Knightley tried to peer through the mist of his own dulled consciousness. In the past twenty-four hours he’d endured hypnotic suggestions that would have turned lesser men insane. And now, through the soup of his addled mind, he actually thought he saw his son’s face. But it wasn’t possible. It couldn’t be. Even if Darkus had deduced the location from the scrawled piece of paper, he couldn’t have found his way into this cave alone. Not without Uncle Bill’s assistance. And in that case, where were the officers? Where was the backup?
Knightley blinked helplessly, trying to focus, but the room was swimming. He couldn’t move.
Darkus abandoned any attempt to be covert and ran to hug his father, nearly knocking him off his chair.
“Dad . . .”
Knightley felt his son’s arms shivering around him. “Doc, it is you . . .”
“Of course it is,” said Darkus.
“It’s okay. I’m okay.”
“I’m sorry I let you down.”
“Of course you didn’t—you’re the best son in the world.”
Darkus smiled, hardly believing what he was hearing. “I thought I’d lost you again.”
“I haven’t gone anywhere—”
Someone snapped their fingers loudly to interrupt them, and Knightley’s head instantly lolled.
Darkus spun around to see Morton Underwood with his right hand in the air. His saucerlike eyes gazed out from a dark hat and raincoat.
“Hello, Doc.”
Darkus studied him for any trace of the person who’d allegedly been his godfather, but any connection that might once have existed had been drained from his features by time and bitter experience. Now it was simply the face of a dangerous stranger.
“What do you want?” said Darkus. “We’ll drop the case. Just let us go.”
“Speak for yourself,” Tilly interjected. “We’re all here for our own reasons.” She took Chloe’s stiletto knife from her belt and pointed it at Underwood. “You know who I’m here for.”
“Your mother’s death was a sad necessity, Matilda. She was halfway to pinpointing this l-location when we found her out,” Underwood explained. “I’m sorry she never made it to pick you up from school that day.” Tilly listened with clenched fists, her teeth digging into her lip and her eyes streaming. “It was a relatively quick death,” he added.
Tilly ran at him, but Underwood swung open the door to a switching box mounted on the wall, which stopped her progress dead, cleanly knocking her out. Tilly fell to the ground, unconscious, the knife skittering away.
Darkus got to his feet, assessing the room. It was larger than the others, and he deduced that it was at the end of the platform where the eastbound and westbound tracks converged, and a siding would have been laid to accommodate parked and disused train carriages. There were two doorways in the room. One was occupied by Underwood, who was motionless, scarecrow-like; the other was located in the center of the far wall, its door firmly closed.
“This, Darkus, is the end of the l-line,” said Underwood, as if reading his mind.
Darkus noticed that the man was now holding a pistol in his hand, and it was pointed directly at him.
“You shouldn’t have c-come here,” Underwood went on, his eyes floating in the twin whirlpools of his lenses. “This is grown-up business.”
“I came to get my dad,” insisted Darkus.
“I warned you that if you proceeded with this investigation, it would mean losing your father all over again. And yet you chose to proceed.”
Knightley looked up as if to say something, but his head lolled.
“Alan was perfectly safe until you chose to interfere,” added Underwood.
Darkus blinked. Inside his head, theories were flaring and exploding. Reason had abandoned him. He struggled to recalibrate his mind. “You took him because he got too close to cracking the case,” said Darkus. “To cracking The Code.”
“No,” answered Underwood. “It was you who cracked The Code. You who resurrected his ailing career, and remembered the Knowledge he so badly needed. You are responsible for his current situation—no one else.”
Underwood walked forward to allow another figure to enter through the doorway behind him. It was Presto, balancing something in his hands like a ritual sacrifice. It was a heavy, bulky manuscript, bound in some indeterminate animal skin. For a moment Darkus wondered whether it was in fact human skin. The stiff cover had come away from the spine, which was in tatters. The pages were barely held together, warped and worn by age. Darkus realized this was the original text that the Order of the New Dawn had talked about.
“The Code was my offering to the Combination,” Underwood went on. “My way in. You see, there was a boy under my care—”
“I know all about it,” said Darkus.
“You don’t know everything,” Underwood corrected him. “The boy came to me with behavioral problems, lack of f-focus, that sort of thing. During the course of our sessions he told me about a book he’d discovered. His family was wealthy and powerful. They were collectors. They had come into possession of a certain manuscript . . .” Underwood nodded to the burden in Presto’s hands. “I asked him to bring it to me. The manuscript had no effect on me, but it had the most unusual effect on the boy: he tried to k-kill me. I defended myself, and he fell to his death. I did some research, and realized what I’d stumbled upon. And so it set me on my path, and afforded me entry into a very exclusive organization.”
“A criminal organization,” said Darkus.
“The judicial system found me guilty, so I used the manuscript to gain access to an alternative system. One that doesn’t rely purely on reason.”
“Without reason there’s only madness,” argued Darkus.
“We’re beyond reason. The Combination doesn’t exclude anyone, or anything, however extraordinary, or supernatural. You might say, we use a combination of everything to succeed.”
“That still makes you a criminal,” insisted Darkus.
Underwood didn’t blink. “Crime is only another form of justice. And The Code is the perfect recruiting tool.”
“You’re endangering innocent people.”
“I’m inspiring the weak-minded, giving them something to believe in.”
“That doesn’t explain what you want with my dad.”
Underwood nodded, continuing his story. “Alan f-found me . . . several months after I was presumed dead. But by that time it was too late. We were on opposite sides of the law. The truth is, I never wanted to harm him. It was Alan who told me about the existence of the Combination in the first place—or his suspicions of it. One day he might have been an asset,” Underwood explained. “So when he found me I didn’t want to kill him, but I couldn’t risk him talking. And that’s when I came up with a solution.”
Aboveground, Bogna’s phone was ringing off the hook, and she was starting to regret her choice of ringtone—a Polish folk dance was hardly appropriate for the grave circumstances she now found herself in.
Uncle Bill had called as soon as he woke up, and was now, against doctor’s orders, making the trip to Down Street with every available officer.
Bogna watched as several white vans pulled up outside the abandoned Tube station. She crossed herself as officers entered the general store and the alley and started testing the strength of the gray security door.
Inside one of the vans, Bill’s wheelchair was positioned at a control desk, his right arm in a cast, his left leg, also in a cast, extended out in front of him. He peered at a large monitor as a technician worked the keyboard.
Bill picked up a walkie-talkie with his good hand. “Let me know when we have contact.”