“I have the grimoire handed down from my father, who found it in a storeroom, in a box of personal items left behind by Lorenzo Conti who was the last in a long line of successors all the way back to the author, Benvenuto Cellini.”
“Yes, we’ve been over this, Jutting. I have no reason to believe the book is authentic.”
“No reason not to, either. Sir Edward Elgar was an intimate of Lorenzo Conti when he was the music master in my father’s sanatorium and Conti was an inmate. The director of the sanatorium at the time left a note in his journal, mentioning the relationship and noting that the two often read together from an old manuscript.”
“You’ve told me all this before.”
“Never know how much you retain, Richard.” Jutting seemed to take pleasure in calling the other man by his first name. He drew the syllables out, bringing gleeful attention to his transgression. "Well, I do know that you are familiar with the dark saying encoded into Elgar’s Enigma Variations and the probability that it is, in fact, an incantation such as the one Cellini must have learned from the Sicilian priest who helped him call up the armies of the underworld.”
“So some believe.”
“Yes, some. Including you when I first discussed this with you years ago.”
“I never thought you would go so far with this charade.”
“Well, I have. And now, a cryptographer in my employ has finally broken the enigma. And his solution points to a particular passage of the grimoire. It names the chapter and the page. The chapter is titled Negomanzia.”
Haggis face looked shaken. “But you can’t be serious about trying this, Jutting.”
“Of course I’m serious,” Jutting broke off, exasperated. “Of course I am. This is what I have devoted my life to finding. You put up a great facade but when it comes down to brass tacks you are afraid, Richard. You fear the power so you don’t deserve it. That’s why your followers are deserting you. Deserting your faltering order. If you decide to join us, the ceremony will begin at midnight. I have nothing more to say.”
I watched Jutting’s pointer move across the screen and click the End Call button. Ashna and I looked at each other.
“Is this guy for real?” Ashna asked. “He thinks he’s going to call up some demons and use them to become a powerful dark wizard? This is the real world, not Harry Potter land.”
“I don’t really care much about whether he tries out some dark incantation. He can sacrifice a goat for all I care. Maybe he will. What we need to do is get the enigma solution and send it to Wolhardt before Jutting makes it public. If Wolhardt is the first to go public with it, Jutting will have to pay the reward, even if he already figured it out. He won’t be able to argue that he found it first because he’ll have to admit that he stole the method from Wolhardt.”
“True. We have a good opportunity here. Jutting and his crew are going to be distracted by the preparations for their big black magic party. There are probably a lot of details to nail down. They need to find some virgins, get a lot of candles, maybe some blood to drink out of golden chalices.”
“I’m going to go in. I need to get the notes and St. Martin’s new laptop. I’ll have to wait until after dark though. What time is sunset?”
Ashna ran a quick search. “Looks like around nine fifteen.”
“Okay. I need some sleep.”
“Not me. I’m basically undead. Jutting should just summon me. I wouldn’t do his bidding though. I’d slap him around.”
“I’m sure you would. I’m going to go see if there are sheets on the beds upstairs.”
“I’ll come with you. There’s a little favor you can do for me before you go to sleep.”
“Seriously? Didn’t we vow never again after the last time?”
“You know how I get when I find a good exploit and hack the holy living shit out of some asshole. I can’t help it. It’s like when regular people eat oysters or watch porn or whatever it is they do.”
****
I woke up around three PM. Ashna wasn’t in the bed. I knew where I was but it took me a moment to remember why. I sat up and looked around the room while the fog cleared from my head. Beige Berber carpet, cream colored walls, white trim. The bed did have sheets. The bedspread—pink roses on a mint background—lay on the floor to my left, half dull, half bright in a shaft of sun from the window. A print hung on the wall directly across from the bed—a painting in a loose, impressionistic style showing a bucolic windmill nestled into a field of tulips. It made me think of Dworkin, his friend, and the less bucolic mill I had visited the day before. It had not been what I expected. The asylum would not be either. I felt a dull tide of dread wash over me, weighing me down. I pictured going in blind, with no plan and Jutting’s security on a tight leash, having to find an unguarded entrance, having to slip through the net when everyone would be on high alert—it didn’t make me happy. So far, nothing had gone as planned. The job had been chaos from start to finish. I couldn’t go in thinking it would be easy—stride in there with my usual level of confidence and walk out with what I came for. I thought back to the remote Chateau, deep in the woods, where I had been trapped in the basement vault, bound, shoved into the trunk of a car, taken to a clearing to be executed. It had all happened less than a year before, I could see the scene in my head as if I was looking down a long tunnel or watching a television screen from a distance in a darkened room. Miniature people were arrayed around the gloomy clearing like action figures placed by a child. One of them was me. One of them was pointing a gun. I pushed the memory away with an effort of will. The dread was still fresh in my mind. I had saved myself then but would I be lucky again? I couldn’t count on it. Above all, I needed to know beforehand where in the building the notes were being kept. Was St. Martin still working on the solution? If not, why had they brought him? If I had to creep around the asylum looking for St. Martin’s quarters it would make things astronomically more difficult. I got out of bed, agitated, still thinking through the problem, and wandered into the en suite bathroom. The decorator who staged the house had even thought to provide bath towels, also mint green. I turned the taps in the shower, hoping there would be hot water.
Downstairs, Ashna was sprawled on the sectional sofa, laptop on her chest, staring at the screen.
“I’m deep into this network Justin. It’s like I’m a dog and this network is another dog’s butt. I’ve got it all figured out.”
I sat down in a recliner. “Good. I need to know where people are located in the building. I need to know which room St. Martin is in most of all. I don’t want to go blundering around.”
“You’re in luck. At least partially. This place is saturated with wireless access points. They’ve got one for each flat, one in the lobby, a couple of big rooms with two each, boiler room, offices, conference room. I found the architectural plans from the remodel on the file server. They have a nifty cloud based network management system. I’m in that too. It lets me view each access point and see what clients are currently connected to it.”
“Clients?”
“Computers or other connected devices. We call them clients when talking about a LAN architecture to differentiate them from servers. So, I can at least tell you what access point people’s laptops and phones are currently connected to. Doesn’t necessarily mean they are still there, just that they were there recently and haven’t connected to a different one yet. In a mesh network clients get passed off to the closest access point so you will see them jump from one to another as they move around in the physical space. Also, I found an email from Victoria Butler that Jutting was copied on. It was to your friend Angela James telling her to get three of the flats ready. Jutting’s in the fancy one at the end of the east wing. Victoria Butler and St. Martin are on the second floor, also in the east wing but close to the central building. Security is based in the lobby and roaming the building." Ashna pulled up the floor plan and pointed the units out.
"That’s good news. Now I just need to figure out the bes
t way to get into those flats. But first, I’m starving. Did we bring anything to eat?"
"I should let you starve for sleeping through the whole day but I’ll take pity. There are some protein bars in my pack. I brought a whole case with me. New diet."
I chewed one of Ashna’s dry, flavorless bars while we went over the plans of the building. There was a side door at the rear of the main building, just before the chapel if you were working your way back, giving access to a stairwell that snaked back and forth from basement to the fourth floor and on up to the roof. The stairs would be patrolled but probably only by a stationary guard at the bottom. There was also a fire escape on the exterior of the building leading to the roof. If there was a guard and if I could distract him, I could climb the Victorian era fire escape to the top of the building, break in via the roof door, and take the stairs down to the second floor where I would emerge close to St. Martin’s flat. It was the best plan we could see based on the layout of the building and probable placement of security.
"I’m going to leave at nine thirty. I’ll get on the roof, find a place to hide, and wait for your signal. They’ll probably all attend the ritual. My best chance will be then, while they’re distracted."
"Agreed," Ashna said, looking up from the laptop screen. "I can follow their movements and let you know when they begin heading toward the chapel, assuming that’s where they’re going to do it."
“What better place?” I asked, picturing the scene. Despite my disbelief, I felt an atavistic aversion. The idea made me sick—Jutting in the center of the circle, mumbling some nonsense from an ancient book, surrounded by other old men, all hoping for some supernatural thrill, hungry for some measure of control over their own impending mortality. The power of ritual didn’t necessarily come from any real world result, but from the act itself—the regimented mobilization of bodies, the thrusting of normal people into liminal space, both mental and physical. I had no doubt that demons would fail to appear and do Jutting’s bidding. But the ceremony itself might serve to increase his power anyway by binding weak minds, convincing them via the hallowed smoke and mirrors of ritual stagecraft that they had experienced something numinous, caught a glimpse of the divine or the demonic. It had been working for charlatans like Jutting since the dawn of civilization, when people first discovered that power and wealth could be gained by claiming special access to the gods. The whole enterprise made me angry and stiffened my resolve to get the stolen notes back and the solution St. Martin had decoded, give it all to Wolhardt so he could claim the reward and sting Jutting, even if it was just a minor sting, a drop in the bucket considering the vast wealth he controlled.
Chapter 20
A Cold Bed
July 5: Powick
At nine fifteen I went upstairs and dressed in dark cargo pants, T-shirt, and a hoodie I had thrown into my backpack before we left. I emptied the rest of my stuff onto the bed and repacked only what I would need—supplies for various lock bypass methods, a length of rope, a knife, LED flashlight, a few gadgets that might come in handy.
Downstairs, Ashna was sitting at the kitchen table, watching a grainy video feed.
“I got into their security camera server. They only have four cameras for the whole building. Lobby, main entrance exterior, and two wide angles at the back. You can see the door here.” She pointed at a small door in the frame. It was the one near the fire escape I planned on using.
“Can you disable that one?”
“I can do better. Look, they’re on servos so you can pan.” She showed me a control on the screen. “I’m going to slowly inch it this way bit by bit until the fire escape isn’t in the field of view anymore.”
“Perfect.”
“Don’t get killed, asshole,” Ashna said and punched my shoulder.
“I’ll do my best,” I replied, trying to sound lighthearted but not feeling it.
I left via the patio doors at the rear of the model home, slipping out onto a terrace, crossing dry lawn, and vaulting a low wall into the neighboring yard. In that manner, I moved through the unoccupied subdivision, passing windows that looked in on empty rooms, crossing well-kept yards. A damp chill rose from the earth as the last of the day’s heat dissipated into the evening air. It felt good to be alone, walking at night. I always thought too much, spent too much time obsessing over details. When I finally started moving I was able to clear my head and exist in the moment. At last I reached the crumbled edge where suburb met farmland. Between the two, I found a rough no man’s land—a shallow ditch where tall weeds grew. The moon, amber colored and shaped like a broken button, hung high in the sky. By its light, I crept along the far side of the ditch, keeping my eye on the looming shape of the asylum, solid black against the star-dotted black of the sky. I followed the border, enjoying the scent of fecund soil as I crossed along a fallow field, then a field planted in juvenile sugar beets. The smell of those beets took me back to my childhood on the farm for a moment, memories rolling by like a jerky old movie. Not a happy time. A time I gritted my teeth and got through. A time I didn’t like to remember. I turned the projector off by pure force of will and focused on the task at hand. Another fifteen minutes and I came slowly around to the rear of the old asylum.
A stone wall about eight feet high enclosed the grounds. I climbed to the top and crouched on the pitted cement coping, surveying the building. Lights shone from several windows in the east wing and also glowed through the tall, thin slivers of stained glass at the rear of the chapel. I stayed there for several minutes, watching. I could see the rear door but there was a dark corner where the west wing met the main building and a tall tree blocked out the moon’s light. I kept watching, distrustful. My eyes did the tricks that eyes do in the dark—seeking movement and pattern and making it up out of nothing if it wasn’t forthcoming. Finally, though, I saw something real—the flare of a lighter, a tiny orange glow moving up and down. A guard was posted at the door. He was seated in the shadows nearby, maybe on a bench, smoking.
I would have to distract him long enough to get onto the fire escape and up to the roof. I dropped silently back down to the outside of the wall and stood with my back to it, feeling my backpack catch on the rough texture of the stone, thinking through my options. There was always the old ‘throwing the distraction’ gambit—a common trope in movies and TV shows when the hero is on a stealthy mission and needs to get past a guard. The maneuver involved throwing something to make a noise which the guard would then investigate, allowing the hero to slip past. I had a slightly better version I had worked up once years before. It was the one time I did a commissioned job which had involved sneaking around a well-patrolled museum. I had taken apart a particularly atrocious children’s toy called Gassy Gus, extracting from his molded rubber interior a little integrated circuit with a speaker, battery, and switch that was activated by squeezing the figure’s stomach. When the switch was tripped, the toy would emit ten disgusting fart noises spaced about two seconds apart, then fall dormant. I had hacked the circuit to include a timer that would delay the onset of farts for five minutes. During the museum job I had triggered it then hidden it on top of a molding to cause confusion while I took care of business in a nearby gallery. It had worked so well that I made a detour to go back and get it on my way out.
I found the device in my backpack, put it in my hoodie pocket, and worked my way along the wall until I was even with the far edge of the west wing. A wispy fog had started to gather, pooling in hollows and shimmering when the silver motes caught the moonlight. I used it to my advantage as I darted over the wall and across the grounds. When I reached the asylum’s brick exterior, I began working my way back toward the central building, sticking to the shadows cast by the trees planted along the periphery. When I was about fifty feet from the guard I found a good place to hide where the exterior wall made a little zig zag and a tree threw the corner into deep shadow. I crept back the way I had come, pressed the button on the device, and left it in the crook of a tree. Back in my
hiding spot I waited. Right on time, the farting started. It was surprisingly loud. I had no doubt the guard would hear it. I heard him coming after the third emission of ersatz flatus sounded out. He passed my position, crouching low and peering into the darkness. As soon as he was far enough away, I slipped out and made my way to the fire escape. With a jump, I grasped the cold, fog-damp steel, and began climbing. I turned twice on my way up and saw the guard out in the grounds, back to me, searching for the source of the noise that had ceased before he got close enough to pinpoint its location.
When I reached the top, I scrambled over the edge and hid behind a low parapet, my cheek pressed against tar paper, body tense. The smell of damp, hydrocarbon sludge awakened a sense memory. The feeling was peaceful but the exact memory was elusive. To my right, glistening with droplets of fog in the moonlight, the sloping, tiled roof of the main building rose up against the sky. To my left, the vertical front wall of the chapel rose above the narthex. There were two windows in that wall, looking down into the chapel toward the transept. I lay there for a while, catching my breath but I knew I needed to keep moving and find a good hiding place. I rose and scrambled over to the door that gave access to the stairwell, staying low, then shined my little LED flashlight on the knob set and examined the lock. It was a basic pin tumbler lock made by a well-known manufacturer. It would be no problem to pick. I eased my backpack off my shoulders, set it down silently, and zipped it open, pointing the light down into the main pocket. As I rummaged, I thought I heard something and stopped for a moment, holding absolutely still for several seconds. Then I heard the sound again, closer this time, like a bit of gravel underfoot. I whirled just in time to see a dark figure silhouetted against the sky, arm raised and moving downward. A flash in my brain, a dull, thudding impact, and I was falling sideways, blackness closing over me.
****
The first thing I became aware of was bright light, orange through my closed eyelids, then a splitting headache and deep, numbing cold all down my left side. I opened my eyes but immediately squeezed them shut against the explosion of searing pain stabbing my corneas. I tried to move and managed to roll over onto my back. My left arm was asleep. I had been lying on top of it. The pins and needles started as blood flowed into capillaries. I probed my head gingerly with my right hand, running fingers lightly over my skull. Just behind my ear there was an impressive lump. Around the lump, my hair was matted with dried blood. The floor was like ice—a cold bed of concrete for my aching carcass. I lay still for a full minute and the headache began to subside to a dull throb.
Enigma Variations Page 20