Soul Meaning (Seventeen)

by AD Starrling

  ‘Your old man still has it in him,’ said Roman, leaning on the longsword.

  Victor smiled. ‘I never doubted it.’

  ‘By the way,’ said Roman, looking at me curiously, ‘that’s an interesting design you have on your katana. Does it have a specific meaning?’

  ‘Miyamoto was fascinated by the birthmark on my chest,’ I murmured with a shrug. ‘He had it carved in the blade.’

  Roman watched me with an inscrutable expression before nodding.

  I looked at Reid questioningly. ‘I don’t think you need to worry about the little lady,’ he drawled. ‘She’s a scarily fast learner.’

  Sundown came too fast. As we got ready to leave the estate, I finally cornered Godard on the stairs of the manor house. ‘There’s something I need to ask you,’ I said quietly.

  ‘Yes?’

  I hesitated. ‘Do you know a man by the name of Mikael Olsson?’

  Tomas Godard frowned. ‘No, I can’t say that I do. Why?’ I told him about Olsson, the circumstances behind his apparent death in Boston ten years previously and his recent appearance in my life. ‘I knew a Johan Olsson once,’ said Godard after a thoughtful pause. ‘He worked for the Order of the Bastian Hunters during the sixteen hundreds. I was still an advisor for the First Council at the time.’ His frown deepened. ‘As I recall, he was one of the immortals who perished at the Second Battle of Khotyn, during the Great Turkish War.’ A sigh left his lips. ‘I’m afraid many of us lost lives during our conflicts with the Ottoman Empire.’

  I thought of my own gruesome deaths during the Battle of Vienna. The irony that we both fought on the same side during those tumultuous years and yet were unaware of each other’s presence did not escape me. ‘Were you at Khotyn at the time?’

  Tomas Godard shook his head. ‘No. Although I helped High Commander Sobieski coordinate the battle, my presence was needed in Lwów. The King of Poland had died only the day before.’

  An unexpected wave of relief washed over me at his words. Olsson’s assertion was evidently misguided. ‘Thank you,’ I murmured.

  The blue eyes so alike to mine widened slightly. ‘You’re welcome.’

  We left the manor house when the last of the light was draining out of a red sky; a group of fifty Hunters were staying back to guard the Godards. As the convoy barrelled down the driveway, I caught a glimpse of Anna at the window of the study. The frown had returned to her face.

  ‘How are you doing?’ said Reid after a while.

  We were in the back of a truck, along with Bruno, Anatole and four other Hunters. The immortals were chatting among themselves. I finished fitting a sound suppressor to the Smith and Wesson and murmured a low, ‘I’m fine.’

  ‘Really?’ Reid continued in the same tone. ‘So, you’re telling me that finding out that you have a grandfather and a cousin who are still alive, that you’re probably truly immortal in every sense of the word, and that your long lost grandmother is trying to kill you, is not freaking you out?’

  ‘Well, to be honest, the bit about my grandmother kinda sucks,’ I said with a deadpan expression after a pause.

  A crooked smile crossed Reid’s face. ‘All right,’ he murmured, shaking his head. ‘You know where I am if you wanna talk.’

  I nodded impassively.

  Kazimir Benisek’s manor house was located on eight hundred acres of land north of the village of Drhovy, in the Příbram District twenty-five miles outside Prague. The plot was enclosed by an impressive stone wall topped with barbed wire. Beyond it, a further half mile of thick woods and undergrowth lay between the boundaries of the property and the extensive lawn that fronted the mansion. A pair of thick, wrought iron gates with ornate lattice work barred the entrance to the grounds: to the left of it, a metal plate read “Private Property: Trespassers will be prosecuted” in Czech. A driveway lined with rows of well-established evergreens bisected the lawn neatly before ending in a large gravelled forecourt.

  We entered the estate from the north-west. Thermal images taken just before we left the Dvorskies’ safe house had indicated that that section of the property harboured the least number of guards and had almost no surveillance cameras. There was also a cool breeze blowing in from the south that would help mask the sounds of our approach.

  The land at the rear of the mansion was taken up by extensive manicured gardens dotted with Roman sculptures, arbours and stone seats. The gardens stretched down a series of shallow terraces to a small artificial lake rimmed on three sides by heavy woodland. Ten minutes after we crossed the wall, we paused in the trees beyond the still waters and waited for the signal.

  At exactly seven pm, there was a sudden flurry of activity around the property. Dozens of black-clad figures left their posts on the grounds and hurried towards the mansion. Startled voices rose to the dark skies.

  The Dvorskies had arrived at the front gates.

  Using the cover of shadows cast by ornaments and hedges, we moved silently up the incline and stopped by a water fountain set in a circular stone terrace moments later. Bruno lifted an iron grating behind the water feature and exposed a narrow hole in the ground. We climbed down a metal ladder and descended into murky darkness.

  There was a faint click. The beam from Bruno’s torch cut through the gloom and cast a ghostly glow on the damp, moss-covered brick walls that made up the passage.

  Anatole grimaced. ‘This place stinks,’ he whispered.

  We were in an underground service tunnel that ran all the way beneath the extensive gardens of the property. From the plans of the estate that Victor had procured, we knew it would lead us to one of four cellars underneath the mansion.

  Bruno nudged something with the edge of his boot. ‘There’s a dead rat.’ He paused reflectively while he cast the beam around. ‘Make that a lot of dead rats.’

  ‘Great,’ murmured Anatole glumly. ‘I hate rats.’

  We headed south along the passage, occasionally crossing bars of pale light that streamed down through the narrow grilles in the ceiling. The tunnel ended with a locked, rust-coloured metal door a quarter of a mile later. ‘We’re here,’ I said quietly towards the microphone pinned to my Kevlar vest.

  The earpiece in my ear crackled. ‘You’re good to go,’ said a voice after several seconds.

  When the first commercial satellites were launched into space in the nineteen sixties, the Bastians and the Crovirs privately acquired dozens of the machines and placed them in orbit all over the world. The cluster of Bastian satellites above Europe was currently tracking the movement of anything with a heat signal within a two mile radius of Benisek’s property. To make life less complicated for the Bastian technicians monitoring the area, the Dvorskies, the Bastian Hunters on the ground and our team of four all carried a transmitter with a specific thermal reading.

  Bruno cut through the lock with a small blow torch, oiled the hinges of the door and carefully pushed it open. A dark and cool cellar lay beyond it. Dusty wine racks lined the floor in even rows that extended to a low ceiling. On the left, an entire wall was stacked high with beer barrels. Bottles of expensive spirits glowed briefly in the torchlight.

  Halfway down the middle aisle, Anatole stopped and stared into the gloom.

  Bruno paused and frowned. ‘What is it?’

  Brief silence followed. ‘Damn,’ the red-haired immortal finally murmured in wide-eyed awe. He pointed at a crate. ‘That’s a whole case of Chateau Latour eighteen eighty-six!’

  Bruno muttered something rude under his breath and started walking again.

  ‘Oh, come on!’ hissed Anatole as he trotted after him. ‘Do you know how much a bottle of that would fetch on the open market?’

  At the other end of the cellar, we were faced with a two-inch thick, iron-plated oak door. There could have been an entire horde of Crovir Hunters waiting for us on the other side for all the sound that came through it. ‘You’re still good to go,’ said the voice in my ear.

  Reid picked the lock swiftly and silently; we could n
ot risk using the blow torch with the smoke alarms in the cellar.

  My fingers gripped the handle of the katana tightly when the door swung open. Darkness and silence greeted us across the threshold.

  We exited the cellar and came to a flight of shallow stone steps that ascended to a deserted corridor at the rear of the mansion. We paused in a dark recess at the top. Muted voices rose south of our position. From what we had seen of the thermal images before we entered the property, the Crovir First Council was gathered in the reception rooms at the front of the mansion.

  ‘Take the service stairs fifteen feet to your right,’ murmured the voice in my earpiece. ‘It should take you to the first floor.’ We turned and headed swiftly along the passage. A few seconds later, we reached a flight of carpeted steps and started to climb. We were almost at the top when the voice barked an abrupt ‘Stop!’ in our ears. We froze in the gloom.

  ‘There’re four bodies heading your way, two from above and two from below,’ the voice said tensely. There was a pause. ‘They’re not friendlies.’

  I glanced at Reid and Bruno. They nodded and headed quietly down the stairs. Anatole and I swiftly ascended the last steps, guns in hand. We had barely pressed ourselves into the shallow alcoves on either side of the door when it opened silently on smooth hinges. Two Crovir Hunters stepped over the threshold.

  They never heard our shots.

  We carried the bodies down to the cellar and found Bruno and Reid tying up the other two Hunters. Bruno glanced at me. He hesitated before murmuring, ‘You could finish them off with your sword. That will leave four less of them to contend with.’

  I rose to my feet and stared at him steadily. ‘I have never killed in cold blood.’

  The Bastian immortal studied me for silent seconds. ‘All right,’ he finally muttered with a curt nod.

  We secured the unconscious Hunters’ weapons and headed swiftly back up the stairs to the first floor of the mansion. According to the blueprints, Benisek’s study was located on that level. I glanced at my watch and frowned. Fifteen minutes had elapsed since we entered the service tunnel under the gardens. With each precious second that ticked by, our chances of successfully completing our mission grew smaller.

  The earpiece crackled again just as we entered a corridor. ‘Three bodies moving towards you from the front of the house. ETA in ten seconds.’

  ‘Thanks,’ I murmured, studying the passage we stood in.

  Thick velvet curtains framed the French windows that lined one aspect of the long gallery. Crystal chandeliers hung from a high, ornately corniced ceiling and shed a muted light across a series of oil portraits that adorned the walls, and the vases perched on antique console tables dotted along the Venetian carpet.

  We slid into the shadowy recesses next to the windows. A moment later, the double doors at the end of the gallery swung open. Two black-clad Crovir Hunters stepped across the threshold. A third man dressed in a white evening suit followed behind them.

  There was a slight in-drawing of breath behind me. ‘Well, well,’ murmured Bruno. ‘This is our lucky day.’

  ‘Why?’ I said in a low voice.

  ‘That’s Kazimir Benisek.’

  Chapter Eighteen

  I stared at the man in the white suit.

  Benisek was short, red-faced and overweight. A silver beard crowded the lower half of his features, partly masking his thick jowls. The upper half was a mass of pale wrinkles that surrounded a pair of small, rat-like eyes beneath a receding fringe of grey hair.

  He unlocked a door, stepped inside the room beyond and murmured something to the guards. The Hunters took up position on either side of the door as he closed it.

  I signalled my intentions to the others before stepping out of the alcove. The guard on the right spotted me first. His eyes narrowed and he reached for the gun at his waist.

  ‘Hi,’ I said with an engaging smile and raised my empty hands. ‘I’m with the Bastian escort. I appear to have lost my way. Could you guys point me in the direction of the main hall?’

  The second guard frowned, recognition dawning in his eyes. ‘Wait a minute, aren’t you—’

  ‘Wrong answer,’ I murmured while bullets whined past me and hit them in the chest. We caught the Hunters’ bodies before they hit the floor and tied them up in a bay behind the French curtains. We returned to the closed door seconds later. ‘There’s a man in the room in front of us,’ I said softly in the mouthpiece. ‘Is he alone?’

  ‘Yes,’ came the reply from the Bastian tech. ‘I’m getting a high background heat signal from that place. Looks like he has a lot of hardware up and running in there.’

  We found Benisek seated behind a wide oak desk in the middle of a study. A row of monitors flickered on the wall in front of him: beneath them, stacks of slim hard drives rose from the floor, their faint hum almost inaudible. Benisek’s eyes never left the screens when we quietly locked the door behind us. Fat fingers flying over the ergonomic keyboard beneath his hands, he barked a harsh ‘I thought I said I wasn’t to be disturbed!’ over his shoulder. When this did not elicit the desired response, he finally looked in our direction. His hands froze over the keyboard. The rat-like eyes slowly widened.

  ‘Hello,’ I said with a cold smile. ‘I believe you know who I am.’

  ‘You! But—but—you’re dead!’ stammered Benisek. ‘Thorne killed you!’ The words stumbled out of his mouth in a breathless rush.

  ‘He did,’ I said steadily.

  Confusion dawned in Benisek’s eyes. His fingers moved. A second later, he yelped and clutched at his hand.

  Smoke curled from the suppressor on Reid’s gun. ‘I wouldn’t touch anything if I were you,’ he murmured grimly.

  ‘You’ll never get out of here alive!’ shouted Benisek while Bruno and Anatole dragged him from the chair to a couch in a corner of the room and tied him up. ‘Vellacrus will have you—hmmff, hmmff!’

  ‘There,’ said Anatole. He stepped back and admired his handiwork. ‘That’s much better, isn’t it?’ Benisek scowled behind his gag and struggled violently against his bonds.

  I took the seat at the oak desk and studied the monitors on the wall.

  ‘Can you work this?’ said Reid behind me.

  I stretched my neck and flexed my fingers. ‘There’s only one way to find out.’ I looked at my watch. Another five minutes had passed since I last glanced at the dial.

  Benisek had been in the process of transferring all the files on the hard drives to an off-site server: this was probably a security measure against the unexpected presence of the Dvorskies in the mansion. Fortunately, he had already entered the primary password to access the mainframe. The folders, however, were still in code: they would have to be decrypted before they could be moved. I scrutinized the lists on the screens with a frown. Which ones did I need to access? My gaze shifted to the bound man on the couch. Benisek did not look like he was in the mood to cooperate and we hardly had time for harsher persuasive measures. I stared at the monitors again.

  ‘What’s wrong?’ said Reid tensely.

  ‘The data’s encoded,’ I replied calmly. ‘I don’t know what I’m looking for.’

  Reid’s eyes narrowed. ‘Can’t you just download all of it?’

  I shook my head. ‘There’re hundreds of folders. It would take too long.’

  I eventually found the original encryption file hidden deep beneath clever layers of programming; whoever had installed Benisek’s security system was good. All I had to do now was decipher the code.

  ‘You probably don’t want to hear this, but there’s a whole load of unfriendlies heading your way,’ said the voice in my ear.

  ‘Gotcha,’ said Bruno. He and Anatole moved towards the door.

  Aware that our time was fast running out, I typed “GeMBiT” into the password box. There was a beep from the machines: the words “Access Denied: Incorrect Password” appeared on the screens.

  I tried “Crovir”, then “Thorne” and “Vellacrus” unsucce
ssfully. A series of unhappy high-pitched sounds ensued from the speakers. A fine layer of sweat beaded my forehead: I had one more chance to get it right before the system locked me out. If that happened, I would have to reboot and start all over again.

  This was not an option under the current circumstances.

  ‘Those unfriendlies are almost on top of you,’ interrupted the voice through the earpiece. A strained pause followed. ‘By the sounds of things, Roman and Victor have overstayed their welcome. They’re getting ready to leave.’

  I yanked the receiver out of my ear, closed my eyes and shut out the noise around me. Seconds passed. One, then three and five. At ten, I opened my eyes and typed in “Immortality”.

  The screens flickered. Lists of decoded folders streamed down the monitors. There was a muffled scream of rage from Benisek.

  My fingers fluttered over the keys while I quickly grouped all the files containing the words “GeMBiT”, “Burnstein”, “Strauss” and “Godard”. I sent the data through to the Bastians’ secured server and made a copy on a memory stick. As I moved to shut down the hard drives, another folder at the bottom of one of the screens drew my gaze. It was titled “Red Death”. I copied it and exited the system.

  ‘We have about a minute before the Dvorskies exit the building,’ Bruno announced from the door.

  I pushed back from the desk. ‘I’m done.’

  A second later, the doorknob turned and rattled. ‘Kazimir, are you in there? Open the door,’ someone said through the woodwork.

  Coldness gripped me and I stiffened. I knew that voice. I slowly placed the receiver back into my ear and rose from the chair. ‘Are Roman and Victor out of the building?’ I said carefully into the mouthpiece, my gaze not shifting from the doorway. At my tone, Reid glanced towards me and frowned.

  ‘They’re walking to the cars,’ came the reply. ‘Seriously, you guys need to move. There’s an unfriendly right outside the room.’

  I slid the daisho from my belt. ‘I know,’ I said quietly. ‘It’s Felix Thorne.’