CHAPTER FOURTEEN

 

Morgan kept a hand against the wall as he backed into the mine, the light fading in front of him as he went deeper. Anya held the Beretta centred on his chest. She remained a careful ten paces apart, slowing every time he did. She was a pro and she knew what she was doing. Rushing her was too risky, too likely to get him shot.

"You're working for Raphael," Morgan said, but Anya shook her head. She waved the gun sideways, a signal to get moving, and Morgan speeded up. He knew she could hear the same thing he did: voices at the mouth of the tunnel. The latest tour group was about to descend.

"I could have killed you while you slept if all I wanted was the book. Think, Morgan."

She was right. She couldn't be with Raphael, it didn't make sense. And she didn't seem to be with the Japanese either. "So you want it for yourself."

"Stop," she said. "Go left."

They'd reached a fork in the tunnel, the left-hand turning leading away from the route they'd followed earlier. A 'no entry' sign strung on a metal chain blocked the way, but Morgan stepped over it easily.

"We'll get lost," Morgan said after they'd turned left twice more, and then right.

"Maybe," Anya said, "but so will they."

It was far darker here, the electronic lighting long gone, replaced by the weak illumination of Anya's torch. It swept across a floor that was rough and uneven, beam diffused by the choking cloud of rock dust churned up by their feet. The dust coated Morgan's throat and nostrils, leaving behind the thirsty tang of salt as it dissolved.

He stopped so abruptly that Anya almost stepped within reach before pulling quickly back. She centred the gun's barrel on his chest again, but he ignored it. It occurred to him for the first time that she didn't have a plan. She hadn't expected the Japanese agents to find them and now she had no idea what to do. And something else occurred to him too.

"Why didn't you let me phone Tomas?" he said. "Does he know you're a traitor? But why didn't he tell me before?"

Anya laughed, high and strained. "You want to know why I couldn't let you speak to anyone in Germany? Because there's a chance you'd have spoken to Anya."

Morgan worked the sentence over twice in his mind, but it still came out the same. "So... you're not Anya." He studied her face in the reflected glow of her torch, but it still looked exactly like her. And before, when they'd travelled in the car together - no disguise could be that good.

"I am Anya," she said. "I'm Anya too."

"You're her twin?" That was possible, he supposed. It explained why she'd behaved so differently since leaving the train. Smiling where previously she'd always been so dour, sympathetic rather than accusing. Except no one called a pair of twins the same name. "No, that's not what you mean, is it?

He could see the bunch of tensed shoulders beneath her t-shirt. "Your partner's a man who died twenty years ago. You're working with a forty-year-old girl of eleven with a demon trapped inside her. What do you think I mean?"

"Exactly what you say. There are two of you, and you're both Anya."

"Yes. We're two halves of a whole person."

"The other half, the other Anya, does she know?"

She shook her head.

"And has it always been that way? Were you born like this?"

She looked amused. "Morgan, if two babies came out, that would make us twins."

He punched the wall in a sudden flare of rage. "Don't act like I'm supposed to know this shit! Three days ago I though the world was a totally normal place!"

His voice reverberated in the long tunnels. When the echoes died they left behind the shuffling sound of footsteps, somewhere behind Anya.

Without needing to be asked, Morgan started walking again, almost running. They were well away from the tourist route now. Those footsteps could only be the American man and his Japanese assassins. Morgan had lost count of the turnings about ten minutes ago. He had no idea where they were, only that they were deep in the mine, maybe deeper than they'd been on the first trip down.

Anya was beside him now, Beretta loose in her hand. Careless, but maybe she knew he had no intention of taking it from her. He didn't want to risk stopping the flow of information.

"I'm sorry," she said. "It's probably my fault Richard and his people have found us."

Morgan froze a moment, then kept on walking. "Richard's the man from the train, right? And you know his name because...?"

"I used to work with him."

Morgan flicked her a quick glance, but her expression gave nothing away. "When did you stop?"

"Oh, about thirty hours ago."

Paradoxically, the admission relaxed Morgan. It would have been far easier to lie. "So what changed?"

"You did."

"My charm and good looks won you over?"

"Actually, your brains."

"That's a first." He took a moment to puzzle it out. "OK, you want the diary. You thought you needed what's his name - Richard - to translate it. And when you realised I could do it..."

"Yes, that pretty much covers it."

"Still doesn't explain what you are. Why there are two of you."

"The Japanese made me."

"Made you?"

"They figured out a way to divide a person - to split a personality in two. It's simpler than you might think, though highly exothermic."

He shook his head, baffled.

"Magic is no different from chemistry, Morgan. Nothing is ever destroyed, only transformed. Splitting a personality is like splitting an atom: the two halves are less than the whole. Whatever it is that's lost comes out as heat, a whole lot of it. The explosion when they did it was the size of a small tactical nuke."

"But why? What would be the point of doing it? If you want more people, just make them the old-fashioned way."

"Because of the Ragnarok artefacts."

"Yeah, of course. Because that's all anybody cares about." His teeth were chattering. They were so deep in the mine it was like they'd walked into winter. Icy water dripped from the ceiling into his short hair, drying slowly to leave it stiff with salt.

Anya's hair looked blood-red in the low light, hanging in lank strands around her cheeks. "The Japanese are obsessed with them, with getting hold of them. It isn't just the Japanese, though. Pretty much every country wants them. When Nicholson led the Hermetic Division, tracking down the artefacts was its primary mission. And he got further than anyone else - rumour has it he'd located all three, though that was never confirmed."

"And you're hoping his diary will tell you where they are." Morgan was glad he hadn't told her everything his father wrote.

She nodded. "The Japanese wanted the artefacts and they wanted the diary, and they knew the BND were closing in on both. They tried to turn some of the German agents, but they didn't get anywhere with anyone high enough to be useful."

"So instead of turning you, they copied you." Morgan took a moment to absorb that. It made a demented sort of sense. "They sent the original back, and kept the copy to work for them."

Anya's eyes flared. "There's no copy, no original. We're both Anya. But yes, that's right. I am - was - the BND's top agent assigned to search for the artefacts. When they made me the Japanese got access to all my knowledge - and a chance to infiltrate the German network, too. If I go in to BND headquarters when the other half of me isn't there, or talk to any of her sources, who'd ever suspect I wasn't who I said I was?"

She'd drawn a little ahead of him, but now she suddenly stopped. A moment later Morgan saw why. The tunnel was a dead end, the way ahead blocked by a stout wooden gate fastened with a padlock. Anya shrugged and turned round.

Morgan put a hand on her arm, stilling her. In the silence that followed he could hear their breathing, Anya's a little faster than his, both of them wheezing slightly with all the dust. And beyond that, quite clearly, the sound of approaching footsteps.

 

The Baltic was never calm, not even in summer. The surface of the water was broken by choppy little waves which juddered the small boat from side to side. Tomas had never been a good sailor, and he was discovering that his dead body was still quite capable of feeling that it wanted to puke.

The coast guards Anya had co-opted were taking care of the steering, leaving Tomas nothing to do but stare over the water. There was no sign of their quarry yet, but theirs was the faster vessel. And thanks to the information Raphael's agent had given them, they'd been able to lock onto the other boat's transponder signal. When they'd set out an hour ago, they'd been twenty miles behind. Now they were only five and closing fast.

Thinking about Raphael's agent brought a different sensation to Tomas's stomach, a hunger profound enough to overpower the nausea. Anya had left him alone in the room with the agent's corpse while she'd gone to find them a boat. He knew why. He knew what she'd expected him to do. And god knows he'd wanted to.

And yet he hadn't. Every time he imagined eating, he pictured Kate watching him. He saw the horror in her eyes at the monster he'd become and his hunger twisted into self-disgust.

He could see Anya shooting glances at him. While she was out of the room he'd torn strips from the dead woman's clothing to bandage the terrible wound in his gut, unhealed because he hadn't fed. Then he'd hidden it beneath a fresh t-shirt pilfered from one of the woman's victims. But the gnawing pain of it left him weak, so that he staggered with every shift of the boat. He had to repress a groan as they lurched to starboard, jarring him onto his right foot and loosening something in his belly he was glad he couldn't see.

"They're likely to be heavily armed," Anya said, watching the distant horizon. The day was hot but overcast and the grey light that filtered through the clouds made her face look as lifeless as his.

He nodded. "Catching them's only the start of the battle."

"If they've got Belle with them, they can use her as a hostage. Threaten her and they've got us over a barrel."

"Maybe. But if they kill her they lose the only bargaining chip they've got, and they know it." He also wanted to believe that Kate wasn't capable of killing a child, but he wasn't sure enough to say it.

Anya's eyes flicked to him, narrowed under brows squeezed together with tension. "It's a very big risk to take with a little girl's life."

"You think I don't know it?" Tomas found he was too weary to be angry. "We have to try. Once Raphael finds out we don't have the diary, she'll be shark meat anyway."

"Morgan said he was bringing it back. If you trust him, of course." It was clear she didn't.

He had a sudden memory of Morgan smiling one of his rare smiles. Tomas did trust him, he always had. Maybe it was because Morgan was untainted by a past which was turning out to be so much more complicated than Tomas had anticipated. But they hadn't heard from him all day, and Tomas had to fight not to imagine the worst.

He turned away from Anya as one of the coast guards rushed out of the boat's small cabin, excitement written on his coarse face. "We've got them hull-up on the horizon!"

The light was too diffuse to see anything clearly, but Tomas thought he could make out a blur that might have been another boat. It looked big, considerably larger than theirs.

"How long till we catch them?" Anya asked.

The coast guard leaned forward, as if he could personally speed the chase. "Half hour, maybe an hour if they see us and put on some speed. They're only making about twelve knots at present, trying not to attract too much attention."

"Do you think they've seen us?" Tomas asked.

The man shrugged, but Anya said, "Their agent was probably supposed to report in at regular intervals. When she didn't... We have to reckon they're expecting us."

Tomas nodded as he kept his eyes on the shape ahead, now recognisably a boat.

Half an hour, maybe an hour, until he saw Kate again.

 

Morgan hit the padlock with the largest rock he could find. It didn't break, just rang loudly enough to let everyone in a five-hundred-yard radius know they were there.

"Great," Anya said. "So much for stealth."

"It's not like we'd be able to sneak past them," Morgan snapped. "There's only one way out, and they're blocking it. Give me the gun."

She rolled her eyes at him, then lifted the Beretta and shot out the lock herself.

"Jesus!" Morgan jumped away from the shards of shattered metal. "Give a man some warning."

Anya shoved the door with her shoulder, smirking.

As soon as it was open, Morgan pushed past her and ran down the short tunnel beyond, stooping beneath its low ceiling. At the very end, a stalactite he hadn't seen grazed his forehead. A bead of blood dropped into his eye, but he barely registered it.

The tunnel opened into a far wider area - a cavern that had been carved into another church. The torchlight picked out the glitter of salt crystals everywhere inside.

Anya saw his expression immediately. She stood beside him, studying the high vaulted ceiling, the rotting remains of wooden pews. "Is this it? Is this the one you saw?"

Morgan nodded, throat too tight to speak. He held out his hand, and after a moment's hesitation she put the torch in it. Its light preceded him in a narrow cone as he walked deeper inside. This was smaller than the place the tourist guide had taken them, more of a chapel than a church. But everything in it was just as he'd dreamed.

The walls were lined with statues, as tall as him. Torchlight picked out the nearest, and he couldn't stop himself letting out a cry of alarm. The face was hideous, nose melting into its mouth, and one eye dragged halfway down its cheek.

"The water came in through here," Anya said, a whisper that echoed sibilantly from the other side of the room. "Look."

Morgan swept the beam of the torch across the far wall. Anya was right. It had caved in, the rock curving down in a gentle arc from floor to ceiling where the first gush of water must have come, shallow runnels scoring the soft white floor as it spread. He had a sudden flash of The Wizard of Oz - the Wicked Witch melting as she died. He knew why this place made him think of it. There was something evil and unnatural here too.

He studied the wall a moment longer, then walked to the altar in the centre of the room.

At first he assumed the thing lying on it was another statue, smaller than the rest. Even when he was right next to it, he still thought it was man-made, a facsimile of the thing it seemed to be. It was only as he reached out and touched the sharp curve of its ribs and felt bone rather than rock that he knew the skeleton was real.

The skull was thrown back on the jigsaw bones of its neck, as if it had died screaming. The knife which had killed it was still buried where its heart had once been, blade heavy with rust. Every bone glittered in the torchlight, coated in a thin layer of salt. There was a whisper-thin gold chain around its neck. The unblemished crucifix lay against its breastbone.

The skeleton was tiny. The child couldn't have been more than eight years old when it died.

"Christ," Anya said beside him, her breath the only warmth in the place. "What happened here?"

"I don't know." But that wasn't entirely true. Morgan remembered his dream, the figure bending over the altar, the little girl on it. On the back wall of the church, an ornate silver cross still hung. There was something wrong with it, and it took him a second to figure out what. It was upside down.

Anya was on her knees in front of the altar. Morgan thought she was praying, then saw that she was brushing her fingers over the ground. "Look," she said.

Morgan knelt beside her. The white rock of the floor was streaked with something darker. It was blood, though in this light it looked black. Close up the marks seemed random, but when he stepped back he saw the pattern radiating from the altar: a pentagram, and around that other symbols he didn't know.

"I think someone held a black mass here," Anya said.

"That's... summoning the devil, isn't it?"

"Or communing with him."

"Is that - is it the sort of thing the Hermetic Division does?"

She shook her head. "Your people and mine researched those rituals, but we never used them. Most of the magics we work with are outside of Christianity, part of an older faith. This stuff..." Her voice wavered for a moment as she looked around. "This is anti-Christian. Pagan beliefs are a denial of the One God. This is a rejection of Him."

Morgan could hear Raphael very clearly, saying that he and Nicholson had once been friends. If Morgan's dream had lasted longer, would he have seen his father here too? "It's deliberate evil," he said.

"Yes." She closed her eyes a moment, seeming to steady herself. When she opened them again they were less shocked and more determined. "No wonder this place isn't on the tourist route. But why were you drawn here?"

He'd opened his mouth to reply when he heard the footsteps behind him - and it was only then he remembered they were being pursued.

He spun to face the entrance a moment before Anya. But she was the one with the gun, and by the time she brought it to bear, four were already trained on them. The newcomers had lanterns, and in their brighter light the desecration of the church was even plainer to see. One of the men gasped, and another backed away. Morgan didn't recognise any of them, but all four were Japanese and there was no doubt who they were working for.

The fifth man, the one Anya had called Richard, stepped forward. He holstered his own gun as he approached, holding his hands up in a peaceable gesture undercut by the ordnance still on display behind him. His thin face looked drawn. "You led us a merry chase," he said. "Hello again, Anya."

Morgan almost smiled at the guilty expression on her face. "Richard."

"My colleagues thought I was being unnecessarily cynical, planting that tracking device on you. Thanks for proving them wrong."

Anya shrugged. "You split me in two, and you sent the half which remembered how to feel loyalty back to the BND. What did you expect me to do?"

A network of wrinkles seamed Richard's forehead as he frowned. "The diary won't do you any good. It's a terrible thing. Why do you think I hid it for so long?"

Morgan shifted, drawing Richard's eyes to him. "You hid it?"

"Nicholson gave it to me for safekeeping. That's one of the faults of the fanatic - they can't believe anyone would fail to find their cause as compelling as they do."

There was something in his expression when he said Nicholson's name, the way he looked only at Morgan. Morgan had noticed it before, on the train. It was as if Richard knew the relationship between them.

"Why did he give it to you?" Morgan asked. "What were you supposed to do with it?"

Richard studied him intently. "You know, you're not what I expected. I thought... It doesn't matter."

"Tell me about the book," Morgan said, firmer this time. "I have to know."

"Yeah, I think maybe you do. The diary was meant for Raphael - it really is his. He was in Russia when Nicholson died, and that isn't the kind of thing you send through the post. That book... I didn't truly realise what it was until I tried to destroy it. I threw it in a fire hot enough to melt metal, and the flames didn't even singe it. Knives won't touch it. It's indestructible. In the end, all I could do was hide it in a deep vault and pray. But I knew that wouldn't hold it forever. The book wanted to be found, and six months ago, it finally was.

"Understand this: Nicholson put more than his words into that book. He poured every ounce of power and magic he had into its pages. That's why he couldn't send it to Raphael until after he'd hung himself. It was born out of his death. Just like you, Morgan."

The words jolted like electricity up Morgan's spine. Richard did know. Morgan was both terrified and exhilarated. He could hardly bear to hear the things this man was telling him - but he wanted to know them all the same.

"What's the book for?" Morgan asked. "Why does Raphael want it so badly?"

Anya stepped forward suddenly, reaching out to grip Richard's arm. Behind him, four fingers twitched on four triggers, but she didn't seem to notice. "It's the artefacts, isn't it - the Ragnarok artefacts? Their location is hidden somewhere in the book."

Richard placed his own hand on top of hers, an almost comforting gesture. "Is that what you've been told? In a way, you're right - but not the way you think. The artefacts were never something that could be found. They have to be created."

Anya looked almost desperate, and Morgan realised that he hadn't had the chance to ask her why she wanted the book. "Then tell me how to create them!" she said.

Morgan thought Richard would. He wanted them to know, Morgan could see it in his face. That was why he'd come here, to tell Morgan exactly this. Their eyes caught and held, and Morgan's breath stuck in his throat.

Then Richard's eyes flicked aside, and he saw the skeleton on the altar. "You idiot!" he said to Morgan, suddenly furious. "What were you thinking, bringing us here?"

As if in answer, a sound began to grow around them, a low, growling rumble. It seemed to be coming from everywhere - the walls, the ceiling, the rock beneath their feet.

For a disoriented moment, Morgan thought that he was shaking. Then, like an optical illusion snapping into focus, he saw that it was the world which was moving, not him. The whole church was juddering in violent, uneven bursts. Salt shook from the ceilings and walls in a bitter snowfall. And as Morgan watched, horrified, the skeleton on the altar twitched and started to rise.

 

When they were half a mile away, the other boat caught sight of them. Tomas saw its wake suddenly froth a creamy white as the engine gunned and it began to draw away again.

"Hold on!" the captain shouted from his cabin.

He gave them only a second to grab the railing that circled the open deck, and then their own engine growled and the distance began to close. Tomas could see brown ovals of faces, staring back at them from the deck of the boat ahead.

"What kind of weapons do you see?" Anya asked.

"Can't make out anything from this distance," Tomas told her. "There's more of them, though. They're bound to outgun us."

"Still, we've got you." But the look she shot him was doubtful. He'd caught a glimpse of himself reflected in the cabin's window, and he knew that he was corpse pale, finally looking like exactly what he was.

"They know about me," he said. "They'll be prepared."

"And no sign of Belle..."

"They'll have her below decks, in the living quarters."

They'd be in range soon. Tomas had drawn the Beretta the BND had supplied him, but he couldn't risk firing till he had a clearer target. A stray bullet could penetrate the hull and anyone inside it. A stray bullet could hit Kate.

For the first time, Tomas admitted to himself that talking to her had become his main priority. Nicholson had faked Kate's death. Kate's death had led Tomas to embrace his own. And when she'd learned of that, Kate had gone to work for Raphael. Nicholson and Raphael must have been working together all along. It was the only explanation that made sense - and Tomas hadn't had a clue. The thought that his own naivety had led to this was unbearable. How many other people were going to pay for his stupidity? No more, he promised himself. Not one more.

He could see the faces on the other boat now, staring at him down the barrels of their guns. The woman wasn't Kate. Too young, her features too sharp.

"I know her!" Anya said. The was a discordant note in her voice, out of tune with her earlier mood.

The boat ahead veered suddenly to port, and theirs followed a second after, scything a broad sheet of water to splash back into the grey ocean. Anya staggered and Tomas did too, putting an arm around her waist to steady them both. Her body felt light and thin in his arms, as if there were less of her than there should be.

He grabbed her hands and pushed them against the railing, clinging onto it himself as the boat swerved again, a tighter arc this time that took them back into the choppy waters of their own wake. "How do you know her?" he shouted above the splash of the waves and the roar of the engine. "Who is she?"

Anya's throat worked as she swallowed. "It's the girl from the park in Budapest. The one who... the one who killed Karamov."

The boat was veering every few seconds, as if they were following some invisible slalom course. Tomas dropped to his knees to steady himself and peered through the railing at their quarry. The girl didn't look like anything, barely old enough to be out of school. As he watched, she raised her right hand.

Tomas ducked, dragging Anya down beside him. He expected to hear the whine of a bullet or the blast of its impact. But the noise he heard was longer and shriller.

"Not again," Anya whispered. The skin of her face looked as white and fine as copy paper.

"What does it mean?" Tomas asked, though he had a horrible suspicion. He'd seen what was left of Karamov after the dogs had finished with him.

Anya pushed herself to her feet without replying. She fired her gun twice before Tomas could prevent it. The smell of gunpowder briefly overpowered the briny tang of the ocean.

Tomas grabbed her arm before she could let off a third shot. Over on the other boat, he could see milling confusion. They hadn't expected to be fired on for the same reason Tomas hadn't fired: the danger to Belle. He thought he saw one of them on the deck, clutching an injured arm. But it wasn't the girl. She smiled as she took the whistle out of her mouth.

"Oh god," Anya moaned. "It's too late."

Tomas shook her, hard. "Listen to me - we're faster than them. We need to get alongside and get on board. Then whatever she's summoned will have to get through them to get to us."

"Too late," Anya said again, and for a moment Tomas thought terror had locked her into a fugue state.

Then he followed her gaze through the ship's rail, to the open sea beyond.

All around the boat, the water was churning. For a moment he thought they'd hit a reef, that the white froth was just water breaking over hidden rock. Then he saw that there were bodies inside the foam. Thousands of them, writhing beneath the surface, everywhere he looked.