Fourth Day (19 page)

The next time the door opened, it was the ex-Marine, Yancy, who stood there.

I was on the floor of my cell, braced on my toes and the palms of my hands, running through my third set of press-ups. The back of my shoulder – the same place I’d been shot – burned at the exertion. Somebody, I reckoned, had probably put the boot in during the struggle and it was taking a while to come back to me.

Still, it could have been a lot worse.

I looked up sharply when I heard the bolts go back, blinking as a ribbon of sweat rolled into my eyes. By the time the door cracked fully, I’d jacked to my feet.

‘Your turn, is it?’ I asked dryly.

Yancy didn’t rise to that, just eyed me from the corridor, unwilling to venture into my cell now I was upright and obviously mobile, but my attention was grabbed by the object clutched in his fist.

‘Found something belongs to you,’ he said, and threw it at my feet.

The rucksack landed in a shimmer of dust. I recognised it instantly, could tell by the way it had fallen that it was empty. It crumpled sulkily onto the concrete, like it was embarrassed at being so easily unearthed. I knew I’d buried it in a hurry, but how the hell had they found it so fast?

I shifted my weight, noted Yancy’s twitch of reaction.

‘So,’ I said at last, ‘what happens now?’

‘You come with me,’ he said with a jerk of his head. ‘Bring that with you.’

I glanced down at my bare feet. ‘Some boots would be good.’

He nudged something just outside the doorway with his foot, kicking my boots across the floor towards me with more force than was strictly necessary. I stamped on them before they clouted my ankles, and sat on the edge of the bed to put them on. Yancy watched me in impervious silence.

I picked the rucksack up, slapped it a couple of times to knock the worst off it, then stepped out of my little cell with a certain trepidation.

Yancy stood to one side, indicating I was to walk ahead of him, taking no chances. I slung the rucksack onto my shoulder. It weighed almost nothing.

‘You might have left me the chocolate,’ I said in mock reproach, but received not a flicker by way of reply. There were no obvious marks on him and I wondered about that. His scowl was enough to tell me I must have injured something, if only his pride.

I didn’t remember the area outside my cell from the way in, so took the opportunity to scan the wide, windowless corridor. The rough wall to my left was solid-block cool when I brushed my hand against it, and slightly damp to the
touch. There’d been no indication of a basement level on the plans Parker had pulled, but this had a subterranean feel.

To my right was a line of three other doors, leading to what I assumed were more cells. I’d heard no sign of company during my incarceration, but that didn’t mean they were empty. I remembered Nu’s comment about junkies. Was making them go cold turkey down here all part of Bane’s much-vaunted programme of breakdown and reconstruction?

As soon as we started moving, one of the doors opened abruptly ahead of us and Nu came out, cradling an M4 carbine.

Just for a second, it flashed through my mind that, having found my main emergency kit, the two men had set this up as a shot-during-escape-attempt, during which I could be conveniently dealt with.

Nu had his right hand draped across the stock of the rifle, his index finger hooked almost casually inside the trigger guard, but his upper body was betrayingly stiff.

As soon as I saw the gun I tensed in reflex, started to drop. The M4 shared many parts with its larger M16 brother, and was a superb close-quarter weapon, particularly compact with the stock folded. At anything over
twenty-five
metres, an M4 carbine would put a standard 5.56 mm NATO round through a blockwork wall like butter. But at this kind of ultraclose range, the high-velocity round was more likely to ricochet and fragment rather than penetrate.

Then I realised that Nu had not shifted his stance. With Yancy directly behind me, he would not risk a shot anyway. I straightened slowly and Nu grinned at my overreaction.

‘Still sharp, aren’t you, love?’ His eyes slid past me. ‘Sharper than you, eh, mate?’

Yancy glowered again and waved me forwards. He did not, I noted, make the mistake of grabbing me again.

Nu began to close the door to the cell he’d just vacated, and I glanced inside as we passed, another automatic response, an inbuilt desire to be minutely aware of my surroundings. The first thing that hit me was that the cramped space was almost entirely filled with boxes, draped in dust sheets. And in that instant I knew it was more than just a storeroom.

There was nothing sinister about dust sheets. Bare concrete, unless it’s been treated with sealant, creates a gritty dust that’s corrosive to precision equipment or electronics. But one of the sheets was hooked up a little at the corner, and I caught a triangular glimpse of the casing underneath.

I kept my face blank, my breathing steady, while my mind stepped up into overdrive.

During our surveillance of Fourth Day, we’d worked out that Bane had an eight-man security force, split into four teams of two on a standard rotating shift pattern. On the sparse side, but adequate and efficient.

Eight men. That meant a primary weapon each, plus sidearms. Even allowing for replacements and breakages and spares, maybe two dozen suitable weapons overall. The outside patrols we’d observed had all been carrying M16s. That was a logical choice, a decent weapon, with the advantage that anyone with military experience could handle one in their sleep.

As a Para, Nu would have carried the standard British Army assault rifle, the SA80. Or, if he’d joined early, the old faithful 7.62 mm SLR. During his Special Forces training, he
would have been familiarised with a whole range of different firearms, including the M16.

So, why did Bane feel the need to supplement his men with M4 carbines, RPGs and hand grenades, unless he was preparing them for all-out urban warfare?

And why did he need a storeroom filled to the rafters with gun cases – unless he was training every man, woman and child in the place for combat?

‘
We can’t afford another Waco,’
Epps had said.

I thought again of his initial reluctance for me to enter Fourth Day, how quickly he’d allowed himself to be talked round. Too quickly, I realised now. He’d lost two men. There was no way a man like Epps would take that lying down…

So, I’d been played.

Yancy drew level with Nu, swept his gaze over the gun in his hands. ‘No need,’ he said, almost disdainfully. ‘Put it away.’

Nu grinned at him, but ducked back inside the storeroom, reappearing empty-handed a moment later, closing and locking the door behind him. ‘Happy now?’ he asked.

Yancy grunted and Nu moved ahead of us, giving me a wink as he passed.

‘Them Marines don’t half take themselves seriously, eh?’

We went through another door and up a short flight of steps. I’d been right about the building being partially underground. I squinted as we stepped out into sunlight, shaded my eyes and glanced up. The sun was reaching its noon zenith, but I couldn’t be sure of the day. In
high-stress
situations, people in captivity invariably imagine they’ve been held longer than they actually have. Time has
a habit of slowing down when you have no accurate way to measure it.

So, while I knew it felt like I’d been in that little cell for days, it was probably only one or two at the most. The random light pattern had further served to disorientate me, as it was supposed to.

I glanced around, saw a group of people unloading groceries out of a dusty 4x4, others hanging out washing. All very ordinary and domestic – on the surface, at least. They paused in their labours and watched us pass, faces carefully expressionless. I looked for Maria, but she wasn’t among them.

I wondered if Sean was watching somewhere out there in the undergrowth, just as we’d watched Thomas Witney. The only difference was, he would no doubt be tracking us through the sights of a long gun. And, if he was, the first we’d know about it would be the two men alongside me dropping lifeless in their tracks.

Part of me hoped he wasn’t watching.

‘No chains?’ I asked Nu over my shoulder, keeping my movements fluid, trying not to look as though I was hurting, or under duress. ‘You
are
trusting.’

‘I don’t think you’re the type to cut and run, are you, love?’ he said, and the smile didn’t quite reach his eyes. ‘Not after all the trouble you took to get yourself in, eh?’

The study looked much as I remembered it. The little side table and one of the wingback chairs had gone, and the rug had been thoroughly cleaned.

Randall Bane was behind his desk this time, hands loosely resting on the satin polished wood.

Laid out on a sheet of cloth to protect the surface was my gun and the box of hollow points that went with it, one of the two mobile phones I’d buried, the distress beacon, the first-aid kit, and my chocolate bars. The contents, in other words, of only one of the plastic boxes I’d brought in with me.

I kept my expression neutral as I inventoried what was there, then allowed my shoulders to slump fractionally, as if in defeat. As if they’d got everything.

But, how had they known to look for it at all? I remembered Thomas Witney’s unexpected familiarity with psychoactive drugs, and wondered briefly if Bane had taken that opportunity with me.

If they had, they would have found both boxes. Why didn’t they find the other?

‘This is not the kind of baggage people usually bring when they’re asking for my help,’ Bane said, almost gently, indicating the array with a dismissive flick of his fingers.

I jerked my head in Yancy’s direction. ‘He told me junkies sometimes try and bring in drugs.
To ease their transition,
I think he said.’ I paused. ‘You know I was a soldier. Maybe I’m just having trouble letting go.’

A faint smile crossed his lips. ‘If I suggested it might be better for you to leave us now, are you going to…erupt again?’

I put my head on one side. ‘Perhaps,’ I said evenly. ‘Why? Are you planning to suggest that?’

He sighed. ‘We know you were sent to spy on us, Charlie,’ he said at last. ‘Tell me, what did Parker Armstrong hope to achieve by it?’

I didn’t show surprise at his use of Parker’s name, because it didn’t come as one. Wherever Bane was getting his information, it was good. And the Debacle pair, Tony and Dexter, certainly knew who I worked for. The connections were there to be made.

‘The truth,’ I said. ‘What else is there?’

He murmured, ‘What else, indeed?’

‘I’ve never lied to you,’ I said. ‘That doesn’t mean I’ve told you the whole story, either. The truth is, Parker didn’t send me. Nobody
sent
me. I wanted to come and I talked him into allowing it, and you already know why.’

Bane was silent for a moment, frowning, regarding me steadily. His eyes had a darker ring around the edge of the iris, I noticed for the first time, merging to gold near the pupil. Mesmeric. I peeled my gaze away with effort, aware of a breathlessness I couldn’t quite explain.

‘So, this has nothing to do with the murder of Thomas Witney?’

There was no way I was going to mention our interest in Maria. ‘If I said no, I
would
be lying,’ I said calmly. ‘Witney never wanted to leave here. We forced the issue – not entirely by choice – and I’m living with the consequences of my part in that. But it’s nowhere near the whole reason.’

His head tilted slightly. ‘This is not the place to find those kind of answers.’

I let out a long, shaky breath. ‘Well, right now, I can’t think of anywhere else to try.’

‘I did not kill Thomas,’ Bane said, and his voice was very sure and very steady, like his eyes, bearing down into mine. If he was a liar, he was the best I’d ever come across. It was suddenly very hot in that room, stifling. ‘I had no reason to want him dead. Do you believe me?’

But out of the corner of my eye I saw Yancy move, just a fraction. Hardly more than the easing of his weight from one foot to the other. Bane’s eyes, on my face, must have seen the flare of reaction.

He nodded, as if that was my answer, and stretched a hand towards the collection of my belongings. Just for a second, I thought he was reaching for the SIG. I braced almost subconsciously, but he passed over the gun and picked up my cellphone instead, stabbed the power button with his thumb.

‘No doubt you have people on the outside,’ he said as the unit booted up, ‘ready to stage an intervention, should you fail to contact them?’

‘Yes.’ There was no point in denying it.

He held the phone out to me. ‘Then you had best call them.’

‘And say what?’ I was suddenly wary, like this was some kind of trap.

‘That is up to you, Charlie,’ he said gravely. ‘But think of this as a statement of your intent. A second step on your journey.’

‘My journey to where?’

‘What you seek – absolution.’

Slowly, I reached for the phone, keyed in Sean’s number. As soon as it connected, I hit the speaker button. Bane raised his eyebrow.

‘I’ve nothing to say that you can’t hear,’ I said.

The phone rang out half a dozen times. Longer than it would normally take Sean to answer. I assumed he was activating a recorder, or hooking it up to a satellite tracker. Epps was in this, and he had all the toys at his disposal.

‘Yeah?’ Sean’s voice, a little gruff. A non-committal opener in case of listeners, of strangers, or anyone who’d heard him speak and might recognise him.

‘It’s Charlie,’ I said.
I am not alone
.

There was a pause. ‘Are you OK?’
Is there an immediate danger?

‘I’m fine.’
I don’t think so
.

‘You sure?’
What do you mean, you don’t think so?
‘I’ve been worried about you.’
The team’s on standby. Say the word
.

‘I’m not ready to come home.’
My mission is not yet complete
. Then I sighed, abandoned our carefully
worked-out
covert language of coded signals and shrouded meaning. ‘Sean, they know who I am,’ I said. ‘They know why I’m here.’

‘Charlie—’ he began, then stopped. I could picture his
face, shut down, bleached of emotion, thinking like a soldier because that’s all he could afford to be right now. ‘What do you need?’

I swallowed, meeting Bane’s gaze across the desk and trying not to shift, restless, beneath it. His features formed an impassive mask, giving me nothing in return. Not a trap, but a test.
Had
he arranged for Thomas Witney to be snatched away from Epps and murdered? Personally stood in that squalid little motel room off Sunset Boulevard and watched his men – maybe even these men – beat Witney half to death and then deliver the final
coup de grâce
?

‘I don’t need anything,’ I said, holding eye contact. ‘I’m OK. I’ll contact you when I’m ready. I’m just calling to say…please, don’t come for me.’

There was a long period of silence at the other end of the phone. ‘All right, but I have some questions.’ Sean said then, cool and flat and so utterly detached it made my heart weep. ‘Do you mind?’
Are you being forced to do this?

‘I understand.’
No
.

‘Where did I first send you in Germany?’

No hidden messages here. Simple control questions, designed to expose distress, duress, danger. Checks and balances.

‘A place called Einsbaden, just outside Stuttgart,’ I said sedately, knowing that Epps’s people would be analysing the recordings afterwards, listening for stress patterns in my voice, off cadences in my speech, and wanting to give them everything and nothing to go on. ‘To a close-protection training school run by an ex-army major called Gilby.’

Sean barely paused, changing tack. ‘What was the name of my family cat?’

‘You didn’t have a cat,’ I said easily. ‘You had a dog.’

‘OK, last one,’ he said, and his voice was softer now, more dangerous. ‘The first time we went away – spent our first night together – where did we go?’

Our first time together had been on a forty-eight hour pass from camp. A glorious weekend during which only hunger had driven us out of bed. And then right back into it again.

But I understood the message there. He was giving me just one more night before they pulled the plug. More than that, he was reminding me of what we shared. Telling me not to let go of it. Not to throw it away.

‘We went to that little chalet on the cliff, just outside Colwyn Bay on the North Wales coast,’ I said. I paused, then added gently, ‘And it was a week, Sean, not a single night.’
Give me more time!

He was quiet for so long that I almost spoke again, just to check the signal hadn’t dropped out, but then he said, ‘I won’t pretend I understand, but I’ll respect your decision, Charlie. You’ll call me?’

‘I—’ Across the other side of the desk, Bane broke his stasis to give a single shake of his head. ‘I can’t,’ I said. ‘I have a lot of things to work through, to get straight, and to do that, I need to be alone. I need to be here.’ A whole raft of emotions came bubbling up in a disordered jumble, everything distilled down into a couple of meaningless words. ‘I’m…sorry.’

‘Yeah,’ he said and for the first time he sounded tired. ‘So am I.’