The Camelot Code (26 page)

It takes Mitzi two thick slices of chef’s cheesecake to forgive Dumbo and stop freaking out about having her room tossed while she was at the embassy. Even after using a hand scanner to check for electronic bugs and deciding it’s clean she’s still nervous.

The bottle of thirty-year-old single malt whisky the manager sent up is now being shipped to Kirstin Collins to crack open at Irish’s wake. She’ll make sure she calls on the day and checks on the kid.

Mitzi licks the last of the cake from the fork and finishes reading Vicky’s report on the Gwyns. The girl done good. All the stuff about King Arthur is weird but maybe Gwyn is some kind of enthusiast or collector. Collectors are always crazy. And rich crazies will often kill if things don’t go their way.

She calls Donovan and updates her on the events of the last twelve hours then asks to be bounced to Vicky, who picks up after the second ring. ‘HRU, how can I help you?’

‘Hiya hon, it’s Mitzi.’

‘Hi, Lieutenant. How are you?’

‘Feeling about as raw as newly cut beef. Hey, I just called to say you did a great job on those profiles.’

‘Thanks. I found it all fascinating. It’s like Sir Owain and Lady Gwyn are a modern-day Arthur and Guinevere.’

Mitzi laughs. ‘Don’t get carried away. I think all English lords and ladies live privileged lives like that and I ain’t so sure he’s a knight in shining armour.’

‘Of course. I didn’t mean morally, it’s just with all the historic connections.’

‘Yeah, that’s a bit strange, don’t you think? And what about the guy he took legal action against?’

‘Mallory – I put his numbers on the briefing I sent you and I spoke to him. He says he knows things that would make your hair curl.’

‘That’s not a look you want to see. What’s he know?’

‘He wouldn’t say. Not in person. I think it’s because of the injunctions.’

‘I’m heading out to Wales tonight, so I’ll look him up. Can you get Travel to find me somewhere near Gwyn’s estate?’

‘Sure.’

‘And send me a proper address for Caergwyn Castle. I just searched for it on Google and couldn’t find the place.’

‘Will do. I looked on our standard satellite maps and it doesn’t show up there either.’

‘How can that be?’

‘I checked with intel and they say it’s probably because there’s a no-fly zone there.’

‘Military restrictions?’

‘Seems that way. The SAS use the countryside for manoeuvres. This castle appears to be in the middle of their training grounds.’

Mitzi thinks out loud. ‘A knight conveniently surrounded by an army.’

‘Kings, castles and legends,’ says Vicky, almost too excitedly. ‘I wish I was there to see it all.’

‘I’d gladly swap places. Mail me the details soon as you can. I’m gonna check out and hire a car.’

‘Back to you ASAP, Lieutenant.’

Mitzi hangs up and looks long and hard at the memory stick containing the Arthurian data.

It brings back all the nervousness about having her room snooped. This is what Warman and Jackson, or whoever they are, tossed her room for. What cost Sophie Hudson her life. And what’s certain to cause more bloodshed. She knows she has to do something with it. Something more secure than just put it back in her purse

Gareth Madoc sits behind a glass desk in a secure penthouse office on Sixth Avenue.

He’s listening to Jessica Lanza on a comms feed. ‘About an hour ago, Khalid Korshidi ditched his car, caught a train out to East Flatbush and entered what looks like a safe house.’ She can’t help but sound optimistic. ‘Now get this: he’s just been joined by Nabil Tabrizi.’

‘Have we got a listen in?’

‘Not yet. The building is in a position we can’t hit with a parabolic.’ She looks out of the windshield of the Buick and down the street to where Sullivan is crossing over. ‘Sully has gone to play the jacked-up druggie looking for a quiet place to shoot up. He’ll drop a syringe down the steps to the basement entrance. With any luck he’ll get a recorder on the glass, then we have to pray the technology works.’

‘It usually does.’

‘Yeah, well, I’ll stop sweating when “usually” becomes “always”. I gotta go. Back to you soon.’

‘Stay safe.’

‘You too.’

There’s a click and she’s gone.

Madoc turns his thoughts to Zachra. The fact she tagged her father means she’s onside. Now is the make or break moment. She has to get listening devices into that back room where her father hangs out. If she does, he’s ready to write that ticket she wants for a new life.

He dips into his jacket pocket, takes out an untraceable cell phone and sends a text message:
Goin shopz tomoz, wannacum? Shrn
.

It’s code to have Zachra call him straight away. If her parents saw it, she’d be able to explain it as being from her friend Sharron.

Across the room is a video wall with feeds to more than fifty domestic and international outposts. Behind him is an electronic wallboard, upon which is mapped key operations and the deployment of manpower and resources.

The burner beeps and he grabs it.

The return message says:
Calluin5
.

He takes the phone and walks to the window while he waits. The seconds weigh heavy. People forty floors below move like ants on the sidewalks.

His burner rings.

‘Yes?’

‘I’ve only got a minute.’ Zachra sounds nervous.

Gareth gets to the point. ‘Those mini-cams I gave you. You
have
to put them in place. Right this minute, while your father is out. Do you understand?’

‘When can you get me out of here?’ She sounds desperate.

‘As soon as we record your father saying something we can act on.’

She pauses for a minute. Her mother is in there cleaning the house, no doubt looking for her. ‘I have to go.’

‘You
must
do this, Zachra. For your own sake, you have to do it and you need to do it right now.’

Chris Wilkins is out on a long, meandering daytrip on his own, in a Toyota sedan he rented first thing this morning. The RV would have been no good for what he has in mind. He takes the 101 to Interstate-80, cruises San Bruno, Brisbane and Bayview before hitting South Beach, Oakland Bridge, Emeryville and Walnut Creek.

Around midday he grabs a third-rate hamburger and a cold beer in a place buzzing with flies and bar bums. After freshening up, he rolls on and off the 680, through Danville and San Ramon before cutting into Castro Valley and then over the Bay via the San Mateo Bridge.

By the time he hits the freeway back to Coyote Point, he’s close to exhausted. But it’s been worth it. He’s found the surprise he’s been looking for.

He cracks a wide smile when he pulls up outside the RV and finds Tess stretched out on a striped fabric fold-up chair with a book across her suntanned legs.

She tips her shades as he approaches. ‘Tough day at the office, baby?’

‘Somethin’ like that. My back is killing me. Seats in that rental are so bad they’d give a ghost spinal problems.’

‘Come inside, I got something that will take the pain away.’

She takes his hand and leads him up into the RV. She clunks the door behind them, wraps her hands around the back of his grizzly-bear neck and kisses some life into him.

He lets his fingers wander and she gently eases him away. ‘
That’s
not what I invited you in here for.’

‘It’s not?’

‘No.’ She points to the open laptop on the galley table. ‘Feast your eyes over there.’

Chris taps the spacebar to clear the screensaver and studies the Facebook page and its new postings. His eyes light up. ‘You’re the best, sweetcheeks. Simply the best.’

A glance at the digital clock on the dash of Mitzi’s blue Ford rental tells her she’s been on the road for three hours and still has a quarter of her hundred and seventy-five miles to go.

Vicky had added a helpful footnote to her briefing, mentioning that Wales has more castles than any other country in the world but so far, Mitzi hasn’t seen any, let alone the one she wants to find.

‘Goddamned British drivers!’ She rides her horn at a giant yellow tractor crawling behind a road full of sheep.

A ruddy-faced old farmer in a green Barbour gilet and flat cap turns on his high seat and glowers back.

It’s another fifty minutes before she gets past and the sat-nav chirpily announces,
‘Turn left and you have reached your destination.’

‘About freakin’ time.’

She takes the unmarked turning and finds herself driving a rutted dead-end of a dirt track.

‘In fifty metres you will have reached your destination.’
 

‘Where?’ Mitzi peers in anger through the windshield. ‘You crazy piece of crap, where’s my castle?’

A black and white chequered flag pops up on the sat-nav screen and waves jubilantly as the Ford bumps in and out of potholes and stops at a hedge and fence.

‘You have reached your destination.’
 

Mitzi pulls the handbrake on. ‘Jee-zus! You stupid, stupid machine!’

‘You have reached your destination,’
repeats the voice defiantly, then offers a new screen and the chance to gamble on a fresh destination.

She gets out of the car so that she doesn’t pull the damned thing off and beat it against the dashboard.

Skylarks flap from surrounding birch trees and the air is fresh with scents of long grass and wild flowers. It’s nice to be out of the car. Far across the fields, there’s a dense forest around a hill. She’s willing to bet a first-class flight home that Caergwyn Castle is hidden in the thick of it.

Mitzi returns to the car and checks the address and details that Vicky gave her.

She’s entered all the strangely spelt names correctly and the postcode is right. Ideally, she wanted to see Gwyn tonight and force a face-to-face with George Dalton. But right now she doesn’t fancy driving around like a lost tourist for another hour. Vicky’s notes show that Rhys Mallory, the man Sir Owain took legal steps to silence, lives just two miles from where she is.

She enters his address in the navigation system and presses the touchscreen.

‘Make a U-turn when possible and take the next right.’
 

‘You’d better be right.’ Mitzi scorches the screen with a glare as she starts the car and follows the instructions.

Ten minutes later, she’s bouncing down a farm track towards a solitary detached stone cottage. She parks behind a beat-up Land Rover Defender that looks like it’s never been washed and gets out. As she flaps the door shut, a dog barks out of view.

A scruffy, silver-haired man in filthy brown overalls appears, with a black and white collie at his heels.

‘Can I help you?’ His voice is coated in a thick Welsh accent.

‘Professor Mallory?’

He looks her over. ‘Who are you?’

‘I’m a lieutenant with an FBI unit that specializes in religious, historical and unexplained crimes.’

‘FBI, eh?’ He wipes his hands on an oily rag and takes the glossy ID card she’s offering. He examines it with amusement and hands it back. ‘This is a long way for the Eff-Bee-Eye to come.’

‘It certainly is. I’d like to speak to you about Sir Owain Gwyn.’

‘Really?’ His eyes widen. ‘Now that’s funny, isn’t it? You want me to talk about the very thing I’m legally not allowed to talk about. How do you suppose we do that, then?’

‘How about we have one of those conversations that afterwards we both deny ever took place?’

‘Off the record, you mean?’

His habit of answering her questions with a question starts to grate. ‘Yes.’

He waits a second and then nods his assent. ‘Follow me round the back of the house. You might as well have a cup of tea while we’re not having that conversation.’

Instead of tea, Mitzi settles on a glass of lemonade made by Mallory’s wife, Bethan. She’s a dumpy brunette with streaks of red in her waist-length hair and has breasts that sag beneath a long, chin-to-toes black dress, broken by a necklace of multi-coloured beads.

‘It’s awesome,’ Mitzi says appreciatively. ‘I could have done with this two hours ago, when I was halfway between here and London.’

Bethan looks pleased. ‘Would you like something to eat? We have rabbit stew on the stove.’

‘No, I’m good, thanks.’ Mitzi dreads to think what rabbit might taste like.

The professor’s wife takes this as her cue to leave the American with her husband in the cosy glass lean-to built on the back of the cottage.

Mitzi sits on a brown fabric settee that has an old ginger tomcat perched on the other armrest. She puts her glass on the terracotta floor tiles and gives her host her full attention. ‘So, Owain Gwyn – what can you tell me about him?’

‘He’s a liar, a deceiver, a duplicitous denier of the truth. No friend to history. No ally of openness.’

Mitzi’s taken aback. She didn’t expect such an outburst. ‘And what
exactly
would he be lying about?’

‘His whole life is a lie. Him and his wife and that mad old man who lives with them; none of them are what they seem.’ Mallory leans forward, his brown eyes shining. ‘What do you want with him? Why have you come over here to snoop around and ask me about him?’

She knows she has to provide more than a standard brush-off. ‘We have a homicide in the States that has links to one of his staff.’

His eyes widen. ‘To Gwyn?’

‘No, to his staff. Sir Owain is not a suspect.’

Mallory sits back and assesses her, much in the way he did students when he was a lecturer. ‘Do you know what patronymic means?’

‘I think so. It refers to the practice of descendants taking the name of the father.’

‘That’s exactly what it is. Williamson, for example, would suggest son of William. Names and heritage are important, Lieutenant. Especially Owain Gwyn’s.’

‘Why particularly his?’

‘Because that’s what he wants to cover up.’

‘I don’t understand.’

‘My research and my book, the one he stopped being published, told the truth about him and King Arthur, the links to his family, the secret activities of his company and how governments turn a blind eye to what he does.’

‘You mean he’s cashing in on the Arthurian legend?’

He laughs. ‘No, no. This is much more important than mere commercial exploitation.’ He can see that she doesn’t have a clue. ‘Let me explain. There are three commonly held views as to who King Arthur might have been. Firstly, a Roman soldier, left behind to help the Britons fight the barbarians who flooded the country when the Romans left in the sixth century. Some say he was Ambrosius Aurelianus, others Lucius Artorius Castus. The centurion Castus has even been associated with a cavalry unit that worshipped a sword embedded in the earth.’

‘This would be Excalibur, the famous sword in the stone?’

He smiles, ‘That’s probably just misunderstood history, as most Arthurian legend is. Back in the Dark Ages, heavy broadswords were made by pouring molten metal into stone casts. If the cast was good, then when it cooled a child could easily pull the sword free and it was said to be fit for a king.’

‘And the legend of the lady in the lake – her giving Excalibur to Arthur?’

‘More historic misinterpretation. When kings died in those days their bodies were put on pyres and their swords offered to a water goddess to protect them in the afterlife. Ambrosius, incidentally, is said to have been buried at Stonehenge, a structure that according to some legends was created by the prophet Merlin.’

Mitzi tries to steer away from what she suspects is a bottomless pit of superstition and myth. ‘You said there were
three
views of who Arthur was?’

‘Yes. The second is that he was a Romano-British warlord called Riothamus. I believe Riothamus is a Latinization of the Brythonic personal name
Rigotamos
, meaning “king-most”, “supreme king” or “highest king”. As well as fighting valiantly against the Goths, Riothamus is thought to have crossed the channel and fought his final battle in a field in Burgundy – one that has great resonance to the Arthurian legend. That place was Avallon, with two l’s – one more than Avalon, the place legend has it that Arthur was laid to rest.’

Mitzi’s fast-reaching bored. ‘All fascinating, but what has the ambassador and his family got to do with this?’

Mallory is determined not to be rushed. ‘To answer you, we must go back to
AD
500 and the story of the Welsh warrior Owain Ddantgwyn. He was a great leader and back then such fighters associated themselves with beasts. For example, you’ve heard of Richard the Lionheart?’

‘Of course.’

‘Well, Owain Ddantgwyn was known as the Bear. The Welsh word for bear is Arth, while the Latin name is Ursis. It’s easy to see how he came to be called Arth-Ursis and that got shortened to Arthur.’

He gives her a second then continues, ‘Historic record has Owain Ddantgwyn – which as I’m sure you agree is not a long way away from Owain Gwyn – referred to as “the once and future king”. This is a phrase you will constantly hear associated with Arthur. Well, Owain had a son and his genealogy can be traced into the medieval period, where a more familiar and noble name emerges as direct descendants.’ He pauses for maximum effect. ‘You know the Spencers?’

‘As in Diana, Princess of Wales, daughter of Earl Spencer.’

‘Indeed. And the twisted roots of royal genealogy don’t stop there. Look into the family history and you’ll see that William was given the middle name Arthur, just as his father Prince Charles was.’ He examines the American with curiosity. ‘Are you aware that the title “Prince of Wales” is always given to the heir to the British throne?’

‘I guess you know that I’m not.’

‘Well, it is. And it dates back to post-Roman and pre-Norman times when the most powerful Welsh ruler was also taken to be the true King of the Britons. In the twelfth century, a man named Owain Gwynedd stopped using the title King of Wales and called himself Prince of Wales. As a detective, I presume you are drawing some conclusions here.’

Mitzi tries not to be angered by his condescension. ‘You’re saying that our modern-day Sir Owain Gwyn is a direct descendant of King Arthur.’

He looks exasperated with her. ‘At least that.’

Mitzi frowns, ‘What do you mean
at least
?’

For the first time since they met, he grows uncomfortable. ‘For God’s sake, look at the damned evidence. The bear is on his heraldic arms, as is the round table and the triple crown of Arthur.’

‘Professor, I have a cousin in Texas who is a Scottish lord. He bought the title online because he liked the idea.’

‘It’s a stupid comparison. Owain Gwyn bought no title. This man was and is —’ He stops mid-sentence and looks pained to hold back the remaining words.

‘What?’

‘I can’t say. Even in a conversation that never took place.’ He nods irritably to the slate clock on the wall. ‘It’s getting late. You must go and I must get on.’ He sighs as he raises himself from his chair and ushers her towards the back door. ‘History knows more about Owain Gwyn than the modern world does. Be careful in your dealings with him.’

She stops in her tracks. ‘What do you mean by that? You think he’s a danger to people.’

He tries to explain. ‘Imagine Jesus Christ was on earth, but he didn’t want to be discovered. Imagine history had been written to hide his existence. Would you see it as your duty to expose him? And if you did, would you think such disclosure might put your life at risk, Lieutenant?’