‘OK, Dana, let me introduce you, but the sooner we get her moving, the better.’
Willits swung the door open to reveal a black woman with dreadlocks sitting comfortably on a clean bed covered by a cosy looking white duvet, but handcuffed by one wrist to the headboard. The woman offered no smile and merely stared at them both in disgust.
‘Say hello to Avi Legrundy.’
‘Hello, Ms Legrundy. My name is Dana Kent and I will be escorting you soon to a new location—’ Dana began, but her sentence was cut short when Legrundy spat out a glob of saliva which landed within inches of the new arrival’s boots.
‘Well, it’s nice to meet you too. You’ll forgive me if I don’t offer you the same greeting.’
Legrundy stared at her with nothing short of absolute contempt as Dana moved to the far side of the room, well out of spitting distance. ‘Fortunately I’ve brought a few fashion accessories with me.’ She pulled from her pocket a white bag with a plastic-mesh protector at the front and let it swing gently between her fingertips. ‘This should look lovely on you.’
Legrundy looked neither impressed nor intimidated but continued to stare menacingly with those icy cold eyes. ‘Dat’s a waste of time,’ she growled, seemingly overemphasising a thick Jamaican accent in an attempt to unnerve her captors.
‘Oh, really?’ Dana replied confidently, bringing the swinging bag to a stop. ‘And why would that be?’
Legrundy’s smile offered a flash of pearly white teeth. ‘Because you’ll never get a chance to use it on me.’
This sentence had barely left her mouth when the overhead light cut out, throwing the room into darkness, which immediately had Willits grabbing the torch from his utility belt. He switched it on and aimed it directly at Legrundy, who had not moved an inch, and apart from wincing under the bright beam she remained calm and still.
‘Sam,’ Willits called out and one of the guards appeared at the doorway, his torch beam sweeping the room. ‘Where’s Brian?’
‘He’s still outside, patrolling the grounds.’
Willits snatched the Samsung radio off his belt and raised it to his mouth. ‘Brian, come in.’
The was nothing but static silence from the receiver as he repeated the request. ‘Brian, can you hear me?’
No response.
Willits swung his torch towards Dana to find that she hadn’t moved except to draw her Glock handgun, while the face bag had been discarded onto the floor.
‘Dana, you stay here and keep an eye on her,’ he ordered, gesturing at the still smiling Legrundy. ‘If she so much as moves, then shoot her in the kneecap – do you understand?’
Dana gave a confirming nod as he moved towards Legrundy and shone the torchlight directly into her face. ‘Be smart now, Avi, unless you want to walk with a limp for the rest of your life.’
The assassin simply jangled the handcuff around her wrist. ‘I don’t think it’s me you should be worried about, Templar. It’s you dat’s in trouble.’
Willits ignored the taunt and turned back to the guard who was still standing in the doorway. ‘Sam, you’re with me.’
Willits closed the security door behind them, then both men drew their weapons and began to venture back towards the kitchen, their torches poised over their wrists to illuminate each man’s line of fire.
All the lights in the house had gone out simultaneously, and even with the curtains open the kitchen remained dark and full of shadows. The torch beams cancelled out most of the natural light penetrating from the evening sky as the two men stealthily made their way through the kitchen towards the door leading to the front of the cottage. There was no sign of an intruder.
As they reached the kitchen doorway Willits stepped to one side and Sam to the other, before Willits warily peered around the edge of the door and into the hallway beyond.
His circular beam of torchlight slowly swept from left to right, starting at one wall and passing over a walnut desk before he paused it at the cottage’s front entrance. The door stood wide open, and as Willits looked out to the gravel path outside, his torch beam caught the tip of something protruding from the floor. He lowered his torch to illuminate a boot, then swept it across the motionless body of a man wearing the familiar black flak jacket of his colleague. Spreadeagled on the glossy red-tiled floor with his arms draped across his face, he appeared to have been dragged there by the wrists before being dropped where he now lay.
‘Brian?’ Willits called out in a hushed tone, but there was no response. He shot Sam a warning glance and gave a swift nod in the direction of their teammate’s body.
Without hesitation Sam pulled back from the doorway, his torch aimed in the same direction as his gun, then he moved slowly out into the hallway and towards the body, as Willits covered him from the kitchen.
Whoever had taken down Brian could only be hiding in one of two places. Sam knelt down beside his fallen colleague, his Beretta still aimed squarely at the open front door, whilst Willits slipped to the left of him and shone his torch up the staircase.
There was no one to be seen, but he cautiously proceeded up the stairs and onto the landing. After checking that the few doors up there were still locked, he headed back down to rejoin Sam and check how badly Brian was hurt.
Someone was playing games with them. Dangerous ones.
‘Is he alive?’ Willits whispered upon reaching them both, still glancing back up at the staircase even though his gun pointed towards the open front door.
Sam’s torch was now switched off and Willits could only just make him out on the floor. There was no response, so Willits asked again, this time with an impatient growl. But all he got back was a deep grunt, so with his gun still aimed towards the front entrance he moved over and knelt down beside them. ‘Damn it, Sam, talk to me!’
Willits raised his torch and shone it directly into the man’s face. The sight caused him to gasp. The long, thin metal shard of an ice pick was buried deep in Sam’s eye socket, his mouth hung open, and his dead body was being held upright by man who appeared to be wearing identical clothing to his own and lying on the floor… and it wasn’t Brian.
The face of Herbert Pelosi grimaced back at Willits before slamming a second ice pick, almost concealed in his free hand, deep into his neck even as the Templar swung his Beretta towards him and fired.
Back in the secure room, Dana jerked in reflex as the sound of a gunshot somewhere in the cottage shattered the silence. She kept her gun trained on Legrundy, who was still smiling unnervingly and barely blinking under the dazzling torch beam shining in her face. From far off came a loud yet stifled groan, followed by a slow thudding of footsteps which grew ever louder as they approached the far side of the closed security door.
Dana took a few steps backwards and, confident that the handcuffed killer would not be able to reach her, pointed both torch and gun towards the door.
‘James?’
Her breathing was getting heavier and although the barrel of her gun remained steady and unwavering, her heartbeat raced as adrenalin flushed through her system.
‘I’m hurt. Don’t shoot,’ called a voice in little more than a moan. Then the door handle clicked and it slowly swung open.
James Willits was standing there, his stance rigid, and with blood running down his neck. His eyes kept fluttering.
Dana immediately raced over to him. ‘What happened?’
‘Oh, what I expected,’ was the response, but it came without Willits moving his lips, and she now caught sight of the business end of a 9mm Beretta poking out from underneath Willits’s arm and pointing directly at her midriff.
A blinding flash from its muzzle momentarily illuminated the whole room, whereupon a hand swung out and slapped Dana’s gun to the floor and Willits’s body dropped face first onto the carpet with a thud.
Pelosi stood in the doorway, still holding the Beretta and stained with the blood of his victims. He watched Dana stagger backwards, the torch dropping from her hand, before she lurched forwards
, clutching her chest, and collapsed in a heap next to Willits.
‘About time,’ Legrundy said from the gloom as Pelosi calmly picked up the fallen torch and made his way over to the bed.
‘You’re lucky they didn’t discover that tracking device implanted under your skin, or I’d never have found you at all.’
Legrundy instinctively rubbed at a small scar between two of her knuckles. ‘I told them nothing,’ she said defensively.
He shone the torchlight onto her face. ‘From what I understand, that’s not really the issue, is it?’
The smile on the woman’s face began to fade and she actually now looked apprehensive as Pelosi continued, his face hidden in the shadows. ‘Your obsession with killing Alex Harker has clouded your judgement, Avi. All you had to do was deliver the package to us and then you were free to do whatever you wished. But instead you decided to try and kill two birds with one stone, and in doing so allowed that very package to fall into the hands of the Templars.’
Even though Legrundy could not see it clearly, Pelosi was shaking his head in disappointment. ‘You know how important that strange little being is to us, because without it the project is doomed to failure… So, they’re not happy.’
Legrundy’s apprehensiveness was now changing to real anguish and her eyes widened, despite the brightness of the torchlight. ‘I still know where to look. It marked a place on the map.’
‘Which I suppose the Templars also have in their possession,’ said Pelosi. ‘Well, you had better give me that location, hadn’t you because, thanks to you, this Alex Harker has a head start on me, wouldn’t you say?’
A Samsung smartphone was chucked into her lap and Legrundy immediately began tapping away at the Maps app.
‘And how about our little friend? Do you know where he is?’
‘I heard one of them mention a hospital, but I don’t know which,’ Legrundy replied, without looking up from the screen. ‘But it has to be nearby as he’d lost a lot of blood.’
Pelosi waited for her to finish, then he snatched the smartphone from her hands and peered at it. ‘Looks like I’ll need to catch a flight, then, doesn’t it?’
‘Everything I’ve done was for the good of the Mithras. And if you’d just get me out of these,’ she rattled her handcuffs, ‘I can still be of help.’
Pelosi seemed unconvinced and replied in a chilling whisper, ‘What is that mantra you’re so fond of, Avi? All debts must be repaid.’
It was clear from her puzzled expression that this was not the rescue Legrundy had been hoping for, and her jaw began to tense. ‘I have more information to give you.’
Pelosi laid the torch on the lacquered bedside table, then he sat down on the wooden stool next to it. ‘Oh, I know,’ he remarked, shoving the gun into one pocket and retrieving a knife from another. He pressed a button and the blade flicked outwards. ‘You’ll explain everything.’
Legrundy’s look of real fear was a sight few, if any, had ever witnessed. As she watched Pelosi tap the blade gently against an open palm, she began to rattle her handcuffs again. ‘Undo these tings. You ’ave nothing to fear from me.’
Pelosi emitted a playful chuckle and nodded as if in agreement. ‘I know I don’t, Avi. And as for the handcuffs, well, once we’ve had a further chat you can have faith that I intend to let you stretch your wings’ – he leant towards her and into the direct light of the torch, his teeth clenched tightly and with drops of his previous victims’ blood now visibly spattered across his face – ‘and soar like a bird.’
Chapter 11
‘And with respect, Alex, that’s why I don’t ever go scuba diving,’ Doggie said, sitting back in his seat looking rather cavalier about the whole matter.
‘To be fair, Tom, the chance of one being blown up and then running into an underwater knife-wielding killer is a rare possibility.’
‘Maybe so, but tell that to Barbara Holtz. Poor woman could have been killed.’
As soon as Harker had reached the surface, he was greeted by a coastguard dinghy that had been dispatched within minutes of the explosions being heard. Such a timely response was impressive by anyone’s standards, for they had already picked up the unconscious Holtz and administered what medical assistance they could. She was suffering from severe decompression sickness, as Harker had predicted, and had been rushed by ambulance to the only hospital in the area with a hyperbaric oxygen chamber, whose waiting room they now sat in, waiting for news.
After changing back into dry clothes, Harker had met up with Doggie, who had heard the explosions along with everyone else and had immediately come looking for them. They had driven straight to the medical centre, arriving just in time to be interviewed by the local police, who were understandably treating the explosions with extreme seriousness given that the whole of Gibraltar had experienced the tremors. With Barbara Holtz in no shape to answer questions, Harker was their main source of information, and given the bizarre nature of their experience he had decided to keep the details to a minimum. Holtz had been highly secretive about the archaeological dig, and although she had government approval, the police appeared to have been totally unaware of the site.
In his statement Harker had not lied per se, but simply chosen to omit certain aspects of what had happened. He described himself as a former colleague who had taken up the offer to survey the underwater site and was in the process of consultation when an earthquake had rocked its foundations. On passing through the narrow exit of the dig, Dr Holtz had become entangled with a pressurised buoy used to retrieve artefacts from the depths, and had been tragically dragged too rapidly all the way up to the surface.
Of course, the clearly deliberate act of sabotage and the underwater knifeman remained at the forefront of Harker’s mind, but he figured that Holtz would be able to explain things as she saw fit when she was able to speak again. Hopefully, that would be in as little as twenty-four hours if the doctor’s assessment was accurate.
The only problem was that her eventual statement could clash with his version of events, but he would have to sort that out when the moment came. Anyway, he was determined to be the first person she saw on waking, and that was the reason he and Doggie had been holed up here for the past six hours. Holtz had been reluctant to reveal who it was that had commissioned her work at the site in the first place, but one thing was as clear as day: there was far more going on here than she had yet told him. The only absolute Harker could be sure of was that someone did not want the underwater site to be seen by anyone else, and it was essential he found out why. How this connected to the Mithras and that strange being with two hearts they had found was still a total mystery, but one whose solution preoccupied him. .
‘Fancy another coffee?’ Doggie asked, getting to his feet and stretching his arms. ‘There’s a Costa Coffee around the corner, and it beats this filtered gunk they’re serving here.’
‘Sounds good,’ Harker replied, flexing his own shoulders. ‘Large skinny latte, please.’
‘Skinny! You’re not overweight, Alex. Why not live a little?’
This comment made Harker chuckle. ‘Perhaps that’s why I’m not overweight.’
Doggie appeared unconvinced but held out his hand limply, with a roll of the eyes. ‘Fair enough, give me a fiver and I’ll see what I can do.’
That the dean made far more money than he did was known to both of them, so Harker stared at him. ‘You know, Doggie, you really should try to be a bit more generous… maybe live a little.’ He said it with a sarcastic smile.
Doggie shook his head and leant towards him to say, ‘Perhaps that’s why I’m never broke.’ This was Dean Thomas Lercher, scholar, colleague, trusted friend and a complete cheapskate. Harker pulled out his wallet and handed over a crisp five-pound note. ‘Knock yourself out with that, O generous one.’
With a satisfied look Doggie whipped the money from Harker’s hand. ‘Good, I’ll be back in a minute and then I want to hear all about that pyramid again… especially the frescos.’
<
br /> ‘Shh,’ Harker uttered quietly, anxiously looking around to make sure no one was in earshot.
‘Sorry, I meant the archaeological site,’ Doggie corrected, then slipped the note into the pocket of his green tweed jacket and performed a gracious and mocking Victorian bow. ‘I shall be away but a moment.’
Harker watched the dean saunter off through the medical centre’s double doors, almost clipping a lone individual who was entering. The man was short, but with his shoulders held back he exuded a sense of authority that belied his stature. His eyes darted back and forth anxiously as he made his way up to reception, before they settled on Harker and a glimmer of recognition flashed across them.
There was an odd momentary pause as their eyes met, and for a brief second Harker felt as if this stranger was about to rush at him. His whole body tensed in readiness, but instead the man’s lips twitched apprehensively and he opened his mouth to speak.
‘Professor Harker?’
Friend or foe? Who knew, but Harker’s knuckles continued to tighten regardless, as he offered a slow nod of his head. ‘Yes?’
The stranger’s expression immediately relaxed and his eyes widened in relief. ‘It is indeed you – good. The photo I received was less than satisfactory.’
The stranger then pulled out his mobile phone and held it up to display a rather undignified image of Harker in mid-conversation at some event, with his mouth hanging open and his eyes in mid blink.
‘Do I know you?’
‘No, not yet,’ the man replied, popping the phone back into the pocket of his light tan suit. ‘My name is Harold Cortez and I’m the Minister for the Environment here in Gibraltar. May we speak?’
The Shadow Conspiracy Page 10
