by John McNally
“Oui,” agreed the French President. “The situation is impossible.”
Wise heads nodded one by one by one around the world.
“Allenby, we need those codes,” said the Prime Minister.
“I think I’ll hold on to them a little longer if you don’t mind,” said Al, now looking round for an exit.
“Commander King?” said the Prime Minister, demanding some kind of public assurance.
King felt like he was trapped in a game of chess played against three powerful opponents: one quite mad, one a truculent genius and one a ticking bomb. Who knows what he might have done, had not a message buzzed in his ear. An urgent message from security at the main gate.
He made a snap decision. The best idea he’d had all night.
“Arrest Dr Allenby.”
THIRTY-TWO
Kane squinted through his one good eye, like a cyclops.
He examined the lens of the glowing fibre-optic camera worm, and wiped a thumb over it, to remove the dirt as he did between each run, then fed it under the filthy boards again, scouring the joist gap with the all-seeing snake. Nothing. He picked up the thermal camera again and for the umpteenth time scanned the floor.
It had indeed been a long night and all around him the top floor of the house lay in chaos. He had lifted more than forty floorboards, ripping up carpets and crashing aside furniture and any other obstacle that stood in his way.
He knew they’d been hiding under the network of radiator pipes, disguised by the latent heat, but two hours – maybe more? – had passed now and the glow of the pipes had all but faded. He’d almost caught them twice already, but each time they’d managed to slip away into parallel joist gaps through old bore holes for pipes and wiring, and he’d been unable to shift furniture and associated junk fast enough to lift the next board along and so trap them.
So he’d changed tack and become systematic. He’d started lifting every third floorboard – checking the gaps between with the two cameras – moving systematically across the floor towards the end wall. And he was getting close now. He’d caught a flicker of a heat signature twice already and he knew he was driving them into his trap.
Beneath the floorboards, Delta waited with the bomb.
She and Finn had sweated and laboured for what felt like an age and were now covered in ancient soot and dirt from head to foot, their headlamps completing their coalminer look. They had run from the cover of one pipe to another to stay one step ahead in their bizarre game of Battleships with Kane, crouching and hiding a few minutes at a time, sometimes drifting into hope that he might stop or give up, before another long floorboard was wrenched up and the nightmare of chase and entrapment began again.
As the minutes, then the tens of minutes, then the hours wore on – it was hard to judge time in this exhausted state, in this black and filthy place – they realised the heating pipes would soon offer no cover at all.
Delta knew they were being driven towards the wall. The endgame was in sight. The situation was hopeless.
Finn knew it too.
“He’s trying to trap us against the wall. We’ve got to take him out or we’ve got nowhere left to go,” said Delta.
“How?”
“Got to take out that last eye.”
So she’d taken the remaining C-4 plastic explosive out of the pack and moulded it into the size of a grapefruit. “Get grit, dirt, anything and work it in.”
They scrabbled around in the soot for small pieces of stone, copper filings, anything that would act as shrapnel, and worked it into the explosive dough.
The blast would be small at macro level, only about as powerful as a firework, but still capable of serious damage. Delta’s first thought was to try and make some kind of cannon to fire a projectile at the remaining eye, but the chances of being able to aim it with any accuracy were slim indeed. So she fell back on something much cruder. Make a dirt bomb and get it somewhere near his face, and when – however temporarily – he was blinded, make a run for it.
But how to get it near? He was on his feet most of the time and 150 times their size.
She had one plan and one plan only.
She set Finn running.
Straight down between the joists in the wide open spaces with no thermal cover at all.
* * *
Kane could hardly believe it. There was a heat signature clear as a bell.
He lined up his fibre-optic worm and shot it under the floorboards after the runner. There was the boy. Plain as day. As the camera worm caught up with him, he hopped across to the right-hand joist and dived through an ancient drill hole.
Quick as a flash, Kane jumped to where Finn had just been, hacked his hammer and meat cleaver into the floorboard and…
CRRRRRRRRRAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAACK!
…prised it up.
But where he’d expected to see a nano-boy running – nothing. Where had he gone? Towards the wall? Back beneath him? He spun and pulled out the fibre-optic worm to search again, not bothering to glance at his phone screen as he did so.
As the worm shot past her, Delta jumped out of her hiding place and pitched the sticky bomb they’d made straight on to the end of the lens, having seen how he brought it up to his face to clean each time. SPLAT.
In Siberia, watching live via his array at a 0.44-second delay, Kaparis saw the fibre-optic camera feed black out as the bomb splatted against the lens.
“END OF LENS!” he snapped.
His message took 0.44 seconds to bounce back across Europe.
…and it took 0.88 seconds for Kane to pull out the end of the fibre-optic worm, glance down with his good eye, ready to bring his thumb across the lens, then hear Kaparis’s warning… in the very same moment that Delta beneath the boards hit the detonator.
BANG!
Kane’s head snapped back and he was knocked – as much in shock and reflex as by the blast – flat on his back across the floor.
His ears rang. His skin burnt. His hands shook… but he had closed his eyes and turned his face away in the 0.06 seconds available to him. The very nick of time. Kane cursed and shot straight back to the joist.
Realising she’d blown their last chance, Delta dived through the hole in the joist where Finn was hidden and screamed, “GO!”
* * *
DAY THREE 04:43 (BST). Hook Hall, Surrey
“Why you superior… perfidious… mendacious…”
Al kicked and screamed and fought like a tiger as he was dragged out.
“Seize the codes. Dismantle the Large Accelerator,” King had ordered.
The Security Service guards were far bigger than him, picking him up like a rag doll and easily robbing him of the small blue memory stick containing the sequencing codes from his jacket pocket.
“I’ve had an idea! I’ve had another idea, you fools!” he shouted. But no one listened.
It felt a huge relief at last to physically struggle. To fight. To hit and be hit. It was (weren’t men idiots?) fun, despite it all. He felt like he could fight and fight. He would fight to the end. He would find him. He would find Finn.
CLUNK. The cell door closed in the security block at the back of Hook Hall.
Al sat on his bunk. He thought of Finn. He held on to the lump of spharelite around his neck and scratched it.
Was this what the end of the world felt like?
King walked in.
“You!” Al snapped.
King pulled up a plastic seat opposite Al and studied him through the bars.
“I could get used to this,” said King.
“Get on with it,” said Al.
“Someone always has to look after you, don’t they? Can’t or won’t hold down a job, can’t or won’t commit to anybody or anything, always waking up with a hangover and a desire to tinker with something new. Restless and irresponsible.”
“Hey! Some of us need to get more out of life than a chauffeur-driven
car and a civil-service pension!”
“If you must know, I meet the cost of my car and driver from my private income. Both have been with the family for years.”
“This country needs a revolution.”
“I had to establish that I was credible and still capable of controlling the mission. And I had to get you out of the way of your mother.”
“My mother?”
“She’s at the main gate.”
Al swallowed a lump of emotion.
“You better get me out of here. I’ve got an idea. I’m going to find Finn.”
“How?” said King.
“It’s so stupid I don’t want to say. I just know I’ve got to try, otherwise I’ll go crazy and my heart will break and the world may as well end. I can’t lose another…”
King wondered what that meant, but didn’t press him.
“You have to satisfy yourself that you have done everything you possibly can to look for him,” stated King.
“That’s right.”
“Will you need anything?”
“Six hours.”
“I’ll give you three.”
Al couldn’t quite believe it.
“But you have to give me the sequencing codes.”
“Your goons took them already.”
“I imagine there’s at least one piece missing from that particular jigsaw.”
Al smiled. You had to hand it to King, you couldn’t kid a kidder.
“I don’t think the Fat Doughnut rig matters, it’s the codes he wants,” said King.
“True. You could get most of the parts off eBay; it might take a year or so, but you could put something together,” agreed Al.
“You know that, and I know that,” said King, “but the trouble is I think he knows that too. It’s why he chose to send the picture of the boy as extra leverage against you. I think that much we’ve just learned.”
Al scraped at the spharelite again to make it glow. Studied it a moment.
“You know what I have learned?” said Al. “As soon as you create something special, it becomes corrupted. As soon as someone sees it, it’s out of your control, you’re done for. If we hand these codes over to that madman? One burnt county might seem like a walk in the park. Why do we ever allow ourselves to think these things? Nuclear weapons, biological weapons, codes – why can’t we just leave the genie in the bottle? Why?”
“I have no answer. I am not God.”
“But you are the King.”
“And I have to try and remain in control. You can go off on whatever wild goose chase you want. But I have to have those codes.”
Al had to admit that he loved the way King’s mind worked.
Three minutes later, King was smuggling Al out of the rear gate. The De Tomaso Mangusta had been brought down. World leaders, senior staff and Grandma – who had now barked her way through as far as the Security Chief’s office – were clueless.
Al climbed in, felt the seat cup round him and smelt the leather. He turned the key and started the engine. He closed his eyes for a moment. Home.
King took out a scrap of paper and a pen.
“Codes.”
Al explained. “I hold the key equation as a mnemonic, in a snatch of poetry. Come here.”
King was obliged to bend his head down to Al, as he whispered:
“But at my back I always hear
Time’s wingèd chariot hurrying near,
And yonder all before us lie
Deserts of vast eternity—
where B is acceleration and E opens and closes brackets,
and where all other vowels are disregarded.”
King gave him both eyebrows.
“It’s Andrew Marvell. Except the last bit.”
“I know who it is.”
“Trust me, it’s in there. Just find yourself a couple of cryptanalysts with a romantic bent and you’ve got it. I promise.”
Al gunned the engine and offered King his hand. King shook it. Al put his foot down.
The beast roared.
THIRTY-THREE
DAY THREE 05:21 (BST). Lanyard House. Coppice Lane, Berkshire
CRRRRRRRRRAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAACK!
Light was appearing everywhere now. They were still being driven towards the wall, but Kane was pulling up every board and drawing out the process.
Delta couldn’t figure out why, until she noticed that, not only had he abandoned his splat-bombed fibre-optic worm, he’d stopped pausing to use his thermal camera too. The blast may not have taken out Kane’s good eye, but it looked like he’d fallen back and smashed the camera in the process and now had to rely on brute strength and logic alone.
CRRRRRRRRRAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAACK!
“Run!” said Delta.
“Running!” replied Finn.
* * *
DAY THREE 05:24 (BST). Siberia
With the pictures from the fibre-optic worm gone, Kaparis had to make do with a cloudy feed from the integrated camera on Kane’s phone, and the floorboard sound effects. The rest he filled in himself with stock images of revenge from his blood-curdling imagination.
Heywood had prepared a bottle of Krug ’95 and cued up the Haydn Trumpet Concerto in E flat major to try and calm him down after the unfortunate exchange with Dr Allenby. But with resentment and rage and sour memories still riddling through him, Kaparis could only feel one thing.
Kill Kill Kill…
* * *
CRRRRRRRRRAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAACK!
Another board splintered up above them. They were running at the wall now. There was no way forward. It was a dead end. Or so they thought. But, when they reached the wall, they noticed – just under where one of the joists had been trimmed to fit the wall – a shadow in the brickwork. A gap?
CRRRRRRRRRAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAACK!
They had no choice. The last board was up. For a split second the demon stood over them. Kane in all his myopic glory.
Delta shoved Finn down into the gap and dived in after him.
A heel the size of a house came at the wall – STAMP!
The collapse of old masonry caught Delta’s trailing leg – “Arrgh!” – as she struggled and just made it through.
Finn pulled Delta through into the darkness after him. She was in pain. They were trapped inside some nightmare tunnel, no more than a fracture in the brickwork. The way back had been blocked by Kane’s stamp. They had no choice but to squeeze and struggle on through the tiny space, crawling through ancient mortar that had long ago turned to dust. They began to choke as it kicked up.
Then suddenly Finn felt the tunnel give way – Delta had to grab his shoulders to stop him falling down and forward.
As the dust cleared and their choking stopped, they found themselves on a ledge above a sheer drop where all around was blackened brick. Slowly, their headlamps picked out more detail, and they realised they were in an old chimney. The fireplace below that it had once served had been blocked somehow and a series of copper pipes now rose up the shaft, as if from an organ.
It was a bleak spot, but to get at them here Kane would have to demolish the house.
“These pipes must be running to a cylinder up in the attic. If we get up there, we can reach the eaves in the roof and climb down,” Delta said.
Two power cables dangled alongside the pipes invitingly. Delta looked at her ankle. It hadn’t broken, but it had been caught and twisted and was badly hurt.
“You’ll never make it. We’ll go down the pipes, not up, and see where they lead,” said Finn.
There was a clatter from below. Down the shaft they glimpsed a patch of light. Something poked through it, then the hole was sealed again and the light blotted out.
Hissssssssssssss…
Delta looked at him.
“Gas.”
Hisssssssss…
Kane held the hose and waited. He’d detached the gas line from the back of the large cooker and stuck it through the hole he’d smashed in the plasterboard covering the old fireplace, sealing it with a wet tea towel.
Hissssssssssssss…
Finn grabbed hold of a dangling cable.
“We’ve got to go up!”
“Wait!” said Delta. She lashed a safety line between them, so that they were connected by six nano-metres or so of dangling titanium.
“Now,” she said.
Hissssssssssssss…
They jumped into the cables and began to shin up. Finn fast, but Delta struggled to keep up, pained by the injured ankle.
“Climb!” Finn pulled harder, trying to tug her up after him.
She felt it and made extra effort, hoisting herself up through the pain.
Hissssssssssssss…
Finn tried to drag her on. But Delta suddenly realised something, and stopped. She smelt the air. Nothing.
Finn felt the line drag. “Go!”
“Stop! Give me one of the flares.”
“What? Climb!”
“We’re in the country. It’s tank gas. We have it at the cabin.”
“What?”
“At our cabin in the woods – you have to buy the gas in tanks. It’s heavier than air, so it doesn’t rise quickly, which makes it dangerous, because it pools if it leaks. They must have it here otherwise we’d smell it already. It’s not rising. He’d have to fill most of the shaft for it to reach us. How long’s that going to take?”
“You want to stay and find out?”
“Release the line and get far enough away – I’m going to fire down.”
Finn digested the crazy consequences.
“What if you get caught in the flames?”
“I’ll worry about that. You get clear.”