Temple of the Gods

raising suspicion; the operation had already gone to hell, and he wanted to get out of the confines of the train as quickly as possible.

He spied another black bag on the luggage rack. The fact that nobody was sitting in the seats immediately beneath it made it a likely prospect. None of the passengers nearby paid him any attention as he took it from the rack, more concerned with questioning the guard about the delay. He unzipped the holdall. Inside was a polycarbonate case. He opened it — and smiled.

Three crude statuettes of purple stone gazed dumbly back at him. Why they were important, he didn’t know, or care. His superiors wanted them, and that was all that mattered. He closed the case, refastened the bag, then squeezed back down the aisle.

The door to the boarding compartment slid open and he went through. Those to the connecting passage were push-button operated rather than fully automatic, so he tapped the control and waited for them to hiss apart—

An arm locked round his throat from behind, pinning him in a brutal chokehold as a clenched fist pounded paralysingly into his kidneys. A voice growled in his ear: ‘I think that’s my bag.’

The fist rose to his head, opened, clamped round his face—

There was a horrible crackling snap as Eddie twisted hard and broke the man’s neck. He let the limp body drop, ignoring the helpless choking gurgles from the agent’s crushed windpipe as he took the SD9 from inside his jacket, then collected the bag before moving at speed into the next carriage.

He headed for the first-class coaches. The body would soon be discovered, so he had to get off the train as quickly as possible. But he also had to find Scarber.

One way or another, she was going to give him answers.

He reached car number ten, immediately noticing a breeze as the sliding door opened. A window had been smashed. Scarber’s escape route. He hurried to it, gun at the ready. The train was on a long viaduct over a bowl of farmland. The lights of towns shimmered in the distance ahead and behind, but he was searching for something nearer…

Movement on the tracks, a scurrying figure picked out by the glow from inside the train. Scarber. Eddie jumped down and ran after her. She was crossing the other line, heading for the broad concrete maintenance path along the viaduct’s edge.

He followed, closing quickly. He would catch up well before the end of the bridge, leaving her with nowhere to run.

Which meant she would fight. The former agent wouldn’t give up easily.

He passed the shinkansen’s streamlined nose, now only a hundred metres behind her. Tough and resourceful Scarber might be, but she was a decade older than Eddie, and a chain-smoker to boot. Fifty metres. With the rumble of the train’s motors fading behind her, she would soon hear him…

Forty metres — and Scarber looked back.

Eddie dropped the bag, taking careful aim as the woman spun and raised her gun. He couldn’t risk killing her, not yet.

Scarber had no such restraints. She fired three rapid shots. Bullets cracked against the concrete, closer to him each time—

Eddie pulled the trigger. One shot, but it was all he needed. Scarber shrieked and staggered, dropping her gun and clapping her left hand to her right shoulder.

Keeping the SD9 fixed on her, he ran the rest of the way. ‘You fucking little shit!’ Scarber hissed.

He kicked her gun away. ‘You’ll live — if you tell me who you’re working for. Otherwise I’ll shoot you right here.’

Her voice became tremulous. ‘You’d shoot a defenceless woman?’

Eddie almost laughed. ‘Defenceless? You just tried to fucking kill me!’

The tremor disappeared. ‘No, I didn’t think you’d buy that.’ She screwed up her face in pain, looking down at her injured arm. ‘All right. But do I have your word that you’ll let me go if I tell you?’

‘Yeah. I just want to know who wants me and Nina dead.’ Behind her, a new light appeared in the far distance — another bullet train, coming the other way. The service path was wide enough for them to keep safely clear, though he expected it would be horribly loud. ‘Think we should move back a bit first, mind.’ He retreated a couple of steps.

Scarber followed, coming closer to him. ‘There are two people. One of them is only interested in seeing your wife dead — you’re not even on his radar. It’s the other who has a personal grievance.’

‘Who?’

‘Victor Dalton.’

The name sent a shock running through him. Victor Dalton — the ex-President of the United States. The man who two years earlier had tried to have Eddie and Nina killed to cover up his involvement in a conspiracy, and in return had been forced to resign from office in utter humiliation when a video of him having sex with Eddie’s ex-wife Sophia Blackwood hit the Internet.

Which would explain his grudge, certainly.

‘Dalton?’ echoed Eddie, stunned.

Scarber took her hand from the bullet wound. ‘Hell of a thing, huh, kiddo?’

All kinds of questions sprang to his mind, but one was far and away at the head of the list. ‘So who’s the other per—’

A flat snick, and Scarber’s hand suddenly slashed at his throat. He instinctively whipped up his gun arm to block it — then jumped back with a pained yell as something stabbed into his forearm. Before he could recover, another swipe knocked the Smith & Wesson from his hand with a clack of metal against metal.

The former agent still had a trick up her sleeve — literally. A slender blade jutted out from beneath her wrist: a spring-loaded weapon strapped to her arm. She jabbed it at Eddie’s face again, forcing him to stumble back or be blinded.

The approaching train was now much nearer, racing towards them at full speed, but Scarber’s focus was entirely on the fallen gun. She bent to retrieve it, then whirled and pointed it at Eddie—

He drove a fearsome spin-kick into her stomach, sending her flying backwards — into the path of the oncoming train.

The whump as its pointed prow hit her at a hundred and eighty miles per hour was audible even over the thunder of motors and the scream of displaced air. The shinkansen’s white nose suddenly became a bright red.

Eddie dropped to the concrete, shielding his ears as the train blasted past. Even if the driver reacted instantly to the collision and slammed on the emergency brakes, it would still take a mile for the express to come to a stop. The moment the rearmost car passed, he hurried back to collect the bag, then ran for the end of the viaduct. With two bullet trains now halted and bodies littering the scene, a major police operation would soon begin, and he needed as big a head start as possible.

Once he was clear, though, he knew his next step. He had to get back to the United States.

And deal with Victor Dalton.

11 Rome

Returning to New York via Italy hadn’t been Nina’s plan, but she had been left with more than enough time while waiting to deal with the Japanese authorities to think about the full implications of the events in the Takashi building.

Foremost on her mind was her husband. Three months without even an attempt to communicate, then he appeared out of the blue? She didn’t know whether to be overjoyed or furious — though his accusing her of being in