The Doomsday Prophecy (22 page)

‘You’ve let me see your faces,’ Ben said. ‘You wouldn’t let me out of here alive anyway. So even if I knew where the ostraka were, which I don’t, I wouldn’t give you the pleasure.’

Slater tossed his empty chocolate wrapper into a
bin. ‘Fine. But there are quick and easy ways of dying, and there are slow and horrible ways to suffer.’

‘I’ll have to decide which one you deserve,’ Ben said.

Slater sighed. ‘My God, you’re so stubborn. OK, let me show you something else.’ He gestured again at Jones. The agent pressed another button and from inside the DVD player came the clunking, whirring sound of the disc changer. The screen was blank for a few moments, then another image came up. A close-up shot of a gaunt, wasted man in grimy fatigues. He was in a filthy cell, or a cage, clutching at the bars. There was bright light shining in his face, showing the glistening fresh wounds and bruises on his jaw and cheek, the livid swelling of his right eye.

‘What you’re seeing here is from classified CIA archives,’ Slater said. ‘You don’t need to know what this is about. Same old story. Let’s just say the guy is privy to certain information, and these other guys want to get it out of him. He’s a tough fucker, like you. He’s resisted all kinds of torture. When the camera zooms out, you can just about make out the blood on his feet where they tore out his toenails. Any time now. There.’

Ben watched the images on the screen as Slater stood up and walked around. ‘See, I’m a bureaucrat,’ Slater said. ‘I’ll admit it. I like to hear the truth from people, but I’m not a guy who’s comfortable around blood and violence – at least not at close range.’

‘It’s different when you’re just making a phone call, isn’t it?’

Slater ignored that. ‘I could have you beaten into catmeat right now,’ he said. ‘I could have them cut off
your fingers and ears, cut off your balls, fry you with electricity, dunk you in a tub, string you up by the thumbs, all that kind of shit. With your background, I’m sure you have a pretty good idea of what’s involved. But that’s more Jones’s line. Personally, I’d rather get what I want without the mess. I like things clean and clinical. If I have to have someone fucked up …’ Slater smiled. ‘Well, take a look at this guy.’

Ben was watching. As Slater talked, the prisoner onscreen was being forced down in his chair by guards in unmarked uniform. A third came into shot and stabbed a syringe in the man’s neck, pressed the plunger home and jerked the needle out with a squirt of blood.

Slater reached into his jacket pocket, took out a small amber bottle and laid it down with a clunk on the desk. Then he reached into the other pocket and brought out a small leather case. He unzipped it and laid it open on the desk beside the bottle. There was a syringe inside. ‘Know what this stuff is for?’

Ben gazed across at the bottle. ‘Yes, I do. But I thought Jones asked us not to discuss his personal condition.’

‘Oh, that’s so funny. You know what this is.’

‘I’ve heard about it.’

‘I thought you would have. The very best of its kind. Vintage stuff. Hard to get. Unfortunately, the good doctor who supplied it won’t be joining us.’ Slater gestured at the screen. ‘Now, this guy, he was like you. He absolutely insisted he didn’t know what they needed to know. Boy, he was so sure of himself. But then he talked, all right. One shot was all it took. Within an hour he was telling them everything, and then some. Remarkable. And you
know what, they didn’t even have to put a bullet in his head afterwards, because look what happened.’

Jones thumbed the remote again, three times. The image accelerated to eight times the speed, and suddenly the picture changed: new camera angle, different lighting. The same man, but he had changed too. Radically. He’d gone from being a terrified, beaten-up prisoner to being a babbling, screaming lunatic jerking on his cage bars, eyes wild, teeth bared, foaming at the mouth. He was on a different planet.

‘Total insanity,’ Slater said. ‘The same guy, just six hours later. That’s what this shit does to you. The effects are irreversible, permanent. Sometimes they kick in within an hour or so. Some of the tougher ones hold out for much longer. But they all go the same way sooner or later. Raving psychosis till the day you die. You understand what I’m saying?’

Jones smiled. He paused the image on the screen, laid down the remote and folded his arms in satisfaction.

‘I understand,’ Ben said.

‘Good. Because I want you to think about that.’

‘Thinking of giving me a cocktail?’

‘Straight, no chaser,’ Slater said. ‘But not just yet. Here’s what we’re going to do.’ He looked at his watch. ‘It’s just after nine p.m. You have till ten to think about what you’d like to tell me. Then I’m going to reunite you with your friend Bradbury, and you can watch while I have this serum pumped into her. We’ll see what she has to tell us. You can listen in. It’ll be fun. And then, when I come back here in the morning, I’m going to let you see what it did to her before it’s your
turn.’ Slater smiled. ‘I’ll be far away, sipping on a glass of Krug while you’re sitting in your cell downstairs enjoying your last hours of sanity. Soon afterwards, when you’re screaming in your cage like an animal, I’ll sign a paper turning you over to a state nuthouse where you’ll live out the rest of your miserable life, battering your head off a padded wall.’

‘Why waste the taxpayer’s money?’ Jones said. ‘We should just dump his raving ass in a backstreet somewhere.’

‘I like it,’ Slater said thoughtfully. ‘Now, enough talk. Jones, get your guys in here.’

Jones opened the door. The two men who had brought Ben up in the lift were standing out in the corridor. ‘Take this prick back down there and lock him up,’ he said. He pointed at the muscular one. ‘Boyter, you’re posted outside his door. McKenzie, you get back up here a.s.a.p.’

‘You have one hour,’ Slater said to Ben.

Boyter gripped Ben’s arm. ‘Let’s go, shithead.’

Ben stood up, shook off Boyter’s chubby hands, moved towards the door. He stopped, turned and fixed Slater in the eye. ‘Remember what I said earlier,’ he said softly. Then he was gone.

Jones watched with a smirk as Boyter and McKenzie herded the prisoner down the corridor towards the lift. He turned to Slater. The man looked a little less composed than he had a second ago.

‘Don’t worry about him,’ Jones said. ‘He’s history already.’

Slater paced while Jones smoked. Five minutes passed, then ten.

‘Relax,’ Jones said.

‘I never relax.’ Slater looked at his watch. ‘Those cigarettes reek. What’s keeping your guy McKenzie? I thought you told him to get back here a.s.a.p.’

‘He’ll be right back,’ Jones said. ‘Probably went to the bathroom.’

Slater shook his head. His jaw was tight. He ran his fingers through his hair. ‘Something’s wrong. I can feel it.’

‘You’re nuts. Hope’s locked up tighter than a fish’s asshole.’

‘If that’s so, I want to see for myself. I have a bad feeling.’

‘You and your feelings,’ Jones grunted. ‘OK, let’s go.’

‘I’m not going down there with just you alone. How many people have you got in the building?’

‘Including me, there are a dozen agents in the place. You’re not telling me –’

‘That’s exactly what I’m telling you. Leave two watching Bradbury. I want the rest with me.’

Jones protested loudly, but Slater insisted. Jones got on the radio. ‘Fiorante, join Jorgensen on the prisoner’s door. Everyone else, my office, right now.’

In two more minutes the seven agents were collected in the corridor outside. Slater cautiously stepped out into the corridor. Jones led the way, exasperation showing on his face.

‘Not the lift,’ Slater said. ‘We take the stairs.’

‘I think the guy got to you,’ Jones sneered. ‘You’re spooked.’

‘Cautious is what I am,’ Slater said. ‘And smart.’

They reached the bottom of the stairs, turned through the dingy lobby, trotted down another flight towards the basement kitchen.

‘Get your guns out,’ Slater whispered.

‘You’re nuts,’ Jones said again. ‘There’s no –’

He batted through the double doors leading to the kitchen. Then he stopped dead and his mouth hung open. ‘Oh shit.’

‘Told you,’ Slater muttered.

‘What the fuck happened here?’

Slater shot him a sideways look. ‘I think that’s pretty obvious, don’t you?’

The kitchen was littered with debris. In the middle of it, Boyter and McKenzie were lying dead, the neon striplights reflecting in the broad pool of blood inching slowly across the floor.

Slater peered down at Boyter and wondered for a moment what the strange circular object stuck to the
side of his head was. Then it hit him. He had the snapped-off stem of a wine glass buried deep in his temple. McKenzie was lying at an angle to his colleague, his face blue, tongue hanging out, a livid weal around his throat where he’d been throttled to death with a steel chain. The handcuffs lay open on the floor, next to a small key. The men’s jackets lay open, holsters empty.

Slater and Jones stared at each other. ‘Hope’s loose in the building,’ Jones breathed.

‘No shit. And you’re going to find him.’

‘We’ll find him,’ Jones said.

‘You’d better. You lost him. He stays lost, you’re dead. Understand?’

‘We’ll find him,’ Jones said again. ‘You get back up to the office.’

‘No way. I’m getting out of here. This place isn’t safe for me.’

‘It’s not safe for anyone.’

‘You’re expendable. I’m not.’ Slater stabbed his finger at the agents. ‘You, you and you. Escort me the fuck out of here.’ He started walking away, then stopped and turned. ‘And Jones?’

‘What?’

‘You take him
alive
. Clear?’

‘We’ll get him,’ Jones said.

Slater almost sprinted to the lobby, three agents close behind with drawn guns. He tore open the front door, left the building with jittery haste, and ran towards the sleek Bell chopper that was sitting in the middle of the parking lot. The pilot saw him coming, put away his
flask of coffee and fired up the motor. The prop slowly began to turn as Slater wrenched open the hatch and piled inside. Minutes later, he was a rapidly vanishing speck over the treetops.

With Slater out of the way, Jones gathered his agents around him. ‘OK, people, he’s only one man. With McKenzie and Boyter gone, that still leaves ten of us in the building.’ He picked up his radio. ‘Jorgensen, you still there?’

‘Right where you put me,’ said the voice in his ear.

‘Fiorante with you?’

‘Yes, sir.’

Jones nodded. He jerked his pistol at the men. ‘Cash, Muntz, get up to the top floor and join them. That’s where Hope’ll be headed.’ He grinned. ‘He wants to get the girl.’ He glanced quickly around him, calculating tactics. No way Hope was going to get past four people on the door. Meanwhile, two teams of three men each could scour the place and head him off. ‘Bender, Simmons, you’re with me. Kimble, Davis, Austin, take the left side of the building. Stay in contact. You see him, take him down. He’s way too dangerous to keep alive.’

‘Slater said not to kill him,’ said Austin.

‘I don’t give a shit what Slater said.’ Jones touched his tongue against his teeth, felt the ragged edges that were such a constant reminder of the man. ‘I want this fucker bodybagged in the next ten minutes. Let’s go.’

Ben almost pitied the two dead men. Whoever they were used to dealing with, they’d been too slow. They just hadn’t seen it coming.

He’d left them where they dropped; found the key in the big one’s pocket and taken both of the silenced Berettas they were packing. Both fully loaded. He nodded to himself, tucked one pistol in his right hip pocket and the other in his back pocket. Glanced quickly around the kitchen. Yanked the knife out of the old chopping board. The stainless-steel blade was serrated and still sharp. He stuck it carefully in his belt.

He’d already figured out his escape route. He strode over to a square hatch on the kitchen wall and yanked up the sliding metal door to reveal the dumb waiter. Next to the three-foot-square hole was a dusty old wall panel with three plastic buttons, two arrow-shaped, one pointing up and the other down, the middle one marked ‘STOP’ in faded writing.

He hit the up button with his palm, hoping the thing still worked after all these years. There was a dull
clunk, and the dumb waiter jerked up an inch before he hit the ‘STOP’ button.

Good enough
, he thought. The space was just about large enough to cram himself in. It stank of old grease, damp and mouse shit. He reached out from inside, felt for the ‘UP’ arrow and hit it. Felt the dumb waiter jolt under him, and the sensation of rising upwards. He withdrew his arm quickly inside as the wall came down. A glimpse of brickwork and then blackness. The dumb waiter rose up, grinding and vibrating. In the darkness he took one of the pistols and checked it again. There was no telling what he was going to meet up there.

From somewhere over his head there was a screech as though the cables were about to snap. He braced himself but nothing happened. The dumb waiter gave a judder and then stopped. He reached out and pushed gently, opening a pair of double doors three feet square. His guess had been right. He was in the hotel bar, in a little serving area behind the bar itself. He lowered himself out of the hatch, thankful to be out of the claustrophobic space, and crouched down in the dust behind the old bar.

He figured he was on the ground floor. Where would they be keeping Zoë? Upstairs in one of the rooms? It was only a guess, and a vague one, but it was all he had. At least he was close now. Only about a dozen guns in his way. He could worry about that when he started meeting them.

He snapped off the safety on the pistol and crept silently out of the barroom door, sweeping the muzzle
left and right, surveying the scene through the sights as he moved cautiously down the murky corridor. He kept in the shadows, tight against the wall, senses fully alert, the gun in front of him, drawing on the ability for complete silence and stealth that had made him legendary among his old regiment. He could hear running footsteps and voices from the lobby. They’d have broken up to hunt for him. Maybe two, three men per team, and probably at least two teams with whoever was left over allocated to guard Zoë’s room.

Up ahead, the corridor was L-shaped and opened up into a wider hallway with doors either side. One was ajar, dusty light streaming out of what must once have been a TV room.

He froze. Someone was coming the other way. Three men running. He shrank back into the shadow, the light from the open door creating enough contrast to mask him. He could have reached out and touched them as they ran by. He let them pass. Quietly snicked off the safety on the pistol.

When the third man was two yards past him he stepped out into the corridor, raised the gun and shot him in the back of the head. The man collapsed, hit the floor and squeaked along the linoleum under his own momentum. Before the other two could register what had happened, Ben fired two more shots in such quick succession that the report of the silenced gun sounded more like one prolonged muted bark than two separate shots. The men’s bodies jerked and they stumbled against each other and went down. A gun slithered across the dusty floor.

Ben gathered up their weapons. More Berettas, all the same model. He ejected the mags out of the three pistols and slipped them in his pockets. Then he stepped over to the three bodies and looked down at them.

He’d never enjoyed the cautionary head-shot. It was something that had been schooled into him a long time ago. He’d never wanted to do this again. But every military tactician since ancient times said it was the right thing to do to make sure your enemy never got up once he was down. It was slaughterhouse-brutal but it made immaculate sense.

Three head-shots at point-blank range with a high-powered handgun is a lot messier than in the movies. Shielding his face against the blood splatter, he did the job fast, stepping from one inert body to the next. The 147-grain semi-jacketed hollowpoint bullets split the men’s skulls apart and blasted brains up the wall. The corridor filled with the ripe stink of blood and death.

There’d be more of it to come. He moved on.