Chapter Ten.
"So
tell me what you meant when you spouted 'MSN' and then shut up about it?" Martin asked, as he put down the tray with our food on the table in front of the couch in the computer room. I set down the tray I was carrying and we both sat down.
I scratched my head, looking at him. "Let's eat first, 'cause I'm still working it out, and we're much too hungry to let it go cold." He grinned at me and nodded, the smell wafting off the plates making us both drool. Apollodoros's moussaka was to die for, and the hole I'd felt was soon filled, though it took seconds and pudding.
"Blimey, that was great," Martin said, leaning back and rubbing his stomach. "I could almost do that again.
"What, thirds!" I laughed. "You'll end up as rotund as Apollodoros". He cocked an eyebrow.
"And what's wrong with that, hmm? We can retire to a Mediterranean island and sit in the sun all day telling stories to our children of our exploits on those archaic things called computers." I grinned.
"Children, yeah right
and how are we going to get those, then?"
He stared at me.
"Adopt."
I blinked. 'Blinded by love' was a concept I had read about, but not one I'd experienced until that moment. Martin was serious, which meant he really did love me, and love me enough to settle down and adopt children.
"I
erm
," I gulped, "could we talk about this later, please?"
"Sorry, Gabe. I didn't mean to
."
"No, please, it's my bad
it's just a little much to think about, what with Valerian and all." I paused, looking away; then got to my feet. "I'm just going to the bathroom." I could feel he was about to say something else, so I grabbed the trays and made a swift exit.
The lighting was down in the main room, though the spill of light from the computer room enabled me to see John and JJ sprawled on the couch, watching a movie. JJ waved at me, and I nodded back, opening the kitchen door with my foot. Apollodoros, with her back to me, was talking quietly on her cell, and I managed to put the trays down and sneak up on her.
"Boo!"
She spun around, annoyed.
"Youse a bads boy, Master Gabriels," she said, putting the cell in her pocket, "youse can'ts steell bees hungries."
"No, we're fine, thank you, Apollodoros; your moussaka was fantastic, as always." I paused, smiling at her. "Was that Caitlin on the phone?"
"No." She sucked air through her teeth, in disapproval. "She's a sillies girls. What you do now?"
"Well, I dunno, I guess we have to wait for Sterling and see.
I'm going for a breath of fresh air topside. I need space to think, you know?" I knew she wouldn't understand, so I didn't explain further, just patted her on the arm and left, closing the door quietly. I looked around the room, which seemed empty except for John and JJ on the couch, and someone, possibly Alex, asleep in a chair with his head resting on the communications console. The doors to the sleeping quarters were all shut too, and I was just about to ask John where everybody was, when I saw JJ wrap his arm around his shoulder and murmur in his ear. John chuckled and pulled him closer, and I found myself backing away - feeling like a voyeur.
I walked over to the bunker door and opened it enough to get through, then closed it quietly behind me. The tunnel was brightly lit in either direction, though I knew it was pointless to go back toward the apartment, so I turned left and followed the route to the stairs and fresh air.
I don't like confined spaces. I'm not claustrophobic, by any stretch of the imagination, but I'm not keen, so to get out into the park felt wonderful; especially as it was still daylight. I sat down and realised it was the same bench I'd sat on when I'd been thinking about Nick. The last time I'd sat there I hadn't met my soul mate, everything was peachy, and my life hadn't gone to hell along with Brian's and John's.
As I watched the regulars skateboarding, I started to feel peculiar. My eyes were leaden, and I began to feel distinctly separate: as if I were just a visitor to reality, observing but not part of it. The sun wasn't helping. Even though I didn't have a watch, the sun was low enough for me to guess it was late afternoon, though it seemed much too hot for that. I reached up and touched my brow, and my hand came back wet, which I couldn't understand, as I didn't normally sweat. My vision began to blur, and I started to feel ill.
"Help!" I spoke aloud, though it was more to hear the sound of my own voice than because I thought any help was at hand. I'd left the bunker without telling anyone, and I was in trouble. My mouth became desert dry at the same time as a marching band started laps in my head. I had to
I had to go. But where did I have to go? The sunlight was becoming almost intolerable, so I closed my eyes to slits to see if that would help
this, for some reason, seemed to be more than funny, and my laughter caused the marching band to double time.
"Help!" I mumbled, louder now, trying to stand and ending up on my knees in the mud. My muscles began to spasm as I collapsed in a heap on the ground. I tried to move, but nothing seemed to want to work, and as blind panic set in I heard footsteps. I would have sighed with relief, had I had the control, and anyway the sense of being rescued was short-lived, as a sudden flowering of exquisite pain exploded in my right arm.
"Don't!" The voice wasn't one I recognised.
"The pig kicked Marhmoud in the balls, and broke my nose." I vaguely recognised the voice, and definitely the tone, though my brain wasn't helping. Just as the name was on the tip of my tongue, I felt a sharp pin prick in my thigh, and the world faded to black.
***
"Gabe
Gabe!
Gabriel Dawson, wake up!" My head was thudding, my mouth an open sewer filled with carpet, and I couldn't seem to remember anything. I tried to roll away from the noise, and the sudden pain in my arm made me scream. I couldn't help it. It was so severe I started crying, and then a hand began stroking my back; I froze.
"Shhh, there, there, Gabe." Through the fog in my head I dimly recognised the voice. "There, there: you'll be ok, mate. Nobody's going to hurt you if I have anything to say about it." The hand kept on stroking my back. It was comforting.
"Nick?"
"Mmm hmm."
"Water, please."
"Oh, God, I'm sorry." The hand was removed and I heard the sounds of a glass being filled; then he helped me sit up enough to drink it. It felt wonderful.
"More, please."
"Sorry, Gabe, that's it until they give us more." He helped me lie down and his hand started rubbing my back again as I drifted off to sleep.
Some time later I woke up, feeling marginally better. With difficulty, as sleep had stuck my eyelids together, I opened my eyes and found I was looking at a blank concrete wall. Gingerly I rolled over and saw Nick sitting at the bottom of the bed I was lying on. He looked terrible; one side of his face bruised beyond belief, his right eye almost closed, his nose obviously broken. Wincing at the pain in my arm, I reached out and squeezed his elbow, more for my benefit than his. He gave me a wan smile and I took a deep breath in shock. He was missing a couple of front teeth.
"Jesus, Nick, what happened?" He grimaced, and then shrugged.
"I was stupid, is the short answer." He got up and moved away, which gave me a chance to see we were in a small concrete cell some ten feet by six. I watched as he filled a plastic beaker from a jug on the floor and handed it to me. "You've got to drink lots of water to counteract whatever sedative the bastards gave you." He watched as I drained the glass, then re-filled it for me before sitting down on the bed opposite. "Sterling left me in charge of watching over you, and a fine mess I've made of it."
"It's not your fault, Nick. If anybody's to blame it's me for sneaking out for a breath of fresh air without telling anyone."
Nick laughed, though it sounded humourless and sardonic. "Don't beat yourself up, Gabe. You've been under tight surveillance ever since you arrived at His Highness's penthouse. Martin insisted on it, and he wanted to tell you so you wouldn't take any foolish risks
it was me who persuaded him not to mention it, and for them to ease up on the guard. I thou
."
"You
you used me as bait!" I was incensed, and livid. Nick cringed before pulling himself together and squaring his shoulders.
"Sorry, Gabe, but I thought it was worth the risk, and there are things you still don't know."
"Such as?" I replied, fed up with the obfuscation, and sure I had nearly enough of the pieces to work out the puzzle.
"We received word that Caitlin had been taken on her way to Thames House." I nodded. It made sense, and it looked like family life would never get back to the way it had been less than a week before.
"Who told you?"
"Sterling. The switchboard at Thames House received the call. The voice was disguised, but only Caitlin was taken. They found the car with Celia and the driver on the top floor of the ministry car park. They were in a M99-induced coma."
"And Sterling still let you use me as bait?" I asked. Nick flushed bright red. "I thought so
you didn't tell him, did you?"
"No, I'm sorry, it was entirely my call
." He paused, and I watched as he looked away; he couldn't meet my eye, and it was obvious he was struggling with something.
"Tell me, Nick," I said quietly. His head jerked up and he looked at me with annoyance.
"So fucking sharp you could cut yourself."
"No. I'm not; it's just that I'm hoping."
"Yes, Martin knew. He wasn't keen, but I managed to persuade him."
"Wasn't keen?" I said in as non-committal a manner as I could muster. Nick sighed.
"Alright, if you must know he was dead set against it."
I breathed a deep sigh of relief, and began to relax for the first time since I'd woken.
"Ok," I said, finishing the water, then swung my legs back onto the bed, lay back and closed my eyes. We didn't have long to wait.
The muffled retort of an explosion close by was followed by several short bursts of automatic gunfire, interspersed with the crack of small arms fire. I watched, still lying on my bunk, as Nick leapt to his feet and put his ear to the door. Abruptly the gunfire died away, and a minute or so later the sound of a key in the door sent Nick, for lack of a better plan, hurriedly back to sit on his bed.
The door opened, and a man dressed in black battle fatigues and wearing a balaclava entered, holding a machine pistol.
"Come on, quickly!" he said, and beckoned us to follow him. We ran down a long roughly panelled corridor past two bullet-bloodied bodies, through a door out into a car park, and got into the back of a waiting panel van. I could hear muffled shouts and the pounding of feet as the balaclava'd man got in behind us and slid the door closed. The van's engine gunned, and with the sound of squealing tires we took off. I turned to watch out of the rear window, and saw three or four figures top-lit by the yard lights leaping into the back of a dark-coloured Range Rover, which came after us.
"Don't worry, they're ours," the hooded man said as he pulled off the balaclava and grinned at me.
"Rajit!" I almost hugged him. "Am I glad to see you!" I found that grim though the circumstances were, I couldn't help but grin back at him, even though I knew the end game hadn't really started yet.
"Why on earth are you two grinning?" Nick lisped through his broken teeth, then frowned. "Damn, that hurts."
"Torture generally does, Nick," Rajit said, getting up to lean through the partition and talk to the driver.
Some forty minutes later we were driving in a high speed convoy down the M4 motorway heading back into London. Rajit had told us that we'd been held in an old warehouse well past Heathrow, and closer to Reading. The satellite had had no trouble in picking up the tracer Martin had hidden in my collar, and Jamal's government had liaised with D27 to rescue us.
"Why didn't D27 mount the raid themselves?" Nick was upset, and rightly so. Sterling was treating him as expendable.
"I don't know," Rajit said, and in the dim light inside the van he seemed embarrassed. "Alex might."
I'd not spent any time getting to know Alex, yet here he was sitting in the front of the van with the driver. I laughed, and took a wild guess.
"So the driver would be
Sellick?"
"Bang on, wonderboy!" Sellick replied, making Nick wince as he turned around to grin at us.
"Please, mate," Nick said in a plaintive voice, "if you're driving, then drive, don't look back at your passengers."
Sellick turned back to the road. "You're so not fun, Nick. Where's your youthful enthusiasm gone?"
"Vanished along with my teef," Nick muttered, which temporarily killed the conversation.
"So Alex, any idea why D27 opted out?" I asked, eventually.
"Because the man we think is Valerian is extremely wealthy, and very well connected in global government," Alex replied, in his broad Scottish accent. "As a government department D27 need cast iron proof before they can act, and Jamal's people don't."
"And who do D27 think Valerian is?" I said, having ideas of my own.
"An Italian by the name of Augusto Sbagliato."
I winced and almost missed the rest of Alex's speech. "He's an artist, apparently. Interpol have loosely tied him to several terrorist bombings, but each and every time he's had solid alibis."
"Hmm," I murmured, aware of Nick giving me an odd look. It wasn't surprising. I don't know what expression I managed to keep on my face, but considering my sister had spent the last three months being tutored by Sbagliato, I doubt it was a joyful smile.
We'd just come off the main part of the motorway and had driven up onto the elevated section approaching Chiswick when Sellick piped up.
"I think we have a problem."
I was still thinking about Sbagliato and wasn't paying attention, when a tremendous explosion rocked the van. I watched in fascination as the Range Rover behind us blew up in a lazy ball of coruscating orange fire, the heat, even inside the van, intense. The sound of beating rotor blades shot overhead, and Sellick shouted, "Helicopter!"
I spun around and through the windscreen saw the helicopter, painted black with two pairs of missile tubes mounted under the cabin, come to a halt and, like a spider, slowly turn to face us. In horror I saw a belch of smoke from the left-hand tube just before I was hurled to the floor, as Sellick slammed on the brakes. The van shuddered to a stop as the road exploded some fifty feet in front of us.
"Run!" Sellick screamed, leaping with Alex out of the front. Rajit wrestled with the sliding door for what seemed an eon before it gave way and slammed open hard, letting us tumble out onto the roadway. We made it to the railings a split second before the next missile destroyed the van. The concussion from the explosion blew Nick, Sellick and me over the railings to land in a crumpled heap on the grass verge some fifteen feet below.
I knew that we had to keep moving or we'd be lost. It was all I could concentrate on. I wanted to lie there and wake up in the morning to talk about my dream with Martin over coffee and croissant. Instead I forced myself to scramble up and pull Sellick to his feet. Nick was unconscious.
"Gotta go, gotta go now," I hissed, as the beating of helicopter blades got louder. Together we carried Nick under the motorway's pilings and hid him behind the burnt out wreck of an old car, then slunk forward and crouched down. Sellick, who seemed to me to be on autopilot, shook himself, then snapped to.
"Weapons, Gabe?" Blankly I shook my head. "Shit, well, ideas, then?" I shook my head again.
"Not unless the authorities get here pretty damn quickly."
Sellick frowned. "Doubtful. The motorway was much quieter than normal. Valerian's probably shut this section down."
"Martin wouldn't be fooled," I stated.
"Na, but Sterling would. For all his bluster he's just a civil servant, and he's no idea of the real power of computers, or of how valuable you are to Valerian."
I nearly laughed. "They just tried to off me. I can't be that valuable to them."
Sellick grabbed my arm, and held his finger to his lips. Above the sound of the idling helicopter rotors, we could hear people shouting on the elevated road above us. Then the shouting stopped, and the relative silence was punctuated by a single gunshot. Sellick went white.
"Dear God!" he whispered.
"What?" I replied, a feeling of dread creeping up. Sellick looked at me, and I saw his bottom lip was quivering.
"Where's Alex, Gabe, where's Alex?"
Chapter 9
Index
Chapter 11
Seraph by Camy © 2006/2007/2008
Thanks to Kitty, for all the editorial input and tweaking.
She has made this tale much, much better than it was. Gassho.
