Secrets had been hidden here for decades, potentially hundreds of years. He stared at the rows upon rows of wooden crates that lined the warehouse. Each crate was entirely unmarked and entirely unremarkable, the perfect place to lose something that could plunge the entire world into war and blood and darkness.

"You sure about this?" His brother-in-law asked.

"I'm sure about this." Jonathan said. "I wouldn't mind a few fresh bars of gold, but-"

One eyebrow rose. "You promised the Doc."

"What's with the look?"

"You're paranoid." Rick snorted, putting his hat back on. "Let's get back to the girls. Maybe your friend has finally turned up."

"And I suppose you are the only one in the family that's allowed to have unsavoury friends?"

"Buddy, you still haven't met the worse of my unsavoury friends." Rick laughed. "So you trust this guy?"

"I do." He surprised himself that he really did. In all the years he had been on this Earth, the circle of people he liked and genuinely trusted was pathetically small. Probably because he had rather intimate knowledge of how any sort of loyalty could be twisted and used against you. One hand offered in friendship while the other was held behind the back with a knife.

The two of them headed back to where Sigrun and Evy were watching nondescript workmen pull an empty crate off the racks, Evy making a point of ignoring Sigrun while judging from the Norse archaeologist's non-reaction she hadn't even noticed.

"When're you going to tell Evy 'bout your extracurriculars?"

Seemingly sensing that they were talking about her, his little sister turned. She smiled at her husband before poking her tongue out at Jonathan. He pulled a face back and she grinned. After all these years, as much as Evy liked to pretend, ultimately Jonathan wasn't the only one that refused to mature.

"I think never works for me."

The crate was placed on the floor in front of them, the workers removing the lid.

"Jono!"

Of course, just as Jonathan was thinking he'd have to do this himself, he saw his old mate approaching, with his arms out wide.

"Henry," He walked into the older man's hug, slapping him on the back. "It's good to see you, old chap."

"Ah, you always bring me something interesting. How could I refuse?" He turned to the others and introduced himself with a little bob. "Doctor Henry Jones."

Sigrun shook his hand. "Doctor Sigrun Sarsgard Magnusson."

"Absolutely charmed, my dear. I've read some of your papers, and I only wish that more people in our profession put in your dedication to the subject." Henry bowed a little over her hand and Sigrun smiled. Boy, Jonathan liked to think he was reasonably charismatic, but if he had half the charm that old Henry had…

"And this is my sister Evy and her husband Rick."

"Ah, the O'Connells! Of course." He took Evy's hands and gazed sternly into her eyes. "You need to come back to us, young lady. The world of archaeology is duller without your voice."

Evy blushed brilliantly.

He patted her hand fondly before turning back to Jonathan. "How come you never come around unless it's some weird shite?" Henry said in his thick Scottish accent, peering at him through thick round glasses with a rather disapproving paternal air. "You're just like my son."

"You're going to lecture me on my weird shite? Only the penitent man may pass my arse. Remind me of much time you wasted on that again? How many years?"

"As well as you know, you gobshite, you were doing some of the running for me, as I recall."

Henry had been a visiting professor to Oxford when they'd met. Not that he'd known that at the time, of course. Jonathan had picked his pocket in an apothecary before he realised that, of course, the chap was going to be one of his lecturers that year. Thankfully Henry had been more amused rather than outraged, and the two of them had developed an odd relationship throughout Jonathan's schooling and beyond, where Jonathan would occasionally set out on one-man expeditions of dubious legalities to secure particular information for the prof. After all this time, he would cheerfully place the old man among his best friends.

Unfortunately that also seemed to put another splinter in the fractured relationship between Henry and his own son.

"Dad." Sighed the younger fellow that had followed the white-haired gentleman in. Jonathan nodded to him and he nodded back somewhat more curtly.

"Junior." Henry instructed. "Say hello."

"It's Indiana, Dad." The correction was automatic, something he'd had to do for decades. "We've been through this. I am 48 years old and I refuse to be called Junior."

"Indiana was the name of the dog." Henry rolled his eyes. "Children." He said to Jonathan, as if Indiana and Jonathan himself weren't contemporaries separated by a year at best. "Anyway, what have you brought me?"

"Well, the entire knowledge of the world, Doctor Jones." Jonathan said lightly. From her canvas satchel Sigrun pulled the wrapped bundle. There was scepticism in Henry's eyes but Indiana's raised eyebrows said that he was well aware that anything was possible and was fully prepared to spring into action if he needed to. And hell, if even a third of the stories Jonathan had been hearing were even remotely true, old Indy's life was even more lively than Jonathan's.

Henry briefly pulled back the cloth to see the gleaming emerald and the hieroglyphics promising all worldly knowledge to the reader.

"She's a beauty."

"And lots of people have already died for it." Rick said. "So it'd be nice if we could get on with this."

"Of course, Mr O'Connell." Henry grinned through his beard. "We'll have her lost to the world in absolutely no time."

Sigrun placed the Tablet in the crate carefully, pulling the drape back in place before stepping back. It honestly looked rather ridiculous, the package nestled among the wood shavings in the massive crate.

"Anything else?"

Jonathan discretely slipped his hand into the pocket of his long coat, fingers lightly coming in contact with the bloody little puzzle box, the apparent supernatural skeleton key that he couldn't seem to part with, the damned thing that had started this whole ordeal in the first place. He should just chuck it in the crate, get rid of it and forget. Heal. But what if…

That question had defined so much of his life. What if.

Rick's eyes were boring into his back.

"No." He said lightly. "Nothing at all."

The workmen nailed the lid firmly in place. As they watched, the crate was lifted and placed on the shelves.

"In a week the crates will be rotated." Henry said. "And then rotated every month. In a year no one will have any clue where it is, not even the people that work here." He clapped his hands in a brisk attention-students manner. "Now that's done, I feel like a drink."

"Dad."

"I'm not dead yet, boy, and it's been such a long time since I've had the pleasure of such delightful and well-read cohorts." Henry straightened his jacket before offering an arm each to Evy and Sigrun. "Ladies? If I may escort you?"

Evy took his arm, immediately charmed by the old man. Sigrun was slower and more cautious, but she eventually hooked her arm around his, ultimately unable to resist the blast of pure charisma. A jaunty hop to his step, Henry guided them toward the exit. "Let's get cracking!"

"He's smooth." Rick commented.

Jonathan slipped his own hat on. "You have no idea."

"Junior, bring the car around!"

Indiana sighed.

Jonathan collapsed on a bench in Henry's garden in the last rays of sunlight. Leaning his head back, he stared up through the leaves as a light breeze ran through his hair. He sighed. Ultimately it was only almost a year since he had been drawn back into the web of archaeology and the undead, but it felt so much longer.

"Maybe I should just go back to China." He mumbled, eyes drifting closed.

"If you did, we would just have to follow you and bring you back."

Jonathan shot up from his awkward slouch, almost tumbling from the bench. Doctor Sigrun Sarsgard Magnusson was still in her pale blue linen suit from earlier, but her long flaxen hair was down about her shoulders and she was barefoot in the grass, shoes dangling from one hand. Jonathan felt himself blush, actually blush, though whether it was from embarrassment or something else, he didn't look at it too closely.

"What was that?" The amusement was written on her face as she watched him scrabble about.

Still blushing, he flicked his fingers to cover up his moment of discombobulation. "Well madam, I simply must be overcome by the sight of your shapely, shapely ankles."

Sigrun gave a short laugh, sitting beside him on the bench.

"It's… like going back to a simpler time." She said. "Walking barefoot through the grass."

He understood that. Blimey, did he understand that. Sometimes in this world the only thing they could hold onto were the things that recalled an earlier innocence before harsh reality crashed in.

"I like to make a snow angel in the first fall of the season." He grinned. "Drives my sister insane. Believes it's immature, if you'd have it."

"You? Immature? I don't believe it for a second."

"Har, har. How are the boys?"

"Apparently Andy is teaching your nephew karate." An eyebrow rose. "Or at least, I caught the word karate among the shouting and accusations of cheating."

With each passing day, he lamented more and more the fact that he'd ever introduced the young men to each other.

"Kurt is on the telephone with his mother in New Zealand."

He supposed even the biggest and baddest chap occasionally needed his mum. "Boy, I don't want to think about how much that call will cost. It's good that we'll be gone before Henry gets his next telephone bill."

"So philanthropic." She said sarcastically.

"I have you know that I've never told you that I am anything but what I am."

"I suppose that's true."

The two of them stared off into the distance for a moment.

"Would you have ever used it?"

"Used what?"

"You know what." Jonathan scoffed. "All knowledge in the Universe. Would you have used it?"

"Used it for what?"

He just raised an eyebrow at her.

She snorted. "It is immaterial."

"I suppose." He said. "But-"

"Wouldn't you?" She countered immediately. "Knowing what you do now, having the power to go back to fix all the mistakes you've ever made- Of course I thought about it. For that moment, of course I did."

Jonathan nodded slowly, thinking of the little girl from the farm and the heart-wrenching sorrow and guilt and anger he'd felt, towards the world and himself when he'd been completely unable to save her. He was a doctor, but he couldn't even save one bloody little fragile life.

So what's the use of you? A traitorous voice whispered in his mind, and despite the warm day, Jonathan shivered.

"I…" Sigrun ran her tongue around her teeth, thinking on how to organise her words. "If I used the Emerald Tablet… to bring Thor here…" her voice trailed off, and he nodded. Of course she had thought about fixing things to bring her husband home. Anyone in her position would have thought the same. She cleared her throat. "It wouldn't be fair."

"How so?"

"Because he would still be the same person I married."

He frowned. He kind of thought that would have been a good thing. "And?"

She breathed out heavily. "And I wouldn't be." She said simply, and in that moment Jonathan understood. "I wouldn't be the young and naïve and idealistic schoolteacher he married. It wouldn't be fair." She shook her head, a twist to her lips like she couldn't quite believe how foolish she had been. "It wouldn't have been fair to either of us. That person is gone."

Jonathan understood that. Golly, he did. The person he had been in 1917 was practically unrecognisable from who he was now in 1947. He grinned a little, nudging her arm. "Well, for whatever it's worth, I rather don't mind the old and miserable and mopey you."

"Oh, shut up, you fool."

"You know you love me," He wheedled, and she rolled her eyes fondly. Well, he hoped it was fondness. "I'm your favourite."

"My favourite idiot."

"Since I'm up against Andy Hallet and Vasily Dragovitch for that title, I'll happily take the win." Jonathan shrugged. "Would you really follow me?"

"What?"

"If I went back to China."

"Of course I would." She blinked, like she genuinely didn't understand what she'd been asked. "What sort of question is that?"

"My outwards confidence is just a front for my inwards insecurities." Oh, how close to the truth that actually was.

The two of them sat in a companionable silence for a moment.

"You weren't even a little bit curious?" Jonathan asked. "Just… using the book to, say, take a peek at the ending?" In all honesty, he was perfectly happy to remain in blissful ignorance as long as he could sleep in the sun with some good booze, but he couldn't deny it would have been handy to know the future outcomes of, say, the next few dozen Ashes matches. Not that he would have placed any bets or anything, of course not. "Not even a little curious about your happily-ever-after?"

"This conversation seems a little redundant."

"Humour me."

"Of course I wouldn't mind glimpsing into the future. Just to make sure that all my friends are safe." Sigrun said, making Jonathan immediately feel selfish. "But if we know all the secrets of the world, if we know what is to come, where is the drive to be more? Be better? You could just sit and let life happen to you because you know what is coming. You could be as good or evil as you wanted, become the absolute bastion of knowledge or choose to wallow in your own ignorance because ultimately nothing would change, your choices not impacting on anything." She said. "I… need to question. I need to explore, discover more, be more. If there was nothing more to know, I… would stop. I know you scoff at me being so against legends and fantasy, but I just can't bring myself to believe in things like magic and destiny. Because that would mean that nothing we do now will affect the outcome in the slightest and ultimately there's no point to even trying."

Jonathan nodded slowly. "I don't have anything profound to add here. My whole identity is based around not trying."

"That is an absolute lie and you know it." Her sharp look seemed to strip him bare, and Jonathan felt himself flush at the intensity. "If that was ever remotely true you would have never left England in the first place and stayed at home and been a typical English lord and lived off the family name and the taxpayer until you died bloated of over-excess."

"To be fair, the possibility of dying bloated of over-excess is still entirely on the table." She elbowed him lightly. "The unshakable faith I've managed to engender in you, Kurt, and my sister is quite remarkable considering past events." He said. "Well, Evy is kind of supposed to due to family obligation, but my point still stands."

"And perhaps you should start to consider the reason for our faith in you, you damned idiot."

"Are you going to hit me?" He asked half-jokingly. "I just wanted some gold."

"You own a casino."

"I'm not going to win this, am I?"

"Absolutely not." She said. "There's a marble fountain in the atrium. You have girls in gold greasepaint."

He blinked. "You were at my casino?"

"Incidentally."

"Ooh, did you audition to be one of my dancers?"

That time she did smack him, and Jonathan laughed.

"Fleet here."

"Fleet, it's Nile. I need a favour."

There was a long pause.

"You have a lot of balls to be calling me."

"Are we really going to keep old grudges alive right now? You shot me and I'm not salty about it anymore." At least, not much.

There was silence.

"Good grief, it's not like I'm calling in an airstrike or something. I need information and then I go away again."

"Promise?"

"Cross my heart."

"You don't have a heart."

"No, that's Thames. Thames doesn't have a heart, Danube doesn't have a brain, and I'm the cowardly lion of the bunch, remember?"

There was a grunt on the other end of the phone. "What do you want?"

"Has there been any sort of mobilisation from the Vatican?"

Fleet's voice was instantly more guarded. Anything to do with the church or religion was just a political and philosophical landmine waiting to happen. "The Vatican?"

"I had a brief run-in when they chased off a squad of Mossad agents in Morrocco before they blew up my truck in the Sudan, as I'm sure you know. I need to know who they are, what the objective is, who's in charge."

"Only you, Nile. Hold the telephone."

"I'm not going anywhere."

"More's the pity." The receiver clunked down on a desk somewhere deep in the bowels of the SIS.

He was starting to think that Fleet had simply wandered away and gone to get a shortbread and make himself a cuppa when the receiver was picked back up.

"All right, Niger's in a meeting, so he'll probably call you later, but I've got his case file. You need to be kept on a leash, Carnahan."

Jonathan grinned. "It's been said."

"According to our bloke in the Servizio Informazioni Militare, about six months ago there was activity coming out of the Holy See. A squad from the Swiss Guards were immobilised headed up by agents from the Supreme Sacred Congregation of the Holy Office."

"The what?"

"The Inquisition, mate." Fleet laughed dryly. "It seems they're on some kind of fact-finding mission, led by a Cardinal, Gabriel Mendoza."

"What d'you know about this Cardinal?"

"Was an officer in Mussolini's fascist government before his men were captured by our boys in the Mediterranean, and conveniently found God. Piece of work. Boxer. Sniper. Bomb-maker."

That was mildly concerning. There were quite a few rather unusual things that he had run up against in his long life, but a catholic cardinal trained in hand-to-hand combat definitely wasn't one of them.

"What on Earth could have possibly got the bloody Inquisition to immobilise again?"

"I have nothing concrete, but there have been whispers that they're protecting the Faith. Something's threatening the foundation of the Church somehow and they're running scared."

"Like what?"

"I have a feeling that you probably have a better idea than me." Fleet said.

At the end of the hallway the spectre of the ancient Egyptian priest cocked his head to the side with a knowing grin like he was pleased that Jonathan had finally figured something out, before dissipating into sand. Jonathan sat up straight, a sudden death grip on the receiver.

I have a feeling that you probably have a better idea than me.

A book that held all the secrets of the Universe. A book that could kill with a word. And yet another that could bring life to the dead.

Ad tuendam Fidem.

Oh, bugger.

Once, he had been fooled into thinking that perhaps their centuries-old mission was finishing, was done. After all, there was no need for magic in this world of science and cold technology. Perhaps, even if he didn't, his children may have been afforded the opportunity to lead normal lives away from the responsibilities placed on them by men long dead. It had been frightening to contemplate that their lifelong mission would end, but it was also a relief to think that one day his grandchildren and great-grandchildren could walk in the sun without the fear that even a temporary lapse in judgement could lead to the end of all things.

Though it seemed that possibility had been rescinded.

"Are they still searching?"

Many had attempted to seek the homes of the Medjai. Only a select few had ever been permitted to find them.

"Yes. They are tenacious." He could tell by the set of her jaw that she was pondering her next words carefully.

"You wish to say something, Daughter?"

"As much as I am loathe to say it, perhaps Farid is correct." She said slowly. "Perhaps we should eliminate this threat now."

"If we kill them more will come." Ardeth Bay pressed his lips hard together. He had hoped that she would not be as rash as her brother and would have considered the situation with a more measured mind. After all, despite the elders' objections, one day it would be she who led the Medjai into the modern world.

"I never said all of them. Just enough to send a message."

"At this moment in time, they do not know for sure if what they seek is real. If we mount an offensive, all doubt will be erased and whatever advantage we have lost."

"In this I bow to your wisdom as my elder. Perhaps this will give us time." After a moment his daughter agreed somewhat reluctantly. "But the delay will also give them time." She warned. "They will find us. The question is when. And I refuse to be caught unaware when they do."

Ardeth met his daughter's clear and determined gaze. Perhaps she would be a good chief after all.

There was a faint roaring from overhead and the both of them looked up into the clear sky, to see the grey unmarked aeroplane arching through the air.

"Your friends are here."

Ardeth didn't look away from the sky.

"About time."

fin