The Lure (26 page)

‘Did he buy it?’ Gibson asked in a low, urgent voice.

‘He was suspicious,’ Freya suggested.

‘I thought so too,’ said Svetlana.

‘Who cares?’ Vashislav said. ‘So long as it gets Tom and Freya to the cave. Remember the count, Freya and Tom.’

‘Fifteen.’

‘It’s critical. Not fourteen, not sixteen. Apply the brakes fifteen seconds into the fall. If that works, if it stops you at the entrance to the Styx, then you have a chance.’

‘Split up as soon as you get away,’ said Gibson. ‘Take different routes. That way you’ll double the chance of success.’

Svetlana’s face was ashen. Petrie stretched over to her and held her hand, without saying a word. She looked at him, managed a smile. ‘You’ll make it, Tom? You’ll do it for us?’

He returned the squeeze of her warm, small hand. ‘If it’s humanly possible.’

Something about Hanning.

Petrie climbed the stairs to his room, locked the door and pulled out a sheet of paper from his rucksack.

Arthur Jeremy Winterman Hanning. Eldest son of Edward George Hanning, gentleman farmer, and Agnes Strathairn née Forsyth. Education Leatherhead, Winchester, Greats at Oxford. Began career as HEO in the Agricultural Research Council. Transferred to Central Office, attained Grade 6, transferred over again to MAFF. At age forty became Secretary to the Minister for Science, in which capacity Lord Sangster was the second minister he had served.

That much he had pulled down from the Net within an hour of Hanning’s arrival at the castle. No woman in the man’s life, no interests or hobbies, no recorded scandals or peccadillos; just a bog-standard Civil Service career route.

But now, without warning, something jumped into his head. He had no rationale for it, but it was suddenly, obviously, blindingly true.
That man isn’t Hanning. He’s our assassin.

31

Tatras Ride

Up the stairs, running. Petrie stays at the foot.

Freya, gasping, reaches the top first, followed by Gibson and Svetlana. She stops at the corner of the corridor, waving them past, looking back down the stairs.

Gibson and Svetlana run to the far end of the corridor, turn right. Hanning’s door first left.

Locked.

Gibson has the master key. In his excitement it jams. Svetlana impatiently pulls his hand away, takes the key out, starts again and opens the door.

Unmade bed.
The Fifth Miracle
by Paul Davies on the bedside table, next to a bottle of pills. Suitcase on wooden table, lid zipped shut. Gibson opens it, rakes through the contents; Svetlana rakes through the wardrobe of clothes.

Gibson shakes his head, heads swiftly for the bathroom.

‘Here!’ From between the folds of a spare blanket in the wardrobe, Svetlana pulls out an automatic pistol, heavy and shiny.

‘Jesus!’ Gibson takes it, looks at it incredulously.

‘More!’ She pulls out a box, opens it. A hundred cartridges, it says so on the lid, and there they are, sinister little messengers of death.

Freya is whispering urgently at the door. ‘He’s coming!’ She sees the gun, gapes in open-mouthed horror.

Gibson shoves it into the belt of his trousers, the box of cartridges into a pocket. The pocket bulges. He pulls his casual shirt out, stretches it down.

Out of Hanning’s room. Svetlana locks the door and they run quietly along the corridor.

Petrie is at the foot of the steps, waving them down in an agitated manner. They take the stairs two at a time. Back into the refectory. Into their seats, Shtyrkov looking at them with alarm and curiosity. Hanning saunters in. Petrie is pouring tea and Svetlana is spreading toast, a picture of normality. They are trying not to pant.

Hanning sits down, stretches for toast, leans back in his chair. His manner is relaxed, almost insolent. He lacks the strain showing on the faces of the others. ‘I’ve spoken to Sangster. A truck will come for Tom and Freya at twelve o’clock. So, the pair of you should be back here by this evening.’

Freya, behind Hanning, is looking out of a window. She turns and puts a finger to her lips.

Gibson seems to be looking for a handkerchief in his pocket. Under the table, he puts the gun on his lap. ‘Will we need to make any more arrangements with the soldiers?’

‘No. Freya and Tom should just walk out of the castle.’

Gibson nods. ‘That’s it, then. I think it only remains to see whether we can escape from here.’ He looks directly at Hanning. ‘Do you have any suggestions?’

Hanning senses something. ‘You don’t need to escape. I think we’ve been over that.’

Gibson speaks quietly. ‘I think you should try harder, Jeremy.’

Something in Gibson’s voice. Hanning looks round the scientists, suddenly wary. ‘You people are up to something. Is it Tom and Freya? Do they have an escape route?’

Silence.

Hanning’s face grows pale. ‘I think I’ll go to my room. Not feeling too good.’

Freya turns from the window in alarm.
‘Herregud!
Soldiers in the grounds.’

‘Are they coming in?’ Shtyrkov asks.

‘I don’t think so.’

‘We must not alert them with gunshot.’

There is a moment’s shocked silence, then Hanning quickly pulls his chair back. Gibson clatters the pistol on to the table. Hanning freezes.

‘Like I said, Jeremy, try harder.’

Shtyrkov stands up, wheezes his way through to the kitchen.

Hanning, grey-faced, looks down at the table, his hands clutching each other. ‘There’s never been anything personal in this. I was hired to do a job in the service of the Queen.’

‘There’s nothing personal in any of this,’ Gibson says.

Svetlana says, ‘Speak for yourself.’ She moves away from Hanning, round the table, and sits down next to Gibson. Her face is paler than Hanning’s but her lips are thin with determination. Freya comes back from the window and joins them.

Petrie says, ‘Actually it was Horace, not Seneca. A real Oxford Greats man would have known that.’

Gibson’s voice is calm, almost conversational. ‘I’ll get no pleasure out of an execution, Jeremy.’

‘I’ll bargain with Sangster.’ Hanning’s voice is now hoarse.

Svetlana asks, ‘Is that the best you can come up with?’

‘Do we have to do this?’ Freya asks. She is biting her lip.

‘Think of something quickly, Jeremy,’ Gibson says.

Svetlana’s voice is trembling. ‘That cave is my child. I gave it twelve years and it rewarded me with the greatest discovery in history. And you and the system you represent want it all destroyed, and us along with it.’

Gibson lifts the pistol and examines it curiously, snapping the safety catch on and off. ‘You see our problem, Jeremy. When Tom and Freya go, there will only be three of us left to keep you under control. Vashislav is too slow, which makes it just Svetlana and me. But you’ve thought all this out already, haven’t you, Jeremy? You’re two moves ahead of us, and working out move number three.’

Svetlana says, ‘You’re too dangerous to have around. You could finish us and everything we’ve achieved.’

‘But you’ve achieved nothing. You will find that you no longer have access to the signal. I changed the password. And the original disk is now on its way to GCHQ, where it will be examined by others subject to the Official Secrets Act. They will have no information about the place or time of the signal, and so no way to work out where the signal came from. But they will know what the disk contains. It may put the Great back into Great Britain.’

Gibson grows pale, looks as if he might hyperventilate. ‘You’ve denied us access to the message?’

Hanning nods. ‘So far as you are concerned, it’s gone.’

‘I’ll check.’ Svetlana disappears quickly from the room. They hear her running downstairs. She returns after two long, silent minutes. ‘I can’t get into the computer.’

‘What? Have you tried Tom’s?’ Gibson is almost croaking with tension.

‘Yes.’

A despairing groan comes from Gibson. He hunches forward, puts the gun on the table. Hanning sits very still; only his eyes move, flickering between Gibson and the pistol.

Svetlana flops into her chair. ‘Jeremy, does your government’s treachery extend to double-crossing my country too?’

Hanning shakes his head. ‘I don’t know. But think of the advantages to any country which has sole access to the secrets of the signallers.’

‘And the hard drive in the cave?’ she asks.

‘The intention was, and is, that it will be taken from you as soon as you have it. So you see, even if by some miracle you escaped from here, you would have no hard evidence to back up your story. It would just be a fantasy thing.’ Hanning’s body language is now defiant. ‘There’s absolutely no purpose in getting rid of me. You’re already defeated.’

Svetlana breaks the brittle silence. ‘Charlie.’

‘What?’ Gibson’s head is on the table, and his arms are cradling it as if to keep out the world.

‘I didn’t trust you when we came here. I thought you might disappear with the disk and try to grab all the kudos for yourself.’

‘So?’ His voice is indifferent.

‘So I made a copy of the disk. It’s in my room.’

Gibson is like a man rising from the dead. He sits upright, visibly swelling. He looks at Hanning as if the man is Satan incarnate, then laughs harshly. His hand goes to the pistol. He takes a deep breath and says, ‘Do it, Vash.’

In the fraction of a second it takes Hanning to understand Gibson’s remark, Shtyrkov is bringing the fire axe hard down, as if he is chopping wood.

*   *   *

Petrie had first fainted, then vomited on and off during the following hour while Svetlana and Shtyrkov had wrapped Hanning’s body in a grey blanket. Gibson and Freya had then seen to the scrubbing down of the kitchen table, chairs and floor, while Shtyrkov had taken Petrie by the arm, led him gently to a settee in the atrium, and described some of the things his grandparents’ generation had had to do in the Patriotic War. Petrie had listened to the horrors with his face buried in his hands.

Freya had then appeared with tea and biscuits, looking as if she had just been baking scones. The cosy normality of this had sent Petrie slightly mad. After a fit of hysterical laughter, he had calmed down sufficiently to drink the tea, giggling and spluttering into it now and then. He got to his feet and staggered apprehensively through to the refectory, while Shtyrkov headed up the stairs to change his blood-spattered clothes and have a shower.

It was impossible to connect the clean, polished refectory with a grisly murder. Petrie looked round in bewilderment. ‘Where is he?’

‘Don’t use the kitchen freezer,’ Gibson advised. He looked at Petrie closely. ‘I don’t think you’re up to this. Maybe Svetlana should go in your place.’

‘I’ll be fine. You need a tough, aggressive male to see it through.’

‘In that case Svetlana should definitely go.’

Svetlana shook her head. ‘There’s nothing I’d love more. But we’ve made the decision. Tom’s the expert on the decipherment.’

‘He’ll be fine,’ Freya said.

‘I’ll be fine. Thanks, Svetlana.’

Gibson adopted a businesslike manner although he was visibly shaking. ‘Okay, we have about ninety minutes. Let’s go over the maps again while Vashislav prepares the copy disks.’

*   *   *

Freya and Tom stood just inside the door they had entered five days earlier.

‘Final check-list,’ Gibson said.

Petrie unzipped his inside pocket. ‘Two disks. One with a sample, the other with the full works. Encrypted.’ He tapped a side pocket. ‘Purse with cash and all your credit cards. Pin numbers memorised.’

‘Freya?’

‘Two disks. One the full signal, the other a message from Vash to his friend in Murmansk, to prove authenticity.’

‘How will he know the message is really from you?’ Gibson asked.

‘It has things on it which only he and I know about.’

‘And Vashislav’s mobile,’ Freya added, feeling a side pocket.

‘With which you can send and retrieve e-mail on the move,’ Vashislav reminded her. ‘I’m sorry that there is only the one between you.’

‘Remember your passwords?’ Gibson asked. ‘One for decrypting the disks, the other for deleting them if you’re loading up under duress.’

Shtyrkov said, ‘I’ve used Blowfish encryption and put a compiled C program into the DVD. Insert the duress password and the program will flash “decrypting” on the screen while it’s busy writing zeros all over the disk.’

Gibson smacked his forehead. ‘I nearly forgot! The screwdriver!’

Freya fiddled with the waistband of her jeans. ‘It’s here, Charlie.’

‘Remember, Tom: fifteen. Not fourteen, not sixteen. Fifteen seconds precisely.’

‘We never did get that game of chess, Vash.’

Gibson said, ‘That’s it, then.’

There was a long, long silence. Shtyrkov eventually broke it. ‘I’d have slaughtered you.’

‘Never. I do a good endgame.’
Damn!
Endgame was the wrong word.

But Shtyrkov smiled and said, ‘A good endgame won’t save you, Tom. It needs to be devastating.’

Freya’s eyes were moist.

‘Do this for us.’ Gibson’s voice was strained.

‘Either we’ll get you your immortality, Charlie, or we’ll die trying.’

Svetlana said, ‘It’s probably as well I never married, never had children. Maybe if you have a child some day, Freya…’

‘If it’s a girl she’ll be called Svetlana.’

Gibson said, ‘I think you’d better go.’

There was an exchange of handshakes. Petrie held Svetlana briefly, and then Gibson was opening the door and she was pushing him towards it, and they were out, Freya first. Cold air met them. As the door was closing Petrie looked back and glimpsed Shtyrkov, smiling at him. Then Freya was taking his hand and they walked along the path towards the archway.

Beyond the archway, an army truck was waiting, steam coming from its throbbing exhaust. The canvas flaps were back and there were about a dozen soldiers inside. Most were grinning in the direction of Freya. A bulky Sergeant directed them into a Land Rover. Freya sat next to a dark-skinned, swarthy driver in battledress. The driver nodded curtly. The vehicle grumbled into life and set off down the hill, the lorry following about thirty yards behind.