Temple of the Gods

His heart began to race as they reached the lower level. The limo was a long dark shape in the concrete gloom about fifty metres away. He headed for it, the gun hard against his ribs.

‘Jeez, could you have parked any farther off?’ said Nina, trying to hold in another yawn. She had expected her ride to be waiting near the terminal’s entrance with the buses and cabs.

The chauffeur mumbled a vague apology, then opened the rear door for her. She climbed inside. ‘Thank you.’ He didn’t acknowledge her, instead closing the door and putting her bags in the trunk. Nina checked her watch. If the traffic were favourable, she might reach the UN in around forty minutes. No telling how long Penrose’s meetings would drag on, though…

The trunk lid slammed. The chauffeur walked back to the driver’s side door. He opened it, but didn’t immediately get in, instead reaching inside his jacket with a gloved hand.

Turning away to make sure his target couldn’t see what he was doing, the assassin drew his gun. He started to enter the limo—

Someone hit him hard from behind, smashing his face against the edge of the roof.

Nina jumped as a loud metallic bang echoed through the limo. The driver was struggling with somebody—

She glimpsed a gun as the two men fought.

Jesus! It was a carjacking!

She tried to open the door — and found to her horror that the handle refused to move. Child-locked. The other door was the same. She stabbed at the window switch to lower it, but without the key in the ignition the mechanism was inert.

The driver slammed against the limo’s side, his attacker delivering a punch to his stomach before grabbing his arm. The gun clacked against the rear window. A thwat as it fired, the bullet hitting the concrete floor and ricocheting away with a whine. Another shot, and a car’s windshield shattered, setting off the vehicle’s alarm.

The chauffeur struck back, and the other man lurched away. The gun came up — but not pointing at the assailant.

It was aimed at Nina.

Trapped, all she could do was dive into the footwell—

The gun fired — just as the second man hurled himself bodily at the chauffeur. The window shattered from the force of the bullet at point-blank range, the round tearing into the leather upholstery beside Nina. She shrieked.

The new arrival twisted the chauffeur’s right arm savagely behind his back. The driver let out a strangled cry of pain, free hand clawing over his shoulder at his opponent’s eyes. The wig slipped off his head as he tried to break loose, knees bashing against the limo’s door—

Another muffled thwat, a spent casing clinking off the floor. The chauffeur convulsed, face twisted into an anguished grimace by the pain of the bullet that had just ripped into the back of his calf. Before he could even scream, the other man slammed him face-first against the top of the door frame. He dropped to the concrete, unconscious.

The victor stepped over him and tugged at the door handle. The lock released with a clunk. Nina stared up at her saviour.

‘So this is what you get up to while I’m away, is it?’ said a Yorkshire voice.

She gawped at the dishevelled, bearded figure. ‘Eddie?’

Her husband smiled. ‘Last time I checked. Come on, open the boot so I can dump this twat in it before anyone sees him.’

He extended his hand. She hesitantly took it, and he helped her out of the limo. The chauffeur lay at her feet. ‘Son of a bitch!’ she suddenly cried, booting him again and again.

Eddie pulled her back. ‘What the hell are you doing?’

‘I’m kicking his ass, like I promised I would!’

‘Er… okay,’ he said, bewildered. ‘Now you’ve done that, can we shift him?’ He glanced warily towards the stairwell in case anyone was coming to investigate the alarm.

Nina opened the trunk. Eddie dragged the driver to the limo’s rear and dumped him inside. He quickly searched his pockets, producing the car keys, then slammed the lid and retrieved the gun. ‘There might be more of them — we need to get out of the airport.’ He got into the driver’s seat and started the car.

Nina joined him in the front passenger seat. ‘Eddie?’

‘Yeah?’

‘What the fuck is going on?’

‘That’s a bloody good question,’ he replied as he put the limo into gear and made a hurried exit from the car park.

An hour and a half later, having abandoned the limousine — after wiping it clean of fingerprints — in Queens and taken a cab into Manhattan, the couple faced each other over a table in a darkened corner of a Midtown bar. ‘We should have gone back to the apartment,’ Nina grumbled.

‘Trust me, there’s nothing I’d like more,’ said Eddie. ‘But it might not be a good idea me being seen around there.’ He shook his head. ‘Christ, what a mess.’

Right now, Nina didn’t want to think that far ahead. She took in her husband’s less than pristine appearance. ‘That’s not the only thing that’s a mess.’

Eddie gingerly touched his jaw where the assassin had landed a blow. ‘That guy got in a couple of punches.’

‘No, I meant in general. What is with the beard?’

‘You don’t like it?’

‘Would you be offended if I didn’t?’

‘N—’

‘I hate it,’ she said, before he could even finish the word. ‘I don’t know if you were trying for a Commander Riker look or something, but it’s definitely more towards the Charles Manson end of the beard spectrum.’

‘First chance we’ve had for a proper chat in over three months, and that’s all you want to talk about?’

Her change of expression warned him that was far from the case. ‘God, no, Eddie,’ Nina said with a long sigh. She spread her fingers, putting the tips to her temples. ‘There’s so much I want to say that it feels as though it’s all going to burst right out of my skull. I mean, Jesus Christ, Eddie. Jesus Christ!’ She hit his arm, far from gently.

‘Ow,’ he said. ‘What was that for?’ She did it again, harder. ‘Ow!’

‘What was that for?’ she echoed incredulously, voice rising in both volume and pitch. ‘For God’s sake! You disappear and leave me for three months, not a word the whole time, the police and Interpol and God knows who else are scouring the globe for you — then you turn up out of nowhere at the top of a Japanese skyscraper, which then gets blown up with me inside it, and when I finally get back home after being chased and shot at in Rome, you pop up again as if by magic to save me from some asshole who was apparently trying to kidnap and murder me! The least I deserve is some kind of goddamn explanation!’

‘Oh. Yeah. All that. So what happened in Rome?’

‘Don’t change the subject!’ she snapped, raising her fist once more.

‘All right, fucking hell! Just don’t hit me again, okay? I’ve had people laying into me for the past week, and I’m getting pretty pissed off with it.’

‘Sorry,’ she muttered. ‘I’m just… I’m so happy to see you again, you wouldn’t believe it. But I’m also so mad at you.’

‘Okay, so stick with the happy part for now, all right?’ said Eddie. ‘You want to know what I’ve been doing? I’ve been looking for Stikes, for one thing. I had to bust someone out of a Zimbabwean prison to track him down, but I finally found him… and you were there with him.’

‘I was not “with” him!’ she protested.

‘Yeah, I know that now. But he got away, and I’m not going to get any more help from the person who told me how to find him. Seeing as she tried to kill me.’

Nina sighed. ‘What is it about us? Why are we incapable of having a normal life that doesn’t include regular assassination attempts?’