Shadow Creatures

by Andrew Lane

  ‘I looked at the small print. I’m a fast reader. It didn’t say anything about you being able to conduct surgery on me.’

  Pournell smiled. ‘It does now. You wouldn’t believe how easy it is to add an extra page or two to a document that’s already been signed.’

  ‘I want to rescind my permission,’ Calum said. His stomach was churning, and he could hear a loud buzzing in his ears.

  ‘No can do, kid.’ Pournell turned to go, and then turned back. ‘You can stop this any time you want,’ he said, still smiling. ‘Just tell us where that Almasti DNA is.’ He stared at Calum for a moment. His smile faded, and Calum got a clear sight of the single-minded insanity underneath. ‘After all,’ he added, ‘is it really worth losing your mind over?’

  He turned and left.

  Calum sat there, trembling, unable to believe what had just happened. This wasn’t going to end until either he gave in or Nemor performed whatever torture they could on him. And it seemed there wasn’t any limit to the torture they were prepared to perform. Eventually he would crack, but would that be too late to save himself?

  He didn’t know.

  By the time Gecko and Rhino got back to the hotel it was well after midnight and Rhino was furious.

  ‘Natalie tipped the police off,’ he said as they entered the lobby. ‘I know it was her.’

  ‘I doubt that she alerted the police,’ Gecko said, trying to calm Rhino down. ‘Your reasons for not involving them were good. However, I think she may have followed through with her second option of alerting the United Nations. If they have an office covering illegal animal shipments here in Hong Kong, then they may have been able to mobilize the police through their own contacts and move quickly.’

  ‘The UN!’ Rhino snarled, making it sound like a curse. ‘When you actually want them to do something, it takes nine months and a unanimous resolution to get them moving, but when you don’t want them to move they’re like greased lightning!’

  ‘To be fair,’ Gecko interrupted, ‘I think Natalie did want them to move. She has taken this animal stuff to heart. I think it has hit her somewhere personal.’

  ‘Why does she choose now to suddenly get a conscience?’

  Gecko shrugged. ‘I think it has been building for a while.’

  ‘I ought to go up to her room now and have a strong chat with her, culminating in her flying straight home, alone! I can’t have her undermining our missions like this!’

  Gecko held up a warning hand. ‘That would not help. I’m sure she didn’t mean to undermine our mission. I think she was just trying to do something for those animals.’

  ‘Maybe that’s the case, but because of her those two giant centipedes have escaped. Who knows what they’re capable of?’ Rhino looked at Gecko with sudden interest. ‘You live in Brazil, don’t you? What do you think they’re capable of?’

  ‘What?’ Gecko said, feeling a flush of anger. ‘Just because there’s a rainforest within fifty miles of my family home, you think I’m some kind of expert on strange animals?’

  ‘Yes,’ Rhino said, looking confused, ‘of course I do. You knew about capybaras and coypus, didn’t you? That’s more than I did.’ He sighed. ‘Look, I was born on Canvey Island. I can do seagulls and that’s about it. At least you have exotic animals in your country.’

  ‘What’s your point?’

  ‘My point is that I can predict people. I can’t predict animals.’

  Gecko nodded, calming down. He knew that Rhino was frustrated and angry, and didn’t really mean what he was saying. ‘I guess I understand. OK, then, the centipedes are carnivores, yes? And they have a poisonous bite. They have presumably not had very much food during their captivity. They will be hunting.’

  ‘Hunting for what?’

  Gecko closed his eyes briefly. Images of what the centipedes might be hunting for were flashing through his mind, and he didn’t like what he was seeing. ‘Live food,’ he said quietly. ‘Smaller centipedes hunt other insects. For ones this size, insects won’t be enough. I would imagine that their usual food, wherever they come from, is likely to be small mammals – monkeys, maybe, or rodents. In a city like this –’ he shrugged – ‘cats, maybe. Dogs. Even small children.’ In his mind he was imagining the carnage that could result from the release of the two centipedes, and the thought made him feel sick. ‘Rhino, it’s worse than you think.’

  ‘What do you mean?’ Rhino asked warily.

  ‘What if they are male and female centipedes – a breeding pair? What if they mate, and lay eggs? In a few months’ time Hong Kong could be swarming with these things!’

  Rhino didn’t reply for a moment, but he lost colour from his face as the thought hit home.

  ‘We have to do something,’ Gecko urged. ‘We have to kill them, or recover them somehow’

  Rhino nodded. ‘You’re right. We caused this situation. We need to fix it.’

  ‘But how are we going to find them?’

  Rhino thought for a moment. ‘We obviously need to know more about them.’ He lifted his hand, which was still holding the hard drive that he had retrieved from where the fleeing Tsai Chen had dropped it on the warehouse floor. ‘There might be something on this about the centipedes, if we’re lucky – their likely habitats, their diet, something we might be able to use. I’ve got a laptop in my room – I’ll connect it up and see what I can find. Do you want to join me?’

  Gecko shook his head. ‘I need a shower and a change of clothes. Can I join you in half an hour?’

  ‘OK.’

  The two of them split up, each heading to his own room. When Gecko entered, he saw that his mobile phone was sitting beside the bed where he had left it. Instinctively he checked it for messages. There hadn’t been any calls – which was strange, because he would have expected to have heard from Calum or Tara by now – but he had received a text message. It was from an unknown number. Gecko half thought about deleting it, on the basis that it was probably some kind of advertising scam, but he clicked on it anyway, just in case.

  The message was very plain and simple:

  We have the girl – Tara Fitzgerald.

  Watch the video file.

  It was not signed, but Gecko was pretty sure he knew who had sent it.

  He felt as if he was standing on the deck of a boat in a storm. The ground seemed to be moving beneath his feet, rocking up and down, and his stomach was churning. He didn’t want to watch the video file, but he knew he had to. So he pressed on the Play button.

  He watched with increasing feelings of nausea and guilt as Tara read out her brief message. He listened to the words, but more importantly he watched her expression as she spoke them. She was frightened. She was trying to hide it, trying to put a brave face on things, but she was frightened.

  She had good reason to be. He knew what these men were capable of.

  The video finished. Gecko stood there, in the centre of his room, his thoughts whirling as if there was a hurricane inside his head. Tara was in danger. Tara.

  He had to go back. He had no choice.

  Without showering or changing, he headed straight for Rhino’s room.

  Rhino was sitting at the desk. He had connected the removable hard drive to his own laptop using a USB cable. As Gecko knocked and entered, he glanced up. ‘No good,’ he said grimly. ‘It’s encrypted. We need Tara to take a look at it. She can do that from England, can’t she?’

  ‘I do not think she can,’ Gecko said. He played the video for Rhino. The ex-soldier stood there for a good thirty seconds after it had finished, staring into space and thinking.

  ‘I need to go back,’ Gecko said.

  ‘Don’t overreact,’ Rhino cautioned.

  Gecko moved to where he could stare Rhino in the face. ‘I have to go back,’ he repeated.

  ‘Look, Gecko, I’m trained in hostage rescue. That means I’m also trained in negotiation. The first rule of negotiation is: work out what the kidnappers actually want. The second rule is: don’t give them anyth
ing until you have proof of life. The third rule is: don’t give them anything until you can be sure that you’ll get their captive back alive and well.’

  Gecko knew that Rhino was talking sense, and he tried to calm himself down. ‘Are there more rules?’ he asked.

  Rhino nodded. ‘As far as I’m concerned, there’s a fourth rule as well: don’t give them anything at all, if you can help it. Take swift and harsh action to get the captive back, if you can do it without the hostage getting hurt.’

  ‘And what about the kidnappers?’

  ‘Oh, nobody cares about them.’

  Gecko sighed, feeling dark thoughts swirling around him again. ‘This is my fault. I caused this. I need to fix it.’

  ‘Not by giving yourself to them. Let’s think this through.’ He was quiet for a moment. ‘I’m surprised that Calum hasn’t told us anything about this. Maybe he doesn’t know. We need to talk to him, and quickly. The trouble is he’s not answering his phone. I’ve tried him on his computer – he’s usually glued to that like football fans glued to a sports-bar TV set – but he’s not answering that either.’ He raised a hand to his head and pushed his hair back. ‘I’m not sure what the next move is,’ he said with an uncertain tone in his voice.

  Tara listened nervously at the door to her cell/bedroom until all the noise from the flat died away apart from the murmur of a television set. Her pulse was racing. It was dark outside, and she guessed that one of the Karavla brothers had gone to bed while the other one sat up on watch. After all, it wouldn’t be good for them if they were both asleep and Tara managed – somehow – to get out. If she could work out what that ‘somehow’ was, then she might even try it, but short of pulling the pins out of the door hinges – and her nails were bitten too short for that – she was out of ideas.

  But she did have a mobile phone – Tom’s mobile phone.

  It was security locked, but it was a simple-four digit code and she knew all kinds of ways past that. Within seconds she was in.

  Who to call? Rhino would have been the best bet at getting her out, but he was in Hong Kong. Gecko she was worried about – he apparently hadn’t got in touch with the Karavla brothers yet, and Tara was beginning to wonder, with a feeling of dread in the pit of her stomach, whether something had happened to him, despite the fact that Rhino was meant to be looking after him. Natalie was . . . well, just Natalie. Which left Calum.

  Actually. Calum had resources and courage, and nothing fazed him. He was also the de facto leader of their little group, despite (or maybe because of) his physical issues. He would know what to do.

  Tara worried about whether she should send him a text message or call him and risk being overheard, but she needed to know that her words were actually getting through to someone, rather than just being dumped in a recorded message bucket on a server somewhere in the world. She could call Calum, but then when he asked her to describe what was outside so he could locate her she would have to resort to words, or take a photograph and email it to him. No, the best bet was a video chat. That way she just had to turn the camera round and actually show him what was outside.

  Fortunately Tom’s camera phone had a front lens as well as a rear one. That made things a lot easier.

  She quickly downloaded a few specialist apps that Tom hadn’t got, and then used one of them to set up a video chat. Calum usually spent every waking hour in front of his computer screens, and he didn’t sleep much, so she was bound to get hold of him.

  Unless he had gone out walking with his new bionic legs. That thought momentarily brought her up cold, before she convinced herself that he would be following Dr Kircher’s instructions and not going out without company.

  When Calum’s face appeared on the screen of Tom’s phone, Tara was ecstatic. That faded away after a moment and was replaced with surprise. He wasn’t in his apartment. The background was white and sterile, like a hospital, and she could see a sign behind his head that said: Bed I. The bottom of the sign was rough-edged, as if part of it had been snapped off.

  Calum was wearing pyjamas. That was odd. Tara had never seen him in pyjamas.

  ‘Tara!’ he exclaimed. ‘Thank God!’

  ‘Calum, be quiet. I have to talk quickly. I’ve been kidnapped, and I’m being held prisoner. You need to help me get out. Do you understand?’

  ‘I’ve been kidnapped and I’m being held prisoner,’ he repeated. ‘You have to get me out of here!’

  ‘That’s right,’ she said.

  ‘No, that’s what’s happened to me!’

  She frowned. This wasn’t the conversation she had imagined in her head. How long had he been awake for? ‘No, Calum,’ she said slowly, ‘I’m the one who has been kidnapped. I’m somewhere in east London. I don’t know exactly where.’

  ‘Stop talking for a minute and listen! I’ve been kidnapped, and flown to America. I’m in a Robledo Mountains Technology facility in Las Cruces, but Robledo is actually owned by Nemor Incorporated. I stole one of their tablet computers and I’ve tried sending a message to Gillian Livingstone, but I’ve had no answer.’

  ‘If you’re in Las Cruces, how come I was able to get hold of you on your computer system?’ Tara asked, puzzled.

  ‘I used the stolen tablet to log into my own system remotely. As far as the internet is concerned, I’m in London, in my apartment. I wanted to try to link up with Rhino and tell him what’s happened, but he hasn’t been at his computer.’ He paused for a moment, and frowned as he caught up with her news. ‘Hang on – you’ve been kidnapped too? Who by?’

  ‘Two brothers with the surname Karavla. They’re Croatian. They belong to the same gang who wanted Gecko to work for them as a thief. They want to use me to influence him. They got me to record a video message to send to him, but they’ve not heard back yet. I hope he’s all right.’ She stopped to catch her breath. This was all going too fast for her. ‘What does Nemor Incorporated want with you?’

  ‘They want the Almasti genetic material you retrieved from Georgia.’

  ‘Well, give it to them.’

  He shook his head. ‘It’s not that simple. I don’t think I have the right to do that.’

  ‘How did they get through your security to kidnap you?’

  ‘Long story’ he said, wincing. ‘Back to you. How did these Croatians get past your well-known paranoia to kidnap you?’

  ‘Ah.’ She could feel herself blushing. ‘There was this boy, named Tomas. It turns out that he is their nephew, but I don’t think he actually wants to work for them. I think they frightened him into it.’

  ‘And he was the one who managed to get you out of your shell?’ Calum raised an eyebrow. ‘There must be something special about him.’

  ‘He’s very convincing,’ she said through clenched teeth. ‘But I got my revenge. I stole his phone.’

  ‘Oh, he visits, does he?’

  ‘Leave it, Calum. Seriously – leave it.’

  There was a long silence as they both looked at each other. Eventually Calum summed it up: ‘We’ve both been kidnapped, and we both need rescuing.’

  ‘That appears to be the situation.’

  He closed his eyes, frowning in concentration while he thought. ‘OK, here’s what we’ll do. In case anything happens to one of us, we’ll both do this so at least one of us will be successful. First thing you do is to phone Mr Macfarlane – you remember him?’

  ‘Small man, tight suit, strange taste in music.’

  ‘That’s him. I’ll give you his number in a second. We need to tell him roughly where you are, and he can come and get you out.’

  ‘I don’t know exactly where I am!’

  ‘OK – leave that to Macfarlane. If you can describe the buildings outside your window, he might be able to locate you. He knows east London like the back of his hand. How many of them are there in the flat?’

  ‘There’s at least two of them, and they have guns and knives and stuff. Isn’t that, like, overwhelming odds?’

  ‘It is,’ Calum agreed,
‘but they’ve got it coming to them.’ Before Tara could correct his understanding of her question, he continued: ‘The second thing is to get in touch with Rhino, whenever he switches his laptop on again. I need him to try to contact Gillian Livingstone for me. I’ve tried to get hold of her myself but nothing’s happened. Maybe she didn’t get the message. If he can’t get her, then he has to find some way of getting me out of here. The British embassy might be a good start – I’m sure he knows people who know people. So, I’ll talk to Rhino and you talk Mr Macfarlane, then you talk to Rhino and I’ll talk to Macfarlane.’

  ‘What’s his number?’

  Calum recited it from memory.

  The two of them stared at each other in silence for a long moment, neither one wanting to break the call in order to make another one. This was human contact. This was a rare moment of warmth and a reminder of better things.

  ‘We need to go,’ Calum said eventually.

  ‘I know,’ Tara said. She paused, then, ‘You first.’

  ‘No, you first.’

  ‘Calum!’

  ‘OK, then – both at once. On a count of three. One . . . two . . .’

  ‘Calum!’

  ‘What?’

  She felt her breath catch in her throat. ‘Good luck.’

  ‘You too, Tara. Right – one . . . two . . . three!’

  Her finger came down on the Disconnect button at the same time his did. Her screen went blank.

  She felt desolate. Lost.

  Shoving the desolation and the fear to one side, she quickly got into the operating system of Tom’s mobile and deleted any logs of her video call. If anything went wrong, the Karavla brothers wouldn’t know she had used the phone. She would do the same after she had made the call to Mr Macfarlane.

  She was just about to dial the number that Calum had given her when the door suddenly opened. She tried to hide the mobile behind her back, but in her panic she dropped it.