The Cult of Osiris nwaec-5 Page 9

  The Lamborghini’s other door swung up. Grant emerged - and to Eddie’s dismay ran straight for the bald guy. ‘Wait, get back!’ he shouted.

  The actor ignored him, reaching the weakly moving gunman - and kicking the TEC-9 out of his hand, sending it skittering away to clank against the wrecked Dodge. ‘This is a citizen’s arrest!’ he proclaimed, putting a foot on the man’s back and striking a pose. He grinned at Eddie. ‘Just like in Citizen’s Arrest, huh?’

  ‘Idiot,’ Eddie muttered, hurrying round the Murciélago. He passed the steaming hot dog cart, a blue flame from a squat gas cylinder still burning under its water tank. ‘You okay?’

  ‘Yeah, man. That was . . . intense. Wow!’ A flash came from the top deck of the ruptured bus as someone took his photograph. ‘So, did we save your—’

  A cop ran round the bus, pistol raised. ‘Freeze!’ he bellowed. ‘Put your hands up and get down on the ground, now!’

  Eddie immediately raised his hands. Grant, meanwhile, faced the cop, unconcerned. ‘It’s okay, man. We’re the good guys.’ He nodded towards his billboard. ‘See? It’s me!’

  The cop twisted his arm behind his back. ‘Shut up! Get on your—’

  The Ram’s rear door flew open and Diamondback burst out like a Jack-in-the-box. He saw the three men and aimed his revolver—

  Eddie tackled Grant, wrenching him from the cop’s grip as Diamondback fired. The bullet caught the cop in the chest. Blood spurted out as he crashed to the ground, his gun bouncing away and sliding under a stalled taxi. Its driver ran for cover.

  Hauling Grant with him, Eddie dived over the cab’s bonnet as Diamondback fired again, the taxi’s windscreen exploding. He shoved Grant against the front wheel, spotting the cop’s gun near the back.

  Diamondback jumped down from the Ram. He fired another two shots at the cab, blowing out windows, then snatched up the TEC-9.

  Eddie threw himself into a forward roll to the rear wheel and grabbed the gun, a Glock-19 automatic. He pressed his back against the wheel and checked on his charge.

  Grant was shuffling towards him—

  ‘Back!’ Eddie yelled, diving at the actor as Diamondback opened fire on full auto. A string of ragged bullet holes blew open in the doors just behind him as he knocked Grant back. More bullets ripped into the front of the cab, piercing the thin steel bodywork - before clanging ineffectually against the solid metal of the engine block.

  ‘Cars are concealment, not cover!’ Eddie shouted at the shaken Grant as the onslaught stopped. ‘Didn’t they teach you that at action movie school?’ He popped his head up. The snakeskin-jacketed gunman was out of ammo, dropping the TEC-9 and switching back to his revolvers. Nearby, the bald man, face a patchwork mess of cuts and grazes, staggered to his feet.

  ‘Eddie!’ a woman shouted. He looked round and saw the uniformed Amy approaching in a rapid crouch, her partner behind her.

  Diamondback fired again, forcing everyone down. His companion drew a pistol as they retreated. ‘What the hell’s going on?’ Amy demanded.

  ‘Ask them!’ he replied, gesturing towards the gunmen. ‘They’re the twats who just tried to kill my wife!’

  Another shot punched through the cab, spitting shrapnel. Grant yelped, and Amy flinched. ‘NYPD!’ she shouted. ‘Drop your weapons!’

  More bullet hits on the cab, the sharp crack of an automatic joining the revolvers’ louder blasts. The two men weren’t receptive to orders. Eddie looked under the taxi’s front bumper to see them hurriedly backing away as other cops returned fire. With an officer already down and civilians at risk, they were shooting to kill - but he needed at least one of the gunmen alive to learn why they wanted Nina dead.

  He hefted the Glock - and fired it under the car, the bullet tearing a bloody hole in the bald man’s right ankle. He fell, screaming. Eyes narrowed to agonised slits, he looked up at Diamondback. ‘Help me!’

  Diamondback returned his gaze . . . then without even changing expression shot him in the head. A sunburst of blood sprayed the street beneath him.

  ‘Jesus!’ Amy gasped as Diamondback took refuge behind the overturned Ram. Then she realised what Eddie was about to do. ‘No, wait!’

  But Eddie had already sprung out from behind the taxi, running at the pickup with the gun raised. His target was behind the Dodge . . . and it was no more bulletproof than the cab. He aimed low, hoping for a leg shot as he blew a line of holes from the back of the truck to the cabin—

  Diamondback dived out from the front of the truck - and fired.

  But he wasn’t aiming at Eddie.

  The shot hit the hot dog cart’s gas cylinder - which detonated like a bomb.

  The concussion knocked Eddie off his feet. By the time the roiling explosion dissipated and the cops recovered from the shock of the blast, Diamondback had sprinted away down 43rd Street, shoving through the fleeing crowd.

  Eddie swatted away a burning hot dog bun and stood painfully. Amy hurried to him, other cops running past them - some to help the injured officer, the rest in fruitless pursuit of the killer. ‘You okay?’

  ‘I’ll live,’ he grunted, looking at the bald man. ‘Unlike him.’

  Amy shook her head, still stunned by what she had just witnessed. ‘Cold-blooded murder, right in front of a bunch of cops? That guy’s insane.’

  ‘Maybe, but he’s good at what he does. I don’t think your guys’ll catch him.’

  ‘We’ll see,’ Amy said with wounded professional pride - but also a certain resignation.

  Grant came over, face white. ‘Whoa. Man. You, you . . .’ He pumped Eddie’s hand vigorously. Amy’s eyebrows shot up as she recognised him. ‘You saved my life, man! I’d be dead now if you hadn’t been there!’

  Eddie decided not to mention that it was Grant’s own fault he’d become a target. ‘All part of the job.’

  ‘No, man, seriously. Anything you want, anything you ever need, just let me know. It’s yours.’

  ‘How about your Lamborghini? Kidding,’ he clarified, seeing from Grant’s face that ‘anything’ didn’t literally mean anything.

  ‘Man!’ said Grant, gazing at the Murciélago. ‘I can’t believe it. You said not a scratch, and damn, you did it!’

  Even with the scrapes it had taken the Lamborghini appeared unscathed, reflected firelight gleaming off its paintwork. ‘Yeah. Normally anything I drive gets totalled. Must have got lucky this time . . .’

  The trickle of gasoline from the wrecked Ram reached one of the burning buns.

  ‘Buggeration—’ Eddie began, throwing Grant and Amy down as a line of flame scurried back to the pickup’s fuel tank—

  The Ram exploded, somersaulting end over end through the air - to smash down on top of the Murciélago, crushing it flat.

  Eddie sat up. ‘And fuckery.’

  Grant gasped plaintively at the sight of three hundred thousand dollars of scrap metal. Somebody on the bus took another photo. ‘Oh, man!’

  ‘You had insurance, right?’ said Amy.

  His expression gradually relaxed. ‘Yeah. Huh. Good point. And I wasn’t sure about the colour anyway.’

  ‘Eddie!’ Eddie got up as Nina ran to him. ‘Oh my God, you’re okay!’

  ‘Forget me, it’s you I was worried about.’

  They embraced, then she looked back at her battered cab. Macy had done as Nina told her and run off, but there was still someone in the vehicle. She turned to Amy. ‘You’ve got to get an ambulance. The cab driver got shot.’

  ‘I think we’ll need more than one,’ Amy told her, radio already in her hand. ‘Eddie, I don’t know what just happened here, but you are sure as hell going to tell me.’ She regarded Nina, then Grant. ‘And so are you, and you . . . hell, I should arrest everyone in a five block radius!’

  ‘You know her?’ Nina asked Eddie.

  ‘Yeah, she’s a friend.’

  Her expression became more suspicious as she looked the attractive police officer up and down. ‘Wait . . . your cop friend? The one you were w
ith the other morning?’

  ‘Ah . . . yeah,’ he admitted. ‘That one.’

  ‘You’re Eddie’s wife?’ Amy asked. Nina nodded. ‘Okay, tell you what - how ’bout we make all the introductions down at the precinct?’

  5

  ‘Well,’ said Eddie, slumping on to the couch the following morning, ‘when I said “Let’s see what tomorrow brings” . . . that was more than I had in mind.’ ‘Getting chased and shot at?’ Nina replied. ‘It was just like old times - in exactly the way I didn’t want. I’m amazed we didn’t end up in jail.’

  ‘You can thank Grant for some of that. You know who he rang with his phone call? His manager. Who rang his publicist, who rang the mayor . . .’

  ‘The mayor?’ said Nina, surprised.

  ‘Yeah. That charity thing the other night? They met each other there. And since the mayor was fawning over the hot Hollywood star and having loads of photos taken with him, it would’ve been a massive embarrassment if his new best mate got locked up a couple of days later.’ He grinned humourlessly. ‘Which is why Grant’s in today’s papers as a real-life action hero instead of as a mugshot. But it’s Amy we really owe.’

  Nina’s lips tightened. ‘Why her?’

  ‘She vouched for us, basically. That twat in the snakeskin jacket blowing someone’s head off in front of half the NYPD made it pretty obvious who the bad guys were, but we’d still have been in trouble if she hadn’t stood up for us.’

  ‘Stood up for you, you mean.’

  Eddie knew the tone. ‘Oh, God. What?’

  ‘You know what, Eddie. That woman, Amy - you were with her the other day when you said you were with Grant Thorn!’

  He held out his hands in exasperation. ‘Yes, I admit it! But there’s nothing funny going on - she’s just a friend. I’ve got loads of other female friends all over the world, and you’ve never had any problems with them.’

  ‘That’s because you didn’t lie to me about them! How many other times did you tell me you were working while you were seeing her?’

  ‘For fuck’s sake,’ he sighed, ‘I’m not seeing her, okay? We’re not meeting up in secret to bang each other’s brains out, if that’s what you think.’

  ‘Then what should I think?’ Nina demanded, but before she could get an answer the door buzzer rasped. She went to the speaker. ‘Yes?’

  ‘Dr Wilde? It’s Macy.’

  ‘Come on up.’ She pushed the button to unlock the outer door, then turned back to Eddie. ‘We’ll discuss this later.’

  ‘There’s nothing to bloody discuss,’ he said. ‘She’s just helping me with something, all right?’

  ‘So why didn’t you ask me to help you? That’s what husbands and wives are supposed to do - y’know, help each other.’

  ‘It’s not that kind of thing.’

  Nina was about to ask what kind of thing it actually was when there was a knock at the door. She opened it to find Macy, still in her skimpy clothes from the previous night. Eddie automatically checked her out, earning a scowl from his wife. ‘Macy, come in,’ she said.

  ‘Thanks, Dr Wilde,’ she replied, entering the apartment. ‘I’m glad you’re okay.’

  ‘Yeah, me too. Are you okay? Is your friend all right?’

  ‘Joey? He’s fine, just a bit banged up. I called him after I found a hotel for the night. Oh, here’s your phone.’ She handed it back to Nina. ‘What about you?’

  ‘We spent most of the night being questioned by the police, which was fun. This is my husband, by the way,’ Nina said, indicating Eddie. ‘Eddie. Chase. Who lives up to his surname when it comes to skirts, apparently.’

  Eddie made an irritated noise, then went to Macy. ‘Hi. Yeah, I’m Nina’s husband - and part-time bodyguard. For all the thanks I get.’

  ‘Hi.’ Macy gave his hand a perfunctory shake, giving him a look-over that was equally brief. Nina could tell what she was thinking - too old, too bald - and smirked.

  ‘So,’ he said, sitting down, ‘now you’re here, maybe someone can finally tell me what the hell’s going on? Like why something in Egypt meant I had to nick Grant Thorn’s Lamborghini and chase you halfway across town?’

  ‘You know Grant Thorn?’ Macy asked. ‘He is so hot. Wow. That’s cool.’

  ‘Grant Thorn’s not who we should be talking about,’ said Nina, seeing that Macy’s opinion of Eddie had just been revised upwards. ‘It’s those guys who were after you. Were they the same ones who chased you in Egypt?’

  ‘Only the guy with the bad hair and the terrible jacket.’

  ‘Thought his jacket was pretty cool, myself,’ said Eddie. He frowned, a memory tickling his mind.

  ‘What?’ Nina asked.

  ‘I saw someone with the same jacket, just recently . . .’ His frown deepened as he tried to recall the image. ‘Shit! It wasn’t just the same jacket - it was the same guy! He was at that cult thing Grant dragged me to.’

  ‘The Osirian Temple?’

  ‘Yeah, that’s it. He was in a limo with the head guy, some ex-actor. There was another bloke too, this miserable-looking sod with a big burn scar—’

  ‘Oh, my God!’ Macy interrupted. She tapped her right cheek. ‘The scar, was it here?’

  ‘Yeah, right across his face.’

  ‘He was there too!’ she told Nina excitedly. ‘He was at the Sphinx - he was in charge of the whole thing!’

  ‘What is this thing at the Sphinx?’ asked Eddie. ‘What are they after?’

  ‘You know those TV commercials that get me so mad?’ said Nina. He nodded. ‘They’re after that.’

  ‘They’re trying to dig in before the IHA so that they can steal what’s inside,’ Macy elaborated.

  ‘Which is?’ Eddie said.

  Macy took out her camera. ‘I’ll show you.’ She saw Nina’s laptop. ‘Can I connect it to that?’

  Nina rummaged in a drawer for a connecting cable, then plugged the camera into her MacBook Pro so Macy could copy over the relevant files. A minute later, she was able to take a proper, detailed look at the images she had seen in miniature on the camera’s screen. ‘So those are the three scrolls that were given to the IHA . . .’

  ‘And that’s the one that wasn’t,’ said Macy, pointing at the fourth of the ancient pages. She zoomed in. ‘This part here describes the north entrance to the Hall of Records - it would’ve been reserved for the pharaohs’ use, ’cause the Egyptians had a big thing about the Pole Star symbolising royalty and the gods.’ She flicked through to the next picture, showing the blueprints of the Sphinx compound, and pointed out the two tunnels. ‘Everyone else would have used the eastern entrance.’

  ‘The one Logan’s excavating,’ Nina said, nodding. ‘What else does it say?’

  Macy returned to the first picture and scrolled down it. ‘Something about a map chamber . . . here! There’s a zodiac in it, which if you know the secret tells you how to find the Pyramid of Osiris.’

  Nina’s scepticism returned. ‘Are you sure that’s what it says?’

  Macy sounded almost peevish, before remembering to whom she was talking. ‘Yes, I’m sure, Dr Wilde. I thought it was weird too, but that’s what it says. The zodiac’s some kind of map.’

  Nina regarded the screen. The first three scrolls about the Hall of Records had proved accurate, and if the fourth were as reliable . . . ‘This could be huge. If the Pyramid of Osiris really existed, it’d change everything we thought we knew about Egyptian history.’ She looked at Macy. ‘And the guys after you obviously believed it’s real enough to kill for.’ Her gaze returned to the papyrus. ‘What else does it say?’

  Macy read on. ‘The tomb of Osiris, the immortal god-king, keeper of . . . of the sacred bread of life.’

  ‘Not much of an immortal if he’s in a tomb,’ Eddie pointed out.

  ‘It’s complicated,’ said Macy. ‘He was murdered by being trapped in a coffin, resurrected, murdered again, became immortal but could never come back to the living world . . . kind of an ancient daytime soap opera.’
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  ‘It’s a bit more than that,’ Nina said tartly. ‘The Osiris mythology is the foundation of the entire Egyptian religion. But does this text tell us how to find the pyramid using the zodiac?’

  Macy scanned through the rest of the papyrus. ‘No. I guess that’s a need-to-know thing for the priests or whoever. But it definitely says the zodiac’s the map to the tomb.’

  Eddie leaned closer to the screen. ‘So if this pyramid’s real, what’s inside it that’s worth blowing up half of Times Square for? Are we talking Tutankhamun’s treasure?’

  ‘More than that,’ Macy told him. ‘Osiris is who all the other pharaohs aspired to be - the greatest Egyptian king ever. Even though they thought they were going to become gods themselves when they died, none of them would ever have dared try to outbling him, because he’s the guy who actually judges if they deserve to go into the next life or not.’

  ‘So all the pharaohs’ treasures that have ever been found,’ said Nina thoughtfully, ‘would still be less valuable than whatever’s in Osiris’s tomb. And considering how incredible some of the finds from other tombs have been . . .’

  Eddie stood back. ‘There’s your motive, then. Money. Lots and lots of money.’ He indicated the screen. ‘Go on the Internet - I think we should have a gander at this Osirian Temple thing.’

  Macy opened the browser, typing in the address of the Qexia search engine. ‘Not using Google?’ Eddie asked.

  ‘This is cooler,’ she said, entering a search string for the Osirian Temple. A ‘cloud’ of results appeared, the largest at the centre. She clicked it, taking them to the cult’s home page. A heavily airbrushed portrait of Khalid Osir, standing before what appeared to be a large pyramid of black glass, smiled at them.

  ‘That’s the guy I saw the other day,’ said Eddie. ‘Used to be a big movie star in Egypt.’

  Nina read his potted biography. ‘And then he got religion. Though I guess his ego was too big for him to just join someone else’s - he had to start his own.’ According to the bio, Osir had founded the Osirian Temple fifteen years previously, the organisation now headquartered in Switzerland and established in over fifty countries.