“Shut up. Sorry,” he added after a moment. “Christ! Why the hell didn’t I tell her? She already knew I’d been married before, so why didn’t I just get the whole thing out into the open?” He slumped heavily onto the couch.

Sophia came out from behind the counter, bearing two cups of tea. She placed one on the table in front of him. “Because you never expected it to become an issue. This whole thing is my fault. I’m sorry.”

Chase gave her a look as she sat next to him. “Well, that’s something you’ve gotten better at since we were married. You, apologizing?”

“A lot of things have changed since then,” she said, sounding sad. “Not all of them for the better.”

They sat in silence for a few minutes, sipping tea. Then they looked up as Nina emerged from the bedroom. She was dressed in unassuming jeans and a T-shirt, red hair tied back in a ponytail.

“Okay, Eddie,” she said with an all-business air, “we can talk about this later, because right now we have more important things to worry about. Sophia, I apologize if I was rude to you just now.”

“That’s all right,” said Sophia. “I can understand that it must have been something of a shock. I’m sorry.”

“Thanks. So.” She sat in an armchair, facing them. “I guess now we need to figure out why your husband is so interested in the Tomb of Hercules.”

The Atlantic at dawn was a beautiful shade of deep, almost iridescent blue far below the 747, but Nina was in no mood to appreciate the view from the porthole. Instead she flicked through the pages of Hermocrates-now sealed in plastic sheets clipped into a binder, a far cry from the solid and heavy Victorian album in which they had formerly been preserved-and checked her notes as she tried to ignore the conversation taking place on the opposite side of the first-class cabin.

She, Chase and Sophia were the only passengers in the compartment; it seemed that the tourists making up most of the half-filled plane’s passengers were already spending so much on their African safari vacations that the thousands of extra dollars required to go first class were an extravagance too much. They were an extravagance too much for the IHA as well, which had originally only paid for economy tickets to Botswana. Sophia had arranged for the upgrade, one phone call from Nina’s apartment the previous day prompting a replacement black American Express card to arrive via motorcycle courier within hours. Apparently Yuen hadn’t thought to cancel his wife’s credit cards.

Nina was grateful to her for that much at least, as the big reclining seat made working much easier than if she’d been jammed into economy… but she still resented Sophia’s presence. All the more so as she glanced surreptitiously across the cabin. Chase and Sophia were sitting together, talking quietly, easily. From the occasional snippets she could overhear, they were talking about their past.

The past Chase had never bothered to tell her about. She clenched her jaw at the thought and turned away from them as far as she could without it looking obvious, then began another read-through of the ancient Greek text.

Chase, sitting by the opposite window, looked past Sophia to see Nina turning her back on them in a huff. Great. He sat back and sighed.

“Nina?” Sophia asked him.

“Yeah. Oh, hellfire, this is a mess.”

“It’s my fault. I’m sorry.”

Chase exhaled slowly. “No, it’s not. We were having problems before you showed up.”

“What kind of problems?”

“Same kind we had,” he said.

She looked puzzled. “What do you mean?”

“Come on, she’s a Ph.D.-a scientist, an intellectual. She knows about art and literature and stuff; she can do the New York Times crossword in twenty minutes. I can barely manage the quick crossword in the Sun!”

“Maybe you should switch to sudoku,” Sophia suggested teasingly.

“You know what I mean. She’s different from me. A lot different. We’ve got different backgrounds, different lines of work, like different music and films and telly… we’re not even from the same country, for God’s sake!”

“I suppose we at least had that much in common.”

“Not a lot else, though.” Chase looked away, gazing at the ocean below. “But it’s the same thing all over again, isn’t it? I come in as the rescuer, the white knight who shoots the bad guys and saves the beautiful woman. Then when she gets to know me, the real me, she realizes that I’m not the white knight, I’m not a superhero. I’m just some bloke from Yorkshire who’s good with a gun and his fists… and not a lot else.”

Sophia said nothing. After a moment, Chase faced her again. “Yeah,” he went on, “that’s what I thought. It just took you awhile to realize, didn’t it? Your dad knew it right from the start, though. He couldn’t stand me. He thought I was just some squaddie yob, his daughter’s bit of rough.”

“That’s not fair,” said Sophia.

“No? Then how come all the time we were married he hardly spoke to you? Especially about his business. I mean, Christ, you saw what was coming, but he wouldn’t listen to you even when he was ill because he was so pissed off about me!”

“And by the time he did listen, it was too late,” Sophia said, almost to herself.

“Too late for us by then as well, wasn’t it? And you didn’t waste any time moving on. There was that slimy ponce from the City, and-”

She gripped his arm. “Eddie, please don’t. I know what I did. I was just… I was angry with you, and I was angry with myself, and my father… I was lashing out. I wanted to hurt somebody. And you were the easiest person to hurt. Which I deeply, deeply regret. I’m so sorry.”

Chase remained still, not wanting to look at her. “Just tell me one thing. Why did you lie to me about having an affair with Jason Starkman?”

“What do you mean?”

“I know that you two never did anything. He told me.”

Sophia seemed surprised. “When?”

“Doesn’t matter. He’s dead now. But he said nothing ever happened between the two of you, and I believed him.” He fixed her with his gaze. “Why’d you lie to me, Sophia? I mean, I already knew you’d had an affair. So why did you tell me you’d had one with Jason as well? One of my best friends?”

She took her hands off his arm and rested them in her lap, looking down at them shamefaced. “As I said,” she began, voice barely above a whisper, “I wanted to hurt you. Jason had already left, gone rogue or whatever it was he did; he couldn’t contradict me. So… I lied. I wish I hadn’t, but I can’t change the past. I’m sorry, I really am.”

Chase regarded her silently, his face expressionless except for a brief twinge of sadness around his eyes. Then he turned away, operating the controls to recline his seat. “You know, I’m knackered,” he said in a neutral voice. “Done a lot of flying in the past few days. I’m a bit jet-lagged. There’s still another four hours before we land, so I think I could use a nap.” He turned on his side, back to her, and lowered the blind over the porthole.

“Okay,” Sophia said softly. “I’ll… I’ll let you sleep.” She stood and walked to the rear of the cabin.

Across the aisle, Nina looked across at them, unsure what had happened-or how she felt about it.

About ten minutes later Nina was surprised when Sophia returned, bearing two drinks, and sat down in the empty seat next to her.

“It’s just tonic water,” Sophia explained, handing her one of the cups. “I thought alcohol might interfere with your work.”

“Thank you,” Nina said automatically as she took it.

Sophia nodded at the binder. “Have you managed to find out anything new?”

“Not beyond the map, which isn’t much use until we have the other pages. There are still some phrases within the text that I’m convinced are clues of some kind, but so far I haven’t been able to work out what they mean.”

“Perhaps I can help?”