“Easy?” Tim’s voice quavered out of the darkness.
“Hang on a moment . . .”
Fortunately I still knew what direction I was facing. In the total blackness I could have taken three steps and hurled myself off the edge of the platform. I reached out and found the wall. Then slowly I shuffled toward the tunnel. There were three steps leading down—I remembered them from my first visit. My foot found the top one and I lowered myself. My shoulder hit one of the fire buckets with a dull clang.
“Who is it?” Tim squeaked.
I ignored him. Somehow I found the sliding door. With a sigh of relief I felt it open. I ran my hand up and down the wall, searching for the light switch. I hit it with my thumb. The light went on.
Tim came down and gazed into the storage room. It was just as I remembered it: telephones, dust, litter, and a tap. “There’s nothing here,” I said. “Let’s go before something horrible happens.”
“Wait a minute.” Tim pushed past me.
“What’s up?”
“I’m thirsty.”
What happened next was the second big surprise of the night. Surprise? You could have knocked me sideways—in fact, Tim did knock me over sideways in his hurry to get out.
He’d gone over to the tap. He turned it on. Nothing came out. He muttered something and hit it with the heel of his hand. The tap swiveled in the wall. There was a loud click. And a moment later a whole section of the wall swung open to reveal a jagged entrance and a stairway leading down. I stared at it.
“Tim!” I exclaimed. “You’ve found it!”
“That’s right!” he agreed. “I have!” He frowned. “What have I found?”
“The answer. That’s how Johnny Powers disappeared the day I followed him. He didn’t go into the tunnel. He went down there.”
Tim looked at the stairs. “A secret passage . . .”
“And you opened it when you twisted the tap. You’re brilliant!”
Tim smiled. “Just leave it to me, kid,” he drawled. “I told you I’d look after you.”
There were three flashlights hanging on the wall on the other side of the door. I took one of them and flicked it on. “Come on, then,” I said.
“We’re not going in, are we?”
“Of course we are! Don’t you want to see where this leads?”
“No!”
We went in.
There must have been some sort of pressure switch built into the staircase because after a few steps the door swung shut behind us. I was glad in a way. Tim would probably have turned back given half a chance. And the way I was feeling right then I’d have probably taken the other half and followed him.
Led on by the beam of the flashlight, we went down. And down. The stairs, which had been narrow to begin with, got narrower. It was like being on the inside of a tube of toothpaste. The farther down we went the more buckled and bent the walls became. I could feel them pressing in on me. I just wondered what we’d find when we got squeezed out the other end.
The air was damp now. It smelled of the river. But there was light ahead, a strange blue glow framed by a stone archway. I flicked off the flashlight and turned around to warn Tim to keep quiet. I was half a second too late. Suddenly there was a muffled explosion. It was so loud that for a moment I thought the bomb in the backpack had gone off. I felt for my shoulders. They were still attached to my arms. Then I realized. It was Tim. He had sneezed.
“Tim!” I hissed.
“I’b sorry,” he whispered. “I thig I’b caught a cold.”
“Well, try and keep it quiet.”
“Sure, Nig.”
We reached the bottom of the staircase and passed through the archway. If the steps had looked like they’d been carved out by some nineteenth-century smuggler, the corridor that now faced us was brand-new, white-tiled, with neon strips burning at half strength in the ceiling. The floor was raw concrete. I was about to move forward when a door opened at the far end. Grabbing Tim, I ducked back behind the arch.
“What is it, Johnny?” I heard a voice ask.
“I thought I heard someone, Ma,” Johnny answered.
“What?”
“I don’t know. Somebody sneezed . . .”
“It was nothing, Johnny boy. Ya’re imagining things.”
“Ya think so, Ma?”
“Sure, Johnny. Come and finish ya hot chocolate and gin.”
The door closed and we breathed again. But at least I knew now that Johnny Powers and his mother were here. The door at the end of the corridor had to lead to some sort of living quarters. It was just as well we hadn’t wandered in or we’d have probably ended up in quarters and certainly not living.
A second corridor led off to the right. We took it. It stretched for about a hundred feet, the blue neon throwing blue shadows ahead of us. The underground complex was bizarre—a bit like a hospital, or a bit like the subway station it was directly under. There were no windows, of course. I could hear a faint hum in the air, some sort of ventilation system. How far did the complex reach? And how complex was it? It was impossible to say.
And “impossible” was the only word to describe what we found at the end of the corridor. I’d known it was large, but this was something else. In fact, it was so far beyond belief that I couldn’t have imagined it in my wildest dreams, and I can tell you now, some of my dreams have been pretty wild.
The white tiles had ended. Forget the hospital. Forget the subway station. What we were looking at was a crazy museum, a vast chamber with archways running down both sides and classical pillars supporting a curving brick roof. It was an Aladdin’s cave, a fantastic warehouse. It had to be the central depot. The place where the Fence kept his hoard.
Paintings lined the walls, some hanging, some leaning against the brickwork. Antique statues stood in a cluster, chandeliers hung from the archways. Oriental masks and mosaics poked out behind the pillars. Plain wooden crates spilled out gold and silver jewelry. We passed a mountain of video recorders and stereo equipment. We saw enough fur coats to wipe out a generation of minks, enough cutlery to equip a chain of hotels. You could have burgled every house in London, robbed every store, and stripped every museum and you still wouldn’t have as much stuff as we saw there.
We’d found what we were looking for. As far as I was concerned, that was it. Now we could go to the police and give them everything they wanted . . . the Fence, Powers, and the proceeds from just about every robbery in the last ten years. All we had to do was get out again. It was as simple as that.
But of course nothing in my life is simple. And when things look easy, that’s just when the problems begin.
My problems began with Tim. We’d gotten about halfway through the cavern when he suddenly uttered a strangled gasp. I thought he was going to sneeze again, but then he snatched something off a table and held it up to the light. When he turned around he was holding a vase, twelve inches high, bright blue, with some sort of bird painted on the side.
“I’ve foud it!” he whispered, his voice on the edge of a giggle. “I’ve agdually foud it!”
“Found what?” I asked.
“The Purble Peagog.” He tried to clear his nose.
“Peagog . . .”
“Peacock?”
“You remember! The Ming . . .”
And it was. The Ming vase stolen from the British Museum had somehow found its way to the Fence and there it was, waiting to be sold. I didn’t know what to say. Tim was grinning like a kid with a new toy. For the first time in his career he had actually succeeded. But this was no time for congratulations.
“Put your hands up!” somebody said.
I spun around. Nails Nathan was standing there. In the blue light his acne looked like the surface of the moon. But it was his hand, not his face, that caught my eye. It was holding a gun. And the gun was pointing at me.
“Nails . . .” I muttered, showing him my palms. “Maybe we can do a deal.”
“No deal, Diamond,” he snarled. “You’re
dead meat.”
He was right. And Tim was the vegetable that went with it. It was all his fault. Johnny Powers had heard him sneeze. His mother hadn’t been so sure, but Powers hadn’t been taking any chances. He’d sent Nails out to investigate. And Tim and his wretched Ming vase had drawn him to us.
I looked around out of the corner of my eye, hoping for a gold-plated poker or anything I could hit him with. But there was nothing. Anyway Nails had me pinned down. He’d have blasted me before I could so much as blink. All he had to do was call out for Johnny and we’d be finished.
Then Tim sneezed a second time. It was so unexpected and so loud that Nails jerked around before he knew what he was doing. At the same time I was on him.
With one hand I grabbed his throat. With the other I went for the gun. And that’s how we stayed for a few seconds, like mad dancers doing the tango. He was trying to shout out, but I had a firm grip on his windpipe and no wind was getting through. I spun him around. Now I was facing Tim, who was still standing there, clutching his precious Ming.
“Hit him, Tim!” I hissed.
Nails was bigger than me and I could feel him getting away. There were only a few seconds left. The gun swayed between us as he tried to force it down toward me. I pushed with all my strength and it swung up again.
“Hit him!” I hissed again. “Use the vase!”
Tim moved forward. He was holding the vase in both hands and now he lifted it up, holding it above Nails’s head. I waited for it to come shattering down. But Tim didn’t do it. His arms were shaking. His face was a torment as he struggled with himself.
“I can’t do it!” he muttered. “I can’t do it, Nig.”
Then the gun went off.
The bullet went so close to my face that I felt the heat against my cheek. It must have missed by a fraction, firing past my head and smashing a mirror on a wall behind me. The explosion was deafening. The underground warehouse amplified the smallest sound and the bullet and the shattering glass must have been heard in the next county.
I knew then that it was hopeless. With the echo of the gunshot still pounding in my head, I heard doors opening, footsteps running, voices calling out. Nails broke free. Once again the gun was aimed at me. I didn’t move. Another dozen guns had joined it.
They had come from all directions, men that I had never seen before unless I had glimpsed them in the darkness of the dock. They were all dressed. Perhaps they slept with their clothes on. Perhaps they never slept. But now they were surrounding me. Nails rubbed his throat. There was murder in his eyes. I didn’t need to ask to know whose murder he had in mind.
“I’m sorry, Nig,” Tim whimpered. “I couldn’t . . . not the Purble Peagog.”
“Terrific, Tim,” I muttered. “Maybe they’ll use it to put your ashes in.”
It wasn’t a very nice thing to say. But I wasn’t in a very nice mood. Tim gazed into the vase and put it back on the table. The circle of men separated. Johnny Powers and his mother had appeared. They were both in bathrobes. Ma Powers had curlers in her hair. I almost wanted to laugh. But somehow I guessed that if I did it would be the last sound I’d ever make.
“So ya came after me!” Powers snarled. “Ya rotten, stinking, two-timing rat.”
“You seem to have changed your mind about me,” I muttered.
“Sure I’ve changed. I thought ya was my friend. And all the time ya was working for the cops.” Powers was quivering with anger. His face was white. But the madness was burning in his eyes. “I hate cops,” he went on. “If I had my way I’d kill ya now—both of ya. And I’d do it slow.”
“Why don’t ya?” Ma Powers demanded. She was some mother.
“Because the Fence will want to see him.” Powers glanced at Nails. “You okay?” he asked.
“Sure, Johnny.” Nails sounded far from okay. His voice seemed to have gotten trapped in the lower reaches of his throat. He coughed. “I found ’em with the vase.”
“The vase?” Powers shook his head, dismissing it. “I want them tied up and locked up. The Fence will be here tomorrow. We’ll finish them then.”
Nails signaled and four men moved in on us. We didn’t even try to struggle. We were frog-marched to the far end of the gallery. It ended with a narrow corridor that led past a bank of machinery, the ventilation unit, and the electrical controls. On the other side I caught sight of an iron grille with an empty space behind it, the sort of thing you might see in an underground parking garage. We arrived at a door. Nails opened it and we were pushed into a small room.
One of the men had produced some rope. I’d always thought Nails was high-strung but that was nothing compared to what we were five minutes later. Our ankles, our knees, our wrists, our arms . . . Nails didn’t miss a muscle. We ended up sitting with our backs to the wall. And that was the way it looked like we were going to stay.
The men left and Powers came in. He looked at us with a thin smile of satisfaction. His eyes were still ugly.
“Johnny—” I began. I was going to remind him of our time together in Strangeday Hall, how we’d been good friends, how I’d saved his life. But it wouldn’t have cut any ice with him. This guy had ice for blood.
“Save ya breath, Diamond,” he cut in. “Ya’re gonna need it when the Fence gets here.”
“Who is the Fence?” I asked. It wasn’t going to do me any good now but I still wanted to know.
“Ya’ll find out soon enough.” Powers grinned unpleasantly.
“It’s quite an outfit you got here,” I said.
Powers nodded. “Right now ya’re sitting a hundred feet under the Thames. It’s right above you.”
“The Fence built this place?”
“No. Some guy called Brunel did a hundred years ago. Nobody knew about it except the Fence. There were two tunnels, ya see. This was the first one. Only it ran into problems. Something about the limestone. So he started again a bit higher up. The Fence found the old tunnel, had it adapted.” He stopped and sneered at me. “But why am I wasting my breath telling ya all this? Ya’ll hear it from the Fence tomorrow.”
He leaned down and gripped my face with an iron hand. I could feel his fingers gouging into my cheeks.
“The Fence will deal with you real good,” he whispered. Then he laughed, a high-pitched, trembling laugh. “But maybe there’ll be something left for me. I’m gonna make ya wish ya’d never heard of me, Diamond. After I’ve finished with ya, ya’ll wish ya’d never been born.”
He turned on his heels and strode out of the room. The door banged shut and I heard a key being turned and two bolts being drawn across. Then there was silence.
We were tied up, locked in, and on our own. But there was one thing nobody had noticed: my backpack had been torn off my shoulders and flung into the corner. Nobody had opened it.
And the bomb was still inside.
UNDERWATER
The last time I’d been tied up in a room, it had been with a magician’s assistant named Lauren Bacardi. We’d spent a bit of time together and she’d shown me one or two tricks of the trade. I’m not saying I was any Houdini. But I had learned something. For example, when Nails and the others were tying me up this time around, I’d remembered to keep all my muscles flexed. Now that they’d gone, I relaxed them. It didn’t do much good. But it gave me a little play.
There was also something else. I was more or less dry after my dip in the Thames, but it had left me with a sheen of oil or grease. Like I said, the water was dirty. Now I was grateful for it. My skin was still covered with a slippery coating that made it easier to slide underneath the ropes. Easier but not that easy. It was going to take time.
Tim hadn’t said anything for a while. That suited me. I still blamed him for getting us into this mess, him and his sneezing and his precious vase. But looking at him, I couldn’t help feeling sorry for him. He looked about as happy as a turkey on Christmas Eve.
“Don’t worry,” I said. “We’ll soon be out of here.” I tugged and felt one of the cords slide ov
er my wrist. Now all I had to do was get it over my hand without dislocating my thumb.
“How?” Tim sighed. He had been watching me struggle. “Eben if we weren’t died up, there’s still the door. Logged add boated. And thed there’s a whole arby of grooks waiting for us on the other side. All arbed. It’s useless. It’s hobeless. It’s the end.”
“That’s what I like to hear,” I said. “Always the optimist . . .”
Even so, I had to admit that it looked as if he was right. Fifteen minutes of fighting with the ropes and the only thing that was doing any running in that room was Tim’s nose.
But I struggled on. There was nothing else to do. Tim dozed off, huddled up against the wall. Time passed. I didn’t know how much time. There was no clock, no window, just a single bulb burning through the night. Maybe it was an hour. Maybe it was more. But just as I was about to give up, my left hand came free. The skin was torn and I had more bruises than a peach in an all-night grocery store. But my fingers moved. I was on my way out.
After that things went more quickly. I freed my legs next and finally my right arm. When I stood up, I felt like I’d just come out of the spin-dryer. But I’d done it. I’d actually done it. That just left the locked and bolted door and the army of crooks.
For the first time I looked around the room. It was long and narrow, about the same size as my cell at Strangeday Hall. There was a second door at the far end, which I’d taken for a closet. But opening it now, I found it led into a small corridor running a few yards at right angles to the room itself. It must have been a storage area or something. It stopped with another solid wall. There was no way out from there. But it gave me an idea. I knew what I had to do.
I woke Tim up and began to untie him. As I worked, I told him what I had in mind.
“Are you oud ob your mide?” he asked. His cold had gotten much worse. “Forged id! Just die be up agaid. I’ll waid for the Fedze.”