The Babylon Rite

by Tom Knox

  ‘With you so far, Sherlock. What did he find?’

  ‘Well … What about under the floor of Rosslyn? The alleged vault?’

  She tutted. ‘Puh-lease. The vault almost certainly doesn’t exist. Da Vinci Code nonsense. Next?’

  Adam turned a page. ‘OK, what about the Green Men? There are hundreds of Green Men – stylized images of pagan fertility. One of them in Rosslyn seems to be dead. Is that interesting?’

  She shook her head as they overtook another gritting lorry, spewing its pebbledash into the settling snow. ‘Green Men aren’t unique to Rosslyn, they’re a common motif in European architecture. Nope. Tell me another. There must be something. What did my father see in that chapel? He visited it two days running. He must’ve found something.’

  The road was emptier after the final gritting lorry; the car was accelerating. Adam half-sighed, and flicked the pages. ‘Er … An inverted Lucifer. Musical cubes. Corn on the cob. Adam and Eve?’ The idiocy stifled his energies. ‘Look, Nina. I reckon this is pretty pointless.’

  ‘Why? Rosslyn is key. Dad said so.’

  ‘That’s what I mean. Rosslyn is the key. That’s what he said: it’s all here. So it’s the centre of the puzzle, or at least something like that. So we’re going about it the wrong way.’

  ‘Don’t understand.’

  ‘Imagine this was a jigsaw puzzle. Do you start at the centre?’

  She gave him another look. ‘Ah.’

  ‘Exactly. You’d start—’

  ‘At the edges! Yes. Straight lines, the easy bits. The frame.’ She tutted at her own stupidity and nodded. ‘Yes.’

  ‘Therefore we start at the edges. The Templars. That’s the frame. Then we work our way to the centre. Rosslyn.’

  The car was now silent. Adam gazed out. The resonant place names sped past on either side: Athelstaneford, Luggate Burn, Longniddry.

  ‘Yorkshire.’

  He started from his reverie. ‘Sorry?’

  ‘I’m starting with the edges! The first place he went in England was Yorkshire. That’s the second envelope. After Rosslyn. That’s our destination. Look it up, Ad. In the bag?’

  Adam reached into the back seat and grabbed the large duffel bag. Inside were the envelopes containing the assiduously sorted receipts.

  He rummaged, and located a white envelope. Handwritten on the front was Yorkshire, July 23–26. ‘I’m impressed with your bookkeeping.’

  ‘Told you, I’m good at the boring stuff. But it bores me. Where did he go first?’

  Adam found the first receipt. ‘He stopped to get petrol at a garage in Suffield-cum-Everley. At 3.20 p.m., July twenty-third.’

  ‘Suffield-cum what?’

  Adam found the fat paperback roadmap in the glove box and scanned the page. ‘It’s here, near Whitby. In the North York Moors.’

  ‘OK. Now check the book – I brought it along. The Templars in Europe. See what’s near Whitby.’

  Adam reached behind once more. And saw with a rush of poignancy the book on the scruffy backseat, under Nina’s snow-damped anorak, a big impressive authoritative hardback: A Guide to Templar Sites in Western Europe.

  By Archibald McLintock.

  Inside there was a neat and beautiful handwritten inscription: To my beloved daughter Nina. Dad.

  He saw Nina glance at it, quickly, then look away. A choking silence filled the car. Adam paged through the book. It was an exhaustive gazetteer of Templar sites. He swiftly found the entry.

  ‘Westerdale Preceptory. “Every other preceptory in Yorkshire was built on the very highest ground. Westerdale Preceptory, uniquely, is not,”’ he quoted. ‘“Scant traces remain of this once-extensive Templar possession, but we know that it stood at the base of a small green hill, behind the present-day Westerdale Hall.”’

  ‘So that’s where we go. Westerdale.’ She checked the car clock in the bleakening gloom. ‘But we’re never going to make it tonight.’

  They chose a cheap roadside hotel: a Travelodge. Two non-smoking rooms on the same gloomy corridor. When it came to eating – a couple of steak sandwiches in a garish pub by the hotel, a pub which smelled entirely of vinegar – they had their first moment of awkwardness. The intimacy, a young man and a young woman eating dinner alone, and together, was too much, too soon.

  Nina seemed very sad, and trying to hide it, talking bravely and pointlessly about football. So they hurried through the meal, and retired to their separate rooms, where Adam watched TV and fell asleep half-dressed, and dreamed of Alicia smiling in a chair in a room, quite naked and pale, watching a movie about astronauts, floating in space.

  He opened the tatty curtains of the morning to another snowfall. They flung their bags in the boot. Breakfast was a brace of snatched coffees and Danish pastries bought from the Take a Break service station and consumed in the car. This time Adam drove. His driving was faster than hers; they talked about the past as he took the curves at speed.

  ‘So. Banking?’ He changed gear to come off the motorway. Listening to her story.

  ‘I enjoyed it, at first. Moving south, living in London: it’s a great city. And bankers and brokers are much maligned, I like them, they are honest. Authentic. They’re just greedy. Like sharks. There’s no agenda, nothing hidden.’

  ‘What happened then? You left because …?’

  ‘Got bored. And … the lifestyle was … hard partying. Champagne and coke. I got … I had …’ Her face was blank but pained. ‘I had a wee bit of a breakdown. Year ago. Anyhow, that’s when I came back to Scotland. Trying to think of what to do with my life. Something worthwhile. If there is such a thing. That’s my life. Nutshell! Tell me about you, Ad? Why the fuck would anyone leave sunny Oz to come to shivering Britain?’

  He shrugged, overtaking a tractor in the slush. ‘Because it’s the mother ship, isn’t it? For any writer, for any English speaker. London, England, home of the English language. Walk to work where Shakespeare worked! You don’t get that in Sydney.’

  She gazed at him. ‘So there was no other reason, then?’

  He drove in silence for a minute. Had Nina worked him out? Had he given some clue? He struggled with the dilemma; the urge to be honest was as great as his desire for reticence. And Nina had been straight with him, so maybe he should reciprocate.

  ‘OK, there was something else. I was running away. Doing a geographical, as drug addicts say.’

  They skidded through a junction; a melting snowman stared at them, sadly, from a farmhouse garden.

  ‘Running away from what?’

  ‘Death. My girlfriend—’ The words were cold in his mouth, cold and tasteless. ‘I was in love with a girl, Alicia Hagen, and – and – we were about to move in together …’ He swerved, taking a sharp and icy left. ‘And she was … she was run over, crushed, on a bicycle. She was just twenty-four, riding at night.’

  ‘That’s horrible.’

  ‘It was worse than horrible. The police said she had been drinking, like it was her fault a fucking truck driver didn’t see her. And … we’d had a row that night, she went off, she was … she was a little neurotic but I loved her, the only girl I’ve loved and then suddenly she was dead and … and I just couldn’t stay there, not in Sydney, not in Oz. So I ran away from my guilt. From the sadness. Coward that I am. I think the last thing I ever said to her was angry. Angry words.’

  Nina was staring ahead, and saying nothing. Adam switched the radio on. Then he switched it off.

  ‘That’s not cowardice,’ she said. ‘That’s just human.’

  ‘Maybe. Can we talk about something else?’

  They talked about her lack of ambition; about the time he almost got scurvy working on a sheep ranch; about her sister’s rich boyfriend. The conversation brought them the whole way, to the snowy, undulant hills of the North York Moors.

  Wrapping themselves in jackets and scarves, they scrunched through the frost-hardened, overnight snow. The wooded path led to a bleak hillside, where rooks cawed in black alarm at their app
roach. Adam got the book out, and they looked around: at the snow and the grey-black dead leaves, and the crows, and the nothingness.

  And then they headed back for the car. There was indeed nothing to see in Westerdale. Adam checked the book. Archibald McLintock was quite right. ‘Scant traces remain …’

  So why did he come here?

  Adam drove them across Yorkshire. A revived sense of futility gripped him as they made their way cross country, over motorways, under bridges, through the winter landscapes of city and moorland. He resisted the darker thoughts, and watched the whitened bleak landscape, the crowbound trees.

  Penhill Preceptory is located at the high point of a ridge in the Yorkshire Dales.

  ‘This is it.’

  The map in the book showed them where to go. Uphill a hundred yards.

  ‘Here.’

  ‘Is that all there is?’

  There was almost as much nothing in Penhill Preceptory as in Westerdale. It was just a low ruin of stones, on a freezing cold slope, deep in high and bony Yorkshire countryside. Nina stood shivering in the cold by the scattered remnants as Adam read from her father’s book, his hands numbed by the wind.

  ‘“The main objects of interest are the curious graves.”’

  Nina pointed. ‘He means those?’

  They walked halfway along the largest ruin of wall, and looked down. The curious graves turned out to be odd slots of hollowed-out stone: like small stone coffins embedded in the frozen soil. The coffins were shaped like silhouettes of human corpses, with a narrowing at the neck and a larger space for the head. The effect was sinister.

  Again Adam consulted the book. ‘“These bizarre coffins are almost unique in the British Isles; the only other place where something comparable can be found is in Heysham churchyard, Lancashire, which likewise boasts rock-cut graves, dating to the Dark Ages.”’ Adam paused, and thought, and then read on. ‘“Other than this, Penhill Preceptory is largely ruinous and lacking in great interest, though its spectacular position makes it a delightful place for an historical picnic.”’

  ‘Picnic?’ Nina shook her head. ‘This is just a few wee graves! Just a bunch of nothing. Let’s go. Give me the keys.’

  He handed her the keys and she marched off, stalking down the hill to the car. Adam followed, sensing her frustration, trying to think of some encouraging words. But he couldn’t. Maybe this entire escapade was a silly idea. He felt sorry for her; yet he was mute.

  They climbed a farm gate, and stepped onto the road. Nina pressed her car keys to unlock the doors. And then a voice pierced the cold.

  ‘Nina McLintock?’

  She swivelled. A middle-aged man in a flat cap was staring at them.

  ‘I’m sorry, do I know you?’

  ‘Do forgive me. William Surtees.’ He extended a hand, Nina took it, warily. Adam watched, observant. Always get the details.

  The man was well spoken, tweedy, a rich farmer maybe.

  ‘Sorry, but I knew your father. I recognized the old VW as I was driving by. His car? And you, of course, he used to show me your picture. Such a terrible shame.’

  ‘Dad knew you?’

  ‘Absolutely, yes. I’m so terribly sorry. The way …’ The man looked at Nina, then at Adam. ‘It’s no ending for a man. Suicide. But he was so ill, perhaps …’

  Nina raised a hand.

  ‘My dad was ill?’

  The man, William Surtees, gazed at her, perplexed. ‘Yes of course, ah, yes, your father was dying.’

  19

  TUMP Lab, Zana, north Peru

  The stranger’s coarse, shouting voice was baffled by the fireproof glass in the panel. But his malign intentions were apparent.

  The gun was now circling Dan’s temple. Teasing. Sensual. Malevolent. Waiting. Hungry. The words came quick and angry. Building to a climax.

  What could she do? She couldn’t do nothing; she couldn’t do anything. She was of course unarmed. She couldn’t simply run in.

  Dan was talking now. She strained to hear the muffled words, his fearful responses, but it was said in Spanish, and his voice was quiet, and meek – apologetic. And inaudible. Then the gunman came back, urgent and harsh.

  Again Dan demurred, cowering, shaking his head. More fierce queries from the aggressor. The gun was pressed to Dan’s throat once again. And now the intruder was smiling, eerily; maybe getting off on Dan’s terror. Or smiling with satisfaction at a job nearly done.

  She cringed, hidden behind the door. Waiting for the bang.

  But there was no bang.

  Jess crept up a few inches closer, and stared, again. The gunman was still there. Taunting. Teasing. Dan was now almost on his knees. Begging for his life.

  She could make a phone call, but to whom? Seeking anxiously for her phone, she tried to remember the numbers she’d been told to keep, by Dan when she had first arrived: North Peru is a pretty lawless place, take down these numbers. Police. Hospital. Me. The US embassy …

  What had she done with those numbers? Keyed them into her phone? No. She’d never got around to it. They were in her bag, in a notebook, and her notebook was in the lab.

  In the lab with the man with the gun, who was about to kill Dan.

  The shouts were louder. So loud she could hear them quite clearly.

  ‘¡Dímelo! ¡Necesito la respuesta!’

  Tell me! Give me the answer.

  But I do not know

  Tell me. Or you will die. Here. Like an old pig.

  What can I say? I have never heard of him! Please do not kill me, please do not kill me …

  The intruder scowled, and ceased talking. Jess pressed closer to the thick wire-grilled glass. She didn’t care if she was spotted now. Dan’s voice was supplicant, so frightened, so pleading, she wanted to rush out and save him.

  The man had the gun calmly aimed at Dan’s head. As for a simple execution. Enough: she could bear it no longer. Summoning all her courage, Jess pushed at the door but even as she did, she heard voices from a different door. Jess paused to see. It was Larry and Jay casually walking into the lab. And then gazing in horror at the tall intruder.

  The gunman didn’t waste time. He levelled the gun first at Larry, and then at Jay, wordlessly telling them to back off. They backed off. Then the intruder poised the gun tenderly, this way and that, as if deciding who to shoot first.

  Yet he didn’t fire. Why? Halfway through the door, Jess saw what the gunman had already seen.

  A crowd of villagers was pushing into the room. Jay and Larry had obviously been recruiting: hiring local men, for the dig, as they often did. They’d found a dozen farmers and fishmeal workers; big, dark-skinned Zana men who were staring right back at the gunman, utterly unafraid.

  Now the intruder looked seriously confused. It was a stand-off. The locals gazed at the gunman, daring him, chins uptilted; three of them had drawn machetes, used for cane cutting: the challenge was obvious. You can shoot one of us, maybe two, maybe three – but you can’t kill us all, we will chop you down.

  The tension tautened. The fridges buzzed. The Moche pots stared in reproach across the laboratory.

  The gunman swore. ‘Que chingados! Yo matario tu!’

  But he was edging to the door, and the gun was slack in his hand.

  The tallest villager lifted the machete. ‘Tiratu a un poso!’

  The glinting machete was pointing at the exit, inviting the gunman to go.

  And he was going. Barging through the dark villagers, the gunman pushed his way to the door, and then he slammed the door open and was away down the steps: sprinting. A few seconds later they heard the noise of his car, screeching away very fast, leaving a cloud of dust which was visible from the tall laboratory windows.

  Gone.

  Jay and Larry were already at Dan’s side, helping him to his feet, and sitting him on the stool. He asked, limply, for water. Bewildered, and urgent, Jess fetched water from the fridge. As she took the small bottle of Evian from the refrigerated depths, the Moche skulls smiled a
t her from their yellow foam cushions.

  ‘Thank you,’ Dan said, gazing deep into Jessica’s eyes. His hand was visibly trembling as he tried to open the little water bottle; but he was shivering so much he couldn’t open the bottle. Jess did it for him; he guzzled the water.

  Then someone pushed through the scientists, and poured a liberal measure of the local liquor from a small glass bottle into a plastic cup. Dan looked at it for a moment – and sank the booze.

  ‘Aguardiente?’ The villager with the bottle nodded, quite shyly.

  ‘Gracias, amigo,’ Dan said. ‘Gracias.’

  The villager spoke in a deep Zana voice. You pay us. You feed our children. You are our friends. We are not afraid of guns.

  Dan thanked the villagers again, and then some more. But the men just bowed, and turned solemnly; then they moved to the door, and disappeared.

  Jessica watched as Dan took another gulp of the liquor; he saw her scrutinizing him.

  ‘Jess. Guys. Thanks … I’m OK.’

  Jay was the first to ask, ‘How the hell did he get in?’

  Dan shook his head. ‘The front door. I guess. Just kicked it open?’

  ‘Who was he? How long had he been here?’

  ‘Five minutes. Jess was in the washroom, he just marched in and he pinned me to the wall and … started … asking questions.’

  Jess had so many questions of her own. But her boss – her boyfriend – was maybe too shocked for an interrogation. She looked at Jay. ‘Do we tell the police?’

  Dan shook his head. ‘The police? What can they do? I’ll give them a description, but, eh, how many criminals are there in Peru? Who are they gonna ask? What are they gonna ask? Did you see a tall Peruvian?’

  Larry persisted. ‘So who was he? Race, accent?’

  Dan shrugged.

  ‘Peruvian, probably. Mestizo maybe. South American for sure. Maybe a local villain?’

  ‘A Haquero, perhaps? A graverobber?’

  ‘Could be.’ Dan sighed, and held the cup in his hand as if it was the Holy Grail, the Eucharist. ‘I just don’t know! He stank a little of this stuff, aguardiente. Not too much. Not a total lush. More professional than that.’