Invisible Armies (31 page)

    From his supine position he sees Danielle, her face distended by fear and wrath, as if possessed by some desperate, primal force of destruction, an avatar of Kali or Durga. She opens her arms and literally leaps at Laurent. He ducks and spins, almost avoids her entirely, but she catches him with her left arm and wraps herself around him, pulling him awkwardly to the ground from behind. Out of the corner of his eye Keiran sees Jayalitha duck into the elevator. He tries to get up. Danielle and Laurent are tangled together only a few feet away, he has to help her. But he can't even prop himself up on an arm without falling back down again. All he can do is watch.
   Danielle tries to bring a knee up into Laurent's crotch, but he has crossed his legs, protecting himself. She tries to head-butt him, ram her forehead against the back of his skull, but he is already moving, twisting like a snake in her grasp, and instead her head connects with his shoulder. Half-dazed, she still holds him like he is her only hope. Laurent grabs one of her fingers and bends it back viciously. Keiran hears the snap as her finger breaks. Still she does not let go. The elevator doors begin to shut.
   Laurent gets to his feet, Danielle still half-draped on him but sliding off now. He tries to intercept the closing doors, and Danielle wraps her arms around his waist and bites him through his shirt, like a wild animal. Laurent yowls with pain and arches his back involuntarily. Red blood seeps from the corners of Danielle's mouth. The elevator doors close, with Jayalitha safe behind them. Then Laurent brings his arm back sharply and hammers his elbow into Danielle's head with a sickening thunk. Danielle's whole body sags, but somehow, incredibly, she keeps hold of her opponent, until he grabs her by her waist, lifts her off her feet, and slams her bodily down onto Keiran's fallen form.
   The world goes dark./p>

Part 6
Lazarus

Chapter  
37 

<    Danielle doesn't want to wake. Dimly aware that reality is bright and cold and painful, she fights to stay in sleep's cocoon as long as she can, forever if possible, that wouldn't be so bad, to spend her life in a coma's warm oblivion. It sounds better than waking and facing the world. The world is so much bigger and crueller than she.
    But her body's demands for attention seep into her consciousness like blood into water. She is cold. Her head hurts. Her hand hurts. Her stomach is queasy. The whole world seems to be moving in a strange way, rocking sluggishly from side to side, like a slow continuous earthquake. The body cannot deal with these sensations by itself any longer. Attention must be paid.
    It is the cold that eventually forces her into action. She gropes clumsily around without opening her eyes, hoping to find some blanket, and instead her fingers encounter the headboard of the bed she lies on, wood carved into some sort of elaborate pattern, whorls and ridges like a relief map. It occurs to her to wonder where she is, and that is the end of sleep. Her eyes open and immediately shut. The incandescent power of the light above her seems to approach that of the sun. In her eyeblink of vision she saw that the room was tiny but luxuriously appointed, illuminated by a crystal chandelier in the shape of a painfully bright octopus, furnished with two small beds made of some kind of dark wood. The word mahogany comes to her unbidden. Both beds are entirely unfurnished, bare mattresses. A man sleeps on the other bed, someone she knows. The beds are hard against the walls with a channel maybe a foot long between them. The wall by her feet is slightly concave, and inset with a strange circular window, through which cloud-streaked sky can be seen.
    She has to fight to call to mind the name for this type of window. Porthole. Yes. She must be on a boat. A very nice boat. With the man whose name eludes her. Her head and hand hurt very much, she knows this abstractly, and the motion of the boat makes her feel nauseous, but there is some kind of disconnect between her and her nervous system, she is aware of the pain and sickness without viscerally feeling it.
   How did she get here? She tries to remember the last thing that happened to her, but the door into memory will not open. She casts about for any recollection at all. Jagged, kaleidoscopic images flicker through her mind. Her boyfriend Gavin, in college. Scuba diving on the Baja Peninsula, in her crazy years. Riding a motorcycle through Hampi, in India.
   That last is the key that opens the lock. Her eyes snap open and she takes a sharp breath as memory floods into her awareness. Kishkinda. Shadbold. The man who lies next to her is Keiran. The last thing she remembers is wrestling with Laurent. Clearly she lost.
   Keiran is still asleep. No; unconscious. His breaths are fast and shallow, nothing like the respiration of deep sleep, and his body glistens with sweat. Like her, he wears only underwear and a T-shirt, the same black
You've Been 0\/\/nz0r3d
shirt he wore in Vegas. Danielle makes herself sit up, swings her legs to the right, into the narrow crack between the beds. The carpeted floor is very soft. The air mostly smells like a hotel, but also, faintly, of salt, iron, and diesel.
   There is a three-foot gap between the heads of the cots and the door, which is solid wood, with an L-shaped metal handle protruding from it. She reaches out, turns the handle, pushes. The door shifts a little but is locked.
   The middle finger of her right hand is grossly swollen, bigger than her thumb and almost purple. It dangles across her ring finger at a sickeningly unnatural angle. She remembers Laurent breaking it. It has not been set. She wonders how long they have been here. She is aware of the stream of desperate pain-signals sent by that finger, but somehow they seem not to pierce her.
   "Drugs," she says aloud. Her mouth is so dry only a hiss comes out. She looks at her arm, sees a fresh needle mark. That explains the depth of her sleep, the slowness of her thoughts, her immunity to pain and thirst. But this sensory invulnerability will not last long. Her waking testifies to that. Soon she will be in terrible pain. Her skull hurts both externally, where Laurent struck her, and internally, where a devastating headache broods, waiting to erupt. She looks around for water. There is none. Not even a pot to piss in, not that her drug-calcified body will need that anytime soon.
   She reaches out and shakes Keiran, careful to use her left hand. Eventually he twitches awake and his dilated eyes open. She waits for his addled stare to become awful comprehension.
   "They got us," she says.
   "Yeah. What about Jayalitha?"
   Danielle tries to remember. "I think she got away."
   "Where are we?"
   "I think we're on a ship. His ship. Shadbold's." Danielle gets to her feet, unsteadily, her balance would be tenuous even without the slow rise and fall of the floor beneath her, and looks out the porthole. She sees no land, no other boats, not even any birds, nothing but sky and cloud and the vast furrowed sea, gleaming like steel in the midday sun, so enormously monotonous that it looks like a false background, something from a movie or video game.
   "Your hand," Keiran says.
   Danielle looks down it. "Yeah. It's gonna hurt."
   "They could have set it."
   "I don't think our well-being is their number one priority."
   Keiran rubs at his eyes. "I don't know how we're going to get out of this."
   "No."
   "I'm very glad I'm on drugs right now."
   "They're wearing off," Danielle says.
   "Don't remind me. Look." Keiran points to a curved mirror set into a top corner of the room. "One-way glass. There'll be a camera behind it." He waves to it limply.
   "I wonder why he didn't just drop us in the ocean," Danielle says.
   "I guess they still want something from us."
   "I'm cold."
   "Me too. Come here."
   They curl up on Keiran's bed, animals seeking warmth. It is barely big enough for both of them. Danielle cradles her wounded hand in her good one instinctively. It is hurting more and more. His breath is damp against her neck. Her headache is beginning to throb, in waves that seem to come in time with the motion of the ship.
   "Maybe," Keiran says, "maybe Trurl and Klaupactus tracked us somehow. Maybe they can send some kind of help."
   "Don't be stupid."
   "It's possible."
   Danielle would shake her head, but it hurts too much. "No it isn't. Don't be an idiot. No one's going to come. And they're not going to let us get away. Not this time."
   Keiran swallows. "Yeah."
   "I sort of just hope they get it over with soon."
   "Don't say that."
   "It's true." It is hard to feel frightened of death when she is in great pain, sick and miserable, bereft of hope. Life does not seem precious when it hurts this much.
   "I'm sorry," he says eventually.
   "Don't be. I got me into this. Not you. I'm sorry they got you too. But I'm glad I'm not alone."
   "It's an honour to keep you company," Keiran says, a faint hint of amused vitality entering his voice. "Wouldn't have missed it for the world."
   They both fall silent. Danielle closes her eyes and tries not to notice how much she hurts. Amazingly she manages to drift back into sleep for a little longer. She is woken by Keiran detaching his limbs from hers, then slowly climbing over her.
   "What is it?" she asks.
   "Just looking around."
   He pushes the door a few times, provoking a dim rattling sound. "Padlocked," he mutters. He examines the porthole, probes the mirror in the corner, lifts the mattresses from the beds and looks at the riveted steel slats underneath. Danielle watches without comment. The drugs have worn off fully now. Her broken finger and ravaging migraine burn with white-hot pain, and her stomach is so uneasy from the ship's motion, and maybe the drug hangover, that she has to concentrate on breathing slowly and not throwing up.
   "No getting out of here," he says, sitting down on the other bed with an air of defeat. "No lock on this side, much less anything to pick it with. Pity. I'm a two-time DefCon Lockpick Challenge champion. How's that for an epitaph?"
   "Even if we got out," Danielle says, and doesn't bother finishing the sentence.
   "Yeah. We'd still be fucked."
   "Come back to –"
   She stops. There are footprints in the hallway, boots on metal, coming towards them. The sound of a key in a lock. The door opens. Laurent is there, along with two burly men in olive-drab uniforms without insignia, and a tall Indian man in designer finery. The same Indian man who imprisoned Danielle in that hut in Kishkinda, who struck her with the lathi and threatened her with worse, six months ago. Vijay.
   "It's time," Laurent says, his face a stern mask. He avoids Danielle's eyes./p>

Chapter  
38 

<   They are marched, hands cuffed behind their backs, down a narrow side hallway, panelled in teak, in which alcoves display marble and alabaster antiquities. Then they enter the wide central hall of glittering mirrors and chandeliers that confirms Danielle's suspicions; they are once again on Shadbold's superyacht
Lazarus
. They ascend the marble staircase adorned by a bestiary of carvings, and emerge into a galley so clean and well-appointed it looks like a TV set for a cooking show. The food-smells make Danielle's stomach roil. Past the galley they continue into a small dining room, a whole wall of which is a single window that reveals an expanse of pale deck and the endless ocean beyond. The sunlight is bright and Danielle has to squint. Vijay and the two burly guards remain in the dining room; Laurent, Keiran and Danielle continue through another door into a small library, a room maybe fifteen feet square, lined by ornate bookshelves, with a mahogany table in the middle and four Aeron chairs.
   Sophia is sitting in one of the chairs, her blonde hair pinned up into a bun, a Vaio laptop in front of her. She looks uncomfortable. There is a large jade bowl, full of water, in front of one of the other seats. Laurent guides Danielle to that seat, then Keiran to the one opposite. They sit without protest or comment. Laurent does not sit in the last seat; instead he moves to stand behind Danielle. She looks at the bowl of water and remembers the way Laurent interrogated that man in Paris, what feels like so long ago.
   "This conversation will be gentler for all of us," Laurent says, "particularly Danielle, if you are as forthcoming as possible."
   "Don't bother with the threats," Keiran says tiredly. "I don't care any more. I'll tell you whatever you want."
   "Very sensible of you. We only have three questions. Once you've answered them we'll helicopter you back to shore. On the understanding that you never speak of us again."
   Keiran says, "Don't bother with the lies either."
   "The first question is technical. Sophia reports that you have access to some extraordinary computer network. You will tell her how to take it over."
   "Shazam," Keiran says. "Yes."
   Danielle looks at Sophia, and wonders if her paleness means she is seasick or wrestling with her conscience. There was something she wanted to say to her. Of course. Keiran has begun a lengthy technical discourse, and Sophia has begun to tap at her laptop in response, but Danielle interrupts about thirty words in. "You poor thing," she says loudly to Sophia. "You're so smart. But you were too close to it to see it, weren't you?"
   Sophia stops typing. Everyone falls silent for a moment. And then, simultaneous with Laurent's sharp "Don't waste our time," Sophia asks, "What do you mean?"
    "Your father," Danielle says. "It never even occurred to you to wonder, did it? First you make a name for yourself as a teen super-genius. Then your dad gets sick. Then you happen to stumble across Jack Shadbold, and he gives you a job, wins your loyalty, and puts you to work. Don't you see it?"
    "No. See what?"
    "That wasn't coincidence. Shadbold infected your father. With the same drugs he uses to give the people at Kishkinda cancer. So he'd have someone to use the military tools he found. Someone he could rely on to be as loyal as a dog."
    Sophia sits up very straight and stares at Danielle. "That's insane."
    "You really think Shadbold's going to cure your father? No. He's no good to him cured. Your dad will be kept in great pain, on the edge of dying, for as long as Shadbold can, as long as Shadbold needs you, and then he'll kill you both –" and then a strong hand grabs Danielle's hair and forces her face into the jade bowl of water.
   After the initial shock she gives up her instinctive thrashing attempt to escape and just goes limp. No point trying to fight. Her lungs begin to ache, as if they are compressed in an ever-tightening clamp, and then they cramp with the agonizing need for breath, and she begins to fight again, she can't not, her muscles spasming almost at random, as the world goes dark around the edges, as her mouth opens up involuntarily to try to breathe water, her body betraying itself despite her fevered attempts to stay in control, the tiny part of her brain that can still think understands that Laurent isn't just shutting her up, he's killing her, as simple and final as that, this is the moment of her death –
   – but at the last possible second her head is pulled back up into the air, she can breathe again, two great rattling whoops followed by a coughing fit that sounds like an artillery fusillade. She breathed only a little water in but it takes a whole minute to get it all out, during which she isn't aware of anything but her lungs. By the time it is over she feels exhausted, her core muscles so worn from the coughing that she can barely sit up. Her chest aches with every breath like her lungs are full of broken glass.
   "That's enough out of you," Laurent says. "Understand?"
   Danielle barely manages to nod.
   "No," Sophia says. "Nice try, but no. You're not going to social-engineer me like that. Shadbold couldn't have done that to my dad. His drugs don't reliably cause the right kind of cancer in an individual. Let's get back to the subject." She turns to Keiran. "Shazam."
   "It wasn't just you," Keiran says.
   "What?"
   "We did some research. There were a dozen young bright computer whiz kids whose parents fell sick or died in the same two-month period that year."
   Danielle knows Keiran is bluffing. They never did any research. But he might be right.
   "Enough!" Laurent says angrily.
   "Look it up," Keiran says. "You're being used. You've been used for years."
   Laurent takes two steps around the table, intending to punish Keiran.
   Keiran says, "Why do you think he's so desperate to shut us up? It's because your boyfriend here knows it's true too. He knew all along."
   Laurent stops.
   "But never mind," Keiran says. "What do you care, right? You want Shazam? I'll give you Shazam."
   He starts into his technical deposition again. Danielle understands none of it. But she can tell that Sophia isn't listening. She is lost in disturbed thought.
   Laurent sees this too. "Sophia, are you getting this?" he asks in a pointed voice.
   Sophia looks at him a moment before answering. "I'm a little seasick," she says. "Can we do the other two questions first?"
   "Seasick?" Laurent is skeptical.
   "That's what I said. Seasick."
   He and Sophia exchange a brief hard look.
   "All right," Laurent says. "Question two. Where is Jayalitha?"
   Keiran shrugs. "Fucked if I know."
   The flippant answer earns him a broken nose. Keiran's chair rocks back with the force of Laurent's punch, and nearly deposits him on the floor before it rights itself. Blood streams from his nose, drips down either side of his mouth like a gory handlebar moustache. Keiran, incredibly, smiles.
   "Then where do you think she might be?" Laurent asks.
   "I honestly haven't a fucking clue."
   Laurent shifts the bowl of water to Keiran's side of the table.
   "Do your worst, mate," Keiran says dismissively. "You think we had a fallback plan in case we got kidnapped? She's a ghost. After what she's been through, living on the streets will be a piece of piss. You'll never find her."
   "We shall see. Question three. Where is the evidence?"
   Keiran looks at him like he's crazy. "What evidence?"
   Laurent is on the verge of renewed violence, but Sophia raises a hand to stop him. "I think I'm going to be sick," she says quietly.
   "What?"
   "I think I'm going to be sick. I need to go outside." She stands up, folds her laptop, and walks out of the room. Laurent watches her go, a wary expression on his face.
   "Relationship problems, Laurent old son?" Keiran asks. "Is the level of trust between you and your new lady love not what it could be?"
   "Shut it."
   "Or what? You'll kill me?"
   Laurent stands and walks out of the library, after Sophia. They hear the door lock behind him.
   "Find a lockpick," Keiran hisses, the moment the door shuts. "Quick. He'll send one of his men to watch us."
They both stand up and begin looking around. But the room seems barren other than shelves, books, table, chairs, and the bowl of water. Outside they hear Laurent issue some kind of command, and then boots, tromping towards them.
   Danielle examines the bookcase. It is bolted to the wall, but can move a little back and forth. Wooden brackets protect the top and bottom of each shelf, preventing books from flying out in rough seas, and requiring them to be inserted and removed sideways. The only exception is the top shelf, larger than the rest, which is covered by netting that hooks into holes drilled into the shelf below. The hooks themselves are too large to be useful, but – "There!" Danielle says urgently, seeing a folder full of loose papers behind the netting. "There'll be staples. Or paperclips."
   "Get it," Keiran says, as he puts his back to the table and tries to shove it towards the door – but it too is fixed to the floor. The boots have almost reached them. Danielle gets up on the chair, manages to unhook the netting with her teeth, but the papers are too far away. The door opens. Vijay enters, looks curiously at Danielle standing on a chair, and Keiran with his back to the table.
   "Sit," he says. "Behave."
   Defeated, for the moment, they obey.
    "At least Jayalitha got away," Keiran says.
    "Yeah."
    "You are to remain silent," Vijay warns.
    Keiran looks at him scornfully. "Or what? We'll probably be dead in an hour. What can you possibly threaten us with that isn't already going to happen?"
    The Indian man has no answer.
   "And they think we know where Jaya's evidence is," Keiran continues.
    "Should we talk about this –"
    "Why not? It's not like we know anything. Good thinking with Sophia's father, by the way."
    Danielle shrugs dully. "Too little too late. Probably."
    Keiran nods. "Alas. Afraid we don't have much longer. If they knew we don't know anything about Jaya or her evidence, they would have just buried us in the desert instead of bringing us here. Where are we, incidentally?" he asks Vijay.
    Vijay smirks.
    "I asked you a question, you stupid fucking cunt," Keiran says, and hawks a stream of bloody phlegm across the table into Vijay's face.
   For a moment the sheer chutzpah of the act freezes both Danielle and Vijay with shock. Then Vijay is on his feet, rushing around the table towards Keiran, brushing past and nearly knocking over Danielle. Keiran runs, keeping the table between them. Vijay gives up on the Keystone Kops chase, jumps up onto the table with surprising nimbleness, and leaps at Keiran, who does not dodge, but lets the force of the charge carry him backwards into the bookshelf – the same bookshelf that holds the sheaf of papers. The force of the impact causes them to spill out into the room. Danielle, understanding now that this is method not madness, gets out of her chair, and as Vijay slams a fist into Keiran's solar plexus, and he collapses into a quivering wreck, she manages to squat down and liberate a paperclip from the papers strewn across half the room.
    Vijay stands and uses one of the fallen papers to wipe the spittle off his face. Danielle gets back into her chair, holding the paperclip tightly. Her broken finger sings with agony. She hopes Keiran isn't too badly hurt to pick locks. The wind has been knocked out of him, he fights for breath for twenty seconds, his eyes bulging from his face, before he is able to draw in air again. An idea hits her. She stands up, leaving the paperclip on her chair, and goes to kneel beside Keiran. "Are you okay?" she asks, her back to Vijay, putting as much worry into her voice as she can. And then as he looks up at her, she bends towards him and whispers: "Take my chair."
    "Sit down," Vijay warns. "Now. Or I will end the love taps and a real beating will begin."
    Keiran slowly gets to his feet, his face liberally smeared with blood from his broken nose, totters to Danielle's chair, and sits, breathing hard. Vijay appears not to have seen the paperclip. Danielle hopes Keiran won his DefCon Lockpick Challenges honestly and not by hacking the scoring system. Not that she can imagine how his escape from cuffs might possible save them. She stands, intending to take the nearest seat, but Vijay blocks her path. He closes his hand around her throat, not quite hard enough to block her breaths, but firmly, as if he owns her. He steps close to her, keeping his legs inside hers, preventing a knee to the groin.
    "Danielle Leaf," he says. "It is a pleasure to see you again. As I told you before, we have many more subjects to discuss." His hand tightens. "I hope we can spend some time before you depart. I have such plans for you."
    The door opens. Laurent is there. "Let her go," he says sharply.
   Vijay obeys. He looks a little hurt, like a child whose toy has been taken away for some incomprehensible adult reason.
    "Danielle," Laurent says. "Come with me."
    She doesn't want to, but has no choice. Wondering if he will now simply push her off the edge of the boat, she follows him through the galley and out onto the deck again. The sun hurts her eyes.
    "I'm sorry," Laurent says.
    She looks at him. "What?"
    "For what I did to you in there. I didn't intend it. I panicked. I thought I had to silence you and it was the only way."
    "That's what you're sorry for."
    "Yes. I regret the rest of what happened with us. But this was different. This was a mistake. What happened before was unavoidable."
    "And what happens next? Is that unavoidable too?"
    "You will not be harmed further," Laurent says. "You have my word. You understand we cannot release Keiran, he is much too dangerous, but you will go free."
    "Right."
    "It's truth. I realize you have no reason to believe me. That's fine. You don't need to believe me. But when you are released, you need to understand the necessity of not ever talking about this, to anyone."
    "What about when they come to arrest me?" Danielle asks.
    "I can promise you that the FBI will soon realize that they erred in making you part of the investigation."
    "Sure."
    "As I said, it does not matter if you believe me now," Laurent says.
    "Why would you possibly let me go?"
    "I'll be honest. In part in the hope that Jayalitha will contact you again. And because we have nothing to fear from you. You aren't a credible source. Anything you say will be called paranoia, with no evidence. But mostly it's an operational decision on my part. I think you deserve another chance at life."