Last Light

by Alex Scarrow

  ‘Andy,’ he said, ‘you ever seen that film with Keanu Reeves and Laurence Fishburne . . . The Matrix?’

  Andy nodded silently.

  ‘You remember the blue pill?’

  He nodded - the moment in the movie when one character, the one played by Keanu Reeves, was being asked to forget everything he knows and prepare himself for a new reality. The blue pill had been the visual metaphor.

  ‘Yeah, okay . . . the blue pill, so?’

  ‘Well, I guess this is going to be your blue pill moment.’

  Jenny heard it distinctly; in the dark, somewhere downstairs in the hall, the unmistakable rasp of cloth against cloth, the faintest whiff of friction, someone or something moving.

  She held her breath, and listened.

  A moment later she heard another faint rasp, followed by the slightest creak of one of the parquet slats in the hallway.

  She reached for the gun in her lap and aimed it down at the bottom of the stairs.

  ‘I can hear you,’ she said quietly, almost a whisper, yet sounding so loud in the absolute stillness of the night.

  The creaking, the rasping, stopped instantly. Even more frightening for Jenny, it was confirmation that someone was down there, and not just a phantom of her imagination.

  ‘I-I’ve got a gun, and I’m aiming it right now,’ she whispered again.

  That was met with silence, again.

  Then she sensed something on the bottom step. ‘Stop!’ she hissed, ‘or I’ll shoot.’

  ‘Mrs Sutherland?’ a soft voice, a man’s voice.

  Hearing her name emerging from the darkness like that rattled her.

  ‘Who’s that? Who are you?’

  ‘Who I am really doesn’t matter,’ the voice replied. ‘I’m here for a reason. I’m here because a hundred yards away are men who have come to kill your daughter.’

  ‘What?’ she gasped.

  ‘They’re coming for her, you know, we’ve only got a few seconds before they arrive.’

  ‘Who the fuck are you?’

  ‘Like I’ve said, who I am doesn’t matter. I have to get your daughter out of here before it’s too late.’

  ‘I think you suspect some of this already, Andy,’ said Mike. ‘The things that are going on in the world, hmm?’

  Andy nodded. ‘My work, it’s based on my work.’

  Mike smiled, ‘Yes, your report. And you must have been wondering who it was you handed it over to all those years ago. You were doing a lot of thinking in the back of that truck in Iraq, Andy, weren’t you?’

  Andy stared at the gun, only a few inches away from him. Was he fast enough?

  ‘Well, you gave that report to the right sort of people. What did they tell you when you were first approached? That they were security experts working for several anonymous clients in the oil industry?’

  Andy nodded, ‘Yes, pretty much those words.’

  ‘It never occurred to you that they might have been terrorists? Or middle-men for some rogue foreign power?’

  ‘I wouldn’t have handed it over if I did.’

  Mike nodded. ‘No, I suspect you wouldn’t, despite the money. It was quite a lot, wasn’t it?’

  Andy shrugged.

  ‘These people value their anonymity. That’s very important to them, particularly now that they’ve done this thing; brought the world to its knees. You know, millions will starve. There will be hundreds of small-scale wars in which many more will die. Old scores settled, old rivalries emerging, whilst the world deals with this temporary instability. Now is really not a good time for them to be publicly named. And here’s the problem they have,’ Mike said, ‘your daughter could do just that.’

  Andy looked at Mike. ‘You’re with Them aren’t you?’

  ‘Come on Mrs Sutherland, put the gun down. We don’t have time for this.’

  ‘So wh-who’s out there?’ she asked.

  ‘People, bad people - those that are behind the disaster. It’s all tied up you see, it’s all one thing.’

  ‘And what about you?’ she asked the voice at the bottom of the stairs.

  ‘Me? The less you know the better. Let’s just say I’m a hired hand, hmm?’

  ‘Hired to . . . what?’

  ‘Find your daughter and protect her, of course. Look, now isn’t the time for this,’ he continued. ‘You keep hold of your gun, just as long as you know how to slide the safety on. Let’s get her out of here, let’s get her safe and then you can slide the safety back off, turn your gun on me, and ask as many questions as you like.’

  That sounded convincing. God knows, she wanted the voice down there to be that of a saviour, and not her daughter’s executioner.

  ‘Can I trust you?’ she asked.

  ‘What do you expect me to say, Mrs Sutherland? No? A stupid question given the situation, given we really don’t have much time left.’

  It was stupid.

  ‘Mrs Sutherland? Can I come up and get your daughter now?’

  She heard a stair creak under his weight. ‘Stay where you are!’ she hissed.

  ‘Okay,’ the voice replied. ‘I’m right here, not going anywhere. ’

  Oh God she wanted to trust him.

  He said I could keep hold of my gun, didn’t he? He said that. If he meant to harm Leona, why would he allow me to keep hold of it?

  She was about to lower her weapon and cautiously accept his help when a thought occurred to her.

  ‘How did you know Leona was here, not at her home?’

  Mike looked at Andy. ‘You’re kidding me, right?’

  They heard three rounds being fired in quick succession.

  Fuck it.

  Andy reached out, grabbed the lamp and hurled it across the room against the wall. It smashed and the room was thrown into darkness. As the three men recoiled in surprise, Andy was already on his feet. He shoved hard against Mike, knocking him on to his back, and cannoned into another of the men on his way out of the room, into the hallway, and out through the open front door, on to the moonlit street.

  His feet pounded the tarmac as he weaved around a mattress, the broken remains of chairs and a table, and other household bric-à-brac strewn across the avenue.

  He shot a glance at their home on the left as he sprinted past it. It had been broken into like all the other houses, the front door wide open and their things smashed and discarded in the front garden.

  Up ahead on his right, was Jill’s house.

  He kicked the gate aside, and raced up the garden path in a couple of seconds. The front door was shut. He could see that it had been damaged, a large ragged hole had been kicked through the wooden panelling. He charged the door with his shoulder without breaking stride. The last hinge gave way, and the door clattered loudly on to the hallway floor.

  ‘JENNY!’ he shouted, his voice echoed around inside. There was no response, just a silence that had his blood running cold and the dawning realisation that he had so nearly made it home in time to save his family.

  He’d heard the executioner’s shots; one for his wife, one for each of his children, and it was all over.

  Then he heard it, faintly, the sound of sobbing coming from the top of the stairs. He could see absolutely nothing, but it grew louder and more distinct as it migrated down the stairs, and then, it was beside him. In the wan glow of the moon, he saw two pale white hands reach out for him.

  ‘Oh God, Andy!’ Jenny cried, grasping him tightly and burying her head into his shoulder. ‘Andy! Andy!’ she sobbed uncontrollably.

  ‘Jenny,’ he had to ask, ‘Jenny . . . the kids?’

  She looked up at him, ‘They’re both all right.’

  ‘I heard gunshots.’

  She was about to answer, when a beam of torchlight fell across them, and they heard the sound of footsteps pounding down the avenue towards them.

  ‘Oh God!’ she gasped, breaking her hold on Andy and producing a gun.

  ‘Give it to me,’ he said. She handed it to him and he trained it on a space a
bove the nearest bobbing torch.

  ‘Who are they?’ she whispered, as the torch’s motion slowed to a halt and the sound of footfalls ceased.

  ‘I don’t know yet.’

  ‘Andy!’ Mike called out from the darkness just beyond the garden gate. ‘Don’t be stupid, there’s three of us, and one of you. Lower the gun.’

  Andy wasn’t ready to surrender. In the last minute, he had gone from absolute certainty that his family had been murdered, to finding out they were unharmed and now, quite possibly, were about to fall victim to these men.

  ‘Who the fuck are you, Mike?’ his voice rasped.

  ‘We’re the good guys Andy, the good guys, trust me,’ the American replied, sounding short of breath, recovering from the pursuit.

  ‘He said there were men outside after our daughter,’ said Jenny.

  ‘He?’ replied Mike. ‘Who?’

  Andy looked at her.

  ‘He was here moments ago, on the stairs. He said he’d come to protect Leona. I told him to stay where he was . . .’ Her voice faltered. ‘. . . But he didn’t listen . . . I fired . . . and then he ran away.’

  ‘Andy,’ said Mike. ‘They are here, they know where she is. You’ve got to trust me now.’

  Andy kept the gun levelled.

  ‘Look, if we wanted your daughter dead, I wouldn’t be talking with you right now - we’d already be stepping over your bodies and on our way inside. Think about it.’

  From the top of the stairs, Andy heard Jacob calling out.

  ‘Is Daddy home?’

  CHAPTER 86

  10.25 p.m. GMT Shepherd’s Bush, London

  They sat together in the ransacked lounge, illuminated only by a couple of scented candles Jenny had found in a kitchen drawer. Andy and his family were gathered together on Jill’s leather sofa, slashed and stained, and Mike sat opposite them on the one wooden kitchen chair that hadn’t been smashed to pieces.

  ‘There’s some fresh blood at the bottom of the stairs. I think you hit something,’ he said.

  ‘He just kept coming closer,’ whispered Jenny.

  ‘You did the right thing,’ Mike replied. ‘If you had let him come another step closer you and your children would be . . .’ He looked at Jacob’s wide-eyed expression. ‘Well, he would have acquired his target.’

  ‘Me?’ muttered Leona.

  Mike nodded.

  Andy shook his head. ‘Look Mike, if that’s really your name—’

  The American smiled, ‘Mike’s my first name, yeah.’

  ‘I really don’t know who the hell you are now; I thought I did, back in Iraq . . . but I haven’t got a clue now. All I know is that some very powerful bastards want my girl. Who are they Mike? And for that matter where do you,’ he shot a glance at one of Mike’s men standing guard in the hallway, ‘and your sidekicks, fit into all of this?’

  ‘I can tell you a lot more about us than I can about them,’ he replied. ‘Which is why your daughter is so important to us.’

  ‘Let’s start with you then.’

  Mike shrugged. ‘I work for an . . . let’s call it an agency. A small operation, once upon a time part of the FBI, that was a long time ago. Now we’re privately funded, which allows us to stay off the radar. We do one thing in this agency Andy, just one thing . . . we try to find them.’ He stroked his beard as he considered how to continue.

  ‘They . . . they . . . don’t even have a name; they’re that smart. They don’t have a logo, or a motto, they don’t have a headquarters, they don’t reside in any particular country, they don’t have any political allegiance, or ideology; they are just wealth and influence. They’re a club. We . . . my little agency was set up forty years ago Andy, in 1963 to be precise, after this club decided they’d put the wrong man in the White House.’

  ‘My God . . . Kennedy?’

  Mike nodded. ‘It was his brother, Robert, that put us together in the aftermath. And that’s why the bastards nailed him too. And we’ve had to operate off the grid since then.’

  ‘Shit,’ Andy whispered.

  ‘Yeah. Eight years ago you did some work for a bunch of very dangerous and powerful people. Breaking through the secrecy around them has been virtually impossible. In forty years we’ve learned little more than they number 160 members, and twelve who make the big decisions.’

  ‘You must have an idea who these people are, right?’

  ‘We can guess. That’s pretty much all we’ve been able to do. We’ve only ever had one informant; if you’re up on European politics you’d probably recognise the name . . . he talked to us twice, briefly, before they got to him.’ He looked briefly from Andy to Leona.

  ‘And then we come to you two,’ he sighed. ‘Andy, you did business with Them - you actually dealt directly with the Twelve. Did you have any idea what you were dealing with?’

  Andy shrugged, ‘I guessed they were oil execs.’

  Mike chuckled. ‘The world’s a pyramid of power. Everyone makes the mistake of thinking the apex of the pyramid is government. That’s the big mistake. Governments are merely a tool for them to use. You have corporations, and they’re owned by bigger corporations, who in turn are owned by even bigger corporations. The bigger they get, the less familiar people are with the corporate names. Ultimately these huge corporations are owned by banks that in turn are controlled by bigger banks, again, with names that aren’t commonly known . . . and ultimately these bigger banks are owned by shareholders; very rich, very reclusive shareholders. If I was to hazard a guess at who the Twelve members are, I’d start there.’

  ‘But, it seems,’ he smiled at Leona, ‘you actually saw some of them. More importantly, you recognised one of their faces; someone who was on the television just before things went screwy, right?’

  Leona nodded. ‘I don’t know who he is though, I don’t know the name.’

  ‘It doesn’t matter. Because what we’re going to do is get you out of here to somewhere safe, and then we’ll show you a whole bunch of photographs, and all you’ve got to do is say which ones you saw.’

  He turned back to Andy. ‘Your daughter has in her head, right now, the most important nugget of information in the world. And that makes her very precious to us, and dangerous to them.’

  ‘What about the man who was here?’ asked Jenny. ‘He was one of them then?’

  Mike was cautious. ‘He’s gone, but maybe not too far. We’ll sit tight until we’ve got daylight.’

  ‘What if he comes back?’ asked Andy.

  ‘I’ve got my men covering the front and back doors. They’re well-equipped and well-trained; they’re packing night scopes and body armour, both very capable men.’

  Jenny shook her head. ‘You know I almost let him up. He was so believable.’

  ‘And he’s lethal too,’ cut in Mike. ‘I think he’s someone we know of. Well, at least, we know of his work. He’s their best field-operative, I’m certain they’ve used this same man many times before. He works on his own, completely autonomously. I’ve never seen him but I’ve seen his handiwork.’ He stopped himself. ‘Not nice. I just wish we had more information on him.’

  Jenny turned to Andy, ‘We’re safe aren’t we? I mean the kids . . . you and me?’

  Andy squeezed her hand, ‘I think we are now,’ he replied tiredly. ‘We’ve survived the worst of it, Jen.’

  Mike got up and patted Andy on the shoulder. ‘Your husband turned out to be a real alpha-male back in Iraq, a sharp thinker - a good field-man,’ he said. ‘If you still don’t think you can trust me, you can certainly trust him.’

  Jenny nodded and looked up at her husband. ‘I do,’ she said. ‘I’m so sorry that I didn’t, you know, before this.’

  ‘You guys might want to get some sleep, if you can. We’re all leaving here at first light,’ said Mike. ‘We’ll take you somewhere safe.’

  ‘Okay. We’ll sleep down here, if that’s okay?’

  ‘Fine. That’s nice and close where I can keep an eye on you,’ he said with a reassu
ring nod. ‘Get some sleep. I’ll go and check on my fellas.’

  Mike stepped out of the room, and left them to snuggle down together on the sofa. There were a couple of sleepy questions from Jacob that neither Andy nor Jenny could answer adequately. Then they curled up together, and after a few more whispered words, and some more shared tears of relief, Jenny, Leona and Jacob were fast asleep.

  Andy felt a week of fatigue creeping up on him quickly. The chorus of rustling, even, untroubled breathing of his family asleep, and the distant murmur of Mike conferring with his colleagues outside, was comforting enough that he finally allowed himself to join them.

  CHAPTER 87

  11.36 p.m. GMT Shepherd’s Bush, London

  The lucky bitch had caught him with one of those three shots. It cracked his collarbone on the way in and tore a bloody exit wound from the rear of his shoulder on the way out.

  He would have carried on up the stairs, finished her off with a quick swipe of his blade, and gutted the two children in two blinks of an eye. But he knew the sound of the gun would have those men outside running.

  He would have been trapped upstairs with nowhere to go.

  Ash beat a retreat out through the front door and crouched amongst the clutter on the avenue. The father, Sutherland, passed within a few feet of him and then those three men, seconds later. None of them saw him squatting down in the middle of the avenue, visible amongst the mess to anyone who bothered to look closely enough. He remained absolutely motionless, knowing movement would draw someone’s eye, and watched them from the darkness.

  When finally the big American man, Mike, had won over Mrs Sutherland, they went inside . . . and he could move. He let himself into the house opposite, pulled some clothing out of a wardrobe and ripped a length of material to use as a bandage. He bound it diagonally and tightly round his neck and down under his left armpit, grimacing with every movement of his left arm. It wasn’t going to stop the bleeding, but the compression would slow it.

  The bullet had sheered some nerves or tendons in his left shoulder, and he found his arm dangling uselessly by his side. If it had been the other side, his knife arm, that might have presented a bit of a problem.