The Three Secret Cities

by Matthew Reilly

  Yago drew a pistol but the man-in-black shot his gun hand, turning Yago’s forearm to mush and making him spill the gun, fall, and clutch what remained of his arm.

  And then suddenly the man-in-black was standing in front of Zoe, Stretch, Pooh Bear and Jack.

  He was tall, easily six feet, and well built. Over his black combat fatigues, Jack saw his SWAT vest covered in curious devices: handcuffs, knives, pliers, rope, mountain-climbing pitons, two scuba breathers and—Jack did a double-take—a blowtorch.

  The man-in-black wrenched off his high-altitude oxygen mask to reveal a rugged weathered face, hard and unshaven. He had dark hair and a pair of eyes that glistened with mischievous intelligence.

  And that was the final thing about this man.

  His eyes.

  They were covered by wraparound anti-flash glasses with black frames and yellow-tinted lenses.

  ‘Jack West?’ the man-in-black said. ‘I’m a friend of Scarecrow’s. He saw you on TV in London and sent me to rescue you. My name is Captain Aloysius Knight.’

  Getting Jack out of his stone slab took a little time.

  Yago had a heating unit nearby for use when a prisoner died or if a person needed to be removed from the Wall of Misery for some reason.

  The heating unit was basically a set of red-hot heating elements that were lowered onto the grey slab and which gradually returned the solidified stone to a liquid state.

  Jack’s slab was placed under a heating unit and, slowly, very slowly, the hard stone around his body began to turn to goopy fluid again, releasing him from its vice-like grip.

  As this was happening, Aloysius Knight stood over Jack, scanning the cavern: the Wall of Misery, the castle, the whole incredible place.

  ‘Scarecrow said to be ready for some fucked-up ancient shit,’ he said. ‘But this is seriously fucked up.’

  ‘Better believe it,’ Zoe said.

  ‘I’ve seen weirder.’ Knight shrugged. ‘You wouldn’t believe what you’ll find in the darkest corners of Siberia.’

  The stone gripping Jack was now fully liquid again.

  Stretch and Pooh Bear yanked Jack out of the thick ooze with a loud squelching sound. They cut the leather straps that bound his arms and wiped away any remaining dollops of greystone clinging to his skin.

  The first thing Jack did was embrace Zoe. ‘Thanks for coming to get me.’

  ‘Wasn’t much of a rescue,’ she said.

  ‘It’s the thought that counts. Busting into an ancient prison from which there has never been an escape? When you find a girl willing to do that, you marry her.’

  ‘Which you did,’ Zoe said.

  Jack kissed her. Then he said to Stretch and Pooh Bear, ‘Hey, guys. Get Hades out, too, please. We’re gonna need him.’

  As they set about that task, Jack turned to Aloysius Knight.

  ‘I owe you a significant debt, Captain Knight.’

  ‘Call me Aloysius.’ He pronounced it allo-wishus.

  ‘So, who are you?’ Jack asked.

  ‘I’m a bounty hunter. Ex–special forces. Worked on a mission with Scarecrow a while back. Saved his ass. I also have a pilot circling above us in my plane right now. His name’s Rufus. You’ll meet him later.’

  What Knight didn’t say was that when he’d been a member of Delta Force, he had been framed by his own government and ended up on the Defense Department’s Most Wanted List. He’d gone underground and become one of the best bounty hunters in the world, albeit one with a price on his own head. Cold, hard and dry, he was the closest thing to a one-man army you could find.

  ‘Well, thank you,’ Jack said. ‘As I said, I owe you a debt that I’m not sure I can ever repay.’

  ‘Forget it. I owe Scarecrow a debt,’ Knight said. ‘That guy showed me what real loyalty is and reminded me who I was. So let’s call it even. Now, if you don’t mind, can we get your buddy out of his slab and get the fuck out of this creepy place?’

  Hades was removed from his slab the same way Jack had been, slowly and carefully.

  As this was happening, Jack said to Aloysius Knight, ‘How did you find me?’

  ‘Scarecrow forwarded your text to me about some bounty hunters called “The Knights of the Golden Eight”. I’d heard that name before, once, a few years ago.

  ‘It was during a bounty hunt. I heard it over a supposedly secure radio frequency. They swooped in on a big hunt to nab a wealthy Swiss banker from Geneva. Apparently, this banker had embezzled money from some European royal families. He was never seen again and I never heard of those Knights again.

  ‘But before the Knights grabbed the banker, I’d managed to spray some GPS MicroDots on him, so I saw where they took him. First, they took him to some Italian island and then he was brought here, to the coast of Algeria. And this is where he stayed.

  ‘Rufus and I did a fly-by and we saw the mine crater. Also saw that, according to the MicroDots, our banker was a mile below the surface. I let it go. In bounty hunting, you gotta know when to cut your losses.

  ‘Anyway, right after that shit went down in London a couple of days ago—live on television—Scarecrow called me and said it was you, his friend, in the middle of it all. Said you were a decent dude. Asked me to find you and help you.

  ‘I remembered the Knights and immediately thought of this place. So I flew out here and patched into a Russian spy satellite surveying the African coast. Watched it for a whole day, looking for anyone coming or going.’

  He nodded at Zoe. ‘Sure enough, in the dead of night, I saw three heat-signatures creeping in from the coast: her and her two buddies. Watched ’em come all the way in and go down in the elevator. Waited to see if they came out with you. But then I caught radio chatter on the airwaves between the security posts here: your rescuers had been caught. Given that the elevator was down at the bottom of the shaft—leaving the shaft wide open—I figured it was time to do my thirty-thousand-foot swan dive and make an entrance.’

  Jack nodded. ‘I’m glad you did.’

  ‘So are we,’ Pooh Bear said from the heating unit.

  ‘So what’s the deal?’ Aloysius said.

  Jack said, ‘We have a lot to do: we have to find three lost cities and three fabled weapons or else everyone on this planet is going to die. But before we do that, I need to bust my daughter and a good kid named Alby out of the stronghold owned by those Knights.’

  ‘Another stronghold?’ Knight arched an eyebrow. ‘You know, I normally have a policy of breaking into only one stronghold per day. One. You better be fucking worth it.’

  While Pooh Bear and Stretch continued to work on Hades’s slab, Jack gave Aloysius a brief summary of the royal world: the four kingdoms, his harrowing time with Scarecrow at the Great Games, and the prison they now found themselves in.

  ‘It’s a shadow royal world that exists behind the real world,’ Jack said. ‘A world of incredible wealth and influence, with its own history, its own aristocracy, its own rules. Occasionally, though, it reaches out into our world.’

  Hades came fully out of the slab. He was weak with hunger but okay. Pooh and Stretch gave him water, cleaned him and dressed him in some of Yago’s clothes they’d fetched from the castle.

  Knight said, ‘So why did they imprison you and grab your daughter?’

  Jack said, ‘At the end of the Great Games, I did something that tore their world apart. I should’ve remembered the old saying: no good deed goes unpunished.’

  ‘That’s why I usually avoid good deeds,’ Knight said sourly. ‘So the Knights of the Golden Eight have your daughter and her friend?’

  ‘That’s right. They’re formidable. Soldiers-for-hire who serve these royal families and who exist completely outside the law,’ Jack said. ‘I imagine that Swiss banker you were chasing wronged members of the royal world and the Knights were dispatched to get him. They turned him ove
r to the royal jailer and he was brought here.

  ‘Like I said, every so often, the royal world reaches out into our world. It was they who trashed New York, Venice and London trying to kill me and grab my daughter.’

  Aloysius pondered that for a moment.

  Then he stood. ‘These assholes who have your daughter were the ones who trashed London? Did all that shit with that family in the van, the bus, the choppers and the tank?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And it’s their base that’s in Italy?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘I have one question,’ Knight said.

  ‘Shoot.’

  ‘It’s for him.’ Knight nodded at Hades.

  He asked his question and Hades answered it.

  ‘Then let’s roll,’ the Black Knight said. ‘We just need to make one stop on the way.’

  They retrieved Jack’s personal possessions from inside Yago’s castle: his fireman’s helmet, phone and weapons.

  ‘Jack,’ Zoe said, eyeing the wall of prisoners. ‘What about them? Should we release them?’

  ‘The beautiful lady has a point,’ Rubles said quickly from his slab. ‘Beautiful lady. Smart lady. Kind lady.’

  Jack glanced from Rubles to all the other pathetic prisoners embedded in the Wall.

  Jack threw a look at Hades. ‘We don’t know what crimes they committed to get sent here. We could be releasing killers or worse.’

  Hades nodded. ‘Worse. For example, Mr Rubles here is quite notorious. He was the butler of a minor royal family in Luxembourg. While the head of the family was away, Rubles killed and ate his master’s wife, two young children and dog.’

  ‘He ate them?’ Jack stared in horror at Rubles.

  Rubles rolled his eyes bashfully. ‘I liked the meat of the children best. It was very tender.’

  Jack just shook his head. ‘Let’s go.’

  They did, however, do one more thing before they left.

  A final act regarding the Wall of Misery. They left someone in the very same spot that Jack had occupied, in a new slab of liquid stone.

  Yago.

  Embedded in the dreadful stuff and mounted on the wall.

  Jack stood in front of the royal jailer, now pinned and furious. ‘Hope you like this new view of your realm.’

  Then Jack turned on his heel and walked away, his footfalls echoing in the enormous cavern.

  Beside Yago, Rubles started speaking quickly. ‘Well, well, what an honour this is, what a remarkable honour, the Slave King himself, by my side, by my very side . . .’

  Yago wailed in protest as Jack and the others left, turning off the lights as they did so, plunging him and Rubles and the Wall of Misery into darkness.

  The Castle of the Golden Eight

  Ischia Island, Amalfi Coast, Italy

  29 November, 1930 hours

  After Sphinx had left Aragon Castle with Lily the previous night, Dion and the Knights had retired for the evening.

  But before he’d taken his leave, Dion had stood before Alby in his cage and suddenly snatched his bleeding wrist. Then, shockingly, he’d seared it with a cigar lighter, cauterising the wound. Alby screamed in pain.

  Dion smiled. ‘Now, now. We can’t have you bleeding out before the real fun begins. We shall resume this invigorating conversation tomorrow evening.’

  Then he left and Alby slumped, breathless and sweating, against the bars of his hanging cage.

  Alby spent a long, painful and sleepless night in the cage after that, his wrist pressed into his t-shirt, his right hand still trapped in its manacle-like hole.

  The next morning, Dion and the Knights went to the mainland and stayed there for most of the day, saying something about a coronation for Dion.

  Some squires were left to guard Alby and the castle. At irregular intervals one of them would come over and shove a wet sponge against his mouth. Alby sucked in whatever drops of water he could.

  He also heard the squires mention the celebratory feasting that Dion and the others were partaking of in nearby Naples—with beautiful models filling their glasses and ‘tending to their needs’.

  Then, as evening fell, Dion and the Knights returned to the castle’s dock by boat. The Knights were not the kind of men to get roaring drunk. Jaeger Eins wouldn’t stand for that. Dion, though, was a little off-balance.

  The seagate closed and Eins turned to Dion. ‘Shall we return upstairs, Your Majesty?’

  He emphasised the title. Terms like ‘Your Highness’ were used for lesser royals: princes and princesses, queens who had married to get their crowns. ‘Your Majesty’ was reserved only for kings.

  The coronation had been performed at a verified, and very old, royal estate on the mainland, with the three other kings—Orlando and the Kings of Sea and Sky—attending via videolink, since the ceremony could only be performed in the presence of the other kings.

  Dion was now, officially, the King of the Underworld.

  ‘I imagine you are very keen to reconvene with Mr Calvin,’ Jaeger Eins said.

  Dion clapped his hands together. ‘Absolutely.’

  Then Jaeger Eins’s earpiece beeped.

  ‘Yes?’ he said into his radio.

  ‘Sir, this is radar control. We just detected an incoming airborne signal. Vertical signal. Coming in fast.’ Radar control was a state-of-the-art communications and command centre at the very summit of the island that was manned by two senior squires.

  ‘What kind of signature?’ Jaeger Eins asked, concerned.

  ‘That’s the thing, it’s not a plane or a man,’ the squire said. ‘It actually looks like a—wait—it’s slowing. Okay. Parachute signature. It’s a parachute, all right. But it’s not a paratrooper. Looks like it’s going to miss us to the north.’

  Jaeger Eins turned, thinking. ‘To the north . . .’

  He spun to face two of his Knights: ‘Come with me.’ Then to Dion: ‘Your Majesty. For your own safety, please wait here a moment.’

  Eins leapt into the gantry elevator with his two Knights and rode it up the rock tower.

  They emerged in the Hall of the Round Table and charged over to the wide viewing balcony cut into the northern flank of the island.

  Still imprisoned in his tiny cage, Alby watched them.

  Arriving at the balcony, Jaeger Eins saw the lights of the Italian mainland glittering in the distance. Off to his right, he saw the usual lines of supertankers and container ships cruising in and out of the busy port of Naples.

  Then he peered upward.

  And he saw it.

  A parachute, high in the sky, passing in front of the stars, drifting downward.

  His radar operator had been correct: the object hanging from the chute wasn’t a paratrooper. If it had been, they’d have shot him on sight.

  ‘What the fuck . . .?’ the Knight beside Eins said.

  As the parachute drifted down in front of the viewing balcony, Jaeger Eins blinked to make sure he wasn’t seeing things.

  Hanging from the parachute was a tank, a main battle tank.

  Scrawled crudely on its side in stark white paint and lit by a carefully-aimed flashlight attached to the exterior of the tank were the words:

  RETURN TO SENDER

  Hanging from its chute, the tank glided past the viewing window and dropped gently into the sea below it, where it silently sank from view.

  ‘It missed,’ Jaeger Acht said.

  Jaeger Eins stared open-mouthed at the strangeness of it all.

  ‘It wasn’t meant to hit us,’ he said. ‘It was meant to send us a message.’

  For it wasn’t just any old tank.

  It was his tank.

  The Challenger 2 main battle tank he had used in London to lure Jack West into the open.

  And as the realisation dawned on him, a sudden explo
sion shook the entire island and Jaeger Eins’s world went crazy.

  Eins spun as the castle around him shuddered.

  ‘What was that?’ he demanded.

  ‘Jesus Christ!’ the radar operator said in his ear. ‘A supertanker just ran aground on the southern shore of the island!’

  From his position at the higher northern end of the island, Jaeger Eins couldn’t see it, but had he been outside he would have been stunned by the sight.

  A gigantic supertanker—previously steaming out of Naples in a long line of other slow-moving ships—had turned suddenly, and without slowing in any way, had ploughed into the fortified southern wall of the castle’s island.

  The impact sent bricks flying every which way. The ship’s bow came fully out of the water and it ended up resting on the wall, beached.

  ‘Put it onscreen,’ Jaeger Eins commanded.

  A set of large flat-screen TVs came to life, displaying security feed from cameras all over the island, and there, shockingly, on the main screen, Eins saw it.

  A fucking supertanker, mounted on the island’s southern flank.

  ‘What is going on?’ Jaeger Acht said.

  That was when a second supertanker powered out of the night and rushed toward the cliff beneath Jaeger Eins’s viewing window . . .

  . . . and crashed right into the seagate at the base of it.

  The castle shook again.

  Alarms sounded.

  The other Knights peered out over the edge of the rock tower and saw the bow of the second supertanker now inside the water hangar at its base.

  In addition to the surreal sight of a tank drifting down past their main hall, they now had two supertankers lodged at both ends of their island-fortress.

  ‘Gentlemen,’ Jaeger Eins said. ‘Arm yourselves. Extraordinary as it may sound, we are under attack.’

  Down in the water hangar, Dion saw the second supertanker smash through the seagate from up close.

  The ship’s huge bow just mowed down the gate, thrusting itself into the hangar, pushing aside the floating Hercules seaplane with ease.

  Dion didn’t need to be told what was happening.