The Sacred Vault

that the Bugatti wouldn’t be breaking any more speed records: the suspension was wrecked, one of the rear wheels loose and bashing against the bodywork. Despite the damage, she still managed to wrestle the car towards the gate.

Eddie sat up, raising his gun - and seeing a potential target. Mahajan and another man were driving a golf cart towards the palace, the Khoils on the rear seats. He fired at them. Khoil and Vanita flung themselves out of the cart as bullets caught the guard and sent him flailing to the ground. Mahajan ducked and swerved the little vehicle to put it between the gunman and his employers.

Nina headed for the long drive - only to see a second Range Rover brake to block it. With its low ground clearance and damaged suspension, the Veyron had no chance of negotiating the grass verges to get round it. She instead made a hard turn, bringing the supercar on to the runway.

Eddie glanced back at the golf cart. Vanita had snatched up the fallen guard’s MP5 and was pointing it at the Veyron. ‘Down!’ he shouted as she opened fire. Bullets puckered the Bugatti’s bodywork, but none reached the cabin; the Veyron’s engine was mounted behind the seats, the huge block taking the clanging impacts. There was a loud hiss and a gush of steam as one of the radiators was punctured, adding to the wounded car’s woes.

Nina skidded past the parked jet and the now-closed container holding the smaller aircraft, aiming along the length of the runway and slamming up through the gears. The Veyron had all-wheel drive; even with one of them crunching against the wheelarch the response was still frightening. In the mirror, the golf cart was suddenly reduced to a dot as the car blasted through the sixty mile per hour mark in barely four seconds, thundering on towards a hundred. ‘Jesus!’ she yelped.

‘Bloody hell,’ said Eddie, pushing himself upright. ‘I’m jealous that you’re driving now!’

She was not as thrilled with the experience. The collapsed suspension was making the steering wheel judder like a jackhammer, even holding the car in a straight line becoming harder with each passing moment. Dashboard warning lights started flashing - the radiator was not all that had been damaged. The speedometer passed one hundred . . . then dropped back down. ‘I think this thing’ll need more than an oil change at its next service,’ she warned.

Eddie looked back. The steam had been replaced by greasy smoke, swirling in the Veyron’s slipstream. The second Range Rover was now in pursuit.

Ahead, even with the Veyron slowing, they were rapidly running out of runway. Beyond the poles of the landing lights at its far end, Nina could see the estate’s boundary wall. She brought the car into a sweeping, shuddering turn on to an access lane leading to the main drive. Only a short distance to the main gate, and freedom - if they could get through it.

If they could get to it. The engine rasped alarmingly, the stench of burning oil filling the cabin. Even with her foot to the floor, their speed was still falling. Sixty miles an hour, fifty. Nina straightened out as they reached the road, seeing the gate ahead. Guards ran to block their path.

Armed guards.

‘Go through them!’ Eddie shouted. ‘Crash the gate!’

‘There’s no power!’ Nina protested. Forty miles an hour and still slowing, even as she dropped through the gears in a desperate attempt to maintain speed. The vibration from the wrecked wheel was getting worse, the Veyron’s back end starting to weave. ‘We’re not gonna make it!’ Thirty . . .

A huge metallic bang shook the car as the broken wheel finally sheared off its axle, tearing off the Veyron’s back quarter panel and bouncing down the drive. The already low-slung supercar’s ground clearance was reduced to zero as the unsupported body hit the road like an anchor. Grinding over the asphalt, it screeched to a stop.

The guards ran towards them, guns raised—

And whirled at the sound of another vehicle behind them.

The barrier shattered as Kit crashed his car through it. One of the men was hit by a length of broken wood and bowled off his feet to smash through the guard hut’s window. The other two leapt out of the car’s path, bringing their guns to bear—

Kit spun the steering wheel and yanked on the handbrake. The car fishtailed, its rear end swinging round and swatting away one of the guards with a thump of flesh against steel.

The remaining man dived aside in the nick of time, rolling and bringing up his gun—

Mac kicked open the passenger door. It hit the crouching guard just as he fired, knocking the gun downwards. A semicircle of red sprayed over the tarmac as the bullet hit the luckless man’s kneecap. He fell on his back, dropping the gun as he screamed and clutched the wound.

Mac tossed the fallen weapon out of his reach, then waved to the occupants of the crippled Veyron. ‘Well, come on! We haven’t got all day!’

20

Kit lowered his cell phone, his normally sunny face somewhat clouded. ‘That . . . did not go well. But it could have been worse.’

‘What did your bosses say?’ Nina asked. ‘Are they going to arrest the Khoils? Or at least investigate them?’

‘Unfortunately, no. Not without more proof.’

‘But we’ve got proof,’ said Eddie, indicating the Talonor Codex. The golden book sat on a desk in Kit’s small but modern Delhi apartment, the Interpol officer having arranged a flight from Bangalore back to the capital on a government transport aircraft. ‘They had that thing in their bloody house. That’s got to be enough for Interpol to take action, surely?’

‘It’s your word against theirs. I know you recovered it from them, but that isn’t firm evidence. If Khoil had left a single fingerprint on it, that would be enough, but you said yourself that he never actually touched it. And,’ Kit sighed, ‘the Khoils have already been busy. They have lots of friends in high places - and they seem to have spoken to all of them in the last few hours. Politicians, lawyers, judges . . . We need absolutely irrefutable evidence before we can take any action.’

‘So there’s nothing they can be charged with?’ Nina said in disbelief. ‘What about the simple fact that I’m sitting right here in India? I was goddamn kidnapped!’

‘I looked into that. But unfortunately, the immigration agency has a record of you arriving - alone - at Bangalore airport three days ago.’

‘That’s impossible! They brought me straight to their own airfield.’

‘That’s not what the computer says, I’m afraid.’

‘And guess whose company wrote the software on that computer?’ said Eddie rhetorically.

Mac made a grumbling sound. ‘It seems we have a stalemate. There’s not a great deal they can do to us without arousing suspicion against themselves, but we’ve got nothing on them either.’

‘I have one piece of good news, though,’ Kit told Eddie. ‘The Interpol red notice issued on you has been rescinded. I’ve told my superiors that the Talonor Codex has been recovered - and that you helped. I strongly implied the whole thing was some sort of sting operation. You’ll still have to be questioned back in New York, but for now you’re off the arrest list.’

Eddie wasn’t especially overjoyed. ‘Fucking marvellous. We’ve got the Codex back, but it doesn’t matter, ’cause they’ve got what they needed from it.’ He tapped the plastic replica of the key beside the golden book. ‘They’ve probably made another copy already.’

‘I told you we should have deleted the pattern,’ Nina said.

‘So the Khoils will be able to find the Vault of Shiva?’ Kit asked.

‘Unless we find it first,’ said Nina.

Eddie frowned. ‘Not much chance of that, is there? We don’t know where it is.’

‘Nor does Khoil. He had a translation of the Codex, and made some deductions from it, but hadn’t pinned down an actual location.’

‘What deductions?’ asked Mac.

Nina thought back to Khoil’s boastful claims at the palace. ‘He said it was somewhere near Mount Kailash - Shiva’s home.’

‘The Sacred Mountain,’ said Kit, nodding. ‘The logical place.’

‘Have you been there?’