“What do you want?”
“We’ve been through this already, I think. You know very well what I want.”
Rachel stared at the terrible face and tried hard not to let her eyes slide away to the corner of the room. To the bag that contained the Triskellion.
“I’m not here to take it,” Wing continued. “Not now at any rate. I know that if I bide my time there’s a bigger prize just around the corner.”
Despite the terror that held every inch of her frozen, Rachel felt a strength begin to spread through her: the same sense of power she had felt when the Triskellion had burned through her skin in Marrakesh. “It doesn’t belong to you,” she said.
Wing leant forward suddenly. “You stole it,” he snapped. “You took it from where it belonged and I intend to … restore the natural balance of things.”
“You’re a liar,” Rachel said. “You talk about the Triskellion like it’s some precious bit of family silver, but really you just want the power.”
Wing sat back again. “Yes, if I’m being completely honest, I want what it can do. Triskellion was a village where people didn’t get sick, where the crops never failed. It made us different … special. So, of course, I’m trying to imagine what two of them could do. That’s one part of it…”
“What’s the other?”
There was a sucking noise as the plastic mask tightened across Wing’s face. “I need to make sure that you, and those like you, don’t get it.”
Rachel felt a little more power kick in; a surge of anger in spite of the fear. “It belongs to people like me. If the Triskellion… If both of them are family heirlooms, it’s my family they belong to.”
“Oh I know very well where these things came from,” Wing said. “They’re clearly capable of very wonderful things, but I’m afraid allowing your kind to exist is simply too dangerous. You can’t be … tolerated.”
“I think you’re forgetting that we’re actually part of the same family.” Rachel smiled and could see that Wing was taken aback.
“I’m not forgetting anything.”
“Your father; my grandfather—”
Wing jumped to his feet and raised a scarred hand as though he was about to slap her. “I am not the same as you. Don’t make that mistake…” He pulled up his hood and moved slowly across to the bedroom door. “We may not get the chance to talk again,” he said. “I suspect we’ll all be rather busy over the next day or two.”
“Get out.”
“Where’s your brother, by the way? Dead already?”
“Get out!”
“I’ll put in a word when I get home,” Wing said. “Perhaps they’ll lay on a memorial at the village church. Say a prayer for you both…”
He closed the door behind him without a sound.
Rachel counted to twenty before jumping out of bed and pulling on her clothes, the scream rising up from her before she’d even got the door open.
She tore down the corridor, past the rooms where the French and Spanish twins were sleeping. Laura stepped out of her room and held out a hand, but Rachel brushed it aside and raced further on, round the corner and into Gabriel’s arms.
“It’s OK,” he said.
Rachel could not remember the last time she and Gabriel had been so close. She pressed herself against him as the tears came and, although he was no more than a boy, no taller and not much stronger than she was, she felt safe.
They were less than an hour into their journey and Rachel was exhausted. Lack of sleep made her feel light-headed and the terrible images from the night before haunted her, flooding her mind with horror, draining her of energy.
Ali had organized a couple of donkeys. One was loaded down with bags and the supplies that he had put together, while Duncan and Morag rode happily on the other. The first kilometre had been easy going, along a flat beach which had stretched out from the town walls of Mogador as far as the eye could see. Eventually, the beach had sprouted rough patches of vegetation – grasses and bushes – which in turn had swelled into windswept dunes, the soft sand making it hard to walk with any speed.
There had not been a great deal of idle chat as they’d walked, other than repeated comments about how hot everyone was getting, and Inez and Carmen reminding each other what a nice guy Jubby had been.
Ali was leading the expedition, coaxing the donkeys along through the desert landscape and whistling a strange, sad tune. He wore a long, deep-blue robe, with boots and camouflage-print trousers sticking out incongruously underneath.
“I like your top,” Rachel said, by way of conversation. “Great colour.”
Ali grinned. “It is the colour of my tribe.”
“So the Berbers are not just one tribe?”
“No, there are many. We have tribes all across North Africa and beyond. But we believe our tribe is the oldest. We are where it all started.” Ali closed his fist and thumped his chest, as if to demonstrate that he was the one who started it all.
“Started what?” Rachel was genuinely intrigued.
“Mankind.” Ali said it casually, as though he were telling someone the time. “We believe that the Berbers were the original inhabitants of North Africa, long before the Romans or anyone else came here.”
“How long are we talking about?”
“Prehistoric times. Like cavemen. Neanderthal man. We worshipped the sun, the moon and the rocks among which we lived.”
“Really?” Rachel said. An image was beginning to form in her mind. “So how do you know how to find these caves?”
Ali tapped his head. “It’s all in here. My father told me, same as his father told him. He didn’t tell Mahmoud. Now you see why.”
“I don’t get that,” Rachel said. “He seemed so nice, so … generous.”
“Oh yes, Mahmoud has very nice manners. And, of course, he has plenty of money, which he earned in England. But the way he earned his money … not so nice. That’s why he didn’t earn our tribal tattoo. He got in with bad people in the hippy days in Mogador. English people.”
Rachel shuddered as she remembered the night before. She thought about all the English people she had met, the worst of whom was, without doubt, her own relative. But surely Mahmoud could never have known Hilary Wing. Could he?
Rachel had not spoken of her horror, nor tried to explain the monstrosity that had visited her in the night, to anyone other than Gabriel. She had not wished to scare the others, but she had also felt that Gabriel was the only one capable of understanding, and of protecting them all from whoever – whatever – it was that Hilary Wing had become.
Adam knew that they were on the move.
From inside his cubicle in the mobile unit, it was difficult to get a sense of direction, or speed. But his instincts told him that they were going somewhere, and from the subtle changes in motion, he thought that they might be on water.
He looked down at his wrists. They were still strapped to the gurney, but the bruises had nearly faded completely and he felt almost smug about his rapid recovery rate. There would be no marks.
He was pleased that they had not been able to break him. He had told them nothing, and he had felt no pain. The most horrifying part of his ordeal had been seeing the look of guilt on Mr Cheung’s face as he had given up trying. A man whom Adam had once trusted and whom the Hope Project had considered their toughest interrogator. A man over whom Adam had gained the upper hand through his own strength of mind.
He was winning.
“Welcome aboard,” Clay Van der Zee said, opening the door to the cubicle and releasing the straps from Adam’s ankles and wrists. “Come with me.”
He led Adam up on to the interior deck of a large motor launch. Adam had been right: they were on water, and his cell had been slotted neatly into the hold. He heard the engines fire up and glanced through a tiny porthole to see that they were motoring out of a harbour.
“Where are we?” he asked. “Where are we going?”
Van der Zee didn’t answer immediately. They walked
up a flight of steps to a control room, where several Hope operatives, wearing dark glasses and inhibitors, tensed as Adam entered.
“With any luck,” Van der Zee said, “we’re going to see your sister.”
Adam focused, pushing out all other thoughts until, in his mind’s eye, the image of a cave began to form.
* * *
As Ali spoke, the picture in Rachel’s head was becoming clearer, like images from a dream coming into sharp focus: a cave, a beach, men in boats. She clutched the Triskellion that now hung on a leather thong round her neck. Then she became aware of another set of thoughts chiming with hers.
Adam.
Rachel’s heart leapt and a warm feeling crept through her tired bones, renewing her energy. The connection was faint, but she knew now that her brother was alive and within her range. It was too early to raise her mother’s hopes, but she felt sure that Adam was on his way.
They pushed on over scrubby desert until the landscape developed into sharp, grey rocks. Half a kilometre ahead, a craggy incline led up to a path that wound along the cliff top.
Ali pointed to the top of the path. “We can take the donkeys up that far, then we will have to leave them and carry the supplies.”
The French boys grumbled, looking at the heavy bags on the donkey’s back. Inez and Carmen agreed reluctantly, checking the soles of their flat shoes which would doubtless be wrecked by the rocky path that lay ahead. Laura and Kate trudged on, uncomplaining, while behind them Gabriel looked around to make sure that they weren’t being followed, watching the sky as if checking his bearings.
All the while, in Rachel’s mind, Adam’s voice was growing stronger: telling her not to worry, that he was not far away. She looked across at Ali. “You and Mahmoud are twins,” she said, “so, are you … like us?”
Ali sucked his teeth and considered a moment. “I suppose so, yes, up to a point. There is a legend that says a man came from the sun at the beginning of time and created our people from the primitive cavemen.”
Rachel nodded. She remembered the runes in Triskellion. They had told more or less the same story.
Ali pointed a finger skywards and cast a glance back towards Gabriel before continuing. “They say that the man from the sun accounts for the blond and red hair and the green eyes that sometimes occur among the Berbers. It is said that these people are a genetic throwback to the visitors who came to this coast.”
Rachel was suddenly excited. Pieces of a bigger jigsaw were beginning to come together. “So you’d be genetically linked to the … visitors, the Travellers, who came here. Like we are to the one who came to England?”
“Yes, we are linked. But don’t forget, the Traveller who came here and lived among the Berbers came maybe thirty thousand years ago.” Ali spread his arms wide to demonstrate the enormous length of time.
“That’s a long time for the genes to get watered down,” he continued. “So by the time you get to Mahmoud and me, there’s not much of the original DNA left.”
“Enough for you and Mahmoud to have … special powers?”
“We sometimes have a sixth sense about what the other is thinking or doing, or when one of us was in pain.” He grimaced. “That’s how I saw what was in his head, and in his heart…”
“And now?” Rachel asked. “What do you hear from him now?”
Ali thought for a while. “Nothing,” he said finally, flicking a thin branch at the donkey’s rump to persuade it to continue uphill.
They spoke no further until they reached the summit of the cliff. Ali helped Morag and Duncan down and unpacked the other donkey. The rest of the party lined up along the cliff top. They steadied themselves against the wind and looked down at the grey sea that roared and smashed tirelessly against the ragged rocks below.
“So how does the legend end?” Rachel asked.
“I’ll tell you later,” Ali said. “We need to keep moving. We’re going down there.” All eyes widened as he pointed at the jagged coastline, and they began to pick their way through the rocks, down towards the sea.
Half an hour later, Ali had guided them between boulders, exposing narrow paths that zigzagged across and down the cliff-face, and they found themselves standing on a flat shelf that overlooked the sea. From this lower perspective, the coastline suddenly seemed familiar to Rachel. Looking thirty metres to her right, she could see where the rocks crumbled away and became a crescent of sandy beach. There was nothing of the modern world anywhere, and Rachel could see it almost exactly as it had been thirty thousand years before. In her mind’s eye, she could see primitive tribesmen fishing from this beach. She could see them going out in their wooden boats, day in, day out.
“You were going to tell me the end of the legend,” Rachel said.
Ali sighed. “The usual story,” he said. “The stranger was taken away from his family and his brains were smashed out on a rock, but not before he had been forced to build what would become his own tomb. When the job was done, his body was left out till the gulls had picked it clean, then his bones were sealed up in the caves, where they could do no harm, and where nobody would ever find them.”
“So how are we going to find them?”
Ali smiled. “When he built his tomb, he left a way in for those he knew would come one day. For us.”
Rachel screwed up her face. “Why was he killed?”
“Because they were frightened of him,” Ali said. “Frightened of his power. People have always been frightened of it. And they still are.”
“Do we know where he died?”
“Right here,” Gabriel said. He was pointing down at the flat table of rock on which they were standing, tears rolling down his cheeks. “This is the Killing Stone.”
“Le Rocher des Tueurs,” Ali confirmed.
Rachel looked down at the rock. Images of men grappling – of one man fighting for his life – flashed through her mind. Vibrations tingled up through the soles of her feet and prickled at her scalp like electrical currents.
Gabriel was clearly feeling something similar. He dropped to his knees, his palms flat against the cold stone, his tears dripping into the cracks and fissures on the surface.
He began to howl.
The rest of the group gathered around him and murmured sympathetically. Kate and Laura stroked his head, while Rachel and the Spanish girls dabbed at their own tears. Jean-Luc and Jean-Bernard coughed and scratched their heads, and Duncan and Morag clutched at the adults, frightened by the powerful emotion that was being released from the boy they knew as Michael.
Gabriel’s cries died as suddenly as they had started. He got to his feet, shrugging off the sympathy that was being offered to him, as if it was holding him up. “Come on,” he said. “We have to keep going. We don’t have long.”
They hopped across the remaining rocks and down on to the beach, the damp sand a relief underfoot after the punishing rocky path. They dumped their bags and Gabriel led them forward. They walked away from the sea and up the beach until they could see, tucked under a rocky overhang, the long shallow arch and the down-turned black mouth that marked the opening of a cave.
“La Grotte des Barbares,” Ali said. “The Cave of the Berbers.”
“This is where our story began,” Gabriel said.
Rachel looked at him. “And where it ends?”
“Only one way to find out.”
And they walked into the black.
The sea was choppy and grey, and slapped roughly against the sides of the boat; against the pair of black, motorized dinghies lashed to the stern, and against the name painted in large white letters on the hull:
On the uppermost of the three decks, Clay Van der Zee sat staring at the bank of screens and computer monitors on the wall in front of him. The boat’s communications centre was every bit as well equipped as the one in the mobile unit that had been stationed in Gibraltar until a few hours before. Once word of the children’s final destination had come through from Laura Sullivan, it had been a short voyage across
to the Moroccan Coast, and once there, with the boat moored two kilometres offshore and out of sight of the beach, the command station had been quickly established. Now, Van der Zee was in constant contact with operatives at several different observation points and was able to switch easily between images of the beach and the entrance to the cave itself, both fed live from satellites orbiting the earth high above.
Like the rest of his team, Van der Zee was excited; almost breathless with nerves and anticipation. He had been since the message had come through a few minutes earlier.
They’re going in…
Van der Zee checked in again – as he did every few minutes – with each onshore observation post, with every technician and member of the Hope security team on board the boat. There were more than a dozen of them awaiting orders, ready to move fast once the signal was given. To seize the four sets of twins as quickly as possible, to capture the boy – the outsider – who was leading them, and, most importantly of all, to take possession of what they had all come looking for in the Cave of the Berbers.
From the other side of the room, Adam sat and watched Van der Zee stab at buttons and bark orders into the microphone. Adam had been allowed to move freely around the cabin for some time, but there was no mistaking the purpose of the two security guards who had been assigned to watch him. He looked across at the blank faces; the dark glasses and inhibitors. He knew they carried weapons and that they would not hesitate to use them.
“You won’t get it back,” Adam said. “The Triskellion. You do know that, right?”
Van der Zee turned in his chair. “We’ll see.”
“You won’t get anything.”
“Let’s just watch and see how this all pans out, shall we?” Van der Zee smiled, and pointed up at the screens. “You’ve got a ringside seat; you should just sit back and enjoy the show…”
Adam looked up at one of the screens, stared into the dark mouth of the cave. He’d seen Rachel, his mom and the others disappear inside a few minutes earlier. More than anything, he wished he was with them, but for now, all he could do was close his eyes and reach out with his mind. To let his sister know that he was with her.
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