Authors: Will Adams
‘By calling in a bomb threat,’ said Croke. ‘We’ll have the whole place evacuated then send in people in to check it out. Which is why I needed to speak to you.’
‘Forget it,’ said Grant tersely. ‘You know we can’t have our fingerprints anywhere near this. That’s why we hired you.’
‘I don’t need you for that. I’m going to go to our beloved Vice President.’ With the president still in recovery from the recent attempt on his life, she was in charge of the administration, so it made sense to use her while they could.
‘She’ll do it for you, will she?’
‘Not for me. For God.’
‘Ah. Thaddeus.’ Grant allowed himself a moment’s thought. ‘He’d have to talk directly to her, you realize? Her team have gotten pretty good at running interference.’
‘I thought they were all true believers too,’ said Croke.
‘They’re DC insiders. They believe whatever will win them the next vote.’ Grant paused then asked: ‘So why the call? You don’t need my approval for that.’
‘There’s no time for me to arrange covert delivery. Not by tomorrow night. So, if we find it, I’m going to have to take it in through the front door myself. And, to put it bluntly, I’m not doing that for free.’
‘Fair enough,’ agreed Grant. ‘How much?’
‘A hundred.’
Grant laughed loudly. ‘A hundred? Are you crazy?’
‘Let’s not fuck with each other,’ said Croke. ‘I may not know your real name, or who you represent, but I’m not stupid either. We have to be talking the owners and CEOs of some
big
fucking corporations. Fortune 100 kind of big. The kind whose slush funds can buy small countries. That’s what all this secrecy is about, because you can’t risk word leaking about what America’s business elite are up to.’
‘Get to the point.’
‘If this project succeeds, it’ll be worth tens of billions in revenue to them.
Hundreds
of billions. You gave me five years to make it happen. Five years is an eternity for your modern CEO. I can deliver it on Tuesday. Doing so, however, will mean risking my reputation, my freedom and my life. And you expect me to do it for
free
?’
‘There’s a pretty big gap between free and a hundred million dollars.’
‘A hundred’s my price. Take it or leave it.’
‘Then I’ll leave it, thanks.’
‘I’m impressed,’ said Croke. ‘I had you down as a spokesman, if I’m honest. Some kind of
lobbyist
. I didn’t realize you had the authority to make trillion dollar calls without even asking.’
Grant sighed. ‘Very well,’ he said. ‘I’ll check. But don’t expect an answer today, not on a Sunday. My friends are fierce about family time. Tell you what: why don’t you set things rolling, and I’ll call you back as soon as I get an answer.’
‘Sure,’ laughed Croke. ‘And when will that be? On Wednesday, by any chance? Why hire me if you think I’m that stupid?’
Another sigh. ‘Fine. Give me a few minutes. I’ll see what I can do.’
Luke had no hope of fighting his way past Blackbeard and the bruiser. But Steven was another matter. He flung himself backwards, catching Steven by surprise, knocking him down. He scrambled over him, his feet on his chest and face as he sprinted up the steps.
Someone tap-tackled him. He went tumbling. He span as he fell, kicked out blindly, caught the bruiser in his throat, sent him crashing. He turned and scrambled up into the attic, zigzaging between broken furniture and dust-sheeted mounds that glowed like weary ghosts. He pulled over a stack behind him to hamper the pursuit and glassware and crockery shattered, littering the floor with shards. His jacket was hanging from a rusted nail, his mobile, wallet and keys in its pockets; but he didn’t have time to stop for it. He ran down a short passage to a window that led out onto the roof. He tried to lift the sash but it was painted shut, so he smashed the glass out with his elbow and dived through its empty heart, twisting in the air to avoid the daggers of dirty glass on the sloped roof, hitting with his shoulder instead, tumbling down into the leaded valley between two gables. He thrust out his foot to stop his momentum and it went straight through an old red roof tile whose two halves snapped back together like a mantrap. The bruiser reached out the window for him but Luke pulled himself free, hobbled along the gable valley to the roof edge, took half a step back. The house looked incomparably higher from up here than from down below. And there was no easy way down. Its walls were thick with ivy, and there were iron drainpipes at either corner, but he didn’t much fancy trusting his life to either of those.
He turned around. The bruiser had clambered out the window. Someone passed him a handgun from inside. No, not a handgun. A taser. Not that that was so much better. Luke scrambled up a gable, old tiles buckling and snapping beneath him, precipitating small terracotta avalanches. He crossed the ridge, descended into the neighbouring valley, then up another ridge. The far slope fell away to nothing. He’d reached the edge of the house. He had no option but to tightrope walk along the ridge towards the rear, arms out wide for balance. The old tiles were slick with moss; his left foot went from beneath him and he tumbled down the sloped roof. Desperately, he tried to stop himself but the camber was too steep. He fell over the edge, flinging out his hands to grab the ivy-tangled gutter. His momentum was too much for it. One end ripped free from its mountings, swinging him out and then back in a wild arc towards the house, so that he hit it like a wrecking ball, hard enough to make him lose his grip. He grabbed ivy as the gutter fell away behind him, shattering into shrapnel on the patio beneath.
Noises above. He looked up to see the bruiser peering cautiously over the edge. He wrested a roof tile free and hurled it down at Luke’s face, but it veered at the last moment, bounced off his back before smashing on the flagstones. The bruiser stooped for another tile. Luke looked down. He was way too high to drop uninjured to the patio, but a few feet to his right the patio gave way to a grassy bank. He tried to edge along the wall to it, but clumps of ivy kept ripping away in his hands so that he had to scrabble desperately for grip with the sides of his shoes. Another tile smashed into the wall above his head, showering him with red dust and fragments. He kept edging sideways until finally he was above the bank. He kicked away from the wall, spinning in mid-air, bending his legs to brace himself as he hit the bank then tumbled down onto the lawn.
The impact punched all the air from his lungs, left him wheezing and dazed. He staggered to his feet, wobbled over to the sanctuary of the surrounding woods, sucking in air as he went, bewildered by how suddenly his world had been flipped on its head. The front door banged and footsteps raced across gravel. He could hear the bruiser yelling directions from the roof, like the helicopter pilot in a police chase. Luke fled deeper into the trees, hurdled a fallen timber. Earth clumped on his soles and he almost fell over a tripwire of ground ivy. Crows screeched from trees as he passed, giving his position away. The woods thinned. He burst out into open wasteland, knee deep with ferns, nettles and reedy grass, flecked with bluebells, dandelions and thistles. An abandoned compound of some kind lay ahead. Military, to judge from the rusting MOD ‘Keep Out’ signs, the fence topped with triple strands of barbed wire. Rabbits had burrowed fat holes beneath it, like intrepid POWs, but none were big enough for him.
There were vast fields of root crops to his left, far too exposed for him to risk crossing, so he turned right instead, ran alongside the fence. Someone had thrown a tattered green tarpaulin over the barbed wire – kids wanting to play inside the compound, no doubt. He tried to haul himself up and over, but the mesh was too old and too loose, so that it bellied out towards him and bit into his fingers. Then he heard voices shockingly close behind and he glimpsed colour and movement in the trees. No time to climb. No time to flee. As his two pursuers burst out into the clearing behind him, Luke threw himself down amid the ferns and nettles, and prayed that he hadn’t been seen.
Rachel Parkes rested the tea tray on an upraised knee as she turned the doorknob of Professor Armstrong’s office, pushed it open and then hurried through, setting the tray down gratefully on the edge of his oak desk so that she could finally scratch the tip of her nose, which had been itching dreadfully all the way up the stairs.
‘Not
there
,’ sighed the professor, taking off his reading glasses as he looked up from his paperwork. ‘The coffee table.’
‘Sorry.’
‘I mean, you do realize why they call it a coffee table? It’s not just a
whim
, you know.’
‘I had an itch,’ she told him. ‘On my nose.’
‘How fascinating,’ he said. ‘Do you have any other bodily sensations you wish to tell me about?’
‘Not currently, Professor,’ she said, transferring the tray as requested. ‘But I can keep you informed.’
He shook his head at her as he came over to the table, poured himself a cup. ‘You call this tea?’ he asked.
‘That’s what it claimed on the box.’
‘I’ll be glad when Karen gets back.’
‘Me, too.’
His eyes narrowed; his lips pinched tight. ‘How’s the budget report?’ he asked. ‘I trust you’ll have it ready for me this evening, as you promised.’
‘I never promised it this evening,’ she said. ‘I promised it first thing tomorrow.’
‘What’s the difference?’
‘If there’s no difference, you won’t mind waiting.’
‘I’d like to look it over at home tonight.’
She shook her head. ‘I’m sorry. I can’t. I have my appointment.’
‘Your
appointment
? Today may be a Sunday, Miss Parkes, but it’s still a workday.’
‘You knew about this. I cleared it last week.’
‘Remind me.’
Behind her back, Rachel clenched a fist. He knew exactly where she was going, and why. He just wanted to make her say it for some perverse reason of his own, perhaps so that he could deliver another lecture on the folly of Afghanistan, graveyard of empires. Damned if she’d let him use her brother that way.
Damned
if she would. ‘It’s private,’ she said. ‘And the budget report will be on your desk first thing tomorrow, as I promised.’
‘I plan to be in very early.’
‘It will be waiting for you.’ She nodded a little too curtly, tried to soften it with an afterthought of a smile. But he wasn’t even looking at her any more. He simply waved her away with a patronising little flick of his right hand, then stirred a pinch of sugar into his tea.
Max Walters – the man who’d called himself Steven – burst from the trees expecting to see Luke; but there was no sign of him, just an overgrown glade bordered by fields and a derelict MOD compound. He swore beneath his breath. The fierceness of the chase had kept him from thinking about the old woman, but now his mind went back to her. He felt no remorse. She’d brought her fate on herself by sending that email. However, he did regret the shit-storm it was likely to kick off.
He tried to game it out. Luke would call the police, that was for sure, and the police would visit the house to check his story out. The smashed window, the broken roof tiles and guttering would all corroborate his account. And they hadn’t thought to wear gloves, so they’d have left their fingerprints everywhere. His own were on the police database for various youthful follies, and both Kieran and Pete had records too. This was a total fucking disaster. Then he remembered that Luke had form of his own. It was one of the reasons he’d hired him in the first place, for just such an eventuality as this. He had no idea of Walters’ real name, and his only point of contact with him was via an anonymous email address that would be easy enough to scrub. He began to glimpse a way out of this.
‘Any sign?’ he called out to Kieran, who was wading through the ferns and nettles, looking for Luke.
Kieran shook his head. ‘He has to be in here somewhere. If he’d gone for the fields, we’d have spotted him for sure.’
‘But what if he
has
got away? What if he’s calling the police right now?’
‘How? His mobile was in his jacket pocket back in the attic.’
‘What if he meets someone? What if he finds a house or a payphone?’
Kieran nodded gloomily. ‘We need to get out of here.’
They turned, began jogging their way back.
‘The email the old bat sent,’ asked Walters. ‘Any way to tell if this Rachel Parkes woman has seen it yet?’
‘Not unless she replies. She hadn’t when I looked.’
‘But she’s likely to, right? An email like that, a sweet old biddy asking her for help.’
‘I’d have thought so.’
‘Then let’s assume she hasn’t got it yet. So if we can delete it somehow, she’ll never even know it was sent, right?’
‘Easier said than done. We can’t do it remotely, not unless she’s been
incredibly
sloppy with her passwords. 123456. RachelP. Shit like that. I can run through the most-likelies, but we’d have to get extremely lucky. And her service provider will lock us out if we get it wrong too often. Then she’ll know for sure that something stinks.’
‘So give me a better idea.’
‘We send her another email from the old bat. Have her say that her account’s been hacked and that her last email was a virus, please delete it without opening. Or we could even attach a Trojan to it ourselves.’
‘And what happens if Parkes finds out that the old girl was already dead when that email was sent?’
‘There’s no way of doing this clean
and
fast,’ said Kieran. ‘This is lesser-of-evils’ territory we’re in.’
‘
Fuck
!’ Walters made to punch a tree, but that wouldn’t help. ‘What if she lives locally? What if we could get inside her house?’
‘Then it would be a piece of piss,’ nodded Kieran. ‘Everyone keeps themselves permanently logged in these days. Nine times out of ten, you just turn on the first device you find and you’re in. Even if not, I can easily hack in or rig something up. Something untraceable.’