The Complete Short Fiction (2017, Jerry eBooks) Read online

  He saw it right away.

  Saw the roof of the temple.

  The second brick from the left—the brick Jack had been analysing—had been vandalised, smashed open: the top half of the oblong stone was now simply gone, crudely hacked away with a pickaxe or something similar . . . like a fireman’s axe.

  Max spoke into his phone. ‘Jack, your brick’s been smashed open. Whatever you found inside it, someone just took it!’

  Outside, on the front steps of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Jack held his phone to his ear, walking slowly toward the fire engine marked ‘17’.

  At Max’s words, his eyes snapped up to the truck’s cab and locked onto the ‘commander’ of the firetruck and in that instant their eyes met and they both knew exactly what the other was thinking. The commander of the fake firetruck yelled to his driver, ‘Go! Go!’

  The truck squealed out from the kerb, wheels spinning on the snow-slicked road.

  And Jack West started running after it.

  3

  It was the brief wheel-spin in the snow that allowed Jack to catch it.

  That ever-so-brief skid on the spot allowed Jack to cover the last ten yards and dive full-length for the tailgate of the escaping fire engine.

  His fingers caught the truck’s rear bumper just as the big red truck peeled away from the front entrance of the Met—lights blazing, sirens wailing—and started speeding south down Fifth Avenue.

  Jack’s feet bounced on the icy road as he was dragged along behind the accelerating firetruck.

  A cluster of metal hose valves and switches were mounted above him, plus a thin seven-foot access ladder attached to the rear flank of the fire engine; it led up to the roof of the truck and all the various hoses and firefighting paraphernalia up there.

  Jack reached for the little access ladder, clutched hold of it and began climbing.

  With its lights flashing and sirens blaring, the truck zoomed down Fifth, the already sparse Christmas Eve traffic parting before it like the Red Sea before Moses. Only a few of the drivers who pulled over to let it pass glimpsed the tiny figure climbing up the little ladder on the tailgate of the furiously speeding firetruck.

  Jack reached the top of the ladder and beheld the roof of the fire engine, just as a man dressed in a firefighter’s outfit came rushing at him, face twisted in anger, fists flying.

  For this man was no New York City firefighter: he was an imposter dressed as one.

  Jack grappled with the imposter in the flashing red glare of the fire engine’s lights, wrestling desperately from his inferior position at the very edge of the roof, trying not to get thrown off the back of the speeding firetruck.

  One thing was instantly clear: his opponent could fight. Jack had been an elite soldier and this guy clearly had similar training.

  Suddenly, his assailant threw a punch but Jack caught the man’s fist, and in a fleeting instant, Jack saw a tattoo on the man’s wrist.

  A tattoo of a fish with a crucifix inside it.

  Jack’s mind whirled. He knew that symbol, but seeing it on this man’s wrist, in the middle of a desperate fight, didn’t make sense.

  It was the mark of Opus Dei, the notoriously secretive, ultraconservative cabal within the Catholic Church. But what did Opus Dei or the Catholic Church have to do with ancient Egyptian temples?[*]

  The next moment, Jack’s attacker head-butted him with the leading edge of his FDNY helmet . . . or at least he tried to.

  Jack dodged the blow at the last second and said, ‘That’s dirty pool, asshole. Can’t let you do that again.’

  So Jack reached out and snatched at the man’s helmet at the same time as the man drew a gun from his waistband.

  Jack saw the gun and his eyes went wide, and on a reflex he shifted his weight and grabbed something next to him as he yanked on the chin-strap of his attacker’s helmet and threw them both backwards . . . off the rear of the speeding firetruck and onto Fifth Avenue!

  Jack’s attacker hit the road hard—helmetless—and tumbled away down Fifth Avenue, receding quickly behind the truck.

  But Jack didn’t.

  The object he’d grabbed from the roof of the fire engine was one of its firehoses, which meant that when he hit the roadway, the firehose went taut and like a whip snapping, it dragged Jack along behind the speeding firetruck. It was only the snow- slicked road that stopped Jack from being seriously grazed by the experience.

  Strangely, by virtue of the way he’d grabbed his attacker’s chin- strap, Jack now gripped the firehose with the strap of the man’s fake ‘FDNY 17’ helmet wedged between his fingers and the firehose. He didn’t dare let go of the hose, so the helmet was coming with him.

  A few seconds later, the firetruck’s lights and sirens suddenly went quiet and the fire engine swung left off Fifth Avenue, sending Jack rolling onward down Fifth.

  When he finally rolled to a stop he scrambled off the snow- covered road, diving onto the sidewalk to narrowly avoid being hit by a couple of honking taxi cabs. Lying on his belly on the icy sidewalk, Jack saw the fake fire engine parked down a side street—50 th Street—its fake firemen scrambling out of it and disappearing into an alleyway behind the old dark building that adjoined 50 th and fronted onto Fifth Avenue.

  One of the ‘firemen’, Jack saw, carried a piece of the brick from the Temple of Dendur under his arm.

  Jack’s eyes rose, taking in the grim dark building they’d scurried behind.

  It had two horn-like belltowers and its brooding Neo-Gothic entrance stood in stark contrast to the more modern glass and steel buildings of New York around it.

  It was St Patrick’s Cathedral.

  The pre-eminent Catholic Church in New York City and seat of the Cardinal of New York, one of the four most powerful Catholic clergymen in America.

  Gasping for breath, Jack dragged himself off the ground and ran for the alleyway after the fleeing ‘firemen’.

  ★ ★ ★

  The moment he turned the corner of the alleyway, he froze. What he saw shocked him.

  He saw a lone man standing amid the five fake firemen. The man had already shot dead four of them—they lay on the ground, in icy puddles of melted snow with holes in their foreheads—and now the lone man stood, bathed in shadow, with a silenced pistol levelled at the head of the leader of the group.

  Jack ducked behind a dumpster and watched fearfully as the lone man took the piece of sandstone from the fake fireman.

  Even from this distance, from behind the dumpster, Jack could see the handle of the ancient knife embedded in the broken-open sandstone brick.

  The Knife of Osiris.

  And then, making Jack jump, the lone man spoke to the commander of the fake fire team. ‘This is not yours to take. It belongs to my master. It is not yet time to use the keyblade.’

  The gunshot that followed barely made a sound.

  The back of the fake fireman’s head blew out, spraying blood, and he collapsed like a puppet whose strings had been cut.

  Then, holding the broken brick from the Temple of Dendur in one hand and the silenced pistol in the other, the lone man turned to go. As he passed through a beam of light, Jack saw his face and recognised him.

  It was Trench Coat Guy, the man who had been silently watching Jack and Max all afternoon in the Sackler Wing.

  Jack ducked away from the alleyway, crossing Fifth Avenue and taking cover inside a liquor store so as not to be seen by the man.

  He watched from afar as the man in the trench coat emerged from the side street flanking the cathedral, carrying the ancient brick under his coat.

  Jack watched him. There was something about him—about the way he carried himself, a kind of eerie self-possession—that Jack had seen in only one kind of person before: assassins.

  Jack West was many things—a great soldier, a good fighter and

  a fair historian—but without serious weaponry, there was no way he could get the better of this guy tonight.

  The man in the trench co
at looked both ways before he hailed a cab and disappeared into the New York night.

  Jack could only watch him go.

  He stepped out onto the sidewalk of Fifth Avenue, peering down the long wide boulevard on that cold winter’s night, before suddenly he looked down at his own right hand.

  Still gripped tightly in it—indeed, Jack had forgotten he was even holding it—was his only memento of what would remain one of the most bizarre evenings of his life: the helmet of the fake fireman he had fought on the back of the firetruck, a helmet marked FDNY PRECINCT 17.

  Jack would never forget the Knife of Osiris or the strange word the assassin had used to describe it: keyblade. He would also wear that helmet for many years, using it to ward off falling rocks and troublesome waterflows in booby-trapped places all around the world . . . and also as a constant reminder to himself that not everyone is always who they seem.

  [*] This was many years before Jack discovered that the modern Catholic Church—with its many references to sun-worship—was the contemporary incarnation of an ancient Egyptian sun-cult known as the Cult of Amon-Ra. See: Seven Ancient Wonders.

  ROGER ASCHAM AND THE KING’S LOST GIRL

  About Roger Ascham and the King’s Lost Girl

  In this special prequel to Matthew Reilly’s

  The Tournament, Roger Ascham,

  the unorthodox tutor of Princess Elizabeth,

  is tasked by King Henry VIII with a

  most unusual and dangerous mission.

  It is costly wisdom that is bought by experience.

  —ROGER ASCHAM

  CAMBRIDGE, FEBRUARY 1546

  Seven months before the events

  depicted in The Tournament . . .

  ONE

  King’s College, Cambridge

  February 1546

  IT WAS ALWAYS a celebrated occasion when the king came to visit Cambridge . . . for everyone except Roger Ascham.

  The chapel at King’s College, stupendous and imposing at the best of times, had been converted into a colossal audience chamber for King Henry and it was filled to bursting point with academics, students, puffed-up local nobles and the awestruck townsfolk of Cambridge.

  The king sat on a high throne that had been placed on a stage at the front of the chapel’s three-hundred-foot-long nave, which was only right, as just two years previously he had paid for the completion of the chapel, in doing so finishing a building project that had been begun almost one hundred years earlier at the command of Henry VI.

  Outside, a steady snow fell. It had been a cold and bitter winter. The trees, roads and lawns of Cambridge were covered in white and the river had frozen over.

  From his throne, Henry attended to the business of being king—honouring the local noblemen, gifting money, hearing petitions; he even thanked the Earl of Cumberland’s bastard son, a student at the College, for the repair and reconstruction work the young man had carried out on the ruins of Cambridge Castle.

  Corpulent yet still commanding, with his heavy bearded jowls and deep voice, the king was by turns charming and frightening. He may have needed wheeled machines to move up and down stairways but he knew how to hold court and he had this one in the palm of his hand.

  As the business of the king’s visit was taking place at the front of the great space, sitting quietly at the back, unnoticed by all, were two figures: Roger Ascham and his young royal student.

  Ascham sighed inwardly. He knew what was coming. He had endured it before. Still, it was always unnerving to be commanded to report to a king who had renounced the Catholic Church, dissolved its monasteries and ordered the execution of two of his six wives.

  Ascham wondered who had complained to the king this time. He guessed it had been Primrose Ponsonby—who had complained to the king about Ascham’s teaching methods on six previous occasions—but it could have been any of a dozen people.

  Roger Ascham was thirty years old and a highly regarded professor of Latin and Greek at Cambridge. He was of modest build and he had a thick mop of brown hair that covered his oversized ears. But his eyes were sharp, they took in everything. In addition to his duties at Cambridge he had recently taken on the role of overseeing the education of the third in line to the English throne.

  That individual happened to be the twelve-year-old girl sitting quietly by his side—her head bent reading a book, her feet swinging happily, unable to reach the floor—a delightful young lady known to Ascham as Bess but to everyone at court as Elizabeth. Her usually wild curly red hair had been tightly braided for this unexpected visit from her father. Right now, despite the murmuring, movement and general excitement in the great room around her, she was totally absorbed in her book: a history of Cleopatra that Ascham himself had recently translated.

  While he waited to be raked over the coals by the famously intemperate king—and he and Bess had been waiting all morning; it looked like Henry had chosen to see them last of all—Ascham examined a most unusual object in his hands: a brass mariner’s quadrant that he had been tinkering with. The quadrant had long been used for celestial navigation at sea, but Ascham was frustrated with its limitations on a rolling ship’s deck, so he had attached a couple of mirrors to the device, plus a sighting tube, which he hoped would make it work better—

  ‘Excuse me, good sir, but is that a quadrant you have there?’ The voice was cultured, firm, confident.

  Ascham looked up.

  A young man in his twenties stood before him, a student. A student, Ascham realised, who he knew.

  The lad’s name was Timothy Higginbotham but the plainness of his name had not stopped the rumour-mongers at Cambridge—they could smell anyone with blood ties to a title from ten miles away—from figuring out very quickly who he really was: Timothy Higginbotham was the bastard son of the Earl of Cumberland. And he was clearly a beloved son: despite his illegitimacy, the Earl had sent him to Cambridge with a sizeable pension.

  Ascham handed the young man the quadrant. ‘Yes, it is but with some modifications of my own design.’

  Higginbotham took the device and turned it sideways to look at it more closely.

  ‘I love to know the inner workings of things,’ he said absently. ‘I like your modifications. They would compensate for the rocking of a ship, allowing you to sight your star and the horizon with greater ease.’

  Ascham was both surprised and impressed at the speed with which the young man had assessed the purpose of his adjustments.

  ‘Why, thank you. You are Cumberland’s boy, are you not? The one who has been repairing the old castle?’

  ‘I am.’

  ‘I confess I do not venture to that part of town very often so I have not seen your work at the ruins. You are a student here? What are you studying?’

  ‘Medicine,’ the lad answered without looking up, still gazing at the quadrant. ‘I want to be a surgeon.’

  Ascham nodded. ‘Good for you. That is a fine calling—’

  ‘MR ROGER ASCHAM AND HER HIGHNESS, THE PRINCESS ELIZABETH!’ the King’s herald’s voice boomed above the din.

  Ascham retrieved his quadrant from the lad and, taking Bess’s hand in his, strode down the length of the hall.

  The crowd parted like the Red Sea before Moses as Ascham and Bess made their way toward the throne. Ascham caught many a curious glance and even a few pitying ones from members of the throng as he passed them by.

  And there, looming at the end of the pathway made by the crowd, sat King Henry VIII, legs spread wide, fists resting on his armrests, staring down at them. Ascham wondered if anyone else saw the irony of a king who had dispossessed the Catholic Church of its riches sitting on a throne in a grand chapel that had been built for that very Church. He doubted it.

  Ascham and Bess stopped before the king, holding hands, and for a horrifying moment the hall went silent. The king’s frown was even more severe than usual.

  And then his face broke into a broad grin. ‘Come here, my gorgeous little princess!’

  Bess walked toward
her father, shoulders hunched and head bent, blushing.

  In so many ways, Ascham thought, she was beyond her years—but in the presence of her father she became a little girl again. So confident and assured in private, now she moved with the stilted awkwardness of every twelve-year-old girl. Ascham’s heart went out to her.

  The king took her hand gently in his and suddenly became the doting parent. ‘Are you doing your sums, little one?’

  ‘Yes, Father.’

  ‘And your Greek? I am told it is improving.’

  ‘Oh, it is, Father. Mr Ascham is frightfully good at the ancient languages.’

  At the mention of Ascham’s name, Henry cast a glance at him. ‘And how is your chess, Elizabeth? Have you beaten your teacher yet?’

  ‘No,’ Bess said sadly. ‘He continues to get the better of me. But I am improving, Father, and I shall beat him one day. I am determined to.’

  Ascham offered the king an apologetic half-smile. His crushing victories over Bess at chess had been the subject of their last meeting.

  Henry kept his eyes on Ascham as he spoke. ‘If your teacher is equipping you with determination, then I approve of those lessons. It is a worthy virtue to possess. Now, run along, my sweetling, I have matters to discuss with your schoolmaster. Master Rusting, please take my delightful daughter to the kitchen and find her something sweet and tasty.’

  Bess was whisked away by the king’s usher.

  No sooner was she out of the room than the king rounded on Ascham.

  ‘Ascham, what in fucking hell were you fucking thinking when you took my fucking daughter to a fucking slaughterhouse last month?’

  Ascham stood his ground. So that was it.

  ‘Your Majesty, I merely wished for Bess to learn where her food comes from,’ he replied evenly. ‘Every common farmer’s child knows how a leg of beef arrives at their table, but Bess did not. I felt that a potential future Queen of England—’