‘Oh, yes,’ Emily says, cocking her head over to look. ‘That’s really nice, Ria.’
Safa tracks the line of sight from Emily to Ria. She frowns, scowls, gets ready to call everyone a twat, then grins, sudden and wide. ‘Got it,’ she announces proudly.
‘Do you like it?’ Ria asks her, pausing mid-drink and making to look at Safa.
‘It’s alright,’ Safa says with a shrug, then clocks the glares coming from Ben and Emily. ‘Yes! I love it. It’s awesome.’
Ben groans. Harry rolls his eyes. Emily shakes her head.
‘It’s very table-like,’ Safa says, admiring the new table now holding their food, drinks, plates and eating stuff. ‘Wooden and . . . and . . . it looks flat.’
‘Oh god,’ Ben mumbles, turning away.
‘And sturdy,’ Safa adds. ‘Which is good for a table.’
‘It’s great,’ Harry rumbles, placing a huge hand on Ria’s shoulder. ‘Bunker looks lovely now, Ria.’
Ria smiles up at him. Seeing his genial face so broad and big and full of beard.
‘You’ll have to do my room,’ he says in the way of Harry – easy, steady, deep and so reassuring.
‘I’d love to,’ Ria says.
‘And mine,’ Safa says, coming to a stop on Ria’s other side. ‘Is that mine?’ She plucks a mug of coffee from the table. ‘But nothing weird though,’ she adds to Ria. ‘I like black,’ she says. ‘And white.’
‘Black and white?’ Ria asks.
‘Or some other colours,’ Safa says. ‘Not shit ones though. Actually, do Emily’s first cos she’s got good taste, then . . . Actually, no, you got good taste too, so do what you want, go nuts. Pass an apple over, cheers . . . Is it weird being outside your hologram house?’
‘Yes.’
‘Bet it is,’ Safa says, holding the apple in one hand and the mug of coffee in the other. ‘We’re in a bunker in dinosaur times and the prisoner that tried to kill us is now my bezzer mate. Everything’s weird. How’s your brother anyway? Still batshit crazy?’
Twenty-Six
She was here before. Many years ago. She knew it would still be here. Only time and the evolution of the world will ever take this place away.
She arrives on the ninth floor below ground level to the same repugnant stench of damp, rotten air. She has varied the arrival location each time. Yesterday was the eighth floor below ground level. The day before was the tenth. She has the coordinates for different places on each floor.
She came here when it was still the old Soviet Union. That was back in the day. Now she is here again but this is different. For a start, the objective is a whole bunch more serious, and her resources are a whole bunch less.
A small torch lights the way as she moves out of the cell and into the main walkway. Each room was designed to hold people in the event of a nuclear or chemical attack. Four to a room the size of an average American prison cell. The Russians didn’t buy into the concept of personal space. They would have crammed tens of thousands in here over the ten floors buried deep beneath the ground, each floor a vast network of rooms and corridors. They said it was to save people, but never answered why each room had a door lockable from the outside.
It felt weird coming back here, but she knew it was one of the only places in the world safe enough for the task in mind. No one comes here now. The razor-wire topped fences surrounding the vast grounds outside stop most. The external doors are welded shut too, so only someone with serious intent and serious equipment would break through.
She finds the stairs and treads down with the faint echo of her boots on each step. It would be pitch black without the torch. A complete absence of light. A total darkness that would freak out the hardest of people.
She sees the light spill as soon as she turns the corner. A glow ahead that seems to be fighting the darkness for the right to live and exist.
‘MIRI?’
Desperation in the voice. Fear too.
‘MIRI? I CAN’T TAKE THIS . . .’
She walks on towards the light. Purposefully treading harder to create sound that will signify her approach.
‘MIRI!’
He’s freaking out. She knows he recognises her footfall, but the fear inside his mind will be driving him crazy. His imagination running wild.
‘MIRI! THIS IS INHUMANE . . .’
She stops and waits with her torch pointing down so the light doesn’t reach the area he can see.
Roland stares through the bars. His face covered in days of growth. His once-lacquered hair now in clumps. Bags under his eyes. Cheeks sunken. His hands tremble as he grips the bars and tries to see down the corridor.
He screams out in fright when she steps from the blackness into the pool of light outside the cell. His heart thunders. His nerves frayed. He is almost at breaking point. Almost.
‘Roland,’ Miri says, lifting her hand to show him the pistol gripped steady and unwavering. ‘Move back.’
‘Miri, please . . . I can’t stay here.’ He sobs the words out, tears spilling down his dirt-encrusted cheeks.
She stares at him. Devoid of expression. He has cleaning materials. He has a safety razor. Water, food, supplies, reading materials and enough comfort to keep him occupied and safe. The fact he isn’t washing or taking care of himself is down to him and him alone.
‘Okay,’ she says flatly, and moves to drag a wooden chair into the pool of light.
‘No, sorry, sorry,’ he whimpers, moving back from the bars.
‘I will stay here.’ She sits on the chair and rests the notepad on her knees.
‘No, please, please, come in . . . I can . . . I can make it cleaner . . .’ He rushes off to move bits of litter and empty tins across the floor. His movements frantic and rushed. His whole manner now showing complete servitude.
‘From the beginning,’ she says, opening the notepad and clicking her pen.
‘Miri, please . . . I can’t take it here anymore . . .’
‘From the beginning.’
‘I CAN’T DO THIS,’ he screams out, animalistic and full of rage. He lunges at the bars. His face twisted in fury. ‘You can’t do this to me . . .’
She waits with her pen hovering over the notepad, then checks her nails and flicks a tiny piece of dust away from the tip of one finger.
‘Miri . . . I’m begging you . . .’ An instant switch to pleading. The tears come again. Sobbing as his chest heaves. ‘Please . . .’ His voice becomes a hoarse whisper. He even starts sliding down the bars, as though ready to collapse, but his eyes dart to take in her lack of reaction. ‘CUNT,’ he screams out.
A month to the day since they extracted him and his children. Leaving him in the bunker with the others was not an option for Miri. She needed him sterile and away from everyone else. She needed him starting to break. She needed him made weak and reduced to base human traits.
The cell was stocked with supplies and enough batteries to ensure the lights never went out. Enough food to grow fat and enough drink to never grow thirsty. That was all part of the mind game. A show of care with soft touches that contrasted so starkly with the horrific location and the ongoing captivity.
Miri lets the emotions play out. He did the same yesterday. He flits between denial, rage, impotent threats, then to begging, pleading and offering money, wealth and anything she could ever want. She’s heard it all before, and not just from him. This alone shows his staggering ineptitude. He invited her into this game. Roland came to her and asked for her help. What did he think would happen?
Miri doesn’t say a word, but waits with the pen hovering over the notepad. Her posture is perfect. Her back ramrod straight. It hurts her to sit for any length of time like this, but she chooses to be read in a certain way right now, and that way is unforgiving.
‘Fine,’ he gasps while sitting on the floor to slump like a child. ‘I killed myself. My son invented a time machine to go back and stop me killing myself. Someone broke the world. I extracted Ben, Safa and Harry, and now here we are.
All done? Happy now, you evil fucking vile, treacherous, nasty . . .’
‘Properly. From the beginning.’
‘Miri, please.’ He sobs. His whole world crumbling around him. To stay another night in this place is too much. The noises he hears. The demons in the shadows. The monsters watching him. His mind warping from the loss of knowing where he is in time and space.
‘Approximately ten billion human beings die in an event which is attributed to your son . . .’
‘I know this. I told you this. I came and got you for this very reason.’ He spits the words out bitterly, with the anger surging back up.
Miri has known people survive years of this treatment and never lose a shred of pride. She has served with people who have done it. She has worked on others held captive too, but Roland is a record. She hasn’t known anyone break this quickly. He’s not even been tortured or deprived of food or sleep.
He has no choice. He knows that, and so he starts from the beginning properly. Recounting the same story she has now heard so many times she could repeat it in her sleep.
The first few debriefs saw a Roland entirely focussed on the risk to humanity and how everything had to be done to save the world. How important it was to extract Safa, Ben and Harry. How hard it was to get the bunker built and ready.
He was honest too, and said he’d bitten off more than he could deal with, and in the end he was spending less and less time in the bunker. It was frustrating for him that Ben got sick, and he felt very intimidated by Safa.
At first, he tried making out it was so he could be with his family, but then admitted he was getting hooked on stock markets again. The same way he did when he lost everything before he tried killing himself. This time, however, he was dealing in stocks and shares with the benefit of a time machine. But instead of making vast sums, he became addicted to trying to make money without influencing the timeline.
What becomes clear is that Roland loves his family, but he also loves money, wealth, power and himself either equally, or in some cases, more. He is a greedy coward, but not evil. He tried to do the right thing, and given the circumstances he actually did very well. He lies easily, but not convincingly.
What also becomes clear is that the man is actually very resourceful when he puts his mind to something. He was a government minister once, and admits he was tempted to pass the device to the British government.
In short, Roland is a typical aristocratic man of wealth.
Through her own investigations, Miri ruled out that Roland leaked the device or played any overt part in the British Secret Service finding them in Berlin. It was simple ineptitude.
‘We’re done,’ Miri says. She checks her watch and makes a note of the time, then stands up swiftly. Roland blinks in surprise. Trapped in a loop of monologue about his life and feelings, but his eyes come alive with the glint of hope.
‘Please,’ he whispers, rising unsteadily to his feet with a show of complete submissiveness. ‘Please . . .’
‘Is there anything you have not told me?’ she asks.
His heart thrills at the new question. Something is different. He edges closer to the bars of the door held secure by the thick chain and padlock. ‘Nothing . . . I swear it, Miri. I swear on my children’s lives.’
She pauses, listening, waiting with her head cocked over. She can feel she is being watched. She knows she is being watched.
‘What is it?’ Roland asks, panic in his eyes at seeing her reaction.
‘Okay?’ she calls out. Roland blinks. Confused. The sound of a shoe scraping on the rough floor floats over clear and distinct. Miri nods and looks back at Roland. ‘We’re done here.’
‘Really?’ he asks, his voice quavering with emotion, which drops off as she comes forward while lifting the pistol. ‘No . . . No, please . . . MIRI . . .’
Shots fired from a small pistol held one-handed that send the rounds through the gaps in the bars that embed in his body. A double-tap to his centre of mass that drives him back. A step forward, an adjustment of aim to place the last shot through his head. Killing him outright.
Roland is not evil, but this is Miri’s show now. This is her game and the last thing she wants is someone connected, wealthy and influential looking over her shoulder.
Besides, a question is now answered. A mystery solved. She allows a second of reflection while thinking about fate and destinies. Histories and lives linked in an ever-revolving chain of existences.
She was here before. In this same place. She stood in this same spot in the mid-1990s as part of a UN investigation team ensuring treaty compliance of the Soviet cessation in production of chemical agents. They were all confused back then, and she’s thought about it ever since. The Russians suppressed it. It was never leaked or mentioned.
Miri takes the bag left in the next cell along then returns to unlock the door to Roland’s room. She checks the body first. Ensuring he is dead. She opens the bag and takes out the incendiary charge that she places next to the corpse. Every movement seems prophetic and loaded with meaning. There is enough charge to destroy everything in this cell, but not enough to damage the structure of a building constructed to withstand a direct missile strike.
With the timer set, she walks off. The damage will be enough to destroy any evidence. She knows that for a fact.
Miri reaches the portal on the ninth floor and pauses for a few seconds until she hears the dull whump of the explosion and stands to think for a second.
They all wondered, back when they visited this site, how a man died in a fireball in a cell ten floors below ground level in a bunker welded shut from the outside that had not been accessed for over a decade.
Now she knows.
She killed him and made it happen.
Twenty-Seven
Ben waits in the portal room. Pensive and quiet. A large black holdall at his feet. He knows what she is doing. They all do. Emily told them what she saw when she came back with Miri that night. He never liked Roland, but still, the thought of the man being executed in such a way is abhorrent. Only Miri and Emily have seen the underground complex Roland is held in, but Emily’s description was enough for them to know that Miri’s treatment of him is uncomfortably close to torture.
He questioned it, of course. Quietly, when he and Miri were alone. She just looked at him and told him to let her work. He declined to accept that answer. She declined to explain. They argued. In the end, she gave enough of an explanation to satisfy him. Again, he knew he was being manipulated, but at least it was overt and obvious, and although the end is justified by the means, it still leaves a bitter aftertaste.
She comes through, nods once, then focusses on the tablet to change the setting.
‘You killed him?’
‘Yes.’
Roland is too great a risk. His ego is too vast. His vanity and addiction to wealth and power would constantly place them in danger. That’s what Miri had said. Roland’s own actions almost cost the life of his son and daughter and the loss of the device. This is the level we are working at, Mr Ryder, and not all our decisions will be easy ones.
She looks up from the tablet to Ben, thoughtful for a second. ‘We know where he is, Mr Ryder. If we need him, we can go back and get him. Bag?’
‘Here,’ Ben says, handing it over with a heavy sigh. ‘Want me to come?’
She takes it, wincing at the weight. ‘No.’
The blue light blinks off, then back on. She picks the sunglasses up from the side and nods at Ben while pushing them on.
‘I don’t mind coming . . .’
Miri hears Ben’s words cut off as she steps through to a dazzling sun reflecting off a gorgeous blue sea.
‘Miri!’
A transition of character. From cold to warm. From austere to friendly. She smiles warmly at Bertie rushing towards her and drops the heavy bag on to the rocks not far from the water’s edge.
‘Look what I found . . .’ he gabbles, holding up a seashell. ‘These were extinct for, like . . .
like, tens of thousands of years in our time . . . Look! It’s what? Two or three years old? So amazing.’ His gaze flicks from her to the seashell the size of a house brick clutched in his hand.
The island is tiny. Just a rocky outcrop with thick vegetation somewhere in the Aegean Sea between the coasts of what will eventually become Greece and Turkey. It’s not the Cretaceous period, but old enough to be safe.
‘How are you?’ she asks, softening her tone.
‘Oh, fine, totally fine . . . Like, yeah, fine and . . . Oh, I saw a meteor shower last night! So beautiful. Like, just amazing. Never see anything like that in our time. Light pollution. Yeah, so, um . . . it’s all just binary really . . .’ He stops talking and stands with the now-forgotten seashell in his hand.
‘Ria?’ Miri asks.
Bertie looks round. ‘Somewhere . . . I think she’s at the shack. I woke her up for the meteor shower last night and she cried again.’
‘Grief, Bertie.’
‘Yeah,’ Bertie says with a slightly vacant look on his face.
‘Can we talk?’
‘Talk?’ He looks stunned at the question.
‘In the shade?’
‘Oh, totally,’ he says, nodding seriously. ‘Miri. Would you like a drink? I’ve rigged up a rudimentary cooling system using those solar panels you got me. Could you get some more? And some wiring . . . And I need a few capacitors and transistors, diodes and, like, don’t get new stuff. Get old stuff, like old computers and I’ll, like, totally strip them down.’
‘You said that yesterday.’
‘What’s in there?’ he asks, looking down at the bag with genuine interest.
‘The things you asked me to get yesterday.’
‘Oh,’ he says slowly, ‘what was that?’
‘I need some shade.’ The sun hurts the scars in her scalp hidden beneath her tangle of hair.
‘So,’ he says, waving the seashell at her while leading the way. ‘I had a thought while I was watching the meteor shower last night. I mean, it’s just binary, isn’t it? Like, everything so . . . um . . . we’re over-thinking the whole space-flight problem.’
Extracted Trilogy (Book 2): Executed Page 23