The Excalibur Codex

I

‘And the light drizzle will continue well into the afternoon …’ Abeba Trelawney’s hand flicked out and hit the radio switch, consigning the weather report to some distant corner of the ether. God, she hated driving in the rain. The little sports car was fine for nipping about town, but on a jam-packed M25 in a deluge it lost a helluva lot of its charm. She gritted her teeth as the intimidating bulk of an articulated truck surged up the outside lane, throwing a wall of spray that momentarily blinded her. ‘What’s your hurry?’ she snapped at the passing behemoth. Three lanes of traffic moving intermittently between zero and forty miles an hour max; nobody was getting anywhere fast. That reminded her. She was going to be late. Should she call Jamie? Her hand groped for the mobile phone on the passenger seat.

‘Damn.’ The movement towards the handset distracted her and she almost missed the brake lights on the car in front.

She took a deep breath. No, it was illegal, and Abeba was a girl whose solicitor parents had brought her up to respect the law. She’d leave it for now and perhaps stop later at a service station to send him a text. The thought brought with it an electric surge of excitement from low in her belly. Should she tell him? She smiled to herself and decided not. This wasn’t the kind of news you imparted in a text, or even in a phone call. It had to be face to face. The smile broadened as she thought of his reaction. Would he be pleased? Of course he’d be pleased. She caught sight of herself in the rear-view mirror: soulful brown eyes; long hair, black as a raven’s wing, and a complexion the shade of pale honey. She looked like the cat who’d just been given a saucer of cream. Would he be pleased? Please, God, let him be pleased. I couldn’t stand it if he wasn’t pleased. Just one flinch and I’ll burst into tears.

But Jamie wouldn’t flinch. Not the Jamie Saintclair she knew and loved.

Now it was his face that swam into view. Thin-lipped, sardonic and maybe just a little tired, but with wide green eyes that sparkled with humour and crinkled at the edges. She loved the way his unruly dark hair flopped low over his brow and had been surprised at the lean, muscular hardness hidden behind the old-fashioned suits and assumed air of wholesome innocence. Time had taught her the world-weariness was a defence mechanism, a barrier imposed by his supposed failures with women in the past. She had had to fight to break it down. He was an easy man to like, but there were hidden shadows that made him harder to love, and wary of being in love. An art dealer — she smiled at the memory of their first meeting — not really her type, she’d thought, and maybe a little protective of his secrets, which intrigued and kind of irritated her, until she’d understood why. With patience she had drawn out the real man from behind the psychological suit of armour he wore. At first he had been restrained in bed, and she sensed he wanted to be led, but when she had persuaded him to make the running and allow his passions and desires to rule him, the results had been spectacular and most worthwhile. She gave a little unladylike snort at the images she’d conjured up. They hadn’t seen each other for a week and he’d just come back from a trip to France to investigate a painting that might have been stolen by the Nazis during the Second World War. Perhaps later …

The outer lane was moving much faster than the others and she considered switching, but immediately thought better of it, even though the big truck was by now a hundred and fifty yards further ahead. Fortunately, the rain had begun to slacken and visibility was much clearer. As pointlessly as it had sped up, the outside lane slowed to a halt and she glanced right to see two wide eyes staring at her from a scarlet face. A furry arm rose to wave a greeting and she blinked. The TV puppet vanished as swiftly as it had appeared to be replaced by a grinning curly-haired urchin about the same age as the kids in the Year One class she taught. She smiled back and tried to concentrate on the road as the traffic picked up speed at last.

From the elevated cab of his truck, Rasul Mohammed had a view of all three lanes ahead. He could feel the adrenalin building in his system as his satellite navigation system told him he was getting closer to the mark. The rain and spray reduced his visibility, but he had no doubt he would know the place when he got there. He had driven this route ten times over the past few weeks and never missed it once. Closer. He nudged the accelerator pedal and moved up so he was almost bumper to bumper with the car in front, which in turn edged forward away from the intimidating presence of the forty-tonne monster. Rasul licked his dry lips. He’d performed the manoeuvre he was about to attempt often, but never in the rain and never in a fully laden truck. That had been for the movies. This was for real. The most important scene he’d ever shoot.

‘Mark One.’ The voice sounded unnaturally loud in his ears, but he didn’t need the instruction. There it was, a white rag tied to a distinctive bush. Less than a quarter of a mile. He flicked the plastic indicator lever to signal that he wanted to move into the middle lane and began to edge his way across into the solid line of cars. In his passenger-side mirror he could see open mouths that would undoubtedly be cursing him for the thoughtless and potentially dangerous manoeuvre. He could almost feel their puzzlement and anger at the giant throwing his weight around like a prizefighter in a pub queue, but he ignored them. Concentrate. Not too far, his positioning had to be exactly right; half in one lane and half in the other, blocking both.

He could see the second mark a hundred yards ahead. Everything seemed so clear. His gaze darted across the dials. Speed: perfect. Weight distribution: perfect. Position: perfect. Even the rain might help, because it would give his tyres less traction.

Now.

‘Now!’ the voice in his ear echoed the shout in his brain, but his hands and feet were already working in sequence to put the command into operation. In one movement he hauled the wheel to the left and his foot hit the brake with just the right amount of pressure.

For a moment Abeba wondered if she was dreaming. Her consciousness was fixed on the car in front, but at its perimeter a surreal image formed of the articulated lorry swerving into the lanes ahead. The image was followed instantly by a terrible rending of metal and, as if in slow motion, the truck toppled to block the three-lane motorway. She hit the brakes and her scream of fright merged with the squeal of hundreds of tyres.

When the noise subsided, she sat with her head bowed, breathing as if she’d just run the hundred-metre sprint and still only half believing what she’d seen. That idiot … she could — would — be stuck here for hours. But natural concern quickly overcame anger. What about the driver? And the people in the cars up ahead? There had to be casualties from an accident as bad as that. One of the lorry’s tyres must have burst to cause the sudden change of direction. Or maybe the driver had had a heart attack? She reached for the door, but by the time she opened it she saw, in the narrow gap between the cars ahead, that dozens of people were already streaming towards the stricken vehicles. She hesitated before closing the door. For a few moments her fingers remained on the handle, but she was forced to acknowledge that apart from basic First Aid she didn’t have any particular medical skills to contribute. There was no point in just getting in the way. In some ways it was a relief. The car was a warm metal cocoon that protected her from the realities of what was happening a few hundred yards ahead. She tried to call Jamie, but only reached his voicemail, so she left a short message outlining her situation and began backing it up with a text because she knew he often forgot to listen to voicemails.

Up ahead, Rasul lay stunned among the shattered glass and scattered detritus of his overturned cab, his mind waiting for the pain that would signal a broken bone or a torn muscle. Nothing. He almost choked on the surge of relief and exhilaration that flooded his body. It had worked. The lorry now filled most of the motorway and the carefully distributed cargo of gravel would have blocked the rest. He clawed frantically at the harness of his seat belt. His job was done. All that mattered now was to use the escape route that had been set up for him.

He’d just released the catch when a black-clad figure appeared in the upturned oblong of the shattered windscreen. The man was wearing a ski mask that covered his entire head apart from the eyes and the mouth. He carried a short-barrelled assault rifle as if he knew how to use it. Rasul’s first reaction was fear at the unexpected sight of an armed man, but it quickly gave way to elation. They’d done it. His face broke into a smile. Now they would hold all these hundreds of people to ransom for the cause and he would disappear back into anonymous, but cheerfully wealthy, obscurity. The man with the rifle smiled back, but his eyes told a different story and suddenly Rasul Mohammed was screaming inside. The dark mouth of the rifle barrel lifted and the last thing he saw was a flicker of light before the bullets tore through his chest.

An unfamiliar sound froze Abeba’s finger on the send button. A sort of flat stutter like the bolt removers you heard when you went to get a new tyre. But not. From quite far away she heard what sounded like panicked screams. Curious, she craned her head to look along the gap towards the overturned lorry in time to see men and women who’d gone to help the crash victims dropping to the ground like puppets with their strings cut. Puzzlement turned to a thrill of raw fear as a man ran desperately into the space a hundred yards ahead and she saw his head disappear in a haze of bright scarlet. Instinctively she drew back and hunched low behind the wheel. She fought to control her breathing, but her body seemed to have dissolved into its constituent parts and she had no authority over any of them. At the same time her mind struggled to assimilate what was happening with reality, but it wouldn’t work. What she had seen was impossible. It couldn’t be happening. More screams and the sound of shattering glass, all accompanied by the flat stutter she had heard originally. Without warning, a ball of red and gold flame erupted to her front left, followed instantly by the sharp crump of an explosion. A car’s petrol tank. And much closer than the front ranks of the jam. Whatever it was, it was happening, and it was coming for her. She had to do something. Anything. Now.

She looked frantically to her right as a young man in a blue T-shirt opened the passenger door of the adjacent car and stood up to get a better view. Her mind screamed at him to get down, but too late. A volley of bullets punched holes in the metal with a drum roll of sledgehammer clatters and he was thrown backwards, half in and half out of the car. Abeba looked across the divide to see a woman’s face frozen in horror and the curly-haired boy and a girl who must be his sister staring from the back seats with their mouths gaping. She wanted to shout to them, to reassure them that everything would be all right, but their father lay sprawled in front of them with his body ripped open and the life blood spewing in dark gouts from his open mouth. The screaming was constant now and all around, and she sensed that similar scenes were being played out among the cars and lorries packed tight into what must be a miles-long queue of traffic. It was only then that she realized she was screaming with the rest and she clamped her bottom lip between her teeth. She heard the metallic crunch of cars crashing into each other as drivers tried vainly to escape the trap. A few sped past on the hard shoulder, but a larger explosion followed by a second eruption of flame gave evidence of the futility of attempting that route. With a stricken glance at the shattered family three feet away, she crouched down in the cramped foot well and tried to think rationally. She had to get away. She’d thought she was brave, like her mother, who had survived civil war and famine, but here and now bravery didn’t come into it. There was nothing she could do for the woman and children or anyone else trapped in the cars. Jamie’s face swam into her vision again. She closed her eyes and her mind locked onto his aura of quiet calm like a drowning person clutching a lifebelt. That was it, she thought tearfully. It was imperative she get to Jamie and share what she knew and he did not. She risked a glance through the steering wheel and found herself staring into the eyes of a masked gunman less than twenty feet away. He was tall and slim and as she watched he raised his gun, a strange modern machine pistol that would be the last thing she would ever see. She flinched at three quick-fire flashes, but the burst must have been aimed at someone fleeing a car behind. With a last glance in her direction, the masked man turned away and she dropped her head. She realized with shame that she’d wet herself. A thought attempted to pierce her fear, something about the gunman, but she thrust it deep, the instinct for survival and waves of terror fighting for supremacy. Her hands shook uncontrollably. Somehow she managed to influence her fear, dragging panic-stricken breaths into her lungs between the sobs. She had to get out or the car would become her tomb. She must survive.