At last, the door opened and a pair of large specimens with buzz cuts advanced on me. My wrists were pinned behind my back with plastic restraints and I was led into the corridor. The concrete chilled my bare feet and gave the soles an abrasive rub that soon became unpleasant. At the end of the passage, we came to a steel door. One of my guards swiped a card through the locking device and it opened inward. On the other side was an elevator with a steel mesh cage. We went down what seemed like a long way. Another sealed door was opened and we walked into the underworld.
‘What the-’ I broke off in amazement as the full extent of the scene in front of me became apparent.
‘Welcome to Hades,’ Apollyon said, coming out of the darkness on the right. ‘In the Antichurch, we prefer to call it Hell.’
Both names were appropriate. The underground area beneath us was huge, with lights flashing in the distance and flares of flame blasting out all over. I made out buildings dotted around, some low and some as much as three stories high, but all of them in a partially ruined condition, as if a tank had driven around firing through windows and smashing against walls. Lengths of timber hung from some of the roofs like gibbets-when I looked closer, I realized that from some of them bodies were dangling. There was a roar and fire consumed a block in the middle distance. I could hear screaming from it, but saw no one emerge. A black-surfaced river wound through the domain, carcasses of animals aground in the shallows. A wrecked car was hanging from a rickety humpbacked bridge in the foreground, much of the brickwork having been knocked away. The horizon in the far distance was bright red, silhouetting ramparts and uneven walls above which smoke was curling. There was a stench of rotting matter much worse than any swamp.
Apollyon smiled grimly. ‘What do you think?’
‘Someone’s been to art school,’ I replied, with a lot more bravado than I felt; I had just noticed that the pale-colored objects in the middle of the river were naked, and incomplete, human bodies. ‘Hieronymus Bosch’s Garden of Earthly Delights, right panel,’ said a familiar voice.
I looked past Apollyon. Like me, Sara was barefoot and the fatigues she’d been given were too big for her. Her face was pale and drenched in sweat. What had they done to her?
‘Correct,’ the bearded man said, apparently gratified.
‘Also, Pieter Brueghel’s Dulle Griet, Jan Brueghel’s Orpheus,’ Sara continued. ‘Plus shades of works by Michelangelo, Memling, the JS Monogrammist, Simon Marmion, Dore, John Martin…’ Sara’s voice faded away and her head dropped. She looked in a bad way.
‘You know a lot about infernal affairs,’ Apollyon said to her. ‘It’s a pity you can’t join the Antichurch.’
I wasn’t surprised that my ex-lover had educated herself about depictions of hell-after all, she did call herself the Soul Collector and her sister had been a practicing Satanist. Despite that, I was still taken aback by what I saw moving beneath us. At first I thought it was fake, some kind of model projected onto a screen, but then I realized the figures and the terrain they were moving through were real-though what did ‘real’ mean down here? Demonic figures with blackened faces, carrying lances and curved swords, were heading into the Hades landscape. They were followed by others, whose forms had been shaped in the imagination of Bosch-diabolical creatures with the heads of birds and fish, all armed with vicious blades and stabbing weapons. Another had the front half of a beetle and the extended rear legs of a frog, and behind it came one with a rat’s head and butterfly’s wings attached to its back. There was only one group missing.
‘Where are the souls of the wicked?’ I asked.
‘Ah, you noticed,’ Apollyon said. ‘Where are the naked humans that the creatures of Hell will torment and feed upon?’ He laughed. ‘Take a guess, why don’t you?’
I looked at Sara. She was nodding slowly.
‘Don’t worry, you can keep your clothes on,’ the bearded man said. ‘We’ll even give you some weapons.’
One of the gorillas stepped up and dumped wooden staves in front of us, two long and two short ones.
‘Oh, thanks,’ I said.
‘You prefer we take them back?’ Apollyon demanded.
‘No, that’s okay.’
‘All right. Now listen up. This isn’t just a turkey shoot-or should I say, a turkey slash and stab.’ He grinned. ‘The two of you have got a genuine chance to get out of here. All you’ve got to do is find your way to the exit at the far side of Hades.’
‘Yeah, right,’ Sara said contemptuously. ‘Like you’re going to let us go.’
Apollyon shrugged. ‘Sure I’ll let you go. As long as you get past the devils and demons.’
‘Oh, great,’ I said. ‘I take it those spears and swords are sharp.’
‘You shouldn’t complain. At least they aren’t carrying firearms.’ The bearded man turned and nodded to the big man with the badge on his cap. This time, I recognized the figure on it, one that had its own relevance to the location. Hercules, the ancient Greeks’ most dynamic hero, had descended to the underworld to capture Hades’ three-headed watchdog Cerberus. I hadn’t seen any other characters from ancient myth in this very medieval hell.
‘Right, take them down,’ the officer ordered.
I was marched to a metal staircase. As I went down, I heard more footsteps. It seemed that Sara and I were going to be working together. I wasn’t sure how I felt about that. Would she be watching my back or looking for an opportunity to execute me? Maybe I should have been thinking about doing that to her, but I didn’t have it in me. We had enough to contend with, and I had no idea what had happened to Rothmann.
A last door was opened and we moved out onto the damp earth at the beginning of the infernal landscape.
‘Hey, shoes,’ I said, as my feet sank into the mud.
‘Screw shoes,’ the guard behind me said. ‘You see any humans wearing footwear in those paintings?’
This wasn’t the time or place for a discussion about realism in art. The staves were tossed a few yards in front of us.
‘Follow your noses,’ said another guard.
I felt the plastic shackles fall from my wrists. By the time I had picked up my wooden weapons, the door had clanged shut behind the guards. I looked over at Sara. She was rolling up the sleeves of her camouflage jacket. She drew one of them across her forehead. I noticed how thin her forearms were. Surely she hadn’t given up the daily sessions in the gym that she had started in London.
‘Any idea where we should head?’ she asked, peering ahead.
Loud barking broke out to the right. I listened and thought I could make out three dogs. Either Caesar had a couple of friends or Cerberus was lying in wait for us.
‘Let’s go to the left,’ I said.
‘Why not? Capitalism’s dead and buried, after all.’
I raised an eyebrow and set off through the mud, glancing up at the figures on the viewing platform where we had been.
‘See you at the far side,’ I shouted. That provoked raucous laughter. Screw them, I wasn’t giving up without a fight.
As we approached the first pair of buildings, I saw a long spear wave above the roof and heard muffled commands.
We were expected.
Thirty-One
Rudi Crane was in Hercules-1, the company Learjet, en route to New York’s La Guardia airport. He was working at his computer, running an eye over the balance sheets from the various divisions. He was gratified to see that activities in the Far East were coming in above projected earnings, while the Middle East was running at its usual excellent levels. Even domestic business was up, proving that some things really were recession-proof. Private security was expanding at a rate that surprised many, but not Crane. It had been obvious to him for years that an economic crash would increase the gap between rich and poor, giving Hercules a golden opportunity to ensure that customers felt safe in their gated communities, places of work and country clubs. Investments that he’d made years ago were now bearing fruit-for which, as always, the Lord was to be thanked.