Andy McDermott - The Tomb Of Hercules

“Eddie-”

“Bang! Dead again. Useless.” Nina frowned at him, growing annoyed. “Try again! I’m Giovanni Qobras’s brother, and you’re the bitch who got him killed-”

Nina lunged, twisting her body away from the gun and grabbing Chase’s forearm with one hand as the other tried to pry the weapon from his grip-

Whump!

The room spun around her, and she found herself flat on her back, the breath whooshing from her lungs. The muzzle of the gun hung over her.

It clicked. “Bang,” said Chase, smirking.

Nina stared up at him angrily. Then she shoved herself upright and stormed into the bedroom, slamming the door behind her.

Forty minutes later, Nina’s headache still hadn’t gone away despite coffee and some painkillers.

But that wasn’t the main reason she was in a rush to get out into the open air.

“So this bloke you’re meeting today, what’s it all about?” Chase asked. He was still in his T-shirt and shorts, slouched on the couch with his feet up on the glass coffee table and showing no sign that he intended to go with her.

“Put your feet down,” Nina told him. He ignored her. “It’s classified, IHA business.” It wasn’t, but she had neither the time nor the inclination to go into details with him.

Chase rolled his eyes. “Oh, is that right?”

“And what’re you doing? You’re not even ready.”

He waved a casual hand at the window. “Thought I’d take the morning off.”

“You did, huh? And did you bother checking if that was all right?”

“Well, since it’s pretty obvious you don’t need me for anything, I thought, why the fuck not?”

Nina took a long, slow breath in a fruitless attempt to suppress her frustration. “The IHA’s a professional organization, Eddie . You’re supposed to get permission.”

Chase put both hands behind his head and stretched out even farther. “Okay then, boss , can I have your permission to take the morning off? Seeing as I need to go to the dry cleaner because somebody got red wine all over my jacket.”

“God!” Nina snapped, finally losing her patience. “Whatever! Take the morning off, take the week off! I don’t care.” She grabbed her bag and walked out, closing the door with a bang.

Chase thumped a fist on the sofa cushion and got to his feet, his own frustration coiled up inside him. “Buggeration and fuckery!” he snarled, glaring at the African statue. “And you can fuck off, an’ all.” It stared back in wooden silence.

Still fuming, he went into the bedroom and retrieved his jacket. Even on the dark material, the stains stood out clearly. “Well, bollocks,” he told it. “Suppose I really will have to get you cleaned.” He went through its pockets, emptying the contents-

His fingers touched something unexpected. A sheet of paper, tightly folded into a small square. Anger giving way to curiosity, he opened it.

He recognized the handwriting even before looking at the signature. Sophia . She must have slipped it into his pocket when she tugged on his jacket at the party.

He read the note. Then his eyes widened and he read it again, just to make sure it really said what he thought it did.

“Fuck me…” he whispered. Forget the dry cleaner-he needed to go to the IHA after all.

But not to see Nina. This was definitely over her head.

Nina’s office had a small private bathroom, in which she tried to make herself appear as polished and professional as possible for her visitor. She looked at herself in the mirror and touched the pendant hanging from her neck. The curved piece of metal was actually a scrap of an Atlantean artifact she had discovered years earlier without knowing its true nature; she had instead always regarded it as her good-luck charm. She hoped its luck would help her get what she wanted today.

Satisfied that her hair finally looked worth five hundred dollars, she checked that her Armani jacket and skirt were straight and her black stilettos clean, then looked at her watch. Almost time for her meeting.

There was something she had to practice first, though.

Nina left the bathroom and sat at her desk, turning to face the view of Manhattan from the window of the United Nations building. “Okay. I can do this, I can get this right.” She took a breath. “Good morning, Mr. Popadol- Dammit! Popo, Popadolapis…shit!” She ground a palm against her forehead. “Mr. Nicholas Popadopoulos,” she finally managed to say, carefully enunciating each syllable. “Pop-a-dop-ou-los. Popadopoulos. Finally!” She giggled involuntarily. “Okay, I’m ready for you now, Mr. Nicholas Popadopoulos. And you are going to give me what I want.”

The man in question arrived a few minutes later. Nina had spoken to him by phone on several occasions, but this was the first time she had met him in person. For such an obstructive personality, he was not terribly impressive to look at. Popadopoulos was in his sixties, stooped, with thin black hair plastered greasily down in a vain attempt to hide his bald spot. He had a little pencil mustache, and beady spectacles through which he peered suspiciously at Nina as she welcomed him into her office.

“Good morning, Mr. Popadopoulos,” she said, mentally congratulating herself even as she held back a smile. “It’s good to finally meet you.”

“Dr. Wilde, yes,” he replied. His accent was Greek, not surprisingly, but with a hint of Italian-the Brotherhood of Selasphoros was based in Rome, and, from what Nina understood, Popadopoulos had been in charge of the secret society’s archives there for over three decades. “I really don’t see why you had to force me to come to New York, no, no. There are these marvelous inventions now, telephone, fax, e-mail. Perhaps you have heard of them?”

“Do take a seat,” Nina offered, already wanting to strangle him. Popadopoulos grunted, but sat down. She drew up another chair to sit facing him. “The reason I asked you to come to New York is because I haven’t been able to persuade you to help me by telephone, fax or e-mail. And since my bosses at the IHA and your superiors in the Brotherhood are finally in agreement that my research into the Tomb of Hercules is valid, and since the Brotherhood has agreed to assist the IHA-”

“An agreement made essentially at gunpoint,” Popadopoulos cut in. “It was not as if we had a choice!”

“However it was made, it was made. And I wanted to do you the courtesy of meeting face-to-face to explain why I need to see the texts of Hermocrates -the originals , not copies or photographs.”

“There is nothing in them you cannot already have seen!” protested Popadopoulos, waving his hands. “They have been in our possession for over two thousand years; they have been studied by the Brotherhood’s own historians! If there were any clues to the location of the Tomb of Hercules in there, do you not think we would have found them by now?”

“You had Plato’s other lost works about Atlantis for all that time as well, but you didn’t find it. I did,” Nina pointed out sharply. Popadopoulos looked stung. “Critias says on several occasions in the text of Hermocrates that he will reveal to Socrates and the others the location and secrets of the Tomb, as given to him by Solon, but he never does.”

“That is because the text was never finished!”

“I disagree. In every other respect, Hermocrates is a complete dialogue. The only thing not neatly wrapped up by the end is the matter of the Tomb of Hercules-which would have been one hell of an oversight by Plato if he’d just happened to forget about it!” Nina softened her voice, remembering that she was trying to persuade Popadopoulos to cooperate.