Andy McDermott - The Tomb Of Hercules

“I think so.” He double-checked the screen. “I hope so.”

“So do I,” Nina said quietly.

Even before Chase opened his eyes, he could tell from the rhythmic pitching motion that he was aboard a ship.

He could also tell there was someone else with him. “Hi, Sophia,” he groaned.

“Again, I’m impressed,” Sophia said as he blearily forced his eyelids apart, fighting to overcome the nauseating aftereffects of the tranquilizer dart. She stood a few feet away, looking down at him. He tried to get up, but found that his arms had been handcuffed in front of him around a pipe running from floor to ceiling, in what appeared to be a cargo hold. “How did you know I was here?”

“Your perfume. Chanel. It always was your favorite.”

“Hmph.” Sophia tapped one of her high boot heels on the deck. “By the way, welcome aboard the Ocean Emperor . I seem to have inherited it from René. A shame I won’t be able to enjoy it for very long, but needs must.”

Chase didn’t like the sound of that. “Where’s the bomb?”

“Close by. Don’t worry. It’ll be even closer before long.”

He liked that even less. “So what’s it all about, Sophia? What’re you going to nuke? And why?”

She arched a perfectly shaped eyebrow. “Actually, I was rather intending to be the one asking the questions. Who helped you get out of Algeria? You might as well tell me-even you must realize by now that there isn’t time to stop me.”

Chase brought his arm around the pipe to look at his watch. It was well after one in the morning-not much more than seven hours before the bomb was set to detonate. “No, there’s still time.”

Sophia sighed. “Stubborn…to the last. Really, Eddie, Joe checked that pipe before he cuffed you to it. It’s rock solid. The only way you’re going to get loose is if you gnaw your own hand off. Who helped you?”

He ignored her and gripped the pipe, then braced himself and yanked at it. As Sophia had promised, it was solidly fixed in place, not even rattling. He tried again, with the same lack of result. Sophia made a tsk! sound with her tongue. Defeated, Chase released the pipe and sank back to the deck. “The dead guy you left in that room full of spears had a radio,” he admitted. “I called MI6.”

Sophia looked confused. “But it wouldn’t have enough range to… Oh, I see. One of Mac’s little tricks, I suppose. You couldn’t have got support from the upper echelons, though, otherwise they would have taken action already.”

“They still might.”

“No, they won’t.” She slowly circled him, a hint of victory in her smile. “You keep forgetting, Eddie-I know you. Deception’s not one of your skills.”

“Unlike you,” Chase shot back.

“It’s a useful talent, certainly. None of my ex-husbands realized that I was using them for my own ends, and that includes you.”

“So what are your ends? I told you what you wanted to know, so now you can tell me-you owe me that much.”

She narrowed her eyes. “I don’t owe you anything.”

“Except your life.”

Although she tried to hide it, Chase could tell that his words had hit home. Sophia completed her circle as if about to exit the hold, then turned back to him. “All right, if you really want to know, I’ll tell you. It’s only fair, since you’re at least partly responsible in the first place.”

“How the hell am I responsible?”

She crouched, staring intently into his eyes, malice burning in her gaze. “Because of you , Eddie, my family lost everything they had. All I have left is my title. Because of you.”

Chase tried to work out what she was talking about, but came up with nothing. “Not quite with you there, Soph. You mind elaborating?”

“My father was completely opposed to my marrying you.”

“Well, yeah, I worked that out pretty early on. Like about five seconds after I met him.”

“No,” she hissed. “You have no idea. He despised you, considered you on the level of vermin.”

Chase snorted. “Now I don’t feel so guilty for buying him those cheap cuff links that Christmas.”

She jumped up. “This isn’t funny, Eddie!” For a moment he thought she was going to kick him, but she wasn’t foolish enough to get within range of his hands or feet, even if he was cuffed to the pipe. “I never told you, but while I was with you, Father practically disowned me, cut me off financially. And you didn’t even notice, because you were so used to living on the cheap that it never even occurred to you just how much I’d been affected.”

“Is that what this is about?” Chase sneered. “Poor little rich girl, Daddy cut up her credit cards?”

Again, she seemed about to lash out at him before intelligence overcame anger. “You never did understand my family, what we did. Our business, our wealth , goes back generations, built up through diligence and reputation. We deserved it, it was our right . But then…” Her face twisted with disgust. “The world changed. Suddenly, reputation and right counted for nothing. It all became about pure greed, just money, numbers flying back and forth between computers. Legacies were destroyed for nothing more than a quarterly profit statement.”

“Legacies like your dad’s, you mean.”

“He was ill!” Sophia shouted. “He wasn’t thinking clearly, he made mistakes. Mistakes which if I’d been there to help him, he never would have made! But because I was with you, he was too proud to ask for my help-and when the jackals in the City and on Wall Street saw weakness, they charged in and destroyed him! They broke up his businesses, tore them apart to sell off piece by piece so that the banks and the stockbrokers and the lawyers could share it all out among themselves-and they left him with nothing! They left me with nothing!”

“And setting off a nuke somehow makes everything all right?” Chase asked. “What the hell are you expecting to achieve?”

“I’ll tell you exactly what I expect to achieve,” she said, her flood of emotion now replaced by a calculating coldness. “The wealth of the people who destroyed my father is a sham, an illusion based on nothing more than the faith that their system works. I’m going to shatter that illusion, bring down the system. My target is New York, Eddie.”

“Jesus!”

She took in his shock with a degree of pleasure before continuing. “Specifically, the financial district. At eight forty-five, just before trading starts, the Ocean Emperor will be in the East River at the end of Wall Street. When the bomb goes off, it will obliterate lower Manhattan-and completely destroy the hub of the worldwide financial markets. The financial crisis after 9/11 and the crash of 2008 will be nothing but a blip , compared to what will happen today. The American market will completely collapse, and take the rest of the world’s stock markets down with it. All those people whose wealth and power is based on nothing more than faith, on pieces of paper and numbers in computers, will be left with absolutely nothing . Just as they left my father.”

“While you still have all the gold from the Tomb of Hercules,” Chase realized.

Sophia nodded. “I have more men excavating the site right now. Nina was absolutely right-the value of physical wealth will multiply enormously following a financial crash. I’ll get back what was rightfully mine-my family’s wealth and status.”

“And screw everyone else, eh?” Chase growled.

“You’re not only going to kill fuck knows how many tens of thousands of people when the bomb goes off, but what about all the millions of other people who’ll lose everything too? Not just the fat cats, but ordinary people?”