Down: Trilogy Box Set (53 page)

A left to the jaw knocked Quint out cold.

Emily wouldn’t leave John’s side.

He was on a stretcher in the MAAC infirmary down the hall from the control room, getting IV fluids. The doctor was making a call to arrange for his transfer to London to receive surgery and antibiotics.

Emily asked whether she might have a coffee, adding, “It’s something I’ve been craving.”

Just then she felt something in her pocket. The drawing Caravaggio had made of her had survived the passage. She quickly looked at it and folded it away.

That’s when Trevor remembered Arabel. It was ten thirty-five. “Christ, I forgot. I’ve got Arabel and the kids in the canteen.”

“They’re here?” Emily asked.

“Stay put,” Trevor said. “I’ll bring her in. She’s going to be over the moon.”

He jogged down the hall to the canteen, threw the door open, then reached for his sidearm in terror and confusion.

Arabel was gone. The kids were gone. Delia was gone.

In their stead, four smelly, filthy, and frightened men were there, huddled in the corner by the vending machines.

Alfred, the largest man, began to move forward aggressively, prompting Trevor to fire a shot into the ceiling. Alfred slunk back to the corner. Trevor pulled his walkie-talkie and gave a mayday call.

Ben and his men rushed in and handcuffed the men while Trevor tried in vain to compose himself.

“They’re gone, Ben, they’re fucking gone. What have I done? Why did I bring Arabel and the kids down here?”

Ben started to say something soothing but his phone rang. He took the call when he saw where it was coming from. He listened, said a few words in reply and put the phone back in his pocket.

“That was HQ,” Ben said. “The police are just now reporting a major incident in South Ockendon, about ten miles from here.”

Trevor seemed to know what Ben was going to say. “I know the place. The MAAC tunnels run under it.”

“Apparently a number of residents of a housing estate have been reported missing and at the same time, numerous strangers have been seen to be rampaging through the estate.”

Emily looked up in anticipation when Trevor and Ben came into the infirmary but she became crestfallen at the sight of Trevor’s grief-stricken face.

She couldn’t bring herself to speak so John asked for her, “What’s the matter? Where’s her sister?”

“We’ve got a problem, guv,” Trevor said, his voice quavering.

“What is it?” John asked.

Emily understood right away. “She’s gone, isn’t she?”

Trevor nodded.

“The children too?”

Trevor nodded. “And another woman who was with them.”

“Why on Earth did you bring them here?” she cried. “The energy fields are too unstable.”

“It was my mistake,” Trevor said, mournfully. “It’s on me.”

Ben had snapped a photo of the four men in the canteen on his mobile phone. He showed it to John and Emily.

“Yeah, they were there,” John said. “A few yards from us.”

“Same spot as the canteen, I expect,” Ben said. “We’ve also learned that a short while ago, a number of civilians disappeared about ten miles north of us, from a town lying over the MAAC tunnel. Numerous strangers are reported in the area.”

Emily began to weep. Before anyone could stop him, John ripped the IV from his arm and was standing next to her, holding her by the waist.

“My God,” Emily said, looking up into his sad eyes. “I’ve got to go back.”

“Mummy, where are we?”

When he didn’t get a reply, four-year-old Sam repeated the question more insistently.

His sister, Belle, a year younger, began to cry.

Their mother, Arabel, didn’t have an answer and could only stare in mute shock, for one moment they had been in the canteen at the MAAC supercollider in Dartford, England waiting hopefully to be reunited with Arabel’s sister, Emily Loughty, and the next moment they were someplace very different. But the other woman had a sick inkling where they were. Delia May quickly snatched Belle into her arms and whispered for her to be a good girl and try to keep still.

They were inside a small house, not much larger than a garden shed. With its earthen floor, small hearth, a few measly sticks aglow, and a rank game bird hanging on a hook, it was rougher than most garden sheds. Sam began to cough from the smoky atmosphere and Delia urgently shushed him. There were loud voices outside and Delia, holding the little girl, crept to a window covered by unlatched shutters which were clattering in the breeze. She pushed one of the shutters open a few inches and peered out. Even though she thought she understood what was happening, she caught her breath at the sight. There in the middle of a muddy road, a short distance away, was Duck, her young charge for the past month. He was naked and a much larger man she instantly recognized as Brandon Woodbourne was throttling him. Another young man began beating Woodbourne’s back with a club and soon a motley assortment of other men joined in the melee and Woodbourne ran off, cursing and shouting.

Just then Sam noticed the hanging bird, took a step toward it and began to giggle.

“Look, mum. My trousers fell down.”

His denim jeans were around his ankles and his underpants, lacking elastic, were about to fall from his waist too.

Arabel felt at her own clothes. Her skirt was loose and zipperless, absent buttons her shirt was half-open, and her bra, missing its hooks was flapping underneath. She finally spoke in a trembling voice. “Please, can you tell me what’s happening?”

“We must stay very quiet,” Delia said, standing away from the window. “I think we’re in the place where your sister’s been.”

“I don’t have any idea what you mean,” Arabel said. “I demand to know what’s going on. Where’s the canteen? Where’s the laboratory? Have we been drugged?”

“Keep your voice down,” Delia implored, but Arabel would not be mollified.

There was a wooden door secured by a simple wooden latch. Arabel went for it. When Delia tried to stop her she pushed the older woman aside, undid the latch, and flung the door open hard enough that it loudly struck the side of the house.

Arabel stared out in shock. She repeated the same question as her young son, “Where are we?”

Delia roughly pulled her back inside and latched the door. She knew where they were but she couldn’t make herself say the word. She couldn’t because to say it was to make it real.

She couldn’t say, “Hell.”

John Camp awoke in pain and momentary confusion in a surgical recovery suite at the Royal London Hospital. A rotund male nurse was checking his blood pressure and appeared to aim a chuckle in his direction which confused John even more. As it happened, the nurse had just been told about the curious instructions John had given the surgeons moments before the anesthesia kicked in.

“Make sure you use double or triple the number of stitches as usual,” John had told them.

“And why is that?” he had been asked through a surgical mask.

“I can’t tell you,” John had said. “Just do it. The wound needs to be strong.”

“Welcome back,” the nurse said.

John blinked. His voice was thin and raspy, his vocal chords like sandpaper. “What’s so funny?”

“Funny? Nothing. Nothing at all. The operation’s over. You did just fine.”

“Operation? Oh yeah, I remember. Fuck.” He grimaced.

“Pain?”

John nodded.

“I’ll just get you a jab of morphine.”

With the narcotic coursing through his system he nodded off and began to dream.

The dream was about Hell.

He was trapped inside a fetid rotting room, pounding on the locked door. Solomon Wisdom was on the other side, telling him he could not let him out. No one could. It was his fate. Then Thomas Cromwell was standing beside him, knee deep in human flesh, informing him that King Henry was very cross with John, very cross indeed.

“Will you repent?” Cromwell asked.

“I repent.”

Through the door Wisdom laughed, “Repent all you want. It matters not. What’s done is done.”

When John awoke again he was in a private room in a ward. The window glowed orange in the sunset. Emily had been waiting by his bed and when she saw his eyes flutter open she tried to envelop one of his large hands with her small one.

“How’re you feeling?” she asked.

“Worse than before.”

“I talked to your surgeon. They made a good-sized incision to clean out the infection. That drip is your antibiotics, two of them, actually, until they get the culture results from your wound.”

“Bad bugs in Hell, I guess,” John said, searching for the bed controls.

Emily found the box and raised him up to a more comfortable position.

“Better?”

“Better,” he said. He asked for ice chips and she spooned some into his mouth. “What were you up to while I was getting my insides cleaned out?” he asked.

“I was in the lab going over data.”

“And?”

“I’m sure Matthew is right. The high collision energies produced strangelets and gravitons in surprising abundance. The interaction between the two must account for the phenomenon.”

“Phenomenon. That’s one of the greatest euphemisms of all times.”

“Well, you know the way we scientists tend to speak.”

“Is there a count yet?”

“A count?”

“How many people are missing.”

“Four from Dartford. Arabel, the children, and Delia, the MI5 lady. South Ockendon’s still a muddle. They haven’t caught any of the Hellers who entered there.”

He waved off more ice chips. “What a fuck up.”

Emily nodded and dabbed at her eyes with a tissue. “I can’t bear to think what Arabel and the kids are going through. They must be so scared.”

“Dirk isn’t a bad kid, relatively speaking. I’m hoping he’s helping them. And his brother’s got to be there too. Trevor told me Duck bonded with Delia May. She’ll know we’ll be mounting a rescue effort.”

Emily nodded. “I know. I talked to Trevor this afternoon. He also told me he’d been seeing Arabel during the past month.”

“Really?”

“Seems he fancies her. He’s as worried as I am.”

“Well, he’s a good man. It wouldn’t surprise me if he volunteered for the mission.”

Emily crumpled the tissue and put it in her handbag. “I don’t want you to go, John.”

He stifled an incipient laugh because it hurt too much. “I don’t want
you
to go.”

“I didn’t just have surgery. I don’t have a life-threatening infection.”

“I’ll be okay in a few days. I heal fast. I’m a soldier, Emily. This is what I do. You were amazing. I’m proud of how you were able to survive but you’re a scientist. You need to stay here and figure out how to fix the problem. You do what you do best and I’ll do what I do best.”

“I’m sorry, John, but I’m going. If Arabel, Sam, and Belle hadn’t been caught up in this then I would never voluntarily go back. But I won’t be put off. You know how stubborn I am. My mind is made up.”

“Well, I’m not changing my mind either.”

They smiled at each other. It was settled.

The large executive conference room at the Massive Anglo-American Collider at Dartford was filling up for the 8 a.m. meeting. There was no pre-assigned seating and participants instinctively sorted themselves according to their own perceived importance. Leroy Bitterman and Karen Smithwick, the US and UK energy secretaries, took prime chairs at the head of the table. Close to them were Campbell Bates, the FBI director, and George Lawrence, the director general of MI5. Ben Wellington from MI5 sat beside Trevor Jones. Senior scientists at MAAC, including Matthew Coppens and David Laurent, and Stuart Binford, head of the lab’s public affairs department, rounded out the assembly. Henry Quint came in and assumed the empty seat at the head had been saved for him. When he approached it, Smithwick waved him off and with his eyes cast downward in embarrassment, he took a chair against the wall.

Ben leaned toward Trevor and said, “Is John Camp being patched into this?”

“I don’t think so,” Trevor said. “He’s having some kind of scan this morning.”

“Where’s Dr. Loughty?”

Trevor scanned the room. “I’d better find her.”

She was at her desk, staring at something.

“Hey there,” Trevor said gently, sitting down. “Just wanted to let you know the meeting’s starting.”

She responded to his attempt at a bright smile with a worn-out sigh. “I lost track of time. I suppose I’ve gotten out of the habit of clock watching.”

“Yeah, I can understand that.”

She gave her telephone a weary look. “I was just talking to my parents.”

“How’d that go?”

“They’re so confused. They’re happy I’m all right, of course, but they’re devastated that Arabel and the kids have gone missing now.”

“What’d you tell them?”

“Am I talking to Trevor, a friend, or Trevor, the deputy-head of security?”

“Friend.”

“I strayed from the script. I had to.”

“How far did you go?”

“Believe me, I didn’t use the word Hell once. I called it another dimension, that MAAC opened a passageway to another dimension. I told them we’d get Arabel, Sam, and Belle back.”

“Did they believe you?”

“I don’t know. They were too scared to ask a lot of questions.”

“Just so you’re aware, they signed the Official Secret’s Act.”

“I know.”

“Did you tell them you were going back?”

“Not yet, but I will. I have to.”

“We’ve got to go to the meeting.” When he stood, he saw what she’d been staring at. It was the charcoal drawing Caravaggio had sketched of her. “That’s a good likeness,” he said.

She placed it in her top drawer. “I’m quite fond of it.”

The meeting began when Emily and Trevor arrived. Matthew had a seat saved next to him. Emily knew everyone except for the man sitting between Bitterman and Smithwick. He had a pugnacious, florid face, which seemed ballooned owing to an overly tight collar and tie knot. She asked Matthew about him but he didn’t know him either.

Trevor was asking the same thing of Ben.

“His name’s Trotter. Anthony Trotter. He’s MI6. Word is the prime minister wanted him involved. Guess what the lads in MI6 call him?”