When the tear broke through to the previously formed aperture, Blake’s hand jerked forward. With all his might he pulled his hand backwards. The tape around his wrist ruffled up into a tight edge. Like a wire snare, the tight loop of plastic sliced into the back of Blake’s hand. Defying the pain, he pulled it back as hard as he could. The edge of the tape slipped slightly and then cut into the raised profile of his knuckles. He pulled again and then, with a sudden movement, his hand was free.
Blake brought his clenched fist up to his panting mouth and felt a trickle of blood run down his forearm. For a split second, he looked over to Sabatini. She tried to speak, but nothing came out of her mouth. With his right hand now free, Blake easily located the leading edge of the tape restraining his left wrist. He pulled it backwards. It let out a loud ripping sound. Blake unwound the tape with a series of quick tugs. Soon his hand was free, seconds later so were his ankles.
Mustering all his energy, he tried to stand up. For an instant, his mind fell out of sync with the movement of his limbs, as if they were all operating in slightly different dimensions. He waited for his vision and the rest of his senses to reunite. Instead, the room began to spin. He stumbled to the side, his shoulder glancing off the exposed plasterboard of the wall. Cursing, Blake willed the blood to drain into his limbs. Biting hard into the side of his mouth, he stumbled forwards. Seconds later he was tearing at the plastic tape securing Sabatini’s wrists.
Chapter 57
A solitary torch beam travelled across the bonnet of the Mercedes van parked in the run-down garage adjoining the safe house. The ceiling strip lighting had years since expired, and Denic and Crossland were working by torchlight. The air was filled with the sound of electronic music coming from a small radio balanced in the van’s large air intake grille.
The screws fixing the front number plate fell to the floor, and the laminated plastic rectangle dropped into Denic’s hand. From behind his shoulder, Crossland handed his partner the replacement plate and repositioned the torch beam onto the now vacant space just above the vehicle’s front bumper. They weren’t going to risk being picked up on the police’s number plate recognition system fed by the battalions of ever-present CCTV cameras standing guard over the city’s streets. Substitute number plates were a necessary precaution.
The two men didn’t speak, there was nothing left to say. The Drakon’s instructions had been unequivocal. Take the Jerusalem Tavern apart, brick by brick, until the pocket watch was found. For leverage, Blake and Sabatini would go along for the ride, but when the timepiece had been located, they would pay dearly for their games. The Drakon didn’t care about the method of their execution, but an image was already forming in Crossland’s imagination.
Denic tightened the last screw, hauled himself up and switched off the radio. He dropped it, along with the screwdriver into the half-packed canvas bag lying at his feet. He picked up the bag and the two men edged their way around the vehicle towards the door. The next job was to load the prisoners into the van. By the time they had walked under the lean-to that linked the garage to the side entrance of the safe house, Crossland was ready with the key. He turned it in the stiff lock and kicked open the paint-blistered door with his boot. Once inside, the two men headed for the stairs.
Suddenly a loud clattering sound came from the top of the staircase. Denic and Crossland looked at each other, their faces caught between shock and concern. Crossland grabbed two pistols from the canvas bag and threw one to his partner. Denic snatched the Sig Sauer out of mid-air. Without thinking, his index finger slid the safety to the off position. Hugging the side of the wall as they went, the two men slowly climbed the stairs. At the top, Crossland peered around the blind corner to the landing. Through the sights of his weapon, he quickly scanned down the long empty corridor. After nodding a signal to his partner, the two men began to move silently down the hallway.
Again there was a loud clattering sound, this time more violent, as if a poltergeist had taken hold of something and thrown it against the wall. There was no doubt: the source of the noise came from behind the closed door. On the other side of the door were Blake and Sabatini. A single drop of sweat traced a path down Denic’s back. He readied himself, squaring his body up with the centre of the door. A moment later, he exploded into action.
The wooden frame surrounding the lock exploded into splinters as Denic’s boot came smashing down on it. The force of the impact sent the door flying open on its hinges. As the door handle slammed into the plasterwork of the wall, Crossland burst into the room, his weapon tracking from side to side. Immediately he felt the cold wind on one side of his face. He quickly turned and located the source of the clattering sound. The window was wide open and the slatted metal blinds were crashing on the glass pane.
A large hand slammed down onto the wild blind, silencing it dead. Against the low winter sun in the horizon, a flickering movement caught Crossland’s attention. Beyond the brick wall at the end of the garden, high on the roof of a disused lock-up, he could see the two silhouettes. Blinking through the sights of his weapon, he tried to resolve the blurred figures into two distinct targets. He held his breath and tunnelled his concentration through the crosshairs of the sight, his finger feeling for the tension in the trigger. As one of the figures appeared to haul themselves to their feet, Crossland fired a rapid burst from his pistol. The flickering silhouette fell like a stone.
Chapter 58
The identification card attached to the taxi’s dashboard stated that the driver’s name was Gregory Kovac. He had almost paid off the loan on his car and wasn’t going to take any chances with the two passengers who had just arrived in the back of his taxi. Kovac pressed a dashboard button and the vehicle’s central locking mechanism engaged with a loud snapping sound. Two days ago he had lost out on a sizeable fare when two young American tourists had jumped out of the taxi without paying. They had disappeared without trace down a side street in Holborn, and Kovac’s internal warning radar was still on full alert. The condition of the two passengers now sitting in the back of his taxi was also giving him some concern. He looked in his rear-view mirror and repeated his question.
‘Is there any direction you want me to head in? I can drive around the city for as long as you like, as long as you have the money to pay me,’ he said.
At first there was no answer. His two passengers appeared to be catching their breath following a prolonged sprint. This was not in itself out of the ordinary, but the state of their clothing was. Kovac’s eyes flicked from the road ahead to the rear-view mirror to get a clearer picture of the couple on the back seat. The man was tall and slim, in his late thirties and appeared to be wearing a heavily creased suit. He was warming his hands in the heated air flowing through the air-conditioning vent next to his knees, and Kovac could make out a large muddy stain running down the front of his once-white shirt. The woman was younger, good-looking and had a Mediterranean complexion. Spanish or Italian he guessed. Kovac lengthened his back and strained to see if she was wearing a wedding ring, but her hands were buried in the pockets of her coat. Both of them were staring forward, silent and consumed in their own thoughts. Their posture reminded Kovac of his mother and father sitting in the hearse the day they buried his brother; two people set adrift, not knowing how to get back to solid ground.
Then Blake managed an answer: ‘Ludgate Hill. Drive us to St Paul’s Cathedral on Ludgate Hill, as quickly as you can.’
As the warm air thawed Blake’s frozen hands, they began to sting. His brain replayed the sound of bullets whistling past his ear and exploding into the brickwork just metres away from his head. If they hadn’t escaped, they would be dead. He was certain of that.
The events of their escape snapped back into his mind. Once they had broken free from their restraints, Blake and Sabatini forced open the window and, with the help of a drainpipe, scaled down the back of the house into the overgrown garden. Blake immediately looked over t
o the garage adjoining the house and heard loud music coming from inside. He scanned left and right to take in the enclosed space that they had just entered.
The garden was bordered on both sides by high walls and flanked at its rear by a ramshackle storage lock-up of some kind. They started moving across the garden, but when they reached halfway, the music from the garage suddenly stopped. Blake and Sabatini froze. Then they heard heavy footsteps approaching the side of the house.
Terrified, they sprinted towards the end of the garden and the pile of household refuse dumped there. Like a madman, Blake searched through the discarded innards of the house for something to help them get onto the roof of the lock-up. He opened his mouth to say something and then noticed them. Discarded paint cans, lots of them, scattered amongst the weeds and rolls of decaying carpet.
The two of them quickly assembled a makeshift pyramid from the cans three or four feet high that formed just enough of a step for Blake to clamber up onto the roof. Once there, he reached down and hauled Sabatini up to join him.
As Blake stood up and straightened his back, a bullet whizzed by his ear, followed a millisecond later by the crack of a firing gun. He swung round just in time for a second bullet to miss his shoulder by a finger width and ricochet off a lamp post.
He remembered pulling Sabatini down and then crawling on his front to the edge of the felt roof. He looked over the edge and spotted a builder’s skip positioned square up against the wall. There was no time to think. He shouted over to Sabatini, who dragged herself to the corner of the roof.
Blake watched in silence as she took hold of the wooden beading strip that kept the felt roof in place and moved over the side. Using the strip as a handhold, she lowered herself just enough to find a toehold in the crumbling brickwork. With her foot secure, she took little time to find a new handhold, and soon her other foot planted itself firmly onto the side of the skip. Seconds later, she made it to the ground. As she called up to him, Blake remembered glancing back to the house, half-expecting to see two men sprinting across the overgrown garden, but they were nowhere to be seen.
Next, it was his turn. Just like Sabatini before him, Blake shuffled his body parallel to the edge of the roof and, using the beading strip to support his weight, swung himself over the edge. Almost immediately, the wooden strip shifted in his hands, and the nails securing it in place bent out of the wall. He remembered his right hand scrambling to re-establish his grip and his arms flailing out to the side to gain purchase against thin air.
Blake grimaced as he relived the events in his mind and how he had landed with a heavy thwack face-up on a bed of cardboard at the bottom of the skip.
Sabatini’s recollection of the next few moments was limited to a series of silent frozen images, as if her memories had been truncated to let her brain process them. She remembered Blake’s hand pulling at her shoulder and being dragged through the small alleyway that led out to the main road. Then she remembered a flash of light to her side and an eruption of brick dust exploding around her head. After emerging from the shadows of the alleyway into Kilburn High Road, Sabatini recalled Blake pulling her onto the pavement and shouting for the taxi driver to stop.
After weaving through London traffic for fifteen minutes, the taxi approached Ludgate Hill. Blake looked anxiously out through the back window. Seeing only the usual scrum of tourists and early Christmas shoppers, Blake fell back into his seat.
‘Vincent, you’re bleeding!’ Sabatini’s words were full of concern. He looked down and saw a line of crimson dots cutting across the front of his shirt.
‘It’s my hand,’ said Blake. ‘I did it with the nail. It slipped whilst I was cutting through the tape on my wrist.’ Talking about it made it worse.
Sabatini took Blake’s hand and placed it face-up on her lap. Gently she examined the circular cut in the centre of his palm. She took a handkerchief from her coat pocket and placed it over the wound. Blake closed his eyes and tried to hold on to the feeling of warmth, but the respite only lasted for a second. A loud Eastern European voice crackled over the taxi radio and jolted Blake back to reality. As if readying himself for a battle, he slowly made a fist with his injured hand. A sharp pain radiated out across his palm. It reminded him that he was still alive.
Startled by the ringing of his phone, Blake took it from his pocket and glanced down at the caller ID. He reacted, and Sabatini mirrored the alarm in his face. A line of black characters flashed back from the display: VINCENT BLAKE, TAKE THIS CALL! YOUR LIFE DEPENDS ON IT!
He accepted the call and tapped the screen to activate the phone’s loudspeaker. Blake and Sabatini both stared at the handset in silence, waiting for a voice. When it came, the sound shook the speaker in its housing.
‘Dr Blake, listen to me very carefully.’ It was the cold metallic voice of the Drakon, digitally disguised as before. ‘I see your reputation for resourcefulness is well placed. You have escaped, but this situation is only temporary. You can run, but you can’t hide from me.’
Blake thought quickly. ‘I’m sitting in Clerkenwell Police Station with Detective Milton, and I can assure you—’
Blake was cut off mid-sentence by the sharp electronic voice, frustration clearly mounting in its tone.
‘Don’t be a fool. You are currently in a car heading south. Next to you is Dr Sabatini.’ Sabatini’s face dropped in horror.
Blake sat up straight in his seat, his eyes briefly meeting those of the taxi driver staring directly at him from the rear-view mirror.
Sabatini silently mouthed something to Blake. He nodded and spoke into the phone. ‘What do you want with the watch?’
‘I know more than you can possibly imagine,’ said the voice. ‘This moment was foretold millennia ago in the scriptures. I know what is hidden in the watch.’
‘Foretold in the scriptures?’ said Blake. Out of the corner of his eye, he could see the shadow of St Paul’s Cathedral coming into view.
‘Mr Blake, the End Times are coming. You and Dr Sabatini must make way for my master’s purposes.’ The signal momentarily dropped and then returned even louder than before. ‘I can see you have arrived at St Paul’s. You have obviously found the map. Give it to me now, or I swear I will drag you both into hell.’
Kovac pulled the black cab into the taxi rank just outside the front steps of Wren’s imposing cathedral. He hadn’t understood a word of the conversation he had just overheard in the back of his taxi, but he understood one thing: he needed to eject his passengers as quickly as possible. From further up Cannon Street, Kovac could hear the screaming siren of a police car weaving its way at speed through the traffic. Were the police after them? As he watched the blue flashing lights of the police car come closer, the most extraordinary feeling of unease washed over him. He flicked the central locking switch and ordered them to get out. Behind his left ear, he heard the sound of a dull click, like the cocking of a gun, and the shocking image of himself slumped over the steering wheel with a hole in his head appeared in his mind. He closed his eyes, uncertain which would arrive first: the bullet in the back of his head or the police car.
It took Kovac several drawn-out seconds to realise that the sirens were not getting closer but were in fact decreasing in pitch. The police car had passed in front of the cathedral and was now speeding down Ludgate Hill.
Gritting his teeth, Kovac opened his eyes and looked into the rear-view mirror. What he saw made him turn around quickly in his seat. Both back doors of the taxi were ajar, and his two passengers were nowhere to be seen. The only evidence that they had ever been there were the two mobile phones abandoned on the back seat.
Chapter 59
Mary and her black dog had been sitting on the steps to the cathedral’s main entrance since the sun first rose over the horizon. The cold London sky had turned a vivid eggshell blue, and white vapour trails from high-altitude jets were the only marks in the perfectly clear sky. The time
had come; she could feel it deep in her being. She looked down at the polished surface of the marble step. The subtle grain of minerals permeating its structure made the stone look like weathered animal bone. She took the needle and scraped it along the stone, blunting its end. She had no more use for it. The map was complete.
Long before Mary heard the police siren above the drone of the traffic, the ears of her dog had risen to attention. She stroked the animal’s head, but its ears resolutely resisted the movement of her hand across its fur. From her position high above street level, she could see the speeding blue lights of the police vehicle reflected in the office windows. As her eyes followed the blue light jumping from window to window, her attention was drawn to one of the two figures that had just emerged from a black cab parked at the taxi rank. She was not struck by the urgency with which he and his companion alighted from the vehicle but rather by the purple aura surrounding him. She had seen the man several times before, but today his aura was extraordinary. Like a heat wave shimmering above hot tarmac, the colour seemed to evaporate from the extremities of his body as its source was renewed by a constant source of energy.
Her pulse quickened as she became transfixed by the man and woman running towards her. Mary rose to her feet and felt a wave of expectancy as they came closer. Together they ran up the stairs in front of her, covering two steps with every stride. Mary froze, powerless to move or avert her gaze. As they rushed by, something dropped from the man’s hand and fell silently onto the white marble step by her feet. She looked down, and a tremor of apprehension shook within her body. Contrasting vividly with the pure white marble steps was a blood-stained handkerchief moving gently in the cold breeze. Twisting around, Mary shouted at the top of her voice.
‘It has been foretold in the Psalms: a band of evil men has encircled me, and they have pierced my hand.’
THE HISTORY OF THINGS TO COME: A Supernatural Thriller (The Dark Horizon Trilogy Book 1) Page 22
