Eden Legacy (31 page)

‘We set up a trust together, to hold the reserve in trust for you and Emilia when you attained majority. You have dual citizenship, after all, so you’re legally able to own property here.’

‘But why didn’t anyone tell me?’ Again Delpha was silent, allowing her to work it out by herself. ‘My father
didn’t trust me, did he?’ she said bleakly. ‘He was worried I’d sell my share just to get back at him.’ She put a hand to her forehead. ‘But what if either Emilia or I should … I mean, what if one of us …?’

‘Then their interest in Eden passes to the other.’

‘Will Mustafa know this?’

‘Mr Habib usually knows everything it is in his interest to know.’

‘What are you saying?’ frowned Rebecca. ‘Is he a crook?’

‘A crook is a person who has been convicted of something. Mr Habib has never been so convicted.’

She gave a dry laugh.
Now
she found out! ‘So that’s why Andriama’s having him watched. But why does he want Eden this badly? It can’t be worth
that
much.’

‘There have been rumours,’ said Delpha. ‘I do not know that they are true. But they say a German hotel group wants to build an ecotourism resort upon this coast. Eden has beautiful beaches and bays. It has virgin forest, reefs and plentiful fresh water. Can you imagine a better site?’

‘How much?’

‘Two million euros at minimum. Perhaps as much as four.’

Rebecca stood and went to the window, looked out into the street. After Yvette had died, Eden had become her father’s life. He’d
never
sell it for development, or forgive anyone who did. She had to find some way to
undo this. She was about to ask Delpha his advice when her phone beeped, sending her heart into overdrive, thinking it was the kidnappers; but it was only to warn her that her battery was almost dead.
Damn it.
Her phone was the most likely way for the kidnappers to get in touch; she needed to sort this out now. She made her excuses to Delpha then grabbed the holdall and hurried off in search of a solution.

Knox arrived back in Eden hoping to find some message from the kidnappers inside the door; but there was nothing. He went through the lodge and all the cabins just in case, then headed down to the boathouse, but again without success. While he was there, however, he decided to take another look at that ceramic, make sure his imagination wasn’t running away with him. And there was something else he wanted to check out too.

The Kirkpatricks were self-evidently an intellectually curious lot. If a subject was of interest to them, they’d acquire books and articles about it. That was no doubt why Adam had the charts on board the
Yvette,
so that he could study them while out on the water. And it was why they kept those books on the treasure fleet and underwater archaeology in the basement. Knox had
been following in the Kirkpatricks’ footsteps so far. Everything he’d discovered about the Chinese wreck, they’d got to first. So maybe they’d figured out other things that he still hadn’t. If so, it was a good bet that they’d have bought reading material on those subjects, and that they’d have stored it in the basement. The shelves, in brief, might be his shortcut to their state of knowledge.

He turned on the generator, slid open the panel, unlocked the door and went down, walked along the shelves. There were textbooks and articles on Zheng He and his treasure fleets, on the Ming Dynasty and Chinese shipbuilding techniques. There were archaeological works on the Chimu, the Incas, the Aztecs and other New World civilisations. There were books on the Renaissance, on the history of mapmaking. Several volumes were ageing badly, missing their spines. He pulled one down, opened it up. It was a biography of Ferdinand Magellan, the man widely credited as being the first to circumnavigate the world. A slight fiction, of course, because he hadn’t completed the circumnavigation himself. He’d died in the Philippines, leading an attack on islanders who’d had the temerity to refuse conversion to Christianity. But eighteen of his men
had
made it all the way. Eighteen out of two hundred and thirty-seven, sailing the one ship that had survived from the original fleet of five.

Since finding the Fra Mauro map, Knox had had a scheme in his mind, of a treasure ship sailing west to South America from the Cape and then returning. Even his discovery of the Chimu ceramic hadn’t changed that scheme; he’d just thought they’d found the Magellan Straits first. But what if they
hadn’t
turned back east? What if they’d kept going west? Why else sail so far north up South America’s western coast if they’d been planning to turn around again and head back across the Atlantic? The Chinese had known the world was round. They’d known circumnavigation was possible. And they’d been on a voyage of discovery. What greater discovery than circumnavigation, than achieving Chinese mastery of the globe?

Sailors, when faced with crossing large bodies of water, often sailed to the latitude of their destination port, then aimed directly east or west towards it. Running the latitude like this not only made navigation easier, it also minimised time spent on the open seas, and therefore offered the crew their best chance of reaching their destination before their supplies ran out. The Straits of Magellan were a good thousand miles south of the Cape of Good Hope, and far, far further south of Beijing. It would have made perfect sense, therefore, for them to head north along the Chilean coast to Peru, trading with any natives they found and thus restocking their holds with provisions for the long
voyage ahead. By Knox’s rough reckoning, sailing east from Peru would have brought them up against the coast of Australia. Logically, they’d have wanted to head north, but Chinese ships had forever been at the mercy of the winds, so perhaps they’d been driven south, then on to South Africa before turning round again and heading for home, finding these reefs instead, being denied the immortality of their achievement by—

A noise behind him, the scuff of shoe on stone. He whirled around to see a man at the foot of the steps, his legs bare and damp, as though he’d just waded through water, his handgun held out ahead of him.

The man in the black shirt.

Boris.

An Internet café near the hotel sold mobiles and other consumer electronics. Rebecca turned her charm on the manager, persuaded him to recharge her phone while she took one of the computer booths, placing the holdall between her feet as she checked her email and caught up on news. The keyboard was French; she kept hitting the wrong keys. She wondered idly if Adam had used one of these when he came into Tulear to catch up on his
own email. On an impulse, she went to his hotmail provider, plugged in his email ID, tried ‘Yvette’ as his password. No luck. She tried ‘Emilia’ and ‘Michel’ without success. Then she tried ‘Rebecca’ and it welcomed her to his home page. She put a hand to her mouth, closed her eyes to prevent tears. She went to his in-box, noticed immediately that he’d checked his messages the day before he’d gone missing; and also, that one of the very last messages he’d read was from Pierre. She opened it herself.

She frowned. Pierre hadn’t said anything to her about any such meeting, or about sending emails to her father before he vanished. She made a mental note to ask him about it, then checked the other messages. There were half a dozen or so unread, one of them from someone called Braddock at the Landseer Trust saying he’d just heard that Adam and Emilia had gone missing. He was of course hoping devoutly that it was just a misunderstanding, but please could Adam let him know as soon as possible,
or they’d have to alert Matthew Richardson and his colleagues at MGS Salvage.

She stared in disbelief at the screen.
Daniel knew her father? What the hell was going on?
She typed MGS Salvage into the search engine. The company had its own website. She went to it. Her screen refilled with a background shot of an underwater wreck, overlaid with corporate pap about expertise and reputation, dedication to ecosystems and archaeological context, plus a link to updates about their Madagascan treasure ship project. She went to the ‘our team’ page, two rows of thumbnail photos, with Daniel’s second from right on the lower row, captioned as Matthew Richardson. The photo was of poor quality, but there was no question it was him. It made no sense to her. She couldn’t get a grip on it at all. Who was he? How did he know her father? Why hadn’t he been straight with her? Could she trust him? She touched a fingertip to the screen, fuzzy with static, ran her finger down his face, along the line of his jaw—

A reflection in the monitor’s screen. She whirled around to see Titch standing behind her. She couldn’t tell how long he’d been there, but his face was pale and he looked a little dazed. He spun on his heel, hurried out. Rebecca grabbed the holdall from between her feet and chased after him, catching him outside, grabbing his arm. ‘What’s wrong?’ she asked.

He turned and shook his head bitterly. ‘It’s him, isn’t it?’

‘What’s him?’

‘The reason you’re staying here. The reason you’re blowing off America, even though you know how important it is to us.’

‘Don’t be ridiculous, Titch. I’m staying here because of my father and sister.’

Anger clouded his face. ‘Don’t bullshit me,’ he cried. ‘I saw the way you were with each other last night. I saw how you flinched when he put his hand on—’

‘The way I flinched!’ she scoffed.

‘Yes,’ yelled Titch. ‘The way you fucking flinched.’ All around them on the streets, people stopped to stare, but Titch, normally the most reserved of men, didn’t even seem to notice. He stabbed a finger at his chest. ‘The things I’ve done for you,’ he said. ‘I’ve put my whole fucking life into your fucking company, and this is how you repay me? For Christ’s sake, Rebecca! You know how I feel about you: don’t you care for me
at all?’

‘You’ve got this all wrong,’ she assured him. ‘I was just checking up on him, that’s all. I need to make sure I can trust him.’

‘Sure!’ scoffed Titch.

‘It’s the truth, I swear it.’

‘So this is about trust, is it?’

‘Yes.’

‘And you trust me, don’t you? We’ve been together three years, after all.’

‘Of course I trust you.’

‘Then tell me you’re glad it’s me here with you, not him.’

‘For goodness’ sake, Titch!’

‘Tell me!’

She had too much to do to be wasting time like this. She said glacially: ‘I’m glad it’s you here with me, not Daniel.’ But her eyes flickered as she spoke his name; her voice rang hollow. She steeled herself to say it again, with conviction this time. ‘I’m glad it’s you …’ She trailed off. Her frown deepened. She looked at Titch in genuine bemusement.

A vein throbbed in his forehead. He clenched a fist and for a moment she thought he was going to hit her; but he controlled himself, shook his head, fished the hirecar keys from his pocket, tossed them to her. ‘It’s the white Toyota,’ he said, gesturing vaguely to his left. Then he turned his back on her and walked away.

Knox didn’t have a chance for either flight or fight. All that was open to him was bluff. ‘Who the hell are you?’
he asked, raising his hands above his head. ‘What do you want with me?’

‘You know who I am,’ said Boris.

‘If it’s money you’re after, it’s inside the main building,’ he said. ‘I’ll get it for you.’

‘Sure,’ said Boris. ‘I flew all the way from Georgia just to lift your wallet. Let’s not waste each other’s time, eh? I know who you are. You know who I am, and who sent me. If I was here to kill you, you’d be lying on your back right now with a hole in your forehead. So isn’t it logical to assume I don’t want you dead?’

‘I don’t know what you’re talking about.’

Boris came a little way inside the basement. ‘Ilya Nergadze is dying,’ he said. ‘Sandro’s boss now. He knows what kind of person Mikhail was, what he did to your fiancée. He doesn’t blame you for what you did. He just wants to move on, restore his family’s reputation and strength. But your Black Sea survey has got him spooked. I’m sure you can understand that. He sent me to talk to you, get your word you’ll drop it. Do that, you’ll never hear from any of us again.’

Knox hesitated. Boris’s story sounded plausible enough. Rumours had been swirling that Ilya was sick; and while Sandro was no saint, he was known as a pragmatist. And, as Boris said, if they wanted him dead, he’d be dead already. ‘Okay,’ he said. ‘You can tell Sandro he has my word.’

Boris smiled. ‘I think he’d rather hear it from you yourself.’

‘How do you mean?’ frowned Knox. ‘Is he here?’

‘In a manner of speaking,’ said Boris, nodding at the steps. ‘We’re going to go talk to him right now.’

Rebecca went back into the Internet café for her recharged mobile, took it over to the computer, which still had MGS’s website up. On a whim as much as anything, she punched in its telephone number. A young woman answered, her voice bright and keen to please. ‘Good morning, MGS Salvage,’ she said. ‘How may I help you?’

‘Daniel Richardson, please,’ said Rebecca.

‘I’m sorry. Daniel’s out of the country at the moment.’

‘Where?’

A first small hesitation. ‘Let me put you through to Frank. Frank deals with Daniel’s work while Daniel’s
away.’ Silence for twenty seconds or so, then a man picked up. ‘This is Frank. Who’s calling?’

‘My name’s Cecilia,’ said Rebecca, putting on a breezy airhead voice. ‘I’m a friend of Danny’s.’

‘Danny’s?’ He sounded like he was picking up dogshit with his teeth.

‘He promised to call last week but I haven’t heard a word.’

‘He’s away.’

‘When’s he back?’

‘Why d’you want to know?’

‘It’s personal.’

‘Why don’t you try him on his mobile?’

‘I lost the number.’

Frank laughed. ‘Sure you did, love.’

She dropped the phoney voice. ‘So what’s the deal with the Eden Reserve?’ she asked. ‘Are you doing a job there?’