‘Open your mouth and put out your tongue,’ commanded Cardini.
Marius stuck it out as far as it would go.
Cardini dabbed the paper on it. ‘Hold your tongue still in your mouth and try not to wash the extract from it.’
Marius felt something like chilli burning on his tongue, a searing sensation simmering and hissing inside his mouth. Suddenly the burning was spreading, like a flame across a crumpled piece of paper. He threw back his head and grabbed his mouth. The feeling was something between pain and pleasure. Suddenly the heat was travelling up his tongue and then down his throat and thence along the nerves of his neck, up the side of his face and into his brain. His eyes opened wide in shock as his mind came alive and his whole being seemed to leap from some shadowy internment into a bright landscape of revelation.
‘My God, it’s beautiful,’ he moaned. ‘I can see – I can feel everything. Everything makes sense. How could I have been so stupid?’ He looked at Cardini, awestruck.
‘Be still,’ said Cardini. ‘Let these feelings pass through you. They will not last long.’
Marius gazed around the room as though he was seeing it for the first time. ‘So, ‘ he said, and laughed, ‘now I get it.’
‘I’m glad.’
Marius stiffened. ‘How long have I got?’
‘Another five minutes, perhaps ten.’
Marius sighed. ‘OK, I get that too.’
‘Good.’
‘I know what I need to do,’ said Marius.
‘And what is that?’
‘Have more.’
‘How can that be, Joe? That one taste was more costly than a year of your salary.’
‘There must be a way.’
Cardini said nothing.
A moment later Marius slapped his forehead. ‘Of course. The foundation.’
‘The foundation?’
‘McCloud’s foundation. It has hundreds of millions of dollars. If I controlled it, I could fund you.’
‘You could indeed,’ agreed Cardini. ‘And how could you gain control?’
‘With enough of the treatment I could outwit anyone – I could do whatever I wanted.’ He smiled at Cardini. ‘The trustees think they’re clever but I can see now how easily they could be manipulated. Stein, for example, would get behind me if the foundation was to fund his favourite museum. Gomes is easily scared – the slightest fear of litigation and he will go along with anything I ask him to agree to. Kelly is a fool. He’ll back any proposal I make so long as he gets his money. Can you believe that?’ He laughed contemptuously. ‘A billionaire caring so much about a few thousand bucks and expenses. What a Scrooge McDuck.’ He smirked. ‘That just leaves Walton, and I know how to deal with him. He has a mistress in Charlotte, some old gal he’s been tight with for thirty years. A little nudge and he’ll fall into line.’
‘Simple,’ said Cardini.
Marius’s eyes widened. ‘I can actually feel myself losing it. I can totally feel my mind shrinking. You said five minutes. Has it been that long?’
‘No, Joe, but perhaps you are not blessed with a mind that can hold such thoughts for long.’
Marius held out his hands beseechingly. ‘Please tell me you’ll help me. Please let me come back to this heavenly state.’
‘I will help you, but only once. The elixir is so precious that I can risk only one full treatment on you. You must succeed in your quest or I must let you wash up, like everyone else, an empty carapace on the beach of life.’
‘Oh, God,’ groaned Marius. ‘I can feel myself slipping away. It’s like my brain is going blind.’ He let out a half-laugh. ‘Wow, the lights are going out in my head.’ He looked at Cardini hopefully. ‘Give me more and I’ll hand you the McCloud foundation and all its money on a plate.’
‘You beg now,’ said Cardini, ‘but it will not be easy. Fail once and you will never have another chance. Are you prepared?’
‘Yes.’
‘Sit down,’ ordered Cardini. He delved into his bag and produced an ampoule. ‘You must understand that the cost of saving a life in the developing world is just two dollars. This treatment costs one hundred million dollars.’ He looked once more into Marius’s soul. ‘By accepting it you are extinguishing by proxy fifty million lives. Are you prepared to cross that line?’
‘Yes.’
‘Sacrifice the population of a whole country for your personal desires?’
‘Yes.’
‘And you understand that only I can manufacture this and that you will be for ever in my thrall?’
‘Yes.’
Cardini extracted a syringe from the bag without taking his unblinking eye off Marius. ‘Very well.’ He loaded the syringe. ‘You will have one day, perhaps two, three at the outside to effect your plan. Open your mouth.’
Marius did so.
‘Write down your plan as you will neither understand it nor believe it when you return to your normal existence.’ He aimed the needle. ‘Raise your tongue!’
Marius rolled it back.
Cardini pushed the needle home and pressed the barrel. ‘You must move fast or you will not succeed. The elixir will not keep you accelerated for long. This is your single chance, your only hope, your one throw of the die.’ He withdrew the needle.
Marius was gripping the seat of his chair. He was staring at Cardini in silence, his mouth open, trying to say something. ‘Professor,’ he said finally, ‘ I will not fail you.’
‘First get me back to London.’
Marius jumped up from his chair. ‘Right away.’ He turned to Cardini. ‘I love you.’
Cardini held up his right hand. ‘For now at least.’
74
Arabella walked the horse up to the ha-ha. There was no sign of Stafford. It wasn’t odd, of course, almost the opposite. It was odd that he should always be standing there and that she should ride by at roughly the same time each day. Yet she had a purpose, and she was sure it amused the butler-cum-estate-manager to be there. At some point the invitation would come and then she would see what the mysterious Mr Evans was all about.
Stafford was a good fellow. His old-fashioned manner brightened up her day. He seemed exactly the sort of retainer that every aristocrat dreamt of having. Her meagre retinue hated the family, as it seemed most servants did. Their heartfelt resentment manifested itself in little acts of sabotage passed off as fawning incompetence. She wondered whether, if the family could afford to pay more, they would get better results, but her friends, many in a significantly better financial position than her family, seemed beset by the same problems with their staff.
If only her family could improve its finances, but there was no prospect of that. They had tried everything they could think of to boost their income but were reduced to scraping by.
The Chase, on the other hand, had seen a complete reversal in fortunes. The grade-one listed Jacobean pile had been stripped down and repaired by an army of restorers from all over Europe. The sums expended on the red-brick monstrosity were rumoured to be colossal. The locals said millions had been poured into the structure and yet more millions into the contents, which included an unbelievable collection of paintings by Reynolds, Gainsborough and Hogarth, to name but three of the more famous artists.
The mysterious Mr Evans had even had the grounds excavated by his team of archaeologists, who, it was said, were forbidden to remove any finds from the earth until he was there to help. That seemed a trifle eccentric, yet at the same time rather fascinating.
She pulled up and looked into the grounds. Definitely no sign of Stafford. She spurred the horse and it jumped on to the ha-ha, halting immediately. She looked over the rhododendrons to the red house, set back a quarter of a mile. Her aristocratic nose twitched: a whiff of atmosphere emanated from the old pile, thrilling her. I can put up with a certain amount of waiting, she thought, but if it continues much longer I’ll have to take matters into my own hands.
She had made up her mind.
She turned the horse. It w
as a pity Stafford hadn’t appeared, she thought.
The chestnut hopped off the ha-ha on to the margin of the field. They cantered towards home.
75
Jim was watching the US stock market close. It was the best way he knew to clear his head. He could certainly go to sleep, but he wanted to get through to midnight and avoid falling into a jetlagged sleep pattern. Watching the market calmed him. He forgot the questions that flew around his head, crazy and unanswerable, as the market traded, jittering from one price to another.
He threw a few million at the moves and made a few thousand in the process. It was like watching ducks on a lake: you had to throw some bread into the water or the spectacle was boring.
No one from America had called him. That was a small relief, but he knew the authorities were never in a hurry. The call for him to explain the goings-on in McCloud’s palace might come at any time, within hours or not for months. It would be years before he forgot the unpleasant episode.
With five minutes to go, the market was plunging down, just as it had at the start of trading hours before. It was a regular pattern these days: a tradable event that would vanish as soon as too many people cottoned on to it. He didn’t have to trade that kind of thing. He could look at a chart and trace out its progress as if he had next year’s market records in front of him. Market moves were so obvious to Jim. Armies of market analysts claimed they had such talents, but when it came to it no one but Jim appeared to possess them. While their claims seemed plausible, the fact of the matter was that if you could predict the markets just a few seconds into the future, let alone days, you could make all the money in the world.
Jim had stopped trading seriously and resorted to playing at it instead. Money was a great thing to have a lot of, if you could keep it simple. The trouble was, money was like honey: it oozed and dripped and flowed so that pretty soon you were surrounded by an uncomfortably sticky mess. He closed out all his Dow shorts and wondered about trading some forex to keep himself occupied. He was feeling pretty tired.
The phone buzzed. It was Stafford. ‘We have a visitor.’
‘Who?’
‘It’s a taxi-cab and I think it might be Kate.’
‘Oh,’ said Jim, getting up from his desk. He hung up.
Kate was paying the driver when he trotted down the stairs. She seemed to be hunting in a purse. He waved at the man, who wound his window down. ‘I’ll get this,’ he said. ‘How much is it?’
‘Ninety-five pounds, boss,’ said the driver, with an element of satisfaction.
Stafford held out two fifty-pound notes past Jim. ‘Keep the change, driver,’ he said.
Jim walked swiftly around the car and opened the door for Kate, who was putting something into the tote bag Stafford had had delivered to the hospital a few hours earlier. She got out. ‘I didn’t know where else to go,’ she said apologetically.
‘That’s OK,’ said Jim. ‘How come they let you out?’
‘Nothing wrong with me,’ she said, shrugging. Her arm was bandaged. ‘Just stitches.’
‘Outrageous,’ remarked Stafford, behind them.
The minicab pulled away slowly and circled back.
‘You don’t mind, do you?’ she said. ‘I’ll—’
‘Of course not,’ said Jim. ‘I’ve got forty bedrooms here.’ He laughed.
‘It’s just—’
‘It’s fine.’ He took her bag from her.
‘I didn’t feel safe going home,’ she said, hunched up. ‘It’s right by the lab.’
‘Don’t worry,’ said Jim. ‘It’s fine, really, come in.’
‘I’m sorry.’
‘Sorry?’ said Jim. ‘I should be sorry for not coming to visit you in the hospital. I was going to in the morning. I mean, what was I thinking?’
Stafford took the bag from Jim.
‘No,’ she said. ‘I would have been embarrassed.’
Jim thought about that for a second. It didn’t make much sense to him. A few hours ago he had been freeing her, stark naked, from a makeshift operating table. Why would she be embarrassed by him visiting her in hospital? His brain struggled to compute. The markets were so much simpler than people. The markets went your way and you made money; if they went against you, you lost. There were no ifs and buts, no non-computes, no illogical results. People said things that were infinitely more inscrutable than any stock price ticking up or falling down on a trading screen. They said things that made no sense on so many levels that his brain would spin. How could anyone begin to understand people? How could an army of traders be so predictable when each individual was so obviously random?
‘Let’s get inside,’ he said, nearly putting his arm around her. He checked himself. ‘Hungry?’
‘A little,’ she replied.
‘How’s your arm?’
‘Sore, but fine,’ she said, as Stafford went through the front door.
She was looking at Jim with an expression he didn’t understand. He was unsure how to reply. ‘What?’ he said finally, for want of anything clever.
She blinked at him and smiled, then looked away from him to the front door. He followed her gaze and she looked back at him. He thought she was very beautiful in the soft light coming from the house. He raised his hand, acutely sensitive to her reaction, and stroked her cheek, as he had before. After a fraction of a moment she smiled.
It felt wrong but he was going to kiss her and she was probably going to shriek and run off down the drive. He leant forwards slowly and their lips met. Her eyes were closed. Her lips were warm and responded to his. His right arm was around her waist and he felt her embrace him.
Inside he could feel himself sighing. His loneliness was dissolving, like snow falling into water.
‘I’m sorry,’ she said, after an indeterminate period had elapsed.
He looked down at her. ‘No, I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘I shouldn’t have.’
‘It was nice.’
Nice, he thought. Fantastic, more like. ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘It was.’ She was looking at the door again.
‘Let’s go in,’ he said, taking her hand and leading the way.
76
Renton sat on the chair, his head in his hands. The effects of the serum had almost worn off. He had ruined everything. In the space of a few short hours he had destroyed his life, exposed the lab and become a fugitive. There was no way back for him now. He was a non-person, completely dependent on Cardini for haven and sustenance.
What would Cardini do when he returned and found out? Would he forgive him? Would he shelter him? Would he do him to death? He wouldn’t mind so much if Cardini killed him. His life was over. What kind of sentence would they give him for what he had done to the girl – and what if they found out about the others? He’d be banged up for life. He was crying silently, occasionally snivelling into a large tissue.
They would be searching his home now, rifling through his drawers, tearing up his carpet, collecting all his implements. They would have seized his computer and soon be trying to unencrypt all his hard drives. They must have ways of breaking into them, he thought, sobbing. Would they be able to piece together his life from them? Would they be able to find his servers and their contents, get access to them? Would they bother?
Someone was entering the building. He wiped his eyes and blew his congested nose.
He shook. It was Cardini.
Renton jumped up and ran for the door. He dashed up the hallway. Cardini was at the end of the corridor.
‘Master,’ screamed Renton, running, arms held aloft. He threw himself at Cardini’s feet. ‘Master,’ he wept.
‘You wretch, what have you done?’ boomed Cardini.
‘Forgive me,’ wailed Renton. ‘Forgive me.’
‘Why are you still here?’ Cardini delivered a kick that sent Renton backwards. ‘Go to my office immediately. I will hear your account there.’
77
Renton was slumped in front of Cardini, distraught and defeated.
Th
e report had sounded plausible. Renton had gone to deal with the girl and she had escaped. That was extremely unfortunate and an unforgivable lapse on Renton’s part. Then he had followed her to Evans’s house. This had sent the police to the lab, a very unfortunate train of events but not necessarily one that would drag Cardini into it. Renton had then overdosed himself with the serum and become delirious, rather as Evans had, with his wild tales, on the plane. The revelation about the tunnels under the university was a new development. Cardini had been unaware that they existed and Renton had elucidated to him what had been in store down there for the girl.
All fiendishly clever but unhelpful.
How Evans had ended up down in the tunnels was beyond his ken, but it was the most worrying factor of all. Evans knew the location of his second secret facility, the THT lab, and it wasn’t a giant leap of deductive genius to place Renton there now. Renton risked exposing everything not only through his actions but his presence.
Renton was staring at him, the low light covering his long face in deep shadow. It had been many minutes since he had finished his tale and Cardini had said nothing.
Cardini picked up his mobile phone from his desktop. ‘Marius, I need a private flight from Cambridge to Cairo as soon as possible.’
‘Professor, our plane is at Gatwick right now. Can you meet it there?’
‘Certainly.’
‘I’ll email details.’
‘How is your project progressing?’
‘Well, sir, it’s all just a matter of paperwork, past and present.’ There was a smile in his voice. ‘I’m recovering all the necessary pieces of documentation from the files. I was very careful to make sure it was all kept close at hand.’
‘Very efficient,’ said Cardini. ‘Please remember to write down your project plans before you revert to the norm.’
First Horseman, The Page 19
