‘Now?’
‘Yeah.’
‘You should have said no.’
‘I can’t face having two arguments at once.’ She returned the handset to the maid, who made as rapid an exit as etiquette would allow. ‘They’re sending a car. I’ll be back as soon as I can. We can talk then. If you’ve calmed down.’
‘Never been calmer,’ rumbled Eddie, tapping a piece of the broken chair with his foot as she left.
The sky over Lima had darkened, the city coming alive with sparkling pinpoints. But Eddie now had his back to the view, sitting on a couch in the fading half-light. The smashed furniture was still strewn across the floor, the maid not having dared return to clean it up.
He heard footsteps and raised his eyes to see Macy at the doorway. ‘Eddie? Why are you in the dark – jeez!’ She saw the wreckage. ‘What happened?’
‘I had words with the chair,’ Eddie said drily. He had managed to recover his composure since Nina’s departure, but was still simmering inside, grief and anger and confusion all swirling in a toxic mix.
‘Uh-huh . . . ’ Macy entered cautiously. ‘Where’s Nina?’
‘Busy.’ He said the word with a caustic sourness. ‘She went to talk to the President.’
Her eyebrows shot up. ‘Of America?’
‘Of Peru.’
They fell again, considerably less impressed. ‘Oh.’ She went to the window, twitching fingers betraying her awkwardness before she finally spoke her mind. ‘I, ah . . . heard you two arguing. While I was in the shower, so I guess it must have been a big one.’
‘You could say that.’
‘What was it about?’
Tact and subtlety had never been Macy’s strong points, but Eddie managed to hold back a scathing reply; she was also genuinely concerned. ‘Doesn’t matter,’ he said instead. ‘All started because I got some bad news.’
‘What?’
He took a deep breath. ‘My nan died.’
‘Your nan? Oh!’ exclaimed Macy, as she realised she had met her. She hurried to the couch and sat beside him. ‘Oh no, I’m sorry. That’s terrible. She was so sweet!’
‘Yeah, she was,’ said Eddie.
‘God, I’m really sorry. And right after Mac as well—’ She clamped her mouth shut, appalled at her own insensitivity. ‘Sorry,’ she mumbled. ‘I didn’t mean . . .’
Eddie gave her a small, sad smile. ‘Don’t worry about it. This really has been a fucking shitty day all round. At least it can’t get any worse.’
‘I’m still sorry,’ she said. ‘Can I – is there anything you want?’
‘My nan back. And Mac.’
Macy wasn’t sure how to react to that, until Eddie eased her mind with another faint smile. ‘Mr McCrimmon really meant a lot to you, didn’t he?’ she said. ‘How long have you known him?’
‘A long time. It was . . .’ He worked it out. ‘Christ, over sixteen years, when I first joined the SAS. God knows why, but he took me under his wing.’
‘He must have seen something good in you,’ Macy suggested.
‘Again, God knows why. But yeah, he sorted me out. I was a bit of an arsehole when I was younger. Bad attitude, aggressive . . .’
She glanced at the demolished chair. ‘You don’t say.’
‘Oi! You want me to have words with you too?’ But it was said lightly, not with anger. ‘He got me through a lot of stuff. I’d be dead ten times over if it hadn’t been for him – not just when I was in the Regiment. He taught me pretty much everything I know. And I don’t mean about being a soldier, I mean about . . . about being a good person. About doing the right thing.’
‘I don’t think that’s something you can teach,’ Macy said quietly. ‘It’s something that’s there already.’
‘But he brought it out, taught me to never give up. “Fight to the end”, that was his motto. It—’ He broke off, voice catching. ‘It was the last thing he said before he died.’ He lowered his head. ‘Christ. I shouldn’t have left him. I shouldn’t have let him come at all, but . . . ’ He sat up, misery returning with self-recrimination. ‘If I’d gone with Kit to find him instead of going after Stikes, he’d still be alive. I had an AK, I would have been able to take out Pachac, and Mac could have blown up the chopper before it took off. But I didn’t, and Pachac shot him and Kit – so Stikes got away. It’s all my fault.’
‘It wasn’t,’ Macy insisted. ‘You can’t blame yourself. And it couldn’t have . . .’ She paused, frowning.
‘What?’
‘I’m not sure, but . . . ’ The frown deepened as she tried to remember the sequence of events in the lost city. ‘Pachac couldn’t have done what he did until
‘No, he must have done,’ Eddie countered. ‘Mac told me he was about to take out Stikes’s chopper when he got shot. Kit said so as well – Pachac caught them by surprise.’
Macy shook her head. ‘No, that’s wrong. I met Kit just as the chopper was going out of the cave, and he
