Entering the hefty chopper, Uri immediately saw he was not alone. There were four men already seated. He recognized two of them from The Bunker.
With all his senses firing, it only took a split-second to size them up. He saw the alert expressions of experienced street-fighters—men with a disregard for any limits.
It was like looking into a mirror.
He did not need a second glance to know they would have no hesitation in cutting bits off him piece by piece if they ever found out who he really was.
Beside the men, he could also see a number of dark bags on the floor. From their size and shape, he assumed they contained similar hardware to the one he was carrying.
He nodded an acknowledgement, and sat down on an empty seat opposite them.
It was hot inside the cabin, and there was a strong smell of fuel. But he did not mind, and was grateful for the noise of the engines—he had no desire to join in any discussion with his fellow passengers.
He could feel his adrenaline levels rising. After all the planning and waiting, his undercover strategy was finally paying off.
This mission was a far cry from his usual operations, which he planned meticulously, staying in control of every variable, leaving nothing to chance. He choreographed his hits with the precision of a ballet, where even the smallest elements moved smoothly, like the cogs of a watch.
But here, in the helicopter, this was something completely different.
He was accustomed to being on his own, deep in enemy territory. But it was entirely new for him to have no idea where he was headed, or what he was expected to do when he got there.
Whatever it was, they were a heavily armed crew.
Something interesting was going down.
The Skipper appeared in the doorway, nodded at the others, then climbed in, followed by another man Uri had not seen before. The two strapped themselves into their seats, and stared into the middle distance in preparation for takeoff.
At the same time, Uri noticed another man climb into the cramped instrument-lined cockpit next to the pilot.
As the pitch of the two massive turboshaft engines increased, Uri sat back into the small seat and buckled himself into the harness, bracing himself.
Although he was heading into the unknown, he knew the only important detail of the operation.
Wherever they were going—it was taking him closer to Malchus.
——————— ◆ ———————
100
Inverness to Foyers
Loch Ness
Scotland
The United Kingdom
It had been a breathtaking journey.
As Ava left London behind, the train had quickly shuttled through the midlands and up the west coast of England, where it was soon lost in the romantic wilds of the rolling Yorkshire dales, followed by the striking peaks and waterways of Cumbria and the edge of the Lakes.
Cutting sharply across to the east, they had then entered the lowlands of Scotland, stopping briefly at the capital, Edinburgh, before embarking on the final dramatic section of the journey into the rugged untamed beauty of the Highlands.
Arriving finally at Inverness, the northernmost city in Scotland, she had quickly located the inevitable row of taxis outside the hangar-like railway station.
She jumped into the scruffy-looking one at the head of the line, and asked the driver to take her the eighteen miles south to Foyers.
He was an elderly man, wrapped in a puffy anorak and a tweed cap. He was sitting on a seat cover made of wooden beads, and gave every indication that he would first have preferred to finish the milky-looking tea he was drinking from a scuffed thermos flask.
As soon as he realized she was a “bonglie” from England, he had wanted to take her via Culloden—a moor four miles out of town where, he explained with rancour, English redcoat butchers had bayoneted a thousand of the Highlands’ finest clansmen some two hundred and fifty years earlier.
Ava was well aware of the history of animosity between the Highlands and anywhere south of the border, and had no desire to be drawn into it.
But the driver was not giving up.
“When the English were done murdering on the moor,” he spoke with the soft accent of the Highlands, “they scoured the lochs and glens for anyone they thought sympathized with Bonnie Prince Charlie—executing men, women, and children, and torching whole villages.” She could see his face in the rear view mirror. There was real anger there. “They called it ‘pacifying’ the Highlands. Today we’d call it ethnic cleansing.”
Ava knew the story—how the victor of Culloden, the king’s son, had plants named after him in both countries. In England it was the pretty red and white wild flower, the Sweet William—while in Scotland the smelly common ragwort had become the Stinking Billy.
When Ava did not respond to his effort to educate her on local history, he lapsed into silence, leaving her free to gaze out of the windows at a landscape unlike any other.
It was early evening, but at this latitude on the fifty-seventh parallel, level with the Alaska Peninsula, the sun would not set for a while yet.
As they approached the great loch, the sight of the low grass and tree-covered hills surrounding the lapping water was breathtaking—made even more dramatic by the almost total absence of people. Save for the occasional small hamlet or lone house, the natural landscape remained unbroken as far as she could see in all directions.
Rarely had she been anywhere so ruggedly isolated.
Speeding down the loch’s east coast, she could make out a promontory on the far side dominated by Urquhart Castle—a vast imposing hulk of a medieval ruin jutting out into the water like the stage set of a Wagner opera. She had heard of it—a Highland stronghold since at least the twelve hundreds. Looking at the monumental husk of what it once had been, she could almost feel the power of life and death its chainmailed lords once wielded.
Contemplating the landscape, she could not help feel that although the scenery was dramatic and majestic, it was not peaceful or inviting. There was a palpable restlessness about it bordering on the sinister. The water was eerily dark, and there was something foreboding about its immense depth—over eight hundred feet, deeper than most of the North Sea.
She could see why Malchus had chosen to come here. There was an undercurrent of tangible menace.
“Nearly there now,” the driver announced, shaking her out of her reverie.
She had asked him to drop her at Foyers, a mile beyond Boleskine House, as she did not want him or anyone else knowing where she was going.
More importantly, she had to be on foot and silent when she approached Boleskine House. She was alone, and needed stealth and the invisibility of the woods to cloak her.
“So, what takes you to Foyers?” the driver asked, “The falls?”
The Falls of Foyers had been described on one of the webpages she had printed off. It was a famous local natural beauty spot formed where the river Foyers entered the great loch—a picturesque tumbling waterfall a hundred and fifty feet in height.
“Business, not pleasure,” she replied. “The power station.” She had spotted on the map that there was a small hydro-electric facility powered by the falls.
It seemed as good a cover story as any.
“Then you’ll not be one of the weirdos come to gape at Crowley’s house?”
Ava’s ears pricked up. “Whose house?” She feigned ignorance.
“You must’ve heard of him. The English fella. You know, the Satanist, the one the papers called ‘the most evil man in Britain’.”
“Did he live round here?” Ava asked, eager to draw out whatever information the driver knew. Local intelligence was invaluable.
“We’ll pass it soon enough. We get black magic types come on pilgrimages here. It’s not healthy, if you ask me.”
“Who lives there now?” She assumed Malchus and the Thelema kept themselves to themselves, but locals everywhere always had a way of knowing their neighbours�
� business.
He shook his head slowly. “It’s not a place for decent folk, if you get my meaning. Strange things happen there.”
“Like what?” she asked, keeping her voice casual.
“They say Crowley chose the house specially so he could do an ancient black magic ritual—Abramelin or something it’s called. You can read all about it in books, I’m sure. They say it takes six months and summons the spirits of Hell. The house was so full of evil shadows that Crowley had to use candles to light the rooms even on bright sunny days.”
The driver wiped a hand over his face. “But he left unexpectedly, with the ritual unfinished. He was called away to Paris, or somewhere.” He paused. “They say he never undid what he had done.”
“What do you mean?” Ava asked.
“I’m no expert,” he answered. “But I hear folks talking. They say if you summon something, then you have to banish it back again when you’re finished. But Crowley never did. So the spirits he called up are still there. You’ll not find a local going near the place.”
“Has anything ever actually happened there?” Ava asked sceptically, aware these types of stories were usually no more than local folklore—tall tales to scare wide-eyed children.
The driver nodded. “There’s a cemetery there. Used to be a medieval church beside it, before Crowley’s house was built on the site. But the church burned down, killing everyone inside. Like I say, it’s a bad place.”
“But what about Crowley?” Ava persisted. “Has anything happened since he moved in?”
He nodded again. “Crowley’s lodge keeper went mad, and tried to murder his wife and children. Then a local butcher cut off his own hand while reading a note from Crowley.”
He angled the rearview mirror so he could see Ava’s face more clearly. “After Crowley left, a retired army major living there shot himself in the head, right in Crowley’s bedroom. And when that guitarist fella owned the house, his lodge keeper’s young children both died suddenly—the daughter at her school desk, and the son on his mother’s knee. And there was the man who lived there, looking after it for the guitarist. He heard and saw things.”
The driver stared hard at Ava. “I’ll say it again. It’s not a place for decent folk. Bad things happen there. Always have. Always will.”
He sped up as they approached a cemetery on their right.
This must be it, Ava realized.
It was an open area of wild grassland surrounded by a picturesque low stone wall. There were several hundred old upright tombstones dotted around it in no particular order, and she could also see a mort-house. Judging by the age of the various trees, the shape of the stones, and the heavy lichen and moss covering them, she guessed it was all several centuries old at least.
She knew from the map that the road they were on cut between the cemetery on one side and the house on the other.
Turning her head around to look up the hill, she caught her first sight of Boleskine House—a long low one-storey building, partially hidden behind a screen of trees.
There was a light on inside.
The driver said nothing. When the cemetery and house were out of sight, he spoke again.
“Here we are,” he announced, drawing into a tiny hamlet. “Foyers.” He pulled up at a small building no larger than an ordinary house. “This is the power station.”
Ava paid, thanked him, and stepped out of the car.
As she was walking towards the small power station, the driver called after her through his open window. “Are you sure you don’t want me to drop you at one of the guesthouses? It’s getting late. There’s one just a hundred yards further on.”
Ava assured him it was fine, and made for the door of the power station.
He nodded and turned the car around, before winding up his window and heading off into the evening.
From the speed of his exit, he left no doubt he could not wait to be out of the area and back in the safety of Inverness.
——————— ◆ ———————
101
Boleskine House
Foyers
Loch Ness IV2
Scotland
The United Kingdom
As the taxi sped off into the dwindling light, Ava turned to walk back along the side of the loch the way she had come.
There was no one else on the deserted country road, and she was lost in thought. Around her, the shadows began to fall, bleeding the colours and contours from the hills and lake until they became monochrome shapes, devoid of textures or details.
It did not take her long to cover the mile back to Boleskine.
She saw the secluded old cemetery first, on her left.
Earlier it had seemed an almost cheerful place—a pleasant corner of mellow stone and rustling trees. But now, in the half-light, it was distinctly more sinister, with the headstones throwing lengthening shadows out under the still branches.
The squat thick-walled mort-house dominating it was a gruesome reminder of the days when fresh corpses needed protection from the ‘resurrection men’. Scotland’s unique solution to the problem of body snatchers was in front of her—an impregnable stone vault where the cadavers could lie until so much flesh had rotted off there was nothing worth stealing and selling. Only then would the sexton put the decomposed corpse into the ground.
Ava turned away and looked in the other direction, up the hill, towards the screen of trees shielding Crowley’s infamous house.
Despite the failing light, she could see it more clearly now than when she had sped past earlier in the car.
It was a long low pale building, one storey high. From the shape and style, she guessed it had been built in the late 1700s.
She counted eleven windows running along the main elevation, with the centre marked by a pointed gable sheltering a larger window. The symmetry was completed by rounded bays to the left and right, each lit by three windows.
The roof itself was local grey slate, and there were a number of visible low chimneys. Despite the chill of the summer evening, there was no smoke.
Although she had no proof yet, she instinctively knew it was Malchus’s retreat.
As she looked more closely at the isolated house, she saw there was no main entranceway—just a small door cut into the northern side of the right-hand bay. From what she had read on the train, she assumed it was the entrance Crowley had built for his Abramelin ritual, which required a north-facing doorway from the ‘oratory’ onto a terrace, which was to be covered in fine river sand in order to see the footsteps of the infernal beings he conjured.
Although the long wall of the house faced the loch, the lack of any main doorway suggested to her it was actually the back of the building.
Thinking quickly, her first priority was to get a fuller sense of the surroundings before deciding how best to get into the house unobserved.
Leaving the road, she began to scramble up the steep hillside in order to skirt around behind the wide building.
As she climbed higher, she realized the grounds were more extensive than she had at first thought, and she was perspiring by the time she had got far enough through the rhododendrons, birch, pine, larch, and fir trees to be able to look back down on her target.
The first thing she noted was that her assumption was correct. The side of the house facing up the hill was the front. She could now clearly see a large sandstone entrance porch with double storm doors. It was at the end of a long sweeping gravel drive leading up from a small lodge house and an imposing set of tall wrought iron gates.
The drive was plainly the official way onto the estate, but she had no intention of drawing attention to herself by approaching that way. The gates were widely visible to any observer and might well be hooked up to a security system. In addition, it was a still night, and there was no traffic or other noise. Her footsteps on the gravel would ring out like gunshots, as well as leaving telltale tracks.
Retracing her steps, she scrambled back down the hillside until she
was again level with the isolated house.
It was dark now, and she was struck by the beautiful but eerie moonlit view over the graveyard and loch.
Feeling her heart pounding hard, she climbed over a low four-bar fence and moved quickly and silently across the lawns between the flowerbeds and box hedges towards the side of the house.
Looking around, she could not see any cameras, and there was no sign of an alarm system.
She guessed that if the taxi driver was right and people avoided the house, there was probably no need for an electronic surveillance system. People’s fear was the best security device of all.
Moving quietly along the back wall, she found all the windows dark and curtained.
As she approached the north-west bay where Crowley had cut his oratory door, she found what she needed. Although it had not been visible from the road, there was a faint chink of light coming through a small crack in the drawn curtains.
The gap was narrow, but it was enough for her to see a thin slice of the room beyond it.
On the far wall, hanging over the stone fireplace, she could see the right side of what appeared to be a painted portrait of a man in Elizabethan dress. She could only make out a sliver of his face, and could tell nothing more than he was an old man with white hair.
Closer to her, she could also see the lower section of a large floor-standing red-gold copper tripod, which she guessed from the room’s mellow flickering light was a standing candelabrum.
Her restricted view did not allow her to see anything else apart from aged dark wooden floorboards and a segment of stone walls.
Listening intently, she strained to hear if there was any sound of activity inside—any indication there was anyone in the house.
But there was nothing—just silence, and the sound of the wind in the trees.
She slipped a hand into her pocket and quietly pulled out the Kahr nine-millimetre she had taken off DeVere. She flipped the safety to the off position, and pulled back the slide to cock it.
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