The Genesis Secret

49

Cloncurry waved the gun at Rob and Christine. ’More over there, lovebirds.’

Rob gazed at his daughter kneeling there in the dust, feeling perplexed, and utterly anguished. Then he stared with fierce anger at Cloncurry. He’d never felt such a lust to hurt someone-he wanted to dismember Cloncurry with his bare hands, with his teeth. Dig out his eyes with his thumbs.

But Rob and Christine were trapped and unarmed: they had to obey; following Cloncurry’s languid directions, they moved up a slight rise in the middle of the valley, onto a kind of sandy knoll, though Rob had no idea why Cloncurry wanted them on this isolated hillock.

The wind was whispering and melancholy. Christine looked as if she was about to cry. Rob glanced left and right, desperate for some escape. There was no escape.

What was Cloncurry doing? Rob squinted, visoring his gaze against the sun with a hand. It seemed that Cloncurry had some kind of phone or other gadget in his hand. He was pointing it left, towards the encroaching floods. Where the levee protected them from the inundations.

At last Cloncurry spoke. ‘It’s not every day one gets to mutilate and kill a child in front of her daddy, so I think some celebrations are in order. Indeed, some fireworks. So. Here we go. Surf’s up!’

He pressed a button on the device he was holding. A fraction of a second later the boom of an explosion ripped across the desert-followed by a tangible blast wave: Cloncurry had blown up the little shepherd’s hut on the levee. As the smoke and the flames cleared, Rob saw why.

It wasn’t just the hut that Cloncurry had sent hurtling into the sky: half the levee had gone too. And now floodwater was pouring through the gap: it had found this lower channel, and the floodwater was tumbling, down the sides of the valley, tons of water spouting and screaming. Coming their way, very fast.

Rob grabbed Christine hard, and pulled her to the top of the knoll. The water was already gushing beside them; tons of water, some of it lapping at their ankles. Rob looked up at the crest: Cloncurry was laughing.

‘Do hope you can swim.’

The water was cascading now, filling the valley, splashing at Rob’s feet. A wall of water, roaring and engulfing, carrying with it a repulsive scum. Bobbing on the surface were bones, and slops of mummified baby, and some of the warrior skulls: floating and tumbling. Soon the scummy and turbulent waters had completely surrounded Rob and Christine on their little hill. If it continued to rise they were going to drown.

‘Perfect!’ exclaimed Cloncurry. ‘Can’t tell you how difficult that was. We had to come out here in the middle of the night to set it all up. In that nasty little hut. Lots of explosives. Tricky. But it worked to perfection! How enormously gratifying.’

Rob stared across the waters at Cloncurry, safe on his elevation. He didn’t know what to think about this man, the utter madness mixed with this…devious subtlety. And then Cloncurry made his usual near-telepathic remark:

‘I guess you’re a tad confused, little Robbie.’

Rob stayed silent; Cloncurry smiled.

‘Can’t work out how such a total psycho like me should end up on this side of the water? Eh? While the good guys, all you guys, you’re on that side. The drowning side.’

Again, Rob said nothing. His enemy grinned wider.

‘I’m rather afraid I’ve been using everyone all along. I got you to find me the Black Book. I harnessed the fine and famous minds of Christine Meyer and Isobel Previn to the cause. OK, I sliced Isobel’s head off but she’d done her job by then. Showed me the Book surely wasn’t in Kurdistan.’ Cloncurry was gleaming with pride. ‘And then, by simply sitting back and doing nothing, I got you lovely people to do the rest of the work, as well: to decipher the Book, to locate the Valley of the Slaughter, to find the only evidence of the Genesis Secret. Because, you see, I needed to know for sure where all the evidence is, so it can be destroyed forever.’ He gestured across the frothing floodwater. ‘And now I am going to erase all of this in a huge flood-entomb it underwater for all time. And as I wipe away all the evidence, I will simultaneously kill the only people who know the Secret.’ He looked down, very happily.’ Oh yes, nearly forgot, and I have the Black Book, too! At least I think I do. Let me just make sure…’

Stooping to the dust, Cloncurry grabbed the box and wrenched the leather lid away. He peered down, reached inside, and took out the hybrid skull. For a moment he cradled the skull, caressing the smoothness of the cranium. Then he turned the skull so it met his gaze.

‘Alas, poor Yorick. You had fucking weird eyes. But quite superb cheekbones! Hah.’

He set the skull to the side, and took out the document and spread it across his knee so that he could read.

‘Fascinating. Truly fascinating. I fully expected cuneiform. We all expected cuneiform. But late ancient Aramaic? A wonderful discovery.’ Cloncurry glanced at Christine and Rob. ‘Thank you, chaps. So kind of you to bring it all the way here. And to dig everything up.’

He folded the document, put it back in the box and replaced the skull on top of the document; the leather lid followed.

Rob watched all this with a kind of sullen, hatefilled resentment. The most disgusting flavour in this banquet of defeat was the sense that Cloncurry was right. The killer’s whole gameplan had a kind of glistening, alien perfection. Cloncurry had outwitted and out-thought them all the way through. From the Kurds to the cottage and back again, Cloncurry hadn’t just won, he had triumphed.

And now his triumph would be honoured in blood.

Rob stared at his daughter’s shining, crying eyes; and he shouted across the water that he loved her.

Lizzie’s eyes implored her helpless father: help me.

Cloncurry was giggling. ‘Very touching. If you like that kind of thing. Makes me want to spew, personally. Either way, I think we should now proceed to the final drama, don’t you? Before you actually drown. Enough of the preamble.’ The killer regarded the wavelets lapping at Christine’s ankles. As he gazed, one particularly enormous skull bobbed along the burbling floodwaters, like an obscene kind of bath toy. ‘Oooh, look, there’s one of the wrinklies. Say hello to granddad, Lizzie.’

Another chuckle. Lizzie wept louder.

‘Yes, yes.’ Cloncurry sighed loudly. ‘I never liked my family either.’ He turned and called across to Rob. ‘You have a nice view from your hillock? Excellent. Because we’re going to do the Aztec thing, and I want to make sure you can see. I’m sure you know the rigmarole, Robert. We splay your daughter over a rock, then we rip into her chest and yank out the beating heart. Can be a bit messy but I think my friend Navda has some Kleenex.’

Cloncurry nudged one of his followers. The moustached Kurd on his left grunted, but said nothing. The gang-leader sighed. ‘Not the most expressive of chaps, but the best available. I do wonder about the moustaches though. Just a tiny bit…sincere, aren’t they?’ He smiled. ‘Anyway, could you two chatty Kurdish gaylords take this little girl and drape her over that rock?’ He mimed it for them.

The Kurds nodded, and obeyed. They picked up Lizzie and carried her over to a small boulder and laid her out with the boulder under her back, her feet held by one Kurd, her hands held by the other henchman; and all the while Lizzie sobbed, and struggled. And all the while Cloncurry smirked.

‘Very good, very good. Now to the best bit. By rights, Mr Robbie, we should have a chac mool, one of those weird stone bowls, into which I can drop your daughter’s bloody, still-beating heart, but we haven’t got a chac mool. I suppose I shall feed her heart to the crows.’

He handed his pistol to one of the Kurds, then reached into his jacket pocket and took a huge steel blade from inside his jacket. This, he brandished exultantly, admiring it, his eyes bright and keen and loving. Then he looked over, and winked at Rob.

‘We should really be using obsidian: that’s what the Aztecs used. Dark obsidian daggers. But a big thick knife like this will do nicely, a big thick rather memorable knife. You do recognize it?’ Cloncurry lifted the knife in the dusty sunlight. It flashed as he turned it. ‘Christine? Any ideas?’

‘Fuck you,’ said the Frenchwoman.

‘Well, quite. It’s the knife I used to fillet your old friend, Isobel. I think I can still see some of her elderly blood on the handle. And a tiny bit of spleen!’ He grinned. ‘Also, as the Germans say. To our task. I see the water is now at your knees and you will drown within about ten minutes. But I so want the last thing you witness to be your daughter having her heart literally torn from her tiny chest as she screams helplessly for her pathetic, useless and cowardly father. So we’d better get cracking. Guys, hold the girl tighter, yes, like that. Yes, yes. Very good.’

Cloncurry lifted the knife in his two hands and the vicious blade sparkled in the sun. He paused. ‘The Aztecs were so weird, weren’t they? Apparently they came from Asia, over the Bering Straits. Like you me and Rob. All the way from North Asia.’ The knife glittered; Cloncurry’s eyes were likewise shining. ‘They just loved to kill children. They lusted for it. Originally they killed the kids of all their enemies, their conquered foes. Yet I understand that by the end of their empire they were so nuts they started killing all their own children. No joke. The priests would pay poor Aztec families to hand over babies and infants to be ritually slaughtered. An entire civilization literally murdering itself, devouring its own offspring. Fantastic! And what a way to do it, to rip out the heart by smashing into the ribcage, then hold the still-beating organ in front of the living victim. So.’ Cloncurry sighed happily. ‘Are you ready, Lillibet? Little Betsy? My little Betty Boo? Mmm? Chesty open time?’

Cloncurry beamed down at Rob’s daughter. Rob watched, with desolate disgust: Cloncurry was actually drooling, a line of spittle dribbling from his mouth onto Lizzie’s gagged and screaming face.

And then the moment came: Cloncurry’s two hands took a grip at the furthest end of the handle and raised the knife higher…and Rob closed his eyes in the sadness of uttermost defeat…

…as a shot cracked the air. A shot from nowhere. A shot from heaven.

Rob opened his eyes. A bullet had whipped across the waters and slammed into Cloncurry- a bullet so violent it had clean ripped off the killer’s hand.

He blinked and stared. Cloncurry had lost a hand! Arterial blood was pumping from the severed wrist. The knife had been sent spinning into the water.

Cloncurry gazed at the hideous wound, nonplussed. His expression was one of deep curiosity. And then a second shot snapped out, again from nowhere-who was doing the shooting?-and this one nearly took off Cloncurry’s arm at the shoulder. His left arm, already handless, was now dangling by a few red muscles, and blood was pissing into the dust from the gaping shoulder-wound.

The two Kurds immediately dropped Lizzie, turned with panic on their face and, as a third shot cracked through the desert air, ran.

Cloncurry fell to his knees. The third shot had obviously hit him in the leg. He knelt, bleeding, on the sand, scrabbling anxiously around. What was he looking for? His own severed hand? The knife? Lizzie was next to him lying gagged and hogtied. Rob stood knee-deep in the water. Who was shooting who? And where was Cloncurry’s gun? Rob glanced left: he could see dust in the distance. Maybe a car was coming their way, but the dust obscured his view. Were they going to shoot Lizzie too?

Rob realized he had one chance. Now. He dived into the water, plunged and swam, swimming for Lizzie’s life, swimming between the bones and skulls. He had never swum so hard, had never battled such surging, dangerous waters…He kicked and crawled, swallowing whole mouthfuls of cold water, and then he slapped a hand on dry hot earth, and hauled himself up. When he rose from the water, gasping and spitting, he saw Cloncurry a few yards away.

Cloncurry was lying down, using Lizzie’s body as a shield from any further gunshots; but his mouth was wide open and drooling-and he was closing his jaw over Lizzie’s soft throat. Like a tiger killing a gazelle. Jamie Cloncurry was going to bite into Lizzie’s neck, and chew out her jugular.

A surge of fury ran through Rob. He flung himself across the sand and ran at Cloncurry just as the killer’s sharp white teeth closed over his daughter’s windpipe, and he kicked Cloncurry in the head, kicking him straight off his daughter. Then Rob did it again: he kicked the killer away for a second time, and then a third time, and Cloncurry sprawled with a yell of pain into the dust, his half-severed arm hanging useless and obscene.

Rob leapt on the gang-leader, lodging a knee on Cloncurry’s uninjured shoulder so that he couldn’t move. Now he had Cloncurry at his mercy. He could hold him here as long as he liked.

But Rob had no intention of showing mercy.

‘Your turn,’ said Rob.

He reached into his pocket for his Swiss Army knife. Slowly and carefully he unclasped the biggest blade and twisted it in the air for a moment, then he looked down.

Rob found himself smiling. He was wondering what to do first, how to torture and maim Cloncurry so that it would cause the maximum pain, before the killer’s inevitable death. Stab him in the eye? Carve off an ear? Slit the scalp open? What? But as Rob lifted the knife, he saw something in Cloncurry’s leering expression. A kind of shared and exultant shame, a hopeful yet defiant evil. The bile of revulsion rose in Rob’s throat.

Shaking his head, Rob closed the knife and put it back in his pocket. Cloncurry wasn’t going anywhere: he was bleeding to death right here. His leg was shattered, his hand was gone, the arm was hanging off. He was unarmed, and mutilated, dying from the shock of the pain and blood-loss. Rob didn’t need to do anything.

Rolling off the killer, Rob turned to his daughter.

He ungagged her immediately. She cried out Daddy daddy daddy and then she said Christine! and Rob turned, ashamed. He’d quite forgotten Christine in his urge to save Lizzie; but Christine was saving herself, and a moment later Rob reached down to the waters to grab her hand and help her out of the surging water. He hauled her up onto the dust, and she lay there, panting.

Then Rob heard a noise. Turning, he saw Cloncurry dragging himself along in the dust, creaking and slow, his half-severed arm hanging at his side, the wound in his thigh gaping wide and raw. As he crawled, he left a trail of blood behind him. He was heading straight for the water.

He was going to make the last sacrifice: suicide. Jamie Cloncurry was going to drown himself. Rob watched, transfixed and appalled. Cloncurry was at the water’s edge now. With a grunt of great pain he hauled himself the final yard, and then he flopped down into the scummy cold waves with a great splash. For a moment his head bobbed amongst the grinning skulls, and his bright eyes stared straight at Rob.

And then he sank beneath the waves. Gently spiralling down, to join the bones of his ancestors.

Christine sat upright, shaking her phone, making sure it was still working. At last, miraculously, she got a signal and rang Sally and began telling her the good news. Rob listened, half-dazed, halfhappy, half-dreaming. He found himself scanning the horizon and did not know why. Then, a minute later, he realized why he was scanning the horizon.

There were police cars speeding across the dust, negotiating their way between the fingers of floodwater. A few moments later the hilltop was alive with policemen and officers and soldiers-and there was Kiribali. In his dustless suit, wearing a wide bright smile. He was snapping orders into his radio, and pointing directions to his men.

Rob sat on the sand and hugged his daughter close.