Fourth Day (18 page)

Tyrone Yancy radioed in before getting me on my feet and patting me down. He was thorough but brisk, taking no apparent pleasure in it, which was lucky for both of us.

‘You think I might have a weapon?’ I asked.

He shrugged. ‘People sometimes try to bring in drugs. They think it will ease their transition.’

‘I’m not a junkie.’

‘This stage, we don’t know what you are.’ He stepped back. ‘Please come with us.’

Despite his politeness, a certain amount of caution seemed appropriate. ‘Where are you taking me?’

He glanced back, his eyes dark and expressionless. ‘You’re beat,’ he said. ‘Out of water, too, huh? We get that settled, then we decide.’

I fell into ragged step alongside him, on his right, so the barrel of the M16 was pointing down and away from me. The other guard stayed a few paces behind, not crowding, but not going out of his way to reassure, either.

I trudged between them, sweat-stained and feigning a
measure of exhaustion. As we passed through the open area in the centre of the compound, there was a small group of about a dozen adults going through morning t’ai chi ch’uan practice, their movements flowing and serene. They ignored our passing, concentration total.

I glanced across at the old juniper tree, but the bench circling its base was deserted. Thomas Witney’s little class, it seemed, had not yet found a substitute teacher.

We reached the main accommodation building and went inside, the two men shouldering their rifles. The lobby looked different in daylight. Yancy detoured briefly into a side room, came back with two bottles of water and handed them over. They weren’t cold, but the seals were unbroken, so I didn’t care, finishing one straight down and making inroads into the other. He jerked his head to his companion.

‘Message from the boss,’ he said. ‘He wants to see her.’

The other man didn’t comment, just raised an eyebrow. I concentrated on keeping my face relaxed, on looking tired and grateful, and stopping the muscles bunch across my shoulders. I wasn’t altogether successful, but they didn’t seem to notice.

They led me along a corridor, remaining alert but not seeming overly tense. Sagar had told us that Fourth Day had two or three walk-ins a month, so this was hardly a new experience for them. But were all new arrivals summoned for an audience with Bane, the moment they arrived?

We continued through the main building. At one point we passed an open doorway to an office. I glanced inside, saw desks and filing cabinets. Two people were working on computer terminals like any other administrators. The very normality of it seemed bizarre.

I was led into an annexe, close but separated from the rest. Bane’s personal quarters, I surmised. I’d expected to meet with him eventually, just not yet. Tension buzzed up through my shins and curled unpleasantly in my belly.

We halted outside a closed door. Yancy knocked, waiting until he heard a muffled invitation before walking in. I stepped through after him and had my first direct encounter with the man himself. On the whole, I preferred it when there’d been a sheet of one-way glass between us.

The room was large, more like a study than an office, and lined with lighted bookcases in a pale golden wood that smelt of cedar. There were blinds at the window but they were drawn against the harsh California sun. For a moment I wondered what took place in that room that Bane didn’t want seen. Or was he simply trying to keep his book collection from fading?

He was reading when we came in, sitting in an
old-fashioned
wingback chair in deep-buttoned dark-green leather, over by an unlit fireplace on the far side of the room. There was a small round table by his arm, containing a tall glass of clear liquid that could have been anything from tap water to gin, and plenty of ice, as if he’d been privy to my earlier fantasy.

Behind the chair was a standard lamp, positioned so the light would fall onto the page. It also made it very difficult to see the man’s face, which was thrown into shadow, but I could tell from his tilted head that he was watching me.

‘Found this one wandering out toward the south-west corner, out of water and just about done,’ Yancy told him. ‘Said she was lost.’

Bane carefully placed a marker between the pages and set
the book down. He said, ‘Thank you, Tyrone,’ and something in that deep-set voice sent a sudden shimmer through my ribcage, like a harmonic vibration.

Yancy ducked his head in acknowledgement and stepped back to the door. When he opened it, I could see the other guard loitering in the corridor outside, just before it closed behind him with a soft click. I guessed they wouldn’t leave quite yet, but I couldn’t work out if their purpose was to prevent my escape, or to drag me out screaming.

Bane gestured me to a chair opposite. I glanced ruefully at my grubby cargo trousers and crusted shirt.

‘What’s a little honest dirt?’ he asked.

I shrugged, unaccountably nervous, and perched on the edge of the seat, uncapping the second bottle of water and taking another swig while I eyed him.

‘So,’ he said at last, ‘Miss…?’

‘Foxcroft,’ I said without hesitation. ‘Charlotte Foxcroft. My friends call me Charlie.’

Using my full name was deliberate on my part. Oh, to Parker and Sean I’d explained it by saying I wasn’t trained for undercover work to the point where I could slip automatically into another identity. I’d legally shortened my last name to Fox shortly after I’d left the army, an attempt to distance myself from the events that had led to my downfall and dismissal. It was only partially successful. But Charlotte Foxcroft – failed Special Forces trainee and unwitting fodder for the tabloids – had been very different from the person I’d since become. More trusting, more gullible.

Going back to her now seemed somehow symbolic, in my own mind at least.

‘Charlie,’ he said in that cultured voice, as if experimenting
with the feel and the weight of the name. My scalp prickled. ‘There are no trails through this land. The boundary is securely fenced and clearly signed as private property. How did you come to be lost?’

I gave a cynical laugh I didn’t have to force. ‘I ask myself that question every day.’

‘So you are not here by accident.’ He paused. ‘You are fully aware of where “here” is?’

‘This is Fourth Day,’ I said. ‘And you are Randall Bane. I was told you could help me.’

‘Really? By whom?’

I shrugged, let my eyes drift down and right. ‘It’s doesn’t matter now. He’s dead anyway.’

In the periphery of my vision, I saw Bane’s head shift, but I didn’t react. Then he asked quietly, ‘How, exactly, do you believe I can help you?’

I shrugged again, still staring at a spot where the polished wooden floor met the edge of the rug. ‘I went through some shit a few years ago – a lot of shit, if I’m honest – and I thought I was past it, but it keeps coming back to haunt me,’ I said, putting intensity into the words. ‘And now I’m scared all the time, of what it’s doing to me, and of what I might do.’ I looked up, straight into Bane’s face. ‘I need to change and I don’t know how.’

He stared at me for a long time unmoving, piercing me with eyes so pale brown they were almost golden. ‘What about your family?’

‘They’re in the UK, and…we don’t talk much anymore.’

‘What brought you to America?’

‘Boyfriend.’ I gave a fractional twitch of my lips. ‘About six months ago.’

‘You still together?’

‘I’m here, aren’t I?’ I said, injecting a bitter note. ‘So, I suppose not. I’ve been pushing him away for months.’
No lie there, then
.

‘Is he violent? Abusive? Into drugs? Crime?’

Violent
? After only minimal hesitation, I shook my head.

Bane sighed. ‘You don’t need my help,’ he said gently. ‘Go back to your boyfriend, Charlie. If he’s clean, like you say, make your peace with him. If he isn’t, then leave him. Get in contact with your parents. Break the silence while you still have the chance. Take responsibility for your own actions and stop looking for the easy way out.’

He pressed a bell push on the table and picked up his book again. As if turning from a fire, I felt the heat and light of his interest go away from me.

Behind me, the door opened again. Footsteps closed on either side of my chair. The panic reached into my throat, churning like acid.

‘Ah, Tyrone,’ Bane said, not looking up. ‘Give Charlie here some food and drive her out to the nearest bus station, would you? She will not be staying.’

I half-rose, reaching towards him, prepared to plead if I had to. ‘Wait—’

One of the men grabbed my shoulder. I flinched instinctively at the pressure and intent, saw Bane’s head lift with narrowed eyes, and that fraction of a second was all it took.

I made a snap decision, without thought to risk or consequences, knowing it might easily be the worst – or the last – I ever made. What had Sagar said of Thomas Witney? ‘
He’d suffered enough
.’

If Bane was looking for damaged souls to twist to his own design, I could give him twisted. In fact, sometimes it was more of a stretch to pretend not to be. To keep the anger penned up inside and to pretend to be just like everybody else, every day.

Now, I needed that rage. I took a breath and called on every ounce and shard of it, felt it come howling up out of the depths of my psyche in visceral response, all teeth and claws like a monstrous predator too long denied the kill.

The taste of it was sour in my mouth, flooding my senses, deafening me, and for once, instead of battling for control and subjugation, I gave it free rein to savage and destroy in wanton rampage.

Suddenly, I was blind with it, sick with it, in the grip of a madness long since denied its true potential and glorying in vicious release. And if, as the first blows began to fall, there was an inner voice, somewhere deep at the back of my mind, that recoiled, keening at this final breach, it was a small voice, and quickly silenced.

I was vaguely aware of Bane himself stepping back, an observer, of more bodies pouring through the doorway, of raised voices and broken furniture. Of fearfulness and, before the end, screaming.

But I don’t fully remember what I did in that room. I don’t know how long it went on for.

When I came round, nauseous and bruised and aching, I found they’d taken away my belt and my boots – and, yes, my watch – and I was locked up alone in the dark.

The door to my cell opened. I half-expected Bane again, come for the next round, but it was the Brit ex-Para with the slightly regal Eurasian features who stood there. Parker had identified him as John Nu, I recalled. He was wearing neatly pressed desert camouflage, his combat boots bulled to a workmanlike shine, and he was carrying a tray.

I didn’t remember him taking part in the altercation in Bane’s study, but then he turned his head slightly and I saw a line of Steri-Strip dressings closing a small cut across his eyebrow.

Oh yeah, sunshine. You were there
.

Someone held the door and he stepped through, checking both ways as well as up, cautious as any good soldier. Behind him, the door was pushed to, but not latched. I guessed he wanted a quick escape route, just in case.

Nu put the tray down on the end of the bed furthest from me, moved back to lean against the wall near the doorway.

I glanced at his offering. A sandwich of what looked like
cheese and salad, wrapped in a paper napkin, an oversize muffin, and a banana. All finger food that could be eaten without the potential weaponry of a knife and fork. The irony wasn’t lost on me.

‘How you doing?’ Nu asked, without apparent resentment for whatever injuries I might have caused. From the distinctive vowel sounds, his accent was West Midlands. The area around Wolverhampton known as the Black Country because of the coal.

‘So-so,’ I said, cautious myself. I flapped a languid hand. ‘Don’t think much of the rooms at this hotel, though.’

He half-smiled. ‘Yeah, well, we get a lot of junkies, don’t we? Got to have somewhere safe and sound to put ’em while they dry out.’

‘Speaking of dry,’ I said, ‘did you bring anything to drink?’

He reached into the front pocket of his tunic and handed across a can of full-fat Coke. I normally drank Diet, but I reckoned I could probably do with the sugar hit.

The can was still reasonably cold, enough for the dampness of condensation to have formed on the outside. I held it to the inflamed area around my eye, letting it soothe for a moment, then picked up the sandwich. I wasn’t hungry, but it was fuel, and voluntary starvation gained me nothing.

Nu watched me bite into the thick bread. Chewing made the side of my face ache, but I hadn’t taken a sock in the mouth, so at least my teeth were still solid.

‘Can always tell a squaddie,’ he said after a moment. ‘Never pass up the chance to get some scran down your neck, eh?’

‘You should know,’ I said. ‘Miss it?’ 

‘Nah.’ He grinned at me. ‘Who’d want to be on stag all night in bloody Baghdad when they could be living it up in California?’

‘I would have thought, by the time you got out, you’d have had enough of taking orders to last a lifetime,’ I said. ‘Why join this lot?’

‘Depends what you mean by “join”, love,’ he said, still smiling. ‘Me and the lads, we was hired to take care of security and training. Don’t mean we’re followers.’ He touched a rueful finger to the cut above his eye. ‘Not that you need much training, eh?’

I finished the sandwich, wiped my fingers carefully on the napkin and took a slug of Coke. ‘Yeah, well, I learnt the hard way.’

‘You did at that,’ he murmured, and for the first time, the humour was wiped clean from his voice. When I looked up, it was gone from his face, too. I lowered the Coke slowly but kept the can in my hand, gauged the distance between us, and waited.

‘I remember you, Charlie,’ he said quietly. ‘How could I not? Made a right splash in all the papers, didn’t you?’

I said, ‘You shouldn’t believe everything you read,’ but caught the frozen note in my voice, and knew he’d heard it, too.

Nu nodded. ‘I was on the next intake. Fancied myself in Special Forces, just like you did, working undercover in Belfast – better than patrolling the Falls Road as a grunt with the Paras, getting rocks chucked at me by five-year-old kiddies.’

I couldn’t bring myself to ask what he’d heard, what lies the Powers That Be had told those who followed the
disastrous training course I’d been on. Instead, I tilted my head back and forced myself to bring the can up to my lips, even if I couldn’t stomach actually taking a drink once it was there.

‘So,’ I asked, ‘did it turn out to be all you were hoping for?’

He shrugged. ‘Nah. Chucked it in, didn’t I?’

Roughly translated, that meant he hadn’t made the grade – had been Returned To Unit. The majority of those who started the training were RTU’d, I’d been warned at the outset, with the clear implication that’s what they expected would happen to me and, hey, no hard feelings. Certainly, the instructors seemed to make it their mission in life to keep the odds stacked against us. Like Epps, most hadn’t believed the few women trainees had what it took.

But I’d been good enough, I knew. I’d thought that making it through the selection process was the hard part, that the training itself was going to be a breeze by comparison.

I’d been wrong.

I looked up, found Nu watching me again. Something flickered in his face.

‘I served with one of them, you know,’ he said then, suddenly. ‘Couple of years after – in Bosnia. Lad called Hackett.’

Donalson, Hackett, Morton and Clay
.

The names of my four attackers danced inside my head, the faces parading behind my eyes, vivid, vicious, causing a physical response I struggled to confine. I wondered if there’d ever be a time when I could hear their names and genuinely feel nothing. When the memory alone no longer sent that burst of pure anger scalding through my hands.

‘I don’t suppose,’ I managed dryly, ‘there’s any chance he died horribly in the line of duty?’

‘There was one or two who wouldn’t have minded if he’d stepped on a landmine, love, that was for sure,’ Nu said. ‘Nasty bugger. Not the sort of bloke you’d want behind you if it all went bad, know what I mean?’

Oh, yeah. Been there, done that
…

‘Anyway, he got pissed one night, and he talked about it – what him and the others did to you,’ Nu went on, his gaze as measured as his tone. ‘Said you didn’t put up much of a fight, all things considered. Reckoned you must have enjoyed it, on the quiet.’

Sure. That’s why they had to beat me half to death to get me to lie still long enough
…

I swallowed, but held my peace. Nu shrugged as if I’d spoken anyway.

‘Hackett reckoned they done you a favour. Said what they gave you was only a taster of what them Provo bastards would have done, if you’d gone and got yourself caught after they sent you across the water.’

‘If you should ever happen to see him again,’ I said, aware that some vaguely human quality was missing from my voice, ‘you can tell him I’ve acquired a whole new skill set since those days. One I’d be delighted to demonstrate to him, first hand.’

Nu’s mouth twitched. He straightened and picked up the tray, sliding the untouched muffin and the banana onto the bed, held out his hand for the can. I finished the last few mouthfuls and handed it over.

He moved for the door, then paused. ‘There was a sergeant on that course, one of the instructors. A bloke called Meyer,
known for being one of the hardest bastards in the army,’ Nu said casually. ‘I found out later that you’d been shagging him while you was there, and I remembered something else Hackett said about you – that you liked a bit of pain.’ His gaze flicked over me, lingering on the expanding bruise around my eye. ‘Might be some truth in that, eh?’