Siege of Stone

by Williamson, Chet

  The St. Paul's bomber had stood not directly under the great dome, but below in the crypt, next to Lord Nelson's tomb, where the blast would be directed upward, smashing through the floor and into the area beneath the dome. The explosion easily demolished the supporting pillars around Nelson's tomb, so that the arches above crumbled, and the dome itself collapsed inward.

  The strategy had been similar in Westminster Abbey. There the bomber had positioned himself between the Chapel of St. Edward the Confessor and the Chapel of Henry VII, assuring the destruction of the tombs of England's greatest monarchs, along with the Coronation Chair which Edward I had ordered made in 1296, and on which monarchs had been crowned ever since.

  The bomber at the Victoria and Albert Museum must have stood in the Gothic Art hall of level A, so that the blast exploded outward from the center of the building. Though protected by more walls, the detonation did immense damage to the delicate works of art, even those not actually touched by the explosive. Afterward, there was scarcely a piece of unbroken glass or ceramic in the entire building.

  A central site was not used for the British Museum, however. There the bomber stood in front of the Elgin Marbles, which were reduced to rubble, along with most of the Greek and Roman exhibits, and many of the surrounding rooms.

  The Jewel House was the target in the Tower of London. The bomber had apparently been stopped by security people, but had pushed himself onward and gotten as close to the Crown jewels as possible before he set off the bomb. The jewels might have survived in some form, but it would take a while to sift through the rubble of the building. The heavy transparent plates had been designed to stop bullets, not a massive amount of plastic explosive.

  But the destruction of the treasures of British culture paled in terms of the loss of human life. Early estimates were placed at 300, besides the 127 who had died at Buckingham Palace. Every site was a major tourist attraction, so many foreigners were killed, along with forty secondary-school students from London whose ages ranged from twelve to fifteen.

  The bombings had definitely been suicidal, and MI5 quickly estimated that each bomber would have had to have been carrying approximately 50 pounds of plastic explosive to produce so much devastation. When eyewitness reports were compared, it was found that at each of the six sites a stout clergyman had been seen, dressed in a loose raincoat. It would have been possible, experts declared, for men of medium weight to carry fifty pounds of plastic explosive strapped to their bodies under their coats, and detonate it with a simple trigger device when they reached their target area.

  Later that afternoon, the letters arrived, postmarked the day before, claiming responsibility for the six bombings. They concluded, as had the others, "We are Scotland."

  The British government stated that they would stop at nothing to bring to justice the cowardly and reprehensible organization that was behind these bombings. The prime minister's statement concluded, "If these butchers and murderers think that this government will capitulate to terrorism, and particularly to terrorism of such a fanatical and blasphemous nature, they are dead wrong. They will be found, and they will be made to pay for their crimes against this country and its people, and for its terrible sins against humanity. The destruction of the best of this great country—its churches, its monuments, and its children, whose loss will be felt the worst of all—has utterly doomed the cause of these madmen, and set them beyond the pale of civilized society. Those who set these suicides on their bloody course are monsters, and this nation shall not rest until we are free of them forever, until they and the hatred that bred them are effaced from the earth."

  "You bastard," Colin Mackay said, in a voice that shook with rage and terror and sorrow. "What have you done? All those dead . . . children, civilians, churches . . . my God, there's not a man in the British Isles who wouldn't cut off his right hand to put you behind bars!"

  Mulcifer stood in the afternoon drizzle that spat down on them where they stood in the northwest tower. He looked at the gray sky and the gently rolling waters of the Minch. "I believe you have that wrong. It's you they want to put behind bars. Mr. 'We Are Scotland' himself. They don't know me from Adam. Nor you, as yet." He gave a small shrug. "I don't see why you're so unhappy. The heart of England has been struck a terrible blow. The very spirit of the empire has been grievously wounded, and you are now the head of the most feared terrorist group in the world. You've shown England that you're capable of touching them anywhere, and that you are capable of inspiring followers, allied to you politically only in the most tenuous ways, to die for your cause."

  "But after what you did," said Colin, turning from him angrily, "they'll never capitulate—never."

  "I gave you what you wanted," Mulcifer said quietly.

  Colin whipped about, looking at him with fiery eyes. "And didn't it mean a damned thing to you that you killed children?"

  "Would it have meant a damned thing to you if I had specifically targeted a busload of soldiers, and that bus had been used at the last minute to carry a troop of boys and their widowed grandmothers to matins? Oh, you might have wrung your hands, but in the end you would have waxed eloquently about the vicissitudes of war and chalked it off to bad luck. Your problem is that you confuse intent with results.

  "And as for meaning a damned thing to me, of course it did. I feel every one of those deaths, my friend, and I revel in them. The younger and more innocent, the more delectable the incense."

  Colin looked at him for a long time. "Maybe I was wrong. Maybe you are the Antichrist."

  "Or something even worse," said Mulcifer, his face soft, his eyes dreamy. "Maybe 'the Devil' himself, after all."

  Colin shook his head. "No. Like you just said. Something even worse."

  What was this beast? Colin wondered, as he turned and walked away, down the stairs and into the castle. It was a creature who not only had no mercy, but to whom the deaths of children were joyous events. As much as he hated to admit it, his father had been right. The creature was thoroughly, unredeemably evil.

  But Mulcifer was right about one thing. His actions had instantly made Colin's group a force, not only to be reckoned with, but to be greatly feared. There was not a terrorist organization in the world that had ever pulled off such a brilliantly orchestrated series of strikes. Yes, it was true that innocents had been killed, but innocents always died in war, as tragic as it was.

  Jesus, listen to me, he thought. Just like Mulcifer said. The bastard read minds like books. But then Colin paused and thought that he had never truly felt Mulcifer inside his own mind. He could guess, of course, what Colin was thinking, but not enter him, as he had the others, including the man down in the dungeon, that CIA agent.

  He had been meaning to talk to Stein and find out how much he knew, not only about Colin's activities, but about Mulcifer as well. The creature himself had admitted that their paths had crossed before. Maybe Stein knew something that would prove useful, some way to restrain or control Mulcifer. Yet if he knew that, why was he now their prisoner? Still, perhaps there was something he could learn.

  Colin got a pistol and went to the trapdoor that covered the bottle dungeon. No one was guarding it. There was no need. He opened the trapdoor and dropped the ladder down through the hole. "I'm coming down," he called, stuck his pistol in his waistband, and climbed through the trapdoor, descending into the dungeon.

  Halfway down he clung to a rung with one hand and took out his pistol with the other. "Get over there against the wall," he said, and Stein did as directed. Colin finished climbing down, his eyes constantly on Stein. As he stepped onto the dungeon floor, he gestured with the pistol. "Sit down," he ordered, and Stein sat on the rough bed. "Now, Mr. Stein, suppose you tell me just how much you and your friends up above know about me and my group."

  "We know that you've gotten into some bad company," Stein said. "I don't think Kadaffi or Saddam or even Hitler would have aligned themselves with your right-hand man. Unless you're his at this point."

  "W
e'll talk about him later. What do you know about us?"

  "Actual or theoretical?"

  "Both, please."

  "How much we really know depends on what your name is."

  "And what do you think it is?"

  Stein looked at him heavily. "Mackay."

  "Aye," Colin said, nodding slowly. "Colin Mackay is my name. Now tell your story, Mr. Stein."

  "It's a long one," Stein said, and began.

  Chapter 33

  There was little point in keeping it to himself, Joseph thought. Mackay was a sounding board. He could see how much of what they had deduced was true and what were illusions born of their own imaginations.

  He told Mackay about the eleven poisoned bodies that had been found in the burned down hunting lodge in upstate New York, and about the evidence that indicated they might be of great age. Then he told about the man who called himself Kyle McAndrews, and how he had tried to kill the operatives in revenge. "He thought we had caused the deaths of his eleven 'brothers.'"

  "And had you?" Mackay asked.

  "No. We're not sure who did."

  "You hesitated. You suspected."

  "Yes. We thought—we think—it might have been a man named Daly. A CIA agent who . . . turned. So McAndrews wasn't far from the truth. Only it wasn't us."

  "And what happened to this Daly?"

  "He's dead. As for the man who called himself McAndrews, we tracked him down and started to question him, but he tried to kill us."

  "So you killed him," Mackay said.

  "We had no choice."

  "Which of you shot him?"

  "All of us. We all shot."

  "And what happened to his body?"

  Joseph took a deep breath. "We couldn't have it discovered. Because of the brand, you see." He eyed Mackay, but no emotions crossed the man's face. "The Templar brand. On his chest. Also the fingerprints, and his appearance. We suspected that he was a very old man, in spite of his physical appearance."

  "So what did you do with him?"

  "We destroyed the body. It's gone, like it never existed."

  Mackay smiled bitterly. "The curse," he said softly.

  "Masonic?" Joseph asked. "Or is the Templar curse similar? Something about being cut apart and having the pieces of your body scattered to the winds, isn't it? If you happen to reveal the secrets of the society. Like maybe telling someone about the purpose behind the Templars' existence. Or even sharing . . . other secrets."

  "Did you find anything else on this McAndrews?" Mackay said, as if anxious to change the subject.

  "Anything else? Like what?"

  "Oh, personal possessions. Anything that would tie into this Templar idea."

  "Very little. Some cash, clothing . . . an old knife, that was all." Joseph didn't mention the simple wooden cup in the elegant case that they had thought might be the Grail. Even now it was wrapped inside one of his suitcases at the cottage.

  He went on to tell Mackay about their near misses at finding the Prisoner, of their return to Scotland to investigate the ghostly sightings, and finally about their deductions that the prison escapes were connected to the former prisoner. "You know the rest," Joseph concluded. "I was in the wrong place at the wrong time, and your powerful friend saw some potential for aid in me, the same way that he did in you."

  "So you've told me what you've seen and done," Mackay said. "Now what have you guessed?"

  Joseph took a deep breath, considered what he was about to say, and then figured the hell with it, he couldn't very likely get in any more trouble than he was in already. "We've guessed that you, Colin Mackay, are the son of Sir Andrew Mackay, who was going under the name of Kyle McAndrews. That was probably only one of hundreds, maybe even thousands of aliases that he used over the years, because those years were many. Your father, and the other men whose job it was to counter the influences of the thing they thought was the Antichrist, were probably alive back in the 1300s. And I suspect that you're no spring chicken, either. Did your father ever share with you his secret for longevity?"

  Mackay's head inclined in the most subtle of nods.

  "So how old are you?" Joseph asked. "Sixty? Seventy?"

  "I've lived nearly a century," Mackay said softly, his eyes faraway, "since I drank . . ." He stopped abruptly, as though he'd said too much, and glared at Joseph. "Go on."

  Joseph licked his lips and gestured around him. "This castle, if not this exact room, needless to say, is where the twelve Templars met every decade, for ceremonial or practical reasons, I'm not really sure, but meet they did. Until they all died. Then Colin Mackay took possession, with his merry band of Jacobites, and they set out upon the rather unlikely task of terrorizing England enough so that it would grant Scotland freedom, and blah blah blah for six pages of demands."

  "We're not Jacobites," said Mackay. "No kings, but the people."

  "Yeah, whatever. Anyway, you made the mistake I did—you trusted Mulcifer, or, more to the point, you figured you could use him and then betray him, but it didn't turn out to be that easy, did it? Starting to get the feeling you're holding a tiger by the tail?"

  "No." Colin Mackay shook his craggy head. "It's broken loose."

  Joseph heard the sadness and the regret. "Jesus, what happened? What's he done? Something with the IRA men he busted out, wasn't it?"

  Mackay told him then, and Joseph could scarcely believe it. He closed his eyes, but kept seeing pictures of the things Mackay had told him about, and opened them again.

  "Haven't you lived long enough," he asked Mackay, "to know that killing people isn't the way to get your political party elected? Haven't you lived through the entire twentieth century, for Chrissake?" He waved a hand in frustration, and hung his head. "So what are you going to do about it?" he said softly. "You going to let him keep on with it?" He looked up at Mackay. "You know what he got from me, don't you?"

  "No. What?"

  "The location of the nerve gas the British government hid. You think he's going to just use that on military targets? If you do, I've got a castle on some nice swampland I'd like to sell you."

  "All right," Mackay said angrily, "I don't want any more civilian casualties—I never did in the first place. I don't give a good shite about the treasures of Britain. London could fall into a black hole so long as the people didn't go with it. But this ends now. We're not using any nerve gas, and none of my men are going to help that bastard get it."

  "Are you so sure of that? In case you haven't noticed, Mulcifer does have a wee bit of influence over most of your crew." Joseph's mouth suddenly tasted sour. "And me, too, I'm afraid. In spades. He tells me what to do, and I do it. Doesn't matter whether I want to or not. There was no way I could keep from getting him the information he wanted. Any idea how he does that?"

  "It's the blood," Mackay said. "Before he was captured, he bred with women—rape mostly, I believe. I cannot think he'd ever be capable of any tenderness. Over the centuries, his descendants have spread, marrying, carrying on the bloodline, until his progeny are numerous. But those in the highlands kept to themselves, married among themselves, unlike the lowlanders. The bloodlines stayed pure. That is why the twelve were all highland men, their ancestry firmly established—so that there would be no trace of his blood in their veins, that he might have no influence over their minds or souls. The greater his influence, the greater the blood tie, although some people are far more suggestible than others."

  "Well, if that's the case," said Joseph, "I feel both highly suggestible and as though I come from an unbroken line from Mulcifer himself."

  "It's very possible, but according to . . ." He hesitated, and then shrugged. "According to my father, there's no shame to be felt in succumbing to his commands. However, that didn't stop my father and the others from killing the thing's servants when they could. They may have been helpless, but still, they committed the crimes."

  "And if," Joseph said, "I had been ordered by . . . the thing to kill, I would have had no choice? Somehow I can't believ
e that."

  "Believe it."

  "Someone can't be driven by sheer mental suggestion to commit a crime they wouldn't commit themselves under certain circumstances."

  "He forced you to reveal the location of the gas, and you knew it was possible—probable—that he would use it, if he could get it, to kill people."

  "But that was something I might do anyway, just finding information in data banks. There's a difference between that and pulling a trigger or setting off a bomb."

  "You think so, do you, Stein? Well, I hope you're right. And I hope you never have to find out."

  "So do I. Don't let him get the gas, all right? He wouldn't be able to do it alone—he'd need your men."

  "He won't get the gas," Colin Mackay said. "Count on it." He climbed quickly up the ladder, and Joseph watched as he pulled it up after him. The trapdoor made a loud clunk as it was fitted back into place, and Joseph was alone again.

  There might, he thought, be an ally in Mackay, in spite of his alignment with Mulcifer. Joseph knew his chances of leaving the castle alive were small, but if he could do something, anything, to keep Mulcifer from accomplishing more slaughter, he'd count his life well spent. His mind spun with various schemes that Mackay might use to control the creature once again, but at last he had to remind himself that he was not Mackay. He was an ineffectual agent in a dungeon made of stone, and unless he could somehow gain Mackay's ear and trust, he could do nothing.

  Then he thought of what Mackay had said about the bloodline connecting him to Mulcifer, and grimaced at the irony of it. This whole thing had begun with the three of them theorizing about the Merovingian bloodline, that hoary conspiracy theory linking Jesus to some latter-day descendant through a supposed marriage to Mary Magdalene.

  Now here was a bloodline rearing its ugly head again, but this time it was a bloodline linking Joseph to whatever devil went by the name of Mulcifer.