“There!” Professor Chambers exclaimed and swung the wheel.
The jeep’s headlights had picked up the wreckage of a helicopter, half buried in the desert floor. Two of the rotors were missing and the other two were buckled and broken. The tail had snapped in half and the cockpit was a mess of shattered glass and dangling wires. Now that they were closer, they could smell fuel in the air. Professor Chambers slammed on the brake but Richard was already out and running before the jeep had come to a halt. He had seen a boy, lying with his back against the wreckage, his legs stretched out in front of him. One of them was bent at an impossible angle.
It was Pedro.
“What happened? Where’s Matt?” Richard shouted out the questions before he remembered that Pedro didn’t speak a word of English. Pedro looked at him quizzically and Richard felt ashamed of himself. He had been so worried about his friend, he hadn’t stopped to consider how the other boy must be feeling. He crouched down and laid a hand on Pedro’s shoulder. “Are you OK?” he asked.
A moment later, Professor Chambers arrived. She had thought to bring a bottle of water with her and she handed it to Pedro, who drank. “?Como estas?” she asked. “How are you?”
Quickly, Pedro explained what had happened. The helicopter had been hit by a bullet. They had lost control and crashed. Richard looked into the cockpit and saw the young pilot – Atoc. He was belted into his seat, his hands resting on the controls. He was obviously dead. Pedro was still talking. His leg had been broken and he was unable to move. Matt had gone on his own to find Salamanda.
“You must leave me,” he said, speaking in Spanish. “You have to find Matteo. The gate opened. I saw…”
He faltered and stopped.
“What did you see?” Professor Chambers asked.
“I can’t talk about it. Just find Matteo.”
Richard had understood the gist of what Pedro was saying. He reached out and touched Professor Chambers on the arm. “You stay here. I’ll go on,” he said.
The professor nodded. Pedro pointed. “Alla…” Over there.
Richard didn’t take the jeep. He was afraid he would miss Matt if he drove too quickly. He was sure that he couldn’t be far from the helicopter, but even so it took him twenty minutes to find him, and when he did it looked as if he had arrived too late. Matt was lying on his back and Richard had never seen anyone more broken or more still. The boy had wept blood. His face was completely white.
He was dead. He had to be. There was no sign of any breathing, not the slightest movement in his chest. Richard had to blink back tears – not just of sadness but of anger. What had been the point? Had they come all the way from Britain just for this? The gate had opened. Pedro was wounded. And Matt was dead. Briefly, he wondered what had happened to Salamanda. He could see the wreckage of the mobile laboratory in the distance, but there was no sign of the man himself. Had he been responsible for this? But, examining Matt, he could see no sign of any external injury. He hadn’t been shot. It was more as if the life force had somehow been sucked out of him.
Richard reached forward and took Matt’s wrist in his hands. Matt’s flesh was cold. But that was when he felt it – tiny, irregular, but definitely there. His pulse. Richard wondered if he was imagining it. Quickly, he rested his fingers against Matt’s neck. There was a pulse there too. And although it was so faint as to be almost imperceptible, there was still some breath reaching his lips.
But he needed help. He had to get to hospital – fast.
Richard straightened up and set off, running back to get the jeep.
Hong Kong
The chairman of Nightrise was standing in his office on the sixty-sixth floor of The Nail, just down the corridor from the conference room where he regularly addressed his executives. He was watching the boats in the harbour and holding a glass of the most expensive Cognac in the world. It was almost a hundred years old and came in a crystal bottle. It had cost five thousand American dollars. How much of the golden-coloured liquid was he cradling in his palm? It seemed to him a strange thought, and a very satisfying one, that outside the window – in Kowloon – there were people who could barely afford to eat, women and children stuck in factories all day and much of the night, working for pennies simply to survive, while he could enjoy this vintage brandy at perhaps two hundred dollars a sip. That was how the world should be, he reflected. And very soon the gap between those who had and those who had not was going to be greater than ever. How fortunate he was to be on the right side.
A sleek cruise liner slid past far below and the chairman turned away. He didn’t like boats. More than that, he had a fear of them – and with good cause. He went back to his desk and sat down. It was time to consider the events of the night before.
The Old Ones were back. That was all that really mattered. His agents in Peru had reported that the stars had aligned exactly as predicted ten thousand years before, and that the great gate, hidden in the Nazca Desert, had unlocked. He wished he could have been there. He had heard it said that you could be struck blind looking into the eyes of the King of the Old Ones – but even so it would have been worthwhile.
Not all the news was good. At their last telephone conference his colleague, the South American industrialist Diego Salamanda, had said that one of the children who called themselves the Gatekeepers was coming to Peru. He had said he would have no trouble tracking him down. But now it seemed that Salamanda himself had been killed, and as for the boy, he was still at liberty. The chairman didn’t care about Salamanda. That was one less pair of hands to share in the rewards. But the fact that the boy might have survived… that was unsatisfactory. That was a loose end. In his part of the organization, it wouldn’t have been allowed.
The private telephone on his desk suddenly rang. Very few people in the world had the number that connected to it. Any call that came through on this line had to be worth taking. He set the brandy glass down on his desk and picked up the phone.
“Good evening, Mr Chairman.” It was Susan Mortlake. She was calling him from Los Angeles.
“Mrs Mortlake.” As ever, the chairman sounded neither happy nor sad to be hearing from her.
“My congratulations, sir.” Of course she had heard what had happened in Peru. “It’s wonderful news.”
“What have you got to report, Mrs Mortlake?” Even at a time like this, business came first. The executives of Nightrise didn’t telephone each other simply to scratch each other’s backs.
“I’ve been thinking about Charles Baker,” Susan Mortlake replied. “The presidential campaign. In view of what’s happened, it’s even more critical that he should win.”
“Yes.” The single word showed that the Chairman was getting impatient.
“You’ve seen the latest figures…”
John Trelawny was edging further ahead in the polls.
“Of course I’ve seen them, Mrs Mortlake.”
“And our agent in New York has been unable to come up with a strategy?”
“I’m afraid Mr Simms has resigned.”
Two days before, Mr Simms, the New York executive, had plunged head first into the Hudson River. In fact, his head had entered the water several minutes before his body. The two of them had later been found washed up, fifty metres apart.
“I believe I may have a solution to the problem, Mr Chairman. As a matter of fact, it was something that Mr Simms suggested himself… while he was still with us. He said that the only answer might be to assassinate Trelawny.”
“I don’t think he was serious.”
“But I am, Mr Chairman.”
The chairman considered. Killing a presidential candidate was possible but it would not be easy. Quite apart from the fact that Trelawny was continually surrounded by secret-service men and that nobody with a gun could get close, the real problem would come later, if the attempt succeeded. There would be a public outcry and the police investigation would be huge and never-ending. It might even lead them to Nightrise. You pay someone who pays someone who pays a madman to fire the fatal bullet – but still the line can be traced back. Assassination was messy and full of danger. It was always a last resort.
But Susan Mortlake was confident.
“Suppose Trelawny was shot by someone who was close to him,” she said. “Someone who had absolutely no link with us. Suppose the killer was caught immediately and was unable to explain his actions but seemed to have suffered some sort of massive nervous breakdown. There would be no doubt about his guilt. He would be tried,
