Chasing The Dawn (Luke Temple - Book 2) (Luke Temple Series) (26 page)

“When did you find them?” Delvechi asked.

“Just before I phoned.”

These were not fresh bodies; taking into account the weather which would have slowed decomposition, we were talking weeks not days.

“Are you telling me that no one smelt this? And why the hell has this bin not been emptied?”

The teenager became solemn. “I am sorry Sir, but … it’s just that ... look.” The boy banged on a large wooden door on the building, then showed Delvechi that the windows were boarded up. “This has been a very long time, no one here, no one here, so we don’t check.”

Delvechi needed to sit down, and not just because of the smell. He moved across to an empty crate opposite the bins.

The boy was in awe of the uniform. “Sir, I am sorry, we thought they had gone home.”

Delvechi looked up. “Say that again?”

“We thought they had left.”

“You know them?”

The teenager was not sure how to answer. He was weighing up what he felt was the
right
answer. “Yes Sir, they were staying with us. My family owns the hotel two roads over. These men came to stay with us, then they disappeared.”

Delvechi frowned in thought. “Who are they?”

The teenager again hesitated. “Well I do not know really, but we have their names. They were with us a long time, the longest guests we had. They worked over at the Laboratory, very exciting.”

The information hung in the air. Delvechi rolled it around, he had to process it a few times,
worked over at the laboratory?
He jumped up. “These two,” he pointed at the bodies. “Where were they from?”

The boy looked hesitant. “Erm … I am not sure.”

“Come on, you said they were with you a long time, you must have known where they were from?”

“I … I … it was a … I don’t remember. Some place East.”

Delvechi pressed, “Was it Korea?”

The boy’s eyes lit up. “Yes! That’s it … how did you know that? But not just Korea … there was something else … erm …”

Delvechi turned away, saying the words more to himself. “North Korea.”

The boy jumped around energetically. “Yes … yes, North Korea, they were from North Korea, working at the laboratory. Their work was very secret they used to say.” The boy moved around in front of Delvechi. He had a smug look on his face. “But I remember what they worked on … OPERA.” The boy flexed on the grand reveal. “Not so stupid, huh?”

Delvechi had a rush of adrenaline. Two North Korean scientists working at the laboratory on the OPERA experiment ... murdered.
Chung Su.
Delvechi would have to be an idiot to see it all as a coincidence. Vittorio’s disappearance? Chung Su’s arrival? Her capture by a mystery man? Delvechi felt queasy; the smell of the bodies and the enormity of what he may be facing was a nauseating mix. He sat back on the crate.
What on earth is the connection?
He barely noticed the cold seeping into his trousers. What did it all mean? Delvechi did not know, but in that moment of silence he thought back to Brun’s speech at the gala, the way it had been received with such awe, such shock. From that point on the world had spun out of control.

Looking at the green bins, the final resting place of the two Koreans, he was pretty certain that Vittorio would not be found alive.

“Where is your hotel? I need to speak with your family.” Delvechi stood and turned to go back down the alleyway. He knew he would have to phone in the bodies officially and get the forensic teams out, but instinct told him to keep things close, to allow him and Beltrano to get the jump on it. They were part of the Special Task Department, and he needed to prove his worth.

“Do we have to?” The boy became agitated. “Am I in trouble?”

“Not yet, no.”

“I am worried my parents will get angry.”

Delvechi started down the street. He had images of Chung Su and the bodies flashing through his mind.

“Don’t worry; I just want to ask your family a few questions. I am not accusing anyone but this is a very serious crime.”

The boy nodded. “I know, I know … it’s just they will be angry, because they said they didn’t want the police around again. They said they had answered enough questions about those two to last a lifetime.”

Delvechi stopped in his tracks. He turned to the boy. “What? Those two have caused trouble before?”

“No sir, no, when they went missing a policeman showed up and asked us lots and lots of questions about them. We thought it was strange because we didn’t report it to the police. You see they always paid us a full year in advance so they didn’t owe us any money. We guessed they went home. This man showed up wearing normal clothes, but said he was an officer of the law … some special officer, and he asked us lots of questions.”

Delvechi grabbed the boy by the shoulders. “What did the policeman look like?”

“Careful …” Chung Su demanded as Luke brushed a hedgerow with the passenger-side wing mirror. His driving was a little erratic, his jaw clenching every time he applied the throttle with his right leg, the wound widening with every movement. Chung Su’s horror was etched all over her face. She was amazed Luke could even move let alone drive.

Without warning, Luke threw the car onto a muddy verge and skidded to a stop; throwing open his door and taking out the keys he kept his leg as rigid as possible as he struggled to his feet. The pain was getting worse and he needed to remove the splinter and stem the bleeding. He hobbled to the rear of the car and opened the boot. Inside were an array of objects including a metal jack, several oil-stained rags and strangely a pack of batteries but nothing to put them into. The batteries were wrapped in bubble wrap. Right at the far end of the boot against the back seats was something that Luke was hoping for, a tow cord. He leant in and retrieved it; both ends had black metal hooks attached. Luke stretched the thick cord to test it. It was designed to take a lot of pressure, and it was perfect for what Luke needed it for. He grabbed the batteries and slammed the boot shut, taking a moment to rest against the car, breathing heavily.

He limped up to Chung Su’s door and opened it; she looked at him wide-eyed. He tore off the bubble wrap with his teeth and threw the batteries down into the footwell. He handed Chung Su the tow cord. “I am going to need your help,” he told her plainly.

“What do you want me to do?”

“I am going to count to three; on the last count I want you to pull this with all your strength.” Luke indicated the shard of wood.

Chung Su’s mouth dropped, her eyes went back and forth between Luke’s eyes and the wood. “But what if … perhaps I am not strong enough? What if I make it worse … I don’t want to … why don’t you do it?” She was starting to panic.

“Chung Su, listen! I won’t be able to do it in one pull. All you need to do is smoothly pull it, a bit of strength and it will come out.” Luke knew that in films when someone has something sticking out of them they just grit their teeth and pull, but the reality was very different. The body would fight itself, it would take someone else to pull with no regard to the pain.

“Do it!” Luke insisted.

Chung Su nodded and turned so her feet were out of the car and she was sat at the right height to yank out the shard. She lightly placed both hands on the wood.

“One, two, three!”

Luke raised his voice as he said the number three in anticipation of the pain. Chung Su suppressed a scream as she tensed her arms and pulled up. The pain shot up Luke’s leg. Involuntarily he leant over and smashed his palms on the frame of the car, gritting his teeth. Chung Su kept pulling and felt the shard slip and then smoothly move up and out. She fell back slightly as it came free and was presented with a blood-soaked stump. Throwing it out onto the floor she sat with her head in her hands.

The pain was so intense that Luke was sweating in the freezing air; he had to keep it together as the next part had to happen fast. Without warning, he pulled down his borrowed jeans. The wound would have been barely visible had it not been for the fresh oxygenated blood seeping out; it was a thin wound but very deep. He heard Chung Su make a retching noise behind her hand.

Luke kept hold of the waistband of his jeans with one hand and placed the bubble wrap on the wound with the other, pressing hard. Sliding his jeans back over the wound awkwardly, he quickly moved his hand back to keep the pressure on. He then motioned to Chung Su to pass the cord.

“You need a hospital.” Chung Su spoke quietly, as if that would soothe things.

She was right, the makeshift tourniquet would not be a permanent solution, but he hoped it would stem the blood flow for long enough for him to decide a plan of action. His brain was not as lucid as he wanted, a fog was building.

“They want you dead,” Luke said calmly.

“Is he …?” Chung Su’s voice faltered.

“Dead.”

She let out a whimper. “But that was Brun’s house, that wasn’t for me …”

“They want you both dead. I was lucky enough to get in the middle.”

“Who are
they
?” Chung Su asked.

“I don’t know, but they will be connected to the men who came for you at the Observatory.”

Luke gritted his teeth and propped himself up on his knees, facing into the passenger seat. “I think now is finally the time to tell me the whole truth … you are here for more than finding out what happened to Vittorio. What do you know?”

Chung Su looked up past Luke’s shoulder, the expression on her face didn’t change. She wanted to be back in her own country, with people she knew, the safety of theoretical experimentation, exploring nothing more dangerous than sub-atomic reactions in a controlled environment …
a controlled environment,
the thought aroused a distant irony. As though someone else were guiding her she focused back on Luke’s eyes. No longer feeling in control of her hands she felt them raise up and press against his cheeks; his growing stubble felt rough against her palms. No longer was she enveloped with a need to close up, to defend, she put herself first, her immediate need … the need to talk.

“You are right …” she was searching to remember the real name he had offered. “Luke.” She took her hands away from his face. “I am not tasked with just finding out what happened to Professor Vittorio. I love my country, we are aware of the contempt that many around the world feel for us, but this does not change the fact we could achieve greatness if we were allowed.”

Luke listened in silence.

Chung Su could feel the barriers crumbling; her body was in shock, words fell out, she was numb to their taste. “Why should we not live with the same freedom that is granted to you? Answer me! Why can’t we look for the same advancements to improve our world? We heard about the work that Vittorio was undertaking. The idea of the ghost particle had always fascinated us …”

“Chung Su, we have no time …” Luke needed the short version.

Understanding him, she jumped ahead. “We wanted to develop our own neutrino experiments. But we did not have the resources. We had the financial backing of the state but money was not enough. We didn’t have the minds. We couldn’t attract them, and besides the state would not allow us to bring people in from outside …”

She stepped up from the seat, the thoughts were tumbling and she felt confined. “There were calibrations to machinery I just couldn’t understand, and we had nothing to compare to, we had no idea what was happening here.” She was pacing up and down. “But our reports were showing that the possibility of measuring the particle could actually be a reality, and once we could measure it then …” she stopped short. “We rightly gave our update reports to the state, then gradually my superiors at our facility started making bigger and bigger breakthroughs. I know now that I ignored it on purpose, but those breakthroughs were not
our
breakthroughs.”

“They were coming from here,” Luke said.

Chung Su stopped pacing and stared at him, the freedom of letting go of the last piece came with a shot of embarrassment and shame. “Yes, we had sent state-sponsored agents into the Gran Sasso facility. They were tasked with feeding us back key information so we could replicate the experiment.”

Luke gingerly stood up. It didn’t take his mind long to start slotting the pieces together. “How far had you got?”

“We were using the nuclear reactions to produce the neutrino beams, but we couldn’t get the calibrations right to capture the data.”

“Are your agents still here?”

“I don’t know. That is what I must find out before I will be allowed to return. They disappeared some weeks ago. But the data they were giving us must have meant they worked at the heart of the OPERA team.”

Luke thought fast
. Where have they gone? Were they discovered? Who else was involved?
The past few days rattled through his mind, the attention Chung Su was receiving now made far more sense.

“I am sorry I did not tell you before, but I must serve my country. We could have created something great.”

Luke shook his head; he had nothing to say to her. He needed to outline a strategy.

“Why do you shake your head? Do you think it is only people in the West who can dream to change the world, to give it something so great.”

“They sent people here to steal information because they wanted to be the first, and by being the first they could own it, harness it and exploit it. And you know the first people who would have suffered? You … the North Korean people.”

Chung Su was getting angry, “Why must everything …”

“Shut up!” Luke snapped. “Do you have any idea where the agents went? Any trails at all that they informed you of before you came?”

Chung Su began crying, she knew nothing. “I thought Professor Brun might ...”

Luke gave a brittle laugh. “Well, someone found them. And whoever found them now wants to find you ...”

Chung Su could not contain her frustrations and fears any longer; she let out a scream. There was so much to take in, it was crushing, and the reality of almost dying was hitting home. Brun was dead and she would never see home again.

Luke closed his eyes and took a moment to breathe. “If this new OPERA discovery is as big as you say, then it has the power to cause devastation on a mass scale, that is a potent power for more than one regime around the world.”