The Malice Box

by Martin Langfield

  ‘Who are these people?’

  The three white-haired men had drawn to within ten yards of Horace. They stopped and stared at him.

  ‘They are the Iwnw. The word means “column” in the language of the ancient Egyptians. We stand against them. We are the Perfect Light.’

  Adam, standing twenty paces ahead of Robert, gave a booming laugh. ‘Well, well, gentlemen. You find yourselves in a tight spot.’

  He walked towards Robert. In the baking heat of the underground passageway, they were all sweating, but Adam’s shirt was drenched. He looked cadaverous.

  ‘Stay strong, Adam,’ Robert shouted. ‘You don’t have to do this. They don’t control you.’

  ‘It’s too late for that,’ Adam called back. ‘Was Horace just telling you about poor Lawrence and the red gold? It’s a very touching story.’

  Robert whispered to Horace: ‘The Iwnw got some of your red gold?’

  ‘Tell everyone, Horace,’ Adam boomed.

  ‘Last year, the unthinkable happened,’ Horace shouted, his gaze fixed on the three Iwnw men facing him. ‘Lawrence and I learned that Hencott had been infiltrated by several of these… people.’ He spat out the final word. ‘They had taken twenty years to insinuate their way into the more secret corners of the company, but they finally managed to gain access, briefly, to the research and development laboratory.’

  ‘The one Lawrence talked about in his interview? The one he said Hencott was closing?’

  ‘That’s right,’ Adam shouted. ‘That one didn’t work out too well for you, did it, Robert?’

  Horace ignored Adam’s goading. ‘They took some. Far less than a gram. But that is sufficient.’

  ‘How long before you found out?’ Robert asked.

  ‘Almost immediately. And we decided to begin the immediate running down of the experiments that were under way. It took nearly a year to power them down. Red gold must be handled, once the process of elaboration begins, with very great care. What they managed to take was not elaborated, it was raw. Some rudimentary work was clearly done on it later. When, finally, it had all been removed and placed in a safe location until mankind is ready to make better use of it, Lawrence decided to tell the world. Not in a way that anyone but the thirty-odd people I mentioned would understand. But it is a timehonoured technique. Make a public announcement, disguising the real content, in such a way that it will be widely reported. Those who need to see the true meaning will understand. It also puts down a marker in time, for those who come later who might understand. That on this date, we took these measures.’

  ‘What happened then, Robert?’ said Adam.

  ‘The company called to say Lawrence had gone off his rocker. They reversed themselves.’

  Horace resumed. ‘All of this had taken a great toll upon Lawrence. It is true that the stress of the discovery of the infiltration, the decision to close down his life’s experimental work, the hunt for the missing red gold, eventually caused a crisis in his marriage. His wife did leave him. But he was of perfectly sound mind when he called you to set up the interview, Robert. He did so at such short notice because he became aware of an attempt to oust him as head of the firm. It went ahead shortly after your news item ran on the wires.’

  ‘Oh, Jesus. I played right into their hands.’

  ‘You didn’t know. It’s not your fault. Lawrence was a soldier. He fought back. Set up his base of operations at that hotel and began to make calls. Rallied support. Made sure arrangements he’d put in place for the succession – his will, company rules, and so on – had not been tampered with. And then’ – Horace twisted his head, eyes blazing, to see Adam – ‘Mr Hale showed up to visit him.’

  Robert stared unblinkingly into Adam’s face as his old friend drew nearer. ‘What happened, Adam? What did you do?’

  ‘I did what these gentlemen demanded. I tried to persuade Lawrence to tell me where the rest of the red gold was. The hidden stock. He did not want to help.’

  ‘Adam was under the influence of these henchmen of the Iwnw, using the Minotaur as a conduit after Adam killed Lawrence,’ Horace said. ‘This may have been the first time they were able to corrode his will so fully. Remember it was he, working with me, who found where the stolen red gold had gone, when he tracked down the maker of the Ma’rifat’ last year. But it cost him. It cost him severely.’

  ‘It allowed me to see whose side I should be on in this endless contest,’ Adam shouted. ‘Don’t go thinking dear Horace has all the answers.’

  Still the three men with white hair stood silently in the dark suits, their relentless gaze on Horace. Robert felt they were waiting for something, though he couldn’t tell what. He cast his mind back to the night of Lawrence’s death. Last Wednesday night. It already seemed a lifetime ago.

  ‘Lawrence tried to warn me. He called me. He wasn’t threatening me. He was trying to warn me!’

  ‘He would have been in great pain. He chose to die rather than to give in to Adam. He wrote to you too, yes? You remember?’

  ‘Said it was all my fault. No, wait. It was because of me –’

  ‘I had flagged you to Lawrence as someone who might one day come to our aid.’

  ‘Lawrence said I had a poisonous ego…’

  ‘No. He said To the poisonous ego of Robert Reckliss I say vile, intense torture reveals impossibility of living. He was giving you advice. On how to help. He was telling you your ego was blinding you to truth, as happens to all of us.’

  ‘Dear God. I’ve understood so little.’

  ‘It was suicide, in a way. But pushing a man so hard that he chooses to die, in order to escape the torment, is murder, of course.’

  ‘I had no choice,’ Adam said.

  ‘Our friends here, however, were not as clever as they thought. Lawrence was able to ensure that after his death, controlling authority in the company moved quickly and irrevocably to me. By Sunday evening I had almost everything in place. By Monday morning, while the funeral was taking place, I was able to act to call those damned lawyers off you.’

  ‘That was extraordinary. You should have seen their faces.’

  Sweat ran into Robert’s eyes. Tension knotted every muscle in his body.

  ‘I needed you. I need you now. So does Adam. So do Katherine and Terri. So do a great many people. These creatures cannot be allowed to stop us.’

  Now the leader of the Iwnw spoke for the first time. ‘You have something we want, Mr Hencott. We have come to reclaim it. Mr Reckliss here stole it from our colleague.’

  ‘Take it from me, if you can,’ shouted Horace, defiance in every syllable. ‘In my brother’s name, I swear you’ll get it no other way.’

  Then suddenly Adam threw himself at Robert, scrabbling for his eyes and throat. Horace twisted one way as Robert leaped the other, feeling his body ignite with the accumulated strength of the five trials he had undergone. He flipped Adam sideways in the air and watched him slam into the wall of the passageway. Turning to face the Iwnw, he saw Horace deflect the charge of their leader and simultaneously twist the wrist of a second attacker with such speed and timing that the man’s entire body left the ground and landed with a crack of breaking bone five yards away.

  Adam rose again and made a dive for Horace, trying to reach inside his jacket, but Robert grabbed him by the shoulders and spun him around so that he and Adam were face to face. Robert dragged him to one side and punched him with all his strength in the belly. Adam folded in half, letting out a bellow of pain, blowing air and blood from his mouth, and lay still on the ground.

  Robert turned again to help Horace fight the Iwnw. One had the old man from behind by the neck and the other was belabouring Horace’s ribs and chest with punches. Robert launched himself headlong at the second man, knocking him flying and landing on top of him in a crunch of breaking ribs. Robert punched him once in the face, and he stopped moving. The third Iwnw man, his wrist shattered from Horace’s earlier throw, knelt with his head lowered, muttering over and over an incantati
on while holding his forearm tightly in his good hand.

  Now Horace twisted out of the grasp of the Iwnw leader and turned to face him. With a yard of clear space between them, he stepped forward and seemed to project a wave of force from his chest. His opponent flew backwards against the wall and fell heavily, knocked unconscious without a finger having been laid on him.

  Breathing heavily, Horace caught Robert’s eye and pointed in the direction of Grand Central. ‘I still have the major key,’ he panted. ‘We must leave.’

  Adam still lay motionless on the ground, doubled over. Robert made to go to him. ‘Leave him,’ Horace ordered.

  A few minutes later Horace and Robert walked out of Grand Central Terminal on to 42nd Street and turned right, heading west. For a minute or two neither spoke. Horace dabbed some blood from the side of his mouth with a handkerchief.

  ‘Do you think they’ll come after us?’

  ‘Yes, but not for a while. Possessing the major key and the traces of red gold it contains, even rudimentarily worked as it has been, I was confident of protecting us both. Of shielding us, at the very least. Without it they might have killed us. Thank you for your help.’

  ‘How did it help to shield us?’

  ‘It amplifies whatever psychic force is around it. With it in my hands, my powers are increased many times over. I am forbidden to say exactly how it operates, by my oath to the Perfect Light. Mankind at large does not yet have this knowledge, although the new collider at CERN may bring signs of it when it starts in a few years’ time. I can say it resonates at a certain rate, setting up certain harmonics, that are also the harmonics of operations in the human brain.’

  ‘It’s like birdsong? The language of the birds?’

  ‘That is one way it may be experienced, yes.’

  ‘Adam’s play, all that time ago, spoke of a device like the Ma’rifat’. But he said there were three components.’

  ‘Yes. The so-called Philosopher’s Stone, which is a fusion of metal and glass with psychic resonances similar to red gold. The red gold itself, which harmonizes with the Stone. They are like male and female components. Then, a knowledge of certain geometric arrangements that allow these materials to be brought into play on each other, like lenses. That is why each of the keys has a different geometric form: to reflect and shape the internal forces of the Ma’rifat’ in different ways, according to the lensing required at different moments. All this is useless without a highly refined state of spiritual attainment in the operator. There is one exception, however. They can also be activated by a person in a desperate state of psychic collapse.’

  As they walked, Horace fumbled in his pocket and handed him a piece of paper. ‘I would have sent you this by text message, but since you’re right here…’

  Robert read the paper.

  Don’t be a rube, follow the cube

  Now visit Babel, if you’re able

  An unseeing guide, leads you to the hide

  To see, though you’re blind

  Pass the Trial by Mind

  Call Number JFD 00–19002.

  PS To get the waypoint number of the next cache, treble the letters in the item you seek and subtract the Deadly Sins

  ‘A call number,’ Robert said. ‘To get a book at the library?’

  ‘Yes, I think so.’

  Robert’s adrenalin level was sky high from the fight. Fire was still coursing through his limbs. He felt lightheaded, with a tinge of nausea. The image of Adam crumpled on the ground began to bother him. He had hit Adam very hard.

  They crossed Vanderbilt and Madison and came to Fifth Avenue. Robert fired up the GPS programme at the intersection and confirmed that Waypoint X87 was indeed inside the New York Public Library.

  ‘Let us read between the lions,’ Horace said with an uncharacteristic wink, and timed his crossing so they could traverse 42nd southand then Fifth west in quick succession. Robert saw that the old man was not immune to an adrenalin buzz himself.

  They strode up the front steps between Patience and Fortitude, the two lions that guarded the library entrance. ‘Arriving destination’ flashed on his screen as they got to the top. He read the clue again to Horace.

  They entered the great hall of the library, passing security, and made their way up the stairs to the third floor.

  ‘What about the unseeing guide? Reminds me of Terri.’

  ‘Yes, it would. We need to help her, Robert. Poor woman. Have you ever heard of a character called Tiresias? He is the originator of the magic wand carried by Hermes, or Mercury, you know. The caduceus, as it’s called. The twin snakes spiralling along a winged staff. There are some splendid representations of it on the stonework outside, I should have shown you.’

  ‘On the way out. So we’re looking for a book about Tiresias?’

  ‘Not quite. A book by someone similar to Tiresias, I suspect. A one-time librarian, blind, one who saw further than most. From Buenos Aires.’

  They entered the catalogue room and jotted the number in the clue on to a call slip with one of the stumpy pencils provided.

  ‘We don’t have the title, I’m afraid,’ Horace said to the librarian. ‘It’s part of a scavenger hunt.’

  ‘Two in one day,’ the librarian said. ‘That’s OK. We get it all the time.’

  ‘Asking for the same call number?’ said Horace sharply.

  ‘I couldn’t tell you.’

  ‘Do you remember the person? Or people?’

  ‘Wow. You take your games seriously. A woman in her late thirties or early forties? Beautiful blue eyes.’

  They were given a three-digit number and walked through to the breathtaking main reading room. Under luminescent trompe-l’æil ceiling paintings of open skies, ranks upon ranks of readers sat in hushed concentration at oak tables. An arrow pointing right, to the North Hall, indicated book deliveries with odd numbers would take place there; even numbers would be delivered in the South Hall. A staff area divided the two halls, serving as a distribution point for volumes brought from anywhere along the library’s ninety-odd miles of bookshelves.

  ‘We don’t use the odd numbers, it never gets busy enough,’ the librarian said, ushering them to the left. ‘Do you have an access card?’

  Horace assured him that he did.

  They sat and waited for their number, 5 42, to come up on an electronic board. The book came in less than ten minutes. Horace collected it. It was a slim volume, bound in library-issue brown hardcover to protect the original green, red and black soft covers inside. Ficciones, by Jorge Luis Borges, in an Englishtranslation.

  On page 46 was the story ‘The Library of Babel’. Robert read: ‘The universe (which others call the Library) consists of an indefinite, and perhaps infinite, number of hexagonal galleries, with vast air shafts in between, ringed by very low railings.’ It described a terrifying, endless library holding an infinite number of books, and the life of those who lived in it. ‘From any hexagon, the floors above and below can be seen: they go on for ever… A spiral staircase passes through, which plunges and rises into the remote distance… The Library is a sphere, the exact centre of which is any of the hexagons, and the circumference of which cannot be attained.’

  ‘I’m going to need a drink after reading this, Horace.’

  ‘How many letters does it speak of?’

  He read on till he found it. ‘Twenty-two, it says. All the books in the Library of Babel are written with twenty-two letters, a full stop, a comma and a space.’

  ‘Trebling it gives 66. Subtract Seven Deadly Sins. It’s 59. Waypoint 59.’

  ‘I thought we’d be doing a Star of David today, not a hexagon.’

  ‘The Star of David is a symbol of great reverence, and not solely in the Judaic tradition. The Mark of Vishnu. Magen David. In Islam, they say Solomon used it to capture djinns. The six-pointed star produces the hexagon, and vice versa. They’re the same thing. If you want to see one, I’ll show you where there was one, just outside. But we need to inspect this book more clos
ely first. There should be something attached to it.’

  They took turns examining the volume page by page. On the inside back cover, Robert noticed a rough patch on the surface, as thougha length of Scotchtape had been torn off it.

  A look of resignation crossed Horace’s face. ‘It was holding something. I’m afraid we’re too late. Katherine has it.’

  They returned the book and left via the front entrance. Horace took him to the northern end of the library’s balustraded patio and pointed north-east, to the corner of 43rd Street. ‘The biggest synagogue in the world was there, Temple Emanu-El, from 1868 to 1927. Two Moorish towers. Quite beautiful. The congregation moved uptown. Their new one is still the biggest in the world. For much of that time, until 1911, the synagogue looked back across here, not at this library but at a massive Neo-Egyptian wall of stone, fifty feet high. It was a huge water reservoir for Manhattan. People used to promenade along the top. I do miss the idea of it.’

  ‘I want to get to the next waypoint. I need to work out what’s next.’

  The Quad showed Waypoint 059 was over near the mouth of the Lincoln Tunnel, just under a mile away.

  ‘We have five minutes,’ Horace said. ‘I need to jam your mind with things to fuel it.’

  He led Robert down the steps at the northern end of the patio and pointed out the caduceus, beautifully carved into plinths on each side at the bottom.

  ‘You are right to say we are on a spine,’ he said. ‘It runs almost exactly along Fifth Avenue. In the 1920s, before there were stop lights, there used to be manned traffic towers directing vehicles from Washington Square Park along Fifth as far as 57th Street. They were made of bronze, with a distinct Egyptian Revival design. They were beautiful. All gone now, though I have a memento of them. Remind me to show you.’

  They walked around the front of the library and went west on 40th Street. Horace turned towards Bryant Park, on the other side of railings painted, like the American Radiator Building opposite, in black and gold.

  ‘Look at that beautiful lawn, Robert. What do you see?’ ‘I see people lolling about enjoying the sun. What should I see?’