They rushed her.
Lara leapt back with a cry of terror.
The coffee mug shattered across the kitchen tiles.
She looked down at the smashed mug and the large star splash of blood-black liquid, the shards of china twinkling like stars.
She realised she was shaking.
“What the hell...?” she murmured.
Lara was in her kitchen, at home in the manor. She was alone. The clock on the wall said four. The banks of elegant designer lights over the marble countertops were on. It was quiet. Heavy rain pattered against the glass doors that led out onto the terrace, and beyond, acres of parkland between her and her nearest neighbours.
Lara walked to the garden doors. It was late afternoon, but the sky was prematurely dark. The clouds over the park were bloated and grey. The rain was torrential and fell like a veil. It was as if she were seeing the landscape through glass smeared with Vaseline.
She cleaned up the spill, swept away the broken mug, and filled another with fresh coffee from the machine. It had been an upside-down day. Cryer’s people had dropped her off at the manor early that morning. They didn’t want her to drive. They had said barely a word to her, except that they would deliver her car later in the day. She’d spent the day in a stupor, bone tired after her long night without sleep. She’d read for a while, paced, and after the car was returned, she napped on the sofa, watched some TV, drifted off again.
You’re tired, Croft, she told herself. A busy night. Lots of stress and exertion. Zero sleep. You’re just tired. You bumbled into the kitchen to make coffee and actually fell asleep standing up.
The wood, the night, the barking fox, the stones, the figures...all of it had been a dream.
But so vivid...
Lara sipped her coffee. She wandered back into the lounge and sat down in front of the muted TV. I’ve been more tired than this, she thought. Exhausted after stupendous physical effort, brain-dead from days at a time without rest. I’ve climbed mountains. I’ve endured and gone through fatigue and out the other side. I’ve hallucinated from lack of sleep...
But I’ve never fallen asleep standing up like that, or dreamt so sharply... After just one late night?
Lara thought about Cryer’s account of the nerve agent. Something like that might just be the cause, especially given the tricks it had played on her mind at Candle Lane. She thought about the number Cryer had given her. Maybe she should call it. Maybe the nerve agent had polluted her system more than their tests had shown.
Maybe she needed help.
Lara was startled by a thump, and then realised it was just the distant drum of thunder outside. She put the mug down and closed her eyes.
Once, during an ascent of the Annapurna, the weather had changed abruptly and without warning. Lara’s party had been about seven-and-a-half thousand metres up when the ice storm rolled in. They had been forced to dig in for three days straight. The ferocious assault had been so blistering and freezing, they had been able to do nothing except hang on. It had been too cold to sleep. No sleep, no food, no heat. It had been a constant effort to hold on, dig in, and keep from being buried in snow.
Towards the end of that ungodly trial, she’d started to hallucinate. The mountainside had seemed to go calm. The sun had come out, warming her bones. She’d seen her mother and father walking easily up the snow slope towards her, smiling.
They had come to find her. She had felt such extraordinary joy.
It had seemed so real.
But afterwards, recovering in the medical facility at base camp, the reality of it had faded quickly. Lara had been able to see it for what it had been: a trick of the mind—utterly vivid, but brought on by physical and mental extremity.
She had hallucinated, but afterwards she had known that she had hallucinated.
But in the cyst chamber under Candle Lane, and just now in her own kitchen, the things she had seen had been real. In hindsight, now they did not seem less real. She was unable to recognise them as hallucinations. Her memory of the cyst chamber, and the figures in the wood, remained utterly real. They hadn’t faded, the way vivid dreams fade into nonsense. They hadn’t lost their quality of actuality.
Lara thought about the phone number again. She didn’t want to call it. She really didn’t want to have any further dealings with Division Eleven.
A sandwich, maybe. A sandwich, a bath, a glass of wine, an early night might all make her feel differently.
On the muted TV, a quiz show began. It was a show she found diverting and relaxing. Number and letter puzzles. She reached for the remote to turn the sound up.
A fox yapped.
Lara sat bolt upright. She rose slowly. The sound didn’t come again. There was just the beat of the rain on the windows and the glass doors. It was definitely a fox, or something that wanted to sound like a fox.
It was exactly the same as the cries she had heard in the misty wood.
There was someone or something in the house, at a distance, upstairs, perhaps, in one of the bedrooms. There was no sound, no footsteps, but Lara felt something, as though there was a weight on the floor above, silently pressing down on her.
With equal silence, Lara moved across the lounge, staring up at the ceiling. Her feet were bare, and she was wearing soft pyjama sweats. Even if she’d been wearing full chain mail, she knew how to move without noise.
She heard a thump, and then the fox yap again, but it seemed further away or muffled.
It was such a wretched sound. It seemed to encompass such pain and discomfort and bitterness. Of all the animal cries she knew of, the fox was the most and least human.
There were foxes in the park sometimes, and other creatures, too. Maybe...
No, it wasn’t a fox. Lara became aware of the tightness in her chest, the shallowness of her breathing. The skin on the back of her neck was crawling. Something was generating fear in her, and she didn’t scare easily. She didn’t scare at all.
Take control, Croft, she told herself. She tried to shake the fear off. She padded through the kitchen to the pantry and quietly opened a cupboard between the cold store and a dresser stacked with cans, jars, and bottles.
Inside the cupboard was the sleek, compact shape of one of the manor’s gun safes. She input the PIN code combination and pressed the thumbprint reader. She opened it quickly and took a Sig nine out of the foam liner. Two pre-loaded magazines lay on the lower shelf. She slid one in, checked the gun, and then closed and locked the safe.
Lara edged out of the pantry, holding the gun in a two-handed grip at hip level, muzzle aimed at the floor, her right index finger resting safe against the side of the slide.
She went back into the lounge. The TV was still playing silently. She crossed into the hall. No one there, and the front door was locked and bolted. Inside the security room, Lara turned on the manor’s CCTV and checked every monitor, but saw only empty rooms. She checked all the alarm settings, but she was locked in. No windows or doors were open and nothing had been triggered. Methodically, Lara locked down the entire manor, except for the part of the house she was living in. Internal doors wouldn’t open, and if a threshold were passed, the alarms would go off. She was ready.
With the weapon held tight, Lara went up the stairs slowly. The landing was empty. She checked her private suite. Her bedroom and bathroom were both empty, too. Lara moved along the landing to her dressing room. She opened the door slowly. The room was dark. Rain pelted the windows. Thunder grumbled outside. There was a feeble flash of lightning, and a shape in the corner of the room resolved briefly. She raised the gun, but even as she did so, she knew it was just her coat stand with jackets and umbrellas hanging on it.
She went back out onto the landing. Thunder rumbled again. The only room left in her private suite was her office at the end of the corridor. Lara edged towards it.
She took a breath and thr
ew open the door, stepping in with the pistol aimed.
Nothing. Her desk, desk chair, the shelves of books and artefacts, the plan chest, the flat-screen monitor, the old threadbare chaise.
More thunder. The dull sheet lightning from outside gleamed off the framed prints and charts that lined the office walls, the glazed doors of her display cases, and the domes of the bell jars she kept her favourite trophies under.
Lara lowered the weapon.
“You’re an idiot,” she said to herself. The powerful automatic handgun in her grip felt like the most ridiculous overreaction. It was time to go back downstairs, lock the damn thing away, and scale down the manor’s security measures. What the hell had she been thinking?
Lara turned. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw something move. Peripheral vision. Something, maybe someone, rushed silently down the stairs away from her...so silently.
A ghost.
Lara didn’t get a proper look at it, but she started to move, rushing down the stairs after it, the pistol raised to aim at the ceiling. What the hell had she seen? What the hell could have been up there with her that she hadn’t seen in a room-by-room search?
There was nothing in the hall. The front door was still locked and bolted. She stepped towards the kitchen. There was someone in the kitchen. She couldn’t see who from her angle, but she knew someone was there. Someone was waiting for her, silently. She could sense steady, calm breathing. She could smell something: lavender or some sweet wild herb. She’d cleaned up the coffee spill with a lemon-scented cleaner. She could still smell that, pungent and chemical.
How could she be smelling the subtle, softer scent of herbs over that? It was as though the lavender smell was stronger, more real. It was wet and slightly musty, a fresh-air, fresh-soil smell—not the stringent odour of an artificial scent.
Lara raised the Sig and stepped quickly into the kitchen.
The grey ghost of the standing stone stood before her, right in the centre of the tiled floor. She could see the lichen patterns on its flanks, the eroded carvings. But it wasn’t stone; it was flesh. It was faded tattoos on pale skin, and the shoulders and head of the standing stone were the hooded shoulders and head of a figure and...
There was nothing there at all.
Lara breathed out, long and hard. She lowered the gun and made sure the safety was on.
“So that’s what paranoia feels like,” she said. “Cryer did warn me.”
There was nothing there. In that brief second, a fraction of a second or even less, as she’d stepped into the kitchen, her mind had shown her something so vivid, so clear.
But there was nothing there now. Even the wet bracken smell of lavender had vanished.
Lara put the gun down, rested her hands on the marble counter, and bowed her head. She swore softly under her breath.
“I guess that’s what separates the winners from the losers.”
Slowly, more composed, Lara straightened up. She shook out her neck. She looked towards the terrace and the parkland beyond.
Rain was still streaming down the glass doors.
Then a burst of red light hit the glass, followed by the blare of the manor’s alarm sounding.
CHAPTER SIX:
THE VISITOR
London
Lara picked up her gun and ran back to the security room. She closed and locked the door behind her and examined the monitors, selecting her private suite first and then all other areas inside the mansion. When she found nothing, she switched to exteriors.
She watched for several moments, and then reset and zoomed in for a closer look. Then she holstered her gun and ran upstairs for a jacket.
Two or three minutes later, she was at the gates at the end of the drive. She was breathing hard from the run, and heavy rain was blowing into her face.
“What the hell are you doing here?” she asked.
Carter Bell was soaked through. His collar was pulled up against the rain. He looked like the revenant spectre of a drowned mariner who had come back from the ocean to avenge himself.
“Can I come inside?” he asked.
Lara flipped open the cover on the keypad on her side of the gate and keyed in the security code. As the huge gates began to swing open, Lara gestured and Carter Bell scurried through the gap. Then, Lara hit the keypad again to prevent the gates fully opening. They closed silently, and she dropped the cover and stepped towards Bell.
“What the hell were you doing trying to break into my house?” Lara demanded. “You must have known you’d never get past my security.”
Bell shrugged.
“I didn’t want to draw attention to myself, to being here. I didn’t know who might be watching. I tried the perimeter, but...”
“The perimeter wall’s really high!” Lara snapped.
Bell stared at her.
“I’ve fast-roped into chasms under the Great Pyramid,” he said. “I thought I could handle a garden wall.”
Lara glared at him for a moment more, and then took his arm and began to walk him up the drive to the manor.
“You didn’t take account of my extra security measures,” she said.
“I realised the gate was my best bet, and then I set off the alarm. All I could do was wait for you,” said Carter. “Sorry.
“Where have you been?” she snapped.
“Waiting at the gate, for you,” he said.
“Don’t get smart with me, Bell. I’m not in the mood, and I’ve been worried about you. I haven’t heard from you since I got back to England, and I only came because you invited me.”
Lara let them into the manor and led Carter to the kitchen. She crossed to the range, yanked a clean hand towel off the handle of the oven door, and threw it at him. Bell caught it and began to mop his face.
“I’ve been calling you for days,” she said.
“I had to ditch my phone,” he replied.
“Why?”
“Division Eleven was tracking me,” he said.
Lara studied him and then took off her jacket, dragged a chair out from the kitchen table, and sat down. Her gaze didn’t leave him as she pulled the Sig nine out of her waistband and put it on the table.
“I’ve had a conversation with them, too,” she admitted.
Bell shrugged.
“How did that go?” he asked.
“It was fine,” she said.
“Can I sit?” he asked.
“Of course,” said Lara. Bell sat down at the table.
“Any chance of a cup of tea?” he asked.
Lara snorted, but got up and put the kettle on.
“What’s the gun about, Lara?” he asked, his gaze turning to the Sig.
“No, we’re starting with you,” she said. “What’s going on? Why didn’t you call me, and why are you acting like some kind of fugitive?”
“Because of my fugitive status?” he ventured.
He saw her eyes narrow dangerously.
“Okay, okay,” he said. “I guess you could say I was in trouble. The M.O.D. closed down the dig. They rounded everybody up. It was...Orwellian, Lara. I managed to give them the slip, and I’ve been lying low ever since.”
Lara took a teapot out of an overhead cupboard and began to spoon tea from the caddy into it.
“There’s nothing Orwellian about anything,” she said. “There was a security issue with the dig site. The M.O.D. was acting according to procedure. They explained it to me.”
“I’m sure they did,” he said.
“You’re acting paranoid, Bell.”
He shook his head.
“Paranoid is when you think they’re out to get you but there’s no ‘they,’” he replied. “Rational is when you think they’re out to get you because they are out to get you.”
Lara sighed. The kettle was coming to a boil.
“Have you been checked out?” she asked.
“Checked out?”
“Tested. For contamination? I guess not, if you’ve managed to give Division Eleven the slip.”
“What sort of contamination?” he asked.
“From the nerve agent,” she said. “It induces paranoia and other nasty complications. Carter, you look exhausted. You look like you’ve been living rough for a week, and your behaviour is all over the place. I’m worried about you. No one’s out to get you. You just may be...sick.”
“Oh, God,” he said quietly. “They’ve done a number on you, too.”
“The only thing that’s happened to me is a certain level of clarification,” she replied. “Clarification you’d have got too, if you hadn’t gone on the run and—”
“Talk to me about the nerve agent,” he said calmly.
Lara filled the teapot.
“The German bomber,” she said.
“It’s a Dornier,” he said.
“You’re aware of it, then?”
“Of course,” Bell replied. “It was pretty mashed up, but it was a surprise when they found it. No one knew it was there. Annie had it checked, and then roped off for later recovery. It wasn’t the primary dig objective.”
“It was carrying a nerve agent, Carter.”
“It was carrying incendiary flares,” he replied. “I checked it myself. It was the marker plane for a bombing raid. Target designation. Most of the flares were still in the bomb bay, but they had long since perished. They were inert and safe.”
“It was carrying a nerve agent, Carter.”
She handed him a cup of tea.
“This is what Division Eleven told you, is it?” he asked.
“Milk?”
“Thank you. This is their story, is it? Nerve agent?”
Lara opened the fridge and located a carton of milk.
“It’s not a story,” she said. “The plane was carrying a Nazi terror weapon, and its payload has contaminated the site. Hallucinations, paranoia, a major public health risk. It’s—”