Pandemic (66 page)

Nicholson still said nothing. The other men exchanged glances, then Westwood turned away. ‘I’ll go put the kettle on, Paul.’

Richter walked across and ripped both sleeves off Nicholson’s shirt. ‘John’s gone off to boil a kettle of water. When he brings it down I’m going to pour it over your
left forearm. That should get the skin bubbling and blistering nicely.

‘Then’ – he gestured towards the table – ‘I’m going to take this kitchen knife and score the skin several times. You’ll bleed, but I’ll put a
tourniquet on your upper arm so you won’t bleed to death. Then I’ll rub kitchen salt into the wounds, pour lighter fluid over it and set fire to it. And once the flame’s gone out,
I’ll start all over again.

‘When I eventually get down to the bone, I’ll do the same on your other arm, then begin on your legs. I’ve got all day, so if you don’t tell me what I want to know
you’ll never walk or have the use of your arms again. And after all that, I’ve still got the flasks, so even if you hold out saying nothing to the end, I’ve still won. You just
think about that now while the kettle boils.’

Richter smiled, but there was no humour or compassion in it, and Nicholson realized that whoever this Englishman was, he was perfectly capable of doing precisely what he’d threatened.
Nicholson knew that, because he’d seen eyes like those before. He looked at such a pair in the mirror every day while he shaved.

‘Of course,’ Richter said, ‘you can save yourself a lot of pain if you just answer a few simple questions.’

Nicholson silently shook his head. Just then the briefing-room door reopened and Westwood walked in, carrying a steaming kettle. Nicholson couldn’t take his eyes off this simple domestic
appliance as Westwood stepped across to the table and put it down.

‘I don’t like this, Paul,’ Westwood’s voice was low and concerned. ‘It’s barbaric, and it’s not something I’m prepared to participate
in.’

‘Don’t worry about it,’ Richter said. ‘Just go upstairs and watch the monitors, in case the hired help decide to come back. I’ll call you down when
Nicholson’s decided to talk.’

Westwood nodded, his face still troubled, and headed back to the door. As it swung closed behind him, Nicholson raised his voice at last. ‘You wouldn’t dare.’ Westwood
couldn’t hear what Richter replied, and he was halfway up the stairs before he heard Nicholson’s first scream.

Henderson had worked out a kind of plan. It had to be quick and dirty, because the three of them guessed that the blond-haired man meant to do Nicholson harm, and they had no
time to work out anything complex or sophisticated.

Murphy was an unknown quantity: he could even be the fair-haired man’s accomplice. Whatever, Henderson had decided that the safest option was to take him down too. Murphy had encountered
Ridout and Henderson when arriving at the house, so it was Blake who was going to provide a diversion while the other two men entered the property at the rear.

Blake now sat behind the wheel, his Kevlar jacket ready on the passenger seat beside him, alongside the Uzi. A Glock was tucked into his shoulder holster. Henderson and Ridout both sat in the
back as Blake turned the car round and headed back the way they’d come. About a hundred yards from the safe house, he pulled the Ford into the side of the road, watched as his two passengers
climbed out, then looked at the dashboard clock. He waited three minutes, then drove on slowly and turned into the drive. He parked carefully and took a map from the glove box. Getting out of the
car, he then walked across to the front door and pressed the bell.

John Westwood was sitting at the kitchen table, his mind a whirl of conflicting emotions. He could still just make out Nicholson’s howls of pain as Richter did whatever
he thought necessary to make him talk. He hadn’t exaggerated when he’d said he thought Richter’s technique barbaric, but at the same time he recognized that Nicholson was unlikely
to say anything unless some extreme form of persuasion was applied. Richter’s method of persuasion was as extreme as anything Westwood could conceive, so he just hoped Nicholson would
cooperate quickly.

The audible sound of the driveway sensor took him by surprise, and he immediately guessed that it meant trouble of some sort. He picked up one of the Glocks discarded on the kitchen table when
Richter had disarmed the two guards. After checking that it was loaded and with a shell ready in the chamber, he headed into the den to look at the surveillance monitors. There he saw a Ford saloon
outside, parked broadside on to the house so both its number plates were invisible. The guards had been driving a Ford, but so did a large proportion of the population of America. It could just be
a travelling salesman or something.

Westwood proceeded to the front door as the bell sounded, checked that the bolts were fully home and peered at the small surveillance monitor fed by the porch camera. On the screen he saw a man
staring down at a road map. Westwood pressed the button and spoke into the interphone system. ‘Yes?’ he inquired.

‘Oh, hi,’ the figure replied. ‘Sorry to trouble you, but I think I’m lost. Can you give me directions to Browntown?’

‘Easy,’ Westwood began. ‘Turn left out of the driveway and—’ He turned sharply, having detected a faint sound of movement behind him. He saw the approaching figure
and raised the Glock far too late. Henderson easily brushed the gun aside and struck out with the butt of his own Uzi. The weapon crashed into the side of Westwood’s skull and he fell
senseless to the floor.

Thirty seconds later Blake was also inside the house, pulling on his Kevlar jacket, as Henderson immobilized Westwood with a roll of plastic tape found in a kitchen drawer.

Nicholson had proved tougher than Richter had expected – tougher in trying to protect a secret almost half a century old than made any kind of sense. He’d hoped
that Nicholson would simply start talking as soon as he saw what Richter apparently intended to do to him. Unfortunately that hadn’t happened. But using the boiling water and lighter fluid
was the kind of brutality that really wasn’t Richter’s style – so he had got physical with Nicholson instead.

The human body is an extraordinarily sophisticated creation, and the human brain the single most complex structure so far identified in the universe. The brain controls the body through nerve
impulses, primarily by instructing muscles when to move, and receives feedback from nerves providing information about the immediate environment. One of the principal functions of these nerves is
to warn the brain of imminent danger to the body, and in order to achieve this many nerve endings are located in the skin.

Several of the more aggressive forms of martial art target these nerves to incapacitate or kill an opponent, but accurately applied pressure can also be used to cause intense physical pain.
Pain, however, that is of brief duration, causes no permanent damage, and ceases the moment pressure is released. That was as far as Richter was prepared to go, and perhaps Nicholson had guessed
this because, despite his screams and howls, he had still refused to divulge the secret of CAIP.

Richter looked down at him, considering. ‘Maybe I should try a different tactic.’ He walked over to the table and picked up the small flask. Then he glanced back at Nicholson and
registered the change in his expression. The fear in his eyes was unmistakable.

‘Maybe,’ Richter walked back across the room, ‘I should just shoot a hole in this flask and close the door on you for a couple of days, leaving you at the mercy of these bugs
you’re so determined nobody else should find. I’ve seen what they do,’ he added, ‘and it isn’t pretty.’

He stared at Nicholson, tossing the flask from one hand to the other. ‘Of course,’ he said, ‘if I do that I still won’t know what the hell these bugs are, but I can
probably get the CDC or else Porton Down to examine one of the other flasks and find out. But you’d be dead, so I still wouldn’t know what you were planning on doing with them.
It’s getting close to the time when you have to make a choice: either die here in a locked room with only a flask full of lethal germs for company or start telling me all about
CAIP.’

As Richter studied Nicholson’s expression he saw the first signs of a smile appear on the man’s face, and realized in the same instant that his gaze was focused somewhere behind him.
He span round to find Henderson standing in the open door of the briefing-room, and himself looking straight down the muzzle of a Uzi sub-machine-gun.

Nicholson’s mocking laugh echoed round the room. ‘I think the cavalry’s just arrived, don’t you, Richter?’

John Westwood came back to consciousness slowly, squeezing his eyes closed against the pain lancing through his head. He tried to move his arms, to lever himself off the floor,
but discovered immediately that his wrists were bound tightly together, his ankles too. He felt the stickiness of the tape on his lips.

He forced his eyes open to register he was lying on the floor of the hallway. The ‘lost traveller’ looking for directions to Browntown was standing right in front of him, aiming a
Glock pistol straight at his midriff. As Westwood glanced up, Blake smiled down at him, then kicked him hard in the stomach.

Westwood retched, or tried to, against the tape keeping his mouth tightly shut. Then Blake leaned down and ripped the tape off his face. Westwood choked, vomiting on to the carpet in front of
him. His lunch didn’t taste any better the second time around.

‘It’s all over, Murphy – or whoever you are.’ As Blake said it, Westwood knew immediately that Richter had been taken.

Henderson stood to one side, his Uzi covering Richter, as Ridout used a pocket knife to sever the cable ties around Nicholson’s wrists and ankles. As soon as he was
freed, Nicholson stood up and glared at Richter.

Since Henderson had entered, the Englishman hadn’t said a word but was figuring the angles and working out what to do next. He had no immediate idea how he was going to retrieve the
situation – not unless one of the three Americans made a bad mistake.

‘You want me to waste him?’ Henderson asked Nicholson.

‘You can eventually, but not yet. He has some information that I need. With the aid of his tools here’ – he gestured at the items assembled on the table – ‘I think
I can persuade him. Meanwhile, shoot him in the legs and tie him up in this chair.’

Then Richter smiled and shook his head. ‘No,’ he said simply.

The three men stared across the room at him, aware that something had changed, but without knowing what.

Henderson raised the Uzi higher, but Richter just grinned at him. His plan was simple and as risky as hell, but it was absolutely the only choice he had. Otherwise he’d be joining John
Westwood at the bottom of Nicholson’s well.

‘You daren’t shoot me,’ Richter said, ‘not while I’ve got this baby.’ He glanced down at the CAIP flask clasped in front of his chest. ‘You and I both
know what’s inside it, and what happens to us all if it gets punctured. Do you want me to tell your two boyfriends about it, or would you rather explain it yourself?’

For a long moment Nicholson just stared at him, then gestured to Henderson to lower the Uzi. ‘The flask contains a lethal pathogen,’ he said finally. ‘If it gets opened in here
we’ll all die. Nothing else is changed, though. I still want that bastard strapped into this chair. His pistol is here on the table, so put your weapons down and grab him. Just take extreme
care not to damage that flask.’

Ridout gave Henderson a warning glance. ‘Watch him,’ he said. ‘He knows martial arts and he’s fucking fast.’

‘So what?’ Nicholson snapped. ‘There are two of you, and you’re both professionally trained. Just grab him and let’s finish this.’

And that situation, Richter realized, was about the best he could have hoped for. He watched carefully as Henderson and Ridout placed their Uzis on the floor behind them, and began to approach
him slowly from opposite sides. Nicholson stood watching with a slight smile on his face.

Richter relaxed, watching everything and everyone. Preparing his body for combat, he stood with his feet slightly apart, his right arm by his side, his left still holding the CAIP flask in front
of him.

Ridout was on his right, and Richter guessed he’d prove more cautious in his approach because he’d already taken a beating when he’d encountered Richter out in the garden.
Also, having had his right arm dislocated, he would still be hurting badly.

Richter waited until the two men were each about four paces away from him, then he moved in a blur of speed and focused energy. He tossed the CAIP flask in the air towards Henderson, and
immediately lunged at Ridout. Nicholson called out something and, as Richter had expected, Henderson stepped backwards and reached up to grab the descending flask. Ridout backed away in reflex, and
Richter knew he had only a couple of seconds to get the situation under control.

Nicholson had been right about the SIG, which was lying on the table beside the kitchen knife, but what he didn’t know was that the Glock 17 Richter had taken from Ridout was still tucked
into the rear waistband of his trousers.

Richter pulled the Glock free, extended his arm towards Ridout, and immediately pulled the trigger. The crack of the unsilenced 9mm weapon filled the room, but Richter didn’t wait to see
the result of his shot. He swung round to Henderson, whose arms were extended above his head, clutching the flask, noticed the horrified expression on his face, and fired again.

The impact of the bullet in the centre of Henderson’s chest knocked the man backwards and he crashed to the floor. As he fell, he released his grip and the flask tumbled, spinning through
the air, but Richter ignored it. Having examined it earlier, he knew that simply dropping it could only dent it. It was far too tough to rupture through falling onto a carpeted floor.

Instead, he swung further to his right, levelling the Glock now at Nicholson. The Agency man was reaching down for one of the Uzis, but Richter took less than half a second to focus on his
target. He sighted carefully, then pulled the trigger. The bullet smashed into Nicholson’s left thigh, smashing the femur about six inches above the knee. The Uzi forgotten, the big man
tumbled sideways, screaming in pain.