The Secret of Excalibur

‘Course you are! We just haven’t settled on a date yet.’ Chase squeezed Nina’s hand. ‘It’s been kind of a busy year.’

‘But it obviously worked out well for both of you,’ said Brigitte. ‘Congratulations!’

‘Thank you. So,’ Nina asked, ‘how did you meet Eddie? Mitzi said he rescued you?’

‘That’s right. He—’

‘We were kidnapped!’ interrupted Mitzi with surprising enthusiasm.

‘Mitzi,’ Brigitte warned, pained by the memory.

Her daughter ignored her. ‘A gang took us hostage to force Papa to give them access to his bank’s computers. But he hired Eddie and his friend Hugo to rescue us instead. And they did.’ She gazed admiringly at Chase as she sat.

‘What happened to the kidnappers?’ asked Mitchell.

‘Oh, Eddie kil—’

‘They didn’t hurt anyone again,’ said Brigitte quickly. ‘But Eddie and Hugo saved our lives.’ She looked across at Chase. ‘I was so sorry to hear what happened to Hugo. I didn’t even know he had died until I read about the discovery of Atlantis.’

‘Thanks,’ said Chase uncomfortably. The official story concocted by the IHA had his partner Hugo Castille dying in a diving accident at Atlantis; while that was technically true, it omitted the very much premeditated chain of events leading to it.

‘Poor Hugo,’ added Mitzi sadly. ‘He was so nice.’

Brigitte nodded, then sipped her drink. ‘So Eddie, Mitzi said you have a favour to ask; you know we will always be happy to give you anything you need.’

‘It’s not so much a thing as a person,’ Chase answered. ‘I’d like to borrow Mitzi for a while. Don’t worry, I’ll bring her back in good nick.’

Mitzi giggled, but Brigitte’s mouth tightened into a hard line. ‘Oh. Actually, that’s something I’m not happy about. Not after what happened last year.’

‘Last year?’ Nina asked Chase. During their search for the Tomb of Hercules he had gone to Switzerland to find his ex-wife, but Sophia’s involvement had made it a part of the adventure about which she had not enquired too deeply.

‘I asked Mitzi to help me with some stuff,’ he explained. ‘She got me some gear, and gave me a lift.’

‘She got you guns and explosives, and then you jumped off a bridge from the roof of her car at a hundred kilometres an hour!’ Brigitte snapped.

‘I had a parachute . . .’

She regarded him disapprovingly. ‘Ever since you rescued us - and I am grateful for that, and always will be - Mitzi has turned into an adrenalin junkie. Skydiving, or waterskiing, or - or bungee- jumping, even. She can’t enjoy herself without risking her life!’

‘Oh, Mama!’ cried Mitzi, exasperated. ‘I’m a grown woman, I can take care of myself. I’m just having fun!’

‘Don’t worry, she won’t be doing any of that,’ Chase assured Brigitte. ‘Not unless it’s the world’s most extreme library.’

‘Library?’ asked Mitzi, crestfallen.

‘Yeah. We need someone to do some research for us, about some castle in Austria.’

‘Oh.’ She sounded hugely disappointed. ‘Well, of course I’ll help you, but . . . are you sure that’s all you want me to do? You don’t need me to help you climb a mountain or anything?’

‘Nah, just check out this castle and persuade the bloke who owns it to talk to us. Are you up for that?’ He looked at Brigitte, who still didn’t seem happy. ‘And you?’

Brigitte sighed. ‘As she says, she’s a grown woman.’

‘Because if it bothers you, we can do it ourselves,’ Chase offered. ‘I mean, I wouldn’t want to make you mad at me or anything.’

She managed a faint smile. ‘After everything you’ve done for us, I think that would be hard.’

‘Of course I’ll do it, Eddie,’ Mitzi insisted. ‘It might not be as exciting as the last time I helped you, but who knows? Maybe I’ll discover something that surprises you.’

Chase smiled at her. ‘Knowing you, you’ll have found what we’re looking for before we even get back. And don’t you worry, Brigitte. She’ll be fine, I promise.’

Mitchell opened his case and handed a sheaf of papers to Mitzi. ‘These are what we have on the castle and its owner, and what we’d like you to find out for us, if you can.’

‘I’ll have everything you need by the time you get back,’ she told him confidently.

‘Great stuff,’ said Chase. He finished his drink and put down the cup. ‘Well, sorry to have to rush off, but we’re kind of working against the clock.’

‘Exactly what are you looking for?’ Brigitte asked.

‘I’m afraid we can’t tell you at the moment,’ said Mitchell, ‘but it’s very important to the IHA and the United Nations.’

‘We really appreciate you helping us out,’ Nina added. ‘Thank you. Both of you.’

Brigitte nodded. ‘I wish you a safe journey, then. And I hope you find whatever it is.’

‘Good luck!’ Mitzi chimed.

Chase stood and kissed her cheek, then did the same to Brigitte. ‘We’ll be back in a couple of days, no problem. See you then.’ He waited as Nina and Mitchell shook hands with the two women, then swept an arm theatrically towards the horizon beyond the lake. ‘Okay. Jordan, here we come!’

9

Jordan

Where Zurich had been clean, neat and above all orderly, the Jordanian capital of Amman was by contrast a living monument to organised chaos. One of the oldest continuously inhabited cities in the world, each new stage of civilisation had been built around - or sometimes on top of - that which went before, resulting in a gloriously jumbled mix of ancient and modern, centuries-old structures separated from brand new apartment blocks by no more than the span of a man’s arms. The metropolis rippled under the baking sun of the Arabian peninsula, tinted a soft orange by sunlight, sand and smog.

Nina would have loved to explore the city, but she had work to do. Mitchell had arranged for her to meet the curator of the University of Jordan’s Center for Documents and Manuscripts, the bureaucratic name only hinting at its true purpose: to act as a vast archive, cataloguing the history of a large part of the Middle East. She wanted to delve into the wealth of ancient texts even more than the city, but for now she forced herself to concentrate on one very specific slice of the past.

‘Muhammad Yawar,’ said their host thoughtfully. Adeeb al-Jafri was a middle-aged man with oversized glasses and a neat black moustache; although he was Jordanian, his clipped accent was still very much that of the English university where he had studied. ‘Yes, I remember the name.’

‘You remember him?’ Nina asked. ‘Why, has someone else been asking about him?’

‘Yes, about six months ago, by phone. I think he was German. He asked if we had any material in the archives concerning him, and we told him that we did, but matters never progressed any further than that.’

‘It must have been Bernd,’ Nina said, with a look at Chase and Mitchell. ‘But nobody else?’ Al-Jafri shook his head.

‘At least they haven’t figured out his notes yet,’ said Mitchell.

Al-Jafri’s eyebrows rose quizzically over the thick frames of his glasses. ‘They? ’

‘The man who contacted you was murdered,’ Nina told him. ‘To stop him from telling the IHA how to find what he was searching for.’

‘Really?’ He sounded more intrigued than shocked, as if hearing about a plot twist in a detective novel. ‘And for what was he searching?’

‘That’s classified, I’m afraid,’ Mitchell said. ‘But it’s for safety reasons, trust me. The people who killed him won’t hesitate to kill again.’