‘You should be there.’ North could hear the tension in Plug’s voice. ‘Can you see the light? Go towards it.’
‘Since when is that a good idea?’ North muttered, scrambling upwards as he tried to keep his purchase on the smooth and slippery walls in the darkness. But Plug was right – above him there was a break in the darkness.
He peered through the air vent into Tobias’s office. It looked the same, but it felt different – no Tobias and no Syd. Keeping very still, he tuned his ears to the silence of the room – nothing. He used the pressure tool Plug had given him to pop the screws on the vent, jackknifing his body to dangle his feet out, easing the length of his legs and his waist, gripping the side with his hands to fall as softly as he could on to the floor.
‘I asked myself: “With forty-six minutes till the first computer overlord rocks into town, what is the stupidest thing North could do?”’ The Belfast accent of the one-eyed man was unmistakeable. ‘And you, North, never disappoint.’ Hone sat in an armchair in the corner of the office, one leg crossed over the other and a Browning Hi-Power steady in his hand.
Under his breath, North cursed. ‘I don’t have time to explain myself, Hone.’
Keeping his gaze soft so the one-eyed man wouldn’t pick up on his interest, North eyed the capsule lift. The small red light by the brass button was red. Had Bald Paulie been able to change the bio-ID on his lanyard yet? This could only ever work if the system read him as Tobias Hawke. And even if it did – was there time to get through the lift doors and for the doors to close? Or would Hone be able to haul him out, or even shoot him where he stood? The lift was three paces away. He took a step towards it without allowing his gaze to drop from Hone’s one eye. In his hand, he moved the lanyard this way and that, as if he was stretching bunched muscles after the confines of his tunnelling through the wall cavity. Tried to keep it casual.
‘Syd is at Derkind, isn’t it, North? There’s some powerful people want me anywhere but here, which makes me wonder why, because I can feel in my waters that there’s something wrong. In the exact same way, I knew you’d show up because you completely fail to understand the word “no”. Where is the damn thing? We’re running out of time.’
There was no green light. It stayed resolutely red.
Had Granny Po been intercepted? Had Bald Paulie failed to make it to the mainframe? No, he had to keep faith. Bald Paulie just needed a little more time. North imagined symbols and numbers flying from the plump fingers down through hundreds of thousands of twisted pairs of plastic-sheathed copper wires, coaxial cables, light zipping through fibre-optic cables, and into the huge bank of computers floors below. Instructing, coaxing, meeting dead ends, turning around, finding his way out of the maze. Trying again. Doing this was Bald Paulie’s path through the darkness and his vale of tears, and North was walking that path with him.
North knew better than to go for his SIG. He swung his right hand with the lanyard round and back to his side, and Hone’s eyes narrowed.
No green light.
‘If I start something, I finish it, Hone,’ he said.
‘Do you know what I’m wondering, North? Where’s Fang? Because in my experience, where she is, there you are – and where you are, there’s a whole heap of trouble.’
‘You got the kid into this mess, don’t think I’ll forget that.’
‘Don’t get in my way, North.’
‘You need Syd back – let me help.’ North didn’t like the way Hone looked at him right this second, nor the way he’d locked away Fang’s mother. But he needed him to believe he was going to find Syd and hand the machine over to the authorities, rather than find Syd and hand the machine over to a ruthless assassin. Because Hone was never letting that happen. He’d let Fang die and never think of her again if it got Syd back.
North took another step towards the lift, as if coming closer to Hone.
The one-eyed man’s face was grim, but his tone softened a shade. ‘This is bigger than you are. And I can’t let some maverick – by which I mean you – put at risk everything we’re doing to find Syd ourselves. Tell me what you know. These are dangerous people we’re dealing with.’
‘But not as dangerous as me,’ North said, using every ounce of strength he had to overturn the desk and drive it towards Hone, who leapt away, knocking back his chair into the plate-glass window, which smashed into a million pieces.
Green light.
North leapt for the button on the lift and the doors slid open. Frantically, he stabbed at the button marked ‘Basement’ on the basis that it was as far down as the official Derkind went. As the doors began to close, a bullet embedded itself in the brass. Hone had an unusual definition of being on the same side.
If Hone was at Derkind, that meant he already had people all over the building. If North couldn’t find Tobias’s secret access to his bunker, the lift doors would open directly into the laboratory and North would be staring at the wreckage of the Lamborghini and the wrong end of twenty years in prison – if he was lucky.
The lift moved off. How many seconds before it stopped and the doors opened? Ten? If he was lucky. Ten seconds to find what he needed.
North ran the tips of his fingers around the brass plate – nothing. Eight seconds. Ran them over the surrounds of the door, and up and down the inside. Five seconds. Nothing.
Had he called this wrong? Was Tobias’s entrance to the bunker someplace else in Derkind?
It had to be here.
Tobias was a vain man – the foyer proved it. He would never stand with his back to the mirror.
Four seconds.
Swivelling on his heel, North turned to gaze at his reflection.
Three seconds.
He lent his weight to the left edge of the mirror and it opened out from the wall, revealing two black buttons stacked on top of each other.
Two seconds.
The lift settled. It had arrived in the lab with the Lamborghini and no doubt a team of Hone’s best people, all of them armed. Had Hone ordered them to kill him?
The top button had to be for the bunker’s secret labs, the other for the floor below the labs – the hangar.
The lift whined as if on the point of opening, and bullets embedded themselves in the brass doors.
That would be a ‘yes’ on the kill order.
One second.
He slammed his hand against the bottom button, then stood back against the glass with his gun raised, his left hand supporting his right. The doors stayed closed. And he heard his name being shouted. Fists hammered against the brass, as the lift jolted and began to move again. Downwards into what he hoped against hope was the secret bunker.
He checked his earpiece, his phone, but there was no signal. He was on his own down here, and that was fine by him.
The doors opened on to a vast darkness, lit only by the puddle of light spilling out from the lift. Gun raised, North stepped out, sweeping the room. A dull whirring started high up in the roof space. The little light there was narrowed and then disappeared completely as, behind him, a short gust of air hit the back of his neck and the lift doors closed, the mechanism straining, before the lift began its rise back up the shaft towards Hone.
North checked his watch. He had less than forty-four minutes to find Syd before Lilith killed Fang.