Anywhere

by Jon Robinson

  ‘Tonight,’ Felix said. ‘As soon as Stephen’s expulsion from the Pledge is announced.’

  Alyn turned to him. ‘And you’ll free everyone, like you promised?’

  Felix was silent for a moment. ‘Yes,’ he said.

  You’d better, Alyn thought, studying him closely.

  ‘Our car has arrived,’ Felix said. ‘Go and tell him I’ll be another five minutes. I’ll meet you down there.’

  Alyn took the lift to the ground floor. He left the foyer, pushed open the glass doors and jogged down the steps. The black limousine was parked at the kerb.

  Alyn tapped on the driver’s window. ‘Mr Felix sends his apologies. He’ll be a few more minutes.’

  ‘Not a problem,’ said the driver. ‘Jump in the back.’

  Alyn went to the rear of the car and through the window he could just make out the shape of a lone figure. The window lowered and a man with neat black hair and intensely focused eyes looked up at Alyn. He wore a sharp grey suit, the colour of which reminded Alyn of his own prison uniform.

  ‘Oh, hello. I’m Alyn, Mr Felix’s … assistant,’ Alyn said, extending his hand politely.

  The stranger watched Alyn’s hand until it withdrew. ‘How interesting. My name is Emmanuel. I’m his adviser. Come, sit with me.’

  Alyn obediently opened the door and slid in. He smiled nervously as Emmanuel studied him, almost imperceptibly sniffing the air.

  ‘Felix’s apprentice,’ Emmanuel pondered. ‘Of all people, I wonder why he chose you …’

  ‘I impressed Mr Felix during the interview,’ Alyn said defensively. I don’t trust this guy one bit, he thought. There seemed to be a peculiar, sinister force seeping from him, and Alyn felt the skin on the back of his neck prickle.

  ‘You and I both know that’s a lie,’ Emmanuel answered coolly. ‘I can sense you have a great power, Alyn.’

  ‘I – I don’t know what you’re talking about. Anyway, I need to speak with Mr Felix,’ Alyn said, avoiding the subject. A little flustered, he pulled the handle and the door swung open. He stood just in time to see Felix coming towards him in a black tuxedo, a white scarf draped across his shoulders. Alyn looked back at the car anxiously. The door was now closed.

  ‘Is something wrong?’ Felix asked. ‘You look like something’s bothering you.’

  ‘Mr Felix, I just spoke with your adviser,’ Alyn whispered, pulling him to one side. ‘Something’s not right about him.’

  ‘My adviser,’ Felix said, pushing past him. ‘You mean Emmanuel?’

  ‘Yeah,’ Alyn hissed. He made eyes at Felix. ‘He’s in there now. I don’t trust him …’

  Felix looked at Alyn with some concern and opened the door to peer inside. ‘There’s no one in here, Alyn,’ he said. ‘The car is just for us.’

  ‘What?’

  Felix stepped out of the way so Alyn could see inside.

  Alyn stepped away from the car, shaking his head slowly. He went up to the chauffeur’s window.

  ‘That man who was in the car just now,’ he said, becoming more panicked by the second. ‘Where is he? Where did he go?’

  ‘There was no one else in here,’ the chauffeur said blankly.

  ‘He was sitting in the back just now!’

  ‘I’m afraid I don’t know about that, young man …’

  Felix placed a hand on Alyn’s shoulder and looked at his watch. ‘Forget it, Alyn. We have to get moving.’ He held the door open and gestured for a speechless Alyn to climb inside, then followed after him.

  Pyra, Anton and Luthan drove through the streaming rain in the silver sports car, followed by a second car. Rather than her usual leather jacket and torn jeans, Pyra was wearing a black strapless dress, a three-quarter-length designer coat and heels. Luthan wore a tuxedo with a silk cummerbund round his waist.

  ‘The pair of you look pretty convincing,’ Anton said as he parked down a quiet street a short way from the opera house.

  ‘This needs to be seamless,’ Luthan said, pushing open his door. ‘We’ve got half an hour after the opera finishes before this masquerade starts. There’ll be a drinks reception. This is when I’ll influence Felix to leave.’

  ‘I’ll make sure the others are distracted,’ Pyra said. ‘I’ll meet up with you in the hall. We knock Felix out and carry him outside, pretending he’s had too much to drink.’

  Anton nodded. ‘Where I’ll be waiting.’ He adjusted his flat cap in the mirror and watched the second car parking at the end of the street. ‘There’s our back-up, if anything goes wrong.’

  ‘Right, we’re on,’ Luthan said, looking at Pyra. He stepped out of the car and crooked his arm for Pyra to take. She grabbed it and the pair walked towards the front entrance of the opera house.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ said the doorman at the top of the marble steps, quickly moving in front of them to block their entry. ‘There’s a performance starting shortly and we have a charity ball afterwards …’

  ‘We know,’ said Pyra with a faux sweetness. ‘That’s why we’re here.’

  ‘It’s a VIP event,’ the doorman said smugly. ‘I need to see your invitation or I can’t let you in.’

  ‘You recognize us surely?’ Luthan said, and gestured to both himself and Pyra.

  ‘I don’t know either of you,’ he said, looking blank.

  ‘We came in earlier,’ Luthan argued. ‘You must have forgotten. A simple mistake.’

  The doorman looked at them both, a little incredulous, and said, ‘If you don’t leave, I’ll have to call security.’

  For the past minute or so Pyra had been twirling the domino between her fingers. A single rogue molecule within one of the doorman’s neurons caused it to generate an action potential, triggering a minor chain reaction of crackling synapses. Amid the chemical fireworks in his brain a phantom memory formed.

  ‘You don’t really want to embarrass yourself by calling security,’ Pyra said.

  ‘No, of course not. I’m sorry,’ he said, having some vague notion that he’d seen the pair arrive already.

  Pyra and Luthan stepped inside. The interior of the opera house seemed to glow with gold and ochre, lights reflecting from every polished surface.

  ‘Down here,’ Luthan said to Pyra, leading her towards a crowded corridor. ‘We need to mingle until it starts.’

  They walked quickly, footsteps clacking on the smooth marble.

  ‘This is it,’ Julian said, as the group turned in to the alleyway.

  Despite their plans to get to the opera house as soon as possible, the group had got completely lost and managed to lose Elsa twice in the space of an hour. Now running behind schedule and anxious with anticipation, a collective silence had fallen upon them.

  The cobblestones glistened under the hazy glow pouring from the streetlight.

  ‘That supposed to be our way in?’ Ryan asked, nodding to a small metal door. He walked over and gave it a shove. ‘It’s locked. Damn it! We’re too late.’ He stepped back a few paces and launched a kick at it.

  ‘Ryan, you moron! Someone might hear you from the other side,’ Elsa said, pulling him away.

  ‘I’ve spotted another way in,’ Julian muttered, looking at a small square window open some way above them.

  ‘All the way up there?’ Jes said. ‘Good luck, Julian.’

  ‘If one of us gets in, they can open the door from inside,’ Julian answered. ‘Someone give me a boost up …’

  Harlan knelt beneath the window and cupped his hands. Julian stepped on and tried grasping for the window.

  ‘I still can’t reach it,’ he spat, rain pouring into his eyes.

  ‘Out of the way,’ Ryan said, moving back several metres. He handed Jes his ibis, then sped at the wall and jumped, aiming with the ball of his foot. As he gained momentum, he reached up with his fingertips, missing the window by centimetres, then landed back on the ground.

  ‘That Pyra or whatever her name is showed me it,’ he said, calming himself with a deep breath. ‘Let me try again.’
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  He ran at the wall again, bounced up and made a desperate grab for the narrow sill of the window.

  ‘This isn’t going to work,’ Julian said. ‘We’ll end up alerting security –’

  ‘You aren’t helping by thinking like that,’ Harlan cut in. ‘You’ll end up jinxing him.’

  Elsa nodded, blushing a little as she remembered how she’d caused Harlan’s coin test to fail.

  ‘Harlan’s right. If we all focus on it, it should help, right? Go on, Ryan, I think you can do it!’

  Ryan walked back further and lowered down again, imagining himself gripping the window ledge.

  ‘You can do it, Ryan,’ Harlan said. He shut his eyes, visualizing Ryan’s success.

  Ryan charged at the wall and bounced, this time gaining enough momentum and traction from the wall to carry him up towards the window. There was a sudden tingling sensation in his mind as he threw his arms up, just reaching the ledge with his fingertips. He hung there suspended for a moment while the others watched below. ‘I’m there!’ he spluttered, amazed that he had managed it.

  He grunted and hoisted himself through the window until all that remained in view were his dangling legs.

  In the back of the car Stephen sat with the fox mask on the seat next to him. He held an ibis in his hands, twirling it back and forth. Since the attack on his website Stephen hadn’t travelled anywhere without a van of thugs following for protection.

  ‘Stop here,’ he ordered the driver.

  The driver pulled the limousine up to the pavement. A tired-looking homeless man was sat in the doorway of a closed shop with a tattered cap in front of him. Inside were a couple of coins.

  ‘You there,’ Stephen shouted out of the window. He clicked his fingers.

  The homeless man pointed at himself.

  ‘Yes,’ said Stephen. ‘Come on, I haven’t got all day.’

  The man creaked to his feet, gathering his cap close to his chest. He tottered towards the car and leant inside.

  Stephen removed a wad of money from his pocket. The man’s eyes widened.

  ‘Have you ever seen this much money in your life?’ Stephen asked.

  The man, mesmerized by the fan of notes, shook his head. ‘No, sir.’

  ‘Daddy used to give me this much pocket money every week as soon I was old enough to walk!’ Stephen released a delighted shriek and fanned the money at the other man. ‘I’ll give it to you. But first I want you to do something for me.’

  ‘Anything,’ the man said. ‘I’ll do anything you want, sir.’

  A cruel smile slid across Stephen’s lips. ‘Pretend that you’re a dog.’

  ‘A dog?’

  ‘Yes,’ Stephen said, smirking. ‘Here. On the pavement.’

  The man considered this for barely a second, then dropped to his knees and began howling.

  Hysterical, Stephen started clapping. ‘More!’ he cried. ‘Louder!’

  The man crawled on all fours towards a couple of pedestrians, barking at them. They quickly hurried past.

  Stephen was laughing so much that his cheeks were pink and a single curl of hair had become displaced from his immaculately combed side parting.

  The man finished barking, erupting into a coughing fit, and crawled on damp knees towards the car window. ‘Sir,’ he said, ‘am I finished now?’

  Stephen picked up the fox mask from the seat and put it on. ‘Go away, little dog,’ Stephen said from behind the mask. ‘I don’t want to play any more.’

  The homeless man got to his feet and lunged towards the money.

  Stephen pointed the ibis through the window and fired. The man fell some way back, landing in a puddle. Stephen reached out of the window and released the money from his fingertips. Most of the notes slipped down the drain by the kerb, sailing on the rainwater, while the few remaining ones scattered in the wind and rain.

  Stephen’s fit of laughter was disrupted by his mobile phone ringing. ‘You’re interrupting something important, so this better be good, or I’ll –’

  ‘Check the news,’ Susannah said.

  Stephen turned on the television screen embedded in the back seat and jabbed it until he found a twenty-four-hour news channel.

  ‘I’m waiting …’ he said impatiently.

  ‘Now,’ Susannah said on the other end of the line.

  Stephen gasped, stroking the leather seat with his soft white hands as the screen changed to a picture of Felix’s company logo and an accompanying headline. ‘Oh, this is just wonderful, Ms Dion. Just wonderful!’

  He nodded to the driver to go and the black limousine pulled away from the kerb and towards the opera house.

  57

  Ryan fell through the window and landed in a large trolley filled with bundles of coloured fabric. He crept out, checking that nobody was around, and opened the door, letting the others inside.

  ‘Now we just gotta find a way down to the stage,’ he said, looking left and right along the corridor.

  The group was halted suddenly by approaching footsteps.

  ‘In here,’ Jes said, and pulled Harlan into a cleaning cupboard. Julian, Ryan and Elsa all leapt into the trolley and pulled the fabric across them.

  ‘This lot is to go down to the stage,’ they heard a voice say. ‘Try to get a move on, we’re running late.’

  ‘Yes, sir,’ said another voice. The man took hold of the trolley handles and with some considerable effort managed to get it moving.

  The trolley rolled and rattled down the length of the corridor.

  ‘We’ve lost Jes and Harlan!’ Elsa whispered. ‘We’ll have to go back for them.’

  ‘We’re not going anywhere, they’ll catch up with us,’ Julian replied quietly. ‘This’ll take us exactly where we need to be.’

  The trolley was wheeled behind the stage. The trio waited for the busy stage hands to pass before they climbed out and peered at the mostly empty auditorium. The walls were decorated with shells, shapes and carved flowers, which glinted through the shadows like coral.

  ‘Do you have your ibis?’ Elsa whispered to Ryan. They paused as a group of chattering assistants emerged and walked right past them, completely oblivious to the three intruders.

  ‘Nah. Gave it to Jes to hold. Guess that screws up our plan. Anyway, we need somewhere to hide,’ he said, searching for a suitable spot. He hopped on to the stage and noticed some wires coming from below. ‘Look, we can go under and wait for the right moment,’ he said.

  Before they had a chance, though, a tall stressed-looking man in a suit and glasses came marching towards them. He gestured with a rolled-up piece of paper, waving it like a baton. ‘There you are, our missing extras! We’ve been looking everywhere for you!’

  ‘Extras?’ said a baffled Elsa. ‘But we aren’t –’

  ‘The director was taken ill earlier, so I’m in charge of you now. What are the three of you playing at? The performance starts in less than half an hour!’

  Julian, Ryan and Elsa all looked at one another. ‘We’re sorry,’ Julian said, improvising. ‘We were just looking for our costumes …’

  The man gave them a contemptuous glare. He stomped towards the trolley, reached inside and removed three threadbare school uniforms, covered in patches. ‘Put your costumes on and get yourselves ready.’

  Each of the three reluctantly took a uniform and was shoved behind the stage.

  ‘No way,’ Ryan hissed, after putting on his costume. His shorts were several sizes too small and the tatty patchwork top barely fit round his broad chest. ‘I’m not doing it. I’m not going on.’

  Julian appeared beside him, wearing a similar pair of shorts, socks hitched to his knees and a child’s school cap balanced precariously on top of his head. Elsa erupted in a fit of laughter at seeing the pair. She clutched her stomach.

  Julian glared at her. ‘I’m glad you find it so funny. At least no one else is around to see this fiasco.’ Barely a moment after the words left his lips, one of the stagehands appeared, with a camera poi
sed in their direction.

  ‘You dare,’ Ryan threatened, but not before a flash blinked. Ryan ran towards him and knocked the camera out of his hands.

  ‘What are you doing?’ the young man cried, reaching down to salvage the camera. ‘Don’t you guys want a picture?’

  ‘No,’ Ryan growled.

  ‘No,’ Julian agreed. ‘No pictures.’ He pushed past the crouched man. ‘Let’s just get this over and done with.’

  ‘The trolley went down that corridor,’ Jes said, opening the cupboard door. Harlan slipped out and the pair followed the winding passage, leading them through an ornate maze of beige and gold.

  Jes peered through a door at the end to find a room filled with fluttering young actors.

  ‘Back up,’ she said to Harlan. ‘We can’t go in there.’ Holding his ibis inside his coat sleeve, Harlan scurried up a staircase that led off the corridor. He paused to wait for her at the top.

  Jes pulled herself up the stairs using the banister, and clutched her side.

  ‘This way is clear,’ Harlan said, treading lightly across the plush red carpeting.

  They dived into the nearest room. Running the length of an enormous wall were three rectangular tables lined with champagne glasses and silver ice buckets.

  Two waiters, a boy and a girl wearing black shirts, were drizzling champagne into the slim glasses. They both looked up at Jes and Harlan.

  ‘Who are you?’ the boy said. ‘This is a private area.’

  ‘We’re here to help,’ Harlan lied. ‘We’re … we’re the new staff.’

  ‘New staff? I don’t know anything about this. Have you both had security checks?’ the girl said. ‘There are some very important people due here shortly.’

  ‘We know,’ said Jes.

  ‘Let me see your passes,’ said the girl.

  ‘Er, we forgot them?’ Jes claimed unsuccessfully.

  The girl lowered the black and gold bottle of champagne she was holding and marched over to the wall telephone. ‘You’re not supposed to be up here,’ she said. ‘I’m calling security.’

  As soon as she had removed the telephone, Harlan pulled the ibis out of his pocket and fired. The girl hit the wall and collapsed to the ground. Her colleague raised his trembling hands in defeat, but Harlan sent him horizontal with another ibis blast.