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  Rosemary closed her eyes. For the next ten minutes she pictured Michael’s face. And she said over and over:

  ‘AMY. TELL MUMMY MICHAEL IS BAD. TELL HER HE WILL HURT YOU. TELL MUMMY TO TAKE YOU AWAY FROM HIM. MICHAEL’S A BAD MAN. MICHAEL’S A VERY BAD MAN …’

  Chapter 36

  Nature of the Beast

  In the hotel room in Wales, Richard sat with Christine, Joey and Michael and watched the television news in a silence that was as solid as stone.

  Outside, columns of rain stalked the valley like shadowy giants. The thunder was a muted grumble, the lightning a silver-blue flickering around the mountain tops. Richard took another swallow of brandy as the TV replayed his nightmare in a series of brutal close-ups. There was the yellow Fiat in Pontefract, mashed flat in a tangle of steel and ruptured tyres. Then the fast-food diner. Not that there was anything recognizable. Scorched debris and shattered ketchup bottles that left splodges of red on the Tarmac.

  He felt numb. The news reader’s commentary never sank in beyond that the police were baffled by two mystery explosions; one of which left two policeman dead.

  ‘The dead policeman were,’ ran the news reader’s voice, ‘Terry Glass, 42, and John Clifford, 37. Both officers were married with children. John Clifford was in the news last year for his part in freeing two young children held hostage in a Bradford house siege …’

  Richard swallowed more brandy. Not that it helped much. He’d screwed up trying to tell the police. Now they were dead. And here he was, watching the result of his screw-up. Body bags stretchered to ambulances. Moving tributes by the men’s colleagues, photographs of the two men with their families.

  The news reader added that the only witness to either bombing had worked at Hank’s Yankee Diner. She was still in a state of shock and unable to help the police at this time.

  ‘Thank heaven for small mercies,’ breathed Michael with relief. Both Richard and Christine shot him dagger looks.

  ‘Sorry,’ he said, ‘that sounded callous. But it means that for the time being we’re off the hook. They haven’t linked the damage to us.’

  Richard grunted. ‘Watch me jump for joy.’

  ‘I know this is rough,’ Michael said, leaning forward, his fingers knitted together. ‘But the truth of the matter is, we need to look after number one. Us. We must accept that people died today. But we can’t let that prey on our minds. We need to stay alert. And be ready for whatever might come at us.’

  Joey said, ‘You said today we were infected, too. That thing might hunt any of us now?’

  Michael nodded. ‘Imagine it’s a hungry shark. That’s got a scent of our blood.’

  ‘You’ve got a vivid way of putting things,’ said Christine, tartly.

  ‘I only wish I could make it even more vivid. The plain truth of the matter is this: it is hunting you all now. If anyone was stupid, no, suicidal enough to decide to go it alone in the middle of the night, I’d give them twenty-four hours, if they’re lucky, miraculously lucky. Then …’ He slapped his hand down on his knee as if crushing a butterfly.

  ‘But I take it that it can’t split itself into pieces and hunt us all at once?’

  ‘No, it’ll simply hunt down the slowest first.’

  ‘What if we caught a plane?’ Joey sounded suddenly hopeful. ‘Put ten thousand miles between us and the thing.’

  ‘That’s not as easy as it sounds. You’ve got to buy tickets. Do you have your passports? Are you prepared to sit for two hours in a departure lounge where you’re effectively a prisoner? When the plane taxis down the runway will it be going to meet the Beast head on with you sitting strapped into your seat unable to do a dickens thing about it?’

  Joey’s shoulders drooped. ‘You’ve got a point.’

  ‘Yes, and the point I’m making,’ said Michael firmly, ‘is Stay with me. I know how this thing ticks. I can get you through this and safely out the other side.’

  Christine leaned forward. ‘And how does this thing tick? Where does it come from? What are you going to do with it in the future?’

  ‘You’ve every right to ask questions and, believe me, I’m going to answer as fully and as honestly as I can.’

  ‘Damn right you are.’

  Michael smiled. ‘Richard, you’ve got yourself one hell of a wife there.’

  Richard didn’t return the smile. ‘She’s got a way of putting into words how I feel, too. We all want answers. You said you’ve been in touch with your research people. What have they had to say?’

  ‘OK, OK, Michael held up his hand. ‘Let me take this in some kind of order. Right, what is the nature of the Beast? What makes it tick? What does it look like? The answer is, I don’t know what it looks like because it doesn’t exist in a physical sense. It is composed of energy. You know, like sound or electricity. Where’s it come from? Again I can only guess. Maybe it’s something that evolved independently on Earth. Yes, it is new to us. An unknown life form. But until a couple of hundred years ago we didn’t know of the existence of micro-organisms such as bacteria or protozoans or viruses.’ Michael looked at each of them in turn. ‘Sometimes I lay awake at night and I wonder if this thing may have drifted in from somewhere, out of the depths of the universe, a million years ago in search of a host body.’

  ‘Then it’s a parasite.’

  ‘No. Parasites offer nothing in return to their host; parasites like hookworm or tapeworm damage the host animal. I call it the Beast but it is actually beneficial. We exist – or at least we existed – in this symbiotic relationship. We each give something that the other wants.’

  ‘You said that in return for giving you power you gave it experience of life.’

  ‘Yes, I’m not one hundred per cent sure but I think that’s what it needs. If you imagine this thing as a cloud of energy then, it has no eyes, ears, sense of smell or touch. So it finds a host with these senses so it —’

  ‘What?’ Christine frowned. ‘So it can enjoy a sunny afternoon and share your sensations of eating ice cream and drinking lemonade?’

  ‘Yes, basically. You could also speculate it’s some kind of probe sent by an alien civilization to learn about other worlds. What better way to find out about other cultures than through the eyes of a native of that culture? Imagine what you could learn about a dolphin if you could somehow magic yourself into its brain, see through its eyes, share its thoughts. And not just speculate what it would be like to be a dolphin but feel EXACTLY what it’s like to be a dolphin.’

  ‘So the beast might be a kind of research probe?’ echoed Joey pouring more brandy. ‘So some ET up in Moo-moo land might be looking at us right now.’ Joey raised his glass at Michael. ‘Cheers, bug-eyes.’

  Christine took a deep breath. ‘So, if you follow this “what-if” line of reasoning: what if alien life-forms are seeing the world through your eyes? What if they are learning about us? What if they do give you power over people as some kind of good-boy treat? But have you thought about this?’ Her hands shook as she sipped the brandy. ‘If you have power over people, do these things have power over you?’

  ‘No,’ Michael shook his head emphatically. ‘What good would they derive from —’

  ‘Christine’s got a point,’ Richard said quickly. ‘It’s a hell of a way to conquer a world, isn’t it? Forget death rays and fighting machines. You just find someone who you can turn into a puppet president and rule through him.’

  Michael still smiled. Only now Richard detected a harder edge to his voice. ‘No. It’s not like that. After all, I’m only speculating myself. Now, we all want answers. Sometimes I find myself answering my own questions with “What if it is some kind of alien probe composed of pure energy? Or what if it is some unknown life form that evolved alongside life on Earth? Or what if this thing is really the spirit force known by the early Christians as the Holy Ghost?”’

  Richard stood up and went to the window. Outside cloud boiled around the mountain tops, rain came down in drenching sheets. The brandy hadn’t ma
de him drunk. He felt calm now. His shattered nerves were healing.

  ‘So,’ Richard said softly. ‘There are records of this happening before. You mentioned Greek and Byzantine Emperors entering into a relationship with this thing you call the Beast?’

  ‘Sounds more like a pact with the devil,’ slurred Joey, pouring himself a tumbler of brandy.

  Michael nodded. ‘Most historical records don’t say so as plainly but there are indications, if you read between the lines, that such a symbiotic relationship existed.’

  ‘Symbiotic re … rela-shun-ship …’ Joey drained the glass in one. ‘Still sounds … like a pact … with the damn devil …’

  ‘That’s Christian prejudice,’ Michael said. ‘Maybe even Christian jealousy. You see, when the Roman Empire was on the verge of collapse around the fourth century AD it split into two halves. Both halves became Christian. The western half, headed by the Pope, became what we now term Roman Catholic. The eastern half, based in Constantinople, in what is now Turkey, was the rival Orthodox Christian Church. The early Popes in the western church wanted this power —’

  ‘But the eastern Church had got hold of it first,’ finished Christine.

  ‘Got it in one, Christine. It was wielded by the Byzantine Emperors. Not all of them, sometimes the secret of how to acquire and control the Beast was lost for decades at a time. During these bad times the Byzantine Empire dwindled. They lost much of it to the Muslims who invaded from the South. Every so often an Emperor would regain control of the Beast; he would inspire his people; his battered armies would rediscover their vigour; inspired by their new charismatic Emperor they would put down rebellions and reconquer the old Byzantine colonies that had been lost.’

  ‘But it was still a downhill slide?’

  ‘True, Christine. Around the twelfth century AD the Byzantine emperors lost the Beast for good. In 1453, Muslim forces conquered Constantinople itself. The last Emperor died fighting. But,’ Michael smiled, ‘the Sultans discovered the Beast and it started all over again. Constantinople was renamed Istanbul and it became the centre of another great Empire and another great faith.’

  Michael leaned across to the food trolley and picked a grape from a bunch on the table. ‘And now, I imagine, you’d like to hear what my research team have come up with?’

  Chapter 37

  Codex Alexander

  Richard, Christine and Joey leaned forward to hear what Michael had to say. They knew that what he had to tell them would be important. Lives would depend on it.

  Michael swallowed the grape. ‘You have a clear enough idea of what’s happening now? When I took the Beast out of its natural environment at the eastern end of the Mediterranean it could no longer remain inside me. And once on the outside, it changed and became destructive. My research team are trying to rectify that problem.’

  Joey sniffed. ‘Why don’t you just somehow get the thing back to Turkey, stay there living all cosy together and have done with it?’

  ‘Because,’ Michael said, ‘the benefits this creature can bring to humankind are enormous. If we can utilize it fully we can create a new world order. A united, peaceful world.’

  ‘So you want to start this new world order in Britain?’

  ‘Only I learned to my cost that the Beast won’t travel more than a thousand miles from Istanbul without detaching itself from its host. Exactly why it does that I don’t know.’

  ‘But you believe you can solve the problem?’

  ‘I think so. And that’s what my team have been working on.’

  ‘Can it be done?’

  Michael nodded. ‘We know it can. Alexander the Great was in partnership with the Beast. He knew he couldn’t take it much further than the northern coastline of Egypt. But then something miraculous happened. After that he was successful in taking it all the way to India. And with it, he conquered the known world.’

  ‘But how?’

  Michael smiled. ‘That’s what we’re trying to find out. You see, the secret died with Alexander but we believe the method of how to take The Beast out of its home territory was written down in a document known as the Codex Alexander.’

  ‘And you’ve got hold of a copy?’

  ‘Hold your horses, Christine. No, not exactly.’

  ‘What do you mean, “not exactly”? Either you have it you haven’t.’

  ‘The Codex Alexander is basically an instruction manual on how to control the Beast. It was given to Alexander by the Egyptians when he liberated them from the Persians in 331 BC. Unfortunately it became lost shortly after Alexander’s death. Then last month, in Cairo, my archaeological team discovered the tomb of a certain Egyptian priest buried in 200 BC.’

  ‘And this Codex was in the tomb?’

  ‘Supposed to be, according to an ancient inventory found in the tomb listing its contents.’

  ‘But they found no documents?’

  ‘On the contrary, we found plenty of documents. Over six hundred of the things. The problem has been to find which one is the Codex Alexander. That isn’t as easy as it might seem. Some of the documents are in poor shape. Thousands of papyrus fragments have to be fitted together like jigsaw pieces before we can even identify which document is which.’

  ‘Christ,’ Richard breathed out heavily. ‘Which is going to take time.’

  ‘Correct,’ said Michael. He smiled. ‘But we can take a short cut. My people have tracked down a collector in Yorkshire who owns a later Byzantine manuscript which is a history of the Emperor Constantine. And the good news is that it contains lengthy excerpts from the Codex Alexander.’

  ‘That’ll be enough?’

  ‘It should be. So, tomorrow morning we’ll drive across to Yorkshire, collect the document, and a few hours after that all this will be over.’

  The words worked a magic spell. Despite what had happened, Richard saw Christine’s and Joey’s faces break into relieved smiles. They continued talking to Michael in an animated way. But there was something more relaxed about it. Michael rang room service for more brandy and sandwiches.

  Christine still asked Michael questions, mainly about his future plans now. Michael answered, his hands moving with graceful slowness to emphasize points.

  ‘Most people don’t realize,’ he said softly, ‘that we have the technical know-how to turn the deserts green once more. All we lack is the will-power. I am lucky enough, through that freakish accident, to be able to give people all across the world that will-power to turn deserts into lush pastures; to end starvation. I plan —’

  … to become Emperor of Planet Earth, were the words Richard used to complete Michael’s sentence mentally. For a split second the idea made him uneasy. Then it might have been the brandy, exhaustion or the way Michael moved his hands in gestures that were almost hypnotic that allowed the notion of this gentle-eyed man as world tyrant to slip away from him. Richard relaxed, feeling the aching tensions flow out of him while a warm easy feeling flowed in.

  Outside it was dark. Lightning still flickered around the mountain tops but he could hear no thunder. And he could almost believe there was nothing out there that could hurt them. He listened with half an ear as Christine and Michael talked. He thought of Mark and wondered if it was raining where he was camping. The sound of rain on canvas would probably keep the boy awake. He could imagine seeing Mark on Saturday and his son grumbling about never going camping again because the tents had flooded out.

  Richard’s eyes opened. He was looking straight up at the ceiling. He rolled his head to the left. Christine’s soft outline stood out against the plain white walls. For a moment he thought he was at home. Then he looked up and saw the dark wood beams running like pairs of rail tracks across the ceiling.

  For the life of him he couldn’t remember going to bed. He guessed he must have dozed off from one brandy too many.

  Suddenly he sat up, his mind alert. There were no sounds but he found himself convinced that at any moment the ceiling would come crashing down upon them.

 
; What were they doing asleep? That thing, Michael’s Beast, could creep up on them as they slept. Sweat pricked his forehead. Richard imagined it swimming like some great shark up through the valleys: smoothly cutting through the mist, its snout hungrily pushing forward, searching for the five sweet morsels of flesh that lay sleeping here beneath the beamed ceilings.

  Anxiously now, he swung out of bed and ran across to the window. The cloud had broken. The moon lit the mountains with a silver light. There were the trees, the distant farmhouses, the river in the valley bottom looking like a snail’s silver trail.

  Richard was looking for the tell-tale disturbance of the grass or listening for the sudden snap of a tree trunk. Any moment he might see his car detonate in the carpark, the bushes flatten, then down would come the Beast, like the hammer of God, down upon the hotel roof, bursting their bodies as easily as you can splat an egg.

  Something caught his eye just beyond his car. He looked hard, trying to make out what it was in the moonlight.

  It moved nearer to the car.

  Jesus …

  It was Michael. The man was standing guard outside. If that thing approached he could warn them. Within seconds they would be in the car and driving out of …

  Richard cocked his head slightly to one side. If it had been important to stand guard outside, surely they could have taken it in turns, to allow Michael to get some sleep. And, surely, he did need to sleep, didn’t he?

  And is he actually standing sentry for us? Richard wondered. Or is he guarding the car? In case we should decide to run away and leave him here in the middle of the night?

  Chapter 38

  Tuesday Morning

  Rosemary Snow woke in the back of the van. 7 a.m. Already cars were moving along the side street. She yawned, stretched. The pain cut from her head to her left knee as smoothly as if she’d been run through a bacon slicer. Her bruised body still ached from the leap into the coal truck two weeks before. For Godsakes, she thought, you can’t put yourself through this. You need time to heal.