by A D Davies
“And you’re sure there ain’t a full schematic somewhere?”
“I tried,” Charlie said. “But plans for eight-hundred-year-old tunnels don’t tend to be kept on a computer.”
“In fact,” Toby told them, “the curator... he doesn’t trust computers. But I have it.” He tapped his head. “Up here.”
Toby had even drawn up a map, which Jules memorized rather than having to carry it with him.
“Who is this curator?” Jules asked.
He hadn’t asked too many questions back at the chateau, preferring to discourage irrelevant detail. But their walk was gearing up to be a long one.
“Colin Waterston,” Toby said. “Actually, he and I are old friends. I was his... mentor, for want of a better word. We have a tea date since I’m in town. But I’ll be wired into our comms system. You can listen in to what we say. I’ll try to pry any useful information from him. Casually. Now, one more time before we split up.”
Groans from everyone. Each time, their run-through got mercifully shorter. For the first briefing yesterday afternoon, Toby embarked on one of his soliloquies, which Jules was already sick of. He didn’t know how the LORI team put up with it on a permanent basis. Maybe he’d ask them some personal questions about that when he got the chance.
“The best security system in the world is secrecy,” Toby had told them, settling into that wide armchair in the chateau’s study. “Do you remember the great fire of Windsor in 1992?”
“Sure.” Bridget perked up. “I know of it.”
Jules nodded.
Toby said, “Ever wonder why, with all that artwork in the State Apartments, a fire was allowed to destroy over one hundred rooms while firefighters were dispatched to save Chester Tower? Why a relatively simple section of the structure was prioritized over the Crimson Drawing Room and the Queen’s Private Chapel?”
Jules shrugged and applied a patient smile. “You don’t ‘allow’ a fire to do anything. It does what it wants. But yeah, Chester Tower. That’s kept me up at night.”
Toby ignored the sarcasm. “They believe the fire started with a spotlight getting too close to a curtain in Saint George’s Hall and it spread quickly, mainly thanks to the huge rooms being drafty and full of air. Plus the dry voids in the floors and ceilings.”
“So there’s something special about Chester Tower?” Dan asked. “Or was it just a strategic spot to contain the blaze?”
On a tablet computer, Toby pointed to the apartment section on publicly available plans. The castle was made up of three wards—upper, middle, and lower—that were enclosed to form a huge fort. The State Apartments, Queen’s Chapel, and the Crimson Drawing Room featured in the upper ward, and the apartments ended at the circular section called Chester Tower. It was part of the outer wall rather than a stand-alone structure.
Toby went on, “Equipment is stored there to break out the Britishness for state visits and the like. But the mirroring subsection has supposedly been cut off and disused for three hundred years.” He indicated the area around Chester Tower, stabbed his finger at the ground just before it. “There’s an entrance via the kitchen, but it is never opened while regular staff are using it, and there’s an emergency exit directly to the grounds in this wall. It places them in what is disguised as a CCTV center, so if they get discovered, that’s what they say it is. But beyond... that’s where the catacombs begin.”
“Catacombs?” Jules said.
Bridget blossomed with the impression that she was about to squeal and clap her hands. “I love catacombs. Especially secret ones.”
There was more, of course, but the main point he danced around was a repository of plundered items from the days of the Empire, belonging to races that were wiped out in the name of progress. A long, drawn-out explanation followed as to why it didn’t make the royal family assholes, but Jules managed to tune a lot of it out.
Sometimes it was easy to stay quiet. Other times, he had to focus.
Today, though, taking an elongated route to the castle, Toby ran through the plan once again in a shorter, simpler way that Jules wished he would use to start such stories: access the floor void, locate the weak spot, snake through a fissure under the foundations, then locate the vault in the heart of the catacombs.
Simple.
Chapter Ten
Toby paced alone beside the Round Tower in the castle’s Middle Ward while Jules’s voice carried into his ear via the nearly invisible bud lodged there. “Hey, did you know Windsor Castle was built by a guy called William the Conqueror? Yeah, after the 1066 Norman Conquest. And did you know it covers 52,609 square meters? Which—whoa—is thirteen acres. Over one million visitors per year.”
Toby watched people of dozens of nationalities milling around, reading pamphlets, taking photos. He didn’t fully understand the bone-conduction technology that Charlie adapted for covert use, but understood it received and fed vibrations through the ear canal and transmitted them without the need for a microphone. It wasn’t something he dwelled on, happy to adopt the tech rather than understand it.
He said, “I know what you’re doing.”
“Saint George’s Hall is the biggest room,” Jules went on. “It’s 55.5 meters long and nine meters wide. Or 182 feet by thirty if you’re from my neck of the woods. You can cram in 162 people for state banquets.”
“What is he doing?” Charlie asked.
“He’s reading from a flyer,” Dan said.
Toby had split them into four parties: Jules with Dan, Bridget with Charlie, Harpal on his own, and Toby loitering here, as arranged, to meet Colin.
“Forty monarchs, including Her Majesty the Queen, have lived in the castle.” Jules now enunciated badly, an American doing a terrible impression of an upper-class British person. “The oldest glazed window in the castle dates back to 1236 AD and is thought to be a wedding gift from King Henry III to Eleanor of Provence.”
“He’s making fun of yours truly,” Toby said. “Thank you, Jules. I tend to talk a lot. I get it.”
“Huh. Just trying to lay out some pointless detail for you while we wait. Thought you enjoyed that.”
Toby paused until a Japanese family passed by. “My ‘pointless detail’ is rarely without point.”
He’d also laid out the castle for them: the Lower Ward with the glorious Saint George’s Chapel, the Middle Ward with the old Round Tower as the central feature of the structure, and the Upper Ward where the residences lay. Also incorporated in the Upper Ward was the precinct where the Changing of the Guard took place, meaning there would be fewer tourists in every other area.
Then came the nasal plummy tones he was hoping for. “Why, Toby, look at you. You got old!”
Toby turned to find Colin Waterston smiling down at him. In a beige suit, the younger man was in his midforties, so not exactly a spring chicken himself. Although he was a head and a half taller than Toby, his hair was far thinner; he’d developed a widow’s peak, and the stringy, brushed-back sweep suggested a bald spot was likely brewing too.
One could but hope.
Toby might be short, his years inching closer to sixty than fifty, but his hair was that of a thoroughbred.
He extended a hand. “Colin, how wonderful to see you.”
They shook hands firmly, smiles at full wattage, a seriously expensive watch on Colin’s wrong wrist—the right—a frightful habit Toby had all but forgotten about. But the Patek Philippe timepiece was his only item out of place.
Colin broke away first. “I must admit I was surprised when I read your message. Thought this would be the last place you’d care to visit.”
“Bygones.” Toby wafted the notion away as if it were a fly. “Hopefully it goes both ways.”
“Of course, of course. So what the devil are you up to?”
“I was rather hoping to chat to you about that over tea. If I’m not imposing.”
Colin forced a chuckle. “For you, Toby, I have laid out the best china. Or rather, the best china we staff are allowed to to
uch. Right this way.”
Bridget mingled with the crowd alongside Charlie, positioned at the north end of the Upper Ward as the Household Troops marched into position for the traditional Changing of the Guard. Their red tunics, black trousers, and enormous bearskin hats never failed to fill Bridget with anticipation, implying something incredible could happen at any moment. This regiment had guarded the reigning monarch for nearly 350 years, making the tradition older than the modern United States. All around, history beat down at her from every brick, every window, every speck of dirt.
While most people read about events, Bridget absorbed them. Simply taking in others’ accounts was never enough, and this was one of the oldest standing castles in the world. Not quite ancient, but more had occurred here over its eight hundred years than she could comprehend. If the public displays contained such wondrous artwork, what lay beneath?
“Concentrate,” Charlie said, having drifted four or five people away.
Bridget nodded. It was rare that they all came out into the field together, especially Charlie, but she insisted she’d be more useful on the ground. There was little to be accomplished remotely, having digitally reconnoitered as much as she could, and drones of the type they usually scouted with were expressly forbidden around the castle.
The troops halted, and the commander yelled his orders. Late-arriving spectators slotted in behind Bridget, some pushing through to crouch near the front with cameras.
“Okay, boys,” Bridget said. “I think we’re occupied.”
Jules followed Dan at a distance. Toby was right. Most tourists were watching the soldiers in red perform their ceremony. In this section—the State Apartments and Gallery—there were occasional guides waiting to offer assistance who barely reacted to Dan’s presence, dressed as he was in a polo shirt with the logo of Trident Facilities, the castle’s contracted maintenance service. That Jules headed in the same direction—the restrooms—was normal for a tourist carrying a near-empty one-liter water bottle.
The bathroom was small: two urinals, three stalls, and a locked door set flush to the wall. The smell of flowery urinal cakes filled the place. Dan hung an “Out of Order” sign on the outside, locked them in, then gestured to the supply closet. Jules took out his lockpick’s scrubbing device and inserted its proboscis into the Yale lock. The teeth whirred until the stem bit into the mechanism and allowed Jules to turn the chamber. It unlocked.
“You like?” Jules said.
“Eh, it was okay.”
Jules and Dan emptied the cupboard of a mop and bucket, an industrial pack of toilet paper, and stacks of hand towels. On the floor, a manhole cover lay cemented into the surface, the date 1795 decorating the metal.
Both crouched to examine it.
“Sealed,” Jules said.
Dan dug in his tool bag and removed a plastic bottle identical to contact lens solution. “Nothing’s ever really sealed. Watch this.” He squirted the fluid around the newer cement. It hissed and bubbled, eating away the looser stone, then a long, heavy screwdriver chipped away the remaining fragments. “Well?”
“It was okay,” Jules said. “I’ll get the recipe later.”
Dan jammed the sturdy screwdriver into the new gap between metal and floor and strained to pry it loose.
Back at the plane, Jules had watched him pack and they had discussed a crowbar, even a mini one, but Dan insisted he’d lifted heavier barriers than a manhole cover with this screwdriver. Plus, a crowbar might look suspicious despite his undercover persona.
Now, though, he hammered the screwdriver with the palm of his hand so it burrowed deeper, then leaned on the tool again. Something shifted. But it wasn’t the cover.
The screwdriver bent under Dan’s weight.
Dan swore loudly. Too loud. Both froze, waiting for someone to enter the bathroom to investigate.
One Mississippi.
Two Mississippi.
Three Mississippi.
Nothing. No one heard.
Dan wiggled the screwdriver loose, returned to his bag, and rummaged, returning with a hammer, by which time Jules had already produced the twelve-inch crowbar he smuggled off the plane and positioned it in the acid-hewn gap.
“Asshole,” Dan said.
“What’s he done now?” Charlotte asked over comms.
“Nothing you need to worry about.” Dan took over the crowbar and jimmied a new crack—progress at last.
The metalwork came loose, with more cement cracking and crumbling, and Jules helped Dan heave it aside. Both peered in and then recoiled at the odor. Jules pulled a cotton scarf up over his mouth and nose, prepared with Vicks ointment, and dangled his legs over. He removed his jeans and long-sleeve top, revealing his bodysuit, this time decked out with rubber-soled shoes and knee and elbow pads.
“You done this before?” Dan asked.
“Sewers? Of course. And don’t worry. Royal poop is pretty much the same as working-class Bavarian poop.”
“2014?” came Toby’s voice.
“What?”
“2014. Is that when you were in Bavaria?”
Jules caught Dan’s grin and said, “No comment.”
“I’ll look after these.” Dan packed Jules’s spare clothes into a garbage bag and set it aside for his return, then pulled out wrenches, hammers, and a handful of pipe fittings. Finally, he passed Jules another squeeze bottle of clear fluid. “Your GPS on?”
Jules tapped the adapted smartphone strapped on his wrist. All it needed was an initial GPS reading from the satellite, then he could use it offline. “Looks like.”
“Good luck,” Toby said.
Jules turned on his headlamp, dropped into the pipe, and bent to his hands and knees to accommodate the tightness of the space. “You better be right about this.”
“Are you talking to yourself?” Colin asked, returning from washing his hands.
“Not at all.” Toby rose slightly from his seat, as is only polite when one’s host enters the room. “Commenting on the tasteful decor.”
The curator’s office had changed greatly since Toby’s time here, which was to be expected after more than a decade of absence. Even in Toby’s day, though, it served more as a drawing room than an office. Yes, it held the same antique desk on which prime ministers had signed many a document and commanded a view of Windsor Park that swept into the middle distance like a perfectly composed painting. It also catered to meetings of up to twelve people, with a boardroom table that had once—according to Colin when he showed Toby in—adorned a tsar’s palace before the Russian Revolution dispatched their royals. The chairs were all modern—Ikea, if Toby wasn’t mistaken.
But it was the view that stirred Toby’s jealousy. Whenever confronted with a problem or dilemma, he used to lock his door and sit here, on the couch away from the desk, and simply contemplate the issue until a solution dawned. Today, he was the guest—on the sofa beside the floor-to-ceiling window, legs crossed. There was a fine china tea set on a silver tray before him, the coffee table designed to fit in but clearly a reproduction.
Colin sat opposite him on a second couch, poured two measures of milk into the delicate-looking cups, and lifted the teapot. “Actually from China,” he said.
“Yes.” Toby watched impassively. “Eighteenth century?”
“Nineteenth. But only just.” After pouring two cups of tea, he offered the bowl of sugar cubes—white and brown.
Toby declined. He noted the milk going in first, a matter of etiquette frequently misunderstood. Pouring boiling tea into a thin china cup—real china, that is—can damage it, so the milk dampens the effect. Another touch of class now absent from his life.
Colin presented him with the cup and saucer and sat back with his own. “So what can the House of Windsor help the great Toby Smith with today?”
“I’m involved with a modest project,” Toby said. “And I was hoping you may be willing to loan me a piece from Her Majesty’s private collection. The Indian section.”
“A loan?�
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“Or even just a quick peek. I’d be grateful for even a few hours, supervised if necessary, but if you could see a way to instigate a full loan, I’d be ecstatic.”
Colin sipped his tea, frowning as if it were pure lemon juice. He set the cup back in the saucer with a clink, expression unchanged. “Toby, I’m more than happy to have a civilized conversation with a former colleague. But after the way you left things here, you don’t really think we’re going to cooperate in that fashion, do you?”
Jules had explored exactly seventeen sewers in varying degrees of heat, through tunnels massively differing in size, and for vastly different lengths of time. Oddly, the sewers in the developing world, towns and cities dating back to Roman times, were easier to navigate, if infinitely more infested with rats, snakes, and other undesirable creatures; their age meant they dated from hundreds of years ago, when people needed to stand upright to conduct maintenance, while newer cities installed the cheapest, smallest pipes they could get away with. Likewise, London’s main sewers were something of a treat at low tide and still in great condition.
The sewer in which Jules lay now was not one of those, but a modern installation after the advent of mass tourism.
He commando-crawled along the access pipe from the public restroom, elbows and knees braced on the sides to evade the worst of the filth, emerging into a tunnel linking the others through which he had to crouch. His rubber soles and pads allowed him to grip the sides, keeping him out of the slurry, but minor splashes could not be avoided. He checked the GPS and concentrated on his destination, ignoring the two upper-class twits in his ear.
