The Covenant of Genesis (64 page)

‘And Eddie, too,’ Nina said.

‘And Mr Chase, yes. What do you say?’

‘Excuse me,’ Sophia snapped, ‘but we were here first.’

‘Sophia,’ Ribbsley said tersely, ‘we’re not arguing over a parking space here. Your ex-husband has us in his gunsights.’

Sophia gave Nina a suspicious look. ‘Does he, though?’

‘You want to find out the hard way?’ said Nina.

‘I think I might. Gabriel, take out your gun.’

‘You must be joking!’ Ribbsley protested. ‘You know that I’d do almost anything for you - but getting shot is definitely one of the exceptions.’

‘You won’t get shot. I’m sure Eddie’s here somewhere, but he doesn’t have a gun. And nor does she.’ Sophia fixed her eyes on Nina’s, calculating. ‘You can’t have arrived in Switzerland much before we did - we didn’t come directly from Khartoum, but we weren’t stopping for picnics en route either. I know Eddie has friends all over the world, but I find it hard to believe they could furnish him with a sniper rifle - but not get you a gun as well.’

Nina put a hand in one pocket. ‘I assure you, I’m armed.’

‘Then Gabriel won’t have to feel guilty about shooting a defenceless woman, will he?’ She turned to Ribbsley. ‘Gabriel, take out your gun. Nothing will happen, I promise. I know Eddie - and I know Nina as well.’

‘Your call,’ Nina said.

‘Your bluff,’ Sophia replied. ‘Do it, Gabriel. Now!’

Ribbsley hesitated, eyes scanning the dark forest - then pulled out his gun and pointed it at Nina.

Nothing happened. No gunshot came from the trees, the only sound the endless thunder of the waterfall.

‘Well,’ said Sophia, ‘I told you.’

Ribbsley let out a relieved breath. ‘I wish you could have found a less stressful way of proving it.’

Sophia nudged the bag. ‘Cardinal, our original offer still stands. I recommend that you take it. Otherwise we’ll have to fall back on Plan B - blackmailing the President of the United States. Which would be messy for everyone. As for you, Nina . . . I think it’s time we said goodbye, once and for all. Gabriel, shoot her.’

Nina tensed. ‘Don’t you want to know where Eddie is?’

The question was enough to give Ribbsley pause, though the gun remained locked on Nina’s heart. ‘All right,’ Sophia sighed impatiently, ‘where’s Eddie?’

‘Right behind you.’

Sophia looked annoyed at the attempted distraction, but Ribbsley turned his head—

To see Chase vault over the railing and smash a fist into his face.

Ribbsley crashed nervelessly to the ground, the gun spinning away. Soaked by the waterfall’s spray while he climbed round the viewing platform’s supports, Chase whirled to face Sophia—

She shot him.

‘
Eddie!
’ Nina screamed as he fell, blood splashed across his chest. He let out a strangled moan, convulsing before falling still.

‘Hold it!’ said Sophia as Nina ran to him, pointing the smoking .38 at her. Nina stopped. ‘Gabriel, are you all right?’ Her concern went unanswered. ‘Gabriel!’

Nina was unable to take her eyes from Chase’s motionless body. ‘Oh, Jesus, Eddie!’ she gasped, shocked tears streaming down her cheeks. ‘Oh, please, get up, get up . . .’

Sophia cast a dismissive sidelong glance at him. ‘I think,’ she said, ‘that marks the end of the Chase.’

Hatred exploded inside Nina. ‘You fucking bitch,’ she snarled, all fear vanishing in her fury, ‘I’m gonna fucking
kill
you!’

‘No,’ said Sophia, with a smile of malicious pleasure, ‘you’re not.’

Di Bonaventura jumped forward, arms held wide as if pleading. ‘No! You don’t have to—’

Sophia fired just as the Cardinal moved in front of Nina. The bullet caught him high on his chest. Sophia froze as he collapsed, realising she had just shot the only person with whom she could make a deal.

Nina leapt at her.

Driven by rage, she smashed the gun from Sophia’s hand before slamming a brutal blow into her face. Sophia shrieked in pain, the flash drive in her other hand dropping to the ground, but Nina was already striking again, and again, fists crunched tight like blocks of stone. Blood smeared her knuckles as Sophia staggered.

Nina pulled back her arm, winding up for a final punch, swinging—

Sophia caught it.

‘
Whore!
’ she hissed as she gripped Nina’s hand in both her own, twisting. A spear of agony shot through Nina’s wrist as the Englishwoman pulled her closer, wrenching harder as she raised an elbow, ready to smash it into the back of Nina’s arm to break it at the joint—

Nina struck first. One of Chase’s moves: crude, savage - but effective. Sophia’s nose broke with a snap of cartilage as Nina headbutted her, spraying both women with blood.

She tried to pull free, but Sophia still had a solid grip on her arm despite the pain. Gasping, Nina raked her fingernails at the other woman’s eyes.

Sophia jerked her head back - and kicked Nina hard in the stomach. Choking, Nina stumbled, the wound in her leg searing with resurgent pain. Sophia tried again to break her arm, but the kick had thrown her off balance, forcing her to let go to avoid falling.

But Nina was already past the point of no return. She fell heavily beside di Bonaventura. For a moment their eyes met, the Cardinal’s gaze full of pain and regret, before an almost infinitesimal relaxation of the tiny muscles around his eyes marked the moment when life became death. Di Bonaventura was about to find out if his beliefs were true.

Clutching her aching stomach, Nina got to her knees and looked up.

The gun was pointing at her head.

Sophia’s enraged face was behind it, rivulets of blood running from her nose. Her finger tightened on the trigger—

A terrifying roar made both women whirl.

Chase had staggered upright, one hand clutched to his bloodied chest. He launched himself at Sophia, tackling her as she fired again and slamming her back against the railings.

They toppled over them, and were gone.

Sophia’s piercing shriek of terror vanished beneath the waterfall’s rumble as she fell. Chase made no sound as he plunged into the darkness with her.

Nina stared at the railings in stunned disbelief before running to the spot and looking down. The waterfall was a silver streak in the moonlight, the lake at its base a pool of pure black speckled with froth. Of Chase and Sophia there was no sign.

‘Eddie!’ She couldn’t accept that he was gone, leaning out to look beneath the platform. He
must
have managed to grab its supports or a rocky outcropping as he fell, she told herself, was dangling just below her, saving himself at the last moment yet again . . .

But he wasn’t. There was nobody there.

She had lost him.

Nina stumbled away from the railing with a moan of despair, tripping and landing by the bag. She didn’t feel the pain of the fall, a far greater agony overpowering it.

Chase was dead.

‘No,’ she whispered. ‘No, no,
no
. . .’ She couldn’t accept it. She
wouldn’t
. He couldn’t be dead. It wasn’t possible.

A mechanical noise: a gun’s hammer being cocked. Ribbsley had recovered, had found his gun, was pointing it at her with his bloodied face twisted by rage—

A hole exploded in his chest as a high-velocity bullet blew right through him in a bloody shower. The force of the impact sent the professor rolling over several times before coming to a stop, leaving a ragged red trail like a child’s hand painting.

Some fearful instinct made Nina grab the bag and clutch it to herself as she scrambled back against the railings. There was nobody in sight. Who had fired the shot?

And was she the next target?

She looked in panic across the valley. The distant lights of the village glowed below, but she couldn’t see any sign of the sniper . . .

A dazzling blue-white light pinned her from above. A helicopter - but she couldn’t hear any rotor noise, or see anything except the blinding spotlight as it approached.

‘Dr Wilde,’ said a man’s voice, American-accented but unfamiliar. It didn’t seem to be coming from the helicopter, but from all around her - or inside her head. ‘Do not move, remain still. I repeat, do not move, or you will be killed.’

‘I’m not going anywhere,’ she whispered, frozen with fear. Some remaining rational part of her mind dredged an explanation from her memory: a few years earlier, an advertiser had experimented with a hypersonic loudspeaker in New York, only people standing in a small area able to hear the commercials it played while others just feet away heard nothing. She had even gone to experience it for herself. This was something similar, the helicopter’s occupants not wanting to rouse the entire valley.

But who were they?

The light came closer. Nina could now feel the downdraught from the rotors, but still couldn’t hear any noise until it was almost upon her, when a low-frequency thrum filled the air. The light flicked off as the helicopter swept overhead and moved to land behind the cars, cutting off her escape route.

Not that she was planning to move. A strange numbness rolled through her body, as if something within her had switched off to escape the pain. She watched the helicopter almost with disinterest, noting that it was a very strange-looking aircraft, unlike any chopper she had seen before: a flat matt black with a sharply pointed, seemingly windowless nose and an odd rotor assembly within a ring that rose above the fuselage like a halo. Some kind of stealth prototype? Whatever. She didn’t care.

A hatch opened in the helicopter’s featureless side, several men in all-black combat gear jumping out and rapidly securing the area. Two more men, faces hidden behind black masks and night-vision goggles, advanced on her, silenced compact rifles flicking between her and the two bodies nearby. Once it was clear that neither Ribbsley nor di Bonaventura would be moving again, they came to a stop ten feet from Nina and fixed their guns on her, laser spots dancing over her chest.

Another man emerged from the helicopter. No mask, no camouflage; she saw he was wearing a suit and tie as he passed one of the lamps illuminating the platform, the light catching his face.

A face she knew well.

Victor Dalton. The President of the United States.

He stopped between the two men in black. ‘Dr Wilde, hello again. You probably won’t believe me, but I’m glad to see you.’

‘Go to hell,’ Nina growled.

‘No, really - I’ve been watching what was going on down here. I didn’t think you’d be the last person standing, but it’s worked out fairly well.’ He walked to the railing near where Chase and Sophia had fallen and picked up a small white object - Sophia’s flash drive. ‘I even heard Sophia say this was the only copy.’ He looked back at the helicopter. ‘It’s a hell of a machine, by the way. One of DARPA’s latest toys. Full array of surveillance gear, almost totally invisible to radar, and ninety per cent quieter than a normal chopper. Lucky for me it was in Germany for NATO evaluation, or my trip would have attracted a lot more attention - officially, I’m on vacation at my estate in Virginia. I wanted to keep this whole thing quiet.’ He took a step towards her. ‘Personal.’

Nina crawled away. ‘Stay back! What do you want?’

‘This, for one,’ he said, holding up the memory stick. ‘For another, what you’ve got in that case there. May I see it?’ She didn’t respond immediately; one of the soldiers flashed his laser sight over her face. ‘Don’t expect me to ask twice, Dr Wilde. For anything.’

Reluctantly, she opened it and took out a large plastic ziplock bag - inside which, still wrapped in the remains of its ancient shroud, was the skull. ‘Open it,’ ordered Dalton. ‘Let me see.’

‘Why do you want it?’ she demanded as she unfastened the seal and began to peel away the cloth.

Dalton didn’t answer at first, watching as she carefully removed the shroud. The skeletal face was revealed beneath. She turned it towards the President. To her surprise, he appeared visibly discomfited. ‘So, it’s true,’ he said. ‘The Covenant was right.’

‘Yeah, it’s true,’ said Nina. She got to her feet. Both soldiers tensed, rifles tracking her. A nod from Dalton and they eased off, slightly. ‘So why did you turn against them? And why did you destroy Eden?’

‘Because it was in
Sudan
. Do you really think I’d let a group of backwater barbarians lay claim to it? Especially when it would give the foundation of the Christian faith to the Muslims.’ He sneered in distaste. ‘Better no one has it than they do. As for the Covenant, every politician has skeletons in their closet, and the Covenant has taken advantage for decades. It was time that situation ended. I should thank you and Chase for that much, at least - between you, you’ve decapitated the entire organisation.’ He glanced at di Bonaventura. ‘There’ll be others to replace them, but right now the Covenant’s in total chaos. It’ll take a while for them to recover - and by then, it won’t matter.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘You were making a deal with him,’ said Dalton. ‘Well, now you get to make that same deal with me. Only there won’t be any pussyfooting around, gradually preparing the world for the Veteres. As soon as the DNA analysis confirms what that thing really is, you’ll be back at the IHA announcing what you’ve discovered - a non-human race that was the basis of the Book of Genesis.’

Nina regarded him with growing suspicion. ‘So . . . what’s the catch?’

‘Catch number one is that if you don’t agree, you die right here and we find someone else to do it. But we’d prefer it to be you; you’ve got the credibility.’

‘Who’s “we”?’

‘Catch number two,’ he went on, ignoring her question, ‘is that in making that announcement, you’ll become the most hated person on the planet.’

Some of her old defiance returned. ‘What, even more than the President of the United States?’

A brief smirk. ‘Presidents are hated for political reasons. With you, it’ll be
personal
. You’ll be telling billions of people that their deeply held beliefs are wrong, that the basis of their entire religion is false, and you can prove it. They won’t like that.’