Sepulchre (8 page)

Still no one. But the doors weren't closing, and that wasn't right.

Monk crept down the corridor, one hand on the butt of his pistol, a big lumbering man who nevertheless approached the lift silently, soft carpeting helping his stealth. The corridor was gloomy-dark - the way Felix liked it - and mellow light from the opening ahead stained the floor and opposite wall.

The door should've closed by now. Unless someone had a mitt on the O button.

Monk drew out the Snaith and Wesson.

He paused, the opening only two feet away. There were no shadows in the glow that spread from it.

He braced himself, readied to spring forwards and sideways, gun-arm pointed into the lift. But he thought better of that tactic. Monk wasn't stupid. His bulk was too good a target.

So he got down on his hands and knees and crawled forward, gunbarrel almost alongside his nose, elbows digging into the deep-pile. No one expected to see a face appear below knee level.

He was at the very corner, easing his massive head past the shiny metal ridge, the lift's interior coming into view. His gun hand was no more than a few inches ahead of him.

Nobody there. It looked like there was nobody there after A hand grabbed his hair and yanked him forward onto his belly. A leg straddled him and crushed his gun into the carpet. Iron fingers still dug into his hair making the roots scream. Something slammed hard into his neck and his thoughts became unsettled dreams.

Janusz Palusinski sat at the kitchen's breakfast bar slapping butter on bread with a carving knife whose blade was at least nine inches long. Beside his plate was a tumbler half-f of vodka.

He checked his wristwatch, parts of tattooed numbers showing at the edge of the broad strap, then sawed off chunks of roast beef, the red meat rare almost to the point of being raw. As he cut he wondered if Felix - moj Pan, he mentally and with more than a degree of cynicism added - would scream in his sleep tonight. A terrifying sound that stilled the blood of anyone who heard it. What did the man dream of? What fears possessed him when he slept? How close to total madness had he come? But no. Janusz must not even have a negative thought about his master. Felix would know, he would sense.

Felix, Felix, Felix.

Just the name could cause an ache in Palusinski's head.

The Pole wiped the back of his fist across his forehead, the knife he held catching light from overhead in a sudden flare. Normally the kitchen lights, like all the others in the penthouse, would be kept low by dimmer switches, but at present Felix was sleeping, he wouldn't know. Yet sometimes he did . . . Sometimes he would accuse them all of things that he should never have been aware of, and they would cringe, they would cower, they would be craven before him. Still Felix - O lord, master, and oppressor - would make them suffer, sometimes the punishment cruel, other times involving a mere few hours of discomfort. Palusinski often felt that the two Arabs enjoyed that part of their servitude. Monk's brain was too curdled to care either way, blazen that he was.

But Janusz was different, he assured himself. Janusz was aware of certain things . . . The others were fools. No, the Arabs were not fools. They believed . . .

Palusinski gulped neat vodka, then unscrewed the mustard jar lid. He dug in the tip of the carving knife, sunk it four inches, then spread the dollop it came out with across the cut meat. He slammed another thick slice of bread, also lavishly buttered, on top, pressing down with the flat of his hand so that yellow goo oozed from the sides.

Twenty minutes before the gorilla was to be relieved, he told himself as he raised the overflowing sandwich and barged his mouth into it. Monk - a good name for an animal such as he. flours of sitting watching an empty corridor was a fitting task for such an idiota. But for Janusz, it meant five hours of misery to look forward to. A torment. Another torture imposed by Felix. Even pain was better than boredom.

What was it that had made Felix so nervous? The man was mad, there could be no doubting that. But a genius also! No doubting that, either. Gowno! No doubt at all. But why afraid now, moj szef? You, who lives in shadows, who distrusts the light unless it is for your purpose. What fresh fear haunts you now, mgzcayana of many dreads?

Palusinski chomped on meat and bread, lips glistening from the surplus of butter. He stilled his jaw to gulp vodka, seasoning the mushed food in his mouth with fire. His eyes were small behind the wire-framed spectacles he wore, their lids never fully raised, like blinds half-drawn in a room where secrets were kept. They were focused upon the rim of the open mustard jar, everything else a soft periphery; yet his eyes were not seeing that rim with its sliver of reflected light, for his thoughts were inwards, perhaps examining those very secrets within that room of his mind. He sat, slowly munching, as if mesmerised.

Something snatched him from the introspection, though. And he didn't know what.

A sound! A movement? Palusinski was puzzled. He was sensitive to intrusion. Months of living rough, sleeping in ditches, eating raw vegetables dug from the earth, always with his eyes darting left, right, afraid he would be seen, what would happen to him if they found him . . . all that, even though it had been many years since, had attuned his senses for the slightest shift in atmosphere.

His grip tightened on the knife. Someone was in the room beyond.

Monk? He would never disobey Felix's orders to watch the corridor one floor below until Palusinski took over. Unlikely, then, that Monk would desert his post. Youssef and Asil? No, they were not due to return that night, they had the country house to prepare for their precious lord and master's visit. Then who?

Palusinski slipped off the stool and reached inside his jacket, which was draped over a chair back. His hand came out with a thick, round metal bar, its length matching the blade protruding from his other fist. He crept over to the lightswitch and extended finger and thumb to turn it anti-clockwise. The light in the kitchen faded.

From where he stood the Pole could see a broad section of lounge beyond and he cursed the shadows out there, the darkness of the furnishings, the blackness of the walls. He could wait; or he could venture out. He had the patience - skulking and hiding in the old country had instilled that in him - but he also had a duty. To Felix. He must never fail in that.

He held his breath and armed with the weapons moved towards the open doorway.

The danger-if there was someone out there-would probably be from either side of the doorway where a person could lurk safe from view. Which side? Always the dilemma. Which side would an assailant strike from'? If there was someone there . . .

He crouched low and ran through, counting on surprise, the knife held at hip level, tip pointing upwards, ready to plunge or swipe. Palusinski turned immediately he was clear, thrusting one leg back for balance and for leverage, so that he could spring forward or withstand an assault.

There was no need. Nobody hid outside the kitchen doorway, not on any side.

But somebody was behind the long black couch nearby. Only Palusinski, sensitive to intrusion though he was, neither saw nor felt the shadow that rose up from it.

He may have felt fingers tilt his head to one side so that certain nerves in his neck were exposed, but if so, he didn't remember later. He definitely did not feel the edge of the stiffened hand chop down, fast and silent, to deaden those nerves. Nor would he have felt the shock travelling along their roots towards a certain terminal inside his brain. The journey was too swift for that.

Kline was within himself.

He swam in blood vessels amid cells which changed from red to scarlet around him, through narrow passages, breaking out into round caverns, swept on by a bubbling tide that never stilled, towards a source that was no more than a distant rhythmic echo somewhere ahead in the labyrinth of busy tunnels, the rush to the sound as exhilarating as it was terrifying.

There were other things racing with him that were alien to these passages, black misshapen forms that were there only to disease and destroy; but these parasites themselves were steadily destroyed, attacked by globules which engulfed, swallowed, digested. And these defenders decided that he, too, was foreign, had no place alongside healthy corpuscles, that he was an interloper, a danger, up to no good. Even though it was his own body he journeyed through.

He screamed at the giant lumps to get away, to leave him alone, he meant no harm. But they were programmed to fight to the death all that was not right in the system and had no minds of their own. Two attached themselves to him as he was flushed through into a wider tunnel, and he felt the burning of his own back, his arm, acid seeping into him.

Yet he was so near, the rushing even faster, moving in contractions, the steady beat louder, louder still, becoming a thunder, the rapids leading to a fall, the fall to be mighty and devouring. And that was his desire, no other yearning possible to him now: he wanted to be consumed by the mountainous heart.

Instead these blind, ignorant creatures, organisms that knew nothing of other things, were eating him. His body was decomposing under their chemical excretions.

Nearly there, nearly there.

He could hear the hysteria of his own laughter.

Nearly there.

The noise ahead - THUD-UP THUD-UP - deafened him, filled him with dread. Elated him.

Nearly there.

Nearly swallowed.

It wasn't too late.

He would make it.

Be absorbed by the heart.

THUD-UP THUD-UP There . . . !

But not there.

Drifting back, drawn away, consciousness ing upwards, a soft retreat . . .

An abrupt awakening.

There was someone with him in the bedroom. Kline opened his mouth to call out, but something clamped hard over it. A hand. A strong, threatening hand. He felt the extra weight on the bed. Somebody, a shadow among shadows, kneeling over him.

Another hand encircled his throat.

'Someone else and you could be dead,' Halloran whispered close to his ear.

11 A DANGEROUS ENCOUNTER

Halloran glanced into the rearview mirror.

The blue Peugeot was still there, keeping well back, at least four or five other cars between it and the custom-built Mercedes Halloran was driving. His own back-up, in a Granada. was directly behind him.

He reached for the RT mounted beneath the dashboard and set the transmit button.

'Hector-One,' he said quietly into the mouthpiece.

'Hector-Two, we hear you,' came the reply through the receiver. 'And we see the tag.'

Kline leaned forward from the backseat, his face close to Halloran's shoulder. There was a bright expectancy in his eyes.

'Turning off soon,' said Halloran. 'Stay close 'til then. Out.' He replaced the instrument.

'We're being followed?' Kline asked, nervousness now mingled with expectancy.

Cora, next to him in the backseat, stiffened, and Monk, who occupied the front passenger seat - riding shotgun, as he liked to think of it - shifted his bulk to look first at his employer, then out the tinted rear window. His fingers automatically went to the revolver at his waist.

'No need for that,' Halloran warned. 'And use the side mirror if you want to spot them.'

'Nobody can see in,' Monk protested petulantly, already aggrieved with Halloran for having made him look so useless twice the day before.

"They can see shadows through the glass. Face the road and take your hand off that weapon.'

'Do it,' snapped Kline. Then to Halloran: 'Which one is it?'

'The light blue. A Peugeot, a few cars back. It's been on our tail since we left London. My guess is it took over from another car that picked us up in the City, probably close to the Magma building.' In fact, Halloran had felt uneasy long before he'd arrived at Magma early that morning to take Kline down to his Surrey home for the weekend. Yet he'd been unable to spot the 'tag' until they were into the outskirts.

'Are you sure?' asked Cora, resisting the urge to look over her shoulder at the traffic. 'This road is a main highway south most of these cars have probably been with us for miles.'

'Cora,' said Kline, 'if he says we're being followed, that's it -I believe him.' Halloran's easy penetration of Magma's security system the night before had impressed him. By wearing clothes that had merely resembled the security guards' uniforms, Halloran had strolled into the basement carpark, hidden until most of the day staff were leaving that evening, then found his way to the upper floors using the outgoing rush as cover. Nothing more than a stroll against the tide. Then a vacated room, a broom closet, or a toilet - Halloran hadn't given him details - until night time, then through to the chairman's suite, locked. doors only slowing him down, not barring him. Observation cameras? No problem. Only certain corridors and halls were monitored that late at night and, at an agreed time, Shield had created a minor diversion. No more than a motor-bike messenger thumping on the glass main door to attract the attention of the two security guards on the monitoring desk. The messenger had waved a package in his hand and one of the guards had gone to the door while his colleague watched from the desk, poised to press an alarm button which would alert the other two security guards patrolling the building as well as the local police station should anything untoward occur. So his eyes had been on his partner and the messenger outside (the latter insisting that delivery forms had to be filled in and signed before he released the package) and not on the screens behind him. The ruse had allowed Halloran to negotiate the more exposed locations without being seen. Naturally a risk was involved, but human reaction being what it is, the risk was slight. The rest of the journey had been simple (simple that is, for someone like Halloran): the private elevator, the 'pacification' of Monk and Palusinski, the entry into his, Kline's bedroom. No big deal (and heads were already rolling in the Corporation's office that morning as specialists from Achilles' Shield revised Magma's security arrangements).

Someone else and you could be dead. Kline remembered Halloran's words. Not quite that simple, Halloran, he thought. No, not quite that easy.