by Eric Brown
He threw himself back in his seat and laughed. “Prior waning? Don’t you think I would have told you, if that’d been the case?” He sat forward suddenly. “And what the hell do you mean by my ‘contacts’?”
As soon as he said the word, he knew.
Danvers said, “Ten years ago you were involved with a certain Ute Gebbler, now a high-up in the Allianz organisation.”
“Yes, ten years ago—”
Danvers smiled and gestured negligently at the surfacescreen. It was frozen on a close-up shot of Ute. “Why did you go out there and speak with her, Denholme?”
Travis sighed, nodded, and gave the bastard an ironic smile. “Because I happen to care for Kat and, like you, I’m concerned for her well-being. Why the hell do you think I went out there? If I was involved in Kat’s abduction, do you think I’d be bloody stupid enough to waltz out there, in front of the security cameras, and blow my cover?”
Danvers exchanged a glance with Lauren, who said, “And what did you ask Ms Gebbler?”
Travis shrugged. “What do you think I asked her? If she knew why her organisation was holding Kat, of course, and where.”
“And what did she say?”
“Nothing. That is, she denied all knowledge, said the Allianz was a collective of many diverse groupings…I believed her when she said that she had no idea where Kat was being held.”
Danvers and Lauren exchanged another glance, and then the head of security turned to Travis. “Think long and hard about where you stand on this matter, Denholme, and where your loyalties lie.”
“What the hell…” Travis began, but without a further word Major Danvers rose from behind the desk and led Lauren from the room.
He sat very still for ten seconds, fuming, then surged to his feet and tried the door. It was locked, of course. He accessed his carpal and found it dead: the bastards had cut him off—and the surfacescreen was now blank.
Routine, he told himself. Danvers and Lauren didn’t really suspect him of anything; they were just going by the book, exploring every avenue. It was approaching crunch time, with the launch imminent, and nothing could be left to chance. But he wanted to be away from here, doing his best to trace Kat.
Why the hell had the Allianz taken her?
He closed his eyes, going through what Ute had said to him out there.
She hated Project Kon-Tiki and what it stood for, he knew; but he also knew that some of the Allianz tactics did not sit well with her sense of what was right. Ute had a very strict moral compass, with cardinal points of probity and justice. Just as he knew she abhorred the Bonn bombings, also she was not sympathetic to Kat’s abduction. That was why he’d gone out to talk to her, after all—an appeal to her conscience.
He sat forward quickly, recalling something Ute had said.
She had spoken of certain schisms of Allianz as being like criminals, and had gone on: “Where is it that the gangs feel safest?”
Had Ute even realised what she’d told him? ‘Where the gangs felt safest’—the wilds of the coast, the deserted littoral where few people ventured but where Kat had her dome?
The door slid open, interrupting his thoughts.
He expected to see Danvers and Lauren, come for another futile round of interrogation. Instead, Daniel leaned against the doorframe, filling the entrance and smiling down at him. “Don’t looked so surprised, boy. I’ve got you out of here.”
“You?”
“I swung it with Lauren. Had a quiet word, assured her that you had nothing to do with what had happened to Kat. They were going to let you go later, after you’d sweated a bit, but I just hurried her along. Only…” He hesitated, then went on, “There’s a proviso. She wants me to keep an eye on you.”
“So they don’t trust me?”
“They’re just covering every base, Travis. Doing what they have to do like the constipated pen-pushers they are. So I said, ‘Yes, sir, no sir, three-bags-fucking-full, sir…’ We’re out of here, boy. Let’s go to that pub in Lakenheath and get a skinful, hey?”
Travis moved to the door. “What time is it?”
“Two, just after.”
“It won’t be dark for another couple of hours,” he said, pushing past his friend.
“So what?”
“There’s something I’ve got to do.”
“That drink…?” Daniel said, falling into step beside Travis as he negotiated the corridors towards the exit.
“Jesus…Kat’s somewhere out there, and all you can think about is getting pissed?”
“Hey, boy, there’s nothing we can do about it.”
“I think there is,” Travis said, turning a corner and approaching the sliding exit.
Daniel halted him with a meaty hand on his shoulder. “What?”
Travis hesitated. “Kat was heading north when she left here yesterday, going to her dome. I’m going to take a look.”
He stepped out into the icy wind that blew across the tarmac. Daniel caught up with him. “Don’t you think security have already done that, Travis?”
“Maybe, but I’m doing it again.”
He crossed to where his VW was parked.
Daniel said, “I’m coming with you, boy.”
“Keeping an eye on me for Lauren?”
“Fuck you.” He stared at Travis across the iced camber of the VW’s roof. “Look, I’m as cut up about Kat as you are. Let’s go.”
Travis gave the car the address of Kat’s dome and they left the base.
¤¤¤
Skeins of low-lying mist obscured the land, reducing visibility to thirty yards. On either side, ghostly trees loomed through the grey caul, and then the woodland petered out and was replaced by pewter stretches of ice-covered marshland. The heater soon warmed the car and Daniel sat back in his seat and laughed.
“You know, I’ve always hated these self-drive things, but they do have one advantage,” he said, easing himself up so that he could get at his hip-pocket. “At least you can have a drink while being chauffeured.”
He took a slug of Scotch from his hip flask and passed it across.
Travis drank and passed the flask back to Daniel.
“I’ve been thinking,” Travis said.
“Go on.”
“Why did the Allianz take Kat?”
“Like they said, she’s a bargaining chip. They want us to abort the mission.”
Travis shook his head. “Then why snatch Kat?” he asked. “I mean, why specifically Kat? She’s not a big player in the scheme of things. If the Allianz really wanted to halt the launch, they’d’ve abducted someone like Lauren or Patel. A high-up. Then the politicians would really have had to sit up and take notice. As it is…do you think the politicos give two shits about whether Kat lives or dies? Christ, it’d be a great publicity coup for the anti-Allianz cause if they did carry out their threats and kill her.”
Daniel was silent for a time, then said, “Maybe the high-ups were too difficult a target, so they snatched Kat. A question of opportunity.”
Travis sighed. “I don’t buy it, Daniel. It doesn’t sit right.”
“So…why do you think they took her? Mistaken identity?”
“I honestly don’t know, and that bugs the hell out of me. There’s a reason, a supremely logical reason, but I just can’t work it out.”
Daniel took another pull of Scotch and passed the flask to Travis. He took a mouthful and stared out at the road. The grey, iced-covered tarmac, patched and crumbling, stretched ahead in the illumination from the headlights.
Travis said, “Slow.”
The VW decelerated. “Stop,” Travis said.
“What is it, boy? What’ve you seen?”
Travis opened the door and climbed out, the soles of his boots slipping on the icy road. Daniel climbed out too. “I said, what the hell have you seen?”
Travis walked away from the car, staring at the surface of the road. “Nothing,” he said. “Nothing at all.”
“Well then?”
“
And that’s what bothers me.”
Daniel laughed. “You aren’t making sense.”
Travis turned and walked back to the car, passed it and examined the tarmac to the rear of the vehicle. He gestured at the road. “What do you see?”
Daniel stared down at the road and shrugged. “Nothing. Well, just our tyre tracks.”
“Exactly.” Travis stared at his friend. “Listen, if security had been out here today, there’d be tracks, right?”
“Maybe.”
“So the fact that there are no tyre marks?”
Daniel smiled. “Means that they used drones, or satellite imagery.”
Travis shook his head. “In this mist? Bullshit. They’d’ve sent out a ground patrol, obviously.”
“Okay…so it tells me that they have some inside information. Like, they know for sure that Kat didn’t head this way. Maybe they traced her south, towards Bury St Edmunds.”
“No, Daniel. Kat told me. She was heading for her dome. Along this road. Security would have known that.”
“So you’re saying they’re not doing their job properly?”
Travis sighed and walked back to the car. “I don’t know what I’m saying, Daniel.”
They climbed inside and Travis ordered the car to set off.
Daniel took another hit of whisky, but Travis refused. He wanted to keep his head as clear as possible.
Thirty minutes later the road entered a pine plantation, the trees looming on either side; the serried boles flicked by, a change from the ceaseless mist that had cloaked the marshes.
Travis ordered the car to slow down to thirty.
Minutes later he peered through the windscreen and said, “Stop.” The car obediently slowed to a halt. “See that?” Travis, said, indicating the road ahead.
Daniel gave him a look and climbed out. Travis followed, staring down at the skid mark that arched across the tarmac.
“Jesus,” Travis said. He followed the parabola to its limit and knelt. Daniel joined him and indicated what Travis had already spotted, an indentation in the tarmac.
“So you think Kat lost control, skidded and came off…?”
Travis looked into the shadowy plantation to either side of the road. “If so, then what happened to her and her bike?”
He stood and moved off the road, examining the surface of mud and leaf mulch between the tarmac and the forest.
“Here!” Daniel cried.
He was on the other side of the road, kneeling to examine the ground in the shadow of a pine tree.
Travis joined him and made out marks in the mud. “Tyre tracks,” Daniel said, “and footprints. Look. I’d say two people, and two bikes.”
He followed the bike tracks that ran parallel to the road; they disappeared onto the tarmac, heading north.
“What’s north of here, other than Kat’s dome?” he said.
“A few derelict pumping stations, the odd abandoned hamlet, then the sea.”
Travis led the way back to the VW. “Listen, when I saw Ute out there…She told me something.”
He told Daniel what the woman had said about the criminals who haunted this inundated no-man’s land, ‘Where the gangs felt safest.’ He’d always been concerned about Kat living somewhere so remote, in territory known to be populated by gangs of smugglers and looters.
“What if they’re holding her somewhere out there, Daniel?”
They climbed back into the car and continued north.
The plantation continued for another three miles, then gave way to marshland. The road carried on die-straight; twilight was falling, the mist encroaching. Travis estimated that visibility was now down to ten yards.
He brought a map up on the windscreen, found the plantation they’d just left and zoomed in. He pointed to a series of small, square blocks, miles apart. “Pumping stations. The first one is two miles north of here.”
“Perhaps we’d better cut the headlights, boy.”
Travis did so. The car’s electric engine was near silent, and the mist would cloak their approach. If, that was, Allianz were holding Kat at one of the pumping stations.
The first station was situated a mile to the east of the road; when they came to the turning, Travis stopped the car and climbed out. Daniel followed him. An old farm track led from the road, disappearing into the mist.
Daniel was kneeling on the margin of the crumbling tarmac. “Tyres tracks. More than one vehicle. They brought the bikes this way. And a car, by the look of it.”
“What now?”
“We continue on foot,” Daniel said, and led the way.
Shivering with more than just the cold, Travis caught up with the big man.
“We reconnoitre,” Daniel said. “Scope out the situation, see if Kat is there.”
“And then?” Travis found himself whispering.
“No heroics. If we find anything we contact security and let them sort it out.”
Travis nodded, saying nothing.
Ahead, the mist hung low; a half-moon showed itself briefly through the ragged cloudrace. A minute later, the blocky form of the pumping station loomed through the fog. There were no lights at the windows. Travis knelt to examine the track; even in the twilight, he could see more tyres marks imprinted in the cold, frosted mud.
Daniel whispered, “Check the window. I’ll approach the door.”
Travis nodded and stepped off the track. He crept through the tussocky grass and peered through the barred window. The room beyond the dusty pane was in darkness. He heard a sudden noise—a door opening—and a second later he saw the ghostly figure of Daniel, examining the room by the dim light of his carpal.
Travis rounded the building and joined him inside.
“Someone’s been here recently,” Daniel said, pointing to a mattress in the corner. “It must have been them.”
“It could just be one of the gangs, or migrants,” Travis said, torn between jumping to conclusions and clutching at any tenuous straw that might lead them to Kat.
Daniel indicated the door. “Why have a padlock on the outside and a mattress in here unless you’re keeping someone against their will?”
“So they had her here, and…moved her on?” Travis stared at his friend. “But where? Somewhere more permanent?”
“There were a few hamlets round here before the sea moved in,” Daniel said. “A few lone houses, some farms, more pumping stations like this.”
Travis felt a plummeting despair. “She could be anywhere.”
“The weather’s on our side, boy. The mist hides our approach, and we can follow their tyre tracks. Come on.”
They retraced their steps to the VW, and Daniel examined the mud at the end of the track. “Hard to tell. It’s pretty churned. My guess is they headed north.”
In the car, they checked the map. A mile north of their present position was a tiny hamlet. Daniel tapped the windscreen with a stubby finger.
They set off, their headlights dimmed. As they approached the collection of houses, Travis cut the lights totally and slowed the car.
They stopped and stared through the mist at the ghostly buildings. “Bingo,” Daniel laughed.
A light showed in the window of a cottage standing beside a derelict church. A small white van was parked beside the thatched cottage, alongside two motorbikes, one of which looked very much like Kat’s Yamaha. Travis reversed the VW so that it was concealed behind the churchyard’s perimeter wall.
He looked at Daniel.
His friend said, “We should inform security,” and raised his carpal.
Travis said, “No…We need to talk about this, Daniel.”
KAT
KAT BLINKED HERSELF AWAKE, WINCING AT THE PAIN in her head: some effect of the anaesthetic spray the woman had used? She sat up and looked around the room, her head spinning nauseatingly with the movement.
Well, the class of accommodation had improved. What had the woman said—that they were taking her somewhere a little more comfortable? This might not be the l
uxury suite of a five-star hotel, put it was a big improvement: the sitting room of an ancient cottage, with limed oak beams and a wood-burning stove belting out welcome heat after the bone-numbing chill of the old pumping station.
She tried to stand, then found that her ankles were bound with a length of what looked like nylon washing line secured to the solid timber leg of the settee.
She sniffed; beyond the lingering chemical tang of the anaesthetic they’d used on her, she detected the unmistakable odour of cooking meat. After a brief wave of nausea, the scent made her realise how hungry she was: she hadn’t eaten a thing since grabbing a slice of toast that morning.
She tried accessing her carpal, more in hope than realistic expectation. It was as dead as it had been earlier.
She jumped as the door opened. The balaclavaed woman appeared, followed by a giant of a man in leathers, also wearing a reversed balaclava. The small woman carried a tray bearing a bowl of steaming stew; she kicked a small table into position before Kat and set the tray down.
As she stared down at the meaty stew and a mug of what smelled like real coffee, Kat felt an odd sense of gratitude: hell, the bastards had kidnapped her and were holding her against her will, and she felt like thanking them for food and a warm drink!
The man knelt, checked the rope securing her to the settee, then left the room.
The woman said, “There’s a pot over there. The rope’s long enough so you can reach it.”
Kat stared at the woman, at her blue eyes that showed through the slits in the wool.
“Why are you doing this?”
The woman moved to the window and looked out. She turned and said, after a moment’s apparent reflection, “Why do you think? To fight for the future of the world. This world. Not to give in and start again on some colony planet, which we’ll only muck up as we did this one.”
Kat shook her head. “That’s not how it is,” she said, struggling not to be confrontational yet unable to let the muddled thinking go. “You’ve got it very wrong if you think that in pursuing the colonisation program we’re neglecting our duties here on Earth. If anything, what we learn from the science we’re practising with the project has spin-offs that will only help our ecologists and—”
