Sealed With A Death

by James Silvester

  Whyte nodded slowly.

  “Hang on, who told Lake about this?”

  “That would be Ismail, Lucie.”

  Whether it was the news itself or how quickly she swivelled to face him, she wasn’t sure, but Lucie felt her legs weaken and her knees almost give way. Steadying herself she stared back hard, almost daring her friend to repeat his words, so fearful was she that it would turn out to be untrue.

  “Ismail?” she whispered.

  “They dumped him in the sea but he managed to get back to shore and was picked up by a local dog-walker.”

  “How is he? Is he alright?”

  She asked as earnestly as she had ever asked anything, and the conflict of emotions on her face must have been obvious to Algers, who moved quickly to reassure her, at least as best he could.

  “He’s alive, that’s the main thing, and he’s making sense. Now he just needs time to heal.”

  “Thank God, thank God…” she breathed, looking upwards with her tears unhidden, before looking pointedly back at Algers. “And you couldn’t tell me this outside?”

  “I couldn’t find the words. He was very insistent that someone came to find you.”

  She reciprocated his smile and re-ordered her mind as quickly as she was able, parking both her elation at Ismail’s survival and the sudden and unexpected unease she felt at the prospect of making good on the promise she had made him.

  “Well now you have it’s time we found the others, too. Mr Whyte?”

  “Oh, Jarvis, please.”

  “Jarvis,” she said, acknowledging the curiosity of good manners in such circumstances. “Over in the storage block I saw blueprints of the whole complex; there’s a room on this level somewhere that isn’t covered by the security cameras, not even the corridor outside.”

  “Can you remember where?” Jarvis quizzed, his forehead crinkling, as he began tapping at the computer on his desk.

  The trio gathered around the twin screens as Whyte brought up floorplans and diagrams, Lucie frowning as she tried to remember the layout she had seen.

  “There!” she shouted, triumphantly. “That’s the one!”

  “And you think the missing women are there?” pressed Algers.

  “I’d bet my favourite harp on it. Jarvis, can you show us where it is?”

  “Of course,” he replied, the eagerness to be of help obvious in his inflection. “Should I bring these papers too?”

  “I’ll look after those,” said Algers, reaching over and plucking them from his hand. “Now where’s that room?”

  The two spies followed the perspiring Whyte out of his office and past several others before turning down a corridor that could well have been untouched since the building was erected, the paint on the walls chipped and faded, and the atmosphere muggy and dusty with lack of use. At the very end of the corridor stood padlocked double doors and Lucie banged upon it, receiving no answer for her trouble.

  “Where’s the key kept?” she asked Whyte, who stuttered in response.

  “Never mind,” Algers cut in, slipping a thin and well-worn skeleton from his pocket and jimmying the lock open. “I never leave home without it.”

  The door was rigid and stiff, and Lucie pushed hard until it opened, and she half-fell, half-ran into the room, her eyes wide with elation that she had found them.

  Her face dropped as elation turned instantly to disappointment and landed with a hollow thud in her gut. The room was bare, the only sound within it the hum of the industrial lights called reluctantly into action as Whyte flicked the switch. Of the women there was no sign.

  Lucie shrugged off Algers’ outstretched arm, determined to at least do the victims of Butcher’s actions the honour of indulging her rage at their loss. There were four windows in the room, all blocked by blinds, and Lucie pulled at the nearest one so violently it came loose from its hinges and clattered to the floor. Lucie directed her furious stare to the floodlit gravel below.

  “I’m sorry, Lucie,” said Algers, softly.

  “Not as sorry as Butcher will be,” she answered, half-turning back to her friend. “Except…”

  Her eyes caught by something on the back wall. Moving over to the spot that had captured her attention, Lucie reached up and pressed her fingers against a row of nails, following them until they met with the ceiling in the corner.

  “What’s underneath this room, Jarvis?”

  “Nothing of any importance,” he answered her, confused.

  “Tell me!”

  “It’s the motor-pool,” he blustered, “the garage.”

  “Thought so, the wall stops here but the windows keep going.”

  Algers had joined her at the far end of the room, running his own fingers over the opposite edge.

  “Hardboard… It’s a false wall! Can you hear anything?”

  “Not sure,” answered Lucie, her ear pressed against it. “Need to take a look.”

  “On three?”

  “Three.”

  Taking a few steps back, the pair charged their shoulders against the hardboard, a gargantuan ‘crack’ sounding as their weight clattered against it, leaving the façade dented and splintered. A second second charge saw them break through, leaving them crumpled on the floor, a cloud of wood dust in their eyes and lungs.

  Coughing heartily, Lucie blinked her sore eyes free of the rough particles, straining to see what they had uncovered, but it was the voice of Whyte that told her what she wanted to hear.

  “Oh, my…” said Whyte as he stepped over the sprawled pair. “Oh… oh, my.”

  Scrambling to her feet, Lucie stared open mouthed at the sight before her. The space was larger than she’d expected, as though a conference room had been cut in two by the now destroyed false wall. The windows had been boarded up, the only light coming from a single light screwed into the roof and the wall they had broken had collapsed upon a neat row of sleeping bags, now covered in splinters and dust. Across from them were three couches arranged in a group, and it was to them that Lucie’s eyes were instantly dragged.

  Two women sat on each couch, unwashed, dishevelled and pale. None had moved despite the manner of the trio’s entrance, though their eyes were wide and staring. The faces of each of them were imprinted on Lucie’s soul. She wanted at once to embrace them with joy yet weep for the tortures they had endured, turning them into living shadows of themselves. Algers moved to go to them but she put her hand gently on his arm and stepped ahead of him.

  “Hagne?” Lucie asked, moving slowly towards the woman closest to her on the first couch. “Hagne Pappas?”

  Hagne’s blank eyes almost flickered for a moment before drifting off focus and staring at the wall behind Lucie’s head.

  “Bastards,” she whispered, shaking her head. “Bastards.”

  “The fruits of Butcher’s labour,” spat Algers, grimly.

  “Do you think they can be treated?”

  “Anyone can be treated, Lucie. I just hope it doesn’t take too long to work.”

  “Hagne,” Lucie urged again, returning to the woman and kneeling by her side, I need you and your friends to come with us, is that ok?”

  “You can’t ask her like that.”

  Lucie spun around to the new voice, accented with a Polish inflection and coming from a woman with dirty blonde hair on the next couch.

  “You have to order her,” the woman said weakly. “You have to order all of us.”

  Lucie crossed to her and looked into her face. Like Hagne, her eyes would not focus, as though she were talking to a dream.

  “You’re Aga, aren’t you?” she softly asked.

  “Used to be,” came the answer, her voice so weak Lucie could barely hear it. “He calls me something else now.”

  “Butcher?”

  Aga stared, the strain of trying to remember showing on her face, but no more words came. Lucie took her hand and softly held it, turning back to Algers who was swallowing emotion of his own.

  “That wall wasn’t something they to
ok down and put up every day,” she said. “How was food brought to them, how did he get here when he wanted to…” She tailed off, the words she intended to speak making her angry and sick.

  “How about through here?” Algers said as he scanned the room and spotted a square hatch beneath a large table.

  Pushing the table out of the way he dropped to the floor and examined the hatchway.

  “Locked,” he said, “from the underside.”

  Rising to his feet he stamped hard but fruitlessly at the hatch, which stayed resolutely rigid in the face of his assault.

  “It won’t budge?”

  “Not an inch. Damn it! I’d much rather try and get them out through there than try walking them all through the site in full view of security. If we can get them into the garage, we can grab some vehicles and drive them straight out.”

  “With no way of knowing who’s on Butcher’s payroll and who isn’t we can’t risk walking them anywhere. What about from the other side, up through the garage?”

  As she spoke, the hatch began to move, Algers gripping the edge and yanking it upwards, dropping it on the floor beside him as the head of Jarvis Whyte popped up through the hole.

  “Sorry if I shocked you,” he said in his irritatingly polite tones, “but I suddenly remembered where the old fire escape used to be before we refurbished.”

  “Jarvis, I could kiss you,” Lucie shouted with a grin. “If, you know, you hadn’t voted away my rights and freedoms…”

  Jarvis nodded in understanding and Lucie helped Aga to her feet.

  “Aga, we’re to here to take you home, all of you. This is Jarvis, he’s going to lead you down some stairs.”

  Aga nodded and walked painfully to the hatch, Lucie turning back for the remaining five who stayed sitting on their couches.

  Lucie went to each of them in turn, urging and coaxing them to stand without success, before Aga turned back as she stepped through the hatch and spoke again.

  “I told you,” she said, “you have to order them. They’ll only respond to commands now.”

  “But you don’t,” replied Lucie in admiration.

  “No,” Aga acknowledged, “but I do what I have to, to survive.”

  She stepped through the hatch and Lucie turned to Algers who cleared his throat and winced in distaste of what he was about to do.

  “You will stand!” he commanded in his most booming voice, the prisoners responding weakly but without complaint.

  “I can’t do this,” he whispered to Lucie who looked at him with sympathetic understanding.

  “You have to,” she told him.

  “Walk to the hatch!”

  The captives shuffled slowly to the hatchway and began to follow Aga down the cold concrete steps. Lucie held Kasper’s hand as he became the unwitting director of a macabre puppet show they both hoped would soon be at an end.

  TWENTY-SIX

  The stairway was cold and poorly lit but led at the bottom through double doors to the large garage, filled with fleet vehicles of all shapes and sizes. Immediately catching Lucie’s eye were three minibuses emblazoned with the WaterWhyte logo, Whyte explaining that corporate transport was often more cost effective when transferring engineers between sites or to other locations for sub-contracted work. The explanation didn’t interest Lucie as much as the vehicle’s usefulness, and the erstwhile captives were quickly aboard the lead bus, Algers assuring her that this would not be the first vehicle he had hotwired.

  Aga’s voice was becoming stronger with each step she took away from the hated room and Lucie felt comfortable leaving her with the others while she and Algers took care of the unresolved issue of the Red Mako, an uncertain Whyte tagging behind them. Leaving the motor pool, the trio walked the couple of hundred yards to the site’s pièce de résistance, at least according to Whyte.

  The dock hall was an enormous structure of iron and steel, and Lucie could not help but be impressed by the engineering skill which went into building it, let alone what it contained. Though Lucie’s less than business-like attire raised the eyebrows of the guards they passed en route, the three proceeded unhindered to swipe themselves in.

  Inside, the structure was even more impressive, housing three drydocks, upon two of which small vessels sat in early states of assembly. But it was the slipway built into the central drydock that captured their attention. The Red Mako, or at least its skeletal frame, patiently awaited the attentions of its builders. Sleekly lined and resplendent in gleaming scarlet paint where complete, with the outline of a bridge that would not have looked out of place on a yacht, the boat sat in mute expectation of the praise most observers would afford it. Not so Lucie, whose face twisted contemptuously at the thought of the plans Butcher and Al-Khatani had for the project.

  Algers skipped ahead, climbing over the port bow with unexpected alacrity and ducking out of site. Lucie and her unexpected new ally stepped to the edge, Whyte reaching out and touching his product as though it were a treasured but aloof lover.

  “There she is,” he said, a hint of awe in his voice. “The Red Mako. Forty-five feet long, diesel and water jet engines giving it a speed of up to fifty knots, carrying a crew of eighteen. Similar to the American Long-Range Interceptor, only far, far superior.”

  “Would you like a moment alone with it?” asked Lucie, her eyebrow raised.

  “It was to be my company’s crowning achievement,” Whyte responded with whimsy. “Our statement to the world that Brexit Britain was open for business and would thrive.”

  “By ramping up arms sales to dictators?”

  “Someone was always going to,” Whyte justified, unrepentantly. “It’s just a matter of markets.”

  “It’s a matter of genocide now Jarvis.”

  Their eyes turned to Algers as he appeared back on deck, his creased features even grimmer than usual as he clambered over the guard rail and made his way back down towards them, clutching something in his hand.

  “At least an intended genocide.”

  Whyte’s face grew as pale as his name and he shook his head in defiance of reality.

  “No, no. no,” he insisted. “That’s nonsense. Butcher might well be a pervert and I’m sorrier than you can imagine for the horrors those young women have seen, but the only weapons intended for the Red Mako are three machine gun turrets a couple of grenade launchers, plus a short range missile launcher for retaliatory strikes on coastal invaders.”

  “Yes, Jarvis,” Algers calmly concurred. “But the problem is what those launchers are firing.”

  “You mean?” Lucie interjected.

  Algers produced the object he had carried from the boat, holding what looked like a large metal egg, dull grey and with white words painted around it.

  “Hydrogen Cyanide grenades, at least that’s my guess; but we can get Lake to confirm it. There are no missiles present yet but they’ll probably spread volatile liquids while the grenades are useful for close range gas attacks.”

  “What…?” Whyte’s voice was as weak as his flesh was pale and he reached out to take the object from Algers, rolling it around in front of his eyes in disbelief. “We don’t use chemicals…”

  “You do now. That’s what your project was being used for, Jarvis,” Algers rammed home. “Imagine a small fleet of these bad boys firing nerve agents onto Yemen from the sea; imagine the carnage that would cause…”

  “But I don’t understand,” Lucie interjected, “the weapons systems weren’t included in the contract, why is the prototype…?” She broke off as her mind began to answer her own question. “Of course; good old plausible deniability at work again.”

  “Exactly,” Algers confirmed. “If any trace of the chemicals was found, the government can legitimately claim that Britain did nothing but provide the shell; the weapons systems were none of our business.”

  “And by not throwing weapons open to general recruitment, the industry is none the wiser and there’s no risk of a leak. Butcher and Al-Khatani use their own people and
if anyone asks too many questions, the only paper trail leads back to WaterWhyte… and you.”

  She plucked the grenade from his hand and held it up in front of Whyte’s eyes.

  “Al-Khatani gets his massacre, Butcher gets his harem, and you? You get stiffed as the patsy.”

  No words fell from Whyte’s open mouth and Lucie ignored him, turning back to Algers.

  “You need to get the women out of here and to safety.”

  “What about you?”

  “I’ve got unfinished business with our friend the Mako.”

  “Are you sure? We can leak what we have to the press and…”

  “That won’t be enough Kasper, you know that. Butcher’s allies in the press will tip him the wink and before any authorities get here this place will be clean as a whistle and the women out there slandered and pilloried, if they’re even reported on. No, I’ve got an idea…”

  ⌖

  Lucie and Algers argued back and forth, cursing each other’s stubbornness and raising and dismissing alternatives while a bewildered Whyte looked on. Eventually it was settled, and Lucie walked with them both to the dock hall entrance, embracing Algers and offering Whyte her hand.

  “Ms Musilova,” Whyte began, his voice nervous and embarrassed. “It seems I was wrong; about a great many things. I must apologise for my part in this, and I unreservedly do. You can be assured at least that there will be no cover up from me. I’ll do everything in my power to expose what’s gone on here, and to help those women get back to some kind of… normality?”

  The man was struggling to articulate what his face told Lucie he felt, and she nodded in curt understanding.

  “They’re going to need a lot of care,” she replied. “And the government are going to do their best to wash their hands of all this.”

  Whyte nodded vigorously.

  “I’ll certainly do my part to ensure they can’t.”

  Lucie began to break away but the Brexiteer interjected once more.

  “Look, I realise that ignorance is no defence, and I realise I’ve been somewhat lax in my affairs of late, but nonetheless I want you to know that this wasn’t what I intended, either of the project, or…”