The Lost Island

by Paul Kearney

  Jenny nodded. “I see your point. Very well, I’ll call Hereford. We have a sabre team on standby twenty-four/seven.”

  “Try to pick some with brains, as well as muscle,” Cutter said.

  Jenny glared at him. “You don’t much like the army, do you Cutter?”

  “It has its uses. It’s not soldiers I dislike; it’s those who give them the orders. I lead this expedition. I want that made clear — to Lester, to the men you’re giving me. There will be no agendas except my own. Do you understand me?”

  “Perfectly,” Jenny said, raising an eyebrow.

  “You and Lester can take care of the diplomatic shitstorm, if it happens. For me, all I want is to get my people out there, and then bring them all back alive.”

  FIVE

  Regent’s Park in winter was as bleak and grey as some moor, and beyond the fringe of trees the roar of the city rose up interminably, a wall of endless noise. Lester loved London. He would never tire of it, but at this time of year it did not present much of a friendly face to the world. It was a bellowing metropolis without pity, a great animal that created and consumed men.

  He strode up and down alongside the rain-slick park bench. There was no way he was going to sit upon its scarred, slimy slats in his bespoke Ozwald Boateng coat. Irritably, he looked at his watch again. This cloak and dagger stuff was all very well, but they might just as well have met in a decent hotel.

  Stopping for a moment, he looked up at the blank sky. At least the rain had stopped.

  There were few people in the park on this winter’s afternoon. Dogwalkers, tramps, a woman pushing one child in a wheeled contrivance and hauling another by its raw little hand, swearing all the while. Then a man appeared in a dark overcoat, striding in his direction, tapping the ground with an umbrella as he came.

  He was an older man, his collar turned up against the wind and his florid face reddened further by the cold. Lester held out a hand and he shook it. His fingers felt like ice in Lester’s grasp.

  “Thomas — so sorry to get you out here like this, on such a bloody day.”

  The older man shrugged a little, turned and surveyed what he could of London, and the dreary expanse of the winter-emptied park.

  “My own apologies are in order for the sotto voce meeting,” he replied, his voice deep. “I just thought —”

  “You were quite right,” Lester said smoothly. “And I am exceedingly grateful. Thomas, I have to call in a favour.”

  The older man sat down on the bench, careless of his similarly immaculate overcoat. After a pause, Lester joined him, grimacing a little.

  “I owe you one, then?” Thomas asked, smiling a little. Like Lester, he had a gift for smiling without humour. His eyes were set hard as glass in the heavy-set crannies of his face.

  “You know you do. I won’t mention why.”

  “I was just being flippant, James. I have no arguments. So what is it you need?”

  Lester drew a deep breath. “A diplomatic bag — a very large one.”

  “Indeed? And where is it to be sent?”

  “The Republic of Ireland.”

  Lester’s companion frowned. “It’s been a while since we tried anything there. Last time I heard, James, the war was over and we were all friends together, citizens of the EU sitting round the campfire and singing ‘Michael Rowed the Boat Ashore’.”

  “There’s been a development. It must be dealt with outside of normal channels,” Lester told him.

  “How major a development?”

  “Of international consequence, possibly — if it blows up.”

  “And that’s all you’re going to tell me.”

  “And that’s all I’m going to tell you. Believe me, Thomas, I would say more if I could, but my hands are tied.” And I wouldn’t trust you with so much as a racing tip, Lester thought, but he kept his face neutral and solemn.

  The older man sat in thought for a while, punctuating the silence with the tap of his umbrella point on the ground.

  “We know that the term ‘Diplomatic Bag’ is an elastic one, James, but there are limits. How big are we talking?”

  Lester cleared his throat.

  “Something in the order of several hundredweight, and the size of a large tea chest.” He had no idea, really, but it sounded about right. How much could a small but lethal arsenal of modern small arms weigh?

  His companion nodded slightly.

  “Just like the old days,” he said with a grunt.

  “Believe me, Thomas, it’s nothing like the old days. Your mind can be put at rest on that score.”

  Thomas stood up then, leaning so heavily on his umbrella that it creaked.

  “The rain’s coming on,” he said. He opened the umbrella and raised it over his head. “Very well, James, you shall have your bag. I’m a man of my word, always have been. This sets us even, I believe. Do you concur?”

  Lester stood up and proffered his hand once more.

  “I do. Thank you, Thomas.” The other man shook his hand firmly. His bloodshot eyes were cold as the afternoon that surrounded them.

  “And if it all goes tits-up, I shall denounce you as volubly as I am able,” he said in a matter-of-fact way. “You know that, don’t you?”

  “I do,” Lester said, and he smiled, a genuine smile this time, tinged with respect.

  Without another word Thomas turned on his heel and strode off, the wind batting at the umbrella above his head. Lester watched him grow smaller across the park. Then he remembered, felt the back of his overcoat, and gritted his teeth as the green-slimed residue of the park bench smeared his hand.

  Captain John Willoby looked around in wonder as he entered the central well of the ARC. He was dressed in jeans and a pale blue shirt, and carried a green army holdall. Behind him, four more men and one woman trooped in single file, similarly burdened. They all had the angular features and ruddy skin of athletes, and there was a certain poise about them which Cutter, looking on, found himself envying. For a forty-something academic, he was in pretty good shape — not as good as Stephen, but pretty good. Compared to these newcomers though, he felt about as fit as a sack of lard.

  Willoby strode right up to him and stuck out his hand.

  “Professor Cutter, I presume?”

  The man’s hand felt as though it was made of muscle and steel wire. Willoby met Cutter’s eyes. He was of average height, sandy-haired and square-jawed, with a crescent-shaped scar running from the corner of his left eye. Action Man in person, Cutter thought wearily. He had read the file. Originally a Greenjacket, Willoby had made Selection three years before, and had two more to go with a Sabre Squadron before he would return to his parent unit. He volunteered a lot — he volunteered for bloody everything: Iraq, Afghanistan and some murky visits to Central and South America.

  But did he have a brain in that heroic head of his? It remained to be seen. Lester’s cronies in the MOD and the Home Office had cleared Willoby and his team for this operation. Cutter would need to rub along with them all as best he could, because he very much doubted if he would be able to replace any of them.

  “Let me introduce my team,” Willoby said, stepping aside as the remainder of the soldiers lined up behind him.

  “Corporal Peter Farnsworth, demo expert.” A small, well-made up, shaven-headed man with a humourless face, Farnsworth nodded curtly as he was introduced.

  “Demo?” Cutter asked.

  “Demolitions. Explosives,” Willoby explained.

  “Ah.”

  “Private David Doody, team medic,” the Captain continued. Doody was a young black man with a badly broken nose and a broad smile. Cutter liked him instinctively.

  “Sergeant Calum Fox, our mountaineering expert. Another Scot, you’ll be glad to hear.”

  A tall, rangy, dark-haired fellow with grey eyes.

  “Whereabouts?” Cutter asked him.

  “Skye, sir.”

  “You’ll know the Cuillins, then.”

  “I was brought up at their f
eet, sir.” He was about to continue when Willoby interrupted.

  “Private Joe Bristow, our heavy weapons expert,” he went on. Bristow was a small, squat man who looked as though he was a professional weightlifter. His scalp gleamed in the overhead lights and he had the guarded, arrogant air of a man who is supremely confident in his own physical abilities. His gaze slid over Cutter as though dismissing him, and Cutter felt a flare of wordless anger rise up in him, but quickly smothered it.

  “Lastly, our communications expert, seconded to us from the Royal Signals. Lance Corporal Anita Watts.”

  Watts was a slim, dark-haired young woman, extremely pretty, pale-skinned and rather waifish-looking standing next to the hulking Bristow.

  “How’d you get mixed up with this lot?” Cutter asked her, smiling.

  “I earned it,” she said coldly. Out of the corner of his eye, Cutter saw Bristow smirk. He turned away. “Very good, Captain. Now I suppose I’ll introduce my own team.”

  Sitting in plastic chairs around the anomaly detector, Connor, Abby and Stephen lounged amid a welter of tumbled rucksacks. Stephen had on a rumpled t-shirt, his dark hair spiking up as though it had not been brushed in days. He was yawning. Abby was looking on with folded arms, her taut, pierced midriff showing above a pair of frayed jeans that were cut at the knee. Connor was grinning, his ridiculous little porkpie hat perched on his head, a singed hole in his waistcoat and threads hanging from the chopped ends of his fingerless gloves.

  Cutter sighed heavily.

  “Perhaps introductions can wait until later. We have a plane to catch.”

  “We can get them as far as Cork.”

  Lester was perched on the edge of Jenny’s desk with his legs crossed and his hands clasped about his knee.

  “All their equipment and the diplomatic bag are already in the air aboard a freight carrier bound for Shannon. I want you to fly out today and get there to organise its transport onwards to Cork itself. Once the team and their gear are reunited, it’s up to you and Cutter to make your way out to the island without causing a diplomatic incident. Is that perfectly clear, Jenny?”

  “Absolutely,” she said, her mind turning over the problems and the possibilities. She loved things like this; logistical details to be unsnarled, people to direct, timetables to be kept. During her early days in public relations she had organised parties for lazy, famous, rich people. In a sense, she was still doing it. Making sure the band turned up on time, as it were.

  Lester looked at his watch. He seemed tired, less urbane than usual, with less sarcasm and more genuine irritability.

  “The odds are, by the time you finally get out to this blasted little island, the anomalies will all have disappeared anyway.”

  “Yes, we can be thankful for that. But any creatures that came through will still be running around.”

  “Not for long; not with Willoby and his team on board,” Lester said with a small, satisfied smile.

  “What about the bodies?”

  Lester started. “What? Oh, the creatures. They’ll be tossed into the sea. Yes, we can thank God this has happened where it did. Can you imagine half a dozen anomalies opening almost simultaneously in central London? Or even in the provinces. It’s a scenario from a bad B-movie.”

  “They always are,” Jenny replied, arching an eyebrow. Lester sighed and stood up.

  “In any case, if we can keep this quick, quiet and efficient, then there’s no reason for either the Irish or the French to ever suspect a thing. That’s our goal, Jenny.”

  “I know, James.”

  “That’s your job, in other words. We’ve had a few circuses in the past; this must be different. Don’t let Cutter grandstand. If it comes to the crunch, make sure Captain Willoby knows he has my authority to take over command of the expedition. Is that clear?”

  Jenny shifted a little uncomfortably in her chair.

  “Cutter’s a responsible man. I’m sure it won’t be necessary.”

  Lester snorted.

  “Cutter is an unstable, idealistic train wreck,” he said, without a hint of humour. “Your job is to keep him on the rails, or make sure someone else can. Understood?”

  “Understood.”

  “Good. Have a pleasant flight. If things go to plan, all this talk will soon be academic.”

  She watched his retreating back in the immaculately cut suit. He shot his cuffs and strode out of her office as though he were monarch of all he surveyed. In some ways, he was. Jenny didn’t know whether to loathe him or admire him.

  SIX

  The minibus inched its way through the rain-congealed traffic on its way to the harbour. Inside the ten members of the team — Connor had dubbed them the Dirty Ten — sat scrunched up together with their luggage at their feet and resting on their laps, looking out at the ancient city of Cork as it ambled drearily past them in the downpour.

  “Looks just like England,” Connor said, disappointed.

  “What did you expect, Leprechauns and rainbows?” Abby asked him.

  “I wonder if we can slip in a pint of Guinness. I hear it’s phenomenal here,” Connor continued, ignoring her.

  “No!” both Abby and Stephen said in unison.

  The driver called back at them. “You’re quite a crowd. Here for a break are you?”

  The soldiers all stiffened, and their faces closed. Cutter was half-dozing, not listening. Connor spoke up.

  “It’s a stag weekend,” he said, just before Abby’s elbow caught his ribcage.

  “A stag weekend? And you brought the girls along with you?”

  There was a momentary silence, until Connor spoke up again.

  “They’re the strippers,” he said, and swallowed convulsively. They could all see the driver’s wide eyes in the rearview mirror. There was a chorus of smothered laughter from the male soldiers, and even Willoby had to turn his face to the window to hide his smile.

  “Well, I never,” the driver said. “I tell you what, how about —”

  “Don’t even think about it,” Abby snapped.

  The minibus deposited them by the quayside. Above them, white-winged gulls were calling raucously, stark against a shifting slate-grey sky, and the late-morning rain poured relentlessly down. A line of pubs, hotels and B&Bs ran up from the waterside, and all along the stone-built docks there stretched a line of Atlantic trawlers, some shining with well-kept paint, others streaked with rust. A few men were pottering about the decks of the boats, but otherwise the quayside was relatively deserted.

  “So this is Cork Harbour,” Connor said.

  “Technically, it’s Crosshaven,” Willoby told him. “This is where the fishing boats and ferries come in. Cork has half a dozen good harbours, but a lot of them are for container ships and tankers. We’re south of Cork City now, south of Cobh, where the Port Operations Offices are — and the headquarters of the Irish Navy, I might add. We’re out from under the heels of officialdom. Now we just want a boat and a skipper who doesn’t ask too many questions.”

  “And one who’ll take his boat out in a storm,” Cutter added, looking doubtfully up at the sky.

  “It doesn’t look so bad,” Abby offered.

  “We’re sheltered here, in the estuary of the River Lee,” Willoby informed her gravely. “It’s miles out past the promontory to the south before we hit the open ocean. It’s blowing a gale out there, and has been for days.”

  “Fishermen can handle the odd gale,” Cutter said. He looked around him. The ten of them were standing in a pile of their baggage, black rucksacks and holdalls that were not military, but didn’t look civilian either.

  “Short-haired chaps with English accents don’t go down well here,” Willoby said, as if reading his thoughts. “When is Miss Lewis due to arrive with the balance of the gear?”

  “Late this afternoon,” Cutter told him. “Too late to get our feet wet. We’ll have to stay the night here and leave in the morning.”

  “Very well. But let’s get this stuff out of sight. We’re a
ttracting attention already.”

  To Connor’s delight, they repaired to a nearby pub, piling their gear up in a corner with Private Bristow sat balefully beside it while the rest of them leaned up against the bar. As a long line of Guinness pint glasses were filled slowly and surely by the barmaid, Cutter’s mobile rang. “You can’t stand in a bar and not drink something,” Connor had said, quite reasonably, and so they were rationed to a pint apiece.

  Cutter stepped to the side, murmuring into the phone, then slapped it closed and returned to the bar.

  “Jenny’s on her way with a privately hired truck containing the rest of the gear. No questions asked at Shannon. They waved through the crates.”

  “Lester was true to his word,” Willoby said. He sipped his Guinness and closed his eyes for a second. “My word, that’s good.” He looked at Cutter. “You’re not drinking?”

  Cutter raised a small glass filled with honey-coloured liquid. “I prefer a different brand of poison. It’s not Scotch, but it’s not bad.”

  The two men looked at each other. Willoby lowered his voice. “Do you have any idea what we’re in for out there?”

  Cutter shrugged.

  “We never do. That’s part of the fun. I take it Lester has informed you as to the... unique nature of our job.”

  “Yes. Though I confess that I’ll have to see it to believe it. It all sounds like Roswell to me.”

  “You’ll believe it,” Cutter said heavily, and gulped whisky from his glass. He looked into the bottom of it. “This won’t be like big-game hunting, Willoby. There are things that...” he lowered his voice, “things that come through the anomalies which are entirely more deadly than anything you could hope to encounter in our world today.”

  “We’ll handle them,” Willoby said.

  “You’re not the first man I’ve heard say that,” Cutter responded moodily. “And I’m willing to bet you won’t be the last.” He drained the last drop of whisky from his glass.

  Cronin’s Bar rented rooms upstairs, and since it was the middle of winter, they were all vacant. The team rented five doubles and lugged their bags upstairs, then sat in their rooms to avoid the inevitable curiosity of the locals as the day drew on. Cutter and Willoby went out for a while, asking around for a boat they might hire, but they soon returned.