The Phoenix

by Sidney Sheldon

  No. No way.

  Ella had already resisted her grandmother’s idea of ‘destiny’ – a life of isolation and Christian piety up at the ranch, cut off from the rest of the world. It had been painful to break away, but Ella had done it. And she could do it again.

  OK, so her brain had been messed with. That was a problem. But it was a problem she could fix on her own, without the help of the cult that had screwed her up in the first place. She could still lead a normal life if she chose to. The kind of life that Bob had, in the city, with a job and a family and friends. She could do it. Bob could teach her how to do it.

  Except … the voices. The headaches, the nausea, the endless roar that wouldn’t ever switch off. They would drive her mad in the end. How could she hope to hold down a job, or a relationship, when at any moment deafening tangles of noise and pain could ambush her, bringing her, sometimes literally, to her knees?

  She had to learn how to control the voices. How to master the unwanted ‘gift’ that her parents had given her. Because unless she could do that, no life she chose would be worth living.

  Climbing out of the bath, dripping wet, Ella lay back on the bed and let the cool air of the room suck the heat out of her body.

  However she felt about the man – however profoundly she hated him right now – he was the key to her future. Not because she owed a damn thing to him, or her parents, or their stupid Group. But because he might, just might, be able to teach her how to master the voices in her head. Or at least to introduce her to people who could. Maybe, just maybe, if those voices stopped, she might stand a better chance at interpreting the real voices of those around her. Of reading social cues. Of fitting in.

  ‘Where are you?’ Ella shouted out loud. ‘Where the hell are you, you son of a bitch?’

  ‘Close your eyes.’

  Ella spun around, grabbing the throw rug from the foot of the bed, scrambling to cover her naked body. His voice was so clear, at first Ella thought he must be standing in the room. She looked around, her eyes darting to every corner of the hotel suite, but there was no one there.

  ‘You’ll hear me better if your eyes are closed,’ the man repeated.

  Only then did Ella realize, with a sinking heart, that his voice was actually coming from inside her head. Unlike all the others, though, it was crystal clear, like a telephone call on a perfect, crackle-free line.

  He’s transmitting to me?

  Despite herself, she was fascinated. How the hell was he able to …?

  ‘Don’t try to answer me,’ he instructed her. ‘It won’t work. You can receive but you can’t transmit. Just listen.’

  Perfect, thought Ella bitterly. So you’re in control. Again.

  ‘I’m glad you saw the footage,’ the man continued. ‘I expect you have questions.’

  Just a few.

  ‘You’ll have a chance to ask them at training. It starts tomorrow at our upstate facility. They’re expecting you.’

  Of course they are.

  ‘Find something to write with. The information I’m about to give you is important. Do not share it with anyone.’

  Perhaps it was a blessing Ella couldn’t respond, as his dictatorial tone was really starting to tick her off. After about twenty seconds of silence, he gave her some map coordinates, which he repeated twice. Ella scribbled them down. There were just the numbers, nothing more. Then came a curt ‘goodbye’ and the man’s voice shut off, as suddenly as it had begun.

  Feeling marginally less agitated than she had before, Ella climbed under the covers.

  Tomorrow, she would see this ‘Group’ first hand. She had no intention of joining them. Of being brainwashed and corrupted the way her parents had been. And she certainly wasn’t going on any ‘mission’ for this bunch of lunatics. Instead, Ella would turn the tables. She would take what she needed from them, on her terms. She would make them teach her how to control and perhaps even switch off the ‘transmissions’ that were making her life so unbearable. To disable her ‘gift’. And, she’d extract more information about her parents, especially her mother. The least this cult could do after all the havoc they’d wreaked was to fill in the gaps. When she was done, she would leave, free of her headaches, free of her grandmother, free of her parents’ expectations, free of everything. She would begin building the normal, happy life she wanted. The life she deserved.

  For the first time since Mimi’s funeral, Ella fell almost at once into a deep, contented sleep.

  CHAPTER SIX

  Daphne Alexandris turned to her husband Stavros. ‘Did you hear that noise?’

  ‘What noise?’ Stavros looked up from his iPad.

  ‘That … clattering. There it is again!’

  The Alexandrises were sitting at opposite ends of the grand drawing room in their colonial mansion in Putre, Chile. A friend of Stavros’s had sold it to him for a song back in the days when Stavros had been riding high as Greece’s interior minister and Dimitri Mantzaris’s right-hand man. In exchange, Stavros had green-lighted some apartment developments in a slummy part of Athens, that might or might not have fully complied with Greek fire regulations. In any event, the house in Putre was an oasis of calm and peace, a place where Stavros and his wife could escape the pressures of Greek politics – or anything else they might need to escape. Set back from the ancient pueblo of the pretty mountain town, with the peaks of the Taapaca Volcano rising up behind it like benevolent deities, the mansion was at once luxurious and supremely comfortable, furnished with an array of priceless South American antiques. One could live like a king in Chile on reasonably modest means, and the Alexandrises’ means were far from modest. Good security, of course, was a must. But luckily they could afford that too.

  ‘It’s probably just foxes or possums,’ said Stavros, yawning. It was late, and he was no more than one more good brandy away from his bed. ‘Scrabbling at the trash. I’ll send Juanita out to take care of them.’

  Reaching to his left, he rang a small silver bell on the table beside him, like a Victorian lord of the manor. Sure enough, the housekeeper arrived like a summoned genie.

  ‘Go and see what’s making that racket would you, Juanita? The noise is bothering Señora Alexandris.’

  ‘I don’t know how you can be so calm, Stavros,’ Daphne Alexandris hissed, her thin neck straining with stress so that the sinews bulged beneath the crepey, sixty-year-old skin. ‘What if it isn’t foxes? What if it’s her? No one close to Mantzaris is safe. You said so yourself. That’s why we’re here, isn’t it?’

  Walking over to his wife, Stavros laid a skinny hand on her shoulder. ‘We are here because it is safe here, my darling,’ he reminded her. ‘Athena’s business – if she truly is alive – is in Greece. Trust me, Chile will not even be on her radar. She wouldn’t waste resources sending somebody trekking all the way up here, to the top of the world, just to find the likes of us.’

  Turning away from her, he walked across to the bar and poured himself a large measure of Frapin Extra Grande Champagne Cognac.

  ‘Will you have one more, Daphne? Calm your nerves before bed?’ he asked, reaching up for a second brandy glass. ‘Daphne? Did you open a window? It’s terribly—’

  Turning around he froze, letting both glasses drop to the floor and shatter into a thousand pieces across the Persian carpet. His wife sat just as she had been before, perfectly still, her eyes wide open. Except that now there was a bullet hole right through the middle of her forehead. The sash window behind her stood open, its lace curtains fluttering in the evening breeze.

  A slow, cold terror crawled over him, rooting him to the spot.

  Stavros had heard nothing. Nothing! Not a shot. Not a breath. Not a sound.

  Black spots swam before his eyes.

  Why? Why Daphne? Why not him? Surely it was him she wanted. That bitch! Dimitri’s she-devil …

  He looked around him at the empty room, and the darkness beyond the window, wild panic in his eyes.

  Then, like a hunted animal, he turn
ed and ran.

  ‘Shall we?’

  Ella looked up again at the two-foot-thick wooden gates in front of her. Set into a barbed-wire fence, they were twice her height, and would have looked vast anywhere else. But here, deep in the California forest, dwarfed by redwoods that towered over everything like a battalion of ancient giants, they seemed almost comically small, like the gateway to a children’s fort.

  The journey here had been long and bizarre. It had been a six-hour drive from Ella’s hotel to the coordinates the man had given her last night. If, indeed, what she’d heard as she lay on the bed really was the man trying to contact her, and not a sign that she had finally lost the plot and needed to check herself into a mental facility as soon as possible, whether she liked it or not.

  Her satnav had sent her on a narrow road that wound higher and higher into the hills. The scenery was breathtaking. Wilder and more rugged than the rolling pastures of her grandmother’s ranch, but every bit as beautiful, this part of the state was like a Tolkienian fantasy, all pines and rocks and deer and bears and dazzling blue skies that seemed to stretch to eternity. Watching eagles soar above her, and waterfalls cascade down the rocks beside the road, so close in places that if Ella opened her driver’s window and stretched out her arm she could almost touch them, she found herself forgetting everything else as she lost herself in the wonder and majesty of nature. Her grandmother’s rigid version of religion had never appealed to her, never seemed real. But places like this – the peace, the beauty – made Ella want to believe in God, or at least in something outside of herself, something bigger and more important. Something she could trust in.

  The tranquility was interrupted by the next leg of the journey. Ella was met at the designated coordinates by a young woman called Agnes, who led her on a two-mile hike up a steep escarpment, littered with loose rocks, and then insisted on blindfolding her in the back of an expensive-looking Range Rover Velar for a bumpy, tortuous forty-minute drive through the forest. Disorientated and exhausted, Ella had been on the brink of demanding to go home. But after eight, grueling hours, she had to see this through.

  The property Ella glimpsed looked more like a well-maintained hotel than the prison camp suggested by the gated front. Small white bungalows were dotted amongst neatly mown lawns, and soft outdoor uplighters revealed lovingly planted flower beds and charming brick walking paths snaking throughout the grounds. Here and there, parked golf carts, some piled high with bags of what looked like dirty laundry, only heightened Ella’s feeling that she was checking in to the San Ysidro Ranch, and not potentially risking her life at the mercy of some obscure and secretive cult.

  ‘Pretty, isn’t it?’ said Agnes, registering her passenger’s surprise. ‘The training program can be pretty intense, so Mr Redmayne believes it is important that members should have a pleasant environment to return to at the end of the day. Not luxurious, but relaxing.’

  Ella listened. She wondered whether the man who had visited her was in fact ‘Mr Redmayne’ and, if so, when he would appear in person.

  ‘Accommodations are divided up by gender,’ Agnes went on. ‘You’ll be staying in the female quarters, obviously. Whoah, hold up!’

  She slammed on the brakes. A group of disheveled and exhausted-looking women had staggered into the road in front of them. They were wearing army fatigues and most were filthy, their hair matted and their faces splattered with mud. They were also all strikingly thin. As Agnes screeched to a halt, one of them turned and looked right at Ella before sinking to her knees, and vomiting violently. That fairly comprehensively ruined the San Ysidro vibe.

  ‘Oh my God!’ Ella reached for the handle of her door.

  Agnes’s arm shot out to stop her. ‘What are you doing?’

  ‘I’m going to help her, of course,’ said Ella. ‘Didn’t you just see that?’

  ‘She’s training,’ Agnes said, as if that explained everything. ‘And she’s with her unit.’

  ‘Training for what? Armageddon?’ Ella asked, watching the other women stagger on while their teammate fell back against the tarmac, apparently unconscious. ‘And her “unit” just left her there.’

  With a growing sense of foreboding, she waited for them to arrive at check-in, or registration, or wherever it was they were going. But instead, after only a few hundred more yards, Agnes pulled over outside one of the bungalows, gesturing for Ella to get out.

  ‘These are your quarters,’ she told her, jumping out herself and retrieving Ella’s backpack from the back of the truck.

  ‘OK …’ Ella said hesitantly.

  ‘Is something wrong?’

  ‘No, it’s just … don’t I need to sign in? Let somebody know I’m here?’

  Agnes laughed loudly ‘Oh, Ella! Everybody knows you’re here, my dear. Where else would you be? We’ve all been waiting for you.’

  Ella tried not to think about Bob’s ‘Jonestown’ warnings. Whatever she had let herself in for, it was too late now.

  You’re here by choice, she coached herself. Not for them. For you. To get what YOU need. To take back YOUR life.

  Then you get out.

  ‘Community dinner’s in an hour,’ Agnes chirped. Ella reflected that the poor women she’d just seen didn’t look as if they’d eaten dinner in weeks, community or otherwise, but she kept the thought to herself.

  ‘If you need anything before then, your roommate should be able to help.’ Handing Ella her backpack, Agnes hopped back into the driver’s seat. ‘Welcome to Camp Hope!’ she said cheerfully, driving away.

  Tentatively, Ella opened the bungalow door. ‘Hello?’

  She was met by a squeal, a strong waft of perfume, and the slightly disconcerting sight of a buxom blonde in a skin-tight pink T-shirt bounding up to her like a puppy. This girl certainly hadn’t been starved. If anything she looked as if she might have eaten the other women’s food, every ounce of which had made its way to her enormous boobs.

  ‘Oh my God. You’re here! You’re finally here. I do not believe it, oh my God oh my God oh my God!’

  The blonde looked to be about Ella’s own age, although there was something distinctly teenagerish in her manner, from the gushing welcome to the look-at-me clothes. The room was split into two halves, each with a single bed and a washbasin. While Ella’s side was bare, the girl had kitted hers out in a sea of pink, complete with fluffy rainbow pillows and ‘Hello Kitty’ bedding. Décor-wise at least, it was less ‘spy’ and more ‘pre-pubescent Japanese schoolgirl’.

  ‘You must be Ella.’

  ‘That’s right.’

  ‘I’m Christine. Christine Marshall. Sooooooo happy to meet you.’ Drawing her into a hug, Christine squeezed tightly and let out another, only slightly more muted, squeal.

  Extricating herself from Christine’s enthusiastic embrace, Ella put her stuff warily down on the bed.

  ‘You’re probably exhausted,’ Christine said kindly, taking a step back. Everywhere she went, an aura of perfume followed her like a miasma. ‘I know I was when I first arrived. But if you have any questions, any questions at all, just fire away.’

  Ella had a lot of questions, but they were for the man to answer, not this human Barbie doll.

  ‘I’m looking for someone,’ she told Christine, describing the man as best she could. Stocky. Dark hair. Strong jaw. Well dressed. As she spoke it occurred to her how vague and generic she made him sound.

  ‘He’s the person who recruited me, and I really, really need to speak to him. Tonight, if possible. Do you know him?’

  Christine’s face fell. ‘I don’t think so. Sorry. Although I wish I did from your description. But if he’s at camp then he’ll be at community dinner. Everyone comes to community dinner.’

  ‘Everyone?’ Ella mentioned the group of women she’d passed driving through the camp just now. How they looked half starved.

  ‘Ah, yes, well they were probably on operations,’ replied Christine, echoing Agnes’s confidence that somehow that made it all OK. ‘Discipline and
self-denial are all part of the program.’

  At that moment a very fat man with a straggly beard and long hair growing down on either side of a premature bald patch burst into the cabin, a look of almost maniacal excitement on his face. ‘You’re here at last then?’ he said, staring fixedly at Ella.

  ‘Do I know you?’ Ella frowned.

  ‘Not yet,’ his smile broadened. ‘But I know you. Everybody does. You’re quite the celebrity around here, Miss Praeger. Jackson.’ He thrust a bear-like paw towards her. ‘I’m a friend of Chrissie’s.’

  ‘He’s a pain in my ass,’ corrected Christine, although it was said with obvious affection. ‘Jackson thinks he’s more important than the rest of us because he works in systems and is a genius.’

  ‘She’s just being bitchy because she wants my body and knows she can’t have it,’ Jackson told Ella, deadpan. Ella hesitated, then laughed.

  ‘Look,’ she said, ‘I don’t know what you’ve heard. But I’m not part of your Group. I’m only at Camp Hope because of a man who turned up to my grandmother’s funeral. He told me he had information about my parents and … other things. Maybe you’ve heard of them? William and Rachel Praeger? They joined The Group decades ago, before I was born.’

  Jackson and Christine exchanged glances.

  ‘Sorry, I don’t know about them,’ said Jackson. ‘But we’ve heard about you. That you have special capabilities that could be vital to our work.’

  ‘And that it’s super-important we make you feel welcome,’ Christine added, sincerely.

  ‘So, you know: Welcome,’ said Jackson.

  ‘Thanks,’ said Ella. ‘But you haven’t heard of my mother and father?’

  Both Jackson and Christine shook their heads.