Andy McDermott - The Midas Legacy

‘It isn’t yours either,’ said Anastasia frostily. De Klerx edged up behind her, facing Nina, and folded his arms. The intimidating gesture did not go unnoticed by Eddie, who broke off from playing with Macy to move closer to the table.

‘If it belongs to anyone, it’s the monks of Detsen monastery,’ Nina insisted. ‘But their abbot entrusted it to me, so for now, I’m the person who decides what to do with it. That might mean handing it back to the monks, or turning it over to the IHA. But it definitely isn’t going to be put up on eBay! And as for using it to make more gold, you’ll find that kinda hard, since the Midas Cave was destroyed.’

That caused shock around the table. ‘What!’ cried Lonmore. ‘Why didn’t you tell us?’

Nina treated the question with richly deserved sarcasm. ‘Oh, I’m sorry, I didn’t realise I was your employee and was supposed to brief you the moment I arrived.’ Eddie laughed.

Lonmore was flustered, but Olivia responded with amusement. ‘She told me.’

‘And you decided not to tell us ?’ he snapped. ‘It’s the same old story with you, isn’t it, Olivia? Control information, let it out in little trickles when it’s to your best advantage!’

‘Please, Spencer, be calm,’ said Mikkelsson in a placating tone. ‘Nina is right. Though it would have been better, Olivia, if you had shared what you knew before the meeting.’

‘I thought it best if Nina gave her account of events in her own time and as it suited her,’ Olivia replied, nothing but genteel innocence in her voice.

‘I can give you a very quick precis right now,’ Nina said. ‘Eddie and I went to Nepal, we convinced the monks to let us see the Midas Cave, then after we did, we were attacked.’

‘Attacked?’ said Lonmore, eyebrows rising. ‘Who attacked you?’

‘We don’t know,’ Nina admitted. ‘Most of them were Nepalese mercenaries, but the leader was a Greek called Axelos. We don’t know who he was working for, though.’

‘Greek?’ A look of perturbation crossed his face. ‘Wait — you weren’t joking about shooting down a helicopter?’ he asked Eddie.

‘Nope,’ said the Englishman. ‘There were two choppers, full of…’ He remembered that Macy was in earshot. ‘Bad guys. I took one out, but the other got away.’

‘With the big Crucible,’ added Nina.

‘How could anyone have known where you were?’ asked Anastasia.

‘That’s a question I’ve been asking myself. Very few people knew we were even going to Nepal. Now, I trust the people I dealt with at the United Nations, so the leak must have come from either inside the Nepalese government, or…’

‘Or?’ Anastasia demanded.

‘Or this end, I think she’s saying,’ Eddie finished on his wife’s behalf.

‘That’s absurd!’ Lonmore protested. ‘Why on earth would anyone here do that?’

‘I dunno, maybe to cut out the middleman — or the middlewoman, rather — and take the Crucibles for yourself.’

Lonmore reddened, about to object more forcefully to the accusation, but Mikkelsson interceded calmly. ‘I understand why you might think that, but there is a flaw in your reasoning. If we already had the large Crucible, we would not be interested in the small one. We would also have known that the Midas Cave had been destroyed. So there would be no need for you to come here.’

‘Yeah, that’s… actually quite a good point,’ Nina admitted.

‘There’s another reason why the leak couldn’t have been from the Legacy,’ said Olivia. ‘It’s a very simple one: I didn’t tell any of the other members enough to act upon it.’

‘You hardly told us anything at all,’ complained Petra.

‘I did as much as I needed to, according to our own rules.’

‘After you ignored those same rules when you brought Nina into this,’ said Mikkelsson acerbically.

‘Do you tell the rest of us every time you discuss something related to the Legacy with a member of your family? I’ve held the chair too, Fenrir; I know all the procedural games.’

‘The point still stands, though,’ the impatient Anastasia said to Nina. ‘None of us would have anything to gain from attacking you in Nepal. So who did?’

‘We all know a Greek,’ said Olivia. Though addressing the whole table, her eyes were fixed upon Lonmore. ‘Some of us better than others.’

‘What? Yes, I know a Greek,’ he spluttered, ‘but I’ve never told him anything about the Midas Cave, the Legacy — anything like that!’

‘He is your friend, though,’ Mikkelsson said.

‘And I haven’t spoken to him for… for almost a year. Olivia only got Dr Wilde involved in this less than two weeks ago.’ The others seemed unconvinced. ‘Oh come on! As you said, you all know Augustine. Just because one of these mercenaries was Greek doesn’t mean he hired him.’

‘Nina, do you know anything else that might identify the person who sent these men?’ asked Mikkelsson. ‘Or you, Mr Chase?’

Nina shook her head. ‘Axelos spoke to him — assuming it was a him — on a satellite phone, but we never heard his voice.’

‘In what language?’ said Anastasia.

‘Greek.’

All eyes darted back to the increasingly uncomfortable Lonmore. ‘That still doesn’t prove that Augustine had anything to do with this,’ he said, though with noticeably less conviction than before.

Mikkelsson addressed Nina and Eddie again. ‘What about the helicopters? Was there anything that might help trace them?’

Nina gave a helpless shrug. ‘I’m not really the expert. There was a big one and a smaller one, but that’s about as much as I know. Eddie?’

Her husband stood beside her. ‘The little one that got blown up was a Mi-2, and there are thousands of ’em. The big one was a Westland 169… but the registration was covered up,’ he recalled.

‘They must have been worried that it could be traced,’ said Olivia.

‘They’d covered something else too!’ Nina said, suddenly remembering her last view of the helicopter as it swept past them. ‘But the plastic got torn when the monastery tower slid down the mountain… Long story,’ she added, seeing the confusion of the others.

‘Happens to us a lot,’ said Eddie. ‘She just didn’t put any of this kind of stuff in her book. The film’s actually closer to reality.’

‘It is not ,’ Nina insisted firmly.

‘Do you remember the tail number?’ Mikkelsson asked.

‘No, but… there was a logo on its side.’ She closed her eyes, trying to visualise the aircraft. ‘It was yellow.’

‘A yellow circle,’ her husband added. ‘With—’

‘With five triangles radiating outwards from the centre,’ said Mikkelsson.

Nina was startled. ‘Yes. How did you…’

Lonmore finished his drink in a single gulp, then slumped in his seat, ashen. ‘It’s the logo of Augustine Trakas’s company. The Greek — my friend,’ he clarified. ‘He’s in shipping. Well, transport in general. He owns a cargo airline as well as ships. And I’m sure he has helicopters in his fleet.’

Anastasia fixed him with an accusatory glare. ‘How the hell did he find out about the Midas Cave?’

‘I don’t know!’

‘He obviously knows more than you think he does,’ said Nina. ‘How do you know him? How well do you know him?’

‘We’ve known each other since the 1970s,’ said Lonmore. ‘The members of the Legacy at the time thought we might be able to locate the Midas Cave by finding Atlantis itself, based on what our ancestors had learned about Talonor’s journey. Our theory was that Atlantis was in the sea off the island of Santorini, in Greece.’

‘Yeah, I know where that is. I’m kind of an expert on Atlantis.’