by Zoe Sharp
‘Fourth Day use a form of attack therapy,’ he told me. ‘Think of it as a hostile encounter group. The object is to jar you out of your personal belief system.’
‘How physical are they likely to get?’ I asked, but he shook his head.
‘Unless things have changed a whole hell of a lot since my time, they’re not,’ he said, and I didn’t hide my relief. ‘But there’ll be a strong element of psychological abuse.’
‘Sounds like fun. What does that mean in English?’
He sighed, absently pushing those little round glasses back up his nose. ‘I look at you and I see someone who’s strong, self-confident. You have a pretty good idea of who you are and where you’re going in life, and you believe in your own moral code, am I right?’
‘Of course,’ I said, only mildly surprised at the even note I managed to inject into my voice. You have no idea…
‘You must, Charlie. I saw you in action. You never hesitated, I mean, not for a second! You can’t act that way and not believe absolutely in what you’re doing.’ He looked down at his hands. ‘Well, Bane will do everything he can to strip that certainty away from you. Make no mistake, it’s gonna be brutal.’
‘How does he justify such a technique in order to get people to submit to what is, basically, brainwashing?’
‘I was a computer geek in college,’ Sagar said, and it wasn’t hard to believe it, looking at his ageing rock band T-shirt and baggy cargoes. ‘The way Bane described it, someone who seeks sanctuary in Fourth Day is like a computer riddled with a virus. They’re useless. They can’t function. But you can’t go after the virus a bit at a time, which is kinda his view on conventional therapy. He believes you have to wipe the hard drive completely and rebuild the system with clean programs. Start again from the ground up.’
I reached for my cup of coffee from the corner of the desk. It was dark and bitter. ‘Is that what happened to Thomas Witney?’
‘He wasn’t just riddled with that virus,’ Sagar said. ‘He’d crashed. Bane didn’t need to break him down, because Witney was already at rock bottom. He’d suffered enough.’
‘And suffering is what it’s all about?’
‘Bane believes that if people haven’t suffered enough, they can’t or won’t change. Not on the kinda fundamental level he’s aiming for.’ He shook his head. ‘You might think you can fight him, Charlie, but you can’t. Not for ever. He’ll get to you in the end.’
‘Like I said, sounds like fun…’
Now, the sun continued to arc into a cloudless sky above me. I checked my heading and walked on.
The temperature would have been pleasant if I’d been sitting on a lounger by a swimming pool, with a tall ice-filled glass by my elbow. Sadly, all I had was tepid water and slightly greasy chocolate that was beginning to melt. I drank sparingly, just a few mouthfuls, and ate half a chocolate bar, licking the excess off the wrapper. I’d stocked up on Cadbury’s before I left Aberdeen. Hershey bars just didn’t do it for me.
Amid sparse vegetation and rounded rock formations, I was completely out of sight of the road now. There were no man-made structures or signs of habitation. I moved more careful of where I put my feet, but saw no animal or reptile life either. Even the bird of prey seemed to have abandoned me. The silence took on a shape all of its own, surrounding and engulfing me. I was achingly aware of my own vulnerability, of being utterly alone.
By the time I saw the first of Fourth Day’s armed patrols, I’d been walking for over an hour. My shirt was stuck to my back and my water was half gone. I ducked behind some scrubby bushes and waited to see what path they would follow. I hadn’t come across a regular worn route, but it would be good practice not to follow one.
As soon as they’d passed, I looked round for a suitable landmark. There was a tall rock just ahead that looked, from this angle, vaguely like a dog sitting on its haunches, head down. I circled it twice, just to be sure it was distinctive, then knelt at the base of what would have been the dog’s tail and began to dig in the soft sandy earth, first with my hands, then using a flat stone as a shovel.
It took a while to dig a hole big enough to take the rucksack, and I worked with concentration, stopping every minute or so to listen for the guards’ return. When Sean and I had been watching the cult compound, we’d timed their patrols in and out but, even so, I knew I was cutting it fine. The second hole I dug was smaller, and took less time.
When I was done, I made another slow circuit of the rock. This was my emergency escape kit, and being unable to locate it again if I needed to was not a healthy scenario.
As it was, I had my tracks brushed away and the worst of the dirt washed from my hands, using almost all the remainder of my water, before I heard the patrol on their way back.
I stepped out onto my original course and kept walking, apparently oblivious but on a deliberate closing heading. I tried to keep my shoulders down and my mind empty. One question kept coming back to haunt me.
‘Why are you doing this?’ Chris Sagar had asked.
Sean and Parker had asked me that one, too, and I’d given them both the same answer. ‘Quite apart from finding out if Billy is Lorna Witney’s grandchild, I’m doing it because we took Witney out of there and we lost him, and I want to know why.’
They’d both accepted it, in the end, but I couldn’t tell Sagar about our new client’s brief.
‘Come on, Charlie,’ he’d said quietly. ‘I spent most of my time inside Fourth Day asking people, “Why are you here?” Everybody who wanted in, I asked them that, and you know what I discovered inside a month of doing it?’
‘What?’
‘That the first answer they give you is never the real one. It just never is.’ He shook his head sadly. ‘Half of them, they didn’t even know it themselves, what finally drove them under. But you? You got to have an answer. A good one. One that sounds real, even if it isn’t. Because, if you don’t, Bane will kick your ass straight back out again.’ His face pinched. ‘That’s if you’re lucky.’
‘So, it’s a cover story within a story,’ I said.
‘Yeah, you got that right. It’s like peeling an onion. Your outer layers can be kinda flaky, but once you let him under your skin, your story’s gonna have to be solid. So, you need to look deep inside yourself. Why are you doing this?’
I paused, idly swishing the silt around the bottom of my cup. What could I tell him? A cynical part of my mind recognised a certain amount of clutching at straws about the whole thing. I’d been through plenty of conventional therapy of sorts, and I knew how to do the self-analysis thing. The problem was, my attitudes had been wholly shaped by experience.
If I hadn’t learnt to release my latent ability to kill, I’d be dead by now. I’d been through pain and utter humiliation, and come out stronger on the other side. And while there were those who’d tried to persuade me to let go of my anger, I knew I needed it, and had kept it close like a secret.
But discovering I was pregnant had changed everything, as it was supposed to. The desire for change on a fundamental level had overwhelmed me, along with a burst of hormones and the sudden urge for Marmite-and-banana sandwiches.
I put the empty cup down on the desktop, noted that my hands were as steady as they had been after I’d shot the three men in the van on the road out of the canyon, and couldn’t work out if I’d been more surprised then or now.
‘I don’t know,’ I said calmly, ‘but I’m sure, when the time comes, I’ll think of something.’
Now, I timed it so that I crossed the path of the guards about ten metres ahead of them. Unless they had their eyes shut, they couldn’t fail to notice me. They hadn’t, and they did.
I felt the vibrations through the ground as they began to run, saw one closing on my right, knew the other would be circling behind me. I let my gait falter.
‘So,’ Sagar had said, last night, just before we’d turned in, ‘bottom line, Charlie, give it to me straight. When Bane breaks through those outer layers, when he
gets to the heart of you, and you’re all out of excuses and there’s no bullshit left, what is it you’re gonna tell him that you want from Fourth Day?’
I heard the guards shouting at me to stop, felt the pounding of their feet grow heavier and stronger through the soft earth. As if at the end of my reserves of strength, I staggered and went down on my knees, hands half-raised out by my sides and my head bowed, like I’d made a last effort to get here and, now I had, I was spent.
‘What is it you’re gonna tell him that you want from Fourth Day?’
‘Redemption.’
One of the guards stepped round in front of me, careful not to bisect his partner’s line of fire. It was the big black ex-Marine, Tyrone Yancy. One of the pair who’d gone after Maria, the day we’d seen Witney teaching his little class under the juniper tree.
The second man was a stranger. He stayed back just far enough to slot me if I looked like making trouble, keeping the M16 pulled up tight into his shoulder, eyes checking the vicinity. They were well trained. Question was, what for?
‘You’re on private property. Didn’t you see the signs?’ Yancy demanded. ‘You lost or crazy?’
Squinting into the sun, I looked up at him.
‘Both,’ I said.
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
Tyrone Yancy radioed in before getting me on my feet and patting me down. He was thorough but brisk, taking no apparent pleasure in it, which was lucky for both of us.
‘You think I might have a weapon?’ I asked.
He shrugged. ‘People sometimes try to bring in drugs. They think it will ease their transition.’
‘I’m not a junkie.’
‘This stage, we don’t know what you are.’ He stepped back. ‘Please come with us.’
Despite his politeness, a certain amount of caution seemed appropriate. ‘Where are you taking me?’
He glanced back, his eyes dark and expressionless. ‘You’re beat,’ he said. ‘Out of water, too, huh? We get that settled, then we decide.’
I fell into ragged step alongside him, on his right, so the barrel of the M16 was pointing down and away from me. The other guard stayed a few paces behind, not crowding, but not going out of his way to reassure, either.
I trudged between them, sweat-stained and feigning a measure of exhaustion. As we passed through the open area in the centre of the compound, there was a small group of about a dozen adults going through morning t’ai chi ch’uan practice, their movements flowing and serene. They ignored our passing, concentration total.
I glanced across at the old juniper tree, but the bench circling its base was deserted. Thomas Witney’s little class, it seemed, had not yet found a substitute teacher.
We reached the main accommodation building and went inside, the two men shouldering their rifles. The lobby looked different in daylight. Yancy detoured briefly into a side room, came back with two bottles of water and handed them over. They weren’t cold, but the seals were unbroken, so I didn’t care, finishing one straight down and making inroads into the other. He jerked his head to his companion.
‘Message from the boss,’ he said. ‘He wants to see her.’
The other man didn’t comment, just raised an eyebrow. I concentrated on keeping my face relaxed, on looking tired and grateful, and stopping the muscles bunch across my shoulders. I wasn’t altogether successful, but they didn’t seem to notice.
They led me along a corridor, remaining alert but not seeming overly tense. Sagar had told us that Fourth Day had two or three walk-ins a month, so this was hardly a new experience for them. But were all new arrivals summoned for an audience with Bane, the moment they arrived?
We continued through the main building. At one point we passed an open doorway to an office. I glanced inside, saw desks and filing cabinets. Two people were working on computer terminals like any other administrators. The very normality of it seemed bizarre.
I was led into an annexe, close but separated from the rest. Bane’s personal quarters, I surmised. I’d expected to meet with him eventually, just not yet. Tension buzzed up through my shins and curled unpleasantly in my belly.
We halted outside a closed door. Yancy knocked, waiting until he heard a muffled invitation before walking in. I stepped through after him and had my first direct encounter with the man himself. On the whole, I preferred it when there’d been a sheet of one-way glass between us.
The room was large, more like a study than an office, and lined with lighted bookcases in a pale golden wood that smelt of cedar. There were blinds at the window but they were drawn against the harsh California sun. For a moment I wondered what took place in that room that Bane didn’t want seen. Or was he simply trying to keep his book collection from fading?
He was reading when we came in, sitting in an old-fashioned wingback chair in deep-buttoned dark-green leather, over by an unlit fireplace on the far side of the room. There was a small round table by his arm, containing a tall glass of clear liquid that could have been anything from tap water to gin, and plenty of ice, as if he’d been privy to my earlier fantasy.
Behind the chair was a standard lamp, positioned so the light would fall onto the page. It also made it very difficult to see the man’s face, which was thrown into shadow, but I could tell from his tilted head that he was watching me.
‘Found this one wandering out toward the south-west corner, out of water and just about done,’ Yancy told him. ‘Said she was lost.’
Bane carefully placed a marker between the pages and set the book down. He said, ‘Thank you, Tyrone,’ and something in that deep-set voice sent a sudden shimmer through my ribcage, like a harmonic vibration.
Yancy ducked his head in acknowledgement and stepped back to the door. When he opened it, I could see the other guard loitering in the corridor outside, just before it closed behind him with a soft click. I guessed they wouldn’t leave quite yet, but I couldn’t work out if their purpose was to prevent my escape, or to drag me out screaming.
Bane gestured me to a chair opposite. I glanced ruefully at my grubby cargo trousers and crusted shirt.
‘What’s a little honest dirt?’ he asked.
I shrugged, unaccountably nervous, and perched on the edge of the seat, uncapping the second bottle of water and taking another swig while I eyed him.
‘So,’ he said at last, ‘Miss…?’
‘Foxcroft,’ I said without hesitation. ‘Charlotte Foxcroft. My friends call me Charlie.’
Using my full name was deliberate on my part. Oh, to Parker and Sean I’d explained it by saying I wasn’t trained for undercover work to the point where I could slip automatically into another identity. I’d legally shortened my last name to Fox shortly after I’d left the army, an attempt to distance myself from the events that had led to my downfall and dismissal. It was only partially successful. But Charlotte Foxcroft – failed Special Forces trainee and unwitting fodder for the tabloids – had been very different from the person I’d since become. More trusting, more gullible.
Going back to her now seemed somehow symbolic, in my own mind at least.
‘Charlie,’ he said in that cultured voice, as if experimenting with the feel and the weight of the name. My scalp prickled. ‘There are no trails through this land. The boundary is securely fenced and clearly signed as private property. How did you come to be lost?’
I gave a cynical laugh I didn’t have to force. ‘I ask myself that question every day.’
‘So you are not here by accident.’ He paused. ‘You are fully aware of where “here” is?’
‘This is Fourth Day,’ I said. ‘And you are Randall Bane. I was told you could help me.’
‘Really? By whom?’
I shrugged, let my eyes drift down and right. ‘It’s doesn’t matter now. He’s dead anyway.’
In the periphery of my vision, I saw Bane’s head shift, but I didn’t react. Then he asked quietly, ‘How, exactly, do you believe I can help you?’
I shrugged again, still staring at a spot w
here the polished wooden floor met the edge of the rug. ‘I went through some shit a few years ago – a lot of shit, if I’m honest – and I thought I was past it, but it keeps coming back to haunt me,’ I said, putting intensity into the words. ‘And now I’m scared all the time, of what it’s doing to me, and of what I might do.’ I looked up, straight into Bane’s face. ‘I need to change and I don’t know how.’
He stared at me for a long time unmoving, piercing me with eyes so pale brown they were almost golden. ‘What about your family?’
‘They’re in the UK, and…we don’t talk much anymore.’
‘What brought you to America?’
‘Boyfriend.’ I gave a fractional twitch of my lips. ‘About six months ago.’
‘You still together?’
‘I’m here, aren’t I?’ I said, injecting a bitter note. ‘So, I suppose not. I’ve been pushing him away for months.’ No lie there, then.
‘Is he violent? Abusive? Into drugs? Crime?’
Violent? After only minimal hesitation, I shook my head.
Bane sighed. ‘You don’t need my help,’ he said gently. ‘Go back to your boyfriend, Charlie. If he’s clean, like you say, make your peace with him. If he isn’t, then leave him. Get in contact with your parents. Break the silence while you still have the chance. Take responsibility for your own actions and stop looking for the easy way out.’
He pressed a bell push on the table and picked up his book again. As if turning from a fire, I felt the heat and light of his interest go away from me.
Behind me, the door opened again. Footsteps closed on either side of my chair. The panic reached into my throat, churning like acid.
‘Ah, Tyrone,’ Bane said, not looking up. ‘Give Charlie here some food and drive her out to the nearest bus station, would you? She will not be staying.’
I half-rose, reaching towards him, prepared to plead if I had to. ‘Wait—’
One of the men grabbed my shoulder. I flinched instinctively at the pressure and intent, saw Bane’s head lift with narrowed eyes, and that fraction of a second was all it took.