Coming closer, Abberline saw that he wasn’t the only one making his way towards the enclosure. From among the crowds a group of labourers had materialized and were moving in on it too. He stopped and lifted out his spyglass, leaning forward over the fence to train it on the man in robes. He stayed where he was, oblivious to the approaching danger, still starkly visible, yet somehow invisible. Abberline saw that he held something by his side and it looked like … Good God, was that a blowpipe?
Now he swung his spyglass to peer into the thicket of carriages. The navvies were still approaching, and also …
Abberline caught his breath. If it wasn’t his old friend Hardy. The punisher had his back to him but it was unmistakably him. Abberline watched as Hardy caught sight of one of the labourers and tipped him a wink.
The trap was about to be sprung.
Abberline began to move towards the enclosure more quickly. He no longer cared about robed men and whether they fought for good or bad. What he cared about was giving Hardy a greeting from Aubrey, and his truncheon was in his hand as he pushed his way through the crowds then vaulted the enclosure fence. He threaded his way through the parked coaches. Once more he was glad of his peeler’s threads when one of the oncoming navvies saw him approach and turned smartly on his heel, feigning interest in something behind him. He was a few feet from Hardy now, and the punisher still had his back to him, still watching the man in robes. What he and the man in robes had in common was that both thought themselves the hunter, not the prey, and that was why Abberline was able to come up behind Hardy undetected.
‘Excuse me, sir, but can I ask what business you have in the carriage enclosure?’
‘Business,’ said Hardy, turning. ‘It’s none of your bloody business is what it –’
He never said the word ‘is’.
As it turned out, he would never say the word ‘is’ again, because Abberline swung as hard with the truncheon as he could and it was a vicious attack and not one worthy of an officer of the law, but Abberline had stopped thinking like an officer of the law. He was thinking about the weeks of pain. He was thinking about the scars made by a brass knuckleduster. He was thinking about a man who had been left for dead. And he swung that truncheon with all of his might, and in the next moment Hardy had a mouthful of blood and teeth and an appointment with the dirt at his feet.
To his right Abberline saw a powerful navvy snarling as he came to him with a cosh in one hand. There were other navvies coming too, but through the carriages Abberline caught a glimpse of the man in robes, who was now aware of the disturbance at his back and was turning, tensing. At the same time, Abberline felt the navvy’s cosh slam against his temple and it felled him, dazed, his eyes watering and head howling in pain, just a few feet away from where Hardy was already pulling himself to his knees, with his chin hanging at a strange angle and his eyes ablaze with fury – and a knife that streaked out of the darkness towards Abberline.
Abberline rolled but then found himself pinned by the legs and feet of the navvy, looking up to see the man towering over him, a knife in his hand.
‘He’s mine,’ said Hardy, although because of his injury it sounded more like hismon, but the navvy knew what he meant and stayed his hand as Hardy, his lower face a mask of blood, lurched towards Abberline, his elbow pulling back about to strike with the knife.
‘Stop,’ said the man in the robes, and Hardy jerked to a halt mid-strike as he felt the mechanism of the Assassin’s hidden blade at his neck.
‘Call off your man,’ said Ethan.
They heard the running feet of reinforcements.
Hardy spoke, and through his broken jaw and teeth it sound like gufferell but Ethan Frye knew what he meant and engaged his blade and it tore through Hardy’s throat, emerging blood-streaked and gleaming from beneath his chin. At the same time Ethan drew his revolver with his other hand. A blast tore the night and the navvy pinning Abberline spun away. Ethan wheeled. His revolver spoke again and again, and more bodies fell among the carriages. At the first shot panic had taken over the crowd and their screams spooked the horses. Terrified coachmen flung themselves to the ground.
Ethan was empty but the attack had faded and so he dashed to where Abberline lay. ‘I’m Ethan Frye,’ he said, reaching out to help Abberline off the dirt. ‘And it appears I owe you a favour. I will not forget this, Constable Abberline. The Brotherhood likes to pay its debts. Now, if you will excuse me, I have some pressing business to attend to.’
And with that he vaulted the fence and took off over the mud towards the shaft. Men in suits scattered at the sight of this wild figure pounding over the planks towards them. More importantly the squad of navvies at the tunnel edge saw him coming too, but with just four of them between him and the steps, he wasn’t too concerned, and he flipped the blowpipe from beneath his robes. Still on the run he plucked two darts from his belt, clamped them between his teeth, brought the blowpipe up to the first dart, loaded and fired.
The closest man fell with a poison-tipped dart in the neck. Out of deference to Pearson Ethan had assembled an expensive poison that was painless and fast-acting. Apart from the prick at his neck, he wouldn’t have felt a thing. Had he known he’d be using them on Templars, he would have dipped them in the cheap stuff.
He reloaded. Spat the second dart. Another man fell. A third drew a cutlass from under his jacket and came forward, cursing Ethan. His mouth shone with saliva and he was slow, and Ethan took no pride in deflecting his first blow, anticipating an easy scooping strike and then stepping into his body and jabbing back with the blade. He whirled swiftly away to avoid the dying man’s final blood-flecked cough and met the last man at the same time. This one was better, faster, more of a problem. Again, this one had a cutlass, and again he began with a chopping strike that Ethan knocked away, trading two more blows before driving his blade home.
The other navvies were closing in, but he reached the structure first, not bothering with the steps themselves, shinning down the timber uprights until his boots met the planks of the makeshift platform, and there before him stood the stationary train. Nothing strange about it at first glance.
Then he felt the earth move. A rumble. An unmistakable movement. Enough to rock him on his feet. The timbers on the unfinished tunnel roof began to tumble.
Inside the carriage The Ghost had watched as Cavanagh bent and smashed the cane on the floor, pulling the orb from the shaft that he tossed away. Smiling, the triumphant director held up the artefact for inspection. Greedy eyes went from the bronze globe to The Ghost; the two punishers goggled and even The Ghost felt a tremor of something indefinable in the air, as though the artefact had found its worshippers and was showing itself to them. He thought of lightshows and depthless knowledge and understanding – and then saw death and destruction, and great explosions on battlefields, and wondered what he had helped unleash on the world. His job had been to recover that artefact. At the very least prevent it from falling into the hands of the enemy. He had failed.
‘Can you feel it?’ Cavanagh was saying. The sphere seemed to glow in his hand and, yes, unless they were all experiencing the same hallucination, they could all feel it.
It was humming.
Suddenly the door to the adjoining carriage was flung open and Marchant was back, slamming the connecting door and cutting them off from Mrs Pearson, oblivious Mrs Pearson, who no doubt wondered when they were due to disembark.
‘Ethan Frye’s coming,’ said Marchant breathlessly. At once the waves of energy that seemed to pulse from the orb increased in intensity.
‘What?’ said Cavanagh.
‘Mr
s Pearson wanted to be let out, so I opened the door and saw Ethan Frye at the top of the steps.’
‘Did he see you?’
‘Back to me. He had his back to –’
The door to the carriage opened. At the same time, lightning fast, Cavanagh whirled and threw his knife, and there was a short scream from the doorway.
Ethan, thought The Ghost. But it was the train driver’s body that fell into the carriage.
They all felt it. The earth seemed to move. There was a distinct rumble and Cavanagh looked at the object he held, fixing it with a terrible, power-drunk gaze. And was it The Ghost’s imagination or did it seem to glow more brightly – almost boastfully? Look at me. Look at what I can do.
And then the world caved in.
56
The slippage caused the surrounding banks to move. And though the tunnel held, the makeshift roof above the carriage was dislodged and came tumbling, clattering and crashing to the carriage below. The roof cracked and gave, showering those inside with splinters and it gave The Ghost just the chance he needed. He wrenched himself free of the punishers.
‘Ethan,’ he called, and crashed through the door into the adjoining carriage, where Mrs Pearson sat screaming and terrified with her hands over her head and then at the sight of The Ghost screamed even more loudly.
He yanked open the carriage door, leapt out on to the platform – and almost barged into Ethan Frye.
‘Kill him,’ called Cavanagh with a voice that sounded as though it had been dragged from the very pits of hell. ‘Kill them both.’
The two punishers burst out of the carriage door, blocking the way forward, oncoming navvies behind. Other Hardy reached into his suit jacket, hand appearing with a revolver aimed at The Ghost.
Unwavering, The Ghost met him, wishing he had a blade but settling for the toughened edge of his bare foot instead, seeming almost to pivot in the air as he leapt, knocking the revolver away with one kick, then wrenching the man’s head back with a strike to the chin from his trailing foot.
The weapon spun away and the two men both sprawled to the deck, but The Ghost was the first to react, kicking again but this time to the underside of Other Hardy’s chin and hearing a crunch in return that meant he was either dead or out for the count. The Ghost wasn’t too bothered either way.
At the same time Ethan had the pleasure of Smith’s company. The second punisher had drawn a long-bladed dirk and came forward slashing haphazardly, with not a cat in hell’s chance of besting the Assassin. Sure enough, Ethan stepped smartly away, and felt the reassuring tickle of the mechanism on his forearm as his blade engaged before he buried it in the man’s neck.
Suddenly the earthquake seemed to increase in intensity and at the same time Cavanagh stepped out of the carriage and on to the platform in front of them. His knife was still buried in the train driver but he had no need of it now. Not now he had the artefact. It glowed and seemed to pulse in time with the tremors.
Twenty feet away, Ethan and The Ghost exchanged a fearful look as Cavanagh held the artefact before him, as though proffering it to the gods, and there was a great moan of traumatized wood, and then a sudden increase in the deluge from above. In the distance came the screams of spectators terrified by the sudden earthquake – an earthquake that was increasing in intensity now as behind the glowing artefact, Cavanagh’s face split into a maniacal grin, his eyes changing, until the man who had spent his life burying his humanity in favour of ambition and corruption had no more humanity left.
He hadn’t noticed Marchant edging closer to him.
He didn’t see that Marchant had retrieved the pearl-handled knife from the body of the train driver.
‘Crawford Starrick sends his regards,’ shouted the clerk above the crashing of the shaft around them, and then buried the knife into Cavanagh’s armpit.
The director’s eyes widened in pain and shock and incomprehension at the sudden turn of events. Straightaway the artefact’s rhythmic pulse faded as he sank to his knees with his suit front already gleaming darkly with blood. He looked from Marchant to the two Assassins, then fell forward. And perhaps in that final moment a little of himself returned, enough to ponder on the evil he had done, before he left this world with a wet choking noise as his lungs filled and he drowned in his own blood, and The Ghost hoped that the unnamed sepoy was there to greet him in hell.
The navvies swarmed on to the platform behind them as Marchant snatched up the artefact – and Ethan Frye leapt forward to relieve him of it, all of which happened in the split second before a falling piece of timber ignited the gas supplies on the roof of one of the carriage, and the Metropolitan Railway’s brand-new enclosed carriage burst into flames.
57
Ethan and The Ghost dived for cover, flinging themselves into the tunnel. Behind them was fire and pandemonium and noise, and then after a moment, during which the after-effects of the explosion died down, they heard Marchant screaming at the navvies – ‘Get them! Get after them!’ – and they took to their heels, heading west, back towards Paddington.
‘I have something to tell you,’ said Ethan as they ran. They pounded in between the train tracks in total darkness, sharpened senses leading them along the tunnel as fast as they dared, until they found themselves beneath the steam hole at Leinster Gardens, where they pulled themselves up to safety. Sure enough the gang of navvies ran right below them. They didn’t even look up.
For a moment there was silence as both men tried and failed to make sense of what had just happened.
‘What do you have to tell me?’ asked The Ghost, his shoulders rising and falling as he kept his breath – dreading what he was about to hear.
Ethan sighed. ‘This is all my fault,’ he said. ‘I was warned.’
‘What do you mean, “warned”?’
Ethan told The Ghost about Ajay and watched sorrow cripple the man’s features.
‘How could you?’ said The Ghost at last.
Ethan was desolate. ‘I judged it for the best.’
‘You judged wrong.’
Again there was a silence, broken by Ethan, who said softly, ‘Was I the only one to make an error of judgement? How were they able to identify you, Jayadeep?’
The Ghost flashed him a furious look. ‘Anything I did was born of a desire to help my fellow man. Isn’t that the right way? Isn’t that the Assassin way?’
‘It is. But if you excuse yourself on those terms then you must excuse me, because I did what I did for the good of all men.’
‘You were as obsessed with that artefact as he was.’
‘If so, then I was obsessed with making sure it didn’t fall into the wrong hands, and now we’ve seen it in action I know I was right to be.’
The Ghost had been promised lightshows or a pretty talisman from the artefact. Instead he had witnessed something different altogether.
‘Well, it’s in the wrong hands now,’ he said.
‘Not for long.’
From below them came a shout. ‘Come on, mates. We’re to get to the tunnel.’
‘The coast will be clear soon,’ said Ethan, drumming his hands on the dirt in frustration, ‘but the artefact will be halfway to Starrick by now.’
The Ghost wasn’t listening. Let Ethan fixate on his artefacts. He no longer cared. He was thinking about the order they’d just heard. ‘The tunnel’. The Templars knew about Maggie – they knew that through her was a way to get to him, and through him a way to Ethan, and maybe just having the artefact was not enough. They meant to smash the Assassins as well.
‘I have to go to Maggi
e.’
‘I have to go after the artefact,’ said Ethan. ‘Just as your conscience dictates you must go to the tunnel, so I must go there.’
‘You should go after your precious artefact,’ said The Ghost, and then took to his feet.
It was a distance of some six miles from Leinster Gardens to the Thames Tunnel, plus the Templar men had a head start and were travelling by carriage, but The Ghost was fast and he was determined, and he knew the route well, and he made it within the hour.
Even so, he was too late. Wagons were already arranged around the octagonal marble entrance hall of the tunnel shaft. Figures were milling about, some of them holding lit flares and lamps. He saw other figures running, heard screaming and the unmistakable sound of coshes and truncheons being used in anger and the shouts of pain to match. The residents of the tunnel were accustomed to having their refuge invaded but not with such violence, not with so much malice or single-minded purpose.
And the purpose?
To take Maggie.
But he wasn’t going to let them do that. At this, he wasn’t going to fail.
Pandemonium reigned but through a forest of bodies The Ghost saw Other Hardy. The last surviving punisher stood at a carriage with his revolver in one hand and the other at his injured face, shouting orders. ‘Bring the woman, bring the old woman.’ There was no sign of Marchant, and The Ghost guessed Ethan was right: the artefact was on its way to Crawford Starrick. Best of luck, Ethan. You made your choice.
Running past a series of minor skirmishes outside, The Ghost burst into the octagonal hall. Over by the watch-house, the commotion was at its most heated. He saw the grey hair of Maggie amid a throng of bodies, some of them tunnel dwellers, some of them strongarms. She was shouting and cursing loudly as Templar thugs attempted to manhandle her over the turnstile. The tunnel people were trying to save her but they were ill-equipped to do so. Templar clubs and knives rose and fell, and shouts of resistance turned to screams of pain that rebounded from the glass. The Ghost thought he saw the private detective Hazlewood somewhere among the great mass of people but then the face was gone. A second later he realized that Other Hardy’s urgings seemed to have stopped and then heard a voice from behind him, saying, ‘Right, you little bastard …’
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