by Andy Lucas
‘I’ll have our pharmaceutical arm contact you immediately,’ promised McEntire. ‘They will know which drugs are best suited to your problem and they will ship as many doses as you need.’
‘That might run into the millions, in a worst case scenario.’
‘Then millions is what you’ll get.’
Munambe was genuinely taken aback by the generosity of such a powerful, global business icon. That would cost his company many millions of pounds.
‘And the antibiotic shipments will need to be kept secret,’ Munambe explained. ‘We can’t cause panic.’
‘I agree. Your cover story about a flash, anti-poaching operation is a brilliant idea but it will soon be picked apart if anyone gets wind of human fatalities. On that note, has this new outbreak hit any villages yet?’
‘No, thankfully. There are a couple of villages not too far from the infected herds but we’ve managed to evacuate them. If this is the last outbreak, we can contain it without any more human deaths.’
‘Now that all depends on where these outbreaks are coming from, don’t you think?’
Their call was interrupted by a knock at his door. Irritated, Munambe snapped a curt order to enter. Kaoni apologised as he entered, carrying a brown paper package that was heavily taped and stamped with the brand of a secure courier company.
‘This just arrived for you sir. The message with it says it must be delivered immediately.’
Munambe’s anger subsided as quickly as it had erupted. ‘Thank you, Kaoni.’ He took the package with his free hand, still using the other to hold the telephone up to his ear. His assistant nodded and withdrew, quietly closing the office door behind him.
‘Problem?’ McEntire asked.
‘No, not at all. I just had an urgent package delivered to me.’
‘Ah, excellent,’ chuckled McEntire. ‘My gift has arrived.’
‘Gift?’
‘Yes. You need to open it and follow the instructions, understand? Do it now. Goodbye.’
The call was cut at McEntire’s end, which took Munambe by surprise. Wasting no time he tore open the packaging to find a metal box inside, about the size of a paperback book. A small clip secured it, which he unlatched. Opening the lid, he saw a sleek, modern mobile telephone, a charger and a small, grey envelope. They were the only contents.
Tearing open the envelope, Munambe’s eyes opened wide as he read the brief set of instructions. Following them, he turned on the phone and waited for it to spring to life, which it did immediately. Already charged and set up specifically for him to use, he keyed a code into the touch screen and then hit a pre-set number key. The phone was answered within two rings at the other end.
‘Good to hear from you again,’ said McEntire. ‘Now we can talk freely. The phone in your hand is one of a new batch of encrypted devices. All my top people use them. They are completely unbreakable. Even the NSA, GCHQ and their opposite numbers around the world have no chance of cracking the encryptions.’
‘Why do we need to talk on a super-secret telephone? And won’t any call be tracked by the mobile service?’
‘This isn’t a mobile phone, although I know it looks like one,’ McEntire explained. ‘It’s a satellite phone, which uses a number of my company’s own satellites. Nobody is going to overhear us.’
‘So,’ Munambe began, ‘I now need to know what the hell is going on.’
‘Solomon,’ McEntire soothed. ‘This situation needs very careful handling because I can tell you now this new strain of bubonic plague that you’re dealing with is not naturally occurring. Not any more, anyway.’
‘Go on.’
‘This is all being generated by humans, for a reason.’
Munambe sighed, exhaling ever so slowly. ‘You’re talking about ARC?’
‘Yes.’
‘Okay,’ Munambe stiffened in his seat. ‘Tell me everything.’ Which Doyle McEntire then proceeded to do.
17
Keeping herself occupied was the original reason for following up the historical background, with Charlene. After hearing news that James was still alive, Sarah wasn’t able to simply sit around in the floating habitat waiting for news.
It had seemed fairly straightforward. Charlene had left home to attend college. ARC seemed intent on killing her, which was crazy. The only link she had to the long-deceased Paul Pringle was in her DNA. He had died long before she’d been born. They had never met; they could never have met.
One interesting fact that Charlene had spilled, on one of their many deep conversations over wine, was that her mother became the custodian of a box of family heirlooms after her grandmother died. Passed down since Paul Pringle’s day, she had kept it safe until she died. Then, by default, it had come to Charlene.
‘And you truly never looked inside it?’ wondered Sarah, enjoying the relentless monotony of the motorway. ‘I can’t believe that you weren’t curious. As a kid, anything in a secret box would have driven me mad. I’d have had to look inside the minute I got my hands on it.’
‘I never got my hands on it,’ said Charlene, sat in the passenger seat next to her, with her bare feet propped up comfortably on the dashboard. At such an angle, the hem of her summer dress had slipped right down to the crease of her hip, revealing the intricate artistry of her red and gold Chinese dragon tattoo on her right thigh. ‘When mum died, we hadn’t been on speaking terms for a long time.’ Charlene’s face grew distant for a moment, as she remembered the better times she and her mother had shared together. ‘I regret that now, more than anything.’
She glanced at Sarah, who caught a look of genuine sadness on the young face, her eyes flashing as though she needed Sarah to believe her. Sarah smiled encouragingly. ‘This happens,’ she said. ‘Families fall out all the time. Sometimes they have the luxury of time, you know, to make it up. Other times, they don’t. And I’m really sorry you did not get that time.’
‘It was my own fault,’ Charlene continued. ‘I was a stroppy teenager who had no reason to be so hateful. Even now,’ she added, ‘I don’t understand why I was so horrible to the people who cared about me. I just couldn’t see them for what they were, I guess. Always felt they were meddling, and messing with me, when all they were trying to do was stop me making all the mistakes that I went on to make.’
‘You were young, you still are,’ said Sarah. ‘We all make mistakes when we’re young.’
‘Anyway, my so-called friends were all I could think about. One, in particular, opened my eyes to things I could not have imagined.’
Sarah half expected a stream of guilty confessions about drugs and booze to flood out. She was very surprised when Charlene failed to mention these.
‘At school, I rebelled at everything. Played truant a lot. I told every teacher that I hated their lessons before I’d even opened a book,’ she admitted. ‘Had so many fixed term exclusions that I spend more time at home, or roaming the streets, than I ever spent in school. Finally they threatened to expel me, which was fine by me. Luckily a new girl came to the school just in time.’
‘I thought you did well at school, and were some kind of academic whizz-kid?’ puzzled Sarah.
‘Oh I was,’ replied Charlene. ‘This was when I’d just started at secondary school. I was only twelve years old when they wanted to send me to a pupil referral unit.’
‘A what?’
‘That’s the modern, polite name for a school for naughty children.’
‘Okay,’ said Sarah. ‘So, you were going off the rails at twelve but then this girl started who helped you turn it all around, right?’
Charlene nodded, a soft smile now etching her lips. ‘Her name was Sophie. I mean, it still is Sophie,’ she laughed. ‘She’s not dead.’
‘So, what did she show you that was so great?’
‘Art mainly,’ Charlene admitted. ‘She had a passion for it, and not the utter crap that they fawn over at the Tate Modern. She lived with her dad, after her mum took off with his best friend. They were very clos
e. He was a fire-fighter, who worked shifts, so he would often have time off in the day, especially in the school holidays. He was a lovely man. Huge, like a giant, but ever so gentle. I never heard him raise his voice to her,’ she remembered fondly. ‘Well, he loved art and history and we all ended up going to amazing museums together, time and again. We even went to Paris one weekend. It was wonderful.’
‘Is that all? Just art?’
Charlene shook her head. ‘No. Sophie truly saved me. She got my head back into the game, at least at school. Even she could not open my eyes to how caring my mum, and grandparents really were but she made me realise that if I wanted to have options, as an adult, I would need to work at school.’
‘So you did?’
‘Yes, and I fell in love with mathematics, thank God.’
‘Anything else?’
‘She showed me love and, in turn, I fell for her. When we were young, it was like having a sister. We were as thick as thieves. We tried our first cigarette together, behind the cafe in the park, and learned that Diamond White was a cheap, easy way of getting hammered. She got into puff, for a while, but that stuff always makes me heave so I steered clear. In the end, she grew out of it too.’
‘Cherished memories,’ said Sarah, understanding completely. ‘She sounds like a great girl.’
‘I was lucky to have her. As we got older, it just seemed natural to be together physically. It wasn’t about rebellion, or shocking anybody,’ she said. ‘We were in love.’
‘What happened? You were living alone in your flat.’
‘Being gay doesn’t change the inevitable heartbreak of first love,’ Charlene smiled softly. ‘We ended up wanting different things. I needed to stay here and study my passion; she decided to go travelling with some of her artist friends. That was three years ago now. The last I heard, she was living in Melbourne.’
‘You didn’t go after her. Why not? You clearly still have feelings for her.’
Charlene pondered the question. Her answer was simple. ‘When it’s over, you have to let it go.’
They lapsed into silence and before long, arrived at the house. It had not been visited for months and cobwebs were beginning to form at the edges of the boarded-up windows. Looking forlorn and forgotten, Charlene’s family home did not resemble the vibrant, laughter-filled place that she so fondly remembered from childhood. The laughter had turned to tears as she reached her teens when her stepfather had developed an aggressive form of prostate cancer while he was still only in his early forties.
His death had been protracted and awful to witness, leaving her fatherless for the second time in her life and having to try and prop up her devastated mother too.
Time had healed the worst of the wounds, it was true, but her mother never got over it. She was still a young woman but she shunned all thoughts of finding love again after losing another love of her life. Charlene was sure there were men, from time to time, but nobody that she was ever introduced to. Her mother just had a number of friends over the years.
Now she was with him, at least, wherever the dead went to after they discarded their physical form. With her loving grandparents also gone, all that Charlene had left was the house and its ghosts.
The gravel drive still swept up impressively to the large detached building. The lawn was terribly overgrown and the once dutifully manicured shrubberies were thick with thistles and brambles. Without human occupants to scare them away, moles had moved in and the long, thickly bending grass was pocked in dozens of places with brown mounds of displaced earth.
Getting out of the car, Charlene sucked in a lungful of the salty air and smiled at Sarah, who joined her. Together, they looked at the beautiful front door, made from polished cherry and adorned with brass fittings. Glassless, it spoke of unassuming class, and beckoned them closer.
‘It’s going to be dark in there,’ Sarah said, noting that every window had been boarded up with plywood sheets. ‘Is the power still on?’
‘Yes,’ answered Charlene. ‘Well, no.’ When Sarah shot her an enquiring glance, she explained. ‘When mum died, I couldn’t afford to keep everything connected but I knew I would want the services back on again at some point. I got the gas and electricity companies to change the meters out for pre-paid ones. They come with cards.’ She rummaged in her purse and pulled out two plastic cards, both resembling credit cards. ‘These have both got fifty pounds of credit on them. All I have to do is stick them in the meters and, hey presto, we will have light and heat.’
Sarah cast an eye out across at the sea, which looked grey and flat under a thickening cloud layer. ‘Let’s get indoors then,’ she said. ‘I have a feeling we may need the heating on.’
Inside, the house looked like something from a typical episode of Scooby-Doo, with all the furniture covered in dust sheets and more cobwebs hanging in ceiling corners. It actually felt a little spooky initially, as Charlene fumbled under the stairs to get the right card in the correct meter, all the while that Sarah used the flashlight on her mobile phone to light their way.
After a couple of failed attempts and a few choice curses, the cards were accepted and the lights clicked on, bathing the entire house and instantly chasing away any sense of fear. A clicking sound also told them that the gas boiler was igniting. The central heating would soon be coming online, which they were grateful for. The house felt damp and cold.
Sarah kept having to force thoughts of James from her mind and focus on the job. She had decided to ignore calls from her father, who she was still angry with, and even Baker. Until she was finished with Charlene, she could not afford to be distracted by the risk of bad news. She would stay convinced that James was alive and that Baker, as promised, was in the process of bringing him home. That allowed to her to keep her mind on the past, and specifically, Paul Pringle.
‘Where is this box?’ she asked.
‘’Mum always kept it in the safe,’ replied Charlene. ‘Come on, let’s go and get it.’ Even she did not really want to stay in the house for long, despite the light and increasing heat from the radiators. ‘I just hope it has something useful in it, after coming all this way.’
Upstairs, in her mum’s bedroom, Charlene walked across plush pink carpet, stopping by an empty wall. Kneeling down, knowing exactly what she was looking for, her hands felt gently along the white skirting board until they felt a small depression. Pressing her finger down firmly, a faint click sounded and she was able to slide out an entire section of the skirting board, pulling it out from the wall like a drawer. Snugly fitted inside was the grey steel and circular dial lock of a small house safe.
‘Beats having it behind a painting, I suppose,’ laughed Sarah.
Charlene said nothing, instead swiftly turning the dial clockwise, then anti-clockwise, over and over again as she dialled through a complex series of numbers involving family birthdays and anniversaries. Finally, the last digit clicked and she pulled open the horizontal door, revealing a number of family treasures inside. Ignoring some papers and suede jewellery boxes, she grasped a wooden box and lifted it out. Similar in size to a small cereal box, Sarah was keen to have a look inside.
Moving over to the shrouded double bed, they both sat down as Charlene opened it up. If there were any useful bits from the past, this was where they would be.
Thirty minutes later, their spirits were in need of a boost. There were some old letters that went right back to Paul himself, sent to his wife from postings around Britain before he joined the secretive crew of the K-19. They had hoped to find something more important but without success. The letters were dull and very standard.
Charlene rang a local company that delivered the finest fresh fish and chips in the area while Sarah raided cupboards until she came upon a couple of unopened bottles of Chardonnay; dusty but perfect. When the food arrived, the smell hit them hard. Instead of the rather heavy scent of most fried food, this had a powerful smell of herbs and garlic, lovingly infused into the delicate beer batter surrounding the cod
portions. The chips were firm and crunchy, which was also a rarity for anyone who has ever eaten fish and chips from an English takeaway.
With wine adding to the experience, the disappointment began to fade.
‘Maybe there was never anything more?’ Sarah said, munching a delicious mouthful of hot fish. ‘It was a good idea, especially because ARC wanted you dead. They must think you know something, or are in possession of something.’
‘But I’m not,’ protested Charlene, draining her glass in a single, well-practised movement. ‘I was so sure that we would find something in the safe.’
‘Why were you so certain?’
‘Oh, I don’t know. Perhaps it was just because mum was always very careful to open the safe without me there. She would let me look at the contents but only when she was with me, and only after she’d spent a few minutes alone with it.’
‘As if,’ suggested Sarah slowly, ‘she was removing something that she did not want you to find?’
‘That’s what I always thought,’ admitted Charlene. ‘Perhaps something linked to Paul Pringle.’
‘But you know the code really well,’ said Sarah. ‘You could have checked the safe any time you liked. I’m sure your mum and stepdad went out and left you alone at times. Any curious child would have had a look.’
‘I was only given the code by my mum on her deathbed.’ A wistful look clouded Charlene’s eyes as she poured herself another large glass of wine. ‘I’m a genius with numbers, remember? I was never allowed to know the code before.’
‘Is everything still in the safe? Everything that you remember? Is anything missing?’
Charlene’s brow creased as she thought for a second. ‘It’s a long time since I looked in there,’ she said. ‘No. I think everything looks the same.’
‘You’re sure,’ pressed Sarah. ‘Think very carefully. If the code was important enough for your mum to tell you when she was about to die, she must have had a reason. Why waste vital, final breaths on something worthless?’
