Anthony Horowitz - Necropolis

“I’m surprised they didn’t ask you to work for them,” Richard said.

“As it happens, they did indeed ask me to serve them. The Nightrise Corporation approached me exactly a year ago. But the Master of the Mountain does not serve anyone. I mentioned twenty-five victims. The man who put that question to me would have been the twenty-fifth.”

“May I ask a question?” Matt asked.

“You have my permission,” Han Shan-tung replied. “But I should warn you that soon I have a question to put to you and I very much hope you will be able to provide me with the right answer.”

Matt didn’t like the sound of that, but he went on anyway. “How do you know about Scarlett?” he asked. “And why did you call her Lin Mo?”

“The White Lotus Society has always known about the Gatekeepers. You must remember that in our early days, almost two thousand years ago, we were to all intents and purposes a religious order. We still are. That means we are the keepers of many secrets… sacred texts and ancient beliefs. Even when we began to devote ourselves exclusively to crime, we stayed true to ourselves. The secrets were passed on from generation to generation. And I think we always knew that one day we would be called upon to return to our origins, to take up the sword once again.

“As to the second part of your question regarding Lin Mo, that I am not yet prepared to tell you. I need to be persuaded that I can trust you and that is still not the case.

“However, I can say that she was born in a place called Meizhou. We always knew that the Old Ones would return and look for her… that she was one of the Gatekeepers. We therefore arranged for her to be adopted and taken to the West. We wanted her to be as far away from here as possible. We hoped that she would be safe.”

“It didn’t work.”

Shan-tung shrugged. “We did everything we could to protect her. It was not our fault that the Old Ones found her. In fact, if anyone is to blame, it is her. Nonetheless, you are right. The Old Ones found her and brought her back.”

“You tried to get her out of Hong Kong,” Jamie said. He hadn’t eaten very much, absorbed in what he was being told.

“Scarlett was kept under guard from the moment she arrived,” Shan-tung explained. “With great difficulty, we managed to get a message to her. My most trusted agent in Hong Kong, a man called Lohan, contacted her and arranged for the shape-changer who had been guarding her to be killed. He took her to a safe place where we hoped to keep her hidden, but unfortunately – and again through no fault of our own – she was found again. As I mentioned to you, several of my people died. However, Lohan managed to move her to one of our warehouses and had planned to smuggle her out on a cruise liner. That was yesterday. The plan failed for reasons that are not yet clear. She is now their prisoner.”

“So what do we do now?” Jamie asked. “How do we get her back again?”

The Master of the Mountain poured himself a glass of water from a crystal jug and drank it.

“Jamie and I can go into Hong Kong,” Matt said. “We can find her…”

“If you go into Hong Kong, you will be doing exactly what they want you to do. They will be waiting for you and although they will not kill you – that is not part of their plan – they will keep you in so much pain that you will wish constantly for death.”

“We can’t just leave her.”

“You may have no choice.”

“No, Mr Shan-tung,” Matt said. “You don’t believe that. Otherwise, why would you have invited me here?” Matt looked him straight in the eyes. “You’re going to help us get into Hong Kong,” he said. “You’ve already told us. You’ve got people over there. You can smuggle us in. We can find Scarlett. And we can be out of there before the Old Ones know what’s happened.”

Han Shan-tung set his glass down. “I might help you,” he said. “But as I mentioned to you earlier, there is still a question you have to answer for me.”

“And what is that?”

“I am, by nature, a very careful man. I have told you that I have killed twenty-five times. What I should have added is that there have been as many attempts on my own life. You are here in my house on the recommendation of my friend, Mr Lee. I trust him. He has been useful to me in the past, and he definitely believes that you and the American boy are who you say you are.”

“Is that your question?”

“It is exactly that. How can I be sure that you are one of the Five?”

Matt thought for a moment. Then he pointed at the crystal jug. He didn’t even need to think about it any more. The jug was swept, instantly, off the table. It fell to the floor and smashed. Shan-tung blinked. It was his only reaction. But then he slowly smiled. “An amusing conjuring trick. But it is still not enough. I do not question your abilities. It is your identity I wish to know.”

“I’ll read your mind,” Jamie said. “You say you know everything about us. In ten seconds I can tell you even more about you.”

“I would recommend that you stay out of my mind,” Han Shan-tung said. He turned to Matt. “There is a test, a trial you might say, that will prove to me beyond any doubt that you are who you say you are. Only one of you needs to take part in it. But I should warn you though that to fail will cause you great pain and perhaps even death. What do you say?”

Matt shrugged. “We need your help,” he said. “We’ve flown a long way to get it. If there is no other way…”

“There isn’t.”

“Matt…” Richard muttered.

“Then let’s go ahead,” Matt said. “What test do you have in mind?”

Han Shan-tung got to his feet. “It is called the sword ladder,” he said. He gestured towards a door at the back of the room. “Please… will you come this way.”

Matt stood up and followed Han Shan-tung. Richard and Jamie came behind. They went through the door into a long corridor, all polished wood but otherwise undecorated. There was a second door at the far end.

It opened into a large, square room that didn’t seem to belong to the rest of the house. It reminded Matt of a chapel or perhaps a concert hall that might comfortably seat fifty or sixty people. The walls were plain and wood-panelled, matching the corridor outside, and there were pews arranged around three of the sides. The fourth was concealed by a dark red curtain that had been pulled across, perhaps concealing a stage. There was a gallery above the curtain, but it was high up, arranged in such a way that it was impossible to tell from floor level what it might contain.

“You are inside a Triad lodge,” Mr Shan-tung explained. “And you should consider yourselves very privileged. Only Triad members and initiates are allowed in here and normally any outsiders would be instantly killed. We meet in this place on the twenty-fifth day of each Chinese month. There is a separate entrance from the street. You might be interested to know that an initiation ceremony lasts six hours. A new recruit is expected to answer three hundred and thirty-three questions about the society. He learns secret handshakes and recognition signals. A lock of his hair is taken and he signs his name in blood.”

“Actually, I wasn’t thinking of joining,” Richard muttered.

Fortunately, Shan-tung didn’t appear to have heard. “I speak of our rituals to remind you that the White Lotus Society is very old,” he went on. “Things have, of course, changed with modern times. Nine hundred years ago, initiates would have drunk each other’s blood, mixed with wine. And there is another part of the ceremony that has fallen out of use. When China was enslaved by Kublai Khan, it is said, the society searched for a leader, the one man who might liberate them. That man would be known as the Buddhist Messiah and he would show himself by a sign…”