There was a worryingly long pause. The trolls were getting closer. I could feel the vibrations of their pounding feet through the stone floor. I sealed the compass away inside my armour and started to reach for the Colt Repeater. The trolls burst out of the tunnel mouth behind us, long spiked arms reaching for us. Molly yelled for me to close my eyes, and I squeezed them shut just in time as she hit the trolls with the same incandescent flare she’d used up in Paddington station. The trolls slammed to a halt, falling over each other as they clawed in agony at their blinded, light-sensitive eyes. I stepped forward and killed the first half dozen with my golden fists, smashing in their heavy skulls with my armoured hands. I pushed the bodies back into the tunnel mouth, building a barricade to hold the other trolls back. More of the creatures pushed hard from the other side, and it was all I and my armour could do to hold them back.
"Eddie! The door’s open! Come on!"
I turned and ran for the narrow dark opening in the wall. Molly was already inside. She pulled me in, and then slammed the door shut in the trolls’ faces, right behind me. The door didn’t look like much, but it held firm, despite the pounding of heavy fists on the outside. The trolls hooted and howled, slamming against the closed door in frustrated rage.
"Should we brace ourselves for an explosion?" I said to Molly.
"The Mole knows what’s going on now," she said breathlessly. "He’s expecting us. Eddie, be nice to him. He’s not used to visitors."
I followed Molly down the narrow tunnel lit by naked electric lightbulbs hanging from the ceiling at regular intervals. I reluctantly armoured down. As a rogue himself, the last thing the Mole would want to see was a Drood in full armour coming straight at him. It did feel good not to be running anymore, to get my breath back. I massaged my aching left arm, but it didn’t help, so I just pushed the pain as far away as I could. I had more important things to think about. If the Mole was as crazy as Oddly John, he’d need careful handling.
The tunnel walls were strung with overlapping layers of multicoloured electrical cables interspersed with junction boxes and a whole bunch of technology that baffled me completely. Swivelling security cameras kept track of Molly and me as we made our way down the tunnel, and I did my best to smile back at them in a friendly and distinctly unthreatening manner.
"You’ve been here before," I said. "What’s his place like?"
"Ah," said Molly, carefully not looking at me. "I haven’t actually been here before. Not in person, that is. In fact, I don’t know anyone who has. You should be very flattered he let us in. The Mole doesn’t normally allow visitors. In fact, he tends to discourage them by killing anyone who turns up."
"Hold everything," I said. "You mean, there was a real chance he might not have opened that door for us? That he might very well have just left us out there to die?"
"Well, that was a possibility, yes. But I was pretty sure he’d be so curious about you that he’d let us in. Besides, he sort of likes me."
"He likes you."
"No, I mean, he likes me."
"How, if you’ve never been here before?"
"Oh, I’ve been in his lair lots of times, just not in the flesh. I’ve dreamwalked here a dozen times, astral travelling. That’s how I knew the way. And we talk on the phone a lot. He can be very chatty, as long as you keep your distance. I really was pretty sure he’d let us in."
"Because he likes you."
"Yes. I do him favours…"
"I’m almost afraid to ask. What kind of favours?"
"I find him these dodgy porn sites on the Net…"
"I was right. I didn’t want to know."
The tunnel opened up abruptly into a huge cavern carved out of the bedrock deep under London. It was vast, almost overpowering in its scale, but the Mole had clearly had a lot of time to make himself comfortable. The great open floor space was packed with every modern appliance, every conceivable luxury and convenience. Along with mountains of piled-up computer equipment. Huge flat plasma screens covered the walls, showing fifty different views at once, with the sound turned off. And in every gap and space there were computer monitors showing dozens of different sites all at once. Molly led me through the maze of equipment and into the centre of the Mole’s lair, and there in the very heart of the labyrinth sat the Mole himself in a great bright red leather swivel chair. He kept his back to us until the very last moment, and then he reluctantly swung the chair around to glare at us. He put up a hand to stop us coming any closer, and we stopped a good dozen feet away. He looked us over, making no move to rise from his chair to greet us.
I’d expected the Mole to be a dumpy little guy with squinty eyes behind huge spectacles, and that was exactly what he was. He was very pale, with long flyaway hair around a podgy face, and he blinked and twitched quite a bit. He wore Bermuda shorts, grubby trainers, and a T-shirt bearing the legend Tarzan, Lord of the Geeks. He also wore a Buddhist charm on a chain around his neck: the All-Seeing Eye. And above that, the golden collar of the Droods. One plump hand rose to touch it as he looked at me and the torc around my throat, and finally he relaxed a little. He smiled briefly at me and nodded to Molly.
"Hello, my dear. So good to see you again. And in person, at last. Yes. But please, both of you, don’t come any closer. I’m not used to company anymore. No. No. Hello, Edwin. Fellow Drood, fellow rogue. Yes. I don’t normally allow visitors. They’re too hard on my nerves. But if I can’t trust a fellow rogue…So, welcome to my lair. Edwin, Molly. Yes."
"Nice chair," I said for want of anything else polite and nonthreatening to say.
"It is, isn’t it?" said the Mole, brightening a little. "I ordered it specially. Through a whole series of cutouts. I have to be very careful. The armrests hold coolers for soft drinks. Would you care for one?"
"Not just now," I said.
"Good, because I’m running a bit short just at the moment. I must put a new order in. Yes. I have very good people who smuggle all sorts of things down here to me, for a consideration, but of course it’s not easy, getting things delivered. No. No. I have to be…circumspect. About everything. I’m safe here, protected, and I intend to stay safe. Cut off from the world. It isn’t just the family who want me dead, after all. Oh, no."
"Really?" I said. "Who else is after you?"
"Pretty much everybody," the Mole said sadly. "I know so many secrets, you see. So many things that some people don’t want other people to know. Oh, the things I know! You’d be amazed! Really. Yes."
"How do you power all this equipment?" I asked, genuinely curious.
The Mole shrugged. "I tap all the energy I need from the Underground. And the city. They don’t notice. I have all the utilities down here, and I’ve never paid a bill. Though I could, if I chose. I’m really quite remarkably wealthy. Oh, yes. So, Edwin; you’re the new rogue. Let me look at you…I know you by reputation, of course. The only field agent to keep the family at arm’s length for almost ten years. Unprecedented! Always knew it couldn’t last…The family doesn’t trust anyone or anything it can’t control. I used to be Malcolm Drood, you know."
He said the name as though he expected me to recognise it, but I didn’t. We’re a big family. He studied my face intently, and then frowned and pouted as he realised the name meant nothing to me.
"So, I’ve been erased from the official family history. Scrubbed out. I suspected as much. Yes. You will have been wiped out too by now, Edwin. As far as the next few generations of the family are concerned, you will never have existed. All your history gone, oh, yes. Everything you ever did for the family, all your battles and successes and achievements, will be parcelled out and attributed to others. To agents who still toe the family line and bow down to family authority. Matthew will probably get most of it. He always was hard-core family, the humourless little prick. He’ll always be a good little soldier…Not like us, eh, Edwin? We have minds of our own. Souls of our own. Yes. Yes!"