Thirty Four Minutes DEAD (15 page)

The MC project didn't forgive, and as the pursuer started to close in on Stowles he envisaged the praise he would receive for bringing to ground a project traitor. He was just about to jump on the hunched back of his quarry when he was stopped in his tracks by a blade!

Stowles had turned with an agility that belied his poor physical condition and had thrust the blade of his four-inch pocket knife into the chest of the man who had raced after him. As the man started to staunch the blood from the clumsy wound inflicted by the knife, Stowles took his chance and sped into the corralled environment provided by an adjacent building site. Stowles had hated this development when it sprang up, but now the cover it provided could be his lifeline!

The residence being built was complete with regard to its shell, and Stowles made his way upward to the fourth level. The building was similar in design to the other adjacent properties in the neighbourhood but it was taller than most, subsequently providing Stowles with more cover. As he sought refuge in the upper section of the building, Stowles cursed his bad luck. It was now patently obvious that other MC project staff apart from just Denison and Fray could break into the D39 storage method. Stowles assumed that Mr Voight had examined his locked confine area when he had left Designation B for his ten day leave period. The man who Stowles had stabbed was one of Voight's security team and although Stowles didn’t know him by name, he was quite a familiar presence around the British Designations.
 
Stowles knew that what he had left behind in Designation B was enough to offset his execution. The commercially packaged nature of his video, with it's titling and post produced visuals could only mean one thing - that Stowles was aiming to commercially trade the explorations. The use of musical soundtracking was a third factor, which indicated the video was being designed for 'public' consumption. Voices from outside disrupted the reflections of Brynley Stowles. Voight's voice dominated proceedings.

"...just dead damn you. I don't care about guns with silences, without silences, knives - I really don't give a fuck! I want his head. That's the bottom line. I want the Fuqua’s head - literally. Brynley is a popular team member and if we leave his corpse intact, old 'goody two shoes' Ko-Chai is going to want us to perform an MC exploration on the bastard when they return from the States. If Stowles is decapitated we will have eliminated all visuals pertaining to our role surrounding his death. We'll leave his body but incinerate his fucking head. You see guys, some of the project ranks are a bit soft really. Some would draw conclusions that our treatment was too harsh and project divisions would start to emerge. Leif will obviously get to know of our sentencing method and both he and Mr Fray will back us to the hilt but Ko-Chai, Vain and a few others are going to lose their trust in the security operations surrounding the project".

Stowles froze when he heard the men plotting his method of execution. There were now several hushed voices debating his execution. One of the men put a logistics based question to Mr Voight.

"A decapitation isn't going to be the easiest method of execution right now is it, Mr Voight? I mean it's not as if any of us have an axe or anything, is it? Wouldn't it be better to take him to the Designation to perform the execution, once we've caught him?"

"Jeez - Look around you Brookes. He's holed up in a building site for God's sake. You're going to find a range of objects capable of decapitating a person here. Stop bloody worrying, will you? We've got the guy surrounded, and if any local police show an interest my security identity badge will render them history in a matter of seconds".

The snatches of dialogue could be discerned for several more minutes, although the voices had become muted in their tone and thus Stowles could not discern any further specific information. He knew that things weren't going quite as planned. Voight's security operations usually went without a hitch and yet so far the attempt on his life had been a catalogue of mistakes. The initial two pursuers had been too obvious in their tracking and had aroused his suspicions immediately. The usually flawless attack plan had fallen apart as well, being thwarted by a hunchback with a pocket knife! Stowles felt that Voight's methods indicated his state of panic and it give him a degree of hope. If the mistakes continued he envisaged that he might yet escape his pursuers. A pregnant silence pervaded the location.

Half an hour went by and Stowles heard no sounds associated with human approaches. Two staircases led up to his top-floor position and Stowles kept glancing at both in turn, expecting Voight's men to ascend through the moonlight. The silence started to cause beads of sweat to form on his brow, and every breath uttered by the man seemed to him to be amplified in volume. The partially tiled roof allowed the moonlight to stream through the uncovered sections directly above Stowles and a bizarre type of patchworked shadow was created as a result. Despite his fear, Stowles was briefly distracted by the effect the streetlight and moonlight rendered upon his location. For a few seconds Stowles was off guard. It was enough.

"And now your end is near!”

As the figure dropped down from the roof scaffolding, his leading arm punched the knife from Stowles's hand, and in one move Brynley lay disarmed in an excruciatingly painful judo hold. The connotational entrance line had been whispered as his pursuer administered his stealthy attack. Stowles had seen nothing with regard to the approach of his assailant. Stowles was then punched very hard in his face and as he struggled to remain conscious, his attacker bound his arms tightly behind him. As blood started to role down his left cheek, Stowles was laid out flat on the floor and he was kicked with great ferocity in his testicles. The excessive pain made Stowles lose consciousness for a couple of minutes and when he came to, he saw Voight and two of his security team looking down on him. Three other security staff were searching the skeletal top storey with torches illuminating their movements. Voight gazed down in hatred at Stowles, his face illuminated to a malevolent degree by the torchlight. His words, when they came, had their usual measured precision with no hint of the panic inspired utterances he had made outside the shell of the building.

"So you thought you could make a pound or two out of Ms Venison did you, Brynley? A shame Mr Yardley never got to actually see your hard work. All he had were your rather sad sketches and now he won't see anything, will he? God I hate treachery".

An excited exclamation interrupted Voight's rhetorical address.

"Fortune shines on the righteous, Mr Voight!”

One of Voight's men arrived on the scene carrying a stone cutting angle-grinder with him. The tool was anchored to a mobile power point and an extension cable meant it could be utilised throughout the length of the top floor. Brynley's eyes widened in horror as he realised he was looking at his own customised guillotine!

Voight spoke to Stowles once more - his final castigation.

"We're going to leave most of you here Brynley. They'll know it's you through your fingerprints but no one's going to really give a damn after they've been to your house. Our guys are stacking it full of kiddie porn right now. Your decapitation will go down as another unsolved scumland killing. You will have fallen foul of fellow kiddie-porn distributors. Who the hell is going to weep for you? Your head? Oh, your head! Well after Charles has severed it from your body, we're going to incinerate the damn thing! Do it Charles".

The angle - grinder was activated and as Voight's man approached Stowles, the latter lost control of his bowels. The grinder raced through flesh and muscle and the gagged Stowles breathed no more as the blade severed his neck like it was made of paper. The whole cut had lasted just five seconds.

As Voight's men descended the stairways the head was thrown from man to man. Occasionally it was dropped, causing the security personnel to break into unanimous laughter. Even the usually reserved Mr Voight couldn't contain himself. St John's Wood echoed to the sound of laughter.

When Vain arrived back in England, he along with his project colleagues was given a ten-day recuperating period to spend with his family. America had been beneficial as far as explorations and research were concerned. Indeed, Vain's front line team were now ready to 'test demonstrate' their work upon the extension to the MC vault. The equipment to enable the recovery of visuals had been radically modified to enable the living 'thinking' mind to be tested.

The vault-splicer was now unrecognisable in comparison to the crude, 'inquisition' type device used upon corpses. The new device wouldn't penetrate the skin at all, being composed of small micro-fibre pads that absorbed sensory signals from the brain. The two pads were positioned fractionally above a person's temples and they were wired up to digitised laser facilities. The new vault splicer looked quite mundane, an almost basic piece of equipment, and yet it was a 'mind reader' in effect!

Despite their research successes, America had exacted its toll on the project staff and several of their number had been killed in Chicago. As the Designation J pressure had intensified, the bond between Vain and Levene had strengthened beyond just mutual attraction. Both felt something deeper, something more powerful - a feeling of trust and intimacy. When Vain returned home to his loved ones, he was genuinely pleased to see his wife and children, but his mind did frequently conjure up the image of Levene. Whilst his love for Tanya was very evident, his lust for Levene made him slightly more 'distant' than usual. This aroused his wife's curiosity but he had told her about the events in Chicago and she assumed the loss of some of his friends had made him more withdrawn than usual. Tanya still found it difficult to comprehend the infrastructure of the project Greg was involved with because she was still denied the names of any of Greg's colleagues and could not establish any chain of command. She knew that both Britain and America were involved in the MC project, and it was clear that America possessed a power dominance. She also felt that her husband had a close female friend amongst project staff. Greg had a face which betrayed what he was thinking on occasions, and Tanya knew when his thoughts were racing beyond his dialogue. When he had described the Chicago fire he had stated that he and a colleague managed to scramble out of their project venue and when he had uttered the word 'colleague' he had avoided firm eye contact with his wife, looking down for a brief moment. This gaze avoidance reminded Tanya of an instance that had occurred shortly after her and Vain had commenced their relationship. Greg had been invited to a party which she couldn't attend due to work commitments and so he had gone alone. The event had been organised by one of Vain's ex-girlfriends and when her partner returned home at 05:00 in the morning, he was too drunk to reveal how the party had gone. When she tackled him about his behaviour at the said event in the afternoon, he was initially very careful to avoid maintained eye contact with his partner, looking at her side on or staring fixedly past her. It later transpired that his avoidance of eye contact was due to the fact that he had indulged in a bit of heavy petting with his former girlfriend. Vain's avoidance of direct eye contact had subsequently signified his guilt. When he mentioned the Chicago fire, the same look had been there - just for an instant. She decided to tackle him head on about her suspicions.

"Dark hair, tall and thin I should imagine love - is that about right?”

"You what, Tan?”

"Your fellow escapee, Greg. I bet she looks like that, I mean that's your ideal type love, isn't it?”

"Oh leave it out love. I was running away from a bloody fire, not copping off with elegant women".

"So she was elegant then, Greg!”

"Just a turn of phrase, Tan. I haven't even said my fellow escapee was female for goodness sake".

"Your eyes have, love, and I bet your memory-camera can paint quite a vivid picture of her".

Vain and Tanya indulged in this form of verbal sparring quite frequently during their ten days together and whilst a full blooded row never materialised, a tense atmosphere was generated by the air of suspicion that pervaded their house. The holiday was definitely spoiled by this factor, and Vain was almost relieved to return to his project duties when the ten days were up. He was amazed at the perceptiveness of his wife and although he hated admitting it to himself, a lot of her comments were correct deductions.

When the project ranks were reassembled at Designation B, Denison didn't waste any time in relating the death of Brynley Stowles. Mr Voight had informed him of the true story and he had indeed complimented the British head of Security for the fast, effective manner in which he tackled the treachery in question. In his speech however, he ran with the 'planted' kiddie-porn scenario.

"Project friends, my welcome is tempered by some bad news concerning one of our number on this side of the Atlantic. In Chicago we lost some excellent committed MC project colleagues and a few who abused our trust in them. Unfortunately Brynley Stowles's death is another occasion where an MC member of staff will have few mourners".

As several project members shook their heads in initial disagreement with Denison's words, Blyth Carson stood up and mouthed his discontent.