by Zoe Sharp
I looked straight at Bane. ‘He was a rapist and a murderer. It was a split-second decision – him or me.’
‘A very sanitised version of events,’ Bane said. I flushed, but there was no condemnation in his tone. ‘John has told me something of your time in the military. That four of your brothers-in-arms beat and raped you. And yet you made no attempt to kill them. I wonder why.’
That was an image I didn’t want to return to, a whole series of them, in fact. Rape isn’t sexual, it’s all about power, so why did Bane make this feel like foreplay? I shifted in my seat, suddenly restless, unable to find a place for my hands.
‘I would have done,’ I said, chest tightening. ‘At the time I didn’t know how.’
‘But you had passed your Special Forces selection course, and were training for highly dangerous undercover work, I understand,’ Bane said, no trace of taunt about him. ‘How could you have been so helpless?’
I shot him a barbed look, but none of them penetrated that cool facade.
‘We’d all been through exactly the same unarmed combat courses. Whatever moves I had, they knew the counters,’ I said, bitter. ‘And there were four of them.’ I gave a short, mirthless laugh. ‘I was a first-class shot. If I’d had a gun I would have slotted all of them, but they were supposed to be my comrades. I was supposed to be able to trust them.’ And I heard the note of longing in my voice. It was the betrayal as much as the violence that had charred to the bone.
‘How far had they gone before you finally believed what they intended to do?’
‘Too far.’
‘So, you were raped,’ Bane said, his words sliding softly over my skin like a verbal caress, ‘and afterwards you taught yourself the skills to prevent a recurrence, is that it?’
I shivered and my chin came up. ‘Wouldn’t you have done the same thing?’
He shook his head. ‘We’re not talking about me, Charlie. We’re not talking hypothetical “what ifs”. We’re talking about your life, what happened to you, because or in spite of the choices you made.’
The anger rose fast and hard, building up instant pressure behind my eyes, prickling in my vision. ‘You think I chose to be raped? You think I wanted that? Was asking for it?’ I demanded, harsh, almost shouting now. ‘OK, yes, afterwards, I trained. When I was past feeling bloody sorry for myself, and past the shame and the shock, I studied every discipline I thought might be of use to me. I vowed I’d never let anyone do that to me again. Ever.’
He took the outburst calmly. ‘So, you had already made the decision to kill, a long time before the opportunity presented itself?’
He made it sound calculated, cold-blooded, as though I’d cruised the streets like some damned vigilante, praying for my chance to get even. It took the heat and the colour straight out of me. ‘No! No, I…things were different.’
‘How?’
I took a shaky breath. ‘Because it wasn’t just me he was trying to hurt. He’d taken…someone else. Someone I cared about. A friend. And when he was done with me, he was going to start on her. And I didn’t…I couldn’t let her go through that. Not knowing I was capable of preventing it. I couldn’t have lived with myself.’
‘So that was your catalyst,’ Bane said simply. ‘When you were driven to kill, it was not to save your own life, but somebody else’s.’ And watching me across the desk, he saw the dawning truth of his words, and gave a slight nod. ‘You are far from a lost cause, Charlie. However much you might wish to be.’
‘Logically, rationally, I know what I did was entirely justifiable,’ I said. ‘The police and the courts agreed…’
‘But?’
I looked down at my hands, clasped loosely in my lap. They were unremarkable hands, neither large nor small for my height and build, straight fingers, short nails. Capable hands.
Hands capable of killing.
I looked up. ‘The kind of people who become mothers do not kill people.’
Bane shook his head. ‘But surely parents are the epitome of the perfect bodyguard?’ he said, and it was the mild surprise in his voice that echoed, lasting through my mind. ‘And mothers are the fiercest of all.’
CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE
I waited until it was completely dark before I used the key I’d found in Witney’s book to let myself quietly out of my room and along the corridor. As I slipped into the tiny lobby area, I halted briefly, eyes closed, listening to the quality of silence around me.
After a moment, I turned away from the external door. I knew the security patrols had the area immediately surrounding the compound covered during the night, and they had all the equipment to do so. Going out there was foolish when we hadn’t spotted anything amiss in our previous surveillance. Whatever was going on here, it was happening inside.
I remembered the gun cases I’d seen as they’d brought me out of confinement, could calculate from the height and depth of them just how many there had been. A lot. Too many to be easily explained, that was for sure.
So, what was Bane up to that he needed to stockpile armaments? And was that why Thomas Witney had been silenced?
I gave myself a mental shake. That’s not why you’re here, Fox!
I thought of the dossier Chris Sagar had put together from his time on the inside of Fourth Day, about their methods and their ideology. So far, they’d shown me little sign of the psychological brutality I’d been led to expect.
I guessed, after my initial outburst, they were waiting until I was deemed more stable before that began in earnest. Meanwhile, far from breaking me down, my sessions with Bane actually made me feel…better about myself.
Much better.
Maybe that was part of the process – lull you into a false sense of security, then take your legs out from under you.
I shook my head, stepped cautiously across the lobby and passed through into the corridor leading towards Bane’s study.
Along the way, I tried the handles of every door I passed. The ratio of locked to unlocked was pretty even. I found a storeroom, a kind of first-aid station with rudimentary equipment but apparently no drugs.
In the corner was a three-drawer filing cabinet – the most likely place to find any records relating to Billy’s medical history. I tugged experimentally at the upper drawer, marked A–G. Not surprisingly, it didn’t open, but the cabinet was an older type. It didn’t take more than a few moments to carefully walk it forwards far enough to tilt the upper half back against the wall to locate the exposed end of the locking rod underneath. I pushed it up, disengaging the locking system with a soft clunk, and smiled into the gloom. Another little gift from Sean.
Gently, I set the cabinet upright. The top drawer slid open without complaint and I leafed through the manila dividers until I came to ‘GONZALEZ, B’. It contained a slim folder, listing the usual childhood illnesses and his blood type, which was O negative. The universal donor – too common to be remotely useful.
I shuffled the cabinet back into position without marking the floor. There wasn’t much I could do to relock it, but I’d just have to hope that was put down to oversight. At least it hadn’t been obviously forced.
I moved deeper into the building, remembering the admin office I’d seen that first day. I really didn’t expect the door to be open, but it was.
Inside, I found the layout as I remembered. Two desks at ninety degrees to each other, each topped by a dark computer flat screen, paperwork trays, and a telephone. More filing cabinets lined one wall with a small photocopier on top. Mundane, ordinary.
I hesitated. Working in close protection does not prepare you for searching an office, and I had no real idea what I was hoping to find. I almost turned back when a sheet of paper on the nearest desktop caught my eye and I canted my head to read it.
It was a list of names and addresses, maybe twenty of them, laid out in two columns in alphabetical order.
It could have been anything, from a Christmas card list to a roster for digging latrines, apart from the fact that half a
dozen of the names had been crossed out. Last on the list was Thomas Witney. And there – just above him – his son, Liam. Both names had been struck through with a thin black line.
Quickly, I scanned the others, and something shimmied down my spine as I recognised two more from Parker’s briefing on former Fourth Day members. Both had met sudden, violent ends.
I picked up the sheet, carefully noting its exact position on the desktop, and shoved it under the lid of the photocopier, hitting the ‘On’ button as I did so.
The machine let out an eerie glow as it powered up. Heart pounding in the darkness, I glanced over at the small window, knowing that any passing security patrols would be instantly alerted. Shielding the light as much as I could, I ran off a single copy of the list and switched the machine off again. It took for ever.
I put the original back on the desktop, lining it up precisely, folding my still-warm copy and shoving it inside my underwear, where they wouldn’t find it without a hell of a fight.
I slipped out of the admin office, had just reached the communal dining hall when I heard the unmistakable sound of the main outer door opening, and two sets of booted feet entering the lobby behind me.
I bolted across the dining hall on the balls of my feet. One door on the far side was slightly ajar. I dived through it, closing it fast and quiet behind me, and stood flattened against the wall, as if that would save me from discovery if they walked in.
Had they seen the light from the photocopier, or was this just a routine patrol?
Outside the door, I heard measured footsteps, indefinably male, growing louder as they approached. I shut my eyes, but there was no urgency in their even cadence. Routine, then.
I tried to control my ragged breathing as they passed and faded. It was hard to judge time but, maybe five interminable minutes later, I heard the steps retrace across the dining hall, and the outer door close behind them.
Only then did I relax enough to look around. I found myself in a small classroom with an old-fashioned blackboard and a jaunty alphabet frieze around it. Light came in from a line of windows set close to the ceiling along one wall. High enough for ventilation, but not for distraction. The room was probably used when the weather wasn’t good enough for the kids to have their lessons outside.
Unless little Billy had ever been asked to write an essay entitled ‘My Daddy’, there was nothing for me here. But, just as I was about to slip out again, something on a nearby desktop caught my eye.
A folded newspaper and a pack of cigarettes.
The newspaper I could understand, but the cigarettes were something else again. Bane was big on mind, body and spirit and I hadn’t seen or even smelt anyone here who smoked. It was not exactly the kind of teaching aid I expected anyone to use, unless they forced the kids to take a puff and throw up as aversion therapy at an early age.
I moved forwards, cautious. The pack was open and there was a loose cigarette lying next to it. Something about it tapped at the back of my mind. In the low light, I had to bend in close to see what it was. And the moment I did, realisation came down over me in a cold wash. In that instant, I knew exactly why it was there, and what kind of lessons were being taught in that classroom.
And I hoped to hell it wasn’t to children.
CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX
The loose cigarette had a small hole pierced through it, and a piece of thread inserted at that point, almost exactly two inches from the tip.
Suggestive on its own, but hardly conclusive. Carefully, I held the pack in position and lifted the lid of the desk. Inside, I found several wooden clothes pegs, a small reel of thin copper wire, and a familiar-looking slim buff-coloured book. A reprint of an old 1960s US Army training manual called the Improvised Munitions Handbook.
I didn’t need to leaf through the pages to find where the oddments from the desk fitted in.
A cigarette, in still air, burns at a rate of roughly seven minutes per inch, depending on the brand and conditions. What I was looking at here was the bare bones of a rudimentary time-delay fuse.
It was a simple enough improvised device. Wrap the copper wire around the jaws of the clothes peg and secure the thread around the legs to hold the jaws open. In this case, the ends of the peg had even been notched slightly, to ensure the thread sat firmly in place without slipping. Then all you have to do is light the cigarette and walk away. The cigarette burns until it reaches the thread, releases the peg, the jaws close, the copper wire completes the circuit and…
And what? Boom?
Was that what Bane was doing here? Sagar had seemed certain of it and now, it seemed, I had proof. The radical eco-group, Debacle, I recalled, had been disturbed setting an IED in Alaska on the night Liam Witney was killed. There had been nothing in the report about the type of device, but had bomb-making been one of the skills he’d acquired in Fourth Day?
I thought again of Ann’s finesse with electronics, her delicate touch on a printed circuit board. I was pretty sure that she had the expertise to put together a much more sophisticated type of timer, so why this crude device?
As I carefully replaced the items, I noticed the folded newspaper had the lower right-hand quarter of the page on view. One story had been circled several times in pen.
I scanned it quickly, catching the gist. A visiting delegation from the Middle Eastern oil-producing countries was due to tour the Long Beach refineries the following week. A total protest by environmentalists was expected. Naturally, security was going to be tight.
That would explain the primitive approach…but to what end?
I shivered. Something just didn’t feel right about this that I couldn’t put my finger on. Maybe, I admitted to myself, I just didn’t want it to be true.
And suddenly, all I felt was an anger, that Bane was throwing away the genuine good he could do here. While there was no denying that former Fourth Day members had sought out organisations like Debacle, many others left the cult to join nothing more daring than a gym.
And now, a number of them are dead.
I had a brief snapshot of the damning list of crossed-out names tucked inside my waistband. It could have just been a note of back pay no longer due.
Or it could have been a kill sheet.
Cautiously, I opened the door a crack, reassured myself I was alone, and headed back across the dining hall.
Just off it was a kitchen area, shut down and squared away for the night. There was a bug zapper high on the far wall, illuminating the space with an eerie blue glow.
By its light, I padded across the scrubbed tiles, noting the array of professional-looking cook’s knives on display. Briefly, I considered taking one, rejecting the idea just as fast. Decent chefs tend to notice if the tools of their trade go missing.
Under the workstations at one side of the kitchen were rows of drawers. I pulled the first one open. It ran smooth on its runners, no squeaks or rattles, and I quickly found what I was after. Odds and ends of cutlery used for preparation rather than service. Quietly, I dug to the bottom of the tray for an old, cheap-looking table fork, flexed it experimentally in my hands. It bent easily. Perfect.
I slipped the fork into my pocket and paused in the doorway to check the kitchen appeared undisturbed, then moved back through the dining hall, out into the corridor again.
As I passed the admin office, I ducked inside, moving straight for the phone on the nearest desk. But, when I picked up the receiver there was no dialling tone, only silence. I cursed under my breath. Was Bane so paranoid that he cut the phones at night?
It occurred to me that, still out there apparently undiscovered, was a backup emergency kit containing a second cellphone. I hurried for the lobby, got as far as crossing to the outside door to grip the handle, then wavered.
Not because of concern about more guards. I’d passed my Escape and Evasion courses, and Fourth Day didn’t have dedicated trackers or dogs. And not because, after this evening’s discovery, I was worried that they might have found the second plasti
c box I’d buried and booby-trapped it, just for an eventuality like this.
But because, once I’d reported what I’d seen, I knew Epps would take over and set in motion a train of events over which I had no control. And whatever I might think about Bane’s possible motives, he had shown a level of compassion, where Conrad Epps had none.
‘You don’t like letting go of control – on any level,’ Bane had said. ‘That scares you, doesn’t it?’
Was that it?
Or was it just that I was nowhere near uncovering the truth about Billy’s parentage? Without proof that he was Lorna Witney’s grandson, we had no justification for taking him out of there before Epps descended on the place.
Maybe that threat alone would be enough to convince her to take the risk, but I’d seen first hand the state Maria was in. I’d lost a child I’d never had the chance to know. How much worse would it be for her?
I tightened my grip on the door handle, and slipped out into the blood-warm night.
CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN
A little before eight the following morning, I sat on the bench under the old juniper tree, surrounded by a small group of children. They ranged in age from probably about two or three, to around five. As I’d told Lorna Witney back in Scotland, I never was very good at judging ages.
Beside me was Ann. She’d told me over breakfast that she’d taken over Thomas Witney’s teaching duties and asked, apparently without guile, if I’d help her with her class.
I agreed, although not without trepidation. It was a good opportunity to observe Maria’s son and have a semi-legitimate reason to ask about him, but I was not entirely comfortable with kids. Like horses, they could instinctively tell if you were uneasy around them, enough to take gleeful advantage wherever possible.