The Coil

by Gayle Lynds

  Judging by the flames crackling in the fireplace and the darkness of the night, they had not slept long. She was not sure she had even heard the engine. The truth was, she was on edge, her mind roiling. That was the real problem. She tried to relax, but her thoughts returned to their long conversation with Henry about Nautilus and his role in it, then finally moved on to their deducing the five remaining members of the Coil.

  She wondered about them…the respect their names evoked internationally. Their towering wealth and influence. The dry-lipped awe of those struggling to reach the same exalted career heights.

  Yet they had treated her like a rat in an experiment, and they had murdered Kirk and the dean and the dean’s wife. How could they? The easy answers were greed and ambition for her father’s files. But that was unsatisfactory, superficial. Repulsed, she recalled what Sophocles wrote in Oedipus Rex: “God keep you from the knowledge of who you are!” That was it: The ancient Greek playwright had known the human soul—that the ultimate judge and jury was oneself. To keep a high opinion of themselves, people rationalized away their less-than-stellar deeds. The more they rationalized, the better they became at it. And the greater the evil they could justify.

  She repressed a shudder. Simon seemed to sense her unease. He pulled her closer—and a single gunshot shattered the silence.

  It was like a knife through her heart. “Simon!” She shook his arm.

  He was already awake. “Damn! What…”

  “A shot.” She disentangled and ran to the high windows.

  He was at her side. “Did you hear anything else?”

  The fishpond and forest looked untouched, full of deep shadows as the moon sank toward the horizon. Nothing was out of place. Simon opened the window.

  “Before the shot,” she told him, “there might have been a motorcycle engine.”

  “A motorcycle and a single gunshot could mean a poacher.” He listened, but there were only the dawn songs of insects.

  “Maybe.” She crossed the room and grabbed her shoulder bag.

  He followed and snatched up his gym bag. “You think it’s someone after us.”

  “If I’m wrong, we can always come back and finish our nap.”

  “We’re going to have to wait for that, I should think.”

  All business, he checked his pistol, and they hurried to the door.

  Liz cracked it and peered out. “No one.” Her voice was tight.

  He pressed it open wider and gazed through the space beneath the hinges toward the opposite end of the dimly lit hall. “No one this way either.”

  She flung the strap of her bag across her chest. The Glock in both hands, she slid out. He followed with his Beretta, the handle of the Uzi jutting conveniently from his bag. Silence. Liz nodded toward the short end of the hall. He nodded, agreeing. They sprinted along the carpet, passing portraits of Henry’s stern-faced ancestors. At one time, family and friends had filled the suites and rooms in this wing every weekend. Now the emptiness resounded.

  The corridor ended at a back landing. At the arched opening, they studied the elaborately carved staircase that curved up and down. No movement. No sound. The silence was eerie, like the hush before a thunderstorm. They left their cover and glided down the stairs, then stopped abruptly when they heard four or five sets of feet padding across a wood floor.

  “That’s no poacher,” Liz whispered. “They’re in the house.”

  Before Simon could agree, a violent fusillade exploded from the front. Windows shattered. Bullets whined and thudded. There was the noise of ripping wood and the loud pinging of rounds striking metal. Instantly, people inside returned fire.

  “We’ve brought them down on Henry!” she said.

  “Damnation!” Simon reached the first floor in one jump.

  Liz was on his heels. They raced down the hall, slid inside the foyer, looked carefully both ways, and started across.

  A fusillade smashed in, fracturing windowpanes and puncturing the massive front door. The noise was deafening. Wood splinters flew like arrows. Liz and Simon dived onto the marble floor and covered their heads.

  As soon as the firing paused, they crawled around glass shards and across to the parlor, where three servants in pajamas huddled beside windows, their hands shaky as they held a motley collection of shotguns and ancient bolt-action rifles. The low moon filled the room with gray light and eerie shadows. Another short round of shots blasted inside. A painting crashed to the floor. A wooden lamp splintered. When the firing paused again, the men rose up to shoot wildly out the windows and duck back.

  Liz and Simon hurriedly crab-walked to Henry’s servant Richard, hunched like a praying abbot beneath his window.

  “Who are they?” Liz asked. “How many?”

  “I don’t know.” His face was half in shadow, making him look far older than when he had invited them into the mansion. He turned in alarm as another volley sounded. “A dozen. Maybe more. Well armed.”

  “Where’s Henry?” Simon asked worriedly.

  “In his bedroom with Clive, sir.”

  As another shot slammed through the window, Richard flattened against the wall. Window glass exploded like glinting ice. He waited, darted up to fire out wildly, and fell back, his face twitching with fear.

  More isolated shots followed, pinning everyone down, riddling the walls. As the servants returned fire, Liz and Simon scuttled back to the foyer and down the hall to what had once been Henry’s den and was now his bedroom. The door was open.

  Liz froze, shocked. “Oh, no!” Her throat tightened, and she fought a sudden ache behind her eyes.

  “Henry!” Simon’s quick intake of air sounded like a gasp.

  Lord Percy lay on his back in a pool of blood, motionless, his face bone white, his gray eyes staring upward. Sitting cross-legged next to him, Clive wrung his hands and muttered under his breath. From the French doors, where the drapes had been pushed back, dingy moonlight illuminated them.

  Liz and Simon ran to him. Clive looked up, his grizzled cheeks streaked with tears. They knelt, and Clive gently closed Henry’s eyes. Sharp pain pierced Liz’s heart and lingered. Instantly, shots detonated somewhere outside, and bullets screeched in through the panes of the French doors, spraying glass.

  Clive started to rear up, but Simon yanked him down to the floor.

  “Stay here!” he ordered, clamping him flat.

  More bullets rammed into an upholstered chair. Goose down burst out in a white cloud. Other gunfire crashed into distant walls—the east wing. There was the sound of a door’s being battered open there.

  “They’re coming inside!” Clive looked around frantically and tried to sit up, but Simon held him down. “They want you,” Clive said. “Go. Hurry!”

  Liz resisted. “No. We can’t leave you. We—”

  “He’s dead,” Clive insisted tearfully. “You can’t help Lord Henry. And if you’re not here, they may leave us alone!”

  Running feet sounded in the east wing. His memory might be bad, but Clive was right. There was no way the untrained servants with their sporting weapons could hold out. There were too many attackers—and too many servants to be saved—for Liz and Simon to force a better result.

  Clive rolled away and sat up. “Go! Now. Please! So we can surrender!”

  Liz and Simon exchanged a look. They leaped up and ran back down the hall as the gunfire outside halted suddenly, indicating the invaders were likely inside. The lull was Liz and Simon’s only advantage. They sped past the curved staircase and into the cross corridor at the rear of the house as shouts erupted from the foyer. Feet thundered after them.

  They slammed through the rear door and tore around to the grape arbor and their parked Jeep. In the lead, Liz vaulted into the driver’s seat. Simon tumbled in on the passenger side. The engine sputtered, then started.

  As the first two attackers stormed out of the house after them, Liz gunned the engine and screeched the Jeep in a sharp J-turn, fishtailing until her tires gripped the cobbles
tones and the vehicle straightened out.

  As she raced the Jeep past the shadow-drenched front lawn, Simon yanked the Uzi from his bag and leaned out the window. She glanced at him once, caught his implacable expression. In the moonlight, beads of sweat glinted on his forehead.

  “Here they come!” he warned, voice taut. The killers were ghostly shadows, legs pumping as they chased the Jeep and raised their weapons. “Looks like at least a dozen.”

  “On foot?”

  “So far.”

  “We’ll outrun them then.” With a jolt of adrenaline, she floored the accelerator.

  But they could not outrun bullets. A volley crashed into the Jeep’s tail and screamed past their windows. The horrible noise penetrated to her marrow. Simon squeezed off a burst and ducked inside just as a shot detonated his side-view mirror. Pieces exploded into the air and pinged against the door.

  “A tad close, that.” His voice was grim and breathless.

  “Too close!”

  She bit back fear as Simon ducked out and fired again. Still, the bombardment from their hunters was lessening.

  “Are we out of range?” she asked hopefully.

  Simon fell into the front seat again. “Yes. Their bullets are going wild.” He stared back over his shoulder through the shattered rear window, watching.

  She nodded silently and eased up on the accelerator. She glanced up at the rearview mirror, glimpsing a dark-clothed figure who paced alone ahead of the pack of gunmen, his movements radiating anger and frustration. Her breath seemed to freeze in her lungs when she thought she saw a limp. She ripped her gaze away to concentrate on keeping the hurtling Jeep on the dark, narrow drive that led back to the country road.

  “Do you see a limping man back there?” she asked anxiously. “The limp should be on the right side.”

  “Yes. It’s on the right. Didn’t the man at the Eisner-Moulton warehouse have a limp?”

  She nodded. “I think he’s the one who dropped the jacket with the Cronus note inside. I didn’t get a good look at him then, and I don’t dare try now. Do you see any signs of a car?”

  “Yes! Here comes one now!” A van had paused beside the hunters, and they had jumped inside.

  Pulse pounding, Liz killed the lights as she sped the Jeep into the tunnel of brush and overgrown trees. They might as well have been inside an inkwell. The only light came from her dashboard. Branches screeched against the Jeep’s sides. Simon seized the door handle, holding tightly. The towering vegetation blurred past like a long brushstroke of black paint. Behind, headlights pierced the night ominously, searching.

  Simon said nothing, tension radiating from him like heat from an oven. She stared ahead, her eyes aching with the strain of trying to see the road. It was as straight as a bullet’s path, or at least that was what Henry had always said. She gripped the steering wheel, unconsciously leaning forward, trying to spot…waiting…there it was. A break in the trees! The faint shine of the stream. The glen!

  But at this heightened speed…still, it did not matter. She had little choice.

  “Hold on!”

  She slammed the brakes and yanked the steering wheel. The wheels banged on rocks as the vehicle thudded blindly over the roadside and dropped, throwing them against their seat belts. She held the steering wheel tightly while letting the vehicle find its own way as it smashed saplings and rolled over rocks. She controlled it enough to keep it upright and still moving in the general direction and…there were the headlights again, glowing through the trees as if a monster were out looking for them with searchlights.

  “There!” Simon pointed to a leafy horse chestnut tree.

  “They won’t see the stream from the drive,” she said, turning the wheel, “unless they kill their headlights.”

  “Unless they know where to look.”

  “That thought doesn’t make me happy.”

  With a queasy feeling, she braked and yanked the steering wheel once more, nosing the Jeep under the tree. Branches draped themselves across the rear, cloaking it. The front pointed at a sixty-degree angle to the spring. She killed the engine.

  They were not only silent but completely hidden. Simon reached out. She took his hand. With his other hand, he covered hers. They lifted their heads, listening. The growl of the engine approached, and the illumination brightened. They stared back. She found herself holding her breath. Breathe, dammit.

  Up on the drive, a large van charged past, its engine so powerful it could not help but advertise itself with its immense, smooth strength. In an abrupt Doppler effect, the noise level dropped. And the immediate danger was gone, red taillights soaring onward.

  She inhaled deeply. “Did you see what kind of van it was?”

  “Not a prayer. Much too fast. But it was big enough to hold the dozen men who were chasing us.” He watched the taillights disappear. “You’re a hell of a good driver.”

  “Thanks. I like to drive.” She added, “Usually.”

  They sat like two automatons, the sound of the rushing stream in their ears.

  At last, he said, “They’ll be back, and we have to decide what to do. We can’t drive out the way we’d planned. They might be waiting for us.”

  “We’ve got one advantage—the Jeep.” She turned on the engine. “Four-wheel drive.”

  He knew instantly what she had in mind. “You want to use the stream bed?”

  “Why not? Unless it’s changed, it’s a gentle descent.”

  “What the hell. I don’t remember any boulders. Let me know when you want me to spell you.”

  She touched the accelerator, and the vehicle rolled into the water. The tires bumped and bounced. The left front wheel landed heavily in a hole, and a wave of dark water splashed up over the fender.

  As low-hanging branches scraped along the top, he saw her glance at him. Her dark eyes glowed like a feral animal’s, dangerous with worry.

  “What is it?” he said immediately.

  “If I’m right that the man with the limp works for the Coil, then everything’s changed.” She paused, her gaze on the treacherous streambed. “Up until now, the Coil’s been protecting us against the blackmailer, because it wanted us to find the files for them. This attack proves they’ve changed their minds. Not only the blackmailer wants us dead—they do, too. And if they worked on Henry before they shot him, they’ll know we’re on our way to Dreftbury. They’ll be waiting.”

  Forty-Six

  The drive down the streambed took nearly three hours, although the distance was only a little more than a mile. They jumped out four times to roll oversize rocks out of the way. As sunrise rose in brilliant pink and gold above the treetops, Liz saw a shortcut. She drove up over the bank, across a shady meadow where grazing deer scattered like bird shot, and then back into the stream. Shortly after Simon took over the wheel, a waterfall appeared ahead. Liz got out and walked along the bank, guiding him as he maneuvered the Jeep down one jarring lip of rock to another, seven in all. Then a tire went flat.

  By the time the vehicle emerged at the country highway, it was soaked, the paint was chipped, the body battered, and they felt shaken to the marrow. And they were wet. But no one had followed, and no one waited in ambush.

  Jubilant, they used a blanket from the back to dry themselves and set their socks and running shoes on the backseat for the sun to dry. Once more on a real road, Liz accelerated, and the sturdy Jeep headed south. The ride felt smooth as a sheet of glass. Stands of trees towered against the morning sky. White sheep grazed in green fields. Traffic was sporadic in this sparsely populated area.

  Still, her voice was tense when she asked, “Do you see anything?”

  He was sitting with his back to the door, Beretta in hand. His face was craggy and determined as he watched behind. “Nothing yet,” he said.

  “Yet.”

  “We mustn’t ever assume again we’re safe from them.”

  That word again—assume. Her jaw tightened, and she nodded. “Do you think it was through Gary that
the Coil found us?”

  “He’s the most logical source.”

  “That feeling in Paris I had of being followed, even while we were going to the airport…I must’ve been right. Somehow they tracked us to him. Then they made him tell where he’d flown us. I hope they didn’t kill him.” Her voice sounded dead. She blinked back tears, thinking of Henry’s broken body. And banished his murder and her worry about Gary Faust. “We need information about Dreftbury.”

  “I’ve been thinking the same thing. A cybercafe would do the trick.”

  “Good. We can check out the EU Web site, too, to see whether we can figure out which of the Coil members has a deal pending with Carlo Santarosa’s commission.”

  He gave a cold smile. “Yes. I like that.” His fist tightened on his Beretta.

  She glanced at him. “How are you planning to get into Dreftbury?”

  “Use one of my MI6 IDs.” Nautilus would be a magnet for foreign agents, which meant Britain’s counterintelligence arm, MI5, would be there. But there was little love lost between MI5 and MI6, and the chance MI5 had been told of his new status was remote. MI6 considered MI5 drones; MI5 thought MI6 snobs. In Simon’s opinion, both were right. “I’ll be an expert on antiglobalization organizations and eavesdropping. MI5 will resent me like the Black Plague, but they’ll be glad for me, too.”

  “That might work. I’m going to need one of your MI6 IDs, too.”

  With Simon navigating, his gaze never at rest, they continued on toward the small town of Hexham, where they picked up the A69 west. Liz watched the traffic and the rugged countryside as they passed red sandstone villages and castles that had once guarded the border. They were in Cumbria now, which had a history of feuds and warfare as long and violent as Northumberland’s, dating back before the Romans.

  At Carlisle, she took the Jeep off the highway. Once a simple outpost of Hadrian’s Wall, Carlisle had grown into a city of more than 100,000.