Lee Child - MatchUp

I flew in on a private charter that Malcolm Chubb arranged. In my former profession I went nowhere without a weapon, but in those days I carried an official United States Justice Department badge that granted me security exceptions. I still carry a badge, though unofficially, given to me by my former boss, Stephanie Nelle, since I often work for her as contract help. My display of it had satisfied Scottish customs. But the people in this house are another matter. Its presence will raise a lot of questions.

The first thing that occurred to me when Eleanor noted that the servants were searching the castle is that they’d certainly search the guests’ rooms too. Most likely discreetly, after the occupants come down for breakfast. And, sure enough, I watch as one of the maids lightly raps at a door near the end of the hallway in which my own room is located, a stack of fresh towels in her arms by way of an excuse for her presence. I hang back behind a Victorian stand until the woman, receiving no answer to her knock, lays the towels aside and steps quietly inside. I quickly open my own door, find the Beretta, and tuck it into the kilt’s internal waistband, concealing its presence with the baggy Arran sweater.

I descend the narrow zigzag stairway, one hand on the slick banister, back to ground level. More people are now around and I feel a suppressed air of consternation in the scraps of muted conversation I manage to hear. I don’t think it will come to a physical search of the guests. Not yet, anyway. But I don’t want to explain why I’m carrying a gun inside a remote Scottish castle. So I find the foot of the stairs and stride purposefully through the entrance hall, straight for the front door.

A young servant is on duty there.

Or maybe on guard?

“Off for a morning walk, are you, sir?”

I nod. “I thought I’d take advantage of the nice morning.”

“Best move fast, then,” the young man says. “Weather here changes every quarter of an hour. If you’re going to walk along the cliffs, be sure to keep to the marked footpath. There’s no missing it—some of the other guests went that way not ten minutes since.”

I toss the guy a cheery wave. “I’ll keep an eye out for them.”

Outside, another servant at the front gate, this one wearing a Barbour jacket and flat cap with his kilt, evidently doesn’t trust the weather any further than his pal inside. The young man adds the suggestion that if I mean to traverse the moor, I should stick to the road.

“It looks flat, but it’s not,” the young man says. “Up and down, it is. Lose sight o’ the castle and ye won’t know where ye are.”

I assure him I will take care and set off up the paved road. The warning is a good one, though. I can feel the grade rise, then gently subside in the deceptively rolling terrain. I’m not afraid of getting lost, I just want to kill some time and give things back at the castle a chance to cool down. Once my room is searched and nothing found, I can replace the Beretta in my bag. Malcolm Chubb has to be in a panic. The missing grimoire is worth tens of thousands of pounds.

I walk for nearly an hour until I spot, in a hollow, a small cluster of pale boulders barely visible from the road. It’s the first thing I’ve seen definite enough in the moor to make for a landmark, and I leave the pavement for a closer look. The going is rough, as stretches of spongy peat moss give way under my feet and soak my shoes and socks. Growths of scratchy heather and all kinds of other prickly plants grab at my hose and the hem of the kilt. Nothing that looks like a path leads to the stones, and it takes me a half hour to reach them. Why I feel the need to get closer to them baffles me.

It’s just that I need to.

I stop for a moment and gather myself. A quick look back and I see that my passage through the brush has left no visible track, the moor so wild that it immediately swallows every trace of my presence. I’m also now out of sight of the castle, which had disappeared some time ago, along with the road.

I scramble down to the clearing, among the stones.

They might have once made a circle, but now they lie hither and yon, as the Scots would say, like teeth in a long neglected mouth, the remnants thick with lichens. Stonehenge, it isn’t, but there is one that sticks up proud, like a hitchhiking thumb, and I make my way toward it. It has a faint mark chiseled into it, so faint I can’t be sure what it is. Maybe a half circle with a cross of some kind above it? I spot a flowering plant on a slight mound at the base, its blue petals obvious among the muted heather. Then I notice that the heather is broken, several stems cracked and hanging loose. Fresh, too. None of the leaves have wilted. I squat and catch a glimpse of something that isn’t a plant. A rock, maybe? No, not that either. I reach into a cavity that someone has dug under the heather and find a small rectangular package, tightly wrapped in clear, thick plastic.

A book.

About five by seven inches.

“Put that back where you found it,” a voice says from behind me.

Which is startling, considering all I’ve heard for the past hour has been the wind gusting across the moor, tugging at my clothes. I stand and slowly turn, still holding the package in my left hand. The man who faces me is the Russian, Kuznyetsov, attired much like me, in a kilt and outdoor jacket, holding a gun, pointed my way.

I stay cool and assess the situation.

Obviously, this man has been here all along able to see my approach. Luckily, this isn’t my first rodeo. I’ve faced down many guns.

“This yours?” I ask, motioning with the wrapped book.

“I told you to put it back.”

I decide to see how much nerve this guy really possesses. “If you still want it, here.”

And I feign tossing the book across the ten feet of air that separates us. At the same time I dive behind the sole standing stone, reach for my Beretta, and fire past the edge of the rock. A shot comes in return, which ricochets off the stone.

Chips and dust spew in my face.

I grab the stone to steady myself, bracing for another shot.

Everything turns inside out.

The rock, the heather, the sky, even me. It all flies apart in a strange, rapid disintegration. Like a jigsaw puzzle disassembling. I’m aware for a split second of being there, behind the stone, then in the next I fight to keep myself physically together. A blinding light sears across my eyes and I’m overwhelmed by an incredible force.

One I have never felt before.

And cannot fight.

I WAKE.

Lying on the ground in a patch of wet peat moss, cold water wells up between my legs through the kilt. I roll over and push up onto my hands and knees. My head pounds and feels too heavy to lift and my thoughts make little sense. I see the wrapped book lying on the ground where I apparently dropped it. Then I realize that the gun is still in my hand, my fingers numb from gripping it.

I glance up at the sky.

More clouds have arrived, but the sun is still there, at about the same height. So not much time has passed. Things are coming back to me and, with a jolt of adrenaline, I remember Kuznyetsov.

I spring to my feet and look around. But no Kuznyetsov. I glance down at the gun and see shreds of blackened, melted plastic clinging to my fingers where the butt had once been. The gun itself is destroyed. The hammer fused tight, its form misshapen.

What the hell?

I shake away the plastic, as if it’s an unwanted insect.

I bend down and lift the wrapped book. Through the clear wrappings I see that it’s Chubb’s missing 15th-century grimoire. How long have I been out? I glance at my watch. Magellan Billet standard issue with a GPS tracker. But the bezel has cracked with a hole the size of a fingertip, the watch face beneath showing a similar hole, black at the edges.