Turning Point

by Barbara Spencer

  ‘What about Jameson?’

  ‘Your pal from school? Nothing! He’s a valuable member of our little team. I hear he’s clever. Already getting to grips with firewalls. Can’t understand them myself. Tragic waste, your dad not wanting to work with us.’

  Scott ground his teeth curbing an urge to retort. What was the point, the man’s ego was colossal as it was.

  The corridor opened up into a wide lobby. Scott recognised it instantly. Built on several levels, it was bigger than he had thought, with his view partially blocked by the framework of the ventilation grille. Shallow half-steps separated areas into private seating, shielded by walls of greenery. Scott touched the leaf of a Japanese maple. Like the rest of the setup it was false, made from some sort of plastic. Something else that gave the impression of being one thing yet, in reality, was something else. On the wall, the vast television screen stayed mute and silent. There was no one about.

  Scott pointed. ‘You said television.’

  ‘Not here. That’s for the use of our work force.’ Pete’s voice was relaxed, its southern drawl very noticeable. He hadn’t bothered to draw his gun, strolling behind them as casually as a tiger with sheathed claws, utterly lethal if provoked. ‘Don’t bother shouting for help. We don’t let things escape our control – not even noise. You’ll find every room is sound-proofed.’

  At the far end of the lounge area, double doors opened up into a long corridor, doors leading off on both sides like a suite of offices; smart but for middle-management only, not plush enough for the hierarchy, the bosses.

  Pete opened a door, casually waving his hand towards a small table ringed by hard-back chairs. In the corner a television was playing, voices speaking in a foreign language.

  ‘Take a seat; someone’ll be with you shortly.’

  The door closed behind him. Automatically, Scott tried the knob, twisting it round and round. He gave a shrug, grimacing at his own stupidity. ‘Haven’t a clue why I did that.’ Releasing the handle, he hooked his foot round the leg of a chair, crashing down on the seat. ‘Hilary…’

  Putting her hands on the sides of his head, Hilary twisted Scott round to face her. She stared into his eyes and raised her fingers to her lips.

  Scott grimaced painfully. ‘Yeah, I know they’re listening. I was only going to say sorry. Again.’ He dropped his head staring down at the table, his fingers tracing a pattern on its wooden surface. ‘Recently, I seem to have spent half my time regretting stuff,’ he mumbled, remembering all those times he had behaved like a kid. Getting angry in Switzerland because their holiday had been cut short; furious because his father wanted to do the right thing and help the victims of Mr Smith’s ambition, storming out of the house because Sean Terry announced he was moving them to safety, even mad at Tulsa because he’d kept silent out of loyalty to his boss. He raised his head again, dredging up a wry smile. ‘Next time, I’ll leave you in Falmouth.’

  Hilary grabbed his hand, linking her fingers through his. ‘You tried, remember. This isn’t your fault, Scott. Kids like us; we don’t stand a chance against powerhouses of evil.’

  The words came out defiantly, wanting listeners to hear. Okay, she might have been taken prisoner but she wasn’t beaten. Scott felt a surge of pride. She was so amazing. Even now, totally composed. Most girls would be in hysterics. No wonder he loved her! The thought stopped him dead and a gut-wrenching shaft of pain soared through him. He pictured the Suzuki, a crumpled heap of metal – exactly like his life.

  ‘What?’ Hilary’s voice was sharp and the pressure on his hand increased.

  ‘I was thinking about the bike.’

  Hilary’s startled gaze met his, the symbolism not lost. She knew as well as he did that they stood little chance of getting out alive. But there was a chance. Scott eyed the dial on his watch. If Beau or James… He cut the thought not daring even to picture the words in his head for fear of being overheard. He stared round the walls. Somehow he had to buy time – a day, maybe more.

  Twenty-seven

  The minutes ticked slowly away. By the time the door opened, Scott felt convinced his watch had stopped and hours and hours had elapsed, not twenty minutes. They’d not spoken much, not from fear of being overheard but because there was nothing to say. No point discussing ways of escape. There weren’t any. Even the grilles in the ceiling were too small to climb through. Hilary rested her head against Scott’s shoulder, her fingers clasped in his for comfort. It was little enough. The blame was his and his alone. He should have left her with Travers.

  They jumped to their feet. He felt Hilary dig her nails in sharply and responded, gripping her hand tightly.

  ‘How charming.’

  Scott recognised the stocky figure in the doorway. He may have seen him only fleetingly but it had been long enough to haunt his dreams, a dark menace sweeping to the point of recognition and then retreating again, like the tide on the seashore. When he woke the image was gone, leaving him no nearer putting a name to the face than he had been when he went to bed. Longish dark hair, swept back from the forehead and going grey at the sides; his clean-shaven face was cherubic, with that polished glow that comes from daily grooming, his nails manicured. He wore a diamond encrusted watch on his wrist, and his cuff links sparkled beneath the sleeve of his jacket, his shirt immaculate.

  Towering over him, like a gargoyle, was another figure that Scott recognised, the German bodyguard. No silk suit for him. The muscles of his upper arms strained against the coarse material of his jacket, the shoulder on one side distorted by a heavy gun holster. His name… Scott scrabbled through his memory banks. Arnulf, his father had called him. He had described him as an ox without brains. He’d been waiting by the helicopter that fateful morning when Pete had taken him prisoner – yet another situation in which there’d been no hope. It was the German’s clumsiness that had shifted the balance, awarding him and his dad a precious second in which to run, the shot intended for his dad spinning harmlessly off into space. And they had run. The images flashed past; the chase across the roof tops, the climb down the face of the building – until that fatal gunshot which had so grievously wounded his father.

  Pete closed the door and leaned back against it. He grinned at Scott, amused by the expression of hatred on his face. ‘I told you once before, Scott. This isn’t personal. In any other circumstances you and I could have been great friends. By all accounts, like you were with Tulsa.’

  ‘He was killed saving me.’ Scott caught the savage note in his voice.

  ‘I heard. Shame! Good man. Like you, he chose the wrong side, that’s all.’

  Hilary twisted a lock of hair into place. ‘And is it too late to choose the right side?’ she said, her voice icily polite.

  Scott held his breath, not daring to look at her. She had to be scared like him, but you’d never guess.

  Arnulf pulled out a chair and, flipping the seat with his hand to clean it, offered it to the man Scott had seen across the floor of the United Nations.

  ‘Children! Children! Enough of this squabbling.’ Nodding his thanks, the man sat down, resting his hands flat on the table. ‘I believe the English are fond of the saying “why stand when you can sit.” My dear young people… Scott, I know. And you, my dear…’

  ‘Hilary Stone.’

  ‘American Secret Service,’ Pete added from the doorway.

  ‘I resigned,’ Hilary spat back. ‘Hated what killing did to people like you.’

  ‘I understand. Not a good profession for a delicate young lady.’

  A snigger came from the German, hastily wiped off, once again staring stolidly off into the distance.

  ‘I am sure we’re all friends here. Please allow me to introduce myself.’ The man’s English was heavily accented, each syllable slow and marked as if he had learned sentences parrot fashion from a tape. Through the headphones, the man had sounded hectoring and bullying. Now, his voice was as soft as the silk of his suit, the iron fist concealed. ‘My name is Vasilov.’ He laughed. ‘
I see that means nothing to you.’ He held up a hand offering a blessing like the Pope in St. Mark’s Square. ‘This is good. Perhaps an amicable solution can be found, after all.’

  Scott stayed silent. Was it possible ignorance might save them? He felt a fleeting whisper of hope, instantly dashed.

  ‘My problem with ignorance… so rarely is it ignorance. If you had not turned up here, perhaps I might have been persuaded to believe in it.’ Vasilov shook his head. ‘A great pity. You so nearly got away with it too.’

  ‘I promise you we didn’t plan it. We were arrested – and sent here,’ Scott said. ‘I can’t imagine anyone choosing to spend a week here. Please, all we want is to go home. We won’t say anything – we don’t know anything.’

  Vasilov smiled. ‘Not true. You know quite enough to upset our plans.’

  ‘So keep us here, till you’ve done what you want. Then let us go,’ Hilary suggested.

  ‘Hm! I like your approach, young lady. Pragmatic. Such a pity. A waste, a great waste of obvious talent.’

  Scott heard the rigid tone, the man’s gaze implacable. This was the man who could drum up killers at a moment’s notice. He didn’t do caring. ‘Are you Mr Smith?’

  He was treated to a great burst of laughter. Up until then, the man’s gestures and voice had been restrained, held in, like a questing hound on a leash. Scott tried to conceal a shiver. Vasilov had no intention of letting them go, however much they pleaded ignorance. He’d been toying with them all along, like a killer whale playing with its seal prey before snapping its neck in its great jaws.

  ‘I created the identity, yes.’

  ‘So the man at the other end of the phone was Mr Smith,’ Scott burst out with the words, unable to stop himself.

  A deafening silence fell. Nervously, Scott eyed the two bodyguards, their stance unaltered. The German poker-faced as if incapable of registering thought, Pete propped up against the door, his eyes concealed behind their sunspecs. Scott remembered the piece of wood Pete had picked up from a pile of fragments, after their front door had been blown to smithereens. Casually leaning against the gate, he had whittled it into a shape, not sparing a moment’s thought for the man he’d poisoned the night before. Scott bit his lip angrily. Now he’d really gone and done it. Losing his temper like that had scuppered any possible chance of getting out alive. He stuck out his chest defiantly. He didn’t care. It had given Vasilov – if that was his real name – something to think about. Besides, right from that moment in the courtyard when Pete called his name, they were doomed.

  ‘Ah! So you did overhear our conversation. I wondered if you had.’

  ‘Then it was me you were trying to kill.’ The man seemed amused. ‘Of course! How could I take a chance? You can appreciate, Scott, I would be a fool to let you go, no matter how much you try to convince me otherwise.’ Vasilov toyed idly with his cuff link, its diamonds flashing a sparkling rainbow of light onto the walls. ‘I flipped a coin, a simple fifty-fifty chance that you had heard. Perhaps… perhaps not. If you had, maybe one day you would recall the voices and be able to put a name to them. And I really wouldn’t like that.’ Vasilov inclined his head. ‘Not good odds. One hundred per cent are the only odds I work with. I have spent twenty years creating Mr Smith. I would not wish to see my work destroyed because I accepted less than an odds-on bet.’

  He got to his feet, the German bodyguard at his shoulder, leaving Pete to open the door. ‘Kill them.’

  ‘No!’ Scott reached forward with his hand as if to pull the man back into the room.

  ‘You won’t get away with it,’ Hilary shouted. ‘Once the authorities find us missing, they’ll come searching.’

  A bellow of amused laughter echoed off the walls. Vasilov paused, his hand on the knob of the door, a beaming smile on his face. ‘My dear young lady; you are so naïve. I told you the odds with which I work. Remember? One hundred per cent – never less. We own the authorities. If I want a file lost – I can assure you it will be lost.’ He laughed again, a cruel mocking sound. ‘I had intended to let you travel on the coach – to let you enjoy your final hours of freedom.’ He shrugged. ‘Curiosity got the better of me. I wanted to find out if you had heard our little talk.’ He raised a hand, inspecting his nails. ‘It makes no difference. The coach will never arrive. Tragically, it will crash into a ravine.’ He twirled his fingers nonchalantly. ‘Brake failure. Only the driver will survive. Tumbling from the open door of his cab, a tree will stop his fall.’

  Beau! James!

  ‘But you can’t, there’s innocent people,’ Hilary shouted the words. ‘No one, not even you can be that callous.’

  ‘As I said, a terrible tragedy. The newspapers will love it.’

  Too tired even to keep battling, Scott raised his head gazing bleakly at the figure in the doorway, feeling pain in every breath as hope withered. It didn’t much matter what he said now; the man was untouchable. But for the sake of Beau and Hilary, he had to try.

  His voice cracking with emotion, he spat out, ‘The authorities already know you’re planning the break-up of Europe. And I’m not talking about the ones you’ve bribed.’ It was a stab in the dark but it found its target. Vasilov hesitated then stepped back into the room.

  ‘Impossible.’

  ‘You said about the odds but you got them wrong too. At best I give you ten to one against.’ Scott eyed the three men in the doorway, all three listening intently. All at once, he felt the adrenaline pumping through his veins, banishing his lethargy as if the ligature around the neck of hope had been loosened. ‘Tulsa was with me that day. I told him what I’d seen and he passed the message on.’ Scott dived into his memory banks, searching frantically for something, anything, to keep their attention. ‘Bugging the suite at the UN – that was stupid too. Without that, they might not have believed me. It was a mistake – your mistake.’ He hurled the words across the room. ‘And you were right about the spying. After Mr Smith vanished from Lisse, the Americans were determined to discover where he’d gone. They have spies too, you know. They know about this place.’

  Vasilow laughed good-humouredly. ‘My dear Scott, a good try; for a moment, I thought you actually knew something.’

  A picture of snow swept uninvited through Scott’s head and, once again, he watched the little line of cars leaving the UN building. ‘They know a Russian is involved. I saw your car through the window.’ The figure in the doorway stiffened, the smile replaced by a look of fury. He ploughed on wildly. ‘Then I remembered who you were talking to. Except… it didn’t make sense at first. Why would this man want to destroy the Union?’ He flung the words into the arena. He could be wrong. But he didn’t think so. It didn’t much matter if he was. Some part of his words were hitting home. Vasilov was definitely shaken, impatient to hear what Scott was going to come out with next. Unconsciously, he crossed the middle fingers of his left hand for luck, his right arm still wrapped around Hilary.

  The silence in the room had grown almost painful in its intensity. By his side Hilary hadn’t moved, staring up into his face. He forced himself to speak clearly, as if addressing an audience. They weren’t to know he was making it up as he went along, some of it true, the rest guesswork and fantasy dressed up to sound like truth. ‘Why would the President of Europe… Damn, I never can remember his name.’

  ‘Rabinovitch.’ The words hit the air softly.

  Scott nodded. ‘That’s the guy. Igor Rabinovitch. Why would he want to destroy something he was the President of? It’s a great achievement that so many countries are working together.’ The truth blasted its way to the surface like a rocket. He frowned, pausing while he worked it out. ‘Unless…’ He brought his hand out from behind his back and marked the air with his finger. ‘He wasn’t who he was supposed to be. That’s it! You thought I was the spy. I wasn’t… but he is.’ He caught the look of rage on Vasilov’s face and knew he’d guessed right. ‘Even the Americans didn’t believe that bit at first. But they do now.’ Okay, so that bit was a lie. B
ut the enemy didn’t know and, following a statement of truth, they just might believe it. ‘You lied about being Mr Smith… ’

  ‘Shut up!’

  With the speed of a snake paralysing its prey, Vasilov struck out, his fist clenched. Scott felt the blow and reeled back, falling heavily.

  ‘Scott!’ Hilary screamed the words. She fell onto her knees helping him up into a sitting position.

  ‘I’m okay.’ He fished in his pocket for a tissue, dabbing at his nose. It came away bloody; his jaw and cheek tender and already swelling.

  ‘Killing me won’t stop the Americans,’ Scott ploughed on thinking of James and Beau. If he remembered right, there were no ravines for miles, the ground flat. Then he recalled the twists and turns of the mountain road they’d met up with half-way into their journey. At least, they’d be safe for a few hours. By that time Beau might have found a way to get a message out. ‘They’ve already worked out that Mr Smith is an organisation, and the President of Europe a mole – a sleeper, you call them.’ He watched the fist, clenching and unclenching, and decided to stay where he was on the floor. ‘I don’t know why the Russians want to destroy the Union, I only know they do.’

  ‘Get rid of him. Now! Dispose of the bodies, and get back here. There’s work to be done. I’ll not let a kid overturn our plans.’

  The door slammed, the frame shuddering under the force. A deathly silence fell. Scott stared at the two men, the massive frame of the German, his face as always expressionless, dwarfing Pete by a full head.

  Scott got slowly to his feet and pushed Hilary behind him, shielding her body with his own.

  Pete slowly drew his weapon, sliding off the safety. Behind him, apparently uninterested, Arnulf was bent down, casually tying his shoelace.

  ‘Good performance,’ Pete drawled. ‘But then you always were a gutsy kid. I’m almost reluctant to kill you.’