Fourth Day (4 page)

‘This is Thomas Witney,’ Parker said, for the benefit of McGregor more than Bill Rendelson. It was probably Bill who’d collated the initial data. I glanced across at him, but the big man sat without any sign of impatience on the leather sofa, coffee in his hand, attention on his boss. Only when Parker put up the newer picture did Bill give the screen a long scrutiny.

‘Witney went in to Fourth Day because he believed that the cult in general – and Randall Bane in particular – was responsible for the death of his only son, Liam.’

Another picture came up, of a young man in a scruffy olive drab jacket. Standard student wear from Vietnam to the present day. The shot had been taken on a university campus. He was standing in a group, listening intently.

He was centred in the frame, the faces of the others slightly softened by the narrow field of focus. The boy looked no older than nineteen or twenty, a thin serious face
and naturally pale skin that held a flush of red along his prominent cheekbones.

‘Liam Witney became involved with the cult while he was a student at UCLA, dropped out of college and then became a self-styled eco-warrior,’ Parker went on. ‘He joined a radical group who call themselves Debacle, died a few months later during a protest against oil exploration in Alaska. Witney believed Bane
encouraged
Liam in this direction and, against advice, decided to infiltrate Fourth Day in order to prove it.’

‘Was he a cop?’ McGregor asked.

Parker shook his head. ‘A schoolteacher,’ he said. ‘But he’d been to the cops and gotten nowhere. He felt, rightly or wrongly, that because the boy had been engaged in illegal activity at the time of his death, there had been only a cursory investigation by the law enforcement agencies. He decided to go it alone.’ Parker’s expression hardened. ‘Witney left instructions that if he didn’t come out voluntarily inside six months, he was to be extracted – by force if necessary.’

‘So what happened?’ I said.

Parker cast me a fast, dark look. ‘He cancelled,’ he said shortly.

There was a long pause, and then Sean asked with quiet sarcasm, ‘And nobody thought to question his state of mind?’

Parker’s face tightened. ‘Well, it’s sure being questioned now,’ he said. ‘And that’s why we have to get him out of there, fast as possible.’

There was something about the inflection, the emphasis, that tugged at all of us, but it was Bill Rendelson who said it. ‘Boss, when you say “we” I hope you don’t mean—’

‘I’ll be going in with Joe and Sean and Charlie,’ Parker said calmly. ‘I want you here running comms, Bill. I can’t think of anyone I’d rather have handle that end of an operation.’

Bill shrugged the compliment aside as a poor attempt at flattery, scowling. ‘To hell with that,’ he snapped, jerking to his feet. ‘You can’t have both the agency’s partners in the field at the same time. It’s crazy!’ His gaze was scornful as it swept over Parker, more so as it then flipped between me and Sean. ‘It’s bad enough that you’re putting Charlie in when—’

‘That’s enough,’ Parker said, cutting Bill dead without troubling to raise his voice. He had that kind of knack. ‘Charlie is one of the most capable operatives we have. I’m putting her and Sean in together because they’re damn good at what they do, and I trust them not to let any personal feelings they might have for each other interfere with their ability to do their job. If you can’t do the same, Bill, you’d best speak now.’ He glanced pointedly at his watch. ‘There’s still time for you to catch a flight back to New York.’

It was cruel, and very unlike Parker’s normal measured stance. Something flared and died in Bill’s muddy eyes, then he shook his head and subsided, shooting me a quick, poisonous glare that bothered me more than it should have done.

He knows
.

I busied my hands with putting down my cup, aware of a sudden coldness that had nothing to do with efficient air conditioning. When I looked up again, it was to find Parker watching me minutely.

‘You OK?’ he murmured. It was casually put, and could
simply have been in response to Bill’s obvious hostility over the forthcoming operation. But it wasn’t.

‘Of course,’ I said, forcing a smile. ‘I’m fine.’

Sean, meanwhile, was interrogating all of us with a silent lethal gaze. I kept my face neutral and hoped that, for once, his ability to read me like an open book was going through a dyslexic phase.

‘What’s going on with you and Parker?’

It was later – late, in fact. I lay alongside Sean in the half-light of the bedroom we were sharing.

‘Going on?’ I echoed carefully. ‘Nothing, and I bloody well hope you’re not implying—’

‘Of course not,’ he said. ‘But he’s clearly concerned about you for some reason.’ He lifted up onto one elbow, stared down at me in the gloom, as if feeling his way, and added softly, ‘Tell me.’

I drew in a quiet breath. ‘After we got back from Texas, I suffered a few side effects from…what happened there,’ I said, which was fine but hardly went the distance. ‘You were away – Mexico. I didn’t want to distract you while you were on the job.’

‘But that was before Christmas,’ he said, and maybe it was because of the darkness but I heard a mix of emotions in his voice – bafflement, with a touch of accusation. ‘And you told Parker but not me.’

‘I ended up in hospital for a check-up,’ I admitted,
which skated so thinly over being an outright lie it was in imminent danger of falling through. I shifted uncomfortably, glad he couldn’t fully see my face. ‘So, of course Parker knows – the company insurance scheme had to pay for it.’

‘And that’s it?’ he said.

My hesitation was fractional. ‘Of course.’

He sighed. ‘If there’s anything that will affect this operation, Charlie, I need to know.’

‘There’s nothing,’ I said, more firmly, rolling onto my side away from him, even as a little voice in the back of my mind whispered, ‘
Coward
.’

His hand stroked smoothly across my shoulder, thumb sliding into the slight indentation of the old bullet wound in the back of my scapula, tracing its outline like a rosary. I knew then, beyond any doubt, that he loved me, despite or possibly because of my flaws and imperfections.

So, why did that realisation bring a wash of silent tears oozing past my eyelids?

I lay quite still while I fought this inconvenient burst of unwarranted emotion, and gradually his caress slowed. Eventually, he leant down and pressed a kiss into my hair, murmuring, ‘Goodnight, Charlie.’

I didn’t answer, even though we both knew I wasn’t sleeping, and I felt the mattress stir as he turned on his side away from me. I knew all I had to do was roll over and reach for him, but I just couldn’t do it and I had no idea why.

If he’d kept the job out of the equation, I thought in desperation, perhaps I’d have finally found a way to tell
him the truth. That when we’d returned to New York from the events in Houston three months before, I’d found myself pregnant with his child.

‘Well, there’s no doubt about it – you’re pregnant,’ the young doctor said. ‘I would say seven or eight weeks.’

Still reeling, I muttered, ‘It’s seven and a half.’ And when she raised her eyebrows, I added, ‘I may not have a medical degree, but I can still count.’

‘Well, er, congratulations?’

This last was hesitant, definitely a question. She must have realised from my face that her diagnosis was not exactly the outcome I’d been hoping for.

‘Thanks.’ Suddenly glad I was sitting down, I stared dully at the corner of her desk where the cheap veneer had split to reveal the chipboard underneath. Well, you can’t expect solid hardwood furniture in a free downtown clinic.

My father, who had long since escaped the UK’s underfunded state medical system for the rarefied atmosphere of private practice, would have been horrified to see me in such a place. I had no intention of ever telling him I had cause to be there.

The doctor sitting opposite looked about eighteen, a Chinese American with a long, thin neck rising giraffe-like from the shapeless collar of her white coat, and dark circles under her eyes. Now, she sighed, twisting in her seat to face me, and I saw her check out my ringless hands, clasped together in my lap.

‘Do you know who the father is?’

I gave a lopsided smile, assailed by a brief but vivid flashback to a half-wrecked hotel room in Boston, of the
exultation in Sean’s eyes as we’d lost control of everything, including our senses, in the heat of fury and passion. ‘Oh yes,’ I said, ‘I know.’

‘And are you still in regular contact with him?’

I nodded.

‘But you don’t want him to know that you’re expecting his baby.’ Another statement, disappointment in her tone now, maybe even a little anger on behalf of all those expectant mothers who’d sat in this very same chair and didn’t have a choice in the matter. Because they didn’t know. Because they were scared. Because they’d been betrayed or abandoned or rejected out of hand.

That shook me out of my stupor a little. ‘You can tell that from my test results?’ I said sedately. ‘Wow, you people are good.’

She capped her pen, tossed it onto the desk and sat back, the action causing her plastic chair to bounce slightly, like an old-fashioned rocker. ‘Look, you’re wearing a good watch and expensive shoes. I’m guessing you don’t need to come here unless you wanted to keep this quiet.’

I was wearing the Tag Heuer Sean had given me when we’d first moved into the Upper East Side apartment, and soft brown leather ankle-length boots under my jeans, bought in a sale at Saks. Everyone told me I’d got a bargain, but they’d still cost what seemed to be an indecent amount of money, even when I’d mentally converted it back into sterling. So, I could see her point.

I let out a slow breath. ‘You’re right,’ I said. ‘I don’t want him to know.’

‘Why not? I mean, is he married?’

Sean and I had discussed the subject of marriage only
once, on a two-day drive to Texas, under threat and on the run. ‘
I don’t think I’m good husband material
,’ he’d said. ‘
And, if genetics are anything to go by, I’d make a lousy father
.’ The ironic thing was, at the precise moment of that conversation, it was too late. I’d already conceived.

‘Only to his job,’ I said, closing that mental door. ‘We both are, come to that.’

‘Ah,’ she said with the faintest trace of a sneer. ‘And you feel having a baby will disrupt your career?’

‘I work in close protection,’ I said flatly. ‘I’m a bodyguard. My job is to put myself between the client and the threat, regardless of personal danger.’

How can I do that, without hesitation, if I’ve a child to consider? This won’t just disrupt my career – it will finish it
.

‘Ah,’ she said again, more soberly now. ‘I see.’ There was another long pause and we sat listening to the bustle of phones and pagers and babies crying outside her office, and the buzz of traffic coming up from the street. ‘You’re from England, aren’t you?’ she said then. ‘Is your status here in the United States dependent on your work?’

I nodded. ‘I would most likely have to go home.’

‘And the father, I take it, might not want to follow?’

I thought of the newly installed ARMSTRONG-MEYER lettering in brushed stainless steel on the maple panelling behind Bill Rendelson’s desk. Ever since Sean had been manoeuvred out of the army and set up on his own, he’d been working towards this point. A partnership in a highly regarded New York agency with a prestigious international reputation. I’d already nearly ruined things by getting him, and Parker, embroiled in a huge scandal involving my parents
the previous autumn. This might just be the final straw.

‘No,’ I said. ‘I couldn’t guarantee that he would.’

‘Then you have a big decision to make about your future, and that of your baby,’ she said, suddenly looking very tired. She pulled open the top drawer of her desk and picked out a couple of leaflets, put them into my hands. I glanced at the top one. It offered advice on terminating unwanted pregnancy. The second was a list of clinics who would perform such a procedure.

Mouth suddenly tasting of ashes, I lurched to my feet, spilling the leaflets on the desktop. The open drawer, I noticed, was full of them.

The young doctor eyed me with concern. ‘Take them – think it through,’ she urged. ‘You need to consider all your options, however unpalatable you may find them at the moment.’ She hesitated. ‘Surely, as a bodyguard, you have to do that, don’t you?’

‘Yeah,’ I said, finding my voice and not recognising it when I did, ‘but murdering the principal is never an option.’

We went in to Fourth Day two nights after our initial recce. Sean at the rear, Joe McGregor and Parker Armstrong to the centre, and me on point.

Parker was old-fashioned in some ways, but there was no gallantry at play. Sean and I had done the bulk of the recon work and knew the ground. Parker simply picked me to lead because I was physically smallest, minimising our chances of detection.

We’d carefully chosen dark disruptive-pattern-material camouflage to suit the terrain going in, and aid our exfil. Particularly if we were in a hurry, or under fire. The last thing we seriously expected was that Fourth Day would use deadly force to protect the compound, but we planned for it anyway.

Each of us wore body armour under our fatigues and McGregor had an M16 to give us comparable range and rate of fire to the weapons we’d seen the guards carrying. Its use was strictly a last resort, Parker had warned, and not something he wanted to explain to the local cops.

As well as our usual semi-automatics, we all carried TASER stun guns as a non-lethal alternative. Parker had several ampoules filled with various pharmaceutical concoctions, including enough horse tranquilliser to knock out half the runners in the Grand National if he had to.

We hiked in just as the sun dipped below the far horizon, using the last of the light and a hand-held GPS. Sean and I had already programmed in waypoints during our daylight recces. We knew the planned route was clear of undue hazards or easy opportunities for ambush.

The moon came and went behind fast-moving high cloud. Our shadows followed suit, rippling like liquid over the uneven ground. The local weather service had predicted an almost clear night, so we carried our night vision equipment rather than using it.

We moved as quickly as silence would allow. Less than twenty minutes after leaving our drop-off point, the four of us were overlooking the darkened compound. We confirmed our insertion to Bill Rendelson, monitoring comms traffic from a van pulled in behind a small roadside bar a mile away. Parker glanced across at Sean. ‘You’re sure about Witney’s location?’

‘Ground floor, third window along, to the left of the main doorway,’ Sean said immediately, taking no offence. No harm ever came from double-checking.

Parker nodded to McGregor. ‘Eyes and ears, Joe,’ he said, and the three of us ducked out of cover and ran, bent low, across the open ground towards the building, leaving McGregor to watch our backs.

We reached the door through which I’d seen Randall Bane emerge only a few days before. I tried the handle to
check it was locked, jerked my head to Sean. He moved up, a lock pick set already in his hands. Within moments, the tumblers had yielded and the door swung open to reveal a spartan lobby.

Sean and I had already checked that Fourth Day did not use a CCTV monitoring system, which would have been my first request, had I been in charge of their security. I reminded myself that Nu had failed Selection twice.

We were still careful as we slipped quickly over the threshold into the main accommodation building. We stayed wide once we were through, to make targeting more difficult.

There was enough light from the windows to see the contours of the room. The sparse furniture was functional but not shabby, and modern air conditioning was unobtrusively keeping the internal temperature down to a comfortable cool level.

Despite the lack of a personal touch, the interior of the building bore out our earlier observations of a revitalised organisation. Even the lino gleamed to a high-buff shine like a barracks floor.

Parker would have stepped past me towards the left-hand corridor if I hadn’t put out a restraining arm. For a moment I thought he might insist, but he surrendered point at once, indicating with a slight bow that I should go on ahead. I moved past him into the corridor, putting my feet down with utmost care, counting the doorways which corresponded to windows on the outside of the building. Fourth Day might have enjoyed an injection of funds over the last few years, but that didn’t mean the inmates got bigger cells.

We flattened against the wall outside the door to the
room we knew to be Witney’s, and I sent up a quiet prayer that he wasn’t fooling around with anyone that we didn’t know about and hadn’t suspected. Or at least that he didn’t regularly spend the night away from his own bed. With Parker’s potted history of the cult in mind, nothing would have surprised me.

The door was solid, secured with a simple lock that was child’s play for someone with Sean’s nimble fingers. Then we were pushing the door open. Parker and I went through the gap first, leaving Sean to pull the door almost closed behind us and keep a watch over the corridor through the crack.

The window had no curtains, which was how we’d been able to pin it down to being the correct room in the first place. Now, illuminated by the ghostly moonlight, I caught an instant snapshot of the layout of the narrow space Thomas Witney had called home for the last five years. A small desk, a straight-backed chair with a pile of clothing folded neatly on the seat, a single bed, and a side table containing only a book and a glass of water.

Witney lay sprawled beneath a thin sheet, apparently relaxed and unaware. Carefully, quietly, Parker reached for one of the ampoules he carried and broke the seal.

But some people are alert to even the smallest sound while their body rests. As we closed on him, some animal instinct jolted him into wakefulness. Witney reared up from the covers, body in spasm as though responding to a nightmare, and saw us. Instantly, I heard him suck in a breath to shout.

I took one fast onward stride and launched, landing with one knee in the vee of his ribcage to punch the wind out of him, hands going for his mouth, his throat. Parker grabbed
his arm, jabbed the needle of the ampoule into bare flesh and squirted the contents into the former schoolteacher’s heightened system, where his accelerated heart rate began to distribute it like an express courier service. I wrestled Witney’s head into a chokehold, subdued him long enough for the drug to take effect.

Ten milligrams of a premed relaxant like midazolam, even whacked into muscle rather than direct into a vein, was more than enough to induce the sedated compliance of an average adult male in a little over a minute, but not enough to knock him out. We had a half-hour hike back out to our collection point. Far better not to do that with a deadweight unconscious body to carry if we could avoid it.

I waited for Witney’s struggles to slow and weaken before I let go and rolled sideways off the bed. Parker helped the now unresisting man to sit up, while I grabbed his things from the chair. The lightweight shirt and trousers had the soft feel of constant laundering. I checked the pockets and dumped it all in his lap. Parker squatted in front of him.

‘Thomas,’ he said gently. ‘We need for you to get dressed now and come with us. Can you do that?’

Thomas Witney raised his head only with great effort, seeming suddenly very tired, like an old man, but he managed a laborious nod. Parker nodded back with grim satisfaction.

We helped him dress, recognising his clumsiness as lack of coordination rather than deliberate delay. When his boots were laced, we moved him towards the doorway. Sean opened it a crack and peered through, then gave us an abrupt
wait
signal.

We froze. My eyes were locked onto Sean for the first
sign that we’d been compromised. The seconds stretched as they ticked by, with Witney swaying slightly between us.

Finally, Sean closed the door, latching it in absolute silence, and turned back to us.

‘Remember the girl with the kid?’ he said to me.

How could I forget
?

He nodded as if I’d answered out loud. ‘She’s just walked down the corridor to another room at the end. Last door on the left. Is that her room,’ he demanded, eyes raking over Witney, ‘or somebody else’s?’

Witney’s head turned vaguely in the direction of his voice. ‘Bathroom,’ he mumbled.

I exchanged a quick glance with Parker. Witney was slow on his feet. Too slow to risk dancing him down the hallway in the time it took the average person to go to the loo in the middle of the night.

‘We wait until she comes back,’ Parker said.

‘We should get her out as well,’ Sean said, his gaze on Parker now, intent.

Parker let out a long, fast breath. ‘Don’t go off the reservation on me now, Sean,’ he warned in a fierce whisper. ‘We do not have time for this.’

‘You didn’t see her. How Bane was with her.’ Sean’s eyes flicked to me, as if for backup. ‘The opportunity’s there. We should make time.’

‘Look, Sean—’

‘She won’t go.’ Both of them stopped dead at my quiet interruption, turned their focus onto me.

‘Why not?’

I returned Sean’s fierce gaze without flinching. ‘Did she have the kid with her?’

He shook his head.

‘Then she won’t go – not without her child,’ I said. ‘Trust me on this, Sean.’

‘You’re talking about Maria.’ Witney’s voice was slightly dreamy, as it might be for a man who’d just been shocked from sleep, but otherwise he sounded calm and coherent. He nodded with slow gravity. ‘She needs to stay here – with her family.’

Sean gave a short grimace of frustration. ‘Parker—’

‘No…and that’s an order.’

I’d never heard Parker pull rank before. Maybe he’d never had to. Still, I thought Sean would stand his ground, but with a last hooded stare, he nodded shortly, turned away.

A few moments later we heard shuffling footsteps pass along the hallway, a door open and close. We gave the girl, Maria, enough time to regain her bed, then slipped out, shepherding Witney along between us.

Sean relocked both the door to Witney’s room and the main entrance as well, once we were outside, to confuse pursuit.

Just when we could have done with some cloud, the moon now glowed strongly. The most dangerous time was crossing the open area of the compound, when we were caught full in the glare of the reflected light. It bounced back up off the pale sandy ground with the brightness of winter snow.

Parker and I forced Witney into a stumbling jog, one on either side of him. I had one hand on the pressure points at the back of his neck to keep his head down and give me advance warning if he tensed to resist. There was nothing.

Then, about halfway across the open courtyard, McGregor’s voice came into my earpiece in an urgent whisper. ‘Security patrol!’

We reacted instantly, dragging Witney down into the shade of the only cover available – the ancient juniper tree with its wooden bench. We flattened ourselves into the shadow thrown by the trunk in the strong moonlight, and froze, keeping Witney beneath us both for his protection and our own.

We heard the scuffing of two sets of booted feet, ambling across the dirt, listening intently for a change in cadence to indicate surprise or discovery. I shut my eyes briefly, willing my heart to slow so my body gave no betraying quiver. I’d learnt a long time ago that the most outrageous levels of exposure in the field can be countered by simple immobility.

The footsteps of the two guards arced nearer, then began to fade. We didn’t move until McGregor’s voice came again. ‘Clear!’

By the time we’d scrambled up and reached McGregor’s position, I was flush with sweat that had little to do with exertion. McGregor took the rear to cover our retreat, Sean now on point. We closed in to a diamond formation around Witney, moving with the kind of practised ease you can only achieve when working with people you’d trust with your life.

But there would be repercussions for Sean’s little mutiny over Maria, I knew. Although Parker might appear easy-going on the surface, that didn’t mean he took insubordination lightly.

And there was a part of me that was fiercely glad Sean
had made his stand for the girl. It heartened me in a way I couldn’t quite define.

Maybe I will be able to tell him, after all
.

Over our comms link, Sean put Bill Rendelson on alert. By the time we reached our retrieval point, there was a van with blacked-out windows waiting to collect us, along with two identical decoys. We piled Witney into the back of one and all three vehicles took off in different directions. We were pretty sure we’d escaped detection so far, but there were no guarantees it would stay that way.

Our driver was another of Parker’s operatives, Erik Landers – ex-military, as most of them were. He drove to make progress without attracting undue attention, and we sat in silence in the rear, swaying to the lurches of the soft suspension over the undulating road surface.

The back of the van had bench seats fitted along both sides, facing inwards. I was to one side with McGregor. Witney sat opposite, with Parker and Sean close on either side of him.

I glanced at my watch, calculating. That dose of midazolam would give us around four hours of docile obedience before it wore off. And when it did, Witney would have no memory of his abduction, or of any of us, which was a useful
byproduct
in this line of work.

The ex-schoolteacher had hunched in on himself, but was otherwise showing no physical ill effects from the drug. He seemed tired and distracted rather than doped up, but everyone reacts differently to chemicals in their system.

At least, that was what I told myself, when the
headlights of a passing car pierced the front screen and swathed across us, revealing that while he sat quiet and apparently accepting of the events that had overtaken him, Thomas Witney’s face was wet with helpless silent tears.