The two of them manhandled Emma into the wheelchair, which wasn’t an easy feat given her heavily pregnant condition, and then covered her with a blanket taken from the bed.
They wheeled Emma out of the side room and down the length of the ward without anyone paying them the slightest attention. The lift arrived and took them down to the main entrance where a driver was waiting to take them away.
***
“Jim, have you seen Emma recently?” asked Janna.
“No, I haven’t. Wasn’t she seeing that patient with pancreatic cancer?” replied Jim.
“I’ll go and check to see how she’s doing as we need to meet to debrief,” said Janna.
Janna returned a few minutes later looking worried.
“No sign of her or the patient, and when I looked in the side room someone had left a dressing gown and coat behind.”
“Christ, no!” exclaimed Jim. “We need to call that number that Emma gave us if there were any problems.” He reached in his pocket and looked at the card. He grabbed the phone on the table and entered the digits.
“It’s Jim here, Fred. Emma’s disappeared. I think she’s been kidnapped.”
September 2005, an hour later
Emma woke feeling extremely groggy. She was aware of sitting on a chair but she couldn’t see anything and was unable to move her hands or feet. In fact, she was blindfolded and had her hands and feet tied to the chair. She could hear voices behind her which she recognised as belonging to the man masquerading as a patient and the woman pretending to be his wife. She considered her options. She could pretend to go into labour but she didn’t think her performance would be as convincing as that of the woman calling herself Chantelle. So, if it was to be fight rather than flight, what did she have to fight with? She thought back to what Dr Kyriakides had said when he scanned her eyes: “it’s almost as if you’ve got a solid-state laser in the centre of your retina.” If she could boost the intensity of the emission and then focus it onto the blindfold material, would that be sufficient to burn a hole that she could see out of? It was a long shot. Emma took a few deep breaths as quietly as she could and then used her visualisation to imagine increasing the blood flow to the retina. She saw the blood pulsing through the ophthalmic and central retinal arteries. She imagined the centre of the retina pulsing light in rhythm with the arterial pulse. She visualised the pulsing getting faster and faster and focused her eyes on where she imagined the blindfold to be. She took another deep breath and then exhaled as quickly as she could, at the same time imagining the release of an intense pulse of light. Miraculously, two tiny holes appeared in the blindfold, too small to be seen by her kidnappers but sufficient for her to see out of like a pinhole camera.
Looking around, she was now able to see that she was in a room about ten feet square. Next to her there was a trolley with some vacutainer needles and collection tubes. Directly in front of her, she could see a flat screen TV that was displaying someone’s office. A man’s face came into view and seemed to be peering at her intently. Although his hair was grey and his face fleshier, there was no mistaking that the features belonged to Daniel’s father.
“I see that the sleeper has awakened,” he said in a Scottish/American accent. “Even with the blindfold on I can see why Daniel was so captivated by you. You must forgive me for plucking you from your workplace but my needs are greater than those of your patients. In short, you have something that I want: the droch-shù
i
l.
“Your voice gives you away, Mr Armstrong, or should I say, father-in-law,” said Emma. “Actually, I believe in giving rather than taking and I also take exception to deception and kidnapping. And I’m sure you wouldn’t want any harm to come to your grandchild.”
“Indeed, daughter-in-law, but you can rest assured that I’ve taken that into account as my colleagues here are fully trained paramedics and will assist if necessary. Ideally, I’d like you to be my guest over here but getting you out of the UK would be difficult now that you have MI5 on your tail.”
“So, how do you propose obtaining the droch-sh
ù
il?” asked Emma. “You’re not seriously proposing removing one of my eyes, are you?”
“Goodness no, nothing as crude as that,” he replied. “It might interest you to know that my scientists have also been investigating your interesting condition. The complete heterochromia you have is actually an autosomal dominant condition and I’m informed the genes responsible are the
OCA2
and
HERC2
genes on chromosome 15. We’ve identified a regulatory region proximal to these genes which turn out to be two adjacent regulatory regions, one of which is permanently switched off. Our theory is that by switching this region on we could activate the droch-sh
ù
il even in normal individuals. But first we need to study an individual with that region already activated, which is where you come in. To start with, we’ll need a specimen of your blood which we’ll put through our gene sequencer next door. Your co-operation would be greatly appreciated. Bob, would you do the honours, please.”
“Certainly, Mr Armstrong,” replied Bob. He moved around to where Emma was sitting and put on some latex gloves. He fastened a tourniquet above her left elbow and swabbed the skin over the brachial vein. Emma tried to pull her arm away but it was fixed firmly to the arm of the chair. Bob picked up the vacutainer needle and approached her arm. Momentarily, he looked up at Emma. In that fleeting moment, she unleashed the most intense pulse of light she could muster, trying to reconstruct the incident in the classroom and the anger she felt towards the girl humiliating her. Bob suddenly dropped the needle and put his hands to his head. He screamed in anguish and convulsed for a few seconds before falling to the floor. His colleague rushed over to help him. At the same moment, there was a loud crash and Fred and two colleagues burst through the door. Guns were immediately trained on the incapacitated Bob and his colleague.
“So the cavalry has finally arrived,” said Emma. “I thought the GPS device you planted on me was meant to activate automatically as soon as I left the hospital premises.”
“Well, it did,” said Fred, “but no-one picked it up at HQ until sometime later. Then Bill and Ben here couldn’t agree on the plan of action, so I had to make the executive decision to force entry and break down the door. But it looks as if you did pretty well by yourself. MI5 would be proud of you. Let’s get you untied and back home before you go into premature labour.”
Untied and with the blindfold removed, Emma turned to see whether Mr Armstrong was watching but the screen was blank. She figured that wasn’t the last she’d see of him.
September 2005, a day later
Emma had seen the MI5 headquarters many times before when crossing Lambeth Bridge. From the outside, Thames House was just another Grade II listed building with a long heritage, none of which had anything remotely to do with the Security Service until the mid-90s. She wasn’t surprised to be summoned for a debriefing following the events of yesterday, but she was glad that Fred was going to be present. In fact, she was quite relieved that someone else was going to be doing the thinking about the latest evolution in her ability. At home last night, she had tried her laser trick on some tissue paper held in front of her eyes, but nothing had happened. She actually found that rather reassuring, as otherwise she might be back to wearing sunglasses fulltime.
Arriving at the Thames House visitors’ entrance, she was impressed by how the doors were opened without her even having to ring a bell. She was also struck by how quickly she was processed through security, which she thought was probably because she was rather too near to going into labour for anyone to feel comfortable about delays. She was shown into a bright, smartly appointed office and someone she took to be Fred’s senior stood up to greet her. His military bearing was unmistakable despite the incongruity of him wearing sunglasses indoors.
“Good morning, Dr Jones,” said Major Chisholm, shaking her hand with a warm smile, and then pulling out a chair for her to sit down. “I’m sorry for taking you away from your home, but I’m sure you’ll appreciate the need to explore the events of yesterday in a bit more detail. As you can see, I have taken some, er, precautions for our first meeting. Mr Bannister should be joining us shortly. Let me explain a bit about my role. I’m Director of International Counter Terrorism, Counter Espionage and Proliferation, commonly known as ‘ICTCEP’, and we basically try to stop things from happening, including the kidnap of a heavily pregnant doctor for nefarious purposes. Sadly we don’t always get it right and I must apologise for that.”
Emma nodded her appreciation of this gesture.
An intercom buzzer sounded which Major Chisholm responded to: “Yes, please send him in.”
Fred entered the office through an adjoining door. “Good morning, Emma. I hope the guys looked after you okay last night.”
“Morning, Fred,” she said. “Yes, they were as quiet as church mice, although I’d obviously have preferred having your company if protection is really that essential.”
“Sadly, Dr Jones, we believe that will be the case for the foreseeable future,” explained the Director. “We really can’t risk a repetition. Of course, Her Majesty’s Government will be footing the bill.” He turned to look at Fred. “Thank you for your detailed report, Mr Bannister. We will obviously examine certain, er, procedural irregularities at a later time, but I think now we should hear Dr Jones’s account of the events. Would you mind, Dr Jones?” he asked, looking inquisitively at Emma.
“Of course, sir,” replied Emma. “Would you like me to commence from when I went to the hospital in the morning?” The Director nodded. “Well, I arrived at the hospital just before 9 for the fifth day of our OAE pilot. There hadn’t been any problems during the week, so I went in on my own.”
“Whose idea was that?” asked the Director.
“Mine really,” said Emma.
“But I agreed,” said Fred, looking shamefaced. “I’m afraid I allowed my partner to persuade me to go to the autumn sales with him. I can assure you it won’t happen again.”
“Indeed,” said the Director. “Please continue, Dr Jones.”
“I arrived at the team’s office and learnt that one of our therapists had phoned in sick. So I agreed to see someone referred to us with pancreatic cancer on my own. This turned out to be the person called Bob whom I’d unwittingly asked to do some building work in my house. I didn’t recognise him when I walked into the side room. He had someone with him called Chantelle who was introduced as his wife. Both seemed genuine and I didn’t suspect anything. It was only when I looked into his eyes to start the therapy that I thought I recognised his eyes. The next thing I knew was something being held against my nose and everything went blank after that.”
“Thank you, Dr Jones. Fred, can you take us through what happened next?”
“Certainly, Director. It seems the two operatives then managed to get the unconscious Dr Jones into a wheelchair that was already by the side of the bed. The male was wearing medical scrubs under a dressing gown and the female had on a nurse’s uniform. The ward receptionist remembers seeing the three of them leaving the ward at around 9:30 but didn’t regard it as suspicious. It wasn’t until about 12:30 that other members of her team realised that they hadn’t seen her for some time. When Dr Roit checked the side room where the patient had been, she found the dressing gown and coat left behind but no sign of Dr Jones. Dr Lawrence then phoned me on the emergency number I gave him earlier in the week.”
“And did the GPS device on Dr Jones activate when she left the building with the operatives?” asked the Director.
“Apparently there is a record of it activating but no-one acted on it until an hour later,” replied Fred.
“During which time the unfortunate Dr Jones could have had both eyes removed, if that had been the plan,” said the Director, sarcastically.
“I guess so,” said Fred, shifting uncomfortably in his chair.
“And I believe that there was then some disagreement on how to proceed once her whereabouts had been established,” said the Director.
“Er, yes,” replied Fred. “I’m afraid my colleagues were reluctant to take decisive action and so I had to make an executive decision to force entry and break down the door.”
“Which was clearly the correct decision given the circumstances,” said the Director. “And of course when you did break down the door, you discovered that Dr Jones had defended herself in a most remarkable way. Dr Jones, perhaps you could continue your narrative.”
“Okay. When I came around, I was blindfolded and had my hands and feet tied to a chair. I could hear two people talking. I realised I had to something to escape. I remembered Dr Kyriakides saying that the structure he found in my retina was like a solid-state laser. I was pretty desperate by this point and somehow that was sufficient for me to use my eyes to burn tiny holes in the blindfold. I then saw a trolley with some phlebotomy equipment on it and a flat screen TV. It was obvious that the man who appeared on the TV was my father-in-law, although I’d never met him before. He didn’t know I could see him. He talked about his scientists investigating my condition and believing they understood the genetics sufficiently to switch it on in normal individuals. He said he needed a blood specimen from me to put it through a gene sequencer and that’s when the man approached me with a vacutainer needle. Momentarily he looked at me and I used my eyes to incapacitate him. Just after that, there was a crash and Fred and his colleagues burst into the room.”
“Most interesting, Dr Jones,” said the Director. “Mr Bannister, do you have anything to add?”
“I’d say that “incapacitate” is putting it mildly,” said Fred. “The guy screamed in agony and fell to the floor convulsing.”
“What’s being done about my father-in-law and the people who kidnapped me?” asked Emma.