Anthony Horowitz - Necropolis

“There are stars,” Jamie said.

They were scattered all over the pages; the five-pointed stars that he and Matt knew so well.

“That’s right. There are twenty-five of them – one for each door. The only trouble is, like a lot of the maps being drawn at the time, this one isn’t very accurate. As far as I can make out, there seem to be doors in London, Cairo, Istanbul, Delhi, Mecca, Buenos Aires and somewhere in the outback of Southern Australia. There’s one here, close to the South Pole. But the world’s changed quite a lot in five hundred years and trying to identify the exact locations isn’t going to be easy.”

“You mentioned a list,” Tarrant said.

“Yes…” Richard turned a page and sure enough there was a long row of names, all of them in tiny handwriting. “The problem we’ve got here is that the names don’t quite match up with the modern places and half of them are in Spanish. Here’s one, for example. Muerto de Maria. It took me half the night to work that one out.”

“The death of Mary,” the bishop translated.

“Or Mary’s death,” Richard said. “Do you get it? Marydeath. Or the church of St Meredith in London. It’s like a crossword clue although I don’t suppose Joseph was doing it on purpose to confuse us. Coricancha isn’t named at all. It’s just represented by a flaming sun – but then, of course, the sun was sacred to the Incas.”

“Is there a door in Hong Kong?” Matt asked.

“There’s certainly a door somewhere nearby,” Richard said. He turned the page back to the map. “You can see it here… and if you look at the list, there’s a reference to a place called Puerto Fragrante and a little dragon symbol. But that could be anywhere.”

“May I see?” Mr Lee reached out and took the diary in both hands, holding it as if he was afraid it was about to crumble away. He looked at the map, then the list, then turned another page. “Someone has written in pencil,” he said. “The words ‘Tai Shan’.” He glanced at Richard. “Was that you?”

Richard shook his head. “That must have been Ramon,” he said. “He made notes all over it when he was trying to decipher it for Salamanda, but as far as I can see, he didn’t have time to work out too much. Anyway, he was mainly focusing on the Nazca Lines.”

“There is a door in Hong Kong!” Mr Lee exclaimed. “I can tell you that for certain. And I can even tell you exactly where it is.” He laid the diary down. “Puerto Fragrante – the Spanish for Fragrant Harbour, I think – is another clue,” he said. “In Cantonese, Fragrant Harbour translates as Heung Gong. Or in other words, Hong Kong. The city was originally given that name because of the smell of sandalwood that drifted across the sea. Whoever studied the diary has been good enough to confirm it for us. Tai Shan means ‘the mountain of the East’. It is where the sun begins its daily journey. It is also the place where human souls go when they die. There is a very old and very sacred temple with that name in Hong Kong, in a part of the city called Wan Chai…”

There was a sense of relief in the room. It was as if they had all made their minds up. Even Susan Ashwood nodded her head in agreement and seemed to relax. Only Matt didn’t look so sure.

“You could leave tonight,” Harry Foster said. “If things went your way, you could actually be there to meet her at the airport. You could pull her out before the Old Ones even knew you’d arrived.”

“Wait a minute,” Matt said. “We flew here from Miami because we didn’t think the doors were safe. Why has anything changed?” Nobody answered so he went on. “Salamanda had the diary. He’ll have found out about the temple…”

“Not necessarily,” Foster insisted. “This guy, Ramon, was working on it. But he may not have passed on everything he knew. Anyway, Salamanda’s dead.”

“Maybe there is an element of risk…” Susan Ashwood began.

“It’s more than a risk. It’s a trap.”

Matt hadn’t sat down and worked it out. It was just that all the doubts that had been in his mind had somehow come together and he could suddenly see everything very clearly.

“The whole thing is a trap,” he said. “And it always has been, right from the start. Why were we attacked in Nazca? Why was Professor Chambers killed? It’s because the Old Ones wanted to get us on the move. They wanted us to do exactly what we’ve done.

“Think about it. Scarlett Adams goes through the door at St Meredith’s and suddenly the whole world knows about her. She’s in all the newspapers and the Old Ones find out who she is. And then, the very next day, a university lecturer called Ramon turns up in Nazca. Somehow he’s managed to track us down. He tells us that he’s managed to steal the one thing we most want and he hands it across without even asking for money. Why? Because he goes to Church! Because he’s planning to get married! His whole story was ridiculous. And it wasn’t true. The Old Ones wanted us to have the diary.”

“They killed him to get it back,” Nathalie said.

“Did they? I think Ramon was as surprised to get that fence post through his chest as we were to see it happen. He must have been programmed – either drugged or hypnotized – to stop Scott and Jamie seeing into his mind. And then they killed him to make us believe that he had been telling the truth. Otherwise, it would have all seemed too easy.”

Matt took a breath. Normally, he didn’t like being the centre of attention but this time he knew he was right.

“All along, there was something that bothered me about that night in Nazca,” he went on. “If they really wanted the diary back so badly, why did they send such a small force? What happened to the giant spider, the fly-soldiers, the shape-changers, the death-riders?” He turned to Jamie. “You’ve seen them. You’ve fought them. Nazca was peanuts compared to what you went through.”

Jamie nodded but said nothing.

“They want me to come to Hong Kong. That’s what this has all been about.” Matt was getting tired. He had no idea what time it was according to his body clock. He just wanted to crawl into bed and forget everything for ten hours. “First of all they got us out of Nazca. They managed to split us up. And now they’ve given us a nice invitation to walk straight into their hands. The moment I go through that door, I’ll be finished. They’re using Scarlett to get at me. I hurt them. I wounded their leader, Chaos – the King of the Old Ones, or whatever he calls himself. They want to make me pay.”

There was a long silence.

“What do you want to do, Matt?” Susan Ashwood asked. And that made a change. Normally the Nexus told him what they wanted him to do.

“I still have to go to Hong Kong,” Matt said.

“Matt…” Richard began.

Matt stopped him. “What Miss Ashwood said was right. They’re not going to let any of you get anywhere near Scarlett. It has to be the two of us, Jamie and me. And you too, Richard, if you want to come. But maybe we can use this situation to our advantage. The Old Ones expect us to turn up in the Temple of Tai Shan. That’s how they’ve arranged the trap. But suppose we arrive another way? We could still take them by surprise.”

“You could go in by sea,” Foster said. “There are cruise ships going in and out of Hong Kong all the time.”

“May I suggest something?” Mr Lee interrupted, asking permission again. “The best way to enter Hong Kong might be through Macau. It is part of China, a small stub of land on the South China Sea – and like Hong Kong it is a Special Administrative Region, which is to say, it is – at least in part – independent. You can fly from one to the other in a very short time. Helicopters make the journey several times a day.”