by Will Hill
Bloody Americans. Their timing couldn’t be worse, as usual.
The mission to rescue Colonel Frankenstein was minutes away from despatch, and the interrogation of Valentin Rusmanov was continuing on the detention level.
This better be important, Bob. It better be bloody vital.
Seward entered the code beside the door to his quarters, pushed it open and strode inside. He stepped round his desk, opened his terminal and hit the button that illuminated the wall screen opposite him. He entered his personal authorisation code, and hit ACCEPT on the MESSAGE WAITING box.
“What is it, Bob?” he asked, before the image had even fully loaded. “It’s really not a great time.”
The tanned, weathered face of General Allen appeared on the screen. The NS9 Director was sitting behind his own desk, five thousand miles away, with an expression on his face that Seward instantly didn’t like.
This isn’t a routine call, he thought, his heart sinking. Something’s wrong.
“I’m sorry, Henry,” Allen replied. “But you’re going to want to hear this. You’re not going to believe it, but you’re going to want to hear.”
“What’s going on?”
General Allen looked away from the camera for a second, as though he could not believe what he was about to say, then returned his attention to Henry Seward.
“I’ve just locked Julian Carpenter in one of my cells,” he said. “He’s alive, Henry. Julian’s alive.”
Seward’s breath froze in his lungs, and he felt a numbing cold spread through his body as he stared at his American counterpart.
Is this a joke? Some kind of stupid, awful joke?
“Say again, Bob?” he managed.
“I got a call from our gatehouse about fifteen minutes ago,” said Allen. “They stopped an intruder who made it past the guards and got to the gate. He jumped out of his car, shouting an old clearance code, asking for me. Asking for me by name, Henry.”
“Jesus Christ,” said Seward, softly. “You’re serious, aren’t you? This isn’t some kind of joke?”
Allen shook his head. “I’m serious. I had him brought in, and went up to see what the hell was happening. And out of the jeep, as casual as you like, steps Julian. He walks over to me, puts out his hand and says hello. It’s him, Henry. It really is.”
A terrible thought entered Seward’s scrambling brain.
“Is he human, Bob?” he asked, urgently. “Have you checked him?”
“He’s human,” replied Allen. “I took him through two UV grids without him knowing. He’s not turned, and he doesn’t seem to be anything else. He’s just Julian, alive and locked up downstairs.”
“How is this possible?” asked Seward, fighting hard to hold on to any sort of equilibrium. “If it’s him, where the hell has he been for the last three years?”
“He told me he didn’t feel safe to come in,” replied Allen. “He’s been here in the US, I think. He said he’s been looking for a cure.”
“A cure for what?”
“For vampirism,” said Allen. “I guess it’s pretty important to him, what with what happened to Marie.”
Seward froze. “He knows about that?” he asked, slowly. “He knows what happened to his wife? How the hell would he know that?”
“I don’t know,” replied General Allen, shaking his head. “But he does. Knows about Jamie too, about what he did on Lindisfarne. That’s partly why I’m calling you, Henry. Julian’s worried about Jamie.”
“Hold on,” barked Seward. “Just hold on a minute. Julian Carpenter is sitting alive and well in one of your cells at Dreamland, we’ve no idea where he’s been for the last three years, but somehow he knows about classified Blacklight Operations, and now he wants information about Jamie? What the hell am I supposed to make of all this?”
“I don’t know,” said General Allen. “I’ll hold him here until you can send a team to debrief him, and I’ll make sure no one else but me knows who he is. But he was insistent about being allowed to see Jamie. He says he thinks the boy is in danger.”
“Of course he’s in danger,” snapped Seward. “He’s an Operator. He’s in danger every day. Now just let me think for a moment.”
The Department 19 Director tried to calm his racing mind, and focus on the immediate problem in hand. Julian, if it was indeed him, was secure, which was the first thing. General Allen was right; he would need to send a team to Nevada to find out where Julian had been, and why he had resurfaced, but that would have to wait; there were simply too many demands on the Admiral’s attention at the moment for him to begin to address the potential ramifications of what General Allen was telling him.
Who the hell had known Julian was alive, and had been feeding him classified information? How had he faked his death, as surely he must have done? Seward groaned, as the scale of this new revelation began to suggest itself, and turned his attention back to the video screen.
“What did he ask about Jamie, Bob? Precisely.”
“He asked me to ask you to let him see his son,” replied General Allen. “In those words. I told him I would, and now I have. What do you want to do?”
“I can’t allow it,” said Seward. “Who knows what Julian’s agenda is? He can’t just walk in off the street and start acting like an Operator again. Jamie is about to embark on a Priority 1 mission to Paris, and I’m not going to distract him with this, certainly not until Julian has been debriefed and we are in the full possession of the facts. You can tell him that his son is fine, and that’s more than I ought to be letting him know. But I’m not going to let him see him, Bob. Not right now. You understand, right?”
“I understand,” replied Allen, and gave his old friend a warm smile. “But I’m pretty sure Julian isn’t going to.”
“Well, he’s going to have to,” said Seward. “I’ll send a team as soon as I can, Bob. In the meantime, if you could please do like you said. Keep him isolated, and keep access to him to zero.”
“Done,” replied Allen. “Let me know when you’re coming to get him. I’m going to be pretty interested to hear what he says to your team.”
“Me too, Bob,” said Seward, a grim smile on his face. “Me too. Out.”
The Department 19 Director cut the connection, and flopped into his chair. A hundred emotions were jostling for space inside his head; largest and most potent was an overwhelming, almost painful hope at the thought that one of his closest friends, a man he had never believed he would see again, and, more importantly, never get the chance to apologise to, could somehow still be alive. But there was confusion as well, over what this would mean for Jamie, and for himself.
And beyond that, a deep sense of being overwhelmed, of one more thing to carry around on his back, of this being almost the final straw, the point where he reached the limit of his ability to cope.
How can he be alive? It makes no sense. I saw his body before they cremated it.
“Admiral?”
The voice came from the door to the Director’s quarters, and Seward jumped. He whirled round in his seat, to see Jamie Carpenter standing in the open doorway. He realised he must have forgotten to close it behind him, such was the rush he had been in when the call came through. A flicker of guilt passed momentarily across Seward’s face when he saw Julian’s son, but if Jamie saw it, he gave no indication.
“What is it, Lieutenant Carpenter?” asked Seward, his equilibrium returning.
“What did the Yanks want, sir?” Jamie asked, his face open and honest.
“Routine update. Typically bad timing. Nothing for you to worry about.”
Jamie nodded. “We’re ready, sir. We’re leaving for Paris.”
“Understood,” said Seward. “Bring him home, son. If he’s alive, bring him home.”
“I will, sir,” replied Jamie, forcefully. “You can count on it.”
43
THE TIES THAT BIND
ORLY AIRPORT NINE MILES SOUTH OF PARIS, FRANCE
At the western edge of Orly, the se
cond busiest airport in France, lies a sprawl of low metal cabins and a series of wide hangars, the paint flaking from their sides. Away from the terminals where families depart for holidays in the Alps and the Riviera, where couples are reunited under the unforgiving glow of fluorescent lights, where businessmen wait for connections that will take them on to another airport almost identical to the one they are sitting in, the buildings represent the true beating heart of any airport.
Through these offices and the hangars that stand behind them, a timetable of cargo freight every bit as complicated as that maintained by any of the passenger airlines is organised and set in motion; forklift trucks whir incessantly, carrying cases of wine from Bordeaux, of cheese from Rouen and Reims, of machine parts, of cruise missile timing triggers and glow-in-the-dark stuffed animals, all bound for the four corners of the world. Beside the freight offices stand the maintenance hangars, where planes trundle in and out every day of the week, needing new tyres, their carpets steam-cleaning, or their worn, creaking joints oiled.
At Orly, the buildings are older than most, for a very good reason. Until 1967, when the French government withdrew from NATO central command and ordered all non-French forces to leave the country, the sprawling site was a United States Air Force base. The soldiers are long gone, as are the military aircraft, but many of the buildings remain, a crumbling legacy of the airport’s former life, of a time when fast jets screamed overhead, and the heavy thump-thump-thump of helicopter rotors filled the air. Now all that remains is nondescript industrial sprawl, where nothing much of note ever happens.
Until tonight.
The Blacklight helicopter burst through the clouds that were hanging low over the airport. The sun was drifting lazily towards the horizon in the west, and the squat black shape gleamed in the last of the evening light as it dropped sharply towards the ground.
The Communications Division had made contact with the French Security Services as the chopper made its way across the Channel, and had been granted permission to land on French soil. The agreed site was a helipad in the centre of the industrial complex, a helipad that had once served American helicopters as they ferried senior personnel in and out of the base.
“Thirty seconds,” announced the pilot, over the helmet communication system that the five Operators strapped into the chopper’s belly were all linked into.
“Roger,” said Jamie, over the howl of the rotors and the shriek of the rapidly decelerating engine. “Comms and weapons checks.”
The four members of his team, identically clad in their matt-black uniforms, the visors of their helmets pushed up from their faces, quickly ran through the list of final checks, examining their weapons and kit and replacing each item in its proper place on their belts and webbing.
“Check,” said Angela Darcy.
“Check,” said Jack Williams.
“Check,” said Dominique Saint-Jacques.
“Check,” said Claire Lock.
“Understood,” said Jamie. “Clear in ten seconds, team. I want to be in Paris in thirty minutes. And visors down; no one sees us, clear?”
The four Operators nodded, then pulled their purple visors down over their faces. The flat, featureless screens instantly lent the team an inhuman, unsettling air; it would be difficult for anyone who saw them to believe that there were men and women beneath the plastic façades, and impossible for them to give any clues as to their identities.
The helicopter’s engines roared, reaching a volume and pitch that sent bolts of pain through Jamie’s ears, despite the protection his earpieces and helmet provided. Then, with a bone-jarring jolt, the heavy wheels of the chopper squealed on to tarmac, and rolled to a halt.
“Move!” shouted Jamie, releasing himself from his safety belt and throwing open the side door of the helicopter. His team leapt out, one after the other, and disappeared from view, as he ordered the pilot to take off as soon as they were clear, and wait at the location the French military had given them, a NATO airbase ninety miles to the east.
“Be ready to come and get us!” he shouted.
“Yes, sir,” replied the pilot. “Good luck, sir.”
“Thanks!” yelled Jamie, and leapt out of the helicopter.
Dominique and Claire were standing at the rear corners of the vehicle, their MP5s at their shoulders, scanning the area around them. The helipad, cracked and faded by the passage of time, was in the middle of a loose ring of metal huts, rust climbing relentlessly up their sides, their roofs beaten and tarnished by years of neglect. There were no lights on in any of them, or in the first rows of low concrete buildings that stood beyond them, but Jamie was glad to see his team were taking no chances.
The heavy ramp at the back of the helicopter had already been lowered, and as he made his way towards it, he heard the rumble of a powerful engine bursting into life. A second later a jet black SUV rolled down the ramp, and stopped in the empty yard, its headlights blazing, its black windows completely opaque.
As soon as the back wheels hit the tarmac, the ramp rose back into place. The helicopter’s engines screamed again, and it hauled itself into the air. The churning rotors whipped the air, and Jamie fought to stay on his feet. Then the helicopter was climbing, and the wind and the noise lessened. Within thirty seconds, all that was left of the huge black chopper was a rapidly diminishing pair of yellow lights, heading east in the gathering gloom.
The passenger side door opened and Angela Darcy stepped out, her pretty face hidden behind the flat purple of her visor.
“Your carriage awaits, sir,” she said, motioning towards the rear doors.
Jamie smiled beneath his mask, and ordered everyone into the vehicle. He took the front seat next to Jack Williams, who was sitting comfortably behind the steering wheel, and pushed back his visor. Angela, Claire and Dominique filled the two rows of seats behind them, and did likewise.
“Dominique,” said Jamie. “I need to find this Latour, quickly. Where do we start?”
“The Marais,” replied Dominique, instantly. “We start in the Marais.”
Jack Williams hit the accelerator and the heavy SUV leapt forward. He slid the car carefully between the ageing huts and on to the wide strip of tarmac that served as the industrial area’s main thoroughfare. Watery yellow light spilled down from a series of flickering streetlights; the drone of forklift truck engines rumbled in the cool evening air, and the occasional shouted instructions could be heard. Jack turned left, and headed towards where their satellite read-out told him the gate would be.
The black SUV rounded a corner, and passed a small gang of workmen huddled along the long wall of one of the shabby office buildings, sipping coffee from flasks and smoking short white cigarettes. They looked briefly at the car as it passed, then returned to their conversations; the vehicle, and its contents, clearly did not merit a second look.
Two minutes later they were on the motorway, and accelerating north towards Paris.
On the stage of the Fraternité de la Nuit’s theatre, Frankenstein heard the door, the door that he had walked through a hundred times in another life, creak open, and used a significant amount of his remaining strength to lift his head.
He had been tied to the wooden pole in the middle of the small stage for more than thirty-six hours, and had long passed through the threshold of what would be conventionally described as agony. His arms and legs, which were pulled back at unnatural angles and tied at the wrists and ankles, had gone from a dull, throbbing ache to white-hot fire to a pain so vast he could not fully comprehend it, a pain that had felt as though every millimetre of the grey-green skin that covered his limbs was being sliced away with razor blades before salt was massaged into the wounds. Now, after a day and a half, they were empty, useless things; he could not feel them at all, and only the ruthless application of logic was able to convince him that they were still there.
He had been given water, sparingly, by Lord Dante’s butler, who had refused to speak to him, or even look at him as he delivered i
t; it felt as though the butler saw this duty as little more than feeding a pet, and not a favoured one at that. There had been no food, and the rumbling and gurgling in his stomach had given way to dull emptiness, a yawning vacuum at the centre of his being. His bodily functions had been taken care of twice, in humiliating fashion. And beneath it all, beneath the pain and the fear and the shame, Frankenstein could feel it coming.
Twice in the past hours he had found himself staring up at the ceiling, at the point where he knew, with absolute certainty, the moon was rising beyond the ornate roof of the theatre. He could feel the grinding sensation in his bones that he had come to dread, feel the prickling of his skin, feel the urge to run and leap and bite.
Now, as he lifted his head, he saw a dark figure standing silently at the rear of the theatre, just inside the door. He watched as the figure slowly walked forward, and emerged into the low lighting that glowed at the edges of the stage, and recognised the pale, narrow face immediately.
“Latour,” he breathed. “Are you here to gloat?”
“No, my old friend,” replied Latour, floating slowly up on to the stage and landing in front of Frankenstein. “I am not. It causes me great pain to see you like this.”
“Then you are the cause of your own suffering,” spat Frankenstein.
Latour’s eyes flared red, and he closed the gap between the two men in a millisecond.
“You brought this all on yourself,” he hissed. “It was you who crippled Lord Dante, and you who returned to the one city in the world where you knew full well there was a generous price on your head. Do not blame me for your own stupidity; had it not been me who found you and delivered you here, it would have been someone else, I can assure you of that.”
“Would the someone else you speak of have claimed to be my friend as they handed me over to be murdered?” asked Frankenstein. “Would they have talked of old times as they exchanged my life for nothing more than a pretty young girl, and a pat on the head from their master?”
