Alchemist (66 page)

‘That's quite a difference.'

In a masterful display of self-control, Walker's expression barely altered. ‘Well – it reminds me of your Chappaquiddick. All kinds of different stories start flying round when accidents occur.'

‘That's because someone was trying to do a cover-up at Chappaquiddick,' Conor said, his eyes fixed on Walker's.

‘Yes, tragedy does make people panic, doesn't it? Maybe they all got drunk at the beach barbecue first, and someone made up a story to prevent the skipper of the boat being
prosecuted for negligence. The sad truth is that Mr Rowley has drowned, and whatever the circumstances, that remains the case.'

Conor wondered how much all this had cost the company in bribes to the relevant authorities in Hawaii. ‘Have they found his body yet?'

‘I believe not. From what I hear, with the currents and undertows on that coast, it could have been swept out to sea and lost for ever.'

How convenient for everyone
, Conor thought sourly. He pumped more questions at Walker, trying not to show his hand, but got no further information out of him. Changing the subject, he related the substance of Schwab's fax.

Walker agreed to the Washington trip, gave him two names in Human Resources who handled all travel arrangements, told Conor he would see him at nine o'clock, and left.

As Monty drove along the Euston Road she saw the Bendix Schere monolith rising up ahead, on the right. But instead of turning across the traffic and driving up to the security gate, she made a left into the side road opposite and slowed to a crawl. Twenty yards ahead was a ramp leading into a multistorey car park that she had seen numerous times, but of which she had never taken any notice. Until now.

The orange and black lettering across the entrance said, ‘
LRG CAR PARKS
.' AS she drew level, she saw an electronic sign by the lowered barrier that announced: ‘
FULL, CONTRACT PARKING ONLY
.'

She drove on a short distance, turning left again around the block, looking for a meter, then ended up back at Euston Road. Approaching the multi-storey once more, this time she pulled into the kerb, took a chance on a double yellow and ran up the ramp, squeezing past the barrier and into the concrete world of the interior. A closed-circuit camera watched her silently from an indent near the top of the wall.

She thought it was strange that there was no attendant. The ramp curved sharply and steeply, like the chute of a helter skelter: seeing no sign of a pedestrian entrance, she walked up it and around the bend into increasing darkness. Then, ahead
of her, she saw a booth and a second much stronger barrier blocking off the ramp beyond.

She approached the booth under the distinctly hostile stare of the uniformed attendant behind its plate-glass window. Her warm smile provoked no change in his expression.

The window facing her was sealed and there was no door. Inside, another attendant was seated in front of a bank of monitors. There was no rate card on view.

‘I wonder if you could help me – I'm interested in buying a season ticket,' she said through the security grill.

Unreadable eyes stared back at her. ‘We're full.'

‘Do you have a waiting list?'

‘About three years at the moment.'

Monty thought for a moment. ‘OK, I think – I – I'd like to put my name down. May I take a look around first?' She only realized after she had said it, how daft the remark must sound.

He looked at her stonily. ‘It's a car park. There's nothing to see.'

She racked her brains for an excuse to get past him. ‘You seem to have very good security here. I have an old car – a classic – I'm very concerned about vandalism.' She was making a complete hash of it, she knew, feeling increasingly flustered.

‘Nothing gets vandalized in here,' he replied curtly.

‘Right. Good. You – er – you monitor them?'

‘We have closed-circuit surveillance.' His eyes did not move from her face.

‘How much capacity do you have?'

‘What's it to you?'

Her face reddened. ‘I – I'm curious, that's all.'

The attendant's colleague glanced over his shoulder at Monty and studied her for a moment, as if imprinting her in his memory. In return she tried to look at his monitors, but they revealed nothing more than lines of cars, concrete pillars and pools of darkness.

‘What time do you close at night?'

‘We don't close.' He was showing distinct signs of losing his patience.

‘OK, thanks. If I go ahead and put my name on the waiting list, to whom do I write?'

‘You give it to me.'

‘Where's your head office? If I want to write in?'

The eyes stared flintily at her. ‘If you want to communicate, you do it here.'

She gave him another pointless smile. ‘OK, thanks.'

As she went back out into the street, she saw a traffic warden had stopped by her MG. ‘Hey!' she shouted, breaking into a run. ‘I'm just going!'

The warden was a young woman her own age, with a cheery grin. ‘Another thirty seconds and I'd have booked you.'

‘Phew!' Monty paused and pointed back at the multi-storey. ‘I was just trying to buy a parking contract. Rather a sullen lot in there.'

‘Charge the earth, these car parks,' the warden said, then gave her a knowing look. ‘But a lot cheaper than getting tickets.'

When she got to her office, Monty ignored the stack of correspondence awaiting her, logged on to her computer terminal and called up the electronic phone directory stored on the company's main archive system. She selected the ‘H-M' section for London and typed in a search for LRG Car Parks.

Almost instantly the reply appeared:
Not found
.

She rang Directory Enquiries, but was told there was nothing listed under that name.

Monty hung up and sat back pensively. Fire regulations, she thought, suddenly. Car parks had to be inspected regularly. She tried Westminster City Council and asked for the Chief Fire Officer's department. A female voice answered.

‘I'm trying to find the head office of a company called LRG Car Parks, just off the Euston Road,' Monty explained. ‘I can't find them listed anywhere, and I thought you'd probably have their correspondence address on file.'

‘I'll check for you …'

Monty began to scroll through her eMail messages as she waited, noticed an irate one from her father about another
missing file, then heard the woman come back on the line. ‘LRG Car Parks, 11 Chaltow Street?'

‘Yes. That's the one,' Monty said with a beat of excitement.

‘We have their head office recorded as 216 Lombard Street, EC3.'

Monty jotted this down, then hung up.

The address rang a bell, for some reason, but she could not immediately think why.
216 Lombard Street
. She stared at it, then suddenly keyed into one of the old files she'd transferred into her computer. ‘Bannerman Research Laboratories – BS Acquisition Documents.'

She scanned through it for the correspondence they'd had with the Bendix Schere lawyers, Dean-Wilson. Their City address jumped back at her:

216 Lombard Street. London EC3 6BK.

North London. 1953

Daniel squatted in a corner of the temple, his chalice cupped in his hands, and eyed the scene in front of him with distaste.

His fellow adepti lay sprawled on the floor variously and enthusiastically engaged in sexual congress from fellatio to intercourse to sodomy. Mostly they were in pairs, but one group was copulating in a threesome and one in a foursome. This period was not just the highlight of the week for them, it was the highlight of their existence.

Bringing the chalice slowly to his lips, Daniel drank a tiny amount, still uncertain after eighteen months as an adept whether he liked the bitter, metallic taste or not. It was not long ago, he reflected, that he had been so in awe of these people he had longed with all his heart to become a member of their coven; now he was experiencing disillusion.

He could still clearly remember the pride – and the shock –
of his initiation. But more, far more, he could remember the acquisition of the
power
.

The taste of that power.

The incredible energy, strength, ability that it promised. Where was it now? Everyone here had, once, gone through the same ritual as himself, all had tasted that same power. But what were they doing with it? Just squandering it on a few moments of repetitive pleasure.

For it was always the same, week after week. Only small variations in the ritual on certain important dates of the calendar. Nothing else changed here. And after the ritual had ended, the masks came off and the party began.

The sacramental potion was the only drink offered; it contained a potent mix of red wine, gin, cloves, cinnamon, and blood. On festival dates, small quantities of urine and semen were added.

Daniel usually drank only a few sips, making the contents of his gold initiation chalice last the night. Those sips were more than enough to give him a lift and to blur his already well-heightened senses. The drinking was accompanied by shared sandwiches, sausage rolls and cakes. Then after the food came the sex.

It had taken him aback to learn that his first duty as a new initiate was to copulate with a different female member of the coven every week, until he had covered each one. After that, it was a free-for-all.

Of the twenty-one women, Daniel found three quite attractive. There were a further six he could just about cope with; they were neither ugly, nor too old, nor smelled unpleasant, and with sex still a novelty and his urges strong, he was reasonably able to enjoy his couplings with them. But the rest, in varying degrees, filled him with disgust. And even worse had been the two occasions when he'd been taken from behind by other men in the coven, once on his own, once whilst he was actively engaged in intercourse with a woman. As a junior adept he had no option but to comply.

On the nights when his luck was down in the pairings he would drink the entire content of his goblet and sometimes refill it more than once. The result was always the same: he
would stagger home with his focus and co-ordination gone, knock everything over and wake his mother who would smell the alcohol on his breath and scream abuse at him.

But it was a long time since he had feared her abuse. Now it simply amused him; so much so that there were times when he had to struggle not to burst out laughing in her face. Even before the accident when she had lost her hands she had turned from an object of fear into a guinea pig on whom he could test his powers. He no longer even regarded her as his mother, but as his caged laboratory animal.

He drank some more of the potion, pleased that he had been quick enough at the end of the ritual workings to slip away before the scramble for pairings started. Three women were absent tonight due to illness, but there would be no shortage of volunteers coming for him in ten minutes or so when the first couplings had ended. He intended to be sufficiently drunk by then not to care.

‘You seem very quiet recently, Theutus. Something bothering you?'

The Magister Templi's voice startled Daniel and he looked up at the naked man; saw his flowing hair, the silver chain, the flabby bowl of his paunch, the massive penis limp and spent –glistening with fresh fluids. This apparition sat down beside him and placed an arm around his shoulder.

‘Do you want to talk about it?'

Daniel drank a little more and it gave him confidence. ‘I don't always want to squander my energies in sex, Magister. I want to preserve my energies for higher work.'

‘And what kind of higher work do you have in mind?'

‘I want to control the world.'

The Magister Templi's hand remained on Daniel's shoulder. Eventually he said: ‘Anything is possible, Theutus, if you want it enough. To control the world is both a big and a small ambition. Why not set your sights on a higher realm?'

‘Because I know this one,' Daniel answered simply. ‘If both the Great Impostor and His Satanic Majesty place such importance on it, I believe the portal to any higher realm must lie here. I think perhaps it can only be reached by the
unification of the whole world under the rule of His Satanic Majesty.'

The Magister Templi marvelled at the boy's mind and vision, and turned towards him. ‘I knew when I first set eyes on you that you would outgrow us all one day, but I had not realized it would happen so fast.' He smiled. ‘I have often looked at you and wondered how much ancient wisdom is locked in your young mind, how many lives you have led before this one. I will help you and guide you all I can on your ambitious path, but ultimately you will have to help yourself.'

‘Yes, I know that.'

‘You will need a lot of money and much time. I presume you intend to become a magician?'

‘I intend to become
the
Ipsissimus,' Daniel replied, contemptuous of this man's limited horizons.

‘You will become the Godhead, Theutus?'

‘I will.'

There was a silence between them as the implications sank in, then finally the Magister Templi said: ‘Yes, you will need a great deal of money to get on that road, Theutus. You must start on a journey of total purification. From now on you must wear robes made only from the finest linen. You will need to make your own tools from base metals of utter purity, and you will have to cast these yourself in the foundries.'

Daniel watched the heaving, tossing, moaning sea of flesh in front of them, nevertheless concentrating intently on the Magister Templi's words.

‘I can give you the right contacts, Theutus, but you will have to work hard to impress them. You are still a teenager now and you will not be permitted to become a full magician until you are thirty-three. But you'll need all of that time and more. Are you prepared to train for such a long period to the exclusion of all else?'