The Spy Coast: A Thriller (The Martini Club) by Tess Gerritsen

Author:Tess Gerritsen [Gerritsen, Tess]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Thomas & Mercer
Published: 2023-11-01T04:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 19

London, sixteen years ago

I sit on a bench in Room 17 of the British Museum, where I often come to contemplate the tomb of the Lycian king Arbinas. Once this tomb stood in the city-state of Xanthos, where it must have dazzled with its sculpted friezes and its twenty columns and its statues of Nereid nymphs, who represent all that is good and generous from the sea. Over two and a half centuries, it slowly fell into ruin until it was packed up and shipped to London by an English archaeologist. Now it stands in Room 17, yet another example of the spoils of empire, and a reminder that no kingdom lasts forever. I am homesick for Turkey. This marble monument brings me back to its Lycian coast, to warm beaches and dazzling sunshine and fruits ripened on the tree to perfect sweetness. Here in London, it is a rainy afternoon, and even though it’s almost June, the weather’s dampness has seeped so deeply into my bones that I cannot seem to get warm. I look up at the podium frieze, at the carved figures of men engaged in battle. So little about humanity has changed since the era of King Arbinas. We are still engaged in a never-ending cycle of conflict and war, and now we have weapons powerful enough to doom us all.

I don’t see Diana walk into the room, but I sense her arrival. My antennae pick up a flutter in the air, a shifting thermocline, and there she is, sitting beside me on the stone bench. For a moment we don’t speak, don’t even look at each other. The Nereids hold my full attention.

“Interesting place to meet,” she finally says.

I slide a folded newspaper across the bench to her. The newspaper conceals a flash drive with Hardwicke’s medical records, which I downloaded from the Galen clinic computer a few days ago. When she slides the newspaper back to me, the flash drive is gone. She’s already slipped it into her pocket.

“And?” she says.

“Along with essential hypertension, he has a seizure disorder that dates back to a serious head injury when he was twenty-six. He had a subdural hematoma requiring surgery.”

“How was he hurt?”

“Crashed his parents’ Lamborghini into a stone wall.”

“Oh, the woes of the rich.”

“He has a neurologist who’s constantly making adjustments to his meds, but he still has occasional grand mal seizures.”

“How often?”

“The last one was three months ago, while he was at his office in Hardwicke Tower. It lasted only a minute or two, but there’s always the danger of status epilepticus, when the seizure doesn’t stop. It requires urgent medical intervention. That’s why he insists on having a doctor travel with him whenever he leaves London. Security blanket. He’s also starting to have problems with his short-term memory. It may be related to that same head injury all those years ago.”

“How bad is his memory?”

“He has trouble remembering names, numbers. He was concerned enough to mention it to Danny.”

Diana falls silent as

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