First Horseman, The (24 page)

Jim had stopped trading seriously and resorted to playing at it instead. Money was a great thing to have a lot of, if you could keep it simple. The trouble was, money was like honey: it oozed and dripped and flowed so that pretty soon you were surrounded by an uncomfortably sticky mess. He closed out all his Dow shorts and wondered about trading some forex to keep himself occupied. He was feeling pretty tired.

The phone buzzed. It was Stafford. ‘We have a visitor.’

‘Who?’

‘It’s a taxi-cab and I think it might be Kate.’

‘Oh,’ said Jim, getting up from his desk. He hung up.

Kate was paying the driver when he trotted down the stairs. She seemed to be hunting in a purse. He waved at the man, who wound his window down. ‘I’ll get this,’ he said. ‘How much is it?’

‘Ninety-five pounds, boss,’ said the driver, with an element of satisfaction.

Stafford held out two fifty-pound notes past Jim. ‘Keep the change, driver,’ he said.

Jim walked swiftly around the car and opened the door for Kate, who was putting something into the tote bag Stafford had had delivered to the hospital a few hours earlier. She got out. ‘I didn’t know where else to go,’ she said apologetically.

‘That’s OK,’ said Jim. ‘How come they let you out?’

‘Nothing wrong with me,’ she said, shrugging. Her arm was bandaged. ‘Just stitches.’

‘Outrageous,’ remarked Stafford, behind them.

The minicab pulled away slowly and circled back.

‘You don’t mind, do you?’ she said. ‘I’ll—’

‘Of course not,’ said Jim. ‘I’ve got forty bedrooms here.’ He laughed.

‘It’s just—’

‘It’s fine.’ He took her bag from her.

‘I didn’t feel safe going home,’ she said, hunched up. ‘It’s right by the lab.’

‘Don’t worry,’ said Jim. ‘It’s fine, really, come in.’

‘I’m sorry.’

‘Sorry?’ said Jim. ‘I should be sorry for not coming to visit you in the hospital. I was going to in the morning. I mean, what was I thinking?’

Stafford took the bag from Jim.

‘No,’ she said. ‘I would have been embarrassed.’

Jim thought about that for a second. It didn’t make much sense to him. A few hours ago he had been freeing her, stark naked, from a makeshift operating table. Why would she be embarrassed by him visiting her in hospital? His brain struggled to compute. The markets were so much simpler than people. The markets went your way and you made money; if they went against you, you lost. There were no ifs and buts, no non-computes, no illogical results. People said things that were infinitely more inscrutable than any stock price ticking up or falling down on a trading screen. They said things that made no sense on so many levels that his brain would spin. How could anyone begin to understand people? How could an army of traders be so predictable when each individual was so obviously random?

‘Let’s get inside,’ he said, nearly putting his arm around her. He checked himself. ‘Hungry?’

‘A little,’ she replied.

‘How’s your arm?’

‘Sore, but fine,’ she said, as Stafford went through the front door.

She was looking at Jim with an expression he didn’t understand. He was unsure how to reply. ‘What?’ he said finally, for want of anything clever.

She blinked at him and smiled, then looked away from him to the front door. He followed her gaze and she looked back at him. He thought she was very beautiful in the soft light coming from the house. He raised his hand, acutely sensitive to her reaction, and stroked her cheek, as he had before. After a fraction of a moment she smiled.

It felt wrong but he was going to kiss her and she was probably going to shriek and run off down the drive. He leant forwards slowly and their lips met. Her eyes were closed. Her lips were warm and responded to his. His right arm was around her waist and he felt her embrace him.

Inside he could feel himself sighing. His loneliness was dissolving, like snow falling into water.

‘I’m sorry,’ she said, after an indeterminate period had elapsed.

He looked down at her. ‘No, I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘I shouldn’t have.’

‘It was nice.’

Nice, he thought. Fantastic, more like. ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘It was.’ She was looking at the door again.

‘Let’s go in,’ he said, taking her hand and leading the way.

Renton sat on the chair, his head in his hands. The effects of the serum had almost worn off. He had ruined everything. In the space of a few short hours he had destroyed his life, exposed the lab and become a fugitive. There was no way back for him now. He was a non-person, completely dependent on Cardini for haven and sustenance.

What would Cardini do when he returned and found out? Would he forgive him? Would he shelter him? Would he do him to death? He wouldn’t mind so much if Cardini killed him. His life was over. What kind of sentence would they give him for what he had done to the girl – and what if they found out about the others? He’d be banged up for life. He was crying silently, occasionally snivelling into a large tissue.

They would be searching his home now, rifling through his drawers, tearing up his carpet, collecting all his implements. They would have seized his computer and soon be trying to unencrypt all his hard drives. They must have ways of breaking into them, he thought, sobbing. Would they be able to piece together his life from them? Would they be able to find his servers and their contents, get access to them? Would they bother?

Someone was entering the building. He wiped his eyes and blew his congested nose.

He shook. It was Cardini.

Renton jumped up and ran for the door. He dashed up the hallway. Cardini was at the end of the corridor.

‘Master,’ screamed Renton, running, arms held aloft. He threw himself at Cardini’s feet. ‘Master,’ he wept.

‘You wretch, what have you done?’ boomed Cardini.

‘Forgive me,’ wailed Renton. ‘Forgive me.’

‘Why are you still here?’ Cardini delivered a kick that sent Renton backwards. ‘Go to my office immediately. I will hear your account there.’

Renton was slumped in front of Cardini, distraught and defeated.

The report had sounded plausible. Renton had gone to deal with the girl and she had escaped. That was extremely unfortunate and an unforgivable lapse on Renton’s part. Then he had followed her to Evans’s house. This had sent the police to the lab, a very unfortunate train of events but not necessarily one that would drag Cardini into it. Renton had then overdosed himself with the serum and become delirious, rather as Evans had, with his wild tales, on the plane. The revelation about the tunnels under the university was a new development. Cardini had been unaware that they existed and Renton had elucidated to him what had been in store down there for the girl.

All fiendishly clever but unhelpful.

How Evans had ended up down in the tunnels was beyond his ken, but it was the most worrying factor of all. Evans knew the location of his second secret facility, the THT lab, and it wasn’t a giant leap of deductive genius to place Renton there now. Renton risked exposing everything not only through his actions but his presence.

Renton was staring at him, the low light covering his long face in deep shadow. It had been many minutes since he had finished his tale and Cardini had said nothing.

Cardini picked up his mobile phone from his desktop. ‘Marius, I need a private flight from Cambridge to Cairo as soon as possible.’

‘Professor, our plane is at Gatwick right now. Can you meet it there?’

‘Certainly.’

‘I’ll email details.’

‘How is your project progressing?’

‘Well, sir, it’s all just a matter of paperwork, past and present.’ There was a smile in his voice. ‘I’m recovering all the necessary pieces of documentation from the files. I was very careful to make sure it was all kept close at hand.’

‘Very efficient,’ said Cardini. ‘Please remember to write down your project plans before you revert to the norm.’

Cardini saw Renton’s head jerk up. He’d know what that meant. Cardini had inducted someone else. He hung up. ‘Tomorrow you must go to Cairo and unleash the first horseman. Then you will travel to Rome. There you will stay till I call for you.’

‘Yes, Master.’ He clasped his hands together. ‘Thank you, thank you.’

‘Do not fail me again, Renton.’

‘No, no,’ he said, jumping off his chair. ‘I swear I would rather die,’ he said, bobbing up and down on the balls of his feet.

Cardini stared at him, filled with pent-up fury.

‘Master?’

‘Yes, Renton?’

‘My serum is all used up.’ He hung his head. ‘Will you replace it?’

‘No, I will not,’ growled Cardini. ‘It is too rare, too precious.’

‘But, Master, I had to use it to escape.’

Cardini rose from his chair, looming above Renton, who cowered even though a desk stood between them. ‘I will give you more on your return, but not until then. You have squandered the precious little you had and by rights you should have no more.’

‘But you will give it to me,’ he said, grovelling.

‘Get out of my sight, Renton. Prepare the horseman so that you can travel first thing tomorrow.’

‘Yes, Professor.’ Renton straightened. ‘I’ll do it now.’

Renton made the final fiddly selection of fragile mosquitoes from the lethargic bald rat: a swarm of Ebola-infected bloodsuckers. He placed the last one in the Perspex box with its mates and put it into the airlock. He opened the airlock and held the box up to the light, dimly viewing the insects inside. The night’s job was complete. He was ready.

He put the last container into its protective box, then slipped it into his shoulder bag and checked it for balance. It was three a.m.

He slung the bag over his shoulder. A small wheeled suitcase stood by the door, waiting for him to add the bag. It would pass through the X-ray machine at the airport as a jumble of soft lines. The four small boxes would be undetectable. ‘No,’ he would say, when they asked him about liquids and toiletries. Of course, carrying creatures over borders, infectious or otherwise, was highly illegal, so if he was caught his plan would be foiled. This gave him a moment of concern, but he was sure that, beyond another stroke of sheer bad luck, no one would have any idea that he was carrying the most devastating weapon ever created to its destination in Egypt.

He thought it was ironic that, as the Angel of Death, he would be flying by private jet, but genocide didn’t have to stick to an economy budget. He scratched an itch on the back of his neck and glanced round the lab, with its array of humming, flickering equipment. This was where he and Cardini had fashioned the future of mankind in a test tube, he mused. Then he shook himself, picked up the case, walked out and closed the door with a click. He would soon be a god in a world renewed, responsible for the long overdue pruning of
Homo sapiens
before its ultimate regeneration. He was on his way to remake the destiny of man.

Jim registered a cry. He sat up in bed. Kate had jumped out. He looked at the side he normally slept on. The drawer was open. He was suddenly very awake.

‘What’s going on?’

Kate was on her way to the door. She stopped and turned. ‘There’s a gun in that drawer,’ she said, pointing.

‘So what?’

‘So what?
So what?
’

‘Yes. So what?’

‘It’s not normal,’ she said.

‘Normal?’ he said. ‘What’s normal?’

‘I don’t know,’ she said.

She made a dash for the door but he intercepted her. He took her in his arms. ‘Come on,’ he said, ‘it’s OK.’ He kissed her.

‘And what about that?’ She pointed at his mangled side.

‘Bitten by a shark,’ he said. ‘I was surfing.’ He kissed her forehead. ‘But I punched it on the nose with my free hand and it let me go.’

She looked up at him, her eyes glinting in the moonlight. ‘Am I just meant to believe you whatever?’ she said quietly.

‘No. Trust me. That’s all.’

‘And the gun?’

‘I’ve got a licence for it,’ he said. ‘Do you want to see?’

She shook her head.

‘Let’s go back to bed,’ he said.

‘I can’t sleep.’

‘That won’t be a problem,’ he said, smiling at her.

She pushed him away gently. ‘I was trying to find something to read but instead I found a gun.’

‘Welcome to my world.’

Renton’s alarm was buzzing and he sat up with a jolt. He had barely slept. The little bedrooms above the lab were Spartan but serviceable. Many a time he had slept in one of them, too tired to go home. Now home wasn’t an option. He felt hot and he needed an urgent pee. He got up and went into the bathroom cubicle.

He caught sight of himself in the mirror and did a double-take. He looked like a student again, a good ten years younger than the man he had last seen in the mirror. His face was red, glowing with sweat, and hot. His skin had a youthful softness. His cheeks were thinner and he thought his ears had shrunk. The lines and wrinkles that had collected around his eyes were gone, along with the black rings, the bags and creases.

He relieved himself – an immense quantity flooding out of him – then looked into the mirror again. He seemed at least five kilos lighter than he remembered.

He smiled. He noticed that his gums were red and swollen and his teeth ached, as if he had been chewing long and hard on something tough, like beef jerky. The dramatic change wrought by the elixir was bound to take its toll on his body, he thought. But bleeding gums and sore teeth seemed like a fine price to pay for becoming ten years younger overnight. He hopped into the shower and switched on the water.

When he came out, his pay-as-you-go phone, his emergency line of communication, flashed with an incoming message. ‘Mr Renton. The car has set off and is on its way.’ He read it, then looked at himself in the mirror again. It might take a year for someone of his age to revert to his rightful position on the clock face of ageing. For the next month or two he would be twenty-one again. He could feel the difference in his whole body: the new younger Renton was just that bit more flexible and, in a strange way, moist and smooth. He had never spotted his deterioration, but the difference between twenty-one and thirty-one was giant when you could jaunt back a decade during a few hours’ sleep.