Day of the Serpent (Ouroboros Book 3)

by David Longhorn

Life. Death, Rebirth. The eternal cycle.

  Dismissing the nightmare, he shaved, showered, and dressed. Then he looked through some more of Marcus's writings and drawings. Every time he visited his friend, the Englishman handed over sheets of paper he had covered in words and images. They were clearly of great significance, but Marcus could never explain in plain English what their meaning might be. The problem was made worse by the scholar's poor handwriting, which often degenerated into a baffling scrawl.

  Brad sighed as he looked over lists of seemingly random words, sketches of places that might be purely imaginary. One recurring image was of a long, diagonal shape. It reminded Brad a little of a rough slash in a piece of fabric. There was also a dot at one end of the slash. Two words next to the dot might have read Chilly Island.

  Brad gave a grunt of displeasure and looked at the next page. This needed no interpretation. It was yet another of Marcus's crude renditions of something most people would never recognize. At first glance, it seemed to be a rough circle covered with cracks, like an egg about to hatch. Thanks to his training in geology, Brad knew that it showed the Earth. Instead of continents and oceans, Marcus had sketched out the tectonic plates lying miles beneath the surface. The cracks were the places where these plates collided as they drifted over the planet’s molten core. The jagged lines, therefore, showed where volcanic eruptions and earthquakes occurred.

  Brad picked up a folder of earlier sketches, compared the latest to its predecessors. Sure enough, Marcus had repeated his earlier perspective, showing the Earth from directly above Western Europe.

  Ominous as hell, thought Brad. But what does it mean? The Zamyatin device can’t cause earthquakes, can it? The sheer energy involved would be immense.

  Brad tried to visualize some means of triggering a major seismic event that didn’t involve deep holes and big nuclear bombs. His reverie ended when his phone chimed, and he set the drawings aside. The call, he saw, was from Detective Sergeant Declan Healy of Scotland Yard. Healy had been assigned the case of Matt Arnold, the private investigator Brad had hired to find Kelly. Pursuing a lead, Arnold had been killed in Hyde Park, apparently by constriction. Brad recalled the police detective as a decent kind of guy, albeit one who had seemed a little out of his depth with the Ouroboros cult.

  “Hi,” he said, “what can I do for you?”

  Healy explained that there had been some new developments in the case and would like to meet up.

  “I can be at your hotel by nine,” he added.

  “Great,” said Brad. “See you there.”

  After he had hung up, Brad called Denny, inviting the reporter along to the meeting.

  ***

  Detective Constable Knapton of Scotland Yard took off all his clothes, folded them neatly, and stood in front of an array of closed circuit TV cameras. The cameras meant he was visible from four angles through fish-eye lenses. He was in a small, tiled room with two doors. He had just come in from an underground car park through the entrance door, using a key card. A woman’s voice spoke from a grille over the inner door, which had no handle. ‘Turn around, slowly.’

  Knapton did as he was told. ‘Not bad. You have a very charming blush reflex.’

  The voice was mildly amused.

  “Curse you and your paranoid security nonsense, Melissa,” said Knapton. “Am I clear or not? I don’t recall anyone biting me lately, but then I did spend Saturday night in an Irish pub.” ‘Tsk tsk. We’d better have another little twirl, just to make sure.’

  “Remind me not to sign your birthday card,” muttered Knapton, attempting a pirouette. “There, have you had enough eye candy?”

  In reply, there was a buzz, a click, and the inner door swung open a couple of inches. Knapton put his clothes back on and entered the complex. It was, at first glance, a normal office building. But none of the doors had names, only numbers, and there were security checkpoints at the end of every corridor. After he had been scanned, patted down, and bantered with by three sets of armed guards, Knapton finally reached his destination.

  “Take a seat,” said the white-haired man known only as the Director. “We've got some catching up to do.”

  On their first meeting, Knapton had pointed out that, as a detective, he might easily find out the Director's real name. The Director had spelled out why that would be a bad idea for both of them, and Knapton had dropped the idea. But he felt sure the Director was a bureaucrat in some seemingly innocuous role.

  Deputy Under-Secretary of State for Ancient Buildings, he thought. He was making a mental list of possible titles. Knapton would never be so foolish as to write the list down.

  “How is our mutual friend?” asked the Director. “Still looking a bit seedy? Distracted? Off his game?”

  “Yes, and not just at work. His wife left him,” explained Knapton. “Took the kids. Said he wasn't the man she married, allegedly. Which he isn't, I suppose.”

  “No, quite. Sad situation.”

  “Can't we do anything to help him?” asked Knapton. “It's not easy, working with a man who, you know, is …”

  The police officer struggled to find the right words.

  “Enchanted?” suggested the Director. “Mesmerized? Whatever you call it, we can't cure it. We could of course confine him for his own safety, but that would involve legal procedures. A police officer can't just vanish. Too many people would notice.”

  “Is that why you can't do anything?” demanded Knapton. “Or is it because it would risk making your secret outfit a little less secret?”

  The white-haired man smiled.

  “The Prime Minster, and not to mention the Queen, know nothing about this unit,” said the Director. “It's been around for a long time precisely because only sixty-six people in the world know it exists. And you're quite right; this leads to the paradox that hampers all covert organizations. The more we actually do, the less secret we can be. So we prefer to operate at a certain distance from the action. In this case, the Ouroboros problem. We need to tackle it urgently, so we are doing as little as humanly possible about it ourselves.”

  “That's a bit barmy, sir, with all due respect,” said Knapton. “I prefer to go straight at a problem, get it sorted out.”

  “It's in the nature of government to be somewhat barmy, as you put it,” said the Director. “Or schizophrenic, if you want a fancier term. The modern state tells its citizens, over and over, that we're in a state of crisis. There is always some imminent disaster, some deadly peril. Yet at the same time, the state tells them that everything will be fine, just trust us to do our jobs, it's no big deal really. Conflicting messages all the time, about the economy, crime, terrorism. It's not surprising that ordinary people get disillusioned. Living with a government can feel a lot like sharing a padded cell with a lunatic.”

  Knapton nodded slowly.

  “Fair enough,” he said, “but that doesn't tell me why we can't simply neutralize Ouroboros rather than providing discreet nudges to amateur monster hunters.”

  “Because we don't know two key facts,” shot back the Director. “One, how far does their reach extend? Most of them died at Wychmere, when Steiger managed to mess up their May Day ritual. We know at least one recruit was killed in Poland, again thanks to Steiger's intervention, or so we suspect. The Poles are even cagier about this stuff than we are.”

  “So their numbers are depleted,” said Knapton, “and they've been beaten back twice. Why not make it a hat-trick?”

  The Director waved a dismissive hand.

  “The other factor,” he said, “is what they plan to do with the Zamyatin device? It may be almost useless, or more dangerous to its users than anyone else. Remember, this was a technology that the Soviets abandoned. If we suspect it's a real threat, we would move instantly. As we did with the cleanup at Wychmere.”

  “So, in brief,” said Knapton, “we can sit back and watch a right bloody mess develop in the hope that everyone we don't like will obliterate themselves? And if a few innocent people get ki
lled along the way, that's just tough luck on them?”

  “That's not how I would phrase it in an official report,” said the Director, slowly. “But you have summed up our approach rather neatly.”

  “So if we let Steiger carry on his personal crusade and he shoots a few more of them you'd be happy?” asked Knapton, incredulously. “Because at Scotland Yard that might be considered a tad negligent.”

  The Director waved a hand in gentle dismissal.

  “I'm sure it would,” he said. “But we are above minor matters like the law.”

  A bit less of the 'we,' thought Knapton. If you don't mind.

  ***

  “You're joking, surely?” asked Brad.

  He was sitting in the lobby of his hotel looking at a photo on page three of a British tabloid. Like all such newspapers, it was a slightly crazy mish-mash of editorial outrage, celebrity gossip, facts about sports that Brad did not really understand, and general weirdness. In the latter category was the picture of the so-called 'Loch Ness Mermaid'.

  “Well, it is what we call the silly season,” conceded Denny. “But think about the location.”

  “Loch Ness?” said Brad. “I thought that was just some dumb hoax about a plesiosaurus. What's the connection?”

  Denny shrugged.

  “Maybe no link at all,” she admitted. “It's not a good picture. I just thought you might recognize her.”

  Brad took out a pocket magnifier and scrutinized the grainy color picture more closely. The face of the so-called mermaid was turned away, but there was something familiar about the head and neck.

  “You think this is the one who was at the circus sideshow?”

  Denny nodded.

  “Lilith, who deceived Adam, according to her publicity,” she said. “Though I believe you said her real name was Cleo?”

  “That's what Kelly called her,” said Brad. “Clearly a few bullets didn't slow her down much. Any normal woman would have died, bled out on that cellar floor.”

  Denny looked at him approvingly.

  “Was it the first time you shot someone?”

  Brad shrugged.

  “First time I hit someone I shot at,” he said, standing up as a familiar figure walked into the lobby. “Let's leave it there. Here's the man from Scotland Yard.”

  Brad started to introduce Denny to Detective Sergeant Healy, but was cut off before he could finish. The police officer barely glanced at the reporter then said to Brad, “Mister Steiger, sorry, but I must ask you to accompany me to the Yard for questioning. You are free to refuse of course, but if you do I will feel compelled to seek an arrest warrant.”

  Brad was dumbfounded. Healy's cold, abrupt manner was as surprising as his demand. When they had first met, Healy had been helpful, witty, clearly a good cop. Now Brad felt the need to be defensive. He noticed a uniformed policeman standing just outside the hotel entrance.

  “Ms. Pollard was just leaving anyway,” he said, with a significant glance at Denny.

  No need for two of us to get tangled up in this, he thought. Clearly, she was of the same mind.

  “Right,” she said, gathering up her bag and the newspaper. “Okay, I'll be in touch about – well, I'll be in touch.”

  “Let's go,” said Brad, leading Healy out of the hotel. “Can you tell me what this is about?”

  “The death of Matt Arnold,” said Healy, hurrying to keep up. “Plus the death of Kathy Hopkirk in Wychmere, which the local police asked us to look into.”

  The uniformed officer ushered Brad to a car. He expected to be handcuffed, then recalled that he was not actually under arrest. On the ride to Scotland Yard, he kept quiet for a few minutes and observed Healy and his colleague. The latter seemed normal enough, if taciturn. But the detective was distinctly odd-seeming. His skin was pale, his hair untidy, and at times he gave a characteristic tilt of the head.

  As if he's listening to someone talking to him through an earpiece, thought Brad. Except he's not wearing one.

  Brad had seen that mannerism before often enough to know its significance. He decided to attempt a simple test.

  “When were you turned?” he said.

  Healy's head snapped round, his eyes wide.

  “What?” asked the detective. “What did you say?”

  Brad smiled, his suspicion confirmed.

  “I said I thought we should have taken a turn back there,” he said. “But I guess you guys know your way around London.”

  Healy stared at him for a second longer before turning back to face front. The rest of the journey was uneventful, and Brad was shown to an interview room in London's riverside police headquarters. He felt reasonably sure of himself. If things turned unpleasant, he planned to protest, politely at first, then make a hell of a fuss. But he suspected that Healy was trying to intimidate him, or simply wasting his time.

  Chapter 3: Control Freaks

  Brad's interview with Healy was conducted in the usual way, in a stark, windowless room with a table and two chairs. There was a closed-circuit TV camera in one corner of the room, and a couple of microphones stood on the desk. A second plain-clothes officer was waiting. He was introduced as Detective Constable Knapton.

  “I guess you must be playing nice cop?” Brad asked him, but Knapton just smiled.

  Brad had seen variants on the method in dozens of movies and TV shows, but had managed to avoid such interrogations in real life. Until now. While Knapton stood back, observing, Healy began by naming the people present, then began to question Brad about Matt Arnold and Kathy Hopkirk.

  “Two people you were involved with ended up dead,” said Healy. “And in Miss Hopkirk's case, it was shortly after some kind of bomb was detonated in a public place.”

  And you can't tie that to me, thought Brad. I was too careful.

  “As I understand it,” he said carefully, “the explosion destroyed a stone monolith and harmed nobody. Of course, the damage to your country's cultural heritage is lamentable. But I was there, and what killed Kathy was not a bomb. It was …”

  Brad hesitated. He had been about to try and get a strong reaction from Healy. He was going to state bluntly that Ouroboros, an ancient snake-deity, had been invoked and killed Kathy in a rage when Brad had wrecked the ceremony. But Knapton, who was standing behind and to the left of Healy, had given Brad a clear instruction. The junior officer made the throat-cutting gesture familiar from media interviews that Brad had given a few times.

  “What was it, Mister Steiger?” asked Healy, leaning forward. The detective's eyes were a little brighter now. Suddenly he seemed less robotic, eager to press home some kind of attack.

  “I don't know, for sure,” continued Brad, weakly. He looked questioningly at Knapton, who gave a quick nod, before continuing, “A lot of weird stuff happened. Last time we met, you were going to look into Ouroboros. What happened?”

  “It's an ongoing investigation, Mister Steiger,” replied Healy. “Our inquiries into the cult have been hampered by the fact that most of its members are now deceased. Perhaps it no longer exists, have you thought of that?”

  “It still existed a couple of months back, in Poland,” retorted Brad. “Do you know what a lamia is?”

  The question was intended to have some shock effect, but Healy simply smiled.

  “Lamia? I'm afraid I don't, Mister Steiger. Perhaps you would care to explain it to me?”

  Again, Knapton made the 'cut' gesture, but this time Healy, turning his head, almost caught him. Knapton improvised a fake-sounding cough and covered his mouth with his hand. Meanwhile, Brad realized the point of Healy's questions. It was not intimidation, but ridicule that was being attempted. If Brad went on official record as believing in shape-shifting serpent-women the recording could be conveniently leaked. If it reached his employers, he would be through. And without a job, he certainly could not afford to spend time chasing Kelly around Europe.

  “Look it up on Wikipedia,” said Brad, leaning back and folding his arms.

  “Did y
ou obtain an illegal firearm in Poland?” snapped Healy. “And did you shoot someone with it?”

  “I have never shot a human being in my life,” replied Brad, choosing his words carefully. “Shot a few animals though. Vermin, poisonous snakes, that sort of thing.”

  At that, Healy's expression contorted into genuine anger, then reverted to its familiar impassivity. Brad had a sudden intuition that he was not being questioned by the man sitting in front of him.

  “What's the matter, Cleo?” he asked in a snide voice. “Still licking your wounds?”

  Healy jumped up out of his chair and seemed about to fling himself over the table at Brad. But what was even more unusual was the strange hiss Healy emitted before Knapton leaned and grabbed his colleague by the shoulder.

  “Careful, you'll damage your puppet,” said Brad, knowing he had guessed right. Behind Healy's eyes was the lamia he had wounded at Mista Venja. She was acting as a kind of puppeteer, projecting herself into Healy's mind.

  “You will regret that Steiger!” said Healy in a voice that was incongruously feminine and husky rather than his normal tone. Then the detective seemed to fold up and collapse into his chair. Knapton went from restraining Healy to trying to stop him from falling sideways to the floor.

  Having propped Healy up, Knapton reached for a switch next to the nearest mic and, before flicking it, said, “Interview interrupted due to Detective Sergeant Healy becoming indisposed. Recording stopped at nine forty-three.”

  “Can I go now?” asked Brad. “Seems to me you have no reason to detain me here other than a desire to annoy a US citizen.”

  “No!” moaned Healy feebly. His pale, sweaty face and vacant expression suggested a man in the throes of fever.

  God, thought Brad as he stood up, what must it be like to have one of those creatures controlling your mind?

  “I think the American consul might take an interest in what some might call harassment. Or are you actually going to charge me with something?”

  Knapton gave a quick, almost imperceptible shake of the head.