The Guardian

by Christopher Kenworthy

  Then she turned out the lights, slipped silently out of the door and made for the doorway to the dungeons.

  *

  Across the courtyard, Sigmund Dark emerged from the low doorway of the gate tower where the duty guards lay face down in the remains of their evening meal, and padded quietly across to the doorway of the staircase which led up to the guards’ quarters higher in the tower. He moved quietly and carefully because it was entirely possible that one of the legionnaires had missed his meal, and he did not want yet to have to use the Uzi.

  There was already an unnatural stillness about the castle which told him that the process of depopulation had begun.

  Kiti he would keep. The rest would have to go. The elimination of Yasmin had been easy enough. She was already deep in an exhausted sleep when he dropped the hydrocyanic acid between her parted lips.

  In a way, he told himself, he had excellent historical precedent. He felt a strange sense of communion with the men, long dead, who had braved the horrors of the Middle Passage. They had started their voyages of adventure by dodging first a terrible death on the Slave Coast and then the summary justice of one of His Majesty’s patrolling frigates to bring the black ivory to the Americas.

  They, too, must have faced heroic decisions like this. On their shoulders alone fell the responsibility for ridding themselves of the incriminating cargoes.

  In their cases, he thought, the decision was easier. A line of blacks along the bulwarks, a length of anchor chain run between their ankles and their leg-irons, and a quick heave over the side.

  He stepped into the bunkroom in the gatehouse and looked around. The normally pristine place smelled, and he wrinkled his nose in disgust.

  Jenkins and Ghosni had died sitting at the table, and the results of their final paroxysms were spread across the table and part of the floor. Dark looked around the room carefully, his face wooden, eyes wary. There should be a third.

  From the door at the far side of the room came the sound of uncontrollable retching, and he stepped fastidiously across the floor and peered through. Built into the tiny turret there was a shower room and latrine. Bent over the toilet bowl, Brinkman was desperately trying to rid himself of the little food he had eaten.

  Sigmund Dark stepped into the room, put the butt of the Uzi against the back of the American’s head and pushed it further into the pan and leaned on it while frenzied struggling told him the man’s face was underwater.

  Expressionless as always, he held it there until the writhing limbs straightened and relaxed in death. He ran the steel outline gun butt under the tap to clean it, and wiped it on a blanket from one of the bunks.

  He surveyed the darkened court yard with extreme care before he stepped out and made his way silently across to the door of the dungeons.

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  Carver had run into an unexpected problem. None of the slaves in the cells wanted to be liberated, and two of them had made determined attempts to maim him for trying.

  He stood outside the hastily slammed door in the lower corridor and heard a vicious kick land on the inside of it. The grunt of pain and the sound of a man hopping around on one foot while nursing the other went some way towards soothing his indignant rage – but not all the way.

  He went back to the staircase to consult Amy, and met her backing down the corridor with her shotgun held in front of her. When he stopped her, she spun round and rammed the gun into his stomach.

  “Hey! Cool it!” he said, startled.

  “It’s him!” she hissed through clenched teeth.

  “Who?”

  “The Master! Coming down the stairs!”

  Carver took the shotgun off her and went to the stairwell. The landing was empty.

  Gingerly, he put his head out into the central well of the spiral and looked up. The stairs were empty, too.

  He eased his way out onto the steps. From above, he could hear a foot scrape, and then another. Someone was moving around and in this place; it could only be an enemy.

  Moving like a raiding Kiowa, he ghosted up the steps, the shotgun held in his right hand against the wall. As he reached the level of the girls’ cells, he flattened himself against the wall, and peeped round the doorframe at floor height.

  Immediately in front of his eyes was a slender female ankle and bare foot. He followed up the line of a pair of tight stretched jeans and sweatshirt and looked into the barrel of his own Desert Eagle pointing down at him.

  He was expected to freeze, and so did quite the opposite.

  Still in silence, he grabbed at the ankle and jerked, hard.

  Kiti hit the ground with a solid thump and dropped the automatic, which clattered but mercifully did not go off. Carver winced at the idea of that supercharged slug whining around the stairwell.

  For a moment she kicked viciously at him, then stopped and surprisingly put her finger to her lips.

  “Gehn?” said Sigmund Dark’s voice from above.

  Carver gave a kick and landed on top of Kiti, hand reaching for her mouth. But the girl was making no attempt to shout. Instead, she was making frenzied signals to him to be quiet.

  They lay there silent while Dark called again, then the sound of an opening door interrupted them.

  “Gehn?” said Dark again. Then there was an exclamation and the sound of muttering. Kiti swore in a hissing breath right into Carver’s ear, and heaved at him impatiently.

  Warily, he slid away from her and they lay together in the corridor, listening to the noises from above. There was the sound of a door being closed and the muttering stopped.

  “Is there a camera in this corridor?” he hissed into her ear.

  She shook her head.

  “Only in the cells.”

  “What is happening?”

  “By now he knows you are free. But he does not know where you are,” she said.

  “Gehn is in the control room. He has a gun,” Carver told her. She nodded, impatiently.

  “I know. I brought you your own gun. The Master has gone mad. He wants to kill everybody and escape with me. I think now he has come here to kill the slaves as well, though he told me he had decided to let the sale go ahead.”

  “No, he won’t want to kill everyone,” Carver told her. “It is too late, the police know who he is and where he is, and he is aware of that. There is no point in killing all the slaves, and he will never let the profit escape him. He will stage the last sale and then disappear.”

  What she really meant was “If he is going to kill everybody else, he will probably kill me, too.” Carver understood her message.

  He stood up.

  “What made you change sides?”

  “I hate him. I have always hated him. And he killed Yasmin.”

  “Yasmin? The scarred girl?”

  Tears filled her eyes.

  “I loved her. He killed her because she was marked. He kills every one who is not perfect.”

  “Yeah,” said Carver. “I know. Why didn’t you do something about him before?”

  “And be alone with Josef? And Gehn? He is nearly as bad.”

  He nodded, thinking: “Also, he was not going to kill me before.” But there was not time to investigate further. He either trusted her or killed her.

  He could do with a recruit.

  “We must find Irene. The slaves won’t leave, I’ve been asking them and I nearly got my head kicked in for trying. But Irene wasn’t in the cells. Do you know where she is hidden?”

  She stared at him for a long moment.

  “She isn’t dead already, is she?”

  She shook her head.

  “Not dead, no. But sold. She went to Beziers, days ago. LeCorbiere wanted her.”

  “That was what you pointed out to him on the file when I asked about her, wasn’t it?”

  A nod.

  He sat down with his back against the wall for a long time, and then he reached out and picked up the big automatic f
rom the floor.

  Methodically, he checked the loads, and then slipped it into his belt and picked up the shotgun.

  “And we wasted time to get here on Saturday,” he said. “Will LeCorbiere come to the sale?”

  “Yes, always,” she said.

  “Will he bring her with him?”

  “Probably. She is a secretary as well as everything else. He will be training her to run his life and business.”

  “Then we will make sure the sale takes place,” he said.

  Kiti watched him from wary eyes.

  “What will you do?”

  He got to his feet and stared down at her.

  The look in his flat, green eyes made her stomach turn over.

  “I’m going to get Dark and Gehn down into the exercise room. Find some way of getting those people out of the cells and down the hill to the main road,” he said. “After tomorrow, there ain’t gonna be no Château Bram no more.”

  And then he was gone.

  Kiti flattened herself into the doorway of the nearest cell and began to compose her speech.

  *

  In the control room, Gehn and Dark together worked methodically through the screens, noting the presence of Lefeu and Ducher in the torture chamber, the empty exercise room, the excited state of the slaves in their cells.

  “They are in the slaves’ corridors,” said Dark. “That is why they are restless. We must get them out and down to the exercise room. Then we can lock them onto the lower level and leave them there until after the sale tomorrow. It is only a matter of hours now.”

  Gehn shook his head dubiously.

  “We would need grenades to get them out of the tunnels. I am not sure the cell doors would stand the explosions in that space,” he said.

  Dark grinned. “Percussion grenades are very nasty in an enclosed space and they wouldn’t do the doors any damage. I have half a dozen here.”

  He put down the bag he had been carrying. Gehn opened it and brought out the grenades, checking the priming on each. When he put them down, he was looking thoughtful.

  “You armed these yourself?”

  Dark gave him a slantendicular look.

  “They are properly armed and can be relied upon,” he said in excellent German.

  “I know,” said Gehn, expressionlessly. But behind his faded blue eyes was a newly wary expression. He had no idea his employer was a man versed in the use of the tools of modern warfare. The image of Dark as a warrior was new to him and uncomfortable.

  Dark himself was busy. He opened a panel to the side of the television screens and turned a key in a look. A red bulb began to glow.

  “See the switches here?”

  Gehn leaned forward and looked.

  “The right hand one drops a steel gate outside the exercise room. The left hand does the same thing this side of the slaves’ corridors,” said Dark. “They can be raised only with a hand crank, or the use of a fail-safe switch this side of the gates. Once they are down, whatever is the other side of them stays where it is.”

  Gehn nodded. He had been unaware of the gates until now.

  He wondered if there were similar ones outside the guardroom and the mens’ quarters, and made a mental note not to be trapped inside either with his employer on the outside.

  “Go down to the next level with the grenades and drop them into the corridors. Keep back from the edge of the landing, so they can’t shoot at you. Then lie down so the percussion won’t affect you.”

  Gehn shook his head.

  “The way to do this is to swing them in, sir. I couldn’t stand on the landing down there without being in their line of fire.Will you cover me while I get upstairs?”

  Dark fired a burst from his Uzi into the stairwell, and Gehn was out and up the stairs to the courtyard before the bullets had stopped singing in the shaft. There was no reaction from below.

  Five minutes later there was a scratch at the door, and Dark opened it. Gehn fell through just as a blast from the stairs sleeted the doorway with shot.

  Gehn grunted painfully and dropped onto the bench a hank of thin rope.

  “I think he hit me, sir. Can you see?” He turned his back and Dark saw a pattern of holes and spreading dark patch on the back of the tan shirt.

  “There are some holes. Take off your shirt.”

  Gehn pulled the shirt off his shoulders, and Dark saw the gouges across his back from the buckshot. Two of the marks were shallow, like the scratches of some vicious claw. But two were punctures. Gehn was carrying the shot inside him.

  “Creases,” he said. “They’ve cut your back. Stand still and I’ll fix them for now.”

  He opened the control room’s first aid cupboard, dabbed iodine and covered the cuts with plaster. There was a pack of morphine ampoules in the box as well, and he injected one into Gehn’s shoulder.

  “You’ll be stiff and very sore soon. But keep off the morphine as much as possible. It will make you drowsy. Keep going for another few hours and you can have yourself seen to in the best clinic around. You’ll be a rich man by then.”

  Or I’ll be dead, thought Gehn, and made a private resolution that if death came he would not meet it alone.

  He cut four lengths of cord, and knotted them round the necks of the grenades, under the priming handle. Then he coiled each length tidily and laid them separately on the bench. He could not afford a tangle.

  Taking Sigmund Dark’s submachine gun, he eased the door open and fired a short burst.

  It was answered with a blast from the shotgun, which he had expected, and in the second after it, he pulled the pin from the first grenade, held onto the end of the cord, and lobbed it over the edge of the landing.

  The bomb flew out in an arc, until the cord checked its parabola when it cut back sharply – directly in line with the tunnel mouth below the landing.

  Gehn, counting under his breath, let go of the rope when the weight of the grenade hit the end of the line, stepped back into the control room, and slammed the door. The sharp crack of the explosion came instantly.

  As it did so, he was out again with the second grenade primed and already swinging. There was smoke in the stairwell, and the smell of explosives.

  The second grenade followed the first, and when Gehn came out onto the landing for the third swing, he could hear stumbling steps on the stairs below him just before the grenade went off.

  He risked a glance over the edge, but there was too much smoke to see anything clearly.

  He stepped back into the control room and glanced at the television screens. Dark was watching the slaves’ screens intently.

  “They didn’t like the grenades,” he said. “But they don’t appear physically harmed, either.”

  Gehn grimaced.

  “Try the exercise room, sir,” he said.

  Dark flicked the switch, but the screen went blank and stayed blank.

  “Lock the door, sir. They’re in there,” said Gehn, and Sigmund Dark hit the button.

  From below came a loud clang, and a woman screamed. Dark raised an eyebrow.

  “It would appear you are right,” he said.

  “Congratulations.”

  Gehn gave him a savage smile, and went to the landing.

  The smoke was hanging in the stairwell, but the lights behind their armoured glass shields were still visible, and he could see the rock steps dimly.

  Moving with infinite caution, he inched his way down to the opening of the girls’ corridor. It was empty, though the grenades had left marks on the walls and doors. The corridor light was shattered.

  He made his way to the next corridor, and checked that.

  It was undamaged, but empty.

  That left only the stairwell and the lower chambers themselves.

  He stood out on the stair and called up to his employer, and Dark joined him.

  “They are below, sir,” said Gehn.

  Dark nodded.

  “Go d
own and check that they are all behind the gate. Be careful not to expose yourself. The gate is only bars,” he said.

  Gehn shrugged, and then winced. He was becoming aware that the paralysis of shock was wearing off and he could feel the wounds in his back even through the morphine.

  But this was what he had been paid for. He descended the rest of the stairs, and surveyed the entrance to the exercise room.

  The door had been closed, and in front of it was a massive gate of iron bars as thick as his thumb. It filled the doorway to the exercise room, a foot from the door itself. He could see the grooves in which it ran. Nothing short of explosives or a power winch could shift it.

  He remounted the stairs and reported to his employer.

  Dark smiled slowly.

  “In that case,” he said, “we can continue with our business. Come.”

  He led the way up the stairs to where the dawn was already pinking the sky to the east in the birth of a new, and glorious day.

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  Carver waited until he could hear nothing, then inched open the door to the exercise room. It moved a few inches and then stuck. He threw his weight against it, but it remained immovable. In the small gap between door and a jamb he cold see a sliver of the stairwell, and two horizontal strips of metal.

  “He has dropped the gate,” said Kiti calmly. “We are locked in here. He and Gehn have gone to calm the boys and girls. Then they will carry on with the sale.”

  “Gate?” said Carver. “What gate?”

  “You can’t see it when it’s up, the bottom strip fits into a recess in the door frame,” said Kiti. “It’s part of his secret security system. It drops in front of the door and you can’t get out. There’s another at the top of the stairs in case the boys and girls ever broke out. The switch is in the control room. But there is a release by the door as well.”

  Carver swore bitterly. “So we’re trapped. Why didn’t you tell me about the gate?”

  “Where else could we have gone? It was a miracle we happened to be in the boys’ corridor instead of the girls’ when he dropped the bombs,” she said practically.

  It was true, and Carver acknowledged the fact. He glanced up at the ruined television camera – blinding Dark’s eye in the ceiling had been his first act on arriving – and then started a methodical check of the room.