The Baker Street Translation (27 page)

His left leg went down first; he grabbed with both arms for the floor of the tunnel; but his right knee and leg collapsed into the hole now, as well; the surface of the floor was just too slick, and he could not hold on.

Reggie dropped into the hole and down.

He slid. It wasn't a free fall; he realized after perhaps a second that he was on a slope.

And then it was over. He landed.

It was a hard surface; brick, like the floor of what he'd already been on, but with no mud or muck to cushion the blow. He landed on his ass more than his legs, and the impact sent a momentary shiver up his spine.

He got his hands on the floor and gathered his legs beneath him. Perhaps nothing broken. He tried to stand.

Yes, thank God. He could. He began to straighten up.

“Careful,” said a voice. “Don't step forward. There's a damn bloody ledge. I almost went over it myself.”

Reggie knew that voice. It was too dark to see him, but he knew the voice: It was Buxton's.

“Where are we?” asked Reggie.

“Heath? That's you?”

“Bloody hell, yes.”

There was a long pause, during which, Reggie presumed, Buxton was trying to figure out just why Reggie was there.

“We'd given you up for dead,” said Reggie. “Or at least I had. And please don't say it was nice of me to drop in.”

“Wouldn't dream of it,” said Buxton. “But I can't say I'm not glad for the company.”

Reggie could hear water flowing somewhere; he hoped it was water, but it might not be, given the acrid stench in this chamber.

And he thought he could hear something else, above the ceiling and perhaps a bit to the south. The muted sound of traffic.

But now there was a clang of metal from somewhere in the chamber.

“He's going to appear over there,” said Buxton, pointing at some area in the darkness across from them.

And then Aspic did indeed appear. He was still in waders and his green uniform. He now had a large leather rucksack slung over one shoulder.

Aspic held his electric lantern aloft, and for the first time Reggie got a look at the chamber they were in. It was broader and higher than the others he had been through—eight feet high, and there was a distance of at least ten feet from the ledge where Reggie and Buxton stood to the one where Aspic stood now. Behind Aspic was a set of steps, straight up, which Reggie guessed had to lead to the surface—or at least to another chamber higher up.

“Impressive, isn't it?” said Aspic. “The effort they put into the brickwork a hundred years ago. Built to last. Build to withstand the occasional flood of London rainwater and the continual flood of detritus from the city's inhabitants. Maybe not built to withstand six pounds of C4 explosive, though. We shall see. Or you will, at least. I intend to be aboveground.”

Aspic put down the rucksack.

“This chamber and the large tunnels you see over there are what we call ‘mixed use,” he continued. “Some of that use is for water, storm water, water that goes into the lakes and out of them. The other use, your nose can tell you. There are connecting tunnels for each use.”

Aspic took an object out of the rucksack as he spoke.

“One of those water tunnels is right up there,” he continued, pointing at the ceiling above the steps. “It carries water into the eastern end of Serpentine Lake, which is directly above where you are now standing. It's the lowest point in Hyde Park, the quickest point of access for someone who knows the tunnels, like me. And it's also the place where royals are most fond of having their little public picnics.”

Aspic unwrapped the object, and Reggie recognized it immediately: a white-and-yellow plastic duck.

Aspic picked up the toy and opened the bottom panel with a screwdriver.

Then he reached into his rucksack and brought out several small slabs of gray-white material that looked rather like Play-Doh. He began to pack them into the duck's compartment.

“Why are you doing this?” asked Reggie.

Aspic now screwed the bottom panel back into place.

“Eighteen years,” said Aspic, kneeling by the toy duck and inspecting his work. “Eighteen years, starting from when I was just a lad. But I did my job for eighteen years—keeping these tunnels clean, slogging through the stench when it backed up. You can never get the smell out, you know; you put on slickers before you climb down the steps, you put on a mask for the fumes, when it gets really bad, but it still gets into your skin somehow, and when you go back up to life aboveground, you can never really get it out. You try to cover it up with vanilla, but you know it's still there.”

“Eighteen years?” said Buxton. “Then you're just two years from your pension. Why mess it up now?”

Aspic stopped what he was doing and shot back a glare. He put the duck down and stood.

“Eighteen years,” he said, “of cleaning up royal shit, and then the Royal Parks Service let's me go.”

“Oops,” said Buxton under his breath.

“Me and my partner were working the Thames outfall during a storm, trying to clear out the debris before the tide came in. We were almost done. It was his turn to go under and mine to stay above and stand guard at the manhole cover. We were outside a pub. I was thirsty. I put cones all around the cover and made sure it was unlocked, and then I popped inside for a brew. Not strictly according to regulation procedures, but we'd both done it. We'd both done that, many times before.”

Now Aspic knelt down to do something with the duck again. He didn't look up as he spoke.

“Couple hours later, I wonder why my partner hasn't come in to join me. I'm ready to buy him a pint, and I come out—and a bloody lorry has ignored the cones, knocked them all over, and parked there anyway. It's parked on the manhole cover. Not just over it, but it's rear wheel actually on it, holding it down with all the weight of the vehicle. I run back in the pub, I find the owner of that bloody delivery truck, and I drag him out by his ear to move the thing. But it's too late. The tide was in. Someone had locked the escape gate on the other tunnel—we didn't know—and my mate couldn't get out through the tunnel where we'd come in. The Thames came in, and he drowned.”

Now Aspic stood again, the duck in his hands.

“The Royal Parks Service fired me. I disputed the firing in court. I won a settlement. I never went back to work for them—no way I would—but I kept my uniform and I kept my memory of all the stink hidden beneath the royal palace.”

Aspic set the duck on a shelf behind him now and started digging into his pack for something else. Reggie saw him take out two paper items and place them in a small canvas bag.

“That was twenty years ago,” Aspic continued. “I swore I would make the royals pay for what happened to me. I didn't go to university like you, Heath. And I sure as hell wasn't born into money, as you were, Lord Buxton. But I learned. I started my own import business. I learned how to make connections on the Internet. Set up my antiroyals Web site. Got a young police officer to join as a way of expressing his family rebellion. Added a lazy techno-geek who thinks that if he can be an anarchist with money, that will get him girls. Hired a limo chauffeur who's driven just one too many celebrity toffs. I networked. Made friends, influenced people, you know? Set up a perfect system for keeping everything under the radar, and it was all running smoothly—until I get a subcontractor who thinks every little thing has to be perfect, and a freelancer who comes all the way from China on a point of honor. What are you going to do with people like that? Anyway, those were just bumps in the road. Now I'm ready.”

“You know, I sympathize with your cause entirely,” said Buxton. “And I've been thinking for some time now that its time to run an exposé on the Queen Mum.”

Aspic just shook his head and continued what he was doing.

Reggie glanced over at Buxton and said, “Might be best not to mention the queen at all.”

“Well, why don't you say something, then? You're the bloody barrister. Argue us out of this.”

Reggie nodded, thought about it for a moment, and then turned to Aspic.

“You know, these things never really accomplish what you hope. Maybe there's a better way. My guess is, your little bomb will just end up missing the royals entirely and you'll blow up the serving staff instead.”

“You think so?” said Aspic. “I'll let you assist, then.”

Now Aspic threw the small canvas bag across from his ledge to theirs.

It landed at Reggie's feet. He picked it up.

Inside were two birthday greeting cards—just like the one Reggie had tested back at chambers.

“Share, boys,” said Aspic. “You each get one.”

Buxton hesitated, then took one card from the bag. Reggie kept the other.

“Now then,” said Aspic. “Just how much do you love the royals? Are you ready to die for one? Unknown, out of sight, below ground, not being certain at all whether your act will even accomplish anything?”

“You mean that in just a rhetorical way,” said Buxton. “Right?”

“You each have a card exactly like the cards the birthday guests will have when they assemble upstairs by the lake. As soon as someone opens one of the cards—any of them, one of yours or one of theirs—all the C4 explosive that I just now placed in this duck will explode.”

“I'm not sure what you mean,” said Buxton.

“I think your friend gets it. He and his people have been working on it long enough. Mr. Heath, explain it to Lord Buxton, will you?”

Reggie looked at Buxton and said quietly, “The bomb is in the duck. The wireless detonator is in the card. He's inviting us to set it off now, before the royal party arrives, thereby possibly saving their lives.”

“If we do that, we die,” said Buxton.

“Exactly,” said Aspic, calling across the ledge. “You die now, or the royals die later. You choose.”

Buxton thought about it, made up his mind, and then acted quickly. He threw his card down.

“God save the queen,” said Buxton. “But it's not my job.”

Reggie was still holding on to his own card. He glared across at Aspic.

And then Aspic's mobile phone rang. The sound of it made all three men jump.

Aspic turned it on speaker.

“They will arrive in five minutes,” said a conspirator's voice over the phone.

“Very good,” said Aspic, and he turned toward the steps.

Then his phone crackled again.

“One thing,” said the voice, still on the speaker.

“Yes?”

“There is an addition to the procession. This Laura Rankin person. The actress. Do we consider her a bonus?”

Aspic paused to consider it, and at the same moment, there was a scream—from Buxton.

“No! Don't!”

But Buxton wasn't screaming at Aspic. Or at the man on the phone. He was screaming at Reggie.

But Reggie paid no attention. He opened his card.

Buxton cringed against the slick wall.

“Humpty Dumpty sat on a wall,” said the duck.

Aspic, still holding the duck, but completely nonplussed, looked back over his shoulder at Reggie.

Reggie looked in surprise at the card in his hand.

Then he looked defiantly back at Aspic—and he closed and opened the card again.

“Humpty Dumpty sat on a wall,” said the duck again. And that was all.

“Ah,” said Aspic, smiling, and holding both the duck and his mobile phone. “There, you see. I haven't yet punched the arming code into my phone. Silly me. But no matter. I'll do that after I get upstairs. And far away.”

He paused, with his foot on the first step, and said, “I was wrong about one of you, perhaps.” Then he shrugged. “No matter. I was merely curious.”

Aspic set the lantern down where it would give him just enough light, and he started up the slimy, smooth brick steps.

And then he slipped.

Aspic still had both arms around the duck and one hand on his mobile; unwilling to let anything go, he could not grab on, and he slipped from the steps back down to his ledge. The phone clattered from his hand, and the lantern went skidding across the ledge into the water.

The entire cavern went dark. There could never be a better chance.

Reggie leaped in the dark as far as he could from his ledge toward Aspic's; he landed with his arms on the slick ledge floor and his legs dangling in the water below.

And then, with one foot, he found an indent in the tunnel wall, the rare space of a missing brick. He had leverage now, and he pulled himself onto Aspic's ledge.

Aspic was scrambling on his hands and knees, searching for the phone. Reggie scrambled after him, and then felt a collision as Buxton managed to come across, as well.

In the pitch-black, Reggie lunged for where he thought Aspic was, and missed him. But his hands landed on something else—smooth and plastic. He had the duck.

Now, on the steps leading out, the pinpoint lights of Aspic's mobile phone came on. Buxton was on the steps as well, behind Aspic. But Aspic had the phone—and he was punching in the numbers. One, two … all seven.

“He's armed it!” shouted Reggie. “Don't let them open their cards!”

Aspic was on the steps now, climbing out. And Buxton was right behind him.

And Reggie was on the floor with the damn duck.

39

Laura rode in the last limo as Lady Ashton-Tate's procession passed through Lancaster Gate into Hyde Park.

In the meadow at the east end of Serpentine Lake, everything was already in place for the lady's Birthday Bash and Charity Celebrity Jogathon. As they approached, Laura could see through the limo window that the duke's contingent had already arrived and assembled at his bandstand, and most of the celebrators were already seated at picnic tables covered in white linen alongside the lake.

The first Ashton-Tate limo arrived now at the destination, parking on West Carriage Drive, adjacent to the meadow. The other limos fell in behind.