Moon Mask (51 page)

“Almost?”

“Well, she reckons there’ll be some residual tachyons like, I dunno, floating about, or whatever they do, but not enough to cause any harm.”

Just then, the door to the office opened and Raine emerged. Gibbs was instantly on his feet, moving in like a predator about to strike, but Raine ignored him. Instead, he marched resolutely across the hanger towards Sid and Nadia. King could instantly tell that something was wrong. The ‘other’ Raine was there again. Not the easy-go-lucky flyboy that he portrayed, but the intense, searing, determined man whose shockingly blue eyes held menace and danger. The air practically buzzed with an almost palpable charge. A storm about to erupt.

Quick as a flash, Raine grasped Nadia and hauled her off her feet, slamming her down on the bonnet of the jeep parked in the hanger.

“What the hell are you doing?!” Sid demanded, rushing forward to grasp his arm, but he held tight to Nadia’s throat, pinning her down.

“You sold us out to the Russians!” Raine spat, his face twisted in anger.

“Nate!” King bellowed at him as he ran to join the commotion. Gibbs was there also, pulling Raine away from the Russian woman. Everyone was yelling at him but Raine was focussed solely on Nadia.

“You nearly got us all killed!”

Nadia tried to protest, her hands clamped around the man’s wrists, trying to prise him off but to no avail.

“Let her go!” Gibbs shouted. “That’s an order!”

“What are you talking about?” King barked. By now, the entire team was gathered around. Outside, a Merlin helicopter bowed to the audience in a display of the machine’s agility. “Nadia’s not betrayed anyone.”

“I won’t tell you again, Raine!” Gibbs un-holstered his sidearm and jabbed the muzzle firmly against the side of Raine’s head. “Let. Her. Go.”

Raine’s eyes locked on Nadia’s, fury seething from them. His face was hard and unforgiving. Despite her lack of breath, Nadia’s remained cold and impassive. Fire and ice.

“Nate!” Sid snapped.

As though it was a physical struggle, Raine pushed away from Nadia, allowing her to slide to the floor, gasping for breath. She wheezed, pulling long breaths down her bruised wind pipe. Sid was at her side, her hands supporting the trembling woman. King immediately felt a pang of concern at his fiancée’s proximity to the woman who had just been accused of betraying them. He felt guilty for thinking it, but what if Raine was right? What if Nadia was working for the government of her birth? What if, now cornered, she took Sid hostage?

Then the ice cracked and Nadia’s face twisted in anger. “You crazy fucking son of a bitch!” she spat.

“What’s going on, Raine?” Gibbs demanded. He hadn’t holstered his weapon yet, but neither had he decided where to point it: Nadia or Raine? King noticed also that the other soldiers all had moved their hands to their respective weapons. They were twitchy. The situation was tense and King feared that one false move could result in a bloodbath.

“Sid,” he said softly, trying to catch her attention and draw her away.

“It’s okay, Ben,” Nadia replied for her, her voice scathing. “I’m not going to hurt her if that’s what you’re worried about. I’m not going to hurt anyone.” She looked pointedly at her accuser. “Because I have nothing to hide! Nothing to fear.”

“That’s what Langley wanted to talk to you about?” Gibbs asked. Raine nodded. He briefly summarised his conversation with the ambassador.

“And so, because the data was sent to Moscow, it is obvious that
I
am the traitor!” Nadia declared, sarcasm dripping off every word. “How very astute of you Nathan. I am Russian, therefore it must be me, yes?” Her face twisted into a sneer. “You have the intelligence level of a Neanderthal!” As she spoke, more vehemence rose in her voice. She pushed up to her feet but all eyes remained fixed on her. Jumpy. Twitchy. Ready to gun her down at the first sign of trouble.

“You are an idiot!” she shot at him. “And you have now tipped off whoever the
real
traitor is.” She glanced menacingly at each member of the team, King and Sid included. Her stare was accusing.

“I checked the com-logs,” Raine said. “You tried to delete the data-burst once it was sent but it left a digital fingerprint on the laptop’s hard drive. Three bursts altogether. One, shortly after we landed in Jamaica, when we on our little shopping trip in Kingston. Not only do the data traces left on the laptop prove it, but your login was active at the same time that the transmission was received in Moscow. A second burst,” he counted down, “when we were en route to Patagonia. What was that for, Nadia? To give Bill Willis a heads-up that we were coming?”

“No-”

“And a third time,” he cut her off. “When we were on the jet heading to England.”

King saw the concern suddenly flash over Gibbs’ face. The enemy knew where they were . . . again.

Slowly, Gibbs brought his weapon around and pointed it at Nadia. Garcia and West both followed their commander’s action and pulled out their own weapons. King hurriedly pulled Sid away.

But despite the three weapons pointed directly at her, Nadia’s complete attention remained focussed unwaveringly on Raine. His gaze didn’t flicker either.

“Garcia,” Gibbs barked his orders. “Secure Miss Yashina.”

“You nearly got us all killed!” Sid suddenly erupted. King held onto her as she lunged towards the Russian woman. O’Rourke moved in to intercept her as well. “Ben nearly died because you sold us out! You bitch!”

“Hold her back!” Gibbs shouted.

“Sid,” King said, trying to restrain her. The shock of Nadia’s betrayal erupted like Vesuvius in his fiancée. Tears streamed down her cheeks. She pulled against him again and nearly broke loose but this time Lake intercepted as well.

“Get her back!” Gibbs yelled again. “Garcia-”

“This is a mistake,” Nadia protested. “Do you really think I would betray you? To the Russians?!” The question was directed solely at Raine, totally oblivious to the commotion Sid was causing or the three guns pointed at her. Garcia holstered and secured his weapon and then stepped forward. Nadia didn’t resist as he took her hands behind her back and bound her wrists with plastic ties.

“I would see all of Russia burn in the fires of hell and damnation before I ever raised a finger to help them!” The ice was gone from her voice. The fire burned. “My
precious
Russia, to whom I have betrayed you, killed my father and raped and abused me! Perhaps you should have done your homework more thoroughly before you started pointing fingers, Nate!”

“Come on,” Garcia said, shoving her roughly away. Gibbs and West followed, keeping their weapons trained on her. On the far side of the hanger, Sid was dragging in deep breaths in an effort to calm herself.

“You have made a mistake, Nathan!” Nadia shouted back to him as she was ushered into the office. “And now, I think, you will die because of it!”

39:

The Mummy’s Curse

Poldark Mine,

Cornwall, England

“Which
way now?”

“Uh . . . that way.” King pointed down the left most tunnel out of the selection of three. Raine stepped ahead, the torch beam affixed to the helmet of his NBC suit slicing through the gloom while his handheld torch darted around the walls and ceiling of this latest tunnel.

As with the other tunnels they had trekked down for the last twenty minutes, the wooden support beams put in place centuries ago by the ancient tin miners had rotted away. Much of the wall had sagged, the damp soil slouching down to the ground, covering the tracks of whatever antiquated system of carts had once prowled these depths of the earth, ferrying ore to the outside world. In some places the ceiling had caved in completely but narrow gaps had allowed them to squeeze through into the tunnels beyond. Nevertheless, it had been a precarious adventure since they had been lowered down through the shaft which they had discovered and ventured deeper and deeper into the depths of the earth.

Moisture glistened from the walls, large drops echoing loudly as they splashed into stagnant pools. The shards of rotten wood creaked under the pressure of three hundred feet of earth above their heads.

Preparing for his and Raine’s mission into the mine, King had read up on the history of Cornish mining. Now, he wished he hadn’t, because of all the statistics he’d read about - about mines with around forty miles of tunnels dropping to depths of almost 3,000 feet - it was, unsurprisingly, the accident rates that had wedged themselves into his memory. Tale after tale of cave-ins, explosions and gas leaks. And those mines were kept in comparatively good condition, maintained to some degree at least by the miners. He guessed that this however, perhaps a southern extremity of Poldark Mine, had been long since abandoned even in Kha’um’s day. Despite Poldark’s modern visitor centre and underground tours and ghost hunts, he guessed that this branch had been cut off from the main network centuries before. Abandoned, lost and forgotten about.

Which meant, of course, no maintenance whatsoever.

Their booted feet sloshed through the muddy ground as Raine led the way cautiously down this latest tunnel. King held a tablet computer in his hand. Small, flat and compact, its touch screen now displayed an enhanced image of the route etched into Abubakar’s dagger but trying to juxtapose it into his real life surroundings was proving to be very difficult.

Raine had barely said a word since they had started their descent, except for the odd instruction to assist with overcoming some of the obstacles. But King knew it wasn’t just the oppressiveness of the low and crumbing ceiling that kept him quiet.

“You know, it doesn’t make sense.” King had to break the silence. The sense of claustrophobia had been slowly gnawing at him.

“What doesn’t?” Raine’s voice came back to him through tinny-sounding speakers set into his clumsy helmet. His breathing sounded not dissimilar to Darth Vader. As well as offering some limited protection from the tachyon emissions– despite Nadia’s assurances that their bodies were immune to the effects- the suits also protected them from any potentially fatal gases which had been trapped down here for the past three centuries.

“Well, Bill – the mercenary leader – didn’t sound the remotest bit Russian. Surely-”

“It makes perfect sense. You said it yourself, Benny. He was a merc. Nadia fed Moscow our itinerary and Moscow relayed it to their hired help. If the Russians had sent their own team and they’d been discovered, they’d be in the same boat as the Chinese right now.”

“So you’re saying that by using mercenaries, the Russians have got plausible deniability?”

“Something like that,” Raine replied, non-committal. “I guess they figure one international incident is enough at the moment, and it’ll take a lot of people’s bank balances to go through to find the paper trail linking the mercs to Moscow.”

“But we’ve got the proof of the data-bursts.”

“Yeah, but to use that as official evidence means sacrificing the CIA’s ‘asset’ in Moscow, which I guarantee you won’t happen.”

“So, what? Nadia’s going to walk?” There was a longer pause than he had expected. “Nate?”

“She won’t walk,” he replied. “And she won’t talk.”

His words sent a chill running through King. “What do you mean by that?” Raine didn’t answer. “Nate?” Still nothing.

King grasped the other man’s arm and swung him around. A flash of anger flared across Raine’s features and King thought for a moment that he was going to hit him. Then his expression mellowed again.

“There are . . .
ways
of governments dealing with . . . sticky situations.”

“What do you-” He cut himself off. “You don’t mean . . ?”

“Moscow will deny all knowledge of her. Washington won’t be able to let her go. So, she’ll be . . . absorbed, I guess you could say.”

“Absorbed?” King was disgusted. He tried to read Raine’s expression behind the glass face plate but found, once again, that he was unreadable.

“She’ll vanish into the bureaucratic regime of two supposedly peace-time nations, pushed out of existence, forgotten about. Too dangerous to release, too embarrassing to keep.”

“We can’t let that happen. Whatever she’s done-”

“Nadia knew the risks,” Raine replied harshly. “Just as I did.” He laughed bitterly. “We’re pawns to them, Benny. To Washington, Moscow, London, Beijing. You name it. We’re nothing more than pieces to be moved across the playing board. And if sacrificing a pawn to save the king is the only option . . .” He didn’t need to finish his statement. Without another word, he turned and continued down the tunnel. King stood glued to the spot for a moment more, watching the other man’s silhouette fade into the gloom and, once again, he wondered about his history.

He was dangerous, that was for sure. Yet he had also shown an honourable side. But he was branded a traitor. Even O’Rourke had confirmed that. And King suddenly realised, with a sense of dread, the irony of a convicted traitor producing evidence to implicate another right at the moment of achieving the mission’s goal.

If anyone had something to gain by jumping into bed with the Russians, it wasn’t the woman whose family had been massacred by them. It was the man who had been imprisoned and sentenced to death by Russia’s greatest rival.

Alone, trapped beneath hundreds of feet of crumbling earth with a hardened killer, Benjamin King suddenly realised that he could be in a lot more trouble than he’d realised.

What if Nadia wasn’t the traitor?

What if it was Raine?

United Nations Headquarters,

New York City, USA

Alexander
Langley watched the video feed which was streaming from a camera mounted on Raine’s helmet, now almost three thousand feet below ground, three and a half thousand miles away. The audio feed had been cut while Raine and King made their way through the treacherous labyrinth. Occasionally, Raine’s voice would crackle over the com-link, checking in with the rest of the team posted at the entrance to the mine shaft.