by Karen Guyler
“But you’ll never find her without my help, and there’s a, a reason you need to, right now.”
‘You have resources,’ Eva used Nora’s reminder to quash the bolt of panicked dread that hammered through her. If the water wasn’t poisoned, Lily would have longer.
“What reason, Charles?” She tried to keep her tone even, to not let him know what his decision was doing to her.
“You need to pick her, Eva, you need to choose Lily.”
“You need my permission to do this? I don’t give it. The water, I choose safe water.” Always you, Lily, I always choose you. This way you won’t be poisoned and I’ll still find you. I promise, I’m coming, sweetheart.
“You don’t get to take this away from me.”
Eva was moving before he was. The knee brace he’d bought her, his last act of kindness to her, helping her limp towards him, a handful of steps, a mile in slow motion.
He turned away from her, lifting the flask, moving it over the opening.
Eva lunged.
She grabbed for him, reaching for his outstretched arm. In taking a jab at her, he was unbalanced. Charles dropped onto his side, holding the container upright, keeping its contents inside.
“Stop, you could get us both killed.”
She leant over him, hands outstretched. “Give it to me, it’s over.”
He shook his head. “I didn’t underestimate you, it was your choice to stay small. You could be so much more, but you’re always too worried about everyone else.”
She reached further, her fingertips a skin cell from grasping the container, from knocking it all over him. Could she do that, if that was her only choice?
But then he struck.
His foot slammed into her left knee, side on, pressure beyond the knee brace’s design, and she tumbled to the metal platform. Her leg lit up from within, a popping explosion burning every nerve ending, radiating out in waves of sweat and nausea. He twisted away from her, stood the container on the gangway while he got back onto his knees.
He picked it up and tipped it over the water.
Lily, I’m coming. Eva dragged herself upright. She’d do this for her baby girl. Straining against the effort, the agony, a shuffling half step, another.
“You’re going to do it, do it properly.” Eva pushed the flask the opposite way to Charles’ expectation, down through his gloved hands, down until the tumult beneath their feet that swallowed it.
“What did you do?” He looked horrified, as though he’d been trying to stop her from this madness.
“Where’s my daughter?” she screamed.
“Half would have been enough.” Charles stared at the rushing water that had devoured the flask.
“You got what you wanted now tell me where she is.” He leapt up and ran out of the pump room. “Where is she?” The slamming door cut off Eva’s scream.
She limped fast down the corridor, banging at the security room. Luke’s words were lost between his space and hers, deadened to nothing by the locked door. She typed a note on his phone, maximised it and held it up to the window. ‘Area jammed, water poisoned, look for an isolation switch, turn supply off, divert it.’
Luke moved to the control panels, scanning the calligraphied scrawls that meant nothing to her but thankfully something recognisable to him. Could he really be The Society?
She could still hear the rushing water as it made its way through the pipes below them in its steady swan dive beneath the city. Why wasn’t it shutting down? Addison’s bumpf had said it clearly enough, a sabotage-proof system. The flask was definitely big enough to trigger the safeguard. Why hadn’t it detected it and stopped the flow?
It was taking too long. How many thousands of litres had already sluiced through, picking up the agent and carrying it into the pipe tributaries that served a million people? And Charles, the only way she had to find Lily, was getting away.
Eva pocketed Luke’s phone and limped out of the building, the door crashing closed behind her.
Charles was nowhere.
What could she do?
She turned a slow circle in the darkness, the buildings around her were no help. All she imagined was the men, women and children in them already dying. Lily. She half-dragged in a breath that was more sob. She wouldn’t fall apart, she was the only warning, the only half-chance the people had.
Maybe half a chance might be enough.
They’d come from the south, her and Luke, when she’d believed he was on her side, but she didn’t think there was anything there that would help her now. To the north then, out of the wider junction into narrow passageways, limp-running on though she wanted to lie down and scream.
The passageway led into a tiny square where she still couldn’t see what she needed. Out of it on the opposite side, around the next corner, she barged into a moving obstacle.
He let loose a guttural stream that sounded like the swear words she might have muttered if someone had run into her.
“Sorry, pardon monsieur,” she remembered the French for excuse me.
The smile on his too close face was nothing she wanted to see. She stepped away from him, turning carefully.
“Excuse me.” She stepped to go past him, but he grabbed her.
“Why you running? We have lots of time.”
She’d left her scarf in her hiding place in the pump room, stupid, stupid, her blonde hair a beacon, Westerner here.
“You need to go home, the water is mal. L’eau is mal,” Eva mimed throwing up but he was only amused by her theatrics. She clutched her throat, mimed choking. Why wouldn’t he understand? “You will die, mourir, everyone,” she gestured around her. “Mourir. Vite. Family.”
“Pretty.” He stepped closer, a tightening noose.
“Get away from me.”
He grabbed a handful of her hair, winding his fingers into it in an obscenely personal attack, pulling her closer to him.
“When I get what I want.”
55
Walk away, Charles should just walk away, trust that his agent would do what he knew it would.
But Nancy deserved better. Hell, so did he. What he didn’t deserve was to be looking over his shoulder for the rest of his life, always running, scrambling to stay one step ahead of an unknowable assassin who would come at him in the shape of a car, a slip in a wet shower, a tangy taste in his coffee to go.
Charles needed Jed to understand why he’d done it, how else could he avenge Nancy?
The Hotel Adina looked like a stock photo, an oasis of calm beyond the traffic and hubbub of surrounding crowds. A good message reinforcement holding a summit featuring advanced water technology where a desert city could display a run of fountains leading to the grand entrance.
He’d expected security to be tight inside the hotel, but they’d thrown a ring of muscle around it that stopped him before he got past the oasis frontage.
“Name.” The man wasn’t a Mr Universe but he was somehow more intimidating for that. And the question was tricky, which name should Charles use?
“Dr Charles Buchanan.” On his rush down there he’d practised, but he couldn’t drop his royal family accent so easily, he’d been well-trained. “I’m the relief physician for President Jed Carson.” Better.
“Dr Charles Buchanan on the list?” The guard said it as though he was addressing Charles, but his lapel mic, earpiece, whichever piece of hidden technology picked up his question, relayed the answer Charles expected. “You’re not on the list, Sir.”
“Yeah, I’m never on the list. Kind of a shitty protocol, I’m not important enough to be on the list, but I have clearance to save the President’s life. I understand you’re just doing your job. Is there somewhere I can wait in the shade, in case I’m needed.”
The guard’s eyes tightened.
“It’s standard operating procedure. I’m always there in the shadows, but the other guy gets all the glory.” Charles’ childhood accent wasn’t getting any easier to conjure up, his drawl just wouldn’t
.
“ID.”
He pulled his driving licence out of his wallet, held his finger over the UK flag. “My hotel has my passport.”
The guard gave it a cursory glance. “I’ll ask them to let you in the hotel next door, they’re broadcasting the summit on a live feed.”
“Thanks, appreciate that.”
Not as grand an entrance as the star hotel of the moment, but the cool embrace of its air conditioning in the lobby was very welcome. People in, people out, ringing phones, conversations, a muted relay from the summit showing on two large screens, one behind reception, one in the vast lounge.
Charles turned Lily’s phone on to call the riad. Two rings, hang up, call right back. But the phone rang and rang on his redial, its shrilling siren muted from Charles’ end. He’d told her to answer if he called. What was she doing? She had no phone to distract her, no internet because he was pretty sure she wouldn’t know how to navigate the home screen on Terry’s ancient PC now he’d set it to display in Arabic.
He switched off her phone, he’d try again in a minute.
But there, on the TV screen, was his karma. He watched the toast to begin the summit dinner. Per Larsson speaking in subtitles Charles couldn’t read raising a glass and smiling at the assembled great and good. A water glass.
Larsson drank, the camera panned to the attendees in front of him doing the same.
He believed he’d timed it right, but had he? His agent would work fast, be strongest there before diluting downstream in a ripple effect. He’d been counting on the hotel having instructions to use the freshest water possible for the water jugs. It’s what he would have done, had he been showcasing.
Where are you, Jed? There, just in shot, swallowing his water like a good leader.
When the cameras panned back to the top table, Charles sat in one of the chairs arranged in groups around low tables and tasteful flower displays and waited.
56
“I’m trying to save your lives.” Eva ground out, her hand braceleting the wrist of the man who had hold of her. “Everyone’s going to die.”
He pulled harder at the knots in her hair.
“I really don’t have time for this.” Eva grabbed the man’s football shirt and kneed him as hard as she could with her braced knee. It didn’t protest at all at the up, down movement but he folded to the ground in a pain-pitched moan.
She ran back to a wider street where the city was more alive. She chose a woman dressed in a long tunic over trousers and a bright red hijab to ask, “Excuse me, do you speak English?”
The woman laughed. “I am English, from Peckham, ‘ere on ‘oliday.”
“Where’s the closest mosque?”
“You can’t go in dressed like that.”
But she could. “Do you speak Arabic?”
“Nah, just the Queen’s English. Nearest mosque’s that way,” the woman pointed.
Eva saw the carved stone monument of the minaret soaring over the buildings, probably only a couple of streets over.
But the entrance was closed, locked, when she tried the doors.
“You’re a hard woman to keep up with.” The English was welcome, the person speaking it wasn’t.
“If you’ve come to kill me, can you just wait until I’ve warned them about the water?” Eva backed away from Luke.
“What’re you talking about?” he followed.
“I showed you on your phone. Charles poisoned the water.”
“Not that, why would I be here to kill you?”
“Orders. Charles told me, you’re part of this group The Society.”
He made a gesture brushing aside what she said, the space between them. “You want to know what my orders are?”
She took a step backwards. He copied, a step towards her. Hers backwards, his forwards. Eva jolted up against the corner of something.
Luke took another step, Eva couldn’t move. “Gordon Stamford is the mutual friend between Addison and me. It’s how I found you, Iago tracked my phone.”
“You could just be saying that.”
“Out of all the names to choose from, I went with Iago?” He put his hands on the wall behind Eva, either side of her head, and bent towards her. His breath tickled her ear. “Vincent doesn’t know.”
Eva felt her eyes snap open, heard her own gasp.
Luke pressed back off the wall. “Nora told me that’d mean something to you. Don’t worry, she didn’t tell me what, though now I’m intrigued.” He took a half step away from her. “Believe I’m here to hurt you now? I tell a lot of lies in this job, but that isn’t one.”
Locks rattling on the inside of the building pushed her to decide. The doors to the mosque opened one at a time.
“You have to tell them to broadcast a warning about the water,” she gestured at her hair. “I can’t go in there.”
“Me either, not armed. Stand closer.” He held his right arm out and she did as instructed. “Holster’s on my left.” She slipped her arms into his warmth, understanding why he wore a jacket in the heat. He looked down at her, “I’m not giving you my weapon if I’m your enemy, am I?”
Eva shook her head. She unclipped the holster and pulled out his surprisingly heavy gun, under the cover of his closeness, tucking it into the waistband of her jeans beneath her t-shirt.
“Won’t be long.” He disappeared inside.
She stood stock still, hands hugging her stomach as though she was pregnant, holding the weapon tightly against her so it didn’t fall onto the concrete and accidentally shoot one of the people now approaching the mosque. Or get her arrested.
So much time ticked by while she waited, so much water had rushed through the pumping station. How many people was it too late for?
Lily, don’t drink the water. I’m coming.
57
The automatic doors of the hotel where Charles waited swished open to admit a man in Arab dress, two suited men behind him. Allahu Akbar wailed in with them, the call to prayer cut off when the doors closed.
Charles looked back at the footage on the TV screens and caught it.
The cameras showed the outward view of the delegates enjoying their formal dinner as if it was sited on the top VIP table. A trickle of tuxedo-ed men and glittery-dressed women were leaving their tables. It was working. He gave it a while longer, each minute a torture, longer than the previous one until he just couldn’t sit there, passive, any more.
He power walked to the Hotel Adina, moping at his forehead with his handkerchief when he presented himself to the same guard he’d spoken to earlier.
“Hey, you remember I’m the relief physician for the President of the United States? Just got a call he needs me, can I go in? Just get me in the lobby, I still have to go through the Secret Service to get anywhere near the President. Don’t sweat it, I’m used to it.”
“Sit rep?” The man asked his tech. “Status of US?. . .Roger that. Okay to send in the relief physician?. . .Sending in Dr Charles Buchanan.”
Charles nodded thanks and walked past the fountains to the entrance. As easy as that.
The sumptuous foyer was certainly a couple of notches up from next door. A man with a weathered face and thick neatly styled grey hair in an expensive suit was holding a hushed but urgent conversation with the reception staff. They were good, Charles might not have noticed anything was wrong if he didn’t know better.
“Please take a seat, Sir, I’ll be with you in a moment.” One of the man’s underlings dismissed him.
“I have been, sitting. I got an emergency summons, I’m needed right away by the President of the United States, I’m his relief physician.”
“Sir, I—”
“I get you’re busy, but the guards outside cleared me, all I need’s his room number. You all don’t want him getting sicker here now, do ya?”
The man looked at his boss, who responded faster than Charles would have credited. “Suite Fifteen, Sir.”
Security was heavy out of the lift, but Charles had expec
ted that. “Dr Charles Buchanan,” he announced, “the President’s fallen sick, I’m one of his physicians.” The guards hesitated, not briefed for this. “You won’t let me through, fine, but you go tell him because I don’t want his death on my conscience.”
“ID.”
Charles repeated the same charade. “They wouldn’t put me up in these fancy digs.” Inwardly he winced at the Britishism but arguing over whether to let him through they missed it. “I know it’s Suite Fifteen, I wouldn’t know that otherwise, would I?”
“Where’s your equipment, don’t you need a doctor’s bag?”
“We share medical equipment, too pricey for a kit each.” He pulled his driving licence away from the guard and pressed the call lift button. “Why don’t you just ask the President if I’m cleared to enter?”
Charles waited while his request was passed up the chain to their Commander-in-Chief, not sure which way his request would go.
“You can go in.” The agent said after a few minutes.
“Dr Emmanuel Seaton.” Charles heard the booming voice behind him when he was just a few steps away from the double doors with the number fifteen on them.
He turned around with a smile. “Emmanuel, didn’t realise you were in on this gig too.”
The round black man looked at Charles with the blank but not wanting to be rude look that Charles had seen so often at conferences. Charles held his hand out and withdrew it as Seaton went to grasp it.
“Sorry, force of habit, best not to, until we’re sure of what we’re dealing with. You up to date with your shots?”
“Naturally.”
“Looks like this could be a mutation of the virus that swept through these parts two years ago. I was here then, had a mild case myself. You probably need to consider full PPE, it’s pretty lethal. It showed up in Ethiopia last week. Look, I have some immunity, let me take this one. There’s a lot of people falling sick, best advice? Go to your room and wait it out.” Charles patted Seaton on the shoulder, “be good to see you again at the next conference.”
