We Are Death

by Douglas Lindsay

  ‘But that... but no one actually thinks he did it! No one thinks the stories of the miracles are true.’

  Develin shrugged.

  ‘Well, some do, but yes, you’re right. Magic, supernatural powers, whatever you want to call them, everyone is sceptical. There are plenty of people in my organisation who are sceptical. I’m sceptical. But there’s a book, and Featherstone found it, and he brought it back to England and there was little doubt, from contemporary records, that he hadn’t aged a day. Maybe he just drank the water and ate some sort of herb.’

  ‘So Featherstone stole the book.’

  Develin nodded.

  ‘That’s more or less how it went. He stole the book. The story of Featherstone isn’t a great one. That’s one of the reasons – one of them – why it isn’t told. It’s like all the stories, all the tales of greatness. The great empires. Every one of them was built on conquest or on the exploitation of people. Nobody wants to dwell on that part.’

  Another movement of the glass, another drink, Develin was relaxing into his subject. Or pretending to relax, hoping perhaps to draw Leighton further in. Leighton took another drink, happy to let him talk.

  Was she, at some point, going to test his claim? Could she break her glass and put it to his throat, then see if she could just walk out of the building?

  ‘Perhaps it was just something in his time in the Himalayas that allowed him to draw something from within, that allowed him to become a great man, doing great things. Perhaps it was indeed the book. We don’t know.’

  ‘He beat his wife and then stole an ancient artefact,’ said Leighton. ‘He doesn’t sound so great.’

  ‘Whatever he was, and remember that most great men and women are awash with contradiction, he built an immensely powerful organisation. They controlled things, they controlled people, they controlled governments.’

  He finished off his drink, the ice falling against his lips, then lowered the glass.

  ‘And we still do,’ he added. ‘Would you like another drink?’

  ‘Please,’ she said, nodding.

  She drained her glass and handed it to him. Their fingers touched in the exchange. He felt the excitement of it, and hoped she did too. She watched him as he moved to the drinks cabinet, as she had done previously, making sure he didn’t slip anything into her glass. Of course, she was no drinker. She might have been taking alcohol to steal her nerve, but it was going to be a very narrow line between that and her usual affected, useless, good-natured intoxication.

  She didn’t really want to feel any good nature towards Develin.

  ‘And this book was placed at the summit of Kangchenjunga?’

  Develin nodded, over the sound of gin pouring into two fresh glasses.

  ‘The organisation grew quickly in the beginning, and perhaps you’re right. The measure of Featherstone was that it quickly outgrew him. Its power was established, but the book considered too dangerous. And so it was placed as far out of the way as possible. They took it back to the Himalayas, but instead of returning it to the lost valley, they took it to the summit of the highest mountain on earth. Or, as the history books will tell you, what was believed to be the highest mountain on earth at the time. Kangchenjunga.’

  ‘That is a good story,’ she said.

  He smiled, walked back to her, handed over her drink and slightly raised his glass, before taking his first sip of the fresh, colder liquid. What was it? His fourth of the day? He probably ought to slow down. Stop, in fact.

  ‘Everything you read nowadays about Kangchenjunga stems from that moment. The fact that the locals hold the mountain holy and that no one should go to the summit, that was us. The locals are well compensated to go along with it. Climbers were supposed to not go to the summit. And the organisation made the decision to leave the book there, although we’ve had pretty strong surveillance on it for the last fifty years.’

  ‘And this man Geyerson was the first to go to the actual summit?’

  ‘No, there have been others, albeit not many. But we’ve watched them, made sure they didn’t find anything. It’s usually apparent that they haven’t. There was a Japanese expedition a few years ago that we weren’t sure about. Tricky...’

  ‘So what did you do?’

  A small shake of the head.

  ‘Doesn’t matter. They’re all dead now anyway.’

  She turned and looked directly at him, but he avoided her gaze.

  ‘So we learned that Geyerson had been to the top, and that finally someone had removed the book. We don’t automatically go into overdrive and start killing people. We gave him a few months, waited it out to see what was going to happen. Then it became clear that he himself, for whatever reason, was more interested in money than the book.’

  He made a small gesture of curiosity, his lips pursed.

  ‘Interesting in itself. Remember that no one alive, until this expedition, had seen it. No one knows what it contains. It could be the real thing, or it could be a myth in itself. Just all part of the story behind the organisation, something to bind us together, our own creation myth as it were.’

  ‘So you killed all the Japanese for nothing?’

  ‘I didn’t say we killed the Japanese.’

  ‘But you admit that you killed the man in Switzerland and in Somerset.’

  ‘These people took something that wasn’t theirs to take. This is a big game, bigger than them, bigger than any individual. We don’t know if they went there looking for it, or if maybe recent warming has revealed more of the summit than there would have been previously, so that it presented itself to them. We don’t know how it played out. But they got it, and we realised that one of Geyerson’s men was traversing the world, trying to drum up interest in an auction.’

  ‘And did he?’

  Develin nodded, this time looking out into the night, or staring at his own reflection.

  ‘That’s why we’re here. That’s what’s happening in Oslo. Tonight. Geyerson is going to sell the Book of Lazarus to the highest bidder. And we’re going to make sure it doesn’t happen.’

  49

  Another meeting with another police superintendent. There was nowhere, thought Jericho, that you could just pile in and get on with what you had to do. It always had to be run past authority.

  Well, there were likely plenty of places where the police, at any level, were their own authority, but he wasn’t operating in those. Never had done.

  Chief Superintendent Torsveg was a man of careful consideration. He had heard Markussen out, and he had asked questions of Jericho, Badstuber and Haynes, making sure to get answers from across the board. Judging everyone, getting a handle on the role that each of them had in the small drama playing out on his watch.

  At last counting, there were five different people to arrive at the house, security aside. Three of them had been identified, one as a Chinese businessman, one from the Brazilian government and the third a known business associate of the Russian president.

  A few months earlier Torsveg would have been keen to get home to his wife. His second wife. But she had gone the same way as his first – taking his money and a younger colleague of his along the way – and now going home meant sitting with a beer and late night television, so he was never in any rush.

  She had even taken the dog – his dog – as he’d had no answer as to how he was going to take the dog out during the day. Sometimes it didn’t pay to have no friends.

  Nevertheless, he managed not to be bitter. A phlegmatic sort, Torsveg, which was one reason he had risen as high in the Norwegian police service as he had done, despite conducting almost his entire career devoid of ambition.

  It wasn’t the only reason, however.

  ‘I’ve heard from all four of you now,’ he said slowly, his voice almost completely without any accent. ‘I think you all know that, as far as we’re aware, there has been no crime committed at this house so far, and that we know of no specific crime that will be committed.’

  None of
them replied, despite the lengthy gap Torsveg allowed himself. He thought over his next words with his eyes directed at the floor. The silence in the room was total. Only Haynes amongst them, anxious about Leighton, wished that Torsveg would get on with it.

  ‘I’m curious, Chief Inspector, what you would do if you broke in there now. Who would you arrest? What illegal activity is it that you think you’d be breaking up?’

  Jericho took the same length of time over his reply. Although he had no interest in the minor celebrity he had at home, and the effect it had on meetings he had with superior officers, it was always something different, and challenging, for him to meet someone who had never heard of him, had no interest in him, and did not defer to him in any way.

  ‘I think, perhaps, where Inspector Markussen misspoke, was to imply that we would be charging in, heavy-handed, taking over the house and making a series of arrests. You’re right, of course. At the moment, although the whole evening seems to have been organised as a cloak and dagger event for beginners, there’s nothing on the surface implicitly criminal.’

  ‘So what is it you’re looking for?’

  ‘We want to close in on the house, as low key as possible. The fact that darkness has now fallen will hopefully make this a little easier. We want to send one man into the house, to essentially break in – and we have the best weak spot for this from the architect himself – to plant a sensitive listening device, as close to wherever the business is being conducted, in order to listen in.’

  ‘That won’t be admissible in court,’ said Torsveg.

  ‘No,’ replied Jericho, ‘but if we can use that to catch them in the act of something incriminating, then hopefully we’ll get everything we need for court.’

  ‘You’ll have a tough time explaining how you knew what you knew when you knew it,’ said Torsveg, and he smiled, although his mouth quickly regained its regular downcast, melancholic shape. This all had the potential to be a gigantic mess, and bigger men than Torsveg would have worried about how it would play out from their own perspective.

  Jericho made a slight gesture with his hands.

  ‘Something was taken from the summit of Kangchenjunga. We don’t know yet what that is, but we know that people have died and we suspect that tonight Geyerson is going to try to sell it on. We’ve hunted this killer down over four countries now, and this is our best chance to catch him in the act. We need to know what’s going on, and we need to be as close as we can possibly be. This isn’t about making the sexy arrest...’ Did I really just use the word sexy? Jesus... ‘This isn’t about headlines. There are people dying, and this is about bringing it to an end and catching the person responsible.’

  By the time he’d finished talking, Torsveg was nodding silently. Jericho knew he would go along, he had just to be taken there.

  ‘I’m not entirely sure that I agree with you, or that you have as much chance as you seem to think, Chief Inspector. And as far as I can see, the two crimes we have here – the murder at Geyerson’s hotel room and the disappearance of Sergeant Haynes’s professor – were nothing to do with either Geyerson or the people attending his house. Nevertheless, on balance...’

  There was a knock. Torsveg muttered something and the door opened. One of the young constables from the operations room stuck his head in, looked around, located Markussen.

  ‘Inspector, there’s one more attendee newly arrived at this event. No name yet, but he looks Indian, or from that region. And we’ve identified one of the earlier arrivals as being ex-Mossad.’

  ‘Cool.’

  ‘Jesus,’ said Torsveg, his voice low and heavy, then he shooed the constable from the office with a dismissive wave.

  The door closed and silence once again fell upon them. Jericho found himself leaning forward slightly. They needed to be getting on with it. However, he knew to wait.

  ‘If there’s one thing worse than a bunch of rich international thugs converging in one place, it’s multiplying it by Israel,’ said Torsveg.

  He shook his head.

  ‘All right, do what you need to do. But I’m not sending three hundred men over there. I’m not having media helicopters in the skies over Oslo.’

  None of them responded. He wasn’t sure what he wanted in terms of numbers. On one level he felt that the more people they took, the more people were likely to get killed.

  Torsveg shook his head, then once again waved at the door.

  ‘Go! Go! Do what you have to do, I’ll have your back.’

  ‘Good move,’ said Markussen as they got to their feet.

  ‘Thank you for the affirmation, Inspector,’ said Torsveg.

  *

  ‘So, why the tarot cards?’

  They were standing beside the bar, having moved there while getting their next drink. Leighton had no idea what she was doing. She wished that she was being sensible, that she was secretly depositing the gin into a plant, or that she was a secret drinker and knew she’d comfortably be able to drink Develin under the table, like Marion Ravenwood in Raiders. But all she was doing was getting drunk. Stalling for time and getting drunk.

  And whose time was she stalling for? Did she really think that nothing was going to happen that evening while she kept Develin detained?

  He smiled, made a small, slightly affected gesture with the hand that wasn’t holding his drink.

  ‘Trade secret,’ he said.

  ‘Seriously?’

  He held her gaze for a moment, and she could tell he was contemplating telling her something he hadn’t originally intended to. Perhaps he had a set routine, perhaps he lured lots of women in with information.

  She just didn’t want to think about what happened to them when they refused to be lured.

  ‘They’re not tarot cards,’ he said.

  The surprise on her face was genuine, quickly switching to disbelief.

  ‘Yes they are,’ she said.

  ‘You’re not an expert in every aspect of history, Professor. Like I said, there is much for you to learn from The Pavilion. Perhaps you’d like to reconsider your position.’

  ‘What are they, then?’ she asked, more or less ignoring him. ‘What could they possibly be, if not tarot?’

  He took another drink, and when the glass came down from his face she could tell he had told her everything he intended to.

  ‘I don’t think my employers would be too impressed if I divulged anything further,’ he said.

  ‘Your employers? So you’re not the boss? You seem to be the boss.’

  ‘I’m the manager of the team,’ he said. ‘I’m the face of the organisation, when it needs a face. Although, it must be said, it doesn’t usually need a face.’

  ‘So who actually runs things?’

  ‘I run things.’

  She laughed, then stopped herself. Laughing would be all right if she was toying with him. She wasn’t toying, however. Just getting drunk, that’s all.

  ‘OK, who pays you to run things?’

  He smiled as he took another drink.

  ‘Once again, I believe you made the choice not to become part of our organisation, Professor. You don’t get to know.’

  ‘You seem to have told me quite a lot this evening already,’ she said.

  ‘I suppose I have,’ he said. He laughed lightly, waved his glass. ‘As you may suspect, all that means is I’m going to kill you, so you’ll never be able to tell anyone. Even so, I think we ought to have some secrets between us.’

  His tone was light, and yet there was an underlying seriousness in his voice. It was obvious really. That was the choice he was giving her. Join us or die.

  She caught his eye, then looked back at her drink. He was appraising her. It was possible that this was him, coming to it at last. The point of the afternoon and evening.

  Suddenly she felt on edge, the nerves cutting through the alcohol. Did she hope he wasn’t really going to kill her, and let it play out? Did she just let him kill her, because that way perhaps he wouldn’t feel any need to
go after Haynes? Or did she finally take part in the adventure, do what the heroine of the story should do, and fight back?

  ‘What’s going to happen to Sergeant Haynes?’ she asked. ‘And Chief Inspector Jericho?’

  She didn’t look at him as she spoke, the glass once again at her lips.

  ‘As I said to my man earlier, while you were making your little break for freedom, everybody dies.’

  She closed her eyes briefly, then looked back at him.

  ‘You don’t have to do that. Stuart doesn’t know–’

  ‘Come on, Professor, don’t disappoint me. He knows more than you do. And if you know too much to be allowed to live, and he knows more than you... well, you do the math.’

  Those nerves were racing now, her stomach crunching horribly. This was it. She really was going to die, and she wouldn’t be alone. He had allowed her this last pleasant conversation, standing at a window looking down on the world, all the alcohol she could handle, as though granting her some final request. As if this here, with him, would have been her final request.

  Yes, he really did like her, but she couldn’t bring herself to tempt him in any way. It was too late for that. Too many nerves, too much suspicion, too much contempt rising inside her.

  She drained the glass and, as it rested against her lips, the ice sliding to the edge of the glass, she made her choice. Time to do the kind of thing she’d only ever seen in a movie, and hope that it came off, which would be unlike most things in life the first time you ever tried them.

  She brought the glass down swiftly on the edge of the bar. It shattered in her hand leaving barely more than the bottom and a centimetre of jagged glass in her fingers, then in one movement she brought her hand up towards his neck.

  He was waiting for her. He’d been waiting for it the entire night, and at no point had his guard been down. And in choosing a moment, it would have been better to pick one in the middle of a long explanation, one when the mood of the room hadn’t just changed, rather than this moment here, when her actions were writ large across her face.

  Her hand, already bloody, got nowhere near his neck. As she moved to break the glass, he instantly brought his open palm up onto her face, a vicious slap, sending her backwards.