AN: I've sped up a couple of historical events here, involving Israel and the Mossad.
"I'm going to kill him!"
Rick knew by now that most of his wife's bluster concerning her brother was that, bluster.
Mostly.
"Honey, I seem to remember that you've said that before." He said in an even voice.
"Well, this time I mean it! He put my baby in the hospital!" Her voice crackled over the telephone, and Rick could just see her in his mind's eye flinging her arms out for emphasis, like he didn't somehow grasp the severity of the situation. Never mind the fact that he'd been the one to actually be there and had got his ass shot at for his trouble.
"Alex just got a concussion. The kid'll be fine in no time. Probably got worse playing football."
"Rugby." Evy corrected absent-mindedly. "Dear Lord, how can you just do that?"
"Do what?"
"Be so… bloody American!"
Sometimes he wondered if Evy really realised exactly how similar she and her brother were.
"In all the time I've known you and your brother, if it's not you, it's him."
He could just imagine his wife's face in that instant, and was suddenly grateful that she was at the Museum for her talk and not here in the middle of Paris. "What is that supposed to mean?"
"Yeah, like you really don't know." Rick said, realising moments later that just maybe he could have said that better. "Uh, sweetheart, I mean-"
"I just- we're supposed to be retired. No more adventures, no more people trying to kill us, no more mummies-"
"No more fun," Rick grumbled under his breath.
"What was that?" And of course she immediately heard him, even over the questionable telephone connection. "We all agreed to be as normal as humanly possible, for Alex's sake."
"Sweetie, Alex is 21." Rick reminded her gently.
"But we all agreed, even Jonathan-" and that was what broke her, and Evy let out a single sob, before gathering herself in a singularly English way. "Why did it all go wrong? We were all fine. We were fine and then Jonathan had to latch onto some bloody blonde and now Alex is hurt and Jon is gone and-"
"And we'll get there. We always do."
"But the last time we got there in time for Jonathan to almost die!"
"Then we'll just be faster this time."
"How?"
"I believe I can help with that."
He turned, and Rick found himself looking at the bloody blonde herself, the archaeologist Doctor Sigrun Magnusson. She walked cautiously, like every move hurt, and hell, she'd been in the back between Jonathan and the big guy Steiner. If it wasn't for the lap belt she would have gone clear through the windscreen. Maybe seat belts were a good idea.
"Who's that?" Evy demanded. "Is that her?"
From the weathered-looking canvas bag that hung from her shoulder, she withdrew a little canvas-bound book, and slapped it down on the tabletop beside where Rick had kicked his boots up.
"I don't know where they are." The Doc said. "But I know where they'll be."
His eyes narrowed.
"Honey? I think we've got a lead."
Absolute pain cut through his head, jerking Jonathan unceremoniously from the comfortable world of hazy oblivion he had been drifting in. He raised a hand to his temple, and squinted at the smear of drying blood on his fingers. Fantastic, a head injury. Just what he needed. He slowly sat up, the change in elevation making his head throb.
Jonathan lent back against the wall behind him, head lolling as he slowly looked around himself. Spotting a slumped form in Kurt's blue trousers, he kicked the fellow's shoulder. After a moment the chap groaned, scrubbing at his eyes and rolling onto his back.
The man blinked dumbly at the black ceiling for a long moment.
"You still with me, old boy?"
"What the hell was that?" The man gritted out.
"Damned women drivers." Jonathan groused, slowly pulling his legs up. "Is it just me or is it hot in here?"
Kurt rolled to his hands and knees, blood slowly oozing from his nose. He staggered to his feet before touching the walls. After a moment he slammed his fists into the walls, and they made a metallic booming noise.
Jonathan blinked, his eyes adjusting to the lack of light, swallowing dryly, suddenly with the realisation that they were locked in a military shipping container.
Kurt slammed his open hands against the steel walls, every muscle in his body as tight as a bowstring. Jonathan tried to pull himself up, immediately knowing that his friend's anxiety was back, being confined and imprisoned in this small space not helping in the absolute least. But after a moment of trying to get up, Jonathan slumped back onto his bum, his vision swimming.
"Kurt."
He tried to cut over his friend's spiralling, hoping that the old chap could somehow latch onto his voice and use it to reel himself back to awareness.
"Kurt! That's not helping! Come on, old boy. Give me a hand here."
After what seemed like forever, the big chap turned to him, ghosts flitting through his eyes. After a moment recognition seemed to return.
"Jonathan?"
Jonathan tried to push himself up the wall. "I think there's a problem with my inner ear. My balance is gone."
Latching onto Jonathan's weakness and using it as an anchor to keep him in the present, Kurt carefully picked his way across the container before sinking down beside him. The fellow's chest was still rising and falling too fast, but there was awareness still in his eyes. Jonathan reached out and smacked his arm.
"You still with me, old chap?"
"Yes. I'm here." His hands kneaded into his trouser legs. "I'm still here."
The last one was said more to himself than to Jonathan, he was sure.
Jonathan's eyes were starting to adjust to the darkness, and could slowly make out a desk and chair. The container was scrubbed clean but there were darker oil stains on the floor that denoted machinery that had been stored and removed. Hopefully that meant that someone was going to come back for them before they died of starvation. Or, judging by the heat, be cooked to death.
There was a massive bang from outside that caused both of them to jump, and a screech as the lock was opened and the doors wrenched open. Kurt rose to a crouch like a panther about to spring while Jonathan stayed slumped on the floor, willing his head to just stop spinning.
And a rather unassuming woman in a black jumper and dark trousers stepped into the container. She gave them a charming smile, and Jonathan blinked in recognition, almost certain that he was suffering from more than a concussion as he realised that somehow he was staring at an old friend. Well, sort of.
And an agent of the newly-formed Mossad intelligence agency of the State of Israel.
Adela Katz smiled.
"Hello, darling."
All these spies suddenly reappearing in his life wasn't exactly doing anything for his nerves. Jonathan flinched as the squad doctor probed his skull for fractures before swabbing the open wound with rubbing alcohol. Spots exploded in front of his eyes and he swore.
"There's no fracture." The doctor said, glancing at his boss. Jonathan glared at him through slitted eyes. With the acne and greasy hair, he severely doubted that the kid had even completed the first semester of medical school.
"That's good?" Jonathan gritted out.
Adela cocked her head to the side. "Rather. I'd much prefer not to have your brains leaking all over my upholstery."
"Oh my dear Agent Katz, how I have missed you."
"I do know what sarcasm sounds like, darling."
"Despite evidence to the contrary." He groused.
"So sour. I remember when you used to be fun. When did you become this middle-aged fuddy-duddy?"
"Yes, well, excuse me if someone's smash-and-grabs still leave a lot to be desired."
"Yes, my boys and girls can get a little over-zealous at times." Adela cocked an eyebrow, not a hint of apology on her face. "If I had extended you an invitation, would you have taken me up on it?"
"You drugged me! And handcuffed me to a bed! Naked! And then you stole my trousers!"
"We had fun back in the day, didn't we? Dear boy, are you really telling me you weren't thoroughly enjoying yourself up until then?"
Jonathan glared.
Beside him sat Kurt, a bandage across his nose and sporting two impressive black eyes. Even though the big man was of Jewish descent himself, he looked nervous and twitchier than he ever had while surrounded by these lithe, black-clothed men and women, knowing that however reluctantly he had still worn the colours of their enemies not that long ago.
"What is this all about, Adela?"
The woman balanced her ankle on her other knee. "I want the book."
Kurt's swallow seemed to echo around the room, and Jonathan could have kicked him for such an easy tell.
"What book?"
"Sweetheart, do you really think I'm that stupid?"
Jonathan's lip lifted in a slight sneer. "Not going to try and seduce it out from under me?"
"That kind of trick only works once, as I'm sure you've figured out."
"Still salty about Sicily, I see."
"Give me. The. Diary."
Jonathan hoped that his relief didn't show. For a moment he was genuinely terrified that they were talking about the Book of Amun-Ra, and the idea of handing any organisation the power to commit mass murder with only a few words was enough to send him into fits of apoplexy, but no, they were talking about the ratty diary.
The ratty diary that belonged to a Nazi archaeologist.
A whole new tension seized his body.
"I don't have it." He said flatly. Adela's friendly face faded at his words and she once again reached forward to rifle none-too-gently through his jacket. "Nope. Sorry, honey, you're out of luck."
She bellowed something to her henchmen, who snapped to attention. The woman turned to Kurt, who immediately sprang to his feet, fists up and ready for a fight.
That was when one of the men noticed the number tattooed on Kurt's hand and blinked in surprise as he took in Kurt's very obvious Aryan appearance. He said something cautiously back to Adela in Hebrew. Adela blinked, masking her confusion much better than her henchman, but Jonathan still saw it.
"Something been left out of the briefing, milday?" He asked snidely.
Of course, when the smash-and-grab had been initiated the squad had simply been told that their primary acquisition target was a member of the Socialist's Party and an enemy soldier. The brass had carefully left out the fact that he had been imprisoned for speaking out against the regime, or the rather important fact that Kurt's family was Jewish, lest the waters become somewhat muddied and that their men may develop a consciousness outside their indoctrination.
There was a little more detail provided when it came to Jonathan, secondary acquisition target, quite a little bit more embellished than even Jonathan expected. He was a linguistics expert and Egyptologist, and the squad were given the firm instructions to not damage the package.
Jonathan scowled, lightly touching the cuts on the side of his head. Adela shrugged apologetically.
"We go where we are told, when we are told."
"Yes, you were always such an expert at doing what you were told to do."
"As opposed to you?" She asked smoothly.
"I still don't quite understand." Kurt's voice was small, like he was a child expecting to be told off. It was unnatural, for him to be so meek. "Why are we here?"
She eyed him up, one leg crossed over her other knee and hands resting primly in her lap, like they were all just catching up for a cuppa on a nice summer's day. "You were one of the North Africa explorers."
His eyes narrowed cautiously. "Yes."
"You helped loot arcane artefacts for the Germans."
Kurt wound up even tighter, like this diminutive secret agent was a Nuremberg judge. "Yes."
Jonathan's brow furrowed, and a moment later it occurred to him exactly why the man's face had gone snow-white when Kurt had first seen the Gold Book all those months ago. He hadn't really considered it at the time seeing that he had been bloody dying.
It wasn't the complete shock of walking into a supernatural situation at all that had caused it. No, it was that the blighter had seen it before.
"You and I are going to have words." He hissed.
Kurt gripped his big hands together, his knuckles white.
"You and Simon Gerhard were attempting to find the Emerald Tablet of Thoth."
"What d'you want with the Tablet?" Jonathan asked her.
"The same as you, I'd expect."
"Fame and fortune? Ah, no, just the fortune, I'd expect." Jonathan said. Her expression didn't flicker but an eyebrow rose, and he remembered. The Tablet supposedly held the secret to turning lead into gold. "After all, it's expensive to actually run your own state."
"Do we really have to get political?"
"You're always political. You're a joy at parties."
"Oh, sweetie, you know I'm a riot at parties." She flipped her hair in a familiar flirty way, and Jonathan was taken back to the night where they'd first met. Of course, at the time he'd thought she was just another airheaded pretty face just prowling for rich men and he'd been perfectly happy to play the part, but-
"You-" the woman flicked a manicured finger at Kurt, who looked like he stopped breathing for a minute. "Are going to get me the Emerald Tablet. And you-" her glance ticked over to Jonathan. "Are going to translate for me."
"Why would either of us do that?"
"The magnificent fame and fortune, as you already pointed out." Adela's voice was light and airy, but Jonathan had knew her long enough by now that he knew that she used that tone to trick people into thinking she was just another bimbo while she put the knife in and twisted. She shrugged. "Also, it's the only way I'm going to let you leave here alive."
"I was not…" Kurt's voice trailed off before he regained his confidence. "I was never looking for this Emerald Tablet. I am a historian, I deal in facts." Now that sounded like it could have come straight out of Evy. "Not phantoms. This – this entire thing is absurd!"
"Once I would have agreed with you, but have you forgotten the events of our last major soiree? Because my sodding back sure hasn't." Jonathan hissed, hardly believing that his friend was still so stubbornly dim. He had watched magic happen, witnessed the unexplained, but-
"Yes, because being on official records as looking for the Land of the Gods is not fanciful at all." Adela smiled coolly.
"At least there are records of the place exactly existing at one time." Kurt argued, and Jonathan couldn't help but grin at the familiar sight of a historian throwing down. "The legend of the Tablet is pure fabrication."
"Even so." Adela said. "You will get me to the Land of the Gods. And then you will find me the Emerald Tablet of Thoth."
The next moment another of Adela's goons walked back into the container with an armload of papers and books. The chap spared them a disdainful look before dropping the papers haphazardly on the desk, and Kurt looked at them, his brow scrunched in confusion.
"My work." He sounded rightly shocked, having fully expected all his research to have gone into the ovens when he'd been labelled a traitor to the cause. "How did you-?"
She smiled. "See, your crafty friend Mr Carnahan here isn't exactly the only one with contacts."
"Doctor Carnahan." Jonathan said sharply.
"Oh? I believe the first time we met it was Sir Carnahan, wasn't it?"
"I'm going up in the world." He said dryly.
Kurt was running his hand along his work, flicking the pages like he was honestly stunned that they were here.
"I believe that will be enough to get you started." Adela said.
"I… I only have preliminary research. Simon was the one who continued when I… went away. My work is incomplete."
"Since you conveniently don't have the journal, you will have to complete it." Adela said shortly.