The Man From U.N.D.E.A.D. - the Curious Case of the Kidnapped Chemist

by Darren Humphries

  “All in hand,” I assured him.

  “Anything else you want us to do?” It was fairly obvious that he was expecting to get a brush off. The regular police generally don’t have a lot of time for Agency types because we have the power to walk all over them, a power that we quite often use, and they don’t take kindly to that. I can sympathise and, unlike some others at the Agency, try to treat them with a bit of professional courtesy when I can.

  “Shot came from that direction,” I pointed to the shattered window like it wasn’t obvious which direction the shot had come from. “If you could catch the shooter it would save me a lot of time and hassle.”

  “They’ll be likely long gone,” he pointed out.

  “I didn’t say it’d be easy,” I replied, the implied challenge floating the air between us.

  He grinned. “All right, I’ll see what I can do.”

  “You got a name?” I enquired as he turned to go.

  “Diggs.”

  “Good to know you Officer Diggs.”

  “If you didn’t have a dead woman at your feet,” he qualified, “I’d say the same.”

  Which was a fair comment. He walked off, already with his radio in hand, demanding the force helicopter to do a sweep of the rooftops in the area and to get all the CCTV downloads from all of the neighbouring business premises. I couldn’t suppress a wry smile, though there really wasn’t that much to smile about. Pleasing one policeman didn’t exactly make up for a woman being dead who didn’t deserve to be dead. And she had been my best and, to be fair, only lead. What had she given me?

  Osiris.

  A name. Not even a real one. Probably an alias or a codeword.

  Agency basic training includes a grounding in all the major religious pantheons and mythologies, including the smaller, more troublesome ones. Greek, Roman, Egyptian, Norse, Celtic, Sumerian, Incan, Hindi, Slavic, Hyperborean, Cthulic, Druidic… you name it and if it ends in ‘–ic’ or ‘-ian’ we’d probably studied it in those first few months. I didn’t need anyone to tell me that Osiris was one of the big Egyptian gods, generally considered to be one of the more benign ones, but Overlord of the Underworld nonetheless. No God given the job of looking after the dead was going to be all good. Still, he had been a husband and a father, albeit married to his sister, so he probably wasn’t all bad either. At least he’d kept it amongst his own kind instead of getting a bunch of human virgins pregnant whilst pretending to be beams of sunlight and bulls and the like.

  It wasn’t the sort of name that you would expect as an alias or codeword, at least not outside of Egypt. And wasn’t Egypt becoming a recurring theme here? Arnie had mentioned the country to the Siren on the CCTV and now names like Osiris were being bandied around. A coincidence perhaps, but one far too unlikely to be just coincidence.

  The wailing of more vehicular sirens denoted the arrival of the Agency Splashdown team into the car park at the same time as the police helicopter swept overhead with a thrum of its sound-suppressing rotor blades. Officer Diggs had impressed me again since we probably couldn’t have gotten a chopper up any quicker than that. Through the broken window I could see a small crowd starting to gather on the edge of the car park. You couldn’t get that many police and unmarked vehicles with flashing blue and red lights in one place and not expect to attract a bunch of gawkers. At least there weren’t any outside broadcast vans in evidence yet and the attending police officers were already warning people to put away their mobile phones. They might be able to take pictures of what was going on, but they wouldn’t be able to send them to anyone since the splashdown team would have already instituted a total shut down of the local phone networks, mobile and fixed line.

  Whilst I was waiting for the Splashdown team to disembark from their vans, I used my own phone (Agency phones being exempt from the communications blackout) to call the hotel and asked for Miranda’s room. She answered almost before the first ring was fully completed, “Yes, who is it?”

  “It’s me,” I said by way of reassurance, hoping that I wouldn’t then have to identify myself further as that would have just been embarrassing for us both. “Nice phone etiquette by the way.”

  She exhaled noisily, which was gratifying, “Oh it’s you. I’ve been so worried. What’s taken so long? Is everything all right there?”

  “That depends upon your definition of ‘all right’,” I told her, hedging my bets, “but I am as healthy as when I left you and with no added bullet holes to prove it. I am going to have to be here for a while, though, so you might as well make yourself comfortable there.”

  “Something has happened hasn’t it?” she demanded and I could almost hear her blood pressure rising down the phone line.

  “Something yes, but nothing for you to worry about,” I started to say, but finished to the dial tone as she hung up. I left a message for Officer Diggs to let her through the cordon when she inevitably showed up.

  A group of men and women struggled up the stairs onto the upper floor encased from head to foot in latex environment suits and each carrying a large case of equipment, They may have been proof against all the major known bacteriological, radiological, chemical and magical weapons but the skin-tight suits did nothing to hide anything that was flawed about the body shape of the wearer. The large headpieces made them look like people-sized lollipops, cherry-flavoured judging by the colour of the material. I thought, with momentary irrelevance, that you would have to be built something like Miranda to make one of those things look even remotely good.

  The group’s leader, a man whose beard was so bushy that it strained the seals of his suit’s headpiece and meant that the whole of his lower face was lost in a mass of hair compressed behind the faceplate, approached me whilst his colleagues started to extract their equipment from the shielded cases. From somewhere within the mass of beard a surprisingly falsetto voice struggled its way out. “How much of the place have you contaminated then?”

  I would have shrugged, but that might had added more of the contaminants that worried him so much to the scene that he seemed to care so much about. “I was here when it all happened, so I’ve just moved as little as possible under the circumstances.”

  “Hmphf,” was the sound that emerged. It might once have been a word, but had regressed to a mere sound in passing through the facial foliage. However short and inarticulate the sound was, it managed to convey the message of just how unlikely he considered it that I had done anything less than completely ruin his lockdown site. “And I take it some incompetent copper’s been clodhopping around in here with his flat feet?” he continued.

  “If you mean has one of our esteemed law enforcement colleagues been present at this particular crime scene,” I said for the benefit of Diggs who had climbed the stairs again, “then yes.”

  “He’s behind me isn’t he?” the latex suit wasn’t embarrassment-proof apparently.

  “Yes he is,” I confirmed with an inner satisfaction that I chose not to show.

  “Is there anything that we should be looking for particularly?” If the technician could have sunk any further down into his beard I am sure that he would have.

  “Not really. Links to Egypt, to anyone called Osiris, to any non-human lifeforms … Is this your entire team?”

  “No, the rest are helping to evacuate the changing rooms downstairs.”

  “Yes, I’ll just bet they are.” I turned my attention to the approaching policeman, “Officer Diggs, you have something for me?”

  It was obvious from his body language that he was bursting with information for me. He was practically vibrating with suppressed excitement and I couldn’t blame him. Working on an Agency enquiry, especially a murder enquiry, had to beat rolling the drunks out of the town centre on a Friday night.

  “We’ve located the rooftop that the shot came from. The building’s being cordoned off now and I have our forensics people standing by, unless you want your own people to deal with it…”

  “They seem to have plenty to be gett
ing on with,” I decided magnanimously. Besides which, it was actually true. “I really need to know about the assassin and where they are heading.”

  “I’m getting the CCTV from all the neighbouring buildings downloaded now, so that we can take a look and see what we can do.”

  “OK, but please get a copy of that sent over to this email address so that our own boys can take a look as well,” I suggested, well more sort of ordered really as I passed over my Agency business card which bore nothing except the main switchboard number and a generic e-mail address, softening the instruction with, “two pairs of eyes and all that.”

  Diggs was still too stoked up at taking an active part in an Agency investigation to take any sort of offence. “No problem.” His radio signalled and he listened to the voice in the earpiece for a moment. “I think that lady you were expecting has arrived.”

  I went down into the main bar to intercept Miranda. I wanted to spare her from having to see Cynthia Traske’s lifeless body lying in the shattered mess of the office, but I also wanted to spare us both from being shouted at by the trapped beard. She was looking rattled as she entered and the moment that she saw me she hurtled across the intervening space and threw herself on me. If I hadn’t been braced for the impact we would have both been thrown backwards onto the ground.

  “You’re all right, you’re really all right,” she said frantically and then kissed me, long and hard, on the mouth. For me, time stopped for about a century and a half, but nobody else seemed to notice. Once the kiss was over, she leaned back and then slapped me hard across the cheek. I could have blocked the blow with ease normally, but the after-effects of the kiss left my reaction time languishing somewhere behind that of a drunken snail.

  “That’s for frightening me like that,” she told me and then kissed me for a second time, softer and less urgently.

  “Don’t think that I’m going to let you slap me again,” I warned her as we broke apart.

  “Don’t think that I’m going to let you go anywhere on this investigation without me again,” she rejoined. “I don’t think that I could stand to go through that kind of worry a second time.”

  I didn’t say anything, not wanting to make any promises that I was going to have to break somewhere further down the line. She suddenly realised that we were standing in the middle of the room with our arms wrapped around each other in plain sight of anyone who cared to look and pulled back, straightening her hair out nervously. “What happened here?”

  “Someone was killed.” I took a decision that I was probably going to regret later, “Look, there are some developments that I think you need to know about, but first I think that we ought to get a couple of drinks.”

  “Is Arnie hurt?” she asked immediately, her face draining of colour. “Is he the person that was killed?”

  I shook my head to reassure her, steering her towards the bar, “I still have no information on that one way or the other.” I sat her down on one of the bar stools and went around the bar to get a couple of glasses and a nice single malt. Since Traske had done a runner and his wife was in no condition to object I didn’t think anyone would mind. I poured out two generous measures and handed her one. “All right. The owners of this place were involved in something very big, something that also involves your brother.” I held up a hand to forestall the questions and objections that were immediately forming in her mind. “I don’t know exactly what it is yet, but they were using this club as a front for smuggling and they were responsible for bringing your brother’s girlfriend into the country.”

  “The one he met here? The redhead?”

  “That’s right. And you were right when you said that you thought she looked ill. She wasn’t ill, though,” it was time to drop the bombshell, “she was a Siren.”

  Miranda’s hand flew to her mouth and she nearly dropped the glass from the other. I was prepared for the reaction, after all it’s not every day that you’re told your brother is spending his time with a Siren, so I managed to catch it and place it onto the bar.

  “This Siren is here illegally and clearly was manipulating your brother into doing something for these people and that something must have been pretty important for them to go to these lengths to ensure his compliance. It seems clear that as well as being important it probably isn’t for a good cause.”

  “Poor Arnie,” she managed to say, shaking her head as she tried to take it all in.

  Officer Diggs chose that moment to intervene with a well-timed, “Agent Ward?”

  “Yeah, what have you got?” I asked, getting off my stool to give Miranda a bit of space as she processed the new information.

  What he had was some blurred snapshots on his phone. “These were taken by the internal cameras of the building that the shooter used,” he briefed me. “The quality’s pretty poor, but it’s definitely the person who did it.”

  That person was dressed from head to foot in black, the face hidden behind a balaclava with only the eyes visible through holes. The camera was a time lapse model that took images every couple of seconds to save on data space, so all we saw was this black-clad figure descend the ladder from the roof, take a look around and then depart.

  My phone alerted me to a text message that I opened up to find the same images, only in colour. They hadn’t managed to enhance the quality of the pictures, but the colour showed up one thing. Although swathed in black, a few wisps of hair had escaped between the mask and the neckline of the killer’s clothes. Those wisps were bright red in the colourised version.

  “Is that..?” Miranda started to ask, looking at the picture over my shoulder, but since the Siren’s presence still wasn’t common knowledge I interrupted her.

  “Yes it is.”

  “You know this person?” Diggs asked pointedly.

  “Yes, I think that possibly we do.” I revised the statement, “Well, we know of her.”

  “Her?”

  “Yes. Look, I don’t want you to ask any questions, but I think we can say she’ll be hiding out by some body of water,” I told him, “perhaps an abandoned swimming pool, a river…”

  “A lake,” Miranda offered and we both came to the same conclusion at the exact same moment.

  “The Water Board,” I gave that conclusion a name.

  “Funny you should say that,” Diggs commented with an impressed look on his face, “but a vehicle was observed making off from the shooter’s location just after the event and the on board tracking system puts it in the car park of the Water Board Headquarters. I’ll have marked cars there in minutes.”

  “That’s fine,” I told him, already heading for the door with Miranda firmly in tow (I don’t think that there was any way that I was going to shake her off now), “but they’re not trained or equipped to deal with this suspect, so keep them outside.”

  The London and Thames Water Board Headquarters II – The Siren Chase

  I didn’t even bother trying to park the car properly. As soon as we were on the Water Board site, I bounced it over the kerbing, raced across the pedestrianised area and screeched to a halt inches from the big glass façade of the reception area. From the terrified expression on her face, the receptionist sat on the other side had been certain I was going to come crashing straight through it in a shower of etched glass.

  “You couldn’t cut that a bit closer next time could you?” Miranda asked archly, but I already had the door open and was out of the car. She had to detach her fingers from the dashboard in front of her where they had been clamped throughout the journey before she could follow. The seatbelts had certainly earned the price of their installation on that journey. I hadn’t even slowed down through the mass of blue and red revolving lights that marked the police check point that had been implemented at the main entrance. I assumed that Officer Diggs had let them know that I was coming and what sort of car it was since they made no attempt to shoot lots of holes in it as we raced past.

  A guard was running towards me from the security station on the far s
ide of the foyer as I slammed the glass door open. Fortunately, the door itself didn’t shatter under the force of my entrance. I waved my ID at him and said loudly, “Try to stop me and it won’t be only your job that you’re missing.”

  That was enough to convince him that I was visiting on official business, or at least that he was going to need some serious backup before he challenged me on how official my business was. I went straight past him and ran down the corridor beyond.

  “I’m sorry, he’s a bit testy when people get in the way of an emergency,” I heard Miranda tell them apologetically as she passed by them. “Oh and by the way, I’d get out of the building if I was you.

  I could not remember the way to the lab, so I didn’t try, trusting instead to my subconscious mind to guide me through the endless lengths of brightly-lit, anonymous corridors. For once the approach actually worked and I recognised where I was supposed to take the stairs, which I descended two at a time. Getting down to the right level, I picked up my pace even more and was at a full sprint by the time that I reached the laboratory I was looking for, almost racing straight past it in my hurry.

  I opened the door and flinched as the frame splintered under two solid impacts, diving to my right and rolling sideways instinctively. I hadn’t heard any gunshots for the very good reason that there hadn’t been any. Sticking out of the doorframe were two thin-bladed knives, still quivering in the holes that they had punched into the wood. I could imagine the holes that they would have punched in me.

  The lab was an absolute shambles. There were test tubes, pipettes and cooling chambers all over the floor, all of them broken. It was almost as though someone had gone to the effort of making sure that every single glass item in the whole room had been destroyed. Chairs were upset, papers were scattered and nothing was where it ought to be. This wasn’t the scene of a fight, though the damage might have been staged to give that impression. The mess was too general for that. A fight usually causes a lot of damage in localised areas, not to the whole of the room, especially not a room the size of the laboratory. Crawling away from the door on hands and knees, I pulled my gun out and carefully lifted myself up above the level of the desk I found myself behind, ready to fire.