The Excalibur Codex

XXXIII

They locked him in the wine cellar, but at least they brought him food and nobody said anything about the condemned man’s last meal. He wondered how Gault was enjoying his captivity, but decided the former SBS man was quite capable of looking after himself and, anyway, there was little chance of doing anything about it. A strip light illuminated his makeshift dungeon and as he searched in vain for a way out he looked over the contents. Would it be wise to use his last few hours comparing Harold Webster’s Château Margaux ’66 with the ’68, or the ’72 Gevrey-Chambertin with the Nuits Saint Georges of the same year? Probably not, and, if his luck so far was anything to go by, there wouldn’t be a bloody corkscrew.

I must decide whether I’m going to kill you.

Was she serious? He touched the scratch on his throat and remembered the ice-blue eyes at the end of that long sliver of steel. That depended on what she had to gain and how much she had to lose: credits and debits judged as they would be on the corporation balance sheet. Was there more profit to be had by keeping the rather awkwardly persistent Mr James Saintclair alive, or sending him for a swim in the lake with a concrete block tied to his leg for ballast? On initial appraisal, the second option seemed more likely and he felt a little flutter of panic in his stomach. If she knew so much about him, she knew he was here for the sword. Ergo, if she wanted to keep the sword, it would be best to be rid of the inconvenient Saintclair. On the other hand, and now he felt a contrasting and unlikely stirring of what might be called hope, she had suggested he could do her a service and she had seemed quite serious about it. What that service could be, he had no idea. He recalled the figure-hugging bodysuit and one or two thoughts sprang to mind, but the chances of turning them into reality seemed slim in his current situation. All of which left him none the wiser. There’d been almost a twinkle in her eye when he’d asked that final question, and he had a feeling that, whatever the outcome of her deliberations, she wouldn’t be able to resist giving him the answer.

The question now was what to do while she made up her mind?

In the end he couldn’t pass up the ’66.

‘Mr Saintclair?’ Jamie groaned and opened his eyes, blinking at the bright light. ‘Miss Webster will see you now, sir.’

His back ached from lying on the hard floor with his jacket as a pillow, but on the plus side the early morning call didn’t have the feel of an invitation to a firing squad. He followed the guard to a large room in the west wing, with a polished wooden banqueting table — rectangular, not round — at the centre, and walls lined with bookcases that reminded him of the day Adam Steele had revealed the contents of the Excalibur codex. Jamie allowed his eyes to drift over the titles as the guard took his place by the door with one hand poised disconcertingly over the butt of one of the omnipresent Glock 9mms. They seemed to consist mainly of American literary classics, but Harold Webster’s collection also contained a few British books. There was a section on Dickens, another containing the complete works of Shakespeare, and a shelf of leather-clad titles by Sir Walter Scott. One wall was devoted to what looked like every book ever written on the Arthur legends, ranging from the eighteenth century to the latest modern works. He randomly picked one called Arthur and the Lost Kingdoms and had just opened it when Carl, the guard who had watched the fencing bout, entered the room. Curiously, the black man carried a long sword across two outstretched hands, almost as if he were taking part in some kind of solemn ceremony. Jamie felt as if an electric shock ran through him, his heart quickened and the breath caught in his throat as he realized what he was seeing. It didn’t seem possible even now, but there it was, finally, within touching distance. A broad-bladed, battle-notched iron man-killer. How well it fitted the description. Almost four feet of dull, crow-black, rust-pitted metal, the edges worn thin by relentless honing and nicked where they’d once clashed with other blades. Yet for all its utilitarian appearance it took on a curious, almost awesome beauty in his eyes. This was a sword that had been revered, for how else had it been protected and cared for, for more than a thousand years? Carl laid it carefully in the centre of the table. And yet …

‘Thank you for your patience, Mr Saintclair.’ Today she wore an immaculately cut suit of slate-grey silk over a simple turquoise blouse open at the neck and offset by a necklace of thick gold links. Another of the guards followed her, pushing Harold Webster in his chair, twisted and glaring, like a malignant land crab.

‘Does this mean you’re not going to kill me?’

Helena Webster ignored the question. ‘When I heard of your interest in Nortstein Castle, I had a choice to make. I could have tried to stop you, and believe me when I say that I would have succeeded. Or I could watch and judge the mettle of the people I faced. Fortunately for you, I chose the second option. When you found your way here, I was impressed by your perseverance and your ingenuity, but it left me with another choice. My only interest in all this is to protect the good name of my family and my company. You are patently a man of honesty and integrity.’ Jamie blinked. If the description was accurate, he was in the wrong line of business. ‘But you are also a man of great curiosity. The first I can use. The second I must eliminate.’ There it was, the shiver down the spine again. ‘I have decided that the best way to proceed is to be entirely candid with you. All I ask is your word that nothing you hear today will be repeated outside these four walls. Do you agree?’

Jamie met her stare as he considered the question. ‘You’re very trusting.’

‘No, Mr Saintclair, I am a very good judge of character. For instance, I would not make the same offer to your companion.’

‘Then I agree.’

She greeted the words with a smile and turned to Harold Webster with what might have been a look of triumph. The old man wriggled in his chair and snarled like a caged beast, his single eye glowing with suppressed rage and hatred. Helena walked to the table and laid a hand on the great sword.

‘What my grandfather learned from the man he tortured and murdered at Nortstein Castle drove him quite mad. You decoded Rolf Lauterbacher’s journal, so you are aware of what took place in the castle in nineteen forty-one?’ Jamie nodded. ‘But there was more. Much more. My grandfather’s victim was an aide to Wolfram Sievers, Himmler’s black magician. He told him every detail of the ceremony and the lineage of the five swords Reinhard Heydrich had brought together to make it happen. All the elements had been in place, he said, but the human element had proved false. They were weak men who did not believe. Sievers had his doubts from the first, but Heydrich insisted the ceremony go ahead to please Himmler. It would have worked. It still could. Harold Webster had always been interested in the occult. You’ve heard of a man called Aleister Crowley?’

‘The crazy mystic with the Scottish castle? Of course.’

‘Black magician and occultist. Some people considered him the Antichrist, others the potential saviour of the world. My grandfather fell into the second category. He was in correspondence with Crowley before the war and until his death in nineteen forty-seven.’

‘So all this was like the Holy Grail to him?’

‘An interesting analogy,’ she admitted. ‘But probably an apt one. He would always say that a great force had led him to Nortstein Castle and the treasures it contained. The swords were only part of it. The German showed him occult texts dating back to Ancient Egyptian times giving details of ceremonies to draw on the powers of the Dark Gods and containing words of power to bring death and disaster to the enemies of those who uttered them. He believed he was bartering the information for his life. He was wrong.’

Jamie studied the hunched figure in the chair. What was he thinking, trapped in that broken, useless body? Did he ever wonder if it was retribution for the men he’d killed? ‘So,’ he challenged, ‘Harold Webster — your grandfather — has just made the most important discovery of his life. What does he do now? He can’t take the swords and the manuscripts back to the partisan camp, because they’ll probably be stolen from him. Once he’s killed his men, he could strap the swords to a pony and try to ride west, towards the Allies, but the chances of him making it would be very slim.’

Helena nodded gravely. ‘He can’t take them, so he decides to hide them, along with most of the Nazi paraphernalia you saw yesterday. The castle was full of potential hiding places, but none offered guaranteed security. Eventually, he chose somewhere, probably a small cellar, found a local man who had the skills to brick it up, and, when he was satisfied, he got rid of the evidence — all the evidence — and does as you suggest. He rides west. He kept to the woods and the marshes, avoided contact with anyone who looked threatening, stole what he needed from the weak and the fearful …’ Her eyes hardened. ‘He was very good at that by now. By good fortune he had chosen a route between two Soviet army groups, but eventually events forced him onto a main highway where he joined a column of refugees being screened by the Russians. When they questioned him, he revealed his true identity and was placed with a group of former prisoners of war. They repatriated him to the United States a month later.’

‘What I can’t understand,’ Jamie’s voice reflected his confusion, ‘is why it took him so long to retrieve the swords. If he was so obsessed, surely there was a way he could have gone back for them earlier, and without bringing the whole castle with him?’

She produced an unexpected smile. ‘You don’t know my grandfather, Mr Saintclair. He’d already formed his plan by the time he returned to the States. The ritual had to be carried out in perfect conditions, in its original form and its original setting. At first he planned to return just after the war, but within a few years Poland had become a Soviet satellite state and pretty much closed to westerners. There was also the small matter of certain crimes committed against the Polish population by the Byelorussian partisans, who could be very cruel to the people they lived amongst.’

She paused to allow the reality behind those words to sink in. Carl stood behind Harold Webster’s wheelchair, but the black man might have been deaf for all the interest his face displayed. By contrast, the mobile part of the old man’s face was a mirror of his emotions; a twitching arena of fear and anticipation. A dribble of saliva escaped his drooping lip as Helena Webster resumed her story in a flat, almost uninterested voice. ‘My grandfather could never be certain his part in those crimes wasn’t known. Circumstances forced him to bide his time, and he used the interval to begin gathering the essential commodity he needed to make it happen: money. Before the war he had been an electrical engineer. When he returned, he foresaw the growth of the automotive industry and focused his attentions on components shared by all automobiles. He eventually settled on the battery. Relatively simple, cheap and easy to make. The fortune he made in the following ten years allowed him to invest in television technology, and later computers. The Webster Corporation is now one of the largest providers of security software in the world. Along the way he created the Bialystok Foundation, and began building relationships in Poland. When the time was right he used the foundation to employ the services of a rather brash young man called Marmaduke Porter. Porter paved the way for the purchase of the castle, its dismantling and export to the United States. My grandfather had already identified this site and greased whatever palms were required, and here we are. For ten years he attempted to replicate the ritual that took place in Nortstein in April nineteen forty-one,’ her lips wrinkled with distaste, ‘recruiting like-minded people to take the place of the twelve Nazis. If one combination didn’t work, he would try another. When he had harnessed the power of the swords he planned to run for president. Harold Webster would create a new America that would wipe away the shame of Korea and Vietnam. He had already decided Russia was not the United States’ greatest enemy. Once in the White House he planned to focus all this country’s energy on defeating Communist China, first economically, but if that did not work he was prepared to use every means at his disposal.’ The words tumbled free, her breathing quickened and the pain she patently experienced was almost enough to make Jamie feel sorry for her. But he knew Helena Webster wouldn’t thank him for his sympathy. As he watched, something curious happened. The expression on her face didn’t change, but the effect of it altered, as if some classical Medusa was lurking behind the beautiful mask. ‘My grandfather’s obsession killed my father and robbed me of my childhood. The day I received the call telling me he had had a stroke was probably the happiest of my life.’ She went to the old man and stroked his hair. The gesture might have been affectionate, but the atmosphere seemed to take on a new chill and Jamie saw fear in the single bright eye. ‘I can feel his hatred and his loathing. What I am about to do will destroy him still further, but not, I hope, kill him.’ She returned to the table and picked up the sword. Harold Webster groaned and struggled in his chair so much he might have tipped it if the guard Carl hadn’t pushed him back. ‘That is the service I ask of you. I want you to return this to the person it was stolen from.’

Jamie took the sword in his hands, the ancient iron rough and cool against his flesh, instantly feeling the power that emanated from the battle-scarred blade and the life force of the kings who had wielded it. The grip was bone, worked smooth by countless generations of use, and only the pommel, a two-headed dragon worked in gold, gave any indication of its lineage. What had Adam Steele said? A sword is the child of earth, air and fire. Look closely at this blade and you can see the ghosts of the tree roots that bind the earth to the Otherworld. And he was right; the dark metal still retained the magic of the smith who had created it, the jealously guarded secrets of its manufacture and the shadow of the eight glowing bars of specially selected metal that had been used in its forging. Excalibur.

‘You understand …? ’ Her voice faltered.

Jamie met her gaze. ‘Yes.’

‘I told him, but he would never listen. So you will return it?’

‘I will try, where …? ’

She smiled. ‘You’re a clever guy, Jamie Saintclair. You’ll work it out.’