He lowered his arm, the gun at his side again. He realized that he had not done what he had intended to do, and with that realization the fear returned. He tried now to simply drop the pistol, but the fingers of his right hand would not obey him. He snatched it with his left hand, as though he were in some horror movie in which the hand of a killer had replaced his own, and he must defeat its murderous purpose. But he could not drop it from either hand, and he fell on his knees on the rough pebbles, breathing hard.
At last he pushed himself upright, thinking that maybe his legs would obey him, that he could go away from the cottage, just keep walking in the other direction until someone found him or he fell from exhaustion. But he had moved only a few steps northward when he stopped, unable to go further. "Please," he whispered roughly, unsure of what or whom he was addressing. "Please . . ."
His feet would not take him where he wanted to go. He could not drop the gun, could not move away from his targets and his friends. But maybe . . . maybe there was one other thing he could do. As long as he didn't think about it.
Joseph jerked the pistol up, pushing the muzzle against his temple, and tried to pull the trigger.
He couldn't. His finger on the trigger was like stone, the trigger immovable, as if the entire pistol had been cast from iron. For a long time he stood there, the muzzle against his flesh, but no matter how much he wanted to, no matter how often and how insistently he told himself that this was now the only way, he could not move the trigger.
Finally he dropped his arm, fell to his knees, and rolled over on his side, weeping until it seemed that all the moisture in his body had turned to tears. At last, there on the cold, wet pebbles, he closed his tear-filled eyes, and his anguish and sorrow and loss over what he must do exhausted him, and drove him into the dark pit of a restless sleep.
His fingers holding the gun did not relax. They remained clenched around the deadly metal all the time he slept, through what was left of the night, and into the gray light of the next day.
A
fter he spoke to Joseph Stein, and gave him his command, Mulcifer thought no more about him. That Stein would do as he had been told, Mulcifer had no doubt. Now it was time for something else.
It was shortly after midnight, and Mulcifer first went to Colin Mackay's room and pounded on the door. "I want everyone in the great hall," he told Mackay when he opened his door. "As soon as possible." Then he turned from Mackay and continued down the hallway, pounding on doors and telling the men to come to the great hall for a meeting, and to bring their weapons.
In less than five minutes they were assembled, all fifteen men, including Mackay. "Most of us, two van loads, are going on a little midnight journey, about fifty miles northeast of here. We'll be taking two vans, and if we leave within the hour, I expect we'll get there around three in the morning."
"And do you mind very much," Mackay asked, "if we might inquire where we're going and what you expect us to do?" His voice was dripping with sarcasm, as though he had no intention of allowing his men to participate in whatever it was Mulcifer was plotting.
"Oh, you won't be going, Colin," Mulcifer said. "No, I'm afraid you're going to just have to stay here, guarded by some of your merry men. I figure you won't mind, as we're going to get several canisters of nerve gas, and I know you disapprove of its use."
"Nerve gas . . ." Mackay said. "The hell you are. I said before that we're not using any of that shite."
"And I say we are. Now . . ." He turned to the men. "I'll want you, you, you, you . . ." He pointed to them one by one, including Rob and Angus in the draw, until he had assigned all but three men to the vans. "James," he said, "I believe you and Peter and John will remain here. I want you to guard Colin here."
"I've had enough of this," said Mackay. "All of you, back to your rooms. You're to take no more orders from him."
"Excuse me, Colin, but they have no choice in the matter. Oh, a few of them might, but if they disobey, I'll simply have their comrades in arms shoot them. And that's not much of a choice at all, is it?"
"Rob," Mackay said, turning to his friend, "put that gun away and go back to your room."
Rob closed his eyes, as if willing his body to do what Mackay had said, but Mulcifer knew he couldn't. "I'm sorry, Colin," Rob said, opening his eyes and looking at his friend with pain on his face, a pain that Mulcifer drank in like a gardener delighting in the scent of hyacinth. "I don't think I can do that. I want to, but I just can't."
"That's a good boy. Now—you lot—I want you to keep an eye on Colin here all the time we're gone. Don't let him out of your sight."
"You filth," said Mackay. "Why don't you just drop me into the dungeon with Stein?"
"Because Stein is no longer there, for one thing."
"
What?
"
"That's right—free as a bird. Free to go back and dispatch his two colleagues and then blow a hole in his own belly. Sorry I have to miss it, but duty calls, as it does for all of us. Let's be off. The weapons shouldn't be necessary, but we'll bring them along in case we run into the authorities. What we
will
need, however, is a decent flashlight for each man, extra batteries, shovels, crowbars, and some explosives.
"Yes. We will definitely need explosives . . ."
A
ngus drove the first van, the Prisoner seated next to him. Rob drove the second. Each van carried five men, and there was plenty of storage room for whatever it was they were getting. They had taken the vans down into the cellars on the big elevator, and then driven them onto the beach through the hidden exit that had been built centuries before to escape from the castle on horseback, then gone north on the beach to an access road.
From there they had driven off the peninsula, then north to Gruinard Bay and east down the southern shore of Little Loch Broom, south through the Dundonnell Forest, and north again toward Ullapool when they reached the River Broom. The crow seldom flew straight in the highlands.
From there they went northeast past the Cromalt Hills, then southeast on a one-lane road. It bore no other traffic at that time of the morning, so the passing places remained unused. Near Rosehall they turned north again, on a vile little road that Mulcifer promised was the end of their journey.
Just past a sad pile that Mulcifer said was Glencassley Castle, they saw a sign that read, "GOVERNMENT BIRD SANCTUARY—GATE 1 KM." Mulcifer ordered Angus to pull off the road, and guided him over a slight rise that would hide the vans from the sight of anyone who might be driving past, though that possibility seemed about as likely to Angus as pissing beer.
But as Angus got out of the car, he saw that there might be more to their location than simple concealment. Less than thirty yards away, hardly visible in the cloudy night, was a mound of earth barely four feet high. It didn't appear to be a natural formation, and Angus had seen enough of them to know that it was a barrow, a burial place that had been dug before Scotland had its own history.
It was one of those ancient places in whose presence Angus always felt a trifle uncomfortable. When he thought about how old these things were, how they'd been built before Christ had walked the earth by men who'd left hardly any other record of their passing, it made him shiver. The stone circles were bad enough, but barrows were graves in which the dead had been placed, and in which their dust still lay.
And those dead had been of a race, ancestors of his own, that was rich in magic and wizardry. Who was to say that those barrows weren't still guarded by the spirits the old Celts had placed there for that purpose? And who was to say that a worker of magic, like this goddamned Mulcifer surely was, couldn't accidentally or purposely bring those old bastards back to life, if they weren't already?
The men fell in behind Mulcifer, who was facing the barrow. Angus couldn't see his expression, but guessed that he was smiling. The prick was always smiling, as if he had the most precious little secret but wasn't going to share it with
you
. Angus thought he acted like a ponce, but that he did it just to piss people off.
"There, gentlemen, is our entryway," he said.
Rob walked up and stood next to him. "You're not saying the canisters are buried in that barrow and left unguarded, are you?"
"No, I merely said it is the
entryway
. Now, let's start digging."
Mulcifer walked to the mound, and Angus followed with a shovel. Maybe he'd be haunted for disturbing the dead, but he had to have something to do to get his mind off their sacrilege. He and the others dug where Mulcifer directed, and at first he began to think that the barrow wasn't hollow, but was composed only of earth that they piled carefully for later replacement. At last, however, the shovels hit stone, and they scraped the dirt away from what appeared to be a stone vault over which the earth had been thrown.
The ancient stones yielded easily enough to their crowbars, and the smell that burst from the sealed-up tomb was not that of recent death. Nothing organic had tenanted that chamber for many centuries. It was an odor of something older. Angus couldn't remember ever having smelled its like before. It was, he thought, the stink of primal secrets.
Soon the entrance was large enough to step through, and Mulcifer entered first, beckoning the men in after him. Angus went in right after Rob. Only five of them fit within the chamber, whose floor was level with the ground. But in the center of that earthen floor was a flat sheet of dull black metal, three feet wide and four long, scarcely a half inch thick. At each of its four corners were heavy stones that nearly came up to Angus's waist.
"Roll them off," Mulcifer ordered, and they did so, although it took four of them, panting and groaning, to roll or slide each of the boulders aside. "Now lift it up," said Mulcifer, "and lean it against the wall."
Angus felt hesitant, as though if he did, something that didn't like its secrets revealed would rise up out of the earth and devour them all. But his feeling gave him no pause, and he joined the others in moving the metal sheet, so heavy that he suspected it was lead, and propping it against the stone wall.
A chill wind blew up through the hole, smelling only of damp stone. They all shone their lights down into the opening at once, and saw a flight of steps leading into the earth. "Follow me, all of you," Mulcifer said, loudly enough so that the men still standing outside heard him as well. Then he walked down the stairs.
Rob followed, then Angus. Angus didn't want to go, didn't want anything at all to do with this Mulcifer, who blew up children and took them to places that surely no one had seen for hundreds of years. But he had no choice. A hundred times before, he had wanted to take out his pistol and just fire point-blank into the shite's grinning face, but he had never been able. Maybe if he worked hard at it, he could put a bullet in the back of the bastard's head.
Angus had heard the prisoners he'd freed babbling that they'd seen Mulcifer taking bullets like bug bites, and some swore they'd done the same thing when they were with him. But that didn't necessarily mean that those prisoners couldn't have died later. Hell, they blew up easily enough, didn't they?
So maybe Mulcifer the Mighty wasn't like Superman all the time, either. Maybe Angus could catch him with his trousers down just long enough to finish him off.
It was a thought that made him a little happy anyway, as the stairway ended and they passed into a low-ceilinged tunnel that led downward at a gentle angle. It seemed hewn out of the rock itself. At no point was the tunnel wider than four feet, or higher than six, so the taller men, Angus among them, had always to move at a slight crouch.
Every hundred yards or so they came across other tunnels branching off into the darkness. Before they reached these junctures, Mulcifer's pace slowed, and he approached them cautiously. It made Angus curious. He had never seen Mulcifer cautious before.
As they moved downward, Angus began to wonder what had made these tunnels. At first he suspected underground streams, but then he realized that water would have smoothed the walls, and these walls were rough, top, bottom, and sides. At one of the cross tunnels, when they slowed, he ran his fingers over the walls, examining them more closely. He saw hundreds of small jagged marks in the stone.
Nothing natural that he knew of could have created the marks. They looked more like chip marks, and a sudden shock went through him at the possibility that these tunnels had been carved by hand out of the solid rock.
What was even more disturbing was the fact that all of the marks seemed to have been made from the descending side of the tunnel, as though the excavators had been working their way
up
from below. That thought made Mulcifer's caution all the more understandable.