Ghost Dance Page 12

  Morgan hoped he had, but he didn't want to rely on it. He took one last look at the water - no bubbles rising to the surface, no body either - then strode to the other side of the bridge. A few hands reached out to stop him only to flinch away when he glared at their owners.

  It took him a moment to spot Coby's punt in the pack of boats crowding the water. It was nearer than he'd expected, almost close enough to jump to and he swore as he realised the other man must have stopped to wait for him. When Coby's eyes caught his he raised a hand, pointing onward. Without waiting to see the response, he launched himself over the side in a dive that was nearer to a belly flop.

  The rank river water rushed through his nostrils to trickle unpleasantly down the back of his throat. He coughed and swam on, blinking his eyes clear. He could hear a hubbub of voices around him and knew there couldn't be a person left in this section of the river whose attention he hadn't drawn.

  Coby's punt was harder to spot once you were in the water. Morgan pulled himself over the side of one boat only to find himself looking into the startled eyes of a middle-aged woman. The next boat was full of students and this time he was pushed roughly away with the punt pole, a bruising impact against already sore ribs. The fourth boat was Coby's. The other man didn't look much more pleased to see him than the strangers, but he paused in his poling long enough to haul Morgan over the side.

  Morgan lay in the bottom of the boat, absorbing the sun's heat through his soaking wet clothes.

  A second later, the rays were blocked by Coby's shadow. "What the hell were you doing back there?" he said.

  Morgan shrugged, sighed, and rolled to his hands and knees. "Lahav's in the river - w-e can get the mirror."

  Coby's brows drew down, suspicious.

  "Get moving," Morgan said. "I don't know how long he'll stay under. Fuck, for all I know the bastard can breathe under water."

  Coby frowned at him a moment longer, then shrugged and turned back to the river. It was clearer now, the boats around them hustling to get out of their way. To their left, a wide field of grass opened up, ending in a long, low building and another, tall and over-ornate, that was probably a church. At the end of the grass was another bridge, plainer than the one he'd scaled. Morgan alternated between scanning it and scanning the water behind him. He could see neither pursuit nor police, and Coby had said ten minutes. Surely they were going to make it.

  "Next one," Coby said tensely as the shadow of the bridge blotted out the sun.

  Then they were through and Morgan could see it ahead. Unlike the others this bridge was wooden, a complex puzzle that arced over the water like a kid's toy from the Early Learning Centre.

  "Under there?" he said.

  "Beneath it," Coby told him. "There's a null zone below the very centre. The struts form a rune whose shape is only visible from a thirty degree angle. No one who wasn't looking for it would see it, although there've always been rumours. It's been rebuilt twice, but it doesn't matter. The power's in the design, not the material."

  Morgan studied the bridge as they drew closer, the complex shadows it cast on the water below. "Which side were they working for, the people who built it?"

  "Doesn't really matter, does it? Sometimes our acts count for more than our intentions." He twisted the pole, spinning the boat 180 degrees and bringing it to a halt only a few feet from the centre of the bridge. "I'm not sure what they hid under the bridge originally, it's long gone. But it sure came in handy when I needed to stash the mirror."

  "Beneath the water?" Morgan said. "Great."

  Coby smiled. "Well, I guess you're already wet."

  Morgan didn't bother to argue. He wanted the mirror in his hands, not Coby's. He was using the other man but he didn't trust him.

  His soggy T-shirt clung to his body, tangling his arms as he pulled it off. His jeans were worse. Coby raised his eyebrows as he saw Morgan scraping them down his legs, but he didn't want anything dragging him down once he was underwater.

  "How am I gonna find it?" he asked Coby when his jeans were round his ankles. He lifted them above his head, rocking back inelegantly on his hips to tug them off.

  "It's in an oak box, about half a foot square," Coby said. "I only hid it three weeks ago, so it shouldn't be buried in silt. I guess you'll just have to feel around."

  "Great." Morgan knew if he gave himself time to consider it, he'd reconsider. He hated the water. He had only dark memories of what lay beneath it. But he slid himself to the side of the boat, took one deep breath and tumbled over.

  He didn't keep his eyes open. There was no point. He kicked with his feet, hands still and spread out in front of him. The bottom came sooner than he'd expected, a slimy brush of mud and weed against his fingertips that made him cringe away before he forced himself forward.

  His eyes opened on instinct, but he could see nothing. There was no light beneath the muddy water and he had to fight hard not to panic. He felt his heart pounding as his fingers trailed through the mud. He stayed down as long as he could, until the air was burning in his lungs, but his fingers found nothing except pebbles and eventually he had to kick up to the surface again.

  When his head struck wood, he felt a fierce moment of fear before he realised he'd come up beneath the boat. Coby was leaning over to look at him when he'd worked his way to the side.

  His face fell when he read Morgan's. "No?" he said. "Nothing?"

  Morgan didn't answer, just took another big gulp of air and jackknifed in the water to dive back down. This time his fingers found something solid within seconds, but when he tried to grasp it a piercing agony shot up his arm and he let out a great gulp of air in a silent scream. His feet felt weak as they kicked him to the surface and when he neared it he could see the cloudy trail of blood flowing behind him.

  "Jesus," Coby said when Morgan grabbed the side of the punt, only to snatch his hand back with a hiss of pain as the cut on his palm opened wide and oozed blood.

  Morgan shook his head, teeth gritted, annoyed with himself. "It's nothing. Just some junk on the bottom of the river. Piece of scrap metal, I think."

  "I'm sorry," Coby said, but he didn't look it. His hazel eyes were flat and Morgan thought the only thing he regretted was that Morgan hadn't yet found the mirror.

  Morgan didn't much like the idea of diving again with an open wound in his palm. The water was filthy and god knew what sort of infection he could pick up from it. Childish memories of watching Jaws crowded his mind, creatures hidden beneath the water which were drawn to blood.

  "Fuck," he said, then dove back down into the water.

  He used his knuckles to brush the surface this time. The wound ached deeply and he had visions of finding the jagged metal again. He imaged it catching against a finger this time, cutting it through. When he felt something hard beneath the mud he flinched back from it instinctively. But it was smooth and warm: wood, not metal. He'd been down a minute at least and he already felt the burn of oxygen deprivation in his lungs, but if he surfaced for air he'd never find this same spot again.

  The box was buried deep in the riverbed, sucked down by the hungry mud. Morgan's fingers were clumsy as they scrabbled to find its edges, digging for purchase. His lungs hurt and his palm throbbed in time with his heartbeat.

  When he finally fought it free of the mud's grasp the release of tension opened his mouth and he drew in a lungful of water. After that, it was pure, unreasoning panic. He hugged the box against his chest and kicked his legs and it seemed like nothing more than chance when he finally made it to the surface.

  He was further away from the punt his time, and it was hard to tread water with the box pressed to his chest. The blood from his palm seeped into the wood to leave a growing red stain. Coby cursed and poled towards him. As soon as he was within arm's reach, he dropped the pole and fell to his knees, reaching out to grasp the wooden box.

  Morgan held on to it stubbornly, kicking with his legs until he was outside the other man's reach.

  Coby huffed i
n irritation. "I can't use it without you," he said. "I'm not going to let you drown."

  Morgan hesitated a moment longer, then released his hold on the box and let Coby lift it into the boat. The other man eyed it for a moment, and Morgan knew he was itching to open it, but instead he turned back and helped drag Morgan over the side of the punt for the second time.

  He knelt on his discarded jeans and T-shirt, the sun warm on his bare back. "Well?" he said to Coby. "That's it, right?"

  Coby nodded, and Morgan could see that his hand was shaking as he reached around his neck and drew out a thick silver chain from beneath his shirt. There was a key hanging from it and Coby leaned forward to fit it into the box's lock.

  The mirror was smaller than Morgan had expected, but very beautiful. The frame was too pale to be gold, but it didn't look like silver either. Morgan guessed it might be platinum, a metal more precious than almost anything else on earth. It was engraved with designs that reminded him unpleasantly of the runic alphabet in his father's diary and there were rubies embedded in its back.

  He wondered how much it was worth, then realised that no monetary sum could equal its value, if it really contained what Coby claimed. He looked at the other man, and saw that his face was pale, sweat coating it. His eyes looked feverish as they bored into Morgan's.

  "What do I do?" Morgan asked. "How do I use it?"

  "Just look into it." Coby's voice was husky and he coughed to clear it. "It's like any other mirror, but the gateway should be broader. Dee's waiting in there. He wants to be contacted. Just look through the glass, Morgan, and tell me what you see."

  The handle was bone and felt slick and warm in Morgan's hand. It was soothing against the still bleeding cut on his palm. The mirror wasn't glass, he realised, but crystal. It shimmered, facets scattering the daylight, and he wondered how he was expected to see anything in its broken surface. And then he wasn't looking at the crystal but through it and Dee was right there.

  Morgan almost smiled at the image, exactly like something out of one of those BBC costume dramas he'd seen advertised but never watched. Dee's neck was ringed with a wide ruffle of lace that made the head above it look like it was detachable from the body below. His beard was long, grey and pointed and his gaunt face was lined with pain. Coby had said that Dee looked into the mirror in the moment of death. Morgan didn't find it hard to believe this was a dying man.

  "A blackamoor," Dee said. "A savage has possession of my mirror."

  His voice was hard to understand, the words rounded in an accent Morgan didn't recognise. It took their actual meaning a moment to register and then Morgan scowled at the man in the mirror.

  "What?" Coby said. "What did he say?" His voice was shaking and his cheeks were tense with strain.

  "Nothing yet," Morgan told him.

  Coby's breath left him in a rush. "Ask him where it is."

  Morgan turned back to the crystal mirror.

  Dee was still there, mouth pinched tight. "Well, savage?" he said. "Speak."

  Morgan kept his voice calm as he said, "Where's the shofar? Where did you put it?"

  The ancient alchemist's head tilted, as if he found Morgan as hard to understand as Morgan found him. "You seek the shofar?" he said. "So it remains hidden, in whatever future is your dwelling place. But perhaps you will find what I could not. The shofar is lost in the forests of the New World."

  "Lost in the forests of the New World," Morgan repeated for Coby's benefit and also because he wasn't sure he understood.

  Dee took in a harsh breath and flinched as if it hurt him. It occurred to Morgan that a man's spirit trapped in the moment of death would be dying forever.

  "They stole it from me," Dee said. "The hordes of the ignorant took my treasures. They took them to our Queen's colony across the great ocean. Yet when I sent my agents in pursuit, they too disappeared."

  Coby shook Morgan when he didn't speak, but he was too intent on the mirror to respond.

  "So you don't know?" Morgan said. "You've lost it."

  "Only one message remained," Dee said. "Croatoan."

  "Croatoan?" Morgan repeated.

  Coby's hand clawed suddenly into his arm. The other man's wide brown eyes were bright and Morgan knew that whatever Dee's message was, Coby at least had understood it.

  He turned back to the mirror to ask more. He didn't want to have to rely on Coby to explain. But when he looked at Dee, the old man's eyes were focused over his shoulder. His pale skin paled still further until he looked exactly like the corpse he was.

  "He is here," Dee hissed. "You have brought my death to me!"

  And then Coby too was shouting in inarticulate alarm and Morgan lowered the mirror and spun.

  Lahav stood on the river bank, dripping water. The Israeli's face was less handsome with the bloody bruise which had almost closed his left eye. His other glared with fury. The same red light shone within it that glowed from the knife in his hand.

  Lahav moved his arm back then forward, and the knife spun end over end through the air towards Coby. A wave of heat preceded it and Morgan felt a moment's pity for the other man. And then Coby reached for Morgan, swinging his body into the path of the knife.

  He struggled in Coby's arms, but it was already too late. The knife shot towards him and he knew it would scorch as it skewered him. In a futile, instinctive gesture he raised the mirror. The knife burned into it and through it, and the force of the blow drove him back into the muddy river waters for the last time.

  CHAPTER TEN

  Alex counted her heartbeats all the way to Alamo Square. PD seemed content with the silence and she was happy not to speak. She knew the tension in her voice would betray her. The bank would have her money in two hours. She needed to be ready to leave by then.

  PD's contact was waiting in the small park at the centre of the square. They were to meet on the bench at the highest point of the hill which offered a view over downtown San Francisco that seemed to transform the city into a toy-town version of itself, the distant Bay just a painted backdrop.

  PD walked to her left and Raven to her right as they climbed to the top of the park, but she ignored them both. When she swept her eyes over the view below she saw the same double image, a modern city basking in sunlight and an older one consumed by flame and earthquake. She was learning to ignore that too.

  PD's contact turned out to be a woman not much older than Alex. She had short brown hair, narrow brown eyes and was dressed like she'd wandered over from one of the bars in the Castro. PD obviously knew her already. He smiled and hugged her, making circles in the small of her back with his palm. Alex felt a hot flare of jealousy and ruthlessly suppressed it.

  "Curtis, this is Keve," PD said.

  The other woman's handshake was firm to the point of pain. Alex broke it as soon as she could, looking at the view rather than her companions. She was afraid of what they might see in her eyes.

  "Not smooth sailing, then," Curtis said, eyeing their bruises.

  PD shrugged. "Nothing we couldn't handle. What have you got for us?"

  Curtis handed him a thin manila folder. He tucked it beneath his jacket without looking at it.

  "It's not much," Curtis said. "Jacob Marriott's either damn good at flying below the radar or he hasn't been involved in anything that might interest us until recently. He's stinking rich, but there's no mystery where it came from. It's family money. He's East Coast stock but his father moved out here when he married himself a failed actress and semi-successful model a third his age."

  "Interesting," PD said. "Maybe he's repeating family history with Maria. Might explain where all her money comes from."

  Curtis shook her head. "Unlikely. Marriott was married to the same woman for fifty-two years and by all accounts he was devoted to her - not even a whisper of a rumour of any infidelity. She died of bone cancer just two months ago. And it looks like it was the wife who actually introduced him to the cult. Her financials indicate several very sizeable payments to an off-shore she
ll company. We haven't confirmed yet, but we're 99 per cent sure it's a front for the Croatoans."

  PD frowned. "So not every Croatoan's getting rich out of this - some are paying top dollar to get in. Maybe Maria isn't in trouble at all. Maybe she's part of the group running this shell game, taking people like Marriott for a ride. It explains what you saw in the restaurant - if she's given herself to the devil's side."

  It was very possible, Alex thought. Maria had certainly seemed to be the one with the power, whose presence was like a scar on the spirit world. But she wanted PD interested in Marriott - she needed him to break into the man's house as he'd suggested.

  "It's possible," she said. "But I don't think Marriott's an innocent in all this. There was definitely something odd about him too."

  Curtis quirked an eyebrow. "Odd?"

  "We can trust her instincts," PD said quickly. "If she says he's odd, we need to investigate."

  Curtis looked at her untrustingly and Alex wondered what PD had told her. Not very much, she guessed. She was Hammond's dirty little secret - and her partner's too.

  "We need to get Alex inside the house," he said. "Is that possible?"

  Curtis shrugged. "Marriott's got some pretty impressive security measures in place, but I think I can override them. It's a risk, but not a huge one."

  Though PD's face was impassive, Alex knew he was weighing up pros and cons. She needed to contribute to the pro side, but she knew he'd get suspicious if she seemed too keen on the mission. There was no trust left between them.

  "No way," she said. "They know us now - it's much too dangerous. And I've seen all I'm going to see."

  As predictable as Pavlov's dog, PD shook his head. "They're representing one hand and playing another. We need to see their hole cards, but they are wise to us now and infiltration's out. Marriott's house is our best bet." He turned to Curtis. "You've got a surveillance van set up, right? Can you co-ordinate from outside the perimeter?"