by Sam Christer
There’s a polite thump on the door.
‘Come in.’
Metal locks clunk. Oak creaks. A dishevelled Sir Owain enters, a bag in each hand, his hair blown wild by the helicopter’s rotors. ‘I hoped you would be up.’ He smiles appreciatively.
‘As if it would be otherwise. Put those down and come sit by the fire with me.’
‘Do you have any water?’ He takes off his jacket and heads to one of two hard chairs set either side of the blaze.
‘I drew some from the well, last night.’ Myrddin reaches to a rough wood side table and tips a terracotta jug until crystal clear liquid fills a matching beaker.
Owain takes it and remembers he’s been drinking sweet fresh water from this ancient spring since he was a child.
Myrddin waits for him to finish. ‘Has Jennifer spoken to you of matters of the Cycle?’
‘No. She cannot bring herself to do so. But she carries the secret in her eyes. I saw it in Glastonbury and felt her pain in trying to hide it.’
‘These are tough times.’ He looks to the roaring flames. ‘The most vicious of fires forges the strongest steel.’
‘Vicious is a good description of my dilemma. My wife is pregnant with our first child, and instead of preparing for the birth of my son I must prepare for my death. And, to add insult to such fatal injury, in the white heat of this pain I must hammer out a new love for her.’
‘Such is the way of the Cycle.’
‘Then forgive me, but I wish it were not this way.’ He laughs sadly. ‘Have we picked well, Myrddin? Is Lance truly the man I hope he is, one who can protect her and my son?’
‘He will become that man. Fate decrees it and I will ensure it.’
‘Thank you.’ Owain looks at the grey light pressing the windows. ‘Enough of this now. I am stuffed to bursting with pains of the heart.’ He picks up a gnarled log and throws it on the fire then settles back in the chair. ‘Talk to me about other things. Of life and memories. Anything but our never-ending duties and what is expected of us. I shall spend the rest of the night here with you and will return to the house when a new day has broken and prepare for the meeting with the Blood Line.’
82
SOHO, LONDON
Jet-lagged and hungry, Mitzi sips coffee and watches dawn break, not in all its glory, but in shabby shades of nicotine and burned orange.
She’s come out on the roof garden of the hotel for fresh air, her eyes fixed south towards the Thames but her mind on events thousands of miles away. Her children: one sick and needing her, the other angry and not wanting her. Her sister: lonely and confused because her heart’s been broken. Her ex: violent and troublesome, but still the only man she ever loved. Irish: a good soul, ground down by the job, now just bones and skin waiting to be buried. Life seems to go so fast and to do such damage with its speed.
Mitzi returns to her room, makes instant coffee and tries to work out why Sophie Hudson got killed. She has a very good idea what the motive was, but needs to know all the facts before she draws conclusions.
Once her computer’s powered up she reads the full report from Kirstin, then examines JPEGs of the crime scene. Digital shots of turned-out drawers, smashed vases, and emptied containers. Coffee, sugar, chocolate, rice and cereals are spread all over the floors. Sophie’s clothes have been torn to shreds. Including those she was wearing.
Mitzi checks the ME’s report. The girl was badly beaten. Punched both sides of the face. Hit in the stomach and breasts. There are signs of bruising to oral, vaginal and anal cavities.
A rookie might write off the scene as a rape robbery. It looks for all the world like a cokehead came looking for cash and lost sexual control when he found a pretty girl home alone.
But Mitzi knows better.
Whatever swabs have been sent to the labs will come back to show nil semen and nil DNA. She hadn’t been raped, she’d been cavity searched. The bruise patterns around Sophie’s wrists and cotton traces in her mouth indicate she’d been bound, gagged and interrogated by someone ruthlessly looking for something.
Mitzi opens her laptop case and takes out the memory stick.
It has to be this.
Having seen the autopsy pictures she was in no doubt that Sophie had told her torturer that she’d given the stick to the FBI woman. She’d have spat out that particular fact soon after the first punch in the face, but the murderer would have tortured her just to check it right up to her dying breath.
Now he’ll be coming after her.
Either him, or the men who are paying him for his brutal and homicidal skills.
83
LONDON
Angelo Marchetti wakes in pain.
It had been nearly four a.m. by the time nurses at St Thomas’s finished stitching him up. There’d been a couple of awkward moments. One when he’d needed to drop the triage nurse a fifty-pound note and a story about a jealous husband coming home early to stop her calling the cops. And another when he was leaving and saw an ambulance unloading two of the guys he shot.
Aside from that, he counted his blessings. The wound was only two inches deep and hadn’t hit anything except fat on his hips.
He fumbles in the little white bag the hospital pharmacist gave him and takes two painkillers with the last of the water he’d put on the bedside cabinet. For the next hour, he sleeps. Submerges himself in a soft and healing slumber, glad to be unconscious.
It’s eight o’clock when he comes round and stares at the digital clock that’s also charging his iPhone. He makes it three in the morning in DC, the place where there is one less store assistant sleeping soundly because he paid for her to be murdered.
He swings his legs out of bed and blood rushes to his head. He can almost feel the guilt too, growing inside his cranium like a tumour. He knows he mustn’t think about it. He can’t afford to let it eat away at him.
The girl’s a casualty. Collateral damage. Nothing else.
But the harder Marchetti tries to blot her out, the more her ghost haunts him.
He staggers to the bathroom and looks at the blood-soaked patch around his hip. He wishes he’d been killed last night. Wishes those punks had got their shit together and put him out of his misery.
He runs the shower and tries to face up to what he has to do.
Today is the start of another day. Another series of bold steps in the quicksand of sin. And unless he gets what he needs, at least another murder to blacken his soul.
84
SOHO, LONDON
Bronty knuckle-raps Mitzi’s door to walk her to breakfast.
She ushers him in with the overnight news: ‘Sophie Hudson, Goldman’s assistant, got killed in her apartment.’
‘When?’ He shuts the door behind him.
‘Yesterday. I got a call from DC Police just before I went to sleep. Tortured and neck broken. Pro job by the look of the autopsy shots. Twist and snap, it’s much harder to do than they show on TV.’
He flinches. ‘Too graphic, Mitzi. I don’t do death this side of coffee and carbs.’
‘I figure someone’s after the stick she gave me.’ She hands him two sheets of paper that she ran off in the business lounge more than an hour ago. ‘Top page is a copy of the transcript Vicks sent us last night. Underneath is a new fragment she just mailed through from the cryptologists.’
Extract from directory headed ‘The Arthurian Cycle’:
Beware you who boldly turn this page and bend inquisitive head to look upon these weighted words.
Be sure your soul is strong enough to support their meaning and you are naught but noble and chivalrous.
Be certain you have only fullness of courage and surfeit of kindness in your mind and heart.
Be absolute that you are virtuous and incorruptible, for this text is written in holy blood and is by divine right a mirror held to your soul.
Should you be found wanting then your search for the secrets of ‘the ruler known by many names’ will not only be the death of you, it will be the
ruination of your afterlife. Be warned – if Darkness finds a home in you, then you in turn will find no home in the Promised Land and you will curse your family with your sins.
Take not my words lightly, for I am the sorcerer who made the true king, the one who was, who is and who will always be.
It is I, who forged his righteousness in the image of man and doused his soul in human mortality, I who curdled fact and fiction to create the clouds that cover centuries of history.
Know that knowledge is never absolute. Learn this, or you will never understand the Arthurian Cycle and how it turns with the planets and shapes the history of the earth.
Every man has a birth. All belief has a beginning. Every circle has a start.
But what if the strongest of circles were cast whole? If, like molten iron, they were poured into a seamless mould. Would the beginning of such a circle be said to come at the moment the hot metal touched the cold? Or would the start lie in the creation of the mould? Or in the hand of he who created the mould? Or in the bodies of those who created the man who created the mould? Or in the mind and heart of the one who imagined it all? See how ill-equipped we are to speak of beginnings and endings, of time and place and our positions within them.
To separate great men from the great myths that surround them, you must understand the forging of the Circle of Iron. For the King of Kings is a Man of Iron. Belief is the mould and generation by generation a new man is poured into it. Century by century, those who stand around him point him out and say he was the one, is the one, will be the one.
And, so it is, that to those who chronicle such feats, it seems at times that there are either many of him, that he lived for ever, or that he never lived at all.
Be careful in your quest for knowledge.
The road is long and journey perilous.
I know for I have fallen a thousand times in its rocky ditches and sunk ten thousand times in its sulphurous lakes.
Better to live happily with Ignorance than suffer the unrequited love of Knowledge. Remember, Ignorance is the father of Peace and Peace has no prejudice. Both Ignorance and Peace can sow as bountifully in the soils of Deceit as they can in the earths of Honesty.
Bronty lowers the paper and sees Mitzi waiting for his opinion. ‘Without seeing much text it’s difficult to know what to make of this. I could easily jump to foolish assumptions and —’
‘Oh, for God’s sake, Bronty! People got killed for this. Just tell me what you think without all the lawyery cop-out crap.’
‘Okay.’ He holds the paper so she can see it and slides his finger over a line. ‘Here the writer claims to be a sorcerer.’ He stabs another paragraph. ‘And here he expounds The Arthurian Cycle and its role in the universe. The author goes on to claim he is the sorcerer who made “the true king”. He says he cast him in the image of man. Created him like a circle of iron that has no beginning and no end.’ He pauses to see if she’s making the connections on her own. ‘Does any of this sound familiar to you?’
‘Yeah, I’m thinking about superheroes, Iron Man in particular and how cute Robert Downey Junior is.’
‘Think God instead of Hollywood.’
‘You’re going to have to explain that to me.’
‘Forget King Arthur for a minute, this is a tale of God the Father – he is the sorcerer, and Jesus Christ the true king. It is about how Jesus was created by a divine power, how he died but never died, how he rose and is still among us. How some people believe in him and others think he’s just the stuff of legend, myth and fairy tale.’
‘Shit. Really?’ Mitzi takes the paper from him. ‘You really see that?’
‘Was Christ not the King of Kings, the one true King?’
She plays devil’s advocate. ‘Not to everyone.’
‘But you get my drift?’
‘Drift a little more, so I’m certain.’
‘Well, perhaps what’s on that memory stick isn’t a stack of stories about some old king and his knights. It could be that Arthur was just another name for Jesus and what you have here, concealed in centuries of code, is an extract from an unknown gospel. Now, think how precious that would be.’
85
CAERGWYN CASTLE, WALES
Blossom blows across the courtyard as Owain makes his way from Myrddin’s quarters to the main part of the castle.
Ahead of him, lost in thought, is Lance Beaucoup. His head down as he walks, Owain is sure his mind is on Jennifer and what kind of future lies ahead for them.
‘Bonjour,’ he says when only a yard away.
Lance turns in shock. His eyes glisten with guilt. He quickly tries to recover his composure. ‘I’m sorry, I didn’t see you there. Good morning, when did you get back from London?’
‘Just in,’ Owain lies. ‘I wanted to make an early start because we have the Blood Line meeting this afternoon.’
Lance glances at his watch. ‘Some of the older members arrived yesterday evening. I heard them talk of going to watch the new recruits training, then a walk down to the lake.’
Owain smiles. ‘It brings back memories for them. As it will for you one day.’
He laughs and relaxes a little. ‘I want to forget my training. All those weeks out in the wild with nothing to eat or drink.’ He pulls a face. ‘Give me a five-star hotel and fine dining any day.’
‘I agree. Though I now have to take care I don’t turn too soft in my older years.’
They walk together along the foot of the castle wall and Lance makes small talk. ‘How were things in London? As chaotic as I imagine?’
‘Almost. The Cabinet is next to useless and the Prince of Wales wanted to see me twice a day for updates on the Eurostar bombing.’
Lance opens a door from the courtyard to the southern wing. ‘An over-interested patron is not always the best thing.’
Owain walks inside. ‘Interest, no matter how intense, is always better than a lack of interest.’
‘Je comprends.’
‘HRH also wants to join our Inner Circle.’
‘Figuratively?’
‘No. He really wants to take part, to get involved.’
Lance stops walking. ‘What did you tell him?’
Owain halts as well. ‘That I would put it forward for consideration.’
‘And are you in favour?’
‘I’m still deciding.’ He starts them walking again. ‘As well as his considerable wealth, which as you know is an important weapon in any war, the prince has enormous domestic and international influence.’
‘Today’s influence turns into tomorrow’s interference.’
‘You may be right.’ Owain changes the subject. ‘Were you with Jennifer last night?’ He lets the question hang until he sees his colleague tense up. ‘Only I called her mobile and she didn’t answer, and I couldn’t get through on the landline.’
Lance has to hide his anxiety. ‘Yes. I saw her for dinner. We were with Myrddin. I didn’t hear any phone call.’
‘How strange.’ He changes his tone. ‘You know that when I am not here, I really count on you looking after her. You realize that, don’t you, Lance?’
His heart thumps hard. ‘I do.’
Owain gives him a hearty shoulder punch. ‘Good man. I knew I could trust you.’
86
SOHO, LONDON
The hotel receptionist finishes dealing with an elderly Chinese couple, and then manages a welcoming smile for the smart-suited executive next in line. ‘Hello, can I help you?’
The dark-haired visitor looks at her name badge as he produces his ID. ‘I hope you can, Kata. I’m DCI Mark Warman from the Metropolitan Police. Can I see your manager, please?’
The young Hungarian presses a button beneath the desk. ‘I get him for you.’
‘Thanks.’ He senses a personal nervousness beyond any that his request should have prompted. Fortunately for her, he’s not interested in checking her immigration papers.
A portly man appears, dressed in a brown wool suit that looks at leas
t a size too small. He straightens his tie and introduces himself. ‘Jonathan Dunbar, hotel manager. You asked to see me?’
‘Yes, sir.’ He edges away from queuing guests and is joined by a young woman in her thirties who’s been hanging back. He shows his credentials again. ‘DCI Warman. DS Jackson and I are from SO15, the counter-terrorism unit. We have an interest in two of your guests.’
Dunbar’s face turns pale.
‘Americans,’ adds Jackson. She produces two photographs from inside her lightweight red blazer. ‘The woman is Mitzi Fallon, a brunette in her late thirties. Her colleague is Jon Bronty, a thin man, with chestnut hair.’
‘I’ve seen them,’ he says nervously. ‘They checked in yesterday. They had FBI credentials.’
She smiles understandingly. ‘Credentials aren’t always genuine. Are they here now?’
‘I really don’t know. I’ll have to find out.’
Warman’s eyes grow intense. ‘Don’t tell them we’re here. We don’t want things to get … how shall we say… complicated.’ He opens his jacket slightly, lets Dunbar see the Met-issue pistol in its holster.
The manager scurries back behind the front desk. He talks to the receptionist, checks a computer then returns. ‘They’ve just left. No more than ten minutes ago.’
