by Stephen Cole
Only they didn’t. The house stayed cloaked in a silence as thick as the shadows.
‘You sure you didn’t dream this figure you saw?’ Motti demanded, his fingers hovering over a thick, heavy bolt on the massive oak door.
‘I swear someone was there.’
‘Only I don’t hear no alarm bells …’ Patch looked apologetic. ‘And you’ve been pretty jumpy, Jonah.’
‘Maybe they thought we were the cleaners,’ said Motti sourly. ‘Aw, this is bullshit.’
‘I tell you I saw someone. Right when you were saying …’ he shrugged, ‘… whatever it was you were saying.’
‘Ancient Inuit prayer for protection ’gainst evil,’ whispered Motti. ‘Good all-purpose curse-buster, since Tye ain’t around to work her voodoo.’
‘Please say you’re joking,’ sighed Jonah.
‘Something scared off your little shadow, right?’ Motti started retracing his footsteps. ‘C’mon, we should get the hell out of here. We are seriously pushing our luck.’
Jonah felt a mixture of relief and humiliation as he once again tagged on after the others. They wound their furtive way through the splendid halls and corridors. Somehow, the atmosphere seemed more threatening than before. Dark, accusing eyes stared down from the portraits. Suits of armour stood poised, ready to strike out at them without warning.
All three of them slowed down as they neared the room where they’d heard the woman’s voice, but it was silent now, its door still firmly closed.
After what seemed like hours, they reached the white, clinical tiles of the snake lab and the hothouse beyond. Jonah almost welcomed its stifling heat. It was a sign they were nearly out.
‘Patch, you go first,’ said Motti, ‘clear the way of critters, since you like ’em so much. Then I’ll go through with the bag. Jonah, wait till I’m well clear, then follow us through. We’ll both help you out through the crawl space, but take it nice and slow, ’K?’
Jonah didn’t argue. A little bruised pride was the least of his problems right now.
Patch shone his torch into the glass case through which they’d entered the house. There were no snakes there now – perhaps they had slithered outside? Jonah chewed his lip as Patch clambered into the case and twisted himself round ready to take on the crawl space. Once he’d vanished from sight, Jonah gave Motti a hand getting inside. Motti pushed his bag and torch through the hole first, then started to wriggle carefully after them.
For a moment Jonah stood alone, uneasy in the thick, hissing darkness, waiting for the all-clear.
‘Leaving so soon?’
There was someone else there with him. A woman’s voice, quiet and foreign. She sounded amused. Jonah swung round to see, but there was only blackness and shadow all around.
‘Perhaps you are lost? I do not think you are where you think you are …’
Jonah scrambled inside the case, ducked down and shoved himself into the crawl space. ‘Someone’s here,’ he shouted.
Motti shone the torch in his eyes, shushing him. ‘Are you crazy?’
‘It’s no good! We’ve got to run for it!’ He pushed forward, catching his arm on the glass as he tried to muscle through. A hard, sickening slide through his flesh, and the skin burnt hot. He gasped.
‘Take it slow, Jonah,’ hissed Patch. ‘God, Mott, he’s cut himself.’
‘Hold still, you’re gonna break the … Patch, help me with him!’
Jonah felt their arms gripping his, hauling him out. The glass scraped his shin through his jeans, caught on his shoe – but somehow it didn’t break, the alarm didn’t sound. The grass was sweet-smelling, cool against his hot face.
‘Get up,’ said Motti gruffly. ‘Now!’
‘Shit! He’s bleeding a lot.’ Patch sounded panicked. ‘Can we carry him?’
‘We gotta walk light to beat the sensors.’
‘There was someone in there, I’m telling you!’ Jonah whispered hoarsely. ‘She’ll hit the alarms! We have to run –’
‘Jonah, you gotta hold it together, OK?’ Motti’s glasses were sliding down his nose, but he held Jonah’s stare, as if willing him to calm. ‘It’s OK. Be cool. Breathe. It’s OK.’
‘I’m sorry,’ Jonah croaked, getting a hold on himself. ‘But I swear she was in there, Motti, watching us.’
‘Like whoever that was watching us in the hall?’
Jonah squared up to him. ‘I didn’t imagine it!’
Patch laughed nervously. ‘Maybe it was a snake?’
‘It sounded like that woman in the room we heard talking to Samraj.’
‘The dark plays tricks on us,’ Motti said soothingly. ‘You got a little freaked out in there, buddy, but you’re OK … and now we gotta go.’
Jonah bit his tongue, nodded meekly. He supposed there would be time to argue the toss later – if they made it out in one piece. He stared down at his arm, which was starting to throb like hell, glad of the black clothes that hid the sticky wetness of the wound, the damage done.
Patch tore off some duct tape and wrapped it tight round his arm, a makeshift tourniquet. ‘That good?’
‘Hurts like hell.’
‘Hell is what happens if we get caught,’ said Motti quietly, cautiously leading them away from the house. ‘You remember that.’
Their luck lasted as far as the outer wall.
The rubber footholds Motti had applied so painstakingly should have made the climb easy, and Jonah did his best to scale the brickwork as lightly and carefully as Patch and Motti had before him. But the cut in his calf was stinging sharply: he could feel sticky blood soaking his trouser leg, dribbling into his sock and shoe. Just as he was nearing the top he scraped the wound against one of the footholds and gasped with pain, gripped the wall to stop himself from falling.
And the goddamn alarms finally went off. The din and blare was incredible, even all the way out here.
Motti swore. ‘Get the hell down from there, numbnuts!’ Jonah threw himself down from the top of the wall, landed awkwardly and rolled over. Motti grabbed him by his good arm and hauled him up. ‘What the hell did you do?’
‘I’m sorry. My leg, I cut it on the glass …’
Patch slipped an arm round Jonah’s back, tried to help Motti take his weight, though he was too small to be a lot of help. ‘You did your leg in and you never told us?’
‘I didn’t want to make a fuss –’
‘If we’d known, we coulda helped you,’ Motti grunted. ‘You don’t get extra points for trying to be a hero.’ He and Patch broke into a shambling run down the slope of the olive grove, half dragging, half carrying Jonah between them. ‘God knows who’s gonna come running at those alarm bells. But maybe if you’re real lucky, there’ll be a priest among ’em.’
‘A priest?’
‘Sure,’ said Motti darkly. ‘He can read you the last fricking rites once I’ve kicked your ass all over this goddamn olive grove.’
‘At least it proves one thing that was bugging me, Mot,’ Patch piped up. ‘I was starting to think the alarms had been done before we got there. You know, like in Cairo. That it was maybe a set-up.’
‘Well, hey, cool, guess the geek’s done us a good turn,’ muttered Motti. ‘He’s reminded us we’re just the best there is. When we don’t have a goddamn amateur screwing things up for us.’
Jonah listened to the deranged howl of the sirens. He didn’t say a word. What the hell could he say?
When Motti judged that they’d covered a safe distance, they lay low in bushes for most of the night, awkward and uncomfortable. At one point a helicopter swooped in over the house like a UFO, blazing with light as it circled the area and then descended on the grounds.
‘Think it’s the cops?’ said Patch.
Motti shrugged. ‘Like I say. When someone like Samraj gets ripped off, it ain’t just the cops she calls.’
When the helicopter departed, the dark countryside fell quiet save for the drowsy thrum of the cicadas. Jonah’s arm throbbed in time with their song,
and his leg was killing him. Sometimes he drifted into fevered catnaps, and each time he heard the woman’s voice again in his head and woke with a start. He pictured her as some hunched and hideous witch, holding vigil in the shadows with her snake familiars, watching him through unearthly eyes.
As the morning sun began to warm the cold grey soup of cloud and sky, Jonah watched the beautiful Tuscan countryside resolve itself around him. Right now, he wished he could trade the whole lot for the hard, safe slab of mattress in his old cell.
‘C’mon,’ said Motti suddenly. ‘I think maybe it’s safe to move now. The car’s another half-mile.’
‘Is that all?’ sighed Patch. ‘What if they’re still out searching for us?’
‘We should see ’em coming now it’s getting light.’ He glanced at Jonah. ‘You OK to walk?’
‘Walk …’ Jonah nodded to himself. ‘Yeah, maybe it’s time I did exactly that.’
‘I’m …’ Motti shrugged. ‘I’m sorry for losing it with you, OK, man? I know it’s early days for you. It wasn’t your fault.’
‘Yes, it was,’ said Jonah. ‘And I could have got you both killed.’
‘Well, now you’ve learned for next time,’ said Patch. ‘Ain’tcha?’
‘C’mon. Time to move on.’ Motti struck out on to the path that led down into the sleepy hamlet. Patch followed him in silence, rubbing his fingers distractedly across the leather over his missing eye.
Jonah hung back a few seconds. Then he trailed along behind, like driftwood towed in their wake.
Chapter Thirteen
Jonah’s elation at making it back to the car and escaping Bellosguardo soon bled away at the prospect of having to explain his foul-ups to the chief. Next to the crushing sense of humiliation he felt, his injuries were little more than scratches.
‘Relax,’ Motti said, burning rubber as they tore back up the autostrade. ‘I’ll square things with Coldhardt.’
‘Yeah.’ Patch was back hunched over his Game Boy. ‘The important thing is, we got away with the stuff he wanted. The rest is just details.’
‘I’ll call ahead, make sure there’s a doctor waitin’ for you,’ Motti added.
‘Thanks,’ said Jonah. ‘I don’t – I mean …’ He sighed. ‘No one’s ever watched out for me like this before. You know?’
Patch actually looked up at him from his busy screen. ‘Told you. We watch each other’s backs.’
‘Even after I screwed up the whole thing?’
‘Will you quit beating yourself up?’ Motti threw a grin back over his shoulder. ‘That’s my job! Just promise me one thing, geek.’
‘What’s that?’
‘That you ain’t bleedin’ over my seats. ’Cause if you are, you’re gonna know what bleedin’ really is, right?’
Jonah smiled. ‘Right.’
He slipped in and out of sleep. The journey seemed to take hours, even at Motti’s breakneck speed, but finally the buzz of Coldhardt’s gates woke Jonah properly. They were back in the grounds, but he felt no better. His failure weighed heavy on his mind.
‘Tye and Con ain’t back till this afternoon,’ Motti reported, as he swung the car into a large, air-conditioned garage. ‘So, unlucky – you got no nubile nurses to fetch you drinks and stuff.’
Jonah just grunted.
Patch staggered out of the car and threw up into an empty bucket standing beside a Land Rover, doubtless placed there for just that reason. ‘You need a hand getting to your room?’ he muttered, wiping his mouth.
‘I can manage it,’ said Jonah. He wasn’t at all sure he really could, but he decided he’d already shown himself up enough today.
A suited doctor was waiting in his apartment in the castello grounds to stitch him up. He asked no questions, worked swiftly and in silence then got the hell away. Jonah felt the sudden urge to ask him for a lift out of here. I can pay you, he wanted to say. I have this diamond, you see.
He looked at it now, nestling in his sweaty palm. Then he hurled it into the cold stone fireplace.
Take it. It’s worth a hell of a lot more than I am.
Tye wished Coldhardt would up the lighting a little for these debriefs. She was dog-tired, both from the long flight back and the partying the night before – and they hadn’t even had time to grab a shower before being summoned to the hub. Con sat beside her, a touch of pink about her skin from the sun they’d caught in Aqaba. Shame that was about the only thing they’d managed to bring back with them.
‘You found no trace of the car with the fake plates?’ Coldhardt enquired.
Con shook her head. ‘A no-show in the car park, and no record of it ever having been there. Not in the visitors’ log, anyway.’
‘Oh, right, I can see them signing in to the building,’ said Motti sourly. ‘“Name? Masked Pseudo-religious Maniac. Organisation? Cult of Ophiuchus. Car registration? Shit, one of yours, actually –”’
‘Thank you, Motti,’ said Coldhardt heavily.
Tye rolled her eyes at Motti, but she was smiling. He was always noisy after he got away with something. Like Patch, the buzz kept him going for days. Jonah, on the other hand, seemed quiet and withdrawn, staring at the blank screens on the wall like he could see something there. She doubted it was just the disappointment that, so far, his code-cracking programs had turned up nothing on the mysterious cipher.
‘Tye,’ said Coldhardt suddenly, ‘what news of the lekythos?’
‘It was there maybe twenty-four hours. Samraj’s assistant booked a top level courier the morning after the black Chrysler showed up.’ She glanced at Con. ‘According to the dispatch boys, a “package” was transported by the courier to an address in Rome.’
‘Well, well. I wonder why she kept it there for twenty-four hours?’
‘I don’t know. There was nothing special about the labs at Aqaba,’ Con told him. ‘Just boring foodstuff research. We think it may have been a drop-off point, the nearest Serpens offices.’
‘The nearest by car, perhaps,’ Coldhardt agreed. ‘By plane, the Turkish and Italian facilities would be far easier to reach.’
‘They might not get the vase through customs,’ Patch argued.
‘Yeah, and can you imagine their passport photos?’ Motti snorted. ‘Any distinguishing features? Big black veil-thing over face.’
‘I think we can assume that their resources might stretch to bypassing traditional routes in and out of the country,’ Coldhardt surmised. ‘But since you’re feeling so loquacious, Motti, please give Tye and Con your field report.’
Jonah stiffened.
Motti explained that they’d photographed the fragments as instructed, and went on at length about how his ingenious plan of entry had been executed. When he got on to the snakes they’d braved in the hothouse and the gory discovery in the lab, Tye turned up her nose.
‘The fragments are of a manuscript written in Ancient Greek, unencrypted, allegedly from the pen of Ophiuchus himself,’ Coldhardt announced. ‘I’ve attempted a preliminary translation. “The root of the snake” is mentioned – possibly as an ingredient of the Amrita.’
Patch nodded. ‘Is that why Samraj is torturing the snakes, then – she’s looking for their roots?’
Coldhardt paused and smiled. ‘She’s doing many things in her quest for this secret. She is a first-class biologist.’
‘First-class bitch, more like,’ Con whispered. But Tye was more interested in the way Coldhardt had carefully evaded the question. What was it about Samraj that made him so secretive?
‘Well, Samraj was there when we did the place,’ Motti went on. ‘Coulda turned us into one of her specimens.’
Coldhardt frowned deeply. ‘You didn’t mention this before.’
‘Some woman was talking to her in one of the rooms we passed.’
‘You saw Samraj?’
‘No, the door was closed,’ said Jonah, breaking his silence.
‘Then it’s possible you misheard,’ said Coldhardt thoughtfully. ‘I understand the atmosphere there
was rather highly charged. Jonah, Motti mentioned you thought you actually saw somebody watching you.’
Jonah glanced at Motti, swallowed hard. ‘Yes. I’m sure I did.’
‘And do you believe, as he does, that it was this person who activated the alarms upon your attempted escape?’
Tye noticed Motti staring at Jonah, nodding his head a fraction, encouraging him to agree. You didn’t need uncanny instincts to know that something bad had kicked off at the mansion, and that it involved Jonah up to his cute choirboy’s neck.
‘I don’t know,’ Jonah faltered, blushing. ‘I s’pose it’s possible …’
‘All things are possible.’ Coldhardt smiled, leaned back in his seat. ‘The important thing is, you got away safely with a record of the contents of that safe, as instructed.’
Tye was watching Coldhardt closely. Motti wasn’t the only one covering something up. Coldhardt didn’t believe that Samraj was in that house for a moment, or that this mystery woman had hit the alarms – but for whatever reason, he had decided to keep his opinions to himself. She supposed that was his prerogative. A boss spared his workforce the details of how the business was run, and a parent didn’t tell his children everything …
Why then did she feel so uneasy?
Once they were dismissed, Jonah walked back to the hangout with the others. But while the four of them chatted and caught up, he kept a stony silence.
Motti swung open the double doors into the hangout and led the way inside. ‘Hey, geek. How you feelin’?’
‘The lengths some people will go to get out of training,’ said Tye.
Still Jonah kept silent.
‘Hey, I’m talking to you,’ said Motti, tapping on Jonah’s head. ‘Or did the doc stitch your mouth up along with your arm and leg?’
‘Why’d you lie back there, Mot?’ Jonah demanded. ‘You know it was me who set off the alarms.’
Con frowned. ‘You did?’
‘I screwed up climbing the wall.’
‘He was badly hurt,’ said Patch quickly.
Motti nodded. ‘Geek had some kind of panic attack –’
