They stumbled out of the casino into the light of early morning, Mason quickly checking his watch. It was a little after six a.m., and they’d spent the entire night inside. The morning air was crisp and clear and fresh. He filled his lungs with it. Casino Square was quiet as the grave, just a few early risers – or late revellers – wandering around and a single car winding its way up from the town below. It was quiet, surreally so, after the all-night hubbub of the casino. Mason shielded his eyes for a moment as they adjusted to the light.
‘Back to the hotel?’ Hassell suggested.
‘Yeah, and surveillance all the way,’ Mason said.
They used every scrap of skill they’d accumulated through the years to meander their way from the casino to their hotel, making sure they weren’t being followed. Hassell’s expertise came in useful, as did Mason’s and Roxy’s. They doubled back several times, and took wrong turns, waited for minutes behind corners, but eventually ended up standing outside their hotel, satisfied that sometime in the night Cassadaga had relinquished the hunt.
They entered the lobby, knowing they weren’t going to get any sleep, but content to freshen up. Before they could cross the wide, airy space, Sally’s phone was ringing. She stopped next to a row of potted plants to answer it.
‘Yes?’
‘Is that Sally Rusk?’
Immediately, she put the call on speakerphone and ushered them all to a quiet area of the lobby. ‘Yes, who is this?’
‘You don’t know me. I am Daniel. I work for a certain, um, auction house.’
‘Premo Conte asked you to call?’ Sally said.
Daniel coughed. ‘In a manner of speaking,’ Daniel said with a rich English accent. ‘I organised your tickets last night.’
‘Good.’ Sally held the phone tighter. ‘Can you speak freely?’
‘Yes, I can.’
‘We need information. I’m guessing it will be … classified. Can you help us?’
‘That depends on what you need.’
‘A man,’ Sally said, thinking hard. ‘He’s the owner of all that Babylonian jewellery, the seller from last night. We need his name and his address here in Monaco.’
Daniel drew in a deep breath. ‘That’s highly confidential information.’
‘I realise that.’
‘Until now, all I did was get you some tickets, but now you’re asking me to break the law. I could lose my job, maybe go to jail. I could—’
‘Calm down, kid.’ Roxy leaned towards the phone in Sally’s hand. ‘Take a breath. Why did you get us those tickets?’
‘Why?’
‘Yeah. Something must have made you do it, and I’m guessing it wasn’t for the love of Premo Conte.’
Daniel managed a small laugh. ‘No, it was purely for the love of money.’
Mason liked that. It made the man easier to read. ‘Conte bribed you?’
‘I guess you could say that.’
Sally spoke quickly. ‘All right, well, that’s still on the table,’ she said carefully.
‘The tickets were easy. What you’re asking is going to be super hard.’
‘Can you do it?’ Mason asked.
‘I need to think about it.’
‘Would it help if you knew that this man is a criminal?’ Sally said. ‘Wanted by the police?’
‘You could really help,’ Roxy put in.
‘This would be to help track him down?’ Daniel asked.
‘That’s exactly what it would be,’ Mason said.
‘Who are you people?’
Mason thought about that. After a few moments, he said, ‘We work for Conte on sensitive matters. Things we don’t want the public at large, or even the authorities, to know too much about. All we need from you is a name and an address.’
Daniel was quiet for a long time. Mason was torn between wanting to prompt him and pushing too hard. The fact was – they’d already tried breaking into the place using Hassell. The New Yorker had told them he’d need hours to go through all the files, to track Marduk down that way. What they really needed was an inside man.
‘Daniel?’ he said finally.
‘How much?’ he asked.
‘How much did Conte pay you?’ Sally asked.
‘Five hundred.’
‘Then how does five thousand sound?’
There was a sharp intake of breath. ‘Pretty good,’ Daniel admitted.
‘We need that information as soon as possible,’ Mason said. ‘The man in question may leave Monaco at any moment.’
‘I’m a keyholder. I can go in early,’ Daniel said. ‘There’s always plenty to do. I’ve done it before. It just might be possible. It all depends how quickly I can find the right file.’
Hassell made a face. ‘Tell me about it.’
Mason kept his voice low, since there were now others in the lobby and sound travelled inside. ‘Will you do it?’
‘I’ll try.’
‘Good man. As soon as you’re done, call us. We’ll be waiting for you.’
Daniel coughed. ‘If I haven’t called you by ten a.m. the deal’s off.’
The line went dead, leaving Sally staring at a phone with an empty line. She looked up at the others. ‘Our best chance,’ she said with a wry shake of her head. ‘It’s a small hope.’
Mason knew he needed to decompress, to take a few moments alone. They exited the elevators and then parted, heading for their rooms. Mason closed the door behind him and then leaned against it, sighing. It had been a hell of a long night. Worse, they had failed.
Again.
It’s never going to be a case of just jumping from clue to clue, he thought. During their last few missions, they’d learned that. He tried to focus on the positives from last night – Roxy claiming she’d made a breakthrough, all the lives they’d saved, that they’d faced Cassadaga and lived.
Mason showered, changed and lay down on the bed. It was seven-thirty a.m. He was hungry. He spent an hour dozing and then swung his legs off the mattress, put his shoes on and headed down to the breakfast room, half expecting to see Roxy propping up the bar as he went past but, for once, the American wasn’t there. Mason helped himself to a large, cooked breakfast, a mug of coffee, and then took a table. Soon, the others turned up. They talked, they ate, but nothing could make the time go faster. It crawled by. All they thought about was Daniel and of what he might be doing, of Marduk and where he might be. After breakfast, they took a walk to the harbour with takeaway coffees clasped in their hands and leaned against the railings, staring at the expensive yachts.
‘You think Marduk’s still here?’ Mason asked.
Sally nodded as the wind tousled her hair. ‘I do,’ she said. ‘Last night’s fiasco set him back.’
It was nine forty-five.
‘Everything will change if we get an address,’ Mason said, the words as much to stimulate himself as the others. The slow passage of time was edging towards their deadline, and now they wanted it to go slower, fearing that ten a.m. might come around and they wouldn’t hear from Daniel.
It was nine fifty-five.
The sea glittered, the waves rolling and lapping against concrete moorings and stirring the enormous yachts. Seagulls dipped and soared, squawking and making wayward patterns against the blue vault of the skies. Service staff were cleaning the decks and the windows, one man bringing a sleek car around for its owner to drive. Another man, dressed in a suit, was sitting alone on deck, breakfast laid out before him, staring out to sea as if searching for something even his wealth and influence couldn’t conjure.
‘It’s gone ten,’ Sally said then. ‘That’s the deadline.’
‘Give him a few minutes,’ Mason replied. ‘He might have got held up.’
Time passed. There was no phone call. Mason sipped his coffee and scanned the marina, chilled now by the rising wind. He checked his watch. Daniel was ten minutes late. It didn’t look good. For all they knew, Daniel could be in police custody.
‘He said he was going in early,’ Sally fretted. ‘We need to come up with a plan B.’
‘Plan B?’ Roxy stared at her. ‘We barely have a plan A.’
Mason tried to clear his head. It wasn’t working. Everything they’d done in their search for Marduk had led them to this harbour at this moment. It couldn’t all be in vain.
‘Give him a few more minutes,’ he said.
‘There comes a time,’ Quaid said, ‘when you have to get past it and move on. I think we’re there now.’
Mason wondered if they could just turn up at the auction house and talk to Daniel face to face. They could, but it was hardly fair to the kid. Mason wouldn’t push someone into doing something they didn’t want to do.
Out of nowhere, and loud across the tranquil marina, the ringtone of Sally’s phone chimed. Mason jumped, even though he’d been hoping for it. Sally answered the call and put it on speakerphone.
‘Daniel?’ she said.
‘Yes, I have the information you want.’
‘We thought you weren’t ringing back,’ Roxy said with relief in her voice.
‘I got caught up in something, but I got the name and the address. Are you ready? I don’t have long.’
‘Sure,’ Sally said, finding her notes app on her smart-phone as Quaid pulled a pen and paper from his pocket. ‘Go ahead.’
‘The man’s name is Jon Utu, and he’s staying in one of Monaco’s best hotels.’
Sally’s eyes narrowed at the mention of the name. She typed it into her phone as Quaid scribbled it down on his pad. Daniel spent a few seconds reeling off the name of the hotel and the room number and then hung up, asking them to wire his money across as soon as possible. Sally looked down at the name she’d written on her phone.
‘Utu,’ she said. ‘It makes sense.’
‘Why does it?’ Quaid asked, also studying the name.
‘Utu is a Babylonian god,’ she said. ‘He appears in the Epic of Gilgamesh and helps him defeat an ogre. He’s portrayed as riding a heavenly chariot that looks a lot like the sun. Most importantly, he was responsible for dispensing heavenly divine justice.’
Mason nodded. ‘That links perfectly to Marduk,’ he said. ‘It’s what he thinks he’s trying to do.’
‘Utu is a major god,’ Sally told them. ‘Outliving the Babylonian empire by thousands of years and only diminishing when Christianity suppressed the Mesopotamian religion.’
‘One more reason for Marduk to hate Christianity,’ Quaid said.
‘So this Jon Utu is Marduk,’ Roxy said, with steel in her voice. ‘Let’s go pay him a visit.’
Mason pushed away from the railing and threw his empty coffee cup in a nearby bin. ‘Today,’ he said. ‘We can end this.’