‘Do it! And do it quickly! If anybody queries you, tell them to speak to me.’ Hedrick said, as he left the lab.’
Tanka’s essence was only exposed for a few milliseconds as it migrated from Mrs. Perkins to the farmworker’s body, but that had been time enough for Rampel to detect its presence. In his guise as a pigeon, he was now perched on the milking parlour roof, preening his feathers and watching Tanka pace up and down the farmyard cursing and swearing. In temper, he kicked out at the Uzi’s magazine, sending it rattling into the barn, then, swinging the gun at his side, he followed it through the doors.
Five minutes later, Tanka emerged carrying another holdall. He closed and locked the barn doors before walking across the yard to Mrs. Perkins’ car. He heaved the holdall onto the rear seat then, climbing in, drove out of the farmyard and onto the lane.
Rampel kept his distance, flying high over the field which ran parallel to the narrow country lane. For a moment the car was hidden by the oak trees that defined the edge of Meadow Wood. He beat the pigeon’s wings harder to gain more speed and was soon flying directly over the car as it approached the turning into Church Lane. As the Smart Car headed towards the village it began to accelerate and Rampel struggled to keep up. Its speed continued to increase and it now seemed out of control, skipping from one side of the road to the other, its wing-mirrors ploughing through the hawthorn hedges that lined the lane. As it approached the bend at the bottom of Brook Hill, it left the road and flipped over, tumbling down the grass-covered bank and into the stream. The farmworker was thrown from the car and now lay unconscious at the feet of the Ghost of Mrs. Perkins. It had been the spontaneous appearance of the ghost in the passenger seat that had freaked Tanka out, causing the farmworker to lose control of the vehicle. Calmly the Ghost of Mrs. Perkins reached down, her hands disappearing into the farmworker’s chest. The angel Rampel was now hovering in front of her, his presence inflated in an attempt to dominate the situation. As the ghost rose up, the glowing globe that was Tanka’s essence was cupped in her hands and she held it out towards the angel like an offering, her smile lost amongst the mutilated features of Mrs. Perkins’ face.
This was the first time that Amy had used money and she was now proudly walking through the food hall carrying the tray of coffee and paninis she had just purchased. Having escaped from Tanka, Daniel had driven without thought of their destination, instinctively making the turns that would take them away from the village as quickly as possible. After an hour of manic driving, they found themselves travelling west along a motorway and, desperate to purge the waste products from his host’s body, Daniel had driven into a service area. While Amy had been queuing for the coffee he had purchased a European Road Atlas, and was now studying the map, trying to pinpoint their location. Amy placed the tray on the table, ‘What are we going to do?’ she asked, as she sat down. Daniel was engrossed in the map, flipping from page to page, tracing the route they had taken.
‘Sorry, what did you say?’
‘Where are we going to go? What are we going to do?’
Daniel thought for a moment and then, pointing at an area on the page, said, ‘That’s where we’re going to hide out, Wales.’ He picked up the panini and pushed virtually the whole sandwich into his mouth, glancing up to catch a disapproving glare from Amy. He flashed a smile that a naughty child might give its mother and then looked up at the TV screen suspended from the ceiling. Unable to take his eyes off the news channel he tapped the back of Amy’s wrist vigorously. She stopped stirring her coffee and looked up at him and then followed his gaze to the screen. Staring back at them was the face of the vicar, surrounded by his congregation, being interviewed by the reporter. As he spoke, the camera panned to show the demolished memorial and the rubble strewn street. The TV’s sound was turned off, but the Breaking News banner at the bottom of the screen told the story; Tragedy in a remote Derbyshire village . . .
The picture changed to a reporter standing in front of a white palatial building set back in landscaped gardens. The rolling banner now highlighted the new story which read, U.S. president to resolve nuclear issue. The image of the reporter was replaced by that of a human male standing behind a lectern carrying a circular motif. He was speaking to a room packed with people and, from the look on their faces, he was a person of authority. ‘Who’s he?’ Amy asked.
‘He’s Mr. President. Tanka was telling me about him last night. He’s like a director of the planet.’
‘Well, maybe he can help us stop Anubis,’ Amy said as she took the map and started to flip through its pages, looking for anywhere called the United States. Impatiently she turned to the index and scanned down the columns. She huffed with disappointment; there were only two entries, Utrecht and Ulcinj.
Daniel took the map back and looked up at the TV again. He couldn’t help but be impressed by the figure standing so confidently before the rows of interrogating journalists. ‘This male is no ordinary human, Amy. Look how everybody watches him. Yes… he’s the one we’ve got to tell about Anubis’ plan.’ Daniel looked down at the map again, ‘I wonder-’
Amy interrupted, ‘I thought we were going to live in Wales and wait for Mo to find us?’
‘But what if they don’t find us? What if Anubis builds his bomb first and launches it into the Sun. Our essence will be vaporised along with everything else.’ He grasped Sally’s hand, ‘This human could be our only chance of getting out of here.’
‘So what’s your plan?’
‘I’m not sure but, from what Tanka was saying, he lives in a white house in a town called Washington.’
Amy grabbed Daniel’s wrist and nodded towards the TV screen, now displaying an image of the Earth overwritten with the caption World Weather Report. Daniel pulled the roadmap out of Amy’s hand and started to sketch the satellite’s view of the Earth on a blank page inside the cover, ‘Look, we’re here,’ he said, pointing to the British Isles, ‘and this area is Europe, and down here is France, where that explosion happened. Now, I think Mr. President lives here,’ he said, drawing a crude approximation of the north American coastline.
‘Can we drive there?’ Amy asked.
‘No, look, we’d have to cross this area of water. I remember Anubis asking Orion if he had collected the air tickets. They use what they call aircraft to get around the planet, they’re a bit like flying levitrams.’
‘Where do we get our tickets from?’ Amy said, as she studied Daniel’s crude map of the world.
He smiled at her, ‘I thought we were hiding out in Wales and waiting for Mo to find us.’ Amy grinned without looking up.
Coincidentally the Gatekeeper was watching the same TV news channel in a hotel room just south of Birmingham. The newsreader was interviewing a geologist who was expounding her theory on the tragedy that had occurred in a remote Derbyshire village. She was hypothesizing that a shallow earthquake, only a few kilometres deep, had ruptured the gas supply to a satellite ground station. The build-up of gas had exploded so violently, that a section of the roof had been hurled onto the nearby village, fatally injuring a postman.
The Gatekeeper gasped, ‘Anubis, look! The Ground Station, it’s been destroyed!’
Anubis, who was flipping through the pages of a travel brochure, looked up, and only caught a fleeting shot of the destruction before the story switched to the vicar being interviewed in front of his congregation. ‘What the fuck’s going on?’
The Gatekeeper, unaware of Rampel’s involvement, answered, ‘For a moment I thought Haamiah had found us… but if she had, we’d be in Purgatory by now.’
‘That earthquake must have been stronger than we thought to cause that much damage. It must have ruptured that hydrogen tank in your lab. I told you the mountings weren’t strong enough. Once the place had filled up with gas, BANG! The whole fucking building would have been blown to pieces.’
‘It was just as well we took the drone up to the cavern when we did. If we’d left it there, we’d be screwed.’
�
��We need to find another building.’
‘No, leave that to me. I’ll call the original builders when I’m settled at CERN. They can rebuild it easily enough. All we’ve got to do is concentrate on the job in hand,’ Anubis said as his eyes returned to his copy of The Essential Backpackers Guide.
The Gatekeeper walked over to the bed and sat down next to Anubis. ‘Have you found us somewhere yet?’ he asked.
‘Yes, there’s a one-star guesthouse right next to the airport. It looks perfect.’ Anubis handed him the guide, still open at the page advertising the Shangri-La Guesthouse. The normally free publication had been supplied by the hotel porter for a fee of twenty-five pounds.
‘That body of yours is going to be a problem,’ the Gatekeeper said, casually flipping through the pages. ‘Somebody’s bound to report it missing sooner or later.’
‘Yes, I know. I’ve been thinking about that myself,’ Anubis replied.
The hotel porter knew when he was onto a good thing and the price for his normally free services was escalating exponentially. He suspected these guys were on-the-run and he was going to milk the situation for all it was worth. Two ham sandwiches and a couple of bottles of warm beer had cost them a hundred pounds. A free tourist map of London taken from a display rack in the hotel lobby was a staggering two-hundred and fifty pounds. These mugs will pay anything to get what they need, he thought to himself as he knocked on their bedroom door, holding an ancient mobile phone priced at a reasonable one thousand pounds. The Gatekeeper opened the door, ‘Sven! We thought you had forgotten us. Come in and sit down.’
Sven entered the room cautiously. They had not invited him in before. ‘I’m sorry it took so long. I had to go home to get it. But I’ve put twenty pounds of credit on it for you,’ he said, offering the mobile phone.
Anubis put the well-thumbed travel guide on the bedside table and, walking up to Sven, embraced him like a long-lost brother. Taken aback, Sven tossed the phone on the bed, ‘You can pay me later,’ he said, keen to get out of the room. Anubis smiled and, standing in front of Sven, took off his tee-shirt, pulling it over his head and dropping it onto the floor. ‘I’m not gay!’ Sven said uncomfortably, ‘I like girls... I don’t do this sort of thing!’
‘And, what sort of thing would that be?’ Anubis replied with a leery look in his eye. Sven turned for the door, but his path was now blocked by the Gatekeeper. Anubis rushed forward and pulled open Sven’s porter’s jacket, ripping at the shirt beneath. Sven’s arms were flailing about as he tried to fend off Anubis’ advances. But before he knew what was happening, Anubis had him in a bear-hug, pressing the naked flesh of their chests together. The grip was so tight that not even Haamiah could have sensed Anubis’ essence burrowing its way into Sven’s body. Then, with a sigh, Sven relaxed.
‘This will do very nicely,’ Anubis said, walking Sven’s body up and down the room. His former host slowly sat down on the edge of the bed and flopped back like a drunk passing out. Anubis did up the buttons of Sven’s shirt, straightened his tie and set the jacket squarely on his shoulders.
‘What now?’ the Gatekeeper said.
‘We kill two birds with one stone!’ Anubis replied, smiling into the poltergeist’s worried face, ‘Don’t you just love human proverbs.’
The Gatekeeper, Orion, pointed to the body on the bed, ‘And what are we going to do with that?’
‘He can stay here. Who’s going to believe his story anyway. When they eventually find him they’ll assume he’s had some sort of nervous breakdown following the explosion at the Ground Station. But more importantly, how are we going to get to the guest house.’
‘Why don’t we just drive?’
‘No, if we’re leaving him here, they’ll expect to find the car too. There must be a levitram nearby, we can use that.’
The hissing of Sven’s radio interrupted their conversation, ‘Sven, Sven, come in Sven, where are you, the duty manager’s looking for you.’
Anubis unclipped the radio from Sven’s belt and pressed the talk key, ‘Tell him I’m too busy.’
‘He’s not going to like that, Sven.’
‘Well, he’ll just have to lump it.’
‘Sven, are you trying to get fired? You had a warning yesterday!’
‘Tell him he can stick his job up his ass, I quit!’ Anubis released the talk key and slid the radio into Sven’s jacket pocket. He did a double take at Orion, who had remodelled his human form to mimic that of the weather presenter on the TV news channel. He now stood elegantly dressed in a crimson tie-front silk blouse, through which the over-filled bra could clearly be seen. Below was a black, knee-length pencil skirt, so tight that the Gatekeeper resembled a geisha as she walked across the room to show off his creation. The tanned, naked legs stood in tall high-heeled shoes the same colour as the crimson blouse. Eyes of the deepest brown were set in a perfectly proportioned face, framed by a head of auburn hair. Anubis studied the creation, not certain whether it was a good or bad idea, but one thing was for sure, nobody would be looking at Sven as they left the hotel.
28
JFK
Anubis and Orion had checked into the seedy guest house advertised in the travel brochure. It was close to Heathrow Airport and a perfect location to finalise their plans. The elderly landlady had seen it all before. The professional businessman accompanied by his beautiful young companion, signing the guesthouse register as Mr. and Mrs. Smith. The outfits were always the same; the plunging neckline, the short skirt, the ridiculously tall stiletto heels, and, of course, the impractically manicured fingernails.
As they sat in the crowded train heading for London, Anubis berated the Gatekeeper. Here they were trying to be discreet and now every eye in the carriage was staring at them, or rather, at her. It had its advantages though; when Anubis bought a Volvo estate car from a rather dubious car dealer, it had been Orion, or rather her cleavage, which had convinced the salesman to accept payment in US Dollars.
Orion’s flight to JFK departed the following morning and he was passing the time by skipping through the news channels on an ancient TV standing in the corner of their bedroom. Anubis was sitting at a small table by the window, reviewing his plan to construct a temporal bomb. The plan revolved around gaining access to the Large Hadron Collider in CERN, the only device on the planet that could produce temperatures high enough to distil trihadronite. He had originally planned to infiltrate the Cavendish Laboratory in Cambridge, taking over the body of a PhD student carrying out research at CERN. But, the untimely destruction of the Ground Station had scuppered that plan.
Orion was beginning to irritate Anubis, announcing each time the news updates mentioned the event. ‘Haven’t you got something more constructive to do?’ he snapped. Orion didn’t reply. Being omnitemporal the poltergeist had no need to rehearse his tasks. He knew that in three years, two months, four days, seven hours, six minutes and eight seconds, he would tighten the last of the bolts securing the trihadronite bomb to the Solar Explorer probe. Unfortunately, Anubis had to do things the hard way and sat drafting a list of tasks that had to be completed. The first item was to obtain a passport with a photo ID that would pass for Sven. He delegated this to the Gatekeeper, partly because he was pressed for time, but mostly to get her out of the room so he could concentrate on his scheme to infiltrate the LHC team. In the morning he would drive Orion to Heathrow Airport, before making his way to Folkestone to board a Eurotunnel car shuttle that would carry him under the English Channel to Calais. From there he would drive east across France towards the Swiss border and, once there, find a small town to operate from.
Anubis was asleep when Orion returned at two a.m. with the passport of an Englishman called Francis Wright. From the photograph inside, Sven wouldn’t have a problem getting passed immigration control. She went into the bathroom and washed the blood from under her finger nails, then returned to spend the rest of the night sat in a moth-eaten armchair by the table, waiting for the Sun to rise and Anubis to wake.
The full English breakfast served by the landlady was truly excellent and must have contained over twelve hundred calories. Anubis licked his lips in excitement as the plate containing rashers of thick-cut bacon, Cumberland sausages, hash-brown potatoes, mushrooms, tomatoes, black pudding and fried bread, all topped with a mountain of scrambled eggs, was set before him. Orion sat in silence, bemused by the human need to consume the charred flesh of dead life forms. ‘How did you come across Frank’s passport?’ Anubis asked, carefully mopping up the last of the juices with a piece of bread. Before Orion could reply the landlady returned to the dining room and presented Anubis with the bill for their stay at the Shangri-La Guesthouse. She stared at the Gatekeeper’s creation, concentrating on the love-bite on the side of her neck. ‘On a diet are we, luv?’ she said, referring to the fact that Orion had abstained from any breakfast. She turned back to Anubis. ‘We only take cash darling… is that okay?’
An air of anticipation filled the room as they prepared to leave. Orion was struggling to close the flaps of his pilot’s case which was now stuffed full with bundles of hundred dollar bills. Anubis had packed his holdall the previous night, hiding the plastic pouches containing over two million Euros beneath his clothes. As he drove the short distance to Heathrow Airport, he found himself wondering if putting a poltergeist in charge of such an important part of his plan had been a wise decision. But with Tanka almost certainly captured and returned to Creation, what alternative did he have?
The Gatekeeper watched the Volvo pull away before walking through the automatic doors into the departures hall, her stiletto heels clicking against the tiled floor. She made her way towards the ladies’ restroom and locked herself into one of the cubicles. Sitting on the toilet seat, she stared down at her hands, admiring the beautifully painted fingernails. Orion had enjoyed his creation, but Anubis was probably right, a less conspicuous avatar was required. And anyway, the passport in his case was in the name of José Santiago and he didn’t have the time to go foraging for a replacement. He sat and watched his petite, female fingers morph into those of a man’s. Then, when he was sure he was alone, he opened the cubicle door and walked swiftly out of the restroom.
Creation- The Auditor’s Apprentice Page 24