Two hours later they handed the steel box over to a middle-aged woman who placed it reverently onto her desk. Norma Johnstone lifted the lid and smiled. “Beautiful,” she said.
“Small.” Geordie leaned against a bookcase, arms folded, as Daisy took the only other chair in the office.
“Small is beautiful,” Norma told him.
Geordie grunted. “Yeah, but it’s not earth shattering, is it?”
“It’s warm to the touch,” Daisy said.
“Is it?” Norma reached out. She used the back of her hand to test the heat. “Fascinating. Was it like that when you retrieved it?”
Daisy stood so she could touch the statuette. “It seemed hotter earlier, or maybe I’ve got used to it by now.”
Feeling left out, Geordie came over and touched the carving. “Odd,” he said.
“Very.” Norma closed the lid. She sat back in her chair and steepled her fingers as she gazed at the box. “I presume there were no problems?” she asked.
“Easy as pie,” Geordie said. “Daisy here did all the hard work, I hung around and looked handsome.”
“Hmm.” Norma made a sound that Geordie didn’t quite get but didn’t pursue. Her confirmation as Douglas Congrave’s successor took six months to make its way through the dark corridors of Whitehall. The whispers that Geordie had picked up from people he knew in the Ministry of Defence put that down to Sir Richard Stanton, the Secretary of State for Defence. He seemed to want to ring fence the Department of Environmental Security into his area of responsibility. There’d been a tussle between him and the Prime Minister which ended up with Norma taking the top job and a bunch of suits from the MOD being shipped in to run each section.
It meant that Norma was the boss, and even Geordie knew when to keep his trap shut. She didn’t have the same sense of humour that Congrave carried. And his death had hit the department hard. Norma seemed reluctant to jump into situations now, only acting when forced to by circumstances. Her idea was to watch and gather evidence, something that drove Geordie barmy. It was why the two Yanks had disappeared back across the water. Their boss in the States wanted some action, not for them to waste their time on surveillance duty in rainy old Blighty. Geordie missed them. They made life exciting.
Which is why Norma’s decision to ‘retrieve’ the statuette from a security room in broad daylight intrigued him. He’d expected her to be the kind of woman to knock on the front door and ask the master of the house if she could borrow the item with an explanation of ‘one of our psychics is picking up emanations from it’. He waited for Norma to expand on the situation. When she didn’t, he said, “What next?”
“We take this down to Alex and see what he can get from it.”
Geordie smiled. He liked the ‘we’ part. It meant he and Daisy would get to stick with this job all the way. Norma seemed to like a separation between office and field duties. Geordie didn’t get to see the psychics much anymore. Not that that was necessarily a bad thing. Some of them were a little strange, to say the least. Alex was okay, and the little girl Emily, who Geordie knew best of all. But a couple of the others were candidates for the Oddball of the Year award.
Norma stood. “Let’s go,” she said.
Geordie gave Daisy a wink as their boss walked ahead of them. His partner smiled in return. Geordie liked her smile. He also liked Daisy. She’d proved how tough she was by surviving a shoot-out with a replicating demon. That and pulling a few stakeouts with her, playing eye-spy and having discussions about life, the universe and everything else to pass the time, made him like her even more.
Norma led them a merry old trot down to the ground floor. The psychics hung out in a former ballroom. Geordie didn’t have much of an eye for interior decoration, but the artwork, architecture and décor of the room never failed to impress him. He could almost see an orchestra at one end and a couple of hundred people in their finest Victorian clothes doing the paso-whatever as the champagne flowed. Lucky sods. All he got was bland coffee from the machine sitting on one side of the room.
Norma gave the box to Alex. Geordie thought the guy looked petrified. He held the container like it was a bomb and could hear the ticking about to stop.
“I’ll leave Derek and Daisy with you,” Norma said. “Let me have a full report in the morning.”
That was the other thing about Norma. She never called Geordie ‘Geordie’. It was always Derek, which was his name, and had been since birth. But everyone called him Geordie apart from his dear old mum up in Newcastle, and he wished Norma would do the same. He didn’t bother telling her, though. She wouldn’t listen.
They watched her leave the room, and once the door clicked shut, Geordie said, “You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”
Alex stared at him in confusion. “I’ve seen loads of ghosts,” he said. “I’m a psychic.”
“Yeah, I know. But it’s a saying, ain’t it? You look scared.”
“That’s because I am.” Alex put the box down. Geordie and Daisy exchanged a glance.
Apart from Emily, he was the youngest of the psychics on the books of the DES. In his early twenties, with unruly dark hair and an accent straight from the playing fields of Eton, Alex had made a living online providing spirit-guidance on potential matches from dating websites until the DES came calling. They liked the fact that he got a ninety-five-per-cent approval rating from clients. Plus, the realisation that Alex could spirit-walk and had been the one to pinpoint the location of the statuette for Daisy and Geordie to retrieve.
“What now?” Daisy perched herself on the edge of Alex’s desk.
“We go to one of the quiet rooms and open the box,” Alex said. He wiped the palms of his hands on his thighs.
“We?” Geordie prompted.
“Yeah,” Alex smiled. “Us three. Norma said you’d follow this through now.”
“Did she?” Geordie sighed. “Why don’t I like the sound of that?”
“I’ll show you.”
Alex took them out of the ballroom and down to one of the old cellars, now fitted out with sound-proof walls, a full audio-visual suite and the kind of furniture usually found in only the best corporate offices and boardrooms. Geordie dumped himself on a leather sofa as Alex prepared the cameras and microphones to record the session. Daisy made herself a cup of coffee and sat across the room from Geordie. As she sipped on the coffee, Daisy asked, “No-one filled us in on the background of this carving.”
“It’s old,” Alex said as he checked the various cameras. The room was covered from seven different angles and with the kit that included high-definition video and thermal imaging cameras.
“You don’t say,” Geordie laughed. “Even I know that.”
“Only because I told you,” Daisy said.
“I already knew,” Geordie told her. “Bleedin’ obvious when you look at it.”
Alex came back into the centre of the room and looked around. Happy that the equipment was working he said, “It’s Sumerian. A carving of the goddess Ki, the Earth goddess.”
“And that’s interesting because?” Geordie asked.
“Because I and two other psychics have received warnings from her.”
“Warnings about what?” Daisy put her cup down.
“We’re not sure. Fire, or a storm maybe.”
Alex walked to the table where he had placed the steel box. He seemed uncertain. Geordie watched his hands hover over the clasps of the box before he flicked them open and lifted the lid. Nothing happened. Geordie stifled a yawn. These psychics sometimes got a bit overblown about their talents. Not that Geordie doubted them, it was just that on occasion a big fuss was made over nothing.
Like now.
Geordie caught sight of Daisy shaking her head at him, ‘concentrate’ she mouthed silently. He sighed and put his attention back on Alex. The psychic lifted the statuette of Ki out of the box and placed it on the table. “It’s warm,” he said.
“It was like that when I picked it up at Grestly Manor,” Daisy to
ld him.
Alex pulled up a straight-backed chair and sat on it, facing the carving. “I’m going to put myself in a partial trance,” he said. “I’m not sure how Ki is going to reveal herself if she ever does, but please watch out for any clues.”
Now Geordie did yawn. Daisy glared at him, and he made an innocent ‘what me?’ gesture with his hands. Ignoring her follow up stare Geordie turned back to Alex. From his angle, he could see the younger man settling into the chair. Geordie wondered what was going through Alex’s head. If anything. He glanced across at Daisy. She had all her attention fixed on Alex and the statuette. Geordie saw her eyes widen. In the time it took him to look at Alex, the statuette of Ki began to glow. The dull coloured stone turned red, pulsing brighter as if generated by the beat of a heart. Alex made a sound, somewhere between a sigh and a cough. His head slumped left and the weight of the movement caused his body to begin to slide from the chair.
Geordie reacted first. He came out of the sofa and caught the psychic as Alex fell towards the carpet. Geordie managed to lower him to the floor before Alex hit it too hard. Geordie checked to make sure Alex still breathed. He saw Daisy’s shoes appear in view. As he looked up, Geordie heard her say,
“The statuette.”
The stone carving shimmered with heat, its surface turning a molten yellow. Geordie saw vapour rising from the head. It formed a twisting column that seemed to solidify as it expanded. A human shape appeared out of the writhing smoke. The flesh rippled until the smoke settled and a woman’s face appeared. Not a beautiful face, more handsome than anything, but she stared down at Geordie, Daisy and Alex with eyes that swam with fire.
For a moment, there was silence. And then the woman’s mouth opened and she screamed.
***
A sound like ten-thousand bugles swept Alex into the air. He hung, suspended in a boiling cloud of tar-like smoke as ash and debris swirled around him, driven by hurricane force winds. Below him lay nothing but darkness, above he saw the sick yellow of a filtered sun. A need for light and air made his spirit rise through the turmoil.
He broke through the surface of the storm into daylight. His spirit didn’t need to breathe, but the clean air lifted him higher. Alex looked down. Bolts of lightning split the churning clouds of smoke, blue-white fingers that snaked across the roof of the storm and left canyons in the cloud that allowed Alex to see down into the heart of the storm.
Alex rose higher. The curve of the world came into view, as did the dark edge of space. Beneath him, he saw the cause of the storm clouds came from a single location. A geyser-like plume of fire rose from the earth, rolling out like the mushroom cloud of an atomic bomb. Alex’s eyes tracked the path of the cloud. It spread itself across the world like cancer, fingers extending across oceans to east and west, a single carpet going north and south. Land vanished into shade, and ocean disappeared into gloom.
A tug on his soul made Alex descend. The storm came closer, and Alex braced himself as he plunged into the clouds. Debris surrounded him. Ash, rock, soil and burning vegetation swirled around him in the darkness. He saw heavier objects, things that shouldn’t fly; trees, the carcass of a horse, telegraph poles.
His eyes grew used to the dark, or maybe he could see because his spirit-vision penetrated the night-black gloom. A land of fire opened up before him as if a giant bullet had been shot into the world and the wound bled magma. Alex followed a river of burning lava two miles wide until it reached the ruins of a city. The blackened skeletons of high rise buildings were the only evidence of civilisation. The suburbs were gone, turned to ash. Roads, gardens, parks and malls had all merged into a single mass of charred wasteland. There were no people. If anyone lived they would not be here; they would have run to escape the destruction. But run where? The whole world seemed to be engulfed by the fire storm, ash and cloud wrapping a cloak of death around the planet.
Alex waited. He knew some entity guided him. He had been brought here for a reason. This vision must be the future or a possible future. A world of death. Winds blew hard around him, whipping up the remains of the city in sweeping vortexes. The particles of debris became a blizzard. Alex turned. The land and the sky merged. If any place could ever be called Hell on Earth, this was it.
The wind dropped, and the curtains of ash fell to the ground. Alex saw a woman walk towards him. He knew she wasn’t human because in all the darkness and destruction she walked barefoot, kicking up small plumes of ash with each step, and wore a straight linen dress that reached to mid-calf.
Ki, Alex thought, Goddess of the Earth.
She stopped in front of him, and Alex saw tears on her face that formed tracks through the grime that coated her skin. Ki spoke, and her words formed in Alex’s head like a half-remembered memory.
‘This is my world, and this is its future.’
She gestured around. Alex thought his question. ‘What happened?’
‘They called upon the Death Gods and set them free to rule the world.”
‘They?’ Alex heard a roar that made the air shake and his spirit tremble.
Ki vanished. Alex saw a wave of fire come over the horizon, consuming what remained in its path. He heard Ki’s voice again, reaching him one last time as the fire raced closer.
‘This is the future.’
Chapter Three
Kramer must have been feeling sorry for Ben because she let him have a lie-in the morning after they arrived in Boston. He crawled out of the sack a few minutes before nine and came out of the shower to find she’d returned from her run and brought with her two cups of coffee and a bag of muffins. Kramer kicked back on the hotel room’s single chair and put her feet up on the bed as Ben stood by the window and looked out at a busy city street.
“No need to rush,” Kramer said. “Our appointment isn’t until two.”
“Who are we seeing?” Ben sat on the end of the bed and wished Kramer didn’t look so damned healthy.
“A couple of their directors and an antiquities specialist.”
Ben tried one of the muffins. It made him realise how hungry he was. “We getting breakfast anytime soon?”
“Sure, I’ll have a quick shower then we can head downstairs. I’m thinking we take a walk around the city and get us some culture.”
Ben looked closely at her. “You’re being very nice today,” he said.
“We work hard, why not enjoy ourselves when we get the chance?”
Kramer stood, gave him a smile and carried her coffee into the bathroom. Ben shook his head after the door closed. Ever since his revelation about wanting resign Kramer had been a sweet as pie to him. Now Ben didn’t always get suspicious when Kramer was in a good mood, but this time he did. He figured she’d play good-cop for as long as it took him to decide to stick around a while longer.
By the time Kramer emerged from the bathroom looking better than when she’d gone in Ben had finished his coffee, read part of a guidebook to Boston, and worked his way through two more muffins. Kramer’s enquiry as to whether he still needed breakfast got a reply that it was now closer to lunch, so they settled on brunch and headed out to find somewhere to eat.
Kramer’s good mood didn’t seem to want to go away. She let Ben choose the diner, refused the chance to do some shopping and let him lead the way through the streets to Boston Common. They sat on a bench down from the Ether Monument and watched people riding swan boats out on the lake. Kramer said a polite no when Ben suggested they join in the fun. She settled instead for sitting up close to him, resting her head on his shoulder as a few jogging mothers with their children strapped into strollers trotted past.
“You know Chrissie will be joining them soon,” Kramer said about Ben’s recently married sister.
“She will?” Ben almost jumped in shock. “Do you know something I don’t?”
Kramer laughed. “No, I saw the look on her face last time we saw them. She wants a family, I can tell.”
“I must have missed that.” Ben settled down again, enjoying the
feeling of Kramer so close and in public. She didn’t mind getting near to him in private but often kept a distance when they were out on display.
“You weren’t looking.”
“True,” he admitted. “And I wouldn’t know what to look for.”
A hand brushed across his chest. “It’s in the eyes.”
“Okay.” Ben shuffled a bit. Kramer’s head came up, and he peered into her cornflower blue eyes.
“What?” she asked.
“I wondered if I could see any family desires in there,” he said.
She gave him a gentle elbow in the ribs and settled down again. A couple walked past, the dad carrying a toddler and the mom showing another one on the way.
“Are you still thinking about leaving?” Kramer asked.
“Yeah.”
“Is it because of me?”
“What?” he sat up again. Kramer edged away from him. Ben reached out and took her hand. “I’m not leaving you. I’m leaving the job.”
“I know, but we spend so much time together that it’s almost the same.” She didn’t take her hand away.
“No, it’s not.” Ben moved, so they were touching again. He put his arm around her. “You get to do your kick-ass soldiering stuff, and I get to sit behind a desk and drink coffee.”
“And when do I see you?” The question floored Ben, but thinking about it, unless he moved somewhere near Fort Bragg then their paths weren’t likely to cross. Kramer stood up. “See,” she said and walked away.
“Damn,” Ben said out loud. An old woman stopped.
“Girl trouble?” she asked.
“As ever.” Ben got up to follow Kramer.
“Flowers,” the old woman said. “That’s what my late husband always got me if we had an argument. A big bouquet of flowers.”
“I seem to remember a conversation where she said she’d break the arms of any man who bought her flowers,” Ben told the old woman.
“Really?” she looked to where Kramer stood. Kramer had her back to them, but Ben could tell by the way she held herself that Kramer was not happy. “In that case a diamond ring. The biggest you can buy.”
The Tomb (Scarrett & Kramer Book 3) Page 3
