by PJ Adams
A pause, then: “But if there’s nothing more I can assist you with...”
§
Mitchell hadn’t expected any more than that. A chance to get to know the lie of the land. An opportunity to read Bowler’s reactions.
“What did you think?” That was Halliday, on speakerphone as Laura drove Mitchell back along that narrow road from the BoTech research facility.
“I thought he was slippery, evasive, far too full of himself, and had no class,” said Laura.
“Yes, but did you learn anything?”
“He admitted she was here last night,” said Mitchell. “But he insisted she left this morning to visit family.”
“That was her original plan, yes,” said Halliday. “But we know she still hasn’t shown up.”
They reached the junction with the public road and turned right. Bowler would be monitoring their departure, and they didn’t want to give him any cause for alarm.
“Next move?” asked Mitchell.
“You think there’s anything there?”
“No evidence of wrong-doing,” said Laura. “Nothing to suggest she’s still on-site, either voluntarily or against her will.” She glanced at Mitchell. “You think we should go back in, Mitch?”
He made himself pause before answering. He still had that feeling in his gut, the one that made it seem reasonable to storm in just about anywhere if he thought Sunita was in danger.
“I want to,” he said, because she would expect that.
“Do we have good cause?” asked Laura.
He ground his teeth. Let her think he was frustrated. He’d very rarely been able to hide anything from Laura, but he knew the best way to do so was to play to her ego, let her think she’d read him and won.
“Speak up,” said Halliday, clearly frustrated, sensing a silent exchange between Laura and Mitchell that didn’t transfer well over a phone line. “Are there any grounds for investigating that site any further?”
And risking an incident with Bowler... He didn’t have to say that part out loud.
The silence drew itself out, until Laura finally said, “No. No grounds at all.”
“Then come back in. We have other lines of inquiry to pursue.”
§
Some family thing... She was dreading it. Had to wear a veil over her face, as her kind do...
It had taken him a while to work out what was wrong with what Bowler had told them, to see past the casual racism of his language and assumptions.
There was the obvious: that the Sunita he knew would never ‘go back a long way’ with someone who thought of her like this.
But also... Mitchell knew Sunita tended to dress more traditionally when she went to see her family, but while she would happily wear a salwar kameez or a sari, she’d vowed long ago not to cover her face. She was a modern, western woman, and not at all religious. She could respect other people’s choices, but they were not her own.
And she wasn’t dreading today’s family gathering. She would see cousins visiting from Kolkata who she hadn’t seen in years. She’d been looking forward to this for weeks.
Bowler hadn’t simply been mistaken about these two things; he’d actively lied.
And that opened the question of why? What was he hiding?
And it opened another question, too. Why hadn’t Alex Mitchell said any of this out loud just now?
I know where my loyalties lie, Laura had said earlier. But what I need to work out, Mitch, is where are yours?
That was something he was still working on, too.
20. Sunita
“I need to go.”
She couldn’t have put it any more directly than that, and yet Bernard Bowler simply didn’t appear to understand. He didn’t seem to be equipped with the ability to deal with someone who didn’t want to fit in with his version of reality.
She’d dealt with stubborn, inflexible people before, people unable to see another person’s point of view, but never someone like this.
“No. No, I really don’t think you do.”
He smiled as he said those words, like a man who thought this was some kind of rational exchange. And then he raised a hand to get a waiter’s attention and said, “More espresso? It’s Kicking Horse, your favorite, I believe. We bring it in from Canada.”
He was showing off. She’d had Kicking Horse a couple of times at a conference in Toronto, and had probably only told half a dozen people how much she liked it. Bowler and his team knew everything about her, and wanted her to know it.
She managed to eat a piece of toast, drink her espresso. Maybe the caffeine would kick in, get her brain into gear so she could work out just how weird this whole thing had become.
“Shall we walk? It’s a beautiful day.”
It was, and the brisk sea breeze combined with the coffee to drive the last vestiges of sleep out of her system.
They went out onto the decking, and down the steps.
Back in the Galleria, there had been a sense of normal life going on around her. Real people. What would they say if she went to them and told them she was being kept here against her will? Even now, doing something so strange and direct seemed... she couldn’t work it out. Inappropriate. Melodramatic.
Out here on the beach, it was just her and Bowler, and all hint of normal fled.
They walked along a path at the back of the dunes.
“They’ll be searching for you by now,” Bowler told her, his tone relaxed, conversational.
If he mentioned the men in suits one more time she swore she would punch him.
“They’ll be discreetly asking around. Trying to work out where you were last night, why you’ve gone off their radar. As soon as you signed up with them you submitted yourself to this kind of scrutiny. Right now they will be looking into every aspect of your life. They’ll be alarmed that you gave them the slip, and concerned about your loyalties. Things can never be the same again. They’ll never trust you after this. They will always at least have the suspicion you’re working for someone else, passing your secrets along. Even as we speak Professor Halliday’s people will be weighing up their reserve plan, preparing to strip down your project so they can find someone else to take it on if necessary. Natasha Haynes, perhaps? Is she good enough? They’ve probably spoken to her already, sounded her out.”
The urge to punch him was growing steadily stronger, and for a person as non-violent as Sunita, that spoke volumes.
He was playing with her mind. Mixing perfectly rational analysis with scattered seeds of discontent, stirring her up, trying to make her angry about things that were not even happening. Things that were no more than mischievous speculation on his part. Tasha would never be able to take on her work, and Bowler knew it. But planting that thought inevitably made Sunita think of the practicalities of what might happen if her project was taken away from her.
“There are some things that simply cannot be undone,” Bowler went on. “You have to forget the sequence of events that put you in this position. That’s all in the past. Now you have to think about where to go from here. Would you choose to go back to chaos and mistrust, where your work and life are even more constrained in just the ways you’ve always hated? Or would you like the opportunity to simply pursue your work in peace? Fully funded and supported. Protected. That’s what’s on offer, Dr Chakravarti. Just say the word.”
She said nothing. She had no words.
She hated that there was even a tiny part of her mind that was drawn to the simplicity of his offer, after he had so manipulated and bullied her into this position.
“I’ll leave you to think,” he said. “I know how you do your best thinking when it’s just you and Mother Nature.”
And even that twisted what should have been pure: Bowler setting her temporarily free, only to remind her how thoroughly they had worked her out.
§
Such a strange day.
Out there on the path that ran along the top of the beach, she could simply have kept on walking. Nothi
ng for fifteen miles, Bowler had said. She tried to remember the map of this coastline, and work out what lay ahead of her if she kept going. Creeks and saltmarshes, and then, presumably, she would eventually come to a seaside town.
She knew they’d never let her keep walking, though. Bowler had made a show of leaving her to her solitude. Leaving her to think. But they would certainly be watching her. Monitoring her every move.
Out here, all alone on such an isolated stretch of coast, she felt more imprisoned than ever before.
She tried to lose herself. Tried to focus on identifying the specialized flora that grew here on the dunes and mud, the birds that flew up from the creeks, piping their alarm calls as she approached.
She was in too deep.
She hadn’t even noticed it happening. Each tiny step in this direction had seemed natural, inevitable. Harmless. But each of those tiny steps had brought her relentlessly here.
She couldn’t allow this to continue.
She turned back, a decision made.
When she reached the main cluster of buildings, she went up to her suite and gathered her few things together – her leather jacket, her small shoulder bag, her jeans, top and underwear from yesterday, her favorite Karen Millen ankle boots. She put them all in a larger shoulder bag she found in one of the wardrobes – she was reluctant to take anything that wasn’t hers, but the clothes she wore today seemed reasonable, and she needed the bag to hold everything.
Downstairs, she headed through to the courtyard, and in through the back doors of the main building, the old farmhouse.
The guy on Reception smiled, but said nothing, waiting for her to initiate the dialog. Was this the ‘Adam’ she’d spoken to on the internal phone a couple of times?
“I need to leave,” Sunita said. She didn’t know what else to say.
Adam smiled again. For a second or two she thought he wasn’t going to answer, but then he said, simply, “No, Dr Chakravarti. Mr Bowler has instructed that you still have appointments. A car will come for you when they are complete. Is there anything else I can assist you with?”
She stared.
“But I want to go now. I have prior commitments. I need to leave, and I need my phone back – the security guy took it when I arrived.”
“Dr Chakravarti.” As if she’d summoned him, the big, bearded security guy emerged from a doorway behind Reception. For a foolish moment she thought he was bringing her phone, but instead, he simply raised a hand to indicate the archway that led back through the building to the rear. “Allow me to escort you back to your suite.”
She backed away. When she came to the front doors she turned and pushed her way through. Forget the phone – Halliday could buy her a new one when she explained what had happened and how his so- called ‘protection’ had let her down, and he could be damned well grateful.
She stood on the wide graveled turning area before the farmhouse. A wide sweep of lawn lay beyond it, the security fence beyond that. Her eyes followed the straight line made by the narrow road that led across the fields to the public road.
That, alone, even if they let her through the security gates, was probably a fifteen- minute walk, and then she remembered the twisting route along country lanes they had followed the day before. She would be walking for hours, just to get to somewhere a little less remote, and even then she would have no phone with which to call for assistance. Would she be able to flag down passing traffic and somehow persuade them to help?
It wasn’t that security fence that imprisoned her, it was the simple fact that she could not get away under her own steam and no one here was willing to help her leave.
She felt their eyes on her, ‘Adam’ and the security guy. And, no doubt, all the security cameras that must be discreetly trained on her, too. She imagined Bernard Bowler, somewhere in the depths of the building, watching her humiliation on a screen and smiling that thoroughly annoying smile.
She refused to go back through the farmhouse, and instead turned to the left and walked around the building. That this tiny assertion of control was her only victory only served to emphasize her utter powerlessness.
She went back to her suite, dumped her few possessions, and lay on the bed staring out of the windows at the pale blue sky.
She hated that she was missing Vandana and Nikki, her cousins from Kolkata who were visiting their parents in north London for the first time in several years. Hated that she wasn’t even able to get word to them to make excuses for her absence. She wasn’t that kind of person.
Thoughts went round and round in her mind. How she had got into this position. How she might have done things differently. She found it hard not to blame herself, and yet felt powerless to do anything about it. She couldn’t even think of any course of action she might be able to take later that would put some of this right. If she told people, if she went to the press and tried to let them know how Bowler had treated her, would they even believe her? And anyway, Halliday wouldn’t condone that: her work was secret, and he would hardly want her at the center of any kind of public controversy. Bowler could get away with this, and he knew it.
The rest of the day passed in a blur. After she’d had time to stew in her suite for a time, Sunita went back down to the Galleria for coffee, and one of Bowler’s sidekicks found her there. She was led on another tour of the facilities, although this time there were no discussions with the researchers. Maybe the place was so deserted because it was the weekend, or maybe they were simply keeping her apart, so that her only contact was with Bowler’s trusted few and his security team.
She could make a scene, but who here would listen? Why would any of the people here care enough to stand up for her? She knew nothing about how this place worked, or the people who worked here, except that they were Bowler’s people.
Bowler invited her to join him for dinner that evening, and she was reminded again of the impression she’d had of him this morning. That almost sociopathic way he was oblivious to the subtleties of normal communication. The way he combined sharp insight into the workings of her mind with a complete absence of empathy.
What would he do when she continued to decline his offer to work for him? Would he try to make her yield her secrets?
Perhaps. Normal rules didn’t apply here.
She turned down the offer of dinner, told Adam from Reception she had a headache and would not leave her suite.
Food was sent up, a metal thali platter that held a selection of rice and breads, and smaller katori bowls containing kala chana, masor tenga, various chutneys, and more. Naturally, the selection of food items had been carefully chosen, some of her favorites, but also the selection of Indian delicacies reminded her of the family gathering she had missed today. Was that deliberate, or simply insensitive? Deliberate, she thought. Everything else here was carefully calculated, so why not the crude reminders of the price she paid for her stubbornness?
She tried to sleep, wondering how long this would go on for, whether anyone had ever successfully turned Bernard Bowler down.
§
She realized she had drifted, when she woke, sensing something different, a presence in the room. She picked up the same track of thought again from earlier, the wondering if Bowler could ever be fended off, but now that was in a different context.
When she’d drifted off to sleep she’d been thinking that question in professional terms, but now...
She remembered the feel of his arms around her as they had stood, insanely, in the cold waves on her first evening here. The feel of his mouth against her ear, her face. His body hard against her.
All this in the second or two it took her to wake and then a hand clamped across her mouth, stifling the unvoiced question that would now have been a scream.
She bucked her body, trying to break free, felt weight on her, pinning her down.
A voice, low and in her ear.
“It’s okay. Sunita, it’s okay. It’s me. Alex. It’s okay.”
The tension went from her
body like a dam breaking, and as her entire frame slumped, Alex drew back, his hand leaving her mouth, his torso moving back from where he’d bodily pinned her to the bed.
Had that been necessary?
It had, if he’d wanted her not to scream the place down, yes.
For an awful moment she’d thought this was it, Bowler had lost all patience, had let himself into the room and decided to finish what he’d tried to start the night before.
Now, all she wanted to do was cling to Alex, hold him close, give in and be that pathetic, needy woman whose man had come to rescue her.
She tried to remind herself this wasn’t the real her. She was a rational person, a scientist, a strong and independent woman who just happened to be struggling to deal with an extraordinary situation right now.
And then...
He’d moved away, a dark figure on the far side of the bedroom, backed up against the door.
She reached for the light, and turned it on even as he was raising his hands, trying to warn her not to do so.
The look on his face was hard to decipher. She really had lost her grip on the world around her, the people, how to read them, interpret them. He’d come to rescue her and yet he looked...
“Alex?” she said. She’d thought of him a few moments ago as her man, come to rescue her. Until now she didn’t know she’d even made that progression in her own mind, in the way she thought of him. Then now, even as she thought of him in such terms, when she looked at him she felt as if she had already lost him.
“Alex?”
He raised his hands again to stop her. Still hadn’t spoken a word himself since he’d first burst in and spoken in her ear.
“What is it, Alex?” She drew her knees up, hugging them to her chest through the bedding.
“Just tell me one thing,” he said, finally. “Are you here by choice? Just say you are, and I’ll slip away and it’ll be as if I was never here.”
“And if I’m not here by choice? If I tell you I’m lost and scared and you just took away one of the best feelings I’ve ever known when you moved away from me just now and I couldn’t feel you holding me any more? What then, Alex?”