The Society

by Karen Guyler

  She’d only just stepped onto the tarmac into the welcome warmth of the North African sun, than a call to prayer rang out, the exotic richness of voice that underlined how foreign was this city that held her daughter.

  Addison’s car pulled up outside the Hotel Adina where the G20 summit was taking place. The fountain display that welcomed them rivalled anything in Las Vegas, one desert state catching up with another. Behind the pool was a circle of security she wouldn’t want to be on the wrong side of. Each guard looked like he could take her and Luke on with one hand and half an effort.

  Porters materialised to deal with Addison’s suitcase and look questions at Eva and Luke over their lack of tipping opportunities.

  “You’re very kind, Addison. I can’t thank you enough.” Eva held her hand out to him.

  “I think we’re past that.” He leant forward and kissed her on the cheek. “I’m here until the day after the summit if you want a ride home.”

  Eva watched him pass through the security cordon and go inside, shielding her eyes from the glaring sun, looking at each of the closed windows as though she could somehow see past them into the rooms beyond to locate Lily.

  A brief conversation with the hotel reception told Luke neither Charles Buchanan, nor Maxwell Peyton, were staying there, just summit attendees and their entourages.

  Eva watched security move a couple on who were posing for their Instagram moment in front of them. She could feel the bite of the sun on her skin, its ferocity pressing on her un-hatted head, roasting her in her English winter clothes.

  “Any ideas on where they might be?” Luke asked. Eva shrugged. “You’ll be no good to Lily with sunstroke. Let’s get a mint tea while you’re thinking.”

  The mint tea was a brilliant idea, the baklava more so.

  “Not strictly Moroccan, but sugar’s always good in a crisis.”

  She didn’t need him to justify it. The sticky, nutty pastries were just what she needed.

  She twirled the longest stalk of mint in her glass. Charles didn’t know anyone there, as far as she was aware, but she’d had no idea about his friendship, or whatever it was, with Louie Steinman, so maybe scratch that from her musing.

  He could have chosen the world, why Marrakech? The G20 summit was the only thing happening there and not elsewhere. The phone call he made in the middle of the night just before he went to meet Nancy Seymour, ‘The White House Chief of Staff’s office’, how the woman had answered Eva’s redial.

  She watched the mint, letting her gaze soften, unfocus, as though she was trying to decipher one of those magic eye pictures. Charles had sounded like he knew the President, what if he did? He’d told her he’d interned in the US during his studies. The way he’d said his fake name, Maxwell Peyton, that’s what had been odd about it, he’d said it in an American accent. And his being at the charm school, at least twice.

  So he was American too, like the Professor, hiding as British. That could explain why she knew nothing about his family, why he didn’t share stories from his childhood, nothing to do with the poor memory for such trivia that he claimed. Then why he was here. . .

  No, he wouldn’t, he wasn’t a bad person. The Sherlock Holmes quote nudged at her again.

  She knew exactly why Marrakech.

  52

  The building looked wrong, out of place and time. Not even the streetlights softened the square concrete block, a cuckoo amongst much finer architectural influences, to make it anything other than ugly. It was the sort of Lego building Charles had constructed as a kid.

  In his favour, the streets around the building were almost deserted, the pious returned home from prayers, no reason for the summit delegates and their entourages milling around the Hotel Adina to leave their six star surroundings.

  Still, he let his feet drift to a stop on a street corner, make a slow turn as if he were checking for non-existent traffic. Paranoid, sure, but better safe than not. After all, Jed Carson was in the same city, breathing the same air.

  Charles had been a fool. How short-sighted to have been happy for Jed when the president died and he, as VP, succeeded him. How stupid to have felt a sense of pride that his friend was about to become a legitimate President in his own right, if the polls were the crystal ball they claimed. Even more to not have realised they had sounded the death knell for everyone who’d helped Jed attain his ultimate power trip.

  Charles pulled on the anger of his misplaced friendship and trust—at himself as much as at his now enemy—wrapping it around him. He tightened his backpack straps over his chest, drawing its contents closer to him. This was righteous, justified, this was the perfect karma. For Nancy.

  He walked up to the building as though he belonged there. The card access panel looked curiously out of place, the twenty-first century reaching into an area of timelessness. Don’t let me down, CJ. Tensing against the likelihood it would refuse him, Charles pushed the door.

  CJ hadn’t.

  Charles closed it quietly behind him, waiting while his eyes adjusted to the gloomy interior. Low-level lighting showed him a boxy inside, a reflection of what he expected given the exterior view, and the perfect representation of the plans he’d found online. Maybe that meant he could trust all the information he’d found on this place.

  He walked tiptoeing through a minefield carefully towards the danger area where the only person in the building should be.

  Painted a godawful green, at his eyeline the door held a gift - a small square inset of wire toughened safety glass. Charles tensed against seeing someone looking out of it at him and peeped in.

  A couple of TV screens to the right of the lone worker showed black and white images of the main corridor and the pump room. The guard wasn’t paying attention to any of the systems he was supposed to be monitoring, his cap was half across his face, his body leaning backwards in the chair, a newspaper dropped into his lap where his arm drooped over it.

  Charles fingertip-padded at the door. As immovable as he’d hoped. Doubly thank you, CJ, triple at the end of the corridor when the pump room door gave him access. CJ always charged too much, but today Charles was happy to pay it.

  Machinery noise welcomed him in. He wouldn’t need anything like the ten minutes CJ was giving him before he wiped the camera feeds and stopped jamming signals there.

  Most of the underground infrastructure was just that, locked safely away from sabotage, interference and for the safety of the workers. But in each pumping station in the city a succession of hatches gave access to the water beneath his feet.

  Charles snapped on the central overhead lights, plunging the machinery at the sides of the room into shadow. He pulled out a large container that could have passed as an odd thermos flask if there’d been anyone there to ask him.

  Was he really going to do this?

  What choice did he have? It came down to a simple equation, him or Jed Carson. The things they’d done had started innocently enough. Jed knew Charles never could resist an intellectual challenge, his casual ‘I bet you can’t’ was all he’d needed to say and Charles was in. And it turned out better than he could ever have dreamt.

  The cannister weighed heavier than its form, its contents. It was one thing, the piecing together of science to bend elements to his will. Playing God there, that was something else.

  He checked his watch; the timing had to be perfect.

  Jed wouldn’t honour Charles’ life, he’d find a way to negate his insurance. And now there was Lily. All it would take would be for them to hold her hostage.

  This was the only way.

  And the innocents?

  He placed the container beside him on the gangway. This would show the Nobel Committee just how urgent safe water was. How he deserved the damn prize, how his compound was a miracle worker. The money Stuart would siphon from Every Drop in safe payments would be enough to keep him and Lily hidden, running, but what kind of life was that for either of them? A better use of it was to live a good life, further his research, n
ot waste his days hiding from the long reach of Jed Carson.

  He was owed that.

  It’d be just like a drug trial. There were always some casualties but, as they furthered the scientific knowledge, everyone overlooked that.

  This was his stage, even though no one would know he was the player. Saviour, that’s what they’d call him when he swept in to tell them how he could save their water source. It would become another stream of income, payment from a grateful city.

  Charles gripped the edge of the main access hatch and pulled.

  53

  In the shadows of the tall banks of pump machinery Eva waited, breath held for Charles to prove he was the man she’d married, the man she knew, not the monster she was recording on Luke’s phone. It was taking everything she had to not rush at him screaming for Lily.

  This had been her worst case guess, she hadn’t expected him to actually dream this up, let alone do it. But he was there. Trying to open the main access hatch, beside him a container that looked far too much like the one the saboteur had used in Tirupudur.

  She stepped out from her cover. “Don’t do it.”

  “Eva?”

  “Stand up, away from the water.”

  “You don’t understand—”

  “I understand all too well.”

  He shook his head sharply, as if trying to reconcile her being here now, ahead of him.

  “I think the Moroccan authorities, the Americans, every country who sent a leader here will be very interested in you attempting to poison the water supply.”

  “You think that’s what I’m doing?”

  “I know it is. Where’s Lily?”

  “She’s safe and she’ll continue to be so, you just need to let me do what I came here to do.”

  “You want me to look the other way while you kill thousands of people?”

  “If you want to see her again, you will.”

  “You’re trading Lily for everyone else?” The wave of shock, of outrage, swamped her. Her voice shook.

  “If you want to look at it like that. I’ll give you her address when I’m done.” He gestured at the open hatch.

  “You can’t.” She worked at Luke’s phone, couldn’t help flicking a glance at the door. Where was he? He was supposed to have her back. She pressed send on the email she’d prepared that would forward the video of Charles sabotaging the water supply to everyone she thought would be interested. The starburst rolled around in its little circle, buffering, buffering. Come on.

  “You thought I’d just waltz in here unprepared? The signal’s being jammed. You can’t upload anything, your leverage is useless. Your back-up’s locked in the security room. You’re lucky.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “He’s The Society, Eva, the man you brought here. He’s probably only waiting until we’re in the same room to kill us both.”

  Luke would shoot his way out when he realised he was trapped. But what would he do then? Who would he aim at, who would he shoot? Hazel eyes looking at her then as his target? If that were true, why would he have let Eva take the real security guard’s baton when their bundle of dirham and dollars persuaded him to take a long break?

  “That’s impossible.”

  “Why do you think I knocked him out at the airport? It was a trap. I heard him calling in our false passport names.”

  “It was a security check.”

  “Confirm, Eva Janssen travelling as Sara Peyton, Lily Janssen as Madeleine Peyton, does that sound like a security check to you?”

  “That doesn’t explain why you left me behind, Charles.”

  He looked at the canister. “I didn’t appreciate you weren’t on the plane until we’d begun taxi-ing and then it was too late.”

  “So you left me with a killer?”

  “You were clearly safe, he’s after me and you brought him right to me. You surpassed yourself.” He looked at his watch.

  Eva tried to not let his words hurt, she shrugged as though it was that simple to forget them. “It was that, wasn’t it,” she gestured at the flask, “in Africa and India? Whatever’s in there?”

  He considered, nodded. “It’s genius, it’s a shame it’s come to this to convince the Committee.”

  “The Nobel Committee, this is about your nomination?”

  He half-shrugged like it wasn’t important at all. “Not entirely.” He grasped the hatch’s handle with both hands and pulled it. Hydraulics folded it neatly out of his way, the roar of the water surging beneath them, feeding the city, filled the room so Eva had to shout to pull his attention away from the tumbling dark mass.

  “Tell me then so I understand.”

  She knew he couldn’t resist the chance to show off.

  “It’s a two-stage process, the compound that I had added to your pipes, Eva, so Every Drop would be okay.” The words cut deep. She was more sure than ever that Every Drop wouldn’t be. “And an agent,” he gestured at the container. “They’re like a jigsaw, the compound creates a system at the molecular level that catches the molecules of the agent. When the agent was introduced into the water supply, the compound locked them away so they didn’t harm anyone.”

  “But without the compound. . .” Eva couldn’t say it.

  He half-shrugged, not important in his scheme of things.

  “Like I said, absolute genius. Every other agencies’ pipes let the agent through, Every Drop’s locked it away. The water they supplied stayed safe. That’s why they should never have pulled the pipes down in Tirupudur. They were saving their lives.”

  “But why? Why would you do that, risk all those people?”

  “It’s obvious.” He shook his head at her lack of intellect. “Stuart’s been laying the foundations that everyone should pay for water, Every Drop’s supply will become the gold standard and they’ll pay handsomely for access to it. My royalties will give me financial freedom.”

  His calculation was perhaps the hardest thing to bear until he hammered a final nail into their relationship. “It’s been a long time coming, to get to this point.” He checked his watch again.

  “If that’s the agent in the flask,” Eva tried to distract, “where’s the compound here?” She could read him easily enough then. “So now you’re committing genocide?”

  “You’re being overdramatic.”

  “What about Lily? What if she drinks it?”

  “I’ll tell you where she is and you can make sure she doesn’t.” He couldn’t be bargaining with her life.

  “Where is she? It’s not safe for her to be here on her own.”

  He looked at the flask.

  “Charles, please, don’t.”

  “Carson has to pay.”

  “Jed Carson,” Eva concentrated on looking confused, “what’s he got to do with this?”

  “It’s his fault they’re dead, Tony, Hunter, Nancy.” The way he said her name hurt. “We helped him out a long time ago, did things we shouldn’t have for him because he was our friend. He’s overlooked that in his rush to clean house.”

  He checked the time again, half-nodded.

  Eva placed Luke’s phone on the polished concrete floor, the starburst still spinning, her video proof going nowhere.

  Charles picked up the flask.

  Eva retrieved the security guard’s baton from beside the machinery where she’d been hiding from him, hoping he wouldn’t arrive, hoping she’d completely misunderstood everything.

  He unscrewed the top of the flask.

  She hit the safety railing with the baton. The metallic clang rang loud in the space, even over the rushing water.

  Charles jerked round to her. “What’re you doing?”

  She charged him, grabbing for the flask, aiming to knock him off balance. Smooth, slippery, he twisted up and away from her, steadying the container, keeping it upright.

  “Careful, don’t know what will happen if you get any on you.”

  “But you’re prepared for a city to drink it!” She could hardly get the wo
rds out, her anger exploded in a red rage. She lunged at him, hitting out with the baton but an agony on her forehead made her drop it. Charles leaning close enough to kiss her in a mockery of the position they’d been in hundreds of times. But this time, his free hand pressed against her stitches, making her eyes stream.

  She twisted away from him, her hands cupping around the pain radiating out from her forehead. The baton clanged on the metallic gangway until Charles stamped on it, ending its chattering.

  “Do it again and you’ll never know where Lily is.”

  “You’re not, you can’t be abandoning her.”

  “That’s your choice.”

  How could he have reconciled himself to leaving Lily alone in a strange place where she didn’t speak the language, understand the culture? “She’s eleven, you can’t, you’re her father, fathers don’t do that.”

  “Her or Carson, Eva. Choose wisely.”

  He could have just tipped it in, far crueller to throw this non-choice at her. Worse, he handed it to her almost flippantly, the same decision her father had made. Her or a stranger, knowing his Evie was safe thousands of miles away, knowing the stranger in front of him would die if he saved himself.

  Daddy, did it feel like this for you? Like your heart had shattered, like you couldn’t breathe. Like there was no choice at all?

  54

  “Well?” Charles sounded almost triumphant. He thought he knew Eva, was at least bargaining on her doing what every mother would.

  She pressed the twin of the bracelet her father had held on to when he made his choice against her wrist. Daddy, I understand.

  “You don’t need to tell me where Lily is so you can’t put that in the water.” Her voice was amazingly steady.

  He did a double-take. “You’re choosing Carson over Lily?”

  “You underestimate me, Charles, you always have.” And she’d let him. Her fingers worked the knots in her bracelet round and round. “I’m not choosing anyone over her, but I am choosing for you to not poison the water supply.”