by Stephen Cole
The younger man was already looking up the surname. ‘I’ll try him.’
‘Thank you …’ She bent forward to look at his name badge, giving him plenty of cleavage. ‘Gian. That’s a nice name.’
‘Take a seat?’ Marc suggested, no doubt keen to see if her skirt could ride any higher.
‘Thanks.’ She flopped down, popped a mint in her mouth like she was trying to hide the beer on her breath. Caught movement on the screen behind them and leaned in quickly, confidentially. ‘You know, between you and me, I don’t think Lorenzo’s working late at all. I think he’s got another woman.’
‘What department?’ asked Gian.
‘I dunno. The last bitch he tried it on with was in Accounts.’
He laughed. ‘No, I mean, what department’s Lorenzo?’
She laughed too, threw her head back, stuck out her chest. ‘I’m such a ditz!’
Tye had pulled out a poop-scoop and was crouched beside her dog-on-wheels. From inside the scoop she shook out some titanium wire cutters and, using the dog to disguise her movements, snipped quickly through the tough links.
Once she judged the split was large enough for two skinny boys to sneak through, she hurried away, yanking the stuffed dog after her.
‘So, this guy …’ Gian eyed her casually. ‘He your husband?’
‘Boyfriend,’ Con corrected him. ‘Ex if he’s not careful …’ And while you were trying to see my underwear, you just missed Motti ducking under your fence. ‘Anyway, you were asking – Lorenzo’s in stem cell research, second floor. Tell him Maria’s here, and she’s mad as hell.’
‘Will do,’ grinned the guard.
Praying Con was on good form tonight, Patch ran up to the fence after Motti and slid himself under the flap of loose chainlink. With a steel peg he clipped the flap back in place so the break wouldn’t show on the cameras, and sprinted to where Mot waited in the shadow of the nearby outhouse. It was 2.06am.
‘OK.’ Motti was trying to hold on to the wriggling cat he had stuffed up his grungy top. ‘The quickest way through to our nominated way in – the east block fire door – takes us through the overlap of the two rotating cameras.’
Patch nodded, miming cameras buzzing slowly from side to side.
‘Only they’re just a tiny bit out of synch with each other. And I’ve worked out there’s just one fifteen-second window coming up when they’re both pointing away from our route.’
‘So that’s when we run like the devil’s biting our arse?’
‘Or like this damn cat’s clawing it,’ said Motti, still struggling with the bulge in his top. ‘We move in one minute forty. Of course, when we start running we’re gonna set off the electronic field sensors …’
‘Tell me something I don’t know,’ said Patch, checking his watch. ‘But don’t let the cat out of the bag till then.’
‘No reply from your boyfriend,’ said Gian. ‘I’m only getting his voicemail.’
Con frowned, drummed her fingers against her thigh. ‘Maybe he’s in the men’s room. Would you try him again in a minute for me?’
Suddenly a loud, intermittent buzzing sounded, a red light flashed on the console. Con could hear sirens sounding outside. The guards swore, checked their monitors.
‘Are you having a break-in?’ Con asked, acting thrilled at the thought. Then she smiled as a mangy black cat prowled unhappily into shot.
‘Where’d that damn moggy come from?’ Marc pulled out his two-way radio. ‘Carlo? Control here. Don’t freak – we’ve got a cat in the grounds. It just passed exit three – you’re nearest. I’ll reset the alarms. Let me know when you’ve shooed it out of here.’
Patch and Motti stood panting for breath, leaning against the outside of the building. Motti was rubbing his chest ruefully.
‘Damn fleabag almost tore my guts out.’ He set off quickly along the paved path, staying close to the walls. ‘’Course, the sensors wouldn’t really pick up an animal as small as a cat. But these contract guards, they don’t know jack about the security specs. They just hear a noise and go after it.’
Patch nodded, just behind him. ‘You’re sure we won’t set off the alarms again, moving about?’
‘They won’t reset the sensors till they’ve got rid of Puss. In any case, we’re beyond the range of the receptors now. These are the staff walkways. The guards patrol round here – when they’re not running round after dumbass cats.’
Motti came to an abrupt halt. Patch swore as he almost bumped into him.
‘OK, we’re out of range of the revolving cameras,’ said Motti. ‘That’s the fire door up ahead – our way in.’ A static camera, a different kind from the others, was trained directly on it. ‘Can you bust the lock in sixty?’
Patch bit his lip. ‘It’ll be tight.’
‘We won’t have much longer than that,’ said Motti. ‘This camera sends a digital image back to a CPU in security. The processor scans the video image twice a second looking for any change in the pixel pattern. When movement’s detected, it sounds a warning for the night shift. If they see a Cyclops picking the lock, guess what? They blow the big alarms.’
‘If we still had Jonah, he could hack into the CPU, freeze the internal clock or something,’ said Patch gloomily.
‘Yeah, well, Jonah didn’t want to be in our gang, did he?’ Motti pulled something from his pocket. ‘So we have to do the budget version.’
‘Could you try Lorenzo again for me?’ Con asked Gian.
‘Wait a second.’ He swore, looking up at one of the screens. ‘Now what’s up with camera six?’
All that showed on the screen was a white blur.
‘You’ve done something to the picture,’ said Marc accusingly.
‘I have not! That’s something on the lens!’
Marc pulled out his radio again. ‘Carlo, are you through with the cat? Looks like a technical on six, but you’d better check it out. I don’t like this …’
‘Good ole cheap squirty cream,’ said Motti, surveying the dollop he’d squirted over the lens of the camera. ‘Starts melting away to nothing the moment it’s in the bowl. Why is that?’ He put away the canister. ‘If they’re watching, guards’ll think some bird came over and dumped its supper. But by the time they get here to clean it off, it’s already gone. Twilight Zone time. What was that mysterious bird with the vanishing poop?’
Patch was already working on the lock. ‘It’s nighttime, you prat. What birds come out at night?’
‘Owls.’ Motti was feeling round the doorframe for signs of the magnetic switch that would trigger the internal alarms if the door was opened. ‘Owls are nocturnal.’
‘Maybe so. But they drop pellets. Like little balls.’
‘You ought to know all about little balls.’ Motti grunted with satisfaction as he found the switch point. He pulled out his scrambler.
Patch looked at him. ‘Lock’s done. You ready with the pulse?’
‘Just like in Cairo,’ Motti warned him. ‘We’ll have three seconds: one to open, one to get through, one to close the door behind us.’
‘Not just like in Cairo, I hope,’ said Patch. ‘This time if we don’t do it in time … the alarms will go off. And we’re royally screwed.’
Con feigned anxiety when Gian’s next phone call to Lorenzo was no more successful. ‘Could you take me up? Let me see if he’s there for myself?’
‘I don’t know …’
‘The sooner I know, the sooner I can get out of your hair.’
Gian was still staring at the screen. ‘It’s clearing. Whatever was blocking six, it’s more or less gone.’
Con peered round, wide-eyed.
The screen showed only a closed door.
‘Probably a bird,’ said Marc, miming a bomb falling and splattering on the camera. ‘I’ll walk blondie here up to the second floor.’
He led her out of the security station and into a sumptuous reception. The sleek chrome lift arrived in moments, and hummed smugly as they climbed up two flo
ors. Con checked her watch again. 2.12am.
‘So is it just the three of you on duty?’ Con asked idly.
‘Pieter’s doing the lab walkround,’ Marc told her. ‘He’ll soon tell us if your Lorenzo’s been here tonight.’
The lift doors swooshed open. A large, uniformed black man lay sprawled on his back in the corridor.
‘What the hell?’ Marc crouched beside him, reaching for his radio. ‘He’s out cold.’
‘Really?’ Con karate-chopped the back of Marc’s neck and he keeled over without a sound. ‘Looks like it’s catching.’
Motti peered out from a nearby room. ‘’Bout time you showed up,’ he hissed. Congratulations were a waste of time in his book. ‘C’mon, let’s lock ’em both away in here.’
‘Take their keys and the radios,’ Con told him as they dragged the bodies out of sight. ‘Might buy us some more time if Gian or Carlo want to get chatty.’
‘Meantime,’ said Motti, once he’d found the key that locked the door, ‘Patch has found a restricted area. Just round here.’
Con jogged along with him. ‘Sounds promising. Any cameras?’
‘No. Let’s just hope he can get us inside.’
Patch was grinning at them beside an open door as they rounded the corner of the corridor. ‘Did you doubt my genius for a minute?’
‘Let’s see what’s so restricted,’ said Con, leading the way into an impressive antechamber. Four neatly arranged workstations flanked a wide passageway leading to a set of double doors. The air carried a faint chemical tang, and the lights were bright and clinical. A wipe-clean board hugged most of one wall, the kind you found in hospitals with patient details on them. It was covered in scrawls that were just as hard to read.
She crossed quickly to the double doors. ‘Through here.’
Then she stopped dead in her tracks.
It was like a small hospital ward, with six beds. But Con couldn’t believe that the people inside them were there to get well. She walked slowly inside, studying the man nearest to her with a kind of horrified fascination. His looks were Middle Eastern, but he had no hair, not even any eyebrows. Only his head and left arm were visible – the rest was hidden beneath a mess of micromesh sheeting and scanners. The exposed skin was stuck with the tiny barbs of electrodes and needles and wires, trailing to a large monitor that flashed up the same four letters in endless combinations. They were chemical bases, Con realised. The precious, infinitesimal codes that made up DNA, the stuff of all life.
‘Look,’ said Patch softly, hooking away a wire to reveal a little of the man’s hand. A faded blue snake coiled like an old, fat vein towards the man’s knuckles.
Con stared at him, the hairs rising on the back of her neck. ‘Cult of Ophiuchus?’
‘They all got the snake,’ said Motti, passing from bed to bed. ‘What’s up with them?’
‘More to the point,’ said Con, ‘what about these fragments we’re here to pick up?’
‘Help me!’ It was a girl’s voice, weak and croaking in Italian. At first Con thought it came from one of the six acolytes. But it was coming from behind a screen at the end of the ward. ‘Please, someone help me!’
Con gestured to the others to keep watch at the double doors. Slowly, gingerly, she walked over to the screen and pulled it back.
A thin, delicate looking girl with dark, sunken eyes and angular features lay stiffly on a hospital trolley beneath a starched white sheet. She stared up at Con with raw desperation.
Con recognised the girl at once.
It was Demnos’s daughter, Yianna.
Chapter Sixteen
Con stared in disbelief. Tye had told them about Coldhardt’s talk with Demnos, how the girl had gone missing – and the reward for her safe return. Now, as if conjured up from nowhere, she was lying in front of them.
‘I …I know you,’ Yianna said, frowning. When she spoke again it was in her heavily accented English. ‘You were at the party they held for my father …’
Motti had wandered over. ‘Who we got?’
‘It’s Yianna. The abducted girl.’
‘Jeez, she looks rough.’
Yianna closed her eyes. ‘I have not been treated well.’
‘So,’ said Motti, apparently unmoved. ‘Samraj did take her.’
‘Looks like it,’ Con agreed. ‘To get a hold over Demnos – her biggest rival for the Amrita.’
‘Did … Coldhardt send you here?’ Yianna whispered, licking her cracked lips. ‘You are his people, yes?’
‘His family.’
‘Is he here also?’
‘No. Just the three of us inside, and a girl waiting out front to get us the hell away.’
‘This is a gift, man!’ crowed Motti quietly. ‘Demnos offers Coldhardt a fortune to get her back, and here she is.’
Con turned back to Yianna, feeling oddly troubled. ‘Can you walk?’
‘I’ve been drugged,’ she muttered, turning her head from side to side, her dark hair straggling over the crisp white sheets. ‘Samraj is experimenting on these people…Wants to experiment on me. Wants the secret …’
Motti frowned. ‘Who’s that?’
‘Samraj.’ The word sounded scratchy and faint in her throat.
Con looked at him. ‘What is it, Motti?’
‘Dunno. Thought I recognised her voice.’ He shook his head. ‘Never mind. Where’s Samraj now?’
‘Back … Back in morning …’
‘It will not be easy to get her out,’ said Con quietly.
‘We’ll just have to carry her,’ said Motti. ‘Sneak down to the security station as planned, blow the phosphor caps and run out in the confusion.’
Con nodded. With big cash at stake, they couldn’t afford not to take her with them.
‘No one’s moving out there,’ Patch reported, crossing the ward to join them. ‘What’s going …’
He broke off as he saw Yianna, frowning like he was trying to place her.
‘This is Yianna,’ Con explained. ‘Demnos’s daughter.’
‘That ain’t all she is,’ said Patch. ‘I’ve seen her before, in a painting. A painting on the wall in Samraj’s house.’
Yianna stared at him in confusion.
‘That’s crazy,’ Con argued. ‘Why would her portrait be –’
‘Wait.’ Now Motti was staring at the girl with equal mistrust. ‘The voice we heard behind the door when we broke in. It was your voice. You were there in the flesh at Samraj’s house!’
‘No,’ Yianna protested feebly, ‘you’re wrong.’
‘Guys, I’m telling you –’
Abruptly, Yianna sat up and kicked off the sheet.
She was holding a gun.
‘Back off!’ she hissed. ‘Stand against the window, or I will shoot you.’
Con eyed Yianna evilly as they shuffled off to comply. It was clear from the wild look in the girl’s eyes that she meant it. She was clearly unaccustomed to power; now, holding the gun, she seemed high on it.
‘So much for Samraj’s poor little victim, huh?’ said Motti bitterly.
‘I am helping Samraj with her experiments on the acolytes of Ophiuchus.’ Yianna seemed proud of herself. ‘They have helped us learn the secrets of the Amrita.’
‘And in return you stick needles in them, yes?’ Con was unimpressed. ‘Demnos is an idiot. His dear, darling daughter wasn’t abducted by anyone. You faked it – you went willingly with Samraj.’
‘Most willingly.’ Yianna’s smile twisted into a leer. ‘My poor, dear father rarely leaves me alone – so we seized the opportunity. I should really thank your friends here.’
‘Don’t bother,’ muttered Patch.
‘But I must. You made my apparent kidnapping seem so much more convincing.’
‘What’s that supposed to mean?’ drawled Motti.
‘You left so much incriminating evidence behind you.’ Yianna nodded knowingly. ‘The hole in the hothouse wall. The triggering of the perimeter alarms … Oh, and where is that blon
d boy, by the way? I couldn’t resist teasing the little poppet, waiting all alone in the darkness.’
Motti and Patch stared at each other. Con saw the horror on their faces.
‘Shall I spell it out for you?’ Yianna’s eyes shone darkly. ‘That wasn’t Samraj’s home you broke into two nights ago. It was my father’s.’
‘You’re crazy,’ hissed Motti. ‘We know it was Samraj’s place.’
‘You only think you know – because that is what Coldhardt told you. So easily duped – just like the police.’ She smiled. ‘Oh yes, when I found the three of you blundering about my home, I knew at once how I might turn your visit to my advantage. I called the police and told them the alarms were set off by accident … that everything was quite under control.’
Con sneered. ‘And of course, they now believe that you made those claims under duress …’
‘You must have seen the helicopter, boys, while you were hiding out in the area? You thought it was a police helicopter perhaps?’ Yianna shook some stray hairs from her eyes – a swift, feral movement. ‘It was Samraj coming to collect me, now our plans are almost complete. I used you, and now I have tricked you all – just as Coldhardt has.’
‘If you think you can trick us into doubting Coldhardt, you’re crazy,’ said Con fiercely.
‘Coldhardt knows the difference between the two houses, even if you don’t,’ Yianna sneered. ‘After all, he has been staying with Samraj as her guest, at her home here in Rome. While you fought for him in Cairo, he lay in bed with her.’
‘You lying bitch!’ Con hurled herself recklessly at Yianna, but Motti grabbed hold of her, hauled her back.
‘She’s still holding the gun,’ he hissed at her.
‘This may look like a hospital,’ Yianna said, just the faintest tremble in her voice as she levelled the gun at Con’s chest, ‘but I know nothing of first aid. If I shoot you, you will bleed to death here.’ Her eyes narrowed, the dark rings around them making her seem so much older. ‘Samraj warned me intruders might come tonight. Having witnessed your bungled attempts at breaking and entry, I doubted you would make it this far – but now you are here, we may as well have you all. The girl is outside, you said – I shall have her collected. Where is the blond boy?’