‘It’s not far,’ he shouted, his voice echoed eerily in the small chamber. ‘Your turn.’
Lying flat against the cold stone, Ella pulled herself along the shaft towards William’s torchlight. There wasn’t much room for movement, she struggled to haul herself forward. A wave of panic surged through her, she feared she might get stuck. William shouted words of encouragement and guidance and she settled into a worm-like rhythm. When she reached the end, William helped her out.
‘I’m not doing that again in a hurry,’ she complained as she dusted herself off.
They found themselves in an old narrow tunnel that had been cut into the rock. William had to crouch to keep his head off the uneven ceiling. Water dripped continuously from the damp ceiling onto small pools that collected on the ground. The air was bitterly cold and had an odd stale odour to it. The meandering tunnel led downwards at a gentle angle into the darkness where the torchlight couldn’t penetrate. They followed the path at a cautious pace. At one point the tunnel was so narrow they had to squeeze through one at a time.
‘What do you think this was?’ Ella asked.
‘Could be an old mine shaft.’
‘Or a medieval escape tunnel from the castle,’ Ella suggested. ‘We’re on the right side of the river and I’m certain it’s angled in the right direction.’
‘Could well be,’ William agreed.
The ground eventually levelled out, a few metres ahead of them the tunnel curved to the left. On turning the corner they were confronted with a wall made from small stones. William shone the torch over it. Bare rock merged with the stone wall around the edges. At its centre was a steel door. There were two large black metal handles on one side of the door. Next to the handles was the round dial of a combination lock. William pulled on the cold handles, but it didn’t move as much as a millimetre. The door was locked firm.
‘It’s a Manifoil Mark IV combination lock,’ he said. ‘Strong and unpick-able, not with the tools I have with me anyway. It uses three sets of double digit numbers, a six-digit code. Any thoughts?’
‘Another code,’ Ella sighed, she shook her head and looked around the chamber. ‘There must be a clue to it somewhere, my father’s style. He’s got us this far.’
Inspecting the surfaces, William shone the torch over the door and walls. But there was no writings, no symbols, nothing.
‘What about the painting, or the poem?’ Ella suggested.
‘There was nothing that indicated a combination lock code,’ he said. ‘Wait a minute.’ He smiled and set to work turning the dial. Holding the torch over the lock, he spun the dial anti-clockwise and clockwise stopping at numbers seemingly at random. Ella frowned as he worked. Slowly, he twisted it one final time. Nothing happened.
‘Damn it,’ he said looking up the ceiling. Refusing to be beaten he spun the dial to reset the lock and immediately tried another combination. Again, he twisted the dial anti-clockwise and clockwise. On the last spin there was a click. He looked at Ella and grinned.
Ella gasped. ‘How did you do that?’ she asked.
He winked at her. ‘A lucky guess. I tried your father’s birthdate,’ he said.
‘That was it?’ she said, incredulous.
‘Actually, no. It was yours.’
Ella raised her eyebrows and smiled.
Heaving on the weighty door, William slid it to one side and shone the torch into the dark room beyond. Ella peered in; her eyes widened and her jaw dropped when she saw what lay behind.
‘Oh my God,’ she said as she cautiously entered the room.
*
Leading the way into the room, William took out his pistol and scanned the area with both his weapon and the torch outstretched together. Cautiously, Ella followed behind.
The first thing they noticed were the rifles, there were dozens of them. Shelves and racks were stacked with various types aligned vertically in neat rows. They looked old, the kind used in the Second World War. William easily recognised the Bren guns, the long Lee-Enfield 303’s and the silenced Sten submachine guns. Another shelf housed a long row of black Browning pistols and several military grade Smith & Wesson Victory Models. William swept the torch around the rest of the room. There was a shelf full of dusty hand grenades, rows of brown ammunition boxes were stacked floor to ceiling and there were even a few gas masks. On one shelf in the corner there were a dozen small boxes with the word “explosives” written on them in bold letters.
‘What is this place?’ Ella gasped taking it all in.
There were two car batteries on the floor by the wall, William bent down for a closer look. A modern light switch was attached to a wire that disappeared into the plastered wall. He flicked it on and the lights in the ceiling lit the room up with an artificial yellow ambience.
‘It’s one of Winston Churchill’s secret bunkers,’ William explained. ‘There were hundreds of them built during the war. It was a backup plan, in case Britain was successfully invaded by Nazi ground troops.’
‘Oh my God,’ Ella whispered. She hovered by one of the shelves and ran her fingers over a dusty grenade. It was surprisingly heavy when she picked it up.
‘I wouldn’t do that,’ William warned. ‘It’s a Gammon bomb. The RDX explosives in it might be a little unstable after all these years.’
With theatrical care, and holding her breath, Ella gently placed the grenade back on the shelf and took a step back. As he watched, William suppressed a smile.
‘Were there many of these bunkers then?’ asked Ella.
‘There were over a hundred all around the country. A number of carefully selected people were made aware of the location of their local bunker only. They were usually former military personnel, many were trained SOE agents.’
‘Like my grandmother.’
‘Yes, but others were ordinary civilians or Home Guard. Bank managers, butchers, builders.’
‘Tinkers and tailors?’ Ella smiled.
‘Any patriot who could keep a secret.’ William wandered over to a shelf and picked up a 303 rifle. ‘They created a secret army and trained them in guerrilla warfare tactics. If the worst happened and Britain fell to the forces of evil, then these people were to recruit a trusted band of rebels and attack the invaders in whichever way they saw fit. They were independent of any central command.’ With a struggle he managed to cock the old weapon and inspected the mechanism. It was full of dirt and rust, it had probably never been used, and never would be.
‘You mean they were to operate like terrorist cells?’ Ella asked sounding astonished.
‘Freedom fighters,’ William corrected. ‘It’s all a point of view, you see.’ He put the 303 back and picked up a Browning pistol.
‘It always is,’ she mumbled.
William noticed something at the end of the room, it looked like a door handle. He squinted in the low light and realised that there was another door, it blended in with the wall and was hard to make out. He motioned for Ella to keep silent and drew his pistol. The silver door handle was clean from the dust that coated the shelves and weapons. William pulled on it and the door freely opened outwards. He thrust his pistol forward and scanned the room beyond. It was half the size of the adjoining one and was lit up by a small lamp on a desk by the wall on the right hand side. The air was warmer inside it for some reason and it smelled fresher too. There were no weapons in it, just a single bed on the left hand side that was pushed up against the wall. At the far end of the room was a closed grey metal cabinet two metres high. Covering the wall by the bed were several maps, photos and newspaper cuttings.
‘Your father’s very private study, I imagine,’ William said. He holstered his pistol and placed his rucksack on the floor by the end of the bed.
‘Oh my God,’ Ella said when she studied what was on the wall. ‘Look at these.’
Stuck to the wall were what looked like surveillance photos of various people. Names were written on them in black marker pen at the bottom. Below each person’s name was the name of a d
ifferent Greek god. In one black and white shot a smartly dressed man was helping an attractive young woman out of a luxury sports car. Taken from some distance away, the handsome man was looking almost directly into the camera. On the bottom of the photo was written “Arthur Tempest”, and below that was another name that William recognised.
‘Hades,’ he exclaimed.
‘And he’s named the rest of the gang too by the looks of it,’ Ella added. She recognised most of the names from the research that Ollie had done.
‘I need to report all this back to base.’ William checked his phone, but there was no signal. Using the torch to improve the lighting he held his phone up to the wall and photographed everything.
‘Why was my father tracking these people?’ Ella asked as she scanned over the photos. ‘I thought they had been trying to find him, not the other way round.’
At the cabinet at the end of the room, William used his lock picks to attack the simple lock. Within ten seconds he had opened it. Inside he found shelves stacked full of thick A4 sized binders and books. Flicking through one of them at random he could see that it contained detailed notes of a very complex investigation. He flicked through another file, it was the same. And another.
‘This goes back to long before you were born,’ he said. ‘Your father has been obsessed with this for years.’
He passed one of the older binders over to Ella. She sat on the bed and began to flick through the pages. She frowned and shook her head as she read through them.
‘Oh my God,’ she gasped. ‘Listen to this, “There are twelve people, both men and women, in the very inner circle of the so called Brotherhood. Each position is codenamed after a Greek god. First-borns from those in the inner circle are groomed for their role from birth, eventually inheriting their place amongst the brethren. But others are recruited into their ranks too, I estimate that they have around three hundred followers. Many are recruited from the Society of Eden, a quasi-religious cult run by them and used as a façade for their operations. But only a select few ever know what they are really following, these they call the chosen. The inner circle also runs a network of human intelligence sources that they manipulate for their own ends. Such agents are recruited with impressive precision from all walks of society, whatever is of use to them. They have penetrated global banks, the media and even various intelligence and security agencies. I have no doubt that they have politicians in their pockets too.”‘
‘This is no terrorist group,’ William said. ‘They sound more like the Illuminati.’
Fascinated, Ella scanned through the pages while William continued to search the cabinet. ‘This is strange,’ she said. ‘It says here, “I have lost my only source within them. He has failed to contact me for some months now. Perhaps they have found him out, or perhaps my Russian asset has finally been converted himself.”‘
‘Cossack?’ William wondered.
Ella looked up at him and frowned. ‘Why do you think that?’
‘Your father worked at lot in Russia,’ he explained. ‘Maybe he met him there and recruited him as his own spy.’
‘It doesn’t say here, but there’s bound to be useful information in all of this.’ Ella fanned through the pages and shook her head. ‘There’s so much, it will take days to go through.’
‘We don’t have days,’ William said sternly. He took a couple of binders from the cabinet and threw them on to the bed. ‘Scan through as much as you can. Try to get the general gist of it. I’ll see what else is in here.’
He returned his attention back to the cabinet. He ran his fingers along the underside of the shelves looking for anything hidden, but there was nothing. In the far corner of the bottom shelf, he saw a silver tin box, it was about the size of a biscuit tin. When he took hold of it to lift it out he was shocked by its heaviness, it was like a lead weight. He took it over to the small desk and sat down. There was no lock on the box, he eased off the lid. On the inside, on top of piece of brown leather, was a letter. Two words were written on it in blue ink, “To Ella”.
‘William,’ Ella said excitedly. ‘There’s a section in here that mentions the painting. It says it was commissioned in 1901 and was painted by Edmund Blair Leighton. Darren said he thought that it looked like one of his. It must be worth something after all.’ She beamed, finally lady luck had wandered her way.
‘Ella,’ William said calmly, looking over his shoulder. ‘I’ve found something here too.’ He swivelled around to face her and held out the letter. ‘This for you.’
When she took the envelope her heart raced, she threw William a worried look. Quickly and carelessly she ripped open the envelope and unfolded the letter within. After reading the first line a lump caught in her throat. She swallowed and coughed.
‘Everything okay?’ William asked seeing a tear well up in her eye. It ran down her cheek.
‘Yes,’ she said forcing a smile and holding back the emotion. ‘It’s from my dad. He’s apologising for leaving us. Said he had no choice, said his quest for the truth was putting us in danger. So he let us go to protect us.’ She held back the tears, then shook her head and laughed. ‘Sorry, I’m just tired and emotional.’
‘No need to apologise.’
‘He also mentions the Biblos Aletheia, said it’s written in a strange language. He says that the book is supposed to contain an ancient story of a journey from an unknown civilisation.’
As Ella read over the letter, William carefully lifted out the heavy leather wrapped object from the box. He laid it flat on the desk and carefully peeled back the brown leather cover. His eyes lit up when he saw what it revealed. Now he understood why people were willing to kill for it. Glancing over his shoulder to the bed he saw that Ella was still engrossed by the letter. Her soft hair hung over her face covering one eye. He noticed the gentle curves of her high cheek bones.
‘I have something else for you,’ he said as he sat down next to her on the bed.
She looked into his eyes and held his gaze. Her pupils were wide black holes in the low light; they narrowed briefly as they focused on him and then relaxed again. She smiled a gentle warm smile. In his lap, William slowly peeled back the leather covering from the object. Ella looked down at it in amazement as the contents were revealed. The smooth gold surface gleamed in the half-light.
‘And here it is, the Biblos Aletheia,’ William said.
The solid gold surface was covered in dozens of small symbols, they were all aligned to make the shape of a large triangle. Some of the symbols were repeated, like the ones around the top edges. It didn’t take much for them both to work out what they were. They had seen the pattern before.
‘Pascal’s triangle?’ Ella guessed.
‘Yes, the symbols must be numbers. Arranged in Pascal’s triangle to make it easy to decode,’ William said. ‘For any advanced civilisation that understands maths, that is.’
‘And written in gold to stand the test of time. I’ve never seen anything like it before,’ Ella gasped. She ran her fingers over the raised symbols. ‘This is nothing like ancient Greek or Egyptian.’
When she lifted the object out of William’s lap her face lit up with pleasant disbelief. ‘Wow, it’s really heavy,’ she said.
‘Probably solid gold.’
‘It must be worth a fortune.’ Ella almost laughed, she put her free hand to her mouth.
‘We need to keep it safe. And you too,’ William said. He looked into her eyes, they seemed to sparkle in the light. ‘It’s a precious and beautiful thing.’
Ella smiled back at him warmly. But as quickly as it came, the smile vanished. She replaced it with an eager, hungry look, her eyes flirted over his face.
William felt his stomach somersault, his pulse surged. Cautiously, he placed his hand on the small of her back.
Slowly, Ella leaned in closer to him. Her heart raced, she feared he would move away, but he didn’t. Together they moved closer still. Their lips met.
There was a dull thud. Both William and
Ella shot a look to the floor by the bed. Ella released herself from William and peered over. The Biblos Aletheia had fallen onto the floor. Strangely, it had opened.
‘Look,’ Ella said with astonishment. ‘It has pages.’
Each pure gold page was only a couple of millimetres thick, there were dozens of them. Both sides of each page were covered in strange symbols that were etched into the gold. They looked different from those on the front cover. When Ella closed the book up, the pages fitted together so tightly that it looked like it was one solid gold object.
‘Amazing,’ she whispered as she ran her fingers over its surface. She put the book down by her side and leaned into William. ‘Now, where were we?’
She smiled and bit him gently, teasingly, on the chin. Slowly she moved over to his lips and explored his mouth with her tongue. William unzipped her jumpsuit halfway down her chest and slid his warm hands behind her back, gently brushed her breasts as he moved past them. Ella breathed in sharply and pulled him closer.
Without warning the door to the room was pulled open sharply. A man dressed all in black rushed in. William made to move, but the man swiftly pointed his weapon and pulled the trigger. There was a bang and two darts shot out from the end of the gun and hit William square in the chest. A huge electric current surged through him. Ella watched in horror as his rigid body shook violently for a moment, then he collapsed on the bed unconscious.
Chapter 32
0703hrs – Bedfordshire
William opened his eyes. He was lying face down on the bed. His hands had been bound tightly behind his back. They felt like plasticuffs, he had had some experience with them during a training exercise some years before and knew there was no chance of him breaking free in any hurry. His chest burned where the powerful current had passed into him. He became aware of voices and realised that he wasn’t alone. Mustering up some power, he rolled over onto his back and sat up.
The Secret of Hades' Eden Page 26