‘I understand, where will you be?’
‘Watching from the balcony.’
‘But they’ll find you.’
‘Don’t worry, they won’t.’ He checked his watch. Now they had less than fifteen minutes. Reaching into his pocket, he placed the receipt for the ship’s passage to Port Said on the side table by the bed and the map for Marseille beside it, then he put a couple of the pillows under the bed cover so it looked as if a man might still be asleep under the quilt.
‘Okay, time for you to start vacuuming. Start at the far end of the corridor. Don’t look directly at the men when they arrive. Keep your eyes down until you’re sure they’re not looking at you. Concentrate on the job as if you’re irritated and just want to get finished as soon as possible. When you’re sure they’ve left and are not coming back, join me in room sixteen. Oh, and lock this door behind you.’
He climbed back out onto the balcony and drew the curtains, leaving just a small gap through which he could see the room, then pulled shut the French doors.
The vacuum cleaner was upright and had a light shining in its base reminding Izarra of some curious growling one-eyed monster, as she pushed the heavy machine backwards and forwards across the corridor carpet, the thumping of her heart feeling as if it were eclipsing even the roar of the machine. Behind her there came the rattle of the steel cage of the elevator as it arrived on her floor. Someone pulled open the gate with a bang and a silent menace rolled out of the lift and down the corridor. Through the corner of her eye, Izarra watched two heavy-set men who followed – they were not the same two who had raided August’s room in Paris.
Through the crack in the curtain August watched as the door opened slowly. Immediately, the long snout of a revolver fitted with a silencer appeared around the door, and he heard the thud of two rounds fired into the shape under the bed cover. August winced; it was as if he could feel the vibration of the impact through the floor of the balcony.
Fuck you, Malcolm, you’ve just had me killed, you bastard.
He tried pushing the emotion down, down through his feet, as if pushing the actual event of the shooting back into the minute before, into the moment when there was still a modicum of trust left in the friendship. Now I’m dead. No entry, no attempt at interrogation, no effort to gain information. They don’t want me, they want my corpse. The drive to beat them, to survive rose in him like a huge anger.
Just then the two men slipped into the room, legs bent, guns raised ready to fire at any sound. Professionals, August noted – this wasn’t Interpol. These were trained mercenaries, hired killers and they looked like CIA. Who are they? Tyson would want me alive. Who are these guys and how is MI5 involved? One man, squat, muscular, hair shorn tight against his skull like the fur of a predator, had found the receipt of the ship’s passage. He scanned it then handed it silently to his partner, while he picked up the map of Marseille, no doubt searching for a marked destination. Meanwhile, the other assassin had moved to the sideboard, his finger running across the splashed water around the base of the shaving bowl. A minute later he turned towards the window curtain. That was enough for August – in seconds he was over the balcony and into room sixteen. Izarra was waiting for him, her face grim with tension. They waited until they heard the slam of the door of room fifteen as the men left, and then the clang of the elevator door being pulled shut and the elevator descending. Beside him August could hear Izarra exhaling. ‘So now you know you are hunted by wolves, wolves who care only to kill,’ she told him.
It was dark by the time they reached the house. As August turned the motorcycle into the street he noticed a man standing opposite, looking over at the printing press. Not willing to take any chances, August drove straight past him and into the side lane and pulled up beside the drain cover.
‘Why did you do that?’ Izarra asked, as she climbed off the motorcycle.
‘The building’s being watched.’
He pulled a tyre iron out of the motorcycle’s basket, then levered up the manhole cover. Izarra, clutching his satchel, climbed down the ladder below and August followed, only after checking the lane was still empty and pulling the manhole cover over.
‘What did he look like?’ Edouard stood in the centre of the cellar, coffee pot in hand.
‘Small, thin, swarthy. Like he might have been sleeping on the streets,’ August answered, as he carefully placed the satchel on the table.
‘So no relation to the thugs who visited you earlier?’
‘None. This guy doesn’t look like a professional of any kind.’
‘Well, he’s not there now. Hopefully, he was just some local kid hanging around for a job, maybe at the garage.’
‘Maybe.’ August paced the room. ‘Are you sure no one can see us from the street?’
‘Positive. But maybe we move you tomorrow, just to be on the safe side.’ Edouard watched August thoughtfully as he unloaded the camera.
‘So, was your research trip successful?’ he asked, before pouring the coffee. August glanced up. He wanted to tell Edouard more but for the Frenchman’s own safety the less he knew the better. Yet without Jimmy as a sounding board, August yearned to run his strategy by someone who’d worked in both espionage and underground. The sense of urgency and of always having to be one step ahead of his pursuers weighed him down. It was a lonely feeling.
‘Perhaps. I’ll know when I’ve developed these, but in other ways I don’t know yet. It’s like fishing. I have the bait dangling out there but I’m not sure yet whether I have a nibble. The line twitches and then it doesn’t. Trouble is, this fish is just as likely to haul me into the water before I haul him out.’
‘And the fish?’
‘He’s not a fish, he’s a shark.’ Izarra unbuckled her jacket and pulled her revolver out of the pocket. She unlocked the safety catch and emptied the barrel with professional ease, then placed the gun on the table. August watched bemused. He hadn’t even realised she’d taken the revolver with her for the trip. She was proving to be a worthy companion. Catching her gaze, he ignored the caution in her eyes and decided he owed Edouard his trust.
‘There was a US operative working with Jimmy in 1945. He betrayed Jimmy and a group of Basque fighters they were training up. He wants something I have and I want him. The complication is that he still works for the CIA and he’s set me up as a target. They think I killed Jimmy for some kind of information, maybe to do with the KGB.’
Edouard whistled. ‘You really have stumbled in the shit.’
‘It was this man who murdered my sister,’ Izarra interjected, her voice intense with hatred. Edouard looked from one to the other. Suddenly he felt old, too comfortable in the little world he’d spun for himself since the war. The sense there was something bigger to strive for, something more grand and far-reaching swept through him. For a moment he envied them the adventure. ‘And how are you going to catch this shark?’
‘What I am investigating is like an ancient puzzle, the secret of which he has already killed for, many times over. I solve the puzzle, then he will come to kill me for the answer.’
‘Only we kill him,’ Izarra added, passionately.
‘I prefer the idea of bringing him to justice,’ August insisted.
‘Such evil is beyond justice. Besides, he is not the only one following you. There is the bruja, the one that turned up at Irumendi.’
August glaced sharply over at Izarra. Did she really believe in witches? It was a disturbing thought. He turned back to Edouard. ‘She’s right. I have another nemesis after me. She could be Interpol, MI5, I just don’t know.’
‘No, I don’t think so,’ Izarra answered, thoughtfully, busy cleaning her gun. ‘I think she is either freelance or independent – or working with him. Either way, she’s pure evil, like him.’
‘I don’t believe in pure evil. Everyone has an agenda, a moral compass,’ August argued back.
‘¡Basta! You are a romantic, weak.’ She replaced the bullets and cocked the gun. ‘I will hav
e to kill him myself.’
Appalled, August stared at her. ‘You will do no such thing. Here you are under my command, you understand? We work together or not at all.’
‘This is not the army! I have my own agenda!’
‘We work together, Izarra.’ August could barely contain his anger. He was conflicted. Part of him would like to kill Tyson, but he also thought he should stand trial, and even more disturbing was how beautiful Izarra looked flushed and enraged. His attraction to her compounded his annoyance.
Now both of them were glaring at each other. Sighing, Edouard stood up and placed an arm on each of their shoulders.
‘Oh l’amour, l’amour,’ he sighed, dramatically, a comment that made both Izarra and August back away instantly with embarrassment.
‘I told you before we’re not lovers,’ August insisted.
‘No, of course not,’ Edouard said, soothingly, then began walking them over to the small table where the coffee sat waiting with a couple of baguettes. ‘One thing I have learned to understand in a life that is a little longer than yours, is that what we call evil is when a man lacks morality altogether. Such an individual cares for no one but himself. This is not malice but a handicap, like being blind or deaf – a profound lack of empathy. Such individuals are born not made and they are the most dangerous of all. They are not afraid of death, their own or anybody else’s. They simply do not care. When such a man lacks vision, he makes a great mercenary, but when he has vision he will become a great dictator or fanatic, or possibly start simply murdering, because he discovers it elevates a certain emotional flatness. He discovers that it gives him pleasure.’ Edouard sat them both down at the table. ‘I have had the misfortune to have known such men in Spain, in occupied France, as I’m sure you have, August. Every war has them. It provides a legitimacy for such behaviour, gives such monsters a place in society they do not merit.’
‘So you do believe in evil?’ Izarra interjected. Edouard chuckled, putting his hand over hers. ‘I do, my dear. I think, for whatever perverse reason, it is something nature throws back at us, with each new generation, with each new war. Perhaps such men are born for a purpose, to spill a little blood, to show us what base clay we spring from.’
‘And you think we should kill him?’ Izarra concluded, triumphantly.
‘Bien sûr, ma chérie, if he doesn’t kill you first,’ Edouard replied, then held up the sugar bowl. ‘Du sucre?’
The photographic paper floated on the surface of the developing fluid for a moment, like a leaf on a pond then sank slowly as the clear liquid eased its way over the top until the photo sank to the bottom of the shallow tray. August plucked it out with a pair of tongs and slipped it into the stop bath for a minute to make sure the image didn’t fade in time.
‘Are you okay in there, Monsieur Iron?’ Edouard’s wife, a friendly middle-aged woman whose bourgeois demeanour August did not doubt hid both a political ferocity and a loyalty that would be formidable to cross, enquired through the darkroom door. He looked up from the tank, his profile hawkish and sinister in the infrared light. Madame Coutes’s use of his nom de guerre in French made him smile. Edouard had introduced him as Mr Joe Iron, a visiting party member from England who needed to develop some photographs for a Communist magazine back in London. Impressed, she had been most obliging.
‘I’m fine, Madame Coutes. It’s a well-organised darkroom,’ he yelled back, careful not to bump his head on the low ceiling. He pulled the photograph out of the stop bath then slipped it into the fixer tray. The compact darkroom was really a large cupboard situated under the stairs of their house. Everything he needed hung from the wall, neatly labelled. It was the work den of the obsessive compulsive and as cosy as a womb. Smiling to himself, August wondered about the Coutes’s love life. Such control did not bode well. But he remembered how Edouard’s extreme adherence to discipline had kept both him and his troops sane in the face of sheer chaos – perhaps the Frenchman had found his natural mate. Behind August a timer pinged three minutes and using the tongs he lifted the photograph out, dipped it into a tray of water to clean it, then shook off the water and pinned it up to dry with a wooden peg Madame Coutes thoughtfully kept in a white cloth bag marked for the purpose. He sat down at the small workbench and in the netherworld of the infrared light examined the clues he had spread out before him: a photograph of the first maze – the Tree of Life clearly visible as a whole aerial pattern. In the photograph the sephirot Malkuth, or ‘Kingdom’, at the base of the tree, the first one he discovered that was planted, was a dark circle against the other unplanted sephiroth, which were all blank, flat gravelled circles. The contrast between the empty beds and the planted one was dramatic, but what did it mean? The plants he’d picked from the first maze were pinned to the back of the photograph. Lily and vervain. He stood and unpegged the drying photograph he’d just developed, then laid it flat beside the first photograph. Now it was clear that in the second maze it was, as he’d seen from the hot air balloon, the second sephirot Yesod that had been planted, this time with anise and mandrake root. But what was the connection with the first maze, the herbs and the chronicle? He remembered from his reference books back in London that the Spaniards used to think that, if eaten, lily petals could restore a person who had been transformed into a beast to a human, while vervain was considered a witch’s herb, used to enhance dreaming. As for those found in the second maze in the sephirot Yesod, anise was used in clairvoyance and for psychic protection, whereas the mandrake root was a common ingredient in magical practices.
What was the alchemist Shimon Ruiz de Luna trying to communicate through such symbolism?
Increasingly, August felt there was a message to be discovered in linking the mazes together, one written in code that if deciphered would tell him where Elazar ibn Yehuda’s great mystery lay. But the alchemist had not made it easy. There was the symbolism of the sephiroth within each planting and then the symbolism of the herbs themselves. Layers of meaning that when woven together gave one clear direction; the question was how to interpret the symbols. He looked back at the anise and vervain. Psychic powers and dreaming – could these be the connection? Was Shimon trying to tell him that Elazar ibn Yehuda’s great treasure was metaphysical? If so why would a man like Tyson want it so much? What kind of power did it hold to haunt so many people over the aeons? August shivered – a chill had swept in from under the door.
§
Shimon held up the sprig of dried vervain against the flickering flame of the lantern. The heat warming the crinkled leaves released a strong lemony scent. He breathed in then closed his eyes, trying to remember. He could not, but he noticed, with his eyes still shut, the faint scent of orange blossom and jasmine, the rich incense that burned in his family’s house, the thick Turkish carpet under his bare feet and when he opened his eyes his father’s ghost, smiling and oblivious to its own ephemeral presence, stood before him, those large olive-skinned hands Shimon remembered so well resting on the desk.
‘Yesod, Foundation, Shimon, that is the most important sephirot. You must remember my teachings. These will help you understand the words underneath Elazar ibn Yehuda’s great secret wisdom. You remember the legacy of your forefathers, the hidden meaning of the Book of Exodus, Ezekiel’s vision and the Four Worlds that descend from Kether, the Crown, each more complicated by governing laws of the universe, each a further removal from the Divine presence. The first level we link to fire is the realm around Kether and embodies the will of man – the calling. Remember, Shimon, this I have taught you. The second realm is that of the intellect and is associated with the element Air – this is the Divine creation. The third realm, the realm of Water, is emotion and how it expresses itself in the ebb and flow of forms – the Divine … forming …’
And here, Shimon, forgetting his father was dead entirely, leaped up as eagerly as he had when he was twelve in that grand study in Córdoba, the shelves piled high with rolled scrolls and leather-bound books.
‘I remembe
r! Abba, the fourth realm, in which the sephirot Malkuth, Foundation, exists, is the realm of Action, it is of the Earth, and symbolises the Divine and his making.’
‘So, was that so difficult?’ said his father. ‘Elazar ibn Yehuda’s chronicle is both an allegory and a journey. His journey was his lightning bolt through the ten spiritual stations, the sephiroth, leading to his perfect unification with the Divine. It destroyed him as it will destroy you, but, child, life is death and death is life, we are reborn as light and we die as light.’
Outside, Shimon could now hear Uxue’s footfall on the narrow stairs of the inn. ‘One minute, Uxue,’ he called, but by the time he turned back his father’s ghost had vanished. He glanced down at the blank sheet of parchment then lifted up his drawing square. He had an idea, a notion of perfect concealment, and one that could talk through the very elements themselves across the centuries. That would be his legacy, Shimon Ruiz de Luna’s message to the future.
§
The sound of scraping and footsteps above him woke August instantly. For a second he lay there not knowing where he was before the familiarity of the cellar, the ceiling only inches above him came flooding back. He heard a loud thump, followed by a scurry of footfall. August reached for the Mauser under his pillow.
‘Did you hear that?’ Izarra whispered up from the bunk beneath.
‘Yes.’ August kept his voice low and swung his legs from under the cover and slipped down from the bed. He could hear Izarra cocking her own gun as she, too, climbed out from the bunk, the white of her shirt catching the dim light filtering in from the crack in the trapdoor above them. August gestured for her to keep quiet then follow him as he began up the ladder. Above them he could hear the sound of somebody creeping across the creaky floorboards.
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