Catacombs of Terror! (8 page)

“Whoa there. Two things. Who are ‘they'? What is ‘it'?” I interrupted.

“
They
are . . . they are kind of—the elite. I'm not talking about the old ‘Establishment' here, not the Bilderbergers, not the oligarchs. They are just . . . dilettantes, compared to this lot. No one name describes them or does them justice. They are the folks who
really
run things. The top dogs. They are very powerful people who can never get too much power. They call themselves AFFA. In their own tongue, in a language from a very long time back, AFFA means ‘nothing.' It isn't an acronym for anything. It is—just a word. If you call yourself nothing, no one knows who you are. Or what you want.

“They—AFFA—always want more. And now—right now—They have the means to change the world. I want you to think about what I'm saying. Power has always been fought for. Next king, next queen, next pope, president, whatever. It's a fight, a very, very dirty fight.
Power, by any means necessary
. These people are above morals. Morals are there to keep the likes of us in line. But They, the elite, AFFA, will do anything at all to get and keep power. And now, after centuries of work, the ultimate power, the absolute power to do exactly as they please is finally within Their grasp.”

“I know all about this,” I said, “because I watch
The X-Files
. Next. Next please. What is ‘it'?”

The man sighed. Nice. His turn. I felt better all of a sudden.

“It has had many names. None of them do it justice. I guess you've heard of alchemy, of the Philosopher's Stone, through your avid TV watching? The Philosopher's Stone is an agent of transmutation. To turn lead into gold—that was the stated goal of the alchemists. But physical transmutation is a metaphor. Alchemy—the use of the Philosopher's Stone—is actually about controlling
everything
. It's about controlling the
world.
”

What a fucking joker. He sounded like some kind of zealot. Or something. I didn't trust him to the end of my pint.

“You said that your name isn't important. Maybe it isn't. So don't tell me. But tell me why I should even waste my time shooting the breeze with you. Because you're sure as hell not whoever you're pretending to be.”

He glared at me for a little while before he answered.

“I will,” he said in a low voice, “after you tell me what you know so far. Tell me your thoughts. Tell me what you've found out.”

“Why the hell should I tell you? I've done the hard work so far, in my opinion. Finding stuff out, climbing down holes. I got abducted. I got a kicking. By fucking Tweedledum and fucking Tweedledee. Not you, mister whoever you are. It hurt a lot. Why should I tell you anything at all?”

He grinned. It wasn't a smile. I got to see a lot of his teeth.

“What else are you going to do with what you know? With what you have? What else can you do but tell someone who might believe you? Who else can you tell?”

He had something there. What was I going to do next? I was sunk badly into a situation that I seemed to have less control over with every hour that passed. He was right, really. Who else could I tell? Here was mister Stonehenge T-shirt, right in front of me. He was part of this, whatever it was. Not for the first time, I took a look at my options and felt the usual growing dismay. All of this buzzed around my brain for, well, about three seconds. I put on a pensive, intelligent expression for another minute or so, just to save face.

“You're right, I guess,” I said. It wasn't a thing I said often, and my voice caught a little as the words came out. Lack of practice.

“So?” he asked. I took a deep breath or two and told him. About what had happened so far. About my suspicions about KHS and ScryTech. About the deep hole at Charlcombe. About the slight strangeness of my ‘interview' with the CCTV operatives and Murnau. About being followed, and gave a vehemently described account of my time both in and outside of the shiny, expensive car. Then I asked him, also pretty vehemently, who the fuck he was. I think I asked him to tell me without delay. Something like that.

“I'm an academic. I was asked by a close friend to speak to you. I must apologise for the subterfuge. We needed to know if you were as reliable as we'd hoped you'd be. You should also know, by the way, that the woman you met last night in the Star was an actor, a former student of mine . . . . Now then, we are very concerned about what is happening. Very concerned. And I'm sorry about the violence you suffered today. Their security is even tighter than we imagined.”

“We? They? I guess ‘they' are ‘them.' AFFA. Who are you calling ‘
we
'?”

“Perhaps we shouldn't talk here. Perhaps your office might be less . . . public?”

“Okay,” I said, “but one thing before we go. I came in here last night and made some enquiries about you. I spoke to a barman. He's not here tonight. But he didn't seem to like you too well. Any ideas why that should be?”

“Tall fellow? Dark hair? Eyebrow piercing?”

I nodded. The guy grinned again. Teeth again. “Monty Cantsin. One of my students last year. He was hoping for a First. He got a Third, and he wasn't very happy about it.”

I nodded, slowly. It sounded just about believable. Not much else did. I finished my pint and lit a cigarette. I nodded towards the door.

“Okay. Let's go to my office.”

We didn't speak on the way. It was getting dark too early because of the rain. The street was crowded with people. Most of them had the weekend glint in their eyes. Alcohol, and lots of it, was on their agenda. Then sex or violence or some drunken species of misery. I kind of envied them. Even their misery would most likely be gone by the morning. Mine had legs though. Stamina. And it just kept on getting more nourishment.

We sidestepped the puddled vomit in the alley and I let us into the office. There was a message on the phone from Colin Kafka, asking me to call him urgently. Yeah, well. There's urgent and there's urgent. My main urgency was to find out what Stonehenge had to say. I checked the time. 9
P.M
. Already. Something about the day was nagging at my mind. It was the guys in the car, mainly. I'd been followed, shoved into a car and driven out of town and interrogated, sort of. But would they have done that to just anyone? What if I'd been legit? Polite apologies and a lift back into town? Somehow it didn't quite gel. No, it didn't gel at all. They must have known very quickly that I wasn't who I said I was. That visual mapping thing . . . .

I remembered the CCTV camera I had looked up at after leaving the control room. If they had doubts about me, they could have taken a zoomed-in still of my face, run it through their database, and—what? What could they have seen that would make them want to warn me off the whole deal? Did they have me on file already from somewhere else? If so, then where from? Maybe the cameras at Charlcombe had got me. I couldn't be sure that I'd avoided them all, especially on the way out from under the tarpaulin. Unless there'd been cameras actually down the hole. Infrared cameras? But why? I was getting nowhere. I got out the whiskey and poured a couple of glasses. I turned to Stonehenge and passed him one. He was sitting on the couch. I grabbed my remaining chair, pulled it over, and sat down facing him.

“You were going to tell me. Who's ‘we'?”

“This might come as something of a surprise.”

“Oh, goody. I like surprises. I've had more than my share recently, and you know what? I'm getting to like them. Now. Who is ‘
we
'?”

“Barry Eliot and myself. Barry is, or rather was, closely involved with Them. Almost one of Them, you could say. He became involved through his wife. Through Karen. Who I think you know. Rather closely, I fear.”

He had been right about the surprise. Except it was more of a shock. A jaw-dropper. I stared at him. I was paralysed. But it wasn't very long before it stopped being paralysis and became potentially fatal for my only chair. I might have said, ‘Excuse me,' before I hurled it across the room, but I probably didn't. I did some swearing and only just stopped myself from throwing my drink after the chair. Okay. I could probably speak now. I looked back at Stonehenge. He was watching me. Warily, I thought. Well, yeah.

“Barry Eliot?” My words were choked.

He nodded. “Barry Eliot.”

“You're asking me to accept that you and
Barry Eliot
are the good guys? Barry threatened to kill me two weeks ago. He threatened to get my licence revoked. And he plays golf. These are not the actions of a good guy.”

“He walked in on you having sex with his wife. What did you expect him to do? Pat you on the back? He doesn't care about you sleeping with Karen. He hates her. But he can't let her know that. His is the only direct contact we have with Them. I assure you, Barry's outburst was entirely for Karen Eliot's benefit.”

“You're kidding me,” I said, but somehow I felt he wasn't. He shook his head slowly.

“Karen Eliot is one of—
Them
?”

He nodded again. I went over and picked up by chair. It wasn't broken. Thankfully. I sat down again. I needed to. I drained my whiskey. I looked around, a little wildly I think. Stonehenge leant over and handed me his still untouched whiskey. I drank that, too.

“Karen Eliot is one of this elite? One of these—AFFA fuckers? Who are about to have this ultimate power, whatever the fuck that is? Okay. If I'm going to believe this—any of it—you're going to need to tell me more. A lot more.” I lit a cigarette and got another whiskey, in what order I don't remember. I don't expect you'd remember either, at a time like that.

“Yes. Karen Eliot isn't who you may have thought she was. She is one of a central core, or cabal, of twenty-three individuals concerned with—er, conducting business—under the city. What else would you like to know?”

“Okay. Okay.” I thought for a minute. “
Under
the city? You said something about that before, in the pub. What is it? What is under the city?”

“Tunnels. Caverns. Labyrinths. They're very, very old. Some of them predate the Romans. A lot are medieval. Some are more modern. They are not widely known of, for the good reason that They keep it that way. Every drainage system, every pipeline laid, every new building . . . everything, anything, that disturbs the surface, is vetted exhaustively to ensure that there is no chance it will impinge on the tunnel system. The tunnels themselves are extensive. We don't know how far they extend, but the excavations being carried out by KHS at Charlcombe suggest that the network may run even as far as that.”

“They do. At the bottom of that hole there were maybe three tunnels radiating off in different directions. It was all paved with flagstones or something. I couldn't easily tell. I didn't have my flashlight.”

“Three tunnels? Interesting. There are probably the same number radiating from a cavern underneath the Circus.”

“What the hell is it about the Circus? My contact tried to find out about the 1993 KHS dig there. He came up with zilch. ‘No significant finds' or some such crap. And who the hell are KHS anyway?”

“All right. How can I explain this? The Circus is, well, is basically
Stonehenge
,
rebuilt,
recreated
, in its perfect form.” His eyes were gleaming.

I pointed to his T-shirt. “Hence the threads, eh?”

“Yes, hence the T-shirt. One of my particular specialities. Stonehenge itself is obviously badly dilapidated. The Circus is a much more modern temple, and it remains undamaged. Even after it was damaged in the Second World War it was perfectly repaired. Perfectly. Nowhere else in the entire country, in the whole of the UK, was repaired with such precision. The original architect himself was one of Them. He understood the power of the Neolithic temple at Stonehenge. He calculated the dimensions and placing of the stones as they were in the eighteenth century, and with the help of . . . certain . . . others extrapolated their data back through time. He finally came up with the right sums. He and his son designed both the Circus and the Royal Crescent, two of the more admired architectural creations in the entire country. Those two structures, combined with the streets between them, form a massive symbol on the face of the earth. It's generally given out that this represents the sun and the moon. It doesn't. It's AFFA's symbol. And it's as old as Stonehenge. Older. They had uncovered the matrix of Stonehenge as it was—how it was intended. Then they rebuilt it. They rebuilt it in here, in this city.”

“All right. Okay. Just about. But why here?”

“Because here was—and is—their centre, their laboratory, or headquarters, or whatever. Their temple. The temple of AFFA. They have always been here. We don't know why. But this was the birthplace of alchemy. It may be that the hot water from the springs here was used in earlier experiments. Or in processes of some kind, or, well . . . I don't know. But the tunnels are the reason for it all. They're the key. They predate the Circus by centuries.
Centuries
. Possibly thousands of years. It was natural, deliberate, to build the temple here. Like your—er—contact, we haven't been able to find out much about the KHS dig there. But it's my guess that They're linking up lost parts of the subterranean system. Finding older, forgotten parts, and linking them. From what Barry has been able to find out from Karen, They're very close to completing the work.”

I went over and picked up the bottle. I poured myself another, and took both the glass and the bottle back to my chair. I lit another cigarette, unsurprisingly.

“Mmm. How about that, then. Just how about that. This is about as weird as it gets, right? Anyway, I hope it doesn't get any weirder. Tunnels. I'd laugh in your face if I hadn't seen them—or sensed them—myself. Let's say I accept what you're telling me. Okay. Two things. What's the score with Barry and Karen? And I asked you before, who are KHS?”