The Last Survivor (A Wilde/Chase Short Story)

  Copyright © 2015 Andy McDermott

  The right of Andy McDermott to be identified as the Author of the Work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

  Apart from any use permitted under UK copyright law, this publication may only be reproduced, stored, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means, with prior permission in writing of the publishers or, in the case of reprographic production, in accordance with the terms of licences issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency.

  First published as an Ebook by Headline Publishing Group in 2015

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

  Cataloguing in Publication Data is available from the British Library

  eISBN: 978 1 4722 2663 1

  Cover photographs © Shuttershock

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  Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  About Andy McDermott

  About the Book

  Also By Andy McDermott

  Praise

  The Last Survivor

  Keep reading for an exclusive extract from The Revelation Code

  About the Author

  Andy McDermott is the bestselling author of the Nina Wilde & Eddie Chase adventure thrillers, which have been sold in over 30 countries and 20 languages. His debut novel, THE HUNT FOR ATLANTIS, was his first of several New York Times bestsellers. THE REVELATION CODE, out this November, is the eleventh book in the series, and he has also written the explosive spy thriller THE PERSONA PROTOCOL.

  A former journalist and movie critic, Andy is now a full-time novelist. Born in Halifax, he lives in Bournemouth with his partner and their son.

  About the Book

  Join Nina Wilde and Eddie Chase in a digital exclusive short story from the international bestseller Andy McDermott. Also contains an exclusive extract from THE REVELATION CODE, the next in the Wilde & Chase series.

  Nina Wilde is pregnant and feeling very alone. Reeling from the events of her last mission, in which a close friend died in their attempt to stop a resurgent Nazi force from stealing a great archaeological treasure, all Nina can do is try to find solace in her work.

  But there is one last Nazi survivor. A man determined to take his revenge on Nina for all that befell his brethren. Now he is in New York, waiting for his chance. Can Nina’s husband, former SAS soldier Eddie Chase, stop him?

  By Andy McDermott and available from Headline

  The Hunt for Atlantis

  The Tomb of Hercules

  The Secret of Excalibur

  The Covenant of Genesis

  The Cult of Osiris

  The Sacred Vault

  Empire of Gold

  Temple of the Gods

  The Valhalla Prophecy

  Kingdom of Darkness

  The Revelation Code (Coming Soon)

  The Persona Protocol

  Praise for Andy McDermott:

  ‘Adventure stories don’t get much more epic than this’ Daily Mirror

  ‘An all-action cracker from one of Britain’s most talented adventure writers’ Lancashire Evening Post

  ‘Action, adventure and mayhem aplenty!’ Scott Mariani

  ‘If Wilbur Smith and Clive Cussler collaborated, they might have come up with a thundering big adventure blockbuster like this … a widescreen, thrill-a-minute ride’ Peterborough Evening Telegraph

  ‘True Indiana Jones stuff with terrific pace’ Bookseller

  ‘A true blockbuster rollercoaster ride from start to finish … Popcorn escapism at its very best’ Crime and Publishing

  ‘A rip-roaring read and one which looks set to cement McDermott’s place in the bestsellers list for years to come’ Bolton Evening News

  ‘Fast-moving, this is a pulse-racing adventure with action right down the line’ Northern Echo

  ‘A writer of rare, almost cinematic talent. Where others’ action scenes limp along unconvincingly, his explode off the page in Technicolor’ Daily Express, Scotland

  ‘McDermott writes like Clive Cussler on speed. The action is non-stop’ Huddersfield Daily Examiner

  ‘Fabulous action sequences … [an] epic contemporary adventure thriller’ Sunday Guardian

  New York City

  ‘No!’

  Nina Wilde jerked awake, the single word a fearful gasp. She looked about in near-panic before familiar surroundings took on form in the half-light seeping through the curtains. Her bedroom, safe and secure. Heart still thudding against her chest, she forced her breathing to slow.

  A mumble from beside her. ‘What is it?’ asked her husband, Eddie Chase.

  ‘Nothing,’ she lied. ‘Go back to sleep.’

  The Englishman seemed to return to his slumber, but Nina knew after six years together that he was a very light sleeper; his former career in the British military’s elite Special Air Service had trained him to snap to full alertness at the slightest prompt. She checked the bedside clock: 4.32 a.m. The light outside was spill from the street lamps eight floors below, dawn still almost two hours away.

  But Nina knew she would not get back to sleep – nor did she want to. She had suffered the same nightmare for weeks, the recurring scene all the more terrifying because it had actually happened.

  And just as in reality, she was powerless to stop events from playing through to their terrible end.

  She remained still until Eddie’s breathing became slightly heavier. He was as deep in sleep as he would go. She slipped out from the covers and groped for her dressing gown, then crept to the door and eased it open. Comfortably navigating the darkened apartment, she only switched on a lamp once she had reached her study and closed its door behind her.

  Sitting at her desk, she opened her laptop. The menu bar clock read 4.36. ‘No time like the present,’ the redhead whispered, calling up several documents. They were the notes for her book: a memoir of the archaeological adventures that had led to the discovery of Atlantis, the lost golden city of El Dorado and the ancient Viking hall of Valhalla, amongst many other wonders. She had spent the past two months researching and re-examining her past exploits; with her publisher paying an advance of over half a million dollars, the time had come to get on with actually writing about them.

  So far she had two full chapters and a portion of a third. She scrolled through her notes to refresh her memory, then returned to the manuscript and started to type.

  The words came easily, her focus fully upon the work – until a hand upon her shoulder made her jump. ‘Jesus, Eddie!’

  ‘What’re you doing up?’ Eddie asked, scratching his close-cropped, thinning dark hair. ‘You know what time it is?’

  ‘Yeah, it’s …’ She glanced at the clock: almost six. ‘Okay, it’s later than I thought.’ The sky outside was starting to lighten. ‘I must have really gotten into a groove.’

  ‘I didn’t mean it like you’ve been working too long. I meant it like, “Why in the name of arse are you working at all?” It’s the middle of the night!’

  Her reply was slightly defensive. ‘I couldn’t sleep, so I thought I might as well do something constructive.’

  ‘You’ve hardly done anything else lately. Christ, you’ve barely left the flat for the last few days.’ A concerned look. ‘Everything all right? Is the baby okay?’

  She glanced at her midriff. At three months pregnant, Nina was c
onvinced she could make out a small bump, though so far it had proven beyond everyone else’s perception. But she knew the baby was there – not least because of the whirlwind it had already wreaked on her appetite and emotions. ‘Yeah, as far as I can tell. I’ve got another prenatal check-up today.’

  ‘It’s not the baby I’m worried about right now. You need to get more sleep.’

  ‘I’d love to, but my hormones don’t want to cooperate.’

  ‘You sure it’s your hormones?’

  ‘What else would it be?’ Her defensiveness returned, with more of a bite than she had intended.

  ‘Just want to make sure you’re all right,’ said Eddie, peering at the laptop. ‘So when do I get to read this? I mean, I’m in it. Aren’t I?’

  ‘Of course you’re in it,’ she said, firmly closing the machine’s lid. ‘But it’s not finished yet. I don’t want anyone to see it until I’m happy.’

  ‘Okay,’ he said, disappointed. ‘What time’s your appointment?’

  ‘Eleven. Will you come with me?’

  ‘I would, but I’ve got to meet Natalia at the airport, remember?’

  ‘Oh, yeah. When?’

  ‘Her plane’s due in at twelve.’ He rubbed his neck. ‘Well, I’m up now – I’ll put the kettle on.’

  ‘Decaf for me,’ she said, grudgingly. Cutting her caffeine intake had been an unwelcome medical recommendation.

  He grinned, exposing the gap between his front teeth. ‘Finally! You’ve taken somebody else’s advice. For once.’ He headed for the kitchen, with a quizzical flick of his eyes at the laptop as he left.

  Nina turned back to the computer. But she didn’t open it, again feeling oddly defensive without being quite sure why. It was probably just because she didn’t want anyone looking over her shoulder at a work in progress.

  Wasn’t it?

  Nina spent the morning working, reluctantly stopping when she realised that she needed to leave for her obstetrician’s appointment. She closed the laptop and headed for the bedroom to change. ‘You off?’ said Eddie as she passed. He was on the sofa, reading something on his phone.

  ‘Yeah. You’ve been quiet all morning – what have you been up to?’

  His reply was somewhat pointed. ‘Same stuff I’m always up to when you shut yourself in your office.’

  ‘Oh, looking at porn?’

  The joke disarmed him. ‘Not all the time,’ he said with a grin. ‘I was just reading about that airship – you know, the massive one that’s going up and down the East River?’

  ‘Yeah, it was on TV.’

  He turned the phone towards her, revealing a picture of the giant craft. ‘It’s flying over Little Italy this afternoon as part of a festival.’

  ‘The Feast of San Gennaro? I used to go to that every year with my parents when I was a kid. They did really good food.’

  ‘We could take Natalia.’

  ‘I’m not sure she’ll want to tour Little Italy on foot right after a transatlantic flight,’ Nina pointed out. She took a closer look at his phone – or rather, its bulky rubberised case. ‘I can’t believe you paid good money for that,’ she said, teasing.

  ‘We’ll see how long your iPhone lasts if you drop it down the bog,’ he retorted, smirking.

  ‘Unlike you, I don’t spend hours reading things on it in the bathroom.’

  ‘Then what’s the point of having it?’ They both smiled. ‘But yeah, you’re probably right – Natalia’ll be pretty knackered after her flight. Shame, I wouldn’t have minded seeing that blimp close up.’

  ‘Maybe you’ll get another chance soon. Speaking of Natalia,’ she added as she continued into the bedroom, ‘shouldn’t you be setting off?’

  ‘No, I’ve still got a bit of time left, and I’ll find out if her flight’s on schedule before I go. Don’t want to be hanging around the airport for hours.’

  ‘I know. We’ve done more than enough of that over the years!’ She quickly changed her clothes, then came back into the lounge. ‘Okay, I’m going. So you’ll be gone by the time I get back?’

  ‘Probably. If you hang on a minute, I’ll check her flight.’

  ‘No, I need to go. I’ve already left it longer than I should have.’ She diverted to the sofa to kiss him. ‘See you when you get back.’

  ‘If they can tell if it’s a boy or a girl,’ he called after her as she went to the door, ‘I don’t want to know!’

  Smiling, Nina left the apartment. She took the elevator to the ground floor and emerged on East 78th Street, hailing a cab.

  Across the road from her building, a tall, burly blond man watched her taxi pull away, his eyes narrowing with malevolence. He had found his target … and would soon have his revenge.

  Eddie finished reading the article about the airship, and was about to check the status of Natalia’s flight before deciding it would be much quicker to type in its details on a keyboard than laboriously thumb them in on a small touchscreen. He went into the study and opened the laptop, quickly carrying out the search.

  ‘Bollocks,’ he muttered on seeing the result. The flight from Hamburg had been delayed by bad weather. It was now over the Atlantic on its way to New York, but did not look likely to make up much lost time en route. ‘Good job I checked.’ There was no point leaving for JFK for at least another hour.

  He was about to close the machine when a text document behind the browser caught his eye: Nina’s manuscript. A moment’s hesitation, then he clicked on it. ‘Well, it is about me …’

  The Yorkshireman tried to resist the temptation to play critic – his tastes in literature generally extended little further than thrillers with covers featuring silhouetted running men and/or expensive fast-moving vehicles, sometimes on fire – but it wasn’t long before he caught himself frowning. It wasn’t so much at his wife’s prose style, which admittedly was on the dry side, as at what she was saying. Or rather, as he kept reading, what she wasn’t. It wasn’t inaccurate, but … incomplete.

  ‘Why’s she written it like that?’ He whispered as he continued through the document, his expression gradually darkening.

  Nina returned from the obstetrician feeling buoyant. Her greatest concern about the pregnancy had been as much her own health as the baby’s; several months earlier, she had been infected by a highly toxic substance that seemed likely to kill her sooner rather than later. The toxin had apparently been neutralised during her discovery of the Spring of Immortality, a legendary source of healing water sought by none other than Alexander the Great over two thousand years earlier. It was something of a misnomer, since actual immortality was not one of its benefits, but it did slow the ageing process – and even cure certain diseases.

  Proof of that had come from a deeply unpleasant source. Prior to Nina’s discovery of the spring, its only beneficiaries had been a group of escaped Nazi war criminals led by an SS commander named Erich Kroll, who had been using a small supply of its water looted from a shrine to Alexander in Greece. The Nazis, who were all in their nineties but physically appeared fifty years younger, had been plotting the rise of a new Reich from a remote enclave in the wilds of Argentina.

  All were now dead, and she and those few companions who had survived the expedition had pledged to keep the spring’s location hidden to prevent further bloodshed. The water’s effect on her was no secret, however. The tumours that had begun to infect her body quickly went into remission, shrivelling to nothing. Her doctors were at a loss to explain how, and she had not been willing to share the truth. What mattered to her was that she was now apparently back to full health … and her baby appeared to be suffering no ill effects.

  As she entered the apartment, she saw Eddie’s battered leather jacket hanging by the door; he hadn’t yet left for the airport. ‘I’m home!’ she called, expecting him to greet her. When there was no answer after a few seconds, she said again: ‘Hello? Eddie, you here?’

  ‘Yeah, in the study,’ was the reply.

  He still did not appear, so she hung up her
own jacket and went to find him. ‘What’s up?’ she asked as she entered the study – to find her laptop open with the manuscript on the screen.

  ‘I’ve been reading,’ he said.

  His tone was level, but she immediately picked out a disapproving undertone that she knew from experience would soon escalate into an argument, even if she hadn’t already been about to start one. ‘Is that my book? Eddie, you know I didn’t want anyone to read it until it was finished!’

  ‘You didn’t want anyone to be able to say what you’d got wrong until it was already in print, you mean?’

  She stiffened. ‘There’s nothing “wrong” with it. Everything I’ve written is exactly what happened – the only things I’ve left out are because of security issues.’

  ‘You’ve left out more than that.’ He pointed at the screen. ‘This bit here, you’re talking about how you discovered the Pyramid of Osiris.’

  ‘Yes, what about it?’

  ‘How you discovered the Pyramid of Osiris. What about Macy?’

  Nina felt cold guilt. ‘What about her?’ she replied with a snap, trying to force the feeling away – only to realise too late that she had said exactly the wrong thing.

  ‘What about her?’ Eddie exploded, standing. ‘For fuck’s sake, Nina! You would never have found the bloody thing if it wasn’t for her – you wouldn’t even have got your job back at the IHA without Macy! She had a total case of hero-worship, you were the whole reason she got into archaeology in the first place, and she did just as much as you, maybe even more, to find the pyramid, but you hardly even mention her!’ He stabbed a finger at one particular paragraph. ‘This bit here: “With the help of American archaeology student Macy Sharif, I found the symbol within the Osireon that pointed to the site of the pyramid.” That’s it? That’s all you’ve got to say about her?’

  ‘It’s only the first draft!’ Nina protested. ‘And the book’s supposed to be about what I discovered, not how I discovered it.’

  ‘There – you’ve done it again. You said how I discovered it, not how we discovered it. You left Macy out again!’