The Barbershop Seven (153 page)

'And frankly speaking, most of them, at least most of the ones I've known, have been completely understanding about the male need to watch football, golf and a whole variety of other sports. I was shagging this bird once who used to sit with me to watch the darts on the tele. I mean, frankly, that is outstanding.'

Fraser looked at Barney in the mirror, took a couple of seconds to catch his eye. Barney's barber sense made him look at the customer and say, 'But?' as the yang part had obviously been dealt with and it was time for the yin.

'But,' said Fraser, 'they are the most conniving, devious, scheming, underhand, calculating, sneaky, Machiavellian, conspiratorial, surreptitious, clandestine, furtive bastards known to man. If we were wild animals they'd eat us after sex. They're mean, merciless, callous, malicious, cold-hearted, pitiless, cruel, spiteful, vindictive and downright naughty. They're the human equivalent of those whales that come up onto beaches, catch seals and then take them back out into the sea and toss them about like a rugby ball, just for a bit of a laugh.'

Barney stood back and stared at the rounded contours and the perilous abandon of the crown of the head that is a Colin Firth and decided that the little haste at the end there had pretty much brought everything to a satisfactory conclusion.

'We're done,' he said suddenly.

Igor looked up quickly. Thank God! he thought. Barney glanced at him and smiled.

'I'm only just getting started!' wailed Fraser.

The door opened and another old fella came in, right on schedule, wearing a hat. As he removed the completely inappropriate fedora, Barney's eyes were immediately drawn to his hair and it was obvious that here was a man who had recently been given a very, very poor
Felix Leiter
by the lad 2Tone.

'Bit of an emergency,' said the old guy, looking at Barney.

'I'm done here,' said Barney and he started to brush away the hair from around Fraser's shoulders.

'Perry,' said Fraser, nodding at the
Felix Leiter
.

'Hugh,' said the
Felix Leiter
, nodding at the
Colin Firth
.

'I should leave you to it, right enough,' said Fraser, turning back to Barney. 'Perry's need is greater than mine and I am spent on the subject of women for the moment.'

Barney smiled but didn't encourage him any further. Fraser rose, brushed himself off, handed over the cash, nodded at Igor who grimaced in return and then was on his way.

Perry Liebowitz took his seat and glanced at Barney in the mirror.

'You'll be wanting me to perform a Felixectomy?' said Barney.

'Aye,' said Liebowitz.

'Shouldn't be a problem,' said Barney.

'Fine,' said Liebowitz. Then he said, 'You're new?' as if there was a possibility that Barney might not be.

'Aye,' said Barney.

'I was in the war, you know,' said Liebowitz ominously, 'a sapper. Took a hit helping the Yanks cross the Rhine. Long story, but I suspect we've got the time.'

Barney hit the off button.

'Arf,' said Igor.

***

B
artholomew Ephesian was beginning to feel the cold. He had been sitting in the chamber, deep beneath his house on the hill, for over half an hour. Taking it all in, the exquisite joy of silence. This room had the dual purpose of serving the brotherhood and of serving his need for solitude and complete calm. When he was younger he had loved to be underwater, his ears filled, every sound blocked out. He had learned to hold his breath for minutes, so that he could disappear into swimming pools and the darkness of lochs. Now he was too old for that, though he had no doubt that he still required the escape. This room, this sanctuary, was to him now what the lochs around his family's holiday home in Perthshire had once been.

So it was almost over, only the last rites left to be performed. How incensed the Catholic Church were going to be when the world awoke on Thursday morning to a new day. A new dawn. A new beginning for them all.

For almost one hundred and thirty years now the
Prieure de Millport
, the most underground of secret societies, had been operated out of a house on this site, recently re-built by Ephesian, on the west side of Cumbrae, overlooking Bute and Arran. The
Prieure de Millport
was an institution so clandestine it didn't even allow any of Hugh Fraser's clandestine women to be members, an organisation so enigmatic and underground it made the CIA look like a bunch of brash Americans sticking their noses into other country's political problems.

In 1876 the
Prieure de Millport
had taken over from the more famous
Prieure de Sion
, in keeping alive an ancient legacy. The most important secret of the last two thousand years had been placed in their hands, to safekeep for the benefit of the entire world, until the time was right. Even then, parts of the secret had been hidden, so that the members of the society had been left guarding clues as well as the legacy itself. Now, however, Augustus Lawton had made the discovery that his fellows had sought for thirty years.

Many people, since the mid-nineteenth century, had wondered why a small church on an inconsequential island in the Clyde had been designated a cathedral. The answer was known only to the members of the
Prieure
. These men only ever numbered twelve at one time. Only upon death would they be replaced and an outsider would be invited to take the rigorous tests which would allow them to take the part of the recently deceased.

Ephesian heard footsteps on the steep stone stairs leading down to the chamber. As usual he felt an awkward discomfort at the sudden interruption of the peace but he knew that it would be Jacobs come to intrude on his glorious thoughts.

Ephesian lifted himself out of the chair at the head of the table, the chair that was not intended for him. He may have been Grand Master of the
Prieure
but that seat was for another and he didn't want to let Jacobs find him there. Straightened his jacket, leant on the table and surveyed the intricate stonework around the room. The table and chairs and one small cabinet were the only objects of furniture placed in the room but the floor and the walls and the ceiling had each been beautifully created by the most gifted of stonemasons, every square inch replete with an eccentric mix of pagan and early Christian symbolism. The house above may have been modern but the chamber beneath had been here for the same length of time as the cathedral. Had the room been known of, it would have been one of the most fascinating tourist sites in Scotland. But now only eleven men alive knew that it even existed. Even Ping Phat, the man who had put so much money behind the organisation in recent years, had no knowledge of this room.

Jacobs emerged from the last corner of the winding one hundred and twenty-six step stairwell.

'Yes?' said Ephesian, looking up.

'Sir,' said Jacobs. 'You were going to place one last call to each of the other members of the party.'

Ephesian nodded.

'You're right,' he said. He looked at his watch. Early afternoon on the day before the world would forever change.

'And there is the matter of replacing Jonah,' said Jacobs.

It wasn't just the business of retrieving what Jonah Harrison had kept in the bottom drawer of his freezer. The
Prieure
had to have the full twelve members. On average, in Ephesian's time, one of the twelve would die every three or four years, and it had yet to be a huge problem finding someone of the right calibre on the island to take their place. However, there had never before been a rush to find a replacement. Everything in its time and eventually they would sort the wheat from the chaff and their man would be found. Sometimes it would take weeks, sometimes it would take months, but they always knew they'd get the right man to satisfy their requirements.

Now, however, they had a little over 24 hours. There would be no way to educate him in the ways of the society, there would be no way of testing him to establish his credibility as a keeper of the faith. The difference this time was that the man in question need only keep the secret until tomorrow evening. After that there wasn't a person in the whole world who would not learn the truth.

'We have two options,' said Ephesian, 'neither of which fills me with pleasure or confidence, but given the circumstances...'

Jacobs nodded, accepting that the Grand Master of the Priory was about to take his counsel, as he did on most matters.

'Firstly, Mr Randolph, who would clearly not be one to rely upon under normal circumstances but whom I think we can trust given the truncated timeframe.'

Jacobs pursed his lips.

'The only other, I'm afraid,' Ephesian continued, 'is my son, Anthony. I realise that we are some decades short of being able to have implicit faith in his abilities in this respect but again I believe circumstances render the main objections to his candidature irrelevant.'

Jacobs nodded. Anthony Ephesian, 2Tone to everyone he could get to say it, was amongst the most unlikely candidates in the town. However, Ephesian was right about the situation and he was right about there being no other plausible alternatives. He was wrong, Jacobs thought, to even consider that idiot Randolph.

'It must be Anthony,' said Jacobs sombrely.

Ephesian nodded. He was expecting Randolph back any minute from his latest errand but it did not mean that he had to introduce him into the fold.

'Very good, Jacobs,' said Ephesian. 'I will have a preliminary talk with the boy tonight.'

'And now,' said Jacobs, 'it is time for you to place the calls to the brothers, to ensure that everyone is ready.'

Ephesian looked Jacobs in the chin, Jacobs held the slightly-off gaze, turned slowly, and then began to mince back up the stairs to the library.

––––––––

L
uigi and Tony stood inside the Cathedral of the Isles, which stands hidden in the trees up the hill behind the town of Millport. Designed by William Butterfield, an architect more famous for Keeble College, Oxford and All Saints, Margaret Street, London, in the mid-19th century, the building is small, seating barely a hundred people, but is joined by college buildings to increase the overall effect of the structure. The nave of the cathedral is only forty feet by twenty feet but the one hundred and twenty-three foot steeple and tall pointed roofs make it seem much larger than it actually is. Kind of a Tardis in reverse.

While the nave is comparatively plain, the chancel and sanctuary are lush with colour and detail, with brightly coloured tiles and rich stained glass windows. Originally it had been very dull but early on in the 1860s the vicar at the time had managed to get the church, which was yet to be elevated to the status of cathedral, a place on the hit BBC series,
Changing Churches
. The famed designer of his day, Lawrence Llewelyn McGlumpha, duly arrived and used constructional polychrome on the floors and walls, as well as extensive stencil work on the beams, pillars and the exquisitely painted ceiling, which depicted the great variety of wild flowers that were found on the island. Of course, he went eight million pounds over budget.

'St. Peter's pisses all over this,' said Tony lightly.

Luigi raised an eyebrow at him then turned away and started to walk around the interior, running his hand along panels of wood, touching candlesticks. There would be something here, some basic piece of simplistic art, from which they would be able to derive the clue. Nothing the Episcopalians ever did was very complicated. That no one had ever found it before was because they hadn't known where to look. There were so many other sites in Europe where people had been searching in vain for years. No one other than those idiots at the
Prieure de Millport
had known to look here, until the previous week when Cardinal Salvatori had been given a sign. Or, more precisely, had been given a tip-off from one of his agents who had intercepted a telephone call between Ping Phat and Bartholomew Ephesian. Such had been the excitement of the situation for Ping Phat, he had neglected to take the usual security precautions; Ephesian, at the time, seething with anger at Lawton for divulging the information, had been too off-guard, too incandescent with rage to think properly. They had openly discussed something on an insecure line that should not have been discussed and the subject of the conversation had been passed up the chain of command.

'Look at this, it's so stinkin' small,' grumbled Tony. 'Don't these people realise that size matters?' He giggled.

'You're so stupid you're a bug, you know that?' said Luigi. 'In fact, you're not a bug, you're an amoeba. You've got one cell, and you know what, it's not a brain cell. It's a stinkin' faecal cell. You're a single cell stupid shit, that's you.'

'Hey, well how many cells do you need? And what's with all this flower crap going on? It's a church, for crying out loud, not a garden centre.'

'The flower symbolism around this stinkin' cathedral is nothin' to do with stinkin' flowers and all to do with religious rites and the holiest of holies that we're going to find here. There ain't nothing ever done in the name of religion, my stupid amigo, that don't mean something other than what it looks like it's supposed to mean. You understand that or were there too many words in the sentence for you?'

'You know your trouble, Luigi?' began Tony, before he was halted by footsteps entering the cathedral behind them. The door to the college buildings, leading off from the chancel, closed and Father Andrew Roosevelt, Episcopal priest of the Cathedral of the Isles, stood before them. He smiled and walked forward, hands clasped together. His heart was still beating strongly, having just come from the administration room of the college, where he had taken a phone call from Ephesian. He hadn't been expecting everything to happen so fast but suddenly it was all going to fall into place. If he was honest with himself, he hadn't been expecting it to happen at all, never mind quickly. Now, suddenly, he was faced with being part of the most unique moment in history. His mouth was dry; his hands were clammy. He was scared.