Caleb sat in a cell five feet high, four feet wide and six feet long.
Dimensions designed to force a detainee to crouch while standing and curl up while sleeping. The purpose of the cell was punishment as much as containment.
A simple mattress sat on a bedframe. There were no sheets or coverings, and the mottled bedding was a landscape of stains that resembled a marine map of an island chain. The only other item in the room was a toilet, which lacked both a lid and a seat and whose blue water stared at him indecently.
Waterman stood with his arms crossed, leaning against the door. Outside, an armed guard stood watching, automatic weapon slung across his chest, hand gripping the base.
‘Why, Caleb? Just tell me why?’
‘You were looking for the girl all the time, weren’t you?’
Waterman exhaled noisily.
‘We had nothing to do with Tara’s death.’
‘Didn’t you?’ replied Caleb. ‘Are you telling me that you didn’t know Tara was on the list? You knew she had nothing to do with the girl.’
Waterman took a step closer to Caleb, his voice dropping.
‘Look, Caleb. This is serious. You just hacked into GCHQ. You could be in a cell like this for the next fifteen years. I’m sorry for what happened to Tara, but her problems started long before she appeared on that list.’
Caleb stared at Waterman. He was remembering now what had kindled and then stoked the schism between him and his old friend. Below the bluff, kindly, big-bear exterior, there was a hardness to Waterman. A flint-like core that would not be tempered by appeals to friendship or emotion. Caleb realized it was what made him so suited to being a spy.
‘I’ll make you an offer,’ continued Waterman. ‘You tell me what you learned about the girl, and I’ll see if I can get them to drop the charges.’
Caleb considered this. He didn’t doubt the sincerity of the offer. The country had gone to its highest threat level once this girl was suspected of being the attacker of the base. Waterman would do everything in his power to find her. And whatever anger Caleb had for Waterman right now, he knew he had to get out of this cell.
Caleb sat into the creamy leather seat of his Range Rover. His infiltration of GCHQ had not been successful. He had not found any candidates with high intuitive ability and, as a result, his business was likely sunk. But, strangely, the thought didn’t trouble him. He felt as if his obsession with work was behind him, as if he had come out of orbit from the dark side of the moon. He had a new purpose now.
He was going to find the girl.
He had told Waterman most of what he knew. That the girl trained at such an early age she would feel her childhood had been taken from her. That she would want to find the person responsible. And that this was likely the man in the video, Dobbs. He didn’t tell Waterman that none of this came from a reading of the girl. In all but one respect, she remained impregnable to his skills. His deductions came from the way the others in the room had interacted with the girl, picking what he could from their responses.
Before Caleb pressed the ignition, he opened the glove compartment and pulled out a pen and paper, writing down the information he had memorized while he was in the silo room. It was details he had found, shortly after hacking Dobbs’ personnel file and discovering he was dead. They pertained to his supervisor, the watcher behind the screen for whom the video was made. He would be the girl’s quarry.
There was one thing he had managed to deduce about the girl. It was obvious to him but he was sure Waterman and the others had not picked up on it. And knowing it meant Caleb had to find her before they did.
Waterman stood in the large reception room of GCHQ, hands in his pockets, ruminatively biting his lip, watching Caleb’s car drive away.
He knew Caleb was hiding something from him, that Caleb had made a discovery while he was in that room he was not sharing. Waterman had considered leaving him in the cell, sweating him for longer. But it would be a distraction. The clock was ticking and, anyway, Caleb didn’t have a monopoly on intuition. Waterman had a hunch about Orpheus too. She would come here, to GCHQ. Dobbs was dead, and Salt was the only remaining agent from Operation Orpheus still living. She would hit him here, at their base. She’d taken out the drone unit, their aerial support from the sky, which had almost killed her last week, and F Squad, the only military unit at their unique disposal to defend them. The hunt ended here.
He needed to increase security at the facility.
He let his eyes slide over from the road to the green hills that surrounded the facility.
Somewhere out there Orpheus was waiting, biding her time. Where was she hiding?