Operation Herod

Andrew Cartmel

©
Andrew Cartmel 2012

Andrew Cartmel has asserted his rights under the Copyright,
Design and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as the author of this work.

First published 2012 by Endeavour Press Ltd.

For my mother — who was a Hood.

Contents

Prologue

Chapter One: A Rolling Barrage

Chapter
Two: Died Twice

Chapter
Three: Big Mama

Chapter
Four: Reverse Honey Trap

Chapter
Five: Lord Kitchener’s Moustache

Chapter
Six: Auto Erotic Asphyxiation

Chapter
Seven: Southern Hemisphere

Chapter
Eight: USS Salem

Chapter
Nine: South Polar Ocean

Chapter Ten: Names on a List

Chapter Eleven: One O’clock Kill

Chapter Twelve: Forty-Nine Days

Chapter Thirteen: Down on the Farm

Chapter Fourteen: The Nude Killers

Chapter Fifteen: Girl on Girl Action

Chapter Sixteen: Joshua Tree

Chapter Eighteen: Kill-Radius

Chapter Nineteen: Cape Flattery

Prologue

He watched the
building for three hours before he made his move.

He’d spent most of
that time sitting in a tiny park located between the South Colonnade and Upper
Bank Street, where the EAE building was located. Occasionally he would strike
out and stroll past the glass façade of the building. Pedestrians and motorists
were constantly passing. Now and then someone walked inside through the
daunting glass doors, throwing a bright shard of sunlight across the street.

He didn’t see
anybody waiting in the street or watching the place.

At the end of
three hours sitting on a bench in the park he made his decision. Or at least he
thought he did. But as he rose from the bench he found himself fighting an
overwhelming impulse to just throw the envelope away, to ditch it in one of the
bins that lined the park and flee.

He struggled with
the compulsion but it was so strong that he found himself walking in an endless
circle, following the footpath that led around the park. Every time he passed
one of the bins he felt the urge to discard the envelope but fought it off.

Finally he left
the park, crossed the road and walked into the building. A sceptical looking
grey-haired security guard manned the reception desk. He handed the envelope to
the guard and said, “This is for Mr Braidy on the ninth floor.” The security
guard took the envelope and set it in a tray on his desk beside a bank of
phones. Braidy’s name and the name of his company were written clearly on the
envelope.  But the man felt a sick sense of helplessness once he’d handed
it over, as if he’d thrown a bottle into the ocean.

He turned and
walked out of the building; unable to stop himself looking back over his
shoulder, trying to convince himself the envelope was safe.

Out in the street
there was nothing unusual. No one was watching him. He walked quickly to the
tube at Canary Wharf and descended the long escalators into the station. He was
sure that no one had followed him.

He caught the
Jubilee Line to Waterloo and then changed to the Northern Line. The northbound
platform was hot and crowded. The indicators displaying the time until the
arrival of the next train kept changing, as the train was repeatedly delayed.
The crowd on the platform swelled. He stood sweating with his back against the
wall. The envelope had been delivered. It was over. He had made his decision
and he might as well stop worrying about it now.

He was sure
that no one had followed him.

There was a faint
stirring breeze from the tunnel to his left and he looked up at the indicator.
A train was arriving. He joined the general surge of the crowd as it moved
forward in anticipation of finally boarding. The train lights appeared in the
dark tunnel. A warm gritty wind blew into his face. The train burst out of the
tunnel. He stepped to the edge of the platform and as he did so someone in the
crowd at his back gave him a firm shove.

He heard a woman
scream behind him as he fell.

The Northern Line
was closed for over an hour as they extracted his body from under the train.

During that hour
the security guard at EAE sat with the envelope at his desk. Shortly before
noon a familiar figure appeared at the tall glass doors and entered the
building. It was the sandwich seller from the Degas Deli in Cabot Square. She
was neatly dressed as usual in jeans, white shirt and baseball cap. The shirt
and the cap had the deli’s logo on them. The girl, it was always a girl, had a
big cooler bag slung over her shoulder printed with the words “Every Sandwich A
Work Of Art.” The guard didn’t recognise this particular girl but they were
constantly changing and he just waved her in so she could do her rounds.

The girl went into
the elevator and got out on the second floor. Instead of beginning her tour of
the offices she went into the ladies washroom and locked herself in a stall.
She set the cooler bag down on the closed lid of the WC and turned and hung her
baseball cap on a hook on the back of the door. She opened the cooler bag,
which didn’t contain any sandwiches, and took out a pair of high heel shoes,
and a dress suit consisting of a white blouse and an indigo skirt and jacket.

She threw the
baseball cap into the empty bag. She took off her trainers and shirt and jeans.
Under the jeans she was wearing stockings. She straightened them and put on the
skirt, blouse and jacket.

The old clothes
and the trainers she put into the empty bag. She had planned to leave the
high-topped trainers on the floor of the stall to suggest occupancy, but it
turned out the stall door extended all the way to the floor to guarantee
privacy.

So that was one
less thing to worry about.

The lock on the
door was a simple sliding bolt. She fixed a length of monofilament line to the
snub handle on the bolt and waited, listening, until she was sure she was alone
in the washroom. Then she looped the line over the door and stepped out. She
closed the door and took hold of the strand. It was thin, strong and
transparent. After she’d used it to tug the bolt shut, she wedged it carefully
into the crack between the closed door and the edge of the stall.

She stepped back
to inspect it. The monofilament was virtually invisible.

She glanced at
herself in the mirror on the way out, pausing to flatten her skirt against her
thighs. She looked unexceptionally the sort of well-dressed young woman who had
a junior job and was rising in a large corporation

She took the lift
down to the ground floor and walked across the foyer to the reception desk, her
heels clicking on the marble. She smiled at the security guard and said, “Mr
Braidy was expecting an envelope. A hand delivery by courier.” He got her to
sign for it and she took the envelope and walked back to the lift, her heart
thudding in her chest.

There were two
women in the washroom when she got back but she stalled at the sink until they
were gone. Then she extracted the length of monofilament and unlocked the stall
door. She put the envelope in the bag.

Five minutes later
the sandwich girl emerged from the ground floor lift with the bag slung over
her shoulder.

“You got done
quickly,” said the security guard.

“The early bird
catches the worm,” said the girl cheerfully.

Watching her
disappear into the street the guard reflected that some people had an easy
life.

Chapter One: A Rolling Barrage

Everyone was out
on the lawn and children were running around the flowerbeds. It was a warm
summer afternoon with a soft haze drifting over the sea. Food was being
prepared inside the house — the General was mad about curry and had insisted on
presiding over all the catering for his daughter’s wedding. This meant
everybody was going to be subjected to a battery of delicious but probably
excessively spicy food.

Now and then a
helicopter passed overhead. No one at the wedding reception paid any attention
to it and the people in the village and on the beach below ignored it. Everyone
was accustomed to the yellow Sea Kings, which were deployed by the coastguard
for search and rescue. None of the locals thought to question why this
particular helicopter kept coming and going, moving across the cliffs, out to
sea and back again, in a steady defensive sweep, centred on the house.

While the General
was busy in the house overseeing every culinary detail and no doubt driving the
caterers into a frenzy, the crowd of hungry wedding guests were milling around
outside on the lawn, drinking champagne. The murmur of conversation and the
clink of glasses, and the occasional distant drone of shipping in the Channel,
hung in the drowsy afternoon air.

The wedding
service had finished an hour earlier at the mossy little church down the hill,
just a two minute walk from Seaview, the General’s small red brick house. The
crooked lane that led down to the church was now impassably crowded with parked
Jaguars, BMWs, Bentleys and one particularly scruffy Volvo.

A small jazz band
— the General was also mad about jazz, although disdainful of anything
antedating the swing era — were setting up in the small white pavilion behind
the rose beds. While the band prepared, their singer, a suntanned American
girl, had wandered over to the low stone wall that marked the edge of Seaview’s
lawn. She set her shoulder bag down on the wall and leaned on the cool stones,
sipping her champagne and looking out.

Beyond the
Dickensian tangle of houses below her lay a crooked strip of pebbled beach
dotted with brightly painted beach huts and beyond that the glittering blue
English Channel.

She sipped
champagne and leaned on the wall and gazed out, thinking that in the distance
she could just discern the coastline of France, a smudged white mirage on the
far horizon. In the middle distance, dreamlike ships floated in the Channel.
The summer haze had given all the day’s colours a soft intensity, like an
impressionist painting.

The singer turned
her back on this vision and looked back across the lawn at the wedding crowd.
In particular she was looking at the champagne table where a tall suntanned man
with unkempt dark hair was laughing insincerely at something an old woman said.

Her view of the
man was cut off as someone loomed up before her. A man in a suit, his tie
askew. “The name is Braidy.” He had a jutting paunch and a pugnaciously cocky
manner. He indicated the glass of champagne she was holding. “Drinking before
the gig? That must be a bad sign.”

“I beg your
pardon?’

“You’re the
singer, aren’t you?”

“Yes.”

“And your name
is?”

“Minerva Caine.”
Braidy gazed at her with frank admiration. Minerva had long honey coloured hair
and a deep smooth tan, in almost ironic contrast to Braidy’s own cropped black
hair, turning prematurely grey, and his office pallor relieved only by the
unhealthy flush of recent heavy drinking.

“How do you know
that I’m the singer?” Minerva sipped her champagne.

“I saw you head
into the ladies room looking ravishing,” said Braidy. “Only to emerge moments
later, looking even more ravishing.”

Minerva smiled. “I
changed into my work clothes.” Her work clothes consisted of a sleeveless black
dress with a low neckline. A neckline that Braidy’s eyes were now furtively
attempting to probe. She shrugged the jacket shut at the front, cutting off his
view of the goods. Braidy moved to sit beside her, lifting her bag off the
wall. An observant bystander might have noticed Minerva grow tense when he
picked up the bag.

“My god, this is
heavy,” said Braidy. “What have you got in it? That’s one of the great
mysteries of life, isn’t it, what women have in their bags?”

Braidy hefted it.
It was a Mischa Barton ‘Liberty’ tote in black faux leather with silver studs.
It contained Minerva’s phone, her iPod, a paperback novel, a notebook, some
pens, various items of make up, a small bottle of mineral water, a change of
shoes, a pack of tampons and a Beretta 92FS handgun with a spare fifteen round
clip of 9mm ammunition.

It was principally
these last two items that made the bag heavy.

Minerva took it
away from Braidy, before he could look inside, and changed the subject. “I was
just wondering about him,” she said, nodding towards the tall man by the
champagne table, the one who was still laughing insincerely at the old woman’s
garrulous anecdote, his eyes now thoroughly glazed over.

“Him?” said
Braidy, a note of disdainful astonishment in his voice. “Why do you want to
know about him?”

“Because he looks
interesting.”

“Interesting?”
Braidy snorted. “You must be joking.”

Rupert Hood brayed
with laughter, mechanically and politely, but his mind wasn’t on whatever
nonsense the General’s wife was spouting. Instead he was looking over her
shoulder, past her, towards the far side of the lawn where his old nemesis
Braidy was talking to the American girl.

As he watched,
Braidy was joined by two other all too familiar figures, Harper and Stubbs.
Stubbs was a hedge fund manager. Harper was a career soldier, though a cynic
might have said a more accurate description was career alcoholic with
occasional breaks for bouts of soldiering.

Braidy was a sales
executive at EAE, one of Britain’s largest arms manufacturers. He had prospered
at this, seller of weapons of medium and large-scale destruction, a role which
Rupert liked to think of as being the lackey scuttling behind the four horsemen
of the apocalypse with his shovel, ready to shovel up the horse shit.

Stubbs, Harper and
Braidy.

What was the
plural of nemesis? wondered Rupert.

The three men
clustered eagerly around the beautiful young American singer, showing off like
a troop of male baboons in a mating display.

Braidy glared back
at Rupert. “I was in the army with that bugger, at the Dukey’s,” he said.

“You were never in
the Army, Braidy,” said Harper. He was a tall red haired man with a freckled,
greasy and grinning countenance. A lifelong soldier, he looked uneasy out of
uniform, dressed up today in his civilian best. “Not the proper army,” he said.

“Ha ha,” said
Braidy, turning his body in an attempt to monopolise the attention of the
American girl. “Harper has a point I suppose. Cadets you know. I was in the
cadet forces at the local grammar school and we used to go up to the barracks
at the Dukey’s and they’d let us use the machine guns on the weapons range and
so on.”

“And that’s how
you met Rupert?” said Minerva.

“Not on the
weapons range,” said Harper. “Oh no. You never saw him out there. Not like our
Rupert to get his hands dirty.”

“He was a clerk,”
said Braidy. “A glorified clerk. He used to work in stores. Issuing kit.”

“That’s right!”
Harper gave a braying laugh. “After the first few weeks at the Dukey’s they
wouldn’t let him anywhere near a weapon.”

“We had some
laughs, though, didn’t we lads?” said Braidy. “Remember that trick we played on
old Rupert?”

The men all
laughed raucously.

Standing by the
champagne table, Rupert Hood could tell that Stubbs and the others were saying
something to the girl about him. They all glanced his way and again roared with
laughter.

“Isn’t that
dreadful?” said the General’s wife, patting Rupert’s arm. Since the death of
his own parents, some years ago, the General’s wife had taken Rupert under her
wing. This effectively meant that the old bat had made it her mission in life
to proffer embarrassing motherly concern at the worst possible moments. “No
doubt laughing about the way they used to pick on you.” She clucked, frowning
and shaking her head.

“I don’t think we
can jump to that conclusion,” said Rupert quickly, although he’d already jumped
to exactly the same conclusion.

“It was dreadful
the way they treated you.”

“Oh, it wasn’t so
bad —“

“The time they did
that, what do you call it?”

“What?” enquired
Rupert politely, although he had an annoying certainty that he knew exactly
what the old bag meant.

“When they remove
some poor chap’s trousers? Debagging. That’s what they call it. Do you remember
the time they debagged you at the big dance? The big dance with all the girls
from Dover grammar school? Removing your trousers and shoving you out half
naked in front of all those girls?”

“Yes,” said Rupert
in measured tones, “actually I do remember that.”

“It was so
humiliating for you. And so unkind.”

“Oh well, boys
will be —”

“It just seems so
unfair.” The General’s wife sighed. “So unfair that, since then, you haven’t
got a beautiful girlfriend like Braidy, or got married and raised a lovely
family like Harper, or made a lot of money like Stubbs.” The General’s wife
smiled at him. She was a small shrew-like woman with dark eyes that gleamed
behind the lenses of her spectacles. “But you’re comfortable, aren’t you, with
your niche in life?” Her eyes probed his for an answer. “You’re happy though,
aren’t you? Working at the estate agents?”

“Oh yes,
deliriously happy, thank you. Excuse me.” Rupert went back to the champagne
table and hefted a cold bottle. Another burst of ribald male laughter blared
out behind his back and Rupert couldn’t help considering the satisfaction it
would give him to take the bottle over to Braidy and break it on his head.

He calmed himself
with the thought that any such manoeuvre would be a waste of good champagne. He
topped up his glass and went over to join the merriment.

“Debagging,” said
Minerva Caine. “In front of all those girls? The poor guy.”

“Poor guy?” hooted
Stubbs. Braidy and Harper were laughing too.

“Oh I
shouldn’t waste any sympathy on that drip,” said Braidy, cutting in. “Forget
about old Rupert. Have another flute of champagne. Or gripe water as I like to
call it.”

“Gripe water?”
Despite herself Minerva was amused.

“Yes, that’s what
I like to call it. I… Oh hello Hood.” Rupert had joined the group despite the
best efforts of Stubbs, Harper and Braidy to keep him shut out with their broad
backs.

“This is Rupert
Hood,” said Braidy grudgingly. “He used to know us when we were all young bucks
in uniform together.”

“He used to work
in stores,” said Harper. “He’d sign out the Bren guns for us.”

Rupert smiled and
shrugged. His eyes met Minerva’s. “Do you know where the name Bren gun comes
from?” he said.

“No, I don’t,
excuse me,” said the American girl hastily, setting down her glass and moving
away from him, off through the crowd of guests.

“Well you’ve
certainly made a conquest there,” said Braidy. “Well done old man.”

“‘Do you know
where the name Bren gun comes from?’” mimicked Stubbs loudly. “Now there’s a
chat up line.”

“Old Rupert is a
natural lady’s man,” said Braidy.

*

“You looked like
you were going to smash old Braidy’s face in,” said the General. “I think I
broke up your little school reunion just in time.”

“Smash his smug
smiling face? Why would I want to do that?” said Rupert. He and the General
were standing in the dining room of the small house a few minutes later,
looking out the window at the wedding crowd on the lawn.

“I don’t blame you
for feeling that way,” said the General. In contrast to his wife he was an
elephant of a man. He placed one big hand, only showing the slightest tremor
after a day of heavy drinking and caterer reprimanding, on Rupert’s shoulder.
“I know it hasn’t been easy for you, old son.”

He went over to
the mantelpiece and took down a bottle of champagne. On the wood panelled wall
above him was a canvas depicting a gory shipwreck in bruised shades of brown
and purple. As he poured the wine Rupert noticed that it was a bottle of the
serious vintage stuff rather than the mere NV being proffered to the hoi polloi
outside.

“We told you on
that first day when we pulled you out of cadet training.” The General refilled
Rupert’s glass. “It’s never easy to lead a double life. But to be an effective
operative for us, a double life is essential. No one must suspect what you’re
doing or who you really are.”

“Of course,” said
Rupert, sipping the champagne and reflecting that it was nice to get a glass of
the real stuff.

“And that can be
very hard for a chap. Keeping your temper in the presence of a jackass like
Braidy.”

It was true.
Braidy and his cohorts had begun bullying Rupert mercilessly as soon as he had
been removed from the active training stream of the cadets. Forbidden to take
part in the routine weapons and combat training, he had ostensibly been
relegated to clerical work. In fact, his startling aptitude in all areas of
weaponry and combat had led to Rupert being singled out for special covert
training.

Because this
clandestine tuition took place out of normal hours and in isolation from the
other cadets, his contemporaries had been left with the impression of Rupert
Hood as some kind of incompetent geek who had shirked all the difficult stuff.

“Anyway, I’m glad
I caught you in time today.”

“Oh I wasn’t
really going to smash Braidy in the face.”

“Of course not,
but it’s quite natural to be tempted.” The General patted Rupert on the
shoulder. “Don’t let the bastards grind you down. Now come and taste some of
these curries. I finally got the bloody catering people to put in enough spice
and they’re tasting just about right. You wouldn’t imagine the resistance these
people have to using even the slightest speck of asafoetida.”

Rupert, who was
aware that the esoteric and pungent spice asafoetida was also known
colloquially as ‘devil’s dung’, found such resistance all too easy to imagine.
He didn’t volunteer this viewpoint, however.

*

Rupert went back
outside just as the jazz band began to play. The light was softly fading in the
summer evening and the American girl stepped up to the microphone. She began to
sing ‘Polka Dots and Moonbeams’. He crossed the lawn, with every intention of
finding a good vantage point for listening to the jazz. But as he moved through
the wedding crowd he saw that Braidy, Stubbs and Harper were ignoring the
music.

They were
clustered around a newcomer, a girl with pale skin and black hair trimmed short
in the manner of the silent film star Louise Brooks. She had negligent sleepy
eyes and a lazy smile on her wide red mouth. Rupert changed direction, moving
away from the band and the music.

Magnetically drawn
by the girl.

Braidy watched
with annoyance as Rupert approached them across the lawn. He turned back to the
girl and said, “She’s not bad, that singer. I don’t suppose you sing, do you?”

“No,” said the
girl. “But I play the accordion.”

“The old squeeze
box, eh?” Braidy chuckled.

Rupert joined the
group as Stubbs said, “To get back to what I was saying earlier, a bull market
is one in which the market is bullish, which is to say confident and fearless
concerning stocks and bonds. Basically it’s all buy-buy.”

“Bye-bye,” said
the girl. She turned away from Stubbs and looked at Rupert with cool amused
eyes.

Braidy and Harper
laughed at Stubbs’ discomfiture. Rupert classified the girl’s accent as Eastern
European. She was staring steadily at him, ignoring the others. She smiled at
Rupert.

He smiled back at
her, a strained rictus. His mind was frozen. He knew this was the moment. He
knew he had to say something to the girl.

But he couldn’t
think of anything to say.

The moment was
stretching out to eternity. The girl’s smile had begun to acquire an element of
tension. Stubbs, Harper and Braidy were looking on with growing amusement. He
had to speak. He had to say something. Now, right now.

But Rupert could
only think of one thing.

“Do you know where
the name Bren gun comes from?

The girl relaxed
and her smile widened. “Oh yes, Brno in Czechoslovakia where the weapon was
first developed and Enfield in England where it was first manufactured.”

The girl took his
arm and they walked away across the lawn, leaving Stubbs, Harper and Braidy
staring, appalled.

*

The girl’s name
was Alzbeta Brada and she was from the Czech Republic. Rupert had once visited
the country, crossing the border from a staging point near Altenberg. He’d been
on a mission to collect an asset from a Kazakh organisation who’d already
extracted handsome sums of money from the British government for the promise of
safe delivery.

It had turned out
that there was no question of safe delivery. The asset was dead and, judging by
the smell, had been for some time.

The rendezvous was
really an ambush.

As a result,
Rupert had experienced considerable difficulty getting back across the border
to Germany and then home again. But the way he’d left the Kazakhs, most of them
wouldn’t be going home at all. Of course he didn’t mention any of this to
Alzbeta, although she was delighted to discover he spoke a few words of Czech.

She might have
been less delighted if she’d known that among these words were “interrogation”,
“ransom” and “hostage”.

As the summer sun
declined over the sea and vanished into its own reflection, Alzbeta and Rupert
strolled, chatted and ate wedding cake. At one point he went to fetch fresh
drinks for them and Braidy bustled past and deliberately bumped into him with
his hard little potbelly, spilling Rupert’s drink all down his shirt. But
Alzbeta merely laughed and wiped him with a napkin and said, “Why did the funny
little fat man do that?”

The jazz band
finished its set, the last of the food was consumed, and there were toasts and
speeches. Fairy lamps came on in the garden and the distant lights of shipping
winked on and off in the bruised blue darkness of the Channel. Rupert sat with
Alzbeta, her head resting on his shoulder. “Are you tired?” he said.

“I think I’d
better go back to my hotel.” She lifted her head and looked at him with
speculative eyes. “I don’t suppose you could give me a lift?”

Rupert cleared his
throat. “Um, I don’t see why not,” he said, pleased to notice that his voice
was relatively steady and didn’t, for example, break in a nervous high-pitched
quaver. “Shall we go?”

As Rupert and the
girl left, arm in arm, Stubbs, Harper and Braidy looked on in embittered
astonishment. The universe had ceased to make sense. “How can she go off with a
drip like him?” hissed Stubbs.

“Well obviously
there’s something wrong with her,” said Braidy.

“Something not
entirely right up here,” agreed Harper, indicating his forehead with his index
finger.

Minerva Caine
joined them as they watched the couple leave. “Who is she anyway?” she said.
“Some kind of Russian?”

“Czech,” said
Braidy. “Some kind of Czech madwoman.”

Out in the street,
walking down the hill towards his car, Rupert turned to the girl and said, “Are
you sure you don’t mind leaving the wedding early?”

She said, “The
early bird catches the worm.”

*

Rupert started the
engine.

“I’m staying at
The Stables, do you know it?”

“Yes,” he said.
His heart was pounding happily. He still couldn’t quite believe he had picked
up this rather alarmingly alluring girl.

Rupert eased his
battered old Volvo down the hill, crawling along the narrow winding lane among
the Porsches and Bentleys, past the little churchyard and onto the seaside road
below.

They drove along
with the sea in darkness on their right and the grounds of Walmer Castle on
their left, cannons silhouetted on its battlements, the ancient Tudor Rose
configuration illuminated by spotlights. The Stables was a luxury hotel located
several miles west in St Margaret’s Bay. It was only a short drive.

But they never got
there.

Instead Rupert
found himself steering with one hand while the Czech pressed herself against
him, warm and fragrant, her mouth locked against his.

Headlights shot
towards them as they sped along the Dover Road through Ringwould. It was a
narrow country road set between fields with tall radar masts looming in the
distance. Horns blared a shrill warning as the Volvo wandered over the midline
of the road, towards the approaching traffic, and Rupert wrenched them abruptly
back to safety.

The small portion
of his mind that wasn’t concentrating on Alzbeta and the task of keeping them
both alive observed something in the darkness at the side of the road.

An eerie small
flash of green.

Perhaps the eyes
of a fox, reflecting the headlights of the car…

Alzbeta broke the
embrace. “Pull over,” she said breathlessly.

“What?”

“I want you,” she
said. “I want you now.”

“Can’t you wait
until—“

“Now.”

“But—“

“Turn off the
road.”

“But there’s
nowhere to—“

“Turn here.”

Alzbeta seized the
wheel and steered the car suddenly to the left. The Volvo jolted up onto the
grassy verge and then hit more level ground and continued, relatively smoothly,
into what their headlights revealed to be an open green expanse of field.
Rupert had been about to say that there was nowhere to turn off the road at
this point, and indeed when he had been stationed at the barracks nearby that
had certainly been true.

But it seemed in
the years since things had changed and nowadays there was some kind of farm
track leading seaward from the main road.

They followed the
track for another minute or two with Alzbeta laughing as she struggled to get
out of her dress, and then they came to a stop in the middle of a field. She
fumbled to switch off the engine as she turned to him, releasing her seat belt
and sliding into his lap. Rupert eased his hand onto her firm, warm breast,
nipple hard against his palm, and kissed her as the headlights went out.

*

Rupert awoke to
the grey light of dawn, disoriented but in an odd state of bliss. He was happy
although he couldn’t immediately remember why he was happy, or where he was. He
could hear birds singing. His neck, shoulder and entire right arm were numb and
cramped from the way he had slept, jammed against the back seat of the car.
Fragments of memory came back to him and he rolled over, reaching for Alzbeta.

She wasn’t there.

The smell of her
perfume still haunted the car, but she was gone. Rupert looked around in
bewilderment. The windows of the car were steamed up, obscuring the surrounding
field as the light of dawn grew slowly brighter.

Outside, the birds
stopped singing.

Rupert reached out
to wipe the windscreen clean and his hand froze in mid motion. Something was
written there on the steamy glass, written by a fingertip in the condensation.
A single word.

Sorry.

Rupert just had
time to notice that the handwriting was rather disappointingly childish when
the first artillery shell landed.

It landed with a
shattering blast about thirty metres from the car, kicking up clods of earth
and leaving a haze of moisture and fine debris in the air along with the
distinctive reek of high explosive. An instant later another shell landed —
this one so close that it caused the car to shake on its springs. By now Rupert
was clutching the ignition key, stabbing it into the lock, twisting it back and
forth, coaxing the cold engine to life.

Three more shells
landed around him before the car started. They were coming neatly grouped and
he had already recognised the pattern of a military barrage. He knew exactly
what was happening and exactly what he had to do about it. Training and
experience took over and conscious thought virtually ceased.

Rupert pushed his
foot to the accelerator and the car shot forward. It bucked and slewed across
the wet grass as shells exploded all around him.

A rolling
barrage involves several curtains of fire in a repeated pattern that moves
remorselessly forward without ever ceasing. That’s where Rupert was now, in the
middle of a rolling barrage.

He rapidly smeared
his sleeve against the windscreen, wiping it clean, wiping away the word Sorry,
obliterating it and clearing his field of vision while he steered with his
other hand. The wet green expanse of the field appeared before him, white
clouds rising from it as more high explosive blasted more thick damp clods of
earth skywards.

A shell landed
directly in front of the car, gouging a crater that Rupert couldn’t avoid
driving into. The car bucked and lunged and the steering wheel was almost
wrenched from his grip. He held on tight and wrestled the Volvo back to
stability, bouncing across the wet grass with shells exploding in front,
behind, and at his sides. Ahead he saw a sign reading Duke of York Barracks —
Artillery Range — Do Not Enter — Danger of Death.

Beyond the sign
was a barbed wire fence and beyond that, past a wide apron of pitted concrete,
the Dover Road. He glimpsed a gap in the barbed wire.

Danger of death,
thought Rupert. A shell landed millimetres behind the car, lifting the rear
wheels for an instant and throwing a spattering handful of earth against the
rear window.

He drove towards
the gap in the fence.

Chapter 2: Died Twice

“Of course she was
an enemy agent,” said Connubia. “A beautiful exotic foreign woman meets you and
immediately falls for you and insists on having sex with you? Of course she was
an enemy agent, you idiot. What else could she have been?” Connubia sighed and
stared in disgust at the report taking shape on her screen, detailing the
events at the wedding and after, dwelling on Rupert’s subsequent narrow escape
from the artillery range.

As she started typing,
adding her no doubt acerbic comments to his dossier, Rupert turned and stared
through the window at the busy London street outside. Shoppers and commuters
hurried by in the rain, moving up and down the hill towards Putney station. A
blind woman sat on a folding chair under an umbrella playing an accordion.

There was a guide
dog at her feet with a battered purple felt hat between his paws. Every now and
then someone would stoop to drop a coin into the hat and the dog would gaze up
at them with gloomy gratitude. Through the glass of the window Rupert couldn’t
hear the tune the blind woman was playing. It was just as well; he hated
accordion music.

Connubia sighed
again and stopped typing. She turned away from her keyboard and poured some
coffee from her thermos into the Snoopy mug she insisted on using. A
tantalising aroma drifted from the mug. Connubia always had very good coffee,
which she made for herself at home. She didn’t offer Rupert any. Of course not.
And while he was being debriefed she insisted that he sat in one of the
uncomfortably low chairs they normally reserved for troublesome customers.

Connubia was a
fraught, black haired woman who always wore a business suit one size too small,
the discomfort of which might well have contributed to her perpetual evil mood.
She was his case officer. Like Rupert, her cover was that she worked here in
the brightly lit offices of the Victory Royal Estate Agents in Putney High
Street.

But unlike Rupert,
Connubia had a thriving portfolio of genuine property sales to support her
fictional identity.

She set her coffee
aside and frowned across her desk at him. “Normally I would continue to tell
you exactly what I think of your behaviour,” she said. “But I believe the
General wants to speak to you.”

Now it was Rupert’s
turn to sigh. He rose and walked across the modern open plan office with its
sleek blonde-wood Scandinavian furniture towards a screen of pale blue glass.
He stepped behind the screen and punched a security code into the heavy steel
door in the wall. The thick door eased open silently and he stepped through
into a narrow concrete corridor starkly illuminated by fluorescent strip
lighting. Doors were spaced at intervals along the wall on either side. Rupert
knocked at the third door on the left and, without waiting for an answer, went
in.

The General was
sitting at his desk, staring bleakly at three small foil containers holding
steaming portions of red, green and brown foodstuffs. He shook his head and
looked at Rupert. “Do you realise that there are thirty seven curry houses
within a one mile radius of here?” He prodded at the fibrous green curry with a
white plastic spoon. “You’d think one of them could come up with a decent murg
palak tawa. But they missed by a mile, they all missed by a mile. Try some and
see what I mean.”

“No thank you.”
Rupert sat down.

“Not interested? I
don’t blame you.” The General shoved the curry containers to one side and
picked up a remote control. “But I imagine you will be interested in this.” He
aimed the remote at a large plasma screen television on the wall of his office.
The screen came to life, revealing the image of a winding road, seen from the
air. It was in the ghoulish green colours of night vision. “This is satellite
footage. It shows the relevant section of the Dover Road half an hour before
you were driving along it.” The General wrestled with the remote control. “If I
ever get this to work you will see two figures get out of a van, carrying wire
cutters which they then use on the fence of the Duke of York’s artillery
range.”

Rupert nodded
grimly. “So, they opened the fence, creating a gap which I would drive
through.”

“Yes. Thus
entering the firing range without being aware of where you were going.”

“Always assuming I
turned off the road at the right point,” said Rupert.

The General
frowned at the unresponsive remote control. Rupert repressed the urge to seize
it from him and push the correct button. “That’s where she came in,” said the
General. “What’s her name? The Czech operative.”

“Alzbeta,” said
Rupert glumly. He remembered the sleek animal warmth of the girl, pressed
treacherously nude against him in the steamy confines of the car. “Alzbeta
Brada.”

“Yes. She made
sure you turned off the road at exactly the right point.”

“And how did she
do that?”

The General
pressed the remote again, and finally got the right button. The image came to
life. Two figures wearing dark clothes and ski masks rolled back a cut section
of the barbed wire fence, secured the opening and darted away, scampering along
the verge of the road, hurrying jauntily at high speed. “It seems to be stuck
in fast forward,” said the General dolefully.

The figures
scampered until they reached a point where they stopped and placed something in
the grass. “Ah. There we go. You see that?” The General managed to freeze the
image. “You see what they put there?”

“Some kind of a
reflector,” said Rupert. “Which would pick up the headlights of a passing car.”
He remembered the eerie flash of green that he’d seen. He’d thought it was the
eyes of a fox. But it had been a beacon for the enemy.

“She saw the
beacon and she knew that was the signal to turn off the road.”

“Precisely.” The
General stuck the plastic spoon into the red curry where it jutted up like
Excalibur. “Leaving you in the merde.”

“Yes sir.”

The General peered
gloomily at the screen, the two frozen figures in black. Looking more closely
at the image, Rupert suddenly realised that both the figures were women.

The General
suddenly seemed to shrug away his gloom. He turned off the screen and the image
vanished. He turned to Rupert and smiled. “But luckily you managed to extract
yourself from the merde.”

“Yes sir. ” said
Rupert. “Although the suspension on the Volvo is never going to be quite the
same again.” He was grateful that the General had glossed over the whole
honey-trap aspect of the operation. He was more than a little embarrassed at
how easily, and thoroughly, he’d been deceived.

“Fill in a chit
and save the garage bills. We’ll get it repaired for you under damage in the
line of duty.”

“Thank you sir.”

The General waved
away his thanks as if it was an annoying cloud of cigarette smoke. “The
important thing is why this happened.”

“Why they went
after me, you mean?”

“Yes, we believe
it to have been a pre-emptive strike by the opposition.”

“Intended to
pre-empt what, sir?”

The General sank
back in his chair and studied Rupert as if trying to make up his mind about
something. He picked up the remote control again and, after a few false starts,
caused a new image to flare up on the screen.

A passport
photograph of a serious looking man in his late forties wearing heavy
spectacles.

“We think it may
be connected with this man. Ian Smith. British subject, born in Dundee. Studied
at Edinburgh and London before becoming senior lecturer in agricultural biology
at Loughborough. He is well known in the scientific community for his
pioneering work on the beet necrotic blue vein blight.”

“Blight?”

“It’s evidently a
serious threat to the beet crops.”

“So this Smith is
an expert in plant disease?”

“Specifically he’s
an expert in the blight virus and its spread in spores of, and zoosporangia of,
its vector Polymyxa Betae,” said the General, consulting a folder on his desk.
“That is the title of his most famous publication. Riveting stuff, I know.”

“So why are we
interested in an agricultural biologist?”

“Because he
recently turned up dead under a tube train. It was a Northern Line train,
northbound, destination Edgware. There’d been delays to the service all that
morning and the platform was very crowded. So it appeared at the time to be a
bona fide accident.”

“But now we think
he was pushed?” said Rupert.

“Yes,” said the
General, “but that’s not the compelling aspect of the situation.”

“What is the
compelling aspect?”

“That Smith was
already dead, some months before he went under the train.”

Rupert repressed
the urge to make a zombie joke and continued to give the General his polite
listening face. “And what were the circumstances surrounding his, uh, first
death, sir?”

“He was
supposedly killed in a car crash in Windsor. But at the behest of the Americans
—

“The Americans?”

“Yes, the CIA is
taking a lively interest in all this. They were eager to know the results when
we, subsequent to the tube train incident, exhumed the body — the Windsor road
crash victim — and subjected the remains to DNA testing. Of course it wasn’t
Smith.”

“So we think,”
said Rupert, “that Smith faked his own death.”

“Or someone faked
it for him.”

Rupert nodded.
“And we’re keenly interested in what he was up to in the months when he dropped
out of sight. Before he genuinely was killed, under the tube train.”

“Yes,” said the
General. “Keenly interested. Someone went to a lot of trouble to make one of
our top scientists disappear. We need to know what he was up to.”

“But nothing in
his background suggests he’d be useful for, say, weapons research? Biological
warfare?”

The General
shrugged. “Apparently not. All his work was on harmless plant viruses. I mean
harmless to humans and in many cases not even especially harmful to plants.”

“But maybe
somebody’s found a way to turn these into a weapon.”

“That is one
of the possibilities I want you to explore. And bear in mind that the
opposition won’t welcome your enquiries. It appears they’ve already tried to
kill you once, to stop you looking into this.”

Rupert nodded,
thinking about the lithe nude Alzbeta crawling on top of him in the back of the
Volvo, his subsequent waking the following morning to gleaming mist and the
shattering blast of artillery.

The General said,
“We’ve prepared a briefing document for you on Smith. You can collect it from
Marcus in computing.”

The computing
workshop occupied three of the four rooms on the opposite side of the corridor
to the General’s office. It was a messy space full of workbenches stacked with
empty mineral water bottles, computers and other segments of half dismantled
technology. Presiding over this presumably subtly ordered chaos was Marcus
Crumb, a fat young man who always affected a bow tie. He put Rupert in mind of
a degenerate and rather dangerous version of Billy Bunter.

Occasionally
Marcus was brought out of the back room and into the estate agents shop front,
if they needed to scare off a particularly annoying customer with a blast of
technical double talk.

Rupert knocked
diffidently at the half open door and entered. “The General said I should
collect a briefing document from you.”

“Yes. That’s
right. Here you go,” said Marcus. He picked up a small black rectangle of
plastic and handed it to him.

“What is it?”

“A floppy.”

“A floppy disk?”
said Rupert.

“That’s right. But
not any old floppy disk. A three inch one. A double sided compact three inch
CF-2 disk.”

Rupert gingerly
accepted the floppy. “But these things went out with the ark.”

“Yes.”

“They’re ancient.”

“Actually it’s the
ultimate high tech. There is no way they can be scanned at a distance, unlike
your modern wireless devices. So this briefing document is very, very secure.”

“Oh come on, can’t
you give me a memory stick or a CD or something?”

Marcus shook his
head, grinning. “If we gave you a memory stick or a CD or something, then the
opposition would be able to read it.”

“The opposition?”

“When they took it
from you.”

“Nobody’s taking
anything from me,” said Rupert.

“Hypothetically
speaking.”

“Even
hypothetically speaking.” He put the floppy disk in his pocket and turned for
the door.

Marcus called
after him, “By the way, Connubia wants to talk to you before you go.” The words
echoed behind Rupert as he walked along the corridor, punched the door code and
went back out into the estate agents. He stepped out from behind the screen of
frosted glass and saw that Connubia was indeed waiting. His heart sank as he
sat down beside her desk again, in the uncomfortably low chair.

“You wanted to see
me?”

“Yes. Since you
insisted on making a spectacle of yourself at the wedding by leaving with this
girl—”

“Alzbeta.”

“Yes, this
Alzbeta, and do you mind for a moment if I reiterate just how stupid that was?
I mean, who else could she be but a ruthless enemy agent attempting to kill
you? Anyway, since you insisted on making a spectacle of yourself at the
wedding by leaving with this stupid girl‑”

“Spectacle?”

“Yes, dozens of
people saw you. They’re all talking about you. So now we’re going to have to
cover your tracks for you.”

“What do you
mean?”

“We’re going to
have to clear up this mess for you.”

Rupert felt
himself beginning to lose his temper. “There is no mess.”

“We’re going to
have to account for the fact that this Alzbeta creature has suddenly vanished.”

“What?”

“Account for the
fact that she’s suddenly vanished from your life. We can’t let anyone suspect
what actually happened, can we? So it fell to me as your case officer to
provide a plausible explanation. A cover story.”

Rupert didn’t like
the sound of that. “What kind of a cover story?”

Connubia smiled at
him primly. “One which is plausible and covers all the facts. We need to
explain why this girl has disappeared and is no longer seeing you. And the most
obvious and most simple explanation is that her encounter with you was so
disastrous that she had no desire to ever see you again.”

Rupert felt his
face reddening. “What do you mean? What are you talking about? That’s not
necessary at all.”

Connubia poured
herself a cup of coffee from her thermos. “Oh, but we think it is.” She sipped
the coffee with satisfaction. “And the simplest way to achieve our goal was to
fake a text message from Alzbeta to one of the bridesmaids.”

“Which
bridesmaid?” said Rupert. “What text message?”

“Here, I have it
on my computer. You can look at it.” Connubia rotated her screen so Rupert
could see the message in which, in broken English and imbecilic, fashionable
contractions, Alzbeta concisely catalogued a catastrophic failure by Rupert as
a lover, including the memorable phrases “like jelly” and “useless”, referring to
him several times as “Mr Floppy”, and concluding with the words, “I never see
this drip again.”

Rupert tried to
restrain his temper. “This is your solution?”

“I think I’ve
caught the tone accurately,” said Connubia.

“A semi-literate
text message calling into question my sexual prowess?”

“Oh, I’d say it’s
a lot more emphatic than that.”

“But nothing like
this actually happened!”

“As well you
know,” said Connubia, “in our line of work we often deal with appearances
rather than what actually happened. And this message conveys the ideal
appearance.”

“Ideal for whom?”
said Rupert. “Not for me.”

“That can’t be
helped.”

“Why do we have to
tell people? Why do we have to tell them anything?”

“Security.”

“Who is the
bridesmaid you’re sending this text to?”

“Genevieve
Duvall.”

“But she’s pals
with Harpers’ wife. And she’ll tell Harper.”

“Presumably.”

“And he’ll tell
Braidy and Stubbs.”

“As I say, that
can’t be helped.”

“They’ll tell
everyone that I’m such a sexual incompetent that I scared this girl off.”

“As I said, it
seemed much the most plausible scenario.”

“Well, I forbid
you,” said Rupert.

“Forbid me?”

“To send that
message.”

“Too late. I sent
it ten minutes ago.”

*

There was rain in
the air as Rupert shoved through the door of Victory Royal Estate Agents and out
onto Putney Hill. He was still seething from his encounter with Connubia.
Whatever lapse in judgement he’d made in his liaison with this foreign agent,
there was no need for her to be so vindictive — and humiliating — in her choice
of cover story.

Besides, it was
strikingly untrue, given the epically frenetic and spectacularly gratifying sex
they’d shared.

Before she tried
to kill him.

On the pavement
outside the estate agents, the old blind woman was still playing the accordion.

It was some
lachrymose Gallic ballad that instantly set Rupert’s teeth on edge. But he’d
hardly stepped out the door when the woman abruptly stopped. The sudden silence
caused Rupert to look her way and as he did so the blind woman dropped her
accordion to the pavement where it collapsed with a dying sigh.

Then she fell
forward, clutching at her chest with one clawing hand. She landed heavily on
the pavement. The dog leapt up with startled concern as Rupert hurried over.

The woman was
moaning and writhing, clutching at her chest. Rupert kneeled beside her, trying
to remember what he knew about emergency first aid. At that moment the woman
gasped and stopped breathing. With a sinking feeling, he realised that there
was nothing else for it; he was going to have to give her mouth-to-mouth
resuscitation. Resigned to his fate, he lowered his face to the wrinkled,
be-whiskered visage.

As he did so, the
woman’s body twitched and her hands moved upwards in spasm, like a drowning
swimmer reaching for the surface. Her hands scrabbled frantically over Rupert’s
chest while he tried to save her life.

He made a seal
over the woman’s nose and mouth, using his hand and his own mouth. There was
something peculiar and unpleasant about the feel of the old woman’s skin.
Rupert was trying to identify the sensation when, with startling strength, she
suddenly shoved him off her.

Rupert rolled back
in surprise as the woman lunged to her feet, scooped up her purple felt hat,
which jingled with coins, and moved swiftly away. Jamming the hat on her head,
she leaped on a motor scooter that was parked at the kerb. As she did so, two
thoughts simultaneously surfaced in Rupert’s mind. The first was that the
peculiar feeling of her skin was the kind you experienced when touching latex.

The second was the
realisation that she’d reached into his pocket and taken the floppy disk.

The suddenly lithe
figure of the woman was kicking the motor scooter to life. As Rupert rose in
pursuit, she was clawing at her own face. She turned and threw something at his
feet. A grotesque, puddled caricature of a human face. The latex mask she’d
been wearing.

Rupert moved after
her, only to find his way blocked by the dog, which stood squarely planted and
snarling in his path. Rupert moved to the left and the dog also moved left. He
feinted to the right and then dodged back to the left, but the dog mirrored his
movements exactly, remaining directly in his path, fur rising in hackles and
snarling a warning.

Rupert was
weighing up his options and deciding what to do next when the dog made up his
mind for him by charging forward and leaping for his throat. At this point
training took over for Rupert and without giving it any conscious thought he
responded as he’d been taught, seizing the dog by its leading paw, turning in
the direction of the attack, swinging the dog by the paw and using its own
momentum against it as he threw the dog over his shoulder.

The dog hit the
pavement with a meaty thud which, however, did nothing to slow its lightning
recovery. It turned and surged back towards him, silently moving in to strike.
Rupert did what you do in such a situation. He turned at an angle, sidestepping
the attack, and kicked the dog solidly in its ribs.

A cyclist came
into view at just this moment, pedalling along the main road, and saw Rupert
kicking the dog. As he fended off the beast’s next snarling assault, Rupert saw
the man on the bicycle approach out of the corner of his eye. He was an
extremely large man whose hulking, somewhat inhuman appearance was heightened
by the all black cycling gear and shaded goggles he was wearing. He came
gliding silently in on his bicycle and stopped at the kerb.

He hopped off and
propped his bicycle against some railings. “What do you think you’re doing?” he
said. He was sweaty and what could be seen of his face was a bright beefy red.

“What?” said
Rupert, lashing out at the dog as it tried to seize his ankle.

“Leave that dog
alone. That dog never did you any harm.”

“It’s attacking
me!”

“You must have
provoked it.”

Rupert kicked the
dog again, catching the beast a good one, square in the ribs. The animal
wheeled, almost catching Rupert’s ankle in its jaws, but he was too fast. The
cyclist stepped away from his bicycle.

“Hoi! I said, what
do you think you’re doing?”

Rupert risked
glancing away from the dog for a moment. “What?”

“I saw you.” The
man pulled his goggles down and let them dangle at his chin. There was a neat
black mark on his face, a phantom outline of city grime marking where the
goggles had been. “I saw what you just did. You kicked that dog.”

“Of course I did.
Look at it! It’s savage. It’s attacking me.”

But actually
Rupert noticed with a sinking feeling that the dog was now lying on the
pavement with its nose pathetically between its paws. The bicycle man came
forward and kneeled by it, patting the glossy fur of its flanks. The dog, that
odious opportunistic beast, whined beseechingly and licked his hand. The
bicycle man looked up at Rupert with murder in his eyes.

“Savage, eh?”

“Look, a moment
ago that dog was attacking me. I was merely defending myself.”

The man unbuttoned
his cycle gloves and began to remove them. “Well you’re going to have another
chance to defend yourself now.” He squared up in front of Rupert in a boxing
stance and as he did so the dog, as if sensing that Rupert now had his hands
full, rose and trotted off, tail wagging as if at a job well done. It was
moving down the hill, in the same direction as the “old lady” on her scooter,
who was now rapidly receding out of sight.

Rupert had to
pursue. Immediately. He turned to the bicycle man.

“Look, get out of
my way.”

“That dog was not
doing anything that justified what you were doing to it. There is no excuse for
cruelty to animals. I’m going to teach you a lesson.” The man threw a punch at
Rupert.

Because of the
cycle helmet that the man was wearing, it took Rupert an unconscionable length
of time to render him unconscious. Certainly a good ten seconds. Seconds he
could ill afford to lose. In any case it felt like an eternity, before finally
he knocked the man out and was looking around for the fastest means of pursuing
the scooter woman.

He saw the man’s
bicycle propped against the railings. Rupert jumped on it and sped off,
pedalling strongly, down Putney Hill, towards the river.

He hit the
crossroads just as the lights changed and two huge red double decker 337 buses
came surging at him from opposite sides of the junction. Horns blared out an
affronted warning, but Rupert hardly heard it.

Avoiding the bus
coming from his left sent him bouncing across the road, cutting in front of approaching
traffic, and up onto the pavement, past a shoe repair shop. As he sped past
Putney station a crowd of commuters clustered by the outdoor ticket machines
scattered, cursing. Rupert saw a gap in the traffic and wrestled the bike back
onto the road.

In the distance he
could just make out the figure of the woman on the motor scooter, heading
towards Putney Bridge and the river. Rupert remembered telling Marcus that the
opposition was not going to get its hands on the floppy disk. He felt his face
flush despite the cool air streaming over it as he pedalled more quickly,
slipping through the gears and weaving in and out amongst car and trucks.

The motor scooter
was growing nearer now, stopped at the traffic lights outside the Exchange. The
woman seated on it didn’t look back towards Rupert; there was no reason why she
should. As far as she knew he was still back there, preoccupied by her dog.

The lights changed
and Rupert followed. As he rounded the curve onto the Lower Richmond Road he
saw the scooter change lanes in a brisk manoeuvre, turning right past a pub
called the Prince Regent and heading off the main road down onto the
embankment.

Rupert pedalled
after her. He hit the cobbles of the riverside street and jolted to a halt in
the shade. Further ahead, in the sunlight, the woman had stopped the scooter
and was easing it onto its kickstand. She seemed quite unaware that she was
being pursued, and Rupert began to relax a little.

It was cool and
quiet here beside the river, in the shadow of the bridge, with houseboats
creaking at their moorings. A breeze coming in off the water cooled the sweat
on Rupert’s chest. The only sound was the approaching drone of a small
motorboat.

The woman had
moved away from the scooter and was busy removing her outer garments, the drab
costume of the blind musician. Under her coat she was wearing padding to give
the appearance of a portly middle-aged woman. She stripped off coat and padding
and stuffed everything into a litterbin. Finally Rupert got a good look at her
face.

It was Alzbeta.

He felt a complex
mixture of emotions, not least among which, however, was triumph that he had
her exactly where he wanted her. Rupert began to move forward, the sound of his
approach covered by the approaching motorboat, which was slowing and drifting
towards the shore.

Alzbeta sat down
on a bench. She was holding something in her hand. At first Rupert thought it
was a phone but then he realised that it was the floppy disk and his blood
began to pound in his ears, so loudly that he hardly heard the motorboat
slowing to a halt.

There was a flurry
of movement from the embankment and Alzbeta cried out. He turned to see that it
was the dog, the bloody dog. It came bounding down the street towards the bench
as if it had agreed to meet Alzbeta here by prior arrangement. She called out
happily to the animal and set the floppy disk down on the bench as she turned
to greet it.

Rupert decided
this was the moment to make a move. Unfortunately, he wasn’t alone in this
decision. A lean figure in combat trousers and a tee shirt, wearing a golf hat,
moved suddenly in from the idling motorboat. Jumping ashore from the moving
boat, the newcomer landed on the pavement and moved calmly forward to snatch
something off the bench.

The floppy disk.

Alzbeta and the
dog turned with identical expressions of surprise as the figure jumped off
shore, back onto the boat that was still idling past, gunned the engine, and
moved out into mid river.

Then Alzbeta saw
Rupert. The dog at her side began to snarl. Rupert stared at them, then at the
motorboat accelerating away on the placid green Thames, carrying the floppy
disk with it.

Reluctantly he
climbed back onto the bicycle and left Alzbeta and the dog there. Pedalling
hard, beside the river, after the boat.

Chapter Three: Big Mama

The towpath
between Putney and Barnes was a long winding band of gravel fringed with deep
banks of shaggy vegetation dotted with the random bright colours of wild
flowers. It was all very unspoiled and picturesque. But its only relevant
attribute from Rupert’s current point of view was that it was accessible to a
speeding cyclist while simultaneously providing enough foliage for said cyclist
to remain concealed from the vantage point of a speeding boat in the river
below.

The small boat in
question was moving breezily along in midstream under the confident command of
the figure in the golf hat. It swept past the long line of trees on the far
bank that marked the green expanse of Bishops Park.

By carefully
timing his speed in relation to his quarry, Rupert had so far managed to stay
securely out of sight of the boat, braking and bobbing behind a screening bush
or clump of trees whenever Golf Hat turned around and surveyed the shore.

Now he emerged
from concealment and passed the boat, pedalling fast. The spinning blur of his
front tire spat sharp fragments of gravel up at his face. The boat was about
thirty metres behind him but gaining fast. Ahead, Hammersmith Bridge came into
sight. It was an imposing sight, a handsome green and gold steel structure with
the harmonious proportions and reassuring solidity of Victorian engineering.

Rupert sped
towards it and as soon as he passed under the cool shadows of the bridge he hit
the brakes and stopped the bicycle in a spray of gravel. He hopped off the bike
and began to run. He went up the stone stairs built into the side of the
embankment, emerged at street level and turned left, sprinting onto the bridge.

The boat was less
than twenty metres away now.

Rupert was running
flat out. The bridge surface had been divided into two lanes of tarmac road to
allow for the traffic demands of the twenty-first century. On either side,
protected by a low wall, was a footpath.

Rupert was running
along the footpath on the west side of the bridge.

The boat was close
now.

It was approaching
from the direction of central London, passing blocks of luxury flats and
restaurants on its starboard. But Golf Hat was staring to port, back along the
towpath where Rupert had been following. The boat abruptly sped up. It was
passing the Riverside Studio complex and fast approaching the bridge.

Rupert came to the
centre of the footpath. Here it widened into a semi-circular area where
strollers could pause and gaze down at the water flowing hypnotically below. A
green steel wall ran along at waist height where you could pause and lean and
enjoy the river vistas.

He glanced back
across the bridge, watching for the approaching boat. There was no sign of it.

Rupert realised it
was already underneath. He could hear its motor note change, echoing among the
steel girders below. He peered over the side of the bridge.

The boat was
emerging from the shadows directly beneath him; Golf Hat crouched in the
middle.

Rupert hopped up
onto the wall and stepped out, off the bridge, plunging into the void.

Dropping like a
stone, he fell straight down into the rear of the small boat, causing the
vessel to buck in the water like a startled beast. Golf Hat spun around at the
impact and, without seeming to give it any thought, aimed a kick at him, high
on his solar plexus.

Momentarily winded
from the fall, Rupert blocked the kick. His opponent moved into position again
for another kick and it was at that moment Rupert realised that Golf Hat was a
woman.

Rupert saw his own
reflection, standing tensed in the dark lenses of her sunglasses. She altered
the angle of the kick and Rupert shifted his block accordingly.

The girl
hesitated. She moved back in the boat. Watching her, Rupert braced himself for
her next move.

Her next move was
to reach in her pocket and take out a small rectangular object made of black
plastic. It was the floppy disk.

“I guess you’re
looking for this,” she said, and she threw the floppy across the boat. Rupert
snatched it nervously from the air. He felt a surge of triumph getting it back in
his hands. But in truth the girl hadn’t made it difficult to catch. And he was
beginning to realise her voice was familiar. An American accent.

He searched his
memory. Meanwhile the girl was taking off her golf hat and sunglasses.

It was the singer
from the wedding.

“Minerva Caine,”
she said. “We’ve met before. You wanted to tell me about your Bren gun.”

*

“Very good,
Rupert,” said Connubia. “Very well done.”

She set aside her
Snoopy mug and picked up the floppy disk and looked at it with distaste. “What
we really like is to have our confidential documents stolen and then handed
back to us by a CIA operative.” She smiled at the American girl. “For which we
are duly grateful, Miss Caine.” Her smile was less than sincere.

“In fairness,”
said Minerva Caine, “your man here did a pretty good job of retrieving it.”

“In fairness?”
echoed Connubia, as if this was an alien concept. “My man here?” She looked at
Rupert then poured a cup of coffee and handed it across the desk to the CIA
agent. It was typical that she didn’t offer him any.

He and Minerva
were sitting with Connubia in the front of the estate agents. Minerva had been
given the comfortable chair, of course.

“He shouldn’t have
lost it in the first place. He wasn’t out the door more than ten seconds when
the floppy disk was taken from him by that blind woman.”

“She wasn’t
blind,” said Rupert.

“A blind woman and
her dog,” said Connubia. “After which he commences attacking a member of the
public.”

“You mean that
idiot on his bicycle?” said Rupert tightly.

“That’s right. The
innocent member of the public whom you assaulted, prefatory to stealing his
bicycle.”

“Stealing?”

“Luckily the
prompt return of his bicycle safe and sound, which we achieved only thanks to
the quick thinking of Marcus, mollified the man to the extent that he was
convinced to forego legal proceedings and let the whole matter drop. Saving us
a lot of embarrassment and expense.”

“He was assaulting
a member of the security services in pursuit of his duty.”

“His duty being to
recover the floppy disk which had just been stolen from him by a blind woman.”

“She wasn’t
blind.”

“No, Rupert,
you’re right,” said Connubia patiently. “She wasn’t actually blind. We’ve
established that. She was merely in disguise as a blind woman. Whereas in fact
she was one Alzbeta Brada.”

“The girl from the
wedding,” said Minerva. She sounded amused. “That’s who it was? The Czech
madwoman?”

Rupert closed his
eyes. He felt a headache coming on. “She’s not mad,” he said. “She’s not mad
and she’s not blind.”

Connubia broke in.
“The old man wants to see you now.” She was looking at her computer screen
where an instant messaging window was blinking. “Both of you.”

*

A photograph
appeared on the screen behind the General’s desk: a middle-aged woman with
Asiatic features. It was a plump, pleasant face, smiling benignly into the
camera.

Marcus said,
“We’ve connected your friend Alzbeta Brada to this woman. Her name is Boon-Nam
Merrington, Thai national. Married to a Brit called Solomon Merrington who is
deceased lo these many years. Heart attack. He probably got it when he found
out what his missus had been up to.”

“Thank you,
Marcus,” said the General. “I’ll take the briefing from here.”

He pressed a
button on the remote and the image changed. It was the same woman, but younger.
She now wore a black elegant cocktail dress that had been torn at one shoulder,
apparently in some kind of altercation. Her lipstick and mascara were smeared
and there was bruised defiance in her eyes as she gazed sullenly into the lens
of the police camera.

“This was taken by
the Hong Kong Royal Constabulary some twenty years earlier. When she was known
as Wâat-pai.”

“Rat pie?” said
Marcus incredulously.

“Wâat-pai,”
repeated the General.

“Circumflex over
the first ‘a’,” said Minerva. “It means tropical storm or hurricane.”

“AKA Big Mama,”
said the General. He frowned at the picture on the screen, as if trying to
discern something concealed in the image. “Boon-Nam first attracted the
attention of the authorities as a sex worker in Bangkok, when she killed her
pimp and absconded with his not-inconsiderable personal fortune.”

“She robbed her
pimp and killed him?” said Rupert. “And got rich doing it? I’m beginning to
like her.”

“You may not like
her so well when you learn more.” The General turned back to scrutinise the
picture. “This kind of behaviour soon became something of a trademark for our
subject. It was a scenario she was to repeat on a number of occasions over the
following years.”

He cleared
his throat. “I should stress that all this only came to light years later when
we starting digging into Boon-Nam’s past. She was discreet and she moved from
city to city, blithely crossing national borders, throughout Southeast Asia and
the Pacific Rim nations, and no one ever connected her victims, if one can
stretch a point and classify those predatory pimps, sex traffickers and
flesh-barons as victims.”

A photo appeared
of an immaculately coiffured and attired Boon-Nam walking through the revolving
door of a five star hotel. A glossy press shot. She was laughing and holding a
cigarette. There was a silver fox fur stole around her shoulders. Her escort
was a toothy, pot-bellied middle-aged man in a tuxedo.

“Next she went
up-market, becoming an extremely high-class call girl. She was very successful
in this endeavour and made a lot of money and it seems only occasionally
murdered anyone.” The General looked at Minerva. “I believe our friends at the
CIA have a theory about this period of her career.”

Minerva nodded and
cleared her throat. “We think there were fewer bodies during this phase because
she was no longer killing for gain. She was now assassinating carefully chosen
targets.”

“Carefully chosen
on what criteria?” said Rupert.

The General
frowned. “Sometimes for what appear to be political or ideological reasons.
Again, I believe Miss Caine has more details.”

Minerva said, “In
all cases these were individuals who had exploited or abused women in some way.
Strip-club owners, sweatshop operators, even a couple of outwardly upstanding
and respectable businessmen who it turns out were in the habit of savagely
beating their wives.”

The General rose
from his desk and paced restlessly around his office, a bulky shadow in the
darkened room. “Again no one connected her with these killings for years. And
long before the authorities started digging she had changed her identity
again.” The General waited for the next picture and as it flashed up he said,
“At this point Boon-Nam seems to have grown tired of working solo and signed up
to work at an escort agency. In fact she took control of the agency by the
simple expedient of killing the men who ran it.”

“But she improved
on their business model,” said Minerva. “In no time she was managing her own
stable of hand-picked girls and was making a great deal of money. So were her
girls. She made a point of paying generous dividends to her employees.”

“Did they have a
health care plan?” said Rupert. Minerva glanced at him.

“I wouldn’t be
surprised. And for her own part, Boon-Nam used her profits to purchase a house
in the best part of town and shortly thereafter established her own brothel,
which soon had a select customer base. Her clientele were men in high places.
Handpicked government, military and police officials. She was very discreet and
very popular. There was a waiting list and she chose her customers with great
care.”

Rupert realised
where this was going. “Christ,” he said. Minerva nodded, “At the height of her
success Big Mama threw a party for her blue chip customers. A gala night for
VIPs only.”

“And she killed
them,” said Rupert.

“That’s right. She
killed all of them.” The darkened room was quiet for a moment.

“This is the point
where she registered on our radar,” said the General. “Most emphatically
registered.”

“How did Big Mama
manage to stay out of prison?” said Rupert. “How could she hide after this?
There must have been a hell of a stink.”

“Not as much as
you might think,” said Minerva. “They were all scumbags, the victims, not to
put too fine a point on it. They were the most corrupt cops, the most venal
politicians. People were generally glad to see them go.”

“So Interpol
turned a blind eye,” said the General. He sat down at his desk again. “Or at
least let’s say they didn’t make pursuing her a top priority.” The screen now
showed a picture of a soberly dressed Boon-Nam with another group of smiling
young women, all of whom now wore identical zipper-fronted overalls. “At this
point she changed tactics again, adopted the name Big Mama and became what I
suppose you might call a social reformer.”

“A reformer?” said
Rupert.

“Yes. Rescuing
girls in the red light district. She would take them in and feed them and
clothe them.”

“Clothe them in
matching jump suits,” said Marcus. “It looks like some kind of cult.”

“That’s exactly
what it became. She rescued these girls from the street and saved them from
prostitution. Her call girl operation seems to have been suspended
indefinitely.” Minerva glanced at Rupert. “Except for the occasional honey
trap.” Rupert felt his face flush and was glad of the darkness.

The General
cleared his throat and said, “But the self-styled Big Mama exploited these
girls in a new way. As Minerva says, she was now running a cult, with the girls
undergoing indoctrination until they were ready to do anything Big Mama asked
them to do.”

“And what did she
ask them to do?” said Rupert.

“Same approach as
before,” said Minerva. “Except now she had an elite killing unit working for
her and she could tackle larger targets.”

The General
frowned. “With hindsight, this was the point at which we should have acted. But
we didn’t and we missed our chance. And the reason we didn’t jump on her, when
we could, was because it still seemed she was conducting her vendetta against
the scum of the underworld.

“Many people in
police forces around the world thoroughly approved of the notion that she might
clean house for them. And indeed, in the short term, this is exactly what she
proceeded to do.”

The picture
changed to the aerial view of a compound surrounded by thick green jungle. The
General said, “Big Mama was next heard of on the other side of the world, in
Central America. This is, or was, the Peruvian cocaine factory of one
Enunciacion Mendoza. Senor Mendoza had been diversifying into the sex trade,
using the money from his cocaine sales to procure young village girls and set
them up in the cities or ship them abroad. Here is an image of the same place
after Big Mama and her girls paid a visit.”

The green jungle
was now scorched and black in a ragged outline around the burned-out compound.
“Completely wiped out. Now don’t get the impression that anyone was shedding
any tears over Mendoza. He was a corrupt despot as much as he was a drug baron.
His political ambitions would have made him a target for one of our own
agencies sooner or later. He needed to be dealt with.”

“And she dealt
with him,” said Rupert.

“Indeed. Boon-Nam
and her disciples swept in like a trained commando unit and wiped out every
man. And I do mean every man. The women who worked there were spared and taken
back to Big Mama’s headquarters.”

“So far, so good,”
said Marcus. “For her I mean.”

The General nodded
his head ponderously. “Yes, so far so good, but there are some rather less
favourable aspects to it. She put the women prisoners through indoctrination,
or re-education as she calls it.”

“How Maoist,” said
Rupert.

“Indeed. From what
we can make out, it’s a pretty brutal regime of brainwashing. But that is far
from the worst aspect of the Mendoza attack. Because on the way back from
destroying the factory, Big Mama’s victorious cadre encountered two buses
travelling along a country road. Buses which belonged to the local high school.
Aboard one of them was the girls’ soccer team.” He gazed out at them from under
his shadowed brow. “They let that that one go. The other bus was carrying the
boys’ team…”

“Oh no,” said
Marcus. “A bunch of kids? You must be kidding.”

“No,
unfortunately, I am not kidding. She slaughtered the lot of them. This is the
point where it became clear that it wasn’t just ‘bad’ men she was killing. It
was all men.”

Minerva broke in
quietly. “And not just men. Young boys. All males of any age were fair game.”

“This is also the
point,” said the General, “where it became apparent that Big Mama’s behaviour
was not entirely rational.”

Rupert felt a
small chill at the base of his spine. “Although I imagine she is rational by
her own standards,” he said.

“Indeed,” said the
General. “And to the extent that she has suffered abuse at the hands of the men
in her life, she must believe she has good reason to behave the way she does.”

“Which all helps
to fuel the flame of her fanaticism,” said Minerva. “At least, that’s how our
profilers have worked her up.” She then gave details of other attacks in South
America, one against a military academy.

“Why these
targets?” said Rupert. “Why these in particular?”

“Practice,” said
Minerva. She turned to look at him. “We think she chose them to practise on. To
give her girls combat experience.”

“Jesus.”

“Yes.”

“Practice for
what?” said Rupert. “Do we know?”

It was the General
who replied. “Unfortunately, all we know is that it’s something big.” A final
image appeared on the screen. It was the same as the first one, the plump,
pleasant, unassuming face of the middle-aged woman.

“Lights please,
Marcus.” As the lights came on, the General turned to them. Rupert shifted
restlessly in his chair. “How are we going to tackle her?”

“Well, we’re
actually quite fortunate,” said the General, “in that Big Mama’s organisation —
which normally has very high standards of security and has previously proved
very difficult for our agencies to penetrate — now appears somewhat
compromised.”

“Compromised? In
what way?”

Minerva said, “You
see, Big Mama has put on a big push.”

The General bobbed
his head in agreement. “That’s right. She has radically stepped up both the
pace and scale of her operations. Necessitating a recruitment drive to get her
manpower — or rather womanpower — up to sufficient numbers for a major
operation.”

“And this big push
plays to our advantage,” said Minerva. “Because while previously there was a strong
ideological aspect to Big Mama’s operation, and all her girls were subject to
prolonged indoctrination, they just don’t have time for that crap now.”

“Why don’t they
have the time?” said Rupert. Again he felt a cold, crawling uneasiness.

“We’ll get to that
in a moment,” said the General. “But the salient point is that now, instead of
carefully selecting her girls and comprehensively indoctrinating them, Big Mama
is obliged to make use of more hastily acquired personnel.”

“All kinds of
trash,” said Minerva. “Both her recruitment and training are getting
increasingly hasty and sketchy.”

“Which makes her
vulnerable to infiltration,” said Rupert.

“Possibly,” said
Minerva. “Or possibly she’s already infiltrated. She just doesn’t know it yet.
Perhaps even the infiltrator doesn’t know it yet.”

Marcus frowned.
“What does that mean?”

“It means she may
have already recruited someone we can turn,” said Rupert.

“Someone who will
come over to us?”

“Correct. Someone
susceptible. A weak link. In fact we have someone specific in mind.”

“You mean, sort of
a honey trap?” said Marcus.

“A reverse honey
trap,” said Minerva. She was looking at Rupert.

Before Rupert
could begin to worry about the implications of what she’d said, the General
broke in. “You wanted us to explain about Big Mama not having enough time.” He
turned and studied the last image of the woman that lingered on the screen, now
pale and ghostly in the ambient room light. “It seems our subject is working to
rather a tight schedule.”

“That’s right,”
said Minerva. “She suddenly announced to her followers that they have a
deadline of forty-nine days. We don’t know why.”

“Forty-nine days,”
said Rupert.

“That was some
while ago,” said the General.

Rupert felt
himself begin to sweat. “How long?”

“About a month.”

“Jesus. So we’re
down to…”

Minerva nodded.
“Nineteen days exactly,” she said.

*

“So, to
summarise,” said Connubia, glaring at Minerva. “You and Rupert are going to be
working on this operation together.”

“Yes, I’ve been
seconded from the Agency, and —”

“And you’re taking
my desk.” Connubia was circling around the office like an angry hornet. Most of
her files and personal effects, including her Snoopy mug, had been moved to one
of the narrow little corner units where customers could in theory use the screens
to look at properties offered by the Victory Royal estate agents.

“We’re hot
desking,” said Minerva. “And it’s only for a few hours. A few hours at most
each day. It’s your desk the rest of the time. Don’t feel obligated to move all
your stuff.”

“Obligated? Why
don’t you learn to speak English? The word is obliged.” Connubia scooped up a
potted plant and looked for a moment as though she was going to hurl it, but
instead merely spun on her heels and marched back to her new, much smaller,
desk where she installed it.

Minerva and Rupert
looked at each other. “Well, I’d be obliged if you’d sit down,” she said. “For
your first briefing.”

Rupert sat down
and almost immediately Connubia joined them, rolling her new chair inexorably
across the office carpet. She ignored Rupert, gave a big false smile to Minerva
and said, “Look, there is one thing I don’t understand.”

“Yes?”

“Why were you at
the wedding? I mean, why were you there at all, in the first place?”

“Well, you see —”

“And another
thing, if you knew that the Czech madwoman was there and was planning to
assassinate Rupert…” she said this casually and with a matter of fact
jauntiness, as if Rupert wasn’t present. “If you knew that, why didn’t you try
and stop her?”

“Because in fact I
didn’t know she was there. Though we suspected that someone might be, to make
contact with Abner Braidy.”

“Braidy?” said
Rupert. He remembered Braidy, Stubbs and Harper gathered around Minerva like a
pack of baboons. Laughing and reminiscing about their days as cadets, tormenting
Rupert. “You were at the wedding to keep an eye on him?”

“With the
General’s consent and authorisation, yes.”

“Why?”

“Big Mama’s people
had been keeping tabs on Braidy for a while. We believe they plan to make use
of him somehow.”

“I didn’t think
Big Mama worked with men,” said Rupert. “I thought her mission was to kill
them.”

“If a man happens
to have something Big Mama needs, she’ll use him.”

“And then discard
him.”

“Correct. For some
reason Big Mama has been checking Braidy out, probing his background. And
apparently among the names that came up was Rupert and they didn’t like the
look of him. Whatever their plans for Braidy, the last thing they wanted was
for an old friend of his, who also happens to be a British intelligence
operative, stumbling on the scene.”

“Well, you’ve got
the stumbling part right,” said Connubia.

“Look,” said
Rupert. “I’m not an old friend of Braidy’s. As a matter of blunt fact I never
liked the man.”

“Nevertheless you
came up on their radar. You were at school with him. You were an acquaintance.
So Big Mama’s people figured better safe than sorry. Get rid of you.”

Connubia nodded as
if a long cherished private theory of her own had been confirmed. “And so this
Alzbeta was assigned to leave Rupert snoring in the path of an artillery
barrage?”

“Yes.” Minerva
glanced at Rupert. “We had no knowledge of any of this at the time, but putting
things together after the fact, yes.”

Rupert didn’t like
any of this dwelling on Alzbeta Brada or the way he’d been set up. He cleared
his throat and said, “How did you get wind of Braidy’s involvement?”

Minerva reached
down to the floor where a briefcase was leaning against the graceful chrome leg
of what was now her desk. She opened the case with a twin snap of locks and
took out a transparent plastic bag containing what looked like a badly burned
piece of metal, a mottled greyish fragment with jagged edges that had once been
a disk.

“He was just one
of several names that we managed to pull off a hard drive we retrieved during a
raid on one of Big Mama’s recruiting centres. It was the only occasion when we
actually succeeded in salvaging something useful from one of their computers.
Usually they manage to take a blow torch to the drive while we’re still kicking
down the front door.”

“Kicking down the
front door,” said Connubia. “How subtle of you.”

“On this drive
there were the names of six men. They proved to be a very diverse bunch, from
radically different backgrounds, with virtually nothing in common. We’re still
trying to work out what connects them. They were…” Minerva’s eyes rolled
upwards for an instant as she searched her memory. “Abner Braidy. As you know,
an arms salesman. Terence Rogers, a doctor who specialises in fertility
problems. Gustav Olson, a male escort.”

“Male escort?”
said Connubia. “You mean…”

Minerva nodded.
“Yes, basically a prostitute. The remaining names were Paul Whetticker, a
designer of fetish gear, Ian Smith, an agricultural biologist…”

“Ian Smith?” said
Rupert. “He’s the man who died twice.”

Minerva
nodded again. “Yes. He went under a tube train recently, some months after he
was supposed to have been killed in a car crash. The badly burned car crash
victim turned out to be somebody else. Exactly the same trick — why abandon a
winning formula? — was used in the case of the final name on the list,
Professor Piero Vallortigara. He also disappeared last year after someone went
to the trouble of faking his death. No one knew he was missing until a few
weeks ago.”

“And who exactly
is this professor?”

“A highly
respected geneticist. He specialises in engineering viruses for weapons use.”

“Well,” said
Rupert, “I don’t like the sound of that.”

Chapter Four: Reverse Honey Trap

“There she is,”
said Minerva. She handed Rupert the high-powered Zeiss Victory binoculars. He
adjusted them until the image swam into focus, revealing a young woman walking
a dog. It was just after three o’clock on a bright and breezy Wednesday and the
young woman was Alzbeta Brada.

And the dog was
the odious brute that had attempted to savage Rupert outside the estate agents.

He recognised both
of them with ease at this distance through the Zeiss lenses. There was a
certain matching arrogance in the way they moved, the girl and the dog. Rupert
reflected that he was never likely to have trouble recognising them. Certain
vivid events had impressed them on his memory.

They were now
entering Richmond Park through Roehampton Gate with Rupert and Minerva watching
them from the vantage point of Minerva’s Nissan Figaro parked in Priory Lane.
Rupert might have been better able to appreciate the car’s petite art deco
elegance if his knees hadn’t been jammed almost up around his chin. He was a
big man and it was a small car. They’d been sitting here sharing a thermos of
coffee and the sandwiches they’d bought that morning at what Minerva insisted
on calling the ‘Marks and Sparks’ in Putney.

Minerva had also
insisted that this was the ideal vantage point for their surveillance. After an
hour and a half of fruitless vigilance and coffee nerves, Rupert had begun to
have his doubts. But now here she was. Alzbeta Brada in the flesh.

She was wearing
faded jeans, a three quarter length green coat with large black buttons, a
turquoise beret and sunglasses. Rupert tried to repress the treacherous thought
that she looked rather good. “I knew she’d turn up,” said Minerva. “It’s part
of the routine. They are living in a house just back up the road there. Behind
the Bank of England sports ground.”

“The Bank of
England sports ground?”

“It’s a posh
neighbourhood. That’s probably why they chose it. To allay suspicion.”

“Who exactly are
‘they’?”

“Her and the rest
of her cell. There’s about a dozen of them. All loyal adherents to Big Mama.”

“Well, let’s not
hope too loyal,” said Rupert. “Or we won’t get anywhere.” He brushed the sandwich
crumbs off his shirt and got out of the car. Minerva was watching him with an
ironic smile.

“Knock her
socks off,” she said.

*

“This is
ridiculous,” Connubia had announced that morning. “It can’t possibly work.”

“Why not?” said
Minerva. Rupert was sitting uneasily between the two of them, seated in the
least comfortable of an assortment of uncomfortable office chairs in the front
of the estate agents.

“We’ve already
established that their romantic liaison was a complete disaster.”

“You established
that. In your disinformation. In reality I understand things went pretty well
and there was even what you might call chemistry.”

Connubia snorted.
“Yes indeed. Bundles of chemistry. Right up until the moment she called down an
artillery barrage on his head.”

“Well I hardly
think she’s likely to do that again,” said Minerva. “In fact we think she
definitely has a soft spot for him.”

“A soft spot? In
their most recent encounter she set her attack dog on him after pretending to
be blind.”

“True. But
the Agency analysts think that at each encounter she has deliberately tried to
avoid harming him. Gone out of her way to do so. We believe this girl has a
psychological weakness where Rupert is concerned.”

“More like an
intellectual weakness. Or perhaps just bad eyesight. Maybe she actually is
blind. On what are you basing this much vaunted theory of yours?”

“The way she wrote
that word — Sorry — on the car window when she was supposed to just leave
Rupert there.”

Connubia sighed
and said conclusively, “It all seems pretty tenuous to me.”

And it began to
seem pretty tenuous to Rupert, too, as he walked under the trees on Priory
Lane, past the walls of the Roehampton Golf Club, following the gentle downhill
gradient towards the gate. Richmond Park stretched out in front of him, two
thousand acres of woodland, greenery and wildlife. Now including in the latter
category, he reflected, a beautiful Czechoslovakian terrorist or at least her
loathsome dog.

Rupert was one of
half a dozen people entering the park through the Roehampton Gate, some on
bikes, some on foot. He crossed the miniature traffic roundabout, moving
cautiously past the handsome old lodge on his right. There were times, and this
might well be one of those times, when Rupert wished he could just dwell in that
little lodge and lead a simple life and never have anything worse on his
conscience than perhaps being compelled to shoot the occasional deer during an
annual cull.

Inside the gate he
saw scores of other people on the footpaths and roads, following the gently
rolling contours of the hills. A few hundred metres away he saw a group of deer
peaceably grazing, apparently so accustomed to the presence of humans that they
scarcely noticed the passers-by. Rupert paused and looked for Alzbeta and the
dog. She had struck off to the left and was now cutting through a car park
heading towards a further patch of green. He followed them, keeping his
distance.

He was supposed to
get close in and make contact. But now that the moment was at hand, he realised
that he had no idea what to say. Or do. There was a large pink and white ice
cream van stationed in the car park which was gently playing Lara’s Theme and
which was doing a fair business. Alzbeta and the dog paused beside it. Rupert
hung back while Alzbeta said something to whoever was working inside the
shadowed van. His immediate thought, conditioned by years of training and
suspicion and generally expecting the worst of people, was that it must be some
kind of drop or covert assignation or exchange of secret signals.

But then Alzbeta
dug in the pocket of her jeans and handed some coins over, receiving in return
from the shadowed depths of the van two vanilla cones with miniature chocolate
bars jutting out of them. It wasn’t an elaborate espionage manoeuvre after all;
Rupert realised with chagrin that she was merely buying an ice cream. Two ice
creams, in fact.

He found himself
wondering how she managed to look the way she did if she was in the habit of
eating huge quantities of ice cream like this. Colourful and detailed memories
from that night in the Volvo came back to him unbidden, suggesting that she had
no such habit. Specifically he found himself fixating on a vivid tactile memory
of her lean belly stuck to his with the mutual perspiration of recent physical
effort.

She just didn’t
seem a two ice cream kind of girl.

He began to think
again about secret signals.

But the puzzle was
solved a moment later. As she left the car park and walked under a stand of
trees, Alzbeta plucked the chocolate bar out of one of the cones and stuck it
into the other. Then she took the chocolate-free cone and crouched and fed the
ice cream end of it to the dog, which chewed away with such savage, spattering
glee that Rupert feared for her fingers.

But Alzbeta
waited, amused and calm, as the dog’s flashing fangs made short work of that
scoop of ice cream, and then started in on the cone itself. She held the wafer
tip of the cone daintily in her fingers as the dog gnashed and crunched. When
there was only an inch or so of it left, she withdrew the cone and stood up and
threw it off under the trees. She snapped the release on the dog’s leash and
the animal dashed off in feral pursuit of this final morsel.

By now Rupert was
standing a couple of metres behind the girl and she was about to become aware
of his presence any instant anyway, so he said, “Why don’t you let him have the
chocolate?”

Her shoulders
tightened for a moment, then relaxed. She turned to face him, letting her
sunglasses slide down her nose so her eyes were exposed. She looked at the two
miniature bars in her ice cream then smiled at him.

“Chocolate is bad
for dogs,” she said, taking out one of the bars and biting it in half.
“Everybody knows that.”

*

They walked
together, setting off away from the car park and the road, through the trees,
where in intervals of sunshine and shadow, moving over hills and through clumps
of forest, they passed occasional other walkers and still more occasional
groups of deer.

After a while the
dog suddenly rejoined them, spookily falling into step beside Rupert with such
smooth silence that he didn’t even notice it for a minute. He was quite jolted
when he belatedly realised the animal was there. Alzbeta saw his alarm and
laughed at him. “He’s quiet, isn’t he?”

“He managed to
sneak up on me.”

“He’s a clever
dog. Do you want to know what his name is?”

“No thanks. It’s
not the dog I’m interested in. It’s you.” These words sounded wooden and
contrived even in his own ears, but remarkably they seemed to do the trick, and
Alzbeta hooked her arm around his and fell into step more closely beside him.
The dog followed them, watching Rupert with what he soon found to be an
unnerving intensity.

They walked
through the park, cutting across roads from one stretch of green to the next,
all the way to Richmond Gate. It took the best part of an hour but neither the
girl nor the dog seemed the least bit tired, though Rupert’s feet began to
ache.

They walked in
silence together for most of that time. Rupert had been warned not to push
things, so he allowed it to continue that way. It was however a comfortable,
companionable silence and he found himself enjoying being with the girl. If
only the bloody dog wasn’t around.

Finally Alzbeta
said, “I’m glad you weren’t blown up by the artillery.”

“So am I.”

“You must have
driven really good to get out of there.”

“I did. I drove
like a bat out of hell. My car will never be the same again.”

“No?”

“No.” They both
laughed. The dog observed them with what looked to Rupert like tired disgust.

Alzbeta said, “I
wasn’t assigned to you at the wedding. I was assigned to Abner Braidy.”

“So I’ve been
told.”

“I didn’t go there
planning to try and kill you.”

“No.”

“My attempt to
eliminate you was purely opportunistic. I reported your presence there and
command did an evaluation and worked up a scenario.”

“Did they?”

“It means you are
valuable. You were a bonus.”

“A bonus eh?” said
Rupert. “That gives me an odd little warm feeling of pride.” She laughed and
squeezed his hand, but the strange thing was it did. He felt proud to be a bonus
target.

Thankfully,
Alzbeta offered no resistance as he guided their footsteps towards his chosen
destination. And she came along without complaint when he led her through the
western gate, dodging traffic, into Richmond and towards the bridge. As they walked
along a boulevard the dog paused to squat on the pavement and take a monstrous
crap.

“Oh dear,” said
Alzbeta, searching her pockets. “I forgot to bring a plastic bag. I always
forget to bring one.”

“Well don’t ask
me,” said Rupert. “I didn’t bring one either.” He watched with disgust as the
dog concluded its business, leaving its noisome calling card heaped there on
the pavement, and trotted to join them. Rupert and Alzbeta turned around and
walked on with the dog at their heels. They had only walked about twenty metres
when there was a violent shout behind.

They turned to see
a man on a bicycle. He was wearing a black helmet and goggles and a white tee
shirt and black riding shorts. The helmet, shorts and tee shirt were all
splattered with a fresh brown stain. “Wait right there!” shouted the man and
Rupert realised that he was addressing them. He and Alzbeta stopped while the
man peddled furiously up to join them. As he approached Rupert hoped against
hope that the brown stains on the cyclist were mud but secretly he knew they
weren’t. An intuition reinforced by the man pulling to a halt beside them and
yelling, “Your dog took a crap in the middle of the pavement.”

“Yes, I’m sorry,”
said Alzbeta. “We didn’t have a bag.”

“I went right
through it and look what happened to me!”

Rupert, who might
theoretically have expected to sympathise with the man’s disgusting plight,
instead found himself saying, “Then you shouldn’t have gone right through it.”

“What?”

“You should have
avoided it.”

The cyclist stared
at him, his eyes clearly bright with fury even through the smeared goggles.
“What? It got on my tyre and my tyre threw it up at me.”

“You should have,
what do you call it, a mudguard on your tyres,” said Alzbeta. The bike in
question was indeed one of those stripped-down sports models which eschewed
frills like mudguards.

The man ignored
her. He was intent on directing his wrath at Rupert. “Your dog took a crap in
the middle of the pavement and you didn’t even bother to clean it up.”

“We didn’t have a
bag,” said Alzbeta. “A mudguard would certainly have prevented all this.” But
neither man was listening to her now. Instead they were squaring up for a
confrontation. The man leaned his bicycle up against a tree and stepped away
from it. The dog lay down beside the bike as though guarding it, and watched
the developing conflict with lively interest. Rupert faced the irate cyclist
and felt an odd sense of déjà vu.

And then he
realised why. The man’s voice… His face under those disgusting, encrusted
goggles… He realised who the man was at the same time the man recognised him.

“You’re that
fucker from the estate agents,” he said.

“I thought you
liked dogs,” said Rupert with a certain satisfaction. “I thought a dog was a
man’s best friend and you were his defender. Willing to indulge in fisticuffs
to defend him. It doesn’t look like you’re his best friend now.”

“I haven’t
forgotten you, fucker,” said the cyclist with an unpleasant grin. “I’m going to
get you for what you did. I haven’t forgotten what you did to me.”

Neither had
Rupert. He recalled with a certain savage satisfaction how efficiently he had
beaten the man unconscious. “On the contrary I understood that all that had
been forgotten,” he said. “I understood money had changed hands. A substantial
cash settlement.”

“I haven’t
forgotten,” said the man with a nasty grin. He got back on his bike, pushed off
the kerb and pedalled away. They watched him go.

Alzbeta chuckled.
“He was very angry, wasn’t he?”

“It’s uncanny,”
said Rupert. “It’s this bloody dog of yours. It seems to attract him.”

“You were very
brave. You were ready to defend us.”

“Maybe you. I had
no intention of defending that bloody dog.”

“You’re so funny,”
said Alzbeta. She took his hand and gazed up at him happily. The dog was gazing
up at Rupert too, but in this case as if measuring the distance for another
leap at his throat.

*

As he made coffee
in the small kitchen of his flat, Rupert found, absurdly, that his hands were
shaking. The spoon containing granules of Waitrose freeze dried organic Columbian
blend rattled on the rim of each Ikea cup as he filled it. Was he nervous, he
wondered, because he had managed to manoeuvre an enemy agent into a position
ready for subtle and insinuating interrogation, or because he had simply
managed to bring a beautiful girl back to his flat? He looked out into the
garden below where they had left the dog. It was lying in the long grass —
Rupert hadn’t cut it since he’d moved in three years ago — between two
straggling rose bushes. As if sensing his gaze, it got to its feet and peered
up at the window.

The dog snarled at
Rupert.

He turned away,
poured water from the kettle into each mug and took the coffees through into
the sitting room where Alzbeta waited, perched on his old battered leather sofa
with the Tibetan prayer rug draped on it. He sat beside her and gave her one of
the mugs and she clasped it prayerfully in both her hands as though warming
them, although it wasn’t at all a cold day. Then she took a sip, and set the
coffee aside on a table strewn with magazines.

She moved close to
him. He breathed her perfume and the warm smell of her skin. Her hair tickled
his face. “I’m sorry for what happened,” she said, eyes downcast, “leaving you
there in the car for them to try and explode.”

“Blow up.”

“Blow up.” She
looked up now and touched his face. Then they began to kiss and in a few brief
furious seconds they were fondling each other and Alzbeta commenced to shed her
clothes with an alacrity that startled and almost wrong-footed Rupert. She
broke off their kiss and stood up and took off her bra, then dropped it on the
floor and smiled down at him before walking across the room, naked, towards the
door of the bedroom.

He watched the
rhythmic symmetrical sway of her pale buttocks then rose and followed her. He
found her already lying sprawled on his bed. She looked up at him. “You think
too much.”

“Very true,” said
Rupert. She beckoned him towards the bed, reaching out to touch him as he
approached, shedding the last of his own clothing. One sock didn’t want to come
off his foot and he ended up tugging at it savagely and hurling it across the
room. The old bed creaked as he joined her on it. The covers were cool on their
skin. She knelt by him. She kissed him on the belly, coaxed and teased him with
adroit fingers.

“I’m glad they
didn’t explode your car,” she said.

“Blow up,” said
Rupert, and kissed her.

*

Afterwards they
lay in each other’s arms and he wondered how to get things started. Because all
that had transpired up to this moment had merely been preliminaries. Now it
began in earnest. He tried to think what to say, to choose the right words. But
then she just started talking.

She told him how
she had grown up in Trutnov and gone to college in Hradec Kralove where an
intriguing announcement on a notice board in the student bar had led her to
audition as an extra for a film. The film company had accepted her and two
other girls and had their expenses paid for the journey to the studio in Brno.
Of course, there was no film studio at the end of the journey and she and the
other two girls had ended up drugged and trafficked. The men she was sold to
broke her swiftly and efficiently and had her working in a brothel in Lausanne
when a squad of Big Mama’s commandos liberated the place, killing all the
clients along with the men who ran the operation. Alzbeta and the other girls
from the brothel were flown to a farmhouse near La Rochelle where they were
indoctrinated and trained. All of them became loyal members of Big Mama’s team.
Except Alzbeta.

She rolled over in
bed and looked at him. “I am telling you this because I have five brothers and
I hope to see them again one day. I have no hatred of men despite what they
tried to drum into me at that farmhouse. So I have to tell somebody about them.
About what they’re doing.” She stared up at him. “You are recording this, I
hope.”

Rupert froze for a
moment. Then he said, “Yes, I believe we are.”

“Good. I want to
tell everything. I have become part of something terrible.” There were tears in
her eyes, and her voice shook. “They thought I was one of them. They thought I
was their star pupil. So they took me to Geneva, to the research clinic there.
It was run by this crazy woman called Dr Unity. Ekta Unity. People don’t think
she’s crazy but I can see it in her eyes. She comes from India. She’s a number
one genius. Also a number one hater of men. She fit right in with Big Mama.
They have the exact same agenda. They’ve been working together on something
they call Herod.”

“Herod, like the
king in the bible?”

Alzbeta nodded. In
the dimness of the bedroom her dark eyes were wide. “Yes. But they needed
someone’s help to make Herod. The help of a man. Professor Valla-something.”

“Vallortigara,”
said Rupert.

“Yes, right. Now,
thanks to this Professor Vallortigara they got the last piece of the puzzle
they needed. They were so pleased. They were running around in excitement when
they succeeded. The professor was very proud, the idiot, but of course they
killed him as soon as his work was finished. As soon as they were sure they
didn’t need him any more.” She put her hand to her head, finger extended, like
a gun. And pulled the trigger. “Bang.”

“What is Herod?”
said Rupert.

“It’s a virus
which just attacks men.” She looked at him. “If a woman catches it, nothing. If
a man catches it, watch out. They say it detects the Y-chromosome and targets
it or something.”

Rupert stared at
her. “What are you saying? What does she plan to do with this virus?”

Alzbeta rolled
over in the bed, turning away from him. “Do you have a cigarette?”

“No.”

She looked back at
him, peering over her shoulder. “Big Mama wants to get rid of mankind. Not
womankind. Just mankind.”

“Just mankind,”
said Rupert. He could hear the blood roaring in his ears. “You don’t think
she’s serious?”

“Oh, she’s serious
all right. It was Dr Unity who thought of the idea, and she named it Herod,
like the king who killed all the little boy children.”

“But this will
kill all males,” said Rupert.

She nodded,
“Babies, boys, men. I wish I had a cigarette.”

*

The following day
the General assembled them all for a meeting. Marcus poured glasses of water as
the General sat at his desk and addressed them. “I think that given the
enormous success of her operation I believe it’s only fair we should allow our
fair colleague from the CIA to open the proceedings.”

“How can we be
sure it was a success?” said Connubia. “She could be lying her head off. The
Slovak slut I mean.” She gave Minerva a cordial smile that nevertheless managed
somehow to convey insult.

Minerva smiled
back. “Everything she said checked out, in so far as we can check it out.”

“For example?”

“For example Ekta
Unity, PhD. From Shivaji College of the University of Delhi. She’s a brilliant
biochemistry prodigy who endured a brutal arranged marriage and a subsequent
nightmarish attempt at bride burning when her elderly husband died. She
survived this ordeal to go on to become one of the world’s leading authorities
on biological warfare. The background biographical detail and the date of her
disappearance tie in perfectly with her forming an alliance with Big Mama.”

“And we buy the
rest of it, do we?” said Connubia. “That Big Mama’s ultimate mission is to
quite literally rid the world of men?”

“I don’t see why
not,” said the General. “Her career to date has merely been a quest to find the
perfect means to this end. And the perfect means apparently walked through her
door in the shape of Dr Unity.”

Minerva nodded.
“It appears that she has, entirely voluntarily, joined Big Mama and presented
her with the ideal weapon. Judging by her research before she vanished this is
a modified tropical virus of great virulence and almost one hundred percent
mortality.”

“But which will
only attack men,” said Rupert. “And ironically, Big Mama and Dr Unity needed
the help of a man to perfect this virus.”

Again Minerva
nodded. “Enter Professor Vallortigara, one of the names on the hard disc we
recovered. Vallortigara‘s special field of expertise was biogenetic targeting.
Which means he could engineer viruses to act on specific ethnic groups. This
ability made him ideally placed to create, under duress, a bio-weapon targeted
not on the basis of race but gender.”

“And we’re taking
this seriously?” said Connubia.

Minerva gave her a
steady look. “My people are taking it very seriously.” She turned to Rupert.
“And we’re delighted to have the chance of acquiring such a valuable asset.”

Connubia sighed.
“Really?”

“Yes. She
definitely seems to be responding to Rupert.”

“She must be a
deeply damaged individual,” said Connubia.

*

At their next
rendezvous Alzbeta arrived approximately forty-seven minutes late. Rupert
watched as she came striding towards him along the Upper Richmond Road. The
dog, thank god, was nowhere in evidence.

“Sorry I’m late,”
she said.

“Did you have
trouble getting out of the house?”

“No, I just wanted
to walk. It took longer. But I fancied it,” said Alzbeta. Apparently she had
walked all the way from Roehampton to Putney. No wonder she was forty seven
minutes late. Now that she had turned up, Rupert found that his anxiety was
decisively eclipsed by annoyance. But Alzbeta seemed in good spirits.

“Let’s go
somewhere congenial and talk,” she said.

“What’s wrong with
talking here?”

She smiled at him
and shrugged. “We’re at the Brazilian Naval Commission.” She looked at the
blank façade of the building behind them, all brown brick with a large black
anchor resting in a niche in the wall. “It’s not very congenial.”

So they walked
back to the station, caught a train to Waterloo and wandered down into Lower
Marsh where Alzbeta led him to a little place among the market stalls that was,
improbably, a combination coffee bar and scooter repair shop. The walls were
bedecked with 1950s Vespa paraphernalia. There was a vintage Faema coffee
machine on the bar and a tabby cat stretched out asleep on a faux leopard skin cushion
next to the table where they sat.

They placed their
orders and received two expertly pulled espressos. There was a window open
behind them, birds singing in a shaft of sunlight in the courtyard. It was, he
thought, almost like they were two people on a date.

Alzbeta sipped her
coffee and looked at him. She said, “Your friend Braidy, the arms salesman.”

“He’s not my
friend.”

She blew on her
coffee to cool it. “Maybe not, but you better keep an eye on him anyway.
Something is about to happen.”

Chapter Five: Lord Kitchener’s Moustache

“Let me get
this straight,” said Abner Braidy. “You are now working for me?”

Rupert cleared his
throat. “With you.” His collar felt too tight. He was wearing a tie and a suit,
something he had never been compelled to do at the estate agents in Putney.
Amazingly, he was already beginning to look back on his days there with
fondness and nostalgia. “I am now working with you,” he said.

Braidy’s
expression of puzzled loathing didn’t alter. “Starting today.”

“Yes.”

Braidy abruptly
got up from his frosted glass and stainless steel desk and wandered over to his
unfrosted glass and stainless steel window and gazed out over Canary Wharf. The
head office of Empire Arms was in the EAE building, a sleek modern skyscraper,
open plan and austere even by the standards of the prevailing Docklands
architecture. This waterside hub of the financial district was all cold glass
and smooth stone and shining steel, arranged in high and fanciful towers, few
of them higher or more fanciful than the EAE building. Rupert was given to
understand that Empire Arms shared the premises with a number of other
corporate death mongers, all busily marketing large scale carnage and
destruction and occasionally winning the Queen’s Award for Industry.

In a business
where how high your office was located in the building was a pretty clear
indicator of how high you personally were located in the hierarchy, Braidy
enjoyed a corner suite two thirds of the way up. This was quite enough to offer
a spectacular view of Docklands, the sunlit curves of the river somehow making
all that futuristic steel and glass seem less soulless, endurable even. It was
a great view.

Braidy turned to
him. He looked impatient and disgusted. “Well it isn’t funny. And I must say
you really should consult a psychiatrist because this is strange behaviour even
for you. Contriving an elaborate practical joke…”

“Didn’t you get
the phone call?” Rupert began to feel a righteous anger rising in him. Connubia
was supposed to have arranged all this. She had planned the whole operation;
had “worked up the scenario” as Alzbeta put it, and she was responsible for
making sure that everything was ready for him.

For a moment he
was tempted to just drop all the bullshit and tell Braidy the truth. That he,
Rupert, had been assigned to protect Braidy from the demented Big Mama and her
cohort of man killers who might be planning to at any minute kidnap or, you
never knew your luck, even assassinate Braidy. It would have been nice to see
his face if Rupert had said that.

But instead he
simply said, “Didn’t you get the phone call?”

“Get the what?”
But just then the phone rang and Braidy did indeed get the call Connubia had
been supposed to arrange. Braidy didn’t say much. He just did a lot of
listening and agreeing. Then he hung up and looked at Rupert with a certain
hostile blank astonishment as if Rupert had just walked into his office wearing
a toga. “It’s true,” he said. “You’re working for me.”

Rupert repressed
the urge to say that the disgust was mutual. Braidy smiled a nasty smile.
“Don’t worry,” he said. “This is not the end of it. I’m not going to be
lumbered with you. And if for any reason I am lumbered with you, even for the
briefest of intervals, I intend to make your life a living hell.”

He got up and headed
for the door. Rupert rose to follow. “I’m going to the shitter,” said Braidy.
“Are you coming along to wipe my arse?”

Rupert waited a
couple minutes, then went down the corridor and silently entered the men’s
room, to make sure that Braidy hadn’t decided to give him the slip. But there
was Braidy’s voice echoing from behind the closed door of a stall in the tones
reserved for conveying righteous indignation on your mobile phone.

“His uncle.
Yes. The stupid wanker’s uncle is apparently an absentee director or something
and he pulled all sorts of strings and so now we’re lumbered with him. Yes,
that’s right, instead of wanking in front of his computer screen at an estate
agents he’s going to spend his days wanking in front of his computer screen
here. Yes. He’ll be here for the arms fair and even, they tell me, for the
American trip. We’ve all been well and truly lumbered.”

Rupert returned
quietly to his office.

*

“Here,” said
Minerva. “I got some sandwiches for you. I got them from the Marks and Sparks
by the tube station.” Rupert sat down on the bench beside her.

“I wish you’d stop
saying Marks and Sparks.” He looked up at the sky where seagulls wheeled above
the park, a small square of green wedged between the elaborate corporate towers
of the South Colonnade and Upper Bank Street, where the EAE building stood.
Rupert hoped that Braidy wasn’t looking down on them.

The seagulls
turned on the wind and headed for Heron Quays.

Minerva set a bag
down between them. “So I’m not allowed to talk like a Londoner? I’m not
supposed to adopt, like, the local mores?”

“The last time any
of the locals around here used that particular expression they were dipping
their jellied eels in their pints of Guinness and worrying about unexploded
German bombs.”

“All right. No need
to get nasty. You don’t have to eat the sandwiches if you don’t want to.” She
moved to withdraw the bag.

“No, no,” said
Rupert. “Give them here, thank you. Thank you very much. Did you get the triple
pack? With the prawns?”

“Yup.”

“Thanks. And I’m
sorry if I was rude. I’ve had an hilarious light hearted morning with Braidy.”

“I’ll bet.”

“And I haven’t
quite recovered yet.” Rupert opened the triangular cardboard package and began
to greedily devour his sandwiches, starting with the plump, succulent prawn
one. Between mouthfuls he said, “You know my cover story is that my uncle
pulled strings to get me the job.”

Minerva made a
pained face. “Yes, literally nepotism.”

“Quite literally.
So of course they all hate me. I don’t mind Braidy hating me. I mean, that’s a
given. But now word is out and they all hate me at the office. It doesn’t help
that I’ve turned up at the time of the year when they’re doing the London Arms
Fair then going on a tour of the States. This is what passes for festive fun in
the weapons trade. And it seems I’ve turned up just in time to freeload along,
like the parasite I am. So the long and the short of it is, they all hate me.”

“Yeah, Connubia
didn’t do you any favours with that cover story.”

“I suppose she
didn’t have much time to put it together.”

Minerva reached in
her bag and brought out an apple. “Oh come off it. She’s obviously taking every
opportunity to make life unpleasant for you. My question is, why?”

“Why what?”

She bit into her
apple with a crunching sound. “Why is she doing it? Why is she so pissed with
you? What’s the story with you two?” Then she burst out laughing.

“What is it?” said
Rupert.

Minerva pointed.
“Over there.”

Over there was a
young woman carrying a shoulder bag made of olive green fabric. Printed on the
bag in large indigo letters were the words I’m Not a Smug Twat.

“I’m not a smug
twat?” said Minerva.

“They were all the
rage a few years ago.”

“I don’t
understand.”

“Well, there was
at that time a vogue for cloth shopping bags which said I am Not a Plastic Bag.”

Comprehension
dawned on Minerva. “Oh, I get it. Eco consciousness. Reuse and recycle.”

“Yes. So this
other bag is a riposte.”

“A riposte? Nice
use of language.” Minerva chortled. “I am not a smug twat. I love it. I have to
have one! Can you get me one?”

“I can certainly
try.”

“By the way,
in the States the way we pronounce it, it rhymes with ‘hot’ not ‘hat’.”

“I’m sure it’s the
same sentiment.”

“I’m sure it is.
What were we saying?”

Rupert explained
that he’d initially been assigned to Braidy to protect him. Because he was the
focus of Big Mama’s attention, and he was a man — “Of sorts, anyway,” said
Rupert — so the natural assumption was that Braidy might be some kind of
target.

“But now,” said
Rupert, “all the latest intelligence suggests that far from being a target, he
is some kind of asset to them.”

“Asset?”

“I know, it’s hard
to imagine Braidy being an asset to anyone. But there you have it.”

“There we have it.
So you’re keeping an eye on him because…”

“If he’s important
to Big Mama, for whatever reason, we want to know why.”

“Exactly. But that
wasn’t what you were going to tell me.”

“Isn’t it?” said
Rupert.

“No. You were
going to tell me why Connubia hates your guts.”

Rupert sighed and
leaned back on the bench. Then he told her the story. “We had been sent into
Somalia to obtain a laptop computer with some crucial information on it. We
made contact with the people who were selling the computer and gave them the
agreed amount of money. But of course it was a double cross.”

“Of course.”

“Of course. Anyway,
Connubia and I managed to take them out and retrieve the goods.” They had taken
the laptop back to the staging post they were using for this operation, a run
down and now abandoned resort hotel on the coast in Meregh.

Their local
contact here had unlocked a chalet for them and put some fuel in the generator,
so that while they waited to be picked up by sea they had the benefit of
flickering electric light and a steady flow of rusty lukewarm water in the
shower.

The chalet was
located on the beach, close enough to the sea to hear the faint rush of waves
yet still near enough to town to hear the recorded and amplified voice of the
muezzin calling the faithful to prayer.

Rupert and
Connubia cleaned up and relaxed and discovered to their mutual surprise that
having risked death together seemed to be a powerful aphrodisiac. Rupert
stepped out of the shower to find Connubia stripped and ready on the bed,
waiting for him.

This might have
been the explosive consummation of months of brewing sexual tension between
co-workers. And things went very well initially, rendered all the more piquant
by the inappropriateness of the soundtrack of strict religiosity emanating from
downtown Meregh.

But then Connubia
disconnected herself from Rupert and with a practised twist turned over to
begin further fun and games, canine fashion.

Rupert was more
than happy to accommodate her and go along with this, but unfortunately the
manoeuvre revealed that Connubia had a tattoo.

“A tattoo?” said
Minerva.

“Yes. At the base
of her spine.” It was, as near as Rupert could determine, a tattoo of a pair of
angel wings, rendered in blue-black ink, spreading across the golden down just
above her toned and shapely buttocks.

Unfortunately the
tattoo artist had done a less than competent job or perhaps had a malicious
sense of humour, because the putative angel wings actually looked more like two
stylised and curving clumps of bushy hair. In fact, the longer Rupert looked at
the “wings” in the course of his carnal exertions, the more they surrealistically
came to resemble a cartoon moustache.

Maybe he was
experiencing a state of near hallucinatory exhaustion engendered by his recent
near death experience, but the tattoo soon began to look to Rupert not just
like a moustache but more specifically the moustache of General (later Lord)
Kitchener as depicted on a vintage World War One recruiting poster.

The more he stared
at the tattoo, the more grotesque and distracting it became.

He tried closing
his eyes but the afterimage seemed burned behind his lids. Lord Kitchener’s
moustache, below those grave and disapproving eyes as he exhorted the young men
of the empire to their doom on the European fields of mass slaughter.

Rupert seemed to
recall the slogan on the poster declaimed: “Join your country’s Army” with the
added imprecation “God Save the King”.

At this point in
the proceedings Connubia had realised something was wrong. “That wasn’t
difficult,” said Rupert, “because by now I had experienced a sudden
catastrophic loss of cabin pressure, so to speak.”

“So to speak. Did
you tell her it didn’t normally happen?”

“Yes. And I tried
to attribute it to post traumatic stress, exhaustion, perhaps a dose of food
poisoning. But she didn’t believe me.”

Indeed, Connubia
had instantly divined the true cause.

Kneeling under his
beleaguered, sweating form, her head on a hotel pillow, she turned and looked
at him and said in a sepulchral voice, “You don’t like my tattoo, do you?”

Rupert’s denials
were all in vain.

“So we got up and
got dressed and didn’t speak to each other during the ensuing seventeen hours
before we were picked up by the boat.”

Minerva nodded.
“And that’s why she hates you.”

“Well, hate is
probably too strong a word, I’d say…”

“Oh no, I don’t
think so. Not too strong at all. And you can sort of see her point. She must
have thought she was getting this hot sexy tattoo. And then there’s you,
virtually telling her that the damned thing is so repulsive that it completely
put you off making love to her.”

Rupert was
beginning to regret the whole disclosure. “I didn’t tell her anything. I didn’t
say a word.”

“You didn’t have
to. No wonder she hates you. But I see your point of view too. Personally I’ve
always found piercings kind of stomach turning.”

“Anyway, ever
since then I’ve had problems with Connubia as my case officer.”

“I’ll bet you
have. No wonder she put out that disinformation about your sexual performance.
She was totally getting revenge on you for your rejection of her.”

“I didn’t reject
her. I rejected her tattoo. I didn’t even reject her tattoo. Under other
circumstances it might have…”

“I doubt it.”
Minerva suddenly giggled. “Lord Kitchener’s moustache. When did all this
happen?”

“A year and a half
ago.”

“My god. That
woman can certainly hold a grudge. Why don’t you ask for a new case officer?”

“I have. I’m on
the waiting list.”

“That’s quite a
wait.” Minerva finished crunching her apple, thoughtfully inspected the tooth
marked core, then skilfully threw it into a nearby bin. “I really do want one
of those smug twat bags,” she said suddenly. “Do you think you can get one for
me?”

“I’ll see what I
can do.”

“Thank you.”
Minerva took out another apple and handed it to him. “I’d better be going. Good
luck back at the office.” She got up from the bench and looked at Rupert.

“I don’t have any
tattoos,” she said, and turned and walked off in the direction of Canary Wharf
tube.

Chapter Six: Auto Erotic Asphyxiation

Rupert woke up the
next morning with a feeling of leaden dread. Another day working at the office
with Braidy. He wished he could roll over and go back to sleep.

Instead he brushed
his teeth and showered. Then he went back into the bedroom and got dressed,
looking at the clock. If he wanted to get to work on time he would have to set
off without breakfast. That didn’t matter. He didn’t have any appetite anyway.
Adjusting the knot on his tie, he glanced at the bed. He should change the
sheets but he didn’t want to. They still smelled of Alzbeta.

Rupert walked out
of the house and joined the mass migration of the morning commute, catching a
33 bus across Richmond Bridge which took him to the overground station where he
caught a train to Waterloo. At Waterloo he caught the Jubilee Line to Canary
Wharf. From there it was just a five-minute walk to the office.

He’d only been at
work an hour when his phone rang. It was Minerva. “How soon can you meet me in
the West End?”

*

Minerva was
waiting for him in the coffee shop in the Curzon cinema in Shaftesbury Avenue.
She made room for him on the low leather sofa. “You were able to get some time
off work okay?”

“If Braidy doesn’t
like it, fuck him.”

“Well, all right.
Would you like a hot chocolate? They do a really great hot chocolate here.”

“Coffee please.”

“I’ve been
drinking coffee all morning and I’m like a warning poster for caffeine nerves.
I’ve been up since five. I need to drink something that will bring me down.”

Rupert found
himself relaxing on the sofa. “Chocolate has caffeine in it, too.”

“All I know is
that it calms and soothes me.” She looked at him. “I understand you’re actually
getting on rather well with the Slovak girl.”

“I suppose so.

“You suppose so!
Oh boy. I love the English understatement.”

They got Rupert’s
coffee and Minerva’s hot chocolate to go, along with a box of small cakes
Minerva insisted on buying, and walked north, deeper into Soho. Here on Greek
Street Minerva led him into a white building with a green marble façade. It was
a 1920s apartment house, the ground floor of which had been converted to shops
but which maintained a narrow entrance leading exclusively to the residential
floors above.

This entrance was
adorned by crime scene tape and there was a cheerful young constable standing
on guard. At least he was cheerful enough when Minerva said, “Good morning
Billy, I’ve brought you some more cakes.”

“Thank you Miss
Caine.” He stood aside to let her by, and then he immediately tried to block
Rupert from entering. “It’s all right Billy, he’s with me,” said Minerva.

The cop grudgingly
let Rupert past and they continued through a small lobby and up the stairs. The
place was all art nouveau white mouldings and stained glass. There was a smell
of bleach competing with a smell of mould.

“So it was your
cakes that gained us access to this crime scene?”

“They’re tired of
just being bribed with coffee. And I showed them all my official paperwork
too.”

“So now they’re
just going to let us walk all over their crime scene? That’s very obliging of
them.”

“Well, we do kind
of have priority. Plus there’s the fact that they’re sure it’s an accidental
death.” She turned left on the second floor landing and Rupert followed her as
she walked through more police tape into a surprisingly large flat.

Minerva led him
into a room with red walls and a black carpet and black painted ceiling. The
furniture was minimal, black and shiny and Japanese looking. The walls were
hung with antique mirrors of all shapes and sizes with elaborate gilt frames.
These replicated Rupert and Minerva’s pale faces at unpredictable intervals.
There was a smell of cannabis in the air.

It could have been
called a bedroom, although in it the king size red velvet bed took up only a
small part of the space.

Considerably more
was devoted to a number of strange contrivances that hung from the black
ceiling. One resembled a child’s swing but with a cushioned seat and stirrups,
another a kind of elaborate hammock made up of bands of leather. A third was
frankly a set of shackles, hung from some firmly mounted ceiling plates. The
fourth apparatus, and the one to occasion the most interest, was a kind of
cat’s cradle of black velvet ropes, attached in an elaborate pattern to a black
velvet noose.

The noose was
pulled tight around the neck of the man hanging in the cat’s cradle. He was
naked except for a black leather mask, as featureless as a football, which
covered his entire head.

Minerva looked at
the dead man, then at Rupert. “The mask makes him somewhat easier to look at,
don’t you think?”

“Yes, but not
easier to identify. Who is he?”

“He is, was, Paul
Whetticker.”

Rupert studied the
contraption the man was hanging in. The noose was pulled very tight.
“Auto-erotic asphyxiation.”

“That’s right.
That’s what the police figure. Hence accidental death.”

Rupert’s eyes
traced the black velvet ropes up to the ceiling where they ran through a system
of pulleys. There were also three lead weights of the kind used in theatres,
all hanging high and tight. He also noticed what looked like structural
reinforcement beams running across the ceiling, discreetly painted to blend in.
“It’s supposed to automatically release itself?”

“I think so. When
it starts to get too tight it’s meant to be loosened by those counterweights up
there.”

“But something
jammed it.”

“According to the
police one of those fancy velvet ropes frayed and got stuck in a pulley.”

Rupert frowned.
“Whetticker. Why do I know that name?”

“It’s on our list.
The one we retrieved from Big Mama’s hard drive.”

He nodded, “Of
course. The fetish garment designer.” He looked around the room. Suddenly
everything made a lot more sense. He noticed on top of a black lacquered
cabinet there was a large wine glass with some dried red wine in the bottom and
a crystal ashtray with the roach of a joint in it. “Some party.”

“He probably was
celebrating. Seems he’d had a very successful business year. Someone recently
commissioned him to make a thousand costumes. At three grand a throw. He’d just
completed the contract and got paid.”

Rupert nodded.
“For three million quid I would have been celebrating too, though I would have
forgone the velvet noose.” He looked at the masked form of Whetticker. A
thought occurred to him.

“Are they sure
it’s him? I mean has anyone looked at his face?”

“Definitely. The
first cops on the scene confirmed his identity. He’s apparently a well-known
local character. Lived and worked here in Soho for over forty years. Owns a
couple of shops. Owns the lease on this building. Owned I mean. Past tense.”

“Over forty years?
How old was he?”

“Late sixties.”

Rupert stared at
the lean, wiry body. Its elegant muscle definition looked like an anatomy
textbook illustration. “This guy doesn’t look sixty years old.”

“Apparently that’s
what three hours of yoga every day does for you. Plus god knows how much kinky
sex. I got the full story of his life from the cops on the scene. I understand
he was nicknamed Whipping Whetticker.”

Rupert nodded as
if he’d known this. “Who discovered the body?”

“A girl who was
doing work experience with Whetticker. She’s a student at St Martins College,
studying fashion.”

“How did she get
in?”

“Had a key. It
seems work experience wasn’t the only thing she was getting from Mr
Whetticker.”

“Jesus, how old
was this girl?”

Minerva smiled.
“Do I detect a hint of disapproval?”

Rupert sighed and
said, “I’d better be getting back.” He took one last look at the room. He
realised he’d rather stay here, even with the dead man hanging from the
ceiling, than go back to Docklands and Braidy. “Unfortunately,” he added.

Minerva
accompanied him as he walked out into the corridor and down the stairs. “How is
all that going? I mean ritual humiliation aside?”

“Oh, all right. Fine.”
Rupert walked out past the young cop, who ignored him but smiled at Minerva and
said, “Thank you for the cakes, Miss Caine. Very nice.”

“My pleasure
Billy.” She joined Rupert on the pavement and they turned south, heading for
Leicester Square. “I’m sure it’s not really fine.”

“What?” Rupert
took her arm as she crossed the road and prevented her getting run over by a
rickshaw driver.

“I’m sure it’s not
really fine working for Braidy.”

“With him. Working
with him,” emphasised Rupert. “And no, to tell the truth it’s not fine at all.”
They crossed the road opposite the fire station and walked towards Chinatown.
“In fact it’s thoroughly appalling. It was appalling enough when I was playing
nursemaid to him because we thought he might be a target for assassination. I
mean, it not only conferred an unwonted importance on the idiot’s life, it also
meant I would have to exert every effort to protect him. The General actually
told me I was to not allow a single hair on Braidy’s idiotic head to come to
harm. But it looks like I don’t have to protect him now. I don’t actually have
to do anything. Except put up with the bugger.”

“So you definitely
don’t think he’s a target?”

“Not according to
Alzbeta. According to her, he’s an asset for them.”

“An asset?” They
walked past the Prince Charles cinema and out onto Charing Cross Road, turning
right.

“Hard to think of
Braidy that way, I agree. But apparently Big Mama doesn’t want one hair on his
head to come to harm, either. Can you imagine that? Somehow Braidy has got
himself placed at the centre of a web of international espionage and everyone
on every side is terribly concerned about his wellbeing.”

Minerva stopped
outside Leicester Square tube station. “Except perhaps you.”

Rupert stopped
beside her. “Except perhaps me. No, damn it. Even me. I still have a watching
brief on the bastard.”

She smiled at him.
“Well let’s hope your watching brief is brief.” She turned abruptly and walked
away towards St Martin’s Lane. Rupert watched her go, and then descended into
the underground.

*

When he got home
that night Alzbeta was waiting for him. She was sitting in his garden
accompanied, unfortunately, by her dog. “I should have told you where the spare
key was,” he said.

“No problem.
I could have got in if I really wanted to.” Alzbeta smiled at him. The dog
snarled. Rupert let Alzbeta into the house, leaving the dog in the garden. As
she followed him inside she said, “This is the last time I can see you.”

He turned around
and looked at her. He was startled by the strength of his disappointment. “What
do you mean?”

“I won’t be able
to get away from the house.”

“Why?”

"They’re
tightening up on security. I won’t be able to come and go like I used to.”

“Because you’re
getting nearer to zero hour?”

“Yes.”
Alzbeta’s voice was expressionless. She followed him up the stairs into the
kitchen. He started to make tea. As he moved past the window he glimpsed the
dog in the garden below, watching him with a malign fixity of attention.

He pulled an old
battered yellow stool out from under the counter. Alzbeta sat on it, taking a
gun out of the back of her jeans as she did so. Rupert recognised it as a Bersa
380, an Argentine design with a lightweight aluminium frame. She set it on the
kitchen table where it looked strange, juxtaposed with domestic clutter like
jam jars, condiment pots and the toast rack. “You’d better take that. I’m not
supposed to have it and maybe they will search me.”

Rupert took the
gun through to the bedroom and put it in the safe in the floor of the wardrobe
where he kept his own weapons. A thought occurred to him. He spoke over his
shoulder. “Won’t you have to walk the dog?”

In the kitchen
Alzbeta stirred on her stool. “What?”

“They can’t keep
you locked inside if you have to walk the dog.”

He went back into
the kitchen. Alzbeta rose from the stool and moved restlessly around the
kitchen. “They’re not going to actually lock me up inside or anything like
that,” she said. “But when I go out I’ll have to be with someone. The order is
we now have to travel in pairs.”

“Safety in numbers,
eh?” Rupert felt a bitter pang of regret. He looked at the woman standing
behind him, the woman who was an enemy agent he was supposed to turn, subvert
or exploit. He realised he was going to miss her.

“I might be able
to sneak out, or maybe lose the person they send me out with…”

Rupert resisted
the powerful impulse to agree to such a suicidal course of action. “No. You
mustn’t take the risk.” Before she could argue with him, he said, “Do you know
anything about a man called Paul Whetticker?”

Alzbeta sighed
heavily and sat down again. “No, who is he?”

“Who was he? He
turned up dead today. He was a designer of kinky outfits.”

“Oh, him.” Alzbeta
snorted with amusement. “He’s dead? What happened?”

“It looks like he
hanged himself. Accidentally. While having a wank.”

Alzbeta laughed.
“It’s sad. I shouldn’t laugh. But that sounds about right, for him.”

“How do you know
him?”

“He was working
for us. Making costumes.”

Rupert sat down at
the table and looked at her. “A thousand of them?”

Alzbeta shrugged. “Maybe.”

“Why does Big Mama
want a thousand bondage outfits?”

“They’re not
bondage outfits. They’re battle gear.”

It was Rupert’s
turn to laugh. But Alzbeta just looked at him quizzically. “You’re serious?”

“Yes. Sure. Rubber
battle gear with some Kevlar plates.”

“You’ve seen
them?”

“I’ve worn one,”
said Alzbeta. “Very nice. Very erotic. They make your figure look great. They
cost three thousand pounds each.”

“Is Big Mama out
of her mind?” said Rupert.

“Probably.”
Alzbeta shrugged.

“Why would she get
a fetish specialist to design combat gear?”

“To make us look
sexy.” She gave Rupert an annoyed look when he laughed. “It’s not to be laughed
at. This gear will make it easier for us to kill you.”

“Kill me?”

“All of you. All
men. When the time comes. Big Mama says men aren’t designed to kill a woman who
looks like a woman. A woman who is sexy. ‘Reproductively fit’ she calls it. She
says your brains aren’t wired that way. Men find it really hard to do it. You
can, of course, eventually. Eventually you manage to pull the trigger. But it
slows you down. Maybe by as much as several thousandths of a second. And by
then we’ve killed you.”

“My god,” said
Rupert, weighing the implications. “Maybe it would work…”

“Of course it
would. Big Mama says soldiers are trained to kill other men, or maybe women who
are dressed up like soldiers too. Not reproductively fit females.”

Rupert
nodded. “It could give her an edge.”

“A big edge.”

“And you say that
Whetticker made these suits for her and she paid him?”

“Yes. Sure.”

“Why pay him and
then kill him?”

“She didn’t kill
him.”

“Oh no?”

Alzbeta shrugged.
“I don’t think so. Anyway, you said it was an accident. A wanking accident.”
She smiled at him.

Rupert smiled
back. “But you said Big Mama killed the men who worked for her, after they were
finished their work.”

Albeta shrugged
again. “Sometimes. Maybe not always.”

“So Whetticker’s
death was just a coincidence?”

“Life is full of
coincidence.” Alzbeta came over and sat in his lap and put her forehead against
his and then kissed him. “Let’s go to bed. I won’t be able to come and see you
here again.” She pulled her shirt off over her head and set it on the table,
and then she unbuttoned his shirt and pressed her warm breasts against his bare
chest. They stood up together, still locked in their embrace, and moved
awkwardly towards the bedroom. Just as they were sinking down onto the sheets,
the phone rang.

It was Connubia.
“The General wants to see you right away,” she said.

*

He unlocked the
front doors of Victory Royal, using the set of keys he’d been issued. Someone
had already turned the burglar alarms off so he merely had to be careful not to
switch on any lights. They didn’t want casual passers-by wondering why this
estate agents was in use hours after all the other legitimate businesses in
Putney had closed up tight for the night. Rupert made his way easily in the
dark through the familiar room to the wall at the back and punched the security
code into the steel door.

He eased the door
open, taking care not to let out too much light from the bleak fluorescent
strips that illuminated the narrow corridor within.

They were all
waiting for him in the General’s office — Connubia, Marcus, Minerva and the
General himself. No one looked particularly pleased to be there. They all
nodded at him and as soon as he sat down, the General started talking. “I’m
afraid we’re going to have to temporarily suspend your assignment with Braidy.”

Rupert managed not
to actually burst into joyous laughter, tap-dance across the desktops or punch
the air in a gesture of triumph.

He just kept his
face blank and nodded. “Very well, sir.”

“Before you set
off tonight you can leave a message for him at the office saying you’ve
urgently and unexpectedly had to take some time off. Say it’s a family
emergency or some such.”

“Right you are
sir. What exactly am I going to be doing instead of keeping an eye on Braidy?”

“I’ll get to that.
But you and Miss Caine will need to set off immediately after this briefing.
Did you pack an overnight bag?”

Rupert shot an
accusing glance at Connubia. “No sir, nobody told me I needed to.”

The General
sighed. “Well, no matter I suppose. You can get anything you need at the
airport.”

“What airport?”
said Rupert warily.

“Biggin Hill.
You’re expected for departure at oh-two-thirty hours. But you need to get there
at least an hour before that.”

“For passport
control?” said Rupert. “But I didn’t bring my passport.” He glanced pointedly
at Connubia again. “No one told me I needed to.”

The General shook
his head. “Don’t worry about passports. You won’t be passing through
immigration at either end of your journey. In fact this journey isn’t taking
place, officially speaking. Just consider yourself to be on a highly
confidential fact finding mission. Actually more like verification, as it
happens.”

Rupert wanted to
ask verification of what, but he kept his mouth shut. The General went on. “The
reason you need to get there a couple of hours early is so they can fit you
with a flight suit. Make sure they get you one that’s at least approximately
the correct measurements. Those things can be a bugger if they don’t fit
properly. Very uncomfortable indeed. And a pair of boots that are the right
size, too.”

“A flight suit?”
said Rupert.

“Yes,” said
Minerva. “You know, electrically heated, fire resistant, made of spun aramid,
comes with an oxygen mask. That kind of thing. We’ll try and get you one in a
colour that matches your eyes.”

“No need to be
sarcastic. Why do I need an oxygen mask? I thought air cabins were all
pressurised these days.”

Minerva smiled. “Air
cabins maybe, but not a two man cockpit.”

Rupert looked at
her. “What kind of a plane are we flying in?”

The General
cleared his throat. “Well, initially an RAF transport will take you to Cape
Town and from there you’ll be conveyed by whatever means is fastest to De Aar
military airport. You won’t need the flight suit for that first leg of your
journey but you’d better have it ready with you when you arrive at De Aar. We
don’t have any great confidence that the people there will be able to provide
what you need.”

Rupert said, “And
what exactly happens at De Aar?”

“That’s where the
two man cockpit comes in,” said Minerva. “We’ll do the last leg of our journey
in an F22 Raptor.”

The General
nodded. “That we can guarantee will be waiting for you there, thanks to Miss
Caine and her liaison with the US military. They’ve flown one down from Tel
Aviv and it’s already waiting for you. It’s a wonderful machine. I’ve been
reading up on it. As Miss Caine can tell you it’s regarded as a vital component
of the US strike force.”

Rupert braced
himself. The old man had an unfortunate tendency to rhapsodise about hardware.
“Primarily an air superiority fighter,” said the General, “it has what are now
termed stealth capabilities. It has been used in electronic warfare, ground
attack and signal intelligence roles. I suppose you could say that your own
operation will most nearly fall into the last category. Possibly somewhat
over-specified for your assignment, it has dual afterburning Pratt and Whitney
turbofans which incorporate pitch axis thrust vectoring. That means its maximum
speed is about Mach 1.8 if it isn’t fitted with external weapons, which I
believe in your case it won’t be; no need for them, I trust and hope. You won’t
be armed with any missiles or bombs of any kind. The Yanks — sorry Miss Caine —
the Americans were very clear about that. But don’t worry. You’ll still have
the M61A2 Vulcan 20mm rotary cannon in the right wing root. It only carries
about five hundred rounds — I say ‘only’ but I doubt there’s much in the way of
threats that you could find in any corner of the globe which couldn’t be fairly
thoroughly discouraged by that.”

Everyone waited
patiently for the General to stop talking. When he finally did, after a brief
discourse about air superiority, flight range and detachable fuel tanks, Rupert
looked at Minerva. “But if it’s only got a two man cockpit where are you going
to be?”

“I’ll be flying
it,” said Minerva.

Chapter Seven: Southern Hemisphere

“You’ve only been
working here a day and you’re taking a day off?” said Braidy.

“Well, actually,
possibly more than one day,” said Rupert. “I’m sorry I didn’t call earlier. I
meant to leave a message last night. I was supposed to, but I forgot in all the
rush. Everything’s a bit frantic at the moment. It’s a family emergency, you
see —”

“Wanker,” murmured
Braidy, and he hung up.

Rupert hung up,
too, and reflected that this normally would have been a very annoying exchange
which would have caused him to grind his teeth for an indeterminate length of
time. But now he just stared out the window at the red dust of the distant
hills, simmering in the heat of mid afternoon, and observed that there was
something piquant about the fact that he was standing here four thousand feet
above sea level in the baking Northern Cape while Braidy thought he was
malingering at home in rainy southwest London. Somehow it completely took the
sting out of Braidy’s insults.

Rupert thanked the
crew-cut young Afrikaner sergeant behind the desk and left the airport office,
stepping out into the heat of the day. He blinked in the glare, feeling
disorientated by jet lag and lack of sleep.

De Aar was a small
military air base located in the centre of the Great Karoo, an immense semi
desert inland basin. There were still a few irrigated areas out there in the
shimmering haze that were used for sheep farming. Apart from that it was
uninhabited except for a few hunters on safaris who wanted to slay a colourful
assortment of wildlife and eco tourists who wanted to photograph it.

As well as providing
a base for South African military aviation, De Aar also offered facilities for
a number of air charter services, such as the one running the Challenger 300
which had rushed Rupert and Minerva here from Cape Town.

Minerva stood
waiting for him, soaking up the sunshine with her face upturned rapturously,
eyes closed. She didn’t open her eyes but she must have heard him coming
because she said, “You get permission from the boss to have the day off?”

“The boss?”

“Braidy.”

”Fuck him,” said
Rupert.

“That’s the
spirit.” Minerva still had her eyes shut, face tilted up towards the brute heat
of the African sun as if she was drinking it in.

“I didn’t realise
you were a sun worshipper,” said Rupert. She opened her eyes and blinked at
him.

“A bit of a change
from rainy old Blighty, eh?”

Rupert winced. “I
don’t think anybody has used the expression Blighty to refer to Britain since
at least the last millennium.”

Minerva shrugged.
“Perhaps I’ll re-establish a precedent. It’s a shame to let these old words and
phrases fall out of common usage. A jolly old shame.”

“Jesus. Do you get
all your English slang from World War II movies?”

Minerva smiled at
him. “Not all of it. And you’re just being obnoxious because you’re nervous.”

“I’m not
obnoxious. And I’m not nervous.”

Minerva started
off towards the hangar and Rupert fell into step beside her. She looked at him.
“Sure you are. You’re nervous because you know I’m going to be driving.”

“By driving you
mean flying?”

“Yes. Your life is
going to be in my hands.”

“It hardly bears
thinking about. You’re sure you’ve done this kind of thing before?”

“Only for a few
hundred hours while I was earning my wings in the Marine Corps Aviation Arm.”

“Why do I
suspect,” said Rupert, “that too large a portion of your childhood was spent listening
to the soundtrack of Top Gun.”

“How perceptive.
And now it’s time a perceptive guy like you got into the flight suit that he’s
been nervously clutching in his lap all the way from London. We’re going to be
wheels-up in fifteen minutes sharp.”

“Wheels-up?”

“Yes.”

*

The F22.2 Raptor
was an angular and, to Rupert, somewhat sinister looking aircraft painted with
grey camouflage patterns like the markings on the fur of a big dangerous beast.
The “.2” designation indicated that it had been modified to allow two aircrew
rather than just a single pilot in the cockpit. Although modified was perhaps
rather an optimistic word.

“And you thought
my Nissan Figaro was cramped.” Minerva’s voice was confidential and intimate in
his headset. Rupert was jammed behind her in a seat which had been sunk
partially into what had once been an internal weapons bay. All he could see of
Minerva seated in front of him was the reflection of the top of her bright blue
helmet in the polycarbonate canopy curving above them. Between his seat and
hers, blocking any view, was a matte black metal oblong with a textured surface
that looked like the case for some strange large musical instrument. Or, in
Rupert’s more morbid moments of reflection, a kind of upright coffin.

Obviously whoever
had thought up this cockpit modification hadn’t given a high priority to eye
contact between the two members of the aircrew.

“I’ll be fine,”
said Rupert into the microphone in his helmet. His own voice sounded strange,
echoing in the breathing mask. “Just try not to crash.”

“I’ll surely do my
best. Not least because if I wreck this little beauty they might decide to take
it out of my pay. A hundred and fifty million dollars, in convenient monthly
instalments. Now just relax and enjoy the ride.”

“I’ll try.”

“Nice seat, isn’t
it? Feel the lambswool cushions.”

He shifted
experimentally. “If they’d left enough room for my legs, yes it would be a very
nice seat.” It was actually narrow and rather confining.

“Personally I
think it’s really comfortable and I’ve got plenty of leg room. It’s an improved
version of the ACES II.” There was a note of sardonic pride in Minerva’s voice.
“Check out the active arm restraint system.”

Rupert had no idea
what she was talking about. Perhaps the objects wrapped in nylon tubes on
either side of the seat. “Yes, very nice.”

“Designed to
eliminate arm flail injuries during high speed ejection.”

“High speed…? This
is an ejector seat?” He tilted his head and saw that the back of his seat was
set into a pair of vertical rails, in which it was clearly designed to slide.

“Of course it is,”
said Minerva. “Which reminds me, I’d better not push the wrong button up here,
or out you go! But no sweat, what with this new improved seat, even if that
does happen you won’t have to worry about any arm flail injuries.”

“Yes, well thank
Christ for that.” Rupert leaned back and tried to slow down his heart rate
through sheer will power. He could hear in his headset that Minerva was now
getting clearance from the control tower. She began to taxi down the runway.
Several curious military ground staff were watching the Raptor manoeuvre. So
much for secrecy.

Once Minerva was
in position for take off she said, “Ready, Rupert?” and before he could
respond, they started to accelerate along the runway. The sound of the jet
engines swelled from the rear of the plane as though a cave full of monsters
had awoken behind him. The muffled roaring built to a crescendo and he felt the
G forces begin to grow, starting off as a gentle pressure like someone pushing
on Rupert’s chest and steadily building in strength as the Raptor lifted from
the runway and shot steeply into the sky. Soon it was like a fat lady sitting
on his lap.

The engine noise
rose steadily then dropped to a constant crackling hum.

Moving his head
with some effort, Rupert looked out of the cockpit and glimpsed swathes of red
desert racing and tilting below. There was the bright flash of a railway, a
thin silver line cutting through the dust.

Then they angled
up more steeply and all he saw was blue sky.

Rupert felt
transcendently helpless. The sensation was like being strapped into a narrow
chair and sitting there while a giant hand gently pressed down on you and
tipped you back. Minerva’s voice sounded cheerfully in his headset. “How are
things back there in the baby seat?”

“Actually, it is a
bit like that,” said Rupert. “I don’t exactly feel in control of my own destiny
here. I can hardly move a finger.”

Minerva chuckled.
“Just relax and leave everything to me.”

“But what happens
if you black out? How am I supposed to get to the controls and, uh, seize
control?”

“If I black out
then I’m afraid it’s goodbye to one top British intelligence operative, a
hundred fifty million bucks worth of military hardware and Mr and Mrs Caine’s
favourite little girl. And by the way can you even fly a plane?”

Rupert grinned.
“Of course not. I was speaking hypothetically. So you think I’m a top
intelligence operative, do you?”

“I, too, was
speaking hypothetically.”

*

“Wake up,” said
Minerva. “There’s something coming up that you want to see.”

Rupert jolted
awake, feeling bleary and nerve-jangled.

“And besides,”
said Minerva, “it’s irksome knowing you’re asleep back there while I’m up here
working.”

“I wasn’t asleep,”
he protested guiltily.

“Sure you were.
You’ve been snoring into my headset for the last half hour.”

“Have I? Sorry.
All right, I admit it. I was asleep.”

“You were spark
out,” said Minerva fondly. “I guess it’s a compliment really. I means that you
feel so safe with me as your pilot that you can relax and fall asleep.”

“That plus the
exhaustion of having flown half way around the world in the middle of the night
also helps.” Now that he was awake, Rupert was uncomfortably aware of a sharp
and growing pressure in his bladder.

“You poor delicate
flower,” said Minerva. “You just better hope your pilot is made of sterner
stuff. Imagine what happens if I fall asleep.”

“Yes, we wouldn’t
want you to do that. Listen, Minerva, I’ve got a bit of a problem here.”

“What’s wrong?”
Her voice was suddenly serious.

“Oh it’s just that
I’ve got to…”

“Take a slash?”
suggested Minerva, demonstrating once again her irritating command of idiomatic
English.

“Yes.”

“Oh that.” There
was relief in her voice. “Thank god you don’t have to take a crap. Right,
here’s what to do. Reach down into the map pocket on the right leg of your
flight suit and take out one of the plastic bags in there…”

“Wait a minute.”
Rupert’s heart leapt in his chest like a startled hare. His hand was groping in
the designated pocket and there was nothing there. “There’s nothing here. It’s
empty!”

Minerva laughed
long and loud. “I know. I was just teasing you. They’re actually in the pocket
on the left leg.”

Rupert’s fingers
leapt to this pocket and with a surge of relief he felt the wad of folded
plastic bags nestling there. He realised he was drenched with sweat. Over the
years he’d faced gunfire, bombardments and direct rocket launcher assault. But
the prospect of having to urinate in the cockpit of a jet fighter travelling at
over a thousand miles an hour at nine thousand feet without the proper
accessories had introduced him to a new kind of fear.

“You’ve got them?”

“Yes.”

“Right, those are
your relief bags. Known in the trade as piddle packs. They contain a compressed
highly absorbent sponge that soaks up the fluid.”

Rupert studied the
plastic bag sceptically. It was a kind of distorted hourglass shape with a
narrow neck and wide bottom section. In the bottom section was a thin pale blue
sponge. “I hope it is highly absorbent.”

“Don’t worry,
you’ll be fine. Now you need to unzip the front of your suit, remove your lap
belt and move your ejection seat into the highest position.”

“Without actually
ejecting.”

Minerva chuckled.
“Yes, without actually ejecting. This can be a tricky manoeuvre. Pilots have
been known to inadvertently roll their planes and go into a fatal dive while
doing it.”

“Lucky I’m not the
pilot,” said Rupert. As he followed her instructions, a thought suddenly struck
him. “What happens if you have to go to the loo?” He looked down at the now
warm and swelling plastic bag which he held carefully and gratefully in his
left hand as it performed its function with surprising efficiency. “I mean, a
female pilot like you.”

“You know, that’s
a technical problem they’ve just never been able to lick.”

“What?”

“They just never
solved the problem.”

“You’re joking,”
said Rupert, outraged.

“As a matter of
fact I am,” Minerva laughed again. “They solved it. And as it happened one of
the crucial things they had to do for women pilots was adapt the midline zipper
on the flight suit so that it extends down an extra two inches. An anatomical
necessity you might say. Once we’re unzipped we use a variation on the kind of
piddle pack you guys use. There’s this sort of adapter thing that goes on the
funnel of the pack. I’d show you one but I’m not allowed to. It’s kind of a
Masonic secret among us girl aviators.”

“I’ll bet.”

“Well I could show
you, but if I did I’d have to kill you. Anyhow, the main thing is, I can go to
the loo as easy as you.”

“I’m relieved,”
said Rupert. He looked down at the now much heavier bag in his hand and began
to ease himself out of it. “I’m now relieved in every sense.”

“Good. When you’re
finished you seal the pack and put it in the pouch that you’ll find down on the
lower left hand side of your seat.”

“Thanks for that.”
Rupert did as he was instructed.

“No problem,” said
Minerva. “It was kind of sweet, you know, talking you through it like that.
Like being a mommy and helping my little boy take his first proper piddle in a
proper toilet.”

“I hope you’ve got
some vomit bags, too,” said Rupert. “If I’m going to have to listen to tripe
like that.”

Minerva laughed.
“Now if you’re finally finished with your comfort break, return your seat to
its proper position and take a look down below. That’s why I woke you. We’re
just coming up on East London.”

“East London?” he
said. For a surreal split second the familiar name gave him a jolt. It was as
if they’d flown halfway around the world, back home again. But immediately his
memory offered the image of a map on which East London was a South African city
just north along the coast from Port Elizabeth. Realising where he was, Rupert
looked down and out of the cockpit just in time to see blue waves breaking in
foaming lines against a pale brown band of beach. Then it was gone and all
around them was the shifting glint of blue-green water.

“Welcome to the
Indian Ocean,” said Minerva. “Pretty, isn’t it?”

“Are you at
liberty to tell me where we’re going yet?”

“I can tell you
when we arrive.”

“You can tell me
where we’re going when we get there?”

“Yep,” said
Minerva. “It’s one of those Catch-22 kind of situations.”

“What happens if
we run out of fuel before we get there?”

“Then we’ll have
to ditch in the drink.”

“My god,” said
Rupert. “I was completely right about those World War II movies, wasn’t I? You
gleaned your entire collection of slang from them.”

“Oh look, there’s
that button for your ejector seat!”

“All right,” said
Rupert quickly, “perhaps I’m being a trifle unjust. Your entire collection of
slang isn’t antiquated. For example, it’s entirely possible that many people
are still enjoying the use of the expression spark out.”

“That’s more like
it, buster.”

*

As it turned out,
Rupert didn’t have to wait long to discover their destination. A quarter of an
hour later a tiny grey rectangular fleck became visible on the surface of the
ocean and rapidly swelled as Minerva descended towards it. The fleck grew and
developed detail, turning into a shape resembling a foreshortened grey cricket
bat. As they got close enough for further details to become evident Rupert
estimated the length of the vessel as about a thousand feet. He recognised it
as one of the US Navy’s Nimitz-class nuclear powered aircraft carriers.

He said, “This is
where we’re landing?”

“You see? No need
to worry about running out of fuel.”

“Have you ever
landed on one of these before?”

“No, but it should
be pretty easy. I watched a video on YouTube and that gave me the basics.”

“Very amusing.”

“Of course I’ve
landed on one before,” said Minerva.

“In a Raptor?”

“No, but the
principle’s exactly the same. We’ll be fine.” Minerva’s voice took on a
thoughtful quality. “Providing of course they remembered to fit a tail hook on
this baby.”

“That’s the thing
that snags the landing wires?”

“The arresting
wires, yeah. Kind of essential to stop us overshooting the flight deck and
landing in the drink.”

“Stop saying
drink,” said Rupert. “Shouldn’t you have checked the tailhook situation before
we took off?”

“Who can think of
everything?” said Minerva breezily. “Still, we’ll find out soon enough. Get
ready, we’re going down.” She switched her helmet microphone over to the radio
frequency of the aircraft carrier and as they exchanged cryptic landing
protocols Rupert learned that the vessel was called the USS Wichita.

The Landing
Signals Officer on the deck of Wichita guided Minerva down over the radio, and
as they came in for their final approach the Fresnel lenses mounted on a
platform on the deck provided a visual check for her. These consisted of a
series of green and amber lights — effectively a kind of grandiose set of
traffic lights. As Minerva explained to Rupert in a casual running commentary,
the objective was to get a single amber light aligned with a row of green ones.
If the amber light — which Minerva called the “meatball” — was above or below
the green lights, it indicated that the pilot was coming in, respectively, too
high or too low.

“What happens if
we see red lights?” said Rupert.

“It means we’re
going to crash into the stern of the ship. And we’d rather not do that.”

As it happened,
Minerva’s approach was rewarded with a perfectly aligned meatball. And of
course, it transpired that the Raptor was indeed fitted with a tailhook and she
had been perfectly aware of this fact all along. But that didn’t prevent a certain
amount of adrenalin flooding Rupert’s system as they descended to the rapidly
expanding flat grey surface of the Wichita, dotted with the white dart-shapes
that became lethal looking jet fighters arranged around the perimeter of the
deck.

Nor was it
entirely calming that they overshot the first three of the arresting wires
stretched across that deck.

But their tailhook
snagged the fourth — and Rupert later learned, the last — of the arresting
wires and engaged it. The wire was attached at both ends to hydraulic cylinders
concealed below the deck and the hydraulic system absorbed the energy of the
Raptor, now travelling at an almost leisurely 150 miles an hour, and brought
the plane to a smooth stop. Well, relatively smooth, thought Rupert.

“Fuck,” said
Minerva quietly.

“What’s wrong?”

“My landing.”

“It looked pretty
bloody good to me,” said Rupert.

“I hit the fourth
wire.” Minerva detached her air hose and took off her helmet. Rupert did the
same. Through the cockpit he could see the flight deck crew, dressed in
sunglasses and life vests, moving towards the plane. “You’re supposed to catch
the third wire. If you don’t, you’re never going to amount to anything as a
pilot.”

“Well, let’s not
go around and try again,” said Rupert.

*

They were led
along crowded, narrow grey corridors and down nearly vertical stairs to two
adjacent, tiny rooms in what turned out to be officers’ berths. Even these had
twin bunk beds and were clearly designed for double occupancy. Rupert dreaded
to imagine what sort of claustrophobic conditions the lower ratings must
endure. Food was brought to them and they ate in their tiny rooms and then they
were escorted back along the narrow grey corridors and up the nearly vertical
stairs. Nobody paid any attention to them and Rupert realised that, in their
flight suits, they must be a very everyday sight.

They went up into
what Rupert persisted thinking of as the control tower of the vessel, but which
Minerva and everyone else called the “island”. This was the structure jutting
up from the flat deck of the carrier, a kind of misshapen inverted Mayan
pyramid, bristling with antennas — radar, microwave and inscrutable others.

Inside the island
was primary flight control and below it the bridge and the flag bridge. Below
that was the launch operations room and Minerva and Rupert were escorted only
as far as this level. The full and accurate title flight deck control and
launch operations was a rather pretentious designation for what proved to be a
narrow, cramped room dominated by a scale replica of the Wichita’s flight deck,
complete with tiny models of individual aircraft. The room had been cleared for
their use while a medical officer briskly showed them how to use their
biohazard suits. It was a windowless place and seemed to protect them from
prying eyes.

The medical
officer was named McPherson. He had a tanned, deeply lined face and a small
silver moustache. “These are NBC suits.” He glanced at Rupert. “Civilians call
them hazmat suits.”

Minerva said, “I’m
afraid Mr Hood isn’t just a civilian. He’s English too.”

“Well, basically,
Mr Hood, these suits are sealed systems maintained at overpressure, designed to
protect against biological agents up to biohazard level 4, which includes
viruses. They are state of the art and basically you can forget about catching
anything off a toilet seat.”

McPherson
proceeded to show them how to use the self contained breathing apparatus in
each suit, which would provide them with air while also serving to pressurise
the suit and, theoretically, protect against contamination even in the event of
a puncture.

“I wouldn’t be in
any hurry to put that particular theory to the test,” said McPherson. “Normally
with an SCBA the maximum breathing time you get is fifteen to twenty minutes.
But you’re going to need more than that where you’re going, so these tanks have
been supplemented, allowing you approximately an hour of oxygen, providing you
don’t exert yourself. Take it nice and easy, that’s the watchword. You’re going
to be a bit clumsy anyway. With those extra tanks there’s an inevitable trade
off with mobility. Well, get suited up and then we’ll get you on board the
helio.”

Minerva looked at
Rupert. “Helio’s a helicopter.”

“I know,” said
Rupert.

*

The helicopter
didn’t have far to take them. In the hours since Rupert and Minerva had landed
on the Wichita, the huge vessel had been sailing inexorably towards a
rendezvous. Now another aircraft carrier lay, apparently drifting on the warm
green swells, a mere three hundred metres to starboard.

The second carrier
was smaller than the Wichita and called the USS Salem. Rupert looked down from
the vertiginous vantage point of the helicopter at the big ship approaching its
smaller companion and he thought that the Wichita was like a huge animal coming
to attend to one of its stricken young.

Dr McPherson had
seen them onto the flight deck and safely aboard the helicopter in their clumsy
hazmat suits, painstakingly vigilant about any possibility of puncture. Rupert
was alarmed at the number of surfaces on the aircraft carrier that suddenly
seemed likely candidates for destroying the integrity of his life-preserving
suit. As McPherson had sealed him in he’d said, “The suit’s going to be heavy
and uncomfortable, but there is a filter to handle sweat and condensation.”

“No piddle pack,
though, Rupert,” said Minerva.

“I think I’ll
manage for an hour,” said Rupert.

The HH60 Seahawk
helicopter rose up into the air in a cacophony of rotor blades as McPherson
waved farewell to them from the flight deck, a figure dwindling to tinyness and
anonymity. His last words had been “And remember, no smoking in the suits.”
This said with a wink.

The flight from
the Wichita to the Salem only took a few moments but being winched down to the
deck of the second ship took what seemed a nerve-wracking eternity, with Rupert
swaying in the harness normally used for medical evacuation.

But despite all
the distractions of his situation, Rupert noticed the eeriness of the Salem.
The first disturbing thing was the absolutely deserted nature of what would normally
be the bustling flight deck. The second was the presence of ugly black scorch
marks which everywhere defaced the clean grey paint. There were no aircraft on
the deck and it looked vast and strangely empty, a ghost ship.

Finally Rupert
landed and managed to detach himself from the rig, which was swiftly winched
back up into the helicopter for Minerva.

As the harness
rose into the Seahawk it was sprayed with disinfectant, vanishing into a green
cloud. Rupert could see the stuff drifting down to him, the cloud dispersing
into invisibility as it fell. They weren’t taking any chances. Rupert waited as
Minerva was lowered and released from the harness, which was then winched back
up through another green cloud as the Seahawk clattered away, back to the Wichita.

Rupert looked
around. He had braced himself for the suit to be hot and sweaty but it was
worse than he could have imagined. It didn’t help that it was a scorching day
and so windless that in the era of sail they would have been becalmed and
helpless. The sun glared on the still surface of the Indian Ocean which seemed
to stretch to infinity in every direction.

The only sound was
his breathing in the suit. He said “Are we supposed to just stand here?”

“We’re supposed to
be met,” said Minerva. Rupert gazed around the lifeless ship for a while
longer, then he grew restless and moved to make a closer inspection of one of
the black scorch marks that dotted the deck. As he did so, Minerva said in a
sharp voice, “Stay put.”

Rupert looked at
her and chuckled. “Getting a little hot under the collar?”

There was a
moment’s strained silence, then Minerva said, “You’re right, it’s not a joyous
experience, wearing this thing.”

“Look,” said
Rupert suddenly. “Someone’s coming.”

Two figures were
approaching across the deck.

Chapter Eight: USS Salem

As they grew
closer Rupert saw that the two figures were women. They were both wearing
coveralls with white belts and side arms in holsters. On their heads they wore
navy issue baseball caps over dark sunglasses. One of them was tall, slim and
blonde. The other shorter, rotund and dark. The tall blonde moved with clipped
decisiveness. Her companion more tentatively, once almost staggering, as though
struggling against a strong wind, although the day remained resolutely windless
and murderously hot.

The two women
reached them and there was an awkward moment when salutes would have been
exchanged, if Minerva and Rupert had been military personnel. Then the blonde
said, “I’m Starboard Lookout Sherrington, S.N. And this is Anti Submarine
Warfare Specialist Lovak, A.G.” Minerva effected the introductions of herself
and Rupert and as she did so the blonde, Sherrington, took her sunglasses off
as though to get a better look at them. Her companion, Lovak, followed suit.

Sherrington’s gaze
was clear and direct. Lovak’s strangely tentative and erratic. She didn’t seem
able to look Rupert in the eye. He noticed she was wearing a large silver
crucifix around her neck, displayed prominently outside her coveralls in what
he took to be contravention of navy regulations. She was content to let
Sherrington do the talking.

“Welcome aboard
the USS Salem,” said Sherrington. “I know we must look a little grubby compared
to the ship you just came from but you’ve got to understand these are extraordinary
circumstances.”

“Please forgive
us,” interjected Lovak suddenly. “We’ve been through hell.” She appeared on the
verge of tears and Sherrington hastily went on.

“The vessel you
came from, the Wichita, is Nimitz class. We’re Kitty Hawk class.” She glanced
at her friend, checking that this was safer ground. “The Kitty Hawks are the
last of the non nuclear powered aircraft carriers in the fleet.”

This soporific
shoptalk seemed to have a suitably sedative effect on Lovak and Minerva was
listening attentively enough, but Rupert felt restless and edgy in his
sweltering suit. He estimated he now had about fifty minutes of air left.

“The Kitty
Hawks were all decommissioned,” said Sherrington. “They were superseded by the
Nimitz class.” Sherrington seemed to show no inclination to get to the point or
even to be aware that there was one, and Rupert’s patience simply ran out.

He said, “What
caused those scorch marks on the deck?”

Sherrington
appeared not to hear him, “However, the Salem was brought out of mothballs
along with the other Kitty Hawks because of the increasing incidence of piracy
in these waters.” Finally she looked at Rupert and acknowledged his question.
“Fire,” she said.

Lovak shifted
uneasily at this word and murmured something that sounded like “The daughters
of Lilith.” Sherrington shot a glance at her, then looked at Rupert and
Minerva. She seemed to come to a decision.

“It began five
days ago,” she said. “We were on routine manoeuvres off Europa Island when we
encountered a vessel in distress.”

“Sherry was the
first to see it,” added Lovak.

“That’s correct. I
was on watch on the bridge and I spotted it. A damaged pleasure boat dead in
the water — a small yacht. We later learned, after we picked up the survivors,
that it was registered in the Maldives. It had apparently suffered an engine
malfunction and had been drifting. It showed considerable storm damage and we
were unable to establish radio contact. But we could see survivors on the deck
and we sent a chopper to pick them up and bring them on board.”

“We should have
left them to drift,” said Lovak.

“The survivors
were all women. We didn’t think there was anything odd about that at the time.
They were brought on board and treated for dehydration and exposure.”

“Five women,” said
Lovak. “And five days later it was over.” Her voice was odd and flat. “They
were all dead.”

“Not the women,”
said Sherrington. “She doesn’t mean the five women were all dead.”

“No, we get that,”
said Minerva. “What did happen to the women?”

“We believe that
during the chaos they escaped on a life boat. The Salem was by then barely
operational, being sailed by a skeleton crew.”

Lovak said,
“The men started getting sick right away. We didn’t know it was the daughters
of Lilith. By the time we realised it was their doing, it was too late.” Her
voice shook and Sherrington looked at her with concern.

“Most of the men
were gone by the second day,” continued Lovak. “On the fifth day, the last of
them died.”

“It moved too fast
for us to do anything,” said Sherrington.

“We lost the last
of them this morning,” said Lovak. “We were praying he’d pull through. No one
else had, but he’d lived almost three days longer than any of the others and we
were praying. But he passed just after dawn this morning in the sick bay. The last
one.” Lovak’s voice was trembling in a worrying fashion. “The last of five
thousand and sixty seven men.” She looked at them. “It was the daughters of
Lilith, visiting doom upon the race of men.”

She began to weep
and moved away, unsteadily. Sherrington watched her with concern. She said,
“Lovak’s husband was among the male crew members. Information Systems
Technician Cohen. He died on the second day.”

“We understand,”
said Minerva.

“Lovak’s math was
about right. We lost around five thousand male crew members. The surviving
crew, all female, numbers less than five hundred and many of them are deeply
traumatised by what they have witnessed.” She looked over at Lovak. “What we
have witnessed.” She turned back to Minerva and Rupert. “The Salem isn’t a
warship any more. It’s a giant funeral barge.”

“I understand,”
said Minerva again. “But we need you urgently to take us to the cabin of Chief
Petty Officer Markham.” Sherrington looked startled, as though this request was
the last thing she’d expected. But she nodded and called out to Lovak who
rejoined them. She’d obviously made a tremendous effort to pull herself
together and tried to appear businesslike.

They started
towards the island on the far side of the deck, Rupert and Minerva moving
slowly and ponderously like astronauts walking on the moon. Sweat trickled down
Rupert’s brow and stung his eyes. He looked at the black scorches on the grey
paint of the deck and said, “What caused the fire?”

Sherrington looked
at him. “What?”

“You said these
marks were caused by fire. But what caused the fire?” Lovak, who was walking
slightly ahead of them, flinched visibly at these words, as if Rupert had
struck her.

Sherrington said,
“We very rapidly ran out of space for… storage. And as you can imagine, in the
tropics, dealing with thousands of dead bodies that cannot be refrigerated,
after several days can present… problems.”

“You burned them?”
said Minerva.

“Cremated them.
With aviation fuel.”

“All of them?”

“We couldn’t bury
them at sea. We didn’t know if they might be carrying a virus that would
contaminate the water or the sea life. So we had no choice.” Feeling the sun
beating down on them and imagining the endless rows of bodies, Rupert felt
inclined to agree with her.

But Minerva
lowered her voice so that Lovak couldn’t hear and said, “Those bodies were
evidence. You shouldn’t have destroyed them.”

“We had no choice.
They were a health hazard. It was a massive operation and we only just managed
to cremate them in time.”

“But all of them?”
demanded Minerva. Rupert was shocked by how vehement she was. He felt she
should be cutting the poor woman some slack. Sherrington was, after all, one of
the damaged survivors on this ship of the dead. He tried to imagine what it had
been like cremating five thousand corpses.

“There was no
choice,” said Sherrington.

“You keep saying
that, but there must be mortuary facilities on a vessel of this size.”

“Yes, of course,
but it’s not equipped to deal with… this.”

“You could have
preserved some of the bodies,” insisted Minerva. “These deaths were the result
of a virus, deliberately introduced.”

“Yes, clearly,”
said Sherrington. “By those five women. At some point after they came on board
they released a bio-weapon. Within five days it had finished its task.”

“We needed to take
samples,” said Minerva, “For tests. So we can identify the pathogen.”

“We’ll do anything
we can to help,” said Sherrington.

“What about the
one who died this morning?” asked Rupert.

Minerva and
Sherrington turned around and looked at him. “What?” said Sherrington.

“The man who died
this morning. Have you cremated him yet?”

Lovak, who had
been walking ahead of them, but steadily slowing and drawing nearer, was close
enough to hear them, and said, “No. He’s still in the sick bay.”

“All right then,”
said Minerva. “His body must be preserved. Refrigerated. Is that understood?”

Rupert said, “If
he survived longer than any of the others it might be because he developed
antibodies to fight the virus. It’s possible that you still have the most
valuable piece of evidence.”

“That’s right,”
said Minerva. “His body must be preserved at all costs.”

“Of course,” said
Sherrington.

*

The corridors of
the Salem were even smaller and more cramped than on the Wichita, but they were
also eerily deserted. They passed a dozen women moving apparently aimlessly on
the hangar deck. They all paused and stared at the figures in their clumsy
biohazard suits. But other than these, they didn’t see a single soul on their
way to the Chief Petty Officer’s cabin.

Even as she led
them, Sherrington seemed stubbornly unable to understand why they needed to go
there. “Don’t you want to visit the sick bay?” she said. “And examine the
body?”

Minerva shook her
head. A clumsy and indeterminate gesture in the suit, so she said, “No.”

“We don’t have
time,” said Rupert. “We’ve only got enough air in these suits to make a brief
incursion here and then rendezvous with the helicopter to take us back to the
Wichita. Besides, we’re not scientists.”

“That’s right,”
said Minerva. “There’s nothing we can learn from the body. Just make sure you
refrigerate it after we’ve finished here.”

“Speaking of your
suits,” said Sherrington. “Be careful. There’s a lot of sharp surfaces where
you might puncture them.”

“Tell me about
it,” said Rupert.

They started to
descend one of the harrowingly steep and narrow staircases, moving almost
straight downwards. Sherrington was in the lead, followed by Minerva and
Rupert, with Lovak bringing up the rear. Sherrington’s holstered pistol
clattered against a railing as she descended in the tight space. She said, “Why
do you want to see Chief Petty Officer Markham’s cabin?”

Minerva followed
closely behind her. “We need photographs.”

“You need to take
photographs?”

“We need to
collect them,” said Minerva.

Sherrington led
them along a corridor. “Photographs of what?”

“The five women
who came aboard.” Minerva looked along the long empty corridor which normally
would have been thronging with activity. “The women who did this.”

“But you already
have photographs of them. We sent photographs.”

“Digital,” said
Minerva. “They were all digital photographs.” Sherrington turned left and they
followed her down a side corridor.

She said, “I don’t
understand.”

“Digital photos
can be manipulated. Distorted.”

Sherrington fell
silent. Rupert realised the implication of Minerva’s words and he wondered if
Sherrington was now making the same connections in her own mind. She said, “But
why does Chief Petty Officer Markham come into it?”

Minerva hesitated
before she answered. “Because of the last transmission by the Captain before he
died. He was concerned about the digital photographs that had been sent of the
attackers.”

“The attackers,”
echoed Lovak behind Rupert. There was something in her voice that sent an
irrational chill through him.

“The women on the
boat,” said Minerva. “The Captain believed that the digital images of them
might not have been accurate.”

“You mean someone
tampered with them?” said Sherrington. “Someone on this ship?”

“Possibly.”

“Someone who’s
working with these people?” said Lovak. “Helping them? Helping them do things
like this?”

“Possibly.”

“Like a fifth
column?” Lovak’s voice was shaking. “Here on the ship?”

“That’s what
we have to find out,” said Minerva soothingly. They stopped outside a small
cabin. Like the cabins they had briefly used on the Wichita, it was designed
for occupancy by two officers.

“Here we are,”
said Sherrington. “But I still don’t—”

Minerva paused by
the doorway. “Chief Petty Officer Markham was a keen amateur photographer.
Analogue photography, using real film. He’d just bought a camera in Durban. Not
a digital camera. A vintage Leica. Markham was on the bridge when the survivors
were brought on deck, and he took some photographs. The Captain reported that
he developed a roll of film and stored the prints in his cabin.” Saying this,
she went through the door.

Sherrington
lingered outside. So did Rupert and Lovak. There was hardly room for Minerva on
her own, wearing her bulky suit, in the tiny room. “I wasn’t on the bridge when
they came on board,” said Sherrington softly. “I was on the deck.” Lovak said
nothing. Rupert breathed the humid air in his suit and wished he could wipe the
sweat off his face. His breathing was laboured and shallow. He wondered if his
oxygen was running out more quickly than they’d calculated.

Minerva emerged
from the cabin clutching a sheaf of black and white photographs in her clumsily
gloved hands. “Look,” she said simply, and handed them to Rupert. The top photo
on the pile showed a woman with a placid moon face, smiling gratefully as a member
of the flight deck crew helped her out of the rescue helicopter. He recognised
her face from the briefing the General had given him, what seemed like a
lifetime ago.

“Big Mama,” he
said. Minerva nodded. “But why would she risk coming here in person?” said
Rupert.

Minerva looked at
him, her face slightly misted by the condensation on her face plate. “Maybe she
wanted to see it happen.”

“She didn’t want
to miss the fun.” Rupert found himself sweating copiously in his suit. Minerva
showed him another photograph. This one showed a thinner, darker, younger woman
with intense eyes behind narrow glasses. “Dr Ekta Unity, of Shivaji College,
the University of Delhi. She’s the one who made the virus. Naturally she wanted
to see it too.”

“So they just put
themselves adrift in a yacht and allowed themselves to be picked up by their
sworn enemy. By a giant war ship armed to the teeth?”

“Apparently.”

“They were taking
a hell of a risk,” said Rupert.

“They seem to have
pulled it off,” said Minerva. The thin glossy sheets of photographic papers
began to slide from her clumsy gloves and Sherrington took them from her and
handed them to Lovak to carry as they started back down the corridor, retracing
their steps.

Lovak was in the
lead now, with Rupert behind her, anxious to get out of the suffocating
confines of the below decks area which seemed to reinforce the already
suffocating confines of his suit. Sherrington was behind him and Minerva behind
her.

They turned right
and trudged back along the main corridor, Rupert following Lovak’s swaying
back. They reached the staircase and began their steep, torturous ascent.

They had almost
reached the next level when Rupert suddenly heard Minerva’s voice over the
radio circuit in his suit, shouting so loudly his eardrums popped. “Rupert,
look out! Behind you.” He turned to witness an extraordinary sight.

Just below him
Sherrington was surging up the steep vertical staircase with the speed and
skill born of years of experience moving in these confined spaces. Her face was
rendered grotesque by the fact that she had something in her mouth. Something
narrow and gleaming that spanned wider than her cheeks.

It took Rupert an
instant to realise that she had a knife between her teeth, just like a pirate
of yesteryear.

She was holding
the knife there while her hands were busy pulling herself up the rails on
either side. Her eyes instantly obviated any innocent explanation for this
alarming behaviour.

Staring up at
Rupert, they were quite insane with rage.

He felt again that
unique sensation of meeting the gaze of someone who was bent on killing you.

Sherrington
transferred the knife from her mouth to her hand and slashed at him with it.
Rupert jerked away from her, trying to escape up the stairs, an almost
impossible manoeuvre in the clumsy suit. It was like trying to flee while
carrying someone on his back. He was still trying to process the information
that Sherrington was attacking him.

A fifth column, he
thought. Here on the ship.

There was a
rattling echo as Sherrington’s knife glanced off the step just below Rupert.
Her slash had missed, and in any case she had only been aiming at his buttocks,
hardly a fatal wound —

Then Rupert
realised what she was trying to do. She wasn’t trying to cut him at all. She
was trying to cut his suit. And if she slashed it open, he was dead, never mind
all the overpressure anti-contamination systems in the world.

The slightest tear
and he was dead.

And she knew it.

Rupert tried to
haul himself up the stairs fast enough to escape his attacker. He surged up in
a clumsy lurch, jerking his legs up behind him and again the blade rang off the
step just below his feet. He risked another glance back at Sherrington.

She was slashing
at him again.

He kicked her in
her face, and resumed moving up the stairs as quickly as he could.

Sherrington
shrieked with rage. His kick had failed to dislodge her from the staircase and
Rupert realised with a sickening jolt that this was just as well, because if
she fell it would be right onto Minerva, who was following in pursuit close
behind her, yelling rather gratuitously for Rupert to get away.

Rupert looked up
and saw that the entrance to the deck was just above him. Lovak, who had been
some way ahead, was already there and staring down at them, puzzled by the
commotion.

Rupert forced
himself to cover the last short distance up the stairs and shoved Lovak aside,
pushing her down the narrow corridor as he turned to face Sherrington, now also
emerging from the stairway with the knife in her right hand.

She came after
Rupert, grunting and swinging wildly. Rupert backed quickly away, only to
collide with Lovak. “What are you doing, Sherry?” shrieked the woman stupidly
over his shoulder. Rupert cursed her and tried to force her out of his way. But
in the narrow corridor there was nowhere for her to go, nowhere for any of them
to go, and she remained stolidly blocking his escape.

Sherrington was
closing in with the knife.

But then Minerva
emerged from the stairwell and came at Sherrington from behind. As Sherrington
drew her arm back, preparing to swing the knife at Rupert, Minerva grabbed that
arm. Sherrington snarled an obscenity and wheeled to grapple with Minerva.
“What’s going on?” cried Lovak behind Rupert. “What are you doing, Sherry?” The
woman was trying to see what was happening, trying to force her way past Rupert
and, in the process, driving him back towards Sherrington.

Sherrington was
now wrestling with Minerva, who was clutching both the woman’s wrists in an
attempt to stop her slashing with the knife at close quarters. Now Rupert
reversed his policy, heading down the corridor away from the useless, shrieking
Lovak and back towards the fight. He wanted to assist Minerva. But he was too
late. Suddenly Sherrington broke free and, to Rupert’s horror, she cut open
Minerva’s suit in a wide slash from groin to throat.

The knife caught
in the thick fabric of the suit and Sherrington wasn’t able to pull it free.
Minerva hit the woman in the face and knocked her back, releasing her grip on
the knife. Minerva grabbed it. But it was much too late. Her suit was hanging
obscenely open, the slashed fabric like a loose flap of flesh.

As Rupert saw
Minerva grab the knife from Sherrington he felt a flash of triumph which died
almost immediately. He’d forgotten that Sherrington had a gun. Taking the knife
from the woman just freed her up to unholster her sidearm.

And she did so.
She turned to Minerva but didn’t fire at her. Instead she kicked Minerva in the
chest and sent her sprawling over backwards. Then she turned around in a
methodical, leisurely fashion and took aim at Rupert.

Rupert shot her
dead with a single bullet between the eyes. As soon as Sherrington had drawn
her pistol he had turned to Lovak and seized the gun out of the other woman’s
holster. Lovak had made no move to resist him. But now she gave a wounded
animal cry as she saw Sherrington go down, an expression of terminal surprise
in her dead eyes, falling to the grey deck.

Lovak tried to
force her way past Rupert and get to her dead friend. She obviously wasn’t
another member of the fifth column. Just a traumatised bystander, now suffering
a further terrible trauma. But he couldn’t afford to worry about her now. He
shoved her back with the hand that wasn’t holding the gun.

Then he stepped
over Sherrington’s body, moving towards Minerva, who had struggled to her feet
again. She was removing the helmet of her now useless suit.

“Minerva,” he said
in a stricken voice.

She glanced at
him. “For Christ’s sake Rupert, don’t look so worried. I’m a woman, remember.”

“What?”

“The virus only
infects men. It can’t hurt me. I’m only wearing this fucking thing because of
the million to one chance I might become a carrier once I’m exposed.”

“Of course.” His
heart began to beat again.

”I’m going to be
fine.” Minerva shrugged her way out of what was left of the suit. Underneath it
she was wearing a white tee shirt, moulded to her body with moisture, and the
brief black knickers Rupert had managed not to stare at earlier when they’d
been getting changed on the Wichita.

Minerva stepped
out of the suit, her smooth tanned limbs glossy with sweat, and kicked the suit
aside. “Christ, that feels better.”

Lovak was staring
down at the corpse of her friend. “I can’t believe it,” she said in a small
hurt voice. “Sherry was one of them.”

Minerva touched her
on the arm and said, “It looks like I’ll be staying with you here on the Salem
for a while.”

Chapter Nine: South Polar Ocean

Rupert was almost
out of oxygen by the time he reached the appointed spot on the flight deck and
signalled for the Seahawk to come over from the Wichita to collect him. Minerva
stood on the deck below and waved farewell as he was winched up through a green
cloud of disinfectant into the helicopter.

On board the
Wichita he changed out of his suit in a sealed decontamination tent on the
flight deck, and was again sprayed liberally with disinfectant. Both his suit
and the tent were burned and the ashes scattered into the ocean. Then he was
flown back to Cape Town and from there to Biggin Hill, in a dreamlike reversal
of his journey to this hemisphere. He landed in London in the rain and then had
the ordeal of getting a taxi home to Richmond.

It wasn’t until he
was safely back in his flat that he realised he’d forgotten to get a receipt
for the taxi.

An hour later, in
his own bed at last, he was just sliding into soft warm oblivion when the phone
rang.

To his
astonishment, it was Minerva.

“They patched me
through,” she said. “I knew you’d be worried about me.” She told him that she
was helping organise things on the Salem. An emergency research team, all
female of course, had been flown in from the Centers for Disease Control in
Atlanta and landed on the aircraft carrier to conduct tests. Minerva was
helping them piece together everything they could about the mass extinction on
the vessel. “They’re going to confirm that it was the Herod virus, like there’s
any doubt about that. Meanwhile I’m stuck here on this ghost ship, travelling
at a stately thirty miles an hour, eating up the distance towards the
Antarctic.”

“The Antarctic?”
said Rupert.

“Yeah. Thirty
miles an hour doesn’t sound like much but we’re going to get there in about two
and a half days all told. Slow but steady, that’s the navy motto. Actually it
isn’t, I just made it up. There is no official motto for the US Navy.”

“Why the
Antarctic?”

“The CDC people
have determined that the safest way to guarantee the destruction of what is
after all a tropical virus is to sail the vessel into a polar region. You know,
cold weather. There the crew, which includes yours truly, will scuttle the
ship.”

“My god.”

“Yup. Good thing
it’s the last of the non-nuclear aircraft carriers. There might have been a
few, you know, ecological concerns about sinking a couple of Westinghouse A4W
nuclear reactors in the South Polar Ocean. When we scuttle the old girl —
notice how quickly one picks up the terminology — we’ll all be airlifted off.
Some reinforcements, all female again, have been flown in to supplement the
Salem’s skeleton crew and relieve any of the surviving crew members who don’t
feel able to continue. But you know pretty much all of the Salem’s women are
insisting on staying on for the carrier’s final voyage. Including our friend
Lovak, whose name is Alice by the way. Listen, I’ve got to go but I just wanted
you to know what was happening and that I was okay.”

”Thank you. I’m
glad you rang.”

“And I also wanted
to say that the look of shock-horror you had on your face when I got my suit
cut open was really kind of sweet.”

She hung up.
Rupert stared at the phone, then crawled back into bed.

*

Over the next few
days Rupert periodically received further phone calls from Minerva updating him
on her situation. “I’ve been making myself useful here,” she said when she rang
him the following day. “I got to thinking about those digital photos the Salem’s
Captain was worried about.”

“The doctored
photos,” said Rupert. He was sitting back at his old desk in the Victory Royal
estate agents in Putney. He had got back to London to discover that Braidy had
taken the rest of the week off to go shooting grouse in Scotland with Stubbs
and Harper. To his enormous relief Rupert learned that he wasn’t required to
join them there. It would have been almost impossible to get the trio to accept
him as a member of their hunting party, anyway, or to maintain a plausible
cover story to explain his presence.

So the General had
arranged instead for a couple of Special Branch men to stay at the same
Scottish hotel and keep an eye on Braidy until he was safely back in London,
when Rupert would resume his watching brief.

“That’s right,”
said Minerva. “The Salem’s Captain was convinced somebody had altered the
pictures to prevent us identifying the women who planted the virus on his
ship.”

“And Sherrington’s
eagerness to stop us getting those analog photos suggests the Captain of the
Salem was right,” said Rupert. He remembered Sherrington’s insane eyes and the
knife in her mouth. “By the way, thank you for saving my life.”

He had suddenly
awoken in the grey early hours of the morning with the embarrassing realisation
that Minerva had indeed prevented his certain death and it had never even
crossed his mind to thank her.

“You’re welcome. I
think Sherrington’s plan was actually to make a small hole in your hazmat suit
so it would look like an accident. That’s why she kept going on about how easy
it would be to rip the suit open, what a dangerous place an aircraft carrier
was and how you should be careful and all that.”

“You think she was
laying the groundwork?” said Rupert.

“Right, for a
fatal accident. And also, I think, hoping to spread the Herod virus onto the
Wichita and perhaps even further afield.”

“Christ. Shit.
Yes.” Rupert hadn’t seen the implications. “If she succeeded in making a tear
that was big enough to compromise the suit…”

“But not big
enough for you to notice it…”

“I would have been
infected and gone back on the Salem. You’re right. I feel I should thank you
again on behalf of the entire male crew of an aircraft carrier and possibly a
lot of other people as well.”

“You’re all very
welcome I’m sure.”

“It doesn’t bear
thinking about, what would have happened if you hadn’t spotted the knife.
Incidentally how did you spot the knife?”

“I didn’t,” said
Minerva. “Not really. I was following her up the steps and I just saw her take
something from her pocket. I didn’t see what it was, but there was something
about the way she held it. An alarm went off in my head.”

“I’m glad it went
off,” said Rupert.

“Enough of your
maudlin gratitude,” said Minerva. “This phone call is all about me.”

“Yes. Right. You
said you were making yourself useful.”

“I did,” said
Minerva. “I found another one of them on the ship.”

“Another one?”

“Another member of
the fifth column. Incidentally do you know where that expression comes from?
‘The fifth column’?”

“Yes, yes,” said
Rupert, impatient to get to the meat of her story. “It was the Spanish Civil
War. Four enemy columns were attacking the city from the outside and a fifth
one was working away against them, in a sneaky covert way, inside the city. A
war correspondent coined the phrase. Orwell. A great British writer.”

“Hemingway
actually. A great American writer. And the city was Madrid, by the way.”

“For Christ’s
sake,” said Rupert. “Tell me about the other traitor.”

Minerva chuckled.
“It all came about in connection with the digital photos. I got to thinking if
they had been tampered with, someone must have done the tampering and
Sherrington, who was a lookout on the bridge, didn’t seem a particularly likely
candidate.”

“You found a
better one?”

“Yes, and we’ve
just put her in irons. More naval terminology. Specifically, thanks to yours
truly, we arrested Intelligence and Communications Officer Haswell, Ruth. She
intercepted the digital photos before they were sent and altered the likenesses
of the women.”

“How did you track
her down?”

”Basic sleuthing.
I looked for a connection between Sherrington and somebody who worked in that
area. Somebody who might have the opportunity and ability to meddle with the
images. It turns out she and Haswell were old friends. They had enlisted
together.”

Rupert thought
about that for a moment. “You think Big Mama’s been using sleeper agents who
were planted years ago?”

“That possibility
kind of sends a chill down the spine, doesn’t it? By the way, you were right
about that guy who was the last to die and his antibodies.”

“Sorry?”

“Thanks to us his
corpse was preserved and the geniuses from the CDC got useable samples of his
blood and they worked it up. And they think there’s a very good chance of
synthesising some kind of vaccine.”

“A vaccine? To
protect against the Herod virus?”

“Yes.”

“That’s great
news!” said Rupert. He said it so loudly that people all around the estate
agents stared at him. Connubia gave him an icy frown and a couple of customers
looked at him like he was some kind of congenital idiot.

Minerva said, “It
shouldn’t take them longer than a year or two.”

“Oh fuck.”

“That was pretty
much my reaction. But don’t be disheartened. We did good. The CDC people say
this is very valuable stuff. Thanks to us the last man on the Salem didn’t die
in vain.”

“If we arrived a
little sooner he might not have died at all.”

There was a pause
on the line. Minerva said, “What do you mean?”

“Maybe we could
have saved his life.”

“But he’d already
been exposed to the Herod virus. He was infected.”

“Yes, but remember
what they said. They thought he might pull through. Maybe he would have. Maybe
he really was immune to the virus.”

“But he died. Of
the virus.”

“Or maybe,” said
Rupert, “someone helped him with a pillow over his face.”

There was a long
silence and then Minerva said, “Yes. Maybe someone did. I’ll have to look into
that.”

*

Rupert was at home
in his flat that evening, peering into his refrigerator and trying to decide
whether he could risk eating any of the assortment of expensive foodstuffs
contained within which were all now sorely out of date and, he supposed,
potentially lethal, when he heard a tone from his computer announcing a Skype
message.

He sat down in
front of the laptop and switched the video feed on. A slightly fuzzy image of
Minerva appeared, leaning towards him as she adjusted the camera on her own
computer. She was wearing a white tee shirt and looked tanned and healthy.

“You were right,”
she said. “It was one of the nurses in the sick bay, called Nadine Ashton. She
was working with Sherrington.”

“Another one of
Big Mama’s agents?”

“Yep and you
called it fella. Good for you. Let’s hope she’s the last one.”

“Do you think she
is?”

“I say a guarded
yes. We picked her out through data scrutiny. I came up with a model for the
likely background traits of our sleeper agents and ran it through the computer
with the list of the ship’s personnel. It came up with three candidates worth
looking at. Sherrington, Haswell and this nurse, Ashton.”

“Well done,” said
Rupert. “One dead and two in irons.”

There was a long
pause. “Actually two dead and one in irons.”

“What happened?”

“Nadine Ashton
jumped overboard and drowned.”

“She committed
suicide?” said Rupert.

“Well to be honest
there was a kind of lynch mob thing going on. Word got out on what she’d done
and suddenly, pouring from all over the ship, came five hundred women hell bent
on revenge. Mob justice. Out to get the woman who had taken their men from
them. They pursued Ashton out onto the flight deck until she reached the edge —
apparently she was standing in the centre of one of those black scorch marks.
You know, the ones from the funeral pyres? So it was kind of eerie. Poetic
justice. She was standing there looking at the mob close in on her from all
sides and she then just turned and jumped. Overboard. Into the ocean. Thousands
of miles from the nearest land. She jumped rather than let them get hold of
her.”

“And I suppose she
drowned. She’s dead.”

“Oh yes, very much
so. We’re now officially well into polar waters. Extremely cold. She didn’t
last long at all.”

“Jesus.”

“Yes. And, you
know, that mob pursuing her was a really scary sight… but it gave me a very
interesting idea.”

“Did it?” said
Rupert. “I’m almost loath to ask, because I’m sure it’s a very private and
personal matter between you and your conscience, but where exactly were you
when all this was taking place? The mob chasing her off the edge of the deck?”

“I was three
levels down in the bowels of the ship. Standing guard on Haswell in the brig.”

“The woman who
altered the photos?”

“Sherrington’s accomplice.
Yes. There was a general feeling aboard that Haswell had merely, as you say,
altered some photos whereas Ashton had actually killed the last surviving male
member of the crew.”

“Did she hold a
pillow over his face?”

“No, you got it
wrong there. She didn’t have to. She just switched off his oxygen. Anyway, I
wasn’t counting on the mob mind being able to make any subtle distinctions and
I thought if they were going after Ashton they might come after Haswell too. So
at the first sign of trouble I got myself down to the brig where she was locked
away, Haswell, and I relieved the guards who were on duty and stood point
myself until everything calmed down — which happened about two and a half
seconds after Ashton jumped over the side. Literally, as soon as everybody knew
she was gone, they just went back to their posts as if nothing had happened.
Anyway, I wish you could have seen me when I was on guard. I had a brace of
pistols ready. Nobody was going to get by me. I protected that prisoner all
right.”

“She might have
valuable information for us,” said Rupert.

“Exactly.”

“A brace of
pistols, eh? I wish I could have seen you, too.”

“So anyway,” said
Minerva, “me and my conscience are just fine, buster.”

“I’m sure they
are. And as I said, good for you. And just for the record, I don’t particularly
like being called buster.”

“I’ll try and
remember that.”

*

Late that night
Rupert was awakened by the phone. It was Minerva yet again. She was in tears.
She told him how they had reached their destination in the polar waters and
scuttled the ship.

The skeleton crew
had been evacuated by air and brought in relays to the Wichita where a special
quarantine station had been set up on the flight deck. All aircraft had been
removed to the hangars below and all male crew members restricted to quarters,
where they would remain until the health professionals issued the all clear.

The icy
temperatures at that latitude were a blessing. The CDC experts had established
that the virus was highly susceptible to any drop in temperature and was only
viable in a tropical climate.

Minerva had been
on the last helicopter to leave the Salem, escorting Haswell, her prisoner.
She’d been accompanied by the scuttling crew who had finished their task. Even
as she climbed into the helicopter, the ship was beginning to sink.

As they took off
into the white polar sky Minerva had looked back from the departing helicopter
and watched as the vast expanse of the Salem began to go under.

She wept as she
told Rupert about it, how the huge ship was swallowed by the freezing green
waves, dropping into the icy depths where the virus would die.

The Salem sank
slowly and inexorably on its journey to the polar ocean floor where it would
serve as a giant tombstone for all the men who had died on her.

Chapter Ten: Names on a List

When Minerva
arrived at the estate agents Rupert had been just about to start his lunch.
Lunch today consisted of several cardboard cartons of curry, an example of the
General’s largesse. The General was in the habit of distributing such curry
lunches to an apparently random sample of personnel in the estate agents at
apparently random intervals.

Rupert had just
prised the lid off one container and was eyeing its bright green contents with
suspicion when Minerva walked in through the door. He stared at her in
disbelief and quite possibly with an explicit expression of shock on his face
because she immediately came over to his desk and said, “Don’t worry. I’ve got
a clean bill of health from the medics. My viral levels are non existent.”

“It must be all
that fresh air at the South Pole.”

“Boy, was it
fresh. If it had been any fresher they would have brought me back in a block of
ice.”

“Well, you’re
looking very fresh yourself, I mean you’re looking very well. Very healthy.” Rupert
realised he was sounding like an idiot. “So it must have agreed with you, the
passage, your passage on the ship.” Minerva was grinning at him. “To the South
Pole,” he concluded. He knew he was still sounding like an idiot but he didn’t
much care; he was quite unable to conceal his delight at seeing Minerva back
and unscathed.

Connubia, busy
across the room with a client, must have noticed his sudden pleasure and
happiness because she was shooting him a look that could kill.

Minerva sat down
in a chair beside Rupert’s desk. “Possibly it was the fresh air. But women
aren’t very plausible carriers for the virus anyway. That’s the conclusion of
the CDC. It doesn’t kill us and it also doesn’t infect us. And what’s more,
they reckon I might never have been exposed. The Herod bug may have begun to
die off before we even landed on the Salem. Once the male crew were all dead
there were no viable hosts.” She looked at the curry cartons on his desk.
“What’s this?”

“Lunch,” said
Rupert.

“But what is it
exactly?”

“I don’t know.”

“You don’t know?
You ordered it for lunch and you don’t know what it is?”

“I didn’t order
it. The General gave it to me. He just popped out of his office and plonked it
down on my desk without a word. Well, actually he did say ‘Bon appetit.’”

“That’s very nice
of him. Very generous.”

“The prevailing
theory is that these free meals are dispensed as some kind of a reward for a
job well done. According to this theory, I’ve just received a pat on the head
for my part in the handling of the operation on the Salem.”

“And much deserved
too,” said Minerva. “Do I get to share it with you? The lunch, not the pat on
the head. After all, I was there too. Actually for a quite a lot longer than
you.”

“Personally,” said
Rupert, “I don’t buy the reward theory at all. I’m convinced that, despite the
apparently virgin state of the containers, these offerings are in fact dishes
that the General has ordered for himself, sampled, and found wanting. He’s
palming off his culinary rejects on us.”

“That’s terrible.
Rejected curry. Can I still have some?”

“Of course you
can.”

“What’s this green
stuff?”

“I have no idea.”
He handed Minerva a spare set of pale blue plastic cutlery from his desk drawer
and began to open the other curry containers. As he did so she glanced at the
document open on his computer screen. “Is that the data from the blow torched
hard drive?”

“Ah, now that’s
rather interesting.” Rupert turned to look at his screen. “Yes, I’ve been
taking another look at the list of names you recovered.”

“Isn’t that a
coincidence,” said Minerva, “So have I, and I think I’ve got something major.
But you go first.” She was now spooning at her carton with gusto. “Hey, this
green stuff is good.”

“Well, you see
it’s always bothered me why Braidy was on that list.”

“Where is Braidy,
by the way?”

“I’m glad to say
we’re Braidy-free for a few days,” said Rupert. “He’s up in Scotland on holiday
and Special Branch is keeping an eye on him. Of course good things can never
last and he’s due back tomorrow, when he’s obliged to attend the gala arms fair
that the company holds each year. But until then he’s north of the border, deep
in the heather or whatever they have up there, trying to shoot small helpless
birds.”

Minerva said, “I
was going through the list of names from the hard drive, trying to figure out
what bearing each one had on the situation. And one name jumped out at me. That
research scientist Ian Smith.”

“The man who died
twice.”

“Right. He’s
another virus expert.”

“Like Professor
Vallortigara.”

“Right again,
except this guy wasn’t involved in weaponising viruses or anything sexy like
that. In fact, his field of specialty was, rather boringly, plant diseases —
completely harmless to human beings. But I’ve got this nagging hunch that there
must be a connection between his work and Vallortigara’s and Ekta Unity’s.”

“Good old Dr
Unity.”

“Yes.”

“So we have three
experts on viruses,” said Rupert. “Each with his or her own field of
expertise.”

“Right.”

“Let’s see… Dr
Unity provided the tropical virus that was an ideal starting point for a
bio-weapon, the platform so to speak. Then Vallortigara helped customise it so
it would only attack male human beings. And then we assume this third
researcher, Smith, made some contribution. As a plant expert.”

“I know it sounds
nutty. And that’s why no one has given priority to Smith up until now. Of the
names on that list the only one who was obviously a potential danger was
Vallortigara. And maybe, if you wanted to stretch a point, your old friend
Braidy.”

“Because he’s an
arms salesman.”

“Correct. Like you
were saying, he may not be intrinsically interesting.”

“He’s definitely
not intrinsically interesting.”

“But his job is,
the stuff he sells is interesting. Not to mention lethal.”

Something was
stirring in Rupert’s memory, demanding attention. He tried to focus on it but
it slipped away.

Minerva said, “But
apart from Vallortigara and Braidy the other people on the list are just plain
wacky. What have we got? A male escort, a fertility doctor, a fetish costume
specialist…”

“A dead fetish
costume specialist,” said Rupert. “Poor old Whetticker. And it turned out he’s
not so wacky after all.”

Minerva ate her
curry, nodding. “I guess not. I read your report. What Alzbeta said about Big
Mama commissioning him to make special fetish outfits for her troops. Because
she believes it will somehow give them an advantage in combat.”

“I know it sounds
crazy,” said Rupert, “but…”

“No, it doesn’t
sound crazy. Men find it hard to gun down a woman who looks…”

“Reproductively
fit.”

“Yeah.” They were
both silent for a moment. Then Minerva said, “Anyway, I’m taking it very
seriously. Actually, I’ve already made some recommendations to the Agency about
countermeasures we can take in this area.”

“Countermeasures
to sexy outfits?” said Rupert.

“Yes. It was an
idea I got while I was on the Salem. But never mind that now, the main point
here is that Big Mama is about as crazy as Einstein.”

“Or Napoleon.”

“Or him. So, any
name on that list is potentially significant, and potentially really, really
dangerous. Including Smith the plant guy. So I requested a check into his
background and the Agency compiled a detailed file on him.”

“I know,” said
Rupert. “We helped prepare it for you.” He was beginning to remember now. “The
General briefed me about the esteemed Smith just before you and I met. Smith
and his beet necrotic something blight.” More details were coming back to him
from the briefing.

“Beet necrotic
blue vein blight.”

“BNBVB.”

“Right. BNBVB. He
wrote this paper about it. A classic of its kind, I’m told.” Nevada took out
her Blackberry and checked it. “The blight virus and its spread in spores of,
and zoosporangia of, its vector Polymyxa Betae. That’s the title. Catchy, eh?
It seems Smith was the world’s leading authority on the mechanism by which
viruses can attack bacteria.”

“I still don’t see
where that gets us,” said Rupert.

“Specifically he
was a leading authority on the mechanism by which a virus hijacks a bacteria’s
endospores. Do you know what those are?”

“Some kind of
spore?”

“Good guess. It’s
actually the tough protective structures which allow bacteria to survive under
harsh environmental conditions.”

Rupert looked at
her. “Was this another insight that came to you when you were on the Salem?
While you were sailing through the Antarctic?”

She smiled at him.
“Exactly. We were dealing with a tropical virus which died in the cold.” Her
smile faded. “What if someone came up with a way of protecting that virus, so
that it wasn’t vulnerable to cold, or to any other environmental extremes?”

“Shield it by
using endospores,” said Rupert.

“There you go.”
Minerva peered into her empty coffee cup and pushed it aside. “With Ian Smith’s
help, Dr Unity could have produced a strain of the Herod virus incorporating
such spores. And protected by them, the virus would be vastly more robust than
the killer we saw unleashed on the Salem.”

Rupert felt a deep
and growing sense of alarm. “But why would Big Mama need Herod to survive under
extreme conditions? And exactly what conditions does she have in mind?”

“If we can find
the answer to that, we’ll be halfway to knowing where she intends to strike.”

Rupert shook his
head. “I can’t get over the feeling that, as much as I hate to say it, Braidy
is the key to this.”

“Well, let’s look
at this from first principles. Why would Big Mama find him useful? Who is
Braidy?”

“An arms
salesman.” Rupert frowned. “Obviously it must involve a product he is currently
involved in selling.”

“A weapon.”

“ Or weapons
system. Yes.”

“So we need to
ascertain what kind of death-dealing device Braidy is currently flogging,” said
Rupert.

Chapter Eleven: One O’clock Kill

The next day
Rupert was on his way in to work, waiting for a train at Clapham Junction, when
he got a text from Minerva. He read it. An address in Hampstead. No message. He
was just beginning to feel annoyed with the cryptic nature of the text when she
called him.

“Rupert, we’ve
found the other two of them. The last two names on the list.”

“The male escort
and the fertility doctor?”

“That’s right.
Gustav Olson and Terence Rogers. We’ve got both of them. Or at least we know
where they are.”

Rupert didn’t have
to feign his enthusiasm. “Both of them?”

“Yeah. Dr Rogers
was in Germany. In Stuttgart. Actually, just south of Stuttgart, in
Frauenkopf.”

“What about
Olson?”

“Once we’d gotten
Dr Rogers, he just told us where Olson was. Gave him right up.”

“And where’s
Olson?”

“London. Yes,
right here in good old Londinium.”

“Don’t call it
that. Nobody calls it that. So that’s his address you texted me?”

“Exactly. In
Hampstead of all places. I’m on my way to see him now. Want to come with?”

Rupert felt a keen
pang of frustration. “I’d love to. But I’m supposed to be sticking close to
Braidy and he’s back in London, at the arms fair — ”

“Well, if you
don’t want to…”

“It’s not a case
of not wanting to. It’s a case of not being able to. Are you taking him into
protective custody? Olson, I mean.”

“There may not be
any need,” said Minerva.

“Why on earth not?

“Big Mama
apparently promised he’d come to no harm. Same deal with Oslon. Once they’d
done what she’d hired them to do, she would pay them handsomely and let them
live.”

“Well, of course
she’d say that.” Rupert looked up at the indicator and breathed a silent curse
as his train was cancelled. “What reason do we have to believe her?”

“She made no such
promise to Vallortigara or Smith. And look at how they ended up.”

“And we’re still
treating Whipping Whetticker as an inadvertent suicide, are we?”

“Yeah, we are. You
were with me on that one, weren’t you? You know, I’m going to kind of miss
having you along today.”

“I wish I could be
there,” said Rupert without irony. The indicator calmly informed him that the
next train had been cancelled, too.

“Don’t worry about
me. Have you seen the photos of this guy? He must have been very successful in
his trade. If I’m going to be honest, I’m really looking forward to this
interview. I may not be able to resist his charms. He looks like a real hunk.”

“Thanks for that,”
said Rupert sourly.

“Take care.”
Minerva hung up. Rupert sat on the bench and watched as the next train was
tantalisingly not cancelled, but merely delayed. Maybe he’d grab a coffee after
all. He was halfway to the coffee stall when his phone rang again. He thought
it would be Minerva.

It wasn’t. It was
Alzbeta. She said, “Your people have just got hold of Dr Rogers in Stuttgart.”

Rupert froze in
mid stride. “Actually, just south of Stuttgart, in Frauenkopf.”

“Well, you know
that other man who is in Hampstead. What’s his name? Olson. You better be quick
if you want to talk to him.”

“Why?”

“He won’t be
around after one o’clock.”

“Why not?”

“There’s a kill
order out on him.”

“I knew it. Big
Mama promised he would live. I knew she was lying.”

“Oh, it’s not Big
Mama who ordered it. She did promise he’d live. But Dr Unity thinks she’s going
soft, so she ordered the kill, behind Big Mama’s back.”

“Can she do that?”

“The organisation
takes orders from her as well as Big Mama. Unity is second in the hierarchy.”

“How do you know
all this?”

“The orders went
through the London cell. My cell. I also heard they’re going to kill Dr Rogers
in Stuttgart. They’re going to kill him at one o’clock and Olson is supposed to
be done at the same time.”

“Christ.” Rupert
looked at his watch.

*

Number 106 had a
tiny scrap of garden and a black wrought iron gate leading onto a crooked path
of cracked black and white tiles. Rupert swung the gate open and marched up to
the door. Affixed to the front door, under the street number, was a little
porcelain plaque with elaborate lettering that read Kitty Kat Kottage. Rupert
was still staring at this in disbelief when the door opened and Minerva looked
out.

“I thought it was
you. Come in.”

“Don’t you ever
switch your phone on?”

“Not when I’m
interviewing a subject. Why?”

“We got word that
there’s going to be an attack.”

“Come again?”

“An attack on
you.”

“On me?” She led
him into the sitting room. It had bare wooden floors, the boards painstakingly
stripped and polished, and was sparsely furnished with rough-hewn bookcases and
cubist leather furniture — two chairs and a sofa with a tartan blanket draped
over the back. It was an unpretentious, masculine sort of room except for the
little porcelain cats that densely crowded the shelves.

Little porcelain
cats of every variety. The most tasteless and revoltingly sentimentalised
felines imaginable.

Cute, cartoonish
critters with big googly eyes.

“An attack on
here, I mean, this place where you are.” He realised he wasn’t explaining
himself with much clarity. “Basically there’s going to be an attempt on Gustav
Olson’s life.”

“Christ.”

“That’s what I
said. The attack is scheduled for one o’clock.”

“Then we better
get him out of here.” Minerva checked her watch.

“It’s now six
minutes to noon. We’ve got time. And the police are on their way.” Rupert
looked around, trying to keep his eyes off the grotesque collection of cats.

He and Minerva
were perched on armchairs, leaving the small leather settee empty. In front of
the settee was a low table, bare except for a vase of orange flowers and a
parcel, a box wrapped in brown paper, which had evidently just arrived in the
post.

“Where is Olson?”

“He’s upstairs. In
the loo, I think.”

“He wouldn’t be
trying to leg it out the window even as we speak?”

“I doubt it,” said
Minerva. “He seems to be very much enjoying our conversation. And so am I.”
There was a flush from upstairs, followed by taps running, suggesting that
Olson would indeed be returning shortly. Rupert shifted restlessly in his
chair.

“You’re barking up
the wrong tree with Mr Olson, I think,” he said.

“What do you
mean?”

“I mean this hunk
of yours.” Rupert’s eyes searched the rows of revolting cats. He realised that
some of them were actually clocks. He lowered his voice slightly, in
anticipation of the approach of their owner. “He’s clearly as gay as a
midsummer morning.”

“You know what?”
said Minerva. “I don’t think so.”

“Oh come on, he’s
a paid gigolo.”

“So what?”

“So, he’ll do
anything. Any sexual act for money.”

Minerva looked at
the rows of cats. “He’s got an eccentric taste in home décor, I’ll give you
that. But as far as I can see there’s no need for Gustav to go gay for pay. In
fact, he appears to be very successful with the ladies.”

“Kitty Kat
Kottage?” said Rupert, pointedly.

“He loves the
ladies, and the ladies love him. He’s been showing me his scrapbook.”

There was the
jaunty rapid tread of someone heavy coming down the stairs in a brisk athletic
way. Olson appeared in the doorway. Rupert hated the man on sight.

He was wearing tan
chinos and an open necked white shirt. His feet were bare under leather
sandals. On his left hand gleamed a collection of rings with large, chunky,
square-cut gemstones.

He smiled and
said, “Hello.”

“Gustav, this is
my colleague Rupert.”

“Hello, Rupert.”

Rupert thought,
suntan, check. White teeth, check. Bulging biceps, check. Curly brown hair,
check. Cleft chin, check. “Gustav,” he said, “it looks like we may have to ask
you to come with us.”

Olson gazed at him
placidly. Rupert thought there was something positively bovine about his liquid
brown eyes. “Go with you where?”

“Just
temporarily,” said Minerva quickly. “Just for your own safety.”

“But we’ve been
through this. Big Mama promised that nothing would happen to me.” He smiled at
them. “Nothing bad, that is.”

Before Rupert
could reply, Minerva said, “And that’s probably one hundred percent right. But
there’s no point taking any chances, is there? We’ll see you’re back here as
soon as possible and in the meantime we’ll buy you lunch.”

“Lunch?” said
Olson, brightening up. Rupert had to admire Minerva’s finesse. She could get
the oaf to do exactly what she wanted.

“Of course. Just
name the restaurant.”

“That’s very nice
of you,” said Olson, and Rupert realised that they’d won. “Just let me open
this and we can get going.” He reached for the package on the table, saying to
Rupert, “Your friend brought it in when she arrived. Which made me glad to see
her.” Then he added gallantly, “I mean even gladder.”

“It was just
sitting on the doorstep,” said Minerva. She gave Rupert a look to say not to
get impatient, to play along. He accepted that she was right. This was her
caper and she had Olson in a cooperative state of mind and it was best for him
not to interfere.

“Can you believe
that?” said Olson, unwrapping the package, as happy as a child on Christmas
morning. “Just leaving it on the doorstep like that?”

“Do you buy all your
cats on eBay?” said Minerva.

“Most of them,”
said Olson serenely. “Most of them. That’s where the bargains are.” He removed
the last piece of tape with a snap. “Now this is an original Felix ceramic
teapot.” He reached inside and carefully searched with a dry rustle among the
Styrofoam packing beads.

Rupert checked the
time again and noticed that several of the clocks had been set to different
hours, as if for different time zones.

“Oh, it’s a
beauty,” said Olson happily, peering into the box. Time zones, thought Rupert.
He turned to Minerva.

“What time is it
in Stuttgart?” he said.

“Western Europe?
They’re an hour ahead.”

“Man, it’s really
heavy,” said Olson, lifting the black and white teapot out of the box. An hour
ahead thought Rupert.

One o’clock.

He looked at
Minerva.

There was a
metallic rattle as Olson hefted the teapot and both Rupert and Minerva
simultaneously yelled, “Put it down.” But it was too late. There was a sharp
hissing sound and a white cloud sprayed out of the spout of the teapot.

The cloud would
have gone in Olson’s face if Minerva hadn’t seized him and dragged him back.
While she was doing this, Rupert grabbed the blanket off the back of the sofa
and threw it on top of the teapot, which had fallen on the floor.

Then he snatched
the vase of flowers, threw the water onto the blanket and all of them fled the
room.

They ran down the
hall and out the front door, Olson’s sandals slapping on the tiles as he fled
along the garden path with Minerva.

Rupert stayed
behind to make sure the door was firmly shut and then joined them in the
street. Olson was staring back at his little house. A slowly expanding white
cloud was visible through the window of the front room.

“But she
promised,” he said.

Minerva said, “I
can’t believe I took the fucking package inside.” She was furious. “It was on
the doorstep and I took it inside.”

“I can’t believe I
didn’t work out the time difference,” said Rupert. His heart was slugging in
his chest with such force that he could feel the blood throb to the tips of his
fingers.

“But you
remembered in time,” said Minerva.

“Only just.”

“She promised,”
repeated Olson. “She promised me.”

To shut him up,
Rupert said, “It wasn’t Big Mama who sent you the teapot. It was Dr Unity.”

“That bitch,” said
Olson.

Minerva was staring
at the white cloud, which now filled the front room of Kitty Kat Kottage. “What
do you think it is?”

“Some kind of
neurotoxin.”

“Gas? You don’t
think it’s…”

“If it was a
virus,” said Rupert, “why put it in a white aerosol that’s highly visible? No, it’s
some kind of nerve agent.”

Just then the
police arrived and Rupert got them to cordon off the street. He told them to
say it was a gas leak, which in a way it was.

*

Tests of samples
by specialists from Porton Down confirmed that Rupert’s guess was right and
that the vapour unleashed in Olson’s house had been a G-series organophosphate
nerve agent. “That’s like Sarin, right?” said Minerva.

“Correct,” said
Rupert, staring out at the Belsize Road streaming past. They were sharing a
taxi back from Hampstead. “Cyclosarin to be exact. He’s just lucky it wasn’t a
V-series gas.”

“Because they’re
more lethal?”

“Because they’re
oily, difficult to wash off and stay on surfaces for a long, long time. So his
collection of porcelain pussycat figurines would have been permanently off
limits. Or he could have fondled them one last time and then died. Which would
have been a major tragedy.”

“I think you’re
being a bit hard on poor old Gustav,” said Minerva.

“I forgot to tell
you something crucial,” said Rupert. “I’ve formed a conclusion. About Braidy,
and the weapon system he is currently selling. I’ve been attending the arms
fair with him where they’re pushing the company’s hot new product this season.
The Conquistador.”

“Cute name.”

“Yes. We’re taking
it on a sales tour of America.”

“Appropriately
enough.”

“Appropriately
enough. It’s a special attachment that can be retrofitted to ballistic
missiles. So instead of packing an explosive warhead, the missile can deploy
bio-weapons.”

Minerva was silent
for a moment. Then she said, “Like the Herod virus.”

“Well, normally
no,” said Rupert. “Because a tropical virus like Herod couldn’t possibly
survive under those kind of conditions. High altitude dispersal at freezing
temperatures. But…”

“But? Oh shit,”
said Minerva. “I suddenly see the implication of Ian Smith and his spores.”

“Exactly.
Reinforced with endospores, the Herod virus will be protected from the freezing
air while it’s carried by a missile into the high atmosphere. Once released
there, the winds of the jet stream will distribute Herod all over the globe.”

“Jesus.”

“Yes. I think the
Conquistador is Big Mama’s true target.”

“One small point,”
said Minerva. “To make use of the Conquistador she also needs a ballistic
missile. And they’re not easy to come by.”

“Let’s hope not.”

*

The taxi dropped
him outside his house in Richmond. He waved goodbye to Minerva as the cab
pulled away, then he turned and walked through the gate into his garden
thinking that he really needed to do some lawn mowing and plant trimming or, more
realistically, hire someone to do it, before the place turned into a complete
jungle.

There was a sound
from under one of the overgrown shrubs and Rupert turned to see Alzbeta’s dog
staring at him fiercely. It was as if the animal had been waiting for his
return. There was something in the shadows behind the dog and as Rupert
approached, it moved away from the object which it seemed to be guarding.

The dog made no
attempt to stop Rupert and as he got nearer he saw that it wasn’t an object but
a person.

Alzbeta, lying in
the long grass. Rupert rushed to her and, because she was lying face down, he
was able to see the back of her neck where someone had stuck a small, round
flesh-coloured patch.

Chapter Twelve: Forty-Nine Days

“It was patch like
a nicotine patch,” said Rupert. “Except smaller. Less obtrusive.”

“And it contained
a toxin?” said Minerva. She’d been asleep when he rang her, but now her voice
sounded wide awake.

“Yes.”

“Jesus.”

Rupert held the
phone to his ear with one hand and opened his garden gate with the other.
“Transdermal adhesive patch. Provides a controlled release. Highly ingenious.”

“And you think she
put this on herself?”

Rupert closed the
gate behind him and wearily latched it. He’d been up all night in the hospital
emergency unit waiting to hear if Alzbeta would live or die. He’d called for an
ambulance and luckily there had been one a few streets away. They’d raced
through Richmond Park to Roehampton Lane and Queen Mary’s Hospital, again
through a stroke of luck a first-rate accident and emergency unit. The staff
were waiting, briefed by Rupert, when they brought her in.

But the crucial
factor in saving Alzbeta’s life turned out to be the fact that he’d removed the
adhesive patch from the back of her neck as soon as he’d found her.

“No,” said Rupert.
“We think someone put the patch on her without her knowledge.”

“Someone tried to
kill her?

Rupert stood there
in the garden, phone to his ear. It was dawn and the birds were singing. All he
wanted to do was go to bed, but it was almost time to get up. “Yes.”

“Someone from her
cell?”

“Yes, we think
so.”

“So Big Mama knew
you turned her.”

“We think so.”

“Is she going to
be all right?”

“She’ll survive. I
found her in time.”

Minerva’s voice
softened. “You sound exhausted. I’ll let you go.”

“Okay. Thanks.
Good night.” Rupert looked up at the brightening sky. “Or good morning.” But
Minerva was already gone. He sighed and looked around the garden with a sense
of déjà vu. Something was moving in the shadows.

The dog.

He’d forgotten all
about the bloody dog.

He stood there
regarding it with resigned glumness until he realised that the animal was
looking back at him with much the same expression. Rupert wondered if, in the
back of his mind, he’d been expecting it to be conveniently gone when he came
back. To have gone home.

But without
Alzbeta it evidently didn’t have a home.

Against his better
judgement Rupert went into his kitchen and searched for something he might
plausibly give it to eat. There was nothing in the fridge. He sorted through his
shelves of tinned food and finally found some beef stew with an idealised
highland scene printed on the tin. He opened the tin and spooned the somewhat
odd smelling brown stuff into a chipped blue bowl of the kind he normally used
for his breakfast cereal.

He took the bowl
outside to the dog, who watched him with expectant wariness but evidently
didn’t rate him as much of a threat, allowing him to get close enough to set
the bowl down under the beast’s muzzle.

The dog sniffed
the bowl’s contents once and shifted position so its nose was no longer exposed
to the smell of the stew, decisively disdaining the offering. The trouble was,
thought Rupert; he didn’t entirely blame it.

A car pulled up in
the street. Rupert looked up with instant suspicion, measuring his journey back
inside and to the nearest weapon, when he recognised it as an all too familiar
vehicle and out of it stepped Connubia.

“How is she?” she
said.

“Still unconscious
when I left the hospital.”

Connubia came into
the garden and immediately went over to the dog and, kneeling, crooned “Who’s a
good boy, then? Good boy, good boy, good boy.” The dog, that ingratiating
hypocrite, instantly lolled happily at her touch. Connubia scratched him behind
the ear and patted his hairy flanks. “Good boy!”

She noticed the
bowl of stew, glanced at Rupert with exasperation and said, to the dog, “Don’t
worry about that muck, boy. I’ve brought you something you’ll like.” Rupert
watched in astonishment as she went back to her car, opened a cooler bag and
took out an ice cream cone.

Connubia came back
into the garden, brandishing the ice cream cone. The dog leapt to his feet and
happily surged towards her, tail wagging. “That’s a good boy, a good boy, a
good hungry boy.” She daintily began to feed the cone to the dog.

“How did you know
he ate ice cream?”

“I read your
reports,” said Connubia. “That’s how I knew he was here, and that he would need
someone to look after him.” She glanced at the bowl again in a meaningful way.
“Not the sort of person who’d try and make him eat that.”

Despite himself,
Rupert found he was rising to the bait. “At least I tried to feed him some
meat.”

“Is that even
meat?” said Connubia.

“At least it’s not
an ice cream cone.”

“Alzbeta didn’t
seem to think they’d do him any harm.” Connubia glared at him. “You said she
was still unconscious?”

“She’s in a
serious condition. She absorbed a lot of whatever hell’s broth was on that
transdermal patch.”

“She walked to
your house with the patch in place, without even knowing it was there?”

“So it seems. She
said they were supposed to only leave the house in pairs, but she must have
managed to slip away.” Rupert watched the dog and Connubia indulge in a playful
little game over the last bites of the ice cream. She would make as if to
withdraw the remnants of the confection and the dog would whine piteously and
Connubia would offer the treat again and the dog would go into tail wagging
raptures.

“How would you put
it there?” said Connubia, holding the cone for the happy dog.

“Sorry?”

Connubia sighed at
his failure to immediately grasp her cryptic locution. “How would one go about
putting a patch like that on her neck, do you suppose?” she said, spelling it
out in single syllables. “How would someone put a hand on the back of someone’s
neck like that, in such a way that the victim wouldn’t immediately suspect? I
can only think of one way.” Connubia looked briefly at Rupert, and then resumed
playing with the dog. “I imagine it was done during a kiss.”

Connubia took the
last of the cone, which the dog didn’t seem interested in, and made a move to
throw it into his hedge.

“Don’t even think
about it,” said Rupert. So Connubia took the remnant of the cone with her as
she went to the car with the dog and let it in.

It jumped promptly
and obediently onto the back seat and settled there as Connubia closed the
door, for all the world as if this was part of a long established routine.
Connubia turned back to Rupert, gave him a look of calm malevolence and left.

Rupert went to bed
to try and get an hour or two of sleep. But he just lay there restlessly.

He realised he
missed having the dog.

*

The safe house
where they would debrief Dr Rogers and Gustav Olson was located in Wandsworth,
in a little estate called Frogmore. Minerva picked Rupert up the following
morning and drove him there.

When they arrived
at Frogmore, she distributed pastries to the night shift of guards who were
going off duty, and still had plenty left over for the day shift when they came
on. There was also sufficient for Olson and Dr Rogers and indeed Rupert and
Minerva herself.

Their first
interview was with Olson. Minerva started by asking, as she offered coffee and
pastries, if he’d spent a comfortable night. The erstwhile male escort allowed
that he had.

Then, to Rupert’s
surprise, she proceeded by reminding him of the booby-trapped teapot and
offering a brief dissertation on the technicalities of nerve agents.

“A V-series gas,”
said Minerva, “is what we call a persistent agent. It acquired the name because
such chemicals are almost impossible to wash off and very slow to degrade.
Anything that is exposed to them is contaminated and V-series agents remain on
surfaces for a long, long time.”

Rupert noticed his
own turn of phrase being repeated here.

He began to
realise what Minerva was doing when he saw there were tears gleaming in Olson’s
eyes. “So my collection,” he said in a hoarse voice, “my whole collection of
poor little kitty kats, they’re…”

Minerva smiled
and, with perfect timing said, “Actually they’re fine. We were very lucky
there. Although at first we feared they’d used a V-series nerve gas, in fact —
by a great stroke of luck — it transpired they used one of the much more
manageable G-series gases.”

At these words,
hope came back into Olson’s face. “G-series?” he said in a shaky voice.

“That’s right. Far
more washable and quickly degrading. There shouldn’t be a problem at all. We
should be able to let you have your collection back quite soon. In the meantime
I have your cottage under armed surveillance making sure your figurines don’t come
to any harm. We’ll send someone around to collect them in a few days and
process them — with the greatest of care of course — and box them up, packaging
them extremely carefully, naturally, and bring them here for you.”

Olson was gazing
at her with something approaching adoration and Rupert, for very different
reasons, was feeling a similar emotion towards Minerva. “And I’ll be able to
handle them again?” said Olson. “My little kitty kats.”

Minerva said of
course he would, and from that point on Olson was completely cooperative — the
phrase ‘eating out of her hand’ came to mind — telling them everything they
wanted to know promptly and with candour.

Olson described
how he had been hired by Big Mama, ostensibly to sexually service her, a
familiar assignment. But he soon realised he had in point of fact been enlisted
to father a child.

“She wanted a
baby,” he said.

He’d met Dr Rogers
during this period at Big Mama’s compound in Lucerne. Rogers had been tasked
with restoring Big Mama’s fertility, which had apparently been compromised by
her years in the sex trade. In this he was certainly successful.

When tests
confirmed Big Mama was indeed pregnant, she let both men go, and paid them off
handsomely. On the condition that they adopt new identities and remain silent.
Under pain of death.

And that was
pretty much all he knew. He and Rogers had become fast friends under the
pressure of their confinement and before they parted they had secretly
exchanged details of their new identities and the places they planned to live.

Rupert and Minerva
left Olson with his plate of pastries and his excited anticipation of getting
his kitty kats back.

“You were
amazing,” said Rupert to Minerva outside his room.

“Thank you.”

“I can’t believe
he actually believed it.”

“What do you
mean?”

Rupert quoted from
memory, “‘We have your cottage under armed surveillance to make sure your
figurines don’t come to any harm’.”

“We have,” said
Minerva.

Rupert looked at
her. “You think Big Mama might send somebody there?”

“We’re not taking
any chances. And if any of the opposition turn up we want to take them into
custody and find out everything we can.”

“If that’s the
case, why don’t we just swoop on Alzbeta’s cell? The house by the Bank of
England sports ground? Now that we no longer have Alzbeta on the inside we
might as well take them down.”

Minerva shook her
head. “We tried that. The house was raided last night. There was no one there.
They’d already cleared out.”

“And they didn’t
leave anything behind?”

“A few socks with
holes in them and some very embarrassing underwear hanging up to dry on the
shower rail. That was all.”

They moved down
the brown-carpeted corridors of the small apartment complex. Their next task
was to debrief Dr Rogers, whom they had picked up at the airport yesterday. Rogers
had proved to be a small nervous man in tweeds with a Viking beard. Rupert
supposed that he had a lot to be nervous about.

Olson had already
provided them with a good idea of the doctor’s story, but they took him through
it again in his own words. When he was finished, Rupert, whom Rogers seemed to
trust and who was taking the lead in this interview, asked him what he thought
Big Mama’s objectives were.

“Two-fold,” said
Rogers. “To conceive a child, and to create a world without men. How she hoped
to achieve the latter, I have no idea. But it was a central tenet of this
crackpot indoctrination she was giving to her acolytes. Her ‘troops’ she called
them. They were always training, running around with guns and playing soldiers.
And there was this other woman around all the time. Dr Unity. She was the
second in command. Some kind of biochemist from what I could glean. She never
spoke to me and I was just as glad not to talk to her. Frankly she scared me.
She was even hotter than Big Mama on this ‘world without men’ theme.”

“And how did they
propose to achieve such a world?” said Rupert.

“I think it was
just a pipe dream. A vicious one, one they were perhaps willing to kill for.
But a pipe dream nevertheless. They must have been aware of that on some level.
They must have known it was just a fantasy.” Rogers looked at Rupert and
Minerva, searching their eyes. “That’s all it could be, right? There’s no way
they could just kill all the men in the world?”

“Did they at any
point give any indication of how they thought this wonderful new world free of
men would work, if they succeeded in their mass cull?”

“They had some
absurd scheme that they could repopulate the world using fertilisation
techniques that didn’t involve males, or even artificial insemination. Instead
they were proposing some kind of gene splitting technique to create gametes
which would then be fertilised in vitro and implanted in the womb. I didn’t
tell them that in my expert opinion, as a specialist in the field, this was a
crank scheme par excellence, a chimera that was an utter impossibility and
would remain so for many decades to come. At the very least. But I didn’t tell
them that and they didn’t ask me.”

Minerva said,
“Does the time period of forty nine days mean anything to you?”

Rogers laughed.
“Of course. It was Big Mama. She kept pressing me to try and find out the
minimum time after conception at which one can determine an embryo’s sex.
Finally I told her that it was seven weeks. Forty nine days.”

“And is that
true?”

Rogers shrugged.
“It’s as good an answer as any.”

“You mean you
can’t measure it that accurately?

“No of course not.
It’s pure moonshine. How could one determine any biological process so
precisely? Everybody is different. Or rather, every body.”

Minerva said, “You
say that Big Mama genuinely wants this child.”

“Absolutely.
Desperately. Beyond reason, one might be tempted to say.”

“Yet the child
could be a boy.”

“Of course.”

“She didn’t try
and get you to offer any help in conceiving female-only offspring.”

“No.”

“And you weren’t
aware of anyone else who might have been helping her in this area?”

“There wasn’t
anyone else around. Besides the legions of girl flunkies, and they were just
that, indoctrinated drones, it was just Big Mama, me, Gustav, and this Dr Unity
at the retreat. But as I say Unity’s field was biochemistry. She wasn’t a
fertility doctor.”

“So how did Big
Mama square her desire for a male-free world when her own child might have
turned out to be male?”

“I don’t think she
has squared it. I think she’s deeply and massively conflicted.”

Finally, when they
felt they had got as much out of Rogers as they could, Rupert concluded with an
open ended question. “Is there anything else that you think is important?
Anything else we haven’t covered, any questions we haven’t asked, but which you
feel might be significant?”

Rogers toyed with
the remains of his pastries. He had basically pulled them apart on his plate
and then just left them there, uneaten, and Rupert couldn’t help thinking this
was a bit of a shame and a waste, given how delicious they were. “Well,” said
Rogers. “I’m aware that Big Mama is in danger of coming across as a caricature,
or a nutcase. But she’s a long way from being either of those things. The
problem with talking about her obsessions, indeed her potentially contradictory
obsessions, is that it might encourage you not to take her seriously.”

“Oh,” said
Minerva, “I think you can rest assured that we take her extremely seriously.”

Rogers looked
pained. “No, I know you do. I mean, in that sense I know you do. You see her as
a very real threat. But I still think there’s a danger of letting the person
behind that threat become, in your minds, something of a joke. A crank. A
crackpot.”

“You’ve used both
those words yourself,” said Rupert. “When you were describing her plans and her
organisation.”

“I know I did,”
said Rogers. “That’s just the point. It’s as easy for me to fall into that trap
as anyone else. But I think it could be a fatal trap.”

“How should we see
Big Mama, then?” said Minerva.

Rogers replied without
hesitation. “Intelligent. That’s what hasn’t come across, how intelligent she
is. Despite the sheer madness of her schemes, she has a very shrewd, sharp mind
and you forget that at your peril. I used to play chess with her in the
evenings, and I am in all modesty a very gifted chess player myself. But she
used to beat me regularly. She has a very original mind, the ability to think
ahead and, in particular, she is expert at sacrificing valuable pieces to win
the game.”

Rupert could see
that this exposition on chess had not particularly impressed Minerva. She said,
“Thank you for your help. Are you sure there’s nothing else you want to add?”

“Just that Dr
Unity is pure poison.”

*

After the
interview, Rupert and Minerva compared notes in the surveillance suite. This
was a small room with white walls and cheerless grey carpet and grey furniture,
equipped with a bank of monitor screens feeding pictures of the occupied rooms
in the safe house.

Monochrome images
on the screens depicted Rogers sitting brooding on the toilet reading the Daily
Telegraph and Olson doing callisthenics on the carpet of his room. “So what do
we make of these two?” said Rupert.

“Well, for a
start, their stories tally pretty well. I don’t think either of them were
fabricating their accounts to any extent or deliberately trying to conceal
anything from us.”

“Then the question
we have to ask is why they’re still alive. It is, after all, a departure from
the norm for Big Mama. If a man happens to have something she needs, her modus
operandi is to use him and discard him. Giving Olson and Rogers their lives was
out of character.”

“On the other
hand,” said Minerva, “how much of their lives was she giving them?”

“What do you
mean?”

“She probably
thought the Herod virus would deal with them soon enough. She wasn’t giving
them a pardon, just a stay of execution.”

Rupert got up from
the battered grey sofa where they were sitting and paced around the small room.
“And what about the question of Big Mama’s baby? What if it’s a boy? It doesn’t
make any sense.”

“It’s obviously a
question that bothers her, too. Hence the emphasis she’s put on the forty nine
day deadline.”

“Rogers’ entirely
arbitrary and spurious forty nine day deadline.”

“She doesn’t know
it’s arbitrary or spurious,” said Minerva. “She seems to be taking it pretty
seriously. And incidentally it’s now down to a seven day deadline.”

“Jesus. Only one
week left.”

“Yep.”

“But why?” said
Rupert. “I mean, why is she taking this deadline so seriously?”

Minerva swivelled
around on the sofa to look at him. “Because she doesn’t want to know, I guess.”

“What do you
mean?”

“She wants to see
Herod launched on the world before there’s any chance of her knowing the sex of
her child.”

“I hate to repeat
myself, but why?”

They stared at
each other.

“Because,” said
Minerva, “she might not be able to go ahead with it if she did know?”

“That’s the only
explanation I can think of,” said Rupert. Minerva got up from the sofa and took
out her phone.

“I think I’d
better report our conclusions.”

“The trouble with
our conclusions,” said Rupert, “is that they’re not very conclusive.”

Chapter Thirteen: Down on the Farm

The following
morning Rupert got up bright and early and caught the tube to Hammersmith where
he changed to the Piccadilly Line to Heathrow Airport. He was flying to the
States with Braidy and a sample of the Conquistador for a sales tour. It was
the considered opinion of Rupert and his handlers that it was on this American
visit that Big Mama was most likely to make her move. Whatever that might be.

They were getting
the same plane, but Braidy was flying club class. And Rupert was flying coach.
Of course. In the luggage hold were two identical fat black metal briefcases
with grey polymer reinforcement on the corners, which contained two samples of
the startlingly compact Conquistador mechanism.

By the time they
reached Chicago’s O’Hare international airport, Rupert was blearily jet lagged
and weary. From O’Hare they transferred without incident to a flight that
carried them to Omaha, Nebraska.

Without incident,
that is, except for Connubia’s phone call from London. “I thought you’d like to
know that your friend Alzbeta is conscious.”

Rupert stopped
amidst the bustle of the airport and gave a silent sigh of relief. He felt as
if he was relaxing muscles he’d unknowingly held clenched for days. “Are you
there?” said Connubia.

“Yes. Look, thanks
for letting me know.”

“Not at all.”
Connubia sounded unusually civil. “In fact she’s talking again. What’s more,
she has a message for you.”

“Yes?” Rupert
could hear the blood pounding in his ears as he waited.

“She said to tell
you the dog is called Bruno.”

“What?”

“The dog I took
into my care after you tried to force that noxious faux meat upon it.
Remember?”

“Yes, I remember,”
said Rupert. He looked around, searching for Braidy, who no doubt had
disembarked in unhurried comfort along with all the other business class
passengers while Rupert had queued interminably with everyone else in coach. He
paused wearily beside a hot dog stand called Gold Coast Dogs. Braidy could be
anywhere by now. Well, Rupert supposed he’d catch up with him at the departure
gate for their next flight.

“In fact,” said
Connubia, “it has to be said that Alzbeta seemed chiefly concerned about the
dog. And who can blame her? Bruno is a lovely dog. Aren’t you lovely, Bruno?
Yes you are lovely.” Rupert could hear the dog barking.

“You’ve got the
dog at work?” he said incredulously.

“Not ‘the dog’ you
autistic oaf — Bruno. Yes, the General seems quite happy to have old Bruno
coming in each day to work with me. Especially as my through-flow of customers
has doubled since we had him in the office. Apparently other estate agents in
Putney are now talking seriously about getting what they call ‘customer facing
dogs’. But Bruno was the first. Weren’t you, Bruno? Bruno Baby Boy. Boo boo
Bruno.”

“Is Minerva
there?” said Rupert, largely to stop this flow of madness.

“No. She’s
disappeared.”

“What?”

“Not literally
disappeared, you hysterical buffoon. Just dropped out of our sight. Her people
have transferred her somewhere else, destination confidential.”

“To America?”

“Are you
profoundly deaf? Destination confidential.”

Rupert looked
around. “She’s probably here.”

“Don’t get your
hopes up. She’s more likely up a mountain in Afghanistan or something. By the
way, I hope you don’t mind, Rupert, but we’ve turned your desk into a feeding
station for Bruno.” With that, Connubia hung up.

“Feeding station?”
said Rupert to the dead phone.

Braidy was, as
predicted, at the departure gate for the next stage of their journey which was
onwards to Omaha. From Omaha a feeder flight would take them to Kimball
Municipal Airport in the further reaches of Nebraska.

On these last two
jets Rupert, who occasionally glimpsed Braidy being offered luxury snacks
before the curtains swung shut, found himself crammed into economy with his
knees jammed up against the back of the seat in front of him. But this seemed a
small price to pay for the privilege of being free of crying babies. By the
time they landed at Kimball Rupert had even managed a few hours sleep.

At the airport
they were collected by a gleaming black Chrysler Aspen SUV that carried them
the final miles to Quinten Farm.

*

Quinten Farm in
Kimball County, Nebraska had been the subject of a detailed briefing for Rupert
as soon as they’d confirmed it was Braidy’s destination. “On casual
inspection,” the General had said, “the Quinten Farm appears to be several
thousand sprawling acres of agribusiness adjoining Oliver Lake. It seems to be
land devoted to the production of winter wheat, soybean and grain sorghum.”

The General had
allowed himself a chuckle at this point. “But anybody giving the place a more
than casual inspection will be subject to arrest and possibly lethal response
by the soldiers relentlessly patrolling the place. Because Quinten is in fact a
NORAD missile base. Its silos are filled not with grain, but ICBMs, fuelled and
ready to be launched at the enemy anywhere in the world.”

Rupert had been a
little worried at the time by the General’s glib use of a generic term like
‘the enemy’. And the enthusiastic tone, which revealed his blithe underlying
assumption that people everywhere were safer with nuclear death poised to fly
across the globe, aimed at a clearly defined enemy who was best smote by such
comprehensively apocalyptic forces.

An enemy
completely unlike, for example, Big Mama.

But now, standing
here at the centre of Quinten Farm, Rupert reflected that he did feel strangely
safe. Of course this was more to do with the constant military presence of
small armed patrols, buzzing among the farm buildings and out into the far
reaches of the green fields surrounding them.

It was only the
nearest fields which had been sown with missiles, to use the General’s image.
The silos containing the ICBMs were arranged in the band of fields immediately
to the east of the farm buildings. To the west was the lake. To the north,
south and further east, beyond the missile belt, were the heavily patrolled
areas that protected the base from the outside world.

The fiction that the
place was a working farm was only maintained by the appearance of the troops’
barracks, which were built to resemble farm sheds, and the use of unmarked farm
vehicles to patrol the grid of roads that criss-crossed the base.

It was comforting
to know that such a large and well-organised military presence was vigorously
prowling around, guarding the perimeter. Less comforting was the notion that
beneath his feet the earth was honeycombed with the concrete silos where the
ICBMs nestled snugly, a snoozing apocalypse ever ready to awaken.

“It’s sure a
shame,” said Private Van Heusen, who was standing with Rupert outside the large
red and white barn which dominated the farm compound. “A shame that your friend
didn’t get you proper security clearance.”

Van Heusen was a
freckled, plump, pug nosed young woman wearing camouflage fatigues. She also
wore a belt with a sidearm, and a cap to shade her from the Nebraska sun. She
had been left in charge of Rupert while Braidy went inside the barn with the
base commander, a silver haired Lieutenant Colonel called Braddock whom Rupert
had pegged, despite his hard man exterior, as a convivial timeserver.

“He’s not my
friend,” said Rupert. “He’s my…” Rupert had to force the word out, “boss.”

“He still ought to
have gotten your security clearance straightened out. People been known to get
shot around here if they don’t have the right clearances.”

“I don’t think his
ambitions quite extended to getting me shot,” said Rupert, although for a
fleeting second he had to wonder. “I imagine his plan was simply to make sure
that I wasn’t granted permission to enter here but instead turned back at the
gate, to make my own way, presumably by walking or hitch hiking, back to town,
where I could cool my heels.”

“Your heels would
surely need cooling by then. There’s precious little traffic between here and
Kimball and none that’s likely to pick up a hitchhiker. It would have been a
long, long walk back into town for you, Mr Hood. You were real lucky that they
managed to rush your clearance through like that.”

Luck had nothing
to do with it. Rupert had needed to resort to another phone call to his “Uncle”
to pull some strings. This had merely involved Marcus making sure the senior US
authorities knew who Rupert really was. Then doors had magically opened for
him. Much to Braidy’s disgust.

Braidy had been in
smarmy salesman overdrive since their arrival and, astonishingly, base
commander Lieutenant Colonel Braddock seemed delighted to see him. Together
they had made an unlovely couple, telling each other jokes and roaring with
laughter. There had been much congenial backslapping. Rupert had trailed behind
these two rampant male egos, designated as the carrier of one of Braidy’s
briefcases, now definitely confirmed to contain the Conquistador.

Confirmed because
they had no sooner been admitted to the farm compound than Braidy launched into
his oleaginous sales pitch. “Colonel, you’re going to just love this sample of
the Conquistador and so will the Pentagon. This wonderful device really is a
low cost solution to delivering mass destruction.”

“Mass destruction,
ha ha Abner, I love the way you can still say that. Around here these days we
have to talk about combat arena efficacy.”

“But more
importantly, Colonel, it delivers all this in the currently fashionably
non-nuclear mode. Now your Defence Department has been kind enough to take a
keen interest and so I’ve been sent here especially to deliver a unique fully
working prototype, for you to test.”

Rupert noticed he
made no mention of the other Conquistador, waiting in its briefcase to be
delivered to the Marcroft Hayden missile development facility in Washington
State. Perhaps it would make it less of a unique selling proposition. The
second briefcase was in the back of the Chevrolet, presumably now watched over
by the driver. Rupert wasn’t too concerned about this because the SUV was
reassuringly parked amongst dozens of military vehicles and surrounded by a
battalion of heavily armed soldiers.

Braidy and the
Lieutenant Colonel had disappeared into the barn with the first briefcase
amidst more backslapping and there ensued a long, sporadically awkward silence
as Rupert and Private Van Heusen, evidently the Lieutenant Colonel’s driver,
stood waiting outside.

The barn housed
some kind of elaborate command centre and access to the underground complex
that serviced the missiles, but it didn’t look like Rupert would ever be
vouchsafed a glance inside.

Stranded together
outside he and Van Heusen eventually struck up a semi-continuous conversation.
“I guess this isn’t much like the farms you’re used to back in the United
Kingdom,” she said. “Not much like the ones I grew up with neither for that
matter. Full of missile silos instead of stuff growing.”

“Actually,” said
Rupert. “We Brits invented the missile silo.”

“Is that right?”

“At RAF Spadeadam,
up near the Scottish border. The first ever silo was built there for the Blue
Streak rocket in the 1950s. But then we decided to move our missiles onto
submarines. But you Americans liked the underground silo idea so much you
adopted it over here.”

“I guess we sure
did,” said Van Heusen affably. “We got over a thousand of them right here at
Quinten alone. Silos full of ICBMs.”

“Tell me,” said
Rupert. “Are all the ICBMs fitted with nuclear warheads?”

“No,” said Braidy
behind them. Rupert and Van Heusen turned to see that Braidy and the Lieutenant
Colonel were standing there at the entrance of the barn and had evidently been
standing there for some time, listening.

Van Heusen
saluted.

Braidy said to
Rupert, “No, they’re going to send a ballistic missile across the globe full of
confetti and sensitive thank-you notes on pink paper. Of course they’re all
nuclear warheads, you plonker.”

“Plonker!”
Lieutenant Colonel Braddock was uproariously amused by the word. He was a squarely
built man with a lantern jaw who affected mirrored aviation specs. Van Heusen
seemed in awe of her commanding officer but Rupert, who had known a wide
variety of officers exhibiting an even wider variety of skills, or lack
thereof, under combat conditions had identified him as man you wouldn’t want
over you in any situation.

“Did you hear how
he was boring your poor driver?” said Braidy. “Trying to chat her up by putting
her to sleep with stories about the history of the missile silo.”

“Chat her up,” repeated
the Lieutenant Colonel fondly.

“Don’t let him
chat you up, darling. Back home they call him Mr Floppy.”

“Mr Floppy,”
chuckled Braddock. “Tell you what Abner, why don’t you leave Mr Floppy here
with Private Van Heusen.”

“She won’t come to
any harm, I promise you that! His Blue Streak rocket isn’t a threat to anyone.”

“Ha, ha, and you
and me can head on into Kimball.”

“You mean Kimball,
population 2,989?”

“That’s right
Abner. We’ll make it population 2,991 and grab ourselves a few beers, I mean
have an official discussion about this new prototype you brought me.” He turned
to Van Heusen. “Look after our distinguished visitor, Mr Floppy here. Show him
around the base, Private.”

Possibly alarmed
at the prospect of being left with Rupert after all this, Van Heusen said,
“Won’t you be needing me to drive you into town, sir?”

“We’ll take my
car,” said Braidy.

“At ease,
Private,” said the Lieutenant Colonel. “Look after our guest.” Then they left
and Rupert immediately got on the phone to Marcus and told him about Braidy
going into Kimball with the remaining Conquistador. Somebody needed to keep an
eye on the hardware.

“I’ll see what I
can arrange with the local authorities,” said Marcus doubtfully. “I doubt if
there’s a large CIA presence in Kimball, Nebraska but there’s probably some
kind of Homeland Security outfit armed with muskets and cavalry sabres.”

“Just see what you
can do,” said Rupert, and hung up.

Van Heusen watched
him. “I guess it’s all right you using your phone,” she allowed, “with the
clearance that they gave you.”

“That they
eventually gave me,” said Rupert, putting the phone away in his pocket. “So
what do we do now?”

“They said to show
you around. You want to look around?”

*

Van Heusen drove
Rupert out onto the narrow grid of dirt roads that ran around the farm. She
drove a dusty brick-red pickup truck. From a distance it might have passed as a
civilian farm vehicle but it would have taken a fairly inattentive observer not
to notice the fat bulge of a serious communications system fitted to the back
of the cab, or the integral arms lockers built along either side of the flat
bed. Van Heusen told him that the battalion defending the farm consisted of
five companies of ninety soldiers each.

Four hundred of
these troops were distributed to the north, south and east.

To the west was
the lake, where the remaining troops were on patrol. “Not in the lake,” said
Van Heusen hastily. “But beside it.”

“No, they’d get a
bit wet if they were actually in the lake,” said Rupert and he was gratified by
Van Heusen’s giggle. He did a quick calculation and said, “If there’s four
hundred troops in the other sectors, then there’s only fifty left for the
west.”

“But that
section’s up there against the lake.” Van Heusen pointed, one hand on the
wheel. “No open ground out there, just open water. And we got an electric fence
running all along the lakeshore. It shouldn’t take more than fifty men to
patrol an area like that, I hope.” She looked shyly at Rupert. “You like to see
the lake? I mean it’s about the only interesting thing around here. The only
pretty thing, at least.” Rupert conceded that he wouldn’t mind seeing the lake
and it was in that direction that Van Heusen drove them. But she stopped on the
way, pulling the pickup to the side of the road and looking cautiously around.

“I want to show
you something here.”

They were in the
narrow strip of land, dotted with green fields and narrow belts of trees that
lay between the western edge of the farm compound and the lake.

Having established
that there was no one else in the vicinity, Van Heusen gave Rupert a
conspiratorial glance and jumped out of the cab. He hesitated, and then
followed her. They were in a field between two rows of trees.

The land here
looked like it had never been cultivated, or at least not for many years. It
was overgrown with weeds that were almost knee high. Rupert reflected that it
resembled his garden. There seemed to be outcroppings of natural rock, grey
amongst the green.

Then Rupert
realised that these massive square slabs of cracked concrete were in fact the
lids of the missile silos.

“There are the old
silos,” said Van Heusen. “Back in the 1960s they had a section of the missiles
here. But they moved them away from the lake because they were worried about
flooding. Now these are all empty shafts, capped with cement. Some of the caps
have sunk down over the years, you see?” She pointed out a circular depression,
perhaps half a metre deep, in the nearest block of concrete. “Or maybe they
were sunk like that when they put them in there.” She was wandering through the
weeds, apparently looking for a particular block. “Anyhow, they’ve kind of
become natural wells, collecting rainwater. Like this here one.” She trotted
over to a block, manifestly the one she’d been searching for. Rupert saw the
depression here was half full of clear water.

Van Heusen kneeled
by the edge of the shallow well and rolled up her sleeve, then plunged her hand
into the water, like a Neolithic fisherman. She brought something out of the
depths. Rupert recognised the logo of a popular carbonated drink on the
brightly coloured can. She reached down again and pulled out a second can, then
shook off the excess water droplets.

She brought them
back. “Keeps the soda nice and cool.” She beamed at him and offered him one of the
cans. Rupert took it. It was cool and heavy in his hand. She popped the lid of
her can and slurped at it, pausing to lift it in a toasting gesture. “Don’t
tell no one,” she said.

“I won’t,” said
Rupert. “It will be our little secret.” He smiled and pretended to drink the
sugary swill, wondering where he could discreetly dispose of the stuff.

“Gets hot driving
around out here all day,” said Van Heusen. She wiped her upper lip with the
back of her hand, looking around at the trees and overgrown fields seething in
the sunlight. She assumed a philosophical air. Perhaps the soda had gone to her
head. A sugar and caffeine rush. She said, “All this used to be wheat, I guess,
before the government bought the land for the base. Just like the wheat fields
where I grew up. The worst thing that you have to worry about in a wheat field
is loose smut.” She gave Rupert a humorous look. “That’s a kind of fungus in
case you didn’t know, and not what you was thinking.”

“I wasn’t thinking
a thing,” said Rupert politely.

“My name is
Monica, by the way.”

“Cheers, Monica,”
said Rupert and clinked cans with her again in a comradely fashion. He
pretended to swig from the can and accidentally swallowed some of the bland,
sweet mixture. Did people really drink this stuff by choice?

Van Heusen drained
hers with relish and set the empty can on one of the concrete blocks, then
carefully stepped on it, stamping it flat. She put the squashed disc of the can
into her pocket. “We don’t want anybody finding garbage lying around,” she
said.

Rupert felt a
slight stirring of embarrassment. He didn’t see any way of ditching the stuff
from his can without her seeing. And if he didn’t do something she’d just
continue to stand there patiently, waiting for him to finish so she could stamp
his can flat too.

Maybe he’d have to
drink the muck. He didn’t want to offend Van Heusen; she’d gone out of her way
to treat him decently.

Now she reached in
her pocket and drew a thin flat brown stick of some kind of dried material.
“Beef jerky,” she said. She delved into her boot and drew out a knife with a
short sharp blade which she used to cut off a slice of the jerky. “Want a
piece?”

Rupert didn’t like
to think of himself as overly fastidious. But he’d already been turned off the
prospect of eating the jerky by its having resided in a presumably lint filled
pocket of Van Heusen’s tunic. The idea of her then cutting it with a knife
which had been nestling beside her sock in a hot boot didn’t add to its allure.
“No thank you,” he said. “I’m not hungry.”

Which only left
him with the soda to deal with. He was just about to reluctantly close his eyes
and gulp it down when a squawking noise came from the pickup truck. Van Heusen
instantly turned and ran towards it. Rupert took advantage of this distraction
to pour the brown liquid from the can into the weeds, hoping he wasn’t killing
too much local wildlife. Then he stamped the empty can flat, put it in his
pocket and followed the private.

Van Heusen had the
truck radio on and the microphone from the dashboard in her hand. She was
listening to a somnolent male voice say, “West perimeter patrol Charlie logging
intrusion.”

“Mobile Unit Three
responding,” said Van Heusen. She glanced at Rupert and he sensed that he
wasn’t supposed to be listening in, so he moved away, wandering through the
weeds. Van Heusen’s voice was an indeterminate murmuring. When she stopped
talking he headed back to the pickup. She stood waiting for him.

“Sorry if I wasn’t
supposed to hear that,” he said.

“No problem.
Nothing serious. Just some civilians on hang gliders from the lake. They
miscalculated and came over the fence.”

“Does that
happen?”

“Now and then.
Want to go and see?”

“Sure,” said
Rupert and they hopped back into the pickup and cruised along the narrow road
towards the distant blue gleam of the lake. Soon the electric fence on the
shore came into view. Spaced at regular intervals along the top of the fence
were small white lamps. These were glowing despite the bright daylight and
Rupert wondered why until he realised they provided a visual confirmation that
the current was flowing through the fence — and, perhaps, a warning to the
unwary.

“Here we are,”
said Van Heusen.” As they passed a final band of trees and emerged by the lake
Rupert saw three pickups, all the uniform brick red, already parked there.

“That’s Alpha and
Echo as well as Charlie,” Van Heusen frowned as she peered curiously through
the windscreen. “Why do they need three patrol units?” Then she announced, in a
droll voice, “Oh, I see.” They pulled up beside the other pickups and climbed
out. The trucks were identical to Van Heusen’s except they each had two
carbines fastened upright between the seats, like the shotguns carried in some
American police cars.

Lying on the long
grass beyond the vehicles was a trio of brightly coloured hang gliders, now
gaudily inert. Standing beside them were six troops in camouflage fatigues like
Van Heusen’s, and the three civilians.

Rupert saw what
Van Heusen had meant by her arch comment. The civilians were all young women,
and all dressed in skimpy bikinis. The six men who now surrounded them were
behaving less like heavily armed guards at a high security military base than a
bunch of excited boys at a beach party.

They were laughing
as Rupert and Van Heusen approached. One of the soldiers turned and said, “Hi
Monica.”

“Sorry to break up
the party, boys.”

“No party,” said
the soldier. “Just trying to help these three young ladies get those hang
gliders back over the fence and onto the lake.” He turned to the girls, who
were obviously enjoying the male attention, and said, “That’s the trouble with
this place, ladies. Easy to get into but difficult to get out. You may just be
stuck here for the weekend.”

The girls giggled.
One of them said. “Are any more of your friends coming?” The girl who spoke was
wearing a green and white striped bikini and had long, lustrous black hair that
hung loose over her shoulders.

The soldier smiled
at her and shook his head. “You’ve already got every guard within two miles
right here, what more do you want?”

“That’s just fine,
then,” said the girl. She casually put her hand behind her neck, under the long
hair hanging there. “Look out!” said Rupert.

But it was too
late.

Afterwards, Rupert
worked out that she must have had a compact holster taped to her back, concealed
by her hair. When she brought her hand back she had a small gun in it.

She shot the
soldier who had spoken to her, and the one standing beside him.

The other girls
had produced similarly concealed guns and they were firing, too. Before any of
the soldiers even realised what was happening, five of them were down. Rupert,
who was unarmed, threw himself under the nearest pickup and rolled across the
grass, moving under the next one, and then the next. He heard more shooting as
he came up from underneath the third pickup, crouching by the body of one of
the soldiers.

The man was lying
on top of his holster. There was no way Rupert could get at the gun without
turning the body over and one of the girls was already looking over at him. She
turned her gun in his direction as he dropped back onto the ground and rolled
under the truck again, coming up on the other side beside the open door of the
cab.

The window of the
truck door exploded beside his ear as he reached inside and unclipped the
carbine.

It was an M4, so
he knew it well. Rupert turned, aimed and fired. The girl who was shooting at
him went down. One of the other two shouted a warning, and then was knocked off
her feet. Out of the corner of his eye, Rupert saw Van Heusen firing over the
hood of one of the pickups, using the .45 from her holster.

There was one girl
left and she hesitated, unsure whether to shoot Van Heusen or Rupert. While she
was hesitating, they both shot her.

There was a
sudden, numbing silence. Van Heusen looked at him. “What happened?” she said.

“Get on the
radio,” snapped Rupert. “Check the other patrols and see if they encountered
any other women coming in off the lake, on hang gliders, water skis,
speedboats. Anything. And warn them —”

Van Heusen was
grabbing for the radio in her vehicle but before she could activate it they got
their answer. There was the drilling echo of small arms fire, drifting from the
north, and then another burst, from the south.

Then the lights
along the fence went out.

“The power’s been
cut,” said Van Heusen. Rupert went to the fence and stared out at the lake
beyond. He could see something in the distance. A wavering line of shapes on
the water, white water creaming before them, moving swiftly and inexorably.

“Are those boats?”
he said. Van Heusen came to his side and squinted out into the glittering lake.

“Dinghies,” she
said. “Motorised by the look of them.”

“Coming in and
moving fast,” said Rupert.

“And there’s a lot
of them.”

“There certainly
are,” said Rupert. The line extended right across the lake. “You know, I think
we ought to get out of here.”

Chapter Fourteen: The Nude Killers

“Can you use your
radio?” said Rupert. “To contact your HQ and warn them?”

Van Heusen was
driving. Her eyes flickered away from the road, to the radio on the dashboard,
and back again. “I tried it. No good. I don’t know what’s happening but I can’t
raise anybody on it.”

“They’re
transmitting some kind of jamming signal,” said Rupert.

“Have you tried
your cell phone?”

“Yes, they’re
doing something to block that too. Or possibly I’m just not getting a signal
here.”

Van Heusen looked
at Rupert. “How many do you think there were, coming in on those boats on the
lake there?”

“I don’t know,” he
said. “But there’ll be others coming by air, on hang gliders like that ambush
team.”

“Don’t worry. Our
radar will pick them up.”

“I’m afraid not,”
sighed Rupert. “They’ll be coming in too low for your radar.”

“Oh lord,” moaned
Van Heusen. “We took the wrong truck.”

“What do you
mean?”

“If we’d taken
Alpha or Charlie or Delta we would have had an M4 or maybe two M4s, clipped
right here.” She pounded the central portion of the dashboard with her fist,
the place where the other pickups had their weapons mounted. “Damn, I’m
stupid.”

“No,” said Rupert.
“We took the right vehicle. The one you’re familiar with.”

“Familiar doesn’t
matter. I could’ve drove any of those. Hell, that’s my job. I’m a driver.”

“But you service
this vehicle, correct?” said Rupert soothingly.

“Correct.”

“So this is the
one I’m confident isn’t going to break down on us.” He didn’t want her falling
apart on him.

She relaxed a
little. “I guess maybe you’re right. But it still only leaves us with that M4
you picked up and my sidearm…”

“Pull over,” said
Rupert urgently. “Get us behind those sheds.” He’d seen a flicker of movement
beyond the tree line, on the road bisecting the next field. Van Heusen pulled
over and smoothly eased the big vehicle behind the big flat rusting structures,
which turned out to actually be empty façades masking a bank of fuel pumps for
servicing the vehicles, and not any kind of shed at all.

Still, it served
as effective cover and no one in any of the dozen red pickups that shot past on
the dirt road seemed to notice them. “We only just got out of sight in time,”
said Van Heusen.

“Yes.”

“Those are our
vehicles,” said Van Heusen.

“Yes.”

“But those aren’t
our people driving them.”

“No, I’m afraid
they’ve overwhelmed your entire force in this sector.”

Van Heusen stared
at him and then spun around and looked out the window.

The trucks
disappeared in the distance. She said, “You might be right. That was more than
half the vehicles that ought to be out on patrol today. Where are they driving
them?”

“To rendezvous
with the other half, I imagine,” said Rupert, “at a staging area by the lake.”

“And what are they
going to do then?”

“Well, if I were
them, I’d use the trucks to transport the troops who are landing by boat.”

“Those boats will
be ashore any minute now,” said Van Heusen. “And they won’t have any trouble
cutting through the fence with the power down.”

“How many
combatants do you think they can get in the back of one of those trucks?”

“Standing up and
jammed in?” said Van Heusen. “Maybe twenty. Maybe more. All the ones we seen up
to now been skinny girls.”

Rupert did a quick
calculation. “Twenty,” he said, “in twenty five vehicles. That makes five
hundred in the first wave.”

“My sweet god.”
Van Heusen looked at him. “We got to get back and warn them.” She started the
truck and pulled out from behind the building. Rupert looked both ways as they
eased back out onto the road.

He said, “How many
people do you have on duty at the farm compound?”

“Maybe three
hundred, tops, and a lot of those are automotive, clerical, medical, cooking.
Support staff. Most of our combat troops are out in the forward dispersal
points.”

“Facing the wrong
direction,” said Rupert.

*

They drove full
speed back to the farm compound, Van Heusen at the wheel and Rupert on the
lookout for other vehicles moving on the network of roads. They didn’t see any.
Van Heusen drove fast and well and within a few minutes they were screeching up
beside a rank of parked trucks outside the barn.

They jumped out of
their pickup and stared around. The entire compound seemed to be deserted. But
then Rupert saw a figure striding purposefully across the tarmac.

“That’s the
command Sergeant Major,” said Van Heusen excitedly, starting towards the man.
“He’s principal NCO assistant.”

“So he’s in charge
when the Lieutenant Colonel is off base?”

“That’s right.”
She trotted over to the Sergeant Major, followed by Rupert, and snapped a
salute. “Sergeant!”

“I don’t have time
now, Van Heusen,” said the Sergeant Major. He was hurrying toward the barn in a
businesslike way. Rupert wondered if the man had already got word of what was
happening. But his manner seemed insufficiently urgent for that eventuality.

“Sergeant Major
Hopper,” said Van Heusen, “the security of the base has been compromised.”

Hopper stopped and
looked at Van Heusen and then Rupert. “Who is this?”

“We’re under
attack sir.”

But Hopper had now
spotted the M4 Rupert had slung over his shoulder and he didn’t even hear Van
Heusen. “Who the hell is this?”

“My name is Rupert
Hood, I’m—”

“Jesus on a
dinosaur,” said Hopper. “Is that an M4, Van Heusen? What is he doing with an
M4? Give that to me.”

“No,” said Rupert,
stepping back. “If you’ll just listen, please.”

Hopper ignored him
and addressed Van Heusen. “Is Lieutenant Colonel Braddock aware you’re letting
a civilian run around the base?”

“He ordered me to,
Sergeant Major.”

“And did he order you
to give him one of our carbines to play with? This is a court martial offence,
Van Heusen.”

“Sarge, you’ve got
to listen to me.”

Hopper glowered at
Rupert, then at her. At least his attention was fully engaged now. “Have you
been stashing cans of beer out in those silo wells instead of cola, Van Heusen?
Or maybe pouring in a little vodka?”

“Sergeant Major,
you’re under attack,” said Rupert, losing all patience. “You are in imminent
danger of being overrun by a highly mobile, well trained, heavily armed force
who have breached your outer perimeter and will be here any minute.”

Maddeningly, the
man ignored Rupert and continued to address Van Heusen. “Private, you are up
shit creek and there is no prospect of a paddle for you.”

“Please, sarge,
he’s telling the truth. You’ve got to do something.”

“I am not about to
raise a false alarm when the Lieutenant Colonel is off base and I am in sole
command.”

“It is not a false
alarm.”

“Then why haven’t
I heard about it from anyone else?” He glanced distastefully at Rupert. “This
attack by a highly mobile, well trained, heavily armed force? Are they
invisible maybe?”

“No,” said Rupert.
“You haven’t heard anything about them because they are jamming your radios.”

A shadow of doubt
passed over Hopper’s face. “I was on my way to command centre because they
reported some kind of communications foul up.”

“There you go,”
said Rupert.

“Please sir,”
begged Van Heusen. “They killed Benson and Santopietro and the rest of Delta,
Charlie and Alpha.” And lots more besides, thought Rupert.

“All right,” said
Hopper, grudgingly coming to a decision. “We’ll go to orange alert.”

“Sergeant Major,”
said Rupert. “You don’t grasp the seriousness of this situation. You quite
possibly have five hundred hostiles at your undefended rear and closing fast.
You need to pull back your perimeter defences and reorient them right now, or
you’re going to go under.”

Hopper looked at
him and said, “And since we’re now on alert we can’t have civilian visitors
wandering around.” He hailed two passing soldiers who hurried over and saluted.
“Disarm this man,” he said, pointing at Rupert. “And put him under guard.”

“Please Sergeant,
no,” said Van Heusen. The men moved towards Rupert. Rupert braced himself to
resist. Then a shadow swept across all of them, as if a large bird had passed
overhead. They looked up and saw the hang gliders descending from the sky.
Rupert thought they didn’t land at the staging area by the lake. They didn’t
need to. They’re coming all the way into the heart of the complex.

The woman in the
lead hang glider was gripping some kind of weapon and firing it. Suddenly
bullets were lashing the ground around them. Rupert grabbed Van Heusen and
pulled her out of the line of fire. The next hang glider was already in sight,
descending fast, and also firing. Rupert could now see that the women on the
gliders were wearing pink one-piece costumes of some kind of clinging contoured
material that looked more like fetish gear than combat garb; Whipping
Whetticker’s designs.

The second hang
glider began to fire at them, too. Rupert and Van Heusen took shelter behind a
truck.

*

Within thirty
seconds there were dozens of hang gliders descending, all of them carrying
heavily armed women. Rupert cursed himself. Why hadn’t he foreseen this? A
high-speed attack to wipe out the command structure, even before the bulk of
the force arrived in ground vehicles.

Rupert and Van
Heusen had retreated under heavy fire. The two soldiers with the Sergeant Major
had been shot down and Hopper himself taken prisoner. All over the compound
there was the sound of gunfire. Soldiers were running out from the buildings,
some of them armed, some of them not. All of them chaotically, fatally
confused.

Adding to their
confusion was the bizarre garb of their assailants. The skintight pink rubber
outfits made the attackers look curved, sensual, nude. Soldiers seeing them for
the first time didn’t know what to make of them and hesitated for a lethal
split second.

It was a massacre.

As Van Heusen had
said, the bulk of personnel in the compound weren’t ready for combat and Big
Mama’s hang gliding shock troops had them off-balance from the start. When her
ground forces began to arrive crammed in their pickup trucks, only minutes
later, the outcome was no longer in question.

Rupert and Van Heusen
had initially taken cover with the intention of joining the defence. But it
rapidly became clear that this would have been suicidal. So they went into
hiding opposite the barn in a garage complex where the vehicles were
maintained. They concealed themselves in a greasy inspection pit sunk in the
floor for working on the underside of vehicles. They crouched in the shadows
here, with the oily-smelling bulk of a truck parked above them, peering out
over the rim of the pit, watching the one-sided battle.

It was over within
ten minutes of the first shot being fired. After that, the only figures left
alive and moving around the compound were Big Mama’s shock troops in their pink
outfits and shiny black combat boots. Then Rupert noticed that not all of the costumes
were pink. Some were brown, others gold, matching the skin colour of women of
African or Asian origin.

“Like Band-Aids,”
whispered Van Heusen, “in all different skin tones. They’re supposed to look
like they’re naked?”

“Something like
that,” whispered Rupert. He dropped back from the rim of the pit down to the
bottom and looked around. There was a pan of motor oil here, drained from the
vehicle above. He moved it carefully back so they wouldn’t step in and spill it
or, much worse, knock it over with a clatter. For the same reason he started
quietly moving the scattered tools into a pile in the corner.

“Come and see
this,” hissed Van Heusen and Rupert went back to join her, staring out at floor
level. A group of six shock troops had emerged from the barn, and they had
Sergeant Major Hopper with them. They stopped outside the garage and Rupert got
a good look at them. Two of the women were holding Hopper by his elbows,
hustling him along.

Handcuffs gleamed
on his wrists and his hands were shackled together behind his back. Two other
women carried pump shotguns they kept trained on him.

The fifth woman
wore a small backpack and carried what looked like a Nagra portable digital
audio recorder with a microphone plugged into it. The sixth woman carried a handgun
and seemed to be in charge. Hopper moved like a man in a dream, or a deep state
of shock.

The party paused
outside the open doors of the garage. They forced Hopper to his knees and the
one with the audio recorder moved close to him, holding the microphone in his
face. The one with a pistol held it to the back of his head and barked, “Name,
rank and serial number.”

Hopper stared
uncomprehendingly at her for a second, and then began to state his name, rank
and serial number. “Louder!” said the woman, and he gave the information again
in a louder, clearer voice.

The woman with the
tape recorder checked the recording levels and nodded. “We’ve got all the
phonemes we need,” she said. On receiving this news, the woman with the pistol
shot Hopper through the back of the head.

Van Heusen gasped
and covered her mouth. Luckily no one seemed to hear this. The Sergeant Major
toppled forward into a small puddle of his own blood which gradually spread as
the six shock troops moved away. The one with the recorder was plugging it into
a laptop she had taken out of her rucksack. “I’ll begin editing,” she said, and
the group headed back towards the barn.

Van Heusen dropped
back from the edge of the pit, unable to look at the Sergeant Major lying there
motionless in the widening dark puddle. Rupert dropped down to join her. “Why
did they do that?” she said. “What did they mean, about phonemes and editing
and all that?”

They didn’t have
long to wait for the answer. Less than five minutes later a voice echoed out
over the public address system. “This is only an exercise, repeat only an
exercise. Do not use live ammunition. Repeat; do not use live ammunition when
participating in the exercise. Any use of live ammunition will result in
summary court martial. All perimeter troops to return to engage in this
training exercise. Do not use live ammunition.”

It was Hopper’s
voice. Recognisably his voice, speaking words he had never spoken. Van Heusen
looked fearfully at Rupert. “If the boys hear that and they think it’s on the
level…”

“They won’t use
live ammunition,” said Rupert.

“And they’ll be
cut to pieces.” There were sounds of engines starting and they went back to the
rim of the pit and looked out. Teams of shock troops were rigging loudspeakers
to the cabs of the pickup trucks parked outside the barn. The same message
boomed from the loudspeakers as the trucks pulled away.

“They’re driving
out to the perimeter,” said Van Heusen.

“To spread the
word,” said Rupert.

“What are we gonna
do? We’ve got to stop them.”

“If we step out of
here and take them on we’re dead,” said Rupert reluctantly. “We have to stay
put and wait for our chance.” Van Heusen nodded gratefully, as if he actually
had the answers. But Rupert was thinking, our chance for what?

The next half an
hour was almost unendurably tense, crouching in the oily darkness listening to
sporadic distant gunfire. “Sounds like our boys aren’t listening to them,” said
Van Heusen proudly. Rupert nodded but said nothing. A few minutes later she
realised what he’d already concluded. “Or it could just be them shooting down
our boys.”  Her voice shook.

Finally there was
a long period of silence.

Then the public
address system came alive again. This time, though, there was no attempt to
synthesise Hopper’s voice. Instead it was a woman speaking. “Anyone in hiding,
surrender now and your lives will be spared. Search parties are entering all
buildings and areas. Anyone found hiding will be executed. Surrender now and
your lives will be spared.” There was a pause and then the voice added, “Any
female personnel will be permitted to join our ranks. Come forward now and join
our ranks. Any woman can join us. You will be welcomed into our ranks. Come and
join us now.”

Rupert stole a
look at Van Heusen and she turned and caught his gaze. The shocked look in her
eyes made him feel thoroughly ashamed of the thought that had crossed his mind.

“I’d never do
that,” said Van Heusen.

“No of course
not.”

“Do you think
they’ll find us down here? When the search parties come inside?”

“I’m not sure
there will be any search parties,” said Rupert. “I think that announcement was
just a ruse to flush out anyone stupid enough to believe it.”

“You don’t think
they’re coming looking for us?”

“I think they’ve
got a few other things to worry about first. Just sit tight.” There was
activity around the barn now, with a group of shock troops milling around. They
were talking excitedly amongst themselves and suddenly they began to cheer. The
sound chilled Rupert; anything that was cause for their celebration was an
occasion for considerable alarm. Then he saw why they were cheering.

A woman emerged
from the barn. Unlike the others she was dressed all in black, in what looked
like trousers and a tunic. She had Asiatic features and even at this distance
she bore a clear resemblance to the photos he’d seen.

“Big Mama,” he
whispered.

“What?”

“She’s their
leader,” said Rupert. “She’s the one who’s responsible for all this.” Big Mama
began a tour of inspection, moving through the farm compound followed by two of
her shock troops carrying shotguns. Rupert didn’t understand their insistence
on using these. A shotgun was in many ways a useless kind of weapon because of
its dispersal characteristics. No good for hitting a target at a distance.

Of course, a short
barrelled carbine like Rupert’s M4 didn’t have much of a reach either. Its
effective striking range was perhaps two hundred metres. Still, it had a
considerable edge over the shotguns.

He looked at Big
Mama walking across the tarmac and measured the distance to her.

Van Heusen was
thinking the same thing. “We could pick her off from here,” she said. “We
probably wouldn’t get far after we done it, but we would’ve picked off their
leader.”

Rupert thought
carefully, weighing up the options. He considered what Minerva had said about
Big Mama, and what Alzbeta and Rogers had said about Dr Unity. Finally he shook
his head. “It’s her number two we’ve got to locate.”

“The second in
command?”

Rupert nodded. “Dr
Ekta Unity. In many ways she’s more dangerous. Our intel suggests she’s the one
who’s really in charge.”

Van Heusen stared
at the body lying outside the garage. “Like Sergeant Major Hopper and the
Lieutenant Colonel.”

Rupert tried to
distract her from the corpse. “I thought Colonel Braddock was your hero,” he
said.

She shrugged. “I liked
to drive him, but I wouldn’t want him around me when the bullets are flying.”
She glanced at Rupert. “Not like you, Mr Hood.”

“Call me Rupert. I
think by now we can consider ourselves properly introduced.” He looked at Big
Mama and her escort moving back towards the barn. “If her second in command is
here, we have to make sure we get her.” Big Mama went into the barn. “Or
preferably take them both out.”

*

Rupert crouched in
the shadows of the inspection pit, trying to examine his M4. The gun’s magazine
didn’t seem to be properly seating in its well and he was wondering if there
was a problem with the feed lips. Perhaps someone had overloaded a magazine and
jammed it into place.

This was a
worrying speculation because damage like that would cause double feeding and
jam the weapon, a potentially fatal contingency.

Van Heusen broke
in on his thoughts. “Is that her?” Rupert hurried to the rim of the pit and saw
who she was talking about. A truck had just pulled up outside the barn. Three
women in the back were dressed in the standard pink outfits, as was one of the
women in the cab.

But the other
woman in the cab was dressed in black tunic and trousers. She got out and
walked towards the barn.

She looked just
like the photos of Unity that Rupert had studied. “That’s her all right,” he
said. He started looking around.

“What are you
looking for?”

“A way to get into
that barn without both of us getting killed.” He stared around at the dim
recesses of the garage.

“Well, I’m a
driver,” said Van Heusen. “Why don’t I drive us?”

Rupert grinned at
her. “What an excellent idea.”

*

Rupert had never
been inside the barn — Braidy had seen to that — so he got Van Heusen to
describe the layout to him. The barn had a traditional wide door across the
front, ostensibly for vehicles or livestock, with a smaller door set into it
for people to come and go. Of course, the barn frontage was just a false
façade. Inside there were a series of glass doors overlooked by security and
the reception desk.

“The barn front is
just wood?”

“Yes,” said Van
Heusen. “It’s pretty flimsy.”

“And the doors
inside are glass?”

“Yes.”

“And wide enough
to drive a truck through.”

Van Heusen smiled.
“Oh yes.” She was looking over the rim of the pit at the various vehicles
parked in the garage. “There must be something in here that will go. Doesn’t
matter if it isn’t road worthy. We’ve only got to drive it a few hundred
yards.”

“How much of a
start will you need to crash through the barn front and the glass doors?”

“Only a hundred
feet or so.”

“Okay,” said
Rupert. “Then I suggest we forget about the vehicles in here. They might hear
us starting one up and try and stop us. Let’s take one of the trucks out
there.” He indicated the row of pickups parked near the barn. “We won’t have as
far to go and no one will have a chance to stop us once we get started.”

He helped Van
Heusen climb out of the pit and they moved to the garage door and peered out.
There didn’t seem to be any kind of regular guard force passing by on patrol
outside. Instead, there were random bursts of activity, with shock troops
coming and going at irregular intervals.

Which was
considerably worse.

All Rupert and Van
Heusen could do was watch, wait, and hope for the best when they made their
move.

Finally everything
looked quiet outside. They had already made their choice of vehicles, on the
basis of proximity to the barn and Van Heusen’s familiarity with the various
pickups. They had settled on the one they’d arrived in, now at the end of a row
of trucks, some distance across the tarmac and just to the left of the barn.

They came out of
the garage, Rupert in the lead, at a dead run. There was no sign of any
activity around them, although engines could be heard running somewhere on the
other side of the farm compound. The only sound nearby was the slap of their
feet on the tarmac as they dashed across the open, sunlit space towards the
truck.

Rupert reached it
first and threw himself in on the driver’s side, easing the door shut behind
him. Van Heusen arrived a second later, piling in behind the wheel. He was only
just able to stop her slamming the door shut behind her. They’d made it. He
looked out the window and checked the mirrors. There didn’t seem to be any
activity in the compound. Van Heusen checked the controls on the truck.

“All right,” said
Rupert. “When we’re inside and ready to take the shot we’ll try and get them
both. But I’ll try and take out Dr Unity first. If we only get one we want to
make it her.”

“Okay,” said Van
Heusen tensely.

Rupert checked his
M4. The magazine definitely wasn’t seating properly. “I can’t use this gun,” he
said. “We’re only going to get the one chance and it might jam on me.”

“Take another
one,” said Van Heusen. She nodded at the pickups parked beside them. All of
them had twin M4s racked upright in the cabs.

Rupert had already
concluded as much himself. “All right,” he said. He opened the door of the
truck gently and slipped out, moving in a low crouch towards the next one in
line. He opened the door of the cab, unleashing a smell of hot vinyl seat
covers, and leaned inside.

He had his hand on
the nearest M4 when he suddenly felt the cold circular pressure of a gun barrel
in the flesh behind his ear.

“Hands up.”

Chapter Fifteen: Girl on Girl Action

The moon-faced
woman smiled and held up a briefcase which Rupert recognised only too well. “I
believe I have you to thank for delivering the Conquistador.” He said nothing.
The woman smiled again and set the briefcase down on the reception desk that
faced the front doors of the barn, the doors that he and Van Heusen had
intended to crash through in a decisive surprise attack.

Instead, they were
the ones who had been surprised and now they were ignominiously seated on a
bench in the reception area, like naughty school children. Although, thought
Rupert, school children wouldn’t normally have so many shotguns pointing at
them. Rupert’s legs had been shackled together and the shackles secured to a
bar running horizontally under the bench; his wrists were handcuffed.

At least they’d
fastened his wrists in front of him, not behind his back in the manner of the
late Sergeant Major Hopper.

Rupert dismissed
the thought of Hopper, kneeling dead in his own blood outside. It wouldn’t help
anything to dwell on that. Van Heusen was neither cuffed nor shackled and she
sat beside him with her hands clenched nervously together between her knees.

The sound of a
high-speed drill abruptly shrilled through the building and the smiling woman
covered her ears, squinting comically until the racket abated enough to make
herself heard again. “I apologise for the noise. We are drilling through the
locks on the doors that lead to the underground missile complex and it is
taking us quite some time.”

Rupert suddenly
realised why so many of the shock troops were carrying shotguns. It wasn’t a
foolish choice after all. They were the ideal weapon for fighting in confined
spaces such as the network of tunnels that lay below Quinten Farm. Now that the
attackers had won the battle on the surface they were preparing to take the
missile complex underground.

And once they’d
achieved that, they would have access to the ICBMs.

“They have
hardwired communications down there,” said Rupert. “Landlines that can’t be
cut.” He had no idea if this was true or not, but it seemed a fairly safe bet.
“An SOS has already been sent out and reinforcements are on the way.”

“Of course,” said
the woman affably. “But it will take them at least ninety minutes to respond,
even if they chose to send in the nearest units of the National Guard, and I
hope for their sake that they won’t, because my soldiers will wipe out those
reservists with ease.”

Rupert didn’t know
if this was accurate, or whether it was as much a bluff as his own assertions.
But it had the ring of truth. “What is more,” said the woman, “once adequate
forces do arrive they will find that we have established ourselves underground,
where we will prove exceedingly difficult to shift with any conventional force.
And naturally there is no point in trying to bomb us out, because the missile
command centre has been specifically built to resist such an assault. And in
any case, we will by then have achieved our objective, the missile will be
launched and whatever puny efforts they make will be entirely in vain.”

She paused and
looked at Van Heusen, who was staring at the floor between the muddy toes of
her boots. Her head was bowed low, as if ashamed, and she was clutching at her
legs with each hand, just above her boots. “We have not been properly
introduced,” said the woman. Van Heusen looked up at her. “I can see by the
patch on your uniform that your name is Van Heusen, M. What does the M stand
for? What is your first name?”

Van Heusen said
nothing, obdurately returning her stare to the toes of her boots, so one of the
other women opened a laptop computer and typed on its keyboard. Rupert
recognised her as the one who had sampled Hopper’s voice. She seemed to be the
team’s technical specialist. After a moment she looked up from the computer
screen and said, “Monica Van Heusen.”

“Monica,” said the
moon-faced woman. “My name is Boon Nam Merrington, but you can call me Big
Mama.”

“It won’t do you
no good,” said Van Heusen.

“I beg your
pardon?” Big Mama’s English was melodious and fluent and her manners a
caricature of civilised behaviour.

“It won’t do you
no good to drill through those doors, you won’t be launching no missiles.” Van
Heusen looked up and stared her fiercely in the eye. “Right now all the folk
down there are busy disabling the firing systems, sabotaging the missiles in
the silos, busting up their computers and burning their code books. You won’t
launch a single one.” Good point, thought Rupert.

Big Mama smiled at
the tech specialist with the laptop. “Well, as far as ‘busting up’ their
computers goes, I’m sure Felicity here would be more than able to plug in and
patch up a new firing system without any great delay.” She turned back to Van
Heusen. “But I don’t believe she will even need to do that. As I understand it,
there are very robust protocols in place to protect those missiles and the
mechanisms needed to launch them. Far from being busy wrecking them, your loyal
underground comrades will be even now making sure they are in a state ready for
instant use.”

She smiled at
Rupert. “That is an unfortunate consequence of the Cold War state of mind
which, despite everything, still pervades the military hierarchy here in this
country. The men who designed the Quinten Farm installation and set in place
the regulations to protect it could only visualise one kind of attack. An
aggressor who was seeking to prevent missiles being launched.” She chuckled
happily. “Not one whose whole objective was to see that missiles were
launched.”

Unfortunately,
also a good point, thought Rupert.

“Or, to be more
specific, just one missile.” Big Mama went back to the desk and affectionately
patted the briefcase lying there. “Isn’t it strange how people feared the
nuclear warheads in those missiles? When in fact we won’t have any need of such
warheads at all.”

“Unfortunately,”
said Rupert calmly, “the Conquistador in that briefcase is a non-working
sample. It’s merely a model mocked up to give an idea of the dimensions of the
device and some notion of its functionality.” He sounded fairly convincing,
even to himself. “By all means attach it to a missile and send it up into the
stratosphere. All you will have achieved is a rather expensive way of getting
rid of some rubbish.”

Big Mama laughed
merrily. “A non-working sample? And of course you needed to come all the way
here from London with one of the top salesmen from Empire Arms to deliver a
non-working sample so that technicians here could measure it and study its
functionality. Nonsense. If it is indeed what you say, why was extra security
needed to guard it at both Heathrow and O’Hare airports? And, lastly and
perhaps most tellingly, if it was in fact a non-working version why wouldn’t
you just keep your mouth shut and not say anything at all about it, allowing us
to launch it and thereby utterly ruining our plans? No, Mr Hood, a valiant
attempt but it just won’t wash.”

Rupert feigned detachment.
“Fine. Believe what you like. Shoot it off into the sky. It will be fun to see
what happens.” He considered faking a yawn but decided that would be gilding
the lily.

Big Mama’s eyes
narrowed. “Not as much fun as you think.” She turned to Van Heusen and said,
“Has your new friend explained to you what we are trying to do here?” Van
Heusen didn’t respond. She kept her eyes down and picked at the mud on her
boots. Big Mama looked at Rupert. “Has he even told you who he is?”

Van Heusen spoke
without looking up. She seemed more interested in the state of her footwear
than in anything Big Mama had to say. She said, “He doesn’t need to. I know
he’s on my side.”

Big Mama shook her
head sadly. “Mr Hood is not what he claims to be. He is not really employed by
Empire Arms in any capacity. He is actually a representative of a group of
state-sponsored terrorists tasked with furthering the interests of the British
Government’s intelligence apparatus.”

“An intelligence
agent?” Van Heusen shot a glance at Rupert. “I thought it must be something
like that.” She had a note of pride in her voice. This response didn’t seem to
please Big Mama.

“Monica, you don’t
seem to understand that it is people like you that I am doing this for! To free
you from the male tyranny that has ruined your life and oppressed you and
brainwashed you since the day you were born.” Rupert thought he could read the
genuine mad gleam of the fanatic in Big Mama’s eyes. She lifted the briefcase
again and held it aloft like a trophy. “With the help of this device, fitted to
one of your missiles, we shall be able to spread the Herod virus across the
entire globe.” Her arms must have got tired at this point, because she set the
briefcase down again. “The Herod virus is like no other weapon.”

Just then, almost
as if she had been outside listening and waiting for her cue, they were joined
by the other woman he’d seen dressed in black. Now that he got a look at her up
close, Rupert confirmed his suspicions. Dr Ekta Unity.

She was carrying
in both hands a grey plastic container about the size of two shoeboxes, with a
black and yellow biohazard sticker sealing the lid shut. Big Mama said to her,
“Dr Unity, why don’t you explain?”

Dr Unity glanced
disdainfully at Van Heusen and said, “It is a virus I have engineered so that
it will only kill the male of the human species.” Rupert noticed that Professor
Vallortigara had already been conveniently written out of history. He
considered saying as much, but there was something about Dr Unity that
discouraged any such challenge and which suggested, furthermore, that it might
well prove fatal.

Van Heusen had
been picking nervously at her boots. She now looked up at Rupert and said, “Is
she the one? The second in command you were talking about?”

In a gesture he
would regret for the rest of his life, Rupert nodded yes.

Van Heusen was
instantly on her feet. In her hand was the small knife he’d forgotten about. In
the split second that ensued Rupert realised that all of Van Heusen’s earlier
restless picking at the mud on her boots had been carefully contrived to
disguise the eventual move when she would finally draw the knife. Rupert tried
to stand up, to stop her, to do something, but the shackles held him firmly to
the bench.

Dr Unity was
screaming. Van Heusen was on top of her, knife held high and beginning to
descend in a killing blow. But the blow never connected. One of the guards
stepped forward with her shotgun and blew Van Heusen off Unity. It was a 12
gauge and the impact of the charge at close range threw Van Heusen halfway
across the room.

She didn’t move
after she landed.

Unity sat up,
screeching, Van Heusen’s blood on her. For some reason everybody turned to look
at Rupert who was staring in turn at Van Heusen’s body and wishing to god he
hadn’t given her the go ahead, knowingly or not. Big Mama pointed a trembling
finger at him and said, “You were supposed to die and she was supposed to
live.”

Rupert, his ears
ringing from the blast of the 12 gauge, didn’t know whether to look her in the
eye or not. In the end, he did. Big Mama said, “This won’t do at all. Take him
outside and execute him.”

*

The guard
unshackled him from the bench and left the leg irons off as they led him
outside. That was good. He was still handcuffed, but in the front not the back,
which was also good. Rupert’s mind was working at lightning speed as they went
through the glass doors then through the barn façade into the courtyard of the
compound.

There were two of
them. The first guard and another one. Both had shotguns trained on him and
both were walking behind him. That wasn’t so good. They walked past the row of
parked pickups with their M4 carbines tantalisingly on display in their cabs.
He would have to get to a truck, open the door, and release the carbine…

It was no use.
He’d be dead before he took two steps. He glanced at the windshield of a truck
as they walked past, studying the reflections. The guards were walking behind
him, side by side, shotguns ready. If only he could get between them somehow,
and get them to fire on each other.

But they were too
close together.

They led him
across the compound towards the garage and for a moment hope flickered. If he
could somehow get them inside the garage, maybe he could make use of the
inspection pits. Push them down into one, or dive into one himself. But even if
he achieved that, what then? They still had the guns and he was unarmed,
handcuffed, and helpless.

And out of time.

They stopped
beside Hopper’s body, as if this was somehow now the designated spot for
executions, then fastidiously moved a few metres away to avoid getting blood on
their shiny boots. He had to make his move. It was now or never, so he pivoted
to throw himself at the nearest woman.

As he did so, the
first guard hit him in the back of the neck with the butt of her shotgun and,
while he was staggered from the blow, kicked him behind the knee. His leg went
out from under him and he went down.

He was kneeling on
the ground now and they were both pointing their shotguns at him. There was a
momentary absurd pause as they couldn’t decide who was going to shoot him and
then the first guard said, “I’ll do it.”

The other guard
seemed relieved and took two steps to Rupert’s right. The first guard moved so
she was standing directly in front of him, shotgun pointed into his face.

He stared into the
black barrel of the weapon, his mind uselessly and pathetically classifying it
as a Mossberg — a last dutiful response from some corner of his brain before
its synapses were blown apart forever.

Rupert looked at
the woman pointing the gun at him. She was middle aged and her deeply seamed
face, as wrinkled as a prune, provided a surreal contrast with the nubile
pneumatic curves of her pink combat suit.

He stared into
Prune Face’s eyes and she lifted the barrel of the shotgun, set it on top of
his head and forced his gaze down.

But as soon as she
shifted the gun back into a firing position, he defiantly lifted his head up
again. He saw the long black length of the Mossberg, her face, and above that
blue sky.

And movement in
the sky.

Rupert smiled at
her and said, “What’s that up there?” He bobbed his head, encouraging her to
look up.

“You’re pathetic,”
snarled Prune Face.

But the other
guard did look up and she said, “Oh shit.” So now Prune Face looked too and
Rupert reached up and grabbed the barrel of the Mossberg and wrenched it to one
side.

Of course, Prune
Face immediately pulled the trigger and that’s what Rupert was counting on. He
had twisted her gun so it was pointing at the other guard and when Prune Face
fired the charge hit the guard squarely in the torso, knocking her off her
feet.

Rupert held
tightly onto the hot barrel of the Mossberg. It seared his hands but he kept on
twisting the gun, rising to his feet as he did so, pulling it from the woman’s
grasp. As soon as it came free, he swung it back at Prune Face, hitting her
hard in the head with the stock.

It made a sound
like a hammer hitting a doorframe and Prune Face collapsed, quite unconscious,
at his feet.

Rupert stood
there, admiring the dozens of sky blue ram-air parachutes that were coming in
over the farm buildings, skimming towards the rooftops, descending fast.
Hanging from each parachute was a soldier in camouflaged combat dress complete
with helmet and M16 assault rifles.

In response to
this, a pink wave of Big Mama’s shock troops were pouring out of the farm
buildings, firing up into the sky.

Rupert happily
observed that this was the point at which they discovered the limitations of
their shotguns, blasting harmless clouds of pellets that never reached the
parachutists. The parachutists, however, returned devastatingly effective fire
from their rifles, cutting down the rows of shock troops.

Rupert decided it
was advisable to get out of the line of fire.

First, though, he
took the keys for his handcuffs out of a pocket in Prune Face’s garment,
concealed in the small of the back — presumably so as not to spoil the cut of
the outfit. Then he grabbed Prune Face’s shotgun and the other guard’s as well
for good measure and scooted back into the garage, where he dropped back into
the inspection pit. Just in time, as it happened, because some of the
parachutists had by now taken up positions on a rooftop where they’d landed and
were directing fire down into the courtyard at a steep angle.

Stray rounds
sprayed and ricocheted all over the garage while Rupert crouched in the bottom
of the pit. He unlocked and removed his handcuffs with shaking hands. He rubbed
his wrists, which had been chafed raw. Then he checked the Mossbergs.

They were military
spec weapons with twenty inch barrels. He used the spare rounds fixed on the
stocks to reload both of them.

For about five
minutes there was a steady pandemonium of gunfire, then silence. He stuck his
head cautiously out over the edge of the pit. There was no movement in the
courtyard. He climbed warily out of the inspection pit, one of the Mossbergs
slung over his shoulder, the other one aimed and ready.

The first thing he
noticed was that Prune Face was gone. There was no sign of her anywhere. He
felt his spine pulse coldly with the certainty that he should have killed her
when he had the chance.

He crossed the
courtyard. There were bodies scattered here and there on the ground but
otherwise the place was deserted.

He kept an eye on
the rooftops but there was no sign of the parachutists. Presumably they were
descending to the ground and regrouping. With them momentarily out of the
picture it was an ideal opportunity to move safely across the compound.

Apparently
somebody in the barn thought so too. He heard the wooden door creaking open and
he trotted over and stood flattened against the wall beside it. As soon as he
saw a flash of pink emerging, he blasted with the Mossberg. A body fell back
inside and he pointed the snout of the shotgun around the edge of the open door
and fired again without looking in. He fired the remaining eight rounds then
dropped the empty weapon.

That should hold
them for a while.

He unslung the
other shotgun, and then ran over to the rank of parked pickups. Rupert wanted
to swap the Mossberg for an M4 as quickly as possible. He climbed into the cab
of the nearest truck and unclipped a carbine, keeping the shotgun in one hand
and a wary eye out for any activity from any direction.

He left the
Mossberg on the seat of the truck and climbed out with the carbine.

Rupert heard a
sound from his right and turned to see a figure in green camouflage gear — one
of the parachutists, now sans chute, running around a corner of a building.
Rupert jerked back towards the safety of the truck, wary of ‘friendly fire’,
but the figure raised a hand in greeting and hurried towards him. For a moment
Rupert was astonished, but then he realised that it didn’t necessarily take a
strategic genius to make the distinction between hordes of women in skin-tight
pink outfits and a lone man in a baggy and increasingly tattered grey business
suit.

The figure trotted
to join him, a fresh faced young soldier in full combat gear, eyes bright and
wide behind goggles. “Right,” said Rupert, pointing towards the barn. “You see
that building there? That’s where their leaders are stationed and, I suspect,
the nucleus of their strike force. They are trying to break into your
underground missile complex but I don’t think they’ve succeeded yet. It is
imperative, I repeat imperative, that we get in there and hit them before they
get dug in.”

“Well, there’s no
need to be so bossy,” said the soldier in a familiar voice.

“Minerva?” said
Rupert.

*

Minerva and her
fellow parachutists were only the leading edge of a strike force which now
converged on Quinten Farm from every direction. They swept through the forward
pickets and the roaming patrols that Big Mama had established as her defence
perimeter, leaving detachments behind to deal with any pockets of resistance
and pressing inexorably on towards the central farm compound. Big Mama’s troops
were also falling back towards the compound, and this area swiftly became the
focus of the fiercest combat.

As Big Mama’s
defence perimeter collapsed under the assault, her shock troops came in pink
streams, fleeing towards the compound from all sides, only to find that the
advance guard of parachutists were already established there and waiting to cut
them down, from rooftops, from concealment in the buildings and from behind the
hastily arranged barricade of pickup trucks which Rupert had suggested.

He didn’t bother
telling Minerva that he’d got the idea from old Western movies where they’d
circled the wagons to fight off marauding Indians. He merely advocated draining
the gas from the vehicles and forming a loose square from them in the centre of
the courtyard.

As soon as the
defenders were established behind the barricade of vehicles, the first wave of
Big Mama’s retreating troops arrived. They walked right into a wall of fire.
Rupert had to admire the ruthless way the parachutists mowed down the shock
troops without hesitation. The supposedly distracting pink combat gear had no
discernible effect on the new arrivals, in utter contrast to the devastating
confusion it had sewn among Quinten Farm’s original defenders.

While Big Mama’s
troops were being squeezed from both sides, Rupert and Minerva went after Big
Mama herself. They led an attack squad into the barn. Minerva had initially
been reluctant to let Rupert join them.

“You’ve said
they’ve got the Herod virus in there. What if they unleash it? You should sit
this one out.”

“No,” said Rupert.
Minerva must have read something in him that brooked no further argument
because she got hold of a flak vest and helmet for him. The helmet was an
uncomfortably tight fit, but he wasn‘t about to complain. It had probably
belonged to a fallen comrade. He kept his mouth shut and fell in beside Minerva
as they crashed through the wooden barn door, then through what remained of the
glass doors after Rupert had emptied his Mossberg. There were bodies on the
floor and they had to climb across them on their way in.

Minerva threw a
flash grenade into the reception. They paused and waited for the unearthly blue
lightning of detonation, then ran in and overwhelmed the defenders. Big Mama’s troops
seemed to sense defeat. Some were throwing down their guns and surrendering. A
few fought tenaciously to the last.

They found Big
Mama and Dr Unity hiding in the absent Lieutenant Braddock’s large wood
panelled office. Minerva’s comrades in arms had flooded the entire building by
now and the fighting was virtually over. The steel doors leading to the
underground missile complex had been found intact and it was clear that a
general rout was in progress.

Big Mama and
Dr Unity’s sole defender was a woman with a livid purple bruise on her
forehead. Rupert recognised her as Penny and realised the bruise was where he’d
hit her. She was aiming a shotgun at Rupert and Minerva as they came in, but
instead of firing at them, she turned and aimed at Big Mama.

Before they could
stop her, she’d blown Big Mama‘s head off.

Then she turned to
Dr Unity and did the same to her.

Then she turned
and placed the barrel of the gun under her own chin. Rupert and Minerva tried
to get to her, but she was too quick for them. “You can never stop us,” she
said with a note of triumph, and then pulled the trigger.

As unpleasant as
it was sharing the room with three headless corpses, Rupert and Minerva and
half a dozen other soldiers proceeded to search the place and they found the
Conquistador, still in its briefcase. And, much more importantly, the grey
plastic container with the bio-hazard seal intact.

Thirty armed
guards were deployed to look after this until the specialists from the CDC
arrived to take it away for safe disposal, or whatever they did with deadly
viruses.

*

As they emerged
from the barn into the sunlight, Rupert said, “Why didn’t they release it?”

“The virus?” said
Minerva. “Because it would have been a futile gesture.”

“How so?”

“Because instead
of killing every man in the world they would have probably only killed you.”

Rupert stared at
her, trying to puzzle out her apparently nonsensical words. Then he paused and
looked around him. Now that the fighting was over and the farm safely
contained, the parachutists were taking off their helmets and combat armour,
relaxing and talking and lighting cigarettes. And as the helmets and armour
came off they were revealed to be women. All of them. Every one.

To a man, as it
were.

Minerva was
watching him with amusement as the penny dropped. “You’re all women,” he said.

“That was my
inspiration,” said Minerva. “The one that came to me when I was stuck on the
USS Salem with our all-girl crew. I thought about how Big Mama was going to
dress her troops, and why. I realised that if we ever engaged them it would be
best to use an all female force.”

“Girl on
girl action,” said Rupert quietly. Nearby, body bags were being laid out on the
tarmac.

Chapter Sixteen: Joshua Tree

Rupert looked down
on the farm from the helicopter carrying him away. From this vantage the
scattered bodies of Big Mama’s soldiers looked like so many fallen pink petals.

He checked his
phone and found that he had a signal. Minerva had notified him of this
likelihood. She had told him proudly, “My girl commandoes are pretty darn
efficient. Apart from the small matter of kicking Big Mama’s ass they’ve also
located and destroyed the equipment she was using to disrupt communications,
including the nasty little patch antenna that was locking onto your phone.” She
made the call-me-with-your phone gesture as she waved him goodbye, and returned
to the business of dealing with the prisoners, the wounded and the dead.

The helicopter
eased itself into the air, lifting Rupert away, as had so many other
helicopters in the past, carrying him from the field of battle. He wanted to go
to sleep but he checked his voicemail instead. There was a message from a
number he didn’t recognise. He played it.

“Hood you wanker,”
said Braidy’s voice. “Just your luck to get stuck inside that place during a
training exercise. Ha ha ha.”

The helicopter
carried Rupert through the air, away from the scene of carnage, back towards
the everyday world and the nearest airport.

“Wanker’s
luck,” said Braidy. “And I understand you’re stuck there for the duration. The
whole place is on lockdown. So have fun! Uncle isn’t going to be able to pull
any strings to get you out of that place. And it could go on for days. Days and
days. So just resign yourself to it. And try not to fuck things up too much. We’ve
safely delivered that sample so there shouldn’t be much that you can fuck up.
So enjoy the boredom, Mr Floppy. I’m off to spend the night in a five star
hotel.”

The next call was
live, and it was Connubia.

“About time you
answered your bloody phone.”

“I had a few other
things to occupy me,’ said Rupert.

“So I understand.
The General said to tell you and Minerva well done. He’d tell you himself but
he’s in some sort of confab with senior officials from the Agency. Frankly I
think they’re all amazed with what Minerva has achieved.” Rupert noticed that
it had been edited from him and Minerva to just Minerva now. “She really
managed to pull your nuts out of the fire again, didn’t she? It’s just like
that time she managed to retrieve that floppy disc which, thanks to your usual
palsied level of incompetence, you managed to lose.”

“It wasn’t
anything like that at all,” said Rupert, then he gave up. “Look, what happened
to Lieutenant Colonel Braddock?”

“Who? Oh, the base
commander who was off boozing with Braidy during the attack? By the way, they
hushed up the attack. Everyone locally seems to have been convinced by a story
about some kind of a training exercise. The yokels really are gullible in that
neck of the woods, aren’t they?”

“Not just in this
neck of the woods,” said Rupert patiently. “Braidy doesn’t emanate from rural
Nebraska and he seems to have swallowed it hook, line and sinker. But you were
going to tell me what happened to Lieutenant Colonel Braddock.”

“What do you think
happened to him? He was in a bar swilling beer while his soldiers were being
slaughtered. His military career is at an end. He’ll be lucky if he doesn’t end
up in a stockade.”

Despite his firm
and instant contempt for the man, something about Connubia’s attitude compelled
Rupert to defend Braddock now. “It’s not his fault,” he said. “How could he
know there was going to be an attack?”

“Good point. Maybe
you can testify on his behalf at his court martial,” said Connubia and hung up.

The helicopter
deposited Rupert at the municipal airport in Kimball where he’d landed earlier
that day — a lifetime ago. A section of the runways here had been requisitioned
for military use and Rupert glimpsed rows of what looked like jet fighters,
waiting poised and deadly.

These planes were
under heavy guard and he was quickly ushered away from them, indoors.

Here he was told
that there was no need to catch a civilian flight. Some form of military
transport would be available to him shortly. He nodded and sat down on a blue
plastic bench and promptly fell asleep.

He was woken by
someone gently nudging his foot. Rupert looked up and saw Minerva smiling at
him. “I thought you’d like to know. We’ve secured the Herod virus. The CDC came
and collected it and it’s safe. They’ve got it locked up safely with all the
other bad viruses.”

“Good,” croaked
Rupert, gradually returning to consciousness as he listened. “That’s good.”
Minerva sat beside him on the bench. Her leg warm against his. He tried not to
think about the last woman who had sat beside him on a bench. He realised that
Monica Van Heusen would be arriving at this airport soon enough, in a body bag.

A farm girl on her
way home.

“Did you see those
hotrods parked out there on the runway?” said Minerva.

“I got a quick
look at them before I was ushered away. They’re very keen on security here.”

“Those hotrods are
special interceptors, modified F106 Delta Darts, designed to chase and shoot
down missiles in mid flight. If things had gone wrong here today it would have
been the mission of those interceptors to catch and counteract Big Mama’s
weapon.” She looked out the window at the runway. “Now they’re going to be
returned to their original units, dispersed across the continent and their
pilots stood down.” She turned to Rupert. “Almost seems a shame.”

“How do you catch
a missile in a jet fighter?”

“Well,” said
Minerva. “To be honest you don’t. You can’t. But you can get close enough to
shoot at it with rockets carrying tactical mini-nukes.”

“Mini-nukes?”

“Yes. That’s why
they’re so keen on security around here.”

“Jesus. And you
would have been ‘driving’ one of these interceptors?”

“Yes,” said
Minerva proudly. “If things had played out differently today, I would have been
driving one.” She turned and looked at Rupert. “I’ve now got some downtime
coming to me.”

“So have I.”

Minerva’s candid
gaze met his. “So what do you say we spend our downtime together?”

Rupert stared into
her eyes. He was wide-awake now.

“Unless you’d
rather hurry back to Connubia.”

“Strangely enough,
no,” said Rupert.

*

Like the Raptor that
had carried them across South Africa, Minerva’s interceptor was a modified
training model adapted to accommodate two in the cockpit. So once again, after
a quick shower and change of clothes — into a flight suit — Rupert found
himself crammed into an ejector seat behind Minerva and hurtling through the
air.

He fell asleep and
woke when Minerva said over the helmet intercom, “You’re snoring again.”

“Sorry.”

“It’s okay. It’s
kind of sweet. It’s like having a little papoose strapped in behind me, snoring
away.”

“Where did you say
those vomit bags were?”

Minerva laughed.

They landed at the
Twentynine Palms Air Combat Base in California, and Minerva officially handed
back the F106 Delta Dart, and its mini-nukes. From here they got a ride into
town, rented a car, bought some clothes and camping equipment and drove out
towards the Joshua Tree national park. This was Minerva’s idea. As they drove,
she said, “Don’t say anything about the album by U2 or I’ll kill you.”

She suggested he
could get some more sleep while she drove into the park but Rupert now found
himself in a state of crystalline wakefulness. Minerva had passed on some
casualty figures to him and he found himself endlessly running them through his
mind. “Eight hundred and forty seven,” he said.

“What?”

“Eight hundred and
forty seven dead, wounded or captured. Those are the figures you gave me for
Big Mama’s forces.”

“The shocking pink
troops,” said Minerva. “That’s what we’re calling them. It’s a combination of
shocking pink and shock troops. You see what we did there?”

“That leaves a
hundred and forty three unaccounted for,” said Rupert.

“What?”

He looked at her.
They were barrelling down Highway 62, heading east. “Whipping Whetticker made a
thousand suits for Big Mama. Eight hundred and fifty seven from a thousand
leaves one hundred and forty three.”

“Rupert, she’s
dead. Big Mama is dead. Dr Unity’s dead. We’ve broken their forces. The virus
is on lock down. What are you worrying yourself for? Maybe she ordered a
thousand suits but didn’t use all of them. Maybe she only used eight hundred
and fifty seven. Maybe the rest were rejects. Too tight in the hip or
something.”

“Okay,” he said
reluctantly, unconvinced.

She shot him an
affectionate glance. “It’s all over. Everybody’s stood down. Why don’t you stand
down?”

“Right.” He peered
out the window at the town of Twentynine Palms flashing by. Street names like
Shoshone Valley Road and Palo Verde Avenue. “Still, over a hundred and fifty
suits seems like a lot to write off.”

“For Christ’s
sake, Rupert. Maybe she didn’t order a thousand suits.”

“Alzbeta said she
did.”

“Maybe Alzbeta got
it wrong. Maybe the minimum order was a thousand — just one of the overheads a
genocidal nutcase has to factor into her plans for world destruction. Maybe
there’s another hundred and fifty shocking pink troops running around on the
back roads outside Quinten Farm like headless chickens just waiting to be
picked up by our guys. Maybe…”

“Maybe.”

“Look, can’t we
just let it go and relax and enjoy ourselves here?”

“Sorry.”

She looked at him.
“You’re not one of those pleasure-hating Englishmen I’ve read about, are you?”

“I dread to think
what you might have been reading. But take it from me, all Englishmen, and I
speak for myself here in particular, are extremely fond of pleasure.”

They turned right
off the highway, onto the Utah Trail, and a few minutes later reached the park
visitors centre where Minerva stopped and went in to pay their entrance fee. As
soon as she was safely in the building, Rupert dug out his phone and hastily made
a call to Marcus in London.

“Have you been
briefed on Quinten Farm?” said Rupert.

“Yes, and by the
way, well done. Are you coming home now?”

“No. Listen, can
you find out for me if there’s any chance of getting Big Mama or Dr Unity
identified from their dental records?”

Marcus laughed.
“Dental records? They both had their heads blown off by a shotgun. You know
that. You saw it happen.”

“I did. And it’s
all rather convenient, don’t you think?”

There was a long
silence on the line and then Marcus said, “Right. I see where you’re going with
this. What do you want me to do?”

“Find out if
there’s any useable traces at all that a really good forensic dentist might be
able to piece together. See if they can get hold of that bloke who has the
practice in Holland Park. The own who helped us with the air crash business
last year. Connubia will know who I mean. He’s one of the best in Europe. Fly
him over and get him to take a look.”

“All right, I’ll
try. Anything else?”

“Yes.” Rupert saw
Minerva emerge from the building and began speaking quickly. “Big Mama didn’t
have any known relatives, but Dr Unity does. They’re going to have to track
them down and sample them.”

“Sample them?”

“For DNA,” said
Rupert, “and compare it with a sample from Dr Unity’s body.”

“Right.”

“I’ll leave all
that with you,” said Rupert. He hung up. Minerva was standing outside the car,
looking at him. She opened the car and got in.

“Were you talking
on your phone?”

“No. Well, yes.”

“Calling someone
about Big Mama’s famous missing one hundred and fifty three troops?”

“Yes. I suppose
you could say so. Yes.”

Minerva sighed.
“Okay, Rupert, look, I just splashed out a whole ten bucks on our private non
commercial vehicle seven day pass for the park. Should I go back in there and
get them to refund my money?”

“No, of course
not. Don’t be silly.”

“Okay. I won’t.
But you’ve got to let this go, Rupert.”

“Okay.”

“I’m serious.
You’ve got to promise me. No more worrying. No more phone calls.”

“Okay. All right.
Fine.”

They continued
along the Utah Trail into the park, turning onto Pinto Basin Road which took
them up into the mountains. As they climbed El Dorado Mine Road. Minerva pulled
over. “Let’s inspect the breathtaking view,” she said. “Plus I need to attend
to a call of nature.” She disappeared into some bushes and Rupert stared down
into the rocky depths of a gorge slashed with sunshine and purple shadow. While
Minerva was out of earshot he took out his phone and surreptitiously called
London again.

“Your dentist is
on his way to Nebraska,” said Marcus. “And I’ve been in touch with our people
there and in India about doing the DNA comparison between Dr Unity and one of
her relatives. Apparently the Indians are tracking someone down. But it’s all
going to take some time.”

“Understood,” said
Rupert.

“But in the
meantime, I thought we should check on fingerprints.”

“Fingerprints?”
said Rupert.

“Yes,” said Marcus
proudly. “Your newfangled DNA testing is all very well, but sometimes the old
ways are best. I surmised that with her background Big Mama must have a criminal
record and I thought her prints might be on file somewhere. Indeed they were. I
got some very helpful ladies in Nebraska to scan the prints of the headless
dead woman there and send them in. We did a comparison and the woman you saw
getting her head blown off is indeed Big Mama.”

Rupert felt a
warm, slow wave of relief sweep over him. “Marcus, that was very clever indeed.
Very resourceful. Thank you.”

“All in a day’s
work. And now here’s someone who wants a word with you.”

Rupert braced
himself for an onslaught from Connubia or, at best, a protracted encomium from
the General. But it was Alzbeta who came on the line. “Hello, Rupert,” she
said.

“Alzbeta, are you
all right?”

“Yes, not too bad,
thanks. I’m out of the hospital and on the mend now.”

“Good, great,
that’s splendid news.”

“And now it is my
turn to thank you. For saving my life.”

“My pleasure,”
said Rupert. There was an awkward silence.

“Are you with the
American girl? The CIA girl?”

“Well, actually,”
said Rupert, desperately dissembling.

“You are.”

“Yes.”

“Good for you,”
said Alzbeta. “I am glad. Have a good time. Goodbye.” She hung up. Absurdly
Rupert found that his feelings were hurt. She had sounded entirely sincere when
she’d wished him a good time. And that was what hurt. Wasn’t she jealous at
all? He put his phone away and assumed what he believed to be an expression of
composed innocence on his face. Portrait of man innocently inspecting
breathtaking view.

He studiously
scrutinized this view as Minerva emerged from the brush, buttoning her jeans.
She came over and joined him and for a silent moment they both studied the
precipitous beauty below.

Then she said, “I
heard you Rupert. While I was out there tinkling in the undergrowth.”

“Oh.”

“Give me your cell
phone.”

“What?”

“Give me your cell
phone. Come on. Right now.”

“What are you
going to do with it?”

“I’m going to
throw it down into that valley, right into the middle of that fucking
breathtaking view.”

Rupert looked at
her. She was serious. He said, “If you’re going to do that, you have to throw
yours too.”

To his surprise
Minerva shrugged. “Sure.” She took his phone and took out her own and said,
“One, two, three,” and threw them both into the chasm.

*

They had brought
two sleeping bags with them, but their first order of business after setting up
the tent was to crawl inside, zip the two sleeping bags together and crawl into
these. They made love, slept briefly, then woke up in each other’s arms,
sweating in the warmth of the bag. They crawled out of the bag, drank a litre
bottle of water between them and decided to stay out of the sleeping bag. The
tent proved rapidly too constraining for the phase space of their love making,
and they had to open it up, unzipping the front and spreading the sleeping bag
out onto the rocky ground underneath them.

At one point
Rupert looked up from his carnal preoccupations and saw the eerie, gleaming
eyes of a coyote watching them with interest from a short distance away in the
dark desert scrub. When the coyote realised he was watching it, it padded off,
presumably to eat some small mammals.

Finally Rupert and
Minerva zipped the tent shut and dozed again. Then they woke, got dressed and
set about making supper.

This involved
Rupert wandering around the sheltered slope where they’d pitched camp, a small
oasis fringed with fan palms. He was using the eerie green light of a glow
stick as he blundered among the boulders and tall cacti, trying to pick up any
likely looking pieces of dried vegetation. When he’d assembled a sufficient
collection and brought it back to the tent there ensued a spirited debate over
who would get to demonstrate the impressive efficiency of their fire making
skills.

Minerva won and
proceeded to build a rough pyramid of branches and small twigs that, as
promised, she set ablaze with a single well-placed match. Rupert, who could
have done much the same, had the good grace and good manners to make all the
right admiring noises.

They wolfed down a
meal, crawled back into their tent and sleeping bag, made love again, drank
more water and then drifted off to sleep after a long, meandering conversation
that ranged from childhood memories to bad jokes to favourite firearms. Then
they slept. The desert chill quietly invaded the tent and, although it was
luxuriously warm in the bag, the tips of Rupert’s ears got cold enough to wake
him up at dawn.

This was a
blessing because when he got out of the tent he saw the sun coming up over the
mountains. The staggering, quiet beauty of the scene had him torn over whether
to wake up Minerva to see it, or just to stay put and watch, not missing a
thing.

But just then
Minerva’s head appeared in the flap of the tent, like some creature being born,
and she crawled out to join him. She gave him a sleepy kiss and they watched
the sun rise together.

The cool air
smelled of sage, and then of wood smoke as Minerva ignited another one of her
one-match fires. She was making them a pot of what she called ‘cowboy coffee’
when the primeval desert silence was pierced by the shockingly discordant sound
of a telephone ringtone.

It was coming from
the tent.

Rupert stared in
astonishment, then looked at Minerva. “It’s not mine,” he said quickly. “I
threw it away. Into the valley last night. You saw it. In fact, you threw it.
It went into the valley.” Minerva gave him an expressionless look and crawled
into the tent, crawling back out with a phone in her hand. She flicked it open
and put it to her ear and listened for a moment. Then she offered it to Rupert.

“It’s for you.
It’s Connubia.”

He put the phone
to his ear. Connubia was unapologetic about disturbing what she snortingly
referred to as their honeymoon. “But we thought you should know,” she said.
“There has been a rather alarming discovery. When the CDC people got back to
Atlanta they ran some tests. That virus you recovered from Quinten Farm turned
out to be ordinary sugar beet virus. Completely harmless to human beings.”

“What?” said
Rupert. He could see his breath fogging on the cool morning air. Minerva was
watching him closely as she crouched by the fire, tending to the coffee.

“Oh, and our
friend the dentist is now in Nebraska and seeing what he can do with what he
referred to as the abject mess that was left after the shotgun blasts.
Meanwhile Marcus said to tell you he’s pushing on with getting samples of genetic
material from Dr Unity’s nearest relatives. So, as you see, the rest of us have
been busy doing our jobs while you decided to take a holiday.” She rang off.

Rupert looked at
the phone in his hand, then looked at Minerva. “You kept your phone,” he said.

“I kept a phone.”

“It’s a spare?”

“Well actually,”
said Minerva, “I threw the spare into that valley. I kept my original one. It
saved me transferring all my numbers and all that.”

“You kept a
phone,” said Rupert.

“Of course I did.
Someone might have needed to reach us. And they did. Now come and have some
coffee.”

He sat with her
and drank coffee and told her what Connubia had said. They tried to work out
the implications of these new facts.

“If the Herod
virus was a fake,” said Minerva, “what else was a fake?” She looked at him.

“Big Mama and Dr
Unity?” suggested Rupert.

“You think they
might have been doubles?”

“I did think
that,” said Rupert. “But then Marcus ran a fingerprint check. He identified the
prints on one of the bodies at the farm as definitely belonging to Big Mama.”

“All that means is
that there’s a set of prints on file on some computer somewhere that have been
labelled as belonging to her. Are we really going to be convinced by that?”

“No,” said Rupert
thoughtfully. “No, we’re not.”

“So where does
that leave us?”

He looked at her.
“Dr Rogers said —”

“I know, he said
that when Big Mama played chess she specialised in high value sacrifices.”

“Like eight
hundred and fifty seven soldiers?” said Rupert.

The campfire
crackled gently. Rupert and Minerva looked at each other. He said, “Perhaps the
assault on the farm was just a feint. The entire attack, and all its
casualties, merely an elaborate ruse to fool us into thinking we’d won and
cause us to drop our guard.”

“And distract us
from the real target…”

A small knot of
resin burst in the fire, spitting blue sparks at them. Rupert was following the
logic through to its natural conclusion and he felt a cold stab of fear. “What
is it?” said Minerva.

“The other
Conquistador unit Braidy brought with him. He was taking it to the Marcroft
Hayden missile development facility in Washington State.”

Chapter 17: Bear Claw

“The
Marcroft Hayden facility is a sort of northern cousin to Lockheed Martin’s
Skunk Works. Now I know to you young people the term ‘skunk’ is irresistibly
suggestive of a particularly virulent strain of cannabis but the Lockheed
Martin designation indicates an autonomous centre for advanced aircraft
development and design. It’s located in Palmdale California and it’s the place
where Minerva’s Raptor was developed.”

At this point in
his briefing the General had gone off in rapturous praise about the Raptor and
Rupert had been required to gently guide him back on track. The old man
eventually continued. “Marcroft Hayden’s research complex, or Bear Claw as it
is known, is a similar centre of technical excellence, devoted exclusively to
missile development. It’s located north of Seattle, in fact north of Port
Susan. The facility has its own launching pad that extends out into the ocean at
Bear Claw Point, located above the mouth of the Stillaguamish River, which
drains the Cascade mountain range.” At this juncture Rupert had had to steer
him away from a dissertation on the volcanoes in the high Cascades.

The General’s
words came back to Rupert now as he looked down on the landscape in question.
The Stillaguamish River was a steely glint in the late afternoon light as
Minerva descended in the interceptor.

Looking out the
cockpit Rupert observed slopes of pine giving way to a clearing containing
buildings of grey stone and brown wood and glass. Beyond these, the milky green
ocean, a grey tongue of concrete extending into it. The launch pad. And,
glimpsed as they banked, standing there on the launch pad a single tall white
missile supported by the silvery lattice of a service tower.

Rupert and Minerva
had driven hell for leather back from Joshua Tree to Twentynine Palms Airbase
where they had boarded the interceptor, luckily still fully armed from its
previous mission. They had then flown across California and Oregon into
Washington State, moving always north. Their orders had been to proceed to
McChord Air Force Base just south of Tacoma and wait there until a force of
ground troops was mobilised.

They ignored
orders and kept flying north, over Tacoma and Seattle, past Edmonds and
Everett, almost to the Canadian border. Just northeast of Port Susan they
reached their destination, surrounded by miles of pine woods. The Bear Claw
facility had a small airstrip reserved for Marcroft Hayden’s company jets which
ran parallel to the launch pad, separated by a chain link fence.

As they came in to
land here Rupert saw evidence of the battle that had recently taken place.

More pink strewn
petals, the bodies of Big Mama’s fallen troops. But many other bodies as well.
From the air they also saw police cars and other vehicles, some with lights
still flashing on their roofs, strangely motionless among the dead.

They landed beside
a row of Learjet 85s with the Marcroft Hayden logo on them. Rupert and Minerva
climbed out of the cockpit in their flight suits, minus vests and helmets. They
were both only equipped with handguns — that was all they had been able to
requisition at Twentynine Palms. Heavier firepower would have been waiting for
them at McChord, if they’d landed there.

They made their
way past an abandoned police car parked diagonally across the airport access
road, its windows starred with bullet holes. The main gate of the facility was
on the far side of a parking lot on the other side of the access road.

“Do you think they
saw us land?” said Rupert.

“If they didn’t,”
said Minerva, “they probably heard us.”

But, as they
looked around, it began to seem possible that no one had seen them or heard
them at all, because there was no one left to do so. They began to count the
bodies wearing pink as they walked across the parking lot and through the gates
of the complex.

Big Mama’s troops
were lying dead in their dozens, in scores, and finally Rupert tallied more
than a hundred. He began to allow himself the luxury of hoping that the
invading force had been wiped out.

But they weren’t
the only ones who’d been wiped out. The defenders outnumbered Big Mama’s troops
three or four to one and they too lay there dead in their hundreds. National
Guard and Homeland Security and the local police. In their cars, sitting on
steps or pavements. Leaning out of windows or half in and half out of doorways.

“Hold it right
there!” cried a voice. They turned to see a man wearing a pale brown uniform
and cap. He had some kind of badge on his cap and he was pointing a gun at
them. Rupert and Minerva looked at each other and put their hands up.

“We’re on your
side,” said Rupert.

“How the hell am I
supposed to know that?” The man came nearer, holding his gun on them. He was
close enough now for the Marcroft Hayden company logo to be discerned on his
uniform. He looked twitchy and Rupert didn’t blame him, considering what the
man must have been through.

“Take it easy,”
said Rupert. “The attackers were all women, weren’t they?”

“The attackers?”
The man stared around at the carnage surrounding them. “They just came out of
nowhere. From the main road, from the sea, from the tree line around the
complex. They came at us from every which way.”

“They were all
women, right?”

“They hit us just
after two o’clock. We tried to hold them off. We called the police, we called
the National Guard. It was no good.”

“They were all
women,” persisted Rupert gently. “Right?”

The man stared at
him. “So what?”

“So you can see
we’re your friends. We’re not with them.”

The man swung his
pistol on Minerva. “She could still be one of them.”

Minerva said,
“Were any of the other attackers dressed like me, in a flight suit?” The man
blinked at her.

“No, they were all
in those nudie outfits. Except for two of them.”

“Dressed in
black?” said Rupert. He looked at Minerva.

The man lowered
his gun. “Yeah, they were like the ones in charge.”

“Where are they
now? The ones in black?”

“I don’t know for
sure,” said the man. “I last saw them headed for launch command in the observation
building.”

“Can you take us
there?” said Minerva urgently. The man stared at her and she added, “I’m
Minerva Caine and this is Rupert Hood.”

For an absurd
second it seemed as if the man might shake hands. But he just nodded. “Joe
Burnsley, head of security here at Bear Claw. Or at least I was until all hell
broke loose.” He glanced at the tall brown and grey buildings that lay beyond
the wire fence. “I’m waiting out here for the authorities to arrive. I put a
call out. Before the communications went down I put a call out.”

“Joe,” said
Rupert. “Will you take us to the observation building and show us where launch
command is?”

Joe Burnsley
looked again at the complex of buildings stretching towards the sea. The
shadows deepening among them didn’t yet conceal the numerous dead. “You want me
to go back in there and show you?”

“If you feel up to
it,” said Minerva.

*

With Joe as their
guide they made their way stealthily through the Bear Claw complex. “There may
still be some of them left,” said Joe. “We can’t be sure they’re all dead.
Haven’t heard any shooting for quite some while but we can’t be sure.”

He led them
through lobbies and basements and down narrow service alleys. They came out
into the open or moved through exposed areas as seldom as possible. At the
first possible opportunity both Rupert and Minerva upgraded their handguns with
weapons requisitioned from the dead.

Minerva took a
shotgun from one of Big Mama’s troops. Rupert chose an M16 from a National
Guardsman.

Joe watched
anxiously while they salvaged these weapons. He looked as if he disapproved of
robbing the dead. Rupert said, “Do you know anything about an Englishman called
Braidy, Joe?”

Joe looked
surprised. “Sure. He was here this morning. A sales rep, right? He dropped off
some kind of prototype for the missile research boys and left before lunch.”

“He’s gone?” said
Rupert. “He left before the attack?”

“Sure. He was long
gone. He said he wanted to be back in Seattle for lunch.”

“That sounds like
Braidy.” Rupert felt strangely relieved. Perhaps it was just the relief of
knowing he wouldn’t have to rescue Braidy or otherwise be responsible for him.

“Lunch here isn’t
so bad,” said Joe Burnsley and, as if to demonstrate, he led them through the
canteen in the next building. A big, pleasant room full of pastel coloured
tables and chairs with a large bright serving area on two sides. Food was on
display behind glass counters and there were plates and drinking cups abandoned
on the tables.

It was an eerily
deserted place and silent, except for the quiet bubbling of two large cauldrons
of soup behind the counter.

“They came in here
and rooted everyone out,” said Joe. “I saw them on the security cameras. Took
them outside and shot all the men. The women they led away. I didn’t see what
they did to them.”

“They’re probably
under lock and key somewhere,” said Rupert.

Joe Burnsley
stared at the empty tables. “I should have tried to stop them, but they were
hitting us from all sides.”

Minerva said,
“There was nothing you could have done, Joe.”

“There was a lot I
could have done. There was a lot I did do, but I still could have done a hell
of a lot more.” He led them out of the canteen, through some doors at the rear
of the building, and into a warehouse area. Here they passed through a fire
exit and into a row of linked laboratory buildings that eventually gave onto a
square of decorative gardens.

The gardens were
all gravel and bonsai trees, with a fountain at the centre featuring water
running over black marble blocks surmounted by a hulking angular representation
of a bear carved in green stone.

On the far side of
the square was a long, low two-storey building composed of tiers of wood and
glass, in the manner of Frank Lloyd Wright. It had wide bands of window that
looked out over the square on the near side and, on its far side, over the sea
and the concrete launch pad that jutted into it. “That’s it,” said Joe
Burnsley. That’s the observation building. Launch command is on the top floor
there.”

They were just
about to cross the open square when they heard voices. All three of them ducked
back inside the laboratory doorway, just in time to avoid running straight into
a party of what Minerva had amusingly called Big Mama’s shocking pink troops.

There was nothing
amusing about their appearance now. They moved like professional soldiers
patrolling terrain they had recently taken. Alert but in command and confident.
They were all heavily armed. Rupert noticed they had hand grenades attached to
clips on their combat outfits, a refinement he hadn’t seen in evidence at
Quinten Farm. He only counted four of the women. They crossed in front of the
fountain, talking in low voices, and disappeared into a building to the left.

“So there’s still
some of them around,” whispered Joe. “I told you we couldn’t be sure. We
shouldn’t have come in here. We should have stayed outside and waited for the
authorities to arrive.”

“You’ve brought us
this far,” said Rupert. “We know where we’re going. You can head back if you
like.”

Joe seemed to
bristle at the suggestion. “Hell, no. Like you say, I’ve brought you this far.”
He gazed out through the small window in the door, thoughtfully studying the
square. “I’ll take you the rest of the way.” He looked at them. “Marcroft
Hayden is my company. It’s more than that, it’s my home. Or at least it was
before they came in and shot it all to hell. I want to help you stop the people
who did that.” He turned to the window again. “I’ll go out and make sure
they’re gone.” Rupert and Minerva made no move to stop him. He knew the ground
here better than they did.

Joe slipped out
into the square, moving in a low awkward crouch which would have been comical
in other circumstances. When he reached the fountain he turned and beckoned for
them. Rupert and Minerva swiftly followed. Once they were at the fountain only
one small patch of open terrain lay between them and the observation building.

They crossed it
without incident, descending a staircase set into the concrete, down a wide
shaft that had been designed as a sun trap, past a series of small neat flower
beds planted with orchids, to the underground entrance to the building.

Inside, it was
cool and quiet. The atrium of the building was a large open area with a
reception desk, now deserted, situated between escalators which were moving
upwards in a continuous murmuring unfurling of metal steps, and a bank of
stainless steel and black marble fronted lifts. Joe went to the reception desk,
using a key card to open a waist-high glass gate, swinging it open so they
could follow.

Behind the desk was
a bank of security monitor screens, providing monochrome views of various rooms
in the building. Joe sat down at the control panel and began switching views on
the screens. “We’ll soon see if anybody’s in here.” Images of empty rooms fled
across the screens until suddenly two figures appeared, dressed in black.

“That’s them,”
said Joe. “And they’re in launch command all right, on the top floor. It’s like
the penthouse suite.” He swivelled around in his chair and looked at Rupert.
“Doesn’t seem like there’s anybody else in the building though. I guess we got
lucky.”

“I guess we did,”
agreed Rupert. He didn’t add that it was high time.

Joe led them out
from behind the desk and paused and considered. “I don’t like the idea of
taking the elevator. What if someone cuts the power? Escalators are too wide
open if somebody comes in and sees us. Let’s take the stairs.”

Rupert and Minerva
silently agreed with this assessment and followed him through a door marked
with a Fire Exit sign, and into a chill and echoing stone shaft fitted with
steel and wooden staircases. They went up. When they reached the fifth floor
Joe pushed a large beech door that opened noiselessly on its hydraulic arm,
presenting them with a view of a silent corridor fitted with pale blue carpet.

To the right was a
white wall that gave way to an open section where the escalators terminated
and, beyond that, a bank of lifts. To the left was a continuous wall of glass,
frosted to a pale blue opacity that matched the carpet. Set in the middle of
the glass was a door with a steel handle.

“You go through
that door there,” said Joe. “Those women in black are in there. I’ll stay out
here.” He looked around. “From here I’ve got command of the elevators, the
stairs and the escalators. Nobody can get up here without coming past me.” He
took out his revolver. “I’ve got your back,” he said.

Rupert and Minerva
had their own guns ready. They opened the door and went through it. The room
inside consisted of a seating area with chairs and sofas. Illuminated alcoves
in the wall held stone carvings of bears. Beyond the seating area was a long
bank of control consoles and, beyond that, a window that ran the length of the
room, overlooking the launch pad and the sea.

Two women, dressed
in loose black silk trousers and tunics, were seated on a low sofa drinking
tea.

There was a teapot
and a leather attaché case on the table in front of them.

The women looked
up with polite interest as the door opened but when they saw who it was, one of
them dropped her teacup and made a dash for the control console.

Minerva brought
her down in a flying tackle and dragged her unceremoniously back towards the
sofa.

The other woman
didn‘t move. She had a pleasant, round face and large glasses. She looked
plump, content and radiant. Her companion was thin and feral and she cursed as
Minerva dragged her. They were obviously Big Mama and Dr Unity. Seeing them in
the flesh Rupert realised that the pair at Quinten Farm had only been rough
approximations. Similar enough to fool anyone working from memories of a
photograph, but placed side by side with the originals they wouldn’t have
fooled him.

“Your doubles
didn’t do you justice,” he said. Neither of the women seemed to be armed, but
he kept his M16 on them just the same.

“Oh,” said Big
Mama. “So you were at Quinten Farm?”

“We both were,”
said Minerva.

Big Mama looked at
her sadly and shook her head. “What a terrible waste that was.”

“That’s pretty
rich, coming from you,” said Minerva. “You were responsible for the whole
thing.”

Big Mama said, “It
was necessary to do it, but it broke my heart.”

“What, like
sacrificing a knight or a bishop?” said Rupert. For the first time Big Mama’s
placid calm was disturbed. She looked at him.

“What do you
mean?” she said.

“He’s been talking
to that idiot you played chess with,” spat Dr Unity. “That Rogers. I told you
we should have eliminated him.”

“You sure as hell
did your best,” said Minerva, “the other day at one p.m. Western European
time.” She pointed her shotgun at Unity. “What did you have in store for him, a
nerve gas canister like you sent to Gustav?”

But Big Mama
didn’t say anything. She was staring in surprise at Unity.

“You didn’t know
about any of this?” said Minerva.

Big Mama composed
herself. “Ekta can be over zealous, I have always known that.”

Rupert walked over
to the control console, trying to estimate where Unity had been headed when
Minerva stopped her. It wasn’t difficult. In the centre of the console was a
computer with what appeared to be touch screen controls. Down either side of
the screen was a string of what looked like machine code.

In the
middle of the screen was a cartoon image of a growling bear. Superimposed on
the bear was a glowing orange circle centred on an orange cross. It looked to
Rupert like the sight of a gun. Underneath it were the words Bear Claw 17/904
Intermediate Range, Ready for Boost Phase, Touch to Initiate.

He looked out over
the console, at the missile standing in its service tower on the launch pad,
gleaming white against the grey cement and, beyond that, the green water. There
was a small silver object attached to the nose cone of the missile which Rupert
recognised, with a pang of shock, as the other Conquistador.

He had no doubt
that this one was armed with something other than sugar beet virus. He said,
“It looks like Ekta was just about to get over zealous again, when we stopped
her.”

The door whispered
open behind them and both Rupert and Minerva’s weapons swung up, ready. “It’s
okay,” said Joe cautiously from outside the door. “It’s just me. All quiet out
here. Mind if I come in?”

Rupert and Minerva
lowered their guns. Minerva said, “Sure. Come in, Joe.” Joe Burnsley did indeed
come in, but so did the four shock troops they’d seen passing through the
square earlier. They came in swiftly, fanning out. Two of them had their
Mossberg shotguns pointed at Rupert, two at Minerva.

Rupert realised it
was all over. Just like that.

One of the women
disarmed him while the other held her gun six inches from his face. The other
pair repeated the procedure with Minerva. They were a well-trained unit.
Rupert’s mind was just beginning a furious speculation on how Joe could
possibly have been so incompetent as to allow them to sneak up on him and
overwhelm him, when Joe went over to the sofa and addressed Big Mama.

“These two are the
last ones left. Some kind of spooks, from what I can make out. They landed by
jet. I thought you might like to deal with them personally.”

“Very thoughtful,
Joe,” said Big Mama.

Chapter Eighteen: Kill-Radius

Rupert and Minerva
stared at Joe Burnsley as he smiled ingratiatingly at Big Mama and said, “Well,
you were saying it was a shame there weren’t a few more people on hand to
appreciate the big occasion.” He gestured out the window at the missile, ready
in its tower.

Big Mama smiled
back at him. “As I say, most thoughtful of you.”

“Right,” said Joe.
”Well if you don’t mind, I’m going to be getting along now.”

“No, you do that
Joe. Thank you for a fine job well done.”

Joe seemed
awkward. “There’s just the small matter of the…”

“Of course Joe.
Your money. Here it is. Come and get it.” She held out the attaché case. He
accepted it gingerly. “Open it, Joe,” commanded Big Mama. Joe did so, taking
out wads of high denomination bills fastened with bank bands.

“That all seems to
be in order,” said Joe gleefully. He had the manner of a man who couldn’t
believe his luck. A lottery winner. He returned the money to the case with
trembling hands. “Well, goodbye. Thanks and good luck.”

“Goodbye,” said
Big Mama. No one else spoke. Joe looked around the room. For a moment it seemed
as if he might be about to say something to Rupert and Minerva, but he thought
better of it and simply walked out the door.

Dr Unity said
dryly, “Joe had better spend that money quickly,” and Big Mama’s troops all
laughed. But not, Rupert noticed, Big Mama.

“Now, girls,” said
Big Mama. “You know this is a solemn occasion. You know how I feel about such
jokes. Besides, you shouldn’t begrudge the poor man his few hours of happiness.
Surely we owe him a debt of thanks?” Some of the shock troops were nodding at
this rhetorical question, as if confirming a long held inner suspicion. “He
enabled us to realise our ends. Surely he deserves at least his few hours or,
who knows, perhaps even a few days of happiness?”

Big Mama
looked around the room, beaming. She had the full attention of everybody
present. Her words echoed in Rupert’s ears with a force that lay somewhere
between great profundity and cringing banality. There seemed a weighty
inevitability to her every utterance.

One of the shock
troops in particular seemed hypnotised by this performance. She was the
youngest. Merely a teenage girl. Her face hungrily followed Big Mama’s every
word.

Rupert himself
felt the unwholesome power of the woman’s personality. Having encountered her
for real now, the Quinten Farm counterfeit seemed entirely preposterous. “I
made an understatement earlier,” he said. Everyone looked at him in surprise.
People obviously didn’t speak up when Big Mama was holding forth.

The teenage girl
in particular looked stunned that anyone should dare to do so.

But Rupert’s
instinct told him to speak his thought. “No one meeting you in person could
possibly mistake you for your double, Big Mama.” Rupert realised his voice
sounded entirely sincere.

Dr Unity was
staring at him furiously. The teenage shock trooper was giving him a look of
awe. Because Rupert had won a radiant smile from Big Mama. Despite himself, he
felt pride at earning that smile. A good boy in school, getting teacher’s
approval.

“I am glad,”
said Big Mama, “that friends like Rupert and Minerva are here to witness the
action that will finally free women from their chains. In particular I am glad
to see Minerva, even if she hasn’t received the call yet.”

“She hasn’t
received the call yet,” said the teenage girl, repeating worshipfully the words
of her leader. The other shock troopers were attentive. Dr Unity merely looked
impatient.

“Even if she
hasn’t seen the way,” said Big Mama.

“Even if she
hasn’t seen the way,” echoed the girl. It seemed to be a deeply meaningful
mantra to her. Rupert had the girl pegged as a fanatical recent convert to the
cause.

Big Mama beamed.
“I am glad such worthy opponents are here to witness the launch of the weapon
that will at last end man’s oppression of women.”

“I don’t think
that is really your aim,” said Minerva. Rupert could see where she was hoping
to go with this, and he prayed to god the CIA’s analysts had got their
assessment right. Otherwise she and Rupert were as good as dead.

But as it
happened, Minerva wasn’t going anywhere with it, because Dr Unity cancelled the
discussion. “Tell the bitch to shut up or we will blow her brains out.”

Big Mama shook her
head. “On the contrary, let us encourage her comments. Even her most rigorous
criticism. I want to make clear to our guests that I’m not being reckless or
making a sudden decision or undertaking this lightly. Indeed I am proceeding
with the most thorough care, with every possible safeguard and precaution in
place.” Big Mama smiled at Rupert. “And Rupert, you mustn’t think I’m doing
this because I hate men.”

“You don’t owe
them any kind of explanation,” snapped Dr Unity. “Let us put an end to this.
Let us put an end to them once and for all.” She rose to her feet.

“Wait,” said Big
Mama softly and Unity bobbed impatiently, like a tethered balloon, and then sat
down again. Big Mama sipped her tea and smiled at Rupert and Minerva. Rupert
could feel the tug of her charisma. She had a beatific, Buddha like quality.
She said, “Of course, I don’t hate men. How could I hate all men? I know that
there have been great men and brave men and kind men and strong men and good
men.”

Looking at Dr
Unity, Rupert saw impatience congeal into disgust and the beginnings of what
looked to be a dangerous fury.

Big Mama kept
talking but Unity seemed no longer to be listening to her. She was focusing
instead on some turbulent inner landscape.

Big Mama said, “I
once knew a man who was kind and brave and strong and good. Yes, he was a great
man. But he is no longer with us.”

“Solomon,” said
Rupert and Dr Unity flashed him an astonishing look of pure hatred. But Rupert
thought he saw Minerva give him an encouraging glance. Big Mama nodded and
smiled.

“Yes. My husband.
He was a good man. He was the last good man.”

“Not necessarily
the last,” said Rupert.

“This has gone on
long enough,” said Dr Unity. “It is time to silence their disrespectful
chatter.” She pointed at Rupert and addressed the shock troops. “Take him away
and shoot him.” The other women seemed uncertain but the teenage fanatic took
an eager step forward.

“No,” said Big
Mama and the soldier froze. “Let him speak. This is a solemn occasion and I
don’t want it marred by bloodshed.”

Dr Unity laughed.
“Bloodshed? Look around you.” She gestured at the window and beyond the wire
fence at the perimeter of the launch pad, the hundreds of bodies that could be
seen scattered on the ground.

“Those deaths were
essential,” said Big Mama placidly. “This one would not be.” She turned to
Rupert. “Let him speak.” She smiled. Her words and smile seemed honeyed,
hypnotic. “What do you mean, not necessarily the last?”

Rupert said, “The
baby boy you may be carrying—”

“Take him away and
shoot him,” said Dr Unity. Her voice had the unmistakable ring of command and
the teenager and another one of the shock troops promptly started forward,
towards Rupert.

But Dr Unity
suddenly stood up and said, “On second thoughts, give me a gun and I will do it
myself.” She snatched a shotgun from one of the women.

There seemed
something ultimately disastrous in the control of this weapon passing to the
good Dr Unity, late of the University of Delhi, whom Rupert could now see was
clearly barking mad. Once this woman had a gun anything could happen. As if
reading his mind, she turned to Rupert and aimed it at him.

Rupert had a car-crash
rush of déjà vu, staring again into the black barrel of the Mossberg.

But Big Mama’s
voice, relaxed yet authoritative, again took command of the room. “No, Ekta,
let him speak.”

The mad look
passed from Dr Unity, to be replaced merely with a variety of everyday
petulance. She reluctantly lowered the shotgun as Big Mama turned her smiling
attention on Rupert.

“You must
understand,” she said, “that I fully appreciate the gravity of my decision.
Releasing the Herod virus is not a step I have taken lightly. Our planning has
been painstaking and we have been most scrupulous and meticulous.” Rupert
noticed the move from first person singular to first person plural. “Man must
meet his just fate. But in pursuit of this end, every care and safeguard has
been taken.”

Big Mama smiled.
“You must believe me.” Rupert looked in her eyes and, despite himself, believed
her.

“I have delayed
this historic moment as long as I can. And I have made sure that there are
built-in safeguards, to allow me to prevent it happening until right up until
the last possible moment. In case mankind, and of course I do mean man kind,
gave me reason to change my course of action.”

She shook her head
sadly. “But no such change was forthcoming and now you have forced my hand.
Both you and Miss Caine. Your splendid efficiency and that of the organisations
you represent has meant that my freedom will soon be curtailed. That my
followers will be taken from me. Disarmed. Imprisoned. Our movement will come
to an end.”

She looked at
Rupert. “So I must act while I still can, which is why we find ourselves here,
today.” She was so perfectly reasonable Rupert couldn’t help agreeing with her.
“I have been forced to act several days earlier than my deadline.”

“The seven week
deadline,” said Minerva.

Dr Unity said,
“Please let me shoot them.” But Big Mama ignored her and everyone else followed
Big Mama’s lead.

“Before you
learned the sex of your child,” persisted Minerva.

Big Mama nodded.
“Yes. You have forced my hand, despite my every attempt to be reasonable, my
every precaution. I am only taking this step with the utmost reluctance. I even
had my technicians build in a recall signal —”

“Don’t discuss
that,” said Unity. Big Mama continued as if she hadn’t spoken.

“A signal to be
transmitted on the missile’s tactical communication wavelength, so that I can
send a code to disable its navigation computer. This was very much against the
counsel of some of my most trusted advisors.” She glanced at Dr Unity. “But it
does allow us to cancel the mission if we release it prematurely or in error.”

She glanced at the
missile on the launch pad. “Or have a change of mind.”

“Or change of
heart,” said Minerva.

“Change of heart?”
said Dr Unity. “Need we listen to her syrupy drivel? We don’t have time, I
think. And in any case you shouldn’t tell them so much.”

This had the
imperative ring of an order to it, and Big Mama turned slowly to look at her.
“I beg your pardon?”

“With respect, Big
Mama,” said Dr Unity, her voice now pitched to false piety.

Big Mama turned
back to Rupert and Minerva. “But you must understand, we have been driven to
this extremity. I was praying that I wouldn’t be forced to act before I knew if
I was to bear a boy. But thanks to you, and those like you, it is now or never.
I’m afraid Dr Unity is right. The final hour has arrived. I must unleash
Herod.”

Minerva suddenly
spoke up again. “We’ve done a foetal scan,” she said, “and it is a boy.” The
room fell silent. Rupert held his breath. She had surely pushed it too far.

“What did you
say?” enquired Big Mama in a soft voice that suggested to Rupert a world of
potential menace. But Minerva was unperturbed.

She said, “We have
surveillance equipment that uses T-rays. Teraherz radiation. It can be employed
to see inside solids. It was originally designed to detect if someone was
carrying a gun under their clothing. But it’s come a long way since then. We
can scan someone from across the street with equipment in a parked car. And,
without them knowing it, we can read images inside their body.”

Minerva’s voice
was soft, rational, seductive and utterly convincing. But Dr Unity shrieked
with laughter. “She’s lying. It’s nonsense. They don’t have the technology.
It’s impossible.”

Minerva looked at
her calmly. “It’s very possible and we did it.”

“Really?” Dr Unity
sniggered. “From a car parked across the street? What street? Where? When?”

Minerva said,
“Just across the street from the house in University Road, in Tarbulus in
northern Libya. You flew there when you returned from the USS Salem, before
travelling on to Europe and the States.” Judging by the expressions worn by Big
Mama and Dr Unity, this was startlingly accurate information. “While you were
there you liked to walk in the afternoon to the little parks on Al Jamhuriyah
Street and 1st September Street. It was cool there under the trees. Remember?”

“I still don’t
believe you,” spat Dr Unity. “If you knew where we were, why didn’t you simply
come and take us?”

Minerva shrugged.
“We tried but we couldn’t mount an operation in time. Libya is a difficult
location for us. The best we could manage before you moved on was some
surveillance.”

“With the
‘T-rays’,” snarled Unity.

“That’s right.”

Big Mama was
staring fixedly at Minerva. “My child will be a son?”

“She’s lying,”
said Unity. “Don’t listen to her!”

“Wait,” said Big
Mama. For the first time she seemed uncertain. With a savage thrill of victory,
Rupert realised that they might talk her out of launching the missile. She
wanted to be talked out of it. “This changes everything. We must think very
carefully.”

Dr Unity was
staring at her, aghast. “You stupid woman,” she said. She lifted her Mossberg
and shot Big Mama point blank in the face. The sound of the gun shook the room.
Dr Unity stepped back in distaste at the spray of blood that reached the
sleeves of her tunic.

The teenage girl
gasped and threw herself down before the sofa where the dead body of Big Mama
sat. Unbelievably, in that instant, the source of charisma had been switched
off in the room, like someone smashing a searchlight that had been shining in
their faces. Rupert blinked and shook off the last remnants of the strange warm
control the woman had been exerting over him. It was like being doused with
cold water.

The girl knelt
beside Big Mama’s body. “Big Mama is dead,” she whispered in disbelief. Rupert
almost felt sorry for the girl. For her, the light that had been extinguished
must have been a thousand times brighter. She began to sob.

The other three
shock troops all moved back from the corpse on the sofa, withdrawing as if from
a source of contagion. As they backed away towards the rear wall, Rupert and
Minerva moved with them. Rupert was keenly aware of the stone carvings
displayed in niches in the wall, small, heavy and easy to grasp, any one of
which might prove a useful weapon. He wondered if Minerva was thinking the same
thing.

Rupert’s gaze
moved to Dr Unity, who was looking with approval at the shotgun in her hands,
as if marvelling at the effectiveness of such a tool. She’d finally shut Big
Mama up.

Rupert felt his
body tense. The killing had started and anything could happen now. Somebody had
unleashed the tiger in the room.

He and Minerva
looked at each other.

But Dr Unity’s
first action was to go to the control console and touch the launch screen for
the missile. The whole screen pulsed a bright and, to Rupert, somewhat
apocalyptic red. Dr Unity sighed with relief. “I feel better now that’s done.”

She turned back to
the room, to find that the teenage girl was pointing her shotgun at her.

“Put that down
please Emily,” she said.

Emily screamed and
fired. The blast knocked Dr Unity to the floor. “No,” said one of the other
women. She raised her shotgun and Emily spun around. They both fired at the
same time, and both hit their targets. Emily and the woman were now down, which
only left two soldiers remaining, and Rupert and Minerva were dealing with
them.

Minerva had
grabbed a soapstone bear from a niche in the wall and smashed it onto the head
of the woman nearest her. It hit the woman’s skull with a terrible terminal
sound like two stones connecting.

The one remaining
soldier finally realised what was happening and turned towards Rupert, who was
trying to wrench another stone bear from its alcove in the wall. Unfortunately
he had chosen a carving which for some reason was glued, screwed or otherwise
fastened very firmly into place. It wouldn’t come loose and the woman was
raising her shotgun at him, taking aim —

Rupert gave up on
the stone bear, kicked the shotgun out of the woman’s hands, moved in close for
another kick, to the solar plexus, and tried to deliver a final kick to the
face as the woman went down. But the woman wriggled and dodged, drawing a
handgun and pointing it at Rupert.

Another shotgun
went off and the woman was smashed flat by the blast. Minerva dropped the
shotgun and said, “The missile—” They moved to the window and stared at the
ICBM which was still sitting on its launch pad. Rupert and Minerva grabbed as
many grenades from the fallen troops as they could carry.

The quickest way
onto the launch pad was through the window and straight down. So they crouched
behind the sofa and covered their ears while they blew out the window with a
grenade. They jumped down to the concrete launch pad, planning to use the
grenades to somehow sabotage the launch.

But it was too
late.

The missile now
went off, rising from the earth at the same time as its service towers
descended into the concrete, as if in some gargantuan and baleful museum
exhibit demonstrating relative motion.

The flame the
missile climbed on was so bright it hurt Rupert’s eyes. He heard an explosion
to his left and turned to see that Minerva had blown a hole in the wire fence
that separated the launch pad from the runway. She was now moving through the
hole, running for her plane. He ran after her.

“I’m coming with
you!” he bellowed.

Minerva didn’t
look back. She shouted. “No. Stop them.” Them? thought Rupert. He turned to see
a large armed delegation arriving down the access road in military vehicles.
The authorities so frequently forecast by the quisling Joe Burnsley had finally
arrived. Rupert wondered for a second what precisely Minerva had meant when she
had asked him to stop them.

He found out when
a National Guardsman came loping towards him, carrying a rocket launcher. He
grinned at Rupert as he kneeled down and enthusiastically commenced arming the
weapon. “There’s one of those crazy bitches over there,” he said. “You see?” He
indicated Minerva. “Running over there, heading for one of those jets. I’m
going to stop her. She thinks she’s going to steal one and fly out of here. But
I’m going to nail her good. Crazy bitch.”

Rupert loomed over
the man.

“Put that weapon
down. The ‘crazy bitches’ you refer to are all dead. Do you hear me? You got
here too late, soldier. The battle is over. You will stand down.”

“What are you,
English? Can’t you see she’s trying to steal one of those planes? I’m not
letting her get away with it.”

“You are aiming
that weapon at Minerva Caine, a member of your Central Intelligence Agency and
a marine pilot. She is taking that interceptor after the missile you just saw
launched. You did see it launch, didn’t you?”

“She’s in the
plane now. You’re right. She’s taking the interceptor. I’m going to nail her
ass.” Rupert realised that the guardsman just wasn’t listening to him, or at
best listening to him very selectively.

He persisted in
aiming the weapon as Minerva took off, so Rupert was obliged to break the man’s
jaw and take the rocket launcher away from him.

However, while he
was occupied doing this, a young, frightened looking soldier arrived clutching
a rifle. He spun around at the sound of Minerva’s jet climbing into the air and
took aim at it. Before Rupert could stop him he’d emptied a magazine into the
underside of the F106.

Rupert disarmed
the rookie, who actually looked relieved to have someone unburden him of his
weapon. He resisted the temptation to smash the kid’s head in. They both stared
up at Minerva’s interceptor, still climbing. Rupert estimated the bullets would
have gone into the belly of the plane and the underside of the wing. There was
no telling what damage they might have done.

The jet climbed
steadily, chasing the atmospheric trail, already fading fast, of the missile.

*

Marcus arrived
with a CIA delegation, which was just as well because otherwise Rupert might
have been in trouble due to breaking the jaw of the cretin with the rocket
launcher. As it was, once the CIA heard about the man’s enthusiastic but
abortive attempt to shoot down Minerva, they sent him to hospital under guard.

Marcus and the CIA
people had a white van with black windows full of communications gear. Rupert
waited outside while they established radio contact with Minerva. He stared up
into the sky; a white infinity of cloud, but nothing had been visible for some
minutes now. At last Marcus looked out of the van and invited Rupert inside.

They handed Rupert
a headset and then Marcus got out of the van, and so did everyone else.

Rupert felt a cold
chill of foreknowledge. No, he thought.

“Minerva?”

“Rupert. I asked
them to let me speak to you alone. Just for a minute. I’ve only got a minute.”

“You’re all
right?”

“Okay, look, the
good news is I’m closing in on the missile fast.“

“Minerva. What’s
wrong?”

“The bad news is
the damage I sustained from that episode of friendly fire.”

A cold hand closed
on Rupert’s heart.

Minerva said,
“Basically what it means is that I can’t activate my weapons system. I can’t
fire the tactical mini-nuke, which we need to destroy the missile. But there is
still one card we can play. I can get the interceptor within range of the
missile and then detonate the mini-nuke by blowing the plane.”

“Blowing it?” said
Rupert.

“There’s a self
destruct mechanism fitted to the interceptor, to stop it falling into enemy
hands.”

“I understand.”

“And I can trigger
it by punching out.”

“By ejecting.”

“Correct,” said
Minerva.

Rupert felt the
first faint sprouting of hope, that hardy weed. “So you’ll eject from the plane
before it reaches the target.”

Minerva heard the
hope in his voice and crushed it by saying, “Rupert. There’s a problem. It’s the
kill-radius of the mini nukes.”

“What do you
mean?”

Minerva sighed.
“The inexorable laws of physics. I mean that if I get the plane near enough to
the missile to guarantee destroying it, there’s no way I can escape the radius
of the detonation.”

“Oh no. That can’t
be right.”

“The kill-radius
is three miles. And after I punch out I will be, at best, a mile and half away
when it goes off. It’s just math, Rupert. It’s nothing personal.”

“Nothing
personal.”

“I’m just not
going to make it. So I wanted to say goodbye.”

“Wait,” said
Rupert fiercely. “Minerva, what Big Mama said about a recall code. You
remember? To bring the missile down.”

“We’re on it. The
Agency has got supercomputers transmitting every possible combination. But
they’re not going to crack it in time. It’s the math again. We’re just out of
time. I have to go now and do it.”

“No!” said Rupert.
He remembered the expression on Dr Unity’s face. The flash of pure hatred.

“Ten seconds to
intercept. I’ve got to go Rupert. I—”

“No,” said Rupert.
“Try this. Get them to send Solomon.”

At the other end
there was an empty, haunted silence. Certain she had already signed off, Rupert
said desperately, “Minerva.”

“Yes.”

“Did you hear me?”

“Yes we’re trying
it now.”

Chapter Nineteen: Cape Flattery

The boat moved
through the rain. It was the Adrienne Henry out of Port Angeles and it slipped
and slid on the grey waves. A storm was promised but for now it was just
endless rain and fog. Emerging from the smudged grey nothingness, the stone
tower of the Fuca Pillar loomed over them like a watchful giant.

As they rounded
Cape Flattery, Rupert and Minerva stood on the prow of the boat with the spray
in their faces. Eventually they reached the point where the ship’s GPS agreed
with the coordinates given by the flight computers. For the next three hours
they froze their asses off, as Minerva later idiomatically and accurately put
it. But at last they saw it winched out of the deep.

The ICBM from Bear
Claw, which had dropped like a stone from the sky when it received the recall
code. The missile was in one piece and, most crucially, the Conquistador was
still attached to it and intact. The entire crew of the boat gave a sigh of
relief as they watched it emerge from the water.

The Conquistador
consisted of a series of cylinders set into a broad rectangular belt. It would
have looked like a jumbo set of panpipes if not for the four stubby triangular
arms which projected from it, one at each corner. It appeared none the worse
for wear after its excursion in the high atmosphere.

Rupert turned and
beamed at Minerva. “It didn’t fall apart,” he said. “That’s British workmanship
for you.”

“But wasn’t
it supposed to fall apart?” said Minerva. “I mean, wasn’t that the whole point
of it? To open up and spill out its contents?”

“Only under the
proper circumstances.”

They watched as
the ICBM was winched on board, intact and with its viral payload still safe
inside. The specialists from the CDC began to dismantle the Conquistador in an
airtight tent set up on the deck of the Adrienne Henry.

At length the boat
set off back past the stone pillar of Cape Flattery, to the harbour in Port
Angeles where the sea birds were wheeling over the docks and there was a smell
in the air of fish, fresh coffee and diesel.

Minerva travelled
with the CDC team back to Atlanta, where it was duly confirmed that the
organism loaded into the Conquistador really was the Herod virus.

Rupert flew to New
York and checked into the Chambers Hotel on West 56th Street, where Marcus had
left a package for him including a cloned simcard from his old phone. He went
up to his room and loaded the simcard into a newly purchased Nokia. As the
phone came to life he discovered he had twenty-nine missed calls, but only one
message.

The message was
from Braidy. “Hello Mr Floppy. Just got back to London and discovered I’ve
still got your overnight bag with my luggage. I’ll leave it for you at the
office. Sorry about that. You probably could have done with a change of
clothes, particularly a change of underpants, after that military exercise on
the farm. I understand they were using real weapons with live ammunition and we
all know how you feel about real weapons and live ammunition. See you on
Monday. Bright and early.”

Rupert deleted the
message. He had no sooner done so than the phone began to ring. Connubia. It
was as if she had supernaturally sensed that he was once again accessible. He
sighed and answered. “Is Minerva there?” said Connubia.

“No.”

“Oh that is a
shame. I’ve been trying to reach her. I wanted to congratulate her. She did a
magnificent job, simply magnificent. The General and Marcus — all of us think
she did a magnificent job, too. Be sure to tell her that.”

“I will,” said
Rupert dryly.

“And wasn’t it
remarkable?” said Connubia.

“What?”

“It’s enough to
make you believe in fate.”

“What is?”

“The fact that the
CIA supercomputers managed to crack the recall code just seconds before Minerva
would have been forced to launch a suicide attack on the missile.”

“The CIA
supercomputers?”

“As I said, it
makes you believe in fate. A split second either way and the destiny of the
world hanging in the balance. Honestly it made a cold chill run down my spine.
When I heard about it. A cold chill. Bruno barked. He sensed my mood. It’s
enough to make you believe in a profound purpose and order to life. As I said,
a miracle.”

“What the hell are
you talking about?” demanded Rupert.

“The way the CIA
computers came up with the name Solomon. At the last possible instant they
cracked the code and saved the day. Not that that detracts in the slightest
from the extraordinary bravery of Minerva. That girl was ready to sacrifice her
life! What guts. You could take a leaf from her book Rupert. I swear, there
were tears in the General’s eyes when he heard about what happened. What almost
happened. What courage! She really is quite a girl.”

“Look,
Connubia, the CIA computers didn’t come up with Solomon. I came up with
Solomon.”

“What are you
blathering about?”

“They didn’t crack
the code. I cracked the code!”

“Oh Rupert don’t
try and take the credit for what the CIA supercomputers achieved. That really
is pathetic. It’s a new low even for you.”

“Now look here.”

“By the way,
Alzbeta’s on the mend. In fact, she’s in the pink. I thought you’d like an
update on her.”

Rupert fell
silent, resigning himself to Connubia forever promulgating this distorted view
of events. What the hell did it matter? He knew what had happened. And so did
Minerva and Marcus and everyone else who had been there that day.

And besides, he
wanted to hear about Alzbeta. “How is she?” he said.

Connubia waxed
rhapsodic. “Absolutely tip-top. And it’s not just because of the top-flight
medical care she’s been receiving. There is, after all, only so much medical
science can do. It can heal the outer person, but not the inner person, so to
speak. But now Alzbeta has found the means to heal her inner person and as a
result she’s in tip-top shape.”

Rupert didn’t like
the way this was tending. “What do you mean?” he said. “What do you mean, inner
person?”

“Well I was being
euphemistic, frankly. Do you remember the cyclist?”

“The cyclist? You
mean —“

“Yes, the bloke
you clobbered outside the estate agents. Poor chap. Well anyway, Alzbeta was
walking through Putney the other day and apparently he was cycling by and he
saw her and stopped. This is just so romantic! He stopped because he thought he
recognised Alzbeta from somewhere, but he just didn’t know where. So he stopped
and struck up a conversation with her, just chatted her up in the high street.
Just like that. That’s what real men do, you see, Rupert. That’s how they
behave. And from there it just blossomed.”

“Blossomed?” said
Rupert. He was feeling mildly nauseated but he couldn’t stop himself from
asking the question. “What do you mean?”

“Their romance. He
couldn’t remember where he’d met her and she just played dumb and soon it
didn’t matter. Their romance was under way. He still doesn’t know where he
first saw her, which was with you. But he mustn’t know that. He doesn’t
associate her with you, thank god, the madman who savagely attacked him in the
high street and beat him within an inch of his life in an unprovoked assault.”

“It wasn’t like
that,” said Rupert, “and you know it wasn’t.”

“Anyway, to cut a
long story short he chatted her up and they hit it off and now they’re an item.
I thought you’d want to know. Very much an item. But listen Rupert, there is
one thing. He’s got this thing about dogs. Some might say it amounts to a
full-blown phobia, of dogs. So for god’s sake don’t let him know about Bruno.
When you get back, I mean. He mustn’t know about the dog. He mustn’t know he
belongs to Alzbeta. Don’t you Bruno, there’s a good boy, she’s your mummy,
isn’t she, but I’m your surrogate mummy, aren’t I? Good boy. Good Bruno.”
Rupert could hear the dog slobbering in the background.

He hung up.

*

Minerva flew into
New York from Atlanta and joined Rupert at the hotel. They had arranged to
spend the weekend together before they went their separate ways, Rupert back to
London and Minerva back to Langley for reassignment.

On their last night
together, as they lay in bed, Rupert said, “I have to ask.”

He felt Minerva’s
body tense against his. “Ask what?”

“If you were
bluffing. When you told Big Mama that you knew her child was male.” Minerva
rolled over and looked at Rupert. He said, “You were very convincing.”

“Was I?” She
smiled at him. “Well, I was lying through my teeth. We managed to get some
photographs of her when she was in Libya. That’s why I knew about the address
and the local colour and so on. But the rest was total fabrication.”

“All that stuff
about seeing into her body with T-Rays?”

“Complete hokum.”

“You mendacious
minx.” Rupert produced a Tiffany’s bag from under the pillow and handed it to
Minerva. She stared at it for a long moment. It was the kind of small bag which
might very plausibly contain an expensive item of jewellery.

Minerva looked at
it with a degree of trepidation. “What’s this?” she said.

“A present.” He
smiled at her. “Don’t worry, it’s not a ring.”

“Oh hell, now I’m
disappointed.” She opened the bag and took out a white box tied with a red silk
ribbon. Minerva shook the box, listening to it. “I’m trying to calculate how
many carats.” She untied the ribbon and opened the box. Inside were layers of
deep blue wrapping paper. She rustled this aside and revealed a much-folded
piece of fabric. Minerva held it up, shaking it open to reveal a shopping bag
made of beige twill with indigo lettering.

She gave a little
cry of delight as she read the words printed on it.

I’m not a smug
twat.

She looked at the
bag, then looked at him, her eyes bright with tears.

“Oh Rupert,” she
said.

The End