by steve higgs
Thankfully there should be no need to do so as the library should be beyond the door ahead of us with the archive and map room leading from it. We were at the far end of the building, well away from the cleaning crew in the tourist area, but caution dictated we move stealthily.
Big Ben closed the door to seal us inside, the noise of the wind dropping to almost nothing as he did. Neither of us would speak of it, but it was cold out – unpleasantly so, which meant the unheated room we were now in was gloriously warm compared with outside.
‘This door?’ Big Ben asked while rubbing his hands together.
‘It should be.’ I replied. He placed his hand on the handle, listened for a moment, then opened the door. There was darkness beyond.
‘It looks like a library.’ He said as he went into the room.
He wasn’t wrong. It reminded me of the Royal Navy Archive I had visited with my father in Plymouth a few weeks ago. The bookshelves were all ornate wood and stretched to the ceiling. The information contained within the pages could all be managed on a single hard drive now, yet there was a recognisable nostalgia in the books before me, many of which would be as old as the Dockyard itself.
There were three doors leading from the library if I didn’t include the one we had just come through. One would lead out of the library toward the visitor area. We didn’t want that one. Big Ben was asking me which door we did want by pointing and shrugging.
I shrugged back. They were not labelled, so we would have to guess.
A shadow played across the room. There was someone outside. Big Ben and I froze. Nothing would give us away quicker than movement. It was movement that had alerted us to their presence. However, when a flashlight came on, its sharp beam drilling holes in the dark, I stepped into a shadow. They were shining it through the windows, but we were hidden from view.
Were they looking for us?
Big Ben had stepped behind a bookcase, I could see his eyes in the dim light coming into the room from outside. He glanced down and nodded, drawing my attention outside. I glanced, my movement furtive and small, not wanting to give myself away.
Outside were two ghosts.
Obviously, I need to caveat that statement though. What I could see outside were two security guards dressed as ghosts. They had on the ornate Royal Navy uniforms with the brocade running across the epaulettes and silver buckles on their shoes. That they were carrying flashlights gave the game away or would have if I had ever been convinced they were anything other than two dummies in costumes. The costumes had a frosted appearance to them. I couldn’t tell what it was at this distance, but it looked like flour. Poor Cedric would have a fit if he saw his priceless artefacts being abused like that.
As they moved away toward the end of the building we had entered, Big Ben said, ‘We better get moving.’ As he went for the nearest door.
It opened to a storeroom filled with boxes. The next door also opened into a storeroom, but this one was vast, its shelves and spaces filled with everything but books. There were uniforms, paintings, and boxes upon boxes of all shapes and sizes, each labelled to say what the box contained. Wooden wheels taken from ships, flags and pennants, and weapons. Lots and lots of weapons from old flintlock pistols, to swords and knives and everything in between. No cannons, I noted. Perhaps cannons were kept somewhere else.
‘I think this is it.’ I called quietly to Big Ben. I had found a door at the end of a pair of shelves that formed a corridor in the room. There might have been a label on the door, but in the dark, I just couldn’t see it.
Big Ben crossed the room. ‘I think those guards are in the building.’ He did not sound concerned about it. Knowing Big Ben, he was probably bored with all the sneaking about and ready for a fight. It worried me though. I was nowhere near to working out what was going on yet. Getting caught where we ought not to be would only get us fired and possibly prosecuted for attempted theft. A vision of CI Quinn’s gleeful face played in my head.
‘Let’s hurry then.’ I said as I pushed open the door. It was instantly clear we had found the chart room because there were charts everywhere. On shelves, on counter tops, pinned to the walls. Mostly they were rolled, and many were in containers – the long thin tubes designed to house and store such things.
‘Tell me you know how to find it, Tempest.’ Pleaded Big Ben.
Cedric had started by telling me that he didn’t know where the map was and that he hadn’t seen it in years but had changed his tune once he learned my plan. He knew precisely where it was and what it looked like. He had even drawn me a basic schematic of the room. I pulled the piece of paper with his drawing from my pocket now and held it to the light coming through a solitary window.
As I orientated myself to the room, a noise came from the archive we had just been in. The only way out of the room we were in was back the way we had come. The guards were blocking our exit. It must have been the wheelie bin that had tipped them off. We should have hidden it around the corner, not left it outside the door.
‘I’ll deal with them.’ Big Ben said, swinging a few practise punches as he went for the door.
I grabbed his shoulder. ‘Not yet.’ I needed us to stay under the radar. For now, at least. ‘Get the window open.’
He disapproved but he didn’t argue. I worked out where the map I wanted should be, prayed no one had moved it since Cedric was fired and started moving through the room. It was located on a high shelf above my head on the far wall. Safe inside a red cardboard tube, it was easy to spot but not so easy to reach. I wasn’t tall enough.
The sound of the guards talking was getting louder. They might spot the door leading into the chart room and walk through it at any moment. Quelling my rising panic, I looked around for something to stand on.
‘Here you go, short round.’ Said Big Ben as he reached up with one of his impossibly long arms to take the tube from the top shelf. ‘Can we go now?’ He asked with humorous faked impatience.
I slapped him in the ribs and went out the window to drop lightly to the cobbles below. We were in the lee of the building and in shadow, the dark working for us finally. I caught the map as he threw it and checked around while he lowered himself down and closed the window once more.
Then light filled the room we had just vacated as two guards spilled through it, their flashlights sending shafts of light to bounce off everything.
We hugged the wall, crouching beneath the window where we could not be seen. As the guards blundered about above us, I tapped Big Ben’s leg, it was time to go. The chance that they might open the window and look out was too great.
We gained the corner, stood up and went back to our cleaning duties as if we hadn’t just stolen a map to the underground lair of whatever was going on here. The tube containing the map went into one corner of the wheelie bin. I would have to work out what to do with it later. I couldn’t leave here with it tonight. It was four feet long, I hadn’t arrived with it and it looked like an ancient old artefact.
Any triumph I felt over finding the map and getting away was short lived though. A voice called out from behind us. ‘Where have you two been?’
It was Pasha. She was flanked by two more guards and they were all coming toward us, their pace fast and determined.
Thinking fast, I could not come up with a decent lie. As they closed the distance, the two guards dressed as ghosts that had been inside the museum rooms looking for us, came back out the door we had opened. All four guards could have been brothers, their silhouettes were so alike. Each had crew cut light brown hair and a blockish frame. Their uniforms barely fitted them, especially the two old Royal Navy uniforms which were stretched tight across enormous chests and thighs.
‘Well?’ She demanded. She had taken up position in front of us while the four men spread out to surround us. The two dressed as ghosts were behind us now. I turned to get a better look and decided that the frosted effect on the old uniform was indeed flour. I wasn’t going to be the one to tell Cedric.
Acting my way out seemed the only option. ‘We got cold and went inside to warm up for a bit.’
She said something in Ukrainian, smiling while she did it. The guards laughed to prove she had said something derogatory but the threat they posed did not diminish. The laughter left her eyes as she turned them back to me.
‘You have no place here. You should both quit.’
‘I need the job.’ Big Ben lied.
‘I don’t care.’ She spat back. ‘All you English are weak. Hiding from the cold like little children. Taking trips to the bathroom, always taking longer to get simple jobs done. I expected you to quit after last night.’
‘Why?’ I asked.
‘Because you saw one of the ghosts. No one else has stayed once they have seen the ghosts. They all ran away screaming like babies. Like little English babies.’
She paused, waiting for us to respond. When neither of us filled the silence, she pressed on. ‘You should quit now, and these gentlemen will escort you from the premises. It will be better for everyone.’
Stupidly, I decided to challenge her. ‘Do you have a copy of the company equality policy? Does it endorse your opinion that English should not be employed?’
Her eyes diverted to a point beyond my face as she nodded to one of the guards. Suddenly, my arms were grabbed from behind in a steel-like grip. I was fast to react, but hadn’t seen the other guard moving in. The punch to my gut took the breath out of me, just as the same thing happened to Big Ben.
‘You hit like a girl.’ Said Big Ben as he straightened up. ‘Go on, have another go, see if you can add two punches together to make one good one.’
The guard sneered and belted in three more gut shots in quick succession.
‘Yes or no?’ Big Ben asked me. I understood the question. We could fight back right now. Big Ben wasn’t used to letting people hit him without then turning them into a bleeding mess. Despite the size of the guys holding him, I believed he would beat them both to a pulp. I might struggle with my two, but my concern was that once we had shown them what we were capable of, we would no longer be viewed as two weak English cleaners but as something far more dangerous. Dangerous things get treated differently, which in this case, might mean they just kill us.
‘No.’ I replied quietly.
They were not done with the gut shots though. Twice more they hit each of us. Gut shots because they don’t show up and there’s no blood or split lips or missing teeth to explain.
Gritting my teeth against the pain, I locked eyes with the man that had hit me. ‘I won’t forget your face.’ I promised.
He smiled and hit me again.
‘Feel like quitting yet?’ Pasha asked as the guards let us go and we slumped to the cobbles.
I put a hand to the cold cobbles as I started to get up. ‘Not even slightly.’
‘I need the job.’ Big Ben repeated his lie.
Pasha said something in Ukrainian again. Another joke as the four guards laughed, but the show was over. They were leaving us, and the map was still tucked safe inside the wheelie bin. They hadn’t even looked in it.
Pasha paused before she walked away. She had a final comment. ‘This is your last shift, boys. If you are here tomorrow, it will go badly for you.’
Big Ben gave me a hand to straighten up. Bruising to my abdomen was going to bother me for a few days.
‘Just tell me I get to beat the crap out of them later this week, Tempest.’
I put a hand on his shoulder. ‘That’s the plan, big man. That’s the plan. I have just reviewed my policy of never hitting girls and discovered it is no longer politically correct.’ They were guilty of far more than scaring off English workers. I was going to find out what it was and bring it all crashing down around them.
For now, though, we were just going to have to suck it up and finish our shift.
‘What do we do with the map?’ He asked as we pushed the wheelie bin toward the next set of bins. What he had done was identify the shortfall in my plan. I had been so absorbed in getting my hands on it, I hadn’t considered how I would get it out of the Dockyard.
I could only see a couple of options. I could leave it in the bin and retrieve it in the morning. Or I could stash it somewhere else and retrieve it in the morning which did nothing to improve the first plan other than reduce the risk that it went to the tip – I had no idea what day the bins got emptied. The final option was to remove it from the protective tube and carry it out, folded flat against my body. They didn’t search the staff at any point because there was nothing here that could be easily stolen.
‘What about the two Daves?’ Big Ben asked when I outlined my options.
‘Top idea. Let’s give them a call and find out.’ I pulled my phone from my back pocket with a small groan – my abs were complaining already.
‘Hello.’ A cautious voice answered.
‘Dave. This is Tempest Michaels. I need your help.’
‘Oh, err. Give me a minute.’ He didn’t hang up and came back on the line a few seconds later. ‘Sorry, I was in the rest room warming up. Dave and I have all the worst shifts now. I am starting to wonder if they will just ban us from the rest room. They are trying everything they can to get rid of us. What is it you need from me?’
‘It will be easier if I show you. Are you going out on patrol again soon?’
He said that he was and gave us a place to meet him.
The underground. Wednesday, November 23rd 0037hrs
We went to my place with the map because it was closer to the Dockyard than Big Ben’s. The two Daves had dutifully done as requested, smuggled the map out and placed it inside my car. Their belief that no one was paying any attention to what they were doing proved true.
‘Hey dogs.’ Big Ben called out as my Dachshunds recognised him and tried to climb his legs. I shooed them into the garden to empty their bladders, then made two coffees while Big Ben extracted the map from the tube and rolled it out on my dining room table.
The contents of the tube turned out to be three maps, each drawn at different times when the tunnels had been added to. They were not complete though and failed to show where the buildings above ground were in relation to what we were looking at. What I needed more than anything was a way into the underground chambers. Finding it was proving frustrating.
Big Ben sipped his coffee. ‘Got anything stronger?’
‘Are you planning to stay here?’
‘Yeah. Too late for shagging now. I should have set something up earlier. This will just have to be one of those rare days when I don’t get any. I’ll make up for it at Jagjit’s wedding this weekend.’
I was listening to him as I fetched tumblers and rum from the kitchen. ‘Want it over coke?’ I asked.
‘Nah. Ice will do.’
I poured two drinks and focused back on the maps. Big Ben wasn’t done with his plan for the weekend though. ‘Jagjit doesn’t have any sisters, does he?’
‘No, four brothers. All older.’
‘Many female cousins that will be attending?’
I laughed at his continuous need to meet new ladies. ‘I believe so. Alice will also have a selection of friends along. I am sure some of them will be single.’
‘Doesn’t really matter if they are, mate, so long as they don’t bring their boyfriends with them.’
‘Didn’t you only just get a girl pregnant? Do you not remember how scared you were a couple of weeks ago when you thought it was more than one?’
‘Oh. Did I not tell you? Bianca isn’t pregnant anymore. I think what she meant to say was, her period finally came a month later than expected. Do girls get that? Their period just misses a cycle?’
‘I couldn’t tell you mate. It is not the sort of thing I remember from my biology classes and I have never found myself in a position where I needed to ask.’
‘Fair point.’ He conceded. ‘You know, this map might not tell us how to get in, but it looks as if there is an entrance at the water.’
‘Where?’ I
asked, my curiosity making me stare harder than I had been.
‘See here.’ He pointed. ‘The elevation changes. The river sits well below the level of the Dockyard but at high tide this tunnel might be low enough to be accessible. Why build it that way otherwise?’
A water entrance. What a great way to sneak in and out. It wasn’t definitive, but what he had suggested made sense. ‘If we assume you are correct and where they have drawn the terminus of that tunnel is the river, then we can orientate the maps.’
We spent the next minute working out how the maps overlaid. The oldest-looking map had a single tunnel and a set of stone steps drawn leading down into it. It was more pictographic than the others, clearly hand drawn, as each of them were, but there was no scale to it, which made it hard to work out if the whole tunnel was represented on the later maps or if it had been extended at some point. Neither of the other two maps showed a way in. So, we had a possible river entrance and a set of stone steps that led down to the original tunnel but no way of knowing where they started.
It was quite frustrating.
‘This is a bit difficult without a scale to work from.’ Big Ben observed. ‘Plus, I’m not confident of the direction the tunnels are running.’
I scratched my head and yawned. ‘If people are coming and going from the tunnels they must be doing so visibly. Maybe I need to stake the place out during the day and see if I can spot human traffic where it shouldn’t be.’
‘What about the river entrance? Do you want me to look for that?’
‘Have you got access to a boat?’ I asked.
‘I have a canoe if it comes to it, but that seems like the long-winded version. I’ll pop down to the marina tomorrow, there’s bound to be a boat with a lady on board.’
‘And what? You flash her your winning smile, she throws her knickers off and then lets you take the boat down the river to scout out the Dockyard?’
