“You wanted it, so here it is,” he said dully, leaning over his desk.
Dan took the slip and looked at it. It was a handwritten message that simply read 'Saturday, 10.30 AM. Be prompt.' There was no address, no coat of arms, none of the showiness he would have expected from an elite in-group.
“That's it?” he said, disappointed. “It isn't even signed.”
“They never use names,” Nisbet said wearily. “Only membership numbers and titles. You'll be seeing the Secretary. He deals with applications.”
“Okay,” Dan said, putting the note into his wallet. “What kind of guy is this Secretary? Crusty old fart, P.G. Wodehouse type?”
Nisbet, who had been gazing blankly at his laptop screen, looked up sharply.
“You still don't get it, do you? Still think it's a quaint old British institution, like Benny Hill or the royal family.”
Nisbet got up and turning his back on Dan, went to stare out of the window at the shining tower blocks of central London.
“These people play for keeps, Dan. Take them seriously.”
Dan tried to think of a smart reply, but failed. Instead, he turned and left, closing his boss's door more gently than usual.
***
On Sunday night, Michael Malahide began to worry about Jeff. The cat had reappeared in his usual mysterious fashion and become obsessed with the cellar door. The door, in a corner of the kitchen, was padlocked and half-concealed by an old fridge-freezer. Malahide had not noticed it before. Jeff, however, had become suddenly obsessed with it. Malahide tried to tempt the animal away with choice bits of haddock, but Jeff was not playing. He continued to mewl and scratch at the plain wooden door.
“Okay, I know when I'm beaten,” Malahide sighed, and unplugged the freezer. “If I give myself a hernia moving this, you'll be on half-rations.”
The freezer, which was almost empty, proved easy to shift. The key to the padlock was not in any of the kitchen drawers. The only thing Malahide found apart from cutlery and random receipts was a small box containing some sticks of red sealing wax. He put the latter on the table, wondering why Hackett had it. Some of the sticks were almost used.
“Barmy old bugger, eh?” he told Jeff, pulling at the padlock. It was old, rusted, and the actual catch seemed poorly secured. It took only a few moments to rip it off.
“See? This is me damaging the property of Holy Mother Church for your benefit, you little sod!”
Jeff showed no sign of gratitude, only impatience as Malahide struggled to drag open the low wooden door. As soon as the gap was wide enough the cat shot inside. A minute later Malahide could shove his head and shoulders through, but as he expected he could see nothing. He withdrew, failed to find a flashlight, but discovered an old oil lamp. There was enough in the reservoir, he calculated, to let him explore for a few minutes.
“Boys' own adventure story,” he said ruefully, lighting the wick.
***
Saturday morning came, and Dan woke from a night of uneasy dreams. Again, he struggled to remember what night-visions had plagued him. Then he shrugged off the problem, and focused on the task ahead. After a shower and a quick workout, he dressed smart-casual and set off for Salisbury Square.
This time when he arrived, the club's outer doors were open. The cadaverous doorman, still smelling faintly of formaldehyde, showed him in without replying to a cheery 'Good morning'. The atrium of the Mephisto Club was disappointingly conventional. Dan had expected something sinister or at least bizarre. But instead, it was a conventional marble-floored area whose walls were lined with faded portraits.
“These the members of yesteryear?” he asked, walking up to the nearest picture.
Again, the doorman did not reply, but simply stood watching while Dan examined the painting. The signature, which Dan judged authentic, was that of a noted Victorian portraitist. The subject was an elderly man. Dan looked at the small plaque at the bottom of the frame. It read simply 'Number 12 – 1863'. The next portrait was of 'Number 16 – 1898'.
“Wow, you really are all just numbers,” Dan exclaimed, turning to the doorman. “What's yours?”
“You will be late, sir,” said the tall man, and gestured at the main staircase.
Realizing he would get no banter out of the doorman, Dan followed him meekly up to the second floor. He was shown into a large, high-ceilinged room with numerous small tables surrounded by deep armchairs. A man who looked about seventy was waiting. He had hard, dark eyes, a strong jaw, and a full head of iron-gray hair. He was taller than Dan by a good three inches.
“Thank you,” said the stranger to the doorman, who stepped backwards out of the room and closed the double doors.
“You must be the Secretary,” Dan said, extending a hand.
The older man's handshake was firm, perfunctory. He gestured Dan to a nearby armchair and sat down opposite him.
“You have made a nuisance of yourself, Mister Fox,” the Secretary said, in a tone that did not invite a response. His voice was clipped, clear, with an upper-class English accent. “We do not like nuisances. But James Nisbet pleaded your case with some fervor. So the membership committee agreed to let you try and prove yourself.”
“I get it,” Dan said, leaning back. “I'm not an English gentleman. But maybe this place could do with some new blood, right?”
For the first time the Secretary smiled, and Dan felt a distinct chill. It was the most humorless smile he had ever seen, a spasmodic movement of taut, pale skin that vanished after a split second.
“New blood,” the Secretary said, “has never been a problem.”
Dan refrained from saying anything. He did not want to see that smile again. The Secretary leaned forward.
“Listen carefully. You can give up at any time. Nobody will think less of you. Of course, if your task is well underway, the club will not reimburse you for any expenses you may already have incurred–”
“I get it,” Dan interrupted, irritation rising. “Give it your best shot. I'm ready”
“I think you may be laboring under a misapprehension,” the Secretary said softly. “It's you who will have to give you – your best shot.”
Reaching inside his pinstripe jacket the old man took out three cream-colored envelopes, laid them onto the round table between them. Each one bore a small, neat drawing in ink. The one on Dan's left was decorated by a set of stylized waves, like the sign of Aquarius. The middle envelope was adorned by a large, black spider. The third had the simplest symbol of all – a lightning bolt.
“I get to choose which task I perform?” Dan asked. The Secretary shook his head and gave his unpleasant smile again.
“Sadly, no. You get to choose the order in which you carry out three tasks.”
“Let me guess,” Dan said. “Any one of them could leave me as dead as poor Tim Burdus?”
The Secretary nodded, smiled faintly.
“Why three?” Dan insisted, though he already felt sure he knew the answer. “Why not just the one?”
“Mister Burdus was nominated in the usual way,” said the Secretary. “You, on the other hand …”
“I get it,” Dan grated. “I didn't conduct myself like a gentleman.”
“Feel free to walk away, Mister Fox.”
Dan decided to pick an envelope at random and was reaching for the water sign when a small hand appeared from behind him and tapped the lightning bolt.
“This one,” said Melinda's voice. “Trust me, Kermie.”
Dan twisted around but she was not there. The Secretary, for the first time, looked surprised. The Englishman frowned, seemed about to stand up, then changed his mind. Instead the Secretary waved a large, thickly-veined hand over the table. Dan hesitated, then went for his original choice.
If I let a symptom of stress make my career decisions, I really would be crazy.
“Oh, honey,” a gentle voice breathed in his ear. “You're just delaying the inevitable.”
Dan ripped open the envelope, took out another of
the now-familiar slips of paper. He read the two-word message on it, then looked up at the Secretary in angry confusion.
“What the hell does this mean? I never heard of any 'Soray treasure'!”
The Secretary did rise, now, and walked past Dan's chair toward the door.
“The challenge is accepted,” he said over his shoulder. “You must leave now. Return with the item and the second stage can begin.”
“You want me to bring you a buried treasure?” Dan shouted. “That's illegal, for God's sake!”
The Secretary stopped, looked over his shoulder.
“One small item will be sufficient,” he said. “To show you have determined its correct provenance.”
Dan jumped up and strode after the older man, brandishing the paper.
“But I don't know where it is or anything about it!”
He reached up, intending to swing the Secretary around to face him. But before he could touch the shoulder of the man's suit, a piercing cold shot through Dan's fingers. It was as if he had plunged his hand into an ice bucket on a hot summer's day.
“Crap!” he yelped, staring at his fingers.
By the time Dan recovered his composure the Secretary had gone and the doorman was back, waiting patiently just outside the doorway. Dan looked up at him, wondering if everyone he would meet at the club would be taller than him.
“Let me show you out sir,” said the doorman. “The sooner you start, the better.”
Outside in the quiet square, Dan squinted in April sunshine and wondered if he should simply give up on the whole idea. He began to walk slowly back to the Tube station, pausing to look at the paper. He wondered if there was such a thing as a 'Soray treasure' at all.
The whole thing might be some upper-class joke, he thought. Maybe Tim Burdus died in a prank gone wrong.
Dan was so wrapped up in his thoughts that he did not realize he was being followed until his elbows were grabbed by two stocky men in dark suits. They almost lifted him off his feet as they dragged him to a low, dark Mercedes and shoved him into the back seat.
“Hey, you can't–” Dan began to protest, but a beefy fist in the pit of his stomach silenced him.
As the Mercedes pulled away, the thug who had not punched Dan held up a cheap-looking cell phone to his ear. Korochenko's voice emerged on speaker.
“Mister Fox, this is my last message to you. You are not a gentleman, and I do not like being insulted or cheated. You think I am nobody, a barbarian, what you call a philistine. Well, soon you will be food for swine. Think on your big mistake, Mister Fox, when you are being eaten by pigs.”
The second thug took the sim card out of the phone, put the latter into a plastic baggy, then stomped on it to pieces. This was clearly just another day at work for him. Dan opened his mouth but before he could make a sound, the first thug smacked him on the nose, backhanded, and blood gushed down Dan's shirt. He moaned in fear and despair as the car wove through London traffic. Dan could see normal people going about their Saturdays, but no-one could see him through the limousine's tinted windows.
Even if I had any breath to call for help, nobody would hear.
***
“Jeff? Come on, you little bugger!”
What Malahide had expected to be a moderate-sized cellar turned out to something very different. The door did not open directly into a room of any kind, but instead led to a staircase that had obviously been cut into the living rock. Malahide made his way down carefully, wary of steps that were coated in a layer of greenish slime. He paused a couple of times to examine the walls, close on either side. He ran his fingers over tool marks in the stone.
Odd, he thought. I wonder what Uncle Jack would make of this?
'Uncle Jack' had been the nickname of a stonemason who had helped repair Malahide's former church. The old man had shown the priest the marks made by the original medieval builders. The direction of chisel marks were quite distinctive when you knew what you were looking for.
These marks can't be right, though. They look like somebody cut their way up from below. From under the house.
Shaking his head, Malahide continued his descent.
***
Traffic was heavy. The driver said something in Russian, and the first thug replied with a couple of words. The driver shrugged, and they turned into a side-street. Dan, dabbing at his nose with a silk handkerchief, could not think clearly. He was fit and strong, but no way could he win a fight with his kidnappers. He thought he might hurl himself at the driver and cause a crash, and that might attract the police. But even as Dan braced himself to spring forward and grab at the driver's throat the two thugs punched him again in the stomach. He threw up his breakfast, to the voluble disgust of the Russians, who beat him senseless and rubbed his face in his own vomit.
By the time he recovered enough to look out of the car again, they were speeding through the suburbs. There was plenty of weekend traffic, but it seemed luck was with the mobsters. Nothing slowed them down. Gradually, the edge of the metropolis turned to true English countryside, innocent and verdant in the spring sunshine. They neared a pig farm. Dan tensed up, waiting for the Mercedes to turn, but they kept going. The thug on his right said something, and all three laughed.
“Look, I have money, I can pay you,” Dan croaked. “I can pay you anything–”
The thug on the left took him by the ear, shoved his face into Dan's.
“You little man,” he breathed, his breath smelling of mint. “You no have nothing. You no have shit.”
With nothing to lose, Dan tried to bite the Russian's nose, but the man simply head-butted him and laughed. Crying with pain, Dan gazed out of the windscreen past the driver's shaven head. The road ahead was almost empty. Then, between two split-seconds, a figure appeared right in front of the limousine. It was a dark-haired woman, pale-faced, legs together and arms extended in a Christ-like pose.
“Melinda!”
Dan's exclamation was drowned out as all three Russian yelled. At the same time, the driver swung the wheel over to the right. The car slewed across the outside lane, almost colliding with a truck that had been overtaking. The driver threw the Mercedes the other way and the rear end of the car fish-tailed, brake squealing. They left the road and crashed through a fence into a plowed field. The thunderous sound of failing suspension almost drowned out the noise of Slavic cursing. The car hit something big and rolled, ending up on its roof.
Only the driver had been wearing a safety belt. Dan and his captors were piled up in a tangle of limbs. A face, upside down, peered in through the blood and puke-stained rear window. Melinda gave her perky thumbs up gesture again. Then she was gone, and Dan saw a pair of inverted legs in jeans and wellington boots approaching across the field. The legs were getting closer, yet somehow getting farther away.
No, it's the world that's getting father away.
When Dan regained consciousness, there were sirens, British voices, an anxious young face where the rear window had been. A man in a bright-colored uniform was crawling towards Dan.
“Don't worry mate,” said the firefighter. “We'll get you out of there in a jiffy.”
Dan tried to speak, produced something between a groan and a cough.
“Do you speak English?” asked the firefighter, speaking very slowly.
“Matter of opinion,” croaked Dan.
***
The stairway led to a tunnel about six feet high, and perhaps two and a half feet wide. It was a roughly-worked passageway and there were patches of dead seaweed on the floor. Malahide stopped to listen, holding up the old lantern. There was a distant roaring noise that might have been the sea. He tried to remember which direction he was facing, thought it might be towards the coast. There was no sign of the cat.
“Jeff!” he shouted. “Jeff! You little sod.”
A faint yowling noise echoed along the tunnel. Sighing, Malahide knew that Jeff had found something of interest. This meant the cat would not come back until the priest had seen it too.
He walked forward tentatively, feeling with his toes, just in case the floor proved treacherous. After a while, he concluded that there was little risk. The tunnel was surprisingly well-made, and he wondered how such a small community had found the time.
Smuggling, he mused. That must be it. Getting stuff past the Revenue men.
The explanation seemed inadequate after he gave it some more thought. Smugglers normally tried to get illicit brandy and tobacco inland as quickly as possible. But any contraband landed on Soray would then have to be put on a boat again.
Okay, so what's it for, genius?
The tunnel curved downwards, and the feeble lamplight meant he could only see a few yards ahead. It occurred to Malahide that he was taking a big risk, as nobody knew he was here. The priest imagined a newspaper headline that would be as tragic as it was embarrassing. It would be something along the lines of Priest Dies Searching for Lost Cat.
He was about to turn back when a piercing sound echoed along the tunnel. He had heard it before when Jeff was fighting other cats. But this time the screech was more intense, compounded of rage and pain. It sent Malahide running down into the dark, all thoughts of his own safety abandoned.
“Jeff,” he shouted, starting to panic. “Jeff, you come on back now!”
He emerged from the tunnel into a cavern, going so far he nearly fell into an expanse of green-tinged water. Malahide skidded to a halt on a surface of rough, slimy rock, and looked around. The weak lamplight showed what looked to be a natural cavern. It was roughly circular, perhaps twenty feet high and roughly twice as wide. Most of it was flooded. Malahide stood on a narrow ledge some four feet wide. He looked down to see rough-cut steps descending into the dark, stagnant water.
Perhaps it wasn't always flooded, he mused. After all, why would anyone make a staircase that leads underwater?
There was a quiet rippling noise from the shadows. A small wave broke over the topmost step, almost soaking Malahide's shoes. Peering at the opposite side of the cavern, he saw no sign of movement. But there was a hint of radiance. He turned down the lamp and saw a faint but steady green glow in the water.
Dark Waters (Mephisto Club Series Book 1) Page 6
