The Doomsday Key

by James Rollins

  Gray slowed the Land Rover to a crawl as his tires crunched over icy cobbles. He headed toward the main square, where their meeting place—the Kings Arms Hotel—was located. They were already twenty minutes late. Reaching the square, Gray slid the SUV into a small parking lot.

  As they exited the vehicle, the cold bit into any exposed skin. The dampness of Liverpool and the long heated drive had not prepared them for the icy chill of the Lakeland elevations. Wood smoke scented each cold breath. Bundling tighter into their thick coats, they set off.

  The Kings Arms Hotel lay on the far side of the main square. The squat, slate-roofed building had greeted travelers for five hundred years, stretching back to the Elizabethan era. A low stone wall cordoned off a beer garden in front, its tables and chairs currently covered in a thin coat of fresh snow, but the fiery glow from the inn’s lower windows promised steaming warmth and hot drinks. They hurried toward it.

  Kowalski trailed them. “Hey, look it all the bears…” His voice had a wistful note to it, a tone as incongruous as a bull suddenly singing an aria.

  Gray glanced back at him. Kowalski’s gaze was fixed on a shop window. Beyond the frosted glass, amber light revealed a display of teddy bears of every size and shape. The sign above the door read Sixpenny Bears.

  “There’s one dressed like a boxer!” Kowalski began to detour toward the window.

  Gray directed him back. “We’re already late.”

  Kowalski’s shoulders slumped. With a final longing glance back at the shop, he continued after them.

  Rachel stared at the big man with a bewildered expression.

  “What?” Kowalski said grumpily. “It was for Liz, my girlfriend. She… she’s the one who collects bears.”

  Rachel stared a moment longer, her expression doubtful.

  Kowalski grumbled under his breath and tromped heavily toward the inn.

  Seichan stepped next to Gray and touched his elbow. “You go inside. Meet with that historian. I’ll keep watch out here.”

  Gray stared over at her. That hadn’t been the plan. Though her face remained calm and disinterested, her eyes continued to roam the square, most likely analyzing the area for sniper roosts, escape routes, and the best places to duck for cover. Or maybe she just refused to meet his eye. Was she truly seeking to guard them or maintaining a cold distance?

  “Is something wrong?” he asked, his legs slowing.

  “No.” Her eyes flashed toward him, almost angrily. “And I mean to keep it that way.”

  Gray didn’t feel like arguing. After all that had happened in Italy, perhaps it would be best to keep a guard outside. He headed after Kowalski and Rachel as Seichan dropped back.

  Joining the others, he crossed through the frozen beer garden and reached the front door. He noted a sign near the entryway that read “Good dogs and children welcome.” That probably excluded Kowalski. Gray considered ordering his partner to stay outside with Seichan, but that would only make the woman angrier.

  Gray pulled the door open. A heady warmth flowed out, accompanied by the smell of malt and hops. The pub was straight off the hotel lobby. A few voices echoed out to them, along with a booming laugh. Gray followed Kowalski into the pub. His partner aimed straight for the restroom with a quickness to his step.

  Gray remained at the entrance and searched the room. The pub of the Kings Arms was small, a scatter of wooden tables and booths built around a stacked-stone fireplace. A roaring fire had been stoked against the cold. Next to the hearth stood a life-sized wooden model of a crowned king, likely the namesake of the hotel.

  Another thundering burst of laughter drew Gray’s attention to a corner booth near the fire. A pair of locals, dressed in hunting clothes and knee-high boots, stood before the table and its lone occupant.

  “Fell right in the bog, you say, Wallace!” One of the hunters chuckled, wiping at an eye with one hand while hoisting a tall glass of dark ale in the other.

  “Arse over kettle! Straight in,” the man in the booth agreed, a Scottish brogue thickening his tongue.

  “Wish’un I could’ve seen that, right enough.”

  “Ah, but the stench afterward, lads. That you wouldn’ta want to be near. Not at all.” Another hearty laugh followed from the man seated in the booth.

  Gray recognized Dr. Wallace Boyle from his picture on the University of Edinburgh website. But the professor in the photo had been clean-shaven and dressed in a formal jacket. The man here had a grizzly dusting of gray beard and was outfitted like his fellow hunters in a frayed herringbone jacket over a quilted waistcoat. On the table rested a moss-green tweed cap, fingerless gloves, and a thick scarf. Next to him, propped upright on the bench seat, was a shotgun zippered into a gunslip.

  Dr. Boyle noted Gray’s attention and approach. “Tavish, Duff, looks like those reporters I was setting to meet have arrived.”

  That had been their cover story: a pair of international journalists covering the bombing at the Vatican, following up on the death of Father Giovanni. Kowalski acted as their photographer.

  The two hunters glanced Gray’s way. Their faces went hard with the usual suspicion of locals for outsiders, but they nodded in wary greeting. With a final heft of their drinks, they left the table.

  “Cheers, Wallace,” one said as he departed. “We best be going anyway. It’s already getting to be brass monkeys out there.”

  “And it’ll get colder,” Wallace agreed, then waved Gray and Rachel over toward his table.

  Kowalski had returned from the restroom, but he never made it past the bar. His eyes were fixed to the chalkboard over the fireplace that listed the local brews. “Copper Dragon’s Golden Pippin? Is that a beer or some sort of fruity drink? I don’t want anything that has fruit in it. Unless you call an olive a fruit…”

  Gray tuned out his partner as he headed over to Wallace’s table. The professor stood, unfolding his six-foot-plus frame. Though in his midsixties, the man remained robust and broad-chested, like a younger Sean Connery. He shook their hands, his gaze lingering a little longer on Rachel. The man’s eyes pinched for a moment, then relaxed, hiding whatever had momentarily perplexed him.

  Rachel began to slide into the booth first, then suddenly froze. Her side of the bench was occupied. A wiry furred head lifted into view and rested a chin on the wooden table, not far from a half-eaten platter of bangers and mash.

  “Rufus, get down from there,” Wallace scolded, but without much heat. “Make room for our guests.”

  The black-and-tan terrier huffed through its nose in exasperation, then ducked away and came strolling out from under the table. He moved closer to the fire, circled twice, then collapsed down with an equally loud sigh.

  “My hunting dog,” the professor explained. “A mite spoiled, he is. But at his age, he’s earned it. Best fox flusher in the isles. And why shouldn’t he be? Born and bred right here. A true Lakeland Terrier.”

  Pride rang in the man’s voice. This was not a professor headed toward early retirement, nor even one resting on his laurels, which were many, according to the man’s bio. Dr. Wallace Boyle was considered to be a leading expert on the history of the British Isles, specifically the Neolithic age through the Roman occupation.

  They all settled into the booth. Gray placed a small digital recorder on the table, maintaining their cover as journalists. After a few pleasantries about the weather and their drive, Wallace quickly turned to the matter at hand.

  “So, you’ve come all this way to see what we discovered up in the fells,” Wallace said. His brogue grew less heavy, his speech more formal, tailoring it to his audience. “Since the death of Father Giovanni, I’ve been fielding questions and inquiries nonstop for the past two days. Yet no one’s seen fit to come out here in person. Then again, the good father himself hadn’t been out here in months.”

  “What do you mean?” Rachel asked.

  “Father Giovanni left at the end of summer. Headed to the coast, then off to Ireland, last I heard from him.” Wallace
shook his head sadly and tapped his glass of beer with a fingernail in some semblance of a toast to the dead. “Marco was a brilliant chap. Truly a great loss. His research and fieldwork on the roots of Celtic Christianity could have changed the way we view history.”

  “Why did he come here to begin with?” Gray asked. “To the Lake District.”

  “He would’ve ended up here eventually, I suppose. Even if I hadn’t summoned him following my discovery up in the mountains.”

  “Why’s that?”

  “Marco’s passion—or more like his obsession—had him scouring any and all areas where paganism and Christianity overlapped.” Wallace lifted an arm to encompass the region in general. “And the history of this district is a story of that very conflict written in stones and ruins. It was the Norse who first came to this area, sailing over from Ireland to farm here in the ninth century, bringing all their traditions. Even the word fell comes from the Norse word for ‘hill.’ In fact, the village of Hawkshead was founded by a Norseman named Haukr, whose name still lives on in this place. That should give you some idea of the long history of this region.”

  Wallace nodded out the window toward the church that overlooked the town. “But times change. During the twelfth century, the entire area came under the ownership of the monks of Furness Abbey, the ruins of which can be found not far from here. The monks cultivated the region, traded in wool and sheep, and ruled the superstitious villagers with an iron fist. Tensions dragged on for centuries between the ancient pagan ways and the new religion. The old rituals continued to be performed in secret, often at the prehistoric sites that litter the countryside.”

  “What do you mean by prehistoric sites?” Rachel asked.

  “Places dating back to the Neolithic period. Five thousand years ago.” Wallace ticked them off on his fingers. “Ancient stone circles, henges, barrows, dolmens, hill forts. While Stonehenge might be the most famous, it’s only one among several hundred such sites spread across the British Isles.”

  “But what interested Father Giovanni about your specific excavation?” Gray asked, seeking to draw the professor closer to the core of their investigation.

  Wallace cocked one brow. “Ah, well, that you will have to see for yourself. But I can tell you what led me to this region.”

  “And what was that?”

  “A single entry in an old book. An eleventh-century text nicknamed the Doomsday Book.”

  Kowalski stepped to their table. He carried a tall glass of pilsner in each hand, drinking from both. He paused in midsip upon hearing Wallace’s words. “Doomsday,” he said. “Great. Like we don’t have enough problems already.”

  11:05 A.M.

  Seichan walked the full length of the square. In her mind, a map formed of the local area. Every detail, brick by brick, every street, alley, building, and parked car. All became fixed in her head.

  She noted two men dressed in hunting gear as they left the pub. She stalked them as they ambled over to a truck in the parking lot. She made sure they drove away.

  Afterward, she found a good vantage point from which to observe the Kings Arms Hotel. It was the doorway of a closed gift shop. The alcove allowed her to shelter against the occasional stiff gust and to keep out of direct sight. On her right, the shop’s window displayed a pastel-colored diorama of small ceramic animals dressed in little outfits: pigs, cows, ducks, and, of course, tiny bunnies… lots and lots of bunnies. The Lake District was the home of Beatrix Potter and her creation Peter Rabbit.

  Despite her need to watch the hotel, Seichan’s attention drifted to the shop window. She remembered very little about her childhood, and what she did remember she wished she could forget. She had never known her parents and was raised in an orphanage outside of Seoul, South Korea. It had been a squalid place with few comforts. But there had been a few books, including Beatrix Potter’s, brought years ago by a Catholic missionary. Those books and others were her true childhood, a place to escape the hunger, abuse, and neglect. As a young girl, she had even made a toy bunny out of a scrap of burlap stuffed with dry rice. To keep it from being stolen, she had kept it hidden behind a loose board in the wall, but eventually a rat found it and ate out the stuffing. She had cried for a solid day, until one of the matrons beat her, reminding her that even sorrow was a luxury.

  In the doorway, Seichan turned her back to the window display, shutting out those memories. Still, it wasn’t just the past that pained her. Through the window, she watched Gray converse with an older man in tweed garb. It had to be Dr. Wallace Boyle. Seichan studied Gray. His black hair was longer, lankier across his forehead. His face had also grown harder, making his cheekbones stand out. Even his ice-blue eyes had a few more crinkles at the edges—not from laughter, but from the passing of a hard couple of years.

  Standing in the cold, dusted with snow, Seichan remembered his lips. In a single moment of weakness, she had kissed him. There had been no tenderness behind it, only desperation and need. Still, she had not forgotten the heat, the roughness of his stubble, the hardness of his hold on her. Yet in the end it had been meaningless to both of them.

  The hand in her coat pocket touched the scar on her belly.

  They had just been dancing a game of betrayal.

  Like now.

  A vibration in her pocket alerted her to a call.

  Finally.

  It was the real reason she had stayed out in the cold. She removed the phone and flipped it open.

  “Speak,” she said.

  “Do they still have the package?” The voice on the phone was calm and assured but crisp at the edges, with an American accent. It was her sole point of contact, a woman named Krista Magnussen.

  Seichan bridled at having to take orders from anyone, but she had no choice. She had to prove herself. “Yes. The artifact is secure. They’re meeting with the contact right now.”

  “Very good. We’ll make our move once they’re at the excavation site in the mountains. The team set the charges in place last night. The fresh snowfall should cover up any evidence.”

  “And the objective?”

  “Remains the same. To light a fire under them. In this case, literally. The archaeological site is now more of a liability than an asset. But its destruction must appear natural.”

  “And you have that covered.”

  “We do. Leaving you free to focus fully on your objective.”

  Seichan read the threat behind the words. There would be no excuse for failure. Not if she wanted to live.

  As she listened to the mission specifics, she continued to watch the hotel window. Not focusing on Gray any longer, she stared at the Italian woman seated beside him. Rachel smiled at something the professor said, her eyes sparking warmly even across the cold distance.

  Seichan held nothing against Rachel Verona—but that would not stop her from poisoning the woman.

  11:11 A.M.

  Rachel listened as the conversation continued. While the professor’s history lesson was intriguing, she sensed something deeper going on here—in regard to the story of Father Giovanni and something else, something yet unspoken. The man’s gaze kept lingering on her, not lasciviously, but more like he was sizing her up. She had a hard time maintaining eye contact with him.

  What was going on?

  “I still don’t understand,” Gray said beside her. “What does this Doomsday Book have to do with your discovery up in the mountains?”

  Wallace held up a hand, asking for patience. “First of all, the book’s true name wasn’t Doomsday, but rather Domesday. After the old English root dom, which meant ‘reckoning’ or ‘accounting.’ The book was commissioned by King William as a means to assess the value of his newly conquered lands, a way to assign tax and tithing. It mapped out all of England, down to every town, village, and manor house, and took a census of the local resources, from the number of animals and plows in the fields to the number of fish in its lakes and streams. To this day, the book remains one of the best glimpses of life during that t
ime.”

  “That’s all fine,” Gray pressed, plainly wanting to hurry him along. “But you mentioned that a single entry led to your current excavation. What were you talking about?”

  “Ah, now there’s the rub! You see, the Domesday Book was written in a cryptic form of Latin, compiled by a single scribe. There remains some mystery as to why this level of security was necessary. Some historians have wondered if there might not have been a secondary purpose to this great compilation, some secret accounting. Especially as a few of the places listed in the book are ominously marked with a single word in Latin that meant ‘wasted.’ Most of those locations are concentrated in the northwest region of England, where the borders were constantly changing.”

  “By the northwest,” Rachel asked, “you mean like here, the Lake District?”

  “Exactly. The county of Cumbria was rife with border wars. And many of the spots listed as wasted were sites where the king’s army had destroyed a town or village. They were noted because you couldn’t tax what no longer existed.”

  “Really?” Kowalski asked, scowling at his two glasses of ale. “Then you never heard of the death tax?”

  Wallace glanced from Kowalski to Gray.

  “Just ignore him,” Gray recommended.

  Wallace cleared his throat. “Closer study of the Domesday Book revealed a bit of a mystery. Not all of the wasted sites were the result of conquest. A scattering of references had no explanation. These few were marked in red ink, as though someone had been tracking something significant. I sought some explanation and spent close to ten years on one of those entries, a reference to a small village up in the highland fells that no longer exists. I searched for records to this place, but it was as if they’d been expunged. I almost gave up until I found an odd mention in the diary of a royal coroner named Martin Borr. I found his book up at Saint Michael’s.”

  He waved toward the hilltop church at the edge of town. “The book was discovered in a bricked-off cellar during a renovation. Borr was buried up in the cemetery at Saint Michael’s, his possessions given over to the church. While his journals wouldn’t say exactly what had happened to that village, the man did hint at something horrible, suggesting that doomsday might indeed be a more accurate name for that book. He even marked his diary with a pagan symbol, which is what drew me to the tome to begin with.”