Birdkill

by Alexander McNabb

  The door opened. The dark space around her started to glow with light and she guessed she had found another dome. She sprinted for the entranceway, the layout of the dome’s ground floor the same as the one she had entered, four curvilinear spaces and a central pillar.

  She flashed the card at the panel, the door slid open. She saw the faint blush of light from the dome to her right and instinctively ran around the opposite side of her dome, striking across the dark grassland for the obscurity of the woods.

  Robyn collapsed on the damp ground and gasped for breath, the rich leaf mould in her nostrils. She threshed on the soft surface, spasming as she tried to rid her mind of the alien shapes and sounds from that huge room, assuaging the fear that coursed through her veins and had her fighting for each blessed ice-cold lungful of earthy air.

  Eventually she stilled, lying on the cool ground. She got to her knees and stood, propping herself up against a tree. She limped through the stygian woodland, careful to stay in the deep shadows. Leaves dripped around her. Reaching the wall, she despaired. There was nothing left, no energy in her. She was drained. Robyn let her forehead fall against it, the rough bricks pressing into her soft skin. After a despondent eternity, she forced herself to pace away and spring at the wall, throwing herself up onto it, her still-gloved hands scrabbling for a purchase against its topmost bricks. She hung there, no strength left to pull herself up. The pain drove into her shoulders and she dragged herself upwards, agony coursing through her wrists as they ground into the coarse brickwork. She sprawled on to her back, lying on top of the wall, gasping.

  Robyn calmed slowly, her breathing coming under control and the slow sounds of the woodland coming to her, the occasional drip of water from a leaf and a tree creaking. She heard murmuring voices before the flash of a Maglite swept along the wall and across the woodland. She averted her face, listened to their feet scuffling as they followed the course of the wall, shining the light into the trees. She caught a whiff of cigarette smoke and wanted a smoke herself, more than she’d ever wanted to smoke in her life. The heavy tread of booted feet and clink of equipment hanging from their gilets were directly underneath. Robyn held her breath.

  A dog barked somewhere in the distance. The heavy feet moved away. Robyn waited until she could no longer hear them, then crouched before lowering herself as quietly down the wall until she was stretched out, her fingers straining to keep their grip on the edge. She bucked and twisted to land, letting her body crumple to absorb the impact.

  Birds were starting to sing and there was a faint hint of steel on the dark horizon as she stole up the fire escape, exhausted and disoriented. The window had closed and she tried to prise the frame open but it was tightly sealed. A fresh wave of fear hit her and she grabbed at it, but the gloves made her hands clumsy. She pulled her right glove off, hooked her nails into the crevice and pulled.

  It opened. She slid through the gap and pulled it closed behind her. She hunkered down and recovered her breathing again, letting her heart slow and trying not to think about anything beyond calming herself. She staggered to her feet and tottered to the bathroom. Turning the light on, she realised she’d left a muddy trail. Her socks were soaked and her feet numb. She pulled off the other glove, they were both scuffed and torn. Her hands were a state, her wrists looked like she’d attempted her life, welted and cut by the rough edges of the brickwork. She started to pour a bath, letting dollops of bubble bath plop out of the bottle into the warm stream. She pulled off her jumper, red ridges criss-crossed her torso.

  She ached all over, her shoulders were throbbing and, lowering herself into the hot water, her scraped hands and wrists stung.

  Robyn tried to make sense of it all, the domes and the strangeness of that huge room underneath them. The projected images flickering into life around her, the sense that somehow she understood where she was even while she was confused and flying from them, whoever they were. Perhaps she was even fleeing herself. She wasn’t sure she knew anymore and the lack of a boundary between reality and imagination scared her terribly.

  She woke at eight in a cold bath. She gripped the edge with her sore hands and pulled herself creakily out, grabbing a towel and wrapping herself. She slid her feet into her slippers. Moving like an old woman, Robyn picked her way downstairs and called reception.

  ‘Heather? It’s Robyn. Look, I’m sorry, but I’ve eaten something that’s really disagreed with me. I can’t come in today.’

  ‘You sound pretty rough. Not a problem, we’ll cover for you no bother. I’ll let Simon know.’

  ‘Thanks. You’re a treasure.’

  ‘Yeah, a sunken one. Cheers.’

  Robyn dragged herself back up the stairs, the banister cool under her fingers. She sat on the edge of her bed and tried to reprise the events of the past evening. Lying back, she closed her eyes and returned to the white room deep underneath the domes.

  She was back in Zahlé. The school building was in front of her. A taxi had just dropped her off. She was staying in a little bed and breakfast run by a fussy French Lebanese lady called Francine, a devout Maronite with Views. It was a new beginning for Robyn, whose life had been peppered with new beginnings since her bankrupt father had fled Britain and given her a gypsy childhood that had left her with a lifetime’s urge to travel.

  She walked up to the blue double doors, bougainvillea bushes either side of them, the pink papery flowers clustered against the dusty leaves. She pulled the right hand door open. It had a brass handle and scratch plate buffed by a million hands.

  Void.

  Mariam looked up to see Brian Kelly come through the door of the busy café. He seemed hunched in his heavy greatcoat. He paused at the counter to order and came over to her, rubbing his reddened hands. ‘It’s bloody Harry Willy out there. How are you, darling?’

  ‘Can’t complain.’ She closed her laptop and slid it into her bag. ‘What are you working on now, cat stuck up tree? Man dead in graveyard?’

  ‘Don’t be bloody cheeky. The story got pulled. It is what it is.’

  ‘It’s craven is what it is. The public has a right to know about this.’

  Kelly shook his weary head, the baggy eyes searched her face. ‘Oh dear. We do have ourselves an idealist.’ He shrugged off his coat and scarf. He waggled a finger at her. ‘Know the trouble with people like you? You get innocent folks hurt.’

  She shrugged. ‘What happened to talking truth to power?’

  ‘So what’s the story about my laptop?’

  ‘I had to get at your email. Duprez had sent you a copy of the files he had obtained, just before his Google account was shut down. Google accounts take a while to close, they don’t go instantly. I got the files.’

  ‘Not that it makes any difference to us now the story’s spiked, but what was in them?’

  ‘Dynamite, Kelly. Sheer bloody dynamite. Odin is a multibillion-dollar joint programme between the Americans and the Brits to develop augmented humans, sort of anthropoid GMOs. It’s pure Nazi eugenics with a nasty streak of battlefield enhancements added in. Super-intelligent, super-motivated people who can be turned into monstrous killing machines by the addition of a trigger drug. They’ve murdered tens of people with their experiments and trials. Including the mothers of every single child at the Hamilton Institute bar one and she’s the one I’ve talked to. They were all deadbeats. The mothers. Hamilton groomed them, cleaned them up and then had them impregnated by his hand-picked soldiers as part of his breeding programme.’

  Kelly held his hand up to stem the tide. ‘Whoa, there, darling. Can you prove that?’

  ‘I have a list of every single child at the Hamilton Institute. Their births are a matter of record. So are their mothers’ deaths. And one of the Parker emails refers to the unacceptable risk of terminating what he calls ‘the carriers’. Parker’s in charge of the American side of things but the top man on the Brit side is none other than the chief scientific adviser to the Ministry of Defence. Together, they’re bankrolling Hamilton
to mess with the heads of something like forty stolen children.’

  Kelly leaned back as the waitress placed his coffee on the worn wooden table. ‘Thanks, love.’ He sipped it and winced at the heat. ‘Listen, Mariam. You’re a good kid. Here’s some advice from an old man. Drop it. Very drop it. Double drop it. www.drop.com. Like a stone. Walk away.’

  ‘I’ve got the proof, it’s all documented. I need to get an answer to an email I sent to an old pal in Lebanon and I’m done. Sell it for me, Kelly. Sell it to someone they can’t get to, the Sidney Morning Herald or the South China Morning Post.’

  Kelly stared at her in mystification. ‘What earthly good will that do you?’

  ‘It’ll escalate; you know it will. You keep the syndication fees; I don’t want them. But sell the story. I’m writing it up, I’ll have it to you in a couple of days.’

  ‘It’s too hot. Seriously. Alan Potts, you remember him?’ She nodded. ‘Well he’s not answering calls. That’s not really a very good sign.’

  ‘Come on, Kelly. They can’t get away with this. Killing innocent girls, creating monster children? It’s a horror movie and it’s being done with taxpayer money.’

  ‘Look, I’ll put in a couple of calls, but no promises. There are too many dead bodies around for my liking. And I’m in no rush to join ‘em. Not even for a Lebanese babe.’

  ‘You’re making me blush to the roots of my curly little hairs.’

  ‘I’ll bet I am and that. And look, stay away from Clive bloody Warren.’

  ‘What the fuck has that got to do with you?’

  ‘He’s a spook, love. You’re sleeping with the enemy. And he’s having you followed.’

  ‘I know that. He’s got a protection team looking after me.’

  Kelly beamed at her and she wanted to punch his knowing leer out. ‘Is that what he told you? Protection? You’re being followed, watched, traced.’

  Mariam sprang to her feet, her sudden movement making Kelly sit back, blinking. She pulled her bag onto her shoulder. ‘Get lost, Kelly.’

  She strode out of the café, pulling her mobile out. She called Robyn but her friend didn’t pick up. She called Clive.

  ‘Frizz.’

  ‘Seriously, find another nick name. Look, I need a hand. Can you meet me at the Mayview Clinic in an hour?’

  ‘The Mayview? What for? Why do you want to go there?’

  ‘To find out some stuff, why else?’

  ‘Yes, but not there. Let’s meet up and talk about this, Mariam. You can’t just rock up somewhere like that.’

  ‘’Course I can. Coming or not?’

  ‘I’ll meet you, but not there.’

  ‘Clive, the Mayview’s the key to this whole programme Hamilton’s working on. It’s where he’s murdered dozens of women.’

  ‘That’s an outrageous charge and you can’t prove it. Meet me first.’

  ‘Where?’

  ‘At my office.’

  ‘I don’t know where that is.’ The admission made her feel stupid. How much did she really know about Clive Warren? Kelly’s little bearded face came to mind.

  ‘That’s okay. I’ll have you brought to me.’

  The line cut and Mariam stopped walking, staring at her mobile screen. What kind of high-handed arrogance would even approach what he had just said to her? She was still standing, fuming when a man touched her arm. ‘Mariam? I’m Jake. Come along with me and we’ll get you sorted.’

  She was about to protest, but he had guided her gently to the black sedan which had pulled up silently beside them. She folded herself into the open door and the dark leather interior before the words reached her lips or any impulse her muscles.

  Warren’s office was in a leafy square near Belgravia, a curved terrace of Georgian buildings backing a pillared colonnade. Stone steps led up to a black painted doorway with a brass plaque on it proclaiming this to be the headquarters of Adad Holdings.

  The door gave to an expensive, airy entrance hall lined with glass-fronted shelving, a complex white chandelier above and a cream and blue Persian silk rug below, laid over the white marble floor. The shelves held little pieces of ceramic, figurines and other objets, some of which she fancied had once graced museums in Iraq.

  ‘This way, ma’am.’ Jake smiled. She ignored him, her gaze held by a pair of beautiful brown Himyarite cylinder seals, figures of men and animals cut into the shining surface. Above them an alabaster bust of a woman, clearly ancient and likely Mesopotamian.

  ‘Ma’am?’

  She tore herself away and followed him through into the next room, a starkly minimalist reception room with dazzling white studded sofas and chrome floor lighting arcing behind them. The coffee table bore a small heap of large format books, the topmost Taschen’s complete Breughel.

  Jake left her and she dumped her bag on the sofa, wandering to peer out of the window at the square below, turning away to examine the Breughel winter scene above the fireplace. She was struck by the feeling Warren left little to chance and did nothing without reason.

  A side door opened and a petite Asian woman entered. She wore a simple black dress with a gold brooch and black high heels. ‘I am sorry to keep you waiting. Let me take you to Clive.’

  Mariam almost surprised herself with the heat of her reaction. Clive is it, bitch? She ensured her answering ‘Thank you.’ was accompanied by a demure smile. She hooked the strap of her bag and walked through the door the woman held open. The office was Spartan and expensive, a wooden floor, low shelving and a white desk with a Mac and Anglepoise lamp. The walls and ceiling were all Arctic white, ornamental coving on the ceiling and sculptural flats on the walls.

  Warren stood as they entered. ‘Can we get you a coffee?’

  ‘Thanks. Double expresso, two sugars.’

  ‘Koyuki?’

  ‘Certainly.’ She backed out of the room. Warren gestured to the rightmost of the chrome and white leather chairs set in front of the desk. Mariam slung her bag onto it.

  ‘For a start, what the fuck was abducting me all about?’

  He laughed, walking from behind the desk. ‘Oh, come on. That was hardly an abduction.’

  ‘Just your goons bundling me into a big car and hauling me to your lair. You had them bring me to you, did you?’

  He reached for her and she slapped his hand away. ‘You arrogant, presumptuous fuck.’

  ‘Come on, slow down a bit.’ He held his palms up. ‘It was supposed to be fun.’

  ‘Suppose you start telling me some of the stuff you haven’t been telling me? Who Clive Warren is. Why you have priceless Iraqi seals in your bloody hallway, for a start.’

  ‘I collect art. You know that from the house. I’ve made good money; I won’t pretend I haven’t. I was in military security, now I do private stuff. You know that, too. What else is there to know?’

  ‘You buy Breughels. That’s hardly ‘good money’, is it?’

  ‘I invest. What gives, Mariam?’

  There was a knock on the door and Koyuki drifted into the room holding a cup and saucer in both hands, presenting it to the desk in front of Mariam with a bow. She pressed her hands together and left.

  ‘Okay, so I’m impressed. You’ve got a pretty Asian secretary and a Mayfair office with Breughels on the wall. Is that what you wanted to get across, or is there another level of macho crassness you want to lay on me?’

  He let his hands fall to his sides. ‘Look, this isn’t going so well. I didn’t mean to piss you off, just to give you a surprise. I take it all back.’ The muscular shoulders slumped. ‘If I still can.’

  He was crestfallen and she softened but her anger still smouldered in her. ‘So can we stop pissing around and get down to the Mayview?’

  ‘I’m not sure that’s such a great idea, Frizz.’

  ‘Actually, would you mind not calling me that? My name’s Mariam.’ The words hit him like a blow and his jaw hardened. She’d said it now. He turned from her to face the window.

  Mariam sat on the left ha
nd chair and sipped the coffee. It was good, dark with a liquorice pungency. Robyn and she would sip expresso with that observation and then attempt unison with ‘And a hint of charred caramel!’ before collapsing in laughter, usually to the bemusement of anyone unlucky enough to be in the company of two people to whom the whole world is a private joke.

  He was in a suit, grey flannel. His open-neck shirt was white and the button holes were lined in black stitching, which she thought was a touch Lebanese to be honest. A little bit de trop for Mr Art Collector and Man of Taste and Discernment.

  She had become too anglicised. Time to go home and sit in the Bekaa drinking good wine and talking bad politics. Forget this charming Brit and his muscles. Why did he have to pull the whole alpha male thing right now, when it had all been so peachy?

  She let her cup down on the saucer with a clink, a cue for him to turn to her. Which he did.

  ‘The Mayview?’ It was an offer of a future, but on her terms. She astounded herself with the confidence of the gambit, truth be told.

  His arms were crossed which was, in the scheme of things, not good. ‘I honestly don’t get what you’re trying to achieve. If you want to piss off a load of important and dangerous people, that’s the way to go. What are you after, here, Mariam?’

  ‘The truth. The story. The public interest. A lot of dead mothers who didn’t deserve to die. A load of children who weren’t meant to be raised as lab rats but who are trapped in a borstal for over achievers. A bunch of soldiers, your brothers at arms, who are dead today. Needlessly.’

  ‘What’s behind all that good stuff, then? Self-aggrandisement? Or revenge?’

  She balked, the coffee cup halfway to her lips. ‘For what?’

  ‘America. Colonialism. Orientalism.’

  ‘You’re out of your tiny fucking mind, right?’ She had let this oaf inside her. She had given herself to him. It shamed her, made her feel cheap and dirty. He’d seemed like something wonderful and charming and here he was, powerful and smug. Stupid, as stupid as any politician she’d come across. The worst of them. She knew, in that moment, he didn’t love her or feel for her. It was suddenly in her mind as a pure, clear certainty. She had been a piece of business. Kelly was right.