Authors: Louise Voss
‘It could have done. I don’t know.’ Kate pulled hard against the pipe again but it remained immovable. ‘It would only take one sick person to get on a plane and then … it’s totally out of control.’
‘So you and those guys at the lab were trying to find the cure for it?’
‘Yes. We were so close, too. Junko had just figured something out, something that might have held the key – but she’s gone.’
‘What about other scientists, in other labs?’ Simone sounded hopeful. ‘It can’t have only been you working on it.’
‘I’m sure it wasn’t,’ said Kate. ‘But we were the best hope – well, until you lot arrived and killed most of us.’
Simone hung her head.
‘And if Angelica goes ahead with this … sacrifice, or whatever shit way she wants to dress up our imminent murder, then the chances are that there won’t be a vaccine, and this thing will get completely out of control.’ Kate shook her head in despair. ‘Do you think she’s really going to go ahead with it?’
Simone laughed, mirthlessly. ‘You’ve seen what she’s like. She don’t give a damn about nothin’ apart from Sekhmet’s supposed fucking will. She does whatever she thinks Sekhmet says … Actually, Sekhmet says whatever Angelica wants to hear.’
‘Where did she get it all from, anyway?’
‘Visions. Dreams. Says Sekhmet’s been talking to her since she was a kid. Her granddaddy had this gold statue of the Goddess that he brought back from Egypt. Angelica used to play with it when she was a little girl. If I’d known she was so fucked in the head, I wouldn’t have gone near her. But then, I guess, we were all fucked in the head otherwise we wouldn’t have gotten taken in.’ Simone rattled her own handcuffs, her biceps straining as she pulled against the pipe. ‘Angelica didn’t tell us about the virus, of course, not for ages …’
There was a faint scratching sound from inside the walls. Simone froze.
‘Was that a rat?’
‘Well, at least you won’t be around to see the rats taking over,’ Kate said. ‘And you won’t die of the virus, either.’
‘That’s good, about the rats. But I don’t have to worry about the virus – we’re all immune. Part of our initiation ritual to become a Sister of Sekhmet: Angelica gave us the virus and then the antidote, to make sure we’d be immune once she’d released it. Though we didn’t know that at the time.’
‘Do you know where she got hold of it? Did she take you to a lab or a clinic somewhere?’
‘She did it right here. Don’t know where she got the stuff.’
‘What can you remember about it?’
Simone snorted. ‘I ain’t no scientist, all I know is that Angelica gave me a shot. But it worked damn fast, I know that much. One minute I thought I was gonna die, then I had the shot – next day I was well enough to go for a walk in the yard.’
‘And Angelica called it an antidote, you’re sure about that?’
‘Yep. I’m pretty sure she did.’
Kate pondered this. ‘That’s strange. Because an antidote is something you give for a toxin or a poison, not a virus. With viruses, you use a vaccine for someone who hasn’t had the virus yet, or an antiviral drug for someone who’s already got it. It’s weird that she referred to it as an antidote.’
Simone made a face. ‘Her brain is screwed. Maybe she made a mistake. Or maybe I mis-remembered.’
Kate rattled the pipe with renewed vigour. Simone must have got it wrong. Whatever it was that stopped the virus, it was fast-working. She wracked her brains to think what could have been used to create the antivirus, something Angelica had access to that she, Kate, never had … It could save millions of lives, if only she could figure it out. Assuming she could stay alive long enough to be able to try. ‘Come on, Simone, you’ve been trained in combat and survival – surely you can get us out of here?’
‘I think I’m pretty much all out of ideas, honey. We could try and shift this pipe, but I don’t reckon it’ll budge.’
‘Let’s pull, together. We can’t give up, not now.’
They both heaved and strained, leaning as far forward as the handcuffs would allow, but the pipe did not give an inch.
‘Can we overpower them when they come for us?’
Simone shrugged wearily. ‘Doubt it. Angelica and Heather are both crack shots, Preeti’s there as back-up, and we’re cuffed. We don’t stand a chance.’
‘Don’t be so negative,’ Kate said. ‘I thought your meditation was all about acceptance and tranquillity?’
‘Fuck that,’ said Simone.
They slumped back against one another. Kate could smell the other woman’s sweat and perfume, her solid presence, and she felt overwhelmed with pity and sympathy for her.
‘Simone – I just want to say … thanks. Thanks for helping me escape, twice. I’m so sorry this has happened. But don’t blame yourself for any of it, OK? You’re a good person.’
‘Oh, can it,’ said Simone.
If she ever got out of this, Kate promised herself, and things returned to normal, she was going to take a break; a real break, with Jack and Paul. And the next time she saw Paul, she would ask him to marry her.
If she ever saw him again.
Who was she kidding? Defeat flooded through her as the reality of the situation struck her afresh. She slumped back against the basement wall, her wrists aching as much as her head and heart.
At that moment, the door at the top of the basement steps creaked open. Light flooded in, and Kate screwed up her eyes to make out the hunched shape of an old man standing there. It was the same man she and Simone had seen in the kitchen when Kate had escaped.
Simone suddenly sat up straighter. ‘I’ll handle this,’ she hissed.
The man must have been in his mid seventies, with long threads of white hair combed across his scalp, and huge ears. A pair of rimless glasses perched on his rather bulbous nose. His mouth was set in a frown.
‘Dr Mangold, sir?’ called Simone, and Kate gasped.
Mangold!
This
was Mangold? So Paul had been right all along. Kate felt as if she had woken up from a nightmare, only to find that the first bad dream was wrapped in another. She had first heard the name Charles Mangold eighteen years ago, the summer of the fire at the Cold Research Unit. Clive Gaunt, the man who’d murdered Paul’s twin brother, had told them that Mangold had helped fund their work creating killer viruses. Kate couldn’t speak. All she could do was watch as Mangold walked unsteadily down the basement steps, looking puzzled.
‘Over here, sir – we’ve, ah, got a little problem.’
‘So’ve I. I can’t find my damned bedroom.’ He spoke in a cracked drawl, and Kate fleetingly imagined he must have been quite an attractive, charming man once. To the outside world, at least. Nothing charming about what he had done with his life. What an odd thing to say, though. Kate wondered if she had misheard. Or was he suffering from dementia? She had seen it in Aunt Lil. Was Mangold suffering the same fate?
‘Dr Mangold, we appear to have got ourselves chained to this here pipe,’ said Simone, smiling sweetly at him. ‘Do you think you might help us? There are some tools on that wall … Please could you see if you could maybe find a hacksaw?’
‘A hacksaw?’ Mangold turned and started to walk towards the far side of the basement.
‘That’s Angelica’s grandpa,’ Simone whispered. ‘He’s nuts. Harmless, though.’
Kate leaned the back of her head against the damp concrete wall, trying to take it all in. So Angelica was Mangold’s granddaughter. That would explain how she had got hold of this strain of Watoto and the ‘antidote’. She wondered how long Mangold had been ‘nuts’, as Simone had put it. Did he have dementia, or was it something else? But even after Mangold had gone mad, he would still have had money, resources, contacts, all exploitable by Angelica …
Mangold drifted back across the basement to them, empty-handed, and Kate heard Simone hiss quietly with frustration.
‘What am I doing down here?’ he said, gazing down at them. He seemed entirely unsurprised that they were chained to a pipe.
‘Helping us, sir,’ said Simone. ‘You were gonna help us?’
‘Ah yes,’ he replied. ‘I’ll go get Angelica.’
‘No!’ Kate and Simone said together. Kate looked anxiously up at the open basement door. Someone could come along at any moment.
Mangold stared at Kate for a long time, then he pointed a bony finger at her. ‘I remember you,’ he said.
‘We met, briefly, in the kitchen last night, sir,’ Kate replied, her mouth dry with tension.
‘No. Before. You were a little girl. I remember talking to your father about this, Miss Carling.’
Kate gasped, shock flooding through her.
‘He gets muddled with names,’ Simone said.
‘Carling is my maiden name,’ Kate managed, the words sticking her tongue to the roof of her mouth.
‘Yes, yes, Derek Carling, I remember. You had a beautiful house in the English countryside. Roses growing in the garden. You and your cistern, er, sister, running about. Leonard took me to visit you once or … maybe twice. Your mother brought us homemade lemonade.’ He licked his chapped lips.
‘Small world, huh?’ said Simone. ‘His long-term memory is pretty good.’
‘And I visited you in Africa too. In your village in … What’s that place called?’ He rubbed his forehead.
‘Tanzania?’ Kate asked slowly.
‘Yes, that’s right. Tanzania. Camilo and I went out there, looking for …’ He stopped mid-sentence and leaned forward, gazing down on them. ‘I’m so sorry about what happened to your parents. You are beautiful, like your mother.’ He winked at her. ‘I was always a little sweet on Francesca, I must confess.’
Kate’s heart was beating so fast she thought she might collapse. ‘No, you didn’t know my parents. You can’t have.’
‘Oh, but I did. Your … daddy … a fine virologist. One of the best.’
‘He wasn’t a virologist, he was a foreign aid worker.’
‘Um, sir?’ Simone interrupted, fidgeting with impatience. ‘Could you help us out here, and then we could continue this chat later?’
‘One more thing before you do,’ Kate said urgently. If Mangold’s long-term memory wasn’t too patchy, there was a chance that he might be able to tell her. ‘How did you discover a vaccine for Watoto?
He laughed, and for the first time, sounded completely
compos mentis
. ‘Oh, Miss Carling, your father would be proud of you. I’ve known for years. And when we wanted to recreate the cure, Angelica was kind enough to provide the seeds of what I needed.’
There was a screech from the top of the basement stairs. As if summoned by the sound of her name, Angelica flew down the steps and grabbed Mangold by the arm. ‘Grandpa! There you are! What are you doing down here? Come on, let’s get you back to your room.’
‘I was
looking
for my room,’ he grumbled sulkily. ‘These here ladies need our help.’
‘Yes, yes,’ Angelica said, leading him away. ‘Let’s get you sorted, and I’ll be right back to assist them.’ She glared at Simone and Kate with an expression that said she’d be happy to shoot them then and there, and shepherded Mangold up the stairs, locking the door behind them.
The basement was thrown into pitch darkness again.
Kate slumped against Simone, Mangold’s words whirling around her head, almost managing to distract her from the fact that they had just lost their opportunity to escape. So Mangold had known her parents in Tanzania? He said her dad was a virologist – but that had to be his memory playing tricks. She had been very young when Watoto claimed both her parents, but not so young that she hadn’t known what her father’s occupation had been. No one had ever said anything to her about her dad being a virologist too. It had been her parents’ friend Leonard who had inspired her to study virology – or at least, that was what she’d always believed. Mangold’s dementia, or whatever it was, must have made him confuse Leonard with her father. All the same, there was something about the way he’d said, ‘Your father would be proud of you.’
‘Shit,’ said Simone into the blackness.
By the time they arrived in Feverfew, Paul felt like death would be a merciful release. The sickness had taken over his whole body until all he was able to do was sip from a bottle of water Harley had bought from a vending machine beside a shut-up shop a few miles back. He felt alternately sweaty with fever and shivery with cold.
But his determination to find – and rescue – Kate kept him going, and gave him some strength.
Harley checked the GPS and drove down a long mountain road until the ranch gates came into view. The sky was beginning to lighten, the stars winking out, birds filling the air with morning song. Harley pulled up by the side of the road, out of sight of anyone looking out of the ranch windows, and they sat in silence. It was beautiful here, Paul thought, so peaceful. But if everything they believed was correct, this place was the cradle, the source, of all the death and pain he’d witnessed since coming to America.
Including his own death, in all probability.
Diaz dozed in the back seat, a trail of drool on his chin. Harley, who had been wearing his flu mask for the whole journey, turned round and said, ‘Camilo – we’ve arrived.’
The old man blinked as he woke up, wiping his mouth with his sleeve.
‘So …’ he said, smiling grimly.
Paul turned round in his seat. ‘Whatever happens next,’ he said, ‘you need to tell us how to stop the virus.’
Diaz unfastened his seat belt and opened the door, getting out of the car. Paul and Harley followed suit, Paul’s legs almost buckling as he stepped on to the hot asphalt.
‘Camilo,’ he said in the strongest voice he could muster.
‘Yes, of course. Don’t worry. But I want to see Mangold first. Then I will tell all.’
‘You’d better.’ Assuming the man was telling the truth, Diaz was his only hope of survival. If there was some cure that could be created in – well, how long did he have left? A day or two? Would that be long enough? He couldn’t worry about it now. At this moment, the most important thing was getting Kate out.
Harley had been on the phone while Paul was talking to Diaz. He slipped his phone into his pocket and said, ‘Back-up is at least an hour away. Probably two. Every spare person we have has been sent to LA to try to help the situation there. We should wait here until they arrive.’