Chase tried to raise a hand to point, but was too weak. Instead, he tipped his head down the fjord to the east. A thick, oily column of black smoke roiled into the sky. “Hard landing.”

“The virus?”

“Fried. Along with everything else.”

Nina looked sadly at the dark cloud. “Kari…”

They reached the rocky shore, Nina dragging Chase from the water. “Oh my God,” she exclaimed when she saw his leg. She pressed her hand against the wound, trying to stop the bleeding. “We’ve got to get you to a doctor.”

“Right,” said Chase, through gritted teeth. “There’s a clinic at the top of this cliff, in the company headquarters. Too bad it belongs to the bloke we just blew up. I don’t think they’ll be happy to see us-”

Almost as if in reply, a rock beside Chase suddenly shattered. The crack of a rifle shot echoed around the fjord.

“No kidding!” Nina yelped. She looked for the shooter. On the opposite bank, she saw several men silhouetted against the sky, pointing down at them.

Another bullet smacked into the ground close by, chipped fragments of rock spitting into their faces. “Get into cover!” Chase ordered.

“I’m not leaving you!” Nina protested. She bent down to drag him with her.

“Nina, don’t!”

“I’m not leaving you!” she repeated, holding him under his arms and pulling him over the rocks.

Something shot past her, whipping up her hair. Another stone burst apart right behind her. “They’ve got us,” Chase groaned. They looked up at the figures on the cliff top, catching a glint of light reflected from a telescopic sight.

Nina crouched, squeezing Chase more tightly and pressing her cheek against his face. “Eddie…”

Gunfire-but not from the rifles across the fjord.

Machine-gun fire, somewhere above. Dust and dirt kicked up from the top of the far cliff. One of the men fell over the edge, screaming all the way down until he smacked sickeningly onto a rocky outcrop.

“What the fuck?” Chase said in wonder.

The answer came a second later as three helicopters in the colors of the Norwegian army swept over the top of the cliff, gunners visible in their cabins. Two of the choppers continued across the fjord, moving to circle the gunmen, while the third dropped towards the water, turning to face Nina and Chase.

“Where did they come from?” Nina gasped.

“Somebody must have called the fire brigade. The Norwegians probably wanted to know why so much of Kristian Frost’s property was getting blown to buggery.” A voice boomed from a loudspeaker aboard the helicopter. “You speak Norwegian?” Chase asked.

“Not a word.”

“Me neither.” Chase painfully raised his hands as high as he could. “You’d better put your hands up too. You don’t want to have gone through all this only to get shot by some trigger-happy Norseman.”

“Not really.” She lifted one hand, keeping the other in place to support him. Her cheek was still against his. “Oh, and Eddie?”

“What?”

She kissed him. “Thank you for saving my life. Again.”

He returned the kiss. “Thank you for saving mine. Even if…” he grinned his gap-toothed grin, “we’re not exactly level in the whole lifesaving stakes.”

Nina smiled. “Tchah. That’s bloody gratitude for you.”

They kissed again as the helicopter moved into a hover, men rappelling down.

EPILOGUE. New York City

Nina opened her apartment door and walked wearily inside. Everything was as she’d left it, weeks earlier.

She dropped a stack of mail onto the kitchen counter and filled the kettle. Her coffee would have to be black. She couldn’t even imagine what state the contents of her fridge would be in after so long. Maybe it would be safer just to throw the whole thing out without daring to open it and buy a new one.

The kettle on the stove, she slumped onto her couch and looked around. The apartment was at once intimately familiar and almost strange, a forgotten memory brought back to life.

She could barely come to terms with the sheer normality of being home again. After everything she had experienced, she was now back in New York, back home, as if nothing had happened.

Except that wasn’t true. She had discovered Atlantis-and then lost it again. She had rewritten human history, but had nothing to show for it.

She reached up and touched her pendant, correcting herself. She had nothing to show for it… except the knowledge and satisfaction that human history would continue. Frost’s insane plans had been stopped, all his research into the virus destroyed. She turned her head to look out of the window at the lights of Manhattan. She wondered if the millions, billions of people whom he had planned to condemn to death would ever know how close they had come to extermination.

Probably not. Once first the Norwegian government, then its NATO allies, became involved, it had been made very clear to her that the true purpose of the Frost Foundation should remain a closely guarded secret.

Nina stretched out on the couch until the kettle boiled, then padded into the kitchen. She took out a mug, then rummaged through the cupboards for the coffee jar. Where had she left it?

Something plopped onto the counter next to the mug, making her jump. She whirled around.

Chase stood at the door, clad in his more-battered-than-ever leather jacket. He still looked battered himself, but handsome, in his own way. He grinned.

“Give those a try,” he said, gesturing at the tea bags he’d just tossed onto the counter. “Better for you than coffee.”

“Eddie!” cried Nina, caught between delight and surprise. She glanced at the apartment door. All its locks were intact. “How did you get in?”

“Got my ways and means,” he said, beaming even more widely. “Come here, Doc… Nina,” he quickly corrected himself on her joking glare. They embraced, then kissed.

“What are you doing here?” Nina finally asked. “I thought you were going back to England.”

“I did. But I’ve been offered a new job. Actually, it’s sort of why I’m here.”

Nina raised an eyebrow. “Oh yeah? So you didn’t come here just because you wanted to be with me?” she asked, mock-chiding.

“No, but it’s a bloody good bonus! Kidding,” he added, hugging her again. “I really did come here to see you. Thing is, my new job… whether I’m going to take it or not kind of depends on you.”

“What do you mean?”

“Well, now that the top brass knows Atlantis really existed, they thought maybe there’s other ancient myths that might actually be real as well. So they want to find them-and protect them, make sure nobody like Frost tries to get their hands on them. So the United Nations is going to set up a sort of international archaeological preservation agency to look for them. And the person they want to be in charge of it… is you.”

“Me?” Nina exclaimed. “Why me?”

“Because you’re the one person in the world who knows most about Atlantis. You know what to look for. So,” he said, holding his arms wide, “you up for it?”

“What’s your part in all this?”

“Me? Well, hopefully I get to look after this really hot American babe who once saved my life…”

“Be her bodyguard, huh?” smiled Nina.

“Actually, I was hoping to do more with her body than just guard it!”

“I think that could be arranged…”

Chase’s grin almost split his skull in half. “So, you going to take the job?”

Nina smiled, then took his hand and led him towards her bedroom. “Let’s sleep on it. Atlantis waited for eleven thousand years-it can wait one more day.”