Andy McDermott - The Midas Legacy

She shrugged off her own equipment. ‘Where do we go now?’

He checked the dock again. Another man had come into view near the covered workshops at the top of the slipway, but he was far enough distant that he would not see them if they stuck to the shadows. ‘Behind those boxes,’ he said, indicating a pile of broken crates before moving his pointing finger to an overturned rust-scabbed hull, ‘then across to that old boat.’ He took his sub-machine gun from a waterproof bag. ‘Let’s move.’

He scurried out into the night, Nina advancing nervously behind him.

‘Augustine, please,’ said Lonmore. ‘Don’t do this. I know you think it’s the only way to get Greece out of debt, but trust me, it won’t work. You really believe the IMF and the other world banks will just cave in to your demands? They’ll do whatever it takes to find you — and crush you.’

Trakas gave him a small smile. ‘I am not going to walk into the headquarters of the European Central Bank with an ultimatum, Spencer. I will not even let anyone know that I am behind this until Greece is free! They will receive the video proof and perhaps a hundred thousand dollars of gold, to show I am serious, as well as my instructions and the deadline for carrying them out. In the meantime, I will use the Crucible to make more gold — two or three million dollars’ worth should be enough to begin with. If they have not agreed to my terms — and I do not imagine they will, at first — I will sell it all on the open market.’

‘Three million dollars of gold isn’t that much in the global scheme of things. It’s a blip at most.’

‘No, but it will catch their attention. The next instalment will be bigger. The one after that… well, you know my business. My planes, my ships, my trucks — imagine them all filled with gold, on its way to be sold.’

‘Nice little rhyme,’ said Eddie. ‘I’ll have to remember it to tell my daughter at bedtime. It’ll make a change from the story about the eggs with legs.’

Spencer frowned at him. ‘Do you ever shut up?’

‘Nope. You need a smart-arse comment or a crap pun, I’m your man.’

Petra was amused, but she was alone in her feelings. Anastasia merely tutted in disdain, while the faintly baffled Lonmore turned back to Trakas. ‘So you’re going to stay anonymous until you get what you want? You’ll just let your demands speak for you?’

‘No, someone else will speak for me.’ Trakas’s eyes fixed upon Anastasia. ‘You!’

Nina and De Klerx crept along the line of boats behind the workshops. They had managed to slip past a couple of patrolling guards, but now the Dutchman raised his hand as he saw movement ahead. Nina crouched, leaning to look past him. Another armed man had just come into sight, patrolling the boatyard’s outer fence. ‘He will not see us,’ whispered the Dutchman.

‘Let’s not take the chance, huh?’ Nina retreated slightly, then sidestepped into the darkened gap between two of the boats. She stretched out one hand, cautiously sweeping her path. ‘Careful here,’ she warned as her fingers met cold, grimy metal. ‘There’s an anchor or something leaning against it.’ She worked her way around the unseen obstruction, her back rubbing against one of the hulls. Despite the boat’s size — it must have weighed several tons — an unsettling creak still came from the stand supporting it. ‘God, are they balancing these things on toothpicks?’

‘It does not feel safe,’ De Klerx quietly agreed as he followed her past the blockage. To their relief, no further sounds came from the boat.

Nina reached the other end of the cramped passage, hunching behind a propeller. Movement caught her eye off to the left, a guard walking past a cage-like rack of gas cylinders, but he was heading away from the intruders. The large factory was ahead, beyond a couple of smaller structures. It was one of the latter that she fixed upon. ‘If we climb up on that hut, we should be able to jump over to the annexe on the big building without anyone seeing us.’

De Klerx looked for himself. ‘And then we can climb that to the roof.’ He indicated a ladder running up the factory’s side.

‘Good. I always like it when the bad guys have an easy way into their secret base.’

The Dutchman did not smile. ‘If we go between those containers, they should keep us out of sight.’ He made sure nobody was visible in either direction along the line of boats, then pushed past Nina and scurried across a rutted roadway to vanish into the shadows between a pair of shipping containers. She quickly followed.

‘What do you mean?’ Anastasia demanded.

‘I mean, you will tell the banks what you have seen here, and confirm that it is true,’ said Trakas. ‘Dr Wilde would have been the best person to do so, as she is both famous and has a connection to the United Nations, but then so do you. The daughter of Fenrir Mikkelsson, the UN’s top nuclear arms negotiator — she will be believed when she says what the Crucible can do.’

‘I won’t help you,’ she said.

‘You will.’

Her frown deepened. ‘Fuck you.’

Spencer snorted. ‘Classy, Ana. Classy.’

Trakas drew in a breath of irritation. ‘You never liked me, did you, Anastasia? I must say, I have always felt the same about you. And your father. You are both… arrogant. Cold . I suppose it comes from living on a grey rock at the edge of the Arctic. Even Sarah; she had a warm heart when she was younger, but it has been frozen over the years.’

‘Do not insult my father!’ snapped Anastasia. ‘I won’t do what you tell me.’

‘You do not have a choice.’ He stepped right up to her, her tight-fitting wetsuit making her look even slighter against his broad torso, and took hold of her wrists. Disgust flashed across her features as she tried to pull away, but she couldn’t break his grip. ‘You are in my world now. Here, Midas is not king — I am. When I ask for something, it—’

She whipped a knee up at his groin — but Trakas had been prepared for such an attack, twisting back to take the impact against his leg. His response was immediate: a hard slap across her cheek. She flinched away, drawing in a sharp, shocked breath.

‘Augustine!’ cried Lonmore as his wife gasped. Even Spencer seemed taken aback. ‘What the hell?’

Eddie made an abrupt move towards Trakas, fists clenched, only for Axelos to snap his gun up. The Englishman stopped, giving the bodyguard a glare of deep menace.

Trakas released Anastasia. She retreated, one hand to her stinging cheek. ‘You okay?’ Eddie asked her.

‘Yes,’ she said, regarding the Greek with loathing.

He looked back at Trakas. ‘You’re a tough guy, hitting a woman half your size. You fancy trying that on me? Without your little gofer holding a gun on me, I mean.’

‘If I am hit first, I hit back,’ said the tycoon, unimpressed by the threat. ‘No matter who hits me. You are welcome to find out for yourself, Mr Chase. But not now. It is my country’s honour I am protecting, not my own. The IMF, the banks, they need to know that I am serious.’ He addressed Anastasia again. ‘You will do that for me of your own free will, or I will make you do it.’

‘How about you make me do it?’ countered Eddie.

‘You? Why would anyone care what you tell them?’

‘They usually don’t — until I tell ’em they’re fucked and they realise I’m right. But you wanted Nina to do your little hostage video? Well, I’m the next best thing. Nearly as good-looking, and they know me at the UN too. I’ve saved their arses often enough. So if I tell ’em what you’ve done, and what you want to do, they’ll believe me.’