Lethal Profit (16 page)

Eva remembered Sophie's name printed across all the documents from Jackson's sports bag – her position explained why she would have had access to all that information. ‘What did the email say?'

‘It was a confidential email, I should never have sent it.'

‘But what did it say?'

‘Bioavancement S.a.r.l. had set up a laboratory in the Sudan.'

‘That's an odd location for a lab.'

‘Not really. Bioavancement S.a.r.l. is an enormously private company – so in a way, the Sudan was perfect – vast, lawless in places, and plenty of scope for bribing the local law enforcers. Most of us who worked at Bioavancement S.a.r.l. had no idea what they really did, other than that it was pharmaceutical research.'

‘Did you know?'

‘Not initially, no. I was a PA so anything I came into contact with was communication from the man I worked for to others within the business. It all seemed harmless – I later realised much of it was in code.'

Eva thought of the batch of emails she had discovered in Jackson's sports bag that had seemed out of place in his stash. The discussion of weekend plans and meeting schedules must have been using the code Sophie was talking about. She wanted to ask what the code was but Sophie was already speaking again.

‘I forwarded that initial email to Jackson – about the laboratory. I hardly read it first, I was just so desperate to make contact,' Sophie continued. ‘But later, when I had sent it on I realised that it was uncoded. They were discussing this secret laboratory in barely concealed terms and with some considerable urgency.'

‘What were they saying?'

‘There had been some kind of leak. An outbreak of something in the local area resulting from their tests. It was the second time it had happened – first in 2009/10 – and they were really scared about what would happen if it went public. People had died so there was an urgent need to contain reporting of it. I thought that perhaps Jackson could take it to a journalist and gain some leverage. I didn't care about being fired, I hated my job.'

‘And you hoped he would want to see you again.'

Sophie nodded. ‘Yes. And he did want to see me again. But of course it wasn't actually me he wanted to see, it was because of my connection to his work.' She sighed heavily. ‘Unfortunately, it didn't stop there, that first email wasn't enough. After that he wanted more and more information. He started making connections between events in the Sudan and Bioavancement S.a.r.l. – and then in other locations. He wanted me to help him expose them.'

‘Did you?'

‘Of course. I printed off reams and reams of emails for him and I stole so much information. But when we found out what they were really doing, we got so much more than we bargained for.'

‘In what way?' Eva shifted nervously in her seat and glanced over Sophie's shoulder. She was beginning to feel like a sitting duck. She looked over at Leon's position. He wasn't there. ‘Is Jackson's death linked to the Sudan issue?'

‘No. That email led us to details of a land purchase in Paraguay, then another that concerned a group of people in Paris the company was using for… for something else.' She suddenly turned to Eva, eyes wide. ‘It's all about profit, Eva, a lethal profit.'

What? Eva was starting to feel even more confused. ‘A lethal profit…' She repeated.

‘Yes, I… ' Sophie's voice faded away and she looked at the floor. Eva glanced over at her. She must have been pretty once but now her skin was drawn tight across her bones like a thin, sallow mask; her lips were marked with cuts as if she had been constantly biting them and there were dark, sunken hollows underneath her eyes that seemed to be the result of months of lack of sleep. She kept looking around her fearfully and Eva noticed that where she had been pinching one hand with the other she had drawn blood.

‘Sophie?'

Sophie looked up at Eva, her face calm but her eyes wide and distrustful. Although she was obviously intent on attempting to keep up an outward appearance of stability and control, Eva sensed desperation, as if at any moment the anxiety Sophie had been holding at bay might rise up and completely overwhelm her. Such naked fear sent a tremor down Eva's spine.

Finally, Sophie spoke in a hushed voice, unable to hold Eva's gaze. ‘I don't know, Eva, I don't know if this is something real or… or perhaps I am going insane!' She laughed unsteadily.

Eva didn't reply.

‘The only thing that makes me know it's all real is that people who possess this information, who try to do something about it, end up dead.'

‘Can you give me any more details?' Eva asked gently.

‘What we found was just the tip of the iceberg.'

‘What do you mean?'

‘The repercussions of what they are about to do, it goes so much further. That's why I had to get Leon to bring you to me. I thought Jackson must have told you everything if you had come to Paris. We must stop them, Eva – no one knows who they are, no one can even see them!'

‘No, he… Who? Bioavancement S.a.r.l.? I don't understand Sophie.' Eva was beginning to get frustrated. She needed cold hard facts not this emotional outpouring.

Sophie ignored the questions and began to search in the small leather bag she held on her lap. She found what she was looking for and closed her hands around it. ‘Don't look at me. I need to give you something. For your own safety no one must see.'

Eva turned to face forwards again and stared ahead.

‘It's a memory stick. It doesn't contain everything, but once you have read it you will understand and I… '

Suddenly, with a slight shudder, Sophie fell quiet and Eva wondered if she was crying. She didn't know whether to turn around and offer help or to continue to face the front as she had been instructed to do.

She sat and waited for several seconds. ‘Sophie?' she asked, still facing away from her. There was no response and for a horrible moment Eva thought Sophie had asked her to face forward and had made her escape. But she could still sense Sophie's body next to her and besides that made no sense. Why mention the memory stick and then make a run for it without actually handing it over?

She softly nudged her right leg against Sophie's leg to make sure she was still there. She could see out of the corner of her eye the same pair of trousers. ‘Sophie,' she hissed, ‘what are you doing?'

There was no response. She nudged the leg again, hard this time. It fell back towards her like a dead weight. Eva turned. Sophie was staring straight ahead, unmoving. Her eyes were open but unblinking. Eva looked closer. Suddenly she saw it. In the centre of Sophie's forehead, just below the bottom of her hat was a single bullet hole.

It took every ounce of composure Eva had not to scream. She glanced around her, looking for a smoking gun but of course there was no-one. Fighting the urge to panic, she sat frozen to her seat. She looked over at the spot where Leon had been reading the information leaflet. In his place was an old woman attempting to light a small candle with shaky hands, a look of rapt concentration on her face. Eva's gaze moved quickly to the right and left of the old woman. Where the hell was Leon? She considered giving the signal Leon had instructed her to use and put her hand right over her mouth, but in the end she made no noise. The last thing she needed was to draw attention to herself. Whoever had fired the fatal shot at Sophie probably had the very same gun trained on her head right now. Realising the danger she was in, Eva quickly ducked down so that her head was below the level of the person in front and sat crouched on the floor trying to regulate her breathing, fiddling with the prayer book slotted into the back of the seat in front.

She looked quickly back at Sophie. The hole in her forehead was starting to ooze the tiniest trickle of blood, which was soaking into the fabric of her hat. At any moment it would start running down her face. Oh God, poor woman, Eva thought. Then she remembered the memory stick. She looked down at Sophie's left hand and saw that it was curled around the stick, the fingers still locked tight to the inside of her palm. She had to get that memory stick. There was no way she could leave without it. Eva began gently pulling at Sophie's clenched fingers. Anger welled up in her throat at the same time as sickness at what she was doing, but she fought it down and carried on tugging and pulling at Sophie's poor, scarred hands. Eva couldn't stop a small gasp escaping as she began to think she could feel the sights of the gun trained on her head right at that moment. ‘Oh God,' she muttered quietly, wrenching at Sophie's hands which seemed to have become like stone. A surge of panic gripped Eva and finally, almost ripping Sophie's fingers from their sockets, she managed to open her hands. Inside was a small black memory stick. Eva grabbed it, stuffed it into her pocket, picked up her bag and got ready to move.

‘I'm so sorry,' she whispered, as she took a final look at Sophie's sad, shocked face. Then she quickly made her way to the end of the row, keeping as low as she could, thankful that the low light in the cathedral, and Sophie's large hat, meant no one had yet noticed she had been shot. When she reached the end of the row, the desire to be outside had gone beyond urgent. As she pushed through the milling crowds of tourists, attracting angry curses and frowns for her haste, Eva tried to think through the situation.

She looked up at the roof to try and locate where the shot could have come from. There was no mezzanine and apparently no upper floor. Unless the killer had found a hidden upper level then the shot must have come from someone in the church. Given that they had shot Sophie square between the eyes, they must have been standing right in front of them. In exactly the direction she was heading.

But she could see no other way out of the circular building.

Eva was near the doors now, the daylight was shining through and she could feel the cold of the air outside. The crush of people around her slowed her pace painfully but she was nearly there.

Suddenly, a shrill scream filled the cathedral and echoed, bouncing off the ancient curved walls. They had found Sophie. She had to get out. Now.

Waiting several seconds to try to avoid any connection with the scream, Eva began stealthily pushing her way more quickly through the crowd, many of whom had stopped and were looking back in the direction of the scream. A general muttering in the cathedral was turning into something more high-pitched and panicked as word of the grisly discovery spread through the building. Eva was only about ten people away from the door as she ducked and weaved, smiled apologetically and then forcefully pushed her way through, ignoring the exclamations and treading on feet that wouldn't move. Only six people away. Four people. Two.

Suddenly she was swept through the remaining crowds and into the watery sunshine outside by someone else. Eva attempted to wrench her arm free from the person dragging her. She was being propelled down the steps so fast she could hardly keep up and had to keep her eyes on her feet for fear of being dragged down the steps head first. They got to the bottom and Eva finally managed to look up.

‘Come,' said Leon as he turned to her. ‘We have to go. Now.'

Wiraj could have kicked himself. From his position standing on the seat behind the curtained lattice of an unused confessional he'd had a clear shot of Eva Scott when she'd been sitting down. His gun had jammed after he fired the first shot and, just as he'd pulled the trigger a second time, she'd ducked down and the bullet had embedded itself harmlessly in the wood of the tall chair behind. She'd remained crouched for several minutes next to the corpse and then suddenly she had moved down the line of chairs and, once again, the shot he'd squeezed off had missed, this time ineffectively grazing one of the religious icons at the back of the section of the church. He had to eliminate her, he thought grimly, as he dismantled the assault rifle which Joseph Smith had given him, and secreted the parts in the inside pocket of his small rucksack. Otherwise he would pay with his life. He pulled out a hand gun and tucked this into the back of the waistband of his trousers. Inside the confessional he drew a knife from the inside of his bag that had once belonged to his brother Nijam. He had retrieved it from his body at the petrol station where he had been murdered. It would be only fitting that he should use it to silence this woman, once and for all. An eye for an eye. The irony of the intense religious significance of the site was not lost on him, either – this building represented to him the religion Nijam had fallen into before his death, the religion that had weakened him. Wiraj firmly believed that Nijam would still be alive today if he had not allowed himself to be drawn into something so distracting, so direction-less, that was not part of his culture. He had lost all his fight. The fact that Wiraj had now committed murder in a building that was iconic of the religion he blamed for his brother's loss was satisfying to him.

Zipping up his rucksack, Wiraj secreted the knife on the opposite side of his body from the gun then pulled on a long coat, grabbed his bag and set out in pursuit of the fleeing girl. It was only once he was out of the confessional he realised he had left it too late. The throng of tourists kept him from getting closer than five people to Eva's dark head, moving as quickly as she was towards the door. He had considered using his knife to hack people out of his way but that, of course, would draw far too much attention to him and the crowd was packed in so tightly that, if he were identified as the perpetrator, he would most certainly not be able to escape. Then he had glanced up at the doorway and seen that strange, intense man appear from nowhere, grab the girl and sweep her off her feet, down the steps and out of Wiraj's range.

T
HE
JOURNEY
BACK
TO
THE
CAR
WAS
a haze. Leon kept hold of Eva and continued dragging her forward at a blistering pace so that her arms felt as though they were being wrenched from their sockets. She allowed him to pull her along, not wanting to stop in the middle of the street because of the sniper from the cathedral, but it took all her self-control not to force him to let go of her. Finally, as they reached the car, she pulled her wrist free.