Third World War (39 page)

Newman was on her feet as well. 'Sure. I'll slip on a tracksuit or something.'

'You got anywhere I can call Caro?' said Brock, picking up his briefcase from the floor.

'Follow me down the corridor and turn off to the left just before the glass door to my room,' said Newman. 'They've got better stuff there than we've got at State.' She began leading the way. 'There's a number to call if you don't know how it works. But I'm sure you'll be fine.'

Newman went through the frosted-glass doors to her suite and heard the automatic lock click into place. She washed her face in the bathroom and fiddled with her make-up. Half of her wanted to throw on a tracksuit, like she had said. The other half wanted to dress up because of the beautiful tranquillity of the place they were in. She examined her scant options hanging, suitcase-creased, in the wardrobe. Deep down, the adolescent in her wanted her to be attractive to Brock, so he could pass it on to Jim West. That was why she was dithering, because, here in this strange, unfamiliar place, she was making the personal stakes so high. But eventually she ended up with her white tracksuit, a new pair of trainers, but with light mascara and lipstick and the same perfume she had used for the dinner at Camp David.

Through the frosted glass, a light flickered as another artillery shell smashed into the ground miles away and shook the building. A light went off, making the corridor dimmer. She slid open the balcony door and stepped out into the ice-cold evening air. A click behind her made her jump. Above, the gas heater automatically flared up. She felt the warmth immediately, but a chill wind blew up from the rice paddies. She shivered and wrapped her arms round herself. She waited a few seconds in case she could see the flash of the artillery gun. Back inside, she heard another click, like a door opening, and a spit of rain hit her on the face. She stepped back and closed the door as the spit became a downpour, loudly assaulting the windows.

She checked herself in the long wardrobe mirror, rearranging strands of hair thrown out by the sudden change of weather. The glow of the heater on the balcony dimmed and quickly faded, leaving the place in darkness. She looked for the switch to an outside light, couldn't find one and gave up. Just as she was heading out, she had a craving to make a phone call, to a son, daughter, or husband, and say: 'Hi, I'm in this incredible place in the middle of nowhere in South Korea. You wouldn't believe it. You should be here with me--'

Dismissing these difficult thoughts, she unlocked the door with the remote and it slid open. Indeed, one lamp had gone, somewhere. The corridor was lit from the living room.*

*****

'Pete, you finished with Caro?'she asked gently, a few feet away from the door of the office suite. She couldn't hear him speaking. The door was open, but no sound came from the room.

'Pete,' she called out loudly. 'You there?'

There was no answer from the living room, either. A shadow passed a table lamp. Newman moved forward and looked into the office. Her hand went to her mouth. No scream, just an empty dryness thrown up before her brain could even take in what she saw.

Brock's body was slumped forward on the desk, blood streaming from the back of his neck, running down the curls of the telephone cord and dripping on to the floor.

She turned round, saw the shadow again, her hands fumbling for the remote to open the door and get back into her room. She heard a dull thud as a round from a silenced pistol splintered wood in the door frame above her head. The door was open, and Newman ran, hurling herself down, hitting the floor, pressing the remote again to get it closed, and crawling away as two more shots smashed into the room, one exploding into the television set, the second splattering out plaster above the bed.

In the tiny gap before the door closed she saw the killer, thin lips pursed in concentration, wearing a black poncho-style raincoat, exactly matching the darkness outside, water dripping on to the floor.

He fired again.

His shape, darkening the corridor, now appeared blurred coming closer and closer. He fired twice more. But each time the bulletproof glass blocked the shot. Keeping on the floor, she edged herself towards the telephone by the bed. Another round. She glanced up towards the balcony door. That would be bulletproofed as well. Newman's VIP survival training with the secret service told her that if she stayed put, help would be with her within seconds - well, minutes at least. She was the goddamn US Secretary of State. Where were the two secret service guys assigned to her? Where were the Korean bodyguards? Where the hell was everybody? She picked up the phone. The line was dead. She crawled to the wardrobe and found her mobile in the briefcase. He was right up close to the glass, his head against it, peering in. She heard the scraping of metal on glass as he ran the end of the silencer down the pane. He tested the door latch and his hand dropped away.

Newman keyed in her mobile's pin number. It bleeped and she saw the distorted shape of his head jerk up, alerted. The battery was half gone. The signal only showed two bands. She flipped down her phone book and pressed the White House. She had a code, given to her by the secret service. They had made her put the number in her mobile.

He stepped back from the door. Without rushing, he bent down and picked up another weapon. Newman pressed 'call'. He unscrewed the silencer and switched it to the new weapon. The phone did nothing, except emit a whining tone of disconnection. His movements were confident and deliberate, as if he knew no one was coming and that whatever he did, however long he took, he would be safe.

He aimed the first shot at the pane of glass closest to the latch. A crack appeared. A second followed, then a third, each one of the more powerful rounds weakening the bulletproofing. Newman turned her head left and right, looking where to go. She had no choice. She opened the balcony door with the remote. Above her head came the whoosh of the gas heater lighting up. A squall of rain swept on to her. Below her was soft rain-dampened grass and rice paddies. She would jump and run, if she got through without a sprained ankle. Run and scream. That was her plan - as simple as they come.

The central half of the balcony was taken up with the sliding glass door. On either side was brick wall. Newman rolled behind this, stood up, went to clasp the rail to jump and stopped dead. A huge transparent perspex shield covered the open space of the balcony, with only tiny slats for ventilation. Like the heater, this new obstacle must have been automatic and weather-controlled. But it completely blocked her escape.

She banged on it, fury welling up in her throat. She slammed both fists into it, just as she heard the first pane of glass shatter in the bedroom door. The black-gloved hand of her attacker slid inside, turned the lock and opened it.

Against the walls on each side of her balcony prison was a row of four plants potted in earth. To her right was a heavy wrought-iron table with six chairs and under a dark-green protective cover was what looked like a barbecue with a plastic tube running to a gas cylinder on the floor. Another tube ran from a second cylinder to the heater. To the left were two sunloungers. Through the perspex, she could make out majestic angry clouds swirling under a bright moon. In the distance, near the base, was tracer from live-fire exercises. Rain smashed relentlessly against the perspex, glistening and running down and away.

He was inside the room, but still nonchalant, strangely not caring about her. He turned on a flashlight and shone it through on to the balcony. He let off three rounds in rapid succession, all on the same spot, and a fourth, which broke through, cut a tiny hole in the glass and sent a crack splaying across it. Suddenly Newman found herself caught in the harsh white beam of his flashlight. He turned it off and looked straight at her. He was standing in the middle of the bedroom. She stayed absolutely still. For a full five seconds his eyes were on her, and behind him she could see her own reflection in the wardrobe mirror, her face twisted with fear and anger, the face of a terrified little girl.

He cocked his head to one side, as if he had heard something. His were hard eyes. He squatted down, turned on the flashlight again, crouched and looked under the bed. His eyes were off her for a second, and Newman slipped out of his line of sight. Straining through the dark, she searched the remote for a button that would open the perspex balcony wall, but found none. There must be a switch. She felt along the wall, looking for one. Plants brushed her face. She ran her hands along the rough brick. Moonlight, refracted by the perspex and rain, played tricks, making it black in one place and throwing tricky light on another.

He fired. The door cracked even more. There was a ledge between the glass wall and the brick of the balcony wall. She clambered on to it and felt up the wall to a metal trellis trailing plant leaves. She tested her weight on it. The door shattered, collapsing into tiny squares like a car windscreen. He stepped through, his feet crunching on them.

For a flicker of a moment he was confused, as he tried to work out where Newman was. The silence which had been menacing was broken by another squall of rain against the perspex. From a dark edge of the wall, Newman climbed higher up the trellis and found a metal bar stretched along the roof of the balcony. He was attracted by something through the window. There was quiet again, apart from the low whine, just a few feet from her, of burning gas from the heater. With horror, she realized that he was seeing her reflection, blurred and distorted, thrown out into shadows created by the flames.

Squeezed in the corner of the balcony ceiling, she had nowhere to go. He turned towards her, no confusion about him now. She gripped the metal bar. Her hands were numb, but she managed to swing herself out, lift her feet, then swing herself back, forcing her legs up and smashing her trainers into the gas heater.

Sparks flew out, but nothing else. He raised his weapon. Newman hurled herself backwards. He fired, tearing brickwork out of the wall next to her. She flung herself forward, drawing on every reserve, feeling the heater break as she crashed into it, fire shooting out, a roar, and then curling, running flames, and his face alert, thinking, as he stepped back. She fell, the world spinning around her. Fingers of flame leapt around the balcony. He was burning, his hands up against his face. She heard herself screaming, watching as the fire reached the gas tank near the barbecue. She dragged herself, half stumbling, half crawling towards it, only knowing that she had to destroy him, plunging her hand into the heat and wrenching the tube from the cylinder, knocking it over, rolling it towards him, then hurling herself back into the bedroom, just as the balcony was engulfed in a roaring inferno of exploding gas.

She breathed in, choking on the smoke. He was ablaze, but conscious, a killing machine in his last throes. On the wall just inside her room was the switch she had been looking for. She punched it. The perspex balcony cover slid away, creating a sudden tunnel of oxygen, which threw the fire into the room.

The air was sucked from his lungs. His hand let go of the weapon, his arms flailing as he threw it away from him. Newman picked it up, not caring about the heat, running backwards to get away, then turning, holding it with both hands, keeping her finger on the trigger, feeling round after round leave the gun for his body. Her hand was burned from the metal of the gun, her hair singed and her eyes streaked with soot.

She staggered backwards, out of the bedroom, balancing on the wall and came to the office, where she saw Brock's body, just as it had been only a few minutes ago. The air was cooler. She breathed in deeply and walked unsteadily towards him. The telephone receiver was on the hook. He must have just finished speaking to Caro. He had jotted down a number on a pad. She felt his neck. He was still warm. His eyes were open, and if it wasn't for that and for the pool of blood still gathering on the floor, Peter Brock, one of her oldest friends in the world, could have just fallen asleep at his desk.

From behind, she heard the click of a weapon. She turned to face a single man, uniformed, with gun drawn. 'Freeze. Hands on your head.'

She kept her hands by her side. 'Where were you?' she whispered.

'Hands on your head. Don't move,' came the command again.

She stepped forward, her eyes on fire with anger. 'You're meant to protect us, you piece of shit,' she said, knocking the weapon away. 'Why don't you ring Caroline Brock and explain where you've been? Her mobile number's on the pad on the desk there, right next to the body of her murdered husband.'

The Secretary of State sank to her knees, put her blackened, watery face into her burned hands, and burst into tears.

****

41*

****

Delhi, India*

The dining room of the Prime Minister's official residence in Delhi was a charred shell, giving off odours of disinfectant, tar and other building chemicals. A tarpaulin stretched over the roof had become loose. Its edges flapped in the wind, and men shouted at each other from ladders, trying to secure it. It was the first breeze Delhi had had for some days, and with no rain the city had been left under a dome of pollution which stuck in Meenakshi's throat, making her lungs feel tight. She leaned her walking stick against the wall in the hallway and, keeping clear of the walls, she managed to take a few steps, stopped to absorb the pain, then moved on again towards her father's study.