Panic Room

by Robert Goddard

  ‘Sì. La verità. The truth absolute. Cascade will happen once the panic room is breached.’

  ‘And you’ve been pumping these … these nanobots … into the world for, like, years?’

  ‘Years, yes. Not so many years when they have been properly designed for the job they will do. But enough years. They will work. Cascade will work.’

  ‘Why did you go along with it?’

  ‘Like I told you. It is madness. But it is sanity also. There is no right answer. Only a wrong answer now and a worse answer later. A choice of catastrophes. Jack would say – Astrid would say – I have lost my nerve. I guess they would be right. But it does not matter now. They have taken it from my hands.’

  ‘But … Jane – Astrid – paid for Holly Walsh to get hold of Ditrimantelline. And you’re saying … it’ll kill her.’

  ‘I guess Astrid wants her friend to be comfortable before the end. Her mind cuts through everything. That is why she put her family out of her life. So she would see clearly – without conscience. It is simple to her. Like it is to Jack. Problem. Solution. No turning back. No doubts. No compromises. I thought I could persuade her to wait at least. There is a chance, with a switch to renewables in the next decade, that we can get where we need to be without … this. But I was kidding myself. She believes like Jack believes. They have always been partners in this. They won’t stop. No more waiting. No more hesitation. This is it for them. The moment.’

  ‘As soon as the panic room’s opened …’

  ‘It begins.’ Filippo marches over to the screen behind me and bangs helplessly on it with the flat of his hand. ‘And it cannot be stopped.’

  They walked back out into the hall. Don did not know what to do. As soon as the panic room was open, he would no longer be useful to French. But there were no rescues on hand. And he had run out of diversions and delays. ‘Why did you kill Coleman?’ he asked, in a last, futile attempt to postpone the reckoning.

  ‘He was greedy,’ French replied. ‘And he asked too many questions. You’re in danger of doing that yourself, Don.’ He pointed his gun at him. ‘I want the panic room open. And I want it open now.’

  ‘OK. This way.’

  Don led them into the lounge. He moved to where Far West was hanging. He gazed into the painting’s blue and green blocks of colour and imagined, for a second, that he was gliding peacefully above the Cornish coast on some gentle thermal, as, according to Harkness, the artist had – and Harkness too, in his turn. But there was no flight path to carry Don away from the fix he was in.

  He lifted the painting off its hook and propped it against the wall. There, in front of him, was the safe, about two feet square, grey steel, with a countersunk handle and dial. There were numbers inscribed round the dial, running from zero to a hundred.

  French rounded on Zlenko. ‘How come you didn’t find this?’

  Zlenko’s answer was a shrug.

  ‘Fuck me,’ said French. He turned back to Don. ‘What’s in there?’

  ‘A switch. Throw it and the panic-room door opens.’

  ‘And Harkness told you the combination?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘So, open the safe, Don. Now.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘What?’

  Don swallowed hard. He was about to attempt the most outrageous bluff of his life – or his death. ‘Here’s the deal. You two go upstairs and wait by the panic-room door. I open the safe and throw the switch. The door opens for you. I leave. We never meet again.’

  ‘No, Don.’ French raised his gun and aimed it straight at Don’s head. ‘Here’s the deal. Gennady goes upstairs. I watch you open the safe and throw the switch. Then, when he calls down to say the door’s open, I join him up there. And you leave. And we never meet again.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘You open that safe or I’ll blow your brains out.’

  ‘Then you’ll never get into the panic room. The police will find their way here before you can cut through the wall. After the carnage you’ve strewn around the neighbourhood, it really won’t be long before they show up. I think you realize that.’

  ‘Open it.’

  ‘I will. On my terms.’

  ‘You don’t get to dictate terms, Don. Not with a gun to your head.’

  ‘But I do. Take the deal or fire away. Your choice.’

  I punch in Don’s number on my phone. The call goes straight to voicemail. He’s not answering. Maybe – just maybe – because he’s at Wortalleth West.

  Filippo guesses what I’m thinking and grabs the landline phone that’s standing on a side-table. He plonks it on the conference table in front of me, the cable stretched taut from the wall. ‘Landline to landline will give you the best connection. Nine for an outside line. Then double zero double four for the UK and drop the zero from the local code. You understand?’ His voice cracks with the tension of the moment. His face is tight. His eyes are staring at me intently.

  I nod, pick up the receiver and press nine. A second passes. Then there’s a dialling tone. I start stabbing in the numbers.

  The bluff had worked, as far as it went. Don intended to make a run for the front door as soon as he threw the switch. He was gambling French and Zlenko would be so glad to be inside the panic room at last that they would forget about him long enough for him to make his escape. It was quite some gamble. But it was the only card he had to play.

  Three loud thumps on the bathroom floor above his head were the signal that French and Zlenko were in place. There was nothing for it now but to go ahead.

  Don dialled one four times anti-clockwise, eight three times clockwise, seventy twice anti-clockwise. Then he eased the dial back in a clockwise direction. That would release the lock if the safe worked as he expected.

  A click told him it did. He lowered the handle and pulled the door open.

  There were a few documents lying inside the safe. But what he was looking for was also there: a red fuse-switch, housed in a plastic frame embedded in the rear wall of the safe. The switch was down, in the off position.

  At that moment, the telephone started ringing. Leaning back slightly, Don could see it through the open doorway that led to the library-cum-study. It was there, on Harkness’s desk. The main phone in the kitchen would be ringing as well. Don could not actually remember if there was a second extension in the master bedroom. But, if there was, that too would be ringing.

  He could not seem to think clearly in that moment. He wanted the phone to stop ringing. That one thought at least formed in his mind.

  What he did next hardly involved a decision. He walked into the study, moving fast, intent on picking up the phone and cutting the call.

  I’m not sure what goes through my mind while I’m waiting for the call to connect and start ringing at the other end. There’s no way to contain what Filippo has said. I’m floundering. I’m sweating – a cold, fearful sweat. Cascade is real. But it’s also unreal. And I wonder, like really truly actually wonder, what are my chances? Vegetarian. Fresh food, mostly. Quite a lot of organic. No pills. No cosmetics. No nothing. Do I get to survive? And if I do … what will survival be like in a world reshaped by Jack Harkness?

  ‘Hello?’

  Why Don raised the phone to his ear and spoke he could not have explained in any way that was rational. But, picking up the handset, he had sensed somehow that he wanted, oh how he wanted, to speak to the person on the other end of the line.

  ‘Don.’ It was Blake. It was her, by some crazy miracle. And he was so glad to hear her voice he could hardly speak.

  I’m so glad to hear his voice I can hardly speak. But I have to. Fast.

  ‘Tell me quick. You’re at Wortalleth West. Has the panic room been opened?’

  ‘Not yet. But—’

  ‘It mustn’t be. You understand me, Don? Nothing you’ve ever done in your entire life matters as much as this. All our futures depend on that room staying shut.’

  ‘You sound like—’

  ‘Harkness rigged the p
anic room to trigger something if it’s opened, too big – too awful – to describe.’

  ‘That’s not what he told French.’

  ‘But it’s what I’m telling you, Don. For all our sakes – the sakes of millions of people you’ve never met – do whatever you need to do to stop that door being opened.’

  ‘That’s—’

  Then the line goes dead.

  The line went dead, as abruptly as if it had been physically cut – as perhaps it had. Don dropped the handset back into the cradle and moved towards the door into the lounge, his reactions slowed by the unfathomable magnitude of what Blake had said. ‘The sakes of millions of people you’ve never met.’ What did that mean? What could it mean?

  Then he saw French ahead of him, framed in the doorway between the lounge and the hall. ‘What the fuck d’you think you’re doing?’ French demanded. ‘Why haven’t—’

  At that moment, he noticed the safe was open. Don realized the switch must be visible from where he was standing. Which explained why French suddenly lost interest in anything except crossing the room, reaching into the safe and flicking the switch to the on position.

  Don had to stop him. He charged forward, preparing to rugby-tackle French.

  French did not seem to see him coming. He bent forwards as Don approached, but not in self-defence. He raised a hand weakly to his temple.

  Then Don collided with him. And they went down in a heap. But French did not move after hitting the floor. He lay where he was, slack-mouthed and blank-eyed, his arms and legs limp.It was clear he would never have made it to the safe, with or without Don’s intervention. His fall at Tredarvas had just caught up with him.

  As Don scrambled to his feet, time squeezed itself into a suspended moment of hesitation. He heard Blake’s words, as if she was repeating them inside his head. ‘All our futures depend on that room staying shut.’

  He moved quickly to the safe, closed the door, raised the handle and turned the dial until he heard the click of the lock engaging. He pulled once on the handle to be sure, then swung round and headed for the hall.

  As he reached the doorway, a bulky figure loomed suddenly in front of him. Zlenko pulled back his arm and elbowed Don hard in the chest. And Don went down.

  From the floor, Zlenko looked taller than he really was. He towered above Don. But, for the moment, he was not looking at Don. His glance moved to French and then to the safe.

  Then Don heard in the distance the wow-wow-wow of a police siren. Zlenko heard it too. His face twisted in annoyance more than anger, as if the arrival of the police was a predictable setback, one he could readily accommodate in his generally phlegmatic view of the world he moved in.

  He pointed his gun at Don and raised his other hand, as if ordering Don to remain still and silent. He was listening to the siren, Don realized, judging whether it was drawing closer and whether there was more than one. It sounded to Don like yes on both counts. Which, in that moment, sounded like bad news for him.

  Zlenko lowered his hand, as if he had decided what to do. But he never got to do it.

  Don saw a blurred movement behind Zlenko, then heard a dull, heavy thwack. Zlenko made no sound, but he fell like a demolished smoke-stack, crumpling vertically before sprawling out across the floor, finishing on his side, staring at Don through sightless eyes.

  Glenys Probert was standing where Zlenko had been standing an instant before. She was dressed, as on every previous occasion Don had met her, in boots, denim shorts and a T-shirt, this one adorned with a large, tattered black disc and the faded words beneath it TOTAL ECLIPSE OF THE SUN CORNWALL 11 AUGUST 1999. In her right hand she was clutching a large steel exercise weight, one end of which was smeared with blood.

  ‘Think I’ve done for him?’ she asked, almost matter-of-factly.

  Don propped himself up on one elbow and looked at Zlenko, then at Glenys. All he could say was, ‘Maybe.’

  ‘Are you all right?’

  ‘I think so.’ There was a sharp pain in Don’s left thigh. He reached down, wondering what kind of injury it was, only to discover the screwdriver he had taken from French’s car was sticking into his leg. He pulled it out of his pocket. ‘Where … where did you come from, Glenys?’

  ‘The basement. I hid down there when you lot pulled in. Didn’t like the look of this pair. I’d just that minute come off the phone to the police after finding Coleman’s body. There was nowhere else I could rightly go. I took this’ – she nodded to the weight in her hand – ‘from the gym. Just in case. Came up when I heard the sirens.’ She looked round. ‘Sounds like they’ll be here any minute.’

  ‘But why are you here, Glenys? Harkness told you to stay away.’

  ‘It was the way he told me, I s’pose. Not sure, really. But I’ve always been one to do what I’m told not to do. Know what I mean?’

  ‘I think I do.’

  ‘Is Harkness around somewhere? I got the feeling he told me to stay away because he was planning a visit.’

  ‘Harkness is dead, Glenys. So’s Wynsum Fry. And a policeman. These two killed them. Along with Coleman, of course.’

  ‘My Lord.’ Glenys set the weight down carefully on the floor. ‘You’ll have a lot to tell the police.’

  ‘I will. But there’s something I have to do before they get here.’

  Don hauled himself to his feet and moved to where he had propped Far West against the wall. He hoisted the painting back on to its hook, obscuring the safe, then looked round at Glenys.

  ‘You never saw what’s behind this, OK?’

  Glenys nodded. ‘OK.’

  ‘Blake will explain everything when she gets back.’

  ‘Should be interesting.’

  ‘Yeah. It should.’

  ‘One thing, though.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘The picture’s hanging crooked. You’re up at the right.’

  ‘Bloody hell.’

  Don nudged the left-hand side of the frame up slightly. ‘That’ll do it,’ said Glenys.

  The sirens were louder than ever now. Then one of them cut out. Through the window, Don saw a police car brake sharply to a halt in front of the house.

  ‘I’d best go and let them in,’ said Glenys. ‘You sure you’re all right? You look kind of shaky.’

  Don managed a weak smile. ‘I’ll live.’ And in that moment he realized he was going to. He really was.

  Nothing moves in the room behind the mirror, but there is movement nonetheless: numbers changing on the wall-mounted digital clocks, figures in motion on the flickering video screens.

  Most of the screens show empty rooms and vacant passages. But others show bustle and urgency: police officers, some in uniform, some in plain clothes, hurrying to and fro in the hall, while others move carefully around the corpse in the utility room, stooping and peering and examining as best they can.

  Soon there will be forensic specialists in masks and gloves and overalls, photographing, measuring, sampling. Everything will be logged, everything recorded. Nothing will be missed. Not even – eventually – what happens inside this room, the invisible centre of the house, the secret heart of what Jack Harkness built. Its secret will be uncovered, its heart exposed.

  That is not yet, though. That is for the future. In the present, unobserved and unsuspected, the provisions Jack Harkness made bide their measured time and await their moment.

  But those provisions will fail, defeated by chance and circumstance, enemies against which there is no defence.

  Harkness’s moment will never come.

  I’m standing in a cobbled square in Zug. One side of the square looks out over the Zugersee. I’m watching the sun go down behind the mountains on the other side of the lake. The centre of the town’s like something off a music box: lots of winding lanes and timbered clock towers. You’d never know there are dozens of corporate HQs like Harkness Pharmaceuticals just up the road. The lake’s calm and flat and quiet. And the mountains are calm and steep and quiet. I wonder if Switzerla
nd’s like this all over.

  I spoke to Don a couple of hours ago. He sounded good. Better than when I spoke to him earlier. He was at Treliske Hospital then. Apparently, the police thought he was having a heart attack. But the doctors said it was just a stress reaction. I guess seeing three people murdered in front of you has to be ever so slightly stressful. French and Zlenko are at Treliske too. They’re in comas, with serious head injuries. Don’s all right. But they’re not. Which is totally fine by me.

  Compared with what Don – and Fran and Glenys – went through, all I had to deal with here was the truth, which they don’t know yet, and a bucketload of uncertainty, which is over now. Harkness Pharmaceuticals’ security team eventually figured out a way to override the lock on the steel screen in Harkness’s office. By then Jane must have realized Cascade was never going to happen. She didn’t actually say a single word when she came out. She just walked past us all, poker-faced.

  I don’t know where she went. Or what she plans to do. She can’t start something as big as Cascade all over again on her own. Harkness is dead. But she has to live with the failure of what they spent twenty years planning. I just can’t imagine how she’s going to do that.

  It won’t involve seeing her father again, though. I’m sure of that. Which means I have to figure out what I’m going to tell him about her. Thanks, Jane, that’ll be really easy.

  I guess Harkness Pharmaceuticals will try to hush everything up. They may even get away with it. Filippo’s made sure Harkness’s plan can’t work now, even if – which I suppose is when, really – the panic room is opened. With Harkness dead, the company he founded can do a deal with Quintagler Industries. And Astrid Townsend was just a consultant anyway. Here yesterday, gone today, forgotten tomorrow – they hope. Big fine in due course. Then move on. I guess that’s how they see it panning out.

  Now it’s all over, I can’t really believe it might actually have happened, even though I know it easily could have. And what if it had? Thinking about it just blows my mind.

  I suppose Harkness was insane. You’d have to be, wouldn’t you, to plan and prepare what he spent so many years planning and preparing? I look around at the people drifting across the square. None of them has any idea – not a single clue – that today, here and elsewhere and everywhere, it could have begun.