With increasing desperation, she headed into a pub on the corner, and hurried through the warren of sofas and chairs filling its low-ceilinged rooms and snug bars.
Nothing.
She ran out onto the pavement and down the narrow old street.
But he was nowhere in sight.
She stopped dead and looked up and down one last time, but there was little point.
She had lost him.
Dejectedly, she walked slowly back towards the crossroads. A few doors down she passed a shop selling music and books. She peered through the door, but there were no customers inside.
As she turned away, her eye was caught by the window display, showcasing a retrospective of 1960s and 1970s psychedelia.
In the centre was a hyper-colourful Led Zeppelin box-set, which proudly announced the inclusion of their concept film, The Song Remains the Same.
Next to it was the bizarre cover of the Beatles’ Sgt Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, prominently featuring the band dressed as military musicians surrounded by the faces of dozens of counterculture icons. Glancing at the cover, she could not help but notice, in the top left hand corner, the unmistakable fleshy bald head of Aleister Crowley.
As she quickly scanned the window display, she could see a range of related books as well. Their jackets largely featured the bright swirly contrasting patterns and bubble typefaces of the time. But among them were a few more traditional covers—including one titled The Avatar of Aiwass, decorated with the same fleshy photograph of Aleister Crowley as on the Beatles’ album. It was a recent biography of the man the subtitle claimed was ‘the Beast 666’.
She could only imagine how much it would have appealed to Malchus.
She pushed open the shop’s door, and picked up the book on Crowley.
She had been thinking on and off about Crowley’s Gnostic Mass, which Malchus had been reading at Stockbridge House. It seemed to hold echoes of the ancient world whose artefacts she handled every day—one in which priestesses and priests celebrated the mysteries together, in the days before the Abrahamic religions pushed women to the margins.
She paid at the counter and returned to the street. Retracing her steps to the library’s sober gothic quadrangle, she found Ferguson entering from the opposite side. He had clearly done a circuit, but from his frustrated expression she could see he had not found anything either.
She leaned up against the railings of the imposing bronze statue in front of the entranceway to the proscholium.
A wave of despondency broke over her.
Malchus was gone.
Worse—he had left no leads.
The letter Drewitt had been carrying had brought them this far—to the library’s manuscript of The Sword of Moses, where she had been hoping to intercept Malchus trying to access it.
But he had been and gone.
Once again, he had been one step ahead.
After the adrenaline of the last few days, the disappointment was overwhelming. Even though she had successfully duped him by switching the manuscripts so the old priest’s notes would prove useless, the fact remained that the trail had gone stone cold.
With the priest’s death, Malchus had disappeared, taking all clues with him.
Dejected, she glanced at the Latin sign over the main doorway.
ACADEMICIANS OF OXFORD—THOMAS BODLEY BUILT THIS LIBRARY FOR YOU AND THE REPUBLIC OF THE LEARNED. MAY IT TURN OUT WELL!
She felt exhausted with frustration and anger.
For all Thomas Bodley’s good intentions, her day in the library had decidedly not turned out well.
——————— ◆ ———————
98
Oxford to London
England
The United Kingdom
Neither Ava nor Ferguson spoke as they got into the car.
There seemed to be a tacit understanding between them that there was nothing useful to be said.
They had lost Malchus at the ancient medieval library, and with him all chance of finding out where he was headed with the dead professor’s translation of The Sword of Moses.
After all the progress they had made. After they had come so tantalizingly close. For the first time since General Hunter had airlifted her to Qatar, Ava felt as if she had hit a brick wall.
She had no idea where to turn next. Malchus was gone, and she had no meaningful leads on where to begin the hunt for him and the Ark again.
She stared blindly out of the lightly tinted window as the four-by-four pulled away from the built-up area of the city and nosed into the gently undulating and hedgerowed countryside.
To fill the silence, Ferguson flicked on the radio, leaving it pulsing away quietly in time with the purple spiking lights of the graphic display.
Ava was lost in her thoughts.
The frustration and disappointment were overwhelming. She could not bear to think they had come so close for it to end like this. It had so nearly all been in reach—the Ark, the Menorah, exposing her father’s killer, and clearing her and Ferguson’s names.
But with Malchus’s escape from the bookish hush of Duke Humfrey’s library, she could not help but feel she had lost all chance of getting closure on any of it.
It was almost too much to bear.
She opened the glossy book she had purchased on Aleister Crowley, and began to flick distractedly through the text and plates.
It seemed a standard type of biography. It started with Crowley’s childhood, being brought up by strict Christian parents active in the ultra-puritanical Plymouth Brethren. It then chronicled his time at Cambridge University, as a mountaineer and star chess player. But the majority of the text focused on his increasing exploration of the darker sides of life, his rebirth as ‘the Great Beast 666’, and the infamy that increasingly followed him as he revelled in an ever more unconventional lifestyle.
As she turned the pages, her eye was caught by a stylized diagram of a striking star-shaped motif. Its aggressive spiky shape was immediately familiar, but for the moment she could not recall where she had seen it.
Grateful for the distraction from brooding over her failure, she tried hard to think where she knew it from. An Egyptian temple carving? A Mesopotamians stele? She cycled through the image library in her head, trying to remember exactly where she had encountered the unusual shape.
Without warning, Ferguson braked dramatically, forcing the stream of cars immediately behind them to swerve and overtake unexpectedly.
She shot him a concerned look.
“We’re being followed.” He sounded tense. “I wasn’t sure at first. But I am now. They’re hanging back deliberately, two cars behind.”
Ava twisted in her seat to look out of the large rear window.
She did not need him to tell her which car it was. The red BMW 5 stuck out like a sore thumb to anyone who knew what to look for.
It was the standard issue car for the intelligence services and the police’s armed response and diplomatic protection units. If any of the more shadowy echelons within Her Majesty’s government ordered a tail, then she was looking at their vehicle of choice.
Predictably, its cabin was filled with three alert-looking men in a classic configuration—driver and navigator in the front, and observer-radio operator in the back.
She knew the set-up well.
The car would have been completely worked over by the Firm’s engine shop. They would have reinforced the chassis and retrofitted the hardware under the bonnet with a wealth of performance-enhancing parts. Additionally, there would be several packs of spare number plates in the boot, helpfully supplied by the Driver and Vehicle Licensing Agency in Swansea.
It was all textbook.
As she took it in, she realized some things never changed. Despite decades of evidence demonstrating the need for new procedures, surveillance crews seemed incapable of including women in the teams to make themselves look less obvious.
“We’re sitting ducks here. We need to lose them,” she
confirmed to Ferguson, peering closely at the large satnav screen embedded into the dashboard. “We’ll never manage it on the motorway. But there’s a turn off ahead.” She could not make out the place name. “It looks like it leads to a small town.”
“Got it,” Ferguson noted, turning sharply off into the slip road without indicating.
Looking back at the men pursuing them, Ava felt a wave of despondency building from the pit of her stomach.
However much she tried to think of different outcomes, it seemed ultimately inevitable that the Firm was going to catch up with them sooner or later. And when they did, she knew that without Malchus they had little prospect of proving their innocence.
She did not fancy her chances. Or Ferguson’s.
They had no hard evidence to implicate DeVere, and by far the easiest option for the grey men in the top floor suites would be to hurl the pair of them to the dogs. It would save the bureaucrats a great deal of embarrassment and difficult conversations around DeVere’s rogue activities.
But her thoughts were cut violently short as Ferguson abruptly yanked the wheel to the left, swerving across towards the side barrier.
“Trouble!” he yelled, as the car in pursuit, now speeding aggressively, pulled alongside them. The driver was motioning unambiguously for Ferguson to pull over and park up.
Ferguson glanced at Ava, the unspoken question hanging in the air between them.
She shook her head firmly.
“I didn’t think so,” he grimaced, slamming his foot down hard on the accelerator, pulling the car sharply off the slip lane into a smaller road leading to a residential street.
The houses here were uniform—squat two-storey blocks of pebble-dashed concrete with a few square yards of grass at the front. To give a degree of privacy from the road, the windows and door glass were draped on the inside with a variety of net curtains.
“Hold on!” Ferguson warned, accelerating hard, trying to put more distance between himself and the pursuing BMW, which had turned into the narrow street seventy yards behind them, and was gaining fast.
Ava watched with mounting alarm as the high-performance car put on a burst of speed and began to catch up. But this time the driver was not indicating for Ferguson to pull over. He was going too fast.
And getting too close.
Before she could shout a warning to Ferguson, the reinforced government car slammed hard into their rear right side.
The impact shook the four-by-four, shunting it sideways with a sickening lurch. But it was the heavier and more powerful vehicle, and responded quickly as Ferguson pulled it back into the middle of the road, narrowly avoiding a row of parked cars and accelerating out of harm’s way.
As the street of houses came to an abrupt end, Ferguson squealed the car right onto a section of link road.
But Ava could immediately see it was not over.
Before she could catch her breath, the BMW’s engine howled, and it drew level with them, then swerved viciously, hammering into their side.
Harder this time.
Ava was flung against the walnut panel lining the inside of the passenger door. At the same time, she was aware of Ferguson battling to keep the vehicle on the road. It was careering dangerously off course, set to plough into the neighbouring ditch.
But Ferguson’s reactions were quicker. Wrenching the wheel, he dragged the car back into the middle of the lane, ahead of the BMW.
She could see a sheen of sweat on his forehead, and could feel her heart hammering against her ribcage.
It was clear the men in the BMW were not messing around. She had at first assumed they simply intended to arrest her and Ferguson, and take them back to whoever in Vauxhall Cross was running this operation.
But now she was not so sure. The BMW was not observing any degree of ‘reasonable force’ that she could see.
Quite the opposite.
She could hear its engine screaming, and even without looking, knew it was about to slam into them again.
Powerless to do anything, she watched out of the corner of her eye as the BMW closed on them hard and fast.
She could feel the bulk of DeVere’s pistol in her pocket. If she and Ferguson survived the impact of the next attack, she might have no option but to use it—although firing on serving MI6 officers acting in the course of their duty was not going to win her any friends when the inevitable reckoning came.
“Hold on tight!” Ferguson shouted, flipping a black rocker switch at the base of the steering column and jabbing the accelerator harder, pulling ahead of the BMW.
“What does that do?” Ava yelled over the noise of the engines, indicating the switch he had pushed.
“This,” he grunted, stamping hard on the brakes as they drew level with a set of amber traffic lights guarding a crossroads.
The four-by-four screeched to a brutal and abrupt halt.
With no time to react, the BMW smashed into their rear at high speed, catapulting Ava forward in her padded seat with a vicious jolt. For a second, she could feel the straps of her seatbelt cutting into her savagely. A moment later, she was thrown violently back into her chair as the lights turned red and Ferguson floored the accelerator for all he was worth, shooting over the crossroads with a roar of speed.
Ava craned round just in time to see the crumpled BMW skid sideways into the crossroads behind them—the occupants blinded by six puffy white airbags filling the passenger cabin.
A fraction of a second later she heard the high-pitched screech of locked wheels, followed by the deep wrenching crunch of twisting metal and shattering glass as a van steaming across the junction piled into the side of the already crippled BMW.
Ferguson did not slow down or stop to look back at the carnage he had caused. “We need to get out of here fast.” He leant forward and flicked the airbag switch back on. “We won’t have held them up for long.”
As he rejoined the motorway, Ava’s heart was still racing. Whoever was now calling the shots at Legoland had clearly given orders that it did not matter if she and Ferguson were dead or alive.
She knew from experience that if removing them permanently ever became a formal order, they would have to fall off the radar completely, and quickly. If she had learned anything from her stint with the Increment, it was that the government could find and deal with anyone. Anywhere.
It was not a comforting thought.
Ferguson flipped radio station, and Ava’s mind drifted back to the disaster at the library.
She felt overwhelmingly dejected at the idea that the tide was turning against them.
The excitement of leaving London that morning as they had raced up to the medieval city of Oxford had evaporated—replaced with a leaden feeling of despondency.
Next to her, Ferguson began tapping on the leather steering wheel, beating out the time of the song playing quietly on the radio.
If she was honest, she was not in the mood for music, but it was better than admitting to Ferguson she was out of ideas for where to look next to find Malchus and the Ark.
He nudged the radio louder. It was playing a spacey, haunting tune, almost eastern—a tense hypnotic spiral of ascending thumping guitar chords.
She absent-mindedly opened the book on Crowley again at the page with the strange star, but quickly turned to stare out of the window, trying to clear her mind.
Ferguson sang along quietly under his breath, tapping out the relentless metronomic rhythm on the steering wheel:
“Oh let the sun beat down upon my face, stars to fill my dreams.
I am a traveller of both time and space, to be where I have been.”
Ava’s eyes were unfocused as she gazed out of the window at the varied greens of the landscape. But as the lyrics of the song filtered through into her subconscious, she felt an icy chill start at the base of her spine and crawl slowly up her back.
Ferguson continued singing along softly.
“To sit with elders of the gentle race, this world has seldom seen.
As the melody changed and a chorus of strings began a dramatic rhythmic descending run, she sat bolt upright in her seat, feeling a knot tightening at the centre of her stomach. “My God,” she whispered.
“What?” Ferguson turned, clearly alarmed by the tone of her voice.
“That’s where I saw it,” she whispered slowly.
“Saw what?” he sounded mystified.
“The star.” She twisted in her seat to face him. “That’s where I saw the star.” She jabbed a finger at the picture in the book. “At Stockbridge House, first time I met Malchus. He was playing with a rosary. But it wasn’t a normal one. It didn’t have a crucifix at the end—but a star, like this one. He stabbed it into my face.”
She sat back in her chair. “That song reminded me.” She nodded at the radio, feeling herself breathing heavily with excitement. “It all makes sense.”
“The song?” He looked confused. “Kashmir. Always a favourite of mine on the headphones when flying back to the ’Stan. Made me feel optimistic somehow.”
“I just can’t believe it’s taken me so long to see it,” she interrupted him.
“See what?” Ferguson was still tapping the rhythm out on the wheel.
The fields around her had ended, and they were now passing through the endless miles of London’s gloomy suburbia.
“Malchus,” she replied. “Malchus and Aleister Crowley. It’s so obvious. I should’ve realized ages ago. ‘I am a traveler of both time and space, to be where I have been’.” She paused. “Don’t you see? Malchus thinks he’s Aleister Crowley, come back to life.”
“That’s a bit of a long shot, isn’t it?” Ferguson sounded dubious.
She sat forward, focused now, pushing a stray lock of hair off her face. “I’ll bet there’s more.” She flicked through the book, then turned to the Table of Contents.
As her eyes travelled down the list, she suddenly saw it.
“There! Look I was right!” She pointed to a section headed ‘The Holy Books of Thelema’. “It all fits. Malchus chose the name for his group because of its association with Crowley. Hence his obsession with the ‘will’.”
The Sword of Moses Page 68