The masked woman’s eyes narrowed, but she shook her head. ‘No. I understand that you do not trust us.’

Nina joined her husband. ‘So who the hell are you guys?’

Two more figures had caught up with the others during the conversation. One was the sniper, carrying a long-barrelled rifle with a telescopic sight. The other, trailing behind him, was unarmed, and noticeably fatter than his companions. The woman stood back to let the second man approach. ‘He will tell you.’

The newcomer took a moment to recover his breath before pulling off his mask. Eddie and Nina both reacted in shock.

It was Cheng.

‘Sorry it took so long,’ he said with a smile. ‘But I told you I could help.’

Chapter 22

22

China

Nina stared frostily at Cheng across a table in the business jet’s cabin. ‘So everything you’ve told me, everything you’ve done, was all part of a plan to get hold of this?’ She held up the resurrection key.

Cheng met her gaze, albeit decidedly shamefaced. ‘I’m afraid so, yes.’

The group that had saved Nina and Eddie was a Chinese special forces team, which after securing Eleanor and Miller sent members in full hazmat gear into the bunker to plug the gas leak and recover the key and the sarcophagus. Once brought back to the surface, the artefacts were taken to a waiting boat, then the entire group travelled back to Queenstown. The jet, a spacious Cessna Citation Longitude with a Chinese registration, awaited them at the airport; somehow, passengers and cargo all boarded without a single official check. Nina had no idea how that had been arranged, but she doubted the entire customs staff could have been bribed, so it seemed more likely that they had orders from above to let them pass. Diplomatic dealings, faked instructions or high-level corruption? She didn’t know, and her rescuers remained tight-lipped.

The flight, Cheng told her, would take over twelve hours. She had plenty of questions, not least why they were being taken to China at all – while they were not technically being forced to make the journey, unlike Eleanor and Miller, their new travelling companions had made it clear they would not accept a refusal – but she was also exhausted from the frenzy of the previous day. Reluctantly, she and Eddie used one of the cabin’s private berths to find restless sleep.

Now it was morning, and they were cruising high over the endless rocky deserts of western China. Cheng shifted awkwardly before continuing. ‘I didn’t find the key on the dark web myself. Chinese intelligence spotted it, and bought it from Krämer – but without someone of the correct bloodline, it was useless.’

‘So you thought, “Hmm, who do we know who’s got Atlantean DNA? Oh, right, the woman who discovered Atlantis! Let’s trick her into helping us!”’ Eddie said sarcastically.