Temple of the Gods

‘Oh, yes. Helicopters. Tremendous fun.’

‘He’s not a pilot,’ said Julie, teasing. ‘I bought him a flying lesson for his birthday last year, and now he thinks he’s Airwolf. He’s only done it four times.’

‘Five times,’ Larry corrected.

‘No, I’m sure it’s — wait, did you go on a flight without me?’

‘Yes, when I took Jim and David from the golf club up for a spin last month. I told you about it.’ Julie’s slightly hurt expression suggested to Nina that he hadn’t. ‘Anyway, yes, I’ll be flying us up there.’

‘I’m sure it’ll be great,’ said Nina, not especially caring. ‘But you came to New York first?’

‘You have to see New York when you visit the States, don’t you? I think it’s mandatory now, like having your fingerprints taken at immigration.’ He shook his head. ‘The stories I’ve heard from American immigration officers about how useless that whole system is…’

‘I’m sure Nina’s not interested in talking shop, love,’ chided Julie. She turned to the redhead. ‘So what have you been doing since we last saw you?’

Despite her best efforts, Nina couldn’t hold back her sarcasm. ‘Well, I discovered the lost city of El Dorado, and then my husband disappeared and is now wanted for murder.’

There was an awkward silence.

‘I’m… I’m sorry,’ Nina eventually said. ‘It’s just that the last three months have been… stressful. To say the least.’

‘No, no, don’t apologise — I shouldn’t have asked such a silly question,’ Julie said sympathetically. ‘It must have been horrible.’

‘It still is. But thanks.’

‘Have you… have you heard from Eddie? Or anything about him?’

‘No. Not directly,’ Nina replied, the sudden angry bitterness behind the words surprising even her. ‘According to Interpol he’s alive, but beyond that I don’t know.’

‘I’m sorry.’ Julie looked at her husband as if expecting him to follow up her question, but he offered nothing.

A waiter glided over to the table, asking if they were ready to order. Larry shooed him away. Nina turned her gaze to her father-in-law. ‘You actually last saw Eddie after I did, in England. Elizabeth told me about it, but… what about you? Why did Eddie hit you?’

Larry was annoyed to be reminded. ‘He caught me off guard,’ he said, unconsciously raising a hand to rub a long-faded bruise on his jaw. ‘Unbelievable. Right after Catherine’s burial service, too. I can’t believe he was so disrespectful.’

Nina knew that was the last thing Eddie would have wanted to do; of all his family members in England, he had been closest to his late grandmother by far. ‘He must have had some reason to be so angry at you.’

‘God knows what,’ Larry said huffily. ‘He shows up out of the blue, starts ranting on at me, and then pow! Smacks me in the mouth.’

Nina raised a quizzical eyebrow. ‘Ranting? About what?’

‘About some friend of his who’d died.’

‘Do you mean Mac? Jim McCrimmon?’

‘Yeah, him. He blamed me for it, for God knows what reason.’

She gave him a deeply suspicious look. ‘And why would Eddie do that? Was it anything to do with when he met you in Bogota?’

Larry said nothing, but Julie rounded on him. ‘Wait, you met Eddie in Colombia? You didn’t tell me about that!’

‘I’m sure I mentioned it,’ Larry said uncomfortably.

Scowling, the blonde turned away from her husband to address Nina. ‘I’m trying to remember what Eddie said — I’m sorry, I was so surprised to see him, and the whole thing happened so fast, I didn’t really get it all. But he said…’ Her frown deepened with the effort of mental dredging. ‘He said Larry talked to someone about you, about El Dorado — and then this guy turned up there.’

‘Stikes?’ Nina suggested.

‘Yes, that’s it! Stikes.’

Now it was Nina’s turn to round on Larry. ‘You talked to Stikes? About me?’

‘He was a client of mine,’ Larry replied defensively.

‘He was what?’ The last word came out as an angry yelp, drawing the attention of other diners. She dropped her voice to a furious whisper. ‘You were working for Alexander goddamn Stikes?’

‘I told Edward the same thing I’m going to tell you,’ said Larry, bristling. ‘He was just a client who asked me to arrange the shipping of some goods on behalf of his clients. His company was a legitimate British business, and none of the goods were illegal or on any international watch lists. So I did nothing wrong.’ He slapped both hands down on the table for emphasis. ‘Nothing.’

Nina was already putting the pieces together, and not liking the picture they formed. ‘And these clients of his: they wouldn’t have been General Salbatore Callas and Francisco de Quesada, would they?’

The answer emerged with considerable reluctance. ‘Yes.’

‘A murderer who tried to overthrow the Venezuelan president, and a drug lord?’

‘What they do for a living isn’t my business,’ Larry protested. ‘Do postmen carry out background checks before they give someone their mail?’

‘Postmen don’t pick and choose who they deliver to,’ Nina countered. ‘You do.’ She thought for a moment, still fuming. ‘I didn’t know about any of this — but Eddie must have, before he saw you in Bogota. What happened?’

The waiter reappeared. ‘Not now,’ Larry snapped, before continuing with bad grace: ‘All right, yes, I made a delivery to de Quesada in Colombia.’

‘Let me guess,’ Nina cut in. ‘Two Inca artefacts, one of which was made of solid gold and weighed about two tons?’

‘It was a hell of a job to transport, let me tell you,’ said Larry almost with pride, before the glares of the two women reminded him to stick to the point. ‘But I made the delivery and de Quesada was impressed at how quickly I’d arranged everything, so I gave him my card in case he might put any future work my way. But I didn’t think any more of it — until Edward turned up at my hotel. With my business card. He threatened that if I didn’t give my entire fee to charity, he was going to turn the card — with my fingerprints on it, obviously — over to Interpol and have me implicated in whatever the hell was going on.’

‘That would be murder, robbery, an attempted coup and drug smuggling,’ Nina reminded him. ‘Just to start with.’

‘None of which had anything to do with me! But do you have any idea how much being accused of involvement in that sort of thing could damage my business? Obviously I was worried — and I don’t take threats lying down, especially not from my own son. So I called Stikes to see if there was anything he could do to fix the situation.’

‘And… what? You told him that we were searching for El Dorado in Peru?’

A pause, Larry choosing his words with care. ‘It came up,’ he admitted. ‘Stikes asked about you — I didn’t think anything of it,’ he said defensively as Nina’s look darkened. ‘He wanted to know where you were. I assumed it was because he might want to straighten things out with you.’

While for the most part Larry did not resemble his son physically, being taller and thinner-faced, their eyes were all but identical, and Nina knew one of Eddie’s subtle expressions well enough to recognise the same on his father: he was dissembling.

‘But you must have known that Eddie and Stikes weren’t exactly old army buddies.’

‘Not until Edward told me,’ Larry insisted. ‘When Stikes first contacted me, he said he was actually a friend of his, and that Edward had recommended me to him for a job.’

‘And you believed him? After what happened when we had dinner at your house?’

‘I thought that maybe Edward was trying to apologise by sending me a potential client. Clearly I was wrong.’

‘But after Eddie told you, you still spoke to Stikes anyway?’ Nina’s voice became accusing. ‘Did you think that he might, I don’t know, make your problem go away?’