Footsteps outside. The doors crashed open and the four guards burst into the lab firing their weapons on full automatic and spraying bullets everywhere. Ben barely had time to return fire before he had to dive under cover of one of the long tables. Splinters flew from the tabletop; plaster dust exploded from the walls and showers of sparks from the electrical equipment as dials and readouts shattered. The cabinets on the wall burst into cascading fragments of glass, the jars inside them blown apart, liquid pouring over the benches and the floor.
Crouching under the table, Ben glimpsed the slippery white specimens that had been inside the jars, now sliding over the floor in puddles of strong-smelling surgical preservative – and he realised with a jolt of horror what they were. Not chunks of picked cauliflower, but dissected pieces of human brain.
And in that brief moment, he knew.
Knew he was looking at all that remained of those unaccounted-for eight children.
Knew that this was what the architects of the Indigo Project would ultimately do to Carl, and to all the others, if nobody stopped them.
More sparks spat and fizzed from the damaged electrical equipment; an instant later, there was a whoosh as the spilled preservative burst alight. A sheet of fire covered the bench along its whole length, quickly spreading to the floor. Flames shot up, suddenly filling half the room, hot, aggressive, leaping high. Ben had to scramble away as they licked the underside of the table. Spotting him, one of the guards shouldered his weapon with a cry and let off a string of bullets. Ben dived and rolled for cover under another table. From the floor, he saw the running feet of two of the guards moving round to flank him. He fired. A cry of pain. One of the men went down, writhing. Another burst into the man’s body, and the cries of pain were silenced. Ben rolled again, emerging from under the table.
The fire was spreading alarmingly fast, gaining a purchase on the whole room now and threatening to block the only exit. Firing blind into the thick, black smoke that filled the lab, Ben ran for the door and burst out into the corridor, coughing. A glance through the billowing smoke told him that more guards were coming. Too damn many. This place was even better protected than he’d feared.
Smoke and flame were spreading out of the lab door now. He could hear the screams of the men still trapped inside, but he had little sympathy for them. He ran, keeping low. There was a shout; he’d been spotted again. More shots rang out.
No time to stop and shoot back. He sprinted hard up the corridor, skidded around a corner and came to a junction. He went left. Bounded down a short flight of steps. He was totally without bearings now, just trying to lose his pursuers in the labyrinth.
The fire in the lab could only spread to other rooms, and it would. Fast. He needed to make his way to the isolation block on the upper floor before the whole building started to burn.
Ben ran on. Another set of doors, another upward flight of stairs. Now he really was lost, in a part of the building that looked different from the clinical hospital environment of bright neons, sparkling white corridors and gleaming tiles. Here the floor was bare concrete, the lights dim, the walls unpainted. Where the hell was he going?
He was about to turn back and try another way when he saw the door. It was iron. Heavy deadlocks locks top and bottom. It looked like the door to a dungeon.
There’s no time for this. You’ve got to find Carl.
But he couldn’t leave without knowing what was on the other side of that door. He stepped closer to it and saw with amazement that the locks were undone.
Ben pushed open the door. Stepped through, and stopped in his tracks.
In front of him was another door with tall steel bars, like the entrance to a giant cage. Beyond it was what looked like a high-security prison cell, only much larger. Bunk beds lined the bare block walls, three high.
It was a dormitory.
And it was full of children.
23
THERE WERE SIX of them in there, aged between about seven to early teens, all barefoot and wearing plain white garments resembling pyjamas. Three girls, three boys. Their hair was cropped. They looked like prisoners – which, Ben realized, was exactly what they were. The youngest was the little boy lying curled on one of the bottom bunks with his eyes closed. He was either in a dead sleep, or else he’d been drugged. The eldest was a Japanese girl of fourteen or less, who was sitting on a wooden chair watching Ben. There was no trace of fear in her eyes. One by one except for the sleeping boy, the children all turned to gaze at him.
They weren’t alone. Two medical personnel in white coats, one male in his late thirties and one female about ten years younger, were in the cell with them. Neither adult had noticed Ben’s presence. The man held a ring of keys. The woman was clutching the handle of a wheelchair: Ben sensed that they’d just brought the little boy back to the cell. That was why he’d been drugged.
‘What were you doing with him?’ Ben demanded.
The two doctors wheeled around in alarm at the sound of his voice. ‘Wha—?’ the man began, then fell silent as he saw the gun in Ben’s hands.
Ben kicked against the cage door. ‘Open it,’ he said savagely. ‘Open it, or I’ll shoot you through the bars.’
The man hesitated, but not long. He hurried to the door, unlocked it, and it creaked open. He retreated anxiously as Ben strode inside the cell.
For a few seconds, nobody spoke. Ben looked at the doctors in furious disgust. He ran his eye over the barefoot children, and at the little boy lying half-comatose on the bed. He thought of what he’d seen in the lab. Then glared back at the man and woman in the white coats, and his finger twitched against the M4’s trigger.
‘I ought to gun you down where you stand,’ he said to them.
The woman just went on gaping at him in terror. The man fell to his knees. ‘Do not shoot,’ he pleaded in a German accent.
‘Where’s Carl Hunter?’ Ben demanded. ‘Isolation room four. Is he there? Answer me!’
‘He’s there,’ the Japanese girl said quietly.
Ben turned to her. She was gazing at him with the same calm, unfrightened expression. ‘Are you sure?’ he asked her. ‘You’ve seen him there?’
‘I’ve never seen him,’ she replied. ‘But I know he’s there. We all do.’
Ben could see she was being completely earnest. He nodded, then turned back to the cringing doctors. They were too pathetic to kill. ‘Out,’ he commanded them, jerking his thumb in the direction of the door. ‘Go, move it. Before I change my mind.’
The man and the woman stared at one another, then bolted past Ben and scrambled out of the cell. He watched as they went running off down the dark passage.
‘I’m Ben,’ he said to the children. ‘I’m here to get you out. Carl as well.’
The Japanese girl nodded sagely, as if she’d known that too. A younger girl managed a weak smile. A boy a few years younger than Carl began to sob.
‘What’s your name?’ Ben asked the Japanese girl.
‘Satoko,’ she replied. She pointed at the younger girl, who was still smiling at Ben. ‘That’s Nicole. She doesn’t speak English. That’s Sylvie. That’s Luca. That’s Peter. And that’s Franck,’ he finished, pointing at the sleeping boy on the bunk.
Ben gazed at their faces, and his heart went out to them. How had they ended up here? How had Linden Global’s agent network found them? Each child’s story would have to be told, but not today.
‘Listen, Satoko,’ he said, ‘we have to get out of here quickly. Bad men might try to stop us. Things might happen. You’re the oldest, so I need you to be really brave, and I need your help to look after the younger children. Can you do that?’
She nodded again, then shot an anxious glance at Franck. ‘He won’t wake up. They gave him the medicine.’
‘Does it wear off soon?’ Ben asked.
‘An hour, sometimes less,’ she said. ‘But it gives you a headache.’
‘You’ll never have to take it again,’ Ben promised her. ‘None of you.?
?? He went over to the bunk and picked up the drugged boy, thinking that maybe he should have shot those doctors after all.
The boy murmured in his sleep as Ben slung him carefully over his shoulder. ‘Come on,’ he said to the group. ‘We’re leaving this place.’
Back in the main part of the building, alarms were shrilling and the sprinkler system had activated. But from the spread of smoke, the stifling heat and the strong stench of burning that filled the air, it was clear that the fire was raging out of control and Ben worried that the sprinklers would be overwhelmed. As he carried Franck and led the rest of the children through the waterlogged corridors, the walls shook violently to an explosion, then another. The place was full of chemicals and surgical supplies, gas and oxygen tanks and God knew what other volatile materials. How long before the whole place went up in flames?
‘It’s all right, children,’ he said. ‘Stay close to me.’
Every step of the way, he expected to meet more guards and was ready to shoot first lest a stray bullet come anywhere near the kids. But they saw nobody. Ben glanced left, glanced right, memorising the layout of the building as best he could for when he’d have to come back for Carl.
And there it was, the blessed sight he’d been praying for: an exit. Ben kicked open the doors and a rush of fresh air cooled the sweat on his brow. Dusk was falling, the first stars beginning to twinkle over the dark forest. The compound was deserted. All that stood between them and the trees was the perimeter fence. ‘Come on,’ he urged the children.
They ran from the main building, reached the next and skirted along the wall. From its corner, it was only a short dash across the concrete to the fence. Ben’s heart was thudding ferociously. Almost there.
Eighty yards along the length of the wire fence, they came to a padlocked gate. ‘Stand behind me,’ he told the children. Holding the carbine one-handed and well away from Franck’s little ears, he aimed at the lock and fired. The deafening shot echoed off the buildings. One round from a high-velocity 5.56mm rifle was enough to mangle the padlock. Ben tossed the twisted metal away, unbolted the gate and it swung open. He glanced back, half-expecting to see the place’s remaining guards come swarming out in pursuit, drawn by the noise of the gunshot. All he saw was the smoke pouring from the windows of the main building, rising up in a column into the darkening sky.
They ran for the trees. In the deep shadow of the pines, Ben gently took Franck down from his shoulder and laid him on the ground. He gathered the rest of the children together in a small circle. ‘Satoko, all of you, listen to me carefully. This is nearly over. But I have to go back for Carl.’ He took off his watch and gave it to Satoko, showing her the luminous dial. ‘Satoko, remember what I said. You’re in charge. If I’m not back here in fifteen minutes, I want you to take the children somewhere safe. You’ll have to carry Franck. Can you manage that?’
Satoko nodded.
‘Good. There’ll be a farm, or a house, somewhere not too far away. Get there and call the police, all right? ’ He stood. ‘I’m going now. Fifteen minutes.’
‘Be careful, Ben,’ Satoko said.
24
BEN RAN BACK towards the fence, clutching his carbine. Time was ticking by much, much too fast. He could only hope that the fire hadn’t yet reached the top floor.
Through the gate in the fence; across the open ground towards the main building. Two guards came out of a doorway to his left, saw him and froze. Ben didn’t even hesitate. He levelled the M4 and shot them both before they’d had a chance to go for their weapons.
He sprinted for the main building, retracing his steps. Inside, the smoke was thicker and even more acrid than before. The floor was swirling inch deep in filthy black water, but just as he’d feared, the sprinkler system had been ineffective at stopping the spread of the blaze. Almost every way he tried, fire and smoke blocked his way and forced him to hunt for an alternative route. The power hadn’t shut down yet, but it could at any moment and he didn’t dare risk using the lift to the upper floor, for fear of being trapped inside.
Every moment counted. Each second, the fire was blocking another path. He held onto the rifle, even though he didn’t think he’d need it any more. The remaining guards had all fled the building, as well as the rest of the staff. It was just him and Carl in here now.
As he searched desperately through the smoke for a staircase, he stumbled into a medical theatre. The operating table was on fire. Soon, any gruesome traces of the things that had gone on here would be burnt out of existence. He ran on, battling against the smoke. The heat was scorching. Just as it seemed hopeless, he crashed though another door and his heart jumped at the sight of a stairway leading upwards. He bounded up it, two and three steps at a time.
It was as he reached the top floor that the power system finally melted down, plunging him into darkness. He groped his way along, kicking doors open. One, two, three …‘Carl!’ he yelled. ‘Carl!’
The fourth door was locked, and he instantly knew this was it. He took two steps back and then ran at it with all his might, smashing it open with his shoulder.
The isolation room was barely less like a cell than the cage down below. In the gloom Ben could make out a sink unit, a toilet, a chair pulled up to a bare table. And the iron-framed bed on which Carl was lying completely still.
Ben threw back the thin sheet. He shook the boy by the arm. ‘Carl, can you hear me? Wake up. We have to go.’
Carl stirred. He faintly murmured something, then fell back into his drug-induced unconsciousness. At that moment, Ben hated the men who’d done this to him more than ever. He ripped a strip from the bed sheet, dampened it at the sink and then returned to the bed to prop the limp boy against him and wrap the wet cloth loosely over his nose and mouth to help reduce smoke inhalation. He quickly did the same for himself, tying the torn material behind his neck like a bandana. Then lifted the child from the bed and carried him to the door.
The flames hadn’t yet reached the stairs, but they very soon would. It wouldn’t be long now before the building would either blow up completely or start to collapse in on itself. Ben reached the bottom. The route he’d taken before was blocked by fire, so he took another. The boy was a dead weight in his arms, the carbine slapping against his back as he staggered and stumbled through the building with only the flickering fiery glow to light the way.
Now Ben was lost again, and for an instant he truly believed that they’d never get out. Then he suddenly recognised the dark corridor as the one he’d walked along with Aumeier earlier. That meant the main entrance was just ahead!
He was right. But he hadn’t reckoned on the two guards who were making for the doorway from another direction. He saw them at the same instant they saw him. They all stopped. Ben stared at them, and they stared back. Their faces were blackened from the smoke. Their weapons within quick and easy reach.
One of the guards shook his head. He let his gun slip to the floor and raised his hands as if to say, ‘No more trouble, okay? We only work here’. His colleague did the same. Then they were gone, running outside into the darkness.
Ben emerged from the building and gasped cool air into his raw, aching lungs. They were out. They’d made it.
He was pushing through the side gate in the perimeter fence when the building blew. The rumbling blast split the night with a fireball that rolled high up into the sky and lit the forest for miles around. The explosion’s hot breath scorched Ben’s back as he turned his body round to shield Carl.
Ignoring the pain, he hurried towards the trees. The shadows of the forest seemed to leap and dance in the firelight. He could see no sign of the other children.
Then he spotted them, all except the sleeping Franck, standing in a huddled group at the foot of a huge pine.
Someone was with them.
Someone who had his arm wrapped tightly across Satoko’s throat and a pistol to her temple. The rest of the children looked even more terrified than she did.
‘Hello again,’ the
man said, and Ben saw that it was Tommy, the pilot. ‘Stop right where you are. Not another step.’
‘Let her go,’ Ben said. ‘This isn’t your fight.’
‘You don’t think?’ the pilot replied.
‘Everyone else is gone,’ Ben told him. ‘Rascher, the director, is dead. It’s over.’
Tommy smiled, and the fire made his teeth red. ‘Rascher wasn’t the director,’ he said. ‘I just let him use my office now and then. I never did like to be deskbound. More of a high flyer, you might say. Truth is, I’d rather be in the air than do much else.’
‘You—?’
‘That’s right,’ Tommy said, and his smile turned into a grin. ‘I didn’t introduce myself properly. Thomas Holzmann, Senior Executive Vice President of Linden Global. I’m the big cheese around here. Free to come and go, free to stand in for Jürgen if I so choose, or whatever I want. That’s why I never met the real Simonsen – Doc Rascher was in charge of the everyday running of the place, and personnel was his department. But the Indigo Project is my baby, and it always will be.’ He took the pistol muzzle from Satoko’s head and pointed it towards Ben. ‘And I’m afraid I can’t let you take my assets away. They’re unique. Buildings we have plenty more of. Now put the boy down, please.’
Slowly, carefully, Ben crouched and laid Carl on the ground.
‘Step away from him and toss the rifle,’ Holzmann said.
Ben unslung the M4 and threw it away with a clatter.
Holzmann chuckled. ‘I don’t know who the fuck you really are, man, but you came pretty close to pulling it off. Tripped up at the very last hurdle. I almost feel sorry for you.’
‘I’m nobody,’ Ben said.
‘Suits me,’ Holzmann said. ‘I’ll have the engraver put it on your headstone.’ He raised his pistol, took deliberate aim at Ben. His finger tightened on the trigger.
Ben reached behind his hip. He pulled the Glock that Holzmann hadn’t seen tucked into his belt.