‘No, not now,’ I replied. ‘Do not be so impatient, my young apprentice. Soon, very soon.’ Here I raised a warning finger. ‘But remember this, Nicholas. No student of your age will ever have been taken so far or so quickly into alchemical knowledge. It is a heavy responsibility for you, and you must be ready to accept it. Once I have shared the greatest secrets with you, they must never be divulged to anybody. Not to anybody, do you understand? I will swear you to this oath.’

In his proud manner he raised his chin. ‘I’ll take the oath right now,’ he declared.

‘Reflect upon it, Nicholas. Do not rush into this. It is a door which, once opened, cannot be shut.’

As we spoke, Jacques Clément had come in and started quietly clearing up the mess from the explosion. When Nicholas had gone, Clément approached me with a look of apprehension. ‘Forgive me, master,’ he said hesitantly. ‘As you know I have never questioned your decisions…’

‘What are you thinking, Jacques?’

Jacques spoke cautiously. ‘I know you have great esteem for young Nicholas. He is bright, and keen, of that there is no doubt. But this impetuous nature of his…he yearns for knowledge the way a greedy man lusts for wealth. There is too much fire in him.’

‘He is young, that’s all,’ I replied. ‘We were young ourselves once. What are you trying to say, Jacques? Speak freely, my old friend.’

He hesitated. ‘Are you quite sure, master, that young Nicholas is ready for this knowledge? It is a great step for him. Can he handle it?’

‘I believe so,’ I replied. ‘I trust him.’

Ben closed the Journal and reflected for a moment. It was clear that whatever this great knowledge was, Fulcanelli had learned it from the artefacts he’d recovered from the castle, and which were now, apparently, in the hands of Klaus Rheinfeld. At last, he had a proper lead.

Beside him at the desk, the laptop was humming quietly. Ben reached over to it and started clicking the keys. There was the familiar grinding screech of the internet connection, and the homepage for the Google search engine popped up. He entered the name klaus rheinfeld into the search box and hit GO.

‘What are you looking for?’ Roberta asked, pulling out a chair next to him.

The websearch results screen popped up, surprising him with 271 matches for the term ‘klaus rheinfeld’. ‘Christ,’ he murmured. He started scrolling down the long list. ‘Well, this looks promising.’

Klaus Rheinfeld directs ‘Outcast’, starring Brad Pitt and Reese Witherspoon…

‘A gripping suspense thriller…Rheinfeld is the new Quentin Tarantino,’ she read out.

Ben grunted and scrolled down further. Almost everything on the list was featuring reviews of the new movie Outcast or interviews with its director, a thirty-two-year-old Californian. Then there was Klaus Rheinfeld Exports, a wine merchant.

‘And here’s Klaus Rheinfeld the horse whisperer,’ she pointed out.

Several pages into the search results they came to a regional news item. It was taken from a small newspaper in Limoux, a town in the Languedoc region of southern France. The headline read

LE FOU DE SAINT-JEAN

‘The madman of Saint-Jean,’ he translated. ‘It’s dated October 2001…OK, listen to this…’

An injured man was discovered wandering semi-naked in the forest outside the village of Saint-Jean, Languedoc. According to Father Pascal Cambriel, the local village priest who found the man, he was babbling in a strange language and appeared to be suffering from severe dementia. The man, identified from his papers as Klaus Rheinfeld, a former resident of Paris, is believed to have inflicted serious knife wounds on himself. An ambulance worker told our reporter: ‘I have never seen anything like it. There were strange markings, triangles and crosses and things, all over him. It was sickening. How could someone do that to themselves? Rumours have suggested that these bizarre wounds are linked to Satanic rituals, though this was rigorously denied by local authorities. Rheinfeld was treated at the Hospital of the Sainte Vierge…

‘Doesn’t say where they took him after that. Damn. He could be anywhere.’

‘He’s alive, though,’ she pointed out.

‘Or was alive six years ago. If it’s even the same Klaus Rheinfeld.’

‘I bet you anything it’s the same guy,’ she said. ‘Satanic markings? Read alchemical markings.’

‘Why was he all cut up?’ he wondered.

She shrugged. ‘Maybe he was just crazy.’

‘OK…so we’ve got one crazy German covered in knife wounds, who may or may not be carrying import ant secrets connected to Fulcanelli, and who could be anywhere in the world. That narrows things down nicely.’ He sighed, cleared the screen and started a fresh search. ‘While we’re online we might as well check this out.’ He typed in the name of Michel Zardi’s email server, waited for the site to load up and entered the account name. He just needed the webmail password to access the messages, and he knew that most people use some word from their private life. ‘What do you know about Michel’s personal life? Girlfriend, anything like that?’

‘Not much-no steady girlfriend that I know of.’

‘Mother’s name?’

‘Um…hold on…I think her name is Claire.’

He typed the name in the password box.

Claire

incorrect password

‘Favourite football team?’

‘Not a clue. I don’t think he was the sporty type.’

‘Make of car, bike?’

‘Used the Métro.’

‘Pets?’

‘A cat.’

‘That’s right. The fish,’ he said.

‘That asshole with his fish…how could I forget? Anyway, the cat’s name was Lutin. That’s L-U-T-I-N.’

lutin

‘Bingo.’ Michel’s messages scrolled down on the screen. They were mostly spam, selling Viagra pills and penis extensions. Nothing from any of his mysterious contacts. Roberta leaned forward and clicked on SENT ITEMS. All the messages containing Michel’s reports to ‘Saul’ flashed up in a long column in order of date sent.

‘Look at them all,’ she said, running the cursor up the list. ‘Here’s the last one, with the attachment I told you about.’ She clicked on the paper-clip logo again and showed him the JPEG photo files. He glanced through them before closing the box and clicking on COMPOSE NEW MESSAGE. A blank window flashed up.

‘What’re you doing?’

‘Resurrecting our friend Michel Zardi.’ He addressed the new message to Saul, like the others. Her eyes widened in alarm as he typed.

Guess who this is? That’s right, you got the wrong guy. You bastards killed my friend. Now, you want the Ryder woman, I have her. Follow my instructions and I’ll give her to you.

‘Not exactly Shakespeare, but it’ll do the job.’

‘What the hell are you writing?’ She jumped to her feet, staring at him in horror.

He took her wrist. She struggled against his grip. He slackened it, and guided her gently back into her seat. ‘You want to find out who these people are, don’t you?’ She sat down again, but he could see the mistrust in her eyes. He sighed and tossed a bunch of keys onto the desk. ‘There. Like I told you, you’re free to go any time you want. But you agreed to do this my way, remember?’

She didn’t say anything.

‘Trust me,’ he said quietly. She sighed. ‘OK, I trust you.’ He turned back to the screen and finished writing his message. ‘Bombs away,’ he said as he hit SEND.