by John McNally
“If you can’t improve on perfection, what do you do? Try and preserve it. They set off to try and stay young for ever. Ondine thought she had found the answer in panther stem cells. Injections started. At first it worked. Both Kaparis and Ondine showed improvements in strength, stamina and physique, but then side-effects kicked in. Ondine experienced mood swings and became insane. At some point, she tried to escape from the Kaparis ancestral home. He caught her and there was a struggle. In it, whether by accident or not, he crashed into the wall, onto two crossed swords and a shield of bloodied falcons – the family crest – and one of the swords cut deep into his spine. Ondine was imprisoned by his staff in the Great Cavern beneath the Monastery of Mount St Demetrius, while doctors in Geneva fought to save Kaparis’s life. As he recovered, he thought only of revenge, but before he could take it, Ondine somehow managed to escape, disappearing into thin air. It was only when she resurfaced in Brazil a year later, making threats and issuing taunts, that his butler managed to track her down and murder her. Then Kaparis had her family murdered and every record of her and of the marriage destroyed.”
“Charming story, charming man,” said King.
“A love story?” said Al.
“Yes –” said Grandma (who had been head nurse in the UK’s top criminal psychiatric facility) – “in its way. Some people can’t help but turn love into hate. It’s an alchemy of sorts.”
As they spoke, teams were still scouring official records in South America for any remaining detail.
“Maybe it gives us something we’ve been looking for, for a long while,” said Al.
“What’s that?” asked Delta.
“An Achilles heel. A weakness,” said Al.
Grandma agreed. “Right next to his heart.”
“Given the guy’s rap sheet,” General Jackman interrupted on screen from the US, “do you really think the murder of one ex-wife is going to make a blind bit of difference? And what are we going to do? Call him up and kinda allude to it in conversation?”
He had a point. The story was just that, and of no immediate use.
Al sighed. “Well, it’s another piece of the jigsaw at least.”
Further discussion was interrupted by a technician with an urgent message.
“Sir! Blue 4 has Carrier contact and intel from Hudson!”
There was a rush back to the screens and a video feed of Hudson’s note, in a hastily written thirteen-year-old’s scrawl.
FEBRUARY 22 04:18 (GMT+3). Great Cavern, Monastery of Mount St Demetrius of Thessaloniki
Kaparis, when he occasionally regained consciousness, just saw eyes, masks, faces. They were crowded around his head, examining his swelling neck and attaching new instruments.
“What? What is it?” spat Kaparis.
“A blockage – a thrombosis,” said the Big Swiss Cheese, “caused by an abscess, I should think.”
“You THINK?” Kaparis yelled, as everything went black.
And again he passed out.
The Big Swiss Cheese ordered a nurse to prepare an anti-inflammatory drip, an antibiotic, and a plasminogen activator. “We’ll use them in that order – to reduce the swelling, attack any bacteria and dissolve the blockage. If they don’t work, as a last resort we can always try and blast it with ultrasound.”
“ARRRRGH!” Kaparis woke violently as yet another connection was made in his spine. The surgeon watched his blood pressure climb.
“I’m afraid I’m going to have to insist on a sedative,” he told Kaparis while he was still conscious, turning away to prepare it. “Your heart has had far too much for one day.”
Kaparis exploded – “NO!” – and his arm shot from his side and seized the errant surgeon by the neck. Kaparis gasped. Even in his fevered state, he realised something significant had happened …
He had moved. It was not his conscious mind but his subconscious that had made the breakthrough. His rage had restored the connection between mind and body.
The Big Swiss Cheese choked because he couldn’t breathe.
“HAH!” Kaparis cried in delight, before his hand dropped as he once again fell unconscious.
FEBRUARY 22 04:22 (GMT+3). Body of D.A.P. Kaparis
34% LCA REMAINING. APPROX. 91 MINUTES
“Freshly cut grass,” said Finn.
“Gasoline,” said Carla.
Nico screwed up her nose at this.
“Curry!” said Nico.
“Curry,” agreed Finn.
They were onto favourite smells.
“Baking,” said Carla.
“Seaside chip shop,” said Finn.
“Babies’ heads,” said Nico, and her eyes flooded again.
Finn and Carla looked down, waiting for her to manage her emotion.
To avoid talking about the inevitable, they talked about anything at all. Finn and Carla knew far too much about each other after so long on the road, but Nico was new. They made her list her favourite films, books, TV shows, sandwiches, sweets and treats. They talked about ideal holidays, the perfect Christmas. They made her name the seven dwarfs. They laughed and made a genuine connection with her in a way thirteen-year-olds never usually did with thirty-three-year-old neurosurgeons. Nico was more like a favourite teacher, but out of school – a teacher you finally got to know.
But then she would remember her children – Ronny and Raj – and her eyes would fill with impossible tears, and Finn and Carla wouldn’t know what to do or say because Nico was back in the grown-up world and may as well have been on Mars.
Then she would stop. Recover. And they would start again. Talking as if the future existed. When they all knew it was disappearing fast. Pressing in as hard as the yellow scum they were trapped in.
FEBRUARY 22 05:02 (GMT+3). C-130 Hercules, G&T Romanian Command, National Air Defence Base, Kluge
Crack … CRACK … cra-ck … cc-crack …
In the absence of wool and knitting needles, Grandma wrung her fingers and cracked her knuckles.
More and more world leaders came online, to watch Al pace, and to watch Commander King cogitate, his eyebrows rising and falling independently as he went through the mental motions.
The whole operation had been jolted awake by Hudson. There was no stimulant like fear. The base had gone on high alert. Every soldier, every part of the operation, had been ordered to prepare for immediate action.
And in the face of all this frantic activity? Al paced. Incapable. In shock, and angry – at the situation, at the terrible options, at himself.
“He’s cracked the codes …” Al kept muttering, trying to take in the enormity of what they had learned. He could hardly believe it. Kaparis must have found a way through Ethan Drake’s notes, he must have reached the secret heart of Boldklub. And now he was able to shrink whatever he liked to any size he liked and who knew what else might yield from the breakthrough … It was unimaginable. But worse, much worse … Finn …
“He’s crackers and he’s … he’s crackers and he’s cracked the codes … and Finn …”
“What’s he saying now?” asked the German chancellor.
“It’s about the codes again, Madam.”
Commander King had heard enough.
“We have to start making some decisions. If Kaparis is having his spinal cord reattached, then I suggest we make a move sooner rather than later, before the operation has any chance of success.”
“We have to stop him. Now. We agree on that. But how?” said the British prime minister.
“Do we go in all guns blazing at dawn?” asked General Mount, his military chief.
“That would be suicide – if we assume they are fully prepared, heavily armed and fanatical,” said the president of France.
“That’s why we wanted to play a long game,” said Commander King. “We wanted to make sure we’d covered every angle. But with Hudson taken, with this last message …”
“I will drain him, I will drink his blood …” muttered Delta, fully armed. She hadn’t got this close just to
let her sister die. “I will stop his heart …”
“There may never be a better time to strike than now,” said the prime minister. “The messenger said the Carriers have been locked up and are awaiting their fate. Surely only Kaparis can determine that. And if he’s not yet out of this operation …”
“The Primo said specifically, ‘The Carriers will rise up on our command’,” General Mount pointed out.
“The Carriers are children,” Grandma scolded from her chair.
“Most of the Tyros are barely in their teens and the Siguri are hired hands; they will know when they’re out of their league. If we drop three thousand guys out of the sky on them – believe me, it’s going to be over pretty soon,” said General Jackman from the White House.
“But with us taking how many casualties? Two, three hundred?” said his boss, the US president.
“That can’t be worth it,” agreed Commander King. “And yet, look at what Kaparis has achieved in an iron lung … Imagine him running wild – with Boldklub.”
“Imagine a lot more than a few hundred casualties,” agreed General Jackman.
The fate of the entire operation – and who knew what consequences – hung in the balance.
And everyone was aware that Al had so far said nothing.
Not that Al cared. Al was still deep in his own mind trying to compute the fact that Finn, his beloved boy, was somehow trapped deep within the body of the most evil man on earth. His new philosophy had backfired. What a useless hippy he had been. He’d hung loose and let it all happen, and look what had happened. Kaparis had made a great leap forward that Al couldn’t begin to understand, and Finn was microscopic …
Was it too much for him to think about? Too personal? Maybe it was? Maybe there was no way round this problem, rational or irrational. All Al could think to do was scream HELP …
“Is he having ‘feelings’ again? Is he going to share them with the group?” asked an irritated General Jackman.
Grandma watched him too, but the more trouble she sensed he was in, the more she relaxed. She had found that in moments of crisis good people returned to their values, to what they really knew.
Her value was unconditional love.
“Al,” she said, “whatever you decide will be right.”
Commander King raised an arm to stop anybody else interrupting.
“You were born to do the most difficult things,” she continued. “That’s why you attract these decisions, because only you can make them, only you are big enough in brain and heart.”
Al stopped pacing and looked at her.
“Really? And when you’ve reached the end of your intellect, the end of your emotion and hoodoo – what do you do, Mum? Do you stick or twist?”
“I am your mother, you are my son. I trust you. You know what to do.”
He opened his mouth to object, to say no, her trust was misplaced, he didn’t know what to do. To tell her that he didn’t have any more ideas, that he’d reached the end of the line. But something … something about that word. Trust …
And a thought, simple and powerful, slapped him hard across the mental space. Finn. He trusted Finn. Just as his mum trusted him, he trusted Finn, absolutely …
Maybe he wasn’t required to come up with every answer. Maybe he just had to pass on the baton. To trust Finn. Finn, who’d defeated a doomsday bioweapon; Finn, who’d defeated a nano-bot army; Finn, who had the secret heart of a lion whatever size he was.
Finn would be the one to get them out of this. Of course he would. Al didn’t know how, not one clue, but he knew there was no one better placed than Finn.
All Finn needed was … help.
So, what to do? Al turned to the assembled brains and world leaders.
“We ride at dawn.”
FEBRUARY 22 05:09 (GMT+3). Great Cavern, Monastery of Mount St Demetrius of Thessaloniki
Kaparis’s mind flexed just beneath the surface of sleep.
He seemed to have muscles everywhere now, spikes of feeling that had been driven into his body as if he was a pincushion. While his subconscious was fighting to make sense of it all, his conscious mind was simply trying to wake up.
The more he could feel, the worse he felt. One moment freezing and shaking, the next burning hot. And his neck. The pressure. It was as if he was growing another head.
He began to hallucinate. His mother on a golden horse trailing endless hair. Infinity Drake expanding to enormous scale, ready to crush him underfoot …
“Snap out of it!” he told himself.
“He’s not responding,” he heard from somewhere far above him.
FEBRUARY 22 05:10 (GMT+3). Body of D.A.P. Kaparis
16% LCA REMAINING. APPROX. 43 MINUTES
After a long period of silence, Nico began to sing some kind of nursery rhyme in Bengali, a children’s round, like “London’s Burning”, but beautiful.
“We’re not going to get out of here, are we?” Carla said.
Finn ignored her. He had to. He tried to flex his feet and create some more room.
Nico had said they must be near the surface of the abscess or the pressure wouldn’t be this great, the material wouldn’t be this hard. And the heat …
“We have to tell each other what we love. Our favourite people,” said Nico.
Finn didn’t want to look at her, he didn’t want to think about it. This was all too much like it had been when his mum was dying.
“Love. That’s all that will be left of us. Don’t you want to leave that behind inside him?” she said.
Carla instantly saw the logic. It was their best revenge.
“I love my sister and my stepmother and … my brother Finn,” said Carla, her voice cracking as she stared at him with liquid brown eyes. “Though it’s so weird seeing him for real and in the flesh,” she said, and he laughed.
“Weirder than being 9mm tall and living in your hair?” asked Finn. “Weirder than this?” And it was her turn to laugh.
“Now you,” said Nico to Finn.
“I love my grandma and my uncle Al and – my sister Carla,” he said, returning the compliment. “I love Stubbs and Kelly and Delta. I love Yo-yo. Christabel the vicar. The Queen – I love everyone, really.”
“And your mother and father,” said Carla.
“Yes, of course. But I’ll be seeing them.”
“What do you mean?” said Nico.
“I don’t know – no one does – what’s on the other side of life,” said Finn.
Nico’s eyes filled with tears again. She didn’t have to even say who she loved.
“I just want to hold them and kiss them and talk to them one more time –” Nico said, and she looked at Carla and Finn as if they were her children – “I love you, I am so proud of you, you are the best, most wonderful things that ever happened to me. I want you to fill the world and never be sad, because I love you.”
Carla was crying now too.
Great, thought Finn. This was what it was like at the end of his mum’s life. He hated this bit. It could go on for days. All he felt was guilt for not joining in.
“Your boys wouldn’t want you to cry, especially the older one,” said Finn.
Nico laughed in recognition.
“Boys are totally ridiculous,” Carla said.
“If you could talk to your mum, if you could go back and tell her all the things you wish you’d said, what would you say?” asked Nico.
“I wouldn’t have to say anything,” Finn said, “because I know.”
“You know what?” asked Carla.
“That I’m never alone. That she’s with me. Always.”
Nico bit her lip and leant her head against the visor of her helmet where it touched his. Finn and Carla did the same.
“All for one,” said Finn.
“And one for all,” they replied.
FEBRUARY 22 05:15 (GMT+3). C-130 Hercules, G&T Romanian Command, National Air Defence Base, Kluge
Technicians hit buttons, military commanders st
arted barking orders and finalising battle plans. Suddenly, all was action after Al had given the dawn command.
All except for Grandma, who sat, murmuring “I am your mother … you are my son …?” and going over an idea that had occurred to her the moment she had said the words to Al, turning it this way and that, seeing if it made sense whichever way she looked at it.
Five minutes later, she found Li Jun in a bunk in the main hangar and woke her.
“Grandmother?”
“Li Jun, you must get up, dear. We’re about to take off, we’re about to attack. But first you must tell me – you must try and remember – what else Kaparis said about Ondine before she tried to run away. Why did he think she was going mad? Did he say anything else, anything at all?”
“No, Grandmother, only …”
“Only what?”
“Something I didn’t understand, or didn’t hear properly.”
“What was it?”
“He said to the architect, ‘She didn’t just drive me up the wall, she was eating them’.”
“She was eating the walls?”
“Yes. It makes no sense, Grandmother.”
“Or perfect sense …” said Grandma, and she hurried off to make a phone call to Brazil.
TWENTY-SIX
FEBRUARY 22 05:38 (GMT+3). Great Cavern, Monastery of Mount St Demetrius of Thessaloniki
“He’s not responding.”
It was becoming a mantra. The first time had been after the anti-inflammatory drip had gone in. The second after the antibiotics. Now it was the turn of the plasminogen activator – the clot-buster, drain cleaner.
Kaparis could see the faces of the surgical team swimming above him. He had once seen the edge of life. There had been nothing but the open-mouthed screams of his victims. And snarling panthers. And Ondine. He had recovered and sworn never to return.
“Do something!” he managed to demand through his delirium. It brought him round and he saw Santiago. Hudson beside him. Twin idiot tormentors.
Kill, he thought. That will cheer me up. That will break the fever.
