“You know, a sort of virus killed a lot of people back…”
“Yes, Ralph, I know what the plague is, thank you. I mean, why was it mentioned?”
“Rumour has it to stop people going there and stealing old artefacts.”
“Or more like to stop people going for another reason. Is it viable to land there? Could you land people there?”
“Risky, but possible yes. You’d have to do it at night on the tide. Yes, possible. But why would you?”
“Look at it like this. You agree to carry people from Africa to a better life. They pay for the privilege but when you get to Britain you only want the best of the best, the strongest and healthiest, the rest you put ashore and you tell them to wait.”
Reddington, Britton and McGee were all listening intently now.
“And you leave them there with limited provisions. Tell them not to be seen or they will get sent home. Then over the coming weeks the weak ones die off, leaving only the very strongest. Then those get sold on the underground market. The rest get buried in the marshes.”
“Makes sense. I’ve never seen anyone there. But folk say you can hear the cries of young girls sometimes. I put it down to the wind that whistles through here, that and the need to ignore ghost stories.”
“Ralph, I suspect what you heard was real.”
Chapter Fifty-Four
51 24 N 00 34 E
The retired lieutenant commander was marvelling at the view, talking away to himself and recounting stories of maritime folklore to the pilot who tracked up and down the coastline.
Suddenly the ancient mariner unclipped his seatbelt and leant forward and went to press a few buttons on the dashboard of the Eurocopter.
“Tom! Bloody hell mate, you need to leave that stuff well alone.” Cade eased him backwards into his seat.
“You OK Tom?” asked John Daniel.
“No, lad, I’m not. That number on the screen there, it’s gone now. It just reminded me of something. It doesn’t matter. Sorry everyone, you must think I’m a right old fool?” His cheeks reddened and his knuckles went white.
“Far from it, Tom. Now, what did you see?” asked Daniel in a caring voice that aimed not to be too patronising.
“A number. It’s a number I know very well. You see…” He went quiet and a large tear developed on each of his eyelids. “You see, it’s been a long time since I’ve seen it.”
Cade spoke to the pilot. “Any chance we can reverse this thing back up a bit? Ludicrous as that sounds.”
He stared down onto a mottled brown and grey landscape which was disappearing rapidly beneath worsening weather and light.
“Every chance, buddy, that’s sort of what helicopters do best. Stand by.”
He adjusted the collective and manoeuvred the cyclic and checked left and right – all very much verging on the dark arts as far as Cade was concerned.
‘Just keep the bloody thing in the air all the while I’m on board and we’ll be fine’. This was what he wanted to say.
“These little beauties don’t really like hovering. Contrary to what people think. And on instruments, it’s even harder. You see if you have forward motion and it all goes to hell in a handcart then a bit of autorotation is very useful.”
The Kiwi pilot sounded as calm as ever. He just liked his passengers to know the science behind the witchcraft.
“Then how about we keep it moving forward?” asked Daniel, starting to sweat a little.
“Yeah, no, she’ll be just fine…let me know when the old fella sees those lottery numbers will you, I’ve got a bit to do now, light is fading a tad.”
The former naval helicopter pilot from the Land of The Long White Cloud positioned the blue and yellow chopper to roughly where he thought Denby had called out.
“Any moment…Now!”
“There! There it is. It’s there!” Denby was a schoolboy once more, seeing his very favourite dark green steam train, smoke and soot cascading up and over the bridge as he stood and waved at the engine driver who gave a quick blast of the whistle to make his day.
“It’s there,” he sobbed.
“What is, Tom? Talk to us.”
“I think he means the grid ref fellas. I’ll plot it on the GPS. Read it out to me please Jack, if you’d be so kind.”
Cade leaned towards the dial, then read slowly, deliberately.
“Five One Two Four One Two North.”
“Copy that. You receiving this control?” The pilot was a true multi tasker, watching for other aircraft, watching the ground, the sky, the light, the weather and all the while calmly keeping the multi-million-pound machine in the air.
“Zero Zero Three Four Five Three East.”
“Loud and clear brother. Lima Charlie. Control can you plot that onto the job please, let’s start getting some…”
Cade ran his hand across his throat. “No.”
“Stand by control. Cancel last over. All correct here.”
He turned off the microphone.
“Something I need to know, buddy?”
“Later. Just for now keep us airborne and if we need to land, look for a decent place.”
“Shitty terrain brother down there, just marsh as far as I could piss.”
“How far can you piss?”
The New Zealander laughed. “Brother, I was the Northland Pissing Champion 2004 to 2006.”
“Seriously, can we not land?”
“Mate, I didn’t say I couldn’t land. I said I shouldn’t. In that there is a gnat’s cock of a difference. I can land this fucker on a sixpence. You tell me where, but just don’t tell the bosses. This is a rather expensive piece of kit we have here.”
Denby was staring at the number that Daniel was rapidly writing down on a notepad.
“I first came up with that number years ago John. Twenty, probably thirty years ago now.”
“Why?” Daniel asked through the onboard intercom that was linked to everyone on board.
“Why lad? Well, my old dad suffered from dementia. Have I told you this before?”
Daniel smiled at the irony. “No. I’m interested.”
“Dad lost his memory in his seventies. He told me to have a plan. Little did I know I’d need it one day. You see when the girls started coming back to England, I knew I was deep in trouble if it ever got out to the public. You know, British government workers involved in trafficking slaves to the motherland. It would have brought down the very government that funded it.”
“And…”
“And so I selected twelve of the healthiest young women I could find. Ones I knew had a chance of surviving our winter and the conditions that they would find themselves in. And I marked the number on their backs, among all the other marks and scars. I did it in order of age, so I’d remember. I cut the number with a knife. What sort of man does that John?”
“A man that clearly had a plan.”
“I hid those families down there in that fort. It was a cruel night, bitterly cold. We were in the water so long, I barely survived let alone young people from a tropical place who’d never seen weather like it. It seems so stupid now, carving numbers into kids. I am evil. There is no other word for it.”
“Tom. You must have felt it was the right thing to do, at a difficult time when you simply didn’t know who to trust. You were creating a pension of sorts for their future. And now, perhaps we can cash it in for them.”
“Do they even exist anymore? Are they alive? How could they be?”
“I suspect they are. At least the strong ones you helped bring here. They went out into society and made a new life, as servants or workers, some may have even bettered themselves. But down there in that fort I think you stored something for them, in case they did survive. Am I right?”
“I’ve got no idea. Sorry. I don’t remember. I marked their backs with a number, John. So I wouldn’t forget.”
Daniel tapped Denby on the shoulder. “I know. And you have nothing to be ashamed about. For me, the key now is how w
e sort this mess out, and if possible make it a positive. Then at the end we can all have a bloody great party.”
“Will there be lemon cake?”
“Loads. More than you could ever imagine my friend.”
“Then yes, let’s do it. The number you have there is correct. I’d sell my soul to the devil if it helped those poor kids.”
Denby drifted between moments of total clarity and hopeless, helpless ambiguity. There was vague, then forgetful, then a mind as clean as that of a new-born, remembering nothing, knowing no-one.
It was what the experts called Moderately Severe Cognitive Decline, Stage Five. This was a man who commanded a ship at an early age, lived through the war, bobbed and weaved in the Atlantic, avoiding submarines and their deadly payload, then later during his Whitehall days he ran with the best of the best. The intelligence professionals that kept the place alive. The mortar in the brickwork of the government was how he sold the role to anyone new looking to join. Like John Daniel.
Stage Six was around the corner for Denby, then finally Stage Seven.
Quite how he was managing to function was beyond the experts.
For now, he was, and those rare moments of absolute clarity were seams of gold that needed mining.
The experts also had a term for where Denby was right now. Paradoxical lucidity. And those in the know knew it signalled the beginning of the end.
Chapter Fifty-Five
Fort Hoo, Kent
The Medway Girl slowed rapidly, then veered left and left again into a small channel at the side of the marshy island that had provided a strategic stronghold for hundreds of years. Diagonally opposite Fort Darnett, it now rose up from the marsh like a watchman, gazing out across the water towards the channel, just like it had done since the first stone was laid in the inhospitable terrain.
The channel was mainly mud that shifted with the varying tides and seasons. She could hear the bottom of the boat contacting the banks now.
“This is as close as I think I can get you.” Baker said, glancing at her husband who was quiet now.
“Get us closer. I can’t walk through that.” Doto pointed at the mud as she discreetly pocketed something from the cabin.
“Lady, you brought us here, or rather I did, now I assume at some point you might want to get off the bloody island?” She regretted the comment as soon as she had uttered it.
Mick was trying to send a telepathic message to his wife of forty something years. Let them leave the boat, then back out of the channel and run for help. But it was too little, too late.
Baker edged the old war veteran closer to the rusted wreck of an old ship that had been deliberately abandoned at the mouth of the main channel into the fort.
“I can get you close to the ground to the left, but any closer and we’ve had it.”
“You are right. Tie the boat up and come with us. Leave him.”
“I can hardly take him with us, you evil cow. You’ve pinned him to the bloody deck. He needs help.”
The athletic woman swung her arm backwards and delivered a stinging slap to Jan’s face.
“No-one, least of all some stupid old white woman tells me what to do. Clear?”
“Crystal. Now where do you want us to go. These islands are bigger than they look, and they are dangerous. Don’t say you weren’t warned.”
“I need to get into that place. You lead we will follow.”
“No-one goes in there. They say the plague infests the building. Ghosts too.” She was trying to appeal to the black woman’s tribal side.
“Shut up and walk.” She turned to Clarke. “Any thoughts on where the stuff might be?”
“In there, somewhere. That’s the best I can do. I got you here, didn’t I?”
“Do you want to be slapped too?” Doto was wishing her bodyguards were here, at least they did as they were told, when they were told.
“Just walk.”
Twenty minutes later and struggling they arrived at the approach to the fort. The main door was propped open with a large piece of stone and may as well have had a sign. ‘Come on in. All are welcome.’
“The light is fading. We need to get whatever trash it is you have come for and get out before we lose the light and the tide.” Baker offered, hoping common sense would prevail.
Doto grabbed her around the throat. “Lady, we will stay here all night if we have to. It’s a big building, so we all search.”
“For what!” asked an exasperated Baker.
“For these.” She held a conflict diamond in her hand, which she screwed into Baker’s palm until it cut the skin.
“You’d risk my life and your own for a few bloody bits of glass. I hate you more than I did before. And you lady, what’s your role in this pile of horseshit?”
“Me? I’m just the expert that points her in the right direction. Best you don’t ask too many questions. Have that advice for free.” She almost whispered the last sentence.
They entered the large circular building and soon realised it was built on many levels, with a vast central courtyard that had subterranean aspects to it. When the soldiers and engineers had begun construction, they were met with flooding and subsidence, so they built up and hoped it did its job.
Now, the perfect circular building was overgrown, covered in scrub, some even managing to grow on the stone, and in amongst the cracks. The brilliantly built, scalloped edges of the fort were now unloved and forgotten.
“It’s getting darker,” said Doto, trying desperately to light the paths with her phone.
“Good job I brought a Maglite along then, isn’t it? Can we just find what you are looking for and bugger off, this place gives me the creeps? And unless it has escaped your attention, my husband might die this evening, and you will be responsible.” She was gaining strength and courage with every step.
“Give me the torch and do not say another word.”
Doto scanned the building. It was vast. Far bigger than her informant had told her. She now saw why the old man had chosen it. Its sheer size made it easy to defend, its isolation kept people away and yet it was within striking range of the coast and the city of London.
Creepers climbed for the sunlight as darkened corners became darker. Algae was rampant, turning the perfectly preserved brickwork green. Alcoves and pillars remained, walkways, clear of debris made the going easier, but the centre was overgrown and unknown territory.
Something scuttled somewhere. A bird perhaps, or a rat. But it made them all step just a bit quicker. Doto began to think of the ghosts that the white woman had mentioned. She could sense them now. Ghosts of soldiers, spirits wandering the corridors at night looking for somewhere to find salvation.
Twisted metal barred the entrance to one corridor, so they doubled back and headed down, deeper into the second level.
“One of us has to get to the centre. That’s where it is. It has to be. That’s where I would put it, and that’s where he said it was.”
“Well then, you go.” Clarke was not in any mood to be ordered about anymore. “This is not going to plan. We both know it.”
Doto spun around, grabbed her by the throat and started squeezing, harder and harder, then more still, watching Clarke’s eyes change, her feet struggling to maintain a grip on the stone floor. Her hands gripping Doto’s, trying to rid the death grip and failing.
“For God’s sake let her go you bloody bully.” Baker was pushing as hard as she could. Trying to push the African woman literally over the edge, but she was far too strong. Baker doubted she was even female.
But something must have caused the impressive black woman to let go. She watched as Clarke came back to life. Her colour changing in the artificial torch light from death to life.
“I swear if you ever do that again I will kill you.”
Doto smiled. “Just let me know the time and place. Remember, girl, we are in this together! Now, if you want to walk, off you go.” She stood, lighting the path with the Maglite, knowing that there was no
way she could turn her back on her small share of a fortune.
“No, I’ll stick to the plan,” Clarke said, rubbing her throat and willing herself onwards. She gave Baker a look that loosely translated said ‘If you get the chance to club her around the back of the head with a brick please be my guest.’
They pushed on, climbing over the long grass and brambles, through the immature trees that blocked their passage and avoiding old iron structures, long past their intended purpose. It was like an assault course, but one which nature had created, having reclaimed man’s best efforts to build a fortress in a swamp.
“Steady!” called Clarke. “The edge is closer than you’d think.”
“Then you go down, you are the lightest and youngest. Here. Take this, I’ll tie it off.”
“How old is that?”
Doto examined the rope. “I have no idea, but it has been here a while. But I’m sure it is fine.”
“That rope would have been made at Chatham docks, there’s still a rope factory there now. The best in the world.”
“Then this stuff could be a hundred years old!” proclaimed Clarke, rubbing it between her fingers.
It was older.
Doto noted it had been tied around a stone pillar, then lowered over a railing. She pulled on it and it held firmly under her weight.
“After you. I’ll light the way. Think of the reason we are here, it will help.”
“The reason we are here is due to your greed, which I allowed myself to become a part of. How do we even know there is anything here?”
“I just do, OK. I just do. You are looking for a stone plinth down at the very bottom of this building. It is marked with a date.”
“And that date is?”
“It doesn’t matter. There will only be one panel. Smash it and we can get what we came for, get back on the boat and head to our rendezvous.”
“Listen to you, making it sound so bloody easy.” Clarke was clearly unhappy as she lowered herself down into the lowest floor, through branches that clawed at her like living creatures, protecting their treasure from the latest in a long line of invaders.
The Angel of Whitehall Page 51