The rain came down in sheets, reducing my footsteps on Liverpool’s worn cobblestones to a faint sloshing sound. I hadn’t expected to see many people out this late in this kind of weather, and I hadn’t seen any, but I was grateful for the cover of the downpour anyway. The streetlights were also dim and placed far apart, so other than an occasional flash of lightning, I remained an anonymous shape in a world of black shadows.
I turned into a narrow alleyway lined with delivery doors and garages. Here, shopkeepers’ carts and lorries rested alongside buildings, waiting for daybreak and the call of commerce. A drenched cat ran along the wall to my left, focused on something only it could see then disappeared under an iron gate.
A quarter mile ahead lay the river. I could smell it, and I could hear a solitary ferry horn, but the rain and darkness obscured any view of it. I slowed. In yellow letters on dark green steel, I read:
E.L. TYRCONNEL & SONS
PURVEYORS OF FINE SCOTTISH SPIRITS
I knocked once, and before I could bring my hand down a second time, the door opened, and I was facing a small, bald man in white shirtsleeves accented by a pair of tartan sleeve garters—Tyrconnel Clan. I closed the door behind me and shook off as much water as I could. The little man looked at me, taking in my height. “Aye,” he said in a light Highlands brogue, “a Black, for sure. Now, give me your hat and coat.”
I noticed that in spite of the circumstances of the evening, there was a twinkle in the man’s eye. “I loved your father,” he said. “When those fucking Canadians tried to run us out of business, he loaned us the money to stay afloat and arranged for Tyrconnel & Sons to become sole suppliers to the Crown. Then, his newspapers wrote about our good fortune.” Tyrconnel chuckled. “They don’t drink much Scotch down Buckingham Palace way, but suddenly, all of Europe wanted to do business with us. God bless Lord Black.”
I knew the story well, and I smiled back as I handed over my things. “He always spoke warmly of you, Mr. Tyrconnel. Especially about how you permitted him to hide newsprint in your warehouses during the strike so that when everyone else’s presses went dark, he was still turning out two editions a day.”
He waved his hand dismissively. “Twas the least I could do. There’s a drop or two of Tyrconnel blood running through the Black line, you know. And call me E.L., please. Come now,” he said. “We have a little time.”
I followed him down a long hallway until he stopped before a narrow door. He fished a large ring of keys out of his pocket and inserted one. When the door swung open, he turned a switch, and a light came on.
The stairway was steep and narrow, the ceiling extremely low. I had to bend my knees and duck as much as I could to keep from touching it, but there was nothing I could do about my shoulders, and they brushed both walls. Delta instructors teach you to count stairs on the way into a place in the event you need to make a fast exit. Forty-two. Assuming a rise of six inches, we were now at least twenty-one feet belowground.
The basement smelled of oak and leather, and when Tyrconnel turned on more lights, I was surprised at its size. At least one hundred feet long and half that in width. And in sharp contrast to the stairs, the ceiling was high—twelve feet, perhaps more.
Row upon row of tall wooden racks ran the room’s length, giving it the appearance of a vast wine cellar. Only instead of wine, these racks held thousands of bottles of Scotch awaiting their final destination. In a break in the racks about halfway down the room sat a grouping of oxblood-colored leather armchairs, worn to a fine patina. It was here that E.L. led me.
“Please,” he said, gesturing for me to sit.
As I did, I noticed a white nylon-covered fire hose running down the far row of racks, and out of sight beyond. The hose was tightly inflated, indicating liquid was flowing through it. I closed my eyes and listened. Deep in the bowels of the building, I heard a faint humming, clanking sound.
E.L. left for a moment and returned with two cut-crystal glasses and a decanter of deep amber liquid. He poured two fingers in each glass and handed one to me. I took a sip, and the warmth of fine Scotch washed over me. It was like nothing I’d ever tasted. Rich, extremely smoky, but somehow as smooth as velvet.
I smiled, and it was clear my appreciation pleased him. “If you don’t mind my asking,” I said.
“Bowmore 40,” he replied. “Remarkably elegant. Something for momentous times.”
I took another sip. “I’ll be adding it to my cellar.”
“Yes, you will,” he smiled. “There’s a case on its way to you.”
“I’ll instruct my office to send you a check.”
He held up his hand. “I am pleased to have been asked to help. Consider it an expression of gratitude.”
“Shouldn’t it be the other way around?”
“No, it most definitively should not.”
I let the moment stand.
A young man’s voice called from upstairs. “E.L., we need to be getting along.”
I rode in the backseat of the Jaguar sedan as we drove along the Mersey, its centuries-old stone and concrete banks reminding me of St. Petersburg and the Neva. There were three of us. Jeremy Tyrconnel, E.L.’s oldest son, was at the wheel, his brother, Ian, to his left.
“We would have gladly brought him to you,” Ian said.
“I know, and I’m appreciative, but I need to do this myself.”
“I understand. I’d feel exactly the same way. Your father was one helluva chap, Mr. Black. My brother and I were still in school, but we were devastated when he died. And E.L. says that Amarante was the most beautiful woman he ever saw. He attended their wedding, you know.”
“I know,” I said.
Ten minutes later, we slowed and turned into an ornate, eighteenth-century building sitting on the high north bank. The driveway angled downward, and on the lower level, we pulled up to a porticoed glass entryway. It was brightly lit, but no one was in sight.
“We’ll do our part, then be right here,” said Jeremy.
I got out and entered the building. The door was unlocked, and no one was at the security desk. I remembered the elevator. I hadn’t been in it since I was a boy, but it still creaked and groaned and shivered between floors. It had always been small, but now it seemed tiny.
The empty secretaries’ area on the third floor was also frozen in time. Mahogany desks, brass lamps and scattered green leather chairs for those who came to call. There was only one man to see now, and as I pushed open the heavy door to the conference room that led to his office, I heard his voice, angrily speaking on the telephone. I made my way around the long, ebony table that had once belonged to Charles I and stopped in the dark a few steps from the open office door.
“Captain Crowell, I don’t give a good goddamn what the dockmaster says, you sail tomorrow, period. That beef has to be in Santos Friday, and there’s a storm moving in. I’m already suspending you for this delay, and if you have to spread money around to get an exit stamp, that’ll come out of your pocket too. So before you end up working all year for nothing, you’d better find a way to get out of Buenos Aires—and quick. Do I make myself clear?”
Apparently, he didn’t need an answer, because he slammed the telephone down.
I stepped into the doorway.
Maximus Rhein sat where he always had, on the right side of the immense rosewood partner’s desk up against the wall of arched windows. The desk was in exactly the same place, but its ivory inlays of armor-clad warriors slaying dragons were not nearly as terrifying now as they had been to a seven-year-old.
A fire in the oversized fireplace crackled with warmth.
“Good evening, Max,” I said.
He looked up, noticed me, then returned to reading something on his desk.
His voice registered no surprise. “We’ve got nothing to say to each other, Black.”
I walked across the thick carpet and sat in my father’s old chair. I swiveled, looked down at the river. A long barge was going by, nudged on course by four tugs. “Two centuries ago, we could have looked out these same windows and seen four-masted slavers departing for Africa.”
“And that’s supposed to mean exactly what?” Rhein said.
I ignored him. “But long after such sorrow-laden ships no longer plied English waters, there were still those who traded in flesh. And the financial gain for ferrying today’s slaves between nasty ports dwarfs even the grandest dreams of those who pioneered such commerce.” I turned and looked across the desk at him. “And some of those men still sit in these windows—and bank their profits in British sterling.”
Rhein picked up the telephone and pressed two digits. Moments later, a rough-looking, broad-shouldered man wearing a dark tweed coat and a black turtleneck came through the door.
“You called for me, Mr. Rhein?” the man said.
“Yes, Brooks. Escort Mr. Black the hell out of the building, then fire the security person who let him through. And if he should happen to fall down the stairs in the process, make sure he lands on his face.”
Brooks looked squarely at me, then at Max. “I’m sorry, I can’t do that,” he said.
Rhein’s voice became angry. “Are you deaf? I said throw this man out.”
“I’m sorry, sir, but I don’t know what you’re talking about. There’s no one here but you.”
Rhein looked at me, then at Brooks. “What the…”
“I’ll be going now, sir. Mrs. Brooks is nursing a touch of the flu. Good night, Mr. Rhein.” And Brooks departed.
Rhein picked up the telephone and began to dial again.
“The phones are now off,” I said.
Rhein listened into the receiver, then slammed it down. He picked up a cell phone.
I reached across the desk, took the cell out of his hand and threw it ten feet into the fireplace.
“What the hell do you want?” he snarled.
“Nothing.”
“Nothing?”
“Well, as close to nothing as one can get. I came for you.”
Max Rhein sat, his mouth open but no words coming out. I got to my feet, walked over to his side of the desk and hit him in the face with my fist. Not hard enough to hurt him badly, but hard enough so that it stung my hand. Here, in this office, the decisions had been made, and I wanted to feel something. Anything.
Rhein sat next to me in the back of the Jag, pressing a handkerchief against his nose, dabbing at blood that had already stopped.
“So this is the great Maximus Rhein,” said Ian Tyrconnel, half turning in his seat. “Growing up in Liverpool, I heard his name, of course, but I don’t believe I ever saw the man. Pardon me for saying so, but he doesn’t look like much.”
Jeremy looked over his shoulder. “They’re comfortable with blood on their hands. But when it’s on their suits…ah, that’s a different story.”
Rhein looked at me as if a light had suddenly gone on. “Holden,” he said.
“I found him in Tunisia,” I said. “Living in La Goulette, hiring out on sardine boats. Not a happy man. Said you reneged on the money you promised for the explosion that killed my fiancée. By the way, in case word didn’t reach you, Quinn died from septicemia brought on by the bullet I put in him. Holden said he lay in that cheap Panamanian hotel for two weeks, screaming, waiting for the doctor you were sending. The one who never came.”
Rhein slumped in his seat.
“You know how naïve I was, Max? Until Holden started talking, I had absolutely no idea you were behind my parents’ deaths. I didn’t even suspect my father hadn’t died in an avalanche. That he’d been pushed into a crevasse. And that the men who shot my mother and Charlie Fear were a pair of Coral Gables teenagers just picking up some fast money. If someone had given me a thousand guesses and a thousand years, I wouldn’t have come close to figuring out that the trail to all this death would lead here.”
“Goddamn,” breathed Jeremy Tyrconnel.
After a moment, Rhein tried to speak, but his voice broke.
I said, “For the record, Max, Tony Holden’s dead. I know what a sensitive guy you are, so I’ll spare you the details. But I think, on the whole, he would have rather been in Philadelphia.”
Rhein found his voice. His fury was palpable. “Your father stole my ships out from under me! I worked my whole life building that business, then, just like that, it was gone. Sucked into the Black empire without so much as a thank-you.”
I looked at him. “All the money in the company was my father’s, Max. Or did you forget? And it was his name on the door that brought people in, not yours. You came to him a failure, and with his capital and his contacts, he made you richer than you had a right to expect.
“And how did you repay him? By using his ships to transport kidnapped Pakistani children to India as carpet slaves. By shanghaiing Dominicans to Haiti to cut sugarcane. And by shipping Sudanese ten-year-olds to North Africa for…
“You disgusted him, and you disgust me. You were lucky all he did was terminate your partnership. He should have had you thrown in prison. And he didn’t leave you destitute. He carried you until you were back on your feet. Even today, you work from a Black property. And for that, you sick old fuck, you tried to wipe his name off the face of the earth.”
At first, Rhein didn’t want to go down the Tyrconnels’ basement stairs. It was important to me that he wasn’t dragged, so I hit him just off the center of his throat with the edge of my hand. His eyes went wide, and he choked a couple of times, but he found his footing and decided to go under his own power.
E.L. met us at the bottom of the stairs, and the four of us followed him to the far reaches of a section of the basement that had remained darkened earlier. Now we were guided by work lights rigged along a rough passageway just wide enough to allow two men to walk side by side. The inflated fire hose ran along the floor to our right, and the humming noise I had heard earlier became louder.
At the end of the passageway, we came to a large manhole cut into the concrete floor. An iron grate covering it had been removed, and more work lights and the hose ran down into it. The top of a steel ladder extended a foot above the rim, and without hesitating, Jeremy and Ian disappeared down.
Max froze, but I prodded him hard in the back, and with shaking hands and legs, he managed to get onto the ladder. As I followed him down, I saw the broken remains of ancient, iron handholds protruding from the rock. However, as we passed a distinct, still-wet waterline on the walls, the handholds disappeared. Rusted away.
Thirty-five feet later, we dropped onto black bedrock, wet and slippery with algae. We were in a round chamber perhaps twenty feet in diameter. Along the walls behind the ladder lay coiled ropes and pressure hoses, acetylene and oxygen tanks, a pair of welding masks, heavy gloves and a torch.
To the right extended another lighted passageway, this one slightly narrower than the one above. Its entry was through a hinged, vertical iron grate as tall as I was. It reminded me of a bank vault.
Ian had to raise his voice to be heard over the humming noise now. “This is where they held African slaves bound for London. The U.S. gets most of the human trafficking vitriol, but beginning around 1700 and running for a hundred and seventy-five years, Britain had her own issues. The Trade Triangle they teach you in school—guns and trinkets to Africa; slaves to America; then tobacco, sugar and cotton back here—is only part of the picture. What they don’t mention is that some English owners of American plantations couldn’t say no to cheap labor and imported domestic help right from the outset. Cooks, housekeepers and liverymen mostly, but some were brought for sex—all kinds.”
He looked at Maximus Rhein. “Welcome, Mr. Rhein. They say if you listen carefully, you can still hear the screams.” To me, he said, “Everything you requested is about halfway in, Mr. Black. There’s a wide spot cut into the rock, where mothers used to sit and nurse their babies.”
“What’s that noise?” Rhein demanded nervously.
Jeremy pointed to the hose. “A pump. We’re about twenty-five feet below river level. Perhaps you noticed the waterline on the way down. Eighty years ago, the city fathers flooded the catacombs to keep history as non-visual as possible. It’s a criminal offense to be down here.” He winked at Rhein. “Don’t tell, okay?”
Jeremy Tyrconnel stepped aside, and Ian entered the passageway. I pushed Max after him.
“What do you think this is going to solve?” Rhein shouted over his shoulder, trying to sound belligerent but not pulling it off.
“Solve? I’m not trying to solve anything.”
“Then why bring me to this dreadful place? Okay, you win, I’m terrified. But you could have just shot me in my office. Dead is dead.”
“Max, I’m surprised at you. This is England. I’m not carrying a gun.”
Ahead, the tunnel began to widen, and shortly, we were standing in a much larger area, about the size of a hotel suite. Stacked against the far wall were a wet suit, mask, regulator and four individual scuba tanks.
“Get changed,” I said to Max.
He looked at me with palpable terror. “I don’t dive anymore,” he stammered. “I’m too old.”
I reached out and took his suit coat off him. “It’s just like riding a bicycle.”
As Max Rhein stripped, he began to weep. He didn’t beg or cry out, he just sobbed to himself. And like in the office, I tried to feel something—anything—but nothing came.
Just then the pump stopped. The silence was momentarily startling, and the hose immediately deflated. Then Ian came into view, carrying the hose and coupling over his shoulder like the head of a giant, dead anaconda. He disappeared in the direction of the entrance.
Max was in the wet suit now, his business clothes folded neatly and sitting on his shoes so they didn’t touch the damp floor. I noticed that the wet suit was a little large, making him appear smaller than he was.
He had stopped sobbing, but his throat still spasmed like a child’s. “What happens now?”
“Without the pump, this chamber is going to start filling with water. About two inches an hour, I’m told.”
I saw him look up at the ceiling and do a rough calculation. Eight feet. Forty-eight hours.
“That should give you plenty of time to scream yourself hoarse and run back and forth a few times before you get exhausted and settle down to do some serious thinking. Maybe even spend a minute or two on some of the children you sentenced to live in agony thousands of miles from their parents.
“Roughly two days from now, you’ll need to strap on the first tank. That will buy you another hour. There’s one for each of my parents, one for Sanrevelle, and one for our baby. My wife was pregnant, or didn’t you know? By the time you reach the end of the fourth tank, maybe you’ll be halfway to some of the anguish you’ve caused others. Of course, there’s always the possibility you’ll go mad and forget the tanks, and that will be okay too.”
As the reality of what I was saying washed over him, I saw he was about to become hysterical. I stepped forward and slapped him—hard. It brought him back.
“Please, don’t do this,” he cried. “I’m begging you. Just kill me. Oh, dear God, please, just kill me now.”
“Max, God has nothing to do with this.” And with that, I turned and walked away.
As I exited the chamber, Ian closed the iron grate behind me and padlocked it, then he turned off the work lights, and the slave chamber went dark. Turning, he began to help Jeremy, who was now wearing the welding gear and rolling a massive, steel plate over the grate.
Just before the plate hit home, I thought I caught a glimpse of Maximus Rhein running headlong toward us, his face becoming a skeleton. But I couldn’t be sure.
And then Jeremy fired the acetylene.