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Inverness to Foyers
Loch Ness
Scotland
The United Kingdom
It had been a breathtaking journey.
As Ava left London behind, the train had quickly shuttled through the midlands and up the west coast of England, where it was soon lost in the romantic wilds of the rolling Yorkshire dales, followed by the striking peaks and waterways of Cumbria and the edge of the Lakes.
Cutting sharply across to the east, they had then entered the lowlands of Scotland, stopping briefly at the capital, Edinburgh, before embarking on the final dramatic section of the journey into the rugged untamed beauty of the Highlands.
Arriving finally at Inverness, the northernmost city in Scotland, she had quickly located the inevitable row of taxis outside the hangar-like railway station.
She jumped into the scruffy-looking one at the head of the line, and asked the driver to take her the eighteen miles south to Foyers.
He was an elderly man, wrapped in a puffy anorak and a tweed cap. He was sitting on a seat cover made of wooden beads, and gave every indication that he would first have preferred to finish the milky-looking tea he was drinking from a scuffed thermos flask.
As soon as he realized she was a “bonglie” from England, he had wanted to take her via Culloden—a moor four miles out of town where, he explained with rancour, English redcoat butchers had bayoneted a thousand of the Highlands’ finest clansmen some two hundred and fifty years earlier.
Ava was well aware of the history of animosity between the Highlands and anywhere south of the border, and had no desire to be drawn into it.
But the driver was not giving up.
“When the English were done murdering on the moor,” he spoke with the soft accent of the Highlands, “they scoured the lochs and glens for anyone they thought sympathized with Bonnie Prince Charlie—executing men, women, and children, and torching whole villages.” She could see his face in the rear view mirror. There was real anger there. “They called it ‘pacifying’ the Highlands. Today we’d call it ethnic cleansing.”
Ava knew the story—how the victor of Culloden, the king’s son, had plants named after him in both countries. In England it was the pretty red and white wild flower, the Sweet William—while in Scotland the smelly common ragwort had become the Stinking Billy.
When Ava did not respond to his effort to educate her on local history, he lapsed into silence, leaving her free to gaze out of the windows at a landscape unlike any other.
It was early evening, but at this latitude on the fifty-seventh parallel, level with the Alaska Peninsula, the sun would not set for a while yet.
As they approached the great loch, the sight of the low grass and tree-covered hills surrounding the lapping water was breathtaking—made even more dramatic by the almost total absence of people. Save for the occasional small hamlet or lone house, the natural landscape remained unbroken as far as she could see in all directions.
Rarely had she been anywhere so ruggedly isolated.
Speeding down the loch’s east coast, she could make out a promontory on the far side dominated by Urquhart Castle—a vast imposing hulk of a medieval ruin jutting out into the water like the stage set of a Wagner opera. She had heard of it—a Highland stronghold since at least the twelve hundreds. Looking at the monumental husk of what it once had been, she could almost feel the power of life and death its chainmailed lords once wielded.
Contemplating the landscape, she could not help feel that although the scenery was dramatic and majestic, it was not peaceful or inviting. There was a palpable restlessness about it bordering on the sinister. The water was eerily dark, and there was something foreboding about its immense depth—over eight hundred feet, deeper than most of the North Sea.
She could see why Malchus had chosen to come here. There was an undercurrent of tangible menace.
“Nearly there now,” the driver announced, shaking her out of her reverie.
She had asked him to drop her at Foyers, a mile beyond Boleskine House, as she did not want him or anyone else knowing where she was going.
More importantly, she had to be on foot and silent when she approached Boleskine House. She was alone, and needed stealth and the invisibility of the woods to cloak her.
“So, what takes you to Foyers?” the driver asked, “The falls?”
The Falls of Foyers had been described on one of the webpages she had printed off. It was a famous local natural beauty spot formed where the river Foyers entered the great loch—a picturesque tumbling waterfall a hundred and fifty feet in height.
“Business, not pleasure,” she replied. “The power station.” She had spotted on the map that there was a small hydro-electric facility powered by the falls.
It seemed as good a cover story as any.
“Then you’ll not be one of the weirdos come to gape at Crowley’s house?”
Ava’s ears pricked up. “Whose house?” She feigned ignorance.
“You must’ve heard of him. The English fella. You know, the Satanist, the one the papers called ‘the most evil man in Britain’.”
“Did he live round here?” Ava asked, eager to draw out whatever information the driver knew. Local intelligence was invaluable.
“We’ll pass it soon enough. We get black magic types come on pilgrimages here. It’s not healthy, if you ask me.”
“Who lives there now?” She assumed Malchus and the Thelema kept themselves to themselves, but locals everywhere always had a way of knowing their neighbours’ business.
He shook his head slowly. “It’s not a place for decent folk, if you get my meaning. Strange things happen there.”
“Like what?” she asked, keeping her voice casual.
“They say Crowley chose the house specially so he could do an ancient black magic ritual—Abramelin or something it’s called. You can read all about it in books, I’m sure. They say it takes six months and summons the spirits of Hell. The house was so full of evil shadows that Crowley had to use candles to light the rooms even on bright sunny days.”
The driver wiped a hand over his face. “But he left unexpectedly, with the ritual unfinished. He was called away to Paris, or somewhere.” He paused. “They say he never undid what he had done.”
“What do you mean?” Ava asked.
“I’m no expert,” he answered. “But I hear folks talking. They say if you summon something, then you have to banish it back again when you’re finished. But Crowley never did. So the spirits he called up are still there. You’ll not find a local going near the place.”
“Has anything ever actually happened there?” Ava asked sceptically, aware these types of stories were usually no more than local folklore—tall tales to scare wide-eyed children.
The driver nodded. “There’s a cemetery there. Used to be a medieval church beside it, before Crowley’s house was built on the site. But the church burned down, killing everyone inside. Like I say, it’s a bad place.”
“But what about Crowley?” Ava persisted. “Has anything happened since he moved in?”
He nodded again. “Crowley’s lodge keeper went mad, and tried to murder his wife and children. Then a local butcher cut off his own hand while reading a note from Crowley.”
He angled the rearview mirror so he could see Ava’s face more clearly. “After Crowley left, a retired army major living there shot himself in the head, right in Crowley’s bedroom. And when that guitarist fella owned the house, his lodge keeper’s young children both died suddenly—the daughter at her school desk, and the son on his mother’s knee. And there was the man who lived there, looking after it for the guitarist. He heard and saw things.”
The driver stared hard at Ava. “I’ll say it again. It’s not a place for decent folk. Bad things happen there. Always have. Always will.”
He sped up as they approached a cemetery on their right.
This must be it,
Ava realized.
It was an open area of wild grassland surrounded by a picturesque low stone wall. There were several hundred old upright tombstones dotted around it in no particular order, and she could also see a mort-house. Judging by the age of the various trees, the shape of the stones, and the heavy lichen and moss covering them, she guessed it was all several centuries old at least.
She knew from the map that the road they were on cut between the cemetery on one side and the house on the other.
Turning her head around to look up the hill, she caught her first sight of Boleskine House—a long low one-storey building, partially hidden behind a screen of trees.
There was a light on inside.
The driver said nothing. When the cemetery and house were out of sight, he spoke again.
“Here we are,” he announced, drawing into a tiny hamlet. “Foyers.” He pulled up at a small building no larger than an ordinary house. “This is the power station.”
Ava paid, thanked him, and stepped out of the car.
As she was walking towards the small power station, the driver called after her through his open window. “Are you sure you don’t want me to drop you at one of the guesthouses? It’s getting late. There’s one just a hundred yards further on.”
Ava assured him it was fine, and made for the door of the power station.
He nodded and turned the car around, before winding up his window and heading off into the evening.
From the speed of his exit, he left no doubt he could not wait to be out of the area and back in the safety of Inverness.
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Boleskine House
Foyers
Loch Ness IV2
Scotland
The United Kingdom
As the taxi sped off into the dwindling light, Ava turned to walk back along the side of the loch the way she had come.
There was no one else on the deserted country road, and she was lost in thought. Around her, the shadows began to fall, bleeding the colours and contours from the hills and lake until they became monochrome shapes, devoid of textures or details.
It did not take her long to cover the mile back to Boleskine.
She saw the secluded old cemetery first, on her left.
Earlier it had seemed an almost cheerful place—a pleasant corner of mellow stone and rustling trees. But now, in the half-light, it was distinctly more sinister, with the headstones throwing lengthening shadows out under the still branches.
The squat thick-walled mort-house dominating it was a gruesome reminder of the days when fresh corpses needed protection from the ‘resurrection men’. Scotland’s unique solution to the problem of body snatchers was in front of her—an impregnable stone vault where the cadavers could lie until so much flesh had rotted off there was nothing worth stealing and selling. Only then would the sexton put the decomposed corpse into the ground.
Ava turned away and looked in the other direction, up the hill, towards the screen of trees shielding Crowley’s infamous house.
Despite the failing light, she could see it more clearly now than when she had sped past earlier in the car.
It was a long low pale building, one storey high. From the shape and style, she guessed it had been built in the late 1700s.
She counted eleven windows running along the main elevation, with the centre marked by a pointed gable sheltering a larger window. The symmetry was completed by rounded bays to the left and right, each lit by three windows.
The roof itself was local grey slate, and there were a number of visible low chimneys. Despite the chill of the summer evening, there was no smoke.
Although she had no proof yet, she instinctively knew it was Malchus’s retreat.
As she looked more closely at the isolated house, she saw there was no main entranceway—just a small door cut into the northern side of the right-hand bay. From what she had read on the train, she assumed it was the entrance Crowley had built for his Abramelin ritual, which required a north-facing doorway from the ‘oratory’ onto a terrace, which was to be covered in fine river sand in order to see the footsteps of the infernal beings he conjured.
Although the long wall of the house faced the loch, the lack of any main doorway suggested to her it was actually the back of the building.
Thinking quickly, her first priority was to get a fuller sense of the surroundings before deciding how best to get into the house unobserved.
Leaving the road, she began to scramble up the steep hillside in order to skirt around behind the wide building.
As she climbed higher, she realized the grounds were more extensive than she had at first thought, and she was perspiring by the time she had got far enough through the rhododendrons, birch, pine, larch, and fir trees to be able to look back down on her target.
The first thing she noted was that her assumption was correct. The side of the house facing up the hill was the front. She could now clearly see a large sandstone entrance porch with double storm doors. It was at the end of a long sweeping gravel drive leading up from a small lodge house and an imposing set of tall wrought iron gates.
The drive was plainly the official way onto the estate, but she had no intention of drawing attention to herself by approaching that way. The gates were widely visible to any observer and might well be hooked up to a security system. In addition, it was a still night, and there was no traffic or other noise. Her footsteps on the gravel would ring out like gunshots, as well as leaving telltale tracks.
Retracing her steps, she scrambled back down the hillside until she was again level with the isolated house.
It was dark now, and she was struck by the beautiful but eerie moonlit view over the graveyard and loch.
Feeling her heart pounding hard, she climbed over a low four-bar fence and moved quickly and silently across the lawns between the flowerbeds and box hedges towards the side of the house.
Looking around, she could not see any cameras, and there was no sign of an alarm system.
She guessed that if the taxi driver was right and people avoided the house, there was probably no need for an electronic surveillance system. People’s fear was the best security device of all.
Moving quietly along the back wall, she found all the windows dark and curtained.
As she approached the north-west bay where Crowley had cut his oratory door, she found what she needed. Although it had not been visible from the road, there was a faint chink of light coming through a small crack in the drawn curtains.
The gap was narrow, but it was enough for her to see a thin slice of the room beyond it.
On the far wall, hanging over the stone fireplace, she could see the right side of what appeared to be a painted portrait of a man in Elizabethan dress. She could only make out a sliver of his face, and could tell nothing more than he was an old man with white hair.
Closer to her, she could also see the lower section of a large floor-standing red-gold copper tripod, which she guessed from the room’s mellow flickering light was a standing candelabrum.
Her restricted view did not allow her to see anything else apart from aged dark wooden floorboards and a segment of stone walls.
Listening intently, she strained to hear if there was any sound of activity inside—any indication there was anyone in the house.
But there was nothing—just silence, and the sound of the wind in the trees.
She slipped a hand into her pocket and quietly pulled out the Kahr nine-millimetre she had taken off DeVere. She flipped the safety to the off position, and pulled back the slide to cock it.
After glancing through the gap in the curtain one more time, she tried the door’s handle, turning and pulling it gently.
The door did not move.
It was firmly locked.
She considered picking the lock, but quickly decided against it. She had no idea who or what lay on the other side, and there was no sense in putting herself in a vulnerable position—either when picking it or relocking it once inside.
Heading back towards the side of the house, she made for the dim light she had first seen from the road. As she rounded the corner, she immediately saw it was coming from one of the side windows.
She approached the window stealthily, and stopped outside it to peer into a dark room, whose open doorway allowed some of the light from the hallway chandelier to filter into it.
Unlike the old-fashioned room she had just seen at the back of the house, she was surprised to see this one was a study decorated as if for a 1930s German intellectual.
Its walls were a clean white, hung with Bauhaus-era circular graphic art, and the space was sparsely filled with minimalist furniture from the same period.
There was a plain desk of metal tubes covered with a taut white leather top supporting a curved chrome reading lamp. On the other side of the room was a tubular chaise longue, again made of chrome and white leather, but with a matching side table on which a number of books were neatly stacked.
The irony of the room was not lost on Ava. Malchus probably thought the style lent him an air of intellectual respectability, but it was in fact a style of design the Nazis had suppressed for its ‘degeneracy’.
Focusing back on the window, she noted it was a standard sash, with no bolts or locks on the inside.
She inched it up a fraction then held her breath, waiting—listening for even the smallest sound.
But she was met only with silence from within.
Pushing the window’s lower section up higher, she raised the wooden frame until it was half open, then paused again, listening for any indication she had been overheard.
Still nothing.
Moving as stealthily as she could, she climbed through the open window and landed on the study floor in a crouching position. As part of the same fluid movement, she raised the gun in both hands, covering the room with a sweeping arc, ready to unload rounds into anything that moved.
But she was met with nothing but stillness and silence.
She was alone.
Stepping quickly across the darkened study, she paused at its doorway, listening for the sound of anyone moving deeper in the building.
Nothing.
Nosing the pistol ahead of her, she stepped out into the hallway.
It was long and narrow, with a pillared opening on the left leading to the main front doors, as well as two large display alcoves, each filled with a bronze sculpture. Both were male nudes—one holding a flaming torch, the other a sword. They looked like 1930s fascist imitations of classical Greek art.
Moving further down the hallway, she tried the white-panelled doors leading off it, but found them locked.
The only open door was at the far end of the corridor, and as she looked through it into the room beyond, her breathing quickened.
The room’s walls were covered in thin white rectangular tiles, each slightly bevelled, giving an almost three-dimensional effect. The only objects in the room were a long plain stone table and a deep ceramic sink fixed onto the wall next to it.
The room’s clinical cleanness reminded her of a Victorian dissecting room or mortuary.
She did not want to imagine what Malchus used it for.
But what had caught her eye was a doorway in the room’s far corner. It was exactly like the others in the hallway, except in place of the ornamental handles it had a large brass-faced keyhole with a long iron key protruding from it. Immediately above the keyhole was an oversize barrel bolt with a heavy padlock, hanging open.
She could feel her pulse quickening.
It was exactly what she had been looking for.
A cellar door.
And it was slightly ajar, letting a pungent smell of incense rise up from below.
She could hear nothing except for her own racing heartbeat, and there were butterflies in her stomach as she took in the enormity of where she was.
This was it.
This had to be where he was keeping the Ark and the Menorah.
She could feel the excitement she had been trying to suppress ever since she had seen the packing crate on the rusty tug boat in Astana. She had sensed then that she had been in the presence of the Ark.
And she could feel it again now.
All the frustrations of the past days ebbed away, as she knew with a surge of almost uncontrollable elation that she was about to come face to face with the Ark.
Pulling the wooden cellar door wider, she was surprised to find a three-inch-thick steel one just behind it. There was no handle on it, just a small hexagonal keyhole, a tumbler lock, and a large steel wheel.
But it, too, was open.
She raised the handgun in her right hand, pointing it into the cellar.
Her palms were wet with anticipation as she looked down the stone steps, which she could see clearly, illuminated by a warm flickering glow.
She could guess exactly what it meant.
In accordance with ancient tradition, Malchus was keeping the sacred objects in his own secluded holy of holies, lighting them gently by candlelight, and bathing them permanently with incense in an unending tribute of praise.
With the doors fully ajar, the odour was even more pungent. It was like no incense she had ever smelled. It was darker, heavier—like something from a street souk in sub-Saharan Africa.
She took a deep breath to steady herself, then stepped through the door onto the top step.
As she did, she felt a piece of cold hard metal being pressed into the back of her skull behind her ear. At the same time, she heard the unmistakable double click of a pistol’s firing mechanism being cocked.
Before she could react, a familiar deep resonant voice spoke behind her.
“Dr Curzon, I have been expecting you.”
For the first second, Ava was too stunned to react. But as she realized that Malchus was yet again coming between her and her prize, a bolt of white-hot anger shot through her.
Where on earth had he come from?
She had been sure the corridor and room had been empty.
Had he been watching her all along?
A volcano of rage erupted inside her.
Was this some kind of game for him?
“Put the gun down,” Malchus ordered, “slowly.”
“Or what?” Ava exploded, wheeling around, the challenge burning in her eyes. She was damned if she was going to let him come between her and the Ark again. It was her turn to have the Ark. She was angry enough to fight him with her bare hands if that was what it took.
“Don’t tempt me, Dr Curzon,” he replied, a cruel smile playing across his fleshy lips. “There’s no one for miles around to hear what goes on in my little house. I beg you not to be difficult. For your sake.”
He ground the barrel harder into her head. “Now I shan’t ask again. Please put the gun down.”
Seething, Ava’s mind cleared enough to realize he was not making idle threats.
She knew the results of his handiwork—her father, Yevchenko, Drewitt, the priest in the lower church of the Basilica di San Clemente, and Professor Stone in the Bodleian. All of them slain in cold blood. But most of all, she remembered Max’s man in the dark underground Roman complex outside the mithraeum—shot like a dog in revenge for the death of Malchus’s henchman.
Malchus had not batted an eyelid as he executed him.
Flushed with rage, she knew Malchus was not only capable of killing—she had come to realize that he actively enjoyed it.
She could feel him pressing the end of the barrel harder into her skull.
Fuming, she knew she had no realistic alternative but to comply. This was not the time for heroics. If she wanted to see the Ark, if she wanted to see Malchus get what he deserved, and if she wanted to clear her and Ferguson’s names, then she would have to stay alive.