Temple of the Gods - Andy McDermott [14]
The memory returned, unbidden. Peru, three months ago to the day. A gas pipeline in a pumping station south of Lima had ruptured and flames spread rapidly to the rest of the facility. The catwalk on which Eddie and Kit were standing had partially collapsed, leaving the Indian dangling above a searing jet of fire. As Nina reached the scene, she saw Kit struggling to hold on, grasping for a handhold on a pipe—
And Eddie kicking Kit in the face and sending him plunging into the inferno below.
She snapped back to the present. The image was as clear and vivid as if it had just happened.
No gun.
Eddie had insisted that Kit had tried to kill him, that he had being going for a gun. But there was no gun in her memory, just Kit trying to save himself from a deadly fall. A fall that came anyway, just moments later.
Beauchamp’s email was an update on the search for the wanted man. Somehow, her murder suspect had managed to escape Peru undetected, and been sighted in England, India, South Africa and most recently Zimbabwe – but never in time for local Interpol agents to catch him. He was always a step ahead: a shadow, a ghost. It hadn’t taken long for the investigators to suspect that he was receiving help.
That didn’t surprise Nina in the least. From their first meeting, Eddie had astonished her with the sheer number of his friends and contacts around the globe, all of whom seemed willing to do him favours far beyond simply picking him up at the airport. Some would be more useful in his current situation than others: the forger, for example, an Australian ex-military colleague, could have provided him with a fake passport. But she couldn’t bring herself to pass on her suspicions to Interpol.
Eddie was still her husband. And she knew him well enough to be sure that whatever she had witnessed, he believed that Kit had a gun. Since he wasn’t prone to hallucinations or confabulation, that had provided her with the seed of doubt she needed to think that he was telling the truth. That he was innocent.
And if he was innocent, she couldn’t help his hunters track him down.
Other facts had arisen in Beauchamp’s investigation which suggested that more had been going on than anyone had realised. Kit had told Nina that he was going to the pumping station on Interpol authority to meet a representative of mercenary leader Alexander Stikes. The British former soldier had stolen archaeological treasures from the ruins of the lost city of El Dorado; according to Kit, he was willing to return them in exchange for legal immunity.
Kit had been lying. Interpol knew nothing about it.
Eddie had gone to the gas plant after him because he believed Kit and Stikes were working together – thereby directly involving Kit in the murder of Eddie’s friend and mentor, Jim ‘Mac’ McCrimmon. And Nina herself had glimpsed a man who might have been Stikes fleeing the burning station in a helicopter. Could Kit have been corrupt? It seemed unlikely – Stikes had tortured him for information after doing the same to Nina to learn more about the search for El Dorado – but now that the seed had been planted . . .
She leaned forward, head in her hands. Suspicions didn’t help Eddie. While he was ahead of the police for now, they were catching up. Eventually he would be caught. Charged with murder. Tried.
And based on the evidence to date, found guilty.
Her phone rang, an internal call. With another sigh, she picked it up. ‘Yes?’
‘Nina?’ Lola Gianetti, her personal assistant. ‘Matt asked me to tell you that they’re waiting for you in the conference room.’
She looked at her watch. Damn! There was an important meeting scheduled on the hour, and it was now ten past. ‘I’ll be right there.’
One good thing about being the director of the International Heritage Agency, she mused as she hurried from her office, was that meetings had to wait for her rather than the other way round. All the same, she