by Louise Voss
‘Well …’
She could see how happy the attention and praise made him, but he was lost for words. ‘That’s marvellous.’ He eyed her backpack, no doubt thinking it was full of textbooks. If only he knew the truth.
‘I’m so happy that you came all the way to America for this conference.’ She meant it. This was destiny in action again.
The elevator glided to a halt and the doors opened. ‘Er … this is my floor,’ he said, clearly disappointed that the conversation was about to end.
‘Mine too!’ she exclaimed as if this was the most exciting coincidence of her life.
They walked down the corridor together, Dr Larter awkward, her gushing about how she had been reading about a breakthrough in the UK, where they had discovered that antibodies could pass into cells and fight viruses from within. ‘It’s so exciting. To think we might only be a few years away from cracking the code of how to defeat viruses.’
‘Yes,’ he agreed. ‘It might take years of further research but …’
She flung herself forward, as if she had tripped over her own feet, making it look like she had gone down hard on her wrists. Letting out a girlish shriek, she sat up and clutched her left wrist, tears filling her eyes.
He crouched beside her. ‘My goodness. Are you all right?’
She blinked up at him. ‘My wrist … it really hurts. I think I might have broken it.’
‘I’m sure …’
She interrupted him with a cry. ‘Oh, Dr Larter, it really hurts. I need to put some ice on it immediately. I guess if I …’ she moaned ‘… go downstairs they might be able to help me.’
Men were so predictable. The damsel in distress, the beautiful woman in need of help – especially one who had pumped up his ego with praise – there was no way he would leave her to fend for herself.
‘Let me call down for you, get someone to bring up some ice,’ he said.
She nodded pathetically. ‘That would be … so kind. I’ll go into my room and wait.’
‘No, no, come into my room. I’ll call them from there and tell them how urgent it is. Look, here we are.’
He put his arm round her and helped her up, and she made sure to lean into him, to press her warm body against his, so he would feel the swell of her breasts. He produced his keycard and a moment later they were inside. He hurried over to the phone and she reached behind her and locked the door while he wasn’t looking. Then pulled a small pistol from her boot.
As he picked up the phone to call the hotel desk, she said in an urgent tone, ‘Dr Larter.’
He turned and his mouth fell open. She enjoyed seeing the expression on his face: the shock and confusion.
‘Put down the phone,’ she commanded, aiming the gun at his forehead.
‘What are you doing?’
She stepped towards him. ‘Get on the bed,’ she said.
He froze. ‘Miss Tyler,’ he said with a shaking voice. ‘I’m only a scientist … I don’t have any money …’
‘I said, get on the bed. I have no interest in your fucking money.’
He let out a weird noise, like a squeak, and half-turned. She moved quickly, aiming a kick at his back, sending him crashing into the bedside table, the phone and lamp tumbling to the floor. She grabbed him by his jacket and pushed him on to the bed, straddling him and holding the gun to his temple.
‘What do you want?’ he asked, trying to stay calm. But his terror and shock were making him shake.
‘Take off your jacket and shirt,’ she commanded.
‘What?’
Confusion flitted across his face, but he obeyed, pulling off his jacket, then unbuttoning his shirt. It was almost funny. Did he think she wanted his body? He had no idea how much he disgusted her, how nauseous his pale, flabby body made her feel.
‘Now lie on the bed, and don’t move. If you do, I’ll shoot you in the balls. Understand?’
He nodded. There were tears in his eyes. Pathetic, how some people crumbled at the first sign of pressure. It astounded her sometimes how weak most people were. If they had been through what she had experienced in her life, they would end up killing themselves or going insane.
She really hoped he didn’t soil himself. That would be highly inconvenient. She decided she needed to calm him down.
‘I’m not going to hurt you, Dr Larter. So try to relax. Close your eyes, OK?’
He did as she asked, his eyelids flickering like they were resisting his attempts to keep them shut.
She straddled him on the bed, ignoring the smell of alcohol that wafted off him – wondering if, despite his fear, he would grow hard from the feeling of her warm, leather-clad body against his crotch. It had been known to happen. Other men had died with an erection and a smile on their lips. That wasn’t going to be Larter’s fate, though.
She reached behind her and pulled off her backpack, unzipping the front pocket and producing a syringe that she had already prepared with a colourless, odourless liquid. GHB. She took hold of Isaac’s arm and slipped the needle in, injecting the drug directly into a vein before he could pull his arm away.
‘What was that?’ he asked, alarmed, opening his eyes.
She pointed the gun at his face. ‘Close your eyes. It was just something to help you relax. Now, keep quiet.’
She checked her watch. The drug would take effect in fifteen to twenty minutes, leaving Dr Larter intensely drowsy and disorientated. The fact he had already consumed several glasses of alcohol helped. After a while, he stopped trying to open his eyes. He wasn’t unconscious but was relaxed, probably feeling as if he was in a dream. His heart rate would have slowed, and beneath the drowsiness he would be experiencing a mild euphoria. He was in the perfect state for what she needed to do.
‘Don’t go to sleep, Dr Larter,’ she whispered.
A smile appeared on his lips.
‘I need you to sit up, OK?’
Again, he obeyed. ‘Good boy,’ she said. Then she unzipped the main compartment of her backpack.
A little while later, Angelica led Isaac out of the room. She had put his shirt and jacket back on, buttoning the jacket across his belly. She held him by the crook of his arm, leading him slowly down the corridor towards the elevator. To anyone who might pass, he would look like a drunk being helped along by, well, she probably looked like a call girl.
They took the elevator back to the ground floor and she walked him over to the ballroom. Isaac barely seemed to register where he was or what was happening. But he was still smiling faintly.
She took him inside. The drinks reception was in full swing, lots of middle-aged men and women standing around in groups of three or four, chatting, pontificating, exchanging views and business cards. She looked around for Kate Maddox, whose photo she had found online, but there was no sign of her. No matter.
She sat Isaac down on a chair near the centre of the room.
A heavyset man standing nearby grinned at them.
‘He’s had too much to drink,’ she said. ‘But he insists he doesn’t want to go to bed … again.’
The man guffawed at that and she winked at him. It didn’t matter that he’d had a very good look at her face.
‘Do you mind keeping an eye on him while I go to the ladies’ room?’ she asked. ‘I won’t be long.’
‘No problem, sweetcheeks,’ the man said, clearly wondering if he could take a turn at hiring her.
She walked out of the reception and all the way out of the hotel, back out through the revolving doors. Striding briskly away, she covered three blocks until she found her car, the sleek white Maserati, where she had parked it. She brushed aside the two Hispanic men who had stopped to admire it, whistling as they watched her climb inside.
She pulled the cellphone out of her pocket.
While Isaac had been in a semi-conscious state, she had taped three pounds of Semtex around his midriff, then covered it with a bandage. Three pounds of the plastic explosive was enough to destroy a two-storey building. Certainly sufficient
to decimate the reception room at the hotel and kill everyone in it.
She thought of Dr Larter, sitting in his chair, the heavyset man probably wondering where she had got to. Larter, in his delirious state, would have no idea that beneath his shirt was the Semtex and a detonator that she could trigger by calling it from her cellphone.
She dialled the magic number now.
And heard the explosion from three blocks away, saw smoke shoot up above the rooftops. She closed her eyes and pictured the flying body parts, the carnage, the balls of flame. She could almost smell it. It made her feel hungry.
Angelica put the car into drive and headed out of the city, thinking about the end of the world.
5
Kate would never forget the sound of Shelley screaming, the sight of her sobbing in the kitchen, clinging to the worktop, her face scrunched up with shock and grief, a policewoman hovering awkwardly beside her. As Kate ran into the kitchen Shelley launched herself at her, pressing her wet face against Kate’s neck.
‘What is it? Tell me!’
‘It’s Isaac. There’s been a huge terrorist attack, on the hotel he was in! Oh, Kate! My sweet, clever Isaac – he’s dead. Oh, how am I going to tell Callum?’
Over the next five minutes, Kate learned that Isaac, her friend and colleague, the man she spent more time with than anyone else, had been blown to bits by an unknown assassin who’d planted Semtex in the hotel ballroom where the post-conference drinks party had been taking place. Thirty-two other eminent virologists and immunologists had also been killed, but further details were sketchy, and the death toll was still rising.
She joined Shelley in an outpouring of grief that made the policewoman and her colleagues step back as if they’d never seen such a raw display of emotion before. And when the boys came in from the field at the back of the house, still brandishing their toy swords, Kate had held Jack whilst Shelley sobbed out the news to Callum that his daddy had died. Shelley had tried so hard to regain her composure, but to no avail. Tears welled in Kate’s eyes every time she thought of it.
A growing horror combined with her grief over Isaac: someone had targeted the immunology conference. They were trying to kill people like her. Had it not been for Jack’s chickenpox, she would have been in that room with Isaac.
Kate offered to stay the night with Shelley and Callum, but Shelley refused. ‘I just want to be alone with Callum,’ she’d said, brokenly, hugging Kate as they both wept again. Kate tried to insist, but Shelley was adamant.
‘I’ll be back tomorrow morning,’ promised Kate, lifting her glasses to wipe her eyes.
As she and Jack hurried home down the lane, her BlackBerry kept bleeping. She disengaged her hand from Jack’s, and glanced at the phone’s display. Three missed calls from Harley; but the only person she wanted to speak to – apart from Isaac of course – was Paul. When she got back to the cottage, she told Jack he could watch TV for a while instead of having a bath, then went straight into the kitchen where Paul was making dinner.
‘Hi, sweetheart, I thought we would have pasta to—’
He turned and saw her face. ‘Kate, what is it?’
She fell into his arms and sobbed against his chest. He stroked her hair and held her, waiting patiently for her to start breathing normally again so she could tell him what had happened.
He spent the next ten minutes fussing over her, telling her to sit down, asking her over and over if he could do anything, get her anything. She sat at the breakfast bar and stared at her hands. They were trembling. But mostly, she felt numb. Then she remembered.
‘I need to call Harley. He’s been trying to ring me. Can you see if Jack needs anything while I call him?’
‘Sure.’ He looked at her with wide eyes. Paul wasn’t usually very good with big emotional scenes. He never knew what to say. Anything that didn’t require fixing or have a solution flummoxed him. But he had been good friends with Isaac too. He shared her pain – and her fear.
She called the MI6 officer.
‘Dr Maddox,’ he said, as soon as he answered, ‘I’ve been trying to get hold of you. Have you heard …?’
‘About the bomb? Yes. It’s … Do you have any idea who did it?’
He paused, as if he was wondering how much he could tell her. ‘No, no, we don’t. No one has claimed responsibility. None of the survivors saw anything, and the room in which the CCTV was recording was on the ground floor and was destroyed in the blast. I’m very sorry about your research partner.’
‘I should have been there with him.’
‘I know. But luckily for us—’
She interrupted him. ‘What do you mean, “for us”?’
‘Listen, a lot of top people in your field died in that attack. If you’d been killed too, when you’re the leading expert in Watoto … It doesn’t bear thinking about. Kate, Dr Maddox, we really need you to join this team to find a cure for the virus. Please reconsider.’
‘Oh my God,’ she said. ‘Do you think they are connected? The outbreak and the bomb?’ In all the grief and confusion, it hadn’t struck her before.
Harley took a breath. ‘We had a phone call. A message. An hour after the bomb went off.’
‘What did it say?’
Harley recited the message. ‘And She sent a plague upon the Earth, a plague born in the cradle of mankind, and those who would stand in Her way were consumed by the fire of Her wrath. None should dare stand in Her way.’
‘Is that it?’
‘Yes.’
‘And you think it’s genuine?’
‘We’re taking it seriously, yes.’
‘Can’t you trace these things?’
‘The call was made from a throwaway mobile phone. Impossible to trace.’
‘The cradle of mankind,’ Kate said, echoing the message. ‘That’s meant to be in Tanzania, where Watoto originates.’
‘Yes.’
She took a sip of the sweet tea Paul had handed her. ‘It’s a warning, isn’t it? Anyone who tries to stop the plague will be killed.’ She felt a chill run down her spine.
Harley said, ‘I realise that telling you this will probably make you more reluctant to help, but …’
‘I have a responsibility.’
He made a noise as if he was waiting for her to continue.
‘I do have a responsibility. Isaac’s already been killed. I knew some of the other scientists at the conference, too. And these terrorists, whoever they are … we can’t let them win. The virus is only on the Indian reservation at the moment, isn’t it?’
Harley hesitated for a moment. ‘Yes.’
‘But surely the terrorists are going to try and spread it beyond there, if they’re threatening a plague?’
‘That’s why it’s even more vital that we find a vaccine as quickly as possible. And why we need you.’
Kate took another sip of tea. She could hear the TV in the other room, the high-pitched blare of a cartoon. She had almost made up her mind. She had to go. If the World Health Organization was now putting its resources into finding a cure, she owed it to Isaac to do everything she could to contribute.
But what about Jack? Did she really want him to accompany her to America, a country that was under threat of a killer virus? Paul too. She herself was immune to the original Watoto virus, but not necessarily a mutated one. She knew Paul would insist on taking the risk, but Jack was a different matter. At least Vernon wasn’t anywhere near California. She could give him strict instructions about safety precautions to follow. And at the first hint that the virus was anywhere approaching Texas she would make sure Jack was on the next plane back to the UK, to her sister’s.
‘Are you still there?’ Harley asked.
‘Yes. I’m thinking. Let me go and talk to Jack. I’ll get back to you in the next hour.’
She terminated the call and walked into the living room, where Jack was sitting cross-legged on the floor, his head tilted backwards and mouth slightly open, far too close to the television. Tears had left
pale tracks down his cheeks.
‘Jack, I need to ask you something.’
He looked up, slightly annoyed at the interruption of his viewing. She muted the TV and sat down next to him, holding his sticky hand. ‘We might have to change the plans for the summer holidays—’
He jumped up, an expression of panic on his face. ‘You’re not going to tell me I can’t go and stay with Dad, are you?’
‘No – probably not. In fact, the opposite. All I was going to say was, I’ve been offered a job in America and I don’t know exactly how long it’s going to last. It might be a month, which would be ideal because then I can pick you up from Dad’s and we could fly home together – but it might be longer than that. Would you be OK with staying at Daddy’s for longer, if that’s how it works out? I don’t want to take the job unless you would.’
‘Would I have to go to school in Dallas?’
‘I don’t know. Unlikely – but it’s a possibility. You’d be able to come back to your class here afterwards though.’
‘I would miss you,’ he said thoughtfully, still staring at the muted cartoon. ‘But you know Charlie Freestone in Year 3? He lives half a year with his mum and half a year with his dad. So we could be like that. It’s only fair that Daddy gets to see me half the time too. I miss him. And you remember that boy next door I played with last summer – Bradley? I could play with him every day when I’m over there, and go to school with him.’ He hugged Kate round the neck. ‘Yay! I’m gonna go and Skype Daddy!’ His face fell. ‘But what about Callum? I can’t leave him, his dad’s died …’
‘Shelly just told me they’re going to France to stay with his grandma, so he won’t be here. You’re a great friend for thinking of that.’
‘You’re a great mummy,’ he said. ‘Can I turn the volume back up again now?’
Ten minutes later, Kate sent a text to Harley: OK. I’ll
do it.
Three days later, Kate welcomed the gin and tonic brought to her by the almost supernaturally attractive Asian flight attendant, pressing the glass against her forehead before taking a large gulp, then another. She felt as though her alcohol consumption had tripled in the past few days.