The Dark River fr-2

by John Twelve Hawks

  Gabriel had told Jugger he was staying at a drum shop in the Camden Market. Maya assumed that both Linden and Mother Blessing were guarding the Traveler. For the rest of the day, she watched the entrance to the catacombs until Hollis arrived at the shop. Mother Blessing would have killed her for disobedience, but Hollis was a friend. He would arrange everything so she could safely see Gabriel.

  She was standing on the roof when Linden came out of the brick tunnel that led to the catacombs. With a sword carrier hanging from his left shoulder, the Harlequin strolled off to have breakfast at a café that overlooked the canal. Hollis came out of the tunnel ten minutes later and waved his arms. All clear.

  HOLLIS LED HER past the drums and the African carvings to a cold little room where Gabriel’s body lay on the bed. Kneeling on the concrete floor beside the bed, Maya took Gabriel’s hand. She knew he was still alive, but she felt like a widow touching her dead husband. Maya had seen the saint’s book on Skellig Columba and studied the illuminated paintings of hell. She had no doubt that Gabriel had gone there to search for his father.

  All the skills Thorn and the other Harlequins had taught her seemed useless at that moment. There was no one to fight, no guarded castle with stone walls and iron gates. She would make any sacrifice to save Gabriel, but no sacrifice could be made.

  The steel door to the apartment squeaked open. Hollis looked surprised. “Is that you, Winston?”

  Maya jumped to her feet and drew her gun. Silence. And then Linden appeared in the bedroom doorway. The big man kept his hands in his pockets and smiled slightly. “Are you going to shoot me, Maya? Always remember to aim a bit lower. When people are nervous, they aim too high.”

  “We didn’t know who it was.” Maya slid the revolver back in its holster.

  “I thought you might come here. Mother Blessing told me you had an attachement sentimental to Gabriel Corrigan. When you switched off your satellite phone, I realized you had probably left the island.”

  “Did you tell her?”

  “No. She’s going to be angry enough when she shows up on Skellig Columba and finds a Traveler guarded by an American girl and some nuns.”

  “I had to see him.”

  “Was it worth it?” Linden straddled the only chair in the room. “He’s as lost as his father. There’s nothing there but a shell.”

  “I’m going to save Gabriel,” Maya said. “I just need to find a way.”

  “That’s impossible. He’s gone. Vanished.”

  Maya thought before speaking again. “I need to talk to someone who knows as much as possible about the realms. Do you know anyone here in England?”

  “It’s not our concern, Maya. The rule is, we guard Travelers only in this world.”

  “I don’t care about the rules. ‘Cultivate Randomness.’ Isn’t that what Sparrow wrote? Maybe it’s time to do something different, because this strategy isn’t working.”

  Hollis spoke for the first time. “She’s got a point, Linden. Right now, Michael Corrigan is the only Traveler in this world, and he’s working for the Tabula.”

  “Help me, Linden. Please. All I need is a name.”

  The French Harlequin stood up and began to leave the room. When he reached the doorway, he stopped and shifted his weight from one foot to the other like a man trying to pick the right pathway on a dark night.

  “There are several experts on the realms who live in Europe, but there’s only person we can trust. His name is Simon Lumbroso. He was your father’s friend. As far as I know, he’s still in Rome.”

  “My father never had any friends. You know that as well as I do.”

  “That’s the word Thorn used,” Linden said. “You should go to Rome and find out for yourself.”

  32

  Hollis was making a cup of coffee in the hidden apartment when Linden walked in from the drum shop carrying a satellite phone. “I just heard from Mother Blessing. She’s on Skellig Columba.”

  “I bet she wasn’t happy when she found out that Maya was gone.”

  “The conversation was very brief. I told her you had arrived in London and she requested that you come to the island.”

  “Does she want me to guard Matthew Corrigan’s body?”

  Linden nodded. “That’s a logical conclusion.”

  “What about Vicki?”

  “She didn’t mention Mademoiselle Fraser.”

  Hollis poured a cup of coffee for the French Harlequin and placed it on the kitchen table. “You’ve got to tell me how to travel to Ireland, and I’ll need a boat to take me to the convent.”

  “Madam said that she wanted you on the island as soon as possible. So…I’ve made other arrangements.”

  HOLLIS QUICKLY DISCOVERED that “other arrangements” meant chartering a private helicopter to fly to the island. Two hours later, Winston Abosa drove him out to White Waltham-a small airfield with a grass runway near Maidenhead in Berkshire. Carrying a manila envelope filled with cash, Hollis was met in the parking lot by a pilot in his sixties. There was something about the man’s appearance-the short haircut and straight-backed posture-that suggested a military background.

  “Are you the client going to Ireland?” the pilot asked.

  “That’s right. I’m-”

  “I don’t want to know who you are. But I do want to see the money.”

  HOLLIS HAD THE feeling that the pilot would have flown Jack the Ripper to a girls’ school if there had been enough euros in the envelope. Ten minutes later, the helicopter was in the air and heading west. The pilot was quiet except for a few terse comments to air traffic controllers. His only expression of personality was revealed in the aggressive way he roared over of a line of hills, swooping down a green valley where each field was defined by a stone wall. “You can call me Richard,” he said at one point, but he never asked Hollis for his name.

  Pushed by an eastern wind, they crossed the Irish Sea and refueled at a small airport near Dublin. As they flew across the countryside, Hollis looked down and saw haystacks, little clusters of homes, and narrow roads that rarely seemed to go in a straight line. When they reached the west coast of Ireland, Richard removed his sunglasses and began glancing at a GPS device in the instrument panel. He stayed low enough to pass a flock of pelicans flying in a V formation. Directly below the birds, waves surged upward and collapsed into white foam.

  Finally, the two jagged spires of Skellig Columba came into view. Richard circled the island until he saw a white strip of cloth fluttering from a pole. He hovered over this improvised flag for a minute, and then landed on a patch of flat, rocky ground. When the propeller stopped moving, Hollis could hear wind whistling through a crack in the air vent.

  “There’s a group of nuns on this island,” Hollis said. “I’m sure they’d be glad to give you a cup of tea.”

  “My instructions were to stay in the helicopter,” Richard said. “And I’ve been paid a certain premium to follow those instructions.”

  “Suit yourself. You might want to hang around for a while. There’s an Irishwoman who probably wants to go back to London.”

  Hollis got out of the helicopter and looked down the rocky slope at the convent. Where’s Vicki? he thought. Didn’t they tell her I was coming?

  Instead of Vicki, he saw Alice running toward the helicopter, followed by a nun and-several yards back-a woman with dark red hair. Alice reached him first and stepped up on a rock so that they would be on the same level. Her hair was tangled and her boots were covered with mud.

  “Where’s Maya?” Alice asked.

  It was the first time Hollis had ever heard her voice. “Maya is in London. She’s okay. Nothing to worry about.”

  Alice jumped off the rock and continued up the slope, followed by a plump nun with a flushed face. The nun nodded at him, and he saw a hint of sadness in her eyes. But then she was gone and he was facing Mother Blessing.

  The Irish Harlequin wore black wool pants and a leather jacket. She looked smaller than Hollis had imagined, and had a pro
ud, imperious look on her face. “Welcome to Skellig Columba, Mr. Wilson.”

  “Thanks for the helicopter ride.”

  “Did Sister Joan speak to you?”

  “No. Was she supposed to?” Hollis looked down the slope. “Where’s Vicki? That’s who I really came to see.”

  “Yes. Come along.”

  Hollis followed the Harlequin down a pathway to the four beehive-shaped huts on the second terrace. He felt as if a car had crashed and he was going to be shown the wreckage.

  “Have you ever been punched very hard, Mr. Wilson?”

  “Of course. I fought professionally in Brazil.”

  “And how do you survive that?”

  “If you can’t avoid someone’s fist, you try to move with it. If you just stand there like a stone, you’re going to get knocked out.”

  “Good advice to follow,” Mother Blessing said, and she stopped in front of a hut. “Two days ago, the Tabula came to the island with their helicopters. The nuns fled to a cave with the girl, but apparently Miss Fraser stayed here to protect the Traveler.”

  “So where is she? What happened?”

  “This will not be easy, Mr. Wilson. But you may see-if you wish.”

  Mother Blessing opened the door to the hut, but allowed him to go in first. Hollis entered a cold room where cardboard boxes and plastic storage containers had been pushed against the wall. Something was splattered all over the wooden floor. It took him a few seconds to realize it was dried blood.

  Mother Blessing stood behind him. Her voice was as calm and unemotional as if she were talking about the weather. “The Tabula brought splicers with them so they could crawl in through the windows. I’m sure they killed the animals afterward and dropped their bodies into the sea.”

  She motioned to an object covered by a plastic tarp, and Hollis immediately knew it was Vicki. Moving like a sleepwalker, he shuffled over to the body and pulled back the tarp. Vicki was almost unrecognizable, but teeth marks on her legs and arms showed that animals had killed her.

  Hollis stood over the mutilated body, feeling like he had also been destroyed. The left hand was a mass of torn flesh and shattered bone, but Vicki’s right hand was untouched. A heart-shaped silver locket lay in the center of her palm, and Hollis recognized the style immediately. Most of the women in the church wore a similar piece of jewelry. If you opened the locket, you discovered a black-and-white photograph of Isaac Jones.

  “I removed the locket from her neck,” Mother Blessing said. “I thought you might want to see what’s inside.”

  Hollis picked up the locket and pushed his fingernail into the top of the little silver heart. It clicked open. The familiar picture of the Prophet had disappeared, replaced by a piece of white paper. Slowly, he unfolded the paper and smoothed it out on the palm of his hand. Vicki had written seven words with an old-fashioned fountain pen, trying to make each letter perfect: Hollis Wilson is in my heart-always.

  His shock and pain were shoved aside and replaced by anger so extreme that he felt like howling. No matter what happened, he would hunt down the men who had killed her and destroy them all. He would never rest. Never.

  “Have you seen enough?” Mother Blessing asked. “I think it’s time to dig a grave.” When Hollis didn’t answer, she crossed the room and pulled the tarp over the body.

  33

  Maya left the drum shop and went to a cybercafé on Chalk Farm Road. Linden said he trusted one expert on the six realms-an Italian named Simon Lumbroso. A quick search of the Internet showed that a man with that name worked as an art appraiser in Rome. Maya wrote down Lumbroso’s office address and phone number, but didn’t call him. She decided to fly to Rome and meet the person who was supposed to be her father’s friend.

  After making a plane reservation, she took a taxi to the storage locker she kept in East London and picked up a new set of false identification papers. For her trip to Rome, Maya decided to use the safest option, one of her unused OR-IF passports. OR-IF was an acronym for “origin real, identity false.” These passports had been obtained from the government and all the data had been fed into the Vast Machine.

  Maya’s OR-IF identification had taken years to prepare. When she was nine years old, Thorn had obtained the birth certificates for several dead children. All of their “lives” were tended like fruit trees that needed to be occasionally pruned and watered. On paper, the girls had taken their O-levels and received driver’s licenses, started jobs, and applied for credit cards. Maya had kept the documentation current even during the period that she was living on the Grid and trying to act like a citizen.

  When the British government introduced biometric ID cards, the physical data embedded in the e-passports had to match each false identity. Maya had bought special contact lenses that would allow her to handle the airport iris scanners, along with the fragile plastic finger shields that would cover her index fingers. Some of her passports had photographs with her regular face, while others displayed photographs taken after facer drugs changed her appearance.

  Over the years, she had started to regard each passport as a different aspect of her own personality. Her false passport as Judith Strand made her feel like an ambitious professional woman. The passport she was taking to Italy used the name of a dead girl from Brighton named Rebecca Green. Maya had decided that Rebecca was an artistic type who liked electronic music.

  IT WAS TOO dangerous to take a gun on a plane-even in checked luggage-so Maya left her revolver in the locker and carried Gabriel’s talisman sword, along with a stiletto and a throwing knife. All three weapons were hidden inside the steel framework of a folding baby stroller that had been built several years ago by one of her father’s Spanish contacts.

  From Da Vinci airport, she took a taxi into Rome. The heart of Rome could be contained within a triangle set beside the Tiber River. At the base of the triangle were the familiar tourist sites of the Forum and the Coliseum. Maya checked into a hotel near the northern tip of the triangle, close to the Piazza del Popolo. She strapped the knives to her arms and walked south past the mausoleum of Emperor Augustus to the cobblestone streets of the old city.

  The ground floors of the eighteenth-century buildings had been taken over by tourist restaurants and upscale boutiques. Bored salesgirls wearing tight skirts stood outside the little shops and chattered to boyfriends on their cell phones. Avoiding the surveillance cameras around the Parliament building, she entered the square that contained the Pantheon. The huge brick-and-marble building was built by the Emperor Hadrian to be the temple of all the gods. It had stood at the center of Rome for two thousand years.

  Maya passed through the granite columns of the portico. The nervous energy that came from the groups of tourists and their guides dissipated in the domed space. They whispered as they crossed the marble floor and examined Raphael’s tomb. Standing in the middle of the huge temple, Maya tried to come up with a plan. What was she going to say when she met Lumbroso? Could he possibly know some way to rescue Gabriel?

  Something passed through the air and she gazed upward at the oculus-the round opening at the top of the dome. A gray dove was trapped inside the temple and was trying to escape. Desperately flapping its wings, the bird rose through the air in a tight spiral. But the oculus was too far away, and the dove always gave up a few yards from freedom. Maya could see that the dove was getting tired. Each new attempt brought another failure and it kept drifting lower-pulled down by the weight of its exhausted body. The bird was so frightened and desperate that all it could do was keep flying, as if the motion itself would provide a solution.

  The feeling of certainty that had come to her in London seemed to melt away. Feeling weak and foolish, she left the temple and hurried down the street to the crowds that were boarding buses and trolleys near the Teatro Argentino. Maya circled the ruins at the center of the square and entered the maze of narrow streets that used to be the Jewish ghetto.

  The ghetto had once been like East London in the Victorian era-a refuge w
here fugitives could hide and find allies. Jews had lived in Rome since the second century B.C., but in the sixteenth century they were forced to live inside the walled area near the old fish market. Even the Jewish physicians who treated Italian aristocrats could leave the ghetto only during daytime. Every Sunday, Jewish children were forced to attend a sermon at the Church of Saint Angelo in Pescheria, where a friar told them they were damned to hell. The church was still standing, along with a large white synagogue that looked like a belle epoque museum plucked out of the center of Paris.

  Simon Lumbroso lived in a two-story building near the ruins of the Portico of Octavia. His name was on a brass plate near the door along with a description of his services in Italian, German, French, Hebrew, and English: SIMON LUMBROSO/ART APPRAISAL/CERTIFICATION PROVIDED.

  Maya pressed the black button for the doorbell, but no one answered. When she tried again, a man’s voice came from the speaker in the wall. “Buon giorno.”

  “Good afternoon. I’m looking for Mr. Lumbroso.”

  “And for what reason?” The voice-once warm and friendly-had a sharp, critical tone.

  “I’m thinking about buying a certain object and I want to know how old it is.”

  “I’m looking at you on my video screen and I don’t see any statues or paintings.”

  “It’s jewelry. A gold brooch.”

  “Of course. Beautiful jewelry for una donna bella.”

  The lock buzzed open and Maya entered the building. The ground floor consisted of two connecting rooms that led to an enclosed courtyard. The apartment looked as if the contents of a scientific laboratory and an art gallery had been loaded into a truck and then dumped into the same space. In the front room, Maya saw a spectroscope, a centrifuge, and a microscope on various tables along with bronze statues and old paintings.

  She stepped around some antique furniture and entered the back room, where a bearded man in his seventies sat at a workbench examining a piece of parchment with illuminated letters. The man wore black pants, a long-sleeved white shirt, and a black skullcap. Like many Orthodox Jews, he showed the white fringe from his tallit katan: a linen garment similar to a poncho worn beneath his shirt.