Stratton nodded. The woman made a poor effort to help him, unsure where to hold him. This suggested she was not accustomed to helping someone sit up in a bed. That seemed to rule out nurse or doctor as her job. She was wearing jeans and a sweatshirt, both clean but not the usual attire of a professional. As she gripped his shoulder he could feel her strength. She was slender but strong and athletic. Nothing about her was adding up yet.
She pulled the bedclothes away to allow him to slide his feet off the mattress and onto the floor. He was wearing a tracksuit that he did not recognise. His body ached all over. The discomfort reminded him of the time when he’d fallen halfway down the side of a snow-covered mountain in Norway after narrowly avoiding a small avalanche.
Stratton looked around, his ability to focus gradually improving. He realised he was actually inside a steel cage in a corner of a room. The bars went from floor to ceiling on two sides and the door was open. The room beyond looked like a cross between an office and a laboratory. There was a desk with a lamp, pens, paper and a computer. A long workbench was against one wall, next to a row of glass cabinets filled with medical paraphernalia. Another counter was bedecked with technical apparatus and on the wall there was a flat-screen monitor that was switched off. The aspect of the situation that struck him most was that his was the only bed.
Behind the desk was a window with a clear view outside.There were skyscrapers, the central one of which was familiar: the Empire State Building. He was looking at the top half from a similar height which meant he was in another Manhattan skyscraper. The mission was over. He had failed. After surviving the ferry he’d been transported to a surface hospital in New York. But then who was this woman and why was he not with his own people? The feeling that he should stay on his guard intensified.
‘Where am I?’ Stratton asked.
‘You were going to tell me your name,’ the woman said. The chill in her voice did not alter.
He wondered why she was asking for his name. Surely she knew who he was. If she didn’t then who the hell was she? He decided to give her something. Until he was sure that the op was at an end he would continue to play the game.‘Nathan . . . Nathan Charon.’
He caught her expression just before she turned away and he had the feeling that she was disappointed. Or perhaps it was irritation. He looked out of the window as a bird flew close to the ledge before veering away. ‘How long have I been here?’ he asked.
‘Two days,’ she said, walking out of the cage without closing the door and leaning against the steel work surface of the counter from where she could study him.
He did the same, noting her sneakers, her strong, shapely legs, her square shoulders.This girl was in shape and was also very pleasing to the eye.
‘Do you remember what happened?’ she asked.
‘I remember the ferry flooding,’ he said, looking at a row of bottles containing different-coloured liquids on top of the medical cabinets behind her. It was certainly an odd-looking hospital room.
‘Where are you from, Nathan?’
The question highlighted an aspect of this charade that Stratton had been most uncomfortable with. Charon was from Vermont but a cover story of years in the UK was intended to explain Stratton’s English accent. The background details had been placed in Charon’s file but Stratton’s problem was not so much the alleged period during which he’d lived in the UK, it was the rest of his life, supposedly spent in Vermont. He’d read a brief prepared by the analysts but it would never be enough to get him off the hook if he was questioned. If the woman pushed the issue he would go to the emergency plan for that eventuality which was to go on the offensive and demand to see his lawyer if they were going to interrogate him. ‘Vermont, originally. But I moved around a lot.’
‘England, I suppose.’
‘I spent a lot of years there.’
She took her time with her questions as if weighing each answer carefully.
‘What happened on the ferry?’
She was cutting right to the chase. ‘It began to flood. One of the guards released our chains.’
‘Go on.’
The girl was acting more like an investigator or interrogator. He wondered about revealing Gann’s part in the incident but decided it was in his best interests to appear to remember nothing. Once he became an integral part of the investigation it would detract from his purpose - if he had any purpose left, that was. ‘I can remember hardly anything. I don’t seem to remember getting on board, even. Certainly nothing after we climbed out of the escape hatch.’
‘We?’
‘I was with one other prisoner.’
She looked down at her feet. Stratton decided she was not a professional interrogator. She gave too much away with her eyes and body language. Something wasn’t right about her. Whatever her job was it was privileged or she would not be here. She had rank. He would have expected the first person to question him to be highly qualified. She looked as if she was in her late twenties or early thirties. Subtract the years spent in college getting the degrees a person in her position would need and she could not have been in her job very long. She was acting professional but it was just that: an act. She had little real experience of what she was doing. That was obvious to someone like him, at least. It made his circumstances even more curious.
‘Where is he?’ Stratton asked.
‘You and one of the guards were the only survivors.’
Stratton saw an image of Dan leaving the hatch just before him. He felt sorry for the man.
The bird returned to the window ledge before veering away again. Stratton realised there were no bars on the window. That didn’t make sense. He was in a detention centre of sorts but one without bars on the windows. There would have to be some kind of exit control no matter how high up from the street the room was.The door into the room was made of frosted glass. The bird returned to the window but this time he realised there was something odd about it. The bird was performing exactly the same action every time.
‘What am I doing in New York?’ he asked.
The girl looked at the window and rolled her eyes, walked behind the desk, reached for the side of the frame and flicked a switch. The image disappeared. ‘Doctor Mani thinks it’s healthy to at least maintain a sense of natural surroundings down here.’
‘I’m in Styx?’ Stratton asked.
‘Sorry if it confused you,’ she said, without sounding sorry at all.
Stratton felt a sudden partial relief. But a residual fear remained. He was still on the mission, as far as he could tell, but it was all going wrong. Six men were dead, the cause of their deaths was sinister and he had only barely survived.The need to proceed with extreme caution was paramount. ‘You a doctor?’ he asked.
‘No. I’m a prison inspector. I work for the Federal Bureau of Prisons, the programme-review division.’
She spoke as if it was a declaration, a statement of fact, defining her position clearly to him. Her attitude towards him was still hard to pin down. She was cold and authoritative, confident and aggressive. But she was not talking down to him.
She looked as if she was struggling with a thought. ‘You have a problem,’ she decided to reveal.
He couldn’t begin even to guess what she meant.
The girl leaned on the desk and tapped the keypad on a laptop. The screen came to life and she turned it to face him. It was a copy of Nathan Charon’s prison file.
‘You’ve put me in a difficult position.’
‘I don’t understand.’
‘You’re not Nathan Charon.’
Stratton forced a smirk while at the same time trying to deal with this most dangerous development. Everything seemed to be unravelling before he could even get his foot in the bloody door of the place. ‘Do I have brain damage?’
It was a pathetic effort which she was not even going to waste a second on. ‘Who do you work for?’ she insisted.
‘I don’t know what you mean.’
‘Prior to your arrival
at Styx your personal file was wired here from the Vermont Department of Corrections. The files of the other inmates were likewise wired from their respective state corrections departments. You also arrived with hard copies, which were recovered from the ferry. The files from the Vermont Department of Corrections and your hard copies match. The problem is that neither of your files match the one I have. I received mine from the Federal Bureau of Prisons Atlantic regional office. Whoever set you up as Nathan Charon was powerful enough to change your state file but not influential enough to alter your federal records - either that or they overlooked them. Your photograph is close, but it’s not you. Most damning are your fingerprints. I did a comparison and they don’t match. More interesting is that they don’t match anyone’s records. Not even the FBI’s. I checked. Either you never had a US driving licence or you’re a foreigner who skipped Immigration on his way into the US.You don’t work for the CIA because there are enough of them down here already. But you do work for someone in the US government otherwise you couldn’t have got in here.’
Stratton could only look at the girl blankly. He was well and truly busted. But there was something curious about the way she was presenting her findings. She seemed to be acting independently, for one thing. Another oddity was that there was no locked door between them, as if the fact that he was not a threat was a given. He thought about revealing his cover story about being an independent security surveyor. But his instincts warned him to keep that to himself for the moment. It was his get-out-of-jail card and he wasn’t ready to get out yet. Perhaps there was mileage to be gained from her thinking that he was a US-government-sponsored implant, which technically he was. That put them on the same side, as long as she was who she said she was. ‘What now?’ he asked.
She went to her laptop, closed it and put it in a small briefcase which she zipped up. ‘Do you know why they sabotaged the ferry?’
He did not but neither did he want to admit that he knew it had been sabotaged - not yet, at any rate. She was probably guessing anyway.
The young woman seemed to read his mind. ‘You weren’t the only undercover prisoner on the ferry.They either knew about you or about him.’ She stared at him, waiting for something back. He just looked at her. ‘Christ, you’re some kind of asshole. I’m sticking my neck out here and you’re giving me nothing.’
It did indeed appear that she had gone over the top to help him. By admitting she knew there was a fed on board and the reason for the sabotage she was also coming clean about her true affiliations. It was doubtful that she was one of the bad guys looking for a confession because she wouldn’t need any more than she already had on him. ‘What do you want from me?’ Stratton asked.
‘Something that tells me I haven’t risked making myself vulnerable for nothing.’
They locked stares. She could sense he was no longer suspicious of her and, although she had initially been concerned over giving away too much about herself, it did calm her fears. She had not wanted to give him anything at first but her conscience would not allow her to ignore the danger he was in. He was clearly a US government employee and had almost died trying to do his job. It was a miracle he had survived. But he was still in serious danger and she could not turn her back on that. On the flip side, she could not do much to help him, either. It was all down to what kind of a man he was.
‘Does anyone else know?’ Stratton asked.
She shook her head. ‘You want my advice, whatever panic button you have that gets you out of here, I’d push it now.’
It was sound advice, but he was not ready to act on it quite yet. ‘I appreciate what you’ve done,’ he said sincerely. ‘Trust me, I do . . . I’m going to stay.’
His appreciation seemed genuine and that was good enough for her. He had come clean. She had never expected him to tell her which department he worked for or the details of his task although it was obvious enough. Everyone but the CIA wanted the facility closed down. His intention to stay on track with his task, considering what had happened to him and the dangers that remained, revealed a quality that impressed her. She could sense that she was in the company of no ordinary man.
There was a hiss from the next room that alerted them to someone arriving.
The girl quickly closed Stratton’s cage door, picked up her bag and walked to the entrance. ‘We probably won’t meet again,’ she said, reaching for the door.‘Good luck.’
‘You too,’ he said.
She paused for a second before opening the door and Stratton thought he saw her expression soften. She closed the door behind her.
He could hear her talking with a man for a few seconds then there was another loud hiss and a clunk. A moment later the frosted-glass door opened and a portly Indian man wearing the classic uniform of a doctor - a white coat and a stethoscope poking out of his breast pocket - walked in. He looked over his glasses at Stratton.‘Ah. Lazarus rises.And if you’re not a Christian I don’t mean to offend. How are you feeling?’ he said cheerily, his Indian accent only barely perceptible behind some North American overtone whose identity Stratton could not begin to guess.
‘Fine,’ Stratton replied.
The doctor looked across the room at the false window and made a beeline for it. ‘My name’s Doctor Mani. I expect you’re thirsty,’ he said as he toggled the switch on the side of the frame until the New York skyline returned. The bird immediately attempted to land on the ledge. ‘There. Can’t stand the feeling I’m under the water all the time. I understand they’re considering providing something like this for the inmates’ cells. Or is it the galley? Yes, I think it’s the galley. A bit of atmosphere during mealtimes.They come in practically any landscape. I think they even have one of Mars, though God only knows who would want to feel they were on another planet. As if this place wasn’t enough,’ he added as he adjusted the brightness and then stood back to admire it. ‘Now then, soon as we have a drink I’ll run a series of tests, see how you’re coming along, and then let’s see if we can get you back into the mainstream as soon as possible.’
Stratton remained seated on the edge of the bed, wondering what this man had done to deserve his job.
‘Cat got your tongue?’
Stratton looked up at the doctor. He was still feeling unwell and was content to make it appear he was worse than he was.
‘Can you hear me? Can you talk?’ Dr Mani asked, putting on a professional smile.
‘I can hear you OK.’
‘Good . . . Now,’ the doctor said, reaching for a small plastic container, ‘first thing I need is a urine sample. Can you manage that for me?’ he asked, handing the container to Stratton.
Stratton took it and forced a smile.
‘I’ll leave you alone for a moment,’ the doctor said, leaving the room.
Stratton held the container and sighed. He decided now that he was in Styx he had officially begun his mission. He thought if he looked at it that way he could put behind him all the mishaps so far and start afresh. He was not surprised that this perception had not made him feel the slightest bit better.
Christine walked along a broad central corridor, the rock walls and ceiling dripping water onto a suspended shroud, intended to protect pedestrians, and on the outer edges of the metal walkway. A couple of prisoners wearing face masks and canisters on their backs were spraying the mildew and weeds that gathered in the crevices. A guard stood idly by. ‘Mornin’, ma’am,’ he said as she passed, eyeing her bottom. The prisoners paused to do the same.
Christine ignored them and headed along the corridor, the sound of her footsteps mingling with the noises of running water moving along channels beneath her feet and hissing air ducts above. An indistinct voice came over a loudspeaker further down the tunnel, followed by what sounded like a gong. The prison provided a kind of talking clock accompanied by various sounds but as far as she could tell it was grossly inaccurate. Like so many aspects of the prison, the seeds of good intention were visible but the execution was abysmal.
She
headed up a spiral staircase inside a vertical rock tunnel that opened into a spacious cavern. It was constructed of a combination of steel girders, concrete and rock. One wall had a line of large round portholes, the six-inch-thick glass yellow with reflections from outside lights that illuminated any creatures that passed by. There was a single large white airlock door in the cavern that was more ornate than the others, suggesting it was an ‘exclusive’ entrance. She pushed a button on the side of the door and looked at a camera in front of her.
‘Give me one minute, would you, please,’ a metallic voice asked.
Christine turned her back on the camera. She knew she looked as distracted as she felt and made an effort to calm herself. She crossed her arms and then quickly unfolded them, dangling them at her sides until her laptop case almost fell off her shoulder. It wasn’t just the Nathan Charon situation that was unnerving her.The mysterious agent was an issue but was the least of her concerns at that moment. Time was her problem and compounding the pressure on her. It was running out and she had not yet devised a plan to complete her mission.
The door hissed and clunked behind her and she turned to watch it move back into its frame before it rolled out to one side.
Christine walked into Mandrick’s office as the door hissed again and closed behind her.
Mandrick was seated at his desk facing her but he was looking at a computer monitor while he tapped at a keyboard. When he finished he unplugged a minicomputer from a cable attached to the mainframe and got to his feet. She watched as he clipped it onto his belt, averting her eyes as he looked at her.
‘Christine,’ he said, beaming as he walked from behind his desk, a hand outstretched to greet her. ‘You always bring a smile to my heart whenever I see you.’ He took her hand and kissed her on the cheek, clearly savouring the contact.
She smiled, struggling to make it look as natural as possible. He held her gaze beyond cordiality before she broke it off, appearing to be a touch embarrassed.
‘I can’t help being forward with you,’ he said. ‘I have such little time left to impress you.’
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