Department 18 [04] A Plague of Echoes

by Maynard Sims

  “We haven’t always seen eye to eye, have we, Carter?”

  Understatement of the year, Carter thought, but said nothing.

  “You understand that having you in here…” he tapped the side of his head with his index finger, “…well…it wasn’t something I wanted. I’m a very private person, and I’d like to preserve that.”

  “I was there to do a job,” Carter said. “Nothing more and nothing less. Sure, I saw some things that you probably wouldn’t want broadcast, but the only information I was interested in was what you knew about the Liscombe files. Everything else is your own business and that’s how it stays.”

  Crozier’s gaze scrutinized Carter’s expression. “You mean that, don’t you?”

  “You seem surprised.”

  “I think I may have misjudged you.”

  “No, you didn’t. You don’t like me; I don’t like you. We approach life differently and we approach the work we do differently. But it benefits the Department so I see no reason to upset the status quo, do you?”

  “No, I don’t suppose I do. Thank you for your candor.”

  “You’re welcome,” Carter said and went across to speak to John McKinley, who was head to head with Madaki in an angry exchange.

  “Problems?”

  McKinley sighed. “Tevin reckons he can take Schroeder out by himself.”

  “I can,” Madaki insisted. “I know I can.”

  Carter nodded. “Yes, you probably can. But you can’t guarantee it, and we can’t risk you failing. There’s too much at stake. You said a moment ago that you would give us everything you have. Have you reconsidered?”

  “No, I meant what I said. It’s just the thought of the rabbi praying to save Schroeder’s evil soul. If ever a soul should be sent straight to Hell, it’s Schroeder’s.”

  “Who’s to say it won’t be, Tevin?” Bailey had been listening to the conversation and joined in. “Don’t underestimate Stern. He has very strong views on right and wrong. They’re as strong as his views on good and evil. The dybbuk inside Schroeder is on its way to Hell. You just won’t find Abe making a great production out of it. Now, we’d better get going. If Simon’s coming with us, we’re going to need two vehicles.”

  “Already attended to,” Trudy said. “One of them is a people carrier with an elevator to accommodate the wheelchair.”

  “And the other?”

  “The SUV. Plenty of room for all of you.”

  “How are you now?” Carter asked her.

  “Better now that Simon’s on the mend. You wouldn’t believe how relieved I was when he called me and asked him to pick him up from the hospital.”

  “Well, let’s hope he hasn’t bitten off more than he can chew. This isn’t going to be a picnic.”

  “I know that, Rob, but you’ll look after him for me, won’t you?”

  Carter smiled. “You know I will.”

  “Yeah,” she said. “I know. And are you and Jane finally getting it together?”

  “David’s left her.”

  “Yes, I heard. And her daughters seem to have accepted it. So there’s nothing standing in your way now, is there?”

  “No,” Carter said. “I don’t suppose there is.”

  A phone rang in the conference room. Bailey picked it up and listened. “Okay, people,” he said to the room. “The transport’s arrived. Let’s go.”

  Chapter Forty

  The silence in the house was all encompassing, as if the bricks themselves were holding their collective breath and waiting for events to unfold.

  With the aid of his walking frame, Schroeder hobbled the short distance from his bedroom to the modern elevator at the end of the landing. The events of the night had left him feeling more tired than he could ever remember feeling before. Perhaps he was wrong when he thought he could destroy Sultan the way he had annihilated the other two. The way he felt now he wasn’t sure he’d have the strength to crush a bug should it cross his path.

  He slid the gate shut on the elevator, hit a button and waited for the machinery to whir into life. He’d had the elevator installed after the stroke he suffered three years ago left his mobility impaired, and now he depended on it just to get from one floor of the house to another. Stairs were beyond him.

  Life had become almost insufferable and it spurred him on to advance his plans; to be free of this failing husk, laughingly called a body, once and for all. For him, seven o’clock couldn’t come soon enough.

  The elevator reached the ground floor. He pushed the gate aside and maneuvered himself out into the large entrance hall. He stood there for moment, listening to the silence. He had sent the servants away for the day, even the cook. Despite what he had told his granddaughter, there would be no dinner party tonight. The people arriving at the house later were not coming to get their bellies fed. They thought they were coming for a much loftier purpose than that. Food wasn’t on the agenda, eternal life was. They were going to be badly disappointed, but by then it would be too late. He had no sympathy for them. They were fools to a man, driven by their egos to think that they deserved to transcend the boundaries of their pathetic, hollow lives, when actually the reverse was true. Once he claimed them as his own, then and only then would their lives become meaningful.

  He walked to the dining room, entered and closed the door behind him.

  The room had been well prepared. The large oval mahogany table was surrounded by twelve mahogany chairs, and each place setting had nothing but a small leather table mat holding a single crystal goblet. Into each of the goblets he would pour a few drops of blood from a small vial he had kept safe for centuries. Samuel Blacksone’s blood, his esscence, his life force. At a given signal they would drink from them. From that moment on they would become nothing but vessels, as empty as the crystal goblets were now, allowing him to take possession of them. In some small way they would be given eternal life, but it would be a life viewed through his eyes, not theirs.

  Schroeder’s mouth creased at the corners as he smiled to himself. Only a few hours to wait. The excitement he was feeling was almost palpable.

  On the floor above him Gabrielle slid silently out of bed. She had waited until she heard the elevator descending before throwing back the covers. Now, wrapping a silk robe around her, she slipped out of her bedroom and made her way, silently, to Schroeder’s room, some distance from her rooms.

  The knife she carried she had taken from the kitchen last night. It was ten inches long, the serrated blade honed to razor sharpness. As she entered the room she tested the blade with her thumb, producing a thin, satisfying line of blood. Sticking her thumb in her mouth she padded across to the bed and stared down at the desiccated body of Samuel Blackstone, now back in stasis and as vulnerable as it had ever been. She touched the blade to Blackstone’s throat and waited for a moment to see if there was going to be any response. When there was none she pressed down and began to saw slowly back and forth.

  Leon Sultan returned to the house to find Schroeder sitting at the head of the table in the dining room with his eyes closed. At first he thought the old man was asleep, but as he closed the door Schroeder’s eyes flicked open. “Sit down at the table, Leon. Join me in my meditation.”

  “I’m not one for meditating,” Sultan said. “But I’ll join you in a drink. I see you have the glasses ready.” He picked up a decanter of brandy from the sideboard in the corner and carried it across to the table. Sitting down, he poured a stiff measure into the crystal goblet in front of him and took a sip.

  Schroeder watched him with a look of wry amusement in his eyes and shook his head when Sultan proffered the decanter. “Not today, Leon. I have to keep a clear mind.”

  Sultan set the decanter down on the table. “I was hoping you would run through with me what will happen later,” he said. In truth he was starting to feel slightly anxious. Getting his seat at the table
had been his focus, his aim, and he really hadn’t taken the time to wonder what would happen once he was there.

  “Are you worried, Leon? After all, you went to extraordinary lengths to be here. Are you having second thoughts?”

  Sultan shook his head. “No, I just want to know what’s going to happen, that’s all. For instance, will there be any pain?”

  Schroeder smiled. “No, Leon. No pain. You will just go to sleep and, when you wake up, you’ll be a new man.”

  Sultan took another mouthful of brandy and swilled it over his tongue. “Perhaps I should check the house over. Make sure it’s secure.”

  “It’s secure, Leon. Just sit and wait with me. The others should start arriving soon. Be patient.”

  Sultan tried to relax back in his seat but almost instantly he sat forward again. “I don’t trust you,” he said.

  “Really? Very wise. Very astute.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean you’re wise not to trust me. As simple as that really.”

  Sultan frowned. He was having difficulty focusing on Schroeder’s face.

  “You really are a fool, Leon. Did you honestly believe you could outwit me? Did you really think I would sit idly back and let you jeopardize plans I have been making for nearly a quarter of a century?” He shook his head.

  “What are you going to do?”

  “It’s already done. The brandy’s been treated with a very powerful sedative—you see it pays to know your enemy. I knew you wouldn’t be able to resist a full decanter and an empty glass.”

  The goblet dropped from Sultan’s fingers and bounced on the mahogany table, spilling what was left of the brandy on the polished surface.

  “You bastar…”

  “In a few moments you will be unconscious, which will be fine. I need twelve people to complete the ritual and you will be the twelfth person at the table. The fact that you won’t be aware of that is neither here nor there. And once the ritual is complete, once I achieve what I set out to achieve, you will die…in the most horrible manner imaginable. In the meantime, just sit there and wait for the drug to take effect. Use the moment to reflect on your own stupidity for betraying me. Goodbye, Leon.” Schroeder got to his feet, grabbed his walking frame and hobbled from the room, closing the door behind him.

  Leon Sultan watched him go. He was furious with himself for being so easily trapped, and furious with Pieter Schroeder for trapping him. He struggled to lift himself from his seat. He wanted to wrap his fingers around the old man’s scrawny neck and squeeze until the last flicker of Schroeder’s life was extinguished. But he had no strength in his body to lift himself more than a centimeter from the seat. He slumped back down. A thin drool was dribbling from his mouth and his thoughts were becoming hazy. “Bast…” he managed to utter before pitching forward. His head hit the tabletop with a crack and he sank into unconsciousness.

  The SUV pulled up outside the gates of Pieter Schroeder’s Highgate estate. Through the gates they could see the house in the distance, a large Victorian structure built from yellow brick with a grey slate roof.

  “Not as impressive as Stonegate,” Carter said.

  “A very anonymous house for a very anonymous character,” Bailey said. “Very apt really.”

  The people carrier containing Simon Crozier, Abraham Stern and Tevin Madaki rolled up and parked next to the SUV. The driver got out, opened the back doors and operated the elevator mechanism to bring the wheelchair to the ground.

  “What have we got?” Crozier said as he wheeled himself up to them.

  John McKinley dropped the binoculars and let them hang from their neck strap. “Not a lot. The place looks quiet. Only one car on the drive and no obvious security, and the gates are unlocked.”

  “He’s expecting guests, so why bother to lock the gates?” Crozier said.

  “Even so, you’d expect something,” McKinley said.

  “Like that?” Jane Talbot said, pointing up at a Scots pine towering above them. “About halfway up.”

  They followed the direction of her pointing finger to a small video surveillance camera aimed directly at the gate.

  “Then he probably knows we’re here,” Bailey said.

  “Probably. I think we’d better get this show on the road before he can call for reinforcements,” Carter said. “Let’s get into position. Are everyone’s comlinks working?”

  There were nods of assent.

  “Right, let’s spread out.”

  The computer in Schroeder’s study was tuned in to the CCTV security network, the screen showing the camera feeds placed strategically around the outside of the house. From behind his desk Schroeder studied the screen, his withered fingers gripping the arms of his chair in anger. While he could see the views from all the cameras it was the one in the bottom left-hand corner showing Simon Crozier, sitting there in his wheelchair in front of the gate like some kind of wounded sentinel, that really irked him.

  “He should be dead,” he muttered under his breath. “If O’Brien hadn’t screwed up, he would be.”

  “You just can’t rely anybody these days, can you, Papa?”

  Schroeder spun around in his seat, a look of wide-eyed shock on his face. “Poppy? What are you doing here? You should be at rehearsals.”

  “I had other plans for today.”

  “Well, change them. You can’t be here, today of all days.”

  “And why is that, Pieter? Are you scared your precious granddaughter will see you for the lying, traitorous monster you really are?”

  Schroeder stared at Gabrielle, his beloved Poppy, watching her mouth open and close, but the voice that was issuing from her lips wasn’t hers. It was deeper, coarser…and Irish.

  “Michael?” he said.

  “If you like, or would you prefer to talk to Nils. We’re all in here with Poppy.”

  “But you’re dead, dead and gone. We blew you up.”

  “Ah, such a shocking waste of a car, and I loved that little Mercedes, I really did.”

  “Let me speak to her. Let me speak to Gabrielle.”

  Something flickered in the dark brown eyes. “Papa, Papa, what’s happening. I can’t move.”

  “I’m sorry, Poppy. I truly am. I didn’t want any of this for you,” Schroeder said.

  “Help me, Papa. Help…”

  “Enough!” O’Brien’s voice cut her off.

  “Don’t hurt her. Please.”

  “I’ve nothing against her. I could slip out of her now and she’d never know I’d been there. But you, Pieter, your betrayal hurt me more than you can imagine. Since that day in the car park I’ve been determined to bring you down, to ruin your plans and…” he pointed at the computer screens, “… and it looks like I’ve succeeded. It only took three of them to drive me out of Mae Middleton. There’re more of them now. Where will you go, Pieter, when they drive you out? Back to your original body?”

  Schroeder’s gaze drifted up to the ceiling.

  “Don’t even contemplate it. If you go back there, you’ll find he isn’t how you left him. You really wouldn’t want to go there.”

  “How did you survive the bomb?”

  “Did you really think you were the only one wise enough to take precautions?”

  “Your original body…”

  “…is still alive and hidden away so well that it will never be discovered. Unlike yours, unfortunately.”

  Without warning Schroeder clutched his head and fell forwards with a cry of pain.

  Michael O’Brien glanced at the screen. “It seems like they’ve started, Pieter, so I’ll leave you to it. Forgive me if I don’t wish you good luck. By the way, I unlocked all the doors down here to make it easy for them to get in. Goodbye, Pieter, It’s been…educational.”

  Schroeder screamed again as the psychic band around his skull tightened
. He didn’t even see his granddaughter leave the room.

  Chapter Forty-One

  From his position at the rear of the house Abraham Stern watched the young woman break from the French doors and race across the lawn. When she was just yards away from him he stepped out and spread his arms to intercept her. The expression on her face changed from fear to relief as she fell into his embrace.

  “You have to help me. Please. He’s a monster.”

  “It’s all right. You’re safe now.” He shepherded her into the cover of the trees. “You’ll be safe here,” he said.

  Uncertainty danced in her eyes. “Are you sure?”

  “You have my word. What’s your name?”

  “Gabrielle,” she panted. “Pieter Schroeder is my grandfather…only he’s not. He’s a monster.”

  “Just wait here. I’ll be back shortly.” He turned away from her and started reciting the Hebrew prayers he had prepared to help the dybbuk on its way. All around him he could feel the air, alive and buzzing with the massive, combined energy of the others—Carter, Bailey, McKinley and Talbot—combining to wrap a field of psychic energy around the house, driving the dybbuk from Pieter Schroeder’s body and trapping it in the building. Soon it would be over.

  Behind him the girl picked up a rock lying amongst a pile of leaves. Her breathing gradually returned to normal; a smile played on her lips.

  Bailey’s voice crackled in Stern’s earpiece. “Move in.”

  Stern glanced behind him for the girl and started when he saw she was just a foot away from him. She swung the rock and hit him on the side of the head. He sank to his knees as if poleaxed, his lips still moving, reciting the prayers.

  She hit him again, this time opening a gash from the crown of his head to the temple. With a grunt Abraham Stern toppled backwards and lay there bleeding profusely and wondering what the hell had just happened.

  The girl…that’s right…the girl…Schroeder’s granddaughter, she’d said. As he lay there, staring up at the overcast sky, she gradually swam into his field of vision. The prayers had stopped. Now, all he said was, “Why.”