The Sword of Moses

by Dominic Selwood

  After glancing through the gap in the curtain one more time, she tried the door’s handle, turning and pulling it gently.

  The door did not move.

  It was firmly locked.

  She considered picking the lock, but quickly decided against it. She had no idea who or what lay on the other side, and there was no sense in putting herself in a vulnerable position—either when picking it or relocking it once inside.

  Heading back towards the side of the house, she made for the dim light she had first seen from the road. As she rounded the corner, she immediately saw it was coming from one of the side windows.

  She approached the window stealthily, and stopped outside it to peer into a dark room, whose open doorway allowed some of the light from the hallway chandelier to filter into it.

  Unlike the old-fashioned room she had just seen at the back of the house, she was surprised to see this one was a study decorated as if for a 1930s German intellectual.

  Its walls were a clean white, hung with Bauhaus-era circular graphic art, and the space was sparsely filled with minimalist furniture from the same period.

  There was a plain desk of metal tubes covered with a taut white leather top supporting a curved chrome reading lamp. On the other side of the room was a tubular chaise longue, again made of chrome and white leather, but with a matching side table on which a number of books were neatly stacked.

  The irony of the room was not lost on Ava. Malchus probably thought the style lent him an air of intellectual respectability, but it was in fact a style of design the Nazis had suppressed for its ‘degeneracy’.

  Focusing back on the window, she noted it was a standard sash, with no bolts or locks on the inside.

  She inched it up a fraction then held her breath, waiting—listening for even the smallest sound.

  But she was met only with silence from within.

  Pushing the window’s lower section up higher, she raised the wooden frame until it was half open, then paused again, listening for any indication she had been overheard.

  Still nothing.

  Moving as stealthily as she could, she climbed through the open window and landed on the study floor in a crouching position. As part of the same fluid movement, she raised the gun in both hands, covering the room with a sweeping arc, ready to unload rounds into anything that moved.

  But she was met with nothing but stillness and silence.

  She was alone.

  Stepping quickly across the darkened study, she paused at its doorway, listening for the sound of anyone moving deeper in the building.

  Nothing.

  Nosing the pistol ahead of her, she stepped out into the hallway.

  It was long and narrow, with a pillared opening on the left leading to the main front doors, as well as two large display alcoves, each filled with a bronze sculpture. Both were male nudes—one holding a flaming torch, the other a sword. They looked like 1930s fascist imitations of classical Greek art.

  Moving further down the hallway, she tried the white-panelled doors leading off it, but found them locked.

  The only open door was at the far end of the corridor, and as she looked through it into the room beyond, her breathing quickened.

  The room’s walls were covered in thin white rectangular tiles, each slightly bevelled, giving an almost three-dimensional effect. The only objects in the room were a long plain stone table and a deep ceramic sink fixed onto the wall next to it.

  The room’s clinical cleanness reminded her of a Victorian dissecting room or mortuary.

  She did not want to imagine what Malchus used it for.

  But what had caught her eye was a doorway in the room’s far corner. It was exactly like the others in the hallway, except in place of the ornamental handles it had a large brass-faced keyhole with a long iron key protruding from it. Immediately above the keyhole was an oversize barrel bolt with a heavy padlock, hanging open.

  She could feel her pulse quickening.

  It was exactly what she had been looking for.

  A cellar door.

  And it was slightly ajar, letting a pungent smell of incense rise up from below.

  She could hear nothing except for her own racing heartbeat, and there were butterflies in her stomach as she took in the enormity of where she was.

  This was it.

  This had to be where he was keeping the Ark and the Menorah.

  She could feel the excitement she had been trying to suppress ever since she had seen the packing crate on the rusty tug boat in Astana. She had sensed then that she had been in the presence of the Ark.

  And she could feel it again now.

  All the frustrations of the past days ebbed away, as she knew with a surge of almost uncontrollable elation that she was about to come face to face with the Ark.

  Pulling the wooden cellar door wider, she was surprised to find a three-inch-thick steel one just behind it. There was no handle on it, just a small hexagonal keyhole, a tumbler lock, and a large steel wheel.

  But it, too, was open.

  She raised the handgun in her right hand, pointing it into the cellar.

  Her palms were wet with anticipation as she looked down the stone steps, which she could see clearly, illuminated by a warm flickering glow.

  She could guess exactly what it meant.

  In accordance with ancient tradition, Malchus was keeping the sacred objects in his own secluded holy of holies, lighting them gently by candlelight, and bathing them permanently with incense in an unending tribute of praise.

  With the doors fully ajar, the odour was even more pungent. It was like no incense she had ever smelled. It was darker, heavier—like something from a street souk in sub-Saharan Africa.

  She took a deep breath to steady herself, then stepped through the door onto the top step.

  As she did, she felt a piece of cold hard metal being pressed into the back of her skull behind her ear. At the same time, she heard the unmistakable double click of a pistol’s firing mechanism being cocked.

  Before she could react, a familiar deep resonant voice spoke behind her.

  “Dr Curzon, I have been expecting you.”

  For the first second, Ava was too stunned to react. But as she realized that Malchus was yet again coming between her and her prize, a bolt of white-hot anger shot through her.

  Where on earth had he come from?

  She had been sure the corridor and room had been empty.

  Had he been watching her all along?

  A volcano of rage erupted inside her.

  Was this some kind of game for him?

  “Put the gun down,” Malchus ordered, “slowly.”

  “Or what?” Ava exploded, wheeling around, the challenge burning in her eyes. She was damned if she was going to let him come between her and the Ark again. It was her turn to have the Ark. She was angry enough to fight him with her bare hands if that was what it took.

  “Don’t tempt me, Dr Curzon,” he replied, a cruel smile playing across his fleshy lips. “There’s no one for miles around to hear what goes on in my little house. I beg you not to be difficult. For your sake.”

  He ground the barrel harder into her head. “Now I shan’t ask again. Please put the gun down.”

  Seething, Ava’s mind cleared enough to realize he was not making idle threats.

  She knew the results of his handiwork—her father, Yevchenko, Drewitt, the priest in the lower church of the Basilica di San Clemente, and Professor Stone in the Bodleian. All of them slain in cold blood. But most of all, she remembered Max’s man in the dark underground Roman complex outside the mithraeum—shot like a dog in revenge for the death of Malchus’s henchman.

  Malchus had not batted an eyelid as he executed him.

  Flushed with rage, she knew Malchus was not only capable of killing—she had come to realize that he actively enjoyed it.

  She could feel him pressing the end of the barrel harder into her skull.

  Fuming, she knew she had no realistic alter
native but to comply. This was not the time for heroics. If she wanted to see the Ark, if she wanted to see Malchus get what he deserved, and if she wanted to clear her and Ferguson’s names, then she would have to stay alive.

  Fighting the burning torrent inside her, she slowly bent down and put the Kahr on the floor.

  ——————— ◆ ———————

  102

  Boleskine House

  Foyers

  Loch Ness IV2

  Scotland

  The United Kingdom

  “Walk,” Malchus ordered, pointing Ava towards the room’s doorway.

  One thing immediately clear to her was that with a gun trained on her at this pointblank distance, she had no realistic choice except to comply with his orders. He was experienced, armed, fit, and alert. She would have to be in a desperate position to risk attacking him without a weapon.

  And she was not in one yet.

  As she stepped away from the cellar door, Malchus picked up her gun and slipped it into his pocket.

  Keeping his pistol trained at her head, he indicated for her to move out into the hallway.

  He followed right behind her and stopped at the first door on the left, which he unlocked with a key from his pocket.

  “Inside,” he ordered curtly, keeping the gun on her at all times.

  She stepped past him into the room and paused for a moment, stunned at the bizarre sight.

  So this was where Crowley had made his oratory.

  Hanging above the large stone fireplace, dominating the room, was the framed Elizabethan portrait she had spied through the window.

  Now she could see the whole face, with its black skullcap and sharply pointed white goatee beard, she immediately recognized the figure. She did not need to read the nameplate fixed to the bottom of the frame to know it was the most notorious English magician of the troubled Elizabethan age—Dr John Dee.

  She could also now see that the glow illuminating the room was coming from four great copper candelabra—each supporting three large guttering black candles. They were positioned along each of the room’s four walls, slightly off-centre. Thinking back to the aerial map of the house and area she had printed off at Euston, she realized they marked out the four cardinal points—north, east, south, and west in an imaginary circle.

  But in front of her stood something she had never expected to see.

  It was a bizarre but perfectly square table—a cube, as high as it was wide, draped in a lustrous red silk cloth.

  She recognized it immediately from its uniquely odd features and the drawings of it she had seen in the Enlightenment Gallery at the British Museum. But she was having difficulty believing it.

  Because it was not supposed to exist.

  But here it was.

  Right in front of her.

  She was looking at Dr John Dee’s four-hundred-year-old Table of Practice—the occult altar he had designed for communicating with the angel and spirit worlds.

  The floor beneath it was also covered in a matching red silk cloth, and on it, under each leg, were four grey wax seals, each lightly shot through with pink streaks and covered in intricate sigils and glyphs.

  Eyeing the surface of the Table, she recognized what looked like Dr Dee’s black Mirror of Tezcatlipoca, along with several piles of papers.

  The most intriguing was an old manuscript—its quarto-sized vellum sheets buckled and rigid with age, their brown surface covered with medieval Hebrew and Aramaic writing.

  Reading it upside down, she realized with a jolt that it was the original London manuscript of The Sword of Moses. She could not imagine how it came to be in Northern Scotland and not in an acid-free box on a shelf in the underground stacks at the British Library.

  Beside it was a sheaf of computer-typed pages. The top one was titled:

  THE SWORD OF MOSES

  COD GAS 178

  The writing underneath was in English, and evidently a translation of the London manuscript.

  Next to the translation was a smaller sheaf of papers with a torn and ragged left margin—the leaves covered with small but meticulous writing in fine pencil.

  With a flash of sadness, she recognized the handwriting from the pages she had seen earlier that day in the Bodleian. It was the last piece of research Professor Stone had ever undertaken—copying and translating what he thought was the Oxford version of The Sword of Moses for Malchus.

  Faced once again with the lacerated lives Malchus left in the monomaniacal pursuit of his goals, she felt a fresh flush of rage at the human wreckage that invariably trailed in his wake.

  Brushing aside the unpleasant thoughts, she turned her attention to the other side of the room, where there was a large square of oiled black canvas on the floor.

  On top of it was one of the oddest chairs she had ever seen. It was L-shaped, with a short narrow seat and a high back. From the blackened wood, pitting, scores, and scratches, it was clearly several centuries old.

  She had never seen anything quite like it.

  Taking in its detail, her heart beat faster as she spotted three pairs of bulky black handcuffs on the floor beside it. They also looked antique—forged iron, she assumed.

  Whatever the chair was, it had an unpleasantly sinister air.

  She shivered slightly. The temperature in the room was the same as in the hall, but for some reason it felt distinctly colder.

  “Sit,” he ordered, motioning her towards the age-worn chair.

  With a sense of foreboding, but aware she had no other realistic options, she moved across to the chair and sat down on the hard narrow seat.

  “Cuff your ankles to the chair legs,” he commanded, indicating the chunky black handcuffs on the floor.

  She could sense the situation going from bad to worse, and every fibre in her screamed to get off the chair and out of the room.

  But she had no choice. Malchus was out of range for her to attack him, and she did not fancy her chances without a weapon.

  If she did what he asked, she may well end up getting hurt. But she definitely would if she made a break for it.

  So it was simple maths. For so long as she was alive, there was hope of finding a way out. But if she gave him cause to pull the trigger, then it would all be over.

  With every atom of her being screaming at her that it was a bad idea, she reached down and picked up the cold metal fetters.

  She comforted herself with the thought that maybe the chair was not too heavy, and she could move it. Perhaps if she got the opportunity to stand up and lift it, the ankle cuffs might slide off its legs onto the floor, leaving her free to move.

  Slowly, as if in a daze, she cuffed each of her ankles to the chair. To her surprise, the locks closed effortlessly despite their age and crude design. Malchus had plainly maintained them well.

  “Now put the other cuff on your right wrist,” he ordered, walking towards her.

  She did as he asked and watched as he approached her from across the room, before moving behind the chair where she could no longer see him.

  Without warning, she felt an indescribable wrenching pain as he pulled her arms behind the high back of the chair, and snapped the open handcuff shut around her left wrist.

  It had been a lightning fast movement, and she had no time to react.

  She was now pinned to the heavy piece of furniture by her legs and arms, leaving her no ability to move any of her limbs.

  Her throat went dry.

  “You were looking at my table,” he observed, moving back around to where she could see him. “You know what it is, don’t you?”

  “A toy,” she replied contemptuously. “A pitiful feeble-minded delusion. Dee’s original objects are in London.”

  Malchus shook his head solemnly. “You are gravely mistaken. The seals are faultlessly faithful to the originals, and the British Museum’s cherished cabinet now only holds a worthless piece of obsidian in place of the great Mirror of Tezcatlipoca.”

  Ava stared at him with
loathing. “What makes you think the mirror in the museum’s cabinet was Dee’s original? It could’ve been switched many times over the centuries. And sometimes we display replicas—especially of valuable artefacts.”

  Malchus’s eyes narrowed. “Non es digna ut intres sub tectum meum,”16 he spat at her, parodying the words of the mass. “The mirror speaks to those with a true heart. I have spent many nights with it, and I can vouch for its authenticity better than any museum curator.”

  Ava glared at him, pleased to have put him on the defensive.

  “But you should be much more concerned about my chair,” he changed the subject, smiling nastily. “You are honoured to sit on it.”

  “If you say so,” Ava stared at him, not sure what he was implying.

  “You see,” he continued, “there aren’t many garrotting chairs left, now it’s no longer an official method of state execution.”

  Before she had processed the words, something in her subconscious that had been urging her to get off the chair finally broke through, sending an impulse to her legs.

  Driving upwards, she held on to the seat firmly with her thighs and upper arms, lifting it and twisting it so the cuffs would slide off the legs to the floor.

  But to her horror, the seat did not move an inch. She had barely registered that it was bolted to the ground before her head exploded with a searing pain as Malchus brought the metal butt of the pistol down hard onto the side of her skull.

  Collapsing back onto the chair, a torrent of pain cascaded down through her head and shoulders.

  As her focus slowly returned, she saw that Malchus was stepping over her. An instant later, she felt him sitting down onto her thighs, astride her. His hairless head was only inches from hers, and she could feel his breath on her face.

  The expression in his cold eyes had changed, and was now one of uncontrolled animal lust.

  Overwhelmed by panic, and fuelled by a cocktail of adrenaline and fight-or-flight chemicals, she bellowed with a mixture of terror and rage as she fought to stand up, to throw Malchus off her. At the same time, she hurled her upper body forwards, smashing him in the chest with her shoulder in the hope of toppling him.