ She gave Simeon a sidelong look. ‘There have been some threats, though.’
Eddie’s glare through the screen seemed to be aimed directly at Cross. ‘And the baby?’
‘Safe, as far as I know. And Eddie… I’ve decided on a name.’
‘Oh you have, have you? Don’t I get a say?’
‘Nope. That’s what happens when you don’t want to know the sex in advance.’
‘Nowt wrong with Arbuthnot, for a boy or a girl,’ he muttered, before glancing back at the alley. ‘Okay, gotta go. I’ll see you soon, love — trust me.’
‘You know I do,’ she replied. He grinned, then dropped the headset on to the grass and ran.
Dalton whirled to face Cross. ‘You’re giving in to him?’ he asked incredulously. ‘You’re letting him come here?’ A faint edge of hysteria entered his voice, before he glanced almost in embarrassment at Nina and hurriedly regained his composure.
‘No, I’m not, Mr President,’ Cross replied, holding in his anger. ‘There’s only one international airport in Antigua, so he has to come through it. We know him; he doesn’t know us. We’ll take the angel from him when he arrives — by force if necessary.’
‘It’ll be necessary,’ rumbled Simeon. Anna nodded in agreement.
‘He’ll be ready for you,’ said Nina.
‘And we’ll be ready for him,’ Cross replied. ‘Norvin, take her back to the house. Dr Wilde,’ he added, as the bodyguard led her away, ‘you’re still going to find the last angel for me, no matter what happens with your husband. You can trust me on that.’
Again the threat was perfectly clear. But Nina also felt a new sense of hope. Not only had Eddie survived; right now he had the upper hand — and the angel.
And now that she knew where she was, she had options too. Without the threat of Eddie’s suffering to force her cooperation, she could risk an escape attempt. She knew from her vacation research that the Caribbean island was not large, and was certain she would not have to go far to find help.
There was the problem that she was under constant surveillance, of course, both electronically as well as by guards like Norvin. She had already started preparations to deal with the latter, though. Even if she was successful, it wouldn’t buy her much time — but it might be enough to let her make a run for the jungle beyond the Mission’s boundary.
With the baby’s well-being to consider as well as her own, though, she couldn’t afford to take the chances she would have done in the past. The moment had to be right.
But she was sure it would come.
Eddie took a circuitous route back to the bridge, tossing the gun into the river along the way. He saw police cars at the intersection, and Maureen Rothschild amongst a small crowd of onlookers.
He moved up behind her. ‘Ay up, Prof.’
‘Oh my God, Eddie!’ gasped Rothschild. ‘You’re alive!’
He huffed with dark humour as he ushered her away from the gawpers. ‘Don’t sound so horrified.’
‘That — that’s not what I meant. I thought they’d killed you! I heard gunshots—’
‘That was me.’
‘But you didn’t have a gun.’
‘Took one of theirs.’
She sucked in her thin lips. ‘I… don’t want to know how, do I?’
‘Probably not. But,’ he went on, opening his sodden leather jacket to show her what he was holding inside, ‘I got the angel.’
She regarded the statue with amazement — and concern. ‘Is it intact?’
‘If it wasn’t, I get the feeling I’d be dead already, and so would a lot of other people.’ He closed his jacket again, suppressing a shiver.
‘My God,’ she said, this time with sympathy. ‘You’re freezing! You’ve got to get indoors and dry off.’
‘I can do that back at the museum.’ He took out his phone. ‘Nina thought I was mad for paying so much, but I’m really glad now I shelled out for a waterproof case.’
‘Who are you calling?’
‘Seretse, for one; we’ll need him to fix things up with the Germans.’ He looked down the street at the police cordon. ‘Last thing I need is to get arrested on a murder charge. It was self-defence, but stuff like that can take days to sort out, and Nina doesn’t have that long. I’ve got to get to her, fast.’
‘You know where she is?’
Eddie nodded. ‘Antigua.’
‘In the Caribbean?’
‘No, in Siberia.’ He gave a half-hearted smile. ‘Yeah, the Caribbean. I’ve got a mate who moved there, so that’s another call I need to make. But I managed to talk to Nina, and the arsehole who kidnapped her. We’re making an exchange, the angel for her.’
‘Do you think you can trust this person?’
‘Nope. Which is why I want to go back to the museum.’
‘Oh, I hope poor Markus is all right,’ Rothschild said.
‘So do I. I need his help with something.’ He looked across the river at the city beyond, then asked a question that left his companion puzzled. ‘You know what time the shops open in Berlin?’
17
Maps and notes covered the desk, the laptop open and displaying a chapter from the Bible, but Nina was not reading it. Instead she was in the kitchen making herself breakfast, having forced herself away from her work.
She hadn’t planned to continue Cross’s task, but she found herself being drawn back in, first by boredom and then by her own insatiable curiosity. She kept telling herself that she wasn’t helping her captor by doing so — certainly there had been no blinding flashes of inspiration revealing the last angel’s location — and that with Eddie now free and on the way to her, even if she did discover a secret hidden within Revelation, Cross would never hear it. But a small voice kept warning her that she was falling into a familiar trap…
‘I know, damn it!’ she whispered to herself, annoyed by the chidings of her own personal Jiminy Cricket. A glance at the nearest camera, then at the small glass jar beside the sink, containing a cloudy liquid in which a few of the chopped and mashed ingredients were faintly visible. While Norvin had taken over the task of escorting her, Miriam had still been acting as housekeeper; to Nina’s relief, she had left her recipe untouched.
She quickly looked away, suddenly concerned that the attention would somehow alert the watchers to her plan, and took her breakfast to the desk. The Bible text was still waiting on the screen. She munched her toast, trying to ignore it, but her inquisitive side was already drawing her gaze back to the words. They were not from Revelation, but a part of the Old Testament, Exodus, which she had come to suspect was an important piece of the puzzle laid out by John of Patmos almost two millennia earlier. Exactly how, she didn’t know, but the references in Revelation to specific numbers and people and places now seemed unlikely to be coincidences— ‘Mommy’s doing it again,’ she told her bump as she caught herself. As irresistible as she had always found an unsolved puzzle, this time she had to fight the urge to discover the solution.