The Isle of Blood

“Correct, Will Henry, but that is rather like Newton’s saying the apple fell, so it must be on the ground! Understand that my problem was compounded by the presence of Arkwright, whom I had just discovered was an agent of Her Majesty’s government. If I told the truth and by some miracle we were spared, the British would know where to find the magnificum, and that would be only slightly less disastrous than my death.”

The answer to his “interesting dilemma” occurred to him with no more than a second to spare. Saying nothing broke rule one. Lying broke rule two. Telling the truth broke no established rule except the law of necessity; the end result would be the same.

He could feel Rurick’s sour breath bathing his face. He could hear the incessant drip, drip of water and smell the nauseating cocktail of urine and human waste wafting up from the trench below. He looked up into those depthless black eyes, the eyes of a predator, a hunter like himself—into those shining eyes, his eyes, and he said the one thing, the only thing, that could save his life:

“I do know where it is. The Faceless One hails from an island off the coast of Oman, called Masirah.”

“Masirah?” I asked.

“Yes! Masirah, a long-suspected hiding place of the magnificum. It was the perfect bluff, Will Henry. Any other answer, as I’ve demonstrated, would have resulted in our deaths. Our only hope lay in the possibility that the Russians already thought that the origin of the nidus was Socotra. If they believed I was wrong about the nidus’s origin, they might let us go. In fact, it served their interest to let us go. By the time we discovered the magnificum was not on Masirah, their mission to Socotra would be complete. It was perfect in another, albeit secondary, sense. Assuming I was correct and we survived, Arkwright would return to his superiors with the intelligence he’d been tasked to gather: Typhoeus magnificum

was on the isle of Masirah!”

“But why would the Russians kidnap you and Mr. Arkwright if they already knew where the magnificum was? I don’t understand, Dr. Warthrop.”

He patted my shoulder and whirled from his seat, strode back to the window, and admired his newly whiskered profile in the glass.

“In the affairs of nations, Will Henry, all governments, whether democtic or despotic, are desperately interested in two things—obtaining information they wish to protect and protecting information they’ve already obtained. Rurick’s question wasn’t ‘Where is the magnificum?’ It was, ‘Do you know where the magnificum is?’ That struck me like a thunderbolt. Not ‘Tell me where to find the magnificum

’ but ‘Do you know where the magnificum is?’ It tipped his hand; I played my little bluff, and we survived.”

Rurick’s finger relaxed upon the trigger. He looked over at his bald partner, who wore a thin-lipped smirk and was nodding.

“You are sure of this Masirah?” Rurick asked the doctor.

Warthrop drew himself erect, or as erect as the rope around his neck would allow, and said (Oh, how well I can picture it!), “I am a scientist, sir. I seek the truth and only the truth for truth’s sake, without regard to the interests of governments or principalities, religious beliefs or cultural biases. As a scientist, I am providing you a theory based upon all the data at my disposal. Hence it can only be called a theory until it is proven otherwise—in other words, until someone actually finds the magnificum on the island of Masirah.”

Rurick frowned, trying to wrap his reptilian brain around the doctor’s answer.

“So… you do not know if it is Masirah?”

“I think it is highly probable.”

“Damn it, Warthrop,” Arkwright cried out. “For the love of bloody hell, before he blows both our brains out, did the nidus come from Masirah?”

“Why, yes. I believe it did.”

Rurick and Plešec withdrew to consider their options. There were only two. Warthrop used the time to collect himself. It was not the first time he’d faced down death, but that was one thing to which one never got accustomed. As the Russians whispered urgently—it appeared Rurick still thought the best and simplest option would be murder; his comrade, however, had seen the wisdom of releasing them—Arkwright turned to Warthrop and said quietly, “I can save us both, but you must go along with everything I say.”

“Excuse me, Arkwright. It sounded like you just asked me to trust you.”

“Warthrop, you do not know these men; I do. They’re Okhranka, the Russian secret police, and you could not find a more vicious pair of killers this side of the Ukraine. We’ve been tracking them for more than a year. Rurick is the real brute, a bloody, soulless predator. He was questioned twice by Scotland Yard for the Whitechapel killings last year. He cannot be reasoned with. If he has been given orders to kill you, he will kill you.”