“Wait — what?” Lea said.
“Are you crazy?” said Scarlet.
Kim said, “Crazy? This dude is weapons-grade crazy.”
“You’ve beaten Kloos so hard you now have to fire the world’s biggest shoulder-launched missile to open a door,” Hawke said. “That’s not just crazy, it’s stupid, ignorant and short-sighted.”
Kruger snapped, and raising the stock of his rifle he smashed Hawke in the face and knocked him into the dust beside the river bank. “Any more fucking shit out of you and your bones are staying down here forever. Got it, you stupid bastard?”
Lea ran to him, and with Reaper’s help they hauled him to his feet. It took a second to get his balance back and after he spat a wad of blood into the river he was back again. His mind was buzzing with the pain of the blow, but also with the off-hand comment Kruger had just made about working for an insane crackpot.
As the South African surveyed the door and watched his men load the Eryx, Hawke turned to Lea. “Did you hear what he just said?”
“About you being a stupid bastard?” Scarlet said. “We all heard that, yes.”
Hawke gave her a look and then returned to Lea. “No — about him having a boss — he’s working for someone else. He described him as a crackpot.”
“That hardly narrows things down these days,” Scarlet said.
Kruger raised his eyebrows. “Yes, I’m working for someone, and yes, the man I work for is definitely crazy, but what do I care? I’m just a greedy bastard from Cape Town. Now shut the fuck up and let my men break this door down. Somewhere in here is my destiny. I will be great man!”
“You’ll never be the man your mom is, Dirk,” Kim said.
Kruger ignored her comment, now fully occupied with the progress the men were making with the Eryx. There was a grim silence in the chamber as Bruno loaded the shoulder-launcher.
“Everyone take cover!” Kruger yelled, and seconds later, they fired the missile into the arched doorway. A massive explosion tore through the chamber and blasted smoke, dust and flames in every direction.
When the smoke cleared and the doors were blown off their ancient iron hinges, Lea Donovan gasped. The explosion had revealed a second, larger chamber that reminded her of a cathedral’s nave.
At the far end of the chamber there was something still partially obscured by the remnants of the smoke. With the smell of the detonated warhead lingering in the damp, musty air, they moved forward into the cavernous nave.
As they walked through the chamber they saw the object could only be one thing: a sarcophagus, and it was surrounded by other, smaller cadaver tombs. They gathered around it in solemn silence, and for a moment even Dirk Kruger looked awestruck as his eyes danced over the ancient stone coffin.
Neatly carved into the slate tomb lid was a dragon with two wings behind it and a snarling face, all fangs and forked tongue. Below the dragon were the words: HIC IACET SEPULTUS INCLITUS REX ARTURIUS.
“Oh my God,” Kloos said. “This is unbelievable.”
“What is it?” Kruger said.
Ryan saw the words and knew at once. “King Arthur’s tomb.”
Kruger’s eyes sparkled like two solitaire diamonds. “Are you fucking with me, Kloos?”
“No, he’s not,” Ryan said. “It says Here Lies Buried the Glorious King Arthur.”
“So the legends were true after all,” Kloos said. “Not only was Arthur real, but the Sword of Fire was Excalibur.”
“I thought the legend says that King Arthur never died?” Kim asked.
“Not by the looks of this coffin,” said Devlin.
“If he’s inside it,” Hawke said.
“Does that make this place Avalon?” Ryan asked the professor.
The old man shook his head. He looked confused. “Legend says Arthur was buried in Avalon, but it also says he will come back to lead the Britons to freedom, so…” he shrugged his shoulders and gave Ryan an apologetic look. “The problem is that all of this happened so long ago the records are very vague and sometimes totally contradictory.”
“I thought Glastonbury was Avalon,” Scarlet said. “That’s what they said when I got stoned there back in ninety-four.”
“Some say Bardsey Island, just off the coast not far from here,” Kloos said. “But it’s entirely possible the area above us right here is Avalon, and this mountain leads to Annwn. This is… I don’t know what to say. My entire life has been for this moment.”
“You got that right,” Kruger said, and fired his hunting rifle into the Dutch professor’s chest.
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
Tiger listened to the sound of the ringing phone up against his ear. The gentle electronic tone reminded him in a strange sort of way of his songbirds back in his garden. He was making a call to Zhou Yang, his boss and the second in command of the General Office of the Central Investigation Department, but as usual Zhou was making him wait.
What was it his mother used to tell him about patience?
Young plants can't be forced to grow by stretching them.
Yes, that was it; and mother was always right.
A watched pot never boils, as the Westerners put it.
The phone continued to ring, but he could not hang up. He had already spoken with Zhou’s stern personal assistant who had put him through, so the boss knew he was on the line. He closed his eyes and turned the ringing tone back into his songbirds — the ones he kept in the little bamboo cages hanging from his plum tree.
Pig dreamed of retirement in the south, but not Tiger. For him, the perfect retirement away from all this deceit and killing was simply to be among his plum trees and Sichuan Bush Warblers. His wife and daughter laughing in the kitchen as they made dinner together; the evening sun sliding through the blinds and scattering on his living room wall. He could atone for past sins right there among the small domestic comforts of his Shunyi home.
“Report.”
It was Zhou, and his voice sounded harder and colder than usual.
“We have the parents under arrest.”
“Where?”
“At their apartment.”
“And the rogue agent?”
Zhou was talking about Agent Dragonfly, although in this small apartment she was probably better known as Zhang Xiaoli. “I had the mother contact her. She was told her father is gravely ill. She said she was to fly home at once to see him before he died.”
“Good.”
“Am I still to execute her?”
Zhou paused before replying. Tiger had long given up trying to read his boss’s mind. He had never been able to predict him or his moods, and today was no exception.
“No. I have been given new orders. She is to be kept alive and taken for interrogation. We can use her as a pawn in a much bigger game. The ECHO team are up to something and I want to know what it is.”
“I understand,” Tiger said, drawing a long breath. “And the parents?”
“Kill them, of course. They are witnesses and can identify you and your men.”
“Understood.” Tiger spoke casually, as if he had been asked to do nothing more than file a report. To him it was all just bureaucracy.
“Report when you have the rogue.”
“Yes, sir,” Tiger said. He was already screwing a suppressor into the muzzle of his pistol as the line went dead and the disconnect tone rang out. Tiger heard his songbirds once again in the electronic bleeping, but they flew away when he hung up the phone and slid a round into the chamber of his gun.
“What did the old bastard have to say this time?” Pig said, looking at the newly-suppressed pistol with interest but no fear.
“Dragonfly is to be taken alive. The parents must be killed.”
“You want me to do it?” Pig asked, moving to get up from his chair. The legs squeaked on the linoleum tiles. Monkey was sleeping on the couch with a folded newspaper over his face.