Kardinal (25 page)

ALFRED laughed at the Sinclair woman.

“You’re frightened of my workers, darling,” he said.

The guards chuckled.

“Thought you were supposed to be some kind of Amazon warrior queen,” said Alfred. “You wait till you meet Nimrod.”

“I’m so excited,” said Sinclair.

She was a mouthy bitch. Alfred couldn’t wait to see her scream at the sight of Nimrod.

“There is nothing but dust and rubble here, Fuad,” said Goga. “Nothing but dead history.”

The workers skulked from among the rubble. They were covered in dirt. Their eyes gleamed, but their faces and clothes were soiled.

They do look like ghosts at first sight
, thought Alfred,
stumbling from the rubble
.

Among them was a middle-aged man. He wore glasses, which he took off now and wiped on the hem of his shirt. He clicked his fingers, and a girl handed him a wallet-sized item that was filmed in dirt. The man wiped the item clean on his shirt. It was an infrared detector. It looked for movement. It looked for life. Alfred licked his lips, wondering what secrets the detector held.

“Dr Meyer,” he said, “did you find anything?”

Roland Meyer was a Nebuchadnezzar and an archaeologist. Alfred and George had proposed to him the possibility of going after Nimrod the previous year.

Such a quest was heresy among the Nebs. It was like Christians trying to find the face of God. It was dangerous and foolish.

But his academic inquisitiveness had finally got the better of Meyer, and he’d left his post at the Eberhard Karls University in Tübingen, Germany, the previous September, and had started to prepare for this expedition.

One of his university’s former students was Manfred Korfmann, the archaeologist who had continued Heinrich Schliemann’s work at the site of Troy. Now Meyer felt he would be mentioned in the same breath as Korfmann and Schliemann. He was about to uncover a truly mythical city, and, along with it, a god.

“We have found a city, Mr Fuad,” said Meyer.

“Yes, but any life in that city?”

“Just ourselves.”

A ripple of panic ran through Alfred. What would George say if there were nothing here? Nothing to resurrect? Nothing to worship? Alfred might as well stay underground if he had nothing to give his brother.

Goga laughed. Alfred backhanded him across the face. The Romanian fell. He dropped his walking stick. The Sinclair woman went to his aid.

Alfred fumed. “If he laughs again,” he said to one of the guards, “just fucking shoot him.”

He turned to Meyer.

“Doctor,” he said, shaking inside. “We’re in Irkalla. You understand Irkalla?”

“I understand Irkalla, Mr Fuad.”

“Irkalla. The underworld. Hell. The dwelling place of Nimrod.”

“According to myth.”

“Then where is he?”

“I said, sir, according to
myth
.”

Alfred’s head hurt. He thought it would explode. He ground his teeth together until his jaw ached.

He was thinking,
What would George say? What would George do?

Should he have Meyer shot? He knew that killing a Nebuchadnezzar was unlawful. No Neb could purposefully harm another, although a few months earlier, George had thrown old Afdal Haddad out of a window. But he supposed the law didn’t apply to George. Not if he
made
the law. Maybe it wouldn’t apply to him, either, as George’s brother. He thought of reaching for a pistol and blowing Meyer’s fucking clever brains out of his fucking clever head.

But he stopped himself.

Christ, what am I going to do if this fucking Nimrod’s not real?
he thought.

Maybe nothing was real. Everything was a myth. The dream of a new Babylon. The vampires. Being down here in this stifling, airless hell-hole.

It was all just something he’d dreamt.

All the glory that they’d planned for, all the blood that had been spilled, nothing but ten minutes in his sub-conscious.

He had to make the dream reality. He had no choice. He had to make it live again.

The lust for power was too much. The fear of letting down his brother was unbearable.

No, Nimrod definitely existed. The trinity had existed, and legend said they’d been ripped from the Great Hunter’s chest. They were his three beating hearts, born as monsters.

“Give me my fucking laptop,” he barked at one of the guards.

The guard took the computer out of its case and handed it to Alfred, who flipped it open and logged on.

He fired off an email to George:

“Drop everything. We have a problem. Need to talk – now!”

After logging off, he handed the laptop back to the guard.

“Meyer,” he said, “how long have you been down here?”

“We have been at this level for three days, Mr Fuad, myself and my team.”

Alfred scanned the faces. They looked thin and grey. They looked like earthquake survivors, dug out after days. They were mostly students, eager to work for Roland Meyer. They all looked like they could do with a square meal.

Meyer continued:

“We have not seen the sun in days.”

Alfred thought. He supposed that since most, if not all of the students, would never see sunlight again, they deserved a break. These weren’t Nebuchadnezzars, so they would be slaves or food under the new regime. None, except Meyer, wore the red mark. For a moment, Alfred pitied them.

“Let your team get some food,” he said. “The canteen is one level up. Take them up there, Dr Meyer, and eat as much as you want. I’ll give you ninety minutes. Then, back to work at” – he checked his watch – “eleven thirty at the latest, right?”

The doctor nodded, and he trudged away with his team.

“Take this pair back to the cell,” said Alfred.

“You fucker,” the Sinclair woman said.

The guards marched them away. Alfred was left alone. He stared at the rubble.

It so was quiet. The ruins of Irkalla stood before him. Empty. Void. Useless.

He walked through the gate. Goose pimples raked his body, and he shivered.

The silence was piercing.

He stared up into the endless darkness and wondered how such heights were possible under the earth. It seemed as if the apex was higher than the first and second tiers of the dig, which were between 200 and 500 feet below ground.

It didn’t make sense.

But after all, it had been built by a god. Maybe this wasn’t earth. Maybe it was a place for gods. An imaginary city, outside natural law.

It might explain the Tower of Babel story
, he thought.

The Bible said Nimrod had built the tower so he could reach God, so he could be God.

Had he succeeded?

Craning his neck, Alfred truly thought so.

He wondered if it were true that Abraham had come down here to the deep and did battle with Nimrod. Most archaeologists, theologians, and historians dismissed such things as myth, fables. But they did not have vision. They did not have ambition. They were not the Fuad brothers. And they had not seen the depictions on the cave walls.

Alfred scrambled up a pile of rubble. He nearly slipped a couple of times, debris streaming down behind him. But he made it. Stood on top of the little hill of masonry like a king surveying a conquered land. Stood proud. Stood tall.

Where are you?
he thought.

And then he shouted, “Where are you?”

His voice echoed through the caverns and raced away into the far, far distance, and it scared Alfred to think of his call hurtling back in time through the darkness.

Where had his voice reached? Who heard that call? What unnamed, unchartered places had his words reached?

Maybe somewhere beyond Irkalla. Maybe the deepest part of hell.

He waited until the echo died.

He waited for something to come back.

But nothing came. No answer.

Just silence and darkness.

He shook his head gloomily, trying to think how George would take this.

He turned and trudged down the mound of rubble and started to make his way towards the gate. He needed a drink. He needed lots of drinks.

Behind him, where he’d stood momen
ts before atop the masonry, there was a disturbance. Only a slight one. A dribble of rocks and pebbles rolling down the slope. Alfred saw nothing of it. He was gone. But had he been standing there, he would have heard a rumbling noise, similar to a growl produced by a very large animal. The noise came from the heart of the deepest darkness. The far, far distance.

And had Alfred heard it, he would have known, then, that something lived in the abyss.

“IF you do anything stupid,” said Lawton, “I’ll have her rip your throat out.”

Laxman shrugged.

Lawton emptied bullets from the Makarov he’d snatched from Laxman.

“I’m walking in front of you,” he said. “You hold the gun on me, say I’m your prisoner.”

Laxman shrugged again.

He took the gun.

He seemed to weigh it in his hand. Making sure I’ve not left any ammo in it, thought Lawton. Laxman curled his lip when he realized Jake hadn’t accidentally left a bullet in the gun.

“You think I’m stupid, Laxman?”

The mercenary smiled. “I got to hope.”

“You stay there for a second,” said Lawton.

He got out of the Toyota. They were parked on a narrow street about half a mile away from Alfred Fuad’s base.

He looked towards the compound, through a pair of binoculars he’d found in the Land Cruiser. He surveyed the scene. High-wire fencing hemmed in quick-build units. Floodlights illuminated the entire complex. Trucks were lined up outside the perimeter and inside, too. Mostly 4x4s. All black. Right in the middle of the facility, poking out above the single-storey buildings, was scaffolding, and clamped within it a huge drill unit.

He smelled something – sweet decay.

She was right next to him.

“Do you trust this man?” she asked.

He looked into her red eyes and said, “As much as I trust you.”

“Not much, then.”

“Very little.”

“You think I would kill him for you?”

“I think you’d kill him for yourself.”

“I might kill the both of you.”

He dropped the binoculars from his eyes and looked at her. “I’m not sure if you can kill me.”

She glared and curled her lip slightly, showing a fang. But Lawton held her stare. He felt he could. The sense that he was something beyond mortal was strong.

And he was starting to embrace it.

He’d been shot in the side, and the bullet had had no effect. The wound was virtually healed. And it was all to do with the vampire DNA spooling around his own; he was convinced of it. They were merging, human and vampire genes, to create something completely different to either species. They were merging to create him.

And, looking deeply into his one good eye, Ereshkigal said, “You are not like other humans. You are the one with wounds. This is what I believe. You were foretold as the killer of my Lord Nimrod.”

“Wasn’t that Abraham?”

“He had no wounds – you are hurt from soul to skin. You are the one with wounds. You are the one who shall kill my husband. You must fulfil your destiny, while I must fulfil mine.”

“And what’s yours?”

“To protect him from you.”

They looked at each other, and Lawton felt himself drawn to her, this ancient dead thing. He was leaning towards her – but he stopped himself, rearing back.

She laughed.

“You go as red as my eyes,” she said. “You shouldn’t be ashamed of your feelings. I was a bride-to-be, full of hope, full of desire. In many ways, I still am. A girl in love with her betrothed. A girl who wants to be loved.”

“You are a vampire,” he said. “I know vampires. Every shred of what you were has been stripped away. All that’s left is your black heart.”

She grabbed his hand and held it to her breast. He tried to pull away, but once it was pressed on her flesh, he kept his hand where it was, and his skin was on fire.

Her heart pulsed under his palm. Her breast was firm in his fingers. Fire filled his blood, and he sensed the same heat course through Ereshkigal.

“Could I grab a feel, too?”

Lawton yanked his hand away.

Laxman had poked his head out of the Toyota’s window. He was smiling, waggling the empty gun.

“Fondling geriatrics these days, Lawton?” he said. “Necrophilia’s got to be illegal, yeah?”

Lawton glowered at him.

“Get out of the car before I let this geriatric cut open your veins.”