Waking Caliban

by Mike Cartlidge

  Salim glared at him and then shook his head at al-Ahmad. Bakst turned to Ablett, who took a step forward and raised the Sterling back to his shoulder. al-Ahmad’s face showed his terror and a sour odor emanated from his lower body.

  “Mr. al-Ahmad?” I said. “In the interests of avoiding any more unpleasantness, perhaps you could tell us what you’ve found here?”

  He looked at me and, ignoring Salim’s hostile look, coughed to clear his throat. “The first cylinder contained a number of manuscripts. We looked at three of them. They seem to be originals for Twelfth Night, Coriolanus and Macbeth.”

  “In his handwriting?”

  He knew what I meant. I saw him nod. “The handwriting matches the papers you brought us.”

  Bakst tried to push past me but I held my hand against his chest to stop him crossing my line of fire and, grumbling under his breath, he stayed where he was. “The papers are genuine?” he asked.

  al-Ahmad nodded again. “Carbon dating will confirm it but there is already no doubt in my mind.”

  “And we have the complete works here?”

  al-Ahmad shrugged and Salim took a pace forward. His eyes looked colder than ever in the pale light. “The paper we obtained from Mr. Hastings states that the plays are contained in eight cylinders, which you can clearly see before you. I appeal to you, Bakst. There is wealth enough for all of us here. Surely, there is no need for further bloodshed. Let us come to an arrangement.”

  “An arrangement?” Bakst still held the night scope in his hands and he pointed it at Salim to emphasize his words. “Why, my dear Ghassan, should I wish to conclude an arrangement with you?”

  “Take half the cylinders. I will take the others.”

  “Divide the documents? Split up the collection? Is that what you want, Ghassan? It would be a blasphemy.”

  Salim tilted his head to one side. “It is a pragmatic solution, my friend. We divide the spoils and we can both leave here in peace.”

  Bakst smiled. “Look around you, Ghassan. My associates and I are in a commanding position. As far as I am aware, there is absolutely nothing to stop us from leaving here in peace, anyway.”

  Maybe, at this point, he gave some sort of signal to Ablett or maybe it was just that my distrust of these two was such that I was already half-prepared for what I guessed was coming next. I saw Ablett raise his weapon, snuggling the stock back into his shoulder and sighting it on Salim’s head. Salim cringed and started to push al-Ahmad in front of him as Ablett’s finger tightened on the trigger of his weapon. In that split second, I looked again into Browning’s eyes, that moment before he blew his brains all over the ceiling of that ruined farmhouse. I swiveled and sighted my Sterling on the middle of Ablett’s body.

  Before I could pull the trigger, there was movement behind me and I felt a crashing blow against the back of my head. I stumbled and dropped to one knee, turning as I saw Bakst pull the night scope back for another swing. As he lunged forward, putting his considerable weight behind the scope, I raised the Sterling and its stock took the force of the blow. Bakst, off-balance, stumbled and fell against me and I had to let go of the gun in order to keep my balance. Spinning, I came clear of Bakst’s body and back into a crouch.

  Looking up, I saw that Havoc, as aware as I of Ablett’s intentions, had dropped his hands and was starting to pull a pistol from the back of his belt. It was his action that gave me time. Ablett had turned his weapon towards me but now he aimed back at Havoc and fired a short burst, catching him in the arm and torso. I heard Havoc grunt and he dropped his pistol and fell backwards. I glanced at Salim and saw that he was still using al-Ahmad as an unwilling human shield, both men cowering as Ablett’s weapon turned towards them.

  There was no time to recover my Sterling, now somewhere under Bakst’s bulk, or to draw the pistol from my shoulder holster. I launched myself forward. Ablett, though, was fifteen feet or so away from me. I’d made maybe half that distance when he fired again. I heard the popping noise from the Sterling’s silencer, saw the moonlight’s glimmering reflection on the stream of spent cartridge cases that cascaded away from the gun, smelled the cordite.

  His burst of fire took al-Ahmad first. Then, as the muffled firing continued, I heard Salim’s scream, sharp in the night until it was cut off. By this time, I was already diving forward and I hit Ablett side-on, about the level of his groin. We tumbled to the ground. I kept rolling and came up on my feet. Ablett was rolling too and his forearm smacked against the side of my throat. I staggered back, gagging, and he recovered his balance and aimed a kick at my head. Somehow, I blocked it, letting the conditioning of a thousand tae kwon do practices take me along, taking the force of the kick against the fleshy part of my forearm and then turning my arm so that the bone made contact with his leg and pushed it away from me.

  As soon as I’d blocked, I followed through with a kick of my own to his midriff. I caught him off balance and his counter was late. He grunted and I flowed forward, my left arm raised at the elbow, my right coming through with a straight-arm punch. I was aiming at his Adam’s Apple – a deadly blow if I connected – but he turned his body and deflected the punch enough for it to glance off his chin.

  He may not have been down but I figured he was distracted enough for me to spin sideways and put some distance between us. I planted my feet on the grass and went for the Colt.

  “That’s enough, Mr. Hastings!”

  I froze and looked up. Bakst was holding one of the bodyguards’ Galils, its muzzle trained on my chest. I wondered if he knew enough about firearms to be able to cock and fire it and my momentary hesitation was enough for Ablett. He drew his own pistol and stood, feet apart, about two meters away from me. His right hand rubbed against his stomach and his breathing was ragged but the hand that held the gun was steady.

  I looked back at the scene by the hole in the ground. Salim and al-Ahmad were both sprawled in unnatural poses and, beyond them, Havoc was also down. I couldn’t tell how badly he’d been hit but he wasn’t moving and I figured it was unlikely that Ablett would miss vital organs with a machine gun burst over fifteen meters.

  Bakst took a step towards me and shook his head. “I must confess you are a constant surprise to me, Mr. Hastings. You were prepared to risk your life in an attempt to save Salim?”

  “Not because I’m in his pay, if that’s what you mean.” I looked squarely in his eyes. “I just don’t hold with murdering unarmed men.”

  “I told you the Paras were fucking pansies,” Ablett grunted to Bakst.

  “How regrettable,” Bakst said to me. “I offered you so much.”

  I ignored the pain from my bashed head and throat and watched his eyes in the dim light. “I never believed you’d let me live. Not once you’d got what you wanted.”

  He gave a short bark of laughter. “For some reason, Mr. Ablett seems to have taken a dislike to you. I was going to let him satisfy his ill humor later but, in the circumstances…”

  He stepped backwards again. I wondered what my chances were of pulling the Colt from its holster, cranking the slide and getting off a round before Ablett could shoot. On the whole, the odds weren’t promising.

  Bakst took another step back and turned his face towards Ablett. “Time for us to end our association with the gallant Major, I think!”

  I heard Ablett work his pistol’s action to lever a round into the breach. What the hell: I figured I might as well go down fighting and my hands grappled for the Colt. The holster button snagged and, even as I tried to clear it, I waited for Ablett’s bullets to rip into my flesh.

  When the shots came, their unsilenced roar stilled the cooing of the night-owls and sent the neighboring cows scrambling to their feet in panic.

  Chapter 35

  Besides the flesh wound I sustained in the Stratford alleyway, I was shot and wounded once before, when I was first sent to the Balkans. It’s possible that my memory is faulty but I recollect that there was little pain, just a sense of shock and dislocation. For a
moment, I wondered whether this was the same and I looked stupidly down at my body. I was amazed to realize that I was unharmed and even more surprised that Ablett could have missed from such a short distance.

  Then I came back to myself. There had been two shots, one shortly after the other. It was Ablett who was falling to the ground. Bakst looked up at me in surprise for a moment and then his hands tried to work the action on the Galil. I stepped forward and kicked the gun away from him, still struggling with the buttoned holster and finally getting the Colt clear. I worked the slide and, holding the pistol towards Bakst, stepped sideways, so that I could cover him and see Ablett. The ex-SAS man was moving, pushing himself into a sitting position and holding a hand to his shoulder.

  I looked around to try to pick the origin of the shot that had wounded Ablett. A figure clambered over the gate and started down the field towards us, holding a rifle fitted with a night scope. My heart jumped. The figure was swathed in a large khaki jacket but it was unmistakably Miranda. She stopped when she was about three meters away from me and held the rifle loosely, at waist height, covering Ablett.

  I tried to keep my voice calm. “How did you get here, Miranda?”

  She gestured towards the bodies of Salim and his bodyguards. “These bozos tied me up inside a big van they’d brought to carry away whatever they found here. They didn’t tie me very well…”

  “And the gun?”

  “They had a few of them strapped to the side panels of the van. I helped myself. Hey come on, Hastings, aren’t you glad to see me.”

  Bakst took a step towards us. “I’m sure he is. I am also delighted to see you, Miranda. I’m assuming that our little arrangement still stands.”

  She looked at him. “I’m not so sure I want to be in partnership with a would-be mass murderer, Bakst.”

  “If our previous understanding is no longer to your liking, I would be prepared to consider renegotiating…”

  “You’d give me ten percent instead of five? Let’s see now, I could take ten percent from you. Or Hastings and I could have the whole lot to ourselves. Gee, I wonder which of those deals is the most attractive.” She looked back towards me. “I’m going to need you to carry the cylinders up to Salim’s van, Hastings. It’s past the gate there, a couple hundred yards along the track.”

  I pointed towards Ablett and Bakst. “What about these two?”

  “I’ll cover them while you get the cylinders loaded up. Then we can take the guns and leave them here. They can work out how to get clear before anyone finds out what they’ve done.”

  “And then what? Are we still in partnership?”

  “Sure we are.”

  “Don’t believe her,” Bakst shouted. “That story about escaping from Salim’s van is an obvious lie. She had no need to escape! Salim thought she was working for him! From her first involvement in this affair, she’s deceived and double-crossed everyone involved. She’ll betray you too, Hastings, as soon as she no longer has a need for your services.”

  “Screw you, Bakst,” she said. “I was never on your side.”

  “You were never on anyone’s side but your own.” He turned his attention back towards me. “Now you disappoint me, Hastings. Don’t you understand? She needs you now. She has a problem here. She cannot possibly remove the cylinders and keep all of us under control. Not unless she kills us, of course. Normally I wouldn’t put that past her but I doubt she’ll want more shots fired from that unsilenced rifle and I have to say, if she was acting alone, I wouldn’t fancy her chances of dropping that and picking up one of the silenced firearms without us getting to her first.”

  “I’m not a killer,” she said. “I could have killed your man here but I just winged him.”

  Ablett, his hand still clutching his shoulder, sneered up at her. “I could have made that shot with a night scope but don’t ask me to believe you could. What were you aiming at, my head or my heart?”

  “I doubt you’ve got a heart, but I sure wouldn’t have missed your head.”

  Bakst took a step towards me. “Think, Hastings. As soon as she’s got you to do what she wants, she’ll kill both of us, me and Ablett. She’ll have to. She won’t be able to just leave us here. She knows, if she does that, we’ll get away and then come after her.”

  “Don’t listen to him,” she told me. “We need to move quickly, in case the gunshots have disturbed somebody. For God’s sake, gather the guns up for a start.”

  I looked between her and Bakst, trying to work out how far I could believe her. There was no doubt that we needed to recover all the weapons. I decided to do just that and, in the process, give myself time to think. I snipped the safety back on the Colt and returned it to my holster. Then I bent down and picked up the two Sterlings.

  Bakst wasn’t done yet. “Don’t be a fool, Hastings. Don’t you realize she’s responsible for the death of your man Thorpe?”

  That stopped me cold. I looked across at Miranda.

  “That’s ridiculous, Hastings,” she said.

  “How do you think Salim happened to engage the services of Havoc and Damage?” he asked me. “They weren’t his employees. They were nothing more than wide-boy gangsters who got by doing muscle work for organized crime syndicates in London. They were never mixed up with Middle Eastern gun-runners like Salim. It was Miranda who was the link between them. She knew the London underworld through her regular work. For God’s sake, half the artifacts she brokers deals for have been stolen.”

  “You’re pathetic, Bakst,” Miranda said.

  Bakst ignored her. “She recruited Havoc and Damage. She was with them in Stratford, that night they killed your friend. My God, man, don’t you understand they would have been following her orders?”

  Miranda glanced at me. “He’s lying through his teeth, Hastings.”

  I breathed deeply, wondering if I could believe her on this or anything else. For a moment, I looked away. It was all the opportunity Ablett needed. He rolled sideways and, from the corner of my eye, I saw his hand fall onto the Colt he’d dropped earlier. He continued to roll, looking to get the gun clear of his body. I shouted to Miranda and dropped one of the Sterlings I had under my arm, bringing the other up to fire as Ablett raised his hand.

  I had no time to think. I pulled the trigger and a burst hit him, taking him even as he fired, his shot shatteringly loud in the still night air. At the same time, I was aware from the report of the rifle that Miranda had also shot at him, although I suspected that her round went wide. I was moving quickly now, vaguely aware that Ablett’s bullet had missed me, sending another burst into his body, then realizing that Bakst was diving towards the Galil I’d kicked away from him earlier. I swiveled on my heels and pulled the machine gun’s trigger. Nothing happened: I heard was a dull click from the mechanism and realized that the Sterling’s magazine was empty.

  I dropped the gun and dived forward, kicking out as Bakst gathered up the rifle. He got off a round but my kick took him at chest height and the bullet went into the sky. I kicked him again and he staggered back and fell to the ground. The gun was still in his hands, though, and I could see its barrel coming up towards me. I moved quickly: this time, the Colt slipped smoothly from its holster and I flicked off the safety and sank to my knees, holding the pistol at arm’s length. I had some hopes that I could get him to stop but his hand reached for the Galil’s trigger. I aimed for his chest and shot, twice, and he sagged backwards and lay still on the grass.

  I turned back to Miranda, breathing heavily. Her face was white and she’d dropped the muzzle of the rifle to the ground and was leaning for support on the stock. I moved over to check Ablett, holding the pistol in front of me. There was no pulse when I felt his wrist.

  Miranda’s breathing was ragged but she was coming back to herself. “We gotta move quickly. We need to move the containers to my car and get the hell out of here.”

  “You’re still talking partnership between us, then?”

  “Sure, Hastings. I meant everything
I said. You and me. We can have the lives we always dreamed of.”

  I stepped closer to her. “You don’t know what I’ve always dreamed of, Miranda.”

  “OK, OK. When we get away from here you can put me straight. But now we have to move.”

  She walked past Salim’s body to stoop down beside the cylinder that, just a few minutes ago, he’d had Havoc open. She dropped the rifle and I saw her hands reach out and grab the lead tube, struggling with its weight. For a few moments I watched the bizarre scene as she struggled upright, clasping the cylinder to her stomach, and stood swaying in the middle of the array of dead bodies. Finally, she looked up at me with an expression of helpless appeal. “You gotta help me, Hastings. These things weigh a ton. I can’t move them on my own.”

  “There’s no time for any of that, Miranda.” I turned and looked back up the rise towards the copse. At first, there was no more than a faint glow from the low ridge that ran through the woods. Then I guess somebody stumbled and, for a moment, the beam from a torch shone into the night sky.

  She turned back towards me. “Who the hell is that?”

  “If it’s who I think it is, their appearance here has a neat symmetry. Although they’re going to have a hell of a shock when they take a look at this place.”

  “Are you crazy?” She dropped the cylinder to the ground and came to stand in front of me. “Who are they, Hastings? Did you call the cops?”

  “Hardly.” I looked back at the trees. The lights were closer now. “No, if the members of that little posse are who I think they are, they were in at the start of this whole business.”

  “I don’t get it.”

  “The well that Salim and his people excavated… The records show it was dug about two hundred meters from Hamnet Sadler’s cottage.”

  “Sure, but…” Her eyes grew wide as realization hit her.

  “That’s right,” I said. “We’re about to share our little secret with a bunch of archaeologists.”