by A D Davies
“They talk funny,” he commented, switching the Bluetooth audio through his phone to mute Toby’s channel.
“Like Downton Abbey if it was written by stoners,” Dan said.
“What’s Downton Abbey?”
“Seriously? The TV show? You never watched Downton Abbey?”
“I told you, television is irrelevant.”
“You are one weird kid.”
Jules arrived at a T-junction under the Upper Ward, and as Toby had said, there was an area of shoddy repair work on the opposite wall. Using the acidic fluid from Dan’s stash, Jules squeezed the bottle, and the jet arced over the shallow stream of waste, hit the patched-up bricks, and went to work. All he could smell was the ointment on his neckerchief, but he imagined the alternative would be grim.
As the fizzing mist cleared, Jules pulled at the gap with gloved hands, and the top part of the wall fell away. Behind there, he found an open space laid out as a narrow dusty room.
Actually a corridor of sorts, according to Toby, it was at one time accessed by servants to transport dirty coal from the storeroom at one end of the castle, bypassing the monarch’s pristine passageways and living quarters. Jules was now directly beneath the State Apartments.
Rather than fill in the old coal void that had spread the fire in 1992, they sealed it, sprayed the floors and walls with retardant fluid that solidified to a gel, then plastered over the access. Jules crossed this, his feet sticking occasionally, and followed the route mapped out in Toby’s crude drawing, the one Jules had memorized.
The going was far easier in the corridor than the sewer, and Jules pulled his neckerchief down. Aside from the remnants clinging to his pads, the place smelled like the water in which flowers had been kept too long, not vile, but off, slightly rotting. The lack of ventilation made it hot too. Dust motes floated in his flashlight beam. No scurry of creatures, though. The gel coating must have made it an uninviting place.
At the end of the void, the farthest point from the coal storage, was the lowest section of basement floor, where the retardant fluid had settled. Because there was so much here, it made the floor moist before it could react with the air and coalesce, a discovery made when the fluid leaked into the subbasement corridors...
The secret subbasement corridors.
The only problem?
What Jules had to do was a long way from silent. He was directly beneath Chester Tower, where additional guards were stationed at all times, but especially during the Changing of the Guard. He could hear them above in their cramped room, heavy feet shifting, voices muffled.
He had to wait on Harpal now.
Harpal crouched outside Chester Tower, twenty feet back from the crowd observing the marching and synchronized movements of the red-clad troops. He wore flowing white trousers and tunic with sandals on his feet and a skullcap. Essentially—much as it felt politically incorrect—anyone in the vicinity would see a Muslim watching the Changing of the Guard, along with dozens of others within Windsor Castle’s walls. As Sikhs, his family had charted centuries of conflict with Muslims and now, as Islamist terrorism had cemented itself around the world, Muslims in the West had their problems too.
It depressed him, though, to see how many predominantly white, British people hated all of that faith, how they feared Muslims for the way they dressed, the bags they carried, the prayers they said. Such a tiny, almost insignificant portion of the population in the UK was a genuine threat, yet even before Harpal intentionally drew direct suspicion, he’d received plenty of furtive glances and people “subtly” ushering their kids away from him.
It depressed him. But that didn’t mean he couldn’t use it.
He slipped his backpack off, set it on the bench before him, and slid the zipper open, his body angled so the guard station could see. And what they would see was a young Muslim man checking the contents of his backpack: a small pressure cooker—an object known to serve as the base for bomb attacks in the past. Although the bag had been scanned on the way in, it would still ring a few bells.
He checked it over, zipped the pack up, then slung it on his back and took out his phone.
Jules heard a commotion above. Weight shifted; footsteps slapped back and forth. The ceiling was solid here, not simple floorboards, so the muffled words didn’t carry. All he could be sure of was a change in tone, an urgency that continued with the movements.
All fell silent, so he guessed the place was empty. He pulled a hatchet from his pack.
Quietly, he said, “Okay, get ready. You’re about to have company,” and used the blade to scrape back the gel from floor in the corner.
Three guards strolled out from the concealed door close to Chester Tower, trying to look casual in their dark-blue suits with walkie-talkie handsets clipped to their lapels. One was as built as Dan, two of them more so, almost struggling to move as humans due to their bulk. Two of the three sported pristinely trimmed mustaches, the third as clean-shaven on his head as his chin. They split up, circling the gravel path.
Harpal pointed his phone at the crowd watching the ceremony, although their backs were to him and he was plainly too far away to take it in. Bridget and Charlie stood near the back.
Bridget glanced his way.
He would have told her to turn back to the troops, but one of the security guys was too close. A mustachioed guard. Forties. Candidate for steroid abuse. He would have heard anything louder than a telepathic prompt.
“Sir,” he said, now at Harpal’s shoulder. “May I see your bag?”
Harpal dead-eyed the guard. “My bag? Sure, you can see it. Look. It’s right there.” He hooked a thumb behind him and turned his attention back to his video app, filming from afar.
“Inside it, please.”
Harpal hit the stop button and dropped his hand to his side. “Why?”
“Because I need to see in your bag.”
Harpal flicked his phone to its contacts list. “Then I’m gonna call my lawyer first, see if that’s okay.”
The guard instinctively snatched Harpal’s wrist and yanked it down, wresting the phone from him. The bald guard was on him in a second, initiating a choke hold so Harpal could barely breathe, presumably worried that the phone might act as a detonator.
The third struggled to remove the backpack without his bald friend breaking away, meaning the guard had to wriggle it from Harpal’s shoulders and pry it from beneath his colleague’s body.
“Subject neutralized,” the first one said into his handset.
“Wait,” Harpal said. “You’ve really got more people inside that tiny room?”
The mustachioed security guard just stared back.
Jules was in position, about to swing the miniature ax down on the exposed wooden floor, when he heard Harpal speak as if to the guard, but it was plainly directed at him. He froze.
A scuff and creak above indicated movement.
Charlie caught Bridget watching the mini drama unfold, listening in just as Charlie was. She shook her head, but Bridget trotted away.
“This is not what we agreed,” Charlie said.
“No, it wasn’t how we planned it.” Bridget continued onward, her gait stiff, eyes lasering at the unfolding scene.
Charlie’s choice to stay back most of the time was not a matter of skill or experience, and Bridget knew this. She always felt like such a mum whenever she operated in the field even when the risk was low like today. Keeping the team from harm, watching they did things right, offering suggestions on how to improve, scolding them for mishaps. She accepted that she was a decent team leader on these sojourns, and Toby would happily have her along on most trips, but she preferred to downplay her skills and make use of her experience in comms, engineering, and computing. Her mothering role wasn’t necessary out here anymore with Dan available to corral them into a cohesive unit.
Besides, Charlie had other priorities these days, priorities that trumped artifacts and dusty old bricks no matter how much they meant to Toby... or to her.
And yet.
There was always the “and yet” aspect whenever she tried to distance herself.
And yet...
The mysteries, especially those surrounding the objects they found that were—according to conventional wisdom—out of place or in the wrong time period, or where their existence threw up more questions than answers... they simply called to Charlie. Even when she kept her promise to Phil and prioritized her family life over LORI, these objects’ presence in the world would not allow her to sleep or concentrate on anything else until the mystery was solved.
And, clearly, Bridget felt the same way.
At least Charlie had experience working in hostile environments, in places where working women often weren’t welcomed, whereas Bridget had exactly two years of fieldwork behind her, and those were in university-approved risk-assessed regions. That is, until Toby came a-calling.
Harpal was teaching her how to blend in, to make herself invisible, but with her flame-red hair, slender figure, and pale complexion, that wasn’t always possible in countries where Harpal could simply alter his hairstyle and dress sense to go unnoticed. And, more problematic right now, her improvisation skills left much to be desired.
Charlie swallowed the guilt of not spotting Bridget’s intent sooner and reverted to listening in, hoping her advice would not be needed.
“Hey,” Bridget called within earshot of the guards who were manhandling Harpal. “What are you doing?”
“No, Bridget,” Charlie said quietly. “Don’t over-egg the indignation.”
“Ma’am.” The guard’s reply sounded muffled, the downside of the nearly invisible throat mics they were using. “We are dealing with the situation.”
“They’re official guards holding a brown-skinned suspect,” Charlie added. “You go in too hot and sure he’s innocent, you’ll make them suspicious.”
Bridget coughed. Paused. Charlie saw her halt ten feet away. Then she said, “That’s my boyfriend you’re hurting. Let him go.”
The guard did a double take.
No, Charlie thought. Wrong approach.
Bridget in her skinny jeans with a designer jacket and bag. Harpal in a tunic and loose white trousers and skullcap. Not a chance in hell they’d buy that.
“Boyfriend?” the guard said. “Really?”
“Really,” Harpal answered, forced to go along with Bridget’s bad call. “What, she and I can’t be together? This not a free country anymore?”
The guards all glanced at one another, likely waiting for one to take the lead. The one holding Harpal’s backpack spoke into his lapel-mounted handset, but Charlie couldn’t hear. A pause. Then the fourth guard emerged from the hidden door, not so hidden anymore.
“Okay, great,” Bridget said, her Deep-South accent strengthening like an amateur dramatic production of A Streetcar Named Desire. “Any others hiding? Any more folks wanting to oppress a pair of people goin’ about their business?”
The fourth guard approached—a close-cropped clean-shaven type. Ex-military. He asked the mustachioed man to open the backpack. They both looked inside, and the guy holding it stiffened. A pressure cooker would do that. And that was the plan. The team hadn’t expected the reaction to be so fast and physical.
“It’s soup.” Bridget stood with her hand on one hip.
The new guard indicated for his subordinate to lower the bag to the floor. Charlie heard him say, “Is this some sort of joke?”
“Clear,” Charlie said. “Jules, do it now.”
Jules hacked the hole in the wooden floor as planned, stared at what he’d exposed, and said, “This is why you needed me.” A fissure lay between the man-made concrete subfloor and the bedrock beneath the castle. “I’m the slimmest.”
A barely audible, “Ahem,” came from Bridget, but there could be no verbal argument given her position.
He said, “You’re fine, sure. But things that make you fine mean other things too. A chest. Hips.”
He pictured her, had assessed her as a size six, making her size ten here in the UK, with a B-cup chest. It wasn’t a sexual thing, just one of the many observations he could not help when meeting new people. Harpal had a thirty-two-inch waist and forty-four-inch chest; Dan was thirty-eight inches at the waist, forty-eight in the chest, which sounds big but was clearly firm; Charlie sported at least a D-cup and was a size ten US, a fourteen UK; Toby had a thirty-six-inch waist but a thirty-four-inch chest, so his dimensions were all over the place. He always made subconscious assessments like that within seconds of meeting people, and found it difficult to turn off.
Careful to avoid splinters, Jules lay on the floor, switched off his lamp in case anyone happened by below, and gazed into the space. He took a moment to recall the sketch Toby drew, a crude map that the man himself admitted wasn’t to scale, but having walked those catacombs many times, he was confident of it being the closest thing to a blueprint.
“Okay, I can do this. I’m going in.”
No matter how many of these sorts of conversations Toby held, he never got used to the difficulty in maintaining visible outward pleasantries while concentrating on the activities beyond. Especially when things weren’t quite going to plan. Usually, the team withdrew at the first sign of a snafu, but they had progressed too far.
Bridget should have left Harpal to the security personnel. After discovering his soup was unlikely to explode, they would have simply apologized and stood back while Harpal ranted at them and accused them of racism, then come away with a lifetime membership to the National Trust or some such appeasement. But the physical nature of the guards’ reaction was unexpected.
“So I noticed a tad more security these days,” Toby said.
“Fine tuning for a new world.” Colin poured a second round of tea. “Our upgrades reflect a change in the sophistication of thieves, and more violent threats. And indeed the conspiracy theorists who think Her Majesty is a breed of lizard creature from Venus.”
Toby chuckled and slapped his thigh. “That one has been around a while. But I thought she was from a parallel dimension.”
“Who knows? Her Majesty is very versatile.”
Toby lifted his cup. “So, these upgrades.”
Charlie’s voice: “Careful, Toby.”
“Costly?” Toby said, realizing he could not push for details so directly. “With the new world’s desire for openness, it can’t be easy pushing those things through.”
Colin’s cup made a louder than usual clink as it touched the saucer. “There are people out there with other interests of course.” A smile—a royal lizard creature spying a fly. “Like your secret little club, for example.”
Toby’s stomach dropped, but he kept the shake out of his fingers. “My... club?”
Colin switched his gaze to his lap for a moment, and when he returned to Toby, the smile was gone. “I hear you must tread very lightly in Nigeria these days. If you dare return.”
“An... advisory capacity I assure you. A misunderstanding.”
“Really?” One of Colin’s eyebrows arched as he sat back, fingers locked over his stomach. “And Prague? How were the gyros?”
Although Jules had gotten good at blocking out irrelevant chatter, having tuned back in to Toby’s channel, he picked up that Colin was dropping significant hints toward the existence of the Lost Origins Recovery Institute. He just hadn’t named it yet. But still, Jules slipped through the gap in the foundation headfirst, his bodysuit stretching without tearing, although it threatened to rip several times. This was an incidental crack, not a man-made escape hatch.
Jules dropped one shoulder out first, reached back for his pack, and dropped it to the ground. He waited. No alarm sounded; no guards came running. He had to shift his body sideways to squeeze the other shoulder and arm through. Bracing his hands on the wall, he inched his torso and stomach down, then walked his hips out one inch at a time. When he was clinging by his toes, he listened.
Toby said, “I have advised in many countries, many differe
nt interest groups. Including some nice people trying to repatriate the Elgin—”
“Yes,” Colin said. “We know how you feel about our Elgin Marbles, Toby.”
Jules picked up no noise from the corridor, saw nothing, so he dropped the rest of the way, flipping to land almost soundlessly on his feet.
“I’m in.”
Toby jumped as Colin’s mobile phone burst to life, a ringtone mimicking an old-fashioned dial phone. He checked the screen. “Unknown number.” He dismissed it with a swipe.
“Probably one of those sales calls asking if you’ve been in an accident,” Toby said.
“Probably, yes.” Colin placed the phone facedown beside the empty teapot. “Perhaps you’d care to explain why a man who is rumored to be operating outside of international law is asking for a favor. What, exactly, are you seeking?”
“I must say, your insinuation is rather rude—”
“And yet you do not deny it.”
Toby allowed a smile. Both teacups were empty. No more props. “I wish to read one of the Kerala manuscripts.”
“One of Saint Thomas’s?”
“You assume correctly.”
“But didn’t you denounce them as fakes?”
“Reproductions.” Toby raised his finger. “They were very committed people. I suggest ‘transcriptions’ would be accurate.”
“Not a real, honest-to-God manuscript penned by Doubting Thomas himself?”
Toby frowned. “Are you suggesting they might be real?”
Colin stared, poker-faced. “One of them, perhaps. Which one, specifically, interests you?”
Toby probed his top lip with the tip of his tongue. Pulled it back. His own poker tell. He was about to inform Colin exactly which manuscript he was interested in when another brrriiiiingggg erupted from the phone.
Again, Colin checked the display. Unknown number. He dismissed it. “My, those compensation solicitor folks are persistent.”