It was clean.
As she clicked on the folder, it opened to reveal six bulky files of images.
The first file began with an image of the buff outer cover of a manila folder. It was unlabelled, save for a large alphanumeric catalogue number stencilled above the distinctive flaming torch and deep blue atom-ringed globe crest of the U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency. It was the same crest Ava had seen in Qatar on the files Hunter, Prince, and Ferguson had been reading when they first summoned her.
Scrolling through the images, it was instantly apparent they were all concerned with one particular subject.
“Is this the DIA file on Malchus? The one Prince showed you?” she asked Ferguson, without taking her eyes off the screen.
He nodded. “But she only gave me extracts. There’s way more material here.”
Ava continued scrolling through the images. There was no way of knowing if the SD card held the full U.S. records, but as she opened all six files, she calculated it was at least six hundred pages long—a thick dossier by any standards.
The reports were filed chronologically, starting with the details Ferguson had recounted to her. Just as he had said, the ageing close-typed pages charted Malchus’s rise through the ranks of the black market crime gangs in Dresden, before he came to the attention of the ever-vigilant Stasi, who then launched him on his new career.
She tore her eyes away.
As much as she wanted to find out everything there was to know about Malchus, to gain any insights into what made him tick and what he could be planning, she could read the history later.
For now, she needed information on his current activities.
“Prince was a dark horse.” Ferguson was still gazing over her shoulder at the screen. “If she was Mossad, it seriously widens the field of who might have wanted her dead.”
“Including the Americans, if they knew,” Ava offered the unpalatable thought. “Another high-profile trial of a U.S. intelligence officer passing secrets to the Israelis might have been an embarrassment too far for the suits in Washington and Virginia.”
“Probably better than life as a traitor in a U.S. federal facility,” Ferguson added grimly.
Flicking directly to the end of the file, Ava was pleased to see that it included more recent entries.
She hit a button on the keyboard, and the high-speed printer beside the desk began to hum, churning the file out into its tray.
As she scanned through the more recent documents, she was relieved to see there was nothing identifying her or referencing the encounter in the Basilica di San Clemente. It was possible Prince had removed certain documents from it, but with any luck it simply meant that Prince’s people were still some way behind piecing together what was actually happening.
As the images flashed across the screen, she recognized the CX report on the Stonehenge rally that Prince had slipped her after their frosty meeting at Legoland.
Arriving at the most recent material, it became clear Malchus had no intention of letting his life be minutely catalogued by surveillance teams. He had been playing the game a lot longer than they had, and it showed. The U.S. agents had been able to piece together little more than a hazy portrait of an elusive man who was meticulous in avoiding routines or patterns.
As she flipped through the pages, she was astonished to see the Americans were even unaware Malchus had been visiting Stockbridge House. There was no mention of the country mansion at all.
Most disappointingly, there seemed to be no clues to where Malchus was currently based. All the U.S. watchers had uncovered were a series of discreet hotels and guesthouses he used in the outer reaches of London.
Quite evidently, none of them looked like somewhere he would hide objects the size and value of the Ark and the Menorah.
Ava could feel the disappointment beginning to mount.
As she neared the end of the file, her eye was suddenly caught by one of the few grainy photographs they had managed to snap.
She paused, surprised, unsure what to make of the long-distance rain-lashed shot of Malchus meeting Lord Drewitt at Beaconsfield Services—a drab roadside rest area on the uninspiring stretch of motorway between London and Oxford.
She paused, startled to see the two men sitting together.
She had assumed Malchus was only using Drewitt for the safety of his country house—a parasitic relationship ensuring him a secluded base in the country away from prying eyes.
But the photograph showed the two men poring over a clutch of papers spread out on the half-empty motorway restaurant’s plastic table.
They were plainly working on something.
Together.
She wracked her brains for what Malchus could need from the Master of All Hallows College, Oxford. The prickly old don was an economist, not an expert in biblical artefacts. He was definitely not a political sympathizer. And she doubted very much he shared any of Malchus’s darker occult interests.
She saw again in her mind’s eye the image of Drewitt’s mutilated body, and felt a renewed wave of guilt and anger towards Malchus.
Reaching the last page, she leant back in her chair, lost in thought, contemplating the two main questions posed by the SD card.
Why had Prince wanted to pass the information to Mossad?
And what had Malchus and Drewitt been working on together?
She had no answer to either question. She would read the full file later, and maybe the answers would become apparent. But it would have to wait. For now, Prince had unknowingly given her the lead she needed.
Standing up, she looked over to the printer, where the last section of the file was dropping into the tray.
“Some light reading for the journey,” she announced, scooping up the pages. “Pack a bag. We’re paying a house visit.”
Ferguson raised an eyebrow.
“Judging by this,” Ava flicked through the still-warm printed pages, stopping when she got to the photo at the service station, “Malchus was working on something with Drewitt. We need to find out what it was.”
Fifteen minutes later, they were in Ferguson’s car heading west out of London, back down the road to Wiltshire—to Stockbridge House.
——————— ◆ ———————
86
Stockbridge House
Nr Newton Tony
Wiltshire SP4
England
The United Kingdom
It was just after lunchtime when Ferguson pulled the metallic grey four-by-four off the tree-shrouded country road.
Manoeuvring it skillfully, he tucked it into a dense copse of trees to shield it from the view of any passing traffic.
Now, heading into the shady woods on foot, Ava led him swiftly northwards towards the country home of the late Lord Drewitt.
In other circumstances, she would have made her way more slowly—enjoying the sinuous and leafy greens of the ageing oaks, chestnuts, and beeches enveloping them.
But she knew time was critical. Prince was dead, and she had no idea who had ordered the hit.
Or, equally worryingly, who might be next.
Looking about, she was acutely aware that the last time she had seen the secluded building she had been running away from it as fast as she could, leaving Malchus’s bodyguard with two nine-millimetre holes in his thigh.
The patchy layer of dried twigs nestling on the green carpet of moss and wild grass snapped underfoot as she and Ferguson moved forward. There was nothing they could do about the noise, but it did not matter much. There was no one nearby, and stealth was not the priority. The trees merely provided cover so they could approach the house unobserved.
After a hard ten-minute walk, the forest of gnarled trunks started to thin, and she could see the pale stone of Stockbridge House showing through the widening gaps in the trees.
The grand house was exactly as she remembered it—a secluded Elizabethan manor surrounded by a gravelled drive, flowerbeds, and ornamental lawns.
To get insid
e the building, they would eventually need to break cover from the protection of the trees, and cross the final distance in the open. But first, she needed to know if anyone was home.
Loosening the straps on her rucksack, she slipped it off her back and reached inside for the small black rubberized field telescope she had packed before leaving.
Training it on the nearest window, she slowly rotated the slim polarizing filter mounted over the lens. As it turned, the myriad reflections on the window melted away, leaving the glass entirely transparent—offering an unobstructed and clear line of sight straight into the room behind it.
If she had still been with the Firm, she would have had the benefit of one of the portable x-ray or radar devices they issued for these operations. But now she was on her own, she had to make do with what she could improvise.
Nodding at Ferguson to stay where he was, she slowly moved clockwise around the building, always staying behind the tree-line, training the telescope on each window in turn to check for signs of occupation inside the house.
It only took a three-quarter circuit round the building to scan all its windows, before she retraced her steps to where Ferguson was waiting.
“There’s no sign of anyone,” she reported, slipping the telescope back into the rucksack and hoisting it onto her back again. “Let’s go.”
Breaking from the cover of the trees, she hurried across the crunchy gravel towards the house’s imposing stone porchway. It was a shady flagstoned area under an archway, that would have looked as natural on the front of an Elizabethan church as on a manor house of the period.
Arriving in front of the ancient heavy door, she tried pushing it. Sometimes people in the countryside got careless and left things open.
But not this time.
It did not budge.
She could immediately see there was going to be no easy way of getting in. The wood was old and hardened, and the hinges were concealed.
With no alternative, she dropped one knee onto the age-smoothed flagstones, and peered at the door’s only lock.
The polished brass-faced keyhole was shiny but worn, softened by decades of use and exposure to the elements. It looked like it had been on the door since the early days of Queen Victoria’s reign.
Delving into her jacket pocket, she took out a small brown leather pouch, and removed two slim metal tools.
“Going old school?” Ferguson nodded at the picks.
Ava squinted into the old keyhole, trying to make out any details of the antique mechanism inside. But there was nothing to see. The strong sunlight obscured the view completely, leaving just a dark void behind the keyhole.
“Here goes,” she muttered, inserting the tension wrench into the hole, running its L-shaped tip delicately along the bottom until she felt it bite. Turning it, she twisted the barrel a fraction to the right, and was pleased to find it moved freely, indicating the lock was well maintained.
So far so good.
Ferguson was behind her, keeping an eye on the driveway and the woods. “It’s clear,” he reassured her. “No sign of anyone.”
Keeping the barrel rotated with the tension wrench, she inserted the second pick. Unlike the first, this one had a short bent end.
It was a delicate task, and she needed to use only the lightest touch.
Steadying her breathing, she focused all her concentration on the small metal tools.
Gently feeling the lock’s smooth inside contours, she analyzed the information her hands were relaying, recreating in her mind’s eye a three-dimensional map of its moving inner parts.
She knew broadly what to expect, but experience had taught her that old locks were quite unlike the modern mass-made ones off an assembly line. When things were old and hand-built, nothing was standard or predictable.
Pushing the pick to the far end, she stroked the lock’s roof, feeling for the outline of the farthest pin.
As the pick skated lightly over the invisible parts, she finally felt it. Pushing gently upwards, she heard the quiet but welcome click of the sprung pin above moving clear of the cylinder.
With the first pin done, she allowed herself to relax and breathe normally for a few moments. Then she drew the pick fractionally towards her, and felt for the next one.
Finding it more quickly than the last, she nudged it upwards until she again heard the telltale click of its upper pin sliding harmlessly out of the way.
Her confidence growing, she deftly repeated the procedure until all the pins were clear of the barrel plug.
“The moment of truth,” she announced with a grimace, giving the tension wrench a decisive anticlockwise twist.
To her relief, it moved easily, accompanied by the satisfying heavy clunk of the large deadbolt sliding out of the doorjamb and back into the lock’s casing.
“A woman of many talents,” Ferguson whistled quietly but appreciatively. “I’d probably just have drilled it myself. Much more fun.” He pushed lightly on the brass knob in the centre of the door, easing it open a fraction.
“I can believe that.” Ava stood up, and dusted herself down, enjoying a moment of satisfaction at how smoothly she had picked it. “But we don’t want to leave any traces.”
She pushed the door wider, and pointed at the small white cupboard she had seen Malchus’s bodyguard open when they had brought her in as their prisoner.
Arriving in front of it together, she pulled its thin door open to reveal a spray of multicoloured wires bunched around the predictable cluster of dusty hallway fuse-boxes and junctions.
But she was not looking for those, and her eyes immediately travelled to the centre, where there was a brushed metal numeric keypad, whose orange LED display was rapidly flashing the number twenty-seven in large luminous characters. As her eyes locked onto the blinking number, it dropped to twenty-six, then twenty-five.
“Your turn,” she indicated to Ferguson, noting the grey telephone line snaking out of the alarm box. “And it looks like it’s hooked into the local police station.”
Ferguson already had an inch-thick cream-coloured plastic box the size of a small postcard in his hand. Slipping it firmly over the keypad, he pushed a rocker-switch on its side, and stood back.
“You’re sure it’ll work?” She eyed it with uncertainty. “It looks a bit amateur.”
“It’s a lifesaver,” he reassured her, tapping the box confidently. “Very few people change their codes regularly. So it easily detects the four buttons with the most wear and tear and finger grease. Then it’s child’s play. Instead of trying the full ten thousand combinations of a zero-to-nine keypad, it just cycles through the only twenty-four possibilities.” He looked up at Ava confidently. “It’s sound. Honestly.”
The LED clock was still counting down. It was now showing zero-eight.
She shot Ferguson a concerned glance.
“Have some faith.” He paused, staring at the readout as it clicked down to zero-four. “Although obviously,” he conceded, “it needs enough time to work.”
She looked again at the numeric display. “Is this the best the technical lab can do?” she asked, hearing the anxiety in her voice.
“I doubt it.” He looked amused. “But it’s all they’ll trust me with.”
“I don’t think it’s—” Ava began, but was cut short by the howling sound of an alarm going off by the front door.
“Christ,” Ferguson yelled. “Change of plan.”
Reaching inside the rucksack, he pulled out a pair of wire-cutters.
“Don’t!” Ava shouted above the deafening noise. “If we’re lucky, the police will assume it’s a malfunction or a false alarm tripped by an animal. It happens all the time. But if you cut anything and trigger a secondary system, they’ll prioritize the incident.”
Ferguson threw the wire-cutters back into the bag and ran towards the front door, pulling off his thin fleece jacket.
“What are you doing?” she yelled, struggling to be heard.
“Just start looking for wha
tever we came for,” he shouted back.
Without waiting, she ran across the high hallway, darting in and out of the shafts of bright light streaming in from the diamond-leaded windows.
She headed straight for the main reception room where Malchus had first brought her. It was exactly as she remembered it—three sofas at the near end, and a large desk at the other.
The sun was pouring through the windows—a soft afternoon light infusing the room with the gentle brightness of an English summer’s day. It was a peaceful room, and she found it hard to reconcile its current calm with memories of the violence on her last visit.
She pushed the thoughts out of her mind as she brushed past a row of dark wooden bookcases displaying a collection of leather-bound books nestling alongside the obligatory modern economics texts of Drewitt’s trade.
She headed for the far end of the room, beyond the French windows leading onto the patio and fountain where she had escaped Malchus’s thug.
Reaching the desk, she heard the alarm at the front of the house become muffled for a few seconds—then stop completely. An alarm was still sounding somewhere at the rear of the house, but at least she could now hear herself think.
She had to assume they did not have long. The nearest town where there was likely to be a police station was about twenty minutes away according to the map she had looked at earlier. But there could easily be a patrol car closer by.
She needed to be fast.
Drewitt’s desk was a graceful antique hardwood table, polished to a lustrous deep sheen. It stood on an unassuming but elegant pale blue oriental rug of the sort that litter English country houses. She noted approvingly that the desk did not have the usual ostentatious lamp or leather blotter.
It was a working academic desk—piled with Drewitt’s books, journals, and papers. There was no computer in sight. Instead, from the copious sheets filled with neat handwriting, she figured Drewitt was of the generation that still preferred a pen to a keyboard.
She ran her eyes inquisitively over the books’ spines. They were exactly what she expected from an academic specializing in economics, with titles on politics, markets, and economic theory.
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