Anthony Horowitz - Evil Star

“We’re not the only ones looking for it,” Susan Ashwood replied. “There has been a strange development, Matt. You would doubtless call it a coincidence, but I think it’s more than that. I think it was meant to happen.”

She nodded at Fabian, who produced a DVD. “Can I play you this?” he asked.

Richard waved a hand at the TV. “Be my guest.”

Fabian fed the DVD into the player and turned on the television. Matt found himself watching a news report. “We recorded this last week,” Fabian said.

The DVD began with a shot of a leatherbound book, lying on a table. It was obviously very old. A hand reached forward and began to turn the pages, showing them to be thick and uneven, covered with writing and intricate drawings that had been made with an ink pen or perhaps even a quill. Matt had seen something very like it at school: the history teacher had brought in pictures of a fifteenth-century book of poetry rescued from some castle, and the letters had been drawn so carefully that each one was a miniature work of art. Many of the pages in the diary were the same.

“Some people are already describing it as the find of a lifetime,” the narrator explained. “It was written by St Joseph of Cordoba, a Spanish monk who travelled with Pizarro to Peru in 1532 and witnessed the destruction of the Inca empire. St Joseph later came to be known as the Mad Monk of Cordoba. His diary, bound in leather and gold, may explain why.”

The camera moved in closer to the pages. Matt could make out some of the words but they were all in Spanish and meant nothing to him.

“The diary contains many remarkable predictions,” the voice continued. “Although it was written almost five hundred years ago, it describes in detail the coming of motor cars, computers and even space satellites. On one of the later pages, it even manages to predict some sort of Internet, created by the church.”

Now it cut to a view of a Spanish town and what looked like a huge fortress with a soaring bell tower surrounded by narrow streets and markets.

“The diary was found in the Spanish city of Cordoba. It is believed that it had been buried in the courtyard of the tenth-century mosque known as the Mezquita and must have been unearthed during excavations. It passed into private hands and may have been sold many times before it was discovered in a market by an English antiques dealer, William Morton.”

Morton was in his fifties, plump, with silver hair and cheeks that had been burned by the sun. He was the sort of man who looked as if he enjoyed life.

“I knew at once what it was,” he said. His accent was cultured. “Joseph of Cordoba was an interesting chap. He’d travelled with Pizarro and the conquistadors when they invaded Peru. While he was out there, he stumbled onto some sort of alternative history. Devils and demons… that sort of thing. And he wrote down everything he knew in here.” He held up the diary. “There are plenty of people out there who said that the diary didn’t exist,” he went on. “For that matter, there are people who think that Joseph himself didn’t exist! Well, it looks as if I’ve proved them wrong.”

“You’re planning to sell the diary,” the commentator said.

“Yes, that’s right. And I have to tell you that I’ve already had one or two quite interesting offers. A certain businessman in South America – I’m not mentioning any names – has already made an opening bid in excess of half a million pounds. And there are some people in London who seem very keen to meet me. It looks as if I may have an auction on my hands…” He licked his lips with relish.

The camera cut back to the diary. More pages were being turned.

“If anyone can untangle the strange riddles, the often illegible handwriting and the many scribbles, the diary could reveal a completely new mythology,” the voice concluded. “St Joseph had his own, very peculiar view of the world and although some think he was mad, others call him a visionary and a genius. One thing is sure: William Morton has struck it lucky, and for him the book is quite literally pure gold.”

The pages were still turning. Fabian froze the image. Matt gasped.

At the very end of the film, the camera had rested on one page with handwriting – hundreds of tiny words compressed into narrow lines – at the top and the bottom. But in the middle there was a strange symbol. Matt recognized it at once.

He had seen it at Raven’s Gate. It had been cut into the stone on which he had almost been killed. It was the sign of the Old Ones.

“You see?” Fabian said. He left the image frozen on the screen.

“We believe the diary will tell us the location of the second gate,” Susan Ashwood said. “It may also tell us when, and how, it is supposed to open. But as you’ve heard, we aren’t the only ones interested in it.”

“A businessman in South America…” Matt remembered what the report had said. “Do you know who he is?”

“We don’t even know which country he lives in, and William Morton isn’t saying anything.” Fabian scowled.

“You’re the people who wanted to meet him in London,” Richard said.

“Yes, Mr Cole. We contacted Mr Morton the moment he went public with what he’d found.”

“We have to have the diary,” Miss Ashwood said. “We have to find the second gate and either destroy it or make sure it never opens. Unfortunately, as you heard, we’re not alone. This ‘businessman’, whoever he is, got in there ahead of us. Since that DVD was made, he has quadrupled his offer to William Morton. He’s now offering to pay two million pounds.”

“But you can pay more,” Richard said. “You’ve got plenty of money.”

“We told Morton that, the last time we spoke to him,” Fabian explained. “We said he could more or less name any price he liked. But it’s no longer a question of money.”

“He’s afraid,” Miss Ashwood said. “At first, we didn’t understand why. It seemed to us that maybe he was being threatened by whoever he was dealing with in South America. They’d shaken hands on a price and he wasn’t allowed to speak to anyone else. But then we realized it was something more than that.”

She paused.

“He’d read the diary,” Matt said.

“Exactly. He had the diary for the best part of a month and in that time he read it and understood enough of it to know just what it was he had in his hands. Right now he’s in London. We don’t know where, because he won’t tell us. He has a house – in Putney – but he’s not there. As a matter of fact, there was a fire a few days ago. It may be connected. We don’t know. William Morton has gone into hiding.”

“How do you contact him?” Richard asked.

“We don’t. He calls us. He has a mobile phone. We’ve tried to trace the calls but without any luck. Until yesterday all we knew was that he was going to sell the diary to the businessman and we weren’t even going to meet. But then he telephoned us again. I happened to take the call.” Miss Ashwood turned to Matt. “And I mentioned you.”

“Me?” Matt didn’t know what to say. “He’s never met me…”

“No. But he knows about the Five. Don’t you see? He must have read about them in the diary, and the fact that you’re one of them, Matt… he couldn’t believe it when we told him and he agreed, at last, to meet us. But he made one condition.”

“He wants me to be there,” Matt said.

“He wants to meet you first, alone. He’s given us a place and time. On Thursday: three days from now.”

“We’re just asking you for one day of your time,” Fabian said. “If Morton sees you and believes you are who we say you are, maybe then he’ll sell us the diary. Maybe he’ll give it away. I honestly believe that he wishes now that he had never found it. He wants to be rid of it. We just have to give him an excuse, a good reason to hand the diary to us.” He gestured at Matt. “You are the reason. All you have to do is meet him. Nothing more.”