Tom Knox - The Marks of Cain

He turned and looked solicitously at Alphonse. 'Alphonse, have a bloody beer. You work too hard.'

'Sure, Angus.'

'Alfie, I mean it. C'm'ere.' The Scotsman pulled the young ochre-skinned man towards him; Alphonse had glittering feline eyes, slender limbs. Angus kissed him on the lips.

Alphonse laughed, and pushed him away — 'Mad Scotsman!' he said, and gestured at the diminishing food. 'Did you eat all the kudu…Again? You'll get fat!'

'Me? Get fat? As if.' The Scotsman lifted his T-shirt and slapped his white stomach. 'The six-pack of Apollo!' Then he glared at Alphonse as he sat down again. 'Don't make fun, my little bambusen, or I shall be forced to wield the sjambok.'

'No. No, sir. White massa he very kind. He give me de good job picken de cotton.'

The two men guffawed, then kissed again. Angus turned and offered Amy some of the kudu steak from the big steel bowl. David stared at Alphonse.

Angus was turning:

'Jesus, jesusfuck. What's that?'

The Scotsman stared down the valley. Now the noise was discernible. David realized he'd been hearing it for a while — but in the back of his mind he'd thought it a distant growling animal, or some effect of the wind in the thorn trees.

There were cars. Big dark cars were sweeping suddenly, up the dry river bed: heading for them. A roar of engines and lights. David stared. The fear was like a physical pain.

'The tents — the guns are in the tents — '

Angus was up and moving — but then a rifle shot split the still and sultry air. It whipped the sand between the tables and the tents. A warning shot.

Angus sat down, very slowly.

David looked the opposite way. More dust clouds. More. Two more. Coming at them. From every direction, looming out of the murky shadows. The largest car, a black car with black windows, swept up to the camp and parked in a savage curve. Spraying sand over the food with a kind of bullying contempt.

A tall lean figure climbed out, his gait and his twitch and his pale scarred face quite distinctive, even in the darkness.

Miguel stared at them.

'Found you.'

The last Vespers had been sung in the chapel. The last pilgrims had retreated to their cells.

Simon crossed the refectory, and climbed the sloping corridors. He shut the narrow door of his cell; and waited. Mind racing, mind racing. The pyramid. He'd got lucky. He'd got very lucky. He had maybe found in a day what Eduardo Martinez had failed to find in a week. The pyramid. The archives. Concealed in the prim and creepy pyramid, peeping from the centre of the building. Obvious yet discreet.

For a moment he admired the dark artistry of the design. It had a sinister genius.

Then he lay back on the bed.

The first snores and echoes of the nightwatch rattled through the priory. Simon sighed, and fretted about Tim, as he stared at the absurdly low ceiling. It felt like the ceiling was actually descending upon him — if he looked away, then looked back, he got the distinct impression the concrete ceiling was edging down, millimetre by millimetre.

Eventually it would crush him. Like a witch killed by the laying of stones. Squassation. He could feel the pressure of the stones on his chest. More and heavier stones. Till the ribcage collapsed. Like Tomasky lying on top of him, pressing down the knifepoint.

Enough!

He had to do his task. Just do it. Have one attempt. Then go home and protect his son and wife and save his brother.

He rose and stepped outside. The corridor was midnight dark. The monastery was creaking and whispering, like an Elizabethan galleon riding the oceans. Creaks and groans and weird distant noises. From this vantage, he could hear a hundred people breathing in their sleep. Like the entire building was respirating. Like it was a huge concrete lung. With a malignancy at its heart. A black mass on the scan.

The walk to the reception room took him two minutes. And yes, the key was hanging there, from its hook, it was actually marked Pyramide.

But the glass keycase was locked. Of course.

Simon looked left and right and, absurdly, up and down, and he unclasped a Swiss Army knife. He prised at the latch of the door. He heard a noise. He turned. Sweating. The rooms and corridors were empty. Clammy with tension, he returned to his task: he jemmied the knife-blade viciously.

The glass door swung open. Half panicked, he grabbed at the key on its hook, then scuttled out into the dark empty corridor.

He was ready. Running very stealthily he made his way down the darkened steps, down some more empty steps, down towards the longest sloping corridor.

A sharp voice stopped him. It froze through him, made him shrink against a wall. He stared, panicked, into the gloom. But then Simon realized: this stupid building. The voice was probably three floors up. Maybe just the drunken archivist, yelling in his faithless sleep. Cursing the god of nightmares.

The concrete ramp led to the huge bronze door of the basement chapel. It was unlocked; it didn't even seem to possess a lock. Indeed it swung open to the touch, with surprising grace and ease: beautifully balanced. As it turned on an axis, in the middle of the door space, it became a vertical bronze line.

Behind the door was a horizontal window, filtering silver moonlight. The two lines formed a cross.

An electrifying sensation.

Simon gazed about him; he couldn't help it — this was the first time he'd had a serious look at the chapel, when it was quiet, and solemn, and unused — and now he realized: it was purely beautiful. The lofty concrete space was set with serene wooden pews, and an archaic altar; on the far side, the slots of stained glass windows tinted the external starlight — speckling the imperious chamber with exquisite parallels of colour.

He felt a strange desire to pause. Here. Forever.

But his conscience stabbed at his heart.

The Pyramid.

The chapel ran the length of the building, and there had to be an entrance somewhere in the rear, which would direct him to the mysterious inner sanctum of the building.

He searched for two minutes, and found it quite easily: a small metal door, in the dry shadows of a corner. Simon reached in his pocket, and slotted the key. He could hear another noise. From somewhere. An edgy scraping noise. Echoing down the concrete corridors.

Come on, come on, come on.

The lock yielded. He stepped down the narrow, almost totally blackened passageway. Advancing into this space was like squeezing into a tube. Simon wondered if this was what it was like: being in his brother's mind. The walls closing in, the darkness pressing on all sides, every day and forever. The walls tapered so severely he had to turn edgeways to shuffle through, then at last the passage concluded at another rusty steel door, barely visible in the gloom; Simon pushed it.

He fell into a bright pyramidal whiteness.

Simon protected his dazzled eyes with a hand.

Sitting on a chair in the middle of the room was the archivist monk. Brother McMahon. His teeth were red from wine.

'There are two keys to the pyramid, Mister Quinn.'

In the gloom of the Damara twilight, Miguel looked older, more savage, even feral. The jentilak. He had a gun levelled at David's head. Boots clattered on the sand as four, six, and now eight men got out of the black-windowed cars. One of them spoke, with an American accent. Enoka lurked at the back.

'So that's Angus Nairn,' the American said. 'And David Martinez and Amy Myerson?'

Miguel nodded. 'Yes. But the Cagot girl, Eloise? Where is she?'

The accomplice shrugged.

'Can't see her — anywhere.'

Miguel spat the words:

'Check! Check the cars and the camp. Alan! Jean Paul! Enoka!'