The Camelot Code

by Sam Christer

  His secretary comes on the line. ‘Putting you through now.’

  A woman’s voice follows. ‘Ann Lesley; who am I talking to?’

  ‘This is Special Agent Robert Beam from the FBI in San Francisco. Can you confirm for me that you’ve just admitted a young girl called Amber Fallon?’

  The line goes silent for a moment. ‘Agent Beam, do you have a number I can call you back on to verify you are who you say you are?’

  ‘Jesus Christ, lady, I don’t have time for this —’

  ‘A number, please.’

  ‘Five, five, three, seven four hundred and make it fast.’ He slams down the phone and looks up at Donovan. ‘She wants to check who I am.’

  ‘Checking can be so annoying, eh?’ She’s red-faced with anger as she flips out her phone and taps in a number. ‘Eleonora, it’s Sandra Donovan. Get yourself to San Joaquin Hospital in Stockton. Run the lights. Mitzi’s daughter Amber has just been admitted.’

  Beam is about to argue when his phone rings. ‘H’lo.’

  ‘Agent Beam?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘It’s Ann Lesley. We do have Amber Fallon. She’s with me right now and she’s a very frightened young lady —’

  ‘We’re going to get some agents out to your hospital, ma’am.’

  ‘She was left in ER with a note pinned to her chest saying the police were not to be called. She claims her sister is in great danger —’

  ‘We know about that, ma’am. Thank you for your help.’ He glances down at the two face shots Donovan gave him. ‘Can you tell me, was she with a man or woman? A big man, round faced with dark hair, or a woman, probably blonde hair, quite pretty?’

  ‘No, sir. She wasn’t with anyone. She’d just been left here.’

  ‘Can I talk to her?’

  ‘Not right now. We’ve given her a sedative and need to get her X-rayed and treated.’

  ‘Call me when you’re done.’ He hangs up and turns to Donovan.

  The AD’s gone.

  ‘Shit.’ He bangs a hand down on the desk.

  159

  LONDON

  Marchetti’s slap knocks the phone out of Mitzi’s hands.

  There’s wildness in his eyes. It’s a look she’s seen before. Usually on the face of a murderer or rapist she’s hunted down. Sometimes on that of her ex-husband.

  Marchetti grabs her by the throat and squeezes hard. ‘One daughter freed. That was the deal.’ He shows a smartphone in his other hand. ‘Now, do you want to watch the other one being chopped up, piece by piece – or are you going to give me my fucking memory stick?’ He lets go and leaves her spluttering.

  Mitzi struggles to get her breath.

  Marchetti gives her a second then grabs her by the hair and lifts her head. ‘Where is it?’

  ‘Dean Street.’

  ‘Be more specific.’

  ‘I bagged and wired it. Sealed it in an evidence bag and hung it down a street drain outside the hotel where I stayed.’

  Marchetti sizes up a punch, one to teach the bitch a lesson.

  There’s a blinding flash. Smoke.

  The brunette screams.

  There’s gunfire. Pistol shots. Pop. Pop. Pop. The raw stutter of semi-automatics. Blue and orange muzzle flashes in the dark, smoky haze.

  Then silence.

  160

  LONDON

  George Dalton watches the tac teams on split-screen feeds on his laptop.

  Soon after the team leader and his right-hand man go through the window, four SSOA operatives take out the front door of the apartment and come in as back-up.

  Once the shooting stops, Dalton switches to the single night-vision camera on the helmet of the team leader. The viewing frame fills with a pea-green sea as the former marine crunches his way over shattered glass, splintered wood and bodies.

  The first corpse to come into focus is one of the bodyguards. He’s bleeding out in a classic dead man’s sprawl near the doorway. A Glock rests in his loose fingers.

  Next to him is what remains of a thin, young woman. Most of her face and chest have been chewed away by the bullets of an MP5.

  The body of a second bodyguard is against the foot of an adjacent wall, legs stretched out, back against a doorframe. It looks to Dalton like he’s been shot as he came in from another room.

  The leader’s camera tracks across to the centre of the foggy room. Two SSOA men are bent over Angelo Marchetti.

  Dalton speaks into a microphone. ‘Leader One from Base: is he alive?’

  ‘This is Leader One – that’s a negative Base. Target is not alive.’

  ‘Shit!’ Dalton remembers Owain’s request to have ‘quality time’ with their former colleague. ‘And Fallon?’

  The team leader swings his head so the camera shows her. Mitzi’s chair is upturned. She’s lying on her back. Her knees point at the ceiling. The operative moves close.

  Dalton hears the American’s voice. ‘About freakin’ time. Help me off this damned chair. Get me a phone, or by Christ I’ll make an even bigger mess than you just did.’

  161

  SAN RAMON, CALIFORNIA

  Eleonora Fracci has Mitzi in mind as she guns up the Crossfire and burns rubber out of San Ramon. Specifically, it’s the moment they met in the squad room and Fallon showed them a framed shot of her daughters at Disney. She’d never seen anyone look at a photo as proudly as Mitzi had. More than anything, she wants to see a new frame there – one showing Mitzi and the girls with Mickey. Hell, she might even go with them and take it herself.

  She drives with one hand and finger-punches the address of San Joaquin Hospital into the sat-nav stuck to her windshield. The display tells her she’s fifty miles and fifty minutes away. ‘Idiota!’ She’s confident she’ll do it in thirty. The old six-speed Chrysler has a three-litre turbocharged V6 under its brilliant red hood and its limiter has been removed.

  By the time she hits the 1-680, she’s topping a hundred and fifty. San Ramon Central Park. Bishop Ranch Open Space. Athan Downs and Dublin Hills are all just a smear against the Crossfire.

  Then the traffic backs up.

  At the Donald D. Doyle Highway, the road becomes a parking lot. Drivers hammer horns. Local radio says there’s a pile-up on the intersection with the Arthur H. Breed, the freeway she needs to use.

  Eleonora flips on her sirens and lights. Traffic is fender-to-fender. It takes ten minutes for her to get off at Dublin Boulevard and run a road parallel to the blocked freeway.

  There are stacks of red tail-lights up ahead. Others seem to have had the same idea. She hits the lights and sirens again. The sat-nav says she’s coming to the end of the Boulevard and needs to re-join the freeway in less than a mile.

  Eleonora picks up her radio and calls Donovan. ‘I’m stuck in traffic. It’s really bad.’

  ‘How bad is really bad?’

  She looks again and flinches. ‘I could still be half an hour away. You best get a local cop to the hospital until I fight my way through this.’

  Donovan doesn’t answer, but Eleonora’s certain she hears her boss swear, just before she slams the phone down on her.

  162

  SAN JOAQUIN HOSPITAL, STOCKTON

  Chris Wilkins is counting seconds.

  His instructions from Marchetti were very clear. Take the girl to the hospital and wait there. If he didn’t get a call within half an hour, kill the kid and get Tess to do the same with the other one.

  Not that he minds.

  Murder had always been on the cards. He’d just never imagined doing it in a hospital in Stockton.

  He pumps a hospital vending machine for coffee and checks his watch.

  Two minutes.

  If he doesn’t get a call in one hundred and twenty seconds he’s going to walk back into ER, find the girl and put a bullet in her head. He’s already dumped his hired sedan in case they get a trace on it and has broken into a car on the staff lot and left it ready to hotwire.

  Sixty seconds.

  The c
offee tastes like crap. He drops it in a trashcan and heads to a washroom. He goes into a stall, takes a leak and removes his black flight jacket. It’s a reversible one. Once he turns it inside out, it’s red and looks strikingly different.

  The digital watch on his wrist beeps.

  Time’s up.

  He checks his gun and steps out of the stall. There’s no one else in the washroom. He calls Tess. ‘It’s me.’

  ‘Hi.’

  ‘No call. Do it.’

  She hesitates. ‘Okay.’

  The mirror over the taps throws back the reflection of a hardened killer. One who’s wasted plenty of people. But never a kid.

  He tells himself there’s a first time for everything and heads out the door.

  163

  CALIFORNIA

  Tess Wilkins looks across the shack’s open lounge to the young girl bound and hooded on the sofa.

  She knows what she has to do and knows the risk of not doing it. Dead captives tell no tales. Live ones cause trouble.

  She goes into the crummy bedroom and gathers what little stuff she and Chris have in there. She jams clothes into a rucksack, then walks to the bathroom.

  Toothbrushes, paste, soap, hair dye, shaving gear and hairspray get swept into the bag as well.

  In the kitchen, she empties the pedal bin onto the floor. There isn’t much in it, just some fast-food packages and hand wipes. Under a microscope, though, there’d be enough DNA to send both her and her beloved to the Big House. Tess spreads everything out, then goes to the five-gallon jerry can that Chris left by the door. She pops the cap, hauls it as high as she can manage and sprinkles gasoline.

  Tess sloshes the fuel liberally in the kitchen, bedrooms, bathroom and then pauses as she enters the lounge area. There’s an order to things and she doesn’t want to mess up.

  She puts the can down, takes the rucksack outside to the RV and throws it in the passenger side of the cab. She slips the keys into the ignition and pauses for a second to think of anything she’s missed.

  There isn’t.

  She plans to walk back inside, put a cushion around her gun, and then shoot the kid in the head. After that, she’ll empty the rest of the jerry, light a match and torch the place to get rid of any forensic traces. While the shack’s burning she’ll be driving. Before it’s even extinguished she’ll be at the airport. With any luck, by the time they start asking the serious questions, she’ll already be back in LA mixing a cocktail for Chris.

  All she has to do now is go back inside and pull the trigger.

  164

  FBI HQ, SAN FRANCISCO

  Sandra Donovan has no choice but to call Stockton’s Chief of Police. What she’d most like to do is locate whatever squad car is nearest San Joaquin Hospital and get the officers sent over there as fast as possible. But there are protocols and chains of command to respect.

  The chief assures the assistant director that he fully understands the urgency of getting officers there until her agents arrive. As soon as she hangs up, he stresses the very same point to his deputy, who in turn undertakes to get on the case straight away.

  The deputy calls his watch commander who then alerts his two strategic operations commanders. And so, fifteen minutes after Sandra Donovan’s call, a cruiser eventually rolls out of Police HQ in East Weber Avenue bearing senior patrolmen Darren Ratcliffe and Tony Emery.

  As they hit the freeway they are less than fifteen minutes away from the hospital, more like ten if Emery puts his foot to the floor, like he usually does. Only yesterday, he got a reprimand for driving too fast and dangerous, so he’s not going to be dumb enough to make that mistake again.

  165

  LONDON

  Two of the tac team carry Mitzi out of the apartment block and into a private ambulance.

  Dalton rides with her and calls for a clean-up squad to put the building back the way it was, before they sprayed it with thunderflashes and bullets.

  He finishes the call and leans over Mitzi. ‘Stupid question, but how are you feeling?’

  ‘Like shit in a blender.’ She thinks of what she just said. ‘Scrub that. I never want to hear the word shit again.’

  ‘We have a hospital near Temple. Doctors are on standby to check you out.’

  ‘I don’t care. I just want to speak to my girls.’ She tries to sit herself up and falls back, wincing with pain.

  ‘Relax. I’ve called the FBI and they’ve got people on their way to Stockton where Amber called you from.’

  ‘Have you found Jade?’

  ‘Not yet. We still don’t know where she is, and nor do your colleagues. But we’re working together on it.’

  Mitzi’s spirits sink. The whole point of her going in there and surrendering to those damned people, was to buy the time necessary to recover both her girls. She looks to Dalton. ‘You got a phone?’

  He holds one out.

  ‘Call that hospital for me; I have to talk to Amber.’

  He gets reception, then ER, then the administrator and finally Mitzi’s daughter. ‘Amber, hold on, I’m going to put your mom on the line.’ He passes the handset to Mitzi.

  ‘Baby, is that you? Are you all right?’

  ‘I guess.’ The teenager is sat beside Betty Lipton waiting for a doctor. ‘My hand aches in a really weird way. It’s like all my finger’s still there and someone’s squeezing it in pliers or something.’

  Mitzi feels her heart break. ‘Be strong, honey. Have they given you anything for the pain?’

  ‘Yeah, they’re being real nice, Mom.’ There’s an awkward silence and then she adds, ‘ Mom, I’m sorry about what happened. They just grabbed us – I had no time to shout to Jade or —’

  ‘Baby, you’ve got nothing to be sorry for. You’re safe now, that’s all that matters. I’m still in London but I’ll be on a plane real soon and with you in less than half a day.’ She looks to Dalton for reassurance and he gives her a silent nod.

  ‘I love you, honey. I love you so much and I’m coming home to look after you and make sure you are all right.’

  ‘I love you too, Mom.’ She can’t hold back the tears now. Tears of relief. Tears of trauma.

  ‘Don’t cry, sweetheart, you just hang in there now. Get some rest and do whatever the doctors tell you. You hear me?’

  ‘Yeah. Yeah, I do.’ She blows her nose on a tissue the nurse passed her. ‘Mom, is Jade all right?’

  ‘She’s going to be fine as well.’ She looks up at Dalton but this time there’s no reassuring nod. ‘We’re Fallon women, aren’t we? And you know us girls always come out winners.’

  166

  SAN JOAQUIN HOSPITAL, STOCKTON

  There’s an empty seat in the ER waiting room, three rows back, four seats from the end. Chris Wilkins slides his big frame onto the grey plastic.

  It’s the perfect place to sit and watch.

  He hears names being called. Sick people hobble into curtained cubicles to see exhausted medics. Trolleys pass, bearing horizontal patients and vertical drip stands. Minute by minute the scene repeats itself.

  He watches and listens. Finally, he sees her. A nurse has an arm around Amber and a suited woman is on her other side, guiding her down the corridor.

  Wilkins drops the newspaper he hasn’t been reading and tags along. Overhead signs signal different departments. He hangs back to avoid being seen.

  Part way down a corridor they head into an area marked X-RAY.

  Wilkins walks slowly along the passage and stands in the doorway. The department is jammed with people waiting to be scanned. The woman in the suit speaks to the receptionist and they’re told to go straight on through.

  Wilkins steps into the corridor and checks his escape routes. Either back the way he came, or through a door marked Emergency Exit. By his reckoning, the latter will bring him out close to the staff parking lot and the car he’s broken open.

  He walks into X-Ray reception and keeps his head down and face away from the nurse behind the desk.

  As h
e approaches the closed theatre doors, he hears her call after him, ‘Excuse me, sir. You can’t go in there.’

  He pushes a door open.

  Two women turn and stare at him. His eyes flit across the room. The Fallon girl isn’t there. He can’t see her anywhere.

  A nurse approaches him. ‘You need to wait outside, sir.’ She puts her right arm on his shoulder and tries to usher him out.

  He shakes her off. ‘Where’s the girl? The girl you were with?’

  The comment sparks the suited-woman into life. ‘Who are you?’

  He shifts his jacket so they see his gun. ‘I’m a federal agent. I’ve been sent to protect her.’

  They both look relieved.

  ‘She’s just using the washroom,’ says the nurse. Her face lights up as over his shoulder she spots her returning. ‘Here she is now.’

  Amber catches the nurse’s eye. And a glimpse of the man. She recognizes him instantly.

  He starts to turn.

  Amber grabs the handles of a wheelchair by the door and runs it hard into him. Extended metal foot rests smash into his shins. Wilkins loses balance and falls.

  ‘It’s him!’ screams Amber. ‘The man who took me.’ She runs from the theatre.

  Wilkins has lost neither gun nor focus. He scrambles to his feet. The charge nurse bars the doorway.

  Wilkins shoots her in the chest and steps over the body.

  There are screams all around him. He shuffles out into the waiting room, his right ankle burning with pain. Scared patients jam up the reception. ‘Get the fuck outta my way!’ He raises the gun and they clear his path.