The Lethal Target (3 page)

‘Helen Cooper,’ explained Lauren. ‘She lives in the same apartment block as me, and we became friends. I told her all about Malichea, the hidden science texts, and what had happened to us, and how you and I would never see each other again, and how desperate I was . . .’

‘
We
were,’ corrected Jake. As he carried the coffees towards the small table, he almost stumbled on the old and uneven wooden floor.

‘Careful you don’t spill them,’ said Lauren.

Jake grinned.

‘Nagging me already?’ he asked.

‘You need it,’ she said. ‘You get in trouble without me to look after you.’

‘I get in trouble when we’re together.’ Jake smiled. ‘So, how did you get to be Helen Cooper?’

‘It was Helen who suggested it,’ said Lauren. ‘She commented one day about how similar we looked.’

Jake looked at the passport photo and shook his head.

‘She’s nowhere near as beautiful as you,’ he said.

‘You’re only saying that because you’re biased,’ said Lauren. ‘And anyway, passport photographs never show people at their best. She said if I was so desperate to get back to England and see you, why didn’t I try using her passport. They’d be looking to stop Samantha Adams, or Lauren Graham, not Helen Cooper.’

‘A woman with three identities,’ commented Jake. ‘Don’t you sometimes forget who you really are?’

Lauren nodded.

‘Sometimes,’ she admitted. ‘Sometimes, at work, when people call me Sam, just for the briefest of seconds I look around and wonder who they’re talking to.’ She gave Jake a stern look. ‘That’s why it’s important we don’t have any slip-ups while we’re here. I’m Helen Cooper. Call me Helen all the time, even if we think we’re alone. You never know who may be listening.’

‘Even now?’ asked Jake.

Lauren thought it over.

‘It might be a good idea,’ she said. ‘To get used to it.’

Jake looked doubtful.

‘I don’t know if I’ll ever get used to it,’ he said. ‘To me, you’ll always be Lauren.’

‘And I’ll be Lauren again, once we get past this,’ she assured him. ‘Anyway, back to the passport. The more I thought about it, the stronger the appeal to try it became. I couldn’t tell you, or even drop a hint, because, well . . .’

‘They’re listening.’ Jake nodded.

‘Yes,’ said Lauren. ‘So I decided to give it a try. Helen and I agreed that, if I was stopped and caught anywhere along the way, I’d say I’d stolen her passport from her, so she wouldn’t get in trouble.’

‘I phoned your work because I was worried I hadn’t heard from you,’ said Jake.

‘I didn’t dare tell
anyone
, apart from Helen,’ said Lauren. ‘For all we know they’ve got someone at my work, reporting back. Anyway, I booked the flights in Helen’s name, and on the day I did my hair, set off, and just kept my fingers crossed.’

‘You could have told me once you were back in England,’ said Jake. ‘We could have travelled up here together.’

Lauren shook her head.

‘There were two reasons for that,’ she said. ‘One, I had this idea it might be easier to fly in from somewhere other than New Zealand. I hoped they’d be less vigilant about watching for me than if I went straight to London. So, I flew to Ireland first, and then from Ireland to Glasgow. The second was what the Russians are up to.’

‘The Russians?’ queried Jake.

‘A party of them are here, on Mull! They’re looking for one of the hidden books! And they’ve got a good idea where it is.’

Jake frowned, puzzled.

‘Mull’s a bit of a trek from Glastonbury, especially in medieval times,’ he commented.

‘Ah, that’s because this book isn’t from the secret library at Glastonbury!’ said Lauren. ‘There was another branch of the Order of Malichea set up on Iona!’

‘That’s the small island to the west of Mull.’ Jake nodded.

‘It was set up at the same time as the Order on Lindisfarne, in the eighth century.’

‘I’m guessing this other branch of the Order of Malichea on Iona had a library as well?’ asked Jake.

‘Yes. The same as at Lindisfarne — scientific texts. In the case of the monastery on Iona, most of the writings came from Ireland, and the Celtic countries. But in addition there were texts from the Americas! Sciences from Native Americans, both north and south. Mayan. Aztec. Inca.’

Jake stared at her, stunned.

‘But . . . how did they get them?’ he asked. ‘I can see travellers coming from the Continent, even the Mediterranean. But across the Atlantic?’

‘Don’t you know about the early sailors? The Brendan boat crossing the Atlantic?’

‘No,’ admitted Jake.

‘I’ll tell you about that later,’ said Lauren. ‘The main thing is, the science books were on Iona. And, just the same as the monks did at Lindisfarne, when they realised the Vikings were on their way to attack their monastery, they made sure their books were protected. But unlike at Lindisfarne, where they moved the library to another abbey for safe keeping, the monks on Iona hid their books at different places around the Highlands and islands. Travel from Iona wasn’t as easy as it was from Lindisfarne and the north-east of England in those days.’

‘It still isn’t,’ said Jake. ‘Once you get past Glasgow, it still takes for ever!’

He sat there, letting all this sink in. The Order of Malichea was an ancient order, set up in the seventh century, devoted to building a library of scientific discoveries. In England the Order had run into trouble because the scientific texts they collected included topics such as invisibility, astronomy, time travel, as well as proposed cures for different diseases. Many of the theories in the texts were seen by the kings and the Church at the time as heretical, and so the library from the Order of Malichea based first at Lindisfarne, then at Glastonbury, had been hidden to protect them. To make sure that no one found the individual books, they had been hidden by the monks of the Order at sites said to be sacred, cursed or haunted, so they wouldn’t be disturbed accidentally. That had been in 1497.

The abbey on Iona hadn’t had the chance to build up a library to match the one at Glastonbury. The Vikings had attacked and destroyed Lindisfarne in 793. They swept into southern Scotland a year later, continuing their path of destruction. So the scientific texts from the abbey at Iona must have been buried 700 years before those from Glastonbury.

‘We are talking about
really
old books,’ said Jake.

‘Not even books, at that time,’ said Lauren. ‘Not as we know them. Scrolls. Parchment.’ She gave Jake a small smile of triumph. ‘And what’s more, I know which particular text the Russians are looking for.’

Jake stared at her.

‘How?’ he asked.

‘Chatter on the web,’ said Lauren.

‘How could you follow all this on the web without MI5 closing down your computer?’ asked Jake.

‘Cybercafés, you idiot,’ said Lauren. ‘And using Helen’s computer. Anyway, the book they’re after is
De Materia Medica Continuum
by Dioscorides. It was written in AD 53, and is about spontaneous human combustion.’ She shrugged. ‘Why it went to Iona and not to Lindisfarne, no one seems to know. Maybe the person who brought it had a personal connection with someone at the monastery on Iona. But the fact is that
this
is the book they’re looking for. They’re using the cover of pretending to dig for Neolithic remains at the site.’ She gave a snort. ‘Very clever.’

‘But how do the Russians know what this particular book is called, and where it is?’ asked Jake, puzzled.

‘That’s the really important thing!’ said Lauren excitedly. ‘Don’t you see, Jake? It means they’ve got hold of The Index!’

‘The Index?’

‘The journal that lists every book that was in the library at the monastery on Iona, and where it was buried!’

Chapter 5

Jake sat, stunned. So much information, and raising so many questions.

‘Actually, the Russians must have only got hold of part of The Index, otherwise they’d be all over the Highlands and islands, digging everywhere.’

‘But why would the Russians be interested in . . . what was it again?’

‘Spontaneous human combustion. Where a human being just bursts into flames from the inside, and gets burnt to ashes.’

Jake shuddered.

‘Weird,’ he muttered.

‘It’s not weird,’ said Lauren. ‘It’s some sort of chemical reaction inside the body, triggered by something. There are lots of instances of it recorded, but no one knows why it happens. It may be that Dioscorides had the answer.’

‘OK, but back to my original question: why would the Russians be interested in it?’

‘The Russians have always been interested in what you used to call “weird science”,’ said Lauren. ‘In the Soviet era they had whole government science departments carrying out experiments on things like telepathy, telekinesis, levitation.’

‘Why?’

‘One, to get an understanding of how and why things work. And, two, to see if any of them could be used as weapons. Just think, if you had a telepath inside the White House, you wouldn’t need electronic surveillance — very expensive and easy to discover.’

‘And spontaneous human combustion? People bursting into flames?’

‘Can you think of a better weapon?’ asked Lauren.

‘No,’ admitted Jake. ‘So, what are we going to do here?’

‘We’re going to wait until the Russians find the book, and then get it back off them. And we’re going to see if we can get whatever part of The Index they have off them as well. There are bound to be other books listed in it. They’re going to be our bargaining chips.’

‘To get you back here?’

Lauren nodded. ‘Back properly, under my own name, so we can be together openly. And prove that the secret library of Malichea exists.’

‘That the library on
Iona
existed,’ stressed Jake.

‘It’s a start,’ said Lauren. ‘First we prove that there was an Order of Malichea on Iona who buried their library; then that gets the whole business of the Order and their secret library out into the open.’

Jake nodded.

‘Sounds like a good plan,’ he said. ‘How are we going to get the book off the Russians once they find it?’

‘That’s what we’ve got to work out,’ she said. ‘Tomorrow I’ll take you along to the site where they’re digging, and then we’ll have a look at the cottage where the Russians are staying, and we can work out how we’re going to do it.’

‘We’re going to have opposition,’ said Jake. ‘Let’s face it, if you know about this, so will everyone else who’s interested. MI5. The CIA. Pierce Randall. The Watchers.’

‘Yes,’ agreed Lauren. ‘I’ve been trying to work out who might be who. There’s an American staying here. Ian Muir. He says he’s come here to explore his Scottish roots, but it wouldn’t surprise me to find out he’s CIA. Then there’s a couple of Brits, Mr and Mrs Gordon, John and Pam. Very nice. They claim they’re here birdwatching. They say they’re here especially to see golden eagles.’

‘MI5?’

‘Possibly. Or they could be working for Pierce Randall. We know how far that bunch of crooked lawyers will go to get their hands on the books. Their clients are some of the richest people on the planet, so Pierce Randall can make a lot of money finding the books for them.’

‘What about the Watchers?’

The Watchers, the mysterious organisation set up hundreds of years before to keep guard over the hidden books and protect them from being found.

‘I’m fairly sure the MacClains who run this place are Watchers,’ said Lauren. ‘The family have been here for generations, stretching right back to the time the books were hidden. They must be involved in some way.’

‘OK.’ Jake nodded. ‘So those are the ones we know about.’

‘
Suspect
,’ corrected Lauren. ‘I could be wrong about any or all of them. And, of course, there are loads of other people on the island. Mull is a haven for visitors, birdwatchers, tourists, people who want to get away from things. And Iona is a must for pilgrims as well as tourists. Any of them could be using that as a cover while they keep watch on the Russian dig.’

‘And try and get their hands on the book,’ mused Jake.

Lauren nodded.

‘Well, I guess that’s the answer to why things happened to me when I tried to come up here,’ said Jake.

‘What do you mean?’ asked Lauren.

‘I got warned off. And then attacked, at Euston, just as I was about to get on my train.’ He shuddered at the all-too-recent memory. ‘They tried to stab me, but luckily their knife got my bag instead.’

Lauren stared at him, horrified.

‘Who were they?’ she asked.

Jake shrugged.

‘I don’t know,’ he said. ‘But obviously someone didn’t want me joining in the fun.’

‘How did they know?’

‘That’s easy,’ said Jake. ‘They eavesdrop. They know everything.’ He grinned. ‘Except the fact that Lauren Graham is back and pretending to be Helen Cooper.’

‘Yes, and, like I said, we need to keep it that way,’ said Lauren.