For a long time he stood there, his hand on the carved wooden fist. The temptation to pull upon it was strong, but so was his fear. He didn't know what would happen, how easily he could control what was in all likelihood within.
He pushed against the stone wall with his mind, but felt nothing there. Either they were long gone, or, as was also likely, the great slab of stone was sheathed with lead. But the lead wouldn't keep him from opening it should he choose to. It was not harmful to him, only restrictive, limiting. He could open the passageway and find allies obedient to one who had seen more than they ever had, who knew far more of this world from dwelling on its surface, albeit a prisoner, for over a millennium.
Or he could find enemies.
At last he released his grip on the fist. It seemed foolish to take the chance, now that he was free at last, and everything was going so well. Tomorrow would be proof of that. He would drink deep and be sated, at least for a time. He had set his infernal devices, the living bombs he had armed and triggered with electrical impulses, the same way that they would trigger their dumb and lifeless bombs.
He stood there in the darkness that was light to him, and thought about the suffering and death that would come, and was surprised by a brief instant of sanity in which he almost felt some pity for these creatures whom he was destroying. It lasted only as long as it took him to identify it, and then he drove it mercilessly from his mind. Perhaps he had been among them too long, but he had been among those of his own kind all his life before he had come to this world, and he had savaged them as well.
Sanity? Was that how he had actually thought of it for a moment, as sanity? No, it could not be, for to him the twisted was the sane, the abnormal the norm, the insane the lucid and clear and rational. He was incorrigible, his behavior and beliefs irreversible. That was, after all, why he was here, banished from his own kind, except, perhaps, for those behind the wall.
Morality did not enter into it. Morality was illusion, and the affirmation of mortality the only truth, the sole element of life which made existence worthwhile. And one affirmed
mortality
by exercising its rights, as inclusively and universally as possible. One killed so that one could say,
I live
.
And only when one stood on a world once teeming with life, and stood alone, could one's purpose be fulfilled.
In the midst of life we are in death?
No, quite the opposite—only in the midst of death are we truly alive.
So it was that he had pushed against, and at times through, the lead. So it was that his spirit had suffered, and his soul had bled in his attempts to touch those who were extensions of his mind, vessels of his blood. So it was that, paradoxically, he had weakened himself in order to feed and give himself strength.
Now he was free. Now the earth was his. Tomorrow it would begin. No one should bless him or curse him or praise him as a dark god. He could not help what he would do. It was his nature.
T
he next morning at eleven o'clock, a series of suicide bombings provided London with its worst terrorist attack ever, within a single minute. Struck were St. Paul's Cathedral, Westminster Abbey, Buckingham Palace, the Tower of London, the British Museum, and the Victoria and Albert Museum. The damage in each was extensive, and it was later stated that the bombers could not have positioned themselves in any better location, if sheer destruction was their goal.
The bombers had gone into the interior of each building, except for Buckingham Palace, where the bomber must have stood against the gate. Still, the damage was enough to blow out nearly all the windows of the palace wall facing the gate. Luckily, the royal family was on a jaunt to Balmoral, and not inside at the time. The survival of the royals did little to comfort the families of the 127 spectators and tourists who died at the front gates, however, not to mention the guards, and forty-eight more badly injured survivors.
The St. Paul's bomber had stood not directly under the great dome, but below in the crypt, next to Lord Nelson's tomb, where the blast would be directed upward, smashing through the floor and into the area beneath the dome. The explosion easily demolished the supporting pillars around Nelson's tomb, so that the arches above crumbled, and the dome itself collapsed inward.
The strategy had been similar in Westminster Abbey. There the bomber had positioned himself between the Chapel of St. Edward the Confessor and the Chapel of Henry VII, assuring the destruction of the tombs of England's greatest monarchs, along with the Coronation Chair which Edward I had ordered made in 1296, and on which monarchs had been crowned ever since.
The bomber at the Victoria and Albert Museum must have stood in the Gothic Art hall of level A, so that the blast exploded outward from the center of the building. Though protected by more walls, the detonation did immense damage to the delicate works of art, even those not actually touched by the explosive. Afterward, there was scarcely a piece of unbroken glass or ceramic in the entire building.
A central site was not used for the British Museum, however. There the bomber stood in front of the Elgin Marbles, which were reduced to rubble, along with most of the Greek and Roman exhibits, and many of the surrounding rooms.
The Jewel House was the target in the Tower of London. The bomber had apparently been stopped by security people, but had pushed himself onward and gotten as close to the Crown jewels as possible before he set off the bomb. The jewels might have survived in some form, but it would take a while to sift through the rubble of the building. The heavy transparent plates had been designed to stop bullets, not a massive amount of plastic explosive.
But the destruction of the treasures of British culture paled in terms of the loss of human life. Early estimates were placed at 300, besides the 127 who had died at Buckingham Palace. Every site was a major tourist attraction, so many foreigners were killed, along with forty secondary-school students from London whose ages ranged from twelve to fifteen.
The bombings had definitely been suicidal, and MI5 quickly estimated that each bomber would have had to have been carrying approximately 50 pounds of plastic explosive to produce so much devastation. When eyewitness reports were compared, it was found that at each of the six sites a stout clergyman had been seen, dressed in a loose raincoat. It would have been possible, experts declared, for men of medium weight to carry fifty pounds of plastic explosive strapped to their bodies under their coats, and detonate it with a simple trigger device when they reached their target area.
Later that afternoon, the letters arrived, postmarked the day before, claiming responsibility for the six bombings. They concluded, as had the others, "We are Scotland."
The British government stated that they would stop at nothing to bring to justice the cowardly and reprehensible organization that was behind these bombings. The prime minister's statement concluded, "If these butchers and murderers think that this government will capitulate to terrorism, and particularly to terrorism of such a fanatical and blasphemous nature, they are dead wrong. They will be found, and they will be made to pay for their crimes against this country and its people, and for its terrible sins against humanity. The destruction of the best of this great country—its churches, its monuments, and its children, whose loss will be felt the worst of all—has utterly doomed the cause of these madmen, and set them beyond the pale of civilized society. Those who set these suicides on their bloody course are monsters, and this nation shall not rest until we are free of them forever, until they and the hatred that bred them are effaced from the earth."
"Y
ou bastard," Colin Mackay said, in a voice that shook with rage and terror and sorrow. "What have you done? All those dead . . . children, civilians, churches . . . my God, there's not a man in the British Isles who wouldn't cut off his right hand to put you behind bars!"
Mulcifer stood in the afternoon drizzle that spat down on them where they stood in the northwest tower. He looked at the gray sky and the gently rolling waters of the Minch. "I believe you have that wrong. It's
you
they want to put behind bars. Mr. 'We Are Scotland' himself. They don't know me from Adam. Nor you, as yet." He gave a small shrug. "I don't see why you're so unhappy. The heart of England has been struck a terrible blow. The very spirit of the empire has been grievously wounded, and you are now the head of the most feared terrorist group in the world. You've shown England that you're capable of touching them anywhere, and that you are capable of inspiring followers, allied to you politically only in the most tenuous ways, to die for your cause."
"But after what you did," said Colin, turning from him angrily, "they'll never capitulate—
never
."
"I gave you what you wanted," Mulcifer said quietly.
Colin whipped about, looking at him with fiery eyes. "And didn't it mean a damned thing to you that you killed children?"
"Would it have meant a damned thing to you if I had specifically targeted a busload of soldiers, and that bus had been used at the last minute to carry a troop of boys and their widowed grandmothers to matins? Oh, you might have wrung your hands, but in the end you would have waxed eloquently about the vicissitudes of war and chalked it off to bad luck. Your problem is that you confuse intent with results.
"And as for meaning a damned thing to me, of course it did. I feel every one of those deaths, my friend, and I revel in them. The younger and more innocent, the more delectable the incense."
Colin looked at him for a long time. "Maybe I was wrong. Maybe you
are
the Antichrist."
"Or something even worse," said Mulcifer, his face soft, his eyes dreamy. "Maybe 'the Devil' himself, after all."
Colin shook his head. "No. Like you just said. Something even worse."
What was this beast?
Colin wondered, as he turned and walked away, down the stairs and into the castle. It was a creature who not only had no mercy, but to whom the deaths of children were joyous events. As much as he hated to admit it, his father had been right. The creature was thoroughly, unredeemably evil.
But Mulcifer was right about one thing. His actions had instantly made Colin's group a force, not only to be reckoned with, but to be greatly feared. There was not a terrorist organization in the world that had ever pulled off such a brilliantly orchestrated series of strikes. Yes, it was true that innocents had been killed, but innocents always died in war, as tragic as it was.
Jesus, listen to me
, he thought. Just like Mulcifer said. The bastard read minds like books. But then Colin paused and thought that he had never truly felt Mulcifer inside his own mind. He could guess, of course, what Colin was thinking, but not enter him, as he had the others, including the man down in the dungeon, that CIA agent.
He had been meaning to talk to Stein and find out how much he knew, not only about Colin's activities, but about Mulcifer as well. The creature himself had admitted that their paths had crossed before. Maybe Stein knew something that would prove useful, some way to restrain or control Mulcifer. Yet if he knew that, why was he now their prisoner? Still, perhaps there was something he could learn.
Colin got a pistol and went to the trapdoor that covered the bottle dungeon. No one was guarding it. There was no need. He opened the trapdoor and dropped the ladder down through the hole. "I'm coming down," he called, stuck his pistol in his waistband, and climbed through the trapdoor, descending into the dungeon.
Halfway down he clung to a rung with one hand and took out his pistol with the other. "Get over there against the wall," he said, and Stein did as directed. Colin finished climbing down, his eyes constantly on Stein. As he stepped onto the dungeon floor, he gestured with the pistol. "Sit down," he ordered, and Stein sat on the rough bed. "Now, Mr. Stein, suppose you tell me just how much you and your friends up above know about me and my group."
"We know that you've gotten into some bad company," Stein said. "I don't think Kadaffi or Saddam or even Hitler would have aligned themselves with your right-hand man. Unless you're
his
at this point."
"We'll talk about him later. What do you know about us?"
"Actual or theoretical?"
"Both, please."
"How much we
really
know depends on what your name is."
"And what do you
think
it is?"
Stein looked at him heavily. "Mackay."
"Aye," Colin said, nodding slowly. "Colin Mackay is my name. Now tell your story, Mr. Stein."
"It's a long one," Stein said, and began.