“I’m listening,” Uri had no idea what the Salvation Army was, but he got the gist. “But if you mess me around, I’m off, and that would be a shame. For you.”
“You don’t lack front, do you?” The man chewed his lip. “But you’ve got to be, how can I put it ... ?” he paused, “ … vetted—and then we’ll see who’s all talk.”
Uri took a swig of his drink. “What did you have in mind?”
“First things first,” the man answered. “What’s your name?”
“Danny,” Uri lied.
“Well, Danny, let’s say, for now, my name is Otto.” He did not extend a hand. “If you’re serious about wanting to meet the Skipper, then I’ve got a little job for you—to see what you’re made of.”
Uri looked back at him unblinking, while Otto explained what he wanted him to do.
——————— ◆ ———————
10b St James
’
s Gardens
Piccadilly
London SW1
England
The United Kingdom
It was dark by the time Ferguson dropped Ava back home.
She washed out the cut under her eye where Malchus had punctured the skin with the metal star, and poured herself a glass of cold white wine from the fridge. Sipping it, she dropped into one of the comfortable armchairs in the sitting room.
Since Ferguson had shown her C’s letter from Prince’s file earlier, she had not been able to get it out of her mind.
She had been going over and over its implications for the whole of the long journey back to London.
She had never in her wildest dreams imagined that C could have ordered a whitewash of her father’s death, ensuring there would be no investigation, and nobody would ever be held to account. It was a big step, and not one he would have taken lightly.
In her experience, both C and the Director General of MI5 used the whitewash power as a last resort—for matters of national security. But she was having difficulty seeing what that national security concern could have been in her father’s case.
She could only conclude that her father had been involved in something particularly sensitive. He must have been. Or he would not have got the attention from C.
She wracked her mind for any clue about what it could have been.
What had he got himself into?
Had he made some kind of mistake? Strayed where he should not have gone?
She dismissed the idea. He was an experienced officer, who had survived a long time in the game. He did not make elementary errors.
So what had he been doing?
And why did C want it hushed up?
She took a sip of the cold wine, and dialled DeVere’s number.
She needed answers.
——————— ◆ ———————
Southbank Centre
London SE1
England
The United Kingdom
DeVere had told Ava to meet him at 9:45 p.m. outside the entrance to the Queen Elizabeth II Hall at London’s Southbank Centre.
As she approached it, the largest arts complex in Europe, she could see the hulking collection of concert halls and galleries hugging the bend in the river, dominating a long stretch of the south bank.
It was a bizarre 1950s and 1960s concrete vision of ultra-modernism—a mass of split-level walkways and windswept staircases. But even through the tired materials and omnipresent weather stains, she could still feel something of the radical futurism it had once offered.
She did not have to wait long outside the concert-hall entrance before she saw DeVere.
Wearing his distinctive chalk-striped suit and black-rimmed glasses, he emerged from the doorway with the interval crowd, spotted her immediately, and headed over to where she was standing.
“What a pleasure,” he beamed, bending to give her a kiss on the cheek.
“I never had you down as a romantic.” She pointed at the concert poster of a Roman general and an Egyptian queen locked in a dramatic stage embrace. The baroque lettering announced the performance was Handel’s
Julius Caesar in Egypt
.
“It makes me look sophisticated,” he smiled.
Ava knew that was not true. He was being self-effacing. His opera collection at home was the work of a lifetime.
He set off along the riverside walk, before turning into an open concrete stairwell leading up to Waterloo Bridge.
As they emerged onto the top, the two-lane bridge was still humming with traffic in both directions despite the lateness of the hour. DeVere headed onto the pedestrian walkway running down its side, striding out across the river to the north bank.
“This is my favourite bridge in London,” he confided as they walked. “You get a wonderful view from here.”
She fell into step beside him, peering down over the low white railings. The light was gone, and the river’s deep water looked cold and black, conjuring up its old Celtic name,
Tamesas
—dark.
Nearing the centre of the bridge, DeVere stopped and put his hands on the railing, inhaling the night air deeply. Ava halted beside him, taking in the view looking west.
To her left, the elongated capsules of London’s four-hundred-and-fifty-foot-high big wheel inched round imperceptibly. She imagined for a moment being on it, but could not remember the last time she had seen life pass by at such a slow pace.
As she looked out straight ahead over the water she could see the two Golden Jubilee Bridges, each spraying down their spot-lit suspension cables like vast water jets from a shower-head, frozen in time in gleaming metal.
But dominating it all, the mellow yellowy floodlit stones of the Houses of Parliament lit up the night in front of her. It was a bizarre sight—its mock gothic high walls, spiky pinnacles, and three great towers making it more of a fortress than a royal palace—although no king or queen had chosen to live on the site for over five hundred years.
DeVere’s horseshoe of white hair was being buffeted by the wind, and his usually jovial expression was now one of concern. “No one can hear us here. I’ve got about ten minutes until I need to get back. So what’s bothering you, Ava?”
She had been wondering how she was going to ask him. She had no desire to offend an old family friend. But nevertheless, she needed answers, and she wanted them from him.
“Why didn’t you tell me C stopped all investigations into my father’s death?” She kept her tone neutral.
He looked out over the water. “Ah. So that’s it.” He paused. “Would it have helped if I had?” There was a note of fatalism in his voice.
“It wasn’t your decision to make, Peter. You should’ve told me,” she answered quietly.
“Why?” he replied. It was not an aggressive question. “What could you have done? It wouldn’t have brought him back, and I didn’t want you and your family to experience any further pain.”
“Well,” she paused. “I know now. And I don’t understand it. Why did he make the order?”
DeVere shook his head. “Who knows anything for sure in this business? All I knew was that our two-man department was shut down. I was taken off all files, and reassigned. I didn’t blame them. I’d have made the same decision. Our desk was nothing without your father. He was the expert.”
“But that doesn’t explain why C whitewashed his death.” Ava persisted. “It just doesn’t make sense to me.”
“I kept asking, but nobody ever told me why,” he answered softly. “Eventually I just stopped asking. I think they wanted to forget the work we were doing. Without the credibility your father brought to the department, I suspect they found it all too difficult to explain. They didn’t want publicity around a desk specializing in the politico-occult.”
Ava felt a wave of sadness to think that everything he had worked for had been shut down so quickly. Just like that. No questions asked.
DeVere continued. “I also think they were worried any publicity surrounding the department would alarm the public. It was always a fine line. Our work would show people we were taking a real threat seriously. But it would also alert them to a new danger they had probably never thought of. And it would become one more thing for the bureaucrats to be accountable for to the politicians.”
He shifted the weight on his feet. “I know it’s hard to swallow, after he gave his life for them—but I think his death gave the Firm the excuse they wanted to get back to business as usual. It made life easier for the paper-pushers.”
Ava took a deep lungful of the salty air, digesting the information.
As much as it angered her, it made a twisted sort of sense. Underneath everything, the Firm was just another government department—albeit a highly unusual one—run by bureaucrats.
Ultimately, it all came down to paperwork.
She stared out into the evening lights on both sides of the river.
There was something else she needed to clarify. “Peter—I’ve been told he was investigating Malchus at the time he was killed.”
“Christ.” DeVere’s face drained of colour.
He turned to stare at her. “Seriously? They never told me that. We were each wrapped up in our own projects. I knew he was having some success with a new group and had actively penetrated them—but I never had any details.”
He shook his head. “Jesus. So it was these Thelema bastards, even back then?”
Ava clenched her jaw. From what she had experienced with Malchus and his cronies earlier, she was now certain there was a connection. “Malchus was involved. I don’t know how, yet—but I’m going to find out.”
“Prince?” he asked. “This is from the American files?”
Ava nodded.
“Do you trust her?” he asked quietly.
“Not very much,” she answered truthfully.
“Neither do I,” he smiled sadly. “But then I don’t trust many people.”
She looked at him with concern. “You’ve been doing this too long, Peter.”
“It’s a survival skill,” he grimaced. “It’s kept me alive a long time.”
It was another reason Ava had become disenchanted with the job. For all the excitement of covert work, she could see the endless secrets and uncertainties about who to trust were ultimately corrosive. It was hard to stay normal.
He turned to her. “Ava, can I give you some advice?” His expression was suddenly serious. “As an old friend?” He did not wait for an answer before continuing. “I don’t know how deep this thing goes—but I don’t like it. There are too many unknowns. My instinct tells me people are going to get hurt, and I don’t want you to be one of them. Maybe you should go back to Baghdad—leave this one alone.”
She remembered Malchus’s cold sadism that afternoon—the dead expression in his eyes as he had interrogated her. “Let Malchus get away? Give up the Ark?”
She shook her head slowly.
He sighed. “You’re on the outside these days, Ava. You left. There is no salvation outside the Church, remember? I can’t protect you if it gets serious.” He looked at her pleadingly. “You won’t help your father by getting yourself killed.”
“I appreciate the concern.” She shot him a sideways glance. “But I don’t need protection—from you or anyone.”
“You Curzons are all the same.” He looked resigned. “Please, as a personal favour?”
She knew what he was going to ask. “I can’t drop it, Peter—not now.”
“At least think about it.” He looked at her hopefully. “It’s not your job anymore. There’ll be others who can handle it. And none of it’s going to bring him back.”
She wanted to be honest with him. “You’re not going to change my mind.”
He put a hand on her arm. “Well, just think about it. And meanwhile, for God’s sake be careful who you trust. I don’t know what you’re getting into, but I don’t like what I’ve seen so far. As I say, if I’ve learnt anything in too many years at this job, it’s not to trust anyone.”
That was fine. She did not trust Prince, and had no intention of involving others. She preferred working alone anyway. In her experience, additional hands may help, but they invariably brought unwelcome complications.
She glanced over to the south bank, where the second half of DeVere’s evening was about to start. “Come on, then.” She took one last look at the dark still water. “Let’s get back. We don’t want you to miss Caesar and Cleopatra’s big moment.”
——————— ◆ ———————
Undisclosed location
Nobody ever came to the secluded house by the lake.
Ever since the infamous Englishman had made it his home all those years ago, no locals had visited. They avoided it like the plague, even shying away from the nearby roads.
It suited Malchus fine.
He relished the isolation.
Glancing out of the large window overlooking the smoky-black water, he saw that the first glow of morning was just beginning to purple the sky.
He had timed it perfectly. Dawn—the moment between two worlds.
He finished bathing, before drying off and anointing himself with the sacred oil he had blended according to the recipe in the thirtieth chapter of the book of Exodus. It was a powerful formula, and he had followed the biblical instructions to the letter—slowly steeping the myrrh, cinnamon, calamus, and cassia into the olive oil.
Now ritually clean, he put on a dark robe and perfumed sandals, before padding through the hallway to the room at the north-western corner of the house—to the small doorway inside it.
He turned the large iron key and pulled the cellar door open, revealing a three-inch-thick steel door immediately behind it.
Taking the thin gold chain from around his neck, he inserted its slim magnetized hexagonal rod into the anodized key plate.
Next he turned to focus on the door’s two main features—a combination tumbler lock and a large wheel.
He spun the tumbler the requisite number of times to the left and right—a simple exercise in gematria. When the mechanism clicked quietly, he took hold of the steel wheel and turned it to the left. As the metal ran through his fingers, he could hear the sound of the three locking bars withdrawing from the mortises buried deep in the reinforced doorframe.
It was his only concession to security.
What was below was private.
The heavy door swung open easily, revealing a black stone staircase—unlit save for a dull glow rising from the cavernous cellar below.
Striding confidently down the bare stairs, he descended lower, increasingly aware of the thick bitter-sweet
qetoreth
incense rising from the underground chamber.
Like the sacred anointing oil, the historic incense’s recipe was also preserved in the book of Exodus, from the instructions to the Temple priests. It called for equal measures of stacte, onchya, galbanum, and frankincense. While the last two were easy to source, many seekers down the centuries had struggled to identify stacte and onchya. But Malchus had been entrusted with the knowledge by one of the
Kohanim
of Prague—although yielding it up to his violent visitor had been the very last thing the elderly priest ever did.
Malchus inhaled deeply. It was a good smell—a sign things were finally progressing, as he had planned for so long.
Stepping off the last stair, he gazed with intense satisfaction at the sight that greeted him.
The room was a concrete cube.
There were no windows or skylights, and the walls, floor, and ceiling were painted a uniform matt black.
Inlaid into the floor was a large five-pointed star, its tip pointing to the far wall and the whole bordered by a circle. He had built it himself, trusting no one else with the precision required.
Its six lines were scored into the cement, each channel as wide and deep as a fist. They were painted the same black as the floor—clearly visible in the flickering light thrown by the ten wide black candles, one at each of the star’s angles.
His eyes moved up to the walls, flicking rapidly across the riot of intricate blood-red glyphs.
He knew that to uninitiated observers the malevolent shapes looked like the insane ravings of a demonically possessed mind.
But the arcane alphabet made complete sense to him.
The symbols were the angelic sigils—seals used by adepts down the ages to name and summon the Guardians: a code passed down each generation from master to disciple.
Even though he had spent weeks painting the sigils onto the walls, he never tired of looking at their powerful jagged lines and the energizing forces they exuded—like electrical symbols or lightning bolts.
He smiled with satisfaction as he surveyed them one by one: “Danel, Turel, Satarel, Ananel, Batarel, Tamiel, Ramiel, Kokabiel, Zaqiel, Sariel, Jomjael, Rameel, Ezeqeel, Samsapeel, Baraqijal, Semyaza, Arakiba, Asael, Armaros … .”
He read them slowly, mouthing them to himself as if in a prayer, savouring the sounds as he breathed air into them.
Their names were raw power. Assembled together in the same place in this way, they oozed dominion.
His usually lifeless green eyes were shining more brightly now, illuminated by the sigils’ dark potency.
Of the thousands of angels he could have selected, he had chosen the two hundred Watchers—those immortals who fell to earth from heaven in the Great War, fuelled by their uncontrollable lust to pleasure themselves with mortal women.
He smiled knowingly.
He liked to imagine what the battle between the angels had been like.
Carnage, destruction, and agony, he was sure—on a celestial scale.
He sneered at the thought of the chubby winged toddlers who passed for angels on a million church ceilings, chocolate boxes, and Christmas cards.
Did no one read any more? The Bible gave detailed physical descriptions. It was all there if anyone cared to look.
And there was nothing serene or innocent about them.
He closed his eyes and pictured the cherubs—Yahweh’s terrifying guardians.
They had the bodies of men, the cloven hooves of calves, and could see simultaneously in all directions from their four faces: man, lion, ox, and eagle. They protected Yahweh, speeding alongside his chariot on their four great wings.
Malchus savoured the image. He felt especially connected to cherubs, because according to the book of Ezekiel, one of them was the seal of perfection, full of wisdom, and perfect in beauty.
Lucifer.
But despite their famous fallen leader, the cherubs were not the mightiest of the angels.
More powerful still were the seraphs, or burning ones. Malchus saw them in his mind, flying above Yahweh’s chariot—the ultimate guardians: all-seeing from the hundreds of eyes covering every inch of their bodies, even the area under their six great wings.
“They lie in ignorance,” Malchus snorted with contempt. “
Audiunt sed non auscultant.
”
9
As he looked around the room, he felt gripped by the feeling he always had when he was down here.
It was an oratory of power.
Stepping into the middle of the pentagram, he picked up a thick glass amphora with rams-head handles, and began pouring scented oil from it into the floor’s star-shaped grooves.
He had made the oil himself, but it was not the anointing oil from the book of Exodus. This particular mixture was altogether darker and muskier.
Once the star was glistening wet and the viscous liquid had run freely around the never-ending channels, he knelt down and dipped his left hand into the small pool of oil left in the amphora, blessing himself with it—drawing four upside-down crosses from his head to his navel. Counting aloud as he touched himself, each time he reached six he restarted at one. When he had completed the fourth cross, he stopped and traced a large upside cross in the air in front of him with two bold strokes.
His ritual gestures totalled three sixes—the most perfect number.
To finish the opening ceremony, he picked up one of the candles and knelt, touching it to the oil in the floor.
With a gratifying speed, the fire leapt along the length of the deep grooves, instantly transforming the oiled channels into a flaming circled pentagram.
Now he had prepared both himself and the sacred space, he finally allowed himself to look up towards the east end of the room, where the fifth point of the blazing star pointed to the high altar.
Lifting his eyes, they came to rest on the focal point of the oratory—the object he had been lusting after for all these years.
It stood on a black velvet podium behind the granite altar that usually took pride of place in the dark chapel.
He gazed raptly at the ancient chest, savouring how its hammered and cast-gold decoration flickered and glinted in the low candlelight. By a trick of the shimmering rays, it looked as if its dozens of bas-relief figures were moving jerkily across its beaten panels. Even the wings of the vast cherubs on the lid, whose tips touched to form the Mercy Seat, seemed to be undulating gently.
He stared long and hard at the ancient artefact, feeling his heart rate rising as it always did when he came down to gaze upon it.
He could barely believe it was finally his, after so many years of preparation.
Few people had any concept of the ancient chest’s true significance. He felt nothing but contempt for them. At some stage in their pathetic meaningless existences they had decided it was long lost, or a misty legend, or a benign cultural relic with no relevance to their lives.
He despised their ignorance.
They would soon be forced to reassess that view—along with any simplistic Sunday-school idea it was merely an ornamental chest for carrying around the golden pot of manna, Aaron’s rod, the stone tablets of the commandments, and the first Torah scroll.
Its true purpose was infinitely more powerful.
Yahweh, the ultimate warrior God, had chosen it as his earthly throne—making it a unique and sacred gateway: a mystical place where the earthly and heavenly realms met, a portal of unique power and potential.
What would happen was inevitable. It would not be his responsibility. It should come as no surprise to anyone. It was all there, in the Bible.
He looked about with a deep contentment.
The flames from the pentagram were low—no more than four inches high, but they threw off enough heat for him to have started gently sweating.
Good.
It was time for it all to begin.
The ceremony would be an important turning point.
He walked to the north-west corner of the room, where he found the small wicker basket exactly as he had left it.
Inside, motionless apart from the rhythmic bobbing of its head, was a young cockerel—its sleek dark feathers gleaming in the candlelight with a purplish-black sheen, contrasting strikingly with the deep red of its comb.
Unbuckling the basket’s leather strap, he flipped open the lid and grasped the cockerel by its thin neck, lifting it clear.
Carrying it to the other end of the room, he approached the altar, and laid it onto the hard black granite surface.
Sensing imminent danger, or perhaps seeing the wide-bladed knife Malchus had picked up, the cockerel began to struggle—writhing to escape his steel grip.
As Malchus leant on it harder, pinning its small body onto the cold stone, the bird thrashed more wildly, flapping its wings—struggling to be free of the weight bearing remorselessly down on it.
Holding the ritual knife to his lips, Malchus softly kissed both sides of the wide blade. “
Suscipiat dominus sacrificium de manibus meis
,”
10
he murmured, raising it high above his shoulder.
The burnished silver glinted as he brought it down in a great arc—its sharp heavy blade easily slicing into the flesh of the young bird’s neck. Its razor-sharp edge passed straight through the carotid, jugular, cartilage, and windpipe, before finally shattering the bone of its spinal column.
As the bird’s head rolled away from its body, blood sprayed out in jets from the ragged stump of its neck.
He raised the knife again, and touched its bloodied blade to his lips and tongue. “
Dominus, sum dignus
,”
11
he whispered, relishing the taste of the hot metallic fluid.
Leafing through a copy of the Old Testament propped against an ornate stand on the dark stone altar, he turned to the twenty-ninth chapter of the book of Exodus
.
“
Take some of its blood and put it on the lobes of the right ear
,” he intoned, at the same time smearing his right ear with the cockerel’s lifeblood.
Reading on further, he did as the Bible commanded, daubing blood onto the thumb of his right hand, then the big toe of his right foot.
It was an ordination ceremony, and he knew that for what was to come, he had to follow the instructions precisely.
“
Splash blood against the sides of the altar
,” he recited, grasping the cockerel’s warm twitching body and pointing the ragged neck stump at the altar, spraying it with the still-pumping blood like some obscene modernist mural.
Moving to the middle of the room, he picked up the oil amphora and returned to the altar.
Wedging the shredded stump on the cockerel’s shoulders into the amphora’s neck, he watched as the blood dribbled down, creating deep red blobs floating in suspension on the oil.
Reading further into the ancient book of Exodus, he dipped a small silver asperges rod into the amphora, and flicked the bloody oil onto his robes in a gesture of sanctification.
The blessings complete, he picked up the cockerel’s warm but now still body, and placed it in the centre of the altar’s granite top.
Still reading aloud, he took up the bloodied knife again, and slit open the bird’s abdomen in accordance with the ancient instructions.
As the entrails slithered out, he separated off the internal organs, slicing them out one by one, meticulously observing the details stipulated in the ritual—taking especial care to collect the fat from the viscera, the long lobe of the liver, both kidneys, and the right thigh.
Satisfied, he lifted off a metal grill in the top of the altar and lit the kindling nestling in the recess under it, before replacing the plate into position.
When the flames had died down, he placed the fat, liver, kidneys, and thigh onto the grill.
They hissed quietly as the fat dripped down onto the ashes below.
“Burn them on the altar
,” he recited, closing the book of Exodus, “
for a pleasing aroma to the Lord.”