The Devil in Amber

  ‘Oh, absolutely,’ I said blithely.

  ‘Only by working together can the fascist movements of the world unite to create a better world. An ordered, strong, clean world fit for a better breed of humanity!’

  Her breath smoked in the freezing air so that she positively appeared to have steam coming out of her. I gave her an encouraging smile. Lord, but she’d swallowed this stuff hook, line and sinker.

  ‘Any chance of arranging a meeting?’

  ‘Why are you here?’ she said suddenly.

  ‘Business,’ I lied. ‘An art dealer on Fifth Avenue is interested in my work.’

  ‘New work?’

  ‘Not exactly.’ I shivered inside my overcoat. ‘Apparently there’s something of a nostalgia for all things Edwardian just now.’

  ‘Poor Lucy—’

  ‘Don’t call me that!’ I said through gritted teeth. Then, more mildly: ‘Please. You know I hate it when you call me that.’

  Pandora’s red mouth widened just a fraction. ‘A relic of the old days, eh?’

  ‘Seems like it. I must be careful not to be swept aside in this new world order of yours.’

  She nodded towards my bandaged hand. ‘Had an accident?’

  ‘I picked a fight with an engraving tool. It won.’

  Suddenly a smile flickered over her sombre face. Somehow or other I seemed to have touched a soft spot in Pandora’s formidable hide. Wrapping her stole tightly about her throat she lit a black cigarillo and was soon wreathed in its smoke. ‘Perhaps tomorrow. Mr Mons has some business down by the docks. If you give me your number I’ll see what I can do.’

  ‘How splendid! Look, sis, I’m very grateful—’

  ‘I said, I’ll see what I can do.’

  She took my hastily scribbled number and walked off, her face all but swallowed up by the voluminous collar of her astrakhan coat.

  I watched her until she diminished into the whiteness then stamped my frozen feet. What a spot of luck! Pandora was too wily to believe I’d suddenly become a doting brother so I’d been right to appeal to this crazy new fad of hers. And now I had a direct line of contact to Mons!

  I began to stomp off through the drifts then gradually slowed to a halt. The wind was getting up again, whipping snow in my face and sending an eerie susurration through the bare branches of the trees. I had the uncanny feeling that something was watching me from the undergrowth.

  Sal Volatile’s words seemed to echo in my mind. Evil, Mr Box. Patient, watchful Evil.

  I felt suddenly glad to turn my back upon the park and head for Fifth Avenue.

  ‘A pleasure to see you again,’ said Professor Reiss-Mueller. ‘I didn’t know if you’d come.’

  I was deep in the ill-lit basements of the Metropolitan Museum, flanked by shelf upon shelf of labelled cardboard boxes. Behind a desk, illuminated only by a shell-shaded lamp, the white-blond, bespectacled fellow from the “99”, was once again examining Hubbard’s handkerchief. The desk was covered all over with his scribbled notes.

  ‘You were, I recall,’ continued the pallid creature, ‘about to promise me something in return for my expert opinion.’

  I shrugged. ‘What do you want?’

  ‘Absolute frankness.’

  ‘I’m not sure I’m at liberty—’

  ‘You see,’ he whined, none too convincingly stifling a yawn, ‘it’s not much of a life down here. I live amongst the relics of the dead. Dust is my meat and drink, you might say. So it pleases me to hear a little of the life that goes on above me on those crowded sidewalks.’

  He coughed twice again, a tic that was already driving me a little crazy. The lamplight flashed off one lens of his spectacles, turning him into a mildly smiling, electric Cyclops.

  ‘You seemed lively enough at the “99”,’ I countered.

  Reiss-Mueller chuckled. ‘Mere bread and circuses, my friend. This little beauty,’ he cried, waving the hankie, ‘promises much more.’

  ‘Does it?’

  Again I was conscious that he knew slightly more than he was letting on. Sweat stood out on his chalk-white forehead and yet the gloomy basement was as chill as an ice-house.

  ‘The lamplight flashed off one lens of his spectacles.’

  ‘Okey-dokey,’ I said, trying to adopt the house style (not without discomfort, as I’m sure you can imagine). ‘I retrieved that square of silk from the body of a stolen-goods receiver whose brains a colleague of mine had recently blown out. I’m feeling horribly threatened by said colleague–some years younger than me–and am mightily pleased that he managed to miss this piece of evidence. I’d very much like to present it to my superiors so that they’ll think me ever so clever and worthy of praise and give the young whippersnapper a ticking off. So, whether it’s a clue to the whereabouts of the True Cross or merely Henry of Navarre’s laundry list, I’d be most awfully grateful if you’d translate it.’

  Reiss-Mueller gave a stuttering laugh. ‘How thrilling. All that violence.’ A little tremor of excitement ran through him. He held the relic close to his face and was silent for some minutes, his breath coming in quick little bursts. ‘Trouble is,’ he said at last, ‘I can’t.’ Cough-cough. ‘In short, though the artefact appears wholly genuine, the language is gibberish. It’s almost Latin. Then takes another turn to become like Hebrew, then Aramaic. But the words make very little sense.’

  ‘A code?’

  ‘I think not. There’s no obvious pattern.’

  ‘Wouldn’t be much of a code if there was.’

  Another smile, two more coughs. ‘Quite. Some of it’s a ritual. Other parts…how can I put it? Directions. See, this part with the picture of the mountain. It’s like a map. The ragged edges show it’s the bottom corner of a larger piece of material.’

  He let the silk droop in his hand. With a disappointed sigh, I reached for it but Reiss-Mueller snatched it back. ‘I haven’t quite finished.’

  He pointed to the images on the ragged edge of the silk. ‘These markings. They’re Cabbalistic.’

  ‘Black magic?’

  ‘Uh-huh.’ He gave an amused smile and coughed twice behind his hand. ‘Quite my line of country, don’t you know. That little fellow—’ He pointed to a barely discernible goatish-looking creature sitting cross-legged in one embroidered corner. ‘That fellow could be Banebdjed.’

  ‘Bane—?’

  ‘The soul of the god Osiris. His Ba. It’s a ram-headed deity.’

  ‘A Ba-lamb?’

  Reiss-Mueller chuckled. ‘It’s all mixed up with the composite pagan idols worshipped by the Knights Templar,’ he said, gleefully patronizing. ‘Speaking of violence. Oh, boy. Those fellows knew how to party.’

  He pointed a milk-white finger at some of the dense text. ‘These could be the names of various demons–Moloch, Belial, Thentus and so forth–but, like I say, the language is kind of garbled. Still, if you let me study it for a while, I might make some headway. I know all about the arts of the left-hand path.’

  ‘Perhaps.’

  I watched his plump fingers almost caressing the silk. ‘There are some words here that are very clear, though as to what they mean…’

  ‘What do they say?’

  Reiss-Mueller held up the hankie close to his face and read from it. ‘“There will come one who is spoken of. All unknowing he will come. And only he that makes himself alone in the world can defeat the Beast”.’

  ‘Meaning?’

  ‘Don’t have a clue!’ he chirped.

  ‘What about this?’ I continued, indicating the four-legged animal roasting on a spit in the embroidered flames.

  The little man shrugged. ‘Some sort of sacrifice? A sheep? A goat?’

  I suddenly remembered Volatile’s words. ‘Or a lamb?’ I mused. ‘So. An educated guess. Is it a map? A ritual? What?’

  He glanced up again and smiled. ‘How remiss of me. I’d suggest it’s some bastardized version of the Clavicule of Solomon. Or maybe the Grimoire of Pope Honorius. One way or another, it’s an in
vocation.’

  ‘What kind of invocation?’

  The light caught his spectacles again so that for an instant he appeared to have huge, blind white eyes. ‘Why, for summoning the Devil, of course.’

  6

  An Attempt On Mount Olympus

  Waking to the steady throbbing of my injured hand, I lay for a moment on the cool pillowcase that still bore the imprint of Rex’s head. We’d become a bit of an item (I crave diversion constantly) but the boy had risen early to attend to his tedious duties so I was once more alone.

  I stretched out my legs under the sheets then reached across to the little bedside table and retrieved my cigarette case from beneath the white Bakelite of the telephone.

  Watching the smoke curl lazily to the ceiling, I reached for the handkerchief and, producing a lens, made an effort to peer closer at some of the embroidered pictures–the letters being all Greek (or, in fact, everything but) to me. The mountain, picked out in faded blue and white, was surrounded by dense text that did indeed appear to be some species of directions. There were numbers and repeated symbols and a sort of outlined range of hills that seemed to be an indication of where to find this particular peak.

  I suddenly felt a curious prickling at the back of my neck. There was something oddly familiar about that mountain and, for a moment, I almost caught at the remembrance. But it tantalised only briefly and was gone, like the odour of Thomas’s lad’s love, ‘leaving only an avenue dark, nameless, without end’.

  Further down the relic, towards the embroidered corner bearing dragons’ heads and the queer composite demon that my friend in the museum had identified as Banebdjed, was the image of the four-legged animal roasting over flames. Could this be the lamb that Volatile had spoken of? In which case, were the late Hubbard and Olympus Mons somehow connected?

  I got up, showered and dressed, then changed the dressing on my wound–it was weeping in rather grisly fashion–and I was slipping into a snug three-piece grey tweed when the telephone rang.

  ‘Yes?’ I cradled the tulip-like receiver under my chin as I buttoned my waistcoat.

  ‘Pier Thirty-Nine,’ said Pandora’s voice curtly. ‘Forty-five minutes from now.’

  ‘Pan! Thanks, sis. I’m immensely indebted—’

  There was a hiss and a click and the line went dead. Hastily, I finished dressing, folded the silken rag and popped it into my pocket as though it were indeed nothing but a handkerchief, and took the lift down to the lobby.

  Another yellow cab took me down to the docks, the outside world only visible through a hastily rubbed circle in the frost-rimed glass. Vignettes of brownstone blocks, diners and spindly towers flashed past.

  I realized that in my haste to meet Mons, I didn’t actually have a clue what I was going to say to him.

  By the time the car drew up at the pier, I’d pretty much resolved to play the silly ass and come across simply as Pandora’s mildly famous artist brother, fed up with the way the world was drifting and keen to, you know, do my bit.

  Peering through the fogged-up window, I saw that a big grey-wheeled Daimler was already parked there, empty save for its peak-capped chauffeur.

  I paid off the cabbie and slipped outside onto rotted wooden planks, my freshly shaved face stung at once by the bitter cold. The waters of the great river, visible far beneath me, were frozen hard, several sheets of ice toppling over each other like tectonic plates.

  Further from the pier the frozen surface was thinner, and the black waters of the Hudson were lapping and churning around the hull of a disreputable old tub called the Stiffkey, its once gay livery faded, rust from its ancient rivets dribbling like old blood and staining the surrounding water.

  I spotted Pandora at the far end of the gangway, a cloche hat framing her powdered face. Mons, in greatcoat and trilby, was deep in conversation with a big, disordered sailor with matted white hair and a face blossoming with the signs of heavy drinking. The sailor’s clothes were weather-beaten and greasy and a massive ugly watch chain, extending from his top pocket to his hip, seemed to rein him together.

  As I approached, Pandora looked up, said something to Mons and the great leader dismissed the sailor with a curt nod, clattering down the gangway towards me, hand extended.

  His hooded eyes grew wide again. This close I noticed that they were almost all black pupil, only a narrow halo of white visible, like the corona of the sun during an eclipse.

  ‘Why, Mr Lucifer Box!’ he oozed in his oddly light American voice. ‘How utterly delightful. I had no idea Pandora here had such an illustrious sibling.’

  His hand was warm and dry and he held onto mine just a little too long, fixing me with those extraordinary orbs of his.

  ‘Pleasure to meet you too, sir,’ I enthused. ‘Dashed impressed by your performance at the rally the other night.’

  ‘Oh, one does one’s best.’ He looked down, bashfully, and the black suns diminished: the reptile’s membranous eyelids, as it were, flicking back into place. Then he smiled and his scarred lip curled up further over the exposed dog tooth. ‘Interesting you choose that word. Performance. I fear my public expect new tricks of me all the time and I fail to deliver.’

  ‘That’s nonsense!’ chimed in Pandora. ‘You give them everything they want and more—’

  Mons held up a black-gloved hand in an impatient silencing gesture.

  Pandora’s mouth clapped shut as though she’d been struck. A brief flicker of annoyance passed over Mons’s face. Then he was all smiles again.

  ‘Your sister has become absolutely indispensable to me, Mr Box.’

  ‘Call me Lucifer, please.’

  Mons gave a low chuckle, stroking the end of his thickly waxed moustaches. ‘It’s a wonderful name. Not much used these days.’

  ‘Lucifer, Jesus, Judas…’ I cried. ‘All the best people have the best names.’

  ‘And Olympus?’ speculated the great leader.

  ‘How appropriate for a Greek god!’ gushed Pandora, her hand immediately flying to her rouged lips as though to hush them.

  Mons smiled patiently, wearily. ‘Your sister is very kind but has a somewhat exaggerated view of my talents.’

  I shivered within my suit. ‘I doubt it, sir. You’re the man to get the world out of the fix it’s stumbled into. It seems to me, half the population’s stuck in the distant past, the other half’s too idle to look to the future. They need guidance. They need a man with an iron will. They need you.’

  Mons flushed with pleasure. He began to walk away slowly from the Stiffkey’s gangway, hands clasped behind his back, and I trotted after him, Pandora keeping a safe distance behind.

  ‘I know I have it in me to do great things, tremendous things,’ he murmured. ‘I can mould the people of this world into one wonderful, shining whole. But to achieve great things we must be prepared to take great risks, don’t you agree, Lucifer?’

  ‘Rather,’ I said, grinning like an idiot.

  Mons looked me up and down again, perhaps not sure what to make of me. ‘You like risk, Lucifer?’ His eyes flashed wide again and, with a giggle, he simply stepped over the side of the pier.

  Pandora gave a little yelp. ‘Olympus! Don’t!’

  I gasped and leaned over the edge to see what had happened but Mons had landed neatly in a crouching position on the frozen river below. The ice made a weird percussive noise beneath his shoes.

  He stared down at the dark water, swirling inches below the ice, then gestured upwards. ‘Join me!’

  I looked at my sister, shrugged and then jumped lightly over the side. The ice shuddered, took my weight and I walked swiftly and confidently to Mons’s side. He rubbed his hands together and began to stride further and further away from the safety of the pier.

  ‘I’ve always had my own way, you see,’ he continued in a low murmur. ‘My Pop always said I was born with a silver spoon in my mouth. Silver plated with gold, garnished with platinum.’

  ‘How marvellous for you.’ I looked down. The waters of t
he Hudson pressed and swirled at the ice as though protesting at their imprisonment.

  ‘You think so?’ said Mons. ‘I’ll let you into a secret, Lucifer.’

  ‘Please do.’

  ‘My enemy is not the Bolshevik hordes.’

  ‘No?’

  ‘No. It is ennui. It is the staleness of the commonplace. Life becomes very empty when it’s nothing but parties and booze and sex.’

  I nodded vigorously. ‘Oh, Lord, yes. Couldn’t agree more. Though I dare say you’d have a job convincing other people of that!’

  Mons put a gloved hand on my shoulder and squeezed it painfully. I think he liked me. ‘So I looked for other distractions,’ he said cryptically. The inky eyes bored into mine.

  ‘Distractions?’ I asked, all innocence.

  Mons looked over my shoulder into the middle distance. ‘Racing motor cars. Aeroplanes. Eventually I found politics. For a time, the yawning hole within me was filled.’

  An expression of utter blankness stole over him now, and for a moment he seemed nothing more than a bored little boy, tired of his toys.

  ‘For a time?’ I hazarded.

  ‘Everything becomes flat eventually,’ he said bleakly. Then the eyes began to blaze again and a mischievous smile danced around his curled lip. ‘Well, almost everything.’

  Slowly at first, he began to rock on his heels. Again, the strange booming sound of ice under pressure began to reverberate around us. I risked a nervous glance down.

  Mons was laughing now, swaying back and forth in his expensive shoes, harder and harder and harder.

  Finally, as I knew it would, a narrow fracture opened up in the ice. Black water immediately frothed over the gap, like spittle expelled from a palsied mouth, and the break in the ice grew wider, zig-zagging towards us at worrying speed. Mons looked about, his exposed tooth glittering like a vampire’s fang. ‘Risk, my dear Lucifer! What’s life without it?’

  So saying, he pelted back towards the pier, his laughter, picked up by the weird acoustic of the frozen bay, ringing behind him.