The Malice Box

by Martin Langfield

  Horace nodded. ‘That’s the one I saw. And wherever there is one, there are usually three.’ He looked up ahead. There was no one there. ‘We must conduct our business quickly. You may not understand the sequence of my questions, but I must prepare you for the next trial, and tell you certain things. I must gauge your level of understanding. You know the whispering arches here at Grand Central?’

  On the lower concourse was a sinuous vaulted space of Guastavino tiled arches, where at any time of day, in a disturbing spectacle unless one knew the secret, grown men and women could be observed standing at the corner columns, their faces pressed to the wall like punished children. Standing so, it was possible to have a whispered conversation with someone standing diametrically across the arched space at the opposing column several yards away, each hearing the other’s disembodied voice clearly, echoing in the air above their head.

  ‘I do.’

  He looked behind them. The white-haired man was still there, eyes fixed steadily upon them, maintaining an even distance some forty paces away.

  ‘You are like a radio that’s trying to burst into life. You are seeing connections between everything that’s been happening in the last few days, and decades ago, things that don’t seem at all related suddenly aligning… It’s as though everything is connected to everything else by a secret whispering arch.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And you realize you’ve always known this. Felt it.’

  ‘Yes, that’s right.’

  ‘You are at the stage of ordination, we might say,’ Horace said, a grave look on his face. ‘Greater mysteries are opening up to you, some might call them priestly mysteries. You are entering upon the Trial by Mind.’

  ‘I need to go faster. We do. The next waypoint –’

  ‘I know,’ Horace said. ‘We must hurry, yet the Path cannot be rushed. Balance is all. Walk faster with me.’

  Robert began to pour out thoughts and impressions as they went. ‘Adam’s trying with all his power to hold this dreadful thing within him at bay, but it’s winning. I can see it.’

  ‘He is a very brave man. What more?’

  ‘Katherine has left me. She has gone to Adam because I slept with Terri, but she’s in huge danger. She’s playing this double game, trying to support Adam against the Iwnw and the Minotaur within him. Terri is in hiding because she’s terrified, I think because she feels Adam will no longer protect her. She sees Katherine displacing her, leaving her alone to face whatever it is that’s scaring her. I think she’s never been so frightened in her life.’

  ‘All Terri’s hopes are placed in Adam, yet she is terrified of him. She cannot afford to lose him, yet she cannot be with him,’ Horace said. ‘Why?’

  ‘I think she’s pregnant. With Adam’s child. I had these images… cells dividing… but there was a shadow across them, and something else I can’t fully see, can’t understand. Her pregnancy feels over a year old, and yet only four days old…’

  Horace nodded, gazing inwardly as they walked. Robert ploughed on. ‘The shape I have been tracing across Manhattan. It has a spine directly uptown from the obelisk at St Paul’s, through the obelisk opposite the Flatiron. I drew the line further north. It goes directly to the obelisk in Central Park.’

  Robert pulled out a tourist map of the city and drew on it the waypoints that he had visited over the previous days. ‘I don’t know what this shape is, or if it’s an amalgam of shapes, or what, but it has these crossbars, and this spacing along the spine – one unit or a half unit, some points skipped… Today’s waypoints suggest another crossbar, here…’

  It mapped his movements and trials. After St Paul’s Chapel and Mercer Street, it showed his walk across the island from Tompkins Square Park to Washington Square Park to the Goodnight Moon house. Back up the centre line to Union Square. Another cross-beam from the Asser Levy stepping stones to the second obelisk opposite the Flatiron to the Theological Seminary in Chelsea. A third crossing from the United Nations to the New York Public Library. Continuing the line led to the mouth of the Lincoln Tunnel on the far west side.

  ‘Good. You are slowly tracing a shape that is called the Tree of Life. It is a kind of key to navigating the mysteries, to surviving the adventure we are embarked upon. Each level corresponds to a trial. After today there is one more point to complete the diagram, just as there is one more trial before you face the ordeal of closing down the Ma’rifat’.’

  ‘Tell me more. I want to understand.’

  They walked on. Still the white-haired man did not close upon them.

  ‘It is one of the most ancient spiritual tools known to mankind,’ Horace said. ‘It is meaningless to the ignorant. Very powerful to the initiated.’

  ‘What does it do?’

  ‘It points to certain things that are true. It is a key, and a map. It has existed since before the ancient Egyptians. It is not the only key, certainly, but it is found in several spiritual traditions. It was the pattern used by the maker of the Ma’rifat’ to lay out the keys along Manhattan to carry and amplify the force of the weapon. Not quite perfectly traced but close enoughto be very dangerous. It is also the pattern we have used to direct you along the Path. It can be thought of in many ways. It is a route of power, a map of self-exploration…’

  Robert closed his eyes for a moment, seeing again the fleeting multidimensional images that had been hammering at his mind – the sense of a great overarching pattern wheeling about him, threading through the streets of the city, an array of perspectives and sightlines and insights that bound together his inner and outer journeys, buildings and monuments and stages of the trial, in a single geometric shape.

  ‘What does the full key look like?’

  ‘Like this,’ Horace said, filling in the lines on the map Robert had given him. ‘Above the highest point on the Tree, there is a further level that is indescribable, a kind of succession of infinities, which we will also explore before your final battle. In terms of Manhattan, they are represented by Central Park.’

  ‘I have to find Katherine. I have to find Terri. I have to use this to help them.’

  ‘So you do. Bear with me just a little longer.’

  They had walked along the underground passage as far as the exit sign for 48th Street. Set into the wall was a six-foot compass of glass mosaic, a photograph of a youthful Albert Einstein at its centre.

  ‘You’ll be aware that Einstein’s theories describe how space and time are a single thing, and can be warped and bent.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And that energy and matter are equivalent, that each can be converted into the other? With hugely destructive results, in the case of the atomic bomb?’

  ‘Yes. E equals mc squared. Is the Device some kind of atom bomb?’

  ‘At the very least. I believe the Iwnw intend to make it into something much worse. Let’s keep walking.’

  A few yards further north they came to the next mosaic, another wheel set into the wall, this time showing a young woman holding a bowl of fire in her hands, set against a backdrop of intergalactic space. Two smaller circles were set into the wall on each side. ‘These mosaics represent the elements.’ He pointed left to right. ‘Or the trials you have undergone. Earth. Water. Fire, which is what she holds in her hands. See how she sparkles as the light catches the glass in the mosaic design. Then Air. Then Ether.’

  ‘This stage is Mind, you said. What is last?’

  ‘The seventh is Spirit.’

  ‘What do they consist of?’

  At that moment Robert looked north and saw a second white-haired man, identically dressed, coming towards them with the same measured pace.

  ‘Horace!’

  ‘This way.’

  They retraced their steps towards the Einstein mosaic, heading back in the direction of the first Iwnw stalker, who did not speed up but just stared at them with cold malevolence. Horace and Robert descended a flight of stairs and took the 47th Street Cross-Passage to their right.

  ‘When
three of them converge on us, we will fight,’ Horace said. ‘Now listen. The penultimate trial tests the mind in its fullest sense. Not merely the intellect, or just the conscious mind, but the full spectrum of the conscious and the unconscious, the reasoning and the dreaming and creative minds.’

  The sixth trial, Horace whispered as they walked west, would expose him to a shattering new awareness of reality, a powerful truth. Whereas in the Trial by Ether he had found he could affect the world around him through his will, he would now take the next step, realizing that he and the world were identical, and that only his mind constructed the illusion of separation.

  ‘The insight, when it comes, is like grasping a high-voltage cable,’ Horace said. ‘Only one who has completed the previous five trials can with stand it. Even so, the insight comes only with proximity to death. It brings healing powers.’

  To pass the trial, he said, Robert would have to survive accessing those energies, and bend them to a purpose beyond himself. It would force him to face the sixth dilemma: whether to heal, or to kill, his enemy.

  Robert would recover a sixthkey, six-sided or six-pointed, and find the penultimate missing component of the light body that was his new awakened self.

  The two Iwnw men descended the stairs and walked slowly towards them.

  Robert and Horace came to steps leading up to Tracks 32 and 33. Horace paused briefly to point out another mosaic.

  ‘There are about a dozen panels in total in As Above, So Below. This one may also have resonance for you. It shows Persephone condemned to the underworld for half the year for eating a pomegranate. Seems rather harsh, doesn’t it? It’s partly a Greek retelling of another earlier myth, Inanna in the underworld. Also known as Ishtar.’

  ‘Terri told me that one. It’s about the Path. I’m entering the underworld to bring out Adam, and Terri… even Katherine.’

  ‘Many myths reflect the constant struggle between the Iwnw and the Perfect Light.’

  ‘Speaking of that… look. Now there are three.’

  A third white-haired man in an identical dark business suit was walking towards them from the west, a faint smile on his face. Now two were behind them, and one ahead of them.

  ‘Quickly, this way.’

  Horace led him up the steps to Tracks 3 2 and 3 3. They ran back towards the main hall of Grand Central along the North-west Passage.

  ‘We fight them in this corridor if we must,’ Horace said. ‘In case anything happens to me, it is time you learned a little more about the Hencott family.’

  Katherine surveyed the hiding place and decided it was satisfactory. The police sharpshooter had made a good choice. She was early. She always liked to be. She surveyed the equipment, checking every item again. Through the viewfinder, she calculated yet again the distance to her target. It would require a sure touch.

  Moving slowly, keeping away from the window, she made herself comfortable against a wall in the unoccupied apartment and closed her eyes in meditation for a moment.

  The Iwnw were starting to reach her. As Adam struggled to resist them, she was giving him all the energy she could, as Horace had asked, trying to slow him down as muchas possible to allow Robert time to progress along the Path. Although, in doing that, she was also exposing herself to their influence, and she could feel her own willpower beginning to falter. Her judgement.

  Yet she was sure this was a good and necessary move on her part. It was she who had realized there was bound to be at least one police sniper overlooking the location of the final part of the sixth key, given New York’s heightened security levels for the Republican Convention.

  She’d surveyed the area, using her professional expertise and her reawakening gift, and quickly concluded that there was just one sharpshooter, and where he had to be. Then she’d gone to see him. It had been a simple matter to put him into a deep sleep, using a hypnotic trick Horace had shown her many years previously.

  So now she had a rifle. She’d made sure Robert wouldn’t be shot at by the cops as he recovered the last part of the sixth key, and she could cover him if he got into trouble with the other police on the ground.

  Adam had told her he was trying everything he could to help Robert along the Path, even if it meant allowing Robert to believe he had already completely crossed over. It was a miraculous balancing act, for he was at the same time appearing to give the Iwnw what they wanted.

  On Sunday, after she had walked out on Robert, Adam had invited her to stay in his latest New York hide, commiserated with her over Robert, told her he loved her. She’d helped ease his pain, helped him in his vigil.

  Terri had come to the apartment while Adam was out, noted her presence and immediately turned round and left. Katherine had seen nothing of Terri but her retreating back. She’d called out to her, but all she’d felt in response was a wave of hurt and fear, and, mingled with it, a note of deep resignation.

  So much of this was her own fault, she felt. In giving the lost Newton paper to Tariq, she had effectively created the Ma’rifat’. She had given its creator the means to make it, then years later she had caused him to be driven to such pain and anger that he wanted to use it.

  She had to make it right. But, above all, she had to focus on her mission. She had to hold the Iwnw at bay.

  ‘My brother and I grew up in various parts of the world,’ Horace said, whispering between shallow breaths as they walked. ‘We are both somewhat older than you might think. We were born in Alexandria, in the 1920s. Father was a gentleman archaeologist, adventurer, sometime spy. He claimed to have met Lawrence of Arabia several times, to have introduced us to him when we were small boys. I have a faint childhood memory of a man in white robes who spoke oddly. It may be an invented memory, though; he told us about him so many times. My brother, of course, was named after him.’

  Robert looked back behind them. He heard footfalls and then saw one of the Iwnw coming slowly up the steps. He was followed by the two others.

  ‘They’re coming, Horace.’

  ‘Keep moving. Lawrence joined the military as soon as he could, lied about his age and served throughout World War Two. He was a paratrooper. After the war we worked together for a while, in Paris, and Berlin, and back in Egypt. I was altogether less impressive on the military front, worked in intelligence, at the more unusual end of it, sometimes. Army intelligence, then OSS. Heard of it?’

  ‘It was the forerunner of the CIA, wasn’t it?’

  ‘That’s right.’

  ‘Horace, that must make you in your eighties.’

  ‘Yes. Don’t distract me. Father left us some land in various parts of the world, not farmland, you understand, mining plots, mostly worked-out seams, a couple of barely functioning mines. Made us swear never to sell, to safeguard them for eternity.

  ‘Lawrence took all the mines on and made something of them. Really something. I’ve no idea how. He knew men, he knew logistics, he was afraid of no one. He studied when he came out of the army, learned engineering and chemistry, metallurgy. He was a force of nature. He built up Hencott Incorporated almost single-handed, built a corporate empire around what father had left us.

  ‘Lawrence used to say you need presence in the world if you are to do good; it’s better to be strong and protect the weak than be weak in need of protection. He put a lot of resources into researchand development, and based it all in a laboratory so well guarded and secret that most people in the company didn’t even know about it. It was on the grounds of a particular gold mine. You may recall he referred to it in the interview he gave your news service.’

  ‘Oh, God, yes. What was that about?’

  ‘One thing at a time. Lawrence was operational. I am meditative. We have both sought a special kind of gold, in our different ways.’

  ‘I’m sorry?’

  ‘There are a handful of mines in the world – three, to be precise – that produce a certain kind of very rare gold. We call it red gold.’

  ‘I thought that was just an alloy of gold and co
pper? The guy who sold us our wedding bands was quite prolix about red gold, white gold, rose gold, and so on. They’re all alloys, because pure gold is too soft to work into most jewellery.’

  ‘Quite so. But that is not the red gold I am talking about. You will likely have never heard of this kind. Its uses are limited.’

  ‘To what?’

  ‘Here is where I must swear you to secrecy. For ever.’

  Horace stopped and stared at him intently. Robert had never seen him look so powerful.

  ‘I swear.’

  But before Horace could speak again, a voice rang out from up ahead of them. ‘There’s no way out, old man.’

  Behind them, the white-haired men were still advancing at a measured pace, three abreast, now just twenty yards away.

  And ahead of them, blocking the way back to Grand Central, was Adam Hale.

  ‘Listen to me,’ Horace whispered, turning so that he stood facing the Iwnw, back to back with Robert, whose eyes never left Adam. ‘Red gold may be used in certain procedures of a hermetic nature. Named after Hermes, the messenger of the gods. It was the name taken by a series of sages several thousand years ago. Alchemical procedures, if you will.’

  ‘It was in Adam’s play. But he said there is none left in the world.’

  ‘Well, there is. Hencott controls all three mines. They were among the ones left to us by our father, who was himself acting on behalf of the Perfect Light. There are perhaps thirty people in the world who know these things. Red gold, correctly handled, correctly prepared, after many years of trial and error, can in some circumstances draw to itself great amounts of energy, or trigger in the world the release of same. It is extremely powerful, but only in conjunction with the psychic state of those around it.’

  ‘It sounds like the Ma’rifat’. The Device.’

  ‘The Device must contain some of it. Of the thirty people I mentioned, some are of the view that the power of red gold must be used for political purposes. To advance certain political tendencies, to work against others, to shape the world. To rule it. Lawrence and I are not of this view.’