by R. J. Gadney
Was this the reason Teresa had attempted to create such a repulsive diversion—to prevent him from seeing that the wall safe held dirty secrets?
Manufactured by Ludovici of Milan, the safe was steel-plated with welded seams. Only once before, in training, had he disabled a similar repository for weapons, bombs and high-explosives.
He took a long look-see.
The Ludovici’s doors were of solid steel plate. No tell-tale wires. The safe had a pair of locking bolts on its front rim fastened into a drill-resistant frame. The doors were suspended on hidden pivots. He reckoned he was facing locks with four or five levers; maybe, for good measure, an additional and alternative locking system comprising a two-wheel combination lock: the model of Italian deviousness.
Ludovici here I come.
He turned the dial three times right, then rested it at the first number. To the left. Gently through the second number. Stopped. Back to turning it left, through the second combination number, just the once. The second time around he stopped the turning.
The likelihood of guessing the right release numbers was non-existent. You’re talking millions of combinations. You can’t press your ear against the lock, fiddle and listen for telltale clicks like some safe-breaker in the movies. But, by stroking at the skin of the locks, teasing out the nerve of least resistance, exciting the thing’s glands, you can squeeze in.
With heavy-duty bolt-cutters from the garage, he could cause enough damage to persuade the Ludovici to surrender to his advances. It takes a knack for seduction. Such knacks were part of the professional armory of his vocation. Anything that’s been put together can be taken apart.
He hurried to the garage and returned with bolt-cutters.
Within ten seconds the Ludovici gave up its last attempts at resistance and revealed secrets that froze his bones.
ELEVEN
Here, and here only, the traces of the past lay deep—too deep to be effaced.
WILKIE COLLINS
The Woman in White
79
Three hundred miles south.
The sign at the gates of Headley Court said: COUNTER-TERRORISM RESPONSE LEVEL: HEIGHTENED.
To his embarrassment, the counselor’s cell started ringing during the Headley Court Christmas Eve Mass.
He left the service to take the call.
“Fear not,” said he, for mighty dread
Had seized their troubled mind,
“Glad tidings of great joy I bring
To you and all mankind.”
“Where are you, Hal?”
“The Towers.”
“You all right?”
“Yes and no. Listen, write this down.”
“Write what down?”
“No questions. Move it. Write it down. A list of materiel I’ve found. If anything untoward happens to me you’re to pass the list to the police.”
“What’s happening, Hal?”
“Listen to me. Write this down. Do it.”
“I’m listening.”
80
FIGURES:
ONE. Cell phone with charger.
TWO. Cache of photographs of Sumiko wrapped in pages from the Cumberland News.
THREE. Jewelry.
FOUR. Photographs of Sada Abe.
FIVE. Xerox inventory listing major works of art, furniture and rare valuables plus sale estimates.
SIX. Photographs of Sister Teresa Vale with St. John Warren in flagrante delicto.
SEVEN. Copy. Mother’s Last Will and Testament.
EIGHT. Sister Vale’s digital camera containing images of self and Francesca Vale.
NINE. Xerox plans Family Chapel and Crypt.
TEN. Xerox copies Counter IED Task Force Manual. With reference to specifications for use of ammonium nitrate, graphite blades and incendiary chemicals comprising non-military and military components, platter charges, two to six kilos plus same-weight plastic explosive.
ELEVEN. Victim-operated improvised explosive device/booby traps incorporating pressure pads, tripwire, release spring-loaded, push, pull or tilt.
TWELVE. Xerox copies. U.S. Special Forces. TM 31-210 Improvised Munitions Handbook.
THIRTEEN. Photographs of pigs gnawing at what resemble human remains.
“Got all that?”
“Yes. Want me to read it over?”
“There’s no time. Also, note in your own words, I’m looking at two small steel cylinders packed with high-explosives. Others have been prepared and removed.”
“What is all this?”
“Evidence of intention to blow this place to hell.”
“Have you called the police?”
“It’s too late.”
“You can’t handle it alone. Get out of there and now.”
“That’s what I’m going to do.”
“I’ll call the police.”
“Too late. Do what I say. It’s an order.”
The line went dead.
The counselor read the list. Either: one—his patient was imagining things and had altogether lost his mind. Or, if not: two—his patient was about to lose his life.
81
00:00
Time to wish Sumiko Happy Christmas.
She wasn’t answering.
His call was diverted and he left a message.
“You’ll be asleep safe and sound. I wish you and Yukio and the one-to-be A Very Happy Christmas. If anything happens to me tonight please call the one-to-be Sumiko. Watashi wa anata o aishite imasu. I love you. I always have. Always will.”
No more calls.
He turned off his cell phone. Home and Not at Home.
00:05
In the garage, he assembled a make-do kit of emergency basic IED disposal equipment. He looked at his hands. Strangely, they were steady.
Antichrist. False Keeper of The Towers’ Satanic Grail. Show me your eyes that you be tormented with fire and brimstone in the presence of the holy angels—
82
Crouched in subterranean silence, the Crypt was waiting for him. Piles of hemorrhaged waste and feces carpeted its cavernous bowels.
Peering into the gloom, he walked slowly, yard by yard, through vaulted passages. Watery slime ran down his face.
A rotted catafalque rose to face him, its skeletal frame erect in mute protest. Locked gates of wrought iron barred his entry to the vaults, final home to the eldritch remains of subhumanity.
At one curve of the main passage a narrow stairway could be seen. Moistened brickwork blocked the slanting ceiling exit to the Chapel overhead.
Still narrower passages led to more vaults lined with stone shelves. Occasionally he glimpsed geometrical shapes of open coffins lined with lead. The coffin lids lay discarded beside them. Above them iron wall-ladders rose to the ceilings.
It seemed to him an age had passed within the deathly interconnected chambers when he finally paused to assess the progress of his reconnaissance.
Water pattered near the entrance to a tunnel a few meters distant. The passage to it reached out before him, lit by electric light fittings from the postwar years.
The light bulbs offered up a clue; namely, that they’d been fitted and connected to the mains electricity supply in recent times to cast dim light. Satan’s handiwork.
Then he saw it …
83
In the guttering.
Satan’s handiwork wove its sinister route along the corridor.
The fine red line wriggling a few meters ahead, circling the staircase elevation at the point you reached the exterior wall where the indentation suggested a doorway leading to steps: steps out-and-up-and-away to the central courtyard adjacent to what had once been a coal store. The way in and the way out. The discreet and discrete entry to the resting place of Stirling dead.
The wire made no immediate sense. It had a redundant look about it.
He tested it with his tick-tracer; it didn’t light. No current flowed through it. Not, then, a command wire linked to hidden IEDs.
Wal
king steadily, glancing over his shoulder, he heard the whirring.
nnng-whhhhrrrrrr-whhhrrrrrrrnnnnng
Animal, human or mechanical?
It warned him. He was not alone.
*
At the end of the passage the nnng-whhhhrrrrrr-whhhrrrrrrrnnnnng grew louder.
He paused and glanced at his watch.
01:18 was blurred.
As it flicked to 01:19 he looked down and saw it …
… the telltale wire … if it is a wire. Might be a come-on. Might be another one buried in the shit connected to yet another. Wire might have degraded in the filth making the bomb unstable. Moving in the lightest air current the wire might produce an electrical short and trigger an explosion.
nnng-whhhhrrrrrr-whhhrrrrrrrnnnnngwhrrrr
He began to visualize the IED even before he reached the point where it ended abruptly outside a heavy door.
The wire had been set deep in the wall patchily covered with rough plaster. A few feet to his right he saw the flight of stone steps leading upward to the courtyard exit.
He heard the rumbling of a generator. Powering what?
nnng-whhhhrrrrrr-whhhrrrrrrrnnnnngwhrrrr
The surface of the bottom steps gave the clue.
There were muddled patterns outside the door where the slime had been disturbed. The footprints were fresh.
Crawling on hands and knees, he examined the footprints further up the staircase.
Unknown Person &/or Persons had come down the steps, then left the same way.
Person &/or Persons had dragged a wire: the wire that, looking down, he saw running all the way to the door and then beneath it.
The steel padlock was reinforced with a Vaselined steel chain.
He crouched before the door and stared at the wire.
It goes beneath the door to left.
And
—to the right it comes out again
—goes into the brickwork, up a bit, and
—eye-level:
—six inches from my face: the IED, attached to a fine tripwire among a patch of shit and slime.
—no tripwire. A singleton.
—original: organic local Cumbrian produce, no sell-by date, shelf life zilch. Civil warfare at your fingertips: one false touch and it’s
N
One cut. You’re paraplegic.
Three cuts with bolt-cutters.
—1 high-strength low-alloy steel padlock and 1 chain hit the floor and the door opened
nnng
—and a howl of panic.
84
The wild disturbance racked his peripheral vision. Eyes were staring at him. Voices rose in chorus above the nnng-whhhhrrrrrr-whhhrrrrrrrnnnnngwhrrrrnnng— “Spiritus Aeternitas et Dominus. I believe in the Life Beyond, Almighty Creator of Heaven and Earth.”
He saw his mother walking toward him, arms outstretched, singing in lubricious tones: “The Eternal Spirit of Our Mansion. The Only Begotten Son, My Son.”
Naked, her marbled lips recited:
“Two Souls in One One in Two.”
He inhaled droplets of rotted lavender, maternal physical odors that appalled him, stupefied by the imminence of inescapable incestuous union.
“Two in One in Spirit and in Flesh.”
The neurotransmitters in his brain signaled an unholy crescendo of static.
Ferocious sounds of exploding head syndrome: nnng-whhhhrrrrrr-whhhrrrrrrrnnnnngwhrrrrnnng, the physical and mental trauma mismatch between visual and tactile signals.
It was as if he were outside himself, positioned in two entirely distinct places simultaneously.
Adrenalin filled his bloodstream, causing his skin to emit a froth of sweat heavy with the stench of rotted flesh.
He felt a sleep jerk, a hypnagogic jerk between his legs and the wires across his thighs squirmed like silken vipers squeezing his genitalia. He saw rank upon rank of IEDs, actually grinning tombstones in a war cemetery, and they sang out with the sad fervor of a Remembrance Day congregation: “Captain Hal Stirling. Come to mommy, Hal.”
“Long years ago, as earth lay dark and still,
Rose a loud cry upon a lonely hill,
While in the frailty of our human clay …
Here lies the man who calls himself the bomb disposal expert.”
Conceived, Born, Suffered, was Crucified, Dead, and Buried:
He descended into Hell.
And very slowly the two strange women finished their disrobing. The moaning voice was his: synchronized with exactitude: “Is anybody there?” It went on and on whimpering. He heard moans and realized they were his own—“Is anybody there?”
A woman’s face materialized through veils of blood and a line of verse looped in his head: Two girls in silk kimonos, both beautiful, one a gazelle— eyes fixed, struck dumb.
Cowering on the cell floor, wrists tied with industrial tape to a whirring butcher’s heavy-duty slicer.
nnng-whhhhrrrrrr-whhhrrrrrrrnnnnngwhrrrrnnng
She looked at him in stupefaction like a madwoman.
Please: Don’t Die.
85
03:01
Out of the Crypt and into the light.
He carried her through the passages across his shoulders, her weight evenly distributed.
The lights flickered.
On and off. On again …
He set her on the floor …
… the lights went out.
He groped around the walls for a half-remembered switch.
It clicked.
No light.
The electricity supply must have been cut off at the mains.
Through a veil of tiny stars pricking at his eyeballs he saw a shape glide across the Great Hall in the thin light from the snow outside. Its feet seemed to rise, two, perhaps even six inches from the floor.
The figure of a woman faced him. There was the faintest gleam of a hypodermic’s plastic; its needle threatening.
Her sunken eyes mesmerized him; her wide mouth opened, either with a smile or an agonized grimace, he couldn’t tell.
There was the sickly scent of jasmine oil and lilies in a funeral parlor … and she drew a wristband of white silk thread toward his eyes so he was forced to look at the glow of the diamond ornament dangling from it.
He was looking at the image of an Indian cobra’s head, a Naja Naja’s severed head.
Kill. Kill it.
“Who are you?” he pleaded.
There was no reply.
He stood rigid in the darkness. It’s so dark. I can’t have seen this specter.
It dawned on him that all the while his flashlight had been on the darkness swallowed its light.
Something fell.
Earth hard as iron?
Water like a stone?
“Who are you?”
Frosty wind made moan.
“Is anybody there—won’t someone help me?”
86
Carrying the heavy-duty bolt-cutters in one hand, in the other his flashlight, he headed slowly through the darkness of the Great Hall approaching the kitchen, alert to the slightest sound.
He stood outside the kitchen door without touching it: listening for any movement from inside: searching the surrounds; feeling the rims and handle for the signs of the booby trap.
He tucked the bolt-cutters into his belt beneath his jacket and slowly squatted on his haunches; then flattened himself on the floor, peering through the minute crack afforded by the entry-exit hole a rodent had clawed. His fingertips touched cold plastic.
Suddenly, he heard he generator rumble into action and the world exploded with savage light.
He raised his hands to shield his eyes.
A blur, the hooded figure’s face was masked: the deathly mask he’d seen in the driving snow outside the vicarage window. Gloved hands held a shotgun aimed steadily at his chest. Others seized the bolt-cutters and they dropped to the stone floor.
“Who are you?”
No reply.
“Wha
t d’you want?”
The silent figure drew closer.
He could smell the acrid breath. It gestured at him with the gun’s snout to place his hands on his head.
The shotgun lowered, level with his groin. The figure turned slowly and sideways to steady the weapon, managing to keep it aimed at its target.
He tensed his arms and elbows, clenched his fingers together on his head allowing the gloved hand to explore the inside of his thighs.
As it transferred exploratory fingers to his right thigh, he twisted violently, bringing down his fists like hammerheads, the full force of the blow striking the carotid artery.
The shotgun hit the stone floor, its impact triggering the firing mechanism: the report of both barrels shattered the silence.
87
The shadow twisted noiselessly like the Levantine viper.
“Where’s the bomb?” He edged toward the unloaded shotgun and lifted it from the floor. “Where is it?” He looked at the kitchen door. “The door? In the bloody kitchen? A timer? There’ll be a fucking heap of body bits and no one will know what’s-me-what’s-you. What’s wrong with you, fuckface—where is it?”
Silence.
Only the beating of his heart.
“You scared of dying—?”
An arm clamped around his throat. The gloved hand smothered his mouth.
needle
stabbing in the thigh
squirting venom into his bloodstream.
The death mask—
booby trap linked to more up the riverbed flowing into the kitchen.
He reached out to steady himself
touched luminous ether with his fingertips
*
Remembering the future. He thought:
Sophie’s crawling toward the kitchen and oblivion—and felt no pain.
