Hard Targets: A Doc Palfrey Omnibus

by Richard Creasey

  The Prime Minister stopped and turned and looked at her. That got his attention, thought Marion. “What do you mean?” he said.

  “Well, when we let this girl go we had her followed, of course.”

  The Prime Minister stared at her. “Are you serious?” He said. “How can you possibly have done something so foolhardy?”

  “Foolhardy?”

  “I cannot believe that after what we have seen today you are still playing games with these people.” He stared at Marion, his face pale with fury. “Well, I want it to stop immediately. Call off your people. You’ve done enough damage.”

  He went out and left Marion Palfrey there, trembling with rage.

  11: Ash

  Max Fedorov was jet lagged. He had just spent over twenty hours flying from New Zealand, where he had been investigating the local fire cults for Z5, to Linate airport in Milan where he was to meet Sofia Forli.

  Sofia was waiting for him in her office - the Aquarium overlooking her domain. “How was your flight?”

  “Dreadful.” Max settled his bulky frame into one of the office chairs, which barely accommodated it, taking care not to spill the cup of coffee which had been so thoughtfully provided for him downstairs the moment he arrived. “All the way here I’ve been reading news bulletins, and the news is all bad.”

  The smile faded from Sofia’s face. “I know. Tokyo, Paris, Moscow, New York, Washington, Los Angeles…”

  “Yes, the Americans got three,” said Max bleakly. He took a sip of his coffee.

  “New Delhi, Brasília, Ottawa…”

  “It’s as if after they hit London, they liked it so much they went after all the others.”

  As in London, each of these cities had been struck by a small, contained, but deadly fire. A miniature holocaust. The casualties now numbered hundreds of thousands.

  Some estimates were as high as a million.

  Sofia forced herself to smile. “But before we get down to business, there is one small matter…”

  For a moment the deep lines of worry left Max’s face and his mood seemed to lighten. He said, “River, river, circle, star.”

  This time Sofia’s smile was real and unforced. She lifted a newspaper off the desk in front of her revealing four large white cards with black patterns printed on them. Reading from left to right, the first two cards featured a triple wave pattern - the ‘river’ - and the next one was a circle, the last one a star. These were three of the Zener cards, created by Karl Zener in the 1930s for the experiments in extra-sensory perception he’d conducted with his fellow researcher J.B. Rhine.

  Sofia had been concentrating on this sequence of patterns, on and off, for the last three hours. And Max had received her mental image of them while he was flying thousands of feet above the Earth.

  “One hundred percent,” said Sofia. “But then I expected nothing less.”

  “That’s why they gave me this assignment, you know,” said Max. “I’m Z5’s poster boy for psychic phenomena. And that’s what these fire cults are peddling. Mind over matter. Or at least, mind over fire.”

  “Is there any truth in it?”

  Max shrugged. “All I’ve seen so far is a lot of superstitious belief, wishful thinking and credulity. Which doesn’t necessarily mean there isn’t any truth in it.” He looked at her. “But now I’m here. And no one’s told me why I’ve been pulled off the fire cults.”

  “You haven’t,” said Sofia. “It’s just that the investigation is now focusing in Europe.” She told him about the girl called Belle Crane and how her arrest by Z5 had triggered the fire in London. “So Marion’s people had to release her. They handed her back to her brother. But they followed them, of course.”

  Max leaned forward, suddenly interested. “This is good news. The people I’ve been looking at in the fire cult are all at the bottom of the food chain. This Belle and Gregory Crane are obviously much higher up. Closer to Faustus. If we can find them, maybe we can find him.”

  “Well, we’ve found them. When they left Digby Mews they went straight London City Airport and boarded a private jet.”

  “These people have got money behind them, then.”

  “Clearly. From London they flew across the Channel to France. Alan Hayes is presently keeping an eye on them there.”

  Max whistled. “Finally a break in this case. So what are we waiting for? Let’s go and join Hayes in France.”

  “Not so fast, Max.” Sofia smiled. “We’ve also had a break here. Potentially a huge break. You remember the fire here in Milan, in the Forlanini Park?”

  “Yes, your girl was there, wasn’t she? The one with the glasses downstairs. She made a nice cup of coffee for me.”

  “Paola. She was the only known survivor of that fire. But now someone has come forward.”

  “Another survivor?” said Max.

  “No, the person who set the fire.”

  *

  What does a mass murderer look like? Max knew there was no specific answer to that question, that there couldn’t be. But nonetheless he was surprised by the man who was waiting for them in Parco Forlanini, standing in the wasteland of ash where the flames had swept a few days earlier.

  He was a small man, pot bellied, neatly dressed. He might have been a smartly attired off-duty waiter or a junior bureaucrat. He had thinning hair and he wore wire framed glasses. His suit was grey, his hair was grey. He matched the charred tree under which he stood and the expanse of grey ash which spread in every direction. The only colour that could be seen here was the milky green of Lake Salesina in the distance.

  “I told you to come alone,” said the little man in a querulous voice.

  “It’s all right,” said Sofia. “This is my friend Max. You can trust him.”

  The little man cast nervous glances from side to side. It was hard to know what he was looking for. There was no one else there. Just the three of them in this wasteland of cinder, ash and charred wood. There wasn’t even the sound of bird song, just the hiss of wind blowing through burned things.

  “Why did you chose to meet here, of all places?” said Max. He wondered if it was some sort of mea culpa - that the man wanted to torment himself, wallow in the horror of what he had done. Or perhaps revel in it.

  But the little man merely shrugged.

  “You can’t burn ash,” he said.

  That was a little too cryptic for Max. “What do you mean?”

  “It means he’s afraid,” said Sofia.

  “That is correct,” the man said. “If they knew I was talking to you, that would be the end of me.”

  “You said you were responsible for setting the fire here?” said Sofia.

  “I implemented it,” said the little man, as if this fine distinction was important. “I helped them to do it. I told myself I wasn’t really to blame.” He looked around at the scorched landscape. “But I am to blame. And it turns out I can’t live with that.” He gave a peculiar little laugh. “So I am going to tell you everything.”

  Sofia took out her phone and set it to record. “Please begin.”

  The little man stared at them. He made a strange sound. At first Max thought he was laughing again. But the sound turned into a strangled cry. The man began swatting at himself, as though he was covered with burning insects.

  And then he burst into flame.

  It took Max a second to react. Then he shouted, “Lie down!” And he began to pull his leather jacket off. If he could get the man on the ground, roll him in the ash, smother the flames with his jacket…

  But the man was running. The worst possible thing to do. As he ran, the air fed the flames. Max and Sofia ran after him. The burning man was fleeing towards the lake. In his anguished state it must have seemed like his salvation.

  It wasn’t. It was much too far away.

  He was dead long before he got there.

  Max and Sofia stared down at the charred remains of his body, lying there in the grey wasteland.

  Just another pile of ash.


  12: Chateau

  They took Sofia’s D-Jet to France for their rendezvous with Hayes. Sofia was silent for almost the entire journey. At first Max thought she was concentrating on her flying, and then he thought it was the sombre aftermath of what they witnessed in the Forlanini Park. Not being able to stop the man burning, and with him losing their best lead…

  But it was none of these things. When she landed at Deauville Airport Sofia explained, “You might sense a little tension in me. The last time I came to Deauville I’d been drugged and kidnapped and brought here against my will.”

  “Well, that will do it all right,” said Max.

  They were met by Alan Hayes. “You’ve arrived just in time. The ceremony is about to start.” He hurried them towards his car.

  “What ceremony?”

  “The fire walking ritual. Belle and Gregory are taking part. In fact, they’re sort of in charge.” Hayes drove out of the airport, turning onto the D74 and then the D288, a road called Le Désert although there were nothing but green fields on either side of them. “Where are we going?” said Sofia, looking around uneasily.

  “The Chateau Grand Mote,” said Hayes, peering out the windscreen at the winding road. “It’s -”

  Sofia cut him off. “I know what it is. It’s the ancestral home of the late François Edouard. It’s also the place where Miroslav Kalan held me prisoner when I was abducted.” She looked at Max. “Do you think that’s a coincidence?”

  “No,” said Max. “I think someone’s playing games with us.”

  Sofia nodded. Her eyes were bright with anger. “Someone who knows a great deal about Z5.”

  As they approached the chateau Hayes explained that the fire walking ceremony was being held in the courtyard. “Won’t they spot us?” said Max.

  Hayes shook his head. “They don’t seem to be worried about anyone infiltrating. In fact, everyone is more than welcome. The place is wide open.”

  “They’re very confident.”

  “Let’s hope too confident.”

  The courtyard was a paved square in the centre of the chateau. Stone staircases rose up from it on all sides to open doorways in the towers and walls. In the middle of the square a raised stage had been constructed with a long shallow trough full of hot coals for the fire walking. At the back of the stage was a wide white screen, the purpose of which immediately became apparent when images were projected on it of the recent fires in the world’s capitals.

  The audience watched in rapt silence. The crowd consisted mostly of young adults, but there were some older people there and even a few children. Standing on stage on either side of the screen were Gregory Crane and his sister Belle. The girl was good looking, thought Max. Too bad she was caught up in this nonsense.

  After the footage of the fires, a man’s face appeared on the screen. He was handsome and saturnine, with an angular moustache, heavy black eyebrows and a sharp widow’s peak. To Max he looked a little too handsome, a little too smooth, like an actor. Speaking in fluent French the man introduced himself as Faustus. Sofia took a photograph of the face on the screen. This was unlikely to attract any unwanted attention since dozens of others were taking photos, too.

  Faustus explained that the fire walking ceremony was one of spiritual purification and confirmation. Those who were loyal and faithful and true would pass across the hot coals unharmed. Then Gregory Crane placed a block of wood on the coals to demonstrate that they were real. The wood blackened and rapidly burst into flames.

  When it was consumed, Belle Crane slipped off her espadrilles and walked across the scorching coals on her bare feet, moving casually and unhurriedly from one end to the other.

  The crowd applauded wildly and Belle took a modest bow while her brother removed his own shoes and socks.

  Gregory hopped onto the coals and began to walk.

  But before he had taken his third step there was a loud crackle of flame. In front of the staring crowd, and their busy phone cameras, flames raced up Gregory’s body, consuming him in a flaring rush. Within seconds he was transformed from a living human being into a twisted cinder.

  Twice in one day, thought Max. That’s a little too much.

  Belle started screaming hysterically, so that it was hardly possible to hear Faustus saying, “You must know why that once-trusted member died. He has led our enemies here and brought them among us. Now they can return to their masters and tell them of the power of Faustus.”

  *

  It might have been logical for Belle Crane to blame Z5 for her brother’s death.

  Instead, and much more usefully, she blamed Faustus.

  When Sofia and the others identified themselves to her, she immediately offered to tell them everything she knew. Any loyalty she’d felt to the cult had been consumed by the same flames that killed her brother.

  Now she wanted justice.

  Now she wanted revenge.

  Hayes would take Belle back to England. Max and Sofia didn’t argue with him. The Cranes had been his assignment. He was entitled to follow through on it. And the credit for coup should go to him.

  And it could prove to be a huge coup. Belle Crane knew all about the sect of Faustus, its organisation and command structure. She might even be able to lead them to Faustus himself.

  The man who’d killed her brother.

  Max should have felt triumphant. But he merely felt weary. He decided to return to Milan with Sofia and await orders. At least he knew the coffee was good there.

  When Sofia’s D-Jet landed at Linate they saw a police car waiting for them on the runway. “I wonder what this is about,” said Sofia, as she unbuckled herself from the pilot’s seat.

  “Some new development,” said Max.

  They climbed out of the D-Jet. Like Sofia, Max was expecting the police to escort them to some new crime scene.

  Instead the police pointed guns at them, handcuffed them, and arrested them.

  13: Nuntovi

  Marion Palfrey had convened an emergency meeting at one of the conference rooms in Digby Mews. In attendance was Professor Nuntovi, the leading research scientist for Z5 in London, who had his laboratories in the Digby Mews complex. He was a small man with thinning white hair sticking out at all angles in the manner of Einstein. Doc suspected that this resemblance was no accident and liked to imagine Nuntovi spending a long time in front of the mirror each morning achieving the effect. Nuntovi’s decisive technical brilliance was rather at odds with his quiet demeanour and self effacing manner. He was always the last to speak at a meeting - and always the first to arrive.

  He was already sitting there when Doc and Benadir came in, followed shortly by Marion.

  They shut the door and sat down at the table. “I’ll start,” said Doc. “We’ve received the latest update from Sir Fred’s team. They’ve been analysing video footage of the fires and they’ve drawn some rather disturbing conclusions.” He looked at Benadir, his mother, the Professor. “We’ve all heard of fire fighters,” he said. “But what we have here is a fire which fights back. When a hose is directed at the flames and water begins to douse the blaze, the fire actually seems to concentrate its heat and energy at the point where the spray makes contact, making sure that the water has as little impact as possible. Fire crews have noticed this phenomenon - the fire burning more brightly and intensely where they direct their hoses, and less intensely elsewhere. So of course, they switch the hose to attach the fire at its weak point, and the fire promptly reinforces itself there. They switch position again, and the fire’s most intense area moves, too. And so on and so on.”

  “In other words,” said Benadir. “The fire is under some kind of intelligent control.”

  Professor Nuntovi nodded politely. Marion Palfrey said, “Well, that is rather alarming. Luckily I have some good news, from Hayes in France. You will have seen his email. It looks as if Belle Crane has come over to our side as a result of the death of her brother. Hayes should be back here in London with the girl imminently and then we can
get started. It is our first real break in terms of this Faustus cult.”

  “Assuming that there is anything to this Faustus and his cult,” said Doc. “I thought we were sceptical about the whole notion that the fires are controlled by some kind of psychic power?”

  “Well, we’ll know more when we speak to the girl, won’t we?” snapped his mother. “And isn’t it time we had a report from Max about this whole subject?”

  “Max is with Sofia,” said Benadir. “And I haven’t been able to make contact with them in Milan.”

  “They’re probably still en route back from France,” said Marion. “Well, does anyone have anything else to add?”

  Professor Nuntovi cleared his throat shyly. “Well, there are a couple of things from my department.”

  “Go ahead, Professor.”

  Nuntovi nodded. “All right. Thank you. Now, first of all, does everyone here understand what I mean by the terms nanotechnology and nanobots?”

  Surprisingly, it was Marion Palfrey who answered this question. “Yes, they are microscopically small robots which can be assigned to perform tasks en masse, in swarms so to speak.”

  The Professor was delighted. “Yes, excellent, that is exactly what I am talking about.”

  The three other people at the table stared at him. Marion Palfrey was the first to speak. “Are you suggesting that these fires are being caused by nanobots?”

  Nuntovi nodded enthusiastically. “Nanobots guided by sophisticated artificial intelligence software, yes.”

  “And what evidence do you have for this theory?”

  “Well, we have been analysing the ash from these fires and find that there is rather a lot of carbon in it.”

  “Carbon?” said Doc.

  “Yes, and these nanobots would be chiefly constructed of carbon nanotubes. And other materials, of course. But chiefly the carbon nanotubes. So when we discovered that there was rather a large quantity of carbon in the ash…”