The Treasures of Saint Germain

CHAPTER THIRTY NINE

Splendorous hallways that merged the old with the new, the ancient with the cutting edge, led a multitude of ways inside the British Museum. Drake watched Hayden as she followed the curator, her attention focused on some volatile middle-distance, her body language as tense as ever he’d seen it. Like Alicia, Hayden could be a fiery package. He wouldn’t like to be the man on the wrong side of her.

Kinimaka plodded along beside him, concentrating as ever on walking straight and not knocking down ancient statues and filigreed pedestals on his way past.

“I can’t reach her anymore,” he told Drake.

“She still loves you, mate. Give her time.”

“She may still love me, but she’s already gone. She doesn’t waste her time once her mind’s made up.”

Drake tended to agree, but kept his own counsel. “Remember the good times, mate. If you’re sure that you could have done no more then…” He paused. Who the hell was he to be giving out relationship advice?

Kinimaka planted a huge arm across his shoulders and then leaned in. “Thank you, brah. But I’ll tell you this. You got a big reckoning coming. You. Alicia. Mai.” He pursed his lips and blew out a heavy breath. “Judgment Day.”

Drake felt the weight increase across his shoulders. “Thanks for that.”

The vaults were vast, dusty and incredibly disorganized. Hayden quizzed him about Saint Germain but it took time to boot up a computer and search the digital archives. Only after that was done could the man point them to the right area. “Two compositions,” he said. “Donated around the mid-1750s. Are they of significance? I do hope I haven’t missed anything.”

The team calmed him, then sent him back to relative safety. Drake was already prowling the dusty passageways, keeping to the darkest of byways and listening hard. Ancient tomes and curled scrolls lay on unending wooden shelving, the only movement they ever knew just the motes that sifted all around them. Bare bulbs flickered overhead, though most were dead. Drake found it in contrast to the sparkling halls above; down here it seemed the forgotten relics resided in age-old dreams. But then, like people, not all of them could be put on display all of the time.

“Creepy,” Alicia muttered at his side. “You don’t really know what they have down here.”

“Prehistoric hounds,” Drake said. “Chained zombies. Voodoo priestesses. Or so I heard.”

Alicia gave him the elbow. “Don’t be a co—”

Mai clicked her tongue. “Shut up, Taz. I can’t hear anything over your pathetic whining.”

“How about my knuckles? You think you’ll hear those?”

It was escalating.

Drake ignored it.

A row of chest-high crates continued the row to the right, their lids in disarray, some nailed fully shut whilst others were broken into jagged pieces. Drake saw pottery, small statues and a broken mirror. Red lights blinked everywhere, catching his eyes, sensors to catch would-be thieves, and the security up top had been first class. This was one of the main reasons Tyler Webb had recruited Sabrina Balboni.

He turned the next corner and Tyler Webb was crouched on the floor, his back to them, rooting around inside a low cardboard box. Drake blinked in disbelief, came to an abrupt halt, and just stared.

Alicia froze as if she’d just been turned to ice. The rest of the team crowded around the corner and paused; shocked, but all hardening very quickly.

Webb scrabbled about inside the box, jeans and coat thick with dust, surrounded by a dozen ripped apart cartons and a shelf that had clearly broken. Sabrina, crouched before Webb and watching, met eyes with Drake but said nothing.

Webb cackled away to himself. “It’s in the song. The song is all. Where to next, my equal? Where to next? You traveled far and wide. You traveled near. Europe was your playground. Kings and queens your friends. But where are you now? Where will we end?”

Each sentence was punctuated with a ripping of paper or a scroll being flung to the side. Drake wanted to listen longer, conscious of the clues that may be dropped, but Hayden only saw the man who’d once stalked her every move from dusk till dawn, and made sure she was the first to speak.

“Stand up carefully, Webb. This is as far as you go.”

He stiffened, then clapped his hands together to free them of dust, sending plumes into the air. He rose slowly, and Drake saw he held two fragile looking sheets of paper. “Found you,” he said softly.

Then he turned.

“Hayden Jaye.” He smiled in a lewd way. “Been a while. You look slimmer in person than you do on CCTV. And Mano Kinimaka. Is that beef or is it fat? Wait, I’m sure I have some pics. Oh, and the inimitable Matt Drake. Your memory involves Mai Kitano. Let me know if, sometime, you want to relive it. Oh, and the rest of you…” He waved and flapped and backed away. “Email me. I’m sure I have all you want.”

Drake restrained Hayden as she stepped forward in anger. Webb was entirely too confident and nothing they did was ever so easy. He saw Webb pass over Beau with disdain. It couldn’t be easy seeing your old bodyguard who’d always been a double agent. With purpose, he gave Webb one more chance to spout his malice.

“Come to think of it, Hay,” he spat out Kinimaka’s nickname for his lover. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen you stood upright before.” He cackled. “And Alicia? Does Drake satisfy you the way Beau used to? Hmm, ’cause I have the audio and I know. Mai Kitano? I’d love to relate sometime. Oh wait, I’ll call you. Have to watch from afar first. And dudes, bitches, guys — I will watch all of you. I will have the resources and endless, endless hours of time.”

“You think you know everything because you’re an utter creep, a sliver of scum with resources. But you don’t know us. You know nothing,” Hayden spat at him.

“You think?” Webb’s face opened and a light in his eyes spoke of pure honesty and viciousness mixed. “I know one of you is a lesbian. One of you is embarrassed all the time. And one of you is dying. I know that. I know one of you killed their parents in cold blood. One of you who is missing is far from what you believe. One of you will die by my hand in three days’ time just to wring those tragic emotions from those who remain. One of you cries themselves to sleep…”

“You do seem utterly confident you’re about to escape,” Dahl said blandly.

“It’s the only reason you’re all still alive.”

Drake felt a cloud of suspicion and disbelief start to settle in.

“I don’t understand,” Dahl admitted.

“My big plan. My master plan. Did you actually think it began when I started this last final search for Saint Germain or do you think it began before I formed the Pythians? Truly?”

Drake searched the shadows, watched Sabrina, racked his brain for clues.

“You’re gonna be shocked.” Webb laughed.

Alicia aimed her gun between the man’s eyes. “I’m ready. Shock me.”

“You’re all still alive so I can stalk you forever. Understand? My plan started twenty years ago. Yes, it’s had adjustments, most recently to accommodate every last one of you, but the structure still stands. The bones of it—” he chuckled “—and the meat.”

“He’s a fuckin’ loon,” Smyth grunted. “Somebody just shut him the hell up.”

“Happy to.” Alicia squeezed her trigger.

But Webb held up a hand. Sabrina backed away, still playing her part for as long as she was able.

“Really,” Webb said. “I have enjoyed letting you follow me.”

“Nobody followed anyone,” Dahl said. “We found you out and you got lucky. If not luck then it was absolute recklessness and your disrespect for human life. In chaos, you thrive.”

“Ooh, good one. I’ll write that down, commission a T-shirt. But really — everything you have done has been at my whim.”

“But how?”

“Because that is as it should be. I am better, of godly stock. I am a master of the human race. And you shall all bow down before me.”

“Really?” Alicia grunted sarcastically. “And how will you make us do that?”

Drake couldn’t believe the audacity, the utter belief of this man. Truly, completely, he knew that he was born to be superior. Webb glanced back at Sabrina and said, “Get ready.”

And then whipped his head around.

“Don’t kill them, Beau,” he said. “But hurt them just enough.”

He started to run.