have her back. If you do not, or if Mr Zec tells me you have tried to contact the authorities - or he does not check in, for any reason - we will kill her. Now, give him the phone.’
Raging impotently, Eddie did as he was told, then paced the length of the room. Zec listened to Khoil, finally saying, ‘Understood, ’ and ending the call.
Eddie rounded on him. ‘So how the fuck am I supposed to get the Codex out of the vault? I can’t just walk out with the thing under my arm.’
‘Not my problem,’ said Zec, standing. ‘My job is just to deliver it to Khoil - and make sure you don’t try anything stupid.’
‘I’m not stupid enough to risk Nina’s life over some old book. You’ll get it - fucked if I know how, but I’ll work something out.’ He turned away again, pacing back down the lounge . . . until his gaze fell on the photo of his late friend. ‘Zec! Hugo Castille said he once worked with a guy called Zec, in Bosnia. That you?’
Zec glanced at the picture. ‘Yes. I saw the photograph. Our profession is a small world, no?’
‘It’s not my profession any more. But Hugo wouldn’t have worked with you if you weren’t a good bloke. So why’re you working for this arsehole Khoil?’
‘Why does a mercenary work for anyone?’ Zec asked rhetorically. ‘I was Urbano Fernandez’s second in command. Khoil asked me to take his place.’
‘You know Khoil had Fernandez killed, right? That lass with the glass eye almost sawed his fucking head off.’ Zec seemed disquieted by the revelation, but said nothing. ‘That’s it? No loyalty to your mate, just take the cash from the people who killed him? I guess Hugo was wrong about you.’
‘I need the money,’ said Zec, annoyed. ‘I have a family now, a son - I want to give them a good life, somewhere better than Sarajevo.’ He realised he had perhaps opened himself up too much, and the inexpressive mask slammed back down. ‘But the only thing you should think about for the next two days is how to get the Codex.’
‘Oh yeah, that’ll be a doddle, getting something the size of a bloody paving stone out of a top-security vault without anyone noticing.’ He gazed at the picture of Hugo for a long moment, then turned back to the Bosnian. ‘I’ll need some help.’
9
India
Nina awoke to find herself in a palace.
She had expected the plane, or a cell. But she was lying on a four-poster bed draped in fine silk, in an airy room decorated by colourful friezes on the walls and ceiling. The doors and shuttered windows were all arched, the style distinctively - almost stereotypically - Indian.
There was an odd feeling of artificiality to the place, as if she were in an Indian palace-themed hotel room rather than the genuine article. She went to a window, where bright daylight flared through the slats. Expecting it to be locked, she tried it anyway and was slightly surprised when the shutters parted to reveal an expansive sweep of immaculate lawns and gardens below. She could see other parts of the building; it was indeed a palace, domes topping the pillared white walls. Again, there was the too-clean, too-perfect sense of its being a theme park replica.
‘Dr Wilde,’ said Khoil’s voice from behind her, making her start. ‘Good morning.’
The room had changed, a section of wall silently sliding open to reveal a giant screen. The Indian’s bespectacled face, three feet high, regarded her from it. She realised she was under observation, a lens glinting below the display. ‘Mr Khoil,’ she said tartly. ‘Been watching me sleep, have you? I didn’t realise you made your fortune through webcams.’
He ignored the barb. ‘The room has a motion sensor. The house computers alerted me the moment you woke. Welcome to my home.’
‘Yeah, I’m
‘My estate, east of Bangalore. It combines styles of the Mysore, Kowdiar and Laxmi Niwas palaces, only updated with modern architectural elements. And integrated with the most advanced technology, of course.’
‘Well, of course. So are you just going to lecture me from your telescreen like Big Brother, or . . .’
‘You may “freshen up”, as you Americans say, then you will be driven to us.’
‘Driven?’ Nina raised an eyebrow. ‘Just how big is this place?’
‘The main building has a hundred and sixty-five rooms over five floors,’ said Khoil, taking her question literally. ‘But we are not in the palace at the moment; we are at the sanctuary.’
‘Sanctuary? For what?’
A faint smile on the blank face. ‘Tigers.’
Tandon, politely menacing, collected her from her room after she had showered. He took her to an elevator, which brought them to a large underground garage beneath the palace. Dozens of cars lined the space, from a nineteenth-century Benz Motorwagen tricycle to a brand new McLaren supercar in gleaming gold. It was an odd mix of vehicles, a little British Mini beside the rocketship bulk of a 1959 Cadillac, a record-setting Bugatti Veyron hunched next to a minuscule Tata Nano. Some facet of each vehicle’s design had apparently made them worthy of inclusion in the billionaire’s collection.
The vehicle Tandon took her to was less impressive than any of the gleaming exhibits, however: an electric golf cart. They drove up a steep ramp into the open, following a tree-lined drive. About half a mile north of the palace was a huge enclave, encircled by a high concrete wall topped with chain-link and razor wire. A runway ran along one side of the enclosure, the long black strip showing Nina just how far the boundaries of the Khoils’ estate extended. The jet sat outside a hangar, the structure’s doors partially open to reveal a small, strange-looking aircraft. Its matt charcoal-grey fuselage, a propeller at its rear, seemed too narrow to carry any people - even a pilot. Then the jet obscured it as they passed.
Abutting the wall was a two-storey building, an architectural sibling of the palace. Tandon took her to the upper floor. The sanctuary spread out before her through a glass wall. The view was dominated by a leafy tree canopy, though she could also see a more open area of grassland and bushes. Sunlight shimmered off a lake near the enclave’s centre.
‘Dr Wilde,’ said Khoil from one side of the large room. The tycoon was seated at a control station, a bank of monitor screens before him. The biggest showed a view from the upper branches of a tree. Beside him stood Vanita, bent over a control panel with her body language suggesting tension and concern - though the look she gave Nina was one of utter disdain. The tongueless giant and the shark-toothed man waited nearby, eyes locked on the new arrival. ‘Welcome to the sanctuary.’
‘Impressive,’ said Nina. ‘You must really like tigers.’ ‘They’re magnificent animals,’ Vanita said, passion clear in her voice. ‘And they’re being slaughtered by poachers. Two of the country’s reserves had every single tiger in them killed in the last few years.’
‘So you set up your own?’
She smiled coldly. ‘Any hunter who tries to harm
A voice crackled over a loudspeaker: ‘Ready at station three.’
Khoil acknowledged via a headset. He examined a map on one screen, coloured markers slowly moving across it. ‘She has taken the bait,’ he told his wife.
Vanita regarded the monitors excitedly. ‘Show me.’
He tapped a keyboard. One of the secondary screens flicked to a new view. ‘Come and watch, Dr Wilde. You may find this interesting.’
Despite herself, Nina couldn’t help but be intrigued. Tigers had been a favourite animal of her childhood, even if the closest she had ever been to one in real life was at the Bronx Zoo. The combination of sleek beauty and power was appealing to many children, of either sex; Vanita had obviously carried that fascination into adulthood.
On the screen, a squat concrete bunker, partially camouflaged by vegetation, rose from the ground in a
