Lara Croft and the Blade of Gwynnever

  “So, enlighten me,” said Lara.

  Carter led Lara through the main part of the catacombs, with its brick structures and its various cells and anterooms.

  “This was a holding area for as many as three hundred detainees. It’s pretty grim. The original building was here from about 1600. It became a school in the nineteenth century, but the catacombs retained their original purpose until the whole lot burnt down.”

  “And what was their original purpose?” asked Lara.

  “Aboveground was a pretty conventional prison,” said Carter.

  “And down here?” asked Lara as Carter led her to the mouth of a long, narrow corridor, more like a tunnel.

  “This is a bit of a clue,” said Carter. “We’ll need those head torches down here.” They fixed the torches and entered the tunnel. The floor of the corridor curved into the walls, as did the ceiling, and the tunnel was so narrow that only one person could walk along it at a time, and two people couldn’t pass. “I hope you’re not claustrophobic.”

  “It’s a tunnel,” said Lara, matter-of-fact.

  “As opposed to a corridor,” said Carter.

  “So there is some secret site at the end of this tunnel?” said Lara. “Prisoners were coming in from a second, undisclosed location?”

  “Exactly,” said Carter.

  “What does that have to do with Candle Lane?” asked Lara.

  “Proximity and social change,” said Carter. They continued along the tunnel until Carter stopped to look at his map. It was a hand-drawn schematic with the tunnel marked with a series of dotted and hashed secondary tunnels and shafts running off it.

  When they had walked for about five minutes, Carter broke through a rotten wooden cover in the wall of the tunnel to reveal an aperture. They climbed through and dropped down into another, similar tunnel that ran at an angle to the first. Carter had to stoop to walk along it, and Lara could hear the rustle of his jacket as his shoulders brushed the walls as he advanced.

  Three or four minutes’ walking brought the tunnel to an abrupt end. Carter took a step back, almost knocking Lara onto her ass.

  “Sorry, Lara, I just need to...” he said, trying to crouch. There wasn’t room for his bulk with his knees bent, so he straightened up and bent at the waist instead, flexing at the knees until he was able to release the trapdoor in the stone floor at his feet.

  They descended seven or eight metres to another level. This tunnel was wider and squarer, but still Victorian, or even earlier, made of stone and brick, and vaulted.

  “You know this secret location?” asked Lara.

  “My work on the British military led me to some interesting discoveries,” said Carter. “Some crazy shit went down with your monarchy in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.”

  “You said your research wasn’t in the public domain,” said Lara. “Most of what ailed the monarchy was aired in public long ago.”

  “The connections to the military and to Clerkenwell aren’t public knowledge,” said Carter. “You people look after your own.”

  “You still haven’t explained how this relates to Candle Lane or anything else,” said Lara.

  “You’ve heard of Pindar?” asked Carter.

  “The fortress under the M.O.D.?” asked Lara. “Yes, I’ve heard of it.”

  “It’s not the first time the military has built underground in London. There has been underground connective tissue between Parliament, the royal palaces in London, and various safe houses for centuries. The catacombs were prepared under Buckingham Palace before it was built. The House of Detention was a safe house and part of the complex. The military ensured the safety of royalty and the nobility. Criminals, the insane, and even the exhausted or persecuted had military protection and safe havens.”

  “I still don’t see how this relates to Candle Lane,” said Lara.

  “Things changed,” said Carter. “Queen Victoria’s reign changed things. She was a different kind of monarch, and it was a different kind of family. The industrial revolution altered things. People became more mobile. She hated the secrecy, she hated relying on the military, and she hated the idea of hiding her failures in a prison... That’s how the stories go, anyway, and this is all anecdotal, of course.”

  “So, she shut it down?” asked Lara.

  “That’s more or less it,” said Carter.

  Lara stopped. She stopped for a moment, looking around, despite the fact that she could see nothing but brick walls, and listened.

  “Trains,” she said.

  “It’s hard to be anywhere underground in London and not hear trains,” said Carter. He looked at his schematic. “It’s this way.”

  They walked along a brick walkway flanking what appeared to be a service tunnel, and then ducked through a door into yet another shaft.

  “At about the same time that Victoria shut down the royal bolt-holes, the Underground was being expanded. The infrastructure was in place, and the engineers took advantage of it. Candle Lane was built close to one of the tunnels leading from Buckingham Palace to Clerkenwell Close. A maintenance tunnel that used to service Candle Lane Tube is part of the original complex.”

  “And you think you can find it?” asked Lara.

  Carter stopped at a patch of wall.

  “Hand me a flashlight,” he said. “I need more light.” Lara handed him a torch from the knapsack. He played it over the brickwork, moving slowly along the wall a couple of feet at a time. Finally, he stopped. “Here,” he said. “It’s just the other side, where these bricks have been infilled. See how the mortar’s different?”

  “Let’s get to work, then,” said Lara.

  The bricks were only one skin deep. When they had dislodged one, dim light shone through from the other side. Lara hand-signalled to Carter. They killed the lights on their head torches and worked in silence. They scraped away more of the old mortar and more of the bricks, which were easy enough to pull free, until Carter and Lara had made a gap big enough to climb through.

  They stepped onto the track only twenty metres from Candle Lane Station. The light was coming from the site.

  They stopped, hunkered down, and listened.

  “All clear,” said Lara. “Let’s move.”

  They dropped onto the tracks and began to jog in the direction of the site. They hadn’t gone more than ten metres when Lara shoved Carter hard into the platform and ducked in beside him, fingers to her lips. Carter crouched, and they both listened. There was a faint sound of footsteps, then voices, and then nothing for several seconds.

  Lara and Carter armed themselves, and, staying low, in the lee of the platform, moved towards the site.

  Her previous surveillance of the site told Lara that it was just a Division Eleven guard. She’d have no problem silencing him without being noticed. Most of the station was wide open and well lit. Carter covered Lara as she sped across it, keeping low, her gun raised. Once safe, Lara did the same for Carter. He was bigger, heavier than Lara, and he was three metres from cover when the guard appeared.

  Carter launched himself from his position at the same time Lara instinctively threw herself at the guard’s back. The man went down hard. Lara had taken him by surprise and got a good solid blow in fast. He was unconscious before he’d hit the ground. Carter clung around his waist, but let go when he realised that the man wasn’t fighting.

  “Division Eleven?” whispered Carter, patting the man down, and going through the pockets of his jacket before finding some ID. He held it up for Lara to look at.

  The guard had not made a sound as he’d gone down. The only noises were the sounds of the attack, of his body falling. They should have gone unnoticed.

  “Checks out,” Lara whispered back. She took a length of nylon cord from the knapsack and secured the unconscious guard. She gagged him for good measure. Silence was golden.

 
Carter and Lara proceeded with caution, but Lara didn’t expect any further encounters. Her surveillance had only ever shown one Division Eleven agent belowground at any given time.

  “Show me everything,” said Lara as they entered the site proper. “If Vata is still in play, I want to get a good look at the canisters he wanted from Denny.”

  “Shouldn’t we leave that to the M.O.D.?” asked Carter.

  “Do you think Theresa Johnson and her minions can stop Vata getting his hands on anything he wants, if he wants it badly enough?” asked Lara. “If Strand can walk out of here with a canister, not to mention the sword... If I can hook up to their CCTV for long enough to get a couple of dozen good shots of Candle Lane…”

  “Good point,” said Carter.

  Then he did a double-take, his face draining of colour, his eyes wide.

  “What?” asked Lara.

  “Shit,” said Carter. “The canisters. The nerve gas. We should have HAZMAT gear. What the heck are we doing here?”

  “So much for preparedness,” said Lara. “But with the possibility that Vata could be close on our heels, the faster we work, the better. This should just give us the incentive we need to get the job done quickly.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO:

  UNINVITED COMPANY

  Candle Lane

  Lara took off the knapsack and opened the large pocket on the front. Whatever else she carried, she always had nylon knapsacks, specimen bags, dust masks, and gloves. She handed some to Carter and began to put gloves on.

  “Will the mask help?” asked Carter.

  “It can’t hurt,” said Lara, “and it’s the best I can do.”

  She stowed the knapsack with the climbing gear, and Carter led the way through the scaffold and over duckboards to the area of the site where the Dornier had been discovered. It protruded from one wall of a narrow cavity, a little above head height. The fuselage was shredded and concertinaed, and had penetrated at a steep angle. Most of the nose had been compacted, and the cockpit was crumpled and distorted. The damage to the front of the plane was extensive and certainly not survivable.

  “There,” said Carter, pointing up and to Lara’s right.

  “I can’t see much,” said Lara. “Let’s get up there.”

  They climbed the ladder onto a platform that was one scaffold plank wide. There was no room for manoeuvre, and no way into the body of the plane. Close up, however, Lara could see where the canisters were packed into the rear of the payload space.

  “Is that usual?” she asked, pointing at the reinforced areas that had helped to keep the compartment more or less intact.

  “I know very little about Second World War aircraft,” said Carter, “but, from a simple engineering point of view, it looks like they wanted to keep this stuff from getting crushed.”

  Lara reached in and touched one of the canisters. It moved freely in its cradle. She touched another and another. It would be simple enough to lift them out and bag them.

  “Okay,” said Lara. “Let’s do this.”

  Lara lifted the canisters out of their cradles one at a time and handed them to Carter. He bagged and sealed them individually and then put them into the two nylon knapsacks, keeping the weight distribution even.

  They worked quickly, but cautiously.

  “That’s four in each knapsack, Lara,” said Carter. “How many do you plan to take?”

  “Oh, I think that’s quite enough, don’t you?” said a voice from below.

  “Shit!” said Carter.

  “That’s one way to put it,” said Florence Race. “Now why don’t you just turn around so I can get a good look at you?”

  Carter and Lara stood and turned on the narrow scaffold plank. Below them, Florence Race was standing in the chamber with three of Vata’s Wolf-Heads, all pointing guns at them.

  “Brava!” said Lara. “You got here faster than I anticipated. I guess with Mr. Vata on board, two heads are better than one. Or, in this case, two heads are almost as good as one, since I got here first.”

  “As pretty as your head is, Lara, I’ve beaten you to the prize more than once before.”

  “So, why don’t you just shoot us now, Florence, and be done with it?” asked Lara.

  “I wouldn’t dream of it,” said Florence. “You and I still have work to do, Lara. I would have preferred Nefertiti’s tomb, but you rather ruined that. Perhaps Gwynnever’s tomb is better. You can make it up to me on your home soil.”

  “What’s the trade, Florence?”

  “Trade, Lara?”

  “With Dritan Vata?” asked Lara. “He helped you get in here, and you’re surrounded by his goons. Are you doing his dirty work now? Shame on you for letting a man use you.”

  Florence laughed.

  “Is he using me, Lara, or am I using him?” she asked. “If we both get what we want, does it matter?”

  “Neither one of you has got what you want, yet, Florence, and you’re the one in the firing line.”

  Florence laughed.

  “You see which way the guns are pointing,” she said.

  “But they’re never going to fire,” said Lara. “I saw Vata in the tomb. He won’t risk gunfire anywhere near these canisters.”

  “So come down, and let’s talk,” said Florence, signalling the Wolf-Heads to lower their weapons.

  Lara pulled off her mask and gloves and made her way down the ladder. Carter followed, carrying the knapsacks, one over each shoulder. He preferred to keep the gloves on and mask in place.

  “Perhaps you could lead us to the chamber, Mr. Bell,” said Florence. “After all, you’re such a useful guide. Without you, we would never have found our way here through the catacombs.”

  Carter stood his ground.

  “Come on, Carter. Let’s get this over with,” said Lara.

  Carter glared at her but did not speak. He turned and left the chamber with the Dornier, through a narrow portal, down some crude steps carved into the earth, and along a passage with a duckboard floor and props holding up the earth above. He had to tear hazard tape from every opening, and there were lamps clipped to various pieces of equipment.

  This was not the way that Lara had come into the chamber on her first visit to Candle Lane.

  Carter tore down the last piece of hazard tape, and Lara followed him into the wide-open space. It was just as she remembered it. It felt almost more dramatic than Nefertiti’s treasure chamber, perhaps because it was not surrounded by rooms of great majesty and ceremony, but by mud and filth, by modern London above, and by the tube station.

  Lara couldn’t help walking up to the altar and laying a hand on it, briefly, her back to Florence.

  “I see you brought the sword,” said Florence. “Good.”

  Lara turned to face the other woman. She reached over her shoulder for the sword grip, but Florence had already given the signal to one of the Wolf-Heads.

  Reaching for the sword, Lara was not in a good position to defend herself. She took the punch to the solar plexus as her hand took hold of the grip. She was drawing the weapon, but the Wolf-Head’s blow took all the air out of her lungs. Her hand opened reflexively, and the sword slipped back into the sheath. Winded, Lara folded. The punch to the chest was followed by another under her chin. Her neck was extended, her head thrown back, and she was toppled onto her back, unconscious.

  Carter tried to come to her aid, but he was too aware of the danger of the canisters and their contents, and he didn’t put up much of a fight. All the time that Lara was alive, he wasn’t going to put either of them in greater jeopardy.

  He watched Florence kick Lara’s prone body onto its side and reach down and retrieve the sword from the sheath on her back. She held it in both of her hands and grinned.

  “It’s perfect,” she said.

  “It doesn’t belong to you,” said Carter. He felt he
had to make some kind of protest.

  “On the contrary,” said Florence, “I paid Denny Sampson a lot of money for this sword. It is mine now. I am the next great warrior queen.”

  “The sword was stolen,” said Carter. “It belongs to the nation.”

  “You’re right,” said Florence. “It does belong to a nation...to a nation of women, and I am its queen.”

  Florence stood in front of the altar, the long groove stretched out before her. She held the sword out in both of her hands and began the incantation, still fresh in her memory. She had been speaking for no more than thirty seconds when Carter spoke.

  “Wait,” he said. “What’s that sound?”

  Lara groaned beside him.

  “Keep her quiet,” said Florence.

  The Wolf-Heads aimed their weapons at Carter and Lara.

  Carter helped Lara to sit up. She rotated her neck on her shoulders to ease the pain and breathed deeply to clear her head. She sat closer to Carter and took one of the knapsacks filled with canisters from him and held it in her lap.

  Florence began the incantation for a second time.

  Lara and Carter both heard distant movement. They looked at each other, and Lara made a sign to stay quiet. She discreetly held two fingers up. Carter wondered what it meant, for a moment, and then realised that Lara was signalling “11.” If Division Eleven was checking the site, then all this would be over soon. Lara and Carter would be detained with Florence Race and the Wolf-Heads, but at least the canisters and the sword would be saved.

  Moments later, the Wolf-Heads heard sounds, too, of footfalls. Several people were moving towards the site, apparently underground. There seemed to be no sounds from above. They turned, guns raised, and covered the entrance to the chamber.

  Florence didn’t waver as she came close to completing the first part of the ritual.

  “So you accessed the site,” said Vata, stepping into the chamber between the Wolf-Heads guarding the entrance. Several more of his bodyguards stood behind him, clearly visible to Lara.

  “Miss Croft, I did not expect to have the pleasure of your company yet again.”