by Alex Archer
Annja nodded.
He continued to watch the shaky footage.
Annja realized what was about to come next.
It was too late to snatch it back from him.
The screen captured the moment as she rounded the corner to be confronted by the creature.
“What the holy fu—” Lars said, almost dropping the phone in surprise. “Okay, how the hell did you do that? That makeup job is brilliant. Who was it? Garin? Roux? Love it. You guys are insane.”
“It’s not us,” Annja said, deciding that the truth was better than any lie she could come up with. “We think it’s the killer.”
“You mean the guy killing the homeless? Turek’s golem? That’s crazy. You came this close to a murderer and called a cameraman, not the law?”
“Because we need to get this shoot done. Without it, the show’s over.”
“But we’re talking about someone who has killed a bunch of people!”
“Yes, we are, more than you can possibly imagine, Mr. Mortensen,” Roux said.
“Hang on, you think he’s still in there, don’t you?”
Lars hadn’t taken his eyes from the screen. He’d frozen the image of the golem’s face with its blurred features on the screen and couldn’t look away.
“Unless it came out through those gates, it’s in there.”
Lars finally raised his eyes from the screen to look back at the castle. “It didn’t get past me. So what now? Call in the law? You should at least tip off Turek. I mean, look at that thing. He’s right, isn’t he? So he deserves to be in on the takedown.”
He was right. The journalist did deserve to be told that they had the killer cornered. Like it or not, they wouldn’t have gotten this far without him. Everyone else had seen a serial killer where he had seen a monster. And he’d been right.
This was it, the end of his story, and instead of being in the thick of it, he was wasting his time hanging around at the border.
She made the call. He didn’t pick up. She was connected to his voice mail.
“Jan,” she said, “it’s Annja Creed. Sorry to bail on you, but on the bright side, my hunch paid off. If you want to be in on the action, get yourself to the castle at Benátky.” She waited a moment, giving the next two words significant space to sink in. “He’s here.”
She hung up and stared at the phone for a moment, then sent the footage to Lars’s email before slipping it back into her pocket.
“This is turning into quite a party,” Roux said. “All save the guest of honor.”
Lars looked at Roux, confused.
“Not your drinking partner,” the old man said.
“Grab some footage of the castle,” Annja interrupted. “Make sure that you get a decent shot of that metal grille in the ground over there by the wall.”
“So what do we do now?” Roux asked once the other man was engrossed in his task. “Assuming the thing is holed up safe and sound, it won’t move again until dark.”
“Garin’s still in there. Dead or alive.”
“He’s still alive,” Roux said without a trace of doubt in his voice.
“How can you be so sure?”
“Because I would know if he was dead.”
He didn’t say any more than that. He didn’t need to.
34
“We need to get back in,” Annja said. “We can’t just leave him there because you know he’s not dead yet.”
Roux wouldn’t be drawn into explaining how he could possibly know Garin was alive. There was no point in pushing him; if he didn’t want to talk he wouldn’t. She could only assume it was due to the unique bond the cursed pair shared, some kind of sixth sense that came along with it, maybe.
A coffee shop across the road was opening its doors. There wasn’t a morning rush. There was no one in the street. They decided to leave Lars to his work while they grabbed something to warm up.
It had been a long night.
“And we will get back in there…soon,” Roux said. “We’ll just walk in with the paying public, buy a couple of tickets, take the tour. As long we’re not trying to take a video, no one is going to complain.”
“Not we, Mr. Interpol. There’s no way that guard is going to forget his brush with a serial killer. Me. I’ll get the ticket and stay with the crowd. It would have been better if they hadn’t seen me, though. It’s harder to get into the interesting places the public isn’t allowed to go when they know what you look like.”
“Then I’ll just have to make sure they are distracted.”
“And the distraction? You’re not planning to blow anything up or start a fire, are you?”
“Do I look like Garin?”
She didn’t answer that.
Roux took a mouthful of coffee while he thought.
“It’s a long shot,” he said, licking his lips, “but I’ve got an idea. It might just be big enough to keep them busy while you do what you need to do.”
Annja kept her eyes on him, but he wasn’t about to offer anything more concrete. She sighed. She was in his hands. More importantly, so was Garin, and the longer they left him alone in there, the greater the chance that he wouldn’t come out alive.
“Is there anything you need me to do?” she asked.
“Just keep your cameraman out of the way.”
He remained enigmatic, still giving nothing away.
“Do you get a kick out of keeping things from me?” Annja asked. “I just need your help. I don’t want to waste time playing guessing games.”
“Sorry,” Roux said, putting his cup down and raising his hands in surrender. “You’re right. I should trust you. You deserve that much. I saw some things down in the maze that, with a little luck, I might be able to use to cause a distraction. I don’t know if it will work. I won’t know until I give it a try. But believe me, I’ll find a way to buy you time. Trust me.”
“Okay.” She glanced at her watch. “They’ll be opening up soon.”
Through the window she could see a group of school-age children piling out of a coach to gather around the gates while a handful of adults tried to marshal them into some semblance of order.
“Think you can blend in with them?”
“What, I don’t look like a yummy mummy?” Annja laughed, and drained her coffee cup.
“I need to pick up a couple of things from my car,” Roux told her. “Give me a few minutes, then bring your man out to the front. Maybe he can get a few shots of young children running out of there with their mothers following after them as if they were afraid for their lives.”
“What?”
Roux grinned, scratching at his beard. “Don’t worry. They won’t be in any real danger. But there will be plenty of real panic.”
Annja didn’t know what to say to that.
He stood and slipped a bill underneath his cup. It was more than enough to cover the cost of their coffee. It was more than enough to cover the day’s earnings for a small place like this. The old man believed in tipping generously. Sometimes Annja wondered if he had any concept of the value of money.
She poured the last of the coffee into her cup and sipped it while she watched Roux open the trunk of the black four-by-four parked across the street from the café. A stream of traffic crawled past, blocking her view. By the time it had cleared, the trunk had been closed and Roux was nowhere to be seen.
She drained the coffee cup and headed outside.
She spotted Lars sitting on his flight case on the far side of the gaggle of children.
“Did you manage to get some good stuff?” she asked as she approached.
The big Swede nodded. “Plenty,” he said. “What’s the plan?”
“I’m going to head in with the kids. Why don’t you take a few minutes to grab yourself a coffee, then set up to take some externals of the gate and meet Turek when he arrives. There’s going to be a bit of excitement in a little while, and you won’t want to miss it,” she said, every bit as enigmatic as Roux.
Lars tre
ated her to the same withering look she’d shot the old man a dozen times since he met her in the hospital.
“I’m beginning to feel like a third wheel,” he said, getting to his feet.
He lugged his case across the street to the café.
Before he disappeared inside, the castle gates swung open and the level of excitement amplified from pandemonium to the next circle of hell. The children jumped up and down, eager to be inside.
The old security guard was going to have his hands full.
That was not a bad thing.
35
Roux used a length of rope to lower the gas can down the shaft ahead of him. He gritted his teeth, refusing to panic when it started swinging. The can clanged against one of the metal rungs in the darkness below, ringing like a clarion bell. He looked around nervously, but there was no one nearby to hear the chime. It shouldn’t have seeped into the castle itself, barring some freak of the acoustics. No one had secured the grille, so perhaps the old security guard hadn’t yet explained to the officious little twerp of a manager how they happened into the scullery. Maybe they’d get lucky and memory loss would strike before he could. If it didn’t, he’d improvise. After the life he’d lived, thinking on his feet was second nature.
Roux reached the bottom rung and stepped off the ladder. He glanced back up the shaft at the patch of blue and wondered for the first time in a long time if this might actually be the last time he would see it. It wasn’t mawkish nostalgia so much as fatalist curiosity. If Annja knew what he had in mind, she’d have tried to stop him. It was dangerous, and she was overprotective. She’d have insisted he come up with another plan, arguing that there had to be another way, all the while wasting precious time. Garin didn’t have long, assuming he wasn’t actually dead. He’d lied to Annja, claiming to know his protégé was alive, knowing she’d believe there was some kind of mystical link between them. That was easier than just saying he had no idea if Garin was dead or not, but that he feared the worst. She needed to believe there was a chance of saving him.
And she was counting on him for a pretty explosive distraction. She hadn’t told him not to blow up anything; she’d only asked if he was planning to. It was a technicality, but murderers had gotten away with far flimsier excuses.
He slung the rope over his shoulder and picked up the gas can, setting off into the darkness before he turned on the flashlight. The beam speared ahead, lighting his way. The noise that filtered down from the street was soon lost in the echo of his own footsteps and the slosh of gasoline in the can as he moved deeper into the maze of tunnels. It was incredible to think this elaborate network of passages has survived centuries of neglect, but he didn’t recall them being this elaborate the first time he had been here.
With every bend in the tunnel he half expected to come face-to-face with either the monster or Garin’s lifeless corpse. And the deeper he went into the maze, the more convinced he became that that was exactly what awaited him around the next corner.
At last he reached the fork in the tunnels he was looking for.
This wasn’t the one that would lead eventually to the flight of stairs up to the scullery, but nearly two hundred years ago it had harbored barrels of black powder. The kegs, even if they remained, would be useless. But he wasn’t looking to create an explosion that would bring the castle down on its foundations. All he wanted to do was create a distraction. Something dramatic, yes, but not life-threatening.
He wasn’t sure what he was thinking; even if the barrels he thought he’d seen weren’t the same barrels, maybe some of the gunpowder residue had trickled down between the cracks in the floor and still remained there even after all this time. It wasn’t like cleaners would ever have been down here washing the stone floors. Splash the gasoline around, ignite it, step back and hope something went bang?
He left the rope and the gasoline can at the junction in the tunnel, said a silent prayer and hurried to the cellar, hoping against hope God was on his side.
The small barrels were still staked exactly where they had been all those years ago, and playing his flashlight over them, he read the same markings branded onto the ancient wood. It was hard to believe they hadn’t succumbed to damp and decay—or flame during the first explosions that brought the ceiling down—but there was so little moisture in the musty air…that had to have held back the rot.
Even so, in places, rotten wood had split and started to crumble, allowing the black powder to spill out. It formed solid lumps on the floor.
Roux knew that would be of no use.
His best hope was that the small barrel at the top of the stack had been kept clear of the damp.
It was all about noise, not damage. He just wanted to make a loud enough bang for people to hear it, stir up some panic to turn eyes away from Annja.
He tested its weight with one hand, rocking the barrel slightly where it perched on top of the others. He wasn’t sure how heavy he’d expected it to be, but there was clearly something pretty weighty inside it. Roux examined the wood and iron bands, both sound and showing no sign of giving way, so he moved it as best he could.
The barrel was too cumbersome to carry, but he manhandled it to the ground and started to roll it into position. Negotiating the tunnel wasn’t as easy as he had hoped. More than once the natural lay of the ground meant the barrel picked up speed of its own accord, threatening to get away from him. The barrel was old. Any sort of impact could undo the little integrity the wood still had.
He angled the barrel back toward the iron gate that barred the way to the stairs up to the scullery, and rested it against the iron. Roux pried the bung out with the tip of his Swiss Army knife. The dry cork crumbled in his hands. The piece of wax paper that had provided the seal fell to the ground.
He lowered his nose to the opening and took a deep breath.
He knew the smell well enough.
Without a working fuse, he was going to have to improvise. That was where the rope and the gasoline came in. He knew that he could run a trail of powder and gamble that it would buy him enough time to get clear, but given the state of the powder there was no guarantee that it wouldn’t fizzle out long before it reached the barrel.
The rope was a good old-fashioned three-strand twisted natural rope, not the kind of nylon climbing rope that was more modern and stronger. It did not have the same feel about it. In this, as in many other things, Roux was old-fashioned.
He had always known that his path would lead him back to this place at some point in time. He’d brought the rope in case the iron rungs had been either removed, or damaged beyond use by the fire.
The gasoline, well, that was just a case of making it up as he went along.
But it would work.
It had to.
36
Annja could feel more than one pair of eyes staring at her.
She obviously wasn’t part of the school trip.
The old security guard lurked by one of the doorways, whispering conspiratorially to the manager, who after a bit of huddled conversation called over an equally officious-looking man. The man was dressed in a tailored jacket with some sort of logo emblazoned on the left breast. He was obviously a guide. The man said something, to which the manager nodded in Annja’s direction. The guide followed his gaze, meeting Annja’s. No doubt he was being warned about Annja.
She was going to need Roux to come through with a pretty impressive distraction if she was going to give the security team the slip and get to properly poke around.
Annja was only half listening to the guide’s talk, glad that she had stumbled on a tour that was being held in English. The history of the castle held no real interest to her, until she heard the guide mention the name Kepler. Then some things started to fall into place. She remembered where she’d first heard about Benátky—at the Kepler Museum in Prague. This was one of the places that the astronomer had first worked when he’d arrived here.
“Sorry, is it possible to see the observatory?” she asked
, interrupting the woman while she was in full flow.
“I’m afraid that’s closed to the public at the moment,” she said, barely pausing for breath before resuming her well-rehearsed routine, not paying Annja any further attention.
“May I ask why?” Annja asked, interrupting again, much to the woman’s consternation.
The guide gave a very audible and very exaggerated sigh that seemed to fill the room with its discontent before saying, “Refurbishment. Buildings like this require regular attention to maintain them.”
Annja hadn’t seen a great deal of work going on outside the castle, certainly no signs of construction or leftover debris. Something was rotten in the state of Benátky, she thought.
A map on the wall showed the layout of the castle, including the observatory.
She studied it, committing the twists and turns to memory. The observatory was going to be her first port of call after Roux did his thing. She couldn’t help but think there was something there someone didn’t want people to see, which meant she very much wanted to see it.
Annja trailed along with the rest of the tour group while the security guard followed them from room to room. The old man paid more attention to her than he did to the gaggle of children. The kids themselves seemed intent on making as much noise as they could and ignoring anything remotely cultural in the process. She caught his eye a couple of times and smiled, but he didn’t respond. She was obviously losing her charm. The old guy seemed determined not to let her out of his sight, which was a problem.
She checked her watch, wondering what was keeping Roux, and beginning to think his distraction wasn’t going to happen.
As soon as the thought crossed her mind, it was greeted by a sound that could have been a car backfiring or even a gunshot, but somehow it seemed to grow and continued to grow.