The Excalibur Codex (31 page)

Well, they didn’t think much of that, but they had business with the gentleman in question and they weren’t going to let a little old mountain stand in their way. Jamie hadn’t expected it to be easy, but equally he hadn’t expected to do any mountain climbing. Fortunately, they’d come prepared for a hike and when they surveyed the hill as Gault parked the car off the road at the end of the trail, it looked more of a steep walk than an alpine ascent. They pulled on anoraks of camouflage green and sturdy walking boots.

‘Here.’ Gault handed Jamie a rucksack and the younger man grunted at the weight.

‘Hand grenades or mortar bombs?’

‘You’ll
thank me when we get wherever it is we’re going,’ the former soldier said as he hitched an identical bag onto his shoulders.

They followed the course of a stream up through the scattered trees and multi-coloured patches of wild flowers with Gault setting a thigh-burning pace that left Jamie gasping in his wake. He considered himself fit, but hiking in the Sierra Nevada was a world away from his morning jog around the park. A few hundred feet higher and his lungs were burning and his head began to spin. The sensation was similar to an experience he’d once had in the Himalayas and it was only when Gault helpfully pointed out they were probably at around seven thousand feet that he realized just how high these mountains were. At this height they were tramping through a dusting of snow that crunched beneath their feet and made the walking even harder on the thigh and calf muscles, but Gault was relentless. Jamie gritted his teeth and put one foot in front of the other, determined not to be outdone.

Once they reached the crest the former soldier stopped among the thin cover of the trees and shrugged off his rucksack. Sweat coursed down his face and his breath rasped from his lungs, but he was still grinning. ‘Like the Brecons, but without the mud and the sleet.’ Far below, a lake shaped vaguely like a hump-back whale stretched away diagonally northwards in a narrow cleft between the mountains. The wider part lay closest to them and it narrowed the further north it went. Gault hauled out a
pair of binoculars and sighted the lenses on the far side. After a few moments he handed them to Jamie.

‘You can see the jetty just to the north-east at the top end of the lake, but I don’t see any sign of a float plane.’ Jamie found the wooden pontoons in his lenses.

‘Hopefully that means he’s alone, like a good recluse, or maybe just with a couple of staff.’ He studied the area behind the jetty, but the trees were denser in the valley than on the slopes and it was difficult to make anything out. Unless … ‘I think I can just see a tile roof among the trees, but it’s difficult to tell because it’s hidden by the contour of the hill.’ He scanned the rest of the lake, looking for the best way to approach the Webster property. He followed the line of what looked like a track to the south end of the lake. ‘Bastard.’

Gault looked up round in alarm. ‘What can you see?’

‘A road. A road that the little prick at the coffee stand didn’t tell us about. We could have driven most of the way.’

The SBS man took the glasses and laughed. ‘A Yank with a sense of humour? You don’t meet one of those every day.’ He shrugged. ‘It’s hardly a surprise. If they were supplying the place by float plane, there’d be one here permanently. Never mind, your lordship. We’ve had a bracing stroll and now we’re about to have another. It might be for the best. Harold Webster may be a recluse, but he’s a reclusive millionaire, and I’ve never met a millionaire yet who didn’t want his security as watertight as a duck’s arsehole. I’m betting our man will
have the road watched and every car that stops checked out and there’ll be a few juicy surprises in those woods.’

Jamie took the binoculars again. ‘If the security is that tight, how the hell are we going to get in?’

The other man grinned. ‘Leave that to your Uncle Gault. The house hasn’t been built that I couldn’t get inside. Once you’re in, it’s up to you.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘If you can persuade the old man to part with the sword, that’s fine. Pay him what he wants. If not, you’re going to have to steal Excalibur.’

‘So we’re talking fences, cameras, motion sensors and microphones.’ Gault rattled out the dangers like a haiku poem. ‘Any or all of the above, in whatever combination. And we won’t know we missed them until the bastards are on top of us. So we take it slow and you do everything – and I mean ev-er-y-thing – that Gault does. I drop, you drop. I run, you run. If I stop for a piss, you get your John Thomas out, understand?’

It had taken them another hour to reach the east side of the lake where they lay among the trees about a mile from the Webster property. Jamie’s gut churned with nerves, but he smiled. ‘You didn’t tell me you wanted to scare them away.’

Gault grabbed his wrist and looked into his eyes. ‘Just do as you’re fucking told, okay?’

‘All right,’ Jamie snapped, already regretting his attempt to be friendly. ‘What happens in the unlikely event I get hold of the sword?’

‘I told you. When you have it, press one on the sat-phone. That will alert me and I’ll call down the float plane from Reno that will be patrolling overhead just waiting for the word. When I set this up I thought he’d be picking us up from Lake Tahoe, but this is even better. He’ll take us on at the jetty. The guards might be a problem, but there don’t seem to be too many of them and we’ll deal with that as it comes. We fly straight back to Reno, then on to New York, where Charlotte will be waiting for us and will hopefully have arranged the export of the sword—’

‘How …? ’

‘Probably better you don’t know that. I think they call it accessory after the fact over here. We’ll hole up for a few days and enjoy the sights and then head home.’

‘It sounds simple.’

‘It is simple, your lordship. The only difficult part is finding the sword and getting out of here. Let’s go.’

They moved slowly through the trees, keeping low to make best use of the cover of tall ferns that sprouted in flares of emerald green from the mossy ground. Gault’s eyes moved continually between the earth in front of him and the trees around. Jamie’s never left the man in front. Twice they froze at the sound of animals, the first probably a raccoon or a squirrel, but the second most definitely a deer of some kind that sniffed the air before trotting across their front, a fleeting, dusty shadow among the pines. The ground undulated and sudden outcrops appeared in front of them, but Gault
insisted on climbing the obstacles rather than being diverted from their path. From time to time he consulted a compass, but Jamie was certain he didn’t need it. The access road lay somewhere about a hundred yards to their left, and to the right the mountains formed a more or less insurmountable barrier. It meant they always knew where they were, but also that they had only one line of escape. For a time Jamie relaxed and the spectre of Gault’s security guards faded as the forest became less threatening. But that was before they came to the fence. It loomed in front of them like a razor-wire wall, ten feet high and running to right and left as far as they could see. Jamie reached out to touch it, prompted by some foolish instinct to see if it was real or the product of his fevered imagination, but drew his hand back when Gault hissed, ‘Idiot.’

He signalled right and they soon came to a metal sign with an unmistakable zigzag symbol and the words, in bright red, DANGER – 10,000 VOLTS. KEEP OUT. PRIVATE PROPERTY.

Gault bent his mouth to Jamie’s ear. ‘Told you you’re a fucking amateur,’ he whispered, fumbling at the younger man’s rucksack.

Jamie sat back, staring at the sign. Well, that was that. They’d have to try the gate. But Gault had other ideas.

‘The chances are it’s just something to keep nosy hikers out. Too many animals in this forest. They’d be resetting the command box every five minutes. Still,’ he stared at the wire, ‘no point in taking any risks.’ He withdrew
three lengths of cable from the rucksack, each four feet long and tipped with a large crocodile clip at either end, with the lugs of the clip covered in thick rubber. Very carefully he placed the first clips three feet apart on the bottom wire, before repeating the process on the second and third. Once he was satisfied, he reached back into the sack and drew out a pair of heavy-duty wire cutters. ‘I told you to trust your Uncle Gault, eh?’

When the wires were cut he’d created an opening three feet wide and the same high. He replaced the wire cutters in Jamie’s rucksack and pushed it under the wire. ‘You first.’

Jamie squirmed through, making sure he kept to the centre of the hole, and watched as Gault followed. ‘Now,’ the former SBS man said, ‘I want you to remember every tree we pass, so that you’ll know how to get back here.’

‘I thought you said we’d be going out by the jetty?’

‘We had an old saying in the army son. SNAFU. Situation normal: all fucked up. You hope for the best and plan for the worst. Let’s go.’

They continued through the trees for another hundred yards and Jamie became conscious they were being forced closer to the lake shore by the terrain. Everything ahead was cloaked by the shoulder of the mountain overlooking the jetty and Gault wriggled upwards through the sparse bushes and well-spaced trees on the outcrop.

‘Jesus Christ.’

Jamie joined him, his astonishment at the incredible
sight before them marginally reduced by the fact his suspicions had been growing ever since he’d spoken to Marmaduke Porter. ‘Nortstein Castle.’

‘It’s quite a place.’

‘It’s not a patch on Wewelsburg.’

‘But nobody shipped that from Germany and rebuilt it in cowboy country,’ Gault said.

‘Point taken, old chum.’ Jamie whistled softly. ‘Every bolt and every nail. Every brick and every tile. You’ll note how the orientation with the lake and the north– south axis are exactly as they were at Nortstein. Our man looked long and hard before he found Marlette Lake.’

‘Why in the name of God would he do that?’

‘It’s possible he’s just fascinated by the Teutonic Knights.’ Jamie studied the massive building on the far side of the meadow. ‘I’d say it’s not because he enjoys the aesthetic beauty of their creations.’ As castles go, it was one of the least handsome he’d ever set eyes upon: more medieval Hitler’s bunker than Louis XIVth chateau and in a jigsaw puzzle of styles. The squat main block reminded him of a Norman keep, but in red brick, with added wing extensions and a roof clad in tiles of bright orange. A large doorway dominated the façade and at some point an octagonal tower had been added to the west wing. It drew his eye and he borrowed Gault’s binoculars to study the flagstaff.

‘The holy Knight’s Cross.’ Jamie confirmed the black Maltese cross against a white background. ‘If we were
playing blind man’s buff I’d say we were getting warm.’

Gault ignored him and rummaged in the bottom of the rucksack. ‘You go first and I’ll cover you.’

‘Cover me with what?’

A big black Ruger automatic appeared in the former SBS man’s fist. He saw Jamie’s startled look and grinned sourly. ‘This is the States, son; they give them out with the groceries. Go.’

Reluctantly, Jamie left the cover of the trees and made a diagonal run for the angle of the east wing. It came to him that he and Gault were unconsciously following the tactics Wulf Ziegler and his
Hitler Jugend
had used when they’d stolen Excalibur from the mansion in the north of England. He wondered if there was some kind of karmic circle that had brought him here. But Wulf Ziegler had had darkness for cover, while Jamie felt completely naked as he crossed a meadow as wide as two cricket pitches in broad daylight. No sign of the guards, thank God, but given the size of the fence they must be around somewhere. He could hear the sound of the grass rustling in his footsteps and prayed it was Gault and not some hulking great ex Navy Seal. He reached the wall and stopped to get his bearings. To his right, the castle’s frontage stretched away with the main door in the centre. No point in breaking in to the ranch then knocking on the front door to ask for directions. It was a castle. It would once have been surrounded by a wall, or even by a series of walls. They were long gone, but the entrances to the kitchens and the servants’ quarters
might still exist. He made his decision and weaved his way through a labyrinth of outhouses until he reached the rear of the building and looked round the corner.

‘Don’t move.’ The order was superfluous because the cold touch of steel on his forehead froze him to the spot. The owner of the steel, which by the lettering on the barrel an inch from his nose was part of a Glock 9mm, was a tall, rangy man with close-cropped hair, dressed in the kind of outlandish camouflage gear Americans used for deer hunting. A communications set hung from a hook beside one of the outhouses and Jamie realized he must have just returned from a patrol before some buffalo-hoofed English idiot alerted him. ‘Do you have a weapon?’

‘No.’

‘If I find you have a weapon I’m going to make you swallow it and then rip it out your asshole.’

‘I don’t have a weapon.’ Jamie let the anger flow into his voice. ‘I got lost in the woods.’

‘Yeah? And I’m George Washington. Now, very, very slowly, turn round and face the wall. You got that?’ Jamie did as he was told and rotated his body, keeping his head as steady as possible, with the barrel of the Glock scoring his skull as he moved until it was resting in the indent above his neck. ‘Now tell me again why you’re here?’

‘I told you—’ The barrel of the Glock rattled against his skull.

‘Every time I think you’re not telling the truth I’m
going to hit you with my personal weapon, which you’d be advised to understand has a hair trigger. Now, why are you here?’

‘I came to talk to Harold Webster.’

‘Well, crawling through the woods seems a mite un-neighbourly, which leads me to suspect that you already know Mr Webster don’t welcome no visitors. Which brings me to my next question: did you come alone?’

‘I—’

‘Don’t answer that.’ The voice lost its edge and the fierce pressure on the back of his skull eased. Jamie heard the unmistakable crack of metal against bone and the sound of a falling body as the presence behind him vanished.