Tara was alternating between states of euphoria and depression. On the one hand she knew that Calum, at least, was aware that she was in trouble, and that the Karavla brothers didn’t know she had managed to get a message to him. On the other hand she knew that Calum himself was in trouble and might not be able to help. So sometimes she would stay pressed to the window, mind racing, looking for signs of rescue, and other times she would just curl up into a terrified ball on the mattress, trying not to think about anything.
Angry as she still was with him, Tara kept wondering what Tom’s punishment had been. Part of her wanted him to be hurt, but she also knew that he hadn’t wanted to betray her, and he didn’t deserve punishment for trying to help. And it wasn’t as if he had given her his mobile – she had taken it from his pocket. She hoped he was OK.
When the lock clicked and the door swung open, Tara was at a low point, lying on the mattress curled into a ball. She glanced up. One of the Karavla brothers was standing in the doorway. She didn’t know which one. He was holding something in his hand: a metal object that glittered in the light shining through the window.
‘It is time,’ he said without any trace of emotion.
‘Time for what?’
‘Time to prove that we mean what we say. Your friend Eduardo has not been in contact with us, so we need to remind him that we are serious men.’ He lifted his hand, and Tara could see that he was holding a pair of gardening shears.
She had a terrible feeling that gardening was not on the menu today.
‘Come,’ the thug said. ‘We do this in the main room. Very quick, very hygienic. We have put down sheets. There is no reason to get blood on carpet.’ He shook his head. ‘It is very hard to clean up afterwards if you do not use sheets.’ When she didn’t move, he said, in a harsher voice, ‘Come on, girl. Do not make me angry. Let us do this quickly and with small amount of fuss.’
If she didn’t get up, Tara knew that he would come over and pull her roughly to her feet. Part of her was thinking, Why make this easy for him? while another part was thinking, Let’s at least do this with a little dignity, and without screaming if possible.
She climbed slowly to her feet and walked across to the door. She was trembling all over, but she tried not to show it. She would get through this. She would get through this.
But why hadn’t Gecko been in contact? She didn’t expect him to rush back and make everything all right, but at least he could have called the thugs and pretended that he was coming back. That might have delayed the torture she was about to endure. Didn’t he care that she was in trouble? Maybe something had happened in Hong Kong. Maybe he hadn’t sent a message because he couldn’t.
This was all so messed up.
The thug stood back and let her through into the living room, which she had only glimpsed when she was brought into the flat. There was a sofa, an easy chair, a wide-screen LCD TV and, as promised, a white sheet laid down in the centre of the room. A glass door on the far side gave out on to a balcony. The second of the brothers was sitting in the easy chair, with a beer bottle in his hand. He was watching a sports channel on the TV. The fact that he wasn’t even bothering to watch while Tara’s finger was cut off was somehow the worst thing. How often had he done this kind of thing before to make him so blasé?
‘Stand on sheet,’ the first brother said. He had taken up a position between her and the little hallway that led to the front door, just in case she tried to make a run for it. Not that she could: her legs were like jelly. ‘We take little finger on left hand first. You will not even miss it.’
Before she could move, the front door exploded inwards with a stunning burst of noise and smoke, propelling the man with the gardening shears forward. He stumbled, feet catching in the sheet, and fell. The sitting thug sprang to his feet. A gun suddenly appeared in his hand. He peered through the smoke, trying to make out what was happening.
A black object like a cricket ball bounced into the room, coming to rest on the sheet. The two brothers looked at it, puzzled. Instinct made Tara turn away, towards the glass door to the balcony. There was something odd about it . . .
A bright flash of light from the bouncing object turned the room into a white void. Tara, looking away, was only momentarily blinded, but the two brothers cried out and put their hands to their faces, covering their eyes in shock. The one with the gun started shooting blindly at the door, where he expected the attackers to enter.
Tara saw the glass in the balcony door shatter into jigsaw pieces that still somehow held together. It looked as if a transparent film had been stuck across the glass, so that the broken bits stayed in place.
The shattered door fell slowly inwards and hit the carpet.
A dark shape sprang in from the balcony outside.
Whoever it was, he was about Tara’s height but a lot bulkier. He wore a black balaclava over his head, and black overalls. He raised a hand that was holding, bizarrely, a water pistol: all bright red and yellow plastic, with a water reservoir bulb on top.
The brother with the gun turned round, still blinded by the blast but aware that someone had entered from the balcony. The intruder fired the water pistol at the thug’s face. He screamed, dropped his gun and clawed at his eyes frantically. Tara smelt something simultaneously sharp and rancid. Her nose suddenly itched and her eyes started watering.
Tara glanced at the thug’s brother, who was still on the floor. He had rolled sideways and was desperately pulling a gun from his jeans. The intruder hadn’t noticed. He was checking the rest of the room for threats.
Tara stepped sideways, grabbed the edge of the LCD TV and pulled it, hard. It topped off its stand and fell on to the second thug, crushing him. Tara kicked the gun out of reach.
The intruder pulled off his balaclava. The face revealed was one that Tara had seen before – Mr Macfarlane, the chauffer who worked for Calum’s great-aunt and who had driven them both to Farnborough.
‘Afternoon, miss,’ he said. ‘I was told you was lookin’ to be rescued.’
‘And just in time too,’ Tara said shakily.
Macfarlane looked around. ‘Anyfing you want from ’ere, or shall we go?’
‘Let’s go, please.’
‘Right – just ’ang on a minute.’ He handed her the water pistol, then reached into his pocket and took out some plastic ties. Quickly he secured the wrists and ankles of the Karavla brothers – one of whom was still rubbing his eyes and moaning while the other was unconscious beneath the TV Having secured them, he carried them out through the shattered glass door and fastened their ankles to the balcony.
‘How did you find me?’ Tara asked as they left through the front door. No neighbours had come to see what had happened. Perhaps this kind of thing occurred all the time in this neighbourhood.
‘Young Mr Calum got in touch with me. ’E told me what ’ad ’appened, an’ where you were. Asked me to come an’ get you, ’e did.’
‘But how did he know where I was? I didn’t know where I was!’
‘’Pparently some bloke named Tomas told ’im.’
Tara felt conflicted about Tom. He had come through for her, in the end, but he’d got her into this situation in the first place.
She handed back the water pistol. ‘What have you got in this? It smells terrible!’
‘It’s a mixture of lemon juice an’ onion juice,’ he replied. ‘I didn’t want to bring a gun, cos that makes the police really narked if they get involved, an’ I couldn’t get ’old of any tear gas in a hurry, so I ’ad to improvise. The water pistol belongs to me nephew. I’ll ’ave to wash it out before I give it back to ’im.’ He sniffed. ‘The next best thing would’ve been a shotgun loaded with salt instead of pellets, of course, but me mum had used all the salt for a tongue she’s curin’.’
‘A what?’ Tara felt as if the conversation had taken a sudden left turn.
‘Ox’s tongue. Sweetest meat ever, but it needs to be cured in salt for a few days before you can eat it. Shame, that, cos a shotgun commands a lot o’ respect. A water pistol, not so much.’
They hurried down a set of concrete steps and out into the open. Mr Macfarlane had parked a couple of streets away – not the big black limousine that he had been driving the last time that Tara had seen him, but an old and more anonymous BMW!
‘I meant to ask,’ she said as he held the back door open for her, ‘I know the front door blowing open and the flash grenade were both distractions so they weren’t looking at the balcony, but how did you do it? Remote control?’
‘I ’ad, ’elp, didn’t I?’ Macfarlane said as he slid into the driver’s seat. ‘That Tomas kid.’
Tara looked around wildly. ‘He’s here? He’s all right?’
‘’E said ’e thought you wouldn’t want to see ’im right now, so ’e’s makin’ ’is own way ’ome.’ He paused before starting the car, and shook his head. ‘’E’s been roughed up. Don’t look too hot.’
Tara felt a spike of guilt run through her. She hoped she would get the chance to see Tom again. They had things to resolve.
As the car pulled away, she noticed that a laptop with an internet dongle sticking out of one of the USB ports was sitting on the seat beside her.
‘What’s this for?’
‘Mr Calum asked me to tell you that there’s a problem in ’Ong Kong,’ Mr Macfarlane said. ‘There ain’t much time, apparently. There’s an ’ard disk that needs decryptin’ in an ’urry. ’Pparently that laptop there can take remote control of the one that this ’ard disk is connected to. He said he knows you’re tired an’ stressed, but could you take a quick gander at it for ’im?’
Tara grinned. ‘Can I use a computer? I’ve been going cold turkey for days now. Just let me at it!’
‘Good girl!’ He paused momentarily as he pulled round a corner. ‘I’ll take you back to Mr Calum’s apartment, an’ I’ll stay there to make sure nothin’ ’appens to you. In the meantime, do you mind if I put some music on?’
‘Dubstep?’ Tara asked, ready to give it a go, given how much she owed Mr Macfarlane.
‘Nah, Beethoven!’ he said, shocked. ‘The Choral Symphony. Can’t beat a bit of Beethoven after a good workout!’
‘No problem,’ she said, then hesitated for a moment. ‘Look, is there any chance we could stop for a takeaway coffee somewhere? I’ve been looking forward to one!’
It was morning in Hong Kong, and the sun was shining sideways through a haze of pollution. In Rhino’s hotel room he and Gecko were sitting together on the sofa staring at Natalie, who was sitting in an easy chair. Rhino had called and asked her to join them for a room-service breakfast. The atmosphere was tense.
Gecko watched Natalie as Rhino told her briefly what had happened the previous night. She was sullen and disinterested, looking away to stare out of the window.
‘I suppose you think I called the United Nations and told them about the warehouse?’ she said when Rhino had finished.
‘I do,’ he said.
‘You’re right – I did.’
‘Why?’
Her face suddenly creased into an expression that was part anger and part distress. ‘I kept thinking about those animals, and the conditions they were being kept in. I couldn’t stand it. I had to do something!’
‘I understand,’ Rhino said, surprising both Gecko and Natalie. ‘But you put both of us at risk. Next time, tell me first if there’s something you feel you have to do. If it really is something that can’t wait, then we’ll work around it. OK?’
She glanced up at him, and her eyes glittered with tears. ‘OK,’ she said in a small voice, ‘I promise. And I’m sorry. But I’m not sorry.’ She shook her head in confusion. ‘You know what I mean!’
Rhino was spared the necessity of answering by the voice that came from his laptop, on the desk. ‘Hello? Anyone there?’
Gecko sprang off the sofa and got to the desk. Tara’s face was gazing from a window on the screen.
‘Tara!’ he cried, a wave of happiness crashing over him. ‘You’re OK!’
‘No thanks to you!’ she said, sending a pang of guilt through his heart.
‘Look, I left my mobile behind in my room, and I had it turned off anyway, after the flight, and I didn’t get the message for a long time, and—’
‘It’s OK,’ she said. ‘I forgive you. Things turned out OK, and I wouldn’t have wanted you to get sucked into a life of crime just because of me. Is Rhino there?’
‘I’m here,’ Rhino said from behind Gecko. ‘Where are you?’
‘In a car heading for Calum’s apartment. We’ve got to get him back!’
‘We have,’ Rhino said, ‘but right now we’ve got an encrypted hard disk to examine. Can you access it from where you are?’
Tara leaned forward and typed something into the laptop, and the removable hard disk connected to Rhino’s computer whirred into life. ‘Do bears wear funny hats?’ she murmured. ‘Is the Pope—’
‘Can you do it or can’t you?’
‘Of course I can. Running some decryption algorithms now.’ She paused. ‘Fortunately it’s not encrypted using the PGP algorithm. That’s more or less unbreakable. This is some commercial off-the-shelf stuff they bought in a computer shop. Should have it decrypted in a few minutes.’ Another pause. ‘You’ll be pleased to hear that it’s in English, rather than Chinese. Thank heavens for Microsoft and Apple’s domination of the computer market. You want me to copy the unencrypted files to your own hard drive?’
‘Please,’ Rhino replied, ‘but could you also do a quick search for the word “centipede” and give me a separate file with all that text in it?’
‘Will do.’ Silence for a few moments, apart from the growl of a car engine, the click of keys being pressed and, bizarrely, the sound of a choir singing. ‘Right – here it comes.’
‘Thanks, Tara – you go and rest now’
‘It feels like I’ve been resting for days,’ she said. ‘I want to go out and have fun. And I want to see what I can do to help Calum.’
‘Talk later.’
‘OK.’
Tara’s window on the laptop screen closed. Rhino brought up a file listing and clicked on a particular file. The screen filled with text.
‘Jeez,’ he murmured, ‘there’s a lot of this!’
‘Let me have a look,’ Natalie interrupted, pushing past Gecko. ‘I can speed-read faster than anyone I know. It’s probably a genetic thing. God knows I never asked for it.’ She sat down and quickly scanned down the text. ‘Right, there isn’t a lot of stuff about the centipedes, although much of it is repeated in different places. They don’t appear to have a buyer – the centipedes were discovered in a rainforest in some place called Hainan Island, and Xi Lang was emailing various people to see if they were interested. OK . . . this is interesting. Apparently the centipedes had GPS RFID microcircuits attached to their backs so they could be tracked. All of the animals had these microcircuits stuck on or implanted somewhere inside them so that Xi Lang always knew where they were.’
‘So we can track their locations!’ Gecko said. ‘That suddenly makes the problem a lot easier.’
‘Have you got the identification codes for the centipedes?’ Rhino asked.
‘Yes – they’re here.’
‘Right. Get Tara back on the line. We need her help in locating those critters.’
Natalie pushed her chair back and stood up. ‘I can speed-read,’ she said, ‘but I’m not a telephone operator. Gecko can do that.’
Gecko rolled his eyes, slid into the chair and called Tara back. When her face appeared, she was obviously still in the car. ‘Hi!’
‘Tara, we’ve got codes for GPS chips on the two escaped giant centipedes. Can you locate them for us?’
‘Should be able to. It’s no different to locating a lost or stolen mobile phone. There are apps that can do it easily. I’ll let you know what they are and you can download them to your mobiles. What are the codes?’
Gecko read them out from the screen of the laptop. Tara typed away, scowling in concentration. ‘Right – I’ve got them. I’m also installing an app on your laptop that will put markers on a map so you can find the little critters.’ She caught herself. ‘Sorry – big critters.’
‘Thanks, Tara.’ Gecko hesitated. ‘Look –’
‘Don’t worry’ she said softly. ‘We’re OK, OK?’
‘OK.’
‘Now I’ve got to go. Things to do.’
Tara’s window vanished, and a few seconds later a map sprang to life on Rhino’s laptop screen. Two red dots were flashing in locations in Kowloon. They weren’t that far from the warehouse where the centipedes had been kept.
‘Right,’ Rhino said grimly. ‘This is now a search-and-destroy mission. Everyone good to go?’
‘Yes,’ said Gecko.
‘Yes,’ Natalie added.
‘No qualms about hunting down giant centipedes?’ Rhino asked pointedly, looking at Natalie. ‘You don’t want to save them and return them to this Hainan place?’
‘Eeuw!’ she said. ‘There are limits.’ She paused, staring at Rhino. ‘But when we’ve finished, can we give that hard drive to the UN animal exploitation team. There’s a man named Evan Chan I spoke to. They might find it useful as evidence.’
‘OK,’ he nodded. ‘It’s a deal. Get ready to leave.’
‘What happens if one of the centipedes escapes while we’re chasing the other one?’ Gecko asked, concerned.
Rhino grimaced. ‘Good point. We may have to take that risk.’
‘No, we don’t,’ Natalie said quietly. They both turned to look at her. ‘You go after one; Gecko and I will go after the other.’
Rhino’s face reflected his indecision. ‘Are you sure you can cope?’ he asked.
Natalie shook her head. ‘Of course not, but it’s the only practical solution, isn’t it?’
He nodded reluctantly. ‘Be careful,’ he said. ‘These creatures are poisonous and vicious.’
Gecko looked at his hands, which still hadn’t fully recovered from picking up the centipede’s shed skin back in the warehouse. He knew all too well how dangerous those things were.
Calum managed to slide the tablet computer beneath his mattress before the door to his room fully opened and Dave Pournell and Dr Kircher entered, along with two bulky orderlies in white uniforms. They looked like bouncers heading for a fancy-dress party.
‘Ready to have those electrodes implanted in your brain?’ Pournell said cheerily. ‘I’ve talked it over with Dr Kircher here, and we’ve decided that rather than shove them all in at once we’re going to do one a day for the next ten days. That’s the good news. We’re also not going to use any anaesthetic, because Dr Kircher assures me that the brain doesn’t have any nerves. That’s the other good news. You may, however, experience an unpleasant drilling sensation. That, I guess, is the bad news. Isn’t that right, Dr Kircher?’
Kircher was looking pale. He nodded, once, and Calum noticed that he was looking anywhere but at Calum.
‘So – about that Almasti DNA . . .’ Pournell continued, as if the two subjects were linked. Which, of course, they were. ‘Any update on when Nemor Inc. can take those samples over and evaluate them?’
‘Not any time soon,’ Calum said in a whisper. He could feel fear building within him like a growing core of ice, but he wasn’t going to give in. He couldn’t give in. It was just plain wrong. And maybe, just maybe, Gillian Livingstone or Rhino or Tara would find some way of rescuing him, although right now he was wondering how late they were going to leave it.
Pournell gestured to the two orderlies. ‘Take him away,’ he said. ‘Nearest operating theatre.’
The two orderlies moved to the head of the bed and started pushing it towards the door.
‘Last chance, kid . . .’ Pournell murmured as the bed passed him by.
Calum told him to go and do something biologically improbable.
‘Hey’ Pournell said, ‘let’s maintain a little politeness, shall we?’
The bed was out in the corridor by now. As the orderlies tried to turn it round, the tablet computer slipped out from beneath the mattress and crashed to the floor. Pournell bent down to retrieve it. He shook his head disapprovingly. ‘Naughty boy, Calum. Just for that I’m going to tell Dr Kircher to drill extra slowly. Purely for safety’s sake, you understand.’
Calum’s last link to the outside world was gone.
The bed trundled down the corridor towards the nurses’ station, and then past it and round the bend in the corridor. Calum cast one final despairing glance at the lifts in the lobby as they disappeared behind him.
Halfway down the corridor was an open double door. The orderlies stopped there, and turned the bed to steer it through.
Calum could feel the pressure building within him to agree to give Pournell the Almasti DNA, but he had a terrible feeling that the man would proceed with the brain surgery anyway, just because he enjoyed having that power over Calum.
The operating theatre was dominated by a large white MRI scanner, like a doughnut on its side. A bed with a sliding top allowed the patient to be moved into the scanner. It was similar to the one that Calum had been in at the Robledo place in Farnborough, except that this one looked as if it allowed surgery to be carried out at the same time.
Dr Kircher confirmed this as he followed the bed into the room. ‘We’ll put you into the scanner and ask you a series of questions,’ he murmured. He didn’t sound as if he was enjoying himself. ‘Depending on how your brain lights up, we’ll decide where to insert the electrodes.’
‘I might be being stupid here,’ Calum said, his voice scratchy, ‘but isn’t there a bloody great magnet inside that thing? Won’t that make it hard to do any drilling and inserting?’
‘Nice try,’ Pournell said from behind him, ‘but all the medical implements are made of ceramics rather than metal. They won’t be affected by the magnetic field. The electrodes are metal, sure, but what we’re going to do first is insert some long ceramic tubes, like straws, through holes in your skull. We can slide the electrodes down the straws when you’re out of the scanner.’ He paused. ‘Any last words, kid? Anything you want to tell me?’
‘Lots of things,’ Calum replied shakily, ‘but they all break that politeness rule of yours.’
‘Remember – you can stop this any time. Just raise a hand.’
Calum raised a hand.
Pournell laughed. ‘Somehow I think you’re just joking with us now’
At a signal Calum couldn’t see, the two orderlies pushed the bed up parallel to the scanner and lifted Calum across. They strapped him down so he couldn’t move, and then they put a white plastic frame down over his face so that he couldn’t turn his head. All he could do was stare straight up.
‘It’s . . . normal procedure,’ Dr Kircher said as he checked the lights on the scanner. ‘We need you to remain perfectly still while we’re . . . working.’ He licked his lips.
‘Keep telling yourself that,’ Calum said. The frame held his jaw closed, and he had to speak through clenched teeth.
He was then slid inside the scanner until his head was tight up against something rounded, something that his skull fitted into snugly like it was a cap. There were sharp bits around the inside of the cap that touched against his scalp.
‘Really, really, really last chance,’ Pournell called from outside. He was so sure that Calum was going to crack that the boy felt a hot spike of anger piercing the icy cold of his fear. He was not going to give that DNA to Nemor Inc. He wasn’t.
Except that part of him knew that this was sheer bravado. He was going to give in sometime in the next few seconds . . .
Suddenly an alarm went off.
‘What the hell is that?’ Pournell shouted.
Then a bang! and the sound of breaking glass.
‘What is this?’ Pournell screamed. He sounded as if he was somewhere between furious and terrified. Calum got the impression he didn’t like to be in situations where he didn’t control everything.
‘Don’t know,’ one of the orderlies said. Calum could hear the other one talking frantically on a mobile phone.
A series of heavy thuds shook the room now. They were getting louder, as if something very big was getting closer and closer . . .
‘OK, get him out of there!’ Kircher shouted. ‘Get him out of there!’
Someone grabbed hold of Calum’s feet and yanked him out of the scanner. The metal frame was pulled away from his head. He sat up, staring at the closed doors in wonder as the thuds shook them.
And then the doors exploded inwards, scattering wood and metal everywhere.
Something enormous stood there.