The Tomb of the Gods (Matt Drake 4) Read online

  Table of Contents

  Title page

  THE TOMB OF THE GODS

  PART 1

  CHAPTER ONE

  CHAPTER TWO

  CHAPTER THREE

  CHAPTER FOUR

  CHAPTER FIVE

  CHAPTER SIX

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  CHAPTER NINE

  CHAPTER TEN

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  PART 2

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  PART 3

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

  CHAPTER THIRTY

  CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

  PART 4

  CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

  CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX

  THE TOMB OF THE GODS

  (Matt Drake #4)

  by

  David Leadbeater

  Copyright © 2013 by David Leadbeater

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher/author except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other non-commercial uses permitted by copyright law.

  All characters in this book are fictitious, and any resemblance to actual persons living or dead is purely coincidental.

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  For invaluable help on this action-packed journey I’d like to take a few minutes to thank some fantastic people:

  First and foremost, my wife Erica, for her absolute understanding and unflinching support.

  My parents for their enthusiasm, encouragement and help.

  Amy Eye of The Eyes for Editing – for her top class editing work and for putting up with all of my many urgent requests.

  Martha Bourke – author of The Jaguar Sun series – for a wealth of invaluable information that helped to get me started on this ever-winding road.

  Andy Brown – of ClickedTwice Design – for designing the awesome covers.

  And to every single person who has bought a Matt Drake adventure and loved it – the journey has only just begun!

  I would also like to acknowledge the classic poem – The Charge of the Light Brigade, by Alfred, Lord Tennyson, which inspired the climatic scene of this series.

  Other books by David Leadbeater

  The Bones of Odin (Matt Drake #1)

  The Blood King Conspiracy (Matt Drake #2)

  The Gates of Hell (Matt Drake 3)

  Chosen (The Chosen Few Trilogy 1)

  Walking with Ghosts (A short story)

  Connect with David on Twitter - @dleadbeater2011

  Visit David’s website – www.davidleadbeaternovels.com

  Follow David’s blog - http://davidleadbeaternovels.blogspot.co.uk/

  All helpful, genuine comments are welcome. I would love to hear from you.

  [email protected]

  PART 1

  What makes a hero. . .

  CHAPTER ONE

  Beyond the tiny airplane window, a bruised sky reflected the state of his soul.

  He cast his gaze around the cabin. Pretty stewardesses in red skirts and white blouses dished out microwaved food and offered passengers drinks. The aromatic smells of cooked meats and vegetables drifted through the air. Couples and their kids chatted animatedly, but not as much as they had a week or two ago. This was the plane’s return journey. The one taking them all back home.

  To London.

  Drake moved his head slightly back toward the window. His face betrayed nothing, but his mind flicked over recent events faster than it could assimilate the data. After a few minutes, he closed his eyes, letting out a sigh of frustration. He needed to slow down. He needed to take stock. A twelve-hour plane ride should give him time to do that.

  Two days had passed since the Blood King’s defeat beneath Diamond Head. Since then, Drake and his friends had been flown to the CIA’s office in Los Angeles for a full debriefing and then promptly been ushered into a meeting with Jonathan Gates, the US Secretary of Defense. There, Gates told them the shadowy operative Russell Cayman, the man who had taken over Torsten Dahl’s archaeological exploration of the first tomb of the gods in Iceland, had invited all of them—including Gates himself—to an explanatory discussion in a neutral building in L.A. At this meeting, he told Gates, he would reveal his reason for usurping Dahl and furnish them with some details of the group he worked for.

  The Swede, Dahl, was already en route, flying in from Iceland.

  At first suspicious, they’d all been won over when Cayman agreed that the Secretary of Defense and his entourage of bodyguards could accompany them, no questions asked.

  Hayden was optimistic. “Maybe Cayman isn’t such a bad guy after all,” she had said. They were all working on the location of the third tomb of the gods, but the map was beyond ancient, slightly eroded, and in need of translation. She thought that a full-disclosure chat with Cayman would further their joint goals faster than a hundred academics.

  Drake was torn between wanting to meet Cayman, the man they were sure was tied to Wells somewhere down the line and thus tied to Alyson’s murder, and the need to travel quickly to Wells’s flat in London to search for something only he might find.

  A clue as to what the hell Wells had been involved in. And why.

  Wells, at heart, had been an SAS officer and a patriot. Drake had always known that. Beyond everything, Wells put his country first.

  For him to know about Alyson’s death and not tell me…

  What would make a man like Wells do that?

  Cayman might know. But the flat in London—that’s where the real evidence should lie. So Drake, along with Mai and Alicia, settled on a journey to London that they hoped led to the clues to a real answer. Drake asked Ben to accompany him, and the young man had deliberated hard, but elected to stay close to his girlfriend. Ben had been fighting for her for some months now and wasn’t about to let her drift away. Karin stayed with her brother, her elation at beating the Blood King and the seven-layered trap system before uncovering a second tomb of the gods, had been badly tempered when her new friend Komodo had been immediately sent back to his Delta base, destination unknown.

  Drake drifted back to the present and checked his watch. In three hours, they would land at Heathrow. Wells’s flat was on the outskirts of Mayfair, just off Park Lane and Piccadilly. An easy tube journey from Heathrow. Once they landed, Drake, Mai and Alicia were prepared to hit the ground running. Mai’s infractions with her bosses at the agency had been forgiven—the Japanese had seen the importance of finding the third Tomb of the Gods and the hinted-at doomsday weapon it may contain. She’d been given full reign to deal with the situation however she saw fit. Agents were at her disposal. Alicia remained part of Drake’s unofficial team, a team that had been evolving since they had first met Jonathan Gates back in Washington DC, Drake had realized.

  A stewardess leaned over him. He refused the snack. His eyes lingered on the shots: the whisky, the vodk
a, the quick cure. Very slowly, he shook his head. When the stewardess pressed the sale, mistaking raw need for playfulness, he closed his eyes and waited until she went away.

  Behind his eyes, those eternally sad eyes, he saw them both how he liked to remember them. Beautiful and brimming with life and love and happiness. Alyson had always been like that. With Kennedy, the contentment had just started to shine through when. . .

  ...when. . .

  I miss you both so much.

  He had moved on. To a degree, anyway. To drink their memories away was to sully them. To forget the happy times they shared was to waste them. And an ex-SAS soldier was stronger than that. Deep inside him was a core of pure steel.

  He hardened himself now. There was a promise of tough work ahead. Not only for him, but for Hayden back in L.A. She would be meeting Cayman soon, and then the shit might really hit the fan. He considered giving Ben a call on the Sat-phone, trading a joke or two about his band who had hit the limelight at last (without him), and maybe firing off a few old Dinorock quotes. But then, Alicia caught his eye from across the aisle.

  “Fucksake, Drake,” she whispered. “Stop shutting us out. We’re here to bloody help you.”

  “The least you could do,” Drake said. “Considering. . .”

  “Considering what? The only thing I consider is the size of—”

  “Considering. . . that you two lied to me for seven years.”

  “I hadn’t seen you for seven years. I went rogue, remember? And I only heard about it a couple of years ago, Drake. Just like Mai. I guess we both thought it had gone way past the time to tell you.”

  “So you made the choice for me.”

  “We didn’t know anything! Well, nothing beyond the fact that Alyson didn’t die in an accident and that Wells had knowledge of it.”

  Drake frowned. “But how could you know I’d moved on?”

  “Don’t be so naïve. I knew where you were and what you were doing. So did Mai, I’m sure. The world’s a smaller place with Facebook and Twitter around. And before those two, there was still the web, and boyfriends who knew how to use it.”

  Drake sat back. Deep down, he knew that what she said made sense. Time moved by quickly, and to send a man back to the worst place in his life after five years of healing could have been more of a curse than a blessing.

  The seat belt sign clicked on. The plane began to descend.

  Drake met Alicia’s crazy blue-eyed gaze. “The investigation will be even harder,” he said, “now that we know Wells wasn’t controlled by the British government, but by some greater secret organization. Now that we know he wasn’t the man he pretended to be.”

  Alicia buckled up. “Oh, I’m pretty sure he was a perv, Drake. But I guess his being dead doesn’t help us much.”

  Drake stared, a little amused despite himself. “I guess not.”

  *****

  Once through passport control and past the luggage carousels, Drake headed immediately for the depths of the underground. Tired old escalators groaned as they descended, taking them past dozens of picture frames, all inlaid with advertisements of the latest shows and movies and expo’s. Walking With Dinosaurs. The Hobbit. Eurogamer. Once at the bottom, a spider web of signs seemed perfectly designed to confuse newcomers. Drake, Mai and Alicia spent a few minutes deciding which line to take and then which direction to go. Hordes of Londoners and tourists of every color and race flowed past them without checking. A busker strummed a jaunty tune at a nearby junction.

  “Piccadilly line,” Alicia finally said. “Takes us all the way to Green Park. Isn’t Wells’s place just off that?”

  “On the other side of Piccadilly,” Drake said. He slipped his mobile back into his pocket and worked out the time difference back in L.A. Only about seven a.m. in the land of sunshine and celluloid. Hayden and her CIA colleagues were due to meet Dahl off the plane at nine a.m. and then proceed to meet with Cayman at ten. Drake’s suspicions of the shady DIA operative deepened with every mile he traveled. He didn’t just fear for Ben; he feared even for the highly capable people like Hayden and Kinimaka. And Dahl. What was his Swedish friend about to walk into?

  Who was Russell Cayman? And just how far up the food chain did his bosses make their, no doubt, sumptuous and immoral nests?

  So far up, Drake thought. They were beings of mist and shadow, fleeting like ghosts. The power behind the power.

  They found the right station and waited behind the yellow lines for their tube. Mai drifted to his right, Alicia to his left, unconsciously putting a barrier between them. Alicia stepped forward as the tube whistled past.

  “Shag it, it’s packed out. If I get groped on this thing, some bastard’s getting off minus a set of balls.” She paused. “Unless he looks like Boreanaz. Then. . .we’ll talk.”

  “Or Belmonte?” Mai said, her soft, sweet voice belying the venom intended. “I’m surprised you didn’t stay in L.A., Myles. You knew your old lover was arriving with Dahl, didn’t you?”

  “Been there,” Alicia said. “Banged that. I’ve had better.”

  “Oh, hundreds I’m sure.”

  “Bloody hell.” Drake exploded. “If I’d known it’d be this hard with you two, I’d have bloody well come alone.”

  The train rattled through the darkness, the bright windows illuminating pipes that twisted and snaked their way along the tunnel walls. As he studied his fellow travelers, Drake was amused to see how many of them stole glances at each other when they assumed they weren’t being watched. And the traditional open paper was long gone now, replaced by Android phones and Amazon Kindles.

  Green Park arrived quickly. They exited the tube station and found themselves on a busy London street near the sprawling Ritz hotel. Drake zoned out for a few minutes when a black Bugatti Veyron took the right turn at the lights to head down the side of the famous landmark.

  “Earth to Drake,” Alicia murmured. “It has four wheels, a bonnet, and a windscreen. It’s just a car.”

  Drake glared. “Don’t push it, Alicia. I still haven’t forgiven you for shooting up that Shelby Cobra.”

  “You mean the one with the bad guy in the boot?”

  “You could have easily shot him and missed the car, Alicia. I’m not that stupid.”

  Mai spoke up as they crossed the road. “Or maybe she’s not as good as you think she is, Matt.”

  “Fuck off, tiny sprite.” Alicia strode ahead, aiming for the street where Drake indicated Wells’s flat was situated. After a few minutes’ walk, they paused outside a nondescript three-story building built of grey stone, cast-iron gutters and thick, darkened windows.

  “Guess I’m not so bad after all.” Alicia raised an eyebrow at Mai. “This is the place. I only came here once, maybe seven or eight years ago. But this is definitely Wells’s home.”

  Drake checked the address he’d been given. “Yep.”

  They started up the steps.

  “We’d best be quick,” Mai said quietly. “A pack of bruisers has been following us since we entered this street. They’re hanging back for now. Probably just guards hired to watch Wells’s place. They’ll take their time checking us out or they’ll be on us in minutes, depending on orders. My guess is the former. We could be anybody, after all. Keep going.” She hissed as Alicia faltered.

  Matt Drake knew better than to look back. He’d been looking back and staying purposely stagnant for seven years.

  It was time to move forward and fully embrace the power and the violence and the tremendous skill he had been born to utilize.

  He could be a force of nature. A savior of worlds. Deep down, he’d always known it. The time was coming when he’d have to prove it.

  CHAPTER TWO

  Hayden Jaye tuned out the conversation around her for a few moments. Ever since Dmitry Kovalenko ordered the attack on the CIA safe house, killing most of her team and taking her hostage, events had unfolded with such crazy rapidity that she’d barely had a moment to take stock. Even the weeks convalescing after the
first knife wound had passed in a blur as she tried to piece together all that had happened and what the Blood King’s next move might be.

  But now, healing slowly from the second knife wound—a wound that hurt less and healed faster with the intimate knowledge that Ed Boudreau was dead—she had consciously been taking as many spare moments as she could to sort out her feelings for Ben Blake.

  He was too young for her. He was too immature for her. At a professional and career level, they were poles apart. If it were a business decision, it would be easy.

  Hayden wondered if the spirit of old James Jaye was still riding her back, forcing her nose to the ground so she couldn’t see straight. But it didn’t feel that way. Her heart was telling her the relationship was wrong, not her mind. But what was the problem? Could she let something that had, at first, felt so right dissipate without a fight?

  And here she was, about to meet not only the famous Torsten Dahl but also Daniel Belmonte—one of her old flames—whilst Ben and his sister waited back at the HQ, ready to process any information Dahl might bring with him. The big Swede had been toiling persistently inside the Icelandic tomb for weeks upon weeks and had actually stepped up operations when Cayman appeared and took charge. But Dahl had kept many secrets to himself, and Hayden believed, had even managed to place a trusted man on the inside.