Sparks was holding the silver insignia in his hand.
“You kept it,” said Doyle, mildly surprised.
Sparks shrugged. “Nothing else was left. I needed something…” said Sparks, more searchingly. “I needed a way to organize my feelings.”
“For revenge.”
“More than that. I don’t mean to suggest it happened overnight. It took many years. I needed…meaning. Purpose. To be twelve years old and have in that single blow your entire world destroyed, everything you believe in and cherish eradicated…”
“I understand, Jack.”
“There is evil loose in the world. I had dwelled in its shadow. I had tasted it. I had seen its basest products. It flourished in a body and soul that entered into life through the same passage I had taken here. I had willingly placed myself in its hands, allowed myself to be consciously molded by its bearer into his own image.” Sparks looked again at Doyle; he seemed youthful and open and filled by the black wind of his terror.
“What if I was like him? I had to ask that, Doyle, do you see? What if the same vile, twisted spirit that drove him to these unspeakable crimes was alive in me? I was twelve years old!”
Tears filled Doyle’s eyes in sudden comprehension of the boy the man who stood beseechingly before him must have been. To face such grief, to suffer such a loss, was unimaginable. He could offer his friend no comfort, there was none to be given, other than his silent, heartfelt tears.
“I had to believe that the skills my brother instilled in me I had learned for a purpose,” Sparks said, throaty with determination. “They had no innate moral property; they were tools, neutral, still useful. I had to believe that, I had to demonstrate to myself that this was true: There could be more than one sort of Superior Man. The salient point with which I aligned my compass was my choice alone; justice would be my North Star, not mendacity and deluded self-worship. I would stand for the bringing of life, not death. If it was my fate to share his blood, then it was my obligation to balance the scales his presence here disrupted; I would deliver into this world a force to counter the darkness to which my brother had succumbed. I would redeem my family name or die trying. That was my mission. To stand opposed, to set myself in his way. To become his nemesis.”
His words revived the faltering pulse of hope in Doyle’s chest. They stood in silence for a time and watched the river.
chapter twelve
BODGER NUGGINS
THE NIGHT TURNED BITTER COLD. THE WALK BACK TO THE HOtel was one of the longest miles in Doyle’s memory. Sparks withdrew; he seemed hollowed out, emptied. Doyle felt equally flattered that Sparks entrusted him sufficiently to confide and burdened by the weight he would now to some degree have to shoulder. Never had the turning of the New Year left such a feeble impression on him. They made their way past drunks, lovers, hordes of young celebrants cheering and carousing because of this dimly conceived passing—the death of the “old,” and birth of the “new,” the charade of quickly forsaken resolutions to transform one’s petty vices into virtues. Man’s arbitrary attempts to demarcate time with this imposed significance seemed as profitless as the scratching of hen’s feet in the dirt. And how could one presume that man’s essential character was capable of change when a being the likes of Alexander Sparks testified prima facie to the contrary?
Entering the hotel by a discreet rear entrance, they settled into their rooms, lit a fire, and broke open a bottle of cognac. Doyle felt his defiled system balk at the infusion of new liquor, then warm to its heat and welcome the soporific soothing. Sparks stared at the fire, the dancing flames reflecting in his dark eyes.
“When were you next aware of his hand at work?” asked Doyle, breaking the long silence.
“He left England, spent time in Paris, then drifted south. From Marseilles he sailed to Morocco and then crossed Northern Africa to Egypt. He arrived in Cairo less than a year after the killings.”
“He left a trail.”
“Having committed the Original Crimes—patricide, matricide: Shall we call these the Original Crimes, Doyle? I think in all fairness that we may—the last obstacle to the wholesale indulgence of any wanton or dissolute impulse he might suffer was permanently removed. Having achieved absolute dominance of family and school, his original environment, his intention was now to establish himself in the world. His first task was the amassing of capital toward financial independence. The night of my parents’ murders, before setting the fire, he stole from my father’s collection of Egyptiana the most priceless treasures—there were a great number of them. Alexander went to Cairo to peddle them. The returns he garnered became the foundation for his soon-to-be considerable fortune.”
“Other crimes were committed as well,” Doyle surmised.
“There were a series of distinctive murders that year in Cairo. My father had kept a mistress there, an Englishwoman, a colleague in the foreign service. Soon after Alexander arrived, she disappeared. A week later her head was found in the souk, the marketplace. Beheading is customary with adulteresses in Muslim cultures, which naturally threw suspicion toward a local. Except that a red letter A had been sewn into the skin of her forehead. By the way, the woman’s name was Hester.”
Doyle felt his gorge rise again. He realized that to be of any value to Jack in the struggle against his brother, he would have to harden his emotional resolve. If there were no limits to what the man could do, which seemed evident, it would prove no advantage to be left reeling with horror in reaction to his every outrage.
“The following week he dispatched a prominent art dealer, an Egyptian man, along with his wife and children. My conclusion: The man extended negotiation on a piece of my father’s collection beyond the limits of Alexander’s patience. The item in question, a ceremonial dagger, was the murder weapon. Alexander was not above embellishing his handiwork with macabre flourishes. There had been a spat of hysteria in Cairo about the curse of the mummy’s tomb, from whence this dagger and a number of other items in the dealer’s possession had been plundered. The man’s apartment was trampled over with bare, dusty footprints and littered with strips of decaying linen. Threads of this linen were found lodged in the necks of the wife and children, whom he had strangled, and encrusted on the handle of the knife, with which he had cut out the art dealer’s heart. They discovered the missing organ beside the body in a ceremonial bowl covered with the ashes of tannis leaves, believed to be the key ingredient in the ritual formulated by priests of the pharaohs for resurrection from the mummified state. Can you detect the touch of Alexander’s hand in all of this?”
“Yes,” said Doyle, remembering the death of the London streetwalker.
“The next month an archaeological site in the desert was raided in similar fashion, a tomb only partly uncovered. Two guards were found inside, strangled, and many of the inventoried artifacts inside the crypt were missing, including the mummified remains of the tomb’s principal inhabitant. Again the locals found it provident to attribute the killings to a vindictive corpse, risen to exact revenge for the defiling of his grave.”
“Alexander was developing an interest in the occult.”
“As his mastery of the physical world grew more accomplished, his interest moved naturally toward magic and the immaterial plane. Egypt has had that effect on more than a few Europeans. There’s a dread power in those ancient temples. This is where Alexander received his first taste of what dedicated study of the black arts could deliver. Once that hunger was awakened in him, it became the center of his existence. And a hunger fueled by greed is never satisfied by feeding; it only increases the rapacity of the appetite.”
“Where did he go from there?”
“From what I was able to reconstruct, the next few years Alexander drifted throughout the Middle East, seeking entrance to various Mystery schools: Zoroastrians, the Sufis, hashishims—assassins—the murderous cult of the Old Man of the Mountain—”
“But they were eradicated centuries ago.”
“According t
o official history, yes, their fortress stormed by the Ottomans, their numbers decimated. But some highly placed Turks will tell you that small sects of devotees have survived, in Syria and Persia, secreted in remote mountain freeholds. They also say that the unsurpassed killing techniques of the hashishims are still evidenced in enough unsolved politically motivated murders to lend that theory considerable authenticity. If they do still exist in any form, be assured Alexander was most capable of not only seeking them out, but extracting from them their most treacherous death-dealing secrets.”
“When he came after me, I’m thankful I didn’t know then what I know now,” said Doyle, with halfhearted levity. “I might have dropped dead at the sight of him.”
Sparks’s look suggested that possibility was a good deal more than a joke.
“India was Alexander’s next destination,” said Sparks, “where I believe he infiltrated the Thuggee murder cult, a much more immanent and verifiable band of terrorists. Not easy work for an Englishman, their avowed enemy, but by this point he had mastered languages and the art of disguise. The Thugs are particularly adept at garroting. The double-weighted scarf you so admired on the night of our escape in Cambridge is one of their spécialités de la maison.”
“You’ve learned a good number of these techniques yourself.”
Sparks shrugged. “As a consequence of tracking Alexander’s movements over the years, a rather extensive body of…profane knowledge has come into my possession. Does that trouble you, Doctor?”
“On the contrary. I shall sleep much more soundly.”
“Good man,” said Sparks, almost allowing himself to smile.
Doyle had that feeling once again of being in a cage with a dangerous animal. God forbid his skills should ever be turned against me, he thought. “And so during these years in the East, Alexander’s passion for the occult grew more obsessive.”
“Precisely,” said Sparks. “While I was in my teens absorbing the principles of geometry and the conjugation of intransitive French verbs, Alexander was scaling the Himalayas, penetrating the legendary yogic schools of northern India and Kathmandu.”
“I’ve read of these places. Surely, if they exist and their morality is as advanced as are their reported powers of mind, they would have refused a man like Alexander entrance.”
“No doubt some of them did. No doubt there are others directed toward those who wish to tread the—what was Blavatsky’s term for it?”
“The Left-Handed Path.”
“The word sinister derives from the Latin for left-handed, did you know that?”
“It must have slipped my mind.”
“For all we know, Alexander may have been carried by a legion of chattering, cloven-hoofed demons across the threshold of the Dark Brotherhood’s Advanced Conservatory of Thirty-third-Degree Mayhem. As painstakingly as I’ve attempted to trace his itinerary, the full extent of his matriculations during these years remains at best elusive.”
“During your travels to the Far East,” Doyle said, stitching another part of Sparks’s patchwork quilt past into place.
“The very reason I left university before graduation, having absorbed the better part of what they had to offer. Following in Alexander’s admittedly sketchy footsteps has endowed me with a fuller scholarship in the…practical workings of the world.”
Doyle decided to leave that assertion where it lay. “When did Alexander return to Britain?”
“Difficult to say. His trail died in Nepal. I came home and for many years believed he’d vanished into the mysteries that consumed him. My best estimate: Alexander returned to England twelve years ago, not long after I actively began my career.”
“How did you know he’d returned?”
Sparks formed a spire with his fingers, pressed them to his chin, and stared intently into the fire. “I had for many years been aware of—call it a directing intelligence behind the activities of London’s criminal community. This web of connective tendrils suggested a shadowy hand manipulating pieces on a game board, a lurking presence felt more than seen. But the faint signals I have been able to verify point consistently to a conspiracy of purpose behind the random and brutal practices that comprise the majority of the underword’s labors.”
“Have you no idea what that purpose might be?”
“None whatsoever. As you know, I have recruited a number of these denizens—rehabilitating them in the process, one hopes. Many can speak to rumors of an overlord sitting at the hub of the city’s wheel of vice—gambling, slavery, smuggling, prostitution—the fruits of these crimes flowing always toward the center.”
“You believe that this overlord is Alexander.”
Sparks paused. “I’m not completely certain such a figure even exists. No single one of my acquaintances can confirm anyone has ever had direct experience of such an individual. But if so, no other man on this earth would be more capable of it than my brother. And in the doing, no other man would be more dangerous.”
“Then surely that’s been the status quo in London for some time—predating Alexander’s tenure, certainly. Crime has always been a regrettably consistent element of the human experience.”
“I cannot dispute that: What is your point?”
“Something more than the routine conducting of illicit enterprise is at work here, Jack. Something beyond the scope of their ordinary reach.”
“You’re referring to the Dark Brotherhood,” said Sparks.
“Presumably an organization separate from this criminal organization, with its own distinct and self-interested objectives.”
“Indeed.”
“And you’re quite certain Alexander has sworn his allegiance to the Brotherhood?”
“Alexander’s only allegiance is to himself,” said Sparks. “If he’s aligned himself with them, it is solely for the purpose of furthering his own ambitions. The moment their paths diverge, he will not hesitate in severing the bond.”
“But even so, a partnership between two such groups, no matter how provisional—”
“Represents a greater threat to the general well-being of our country than any war or pestilence imaginable. No point in sheltering ourselves from that unpleasant truth.”
Doyle let that sink in for a moment. “When was the last time you saw your brother, Jack?”
“Outside the window at Topping.”
“No, I mean face-to-face.”
“Not since that last Easter, at school. Twenty-five years ago.”
Doyle leaned in. “And when did you first realize Alexander was this mastermind you’ve described?”
“Yesterday. When I saw that great house burning.”
They looked at each other.
“So at last you understand the game we are playing,” said Sparks.
Doyle nodded. Now it was his turn to stare deeply into the fire and wonder if the New Year the crowds outside had ushered in would be his last.
Larry stood sentinel outside their doors as Doyle sought some small renewal in sleep. He woke from a fitful dream that fled before him to find their luggage packed by the door, and Sparks at the table in the sitting room, poring over a map of London. It was half past five, dawn hardly a rumor in the sky outside. It took Doyle, wiping the grit from his eyes, the entire pot of coffee and tray of cakes Larry brought in to strip the rust from his muscles and brain. Both cried out for a day of rest, but as Doyle suspected, there would be no such luxury for some time to come.
“There are a dozen publishers on Russell Street within hailing distance of the museum,” said Sparks energetically. “Did you by any chance submit your manuscript to the firm of Rathborne and Sons?”
“Rathborne? Lady Nicholson’s maiden name—yes, yes I believe I did,” said Doyle. “By God, do you suppose—”
Doyle was distracted by a small, boxy contraption he had never seen the like of before weighing down a corner of the map. As he idly reached to examine it, Sparks snatched the box away, dropped it into his pocket, and began vigorously rolling up the ma
p.
“Then that’s where we will begin,” said Sparks. “In the meantime, Larry will move us to other lodgings. I’m afraid you may not find our subsequent housing as congenial as the Melwyn, but it’s prudent we spend no more than one night in a single place.”
“I could do with a shave first,” he said ruefully, watching Larry carry their bags out of the room.
“Plenty of time for that later. Come along, Doyle, the race is to the swift,” said Sparks, and he was out the door as well. Doyle grabbed the last cake from the platter and hurried after him.
Halfway down the backstairs, they encountered Barry running up to meet them—at least Doyle’s blistered eyes thought it was Barry: Yes, there was the scar.
“Found a bloke you should have a bash at,” said Barry, with uncharacteristic urgency.
“Be more specific,” said Sparks, continuing down.
“Aussie bloke. Boxer. Claims he had the acquaintance of Mr. Lansdown Dilks. After he was hanged.”
“Excellent,” said Sparks as they exited the hotel. “Doyle, go with Barry. Turn the screws: Find out if the man can enlighten us regarding the estimable Mr. Dilks. We’ll meet at noon, Hatchard’s Bookshop, Picadilly. Good luck to you!” Sparks jumped aboard a small hansom with Larry at the reins, gave a single sharp wave, a salute really, and they pulled away.
This wasn’t how the game was supposed to be played, grumbled Doyle, left to his own devices at six in the morning before a proper breakfast. Doyle looked at Barry, who seemed entirely unfazed by Sparks’s sudden departure.
“This way,” said Barry, with a tip of the hat, and he started walking.
Doyle stuffed the rest of the cake in his mouth and set off after him. The first light of day peeked over the eastern horizon.