The Sacred Vault

immediately, she jabbed him with an elbow. ‘Can’t you?’

‘I suppose,’ Eddie said, with a complete lack of contrition.

‘Sorry that you couldn’t come to our wedding do and drone on about restoring your Ford Capri, Alderley.’

Another jab. ‘Eddie!’

‘That’s okay,’ said Alderley sarcastically. ‘It’s the thought that counts. Anyway, I’ve got some information about your friends the Khoils.’ He put a briefcase on the desk, taking out several manila folders and a laptop. ‘While MI6 doesn’t have any specifically actionable intelligence on them, what Mac told me was enough to raise flags. And with the G20 summit going on, any potential threat has to be investigated.’

‘What did you find?’ Nina asked.

‘A lot of financial activity - hardly surprising considering the Khoils own a multinational company, but our banking boffins are always looking for suspicious patterns. They’ve been setting up various . . . well, they’ve described them as “protected archives”, but you could call them bunkers, I suppose. Isolated facilities with everything needed for long-term survival - exactly the kind of thing you’d want if you planned to spark off World War Three. An old salt mine in Montana, something in Australia, Mongolia - and a place in Greenland, which is, according to their flightplan, where they’re going.’

Nina turned to Kit. ‘Can you put out a warrant on them?’

‘I’m afraid not. At the moment, we don’t have enough direct evidence to issue a red notice. Based on our statements there is enough to issue a green notice, but that’s just a warning to local police of possible criminal activity, not a confirmation.’

‘Why the hell would they want to go to Greenland?’ Eddie hooted. ‘There’s not a lot there.’

‘That might be why they’ve gone,’ said Nina, a possibility striking her. ‘Pramesh said one of the reasons they stole those treasures was to protect them while everything else collapses. We saw in Iraq what happened to the country’s museums - they were looted, and most of the contents still haven’t been found. Imagine that on a global scale! But if you wanted to keep something absolutely safe, you’d put it as far away from civilisation as possible - like that seed store in Norway, the Doomsday Vault. Maybe they’re hiding everything they’ve stolen in Greenland. Peter, do you know exactly what kind of facility they have there?’

Already flicked through the folders, then shook his head. ‘Some decommissioned Cold War ice station. I don’t have the details.’

‘If that’s their bolt-hole, there must be some significance to it.’ She gestured at the laptop. ‘Can I use your computer?’

Alderley nodded, and Nina opened the machine. ‘What are you looking for?’ Mac asked.

‘Whatever they’re doing up there.’

‘How are you going to find that out?’ Alderley asked dubiously.

She went to the web browser - and loaded the Qexia search engine. ‘To quote their own commercials,’ she said with a grin, ‘just ask.’

It took only a minute for the network of links to produce a result that surprised everyone in the room. ‘That’s his data centre?’ said Eddie, reading the news article, translated from the Danish, that accompanied a picture of Khoil standing before a bizarre structure. ‘Bloody hell. And I thought his house was over the top.’

‘It says it’s over a hundred miles from the nearest settlement,’ said Nina. ‘If you wanted to keep something hidden, it’s a good place.’

‘So what do we do? Fly up there and knock?’

‘If Interpol find anything to tie the Khoils to the Vault of Shiva, then yes - it directly connects them to the attempted theft of the Talonor Codex in San Francisco. As soon as they have something, they can issue an arrest warrant. Am I right, Kit?’

‘The Indian government is flying a team to Mount Kedarnath first thing tomorrow,’ Kit replied. ‘There are two crashed helicopters there. If their tail numbers match the ones hired by the Khoils’ company, we have our connection. We can upgrade the green notice to a red, and work with the Greenland police to search’ - he indicated the strange building on the laptop screen - ‘this place.’

‘Will you be going?’ Nina asked.

He tapped the crutch on the floor. ‘I don’t think so. But we will still need an expert to identify any artefacts that might be found there. If you want to go.’

‘Absolutely,’ said Nina immediately.

‘That wasn’t what I was going to say,’ Eddie grumbled, only half joking. ‘We just got back from the Himalayas, and now you want to go somewhere even colder?’

‘It’ll be worth it to see the expression on the Khoils’ faces when they get arrested.’ She turned to Alderley. ‘Is there anything else you can do to protect the summit in the meantime?’

‘Without any specific threat, all I can do is try to persuade the Indians to raise the security alert level - and it’s already pretty high. But . . .’ He thought for a moment, rubbing his moustache. ‘All the countries at the G20 have intelligence officers in their delegations - my opposite numbers, you could say. I can have quiet words with them, try to get them to take a gander at the Khoils for themselves. If we pool information, we might be able to find something actionable.’

‘How long will it take, though?’ asked Nina. ‘The summit starts tomorrow.’

‘Yeah,’ Eddie added. ‘It won’t help much if whatever Khoil’s planning happens while you’re swanning about at some spooks’ cocktail party.’

‘That’s not quite what I’ll be doing,’ said Alderley irritably. ‘As a matter of fact, I was going to suggest that Mac comes with me to talk to some of these people. And Mr Jindal, too. Getting first- hand accounts from reliable sources can speed things up enormously.’

‘Will you be able to get us security clearance for the summit?’ Mac asked.

‘For an MI6 adviser and an Interpol officer? No problem. It’s not as though you’re disreputable types.’ He looked directly at Eddie, who mouthed an obscenity.

‘I’m happy to help as much as I can,’ said Kit.

‘Great. I’ll make the arrangements.’ He took out his phone. Mac stepped forward to speak to Nina and Eddie. ‘So, off to Greenland? Rather you than me. One of the best things about retiring from the Regiment was knowing that I’d never have to spend another minute on a glacier.’

‘Funny, I thought that too,’ said Eddie. ‘Didn’t quite work out.’

The Scot smiled. ‘Well, best of luck. And wrap up warm.’

‘Don’t worry,’ Nina assured him. ‘I’m not planning to spend one second longer than I have to in the cold!’

31

Greenland

Nina gazed out of the porthole of the de Havilland Twin Otter aircraft at the landscape ten thousand feet below. It was an unbroken, empty swathe of snow, and in the near-eternal night of the Arctic winter there should have been nothing to see . . . but instead, it was one of the most amazing natural sights she had ever set eyes upon.

The sky was alive with the shimmering glow of the aurora borealis, green and red and pink lights coiling across the dark dome above. The blank snowscape became a giant canvas, a piece of abstract expressionism on a grand scale as colours were poured over it from the heavens. ‘Eddie,’ she said excitedly. ‘You’ve got to see this.’

Eddie paused in his discussion with Walther Probst, Interpol’s Tactical Liaison Officer, to glance through another window, ‘Not bad,’ he grunted, turning back to the German.

‘That’s all you’ve got to say? “Not bad”?’

‘I’ve seen it before. The SAS does Arctic training in Norway. After a couple of days freezing your arse off, you stop noticing it. Actually, it’s kind of a pain because it makes you easier to see.’

‘I married a philistine,’ she complained before joining the two men. ‘How long till we get there?’