Ryder

by Nick Pengelley

  Malcolm’s thoughts jerked back into the moment. “Polonium? Then it’s assassination?”

  Balfour nodded. “MI5’s running the investigation. Imogen Worsley’s at Number 10.”

  “Where’ve they taken her?”

  “The PM? St. Thomas’s. It’s closest.”

  He frowned. “What does that matter if she’s dead?”

  “She isn’t, or wasn’t. Not quite. Probably is by now. Just a matter of time if not. There’s no hope with polonium. No hope at all.”

  Balfour sounded positively glad. Malcolm understood. He’d have to make damned sure to keep his own emotions under control, however. Reflect what people expected. Shock. Horror. Deepest sympathy. The need for the nation to pull together. All that crap. And revenge, of course. People would expect the culprit to be found and brought to justice. They’d need to identify the assassin. Quickly.

  “You know what this means?” Balfour broke into his reverie.

  “Hmm?”

  “You’re acting prime minister. Until we get everyone together and confirm it.”

  “I know that, Balfour. I’m not stupid.”

  The foreign secretary blew out his cheeks. “What I meant was that now you can go forward with your plan. The vote in the House. You’re bound to win it.”

  Malcolm did his best to show surprise. As if the idea hadn’t occurred to him. “I suppose. I—” He broke off as the phone on his desk rang. “It begins.”

  “I’ll start calling everybody,” the foreign secretary said. He turned as the head of MI5 strode into the room, her face like thunder. “We’ll aim for a full party meeting first thing. I’ll make sure the whips tell everyone how you expect them to vote.”

  “Thank you, Philip.” Malcolm nodded to his new visitor. “Dame Imogen, please come in. This is truly awful news.” He said the expected words, but all he could see was Susannah Armstrong’s waxen face, her eyes closed, lying in a coffin. There was nothing awful about that.

  Chapter 7

  Ayesha raced after Joram Tate up the spiral staircase to the upper level of the reading room. A loud crash sounded behind them. Ayesha flew across the landing and dived through the doorway of the farthest annex. Joram was already swarming up a metal ladder concealed between bookcases in the far corner of the room. At the top of the ladder a trapdoor was built into the ceiling.

  The trapdoor opened onto an attic space, lit by a single hanging bulb. The attic was jammed with wooden crates and ancient office paraphernalia: broken chairs, typewriters. Even a gramophone. Joram had thrust his way between the piles to the far end of the attic. With hurried movements, he unbolted a door in the sloping outer wall, shoved it open, and climbed through.

  Ayesha followed him. She felt Joram’s hand on her arm. Tensed. “Careful,” he warned her. A stone ledge, perhaps eight inches wide, was all that separated them from a forty-five-foot drop. Fortunately, she had a good head for heights.

  Joram strode with catlike grace along the ledge. He stopped at the end, above the gardens, at the head of a ladder that protruded above the roof coping.

  “Wait! There—”Ayesha stopped in midsentence. She’d intended to warn Joram that someone could be watching the back of the building, but he’d already swung himself down and onto the ladder, vanishing from her view. He’s a confident bastard, she thought. I’ll give him that.

  Halfway down the ladder in Joram’s wake, Ayesha heard a dull thump from below. She froze.

  “It’s okay,” the librarian whispered.

  On the ground, Ayesha used the cloth of her jeans to wipe away the flecks of rusted iron that had adhered to her hands. Only then did she notice the huddled mass at the base of a clump of rhododendrons. The watcher she’d expected.

  She bent over the body. Not bald. So not Longo. She looked at Joram, her mouth open to ask one of a dozen questions. Before she could say anything, he jerked his head to the right. “This way,” he said, taking her hand.

  “Piss off!” It wasn’t his touch that angered her—she liked it, in fact. It was his seeming condescension.

  Ayesha saw Joram’s teeth flash white in the darkness. “It’s still this way,” he said calmly.

  “Whatever,” she growled, aware that she was being ridiculous. “Go. I’ll follow.”

  “Suivez-moi.” So saying, Joram led Ayesha deep into the thick belt of shrubbery that grew along the high brick wall separating the institute from St. Olave’s churchyard.

  Set into the wall, completely hidden by the shrubbery, was a low wooden door. Ayesha had never known it was there. The door opened without a sound when Joram pushed it; the hinges had been oiled.

  The churchyard was in darkness, clouds obscuring the moon. She knew it well enough, though. Had negotiated it without light when she’d run from Zilinsky’s killers. That the librarian knew it just as well, or even better, was apparent. He took the lead, striding with sure-footed ease between the leaning tombstones—darker masses against the less solid night. At the church door, he reached up to the lintel and produced a key. He used this to unlock the door. By now Ayesha had developed a respect for Joram that went well beyond his evident erudition. The escape across the roof of the library. His silent and efficient dispatch of the watcher. The hidden, oiled door. His ability to navigate the churchyard in near-total darkness. The key to the church. Clearly there was a great deal more to Joram Tate than met the eye.

  Inside St. Olave’s, the only light came from the red-lit exit signs. Ayesha’s eyes were accustomed to the dark by now, though. She watched as Joram squinted through a chink in a stained glass window. “Nothing,” he said. “No lights anyway. I suggest we stop here for a bit.”

  “Fine.” St. Olave’s was one of her favorite places. Ayesha sometimes visited during the day to spend a few minutes in the hallowed quiet. Not in the least religious, and no believer in the supernatural, until a recent experience had given her some cause for doubt, she’d nevertheless always found solace in the ancient churches and cathedrals of Europe. She’d long ceased to puzzle over why. She’d also long ago discovered the delight to be had from delving into Pepys’s diaries. Reading them next to his tomb in St. Olave’s lent the activity a frisson that never grew stale. Thoughts of tombs led inevitably to thoughts of Susannah. She clenched her fists, digging her nails into the palms of her hands.

  “I believe,” Joram said, “that when we were so rudely interrupted, you had just fetched something from your office you were going to tell me about.”

  “Yes.” Ayesha welcomed the distraction. She drew out the blue folder she’d thrust inside her jacket as they fled the library.

  Joram produced a penlight from somewhere about his person, switched it on, and handed it to her.

  This time, the librarian’s touch—light as it was—sent an electric thrill coursing through her body; she almost dropped the light. In other circumstances she might have said something. Done something. Not now. Not with what had happened to Susannah. She couldn’t. With fingers that trembled slightly, she extracted a sheet of paper from the folder, shone the light on it, and said, “This is what Lady Frances Verney wrote in her diary: ‘Sir Francis told his brother, Sir Edmund, that the golden bird contained a secret, a secret that spoke of the hiding place of great riches.’ ” Ayesha glanced at Joram. She couldn’t make out his expression. She lowered her head, not that she really needed to read the words, they were engraved on her memory. “ ‘The property of an infamous order of knights, long suppressed.’ ”

  Joram groaned. “Don’t tell me.”

  She scowled, feeling childishly disappointed at his reaction. Although she’d felt the same way herself when she first read the entry in Lady Verney’s diary. Belief hadn’t come until she’d read Eversden’s Chronicle.

  “Don’t you see?” Joram continued before she had a chance to speak. “It’s one of those myths. Like El Dorado. It’s probably the most fabulous lost-treasure story known and it gets bigger and bigger with each retelling. Heaven knows there have been enough o
f them, in books and movies.”

  “Granted, but there is substance behind the stories.” Ayesha tried to sound academic. Rational, rather than defensive. “The order was suppressed in the early fourteenth century. It’s common knowledge the knights were immensely wealthy. Which was a big reason for their suppression. The French king and the pope both wanted to get their hands on that wealth. It was never found, though. Their Grand Master was tortured in an attempt to find its whereabouts. But he never told. He took his knowledge to the stake.”

  “That’s all true,” Joram acknowledged, reluctantly, Ayesha thought. “It’s just that the story is so hackneyed. Undoubtedly there was a treasure of some sort and yes, I agree, there’s no evidence it has ever been found. The reference in Lady Verney’s Memoirs will be another false trail.”

  “I—”

  “That’s something I don’t understand.” Joram cut Ayesha off, irritating her. “You said everything Dashiell Hammett wrote about the Maltese Falcon checked out, except the bit about Lady Verney’s Memoirs being silent on the subject. On the contrary, it has some very interesting information indeed—even if it’s unbelievable. So why did Hammett say there was nothing there?”

  Smart-ass! Who does he think he is? Ayesha drew breath; choked back the urge to say something she’d regret. “Two explanations I can think of. Either Hammett did not check the source himself, which would have been very hard to get hold of back then. And remember, his primary purpose was to write an entertaining novel. Or else he did read the memoirs and concealed the information because he wanted to hunt for the treasure himself.”

  “And did he?”

  “I’ve found no mention of it if he did. He was in ill health for a lot of his life. He had tuberculosis. Then there was the war, which he spent in the Aleutians. Afterward he had emphysema. He died in 1961. Remember, if the secret to Harold’s burial place is ‘within’ the Maltese Falcon, what access would Hammett ever have had to it? When he wrote that book, the Falcon was in Göring’s possession. Then it was taken by von Gleischman. Then supposedly lost, with whatever secrets it contained, in the Hindenburg disaster. So he probably dreamed about it, but that’s all.”

  “All right. So where is the Maltese Falcon now?” Joram leaned against the end of a pew. “And what happened tonight?”

  Ayesha ran her hand over the cold stone of the Pepys memorial. What would Pepys have made of all this? She was sure he’d have thought it all a wonderful yarn, worth telling and retelling at the Royal Oak or another of his favorite haunts. “I was to meet a man named Zilinsky. In the Ship.”

  Joram nodded.

  “He told me he had the Maltese Falcon. He was bringing it to me.”

  “You believed him?”

  “I did.”

  “May I ask why?”

  “He was von Gleischman’s grandson.”

  “How—”

  “He had proof. Perhaps not enough to satisfy a historian.” Ayesha shrugged. “I believed him.”

  “Past tense?”

  “He’s dead. Murdered.”

  “The blood on your hands?”

  “Yes.”

  Joram said nothing. Ayesha wished she could see his face. She had been responsible for several deaths in the past months. As the whole world knew. She didn’t care what the world thought; to her astonishment, she did care what Joram thought. “It wasn’t me. Not this time. It was the people who were chasing me.”

  “So who are they? Why did they chase you?”

  “They must have seen Zilinsky give me this.” Ayesha groped in the pocket of her jeans and produced the paper. She held it out to Joram, along with his penlight.

  “It’s a receipt,” he said. “From the left-luggage office at St. Pancras Station.”

  “Zilinsky came in on the Paris train tonight.”

  “And these men who killed Zilinsky and chased you? From that text message you received they know who you are.”

  “That’s where it gets complicated.”

  Joram chuckled. “I can’t wait to hear.”

  “They work for Noel Malcolm.”

  “The deputy prime minister?”

  She bit her lip. “Acting prime minister now.”

  “You think Malcolm wants the treasure? Enough to kill for it? Someone in his position?”

  “People have killed for treasure throughout history, including people in some very high positions. But no, I think there’s another reason he wants the Maltese Falcon.”

  Joram put his eye to the chink in the stained glass window. He shook his head. “What does Noel Malcolm want with the Maltese Falcon?”

  “It has to do with one of the stories of where the treasure was hidden.” Ayesha felt rather than saw Joram’s eyes roll. She hurried on before he could say anything. “A fleet of galleys is said to have left La Rochelle in 1307. Just before the order was suppressed.”

  “Another fable.”

  “Not according to a recently unearthed manuscript written by the English chronicler, John of Eversden, dated to 1308.”

  “Let me guess—”

  “It mentions the galleys. Eversden says they came at night and beached in Pevensey Bay. It’s on the East Sussex coast near Hastings.” She remembered the thrill she’d experienced when Malcolm produced the manuscript from his office safe and showed it to her. It was authentic, she could tell. The script. The very feel and smell of it, redolent of the centuries that had passed since it was written. She wished she could show Joram the manuscript.

  “Pevensey Bay?” Joram sounded thoughtful now. The sarcasm had vanished. “Where William the Conqueror came ashore?”

  “Yes. It was a good landing spot, with the added attraction of not being heavily populated.”

  “What else does Eversden say?”

  “Only that the knights hid the treasure at the burial place of Harold Godwinson.”

  Joram said nothing.

  “King Harold who lost to William at the Battle of Hastings.”

  “All right. I’m following this. With disbelief suspended. Although I have to admit I’m intrigued. Now tell me what Noel Malcolm wants with Harold who got it in the eye at Hastings.”

  Ayesha recalled what Bebe Daniels had said. It made sense. Frankly, nothing else did. “Malcolm sees Harold as some sort of symbol for this scheme of his to break up the union and restore the old kingdom of England. There’s a vote on holding a referendum in the House of Commons tomorrow.” She held up her wrist and squinted at the luminescent face of her watch. “Today. Although I suppose with what’s happened to Susannah…” A sudden image of her friend struggling to draw the longbow in the Downing Street garden caused the breath to catch in her throat.

  “I can see why Malcolm might be interested in Harold.” If Joram had observed her brief loss of control he ignored it. “And these men who are after you. You say they work for him. How do you know?”

  “I recognized one of them. His name’s Longo.”

  “So—”

  “So we can’t go to the police. Not till we know what’s going on; who we can trust. Remember, Malcolm is acting prime minister now.”

  “There are others, though. You have friends in high places.”

  Joram was referring to her friendship, well publicized, with senior members of the British government, including the home secretary. Ayesha herself was thinking of Dame Imogen Worsley, the head of MI5. Another friend. “Anyone I could go to at the moment is part of the government, or the civil service. They’ll be reporting to Malcolm.”

  Joram grunted. “It doesn’t make sense.”

  “What in particular?”

  “Noel Malcom asked you to find the Maltese Falcon. You were going to meet a man who you think had the Falcon—Zilinsky. So why wouldn’t Malcolm simply wait until you produced said Falcon for him, and say ‘thank you very much’? Why have this man Longo murder Zilinsky?”

  “I have no idea.”

  Joram turned to the window once more. “There’s more to this than meets the eye. We—”
He spun round. “Time to go!”

  As she raced across the church after Joram the question he’d posed flared like a searchlight across her mind. Noel Malcolm, the man who’d got her to hunt for the Maltese Falcon, wanted it to help fulfill his ambition for a new England. One person had stood in his way: Susannah Armstrong. The prime minister was now dead, or dying. Was Ayesha herself now in Noel Malcolm’s way? If so, she was determined to stay there until she’d found the truth.

  Chapter 8

  “Who was the last person to see the prime minister?”

  Dame Imogen Worsley’s question was straightforward, but Bebe Daniels could hear the stress in the woman’s voice. The director-general of MI5 sat opposite her at the Cabinet table, in the chair normally reserved for Susannah Armstrong. Worsley had been at Number 10 since she was alerted to the prime minister’s condition, leaving only briefly for a meeting with Noel Malcolm in the adjacent Cabinet Office.

  “Dr. Ryder was the last person to see the prime minister.”

  “What?” Dame Imogen frowned. “I was told Ayesha…Dr. Ryder…had left much earlier. Before the prime minister’s meeting with Noel Malcolm and Philip Balfour. A meeting you attended.”

  “That’s right.” Dame Imogen’s familiar reference to Ryder was a reminder of the two women’s friendship. Not that Bebe needed any reminder. “Dr. Ryder came back later,” Bebe continued, “after the PM’s meeting with the deputy PM and the foreign secretary. I let her in through the private entrance. No one else saw her.” It required all of Bebe’s considerable willpower to maintain eye contact with the head of MI5.

  “Why did she come back?” The suspicion in Dame Imogen’s voice was palpable.

  A bead of sweat trickled down the back of Bebe’s neck. She let her eyes drop.

  “Come on, girl! Tell me!”

  When Bebe replied her voice trembled. She’d practiced until it sounded natural. “S-Susannah…she was…she was…”

  “Spit it out, Daniels! She was what?”

  “L-lesbian.”

  “So?”

  Bebe gasped. It was an act. She knew Dame Imogen knew about the prime minister’s sexual orientation. It was no secret to MI5. “Dr. Ryder was, too. They’d had a…a thing.”