The Excalibur Codex

XXXV

Still stunned by what he’d witnessed, Jamie walked in a daze for what seemed like hours before his survival instinct kicked in and he found a public telephone booth on the corner of 17th and Broadway just past Union Square. Panicked fingers dug into his pockets for the card that just might save his neck, discovered another that made him pause, then settled on the initial card and dialled the number. He allowed it to ring for almost a minute without an answer. Eventually, he closed his eyes in frustration and hung up. A sour-looking Hispanic woman eyed him through the perspex and he reluctantly stepped away, giving her access to the phone. She took his place without saying thank you, which he found surprisingly irritating in the circumstances.

While he waited he tried to evaluate what had happened. He knew he was still in shock, but he must clear his mind. Whoever planted the bomb in the hotel could still be looking for him. Maybe it had been the men he’d heard coming from the lift? What they called an own goal. But it had happened at precisely — he remembered Gault’s sneer: ‘I’m only passing on instructions’ — precisely six thirty p.m. Coincidence? There had been too many coincidences. Everywhere he went they seemed to follow him. He relived the blackened starfish cartwheeling across the street and a wave of nausea threatened to overwhelm him.

Gault had set him up. There was be no another explanation. And if Gault had set him up, that meant Adam Steele had set him up. His legs went suddenly weak and he staggered onto the pavement. ‘Hey, pal,’ someone said, and he realized he’d walked into their path. They were all around him. People. Anonymous faces of brown and black and white and every shade in between. Uncaring eyes of brown and green and black and blue. Potential enemies. He clutched the briefcase to his chest. Any one of them could blow him away and there wasn’t one thing he could do about it. He was alone in an alien city. He had no weapon and no friends. A passport and a few hundred dollars in his pocket were his only link to the world he had formerly inhabited.

The woman was still talking, a hundred-mile-an-hour one-sided conversation in Spanish; something about her son needing to find a job. Who in the name of Christ used pay phones these days? Desperate people. He battered on the perspex and met her glare with one of his own. ‘Excuse me, ma’am, but I don’t have all day.’ Her eyes narrowed, but she uttered a few words into the handset and handed it over with a poisonous glance. When he put it to his face he could smell her sour breath. He hesitated before dialling the number on the card. It was the last thing she’d given him before he’d left the castle. If there’s anything else you need just call. But why should she help him? The sword was gone. He’d failed. But there was something about her that made it worth a try. He punched in the number.

‘I hadn’t expected to see you quite so soon, Mr Saintclair.’ The tone was businesslike, but not unsympathetic. Jamie wearily raised his head and found Helena Webster looming over him, with Carl hovering protectively a few paces in the background. Jamie had spent the night moving about the city, trying to stay out of the way of the cops who’d by now know the name of the room’s occupiers and at the same time in constant fear that he might be being followed. By the time he returned at dawn to the rendezvous she’d specified he was cold, hungry, exhausted and irritable. Would she help him or not? That’s all he needed to know. But her next words held only faint promise.

‘You’re fortunate I left for New York not long after you and your friend did.’ She joined him on the bench and studied him for a few moments. ‘Carl? I think Mr Saintclair might benefit from a cup of coffee from the booth over by the lake. I’ll have one too.’ She waited until the guard had left. ‘You said you needed my help, but I’m a little perplexed. I gave you what you came for. What more can you expect of me?’

‘Someone tried to kill me. I think it was because of the sword.’

‘Which you no longer have,’ she pointed out.

‘I can still get it back to the original owners.’

She studied him, taking in every weary line on his face and evidently coming to a decision. ‘Tell me.’

Exhaustion and relief almost overwhelmed him, but somehow he found the strength to relate his story. He told her about the bomb and his suspicions about Gault and Steele. ‘He was very keen that I had this with me when I was blown to bits.’ He placed the briefcase between them. ‘There’s a laptop in it. I think what was left of it was supposed to be found with what was left of me. That makes me suspicious that there may be something on it that links me to other things.’

‘Things?’

Carl returned with the coffees and Jamie sipped his appreciatively, feeling the warmth seep into his bones and for the first time becoming aware of the vibrancy of his surroundings; the contrast between the dazzling green of the park and the pink glow of the surrounding high rises in the morning sun, between the sleek roller-bladers and the smart business types and the drab figures snuffling and scratching like animals as they emerged from the bushes that had sheltered them for the night. ‘I don’t know for certain,’ he admitted eventually. ‘But you were the only person I could think of who might be able to help me.’

She looked around. ‘I do like Central Park on a spring day, don’t you? Come.’ He rose shakily to his feet and they walked through the grass and the early spring flowers past the softball fields and onto the Mall. Eventually she stopped by a larger-than-life bronze statue. ‘You look very tired, Mr Saintclair. Do you need somewhere to hole up?’

He shook his head. ‘I can manage.’ It was only as he spoke that he realized she’d put out her hand for the briefcase. He passed it over and she studied the combination. ‘Five digits; I think we can handle that.’

‘Try one nine two one nine. It might save you a bit of time.’ She stared at him and he shrugged. ‘Just a hunch.’

‘Perhaps we’ll leave it until we’re in a more secure environment.’ She passed the case to Carl, whose face didn’t move a muscle. ‘You realize this could take two hours or two days? Possibly even two weeks.’

‘I’ll wait.’

She nodded slowly and turned away. ‘Oh, I almost forgot. You’ll need this, pay phones are too public. When — if — I discover what you want to know, I’ll be in touch. We’ll meet again here.’ She handed over a slim South Korean-made mobile phone. ‘It’s pre-paid and untraceable. I will text you a time. Use it to contact me if necessary.’

Jamie watched the slim figure walk down the broad avenue of giant elm trees, followed by the watchful Carl, and realized he had never felt so utterly alone. Sooner or later the NYPD or the CIA were going to link him to the bombing at the Washington Park Hotel. When they did that they’d use all their resources to uncover the series of coincidences that had brought him there. Once that happened every law enforcement agency in the United States and Europe would be looking for Jamie Saintclair. The SIM card from the sat-phone felt as if it was burning a hole in his pocket. He’d no doubt the sat-phone records and the timings of the bombings in Madrid, Corfu and New York would match up. And how many more had there been in Germany and Poland? Someone had used him. All the evidence pointed to Gault and Adam Steele. He couldn’t understand why, but he was going to find out.

But that meant he had to get out of the States and back to Britain, and how the hell was he going to do that?

He turned his eyes skywards for inspiration and found himself staring into the face of a familiar-looking young man. Oddly, the bronze figure was doing something very similar as he sat with his quill pen poised to record his latest piece of genius. Time had given the statue a patina of pale green, which, if anything, added dignity to the subject. The memory of excruciating nights in his grandfather’s kitchen listening to indecipherable doggerel in a heathen tongue and being forced to eat what had tasted like spicy sawdust made Jamie smile despite the desperate circumstances. Old Matthew Sinclair had been a great Burns man, and here he was, Robert Burns, another lad stranded a long way from home. The best laid schemes o’ mice an’ men gang aft agley. The line from an oft-heard poem seemed to perfectly sum up Jamie’s current predicament.

But if Rabbie Burns had a message it was one of perseverance and hope, and Jamie took comfort from it now. All he needed was some of that inspiration. Did he have any favours he could call in? Not exactly — the balance sheet was all on the debit side — but maybe that didn’t matter.

He pulled out the mobile phone Helena Webster had given him and dialled a number that was etched on his brain. The ring tone sounded twice.

His voice was surprisingly steady when he spoke. ‘I’m in trouble and I’m going to need some help getting home … Yes, I understand that. But I have something to trade. Get back to me when you know what’s possible and I’ll tell you what I have.’

He rang off with all the care of a man who had just prodded a large cobra with a short stick.

By late afternoon Helena still hadn’t got back to him and he considered buying a sleeping bag in preparation for another night in the park. He was walking towards the stores when the phone buzzed to announce the arrival of a text. An hour later he stood by the Burns statue, staring across at its companion, another Scottish literary giant, when he noticed a certain pattern of movement. Large men in jeans, wearing designer sunglasses and jackets cut to conceal a certain kind of weaponry, took up strategic positions at all points of the compass around him, cutting off every avenue of escape.

He didn’t feel any fear. There’d always been the possibility of this outcome. But it surprised him. It was difficult to believe she’d betray him.

Helena Webster marched up the avenue with a sense of purpose that matched the military dispositions she’d put in place. Only one thing didn’t quite fit, and that was the silver case in Carl’s hand as he walked behind her. When she reached him, her face was so pale he could see the marbling of the veins beneath her skin. ‘Give me one reason why I shouldn’t hand you in.’

He didn’t flinch as he met her cold stare. ‘If you’ve looked at the material in there, and you need a reason, I doubt I’m going to convince you. Either you trust me or you don’t, Helena.’

‘My sources in the FBI say they have a passport picture of the man who rented the hotel room. A man with an Islamic name. They plan to put it out later today. You are a dangerous man to know, Mr Saintclair.’

He nodded, there was no disputing that. ‘Someone needed a sacrificial goat and I was volunteered.’

‘You know what’s in here?’

‘Not the specifics,’ he admitted. ‘But, in general, I think I can guess.’

‘We are talking about mass murder. If what is contained on the hard disk of this computer is true, the kind of detail involved could only have come from the terrorists themselves. Detail of timings and logistics, types of explosives, even estimates of casualties. Dozens of attacks all over the world. The only thing that stops me handing you over to the authorities is the fact that it has been fragmented and repeated all over the disk in a way that’s designed to ensure at least some of it would have survived the explosion in the hotel.’

‘Doesn’t that suggest I’m telling the truth?’ He could hear the weariness in his own voice and it sounded like defeat.

‘Perhaps.’ It wasn’t quite an acceptance. ‘But there are other things on here. A kind of information timebomb designed to stay hidden for weeks before any normal technician would reach them. Information about things that haven’t happened yet. And those things scare the hell out of me. I need to know what you’re going to do with it.’

‘I’m going to use it to buy my life.’

She took a deep breath and walked past him up the Mall towards the intersection with Center Drive. For a moment he thought he’d lost her and waited for the security detail to close in, but she stopped abruptly and turned back towards him.

‘How?’

So he told her.

Later, when the ring of guards was gone and only Carl remained, ostentatiously examining the statue on the far side of the paved road, she studied the briefcase with puzzled disgust. ‘You took a chance giving me this. The information it contains could be very valuable to certain people I know in the CIA.’

‘I trusted you.’

‘Still, I might have been tempted.’

‘You would have been sentencing me to death.’ He shrugged. ‘Or at least several lifetimes in one of your lovely state penitentiaries. I didn’t think you’d do that.’

Her eyes hardened and he knew he was back on dangerous ground. ‘What made you think that, Mr Saintclair?’

‘I’m a very good judge of character.’

She looked up sharply, but gradually her face relaxed into a smile at the reminder of her own boast.

‘You could have made me disappear at the castle,’ he pointed out, ‘and it would have been much more convenient for you if you had. But you didn’t. I think you’ve had enough of killing.’ The smile froze and Helena Webster’s eyes flashed with new menace. He knew he might be talking himself into a noose, but he’d gone too far to stop now. ‘You spoke about your grandfather replicating the ceremonies, thinking I wouldn’t know what that meant. But I do, right down to the last detail. And I understand exactly what it would have taken. That’s what killed your father, wasn’t it? The knowledge of what his father had done in his deranged quest to unleash the secret of the swords. There had to be blood and, more important, a source of that blood. Did Rolf Lauterbacher supply them? Is that what was on the page you cut from his journal? At first I didn’t understand why you didn’t just take the whole book, but then I realized you couldn’t have known the daughter didn’t have access to his safe. If she did, she would have noticed it missing and the German police would have investigated his “accident” a bit more thoroughly. So you ran your high-tech scanner over the pages, decoded the contents — that would have been simple enough for you with the decryption software you supply to your friends in the CIA — took the incriminating page and said a fond farewell to your father’s old pal Rolf.’

A vein throbbed in her temple, and for a moment he thought he’d pushed her too far.

‘I was right, Mr Saintclair, you are clever.’ She glanced towards Carl. ‘What do you intend to do with that information?’

He studied the pale face, noticing something he hadn’t earlier, a resemblance to a martyred saint in a Caravaggio painting. ‘Nothing. I think your family has suffered enough.’

After a moment’s hesitation she signalled Carl and the black man approached with the case. Jamie took it and weighed it in his hands. He delved in his pocket until he found what he was looking for. The combination was as he’d guessed — 19 2 19 — the numbers in the alphabet that matched SBS. He popped it open and dropped the SIM card inside, before closing it and whirling the dials to relock it. Helena Webster gave him a questioning look as he handed it back to her.

‘I’d like you to send it to this address, please.’

He produced a piece of paper and she took it with a puzzled frown. ‘Will it be safe there?’

‘As safe as anywhere.’

They walked to the end of the road. ‘Are you sure I can’t help you get back home?’

He managed a tired smile. ‘You’ve done enough.’ The truth was that he doubted whether Helena Webster’s gratitude for him keeping his mouth shut would last long. She was beautiful, a bit too intelligent, and there was always that buried element of black widow spider.

Anyway, he had plans of his own.

Jamal al Hamza took the news with his usual equanimity. The target would be dead if Allah had willed it. There was nothing to do but pass on the information to his master. He left the coffee shop in Peshawar through the back entrance and directly into the garage that took up the entire rear of the building. At random he chose a beige Toyota, one of the six different SUVs parked there, and flicked the switch for the electronic doors. As he drove through the familiar chaos of the busy streets he was unaware that his progress had been picked up by one of several satellites programmed to monitor the particular pattern sprayed on the vehicle’s roof by one of hundreds of ground operatives recruited to help monitor the movements of the many doubtful vehicles that moved through the area in and around the border between Pakistan and Afghanistan. The dye used to mark the car was invisible to anyone on the ground and the SUV was one of four that the satellites had tracked between the street behind the cafe and a residential complex in the centre of Kohat, one of the less likely terrorist strongholds in the region. It would take several months before the significance of the movement was identified, and at that point it would become a priority for high-ranking officials of a country several thousands of kilometres away. The results would be spectacular.