The Camelot Code (7 page)

Irish is at the bar; a bottle of beer and a whisky chaser stand at his elbow.

Two women in their forties sit on stools around him, glasses of white wine in their hands.

Sarah Cohen has short brown hair and a wide mouth. Suzie Clark is a bleached blonde with strong blue eyes. They work stores either side of Goldman Antiques and for the past hour Irish has been buying drinks in return for information.

‘I was away when those uniformed police came by,’ explains Sarah. ‘Getting my things from my
ex
’s
place.’ She emphasizes the past tense. ‘Which means I’m available.’

‘Not for long, I’m very sure.’ Irish lays on a little charm as he eases a notebook out of his jacket. ‘So tell me again what you saw on the night Amir died.’

‘I was going away Saturday morning. Had the day off and was headin’ to Atlantic City for a birthday party. I saw a man come out of Amir’s around ten-thirty p.m. and shut the door behind him.’

‘Why did that catch your eye?’

‘Coz he pushed on the handle to check it was locked properly. Like you’d do if you own the place.’

Irish writes before he asks the next question. ‘And how did you say he looked?’

‘Handsome,’ she says. ‘Muscular. Tender side of thirty.’ Her face lights up while she pictures him. ‘Tall and clean-shaven, very dark hair. Looked real nice.’

‘Did you notice what he was wearing?’

She thinks for a minute. ‘Blues. A blue jacket and jeans. Not a jean jacket, something smarter.’

Irish takes a swallow of his beer. The description fits the stiff dug up in the woods. ‘What’d he do then?’

‘Crossed the road, got into a big brown car and pulled away.’

Suzie taps her on the arm. ‘Tell him ’bout the noise.’

She obliges. ‘There wasn’t any.’

‘Probably an ’lectric vehicle,’ adds Suzie, keen to prove she’s worth her free drinks. ‘One of those high-breeds.’

‘You mean hybrids,’ says Irish. He turns back to Sarah. ‘You see the make, or recognize the type?’

She shakes her head. ‘I’m not good with cars. Not like I am with men. It was a big, boxy thing.’

‘Probably an SUV,’ suggests Suzie authoritatively. ‘Sports Utility Vehicle.’

‘Thanks,’ says Irish. ‘I know what SUV means.’

‘I watched it go,’ adds Sarah. ‘A few seconds later a car started and drove after it. Took me clean by surprise because it hadn’t any lights on. It was silver. Like a limousine but not as big.’

Irish downs his whisky shot. ‘Like a pimp’s car?’

Sarah pulls a sour face. ‘No. Classier. It had one of those glass roofs. I could see street lights reflecting on it when it drove off.’

‘Two or four doors?’

She has to think. ‘Four.’ Something occurs to her. ‘Oh, and I might be wrong on this, but the licence plate was weird.’

‘How so? You mean out-of-state plates?’

She looks embarrassed. ‘It sounds stupid now. Forget I spoke. I’m really not sure I’m right and don’t want to say the wrong thing.’

‘Say it,’ urges Irish.

‘I don’t think it was a DC plate. I’m not even sure it was American.’

He waves the barman over and makes a final note. An out-of-state plate spells only one thing.

Trouble.

The kind that can be near-on impossible to investigate.

A swarm of helicopters cover the sprawling green grounds. Chauffeured cars crunch the long gravelled drive. Armed guards shadow eleven men and women into the stately home and usher them through cool, marbled corridors to a door marked Wine Cellar.

Two former SAS men flank the big black slab of oak. They check credentials before allowing anyone to descend the stairs. Once below ground the visitors use fingerprint- and retina-identification systems to enter a huge windowless and bombproof room.

At the centre of the secure space is an ancient, circular table. It is marked with heraldic crests and Christian symbols. The circle itself is more than just a design that ensures no one has prominence – it is a Eucharistic symbol: a representation of the holy host.

The delegates of the Secret and Sacred Order of Arthurians take their places.

They are all highly successful executives, CEOs and owners of philanthropic businesses that also fund the SSOA. The organization is dedicated to peace, freedom and an endless fight against terrorism and evil.

Like Britain, the country where it is headquartered, the SSOA is governed by two distinct authorities, one chosen and one hereditary. Today’s meeting is of the Inner Circle – an operational body made up of chosen delegates. They have been picked, not only because of their immense wealth and power, but also because they are so passionate about the central aims of the SSOA that they are willing to die – or kill – for them.

While the Inner Circle formulates and implements policy, it can’t do so without reference to a much larger and even older authority.

The Blood Line.

The BL is comprised of members who are direct descendants of the Knights of the Round Table.

Beneath these two bodies, is a hidden army of modern-day knights. A secret force, spread internationally. Recruited almost exclusively from national military and intelligence bodies. Its uniform is the anonymity of every day clothes and its camouflage that of suburbia and average life.

Today’s agenda, like the briefing paper, is written in Arthurian Code. The rotational cipher was created centuries ago on two wooden wheels marked with letters and numbers. The outer contained numbers and the inner letters. The base code would always be A and 1. But every day someone would spin the wheels and then record the random number that matched A. So if A aligned with 6, then the day’s code would be known as Plus Six. Modern Arthurians have special digital token codes that need alphanumeric logins to retrieve the pass codes of any documents sent to them.

Circle secretary Lance Beaucoup, reads the minutes of the last meeting. He is mid-thirties, tall, dark-haired with the broad shoulders of a swimmer and the waist of a gymnast. His voice has a Gallic lilt.

‘Does anyone wish to comment?’ asks Owain.

The room is silent.

‘Then take them as passed, Lance.’

There’s an awkward silence. One filled with expectancy and fear.

The Frenchman continues, ‘We come to the issue of our
trusted
colleague. Our absent friend.’

All eyes fall on the empty twelfth seat at the table.

‘It is now clear,’ says Owain, ‘that Angelo Marchetti has broken from our order. He has a secret life beyond his secret life. One of gambling, cocaine and crime. Angelo has been siphoning off money. His own accounts have been forged and he is personally bankrupt.’

Mutterings break out.

‘Please – I haven’t finished.’ He waits until silence has been restored. ‘He has stolen several artefacts from the Order and may have fled the country. From what we have been able to discover, he used local crooks to sell a number of burial crosses that he himself had looted. A religious dealer of dubious repute in America was approached and he acquired one cross. He was killed two days ago by Marchetti’s men. We aren’t sure why.

‘We now have a complication,’ continues Owain. ‘I’ve harboured suspicions about Angelo for a while so had him followed the last few weeks.’ He nods across the table to a young Englishman. ‘George tailed his men as they drove away from the dealer’s in Maryland. He’ll tell you the rest.’

George Dalton, a slightly built man with a trimmed dark beard and pale blue eyes, gives his account of what happened. ‘After the killing, two men left the scene. They stopped on the outskirts of Kensington and went into a copse. Only one of them came out. He drove south and pulled in at an all-night diner about a third of a mile east of Dupont Circle. I watched him eat at a booth by the window. When he returned to the car I tackled him. Unfortunately, he was more skilled an adversary than I expected and had a knife.’ George raises his arm to show his bandaged hand and wrist. ‘I’m afraid it was a very close-quarters encounter and he was killed. I recovered a Knight’s Cross from the glove compartment of his car.’

Owain interrupts. ‘There are still two crucifixes missing and possibly other artefacts that we don’t yet know about. We presume Angelo has now lost faith in his minions and is personally trying to sell the crosses. I think we can all guess to whom he will eventually turn and what the consequences of that could be.’

Fresh mutterings break out and Lance takes this as his cue. ‘As of this moment, Angelo Marchetti is expelled from our Order and we are issuing an alert for his capture and permanent exile. You should put whatever bounty you wish on his head and treat this as a matter of utmost urgency.’

Owain sees their sadness. The man with a death warrant on his head had been a friend and comrade to them for many years and his betrayal is hard to believe. ‘Be in no doubt – Angelo poses the biggest threat to our existence for centuries. Do not hesitate to act resolutely in this matter. We have no room for forgiveness, emotion or error. Strike swiftly; our chance may come but once.’

Police HQ is an imposing slab of sandstone and glass set among a collection of other similarly striking buildings that belong to the fire and justice departments, the district court and Department of Labor.

Up on the command corridor, the name etched on a door halfway down says
CPT
.
ZACH
FULO
.
Irish raps on it.

‘C’m’in!’ The words are spat out by a voice of grit and glue.

The cop opens the door and hesitantly steps inside.

A lean black man looks up from a desk layered in paperwork. ‘Take a seat, Lieutenant; you’re late.’

‘Traffic was bad out of Maryland. Sorry for the delay.’

‘Traffic’s bad everywhere. A guy your age should have learned that by now.’ His dark eyes tip to a document in his manicured hands. ‘HRU – that’s Historic Religious and Unsolved, right?’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘What the hell they doing asking about one of our cases?’ He holds up the paper.

Irish stares at the FBI badge and realizes one of the top brass there must have written to him. ‘I asked them, sir. Given this has since kicked up into a double homicide I thought it it might be wise.’

‘No, Lieutenant.
Wise
would be asking me first.
Really wise
would have been solving the case already.’ He screws up the paper and throws the ball at him. ‘You’re an idiot, Fitzgerald. Just in case you’re in any doubt, idiots are at the opposite end of the spectrum to the wise.’

‘Captain, this crime is linked to some old cross that’s probably a valuable artefact. The HRU has the infrastructure to help us work all that out and find the kind of unsub prepared to kill for that kind of thing.’

‘Me. I’m prepared to kill. And guess who my victim’s likely to be? Now get outta here. I want a full report on my desk by seven in the morning, so don’t get too wasted tonight.’

Irish hauls his injured pride out of the captain’s office and back to his desk.

He pulls open the bottom drawer and grabs a box of tissues. The cold Sophie Hudson passed on still has him honking snot and blood. He sticks a wad of tissues in his pocket and pulls out the second thing he’s after.

Scotch.

He unscrews the top of his emergency bottle and takes a long swallow of the cheap whisky. Doesn’t stop until he feels its hot fingers choking his throat. Then he screws the top back, drops the bottle in his drawer and kicks it shut.

The office is deserted. A gap between shifts. He powers up the computer and finds what he hoped for in his mailbox.

A message from Traffic.

He’d told his old friend Billy Puller about the murder he was working was in woods off the south end of Rock Creek Trail, close to where the east-west Capital Beltway crosses Connecticut Avenue. He said he was interested in any brown SUVs and silver saloons that hit that intersection from ten p.m. onwards on Friday night. Ten being the earliest time the ME thought Amir Goldman could have died.

By the time he’s read the first line of Bill’s mail, his heart’s already flipping.

Irish opens the attachment and presses play.

The footage is good quality. An Escalade heads down a slip road. The overhead camera shows the driver. He’s alone. Late-thirties, maybe early-forties. Clean-shaven. Broad. Light hair.

Five cars back, a Lincoln pulls out to the middle lane, stays there and doesn’t zip on by. The kind of thing you do when you’re following someone and don’t want to be noticed.

Irish studies the traffic. The Escalade is doing about sixty. So is the Lincoln. He sure as hell is tagging him.

No sooner do the Dupont signs come on screen, than they both indicate and take their wagon train off the interstate and out of view.

Irish digs out the Scotch for a celebratory belt then rewinds the footage and plays it from the top. This time he sees the small stuff. The Escalade is badged as a hybrid and the Lincoln has a panoramic glass roof. Both vehicles fit with the descriptions Sarah Cohen gave him but the driver of the Escalade doesn’t. He has light hair. The victim in the woods was dark-haired. This must have been the driver parked up outside Amir’s store and the winner of whatever altercation broke out when they drove off after Goldman’s murder.

Irish figures that, given the timing of the footage, the guy he’s looking at on screen is almost certain to be the killer.

The Lincoln comes into view again. It’s an expensive model. One of the new ones.

‘Ho–lee shit.’ He hits pause. ‘Rule Friggin’ Britannia.’

A broad smile breaks out across his face as he stares at what is unmistakably a diplomatic plate.