The Sacred Vault_ A Novel - Andy McDermott [36]
‘Yeah.’
‘But . . . but I realised as time went on that I didn’t kill her. Just because she was there with me didn’t make it my fault that she died - I didn’t pull the trigger. And I know this’ll sound harsh and horrible right now, but it’s the same for you. You didn’t kill Rowan. And you didn’t get him killed either.’
‘But he would be all right if—’
‘You didn’t,’ he repeated, more forcefully. ‘Okay? And they arrested the guy who did. They’ve got him. He did it, not you. Don’t blame yourself for it. That’s what I did with Mitzi, and . . . well, you remember. Things went bad for a while. I don’t want you to have to go through the same thing that I did.’
‘I can’t help it,’ she said. ‘And . . . and I know I should talk to his father, tell him what happened, but . . . I can’t face it. The hospital told him, he knows that Rowan’s dead, but . . .’ Tears rolled down her cheeks, her voice dropping to a whisper. ‘What if he blames me? If I think it’s my fault, what if he does too?’
Eddie held her more closely as she buried her face against his shoulder. ‘Hey, hey,’ he said, stroking her hair. ‘He won’t blame you, because you didn’t do anything wrong.’
‘I . . . You’re right, I know. I know that, in my head. But I don’t feel that.’
‘It’s tough, I know. Believe me, I bloody know that! But you’ll get through it, and you’ll stop blaming yourself. I know that too. Look, you don’t have to do anything right now. You should go home.’
Nina lifted her head and wiped her eyes again. ‘No . . . no, I’d rather keep working. An Interpol officer’s coming in to see me later. If I can figure out why the raiders wanted to take the Codex rather than anything else, it might help them find out who was behind the robbery - and the thefts of all those other treasures.’ She sat upright, taking a long breath as she forced herself back into a businesslike mindset. ‘I’ll be okay.’
‘You sure?’
A half-hearted smile. ‘As much as I can be.’
‘That’s my girl.’ Eddie kissed her, then stood and stepped back to regard the contents of her desk. ‘So what have you worked out so far? Sussed it all out yet?’
‘Not yet,’ she sighed. ‘Maybe I should have taken that guy Khoil up on his offer to translate it.’
‘So what have you got?’
‘Mostly that as an explorer, Talonor’s a name that should be up there with Columbus and Cook and Marco Polo. The Codex only covers one of his expeditions, but we know that he visited South America as well - he discovered the site that would become the Atlantean settlement we found there. There might have been other expeditions, too; we just haven’t found his accounts yet.’
Eddie flicked through a few pages. ‘Is the translation accurate?’
‘As far as we know. Why?’
‘Just that I recognise the way it’s written. It’s like a military report, a tactical assessment - just the facts, ma’am. When he reaches somewhere, all he says about it is how many men old enough to fight live there, what the landscape’s like and where the high ground is, that kind of stuff. This Talonor bloke wasn’t an explorer - he was a scout.’
‘The Atlanteans were conquerors,’ Nina reminded him. ‘I suppose knowing a potential target’s strength was more important than their cultural heritage.’ She remembered something, and searched through the papers. ‘Although . . . here. He took more of an interest than usual in one group of people.’
‘Which ones?’
‘Some Hindu priests. He met them in the Himalayas when he was travelling up the Ganges. Afterwards, he carried on about a hundred miles northeast into Tibet and discovered the Golden Peak - the other major Atlantean site.’
‘Yeah, we had a lot of fun there, didn’t we?’ said Eddie, with a hint of sarcasm. ‘So what about these priests? Were there Hindus around that long ago?’
‘Hinduism’s been around for a long time - much longer than any of the Abrahamic