Authors: Nic Bennett
“Go! Go! Go!” Jonah’s father shouted.
“Gun!” Jonah shouted back. Still on his knees, Jonah scooped up the computer and dive-rolled down the stairs past his father.
David Lightbody never paused. He propelled himself upward in a kind of Superman-flying pose, his right arm stretched outward, his fingers knifing into the attacker’s throat. The man made a
choking sound as David slammed him to the ground, forcing the gun from his hand so that it bounced down the stairs past Jonah. Jonah watched as his father swung his head back and drove it down hard into the man’s face. He heard the sound of cracking bone and saw his father roll off the now immobilized attacker. Suddenly, his dad was back on his feet and running down the stairs, two steps at a time. He picked up the fallen gun without breaking his stride and grabbed Jonah on his way past.
Together they made their way down the final flights of stairs and out of the hotel to a narrow street that ran along the east side of the building. Twenty yards to their left was an illegally parked, nondescript small car. Jonah’s father unlocked the car remotely as they ran toward it, pushing Jonah toward the passenger side. As soon as they had both dived into their seats, David started the engine and accelerated south toward the main road, ignoring the red traffic light as he swung the car left into the traffic.
Behind them the man Jonah had shot appeared at the fire-escape door they had just exited. He gasped for breath, his right hand gripping the top of his left arm to apply pressure to the wound. The man’s expression steeled as soon as he noticed the car’s taillights in the distance. He reached into his right pocket and pulled out his cell phone. He tapped the touch screen and spoke, holding the phone a small distance from his mouth. “East side. Pick me up now. Fast.”
He hit the screen a second time and looked at the image that appeared, a blinking dot overlaid onto a street map, moving away from him. The tracker was still live. He replaced the phone in his pocket and leaned against the wall, breathing deeply. For a moment
he grimaced in pain, causing his mustache to turn upward at the ends. He looked at the blood on his right hand, tested it by rubbing his thumb against his fingers, and then wiped the whole of his hand on his black leather coat.
A motorcycle hurtled around the north corner onto the street, long blonde hair visible under the rider’s helmet. She pulled up next to the man, and he climbed into the sidecar with surprising nimbleness.
“Straight ahead and turn left,” he ordered. “He’s cracked the security. They have the Apollyon files. We must not lose them.”
Part One
LONDON
FOUR YEARS EARLIER
Jonah Lightbody was
twelve years old when he discovered what he wanted to be when he grew up. He wanted to work on the trading floor of one of the big banks in London or New York. He wanted to make millions, wear a suit, and drive a fast car.
It all started during the summer holidays. He was home from boarding school, alone and bored. All his schoolmates were away with their families or playing with “homemates.” Jonah didn’t have homemates. And he might as well have not had a family. His parents were divorced and he lived with his father, a dour, distant figure who worked long hours and traveled a lot. As for as his mom, Jonah hadn’t seen her since she’d fled to America to start her “new life” three years previously. The au pair was the nearest thing Jonah had to family or a homemate, and she was more interested in entertaining her new boyfriend than entertaining Jonah.
Then, two weeks before the end of the holidays, he found a memo from Helsby, Cattermole, & Partners sitting on the kitchen
counter. His dad must have left it there when he had been angrily throwing the contents of his briefcase about the previous night trying to find his passport. Jonah knew that he probably shouldn’t snoop, but the memo’s subject line was “Re: Take Your Children to Work Day,” so in a way he supposed that it was meant for him. After all, Helsby Cattermole was the bank where his dad worked, and Jonah was his only child. As soon as Jonah read the memo in full, the wheels of his mind began spinning. The opportunity to spend the day at his dad’s office might be what he’d been looking for: If he visited him at work, the two of them might actually have something to talk about.
Of course his dad said no at first, but Jonah didn’t let that stop him. He nagged and nagged until he got the answer he wanted.
Now the day had arrived, and Jonah was bouncing off the walls with anticipation. Even the ringing of his alarm clock at five thirty
A.M.
failed to dim his excitement. He was going to spend a whole day with his dad. Just the two of them. At his office!
He jumped out of bed, got himself dressed, ran downstairs to have breakfast and back upstairs to brush his teeth and grab his shoes. “Have you seen my other shoe, Dad?” he yelled, charging back down the stairs, holding a single black loafer up high in his left hand.
“No,” said David Lightbody, standing by the front door, his foot tapping on the ground. It was now six fifteen, ten minutes later than he usually left for work.
“Urgh. I can’t figure out where I left it,” Jonah said, now rummaging through the pile of shoes that they left by the front door.
“Where did you find the other one?” The tone of David’s voice was not sympathetic.
“By my bed,” said Jonah, still rifling through the mountain of discarded footwear.
“Did you look
under
the bed?”
Jonah stopped searching, his stomach dropping. “No,” he answered. His dad always had a way of making him feel foolish despite his continued efforts to impress him. Jonah swallowed. “I’ll be really quick!” he said as he dashed back upstairs and returned seconds later with the other shoe to find that his dad had already exited the house.
“Shut the door after you and get a move on,” David shouted over his shoulder.
Jonah slid on his shoe and chased after his father, slamming the front door behind him, his sandy blond hair dipping into his eyes. When he caught up, he still had to skip every few steps to keep pace. His recent growth spurt and forays onto the school track team were still no match for his father’s broad, six-foot frame and long stride.
“Are we walking all the way to the tube station, Dad?” Jonah asked.
His father nodded without turning around, his gray trench coat swishing as he walked even faster.
“Do you always walk?” Jonah added.
“Yes,” grunted David.
“Isn’t it kind of far?”
“No,” came the blunt reply.
“Oh, okay,” Jonah answered, now trotting, and added timidly, “Err, could you slow down a bit?”
His father halted abruptly and looked down, his ice-blue eyes
boring into Jonah. “We’re late, Jonah. Thanks to you. It’s you who wants to come to my work, so we move at my pace, not yours. Understand?” Without waiting for a reply, he marched on, once more staring straight ahead.
Jonah winced and resigned himself to trotting in silence all the way from their narrow three-story townhouse, along the River Thames to Hammersmith Bridge, and across the river to the underground station.
Not a great start
, he thought as he looked around. He’d never been out this early in the morning. The sun had only just risen but there were already a large number of cars and bicycles on the road, and he could taste the bitter flavor of pollution on his tongue as they streamed past. He felt very grown up; there were no other children outside at this hour.
At the station Jonah’s mind again fizzed with curiosity:
Which line were they taking? Which station were they going to? How long would the trip take?
But when he opened his mouth to ask these questions, he was immediately discouraged by David’s repeated tapping of his foot as they stood in the line to buy Jonah a ticket. He tried again when they eventually took their seats on the underground train, but his father buried his head in his salmon-colored newspaper—the masthead read
Financial Times
—making Jonah worry that disturbing him might cause him to send him back home to the au pair.
Finally, as they emerged from the Cannon Street tube station and headed for a café opposite St. Paul’s Cathedral, Jonah’s father spoke. “I’m going to buy a coffee. Would you like something?” he asked, pushing open the door to the shop.
“Yes, I’ll have a coffee too,” Jonah said, grateful that the silence
had at last been broken. He stepped behind his father in line, leaning away from the people surging past him with hot drinks in their hands.
“You don’t drink coffee,” said David, cocking his head.
“I do when I go to work,” Jonah replied, pleased that his choice had commanded a response.
“Anything in particular?” his dad asked, his attention now on the apparently indecisive woman in front of them in line. He raised his finger, looking like he was about to tap her on the back and complain to her directly, but he decided the better of it, his foot drumming out its beat of irritation once more.
Nearly thirty seconds later, Jonah heard the woman finally order something along the lines of a “Venti skinny Caffè Misto extra hot.” Whatever that was, it made no sense to Jonah. The chalk-written menu was no help either. Were these things even drinks? All of a sudden, an image came to Jonah’s mind. He must have been no more than five years old in the memory, but he could clearly recall his father dipping his mouth into his coffee mug—so that his lips were covered with foam—and making faces that made him and Jonah giggle. It was probably the last time he had seen his dad laugh.
A few seconds later, the woman in front of them stepped away, having finally finished her order. It was David Lightbody’s turn.
“I want a frothy one like you,” Jonah announced.
David raised his eyebrows at Jonah and turned to the brunette behind the counter. “Two cappuccinos please.”
“Cappuccino. Cappuccino,” Jonah said to himself as they waited for their drinks to be made, enjoying the shapes his mouth made
while forming the word. “Cap-ooo-chee-no. Cap-oooo-chino. Caaap …”
He was in mid-sentence when David handed him the coffee, gave him a withering look, and pointed outside. “Come on. We’ll drink while we walk. We haven’t got time to sit down.”
Shoot
, thought Jonah as he held the white cup by its cardboard holder and eyed the drink warily. Hot chocolate was as far as he’d gone on the hot beverage front, and then he usually only consumed the whipped cream that was squirted on top. He brought the cup slowly to his mouth as they marched off down a narrow lane, his tongue searching for the hole in its lid. There was no discernable odor. He began to tip the cup upward slowly. Suddenly his tongue was burning, then his bottom lip, and then the roof of his mouth. The coffee had come out much quicker and was much hotter than he had expected, and he tipped the cup back upright quickly to stop the flow. He checked to see that none had spilt on his white button-down shirt and only now began to get a sense of taste inside his mouth. Until today, everything he had drunk had been sweet: fruit juice, Coke, energy drinks, milkshakes. This was bitter and dry. It wasn’t unpleasant, but it wasn’t pleasant either. He took another sip, this time rolling the fluid around his mouth, cooling it, testing it. His tongue was working hard, savoring the sweetness of the chocolate that had been sprinkled on top.
Suddenly, he was intensely aware of his surroundings. Everything was louder than a minute ago. Images were sharper. Jonah noticed it all—a bus spat and hissed, a dog barked, a petite lady spoke with a foreign accent. There were people everywhere—crossing the road, striding along the pavement, staring out of the
windows of the bus. It was a level of acute awareness like Jonah had never experienced. If this was what it was like to drink coffee, Jonah could understand why adults seemed to throw back one cup after another in a relentless stream.
“What do you think of the coffee?” his father inquired, seemingly shouting.
“Makes you buzzy,” Jonah answered, and riding his caffeinated high followed up immediately with, “So why don’t you tell me what we’re going to do today?”
His father’s eyes narrowed. “Look, I don’t want you to get your hopes up. You’re not going to be able to do much. There are rules, you know?”
“Uh-huh,” Jonah grunted as a wailing police siren invaded his father’s sermon-like drone. There were always rules.
“You will have to be quiet as there is a lot of money at stake.”
“Yes, Dad,” said Jonah, wanting to say that he’d asked what they
were
going to do, not what they
weren’t
going to do. He took another swig of the coffee, practically stamping through the puddles that were still left on the street from the previous night’s rainstorm.
“Just sit and watch and listen. You’ll probably be the only kid there. I doubt anyone else will bring their children in. They haven’t before.”
Enough!
thought Jonah and stopped mid-stride. “Dad, I get it. I’m twelve. I’m not a baby,” he said, puffing his chest out. “I won’t embarrass you. I only want to find out what you do all day. I think it might be interesting.”
“I … umm … uh,” Jonah’s father stammered, obviously taken aback. “Yeah. Sorry. You’re right. It will be a good … learning experience … for both of us.” One side of his mouth tipped upward
in a kind of half-smile, and the tension that had existed since they had left the house seemed to drain away. Jonah felt very pleased, if slightly surprised, with himself.
He looked at his cup of coffee.
Good stuff this
, he thought.
“Okay, let’s start again,” said David. “Let me tell you about the firm. We’re not the biggest player, but we’re very profitable. We do what we know, and we know how to do it well. Helsby, Cattermole, & Partners is …” Jonah tried to concentrate on what his father was saying, but the action around him was a constant intrusion: a man screaming on his cell phone, a newspaper salesman calling out the front-page headline.