Down: Trilogy Box Set (28 page)

“We must make haste.”

“What about the guards? Are they outside?”

“They are. That is what the knife is for.”

“I don’t like to kill innocent men.”

“No one here is innocent and you will not be killing them.”

“You know what I mean.”

“Use the knife or stay here. That is your choice. I cannot intervene further or my role will be discovered.”

John nodded and picked the knife off the bed. Forneau took the candle and announced through the door to the guards that he was ready to leave.

John followed right behind him and as soon as he was past the threshhold, he pushed the blade deep into one soldier’s throat and stomped down hard onto the soft boot of the other one. The second guard instinctively bent at the waist at the crunching pain and John thrust the knife into his belly, angling the blade toward the liver. In five seconds, it was done.

“I am impressed,” Forneau said, looking down at the exsanguinating bodies.

“I’m not proud of it,” John said.

“Well put. I believe our Italian friend will like you, monsieur.”

John followed Forneau down dimly lit corridors and dark staircases, through parts of the castle that seemed little used. Finally they arrived at a small, bolted door in a damp room reeking of the organic smells of the Seine. Forneau unbolted it and told John to proceed along the river until he got to a bridge. To avoid the guard post he would have to climb up one of the footings and crawl along the bridge to avoid detection. Once across his friends were waiting on the first lane to the right. He didn’t expect anyone to be out at this hour but if he was wrong, he had no doubt that John would be able to dispatch them. Lastly he handed John a cloth bag he had been carrying. Inside were John’s pistol and shot and his pocket watch.

John shook his hand in thanks. “Are you going to be all right?”

“My investigation will show that the guards foolishly opened the door and paid the price. In their state they will not be able to give evidence to the contrary.”

“Will Irina be all right?”

“Will any of us be all right?”

“Can I ask you for one more favor?” John asked. “Off the coast, at Calais, there’s a galleon at anchor, the
Hellfire
, commanded by an Englishman, a Captain Hawes. He’s a friend. He was going to wait for me for several days but it’s going to take much longer. Could you get a message to him that I’m going to be delayed?”

“How long would you ask him to linger?”

“I wish I could say. Another week? Two weeks? As long as he’s able, but I’ll understand if he has to sail on.”

“I will have this message delivered. Fare thee well, monsieur.”

John had no trouble getting to the bridge and climbing its structure. He heard the voices of palace guards a short distance away and crawled on his belly until he was halfway across the bridge and fully shrouded in darkness. The streets were deserted. Just as Forneau had said, Simon, Luca, and Antonio were waiting beside a large, closed-top automobile and when they saw him, Simon jumped in and began furiously hand-pumping the boiler.

John shook their hands and said, “I’ve never been so happy to see three dead guys.”

On the morning of the first scheduled MAAC restart since John Camp’s crossing, Henry Quint was in a foul mood. He had finessed Secretary Smithwick’s call for his resignation but how long could he hold on? And any hope for a potentially clean exchange, Camp and Loughty for Woodbourne and Duck, possibly was dashed by the failure to locate Woodbourne.

With only an hour to go he called Trevor and Ben Wellington to his office hoping that they might produce a rabbit from a hat but their glum looks confirmed the bad news.

“Sorry,” Trevor said. “Still nothing.”

Quint didn’t offer them chairs. “Unbelievable. Let me ask you something, Mr. Wellington. Is the MI5 so incompetent that it can’t find a dead man who smells like a rotten piece of meat in your own backyard?”

Ben kept his cool and replied, “Woodbourne could be anywhere. The Frasers’ car turned up torched in Manchester. Perhaps he’s there, perhaps not. There have been no sightings. He could be anywhere really. We are in the midst of the largest manhunt in Britain’s history with every police force in the land and a significant number of our service personnel allocated to the hunt. It is unfortunate that we haven’t found him by this first deadline, but we will find him.”

“And if you don’t?”

“There are many uncertainties in this operation. We have no idea if Camp is alive and functional, whether he has a prayer of finding Dr. Loughty, and if so, whether they can muster back to the critical location.”

Quint sneered at the deflection. “I have to wonder if the FBI would be more effective than your outfit?”

Ben stiffened at the question. “We’ll never know, will we?”

“Maybe yes, maybe no. I’ve asked Leroy Bitterman to float the idea of sending an FBI team from Washington. The prime minister might decide not to refuse a gift horse from the president of the United States.”

“A bit higher than my pay grade,” Ben said stiffly.

“Yes it is.” Quint stood. “I’ll see you gentlemen downstairs.”

Duck was refusing to get out of bed. His minder, Delia, already tiring of spending a week in a windowless suite with him, was anxious to get him moving. On her second visit to his room that morning she had reapplied some of her own strong perfume to counter his unpleasant odor, and had gently grabbed his foot through the bedding.

“Come on now, Duck. It’s well past time. You don’t want to be missing your breakfast now, do you?”

From under the duvet he replied, “I don’t want to go.”

“We’ve been through that, my dear. You don’t have a choice, I’m afraid. You’ve got to go back to your own place.”

“But I like it ’ere. I like the vids and the cartoons and the grub I get. And I like you too.”

“Well, that’s well and good, and I like you too, but we’re on a bit of a tight schedule. If I have to fetch a couple of the men to get you up then you won’t have a chance to get your favorite brekkies.”

A head popped from the covers. “Pancakes?”

“With butter and hot syrup, a huge stack. And if you hurry, I think I can arrange for bacon too.”

He threw off the covers revealing a morning erection.

Delia clucked at him, “I do wish you’d wear the pajamas we’ve given you.”

Matthew Coppens was progressing through the start-up protocol and the control room was bustling with activity. In the back row a VIP section had been cordoned off and at 9:40 a.m. the doors opened and Quint came in with Secretaries Smithwick and Bitterman, and Sir George Lawrence. Shortly afterwards, Ben and Trevor led in the bulk of the armed MI5 security detachment. The rest of the agents were posted outside of Duck’s room, waiting to accompany him down to the control-room level.

Lawrence was irritated that his smart phone didn’t have good reception below ground. He shoved it into the jacket pocket of his bespoke suit and asked for a probability ranking of scenarios.

Quint was about to answer when Bitterman pulled rank and took up the task. “There’s no way to assign probabilities because we have insufficient data. Therefore, I would give all outcomes an equal weighting. One: Camp and Loughty are both at the right place at the right time, and based on what we suspect is a kind of operational parity, only one of them is traded for the boy. Two: only one of them is in place and that one is traded. Three: neither of them is in place and nothing happens. Four: another resident of that world happens by at the moment and is traded for the boy. Of course there are other scenarios, but based on the few things we know, I would think these are the most likely.”

“Still can’t wrap my head around this business,” Lawrence said.

Duck was dressed in his favorite togs, a red Liverpool Football Club training suit and sneakers, sitting on his bed and shedding tears.

“Come now, my dear, it’s time to go,” Delia said. “You’ve had a lovely nosh and everyone’s waiting on you downstairs.”

“I don’t want to go!”

“I understand but you don’t have a choice. They’ll put the cuffs on and carry you if you won’t go on your own power.”

“Let ’em try.”

Delia stood and smoothed her ever-present cardigan over her wide hips. “Look, Duck, I didn’t want to say this as not to get your hopes up, but they’ve told me they think there’s only a very small chance that this will send you back today.”

He wiped the snot from his nose. “Really?”

“Really. And if you behave, when you come back to your room I’ll make sure you get chocolate ice cream. All you can eat.”

At 9:45 Duck followed Delia and his minders through the control room door and all eyes were glued to the young man as he was led to the well of the theater. Delia told him he had to stand on the taped X on the carpet and he obeyed, fidgeting and nervously looking at the scientists in before him and the monitors behind.

“Could you do cartoons on those?” he asked Delia who was sitting nearby in the first tier of seats.

“I don’t think so. It would distract all these nice people from their jobs.”

Smithwick leaned over to Bitterman and whispered, “To think, we could have learned so much if we’d snagged someone with gravitas as opposed to this idiotic boy.”

Bitterman shrugged, “What are you going to do?”

Matthew had been instructed to keep the countdown and scientific chatter muted so as not to spook the boy. At T-minus-one-minute he quietly authorized the particle guns to be injected and in an equally quiet tone called out the rising collision energies.

The elliptical map began showing the protons looping around London.

Duck swiveled his neck and asked what that was and Delia told him it was like a cartoon, one he quickly characterized as boring.

At 25 TeV, Duck began straying off his X, causing a ripple of panic throughout the room but Delia saved the day by sternly saying, “Back on the mark, Duck. Right now or they’ll be no ice cream for you.”

Matthew said, “Twenty-six TeV, twenty-seven, twenty-eight, twenty-nine, thirty TeV. Steady, steady…”

The proton beams kept looping around the ellipse.

“Maintaining at thirty,” Matthew said.

Duck was still there.

Matthew turned toward Quint and pointed to his watch.

“Give it a little longer,” Quint said.

Duck looked like he was going to wander off but Delia talked him into staying still.

A minute passed. Two minutes.

Quint signaled his intention to Matthew with a cutthroat gesture and Matthew ordered a power-down.

Duck looked around, blinking. “Do I have to keep standing ’ere?” he asked.

Matthew told him he could relax and Delia went to his side to collect him.

Duck grinned at her and asked, “When I’m ’aving me ice cream, can I watch the pirate vid I like?”

Trevor was dreading the meeting because it dredged up all the worst memories he’d had as a policeman and a soldier—telling a loved one the bad news about a casualty. He had thought he would never have to do something like that again but he’d been wrong. After avoiding Dr. Loughty’s sister for the better part of a week, it was time to face the music.

The VIPs had departed, Duck was happily back in his quarters, and there was nothing new on Woodbourne, so there was no last-minute excuse to postpone the meeting.

He was in his office when the front desk called to let him know she had arrived, but he already knew that from the security camera feed. He was surprised she was not alone. There were two small children with her, a boy and a girl. He left his sidearm in a desk drawer and went to reception to fetch her.

“Hi there,” he said with a small wave and a reserved smile, “I’m Trevor Jones.”

She was younger than Emily, a little shorter, not quite as lithe, but there was no mistaking the family ties. Her hair was loose and shoulder length, her skin as fair as her sister’s. He found her very pretty.

“Arabel Duncan.” Even the lilt of her Scottish accent was similar.

“Pleased to meet you. I didn’t know you were bringing your kids.”

“Sorry. No sitter.”

Trevor dropped to a knee and asked the girl, “What’s your name?”

The boy, who was four and bossy by nature, pushed his sister aside and said that his name was Sam and his sister was Belle. Arabel intervened to break up the ensuing squabble and apologized.

“Not a problem,” Trevor said. “Would it be helpful if I found a lady to look after them while we talked?”

“Could you?”

“Phil?” Trevor asked one of the guards, “Could you ring down to Delia May to see if she could come up to the lobby for a few minutes to mind the kids?”

In his office Trevor poured her a coffee and sat her down. He wanted to draw out the small talk as long as he could but he could only go so far without looking and sounding foolish or inappropriate. She apologized again for bringing the children, mumbled something about the unreliability of sitters and when he clumsily asked whether her husband was at work, she informed him he’d been killed in a road accident on the continent two years earlier.

His wince let her know he regretted the question. “I’m awfully sorry.”

She was quick to say, “Please don’t apologize,” but he looked supremely uncomfortable.

He absently ran his hand over his close-cropped hair. “So, you’ll be wanting to know what’s going on with your sister.”

“Of course I do. I’m worried sick. My parents are worried sick. We all thought after being visited by some government lawyer and signing the Official Secrets Act that we’d be told the score but that didn’t happen. I’m hoping you can tell me what happened and how she is.”

He cleared his throat. “Please tell me what you’ve been told already.”

“Only that there was some kind of trouble on the day of the MAAC experiment, that there was an armed intruder and when the collider was shut down prematurely that there was a radiation leak that affected Emily. We were told she’s in quarantine and unable to speak with us. That’s all we were told.” She began to cry. “I think she’s dead and no one will say. Please, Mr. Jones, is she dead?”