THERE WAS a tightness in Mrs. Burrows’s chest as she strode up the hill a day later. She took a series of deep breaths to try to quell her rising anxiety. You’ll be fine. This will soon be over, she tried to reassure herself. Yeah, one way or another, came the unwelcome response from somewhere else in her head.
Although she hadn’t said anything to Drake, she was scared stiff. From what she’d heard about the Styx, she knew she was up against an adversary capable of the most savage acts imaginable. An adversary that would think nothing of killing anyone that got in its way. And she felt thoroughly unprepared, as if she’d been dropped between the battle lines of a war in some foreign land and hadn’t the slightest idea where the enemy was lurking.
She consoled herself that at least she was doing her bit to help Will. He was probably already deep in the bowels of the earth, where he might be facing the megalomaniac twins again. This thought didn’t do much to ease Mrs. Burrows’s state of mind. She should have fought tooth and nail to stop him from going back. But she hadn’t, and her remorse was so strong it was like a physical pain in her gut. It had been criminal to ask so much from someone so young, and she found that hard to live with.
A small yapping dog drew Mrs. Burrows’s attention and she looked down the slope to the base of the hill. She sought out the animal, then located its owner, who was throwing a ball for it. As she continued to walk briskly up the gravel path, she ran her eyes over the rest of the scene, scrutinizing the other people there that afternoon.
About a hundred feet away, two teenage girls were sitting next to each other on the side of the hill, a blanket spread beneath them. They didn’t show any interest in Mrs. Burrows, or anyone else for that matter, their noses buried in their books. Then she caught loud voices and located a trio of tramps on a bench down by the east side of the hill, which was just now coming into view as she continued up the slope. They were passing around a half bottle of something and smoking. Drake had told her the Styx sometimes posed as vagrants, so she kept her eyes on them for several seconds. She remembered the images of the thin Styx and stocky Colonists caught on Leatherman’s surveillance films. No, the tramps appeared to be the real thing. Indeed, no one looked out of place, no one looked suspicious.
She checked the time.
2:55.
Five minutes to go.
Perhaps she was just working herself up over nothing. Maybe the important Styx whom Drake was hoping to grab had rumbled what he and Leatherman were up to and wasn’t going to make an appearance. So be it, she told herself. If this operation was all a waste of time, then she should just try to enjoy a pleasant afternoon in the setting of the Common as best she could. But as she closed her hand around the phials in her pocket, she found it impossible to relax.
The situation was far too fantastic for that.
It was as though her life had been ratcheted up into some hyperreality over the last six months. First her quiet existence had been capsized as her husband had taken off on his wild caper. Then, at Humphrey House, just as she felt she’d been waking from a deep slumber and had the chance to regain some measure of control over her destiny, both Will and her fake daughter — or daughters — had gone missing. She’d been cast into a situation as wild and improbable as the films she used to rent on DVD, but usually discarded before she’d watched them all the way through.
2:58.
“Everything OK?” Drake’s voice sounded from the tiny transmitter in her ear, as clear as if he was standing right beside her.
“Yes,” she answered as she reached the rough patch of pavement on the apex of the hill. Strolling casually around the drinking fountain, she rechecked the lower ground from her elevated viewpoint. As she peered down the north side of the hill, a man in a skimpy vest and running shorts jogged past the dilapidated bandstand, next to which an elderly couple were standing. It all looked completely innocent. She raised her hand to her mouth as if she was touching her chin, and spoke into the microphone pinned inside her sleeve. “Looks all clear,” she reported to Drake. “Nothing. Not a sausage.”
3:00.
“And it’s the witching hour,” she added.
“Just keep your eyes peeled,” he said.
By the entrance to the Common, Drake was in a battered van along with Leatherman and two hired hands — former soldiers from Leatherman’s old regiment. On the floor of the van there were three black-and-white television monitors with wireless feeds from cameras rigged in the trees around the hill. Leatherman and his comrades were watching them carefully. “Missing the racing on the other channel,” one of the soldiers grumbled in phony regret, but his eyes were glued to the grainy picture of Mrs. Burrows on the screen nearest to him.
Drake consulted his wristwatch. “3:02. Looks like a no-show,” he said disappointedly.
“Give it a little longer,” Leatherman suggested. “Slowly, slowly, catchy monkey.”
Drake nodded. “Let the teams know we’re maintaining position,” he said. Leatherman switched his handheld radio to a different frequency and communicated with the other soldiers in the dugouts, as Drake went back to watching through the rear window of the van with his binoculars.
Mrs. Burrows strolled very slowly around the drinking fountain. She heard a distant droning high above her. A passenger jet was advancing slowly across the sky, leaving a white-crayon trace behind it. I’d give anything to be on that, she thought wistfully.
3:05.
A man in a bright red tracksuit shot along one of the lower paths on a racing bike. The elderly couple were on the move, making their way up the hill and toward Mrs. Burrows in shambling steps. She began to pay them more attention. The old woman was pushing a wheeled shopping cart while the man seemed very doddery. He was hanging on to the old woman’s arm and also leaning heavily on a walking stick in his other hand. The couple’s progress was so labored that Mrs. Burrows crinkled up the side of her mouth. Hardly your typical murderous Styx.
“Got a pair of old age pensioners heading my way. Otherwise as quiet as … as … as a very quiet place,” Mrs. Burrows said into the microphone as she pretended to adjust her hair.
She heard Drake’s laugh in her earpiece. “Roger that,” he said.
“Leave my husband out of it,” Mrs. Burrows replied immediately, chuckling outrageously as she got some of the tension out of her system.
3:08.
A persistent fly alighted on her forehead, and she automatically swiped at it.
She went to the opposite side of the fountain and glanced down the south side of the hill. The man and his dog had moved on from the lower path and in their place she could see someone else strolling along, but he was walking away from the hill. Then she sought out Drake’s van. She could just about see the tinted window where she knew he’d be watching. Then she stepped sideways toward the east and looked at the two teenage girls, who were both still immersed in their books. The fly buzzed in her ear, and she wafted it away. She went farther around the fountain. The elderly couple were slowly but surely approaching, the man looking extremely frail, as if he would topple over if it wasn’t for the support his companion was giving him.
She heard shouting and swearing. She crossed to the east side. Two of the tramps were leaving. The third was still on the bench. All of a sudden he was on his feet and waving his fists threateningly at the others. He followed after them in a reeling walk. She kept her eye on the group as they went past Drake’s van. Not Styx, Mrs. Burrows told herself again.
She saw a woman on the lower path with two sizeable Afghan hounds — lanky, long-legged dogs that looked as though they were wearing furry pantsuits.
The fly buzzed close to her eye, making her blink.
“Stupid thing!” she exclaimed.
“What was that?” Drake asked, his voice concerned.
“Only a fly,” she said.
She heard a squeak, squeak.
It was coming from the wheels on the old woman’s cart. Mrs. Burrows crossed to the north side of the fountain. The elderly couple was thirty feet away and closing, but at a snail’s pace.
Mrs. Burrows walked nonchalantly around the fountain, scanning the slopes again.
3:11.
“Got company — the wrinklies are up here with me now,” she said to Drake.
“Yes, we can see them from a tree cam, and two teams have got scopes on them,” Drake said. “They’re the wrong side of the fountain for me to have eyes on them.”
“Don’t worry — think I can cope with them,” Mrs. Burrows said confidently into the microphone. She lowered her arm as the elderly couple came around the side of the fountain — she didn’t want them to catch her having a conversation with her sleeve.
Squeak, squeak. The shopping cart wheels. Accompanied by the steady tap of the old man’s walking stick on the pavement.
Mrs. Burrows pulled her shoulders back and inhaled deeply, trying her utmost to look as if she was up there to enjoy the fresh air. Slowly releasing the breath, she gave the elderly couple a sidelong glance, then looked away hastily. The old woman had been watching her. Through the lenses of her spectacles she had hard little eyes.
The fly swooped in front of Mrs. Burrows’s face again, but this time she didn’t bother to swat at it.
Her senses quickened.
She glanced back at the old woman.
The old woman’s white hair was a tangle of tight curls, as if it had recently been permed. She had a small mouth, with a top lip that was overstretched by her false teeth. It made her look vicious and angry. Mrs. Burrows averted her eyes, then raised them again, but this time turned her attention on the old man. He could have been in his eighties, and seemed to have something — Mrs. Burrows assumed they were hearing aids — plugged into both ears. He met Mrs. Burrows’s gaze full on. He narrowed his eyes as if he resented her scrutiny. She immediately turned away, then took several unhurried steps as she tried to maintain her façade of nonchalance.
She told herself she was being silly — that they were merely an old married couple out on the Common for their constitutional. Or on their way to bingo, or to the shops. But something nagged at her, and she turned slowly back to them.
The old man was bending over the cart. Now that she was able to see it clearly, it was bigger than she would have expected — far bigger than the average shopping cart wheeled daily along the sidewalks of any main street. It was rectangular, and instead of the usual bright tartan or florid flowery fabric, it was covered in a dun brown material. It also had sturdier wheels than she remembered from similar carts.
The fly settled on Mrs. Burrows’s cheek, but she didn’t notice it.
She was staring directly at the old woman, who appeared to be putting hearing aids in both ears, just like her partner had in his.
As the old woman finished this, she looked straight back at Mrs. Burrows.
“Good afternoon,” Mrs. Burrows said pleasantly, a little embarrassed that she’d been caught so obviously staring at the woman.
“Think you’re so clever, don’t you?” the old woman snarled. Mrs. Burrows didn’t respond. For the tiniest instant, she asked herself if the old woman was addressing the comment to her partner — it was the sort of sour remark that might pass between a married couple of such advanced years.
But then she saw that the old man, still leaning over the cart but with his face toward her, had a finger poised as if he was about to press a button.
Was it a bomb?
There and then, Mrs. Burrows recognized him.
“Oscar Embers!” she gasped. He’d been one of her husband’s Saturday helpers at the museum. And Will had said he was a Styx agent. That meant the old woman was probably —
“Tant … Tant … Tantrum!” Mrs. Burrows choked as she struggled to recall her name.
“Say again,” Drake crackled in her ear. “What did you —?”
3:13
“Con … CONTACT!” Mrs. Burrows managed to scream at the top of her lungs.
Black-clothed soldiers leaped up from their positions all around the base of the hill.
“Come on, man!” Drake shouted as one of the soldiers fumbled to open the rear doors of the van. Leatherman moved in to take over. He heaved the soldier aside to get at the handle himself, but precious seconds had been lost.
“Fools!” Oscar Embers exclaimed as, smiling, he pressed a button on the top of the cart.
A low tone cut through the air, quickly building in volume.
With Drake’s frantic voice in her ear, Mrs. Burrows braced herself. Her first thought was that there was going to be an explosion — it had to be some sort of bomb in that cart. Her second thought was that she was too close to escape the blast.
She was done for.
As it grew so loud that Mrs. Burrows’s teeth were vibrating, the tone dropped an octave, then another, then several more, until it couldn’t even be heard as a rumble. Her eyes rolled up into her head as she had the sensation that a knife was being dragged down her spinal cord, making each of her limbs twitch uncontrollably. The sound, beyond the limits of human hearing, was unbearable.
Then Oscar Embers hit another button.
The fabric panels on the sides of the cart were blown off, revealing a chunk of machinery. Its sides were gloss-black, inset with concave dishlike hollows of varying sizes that appeared silvery, like liquid mercury.
There had been an explosion, but not one that Drake or the soldiers would have recognized:
Mrs. Burrows was flung unconscious to the ground.
A concussive wave had been thrown out by the device, an invisible wall of subaudible sound that only affected living things.
To a man, the soldiers who had emerged from the dugouts were dropped where they stood. The woman and her Afghan hounds were knocked insensible. The two teenagers reading their books simply keeled over on their blanket. A small flock of starlings fell to the grass around them, caught by the pulse of sound as it radiated skyward.
The few occupants of the houses on Broadlands Avenue at that time of day were similarly affected, collapsing to the floor. And a number of cars within the blast radius either came to a halt or drifted into parked vehicles at the side of the road as their drivers blacked out.
Unable to get the doors open in time, Drake, Leatherman, and the two soldiers lay slumped in a tangle of limbs in the back of the van.
“Enough,” the old Styx ordered as he appeared on the top of the hill beside Oscar Embers and Mrs. Tantrumi. Oscar Embers turned off the device. “Get clear before the Topsoil police arrive,” the old Styx ordered as he yanked out his earplugs. There was no need for them now.
His ankle-length black leather coat creaked as he stepped over to where Mrs. Burrows lay in a crumpled heap. But he didn’t pay attention to her, instead watching the Styx Limiters scuttling out over the areas below like a swarm of cockroaches. Then, as a pair of Limiters ran up the hill toward him, he waved them over to Mrs. Burrows. She was out cold, her head hanging forward on her chest as they hoisted her up between them.
“Wait,” he barked. “Search her.”
One of the Limiters found the pair of phials in her pocket and held them up so the old Styx could see. He nodded. “Good. Get them tested, and take her to the Hold.” Then he walked around the water fountain, monitoring his men’s progress as they dragged away the unconscious soldiers. Other Limiters were kicking in the dirt around the dugouts where the soldiers had been hiding, and removing the surveillance cameras from the trees. No trace of the operation would be left by the time they had finished.
Returning to the south side of the hill, the old Styx peered down at the van by the entrance to the Common — the Limiters hadn’t got to it yet, but the rear doors seemed to be open. He was sure that they’d been shut before the weapon had been powered down.
Something wasn’t right.
And as he watched he could have sworn he caught a fleeting glimpse of a tall, thin figure by the van — it certainly looked like one of his own people, but it was wearing black. He frowned.
That couldn’t be.
He was the only Styx there that afternoon not in Limiter combat uniform.
He began to hurry down the gravel path to investigate for himself.
Leatherman had just turned the handle on the rear doors as the wave of sound engulfed the van. Once Mrs. Burrows had used the trigger word, there was no question in his or Drake’s mind that they were under attack.
The van hadn’t provided any shielding against the subsonic wave. If anything, it had concentrated the effect on its occupants. Within less than a second of Oscar Embers activating the device, Drake had passed out, with Leatherman and the two soldiers dropping beside him.
So Drake didn’t see the man wearing the twin earpieces that Mrs. Burrows had mistaken for hearing aids as he wrenched open the doors and climbed into the van. And he felt nothing as this man, who he would have identified immediately as a Styx, located his limp body from among those of Leatherman and the soldiers, and carried him to a waiting car.
And Drake didn’t know until later how fortunate he’d been. That he and Mrs. Burrows would be the only two to live out the day.
