Authors: Peter James
In five years, through meticulous planning and discipline, rigorously following the guidance of God, none of his Disciples had made one slip. Now, in the space of less than forty-eight hours, two were dead.
He closed his hands over his face, and began to recite from Psalm 73.
‘Oh Lord, when my heart was grieved and my spirit embittered, I was senseless and ignorant; I was a brute beast before You.’
Outside, he heard drumming. The sharp rapping of wood on wood, beginning softly, then rapidly rising in a frenzied crescendo, echoing across the flagstones below, and across the monastery walls.
The beat was getting louder.
As if a wooden gong was hammering inside his skull.
I’m coming, all right, yes, yes, to matins, I will come.
Louder still.
His door burst open. Shocked by the intrusion, he looked up straight into blinding white light. The next moment he heard a sharp hiss, smelled a sour reek like a perfume that had gone bad, then in the same instant, he was enveloped in a moist, acrid cloud.
It felt like acid had been thrown into his eyes. Crying out in pain, he squeezed them shut, pressing his hands back over his face, and now his throat and lungs seared as if he was breathing in flames.
He tried to remember his military training. To stay calm. No panic. Just think the situation through before acting. But he was suffocating; his gullet was on fire, his nostrils, his lungs. He tried to open his stinging eyes. Could see nothing, just a blur of blinding light. He was trying to think, to work out what was happening.
He stumbled against his table, fell to the floor with it, heard a sharp crack that might have been his laptop striking the floor also. Instinctively he curled up into a ball and rolled,
always present the enemy with a moving target.
He crashed against something hard. A leg of the bed. Then against the wall. Lay still. Coughing, choking, his eyes burning, fighting for air.
Voices outside. Unfamiliar voices. The drumming had stopped. Instead there were strange footsteps, all kinds of new sounds. One very angry voice shouting down below. It sounded like Father Yanni.
He tried to sit up, forcing his eyes open, and saw through a wall of tears a figure, just a dark blur of a figure, towering over him.
His coughing eased; the acrid smell was fading a little; he took a deep gulp, but it was like sucking fire into his lungs and he coughed violently again. ‘Who – who are you—?’ he wheezed painfully, squinting, panic-stricken, desperately trying to blink his eyes clear, but to no avail.
The voice was American, with a faint Kansas twang, and sounded a little muffled. It said, ‘Where are the children, motherfucker?’
Gatward tried to speak but had another coughing fit. The light that was shining in his face was making the pain in his eyes worse, and he put his hand over them.
‘PUT YOUR HANDS ON TOP OF YOUR HEAD, MOTHERFUCKER. ONE ON TOP OF THE OTHER.’
Harald Gatward hesitated, then obeyed.
Who the hell was this man?
Except, the pain in his eyes and throat and lungs was so bad, he almost didn’t care who the man was, he just wanted the pain to stop. He didn’t care if he died at this moment.
‘WHERE ARE THE CHILDREN?’
‘What children?’ he wheezed, before lapsing into more coughing.
‘You want to make this easy, or you want to make this hard, you piece of shit? Because it would give me a lot of pleasure to make this real hard. Where are the children?’
Gatward, confused, shook his head. ‘What children?’ Moments later, someone was seizing his hands, jerking them behind his back; he tried to resist, but the moment he drew in breath, he began coughing. ‘Wharachireren?’ he managed to get out.
Something metallic closed around one wrist then the other. Handcuffs.
‘Whoorrruyou?’
‘Special Agent Norbert, FBI. I’m here in the presence of the Greek Police and the US Military.’
The air in the room was clearing now. The taller man lowered his gas mask, produced his ID from an inside pocket and held it out to Gatward, who, still suffering from the CS gas, was unable to see what it was, let alone read it.
Special Agent Norbert, dressed in a flak jacket, fatigues and a balaclava, with a Uzi sub-machine gun crooked under one arm, said, ‘Colonel Harald Edgar Gatward, I’m arresting you on charges of conspiracy to murder and kidnap. You have the right to remain silent. You are coming back to the United States with us today; even as we speak your extradition papers are being stamped by the Greek authorities. They don’t want a piece of shit like you polluting their country.’
His lungs a fraction better now, Gatward said, sullenly, ‘I saved their monastery.’
‘You saved their monastery? That’s funny. Who’d you save it for?’
Gatward said nothing.
‘For the children? That who you saved it for?’
‘What children?’
Something in the way Gatward said that gave Special Agent Norbert a distinct prick of unease.
‘I’m sorry, Dr and Mrs Klaesson,’ Detective Inspector Pelham said. ‘I was hoping to be able to give you good news. This is a big disappointment for you, I know. It is for us, too.’
It was Monday morning, and he was seated at the round table in his office, beside DS Humbolt and Renate Harrison. He looked drained. They all did.
John and Naomi stared at him in stunned silence. Then John said, ‘Are you telling us it isn’t the Disciples’ people who have taken them?’
‘The base of the Disciples of the Third Millennium was raided in the early hours of this morning by the Greek police, backed up by the Greek navy, a US SEALS squad and a British SAS squad. Agent Norbert told me on the phone an hour ago that they are certain beyond any reasonable doubt that they have the ringleader of the cult and the majority, if not all, of its members in custody in Greece, awaiting rubber-stamping of extradition papers.’
‘But they don’t have Luke and Phoebe?’ Naomi said.
‘I’m afraid not, no.’
She lowered her head into her hands and wept. ‘They’re dead, aren’t they? They must have killed them.’
There was a long, awkward silence.
‘Not necessarily,’ Tom Humbolt said. ‘You see—’
‘NOT NECESSARILY???’ Naomi raised her voice at him. ‘Is that the best you can offer us? Not
necessarily
?’
Humbolt raised his huge hands in the air. ‘We don’t have any reason to believe they’ve come to any harm.’
‘Don’t you?’ Naomi said. ‘They were abducted in the middle of the night and two people are dead, and you don’t have any reason to believe they might have come to any harm? What planet are you on, Detective Sergeant?’
‘Hon!’ John put a protective arm around her. ‘Hear him out.’
‘I’m all ears,’ Naomi said. ‘Tell me what you know about them. What do you know about the Disciples?’
‘Very little more than is in the papers, at this stage.’
‘Or than the Americans would tell you?’
Ignoring the barb, Pelham said, ‘We know it is a religious cult dedicated to halting the progress of science. Its leader is now in custody, along with forty other members of the cult.’
‘They were all on this island?’ John quizzed.
Pelham replied, ‘It could well be that their abductors hadn’t got your children there before the raid and might be holding them somewhere en route.’
‘And what do you think they’re going to do with them now that their organization has been busted? Take them on a fun day out to Euro Disney?’
‘All of the people arrested are being interrogated at this moment. I can assure you that if any of these Disciples has information about their whereabouts, they’ll get it out of them.’
‘I hope they torture the bastards to death,’ she said.
Two hours later, in Sheila Michaelides’s office, John held Naomi’s hand, squeezing. Renate Harrison, their ever-present shadow, dressed in a smart two-piece and crisp white blouse, sat beside them.
Naomi stared past the psychologist, out through the window into the walled garden, as the policewoman brought Sheila Michaelides up to speed with the latest developments. Naomi envied the psychologist the seeming tranquillity of her existence.
‘I’m so sorry for you, John and Naomi,’ she said, when Renate Harrison had finished. ‘I saw two police officers on Saturday afternoon and gave them as much information as I could.’
Her head was sticking out of a fluffy, fresh-looking white cashmere sweater, but she looked tired. She had more make-up caked on than Naomi had seen before, and there were bags under her eyes. Even her hair lacked its usual bounce.
‘You were going to try to make contact with some of the other parents around the world,’ John said. ‘Have you had any success?’
‘Yes, I have—’ She glanced at her computer screen. ‘I’m getting emails coming in all the time – there’s been a surge of them since yesterday morning. There’s something going on that I can’t explain, but perhaps you can?’ She stared at Renate Harrison.
‘Explain what, exactly?’ the family liaison officer asked.
‘Over the past five days, seven sets of twins conceived in the Dettore Clinic have disappeared into thin air.’
‘Seven?’ John exclaimed.
‘I’m waiting for confirmation back about one set in Dubai; the total may be up to eight now. And I suspect there are a lot more.’
Naomi swivelled on her chair to face the policewoman. ‘DI Pelham said three sets – he said
three
, yesterday. How could it be seven – eight?’
‘When you say
disappeared
,’ John asked, ‘surely there must be people who have seen something?’
‘Apparently not.’
‘All about the same age?’ he asked.
‘Their ages range from three to five.’
‘And—’ John said. ‘Are – Naomi – and I – the only people to have any evidence of their children’s disappearance?’
‘Incredibly, it would seem so. I’ve had telephone conversations with five of the parents – I’ve been up half the night with different time zones around the world – and in every single instance they tell me their twins have literally vanished. Not even one sighting so far by any security camera, anywhere.’
‘Why us?’ Naomi demanded. ‘I mean, why do we have evidence and no one else?’
‘There doesn’t seem to have been any violence involved in the other instances,’ Sheila Michaelides said.
‘So who were these people who shot this Disciple on our doorstep then took Luke and Phoebe away? The Good Samaritan and his Best Friend?’ Naomi said in an outburst of frustration. ‘Did they just happen to be out for a stroll across the fields, carrying a handgun and wearing night-vision goggles?’
There was an uncomfortable silence. No one seemed to know how to respond. Finally the psychologist said, ‘Naomi, I’m hoping during the course of the day to speak to more of the parents of the children who have gone missing. I can’t believe it’s coincidence, so there has to be some linking factor. Something will come to light.’
‘Could we speak to these parents ourselves?’ John asked.
‘I can conference you in, with their permission,’ she said, seeking and receiving a nod of approval from Renate Harrison. ‘I think it would be a very good idea.’ Then, again looking at the police officer, she said, ‘Meantime, what is the next step you anticipate from your American colleagues?’
‘I think at the moment,’ Renate Harrison said, ‘they’re as baffled as we are.’
*
The policewoman drove through Caibourne, and on up the lane. Neither John nor Naomi had said more than a few words since leaving the psychologist’s consulting room. They were both inside their shells, thinking, trying to pull together something that made sense out of all they had heard, and getting nowhere.
DI Pelham was allowing them to go home today, with the suggestion that Renate Harrison, relieved by another colleague during the night, stay with them for the next few days, and patrols would be stepped up around their house. They would be guarded as much as resources would allow.
They made a right turn into the driveway, and Naomi felt an immediate lump in her throat. They were coming up to their house.
Their
empty
house.
It was a fine day, sunlight glinting on the damp grass. She barely noticed. Barely even noticed the unmarked maroon police car parked in the drive, close to her Subaru and John’s Saab, and a lone policeman in a uniform that looked too bulky for him sitting inside it.
Post and newspapers slithered across the tiled floor of the hall as John pushed open the front door. Naomi looked at her watch. As if on autopilot, she said, ‘Almost one, lunchtime. I – I’d better – make something, I suppose.’
‘Would you like me to do it?’ Renate Harrison offered. ‘If you just show me where everything is and tell me what you’d like?’
John set down their holdall and his laptop bag, and scooped up the mail and papers, sifting through those that were for him and Naomi, and those that were for the owners of the house, putting them aside in a separate pile. Then he went through to his den, set his computer on his desk and went back out again, to carry in the children’s computer from the boot of the car.