Daniel stared at the face, then looked around him, focusing near and far, working something out in his head. They were missing important information. Daniel’s phone began to vibrate just as the prone blond male let out a long sigh and gave up.
When Roberts looked back down onto the road the police minister was dead.
At the barrier, McCall and Francis were taking it in turns with O’Shea to wind the gate back up. Each time it appeared to make progress down, it would slide again. It felt as if the world was working against them.
Inside the gate, things had reached an impasse.
She wanted to kill him at first, then realised they may as well talk whilst they could. She had a lot to learn; he had a lot to tell. She pointed the handgun at him. The green dot was ever present. She knew where he was. One shot would do it.
“You wouldn’t kill your own father? Surely?”
“Do you mean like you did? I know about the way you killed your parents. What sort of animal does that?”
“They deserved it. They had no respect for me. Especially her. It was going to happen one day.”
“And you killed my mother – your wife. You murdered her in a vile way, deprived her of her dignity….because you could. But you had no reason to treat her this way...”
“I had every reason, girl! Every. Reason!”
“I do not believe you.”
“Do you want me to tell you? Are you so brave that you could even begin to understand why I chose to carry out this vile act?”
“Yes. I am.”
“Niko slept with so many men. She thought I didn’t know. I think she even slept with my own brother.”
“This is ridiculous. She would never have done that.”
“All women are like this, my dear.” His voice was echoing in the chamber, competing with the slushing water.
“But you are different, my beautiful Elena. You have always worshipped your father, held him in such high esteem. I know you better than you know yourself, my dear. If you carry out this act, it will be the end and you will be as guilty as I was. Sins of the father and all that!”
“The reason my mother ran away from you after trying to kill you, to get to London, to be safe.”
“Yes, I know. To claim asylum from Bulgaria, but really from me!”
“You think that? Then you have no idea. She told me in a letter, when I was a little girl, she told me she loved my father.”
Cade had lowered himself onto the walkway, against the noise of the river and the wind and machinery he could hear every other word. But it all made sense.
He looked back at the three people, all winding the mechanism by hand. They were exhausted.
He knew that Elena held the ace – or rather was confined in the same space as the most solitary of playing cards. It was now or never. He called out.
“Elena. It’s Jack.”
Alex immediately moved forward a pace. “Don’t listen to him, my girl.”
She pointed the pistol at him. He could see enough to know not to move any closer. He had to time his move.
“What? Get us out of here.”
“I’m trying, look there’s something you need to know. It’s really important. It’s about your father.”
“Talk. He’s listening.”
Cade shook his head.
“Remember when we first met? And I got you all wrong? That day at the Oceanside? Yes? You remember?”
She smiled, still watching Alex like a chess master studies his opponent. “Yes, I remember.” How could she forget?
“Well, Elena, you have got it wrong with Alex. He is…”
Alex yelled. “No, Elena. This man is a liar. Do not listen to a word he tells you. I will save us from this place, not him, then we can start again. I should never have sent you away. It was for your own good. Your mother and I were bad for you. I wanted you to grow up strong – and look at you…you make me so proud.”
The tennis match had begun in earnest.
“Elena.” Cade was shouting now, fighting with nature to be heard. “Do you also remember I flew all the way to the island, in Australia?”
“Yes, how could I forget Jack? We fought like the cats and the dogs.”
“And then?”
“And then…” If there had been light, she would have been blushing.
“And then I forgave you.”
“Yes, yes, you did. And that night Michael Blake told me something about you, something he never finished.” He drew in some more air, could feel himself starting to shake. If he got this wrong, then that would be it.
“OK, so what did he say?”
“You don’t need to know El. Listen to me.” The Jackdaw was also becoming anxious.
“No, I listen to Jack. It sounds interesting.”
“El, Michael Blake told me that he was your real father.”
“No!” The yell was loud enough to be heard across the city. It reverberated off the steel walls, the water enhancing it, making it a hundred times worse. “No!”
She fired one shot, straight at him. Then another. The lead alloy projectiles skipped around the gate, missing her and him. The noise was actually more damaging. Both now had a screaming, high-pitched whistle in their ears.
Cade yelled. “Yes, Elena. He is your father. Michael Blake. Your mother met him when he worked for the British government, a long time ago. They fell in love, just like you and I did, unexpectedly, against the odds. You could take a DNA test. Either way, you need to know that the man in there with you is not your father. Never was, and never could be. He is a sociopath, Elena. He tells people what they want to hear. He loves only one thing – himself. He is a clever man, but your mother was smarter.”
“Jack, she does not need to hear this.” For the first time, Alex Stefanescu had the tone of a reasonable man.
“Your mother held the keys to a few very important things. She was an expert in her field. She had the answers Elena. And the man that didn’t want those answers to be known, well he ordered her death. And that man was the one they call the Gypsy King.”
“And that is Alex. Jack, Alex is my father and the Gypsy King.” Her voice was laced with the accent of her motherland.
“No, you are wrong. Michael was your father. He showed me enough evidence that night in the Whitsundays to convince me – and the King of the Gypsies is a different man altogether.”
“You said was my father.” Her own anxiety was shifting upwards. If it was true.
“I watched him die, about an hour ago. They left us to drown El. It’s what they do to people. Only one of us could get away. Your father made sure that was me.”
“Jack. Stop this now. Please. El you have always been my girl. Ever since I first held you. I am bad, yes, but for you I would have done anything.” He could almost make her out now in the dim light. She was relaxed, a little, holding the gun against her chest.
“Why did Blake let you live – if he was my father then surely you should have let him go, you have no family?”
“That’s true. But the men that took your father from his home injected him with a chemical, into his leg. He knew he was going to die a long and very painful death.”
“Like I would have done if your mother had done her job properly!” Alex was shouting now, a new sense of energy washing over him. He was pacing, a leopard with his original spots.
“Ignore him, Elena. Listen to me. Alex, I’ll make a deal with you. Swap Elena for me. You love her, you hate me.”
McCall was listening. This wasn’t going to plan.
“Jack, you can’t do that.” He yelled across the walkway.
Elena heard the voice. That bloody voice, scented, smooth, like a bowl of melted bitter dark chocolate.
Alex thought for a second, suspended over the Thames, his life and hers in the balance, literally. He did love her, that was true, he wasn’t her father, that was also true. And he did hate Cade, with a passion.
“OK, I let her go.”
“But I have the
gun, I am in charge,” said an indignant Petrova.
“Yes, Elena, you are. So why not order Cade into the gate and you come up here with us and run the operation? There’s a city that needs some help…” McCall draped his voice around her heart.
She appeared resigned to the suggestion. “OK.” She looked at Alex. “But you and I have some things to discuss still. Get me out of here.”
Cade joined the other three and took it in turns to wind the over-sized wheel to raise the gate. Water powered through the gap, rushing headlong into the city. Further upstream the lions held their breath, kept their lips sealed and watched out over the river, waiting. It wasn’t over yet.
The gate slowly moved upwards, revealing the entrance. The bars were still allowing water to escape. Cade ran towards the capsule with O’Shea, leaving McCall and Francis to lock off the gate. It was halfway between safe and hazardous.
Cade nodded to O’Shea. She held the gun firmly, pointed at the entrance. “If he moves, I shoot him. Correct?”
“One hundred per cent. Twice if you need to.”
Elena moved to the side and started climbing. Alex knew he had only one opportunity left. He rushed forward and grabbed her legs and started to pull her back into the gate. She grabbed one of the entrance bars and Cade’s hand, as she did so dropping the weapon onto the floor of the gate. Cade leant into the void. Up close and personal.
He grabbed hold of her arms, and the tug of war began. There was no fun involved, this was a fight for her life.
The Yorkshireman was in the entrance doorway, screaming from the base of his lungs. He had cupped his hands to emphasise his words, not that it made much difference.
“The hydraulics are failing!” He waved his arms frantically, blissfully unaware of the presence of at least three firearms and a caged tiger.
“You need to get out – get away – please. There’s too much water. Move!” His gruff voice was lost into the howling gale.
The gate started to drop once more. Gravity was the winner of the human versus machine battle.
“Jack – let go, it’s going to drop. We need to move!” Francis was urging his old friend to release her.
She stared back at him – genuine fear illuminated her eyes. She shook her head, gripping Cade’s hand, daring herself to let go of the bar. He pulled, she gave in and at the point where Alex had also relented, she suddenly moved forward, leaving Cade to fall into the gate.
Roles. Reversed.
Cade was dancing now, part animal, part lightweight boxer, left and right, finding his footing. And still the capsule edged downwards, faster now.
“Jack!” Petrova had one chance. He turned to look at her.
Looking into his eyes she hissed the words, “Hit him like I hit you!”
It was all he needed. He threw a punch, Alex ducked, another followed, wild, deliberate. Alex countered with a swift blow to Cade’s chin, then moved forward to get him in a neck hold – one of his favoured prison tactics. As he took the last step Cade moved to his left, swung his right arm around and drove a flattened fist up and under Alex’s ribcage.
The blow was enormous, driven by anger and a desperate will to live. The damage was instant and although he didn’t know it the Jackdaw was already bleeding internally. The same process that Cade would have gone through if the Bulgarian he called El had hit him as hard as she had been trained to.
Cade was moving quickly too, out of the capsule that meant certain death, he pushed himself up on his hands, was grabbed by McCall and Francis, leaving O’Shea to point the weapon into the dark hole that had threatened to consume both men.
He was three quarters of the way out when Alex made his last attempt to drown them both. Lunging towards the exit, he caught Cade by the lower legs and pulled with all of his strength. Cade’s fingers were raw, pouring with blood once more. Death because of a thousand cuts.
Alex had him in a vice-like hold. Didn’t this man ever give in?
O’Shea screamed at him. “Move out of the way!” She had the means and the motive, all she needed to complete the set was the opportunity.
“Jack, move!”
Cade couldn’t speak, he was exhausted. Alex had him pinned. His dark, anthracite eyes focused on Cade. Malevolence personified.
The Englishman grappled, tried to kick him away, but he refused to let go. Cade dropped back into the gate, his hand landing on the top of his right thigh. His fingers brushed against something. He pushed his fingers into the small pouch within the pocket and felt the short stainless steel barrel of a pen. He pulled it out, made a fist with it and spun one hundred and eighty degrees, swinging his arm in an arc towards the Jackdaw’s head. The pen drove deep into his temple.
The blow was severe, not enough to kill him but more than enough to cause bleeding beneath his skull. Soon his right eye would swell, causing the pupil, already naturally black, to blow, swell up and provide a cast-iron symptom for even a first-year medical student to identify.
Cade was running through the water now and springing up and into the entrance. He stopped.
Petrova and O’Shea were shouting at him to leave. The wind was hurling along the Thames like the tempest that it was. Beneath him water poured through the opening and fought with itself as it spun and rose. There were waves on the river, big enough to cause small boats to thrash against their moorings.
Despite the screams of protest Cade went back, leant down towards Alex and pulled the pen from his temple.
“That was a gift from a friend.”
He turned and in four paces had jumped up and was pulling himself up onto the walkway when Alex ran again, trying to do the same thing, trying to save his own life.
His hands clamped onto the cold concrete and he gripped and pulled, then pushed himself upwards, looking at O’Shea who had never taken her eyes off him. She pointed the gun at his head and started to press the trigger. ‘The best shot comes when you least expect it Carrie.’
She squeezed some more. Closed her eyes, then fired. The gate dropped.
The hydraulics had failed, tonnes of steel crashed down and into the river, submerging it, aligning it with the river bed, forcing water up to the already turbulent surface. It wasn’t a slow-motion action, rather a rapid, deafening event.
This was not supposed to happen, ever. Engineers had built in safety measures, overrides, call them what you will. It was not supposed to happen. But then the sheer weight of water hitting the gate was never predicted either.
But it did happen. And Alex Stefanescu, the man the people spoke of in whispered tones, in quiet corners of smoke-filled bars and bland offices and even government buildings, but above all, the putrid prisons that he had practically run, the man they called the Jackdaw was gone.
Cade was regaining his breath. His hands still bled. Francis was wrapping something around them, trying to keep them from becoming more damaged. McCall was holding Elena, restraining her and sharing his own warmth at the same time and O’Shea remained where she was, staring at the ground.
“Shit, Carrie, that was close. You OK?” Cade was getting himself up, onto one knee, taking a second, then standing. He walked over to her. Then he saw what had transfixed her.
On the concrete walkway, adjacent to where the gate had once been was a pair of severed hands. Each had been sliced cleanly just above the wrist. They made for a surreal sight. Just there. As if they had been placed there by a modern day artist. Two hands, on the floor, almost waiting to do something. Either tap impatiently or walk away like a prop from a horror movie.
To O’Shea, they were still alive.
She started to retch, then walked to the edge and threw up into the river. She had seen some things in her time, but this was a whole new low.
“Get me a bag, Dave.” Cade called across to the one-time alcoholic soldier.
“You going to puke as well, Jack?”
“No. I’ve seen worse. Actually no, photograph them first, then get me a bag.”
In the gate, ben
eath them, Alex was still alive, pushing himself up and into the air-filled void. He was treading water, trying to find a way out, the river still rising rapidly.
It wasn’t a slow death – like the one that killed his wife, Nikolina. Hers was one that she saw coming, watched the tide arriving, had time to think about, heard the water lapping against her ears, could taste the fuel and filth through the tiny hole in the silver tape that they had wrapped around her mouth. Her heart was the last thing to go cold that morning.
Alex knew he was critically injured. He started screaming and shouting. Up on the walkway they heard him.
“That man needs rescuing, for God’s sake!” The Yorkshireman, face ruddier than ever, was trying to make sense of the commotion.
“How long would it take to get that gate up?” Cade asked, trying to stay warm, favouring his hands.
“In an emergency like this and for a good man like you, an hour, tops.”
“Could he survive, with a pocket of air?”
“He could. If he was a good bugger.”
“What if he wasn’t? If he’d killed three of my team…and really pissed off your mates in the control room?”
The red-faced manager rubbed his chin in thought. “Well, in that case, it could take days…”
“OK, well, you tried.” Cade took a polythene bag from Francis and knelt down to pick up the severed hands.
She was right; they did look alive. If they had grabbed hold of him or formed an offensive hand gesture, it wouldn’t have surprised him at all. The left hand still had Stefanescu’s favoured wrist watch strapped to it, the sweep second hand quietly minding its own business and telling the time.
The right was a little more untidy, still oozing blood and almost in the shape of a fist. As he turned the bag over he saw it, the deep black tattoo, which came to life in a prison cell, created by mixing whatever they could find, as long as it was black, pushed under his skin and forming the image of a wave. As the hand grew paler, the mark got darker.
The bastard was still trying to be the Alpha male.
Cade was brought back into the here, and now by a phone, pushed towards him by O’Shea. “It’s the governor.” As nauseous as she looked, it was evident she was enjoying being back in the field.
Seven of Swords (The Seventh Wave Trilogy Book 3) Page 64
