The Medieval Murderers - The Lost Prophecies

‘The scientists you got to emigrate here? Where do you take them?’

‘Same place you’re going. You’ll see.’

‘What happens when we get to this mysterious place?’ Nobody replied. Shiva swallowed. ‘Can I have some water?’

‘We’ll be there in an hour,’ Parvati said. ‘You can have some then.’

The train rattled on, the engine humming. It slowed as they climbed higher into the steep mountains. In the far distance Shiva saw men labouring like ants on what looked like a new hydroelectric project. Then there were no more people, only bare, impossibly steep mountainsides rearing high above into the blue sky.

Shiva must have been still groggy from the drug they had given him, because he slept. He was jerked awake by the train coming to a halt, clanking and jolting. His thirst was terrible now. He was hauled to his feet and cried aloud at the pain in his shoulder. The two brothers walked him down the carriage and out of the door. He saw what was outside and his jaw dropped. The two men let him stand and look. Parvati stood next to them, arms folded, a sardonic smile on her face.

They were standing on scrubby grass, near the edge of an enormous cliff falling perhaps a thousand feet to a sheet of still blue water. They were at the head of a long fjord, huge mountains rising sheer out of the water on both sides, some far higher than the cliff where they stood. The peaks were reflected in the water. The fjord was perhaps two miles across, running in a straight line to the distant blue line of the ocean. The almost sheer sides were nearly bare, brown scrub clinging to ledges here and there.

Shiva had seen Milford Sound in documentaries, a landscape formed aeons ago by giant glaciers. In the old days it had been a place of tourist pilgrimage. Shiva remembered that it was in Fjordland, where Parvati had told him the land was too steep to cultivate. Once Milford Sound had been a wet place with vegetation clinging everywhere to the cliffs, but now it was bare, the air hot and dry.

There were gaps here and there in the cliffs, circular depressions cut into the hillsides by ancient ice, inaccessible except from the water. On the edge of one of these Shiva saw a little complex of wooden buildings, some of them little huts but others the size of warehouses. A big wooden jetty had been built out on to the water. At the end of the jetty an enormous, dark grey metal thing, three or four hundred feet long, lay half-submerged. It was shaped like a cigar, a projecting tower near the front and a fin at the back. A submarine.

One of the brothers reached into his pocket and pulled out a large army knife. Shiva thought for a moment they were going to kill him now, but the man reached behind him and cut his bonds. Shiva gasped with relief and brought his hands carefully in front of him. His shoulder throbbed.

‘We’ve got a bit of a walk, Parvati said. ‘It’s steep. You’ll need your hands to balance. Don’t think of running – there’s nowhere to go.’

But Shiva was looking at the ring on his right hand, where inside the gold setting the disc had turned pink and was growing darker, edging towards red. He looked at Parvati. ‘This place is irradiated,’ he said.

‘I know,’ she said simply. ‘It doesn’t matter.’

They went down a steep narrow path, little more than a ledge. One of the brothers walked behind Shiva and the other went ahead, behind Parvati. They needed to hold on to the nearly sheer cliff to their left. To the right was a drop to the still waters hundreds of feet below. A warm breeze rose from the sea, making Shiva’s suit jacket, dirty now, flap around his chest. The other three were wearing shirts.

A pair of stocky grey parrots eyed them from a small ledge above. As they approached, the birds took off and flew around them, dangerously close, showing the brilliantly coloured underside of their wings.

‘Take your jacket off!’ the man behind Shiva ordered. ‘It’s the movement that’s attracting them.’

Shiva pulled off his jacket and threw it over the side of the cliff. It spiralled down to the sea, and the two birds flew after the strange object, calling loudly.

‘Wretched things!’ Parvati’s face was angry. She looked around at him. ‘That’s a pair of keas.’

They scrabbled along, moving slowly downwards. ‘How deep is the water?’ Shiva asked the man in front of him.

‘Couple of thousand feet,’ he replied over his shoulder.

Shiva could see the submarine more clearly now. People were climbing in and out of it; a group was studying a large chart laid on boxes on the jetty beside it. A pile of small torpedoes stood on the jetty. A group of men appeared to be taking them apart, removing the detonators. He saw a name painted in large white letters along the landward side of the hull: Patriot . Beside it was a small Union Jack. He knew now what the craft was: one of the nuclear submarines from the last century which had disappeared during the methane hydrate eruptions. Several were presumed to be lying on the ocean bed. He looked again at his ring: a light red; not immediately deadly, perhaps, but a dangerous dose.

They came to the end of the path and walked on to the jetty. Shiva saw more of the keas flying around, people shouting and waving at them to go away. One stood on a nearby post, picking at coils of rope wound around the top. It looked thin and hungry, its plumage ragged. Probably dying from radiation poisoning.

They came to a halt near the pile of torpedoes. The men studying the chart and the others on the jetty looked at the little party curiously. The giant submarine loomed ahead. One of the brothers said, ‘I’ll get some water,’ and walked off.

A kea landed on the pile of bombs, and one of the white-suited men shouted angrily and waved his arms until the bird took off.

‘They should shoot them,’ Parvati said.

‘Can’t risk that with those bombs opened up,’ the remaining brother said.

‘How long before we die of radiation poisoning?’ Shiva asked Parvati bluntly.

‘A long time. The Leader will tell you more. Perhaps you’ll even understand, though I doubt it.’ She gave an angry little laugh.

The man brought back bottles of water and passed them around. Shiva was so thirsty it hurt to drink. When he had finished he looked at Parvati again. ‘Who betrayed me?’ he asked.

‘Mary Ackerley is one of our people,’ she replied stonily. ‘She’s been one of us for a long time. We got her to open up a guesthouse for visiting officials; it is a useful way of finding things out. And somewhere for me to stay, where I knew I’d be secure.’ She inclined her head. ‘And she’s an old lady; people don’t suspect old ladies of being spies. You told her you were going to be making an air journey soon. Then you contacted me. We put two and two together.’

She broke off then, looking behind Shiva. He saw that all the people on the jetty had stopped work. Many wore hats, and now they took them off and stood, silent, looking at a man approaching from one of the large buildings. He was large and roughly dressed, with an untidy white beard, and he walked with a stick, a heavy rolling gait. A canvas bag was slung over one shoulder.

‘Back to work,’ the man called as he approached. His voice was deep and loud, with a North American accent. He walked right up to Shiva and looked him in the eyes. His face was lined and weatherbeaten. His eyes were blue-grey, intense and alive, seeming almost to glitter. He smiled. ‘Inspector Moorthy.’

‘I’ve told him how we got to him,’ Parvati said.

The bearded man nodded. ‘Yes, God was with us that day.’ He looked hard at Shiva. ‘Well, Mr Moorthy. Do you know who I am?’

‘The Leader? Brandon Smith?’

‘That’s right. Now, first question – it’s been on my mind. How did you find out that it was Parvati who took the book? Was it a camera she missed in the museum?’