Last Light

by Alex Scarrow

  Then what she heard shortly after made her blood run cold, and her scalp tingle.

  The house being ransacked, many things breaking, glass shattering . . . and the screams of a woman.

  Oh shit, oh shit, oh shit.

  Leona raced to the window again and peeped out through the blind. She could only see at an oblique angle what was going on; a lot of movement, the pale flash of many white trainers and baseball caps picked out by those headlights and the less distinct muddy colours of T-shirts and bare torsos. They were milling around the front of the house, in and out the front door. On any other, normal night, it could have passed, at this distance anyway, as some kid’s house-party getting out of control.

  But Leona looked at the body of the teenager, now dead for a half hour or so, lying forgotten in front of the car.

  This is how it goes, like Dad said . . . like a jungle now.

  Thursday

  CHAPTER 56

  7 a.m. local time The Turkey/Iraq border

  Driving north-west took them well clear of Mosul. They drove across the Ninawa region, a desolate and empty portion of northern Iraq. They passed between Sinjar and Tall Afar, two smaller rural towns, again managing to skirt them widely and avoid any unwanted contact. The arid desert swiftly gave way to irrigated farmland as they swung north through the second night, passing at one point within only a few miles of the Syrian border as they swung north-east crossing the Bachuk river and heading towards the border with Turkey.

  From Al-Bayji they had traversed nearly 200 miles over two successive nights, and three siphoned refills. The truck, despite the dreadful noises it was making, hadn’t let them down as Andy had feared it might, but he suspected they were asking too much to expect it to get them across a second country.

  They passed through the border control point into Turkey without incident. The barriers were unmanned and left open. The truck rolled over a fading red paint line across the tarmac and they were now officially in Turkey.

  To one side of a cluster of low concrete buildings was a fenced compound containing a collection of various parked vehicles; trucks, a couple of coaches, some small vans, impounded for various reasons.

  Private Tajican was on driving duty; he shouted out of the driver-side window to Andy, who was leaning across the roof of the cab.

  ‘We could take one of those for our new ride, chief.’

  Andy looked across at the vehicles. This was probably the best opportunity they were going to get for a while to change their vehicle and perhaps scavenge for extra fuel, water, food; particularly water. In this heat they had quickly gone through the little water they’d brought with them.

  ‘Okay, pull into the compound,’ he shouted down.

  Tajican steered the truck off the road and through a gap in the wire fencing on to the forecourt where the vehicles were parked up.

  They dismounted quickly.

  Lance Corporal Westley came over to Andy looking to him for orders he could parcel out to his men.

  ‘Right then,’ said Andy looking around, conscious of the fact their eyes were all on him, hoping he had some clear and concise instructions for them to carry out. ‘We need someone to check over those vehicles for petrol we can siphon off, and which one we should take. Taj is right, we can’t rely on that crappy old truck getting us much further, so we’ll need a new ride. And whilst we’re here, we should take a look inside those buildings, see if we can pick up some water and food. Westley?’

  ‘Sir?’

  ‘Whilst we’re checking this place out, let’s have some men on look-out duty too, okay?’

  ‘Right-o,’ said Westley and turned smartly around to bellow some orders to the eleven other soldiers of the platoon.

  Andy smiled. I sounded pretty convincing just then.

  He caught Mike’s eye. The American grinned and nodded.

  Westley put Tajican in charge of checking over the vehicles and sent six men off to help with that. He sent three of them out on the road to set up an improvised vehicle control point and keep an eye open for anyone approaching in either direction.

  ‘You want to take a butcher’s inside then?’ asked Westley nodding towards the building nearby.

  Andy nodded. ‘Yeah. Let’s see if there’s anything inside we can grab.’

  The young Lance Corporal turned to the two remaining men, Derry and Peters, who had both put down their rifles and were preparing to unstrap their webbing. ‘Come on, off your arses you fuckin’ numpties. This isn’t a bloody sit-down tea-party. We’re going to sweep the buildings.’

  ‘Hey Wes, go easy mate,’ muttered Derry.

  Westley cuffed the back of Derry’s head as he sauntered past them. ‘Any more shit from you Dezza, and I’ll rip yer fucking cock off. Come on, get off your crap-’oles and follow me.’

  They both groaned wearily as they got to their feet and headed dutifully after Westley. Mike, following in their wake, nudged Andy as he passed. ‘You just need to pick up a little of that colourful language Andy, and you’ll fit right in.’

  Andy shrugged. Jenny might get a little buzz of excitement if she could see her nerdy husband playing - quite convincingly actually - at being a big tough soldier. He wasn’t too sure she’d be thrilled if he brought the locker-room language home though.

  CHAPTER 57

  10 a.m. GMT Beauford Service Station

  A bump woke Jenny up; somebody had squeezed past the two plastic chairs she’d been lying across in the eating area, but accidentally knocked heavily against them. She was awake in an instant and sat up.

  The staff at the service station were being served a cooked breakfast; quarter-pounder burgers, fried chicken, fried eggs, milk - basically all the refrigerated items . . . made sense.

  Mr Stewart was overseeing the distribution of this, carefully pouring the milk and counting out the helpings to ensure everyone was getting their fair share.

  He spotted Jenny sitting up.

  ‘Good morning. We’re serving up breakfast,’ he called out cheerfully. ‘Join the queue.’

  She had to admit it smelled pretty good. She dutifully stood at the back of the short, shuffling line, and very soon was receiving her rations from Mr Stewart, who beamed with what he must have supposed was a morale-boosting smile.

  Or maybe he just gets off on this sort of thing. She wondered if, outside of office hours, he was a Cub Scout leader or something.

  ‘Thanks,’ she said and wandered over to a table at which Paul and Ruth were sitting.

  ‘Load of bollocks, that really is,’ Paul was saying as Jenny sat down beside Ruth.

  ‘What is?’

  ‘Oh, according to this Mirror-reading moron here,’ he said jerking a thumb at Ruth, ‘this whole oil mess is the work of the Americans.’

  Ruth shook her head and tutted, ‘I didn’t say that. I just said the whole thing seems to have been co-ordinated somehow. And surely the only country with enough clout across the world is America?’

  Jenny thought about that. ‘But what do they gain by disrupting the oil like this? Surely they need it more than anyone?’

  ‘Maybe they have enough stockpiled to ride this out?’

  ‘I heard they had riots in New York, just like we had in London,’ said Jenny. ‘It sounds like they’re having just as tough a time of it.’

  ‘Exactly,’ scoffed Paul, ‘what a load of crap. I suppose you’re one of those nutters that think Bush and his cronies were behind the Trade Towers thing.’

  ‘Well, there’s a lot of stuff that didn’t add up there. I always thought the whole thing was very fishy,’ said Ruth. ‘It was all very convenient, wasn’t it?’

  ‘Oh you’d get on well with my husband then,’ murmured Jenny.

  ‘Lemme guess, they knocked the Towers down just so’s they’d have an excuse to go in and steal Saddam’s oil . . . is that what you were going to say?’

  Ruth nodded. ‘Yup.’

  ‘You know that just really fucking irritates me, that. That stupid conspiracy
crap. You can’t just accept that something happened the way it appeared, can you? There’s always some gullible idiots, that being you by the way,’ Paul smiled at Ruth, ‘who have to think there’s some big evil bogeyman behind it. Well yeah, okay, in this case there was . . . that Bin Laden bloke. But oh no! That’s not interesting enough is it?. No. Of course it would be far more interesting if say . . . the President is behind it.’

  ‘Well he was.’

  ‘Let me guess . . . you think Princess Diana was assassinated by MI5 too, love?’

  Ruth’s face hardened, and her lips tightened. ‘You’re taking the piss out of me, aren’t you?’

  Paul sighed. ‘I think the truth is a bunch of bloody Arabs got a little too excited with the idea of knocking seven shades of shit out of each other. It’s incapacitated the world’s biggest supplier at a time when we could have really done with their oil, and we’ve allowed ourselves to, rather stupidly, become so reliant on it, that we’ve all been caught with our pants down. Add to that a bloody government that couldn’t organise a shit in a bucket, and didn’t plan for anything like this. I don’t see any conspiracy there, I see a lot of stupidity is all.’

  Jenny nodded in agreement with some of that - the stupidity. ‘We’ve been very short-sighted.’ She took a bite out of a burger, savouring the juicy fatty flavour, but instinctively begrudging the calories. ‘Really stupid,’ she continued, ‘for allowing ourselves to rely so much on stuff that comes through just half-a-dozen pipelines from around the world.’

  ‘How long do you reckon this’ll last?’ asked Ruth.

  ‘I’d say a few more days,’ said Paul. ‘Our dickhead of a Prime Minister was caught off guard and put the fear of God into everyone on Tuesday. It’s no wonder there were riots in every bloody town. But the police will get a grip on things soon enough.’

  Ruth shook her head. ‘Where are the police though? I haven’t seen one since Tuesday.’

  Paul shrugged.

  ‘See that’s what worries me so much,’ said Ruth, ‘not having the police around. And how long is it going to be before we see another? Meantime,’ Ruth pointed towards the two fast food counters, ‘places like this, where there’s still food and drink, pumping out nice yummy smells are going to become a target when everyone’s tummies start rumbling.’

  Paul flashed an uncomfortable glance at the wide, empty car-park outside.

  Jenny followed his gaze. It was empty now, but she imagined it full and a crowd of starving people surging forward, their faces and hands pressed against the perspex front wall, begging for a handout.

  Only they probably won’t be begging.

  CHAPTER 58

  9.12 p.m. local time Southern Turkey

  In the darkness of the coach he could study Andy Sutherland more discreetly. It was an old tour coach; thirty rows of thread-bare seats and air conditioning that didn’t work. The men were spread out, legs and arms draped over neighbouring seats, and arm-rests that wouldn’t budge.

  He sat diagonally opposite Andy. The engineer was staring out at the evening sky, whilst everyone else, exhausted from the frantic activity of the last few days, slept.

  What’s on your mind, Dr Sutherland?

  He wondered if this man from New Zealand was thinking about global events. Having been with him since the weekend, one thing was for certain. He was not on the inside. He was not one of them. This had genuinely taken him by surprise. In any case, Sutherland wouldn’t have been stupid enough to be stuck out in the middle of Iraq if he’d known what was going to happen this week.

  The big question, the really big one, was - just how much does he know about them?

  They had used him years ago; falsely recruited his expertise to help them hard-focus their plans. If Sutherland had known who he was dealing with, if Sutherland had any way of identifying them, he would have been dealt with years before now.

  So, unfortunately, it would seem . . . because he was still alive, he knew nothing about them; certainly nothing that they would consider dangerously revealing.

  And he certainly wasn’t one of them.

  I could always take the direct approach. Pull him to one side, come right out with it and tell him who I am, who I work for, and pump him for any details that could help us.

  It was an idea. If he could only get through to his people, that’s what he’d suggest; to confront this man, but there was no way to do that right now.

  Sutherland could be the key. He had dealt with them directly, he might have seen one of them, might even be able to identify one of them. This might be a golden opportunity to glimpse through that almost impenetrable veil of secrecy around them.

  They had scraped together some scant details about them over the years; just enough to realise how little they knew. There was a larger group who referred to themselves as the One Hundred and Sixty, and a much smaller group referred to as the Twelve. A classic power pyramid - the Twelve decided policy, the One Hundred and Sixty enacted it. The secrecy surrounding them was complete . . . truly impressive. In the many years his people had devoted entirely to unearthing the truth, there had only been one of them prepared to talk.

  And he had, but only briefly. Two meetings, held in absolute darkness, in a basement of an abandoned building, in a nondescript industrial town in the middle of Germany. Two meetings that lasted only a few minutes, with the man’s voice trembling like that of a condemned man on the scaffold. He revealed about himself that he was a banking man . . . and that he was merely one of the One Hundred and Sixty.

  A week after the second meeting, a man who was the largest private shareholder of one of the bigger merchant banks based in Frankfurt, a member of the ECB Advisory Committee, and a senior director of the Deutsche Bundesbank, apparently committed suicide by hurling himself from the rooftop of his penthouse apartment. The man was merely one of their foot soldiers.

  By comparison, the Twelve, whose true identities were unknown even to the One Hundred and Sixty, were untouchable. And yet eight years ago, this man, Dr Sutherland - if the rumours they had unearthed were to be trusted - might have actually met one of them. That was why they had begun tapping his phone twelve months ago. He wondered, however, whether Dr Sutherland should just be directly approached now, and debriefed by his people.

  Until then, the potential goldmine of what Sutherland might be able to remember of his dealings with them . . . was invaluable. He needed to stay alive.

  CHAPTER 59

  6 p.m. GMT Beauford Service Station

  Jenny was walking the perimeter at the back of the service station where it was slightly cooler, darker, away from the glare of the evening sun shining in through the front. It was like sitting in a greenhouse up at the front in the eating area.

  She’d pulled out her phone, turned it on and tried once more to see if there was a signal. Of course there wasn’t, and there was precious little charge left on her phone. She turned it off quickly to conserve what juice was left.

  She self-consciously looked around to check that she was alone and not being observed before clasping her hands together.

  ‘Oh God, please, please be looking after my kids,’ she whispered, ‘I know I’m not a believer or anything, but please . . . if you, you know, exist, please keep them safe.’

  What the hell am I doing?

  Jenny had never believed. Never. And that was something else she’d had in common with Andy: another proud atheist. They had even once gone into school together - Leona’s primary school - to complain about the excessive religious content being rammed down the pupils’ throats. An atheist household, they always had been, and now, here she was, praying, for Chrissakes.

  I don’t care. I’ll bloody pray if I want to.

  There was always an outside chance, a remote possibility, that there was a kernel of truth to all this God nonsense.

  Anyway, when it comes to your kids, you’ll do anything, right? You’d sell your soul to the Devil . . . if, of course, such a thing existed.

  ‘You
didn’t strike me as the God-squad type.’

  Jenny jerked her hands down, embarrassed. She looked around and saw Paul standing in a dark alcove lined with arcade machines.

  ‘I’m not,’ she replied defensively. ‘I’m just . . . you know, just desperate I suppose.’

  ‘Yeah, of course, you’ve got kids, haven’t you?’ said Paul, running his hands along the back of a plastic rally-car driver’s seat. ‘I don’t, so it makes things a little easier for me.’

  Jenny nodded. ‘Yeah, it does. So what are you doing back here?’

  He turned towards the arcade machine, stroking the padded vinyl of the seat. ‘I noticed they had a Toca Rally 2 machine. When I was a teenager I used to play that a lot. I put a lot of money in these over the years,’ he said wistfully. ‘Classic driving game. It’s old now. Booth like this is a bit of a collector’s item.’

  Jenny nodded politely, listening, but not listening.

  He sighed and patted it. ‘You know I can’t imagine a world without electricity . . . power. There’s so many things we take for granted, aren’t there? Losing it for a few days like this . . . and look at us.’ He smiled. ‘Living like cavemen. When things get back to normal, I’ll—’

  ‘Who says things will go back to normal?’

  ‘Of course they will,’ he replied, ‘things always right themselves. ’

  ‘I think things will be different after this.’

  ‘Yeah? How do you mean?’

  ‘I don’t know . . . I just think . . . well, there’s something my husband Andy used to say.’

  Paul cocked his head, interested. ‘Go on.’

  ‘He said oil was like the twentieth-century version of the Roman slave economy. We’ve grown used to having it. It does everything for us. It makes power, it’s used to fertilise crops, in pesticides, to make medicines, every kind of plastic . . . basically we use oil in absolutely everything. But I remember this one thing he said. He said some economist once calculated the ways in which oil helps us live and translated that into slave power. He compared the oil economy to the Roman slave economy.’