Hard Targets: A Doc Palfrey Omnibus

by Richard Creasey

  The sheer vanity of the woman!

  15: Wake Up

  “Wake up.”

  A whispered voice in the darkness. Doc tried to ignore it. He just wanted to sleep, forever. He sensed terrible things out there, beyond the safe darkness that enwrapped his mind. He no longer had the strength to face them.

  But someone was shaking him.

  “Wake up. Please.”

  Doc opened his eyes and saw Professor Adenhauer peering anxiously down at him. “Do you remember where you are?” he said.

  Doc nodded.

  “You have been under the influence of a mild sedative. I have just awoken you using an injection of a stimulant. Your mind may not be immediately clear, but please do everything in your power to wake up as quickly as possible. You need to be alert. You need your wits about you.”

  Doc sat up on his cot. As he did so, he bumped against something lying there. A familiar shape. His prosthetic leg. He stared up at Adenhauer. “What’s going on?” he said.

  “I did not give you the drug derived from the lizard venom. Just that sedative I described. You have been asleep for a few hours. But now you must be awake.”

  Doc began putting on his leg as the Professor watched anxiously.

  “You didn’t give me the drug?”

  “No.”

  “You disobeyed Therese.”

  “Yes.”

  “Why are you doing this?” said Doc.

  “Because these people are mad,” said Professor Adenhauer, glancing anxiously over his shoulder. “Because they have to be stopped. Now I will give you some drops that will colour your eyes, but otherwise they are harmless. They will just make you look—”

  “As if I am under the influence of the drug.”

  “That is correct. But for the rest of it, the behaviour you are supposed to exhibit, that is entirely up to you.”

  The Professor put the drops in Doc’s eyes as he coached him in what was expected of him. “Show as little affect — outward signs of behaviour or emotion — as possible. Say as little as possible. Speak only when spoke to. Obey all direct orders.” There was more, and Doc’s mind was soon a whirling checklist of requirements. The Professor gave him a hand mirror and Doc was startled by the flaming red colour of his eyes. They were pure blood-red all around the iris.

  There was the sound of the door opening and the Professor snatched the mirror back from Doc and concealed it in his pocket.

  Zaki stepped into the room. He regarded Doc with deep suspicion. “I told you it would work!” exclaimed Professor Adenhauer brightly. “He is ready.”

  “Come with me,” said Zaki. Doc followed him out the door, the Professor trailing behind them. It was evening now, but the heat of the desert had not yet begun to ebb. Standing just outside the door of the laboratory, patiently waiting, was a small boy who was perhaps eight years old. He had unruly red hair and freckles. He peered uncertainly at Doc and Zaki.

  Professor Adenhauer stared at the boy. “What is he doing here?”

  “He’s one of the spares. Surplus to requirements.” Zaki grinned at Doc, but Doc didn’t meet his gaze, just staring off into the middle distance as he’d been taught. “We don’t need him to fly the swarm, so we can do what we like with him.”

  He took out an automatic pistol and handed it to Doc.

  “Kill him,” he said.

  *

  In their personal quarters Therese and Raoul were lying in the tangled sheets of their four poster bed, in a post coital embrace. They were lazily watching a 24 hour American news channel on the large TV screen on the wall opposite.

  “Shouldn’t we be getting up?” said Raoul, sitting up on the bed.

  “There’s no hurry,” said Therese. She was naked except for the silver comb in her hair.

  “But this absurd television station seems to think that the President’s address on the Lincoln is about to begin.” He was peering at the television screen as he got dressed. He always dressed quickly after having sex, anxious to cover his twisted body.

  “Oh, they will drag out the pomp and ceremony for hours yet,” said Therese.

  “But look at the crowds on the deck of the aircraft carrier,” said Raoul. “They’re all waiting for him.”

  “He’ll make them wait. That’s part of his style. Don’t you know that?”

  Raoul didn’t reply. He had moved towards the television screen and was peering at it intently, as if it was a window he was looking through. Therese sat up in bed, trying to see what he was looking at. It was just a shot of the people massed on the deck of the Abraham Lincoln, waiting for the President. Eager nobodies. “What are you looking at?”

  Raoul didn’t reply.

  “What are you looking at, Raoul?”

  He turned and stared at her, so blankly that she might as well not have been there. Then suddenly he was back to normal. He smiled at her. “Nothing.”

  “Nothing?”

  “Nothing at all,” he said. “Excuse me, would you, my love? I just have to go to the bathroom.”

  “Of course.”

  As soon as he left the room, Therese abruptly sat up, alert, on the edge of the bed. She knew something was wrong. She hopped off the bed onto the thickly carpeted floor and was looking for her garments, so hastily discarded in the rush of passion earlier, when Raoul came back into the room.

  He was holding a gun.

  Therese looked at him without surprise. “What did you see on the television?”

  He sighed. “There among the spectators on the Lincoln. A face from the past. Marion Palfrey.”

  Therese grinned at him. “You’re joking.”

  “No.”

  “I imagine she hasn’t aged well.”

  “She is still who she is.”

  “And what difference does that make?” said Therese.

  “All the difference in the world I’m afraid.” Raoul sighed again. “I just can’t let you do it.”

  “Let ‘me’ do it? It is we who are going to do it! The two of us together. Now put that gun down and we will walk to the Hive hand in hand and launch the swarm. Just as we planned.”

  “I’m sorry, my love, but it’s over.” There was a note of genuine regret in Raoul’s voice.

  Therese burst into laughter. “All this for one woman? Raoul, you really are an incurable romantic.”

  “I am sorry, but that is the way it must be.”

  “This is absurd.”

  “Marion Palfrey once saved my life.”

  “What does it matter? You don’t owe her anything. Least of all your loyalty.” Therese threw her head back and laughed again. The laughter stung Raoul. For a moment his thoughts were clouded by anger.

  He was holding the gun loosely in his hand, not quite pointing at her. She stood facing him, entirely naked. The only sign of her agitation was the hand that crept up to her hair to nervously adjust her comb, the way she always did, fingering it thoughtfully.

  Then her hand moved, there was a gleaming blur of motion in the air of the room between them, and suddenly Raoul was staring at a silver blade sticking into his chest.

  So that’s why she never let me handle the comb, he thought. It wasn’t a comb but a knife, a throwing knife. Fingering it had not been nerves, but a ruse.

  He sank to his knees. The blade in his chest quivered with his heartbeats, each slower than the one before.

  Always thinking ahead. That’s my Therese.

  This was his last thought, wistful and almost fond, as he died.

  *

  Zaki was staring at Doc.

  “What are you waiting for? Kill him.”

  From the weight of the gun in his hand, Doc knew it was loaded. As Professor Adenhauer watched in horror, he lifted it and pointed it at the little boy — then suddenly pivoted and aimed it Zaki. “Put your hands on your head,” said Doc.

  Zaki wrinkled his face in disgust and shot a glance at the Professor. “What have you done?”

  Adenhauer wouldn’t meet the man’s gaze.


  “I said, put your hands on your head,” repeated Doc. But Zaki didn’t obey. Instead he reached inside his jacket for his shoulder holster. Doc pulled the trigger.

  Nothing happened.

  “I disabled the firing pin,” said Zaki. “Because I didn’t trust you.” He drew his own pistol and aimed it at Doc. “But the firing pin on this one will work perfectly.”

  Professor Adenhauer gave a little cry and lunged at Zaki, slamming something into his neck. Zaki jerked back, revealing a syringe sticking grotesquely out of his throat. Before he could pull it out, Doc stepped forward and hit him on the head with the heavy automatic pistol.

  He hit him a considerable number of times.

  “The firing pin may not work, but it’s still a useful blunt instrument.” He looked up from the unmoving form of Zaki to see that the little boy had fled in terror and the Professor was looking at him with a strange expression.

  “You needn’t have hit him so much. I gave him a considerable dose of sedative.”

  “He killed my woman,” said Doc.

  But Adenhauer wasn’t listening to him. He was staring over Doc’s shoulder. “Quickly!” he said. Doc turned to see Therese on the other side of the compound, walking towards the Hive in a leisurely fashion. She hadn’t seen them.

  “It’s about to start,” said Adenhauer. “They’re going to launch the swarm. You must stop her!”

  Doc raced after Therese. She had her back to him and he could see that she had a pistol stuck into the back of her jeans. He wondered where the hunchback was. As soon as he was close enough to her he called out, “Stop. Don’t touch the gun. Turn around.”

  Therese froze and turned slowly around to face him.

  “What on earth happened to you?” she said.

  “Not what you were hoping. Now put your hands on your head.”

  “On my head?” said Therese. She smiled. “Happy to oblige.” She put her hands into her hair, searching for the lethal blade of the comb…

  But it wasn’t there. It was still sticking out of poor Raoul’s chest. Therese suddenly had a sinking feeling. For the first time in many, many years, she realised that things might not work out the way she wanted them to.

  “It’s all over, Therese,” said Doc.

  She stared at the Englishman. She wondered how quick he was. Or whether he had ever shot anyone before. There was always the possibility of fatal hesitation… She decided it was worth the risk.

  She grabbed for the gun in her waistband.

  Training, experience and a cool waiting rage came together in the man standing in front of Therese, forming a neural response that was faster than thought.

  Doc shot her dead.

  *

  The young man from the Secret Service stood on the deck of the Lincoln waiting for Marion Palfrey to finish speaking on her phone. She was saying, “And you told him that Benadir is all right? Good, that must have been the thing that was weighing most heavily on his mind. And the children are all safe? That’s excellent, excellent news. We should have them back with their parents within a few days, just as soon as the drug is out of their system.”

  What the hell could she be talking about? Wondered the young man.

  Finally she hung up and he smiled his most political smile.

  “I’m sorry but the President won’t be able to see you after all, ma’am.”

  Marion Palfrey returned his smile. “That’s all right. It doesn’t matter now.”

  Burning Night

  1: Cambridge

  Dr Thomas ‘Doc’ Palfrey caught a late morning train up from London to Cambridge. He’d timed it so that he missed both the morning rush hour and the first wave of cheap off-peak fares, and as a result he had a first class compartment all to himself. This was a bonus because it meant he could remove his left leg and put it on the seat beside him for most of the journey - an action which might otherwise have thoroughly freaked out a fellow passenger.

  He massaged the neat stump that had been left him by the combat surgeons in Afghanistan. They’d done the best they could with the mangled mess which remained after the explosion. And Sofia Forley, Z5’s director of operations in Milan, kept her technical team busy constantly upgrading his prosthetics, the latest example of which lay on the seat to his left.

  Still, it felt good to take it off.

  Doc stared out the window at the green countryside speeding past. Then he consulted his iPhone, reviewing the file on Jacob Goldstein. Finally he took the map out of his jacket pocket.

  An old fashioned paper map of Cambridge, with a large scale street plan of the centre of the city on the reverse which he had marked up, the bright yellow line encircling a street just off Maids Causeway, near Midsummer Common, where Goldstein’s flat was located…

  Had been located.

  Doc supposed the past tense was appropriate. The flat was still there, but Goldstein was no more.

  The yellow line on the map then snaked up Market Road and divided into a yellow hydra-head of smaller snakes, running around all the streets in the area where there were likely to be chemists or supermarkets that sold pharmaceuticals. Or corner shops, for that matter.

  Doc sighed. It was going to be a tedious business, involving a lot of leg work.

  He grinned and looked at the prosthetic on the seat beside him.

  Leg work.

  *

  Doc got a taxi from the station to Fair Street and had the driver drop him some distance from his destination.

  Old habits.

  Goldstein had lived in Willow Walk, which was almost as leafy and pleasant as its name suggested. It was a kind of narrow street, or wide alley, which had been surfaced with cobbles and turned into a pedestrian walkway with limited access for cars of the residents. There was no space for gardens or yards here and the fronts of the houses ran straight onto the street, although the houses on his left backed onto a large park, which must have compensated somewhat for the lack of a garden.

  Goldstein’s flat occupied the ground floor of a house on his right. The building was a two storey box with a flat roof. It had a recessed doorway, which was convenient because it meant Doc didn’t have to actually stand in the street while he picked the lock.

  One of Sofia’s operatives in Milan, a girl called Paola, had taught him this skill and Doc liked to think he’d become rather good at it. Within two minutes he was inside the house.

  He could have got in quicker if he didn’t mind breaking the lock.

  Just inside the door was a narrow, awkwardly angled hallway which led at one end to a staircase that gave access to the upstairs flat and at the other to Goldstein’s front door.

  Doc was quite prepared to pick the lock of Goldstein’s door, but he found that the police had left it unlocked. The discovery gave him a ridiculous little pang of disappointment. He wanted to practise his new found talent. Doc went in and closed the door behind him. The place was silent and smelled airless, of dust warmed by the sunlight falling through the windows.

  He made a quick search of the premises. He looked at the bed where Goldstein had been found dead. He looked at the kitchen, where the chrome base of the food processor was still standing on the counter. Goldstein had used the food processor to make his smoothies. He’d been obsessed with drinking the damned things. He’d made them with fruit, wheat germ, wheatgrass, flax seed, seaweed and god knew what else.

  They had been a standing joke at Digby Mews, Z5’s London HQ, when Goldstein had been working there. The refrigerator in the laboratory had always been jammed full of exotic ingredients and Professor Nuntovi had been forced to complain more than once.

  Goldstein had drunk the smoothies for his health, which was bitterly ironic when you considered how things had ended up.

  The glass jug of the food processor was missing because the police had taken it away. They had analysed its remaining contents, which had confirmed what Goldstein’s note had said. On the counter around the food processor had been the numerous scattered w
rappers and packs which had contained paracetamol and aspirin and other assorted non-prescription painkillers which had gone into Goldstein’s final smoothie in lieu of the more traditional seaweed, wheatgrass or flax seed.

  These wrappers and packs were all gone now, removed by the police, but Doc had seen the photographs.

  There was specific legislation in place to prevent people killing themselves with such drugs, which meant that you could only buy a few pills at a time from any given retailer. Of course this didn’t represent any real barrier to a determined individual and apparently Goldstein had gone all around the area visiting various shops, buying enough of the painkillers piecemeal.

  According to the official version of events, he had then made the smoothie, drunk it, and gone to bed awaiting its effect.

  Which was unconsciousness, coma, and acute renal and hepatic failure.

  All of this was confirmed by the note he had left, not to mention the analysis of the residue of the smoothie in the food processor and the post mortem examination of Goldstein’s stomach contents.

  The young scientist had been a notoriously highly strung and emotional individual. Brilliant but very unstable. Volatile. He had made enemies easily, and not everyone had appreciated his brilliance. He had recently been refused funding for a cherished research project. When he got word that his grant application had been rejected, the disappointment drove him to go out and start buying the pills.

  It was all very neat.

  The only trouble was, Doc wasn’t buying it.

  *

  It was true that Goldstein had been an excitable individual. But in Doc’s experience his emotional excesses had always been in the direction of rage rather than despair. When he flew off the handle it was to shout at someone, not to burst into tears. And while he had complained and moaned almost constantly, it had always seemed to Doc that he had enjoyed doing the complaining and moaning.

  In fact, in his own quirky way, Goldstein had seemed to have quite a passion for life.