Fire and Water

by Simon Guerrier

  “These things have to have come through from somewhere,” he said.

  “You said holes in time,” she answered, her voice thick with doubt.

  “Yeah,” Danny said, checking and rechecking the detector in his hands.

  “Maybe your customs lot dropped this or something. But there’s no anomaly anywhere near.”

  Without a solid lead to follow, they made their way back to the lodge. Along the way Danny tried asking Sophie about herself. At first she resisted, but he had been taught to interrogate witnesses by gaining their trust, and he wrung a few choice details from her. She had elderly parents who depended on the money she sent them, and she muttered angrily about the lack of welfare in the country, that decent, hard-working people could suddenly find themselves practically on the poverty line. This verdant land held such opportunity, yet everywhere money was tight.

  It seemed she’d also once had a brother, who had been her parents’ favourite. He’d either died or absconded, but Danny didn’t want to press her to find out which. He glanced at her at regular intervals, trying not to let her see him doing it; she didn’t once turn her head in his direction. At last they pulled up, and still there were no other cars in the car park.

  “Thanks,” he said as he got out of the SUV. “It was a lovely outing.” He shut the door.

  She looked up at him from behind the wheel, the engine still rumbling.

  “Need some more stuff if we’re going after this thing,” she said. And before he could respond, she reversed smartly backwards and was bombing away down the road. Danny stood watching the dust curl in the air behind her. Then he stepped up onto the raised platform and went back into the lodge.

  He found Lester in the mess room enjoying a regal breakfast. Something cooked, judging by his plate, and a rack of toast. Now he was finishing off with a dripping mango while topping up his coffee.

  “Ah,” he said, seeing Danny. “You want some of this?” He splashed dark coffee into a cup then waved the pot in the direction of the milk and sugar.

  Danny sank onto the seat opposite him and exhaled.

  “Thank you, yes,” he said, wiping his forehead. “Woo, it’s already hot out there.”

  “Mmm,” Lester said. “That’s why I’ve stayed inside. The gamekeepers have rather left us to it, which isn’t especially wise given that this place was invaded last night. Once animals know they can get into somewhere, there’s no holding them back.” His mouth twitched with irritation. “But since there’s nothing I can do about it, I just helped myself.”

  “I can see. Did you call Connor?” Danny splashed milk into his coffee and then took a sip. It had a strange, musty flavour, as if it had been spiced. He washed it round his gums, feeling the tannins and caffeine and whatever else igniting in his blood.

  “Couldn’t get hold of him. His phone seems to be switched off, and no one else at the ARC is responding either. I keep getting that automated message we use for fobbing off the public.”

  “Jenny at her sultry best,” Danny commented. “I might ring them again, just to hear it.” The message simply said that the caller had come through to a division of the Home Office, and could they leave a name and number. But the way Jenny said it...

  Lester grunted, clearly not in the mood for jokes — when was he ever? — and continued with his mango. He’d put on a crisp new shirt and plain silk tie — not really the thing for the stultifying heat or such messy fruit, but Lester ate with deft and delicate skill. Danny assumed it was something you got taught at public school.

  “I’ve had an odd morning,” he said.

  “Mmm.” Lester reponded, not feigning any interest. “Thank you for the note.”

  “Didn’t want to wake you. Unless you wanted to come with us?”

  “What, play gooseberry to you and Safari Girl?”

  “It’s nothing like that. Well, not yet anyway,” he replied, and he grinned. “I can’t hold her off forever.”

  “She does seem mysteriously besotted with you,” Lester observed dryly.

  “We’ll see.” But the comment gave him new hope. He filled Lester in on the events of the morning, including their equipment delivery and their discovery of the grim remains of the theropod.

  Lester nodded. “As the Postosuchus is from a different period, we’re still looking for two anomalies.”

  “Sure.” He held up the handheld anomaly detector. “This thing’s only got a limited range, so we can go out for a longer scout around the game reserve once Sophie gets back with more supplies.”

  “What’s she made of all this?”

  Danny considered what to tell his boss. He didn’t want to give away anything that Lester could use to antagonise her. He realised that he actually wanted to protect her.

  “She’s doesn’t say much, though she was happy to prod about the mess that was left of the theropod, so she isn’t squeamish.”

  Lester’s eyes narrowed as he mulled over this information, as if he was unpicking all the things that Danny hadn’t told him.

  “She’s used to animals killing each other,” he mused.

  “Yeah, but not to shiny great holes in time.”

  “So this reconnaissance... You’re assuming the anomalies will both be in the game reserve.”

  “Not assuming, but it seems like the best place to start.”

  Lester leaned back in his chair and sipped his coffee.

  Danny spent an agonising hour waiting for Sophie to return, fidgeting around the lodge, kicking his feet, while Lester sat demurely at the dinner table checking his BlackBerry periodically as he continued to try to reach Connor. When he wasn’t doing that, he was reading a fat paperback, The Scramble for Africa. He seemed to have a thing for history, for military tactics. His office back at the ARC had all sorts of pretensions to the great strategists of history. Danny suspected that he saw himself as the ARC’s Duke of Wellington — with everyone else as the cannon fodder.

  Eventually they heard the thrum of Sophie’s SUV pulling up outside, the engine purring over. Danny hurried out to meet her while Lester followed at his own pace. She poked her head out of the open window of the car and Danny found himself grinning at her. She looked back at him with eyes hard and sharp like diamonds.

  “Uh,” Danny said, his smile faltering.

  “Get,” she told them, “in the car.”

  He jumped down from the platform, and beat Lester to the front seat. Lester muttered something under his breath and got into the back alongside bottles of water, a box of ammunition, and a few other bits and pieces. Danny strained round in his seat to look over the provisions, then tossed Sophie another grin. She eyed him warily.

  “Is something wrong?” he said, acting all innocence.

  “Everything’s fine,” she told him. “Though he ’s not dressed for this.”

  Lester smiled. “A good suit means you’re ready for anything.”

  “Don’t mind him,” Danny said. “He’s management.”

  “Indeed,” Lester said. “Fieldwork isn’t my usual line. So perhaps we can get on with this.”

  Sophie put her foot down and the car lurched backwards in an arc, throwing Danny forward. He heard Lester hit the back of his seat with a thump, and fell back into his seat as Sophie shoved the car into first gear and they bounded off along the red dust track.

  “What’s your plan?” Lester said calmly, once they were on their way. He ran a hand through his slicked-back hair.

  “We find this creature,” Sophie said, her eyes fixed on the road. “Turns out it’s had quite a night. Worked its way through a lot of the wildebeest and zebra. Didn’t eat them, just tore them up. If it goes on like this, we won’t have a game park left. So we find it, and we bring it down.” She peered at Danny beside her. “If we can, we send it home. But I’m not going to lose any sleep if we can’t.”

  “How are we going to find it?” Danny asked.

  Sophie smiled.

  “Got something trussed up in the back that’ll bring it o
ut.”

  Danny twisted round, to see Lester looking over the back of his own seat into the boot of the SUV. Something bleated meekly back at him.

  That could just as easily be us, he mused. And this time he didn’t grin.

  FIFTEEN

  Connor had no idea of the time, no sense at all of how long they’d kept him in what they now called the ‘interview room’.

  He’d seen films where suspects were deprived of sleep and their wristwatches, putting them in a surreal and itchy-eyed state where they’d agree to just about anything. He’d also watched enough episodes of 24 to know some of the nastier things an interrogator might do so you’d say what they wanted to hear.

  They’d removed his handcuffs but he’d learnt that it didn’t mean he could get up from the chair. So he sat on the hard plastic, his bum passing from discomfort to sore to a weird numbness. Possibly he dozed off sporadically, but he couldn’t be sure.

  His best measure of time had come from counting the different interrogators. Becker had been relieved by a bloke called Adam who usually worked at the front gate. Connor and him had developed a routine where Adam rolled his eyes whenever Connor came in late. Which was — to be fair — every morning. They’d not spoken, as such, not that Connor could remember, and now here the guy was, standing over him and yelling questions. But not looking entirely comfortable with it.

  He’d been left on his own for a long time, before a small man with a bunged-up sort of voice took over. After he left, it was the female security guard some of the other men called Pliers — though, he’d noticed, never to her face. A scar reached from her bottom lip to just below her jawline. As he struggled to answer her aggressive questions, he pitied whoever had dared to cross her path.

  They all asked the same things, but in different ways: where he’d been, who he’d talked to and what about, what proof he could offer to corroborate his answers. He knew they were trying to confuse him, changing the emphasis of the questions or implying he’d said something differently before. Over all, he felt he’d done okay on sticking to his story. But the more he went over the same tiny details, the less sure of them he became. It was like saying your own name out loud over and over, until it lost all sense of meaning.

  He assumed they knew that anyway, that they just wanted to wear him down. They prodded and probed him, got angry or pretended to be his best friend. Connor tried to cooperate but remained defiant, indignant about the whole thing.

  He needed a shave, and to wash, sleep, and eat something — and to check his email. In fact, they had him neglecting a whole routine of small tasks that helped oil the ARC machine. But they weren’t very interested in that, no matter how much he tried to explain. Connor could merely sit as comfortably as the hard plastic would allow, answer their questions to the best of his ability, and wait for them to make a decision about what to do with him.

  His only solace was the thought that somewhere outside this room, he knew Abby would be raising merry hell on his behalf.

  Abby had tried to stay awake, really she had. She’d drunk her way through a whole plunger-thing of coffee, without even adding milk. But that had only made her even more manic and irritable, and then meant several trips to the ladies’. One of the female security guards — Sharon — had been made to accompany her.

  Sharon had a scar on her chin from her days as a professional boxer. At least, that was what Abby had heard. She didn’t look the sort to gossip about shoes or boyfriends — which was hardly Abby’s forte, either — but it would have been obvious that Abby was working around her if she’d asked about fighting and guns. So she smiled and said thank you and allowed herself to be escorted back to the canteen.

  Sarah lay curled up on the floor, her head on a rolled-up flak jacket. Abby found a space down beside her, rather than sitting with the guards at the table. She watched Sharon unclip the chunky pistol from her hip pocket, and place it with two more already on the tabletop before she sat down and joined her colleagues and their card game.

  “Raise you a night shift,” she said once she’d examined her cards.

  The man opposite her — Adam — considered his own position.

  “Raise you a bank holiday,” he responded.

  Abby rested her back against the cool wall, her eyes and muscles aching. It had been an arduous day even before she and Connor had got back to the ARC, and now every new minute seemed an eternity.

  In her dream, Cutter, Stephen and Connor stood together in Kensal Green Cemetery, in view of each of their graves. They didn’t ask her why she’d not been to visit them, but the disappointment was plain in their eyes.

  She woke with a start, sore and muzzy, spittle drooled on her chin. The security guards looked up from their card game but paid her little heed. Abby got awkwardly to her feet, yawning and rubbing at her eyes.

  “What time is it?” she asked. It wasn’t easy to tell from inside the ARC with its total absence of windows.

  “Getting on for three in the morning,” one of them told her. “You were only asleep half an hour.”

  Abby cursed under her breath. She’d vowed to herself that she’d stay awake, if only to show solidarity with —

  “Where’s Sarah?” she asked. But the guards just went on with their game.

  She lay back down, wondering if she should be alarmed. Probably not, she mused. Sarah’s not the one they’re after — it’s Connor and me they want.

  Though she tried not to give in again, exhaustion triumphed, and she nodded off again, startled herself awake, then lost the battle altogether.

  Abby had advised Sarah on her first day at the ARC that she should bring in a spare set of clothes and cosmetics. Sometimes, she’d said, they had to work through the night, but more often they just got a bit messy.

  Sarah emerged from the ladies’ feeling fresher and better, but still wishing she could have showered. Her skin felt grubby under her clean clothes, just from having slept on the floor. But there was also a deeper sense of uncleanness from the attack by the squad of soldiers. Sarah shivered, remembering it — the way they’d broken in so easily, the way she’d been so helpless. The ARC’s security agents didn’t seem any the wiser about how they’d achieved it, what they’d done, or why they’d then disappeared. And that disturbed her more than anything else.

  Sharon saw her back to the canteen where Abby still slept on the floor. In whispers, Sarah’s guards asked her if she wanted anything to eat or drink, then bickered about which of them should fetch it. She took a seat at the end of the table, politely declining the opportunity to join the game of cards.

  Adam made her some toast, and as she ate it, she became aware of Tom Samuels standing in the open doorway of the canteen. His tie hung loosely under an undone top button, his shoulders slouched.

  “Good morning,” she said curtly, resentful at being his prisoner. He didn’t reply, just nodded his head to one side, indicating she should follow. Silently she obeyed.

  He led her to the main operations room, holding the swing door open for her to pass through. Technicians beavered around the tables of equipment and two soldiers stood on duty at the five-screen ADD.

  Sarah followed Samuels up the walkway to Lester’s office, and gasped when she saw the disarray. Papers and files spilled over every surface and all across the floor. At first she thought the soldiers who’d attacked her must have been responsible. Then Samuels weaved through the mayhem and round the back of Lester’s desk. He studiously avoided sitting in Lester’s chair as if it was his, but took a seat at a distinct angle. And that was when Sarah realised the mess was of his making: he’d spent all night reading through this stuff.

  She scooped up the papers that sprawled over the low, leather settee and sat herself down. He seemed busy checking over some notes, so she let her eyes wander slowly around the room at Lester’s precious statues and ornaments. The lion statue looked like a Renaissance copy of an original from the late classical period. The mask of a Spartan that sat on Lester’s desk didn’
t look like any she remembered from the British Museum. It occurred to her that it might be a genuine relic, purloined from some government collection.

  Her captor continued to ignore her.

  “So,” she prompted, “you want to ask me some more questions.”

  He scratched at his closely cropped beard; she could hear the rasp of the bristles.

  “Actually, I thought you might want to ask them of me.” He looked up to gaze levelly at her.

  “I thought I was a suspect,” she replied, puzzled.

  He smiled.

  “I think we got off to a bad start. Really, I’m not a villain. I wouldn’t even be here were Lester still around. But there’s a problem, and there’s no one else to sort it out, so here I am.” He spread his hands.

  “All right,” Sarah said, still wary, “so I’m free to go home if I want?”

  “Well, I’d obviously rather you didn’t,” Samuels replied casually. “We’ve got quite a lot still to get on with, but if you feel you need to go anywhere, I’m not going to stop you.”

  “And Abby?”

  He sighed.

  “That’s a bit more tricky. I want to trust her, I really do. I want to trust Connor Temple as well. But what little evidence we have to hand just stacks up against them.”

  “What are you going to do with them?”

  “I thought I’d ask you.” Samuels studied her carefully as he waited for her reply.

  “Well then, let them go.”

  He laughed.

  “I’m asking you to persuade me. I’d hoped to find suitable testimony from Lester amongst all these files, but even he has his concerns about them. Connor seems to have illegally accessed the ARC’s personnel records. Abby’s keeping a —” he checked his notes — “a Coelurosauravus illegally as some kind of pet. I’m sure Lester had this all in hand, but it doesn’t exactly work in their favour.”

  “What do you want me to do?” she asked genuinely. “What do you want me to say?”

  “Tell me about them,” he said. “Tell me everything you can. I hardly need tell you that this is important. Everything the ARC does is at risk if these two can’t be trusted, so I need to appreciate why you’re so certain that they can be.”