At first, the place looked empty, but then a flicker of artificial light caught his eye. There, in the gloom in the far corner, sat a fair-haired man in a T-shirt. He had his back to Marc and seemed to be staring intently at a computer monitor. On the floor around him was a haphazard array of electronic equipment. Marc couldn’t be certain, but it looked to him like surveillance kit. It all seemed very makeshift. If this was their centre of operations, then they were clearly either moving in or moving out.
A surge of anger rippled through him. The man appeared to be alone. But where was Evie? Was there a basement? All thoughts of the folly of what he was about to do now evaporated. He threw caution to the wind and sprinted round the building to find a way in.
Right, then, dickhead, it’s showtime.
The entrance was a large metal door and he eased it open until the gap was wide enough to squeeze through, relieved that it made no sound. Once inside, he stood still and tried to control his breathing. It took him a few seconds to adjust to the gloom. He was in a narrow entrance hall with what looked like a small kitchen off to his left. To his right was a corridor leading through to the main warehouse. He searched around for a weapon, realizing too late just how unprepared he was for this rescue mission. A filthy plank of wood leaning against the kitchen door looked sturdy enough to do some damage. He picked it up quietly, satisfied with its reassuring solidity, and crept slowly across the hallway. Detritus and broken glass, hard to avoid in the dim light, crunched as he walked and he cursed under his breath as he tried to cross it on tiptoe.
When he emerged into the main open space of the warehouse, he stood still in the shadows while his eyes darted around, searching for any sign of Evie, but he could see no obvious route down to a cellar. At least the man at the computer screen, who was still unaware of Marc’s presence, appeared to be alone.
But the element of surprise didn’t last.
Without warning, the man suddenly swivelled around in his chair and looked directly towards where Marc stood. Marc had no time to think. Luckily, shock had temporarily immobilized his antagonist and it was all Marc needed. With a howl of rage, he charged.
The world took on a dreamlike quality as everything seemed to slow down. He had halved the distance between them when the man snapped to his senses and reached across the table for a gun. There wasn’t enough time to cover the remaining ground and instinct took over. With an underarm swing, he propelled the plank of wood at the man with all his strength. It arced upwards through the air, catching him with a loud crack under the chin, throwing him backwards against the chair behind him and leaving him crumpled in a motionless heap.
Marc was by now on top of him. Snatching the gun off the table, he held it ready to fire, but his caution wasn’t necessary. The man was out cold. His mouth was bleeding and hanging open at an unnatural angle – a broken jaw. Marc stood over him for a few seconds then swung round to examine the warehouse space once again, consumed by the need to find his daughter.
‘EVIE. EVIE. CAN YOU HEAR ME? IT’S DAD.’
Silence.
After several minutes of desperate searching he gave up. Had he just come on a wild-goose chase? He tapped his wristpad and contacted Shireen. ‘Shireen, I’m OK. But there’s no sign of Evie here.’
‘Shit. Tell me how I can help.’
‘OK, stay with me.’
He considered reviving the still unconscious man and beating the information out of him, but instead turned his attention to the computer on the table. There had to be some clues there. The screen showed several windows of live video feed. The one that caught his attention first was a view of the interior of the warehouse itself. He was looking down on himself from above. He craned his neck back and, sure enough, hovering silently a few feet above his head was a tiny skeeter drone recording his every move. That’s how the man knew I was here.
He looked back at the screen. Another window showed a view of Evie’s prison: the rug she had been lying on and the stained brickwork behind it. But there was no sign of Evie. In the top left of the window were the words ‘St Pancras’.
His heart sank. ‘Shireen, I’m in the wrong place. I’m looking at what appears to be live footage of where Evie is, or was, being held, but I can’t see any sign of her. It’s definitely the same place as that video footage of her they sent me and it just says, “St Pancras”.’
‘OK, I am accessing that computer through your wristpad so that I can trace the origin of the feed. Give me a minute.’
Marc felt helpless. The man he’d overpowered was clearly one of the kidnappers, but if Evie wasn’t here, what was this place? Some kind of safe house? Was Evie being kept captive in a temporary location and set to be moved here later? A sudden tiredness overwhelmed him as the adrenalin that had been surging through his body just a few minutes earlier, and which had sharpened his senses, now drained away. Had he missed his only chance of finding Evie?
Suddenly a woman’s face appeared in a corner of the screen and she was staring straight at Marc. And they know I’m here. Great.
He jumped from the chair, not quite knowing what to do with himself. He couldn’t stay here, that’s for sure. Had he just signed his daughter’s death warrant?
But where am I supposed to go? St Pancras Station? Is that where Evie is, or at least where she was? Stay calm and think, dammit. Think!
Then Shireen’s voice again. ‘Marc, I’ve found it. It’s not St Pancras Station, it’s St Pancras Church. She’s being held captive in the crypt beneath it.’
‘And where the hell is that?’
‘There was a reason why Evie’s captors contacted you from the British Library. The church is just across the road from it.’
‘Oh, no,’ moaned Marc. ‘And that’s just a couple of blocks away from the Institute, where Sarah is, where I just spent the past few hours. I’ve just been on a wild goose chase.’ He stumbled out to the road. But Shireen hadn’t finished.
‘Marc, listen. Firstly, we wouldn’t have found the place had you not gone to the warehouse. But there’s something else. There wasn’t just one of the kidnappers in the library this afternoon. There was a woman too. But I had stupidly discounted her.’
‘How do you know this?’ He was suddenly finding it hard to breathe and his head began pounding.
‘Because I just hacked into her wristpad and put in an autotrack. She’s just left the coffee shop where she’s been all afternoon. It’s up the road from the church. She must have been hanging around to keep an eye on things, and now it looks like she’s heading there.’
It was the same woman he’d seen just now and who’d seen him too, he was sure of it. He’d run out of time. He couldn’t get there before the kidnappers.
But Sarah could.
‘Shireen, tell Sarah. Tell her—’ He didn’t know what he expected Sarah to do. He would be putting her directly in danger, and in some corner of his brain a warning voice told him this was a grave mistake, that it was not fair to ask her to do this. But what other choice did he have?
‘Tell her to get to the church, but to stay out of sight. And if she sees anyone, not to do anything. I’ll be there as quickly as I can. And Shireen, call the police. Our cover’s blown now so there’s no point in being careful any more.’
‘OK,’ said Shireen, ‘I’ll get eyes on the church too.’ She disconnected.
Never in his life had Marc Bruckner felt so powerless.
37
Tuesday, 10 September – London
Sarah was out of the Helios Institute building and running before Shireen had finished briefing her, the information continuing to feed through to her retinal AR as she ran. In one corner of her field of vision was a map of the block between University College and the church; in another, she watched a live feed from a drone hovering above the church. She could be there in less than a minute.
The church was on a quiet, tree-lined avenue at its junction with the busy Euston Road. She slowed to a walk as she emerged from a side-street opposite,
and approached the church more cautiously. She’d seen no one on the drone feed, so with luck she’d beaten the kidnappers back here. The churchyard was blocked off from the road by an imposing metal fence and a padlocked gate looked like the only entrance point. She rushed along the fence and around the side in search of another way in while Shireen told her what she could about the place.
‘There’s a crypt beneath the church. And images of it online show that its walls match those in that footage. It seems it was originally used as a catacomb and there are still over five hundred bodies entombed down there! But it’s been abandoned for the past ten years, the perfect prison. Evie was down there, I’m sure, but I don’t know if she still is.’
‘Thanks,’ panted Sarah. She stood still for a moment to take stock. Staring through the railings it struck her that there was something forsaken, sempiternal, about the place that she found deeply unsettling. All she could hear was her own heavy breathing.
Just then, Shireen spoke in her ear. ‘Sarah, it looks like you’ve got company. You’d better hide.’
She ducked behind a tree just in time, because a second later she heard the sound of an engine. Peering from the shadows she saw a large anonymous black van pull up alongside the fence. A man jumped out and unlocked the gate, pushing it inwards. The entrance was wide enough for the van to drive into the churchyard and out of her line of sight. Were they about to move Evie to another location now that they knew Marc was on to them?
‘Sarah, I’ve taken the drone up to two hundred metres in case they hear it, and its camera resolution isn’t good enough to make out details, so it’s just your eyes now.’
Sarah looked up and down the street. It was deserted. She edged her way back round to the front gate. There was no one visible in the yard and the van looked empty, so its occupants must have gone inside, down to the crypt presumably. She took a deep breath. Her heart was still racing from her run and was showing no sign of slowing down. Had it been just one person, maybe the woman from the coffee shop that Shireen had mentioned, she might have stood a chance. After all, she still had the element of surprise on her side. But she had no idea how many kidnappers there were.
‘Sarah, I can just about make you out at the gate. Please be careful. There’s nothing you can do right now so get back out of sight. The police are on their way.’
Shireen was right. But the decision was made for her. One of the kidnappers suddenly appeared from behind the van and pulled open the sliding door on its side. She realized all too late that she was caught in no man’s land and in plain sight. He had spotted her. For what seemed like an eternity, neither of them moved, and the spell was only broken when two more of Evie’s captors appeared – the man who had unlocked the gate and a woman. They were half carrying, half dragging Evie between them. Her clothing was dishevelled, and her face and hair smeared with dirt. At first, Sarah almost didn’t recognize her. The girl looked dazed, as though drugged.
The sight snapped Sarah back to her senses. She was within arm’s length of the gate and the open padlock was still dangling from the bolt.
Sprinting forward, she reached out and pulled the gate shut, slipping the padlock off the bolt as she did so. The driver, seeing what she was doing, started running too. She had no more than a couple of seconds. The gate clanged shut and she pushed the bolt across. Despite her fingers fumbling, she managed to slip the padlock back onto the bolt and click it shut just as the man reached the other side of the gate. He snarled and thrust both arms through the bars to grab at her, but she had already stepped out of his reach. She now watched transfixed as he pulled out a key from his pocket and tried to manipulate his hands through the bars to reach the padlock, but thankfully the angle was too awkward to allow him to get the key into it from inside.
The second man now released Evie from his grip and the girl dropped heavily to her knees. Sarah stood rooted to the spot in horror as he walked calmly around behind Evie and pointed a gun at the back of her head.
‘That was a very stupid thing to do, Dr Maitlin,’ he called over to her. ‘My associate is going to pass you the key to that padlock and you will unlock it again, or your boyfriend may find it hard to forgive you with his daughter’s blood on your hands.’
What choice did she have? What on earth had she been thinking anyway? That they would just sit around, imprisoned in the churchyard until the cavalry arrived? She slowly walked up to the gate again, her whole body shaking with anger. The man on the other side smiled cruelly at her as he stuck out his hand through the bars, offering her the key.
Just as he did so, she heard a sudden buzzing sound overhead. At first, she thought it must be the surveillance drone Shireen had commandeered. Looking up, she saw instead a weaponized police drone skim over the fence. Without slowing, it fired twice at the armed man standing behind Evie. He was thrown backwards in a spray of red, gun flying from his hand. The driver lunged at Sarah through the bars, but she stumbled backwards out of his reach once again and his hand snatched at thin air. Within seconds, more police drones dropped out of the sky and a cold mechanized voice ordered the two remaining kidnappers to lie down on the ground with their hands over their heads.
Sarah stood frozen to the spot. A robotic voice from one of the police helis above her head boomed out, ‘Dr Maitlin, step back from the gate now.’
It snapped her out of her stupor, but instead of obeying, she without thinking rushed over to the gate and unlocked it, then dashed past the dead man to Evie. The girl just stared up at her, eyes wide in shock.
‘Come on, Evie, let’s get you out of here. You’re safe now. I’m Sarah. Your dad has told me so much about you.’ Helping the girl gently to her feet, she supported her limp frame and guided her back out to the street.
They hurried across to the other side and sat down on the kerb. The police had now physically arrived on the scene and were pouring into the churchyard. A small crowd of onlookers was beginning to gather outside.
Sarah watched numbly and hugged Evie tight. She could feel the girl shivering as she sobbed silently against her chest.
It was almost midnight by the time Sarah and Marc got to the hospital to be with Evie. Marc had understandably not wanted to leave his daughter’s side but had to endure a thorough debriefing at Scotland Yard. Sarah had told them everything she knew and was confident that her story would tally with both Marc’s and Shireen’s, who were each being interviewed in separate rooms.
Now, perched next to Marc on the edge of Evie’s hospital bed, Sarah watched the heavily sedated girl as she slept.
Marc spoke softly. ‘One way or another this will all be over in a week.’ His attempt at a smile was no doubt meant to be reassuring. Was he trying to convince her, or himself?
‘A week suddenly seems an awfully long time, though, doesn’t it?’
Marc rubbed his eyes and nodded. ‘You know they’ll keep trying, don’t you?’
Sarah wondered whether the arrest of several of the Purifiers in London would provide enough intel to bring down their entire network. She doubted that very much.
38
Monday, 16 September – Amman, Jordan
Marc awoke just before dawn and lay still for a few minutes. He thought about the trauma the terrifying ordeal of the previous week would have inflicted on his daughter. Charlotte had told him that Evie hadn’t been sleeping well, even under mild sedation, and was waking up regularly from disturbing nightmares. Not surprising really, considering what she had been through. But given the current situation so close to Ignition, they had not been able to arrange any counselling for her. Still, she was a tough kid and if they got through all this, then there’d be time to worry about any lasting psychological scars. He had to keep telling himself that this was not his fault and that at least she was safe now. It had been quickly decided that families and loved ones of all key personnel connected with the Odin Project would be taken off-grid and moved into secret protective custody until after Ignition. But he missed Evie, now more than
ever.
He listened to Sarah’s soft breathing in bed next to him and turned to face her. She looked even more beautiful when she was sleeping. Had they just spent the night together because they might never get another chance? Or was it the only way they had of dealing with the stress they were under? Maybe it would have happened anyway at some point, under more normal circumstances. For him it was probably a combination of all three reasons.
He thought about going for a run to ease the tension he was feeling but knew that was no longer possible – the hotel was under heavy guard to protect the assembled scientists, journalists and politicians staying there and no one could leave or enter without good reason and without ridiculously tight security. Instead, he climbed quietly out of bed and padded across the cool marble floor to the window. Pulling up the blind, he opened the casement wide and took a deep breath, instantly feeling the contrast in temperature between the air-conditioned room and the warmth outside. He gazed out across the ancient city bathed in sepia early-morning light. After the heavy thunderstorm overnight, the sun was now rising above the distant desert skyline with its usual intensity and belligerence, signalling another swelteringly hot Middle Eastern day. Ignition had almost arrived: thirty-three hours to go. He wondered whether tomorrow’s sunrise would be his last, and quickly pushed the thought away. No, the Project will work. He’d spent his career trying to tease out the secrets of dark matter and hadn’t come this far for his life’s work to count for nothing. He closed the window and wandered off to the shower. As he did so, he heard Sarah stirring and turned towards her.
‘Hey.’
‘Hey to you too.’ Sarah stretched and smiled sleepily, the sheet that had been covering her now slipping down.
I’d better make that a cold shower.
Seeing him looking at her, Sarah grinned as she pulled the sheet back up. ‘What time is it?’
‘Early enough. Don’t forget, we’re meeting Qiang for breakfast before we head off.’
Sunfall Page 29
