Chapter 19

Pentimento

July 5: Powick

“Pentimento,” Ashna said, glancing over at me. We were speeding along the road to Powick, my third visit in two days. It was very dark on that country highway. My phone showed that Jutting and company had parked at the old asylum. We were twenty minutes behind them.

“What about it?” I asked.

“It’s when an artist changes a painting. Like say they paint out a person’s arm or something and put it in a different position but there’s still evidence of the original composition.”

“Yes, I know. Remember, I’m the one who paid attention in art history.”

“Well, it just popped into my head. Could be a metaphor for our situation or something.”

“Deep. I was just thinking about something I read a long time ago. Can’t even remember who wrote it. It said, movement through darkness is the ultimate abstraction of life itself.”

“Even deeper. We are moving through darkness,” Ashna said in a creepy ghost voice. “Our path is unilluminated. The future is unknown, unseeable.”

“Fine. It’s not any worse than your metaphor searching for something to be metaphoric about.”

“Why did they go to the asylum? That’s what we should be thinking about.”

“Yeah. I have a guess. Given that Jutting used to be a member of the Masonic order, I’m guessing he’s into weird rituals.”

“That seems like a fair guess.”

“And judging by his subterranean ritual room, he likes a creepy location for his weird rituals.”

“Yes.”

“And, knowing that he is obsessed with the occult, his weird rituals in creepy locations are probably going to involve demons, spirits, blood, sacrifice…”

“Naked orgiastic sex rites!” Ashna broke in.

“Maybe that too. Anyway, where else would he go to do his deciphered Cellini via mad Cellini descendent via Elgar magic spell? He’s got to be planning some kind of ritual at the asylum. Maybe that’s why he bought the place, aside from the connection to his youth.”

“You’re probably right. What are we going to do about it?”

“A plan is percolating in my brain. We’ll need to hide this car somewhere and hike in though.”

We left the car on what looked like an unused side road leading out into a field, tucked into a group of trees that would keep it hidden from the highway. The sky was still nearly black with a faint tinge of blue at the horizon. Morning was approaching. The cool, damp air smelled like mossy soil full of fat worms. We were three quarters of a mile from the housing development. With nowhere else to walk, we stuck to the shoulder of the main road. Only two vehicles passed during the fifteen minutes it took us to get to the entrance to the estate. One was an old panel truck, the other a motorcycle. Both times we crouched amongst the trees until they were well away.

I had been driving a car through the housing estate on my previous visit but I had a rough idea how to get where I was going on foot. I led the way, dead reckoning through the silent, Stepford-like lanes until we stood in front of the model house the agent had showed me.

“What’s special about this one?” Ashna asked.

“It’s the model home. Electricity is on, water is on. It even has WiFi.”

“Got it. So we hole up here and use it as our base?”

“What if they decide to do a tour?”

“I doubt they’ll be showing any homes to potential buyers until after Jutting calls up the spirits of the dead, becomes a mighty necromancer, and seizes power.”

“Yeah, probably not.”

“How do we get in?”

“Front door. I memorized the combo for the key box when the agent opened it.” I glanced down the street to where the old asylum crouched in the darkness, its one, cyclopean chimney jutting up black against the dark sky. Something about the scene made me think of Goya’s terrifying depiction of Saturn devouring his own son. It was something in the composition, the colors, the brooding, claustrophobic horror. I turned away quickly.

“Is that it?” Ashna asked.

“Yes.”

“Creepy looking place.”

“It wasn’t so bad in the daylight. Let’s get settled. We have work to do,” I said, opening the key box.

Inside, we planted ourselves on the conservative, uncomfortable furniture in the living room. It was the kind of furniture that looks substantial but lacks proper weight. As soon as you sit down you realize it’s nothing but thin pine lumber, fiber fill, and fabric. We left the lights off and the blinds closed.

The Wi-Fi was open so Ashna connected and got back to work right away. I was prepared for several more hours of frustrated grunts punctuated by inventive curses but after only a few minutes she raised her hands in triumph. “Ha! Jutting’s own stupid laptop!”

“What do you mean?”

“My little hacker box that you placed in the asylum found another client on the network called mjutting. It’s running Windows ten. Probably a laptop. Probably not patched frequently. Sometimes the boss machine is the easiest one to hit. Sysadmins are afraid of the bosses so they let them get away with not running updates. I’m going to try a few exploits.” Ashna worked for a few more minutes, typing commands into a terminal window. I watched the output scroll by.

I had that feeling you get when it’s almost morning and you haven’t slept—gritty eyes, senses deadened and heightened at the same time. I was lying on the floor, stretching my neck and had just felt a very satisfying pop around my C-7 vertebra when Ashna raised her arms again.

“I’m in,” she said. “Good old remote desktop services remote code execution vulnerability CVE two thousand nineteen one two two six.”

“I have no idea what that means.”

“You don’t need to. You just need to know that I am now the master of Jutting’s laptop.”

“Great. How does that help us?”

“He’s on the machine right now. I can view his screen just like I was standing behind him. He’s on a Skype call. Let’s listen.”

I got up and crouched next to Ashna’s chair. A window was open on her laptop that showed Jutting’s full desktop in miniature. He appeared to be on a video chat. The person on the other end of the call was an elderly man with white hair and a face like haggis. He seemed agitated and was talking quickly which made his jowls quiver with a stop motion animation-like video latency effect. Jutting’s face was visible too in a smaller box in the corner.

“…cannot use the ritual structure when you are no longer a member. Nor can you borrow ritual items or in any way associate your fiasco with our order. It’s inconceivable.”

There was a pause while Jutting presumably said something in reply. We couldn’t hear it because his end of the conversation was not being played back through his own computer.

“We’ve got to get Jutting’s audio,” Ashna said. “I might have a trick for that. Did he have an iPhone?”

“Yes, I think so. Only saw his phone for a moment,” I said, closing my eyes and calling up the scene. “I’m pretty sure it was an iPhone.”

“Great. I have a zero day in my pocket. Friend from Mossad told me about it. Interactionless exploit.”

“A friend from Mossad?”

“Yes. Not the kind of friend you know IRL Justin. The kind you meet on the dark web. And by ‘told me about it’ I mean gave it to me after I paid for it. Paid a lot of money for it.”

“I have a feeling you have a whole secret life going on that I know very little about.”

“You’re one to talk. Remember when you spent years secretly being a master cat burglar without even your closest friends knowing anything about it?”

“Fair enough.”

“Anyway, what was Jutting’s phone number? I wasn’t planning on using the big guns but I want to know what that rat fucker is saying.”

Victoria Butler had given me Jutting’s private number to pass on to Ortoli. I found it and read it out to Ashna. She pulled up another window then quickly typed a command that included the digits.

“He doesn’t even have to answer the call,” she said. “I can capture audio from his phone’s mic. I can do a lot of other unsavory things too but I just want to hear what he’s saying right now.”

On the screen, we could see Jutting look down as if glancing at his phone. Output started to flow in the terminal window—lines of green text on a black background, moving by too fast to read.

“Got him!” Ashna exclaimed.

“…afraid it’s out of the question.” Haggis face shook his head back and forth forcefully.

“Matthews is coming.” Jutting smiled. His voice seemed flat with a tinge of robotic echo chamber to it.

“Archibald?” Haggis face asked, obviously surprised. The name Archibald Matthews was familiar but I couldn’t remember where I’d heard it. I put it aside to think over later and focused on the conversation.

“Yes. He’s in London on vacation. The fool told Benderick about my cryptographer and Benderick thought he could threaten me. That’s another story though, for another time.”

I turned to Ashna. “Benderick? How is he mixed up in this?” She shook her head and we both turned back to the screen.

“Philpot and Gentry too,” Jutting continued. “You are losing your hold, Richard. They are defecting.”

“Fine. Tell me what you’re planning, Jutting. I might consider it.”

“I have the grimoire handed down from my father, who found it in a storeroom, in a box of personal items left behind by Lorenzo Conti who was the last in a long line of successors all the way back to the author, Benvenuto Cellini.”

“Yes, we’ve been over this, Jutting. I have no reason to believe the book is authentic.”

“No reason not to, either. Sir Edward Elgar was an intimate of Lorenzo Conti when he was the music master in my father’s sanatorium and Conti was an inmate. The director of the sanatorium at the time left a note in his journal, mentioning the relationship and noting that the two often read together from an old manuscript.”

“You’ve told me all this before.”

“Never know how much you retain, Richard.” Jutting seemed to take pleasure in calling the other man by his first name. He drew the syllables out, bringing gleeful attention to his transgression. "Well, I do know that you are familiar with the dark saying encoded into Elgar’s Enigma Variations and the probability that it is, in fact, an incantation such as the one Cellini must have learned from the Sicilian priest who helped him call up the armies of the underworld.”

“So some believe.”

“Yes, some. Including you when I first discussed this with you years ago.”

“I never thought you would go so far with this charade.”

“Well, I have. And now, a cryptographer in my employ has finally broken the enigma. And his solution points to a particular passage of the grimoire. It names the chapter and the page. The chapter is titled Negomanzia.”

Haggis face looked shaken. “But you can’t be serious about trying this, Jutting.”

“Of course I’m serious,” Jutting broke off, exasperated. “Of course I am. This is what I have devoted my life to finding. You put up a great facade but when it comes down to brass tacks you are afraid, Richard. You fear the power so you don’t deserve it. That’s why your followers are deserting you. Deserting your faltering order. If you decide to join us, the ceremony will begin at midnight. I have nothing more to say.”

I watched Jutting’s pointer move across the screen and click the End Call button. Ashna and I looked at each other.

“Is this guy for real?” Ashna asked. “He thinks he’s going to call up some demons and use them to become a powerful dark wizard? This is the real world, not Harry Potter land.”

“I don’t really care much about whether he tries out some dark incantation. He can sacrifice a goat for all I care. Maybe he will. What we need to do is get the enigma solution and send it to Wolhardt before Jutting makes it public. If Wolhardt is the first to go public with it, Jutting will have to pay the reward, even if he already figured it out. He won’t be able to argue that he found it first because he’ll have to admit that he stole the method from Wolhardt.”

“True. We have a good opportunity here. Jutting and his crew are going to be distracted by the preparations for their big black magic party. There are probably a lot of details to nail down. They need to find some virgins, get a lot of candles, maybe some blood to drink out of golden chalices.”

“I’m going to go in. I need to get the notes and St. Martin’s new laptop. I’ll have to wait until after dark though. What time is sunset?”

Ashna ran a quick search. “Looks like around nine fifteen.”

“Okay. I need some sleep.”

“Not me. I’m basically undead. Jutting should just summon me. I wouldn’t do his bidding though. I’d slap him around.”

“I’m sure you would. I’m going to go see if there are sheets on the beds upstairs.”

“I’ll come with you. There’s a little favor you can do for me before you go to sleep.”

“Seriously? Didn’t we vow never again after the last time?”

“You know how I get when I find a good exploit and hack the holy living shit out of some asshole. I can’t help it. It’s like when regular people eat oysters or watch porn or whatever it is they do.”

****

I woke up around three PM. Ashna wasn’t in the bed. I knew where I was but it took me a moment to remember why. I sat up and looked around the room while the fog cleared from my head. Beige Berber carpet, cream colored walls, white trim. The bed did have sheets. The bedspread—pink roses on a mint background—lay on the floor to my left, half dull, half bright in a shaft of sun from the window. A print hung on the wall directly across from the bed—a painting in a loose, impressionistic style showing a bucolic windmill nestled into a field of tulips. It made me think of Dworkin, his friend, and the less bucolic mill I had visited the day before. It had not been what I expected. The asylum would not be either. I felt a dull tide of dread wash over me, weighing me down. I pictured going in blind, with no plan and Jutting’s security on a tight leash, having to find an unguarded entrance, having to slip through the net when everyone would be on high alert—it didn’t make me happy. So far, nothing had gone as planned. The job had been chaos from start to finish. I couldn’t go in thinking it would be easy—stride in there with my usual level of confidence and walk out with what I came for. I thought back to the remote Chateau, deep in the woods, where I had been trapped in the basement vault, bound, shoved into the trunk of a car, taken to a clearing to be executed. It had all happened less than a year before, I could see the scene in my head as if I was looking down a long tunnel or watching a television screen from a distance in a darkened room. Miniature people were arrayed around the gloomy clearing like action figures placed by a child. One of them was me. One of them was pointing a gun. I pushed the memory away with an effort of will. The dread was still fresh in my mind. I had saved myself then but would I be lucky again? I couldn’t count on it. Above all, I needed to know beforehand where in the building the notes were being kept. Was St. Martin still working on the solution? If not, why had they brought him? If I had to creep around the asylum looking for St. Martin’s quarters it would make things astronomically more difficult. I got out of bed, agitated, still thinking through the problem, and wandered into the en suite bathroom. The decorator who staged the house had even thought to provide bath towels, also mint green. I turned the taps in the shower, hoping there would be hot water.

Downstairs, Ashna was sprawled on the sectional sofa, laptop on her chest, staring at the screen.

“I’m deep into this network Justin. It’s like I’m a dog and this network is another dog’s butt. I’ve got it all figured out.”

I sat down in a recliner. “Good. I need to know where people are located in the building. I need to know which room St. Martin is in most of all. I don’t want to go blundering around.”

“You’re in luck. At least partially. This place is saturated with wireless access points. They’ve got one for each flat, one in the lobby, a couple of big rooms with two each, boiler room, offices, conference room. I found the architectural plans from the remodel on the file server. They have a nifty cloud based network management system. I’m in that too. It lets me view each access point and see what clients are currently connected to it.”

“Clients?”

“Computers or other connected devices. We call them clients when talking about a LAN architecture to differentiate them from servers. So, I can at least tell you what access point people’s laptops and phones are currently connected to. Doesn’t necessarily mean they are still there, just that they were there recently and haven’t connected to a different one yet. In a mesh network clients get passed off to the closest access point so you will see them jump from one to another as they move around in the physical space. Also, I found an email from Victoria Butler that Jutting was copied on. It was to your friend Angela James telling her to get three of the flats ready. Jutting’s in the fancy one at the end of the east wing. Victoria Butler and St. Martin are on the second floor, also in the east wing but close to the central building. Security is based in the lobby and roaming the building." Ashna pulled up the floor plan and pointed the units out.

"That’s good news. Now I just need to figure out the best way to get into those flats. But first, I’m starving. Did we bring anything to eat?"

"I should let you starve for sleeping through the whole day but I’ll take pity. There are some protein bars in my pack. I brought a whole case with me. New diet."

I chewed one of Ashna’s dry, flavorless bars while we went over the plans of the building. There was a side door at the rear of the main building, just before the chapel if you were working your way back, giving access to a stairwell that snaked back and forth from basement to the fourth floor and on up to the roof. The stairs would be patrolled but probably only by a stationary guard at the bottom. There was also a fire escape on the exterior of the building leading to the roof. If there was a guard and if I could distract him, I could climb the Victorian era fire escape to the top of the building, break in via the roof door, and take the stairs down to the second floor where I would emerge close to St. Martin’s flat. It was the best plan we could see based on the layout of the building and probable placement of security.

"I’m going to leave at nine thirty. I’ll get on the roof, find a place to hide, and wait for your signal. They’ll probably all attend the ritual. My best chance will be then, while they’re distracted."

"Agreed," Ashna said, looking up from the laptop screen. "I can follow their movements and let you know when they begin heading toward the chapel, assuming that’s where they’re going to do it."

“What better place?” I asked, picturing the scene. Despite my disbelief, I felt an atavistic aversion. The idea made me sick—Jutting in the center of the circle, mumbling some nonsense from an ancient book, surrounded by other old men, all hoping for some supernatural thrill, hungry for some measure of control over their own impending mortality. The power of ritual didn’t necessarily come from any real world result, but from the act itself—the regimented mobilization of bodies, the thrusting of normal people into liminal space, both mental and physical. I had no doubt that demons would fail to appear and do Jutting’s bidding. But the ceremony itself might serve to increase his power anyway by binding weak minds, convincing them via the hallowed smoke and mirrors of ritual stagecraft that they had experienced something numinous, caught a glimpse of the divine or the demonic. It had been working for charlatans like Jutting since the dawn of civilization, when people first discovered that power and wealth could be gained by claiming special access to the gods. The whole enterprise made me angry and stiffened my resolve to get the stolen notes back and the solution St. Martin had decoded, give it all to Wolhardt so he could claim the reward and sting Jutting, even if it was just a minor sting, a drop in the bucket considering the vast wealth he controlled.