The Kings of Eternity (38 page)

The taxi seemed to crawl across the waterfront. It edged so slowly up the track towards his villa that he was sure he could have run faster.

The driver braked, having reached as far as he was able. From here, the track narrowed and was impassable. “Wait here!” Langham cried, flinging a ten drachmae note at the startled driver and jumping out.

He ran the rest of the way up the track, arriving out of breath five minutes later. He hurried across the patio and into his study. He unlocked his desk. At the very back of the drawer, unused for years, was the kree. He pulled it from the drawer, slipped it into his pocket, and hurried from the villa.

As he was crossing the patio, he heard, “Daniel, is that you?”

He moved to the sofa. “Caroline, I’m just slipping into Xanthos on business. I won’t be long, but I must go. See you soon.”

“Daniel!” She reached over the back of the sofa and took his hand. “Promise you’ll be back before sunset, okay?”

He squeezed her fingers. “I promise.”

He leaned over and kissed her forehead, then ran from the patio.

Halfway down the track to the waiting taxi, a thought occurred to him. He pulled the kree from his pocket, took aim at a sapling beside the path, and fired.

A brilliant burst of incandescence, and the sapling was reduced to a pile of ashes.

He ran the rest of the way to the taxi. “Xanthos,” he said. “Quickly!”

He sat back in the seat, exhausted, as the car reversed at speed down the track. Five minutes later they were racing along the high road over the hills to Xanthos.

He pulled Vaughan’s letter from his jacket pocket and read it again.
Jasper sends his regards - prepare yourself for revelations.
Jasper would open the shanath when they were all together, and communicate his revelations...

It would all be for nothing if the Vark did its work.

The journey seemed to take for ever, even though they were driving at speed. They came to the highest point of the island, the ridge which afforded a spectacular three hundred and sixty degree view of the land falling away on every side. Ahead, far below, Xanthos came into view, a collection of white-painted buildings contrasting with the brilliant blue of the sea. Langham looked for Vaughan’s motor launch, but the jetty where it might be moored was obscured by a tumble of white, sugar-cube buildings.

He willed Vaughan to be late. If the launch was not there when he arrived, then there was hope. He would pay a fisherman to take him out and with luck intercept Vaughan and Charles before they docked.

He nodded to himself, satisfied with the plan. Of course, it was dependent upon Vaughan’s being late.

Then he had another, more worrying, thought.

What if Forbes... the Vark... had considered the very same thing? What if the alien assassin had taken a boat out to meet the launch?

He closed his eyes. Such speculation was futile. He could only wait and see what might eventuate in the next fifteen minutes, or however long the damned taxi took to reach Xanthos.

He considered his friends, and how under different circumstances he would have been overjoyed to be meeting them. For the past fifteen years Vaughan had made his home in Cairo, after abandoning his persona of Ralph Wellard, abstract expressionist. He had taken up the piano, with nothing like the success of his artistic career, and was content to play for hire in the many exclusive restaurants and hotel bars of his adopted city. Langham had last seen him five years ago, when he had visited Kallithéa aboard his luxury motor launch. He had seemed content with the life of an itinerant musician, but even then had been considering his next move.

Charles, for his part, still lived a devout existence in a monastery in Bhutan. Langham had not seen him for ten years.

Oh, to see his friends again under less hazardous circumstances! They would eat and drink and reminisce, consider the past and plan for the future. He would introduce them to Caroline...

He might still, if events turned out for the best.

But the Vark were fearsome enemies, and now the assassin had the upper hand. He knew where and when Vaughan and Charles would be arriving, and he had only to apprehend them under some suitable disguise.

They were motoring along the approach road when a terrible thought occurred to him. If, in the ensuing confrontation, the Vark did succeed in eliminating Vaughan, Charles and himself, then Caroline was doomed along with them. He told himself that he should have given her the serum before leaving in the taxi - but he had been in desperate need to get to Xanthos then, and how could he have explained in such haste, short of not explaining at all but forcing immortality upon her?

To ensure that Caroline had the choice, he would have to make sure that he survived; he would have to proceed with care, thinking through every move before he acted, putting himself in the mind of the enemy and second guessing the Vark’s intentions... But how did one get inside the mind of an alien assassin?

Speculation was useless. He closed his eyes and tried to calm his thoughts. He slowed his breathing, settled himself. He slipped his hand around the kree in his pocket and gave thanks to Jasper for sending the weapons.

They drove into Xanthos, and Langham directed the driver along the road that gave on to the waterfront. Halfway down the street, he called out, “Stop here...”

Through the windscreen he could see the majestic shape of Vaughan’s motor launch, moored alongside the jetty.

And, seated upon the foredeck, he made out three figures.

One of them was unmistakably Edward Vaughan, gone to fat over the years, and tanned, his mane of hair even longer now and silvered by the sun. Beside him was a tanned, shave-skulled figure garbed from head to foot in orange robes. It could only be Charles.

And seated to Charles’ right...

Langham felt the blood drain from his face, and a hot fear gripped him. He stared across the waterfront at the three seated figures, drinking and laughing like old friends united - which, to all appearances, they were.

The third figure in the tableau was the perfect double of himself.

To see oneself as others see you... It was, he thought, an uncanny experience. The Vark impostor was wearing the same clothes that he, Langham, was wearing - the same clothes that he had worn, he realised, at his last encounter with Forbes: casual slacks, a white shirt, a pale blue jacket. The Vark appeared relaxed and at ease, tanned, his flaxen hair faded by ten years beneath the Mediterranean sun.

“Turn down the side-street,” Langham instructed the driver, and a minute later he passed him a wad of drachmae notes - roughly double the fare - and slipped from the car. He ran back to the end of the street, past strolling tourists, and peered around the corner.

Vaughan, Charles, and the impostor remained seated in deck-chairs on the prow, facing west.

He ducked back around the corner and considered.

Was the Vark waiting for the first opportunity to get Vaughan and Charles alone and out of sight, before killing them? Would it suggest before long that they adjourn below-decks?

But why had it not simply killed them by now, assumed a new identity to evade arrest, and come in search of him?

The letter, of course.

Forbes had intercepted Vaughan’s original letter to him. In it, Vaughan had mentioned Jasper’s opening the shanath... The Vark had this information and was acting upon it.

If that were so, then it needed Vaughan and Charles alive until Jasper effected communication.

He told himself that he had time in which to act. The Vark would not kill his friends, just yet.

This time, when he peered around the corner, the three men were moving from the prow of the launch, strolling towards the stern of the vessel and the entrance to the cabins...

When they descended the steps and moved from view, Langham hurried down the street and across the road. It was the hottest time of day and there were few people about. He came to the jetty and paced along its sun-warped planks, aware that if Forbes were to look from the launch and see his approach... He banished the thought, concentrated on what he had to do next in order to save his friends.

He came to the boat. Through a brass-encircled porthole he saw movement within the launch: they were in the spacious lounge, then. He increased his pace, lest Forbes notice him, and quickly crossed the gangplank and stepped on deck. He moved to the stern of the vessel, as silently as possible. His hand reached into his jacket pocket and gripped the kree.

The lounge was situated at the prow of the boat. If they had closed the door behind them, then he would be able to move down the corridor without fear of being observed.

He came to the door that gave on to the passage-way, opened it slightly and peered through. The door to the lounge at the far end, perhaps twenty metres away, stood ajar. He judged that he would be able to approach without being seen, just so long as they decided to remain in the room as he approached.

He took deep breaths, steadying his nerves. He peered around the door again, and then stood and crept down the corridor. No matter how hard he tried to be silent, his footsteps seemed deafening.

Seconds later he was outside the door. Through the gap he could see the red carpet of the lounge, a sofa and chairs. He made out a strip of Vaughan’s broad back, but saw nothing of the other two.

His heart pounded. To his right was another door, which he recalled gave access to the galley. If he heard movement towards the door, then he could always retreat into that room.

He moved closer to the lounge door and peered through. He could see Vaughan, addressing the others, “When we last spoke, he didn’t inform me as to how the war against the Vark was progressing...”

Langham decided that it would be madness to burst into the room and fire before ascertaining the precise location of his doppelganger. Only when he knew where the Vark was standing would he move. He gripped his kree, aware of its lethal power. With luck, he would catch the Vark unawares, unprepared for the assault.

Then he heard the faithful reproduction of his own voice, deep and almost ponderously slow. “A beautiful vessel, my friend.”

“Edward certainly knows how to look after himself,” Charles said.

Langham judged that the Vark was standing to the left of Vaughan, and that Charles was between them. If he burst into the room now, then surely he could target the Vark and get off a shot before anyone could respond.

He prayed that neither Vaughan nor Charles had a weapon to hand. They would have no hesitation in firing at him, he thought, when he appeared wielding a kree. As far as they knew, the Langham in the lounge with them now was the genuine article.

Vaughan looked at his watch. “Twenty minutes,” Langham heard him say. “I positioned the receiver in the centre of the floor so that Jasper can get a reading and locate the shanath a metre to its left. He’s on a world called Kerrain, which orbits the star of Alnilam, the middle of the three stars in Orion’s belt. To think that, in a little under twenty minutes, we will be standing beneath the light of another sun...”

Langham caught his breath. They were leaving Earth, joining Jasper among the stars. No wonder Vaughan had written and told him to prepare for a revelation!

And no wonder the Vark had not killed Vaughan and Charles earlier, when soon it would be able to account for Jasper, too.

He was about to push through the door when he saw movement beyond the gap. The Vark, his perfect double, moved past Vaughan and appeared in full view, standing side-on to Langham. The Vark was alone, no-one between it and the door, no-one nearby to get caught in the fire...

He knew that this was it. He had to act. He raised his kree. He counted to three, and then made his move.

He shouldered the door open and fired at the startled facsimile of himself.

He would look back, later, and wonder how something that should have been so simple could have gone so wrong.

The lance of light missed the Vark by inches, hitting the far wall and reducing it to a charred mess. The Vark dived to the floor and rolled, and Vaughan and Charles cried out loud in fear and startlement.

Before Langham could sight the Vark and fire again, he saw Charles draw his own kree and take aim at him.

The following sequence of events seemed to occur in slow motion, and he recalled them later as a series of terrifying freeze frame images.

Charles raised his kree and thumbed the fire stud, and at that second the Vark produced its own light-beam weapon and, turning towards Charles, fired. Charles exploded in an actinic detonation of light, blinding Langham and drawing a pained moan from Vaughan. For a long second, Charles’ outline showed as a tortured, twisted silhouette, and then vanished.

The Vark fired again, this time at Langham, who rolled and eluded the light-beam. He came up against an armchair, raised his kree and fired just as the Vark was swinging around to fire for a third time.

Langham saw his beam hit the Vark - hit his mirror image - and illuminate the room with its sun-burst radiation. The Vark screamed and convulsed within the fire, and it lost its hold on its Langham-persona. Langham saw the figure of Forbes appear, briefly, and then the Vark was itself, a bipedal saurian creature tortured and writhing in the annihilating fire. The entire sequence lasted perhaps five seconds, before the assassin winked out of existence and a ringing silence filled the room.

“The other...” Vaughan stammered, “The other Langham? A Vark?”

“It found me on the island, intercepted your first letter.”

Vaughan slumped into a sitting position against the far wall, his tanned face ashen with horror. Langham gathered himself and stood.

He stared at the charcoal stain on the scorched carpet which was all the remained of Charles Carnegie.

“If I’d hit the Vark with my first shot...”

Vaughan shook his head. “You did all you could. Had you not intervened, then God knows what havoc the Vark would have wrought.” He gestured, lifted his hand and pointed at the place where Charles had stood, just minutes ago. “He was telling me as we sailed here,” Vaughan whispered, “that he was prepared for death. He said his meditations had made him realise that, even though he was immortal, death was natural and that he would die one day, as would we all.”