by Sam Christer
‘This is Amir Goldman.’ Mitzi plays her first card. Face up. A post-mortem shot of the old man. Naked. White. A clear view of the wounded stomach. ‘Knifed to death in his antiques store in Maryland last Friday night.’
She turns over the second. Another PM shot. Taken in the woods just as the body had been pulled from worm-infested earth. ‘This gentleman is James Tiago Sacconni, an ex-con with previous for knife attacks. He was seen coming out of Goldman’s on the night the store owner was murdered. He got into a brown SUV, an Escalade hybrid and was killed minutes later. His body was buried in nearby woods.’
Mitzi notes that neither diplomat flinches when shown the pictures. She dips into her folder and pulls out a printed Google map. ‘Please look at this for me, Mr Dalton. On there, you’ll see the antiques store. It’s marked “A”. The woods where Sacconni was found are marked “B”. You’ll notice there’s a “C”. This is Massachusetts Avenue in Washington, where the British Embassy is.’
She watches the younger man fixate on the map. Spots how he crosses his ankles to stop his foot tapping. Doesn’t miss the way he pushes his lips together to wet them as discreetly as possible. She slides her gaze over to Gwyn and finds he’s not at all interested in the map, only in his colleague and how he’s holding up.
Mitzi sits back and relaxes.
There are still cards to play but now it’s time to bluff a little and raise the stakes.
She waits until the consul lifts his head and catches her penetrating stare. ‘My question, Mr Dalton, is this – where were you between nine-thirty p.m. Friday last and daybreak Saturday?’
The lips are licked again. ‘I’m not sure. So much happened just before I left Washington to return to the UK.’ He looks towards the ambassador. ‘I think I was collecting something for Sir Owain. Something confidential.’
The knight gives a confirmatory nod.
The collective evasiveness encourages Mitzi not to rush things. ‘What vehicle were you in?’
‘The embassy Lincoln.’
‘That’s a silver MKZ with a panoramic roof?’
‘Yes.’
‘What would you say if I told you that an eyewitness saw that Lincoln follow a brown Escalade, driven by Mr Sacconni, away from Goldman’s store just after he was murdered?’
‘I’d say your witness might be confusing my car being on the same road at the same time as the other vehicle, with the notion of me deliberately following it.’
‘I don’t think so.’ Mitzi plays her next cards. She flips over the third, fourth and fifth photographs. ‘This is a sequence of shots taken of the Lincoln, with you at the wheel, heading south from the Beltway intersection. For some reason, you are always a quarter mile behind the SUV.’ She taps the last photograph. ‘And when it comes off at Dupont, so do you.’
The consul shrugs dismissively. ‘I can see half a dozen cars in your shots there. You could say any one of them was following that target vehicle. And I’m absolutely sure I wasn’t the only person to exit at Dupont.’
Mitzi makes mental notes. He just gave her two valuable insights. But she’s not going to mention them. Not now. Not until the time is right and the advantage high. ‘It’s a nine-mile stretch from Kensington to the diner. You were the only driver that joined the road within sixty seconds of the Escalade and you didn’t overtake it during that short journey south. A little strange, don’t you think?’
Again the shrug. And another confident answer. ‘I’m a safe driver. I represent the British Government and I’m conscious of that honour, so I stick to the speed limit.’
The door opens and Melissa Sachs appears and looks pointedly towards her boss.
‘Excuse me.’ Sir Owain gets up and walks to her.
They talk briefly.
The ambassador returns to his guests. ‘I’m afraid you’ll have to carry on without me for a moment. I have an urgent call I need to step out and take.’
Mitzi turns back to Dalton. Time to play her trump card. She flips over a grainy photograph of the All Night All Right Diner that she had Kirstin take and make look as though it had come from a security camera. ‘This is a fast food joint off Connecticut Avenue, out from Dupont, down seventeenth near Stead Park. Not the kind of place I’d imagine a person like you would visit. But you did.’
His eyes flick from it to the two remaining face-down photographs on the table and guesses that they show him both inside and outside the diner.
‘What were you doing there, Mr Dalton?’
He shifts awkwardly in his seat. ‘It was a call of nature. I used their washroom.’ He picks up a bottle of water and casually drinks, then adds, ‘We Brits are a bit old-fashioned. We can’t just go urinating in the wild.’
‘Hell, no!’ says Mitzi. ‘What would the world come to?’ She opens her own bottle and mirrors his actions. ‘How did things go in the men’s room?’
‘What do you mean? I went to the toilet. How do you think it went?’
She notes his touchiness and puts her bottle down next to his. ‘Talk me through it. Tell me.’
His face flushes with anger. ‘I went in. Used the urinal. Went out and drove home.’ He sits back and glares at her. ‘Did you really come all the way from the States to ask about my toilet habits?’
‘You’d better believe it, buddy.’ The guy’s as guilty as hell. If she gives him a little more rope sure as night follows day he’s going to hang himself.
The office door opens.
Sir Owain enters. There’s purposefulness in his stance. ‘I’m very sorry; I’m going to have to ask you to leave. Something of extreme importance and urgency has happened.’
Mitzi collects the photographs, drops them in her folder and grabs her bottle of water. She’s as mad as hell and struggles to hide it. Sir La-de-da was probably watching on a hidden camera and didn’t like the fact his boy was in trouble. She gets to her feet and walks over to him. ‘Is whatever just happened really more important than the Code X files, ambassador? I was so looking forward to discussing them with you.’
‘It is, Lieutenant.’ His eyes narrow. ‘You will learn soon enough what detained me and why this meeting had to be curtailed. I only hope that when you do, you will apologize for that remark and then it may be possible for us to meet again.’
70
CAERGWYN CASTLE, WALES
From the rain-puddled roof of the Augur’s Tower, Myrddin gazes nostalgically across the shimmering estate’s vast lake into the distant forests where the red deer run.
It seems only a couple of springs since he hunted and fished there as a young man, his head full of plans and his heart swollen with love. In those days, he lived on whatever he caught. Venison, rabbit and salmon, when he was lucky. Rat and squirrel when he wasn’t. Every day brought fresh adventures. His craft needed to be learned. Secrets had to be discovered. The magic of life was still to be learned.
As he descends to his solar, he can’t help but think that the years have flown faster than the falcons he used to train. Nowadays, he feels he has become a slave to the very crafts he strove so hard to master. Knowledge has tired him. The sheer weight of it has fixed leaden boots to his weary feet.
He is sinking.
And Owain Gwyn is the reason why.
He guided him from boy to man. Made him his charge. His protégé. The manifestation of all his hopes and loves. It became his life’s work to empower him, to help him achieve his greatness – and goodness. To make Owain a king among men.
The small cot of a bed creaks and his old spine cracks as he stretches out on the hard boards and worn-out mattress. He’s never afforded himself luxuries – except for his imagination. Inside his mind, he has indulged himself in pleasures mere mortals would never comprehend.
Sleep comes quickly.
And visions, too. Mixed and confused. Like multiple movies spliced together.
There is water. Vast stretches of it. Bigger than a lake. Smaller than a sea. People speaking in foreign tongues. Loved ones separated by geogra
phy, united in grief.
Then there are bodies. Burning bodies. Buried bodies. Decomposing bodies that stir in the soil and rise from their wormeries. Living bodies, still bleeding, rattling with death but not yet surrendered.
And women.
There is a young woman and an old one. Together but strangers. Women from different lands. One he recognizes; one he doesn’t. The older one is terribly powerful. A threat to everything and everyone he holds close.
But there is goodness about her as well. And vulnerability.
Out in the unmarked fields, in plots known only to the Arthurians, bones that once bent and broke for the betterment of mankind shake off their blankets of soil and once more feel the kiss of the sun.
But this is no resurrection. No Day of Judgement. No moment of divine redemption. This is exposure. Destruction of the Order. The end of secrecy.
Myrddin’s closed eyes are blinded by the bright lights of his vision. Blues and reds and oranges and whites. His ears ache from the shouts of voices, male and female, adult and child. They are crying. Begging for the pain to stop. Their screams overlap. Fight to be heard above each other.
And there is Owain. At the centre of the pain. Desperately trying to soak it all up.
Unable to stop it.
71
CALEDFWLCH ETHICAL INVESTMENTS, LONDON
Melissa Sachs shows the Americans out and returns to Sir Owain’s office. ‘Are you ready for your call with the Home Secretary, sir?’
‘I am. Thank you, Melissa.’
George Dalton rises from the sofa. ‘Would you like me to leave?’
‘No. Stay. We need to talk as soon as I’ve dealt with this call.’ A light on his phone flashes. He picks it up and answers. ‘Hello, Charles. How are you all coping?’
‘Best we can. How much do you know?’ Charles Hatfield suspects it’s at least as much as he does.
‘Only the briefest details. Bomb on the Eurostar. Explosion at the British end. Something like fifty dead.’
‘Might be more. We won’t know until the emergency services report back. The device went off south of Ashford, five minutes from the station. A pensioner saw a man doing something with wires inside a rucksack and she alerted train staff. When the guard questioned the suspect, he made a run for the toilet, locked himself inside and exploded the bloody thing.’
A live video feed from a helicopter is already up on the monitor in front of the ambassador. It shows the splayed track, smoke and flames rising from the concertinaed carriages, corpses on the rails and the blinking lights of fire engines and ambulances. ‘I’m finishing up a meeting here and then I’ll come into Whitehall. I assume you’ll be putting together a Cabinet Office briefing?’
‘Research team is already working on it. When can you join us?’
‘Within the hour.’
‘Good.’ Hatfield checks fresh data on his computer as he speaks. ‘I know this is of no comfort to those victims or their blessed families, but thank God the bomb didn’t go off in the tunnel. A blast mid-channel would have been an even bigger tragedy.’
‘That must have been the intention.’ Gwyn watches the helicopter on his screen come to a stationary hover directly over the cratered track. ‘Anyone claimed responsibility yet?’
‘Not yet. But it’ll be al-Qaeda.’
Gwyn puts the phone down and returns to Dalton. He can tell his colleague is worried. ‘What is it, George?’
‘I’ve been thinking about the interview with the Americans. I fear I may have messed things up.’
‘Why?’
‘In retrospect, I don’t think that lieutenant knew I was at the diner near Dupont, and now I’ve confirmed I was.’
‘The fact she raised it with you meant she had good reason to believe you were there. The big mistake was taking the Lincoln.’
‘I had no choice. I was in the Lincoln when I got the message that Marchetti’s men were heading out to Kensington. Had I swapped cars, I would never have got there in time.’
‘I need to get directly involved in this Eurostar blast, so you must take care of the Americans. Have someone find out where they’re staying. I want their room turned over and electronic or human surveillance on them all the time, until I say otherwise. Let’s see if we can stop this investigation before it stops us.’
72
LONDON
News of the train bombing plays on the radio in the Rolls.
Once the bulletin finishes, Mitzi calls Sir Owain’s office and leaves a message with Melissa. The ambassador had been right, there was good reason for her to apologize.
The journey to their new hotel is a long and muted one. Despite the privacy glass, neither she nor Bronty feel comfortable discussing their interview.
They book into The Dean, a new hotel in Soho, close to famous media haunts like the Groucho Club and Ivy and debrief over room-service club sandwiches, fries and two large pots of coffee.
‘So what did you make of our friend the British Consul?’ He slaps the bottom of a ketchup bottle to release a blat of sauce.
‘Dalton’s up to his neck in the whole thing.’ She opens her sandwich like a book. ‘Why is this bacon so much better than the stuff I have back home?’
‘The Brits do good bacon. How d’you know he’s implicated?’
‘First slip he made was to admit the Lincoln had been outside Amir Goldman’s store. No surveillance footage put him there. Then he got nervous and referred to the brown SUV as “the target car”.’
‘Maybe he’s an ex-soldier, or policeman.’
‘He’s not. I checked before we flew out. But he might be a former spook, MI5 or 6.’
‘It’d explain the manner in which he followed the Escalade.’
‘Yeah. But not why he followed it. Or what he was doing when the SUV stopped in the woods and Sacconni got whacked.’
‘You think Dalton killed him?’
‘No. I think Sacconni was killed by his partner-in-crime, Bradley Deagan. But I think Dalton may have killed Deagan at the Dupont diner.’ She reaches into her purse and produces a small plastic bottle of water. ‘Which is why this little baby might help us.’
‘Your drink from Gwyn’s office?’
She smiles, ‘No, not mine. Dalton’s. And I’m willing to bet the DNA on this matches the profile we lifted from blood in the diner’s bathroom – blood mingled with Deagan’s.’
‘Who exactly is Deagan?’
‘A fraudster who tried to pull a con on an auction house with a painting called The Ghent Altarpiece.’
His eyes widen. ‘Also known as The Adoration of the Mystic Lamb. One of the greatest and most stolen pieces of art ever created.’ He points to her laptop. ‘Mind if I use that for a second?’
‘Be my guest.’
He opens a search engine and types in ‘Ghent Altarpiece’. ‘Here, look at this.’
He paraphrases text below the paragraph. ‘It was commissioned in the fifteenth century for an altar in a private chapel in Belgium. The twenty-four panels form one overall picture when opened up and then a completely different one when closed.’
‘I only see twelve.’
‘Twelve front, twelve back.’
Now she sees it. ‘Stupid me.’
‘It’s been the object of thirteen crimes over six centuries, including six separate thefts and a ransom demand.’
She pours fresh coffee for them both. ‘Come on then, more detail: tell me the juicy stuff.’
‘In the early nineteenth century some panels were pawned by the Ghent Diocese and ended up in England. They were bought by the King of Prussia and exhibited in Berlin. After the First World War, they were confiscated from the Germans as part of reparations. When the Second World War broke out the Belgians sent the paintings to the Vatican for safekeeping. At least that was the plan. Hitler’s troops intercepted them, brought them to Bavaria and locked them in a castle. When Allied attacks intensified, he moved them into salt mines. Then when we beat the Nazis, our troops returned them to
the Belgians.’
‘And the ransom?’
He takes a second. ‘Let me get this right. Back in the thirties, two panels, a front and back, were stolen from St Bavo Cathedral in Ghent. Often it’s reported as one, but actually there were two. One called ‘The Just Judges’ and the other John the Baptist. A lot of ransom letters were sent. They demanded more than a million Belgian Francs and warned that unless it was paid the paintings would be destroyed.’
‘What happened?’
‘The bishop never paid the money. There were some negotiations and the John the Baptist painting was recovered, but ‘The Just Judges’ was never found. Another painter was hired to fill in the blank on the altarpiece, but by all accounts there are errors in the scene.’
‘Okay, enough history,’ says Mitzi. ‘My head’s exploding and to be honest the last thing I want is a missing painting to add to a homicide that already has religious relics and secret codes.’
‘Have the cryptologists got anywhere with that?’
‘I have to call Vicks and check. It would be great if this Code X stick gave us all the answers.’
‘Did you say “Code X”, as in the letter X?’
‘Yeah. Why do you ask?’
‘Have you got the stick?’
‘Sure.’ She digs it out of her purse and passes it to him.
Bronty reads ‘C-O-D-E-X’ and smiles.
‘What?’
‘It’s “Codex” not “Code X”. One word, Latin by origin, as in ancient bibles and manuscripts. So your secret code is no new thing. It’s hiding something that’s probably been hidden for centuries. Something people are probably prepared to kill to keep hidden.’
73
WHITEHALL, LONDON
Cabinet Office Briefing Room ‘A’ is said to be the venue from which the press originated the acronym COBRA. Around its famous conference table are Defence Secretary Sir Wesley Piggott-Smith, Home Secretary Charles Hatfield, Deputy Prime Minister Norman Batherson and the ACPO chief, Milton Coleman.