by Guy Roberts
A part of him suddenly cried out that they should leave the tiny room in peace, go back out into the hurly-burly of the reenactment and leave the unfound gold alone in tribute to the fallen dead. He paused for a moment, wanting to explain his feelings to Cleo, but Johnathon Fairchild’s warning in the Freemasons’ Hall came back to him – if the gold was left untouched then Deschamps would find it eventually, no matter what. Reluctantly, Jack moved forward with Cleo to crouch down and examine the altar on the far side of the chapel. The two of them examined it minutely, eyes poring over the stonework. There was the thinnest of cracks under the main slab of carved stone. After a moment of careful consideration, the two of them moved to either side of the altar with a heave of muscle slid it from the top of the altar and carefully lowered it to the ground. A deep recess was revealed in the centre of the altar. Jack cautiously stuck his hand down into the space. It reached down to the floor, but was empty, it’s bottom coated with centuries-old dust and detritus. A frown on his face, Jack carefully felt around the void before withdrawing his hand and looking at Cleo in consternation.
‘Nothing,’ he declared, wiping a hand on his already grubby leggings.
‘Nothing?’ she queried. ‘No gold? No signs?’ Jack shook his head.
‘Wait!’ she declared. ‘Under the altar stone?’ Jack followed her prompt and together they heaved the block of stone onto its side. The blank underside of the slab stared back at them, unmarked by any hidden message or clue.
‘Under the stone, maybe?’ Jack scratched his jaw, feeling a sense of desperation circling. They had to find the gold. They had to.
‘Maybe we’ll need to dig up the floor,’ he suggested. ‘Maybe come back in a few days, or weeks and search for the next clue.’
‘Search for the next clue?’ Cleo looked at him with growing outrage. ‘The golden tablet is destroyed – there is no next clue. This is it, we’re here, and there’s nothing. Nothing!’
Jack shook his head in confusion. Perhaps the gold had been hidden there beneath the altar, but had been taken long ago – perhaps it had been taken by one of Wellington’s officers that night, and the 200 year-old secret had never been anything but a hollow dream. Jack looked around the room desperately. There was nothing. No roman numerals, no codes… just a stone altar, wooden pews and a fire-damaged crucifix. Jack felt dizzy for a moment, failure and frustration battling within him. He grabbed at a pew and sat down, his legs weak. For all his effort, Jack knew he had failed his murdered brother, had ruined the quest that he had been given. Cleo stared around the room in fury, eyes blazing, before her shoulders slumped and she collapsed next to him.
‘Crap,’ she declared with vehement exasperation, utterly dejected. Jack snorted a laugh at the sound of her disappointment. A few seconds passed before she stifled a giggle of her own and suddenly the two of them were laughing like lunatics, tears pouring from their eyes as they resigned themselves to failure in a mixture of frustration and relief. They hooted and gasped helplessly for several minutes, Jack feeling the tension recede from his body, leaving nothing but a feeling of well-earned exhaustion. They sat together in the chapel for a few minutes of silent reflection, drinking in the peace of the little room. After a few moments Cleo leaned her head on Jack’s shoulder companionably.
‘Well,’ Jack smiled, ‘maybe it’s here, maybe it’s not. We can keep looking when the time is right.’
‘You’re right,’ Cleo declared eventually. She reached inside her mud-splattered jacket and pulled out the little tube of lipstick. ‘It’s not the destination, it’s the journey, correct?’
Jack nodded in agreement as she applied a dab of lipstick and the two rested for a moment longer, listening peacefully to the rain hammering down outside.
‘Let’s go watch the end of the battle,’ she suggested after she had put the lipstick away. ‘It can’t be long now.’
‘Good idea,’ Jack grinned and pulled himself upright and limped toward the exit. ‘Ladies first,’ he declared, offering her the way.
‘Not this time,’ Cleo shook her head and smiled. ‘Lead the way, Jack, you’ve earned it.’ They shared a warm smile and Jack stepped outside onto the rain-slicked step of the chapel entrance. His foot slipped on the smooth old stone and he fell downward, grabbing at the iron grille for support. A sabre hissed through the rain where his head had been and struck sparks against the iron grille. Jack pushed himself into the rain, desperate to avoid the unexpected attack. Reynard’s razor-sharp sabre slashed forward again, cutting through the rain behind Jack and scraping against the grille in an explosion of sparks. Jack staggered away from the unexpected attack and leapt to one side to avoid the next curving swing of the deadly weapon. The bag with the remains of the tablet went spinning to the ground beside the chapel’s entrance.
‘Starling,’ Reynard hissed his name with savage glee, sabre on guard as he advanced. ‘You’re dead!’
1110 hrs (1010 GMT) 18 June 2015, Drontheimer Strasse, Berlin.
GR 52.561948, 13.377329
The factory floor stood empty, every hacker dismissed. Vano and the Termite stood alone on the platform, watching dust motes dance in the morning light above rows of abandoned computers.
‘Where did everyone go?’ Vano looked around the room curiously. It was rare to see the computers empty during daylight hours.
‘To their homes,’ the Termite shrugged, ‘or their dormitories… or their bedrooms where mummy and daddy will tuck them in… they have gone home to their little rat holes across the city.’
‘I did not know you held us hackers in such low esteem.’ Vano smiled at the Termite. Talk all you want, old man… they know everything now. After infiltrating Brice’s iPad and listening to everything that had been taking place in COBRA over the last few days, it had been a final guilty pleasure for Vano to email Brice directly, posing as his friend in the Ministry of Defense and telling him exactly where Starling, Sir Johnathon and Deschamps would be at this very moment. After that, Vano had sent a copy of everything he had gathered to the personal email address of the Director of the Central Intelligence Agency in Langley – a little Easter Egg to let the CIA realize how completely the British security establishment had been compromised by Vano’s work. He pushed the mischievous thought aside and focused on his immediate foe.
‘I do not discredit all hackers,’ the Termite conceded thoughtfully. ‘Only some. Most are useless…unlike you. To compare them to you would be like comparing a child’s finger painting to a Rembrandt. But come,’ he patted Vano’s shoulder. ‘Nyx is fetching the BMW to drive us to Brussels. We have a busy few days ahead.’
‘Good,’ Vano nodded, eyes glittering, ‘let us go.’
The Termite turned away from the edge of the platform and started walking toward the rear door. Vano remained standing where he was.
‘I’m impressed, Termite,’ Vano declared loudly. The older man paused, then turned back to listen as the hacker spoke. ‘After all these years you have spent manipulating others,’ Vano stared at him contemptuously, ‘I thought fooling you would be more difficult.’
‘What do you mean?’ The Termite’s eyes narrowed.
‘Your greed,’ Vano spoke simply, ‘nothing else was needed to make you do exactly as I wanted.’
The far door of the factory was thrown open with a bang and Nyx was frog marched through by a burley policeman, one hand on her shoulder and a machinegun jammed painfully into her back. Four more police followed, guns raised. Three of them fanned out rapidly through the building. The final officer approaching Vano and the Termite, a heavy pistol carefully trained on the Termite’s paunchy frame.
‘What are you talking about, Vano?’ the Termite stared at him incredulously. ‘What have you done?’
‘Do you honestly think I came here to work for you and Nyx?’ Vano smiled. ‘A disgraced civil servant and a sociopathic psychology graduate?’
‘What are you talking about?’ the Termite tried to put a smile on his face, even as the police officer
pulled a set of handcuffs from his belt.
‘Come now, Termite,’ Vano’s smile was replaced by a look of cold loathing, ‘I’ve known who you are for months. You’re not invisible, nor invulnerable.’
‘So wise, so young?’ the Termite’s face was still.
‘It wasn’t so hard,’ Vano shrugged. ‘I spoke to people here and there, in Berlin… Rotterdam… Bonn. Hackers, police, bureaucrats … not via email, not on the phone or on Skype, but face to face… in a café, or a park. Places where your little electronic tendrils couldn’t reach.’
‘And why?’ The Termite’s face was cold with outrage as handcuffs were placed around his wrists.
Vano’s face hardened. ‘Do you remember a boy? Beka Kubriashvili, 17 years old? He came to you a year ago, an expert on American Department of Defense security protocols.’
‘Perhaps.’ The Termite’s voice was guarded.
‘Perhaps?’ Vano snapped at the word. ‘Beka was a hacker, like me. He told me everything about you, about Nyx, about the old factory you took him to in Saxony to steal secrets from the United States…’ Vano blinked back tears, his voice on edge, ‘and he told me about afterward, about how Nyx took him to the movies, and held his hand, and made him love her… a boy of 17, with all the passion and foolishness of a child.’ Vano spat at the Termite’s feet. ‘And then they found little Beka’s body at the bottom of the cliff. A boy, only 17 years old.’
‘Why are you telling me this?’ the Termite’s voice was cold. ‘You just are a boy yourself.’
‘He was my brother, Termite,’ Vano whispered, a thin smile on his face. ‘He was a boy, but I am a man, and I bring vengeance. Vengeance for my brother and all the others you two have corrupted over the years.’
‘Really?’ the Termite’s eyes narrowed angrily.
‘Indeed,’ Vano smiled. ‘I have spoken to Sir Johnathon, the man whose telephones I monitored. I have spoken to Deschamp’s sidekick, Reynard the Hunter, letting him know the treachery you planned, and I have spoken to the Police here in Berlin, summoning them here to lock you up at last.’ The young Georgian smiled, inclining his head toward the silent police officer at the Termite’s side.
‘My vengeance has arrived,’ Vano said happily. ‘Termite, your time is done.’
The Termite shut his eyes in resignation.
The bullet caught Vano beneath the ribcage, thrusting him backward to fall from the platform like a rag-doll. He toppled to the factory floor in a heap, mouth open in shocked surprise.
‘Oh, Vano,’ the Termite sighed deeply, ‘you could have lived.’
He tut-tutted matter of factly, then turned to watch Nyx pass a pistol back to the policeman by her side.
‘Thank you, Polizeidirektor.’ The Termite smiled cordially to the police officer as his handcuffs were removed. ‘A shame that you had to be involved in such an unfortunate scene.’ He pulled a heavy fold of banknotes from a pocket and passed it over to the officer with a disarming smile. ‘A little something for you and your men. Ten thousand Euro, with my thanks.’
The policeman took it distastefully.
‘I’ll take this for my men,’ he admitted grudgingly. ‘But I don’t ever want to see you or your woman in Berlin again. No matter what you know about my past.’
‘Don’t worry,’ the Termite looked him up and down candidly. ‘We both know how the game is played. Your secrets are safe with me.’
‘And the boy?’ The man’s face was taut.
‘Short sighted.’ The Termite smiled dismissively. ‘Think of him as just another trouble maker. A drug user, or an illegal immigrant. Someone utterly forgettable. We’ll leave the body here, let someone find him in a week or two – I doubt the rats will leave anything identifiable, and we, of course, will be long gone from this place.’
The Polizeidirektor glared at him for a long moment, wishing he could lash out. A moment later he had gone, marching from the factory with the other policemen at his heel.
‘Tell me, Nyx,’ the Termite smiled, his eyes watching the police coldly as they trailed from the room. ‘Who watches the watchers?’
Nyx stalked from the shadows and slid one hand around the Termite’s waist in a warm embrace.
‘Why, we do,’ she whispered, placing a sensuous kiss upon his lips. ‘We do.’
The lovers turned and looked down from the podium at Vano’s body.
‘A loss,’ the Termite sighed. ‘His pursuit of Starling was something to admire.’ He smiled sadly. ‘How fortunate that the young are so naive. So trusting of authority, so sure that right will triumph, they forget that everyone has a weakness. Even the police.’
‘I remember his brother,’ she smiled tenderly, ‘little Beka.’
‘And was he a challenge, my dear?’ the Termite looked at her fondly.
‘Oh no,’ Nyx looked down at Vano with a nostalgic smile on her face. ‘Not a bit of it.’
‘But come,’ she pulled her thoughts away reluctantly. ‘The past is a foolish place to linger. We march to the future.’
‘To Hamburg,’ the Termite declared.
‘To Hamburg,’ Nyx agreed.
1115 hrs (1015 hrs GMT) 18 June 2015, Battlefield of Waterloo, Belgium.
GR 50.670640, 4.394861
The Frenchman leapt forward, sabre swinging in another attack. Jack danced to his right, desperately twisting past Reynard’s stroke as he clawed his own weapon from the scabbard by his side. Reynard did not let up, swinging the sword at Jack time and again and it was all that Jack could do to keep the swordsman at bay as he retreated across the rain-soaked courtyard. The walls of the complex were empty, the Redcoats seemingly driven into shelter by the thunderous squall overhead. Another blow swung from one side, battering Jack’s sword away and slashing a deep wound across his forehead. A mortar tube detonated by their side, ignored by both fighters as they cut and parried through the mud and dross. Jack shook his head, trying to dislodge the blood streaming from the wound above his eyes. Reynard slashed forward with his sabre and Jack had to use both hands to deflect the blow with his own sword. His feet gave way in the mud and Jack fell backward, blinded for a moment by the blood pouring down his face. A banshee cry filled the air and Jack desperately wiped his vision clear as he swarmed upright for another attack. He was just in time to see Reynard land a vicious punch on Cleo’s jaw, knocking her senseless to the ground, before the Frenchman lashed out with a foot, knocking Jack back down.
Reynard’s low laughter snaked through the confusion like a stiletto in the dark. ‘Time to die,’ Reynard hissed, drawing his sabre up to strike Jack down. It was enough. Jack launched himself forward, catching the Frenchman in a bruising tackle before the Frenchman’s sabre could descend. The ploy worked, Jack driving into the thinner man like a juggernaut, knocking him across the courtyard and pinioning him against the wall of the chapel before they fell to the ground in a vicious, brutal melee. The pair rolled back and forth through a pile of mortar tubes, desperately struggling to gain the upper hand. One of the tubes beeped and sent a projectile skittering along the wall before detonating against the corner of the house. Billowing smoke filled the courtyard, and Jack could hear the bemused shouts of soldiers emerging from the barn.
Despite his rage, Jack could feel his strength flagging swiftly. Reynard landed a punch on his wounded shoulder, then his foot tangled through Jack’s legs, tripping him backward with a laugh of triumph. Jack cursed through gritted teeth, then went still. The sabre was at his throat, its razor-sharp blade pressing into his skin as Reynard leaned down toward him with a snarling grin on his face. Jack lay flat on his back, panting in exhaustion and pain, teeth gritted as he felt the blade resting against the skin of his Adam’s apple.
‘It’s funny,’ Reynard slid the sword along Jack’s throat, ‘it is not even a week ago today that I cut your brother’s throat.’ Reynard smiled absently. ‘First David… now Jack…’ his cold blue eyes slid across the courtyard to where Cleo’s motionless body lay crumpled on the muddy ground. ‘T
hen Cleo.’ Reynard’s pale eyes moved back to Jack and a slow smile spread across his face. ‘I will enjoy her the most.’ His tongue flicked across his narrow lips for the merest of instants.
Jack spat blood from his mouth and looked wordlessly up at the looming Frenchman. He was trapped. There was nothing left. He took a deep breath and shut his eyes, finding that little centre of peace at the heart of all true warriors. Reynard nodded, pleased at this compliance and raised the sabre in both hands, preparing to bring it down in a stabbing thrust through Jack’s neck. Jack breathed out slowly and found peace.
He opened his eyes as the sabre reached its highest point and moved faster than Reynard could see, twisting the Tomcat pistol from his belt and firing it upward at point blank range. The final bullet of the tiny handgun blasted through the sabre’s blade, shattering it into a dozen pieces. Off-balance, Reynard staggered backward, the sabre’s useless handle spinning away into the mud. Something beeped by Jack’s ear and he twisted around, grabbing a long mortar tube from its sandy bunker and pointing it toward Reynard’s exposed chest. There was an instant of silence between them, just long enough for Reynard to realize his doom had come. The killer’s mouth opened in a perfect circle of surprise and then the mortar discharged, firing an explosive charge at point blank range into Reynard’s chest. There was the merest glimpse of the Frenchman being launched bodily into the air and then an explosion of smoke billowed out to fill the courtyard.
The blast seemed to be part of a crescendo in the battle, other tubes firing simultaneously. Knocked here and there by the desperate combat between Reynard and Starling, the tubes began launching haphazardly and all Starling could do was cover his head in his hands as canisters of smoke launched and ricocheted around the enclosed space. Eventually the confusion ended and Jack lifted his head slowly, ears ringing.
The rain had stopped and smoke was slowly clearing from the ruined courtyard. A soldier staggered past shouting incoherently, his uniform blasted with soot and powder. Limbs aching, Jack hauled himself upright, his torn uniform smoking here and there from where fragments of gunpowder had lodged. Wordlessly, he limped over to the motionless form of Cleo, his heart in his mouth as he approached her still form. He heaved a great sigh of relief as she stirred beneath his touch and slowly clambered to her feet by his side. A great welt across her face marked where Reynard’s savage blow had struck her down, but she was strong enough to smile at him doggedly. The clinking of falling masonry reached through the ringing in Jack’s ears. Together, each leaning on the other for support, they staggered to where Reynard had been hurled against the chapel wall. A great hole had been smashed into the wall as if by a giant fist. Reynard’s broken body lay at the base of the aperture, as twisted and lifeless as a discarded doll. Ancient pieces of masonry clinked and tinkled from the ragged hole to find a new resting place on his dust-covered body. Cleo hung back, but Jack could not help but step closer, wanting to make sure that the viperous assassin was truly dead. Reynard lay still, arms and legs akimbo, the back of his head crushed by the impact against the wall. Trails of bright red blood were trickling slowly from his mouth and ears, inching their way down across his dust-covered face. Another small landslide of brinks tumbled downward, thudding brutally across the assassin’s face and covering it from view. Jack sighed. One small debt had been paid, at least.
