The Dark Master of Dogs

by Chris Ward

  Urla thought for a moment. ‘Get some undercover agents out on the street. Start spreading the word that it worked for us but had a malfunction. That it was supposed to kill them all, that it likely took them away to … I don’t know, eat or something.’ She shrugged. ‘Be creative. It couldn’t get any worse.’

  Justin nodded. ‘As you request. What should we do about the two escapees?’

  ‘Much as I couldn’t care less what happens to them, it would be good for public relations if they were recaptured and punished appropriately. Double your efforts to find them. Assign teams to interrogate their remaining family members. Use whatever force is necessary to ensure no information is hidden. Who do you have?’

  Devan has only a mother, a woman by all accounts in poor mental and physical health. His brother is missing, and has been for several weeks now. He has no known father.’

  ‘And the girl?’

  ‘She lived with her father, who is currently considered in exile. It was recently discovered that he sold his factory, Carmichael Industries, at short notice to a Mr. Crow. The new owner has closed the factory, making almost the entire workforce redundant. It’s the kind of deal that suggests Carmichael-Jones already had one foot on the boat.’

  ‘So no love there?’

  Justin shook his head. ‘Her parents were divorced, however. Her mother lives in Glastonbury with her new husband. They have a young daughter.’

  Urla nodded. ‘Do as you need to do. Get whatever information you can, then do with them as you will.’

  ‘I’ll ensure the teams are properly briefed,’ Justin said.

  Katherine Devan was brought in for questioning late in the afternoon. Justin had reported back that they had no luck finding Suzanne’s mother or her family, with neighbours informing them that the family had taken a planned trip to Bristol. The new husband was a financier, a regular recipient of travel permits. Disappointed but at least confident the family had not skipped the country, Urla requested a watch be placed on the house.

  In the meantime, she had to make do with what she had.

  Katherine Devan appeared drunk. Urla watched through a one-way mirror as two DCA agents interviewed her. On more than one occasion Katherine got angry, shouting that both her sons were worthless losers and that she was better off without them. In between outbursts, she told them she had been entirely unaware that Patrick had faced execution, not even knowing of his imprisonment.

  After more than two hours of fruitless interrogation, it was clear Katherine knew nothing. Even if she did, she appeared such a wretched specimen of society that it was likely she would remember nothing she had heard. Urla gave a disappointed shake of her head.

  ‘Send her home,’ she told Justin. ‘This is a waste of time.’

  ‘Just let her go?’

  Urla considered it then shook her head. ‘No. I find it unlikely he would bother to contact her if he came back. It seems she has no value to him.’

  ‘The house was searched. An illegal mobile phone was found in Patrick’s room. It had one number—to a similar phone found in Suzanne Carmichael-Jones’s room during the search after her father disappeared.’

  ‘How sweet. It’s like a storybook, isn’t it?’

  ‘You’re a little hardhearted,’ Justin said, flashing a grin, his professionalism briefly dropping.

  ‘I’m waiting for a man to come and melt it,’ she quipped back. Then, shrugging off a feeling she hoped might escalate next time they were alone, she said, ‘Send them both a warning. I’ll let you be creative.’

  ‘As you wish.’

  Justin left. Urla made a couple of phone calls to other local DCA branches, and found the situation the same. The people were angered, protests in most of the nearby towns turning to violent riots at the first sign of resistance. It was a critical period for the country, she realised. The people were still strong. They resented the loss of their public voice, but they weren’t going to go down without a fight. It would take decisive action to quell them, an action she had tried to take but failed.

  She made another phone call, this time to the regional head office in Bristol. The helicopter she had requested had still not been scrambled. She silently cursed the country for its annexation of international trade, leaving it unable to cope with even a limited fossil fuel demand. They would have the helicopter fueled and in the air by tonight, she was promised, but she heard the lie in the other person’s voice.

  All the major roads were blocked in a twenty-mile perimeter, and none had reported anyone meeting the descriptions of Patrick Devan or Suzanne Carmichael-Jones. It was quite possible they had gone off-road, but where would they go? Neither, that she could establish, had any links outside of the immediate area. Devan had an uncle, a prominent local civil lawyer, but when questioned he claimed to know nothing. He was estranged from his sister, barely even in contact with her family.

  He had, however, offered to let them search his offices, but they had found nothing of suspicion. It was tempting to pull him in for further questioning, but the arrest of such a well-known figure might cause a stir in the community that she didn’t have the resources to quell. She felt, sometimes, that she was living on a social knife edge.

  It made sense that they were hiding out in the local area. She had dog teams out, following their scent, but no recent trails had been found at any of the addresses of friends in the town.

  Witnesses had seen them getting into an old Ford electric car. One guard had even memorised the number plate, but it had come up unregistered, likely fake. Still, the car, a rusty brown with—according to the witness—a crack on its back windscreen, was a good lead. She had men out combing the town. No such model was currently registered in the local area, although three had been unregistered, meaning it was likely salvaged and restored.

  She pulled up a map on her computer, zooming out to view the surrounding area. Electric cars required charging, and charging points were few and far between. They also had a limited range between charges. Unless, of course, it was still nearby, parked somewhere close to a charging point which would also work as a hideout.

  Justin was sitting at his desk, a phone held between his shoulder and neck as he wrote something down on a piece of paper. As Urla approached, he ended the call and smiled.

  ‘Get me a list of electric car charging points registered to private users within a fifty-mile radius,’ she said.

  ‘Already did,’ Justin said, pulling a sheet of paper off a printer.

  Urla smiled. ‘Good, good. The net is closing. We’ll have them soon, I’m sure.’

  15

  Kurou

  The Huntsman that had once been both Race Devan and a stray Alsatian Kurou had bought from a local animal shelter lay naked on a gurney in front of him, its chest cavity held open by clamps as he worked at repairing the damage inside. Two bullets had pierced it, luckily narrowly missing its functioning human organs but damaging some of the implanted wires which kept it under his control.

  ‘Oh, grandiosity, oh severity, oh disheartened eyes of mine,’ Kurou hummed as he worked, his fingers a blur as they soldered, cut and tightened, adjusted, and mended, slowly putting the biotechnological marvel back together.

  Divan was lucky. He had taken nine bullets, but six had been stopped by the armour-plating. One had penetrated the left shoulder, rendering that arm useless, the others the chest cavity. All the damage could be repaired, but it was disheartening how close his prized creation had come to failing on its first mission. Sure, it had faced odds of a hundred to one, but he was aiming at a thousand. It wasn’t so outlandish to consider the creature a nearly immortal warrior. He had made good attempts in the past, but now, in the twilight of his long life, he was reaching his zenith. His masterpiece was close to completion.

  ‘More plating,’ he muttered, adjusting with pliers a sheet of metal insert which had bent beneath a bullet’s impact. Additional armour was the answer, but was it worth the loss of speed and agility? He wanted to get his hands on c
arbon fibre or even titanium, as regular steel was too heavy to be used excessively. He was still working on reinforced metal inserts to strengthen the arms, legs, and torso, but building a system to connect the robotics with the human tissue was proving tough. Once, more years ago than he cared to remember, he’d had unlimited resources at his disposal: as much money as he needed, suppliers from anywhere in the world.

  Now he was left picking through scrap.

  ‘There.’ He pulled the cavity closed and clipped it shut. He watched, wondering if he could see the tissue regeneration with his naked eye. The incision knitting together, the wound turning pink, perhaps?

  It was still too slow to see, but he hoped further experiments would accelerate it, eventually leading to the regeneration of organs and bones. He was close to a breakthrough which would stun the scientific community … if there still was one.

  He chuckled. Fighting a lone fight, he was still putting up a hell of a front against a rising tide of enemies. He left Divan alone in the research room and went into his office, where Laurette had left him his lunch.

  Scones, jam and cream, and a tuna sandwich cut into neat triangles with the crusts removed.

  How very quaint. Kurou did love his regional delicacies, and Laurette had failed to disappoint, Carmichael-Jones’s staff kitchen providing adequate provisions which would last them a few weeks yet. Long enough, he hoped, to complete his final project.

  Laurette had also left tea in a chipped but still elegant Cath Kidston teapot, alongside a copy of today’s newspaper, a subscription of Carmichael-Jones’s which Kurou had seen no need to cancel.

  Today, though, he felt his blood boiling as he read the headline.

  N.F.P. WIN 87 BY-ELECTION SEATS. CALE REMAINS UNSTOPPABLE.

  Cale. Maxim Cale.

  A man whom Kurou had left for dead more than twenty years ago, whom he had wanted to die in slow, painful agony, but whom he now regretted leaving alone.

  A man who had risen from the dead.

  Calling himself the Grey Man, Cale had terrorised parts of Eastern Europe after setting loose a deadly army of machines that Kurou himself had fought to repel. Eventually, sheer weight of numbers on the other side had broken the army’s back, but after leaving catastrophic damage to Europe’s infrastructure and information highways, the person calling himself the Grey Man had disappeared….

  Reemerging two decades later as a man slated to becoming Britain’s next prime minister.

  With a furious shriek Kurou shredded the paper with his birdlike hands, then swept the lunch Laurette had prepared to the floor. This in turn only incensed him more, for he had encountered the Grey Man at a time when his own deprivation had been at its lowest, when he had resorted to human flesh for sustenance. Leaning over, he scooped up what he could of the scones’ remains and shoveled them into his mouth.

  He called Laurette to clean up the mess, then returned to his workshop. Divan’s repairs were progressing well, so he left the Huntsman where he lay and went through into another room where three works-in-progress lay on different gurneys in various states of repair. He checked their heart monitors, scowling as he saw the blip on one had weakened since his last check. The man was unlikely to survive the surgery and genetic tampering procedures Kurou had undertaken to bind the dog’s snout to the man’s face.

  He shrugged, trying to brush off his frustration. He had carried out the same procedures with these as he had with Race Devan, but while Race had proved an unparalleled success, the others were failing to live up to his hopes.

  The science was correct; his knowledge of genetics and biotechnology was unrivaled in the world. Were it not for the abomination of both his appearance and his deeds, he might have won science prizes the world over and advanced technology for a power-hungry generation obsessed with increasingly complex gadgetry.

  But playing God was not something the foolish unwashed deserved. Only he, Kurou, could play God, as he had done numerous times before. This time, however, he was failing to live up to his own massive expectations.

  Perhaps it was a simple case of subject material. Race had been strong and lean; the three lying before him were homeless runaways.

  Even though two of the three might survive, preliminary testing showed they would be far behind Divan in terms of strength, agility and durability, mere cannon fodder in a full-scale assault.

  No, he needed better subject material.

  Dogs were easy to find. Every other home had some overfed guard dog to protect them against the growing unrest, but people were another matter.

  He had got lucky with Race Devan. Race had shown up in the right place at the right time, drunk, easily fooled, easily sedated. But Kurou was aware of his limitations: he didn’t have the strength of his youth, and his workforce currently considered of Laurette, one damaged Huntsman, and a few basic service robots.

  It was time to call in his favours.

  He picked up the phone and called Tommy Crown.

  The lawyer picked up on the second ring. ‘Who is this?’

  Kurou flashed a crooked smile. ‘Ah, the delightful Mr. Crown, he of the blessed luck.’

  A long pause came before Tommy answered. ‘Kurou.’

  ‘The deed is done as requested. Your nephew and his fine young girlfriend are safe, and something of an upheaval has begun around the town which might offer you a few stepping stones in your quest for greater social status. It’s time for you to uphold your side of the bargain. I need people.’

  Tommy’s long outtake of breath might have been inaudible to someone with lesser hearing, but to Kurou it sounded like a wave drawing back on a rocky shore.

  ‘I’ll do what I can.’

  ‘Quickly. I cannot wait. I feel something is about to happen, and I need to be prepared.’

  ‘I said I’ll do what I can. It won’t be easy.’

  ‘I need strong, solid men. No drug addicts or wasters. I need blood made of blood, not blood made of piss and vinegar. I need blood I can fill with ire, with grit and steel—’

  ‘All right, all right, I’ll try.’

  ‘Hurry. Can I expect a first shipment within a few days?’

  The rustle on the other end of the line sounded like Tommy shaking his head, but he said, ‘I’ll bring some as soon as possible.’

  ‘Good, good. And remember, sire, we’re a team now. You scratch my misshapen back, and I’ll scratch your bowed one in returned. Mutual partnership and teamwork set a ship to sail quickly, don’t you think?’

  Tommy’s answer was a grunt.

  ‘Good.’

  Kurou felt satisfied. With someone else he might have expected their deal to fail, but he could see Tommy’s character in the way he moved, the way he talked. He was a hard, hard man, but one of his word. And one who, thanks to Kurou’s little game, felt a healthy sense of fear.

  ‘The sun will shine in the end,’ Kurou whispered, looking down at a picture from the newspaper he had shredded that lay by his foot. It showed a tall, shadowy figure standing outside Parliament Tower in London. The figure, face nearly hidden by shadows cast by an aide holding an umbrella over his head, had his arms aloft in triumph.

  ‘Dear Maxim, I would so like to see you again,’ Kurou whispered. ‘Would it be okay if I brought a friend?’

  16

  Urla

  She held binoculars to her face, surveying the mob which had formed outside the northern branch of Wells’s DCA department. Only three agents were on duty at any one time, but the crowd numbered a couple of hundred. Chants rang out, discordant, poorly organised shouts of ‘Give us back our voice,’ ‘Free all political prisoners,’ ‘No voice, no freedom,’ and ‘Silent people, silent government.’

  What disturbed her most was that some people had unearthed photographs of both Patrick Devan and Suzanne Carmichael-Jones and were waving about placards with their enlarged faces taped above crudely written slogans. What did these idiots think, that Devan and Carmichael-Jones had become folk heroes, later day Robin Hoods wh
o would dance down from Cheddar Gorge to save them?

  She shook her head and turned to Justin, sitting beside her in the parked, unmarked car.

  ‘It’s getting worse,’ she said. ‘We have to quell this or it could spread. Those escaped kids have become a rallying cry.’

  ‘Cut out their heart,’ Justin said.

  ‘How do I go about that?’

  ‘Their leadership. You planned to execute a handful of dissidents, but they were just kids. We need to find the people these mobs look up to.’

  ‘The hunt for Devan and Carmichael-Jones is well underway. I expect them recaptured within the next couple of days.’

  ‘I don’t mean the kids. I mean the people behind the scenes. Mobs like this don’t just come together. There are people in bars or clubs bringing the people together, organising them, telling them where to meet.’

  ‘So, how do we find them?’

  ‘The easiest way would be to get an informer, to infiltrate them, but that could take time. In the meantime we have to do a bit of guesswork. Look for those in positions of power among the underclasses. The workcrew foremen, the heads of local community groups, civil lawyers, charity leaders. Those are the types who could be behind this.’

  Urla shook her head. ‘It’s too indiscriminate. We could end up incarcerating innocent people.’

  ‘There are no innocents in a civil uprising,’ Justin said. ‘There are those who conform, and those who don’t.’

  She looked across at him. He was staring straight ahead with a look of utter concentration, and for the first time she wondered what kind of man she was taking into her bed. His coldness made her own feel like a warm shower.

  ‘We can’t do anything without asking a few questions,’ she said. ‘Send more men out into the streets, plain-clothed, listening for names. A simple suspicion is enough justification.’