The Sacred Vault_ A Novel - Andy McDermott [18]
As Nina had gloomily predicted, a large part of her next day was spent on the phone. The Treasures of Atlantis exhibition, displaying a plethora of ancient artefacts the International Heritage Agency had recovered from the sunken ruins of Atlantis, was about to begin its four-month tour of sixteen cities in fourteen countries. Even delegating much of the organisation to Rowan Sharpe and others, the IHA’s director was finding it a major - and draining - addition to her workload.
‘Oh, God,’ she sighed, rubbing her eyes at the conclusion of one especially long call. ‘Next time I have to work with the Secret Service, please just phone them anonymously and tell them I’m a communist or something, so they’ll blacklist me and I’ll never have to deal with them again.’
‘Clearance hassles?’ asked Eddie, who had been sitting with his feet up on her desk, waiting for her to finish.
‘You’re not kidding. Interpol suggested that the UN ought to beef up the exhibition’s security because everyone’s paranoid after Michelangelo’s David got stolen, but now the Frisco city council’s complaining because they don’t want to pay their half of the extra costs, and the Secret Service threw a fit because they have to vet the extra staff. Plus, the mayor’s office keeps adding to the VIP list because obviously everybody wants to meet the President, and the Men in Black need to clear all the new guests too. And for some reason, they’ve decided it’s all my fault.’
‘It’s tough at the top.’
‘Damn right. And get your feet off my desk.’ Nina glowered at the offending extremities until they returned to the floor. ‘Is everything ready?’
He nodded. ‘The flights and hotel are all confirmed, and Lola’s going to bring those Egyptian reports you needed to check. Oh, she says she needs higher clearance to get them, though. The Egyptian government wants some stuff kept classified. They’re down in secure storage.’
She made a sour face. ‘The only way that’ll get approved before we fly out tomorrow is if I go and stand on the security supervisor’s desk until he signs it off. She can just use my clearance, she’s got the code.’
‘Christ, you don’t even let me use your security code.’
‘She’s my PA, not my husband. It’s a whole different degree of trust.’ She smiled at his exaggeratedly offended expression. Her phone rang; she picked it up. ‘Hi, Rowan! Back in San Francisco, then? Are you wearing flowers in your hair?’
Eddie watched her face fall as her old friend spoke. ‘I’ll wait,’ he said, putting his feet back on the desk.
Nina flapped an irate hand to shoo them off. ‘Okay, I’ll talk to them,’ she said, exasperated, after some time. ‘I’ll see you there tomorrow. Bye.’ She hung up and buried her face in her hands. ‘Ugh.’
‘Problems?’
‘Of course. The mayor’s changed the VIP list again. Which means the Secret Service will be calling to yell at me in about five minutes.’
‘You want me to tell ’em you’re a communist?’
‘Don’t tempt me.’
‘Still,’ Eddie said reassuringly, ‘after tomorrow it’s out of your hands and you can stop worrying about it. You just have to fly to Frisco, show off all the stuff from Atlantis, meet the President . . . then you can finally get back to what you really love. Digging bits of old junk out of the ground.’
It was her turn to look offended. ‘Ha ha. Although it will be good to get back to some real archaeological work.’ She glanced at a display case in one corner. ‘Maybe I’ll finally figure out where Prince came from.’
Eddie grinned, going to the case. ‘Prince. That still makes me laugh.’ He peered at the small purple figure within. The statuette, crudely carved from an oddly coloured stone, had been discovered inside the Pyramid of Osiris, but it bore no resemblance to any known artefact from ancient Egypt, and even after five months of analysis nobody at the IHA was any nearer to identifying its origins. ‘Tell you what, give me a hammer drill and ten minutes alone with him, and I’ll find out everything he knows.’
‘I don’t think that approach would get through the peer-review