Читать книгу The Book Of Schemes - Marcus Calvert - Страница 3

Rosa Fernandez sat on a tree stump, warmly dressed for the chilly autumn evening. The youngest of six half-siblings, the plump waitress looked up at her father’s manor with an unshakeable sense of foreboding. Under the cloudy Maine sky, it looked haunted.

A few centuries old, four stories high, and made of age-darkened bricks and mortar, the manor had been transported piece-by-piece from England in the 1920’s and rebuilt here by her great-grandfather. The building and its antique furnishings were easily worth tens of millions. The mansion itself was surrounded by one hundred acres of manicured lawns, exotic gardens, and pristine forestland, which only added to its value. Then there was the half-billion dollars worth of precious stones reputedly hidden inside.

That’s why the teams were here.

Hugh Nokrum had fathered six children – including Rosa – under various aliases. He went to extreme efforts to ensure that they were each born out of wedlock. Hugh chose poor, working-class mothers to impregnate. Once each child was born, Nokrum left town and covered his tracks well enough to avoid discovery.

His disappearance did result in each abandoned mother miraculously receiving a six-figure “sweepstakes prize,” equivalent to eighteen years of child support payments. Rosa’s mother blew her allotment and ended up raising her daughter in near-poverty. But her five other siblings all made something of themselves.

Reuben Turner was a vascular surgeon.

Naomi Secreo-Thornton was a senior project director at a bioresearch firm.

Todd Gheter was a clinical psychiatrist in Malibu.

Rhea Benton was a commercial airline pilot.

And Peter Jurpin was a concert pianist for the Boston Philharmonic.

Two weeks after Nokrum died of prostate cancer, all of his children were notified and asked to assemble here on this exact date. They received a tour of the estate and were informed of the inheritance provision in their father’s will. Nokrum’s lawyer, Anthony Murgathol, explained that each of them would have one million dollars wired to their respective checking accounts by the end of the next business day.

Then Murgathol gave them two options.

They could take the money and move on with their lives. In doing so, they would forfeit any future claim to the multi-billion-dollar Nokrum family fortune: corporate holdings, real estate, stocks, et cetera.

Or, with their million dollars, any of the siblings could assemble a team of experts and search the house. Five hundred million dollars worth of precious stones had been strategically hidden within the mansion. Any sibling who wanted a claim to the inheritance had to personally lead his/her team on a search for the stones – or be ruled ineligible. Each team would then be randomly assigned its own sector to explore. Once inside, they had from sundown to sunrise to conduct the search for the stones.

Murgathol also declared that the house was booby-trapped.

The lawyer explained to the surprised heirs that the late Hugh Nokrum had a knack for inventing “dangerous toys” in his day. These booby traps were all linked to a central data server, which was located somewhere within the estate. The traps would be activated one-by-one and in random sequence. As the night went on, the level of danger would exponentially increase. By dawn, anyone still inside would have – in Murgathol’s opinion – absolutely no chance of survival.

Still, explained Murgathol, anyone who went in could exit at any time and keep whatever valuables they could find … but forfeit their claim to anything else. Whichever heir made it out alive, after sunrise, and with the most jewels in his/her possession, would be awarded the remainder of Nokrum’s estate.

Todd asked why their father had not just left the valuables to them in his will. The lawyer gave him an odd smile and explained that Hugh Nokrum believed that wealth should be earned, not given. Also, the lawyer pointed out, their father had left them each one million dollars, which could be turned into true wealth, given time and planning. But inside that mansion was the opportunity to earn billions more … in one night. In the late Mr. Nokrum’s opinion, Murgathol explained, that kind of money should only go to someone bold enough to take it.

Now, exactly thirty days later, the other five siblings had arrived with their teams on a cold Friday evening. Rosa showed up alone and told the lawyer that she had no interest in competing. Her greedy siblings thought she was nuts. Although they each came prepared for a scavenger hunt of the manor, Nokrum’s other children didn’t believe the part about the lethal booby-traps. Each of them had at least six people as backup, with Naomi having the most (twelve) people on her team. They were going in with weapons, tools, and detailed maps of their respective sectors, which Murgathol personally marked off as they entered the mansion.

At five minutes to sunset, Murgathol gave them the go-ahead to enter the manor house through the main entrance. Murgathol had a heated tent set up on the front lawn and invited Rosa to wait along with him. Two uniformed medics and a well-dressed manservant waited in the red tent, which contained a small stash of medical supplies and assorted refreshments. As the last of the five teams entered, Murgathol pulled out an ovular remote control. With the press of a button, he activated the mansion’s server and the game commenced.

Then, the lawyer asked Rosa why she had come here in the first place. She told him that she had taken a portion of her payout and had researched her father in-depth. Apparently, Hugh Nokrum had designed highly lethal booby-traps for governments, drug cartels, and anyone else who needed their valuables/secrets protected. Based on her research, Rosa had learned that her father was once the best trap maker in modern times.

Murgathol put on his best poker face as she spoke.

Rosa was equally intrigued by her father’s deep and abiding interest in the occult. In his youth, Nokrum had traveled the world as something of a grave robber. His knowledge of bypassing booby traps had saved his skin time and again in his thirst for occult knowledge. And, while they were given that tour of the manor house, Rosa couldn’t help but notice the assorted hieroglyphs carved into the ceilings and walls. Something of a doodler, she put a few images down on paper and had them researched. The images were a mixture of Mayan and Egyptian incantations of a sacrificial nature. The experts she hired could not quite agree on what they would do.

As a result, Rosa decided to show up and see what would happen.

Somewhere around the half-hour mark, a burning body crashed through a second-floor window. Rosa picked up a pair of binoculars as the corpse hit the ground, riddled with multiple arrow-length projectiles. The remains were too charred to recognize. Murgathol consulted a map and figured that the deceased was either Peter or someone on his team. As the night progressed, they heard screams and the occasional explosion from inside the manor.

Sustained by Murgathol’s fine coffee, Rosa wondered if anyone would make it out.

Just before dawn, two team members exited the mansion through different first-floor windows and limped outside. One was a member of Rhea’s team. The other was a member of Todd’s team. Utterly terrified, they were covered with assorted cuts and burns. After the medics tended to the survivors, and gave each of them a pill for their nerves, Rosa asked them what happened.

The survivor from Todd’s team, a former marine demo expert, poured himself a stiff drink and then told his tale. He said that they encountered traps at every turn. About an hour into the search, Todd was sliced in half by a huge pendulum (hidden in the ceiling). With Todd dead, his former employees decided to abandon the search and backtrack through the traps they had already found and disarmed. The problem was that when they backtracked, they ran into new traps that they had not detected the first time through. In the end, he was the only survivor.

Rhea’s team member – a retired archaeologist – had also recounted his nightmarish experience of running into dozens of traps. They tried to talk Rhea into leaving but she ignored them. Two hours into the search, she had fallen through a section of the floor, down to her waist. While the deadfall trap was only three feet deep, it was halfway filled with hundreds of scorpions. By the time they managed to get her out, she had been stung dozens of times. They left her corpse behind and simply tried to find the nearest way out. However, the windows and doors were surrounded by ingenious traps, which slaughtered everyone else on the team.

Neither team found one single jewel.

Murgathol promised to “generously” compensate them for their troubles … once they signed a non-disclosure agreement. The pair of would-be treasure hunters regarded the lawyer with suspicion. Then they looked at the multi-million-dollar mansion behind him and reluctantly agreed. As the sun rose, Rosa asked Murgathol if he thought anyone else was still alive in there. The lawyer merely shook his head as he pulled out the remote and disarmed the security system.

Oddly enough, the front doors of the manor house swung open fifteen minutes after daybreak. A thin man with a nice black suit emerged. While Rosa had not attended his funeral, she did see a few recent photos of Hugh Nokrum. Unless he had another son she didn’t know about, the man exiting the manor house was indeed her father … only he now looked to be in his mid-thirties!

As if on cue, the medics and manservant whipped out silenced pistols and gunned down the two wounded survivors. Then they turned their weapons on Rosa, who glared at Murgathol as she raised her hands. The lawyer merely gave her a smug grin and signaled the gunmen to hold their fire.

Hale and hearty, Nokrum shook hands with Murgathol and thanked him for making the necessary arrangements. Nokrum then turned to Rosa and gave her a fatherly hug. She asked him what had just happened. Nokrum explained that he had learned of a way to cheat death long ago. All that was required was a voluntary sacrifice of sufficient size – say, at least three of his offspring (hence the large number of illegitimate children). Hugh explained that he didn’t raise any of his kids for fear of becoming too attached to any of them when the time came.

So, he concocted this plan and retained Murgathol – an old school chum – to enact it. Murgathol handled everything to perfection: from bringing the siblings together to having Nokrum’s body placed in the sub-basement ritual vault. Ironically, he found Reuben’s corpse just outside of the vault door. The clever lad had almost avoided the acid traps.

With the deaths of those five siblings, their combined life energies not only raised Hugh Nokrum back from the dead but (much to his surprise) made him roughly thirty years younger to boot. The billionaire figured that the two extra siblings were responsible for his renewed youth. Frankly, he was disappointed that so many of his children were foolish enough to participate in such a dangerous event.

Rosa asked him if there were really any precious stones in that death trap of a mansion. With a laugh, Nokrum admitted that they were all tucked away inside of a wall within the main foyer – just beyond the front doors! It was a neutral sector of the mansion that no one had apparently bothered to search. Each team passed right by the treasure last night, eager to get to their respective areas and begin the treasure hunt.

Rosa asked Nokrum what would happen next.

Nokrum explained that Murgathol would liquidate the mansion and all of his other hard assets. Then Hugh would get a facelift, run off with his wealth, and live comfortably abroad. And, of course, he’d design a new deathtrap of a mansion and sire more children for a rainy day.

Nokrum gave Rosa a peck on the forehead and confessed his pride that at least one of his children was worthy enough to bear his genes. But unfortunately, she’d have to die. With a cocky smile, he left the tent to bask in the warm fall morning. Rosa asked him what Hell was like. Nokrum’s smile abruptly vanished as he remembered the last six weeks of his death. His troubled expression shifted to one of anger as he ordered Murgathol’s goons to kill his only surviving child.

The trio of shooters stepped out of the tent, raised their pistols … and then died as eighteen silenced shots ripped through them from a distant tree line.

Murgathol dove to the ground with surprising speed.

Nokrum turned and ran for his mansion.

Rosa lifted her left wrist to her face and pointed at her father with her right index finger.

”Take him,” she said evenly into a small radio strapped under her blouse’s left sleeve.

Blood erupted from the back of Nokrum’s head from a well-placed round. The wealthy occultist fell over dead (again), his face a mask of shock and pain. From the manicured lawn, Murgathol could only gawk up at Rosa.

“I guess I did bring my own team,” Rosa admitted as she gestured for Murgathol to rise. “I wasn’t sure what would happen. But I figured I’d want some ‘experts’ of my own on standby, so I could keep my options open.”

Murgathol stood up, brushed a few lawn clippings from his suit, and took a few moments to compose himself. He had advised Nokrum to hire perimeter security for this function. But Nokrum refused, convinced that the fewer witnesses involved, the better.

“What would’ve happened if one of your siblings won the competition?”

“They would’ve been jacked,” Rosa grinned. “We’d take the stones. And they’d get the multi-billion-dollar estate.”

“That would’ve been … fair,” Murgathol replied with a forced smile.

“Give me your cell phone and the remote to the mansion’s trap grid,” Rosa ordered.

Murgathol handed them over. Rosa chuckled to herself as she checked her watch.

“So what now?” Murgathol trembled slightly.

“Now, you work for me, Mr. Murgathol,” Rosa snapped as she pulled a small vial of clear liquid from her coat.

“What is that?”

“Poison. It takes a few hours to kick in. You won’t feel any symptoms to slow you down. So you’ll have plenty of time to grab some tools, cut your way to the jewels, and then pile them at my feet. Come through and you’ll get the antidote and a hefty check when you sign everything over to me. Try anything else and my people will kill you, your wife, and your three lovely daughters. Any questions?”

“No ma’am,” Murgathol replied as he took the poison and nervously swallowed it down.