The Malice Box Read online

  The first line from the letter he had burned over twenty years ago lit up in Robert’s mind: To live well, know death.

  He had wanted to kill that man. It had been necessary to want to kill him. And now he had to convert that power.

  ‘I think I understand. What happens if a potential Unicorn cannot channel these energies, cannot convert them?’

  ‘They die.’

  They were both silent for a while. Robert looked within himself. He would find the strength. He had to.

  ‘May I ask you a favour, Robert?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Could you stop pretending to be Adam? He might try to contact me. He can’t do that if you’re using his profile… I do know your email address.’

  ‘Oh…’

  ‘Please? You need to rest. Gather your strength.’

  ‘I want to see you tomorrow.’

  ‘Be at the site of the first cache. Tomorrow at 2 p.m.’

  ‘Will you be there?’

  ‘You’ll see me. Now go. I’m going to send you something to listen to tomorrow. It’s part of the puzzle. Till tomorrow. We’ll meet. I’ll explain. You’ll like it. Trust me. Please.’

  And she was gone.

  He took the bullet casing and the Malice Box to the hidden safe he and Katherine used for their valuables. Then, back at his desk, he continued to look things up, his mind haring in a dozen directions at once.

  The image of the Man of Light burned in his brain. Robert found him in the Book of Revelation 10:1–4:

  Then I saw another mighty angel coming down from heaven, wrapped in a cloud, with a rainbow over his head, and his face was like the sun, and his legs like pillars of fire. He had a little scroll open in his hand. And he set his right foot on the sea, and his left foot on the land, and called out with a loud voice, like a lion roaring; when he called out, the seven thunders sounded. And when the seven thunders had sounded, I was about to write, but I heard a voice from heaven saying, ‘Seal up what the seven thunders have said, and do not write it down.’

  Seven thunders. Each a sealed secret. Had he just heard the first thunder, in the subway under Ground Zero?

  He shook his head, fatigue in every bone. He worked on.

  The obelisk at St Paul’s commemorated Irish patriot and former New York State Attorney-General Thomas Addis Emmet, brother of executed Irish patriot Robert Emmet, but it covered no grave. Thomas Addis Emmet’s vault was across town, at St Mark’s in-the-Bowery. Carved into the obelisk was its own location, latitude and longitude, in minutes, degrees and seconds.

  None of it made sense. He rubbed his eyes in frustration. Terri’s email landed. It contained nothing but an audio file and the admonition not to listen to it until she told him to. He loaded it on to the Quad. Terri had asked him to dig deeper. He gathered his thoughts, wrote again and posted to the website.

  Ground Zero, Lower Manhattan

  If I look within myself at this place, I return to a memory so painful it still causes me to twist my head away as though ducking a blow. It is the image of a street covered in thick black dust, under thunderclouds, and at the end of the street the still-standing remains of a section of the World Trade Center towers, twisted and blackened and looking like the very mouth of hell, those Gothic arches backlit in the afternoon gloom from the arc lights of the searchers, the damp dust like cinders under my feet and the sheer hatred of the attack reverberating weeks after the towers fell. It caught me by surprise even though I knew it was there, as Katherine and I walked in the rain and held each other, in downtown Manhattan to spend some money to support the local vendors, the only time I could bring myself to go.

  There was beauty still: the arches persisted, they were not all thrown down. Something defiant remained in their shattered suggestion of a cathedral entrance, of praying hands, of a portal that said: through these arches lies a womb, beyond this defilement there is rebirth, even here there will be love.

  But the overriding pulse in that place was of such anger and hatred that I could not look at it for more than a second or two, I had to walk away, east, towards the South Street Seaport. It will never leave me.

  We have been locked in a labyrinth since that day. How do we react, how does anyone react, to an act of such wickedness and still remain ourselves? You cannot be good unless you survive. But there is a monster within us who out of sheer fear says: do anything, hurt anyone, I don’t care: to anyone beyond the bounds of my tribe, anything may be done.

  Today I thought I would die. I was so scared that for a moment I wanted anything, anything at all to happen to prevent it. Then suddenly I wasn’t afraid. We were right underneath Ground Zero. I stared into the face of death, and I fought for my life. I saw something in myself I had not seen before, and I came out on the other side. It was the ability, the desire, to kill.

  It was dangerous, inchoate, raw energy that poured through me. Blood energy. I know now, with complete confidence, that I can draw on it again, whenever I need it.

  Many years ago, someone within my family wrote to me with seven lines of wisdom. The first line was this: ‘To live well, know death.’ I think I understand: these were the first energies I had to tap into on the quest I have embarked upon. Raw, powerful, potentially murderous. If I can’t yoke them, I won’t have the strength to survive. But how to harness them?

  At Ground Zero the towers fell and St Paul’s was left intact, not a window broken. A friend of mine, a masseuse, volunteered there for weeks, working on cops and firemen and construction workers, offering real physical compassion as others put together the chapel’s ministry of meals and water, a place to sleep, a place to find some solace for the heart. Yet this was all for ‘our’ people, for those like us who had suffered, those with whom we identified. For ‘identity’ comes from idem, ‘the same’. It is easy to pray for our friends. How many of us can truly pray for our enemies, for those who actively seek our death?

  Robert had just finished posting when there was an IM trill from AOL. He figured Terri wanted to respond. But it was from AdamHD 1111.

  ‘So you’ve met the delicious Terri.’

  ‘Adam?’

  ‘She probably means to fuck your brains out tomorrow. Problem with that?’

  Then he was gone.

  Robert stared at the computer screen, willing him to come back, and praying he wouldn’t. Eventually he could bear it no longer and went to bed.

  New York, August 26, 2004

  Adam took a deep breathand slowly exhaled, alone and racked with pain. He walked away from his computer and curled up in a ball on the bed, praying from his most secret inner place. He had taken a hell of a risk in attacking Robert. Either might have killed the other.

  Compelled by the Iwnw to carry out the attack, and feigning complete obedience to them to buy time, Adam had prayed the experience would launch Robert on to the Path. It had worked, he felt, though only just. But Robert had passed the Trial by Earth. Drawn on his raw will to survive. Faced down death and fought for his life. And he’d seen its shadow side, known the tribal savage, the executioner, the torturer within. And he’d turned away from it. From pure earthtowards water, whichwashed away the dross.

  The pain was growing. Adam steeled his will again to force away the Iwnw’s creature that was eating into his soul, into his very DNA, the Minotaur lodged within him. He recited his mantra of defiance:… death shall have no dominion… death shall have no dominion…

  Only one in a thousand survived the road that Robert was taking, he knew. Adam would stay with him until the end. He couldn’t go on muchlonger. A few days more. Just long enough.

  A Martyr’s Love Song: The Making of

  the Ma’rifat’

  I am the maker of the Ma’rifat’.

  I am not a hateful man. I love God with every pore, with every atom and breath of my body. I am in love with God. I wish only for everyone to see what I see in God. Please do not think of me as a primitive, tooth-gnashing kind of man. I am educated to a high level. I am almos
t what you might call a rocket scientist. I studied in the finest halls of Cairo and London, before coming to live in America. I worked at what I like to call the Ring of Gold – its official name is the RHIC, or Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider – at Brookhaven, on Long Island. We smashed things there, to see what would happen. Not large things, though a secret part of me has always wanted to smash large things, like all boys, to see what happens. But we smashed together atoms of gold, at very high speeds. At speeds so close to the speed of light that time and space started to warp. My father taught physics and chemistry in Egypt and Iraq, and this would have been his dream. We created such powerful energies in the collider that particles appeared that have not appeared in nature since the first few nanoseconds after Creation. It is a marvel. It is almost like prayer: it gets us that close to the energies of God.

  My mother is American, and I am an American.

  You may call me Al-Khidr. I take the name of the great instructor and guide in hidden knowledge of God, the one who instructed Musa himself – Moses, as you call him – because I will teach you the greatest lesson of your nation’s history, and the lesson will be in destruction and rebirth, in wiping clean, in making holy once again that which is defiled.

  My true name is unimportant. I shrug ged it off long ago. I lived among you, studied in your schools, ate in your homes, slept with your women. I held security clearances. You would not find me a prig or a bore. I know your literature and music. Do you know mine? I know your laws and institutions, your holy books and prayers. Do you know mine? I know your fears and nightmares. Do you know mine? My name is Al-Khidr, the ancient guide, and I am bringing you your lesson, which is the same lesson we must all learn.

  I am not filled with hate. I am filled with love. I have come to love freedom, but I love God more. I have come to love America, but I love the earth more.

  It seems to me that America must experience submission to the will of God. America must be shattered in order to emerge more whole and humble. America must learn that true freedom is found in submission, not in being the big gest, loudest, dumbest, horniest kid on the block. This is why I chose to destroy New York. But do not say I did it out of hate.

  2

  Trial by Water

  Little Falls, August 27, 2004

  Katherine returned home sometime after midnight and came to Robert’s room. She lay with him in the dark, saying nothing, inches and light-years away. It had been seven years now since she’d walked away from her career, six since they had met again and fallen in love.

  Neither liked to argue, but it was rare that they would make up like this. She just lay next to him, and they drifted off to sleep, fingertips barely touching, each showing the other that they hated the deadening frost between them, even while acknowledging that it was there.

  Robert dreamed they made love.

  He dreamed that they awoke to find themselves making love, and that their relief and delight was so great they burst out laughing.

  Then in the dream he opened his eyes and realized it was Terri he held in his arms. He willed her to become Katherine again. She wouldn’t. As Terri smiled up at him, he dreamed Katherine stood over them, watching.

  ‘I can’t blame you,’ she said. ‘Everybody wants Terri.’

  Then he caught a glimpse of himself in the bedroom mirror. He was Adam.

  He awoke with a start. Katherine was gone. His body aching, he stared into the darkness till dawn broke.

  August 14, 2003: Blackout Day

  For months Adam had tracked his quarry, using the skills of the Path, sometimes working alone, sometimes directed and aided by the Watchman. Now he stood at the intersection of Tesla and Robinson Streets in Shoreham, Long Island, and surveyed the abandoned buildings. A brick tower rose above the main one, a disused laboratory, and he knew as soon as he saw it that his target was inside.

  He pressed his fingers against the talisman Terri had given him, then pulled it out of his shirt and kissed it. He was totally calm, totally alive, more alert than he had ever been in his life.

  It was five minutes to four.

  He checked the position of the security guard. He was over by the far entrance. Searching in his mind’s eye, Adam saw his enemy’s movements that day, his arrival at the site, his entry through a disguised hole in the fence.

  Adam felt Katherine’s power with him too. To her, he owed the final tip-off: that today would be the day of the attack.

  Adam found the entrance and moved towards the laboratory’s ground-floor windows. He saw a device like a shallow drum, glowing softly with gold light, on a simple wooden table, and a stocky man in his late forties, his eyes closed in deep meditation, sitting on a chair before it. The man held a smaller version of the drum, of the same translucent red-gold metal, between his fingers. The rim of the drum seemed to rotate in contrary directions at once, and geometric forms traced into its sides glowed white and gold. At the limits of his perception, so tenuous that he wasn’t sure if it was there or not, he could make out a faint cloud above the Device. As it swirled in and out of visibility, he thought for a moment it was an eye.

  Adam prayed. Let me stop this act of defilement from taking place, even if it costs me my life.

  The man suddenly stood up and took a step towards the Device, eyes still closed. Adam saw that he was weeping. A wave of great loss, of deep hurt and anger, rippled off him. Adam moved to the door and walked in. He moved towards his target in plain sight as the man opened his eyes and calmly put down the core.

  When Adam was almost upon him, the man raised a hand and planted it firmly palm-first into Adam’s chest.

  In the split second before it hit him, Adam clearly saw the tenuous eye above the Device twist and melt into his opponent’s body. Then a shock-wave tore through Adam that sent him flying twenty feet across the room. Stunned, he scrambled to get back on his feet. He looked up to see the man again walking calmly towards the Device.

  Adam stilled his mind. He called out, firmly: ‘Stop.’

  ‘No. No, no. Why stop?’

  His quarry placed the core into the top of the Device, which doubled its speed and began to emit a deep bass throb. The air around it began to vibrate, to warp. Then he removed it, wrapping it in a cloth. The Ma’rifat’ slowed again.

  ‘It is complete. It is armed. You cannot stop it. I will take it into Manhattan now, where the fuel is richest. The greed. The fear. The hypocrisy. Then I will insert the key again. And it will feed.’

  Adam stepped closer. The Device flared and spat light.

  ‘It is responding to me,’ Adam said. ‘I have no hate in my heart.’

  ‘Step back,’ the man said.

  Adam took another step forward and spoke again. ‘And I have no fear.’

  ‘Step back!’

  Adam launched himself forward, trying to wrest the core from the man’s right hand. They fell to the ground and fought. The core rolled loose, and they both lunged after it. Adam grabbed it and tried to rise but felt his wrist twisted savagely backwards. He dropped the core into the hands of his enemy, who leaped forward and slammed it back into the top of the Device.

  The Ma’rifat’ began to spin again, glowing deep blue and red from within. A sound like slow thunder rippled through the twisting air.

  Adam shoulder-charged him, and both men fell, grabbing at each other’s throats. They hurled themselves over and over on the ground, trying to gain enough leverage to stand. They smashed into the table and cracked one of the legs, and before either could react they saw the Ma’rifat’ slide off the falling surface and drop towards the concrete floor.

  ‘I have no forgiveness,’ the man said as it fell, and then the Device hit the ground and detonated.

  Time and space twisted as Adam watched, aghast. A seething, swirling eye of lightning formed around the damaged Ma’rifat’, flaring yellow and electric-blue as it shot towards the two men, dousing them in fire. Adam made his mind a perfect mirror. He saw his enemy’s body atomize in a flash. Then he knew
nothing.

  Generating its own warped geometry, searching for fuel, for an energy it could engage with, sliding down the ladder from finer to denser, from spirit to ether to matter, the Ma’rifat’ fed on the echoes of its creator’s pain, his hatred and anger, and flared out into the world. Specks of space and time randomly distorted around the Device. Snatches of time and place became conjoined, and from the void at the heart of the Ma’rifat’ a great surge of energy flowed, arcing in the air.

  But then it lost its grip on the souls it could feel all around, the great agglomeration of spirits it detected… Weakened by Adam’s calm, his stillness, its power spiralled down to become a raw electromagnetic pulse, hugely powerful but disorganized, its spiritual force diluted to a fraction of its potential. The pulse see-sawed back and forth along power lines, tripping safety systems, blowing out fail-safes, spreading like ink in water. With a surge of physical energy like an invisible thunderbolt, the Ma’rifat’ blew out all the lights across the north-eastern United States.

  Little Falls, August 27, 2004

  Robert lied to Katherine over breakfast, telling her a spurious story about trying to break up a fight in the street between a taxi driver and a customer and getting punched in the face for his pains.

  ‘No good deed goes unpunished,’ Katherine said. ‘You’ll heal.’

  It was a role she hated playing, but already she was performing the Watchman’s wishes, settling into her secret assignment. With the genuine difficulties she and Robert had had since the miscarriage, it was not proving hard. She despised her own skill.

  Robert told her of the death of Lawrence Hencott, saying nothing about Adam’s supposed involvement. As for Robert’s ignominious removal from the offices of GBN, she had little sympathy.

  ‘John’s a dick. He’s scared of you, that’s why he’s doing it. Sees you as a rival. He can’t think any other way. Scott will look after you.’