Temple of the Gods

‘I don’t know, but… a large sum, I imagine.’

‘Which is probably now in Stikes’s pocket. Great,’ she said glumly. ‘When does he want to see me?’

‘He said that’s up to you,’ said Penrose, ‘but from the IHA’s point of view, the sooner the better. If the statues are off the market, that’s one security issue we no longer need worry about.’

She considered it. ‘Okay, I’ll go see him. Once this is wrapped up, I can focus on the Atlantis excavations.’

Penrose nodded. ‘A sound choice. I’ll let Mr Takashi know.’

He left the office, and Nina picked up her phone. ‘Lola. I need you to book a flight for me.’

Half a world away, Eddie had completed a flight of his own, and was making a taxi journey through the bustling streets of Hong Kong. He had visited the former British colony several times before, and was always amazed by the island’s energy and vibrancy, a hothouse for deal-making and fast action. It was a vanguard for the new China, raw entrepreneurial capitalism working at a merciless pace that shocked even Americans. Anyone who wasn’t constantly clawing their way up like the ever-climbing skyscrapers very quickly got trampled.

But this time, the city’s rush was nothing more than a background hum. There was only one thing on his mind. The taxi deposited him at a corner near the address he had been given, and he carved his way like an icebreaker through the crowds filling the narrow, advertising-banner-filled street to reach one particular door. He found the buzzer for the apartment and pushed it. After a pause, a female voice spoke in Cantonese.

‘It’s Eddie Chase,’ he said.

The voice switched to English. ‘You made it. Come on in. Sixth floor, on the left.’ The door latch clacked, and he entered the building.

There was no lift, so he pounded up the cramped stairwell to the sixth floor. A woman opened the door as he reached it. ‘Come inside.’

There was no mistaking Madeline Scarber’s sandpaper-throated voice, but its owner was very different from Eddie’s preconceptions. For a start, her name had led him to assume that she was Caucasian, but the short, skeletal woman with the helmet-like black bob was of Chinese descent. She was also younger than he had imagined, around fifty rather than the pensioner her gravelly growl suggested. ‘Not what you expected, huh?’ she said as she ushered him inside. ‘My mother was Chinese — German, and she married a Dutch American. I’m a one-woman melting pot.’

More like a one-woman ashtray, Eddie thought as the all-pervading reek of stale cigarette smoke hit him, but he kept it to himself. Scarber closed the door and followed him into a lounge. The room was expensively furnished in stark black and white, a glimpse of the harbour visible through the window between two much taller apartment blocks. She waved for him to sit on a stylish but, as it turned out, not especially comfortable leather couch. ‘So you’re here, kiddo. I guess you want to know what I want from you in return for telling you how to find Alexander Stikes.’

‘It’d crossed my mind.’

Scarber lit a cigarette, then almost as an afterthought offered him one. ‘We’d like you to do something for us.’

‘We?’ Eddie asked as she held out her expensive lighter.

‘The people I represent. We have a mutual enemy.’

‘Stikes?’

She shook her head. ‘Stikes is part of it, but no big deal to us.’

‘He is to me.’

‘I know. Which is why my proposal will benefit us both.’

He leaned back and blew out smoke. ‘So get to the point, then. What’s the job?’

Scarber slowly paced across the lounge, a line of smoke trailing behind her. ‘Stikes stole something from your wife — three stone figures.’

Eddie stiffened. ‘Those statues?’ he snapped. ‘For fuck’s sake! You know how many people have died because of those fucking things — and now you want me to get them for you?’

‘No. We don’t want you to get them. We want you to destroy them.’

It took him a second to get over his surprise. ‘Now that’s more like it.’

‘We both know that the statues have unusual properties — properties that could be very dangerous if they fall into the hands of the wrong people. That can’t be allowed to happen.’

‘And how do you know that?’

‘I’ve got access to certain classified information. Including the IHA’s files on earth energy.’

He shot her a mistrustful look. ‘You’re a spook, aren’t you? CIA?’

‘Former spook,’ Scarber replied. ‘Now, I’m what you might call a freelancer.’

‘Not a big fan of spooks. Been fucked over by them a few times. They tend to lie about what they’re really doing.’

The accusation didn’t bother her. ‘Nature of the business, kiddo.’

‘So what is your business? Why’re you so keen to destroy the statues? Who are you working for?’

‘That doesn’t matter.’

‘Oh, it bloody does.’

She abruptly crossed back to him, face hardening. ‘Do you want to know where Stikes is or not? This is the situation: we want the statues destroyed. Stikes has the statues. You want to kill Stikes. It’s a simple enough proposition — we tell you where he is, you find him, destroy the statues… and then you can do whatever you want with him. We’ll even pay you. How does half a million dollars sound?’

‘I’d kill Stikes for free… but yeah, half a mil sounds pretty good,’ said Eddie. He had spent the last three months hunting for Stikes, and this was by far the closest he had come to tracking down his nemesis. However, there were too many aspects of the deal he didn’t like, not least Scarber’s secrecy about her employer. ‘But…’

‘There’s something else we can offer,’ she said, seeing his hesitancy. ‘We can make the charges against you go away. Completely. You’ll be able to go home. To your wife.’

Eddie was silent for a long moment. ‘How can you manage that?’

‘Let’s just say my employers have a lot of influence.’

His suspicion returned. ‘Then why do they need me to do this job?’

‘Because you’re very highly motivated. I’ve read your IHA file too; you’re extremely good at what you do. If anyone can get to Stikes, you can.’

‘So I take it he’s not just hanging out by a pool somewhere. Where is he?’

‘Do we have a deal?’

He considered it… then nodded. ‘Where’s Stikes?’

‘Japan. Tokyo, specifically. But he’ll be hard to reach. We can get you into the building, but you’ll have to make your own way to him from there.’

‘What building?’

Scarber finished her cigarette. ‘The headquarters of Takashi Industries.’

6 Tokyo

It was Nina’s first visit to Japan, and she looked out at the sprawling city from the limo that had collected her from Narita Airport with great interest. As a New Yorker she was no stranger to tall buildings, but the differences between those of her home and Tokyo intrigued her, not least the way that some rooftops were home to so many garish billboards and advertising banners that they resembled clipper ships, about to set sail across the urban sea.

One building stood out — not because it was festooned with hoardings, but instead because several wind turbines rose gracefully above its roof. She guessed it to be around fifty storeys tall; nothing remarkable by New York standards, but enough to put it in the upper ranks of this earthquake-prone country’s structures. An illuminated