Underworld

by Oliver Bowden

  “It’s not having a body to bury, I know, Mrs. Shaw, and I’m so, so sorry,” said Abberline, and left, happy to escape the weight of grief for a man who was not only alive but enjoying the relative comfort and warmth of Abberline’s rooms. Taking with him the guilt of having to lie.

  It was for the greater good. It was for the safety of them all that Cavanagh and company thought this particular loose end had been tied. But still. The guilt.

  FORTY-EIGHT

  “You are to be inducted into the Knights Templar,” said Cavanagh. He, Marchant and two of the punishers—Mr. Hardy was missing—had taken The Ghost away from his duties and to a corner of the excavation site, to all intents and purposes conducting an impromptu works meeting.

  “Thank you, sir,” said The Ghost. He bowed his head low, hating himself at that moment. When his eyes returned to Cavanagh he saw something unreadable in the man’s eyes, like a distant, mocking expression.

  “But first, I have a job for you.”

  “Yes, sir,” replied The Ghost. He maintained a blank expression but inside his mind raced and he felt his pulse quicken, thinking, This is it.

  Indicating to his men to remain where they were, Cavanagh took The Ghost’s arm and began to lead him away from the group, toward the perimeter fence. There The Ghost could see Cavanagh’s Clarence. Tending to the horse was Mr. Hardy, who looked up at them briefly then returned to brushing the nag’s mane.

  Away from the noise, Cavanagh no longer needed to raise his voice. “What I’m about to tell you is information known only to members of the Knights Templar. You are yet to be inducted and so, by rights, I shouldn’t be revealing this, but you’ve proven yourself an asset to my operation and your task is what we might call ‘time-sensitive.’ In other words it needs to happen before the council can meet to ratify your induction. I am a man of instinct and I prefer to act on it. I have faith in you, Bharat. I see much of myself in you.”

  The Ghost allowed himself a feeling of triumph. Everything he had done, the months of living in the tunnel, of building a life as Bharat Singh, had all been building to this moment.

  Cavanagh continued. “This dig you’ve been involved in, the one to build the world’s first underground railway. Perhaps you might have guessed, given my involvement, but there’s more to it than meets the eye. The railway will of course be finished, and it will of course be a success, but there is, believe it or not, an ulterior motive behind its construction.”

  The Ghost nodded.

  “The Knights Templar in London are in search of an artifact believed to be buried along the line. Pinpointing its exact location has proven to be a demanding task. Let’s just say that, in my opinion at least, Lucy Thorne’s exalted position within the Order is not fully deserved. Certainly not on this showing.”

  “Lucy Thorne, sir?”

  Cavanagh shot him a quick look and The Ghost had to suppress a nervous swallow. Was the director trying to catch him off guard?

  “All in good time,” said Cavanagh. “You have the delights of the ruling council to come. For the time being all you need to know is that Lucy Thorne is among a cadre of high-ranking Templars whose job it is to locate the artifact.”

  “This . . . artifact, sir, what does it do?”

  “Well, you see, this is the trouble with scrolls, isn’t it? They’re so damnably ambiguous. The details are left to the imagination, I’m afraid; the scrolls simply say that great power will come to whoever has it in his possession. It may not surprise you to know that I intend to be the one in possession of it. Who I have at my side when that day comes will very much depend.”

  “I hope it will be me, sir,” said The Ghost.

  He glanced over to where the Clarence was tethered. Mr. Hardy was replacing the horse brush in the carriage stowage box, but as The Ghost watched he took something else from the box and slipped it into his pocket.

  “Well, as I say, that will very much depend,” said Cavanagh.

  The two men walked a few more paces, The Ghost keeping an eye on Mr. Hardy. The punisher seemed to have finished grooming the horse as he had moved to check the harness buckles. And now he was leaving the carriage enclosure and making his way toward the gate, shouldering a match girl out of his way, kicking awake a worker who leaned on the gate post with a railwayman’s cap pulled over his eyes.

  “On what will it depend, sir?”

  “On how well you perform your task.”

  Hardy was crossing the mudflats some fifty yards away.

  “And what task is that, sir?”

  “You are to kill Charles Pearson.”

  * * *

  Lately they had judged it too risky to meet; The Ghost, in particular, wanted to leave nothing to chance. But this was different. This represented a major escalation of events, he needed Ethan’s counsel, and so, after an exchange of gravestone positions in the Marylebone churchyard, the two Assassins convened at Leinster Gardens.

  “Why?” asked Ethan. “Why kill Pearson?”

  “The rite commands it, so Mr. Cavanagh says.”

  “Too much of a philanthropist for their taste, eh? Christ, they won’t even let him see his beloved railway open.”

  “Cavanagh has the details worked out, Master. Now that work has resumed after the Fleet Sewer burst, he wants to demonstrate to Mr. Pearson that the line between King’s Cross and Farringdon Street is fully operational. What’s more, he has a new enclosed carriage to show off, and he plans a train ride to Farringdon Street and back. But at the end of the journey, when Mr. and Mrs. Pearson make their way back to their carriage, I am to kill him.”

  “But not Mrs. Pearson?”

  “No.”

  There was a long silence, then The Ghost asked his handler, “What do you think?”

  Ethan took a deep breath. “Well, it’s not a trap, not in the sense that they want to do you down; they could call you into the office for that. What it is is a test.”

  The Ghost’s palms were sweaty. He gulped and returned to a balmy room in Amritsar, tasting the fear afresh, seeing the blade in Dani’s screaming mouth, blood and steel shimmering in the moonlight.

  He had to summon all his strength to say the next words, and it hurt to hear himself say them but say them he did. “If it is a test, then I am sure to fail.”

  Ethan closed his eyes in sad response. “We’re this close, Jayadeep.”

  He was almost whispering.

  The Ghost nodded. He, too, longed to see the artifact. For years he had dreamed of bearing witness to its unearthly light show. But on the other hand . . .

  “This artifact could be nothing more than a trinket. Even the Templars know nothing of its true potential.”

  “Scrolls are cryptic. That’s the point of them. They’re passed down through the ages so that our forefathers should think themselves more clever than we.”

  “Yes. That’s what he said, more or less.”

  “How perceptive of him. Perhaps he also pointed out that, trinket or not, the artifact’s actual powers are less important than a perception of their worth. Yes, it’s true that what lies beneath the earth may be an ancient bauble fit for nothing more devastating than entrancing old dames and impressionable children. But for centuries Assassins and Templars have fought over artifacts, and we have all heard the tales of their great power: the Koh-i-Noor diamond, the unearthly force unleashed by the Apple of Al Mualim. Is it possible, perhaps, that these tales have become exaggerated in the telling? After all, none of these artifacts have ever been so powerful they proved decisive in the war. And the scrolls are as good at aggrandizement as they are at being abstruse.”

  “My parents . . .”

  “Your parents are a case in point, bouncing you on their knee, filling your head with the tales of their awesome power.” He looked across at The Ghost, who returned his gaze, not quite able to believe what he was hearing, and ga
ve a dry chuckle. “Evie’s like you. She’s fascinated by the idea of artifacts just as you were fascinated by that stupid bloody diamond.”

  The Ghost bit down on his anger, saying nothing.

  “It’s the fascination with it, do you see? The idea of it. That’s where the talismanic power of the artifact lies. Assassin or Templar, we’re all in the business of selling ideas to the masses, and we all think our ideas are the ones to save the world, but one thing we have in common is the knowledge that these artifacts contain secrets of the First Civilization. Look around you . . .” He indicated the false house in which they sat, the tunnel through which underground trains—underground trains—would soon travel. “We have steam power. Soon we will have electricity. The world is advancing at an almost unimaginable, unthinkable rate. The twentieth century is almost upon us and the twentieth century is the future, Jayadeep. The technology being used to build bridges, tunnels and railways—that same technology will be harnessed to create weapons of war. That’s the future. And unless you want to see man enslaved by tyranny and totalitarianism, then we need to win that future for our children and all the generations to come, who will one day sit with storybooks and read of our exploits and thank us for refusing to deliver them into despotism.

  “In other words, Jayadeep, we need to win at all costs. And that means you kill Pearson and the mission continues until we have recovered the artifact.”

  It was quite a speech. The Ghost let it sink in.

  “No,” he said.

  Ethan leapt angrily to his feet. “Damn you, man,” he roared, too loudly for the still night. Instead he bit his tongue and turned away from the steam hole to gaze angrily and unseeingly at the false-brick front of the house.

  “I cannot kill an innocent man in cold blood,” insisted The Ghost. “Surely, after everything that has happened, you know that? Or is your desire for the artifact making you as blind to the truth as my father was?”

  Ethan turned and pointed. “He wasn’t the only one who was blind, my dear boy. You yourself thought you were ready, I seem to recall.”

  “I have more self-knowledge now. I know you’re asking me to do something I simply cannot do.”

  There was a catch in his voice, and Ethan softened to see the boy so wrought with despair: a boy brought up to kill for his cause but incapable of doing so. Once again he thought what a sad world, what an obscene state of affairs, when we mourned a man’s inability to kill.

  “Inform Cavanagh you plan to use a blowpipe. You can tell him you learned its use in Bombay.”

  “But, Master, I can’t kill an innocent man.”

  “You won’t have to.”

  FORTY-NINE

  Breath held, Evie Frye crouched outside her father’s study as he sat with George Westhouse, the two men talking in such low voices that she could barely hear through the door. She tucked her hair behind her ear as she strained to listen.

  “Tomorrow, then, Ethan,” George was saying.

  “Yes, tomorrow.”

  “And if all goes well, then the artifact . . .”

  “They’re close, they say.”

  “Well, logic dictates they must be. After all, the tunnel is built.”

  “There are dozens of service tunnels, rerouted sewer pipes and gas mains still to install. There’s plenty of digging to be done yet. Besides, who’s to say the burst sewer in the Fleet Valley wasn’t their doing?”

  “True . . .”

  Just then there came a knock on the door that startled Evie, and she stood quickly, slightly disoriented, gathering herself and smoothing down her shirts and skirts before going to answer it. They had no servants. Ethan would not have allowed it, believing the very idea of retaining servants went against the tenets of the Creed. And so it was that young Evie Frye answered her own front door.

  There on the step stood a young Indian man wearing a brown suit. He was handsome, she thought, and yet there was something about him that offset his good looks, a wild and hunted expression that he fixed on her, regarding her from the gray lower steps with eyes that didn’t really see her. Nevertheless, when he proffered a letter he said her name. “Evie Frye.”

  She took it, a folded piece of paper. On the flap was written, “For the attention of Ethan Frye.”

  “Tell him that Ajay came,” said the man on the doorstep, already turning to leave. “Tell him Ajay said he is sorry and that he will see him in the next life.”

  Rattled, Evie was glad to close the door on the strange, haunted man—then rushed to her father’s study.

  A second later the household was in an uproar.

  “Jacob,” called Ethan, storming out of his study with his forearm extended, buckling his hidden blade at the same time, “arm yourself, you’re coming with me. Evie, you too. George, come on, there’s no time to waste.”

  He had unfolded the letter in a burst of panic, only to find a note written in code they had no time to translate. But Ajay—the man with the cryptic apology. Surely not the same Ajay who stood guard at The Darkness, because if that man was in London, then Ethan should have been informed . . . But then again, who else could it be?

  All four of them came bursting into the street, Ethan still buckling the blade, holstering his revolver and pulling on his robes at the same time, the two children thrilling to the sight of their father in action.

  “Which way did he go, darling?” said Ethan to Evie.

  She pointed. “Toward The Broadway.”

  “Then we’re in luck. There are sewer works on The Broadway; he will have to turn onto Oakley Lane. Evie, Jacob, George, get after him. With any luck he’ll take George to be me and not suspect I’ve worked my way in front of him. Go. Go.”

  The two young Assassins and George took off in the direction of The Broadway. Ethan ran for a wall that belonged to an opposite neighbor, and with a leap and a fast tap-tap of his boots, almost as though he were kicking the wall in midair, was on top then over it.

  In front of him stretched the garden, and gazing along it, he experienced a brief moment of involuntary garden jealousy. He’d always wondered what size garden the neighbors had and here was his answer. Bigger. Twice the size of his own. Keeping to the shadows, he ran its length and at the bottom, where even the gardeners feared to tread, drew his hidden blade to hack at the undergrowth. Succumbing to the foliage at the back was a wall, but he scaled it easily before dropping to a passageway on the other side.

  All was quiet. Just the ever-present drip-drip of water. He strained to hear, picking out sounds from the distant surrounding city, until it came to him, a faraway rhythmic thud of running feet to his right.

  Excellent. Ethan set off, darting quietly along the passageway to the end then waiting in the shadows, listening again. The running feet were closer now. Good. This Ajay had seen his pursuers and was taking evasive action. All his attention would be concentrated on what came from behind.

  Drainpipe, loose brick, window ledge—and then Ethan was on the roof of the adjacent building, framed against the moonlit sky but knowing his quarry was unlikely to look upward. He was almost directly above the running footsteps in the alleyway below and he sprinted ahead, dashing to the end of the tenement then jumping to the pitched roof of the next.

  Flattening himself to the shingles he looked down into the street below and watched as a figure in a brown suit hurried into the alleyway, throwing a look behind him at the same time.

  Ethan’s robes fluttered as he swung to the lip of the roof then let himself down to the cobbles below, where he took a seat on a crate and rested his chin in his hand as he awaited Ajay’s arrival.

  FIFTY

  Ajay didn’t see anything until it was too late and he was brought up short. Ex-Assassin though he was, he still thought like one, and he instantly appraised the situation and drew his kukri on the run, taking note of Ethan Frye’s position, posture, his body at rest, hi
s leading hand hanging down by the side and seeing an opponent who was too relaxed and too vulnerable to attack on his weaker side, and it was to that flank that he directed his attack—fast and, if his assessments were correct, then decisively.

  But, of course, his assessments were not correct. They were based on assumptions that Ethan had anticipated, and as Ajay’s kukri flashed toward him, the older man’s hand shot out from beneath his chin, his blade engaging at the same second, and there was a ring of steel as Ajay’s sword was blocked in midair, then a scream of pain as Ethan completed his move with a downward slash that sheared off half of Ajay’s hand and took the blade away from him.

  The kukri dropped to the stone, along with a chunk of Ajay’s hand. In pain and disoriented as he was, he acted on instinct, ducking and spinning and kicking his sword back up the alley as he dived away from another attack.

  Ethan came to his feet and took a few steps up the alleyway, still reeling from the shock of recognition—Ajay, it was Ajay, how the hell did he get here?—just as the other man reached his weapon, stumbled and with one hurt and bleeding hand clutched to his chest, snatched it up from the cobbles with his good one.

  “This is a fight you can no longer win,” called Ethan. The other three had appeared in the alley behind them and Ajay heard, turning to see his exit barred and swinging back to face Ethan again, knowing, surely, that all was lost.

  “Why did you come to my door? Why did you attack me?” Ethan took two steps forward threateningly. “I don’t want to hurt you any more, but I will, if I have to.”

  Again Ajay glanced behind him and back at Ethan, then he stood up straight with his shoulders thrust back, and through a last wretched sob that bubbled up from some place of inner pain, said, “I’m sorry. I’m sorry to you and I’m sorry to Kulpreet, and I’m sorry for everything I have done.”

  And then drew the blade across his own throat.