Exit Alpha (42 page)

They reached a hotel with an air of refined decay and escorted him to a room. It had a spa-bath, hot rail and could have been on 56th in New York.

They gave him an hour to fix himself up. He emerged a clean shaved shadow of his former self and the heavies outside his door escorted him to another suite.

‘So,’ Frost handed him coffee, ‘we have the pope. Now we’re interested in Stern, the sisters, Nina.’

He took the cup, hand shaking, eyes gritty with tiredness. ‘So you knew about Stern and John?’

‘We do now.’ Wilson tamped his bowl-blackened pipe. ‘You two-timers.’

‘I just worked there.’

‘So who’s still alive at Alpha?’

Frost said, ‘We need to know what’s happened, Ray. Then you can sleep.’

Sleep deprivation was one of the most insidious tortures known. He had no reason to put himself through that, no reason to deceive. So he told them what he knew, which became an outline of the destruction of EXIT, and the two attentive faces became grim. He expected they were recording him but it hardly mattered now.

It took two hours. At the end of it, the part of him still awake was tripping on caffeine.

Frost cleaned his half-frames. ‘A great pity about Nina.’

‘But Stern’s the money-shot for us,’ Wilson said. ‘Think carefully. Is there a chance he could be alive?’

‘Pretty slim.’ His eyes kept shutting. ‘Look, I’m a threatened species, I’m whacked and I’ve told you all I know. Now can you guys give me a head start? Or some kind of steer on all this?’

‘We’re not authorised to assist EXIT personnel. I need hardly tell you that.’ Wilson’s pipe had gone out a fourth time. He probed it with a match. ‘But, if it’s any joy, we’re flying back via Santiago. I can stretch a point and drop you off. Let you catch a commercial flight from there.’

‘Appreciate that.’

‘As for advice,’ Wilson sucked his teeth, ‘you’re now Vanqua’s favourite target. But if you’re still alive in a month, you can kiss his arse goodbye.’

‘How come?’

The man deliberated how to put it. The lines of his frown seemed to draw the sides of his skull together while his ears appeared ready to take wing. ‘Let’s just say he’s had his run — but he doesn’t know it yet.’

C
ain didn’t understand it. Nothing happened. Nothing at all. His credit cards and fake passports were still accepted everywhere. Santiago airport appeared free of surgeons. He was back in the world of posturing businessmen, agitated mothers, sullen shoppers, mortality-conscious suburbanites and the triumph of TV over tradition.

He flew Easter Island, Tahiti, Auckland, then switched airlines for the Sydney leg. He went first class, craving comfort and faked consideration — much as the hopeless or rejected would gamble, overeat or drink. He sat beside a concert pianist and, on the last leg, the Malaysian foreign minister. He didn’t fraternise and comforted himself by studying John’s book.

‘Aquinas said that, at the deepest level, all things fade into mystery. At a certain level, life brings a wave that communicates joy — to be absorbed then radiated. When you feel that, have that, you are living in supernature — God. It means you deeply existentially are. But how to be? There’s no approach because concepts kill it. It’s organic — to do with energy-flow — an am-ness defying analysis.’

He chose Sydney rather than Lahore because the politics of a country that had spent half its years under military rule never ceased to depress him. He went to the shack at Bundanoon because wherever he went, they’d find him. And because in a box under its floorboards were weapons he’d need.

The big block of natural bush was unchanged but there was mould on the front verandah. He got the keys back from the neighbour on the other side of the hill and thanked him for watching the place. He switched on power and water. The dusty, musty rooms were as he’d left them.

He selected weapons, cleaned and loaded them. They wouldn’t kill him — until they had their information. That gave him an edge. He waited. And he read.

‘. . . and the Holy Ghost is always being sent. The greatest force in the world and we simply don’t feel it, receive it. It’s we who cut ourselves off — deprive ourselves of the Good.’

He remembered something John had said on the plateau days ago. ‘The horizontal — life. The vertical — eternity.’ He’d slowly made the sign of the cross. ‘Our place is where they meet. Don’t forget. We need to live both in time and in the space, expansion of the present. The denying force is as real as the affirming.’

‘But if God’s everything . . .’

‘Yes.’ The pope had joined his hands. ‘In the expansion of manifestation, God becomes the devil. That means his force becomes increasingly automatic. But we’re offered choice. To either drift . . . or fight back against the stream like salmon.’

‘Fight God to rejoin God? Jacob’s ladder?’

‘If you wish.’

They came at four on a grey afternoon. None of his detectors went off. He wondered later if they’d monitored him on MDR. The transmitter could detect people through doors, concrete and brick walls.

He’d been in the shed, getting the ladder to clean leaves out of the guttering. Then he saw, through the cobwebbed window, the wrong end of a grenade launcher.

He ducked, turned. Silhouetted in the open garage door, a man holding a contraption with four splayed barrels capped by pods.

Before he could react, he was covered by the sticky net and disabled by the high-voltage pulse.

He hit the concrete, yelling with pain.

‘Foam gun’s better,’ the man remarked, ‘except the crud takes hours to remove.’

‘Baby oil,’ someone else said. ‘Comes off with baby oil.’

‘Non-lethals. Pain in the arse,’ a third man said. ‘Fucking rubber-pellet grenades. I signed on to kill. Not frig around.’

Cain remembered them stripping off his shirt.

‘Fuck. Look at that. Get it off him.’

They took the breast-cannon and the underarm reverse-holstered pistols from him.

They stripped him to his underpants and taped him to a kitchen chair, then he was lifted like a parcel and put in the living room. They’d taped black plastic over the windows until the place was cellar-dark, then shone a lamp in his eyes.

‘Now,’ the big one said, ‘we wait.’

Cain tried to see beyond the light. Four shapes. The biggest, bearded with curly hair, hulking body movement, pinned back ears.

‘Know me?’ the man asked. ‘I’ll clue you. I’ve had a bit of a make-over.’

‘Murchison?’

‘Got it in one.’ He chuckled. ‘We stuffed you lot good.’

A car bouncing up the potholed drive.

The men fell back as a fifth man entered the room. Vanqua’s smooth face within the circle of the light — flushed with rage. ‘Your turn, Cain.’

‘So it seems.’

‘Files have been doctored. Identities substituted. And funding for your absent department continues.’

‘Encouraging news.’

‘I’ve been sold a pup and don’t like it. And you’re going to tell me what you know.’

‘Nothing.’

‘We’ll see. You were close to Rhonda. Talk, or we remove parts of you — slowly.’

‘It was need-to-know with her. She left me out of the loop — never said anything vital. Now I see why.’

‘Not good enough. But if it’s true, you’re going to wish she had.’

Murchison added, ‘You’re not our friend, Ray.’ He unfurled a pouch on the floor beside Cain’s chair. The tools in it were surgical steel. But antisepsis and anaesthetic were not part of the coming procedure. He selected a pair of serrated pliers with inturned, precision-ground tips. It seemed that his nails were to be withdrawn before his fingers were crushed. The cutters in the pouch implied that it went on from there.

‘Well?’ Vanqua said. ‘Where will we start first?’

His gut turned over. He knew it was the end, either way. He hadn’t been issued with one of Rhonda’s cyanide capsules or the easier to hide sheathed curare-coated needles. He felt he might disgrace himself. He said, ‘I don’t know a thing.’

The sound of a chopper, a big one, coming fast. Murchison shot a look at Vanqua. ‘Us?’

‘No.’

Startled looks.

An act? An elaborate deception for his benefit? Otherwise, why cover the windows?

Vanqua said, ‘Get out there.’

Murchison and the others dashed outside.

The thing hovering now. It sounded huge — a heavy lifter.

Cain said, ‘Is this to impress me?’

The listening Vanqua didn’t respond.

‘Why the hell did you wreck EXIT, you small-minded, dopey shit?’

Vanqua struck him hard across the face.

Automatic fire.

The surgeon pulled out a Browning high power, hurried from the room.

Cain sat — alone, cold, frightened, puzzled — licking blood from his split lip.

The slapping, whining monster went away.

Sporadic firing.

Then nothing.

He sat.

And sat.

At last, the verandah creaked.

Men burst into the room from both doors, ripped the plastic off the windows, switched off the lamp. They wore black body armour, face masks and sprouted MP5s.

Then Rhonda walked in, holding Vanqua’s Browning. Creased dress, dirty nails, straggly hair. She turned to the shock troops. ‘Untie him.’

One unsheathed a knife and cut the tapes.

‘Ron?’

Was it her — or a magnificent duplicate? Had they staged this to get him to talk?

She said, ‘Thank God you’re still with us. You know the drill.’

Christ. She wanted him to
verify
? He’d bloody make this good.

She waited, scratched under her breast.

He dragged his wits together. ‘Okay. Who said, “Except at Wydecombe Fair in my youth I never saw anything so bad as
Pinafore
”?’

‘Disraeli. Proving that the cleverest of men can be utterly wrong.’

The answer astonished him. No duplicate could have known that. But he wasn’t quite convinced. He stumbled closer to her, stared. My God, she was the image. He dredged his mind for the most obscure G and S anecdote she’d told him. ‘Sullivan said to someone, “Another week’s rehearsing with WSG and I should have gone raving mad. I had already ordered . . .” Complete the sentence.’

‘”. . . some straw for my hair.” Yes, it’s me.’

‘Ronnie? Christ.’ He hugged her, felt her big arms enfold him. ‘What . . . ?’

‘Long story, dear heart.’ She pushed him gently back and handed him the pistol. ‘For political reasons, as you’re the only good guy around with a Blue Card, I need you to do unto others. They’re outside.’

He followed her onto the verandah. Three surgeons were flat on the drive, flies already crawling on their faces. There were three more alive, huddled on the ground — Vanqua, Murchison and a third man.

Murchison cradled a shattered arm. Blood trickled between his fingers. Vanqua looked unharmed but stunned. The third man rocked with pain, hugging his shredded thigh and knee.

Cain stood in his underpants, blood running down his chin, the classic double-action pistol a familiar tool in his hand. He looked back inquiringly at Rhonda.

She nodded. ‘The three, if you don’t mind.’

He cocked the hammer and walked two paces from the group, aimed at the surgeon he didn’t know, put a single 9mm round through his brain. Flecks splattered Murchison’s shoulder.

As the man toppled he turned the gun on Murchison. ‘For Rehana.’ He shot him in the balls. As Murchison sagged forward, grabbing his crotch, Cain plugged him in the top of the head.

Vanqua, next in line, raised his hand in front of the gun, called to Rhonda, ‘How did you do this?’

‘If we can duplicate world leaders, why not department heads? We had your measure long before you knew.’

‘That woman was a duplicate?’

‘A brave one. She bought me time. Now certain governments have seen reason and I’ve blackmailed people, pulled strings. Department D never shut down. You only thought it had.’

He stared at the slit-eyed troopers. ‘And where did you scrape up this circus?’

‘CIA contra deal.’

‘So much for edicts. What did you give them?’

‘Stern.’

‘You sick deviate. You destroyed the human race — for this?’

‘Is your arse cleaner? What about
your
motive?’

‘You still don’t know?’ His look of hatred. ‘My sister. You corrupted her.’

Rhonda’s eyes slowly widened.

Cain didn’t understand.

A terrible sorrow contorted the surgeon’s face. His voice when it came was agonised. ‘See it now?’

‘You’re . . . Etta’s
brother
?’

‘You pervert. I damn . . . you . . . to . . .
Hell
.’

Rhonda’s face crumpled and she half turned away. ‘My God.’