The Isis Covenant

XLIV

They took Irina Samsonov between them and gently turned her over. One look was enough to tell them it was too late for the billionaire’s wife. Blood oozed slowly from the wound in her left breast and the shadow across her pale features could only mean one thing. But somewhere deep inside Irina’s indomitable Russian soul fought to keep her alive for another few moments. Her lips moved, but Jamie had to bend low over her to hear the words.

‘My son,’ she whispered. ‘He has taken Dimi.’

‘Who has taken him, Mrs Samsonov?’

‘Paul … Paul Dornberger.’ A tear rolled down her cheek. ‘We trusted him. My husband paid his father’s hospital bills.’ With her last breath she whispered the name of the private hospital.

‘How far?’ Danny demanded.

‘We don’t know for certain he’s gone there.’

‘Paul Dornberger has the Eye, he has the Crown and he has the boy, Jamie. It all adds up now. Where else is he going, unless it’s to be with his father?’

Jamie fought to fit the name of the hospital to an area. When it materialized he realized there was still hope. He started for the stairs. ‘Not far. It’s on the other side of the park. Let’s go.’

‘We can’t just call a cab.’

She followed him downstairs and along the corridor to the guards’ living quarters where he remembered he’d seen a board with car keys on it. His hand hovered over a set with the prancing horse of the house of Ferrari on it, but eventually he picked one from a mass of Mercedes keys. When he’d made his choice he laid the MP-5 on the work surface and replaced it with the pistol from the nearest guard’s shoulder holster, adding an extra magazine just in case. Common sense said the security men must have some sort of direct access to the garage area and they soon found the back stairs beyond another door from the kitchen. When they emerged into the underground garage they were faced with dozens of luxury cars all parked in rows and at least half of them were Mercs.

She glared at him. ‘Which one is it, Sherlock?’

For answer he pressed a button on the main key and a black limousine in the front row beeped and flashed its indicators.

‘That one, I’d say.’

When they were inside the car, he ran his hands over the controls. His knowledge of automatics was thin, but someone had told him they were easier than driving a manual. What could go wrong? He found out when he put the car into ‘Drive’ and his foot instinctively searched for the clutch, which turned out to be the brake. He heard Danny Fisher groan in frustration as they were hurled forward into their seat belts.

‘Maybe I should drive?’

He bit back a comment about what had happened the last time she’d been at the controls of something and drove directly at the garage door.

‘Er, shouldn’t we open it first?’

‘We’re billionaires. We don’t open things. They open for us.’

The door rose automatically and they drove out into the dull light of a November afternoon. The same happened at the main gates, which moved silently inwards as the big Mercedes S-Class approached. They drove onto Regent Park’s outer ring road and Jamie hesitated.

‘What’s the problem now?’

‘Right or left. Either way we’re eventually going to hit heavy traffic at this time of day.’

‘Go left. We’ll worry about it when we hit it.’

He obeyed and gunned the big six-litre Maybach engine. As the car leapt forward he tried to explain. ‘You don’t understand. It could take us thirty or forty minutes and Dornberger has at least a thirty-minute lead on us. Whatever he’s going to do he could have done it by the time we get there.’

‘Well, get us close enough and we’ll get out and run.’

‘Too far,’ he said. ‘We need to find a shortcut.’ They reached a junction where a paved walkway crossed the road and he put the big limousine into a screaming right turn.

‘For Christ’s sake, Jamie, you’ll kill somebody,’ Danny screamed as they roared into the wide open spaces of the park.

‘In this weather it can’t be too busy, and, with any luck, in this car they’ll think it’s Prince Andrew out for a drive.’ He swerved to miss a shocked dogwalker and the driver’s side wheels spun on the grass, but the Mercedes had some kind of stability control and they easily regained the tarmac. Belatedly, he switched on the hazard lights. ‘Better safe than sorry.’

Off to their left was an odd-shaped flying saucer of a building on a low mound surrounded by cricket pitches. Jamie drove on, honking the horn at anyone who happened to be in the way while Danny waved apologetically at startled pedestrians oblivious of the fact that she was invisible behind the smoked-glass armoured windows. It was only a matter of time before some kind of park ranger spotted them, but soon they joined a wider walkway which led off to the right between an avenue of skeletal, leafless trees and within a few seconds Jamie swerved onto a roadway in a narrow gap between two cars.

‘Not bad, Saintclair,’ Danny said appreciatively. ‘Where to now?’

‘All I know is that the hospital is close to the Royal College of Surgeons, which can’t be far from here. See if you can work the satnav.’

She fiddled with a screen on the dashboard. ‘It says here the Royal College of Surgeons is miles away.’

‘Not surgeons. Try physicians.’

‘That’s better. It’s a little way to our right, on Albany Road.’

‘All right, punch in the name of the hospital now. We’ll park at the college and walk the rest of the way.’

The hospital was on a side street in a residential area not far from Munster Square. They passed a greengrocer’s on the way and Jamie bought a basket of fruit tied up with a pink ribbon.

‘What if it’s not visiting time?’

‘It’s a private hospital,’ he pointed out unnecessarily. ‘Very civilized. It’s always visiting time.’

They walked through the front door and up to reception with the bustling air of regular visitors.

‘Max Dornberger’s room, please.’

The nurse behind the counter smiled. ‘If you could wait a second, please, we’re just changing shifts.’ A few seconds later she produced a chart and ran her finger down a list of names. ‘Third floor, room eight. Who did you say you were?’

‘We didn’t. This is Mr Dornberger’s niece from New York, I’m her partner.’

Before the nurse could say anything else, the lift door opened and they stepped briskly inside. Danny took the pistol from her bag and pushed it in among the apples and bananas until only the grip was visible. She pressed the button for the third floor and took a deep breath.

‘An apple a day keeps the doctor away, huh? Well, not for Paul Dornberger.’

Jamie cocked the pistol he had taken from the dead guard and folded his hands behind his back.

‘We take no chances unless he threatens the boy.’

She stared at him. ‘You know he’s going to kill him anyway, don’t you?’

‘I won’t be responsible for that child’s death, Danny.’

The bell announced their arrival. ‘Let’s hope it doesn’t come to that.’

They emerged into a corridor with the odd-numbered rooms on the left and the evens on the right. Room eight was the fourth door on the side overlooking the square. They stood side by side in front of the door. Danny’s hand found the cool of the pistol grip and she held the basket in front of her like a shield. They could hear the soft murmur of voices inside.

Jamie reached for the door handle. ‘There’s no easy way to do this,’ he whispered. ‘If the boy is clear and Dornberger makes a move, shoot him.’ Danny nodded. He noticed that she was holding her breath. ‘Three, two, one …’

As they burst in the door side by side, Jamie began bringing the pistol round. Danny’s finger tightened on her trigger. The occupants of the room were grouped by the bed and they whirled round at the unexpected intrusion, their expressions a mixture of surprise and shock. Danny’s eyes vainly sought the child she knew should be here and she was a millimetre from firing when her brain screamed that the man by the bed was wearing a blue overall and the person lying on it was female.

‘What the hell is going on?’

Jamie slipped his hand behind his back and hoped the male nurse hadn’t seen the gun that had been about to blow his head off. ‘Er …’ His voice sounded as if it came from a long way off. ‘We were looking for Mr Dornberger’s room.’

The man frowned in annoyance. ‘This room has been re-allocated to Mrs Gibson. Max Dornberger was checked out this morning by his son. You should have been informed at the front desk.’

‘I’m sorry,’ Danny apologized breathlessly. ‘We wanted to surprise him.’

‘Surprise? I don’t know about Mrs Gibson, but I almost had a heart attack.’

They withdrew, still apologizing. The woman on the bed raised herself to one elbow. ‘You could always leave the fruit, dear? I’m partial to a bit of pineapple.’

Danny produced a wan smile. ‘I don’t think you’d like this one. It’s almost gone off.’

On the way out, Danny sweet-talked the receptionist into giving them the address where Dornberger’s medicines were to be sent, so that she could visit her English ‘uncle’ at home.

The address she gave them was a small country estate out beyond the M11 in rural Essex. Danny punched the postcode into the car’s satnav and a disjointed voice directed them north-east, through Holloway and Finsbury Park, up to Seven Sisters, where they turned due east.

‘Can’t you go any faster?’

‘Certainly,’ Jamie replied reasonably. ‘I could stick the cruise control at thirty or forty miles an hour over the speed limit, but you can be the one to explain things when some traffic cop finds the guns we have no right to carry and the fact that this motor car is stolen from a Russian billionaire who just happens to have been slaughtered along with seven other people. That should go well.’

They were a few miles beyond Chigwell, crossing neat rolling countryside under a thunderous, threatening sky, when the voice ordered Jamie to turn right onto a country road, then onto a narrow lane. They drove for a further mile before it petered out into a mud track at a point where a surprisingly modern gate barred the way to a remote house. The estate was surrounded by a brick wall high enough to inform passers-by that they weren’t welcome, but not to deter anyone determined to get across it. Jamie didn’t see any high-tech security, but the apparent lapse was offset by the ‘Beware of the Dogs’ sign on the gate.

‘You think it’s real?’

‘If this is the guy we think it is, I’m pretty sure you could bet on it.’

‘In that case, you wouldn’t happen to have any drugged meat on you?’

She gave him a thin smile and checked the magazine of the silenced pistol.

‘We could call the police.’ It was something they’d discussed earlier. Danny had called in the Samsonov killings, but she had been curiously reluctant to let them know about the location of the country house.

She shook her head. ‘First, we don’t know for certain he’s in there.’ She looked at the brooding clouds racing across the sky. ‘Dark soon. If you’re right about the significance of the new moon, I doubt we have time. We go in, get the boy and get out again.’

‘It might not be as easy as that.’

She shrugged. ‘You gotta start somewhere, Jamie. If we wait for your cops the chances are that Dmitri will be dead by the time they get here. I say we go, and we go now.’

There was no point arguing. By the time they were out of the car, the rain was slanting down and a distant flash of lightning lit the western skyline. Jamie pulled the thin jacket he was wearing closer around him, but Danny clicked the boot of the Mercedes and found a top-quality padded waterproof. Without a word, she threw it at him and he grinned acknowledgement.

‘Okay, but I’ll go in first. I’ve done this kind of stuff before. OTC and the Brecons, and all that. We don’t know what’s on the other side of this wall, so when we go over, we stay together and we protect each other’s backs. We follow the line of the drive towards the main house. Once we get there we’ll have a better idea of where we go next. All right so far?’

For answer she cocked the pistol and jogged towards the wall. Thick foliage barred the way and by the time they reached it they were soaked. Jamie ran his hands along the top of the wall, checking for glass or razor wire, but there was none. He hauled himself up by the arms and straightened out, belly down along the top, keeping the lowest possible profile, before allowing himself to drop on the other side. Danny followed his example and they hunkered down in the shadow of the wall to get their bearings. The driveway to the house was off to their right, to their left was an open patch that seemed to be some kind of neglected garden. In front of them, covering the direct route to the house, was an orchard of ancient gnarled apple trees whose roots were hidden beneath the rough knee-high grass that carpeted the entire area.

Jamie led the way, leopard-crawling through the wet foliage. He’d felt a thrill of fear when he’d seen the warning sign. No one would willingly go up against the kind of dog Paul Dornberger was likely to keep about the premises. But now he was here it gave him a certain amount of reassurance. If Dornberger was relying on dogs it meant he wasn’t relying on anything else, like the kind of motion-sensor equipment Bernie Hartmann had thought would protect him. It also made it unlikely that the long grass hid the kind of iron-jawed man trap that his imagination told him was sitting beneath every blade. He stopped and sniffed the air. Nothing; but that was what he would have expected. The weather was another bonus because not only would it hamper the dogs’ sense of smell it would affect their hearing. With just a little luck they would make the house undetected. A peel of thunder was followed a few seconds later by a flash of lightning that turned the trees into an army of enormous, skeletal witches with twisted, grasping arms and long curling fingers, and he felt a shiver that was connected with some childhood memory. Babes in the Wood? Fantasia? He knew he would make quicker progress on his feet, with probably just as little, or as much, chance of being seen, but somewhere close by was Paul Dornberger and he was armed and dangerous and he could shoot the fleas off an itching hound. Why the hell did he think that? He tried to force the stupid thought back where it came from, but it was as if letting it loose had drawn them to him. Through the rain two enormous, hulking, four-legged figures padded into view a few yards ahead of him. He froze, but they lumbered to a stop and their red eyes fixed on him. It couldn’t have been worse. Rottweilers. Devil dogs. Black-and-tan giants with broad shoulders and thick necks and jaws that were designed to crush a wolf’s skull with a single bite. A low growl confirmed that he’d been detected, but they must have been trained not to bark because the following rush was swift and silent. The first was almost on him when something zipped past his ear like a turbo-charged wasp and the lead attacker’s head snapped back and it somersaulted backwards as if it had run into a steel wire. But there was no stopping the second and before he could bring up his pistol its teeth clamped on his arm and threatened to rip it from his shoulder, shaking its head and using its powerful neck muscles. The only thing that saved him was the padded jacket Danny had given him; even then he felt the tips of those savage fangs raking the flesh of his arm. It was like wrestling with a crocodile and the way things were going there would only be one winner. He smashed his free fist into the beast’s muzzle in a vain bid to force it off, but it seemed to grow stronger. His vision was beginning to blur when, in a moment of slow motion, he saw its eyes widen and its skull expand until the back of its head exploded in a spray of scarlet and white. With a convulsive shudder the Rottweiler went still, its enormous weight pinning him to the ground. A dark figure appeared from behind and heaved it clear.

‘Can’t lie about here all day, Jamie Saintclair, there’s work to be done.’

Jamie rose to his feet on shaking legs. He checked the pistol to make sure the magazine hadn’t been dislodged and the familiar actions slowed his heart rate to a point where the organ wasn’t going to explode. It was almost dark now and despite the storm to the east he could see a silver glow in the sky he knew was the first rays of the moon. Time was running out for Dmitri Samsonov.

Danny slipped easily through the trees and he ran to catch her up just as another flash of lightning illuminated the house properly for the first time. It was big, ugly and ramshackle, probably Victorian or earlier, with missing slates and peeling woodwork; neglected like the rest of the estate. The path through the trees brought them towards it at an angle, but half a dozen darkened windows covered their approach and any one of them could have Dornberger behind it watching their every move. Danny knelt at the base of the last crooked apple tree before the open ground of the driveway and Jamie crouched beside her. Together they studied the lower floor, looking for the best way to get inside.

Eventually, he put his mouth to Danny’s ear. ‘Stay here. I have an idea.’ He slipped away into the darkness and reappeared after a minute or so with a rusting piece of metal. It was about two feet long, a narrow bar with hooks protruding at intervals; something that might have been made to string barbed wire, but had probably been used to support peas in the garden.

He led her to a small ground-floor window that looked as if it might provide light for a cloakroom. Fortunately, whoever owned the house had resisted the urge to improve its rustic charms by installing double glazing. The windows were old-fashioned sash and case affairs with cracked woodwork and layers of peeling paint. He put the end of the iron plate into the narrow space between the window and the sill. He had to use all his weight to prise the window upwards and it gave a crack like a small-calibre rifle as the thick seal of generations of paint surrendered to the assault.

Fisher winced at the sound, but she pushed him aside and silently squirmed through the gap he’d created. He followed her and for a few moments they stood in the pitch darkness listening to the sound of their own breathing until a flash illuminated their surroundings. It was fortunate they hadn’t moved far from the window, because the small room was strewn with a domestic minefield of discarded household equipment. An old wooden ironing board blocked the way to the door, surrounded by boxes, a standard lamp and a collection of paint tins. Warily, they picked their way through the debris. Fisher groped for the door handle and eased it open. Beyond the door the house was in darkness, but in the gloom it was just possible to make out a wood-panelled hallway and stairs. They eased their way through into the hall, Fisher leading the way with her pistol held two-handed in front of her. Jamie gave an involuntary shiver. A permanent chill hung in the air as if the occupants preferred to live their lives without the benefit of warmth. Danny signalled that she was going to check a room off to her left and waved him on. He moved slowly, planting one foot at a time and feeling his way forward over the bare floorboards. The hall took a dogleg and as he turned the corner a giant figure loomed out of the darkness in front of him. The gun came up automatically and his finger tightened on the trigger. He was within a whisker of firing when the hooded attacker of his imagination transformed into an enormous stuffed bear with yellowing fangs and tiny obsidian eyes. Shaking, he lowered the pistol and stood for a moment, the surge of adrenalin draining away and leaving his body limp. All it needed was a few marching suits of fucking armour and they’d be starring in a nightmare version of Bedknobs and Broomsticks. Just for a second he felt the urge to scream out loud.

Someone else beat him to it.

He was moving before he even understood what he was hearing. At first he thought it must be Danny, caught in some awful demonic trap, but the scream was high-pitched and filled with visions of terror. A child’s scream. Dmitri. A hand clamped on his shoulder and he turned to look into a pair of wild, staring eyes. Danny’s face was twisted into a grimace of desperation.

‘Stay still,’ she hissed. ‘We have to know where it came from!’

He shook his head, uncertain at first. Then some radar in his head clicked into operation and he knew. He pointed at the floor. The sound was from somewhere below. He signalled to her to check one side of the hall for the entrance to the basement, while he took the other. It didn’t take long. One of the panels set into the side of the stair proved to be a door that led to a dank stairway. The stairs spiralled downwards and with Jamie in the lead they moved into the narrow passage.

At the bottom, they came to another door, identified by a thin frame of bright artificial light. Jamie’s hand reached for the handle and Danny whispered in his ear: ‘I’ll be right behind you, Sherlock. Give ’em hell.’

He threw the door open and they froze. Was this some kind of hallucination?

In the cellar of his dilapidated English country house, Max Dornberger had created a replica of an Egyptian temple. Statues of jackal-headed Anubis and Horus, the hawk god, flanked the doorway. The floor was of paved sandstone and on the far side four steps led up to a carved throne set between two pillars. Each of the four walls was covered by marvellous multi-coloured friezes depicting more god-like figures conducting their hunts and holding court. The temple was empty.

In the silence, they could hear a muffled droning sound, as if someone was reciting a mantra.

‘There must be another room.’ Danny’s urgent whisper brought Jamie out his reverie.

They searched the walls for a second door, but there was none.

‘Look again. It has to be here,’ he said. ‘Dornberger is close.’

A tablet with two figures etched upon it caught his eye. The woman with the horned crown and the sun disc kneeling before a Pharaoh dressed all in white with green features.

‘Isis and Osiris,’ Danny whispered.

The woman’s eye was the stylized symbol that had brought them here: a dark pupil on a white background, with the distinctive red tear in its corner. Without thinking, Jamie reached up and pushed the centre. Immediately the entire panel swung inwards.