The Hunt for Atlantis_A Novel Page 5
The Bentley swerved as the driver’s corpse slumped to one side. Starkman yelled and grabbed the steering wheel. The vehicle straightened, throwing the stilldazed Nina back across the rear seat.
Wham!
The SUV rammed them again.
Swearing, Starkman leaned over the dead driver and grasped the door handle. The door opened. He stabbed the seat belt release and shoved the corpse out onto the road, then pulled himself over the center console and dropped into the driver’s seat just as the SUV hit again, harder. The Bentley snaked from side to side before Starkman regained control, sawing at the wheel and flinging the car into a hard turn to the left as he stomped on the accelerator. The tires shrieked in protest, the heavy car wallowing.
Nina’s head hit the right-hand door again as the turn flung her across the car. She pulled herself up. If Starkman was occupied with driving, then he couldn’t use the gun …
The other vehicle, a Range Rover, drew level with them. She recognized the face at the wheel—the man in the leather jacket!
With a huge silver gun in one hand, pointing at the Bentley.
“Stay down!” he shouted.
She dropped flat onto the seat again as two booms like cannon fire came from outside. Starkman ducked and shielded his face as the windshield burst apart, the wind driving the fragments back into the car.
Holding the wheel with one hand, he twisted and fired three shots over his left shoulder. Nina heard the Range Rover’s tires screech as it swerved for cover directly behind its quarry.
More horns sounded as Starkman wove the Bentley through the evening traffic, a nerve-shredding grind of metal assaulting Nina’s ears as it sideswiped another car. She looked up. They were somewhere around 17th or 18th Street and rapidly approaching the western side of Manhattan, only the broad lanes of the West Side Highway ahead, and beyond that the cold waters of the Hudson River.
Starkman fumbled with his gun, barely keeping hold of the wheel. Nina realized what he was doing. The automatic’s slide was locked back; he was reloading …
Which meant he couldn’t shoot!
She sat up sharply and clawed at Starkman’s face. He swiped at her, trying to use his weapon as a club. She ducked to one side and continued her attack, feeling something soft beneath the middle finger of her right hand.
His eye.
She drove her nail against it. Starkman howled, thrashing the gun violently at her.
“Stop the car!” she screamed. A glimpse of the speedometer told her that the Bentley was doing sixty and still picking up speed as it careened down the street, directly towards a knot of traffic waiting at the lights.
She screamed again, this time in panic, and pulled her hands from Starkman’s face. Blood covered her fingers. He saw the danger just in time and threw the wheel to the right to miss the rearmost car by mere inches, slamming the Bentley up onto the sidewalk. A trash can spun into the air as they plowed into it, but that was the least of Nina’s concerns, because now they were heading right into the path of the traffic racing along the West Side Highway—
To her horror, Starkman sped up.
The Bentley flew off the end of the sidewalk and smashed back down onto the road, the underside of the car grating against the asphalt. Nina saw headlights flash and heard the desperate shrill of locking brakes. Cars slewed in all directions to avoid a collision, only to be hit from behind by other drivers too close to stop in time.
They shot across the northbound lanes, reaching the median unharmed—only for Starkman to turn into the traffic on the other side, heading uptown directly against the southbound vehicles!
“Oh my God!” Nina shrieked as he flung the Bentley between the lanes of cars and trucks. Other vehicles flashed past on either side just inches away, their drivers swerving frantically to dodge the maniac charging straight at them. More horns blared ahead and behind, an orchestra of fury and fright. “Stop the car before you get us both killed!”
She struck at his eyes again—but this time he was ready.
The gun smacked into her forehead, driving a spike of intense pain deep into her skull. She fell back, dizzy and sickened, as Starkman threw the Bentley hard to the left and plowed through a metal gate onto one of the piers jutting out into the Hudson.
Wind sliced through the shattered windows as the Bentley accelerated along the wharf. Nina struggled upright to see warehouses flying past on one side, the rust-streaked flanks of ships on the other.
And directly ahead, nothing but open water and the distant lights of New Jersey beyond.
She gasped, realizing what Starkman was about to do.
He looked around at her for a moment. His right eye was squeezed tightly shut, deep scratches cutting across it, blood trickling down his cheek.
Then he threw the door open and rolled out, tucking up his arms to protect himself as he fell. In a flash, he was gone, the door slamming behind him—leaving the Bentley still racing towards the end of the pier, the cruise control active and holding its speed at almost fifty miles per hour!
Nina barely had time to scream before the car ripped through the flimsy wire-mesh barrier at the wharf’s end and arced down towards the dark water below.
Sudden deceleration crushed her against the back of the driver’s seat. Freezing water cascaded over her, a tsunami rushing through the broken windows. Bubbles frothed past as the Bentley’s heavy front end tipped downwards, pulling the car and its occupant towards the bottom of the river.
Nina tried to get out through the rear window, but the high headrests above the back seat blocked her escape. Eyes stinging, she tugged desperately at the nearest door handle, but it still wouldn’t budge.
The side window …
The glass was smashed, and it was just large enough for her to fit. She grabbed the window frame and pulled herself through. Her shoulders cleared the door, her chest—
She was stuck!
Her dress had snagged on the metal rods supporting the driver’s seat’s destroyed headrest.
Nina kicked, trying to free herself. No luck. Her stupid dress was still caught fast. She kicked harder, pushing at the window frame with her arms for extra leverage. The material gave slightly, but refused to tear.
Her chest was about to explode. She wanted nothing more than to take a breath, but the only thing she would draw into her lungs was water.
She was going to drown! Professor Philby had been right: her hunt for Atlantis would get her killed—
No, there was no way she was going to let him be right!
But she couldn’t do anything to stop it. She was trapped in a car that was plunging to the bottom of the Hudson, and the pounding in her head would at any moment overcome her reason and force her to take a fatal breath…
Someone grabbed her.
She was so surprised that the breath froze on her lips. An arm tightened around her waist, pulling. Her dress ripped, and her savior dragged her through the window, kicking forcefully upwards as the Bentley disappeared into the darkness below.
Her heart slamming desperately inside her chest, Nina breached the surface and pulled in a whooping, painful gasp, not caring about the foul taste of the water. One arm still around her, her rescuer pulled her towards shore. Her pain and panic subsiding, Nina looked to see who it was.
The man in the leather jacket grinned back at her, revealing a prominent gap between his two front teeth. “Ay up, Doc?”
“You?”
“Tchah! That’s bloody gratitude for you!”
They reached the pier, the man guiding her to a rusted ladder. Nina wearily climbed it, dragging herself onto a concrete dock below the main level of the wharf itself. The man followed, water streaming from his jacket. “Nice dress.”
“What?” Nina asked, confused, before realizing that her skirt had been torn away practically to her crotch. “Oh my God!” She clapped her hands protectively between her legs.
“Well,” said the man, running a hand over his short hair, “if that’s all you’r
e worried about, you’re probably okay.” His accent was English, but not from a region Nina could pin down. “Which is good, ’cause we need to get out of here. Right now.” He held out a hand. Nina stared at it in bewilderment for a moment, then took it. With considerable strength, he hauled her to her feet. It was only then that she realized she’d lost both her shoes.
“Who are you?” she demanded, as he quickly led her to a flight of steps leading up to the wharf. “What’s going on?”
“My name’s Chase. Eddie Chase. Don’t worry, I’m not some nutter.” He looked back to give her a smile that wasn’t entirely reassuring. “Just mad enough to dive into a river to rescue the woman I’ve been hired to look after.”
“Hired?”
“Yeah. I’m your bodyguard!”
They reached the top of the steps. A small group of people were waiting for them, looking amazed. A few of them applauded. “Used to be in the SAS—you know, Special Air Service. Now I’m… sort of a freelancer.” Nina saw that his Range Rover, its front end the worse for wear, was parked on the wharf with a door open and the engine still running.
An overweight man in the uniform of a security firm jogged towards them, panting. “Hey! What the hell’s going on here?”
“It’s all right, mate,” said Chase. “Everything’s under control.”
“The hell it is! A car just smashed through the gates and went off the end of the pier! I want some answers!”
Chase sighed, then reached into his jacket and pulled out his massive gun. It looked even more menacing to Nina close up, the long barrel reinforced by a slotted steel bar along its top. “Mr. Magnum here’ll answer any questions,” he said, waving it in the guard’s general direction. The little crowd hurriedly backed away. “You got any?”
The guard fought to keep the fear off his face, with little success. “They can wait.”
“Good. You might want to find the bloke who bailed out of the car before it crashed, though—he’s the real bad guy. But right now I need to get this lady somewhere safe. All right?”
“Sure!” the guard agreed, backing off.
Still keeping his gun raised, Chase opened the Range Rover’s passenger door for Nina, then ran to the driver’s side and jumped in. He drove off down the wharf at high speed. At the end he made a tight turn, then sped along the empty sidewalk for a few hundred yards before passing the tangle of stationary cars and swerving onto the West Side Highway. “Better put the heater on, I suppose,” he said, glancing at the shivering Nina as he accelerated. In the distance, the sound of sirens wailed through the night air.
She clenched her teeth. “What the hell’s going on?”
“Short version? Bad guys want to kill you. Good guys want to stop them. I’m one of the good guys.”
“Why do they want to kill me? What did I do?”
“It’s not what you’ve done, Doc. It’s what they’re afraid you might do. That bloke in the Bentley, Starkman? Used to be a mate of mine back in the day—we worked together, joint ops around the world—until he went rogue.”
“He said he worked for the Frost Foundation, for Kristian Frost,” said Nina.
Chase laughed. “Well, I know for a fact that he doesn’t.”
“How?”
“Because I work for Kristian Frost. You want to meet him?”
THREE
Norway
Check it out, Doc,” said Chase. “Pretty nice, isn’t it?” “It certainly is,” Nina agreed, gazing at the starkly beautiful landscape below.
Kristian Frost’s home and corporate headquarters were both at Ravnsfjord, three miles inland of the Norwegian coast south of Bergen. The fjord that gave the area its name bisected his expansive property. On the southern side was a campus of office buildings that, while ultramodern in design, nevertheless perfectly complemented their surroundings. A road led from them to a slender arched road bridge across the fjord. Over looking the bridge—overlooking the entire area, she realized—was another large, sleek building, its colors and curves blending into the bluff on which it stood.
“That’s Frost’s house,” Chase told her.
“That’s a house?” Nina gasped. “My God, it’s huge! I thought it was another office building!”
“Bit bigger than your flat, eh?”
“Just a bit.” The plane—a Gulfstream V business jet in Frost’s corporate livery—banked to cross over the fjord. Nina spotted another cluster of ultramodern buildings farther east of the house at the base of a cliff, then on the northern side of the waterway their destination—a private airport. “All of this belongs to Kristian Frost?”
“Pretty much, yeah. He runs his whole business from here, almost never leaves. Guess he doesn’t like traveling.”
Nina took a last look through the porthole before sitting back. The Gulfstream was moving into its final descent. “It’s a lovely place to live, that’s for sure. A bit isolated, though.”
“Well, when you’re a billionaire, I suppose the world comes to you.”
The plane landed and taxied to the small terminal building. Nina wrapped her coat more tightly around herself as she stepped down onto the concrete. “Bit nippy?” Chase asked.
“Are you kidding? I’m used to New York winters. This is nothing!” Actually, it was close to freezing even without the chill wind blowing in from the coast, but now that she’d opened her big mouth she had to endure it.
“Well, we’ll be going somewhere a lot warmer soon.” Nina looked at Chase for an explanation, but he just grinned. “Here’s our ride.”
A white Jeep Grand Cherokee pulled up next to the plane. A thick-necked man with close-cropped blond hair and muscles practically bursting the seams of his tailored dark suit, got out to greet them. “Dr. Wilde,” he said, his accent German. “I am Mr. Frost’s head of security here at Ravnsfjord, Josef Schenk.” He extended his hand, which Nina shook. Although his grip was light, she could tell that if he chose, he could crush every bone in her hand. “Good to meet you.”
“Thank you,” said Nina. Chase and Schenk were eyeing each other up almost like boxers before a fight. They had similar builds; she wondered if they also had similar—or rival—military backgrounds.
“Joe,” said Chase.
“Mr. Chase,” Schenk replied, before opening the Jeep’s rear door. “Please, Dr. Wilde. I’ll take you to Mr. Frost.”
Nina got in. Chase followed her with a slightly sarcastic “Cheers,” closing the door behind him. Schenk glared at him before walking around the SUV to the driver’s side.
“What’s that all about?” Nina asked.
“He’s a company man,” Chase explained while Schenk was out of earshot. “Doesn’t like freelancers, thinks I’m going to rip off his boss.”
“And are you?” Nina couldn’t resist asking.
“I’m a professional,” replied Chase, for a moment completely serious. “I always see the job through.”
Schenk climbed in and they set off. Nina saw several hangars at the runway’s western end. Parked outside the largest was a huge aircraft, the Frost corporate logo—the outline of a trident inside the “O” of the name—only half complete along its flank as tiny figures on cherry-picker cranes painted it. “Wow. That’s a big plane.”
“An Airbus A380 freighter,” Schenk said. “The latest addition to Mr. Frost’s fleet.”
Nina looked back down the long runway. Steep hills rose beyond its distant eastern end. “Hope it’s got good brakes! Those mountains look a bit close.”
“It can only take off heading westwards. It’s inconvenient, but fortunately once it’s in service it will be spending more time flying around the world than here.”
The Jeep left the airport and crossed the bridge. Nina expected them to turn west for the corporate buildings, but instead they headed up a zigzagging road towards the house on the bluff. Close up, its clean, elegant lines looked even more striking.
Schenk parked outside, then ushered Nina and Chase into the house. “This way.”
And the view wasn’t the only impressive thing about the room. It was almost a combination of luxurious lounge and art gallery. A Henry Moore sculpture, a Picasso painting in an alcove carefully shielded from direct sunlight, a Paul Klee … and several others she didn’t immediately recognize, but was sure were equally valuable.
“This is an amazing house,” she said, awed.
“Thank you,” said a new voice, a woman’s. Nina turned to see a tall and strikingly beautiful blonde entering the room, glossy hair sweeping down past her shoulders. She looked to be about Nina’s age or slightly younger, the regal way she held herself countered by her high-fashion clothing—a tight white top cut off above her stomach to reveal a perfectly toned midriff, and equally tight black leather jeans with high-heeled boots. As she approached, she looked Nina up and down as if not quite sure what to make of her.
“Dr. Wilde,” said Schenk, “this is Kari Frost, Mr. Frost’s daughter.”
“Nice to meet you,” said Nina, offering her hand. Kari shook it firmly. Chase, Nina noticed with amusement, was trying not to make it too obvious that he was checking her out.
“You too, Dr. Wilde,” Kari replied. “Mr. Chase. I heard your services were needed in New York?”
“Yeah, you could say that. Good job you hired me!” He shot Schenk a smug look. Schenk frowned.
“I’m glad you like the house,” said Kari, turning back to Nina. “I designed it. Architecture is one of my… well, I would say hobbies, but that would be immodest. I have a degree in the subject.” She spoke perfect English with only the slightest trace of an accent.
“It’s beautiful,” Nina told her.
“Thank you.” Kari’s name was familiar, but Nina couldn’t quite recall why.