The Book of the Lion (5 page)

The machines looked familiar to Hallkyn. They were gray with a texture to their housings. There was a small digital display near the top, and a small tray-like surface in front. And then the men began to work and he remembered where he'd seen machines like that—at his bank. They were counting machines, like the ones that tellers used.

Each man would pick up a ten-thousand dollar stack of money, slip off the band, and place the stack on the machine. The machine whirred as it counted the bills, and the man took the stack off and dropped it into a duffel bag at his feet.

A man a bit older than the others, with graying hair that was trimmed in a buzz cut, stepped up to the window beside Hallkyn. “You look surprised. Didn't you think I'd count it?” The voice was unmistakable. Hallkyn hated it even more now than he had before. He thought he caught a slight resemblance to the driver. Were they a pair of brothers?

“Of course,” Hallkyn lied. “Not like this, maybe. Not right away.”

“Did I strike you as a trusting soul?” He stared hard at Hallkyn. Then he turned his head and called to the others. “Find anything wrong yet?”

“Not yet,” said one. “Nothing,” said another. None of them looked up. They were working at a furious pace.

Hallkyn watched. Five boxes, a hundred stacks each. Slip the band off onto the floor, set the stack on the counting machine, and while the machine whirred through that stack, strip the band off the next stack so the machine never stopped. Each man was getting through his hundred stacks at an incredible speed.

The gray-haired man walked toward the counting machines. He bent over to pick up something.

Hallkyn's breath stopped in mid-inhalation. The man was picking up the bands from the floor and putting them in an old-fashioned galvanized trash can.

Hallkyn was desperate to get him thinking about something else. Even a minute might help. “Can you at least let me see it?”

“See what?”

“You know.”

The man shook his head. “It's not here. I don't carry it around with me.” The man stopped moving, his eyes on the floor. He looked puzzled for a second, then different—suspicious. He spun his head to look at Hallkyn. He picked up a band, then tore it. He ran to the wall, picked up a push broom that was leaning there and ran with it along the line of men at the counting machines. He swept the bands into a pile, and threw them in double handfuls into the trash can. He shouted, “Stop the counting and strip off the rest of the bands. Put them in this can as quickly as possible.”

As the men complied, he moved back to the wall, and picked up a small can that looked as though it held kerosene. He poured the clear liquid contents onto the money bands. He took a pack of matches out of his pocket, struck one, and tossed it.

The fire caught with a
poof
, the flame four feet high instantly. He shouted, “Strip all the bands and put them in the fire. Don't do anything else, and don't miss any.”

The men obeyed, burning the bands as quickly as they could. When they were finished, he called out, “All right. Toss the rest of the money into the bags and carry them to the street.”

The men each lifted a duffel bag and carried it through a man-size door on the side of the building away from the garage door where Hallkyn's Escalade had entered.

The man with the gray hair stepped close to Hallkyn's window. “We had an agreement, and you cheated,” he said. “You stupid, stupid man.” Then he turned and ran through the doorway where the younger men had taken the duffel bags.

Hallkyn heard a car start, and then drive off.

The five young men each took a counting machine and carried it out through the mansize doorway. He thought about stopping them, but he had no idea how to stop five men from doing anything. Stopping one would probably get him beaten senseless.

He sat still in the passenger seat of the Cadillac Escalade, watching. The men ignored him, as though they had forgotten he was there, and it was a relief to Hallkyn. A moment later, they were gone. There was another engine sound. They were driving away too.

Hallkyn sat in the passenger seat of the Escalade, watching the fire in the trash can burn down to nothing and go out. The bands had been consumed, and now the igniter was exhausted too.

He took out his cell phone and dialed Spanner's number.

“Where are you?” said Spanner. “The security people said the transmitters went dead.”

“They were burned,” said Hallkyn. “The man realized they were a trick. He was furious. Now I don't know what he's likely to do.”

“Where are you?”

“One of his men drove me up an alley to a place that looks like a warehouse or a garage. He took the keys with him.”

“Can you go outside?”

“I think so.”

“Then do it, and look for a street sign. I'll hold on.”

Hallkyn went out the man-sized door where the others had gone and found himself on an ordinary Boston street. People walked past him on the sidewalk, went into stores and restaurants. It felt like he'd gone through a door to another, calmer, ordered world. At the corner he saw a sign for Beacon Street.

An hour later Hallkyn and Spanner crossed the carpeted floor in the lobby of the Lenox Hotel.

“I need a drink,” said Hallkyn.

“So do I,” said Spanner. He stepped to the door of the bar and opened it, and they entered the dimly lighted, comforting space.

Hallkyn's phone rang. He pulled it from his pocket and swiped his thumb across the screen to answer it.

There was a picture—a video, he realized after a moment. It was a shot of a thick sheaf of elongated sheets a bit yellowed, with neat lines of black ink in a single column of writing down the center, and a demi-venet border on the left margin. Hallkyn thought he saw a glow of gold leaf at the top left that could be an illuminated letter. “Oh, my God,” he said.

Spanner leaned close and looked at it too. “Is that it?”

A pair of hands picked up the stack of sheets. The familiar hated voice came over the picture, filled with contempt. “Your word was worthless. My word is true.”

The hands set the stack of pages on a shiny metal tray.

Hallkyn said to the phone, “Please don't do this.”

There was no reply, and he realized this moving image wasn't live. This had already happened, and nobody was listening. The right hand poured a can of liquid on the sheets. The hands struck a match and tossed it onto the tray. The bright yellow flames rose, flickered and wavered. There was a blue aura around the top as they fluttered a little. Then the picture went black. The video was disconnected.

The two men looked at each other, speechless. After a thirty second silence, Spanner was the first. “I'm sorry,” he said. “I'm so sorry, Dominic.”

Hallkyn gave a little start, as though he had been wakened from sleep. “Eh? No, T.M. It wasn't your fault. You did everything you could, so generous and brave, as always. It was my fault.”

The bartender materialized in front of them like a specter. “What can I get you gentlemen?”

Spanner said, “Single malt Scotch.”

Hallkyn nodded, more at Spanner than the bartender.

The bartender said, “We have several single malts. Do you have a favorite?”

Spanner glanced at the row of bottles on the third shelf above the bar. “That one should do it.”

“Laphroaig?”

“Fine. We'd like two glasses and the bottle.”

The bartender poured the first round, and Spanner poured the second round less than a minute later. They slowed their pace after that, and drank in silence for a time.

Finally Hallkyn spoke. “I've lost your money. I'm afraid it's much more than I can repay, more than I'll have in my lifetime. I feel terrible.”

“I don't want it repaid,” said Spanner. “I can cover that much by myself. The backers I had lined up won't lose anything. I'll just send each of them ten percent of what he'd promised to invest, and call it a profit. They'll all be delighted.” He looked into Hallkyn's eyes, and his expression changed. “Here's the important part. This has to remain our secret. Forever. If the people I deal with knew I had been so foolish, my reputation would be destroyed. I rely on investors who trust my judgment and bet billions on my being right. I have to ask you to swear to me that you'll never tell.”

Hallkyn leaned back and focused his eyes on Spanner. “Do you think I want this known? If you lost your career now, you'd still be pretty much the man you are—a winner. But all I have is my reputation as a medieval scholar. Do you have any idea what the people in my field would think of the man who got some lunatic to burn Chaucer's
Book of the Lion
? I'd rather die than tell anyone this happened. I'll swear gladly.”

Behind the garage of a house fifty miles away, the man finished cleaning up the residue of the little fire he had lit a couple of hours ago. He'd had to wait until the tray was cool enough to touch. Now the ashes and burned remnants had been bagged, then double bagged, and put in the garbage can. It had been an expensive fire. He had bought the vellum from a company that printed diplomas, rough cut and trimmed the sheets himself, and used a projector to trace the design of the top page so it would look like the real
Book of the Lion
on a video. He'd been pleased. It really had looked a lot like the real one that Uncle Reg had found in the trunk he'd bought at the farm sale in Lankashire after the war. That one was in the climate-controlled room where it belonged.

He hosed off the tray, wiped the surface dry with paper towels, and then took the tray back into the house and set it on the shelf under the counter in the kitchen. He looked at his watch. It was getting to be just about time.

He went into his study and sat down at the desk. He scanned his list of names and numbers, and then took out one of the pre-paid cell phones from the drawer on his right. He dialed.

He waited through four rings and then heard the voicemail message. When it was time he said, “Professor Bethune, the reason I'm calling is that you are one of the three or four most respected medieval scholars in the world. I have what I believe to be the only remaining copy of
The Book of the Lion
. It's on thin vellum, in a fine court hand, legible throughout. I'll call again.”

All rights reserved, including without limitation the right to reproduce this ebook or any portion thereof in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Copyright © 2014 by Thomas Perry

Cover design by Kat Lee

978-1-4976-4993-4

Published in 2015 by MysteriousPress.com/Open Road Integrated Media, Inc.
345 Hudson Street
New York, NY 10014
www.mysteriouspress.com
www.openroadmedia.com