The Silent Neighbours (Watchers Book 2)

by S. T. Boston

  “This is horseshit,” he snapped, slamming his fist down onto the table and causing the empty cup to topple over and roll off onto the floor. “Apart from the information I found on the other killings, that I have no doubt you were either involved in, or have some knowledge of, I also managed to pull your file.” He opened the folder once again and scanned a number of pages until he found what he was looking for. “I see that you were a former sergeant in the British Army. You carried out a number of tours in some of the world's worst hell-holes before getting pensioned out after being shot. An injury you obtained during the rescue of a reporter. An injury that saw you awarded with the George Cross.” He scanned down the page a little, running his finger over the paper. “It all gets a little hazy then. It would seem that after a period of rehabilitation you went back to the Middle East as a private contractor, is that correct?”

  “It is,” replied Sam, not quite sure what angle the inspector was going for. He was shocked that Ackhart had managed to pool so much information about him in just a few short hours. There was obviously a far less clunky online community for the security services.

  “What I'm getting at is - you're not the usual kind of person we have under investigation for murder. In fact, I have no doubt that you are a person of very high integrity. I have a military background, too. Air Force. This killing, along with the others reeks of an assassination, a contract killing. Just who are you involved with?”

  “What – I'm – involved – with,” said Sam slowly, “is a battle between good and evil on a scale that you could never imagine.” There was no point trying to cover it up, Sam decided to go for broke and come clean. At least if they sectioned him as crazy he'd have a better chance of escape than if he were thrown in jail.

  “And what side of that fence are you on exactly, monsieur?”

  “Like you said, inspector, I am a person of the highest integrity, so the good side obviously.” Sam treated Ackhart to a confident smile. “What if I were to tell you that Mr. Laurett was not who you thought him to be? What if I were to tell you that Mr. Laurett was partly responsible for some of the horrors that we have witnessed over the last few years?”

  “Impossible,” spat Ackhart, as if he'd just tasted something bitter that offended his tongue. He was a member of the French Government. He worked with Jacques Guillard on plans that held the Euro Zone together. A breakaway group of Al-Qaida were responsible for that virus.” A sad look flushed across the inspector's face, Sam felt sure that he must have lost someone close to him as a result of it, which made the ground he was treading even more dangerous.

  “Do you really believe that?” asked Sam a little gingerly. “For one, do you think they would have been capable of engineering such a thing? And secondly, even if they could produce such a thing, why would they release it in a time that had virtually seen the end of all terrorist attacks? Not to mention the fact that many of their own people would have been killed. That virus was very indiscriminate; there wasn't a nation on the planet that didn't become infected. Every living person would have known someone who died.”

  “But they claimed responsibility,” defended Ackhart, suddenly sounding a little unsure of what he was actually saying.

  “Smoke and mirrors,” Sam cut in with a wry smile. “Although I'm fairly certain that no one apart from a handful of people, myself included, know what really happened. If some small breakaway extremist group wanted the so-called honour of those atrocities, then it was an easy explanation for the governments of the world to run with. Far more feasible than what really happened.”

  * * *

  Inspector Ackhart sat back in his plastic chair and exhaled a long, over-exaggerated breath, feeling the backrest sag slightly under his weight. This was most certainly not the direction he'd anticipated his conversation with Samuel Becker to go. He'd lost count of how many prisoners he had interviewed over the years, and liked to think that he could easily spot the tell-tale signs of a liar. Becker was displaying none of them. Either there was truth in what he was saying, or he was a pathological liar and a very dangerous psychopath. Unfortunately he didn't believe the second option for an instant.

  “So you believe that Monsieur Laurett was involved?” he asked, not quite sure he believed that he'd even asked the question.

  * * *

  “I don't believe, I know,” replied Sam with conviction.

  “Is this some kind of domestic terrorism?”

  “No!” said Sam firmly. “If only it were that simple. The group he was involved with were far more dangerous than any threat we have ever known.” Sam watched the inspector turn his attention to the recording device sat to their left. “Just look at the events in the few weeks before the virus, and the few weeks after. During that World Summit you had the disappearance of three of the delegates. Euri Peterson, Tillard, and the chap you mentioned who worked with Laurett, Jacques Guillard. Then the next day John Remy, the U.S. President turns up dead. Suspected assassination by one of his own Secret Service Team, Robert Finch.” Mentioning his name caused Sam to pause momentarily, as he recalled with some pleasure how he's shot him point blank in the head back in the Pyramid. “Then two weeks later this virus suddenly appears. Look hard enough and you will also see that on the day of the virus first making an appearance there was a major seismic event reported in Egypt, near the Plateau, that caused substantive damage to The Great Pyramid of Kufu. The story was not surprisingly dwarfed by the EMP that fried the globe and left us in this shithouse situation we are in now. Another smoke and mirrors event that the scientists of the world put down to a massive solar flare that they never saw coming. Fast-forward another eight days and we see a major storm that hit the planet for seven days, causing widespread flooding, following that the virus is gone, leaving one in seven people dead. As you well know, that unusual storm was put down once again to solar activity disrupting Earth's weather patterns on an unprecedented scale. Due to the fact that all of our technology was useless by then, scientists were never able to quantify this claim. Also, I fear that they were just too embarrassed to admit they had no clue whatsoever as to how it all happened and had to offer some feasible explanation to a very demanding public. If they could have, they would have found that none of those events were linked to a cosmic occurrence at all.”

  Inspector Ackhart massaged his temples with his fingers, “What exactly is it that you think you know, Monsieur Becker?”

  “Like I said, inspector, I will tell you everything. The question for you is, how far down the rabbit hole do you want to go?” Sam smiled inwardly at the phrase, recalling how Laurence Fishburne had asked Keanu Reeves the exact same thing at the start of the first Matrix film. It was a cheesy line but he felt that it somehow fit the situation.

  “I think maybe I should start recording this, it might be evidence of your insanity when this whole mess comes to trial.”

  “No recording devices,” fired Sam. “If you want to know, this is between you and me. I have reason to suspect that I might be in danger.”

  “How so? You are in police custody, apart from facing a long prison sentence, and possibly the death penalty if the Americans choose to extradite you for the crimes committed on their soil. You are, for the time being, quite safe and secure.”

  “Something Laurett said to me before I killed him,” Sam replied uneasily. “And the fact I'm locked up offers no protection from these people, they have a very long reach. If things start going bad, as I suspect they will, it will pay to have someone of authority who knows the truth, whether you believe it or not. I fear that in a short time you may have no other option other than to accept what I am about to tell you, it's going to be hard for you to accept and it will make you question everything you thought you knew.”

  “Very well,” said Ackhart reluctantly, “I always liked a good story. So, how did you become involved in this?”

  “Well, it all started with a road trip,” began Sam, remembering how Oriyanna had been so reluctant to try and explain i
t all to them. He now had a little empathy for how she must have felt. “At the time my friend, Adam, and I could never have known what we were about to become involved in. It's fair to say it has changed our lives, forever!”

  Chapter 6

  “That's your car?” asked Maya, a little surprised at the old slightly tatty looking Mazda RX7 as Adam reached the door and unlocked it.

  “What can I say, it was cheap, and the parts to fix it were readily available. After the EMP many of the newer cars needed a lot of work in order to get them running again. Older stuff, like this, was much easier to fix. Sam sorted it out for me, I was never that mechanically minded.” She slid into the driver's seat and gunned the engine as Adam climbed in next to her and fastened his seat belt. “Go easy on her, she's practically a classic!” Before the car started moving he'd found Lucie's number and hit the call button.

  “Get her to meet you somewhere that only the two of you will know about,” Maya said hastily as she reversed the Mazda out of the parking bay and engaged first gear. “Somewhere that they won't know about!” Adam knew in an instant that his grandparents' old cottage in the Vale of Pewsey near the small village of Alton Barnes was going to be a pretty safe bet. Not only was it in the middle of nowhere, it would have been sitting empty for the past couple of years. Unless they dug very deep, which would be nearly impossible now, they would never know about it.

  The property had belonged to Adam's grandparents on his mother's side, the couple had been married for sixty years. Adam had little memory of them other than the odd visit to the small thatched cottage that he grew to love though his early teens, they had both died when he was seven years old. His grandfather had passed away very suddenly. One Saturday afternoon he'd been collecting some timber from the local sawmill across the street, he'd collapsed in the yard while loading his old ford full of kindling. His wife, so his mum had told him, had died of a broken heart just four weeks later, tragically it seemed that they were just unable to live without each other. The cottage had then been passed to his mother and his aunt who chose to keep the quaint little house, renovate it and rent it out as a holiday let. He and Sam had spent many a drunken weekend at the pad during times when Sam was home on leave from the Army, both stumbling back from the local pub, The Barge Inn, after sampling a glass or three too many of the vast array of local ales and ciders on offer. The walk back always took them past the sawmill where his grandfather had met his fate, along the canal towpath and across the road to the house. Lucie loved the place, as Adam's junior she had no memory of her grandparents who'd called the thatch home for the best part of fifty years. For her it was memories of long summer weeks spent as a child with Adam and their late parents, then later on with her Aunt and Uncle, running through corn fields and swimming in the canal that threaded its way through the small village like a ribbon.

  “Wiltshire,” replied Adam, still not sure if he should trust his new ally completely with the exact address. If things went sour she'd have to scour the whole county to find him. The call, as usual was taking an eternity to connect. “You are, were, part of it all. Do they know about the house in Wilshire?”

  “I don't think so,” fired Maya as she reached the bottom of a steep hill that led to the sea. She took a right and screamed the pokey engine through the gear box. Brighton Pier sat in darkness, standing out almost oppressively against the clear, cold September sky. She navigated a small roundabout and kept the Mazda heading west, the cold waters of the English Channel to her left. White breakers broiled angrily as they hit the shingle beach, foaming and bubbling for a second before being drawn back into the dark, icy water.

  “Keep heading this way,” said Adam hurriedly as he listened impatiently to the rhythmic clicks on the line as the call tried to connect. “In a few miles you will see signs for the A27, follow those toward Portsmouth.” Finally the welcome sound of Lucie's phone ringing greeted his ear. Maya nodded her head in understanding and swung the car round a slow moving council vehicle with a flashing orange light affixed to its roof.

  “Adam. What is it?” came his sister's voice, sounding somewhat and unusually annoyed. He felt his bowels churn a little. He hated the thought that she was about to be drawn into whatever mess was developing. He took a deep steadying breath and told her all he knew.

  “Is she safe?” asked Maya as he ended the call and tucked his phone into his trouser pocket.

  “I'm not sure.”

  “What do you mean, you're not sure?”

  “I think one of your kind was with her in the bar, a lone male customer,” replied Adam making no attempt to hide the bitterness in his voice. “She is leaving now, I asked her to call back once she got clear. If anything happens to…”

  “I'm sure she will be fine,” Maya cut in, sounding a little unsure of her own statement. She took one hand off the wheel and brushed her thick dark hair out of her face, securing it behind her ear.

  “I suggest that now would be the time to start talking. I still don't quite believe that I even trust you.”

  “I don't blame you,” sighed Maya sadly. “Thank you for giving me a chance. I know I can never put right what we've done, I just hope that I can stop what is about to happen!”

  Adam felt his stomach turn again. “So this isn't just about killing us then?” he asked reluctantly.

  “No. You form just one small part, Adam. There is something much bigger at play here, something much worse. It would be easier if I start at the beginning, that way it will make more sense.” Adam felt a strangely familiar feeling of intrigue and dread wash over him. Not for the first time he was racing through the night with a strange woman who had a story to tell. For the briefest of moments he felt a pang of longing for Oriyanna as he remembered their time together in the RV on that strange night back in the States. What he wouldn't have given for her to be here now with him. He gazed momentarily out the passenger window of his car and watched the beach give way to a darkened marina that housed a number of small yachts and motor boats. Many looked as if they hadn't been used in a long time. He suspected that many never would be used again, their once proud owners long dead. Somewhere out there, across the dark expanse of the English Channel was Sam. He just hoped that whatever was happening hadn't reached him yet, it was a shallow hope but it was better than none. Shivering slightly he reached forward and cranked up the heater. Thankfully the manner of Maya's driving had quickly warmed the rotary engine and hot air immediately poured out of the vent. “Back before the virus,” began Maya, not taking her eyes off the road ahead, “I worked in the Russian office of Integra Investments. I take it you know who they are?”

  “No, sorry.” He answered a little distantly. He forced his eyes away from the darkened, passing boats and turned to face her.

  “They were the official face of – Buer's -operation here,” she paused momentarily before she mentioned his name, as if it were almost difficult for her to say. “I'm surprised you didn't know that.”

  “I have very little knowledge of events before the virus.”

  “Around eighty four years ago now, when the first of the Elders came here, they set up an investment firm in order to gain assets and money. It was necessary for them to cement themselves firmly in Earth society for the plan to work, it was essential for them to have the decades before the virus to build up the wealth and assets that they would need. Shortly after their arrival they began the Earth-Breed program.” Maya paused, glancing at Adam. “We were engineered in a lab,” she said sadly. “They wanted a race who were born here on Earth, who knew nothing of life on Sheol, it was seen as the best way for them to integrate into society. The likes of those who you had dealings with, as well as me, are known as second generation Earth-Breed. Our mission was to infiltrate world governments and businesses, to seek out and identify the Arkkadian Watchers. Some had more involvement in that than others. We were engineered with differing intellects, you could say we were created to be role specific. Whilst I was made to have a higher intellect, I nev
er became involved in the hunt for the Watchers. I worked solely in the investment firm, alongside many Earth-Humans who had no idea of whom we really were.”

  “Take a right here,” instructed Adam as they sped toward a small roundabout that displayed a sign for the A27 and Portsmouth. Maya swung the small car right, the tyres squealing on the tarmac. Adam dug his phone from his pocket and eyed it uneasily. Lucie should have called by now, he thought to himself.

  “Around a week before the virus hit and things went wrong the Earth-Breeds working in our various offices around the world, the ones not employed in the most important roles, were called to the States. The official line was that we were being given a chance to visit the company's head office. A benefit that was promised to all, even the Earth-Humans working for us. The real truth behind it was much more sinister. We all of course knew that the plan was nearing the end game. We were really going to the American Headquarters in Allentown, about two hours from the company's office in New York. The Earth-Humans who worked for us would never get the chance to visit the US; they were being left to die like cattle with everyone else.” Her voice took on a hinted tone of sadness and regret. “You need to understand that from birth I was educated to hate Earth-Humans, we were brain washed from an early age. I knew nothing else. I didn't create or release that plague, I cannot be held responsible.”

  “Do you really think you can shirk your guilt that way,” laughed Adam bitterly. “You're all accountable in my book! So what led to you being here now? Why switch sides so suddenly?”

  “During my time working with the Earth-Humans I made many friends,” her voice went a little distant, as if she were recalling the time before the plague with some fondness, something that as far as Adam was concerned she did not deserve. “I even had a boyfriend,” she laughed. That wasn't hard for him to believe, despite his dislike for her and what she had stood for there was no denying she was beautiful, almost in a similar way to Oriyanna and a number of other Arkkadian females that he'd met during his brief stay on the idyllic planet. It was easy to see how earlier Earth-Humans had mistaken them for angels. However Maya was not Arkkadian, she was Earth-Breed, still Adam felt sure she had a hint of that alien gene in her, something that made him feel uneasy. “I began to doubt their cause,” continued Maya. “By the time I reached the US I felt so wracked with guilt that I even considered taking my own life.” She took her eyes off the road momentarily and eyed him sincerely. “I could never bring myself to do it, though.”