by Nick Baker
Lex cast aside his disappointment and looked at his watch. There was no time to lose. He strode towards the office, stopping short of a criss-crossing network of beams that traversed the room and blocked his path to the door. The infrared lights originated from a trio of small transmitters embedded in the wall, crossing the room at various fixed angles to strike strategically placed mirrors on the opposite wall. From the mirrors, the beams of light were reflected back to photoelectric receivers adjacent to the transmitters, thus protecting the office behind an invisible fence of infrared light, ready to alarm the moment the light was interrupted.
Lex withdrew a dental mirror from his jacket pocket and edged forwards, holding the mirror immobile inches from his chest. He closed his eyes and steadied himself with deep, cathartic breaths, his nostrils flaring like a thoroughbred. He relaxed his muscles by drawing upon daily routines of yoga and meditation and held himself perfectly still. Suddenly, with the voracity of a striking snake, he thrust out the mirror and held his hand unwaveringly. Lex could barely draw breath as he stared at the mirror interrupting a beam of light and reflecting it back to its corresponding sensor, albeit now over a shorter distance. In this way, he had created a window beyond the beam through which he might pass without setting off the alarm.
Inch by inch, Lex rotated his body about the mirror, performing a hypnotic, slow-motion, sideways limbo. With neck arched and back extended, he stepped gracefully over the beam below his waist with the finesse of a ballerina while instinctively avoiding the light that passed a hair’s-breadth above his head. He edged towards the office and steadied himself. Following a final deep breath, he yanked the mirror towards him with a sudden snap, allowing the light to regain its former trajectory and pass unhindered as if nothing had happened. He had done it!
Once safely ensconced between the sensors and the office door, he sighed in relief. He smiled as he inspected a highly-polished, brass plate bolted to a solid wooden door bearing the name of one Marcus De Wolff. He studied the door, and in a flash, he found what he was looking for. There in the gap adjacent to the architrave was the shadow of a contact switch. It was a similar arrangement to the roof skylight with a magnet on one side and a switch on the other. As with the window, any attempt to open the door would separate the components and trigger the alarm, but this time, there was no choice, he had to open the door.
He removed the rucksack and unearthed a powerful magnet, which he secured on the architrave with a large blob of clay. He nodded appreciatively after ensuring that the magnet was positioned in precisely the right position. He took a set of lock picks from the rucksack, stood bolt upright and cracked his knuckles. He was ready to go.
Lock-picking was therapeutic for Lex in a way that hobbies and pastimes were to others. Abandoned by parents who did not care for him, Lex was raised by vagabonds and thieves on streets that became his home, learning many obscure skills normally considered rather unusual for one of his age.
At the age of six, a circus arrived in town, bringing untold opportunities for a young, would-be thief like Lex. The billboards advertising the spectacle optimistically hailed the top of the bill, Marco Zabini, as the greatest escapologist of all time. Late one evening, just as the show was closing for the night, Zabini spotted a shabbily dressed street urchin shamelessly picking pockets. Overcome by pity, Zabini took the young boy under his wing, happy to pass on all the tricks of the trade to his newly appointed apprentice.
To this day, Lex could still recall Marco’s words as he watched him demonstrate the fine art of lock picking. Since then, each time he worked the magic Marco had taught him, those words came flooding back in a wave of nostalgia.
‘Never forget that lock picking requires great skill and expertise,’ Marco enthused. ‘For success you must combine mechanical tactility with manual dexterity, and visual awareness with analytical thinking. If you excel in these areas, Lex, you will grow in many ways.’
Lex never forgot his old guru, and as he grew in maturity and wisdom, he realised how prophetic Marco’s words were. The time he spent learning the practical skills to master the art of picking locks also taught him the importance of patience and humility. Ironically, the acquisition of these attributes ultimately generated a yearning for greater depth and balance in Lex’s life, culminating in a fascination with enlightenment through spiritual contemplation.
As Lex flicked through a vast selection of strangely shaped picks, he felt an inner calm wash over him, a man at complete ease with the task in hand. He worked the lock with a hand-fashioned pick he had painstakingly ground from a steel street-cleaning bristle acquired from the gutters that had once been his home. He tactilely adjusted the pick with exactly the right torque and pressure to align the pins utilising a technique Marco had described as ‘scrubbing’.
As the minutes ticked by, Lex pictured the internal mechanics of the lock in his mind’s eye, until finally, there was a muffled click as the tumbler rotated inside the keyway to release the lock. With a gentle push, the door swung open. Lex held his breath and craned his neck, listening with trepidation. Silence. By overriding the switch with an even more powerful magnet, the circuit remained unbroken, even with the door open; the magnet had done its job.
He stepped into the office, pushed the goggles from his eyes and retrieved the torch. The room was a rather sparse affair with a small, tidily arranged desk in the centre and a large wooden cabinet in the corner. Lex yanked eagerly on the cabinet door to inspect the contents and breathed a sigh of relief; he had found the safe.
The battered block of metal that masqueraded as a safe was a sad reflection of its unimportance, and to Lex, it was nothing more than a relic harking back to a bygone age, instantly recognisable for its simplicity by a lock and handle as the only external features to its door. The lock secured a strong bolt inside the door, and by simply rotating a key, the handle would turn and release the bolt. The sight of the ancient safe filled Lex with a sense of nostalgia, but times had moved on. He shook himself down and dismissed the bout of melancholia; it was time to finish the job.
After a fruitless search for the key, he returned to the safe, and although he had encountered infinitely more sophisticated locks in his time, after all the obstacles he had overcome, he suddenly felt an overwhelming sense of gratitude; it had been a rather long day, after all.
Although the safe was a rather basic design, it still took considerable know-how to open it, particularly as he could ill-afford to damage the contents. He considered picking the lock, but the safe was no push over, and after glancing nervously at his watch, he knew that time was running out. He also had a reputation to keep, and while a ‘Liquid Lex explosive’ would point the finger of suspicion in his direction, he did not care. It would take the authorities many days to establish him as a suspect, and by then, he would be long gone.
He gathered up an ancient typewriter sitting on the desk and hauled it over to the cabinet before carefully extracting a featureless box from his rucksack. He opened the box and peered excitedly at a glass phial brimming with a colourless liquid securely sealed with a taped rubber bung.
Lex always transported his precious chemicals with all the care of a doting parent, safely packaging them in separate compartments to reduce the chance of inadvertently blowing himself up. While back in the hotel bedroom, he had carefully unpacked the various reagents and spent the afternoon mixing them into the requisite phial. He began with one part aluminium powder to five parts ammonium nitrate before adding the resultant mixture to twice the volume of anhydrous hydrazine. The brisk reaction liberated a large billowing cloud of ammonia, which he quickly dispersed by opening a window before anyone came to investigate the strong pungent odour emanating from the room.
This simple chemical combination yielded Lex a solution of hydrazonium nitrate, a compound grandiosely described as one of the most powerful explosives in the world. Lex had developed a particular penchant for this liquid, courtesy of its ease of manufacture and the spectacular results
it had previously afforded him. He had learnt of its existence from an old lag and physicist who had been happy to forgo his signature on the Official Secrets Act in exchange for a large wad of Lex’s cash. The man had been discredited for embezzling funds from the military, and in revenge for the years he had languished in prison, he had been happy to provide Lex with the details of a compound developed, not as a weapons-grade explosive, but as a rocket propellant!
Lex lifted the bottle from its protective packaging. Taking great care not to agitate the liquid, he slid the tube into the safe’s keyhole and secured it with a marble-sized plug of clay. Next, he tucked a small electric blasting cap into the clay, ensuring the detonator passed all the way through to the phial. He secured the typewriter to the safe’s handle with a thick piece of rope, leaving it dangling in mid-air. He unrolled the wires from the detonating cap and scampered across the room, positioning himself behind the desk after he had calmly tipped it over with a strategically placed boot.
He smiled nervously, made the sign of the cross on his chest and flicked the detonator switch. The fuse wires in the cap immediately vapourised, firing the initiator explosive, which in turn triggered the output explosive, shattering the phial and exposing the contents to the detonating force of the cap. The gentle tinkle of breaking glass was merely a herald to the loud report that followed. The hydrazonium nitrate split like an exploding Mount St. Helens, blowing the lock asunder. Vast plumes of nitrogen and hydrogen were released in a gaseous outburst of nebular proportions as the bolt was freed from the restraining lock. The handle turned under the dead weight of the typewriter hanging by its rope, and as the smoke cleared, the door swivelled open. Lex was in!
Lex emerged from behind the desk now pockmarked with shrapnel and calmly brushed away the debris that had settled on his jacket. He looked in satisfaction at the black scorch marks around the lock and gazed expectantly into the safe at the only item of any size amidst several unimportant looking documents. Lex reached out in eager anticipation for the deeply tanned, leather-bound book with no obvious clue to its nature. He cradled the book in his arms like a long-lost friend before setting it down on the floor to inspect its pages by torchlight. The words set boldly in black ink were a little faded on the remarkably well-preserved vellum pages. Lex sat down and crossed his legs, composing himself before he read the introductory words penned many centuries before.
The circle has no beginning or end, and so it has always been thus for those who seek enlightenment through the teachings of the Esoteric Brotherhood of Men. Singularity is the path to darkness and eternal ignorance. Alone and you will surely fail.
On Frankl’s instruction, Lex had committed these words to memory, and re-reading them now merely confirmed he had found what he had come for. He looked fleetingly at his watch; three a.m., it read. He bundled up the manuscript, tucked it safely under his jumper and lowered the goggles over his eyes.
After further careful contortions and the use of an implement miraculously pilfered from beneath a rubber dam during a course of root canal treatment, Lex wriggled safely beyond the beams of infrared light. He donned the Gecko Gloves in anticipation of escape, but his first ascent of the wall ended in disaster when the adhesive gloves pulled several books from their shelves, causing him to topple ignominiously to the floor. He cursed as he struggled to separate a seemingly irreversibly bound copy of Plinchy’s Esoterica from the palm of a hand, but when finally free of the cursed book, he carefully confined his climb to the fixed wooden struts of a bookcase. After inching across the ceiling like a manifestation of Kafka, he reached the hatch and hauled himself into the attic. He scurried along the rafters and pushed a begoggled head through the carefully cut aperture in the sloping skylight, emerging like a mole from a tunnel. He doffed the goggles and stashed them carefully inside the rucksack. He slid across the roof, slipped over the parapet, and with his eyes firmly fixed on the wall, he set off towards terra firma.
Once safely returned to the ground, Lex retrieved his coat and slipped the book into a deep, inner pocket. Faint streaks of light were visible in the sky hinting at incipient daybreak, and after a pleasant stroll to the station, he even contemplated having time for breakfast before boarding the train. Lex smiled in a way that only someone who had just committed the perfect crime could. He swaggered self-assuredly through the gate and felt his elation soar from the misguided notion that, after all he had been through, nothing could now possibly go wrong.
Lex was a professional and not a person usually prone to overconfidence, but as he eased his way out of the shadows onto Bloemstraat, he missed the blur of movement that signalled he was no longer alone. Before he could react, a man jumped out in front of him brandishing a gun. The pistol flapped menacingly in the man’s trembling hands, but Lex did not doubt that it was levelled directly at him. At first, he did not recognise the man barring his way, but as his eyes accommodated to the dull neon light, the unmistakable face of Thjiis Ackerman took shape. Following this disturbing realisation, Lex recognised two other things at once. Firstly, Ackerman’s face carried the same ruddy complexion that had been apparent at their first meeting, undoubtedly a sign of alcohol intoxication. Secondly, the pistol waving awkwardly in Ackerman’s hand was a Luger P80 semi-automatic, and not a particularly good specimen at that.
‘You lied,’ cried Ackerman with the neglected pistol still shaking in his hand.
Lex shifted uneasily on his feet, suspecting Ackerman had never handled a gun before. ‘You’re mistaken, Thjiis. Look, we can talk this over. Just put the gun down and we can—’
‘You must take me for a complete idiot,’ Ackerman cut in. ‘When I woke up this morning, I realised I’d been duped. I couldn’t believe what a fool I’d been.’
Lex smiled nervously. ‘You’re mistaken, Thjiis. Let me explain. Look, I haven’t taken anything. See for yourself,’ he said glibly, exposing empty hands. ‘I just wanted to try out the security system for myself. I—’
‘Stop lying!’ Ackerman screamed in a voice that was steeped in anger and self-loathing. ‘Do you really expect me to believe you now? I may look stupid, but it wasn’t difficult to check your credentials. I still have some contacts at ARC, you know. The company has never operated in the Middle East and probably never will.’
‘Okay, okay, maybe I wasn’t entirely truthful the other night, but look, I haven’t got anything to hide. Why don’t you search me?’ replied Lex.
Ackerman shook his head uncertainly.
‘Come on, Thjiis, let me explain,’ continued Lex in a placatory tone. ‘I just wanted to break in, that’s all. I work for Sinclair Security. Surely you’ve heard of them? They’re one of ARC’s rivals,’ said Lex, rapidly thinking on his feet. ‘It would be very embarrassing for ARC if someone broke in and bypassed their systems. It would mean a lot more contracts for my company. Look—’
For once, Lex’s smooth words and charming manner only seemed to inflame the situation further. Ackerman, ill at ease from the outset, hopped from one foot to the other. ‘I don’t believe you! Just shut up!’ he bellowed, the gun now shaking uncontrollably in his hand. ‘Lie after lie, it all comes so easily to you,’ he continued, and for once he was right. ‘I trusted you, but you lied to me. I decided to keep an eye on this place and I was waiting for you when you arrived last night. You never saw me, but I followed you through the gate and watched you scale the wall like a blinking spider. I bet you’ve stolen something priceless from in there,’ he said, beginning to sound a little unhinged as he brandished the pistol in the direction of the library.
The moment the gun veered off target, Lex saw his chance. He lunged for Ackerman’s outstretched arm, but as he dived towards him, Ackermann pulled the trigger. There was a blinding flash and a reverberating boom as the ancient pistol exploded in flames.
The bullet tumbled from the weapon at a speed more akin to an arboreal sloth than the terminal velocity of a projectile exiting the barrel of a semi-automatic firearm, yet the missile still hit Lex
squarely in the chest with sufficient force to lift him off his feet and send him flying backwards through the air towards the library wall.
As the echo dissipated, Lex struck his head on the solid brick wall and tumbled to the ground. When the smoke cleared, Lex remained spread-eagled where he had fallen, a small, charred entry portal the only clue to the bullet that had passed through the heavy-duty cloth of his overcoat. As he lay immobile, perhaps teetering on the brink of mortality, a paradoxical wave of euphoria poured over him in the brief moments before he lapsed into the depths of unconsciousness.
16
THE STONE OF MADNESS
Poison or Antidote?
CORNELIUS SPYDRE SAT UP in bed, sipping gingerly from the mug Mrs Brimstork had deposited on the bedside table while he had been napping. The hot, steaming infusion gave off aromatic vapours smelling vaguely of pine, and as soon as the viscous green liquid touched his lips, he began to feel rejuvenated. His memory of the past few days was hazy, and he could recall little, if anything, of the time he had spent in Westminster Hospital prior to his discharge. Henry Price had insisted that he return home with him to recuperate, and despite not wishing to impose on his old friend, Spydre had been delighted to accept.
Spydre looked up from the mysterious liquid and caught sight of his reflection in a mirror at the end of the bed. His grizzled, semi-paralysed face looked tired and drawn, and his stretched, paper-thin skin was whiter than ever, giving the impression of a man who had cheated death once too often. He smiled lopsidedly at his mirror image and mused ruefully that his failing body could not tolerate many more injustices like this.
The sound of footsteps on the stairs followed by a circumspect tapping at the door jolted him from his thoughts. ‘Hello,’ he called out in a croaky voice despite the revitalising effects of Mrs Brimstork’s concoction.