Sudden Death

by Nick Hale

  It was Benalto, the Argentine player. His forehead was coated with a sheen of sweat and he was breathing heavily from training.

  ‘Oh, hello, Jake,’ he said. ‘Have you seen your father?’

  ‘I thought he was with you,’ Jake said.

  ‘No,’ said Benalto. ‘We look for Devon also. I thought they are here, but I see no. Sorry to interrupt.’

  He closed the door and was gone.

  Jake opened the computer again and continued to read. Apparently, no body had been recovered, but the suspicion was that Elisandos had drowned. There was a quote from Truman that said that he was devastated by the loss of such an eminent scientist, especially because his research seemed to have been lost with him.

  Jake closed the file, then opened the Internet and searched for Elisandos. It was strange: none of the major English-language newspapers seemed to have picked up the story of the disappearance. Perhaps Elisandos wasn’t such a big deal, after all. So why had Powell slipped the story to his dad?

  Jake deleted the history files of his search. He didn’t want to leave any sort of trail that his dad might pick up on. He took in the screensaver a final time. His dad’s smile seemed so innocent . . . Shaking any thoughts of loyalty away, Jake shut the computer down and pocketed the pen-drive as he left the office, walking straight into Devon Taylor.

  ‘What the –’ he began. ‘Oh, Jake, it’s you. Sorry, dude.’

  ‘Hey, Devon,’ Jake replied. ‘Bennie was looking for you.’

  ‘I was seeing the physio,’ said Devon.

  ‘Everything OK?’ Jake asked.

  Devon slapped his right thigh. ‘Hope so. Slight tear to my hamstring last year. It’s recovered, but still aches after sprints.’

  ‘The first game’s only a couple of days away. Will you be fit in time?’

  ‘Should be. If your dad doesn’t bench me for being late for practice.’

  Jake laughed, but inside he felt only sadness. If Devon only knew that his dad didn’t care about football as much as he pretended. ‘Better get out there then.’

  Jake followed Devon out to the pitch. It took him a few seconds to realise what was different: the sky wasn’t there. The stadium’s retractable roof had been drawn across like a gigantic shroud. Instead of the sun, hundreds of dazzling spotlights illuminated the pitch. Jake stood open-mouthed.

  ‘Wow!’ he said. ‘What a place to play.’

  ‘Sure is. And it looks like I’ll get away with being late,’ Devon smiled. Jake looked over to where he was nodding. The players were all gathered round the assistant coach near the far goal, but his dad was nowhere to be seen. Devon jogged off to join them.

  Jake was left alone on the sidelines. Where was his dad?

  Across the other side of the pitch, above the tiers, was the Truman Oil sponsor box. Jake could tell that its view of the pitch was almost as good as the one from Popov’s office. Two figures were standing together behind the glass, and Jake squinted up. Truman and Popov. The Russian was gesturing over the pitch with one arm in a wide sweeping gesture. In his other hand he held a mobile phone to his ear.

  A tannoy crackled into life, and someone spoke in Russian. A few of the security guards looked up, and so did the assistant coach. Then the message was repeated in English: ‘For health and safety reasons, please leave the football pitch. We will shortly be testing the stadium roof. I repeat, please vacate the football pitch.’

  Some of the players drifted towards the opposite touchline. Devon and Janné came towards Jake.

  ‘Why do we all have to stay clear?’ asked Janné.

  ‘In case something goes wrong, I guess,’ said Jake.

  ‘Nothing will go wrong,’ Devon said. ‘They spent millions on the technology.’

  The field is clear, boomed the tannoy. Proceed with testing.

  The spotlights flicked off. Suddenly it felt like they were in a giant cave. It was dark as night.

  ‘Bloody hell, I almost missed it!’ said a voice. Jake spun round to see his dad limping quickly to the edge of the pitch. ‘Beats Wembley, huh?’

  Jake was about to answer when the clanging of machinery interrupted him. A pale crack appeared where the roof panels parted, sending shafts of light on to the centre circle. As the mechanism whirred, the two wings retracted slowly.

  A piece of debris detached from the edge of one of the wings and fell off. Straightaway, Jake knew something was wrong. A fraction of a second later, he realised it wasn’t debris at all.

  It was a body.

  Legs and arms spiralled as it plummeted, turning over and over. Jake turned away, but heard the sickening thud as it smacked into the turf. Bile rose into his throat. What followed was a blur. He didn’t want to see, but his legs carried him towards the centre circle anyway.

  He heard someone shouting, ‘No, Jake!’ His father.

  But Jake was close enough to see the limbs bent out of shape. The neck at an impossible angle. Blood colouring the clean white halfway line. No first aid could help this person. Then he saw the face, pale and lifeless.

  Jake fell to his knees and his nausea overcame him. Retching from the depths of his guts, he vomited on to the grass.

  The dead man was Daniel Powell.

  12

  Strong arms seized Jake’s shoulders and pulled him from the scene. His dad.

  Jake wanted to push him away, but he didn’t have the strength.

  An accident?

  Suicide?

  Security guards streamed past on either side. ‘It’s nothing,’ they were saying in Russian. ‘Nothing to see.’

  Jake saw Janné’s face, contorted with horror. Devon Taylor’s eyes were wide with shock.

  Murder.

  Jake knew he was right. Daniel Powell had been murdered. He remembered his dad’s last words to the journalist, uttered so coldly: Be careful, Powell.

  Jake’s skin prickled with fear and the sickness took him again, coiling in his guts like a snake. He puked in the tunnel, spattering the concrete floor.

  ‘Get it all out, son,’ his dad said.

  A man and a woman, both in police uniforms, rushed towards the pitch. A siren blared in the distance. Jake wanted to grab one of the officers, tell them what he knew, but his dad kept ushering him forcefully into the belly of the stadium. They reached the lift and stepped inside. Jake wiped his mouth and stared at his reflection in the mirror on the wall. He looked terrible: pale, sweating. Behind him his dad was stepping impatiently from foot to foot. He was stabbing at the elevator button. ‘Oh, come on!’

  Why is he in such a rush?

  The doors swished closed.

  His dad said something Jake didn’t hear. His world was spinning.

  ‘I said, are you OK, Jake? Talk to me.’

  ‘I . . . I’m OK,’ Jake said.

  He couldn’t tear his eyes from his dad’s hands. He kept asking himself: Did those hands take Daniel Powell’s life?

  They were in the car and driving away from the stadium just as another ambulance arrived, sirens on.

  There’s no need to hurry, Jake thought, remembering Powell’s broken body. Then he felt guilty. Weren’t they fleeing a crime scene? His dad was on the phone, talking to Popov.

  ‘I thought it was best to leave,’ he was saying. ‘There’s no way we could carry on practice after that. Tell our driver to go home.’ A pause. ‘Yes, tomorrow. Bye.’

  ‘Dad,’ Jake said. ‘Shouldn’t we go back? I mean, the police . . . they might want to talk to us.’

  He guessed the answer before his dad even spoke. ‘The Russian police can’t be trusted, Jake.’

  A brush-off. He wasn’t going to let his dad get away with it.

  ‘Yeah, but after the plane crash, and him getting thrown out of the press conference . . .’

  ‘I said forget it,’ his dad said curtly. He was driving calmly, but quickly, nosing the Mercedes from lane to lane. Jake checked the speedometer: almost eighty miles per hour. His dad spoke again: ‘This isn’t like the UK. A lo
t of the police force here are in the pockets of Russian gangsters.’

  ‘Like Igor Popov?’ Jake sneered.

  As soon as the words left his mouth, he regretted it. His dad swung the car across the inside lane of traffic and slammed on the brakes. Jake’s seatbelt tightened across his chest and he was thrown back into his seat.

  His dad craned his head round, almost as though he expected to see somebody seated in the back of the car. Then he fixed his eyes on Jake.

  ‘What the hell do you mean by that?’ His skin was bloodless with fury, or fear – Jake couldn’t tell which.

  ‘All I’m saying,’ said Jake, meeting his dad’s eyes, ‘is that I know a lot more than you give me credit for.’

  ‘Well, stop saying.’ His dad looked around again and then whispered. ‘You never know when someone may be listening.’

  They were silent. The only sound was the hum of the air conditioning. Jake thought back to Lester the electrician’s work at the house. Now it made sense. His dad had asked him to search for listening devices. And he wasn’t discussing a fantasy football team when Jake overheard him on the phone. He was talking in some sort of code, using old footballers’ names. But why?

  His dad pulled out into the traffic. They were almost at the house when he gave a heavy sigh.

  ‘Mr Popov’s been good to us, Jake. This job is important. It’s not just about football, it’s about cooperation. East and West. A new beginning.’

  ‘What do you mean? How can you work for such a crook?’ Jake asked.

  His dad’s head whipped round. ‘You mustn’t talk that way about Mr Popov . . .’ He seemed to collect himself as he looked back at the road. His voice was quieter. ‘Mr Popov is a successful businessman. And in Russia they do things . . . differently.’

  ‘Like kill people? You know that Powell was murdered. And Chernoff, too.’

  ‘No, I don’t!’ his dad said with sudden vehemence. ‘Jake, back off, Andrew was my friend.’

  Jake was taken aback by the ferocity of his dad’s words, but he felt a tingle of excitement too. At least he was getting somewhere.

  ‘And Powell? Was he your friend?’

  His dad took a deep breath and when he spoke again his calm was restored. ‘He might have jumped.’

  Jake recalled the figure cartwheeling from the sky. ‘I think he was dead already,’ Jake said. ‘We should have stuck around to find out.’

  His dad stopped the car in the driveway and turned off the engine.

  ‘We can do without the bad publicity,’ he said. ‘People are already waiting for Popov to fail. The last thing he needs is for the police to get in the way. Not with the big game at the weekend.’

  Jake wasn’t sure that was the answer he was looking for. In his dad’s face he saw only anxiety, but how could he be worried about the game after what had just happened?

  ‘Dad,’ said Jake. ‘Stop lying to me. I’m not a kid any more.’

  His dad swung open the door and climbed out.

  ‘I know you’re not, Jake. But there are still a lot of things you don’t understand.’

  ‘How can I if you’re so secretive?’ Jake said.

  ‘Just drop it, son,’ said his dad. ‘If you don’t keep your nose out of my business, it could be dangerous.’

  He walked towards the door of the house.

  ‘What’s that supposed to mean?’ Jake shouted after him.

  His dad walked inside without answering.

  Was he threatening me? Jake asked himself. He leant against the car and rubbed a hand through his hair. The image of Powell falling and the dreadful sound as he hit the pitch replayed over and over in his head.

  Is that the price for crossing the great Steve Bastin?

  The next morning Jake woke feeling exhausted after a fitful night’s sleep, but his dad seemed bright-eyed and raring to go at breakfast. It was like he’d forgotten the awful events at the stadium.

  ‘Today should be great, Jake. Christian Truman has invited us over for lunch at his ranch. A real treat.’

  Jake swallowed a mouthful of toast. ‘Truman has a ranch in Russia?’

  ‘Apparently so – his oil company has land all over the world.’

  ‘Wherever there’s oil to pillage, I guess,’ said Jake.

  His dad laughed and for a moment it was like the last two weeks hadn’t happened. ‘Actually, Truman Oil are looking into all sorts of different resources, not just fossil fuels,’ his dad said.

  Jake remembered the article about Hector Elisandos. The pen-drive was hidden in his football boot.

  ‘Like tidal energy?’ he said, as nonchalantly as possible.

  His dad shrugged. ‘I don’t know about that. But wind power, for sure. His whole ranch runs off a wind generator, apparently. Some kind of advanced technology. It’s near a place called Pogoli, inland along the river.’

  Jake didn’t particularly want to spend the day traipsing around Truman’s ranch. Anyway, with his dad out of the way, there’d be a chance he could speak to his mum. Get some answers.

  ‘I think I might give it a miss,’ he said. ‘I feel pretty tired after yesterday.’

  His dad looked obviously disappointed but said, ‘Sure, you take it easy then.’

  Jake climbed off his stool and was about to head back to his bedroom when a car horn went off outside. His dad checked his watch.

  ‘They’re early,’ he said.

  ‘They?’ Jake repeated.

  ‘That’s right,’ said his dad. ‘Mr Truman’s invited the whole team. It’s a bonding exercise. I doubt they’ll all come though. Are you sure you don’t want to join us?’

  Jake rushed to the window. There was a coach parked further down the driveway, with tinted windows. Devon Taylor was standing by the side of it, speaking on a mobile phone.

  There’s no way I’m missing this, Jake thought.

  ‘I’ll get my things,’ he said.

  The coach headed east away from St Petersburg, staying on the southern side of the river until they reached a massive, four-lane bridge. Jake’s dad was right – they really didn’t need a coach this size as only half a dozen players had come along. Jake supposed millionaire footballers needed lots of room.

  The mood on the coach was sombre. Powell’s very public death seemed to have taken some of the spark out of the players. It wasn’t surprising that Popov wanted to get them away from the press for a day.

  They took a service road off from the highway and headed down a track through dense forest until they reached a tall mesh gate. There was a wooden cabin to one side, from which armed security guards emerged. After a quick chat with the driver, the coach was waved through.

  ‘It’s like a military facility,’ said Jake to Devon.

  ‘Truman has something pretty special going on out here,’ replied Devon blankly. ‘State of the art.’

  The forest ended abruptly and the players were out of their seats looking through the windows on one side of the coach. Jake joined them.

  Truman’s ranch house was a sprawling, two-storey building, painted white, with arched gables and wooden facings. It looked like it had been shipped timber for timber, from somewhere in the southern United States. Jake could not imagine anything that would look more out of place against the bleak Russian landscape that was its backdrop. The same blue and red helicopter that had landed at the stadium was resting on a raised plateau in front of the house.

  Christian Truman himself stood on the sheltered veranda, wearing a Stetson and cowboy boots. Beside him stood a smaller man with curly hair and glasses, dressed in a blue casual shirt and straight jeans. A row of stables backed one side of the building. Beyond the trees on the far side of the house, Jake made out two huge wind turbines, each with four wide blades.

  They climbed off the bus into the warm sunshine.

  ‘Howdy, fellas,’ said Christian Truman. He greeted each of them in turn, pumping Devon Taylor’s hand the longest. A fellow American, Jake thought.

  ‘Gentlemen,’ Truma
n continued, ‘there’ll be time for some lunch later, and some horse-trekking too if the coach allows it.’ He smiled a wide, white smile at Jake’s dad. ‘But first, there’s going to be a big announcement prior to the game tomorrow. We’ve kept it under wraps until now, but I want you to be the first to know.’ He puffed out his chest and hooked his thumbs in his belt. ‘My family has been drilling in America since the 1920s, and abroad since 1964. But the world has changed, and Truman Oil is changing with it. Fossil fuels are only one part of the global energy solution. Today, I’m going to show you just part of our new direction. It’s time for you to see where the money for football comes from.’ He gestured to the man beside him. ‘This is Dr Ian Dowden, and I’m pleased to have him on board. Some of you may have heard of him. His papers at MIT have revolutionised technology for sourcing wind power. Because of Ian, wind power is more efficient and cleaner than ever before.’ He pointed towards the huge stationary blades over the treetops. ‘What you see here is just a prototype, but those turbines provide over 10,000 times more energy than I need to run my ranch. A hundred would provide enough energy to run . . .’ He waved his hands. ‘Well, I’ll let Dr Dowden tell y’all himself. Fellas, I’ll see you later.’

  Truman headed back towards the house and Dr Dowden stepped forward. He looked a little nervous, and his hands smoothed down either side of his trousers, as though he was checking for something in his pockets.

  ‘Gentlemen,’ he nodded briskly, ‘if you’d like to follow me.’

  With that, he was striding off along a track towards the wind turbines. Jake fell into step with the rest of the players, but when he looked round he realised his dad wasn’t with them. Glancing further back, he saw that his dad was talking earnestly with Truman. Popov was there too, seemingly happy and relaxed in casual clothes. He must have been waiting in the house.

  The doctor led them in single file along a narrow footpath and soon the masts were looming above them. Up close they looked even bigger, like giant conifers soaring into the sky. Only these were painted pristine white. Jake knocked on the side and heard a hollow thud.

  ‘A type of fibreglass,’ said Dr Dowden. ‘Modified at molecular level for increased durability and stability. Once these turbines are in operation, the maintenance will be minimal. It means we can place them in remote places without worrying about calling in the electrician.’ He smiled. Jake guessed that was as close to a joke as MIT scientists came.