“So which two are they?”
The chairman waited before answering and Jonas knew that he was toying with him, enjoying the moment. “One is a Peruvian boy. His parents died in a mud-slide in his village and he ended up scavenging and begging in the streets of Lima. His name is Pedro.”
“And the other?”
“Scott Tyler.”
The words were out and Jonas felt a warm glow of satisfaction. Scott and Jamie Tyler had been responsible for the death of his mother in California, ten years ago. One or the other of them – maybe it was both – had turned the hand of an assassin and sent a bullet straight into her head. Jonas had been seventeen at the time. Of course he didn’t care about his mother – but that wasn’t the point. This boy, Scott, had been responsible for her death and that made it personal. It would give Jonas great pleasure to meet up with him. Suddenly the wine tasted sweet.
“What do you want me to do?” he asked.
“Pedro is of very little interest to us. He’s weak and he’s loyal and it’s unlikely that we’ll be able to do very much with him. Scott is a different matter. Your mother already spent a certain amount of time with him and almost managed to persuade him of our point of view. She was using drugs and various brainwashing techniques.” The chairman produced a memory stick and handed it to Jonas. “This is her report and there are video files too, which will give you a general idea of what went on. Obviously the process wasn’t completely successful as Scott and his brother were reunited and your mother is dead.
“But it’s still our belief that Scott is the weak link. He may be one of the Five but he’s not really one of them, if you know what I mean. He’s an outsider. He’s not popular. From what we know, when the others went travelling to the UK and then to Hong Kong, he got left behind. They didn’t want him. We can play on that. We can do anything, actually, but we want him on our side.”
“And then?” Jonas turned the memory stick in his fingers. It was strange that he might be seeing his mother again soon in the video files.
“We can use him to get Matthew Freeman,” the chairman replied. “That’s what this is all about. It’s like I said when we were in the conference room. Matthew Freeman did the impossible and hurt the King of the Old Ones in the Nazca Desert. For that he has to pay. There is an infinity of pain coming his way, Jonas, and it’s your job to arrange it. You finish your mother’s work and you make Scott one of ours. Scott draws Matt into a trap. And you get your reward.”
“You mean … I end up getting adjusted too?”
The chairman smiled. His skin barely moved but it was there in his eyes. “It could come to that, Jonas. Let’s face it. We’re heading towards the end of the world as we know it. How many hundreds of thousands of people do you think have taken their last breath while you and I have been having this conversation in this nice office with this pleasant glass of wine? That’s how it always was, even before the Old Ones arrived. You can’t think too much about these things because there’s nothing you can do – so why bother? If I were you, I’d take the same attitude to your future. Do as you’re told and don’t worry too much about what’s going to happen. Because one thing is sure, if you fail in this, you’ll be adjusted before you have time to blink!”
“I won’t fail, sir.”
“I know that. It’s why you’ve been chosen.” The chairman finished his drink. “There’s a plane waiting to take you to Italy. Let me know when Scott is ready and I’ll tell you what happens next.”
“Thank you, sir. Thank you for this opportunity.”
“You deserve it, Jonas. Enjoy it.”
A few hours later, in the air above New York, Jonas Mortlake saw his mother again. Her face filled the computer screen which rested on the table in front of him.
He had always thought there was something deeply unattractive about her. She looked more like a man than a woman with her hair cut so short – and with those thin shoulders and long neck. As always, she was dressed in black, a trouser suit that didn’t flatter her at all. She’d never worn make-up or very much jewellery. Her face was so washed out that had this been a black-and-white film, it wouldn’t have made any difference.
It was the boy who was with her who fascinated Jonas. He was lying on a bed being fed by some sort of saline drip connected to his arm. He was wearing dark trousers and a black shirt that had been torn open to expose his chest. His feet were bare. He looked dazed as whatever drug was being pumped into him took effect. This was Scott Tyler ten years ago … although, of course, he would be exactly the same now after his little jump in time. He was a very handsome boy, Jonas thought, with that long, dark hair, sculptured features, Native American eyes. Fifteen years old but he had already packed so much into that young life. Jonas had read about his so-called uncle, a man called Don White who wasn’t actually related to him at all. He had exploited the boy’s ability and put him on the stage in Reno, Nevada. Scott had never had much education. He hadn’t really had much of a life.
“It’s always the good people who get pushed around,” Susan Mortlake was saying on the screen. How long had it been since he had heard her voice? “The little people. Do you want to be a little person, Scott, or do you want to be with me? Because, you see, in the world that’s coming, I’m going to be in charge, and you’re going to have to start asking yourself: Which end of the whip do you want to be?”
The camera moved closer and Jonas froze the image. Scott seemed very close now. He reached out and ran a finger down the boy’s chest. It felt good. He was going to enjoy this assignment. Whatever happened to him in the future, it would be worth it.
The plane soared over the clouds, carrying him east to Europe and towards the blood red sun.
BLOOD AND SAND
ELEVEN
Scarlett Adams hovered between three different worlds.
The first of them, she knew, was the real one – and she spent as little time there as she could. It was a world of pain, harsh light, the smell of antiseptic and the knowledge of plastic tubes, twisting down, carrying fluid into her arm. She was lying on her back, in bed, obviously in a hospital. Once she had seen a woman, dressed in white, leaning over her. A nurse. The woman had said something but the words were far away, indistinct, and anyway, they seemed to be in a foreign language. Sometimes she thought there was a man in the room with her, but whenever she turned to look at him he was no longer there. She knew that she was drifting in and out of sleep and what seemed like a few seconds to her might in fact be an hour. She had never felt more tired. Her arms and legs were completely useless. There was a foul taste in her mouth.
The pain wouldn’t stop. It was in the side of her head, like a knife pushed in between her eye and ear. The pain was throbbing in time with her heartbeat, so for every pump, pump, pump there was a stab, stab, stab. From time to time she was aware of someone pressing something against her lips, but she couldn’t drink. She wondered if she was going to die.
And if this was a hospital, where was it and what was going on outside? She heard machine-gun fire, random shots, the occasional crump of a mortar or grenade. Sometimes it was very close and the whole world – the bed, the room, the building – trembled and she smelt dust and felt it sting her eyes. She had to be in some sort of war zone. The explosions were more or less continuous and although she had no real idea when day ended and night began, she was certain they stretched across both.
She had herself been shot – but not here. That had happened in Hong Kong, in the Tai Shan Temple. She still saw the flash of the gun and felt the shocking impact of the bullet. How long ago had it been? Lying on her back with the pain and the darkness, she tried to piece it all together, as if making sense of the past might somehow explain how she came to be here now.
The Old Ones had taken over Hong Kong. They controlled the entire city and had lured her in, using her as bait in a trap that had been set for Matt … Matthew Freeman, a boy she had never met, even though the two of them had lived less than a mile apart for much
of their lives. There were five of them. Gatekeepers. Matt was their unofficial leader. It was all very complicated and it made her head hurt (as if it wasn’t hurting enough already) just to think of it.
She focused on the last day. Hong Kong was in the grip of a typhoon that was destroying everything and would have killed them too if she hadn’t held it back. That was her power. She could control the weather … make it rain, make the sun shine. And it was she who had brought them all to the temple, through the eye of the storm. Who else was there? Jamie, of course, the American boy. And Matt.
But there were also two others … outsiders who had been drawn into the adventure, even though they really had nothing to do with it. The first of these was a journalist from a small, local newspaper in the north of England. Scarlett had barely met him but Matt had told her a bit about him while they were locked up together. His name was Richard Cole and he had become Matt’s closest friend.
The other man was Lohan, her own protector even if “friend” wasn’t quite the word for him. Dark-eyed, darkly handsome, always in control, Lohan was a member of the White Lotus Society, one of the Chinese Triads dealing in drugs, prostitution and God knows what else. He had never shown very much warmth or affection towards Scarlett and yet he had risked his life for her and would do anything to protect her. He was the man in the room with her, of course. It couldn’t be anyone else.
They had reached the temple, knowing that there was a door that could take them out of Hong Kong, anywhere they wanted. She had got them there. She had seen the door with its five-pointed star. It had been built specially for the Gatekeepers, to take them across the world in the blink of an eye. Everything was going to be all right. They had won.
But then, at the last moment, it had all changed. Suddenly the door had opened and Scott and Pedro had appeared. Scott was Jamie’s twin brother. And Pedro … if only he were here now. Matt had also told her how he had met Pedro when the two of them were in Peru. Pedro was a healer. He could touch her with one finger and all the pain would be gone and she would be turning cartwheels out of the room.
For a few brief seconds, the five of them had been together. That was all that mattered. All they had to do was form a circle and a gate would open up and swallow the Old Ones. Wasn’t that how it was meant to work? But before it could happen, someone had fired a shot. One of the guards must have been alive, hiding in a corner of the temple. Why had he chosen her? She had felt the explosion of pain in her head and had thought that this must be what it was like to die. And even as she fell, she knew her power had switched itself off and the typhoon would fall on the temple and demolish it. That was her last memory. She wasn’t sorry she had been killed. She was just sad that she had let the others down.
But she wasn’t dead. She had woken up here. One of them must have carried her. Maybe the others were waiting for her outside in the corridor: Matt, Pedro, Jamie and Scott. If only she could believe that, then the pain wouldn’t be so bad and she would feel less alone.
That was world number one.
The real world. The here and now.
But sometimes she would slip back into the life she had left behind when she flew to Hong Kong and she would see herself almost as if she were watching herself in a film. There she was … a confident, carefree girl moving across the screen in the uniform of a smart, south London private school (mauve dress, yellow jersey, ridiculous straw hat). On her way home, surrounded by her friends. She had to remind herself that this was her, how she had been, and not some stranger she would never see again.
She had lived in a comfortable house in Dulwich with a front garden and a gate and dustbins that were emptied once a week. Everything was ordered. School Monday to Friday and, annoyingly, Saturday mornings. Even weekends had their own routine, meeting up with Aidan, who was, she supposed, her first boyfriend, not that either of them would have ever used that word. They would hang out in the park, go shopping, see films, go to parties (home by eleven o’clock or else…). Looking back, she saw that she had been pinned down all her life like a butterfly in a glass case, but that was the way she wanted it. Didn’t everybody?
Of course there had been upsets. She remembered the day her parents had told her she was adopted – which was hardly a great surprise as she was nothing like them with her Indonesian looks, her long, very black hair and green eyes. But the telling of it, the explaining made it real and somehow took her away from them. It was official now. You don’t belong to us. What if they got fed up with her and sent her away again? They didn’t owe her anything. What would happen if her real parents turned up and demanded her back? She had been nine years old at the time and those had been the thoughts that went through her head.
And then, when she was fifteen, Paul and Vanessa Adams had got divorced. They had kept everything very civilized. There had been no plate-throwing or heavy-handed lawyers. But once again Scarlett had felt threatened. Everything she had taken for granted was being dismantled around her and there was nothing she could do. Her mother was moving to another country. Her father wanted her to go with him to Hong Kong. As her family life disintegrated, Scarlett had been struck by how little control she had over her own future – and it made her angry and afraid. Sitting on her own in her room, she had actually cried. How pathetic those tears seemed now.
Lying in bed with a bullet wound in her head, Scarlett felt she had plenty to cry about. One thing was certain. Her old life – Aidan, Dulwich, all the rest of it – was gone for good. She would never be able to return. At the same time, none of it mattered any more. She might die. She might never see Matt again. The Old Ones might have won.
She was determined it wasn’t going to happen. Somehow she was going to get out of this hospital bed and back onto her feet. It wasn’t over yet. She was going to fight back.
“Scarlett? Scarlett – can you hear me? I’m right here with you. You’re going to be OK.”
Someone was holding her hand. It was Lohan. She was sure of it. He had followed her through the door and across the world and he was with her now, as he had been when she was escaping from the Old Ones in Hong Kong. She tried to speak but her mouth was too dry, and anyway, she was exhausted. She needed to sleep.
Because sleep took her to the dreamworld – the third world – that she knew so well and that she had been visiting for as long as she could remember. It was here, in this empty landscape that she had first met Matt, Pedro, Scott and Jamie, although she hadn’t then known their names. The dreamworld seemed to have been constructed specially for them. It allowed them to communicate with each other. Although Pedro spoke only Spanish, he and Matt had been able to have conversations there, and when they woke up they remembered everything they’d said. If Matt was still alive, Scarlett was certain she would find him here. He was probably looking for her even now.
Scarlett slept and went back into the dreamworld. As always, there was no colour. The land was grey, the sea black, the sky a mixture of the two. What had happened here? she wondered. Had it always been like this? Surely dreams should be able to offer something more. She put aside her disappointment and called out for the others, her voice sounding as empty and lifeless as everything else.
And then, ahead of her, something moved. A man had appeared as if from nowhere, standing with his back to her. She saw that he was wearing a white shirt with a waistcoat but no jacket. Scarlett was completely shocked. She knew that the dreamworld could send strange messages. Jamie had met a cowboy figure who had seemed hostile but who had in fact warned him of an attempted assassination. Matt had been threatened by a giant swan.
Was this man here for her?
“Excuse me…” she said.
Slowly the man turned. Scarlett blinked. She was looking at a perfectly round face with a small, neat moustache. The man was wearing very black glasses, shaped like coins, that completely hid his eyes. He smiled at her, revealing more gold teeth than real ones.
“Five,” he said.
The Five. She was one of them. He had
recognized her.
Scarlett woke up and knew at once that something had happened. Doctors often talk about a tunnel of pain and she realized that, at last, she had come out the other side. There was a rush of light and a sensation of leaving the worst behind her. She saw the ceiling then, moving her head, the wall opposite. There was a picture in a frame: a young, very confident-looking man in Arab dress. He was standing in the wind with his fist raised above him. Next to the picture was an open door, leading to a corridor. Early morning light was slanting down, hitting the corner of her bed. She was desperately thirsty. She could feel the bandage tightly woven around her head but that was good. Before, she hadn’t even been aware it was there.
“Scarlett…?”
Lohan was still with her. He was moving towards her bed, leaning over her. But as he came into focus, she saw that it wasn’t Lohan at all. Somehow they had all got switched in the escape from the temple. The man had a lean, intelligent face, a slightly crooked nose and dirty blond hair, cut short and tangled. Scarlett recognized the journalist, Richard Cole.
“Can you hear me?” he asked.
She nodded.
“I’ll get the doctor. Is there anything you want?”
“A drink.”
“Here…” He picked up a glass, held it to her lips.
Scarlett swallowed. She felt the water go down.
“I was so worried about you,” Richard said. “But you’re looking much better now. You’re going to be fine.”
There were so many questions. The first one was the most obvious. “Where am I?”
Richard gritted his teeth. He sighed. “You’re going to wish you hadn’t asked.”
TWELVE
The last minutes in the Tai Shan Temple would stay with Richard for the rest of his life.