“It’s not your fault. Hey, I got beat too. Twice, actually, if you include my jail-yard brawl with King Kong’s big brother.”
Mai’s expression put him in his place. “You do lose, Matt. I don’t. And this is the worst possible time for me to start failing.”
“Why? Because of Cayman and the Babylon thing?”
“Of course not. Something else is in play, Matt. Something that leads all the way back to my childhood. You know about that of course.”
“Fuck me, Mai. That’s huge.”
“I know. I just can’t lose my edge now.”
Drake relented. “We got complacent. We took a few days off. We shouldn’t have to be on our guard twenty four hours a day, but,” he shrugged, “that’s the job. And, Mai, I’m always here for you.”
Mai stood up. “It won’t happen again. Look, when this is over I want to go and see Chika. Visit her in Tokyo. Maybe the two of us?”
Drake grinned. “Sound idea. Bloody sound. I haven’t visited Tokyo since the old Coscon days.”
Mai looked wistful for a minute, remembering. “Those were the best of days.”
Drake framed her face with his hands and leaned in to kiss her. “And so are these.”
CHAPTER TWENTY SEVEN
Mai Kitano watched Drake sleep from her perch by the window. She couldn’t relax. The endless, sleepless nights had not affected her yet, but would soon take their toll. Even here, in Russia, in this safe house, with CIA protection, she knew that she was far from safe. Mai was not afraid, fear did not live in her, but she was anxious and worried about her friends.
The Clan is looking for you.
Just a one line message, received on a personal email address that nobody except a few of her old contacts knew. But devastating. Truly dreadful. The past that she thought she had left behind was catching her up, a looming freight train full of horrors, and she had no option but to meet it head on.
Now, she thought. Just when I got him back.
The events of the past few days had put the very real mortality of Mai and her family and friends into perspective. Reality had checked in with a vengeance.
Without any more deliberation she dialed Chika’s number. Her sister answered on the third ring.
“Moshi-moshi?”
“It is me Chika.”
“Sister! I have missed you.”
“And I you, Chika. It is good to hear your voice.” Mai proceeded to ask her sister about her job, her friends, and whether any men had appeared in her life of late. Chika reacted a little cagily to the last question, but confirmed that all was well, and Mai started to relax. She laughed a little, talked of the few good times they had shared, but then, near the end of the conversation, Chika finally came out with the one thing Mai had been dreading all along.
“Two days ago,” she said. “Some men visited me at work. They were asking about you Mai. And about your past.”
“Did they threaten you?”
“Oh no. They were very nice. Why would you say that?”
“Because of my past, Chika. That is why.”
“I don’t know much about your past. I told them that. And I told them I didn’t know where you were. Which I don’t.”
Mai glossed over the rest, quickly alleviating any alarm Chika may have felt by saying it was most likely something to do with her old job at the government. She waited the required time and then told Chika to be safe.
“Goodbye, Sister.”
Her next call was to Dai Hibiki. “Where are you, Dai?”
“Wow, Mai. No contact for years, then you wrench me out of deep cover and now ring me whilst I’m servicing the girlfriend. This had better be good.”
“Correction, Hibiki. I saved your feeble hide from being flayed to bits, and then your girlfriend’s from two minutes of skin on skin that doesn’t really measure up, if you know what I mean.”
“Ah, you remember me well.”
“Never forget.” Mai owed her life and more to Dai Hibiki. “But I need to ask you something—”
“Don’t bother. I know what you’re going to ask. I gave them nothing, Mai. Nothing.”
“What? Then they came to you also?”
“Also?”
“Some men visited Chika recently, asking about my past.”
“Then yes, they visited me too. But at work, Mai. They showed no signs of malice. No ulterior motive.”
But the Clan wouldn’t, Mai wanted to scream. They moved in the highest circles, taking every head they fancied and smiled whilst they did it. Once, she had been a part of that.
“Please. Do your best to look after Chika for me. Until I can get there.”
“Already on it.”
“What?”
“I mean yes, way ahead of you. As soon as you mentioned her name I started planning a visit.”
Mai knitted her brows. There was something in Hibiki’s tone, something that told her he was keeping a secret. She wondered briefly if it had to do with Chika.
“Okay, Dai. I’ll speak to you as soon as I can.”
She terminated the call, still staring out the window, searching the shadows for the returning ghosts of her past.
CHAPTER TWENTY EIGHT
Drake met Torsten Dahl at the door, patting the big man on the back, and then shook hands with the diminutive-by-comparison professor, Olle Akerman.
“Bit of an adventure?”
Dahl wrinkled his nose. “Nothing special. Just practicing my free running.” As usual, the Swede wasn’t boasting. To him, the Iceland jaunt had been standard fare.
Akerman still looked a little shaken. “I had to run for my life whilst Torsten here was playing ‘boats’ with a couple of thugs. Frightful.”
Drake bolted the door behind them, listening carefully as the triple locking mechanism kicked in. The CIA manned CCTV would also be surveying the surroundings for as far as a mile in every direction, but, not wanting to solely trust the CIA, Hayden had put Mai on patrol as back-up.
The boss of SPEAR pointed Dahl and Akerman to a seat. “We’ve waited for you. Please tell us what you know.” Smiling, the blond-haired agent sat down next to Akerman, the worry lines of the last few months all but gone from her face. Drake thought that Kinimaka was shaping up nicely for her.
Dahl went quickly through the story that Akerman had told him in Iceland. “One of Olle’s colleagues discovered some kind of ancient message in the tomb, written in the language of the gods. Something significant, apparently. This man — Jakob Hult — sold his findings to the kind of ruthless individual we seem to keep on coming up against. They killed Hult and tried to kill us.”
“But they didn’t succeed.” Hayden smiled again.
Dahl shrugged. “There were only three.”
“Whatever this message was, Hult took it away from the tomb,” Akerman told them. “He smashed off part of the rock where it appeared.” The older man looked angry. “Such disrespect for our history.”
“For proof,” Drake said. “He needed proof.”
“Yes,” Dahl carried on. “Well, then my little friend here, he bumped into Russell Cayman. What that crazy bastard was doing at the tomb we don’t know. But Olle escaped and called me. That’s it.”
Hayden sat back. “That’s it? You said this was good information, Dahl.”
The Swede nodded. “Later, as Jakob died, he revealed a few things relating to the translation, particularly the doomsday device. First he said, ‘there shall remain one other way to activate… two failsafes’. And finally he said, ‘three minds, three tombs, three bones. Nine parts. Do you see?’ Just like that.”