‘No, I don’t,’ I said. ‘I don’t want anything more to do with you at all.’
‘I’m sure I could help you with something.’
‘And I am sure you cannot. Please leave me alone now. And never again come into my life.’
‘I ought to give you something. If we are never to meet again.’
‘You have nothing I want,’ I told Mr Ishmael. ‘I hope that you live an unhappy life from now on and die painfully.’
‘Sadly, that is what will happen. But I will give you something, Tyler. Something you need.’
I said nothing more. For I had tired of this.
‘The map,’ said Mr Ishmael. ‘The treasure map showing the location of the Lost City of Begrem.’
‘You want it?’ I said. ‘Because you can’t have it. Tell you what, I think I’m up to it now, up to taking you on. You scared me before. You had power that scared me. But I’m not scared any more. Tell you what – I’ll put the map on the table and the one who remains alive can walk out of the door with it. Come on, what do you say?’
And I even surprised myself with that little speech. But I was oh so very angry.
‘I don’t want it,’ said Mr Ishmael. And he raised his hands. ‘That map is for you. It has always been for you. I don’t want to take it. I want to tell you what it represents. Where the lost city is. Exactly where.’
‘And you know that?’
‘Of course.’
‘So where is it?’
And Mr Ishmael looked at me and I looked at Mr Ishmael. And it was really hard looking that we did. One upon another. And Mr Ishmael smiled. But I did not. And Mr Ishmael said, ‘We will never meet again, Tyler. This is my final gift to you. Use it well.’
And I said, ‘gift?’ and got even angrier.
And Mr Ishmael said, ‘That map is of the New York underground railway system, Tyler. The City of Begrem is here. Right here. Beneath your feet.’ And he pointed downwards and smiled. ‘Where “X” marks the spot, that is the entrance.’
And then he got up and just walked away.
Out of my life for ever.
I never saw him again.
57
The New York underground railway system.
Now why hadn’t I thought of that?
It was all so obvious, really, when you thought about it. Really.
Well, perhaps if you screwed up your mind just a little and thought about it. Because, as is well known to all Londoners, there is a lost race of troglodytes inhabiting the London Transport Underground railway system. Descendants, it is believed, of a Victorian train disaster down there, when a train all-filled-up with Victorian ladies and gents got all-walled-up in a tunnel collapse. The London Underground Railway Company covered up this terrible tragedy and denied all knowledge of it, because it was bad for public confidence in the Underground system. It appears that there were survivors, living on rats and mushrooms, who eventually burrowed into the present-day system, where, when the hunger is upon them, they will snatch some lone commuter from a late-night platform and descend with him or her into their secret subterranean lairs, to feed. And surely it can be no coincidence that that most secret of all secret Government departments, the mysterious Ministry of Serendipity, is housed beneath Mornington Crescent Underground Station in London.
No.
And so, what, a lost city beneath the present-day streets of New York? An unlikely proposition? No, I don’t think so.
I took the treasure map from my pocket and gave it a good peering at. It did look like a railway system, yes, it really did.
I hailed a waitress who was passing by, whistling that old Sumerian Kynges classic ‘The Land of the Western God’, and I enquired of this beauteous personage as to whether she might have a map of the New York underground railway system anywhere about her beauteous person.
And she replied in that feisty manner for which New York women are renowned and told me exactly what I could do with myself and precisely how I could do it.
‘That would be a no, then,’ I concluded. But I was not going to be thwarted quite so easily in my bid to enter the Lost City of Begrem and avail myself of whatever there was to be had once I was there. And so I asked a young black gentleman of the burly persuasion, whose attire sported a comprehensive selection of gang-affiliated patches. And he gave me his map and said that I could keep it.
And I thanked him very much for his generosity.
And he in turn said that it was a pleasure to be of assistance and that if I wouldn’t object to giving him one hundred dollars as a ‘handling fee’, he would kindly refrain from disembowelling me with his shiv.
And so I handed over one hundred dollars, on the understanding that ‘fair exchange is no robbery’ and ‘a trouble shared was indeed a trouble halved’.
And then it occurred to me that I had indeed been talking the toot with myself. Which was novel enough, and cheered me up slightly, though not very much.
And then I unfolded the map the young black gentleman had ‘given’ to me. And discovered it to be a flyer for some rap band appearing that night in a nearby club.
And I was about to hail the young gentleman, who was leaving the Donut Diner, and inform him of his regrettable error when the feisty waitress took me by the arm, advised me against it and then pulled out a map from her apron and handed it to me.
‘You’re not from around these parts, are you, stranger?’ she asked me.
‘Well, curiously,’ I said, ‘I’ve been living in New York for the last thirty years. But I haven’t been out and about much lately.’
‘Are you someone famous?’ she asked me. ‘Only I think I recognise your face from somewhere.’
‘I’m the public face of a very private grief,’ I told her. As some women find enigmatic men fascinating, and take them back to their homes for extended periods of sexual activity.
‘Yeah, right,’ she said and went straight back to her work.
And then I unfolded the map she had given me. And lo, it was a map of the New York underground railway system. And lo, when I held my map up against it and got it round the right way and everything, the two were an all but perfect match. And I carefully traced the railway lines with my finger, noting that my fingernails dearly needed cutting, and I concluded that the location of the entrance to the Lost City of Begrem had to be right there, beneath that particular station.
And I peered at the name of that particular station. And the words on the map read Mornington Crescent East (discontinued usage).
Mornington Crescent! I was amazed. Discontinued usage? That would mean closed, I supposed.
And I folded up my map and stuck it back into my pocket. And I folded up the waitress’s map and kept that, too. And I got a bit of a smile going then (even though I wasn’t that happy) because I did now have the location of the entrance to a lost city of gold. So I had pretty much cracked everything that needed to be cracked and so must be on the home straight and about to storm across the finishing line as an outright winner. So to speak and things of that nature generally.
I’d just have another cup of coffee, and another donut, because I couldn’t be sure when I’d be eating later. Then I’d saunter on over to Mornington Crescent East, gain access to its murky depths and hit the lost city of gold. Job done.
And you really would have thought that it would have been as simple as that, wouldn’t you?
So I ordered more coffee and a further donut. And then I ducked very low to avoid the coffee pot that was swung at the back of my head.
Which I did because I heard the thoughts of the waitress. And these went, ‘It’s that psycho-terrorist, and if I
