ARKANE Thrillers Books 7-9

Chapter 9

9

JAKE FOUND THE ACCESS shaft a little too tight for comfort. It was a square chimney just wider than a man's shoulders – a small man's shoulders – and he was over six feet and broad with it. He concentrated on breathing deeply, focusing on the brickwork in front of him as he mechanically stepped down the ladder after the two women.

He could hear Naomi and Regina chatting below, the echoes of their laughter filtering up to him. Naomi seemed to find these dark places a natural habitat, her smart suit forgotten as she had enthusiastically followed Regina down the shaft.

If they were being followed, it would be easy to find them with this level of noise.

He paused for a moment to reach around his back and check the gun was still safely tucked there before he continued down. After a few more minutes, he found Naomi and Regina standing in an alcove off the main shaft in front of a metal access hatch.

"Welcome to the New York Public Library," Regina said with a broad grin. "It has seven floors of stacks but the official plans don't show the sub-basement where some of the city's most politically sensitive documents are kept. The treasures and rare manuscripts are above, but down here are the secrets. We'll be entering directly into that area."

Jake's mind flashed to the ARKANE vaults, buried deep under Trafalgar Square in central London, way below the transport level and the pipework necessary to run the city. Could those levels be accessed in the same way? It was something to talk to Director Marietti about when he got back to London.

"Oh, wow!" Naomi said, her eyes shining with excitement. "I've heard rumors of this level but I've never been able to get in, even with ARKANE access."

"What are we looking for here?" Jake asked. "And how does it relate to the relic?"

Regina began to turn the wheel on the hatch, opening the lock that held it shut.

"The Mother Superior of the Order of the Guardian Angel has always been a prominent figure in the city," she said. "In the background, for sure, but influential in her own way. Those who held the position have always written diaries and those records are locked here in the vault because of the secrets that the Mother Superiors have always kept. My source at the convent said that the last recorded sighting of the original relic was around 1890, so we'll be trying to find the diary from that time."

Regina pulled the door and it swung silently open on oiled hinges. She put her finger on her lips as they stepped inside, motioning them into silence.

Directly in front of the door was a huge wooden slab, the back of a giant bookcase or storage unit. Regina inched into the space behind it while Naomi easily followed and Jake squeezed along after them. Regina peeked her head around the end.

After a moment, she stepped into the room, beckoning for them to emerge.

"It's OK," she said. "There's no one here. There never is, actually, and I've been coming here for years. It's always this awesome temperature, keeps you warm in the winter and there doesn't seem to be any security to worry about. I think they've forgotten about this place. The last documents deposited down here are dated 1972."

The vault had a low ceiling and rolling shelves that stretched into darkness ahead of them, creating a sense of intimacy. The sound of their voices was muted by the stacks of paper, books and documents that lay filed on the shelving. The place smelled of age and knowledge, crumbling into dust, for life was a constant fight against entropy, the degeneration of all things. It looked like some of the archives here had already succumbed.

Jake thought of Martin Klein's database back in London, and how much his friend would love to get hold of what was in this vault. It could be a possibility later, but for now Jake walked to the first shelf and scanned the contents, written in spidery handwriting on an index card taped to the end.

"Do you have any sense where the diaries might be?" Jake asked. "We don't have time to go through the whole vault."

"Of course," Regina said. "I searched for them after I became part of the Sisterhood."

She walked down the narrow aisle, Naomi and Jake following behind until they reached a particular aisle. Regina pulled a cord to turn on the light in the stack. The illumination was dim but it was better than their torches. She turned the handle to open up the rolling stack, revealing a row of identical black books standing upon the shelves, each one with a date etched in gold on the spine.

Year upon year of diaries, each one an inch thick.

Jake raised an eyebrow. "This could be a problem."

"We just need to narrow down the date range," Naomi said, trailing her fingers along the spines as she scanned the dates. "As much as I'd love to sit and read these earlier tomes, we should start with the year the relic was seen and go from there. We'll scan for mentions of it and hope the Mother Superior wrote about it." She pulled the book from 1890 off the shelf and a cloud of dust lifted into the air. "You take this one, Jake." She handed it to him, coughing as the dust settled on her skin and clothes.

Regina pulled down the next one in the series. "I'll look at this one."

Naomi took the following year and they all sat on the floor, books on their laps. The sound of pages turning was soon the only thing that could be heard, their breathing more rhythmic as they settled into the search.

Jake's diary was a monotonous account of life in the convent, with lists of ailments amongst the nuns, accounting notes and snippets of information on visitors. Page after page of this made his attention wander as the minutes ticked by.

He glanced up at Naomi, who leaned against the stack behind her, dark eyes fixed on the page, her slim fingers gently laid on the ivory paper. She was attractive above ground in her bureaucrat's suit and perfect hair, but she was stunning down here covered in the dust and dirt of adventure. She looked up and caught his gaze, a smile playing around her full lips.

"Found anything?" she said, her voice soft.

"Convent admin mainly," Jake replied. "You?"

"This could be interesting. The Mother Superior has started to visit an asylum and she speaks of women there needing divine protection. It's located –"

Her words were cut off as a dull clang came from the end of the vault, back where the access hatch led to the shaft.

"Get back," Jake whispered, rising quickly and pulling his weapon.

Pushing Regina to the back of the rolling stack, he peered around the end of the row, Naomi right next to him, her weapon drawn. Jake's pulse raced as he considered their options. This was the worst environment for a gun fight. There was no other exit they could use and from what Regina had said, they would not be heard even if the place was burning down. He glanced around at the paper surrounding them. And this place would burn indeed.

For a moment, there was silence.

Then, the unmistakeable noise of a heavy object landing in the aisle near them, and a grenade rolled into view. There was no smell and no visible smoke, but a hissing noise betrayed the leaking gas.

Jake didn't hesitate.

He yanked off his jacket and threw it over the grenade, dampening the gas down, but he knew it wouldn't hold the chemical for long. "Get to the end, as far away as you can," he said. "Run, now."

He sprinted in the opposite direction, back towards the hatch they had come through, where whoever had thrown the grenade must surely be. As he reached the back of the bookcase, he looked round the corner quickly. He saw the back of a man's blue jacket and one leg as he stepped into the hatch.

Jake drew his gun and took a shot, knowing he wouldn't be able to get through fast enough.

The man grunted but pulled through, the shot catching only his jacket. Jake squeezed into the space, fighting to get to the door, but as he reached it, he heard the unmistakeable sound of the wheel lock being spun into place.

He pounded on the metal.

"You coward," he shouted. "Come in here and face me in person."

He banged the door one last time and then swore, a torrent of Afrikaans that wasn't fit for translation. He squeezed back through the gap and into the vault again. Covering his mouth with his shirt sleeve, he crouched low to the floor and crawled back towards the stacks, beginning to feel the edges of his vision go dim. It made Jake angry to think he might die like a librarian instead of a warrior – not the way he had planned to go at all.

"Back here, Jake," Naomi called.

The two women had crawled right to the back of the corridor, as far as they could get from the source of the smoke. Regina lay with her head in Naomi's lap, her eyes closed, her breathing shallow. The Mother Superior's diary was next to them.

"She succumbed quickly," Naomi said, coughing as she spoke. "We should never have brought her into this. There's been too much death already today."

Jake sat down next to her and she leaned her head on his shoulder. He reached one hand up to stroke her hair.

"Well, passing out twice in one day next to you isn't so bad," he said.

Her laugh was soft and she lifted her head. He turned to look into her dark eyes.

"I hope we can manage it again sometime."

Moments later, the world shifted and Jake slipped away into darkness.