The Liberators (14 page)

Ivo. She must talk to Ivo. His face came back to her, and she felt in her pockets for the bump of her mobile phone. It looked alien to her when she took it out, and she stared at it, unable to remember how to make it work. Then a wave came over her, she pressed the buttons hurriedly, and held the phone to her ear, breathing more slowly now, but lips quivering.

It rang, the beeping in her ear seeming unbearably slow. When she heard a click, and Ivo's voice softly saying ‘Hello?' she could barely suppress a yelp. But she did and, biting her lip, she said, ‘Ivo.' And then left a pause, long enough for Ivo to say, now sounding impossibly far away, ‘Miranda? Is that you? Hey, Miranda, are you OK?'

The tears came now, and Miranda couldn't stop them; she let the phone fall to her side, Ivo's voice calling in vain, and she lowered her head into her hands and wept.

Julius stood in the half-light, the dim orange glow from the electric lamp illuminating him only feebly. Strawbones was standing with his back slightly facing his brother; he was looking away. Julius was looking right at Strawbones's neck. His hands were held together, and he was leaning against the wall; this, somehow, made him look menacing, like a tall praying mantis. There was silence between them, and then Strawbones shifted around.

‘I'm sorry, guv'nor,' he said in a Cockney accent. ‘I couldn't 'elp it.'

Julius, when he spoke, measured his words carefully. ‘You are really the limit.' He moved his face further into the light, suddenly, and Strawbones drew back. ‘I have laid my plans –
our
plans – so carefully these last few years. The tunnels, the National Gallery – everything is in place now. And
you
–' he moved forwards, as swiftly as a hare, and pulled his brother close to him, so close that Strawbones could feel Julius's spittle on his face – ‘
you
cause a riot in Oxford Circus!'

‘It was
fun
, brother,' said Strawbones, in a composed voice. ‘Nobody knows it was
us
.'

‘Still,' said Julius, releasing him, ‘I want you to stay quiet. It's not long now. A riot!' he smiled at his brother. ‘There will be time enough for that soon. Time enough.'

.

Chapter Fourteen

Ivo heard the dial tone go. Immediately he rang Miranda's phone back, but received no reply; he rang Felix, and nothing; he rang the house phone, but nobody answered, and he hung up before it reached the answerphone.

Ivo's stomach was swirling with fear. He was sitting on the end of his bed. He put down his phone slowly, and then suddenly kicked it away, as if it were something distasteful. A sickening thought had come into his head, and he could not shake it from his mind: that the Acolytes had got Felix and Miranda, and that they had already killed them. He thought, I'll wait. I'll wait for an hour and see what happens.

At the end of the hour, he decided to go over, risking being seen himself. Without stopping to put on a jumper, he made his way down the stairs quickly and quietly, and then turning a corner, backed up in terror as he saw Julius coming out of the studio with Lydia.

He heard them laughing, and Julius muttering thanks. ‘It's really wonderful, Lydia, my brother will, I'm sure, absolutely love it.' Lydia murmured some self-deprecatory phrase, and then waved Julius off down the stairs, before going back into her studio.

Ivo crept past her door and paused at the top of the last flight, and watched Julius slide out of the house. Ivo's heart was thumping. He went down into the hall, jumping the last four steps, and was just about to reach the front door, when Jago stepped out of the drawing room.

‘Ah, Ivo, how are you, old horse? Haven't seen you in a while. Come in here.'

Ignoring Ivo's protests, Jago dragged him into the sitting room for backgammon. The radio was on, a gas fire threw shapes on the walls with its dancing flames. Ivo felt in his pockets and realised he'd left his phone upstairs. He swore softly. Jago, flexing his thick fingers, opened the wooden backgammon board, which shone in the soft light. They played. Ivo lost every time. Jago regarded him with his hawk-like eyes.

‘Something worrying you, old horse?'

‘Oh . . . no,' said Ivo. What could he tell Jago? That his own life was in danger, that his friends might be dead? He managed to push his feelings into a corner of his mind, but only a tiny part of his brain engaged with his uncle. He might as well have been an automaton.

‘You're staying for dinner, Ivo?'

Ivo jumped at the chance. ‘No! I'm going out to see . . . I mean I'm meeting some friends – I said I'd meet some friends from school, down at the Odeon, we're going to see a film.'

Jago's face darkened. ‘But you are staying to dinner, Ivo. We discussed this. Your cousins are coming.'

‘Oh . . . but . . .' Ivo knew that arguing was futile. He was dependent upon Jago and Lydia; his parents had instilled that in him – while he stayed with them, he must obey them.

Unable to control himself, he was clumsy and knocked over his glass; apologising, he left the backgammon board and ran upstairs to check his phone. There was nothing.

He heard his name being called, and powered down the stairs again; panting, he arrived in the hall to greet his cousins.

At dinner he spoke to no one unless spoken to; his girl cousins, who were about the same age as him, giggled and joked; his boy cousin, three years older, maintained an aloof presence and spoke only to the adults. Ivo ate, his mind only on one thing.

After dinner, he checked his phone once more, but nothing. They played a game, called ‘Who's in the hat?', in which everyone put names of people in a hat, and then one person acted out the name they pulled from the hat, and everyone else had to guess; Ivo was roundly voted the worst player of the night. He endured a film which he had seen before. Before bed he tried calling, first Felix, then Miranda, and then the house phone again, but got no reply; in desperation he checked every available means of electronic communication on his computer, but there was nothing, except for an email from his parents, which, in his anxious state, he ignored.

Having said goodbye to his cousins, he tried to get ready for sleep, but it was impossible; his head was buzzing and, though he longed for oblivion, he could not reach it, and Lydia would not give him another sleeping pill.

Eventually, some time around five, in the blackness of early morning, which had become to him another, strange world of muted colour and sounds that echoed for miles; eventually, as he lay muffled, wondering how many other people in England were lying awake, staring manically at the ceiling, he fell asleep, although when he woke at eight thirty it did not feel like he had been sleeping at all. He looked at himself in the mirror – eyes bloodshot, bags under his eyes, and wondered ruefully what Jago and Lydia would think he'd been up to.

The first thing he did after a breakfast of salmon and scrambled eggs – which, though delicious, he ate absent-mindedly, concentrating instead on three glasses of orange juice, causing Christine to tease him a little – was pull on his coat and run round to the Rocksavages.

He knocked on the door, expecting it to be opened by a tearful Olivia Rocksavage; but when she did open it, she looked remarkably composed.

‘Oh, it's you, Ivo. They're busy. Working. They have lessons till one. Why don't you come back then?'

They! She had said ‘they'. Ivo's heart burst with relief. A glowing, tumbling hotness of joy bubbled in him, expanding all over his body. But why hadn't Miranda called him to let him know that they were OK? He felt a creeping sense of unease at the thought that they might even now be with Perkins, who had pursued them only the day before.

After Ivo had agreed to return at lunch time, smiling at him, Olivia Rocksavage shut the door. He knew that Felix and Miranda had lessons in the dining room, which was on the ground floor and faced on to the street. Ivo nimbly leaped on to the wrought-iron shoe-scraper, from which vantage point, if he stretched far enough, he could see right into the dining room.

Usually Felix would be staring, frog-like, into the square, and Ivo, as Perkins had his back to it, would be able to attract his attention, while Miranda would keep Perkins diverted.

But they were sitting, perfectly naturally, both very neat and tidy, almost demure; Felix was wearing a shirt – and it was buttoned almost to the top; Miranda was wearing a very preppy-looking jumper. Both of them were looking attentively at Perkins.

Miranda was reading aloud from a book, and occasionally would stop and Felix would take over. Perkins paced up and down. Ivo ducked as Perkins swung past him, eyes glaring out on to the street, and then slowly rose up to peer at his friends when Perkins' back was turned again.

Ivo waved at them, trying to catch their eyes, but they did not see him, or pretended not to; he considered throwing a stone but did not want to risk alerting Perkins to his presence. Eventually Miranda said something and marched to the window, and without even looking at Ivo, she pulled down the blind. Ivo, crestfallen, slipped off his perch and stood, mind buzzing, alone in the street.

.

Chapter Fifteen

Stretched out on his bed, Ivo listened to the sounds below him. Miranda and Felix were dead to him – they were frozen, somehow. He would never be able to forget the look in Miranda's eyes as she had come to window – was it hatred, or distrust, or just simple blankness? He doubted whether he would ever be able to see them again. Seeing his friends whose jokes and warmth had made cold London so welcoming behaving like robots, as if some hostile, alien intelligence had taken over their minds, was crushing.

There was bustle and movement in almost every room of Lydia and Jago's house. People were constantly walking in and out of doors, bearing flowers, boxes, materials for Lydia's dress; Christine was always making something that smelled delicious, and streams of wellwishers, helpers, hangers-on and sycophants were always to be found huddling in the drawing room, subsisting on Christine's excellent sandwiches and cakes.

Ivo moved, rolling off his bed with great effort, and slouched towards his desk. He put the mysterious Koptor on the desk in front of him. The thought had occurred to him that he should try to enter Julius's flat in order to find the Thyrsos. It was a decision he had been playing with, turning over and over in his mind. Julius and Strawbones, he knew, were somewhere downstairs. He had seen Strawbones sliding into the studio, and Julius was in the drawing room being courted by half a dozen eager socialites. Their presence in the house unnerved him. Strawbones hadn't come up to his room, for which he was grateful.

And there was also Blackwood's house, Ivo thought. He could return there, find some information. Maybe there would be something that could help him.

He hoped that the Rocksavages, in their newly docile state, had not confessed everything to Perkins. Ivo couldn't know what Perkins had done to them – had he enslaved them, or hypnotised them, or even somehow lobotomised them permanently? It was too horrible to think about.

He had managed to avoid the two brothers. Neither had attempted to spend any time with him since he had seen them on South Audley Street. Ivo was hoping that they were now too occupied with their larger plan to worry about him.

It was ten thirty, and raining, on the Monday of the week of the party. Outside, muddy swirls of water gurgled down drains, sucked into the mysterious underground, and bent pedestrians scuttled by under glistening umbrellas, like beetles. Ivo pulled on a coat and stomped downstairs without saying anything. He slipped outside, narrowly avoided a collision with someone bearing a huge bouquet, and made his way to Chelsea.

When he got to Blackwood's house, he remembered how Felix had opened the door. He jiggled his cash card in the lock, not really knowing what he was doing, and to his surprise it opened. The house was as he had left it – a mess of papers. First he went to the mantelpiece and put the Koptor into the small depression, and clicked it into place. Nothing happened. He sighed and began leafing through the files. Rain stippled the windowpanes. It seemed as if someone had been through all the papers and removed anything that had to do with the Liberators.

About to give up, he found, amongst a mess of what looked like party invitations, a small book which had simply the letters FIN on the front. It was heavy, despite its size, bound in leather with gilt edges.

.

Minutes of FIN 7th July 1948

was written, in neat handwriting, on the first page. He flicked through to the back and saw on the last page:

00

8th December 2009

It was initialled by two sets of hands: A.H. and G.B. Hunter and Blackwood. He turned back to the first page and read.

00

The members were sworn in. ‘Freedom is Nothing' is our motto. We have set up the group to monitor and prevent the activities of the two brothers who call themselves the Liberators. They have become active once more. Jamie Lovat and Constance Mantel have been despatched to the Balkans to carry out our research.

There was now a lot of what looked like administrative stuff, so Ivo skipped on to a later date where he saw the names Lovat and Mantel again.

00

Lovat and Mantel have voyaged to the village in the Balkans, at great peril and personal risk, where it had been rumoured that the Liberators were born. They report that the brothers were of ancient nobility, sprung from a family which had inhabited the same hill fort for generations, ruling the lands around them with despotic cruelty. A rugged, desolate place, where no priest found a convert, no conqueror dared tread. The last of the dynasty to live in the castle, Dragan and Milan, were by far the cruellest and maddest. Deep in the mountains of Montenegro, the expedition found peasants who still related garbled folk tales of the monstrous Dragon brothers, ten feet tall, with teeth made of diamonds, and hands made of knives.

Lovat, searching in the hidden archives of the one bleak monastery that clung to a hilltop, found a parchment which told the history of their savage rule. They were said to have slaughtered thousands of people and drunk the blood of their foes, even cannibalised their remains.

Lovat reported that at the peak of their violence, in the late thirteenth century, whilst marauding through Greece, the brothers discovered, buried deep in a cave on top of a frozen mountain in Arcadia, a staff.

This staff proved to be the Thyrsos, the staff of Bacchus, that holds within it the power of frenzy. This power can be a positive one. Bacchus is the releaser, the liberator of tensions and hatreds, enabling the order of Apollo to be restored. But the brothers bent the Thyrsos to their will, using it for unrestrained freedom, and the horror of insanity. The Thyrsos gave them power, at the expense of their humanity, for slowly they became immortal. Beautiful, heartless and deadly.

Soon they drew hundreds of people to them, and they called their followers ‘Acolytes'. The name they gave themselves was ‘hoi tou eleutherou adelphoi', or ‘the Eleutheroi' – the Brothers of Freedom. As they grew in power and strength they also took one of the names of Bacchus – ‘Liber' – and labelled themselves ‘The Liberators'. Those who followed them were ‘blessed' or ‘liberated' in stages until they became totally without restraint.

Prickles of fear ran down Ivo's back, his hands trembling, his heart fluttering. He had seen the Thyrsos, seen people killed for the greater glory of the Liberators: he was in the middle of something whose depths and strangenesses he could not guess at. The two brothers that Strawbones had told him about were Dragan and Milan, and they were Julius and Strawbones, he was sure. Strawbones hadn't told him his real name.

Ivo jumped at the sound of a mouse scuttling across the floor and continued to read. It appeared that most of the disturbances of the last decades had their roots in the activities of the Liberators. They were waiting for something, for a period when global chaos would be widespread enough for them to step in and take over
.
And that period was now: the financial market, the lifeblood of the world, was in ruins; wars devastated large swathes of territory; terrorists aimed at the destruction of Western civilisation.

The entry for 1st November 2009 read:

00

The Acolytes have eliminated several of our number. There are few left in FIN. Twenty souls remain. We must recruit more.

Ivo read the last entry with growing unease.

00

Blackwood's whereabouts are unknown. He has the Koptor. The Liberators are strengthening.

It was initialled simply A.H. Ivo closed the book and put it down gently. But Hunter had him to help her now. Ivo . . . the sound rolled in his mind. Ivy – the plant that could bring down huge buildings – that was him, he could do it; he was on his own, defenceless, but by clinging on, by plotting, by never giving up, he could stop them.

There was a loud crashing noise behind him. He spun around. The window was being smashed in. Slivers of glass exploded on to the carpet. Two men vaulted into the room and, without saying anything, advanced towards Ivo. The men were fast and one had immediately blocked off the door. Ivo wondered if they were going to kill him. The other came nearer to him, silent, and Ivo prepared to fight; he mustered up all the energy that was in him, but the man came at him and was too strong. He punched Ivo in the stomach whilst the other grabbed him from behind, and the last thing Ivo saw was a glaring face, grinning at him, showing perfect white teeth.

A low, buzzing hum. No air. A tiny room, cell-like, the light coming from a small lamp in the corner, which cast an orange circle upon the ground. A door, heavy, iron, impossible to break. All these things Ivo took in very quickly as he opened his eyes. If he stretched out, he could touch both walls.

I must be in the tunnels, he thought. He had been dumped in a corner. There was no furniture in the room, although somebody had rather thoughtfully left a glass of water by him. He surprised himself at how quickly he gulped it down. He had been dreaming of deserts, of water ever out of his reach.

He patted his pockets, slowly at first, and then feverishly, as he realised that he did not have the Koptor any more. He turfed out everything on to the ground – coins, front-door key, phone, wallet. There was nothing. It was in their hands. They had it. He was captured; he had failed. An emptiness opened in him, and he lay with his head on the cold floor, feeling the pounding of the blood in his veins.

He heard the sound of a lock being turned. He sat up in a corner, his knees held up to his chin. The door creaked and was pushed open. Two Acolytes entered: a woman, beautiful, whom he recognised as Jennifer Brook; she looked grim and calm; and the man who had attacked him in Blackwood's house. They were followed by Perkins, wearing a baggy red T-shirt and jeans, pushing his glasses up on his nose, and he was followed by Julius.

But this was not a Julius that Ivo recognised, who would fit in at cocktail parties, charity dinners and launches for one thing or another; whom you might see sipping champagne in the Royal Enclosure at Ascot.

He had a sword slung across his chest, the scabbard banging at his side. His face – so civilised, so clean, so pure – was pale, and his eyes were green, deep green, and his mouth was a crimson gash, and his hands, sinewy, strong, were those of a murderer.

‘Ivo Moncrieff,' he said, his accent harsh and deep, ‘you are a child. I do not understand. You have thought that you would be able to
break
us?' His English was slightly awkward, as if he were translating it a word at a time in his head.

He didn't laugh, but looked fiercely at Ivo.

Ivo was still thirsty, his mouth dry, his lips sticky. His vision was blurry.

‘Do you even know what I am? What we are?' asked Julius.

‘I've seen your vision of the future,' said Ivo, spitting slightly.

‘Did you not feel its goodness?' said Julius, his eyes roaring.

‘No! It's
evil
!' exclaimed Ivo.

‘But freedom, Ivo, is all that mankind wants, is it not? Have we not always struggled to throw off the chains of our oppressors? To be enslaved, is that not the greatest of all sins? Surely to dissolve that enslavement must be good?'

‘But not in the way you want,' said Ivo. ‘It doesn't work like that. You have to have rules, otherwise the world breaks down.' He remembered dowdy Alice Hunter. ‘Dionysus and Apollo. Too much of either one is bad. You need both.'

‘Foolish child. You should have joined us when we gave you the opportunity. I will kill you,' said Julius, lazily lifting up a finger. ‘It will hurt, very much, but it will be over soon.' With that he began to laugh, a horrible, sing-song laugh, and he spun on his heel and left the room, followed by the Acolytes.

Time passed; Ivo didn't know how much, it could have been hours, it could have been minutes. He reached for the most pleasant memories he could – the smell of grass and the feel of the sun on his face; the sound of a cricket bat; plunging into cool waters; the song of a stream across pebbles; but they were all coloured with blood, all pulsating with the knowledge of horror.

Eventually the door clanged open again and Perkins scuttled in. He stood at the entrance, and threw a bottle of water at him. Ivo grabbed it from where it had fallen and drained it in one go.

Perkins then lobbed a paper bag at him. ‘Eat this, it's all you'll get today.'

Perkins lingered a moment, glaring at Ivo, then he left.

Inside the bag was an energy bar, which Ivo stuffed into his mouth, barely taking time to chew it, and an apple, wrapped in paper, which he ripped off in a desultory way, throwing it aside. He savoured biting into the crisp surface of the fruit. He slumped back into the hard corner of the room, watching the orange light splash on the floor. He had to work out how to escape. But it was impossible. He was worried, too, about Lydia and Jago. He wondered how long he had been away. Would they be sending out search parties? Maybe they knew about all this?

He reached out to pick up the paper he'd thrown aside; fiddling with it he scrunched it up, and unfolded it, his mind elsewhere. Then he noticed, out of the corner of his eye, something written on it; it took him by surprise, so he smoothed out the paper properly and read it again. He shook his head. Yes, he had read it correctly.