Chapter Thirty-seven
NICOLAS DRAGOUMIS FLINCHED and closed his eyes a millisecond before Elena killed his father and then herself. When he opened them again, his father was lying on his side, one arm splayed out, the other tucked awkwardly beneath him, legs folded like half a swastika. He found himself staring and staring, unable to take in what he saw. It was impossible that such a man could be so quickly and utterly extinguished. He stepped unsteadily across Elena’s prostrate corpse to stand beside his father, waiting for him to move—to rise, brush himself down, give orders.
He jumped as someone touched his elbow. He turned to see Leonidas talking to him. He could see his lips move but could make no sense of the words. He looked down again, and slowly his brain began to recover. All men died, but their missions lived on. His father’s mission lived on. It was up to him to complete it. The thought strengthened Nicolas. He looked around again. The sun had already cleared the horizon. The mouth of the tomb had already vanished beneath sand. His men were gazing expectantly at him.
“Dig a pit,” he said. “We bury Costis and Elena here.” The calmness and authority of his voice surprised him. But then, why should it? His father had been Philip II reincarnate, the father of Alexander the Great. And what did that make him? Yes, what did that make him?
“And your father?” frowned Leonidas.
“You think I’d leave him here?” snapped Nicolas. “We bring him with us. He is to be buried with full honors.”
“What about those two?” asked Leonidas, nodding at Gaille and Knox, being herded by Bastiaan into the back of one of the four-by-fours.
Nicolas felt a resurgence of his anger, and an opportunity to vent it. His jaw tightened. He stooped to take the Walther from Elena’s loose grip. He checked the clip: five gone, four left. He walked over to the four-by-four. “Get Knox out,” he ordered.
Bastiaan dragged Knox out by the arm and threw him on the sand. Nicolas aimed down at his chest. The girl cried out, pleading for mercy, but Bastiaan punched her in the temple, so that she fell sprawling unconscious across the rear seats. Nicolas stared down at Knox. “No one can say we didn’t give you fair warning,” he said.
“Your father gave us his word he’d let us go if we helped you find Alexander.”
“My father is dead,” said Nicolas.
“Yes, but he—”
He got no further, because Bastiaan slammed the butt of his gun into the back of his skull, and he collapsed facedown on the sand.
“Thank you,” said Nicolas. He smiled as he aimed at the back of Knox’s head and tightened his finger on the trigger.
art
MOHAMMED RUBBED HIS LEFT WRIST where the hard steel handcuff chafed. He didn’t recognize the man Nicolas was about to shoot, but he recognized Gaille, who had always been nice to him during the necropolis excavation, enquiring after Layla and wishing them all well. And he recognized murder, too, and that he was colluding in it.
He had thought Layla’s life worth any price. Now he realized he had been wrong.
The cuff was too tight to slip his hand free. And though he was a strong man, he wasn’t strong enough to rip the steering wheel from its mount. But the handcuff key was on a chain on Costis’s belt. That, at least, gave him a fighting chance. He started up the digger, thrust it into gear, and accelerated forward. The suddenness of his charge caught the Greeks by surprise. Nicolas turned and fired twice, but Mohammed used the scoop as a shield, and the bullets pinged and whined away, and then he was upon Nicolas, so that he had to dive aside, rolling over and over. Bullets sprayed; Mohammed ducked as he worked his controls to scoop Costis up from the sand. Then he turned down the slope, the gradient helping him speed away, glancing over his shoulder to see the Greeks streaming down after him on foot and in the vehicles. The digger bucked and jolted, and Costis danced in the scoop but didn’t fall. Mohammed reached flatter terrain and dumped Costis to the sand, then pulled up alongside him, placing the bulk of the digger between himself and the Greeks. He threw open the cab door and stretched down, but he couldn’t quite reach Costis. He twisted the steering wheel as far as it would go, and tried again. Still no good—he could only brush him with his fingertips, however hard he strained. The Greeks were yelling as they hurtled down toward him, loosing wild shots, roaring their vehicles. He hooked his right boot beneath Costis’s head, lifting him high enough to snatch a hank of hair. He grabbed his chin, collar, finally his belt, the chain, the key ring. Four keys. Two bore BMW insignia; the others were small, unmarked. He had to lift Costis bodily from the sand to get the first key up to the cuff. No good. He was trying the second when something exploded behind his ear, and his world went black.
art
NICOLAS ARRIVED AT THE FOOT OF THE SLOPE to find Mohammed unconscious, blood leaking from a cut in his scalp. “New plan,” he said tightly. “Put the bodies in the flatbed. Dump it and the digger in the lake.”
Vasileios pulled up in the second SUV and nodded at the backseat. “And the girl?”
Nicolas peered in. Gaille was sprawled unconscious across the backseats. It made him realize suddenly that he’d forgotten about Knox in the chaos, and he suffered a sudden lurch of premonition. He looked around. All his men were down here with him—every last one of them. Without Costis or his father to lead them, they had degenerated into an undisciplined rabble. “Where’s Knox?” he demanded, even though in his heart he already knew the answer. “Who the f*ck was looking after Knox?” No one spoke. Their eyes wouldn’t meet his when he glared their way. He clenched his fists as he gazed up to where Knox had been. There was no sign of him except for the ropes that had bound him, now lying discarded on the sand. He closed his eyes for a moment to let the swell of fury pass. Sometimes it almost seemed as though God wasn’t on their side. He jumped in the four-by-four with Vasileios and Bastiaan and drove back up. The place was a mess of footprints, impossible to track. Knox could have vanished anywhere. He could have hidden beneath the sand or climbed the hill or gone round the other side of it by now. The sun was getting higher all the time, and daylight wasn’t safe. You could see forever in the desert on a clear day; their vehicles would stand out like beacons. The tourists and the bird-watchers would already be leaving their hotels. Reveille would have sounded in the army barracks. They had to leave now.
Nicolas half pulled Gaille out of the backseat and pressed the muzzle of the Walther against her temple. “Hear this!” he shouted. “The girl dies if you give us trouble. You hear? Any trouble at all, your old friend’s daughter dies.”
His voice echoed off the hill, then faded to silence.