‘It’s the truth,’ he said. ‘I feel okay, we can ease the symptoms, it will be bearable. I promise.’
Bearable. The word alone hurt them.
‘I took half a box this morning, I can hardly feel the itch. That’s a good sign, don’t you think?’
William paused for a second. Two seconds. Then:
‘It’s a very good sign.’
Connors gave new smile. Thank you, it said.
And he looked at Janine, looked at William, and they stood at opposite ends of a corridor, a goodbye without handshakes because that’s how it had to be.
They lingered as long as they could over their silent parting; they knew it would be the last.
Franquin was standing with his head against the wall when the diode suddenly turned green for no reason at all.
Exactly five minutes had passed, and he’d gone from anger to panic and then he’d pulled himself together and tried to come up with a solution. He’d failed and lapsed into resignation. And then he heard it. The lock, clicking behind him.
At first he could only look at the green diode in disbelief, as if it was toying with him. And then he’d raised his gun, left hand cradling his right, ready for anything.
In theory it could have been nothing more sinister than a technical malfunction. But that wasn’t a theory he favoured. There shouldn’t be anyone else still here. Shouldn’t. But Connors had to be somewhere. And whatever was happening with the locks, it had to be because of him.
He pushed open the door with his shoulder.
Nobody there. Just metal and concrete. At the end of the corridor ahead of him was the next door, and behind that were the stairs to the next floor, and he ran sideways through the hallway, back against the wall and both hands on the weapon, ready to respond if anything happened.
Next door.
Already green.
There was no doubt. Someone was there.
Again he pushed it open with his shoulder, advanced up the stairs in quick, quiet steps, into the hallway at the top.
It was silent. Sterile. But he moved along it, gun in hand, ready for danger.
The doors stood open, but even running takes time.
Janine and William sped through the castle, running without stopping and without looking back, their feet pounding across the smooth floor slabs, knowing that they were running for their lives.
They passed stairwells and corridors and the room where Janine hid William from the guards, archways and passages and the huge room with the chandelier and the projectors – places that they would never see again.
And every one of the thick security doors along the way stood unlocked, and they took them at full speed, breathless and scared but full of hope, and their mouths tasted of blood and their lungs hurt with the effort, but they kept running because it was the only thing they could do.
They ran and breathed and hoped and ran.
Behind them time ran at their heels.
And it was catching up fast.
By the time Franquin sensed movement it was too late.
It was the light he noted first, the light that flickered, not the shadow behind it. Then suddenly a figure detached itself from the darkness and there he was, standing in the middle of the hallway, his gun raised at Franquin, just as he’d pointed it at William and Janine only minutes earlier.
But this time there was confidence in his stance. He was still shaking, but it was caused by the fever and not nerves. He knew he was doing the right thing and his body could itch all it wanted, because soon it would be over no matter what.
‘I’d stay there if I were you,’ said Connors.
The light danced across him from the side, and in the dark corridor it gave his contours a white glow, almost as if he was separated from the castle and floating mid-air, floating but with his feet wide apart on the floor and a gun in front of him.
Franquin raised his own weapon, his right hand firm on the grip, measuring the distance to his target, taking aim.
Of course he’d suspected. But he was disappointed all the same.
‘Why are you doing this?’ he asked.
Stopping me, he meant. Stopping me and violating protocol, staying in the castle instead of coming to the ship – and what the hell happened to the helicopter?
He was about to ask, but he stopped himself.
He already knew the answer. He could see it in Connors’ eyes. No, not his eyes, he saw it in his entire face. There was a sheen of sweat on his skin and his features were etched with stress and pain. Franquin had seen others who looked that way.
‘You’re ill.’
He said it without lowering his gun.
And their eyes locked across the floor.
‘So many scenarios,’ said Connors. ‘And yet I didn’t come close to predicting this.’
He tilted his head to show what he meant. This. Here and now and the castle and you and me. This is where it will end, and how could we have known.
‘You know why I’m here,’ Franquin said.
And Connors shook his head. Not because he didn’t know, of course he did, but because he couldn’t allow it to happen.
‘You know how we always used to say that it’s better to save a few than let everyone go down together?’
Franquin didn’t answer. Whatever Connors was about to say, he suspected he wouldn’t like it.
‘We were right,’ Connors said. ‘But we’re not going to be among the saved.’
They stayed frozen, guns pointing at each other, both aware that they were caught up in a situation for which the protocol had made no provision. There were no rules to cover this, it was a chess composition that couldn’t be solved: Connors was a larger threat to Franquin than his gun could ever be, and Franquin’s gun was no more lethal than the illness Connors already had.
‘Let me pass,’ Franquin said. ‘I have a job to do.’
Connors mutely shook his head.
‘I don’t want to shoot you.’
‘You won’t,’ Connors replied.
And there was something in his voice. Something that made Franquin register the light that kept flickering from the side.
It was only then that he realised they were standing outside the crematorium. And that he understood the significance of the flickering light. Fuck Connors, he thought, fuck everything, and he ran up to the door to look into the room.
And Connors let him past. Backed away, without lowering his gun, let him stop at the doorway and take it all in.
‘You can’t!’
Franquin turned back to him, anguish in his voice. His gun was still raised, but it was a stand-off that meant nothing. Soon it would be over for both of them and nothing anyone did could stop it.
The crematorium fire roared inside a hatch in the wall. Heat radiated through the thick layers of security glass.
And on a slightly tilted conveyor lay a single crate.
The flames swirled hungrily inside the opening, the same flames that had once consumed Helena Watkins; they would now consume the olive-green crate, and when that happened everything would be over.
Around the conveyor lay more boxes of the same kind, waiting on top of the carts that had brought them there.
Grey, green, shades of brown. Labels in white and yellow, in English and Russian and other languages.
‘This,’ said Connors. ‘This is how it’s going to be.’
They had just reached the wooden door in the low, narrow passageway, the one that led to the winding staircase which in turn led to the terrace where they’d hurl themselves over the edge to escape.
She was a dozen steps up when she heard her feet against the steps and realised there should have been another set of footsteps behind her.
She turned.
Crouched to get a better view of the door below.
‘I can’t,’ William said behind her.
He stood at the bottom of the steps, wouldn’t move, hadn’t even started to climb the staircase. And she stepped down towards hi
m, one step, one more, knew that they didn’t have much time and definitely not for this.
‘What’re you doing?’ she said, bewildered and frustrated and scared in a combination that probably just seemed angry.
‘Give me five minutes,’ he said. ‘If I’m not back by then, go without me.’
She barked a reply, but he had already disappeared, his footsteps ringing out on the stone floors.
Part of her was prepared to leave him to it. After all, if the stupid old bastard wanted so badly to die then let him get on with it.
But she knew that she couldn’t.
Franquin had been the first to lower his gun.
And Connors had followed.
And there they stood.
Connors smiled.
Smiled through eyes full of tears, not from sorrow but because they had finally reached the end, smiled with a warmth and a confidence that surprised Franquin, no, it made him sad, sad and uncomfortable and overwhelmed by the knowledge that it was really over.
Connors had told him.
Told him what William had said, told him that all their theories had been wrong. That many would die, many but not all, and the tears had come when he said it, tears even though he smiled: the purple circles would grow and grow, but then they would start to shrink, and not everyone would be gone.
He had told him about the one thing they never considered.
That the codes didn’t end where they thought, but went on and on and on. Who knew, maybe humanity would see more disasters, or maybe successes, or more likely the same old mixture of both, and somewhere, that was written too. Even though no one had read it yet.
They had spent their lives looking for the answer.
But the question was badly phrased.
That’s what Connors had said, and that was all that Franquin had needed.
‘You said the worst thing that could happen would be if they found out,’ Connors said. ‘Turns out you were wrong after all.’
But he said it as a friend, smiled as he said it.
It was a smile that said thank you. Thank you for the time we got. Thank you for everything.
‘I think both of us were wrong,’ said Franquin.
They stood there, looking at each other. Two men in uniform. It was all they had left, the pride and the posture and the knowledge that they’d spent their lives trying to do good.
‘I can live with that,’ said Connors.
Janine caught up with William in his workroom. The one where all the pages had hung on the walls and where everything else had been left on his desk: all his books, all his computers, everything.
She stopped in the doorway, didn’t speak.
Didn’t know, but understood all the same.
All she could see was his back, but she didn’t have to see his face to know.
He was biting his lip. Not crying, he was biting his lip, his eyes empty and his tongue pressed hard against his teeth to keep his emotions at bay.
Finally, he crouched down next to the table.
His face level with the computers.
The heavy green machine on the far right was the one he called Sara, and he rested his hand on it, gently and carefully, he let it lie there and didn’t say a word, and yet it felt as if he was talking.
And one second passed and two seconds passed and then he stood again.
He hadn’t heard that she came in after him.
He saw her standing in the doorway, he met her eyes with his, saw her wonder without asking.
And he shrugged. Smiled without smiling.
Nodded to her that they’d better be going.
And answered the question she hadn’t asked.
‘This time, I wanted to say goodbye.’
62
Sooner or later it had to happen, and so it did.
The green crate was made of wood, and the heat from the hole in the wall was so great that it couldn’t resist.
Though it was still a metre away from the fire, the side started to turn black and the heat began to spread through its fibres in glowing red. After that it took only a matter of seconds for the flames to reach the heavy ammunition inside.
And there was no way to stop it.
All around stood other crates, stacked in line, and the fireball surged through them like a vibrating chain reaction that grew and burst and broke through the impenetrable safety glass and went on.
For the two men in the corridor outside, everything ended in one devastating wave of air.
63
They ran for their lives.
They left William’s room and emerged out on to the terrace, and once there Janine didn’t allow him time to hesitate. She lowered herself down into the darkness and he followed right behind; it was as death-defyingly dangerous as before, but staying behind didn’t feel like an alternative. There simply were no options: if they stayed they would die and if they fell they would die too, and the only thing he could do was to hope the ropes would hold and that he could do what she had done before him, and if so then maybe they would survive after all.
They lowered themselves, gradually and with bouncing kicks against the vertical mountain, until finally they reached the ground. William was soaking with sweat. It was night and below zero and he was freezing, but his fear came out through his pores and the only thing he wanted was to lie down but there wasn’t any time.
They kept running downhill. Left the castle behind, the terrace far above, kept running down the slope towards the lake. And then they circled around it to get as far away as possible before it happened.
There couldn’t be much time left.
And they were halfway up the opposite hillside when time ran out.
William fell first.
The vibrations threw them both to the ground, face first into the sharp rocks, and they tried to hold on but couldn’t. Next to him Janine lay clutching the surface, the same panicky grip as him but to no avail, both of them with eyes closed and tucking their heads into their chests to protect their faces from stones and pebbles that kept shaking past them down the slope.
Once the tremors began it felt as if they would never end. The steep slope and the shaking ground beneath them made it impossible to get a grip, and they slid down, skidding over gravel and scree, trying to ignore the stinging pain, the ground scraping against their skin, scrabbling to find things to hold on to. But neither of them managed to stop, and below them were the drops they’d avoided on their way up. The last thing they wanted was to pass them on their way down again.
Janine was about to give up when she managed to catch hold. She felt the flat stone as it passed underneath her, and she was prepared with both hands, grabbed it with a climbing grip around its edge and managed to stop. And she reached out to William, and their hands locked at the same time, held on to each other with cramping grips as the tremors continued, the shaking and the roar and the rocks that rumbled by on their way down.
Somewhere underground it had already begun. And nobody knew how long it would last.
And William opened his eyes. Carefully, slowly, his head close to the ground and his face covered. He let his gaze continue under his arm, across the alpine lake below, across the concentric waves whipped up by the shaking ground, and over to the castle on the other side.
It stood there.
Stood the way it had for hundreds of years.
They had done all they could. There was nothing more they could do except to hold on, waiting for the earth to stop trembling and for an end to the increasing subterranean roar. The process had started.
And no one could stop it.
The explosives had done their job.
They had rolled along the same conveyor belt as Helena Watkins, into the same flaming furnace, and like her body they had caught fire.
The resulting shockwave ripped through the maze of tunnels like a speeding subway train made up of heat and fire, finding its way through the corridors in a cloud of smoke, splitting up where passages peeled off in dif
ferent directions and joining again where staircases and hallways met.
Like liquid in a network of pipes the fire surged through the underground maze, grew in size and strength and heat and disintegrated everything in its path.
The parliament. The blue rigid chairs in front of the rows of thin monitors. Nobody was there to see them ignite the moment before the fire train rushed in, nobody saw them char in the oncoming wind, but that was what happened. And the train went on and on, seemingly endless, filling room after room with clouds that bloomed in red and yellow and made everything melt and evaporate, and nowhere did it stop, it just travelled on.
The treatment room with its rows of bodies.
The corridors of steel and concrete and aluminium.
The storage rooms with other crates that boarded the train and made everything bigger and larger and stronger and hotter.
And the computer hall, the rows of rolling storage tape, the working consoles with controls and lamps and panels that had blinked the same way for fifty years. Everything was engulfed by the flames, and nobody would ever get to learn their secrets.
Where the corridors ended the thick security doors proved no defence. Without a crumb of resistance they folded to the pressure, allowing fire and heat to stream past, surging onward into more and more passages, obliterating walls and the load-bearing beams that had been put there to prevent it all from collapsing.
And above it rested the mountain.
And on that, all the stones that formed the castle.
And eventually, it became too much.
On the outside, it started gently.
Fragments breaking off and tumbling down the façades, falling like a powder at first, pieces so small and fine as to be almost invisible, and then bigger and bigger as the cracks spread and the debris increased in size.
Once the first stone had left its spot it was as if the floodgates opened. Every new hole created another, stones that had rested on their neighbours had nothing to rest on, and with a roar everything started to crumble, whole sections toppling out of place, twisting as they fell and causing new holes until the entire the structure began to disintegrate, teetering as if fighting to stay intact but unable to resist the reverberations within.
Chain of Events Page 45