The Excalibur Codex (33 page)

‘Since you know everything else about me, I’m sure you already know the answer to that.’

‘Well, I do like to gamble, or perhaps that should be,
place my faith in my own skills. If you’re willing, we shall have a small wager on our bout. If you touch me you may walk away from here and we will say no more about aggravated assault, trespass and fire-raising, which you may not be aware can carry a life sentence in this state. If I touch you, we will honestly discuss the reason you are here and you will consider doing a service for me.’

‘It would be unwise of me to agree without knowing what the service was,’ Jamie pointed out.

‘True,’ she smiled, ‘but all I am asking is that you consider it. If you find it distasteful you have every right to say no.’

‘In that case, why not? Where are the masks and the vests?’

‘Oh, we don’t bother with little formalities like that here, Mr Saintclair. Swords have always been a way of life in my household. We trust in God and the expertise of our opponents to keep us safe.’

Jamie managed a rueful smile as he remembered the day Adam Steele had persuaded him to fight without a mask. Why do these bloody people always choose me? Still, what choice did he have? ‘Then God help us,’ he said, not altogether ironically.

‘Indeed.
En garde
.’

He’d planned to launch the first attack and finish it quickly, preferably in his favour, but the instant their swords touched he discovered just how good she was. Good and fast. She met his attack with a perfectly timed
defence and counter that rocked him back on his heels and had him frantically trying to protect shoulder and breast where her relentless attack threatened. Just when he knew she had him, Helena Webster stepped back and resumed the
garde
position with an amused smile.

‘Not bad, Mr Saintclair. Not bad at all. I assume you know my grandfather flew with the Eighth Air Force? What you possibly do not know is that on 18 September 1944, during a mission to support the rising of the Home Army in Warsaw, his plane was shot down on the way to its Russian landing place. This was the only time in the war that Marshal Stalin had sanctioned the landing of Allied planes on Russian soil. Not surprisingly, given the distances involved and the casualty rate among the squadrons who’d previously flown to Poland, the crews regarded it as a suicide mission.’ Without warning she renewed her attack, but this time Jamie was ready and he managed to hold his own for a few seconds before she again took command. He tried to concentrate on the glittering blade as she continued the conversation. ‘His was one of nine planes lost.’ Christ. The point flashed before his left eye. ‘It was forced north and came down in the Byelorussian forest.’ He just got his foil in place to parry a lunge and dance out of range. And again. ‘Gramps was the only survivor and he joined the local partisans.’ She stepped back and Jamie took the chance to recover his breath and try to calm his thumping heart. Helena Webster was better than good. She was world class and she was playing with him.

‘Or that is the story,’ the American continued, her breathing as regular as when they’d begun. ‘My investigations, albeit impossible to verify, indicate that the “partisan” band he joined was actually a gang of bandits who terrorized the Polish villages between Byelorussia and what was then East Prussia, but took part in very little fighting against the Nazis. When the Red Army advanced into Germany, Gramps’ merry band roamed the no man’s land between the two sides, preying on the weak and stealing everything they could lay their hands on.’ She smiled at the man in the wheelchair. Hal Webster fixed her with his single eye and whined like a caged animal. ‘Isn’t that right, Gramps? A thief and a murderer, even before.’

Before what? Jamie’s attention drifted between the astonishing story he was being told and the point of Helena Webster’s foil, which he now discovered had somehow lost its protective button during the fight. Accident or design? He didn’t have time to ponder the question, because she came at him again and this time he knew he was fighting for his life. Time after time, he only just managed to get the edge of his foil in position to parry a thrust. Again and again, that point came back at him with lethal intent. His arm began to ache and the breath tore at his chest and throat. He could feel himself slowing and knew she could feel it too.

She fended off his counter-attack too easily and he knew it must end soon. He had one last chance. Using sheer power he pushed her blade up and away in an
attack au fer,
positioning himself for an angled strike that would have taken her in the left breast, but Helena Webster pre-empted the move with one of her own and he found himself breast to breast with his opponent. ‘The only question, Mr Saintclair, is how much you know about what comes after. And, more important, what will you tell?’

With a piece of footwork that would have pleased a prima ballerina she disengaged and came at him again, the relentless steel seeking out his eyes and throat. But the red rage that had been building up inside came to his rescue, fuelling his speed and the desire not to be beaten by this beautiful, infuriating, dangerous woman. Gradually it took over his movements. Now she was on the retreat, parrying right and left to stay in the fight. He saw his chance and lunged at her chest. A whir of light and a searing pain in his wrist. A pinprick at his throat.

‘Never underestimate the opportunity to
envelope,
Mr Saintclair. It is a little flashy, some would say a little too Errol Flynn, but it has its uses.’ He looked along the three feet of high carbon steel into eyes as hard and unyielding as the sword at his throat. ‘You see, in many ways I am my grandfather’s daughter. So let me ask again. How much do you know about what comes after?’

Sometimes not answering a question is an answer in itself, but he doubted Helena Webster would care for that option. He felt a tiny trickle that might be blood
run down over his Adam’s apple and into the little hollow below.

‘All right.’ He nodded carefully. ‘A Byelorussian partisan group visited Nortstein Castle before the Germans had time to evacuate it in nineteen forty-five. They killed what was left of the garrison, while their leader had a, let us say, conversation, with the officer in charge. When he’d finished with the German, he lined his men up and shot them.’

The sword point slipped from his neck and Jamie relaxed. ‘Yes, their
leader,
as I’m sure you have surmised, was none other than my grandfather and he had his little chat with the SS officer on that very table,’ she pointed with the sword, ‘which is symbolic, if you like.’ She looked up at the banners hanging from the ceiling and smiled in a way that sent a shiver through him. He remembered Hermann’s description of a man red to the elbows and he didn’t feel like smiling back. Helena Webster read his look as she handed her blade to Carl, the guard. ‘The villagers had to bury what was left of the poor man. They couldn’t leave a whole heap of dead Germans and Russians lying around, so they hid them away in the woods.’

‘Do you mind telling me how you know all this?’

‘Oh, I was always curious about this – let’s call it a house, shall we? – and why my grandfather was the way he was.’ Her gaze drifted to the old man in the wheelchair and Hal Webster must have felt her eyes on him, because he lifted his head and now the expression on the
untouched side of his face was one of sheer terror. ‘So when I got the opportunity to do some research I used all the resources at my disposal to find out, and those resources are considerable, Mr Saintclair. In this age of instant information and high-speed global communication all things are possible. A few people from Nortstein survived the war and the forced evacuation, and even those who did not left their stories. It was only a matter of tracking them down.’ Her voice took on an edge that hadn’t been there earlier. ‘Whatever happened in this room that day changed my grandfather, Mr Saintclair. He was never what you would call a good man, but … Are you aware of the story of Faust?’

An involuntary shudder ran through Jamie as he remembered a long day in the depths of the Harz Mountains
where Goethe met his demon
and a man sold his soul to the devil. ‘I’m acquainted with it.’

‘Then you understand. His obsession with Nortstein Castle led to where we are today, trapped, for want of a better word, inside this monstrosity; a temple to a culture of death. I by family responsibilities I cannot escape and you by circumstances currently beyond your control,’ she frowned and stared at him, ‘and perhaps even by a sense of duty?’

‘I thought you hated him.’

She turned to the man in the wheelchair with a look of loathing. ‘Oh, not my responsibility to my grandfather, Mr Saintclair; never that.’

‘Why?’

The question surprised her. ‘My family affairs are my own, please understand that.’

‘No.’ Jamie indicated the twelve shop dummies elaborately dressed in cloaks and SS uniforms, the Teutonic Knights’ banners, the round table and the iron pentagram of heroes’ swords. ‘I meant why all this?’

The blonde head tilted a little to one side and the over-bright blue eyes studied him quizzically. Eventually Helena Webster smiled.

‘Before I answer that question I must decide whether I’m going to kill you.’

They locked him in the wine cellar, but at least they brought him food and nobody said anything about the condemned man’s last meal. He wondered how Gault was enjoying his captivity, but decided the former SBS man was quite capable of looking after himself and, anyway, there was little chance of doing anything about it. A strip light illuminated his makeshift dungeon and as he searched in vain for a way out he looked over the contents. Would it be wise to use his last few hours comparing Harold Webster’s Château Margaux ’66 with the ’68, or the ’72 Gevrey-Chambertin with the Nuits Saint Georges of the same year? Probably not, and, if his luck so far was anything to go by, there wouldn’t be a bloody corkscrew.

I must decide whether I’m going to kill you
.

Was she serious? He touched the scratch on his throat and remembered the ice-blue eyes at the end of that long sliver of steel. That depended on what she had to
gain and how much she had to lose: credits and debits judged as they would be on the corporation balance sheet. Was there more profit to be had by keeping the rather awkwardly persistent Mr James Saintclair alive, or sending him for a swim in the lake with a concrete block tied to his leg for ballast? On initial appraisal, the second option seemed more likely and he felt a little flutter of panic in his stomach. If she knew so much about him, she knew he was here for the sword. Ergo, if she wanted to keep the sword, it would be best to be rid of the inconvenient Saintclair. On the other hand, and now he felt a contrasting and unlikely stirring of what might be called hope, she had suggested he could do her a service and she had seemed quite serious about it. What that service could be, he had no idea. He recalled the figure-hugging bodysuit and one or two thoughts sprang to mind, but the chances of turning them into reality seemed slim in his current situation. All of which left him none the wiser. There’d been almost a twinkle in her eye when he’d asked that final question, and he had a feeling that, whatever the outcome of her deliberations, she wouldn’t be able to resist giving him the answer.

The question now was what to do while she made up her mind?

In the end he couldn’t pass up the ’66.

‘Mr Saintclair?’ Jamie groaned and opened his eyes, blinking at the bright light. ‘Miss Webster will see you now, sir.’

His back ached from lying on the hard floor with his jacket as a pillow, but on the plus side the early morning call didn’t have the feel of an invitation to a firing squad. He followed the guard to a large room in the west wing, with a polished wooden banqueting table – rectangular, not round – at the centre, and walls lined with bookcases that reminded him of the day Adam Steele had revealed the contents of the Excalibur codex. Jamie allowed his eyes to drift over the titles as the guard took his place by the door with one hand poised disconcertingly over the butt of one of the omnipresent Glock 9mms. They seemed to consist mainly of American literary classics, but Harold Webster’s collection also contained a few British books. There was a section on Dickens, another containing the complete works of Shakespeare, and a shelf of leather-clad titles by Sir Walter Scott. One wall was devoted to what looked like every book ever written on the Arthur legends, ranging from the eighteenth century to the latest modern works. He randomly picked one called
Arthur and the Lost Kingdoms
and had just opened it when Carl, the guard who had watched the fencing bout, entered the room. Curiously, the black man carried a long sword across two outstretched hands, almost as if he were taking part in some kind of solemn ceremony. Jamie felt as if an electric shock ran through him, his heart quickened and the breath caught in his throat as he realized what he was seeing. It didn’t seem possible even now, but there it was, finally, within touching distance.
A broad-bladed, battle-notched iron man-killer
.
How well it fitted the description. Almost four feet of dull, crow-black, rust-pitted metal, the edges worn thin by relentless honing and nicked where they’d once clashed with other blades. Yet for all its utilitarian appearance it took on a curious, almost awesome beauty in his eyes. This was a sword that had been revered, for how else had it been protected and cared for, for more than a thousand years? Carl laid it carefully in the centre of the table. And yet …

‘Thank you for your patience, Mr Saintclair.’ Today she wore an immaculately cut suit of slate-grey silk over a simple turquoise blouse open at the neck and offset by a necklace of thick gold links. Another of the guards followed her, pushing Harold Webster in his chair, twisted and glaring, like a malignant land crab.

‘Does this mean you’re not going to kill me?’

Helena Webster ignored the question. ‘When I heard of your interest in Nortstein Castle, I had a choice to make. I could have tried to stop you, and believe me when I say that I would have succeeded. Or I could watch and judge the mettle of the people I faced. Fortunately for you, I chose the second option. When you found your way here, I was impressed by your perseverance and your ingenuity, but it left me with another choice. My only interest in all this is to protect the good name of my family and my company. You are patently a man of honesty and integrity.’ Jamie blinked. If the description was accurate, he was in the wrong line of business. ‘But you are also a man of great curiosity. The first I can use.
The second I must eliminate.’ There it was, the shiver down the spine again. ‘I have decided that the best way to proceed is to be entirely candid with you. All I ask is your word that nothing you hear today will be repeated outside these four walls. Do you agree?’