The Roubaud Connection

by Estelle Ryan

  Sometimes, it amused me to observe neurotypicals argue. Right now, it only irritated me. I pulled my hand from Colin’s and walked to the filing cabinet to get my handbag. “This is my choice. I don’t want to go. I don’t want to be in a dangerous situation, but Colin is right. None of you understand Caelan as well as I do. I’ll go.”

  “I’m streaming this to your phones.” Francine now had the live footage split on four monitors. I jerked. Caelan’s eyes were wide in fear, his slapping was increasing and would no doubt leave his thighs bruised. Darkness teased my peripheral vision, but I pushed back at it. I needed to stay at my best until Caelan was safe.

  We didn’t speak on the way to the elevator. This time I didn’t say a word about the small space when all four of us squeezed in. It was an uncomfortable fit, but I pushed my face into Colin’s chest and mentally pulled up that empty music sheet again. Now it was time for me to write Mozart’s Symphony in C major. It always calmed me when I needed it.

  I also didn’t complain when Colin raced through the city, breaking countless traffic laws. I wasn’t paying much attention in any case. I had my phone in my hands, watching the live video on Caelan. He hadn’t changed his position once, his rocking and slapping increasing and becoming more erratic.

  Only when we entered the warehouse area did Colin slow down. Clouds had gathered and shortened the daylight hours. It wasn’t completely dark, but the shadows from the warehouses could provide plenty of cover for someone who didn’t want to be noticed. I changed from mentally writing Mozart to playing the symphony in my mind. Loudly.

  Colin parked next to a building and rested his arms on the steering wheel. “He’s in there.”

  I looked at the neighbouring building, then at my phone screen. Caelan’s movements were jerky. “He’s becoming more unstable.”

  “Did you see anyone else walk past the camera?” Vinnie asked.

  “No. Only Caelan.”

  “The GIPN team is still thirteen minutes out.” Manny’s tone was tight.

  “We need to get that kid out.” Vinnie opened the back door. “I’m not letting him sit there another minute.”

  “Oh, for the love of all that is holy.” Manny opened his door and we followed suit. The cold air was harsh against my exposed skin and I pulled my scarf higher to cover more of my chin and cheeks.

  “Ain’t it grand we came in my SUV?” Vinnie opened the boot and I blinked a few times. I had been so absorbed in the video and in my concern for Caelan that I hadn’t noticed that we’d taken Vinnie’s vehicle. From the back of his car, he took a device the size of a camera and aimed it at the warehouse. His smile was wide and genuine. “Thermal imaging, baby.”

  I stepped behind him and Colin joined me, both of us watching the small square screen as Vinnie slowly moved it from right to left. I hadn’t seen this model before. “How accurate is it?”

  “Very. It will pick up heat signatures as small as a kitten within six hundred metres.” Vinnie’s muscle tension increased as first one, then a second red light entered the small screen. “Two people.”

  One was lower than the other and I assumed that had to be Caelan sitting on the floor. “Who’s the other person?”

  “No idea.” Vinnie frowned at the screen. “He’s not moving at all.”

  Caelan was. His rocking and slapping caused the lower red image to expand and retract.

  “Check the rest of the warehouse,” Manny said. “Twice.”

  Vinnie did that. “Still only these two.”

  Manny turned to fully stare at Vinnie. “We lead.” Then he turned to me and Colin. “You follow. No heroics.”

  “I’m not a hero.”

  “Doc.” Manny’s lips thinned, then he looked at Colin. “You make sure she’s out of the line of fire at all times.”

  Colin nodded once.

  Vinnie reached into the back of his SUV again and came out holding a handgun. He held it out to Colin. “I know you hate this, dude. But let’s just make sure we’re covering all our bases here.”

  Colin sighed deeply before taking the pistol. He removed the magazine, put it back and cocked the gun. Despite his intense dislike for weapons, he was expertly trained. The way he held it in both hands, his arms slightly raised and the barrel of the gun pointed downward, showed his unconscious competence at handling the weapon. It brought an uncomfortable tightness around my throat. I swallowed.

  Manny looked at each of us, then nodded to himself as if satisfied that we were prepared. I wasn’t. Yet I followed him and Vinnie as they walked to the door thirty metres ahead of us.

  Colin stepped next to me. “Put your hand on my belt and stay half a step to my left and behind me.”

  I did that and focused on the sound of the snow crunching under our feet. It was strangely quiet for this time on a weekday. It made me wonder what was in the other warehouses that didn’t require or invite a lot of movement. All those thoughts stopped when we reached the red metal door.

  I recognised it from Jace’s video. Except this time the keypad was badly damaged. The door was ajar. Manny and Vinnie raised their weapons at the same time, their postures focused and ready for action. Vinnie tapped Manny’s shoulder. Manny responded by opening the door.

  Manny went in first, Vinnie right behind him. Colin waited two seconds before he followed. My hand tightened around his belt and I stayed half a step behind him the whole time. My movements were stiff and even the most untrained eye could easily observe the fear making my shoulders hunch and bringing my arms tightly against my torso.

  The utter silence in the large space exacerbated my nervousness. As did the low lighting. We stopped in front of the aisle, Vinnie lifting his device again to ensure no one was there. Once satisfied, he and Manny still moved around the corner, their guns aimed into the aisle, Manny aiming high and Vinnie low as if they’d agreed on this before.

  “Clear.” Manny’s whisper was so soft that I barely heard it, but it made me exhale a breath I didn’t know I’d held.

  The next aisle was about ten metres ahead, the light coming from it brighter than anywhere else in the warehouse. My muscle tension increased to the point where it felt as if my boots had turned into lead. Everything in my mind and body screamed at me not to move forward.

  Then I heard Caelan’s keening. It was soft, but non-stop. The closer we came to the aisle, the clearer it became, until I could hear that he wasn’t keening. He was reciting geographical facts.

  Manny and Vinnie stopped at the corner and Vinnie reached for his device again. The two red images filled the screen when he aimed it towards the aisle. Caelan was in there. With someone.

  Vinnie touched Manny’s shoulder. Leading the way with his gun, Manny leaned around the corner. First his body tension increased, then significantly decreased. He stepped into the aisle, not lowering his gun or level of focus. “Well, well, well.”

  “About twenty percent of all volcanoes are underwater!” Caelan’s shout wasn’t very loud, his voice sounding damaged. How long had he been reciting facts? And at what volume?

  Vinnie followed Manny into the aisle, but held out his hand to stop Colin from following.

  My breathing increased, as did my heart rate. I started feeling lightheaded and pushed Mozart’s symphony back into my mind and concentrated on taking slower and deeper breaths. Four of these later, Manny’s voice reached us. “Clear.”

  “An erupting volcano can trigger tsunamis, flash floods, earthquakes, mudflows and rock falls! Doctor Lenard! The word volcano originally comes from the name of the Roman god of fire, Vulcan!”

  I followed Colin into the aisle, wondering why Caelan was reciting only facts about volcanoes. When in great distress, he usually recited facts at random. Then all these thoughts left my mind.

  Caelan was on the floor as I’d seen him on the video. His eyes were wide open and had a wild look in them. I was amazed that he’d not given in to the shutdown that had to be pushing down on him with an incredible weight.

  Vinnie wa
s at the end of the aisle, his weapon still raised, but the barrel now also aimed at the floor. Manny was standing between us and Caelan.

  “One in twenty people in the world live within danger range of an active volcano!” He flapped his hands in the air a few times, then slapped his thighs. “One thousand nine hundred volcanoes are considered active!”

  My eyebrows shot up when I saw the thick rope around his ankle. His jeans had ridden up and the rope had chafed away his dark skin. It looked raw and very painful. I took my hand from Colin’s belt and took a step to the side to see Caelan completely.

  Immediately, and irrationally, I wished I hadn’t done that. On a chair three metres from Caelan was a badly beaten man. The rope was tautly stretched between one leg of the chair and Caelan’s leg. It seemed as if Caelan had moved away as far as he could from the man.

  I swallowed and took one step closer. Then another. With every step, Caelan recited another fact, his movements becoming more agitated. I stopped.

  “Seems like Shahab got to you before we could find you.” Manny lowered his chin and stared at the man on the chair.

  “There are no active volcanoes in Australia because it sits in the middle of a tectonic plate!”

  It took another second for me to recognise the man on the chair. It was François. His hands were resting on his lap, all his fingers broken. His face had been beaten and was swollen so badly, it was hard to see any recognisable features. Or micro-expressions. The dominant expression on his face was pure physical agony.

  He wasn’t dead. He raised his head a little to look at Manny and smiled. His mouth was filled with blood and it looked like he was missing a few teeth. Because of his injuries, I couldn’t determine the nature of his smile, but found it hard to imagine it could be genuine. Not when he had difficulty breathing, most likely because of broken ribs.

  His legs looked unharmed, but I couldn’t see through his trousers. His ankles were also bound to the legs of the chair and a rope around his waist seemed to both hold him upright and seated. His bulky winter jacket hid any injuries to his torso.

  “Caelan, bud.” Colin walked closer, but also stopped when Caelan flapped his hands again and viciously slapped his legs. Colin glanced at me.

  “Doctor Lenard! Japan has ten percent of the world’s active volcanoes! The eruption of Mount St. Helens in 1980 had five hundred times the power of an atomic bomb!”

  I closed my eyes for a second and held my breath as I considered Caelan’s facts. My eyes shot open and I shook my index finger at François’ jacket.

  “Jenny?” Colin looked from my finger to François. “What’s wrong?”

  “Volcanoes. Explosion.” I shook my finger again. “There’s a bomb under his jacket.”

  Chapter TWENTY

  “BLOODY HELL!” MANNY leaned away from François, staring at his closed jacket. “Is that true?”

  “What?” François’ voice came out hoarse. “A bomb?” His voice rose in volume and pitch and he shifted. “Get it off me! Get it off me!”

  “Don’t fucking move.” Vinnie stepped closer, put his hand on François’ shoulder and pushed hard. “We don’t know what will set it off. Stay as still as you can.”

  François froze, his eyes stretched as wide as they could with the swelling. “Get it off me.”

  “The oldest fossil was found in a rock almost three and a half billion years old from western Australia!” Caelan slapped his thighs, looking at Vinnie’s hand on François’ shoulder. “Mayflies live only twenty-four hours!”

  “Wait.” Colin raised one hand to stop Vinnie when he reached out to lower the zipper of François’ jacket. He was frowning at François. “How can you not know there’s a bomb strapped to your chest?”

  “Oh, God!” A tear rolled down François’ face. “I... I passed out. He must’ve put it on me while I was out.”

  “Who’s he?” Manny asked.

  “Shahab.” François raised his hand to wipe at his cheek, but moaned loudly. “He broke all my fingers. Every single one.”

  More tears rolled down his face. I didn’t know what to think. His injuries and the swelling made it impossible to read his micro-expressions. Phillip had told us about the François he knew many years ago. Given the current situation, I doubted that he’d changed his character traits and stopped being manipulative.

  But after our conversation with him in Phillip’s conference room, I found it hard to imagine that he would choose this moment to be deceitful. His fear had been real then. It was real now.

  “Where is Shahab?” Manny kept shifting his glare from François’ face to his closed jacket.

  “I don’t know. I don’t even know how I got here.” He looked past us. “Where are we? The storage place? Oh, God. How did I get here?”

  “A Great Basin bristlecone pine in California is more than five thousand years old!” Caelan was busy losing his voice, the words a rough whisper. “It’s the oldest tree on Earth.”

  I looked at the rope around his ankle and stared at the broken skin, dripping blood onto the floor. “We need to get this rope off him.”

  Colin shook his head. “I think we first need to see what’s under François’ jacket.”

  “Carefully, big guy.” Manny raised his gun, but kept it pointed at the floor. “I’ll provide cover.”

  Vinnie nodded and holstered his gun. He frequently boasted about the training he did with Daniel’s team, especially the basic training in identifying improvised explosive devices.

  I barely breathed as I watched him carefully lowering the zipper. The sound of the slide gliding over each tooth was exaggerated in my mind, making me wince with each movement. The progress was slow, but smooth and Vinnie gently disconnected the zipper at the bottom.

  I held my breath as he lifted the two front panels of the blue winter jacket and opened them to reveal François’ torso.

  “Oh, God. Oh, God.” François’ voice trembled, tears streaming down his face. “Get this off me. Please, get this off me.”

  “Did you tell Dan to bring the bomb squad, old man? Because we’re going to need them.” Vinnie straightened to give us a full view of François’ chest.

  Darkness immediately crowded my peripheral vision and my breathing became erratic. A small box was strapped over François’ heart. It was the size of a smartphone, but four or five times as thick. The rope that went over the box and around François’ chest seemed to be the same rope that tied Caelan to the chair. It seemed like the lid was only a thin piece of black plastic that covered the box and was held in place by the rope.

  “Dan is bringing the bomb squad.” Manny leaned a bit forward and scowled. “Do you recognise it? Can you disable it?”

  “It’s small.” Vinnie rested both hands on his hips, his thumbs pointing to the front. He was thinking. “I can’t see much. And I don’t think I want to mess around with it. In our last training, we were shown a bomb the size of a matchbox that could take out three of these buildings. I have no idea what explosives are in here. It could be just for this dude or to destroy the entire building.”

  “Russia and the US are geographically only four kilometres apart, but there’s a twenty-one-hour time difference between them!” Caelan’s rocking increased.

  I was fighting to not give in to my shutdown. I was also angry with myself. What had I been thinking to come here? I was in no position to be of any help to anyone. I didn’t know anything about bomb disposal. And I wasn’t capable of helping Caelan right now.

  “I suggest we turn off our phones.” Colin reached into his trouser pocket. “We don’t know what will set it off.”

  My throat was instantly dry. My phone was in my handbag in Vinnie’s SUV. I didn’t know if I would’ve been able to turn it off in any case. I felt frozen.

  “The book says we should all leave.” Vinnie looked at Caelan and his top lip curled. “Not happening.”

  “I’m not leaving Caelan.” Colin took a step closer to the young man still rocking. “Jenny?”
/>
  I shook my head. Even if I wanted to leave, I didn’t think my feet would obey signals from my brain at the moment. Colin, Vinnie and Manny were calm and composed. I was not. My mind was reeling and it was clear to me that François was close to a breakdown as well.

  “Bloody hell.” Manny exhaled loudly. “But the moment the bomb squad comes, we leave.”

  “We’ll see about that,” Vinnie said. “What about Caelan? The rope?”

  “Yeah.” Colin walked over to Caelan and went down on his haunches. “Caelan, bud. I’m going to untie you, okay?”

  “Russia spans eleven time zones.” Caelan nodded, then didn’t stop. A tear ran down his cheek. “The length of a day on Earth is twenty-three hours and fifty-six minutes.”

  “I know it’s hard, superman.” Vinnie’s tone was gentle. “But you’re doing a great job.”

  “Uh, Vin.” Colin prodded the rope. “This is a double fisherman’s knot.”

  “Fuck.”

  “What’s a bloody double fisherman’s knot?” Manny took a step back to better see everyone.

  “Something that I’m not going to be able to untie. Not tonight. These knots were designed to be nigh-on impossible to untie.” Colin looked up at Vinnie. “You have your knife on you?”

  “Of course.” Vinnie reached into one of the side pockets of his combat trousers and handed Colin a red multi-purpose knife.

  Colin sat down on the floor. “Caelan, bud. I’m going to cut through this. Then we’ll have you out of here and safely at home with some white cookies and milk. Or Vin can make you some of his pasta with white beans and white cheese sauce. Would you like that?”

  “China encompasses five time zones, even though the entire country only uses one!”

  Colin opened the knife and cut at the length of rope not tied around Caelan’s leg, but the part connected to the chair. He grunted and sat back. “Well, shit.”

  “Speak.” Manny’s scowl intensified.

  “This rope has a wire core as well as thin wires threaded in the nylon.”