‘Mac, I know this is kind of classified,’ said Nina, ‘but is there any chance Catherine or Holly could sit in? Eddie’s so much more polite when they’re around.’
‘Afraid not, but I share your sentiments,’ Mac replied. ‘No, I get the impression that Alderley’s been shoved aside by the Americans, and he’s not happy about it.’
‘Yeah,’ said Chase, toying with Nina’s ponytail. ‘I know how annoying it is taking orders from Yanks.’
‘Hey!’ Nina said.
Mac smiled, then sat up, seeing something outside the window. ‘But I think these people might be able to provide some more illumination.’
A car had stopped outside, a large black Lincoln limousine. Chase could see its number plate, the unusual format classifying it as a diplomatic vehicle. ‘Oh, ’ello, here come the Feds.’ Nina got up to join him, watching as two men emerged from the car and marched up the drive. The doorbell rang; after a brief exchange, the living-room door opened and Elizabeth peered cautiously inside.
‘There’s some people here to see you,’ she said. ‘They said they’re from the US embassy.’
Mac stood. ‘Please, show them in, Ms Chase.’
Elizabeth led two suited men into the room. The first was in his fifties, with a thatch of thinning brown hair and a harried air. He extended a hand to Nina. ‘Dr Wilde,’ he said, before looking uncertainly between Chase and Mac. ‘Mr . . . Chase?’ Chase pointed at himself. ‘Thanks.’ Shaking hands with Chase, he introduced himself, his accent Bostonian. ‘I’m Clarence Peach, from the Department of Security Cooperation at the US embassy in London.’
‘Peachy,’ said Chase, suppressing a smirk. From Peach’s weary expression, he’d endured endless jokes about his name.
The second man was younger, in his mid-thirties, and to Nina far more impressive to look at. He was a well- built six foot plus, square-jawed and handsome with intense green eyes and jet-black hair. ‘Dr Wilde?’ he asked, deep voice betraying a distinctive New Orleans drawl. ‘I’m Jack Mitchell, from DARPA - Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency,’ he clarified, seeing her puzzled look, before his voice changed to a pitch-perfect imitation of Troy McClure, the washed-up actor from
Nina laughed. ‘Hi! Good to meet you.’
‘And you must be Eddie Chase.’
‘Guess I must,’ said Chase, not nearly as impressed as Nina by the newcomer. ‘So why’s DARPA interested in finding Excalibur? Thought you were just into building killbots and microwave pain beams these days.’
‘There’s a lot more to Bernd Rust’s research than ancient relics, and I’ll explain why in a moment. But unfortunately, that information is need-to-know classified.’ He turned to Mac. ‘I’m afraid I’m going to have to ask you to leave the room while I discuss it. Sorry, sir.’
Mac was surprised. ‘I have a level five security classification.’
‘I know, sir.’
Shooting Nina and Chase a look, Mac left the room. Mitchell gestured for Nina and Chase to sit down, then opened his slim metal briefcase and removed a folder. ‘Do you recognise any of these people?’ he asked, handing several photographs to them.
Nina immediately spotted the bearded man whom she had chased through the hotel. ‘That’s the guy who stole my laptop!’
Mitchell nodded. ‘Oleg Maximov, AKA “the Bulldozer”. Former Russian Spetsnaz special forces trooper, noted for extreme physical strength and also extremely limited intelligence - even before he got shot in the head in Chechnya.’ He indicated the expansive scar on the man’s forehead. ‘Nobody quite knows how he survived it, but he did, and he’s now got a metal plate holding half his skull together . . . and a seriously screwed-up nervous system.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘He suffered some sort of brain damage that affected his pleasure-pain response,’ Mitchell explained. ‘Basically, when he experiences pain he feels it as
‘Ew!’ Nina said, wincing. ‘That explains why me hitting him in the face with a fire extinguisher turned him on so much, I guess.’
Chase gave her an admiring look. ‘You smacked a Spetsnaz bloke with a fire extinguisher?’
‘Yeah.’
‘Good for you!’ He pointed at one of the other photos. ‘Hey, she was the getaway driver.’
Nina examined the picture. ‘She was the one who shot Bernd as well - only she had orange hair.’ The sullen woman in the picture, who looked about thirty, had hair that was mostly purple, with long green-dyed strands hanging down over her face.
‘Her name’s Dominika Romanova,’ said Mitchell. ‘She used to be a sniper for the FSB - the successor to the KGB - until she decided she could get more money in the private sector.’ He took the photos back, shuffling through them. ‘She and Maximov worked with Yosarin and Belenkov, these two charmers -’ he held up two more photos, both showing unattractive and menacing-looking men - ‘who got blown up in the Bournemouth Imax theatre yesterday afternoon. Fortunately, their IDs were more fireproof than they were.’
‘So why did they kill Bernd?’ Nina demanded. ‘What was in his files that they wanted so bad?’
Mitchell took another pair of pictures from his case. ‘All four of them work for this man, Aleksey Kruglov.’ The picture revealed another unappealing man, older than the others, with a wide mouth and cold eyes. ‘Kruglov’s old- school KGB, but he now works as a “security specialist”, by which I mean head thug, for
Nina frowned. The man in the picture appeared to be in his late forties, with a trim brown goatee beard and narrow rectangular wire-framed glasses. He also seemed vaguely familiar. ‘I’ve seen him somewhere . . .’
‘Probably in the news,’ said Peach. ‘That’s Leonid Vaskovich. He’s a Russian energy baron - one of the new breed of oligarchs. Personal fortune of about eight billion dollars.’
‘Major player in Russian oil and gas,’ Mitchell added, ‘and currently working very closely with the administration in Moscow with an eye to becoming part of it. He’s a hardline ultra-nationalist, who wants to make Mother Russia the number one world power, and is willing to do whatever he thinks is necessary to achieve that.’ His gaze fixed on Nina. ‘He’s also the man your friend Rust made the mistake of trusting when he went looking for backers.’
Nina stared at the picture. ‘What does finding King Arthur’s sword have to do with a Russian oil baron?’
Mitchell retrieved the pictures and returned them to his case before answering. ‘Dr Wilde . . . have you ever heard of something called “earth energy”?’
Nina’s heart sank. Was
‘Extremely.’
‘What’s earth energy?’ asked Chase. ‘Sounds like some hippiedippie thing.’
‘It is,’ Nina sighed. ‘It’s things like ley lines, dragon lines, feng shui - the idea that there’s some kind of energy that’s channelled along specific paths around the earth.’ Her disappointment grew even as she spoke; she couldn’t believe Rust had wasted his time on such nonsense - and that it had somehow got him killed. ‘It’s crap, basically. Crackpot pseudoscience.’
‘Actually,’ said Mitchell, ‘that may not be entirely true.’
Nina regarded him in disbelief. ‘What?’ A lone, disgraced historian spending his time on such a theory was one thing . . . but one of the US government’s most advanced scientific departments?
Mitchell leaned forward. ‘Have you ever heard of HAARP?’
‘Brother of Grouch, Chic and Zepp?’ Chase said. Nina groaned.
‘High-frequency Active Auroral Research Program,’ said Mitchell, faintly amused. ‘It’s a US government project based in Alaska that uses a directional antenna array to selectively heat parts of the ionosphere into plasma: the idea was that we could turn the upper atmosphere into a kind of mirror for directed energy, which would let us increase the range of radio signals or radar by thousands of miles, even tens of thousands.’
‘So you wouldn’t be affected by line of sight limitations,’ said Chase thoughtfully, interested now the subject had developed a military aspect. ‘You make this mirror, then bounce signals off it so they can go over the horizon.’
