The Trespass (44 page)

Dracup let Natasha lead him into another passage, lower and smaller than the one they had just emerged from.

“Here.” She stopped beside a heavy wooden door. It was ajar. Dracup pushed it open gingerly with his foot, revealing a stone staircase spiralling up to the distant apex of the ziggurat. He craned his neck.

I know what’s up there.

“Daddy! Come on.”

But I still don’t believe it.

Gunfire again, but closer. He hesitated, turned to the others. “What about Cannon?”

“He’ll be along soon,” Jackson said. “He always is.”

Dracup led them up.

Dracup took a hesitant step onto the staircase. For the first time he felt like a trespasser. The stone was soft under his feet, warm. Machine gun fire echoed in the distance, a series of muffled rattles as Cannon returned the
jihadi
fire.

“
Daddy!
Hurry up.”

Dracup battled the strange feelings working inside him. He felt –
unholy
.

Moran was waiting a few steps behind, his ferret face set in determination, but with the ghost of some deeper emotion simmering beneath the surface.

He feels it too.

They went up. And up.

Moran spoke. “We must be near.” Dracup could hear the DCI’s laboured breath.

Jackson had pushed past. His voice came from somewhere ahead, around the next spiral. “Well I’ll be
darned!
”

The staircase ended at a blank wall. On the surface were imprinted a series of letters – cuneiform letters. Apart from these, nothing broke the smoothness of the stone.

Two short bursts of fire. Closer now. Cannon’s voice raised in defiance, somewhere down the stairwell.

Jackson managed a tense grin. “He gets real riled when folk shoot at him.”

“There
must
be a way in,” Dracup was muttering, running his palm over the markings.

“Ain’t no keyhole I can see,” Jackson said, “leastways, not a
regular
keyhole.”

“Exactly,” Dracup said. “But there
is
one. Somewhere.”

Moran was beside him. “They’re on the stairs.” There came another clattering burst of automatic fire confirming Moran’s statement.

Dracup concentrated on the lettering. It was set out in a grid format:

“Daddy. I’m scared.”

Dracup put his arm round Natasha’s shoulders and pulled her close.

It’s not going to end like this. Think, Dracup.

He tried to remember the symbols from Fish’s presentation. These markings looked nothing like the lettering the Americans had translated. But it was still recognisably cuneiform.

Jackson was backed against the wall, waiting. He turned his head sideways. Dracup saw the boy behind the soldier’s uniform, a young lad far from home and probably more scared than he’d care to admit.

“Reckon they shoulda fitted a keypad entry system, huh?” Jackson said with a forced grin.

In Dracup’s head the light bulb went on. “Jackson,” he said, “go on thinking like that and you’ll make General before the decade is out.” His heart was racing now that he knew what was set before him.
Numbers. They’re numbers, you idiot, not letters.

Question was, what was the sequence? His fingers stroked the lines of script, willing them to reveal their secret.
Come on, Theodore. One more time, for your granddaughter’s sake.

From below came another burst, then a cry. The silence was more frightening than the gunfire.

Jackson moistened his lips. “Cannon’s down.” His voice held a note of disbelief. “He’s
down
.”

“
Daddy?
” A tremor now in Natasha’s voice.

“We can hold them,” Moran said. “There’s only a narrow gap.”

First symbol. One character. Right, let’s follow old Occam again. Say that’s one. Count the little golf tees.

Moran fired his pistol, a single sharp report against Jackson’s
tak tak tak.

“Stand in front of me, ’Tash.” He shielded the little girl with his body.

One. Five. Two. Six.

Despair clutched at him. No pattern.

Three. Seven. Four.

He played with the numbers in his head.

Order them: One, two, three, four, five, six, seven.

Jackson reloading again. A scream: Natasha. A man had appeared at the stair’s turn, ten metres below.

Bullets scudded around them. One buried itself in the wall. Dust flicked back into Dracup’s eye. He swore and grimaced, ducking down, bending over Natasha. He squinted through his good eye. The
jihadi
was taking the stairs two at a time. Moran shot him through the chest. He fell back, tumbling.