Authors: Simon Toyne
By the time Athanasius reached the Chamber of Philosophy he had stopped running. The moment he entered he saw a dim glow to his left and stopped.
He stared for a moment at the faint light sketching the outline of a bookshelf, then moved quickly and silently toward it. He reached the edge, took a deep breath and peered round.
For a moment he could not make out who stood at the centre of the bright circle of light, so accustomed were his eyes to the dark; then – as his eyes adjusted and penetrated the glare – he saw with relief who it was.
Father Thomas stood halfway down the row next to Ponti, who was hunched over a reading desk deep with abandoned books, his cart parked beside him full of dusters and brushes, carrying on his work, oblivious to the unaccustomed light he was currently bathed in.
Athanasius moved down the row of shelves towards them, clearing his throat as he went. ‘Brother Ponti! Father Thomas!’ he said in a voice that seemed unnaturally loud after his long enforced silence. ‘I thought I heard something.’
Ponti looked up, staring straight through him with his blank, white eyes. Thomas glanced across and smiled, the relief of seeing his friend lighting up his face.
In the control room by the main entrance two dots converged on a computer screen and the program invisibly transposed their identities then deleted itself.
‘There’s a security drill underway,’ Thomas said matter-of-factly. He watched Athanasius quietly withdraw four sheets of folded paper from his sleeve. ‘We should probably make our way to the exit, don’t you think?’
‘You two go ahead,’ Ponti replied. ‘They don’t even spot me half the time. I’ll move on if somebody makes me. Elsewise I’ll just carry on with my work.’
Athanasius picked up the largest of the open books on the reading desk, placed the folded sheets of paper inside and gently closed it. ‘Very well,’ he said. ‘Then we won’t mention we saw you.’ They turned to walk away, dragging the light with them as they went.
‘Much appreciated, Brother. Much appreciated,’ came the caretaker’s dry voice as his spectral form melted back into the darkness.
Athanasius glanced down at the cover of the book. It was a copy of
Also Sprach Zarathustra
by Friedrich Nietzsche, printed in the original German and now containing wax rubbings of most of the contents of the Heretic Bible. The temptation to open it and look at the pages now he had his light back was almost too much to resist. But it was too risky. The guard might return with Father Malachi at any moment. It was best to wait until the alarm was over and the library was re-opened. Then he could read it at his leisure.
Thomas walked on ahead as agreed, heading for the entrance alone so they would not be seen emerging from the depths of the library together. Athanasius held back, scanning the shelves, looking for somewhere to hide the book. He daren’t risk whoever had been studying Nietszche to return and discover what it now contained. He reached the end of the row and saw a wall of identical books completely filling a low shelf. He lowered his head and looked over the top. There was a gap between them and the back of the shelf. He quickly slid the volume of Nietzsche over them and down into the gap, then leaned back, straightened the volumes on the shelf and read one of the spines. It was the complete works of Soren Kierkegaard. Nietzsche had been totally obscured by his Danish counterpart.
Satisfied, he stood back up and headed to the exit, cocooned in the darkness by his rapidly brightening circle of light.
The vehicle pulled to a stop just short of the barrier and level with the guardhouse window. The guard looked up from his paper and slid the glass panel to one side. His hat lay on the counter in front of him. An official-looking badge on the front said ‘Airport Security’.
‘Can I help you?’ he said, checking out the men inside.
‘Has a Gabriel Mann signed in today?’ a voice asked from the passenger seat.
‘Maybe. Who’s asking?’
Arkadian flipped open his leather wallet and leaned across the driver to show him. The guard peered over the edge of the counter and inspected the gold inspector’s badge. He pressed a button underneath the counter and the barrier started to rise. ‘Came in ’bout a half-hour ago with his girlfriend in tow,’ he said.
Arkadian felt the skin on the back of his neck prickle at the mention of a girl. ‘What did the girlfriend look like?’ he asked, slipping his badge back into his jacket pocket.
The guard shrugged. ‘Young. Blonde. Pretty.’
It wasn’t exactly a portrait in words but Arkadian had a fairly good idea who it was. He still hadn’t heard back from Sulley – or from Liv. ‘And where would I find them?’
‘Follow the yellow line,’ the guard said, leaning forward and pointing at a line of thick paint on the tarmac that curved away, parallel to the fence. ‘It’ll take you past the warehouses. They’ll be in hangar 12, about three hundred yards on the left. It’s the one with the old tail-gunner cargo plane parked out front.’
‘Thanks,’ Arkadian said. ‘And please don’t tell them we’re coming. This is not a social visit.’
The guard nodded uncertainly. ‘Sure,’ he said.
The car slipped beneath the barrier, the headlights following the bright yellow line round toward the row of grey, oblong warehouses. Most of them were shuttered up and silent. They slipped past the open windows of the car like headstones.
Up ahead a squat plane was parked on the concrete, its truncated rear pointing back towards a hangar. On the front of the building a large sliding door stood slightly open, spilling orange light out into the gathering gloom. ‘Kill the lights,’ Arkadian said to the driver, his eyes fixed on the gap, trying to see what lay beyond it. ‘And pull up short, I want to take a look-see.’
The driver hit a switch and the headlights died, plunging the road ahead into darkness. He slipped the car into neutral and killed the engine. With the headlights gone, Arkadian could see the stars starting to shine out of the inky sky beyond the hangar as they glided forward with a hiss of tyres on cooling tarmac.
When they got within fifty feet Arkadian held up his hand and the driver eased the car to a stop using the handbrake so as not to fire up the brake lights. Arkadian leaned out of his open window listening for voices, or any other noise coming from inside the warehouse. He heard nothing but the distant whine of jet engines and the ticking of the car as it started to cool in the evening chill.
He unclipped his belt, reached inside his jacket and slipped his gun from its pancake holster. The driver looked across. ‘You want me to come with?’ he asked.
He was a fresh stripe officer, newly minted. The smell of the street patrolman still clung to him despite the plain clothes. ‘No, I’ll be OK. Let me take a look first. I’ll wave you over if I think I need back-up.’
Arkadian reached up, flicking the switch on the car’s interior light so it would stay off then popped his door release and slipped into the night.
Kathryn swept the remote off the desk, ramping up the volume on the TV as the newsreader filled in the details.
‘ . . . fire crews have rushed to the home of internationally renowned newspaper editor Rawls Baker and we are receiving reports that his body has been found burned to death at the wheel of his car.’
‘Oh my God,’ Liv said. ‘That’s my boss.’
The picture cut to an exterior of a residential street crammed with firetrucks and ambulances. Yellow police tape fluttered in the foreground keeping everyone back, while in the distance firemen, cops and paramedics gathered round the smoking skeleton of a car.
‘Did you phone him?’ Gabriel asked.
Liv nodded.
‘When?’
She shook her head and tried to remember. ‘Earlier today,’ she said.
‘Did you call anyone else?’
She thought hard, running back through the events of the morning. She hadn’t called anyone until she’d got away from the cops. Then she’d called her boss, and . . .
She looked across at Kathryn. ‘I called you,’ she said.
Gabriel sprang across the floor towards his mother. ‘Give me your phone,’ he said.
She took it from her pocket and handed it to him. He checked the call log. Noted the time of Liv’s call. Held the power key to turn it off and turned to Liv. ‘We need to get out of here,’ he said. ‘Looks like they were not only tracing your phone, they were also tracing your calls. So anyone you’ve spoken to will be in danger.’
Liv looked back at the TV as another photo of Rawls cut on to the screen. It showed him standing in front of the offices of the
Inquirer
, beaming from ear to ear. She couldn’t believe he was now dead, just because she’d spoken to him. She couldn’t even remember what they’d talked about. Then she looked down, saw the smudged phone number on her hand, and remembered who else she’d called.
Bonnie was upstairs in the nursery bedding the twins down when she heard the knock on the front door. She made no move to answer it. Myron was downstairs fixing lunch. He’d let her know if it was for her.
She smiled down at the two tiny faces, peeping out from their soft white blankets and cotton caps, and pressed a button on the plastic box fixed to the side of the double crib they shared. Above them a mobile started to twirl, black-and-white shapes waltzing along to the sounds of seagulls and the shore. One of the babies’ tiny mouths curled into a smile and Bonnie lit up at the sight of it – the hell with anyone who suggested it was only wind.
Her mobile phone rang in the bedroom next door, puncturing the moment. It had been going nearly constantly since Myron sent the group text announcing the arrival of Ella – six pounds four ounces – and brother Nathan, two ounces heavier and one minute younger. She took one last look at her babies then padded from the room, dimming the lights as she went.
Bonnie entered the bedroom, moving gingerly toward her phone, which stood charging on the nightstand. She still felt sore from the long labour and traumatic childbirth. She picked it up and glanced at the caller ID. Number withheld. She was about to put it down and let the voicemail deal with it when she remembered Liv’s earlier message. It might be the new reporter calling about the story. She’d told just about everyone she knew that her babies were going to be in the paper and she was damned if she was going to be proved a liar. She pressed the button to answer. ‘Hello?’
‘Bonnie!’ The voice was urgent and tight.
‘Who’s this?’
‘It’s Liv – Liv Adamsen. The reporter from the
Inquirer
. Listen, you need to take Myron and the kids and get out of there right now.’
‘What are you telling me, honey?’ she asked, her professional calm automatically kicking in. Then she heard a sound downstairs. Like something soft and heavy falling on the hallway floor. ‘Hold on a second,’ she said, and started to lower the phone.
‘No,’ Liv screamed. ‘Don’t go. Have you got a gun?’
The question was so unexpected that Bonnie froze. Downstairs she heard more sounds. The click of the door gently closing. The
shush
of something sliding along the hallway floor. No sounds of conversation. No footsteps leading back to the kitchen to finish fixing lunch. She felt dread creeping over her as she listened to the silence.
Then there was another sound. Much closer, just along the hallway. The high-pitched wail of a baby crying.
‘Gotta go,’ she said tonelessly into the phone.
Then she hung up.
Liv heard the dialling tone purr in her ear and frantically searched the display for a redial option. When she couldn’t see one she held up her shaking hand and started dialling the number written there.
‘Put the phone down please.’ The voice was familiar, but totally unexpected.
Liv looked up. Saw Arkadian standing in the doorway. His badge in one hand, his gun in the other. It was pointing at Gabriel.
She heard the rapid beeps of the number sequence starting to connect. ‘No,’ she said, punching in the last two numbers. ‘You’re just going to have to shoot me.’
She held the phone to her ear, and stared at him as it started to ring.
Bonnie stood in her bedroom. Listening.
From down the hall the crying of her baby pulled at her like an invisible cord, but she forced herself to ignore it and listen instead to the other noises in the house. She searched the silence. Heard nothing. Nothing at all.
She stepped over to the closet, her slippered feet silent on the thick cream carpet, and carefully opened the door, revealing rows of clothes on hangers. Then she heard it. The slow squeak of the kitchen door swinging on hinges that had never been set quite right. Someone was down there. Maybe it was Myron, heading back to fix lunch. But then why was he ignoring the baby?
She glanced across at the closet. Pushed her hand through the curtain of clothes to the small wallet safe fixed high on the back wall. She’d made Myron put it in the moment she discovered she was pregnant. The plastic covering on her patrolwoman’s uniform crinkled as her arm pushed past it towards the keypad set in the small steel door of the safe. She tapped her birth date into it and opened the door. Inside was her police badge, a box of 9mm cartridges, two fully loaded clips, and her service weapon.
She picked up the gun and a clip and pulled her arm out of the closet, listening to the wailing and the silent house beyond. She slid the clip into the stock of the squat, L-shaped gun until it made a click, like a tiny bone snapping.
From down the hall the crying grew, getting more desperate, and she felt a tingling behind her nipples as nature began to respond. She held her free arm across her front, padded over to the door, hunkered low behind it, and looked through the crack into the hallway.
Nobody there.
The hungry cry continued and she felt patches of wetness start to soak into her bra. Her grip relaxed slightly on her gun. Maybe she was simply hormonal and imagining all of this. She was tired, there was no doubt about that, and her lioness senses were probably working over-time. She listened for a few beats longer, feeling more and more foolish, and was just about to get up when she heard it.
A stealthy creak of a footfall on the third step of the stairs.
Then another on the fifth.
Myron had always joked that you couldn’t sneak up on anyone in this house.
Myron!!
Dear God, where was Myron?
She pressed her eye closer to the crack, trying to get an angle on the stairs, hoping to see him appear and amble towards the nursery. Instead the second twin started crying, and a faint smell of burning flooded her nostrils, then a vision of hell stepped into view.
It was a man. Tall. Bearded. He wore a red rain slicker, the hood pulled tight round his face. In his hand he held a gun, made obscenely long by the silencer screwed tight to its barrel. His eyes flicked between the sound of the babies crying and the partially opened door of the bedroom.
Bonnie looked up at him. Felt the warm wetness spreading across her chest, like she’d been shot. She held the snub barrel of her gun low against the crack of the door, angling it up as best she could so it pointed at the man. She’d been through weapons training at the academy. Learned to sweep through buildings checking for hostile targets. She went to the firing range every couple of weeks to stay sharp. None of it had prepared her for this. Her hand tightened round the gun as she watched him, his head cocked to one side, listening through the crying, as she had done.
The phone rang in the bedroom, startling Bonnie and bringing the demon towards her at terrifying speed. Red filled her vision as he leaned in to the crack in the door, his own gun raised as he looked through to the room.
Bonnie looked up. Angled her gun higher. Saw his head tilt down. His eyes meet hers.
She fired three shots in quick succession, eyes closed against the splinters blowing back in her face from the bullets tearing through wood.
She opened her eyes. Saw the landing was empty. Leapt up in panic, terrified he may have retreated to the nursery, her stitches tearing with the effort but her mind oblivious to the pain. She rounded the door, tears of fury and terror streaming down her face, ears still ringing from the gunshots. She glanced right as she rushed on to the landing, gun drawn and ready to fire. And then she saw him, lying on his back, at the bottom of the stairs where two of her bullets had thrown him.
She whipped her gun round and surveyed the scene from behind it, her heart hammering, the twins still screaming.
Blood spattered the walls and the pale stair carpet, marking the man’s violent passage down them. Halfway down, his gun lay balanced on the edge of a step like a broken black cross. Bonnie dropped down the few steps to get it, her gun never wavering from the sprawled red form at the bottom of the stairs. She saw a bullet hole in his side and another in his head. His eyes were open and still. The only movement was the creep of dark blood spreading out from beneath him like a hole opening up to drop him back down to hell. She got closer. Crouched low to pick up his gun. Saw something further along the hallway, a sneaker attached to the foot of someone lying motionless on the floor.
She recognized it, realized what had happened. Then her own scream rose, desolate and terrible, drowning out the cries of her fatherless babies.