by David Gilman
He slammed the door behind him. She was already sitting, peering around, checking that they would have a clear view of anyone coming down the carriage. She looked at him but didn’t smile. She pulled off her coat and beret. It was hot in the carriage.
Max looked out of the door window as the train pulled away. The gendarmes had sauntered to the cafe. There was no sense of urgency about the two men. It had been a routine patrol after all.
Max pulled up the window, caught his reflection and saw he was smiling. He checked his thoughts, then glanced at a stony-faced Sophie, who barely met his gaze. Reality check.
The train pulled away.
In the cafe Corentin wiped the condensation from the window and watched the carriages disappear. Thierry splashed two lumps of brown sugar in his coffee. Corentin’s phone was at his ear.
They came like scurrying rats. Out of the darkness, a silent attack. One or two of them grunted in pain as the razor wire sliced flesh. They landed on the far side of the wall and the blackness swallowed them.
Only one light, high up, spilled out into the night, sea fog shrouding it-like a specter.
Isolation meant danger could arrive in a leisurely way, and the killers showed no sign of haste. They soon found the flimsy window catches and slipped into the silence of the old chateau.
The light from the comtesse’s bedroom sneaked into the lounge. The doors to the balcony were open, and she sat, as she did every night when alone, letting the sea breeze and crashing surf caress her tired mind and the sadness in her heart. As much as she loved her children and Bobby, her only grandchild, it was her soldier husband she longed for. How little people understood those who served their country. She sipped the rough red wine and inhaled the strong French tobacco. What no one knew was that she was dying. Too many cigarettes, not enough food, or just the hand of fate? She didn’t know. She did not care. She was old. It was her time. And for some reason she had not seen it in the cards. It had been a life well lived. She had done her duty to her family, and even though she knew she lived in a half world of fantasy, she had honored the memory of the real comtesse.
The blanket clouds slid briefly away from the moon and bathed her in magical, veiled light, and that was when she realized the creatures had slipped into her sanctuary. The lack of panic surprised her. The four young men stayed back in the corners of the room; she could barely make out their features, but she could see their eyes. Dead. Soulless. Uncaring and unflinching. These boys would kill without a second thought. She stood slowly, turning her back to the sea and moon, hoping the light behind her would mask the fear that suddenly strangled her heart. But her voice was calm.
“Who are you and what are you doing in my home?” An imperious disdain filtered the words. She sounded just like the real comtesse used to. One of the boys took a step forward. There was no sign of any weapon, but his face was frightening.
Spittle wet the edge of his lips, which seemed like a slash, pulled back against his pointed teeth. Was he smiling or was that how he always looked? she wondered. He took a step closer and the others moved behind him out of the shadows. A phalanx of fear.
“Where’s the boy?”
“Boy? My grandson? I don’t know. He’s out. Who are you?” she demanded.
Don’t show them you’re frightened. Don’t yield to a threat. Stand your ground. Face the danger. That was what her husband would have done.
“Not him,” Sharkface said. “Max Gordon. He phoned his father in England. From here. We know that.”
How could they know? Her mind pushed the thought away. Expressionless, she faced her inquisitor.
“I don’t know any Max Gordon. You should leave now. My grandson and his friends will be home any moment. Trust me, you would not wish to see them angry! Get out!”
They took another pace towards her; she involuntarily stepped back, touching the edge of the big old sofa for support.
“We know about your surfing dropout. He won’t be coming home.”
The flat, disinterested voice was like a slap across the face. What had they done to Bobby?
“Where is he?” she demanded.
The grin revealed jagged teeth. “Where’s Max Gordon? He phoned his father from here. Or was that you? Where is he?”
She heard the click of the switchblade and saw the glint of moonlight on the knife one of the boys now held.
“You’ll tell us, old woman. You’ll tell us everything we need to know,” Sharkface snarled.
A small knot of warmth formed above her heart. It came, unsummoned, from somewhere deep within her and saturated her whole body. It was a longing for her husband. It was as if he held her, to protect her, an invisible shield between herself and the killers. Max Gordon would face these thugs, if he had not done so already, and he would have to fight for his life. Yes, they could hurt her and make her talk, she knew that. But she would not tell them what they wanted to know. She would not let these dogs loose after Max.
Her brave soldier husband, a hero of France, held her tightly. He embraced her, whispered his love for her, and gently, ever so gently, helped her take a step backwards onto the decayed balcony.
The moonlight filled her eyes; the crashing waves muffled the sound of splintering, shattered wood.
Her last breath was a sigh of joy.
She was dead before her body hit the ground.
16
Sayid made the taxi driver go past the entrance to the terminal and drive around the airport ring road. He wanted to see if there was any sign of the motorbike gang, even without their bikes, or any noticeable police presence.
He checked his passport and ticket, and the piece of paper with the magic square of numbers they had found in d’Abbadie’s chateau fell from his pocket. Sayid had shoved it in his jacket when they moved out of the library and into the observatory. If he was picked up he would be searched, and this piece of paper might be a clue as to where Max was heading. Sayid studied the five-by-five box of numbers. Max might have the instincts of a wild animal for survival, but Sayid had the ability to focus totally on anything mathematical.
He had used it effectively when cramming for exams. He supposed it was a bit like a musician being a sight reader. The immediacy of what lay on the score, or in this case the page, allowed him to embed the relevant numbers in his memory. Up to a point, that is. Heat-seeking missile, your brain is, Max always said.
Sayid concentrated, locking out all sounds from the passing night, worked each line up and down, and saw the numbers take shape in his mind’s eye, burning them into his memory. Then he wrote the other numbers that Max had dictated to him under the instep of his boot. Even Sayid’s memory recall wasn’t good enough to remember that sequence and the boxed numbers. Once he was satisfied the indelible ink had dried and there was no chance of misreading the numbers, he crumpled the piece of paper in his mouth and chewed it into a soggy mess and swallowed it.
That was what Max would have done.
It tasted horrible but at least part of the secret, whatever it was, was safe.
The taxi driver dropped Sayid off at the departure entrance. A car horn tooted. Like a Morse code signal. Calling him. Demanding he look. He turned. A gush of relief making him forget his trepidation about the flight home. Bobby’s van pulled up at the curb.
Sayid limped towards the door that swung open.
“Bobby, where the heck have you been?”
Hands grabbed him, pulling him into the unlit van, and threw him roughly into the back. He cried out, but the van’s engine was already revving as it pulled away. Someone had an arm around his throat, someone else bound his hands with gaffer tape, and then the tear of the sticky cloth as a strip was pulled across his mouth. Sharkface had split the hunting pack. Three of his thugs had staked out the airport while he had invaded the comtesse’s chateau.
There was a smell of neoprene and a tang of seaweed as they let Sayid fall against the black-clad body that lay trussed in the back of the van.
Eyes wide, he
saw Bobby Morrell’s lifeless form. Panic nearly suffocated him. He had no idea if Bobby was alive or dead. He was unconscious, that was for sure. There was no warmth coming from his body, but that might have been because he still had on his wet suit.
The van pulled off the autoroute, leaving behind the glare of the yellow motorway lights, and stopped. The back doors’ tortured hinges screeched open, and without any care for the well-being of their captive, the thugs pulled Sayid out by his ankles. His back thumped onto the ground; the pain knifed into him, but his gasp was smothered by the tape across his mouth. He twisted his head left and right, but the old buildings around them were in darkness. An abandoned site. Fear and desolation.
Bobby’s body hit the ground next to him. Sayid heard a groan. Good! Bobby was still alive. Other men appeared; Sayid couldn’t see their faces clearly, but then one of them bent down and he recognized him from the attack at the d’Abbadie chateau.
Their faces were ugly with violence. Someone kicked Bobby, another dragged Sayid to his feet. They were bigger and stronger than he realized. Now Bobby, too, was on his feet, shaking his head groggily. A fist in the back prodded Sayid towards the darkened interior of what appeared to be an abandoned warehouse. As he was frog-marched towards the doors, Sayid deliberately dragged his boot through a muddy puddle-he had to hide those numbers.
There were other vans parked in the background. Two older teenagers leaned against them, smoking; another was finishing off repairs to a rack of motorbikes that slid out on a ramp. Sayid realized those were the bikes Max had knocked over.
One of the men pulled back the other van’s door, reaching for something. Peaches! She was unhurt but sat guarded by another thug. She glanced up. She was probably terrified, Sayid realized. They must have caught her and Bobby down in Hendaye. He wanted to shout. Wanted to tell her not to worry. That it’d all be OK. But he couldn’t and it wasn’t going to be. The door slid closed on her.
A biker circled the fringes of light, dipping in and out of the gloomy shadows, filming everything with a small video camera held almost at arm’s length. Sayid noticed there was an antenna on the roof of the van.
Another man stood in a pillar of light cast downwards by an overhead spotlight, which threw an ominous shadow across his pinched features. He was leaning against a metal table, an old workbench, rusted but solid, which had an angle grinder resting on it.
This ragged-toothed man ripped the tape off Bobby’s mouth, then Sayid’s. Pushing his face next to Bobby’s, he made the young American jerk back in fear, or maybe he had rotten breath with teeth like that, Sayid thought.
“Where’s Max Gordon?” Sharkface said.
Bobby shook his head. “I don’t know.”
Sharkface nodded to a couple of the henchmen, who slammed their fists into Bobby. He was tough and fit, but Sayid could hear the sickening thuds and watched as the boy went down.
“Where is he?” Sharkface asked again.
Bobby gasped for breath. Shook his head. “Don’t know.”
“You tell us where Max Gordon is hiding and we won’t hurt the old lady at the chateau.”
Bobby and Sayid couldn’t hide their alarm. They knew about the countess!
“Don’t hurt her! She doesn’t know anything!” Bobby yelled at Sharkface.
“Where is-?”
“I don’t know! I left him at the place in Hendaye!”
Sharkface let his heartless eyes gaze at the boy and then nodded. “Know what? I believe you.”
“Then you won’t hurt her. Please!”
“She said you were due home. We told her otherwise,” Sharkface sneered.
“What?”
“If you knew anything you’d have told us. To save her. Wouldn’t you?”
“If you’ve hurt her I’ll kill you!” Bobby shouted.
Sharkface grinned, which made him look as though he was going to tear apart a piece of meat. “Too late, Bobby.”
Bobby yelled and threw himself at Sharkface, but the men holding him kicked his legs away and pinioned him to the floor.
There were tears in the American’s eyes and his voice sounded as broken as his heart. “You shouldn’t have hurt her! She was an old lady … she was my gran!”
Sayid felt a wave of pity for Bobby. He knew what it meant for a loved one to die.
“I didn’t touch her. She fell off a balcony,” Sharkface said dismissively.
He turned and looked at Sayid-who shuddered. A brief glimpse in his mind of the comtesse falling off the derelict balcony flitted across the image of Sharkface staring at him.
“But you know where he’s gone, don’t you?” Sharkface said, wiping saliva from his leaking mouth.
Sayid shook his head vigorously. A spasm of vomit squeezed into his throat. He gagged, swallowed the acid taste and tried to think of what he could do. There was nothing. He was helpless. At their mercy.
The face came closer, like a shark coming out of the depth of the ocean towards a helpless diver. Closer, until the overhead light picked the button eyes out of the frightening face.
“How’s the ankle?” Sharkface whispered in Sayid’s ear.
“Listen, I don’t know where he’s gone. He does things his own way. I dunno. Honest. Just let us go. We won’t say anything about any of this. We won’t-I promise.”
As the words tumbled out of his mouth Sayid knew they were pathetic. Pathetic and desperate. There was no clearheaded thought for such a frightening moment. He didn’t want to get hurt, but neither did he want to betray Max. How long could he hold out?
Sharkface nodded at the bikers behind Sayid and they hoisted him onto the workbench, pinning him down. Sayid gasped for breath. He didn’t want to cry, he didn’t want to show these thugs how scared he was, but he could feel the tears sting his eyes. Heard the voice in his head shouting, Please don’t hurt me, please … don’t. But the words wouldn’t come out of his mouth, not while he was gasping for each frightened breath. Strangely, for a moment, he felt more scared for his mother should anything happen to him. Sharkface looked down at him.
“That plaster cast must drive you crazy, yeah? Make your foot itch, does it?”
Sayid nodded.
“Why don’t we take it off for you?” Sharkface said.
He grinned again. “And I’m not talking about the cast.”
Sayid heard the terrifying screech of the angle grinder being started.
Money meant power, and Fedir Tishenko had both. He moved those who worked for him around like a man playing a computer game, and this particular game was proving interesting. The boy, Max Gordon, had slipped away, and the old woman had died without giving his men any information.
Tishenko stood before the wall of glass that filled the huge rectangle cut into the rock face. The mountain lair was an incredible feat of engineering. Over the years tunnel-boring machines had scoured out vast caverns, bigger than road tunnels, large enough to house equipment, long enough to allow kilometers of cable to snake through the lower labyrinth. Here in his personal quarters he could gaze down onto jagged valleys and the mighty glacier that edged lazily along the valley floor. Small aircraft would fly a couple of thousand meters below his eyrie, but no one could know that Tishenko gazed down upon them like a mountain god.
Inside his mountain, vertical fissures, scars from the ice age, had been reamed out and made into airtight shafts. Lifts dropped and rose, cushioned on air, a perfect vacuum-glass pods, steel supports and space-age technology-something that even the grandest, most innovative corporations around the world could not install. They were the fastest lifts in the world and, other than jumping from the small plateau of black, glistening rock outside his quarters, there was no quicker way to descend into his underworld of ice and stone.
Ascending in one of those lifts was the man Tishenko had summoned. Angelo Farentino was nervous, but he hid it well. He lived in his own fortress, a fortress of lies and deceit. Layers of misinformation surrounded him, protecting and hiding him from those who woul
d love to have him arrested, tried and convicted for the massive betrayal he had inflicted on environmental groups around the world. But Tishenko knew where he lived.
Farentino had once been Tom Gordon’s best friend. He was the man who published reports of ecological danger zones from scientists, adventurers and explorers such as Max’s father. But over the years Farentino had played a game of deceit. He had turned his face and his bank account towards those who controlled vast sums of money and who wished to embark on massive projects that needed their environmental damage to be hidden.
The lift door opened and Farentino, casually but expensively dressed, stepped into the room. He had been summoned; not to have come to this grotesque man’s lair would have proved bad for his health. He neither smiled nor greeted Tishenko. It was obedience not politeness that was required.
“Good timing, Angelo.”
Tishenko pressed a button on a console and a white surface the size of a small cinema screen appeared. It showed a recording, sent by Sayid’s kidnappers. Max Gordon’s friend had been snatched at the airport and the fear his men instilled in the boy gave them everything he needed.
Angelo Farentino felt his stomach lurch as if he had fallen down the lift shaft. Delicately, he dabbed the moisture from his upper lip with his handkerchief as he heard the angle grinder ripping the air above the screams of the boy held down on the workbench.
Screams of terror.
And the betrayal of Max Gordon.
Tucked up in the plane, Max allowed himself time to sleep. Who knew what awaited him in Morocco? It was important to snatch brief moments whenever he could. Even a twenty-minute catnap could invigorate him, and he knew soldiers slept at every opportunity, even if it was for only a few minutes. Have to keep going. Take what rest you can when you can. Stay a player in a dangerous game. Why was he putting himself through this? Someone had died a horrible death and had trusted him to solve a mystery and find the killer-that was why. Giving up had never been an option. There were times he didn’t want to go on, but something mingled with his blood as it pumped through his body. Intangible, undetectable by chemical analysis, invisible to any probing scans science could offer-it went beyond his DNA-it was who he was. Besides, Max hated analyzing things. Start thinking too much about yourself and you end up tangled in a mental net that won’t let you go. Take it as it comes. Deal with whatever you have to; there’ll be plenty of time to think about it later.