Roadworks

by Gerard Readett

  The lift reached the lobby, and the doors opened. There were more hotel guests around than earlier when I had first arrived, and the hubbub of their conversations surrounded me. Here and there, as I headed for the door, I caught a snippet of conversation. The favourite topic seemed to be speculation about why the hotel guests had been restrained from leaving.

  Apparently, word of the real reasons, the OPA, the bombs and so on, had not reached the general public. I have to hand it to the Bourgmestre. She had managed to keep it all quiet. If the guests in any of the hotels lodging a head of state knew the danger they had been in, there would have been widespread panic throughout the city.

  I reached the hotel entrance and had the door open when a commotion behind me caught my attention. A group facing away from me parted suddenly. Stephane charged through the passage that they left him. His right hand was pointing something at me. One woman hadn't been able to fully get out of his way. His left elbow hit her at shoulder height. Having lost his balance, he extended his left arm to soften his fall. As he did so, he dropped what he had been holding in that hand. It clattered to the floor, and slid right up to me. Without thinking, I picked it up and spared it a glance. It looked very much like the electronic notebook I had seen Wellens use up in his room. I returned my attention to Stephane. He had pulled himself up from the ground, and his right arm was moving so I couldn't make out what he was holding in it.

  My heart jumped when I realised it was the gun I had seen him menace Wellens with. My body didn't give my brain the time to think about the situation.

  Before I knew it, I was in the street. The Place Stephanie, right in front of me, was full of immobile cars. I had to use them as cover.

  For once my ignorance, when it comes to guns, would be important. If I could have recognised the gun, I could have counted the shots, and turned on him when he had to reload. As it was, my best bet was to run like mad. Which is what I did, straight through the rows of grid locked cars and up the road towards the Place Louise.

  I could hear only two things, the beating of my heart and the thump on my footsteps on the road's surface.

  The path I was using ended abruptly at the crossroads. A small truck blocked my path, between the lanes. The second I made contact, using my hands on the truck, I translated my forward momentum into a shove sideways. Without really noticing them, I grabbed the bull-bars, and swung myself round the truck.

  For the first time I saw the crossroads clearly. There was no straight path to the Place Louise. I had to turn right and head up a small road. I began weaving through the jumble of cars, using a hand here to ease through a tight squeeze, a foot there to effect a violent change of vector as I gradually cleared the obstacle.

  Once again on a road with cars lined up in their respective lanes, I was able to speed up. I ran straight down the middle, toeing the separator. Free from working out angles and changing speeds, my mind set to work again. Running was fine, it suited the animal instinct of fleeing danger, but it didn't account for that danger chasing the animal wherever it went.

  When I turned round, I sighted Stephane immediately. He hadn't bothered with going around the cars at the crossroads. He had chosen to go over them.

  Standing on the truck, he took aim and fired off two shots. One ploughed into the boot of the car beside me. The other would have hit me had I stayed immobile.

  I ran on, but looked about frantically for some cover. Once he cleared the crossroads, he would have a clear line of fire down between the lanes of cars.

  There! A side street lay ahead and to the right. I thundered down it.

  The shock of what I had witnessed and the physical exertion of the last few minutes had taken their toll. My legs were beginning to ache, and I had to slow my pace a little.

  There was a deep thunderous bang like a peal of thunder. The third floor of a building barely a hundred metres ahead had no windows; it must have been set aside for the air conditioning. It was blown into the street. Whole chunks of the wall were hurled across the street, smashing through windows or bouncing down onto the pavement. Several cars were bowled over by the blast. The glass of surrounding buildings and the windshields of the undamaged cars shattered in unison.

  A massive ball of flame erupted from the gaping hole and ballooned outwards in every direction, licking the facades on both sides of the street and the roofs of the cars below. Dark smoke rolled outwards to engulf the flames. The cloud mushroomed upwards, then thinned as it expanded further. Debris started to drop out of the sky. Sheets of panelling snapped as they crashed onto the cars. Amid a white spray of plaster, bits of concrete bounced down the street towards me. A piece of twisted metal soared through the air to impale the radiator of a car nearby.

  The building rapidly disappeared behind the veil of thick smoke and dust. Shreds of paper fluttered in the billowing cloud.

  At first, the noise abated somewhat, and the cloud looked like it was settling. Then abruptly, the roof of the building dropped below the adjacent ones. The screech of twisting metal was appalling, and when the concrete hit the ground -- I suppose that's what it was, I still couldn't see -- the noise deafened me. The sky was darkened by the churning dust.

  I crouched behind a car as the cloud, filled with dust, expanded towards me. Watching as it hit the car like a strong wind, I failed to react in time. Although part of its energy was spent on the bonnet of the car, it passed over and around the obstacle. As it hit me in the face, a sudden pain made me squeeze my eyes closed.

  The initial shock over, my instincts reasserted themselves. There was still that more urgent danger running up the main street. Rubbing the grit from my eyes with a handkerchief, I waited for Stephane to arrive. In the dark and dust choked air, it took me a while to see him. He entered the street walking, as if he was on a calm morning stroll through the city. I caught him glancing up the street at the wreckage, and then he whistled before heading deeper into the swirling dust.

  In his hands I saw a black and blue contraption. The top looked like a phone and the bottom, like a blue pack of cigarettes. I must have had only a few seconds to see it properly, but with my mind racing it seemed like much longer. On the bottom was a small screen with scrollbars on each side. Displayed was a map of the city. Somehow I knew it showed the area we were presently in, this road and the few adjoining ones. Several buildings on the map were outlined in red and numbered.

  I had seen that before. The first time I had seen that was when I called them unexpectedly on the videophone. That was the gadget the OPA had at the backup TMC. The one we never found. The one Michaux had assumed was the detonator for the explosive charges they had set up in buildings around the city. Like the Castell building and the Central Library and the hotels.

  That would mean that Stephane had used it here, to catch me under the rubble. The buildings that were outlined in red on his map probably were the ones that contained bombs. The number inside those buildings could only be a speed dial number for a beeper attached to the bomb.

  Stephane was certainly a good actor. In all the time I had worked with him, he had never shown this streak of utter ruthlessness. Blowing up a complete building, killing hundreds of people inside or below in cars, and injuring who knows how many with flying glass. All that just to get one person: me.

  The passengers of cars near me started getting out. I had already eased myself forward when the door of the car I was using as cover opened. It hit me in the shoulder and knocked me backwards.

  The passenger had felt the knock and looked round his door. "What the hell are you doing?"

  I suppose I must have looked suspicious, crouching behind a car and trying to slink off quietly when up the road a bomb had just gone off.

  He leaned back inside his car to grab something, but I kicked the door shut. It slammed onto his leg, and then I saw the crowbar in his hand, and squashed any remorse I might have had. The driver of the car got out and started yelling at me.

  Stephane had heard the racket and was coming
this way, gun pointing. I didn't wait for him to get closer. Getting to my feet, I darted round the corner.

  Return to Contents

  * * *

  Chapter Nineteen

  4h07 PM

  The first thing I noticed was that the drivers on this road, perpendicular to the last one, were all running away from me. Some people came out of nearby buildings, cast a rapid glance in my direction, then followed the drivers away from the cloud.

  I was starting to get really frightened. When that building had collapsed in front of me I had been jolted. Until then, I had been in shock. Fear, after all, is the motor for the survival instinct, and the first thing that instinct does is switch off the unnecessary functions of the body, like conscious thought.

  The animal inside me had realised that it was not going to survive solely by fleeing. The danger was not only behind me, but could, at any time, be in front as well, another bomb rigged by the OPA. That building had snapped me back into thinking again.

  I couldn't simply run on in the vain hope of losing him. Eventually I would pass under one of his rigged buildings, he would push a button, and that would be that. I would be another statistic to add to the rising death toll he and the OPA were notching up today. With these thoughts rushing around in my head, I ran down the road and out onto the inner ring road, where I darted left.

  Something warned me - to this day I don't know what it was - call it a sixth sense or intuition, whatever it was it made me stop and turn round.

  Stephane, his hair and clothes a uniform grey-brown, was standing still. The detonator was balanced in one hand. The other, still holding the gun, was above, ready to hit the button.

  He shouted, "Hand me the notebook."

  That's when I began moving. I sprinted forward, praying that I would pass his trap before he had time to act. There was no way for me to know which building he had in mind, and at every moment I was expecting to hear the dreaded rumble again. Passing through the line of stationary traffic, I came alongside a big, self-hire van.

  Although I had believed I was ready, I was way off the mark. In the initial moments of the blast, all my senses were assaulted. The noise, the jarring of the ground and the bright flash reached me at the same time. I was still running, and only had the time to bring my arms up when the blast hit me.

  Fortunately, the van took the brunt of the explosion for me. The glass from the passenger's window flew out sideways. A few fragments pelted my right arm. The back door was ripped off with a sharp cracking sound. It scraped a corner along the road behind me, and skewered the side of a car, nearly cleaving it into two. The bonnet, still hanging on by a tough hinge, flipped up over the side, to slam into the passenger door. Broken glass began to rain down on me.

  The blast pushed the van sideways. I put my hands out, but the weight was too much. I was knocked backwards over the boot of a parked car. Just as my legs passed over my head, the van banged into the side of the car, then fell back onto its wheels. I landed painfully on my arms, some of the bigger bits of glass gouging out more skin. Ignoring the pain, I rolled under the car. The noise of debris pelting the roof echoed in my ears, and the road around me became a dark, thick layer of dust. Careful not to expose my eyes, I pulled out my handkerchief. Placing it over my mouth, I tried to breathe through it. When the noise softened, I extracted myself from my hiding place. The pavement was covered in several centimetres of fine sand and chunks of concrete. The wall it had landed under was a mosaic of holes. The dust kept falling like dirty brown snow.

  The sound of the collapse of the building never came. Maybe the bomb in this one was not well placed. When a gust of wind whipped the cloud away momentarily, I saw that the bomb had been in a building still fairly far from me and on the opposite side of the street. If I had been closer and had not had the van between the bomb and me, I would probably not be alive.

  In any case, there was no time to waste. I pulled out the most painful glass fragments, then shakily got to my feet. A twinge in my back made me wince, but I could spare no time on it. At the moment, the expanding cloud of dust and debris hid me, but when it settled, Stephane could start his duck shooting again.

  There was one good point: I still knew where I was.

  Think!

  I had to find some way out of this road. Here, it's a dead end, and down the street is Stephane. Whatever I found had to be between him and me.

  Got it!

  There was a building with two entrances, one on this road, the other on the next road down. It was the Galerie Louise, a shopping mall. I had to reach that, without getting myself shot. The only problem being that it was much nearer to Stephane than I was.

  Taking my courage in both hands, I prepared myself for the run of my life. There was no question about it; this was the only way out. I would have to blank out everything but Stephane and that entrance, and stop for nothing, nothing whatsoever.

  I glanced, one last time, down the road, towards where Stephane would be waiting. The edge of the cloud was thinning rapidly, and that wasn't good. I would need to be at full tilt when I left the cover of the cloud, or I would be a sitting duck. I walked backwards until I felt rubble under my feet. Here I readied myself like an Olympic sprinter: legs back, body forward and supported by outstretched hands.

  Taking a deep breath, I tensed, trying to build up adrenaline inside my body. Then I pushed forward, and I was off. I remained on the pavement, as close as possible to the buildings.

  It took Stephane several seconds to notice me, and that helped. When he did eventually realise what I was doing, he immediately stabbed his detonator. At the time, I didn't hear or feel anything, but my subconscious took note of how close we came.

  The bomb went off in the ten-storey Pelletier building, two down from me. The wind from the blast spun me around, and I stumbled, falling on my backside. A small lorry in the middle of the street was knocked over onto its side. The explosion sent debris flying straight across the road, so there was a much reduced blast effect towards the sides. The fireball blossomed at the fifth floor and spread across the street before the smoke cloud hid it. The cars on the road were not directly damaged by the explosion, only by falling debris. Once again I took to the limited refuge under a car, and waited for the storm of concrete and glass to abate. Luckily, I had been too far and too low to sustain any serious injuries.

  Normally, I would have waited longer, but I was too intent on reaching the entrance to the shopping mall. Another filthy dust cloud spread around and over me, again depositing its thick layer of muck. With my hand firmly holding the handkerchief in place, I closed my eyes and crossed the street as quickly as I dared. When I felt a sharp stab of pain in my outstretched hand, where a piece of glass protruded, I knew I had reached the other side.

  Taking the risk of opening an eye, I stumbled towards the edge of the dust cloud. It started thinning, then the ground trembled again. I immediately lay down and placed my hands on my head. The sound was less deafening than before, but the cloud thickened rapidly. The force of the wind seemed too gentle for it to have come from the Pelletier building. It must have been the other building finally collapsing. With a double layer of dust floating in the air, I saw nothing. All I had to go on was the noise.

  After a long wait, the air thinned, and I got shakily to my feet. A gust of wind lifted the veil of dust, and I looked for Stephane further down the street. The moment I could see him, I started running.

  He was off to my left and on the other side of the street. With the palm of his hand he wiped his face, to clear away the layer of dust. When he looked up, he stared at me, surprised, but that didn't last long. The gun came up, and he started firing.

  Ahead I saw the Galerie Louise, and my spirits soared. Then I heard the shots striking the wall behind me. There was nothing I could do about them without slowing down. So I forged on.

  Stephane must have overcompensated. His next bullet hit the wall ahead of me, and a chip of concrete grazed my cheek as I passed.


  No matter. I had reached the entrance, and slipped on the smooth stone surface, which was covered by a thin layer of grit. I twisted around to face the entrance, and stumbled.

  The glass from a shop window behind and a little above me shattered, and fragments of glass fell all around me. I wasted no time. Jumping up, I headed through the mall for the other entrance, with one thought to keep me company: Stephane had me in his sights, and if I hadn't stumbled--

  Several times Stephane had missed me by centimetres. Only by the thinnest of margins did I survive.

  "I can't continue like this," I thought to myself. "Eventually he's going to get me. With so many close calls, one is going to be too close."

  I dashed blindly through the mall, and reached the opposite entrance in what seemed like only seconds. My shoulder hit the handle, and the door swung wide. I darted across the road, and ran down it, along the pavement.

  Ah. Here was what I needed, something to help me lose him: the metro entrance of the Place Louise. I had reached the concrete wall above the escalators. The station was very deep underground, and the escalators were known as the longest in Brussels. Three people hopped on, grabbed the banister and moved down, out of sight. I only had three metres to go around the wall to reach the escalators and hopefully salvation.

  Behind me, I heard several muffled shots, accompanied by breaking glass. Probably Stephane, smashing the glass doors to pass though them, without the need for slowing down.

  Again, a premonition made me turn round. He was standing stock still, waiting for me to look up. Our eyes met across the immobile line of cars. He winked at me, raised his right hand, and waved. "Last chance, Hugh," he yelled, "or�"

  Bloody hell. How many buildings did they rig? Up to now, the count was five.

  In that instant, I realised that I was directly below number six.

  My mind jumped into overdrive. Distance from here to the safety of the escalators: three metres, only about four seconds, running. Distance from Stephane's fingers to the detonator: all of three centimetres, or two seconds tops. These calculations took milliseconds, my mind was working at peak performance, and I knew I had barely a second to react.