Ironheart (21 page)

They found an office, smelling of decay and showing all the signs of having been abandoned in a hurry. Chairs were overturned, papers were strewn and one of the lights blinked on and off like a
bad stutter.

‘Look,’ said Bulldog, pulling a tattered sheet from the wall. ‘It’s a map of this whole place.’

‘It’s in gobbledegook,’ said Clench, squinting over his shoulder.

‘It’s old Russian,’ said Bulldog, running a finger over the yellowed paper. ‘I’ve got a smattering of it.’

‘Rusty Yakut and a smattering of old Russian,’ muttered Clench. ‘It’s a wonder he’s still single.’

Bulldog whistled. ‘These tunnels go right underneath the mountain. This level is labelled
“Administration, Staff Quarters and Vaults”.
There’s another level
below this one which says
“Restricted Area, Authorized Personnel Only”.’

Clench’s ears pricked up. ‘Vaults, eh?’ he said. ‘That sounds like where we need to go.’

Next door to the office was a guard room with ragged uniforms still hanging from the pegs, and beyond that a pair of double steel doors. The damp air had taken its toll on the ironwork and the
bolts were welded shut with a thick coat of rust. Bulldog rummaged through the drawers in the office, found a hammer and, with much bashing and cursing, forced the bolts. The doors yawned open,
revealing a tunnel with rough chiselled walls and a high vaulted ceiling.

‘After you,
Captain,
’ said Clench, slipping behind Bulldog’s bulk.

Bulldog stepped into the tunnel and they all jumped as a single overhead light clanked on. They took a few tentative paces into the tunnel. Every few steps the next light would come on and the
first would go out so that they walked continually in a pool of light, surrounded by blackness.

The walls of the tunnel were lined with iron bookshelves, so high that they disappeared into the gloom above their heads. The shelves were tightly packed with pulpy, leather-bound books,
including technical manuals, medical textbooks and dense novels written in foreign languages.

‘They must have every book in the world in here,’ murmured India, examining the spine of a scientific text written in Russian. On a low shelf she spotted a row of children’s
story books and a small volume in a green cover caught her eye. ‘I remember this!’ she cried, pulling the book from the shelf. ‘My dad used to read it to me and Bella when we were
little.’

Clench and Bulldog had moved on down the tunnel and didn’t hear her. She looked at the book again, then quickly slipped the little volume into her satchel before hurrying to catch up.

In other corridors the shelves were stacked with lifeless computers and racks of shiny plastic disks that reflected rainbow colours in the light. There were dim alcoves with pieces of machinery
under tarpaulins and side passages that twisted away into even more remote corners of the mountain. India wondered how she would ever find her father in this maze.

After they had descended for about fifteen minutes, they reached a set of clean white doors. They opened smoothly with a faint hiss and a rush of warm, moist air, and India gave a cry of
surprise.

They stood at the top of a flight of stairs above a very large, rectangular chamber. The air was humid and overhead lights warmed her skin like the sun. The chamber floor was divided into
sections by low walls, each one filled with thick, chocolatey soil and kept moist with a fine mist from overhead sprinklers.

The room was a living patchwork of vibrantly coloured plants, bushes and trees, growing in neatly manicured lines. She was fascinated by a small tree laden with fuzzy yellow fruits and a twisted
vine draped with plump, purple clusters that held the promise of sticky sweetness. Even the fruits she did recognize bore no resemblance to their stunted and shrivelled cousins back home. The
tomatoes were a rich, glossy red and the apples were large and crisp. Everywhere the air shimmered with the movement of insect wings.

‘It’s a garden,’ she said, remembering the soggy and barren patch of earth they had at home. ‘It’s the most beautiful garden I’ve ever seen.’

‘It’s not a garden,’ said Bulldog squinting up at the ceiling. ‘High-intensity ultraviolet lights, automatic irrigation and enough insect life to pollinate the plants.
It’s a farm! As long as there is power and water, this place could run forever.’

‘Fruit and vegetables!’ spluttered Clench. His face was aghast. ‘Are you kidding me? I’ve come halfway around the world to visit a bleedin’ greengrocer?’

‘Take it easy, Archie,’ said Bulldog with agrin. ‘Vegetables are very healthy, you know.’

‘Do I look like I need the vitamins?’ he hissed. ‘I thought this was the vaults. So where’s the treasure?’

India laughed. ‘I think this
is
the treasure,’ she said. ‘Or at least part of it.’ She ran lightly down the stairs and walked among the fruit trees, gazing up
into the branches.

Bulldog pulled down a bright orange fruit. ‘I saw one of these once when I was a kid,’ he said breathlessly. ‘We had to share it between eight of us but I thought it was the
most wonderful thing I’d ever tasted in my life. Here, try this.’

He dug his thumbs into the flesh and pulled it apart, handing India a segment of the dripping fruit. It tasted sharp and sweet at the same time and she laughed as the juice ran down her throat.
Soon she and Bulldog were laughing like children as they gorged themselves on sticky fruits and India wished she could have taken some of them home for her sister.

‘Don’t eat the yellow ones,’ said Bulldog, with a pained expression, ‘they’re as sour as hell.’

A movement in the undergrowth caught India’s eye. She pulled apart the leaves and saw a tiny silver machine trundling between the flower beds. It stopped beside a tree and extended one of
its wiry steel arms to pluck an apple from a low branch, then it deftly sliced it in two with a thin blade. They watched as it used a narrow tube to suck out the seeds and deposit them in a foil
envelope.

‘A robot gardener,’ said Bulldog in wonder. The little machine jumped at the sound of his voice and promptly turned to scuttle in the other direction. ‘Quick, follow it!’
he said.

The robot beat a hasty retreat down the rows of crops. When it reached the far wall it pushed its way through a thin plastic curtain. The room beyond was chilled and full of high shelves stacked
with plastic boxes. When the robot found the box it was looking for, it deposited the foil pack inside and headed back out to the garden.

‘There must be enough seeds in here to plant a garden like this in every country in the world,’ said India, gazing up at the shelves.

‘More than enough,’ said Bulldog. ‘According to the map there’s at least a dozen other garden chambers like this one.’

‘It’s the most wonderful place I’ve ever seen, Bulldog,’ said India. She tried to imagine how John Bentley would have felt seeing it for the first time, and the
opportunity he would have seen to feed the world. ‘My dad’s here somewhere, I just know he is. We have to keep looking for him.’

When they got back to the garden Clench was in a state of high agitation and India was amused to see a herd of the tiny silver robots whirring and chattering around his feet. He crashed around
in the shrubs trying to shake them off while they tried to repair the damage he left behind. When he aimed a kick at one of them they scattered like frightened chickens.

Without warning, the bright lights were suddenly extinguished to be replaced by a soft red glow.

‘Must be night time,’ said Bulldog, glancing up.

‘Night time!’ said India with a start. ‘Oh no! Nentu said we only had two days before something terrible was going to happen and that’s one day gone already. Come
on!’

Bulldog looked as though he would happily have remained in the garden all day but, after much cajoling, she forced him and Clench out of the chamber. Back in the corridor, Bulldog found another
switch and the lights surged on in the concrete stairwell. ‘Level Two, restricted area,’ he said with a grin. ‘Sounds like my kind of place.’

They descended dozens of flights of stairs and India felt increasingly aware of the weight of the mountain above them. A door at the bottom opened into a room filled with pale green cabinets
where the atmosphere hummed with electrical energy. Every surface was covered with switches and dials and needle-thin pointers that pulsed to an unseen current.

‘It’s a generator room!’ said Bulldog, inspecting one of the panels. ‘It’s using geothermal energy from deep underground. It could have been running on its own like
this for a hundred years.’

A row of windows in the control room overlooked a factory floor where a big turbine hummed powerfully amidst hissing steel pipes and red-wheeled valves. One end of the turbine hall was taken up
with a set of huge hangar doors.

‘According to the map we’ve travelled right down through the heart of the mountain,’ said Bulldog. ‘Those doors open out by the lake.’

The cavern also provided storage for hundreds of dark brown wooden crates stacked in high rows, each one stencilled with a red star. Clench’s eyes nearly popped out when he saw them.
Before they knew it he had scurried to the nearest one and was lovingly running his hands over it. ‘It’s treasure,’ he said breathlessly, ‘I know it is. Find something to
open it with, quickly.’

Bulldog pulled out the hammer and used it to smash his way through the wooden panels. Clench looked on with eyes as round as plates as he thrust his hands inside the crate and pulled out stacks
of pristine banknotes, bound with gummed paper strips.

‘Roubles,’ said Bulldog, stuffing a stack of notes in his bag. ‘One of the old-world currencies.’

‘This is no good,’ cried Clench. ‘We can’t spend this anywhere.’

The crates in the next row contained gilt-framed paintings packed in straw. They showed angels and saints with golden halos painted in dark oils and decorated with splashes of gold leaf.

‘Religious icons,’ said Bulldog. ‘Priceless, actually, or at least they would be if you could find anyone to buy them.’

‘Boring!’ shouted Clench.

Other crates held portraits of generals on horseback, kings and queens, landscapes and pictures of ancient cities. Pretty soon the floor was littered with wood splinters and wisps of straw. At
the sight of each crate filled with fine art, Clench would curse loudly before stomping off to break open another one.

‘The stories were right,’ said India in a hushed voice. ‘These really are the treasures of the old world, aren’t they?’

‘Looks like it,’ said Bulldog. He held up a painting of an angel in an ornate golden frame. ‘Do you think this would look good in
The Beautiful Game
?’

‘Bulldog!’ said India.

‘Yeah, I guess you’re right,’ he said, putting it back with the others. ‘It belongs here.’

They were interrupted by the sound of whooping from the next aisle. They found Clench beside a crate from which all manner of jewels was spilling on to the floor. Emeralds, rubies and sapphires
lay scattered like Christmas nuts, and splinters of diamond flashed ice-fire in the dim light. There were thousands upon thousands of gold coins and countless pieces of fine jewellery.

‘You go and find your own crate,’ growled Clench, stuffing handfuls of gemstones into his bag. ‘This one’s mine!’

His eyes gleamed yellow like a dog’s and a small muscle had begun to twitch in the side of his face. India felt faintly disgusted by him. ‘We’re wasting time here,’ she
said. ‘We’re supposed to be looking for my dad.’

‘Haven’t you got it yet?’ said Clench. ‘If John Bentley was ever here then he’s long dead, frozen to death or eaten by one of those shadow things, I shouldn’t
wonder.’

‘Don’t say that!’ cried India. ‘You don’t know what happened, you don’t know anything about him!’

She stamped away, wiping her eyes with her sleeve. Bulldog followed. ‘Don’t pay Archie no mind,’ he said kindly. ‘He can’t see past his own greed.’

‘Oh, Bulldog, what if those Valleymen really did get my dad?’ she sniffed. ‘I’ve seen what they can do.’

Bulldog placed an awkward arm around her shoulder. ‘Come on now,’ he said gruffly. ‘Let’s have none of that. If your dad’s here we’ll find him.’ Then he
stiffened suddenly. ‘Holy moley!’ he said. ‘Would you look at that!’

Ahead of them was a row of narrow caves, each filled with a deadly-looking arsenal of equipment. One was lined with racks of rifles and boxes of ammunition while another was stacked with
sinister-looking black drums, each marked with a skull and crossbones.

‘Chemical weapons,’ said Bulldog. ‘Nasty things. They drift on the breeze and kill anyone that gets in their way.’

India shivered.

The last cavern was filled with what looked to India like dozens of gleaming white coffins in steel racks. There were angry warning signs in yellow and black on the surrounding walls. Bulldog
seemed shocked by what he was seeing. He ran his hand over the glossy surface of one of the coffins. Now that India saw them up close, she thought they looked familiar. Each one had stubby fins and
a tail with a painted red star. ‘I’ve seen pictures of these in some of my dad’s old books,’ she said. ‘They’re bombs!’

‘Not just bombs,’ said Bulldog in a hushed tone. ‘They’re warheads, more than a hundred of them.’

‘Warheads?’ she murmured. ‘That’s like what Nentu said about my dad: “He rests among the heads of warriors!” But what are they?’

‘Terrible old-world weapons,’ he said. ‘Just one of these missiles could destroy an entire city in a flash of heat and light. No one knows how to make them any more.’

She reached out to touch one. It gleamed like bone and felt cold to the touch. Like death, she thought. ‘Bulldog,’ she said slowly. ‘Do you think these warheads might be the
reason Lucifer Stone wants to find Ironheart so badly? I mean, think about what he could do if he had weapons like these.’

Bulldog let out a low whistle. ‘You might be right, India,’ he said. ‘He could hold the world to ransom if he wanted to. No one could stop him.’

They both fell into silence as they looked at the shiny, coffin-like missiles and thought about what horrors Lucifer Stone might be able to inflict with them.