by Stephen Cole
‘He’s gone,’ Motti snarled. ‘Run away.’
‘You expect me to believe that?’ She moved the gun to cover Patch. ‘I think this little one will tell me. Won’t you, little boy?’
Patch raised his hands slowly, nervously. ‘I may be little, but I’m ever so bright.’
Con took the hint, closing her eyes as Patch threw down a phosphor cap. It exploded in a blaze of light. Yianna cried out, staggered back. Motti slugged her in the jaw and she fell sprawling against one of the beds, shouting as she became entangled with the wires and tubes hooked into the man who lay there.
‘Out!’ Motti snapped, leading the rush for the double doors.
But two dark figures were blocking the way. They looked like the men from the museum in Cairo.
‘Like I said,’ hissed Yianna, struggling to free herself, ‘Samraj warned me intruders might come tonight. You think she would not give me protection?’
Motti reached them first, threw a punch at the closest cultist. But the man dodged aside and struck him in the throat. Patch yelled and threw himself at Motti’s assailant, fists flying. The other man plucked him free and swung him round into the wall, head first. With a pitiful squeak, Patch went down in a crumpled heap.
Con assumed a fighting stance as both Yianna’s bodyguards turned to face her. Patch was down. Motti was gasping for breath on the floor. She backed away towards Yianna, who was still struggling to get back up – where was the bitch’s gun? The thought of using it terrified Con, but maybe she could bluff her way out …
But then the acolyte in the bed lashed out with his one free arm and gripped her by the throat. The skin on his arm came up short against the wires, stretched grotesquely like melted mozzarella. She struggled to free herself, but his grip was like iron. He stared up at her with cold, dark eyes like he felt nothing. Nothing but disgust for her.
The taller of Yianna’s bodyguards loomed over Con, a dark wraith in this sterile, frightening place. He took a firm hold of her, twisted her arm behind her back.
Yianna struggled up. ‘The little one!’ she shouted. ‘Where is he?’
Con’s heart quickened. Patch was no longer crumpled on the floor. He had gone.
‘Get after him,’ Yianna told her other bodyguard. ‘Quickly! He’ll be trying to get back to his friends.’ She smiled darkly at Con. ‘We should show him there’s nowhere he can run to.’
Patch hared out of the restricted area and stabbed desperately at the call lift button. His head was throbbing, he felt sick. But he had to get out, tell Tye what had happened. She’d know what to do.
Together they’d rescue Motti and Con. No question.
The doors opened at once – but already he could hear running feet behind him. Patch threw himself inside, hit the ground floor button again and again. Finally the doors began to move.
But Yianna’s minder was going to get to him long before they closed.
Patch scrabbled for his false eye, tugged it out and lobbed it at the dark shadow approaching. It cracked off the man’s head, stalling him for a moment – long enough for the doors to close.
He grabbed the guard’s radio from his pocket, struggled to remember the simple Italian phrases Con had taught him on the way over here. ‘Uscita sei,’ he shouted into it as the lift doors opened again on the ground floor. ‘Rapidamente! Intruso avvistato! Rapidamente!’
The radio squawked back a moment later but Patch ignored it. Let security run around trying to spot intruders at exit six. He was too busy wondering which of these keys would get him through to the security station before the bodyguard could –
Too late. Patch swore as his faceless, implacable pursuer swept down the stairs and tore across the marble towards him.
‘I’m in main reception! Open up!’ Patch yelled into his radio. But English was no good. ‘Uh, ricezione principale, aprasi—’
He threw the radio at the minder, knew he’d miss, didn’t stay to see. He was running for the large marble reception desk, desperate to put something between him and his attacker. But the man leaped through the air and landed on top of the desk like this was some martial arts movie, completing the effect with a whistling kick that narrowly missed taking Patch’s head off.
With nowhere left to go, Patch pelted towards the locked door – just as it opened to reveal a young security guard with a shaved head and a gun. His eyes widened in fear as Patch hurtled towards him.
‘Get out of here!’ Patch yelled. He brought down the guard with a clumsy tackle, knocking him back the way he’d come, through the doorway. The heavy door swung shut behind them, locking out the masked man.
The security guard tried to bring his gun to bear on Patch.
‘Not me!’ Patch knocked it away angrily and pointed to the closed door. ‘He’s the one you’ve got to worry about – capite?’
Suddenly the door shuddered under some great impact. Patch scrambled to his feet as a second blow almost smashed it off its hinges.
He helped up the dazed security guard. ‘If I were you, mate, I’d find another job, pronto.’
The door began to splinter under another pulverising blow.
Patch let the guard run first. Then he followed him out through the security station and headlong into the night outside.
Tye was getting nervous, waiting in the van. She knew in many ways that she had the cushiest job as getaway driver, the least to lose. But just hanging around uselessly while the long minutes scraped against her nerves … wondering over and over if something had gone wrong, if this was the time that her friends wouldn’t be coming back … It never got any easier.
Suddenly her stomach twisted as she caught movement in the rear-view. A security guard was sprinting down the dark, deserted road towards her, with Patch apparently in hot pursuit. What the hell was –?
Her mouth dried as she saw a dark figure steal out from between two parked cars close by. The guard was running blindly, he hadn’t noticed. Not even when the moon peered through the covering clouds and lent a sheen to the stiletto blade in the figure’s hand.
Tye opened her mouth to scream out a warning, but too late. The figure swiped at the guard’s back as he ran past. An arc of blood spat out. The guard tumbled to the ground.
Patch skidded to a halt as the dark shape turned its attentions on him.
‘No!’ Tye fumbled for the ignition key. The engine turned over.
Then she jumped as a dark, veiled face appeared up close against her window. A woman’s hooded eyes bored soullessly into hers.
It was the Ophiuchus cultist she’d faced in Cairo.
Tye turned, catching a glimpse of movement through the windscreen – just as the glass exploded in on her, a thousand tiny shards tearing the air. A man’s hand reached in to grab hold of her and she slammed the van into reverse gear, stepped on the gas, squealed away from her attackers down the road towards Patch. She had to get to him before the guard-killer did. And now she saw another of the lithe, shadowy figures had appeared outside the Serpens building, cutting off the boy’s retreat.
Tye drew level with the guard-killer and twisted hard on the wheel, swerving to smash into him. She caught him a glancing blow but he rolled with it, somersaulted backwards and landed on his feet. He crouched into a fighting stance.
‘That’s right, Patch, get him!’ she yelled, slamming on the brakes. As the man turned, ready to fend off an imaginary attack from his quarry, she jumped out of the van and kicked him where it hurt, following up with a judo strike to the back of his neck.
Before he’d even hit the asphalt, Tye was back in the van. It lurched as Patch threw open the doors and jumped in the back.
‘Hold on!’ she yelled, flooring it in first, the night air cold on her face through the smashed-in windscreen. Two more sinister silhouettes jumped into the road to block her way. She screwed up her eyes and kept her course. At the last possible moment, the figures jumped clear.
‘Where are they?’ she shouted at Patch. ‘Motti and Con?’
‘They’re caught inside!’ he yelled back. ‘Yianna’s got them!’
‘Yianna –?’
Tye stamped on the brakes and the van slewed to a halt. Patch was thrown forward, colliding with the back of her seat. ‘Yianna’s working with Samraj!’ he gasped without missing a beat. ‘We – we’ve got to get them out of there!’
‘Are they hurt?’
‘Motti was hit in the throat, I – I dunno how bad he is. Then there were these zombie cult people in the beds, wires and stuff shoved into them, and then Yianna had these two minders and they were the ones who mullered us in Cairo, I swear, and one of them grabbed Con when I –’
‘Slow down,’ Tye told him. She saw now just how awful he looked. He was white as a sheet. A huge lump on his forehead offset the bruise on his face. His patch was yanked down over his cheek, and she could see that he’d lost his false eye.
‘This is all my fault. I let them down. I’m useless.’ He gritted his teeth, started hitting himself around the head. ‘Useless rubbish.’
Tye struggled to grab hold of his flailing hands. ‘Patch, stop it.’
He went limp in her arms, started to sob. ‘I tried to get us out, Tye. I threw a phosphor cap but it wasn’t enough.’
‘Listen to me,’ she squeezed both his hands. ‘Patch, you did everything you could. If you stayed you’d have got caught. Now we have to call Coldhardt. He’ll tell us what to do.’
‘Him?’ Patch stared at her. ‘Yianna said Coldhardt’s been tricking us. That he’s been seeing Samraj in secret, screwing us over for her. Said it was really Demnos’s place we broke into while you were in Aqaba, not hers. And I didn’t believe it first of all, but her painting was on the wall, see? I recognised her, that’s how I knew who she was, and she was acting sick and sort of harmless till I gave that away, so it’s my fault that she suddenly –’
‘Don’t start that again. I need you with me on this.’
‘D’you reckon it’s true about Coldhardt?’ Patch looked at her beseechingly. ‘D’you think he’s been lying to us?’
‘I think we need to get our heads straight, and some facts straight.’ Tye swallowed hard, a sick feeling clawing at her insides. ‘But the first thing we’ve got to do is get Con and Motti back. Right?’
He nodded.
‘Maybe we can double back, try to –’
But then in the rear-view, she saw a black Chrysler turn the corner.
‘Oh, God.’ Tye floored the van again. ‘They’re coming after us. We can’t help Motti and Con if we’re all in the same boat.’ She pulled out her mobile and stuffed it into his hands as she took a corner at speed. ‘Call Coldhardt. Tell him what’s happened. Ask him what we do.’
‘But what if he’s –’
The Chrysler was picking up speed, looming larger in the wing mirror. ‘Patch,’ Tye shouted, ‘whatever they say Coldhardt’s done, he still cares about us. We know that. Right?’ She realised with a sick feeling inside that she was asking him as much as telling him. ‘Right. So call him. Direct line to the Bat-phone in the hub.’ She had the pedal pinned to the floor but she couldn’t pull away from the big black car behind them. The night air blasted in through the empty windscreen. ‘Do it! This could be the last chance we have!’
She heard him hit the call button, with a noisy sniff.
Then, suddenly, twin green eyes loomed out of the night ahead of them. Traffic lights. They’d reached the intersection with the main road.
‘He’s not picking up,’ muttered Patch.
The lights darkened to amber, then to red. Tye saw the traffic on the right at the intersection strain forwards, ready to accelerate away at the first wink of green.
‘Tye, he ain’t answering!’
The Chrysler was still gaining. No way could she stop now.
The traffic started to move, metal animals let off the leash.
‘Hold on, Patch,’ she shouted.
The van ran through the reds and careened out into the oncoming traffic. Cars swerved and horns blared, a dozen tones at once. With no windscreen, the sounds seemed amplified, a deafening soundtrack as Tye spun the wheel this way and that. A huge oil truck almost broadsided them, slamming on its brakes at the last possible moment.
A sickening crunch of metal on metal carried to them as they cleared the chaos, and Tye sent the van screeching down the Via Gianicolense towards the city. She checked the rear-view and saw that the Chrysler had smashed into the side of a tourer, its doors flung open. She glimpsed black-clad figures disappearing into the night.
‘Gee.’ Tye glanced sideways at Patch with a shaky smile. ‘You think they didn’t have insurance?’
‘I think we need to dump this van before it gets so hot it burns our arses.’ Patch looked and sounded utterly exhausted, dropped the phone sullenly in her lap. ‘Coldhardt ain’t home. You think he’s at his girlfriend’s place?’
‘I think …’ Tye began.
But she found she didn’t know what to think any more.
Chapter Seventeen
Motti was shoved roughly out of the security station and into the cool night. There were more of Yianna’s bodyguards out here – together with the tattooed bitch from Cairo. He knew that these guys did not mess, so he didn’t struggle. His throat felt like it had been hit with a hammer, and he tasted blood whenever he swallowed.
He glanced at Con, subdued and quiet, allowing the black-clad minders to push her along without protest. He guessed she was thinking on what Yianna had said about Coldhardt. Well, so was he. And it was bull. It had to be bull.
Yianna was talking with one of her minders, her voice rising in anger. Abruptly she broke away and limped over to Motti and Con with the help of a gleaming chrome walking stick. ‘Your friends have caused us some inconvenience.’
Motti coughed painfully. ‘Y’know, they’re always doing that. I been meaning to talk to them about it.’
Yianna’s expression stayed sour. ‘But we have you two. That should suffice.’
‘Suffice for what?’
A Mercedes limousine pulled up beside the security station. The back door opened ominously.
‘We going for a ride?’ Motti croaked.
‘You’re going to visit Samraj. Her real home.’ She nodded towards the car. ‘Put them in.’
‘No.’ Con snapped out of her trance as she was shoved towards the back seat. She looked at Yianna, wide-eyed. ‘Not in the back. I can’t go in the back.’
‘No tricks,’ she hissed.
‘It’s not a trick,’ said Motti. ‘She freaks out in the back of a car. Let her go in the front.’
‘Pathetic,’ sneered Yianna.
Con struggled fiercely in the arms of the black-clad figures as they forced her step by step into the car and manhandled her inside. ‘No,’ she kept saying under her breath. ‘No, no, no.’
Motti hurriedly joined her in the back of the limousine. Another man slid in beside him so he and Con were bunched up in the middle. Con’s eyes were tight shut, her breathing erratic. Sweat glistened on her forehead. Motti took her hand and she squeezed it tightly, her nails digging into his skin. ‘Look, she’s going to have a fit or something.’
Yianna got in awkwardly beside the black-clad driver, didn’t even turn round.
The car pulled slowly away and Con shrieked.
‘I’m telling you, she can’t do this!’ Motti saw the sides of Con’s mouth were flecked with spit. She was rocking back and forth, moaning under her breath.
‘’S OK,’ Motti whispered in her ear, trying to hold her. ‘’S OK, sweetheart, it ain’t for ever. We’re gonna get through this,’ he kept whispering, over and over, though she showed no signs of hearing him. ‘And then it’s payback time.’
As Patch finished telling his sorry story Tye’s mind was racing, trying to make sense of it all. Yianna was sick, she needed the Amrita. Samraj was more likely to get it than her own father – was that what had driven her to betray him?
And what about Coldhardt’s betraya
l?
She remembered the intimacy between him and Samraj at Demnos’s party. Coldhardt’s evading the question of her whereabouts – ‘I really couldn’t tell you’. Because then it might have come out that she didn’t even own a mansion in Florence? That the mansion was Demnos’s property all along?
But why would Coldhardt order a covert raid on the house of his own employer? What was the point? And why mislead Motti, Patch and Jonah in their work? Tye would have known if he’d told an outright lie, but Coldhardt was a wily old bastard, he rarely slipped. He chose his words like his suits, tailor-made for the occasion.
She remembered the call with Demnos that morning, though it seemed a lifetime ago. ‘Perhaps a third party is at work, someone playing each of you against the other,’ he had mused, and there was a look in his eyes she hadn’t been able to fathom.
Now, with sudden clarity, she knew.
‘It’s you,’ she breathed.
Coldhardt was working for both Samraj and Demnos – and ripping them both off at the same time.
For Demnos, he had used the talents of his children. For Samraj, he had used his own.
‘I have obtained Samraj’s fragments of the prescription, by covert means,’ he’d told Demnos just that morning. Not ‘we’. I. She imagined him rising quietly from the woman’s exotic bedside in the dead of night, sneaking away to steal the secrets of her part of the prescription. Just as he’d sent Motti, Patch and Jonah to steal the fragments that Demnos possessed – for Samraj’s benefit. Perhaps Yianna had been unable to crack her father’s safe. Or perhaps Samraj wanted to be sure that Yianna was not holding out on her.
But why hadn’t Coldhardt explained to them what he was doing? He’d been playing a dangerous game, so why go it alone when they could have helped him? Was he trying to protect them, or did he simply not trust them enough?
Her pride stung at the thought. When she got back she would ask for answers. No. Whatever his temper, she would demand them.