by David Gilman
The hermit pointed to a tiny dab of light beneath his beard. Another star. Next to his neck.
Max touched the pendant at his throat.
Bobby Morrell had run for his life. The sand slowed him, but he was strong and athletic enough to ignore it. Besides, high-octane fear drove his muscles towards the sea. The one place of safety. The dark waters would swallow him, his wet suit the perfect camouflage. And Bobby could swim a long way underwater. Up and over a sand dune, across the last stretch to where the moonlight corrugated the beach. The tide was high, he’d make it, no problem, then he’d warn Max. He didn’t know how, but he’d stay out in the sea until these thugs beat it. Then swim for the rocky headland. He’d find a way.
In those first few strides he had screamed Peaches’s name. Yelled at the top of his lungs into the night. Telling her to run. Telling her to hide. But the attack came fast and took him by surprise. They’d been hiding in the trees and bushes near the dunes. The motocross bikes coughed once, throttles turned, wheels churned sand. They leapt from the darkness, wolves hunting a vulnerable animal.
He was in the shallows, but they were already on him. Wheels sprayed wet sand. Well-rehearsed, they crisscrossed him, one from the left, another from the right. There was a faltering moment when he couldn’t move, and a third biker knocked the wind out of him.
Bobby sprawled, face slamming into wet sand. The sea was tantalizingly close. He breathed through the pain, pushed his feet into the sucking sand and lunged for the water.
They let him make three, four strides and then powered their bikes into the shallows. One of them held a club, or a stick, he couldn’t see; his eyes focused on the beckoning refuge. He needed deep water.
The blow spun him around. The back of his head hit the water. He went under, gagged. Salt water flooded his nose and mouth; gritty sand choked him. Gasping for air, he was struck by the irony taunting him. You’re gonna die in six inches of water!
Someone grabbed his wet suit, hauled his face out of the water and shook him. He spluttered, regained his breath. The faceless figure, silhouetted by the moon, hissed with pleasure.
“We’re not finished with you yet,” the twisted mouth said.
Unless anyone had ever felt the grip of a crashing six-meter wave, its hungry power pummeling you below the surface, they couldn’t know the strength of someone who spent every spare moment in the water. Bobby twisted hard and fast. His fist, clutching wet sand, slammed into the boy’s head, whose cry of surprise and pain made him release the hand that gripped him.
Like a seal escaping a killer whale, Bobby slithered free and struck out for deeper water. Within seconds he was swimming. The bikes couldn’t follow him now. He kept going. Head down, a crawl stroke, breathe, pound the water, breathe. Keep going! Gotta warn Max. Gotta warn him!
He twisted, pushed his back against the swell and faced the shore. He’d put a couple of hundred yards between him and the bikers. They weren’t going anywhere; they just stared at the sea, watching him.
He laughed. If they were waiting for him to tire they had a long night ahead of them. Bobby Morrell could swim like a dolphin. He’d cut across the headland, get ashore by the rocks and into the grassland behind the chateau. The distant crashing waves muted the sound of an engine. At first he didn’t under stand. It couldn’t be a motorbike.
He turned.
Slicing through the water, the speedboat was coming straight for him. They’d had a backup, and with this moon they didn’t need a searchlight. He was an easy target. The boat roared around him, the waves bobbing him even more clearly for them to see. It turned again and thundered in for the kill.
He ducked his head, pulled himself underwater and kicked, praying the propellers wouldn’t mangle him. The muted roar of the powerful outboard reverberated through the water, and the shock wave plucked at him. He broke the surface, sucked air and swam. The boat was turning, lining up another attack; he had to keep going for the headland. But he’d miscalculated. The boat had spun so quickly it was already bearing down on him. The engines slowed. Too much speed had made them overshoot their target on the last run. But the thumping power was still enough to finish him.
If he was to survive he had to know when the hit was coming. He turned, faced the boat, waited, took a deep breath and, when it was three yards away, kicked hard to one side. But it was not enough. The boat cuffed him. His ribs cracked. Pain. He gasped, swallowed water and rolled, clearing his lungs of water.
Cold reality bit like a blade.
He wasn’t going to make it. He was going to die.
They circled him slowly, engines barely ticking over, gazing disinterestedly as the dark sea began to claim him.
He saw the boat ease alongside, a yard away. Help me. They watched. Unmoving. Help me. Please. Had they heard him? Were the words only in his head? One of the men in the boat handled a spear-ended boat hook, raising it like a lance. The men were grinning. They were going to spear him like an injured fish.
The man lunged.
Bobby felt the tip pierce his wet suit and the hook catch his skin. Water slipped across his face, which dipped below the surface, then bobbed free again. He gazed at the shining orb that blessed the darkness with its light.
The man in the moon was smiling.
Mocking him.
13
Max pulled the pendant over his head and gazed at the blind stone. Twirling the brass ring between his fingers, he turned it against the moonlight and then the dim ceiling light, but nothing revealed itself to him. So if the pendant sat as a star on the hermit’s neck, what did the other two stars in the painting signify? Max knew he was pushing his luck. It was getting late.
“Sayid, I need to have a look through there.”
Sayid slid the wooden chair backwards and rolled himself free of the contraption.
“Be my guest. I can’t see much. That’s the trouble with stars-they’re too far away. And the moon’s so bright. I’ve angled it away a bit, but it’s still too bright to see much.”
Max slid into the seat, pulled himself under the telescope’s angled eyepiece and began to focus. He squinted his eye across the eyepiece and tilted the barrel of the telescope down to where he hoped the Pyrenees would come into view. It was too sharp a movement; the magnification blurred everything. He tried again and the glaring moon, escaping the cloud cover, made his eye water. This was going to take more time than he had available. He tried again, promising himself no more than a few minutes to sweep the skies.
He focused and refocused, changed angle and direction, but nothing obvious presented itself. As he lifted his head away in frustration, ready to quit, the pendant swung loose on its cord, tapped the eyepiece, almost snagging it.
He tucked it back into the sweat rag, but with his face further away from the eyepiece, he saw there were grooves etched inside it. Something like a camera lens that you screwed filters onto. But this diameter was small.
Pulling the pendant free again, he slipped it over his head and fingered the brass ring. It fit perfectly. Careful not to cross-thread it, he turned it until it sat snugly in the eyepiece.
He looked through at what now revealed itself to be a polished, opaque crystal. Backlit by the moon’s glow, numbers and a diagram, both blurred, were visible, etched into its surface.
The blind stone had revealed its treasure.
“Sayid!” he whispered, without taking his eye from the viewfinder. “Write these numbers down. Quick.”
Sayid pulled out the piece of paper with the magic square on it.
“OK,” Sayid said.
“There’s a space between each of these … seven, then twenty-four and eight. Then a dash. Then ten, four, nine, twelve, twenty-five. Another dash. Yeah?”
“Got it.”
“Then seven, eleven, nine and seventeen. That’s the lot.”
Sayid repeated the numbers, with all their spaces and the dashes.
Max could see something else but it was blurred. Whoever had etched these ti
ny inscriptions onto this stone must have spent hour after patient hour doing it-it was the work of a craftsman. Or a determined scientist.
Max eased the eyepiece slightly, refocusing it. Now the numbers became blurred but the rest of the drawing revealed itself.
He looked up at Sayid. “There’s a drawing etched on this thing. Get me something to write on, will you?”
Max put his face back down to the eyepiece as Sayid grabbed one of the old brown files from the shelf, tore it down its middle and gave it, and his pen, to him.
Sayid stopped. “I think I heard something,” he said quietly.
“Like what?”
Sayid shook his head. They listened. It was silent, except for the eerie moaning of the wind torturing the gargoyles.
“Stay at the door. You hear anything definite, tell me. I need more time.”
Sayid moved to the doorway as Max put his eye back to the telescope.
Max put the folder on his lap and drew what he saw using his other eye. It was a long-sided triangle in a circle. Very similar in shape to, if not the same as, the drawing he had found earlier. But there was a single letter at each point of this triangle-E, S and Q.
Max had the next part of the secret. The vital element of the dying monk’s legacy. In less than a minute he had drawn a rough copy. He unscrewed the pendant from the eyepiece and folded the file’s cover in half, tucking it into his jacket pocket.
Time to go!
He pulled himself free of the sliding chair, closed the louvered window and walked quickly to Sayid.
“Sayid, I’ve got it. We’re getting out of here.”
Too late!
Max saw the ghostly image of a man walking up the stairs towards them. It was the German. And he was smiling. Max realized he was the one who had switched off the alarm system.
“That’s good, Max. We could not find it.”
Max realized with a sickening lurch that he and the woman must have known he would be at the chateau today. How? Who had told them? It didn’t matter right now. Max had played into their hands and they had waited in the darkness, giving him all the time he needed to try and work out Zabala’s secret.
The shock lasted no longer than the words spoken. Max got between the approaching German and Sayid, shoved Bobby’s mobile phone into Sayid’s hand and pushed him towards the chateau’s main bedroom. “Go, Sayid! Phone Bobby!”
Sayid didn’t argue and, like a stick insect in fear of its life, loped away on his crutches.
The man stopped, shook his head and lit a cigarette.
“Max, there’s nowhere to go.” He stopped midstairs, gazed upwards and shrugged, watching the smoke drift lazily into the moonlit stairwell. “I am not alone.”
Out of the darkness two figures bounded up the stairs past the nonchalant man. Bikers. One armed with a motorcycle chain, the other with some kind of short iron bar-a wheel brace. They were going to hurt Max and Sayid badly. There was no sign of Sharkface, but Max recognized the tough-looking teenagers as being part of his gang.
“Don’t kill him. Not yet. Go for the injured boy first,” the German called.
If they got to Sayid, they would inflict so much pain on his friend that Max would sell his soul to have them stop.
But he wasn’t ready to turn and run. In trouble? Always do the unexpected, Max. Dad’s voice. Max smiled. It checked them. “A length of chain and a wheel brace? Think again, porridge brains.”
Grabbing an Ethiopian shield and a set of lethal-looking antelope horns off the wall, he attacked, jumping down the top three stairs and smashing into the dumbstruck bikers. The German turned and ran, one of the bikers tumbling head over heels after him, catching the back of the man’s legs, crashing the bodies down together. The German yelled in pain and anger.
The second biker regained his balance and swung the chain hard towards Max’s head. Max ducked, turned his shoulder, raised his arm, felt and heard the power of the blow clattering across the shield, and lunged. The boy’s eyes widened as Max went for his throat. The fear served Max well; it was exactly what he wanted. The boy faltered, took a step backwards, found himself trapped against the banister-as Max drove the attack home. The horns went to each side of the boy’s neck, pinning him next to one of the monster creatures carved into the main staircase. A flicker of shadow and light, its eyes gleamed, as if relishing the helplessness of the boy held so close to its jaws.
No sooner had the biker been pinned than a whisper of air came out of the darkness. Max spun, raised the leather shield-a knife thudded into it.
The German’s voice cried out a command from the pit of darkness below: “We need him alive!”
But the pounding of more feet told Max that kids don’t always do what they’re told by adults, no matter how much they’re being paid. The first figures moved into the light. He could see the knives in their hands now, the moonlight glinting on dull metal. Max was defenseless except for the shield. They would soon get through that. He turned to run, but a twang and a shuddering impact into the wall stopped him dead in his tracks. An arrow had pierced the half-light just in front of the attackers. Max looked up. Sayid stood awkwardly against the balustrade, a short African hunting bow in his hands-and let another arrow fly down the stairwell. It thudded into one of the silently screaming gargoyles’ heads. The bikers faltered, holding back, keeping themselves out of sight. Max seized his chance.
In a few strides he was at Sayid’s side. “That’s all the arrows there were,” Sayid said, trembling with the effort, fear and excitement.
Max was already bundling him back towards the chateau’s main bedroom. He had done enough to stop the savages for a few moments.
“You saved my neck there, Sayid.”
Sayid smiled. “I did?”
“Yeah. Though another couple of centimeters closer and it would have gone through my neck.”
“I’ve never fired a bow before,” Sayid said as Max shoved the door closed behind them.
“I’d never have guessed,” Max said through gritted teeth as he pushed a big piece of antique blackwood furniture across the door. It took all his strength to shift it, but the fear of who was coming up the stairs helped his efforts.
“There’s no reply from Bobby’s phone,” Sayid said.
“Then we’ll make it up as we go along,” Max said, but he wasn’t smiling. They were in real trouble now without any backup.
Satisfied the piece would keep anyone from forcing the door for a while, he took his bearings. Could they hide here? Heavy furniture, cabinets and tables supported by legs of twisted wood; a leopard skin on the polished floor. Latticed windows, a chaise longue, a boxed bed, the wooden sides almost touching the ground. There was nowhere they could conceal themselves and not be found in seconds. Heavy blue curtains draped the bed and windows; a door led to a dressing room. It was almost pitch-black in there.
Grunts and shouts came from the other side of the bedroom door. They were pushing hard. The furniture shifted a few centimeters.
Max gripped the lip of a big table and heaved it in place. That would buy precious minutes. All those curtains! They had to be of some help. Max snatched at the corded tiebacks, his eye catching the benevolent stare of Antoine d’Abbadie and his wife, Virginie, their gold-framed portraits gazing down above the black marble fireplace. Max felt a twinge of guilt for the ugly stench of brutality he had brought into the eccentric man’s home. The concerted effort of that brutality, banging and shouting behind the door, that was trying to reach Max and Sayid.
“Sayid!”
Max nodded towards the small dressing room. Sayid hesitated-they’d be found if they hid in there! But Max was already tying all the cords together, making a rope. Sayid knew Max would have a reason for his command, and he did not want to face the violence that threatened them outside the door. He did as he was told.
Once in the small room Sayid saw there were doors leading to a balcony behind the room’s heavy curtains. Max was ahead of the game-he’d already seen th
e terrace on the chateau’s plans. Sayid opened the doors while Max feverishly pressed his palms across the small room’s paneled walls. He found the latch he was searching for. A click. A narrow door creaked open, revealing a passage: a slender tunnel of blackness leading into the body of the building.
“Servants’ corridor,” Max said quickly. “Right. Get ready.”
Max joined Sayid outside, drawing the curtains and shutting the doors behind him-the German and the bikers might waste valuable seconds before they realized there was a balcony.
Sayid’s mouth was dry. His voice croaked in a worried whisper, “Ready for what?”
Max dropped a meter of the homemade rope over the edge and coaxed Sayid forward. “Dead easy,” he said. “All you have to do is clamber over the balcony, put your good foot into this loop and I lower you down. Smell that sea air? That’s freedom.”
Some of the curtain tiebacks were broad swathes of strong material and Max had fashioned a loop with one of them at the end of the cord. He smiled. “No rush. Take your time,” he said with a comforting, though false, calmness.
A huge thump against the door convinced Sayid to clamber over the balcony. Knuckles white with tension, he nodded. Crutches gripped in one hand, the other holding the rope, he eased his good foot into the sling.
Max took the cord across his back and braced his legs for Sayid’s weight. “Step off gently. There-got you,” he whispered.
The cord bit into Max’s back, but he lengthened the rope half a meter at a time, then allowed his legs to walk forward slowly towards the balustrade, taking the strain in his thigh muscles. Sayid was still a couple of meters off the ground. The cord was too short! Max leaned his body across the balcony’s rail to try and give Sayid the extra length that his own body provided. The rope burned into his back, and it felt as though the skin on his hands would tear from his bones. Sweat ran off him, and the railing pressed against his bruised rib. He had to let go, he couldn’t hold on any longer. Sayid would smash his leg. He’d failed.