Ava allowed herself to show her anger. “I’ve told you who I am, and why I’m here. My line of business requires a certain amount of discretion, trust, and goodwill—and I’m not feeling any of it from you at the moment.”
Malchus screwed the piece of paper up and dropped it by his feet. He turned to the guard standing by Ava’s side, who still had the Glock trained on her.
“Take her away. Don’t bring her back until she wants to tell the truth.”
From the overly precise way in which he had said ‘wants’, she was in no doubt he had just given the bodyguard a free licence to do whatever he wanted with her.
Malchus turned and left the room, closing the door firmly behind him.
Ava could not stop herself from looking up at the man looming over her. And she was horrified to see that his thuggish expression had been replaced with a leer of expectant sadism and lust.
——————— ◆ ———————
Stockbridge House
Nr Newton Tony
Wiltshire SP4
England
The United Kingdom
The bodyguard wasted no time in complying with Malchus’s instructions.
“I’m going to enjoy messing you up,” he leered. His South African accent was thick and precise. “Such a pretty thing, too. But you’re going to look even better by the time I’ve finished with you.” He smiled unpleasantly. From the way he was looking up and down her body appreciatively, she was in no doubt he had a particular range of pleasures in mind.
“Why don’t we start with some water sports,” he smirked, nodding to the large stone fountain in the courtyard outside the French windows. “I want to see you all wet for me.”
He motioned with the pistol for her to walk towards the French windows. “Hands above your head.” He prodded her with the gun. “If you play any games with me, I’ll know you’re having fun and want me to take longer.” He grunted with pleasure. “I’m going to really enjoy this.”
Ava shuddered at the thought of what constituted pleasure for him.
She wanted nothing more than to wipe the unpleasant grin off his face permanently. But she would have to be careful. He was big, and clearly dangerous. No doubt he had earned his position as Malchus’s bodyguard the hard way. She had to assume he could handle himself.
She turned to the French windows and began to walk towards them, aware he was keeping the gun trained on her.
She could see the fountain more clearly now. It was made of grey stone, with an ornamental bowl at knee height out of which a spray of water rose gently several feet in the air. It wasn’t especially wide, but easily deep enough for him to hold her head under and drown her.
She knew she had to do something before they got to it. If not, she would lose any element of surprise, and he would start hurting her severely.
She could feel her heart racing as her body primed itself, preparing to fight, moving into attack mode.
One way or the other, things were about to get physical. And it was not going to be in the way the guard was planning.
Looking about, she could see only one option.
It was not perfect, but would have to do. She would have to make it work.
Placing herself at the guard’s mercy was not an option
Aware she was walking too quickly, she forced herself to slow down, allowing the guard to make up the ground between them and fall into step right behind her.
Slowly.
She kept repeating the word inside her head.
Take it slowly.
As she drew level with the French windows, she could feel him right behind her.
All her training had taught her that speed, surprise, and maximum aggression were everything.
Now!
With a lightning quick twist, she grabbed the pale blue damask curtaining gathered above and around the glass doorway, and yanked it off its runners with all her strength.
To her relief, the fabric was heavy and came away easily. As she had expected, it unfolded itself from the neat gathered pleats and spread out, revealing more than enough material for her purposes.
It fell fast and hard, and she hurdled it onto the guard directly behind her.
Without pausing, she lunged toward him at full speed, smashing her knee hard up into his groin. At the same time, she punched out both hands with all her force, using them as rams. One of her hands connected with his shoulder, the other with his chin. Pushing him, she powered forward, snapping his head back, driving his upper body until he toppled, disorientated by the curtains and destabilized by her unexpected onslaught.
As he keeled over, she took aim, stamping hard on the central area just below the intersection of his bottom two ribs. The heel of her boot found its mark, crushing the massive bundles of sensitive nerves that routed into the soft flesh of his solar plexus.
His body instantly doubled up into a foetal position, and his diaphragm went into spasm. He choked, writhing in agony. As he twisted, the curtain slipped off his right side, revealing his hand still clamped around the grip of the Glock.
Aware she only had a few seconds to finish the job before his strength returned, she quickly leant over him, jamming her index finger inside the pistol’s trigger guard so it covered his.
Nauseous from the pain, his reaction was delayed. But as he realized what she was doing, he bellowed, swinging his arm away from his body.
Not quickly enough.
With two rapid squeezes, she pushed his finger against the trigger twice. The noise of the Glock was deafening as it discharged a pair of rounds at over a thousand feet per second straight into the soft flesh of his inner thigh.
When the noise of the explosions faded, she could hear him screaming in agony as he dropped the gun and grabbed his mangled leg, where a dark crimson patch was already bubbling out onto his jeans.
She looked at him lying on the ground, and realized it was a long time since she had been in a hand-to-hand fight. She was breathing hard, but grateful to note that lack of practice had not dulled her reactions or instincts.
Gazing down at the crippled thug, whimpering as he pressed his slippery red hands onto his thigh to staunch the blood loss, she felt no sympathy. He had chosen a life of violence, and this was the price.
Bending over him, she spoke in a low voice. “If you ever try anything like that on me again, next time I’ll really hurt you.”
He stared up at her—his eyes gleaming with hatred behind the mask of pain.
As she spoke the words, she became aware of the full extent of her pent-up tension. It had been building ever since she had regained consciousness in the car, reaching a peak when Malchus had handed her over to this animal. Now she was out of immediate danger, she felt the tension begin to subside, giving way to a sense of sheer outrage at Malchus’s arrogance.
She grabbed the gun and tucked it into the back of her jeans’ waistband. She was not clear of the danger yet, and had no idea who may have heard the shots.
Taking a final look at the crippled guard to reassure herself he posed no further threat, she ran quickly out of the French windows and into the garden, heading straight for the woods.
——————— ◆ ———————
The British Library
96 Euston Road
London NW1
England
The United Kingdom
The ancient manuscript was vital.
Without it, the plan would fail.
Malchus knew he needed to choose his target with care.
There was no scope for error. If it went wrong, if his target alerted the authorities—the manuscript would be put under lock and key, and all would be lost.
He had delayed going after the manuscript for some months. But now he was ready.
The time was right.
All he needed was a collaborator.
In his previous life, sitting in his clinical office at the Ministerium in Berlin, it would have taken a team of underlings weeks of trawling through confidential personal files and conducting covert interviews to find a suitable target.
But these days the internet did away with all that. People were stupid. They voluntarily published their most personal information to the world.
He wanted someone who worked in the hushed underworld of the book stacks deep below the library. Not a trained librarian or archivist—someone who pushed the trolleys around would be just perfect.
He had combed social and work networking sites to draw up a shortlist of potential targets, before following up on each of them in more detail. He had then built a picture of their personal profiles from entries on user groups, online forums, hobby sites, and the general flotsam and jetsam they left in cyberspace.
It took him a morning, but when he was done, he was extremely pleased with the result.
Alex Hibbit would do nicely.
Once he had chosen Alex, a few hours of invasive hacking into Alex and his friends’ online profiles and uploads yielded a crop of photographs showing a dull-faced lanky twenty-something man with a mop of blond hair.
The pictures were easily good enough to identify Alex.
Now, waiting at closing time again on the large chequered piazza outside the British Library, he scanned the stream of readers and employees exiting the brutalist red brick building.
He breathed in deeply, feeling the power, aware that under his feet, in the vast subterranean store rooms, lay the world’s greatest collection of black magic manuscripts—the writings of the occult masters going back to ancient Babylonia. He had collected and read most of them over the years. But now, so close to the originals, he could sense their dark energy.
It filled him with renewed purpose.
He looked with disdain at the intellectuals scuttling in and out of the building. He despised them—squandering their efforts on barren studies in that great temple of knowledge. They were mental eunuchs—knowing much but understanding nothing.
He did not have to wait long until he saw Alex sauntering out of the large metal and glass entrance doors.
He followed the younger man at a discreet distance.
He had better have it with him.
He was not in the mood for disappointment.
Malchus had been waiting in the library’s vast foyer two days earlier. When he had spotted Alex then, for the first time, he had immediately headed for the exit, engineering it so they both arrived at the same time. As they passed through the doors side-by-side, Malchus had purposefully mistimed his step, bumping into Alex, intentionally dropping the notebook and pen he had been carrying.
Alex had looked startled at Malchus’s unnerving appearance, but Malchus left him no opportunity to get away—forcing him instead into a conversation, explaining it was his first trip to the library, where he was researching computer simulations.
As Malchus continued and mentioned war-gaming strategy, he was gratified to see interest flicker behind Alex’s eyes. He had assumed it would—Alex’s cyber footprint had quickly shown he was a keen gamer.
They had headed down the Euston Road, deep in conversation. At King’s Cross station, Malchus had suggested he might buy him a pint in a pub they were passing. Sensing the younger man’s apprehension, he had reassured him he was not making a pass. Rather, he had been working on developing a new game, and he would welcome the thoughts of a player as expert as he plainly was.
It turned Malchus’s stomach to curry favour with someone as insignificant as Alex. But he kept himself focused, thinking about the manuscript.
The pub was typical for a railway station bar. It was cavernous, gloomy, smelled of stale beer, and was fitted out with tatty dark wooden furniture. Fruit machines beeped and flashed in the far corner, while an array of televisions bolted into the ceiling showed a range of soundless sporting fixtures.
Malchus looked contemptuously at its occupants—flabby men with nothing better to do than spend their evenings swilling beer around emptying glasses while staring at screens.
He picked a quiet area of the back bar, and indicated for Alex to sit.
As one drink turned into another, he revealed confidentially that he was developing a totally new type of computer role-playing game—one that would be very special. Inside it, he was going to hide an extra game, a very exceptional one, accessible only to players who proved themselves worthy, on and off the computer. The whole architecture was revolutionary—gamers would not only play in cyberspace, they would need to accomplish certain tasks in the real world, too. It would be like nothing anyone had ever experienced or played before. It would re-write the history of gaming—blurring the online world with the real one
He refilled Alex’s pint glass again as he elaborated on the groundbreaking concept, before confiding in him that he was looking for a business partner: one who could add some value to the venture, and help it become a reality that would make them both rich.
Dropping his voice, he asked if Alex could keep a secret. When the younger man affirmed he could, Malchus shared his view that it must be fate they had met that night, as what Malchus needed to finalize the game was inside the library.
Malchus explained that he had discovered there was an old manuscript that was crucial to the game’s architecture. It was a unique document, containing details of an ancient tradition. It alone could provide the details needed to finish the adventure at the heart of the revolutionary game, and allow players to plug into a quest that had been spinning down the centuries. Malchus had leaned in conspiratorially, explaining that once the game was launched, the world would never be the same again.
He watched as the alcohol and the tall story began to work on his new friend. His pupils were constricting, and his eyes beginning to gleam. Not just with the alcohol, Malchus noted with satisfaction—but with greed, too.
Sensing the moment, Malchus went for the kill. He pronounced that destiny had surely brought them together, as the answer lay right in front of them—Alex could be his business partner: all he needed to do was get the manuscript.
To prove his good faith, Malchus placed an envelope holding ten crisp fifty pound notes onto the bar counter between them, and told Alex there was another five hundred if he earned his place in the partnership by getting the manuscript. Alex should consider it a sign-on bonus into the business.
Eyeing the money hungrily, the younger man nodded—just as Malchus suspected he would when he had planned the sting.
Alex reassured Malchus he could do it—no problem. Books regularly went missing. Thousands were currently unaccounted for. He explained that security was minimal in the four hundred and something miles of shelving under the building. There was no budget for anything thorough—his access card was about as hi-tech as it got.
Malchus reassured him he would return the manuscript once he had finished with it. It would only be a temporary loan—just long enough for him to study it.
Alex nodded, but had clearly not been so befuddled by the beer to miss an opportunity. He suggested the second payment should be one thousand pounds, not five hundred. After all, he reminded Malchus, he could lose his job if he was caught.
After making a show of indecision, Malchus accepted. This was not the moment to have an argument with his new business partner.
Alex was perfect for the job. Removing the manuscript from the library required no skill or knowledge, so it made little sense for Malchus to do it and put himself at risk. And for a man of Alex’s age and prospects, the lure of immediate money and a new life as a computer game mogul was an undreamed-of change in fortune.
Malchus had learned a lot about human nature over the years. Not simply that everyone eventually gave in to unrelenting or extreme pain, but also how easy it was to pull the strings and have people dance to whatever tune he wished.
It was simple with young men—they liked money and grand dreams. The prospect of either of those would give them all the motivation they needed. As they hit middle age, they would still do things for the prospect of money, but were less wide-eyed and more sceptical. Paying an attractive young prostitute to get them drunk and seduce them into a night of long-forgotten pleasures of the flesh was usually easiest—as was the ensuing blackmail.
Malchus had known that hooking Alex would be straightforward. Working in a government library did not pay much, and doubtless Alex had a host of dreams he could indulge if he suddenly came into money.
Finishing up their drinks, Alex assured Malchus he would have the manuscript in two days. Malchus could wait for him outside, at closing time.
So now Malchus stood on the library’s great piazza, watching Alex emerge from the library with a rucksack on his back.
He followed the younger man across the esplanade, his excitement mounting.
As Alex turned right onto the Euston Road, Malchus drew alongside him.
“Do you have it?” He had to work to keep his voice calm.
Alex nodded, sending a shiver of anticipation down Malchus’s spine. He began to slip his rucksack off.
“Not here,” hissed Malchus, gesturing for them to turn up a side street to their right.
Malchus pointed to a blue Mercedes parked a little further up. It had dark tinted windows and a fold-out sunshade covering the front window from the inside.
“Is that yours?” Alex looked impressed. “You must be doing alright for yourself.”
“It is,” Malchus replied brusquely. At least, it had been for a few hours, since he had stolen it from outside a residential house in south London.
As they drew alongside, Malchus indicated for Alex to open the rear passenger door and climb in. Malchus followed, sliding in after him.
“Show it to me,” he ordered the younger man, taking out a pair of silicone medical gloves from his jacket’s inner pocket.
“What are those for?” Alex asked, a hint of uncertainty in his voice.
“Manuscripts are fragile.” Malchus pulled on the gloves. “Finger grease damages them.”
“Where’s the money then?” Alex’s tone was belligerent.
“All in good time.” Malchus replied slowly, fitting the gloves onto each finger carefully.
“It’s not that I don’t trust you,” Alex replied. “I want to see it before we go any further.”
“Of course,” Malchus answered, taking an envelope from his pocket and handing it to him. “Count it.”
Alex tore it open. His eyes lit up as he counted out the twenty fifty pound notes, before pulling out of his jeans pocket the cash Malchus had given him the previous day and putting it into the envelope with his new earnings. “It’s not funny money or anything, is it?” he asked, a trace of suspicion in his voice.
Malchus ignored the question. “Show me the manuscript.”
Alex unzipped the rucksack resting on his knees, and took out a shallow grey cardboard archive box sealed on top with a string-tie fastener.
Malchus gazed at the box.
Finally.
He had waited for so long.
He could almost hear the voices from the past speaking to him down the centuries—the ancient words passed on through time so he could accomplish the Work.
The wisdom was over two thousand years old.
And soon it would be his.
He would complete what no one else ever had.
It all lay before him, in that nondescript-looking archive box.
He reached out his hand and took hold of the cardboard, sensing a surge of energy pass through him.
This was it. This was the key.
He could feel it.
Unlooping the string tie holding the lid closed, he slowly opened the flaps of the box, his heart beating hard.
He felt an overwhelming sense of excitement that the knowledge was within his grasp.
Inside the box was a folder of stiff white acid-free card. He flipped it open, revealing a sheaf of vellum manuscript pages. The ancient animal skin was light brown, thin and brittle, with clear signs of water damage in places. But the bold writing—Hebrew and Aramaic characters—all stood out as clearly as the day they were written.
He knew in an instant that it had been waiting for
him
—all those years, in the cold basement of the library.
He alone knew what to do.
The time was right.
He sensed that it was all coming together, like a propitious planetary alignment known only to the select.
He turned the quarto-sized folios over carefully, checking they were all legible.
As he reached the last one, he looked up at Alex, an expression of cold rage on his face.
“Where is the twelfth folio?”
Alex shook his head slowly. “That’s my insurance,” he replied. “When you’re done, you give me back the eleven, and I’ll give you the twelfth.”
With a lightning-fast movement, Malchus pulled a thin black cylinder from his pocket. There was a menacing click as a long narrow steel blade shot out of it. Before Alex had taken in what was happening, the razor-sharp metal was at his throat.
“You disappoint me,” Malchus hissed.
Alex’s eyes widened in terror as Malchus pushed the evil-looking blade hard against his carotid artery. A small trickle of blood appeared.
With his spare hand, Malchus unzipped the rucksack on Alex’s knee, and began to rifle through the contents. It was empty, apart from a fleece and a folder. Malchus pulled out the folder and flipped it open, revealing the missing folio.