Jandreau started. ‘How do you know my name?’
‘Names are my business. There was a box, was there not? A gold box. They left it for you to find. It was probably in a lead receptacle, for they couldn’t be too careful, but they left it where it wouldn’t be ignored. Tell me, Mr. Jandreau. I’m right, am I not?’
Jandreau just nodded.
‘I want the box,’ said the Collector. ‘That’s why I’m here.’
‘For your collection?’ I said. ‘I thought someone had to die before you got to claim one of their possessions.’
‘Oh, someone will die, if I have my way, and my collection will increase greatly as a consequence, but the box will not be part of it. It does not belong to me. It does not belong to anyone. It is dangerous. Someone is looking for it, a man named Herod, and it is essential that he not be allowed to find it. If he does, he will open it. He has the patience, and the skill. The one with him has the knowledge.’
‘What’s in it?’ asked Angel.
‘Three entities,’ said the Collector simply. ‘Old demons, if you prefer. The box is the latest in a series of attempts to contain them, but its construction was flawed by the vanity of its creator, who forgot that he was forging a prison. Gold is such soft metal. Over the years, gaps appeared. Something of what was contained inside found a way to reach out, to poison the minds of those who came into contact with it. The lead box was an effort to counteract that threat: crude, but effective. Like the dull paint used to cover the gold, it also served to conceal what was inside.’
‘Why didn’t they just dump it in the ocean, or bury it somewhere?’
‘Because the only thing worse than knowing where it might be is not knowing. The box was watched. It had always been watched, the knowledge of it transferred from one generation to the next. In the end, it was hidden away among a jumble of worthless artifacts in a museum basement in Baghdad, and then the war came, and the museum was looted. The box disappeared, along with much else that was of value, but somehow an understanding of its nature, however incomplete, reached those who had seized it. It may even have been that they knew exactly what they had from the moment it appeared, for looting is a relative term. The items stolen from the Iraq Museum were carefully chosen, for the most part. Do you know that seventeen thousand items were stolen from the museum over those April days; that four hundred and fifty of four hundred and fifty-one cases were emptied, but only twenty-eight of those cases were broken? The rest were simply opened, which means that those who stole from them had keys. Astonishing, don’t you think? One of the greatest museum thefts in history, one of the greatest sackings since the time of the Mongols, and it may have been an inside job.
‘But no matter. When Mr. Jandreau and his friends came looking for treasure, the box was passed on to them, perhaps in the hope that they would do exactly what they did: transport it back to this country, the country of the enemy, where it would be opened. Now you know what it is. In return, tell me where to find it.’
His eyes scanned every face in the room, as though the knowledge that he sought might somehow be read in them, before he fixed on mine.
‘Why should we trust you?’ I said. ‘You manipulate truth for your own ends. You’re just a killer, nothing more, a serial slayer slaughtering under some divine flag of convenience.’
A light flared in the Collector’s eyes, like twin flares being ignited in an abyss. ‘No, I am no mere killer: I am an instrument of the Divine. I am God’s murderer. Not all of His work is beautiful . . .’
He looked disgusted, both at me and, I believed, at some level kept hidden even from his own conscience, at himself.
‘You must set aside your qualms, just as I must set aside mine,’ he said after a moment. ‘If I trouble you, then you disturb me. I dislike being near you. You are part of a plan of which I have no knowledge. You are bound for a reckoning that will be the death of you, and of all who stand alongside you. Your days are numbered, and I do not wish to be close to you when you fall.’
He raised his palms to me, and there was a plea in his voice. ‘So let us do this one thing, for as bad as you may believe me to be, the man named Herod is worse, and he is himself being shadowed by an entity, one that he believes he understands, one that will have promised him a reward for his service. It has many names, but he will know it by only one, the one that it gave him when first it found a way to worm itself into his consciousness.’
‘And what do you call it?’ I asked.
‘I call it nothing but what it is,’ said the Collector. ‘It is the Darkness: evil incarnate. It is the One Who Waits Behind the Glass.’
32
Herod put his hands beneath the faucet and let the flow of water wash the blood away. He watched the patterns that it made, the crimson vortex that swirled against the stainless steel like the arms of a distant nebula spiraling into collapse. A bead of sweat dripped from his nose and was lost. He closed his eyes. His fingers hurt, and his head ached, but at least it was pain of a different kind, the pain of hard labor. Torturing another human being was a wearying business. He looked up at his reflection and saw, in the glass, the man slumped in the chair, his hands bound behind his back. Herod had removed the rag from his mouth so that he could hear what he had to say. He had not bothered to replace it when the man had finished talking. There was no need. He barely had the strength to breathe, and soon even that would be gone.
Behind the slouched man stood another figure, its hands resting lightly on the back of the chair. Once again, the Captain had taken the form of the little girl in the blue dress, her hair long and worn in braids that hung between her breasts. As before, the girl could not have been more than nine or ten, but her breasts were surprisingly well developed; obscenely so, thought Herod. Her face was startlingly pale, but unfinished. Her eyes and mouth were black ovals, blurred at the edges as though a dirty eraser had smeared the marks made by a thick pencil. She stood very still, her head almost on a level with that of the seated man.
The Captain was waiting for Joel Tobias to die.
It would not have been true to say that Herod was an immoral man. Neither was he amoral, for her admitted the distinction between moral and immoral behavior, and was conscious of the necessity for fairness and honesty in all of his dealings. He required it of others, and demanded it of himself. But there existed in Herod an emptiness, like the hollow at the center of certain fruits once the pit has been removed, speeding their decay, and out of that emptiness came the capacity for certain types of behavior. He had taken no pleasure in hurting the man who was now dying on the chair, and as soon as Herod had learned all that he wished to know he had ceased working on the interior of the man’s body, although the damage that had been inflicted was so great that the suffering had continued despite the cessation of violent, invasive actions. Now, as the last of the blood was washed away, Herod felt compelled to bring those sufferings to a close.
‘Mr. Tobias,’ he said, ‘I believe we’ve reached the end.’
He picked up his gun from beside the sink, and prepared to turn away from the glass.
As he was about to do so, the figure of the girl moved. She shifted position so that she was slightly to his right. One filthy hand reached out and stroked Tobias’s face. Tobias opened his eyes at the touch. He looked confused. He could feel fingers on his skin, and yet he could see nothing. The girl leaned closer. From out of the dark orb of her mouth a tongue appeared, long and thick, and lapped at the blood around the dying man’s mouth. Now he tried to turn his head away, but the girl responded to the movement, clinging to his clothing, her legs between his, her body pressing against him. Something in the way that Tobias’s position had changed allowed him to see his own reflection in the smoked glass of an oven door: his reflection, and the nature of the being that was forcing itself upon him. He whimpered in fear.
Herod walked over to the chair, placed the gun against Tobias’s head, and pulled the trigger. The Captain disappeared, and all movement ceased.
Herod took a step away. He was aware of the Captain’s presence somewhere nearby. He felt his rage. He risked a glance at the oven door, but could see nothing.
‘It was not necessary,’ he said to the listening dark. ‘He had suffered enough.’
Enough? Enough for whom? For him, yes, but for the Captain, there could never be sufficient suffering. Herod’s shoulders sank. With no other option, he was compelled to look again at the window.
The Captain was directly behind him, but no longer was he a little girl. Instead, he was a sexless form in a long, gray coat. His face was a blur, a constantly altering series of visages, and in them Herod saw everyone for whom he had ever cared: his mother and his sister, now gone; his grandmother, adored and long buried; friends and lovers, living and dead. Each of them was in agony, their faces contorted in torment and despair. And, finally, Herod’s face appeared among them, and he understood.
This was how it could be. Cross the Captain again, and this was what would come to pass.
The Captain departed, leaving Herod alone with the body. He restored the gun to the holster beneath his shoulder, and took one last look at the dead man. He wondered how long it would be before his friends discovered him, or how many of them might even be left. It hardly mattered. Herod now knew who had the box, but he had to move fast. The Captain had warned him: the Collector was coming.
Herod had heard stories of the Collector long before the man’s pursuit of him had commenced, of the strange, tattered individual who believed himself to be a harvester of souls, and hoarded souvenirs of his victims. From the Captain, he had learned yet more. The Collector would want the box for himself. That was what the Captain said, and Herod believed him. Herod had been careful to hide himself well, operating under a variety of aliases, using shell companies, and lawyers untroubled by scruples, and shadowy transporters who cared little for paperwork and customs documents as long as the money was right. But the uniqueness of some of his purchases, and the inquiries he had made in the course of his searches, however discreet, had inevitably drawn the Collector’s interest to him. Now it was crucial that he remain at one remove from him, for it would take time to figure out the intricacies of the box’s locks. Once the box was opened, there would be nothing that the Collector, or anyone else, could do. The Captain’s triumph would be Herod’s revenge, and he could die at last and claim his reward in the next world.
Herod left the house, walking past the bodies of Pritchard and Vernon where they lay in the yard, and got into his car. There were sirens in the distance, moving closer. As he put the key in the ignition, he heard the sound of banging from the trunk, until it was lost in the roar of the engine.