Payback (19 page)

And
then, as soon as he had arrived and marvelled at his unwitting destination, all became blackness. There is no dusk in the deep forest, and it had gone from day to night in ten minutes. It was as if the tree had deliberately held back the veil of the night until he safely arrived.

Before
he slept, he planned what he must do the next day. Above all else he needed hunting weapons. A bow and arrows would have to be fashioned. Then, using the friendly world tree as a kind of extra-sensory, atavistic transmitter, he would seek guidance from his own village tribal spirits on what he should do next. He would have to hold a
sing
-
sing
the next day. But for now, he needed sleep. Having made a leafy mattress in the deep buttresses, he ate the last of the cooked food he had brought with him and threw away the dead rats. He had not needed them, and would catch fresher, better meat tomorrow. And he would in any case need to hunt out a pig to sacrifice at his
sing
-
sing
. He had caught sight earlier that day of a group of peccaries, a kind of wild pig. One of those strange-looking beasts would be fine. Then, cutting off a type of vine he recognised, Banto drank the cool water inside and fell into his best sleep since leaving his village just seven days earlier.

His
short, but stocky, broad body was curled tight, his back nestling, protected in the tree. And his face, with its deep-set eyes and broad nose, its tattoos and manhood initiation scars, relaxed at long last. The native, at twenty-five, was already over halfway through his life expectancy. Forty-five years was the average for his tribe. But this was now no ordinary young warrior. He had travelled eleven millennia from the Stone Age in a week. And he was becoming stronger and wiser by the minute.

*

‘Is it really so terrible? I mean, whether we rear pigs for human transplants or bacon sandwiches, it won’t matter very much to your porker friends, will it?’ Maddie said all of this while flamboyantly forking a salade nicoise. Sipping now on her Evian, she pressed on. ‘And besides. I bet the millionaire’s pigs, those with their own DNA—what did you call them?—xenotransplant pigs...I bet they get treated really well. Looked after like VIPs. Very Important Pigs!’

Lydia
groaned inwardly. She had arranged lunch with her to discuss further what to do about the file, but before that Maddie had launched into the usual simplistic logic about animal testing. The newspapers were full of the story of the fire-bombing of her father’s lab, halting his xenotransplant experiments. And the one thing she did not need right now was having to rehearse the same old debating topics yet again. Not with someone, she thought unkindly, whose greatest daily intellectual challenge was whether to order Sauterne or Barsac with her pudding.

‘
Five per cent of people are already veggie, and fifteen per cent rarely eat meat. Wait and see the next generation coming through from the schools. These figures will treble. But in the end, it all comes down to philosophy,’ she said wearily. ‘You can argue that animals lack the power of reason and choice. You can cherry pick bits of Bentham and Descartes. You can point to Plato and Aristotle’s contention that our intellectual life is at a higher level than other animals. And if you really know where to look, you can find enough in Aquinas, Hegel and even Kant to make the case for man as a higher species.

‘
Fine. Except if you knew what else was caught and tortured in your tasty tuna’s drift net, you’d think again. If you actually saw the lives of calves in veal crates, you’d think again. And if you realised what was really going on in genetic experiments. A mouse with a human ear grafted on its back. Or the big selling oncomouse. They’ve bred it to be born with a cancer gene, making it more susceptible to tumours. In fact there are now over 250 strains of mice deliberately bred with genetic defects...It’s horrific. And Dad should have nothing to do with it.’

‘
So you condone these people?’ Maddie waved her
Daily
Mail
. ‘Going around fire-bombing perfectly legal companies. Risking lives?’

Lydia
recognised she had to be careful not to make Maddie suspicious. ‘I don’t believe in risking human life. Of course not,’ she replied, cautiously. ‘But I do believe in animal
rights
, not just plain animal welfare. I do think that the rights of animals have a direct parallel with Thomas Paine’s
Rights
of
Man
. And I do detest speciesism, no less than I do in racism, homophobia or sexism.’

Maddie
looked unconvinced. ‘Well it’s because of people like you that I’m afraid to be seen out in my furs these days. Put it to the vote. Make wearing fur illegal, and I’ll burn the things. But why should small groups think they can override the democratic process? What if we all chose to act like that? Anarchy,’ she said, indignantly. ‘Besides, I’d have more respect if these people threw paint at big, hairy-assed Hell’s Angels in their leathers, instead of at frail old ladies in fox stoles.’

Lydia
smiled. It was a fair point. ‘
Touché
,’ she said. ‘But please, let’s change the subject. You mentioning fox stoles is absolutely guaranteed to get me on to you again about you and your hunting set.’

‘
The uneatable...?’ Maddie teased, nodding at the unappetising vegan-friendly mess of pulses on Lydia’s plate.

‘
The hunting quote
I
prefer is Jorrocks’s: “The image of war with only five and twenty per cent of the danger”,’ Lydia responded quickly. ‘We hunt saboteurs are just trying to raise the odds. To make it even
more
fun and exciting for you...’

They
had by now each comprehensively put the other off their food and after a few minutes’ half-hearted picking, had the plates taken away for coffee.

Lydia
was still high on the success of the attack on the plant. She had telephoned the guard as agreed and ensured he was safely away from the lab when it went up. The incendiaries had worked perfectly, virtually razing the building and its hateful equipment and records before the fire service arrived. Thrower had called her to confirm that they safely got the animals up to Carlisle, and repeated his praise for her. ‘I’ll work with
you
in the future, but not those two clowns,’ he had said, and promised to be in touch again soon. But with the raid behind her, she knew the priority now was to tackle her father head on—about something even worse than his animal experiments. That document—ambiguous though it was—had definitely pointed to human testing. ‘
Males
,
18
-
25
...’

‘
So. What do we do about the file?’ Maddie asked. She had not fully understood the technical references, but the meaning had seemed obvious enough. Her husband was involved in producing biological weapons. Her husband, the man she thought she once loved, the father of her twins, was a monster. He was someone she can never have really known. And who had married her, for reasons the whole world could see, but she had not believed—for her family money, and to try out a new womb for the son he so desperately wanted. There had always been a mystery surrounding his divorce, but she had put his unwillingness to talk about it down to some deep hurt, something intensely private between the two of them. Perhaps, though, it was as simple as that. His first wife had not been able to give him a son, so—Henry VIII style—a new model had been required. That she too would leave James was now certain, but for the present the logistics of what it all meant were overwhelming and frightening. Both she and Lydia needed someone they liked and trusted to lean on, to help them decide what to do. Someone like...‘We could ask Tom what he thinks,’ she suggested.

The
sound of his name made Lydia start. ‘Tom? Whatever for?’ she asked, furious with the involuntary blushing that had plagued her from early childhood.

Maddie
noticed and was puzzled by it. ‘It’s just that he knows so much about James’s businesses. I thought he might help us.’

Lydia
was quiet for a while before deciding to tell Maddie the impulsive plan she had formulated overnight. ‘Worth a try. It might well be a good idea. Actually, what I was thinking of doing was flying out to Belize and confronting Dad. To his face. He’s out there for another week. And Tom arrives any time now too. I could talk to him first, before facing up to James.’

‘
How long would you be away?’

‘
There’s a weekly direct charter flight to Belize. And it’s tomorrow. I either take it or I wait until he’s back. Although his secretary says he’s then flying straight on to Lisbon.’

‘
It sounds as though you’ve thought it all out,’ Maddie said. ‘At least you can try. See what he says...’

‘
I’ll go then,’ Lydia said, relieved to have finally made up her mind. ‘I’ll call you when I get there. All right?’

Chapter Ten

‘James. It’s me. Everything seems to be going pretty much to plan out here.’

‘
So, you haven’t heard, then?’ Barton snapped. ‘I thought you consultant people were supposed to follow the news.’

Tom
felt exposed. ‘What’s happened?’

‘
The Stow plant. It’s gone. Burned to the ground last night.’

‘
What? I don’t...Do they know what caused it?’ Tom was shocked, his quick mind already playing over the various crisis management options.

‘
It was fire-bombed. The inspectors are crawling all over the place, but unofficially they’re telling me what I already know. Animal rights terrorists.’ Barton had received a stream of personal and corporate threats over the past year from several of the fragmented militant groups. And even more since that damned article on Temple Bio-Laboratories had run in the weekend supplement. He had already fired his City PR company for talking him into doing the interview against all his instincts. The piece did nothing for the share price, but made him a magnet for all the bleeding heart cranks, and worse. He had not told anyone about the warnings, however. Certainly not the police. The last thing he wanted was to invite attention and surveillance. And certainly not Tom or his own management people either. If it got out, it could only hit the share price and push up his already crippling insurance premiums.

‘
What’s the media making of it? This is share sensitive.’

‘
No group has claimed responsibility yet, and the fire inspectors will take some time to get to an official conclusion, but the press is already speculating about a suspected fire-bombing attack. From the usual animal rights suspects...or some newish group, the Animal Freedom Militant Warriors. Whoever it is made a hell of a job of it. Two years’ work up in smoke.’

‘
You kept back-up records though.’ They had talked about just such a scenario for a disaster recovery programme.

‘
We’ve got the data backed up, sure. But it’s the actual work...’ Barton complained, genuinely upset. Despite his nakedly commercial reasons for entering the field, he was none the less deeply proud of what the teams he had assembled were achieving, leading the world. ‘The transcription, where we were replicating the pigs’ DNA. Base pairing. The chimera rats we’d developed. And especially the work we’d done with the transgenic haemoglobin. We were
months
away from a commercially viable cell-free blood substitute. Imagine the worldwide market for that! One animal had blood that was sixty per cent human, forty per cent pig haemoglobin. With protein engineering we had all but cracked the problem of low oxygen affinity and the side-effect kidney problems. All this is the
real
cost. It’s the loss of the actual specimens that’s the biggest blow, not the notes. Everyone knows the theory behind all this. What we had was the practical, physiological proof.’

‘
There might be some hope, you know. If this
was
an animal rights attack, then the good news is that they will have “liberated” them. They won’t have burned
them
, will they?’ Tom reasoned. And if I’m right, your pigs are probably roaming around free range on some hippy smallholding in Glastonbury, or some damn place. There’s still a decent chance that the police will find them, you know. They take these militant animal rights people very seriously.’ He just stopped himself adding that MI5 would also almost certainly have been brought in by now. Mitchell would hardly thank him for putting Barton on notice of secret service interest in him.

‘
I’ve thought of that,’ Barton said. ‘I’ll put the private detective agency on the case as well.’ He retained the company to sweep his offices and home regularly for listening devices, as well as compiling the reports on people who could help or hinder his ambitions. People like Elkins.‘As for the impact of all this on Temple Bio, the new PR people are putting out a statement saying we had everything backed-up, including specimens—to settle the market. We’ve had enough of a hammering without all this. And you, I want you to tell Elkins the same story. OK?’

‘
Sure. I’ll handle that.’

‘
How did last night go? You know...after the dinner.’

‘
I assume your PI found out that Elkins was gay? Hence the hotel,’ Tom replied with an edge. He now needed no signposting on how Barton was using him. ‘I left him in a gay bar surrounded by some admirers. I’ve checked that he’s actually back. Got in about five. But I haven’t seen him myself yet this morning. I’m about to call and chase him. We need to be out of here in an hour.’

Barton
laughed. ‘Don’t worry. He should be in a really good mood.’ One of those ‘admirers’ had just called the private detective with his report. The threesome had got through mountains of coke and poppers.

Tom
now felt unclean at ever being a part of Barton’s dirty way of doing business. ‘That side of this trip is all your department. More seriously, are you happy that he’s going to be impressed with what you’re doing out there? Without any need for blackmail?’

‘
That’s not a phrase I want to hear you use again, Tom,’ Barton cautioned. ‘Big business using job insecurity to cow youngsters and fifty-year-olds—is that blackmail? Governments tying Third World aid to defence contracts—is that blackmail? Don’t suddenly turn into Mother Teresa on me! But yes, to answer your question, we’re ready for him. I’ve rehearsed Penny on what to say, and how much to show him. Just get him over here happy. I’ll have the helicopter fly you down. See you later.’

But
Tom knew that all was far from well at Temple Bio. In his job he had often witnessed what he called the ‘bandwagon of success’ working for clients. Things began to go right for some reason, and then almost magically everything else also starts to go their way. Winning contracts by a whisker instead of losing them. New income and new opportunities seeming to come at them from all sides. Currency movements working for rather than against them. The best people are suddenly desperate to work for them, whilst their own high-fliers stop taking calls from headhunters. It was a genuine phenomenon, he thought, one with empirical legs—something he would like to study seriously some day, maybe for a Harvard Review piece. Success really
could
breed success. But there was the other side too. The bandwagon of failure, and Murphy’s Law, when everything that could go wrong, did. This was what was happening now to the company. Unaccountably, everything now seemed to be going belly-up again for the once untouchable Barton.

And
on top of all this, through the formidable Peregrine Mitchell, Tom himself was spearheading a powerful MI6 campaign against the man and the outposts of his sprawling empire. Mitchell had briefed him to ‘go native’ with Barton. To get him to bring him fully into his confidence at last on Lisbon and this Aruba Mutual Alliance. It would not be easy. Barton obviously had him pigeon-holed as a convenient front man for the legitimate side of the companies. What was it he had just called him? ‘Mother Teresa’. On another occasion it had sarcastically been ‘Tom the Baptist’. Mitchell’s plan was for Tom now to show his streetwise side, and make a play for a lot more money. Show Barton some naked greed, and use a little blackmail of his own to plant them firmly on the same moral plane. It was a role an angry Tom was more than ready to play. He would take the greatest pleasure in bringing the monster crashing down. Permanently this time. And if Barton thought he, Tom, could not play dirty pool, then he was in for one very big shock.

*

Bolitho looked around urgently for a safe place to spend the night. The light had just started to go, and he knew how very little time he had left. The temperature had also dropped substantially. Jungles, however, held few surprises or terrors for him. He was pleased with the distance he had already managed to put in, the going so far not being as difficult as he had expected. Trekking on into the night had been an option, but given his good start it was not worth risking a fall and a broken leg.

Having
spotted a fallen banak tree, lying at an angle against a group of others, he decided this would be his first resting place. Swinging off his rucksack, he quickly strung up his nylon hammock before collecting wood. Satisfied with the security of his bed, he now set to work on a fire as the light rapidly died. The wood was damp, so he took a couple of tampons out of the rucksack pocket and placed them together on the ground. It was an old survival trick he had picked up years earlier: the cotton wool made excellent tinder. He lit it with a varnished survival match and carefully added the wood. Then, using his powerful flashlight, he turned his attention to one of the jobs he least enjoyed in jungle operations. Removing the leeches.

These
slug-like creatures survive by attaching themselves to passing animals, sucking out as much as half a pint of blood at a session. Even more horrific, however, are aquatic leeches, which can lodge behind the eye, in the vulva and vagina, the male urethra or, if they have entered through the mouth or nostrils, on to the trachea and bronchi. Bolitho was extremely respectful of the hated things, and now he checked himself, finding three on his legs. Two had not got a hold, and he simply shaved them off with the knife. The third, however, had burrowed in deeply. Dragging them out is dangerous, as the jaws can be left behind, risking ulceration and gangrene. For this one, along with another he felt but could not see on the back of his neck, he applied some anti-insect cream. In half a minute the creatures had left the wounds, leaving behind their bloody trail, and he gratefully flicked them away. Next he reapplied his insect repellent to try and avoid problems with mosquitoes and other bugs.

Afterwards
he made coffee, drinking it directly from the scalding, charred billy can, swallowed a fistful of his pills and then chewed on some high-energy dry biscuits. He was confident he would not be out there long enough to have to worry about living off the land. Changing his T-shirt, he staked the sweat-soaked one he had removed by the fire in an attempt to dry it. The temperature was plummeting and he knew that wet clothing loses heat twenty-five times more quickly than dry. Before making for his mosquito net and hammock, he decided to radio the pilot, to keep him on his toes.

Sure
enough, the man answered the Tacbe unit almost immediately. ‘Everything OK?’

‘
Yeah. I put in maybe eight miles. Pretty good. But it’s fairly easy going in this valley. I was able to walk along a small trib quite a way. Now I’m just turning in.’

‘
Fine. Anything you need?’ The pilot desperately hoped not. The less he had to do with Bolitho the better he liked it.

‘
What you do is this. Get over here tomorrow, real early. Five, latest. Locate the native again. And me. And radio down precise compass directions. I don’t want to spend any more time hacking through this stuff than I need. Also, I want to know how far ahead he is now. Have I closed on him, or stayed about the same this afternoon? Got that? I’ll hear you up there. Call me when you have the information.’

‘
That’s fine,’ the Englishman replied, relieved. ‘Oh, but just one thing for tomorrow. Midday.’

‘
What?’

‘
I have to pick up two people from the airport. They’re due in at twelve-forty-four. Then I bring them over to San Ignacio. VIP treatment. Sir James’s orders.’

‘
No problem. Usain Bolt couldn’t get to the mother that fast. I won’t need you until a lot later.’

Although
at odds with his feelings, the pilot felt an unexpected pang of compassion for the man. He had been on night manoeuvres himself often enough in his service days, but always with others. With mates. Bolitho was alone out there, and not young any more. Also, for all his toughness, he had the pallor of a seriously sick man. ‘I’ll be here for you when you need me. Good luck, pal.’

‘
Yeah. Sure,’ Bolitho said and flicked off the handset.

Despite
the gnawing pain, and the noise of the forest—water flowing, monkey screams, frogs, birds and a Luftwaffe of flying insects—Bolitho fell easily into a light sleep. It was something he had trained himself to do years ago, using his own bastardised form of yoga. The mosquito net was as tight as he could make it, the hammock as comfortable as any hotel bed, and after an inky coffee, a slug of bourbon and a cheroot as a nightcap, life could have been worse.

And
then suddenly it was. Much worse. His highly developed sense of danger woke him, and he opened his eyes, not moving a muscle of his body. He held his breath so as to hear better. Inside the sleeping sack, his thumb eased off the safety on the Army issue Beretta. His straining senses told him nothing. But there was danger. Though he could not hear or see it, he could taste it, as strongly as the coffee.

What
he had in fact tuned in to was danger being picked up by the far more acute senses of the small creatures around him. They were busy warning their own species and young. And this subtly different jungle noise was what had woken him. Calmly he began to work through the options, as a process of elimination. Poisonous snakes, like the rattler or
fer
de
lance
—known as the tommy-goff in Belize and the pit viper in the States—would not attract this kind of forest attention. Deadly, but not big enough to cause nocturnal panic. The same went for poisonous spiders and scorpions. A boa constrictor could grow to eighteen feet, but it moved lethargically and was not likely to spook a whole area like this. There were crocodiles in the region, but not high as this, he reasoned.