Graham Masterton - Innocent Blood

Frank said, ‘You remember at Travel Town, when we were talking about Dar Tariki Tariqat, and where they might meet? And Danny said, “emeralds and orange groves and seven thousand and eleven?”’

‘Of course.’

‘I’ll bet you didn’t know that twelve biblical saints have their own stones – you know, like birthstones – and that emeralds are the stone of St John the Evangelist.’

‘No, I didn’t know that. What of it?’

‘Guess where I’m standing now.’

Saturday, October 9, 11:59 A.M.

Frank was sitting in his car waiting for Nevile when he heard the explosion in the distance. A flat thud, over to the north-east. Within two minutes, KRCW reporter Kevin Jacobson had broken into the morning music program.

‘Reports are coming in of a massive explosion on the Warner Brothers lot in Burbank. A number of people have been killed and seriously injured. So far we have no more details than that, but we will bring you more news as and when we receive it.’

By the time Nevile’s shiny black Mercedes had turned the corner and parked on the opposite side of Orange Grove Avenue, Frank had heard that at least twenty-five people had died, and scores had been critically hurt. A furious Warner Brothers executive blamed the police and the FBI for their ‘abject failure to protect the entertainment industry.’

Warner Brothers’ French Street set had been almost totally demolished by 1,500 lbs of C4 explosive packed into a van. The director John Portman had been blinded and the actress Nina Ballantine had lost both legs. Five extras had been beheaded by the blast.

Nevile came across the street looking serious. ‘You’ve heard the news, too?’ Frank asked him.

‘Yes,’ said Nevile, ‘and believe me, they’re not going to stop. They’ll go on bombing until they get what they want. It was the same with the IRA when I was working in Northern Ireland – same back-to-front thinking. They feel that they’re totally justified in what they’re doing, and they’re blaming all of the casualties on the entertainment industry, for not giving in to them. It’s a case of “now look what you made me do!” Even worse than that, they believe they have God on their side. I’ll tell you something, Frank: a lot more people are going to die before this is over.’

Twenty-Six

They walked around the church of St John the Evangelist, occasionally shaking the corrugated-iron fencing to see if any of it was loose enough to pry free. In the end they concluded that they would have to force the padlock that was holding the gate closed.

‘Tire iron?’ suggested Nevile, and Frank unlocked the trunk of his car.

While Frank kept a lookout, Nevile inserted the tire iron into the padlock, and twisted. A police cruiser crept past, and one of the officers stared at Frank as if he suspected him of being a street-corner drug dealer, but Frank gave an exaggerated performance of checking his watch and frowning up and down the street, as if he were waiting for somebody who had let him down, and the cruiser kept on going. At last the padlock snapped like a pistol shot, and Nevile was able to scrape the door open.

They clambered over the rubbish until they reached the steps. Most of the stained-glass windows were broken, and there was graffiti on the doors. De Skul and Marmaduke had apparently been there, as well as Uncle Horrible and Señor Meat.

Together they climbed the steps. The doors were solid oak, and locked. Nevile laid his hands on them, his palms flat, and closed his eyes.

‘Any vibes?’ Frank asked him.

‘A lot. This is quite overwhelming. There’s so much hatred here, you wouldn’t believe it. I’ve never felt anything like this in any building before, let alone a church.’

‘You think that this is where they meet? Dar Tariki Tariqat?’

‘I’d be very surprised if it isn’t. My God . . . there’s so much pain here, so much suffering. So much desperation.’

Frank took a few steps back down. ‘The point is, how are we going to get in here?’

‘Let’s try around the back.’

They made their way down the narrow alley that separated the church from the tire-replacement workshop next door to it. They could hear drills and hammers and clanking jacks, and the banging of inflated tires. Halfway along the alley, Nevile said, ‘Let’s try this.’ There was a basement window covered with a screen of fine mesh. Nevile slid the tire iron underneath the mesh and it took only four or five wrenches to pull it away. He climbed down into the space in front of the window, and gave it a hefty kick with his heel. The glass smashed and Frank heard it tinkling into the basement.

‘You should have been a burglar.’

‘There’s not enough money in it.’

Nevile wriggled through the broken window and dropped out of sight. ‘It’s OK,’ he called. ‘It’s only about six feet down to the floor.’

Frank looked left and right to make sure that nobody was watching, then squeezed himself through the window and jumped down on to the basement floor. ‘Shit, I’ve cut myself.’ He looked up and there was a single shark’s tooth of glass left in the window frame, stained with his own blood.

‘Here.’ Nevile took a white linen handkerchief out of his pocket and deftly tied it around Frank’s thumb. ‘You can thank my mother. I was never allowed to walk out of the front door without a clean handkerchief and bus fare.’

As their eyes became accustomed to the darkness they could see that one side of the basement was stacked with folding chairs and other furniture, as well as painted panels draped in dust sheets. One of the dust sheets had slipped and the accusing face of Pontius Pilate was staring at Frank from behind the bars of a chair, as if he was imprisoned.

Nevile crossed the basement floor and opened the door. ‘Brilliant. I was worried it was going to be locked.’

They climbed the narrow brick steps that led up to the main body of the church. The pews had gone, the altar had gone, and the font had gone. From high up above, rows of diagonal beams of dusty sunshine fell along the aisle, forming a shining archway. Underneath this archway were stacked dozens of khaki metal boxes, as well as ropes and truck wheels and sleeping bags and bottles of water and other paraphernalia, including a portable diesel generator and a capstan lathe.

They walked slowly down the aisle. The pungent smell of nitrates was eye watering.

‘Look at this,’ said Nevile. ‘Cyclonite, IMI demolitions blocks, TNT, plasticized RDX. There’s enough explosive here to flatten twenty square blocks.’

‘I’m amazed there’s nobody on guard here.’

‘What for? Who’s going to go looking for an arms dump in a derelict church? I saw the same kind of thing in Belfast – an old country chapel that was stacked floor to ceiling with AK47s and Semtex. There was only a rusty old lock on the door, but we would never have found it without a tip-off.’

Frank examined another stack of metal boxes, some of them with their lids hanging open. ‘Detonators, fuses, switches, timers. And what are these?’

At the back of the stacks, there was a pile of at least a dozen navy-blue vests, with deep pockets sewn into them, back and front. Three of the vests had already had their pockets filled with large slabs of greasy, clay-colored material.

‘Hey – don’t go near those,’ warned Nevile. ‘They’re tailor-made waistcoats for suicide bombers. Ten pounds of plastic explosive in each pocket, filled with ball bearings.’

‘Jesus,’ said Frank. ‘They must be totally crazy, these people. Out of their heads.’ But as he looked around he realized that these boxes of explosives had not been assembled because of anybody’s insanity, and somehow that made it much more frightening. This was nothing to do with madness; this was plain, unadulterated hatred. He began to understand what Nevile had felt when he laid his hands on the doors outside, and sensed that this was a place of evil.