The Camelot Code (2 page)
Authors: Sam Christer
Tags: #Fiction, #Action & Adventure, #Thrillers, #Suspense
THIS BOOK IS DEDICATED TO SOME VERY SPECIAL FRIENDS. THANK YOU ONE AND ALL:
Andy Freeman, Maria Mares, Mike Monaghan, Vladimir Cucuz, Nattalia Azuul, Anna Ka, Hemanth Kumar, Astrid Burton, Michael Betts, Pablo Monti, Arn Ðed de Gothia, Maria Del Carmen Triadani, Arantzazu Herrera Peñate, Ana Rackovi, Sharmistha Ghosh, April Stone, Jeanette Holland, Emicar Balmaceda, Silvia Milzoni, Tony Emery, Patricia Connolly, Siladitya Basak, Roxana Popa, Christina Pougoura, Shane Nelson, Serdar Aditepe, Henri Rantalankila, Nikki Petty, Andrew Evans, Barbora Vöröšová, Sónia Alves, Diana Vass, Aida Ali, Richard Dave Gomersall, Caroline Peruzzi, Šárka M
ĕř
ínská, Ivancescu Razvan, Tatjana Antic Jasic, Läle Oo, Eric Nelson, Emily Henshall, Negrea R. Cristian, Corrina Fawcett, Sneha Ravikumar, Cristina Ionela Bulea, Tom McMurdo, Tanaya Patankar Lampard, Elina Emilova Chausheva, John Dalton, Lara Larisimo, Ricardo del Valle, Nikolas Sofikitis, Marcel Kortekaas, Laura-Maria Borti, Cheryl Dalton, Rachel Taylor, Jose Luis Zenteno Cesar, Betka Nosková, Daniel Komor, David Vilhena Marquez, Susan Percival, Aja Tafilaj, Dawn Wylds, Sravan Kumar, Coenraad De Kat, Julie Dring, Alina Coman, Denise Smith, Michelle Marchant, Ann Christin Siljan, Yve Fanor, Ana Velicaru, Pat Taylor, Natasha Kemmer, Anita Abramczuk, Kostas Iordanou, Corinne Mudd, David Price, Monika Nabrdalik, Paula Marland, Jorn Urup Nielsen, Ralph Siebenaler, Ray Stacey, Dawn Denson, Ilona Griffiths, Florence Ruffin, Debbie Ward Yexley, Sharon Wilson, Richie Shemilt, Marcel Kupka, Debbie Hyde Hart, Henriette Irving, Carole Wright,Terry Parrish, Jan Saunders, Sarah Nicholls, Adrian Titley, Leonie Dargent, Audrey Atkinson, Martin Elliott, Stuart Turner, Jamie Mileham, Niamh Dunlea, Danni Carr, Calum Murray, Rachel Hadingham, Pat Gough, Czar Ngaosi, Allwyn Jose, Lindsay Jane Chant, Sara Jackson, Nuno Silva, Casey Yandek, Paul Nuttall Royrogersmcfreely, Shane Barrett, Kay Podboj, Pam Scholl, Clare Davies, Belfast Dave, Jenny Wood, Sladjana Vasic, Prowting Leila, Dilyana Dimitrova, Jackie Nash, Matthew O’Connor, Val Tunnicliffe, Dave Watson, Anna Ó Máille, Helen Branson, Paula Dixon, Valérie Navon, Fiona Gebbie, Carolina Camacho, Donna Rail, Evgeny Chirskov, Helen Turvey, Micka Sinette, Meyer Thorsen, Niels Søndergaard, Jovana Joe Tepavcevic, Amir Isakovi, Medina Kleine Maus, Sabrina Ikpodo Abnukta, Anne Sofie Sandholdt Jørgensen, Emma Kathryn Reitbauer, Rui Costa, Maria João Barros, Valérie Lascoux, Bas Peelen, Michael D. Gonzalez, Hilary Bancroft-Thain, Richard Shipman, Angela DeMarte Frear, Mark Womble, Nikola Nakov, Renzo S. P. Tomassi, Gareth Jones, Tantor Jane, Marija Kvajo,
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Paul Stafford, Margret Jonker, Jason Cr, Peter Van Den Bussche, Jude Thompson, Sherry Potter, Chris Parry, Keli Grejs, Pedro M. Baptista Costa, Alexandra Svjetska, Huiloo Ho, Denny Stribling, Sarah Diedrich, Carmen Forján, Julie March, Neville Dawkins, Aleksandar Ilic, Paul Bendon, Graham Smith, Dawn Bushell, David Taws, Danish Hasan, Gerrie King, Richard Daniels, Adam Stockwell, Lainey Everett, Theresa Bruton, Lukasz Semla, Sarah Bennett, Tim Busbey Sévana Topalian, Michele Cockram, Darryl Bastian.
Behind ancient, castellated walls, high in the solar chamber in the eastern tower, the screams of the innocent pierce an old man’s dreams.
Myrddin draws his near-skeletal frame from the rough wooden cot lodged under a narrow slit of a window. Without looking at any timepiece, he knows it is midnight. That the fragile earth spinning beneath the waxing moon is once more being shaken by a storm of evil.
The pull on him is strong.
He wraps his tall, frail form in a thick blue robe and descends a spiral of timeworn steps. At the foot, he catches his breath and braces himself for what is to come.
Again a powerful force moves him.
He shuffles across the dark hall and opens the huge, arched doors at the end.
Blood from the stab wound in his stomach oozes through Amir Goldman’s fingers and spatters the dark floorboards of the antiques store he’s owned for thirty years.
The widower sinks to his knees. He’s dying and he knows it. His deep sadness is not the loss of a few more years. It’s that he’s been robbed of redemption. Denied the chance that his mundane, miserable, scrape-a-living life might amount to something.
Greatness had been within his grasp.
If he hadn’t been greedy, this would never have happened. Instead he’d have closed a deal that the antiques world would have spoken about for centuries. His name would have ranked alongside Gildas and Malory, Geoffrey of Monmouth and Chrétien de Troyes. The big secret would have been out.
And Amir Emmanuel Goldman would have outed it.
Which, he guesses, is why he’s dying.
The Chamber of Prophecies is cold and perfectly circular, lit by a crescent of virgin candles made from the fat of animal sacrifices.
The flames flicker as Myrddin enters. His gaze rises to the vaulted ceiling then falls to the twelve unique stained-glass windows beneath it. Each depicts a man whose existence is as mythical as his own.
He makes his way to a giant font, fashioned from Irish rocks more than five thousand years old.
In the water he sees his straggle of white beard and hair, arrow-slit eyes and creased leather skin stare back at him.
The surface trembles and corrugates. Tiny ripples become waves. The Font of Knowledge rumbles and shakes. Myrddin grips the wide bowl to stop it breaking.
This is what
it
wanted.
Him.
Raw energy flows into his hands and arms. Seeps into his skin, his blood and organs. Builds in power until he feels like his skin will split and burst.
Myrddin’s mind fills with unbearably bright light.
The vision is starting.
Now he must endure it. Suffer it, in all its painful clarity.
The knifeman kneels beside the bloody floorboards and touches Amir Goldman’s face comfortingly. ‘Don’t fight it. It’ll be over in a minute.’
The old storekeeper feels weak and dizzy. Through blurred eyes, he watches the man watching him.
The killer-in-waiting backs away from the river of red at his feet. He lifts an arm to check the passing time then resumes his patient posture.
Amir’s agony is everywhere now. He slurps for the last dregs of oxygen. His knees curl up. He is foetal and bloody. A fatal parody of how he entered the world over seven decades ago. A grandfather clock beats a soothing tick. His tired eyes close and he counts the silence between the clicks.
‘Amir?’
The hurt is fading now, stroked away by the brush of the pendulum, as soothing as his dead wife’s hand, a touch he’s not felt for twenty years.
‘You still alive, old man?’
He hears a chime and lets go of his last breath. Frees it like a tiny bird from a cage.
‘Amir?’
His eyes shut. The pendulum swings. His wife’s hand strokes his face. Her skin against his. He’s waited so long for her kiss and the warmth of her love.
Across the blood-stained boards, the door opens. A brass bell pings. Amir Goldman’s killer slips into the night.
Death is coming.
Myrddin sees the old enemy on a far-off shore.
He rides a silent brown beast, one that moves with noiseless hooves and many giant mouths to swallow men whole. There’s a flash of blue in Death’s deceitful hand. The burnished steel of a blade peels pink flesh and raises a torrent of red.
Myrddin’s heart prickles with pain. He clutches his chest and sinks to the icy floor, struggling for breath.
He must warn the others.
Thousands of miles away, a man has been murdered.
The Keeper of Time killed in the Cave of Past and Present.
The gates of evil are open. A fresh cycle of bloodletting has begun.
The true mystery of the world is the visible, not the invisible.
Oscar Wilde
A murky fog rises from beneath the Bay Bridge and crawls towards the giant federal buildings crowded near the choppy waters.
Mitzi Fallon stares out from the glass belly of the FBI skyscraper. ‘
Some
weather,’ she says to no one at her side. ‘I move from LA, for what? To start my morning in the mist, like a freakin’ gorilla? Sheesh.’
Heads turn as the muttering brunette, dressed in grey slacks and a new white top, hauls a box of personal belongings down a thousand miles of corridors.
She shoulders open a door marked:
HISTORIC
,
RELIGIOUS
AND
UNEXPLAINED
CRIMES
UNIT
and surveys a small but empty open-plan room with four desks. Tucked in the corner is a tiny office created by a floor-to-ceiling glass partition and a barely visible swing-in door.
Mitzi dumps her stuff on an empty desk and reflects on why she’s uprooted herself and two children to join a unit dubbed ‘The Unsolvables’. Some of it’s down to the pay rise and relocation cheque – money’s tight when you’re raising two teenage girls on your own. Part of it is the opportunity to widen her horizons and work with the FBI in a new multi-agency task force. If the truth were known, most of it is about starting afresh. Quitting town. Getting away from Alfie.
Her Alfie.
Alfie Fallon.
One-time love of her life, turned drunk, turned wife-beater.
The lieutenant unpacks. First out of the bubble wrap is a ‘World’s Best Mom’ mug, then a pile of framed photographs of her twins, Amber and Jade. A favourite of her and the girls at Disney gets a kiss before it’s put in place.
The thirty-nine-year-old crosses to a spotless desk that has only one item on it – a thin, stainless steel nameplate proclaiming its missing occupant to be
JONATHAN
BRONTY
. She’s been told the squad’s only man was once a priest in a tough downtown district in LA. ‘Well, Father, if your soul is half as clean as your desk I’m sure you’re going straight to heaven when the big day comes.’
She puts the nameplate down and drifts to the next workstation. It’s heaped with files and documents. Teetering near the edge is a row of old reference books and the proclamation:
VICTORIA
CANTRELL
,
UNIT
RESEARCHER
.
Adjacent is a third desk, that of
LT
ELEONORA
FRACCI
.
Mitzi inspects a tube of expensive foreign hand cream, a gorgeous brown Achille Pinto silk scarf and two small blue Murano glass fish used as paperweights. She picks up a silver-framed photograph showing a strikingly beautiful woman in a smart Carabinieri police uniform, flanked by her small but proud mother and father.
The office door opens.
Stood there is her new boss, unit head Sandra Donovan.
‘Quite a looker.’ Mitzi returns the photo to Fracci’s desk. She nods to her cardboard box. ‘I think I’ll sit over there, just so no one thinks me and the lovely Eleonora are part of a before-and-after commercial.’
Donovan doesn’t laugh. The forty-four-year-old’s sense of humour is as short as her masculine haircut. She extends a hand and grips hard. ‘Good to have you on board, though we didn’t expect you until tomorrow.’
‘Hey, if that’s a problem, I can gladly go home.’
‘No. If you’re on the payroll, you’re on the clock. Personnel are useless. Come to my office; we can talk there.’
‘Where’s everyone else?’
‘They’re out on a case. Will be all day. It’s something the cops downtown have been struggling with.’
Mitzi follows her into the small area behind the soundproof glass. ‘Anything interesting?’
‘Maybe.’ She slides into a chair behind her desk and gestures to Mitzi to sit. ‘Week ago cops found a woman’s body buried in her own back garden. Homicide has been grilling the husband ever since.’
‘Sounds like a domestic.’
‘They thought the same. But this is a weird one. Forensics found multiple semen samples on the corpse and none are the husband’s.’
Mitzi frowns. ‘But why call in this unit? What’s historic, religious or unexplainable about a rape-homicide?’
Donovan manages a smile for the first time. ‘The vic was a witch. A full-blown black magic priestess.’