The Isis Covenant

by Douglas, James

  Beyond the second dead man a corridor led off towards the main part of the building. But there were more rooms that had to be checked before they could take it. When they reached the guards’ living quarters Danny stared at the bodies.

  ‘These guys are pros, but whoever did this took them out without blinking. The way I figure it is that the killer has got to be one of their own. It’s the only thing that fits. The guys at the top of the stairs were hit before they could even twitch. Looks like these two,’ she pointed at the men at the table, ‘didn’t even have time to go for their guns. The guy walks in. He smiles and heads for the kitchen. He reaches just about here.’ She turned and brought the gun up. ‘Pow, pow. By now the guard on the bed is reacting, but he’s not quick enough, or maybe it’s just that our guy is quicker.’

  ‘What about the guard at the gate?’

  She took her time to think about it and eventually came up with the answer. ‘He didn’t hit him on the way in. He hit him on the way out.’

  ‘Then he already has what he came for.’

  ‘We don’t know that until we check, Jamie.’

  But the certainty grew as they made their way through to the offices. The music had reached a quieter interlude and somehow their breathing and their steps slowed to match it, as if the reverence of the composer for his subject was reaching across the centuries. At first it appeared the offices were empty but the headshot that had taken out Samsonov’s secretary had left its telltale pattern on the wall and they found her body lying beside her desk.

  ‘Samsonov?’

  ‘This must be where he works. The rooms where he lives will be up those stairs.’

  Jamie went first up the broad wooden stairway, with Danny covering him from a few steps behind. With every step he took, the music gained volume as it lifted towards a new crescendo and with it rose the level of his foreboding. If the killer was still here, this was where he would hit them, when they were out in the open. And if he did, Jamie knew he was as good as dead. This man was a marksman with the reactions of a striking cobra. He would hit what he fired at. Maybe Danny would get him afterwards, but Jamie doubted that. For a fleeting moment he wished the bullet-proof vest that Shreeves had sent him wasn’t sitting in a drawer in his flat. But he knew that he would have insisted Danny wear it even if he had brought it. As he reached the last few stairs the room opened up above him like a cathedral. It was vast. He crouched down, his eyes at floor level. A hundred hiding places in a space you could have played a football match in, and with room to spare. He reached forward with his left hand on the top step to steady himself and recoiled as his skin touched something cold and sticky. His fingers came away red. The view to his right had been obscured by the ornate carved banister and it was only now he registered the cube that dominated the centre of the floor and which corresponded with the one on the floor below. The only difference was that this one appeared to be open. Instinctively, he kept low and moved towards it.

  The crash of a cannon made him flinch and he turned with his finger on the trigger of the MP-5 to find himself staring into Danny Fisher’s wide eyes. The music was everywhere around them, coming from a dozen speakers, possibly more than twenty all over the house to which it must be being somehow streamed. The killer could step up behind them and shout ‘boo’ in their ears before he shot them and they’d never hear a thing.

  He angled his approach so that he was shielded from the open door of the panic room. In front of it, a big man whom he recognized as Oleg Samsonov was lying on his back with his eyes open in a wide pool of darkening blood that had poured from the gaping hole in his throat. Beside him, with her head on his chest, lay the body of a woman who must be his wife. Jamie felt Danny Fisher’s presence beside him, her body radiating the same conflicting emotions of rage and sorrow that racked him as he watched over a man and woman united forever in death. Belatedly he remembered that the couple had a young son, and he winced at what he might find in the safe room. He signalled Danny to stay back and stepped round the door with the MP-5 at the ready.

  ‘Bloody hell!’ His surprise was loud enough to compete with Tchaikovsky’s artillery barrage.

  ‘What is it?’ Danny demanded.

  But Jamie found he couldn’t speak.

  She joined him at the door. ‘There are enough dead people here to start our own funeral parlour and you’re excited about an old bunch of flowers?’

  ‘Not any old bunch of flowers.’ His voice was almost wistful, as if the golden glow of the Van Gogh had cast a spell on him. ‘If you want to join the world of the filthy rich all we have to do is pick up that painting and walk out of here. I know a man who would pay half a billion dollars for it, no questions asked.’

  ‘Snap out of it, Saintclair. If I wanted to be a crook I’d have done it years ago. The diamond’s gone, huh?’

  Jamie had noticed the distinctive metal compartment beyond the stand holding the sunflowers, but he found it difficult to take his eyes off the canvas. His mind was a whirl of conflicting emotions: despondency at their failure, anger at the pointless deaths of the billionaire and his guards, fighting with the art lover’s joy of having a piece of pure genius more or less all to himself. Snap out of it, Saintclair. He shook his head to clear it.

  ‘It looks that way. Why don’t you see if you can put that racket off so we can hear ourselves think? I saw some sort of space-age sound system across in the corner that might be responsible.’

  She opened her mouth to argue, but the look on his face changed her mind and she moved past him. He continued to stare at the painting and a few minutes later the music stopped abruptly.

  ‘It’s over then.’ Her voice sounded sharp-edged and loud in the silence. ‘We can’t just walk away.’

  ‘No.’ He was thinking that the boy was out there somewhere with the man responsible for all this. Responsible for how many deaths now? Why would he take the boy? Of course. The words came back to him. You must spill the blood of a first born of good family beneath the first light of the sickle moon. Only then will the gateway to the next life open.

  He looked out of the window at the fading light. When was the new moon?

  ‘Oh Christ.’

  ‘What is it?’

  ‘The boy, how—’

  A long drawn-out groan emerged from the woman draped over Oleg Samsonov.

  ‘She’s alive.’

  XLIV

  THEY TOOK IRINA Samsonov between them and gently turned her over. One look was enough to tell them it was too late for the billionaire’s wife. Blood oozed slowly from the wound in her left breast and the shadow across her pale features could only mean one thing. But somewhere deep inside Irina’s indomitable Russian soul fought to keep her alive for another few moments. Her lips moved, but Jamie had to bend low over her to hear the words.

  ‘My son,’ she whispered. ‘He has taken Dimi.’

  ‘Who has taken him, Mrs Samsonov?’

  ‘Paul … Paul Dornberger.’ A tear rolled down her cheek. ‘We trusted him. My husband paid his father’s hospital bills.’ With her last breath she whispered the name of the private hospital.

  ‘How far?’ Danny demanded.

  ‘We don’t know for certain he’s gone there.’

  ‘Paul Dornberger has the Eye, he has the Crown and he has the boy, Jamie. It all adds up now. Where else is he going, unless it’s to be with his father?’

  Jamie fought to fit the name of the hospital to an area. When it materialized he realized there was still hope. He started for the stairs. ‘Not far. It’s on the other side of the park. Let’s go.’

  ‘We can’t just call a cab.’

  She followed him downstairs and along the corridor to the guards’ living quarters where he remembered he’d seen a board with car keys on it. His hand hovered over a set with the prancing horse of the house of Ferrari on it, but eventually he picked one from a mass of Mercedes keys. When he’d made his choice he laid the MP-5 on the work surface and replaced it with the pistol from the neare
st guard’s shoulder holster, adding an extra magazine just in case. Common sense said the security men must have some sort of direct access to the garage area and they soon found the back stairs beyond another door from the kitchen. When they emerged into the underground garage they were faced with dozens of luxury cars all parked in rows and at least half of them were Mercs.

  She glared at him. ‘Which one is it, Sherlock?’

  For answer he pressed a button on the main key and a black limousine in the front row beeped and flashed its indicators.

  ‘That one, I’d say.’

  When they were inside the car, he ran his hands over the controls. His knowledge of automatics was thin, but someone had told him they were easier than driving a manual. What could go wrong? He found out when he put the car into ‘Drive’ and his foot instinctively searched for the clutch, which turned out to be the brake. He heard Danny Fisher groan in frustration as they were hurled forward into their seat belts.

  ‘Maybe I should drive?’

  He bit back a comment about what had happened the last time she’d been at the controls of something and drove directly at the garage door.

  ‘Er, shouldn’t we open it first?’

  ‘We’re billionaires. We don’t open things. They open for us.’

  The door rose automatically and they drove out into the dull light of a November afternoon. The same happened at the main gates, which moved silently inwards as the big Mercedes S-Class approached. They drove onto Regent Park’s outer ring road and Jamie hesitated.

  ‘What’s the problem now?’

  ‘Right or left. Either way we’re eventually going to hit heavy traffic at this time of day.’

  ‘Go left. We’ll worry about it when we hit it.’

  He obeyed and gunned the big six-litre Maybach engine. As the car leapt forward he tried to explain. ‘You don’t understand. It could take us thirty or forty minutes and Dornberger has at least a thirty-minute lead on us. Whatever he’s going to do he could have done it by the time we get there.’

  ‘Well, get us close enough and we’ll get out and run.’

  ‘Too far,’ he said. ‘We need to find a shortcut.’ They reached a junction where a paved walkway crossed the road and he put the big limousine into a screaming right turn.

  ‘For Christ’s sake, Jamie, you’ll kill somebody,’ Danny screamed as they roared into the wide open spaces of the park.

  ‘In this weather it can’t be too busy, and, with any luck, in this car they’ll think it’s Prince Andrew out for a drive.’ He swerved to miss a shocked dogwalker and the driver’s side wheels spun on the grass, but the Mercedes had some kind of stability control and they easily regained the tarmac. Belatedly, he switched on the hazard lights. ‘Better safe than sorry.’

  Off to their left was an odd-shaped flying saucer of a building on a low mound surrounded by cricket pitches. Jamie drove on, honking the horn at anyone who happened to be in the way while Danny waved apologetically at startled pedestrians oblivious of the fact that she was invisible behind the smoked-glass armoured windows. It was only a matter of time before some kind of park ranger spotted them, but soon they joined a wider walkway which led off to the right between an avenue of skeletal, leafless trees and within a few seconds Jamie swerved onto a roadway in a narrow gap between two cars.

  ‘Not bad, Saintclair,’ Danny said appreciatively. ‘Where to now?’

  ‘All I know is that the hospital is close to the Royal College of Surgeons, which can’t be far from here. See if you can work the satnav.’

  She fiddled with a screen on the dashboard. ‘It says here the Royal College of Surgeons is miles away.’

  ‘Not surgeons. Try physicians.’

  ‘That’s better. It’s a little way to our right, on Albany Road.’

  ‘All right, punch in the name of the hospital now. We’ll park at the college and walk the rest of the way.’

  The hospital was on a side street in a residential area not far from Munster Square. They passed a greengrocer’s on the way and Jamie bought a basket of fruit tied up with a pink ribbon.

  ‘What if it’s not visiting time?’

  ‘It’s a private hospital,’ he pointed out unnecessarily. ‘Very civilized. It’s always visiting time.’

  They walked through the front door and up to reception with the bustling air of regular visitors.

  ‘Max Dornberger’s room, please.’

  The nurse behind the counter smiled. ‘If you could wait a second, please, we’re just changing shifts.’ A few seconds later she produced a chart and ran her finger down a list of names. ‘Third floor, room eight. Who did you say you were?’

  ‘We didn’t. This is Mr Dornberger’s niece from New York, I’m her partner.’

  Before the nurse could say anything else, the lift door opened and they stepped briskly inside. Danny took the pistol from her bag and pushed it in among the apples and bananas until only the grip was visible. She pressed the button for the third floor and took a deep breath.

  ‘An apple a day keeps the doctor away, huh? Well, not for Paul Dornberger.’

  Jamie cocked the pistol he had taken from the dead guard and folded his hands behind his back.

  ‘We take no chances unless he threatens the boy.’

  She stared at him. ‘You know he’s going to kill him anyway, don’t you?’

  ‘I won’t be responsible for that child’s death, Danny.’

  The bell announced their arrival. ‘Let’s hope it doesn’t come to that.’

  They emerged into a corridor with the odd-numbered rooms on the left and the evens on the right. Room eight was the fourth door on the side overlooking the square. They stood side by side in front of the door. Danny’s hand found the cool of the pistol grip and she held the basket in front of her like a shield. They could hear the soft murmur of voices inside.

  Jamie reached for the door handle. ‘There’s no easy way to do this,’ he whispered. ‘If the boy is clear and Dornberger makes a move, shoot him.’ Danny nodded. He noticed that she was holding her breath. ‘Three, two, one …’

  As they burst in the door side by side, Jamie began bringing the pistol round. Danny’s finger tightened on her trigger. The occupants of the room were grouped by the bed and they whirled round at the unexpected intrusion, their expressions a mixture of surprise and shock. Danny’s eyes vainly sought the child she knew should be here and she was a millimetre from firing when her brain screamed that the man by the bed was wearing a blue overall and the person lying on it was female.

  ‘What the hell is going on?’

  Jamie slipped his hand behind his back and hoped the male nurse hadn’t seen the gun that had been about to blow his head off. ‘Er …’ His voice sounded as if it came from a long way off. ‘We were looking for Mr Dornberger’s room.’

  The man frowned in annoyance. ‘This room has been re-allocated to Mrs Gibson. Max Dornberger was checked out this morning by his son. You should have been informed at the front desk.’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ Danny apologized breathlessly. ‘We wanted to surprise him.’

  ‘Surprise? I don’t know about Mrs Gibson, but I almost had a heart attack.’

  They withdrew, still apologizing. The woman on the bed raised herself to one elbow. ‘You could always leave the fruit, dear? I’m partial to a bit of pineapple.’

  Danny produced a wan smile. ‘I don’t think you’d like this one. It’s almost gone off.’

  On the way out, Danny sweet-talked the receptionist into giving them the address where Dornberger’s medicines were to be sent, so that she could visit her English ‘uncle’ at home.

  The address she gave them was a small country estate out beyond the M11 in rural Essex. Danny punched the postcode into the car’s satnav and a disjointed voice directed them north-east, through Holloway and Finsbury Park, up to Seven Sisters, where they turned due east.

  ‘Can’t you go any faster?’

  ‘Certainly,’ Jamie replied reasonably. ‘I coul
d stick the cruise control at thirty or forty miles an hour over the speed limit, but you can be the one to explain things when some traffic cop finds the guns we have no right to carry and the fact that this motor car is stolen from a Russian billionaire who just happens to have been slaughtered along with seven other people. That should go well.’

  They were a few miles beyond Chigwell, crossing neat rolling countryside under a thunderous, threatening sky, when the voice ordered Jamie to turn right onto a country road, then onto a narrow lane. They drove for a further mile before it petered out into a mud track at a point where a surprisingly modern gate barred the way to a remote house. The estate was surrounded by a brick wall high enough to inform passers-by that they weren’t welcome, but not to deter anyone determined to get across it. Jamie didn’t see any high-tech security, but the apparent lapse was offset by the ‘Beware of the Dogs’ sign on the gate.

  ‘You think it’s real?’

  ‘If this is the guy we think it is, I’m pretty sure you could bet on it.’

  ‘In that case, you wouldn’t happen to have any drugged meat on you?’

  She gave him a thin smile and checked the magazine of the silenced pistol.

  ‘We could call the police.’ It was something they’d discussed earlier. Danny had called in the Samsonov killings, but she had been curiously reluctant to let them know about the location of the country house.

  She shook her head. ‘First, we don’t know for certain he’s in there.’ She looked at the brooding clouds racing across the sky. ‘Dark soon. If you’re right about the significance of the new moon, I doubt we have time. We go in, get the boy and get out again.’

  ‘It might not be as easy as that.’

  She shrugged. ‘You gotta start somewhere, Jamie. If we wait for your cops the chances are that Dmitri will be dead by the time they get here. I say we go, and we go now.’

  There was no point arguing. By the time they were out of the car, the rain was slanting down and a distant flash of lightning lit the western skyline. Jamie pulled the thin jacket he was wearing closer around him, but Danny clicked the boot of the Mercedes and found a top-quality padded waterproof. Without a word, she threw it at him and he grinned acknowledgement.