The Malice Box Read online

  PENGUIN BOOKS

  THE MALICE BOX

  Martin Langfield has lived in New York since 1999. An Englishman, he has worked as an international journalist for a major news organization for twenty years.

  The Malice Box

  MARTIN LANGFIELD

  PENGUIN BOOKS

  PENGUIN BOOKS

  Published by the Penguin Group

  Penguin Books Ltd, 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England

  Penguin Group (USA) Inc., 375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014, USA

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  Penguin Books Ltd, Registered Offices: 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England

  First published by Michael Joseph 2007

  Published in Penguin Books 2008

  1

  Copyright © Martin Langfield, 2007

  All rights reserved

  The moral right of the author has been asserted

  Except in the United States of America, this book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, re-sold, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the publisher’s prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser

  978-0-14-190940-0

  To my wife, Amy, and my son, Christopher

  To Andrea, Eddie and Tom

  And to my parents, for the gift of loving words

  Contents

  Acknowledgements

  Prologue

  Part One: The Initiation

  Part Two: The Trials

  1 Trial by Earth

  2 Trial by Water

  3 Trial by Fire

  4 Trial by Air

  5 Trial by Ether

  6 Trial by Mind

  7 Trial by Spirit

  Part Three: The Body of Light

  Epilogue

  Acknowledgements

  I am greatly indebted to the following people: Michael Sissons and all at PFD; Mari Evans and Alex Clarke at Michael Joseph; Donna Poppy and Larry Rostant; David Schlesinger, Betty Wong, Paul Holmes, Tom Kim, Mark Egan, Stephen Naru, Chad Ruble, Soren Larson and Bernd Debusmann at Reuters, as well as my co-workers, over the years, in the San Salvador, Mexico City, Miami and New York bureaux; Nicki Kennedy, Sam Edenborough and Tessa Girvan at ILA; and George Lucas at Inkwell Management in New York.

  I am grateful to several people who read part or all of the early drafts of this story, though any inaccuracies or infelicities in the final version are of course my fault, not theirs: Pilar Prassas, Allison Tivnon, Manuela Badawy, Rasha Elass, Jonathan Lyons, Patricia Arancibia and Bettie Jo Collins.

  For their hospitality at different stages of the book’s gestation, I am grateful to Daniel Soucy and staff at the Auberge Les Passants du Sans Soucy in Montreal, Randy St Louis and colleagues at Café Un Deux Trois in New York, and Gwen and Gary Fadenrecht in Mill City, Oregon.

  For help in glimpsing some of the hidden nooks and crannies of New York, I am indebted to Glen Leiner, Suzanne Halpin, Maya Israel and Peter Dillon; Luz Montano and staff of the MTA and the New York Transit Museum; Janet Wells Greene and the General Society of Mechanics and Tradesmen of the City of New York; to Kevin Walsh, creator of the Forgotten New York website at http://www.forgotten-ny.com, and to Jim Naureckas’s New York Songlines website at http://www.nysonglines.com.

  Thanks also to Father Michael Relyea of St Mark’s Church in-the-Bowery, Nathan Brockman of Trinity Church Archives and Colleen Iverson of NYC Marble Cemetery.

  On matters of fact: the magic cube featured in the fourth trial was discovered by Walter Trump and Christian Boyer in November 2003, though I have imagined it already known to previous ages. Diana Carulli painted the labyrinth Robert walks at a key point in the story, the artwork he views at Grand Central is the creation of Ellen Driscoll, and the digital clock he sees at Union Square is the work of Kristin Jones and Andrew Ginzel. I have slightly altered the actual dates of Hurricane Georges, and imagined a section of Central Park to be open when it was not.

  I owe a special thank you for encouragement and advice to Toni Reinhold, Clive McKeef, Stacy Sullivan, Jason (Jay) Ross and Nicole Revere. For musical accompaniment, thank you to Raquy and the Cavemen, Ken Layne and the Corvids, Tsar, Matt Welch, Don Collins and Alien (Chris, Libby and Jeff), as well as to Steve Deptula of Liberty Heights Tap Room.

  George Short, Keith Stafford, Dave Nicholson, François Raitberger, Anneliese Emmans-Dean, Leslie Crawford, Juliette Aiyana, Donald Coleman, Vincent Sherliker, Ian and Fiona Gausden, Janie Gabbett, Robert Lethbridge, Alison Sinclair, Joe Cremona, Stephen Boldy, Andrew Paxman, my brother Graham Langfield, Kristin Roberts, Barbara Brennan and Catherine Karas, among many others, have helped me find and follow my own path.

  Last, but not least, I am grateful beyond words to my wife, Amy, who sent me to Montreal to start writing and whose deep insight and love – together with a sharp editor’s eye – allow me to make sense of it all.

  Prologue

  New York, September 2, 2004

  An all-knowing eye – beautiful, pitiless, irresistible – stared into Robert’s soul. He fought to control his breathing, to transform his fear.

  I offer myself in their place. Take me. Let them go…

  His heart was pounding. He was on the brink of success or failure. Millions of lives hung by a thread.

  … I pray for my captor…

  He could hear and see nothing, but he knew the Device was near by. He could feel its power rippling through him.

  … as we forgive those who trespass against us…

  He fought against panic.

  … deliver us from evil…

  Its raw energy was terrifying. The light of a thousand suns. His mind raced, deducing, estimating, remembering: downtown Manhattan, underground.

  … thy will be done…

  The air was dense, crackling with hostile energy, with words unsaid, like burning breathon his skin. His senses crept outwards, feeling menace, hurt to come, yet something else too: some desire not to harm him, an awareness that he provoked caution, even fear.

  … fill my heart with compassion…

  He felt the eye’s searching gaze reach into the most hidden corners of his soul. The Device – the Malice Box, the Ma’rifat’ – wanted to know him. It was a bomb about to blow, a barely contained chain reaction, feeding on the hearts of those around it. It asked questions: Who are you? What are your most secret desires?

  He had chosen to be here, wanted it, sought it out with his actions. He fought to close his fear off, hold it to one side.

  … turn fear into love…

  Shapes and fragments of city scenes played before his eyes. Curving arches, tunnels and squares and vertical monuments, fingers and spines pointing from the earth to the heavens, spirals and hexagons and numbers and stars.

  … mind like a mirror…

  Seven days earlier the hunt had begun, and with it the destruction of everything he’d though
t of as his life.

  He’d cracked one code after another, followed strange and wonderful trails through the city, traced lines of light and longing, lust and fear. A scavenger hunt, a geo-caching game. Decode the city. Penetrate the labyrinth. Read the secret story before the enemy do.

  The clock always returns to zero. Here he was facing his end, and he was back where he’d started.

  … merciful heart…

  He peered deeper into the blackness as he lay on the ground, straining for a glimpse of the Device. He twisted his head. Then he saw it: an intricately carved gold and white drum, gleaming dully, its sides decorated in what looked like Arabic script, inlaid with precious metals. In the half-darkness, it defied focus, as though sitting in its own geometry. Its upper and lower rims appeared to rotate slowly in opposite directions. The Ma’rifat’. It was armed, on the verge of detonation.

  A man’s voice, hoarse and violent, jolted him like a bolt of electricity.

  ‘Robert.’

  When he tried to speak, his mouth was sticky, his throat clogged, and nothing came out.

  It was time to fight. He was ready. He cast his mind far into the past.

  … forgive him…

  PART ONE

  The Initiation

  Cambridge, England, March 1981

  Robert ran, his footfalls booming in the mist. The veneer of everything had been stripped away, and nothing was as it had seemed. Familiar sights were raw and strange. The great white limestone blocks of King’s College Chapel, its spires lost in the fog, spoke of power and menace. The shop signs along King’s Parade were written in a foreign tongue, its symbols threatening and new. His body seemed distant, not his own.

  The terrifying image flashed again in his mind’s eye. There was a door, flames licking beneath it, a baleful, unnatural light.

  Blood pounded in his ears. He ran along Trinity Street in the darkness, his white carnival mask dancing between his shoulder blades like a cowboy hat, his star-strewn cape billowing behind him.

  The clocks struck midnight.

  The door was at the end of a dark corridor. He knew whose room it was. He knew what they were doing there. He did not understand what had happened. But if he did not reach them in time, he knew that they would die.

  The evening had begun with a single red rose.

  At eight thirty sharp, Robert Reckliss, freshman linguist, arrived at the college room of a young lady he did not know, following his instructions to the letter: face fully masked, attired as a warlock, sealed envelope and long-stemmed rose in hand.

  He tapped on the door.

  Katherine Rota, third-year philosophy student at King’s College, who, in keeping with the game, had taped over her name on the painted list of residents at the foot of her staircase to maintain the mystery of her identity, called out in a sweet sing-song: ‘It’s open. Come in.’

  Robert pushed the door open with his finger. A young woman dressed as a witchlooked up from her desk and smiled.

  ‘Now who, I wonder, are you, good sir?’

  Amused blue eyes twinkled at him through a black half-mask. As witches go, she was punk Halloween. She wore black lipstick, black tights with holes torn in them, combat boots, a black dress that appeared to be from an Oxfam shop and several necklaces of black beads. A broom leaned against her desk. Her black hair was tied off to one side in a kind of jagged ponytail.

  Robert applauded politely and, with a stiff bow, handed her the rose.

  She performed a mock curtsy. ‘Thank you, good warlock.’

  Behind her, posters of the Clash and a Gustav Klimt painting decorated the wall. A large typewriter sat in the middle of her desk, in a small clearing amid undergraduate bric-a-brac. Classical piano played on her stereo.

  ‘Truly you do not speak? Very well, then, please sit.’ She pointed him to a broken-down armchair. ‘Would my gentleman visitor care for coffee or tea?’ She gestured to a small electric kettle on a low table by her desk. ‘Or a cocktail? I could give you a straw to feed it in there somehow?’

  He shook his head, raising his hand to decline politely. There was something intriguing about her accent, amid the educated London vowels. A hint of West Country? Even American, perhaps?

  She moved to her sleeping area, which was in an alcove to the left. By the bed she had a screen to change behind. Robert found that very classy. She produced a tiny pointed black hat from behind the screen and, returning to the sitting room, tried it on in the mirror over a disused fireplace.

  ‘I feel very witchy tonight.’

  He did not reply. He was forbidden to. He nodded in what he hoped was a courtly fashion.

  Her bookcases were crammed with textbooks on history, advanced mathematics and philosophy. Posters from student plays half covered another wall. He had butterflies in his stomach. She was very pretty. But would she go for him if she knew who he really was?

  Tonight was a game invented by a certain Adam Hale-Devereaux. A kind of ornate blind date for six people, to be consummated at a costume party later in the evening at the School of Pythagoras, a twelfth-century building in the grounds of St John’s College. Adam was a charming dabbler in his final year. The son of a diplomat, he was a minor aristocrat and major drinker who was heading for an effortless first in the languages he had spoken fluently since he was a child.

  Robert had met him at a linguists’ sherry evening towards the end of his first term and been forthrightly rude to him, tagging him straight away as a feckless child of privilege.

  ‘So you didn’t actually have to learn your languages, you just picked them up as your father moved around the world,’ he’d said to Adam. ‘You’re lucky.’

  ‘I’m extraordinarily lucky.’

  Robert’s parents worked for a titled couple at a stately home in East Anglia, his father a gifted gardener and carpenter, his mother a cook and housekeeper, living in a tied cottage on the grounds. An only child, he was the first of his family to go to university.

  ‘My father moved us around so often I used to fantasize about just being from one place,’ Adam had continued. ‘But no complaints, we were certainly privileged.’

  ‘I really don’t think you should be allowed to read something you find so easy. It doesn’t seem fair.’

  ‘But it’s not about the ability to speak a language, is it? Isn’t it more about what you say in it? Have you tried medieval French? Le Roman de la Rose is no picnic. La Chanson de Roland is an utter nosebleed. Rewarding, but…’

  He’d said it with a disarming smile, before switching the subject to cricket. ‘I know what you mean, though. No offence. How do you rate the Aussies this summer?’

  And, on that common ground, they had enjoyed a civil conversation about the merits of Brearley and Botham and the future of the Ashes.

  Then, at the beginning of March, an invitation had arrived in Robert’s pigeonhole in the porters’ lodge at Trinity Hall, hand-lettered on thick card, asking him to take part in ‘a blind date, or preliminary activities towards the founding of a new Society dedicated to the exploration of unconventional wisdom’, signed by Adam with the line ‘would be honoured if you’d join us’.

  Robert, still keen to keep his feet firmly on the ground and not fly off into the upper climes of undergraduate pretension, had accepted on what he termed anthropological grounds: he would study these strange creatures in their natural habitat and undoubtedly learn something, even if he disapproved. An additional deciding factor was that it was a way to meet women.

  Under the rules of the game, participants were not supposed to know each other. Three gentlemen were to step out into the chill misty evening in full disguise, bearing a sealed envelope on which were written the college and room number of the unknown lady they were to call upon at eight thirty. This he had done. The ladies too had received instructions from the game’s master.

  ‘Adam’s envelope says you are not allowed to speak this evening until ten o’clock,’ Katherine said into the mirror. ‘If you do so, I’m to send
you away.’

  He nodded.

  She pinned her pointed hat in place at a coquettish angle, turned to receive Robert’s approval, then poured herself a glass of red wine.

  ‘That’s a little difficult. Adam likes things difficult, doesn’t he?’

  Robert shrugged, inclining his head to indicate he didn’t know.

  ‘His note said I should expect someone surprising. Someone I wouldn’t expect. I was thinking he might come himself, in disguise. That’d be typical.’ She smiled. ‘You’re not Adam, are you?’

  Robert sat motionless. She gazed intently at him. Adam and he were of similar height and build, though Adam was three years older than Robert. In the warlock outfit, each could easily have been the other. It seemed clear that she fancied Adam.

  She giggled as the idea took hold in her mind. ‘You’re not, are you?’

  Robert had the strangest thought: they both wanted it to be true. Robert felt outclassed by the older man. He wanted to acquire Adam’s magnetism, his aristocratic ease and breadth of knowledge. And he felt that Katherine would certainly respond if he could conjure up some of those qualities. Robert feared she would lose interest the more he revealed of himself.

  After a moment he shook his head very slightly.

  Katherine masked her disappointment, getting up and walking to the window. ‘You know, I think I just don’t care about finals. But the idea of leaving this place in three months – I can’t bear it. How about you?’

  He ran a finger down his mask, indicating a tear. After a moment he placed a hand lightly on his heart. She smiled at him.

  In setting up the evening, Adam had chosen the couples and the personas based on what he knew of each of the participants. Katherine and Robert, for reasons not entirely clear to the latter, were witch–warlock; the others were damsel–knight, and tart–vicar. Before meeting up at the ball, each of them was to solve a riddle, contained in their envelope, that led to a certain location. Once there, the instructions said,