Halfway along the Chiswick High Road he pulled into the kerb. Porton had had all day with the laptop which he’d liberated from Palagra. They should know by now whether it contained rabies files.
He rang Waddell’s number and was diverted to the duty officer at Vauxhall Cross who patched the call through to his controller’s home.
‘It’s Sam.’
‘Heavens. Made up your mind already? About where you want to go?’
‘That’s not why I’m ringing. I wanted to know what Porton have come up with.’
‘Still a mystery. There was no reference to rabies on any of the computer files. There’s one simple explanation, of course – whether it’s right or not is another matter.’
‘What is it?’
‘The laptop had only been in use for four months, yet Jackman shipped the virus material to Palagra a year ago. So it’s possible the rabies work was done in the first part of the year, with notes written by quill pen for all I know. The records could have gone up in the bonfire.’
It made sense but didn’t satisfy Sam’s need for certainty. He thanked Waddell and rang off, putting the mobile into the dashboard locker.
He tapped at the steering wheel, then turned on the ignition. He stared at the red light, but didn’t start the engine. Unease was fluttering away inside him like a sixth sense. He switched off again and folded his arms. His anxiety was to do with Julie. He should’ve been more positive. Should have made it clear he was interested in her, not just in what she could do for him in bed.
He took the phone from the locker again, not sure what he was going to say, but knowing he had to say something. He felt in his pockets for the piece of paper on which he’d written her number.
Not there. He’d left it in the flat. Too bad. He’d ring when he got back to Prince’s Gate.
He started the engine and engaged first gear.
‘Damn!’
It was no good. The niggle was getting stronger.
He switched off the ignition once more and snatched up the phone, prodding away at the menu button until he found the call register.
Julie’s number was in the memory.
He pressed the redial button and listened to it ringing.
‘Come on,’ he muttered. No answer. He looked at the display to check he’d got it right. He scratched his head. If she’d turned her phone off, there’d have been a message saying so. Eventually he ended the call.
In his mind he re-ran the parting at her flat a few minutes ago. The ‘goodnight’ that hadn’t said enough. The driving up to the house, the kiss in the car.
He dialled again and let it ring ten times. Still no answer.
‘Shit!’
He switched the phone off. But his mind wouldn’t let it alone. The walk from the car to the house . . . The front door opening and the smell in the hall . . . Old cigars.
The same damned smell as in that wine tavern bedroom in Stammersdorf . . .
‘Fuck!’
He scrambled the ignition, jammed the car into gear and did a U-turn, narrowly missing a bus and a taxi.
Max Schenk snatched the troublesome phone from Julie’s handbag and switched it off. She lay on the floor watching his every move. It hadn’t been hard for him to overpower her. After dragging her into the room and switching on the light he’d pressed a kitchen knife into her neck so hard it had drawn blood. Then he’d ordered her to kneel on the floor with her hands behind her back while he bound them with tape. Shocked, she’d complied like a lamb. Now there was more tape across her mouth and round her ankles. And he’d switched on a loud CD to confound any ideas she had of trying to make a noise.
She’d thought his intention was rape, initially. The sheets on her bed were half turned down. Then she’d had a vision of him having already done something foul on them, gratifying himself with her pillow or her underwear. Soon, however, she’d realised it was her silence he’d come here for, not her body.
He’d demanded to know why she was here. ‘It is the weekend. You should be in Woodbridge. You told me you are always there with your boy on Sunday, until late at night. Later than this.’ He’d said it angrily as if she’d cheated on him.
‘You came like a spy in Vienna,’ he’d hissed, kneeling on her back and twisting a hank of her hair until it hurt. ‘With microphones. That was not right.’ He’d spoken in gulps, like a child fighting with its emotions. ‘You said you saw me with your father last year . . .’
If she could have spoken, Julie would have told him that she’d made that up.
‘Then I think that you will start to remember more things, Julie. Things I said to you in restaurants. About politics. About mutated viruses. All of this we have talked about, even if I think you were not always listening. I fear it will come back to you. Julie knows, I tell myself. Julie knows too much.’
She’d wanted to scream out that she didn’t know anything and that he should bloody well leave her alone.
‘What you know can put me in prison, Julie. You are the only person who can.’
He’d put his hands round her neck, squeezing enough to frighten her. He’d kept sniffing, like a man overcome with emotion. Then he’d goaded her with a description of the death he’d planned for her. Somewhere in that turned-down bed he’d been about to hook a couple of little barbs, coated with a nutrient gel containing the genetically engineered rabies virus. When she’d climbed between the sheets later that night they would have cut her skin and infected her with the very disease she was working to find an antidote to.
Proudly he’d shown her the inside of his briefcase with its vials and syringes and the sealed plastic box containing slivers of razor-sharp glass carved under a microscope in his own laboratory with deep grooves to provide a reservoir for the killer plasma.
And now he was kneeling over her again, fingering her neck once more. Hard, probing movements, as if unsure whether to strangle or caress it. A quivering breath that stank of tobacco. She smelled his sweat, his desire and his readiness to kill. He ran a hand down her back and over her rump, squeezing her cheeks as if testing the tenderness of a steak. He was going to rape her, she decided, clenching her teeth. Rape her, then kill her.
Suddenly he stood up. Julie listened for the unzipping of his trousers. Instead she heard him fiddling with the briefcase. Terrified as to what was coming next, she rolled onto her side and watched as he prepared the syringe that would end her life. She knew she had to do something. There was no one else to help her. If only she’d let Sam come into the flat with her. She screamed his name, but from behind the tape it came out as a whimper. And the rock music drowned it.
Schenk knelt over her with the syringe, touching lightly on the plunger so that a small quantity of liquid spurted from the needle. Julie caught the whiff of chloroform.
‘It will be quick, Julie,’ he mouthed above the blast from the loudspeakers. His razor nose was poised over her like a guillotine.
Julie lashed out, kicking against his shins with all her might. She rolled away from him. Schenk yelped and lunged forward trying to plunge the needle between her breasts, but she rolled again. Over and over, crossing from one side of the room to the other, squealing and coughing, desperate to be heard above the CD’s beat.
‘Verdammt . . .’
Schenk cornered her by the door. He aimed a kick at her head, which she tried to absorb by curling into a ball. Then he put a foot on her neck to hold her down, ripped open her blouse and felt for her sternum.
Suddenly there was a shattering crash. Schenk whipped his head round to see a metal dustbin come hurtling through the curtains into the room, followed half a second later by a man.
‘Scheisse!’
Sam had cut his head on the broken window pane. Blood trickled into his eyes, but he could see Julie on the floor and Schenk crouched over her.
‘Get away from her!’ he yelled.
Only when he hurled himself forward to grapple with Schenk did Sam see the syringe. As he lunged at the Austrian’s arm,
the doctor stabbed forward with the lethal needle. Sam swerved, feeling its spray wet his wrist. Then he kicked, his foot sinking into Schenk’s groin. The doctor buckled and Sam cuffed him on the back of the neck with locked hands. As the man stumbled, Sam knocked the syringe from his grip and kicked it away.
He grabbed Schenk by the hair, pulling it sharply backwards so he lost his balance and fell. He jumped hard on his stomach to knock the wind from him, then threw himself across the room to Julie, ripping the tape from her mouth.
She screamed in pain.
‘Sorry. There’s no easy way to do that,’ he apologised.
Schenk was struggling to get up. Sam kicked his face with the side of his foot, then while the man was disorientated, rolled him onto his stomach.
‘Where’d that tape come from?’ he yelled to Julie above the din.
‘On the table!’ she screamed. ‘God, your head,’ she added, panicking. ‘You’re bleeding.’
‘I’ll live.’ He grabbed hold of the roll and blew the blood trickle from his eye. Quickly he bound Schenk’s hands behind his back, then put another strip round his ankles. Once certain that he wasn’t going anywhere, he looked around for something with which to cut Julie free. There was a kitchen knife on the small table.
‘For God’s sake turn that racket off,’ he ordered when she had her arms and legs in use again.
The curtain flapped in the wind. When Julie cut the music they heard voices outside, the neighbours taking an interest.
‘You okay?’ he asked, touching her on the arm. He noticed a spot of blood on her neck.
‘No,’ she whimpered, slumping against him. He squeezed her gently and stroked her head, withdrawing his hand when she winced from the pain where Schenk had kicked her.
‘I need to know what happened here,’ Sam told her, keeping an eye on Schenk.
Slowly Julie pulled herself together, found a clean cloth to press against the cut on Sam’s forehead and, between gulps of shock and anger, told him about the poisoned barbs in her bed. Then she showed him Schenk’s briefcase with its lethal collection of glass fragments.
‘Jesus!’ He was looking at the tool kit of a serial killer. ‘How the hell did he get in here, Julie?’
‘He must have had my keys. When I got back from Vienna I found I’d lost them. Assumed they’d fallen out of my bag when he hit me with it in Stammersdorf. I had a spare set at the lab. Had to go there first before I could get in here.’
Sam kneeled beside Schenk. ‘Talk to me, Max. Talk to me fast.’
Schenk remained tight-lipped.
‘Were you working for Hoffmann or was Hoffmann working for you?’
When there was no response Sam jerked the doctor’s arms up behind his back until the joints cracked. Schenk yelled in pain, his face twisting, but he still wouldn’t talk.
There was a hammering at the door and an Asian voice demanding to know what was going on.
‘I’m all right, Mr Patel,’ Julie called back.
‘Open the door.’
Sam shook his head.
‘I said I’m all right. There was some trouble but it’s over now.’
‘They break the window,’ the voice protested.
‘Yes. I’ll get it fixed.’
‘The police coming. Someone called 999.’
‘Okay, Mr Patel. You needn’t worry.’
Sam grimaced. When the men in blue arrived, all this would be out of his hands. And Schenk would never spill the beans if handled by the rule book. He had a few minutes at the most. He reached into the briefcase and removed the plastic box of glass splinters, making sure Schenk could see him holding it. The doctor’s eyes widened.
Inside the briefcase Sam found tweezers and sealed packets of surgical gloves. He put on a pair, opened the box of splinters and selected one. The glass chip glistened with the gel it had been coated with.
‘Now, my friend . . .’ He sat astride the doctor to pin him to the floor. ‘They tell me just a little nick is enough . . .’ He touched the splinter against Schenk’s neck.
The man began to cough and splutter.
‘Feel it, can you? Wet, is it?’
‘Don’t do this . . .’ Schenk whined. ‘I beg you, don’t do this.’
‘He doesn’t have a vaccine,’ Julie whispered. ‘Look at him. He’s scared out of his wits.’
‘You’d better talk, Max. It’s a nasty way to die,’ Sam snapped. ‘Tell me about you and Harry Jackman and Hoffmann. Who was running things?’
‘Hoffmann,’ Schenk whimpered.
‘And what was your role?’
‘To advise him how the material should be used.’
‘Advise? Is that all?’
‘Yes. I was not important . . .’
‘I don’t believe you.’ Sam picked the glass splinter up with the tweezers. A tiny blob of gel remained on Schenk’s skin.
‘Do it, Sam.’ Julie was close by his shoulder, her voice a rasp. ‘Give him a dose of his own.’
Schenk’s eyes swung in their sockets, trying to irradiate Julie with his hate.
‘Last chance, Max,’ Sam snarled. ‘I want the truth this time.’ He touched the razor-sharp glass fragment against Schenk’s neck again. ‘Quick. I haven’t got all day.’ The man flinched. His eyelids flickered and his lips began to tremble.
‘Kill him, Sam,’ Julie howled. ‘He doesn’t deserve to live.’
‘All right, all right. I tell you,’ Schenk panicked. ‘We were partners, Hoffmann and I. We didn’t trust the VECTOR scientists. Because they just want money. Like Jackman. They have no principles. I make visits to Palagra to check what they are doing. At my first visit they have already made the rhabdovirus mutation but don’t want to give it to me because there is no protection against it yet. But I insist they bring it to Vienna and I make tests with it. On dogs. When I see how fast it works, I make my own experiments. The glass splinters were my idea,’ he added with a touch of pride. ‘And I try to make a vaccine.’
‘But you failed to develop one,’ Julie goaded.
‘There was no way to do it.’
‘We’ll find one,’ she hissed, fired up by hate. ‘But it’ll be too damn late for you.’
‘And Palagra island? Your wife . . .?’
Schenk nodded. ‘She did not know what was being done there . . .’ His voice tailed away with the realisation of how much he had lost.
Sam stood up. The last piece of the Harry Jackman puzzle was now in place. He replaced the glass splinter in the box and closed the lid.
Julie’s anger had become all-consuming. She couldn’t believe Sam was going to let Max live. ‘What are you doing?’ she gaped.
Sam used a surgical wipe from a pack inside the briefcase to clean off the droplet of lethal gel from the doctor’s neck.
‘You can’t just leave it like that, Sam! He has to die. Max has to die!’ She stared at him wide-eyed, as if he’d lost his mind.
From outside came the sound of a siren, rising to a crescendo as the police car screamed to a halt in front of the house. Sam closed up Schenk’s briefcase and kept hold of it. Then he grabbed Julie’s mobile phone from her bag on the floor and dialled Waddell. He spoke briefly and concisely and was told to hold the fort until Special Branch arrived.
There was a hammering at the door.
‘Police! Open up!’
Sam saw that Julie had gone as white as a sheet. The shock was getting to her.
‘You can open the door now,’ he suggested.
Julie’s head was spinning. She’d just urged Sam to commit murder, and now the police were here. The authorities. She looked at him in bewilderment. Sam was authority too, she realised, her spastic mind suddenly overtaken by the thought that he might betray her to the police. That she’d be charged with attempted murder. Sam’s revenge for her exposing him to the media. The establishment’s revenge for her father having revealed what happened in Bodanga.
Sam saw the distress on Julie’s face, the panic in her eyes. The look of a woman
who’d had one shock too many and was falling apart.
He wrapped his arms round her.
‘You’d better brace yourself, Julie.’
‘What? What d’you mean?’
‘I’m afraid you’ll be in the papers again. The lone woman who overpowered Max Schenk and handed him over to the police. They’ll make you a hero.’
It was after midnight by the time all the statements had been taken and some minor first aid had been applied to Sam’s cut head. Stephanie had arrived twenty minutes after the local force and had worked wonders in twisting arms to ensure Sam’s role in the action wouldn’t appear in any of the press reports the next day. He and Julie had slipped away without being photographed, the media being kept well clear of the street by a police cordon.
Back at the MoD flat at Prince’s Gate, a thorough exploration of the cupboards uncovered a half-full bottle of whisky overlooked by the cleaners. Sam and Julie sat facing each other across the repro table, drinking it.
Julie was still numb with shock. ‘You saved my life,’ she murmured. ‘If you’d come through that window a second later, I’d be dead now.’
‘I wouldn’t have liked that,’ Sam said solemnly.
‘Nor would I.’ She gripped his hand. Then her brow knitted. ‘You know, I really did want you to kill Max, Sam. If it had been me holding that chip of glass to his neck I’d have done it myself.’ She shook her head. ‘What does that make me?’
‘Human, Julie. Human.’
The understanding she saw in his eyes was that of someone who’d been there himself. Many a time.
‘What happens next, Sam?’ She looked down at her glass.
‘He’ll be charged in the morning. Attempted murder. The trial will be months away. You’ll be a star witness.’
‘That’s not what I meant,’ she rejoined.
‘I know it isn’t.’
Sam took a deep breath. Nothing had changed, in that he still had no sensible answer for her. But the situation was different now. The trial of Max Schenk would probably mean him appearing as a witness in camera. So he would be staying in England for longer than he’d envisaged.
The Lucifer Network Page 42
