The Age of Exodus

by Gavin Scott

  “In other words,” said Forrester, “there are three possible targets: Cross, Novak and Perez.”

  “If more than one of them dies, the committee may fail to give its backing to the creation of a Jewish state,” said Eban.

  “So all three need to be kept safe before tomorrow’s vote.”

  “Discreetly safe,” said Eban. “I can’t swamp the place with my people: it would be completely counterproductive.”

  “Indeed,” said Forrester, “it would look as if you were trying to intimidate them.”

  “So, Duncan, it comes down to you and me. Have you found out anything since our conversation this afternoon?”

  Forrester then told him about his conversations with Angela Shearer and Mrs. Palmer and the telegram from Ken Harrison, and they stood in silence for a moment, thinking hard.

  Finally, Forrester spoke.

  “I must go to see Theresa Palmer again, now she’s had time to think about what I told her. Make sure she’s not going to set Smith on any of these three.” As they were about to part, an idea occurred to him. “Is there a member of the committee,” he said, “whose alternate is more likely to vote for the creation of a Jewish homeland than the current member?”

  Eban thought for a moment.

  “Zaheer,” he said at last. “He is firmly against us, which means that he can be in no danger. Why do you ask?”

  “Just thinking aloud,” said Forrester, and he went downstairs to the desk to establish the whereabouts of Theresa Palmer’s room, which the desk clerk, having seen them in conversation several times that day, readily provided, together with a telegram from Robert Glastonbury in reply to his own wasted one before he knew that St. John Townsend was dead. As he took the telegram, the gong sounded for dinner.

  * * *

  Theresa Palmer’s room was on the third floor, just a few doors along from the circular tower room which contained the famous occult library. He knocked on the door, and, receiving no reply, looked into the library in case she was there. But it was empty, and its circular table with its inlaid cabbalistic signs was bare. Circular shelves ran around the walls to a height which required a library ladder, and Forrester, who could never resist inspecting a bookshelf, ran his eye over some of the gold embossed titles on the ancient leather-bound books. The Alchemical Works of Geber. Le Veritable Dragon Rouge. Malleus Maleficarum. Cornelius’ Fourth Book of Philosophy.

  Then he went back to Mrs. Palmer’s room and knocked again. Still no reply. He took out the passkey, which he had purloined while the desk clerk was fetching him Glastonbury’s telegram, and opened the door.

  Mrs. Palmer did not turn to greet him. She was sitting in a wing chair in front of the uncurtained windows, looking out over the dark woods around the chateau.

  “I’m sorry to disturb you, Mrs. Palmer,” said Forrester, “but I feel we need to resolve the conversation we were having earlier.”

  She did not reply; she did not even look round. Forrester walked across the room and stood between her chair and the window so that she had no option but to look at him. Her face was in darkness but the light of the rising moon shone incongruously on the knitting in her lap.

  “I need your help,” said Forrester. “I need your help to prevent the man who used you from achieving his goal.” Was there a tiny sigh? Forrester could not be certain.

  “Very soon now,” said Forrester, “I believe you will receive another instruction purporting to come from Sir Edward St. John Townsend, telling you to order Smith to kill again. I beg you, Theresa, to show that message to me before you act on it, because otherwise you could be part of a terrible crime.” Still she remained silent, gazing implacably at him from the shadows of the wing chair, and Forrester leaned close, speaking softly.

  “Please, Mrs. Palmer. You have been instrumental in doing much wrong, but this is your chance to make amends.” But as he reached out to put his hand on her shoulder her head fell forward onto his arm – and as the moonlight reached her face he saw that her mouth was open. There was froth drying around her lips and a smell of bitter almonds.

  Mrs. Theresa Palmer had not been listening to a single word he had said. Mrs. Palmer had been dead long before he entered the room.

  And there, on the table beside the chair, was the glass from which she had taken her last drink.

  Forrester stood for a moment, swaying with the shock of it, remembering the satisfaction he had felt in destroying her illusions about the great occult enterprise of which she thought she was a part, his sense of triumph as she had walked, her dignity and self-belief shattered, up the grand staircase of the Chateau Bougerac to her room. Of his barely concealed pleasure in destroying yet another supernatural illusion.

  He had, in effect, killed her.

  It was at this point that he saw the letter on the floor, on blue headed notepaper, which contained the last instructions she was to pass on. He picked it up and read it and there, sure enough, were two of the three names Eban had given him as marked for death: Brian Cross and Jan Novak. Unthinkingly he folded the note and put it in his pocket: Smith would never receive his mistress’s orders now. Then he went to the wardrobe and opened it.

  Mrs. Palmer’s clothes hung neatly on the rail inside, somehow a more poignant testimony to a lost life than even her body lying in the chair. On a shelf above sat an elegant pigskin suitcase.

  Forrester took the suitcase down, undid the straps and lifted the lid. There, nestled in tissue paper, was the effigy of Narak he had last seen in the lecture room at Columbia University. The goat face leered at him, as if welcoming him to its cult, its bat-like wings framing its sinewy body. Four of the seven cavities were now filled with cylinder seals: one for Charles Templar, one for William Burke, one for Jan Loppersum, and one, Forrester realised, for the poor office messenger who had been killed just days before his retirement because he had delivered a set of files to the wrong recipient.

  Did the mastermind plant the seals on his intended victims for Smith to retrieve? And had seals already been slipped into the pockets of the men who were going to die tonight? As he looked into the demon’s bulging eyes, they seemed to brim with mischievous glee. Inanimate or not, Narak had been an object of terror for more than four thousand years.

  The blow propelled him across the room, reverberating down his spine and sending him headfirst into the wall. As his forehead smashed into the panelling he felt an agonising stab of pain and the world went dark. The man was on him before he hit the floor, astride his back, grasping his head between two massive hands as if to twist his neck in one single deadly movement; and as he felt the calloused palms on either side of his skull Forrester knew there was nothing in his SOE training that could save him.

  Smith had come for his revenge, and he was not to be cheated of it.

  And then, in an instant, he felt the man’s consciousness shift as he saw something on the floor to Forrester’s left.

  It was the effigy of Narak, which had flown out of Forrester’s hands as he hit the wall. Forrester did not move: the man’s massive weight kept him pinned to the floor. But the great hands, instead of snapping Forrester’s spinal cord, were reaching out reverently for the fallen idol, picking up the scattered cylinder seals from where they had rolled onto the carpet, breathing heavily as he returned them to their cavities.

  On the basis of pure mathematics, with a proper analysis of the size ratio between the two men, Smith’s sheer muscle power and the almost helpless position in which Forrester found himself, there was no possibility of extricating himself from beneath the great brute’s weight. But pure mathematics meant nothing to Forrester at that moment: he knew that any second now Smith would bring the Narak effigy smashing down on his skull, and it would all be over. The thought generated a surge of fury which gave him the strength to rise not just to his knees but to his feet, sending Smith flying backwards into the winged chair – as Theresa Palmer’s body toppled out onto him.

  With a gasp of horror, Smith dropped the effigy to p
ush his mentor’s body away, and before he could get back to his feet Forrester snatched the statuette up and swung it sideways with all his force into the side of the man’s head.

  It was the first time he had seen him face to face, without the sacking mask. It was a massive face, as the man himself was massive, with great flat planes leading up to empty eyes as flat and unfeeling as a shark’s. Eyes that wavered in their concentration on his opponent. Smith swayed as he came upright but showed no other reaction to the blow and there was no room for Forrester to swing his improvised weapon again. He drove the heel of his hand just underneath Smith’s chin, intending to snap his neck backwards, and felt his wrist jar against the rock-like solidity of the man’s jaw.

  Then Smith threw himself at Forrester with the force of a steam train and Forrester went down under the impact, and that should have been the end of it. Except that Forrester let his opponent’s sheer momentum carry him onwards so that the top of Smith’s head thudded into the panelling behind Forrester, and the force of it, combined with the impact of the effigy minutes earlier, slowed Smith’s momentum at last.

  In the split second this gave him, Forrester slammed the statue of Narak into his enemy’s skull for a second time, and this time Smith slid to the floor and remained there, motionless.

  Forrester waited for a moment, to make sure it was not a ruse, and then took the straps from the pigskin suitcase and bound the man’s hands and feet together. He doubted even this precaution was necessary: Smith would not be waking again for many hours. For a long moment Forrester sat there looking from the body of Theresa Palmer to the unconscious frame of the man she had controlled, and the black shape of the Sumerian demon which had been her instrument. No, not her instrument, of course. The device selected by whoever had controlled her.

  He reached for the telephone, miraculously undisturbed by the battle, and made a call.

  25

  AUTOMATA

  Ten minutes later Alphonse Daguerre was making his way once again through the crowded lobby of the Hotel Chateau Bougerac, taking his usual pleasure in calling out his message in French, English and German.

  “M. Zaheer de l’UNSCOP rencontrerait-il M. Smith aux Salle des Automates en cinq minutes, s’il vous plait? M. Zaheer!”

  “Würde Herr Zaheer von UNSCOP Herr Smith im Automatenraum in fünf minuten treffen, bitte? Herr Zaheer!”

  “Would Mr. Zaheer of UNSCOP please meet Mr. Smith in the Automata Room in five minutes? Mr. Zaheer!”

  The Automata Collection of the Chateau de Bougerac was housed in the circular tower room on the far side of the hotel from the one which contained the library. The collection had begun when in 1780 a horse ridden by Count Honoré de Bougerac accidentally injured Alfonse Fronsard, the son of a renowned local watchmaker. The count had the young man carried to the chateau and attended by his own doctor, and as Alfonse recuperated he began to entertain the count’s children by making clockwork dolls which sat up, turned their heads from side to side and even clapped their tiny hands. When his injuries were fully healed, instead of returning to his father’s shop, Alfonse Fronsard was given a room at the chateau in which he constructed the life-sized automata which became the basis of the famous collection.

  There was L’Architecte, who could produce drawings for half a dozen magnificent homes, and even sketches for their gardens, all the while smoking a pipe. There was Le Jongleur, who could keep four balls in the air while his ivory eyes winked at the spectators in mischievous glee. And, most extraordinary of all, there was Le Joueur d’Échecs, who moved the pieces around on the chessboard as if he was a grand master, smiling and at intervals even sighing with pleasure at his own brilliance. The room was dimly lit, and the figures so lifelike that if a visitor sat down beside one of Fronsard’s mechanical creations it was hard, especially in the faint light, to tell them apart.

  So it was a moment before the newcomer realised that the figure beside Le Jongleur was in fact the Indian representative of UNSCOP, sitting there, motionless.

  “Mr. Zaheer! Are you all right?” said the newcomer.

  “Yes, thank you,” said Zaheer. “I am fine. Are you Mr. Smith?”

  “No, there must have been some mistake. You were not supposed to meet Mr. Smith at all.”

  “Then why was I paged so vigorously?”

  “I don’t know,” said the other. “There must have been some misunderstanding.”

  “Do you know who this Mr. Smith is? Or what he wants with me?”

  “All you need to know is this,” said the other man. “If you meet him, stay away from him.”

  “I don’t even know what he looks like,” said Mr. Zaheer.

  “He’s immensely strong and built like an ox. Don’t go near him – he might try to kill you.”

  “Kill me? But why?”

  There was a pause.

  “Because of that misunderstanding I mentioned. Look, please return to your room now. Speak to no one. Go inside and lock the door. Don’t come out until tomorrow morning. For your own safety, understood?”

  “Very well. And you?”

  “I will stay here and wait for Mr. Smith.”

  “You are not afraid of him?”

  “No. I want to clear up this misunderstanding. Goodnight, Mr. Zaheer.”

  “Goodnight, Mr…”

  “Lanchester,” said the newcomer. And Zaheer left the room.

  Toby Lanchester sat in the Automata Room for a long time, his fingers steepled, thinking intently. Then he glanced towards the partly open door.

  “He won’t be coming,” said the figure beside L’Architecte.

  Lanchester started violently. “What?”

  “Your golem isn’t coming, I’m afraid,” said Forrester, leaning into the light.

  “Forrester! What the hell are you doing here?”

  “Confirming my suspicions about who it was that arranged for the deaths of Charles Templar, William Burke and Jan Loppersum, who it was that tried twice to have me killed and who is now trying to eliminate two UNSCOP delegates to prevent a vote in favour of the creation of a homeland for the Jews.”

  “And who is that?”

  “You know perfectly well, Lanchester. It is you.”

  “You’re mad,” said Toby Lanchester.

  “If I were mad,” said Forrester, “you would not be here. You would still be in London instead of responding to my alarming telegrams by coming to Geneva in person. You would have been utterly unconcerned about the possibility of Mr. Zaheer, the UNSCOP member most likely to vote against a Jewish homeland, meeting Mr. Smith. The fact that you are here in this room confirms you have been using Smith as your instrument all along.”

  “Nonsense,” said Lanchester. “Why on earth would I do that?”

  “Because you are passionately opposed to the creation of the state of Israel, as a result of the influence of Sir Edward St. John Townsend.”

  “What influence? What on earth makes you think I have anything to do with Edward St. John Townsend?”

  “Crockford’s,” said Forrester. There was a brief pause.

  “You will have to be more specific,” said Lanchester.

  “A good friend of mine in Oxford this evening consulted, on my behalf, Crockford’s Clerical Dictionary for 1898. I already knew that St. John Townsend was the son of the Bishop of Exeter, but Crockford’s added a crucial detail: that his sister, Elizabeth Victoria Townsend, was Women’s President of the British Missionary Society.”

  “A notable achievement,” said Lanchester, “but I fail to see your point.”

  “My point is that Crockford’s helpfully added that Elizabeth went on to marry the Secretary of the British Missionary Society. I think you know his name.”

  The other man remained silent.

  “It was David Gordon Lanchester. And according to Who’s Who, your father’s name was also David Gordon Lanchester. In short, barring some extraordinary coincidence, Edward St. John Townsend was your cousin.”

  Lanchester looked a
t him for a long moment. “You have been diligent,” he said. “Nevertheless, I fail to see how that fact leads to the wild accusations you’ve just made.”

  “Let’s start with the moment when I noted that you had Townsend’s translations of Sumerian poetry on the shelves in your office, and you omitted to mention your relationship. Perhaps it was just a casual omission, but when I again raised his name in New York, in connection with the Narak effigy, you again avoided telling me something that in ordinary circumstances there would have been no reason to conceal.”

  Lanchester opened his mouth to reply but Forrester moved on.

  “Then let’s consider the fact that your cousin was not just the most passionate Arabist of his generation but also a man dedicated to ensuring the Jews were kept out of Palestine. It was he who ensured the appointment of Amin al-Husseini as the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem. Al-Husseini, who led the Arab massacres of Jews in Palestine in the 1930s and then fled to Berlin to encourage Hitler in implementing the Final Solution. In short, your cousin sponsored a dangerous pro-Nazi fanatic, and from that I assume the same description could fairly be applied to him.”

  “Ridiculous,” said Lanchester. “You know nothing about him.”

  “But you know quite a lot, don’t you?” said Forrester. “You must have hero-worshipped him as he hero-worshipped the Arabs. I can imagine you watching wide-eyed when he came back to England to celebrate his triumphs. Did you meet Aleister Crowley at one of his parties?” Forrester knew from the sudden stillness in Lanchester’s face that he had touched a nerve. “Did your cousin’s sophisticated friends induct you into the mysteries of the occult? Draw you into their debauched, deluded world?”

  “I never believed any of that nonsense,” said Lanchester. “I despised them all.”

  “Of course you did. And gave yourself the double pleasure of taking your revenge on them while using their gullibility for your own ends.”