Shadow Creatures

by Andrew Lane

  ‘So – you have mobile.’ She felt her heart go cold. One of the Karavla brothers was standing in the doorway. ‘I think we need to have a talk with young Tomas.’

  ‘It’s not his fault,’ Tara said, trying to keep the tremor out of her voice. ‘I stole it from him.

  ‘Then it is his fault,’ Tomas’s uncle said grimly, ‘and he will be punished. If you have actually made call, then he will be punished in a way he will never forget!’

  Despite the sinking feeling in the pit of his stomach, Calum tried to contact Rhino again via video link. This time the electronic request was answered. A window opened on the tablet’s screen and Rhino’s worried face appeared.

  ‘Calum – we have a problem,’ he said quickly.

  ‘Actually, we have several problems,’ Calum corrected. ‘Do you know about Tara?’

  ‘We’ve just found out, and we also have two giant poisonous centipedes on the loose in Hong Kong.’

  ‘And I’ve been kidnapped by Nemor Incorporated.’ Calum explained where he was, and took a deep breath. ‘It looks like we’re all in trouble, then.’ He hesitated for a moment, replaying the conversation. ‘Centipedes?’

  ‘It’s a long story. We think we might have some intelligence on a removable hard disk, but it’s encrypted and I can’t read it. That’s why we need Tara.’

  ‘And Tara’s kidnapped as well.’ Calum thought for a moment. ‘OK – priorities. We need to get Tara out first. She can hopefully decrypt your hard drive, so you can locate the centipedes. Once that’s done, you can all come for me.’ He remembered Dave Pournell’s parting comments, and felt another shiver run through him. ‘If I’m still here.’

  ‘What does that mean?’

  ‘I’m facing non-elective brain surgery if I don’t give Nemor Inc. the Almasti DNA.’

  Rhino frowned. ‘Well, give it to them, then.’

  ‘I may have to, but I’m holding out.’ He paused again, thoughts racing. ‘I can get Tara out, but I need to know her location first. I’ll work on that – you get in touch with Gillian Livingstone and tell her where I am. She might be able to exert some leverage. I’m working on a stolen tablet at the moment, so I don’t know how much longer I’ve got, but I’ll try and get back to you in an hour or two. OK?’

  ‘OK.’ Rhino looked as if he was going to say something else, but Gecko’s head appeared in the video window, pushing the ex-SAS soldier out of the way.

  ‘Calum, I could fly back to England and give myself up to them!’

  ‘Not a chance,’ Calum said. He could hear Rhino saying something similar in the background. ‘Tara has seen their faces. They won’t let her live, even if they get you.’ He tried to look earnest and believable. ‘Gecko, trust me – I’ll get her back. I promise.’

  Gecko nodded, reluctantly. ‘You have to, Calum.’

  ‘I know. Talk soon.’ He suddenly remembered the other thing he’d meant to say. ‘Oh, by the way – there’s a Nemor team headed your way. Be careful.’ Calum cut the connection. He felt a wave of depression and loss wash through him, but he pushed it away. There was no time for that now.

  Tom Karavla. He was the key to this.

  Calum knew that he wasn’t as good at computing and hacking as Tara was, but he knew a lot and he’d learned more from her. Using the Robledo Mountains Technology tablet, and knowing that someone might come through the door any moment, he remotely accessed his system back in London to search for the name Tomas Karavla. Within a few seconds he had an email address and IP address. Tomas Karavla was logged on at a coffee shop in central London. Calum hacked into the boy’s laptop and activated the camera above the screen. Within seconds he was looking at Tomas’s face. The boy had obviously been in a fight. He had a black eye, a bruised cheek, a split lip and a gash on his forehead.

  Calum activated a two-way interchange. He knew, from Tomas’s amazed expression, exactly when a window had opened up on the boy’s computer with Calum’s face in it.

  ‘My name is Calum Challenger,’ he said. ‘You are Tomas Karavla, and you helped kidnap Tara Fitzgerald.’

  ‘Not through choice,’ the boy said. He frowned. ‘You are not the way I imagined you.’

  ‘Never mind that. I need your help. Where is Tara being held?’

  Tomas tried to lick his lips, but when his tongue touched the bloody split in his lower lip he winced. ‘Why should I help? My uncles – they beat me up just because Tara took my mobile without me knowing. If they do that for an accident, what would they do if I deliberately betrayed them?’

  ‘They are going to kill her,’ Calum said quietly but urgently. ‘You know that, don’t you?’

  ‘No! They said they would release her unharmed when this Gecko boy comes to work for them.’

  ‘And do you believe them?’

  Tomas was silent.

  ‘You know that she knows what they look like. Do you really think they’ll let her go?’

  ‘If they frighten her enough,’ Tomas said, as if the words hurt him, ‘then she will keep quiet about them.’

  ‘Even if that was true, and we both know it isn’t, do you really want them to hurt her badly enough to scare her forever? That doesn’t seem to be something you’d be comfortable with.’ Calum didn’t know that for sure, but Tara seemed to think that Tomas was OK, and Calum didn’t have much choice but to go with that.

  Tomas’s face was tortured. ‘No,’ he whispered, ‘but they will hurt me. Badly. They will cripple me.’

  ‘Not if they don’t know what you’ve done. And not if they get hurt first.’ He paused. ‘Do they still have your phone?’

  ‘Yes. They smashed it in front of me.’

  ‘Then they probably think you can’t talk to anyone. Tell me where they are holding Tara. I promise that nobody will know you’re involved.’

  ‘I don’t want her to be hurt.’ Tomas looked as if he was trying to convince Calum of what he was saying. ‘I don’t even want her frightened.’

  ‘Then tell me.’

  A long pause, then: ‘St Alkmund’s Court, in Stratford. It is a block of flats. She is in number forty-five.’

  ‘Thank you,’ Calum said.

  ‘Get her out. Get her out alive.’

  ‘I will,’ Calum said, cutting the connection.

  He looked around. He was immobilized in a medical facility in a different country, and someone might come through the door any moment and take the tablet away. How come this was all on his shoulders?

  He sighed. Now he just had to get hold of Mr Macfarlane . . .

  CHAPTER fourteen

  Tara was alternating between states of euphoria and depression. On the one hand she knew that Calum, at least, was aware that she was in trouble, and that the Karavla brothers didn’t know she had managed to get a message to him. On the other hand she knew that Calum himself was in trouble and might not be able to help. So sometimes she would stay pressed to the window, mind racing, looking for signs of rescue, and other times she would just curl up into a terrified ball on the mattress, trying not to think about anything.

  Angry as she still was with him, Tara kept wondering what Tom’s punishment had been. Part of her wanted him to be hurt, but she also knew that he hadn’t wanted to betray her, and he didn’t deserve punishment for trying to help. And it wasn’t as if he had given her his mobile – she had taken it from his pocket. She hoped he was OK.

  When the lock clicked and the door swung open, Tara was at a low point, lying on the mattress curled into a ball. She glanced up. One of the Karavla brothers was standing in the doorway. She didn’t know which one. He was holding something in his hand: a metal object that glittered in the light shining through the window.

  ‘It is time,’ he said without any trace of emotion.

  ‘Time for what?’

  ‘Time to prove that we mean what we say. Your friend Eduardo has not been in contact with us, so we need to remind him that we are serious men.’ He lifted his hand, and Tara could see that he was holding a pair of gardenin
g shears.

  She had a terrible feeling that gardening was not on the menu today.

  ‘Come,’ the thug said. ‘We do this in the main room. Very quick, very hygienic. We have put down sheets. There is no reason to get blood on carpet.’ He shook his head. ‘It is very hard to clean up afterwards if you do not use sheets.’ When she didn’t move, he said, in a harsher voice, ‘Come on, girl. Do not make me angry. Let us do this quickly and with small amount of fuss.’

  If she didn’t get up, Tara knew that he would come over and pull her roughly to her feet. Part of her was thinking, Why make this easy for him? while another part was thinking, Let’s at least do this with a little dignity, and without screaming if possible.

  She climbed slowly to her feet and walked across to the door. She was trembling all over, but she tried not to show it. She would get through this. She would get through this.

  But why hadn’t Gecko been in contact? She didn’t expect him to rush back and make everything all right, but at least he could have called the thugs and pretended that he was coming back. That might have delayed the torture she was about to endure. Didn’t he care that she was in trouble? Maybe something had happened in Hong Kong. Maybe he hadn’t sent a message because he couldn’t.

  This was all so messed up.

  The thug stood back and let her through into the living room, which she had only glimpsed when she was brought into the flat. There was a sofa, an easy chair, a wide-screen LCD TV and, as promised, a white sheet laid down in the centre of the room. A glass door on the far side gave out on to a balcony. The second of the brothers was sitting in the easy chair, with a beer bottle in his hand. He was watching a sports channel on the TV. The fact that he wasn’t even bothering to watch while Tara’s finger was cut off was somehow the worst thing. How often had he done this kind of thing before to make him so blasé?

  ‘Stand on sheet,’ the first brother said. He had taken up a position between her and the little hallway that led to the front door, just in case she tried to make a run for it. Not that she could: her legs were like jelly. ‘We take little finger on left hand first. You will not even miss it.’

  Before she could move, the front door exploded inwards with a stunning burst of noise and smoke, propelling the man with the gardening shears forward. He stumbled, feet catching in the sheet, and fell. The sitting thug sprang to his feet. A gun suddenly appeared in his hand. He peered through the smoke, trying to make out what was happening.

  A black object like a cricket ball bounced into the room, coming to rest on the sheet. The two brothers looked at it, puzzled. Instinct made Tara turn away, towards the glass door to the balcony. There was something odd about it . . .

  A bright flash of light from the bouncing object turned the room into a white void. Tara, looking away, was only momentarily blinded, but the two brothers cried out and put their hands to their faces, covering their eyes in shock. The one with the gun started shooting blindly at the door, where he expected the attackers to enter.

  Tara saw the glass in the balcony door shatter into jigsaw pieces that still somehow held together. It looked as if a transparent film had been stuck across the glass, so that the broken bits stayed in place.

  The shattered door fell slowly inwards and hit the carpet.

  A dark shape sprang in from the balcony outside.

  Whoever it was, he was about Tara’s height but a lot bulkier. He wore a black balaclava over his head, and black overalls. He raised a hand that was holding, bizarrely, a water pistol: all bright red and yellow plastic, with a water reservoir bulb on top.

  The brother with the gun turned round, still blinded by the blast but aware that someone had entered from the balcony. The intruder fired the water pistol at the thug’s face. He screamed, dropped his gun and clawed at his eyes frantically. Tara smelt something simultaneously sharp and rancid. Her nose suddenly itched and her eyes started watering.

  Tara glanced at the thug’s brother, who was still on the floor. He had rolled sideways and was desperately pulling a gun from his jeans. The intruder hadn’t noticed. He was checking the rest of the room for threats.

  Tara stepped sideways, grabbed the edge of the LCD TV and pulled it, hard. It topped off its stand and fell on to the second thug, crushing him. Tara kicked the gun out of reach.

  The intruder pulled off his balaclava. The face revealed was one that Tara had seen before – Mr Macfarlane, the chauffer who worked for Calum’s great-aunt and who had driven them both to Farnborough.

  ‘Afternoon, miss,’ he said. ‘I was told you was lookin’ to be rescued.’

  ‘And just in time too,’ Tara said shakily.

  Macfarlane looked around. ‘Anyfing you want from ’ere, or shall we go?’

  ‘Let’s go, please.’

  ‘Right – just ’ang on a minute.’ He handed her the water pistol, then reached into his pocket and took out some plastic ties. Quickly he secured the wrists and ankles of the Karavla brothers – one of whom was still rubbing his eyes and moaning while the other was unconscious beneath the TV Having secured them, he carried them out through the shattered glass door and fastened their ankles to the balcony.

  ‘How did you find me?’ Tara asked as they left through the front door. No neighbours had come to see what had happened. Perhaps this kind of thing occurred all the time in this neighbourhood.

  ‘Young Mr Calum got in touch with me. ’E told me what ’ad ’appened, an’ where you were. Asked me to come an’ get you, ’e did.’

  ‘But how did he know where I was? I didn’t know where I was!’

  ‘’Pparently some bloke named Tomas told ’im.’

  Tara felt conflicted about Tom. He had come through for her, in the end, but he’d got her into this situation in the first place.

  She handed back the water pistol. ‘What have you got in this? It smells terrible!’

  ‘It’s a mixture of lemon juice an’ onion juice,’ he replied. ‘I didn’t want to bring a gun, cos that makes the police really narked if they get involved, an’ I couldn’t get ’old of any tear gas in a hurry, so I ’ad to improvise. The water pistol belongs to me nephew. I’ll ’ave to wash it out before I give it back to ’im.’ He sniffed. ‘The next best thing would’ve been a shotgun loaded with salt instead of pellets, of course, but me mum had used all the salt for a tongue she’s curin’.’

  ‘A what?’ Tara felt as if the conversation had taken a sudden left turn.

  ‘Ox’s tongue. Sweetest meat ever, but it needs to be cured in salt for a few days before you can eat it. Shame, that, cos a shotgun commands a lot o’ respect. A water pistol, not so much.’

  They hurried down a set of concrete steps and out into the open. Mr Macfarlane had parked a couple of streets away – not the big black limousine that he had been driving the last time that Tara had seen him, but an old and more anonymous BMW!

  ‘I meant to ask,’ she said as he held the back door open for her, ‘I know the front door blowing open and the flash grenade were both distractions so they weren’t looking at the balcony, but how did you do it? Remote control?’

  ‘I ’ad, ’elp, didn’t I?’ Macfarlane said as he slid into the driver’s seat. ‘That Tomas kid.’

  Tara looked around wildly. ‘He’s here? He’s all right?’

  ‘’E said ’e thought you wouldn’t want to see ’im right now, so ’e’s makin’ ’is own way ’ome.’ He paused before starting the car, and shook his head. ‘’E’s been roughed up. Don’t look too hot.’

  Tara felt a spike of guilt run through her. She hoped she would get the chance to see Tom again. They had things to resolve.

  As the car pulled away, she noticed that a laptop with an internet dongle sticking out of one of the USB ports was sitting on the seat beside her.

  ‘What’s this for?’

  ‘Mr Calum asked me to tell you that there’s a problem in ’Ong Kong,’ Mr Macfarlane said. ‘There ain’t much time, apparently. There’s an ’ard disk that needs decryptin’ in an �
��urry. ’Pparently that laptop there can take remote control of the one that this ’ard disk is connected to. He said he knows you’re tired an’ stressed, but could you take a quick gander at it for ’im?’

  Tara grinned. ‘Can I use a computer? I’ve been going cold turkey for days now. Just let me at it!’

  ‘Good girl!’ He paused momentarily as he pulled round a corner. ‘I’ll take you back to Mr Calum’s apartment, an’ I’ll stay there to make sure nothin’ ’appens to you. In the meantime, do you mind if I put some music on?’

  ‘Dubstep?’ Tara asked, ready to give it a go, given how much she owed Mr Macfarlane.

  ‘Nah, Beethoven!’ he said, shocked. ‘The Choral Symphony. Can’t beat a bit of Beethoven after a good workout!’

  ‘No problem,’ she said, then hesitated for a moment. ‘Look, is there any chance we could stop for a takeaway coffee somewhere? I’ve been looking forward to one!’

  It was morning in Hong Kong, and the sun was shining sideways through a haze of pollution. In Rhino’s hotel room he and Gecko were sitting together on the sofa staring at Natalie, who was sitting in an easy chair. Rhino had called and asked her to join them for a room-service breakfast. The atmosphere was tense.

  Gecko watched Natalie as Rhino told her briefly what had happened the previous night. She was sullen and disinterested, looking away to stare out of the window.

  ‘I suppose you think I called the United Nations and told them about the warehouse?’ she said when Rhino had finished.

  ‘I do,’ he said.

  ‘You’re right – I did.’

  ‘Why?’

  Her face suddenly creased into an expression that was part anger and part distress. ‘I kept thinking about those animals, and the conditions they were being kept in. I couldn’t stand it. I had to do something!’

  ‘I understand,’ Rhino said, surprising both Gecko and Natalie. ‘But you put both of us at risk. Next time, tell me first if there’s something you feel you have to do. If it really is something that can’t wait, then we’ll work around it. OK?’