The Stonehenge Legacy

by Sam Christer

  Gideon feels her panic infecting him. What he says next could unhinge her. But he has to let her know, she must understand what is going to happen. She has to realise that these are her last hours alive.

  148

  Draco’s eyes are fixed in his rearview mirror, his hands locked on top of the van’s steering wheel. About five miles back he caught a glimpse of something behind them. A dark blur way back. Maybe five hundred metres. Tiny but enough. The road out of Imber is always deserted. Always. But not today. The blur is still there.

  ‘Can you make out what’s behind us?’ he says to Musca, beside him. ‘What kind of vehicle?’

  The big butcher swivels in the passenger’s seat. He struggles with the shape. Not a van. Not an estate. ‘Too far back to see properly. A hatchback maybe. A Focus or a Golf, that kind of thing.’

  ‘Did you see where it came from?’

  He turns back round. ‘Not a clue. Why?’

  ‘The army doesn’t let anyone park down here. So where the hell did it come from and what’s it doing out at this time?’

  Musca leans forward so he can see it more magnified in the wing mirror. ‘Maybe they’re lost.’

  ‘Maybe.’ Draco takes his foot off the gas and slows the van down to thirty. Another glance in the rearview. A blood-red rising sun and the small black car. It’s closing the gap. The builder slows to twenty-five.

  ‘I’m going to brake and pull over without indicating. Get yourself ready.’

  Musca eases a subcompact Glock 26 from his waistband and cradles it on his lap.

  Draco hits the brakes. The car slides into a gravel run-off.

  The hatchback swerves, its horn blaring. But it doesn’t stop. A window rolls down and the driver shakes a meaty fist.

  Neither Draco nor Musca speak. Their eyes stay fixed on the tail-light of the car as it carries on down the dusty road. They watch until it completely disappears.

  ‘Pissheads,’ guesses Musca. ‘I’ll bet they’ve been on an all-nighter and are heading off to work.

  Draco restarts the stalled engine. It makes sense. They might be going over to Tilshead or Westdown Camp. ‘Let’s hope so,’ he says. ‘Today is not the day we want anyone on our tail.’

  149

  ‘You must be fucking crazy,’ Caitlyn says, backing away from Gideon. ‘Cults and and sacrifices? This is not for real.’ She paces nervously around the cell.

  Gideon glances to the door. The Lookers are out there. Volans and the others. They are waiting. They will hear.

  ‘And this place?’ She raises her arms. ‘What is it? The room next to the fucking death chamber? Are you and your whack-job buddies going to take me somewhere and roast me over a fire?’ Her mind can’t cope with the madness of what he’s been trying to tell her.

  He lets her vent. Pace. Blow off steam. Then he completes the picture. ‘Just before twilight you will be moved from here. You will be washed and changed into ceremonial robes and taken to the Great Room inside the Sanctuary. There the Master will perform a pre-sacrificial ritual.’

  Her eyes widen. He’s deranged. Insane. Isn’t he?

  Gideon tries to reassure her. ‘It is not sexual, but it is painful. Your body will be cut with the marks of the Sacreds. One incision for each of the trilithons. This is down your arms, your legs and your spine. Your wounds will be anointed with water of the Sacreds and you will be left for five hours.’

  ‘And then what?’

  ‘The Bearers will take you to the river. You will be immersed in the waters that the ancients crossed to erect the temple that you are in and Stonehenge.’

  As she hears the word, she thinks of Jake. The last intimate moments they spent together.

  ‘The henge is where the final part of the ceremony will take place. The offering.’

  She stares in utter disbelief. His words are from a lexicon of lunacy. Offering, sacrifice, Bearers, Sacreds. ‘How?’ The question jumps from her of its own accord. ‘How will it be done?’

  ‘It will be quick. Merciful.’

  ‘Merciful? What kind of word is that?’ She looks down. Her hands are trembling. It’s all so crazy she can’t believe any of this is going to happen. ‘Where’s Jake? Is he …’ Even saying his name distresses her. ‘Is he going to go through all this as well?’

  ‘No.’ Gideon tries to be gentle. ‘Your boyfriend is dead. The police found his body a few days ago. In a Campervan.’

  Caitlyn loses her breath. It’s what she feared. Locked in that hole, she’s thought as much a hundred times, but the news still breaks her.

  Gideon wraps his arms around her and feels her sob against his shoulder. Her whole body shakes as the tears come.

  Over her shoulder, he sees a face at the bars of the cell. The face of his father.

  150

  Sammy is already awake and causing mayhem by the time Megan gets back to her parents’ place. She has make-up plastered across her face and over half the bedroom furniture.

  ‘Making myself pretty, Mummy.’ She smiles proudly and puckers her newly lipsticked lips.

  ‘Come on, let’s get you cleaned up.’ Megan sets the shower running and tries to wipe up some of the mess.

  Her daughter walks to the low cabinet beneath the sink and collects her own bottle of shampoo. ‘I’m a big girl now, I can wash myself, Mummy.’

  It makes Megan smile. Her daughter is growing up. Another few months and she’ll start big school. It doesn’t seem five minutes since Sammy was a babe in arms. Time is going so fast.

  The water is fine and she helps Sammy over the edge of the cubicle, careful she doesn’t catch her toes, then closes the door. ‘You okay in there?’ She presses her face to the already steamed-up glass. Sammy slaps the other side, giggles.

  Megan holds her head and pretends to be hit, puts her face back to the glass.

  Sammy slaps it again and giggles even louder.

  This kind of clowning could go on all day.

  ‘Very funny,’ says a deep voice behind her.

  Megan spins round.

  ‘Adam.’ Her head fills with panic. ‘How did you get in?’

  He smiles thinly. ‘Back door. Your mum left it open. I must have told her a dozen times to lock it. She just doesn’t listen, does she?’

  Her heart is thumping. ‘What do you want, Adam? What are you doing in here?’

  He shuts the bathroom door behind him. Traps them both in the bathroom. ‘Where were you last night, Meg?’

  ‘What?’ She tries to sound indignant.

  ‘You were out all night. And not in your car. You left it on the drive, and you weren’t working. So where were you? Who were you with?’

  ‘I think you should leave, Adam.’ She tries to step around him but he blocks her.

  She stares him down. ‘Where I go and what I do is my business. Nothing to do with you. Now get out.’

  His face colours. A vein in his neck twitches.

  Megan tries for the door.

  Again he blocks her. Slips his left hand the other side of her so she’s trapped between his outstretched arms.

  ‘Let me out.’ Megan doesn’t shout. She has one eye on Sammy. Her baby girl is sat squeezing shampoo down the shower drain.

  ‘When I’m ready, Meg. Now tell me where you were.’

  He is so much bigger than she is. She knows she’ll lose any fight between them. But it doesn’t stop her trying. She drives a knee hard between his legs. He catches it with one hand. His fingers lock like a grip wrench. He squeezes until he sees pain on her face. With his other hand, he grabs her throat and pushes her hard against the bathroom door. ‘I hear you’ve been offered a job in Swindon. Promotion. Good for you. Best you take it.’ He glances towards his daughter. ‘Best for everyone. That way you keep your nose out of my life and out of everything else around here. Do I make myself clear?’

  ‘Daddy!’

  The voice shocks them both. A soaking wet Sammy is out of the shower.

  ‘Princess!’ He grabs a towel, wraps it arou
nd her and scoops her into his arms. ‘Let me take a look at you.’ He pulls open the bathroom door. ‘Do us a favour, Meg, and make a cup of tea while I get my daughter dry.’

  151

  The Henge Master sits poring over ancient maps and astronomical charts spread on the stone table. The day’s celestial movements are critical. The time is coming.

  ‘Father.’

  Both the voice and the word surprise him. Father. How he has longed to hear it. ‘Phoenix. Come in. I had forgotten that I’d sent for you.’

  Phoenix. The name pricks Gideon like a thorn in his flesh.

  ‘Sit down.’ The Master gestures to the stone bench by the table. ‘How is the girl? She looked distressed when I saw you.’

  ‘Understandably so.’

  ‘What did you tell her?’

  ‘Her destiny. What will happen to her today. It’s right that she be given an opportunity to come to terms with this, make peace with her own god.’

  ‘And perhaps be accepted by ours.’

  ‘Indeed. I would like to stay with her, if that’s possible. Right until the very end. I think she needs me to give her strength.’

  ‘The very end. Do you think you are ready for that?’

  ‘I’m sure I am.’ Gideon pauses, as if weighing their words. ‘Father, we have no more secrets. You think you hold something over me but you don’t. I know where we are. I know it from your name, my family name, my heritage. I know it from the great forces that you can muster, from the architecture and archaeology of this Sanctuary, from the position of the star shafts and the alignment with the henge. I know it, Father.’

  James Pendragon’s eyes are glittering in the dark. He walks closer to his son. ‘You are right. The time has come when we need to trust each other more. But know this: the ceremony has a certain vividness. It can be shocking. Are you sure you wish to be that close to the woman?’

  ‘I am sure.’

  ‘Very well. You may stay with her until the ritual of renewal has been completed, the Sacreds honoured and our debt repaid.’

  ‘And then?’

  ‘Then we reap the benefits. The autumn equinox is but twelve weeks away. This is the time the Sacreds will bless us.’

  Gideon’s eyes fall on the scrolls of paper on the Master’s desk. They look identical to those he found in Nathaniel’s observatory.

  The Master follows his eyes. ‘Do you know anything about archaeoastronomy or ethnoastronomy?’

  ‘Not much,’ he confesses. ‘The former is the study of how ancient people understood the movement of planets and stars and how they shaped their cultures around those movements. The latter is more the anthropological study of sky watching in contemporary societies.’

  The Master looks pleased. ‘That’s right. Our Craft combines the two. We use historical records, such as those you have seen in our archive, and we keep looking, checking constellations and planetary movements. The alignments with the henge and the Sanctuary are critical to our beliefs.’

  ‘I know.’

  ‘Of course you do. You are one of the few who understands that nothing here is accidental. The position of every building block and star shaft, the physical alignments with sunrise in the east and sunset in the west, the architectural homage to magnetic north, the tilt of the Descending Passages to mirror the inclination of the earth, it all has sacred meaning.’ The Master grows thoughtful. ‘I must leave shortly. There are things I need to attend to outside of the Sanctuary. We had a problem earlier today. Nothing to worry about but I have to go.’

  ‘Anything I can assist with?’

  ‘No, no. Not at all. It would help if you could keep the girl calm. She will grow more anxious by the hour.’ He picks up a long slate knife from among the maps.

  The ceremonial blade.

  He holds up his right hand and cuts into the palm. Blood trickles in a crimson snake down his wrist. ‘Give me your hand.’

  Gideon tentatively stretches his hand out and the Master draws the blade across his palm. Pendragon looks into his son’s unblinking eyes and takes the blooded hand in his own. ‘Blood on blood. Father and son. We are as one.’ He holds up their entwined fingers and draws Gideon tight to him. ‘When I next see you, it will be after the ritual has begun.’ He grips his son’s hand tighter. ‘Swear to me now, as my blood runs in yours and yours in mine, that our souls and our truths are aligned, that I can lay all my trust in you and in this bond between us.’

  ‘I swear it, Father.’

  Gideon watches the crimson drops drip from his elbow and knows it won’t be the last blood shed today.

  152

  Josh Goran flips his mobile shut, amazed at what Jimmy has told him. He and his boss are no-shows. The woman says she’s staying with her kid and Jimmy’s apparently busy chasing another lead. He can’t believe it. The cops here are worse than the FBI. Hundred per cent amateurs.

  Goran gets his men moving. Things are already running behind schedule and Echo Team has been compromised. Forced to abandon the surveillance on the builder’s van. But he isn’t worried. If there is anything to find out on the training range, he’ll find it.

  They get back to Imber by early afternoon. The road into the range is as deserted as it was in the early hours of the morning. But as they cruise past the restricted signs, the empty buildings and devastated gardens, they see ripples of mud on the road.

  ‘Fresh tank tracks,’ says Luc from the front passenger seat. ‘Not even wet yet.’

  ‘Challenger, most probably,’ observes Goran. ‘Piece of shit. I saw them in Kosovo. Brits would have been better sticking to the old Chieftains.’

  ‘Or Rotem K2’s,’ says Luc. ‘Korean Black Panthers. They’ve got fire-and-forget technology and full nuclear, biological and chemical armour protection.’

  ‘K2’s are an army equivalent of a Kia,’ shouts Lynton from the back. ‘Who’d go to war in a Kia?’

  They all laugh.

  Goran takes the Transit off road down a dirt track, west towards Warminster. It bumps around for about a mile and a half then they park up and drag out rucksacks filled with cameras, clipboards, fake documentation and specimen bags. Their cover this time is as members of the International Entomological and Natural History Society. Insect hunters. Lynton has mocked up IENHS access documentation to the Imber range and even filled their bags with research papers on bees, bugs and all manner of weird creatures.

  Luc and Jay drop ramps from the back of the van and unload four Yamaha YZ125 trail bikes.

  ‘Echo, November, Sierra and Whiskey Teams, this is Command,’ Goran barks into the radio. ‘We are go. Repeat, we are go. Command out.’

  The four bikes start their outward sweep, while Echo, November, Sierra and Whiskey recon teams begin to walk inwards from the circumference of the range.

  153

  Warminster is eight point two miles west of Imber.

  It takes the Henge Master twenty-five minutes to make the journey. On any day other than Sunday he would have done it in only nineteen. But Sunday is a day for churchgoers and tourists, and the old Saxon town has eight major places of worship and the kind of surroundings people don’t want to hurry past.

  His vehicle rumbles through the main gates of Battlesbury Barracks and halts behind the parade ground. As he makes his way to his office, each soldier he passes stands to attention and salutes their commanding officer, Lieutenant Colonel Sir James Pendragon. Routine and ritual is as important in his public life as it is in his secret one.

  Settled behind his desk, he instructs his staff officer to send his guest through. The man he’s travelled here to meet. Wiltshire’s Deputy Chief Constable, Gregory Dockery, is in plain clothes – a grey wool suit with white cotton shirt and grey tie. In his sacred robes he would be known only as Grus.

  ‘How are you?’ Pendragon shakes his hand and gestures to a pair of brown leather Chesterfields.

  ‘I will be glad when tomorrow has come.’

  ‘As will we all.’ Pendragon smiles as he sits. ‘
How are you managing your interested parties, the FBI, Interpol, Home Office? Tell me.’

  ‘Vice President Lock is back in the US. He rings the Chief five times a day. His wife is drunk or drugged all the time that she’s not on TV crying or pleading. The Home Office people are bored. They seem resigned to dealing with the fallout when the girl’s body turns up. As for Interpol, well, you know how useless Interpol is. Might as well ask the post office to find her.’

  ‘So all is good?’

  ‘Not quite.’ Dockery grows fidgety. ‘I think we may have a potential problem with the lone American wolf.’

  Pendragon nods. ‘Major Joshua Goran, former Special Ops Command. I wondered how long it would be before he started causing trouble.’

  ‘Goran has a couple of my men on his payroll. They’re only feeding him what we want, but I got word that dogs in his pack are sniffing around Imber.’

  ‘Makes sense. Draco said he saw people out there this morning. They tailed him and Musca for a little while but pulled out when they realised they’d been seen.’

  ‘Any harm done?’

  ‘I don’t think so.’ Pendragon muses for a moment on the incident. ‘Most of our resources are stretched in preparation for tonight and tomorrow morning. But I will increase surveillance at the Sanctuary. I’ll make sure Goran is not a problem.’

  ‘Good.’ Dockery creaks forward on the leather, places his hands on his knees. ‘I also have some difficulties within the force, but I’m hoping they’re being dealt with.’

  ‘You mean Aquila’s woman?’

  ‘Yes. She’s off the case. Hunt was confused of course, but bought the reason for the transfer in the end. She starts a new cold case unit in Swindon tomorrow and we’ve destroyed any physical or electronic evidence she had put together. I also had Aquila pay her a visit this morning. I’m told it had the desired effect.’

  ‘Let’s hope so. And your son, what about him and the woman?’

  Dockery flinches. ‘He remains a worry. Seems he has a lot of faith in the DI.’