He stopped, chest heaving as the breaths fought their way up through his diseased lungs. For a fraction of a second his features hardened. Almost immediately they relaxed.
‘I’m sorry about your friends,’ he said, the smile rearranging itself into an expression of sympathy. ‘Truly I am. I know it must be upsetting for you. But it had to be done. It’s time, you see. Time for you to come home. Your daddy needs you. Your
family
needs you.’
She just stared at him, her face pale as the mist. She could smell his aftershave – dense, oily, vaguely metallic. A smell that brought so many other things with it. Sounds – feet on carpet, creak of door handle – sensations: weight, pressure, entry. The things of her nightmares. The things she’d been running from her whole life.
‘It’s not been easy,’ he was saying. ‘Not having you there. The house so empty. Especially since your dear mother passed away . . .’
‘She didn’t “pass away”.’ Her voice was curiously blank, toneless. ‘She killed herself. You know that.’
In front of her Barren leant forward on the walker, head shaking sorrowfully.
‘I do know that, Rachel, I do, although I try—’
‘Killed herself because she found out the truth. Because I told her what happened.’
Again the momentary tightening of the old man’s features. It lasted longer this time.
‘It’s in the past, Rachel. We shouldn’t dwell on it. It’s the present that matters. And the future. The future of our family. That’s why it was time to put a stop to all this –’ he circled an arm – ‘fetch you home. I’ve given you your freedom. Allowed you to get it all out of your system. Now it’s time for you to come back where you belong. Take up your responsibilities.’
He stared at her a moment, then dropped his head as a succession of coughs tore through his chest. Fumbling for the oxygen mask, he clamped it to his mouth. It was a while before he was able to recover himself.
‘Your daddy’s not a well man, Rachel,’ he rasped, eyes swelling over the mask’s rim, his voice muffled by the transparent plastic. ‘Doctors are giving me six months. Twelve at the outside. I have to think about the succession. Who’s going to lead the family. Front-up the business. William –’
The name provoked a renewed fit of coughing, his whole body shaking, his eyes bulging so forcefully it looked like they were going to pop right out of their sockets.
‘William . . . well, we all know what your brother is. A useless drug-addled, whore-mongering fantasist. Lives in a goddamn dream world. Thinks he’s the big man. Thinks he’s going to take control. Lead some sort of hostile takeover. Some sort of coup d’état. In here! All of it in here –’ his fingertips hammered derisively against the side of his head. ‘He’s a runt. Always has been, always will be. Knew it the moment I saw him. No spine. No intelligence. You, on the other hand –’ he lowered the mask, chest pumping beneath his tweed jacket – ‘you, Rachel, are the real thing. A true Barren. More guts and brains than that shit-stick sibling of yours will ever have. You’ve proved it these last years. Over and over. You’re the one. The true heir. The rightful heir. It’s yours, Rachel. All of it. And now I need you to start taking up the reins. Need you to come home and do what you were born to do.’
His hand reached out again, beckoning to her. She stared at it, head shaking, face twisted into a rictus of disbelief.
‘You’re mad,’ she murmured. Then, louder: ‘You’re mad.’
The old man’s shoulders swelled, like a cobra puffing out its hood.
‘I know you’re hurting, Rachel—’
She erupted. ‘You’re fucking mad!’ Suddenly her voice was flooded with emotion. ‘Come home! After what you’ve done! After what you
did
! Why do you think I got out in the first place? Got as far away as I could. Changed my name, my identity, spent my every waking hour fighting people like you? Did everything I could to screw Barren? Just like you screwed—’
‘Rachel—’
Her head flew back. ‘I was a child, you fucking animal!’ Screaming now, her eyes wild, flecks of spittle firing from her mouth. ‘Ten years old! Every night! Our little secret! Daddy’s special love! Just to show how much I care. Don’t worry if it hurts a little! It’s natural, perfectly natural! You vile, vile—’
‘Enough, Rachel!’
‘Come home! Take up the reins! After that? After Rivka? After tonight? You mad, deluded fucking –’ Her voice was breaking up, the words snagging in her throat, her breath coming in short, desperate gasps. ‘I will never come back! Do you understand me? Never. Never. I will never be involved in any of it. Never work for Barren. Never be part of your loathsome, twisted . . .’
Her left hand had started clawing at her scalp. Just like it used to do when she was young. When he had been inside her. Yanking at her hair as if she was desperately trying to drag herself away from him.
In the same motion her other hand lifted and levelled the Glock at his head. Which was what she’d come up here to do in the first place. What she should have done a long time ago. Had simply been projecting these last eleven years, what with all the marches and protests and riots and Nemesis actions. Transferring. Substituting. Whatever you wanted to call it. Putting off the inevitable.
And now it was time. Like Daddy said.
Time for the real thing.
Punishment time.
In front of her Barren had clamped the mask to his face again. He drew a series of slow, grating breaths, eyes never leaving her, the plastic misting around his mouth. Then, slowly, the mask came down.
‘Oh my Rachel,’ he said. ‘My darling, darling Rachel.’
No guilt in his voice, although she wouldn’t have expected it – her father was not a man who did self-reproach. Did any sort of moral accounting. No fear either, even though he had a gun aimed directly between his eyes. Instead a sort of ghastly, reproachful indulgence. Like a parent whose child has misbehaved, but who loves that child too much to be overly upset about it.
She felt her stomach turning.
‘I know how difficult this is for you, Rachel. How much of a burden it can be. Duty. Destiny. You always were a free spirit. It was never going to be easy. But you have to understand that this
is
your destiny. To lead the family. The company. You can no more escape it than you can the blood in your own veins. You’re a Barren. Like it or not, you’re part of it. Involved. It’s who you are. As for working for us –’ he smiled – ‘well, you’re already doing that, so it’s not so great a leap.’
Her eyes flickered, uncertain what he meant. He craned towards her over the walker, eyes gleaming.
‘Message received,’ he said softly. ‘Offer accepted. We fight together.’
Already pale, her face seemed to assume an even more deathly pallor. Her mouth had to work a while before she could get any words out. ‘What do you . . . how did you . . .’
‘Oh, Rachel, don’t you see?’ Again, that tone of reproachful indulgence. ‘
We’re
the Nemesis Agenda. Barren Corporation. It’s us. We run it.’
A brief, horrified silence. Then her legs seemed to go from beneath her. She stumbled backwards, a breathy gurgle echoing up from inside her: part groan, part choke.
‘No,’ she whispered. ‘You’re lying. You’re lying.’
Although she could see from his face that he wasn’t. The loose fleshy grin. The triumphant hardness in his eyes. Just like when he used to come into her room at night, pull away her covers, absolute mastery . . .
‘Oh God, no,’ she whispered. ‘Oh please God, no.’
He opened out his hands. Blotched, leathery hands, huge as baseball gloves. ‘We own it all, Rachel. Control it all. Everything. That’s what Barren is. In control.’
‘Oh God, no.’
‘Never imagined for a moment it would get this big. It was only supposed to be a small thing. A one-off. A little ploy to undermine a couple of our competitors. One of our in-house guys suggested creating a website, digging some dirt, putting it out there for the world to see under the guise of one of these crackpot anti-capitalist groups.’ He shook his head. ‘The whole thing just took off. Tapped into some sort of cockamamie zeitgeist. We’ve got a pair of supergeeks coordinating the whole thing back in Houston. And an international network of activists feeding us material in the mistaken belief they’re somehow helping bring down the system. We’re having to pay our guys a goddamn fortune to keep their mouths shut, but trust me, it’s been worth it. With Nemesis, we can screw any rival we want to at the push of a button. Like shooting fish in a barrel. Un-be-fucking-lievable!’
Another shake of the head. The lottery winner struggling to come to terms with the immensity of his good fortune.
‘Obviously we’ve had to be careful. Not
just
target rivals. That would leave way too clear a trail. And obviously we’ve targeted ourselves a few times. Nothing too heavy, just enough to throw people off the scent. Irony is, the Agenda’s evolved into some sort of warped yardstick of corporate probity. Nobody trusts the fuckwit regulators any more, but the Nemesis Agenda – they’re on the side of the angels! If they say it, it surely must be true. And the fact that the Agenda’s never managed to dig up anything about Barren – jumping Christ, it’s like getting an endorsement from God Himself! Never realized what a force for good the internet could be!’
His laugh was a sandpapery caw. Her head was shaking, her expression broken.
‘And then what do you know? Out of the blue a message comes into the Nemesis site from my own little girl. My Princess Rachel. Asking if she can join forces. Work with the Agenda. Couldn’t have been more perfect if I’d scripted it myself. The dream scenario. You get to blow off some steam, have your little adventures, fight the good fight and all the while you’re really working for the corporation. Back in the fold again. Back where you belong.’
She was trembling, ashen-faced, the Glock now dropped to her side as though she no longer had the strength to support it. It was like she was in the mansion again. Curled in her bed. Small, weak, helpless, her father pressing down on her, impossible to resist.
‘Although of course the reality is that whatever you might like to think, you’ve never actually been out of the fold,’ he continued, moving the walker forward half a step, its wheel squeaking as it revolved. ‘Truth is, we’ve always been watching you, Rachel. From the moment you left home there hasn’t been a single moment of a single day when I haven’t known exactly where you are and what you’re doing and who you’ve been talking too. All those groups you joined, those marches you went on – every one of them, I had people around you keeping a close eye. Your little Nemesis adventures – always there were specialists on hand ready to step in in case things went wrong. Your hideaway in the Negev – bugged and camera-ed from top to bottom. That’s how we found out about Rivka Kleinberg. There’s not a single thing you’ve said or done that I haven’t heard or seen. All of it, Rachel.
All
of it. You and your little dyke friend . . .’
His chest heaved, his eyelids seemed to flutter.
‘Christ, you’re so beautiful. So beautiful, my darling. You have no concept how much I want to hold . . .’
She doubled up, gagging, vomit pattering from her mouth on to the steel of the deck. He made to shuffle forward again, but she got the gun up, flailed it at him.
‘Keep away!’ she howled. ‘Keep away, you vile fucking—’ Another spurt of sick.
‘Let me help you, Rachel, please.’
‘Keep away!’
He shook his head, grotesque parody of the pained parent.
‘I know it’s hard, my darling. But it’s just the way things are. Like I said, we own it all. We control it all. There’s no point fighting it. No point resisting. It’s your destiny. There’s no way out. You’re coming home, Rachel. Please, don’t make it hard on yourself. Accept what you are. Embrace it.’
In front of him she gave a final retch and came up straight, wiping a sleeve across her mouth. For a moment the two of them stood facing each other, Barren smiling benignly, his daughter broken and hollow-faced. Then, with a nod, she lifted the gun, aimed and fired.
There was an explosion of metal as the padlock securing the container blew apart.
‘What the . . .’ Barren started to shuffle the walker around, trying to see what was going on. She circled him, came up to the container, jerked the shattered lock away and heaved open the doors. In front of her Ben-Roi and Khalifa were standing side by side. They looked bewildered.
‘Out!’ she ordered.
They hesitated, uncertain.
‘Out!’
They did as she said.
‘Rachel, what do you think you’re . . .?’
A hammer of footfalls as the two guards came running back round the bridge tower, alerted by the gunshot. She moved sideways, aimed towards the sound, shot the men in turn as they burst from the mist. One in the forehead, the other through the eye. Shockingly accurate. Their bodies crashed. Stepping over, she yanked the Hecklers out of their hands and threw them to the detectives. There were shouts below now, the scramble of booted feet as men came running up the gangway.
‘Get out of here,’ she hissed. ‘That way. No guards.’
She gesticulated down the side of the ship towards the prow. Again the detectives hesitated, again she repeated the order.
‘Come with us,’ cried Ben-Roi.
‘Go, you fucking idiot!’
She grabbed his shirt and propelled him across the deck. Khalifa followed. As he passed Barren, his Heckler instinctively levelled at the old man. She clocked what he was thinking and pushed the muzzle away.
‘My business,’ she said. ‘Go. Now.’
Their eyes met for a fraction of a second. Then, with a nod and a muttered, ‘Thank you,’ he set off after the Israeli. She watched until the two of them were swallowed by the mist, then turned to her father.
‘Rachel, you really shouldn’t have—’
‘Shut up.’
She approached him, gun arm extended. The rush of feet was getting closer. It meant nothing to her. She came right up to him, touched the Glock’s muzzle to his ogreish forehead. He just stood there, leaning on his walker, his expression more amused than fearful.
‘Oh Rachel, Rachel, is this really what you want?’