by Jim Eldridge
As they neared the Left Luggage office, with its open counter and hundreds of items of luggage stacked on shelves behind, Ronnie ordered him, ‘OK, put the helmet on.’
‘What?’ asked Jake, puzzled. ‘Why?’
In answer, Ronnie held up her mobile phone. ‘Because Jez says so,’ she told him.
Jake frowned. He could only think that Jez wanted to protect him in case anyone attacked him and tried hitting him over the head. He thought wearing a crash helmet was a bit extreme, but then he remembered Robert’s fractured skull.
‘OK,’ he said, and he pulled on the helmet.
‘Good,’ said Ronnie. ‘Let’s go get the thing.’
They arrived at the large open counter of the Left Luggage office and Jake pulled out his ticket and handed it over. The clerk examined it, then told him how much was due. Jake paid, and the clerk went to the rows of shelves, rummaged through them, and reappeared with the rucksack. As Jake took hold of it, he felt sick with apprehension. He had the book, but who was watching and waiting for him? There had to be someone, he was sure. Were they armed? Would they gun him down, here, in public? Yes, he had no doubt they would, if it meant them getting their hands on the book.
As Jake and Ronnie turned away from the counter, they came face to face with a man and a woman, both dressed in plain smart clothes. MI5? Special Branch? They had that air about them, hard, ruthless, determined.
‘Police. We’ll take that bag, please,’ said the man.
‘Oh no you don’t!’ screeched Ronnie. Suddenly she yelled out, ‘Help! Kidnappers!’
At Ronnie’s ear-splitting shout, the man and the woman looked bewildered and glanced around, as passengers stopped and looked towards them.
Ronnie swung her foot back and kicked the man hard on the shin, and he yelled out in pain and hopped backwards. The woman had recovered and was reaching for the rucksack held in Jake’s hand, but Ronnie grabbed her arm and sank her teeth into the woman’s wrist. The woman yelled and hit out at Ronnie, but Ronnie ducked.
There was a loud roar of a motorbike engine right by them, and Jake suddenly saw a small trials motorbike had screeched past them and skidded to a halt.
‘Jump on!’ yelled the rider.
It was Jez.
Suddenly, he realised why Ronnie had given him the crash helmet. He saw the woman throw Ronnie to the ground and leap at him, her fingers outstretched again for the rucksack. Jake dodged to one side, and then jumped on the back of the bike. Jez stood up on the footrests, allowing Jake to plonk himself down on the seat. Jake barely had time to get a grip on the back of the bike, when Jez slammed it into gear and it tore away, heading for the main concourse.
By now, uniformed police officers and Transport Police, alerted by the sound of the motorbike, had appeared and were giving chase, spreading out across the concourse to intercept the bike. Their attempts were made harder by the mass of passengers, most with piles of luggage around them, but they also presented Jez and the bike with obstacles. Not that Jez seemed bothered, he revved and raced the machine, weaving in and out of the people, skidding as they leapt towards him, and then righting it again. Jake clung on grimly as they jumped and skidded left and right. Jez was making for the open double doors of the station that led to the outside piazza, and the flight of steps down to the main road.
Jake saw that five policemen had planted themselves in a line directly blocking off their escape route, in front of the open double doors. They held batons, and one of them looked to be armed and was taking a gun from a holster. There was no way the bike could squeeze past them!
Quickly, Jez veered the bike to the left. As he did so, the five policemen moved swiftly to form a line and try to block the bike’s escape. Jake expected Jez to turn and find another route to get away, but instead Jez opened the throttle and hurtled the bike directly at the policemen, aiming at the already closing gap between two of them. One of the policemen leapt out of the way of the fast-approaching bike, but the other swung his baton at them. Jake saw the baton bounce off Jez’s helmet, and then felt it hit the visor of his own, jerking him backwards. Jake clung on grimly, and felt the surge of the bike as it raced forward, heading for the large glass doors to the outside.
As they accelerated away from the police, Jake was worried that the automatic opening mechanism had been shut off, because the doors stayed shut and for a second he thought they were going to crash into the thick glass. Then, the doors opened and Jez was racing across the concrete towards a flight of steps. There was a roar as the bike left the ground, and once again they were flying through the air. The wheels hit the pavement. The bike bounced, and then Jez had turned it into the roadway, veering between the oncoming traffic.
They were away!
Chapter 29
Jez raced along the back streets and alleyways, along narrow rat runs where no car could follow, until they were well over a mile away from Euston station, before he pulled the bike to a halt.
‘You get it?’ he demanded of Jake.
Jake felt barely able to speak. The experience of clinging tightly to the bike as it had soared through the air, then crashed down to the hard concrete, had been one of the most terrifying experiences of his life.
No, he realised. His most terrifying experience had been the car ride with the men who had been going to kill him. But this bike ride had still left him shaking.
‘Yes,’ he managed to croak, and he held up the rucksack, which he’d been gripping so tightly his fingers seemed stuck to the straps.
‘OK,’ said Jez. ‘Time to phone your journalist friend and tell her to get to the place. Tell her twenty minutes.’ He grinned. ‘I’m going to do back lanes and walkways the whole way, so we don’t get picked up. So you put that rucksack on properly. We don’t want it falling off, not after all the trouble we’ve been through.’
Jake nodded and pulled the rucksack on to his back. Then he phoned Michelle, though he had trouble tapping out her number, his fingers were still shaking so much.
‘Yes?’ she said.
‘Where we said. In twenty minutes.’
‘It might take me longer. Traffic.’
‘As soon as you can,’ said Jake. ‘And when we’ve finished this call, disconnect your phone. Take out the batteries and the SIM card.’
‘Why?’ asked Michelle.
‘Because they might track you using the signal.’
He hung up. Then, just in case his trackers had been able to pinpoint his position from the mobile he was using, he did the same as he’d advised Michelle: took out the battery and the SIM card and dropped his dismantled phone in his pocket.
‘OK,’ he told Jez. ‘I’m ready.’
They pulled up outside the timber yard twenty-five minutes later, because of the number of detours that Jez had taken to throw off any possible followers. As Jake got off the bike, he wobbled; and only then did he realise just how much tension had been in his legs and arms as he held on during the ride. As he stood, taking off the crash helmet and recovering, he heard the sound of a car pull up, and automatically swung round towards it, expecting it to be trouble — maybe Gareth’s spooks. But it was Michelle.
‘This your lift?’ asked Jez.
‘Yes.’ Jake nodded.
‘OK,’ said Jez. ‘You gonna be OK now?’
‘I should be,’ said Jake.
Jez smiled.
‘Good,’ he said.
‘Listen,’ said Jake awkwardly, ‘I have to do something for you, pay you back in some way.’
‘Sure.’ Jez grinned. ‘You get to be a millionaire, you come and find me. Till then, you stay safe, and get that woman of yours back home.’
Jake looked at him, overwhelmed with emotion. This fifteen-year-old, who he didn’t know and had no ties of any sort to, had put himself in serious danger for him. And now he was just disappearing from Jake’s life.
‘I owe you, Jez,’ he said. ‘You and Ronnie.’
‘Our paths will cross, and when they do, you can help us o
ut, if we need it,’ said Jez. ‘That’s the way the world is: we help one another out. We pass on the good thing. We do you a turn, you find someone else in trouble and you do them a turn.’
Jake smiled at him.
‘Maybe Ronnie’s right, maybe you’ve been hanging around them Hare Krishna people too much,’ he said with a smile.
‘Peace and love and looking after people who need help,’ said Jez. ‘It ain’t no bad thing.’ He looked towards Michelle, who had opened the door of her car and was waiting. ‘Better go and do the last move, Jake.’
‘Yes.’ Jake reached out his hand, and shook Jez’s. ‘I’ll pay you back someday, I promise,’ he said.
‘Sure you will.’ Jez smiled. ‘I know that.’
Then Jez slipped the bike into gear, and raced away. Jake watched him go then he walked to Michelle’s car.
‘You got it?’ she asked.
‘I got it.’ Jake nodded.
‘OK,’ said Michelle, her eyes brightening with excitement. ‘Let’s get to the lab!’
Chapter 30
The lab was in a building that looked impressively high-tech from the outside. Michelle parked in the enclosed car park. Inside the building, once they’d passed through security, there were rows of corridors that appeared to house many labs, all with red lights on outside the doors, and signs outside each warning: ‘No entry’. Jake followed Michelle to the lift, which they caught to the third floor. There seemed to be very few people about, and those that were wore white lab coats and hurried past them unsmiling and not making eye contact.
‘This is our lab,’ said Michelle, pointing to the number 23 by one of the doors. She took out a plastic card and ran it through the security decoder beside the door. There was a buzzing sound, then the door swung open. A young female lab technician in a white coat was waiting for them in a small entrance lobby.
‘Ms Faure?’ she asked.
Michelle nodded. ‘And this is Jake Wells,’ she said, gesturing at Jake.
Jake gave the young woman a smile, but it wasn’t returned.
‘Lucy Waning,’ said the young woman. She held out her hand. ‘You have the item?’
Jake took out the plastic bag and handed it to her.
‘Be careful,’ he warned her. ‘The last time one of these was opened, there were spores inside it which infected the person who opened it.’
‘That’s why we are using a bio-hazard case,’ said Waning. ‘If there are any contaminents inside here, they’ll be detected.’ She indicated a side door marked ‘Gallery’. ‘If you go in there you’ll be in the observation gallery, and you can watch what’s happening.’
‘Do we need to wear hazard suits, or whatever you call them?’ asked Jake.
Waning shook her head.
‘Not at this stage,’ she said. ‘And, hopefully, not at all. Inside the observation gallery you’ll find monitors, so you’ll be able to follow everything that I do as there are high-definition CCTV cameras aimed at the bio-hazard case from different angles which pick up everything. If you have any questions, or I want to ask you something during the procedure, the speakers and microphones inside the gallery will be switched on the whole time. Do you have any questions?’
Jake and Michelle exchanged questioning glances, then both shook their heads.
‘No,’ said Michelle. ‘Everything seems to be covered.’
‘Then I’ll go and prepare and we can begin,’ said Waning.
With that, she left the small lobby through a door marked ‘Strictly no entry’. Jake followed Michelle through the door marked ‘Gallery’.
As Waning had said, they were faced with banks of monitors, speakers built into the walls, and there were three microphones dangling down from the ceiling. The observation gallery was dimly lit. As well as being able to see everything via the monitors, one wall was completely glass and looked down on to a laboratory. They watched as Lucy Waning came into the laboratory. Now, she was wearing a hazard suit, complete with a large helmet with a visor at the front, with tubes and wires dangling from the front of the suit and the helmet. Jake thought she looked like an astronaut prepared for a space walk. In her hand she carried the plastic bag with the book in.
She went to a large glass case in the centre of the lab, lifted the lid, and placed the package inside. She shut the lid, and then clicked various switches to make sure it was sealed shut. Lights came on around the glass case.
‘Those lights confirm the case is now sealed and airtight,’ came Waning’s voice over the speakers.
Waning then connected the ends of the different tubes and wires dangling from her suit and helmet to points at the base of the glass case.
‘I am now connected to the unit,’ said Waning. ‘Everything I do will be recorded. If any hazard of any sort is detected, the units on the display above me will show the kind of hazard present, and the action the unit takes to neutralise it. Can you see the displays?’
Jake and Michelle looked at the top row of screens, which showed the sort of displays one saw in hospital emergency wards: lights pulsing, lines going up and down as they monitored everything inside the glass case.
‘Yes,’ said Jake.
Waning pushed her hands into a pair of gloves that were fixed to the case with airtight rubber seals, and set to work. As she removed the black leather case from inside the plastic bag, Jake felt his heart skip a beat of concern, wondering if the outside of the ancient leather had been contaminated. If so, then he would surely be affected in some way. But the various displays registered nothing alarming, just kept up a low beeping while the lines on the screens remained constant.
Waning pushed the bag to one side, and set the ancient black leather case in the centre of the base of the glass case.
‘No contamination detected on or in the outer bag in which the object was delivered,’ her unemotional voice said. ‘No contamination detected on the exterior surfaces of object.’ Jake and Michelle turned to the monitors and saw the black leather package magnified on the screens. ‘The object appears to be made of leather treated with a preservative. Further tests will need to be carried out to identify the constituents of this preservative. The object is rectangular in shape, consistent with casing that may contain a small book of some sort. The surface is embossed with a symbol: a Roman letter “M” with what appears to be a snake of some sort intertwined in that letter.’
Yes, thought Jake, silently urging Waning to go faster and open the case. It’s the Order of Malichea. We know that. Just get on and open it and find out what we’ve got.
‘There are Roman numerals embossed on the material,’ came Waning’s flat and unemotional tones. ‘DLVII. This translates as 557.’
Five hundred and fifty-seven! thought Jake excitedly. Then there really were hundreds of books out there, hidden like this one had been.
‘I am going to open the outer casing,’ said Waning. ‘It appears to be closed by a simple slip knot of two leather strips.’
Jake watched, transfixed, as Waning’s gloved fingers took hold of the ends of the leather strips that formed the small slip knot, and began to gently prise at them. After over five hundred years of being buried in soil, Jake wondered if they would be supple enough to be untied, or would they simply crack? Either way, the excitement and expectation in him at what was about to be revealed almost stopped him from breathing. He and Michelle watched in rapt silence as — in magnified close-up — Waning’s gloved fingers teased and pulled at the knotted leather. There was obviously resistance.
‘I am now using a small tool to aid undoing the knot,’ announced Waning, and they watched as she took a small metal probe, rather like a small screwdriver, and used it to prise the strands of leather apart. Finally, the knot was undone.
‘I am now opening the outer casing,’ said Waning.
With that she carefully peeled back the old leather flaps of the protective casing, to reveal a small book inside. The covers and binding of the book appeared to be green. Waning slid the opened black
leather casing from beneath the book, and pushed it to one side. There was now just the small green book in the centre of the glass case.
‘I am opening the cover of the book,’ said Waning.
Jake held his breath, unable to speak, unable to do anything. This had been the point when the last book had proved dangerous, as the hidden spores exploded. Although he knew that they were all protected from whatever may be inside the glass case by the airtight seals, if there were any hazards now exposed, it would delay the proper examination of the book by Michelle for her article.
The green cover, which appeared to be made of some sort of thick card, was turned over, revealing a blank page beneath.
Jake’s eyes went to the monitors registering the conditions inside the glass case. No changes. No hazards so far.
He switched his attention back to the CCTV screen with the book in tight close-up. He saw the ends of Waning’s gloved fingers delicately touch the blank page, and then lift it and move it gently back, to reveal writing on the next page.
‘The first leaf of the book is blank,’ said Waning. ‘I suspect it is merely an endpaper. Beneath that is a title page, stating . . .’
Jake repeated the words to himself that he saw on the screen as Waning read them out:
‘“Physikiana”, with a subtitle in Latin which translates as “A treatise on changing physical appearances by magic”. The name of the author is given as Roger Bacon.’
‘Wow!’ Jake heard Michelle gasp beside him.
He turned to look at her. She was staring into the lab, at the book inside the glass case, a look of awe on her face. She turned to him, suddenly animated.
‘Roger Bacon! This is even better than I’d hoped for!’
‘He’s good?’ As Jake asked the question, he felt stupid. He rummaged around in his memory for things Lauren might have told him about Roger Bacon. He dimly remembered her telling him something about the man, but that had been a long time ago, when they’d first been going out together, and at that time he hadn’t paid as much attention to her interest in what were called ‘unorthodox sciences’ as he should have; he’d been only interested in her: the way she looked, the way she laughed, the way she made him feel.