Necroscope 9: The Lost Years (78 page)

He conjured a Mobius door and ‘went’ to Le Manse Madonie, to that spot under the walls of the place whose co-ordinates he remembered from his second flash forwards. And without pause he jumped again -this time a half-mile away across rugged, barren terrain, to where uneven fang-like outcrops of rock jutted from the stony, desiccated mountain soil like shattered teeth. That was far enough.

Using his flashlight, he climbed a few feet to a good vantage point and looked back at the dark, squat silhouette of Le Manse.

There were just a handful of dim lights shining out from rooms built into the walls -servants quarters, Harry supposed.

But the arched-over entrance to the inner courtyard was lit up by a battery of spotlights. That was okay; he wasn’t going in through the main door. He had his own doors.

‘Humph,’ he said, under his breath, ‘are you out there?’

Hey, I’ve been expecting you, Necroscope!
The other came back at once. Then the excitement ebbed as the American asked him:
What happened, Harry? I mean, when we were talking? You were there and you were gone. You sort of faded out, as if you were being
blocked
out… but by
what?

The Necroscope frowned, shook his head. ‘I’m … not sure. I don’t remember. I get this feeling occasionally that someone is messing about with my mind, and when I find out who there’s going to be hell to pay! But for the moment

… I think maybe I’d better keep a tight rein on
this
conversation at least. So it’ll be just you and me this time, Humph.’

How can I help you?

‘Show me the route to the vault again - not from your room but just the underground part, the tunnels in the bedrock.’

Humph was puzzled.
But with your talents, why not go right on into the vault?

For the life of him, Harry couldn’t think why not! He only knew he had to take a closer look at the subterranean layout of the place. ‘Maybe it’s for later,’ he shrugged.

Humph answered shrug for shrug, and said,
It’s your game, Harry.
And without more ado his dead mind lit with al the details of the snaking tunnel labyrinth through the bedrock under Le Manse Madonie. The Necroscope memorized all the co-ordinates he needed - including those of that forbidden nether tunnel in the very bowels of the place, where Humph had earned himself a reprimand.

Got what you want, Harry?

‘Let’s hope so,’ the Necroscope answered, and excused himself. He was going to be busy now.

Good luck then,
Humph told him, his dead voice fading into nothing.

Harry got down from the rock. It was time for his distraction, a diversionary tactic. He took three fragmentation grenades from his belt pouches, pulled their pins, lobbed them left, right, and centre as far as he could throw. Then he ducked down in a cluster of rocks and counted off the seconds.

In the silence of the warm Mediterranean night, with only the frying-fat sounds of a hundred cicadas, and the
toot-toot!
of owls to disturb it, the abrupt triple blast of the grenades going off one, two, three, sounded like the beginning of World War HI. Shrapnel whistled overhead.

Harry waited until the echoes came rolling back from the mountains, then stood up. Sulphur and cordite stench came drifting on orange and grey clouds, while across the false plateau the lights of Le Manse Madonie blinked on one by one until the entire fagade was lit up like the esplanade of Edinburgh Castle during the annual tattoo. There was even a searchlight beam in one of the corner towers, that began to sweep the ground immediately outside the walls. Whoever was awake

- probably all of them by now - they’d heard the blasts but hadn’t detected the source. And that wouldn’t do.

Harry gave it a count of ten, then lobbed another grenade off to his left. This time, after the flash and the bang, the searchlight beam came lancing right at him. He sat down in the rocks and let it pass overhead. Unless these people were equipped with something extraordinary in the way of night-sight binoculars, they wouldn’t see anything at this range.

A minute passed, and another; the beam flashed to and fro; a motor coughed into life and a vehicle - probably a Landrover, four-wheel drive engaged - roared into view from under the arch of the entrance. It came bumping across the rough terrain, headlights blazing. Then another motor snarled into life, and with a rising whine and the unmistakable
whup,
whup, whup
of rotors, a helicopter hovered into view from behind Le Manse’s wals.

Harry wasn’t about to let these vehicles get to him, only to where he had been. By now every occupant of Le Manse Madonie would be looking - and thinking - out. It was the Necroscope’s time to go in. He conjured a Mobius door, and jumped …

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… To the location, the co-ordinates, that had come over the clearest (and the darkest) from J. Humphrey Jackson’s memory: a junction of rock-hewn tunnels deep under Le Manse Madonie. Darkest, because this was a place that Humph hadn’t much cared for. The Necroscope had felt it as the dead American had guided him along the route: his reluctance - even in death, and after all this time - to have to visit this spot again, however briefly. It was easy to see why.

The place was claustrophobic, soulless, empty … there was nothing here, except the junction of tunnels itself. Yet it was as if something listened. So that Harry found himself listening back, to nothing. Maybe it was just the knowledge of the
weight
of rock overhead - claustrophobia, yes, - and the sudden notion that if Le Manse were a beast, these tunnels were its jaws; and the waiting for them to close. It was an oppressive place, evocative of morbid thoughts … but no more so than any deep, dark, deserted mine shaft. So Harry thought, as he deliberately shook the feeling off.

The gouged, arched ceiling was low, no more than six and a half to seven feet. Every fifteen paces or so, dim naked light bulbs were strung to the walls, bending away horizontally with the curvature of the tunnel. The illumination they offered was eerie at best: more a haze than true lighting. This was a meeting point for five tunnels. Stone steps going up, to the basement of Le Manse, Harry knew. And others descending, to forbidden regions, apparently. It was down there that Humph had got himself in trouble. Just for being there, without having seen anything. But Harry
must
see -eventually.

(What?
But his reason for being here was money, surely? It was to fund his search. The two halves of Harry’s mentality - conscious and subconscious, or post-hypnotic - met in momentary conflict, confusion, then cancelled the problem out, solving it with a soft solution: the Necroscope’s need to explore this place was just his natural curiosity, that was all.) But right now his need was to be into the Francezci treasure vault.

Yet stil he paused, if only for a second, to fix this co-ordinate indelibly in his metaphysical mind.
These steps coming down from
above, and others descending steeply into the echoing bowels of the place … And three other tunnels joining
horizontally … The place was a labyrinth, just as Humph had said …
They
and
theirs
had been hollowing it out for
centuries.

Harry gave his head an angry shake, blinking his eyes rapidly, worriedly in the poor light. But the information had sunk in, buried itself in his secret memory. And now he could get on with the job in hand.

Seconds had passed, that was all. Up above, there’d be a lot of activity by now. But down here all was silence, or near-silence: the soft susurration of ventilation systems, a sighing of air through the tunnels, the muted throb of unseen machines. And the pressured tonnage of the

solid rock overhead, of course - with all the additional weight of Le Manse Madonie on top of that - which
felt
like a sound in its own right: the mute but ever present groaning of stressed strata …

Two of the three horizontal tunnels were unknown quantities; Humph had never explored them. Harry ‘knew’ the route that lead upwards into Le Manse, also something of the route leading down … to whatever. The third horizontal tunnel led straight to the strongroom, to the massive steel doors installed by the dead American some forty-odd years ago. But Harry needn’t waste time following the tunnel. He could ‘go’ directly to the outermost door.

He thought to contact Humph again, to check the co-ordinates, then changed his mind. Not in this place. He wouldn’t want to disturb the psychic aether in this place. And so the Necroscope was on his own here; it was as simple as that. He went via the Mobius route to the vault’s outer door - and discovered it exactly as Humph had described and pictured it: a hinged, circular, six-foot ‘plug’ of shining stainless steel, set in a wall of rough-surfaced blued steel whose four unseen edges were sunk deep and concreted into walls, floor and ceiling. The great airlock of a plug was fitted with a combination lock and a massive wheel to slide the hidden bolts. You could only go through that door if you had the lock’s combination, or a thermal lance with an unlimited power source, or quite a few well-placed high velocity tank shells. That was it. There was no other way—

—Except one. Harry’s way.

To anyone watching it would seem he simply disappeared … and reappeared, in the utter darkness on the other side of the door. He breathed dead air, used his flashlight, took two paces to the inner door, then a third pace into another quite invisible door which he conjured over the impervious metal… and so into the treasure vault of the Francezcis, the fabulous loot of centuries, the greedy black ‘heart’ of Le Manse Madonie.

And in the first thin beam from his flashlight, as he swept the room, or rather the cave - the treasure cave, yes - behind Humph’s less than impenetrable doors …

… The Necroscope had known something of what to expect, but that something was nothing compared to the reality. Wealth?

Monies? The illicit proceeds of ten, twenty, or thirty years of Mob graft and greed, vice and crime, overseen or advised by the Francezcis? Well, in that case they had a hell of a lot of crime on their hands! But deep inside - in a forbidden place within himself, which was as much a sealed vault as this place - Harry knew better, knew it was more than that. Much more.

That
some
of this unthinkable, some might say obscene spoil was garnered recently was obvious. For one thing, there must be millions, if not
billions,
in high denomination notes of almost every modern

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currency: certainly the wages of crime - for what did the Francezcis
do,
that they could possibly have earned al of this legitimately? And if it was legitimate, then why was it here? - but that was only the actual money, and by no means the treasure. As for that:

Some of it was
literally
centuried. There had been pirates on the Mediterranean since the early tenth century, when Genoa and Pisa raided the Saracen shipping routes. Later, the Crusaders themselves had been attacked as their ships lolled westward loaded down with the loot of fine cities; and some of that loot was here. Statuettes in rare marbles and gold, crude ingots of that same precious metal, treasures from every era of Mediterranean history. But there was more recent treasure, too. Harry’s flashlight illumined chests clearly marked with the swastika - some of which were as yet unopened! But of those that had been opened:

Harry knew of a wartime legend that Rommel’s forces, pinned down in Tunisia in May 1943, had moved an immense hoard to Corsica in the hope of using it to galvanize the German war effort. The treasure was in the form of gold, ivory, works of art, jewellery; all of which had been ‘accumulated’ in Tunisia, Libya, and northern Egypt. But none of it had ever fuelled the war, if indeed it ever reached Corsica. The Necroscope knew now that it never had - for it was here!

But his flashlight wasn’t enough, couldn’t show him enough. Harry’s mouth was dry; his hands trembled and he felt the sweat of fever on his brow; even the Necroscope wasn’t immune to this. For it was greed -like the insatiable, incredible lust of the Wamphyri themselves -treasure fever!

To be here, alone, surrounded by … by a world’s ransom! For a moment he could actually feel it: the way
They
must feel in all their power, their strength, their gluttony. And it was seductive.

Then, sweeping the metal shelves, chests, naked walls with his slender beam, Harry saw what he needed: electrical conduits looping down from the ceiling, with wires leading to light switches on a panel mortared to the wall between racks of shelving. It pulled him together, let him get a grip on his emotions, his greed-stricken senses. It separated his two parts, his two purposes. So that while he
knew
about the Francezcis in their modern role, he also knew about the Ferenczys in all their ancient horror:

Knew that the historical treasures gathered here had been amassed by the brothers’ father - who or whatever he was - and before him by
his
forebears all the way back to Angelo Ferenczini, bloodson of Waldemar Ferrenzig and Constanza de’ Petralia. As to how
many
forebears … that was beyond even Harry’s mathematical powers to calculate, a matter for conjecture. But certainly this mad, magpie’s nest was not the work of one man but generations.

Generations of vampires!

The knowledge was there - clear as crystal in the Necroscope’s

mind - but only for a split second. Then it sank down into the limbo of B.J.’s beguilement and was gone. And, frowning to himself, Harry hit the light switch.

In the dazzle of the bright lights, for the first time he saw the ful extent of it … and in his turn was seen!