by Daniel Diehl
Leading the way up the slope, Merlin chose a spot that was relatively protected from any wind that might arise and obscured from view by a fallen tree. Once Beverley had settled herself on a flat stone, he pulled his bearskin coat beneath his rump and sat down next to her. There was nothing to do now except wait and watch the shifting mists rise up from the ground like ghosts in a cemetery.
Before the vans arrived at the caves the first soft tendrils of a soggy March morning had already reached West Wycombe. The yellow-gray light crept across the valley, shooing the fog ahead of it. Fortunately, the trees ensured that the gray light did not reach above the cave entrance, leaving Merlin and Beverley in deep shadow. Along with the dawn came a limp rain that washed the night’s fog out of the air and soaked the ground. Merlin had removed his old bearskin coat and pulled it over his and Beverley’s head, helping to make them invisible and offering some protection from the wet.
When the first of the white vans pulled within sight of the cave, the driver pulled past the entrance to the courtyard, reversed and backed between the encircling arms of the mock ruins, drawing to a halt when the rear doors of the truck were no more than eight feet from the big steel door. Tense with excitement, Merlin and Beverley watched as a man in a lab coat emerged from the passenger door of the van, scrunched his neck against the rain like a turtle retracting into its shell, and ran to unlock the door. Minutes later the second van backed in next to the first and soon, five men, including Peter Haskell, were unloading tools and equipment from the first van. Nearly an hour-and-a-half later they had moved everything from the first van inside the cave, and taken the first few wooden crates out of the second van.
“All right, my dear, this seems to be our cue. Are you quite sure you’re up to this?”
Before answering, Beverley snuggled close, keeping her voice low, her entire body quivering with the adrenaline rush. “As long as I don’t get dragged bum-first through the woods again I’m up for anything.”
“You’re very brave.” Merlin reached out and patted her hand reassuringly, pressing down lightly when he felt it shaking. “Take several long, deep breaths and let them out slowly. It will help keep you calm and steady.”
Beverley complied, repeating the breathing exercise several times as Merlin laid out his plan. Knowing that the big disk had gone into the van first, it would have to come out last; this would give them ample time to make their way down the hill and around to the front of the courtyard ruins as silently as possible. Merlin pointed out that Peter Haskell had not come out of the caves since the last of the tools had gone in, leaving the other four to off-load the crates. Whether they were moving large crates requiring two men to shift, or small ones that could be carried by a single man, the four always moved in and out of the cave as a group, leaving the vans unguarded for as long as fifteen minutes at a time. As long as they kept to this pattern, Merlin and Beverley should have plenty of time to steal the van with minimal risk of being discovered.
“Now. I want you to take my hand and follow me down the hill. Mind your footing and be as quiet as you can.”
“I’ll be alright. I don’t need to hold hands.”
“You don’t understand. I’m going to obscure my image – essentially make myself invisible. As long as you are in direct, physical contact with me you will be invisible too.”
“Really?” she grinned, “Oh, that’s brilliant.”
Following Merlin’s lead, Beverley stood up and stretched the stiffness out of her knees and back before taking hold of the old wizard’s hand and tiptoeing down the slope as delicately as if she were walking on a carpet of eggs. By the time they reached the front corner of the ruins they could hear the banging and bumping of heavy crates on the van floor as the men prepared to take another load of boxes into the cave. Holding one finger to his lips for silence, Merlin leaned close and whispered into Beverley’s ear.
“We’re going to cross to the other side of the courtyard and wait behind the far corner of the ruins. They won’t actually be able see us when we cross in front of the entryway, but we could appear as a negative area in the rain. Most people wouldn’t notice, but I don’t want to do anything that might draw their attention, so keep down and stay out of sight.”
Accepting her nod as assent, Merlin pulled Beverley from behind the safety of the wall and into the open space in front of the vans. Stepping silently, they walked around the noses of the vans and across the line of vision of two men who were hoisting a large crate, jerking it back and forth, jockeying to get a firm grip on their load. As Merlin and Beverley took refuge behind the opposite edge of the ruin, the men moved slowly away from the van and toward the big iron door. Because one of the men was walking backwards it took them a full two minutes to disappear inside the mouth of the cave and leave Merlin and Beverley alone in the courtyard.
After waiting nearly another full minute to ensure that the men had made their way far enough into the cave that they would not be able to hear any sound from the outside, Merlin pulled Beverley into the courtyard, stepped around to the open side door of the van and ushered her inside. While Beverley watched, Merlin dashed around the rear of the van and ran to the steel door that now covered the cave entrance. Stepping inside the entrance but seeing no one there, he pushed the door shut as quietly as he could. Laying the palm of one hand over the locking mechanism he pressed the flesh against the cool metal, retaining contact until he heard the satisfying ‘clunk’ of the tumblers falling into place. Maintaining the pressure, he concentrated on a different spell, muttering in Latin until the lockset became so hot it threatened to sear his skin. Backing off a fraction of an inch, he continued the spell long enough for the mechanism inside the lock to bend and sag with the heat. Removing his hand to rub the red spot on the palm, he smiled at the lock’s warped faceplate.
Content with his work, he returned to the van and stepped in behind Beverley who was smiling at the objects on the opposite side of the van; two small wooden boxes stacked in front of a single crate forty inches square and ten inches thick. In what she judged to be a major coup, they had successfully taken possession of the communicating disk. By the time Merlin pulled the door closed behind him, Beverley had already taken the driving seat, looked down at the key slot and turned her face in horror toward Merlin. When she spoke, her voice was panic-filled.
“There’s no key. What am I going to do. I can’t…”
“Calm yourself.” Laying a steading hand on her shoulder, Merlin eased into the passenger seat, leaned toward Beverley and laid his left index finger gently against the key slot. Instantly the van engine coughed once and purred to life. “Now, my dear” Merlin said as he got up from the seat and moved around to close the cargo door, “I suggest you get us out of here as quickly as you can.”
Beverley flashed him a broad grin and a ‘thumbs up’ signal, put the automatic shift lever into ‘D’ and pulled away from the Hellfire cave. At the end of the lane she was relieved to see that Haskell and his men had not replaced the chain barrier, and as the van turned onto the roadway leading into West Wycombe she let out a heavy sigh of relief.
“You did very good, my dear. I’m proud of you. But I don’t think you should let down your guard just yet. Maintain your speed and drive to Heathrow Airport as fast as you can without putting yourself in any danger.”
“You think Morgana will find a way to follow us?”
“I know she’ll follow us. I don’t know how and I don’t know when, but if I’ve learned one thing over the course of all these centuries it’s that only a fool underestimates the wiles of Morgana le Fay.”
Chapter Fifteen
“Absolutely, Mrs Morgan. We already have the lock burned away and are back outside. That’s how we know somebody nicked the van.”
Peter Haskell twisted his wrist to point his mobile phone away from his head in an attempt to avoid permanent damage to his hearing. He didn’t catch everything Morgana said but there was no doubt of its meaning.
“…
kill you where you stand but I’m not going to let you off the hook that easily. Now listen and listen good, you sniveling incompetent piece of garbage; there is a GPS tracking device on every one of my vehicles, so if you’re smart enough to figure out which of the vans they took I can have security relay its position to you so you can follow it. Do you think you can manage that?”
“Yes ma’am.”
“Well. I’m waiting. Which van did they take?”
After a long pause, Haskell whispered into the phone “How do I tell? They both look the same.”
“Bloody fucking hell, man, give me the registration number off the one standing in front of you. We only have two bloody vans so the one that isn’t there must be the one that was stolen.”
While they were waiting for Excalibur’s security team to log onto the GPS tracking system and enter the information on the missing van, Morgana continued to harangue her chief engineer, pumping him for any possible details as to the identity of the car thief.
“Yes, ma’am, I know someone should have stayed with the vans but we were trying to get everything inside before it got wet; it’s raining really hard now…Yes, ma’am, I know I should have…I am aware of that…I am so, so sorry, Mrs Morgan.”
Peter Haskell knew just enough about his employer to know that not even the worst of her unspeakable threats were completely hollow. Over the years more than one Excalibur employee had met an unexpected and gruesome demise or simply disappeared without a trace. Haskell had always managed to stay on Lou Morgan’s good side but now he was, quite literally, pleading for his job, his life and the lives of his family.
“And when you find the van and my equipment I want the thieves hunted down and killed. Is that perfectly clear, Peter?”
“Please, Mrs Morgan, my men are engineers, not mercenaries.”
“Not any more, they’re not. I want the dead, lifeless carcasses of the thief, or thieves, delivered to my office. And I am not being euphemistic. Do I make myself perfectly clear?
“Now I’m going to patch you through to security and they will tell you where my van is headed. Do you think your men can manage to follow their directions?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Good. And Peter…”
“Yes, ma’am?”
“Be smart enough to leave someone to guard the cave till I can get a team out there to fix the door.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
* * *
By the time Beverley pulled onto the four lane M40 motorway the late winter rain had returned with a vengeance. It sluiced across the black tarmac with tropical intensity, depriving the tires of traction and slammed onto the roof of the van, cascading across the windows in waves, destroying visibility and making the noise inside the van as deafening as machinegun practice at a military firing range. Beverley was hunched over the steering wheel, trying desperately to keep the van from sliding out of control on the wet macadam while maintaining as much speed as possible.
“Merlin, we have to book tickets to Ethiopia and try to get the disk classified as oversized luggage. We can’t ship it as freight, it might not go on the same plane and we can’t risk losing it.”
“Absolutely. How can I help?”
“Well, the first thing I need you to do is get my phone out of my pocket.”
Slowly, remaining as calm as possible in the face of the combined obstacles of slamming rain and Merlin’s complete inability to navigate a mobile phone, she talked him through her phone’s index until he pulled up a travel booking app. She risked the occasional quick glance at the small screen to make sure he was where he needed to be, and after he found the flight planner, chose an afternoon flight and finally reached the booking screen, she instructed him on how to book two tickets. Rather than book the flight as instructed Merlin smiled and lowered the phone to his lap.
“I think we only need to book one ticket, my dear.”
“Oh, no. I didn’t go through all this nonsense just to get left behind when all the really good bits are about to start.”
A huge grin broke across Merlin’s craggy face. “Of course you didn’t. I was referring to me. You take the disk to Jason and I’ll remain here. I think my time is better spent keeping a close watch on Morgana. She is going to be absolutely livid when she finds out her disk is missing and someone needs to relay her movements to you and Jason. And that someone is obviously me.”
Pulling her eyes from the rain-washed windshield, Beverley turned to stare at Merlin.
“We’re two-hundred and fifty miles from York. How on earth are you going to get home?”
“My dear, you should know by now that Merlin is self-sufficient in ways you cannot even imagine. I can be anywhere I need to be on this small island in less than two days. Trust me.”
Alternating her attention between the water-drenched road and the rearview mirror – at which she kept peering intently in case she might spot someone pursuing them even though everything outside the van was reduced to a watery blur – Beverley tried to maintain a coherent level of conversation, mostly just as a method of soothing her nerves and keeping herself calm.
“So you and Jason both think this disk will open the Ark and that these stone things, which you think are inside it, will lock the dragon gate for good. Do I have all that right?”
“I know this relies on a number of assumptions but if those assumptions are correct – which I believe they are – then, yes, we should be able to close the gate permanently.”
“And what if any one of those assumptions is wrong?”
Beverley turned to stare at Merlin, tilting her head to peer at him over the top edge of her glasses frame.
“Then, my dear, we hope Morgana doesn’t find me before I find her, because if she does the world may well face a catastrophe the likes of which it has never seen.”
“Jason explained a little of your theory about the dragons and the Book of Revelations and stuff, but let me see if I have all of this straight. You think the dragons are working for the Devil, or they are the Devil, or what, exactly?”
“When you say ‘the Devil’ I assume you are referring to Satan?”
“Well, they’re pretty much the same thing, aren’t they?”
“Not at all. Satan is the name given to the Archangel Lucifer after he was cast out of heaven. He is the great deceiver, the Prince of Darkness, the instigator of all evil and the devourer of mankind’s souls. Devils, on the other hand – and there are thousands of devils – are Satan’s minions. Whereas Lucifer was an archangel, devils and demons were lesser angels who followed him in his rebellion against God.”
“Ok, it’s a technical point, but I understand what you’re saying. What I’m trying to get at is that trying to fight Satan, or Lucifer, or even devils and demons – whether they look like dragons or not - is kind of like trying to fight God. Nobody could fight God; so how can we hope to fight Satan?”
“Technically it isn’t the same thing at all, my dear. God is the only uncreated being, the architect of the universe who has existed from before the beginning of time. Lucifer is nothing more than the coequal of any archangel; say Michael or Gabriel.”
“Gabriel? The one who’s supposed to blow his trumpet and signal the end of the world? And that’s supposed to make me feel better?”
Merlin tugged at one eyebrow and grimaced sympathetically. “I’m afraid I wasn’t very encouraging, was I?” Beverley sighed and shook her head. “All I was trying to say is that no matter how difficult it may be to fight these horrid creatures, it’s not impossible. Difficult, yes, but not impossible. My biggest concern is that if they get through the gate it means that Morgana has managed to kill me and break the spell of closure I placed on the gate. And without my power and knowledge it will be much more difficult – if not impossible - to fight them.”
“So how do we fight ex-archangels and devils in the form of fire breathing dragons?”
Merlin cocked his head and smiled a small, wan smile as he reached across the console a
nd laid a gentle hand on Beverley’s shoulder. “Carefully, my dear, very, very carefully.”
After a conversation that Beverley hoped would be both distracting and enlightening, but which turned out to be nothing but depressing, the pair fell silent. Beverley found it was becoming more difficult to keep the vehicle steady as the wind rose, driving the lashing rain with greater and greater force against the flat sides of the van. Gashes of lightning now tore the sky apart, illuminating the landscape of outer London, and the inside of the van, with instantaneous flashes of sickly blue-white stroboscopic light. Hard on the tail of each flash of light came resounding peals of thunder that shook the van like volleys of cannon fire. By the time Beverley finally spotted the turn-off sign directing her to London Heathrow Airport, the slamming rain had begun seeping in around every window in the van, marking snail trails across the glass before jumping into the air to splatter across Beverley’s glasses, further obscuring her vision. When she finally pulled to a halt under the sheltering portico in front of Turkish Airways passenger terminal, she let out a huge sigh and slumped over the steering wheel, allowing the tension to wash out of her body.
“Be glad you weren’t with Jason and I when we ran into a very similar storm in Mongolia; at least this time we didn’t have any elemental demons or Chinese wizards to contend with.”
Beverley rolled her head to one side, cocking an eye at Merlin who was smiling broadly at her. Finally, she raised her head, returned the smile and punched him gently on the arm.
“What do you suggest we do now, my dear? I’m afraid dealing with airports is a bit out of my…what’s the term…job description?”
Twisting around in her seat and flashing one hand toward the crated disk, Beverley shook her head and mumbled.
“Our biggest problem is going to be the box.”
“In what way?”