Crusader's Gold

THIRTY TWO

By late the next morning the team had everything they needed. A night in an obscure, side-street hotel away from central London and close to King’s Cross did nothing to heighten their enthusiasm, and Alicia came as close as she’d ever been to refusing to take a morning shower. In the end, with the lights off and the door closed to preserve dimness she managed it. When she set eyes upon Crouch the next morning she frowned.

“Couldn’t sleep?”

“More important things to do,” he said as they filed out of the cramped lobby and into a brisk, bright morning. “I decided we need a device.”

Alicia raised an eyebrow. “Oh yeah? Dare I even ask?”

“Not your kind of device. My mind. The first task of the day is to decide which of the two arches we’re going to concentrate our efforts on.”

Crouch took a left up Euston Road opposite the great sprawling mass that was King’s Cross Station and started walking. “We need a vibrometer.”

Alicia thought about everything he had said. “What do you mean ‘my kind of device’?”

Crouch waved it off. “A vibrometer is a laser radar vibration sensor that can be used to detect the presence of tunnels. Developed originally for the military some years ago it helped detect buried landmines and improvised explosives — IEDs. The sensor measures surface vibrations, analyses them, and then equates them to a library of target data to render a map of what is below ground. It can find anything from voids to hidden machinery.”

“And you can pick one up in… where? Currys?” Russo asked.

“No. But there is an electronics shop down Tottenham Court Road that has international customers and handles some rather sensitive goods. Nothing strictly illegal, of course, just merchandise the stuffy politicians would rather you didn’t have.”

Alicia followed the boss past St Pancras and Euston Stations, turning left onto Tottenham Court Road. Healey voiced a concern over being famished and Crouch took a glance at his watch.

“Actually,” he said, “we do have time for breakfast.”

They chose croissants, poppy seed pastries and strong black coffee at Kamps before continuing on their way. Crouch entered the large electronics shop alone, leaving Alicia and the rest of the team to their own devices. Alicia watched the flow of human traffic, fascinated by the gym-goers, the dog-walkers, the workmen in their hi-vis jackets and the odd partygoer undertaking the walk of shame. When Crouch returned he held a plastic bag, straining at the handles. Without a word he indicated the closest underground station — Goodge Street.

Twenty minutes later they were exiting Marble Arch station and heading over to the arch once more. Crouch stopped before the high gates looking a little wary. “This thing isn’t exactly small, but it is the latest tech capable of detecting voids hundreds of feet below the earth.”

He pulled the device out of the bag. Alicia saw his problem. The machine was as wide as a dinner plate with two holes and cylindrical lugs and a narrow disc-ended snout. Crouch laid the snout gently against the ground and flipped a switch, looking intensely uncomfortable now as a swelling current of sound waves filled the air. Passersby looked over. Alicia found herself wishing she’d relieved one of the earlier workmen of his hi-vis jacket. At least then they might have looked the part.

“How long does this take?”

“Don’t worry,” Crouch’s tone belied his words. “Eight to ten seconds.”

“And the readout?”

Crouch straightened, holding the machine up. “Right here.”

The screen displayed a series of multicolored sound waves. To Alicia they meant nothing. Even to Crouch they meant very little.

“Well, according to my crash course, this says that there are no tunnels running directly under Marble Arch. So the Central Line underground system that has a station back there,” he waved down Oxford Street, “at Bond Street and then here at Marble Arch must kink away toward its next stop at Lancaster Gate. Boys and girls, there’s nothing under here.”

Deflated, they moved quickly away, retracing their steps of yesterday down Park Lane. “Let’s take a taxi,” Crouch said, holding his arm out. “In case London’s CCTV surveillance system spotted what we were doing.” He shrugged. “It’s better than being stopped on the hoof.”

Ten minutes later they entered the central island of Hyde Park Corner and walked toward the great Wellington Arch. Crouch waited as long as he could and finally, warily deployed the vibrometer. Then the group retired to one of the benches that dotted the area.

“What does it say?” Alicia craned over.

Crouch frowned at the readings. “Would you believe it? A tunnel does not run underneath here.” He stared at the arch. “Three do.”

Caitlyn bounced in her exuberance. “Three?”

“According to this they do. And if I’m reading it right, which admittedly,” he shrugged, “is debatable.” He pointed at the screen. “That one is the underground. It’s huge. So the Victoria Line runs almost underneath where we’re sitting now with the road at our backs. But the other two?”

“I’m on it.” Caitlyn checked her tablet hurriedly. “And here we go. Nowhere does it offer the information that Hyde Park Corner sits above anything but solid ground, but when you add the word ‘tunnel’ we get several items of information. It seems that a large tunnel was built under here in the 1950s to help channel the traffic fumes away. There’s a vent over there,” she pointed at the arch. “Actually inside.” She shook her head. “These people and their secret subways.”

Crouch read on. “The fire brigade still get on average three calls a year from the general public warning of a fire inside the Wellington Arch because of warm air and dust coming up through the massive hidden ventilation shaft,” he said. “And yet they still keep it all quiet.”

“You build one tunnel and say it’s a ventilation shaft,” Russo said. “You could easily build another. Or place it over an old one.”

“No mention of a third,” Caitlyn said.

Crouch followed the line of the mysterious third tunnel. “It heads directly in that direction to start.” He pointed toward Hyde Park. “Which is interesting because isn’t that building there Apsley House?”

“Wait,” Caitlyn said. “I just came across this. An account of a man’s visit to the Arc du Carrousel. He blogs ‘it was exciting to take the underground passageways to and from the monument and feel as though you were a part of something larger’. So the Arc had tunnels too.”

Alicia let them work, their brainstorming part of the process of discovery and idea generation. To know that even now they were sitting above a network of hidden tunnels was exhilarating. Hyde Park Corner sat over a secret tunnel and had done so for untold years.

What were these people hiding?