The Covenant of Genesis

we lose the backup servers, we’ve still got the off-site backups.’

‘Yes, but I’ve still lost—’

‘A day’s work, at most. It’s a pain in the ass, I know, but it’s not the end of the world, okay?’ She swiped her ID card over the door’s electronic lock.

Berkeley tried to follow her in. ‘I still need to ask them how long—’

Nina stopped in the doorway. ‘Hey, hey!’ she snapped. ‘This is a secure area - authorised personnel only. Go on, get your ass back outside. Shoo, shoo!’ Berkeley reluctantly retreated.

She closed the door and slumped against it, taking a deep breath. ‘Okay, guys. What’s the bad news?’

The server room was a windowless space lined with rack-mounted computers and hard drives, forming a miniature maze round the central workstations. Jerry Wojciechowski, an overweight middle-aged bearded man resembling a geek Santa, and Al Little, younger, thin almost to the point of emaciation and fuelled entirely by energy drinks, were working furiously at their computers. Al, even darker bags under his eyes than usual, looked up at her. ‘We got burned, Nina. Some fucker hit us with a virus.’

She knew from the mere fact that he’d sworn in front of her that the situation was dire; normally, he only blurted out the first half-syllable before gulping it back and apologising. ‘What’ve we lost?’

‘Everything,’ said Jerry. ‘Literally. It was a worm - it scrubbed all the drives down to the bare metal.’

‘And it nuked the backup RAIDs as well,’ Al added. ‘Even some of the desktops in the office.’

‘How the hell did it do that?’ asked Nina. ‘I thought all this was impossible to hack!’

‘So did we,’ Jerry told her mournfully. ‘We upgraded everything after that breach two years ago to beyond military grade. We’re running the same operating system as the NSA. It’s totally secure. In theory.’

‘Except,’ said Al, ‘that this fucking thing came straight in without tripping a single warning. The only way it could do that is if whoever sent it had access codes for the entire system.’ He let out an angry snort. ‘We’ve lost absolutely everything since the last tape backup for off-site storage. And that was two days ago.’

‘So, when you say everything . . . that includes emails and files uploaded to the shared server?’

Jerry nodded at her, and a sickening realisation struck Nina. The IHA’s very existence was built on secrets: her discovery of Atlantis three years before had, to her horror, given a madman the key to creating a genetically engineered plague . . . which he had very nearly unleashed upon the world. To a certain extent, the IHA’s mandate of finding and protecting other ancient wonders was a cover for a darker mission: to ensure that they didn’t fall into the wrong hands.

But as the events leading to the death of Hector Amoros had proved, the wrong hands could at first appear to be the right ones. The IHA’s search for Excalibur, the sword of King Arthur, had supposedly been undertaken so that Jack Mitchell, an agent of the US government’s defence research agency DARPA, could stop the blade’s unique properties from being used to create a new weapon that drew on the power of the very earth - but Mitchell had gone rogue, wanting that power for himself. He had been in charge of a black project so secret that neither DARPA nor the Pentagon knew of its existence, even as it threatened to plunge the world into war.

But if whoever sent the virus to wipe her pictures of the mysterious artefacts - and she was certain that that was the true objective, all the other destruction of data merely to cover the fact - was able to bypass the IHA’s security . . . that meant they knew the IHA’s true purpose. Knowledge supposed to be restricted to the highest levels of power.

Whatever was going on was bigger than she had thought. Bigger than she had feared.

She rushed out into reception—

To find herself face to face with an old enemy.

Not one who had ever tried to kill her, admittedly. But Nina still felt the brief, involuntary chill of unexpectedly encountering an adversary, long-forgotten loathing rushing back full-force. ‘Professor Rothschild,’ she began, before remembering that outside academia the hard-faced old woman no longer had any power over her. ‘Maureen,’ she said instead, informality used as a weapon to deny her status. ‘What are you doing here?’

‘Nina,’ said Rothschild coldly, doing the same. The dislike was mutual. ‘May I speak with you?’

Nina saw Lola hovering behind Rothschild’s shoulder, worriedly mouthing something, but she couldn’t tell what. ‘I’m kinda busy right now, Maureen,’ she said, wanting to get rid of her as quickly, and dismissively, as possible. ‘Whatever it is, it’ll have to wait. Lola can book you an appointment, but I wouldn’t expect anything earlier than next week. I’ve got a lot of IHA business to take care of.’ She turned and strode away to her office.

‘Handling IHA business is no longer your concern, Nina,’ Rothschild said.

There was a note almost of gloating in her voice that brought Nina to a stop. ‘Excuse me?’

‘Ah, Dr Wilde,’ Lola said apologetically, hurriedly rounding Rothschild and presenting a sheet of paper to Nina. ‘I meant to tell you when you got here, but there was so much else going on. Sorry.’

Nina quickly read the text, an official UN statement. ‘What?’ she barked. Sensing an impending explosion, Lola retreated to her desk.

‘As you see,’ said Rothschild, now with nothing but gloating in her voice, ‘the UN has just confirmed my appointment as the new Director of the IHA. I won’t officially be taking up the post until the day after tomorrow, but I wanted to get things moving in the right direction. Which I’ve already seen is something that is badly needed. The agency has lacked a clearly defined vision and strong leadership since the death of Admiral Amoros - I’m here to put it back on the proper course.’

‘Oh, you are, huh?’ said Nina, angrily crunching the paper into a ball. ‘I’m sure all your years of attacking any theory that’s even slightly outside the historical orthodoxy makes you the perfect choice to run the IHA.’

Rothschild glanced at the entrance to one of the conference rooms. ‘Perhaps we should continue this discussion in private?’ she suggested condescendingly.

‘I’m fine right here,’ Nina snapped. ‘And how did you get appointed in the first place? You weren’t on the shortlist. You weren’t even on the longlist - and if you had been, I would have crossed you off it!’

‘Making decisions based on petty personal vendettas is precisely the kind of negative quality the IHA can do without in its senior staff,’ Rothschild replied. ‘And since you ask, I was quite surprised to be approached. But when the Senate recommends you to the UN, it would be foolish not to take the opportunity.’

‘The Senate?’ said Nina, stunned. ‘But that’s insane! Why would they do that?’

Rothschild’s lips tightened. ‘Perhaps because they were as tired as everyone else of the appointment process being deliberately dragged out so that the Interim Director could pursue her pet projects with the minimum of oversight?’ Nina was so outraged by the accusation that she couldn’t even form a response before the older woman spoke again. ‘One of my first priorities will be a full review of all IHA projects that are not directly related to the agency’s global security mandate. Anything that fails to meet strict cost-effectiveness criteria, or is based on shoddy mythological theory, will be terminated immediately.’

‘Shoddy mythological theory like Atlantis, you mean?’

‘My other immediate priority,’ said Rothschild coldly, ‘will be to begin a full inquiry into the utter disaster that was your Indonesian expedition. The loss of life is of course a tragedy, but there is also your arbitrary abandonment of the original excavation site, the financial irregularities—’

‘What financial irregularities?’ Nina demanded, furious.

‘I mean the money you promised to the ship’s captain for what I believe you described as “additional expenses”. Just because part of the budget is labelled as discretionary doesn’t mean it’s your personal slush fund.’

‘That’s not what happened at all, and—’

‘You’ll be able to present your version of events to the inquiry,’ said Rothschild. ‘This catastrophe reflects extremely badly on both the IHA and the UN. The facts need to be determined, responsibility decided . . .’

‘Blame apportioned?’

A faint smile curled Rothschild’s thin lips. ‘Indeed. If I were you, I would put all my efforts into as complete an account as possible of what happened in Indonesia. And I’d recommend that your . . . friend Mr Chase does the same. Where is Mr Chase, by the way?’

‘Still over there,’ said Nina, being purposefully vague to deny Rothschild any more ammunition.