Chapter 33
John Andrews opened his eyes to find himself floating on his back on the ocean. Tiny waves lapped at the board he was strapped to, but they didn’t disturb it. There was no wind and the sun was fierce, the sky a blinding white.
He knew this sea and recognised the smells from the land that he couldn’t see but instinctively knew was nearby. He couldn’t remember why he was there but he knew he’d been floating for a long time; waiting for someone. He tried to move his arms but they were firmly tied to the board; the only thing he could move was his head. As he turned it to one side, the water lapped onto his cheek. It was warm, soothing. He noticed a movement out of the corner of his eye and strained his head to see what it was. As he did this, the board turned, as if controlled by his head. He saw the movement again. It was a sailing junk. Of course! He was in the South China Sea. But why was he strapped to the board and not on the junk?
He strained his head again and the board seemed to be propelled closer to the junk. Now he could see a figure sitting on the bow. It was Lei-li. She was sketching something. He called out but she couldn’t hear him. He yelled as loudly as he could but it made no difference; she didn’t look up.
His eyes moved along the boat and he could make out another figure. It was a woman in a very old-fashioned dress. She was smiling and waving at him. Beth! It was Beth! She called out to him as she waved, but he couldn’t hear her. He cried out her name, but she didn’t respond. Suddenly another figure appeared carrying several mugs of beer. She had the headscarf on she always wore in the tavern. Arlette! She walked up to Beth, put down the beer and turned to wave at him.
Suddenly the wind got up and the sail of the junk filled. The boat moved towards him. He saw that the sail had a huge picture painted on it. Why hadn’t he seen it before? It was the Madonna del Parto and the face was Maria’s. But instead of that serene look of impending motherhood, her face was turned towards him and he could see her mouthing a word. What was it? What was she saying? It was his name! She was saying it slowly, over and over. Luca! Luca!
As the junk approached, he glanced back at Beth and Arlette and saw that climbing the sides of the boat were dozens of pirates. Now they were on the deck, creeping slowly towards the unsuspecting women, who were still smiling and waving at him. He realised there were now four of them – Millie and Catherine had joined them. They were dressed in riding clothes. All four were waving and smiling at him but he still couldn’t hear them. He yelled out to warn them, but they took no notice. In the bow he saw a pirate raise his sword above his head, about to strike Lei-li. But she held up a hand to stop him and started sketching furiously. Now he could see who it was she was sketching – it was Mei-ling, her head turned towards him, ignoring the pirate and smiling that quiet, knowing smile of hers.
He looked back to the pirates and saw that they weren’t pirates at all; they were his children. There was Niccolò, Piero, Sofia and Gianna, all waving at him and laughing. Behind them were Henri and Michel. And Tella and Fausto. They were all talking to someone. It was Dominic! Then Lola appeared and walked over to where Lei-li was still sketching furiously. Sophie and Phoebe were with her, dancing round her and turning to wave to him. There was someone else with them, a woman. But she had her back to him. He could only see her long black hair, not her face. She was talking to Lei-li who was smiling back at her.
The wind got stronger and the junk started to circle round him, getting closer and closer as it did. The circling got faster and faster as the roar of the wind increased. He lost sight of everyone on the deck as the movement became a blur, the light getting brighter and brighter as the screaming wind became deafening. His head thrashed from side to side as the intensity of the light and noise overwhelmed him and pushed him down into the water. The sea flowed over his head and, as he went deeper and deeper, silence and darkness replaced the noise and light.
His eyes snapped open. He was sweating. He couldn’t move his arms or legs, but he could lift his head. He was strapped to what seemed to be a hospital trolley. He turned his head as much as he could to try to see where he was. The room was quite small, about ten feet by eight, with a door in the short wall ahead of him. Apart from a bench running the length of the wall beside him, there appeared to be no furniture in the room.
As he moved his head, his temples pounded. He felt nauseous and his throat was parched. Then he remembered the injection that Hannah Frobisher had given him. Fragments of their conversation and the earlier one with Peterson drifted back into his mind.
So the young woman, Claudia Reid, who had come to his gallery and bought a painting, had been in league with these people. She must have shown them the results of his DNA profile. When they wanted more sample, she had used the flap of an envelope he had obligingly licked for her when he sealed it. She probably hadn’t believed her luck when he did that. Whatever tests they’d done must have been very comprehensive for them to work out the facts about his condition. And now they wanted to test him to breaking point.
The door ahead of him opened and Hannah Frobisher walked in. She smiled down at him. “Ah, Mr Andrews, you’re awake. How are you feeling?”
He tried to speak but his throat was too dry.
“I’ll get you some water,” she said, walking behind him. He heard a tap running and she pressed a plastic beaker to his lips with one hand, holding his head up with the other.
“Whatever did you inject me with?” he gasped hoarsely.
“Only a mild sedative; nothing too strong. I needed to make sure you were fully relaxed. You might have noticed your arm is a little sore. While you were sleeping, I withdrew about a litre of blood from you for my research. You might be feeling a little weak, but that will soon pass. It was important to take the blood now before there’s anything else circulating in your body. A litre will give me enough to work on for years, you’ll be pleased to hear.”
“How wonderful,” he growled. “How long have I been asleep?”
“Let me see,” she said, looking at her watch, “it’s now three in the afternoon, so you’ve been out for about fourteen hours.”
“I thought you said it was a mild sedative.”
“Well, relatively mild,” she said, shrugging. “I thought that after all the excitement of last night, it would be better if you were kept out of things. You caused a lot of trouble, you know. Wally was wild with anger. I had to patch him up and send him to bed with a sedative as well. I put seven stitches in his head and five in his hand; he is not a happy man. In fact, he’s still very angry with you. And Henry has been given the day off; he needed stitches too, four of them. He’s been complaining of headaches after you hit him. Still, I’m sure a few hours rest upstairs with his favourite malt will calm him down.”
John stretched on the trolley, moving as much as he could.
“Is it really necessary to keep me so tightly bound? It’s extremely uncomfortable and I could really do with using the bathroom. Surely with all Peterson’s resources he can afford to have a few of his musclemen guard me instead of leaving me trussed up like a turkey.”
“You’re not really in a position to make demands, Mr Andrews. Wally is unlikely to be receptive to them.”
“It’s not a demand; it’s a request.”
She put her head on one side coquettishly and appeared to be thinking about what he’d said.
“OK,” she said lightly, “I’ll pop along and ask him.”
Fifteen minutes later, she returned followed by Jeffrey and Martin.
“Wally took some persuading but he’s agreed that you can be strapped to a chair. But if there’s even a hint of any further resistance or an attempt to escape,” she said, wagging her finger at him, “you will be strapped tightly to that trolley day and night.”
She looked down at him and smiled sweetly. “Now, there’s a bathroom through the door behind you. The boys will accompany you while you freshen up.”
Resisting the temptation to react to the guards’ deliberate rough handling of him as they un
strapped him and took him into the small bathroom, John ignored them as best he could and concentrated on stretching his limbs and aching neck. As he rolled up his sleeves to wash at the basin, he was surprised to see a plaster covering the crook of his left arm where Hannah Frobisher had drawn his blood. A large bruise spread beyond it.
When he had finished, the guards took him back to a metal chair that Frobisher had fetched, and they strapped him to it.
“Thank you, boys,” said Frobisher to the two guards. “I don’t think it will be necessary to stand guard. Your room is just down the hall and I’m sure you’ll hear me if I scream.”
The guards grunted sullenly and left the room.
“So what happens now?” asked John.
“Well, we’re waiting for some results from a DNA profiling we’ve carried out on your blood. Wally said it was important to be absolutely certain we are dealing with the right man – I think all your protestations must have worried him, although personally, I have no doubt at all. After that, because we’re in the fortunate position to have all the results from Professor Young, we can skip the next step.”
“Who’s Professor Young, another one of your conspirators?”
She laughed, looking at him coyly. “You’re making it all sound very sinister, you know, Mr Andrews. He’s an eminent geneticist who works in a laboratory funded by Wally’s money. He’s quite brilliant, if a little naïve. We keep tabs on his work so that if he comes up with anything interesting, we know about it almost before he does.”
“So when Peterson claimed last night that all this work had been carried out here, he was lying. You spied on this Professor Young and stole his results.”
“His research is entirely funded by us so I don’t think ‘stole’ is very appropriate. We have every right to see all his results.”
“Yet you still find it necessary to spy on him. You must feel very insecure about the people you fund.”
Hannah Frobisher tossed her head petulantly at the remark and shrugged.
“Hardly your concern, Mr Andrews.”
“You were in the process of answering my question,” continued John. “What happens now?”
“Ah, yes. Well, since we don’t feel it’s necessary to repeat all the tests that demonstrated your immunity, we can forge ahead with a more interesting battery of tests that will tell us precisely how effective your immune system really is. We want to pit it against some of the big guns. Wally’s idea is to do this slowly, since we don’t want to overwhelm your system. We’ll start with some strong forms of a few common diseases to see how your body copes, and if all goes as I think it will, we’ll start to increase the virulence. It will all take time, several weeks probably, but assuming that Professor Young’s interpretation is correct, you should suffer no discomfort at all.” She smiled sweetly.
“So you intend to expose me to a whole range of deadly diseases?”
“Oh, they’re not deadly to you, Mr Andrews, so you have nothing to worry about.”
“You’re insane. You obviously intend to carry on subjecting me to more and more danger until you eventually kill me.”
“That would be a very disappointing outcome and one I really don’t think we need consider,” she said archly. “You don’t seem to appreciate the very special nature of your immune system, Mr Andrews.”
“And when do you intend to start this madness?”
“The profiling of your DNA will take a little while longer, so I intend to start tomorrow.”
She looked at her watch. “Mmm, unless the results are ready sooner than I thought. I’ll pop along to the lab and check on progress.”
John sighed. He felt as if he was in a bad dream. This time yesterday he had been quietly selling his paintings at the art exhibition in Keswick and now he was being held by lunatics.
About an hour later, Hannah Frobisher returned carrying a metal dish.
“Good news, Mr Andrews! The DNA profiling has finished and the results confirm you are the person from the original profiling. So you can stop all this pretence and mystery and tell me about yourself. Tell me about your lives, your loves, your work over the centuries, Mr Andrews. How many people have you been? Were all of them famous artists? I’m fascinated to know.”
She put down the metal dish and stroked one of his hands. “Just think how old these hands are! And yet they appear as young and fresh as mine. Younger. How many wonderful masterpieces have they created?” She smiled warmly at him. “What an enigma you are, Mr Andrews.”
John glared at her. “My life is none of your business and I’m certainly not going to dignify your criminal activities by engaging you in a little heart-to-heart chat. As far as I am concerned, you can go to hell!”
“Then we’re in the same position as we were last night,” she replied petulantly. “I’ll just have to get on with my work if you’re going to be so stubborn.”
She picked up a syringe and vial from the tray and pushed the syringe needle through the vial’s septum, pulling back the plunger to fill the barrel.
“Wally has agreed there’s no reason why I can’t start my immunity experiments immediately, so I’m going to administer the first of a number of cocktails I’ve prepared now. This one is a simple mixture of four viruses and three bacteria that have very short incubation periods. In other words, we’ll be able to see very quickly how your body is coping with them.”
She pulled up the sleeve of his shirt and plunged the needle into his shoulder.
“There,” she said, removing the needle and wiping the puncture site with a swab. “That was easy, wasn’t it? I’ll just attach these temperature and blood pressure probes to you and we’re finished.”
Rare Traits (The Rare Traits Trilogy Book I) Page 34