by Andy Lucas
Charlene thought harder. ‘No, I’m pretty sure it’s like the last time I went in there. Except for the old money box,’ she suddenly remembered.
‘Money box?’
‘Yes. It belonged to Paul Pringle’s son, if I remember correctly. An old clay money box. Looks like an old wooden soldier toy, with a red and white uniform. It was always in the safe but I didn’t see it this time.’
Dashing back upstairs, leaving their steaming plates of food half eaten, the women went through the safe contents again, rummaging right at the back to make sure the money box had not rolled out of sight. But it wasn’t there. That meant that it was important, somehow.
‘Okay,’ breathed Sarah. ‘The money box might be so important that it was too risky hiding it in the safe any longer.’
‘It’s probably just an old money box,’ said Charlene, ‘but I’ll run with it.’
‘So, where do you hide something like that, where nobody will find it?’
Charlene smiled, as a sudden realisation hit her. ‘You don’t hide it.’
‘I’m sorry, what?’
‘The best place to hide anything is in plain sight,’ she said. Charlene could not remember where she had heard that saying before but it clamoured for her attention now. ‘Come with me,’ she blurted quickly.
Sarah followed her out on to the landing and past a few closed doors until Charlene stopped outside a door at the far end. Not stopping, she turned the handle and went inside, with Sarah hot on her heels.
Inside, the room’s contents had also been heavily shrouded and Charlene wasted no time in pulling off the sheets, sending up a light flurry of dust in her haste. Underneath the sheets, filling units, cupboards and display cases, were hundreds of military toys and games. Model ships, planes and tanks took centre stage in display cases but shelf after shelf held toy soldiers of all shapes and sizes.
‘My stepfather was a collector,’ Charlene explained, standing in the centre of the room and turning very slowly around on the spot, painstakingly scanning every toy.
‘You think the money box is hidden in here? Charlene, nice idea but a bit of a long sh...’
‘I knew it,’ Charlene squealed excitedly, striding across to a shelf on the back wall. Three rows deep, and perfectly blending in amongst the surrounding wooden soldiers, all in their Napoleonic uniforms, stood a clay soldier which Charlene picked up and walked back over to Sarah with. Up close, it stood about twelve inches tall and had been very carefully painted and fired over one hundred years before. As she leaned in closer, Sarah noted a small, thin slot in the top of the tall, black hat.
‘Let’s open it then,’ she said.
‘It doesn’t have a way of being opened. This is one of those old-fashioned money boxes that keeps every penny you feed it until you smash it open with a hammer one day.’
‘Are you sure?’ Charlene turned it over and showed Sarah the smooth bottom. ‘So whatever’s in there has been in there for years?’
‘I guess so.’
‘This belonged to Paul’s son so his wife would have had access to it at any time. She might have slipped something inside.’
Charlene rattled the colourful figurine and they both heard the chinking of metal coins colliding. ‘Well, there’s something inside. Probably just a few old coins that the little boy was given as pocket money.’
‘Let’s find a hammer and find out, shall we?' suggested Sarah.
‘Damned right,’ agreed Charlene. ‘I always thought it was a little creepy anyway. Time to open it up. At least then we can finish our food and get back on the road. Are you still okay to drive?
‘I’ve only had one glass, and I haven’t finished it yet, so I’m fine.’
Downstairs, back in the kitchen, Charlene laid the figurine down on its side on the kitchen worktop and found a wooden meat tenderiser. Taking a calming breath and steeling herself for further disappointment, she brought it down heavily on the money box, which shattered obligingly into three pieces with a tinkling smash.
There were a few coins, and the dried up corpses of a couple of decades-old spiders. And then there were the letters; three of them, tucked up inside small envelopes, heavily yellowed with age. Each had been folded over twice to fit through the slot and still wore the concertina creases. The smell of old paper; faintly vanilla in scent, pushed all thoughts of finishing their meal aside.
Sarah picked up one of the envelopes, surprisingly nervously, having to consciously tell her hand to stop trembling. Over the course of the next ten minutes, she read all three very carefully, with Charlene content to watch from the sidelines while she ate. With each sentence read, the colour in Sarah’s cheeks drained away a little more as the enormity of the content hit home.
Visibly shaking by the time she finished the final sentence, Sarah left the letters on the worktop and reached for her encrypted phone.
‘I need to speak to my dad,’ she said. ‘He needs to send someone to get us, and I mean right now. These,’ she pointed to the letters, ‘cannot fall into the wrong hands.’
‘What on earth did you just read? Are you okay?’
Sarah nodded, just as Doyle McEntire’s voice came over the phone. She did not let him say more than a quick hello before she blurted out her need for help and that she had found something massively important. Listening, she smiled to herself, grateful that he already had men watching the house. He would send them to her immediately and they would take them both back to London.
Killing the connection, Sarah barely had time to tell Charlene to get her things together before a knock at the door told her that their escort had arrived.
A few minutes later, safely ensconced in the plush back seat of a blacked out Mercedes, Sarah and Charlene slowly relaxed. With the street lights of Bournemouth flashing past outside their windows, Charlene asked Sarah to fill her in.
‘All I can tell you is that I know how the Germans tracked down that science base in Namibia.’
‘How does that matter? Charlene wondered naively.
‘Believe me, it does matter.’
‘Alright,’ she said. ‘Humour me, Sarah. How did the Germans find out about this British secret base?’
Sarah turned to look at her for a moment, her eyes a hundred years away in time. ‘Family,’ was all she said before sinking deeper in to the seat and dozing off.
In her hand, she still clutched all three letters.
18
Pace eased up the power and slowly the Sea King took to the air, hovering for a moment and throwing up a localised snowstorm with the downwash of its huge rotor blades that was completely lost in the massive, buffeting grip of the powerful blizzard that he’d just been forced to take off in. Next to him, safely strapped into the co-pilot’s seat, sat Yucel. He kept his pistol in his lap but with the business end facing towards Pace.
There were no spare parts for the Sea King at Scott Base, despite it being their own helicopter that the ARC team had hijacked when they arrived. There was nothing that could be done to repair the half-missing windscreen so Pace just got on with the job of flying with snow blowing freely inside the cockpit. Back in his survival suit, the cold wasn’t a problem for him but he worried about electrical shorting if some of the snow melted when it made contact with the warm console electronics.
He didn’t have any choice. Fiona had made that perfectly clear when the guards had hustled three of them back to the main room an hour earlier. Along with him, two of the New Zealand scientists who had wintered over at Scott Base had also been brought before her. The scientists were both terrified and cursing that this could happen to them with just one week left to go before they were relieved.
Pace still felt physically sick from the memory. One of the scientists was a seasoned biologist called David Hansol. Balding and painfully thin, he was fast approaching retirement age and was looking forward to spending a long, well-funded retirement back in Auckland with his long-suffering wife, Enid. This was his last winter; of the last twenty spent on th
e ice.
Hansol’s companion was a young chemist by the name of Marigold Bath, who appeared to have barely broached her twenties. She kept her long strawberry blonde hair tied back efficiently in a ponytail and her expensive, rimless glasses complimented a serious, somewhat pinched face. Tall and slim, with no noticeable curves to shape her white coat, her intelligent eyes brimmed with tears of pure terror.
As soon as he laid eyes back on Fiona’s face, Pace knew they were in trouble. Stony and set with a determined scowl, something unpleasant was about to happen.
‘James, so good to see you again,’ she said.
‘It’s only been a few minutes and I can’t say the feeling is mutual,’ he responded darkly. ‘What do you want, Chambers?’
‘Oh, don’t be like that,’ she grinned wickedly. ‘I need you to be far more co-operative if we’re going to get along.’
‘What is the meaning of this?’ blustered Hansol. He was tired and hungry, which always made him irritable, and he was fast running out of patience with these idiots. ‘I demand that you release us and leave this facility, which is the sovereign property of the New Zealand government.’
‘And you, my dear?’ She addressed the cowering figure of Marigold directly. ‘Do you demand it too?’
‘I just want to go home,’ she managed to whimper. ‘Please let us go. We are scientists, just doing our jobs. We haven’t done anything to you.’
Fiona regarded all three of them with a sweeping stare. One she could not afford to injure but the other two were definitely expendable. One was young and frightened so she could be useful. Although she admired Hansol for his intellect and courage, he was her obvious choice.
Pace read her thoughts instinctively, seeing her thick neck muscles tense up at the act to come. Desperately, he whistled at her; the shrill sound momentarily diverting her attention.
‘I wouldn’t do that if I were you,’ he spat angrily. ‘Not if you need my help with anything, which I assume you do or I wouldn’t have been dragged back here again so fast.’
‘Do what?’ asked Hansol, shooting Pace a puzzled look.
‘So you’re a mind-reader as well as a seemingly indestructible pain in my neck?’ Fiona challenged. There was no way he could know what was in her head.
‘With a psycho bitch like you, it’s easy. People like you, who I’ve had the misfortune to meet in the past, seem to have very little variety in their responses.’ The look in her eyes reminded him of the evil assassin, Wolf, who he’d encountered in the Amazon. Distant, devoid of emotion and lifeless. Pace had killed him to protect Sarah. Only later did he learn that Wolf had murdered his little sister, Amanda. Any possible remorse he may have felt died with that knowledge. Some people were just too evil to live.
‘What does he mean?’ asked Marigold, sniffing.
‘He means that this woman has murder on her mind,’ said Hansol, understanding.
‘Mur...r...rder?’
‘I don’t kill people unnecessarily,’ refuted Fiona, her tone level. ‘Only when it serves my purpose.’
‘Like now?’ asked Hansol. ‘Nobody needs to die here today.’
Fiona lowered her eyes, as though summoning her courage.
‘Who’s going to die?’ mumbled Marigold, wide eyed.
Fiona straightened up quickly and snapped out her hand, now filled with a stubby, nickel-plated .38 revolver.
‘Me,’ said Hansol, his voice surprisingly firm at the realisation that he had just drawn his final breath.
‘No!’ yelled Pace and lunged at Fiona but Yucel smashed a fist into the back of his head at the same moment that a thunderous crack rang out across the room. Hansol’s head was snapped back on his spindly neck by the force of the bullet entering his forehead at virtually point-blank range, blowing out the back of his skull in a shower of red and grey. Marigold’s scream echoed the gunshot as the scientist’s lifeless body was flung backwards, where it lay in a rapidly spreading pool of crimson, dead feet twitching.
Fiona watched the body fall before slowly lowering her arm and slipping the smoking gun back into a concealed shoulder holster beneath her left armpit. She felt nothing for the man she had just murdered. He was old and would serve no purpose alive. Dead, he would be the leverage she needed to force Pace to follow her orders.
Without looking at him, she spoke. ‘I need you to fly the helicopter for us as you chose to kill our pilot. I will not hesitate to shoot every single one of those scientists if you refuse, one by one. You can help me, or you can watch each one of them die in the same way Dr Hansol just did. Choose,’ she commanded.
Pace was livid and shaking with a mixture of anger, frustration and pain, from the blow to his head. He shook his head to stop the ringing in his ears and was just formulating a plan of attack when he caught a glimpse of Marigold out of the corner of his eye.
On her knees, distraught, tears pouring down her face, she began to choke and wretch. In shock at seeing her mentor cut down in front of her eyes, the young chemist fell apart.
Pace snapped himself back under control and let out a steady breath. Nothing could be done for Hansol any longer but he could do something to save Marigold and all the others. Fiona had just sent the cruellest of messages to them all and everyone might end up with a bullet in their skull if he played the situation wrong.
‘Feel better now? Happy?’ He wanted to curse and pound his fists into her face but restricted himself to sarcasm, spat through gritted teeth.
‘Not at all,’ replied Fiona. ‘I just need you to understand that I will do anything to get what I want.’
‘You could have done that lots of ways. You didn’t need to kill him.’
‘I disagree,’ she said curtly. ‘Get rid of him,’ she ordered Yucel, who jerked his head at a couple of nearby mercenaries. They grabbed a lifeless arm each and dragged Hansol over to the door, opened it, and heaved him out into the teeth of the blizzard. The door closed quickly and the only sign of that awful event was a large pool of blood, already beginning to congeal, on the floor.
‘So, James, do I get your co-operation or will I have to shoot a few more of these people?’
‘You know I can’t let you hurt anybody else,’ he growled. ‘I’ll do what you say.’ A grin of triumph that began to form at the corners of her thin lips died as swiftly as Hansol. ‘But understand this. The minute I get a chance, whenever that is and however long it takes, I am going to kill you for what you just did to an innocent man.’
‘Be careful of what you wish for,’ she said. ‘I’m not that easy to kill.’ Then she instructed Yucel to return them both to their dormitory while she made another call to Josephine.
She rang Josephine’s private extension but expected the call to be answered by one of the guards. By now, she figured, her boss would be under the knife so she was stunned to hear Josephine’s voice at the other end.
‘Are you alright?’ she asked quickly. ‘I thought you’d be having your surgery.’
‘There has been a problem here,’ Josephine explained sadly. ‘It’s my fault so I can only blame myself.’
‘What’s wrong?’
‘Deborah Miles accidentally turned out to be a great match for me but I didn’t know that at the start.’ Fiona knew all this but the last time she’d spoken to Josephine, the surgeon had saved the Miles woman’s life and the operation was going ahead.
‘Is she dead?’
‘No, not dead, just sick. Dr Shilan tells me that she’s developed a blood infection from some of the untreated wounds. Serious but treatable. They’re pumping her full of intravenous antibiotics at the moment but the surgery can’t take place until the doctor is certain that all the infection has cleared up. I can’t risk having infected organs transplanted inside me.’
How long before that happens?’
‘A couple of days, I’m assured,’ explained Josephine. ‘An annoying delay and it means having to keep her alive for a bit longer but the operation will go ahead as soon as possible.’ Fiona heard
a change in tone. ‘Now, tell me about things at your end. I really need you back here as soon as possible, to run things while I convalesce, so you don’t have much time to find the gold and get rid of the evidence that we were ever there.’
The two of them began to discuss the finer details of securing the treasure and disposing of all the witnesses as calmly as if they were chatting about the latest global news. Their original plan remained the same. Fiona was to secure the vials, which Josephine was pleased to know she’d already done, then try and find the gold. Another vast injection of money would allow ARC to take its next developmental steps on the world stage. After that, the scientists would need to be dropped through a hole in the ice sheet before any busybodies from McMurdo Station decided to investigate the radio silence from their next door neighbour.
‘The summer window is open now,’ Fiona explained. ‘Once this latest storm clears, McMurdo will open its three ice runways and the extra summer staff will start flying in, both for McMurdo and Scott Base.’
‘I’m surprised they haven’t been sniffing around already.’
‘They have been ringing on the linked telephone system but we’ve just been ignoring them. I expect a visit any moment.’
‘How long before you find the gold?’
‘I don’t know if it’s even still there,’ explained Fiona. Then she told Josephine about the failure of their search aboard the German U-Boat, added to turning up nothing within the base itself. ‘It may have been shipped out with the British scientists when they abandoned the facility,’ she suggested. ‘It could be anywhere.’
Josephine had really hoped to find the gold quickly. She still had plenty of the stuff from the surprise discovery in their Uruguay site but the more money she had, the more quickly she could develop her master plan for ARC, without the need to ever deal with creepy money men like the deceased Lefevre ever again.
‘We knew it was a possibility,’ she agreed finally. ‘The vials are the main thing, I suppose. We can always shut the base down again and come back another time to conduct a more thorough search.’