Underworld

by Oliver Bowden

  Mr. Smith took the watch to Mr. Pearson, who identified it and with a rueful look at The Ghost, replaced it in his hip pocket. Meanwhile Cavanagh had stood, the very picture of fury, a man whose trust had been betrayed in the worst possible circumstance. “Is this true?” He glared at The Ghost. “Did you take the watch?”

  The Ghost said nothing, stared at him, mute.

  Cavanagh turned to Mr. and Mrs. Pearson. “Mr. and Mrs. Pearson, I offer you my sincerest apologies. This is quite unprecedented. We shall place Bharat under arrest. Mrs. Pearson, may I ask that one of my men accompany you to an adjoining carriage, away from this young thief? I fear he could well turn nasty.”

  “Yes, dear,” said Mr. Pearson, concern etched on his face. “You should go.”

  Marchant wobbled up the carriage toward Mrs. Pearson, giving her an oily grin as he held out his hand in order to accompany her away from the nasty mess that was to come. She left, meek as a lamb, with a fearful, uncomprehending look at The Ghost as she passed.

  And then they were alone.

  Then, just as the train pulled into King’s Cross, Cavanagh drew a pearl-handled knife and plunged it into Mr. Pearson’s chest.

  FIFTY-FIVE

  Cavanagh opened the carriage door in order to call out to the driver, congratulating him on a smooth journey and telling him they would alight presently.

  Then he closed the door and turned back to where Mr. Pearson lay with his legs kicking feebly as the life ebbed out of him. Cavanagh had hammered the knife directly into his heart before withdrawing the blade, and Pearson hadn’t made a sound; in the next carriage his wife was oblivious to the fact that the Metropolitan Railway director had just stabbed her husband to death.

  Anticipating that The Ghost might make a move, the two punishers grabbed him, pinning him to the seat. Cavanagh smiled. “Oh my God,” he said, “the young Indian ruffian has killed Charles Pearson.” He wiped his blade clean on Pearson’s body and sheathed it, then looked at The Ghost. “You would never have done it, would you?”

  The Ghost looked at him, saying nothing, trying not to give anything away but sensing it was too late for that anyway.

  “‘Blowpipe,’ that was good,” said Cavanagh. “I liked that. You telling me you wanted to use a blowpipe gave me everything I needed to know. It told Mr. Hardy everything he needed to know, too, and he’s gone with a squad of men to apprehend or possibly kill, I can’t say I am much troubled either way, your friend and my enemy, Ethan Frye.”

  The train seemed to relax as the locomotive exhaled steam. The Ghost thought of Ethan. The born-warrior Ethan, an expert in multiple combatant situations. But careless Ethan, prone to error.

  “He is as good as dead, Jayadeep, as are you. Ah, that surprises you, does it? That I know your name. Knew your name, knew your weakness, knew your protector would be along to take over a job you didn’t have the backbone to complete. The jig is up, I’m afraid. You played a good game, but you lost. Mr. Pearson is dead, the Assassins are finished and I have my artifact.”

  The Ghost couldn’t disguise another look of surprise.

  “Ah yes, I have the artifact.” Cavanagh smiled, enjoying his moment. “Or should I say”—he reached to scoop up Mr. Pearson’s cane—“I have it now.”

  He held the cane up and The Ghost saw that its handle was a bronze-tinged sphere, about three inches in diameter. “There,” said Cavanagh, and his eyes were aflame, his lips pulled back over his teeth, a strange and ugly look of love at first sight. “This is the artifact. Recovered by laborers some weeks ago and given to Mr. Pearson as a token of their esteem. And Mr. Pearson liked it so much he made it his cane handle. But Mr. Pearson walks with the angels now, and he won’t be needing his cane.”

  * * *

  Standing at the carriage enclosure, Ethan Frye had watched the dignitaries descend the steps and wondered why they’d taken The Ghost—and tried to dismiss a queasy sense that maybe something was going wrong.

  Next he’d seen the great smoke emissions as the train pulled out of King’s Cross, and he’d waited as it went to Farringdon Street then returned, and he’d stood patiently, waiting for the emergence of Mr. and Mrs. Pearson, daring to believe that all would still go to plan. I’m sorry, Mr. Pearson, he thought, and reached for the blowpipe beneath his robes.

  From within the ranks of carriages, Ethan was being watched. He was being watched by a man who drew a knife that glinted in the moonlight; who, when he smiled, revealed a gold tooth.

  * * *

  Coming closer, Abberline saw that he wasn’t the only one making his way toward the enclosure. From among the crowds a group of laborers had materialized and were moving up on it, too. He stopped and lifted out his spyglass, leaning forward over the fence to train it on the man in robes. The man stayed where he was, oblivious to approaching danger, still starkly visible, yet somehow invisible. Abberline saw that he held something by his side and it looked like—good God, was that a blowpipe?

  Now he swung his spyglass to peer into the thicket of carriages. The workers were still approaching, and also . . .

  Abberline caught his breath. If it wasn’t his old friend Mr. Hardy. The punisher had his back to Abberline but it was unmistakably him. Abberline watched as Mr. Hardy caught sight of one of the laborers and tipped him a wink.

  The trap was about to be sprung.

  Abberline began to move toward the enclosure more quickly. He no longer cared about robed men and whether they fought for good or bad. What he cared about was giving Mr. Hardy a greeting from Aubrey, and his truncheon was in his hand as he pushed his way through the crowds then vaulted the enclosure fence. He threaded his way through the parked coaches. Once more he was glad of his peeler’s threads when one of the oncoming laborers saw him approach and turned smartly on his heel, feigning interest in something behind him. He was a few feet from Hardy now, and the punisher still had his back to him, still watching the man in robes. What he and the man in robes had in common was that both men thought themselves the hunter, not the prey, and that was why Abberline was able to come up behind Hardy undetected.

  “Excuse me, sir, but can I ask what business you have in the carriage enclosure?”

  “Business,” said Hardy, turning. “It’s none of your bloody business is what it—”

  He never said the word “is.”

  As it turned out, he would never say the word “is” again, because Abberline swung as hard with the truncheon as he could and it was a vicious attack not worthy of an officer of the law, but Abberline had stopped thinking like an officer of the law now. He was thinking about the weeks of pain and the scars made by a brass knuckle-duster. He was thinking about a man who had been left for dead. He swung that truncheon with all of his might, and in the next moment Mr. Hardy had a mouthful of blood and teeth and an appointment with the dirt at his feet.

  To his right Abberline saw a powerful laborer, snarling as he came to him with a cosh in one hand. There were other workers coming, too, but through the carriages, Abberline caught a glimpse of the man in robes, who was aware of the disturbance at his back and was turning, tensing. At the same time, Abberline felt the first laborer’s cosh slam against his temple and it felled him, dazed, his eyes watering and head howling in pain, just a few feet away from where Mr. Hardy was already pulling himself to his knees, with his chin hanging at a strange angle and his eyes ablaze with fury—and a knife that streaked out of the darkness toward Abberline.

  Abberline rolled but then found himself pinned by the legs and feet of the laborer who had hit him, looking up to see the man towering over him, a knife in his hand.

  “He’s mine,” said Hardy, although because of his injury it sounded more like hismon, but the laborer knew what he meant and stayed his hand as Hardy, his lower face a mask of blood, lurched toward Abberline, his elbow pulling back about to strike with the knife.

  “Stop,” said the man in the
robes, and Hardy jerked to a halt midstrike as he felt something, the mechanism of the Assassin’s hidden blade, dig into his neck.

  “Call off your man,” said Ethan.

  They heard the running feet of reinforcements.

  Hardy spoke, and through his broken jaw and teeth it sounded like “gufferell” but Ethan Frye knew what he meant and engaged his blade and it tore through Mr. Hardy’s throat, emerging blood-streaked and gleaming from beneath his chin. At the same time Ethan drew his revolver with his other hand. A blast tore the night and the laborer pinning Abberline spun away. Ethan wheeled. His revolver spoke again and again, and more bodies fell among the carriages. At the first shot panic had taken over the crowd and their screams spooked the horses. Terrified coachmen flung themselves to the ground.

  Ethan was empty but the attack had faded and so he dashed to where Abberline lay. “I’m Ethan Frye,” he said, reaching out to help Abberline off the dirt, “and it appears I owe you a favor. I will not forget this, Constable Abberline. The Brotherhood likes to pay its debts. Now, if you will excuse me I have some pressing business to attend to.”

  And with that, he vaulted the fence and took off over the mud toward the shaft. Men in suits scattered at the sight of this wild figure pounding over the planks toward them. More importantly the squad of laborers at the tunnel edge saw him coming, too, but with just four of them between him and the steps, he wasn’t too concerned, and he flipped the blowpipe from beneath his robes. Still on the run he plucked two darts from his belt, clamped them between his teeth, brought the blowpipe up to the first dart, loaded and fired.

  The closest man fell with a poison-tipped dart in the neck. Out of deference to Mr. Pearson, Ethan had assembled an expensive poison that was painless and fast-acting. Apart from the prick at his neck, he wouldn’t have felt a thing. Had he known he’d be using them on Templars, thought Ethan, he would have dipped them in the cheap stuff.

  He reloaded. Spat the second dart. Another man fell. A third drew a cutlass from under his jacket and came forward, cursing Ethan. His mouth shone with saliva and he was slow, and Ethan took no pride in easily deflecting his first blow, anticipating an easy scooping strike and stepping into his body and jabbing back with the blade. He whirled swiftly away to avoid the dying man’s final blood-flecked cough and meet the last man at the same time. This one was better, faster, more of a problem. Again, he had a cutlass, and again he began with a chopping strike that Ethan knocked away, trading two more blows then, before driving his blade home.

  The other workers were closing in, but he reached the structure first, not bothering with the steps themselves, shinning down the timber uprights until his boots met the planks of the makeshift platform, and there before him stood the stationary train, nothing strange about it at first glance.

  Just then he felt the earth move, a rumble. An unmistakable movement, enough to rock him on his feet. The timbers on the unfinished tunnel roof began to tumble.

  * * *

  Inside the carriage The Ghost had watched as Cavanagh bent and smashed the cane on the floor, pulling the orb from the shaft, which he tossed away. Smiling, the triumphant director held up the artifact for inspection. Greedy eyes went from the bronze globe to The Ghost; the two punishers goggled and even The Ghost felt a tremor of something indefinable in the air, as though the artifact had found its worshippers and was showing itself to them. He thought of light shows and depthless knowledge and understanding—and then saw death and destruction, and great explosions on battlefields, and wondered what he had helped unleash on the world. His job had been to recover that artifact. At the very least prevent its falling into the hands of the enemy. He had failed.

  “Can you feel it?” Cavanagh was saying. The sphere seemed to glow in his hand and, yes, unless they were all experiencing the same hallucination, they could all feel it.

  Like it was humming.

  Suddenly the door to the adjoining carriage was flung open and Marchant was back, slamming the connecting door and cutting them off from oblivious Mrs. Pearson, who no doubt wondered when they were due to disembark.

  “Ethan Frye’s coming,” said Marchant breathlessly. At once the waves of energy that seemed to pulse from the orb increased in intensity.

  “What?” said Cavanagh.

  “Mrs. Pearson wanted to be let out, so I opened the door and saw Ethan Frye at the top of the steps.”

  “Did he see you?”

  “Back to me. He had his back to . . .”

  The door to the carriage opened. At the same time, lightning fast, Cavanagh whirled and threw his knife, and there was a short scream from the doorway.

  Ethan, thought The Ghost. But it was the train driver’s body that fell into the carriage.

  They all felt it. The earth seemed to move. There was a distinct rumble and Cavanagh looked at the object he held, fixing it with a terrible, power-drunk gaze. And was it The Ghost’s imagination or did it seem to glow more brightly—almost boastfully? Look at me. Look at what I can do.

  Then the world caved in.

  FIFTY-SIX

  The slippage caused the surrounding banks to move. Though the tunnels held, the makeshift roof above the carriage was dislodged and came tumbling, clattering and crashing to the carriage below. The roof cracked and gave, showering those inside with splinters and it gave The Ghost just the chance he needed. He wrenched free of the punishers.

  “Ethan,” he called, and crashed through the door into the adjoining carriage, where Mrs. Pearson sat screaming and terrified with her hands over her head, and then at the sight of the Indian man screamed even more loudly—and Mrs. Pearson would spend the rest of her life believing that the Indian man had stabbed her husband to death.

  The Ghost yanked open the carriage door, leapt out onto the platform—and almost barged into Ethan Frye.

  “Kill him,” called Cavanagh with a voice that sounded as though it had been dragged from the very pits of hell. “Kill them both.”

  The two punishers burst out of the carriage door, blocking the way forward, oncoming laborers behind. Other Mr. Hardy reached into his suit jacket, hand appearing with a revolver aimed at The Ghost.

  Unwavering, The Ghost met him, wishing he had a blade but settling for the toughened edge of his bare foot instead, seeming almost to pivot in the air as he leapt, knocking the revolver away with one kick then wrenching the man’s head back with a strike to the chin from his trailing foot.

  The weapon spun away and the two men both sprawled to the deck, but The Ghost was the first to react, kicking again but this time to the underside of Other Mr. Hardy’s chin and hearing a crunch in return that left him either dead or out for the count. The Ghost wasn’t too bothered either way.

  At the same time Ethan had the pleasure of Mr. Smith’s company. The second punisher had drawn a long-bladed dirk and come forward, slashing haphazardly, with not a cat in hell’s chance of besting the Assassin. Sure enough, Ethan stepped smartly away, felt the reassuring tickle of the mechanism on his forearm as his blade engaged, and then buried it in the man’s neck.

  Suddenly the earthquake seemed to increase in intensity and at the same time Cavanagh stepped out of the carriage and onto the platform in front of them. His knife was still buried in the train driver but he had no need of it now. Not now that he had the artifact. It glowed and seemed to pulse in time with the tremors.

  Twenty feet away, Ethan and The Ghost exchanged a fearful look as Cavanagh held the artifact before him, as though proffering it to the gods, and there was a great moan of traumatized wood, then a sudden increase in the deluge from above. In the distance were the screams of spectators terrified by the sudden earthquake—an earthquake that was increasing in intensity now as behind the glowing artifact, Cavanagh’s face split into a maniacal grin, his eyes changing, until the man who had spent his life burying his humanity in favor of ambition and corruption had no more humanity left
.

  He hadn’t noticed Marchant edging closer to him.

  He didn’t see that Marchant had retrieved the pearl-handled knife from the body of the train driver.

  “Crawford Starrick sends his regards,” shouted the clerk above the crashing of the shaft around them, then buried the knife into Cavanagh’s armpit.

  The director’s eyes widened in pain and shock and incomprehension at the sudden turn of events. Straightaway the artifact’s rhythmic pulse faded as he sank to his knees with his suit front already gleaming darkly with blood from his wound. He looked from Marchant to the two Assassins, then sank forward. Perhaps in that final moment a little of him returned, enough to ponder on the evil he had done, and as he left this world with a wet, choking noise as his lungs filled and he drowned in his own blood, The Ghost hoped that the unnamed sepoy was there to greet him in hell.

  The laborers swarmed onto the platform behind them as Marchant snatched up the artifact—and Ethan Frye leapt forward to attempt to relieve him of it, all of which happened in the split second before a falling piece of timber ignited the gas supplies on the roof of the carriage, and the Metropolitan Railway’s brand-new “enclosed carriage” burst into flames.

  FIFTY-SEVEN

  Ethan and The Ghost dived for cover, flinging themselves into the tunnel. Behind them was fire and pandemonium and noise, then after a moment during which the aftereffects of the explosion died down, they heard Marchant screaming at the laborers, “Get them! Get after them!” and they took to their heels, heading west, back toward Paddington.

  “I have something to tell you,” said Ethan as they ran. They pounded in between the train tracks in total darkness, sharpened senses leading them along the tunnel as fast as they dared, until they found themselves beneath the steam hole at Leinster Gardens, and there they pulled themselves up to safety. Sure enough the gang of workers ran past right below them. They didn’t even look up.