Alchemist

  ‘You really think the company’s that thorough?’

  He gave her a look of feigned surprise. ‘Good evening, pretty girl, what planet are you on tonight?’

  ‘I’m on earth but I think I’d rather be somewhere else.’

  ‘You’ll find Washington a good substitute.’

  ‘Yeah, I’m looking forward to going.’

  ‘Nice city, shame about the people. One in every ten humanoids there is a lawyer; the other nine are either muggers or politicians, and the only way to tell them apart is that the muggers are less crooked.’

  ‘I’m surprised Bendix don’t have an office there.’

  ‘They do. Well, close by in Maryland – their largest plant in the US. Stick a pin, blindfolded, in a map of the world and you’ll probably hit a Bendix site.’ He smiled and drained his glass. ‘My Washington meeting’s come forward a day – I’ll be leaving for it on Tuesday. You’re coming out Thursday, right?’

  ‘Daddy’s worried about getting finished by Thursday – and he can’t leave the analysis unattended. He’s prepared to cancel Washington if necessary.’

  Conor stiffened. ‘You can’t do that, Monty, you have to come.’

  She smiled, uneasy suddenly. ‘Have to? I mean, I’d really like to – and I’d love to be over there with you, but this is more important, surely?’

  ‘I was followed down here tonight,’ he said quietly. ‘When I stopped to find my cigarettes, I saw a car sitting back a few hundred yards that wasn’t there when I pulled up. I noticed it drive past ten miles later when I stopped for gas. Then I saw it behind me again when I stopped on purpose.’

  ‘Where is it now?’ she said, alarmed.

  ‘Lurking out there in the night, somewhere,’ he said.

  ‘What a horrible feeling,’ she said. ‘It frightens me.’

  It was Monty that Conor was frightened for too, not himself, but he didn’t want to say so, didn’t want to spook her more than she already was. She was taking everything pretty well at the moment, staying calm, protected by a deep reservoir of her own resources. She needed her senses to be sharpened and alert, not blurred by fear. ‘That kind of thing doesn’t frighten me,’ he said. ‘It annoys me. Makes me bloody angry. I don’t like my privacy invaded.’

  ‘Nor me.’

  He covered her hand with his own, pressing it firmly, and looked directly into her eyes. ‘Monty, you have to come.’

  She sensed something that she could not identify, as if her antennae were picking up the scent or vibration of danger. ‘Why?’

  ‘Do you trust me?’

  She hesitated, then more emphatically than she really felt at that instant, said, ‘Yes.’

  ‘Then please believe me.’

  85

  Wednesday 30 November, 1994

  Click. The channel changed. A siren wailed, tyres squealed. Click. The channel changed. ‘But I love you, Edward,’ a woman implored. ‘I’ve always loved you.’ There was a bang as a handgun fired. Click. The channel changed. The roar of a crowd. ‘Lineker has possession, he’s passing it across to –’ click. It changed again. Two women were screaming at each other in Italian; subtitles ran along the bottom of the frame.

  Click. The screen went mercifully blank and silent.

  ‘God, there’s such dross on television.’ Nikky slung the channel selector down on her bedside table. She gulped some wine, picked up her Mario Vargas Llosa novel, read one paragraph, then closed it noisily and rummaged through the pile of crumpled magazines strewn across the bed, which they had not removed before making love an hour or so earlier.

  Gunn, part of his midriff covered by a sheet, aware that he had drunk too much, lay engrossed in his thoughts, trying to ignore Nikky’s irritating attempts to distract him. Conor Molloy and Montana Bannerman were becoming an increasing problem and it was bothering him greatly.

  The Bannerman woman had been sniffing around behind the health hydro. She had circumnavigated the exterior of the building. She had been to Winston Smith’s home again. Then she had gone into the multi-storey car park. She sure as hell had not done that by chance.

  He did not like it, did not like it one little bit. Maybe tomorrow he’d get the budget he was after, but he had his doubts. In the meantime he was having to run a makeshift surveillance using overtired staff on overtime. What he wanted was a tight, invisible web, not a team who were so exhausted they were likely to make mistakes. Bugs were now in place on the subjects’ home phones and their office phones were on full monitoring. It was vital they did not know they were being followed; he wanted to do nothing that would put them on their guard.

  Whatever it was they were up to, he wanted to be able to deliver it on a plate to Crowe. He not only wanted to score a few badly needed points, he was also keen to see how the Chief Executive would react to the news that his darling scientist’s precious daughter had been a very naughty little girl. He liked the idea of Crowe being forced to take action that he did not really want to take. Crowe revelled in making other people squirm. Give him a week or two, and he would have Crowe squirming nicely all by himself.

  The computer systems manager Cliff Norris had still not come up with any trace of Conor Molloy having dialled into the Bendix system. Gunn suspected the bastard was not looking very hard, if at all. He had recently overruled Norris on some new hardware he wanted, and the systems manager was not a happy bunny about that.

  Norris was a breed that Gunn did not like or understand. An arrogant anorak. Most of the tekkies were like that and he had little choice but to live with them. Crowe had accused Gunn of losing his grip and he was right. He had been losing it, but he was feeling a lot more positive now. He had a feeling that Molloy and the Bannerman woman had come along at just the right time for his career prospects.

  He was losing his grip on Nikky also, but he was less sure about how to deal with that, or how much longer he could cope with all her demands. Except that he was still hopelessly besotted by her.

  ‘Gosh!’ she said suddenly. ‘This guy – drowned in Hawaii.’

  He turned towards her, startled, and saw she was reading the latest issue of the Bendix Schere in-house magazine.

  ‘Where the hell did you get that?’

  ‘Your briefcase,’ she said simply.

  ‘You picked the lock?’ he said.

  ‘It’s only a dumb combination; a child of four could handle it.’

  He snatched the magazine out of her hands. ‘That’s confidential – employees only.’

  ‘Lucky employees, it’s really exciting reading! Bendix Schere building new factory in Malaya. Maternox sales up sixteen per cent in Brazil. German director of Research and Development raises five thousand marks for Bosnia in bicycle charity race. This is sphincter-gripping stuff, soldier.’ She snatched it back. ‘Sir Neil Rorke states that as a tribute the company will donate twenty-five thousand pounds to Mr Rowley’s favourite charity. Well, well, how much more exciting can a magazine get?’

  ‘Read enough now?’ Gunn asked her drily.

  ‘Sated. I’m utterly sated. What more could a girl ask? Two terrific orgasms followed by a night in bed with the Bendix Schere magazine; you really know how to treat a girl, soldier.’ She slipped a hand under the sheet and fondled his genitals. ‘Not much activity left down there. How about going out for a curry – no, how about Mex? I really fancy fajitas.’

  ‘I’m bushed.’

  ‘Some food’ll perk you up. I’m feeling hungry and horny.’

  ‘Well, you could always sit on the street with a cardboard sign hung from your neck: ‘Hungry and Horny – Please Feed and Shag Me.’

  She thumped him in the stomach. ‘I don’t think that’s funny. Now, come on, let’s get up.’

  ‘Niks, it’s a quarter past eleven. I’m shattered and I have to be in at dawn to finish a report for Dr Crowe.’

  ‘For such a big, tough guy, how come you’re so frightened of this Dr Crowe?’ She tugged a crushed copy of the Evening Standard out from under Gunn, w
hich was folded open at a picture of Crowe in the business pages. ‘Look at him, he’s such a weedy thing, and he’s got a face like a sick rattlesnake.’

  Gunn grinned. ‘That’s flattering him.’

  She stared at Crowe again and screwed up her face. ‘Yech, he gives me the creeps. How many people did he kill to get to the top of the heap?’

  He turned to face her, electrified by the remark. ‘What did you say?’

  ‘Well, looks like a killer. Did you ever kill anyone, soldier?’

  ‘In the Falklands.’

  ‘And in Belfast?’

  He shook his head. ‘I’d have liked to kill a few there, but I didn’t get the opportunity.’

  ‘And since?’

  ‘I’ve been in communications ever since. You don’t get to kill people in communications, you just monitor them.’

  She studied his face closely, with a teasing grin. ‘Are you telling me the truth, big boy?’

  ‘What the hell do you mean?’

  ‘Oh, it just seems an odd coincidence. This Charles Rowley’s name was on your computer screen with a black Christmas tree beside it, and now he’s dead. Just wondering, that’s all.’ She looked testingly at him for a moment, then kissed him on the cheek. ‘Right, more important matters! Tonight’s entertainment and the choice is yours: you have ten seconds to get a hard on or we go out for Mex.’

  86

  Sunday 4 December, 1994

  ‘The overall objective of this collaboration is to see if eis – and transacting components from bacteriophase lambda – can be utilized in mammals to mediate site-specific integration of plasmid DNA into a unique chromosomal alt site.’

  Conor lay sprawled on the sofa in Monty’s living room, wearing only his towelling dressing gown, absently sipping coffee; it had gone cold but he barely noticed as he concentrated on the document. A branch of kindling crackled in the grate and spat at him, but he didn’t even register it.

  ‘The assumptions are as follows:’ he read. ‘First, in order of priority, we must consider –’

  A kiss on his cheek broke his concentration. ‘How many pieces of toast?’

  He noticed, suddenly, the smell of grilling bacon and realized he was starving. ‘Two, I guess, thanks.’

  Conor put the report down as Monty left the room, picked up his laptop and opened his eMail folder. Methodically he began working his way through the last 236 messages, all containing the name ‘Maternox’, that had been picked up by his Trojan Horse and placed in his Minaret Internet dead-letter drop. He had collected this material yesterday afternoon from yet another hotel room. But now he came across nothing relating to the Medici File, nor anything else of interest; just routine eMail traffic, mostly sales reports and marketing memos.

  Monty whipped some eggs in a mixing bowl, then immersed four slices of bread, turning them to soak up the egg evenly, and dropping them in turn into the frying pan. Her eyes drifted to the window. It was a beautiful day; a heavy frost had coated the garden and fields in a snowy whiteness that sparkled in the light of the winter sun, but she ignored Nature’s special effects as she kept her eyes peeled for any unfamiliar movement out there.

  She had been followed home on Friday night, she was certain. She’d called in at the old lab to find out how her father was getting on, and had sensed a car tailing her afterwards. A pair of lights which had been maintaining a steady distance behind her had suddenly disappeared when she’d turned off on to her cart track.

  She had slowed right down a few yards up the track, watching the main road in her mirror for those lights as they went past, but she’d seen nothing. Even when she climbed out of the MG and ran back down to the road, there was only the blackness of the night. Then, later, when Conor arrived, he’d seen a small saloon on the verge with its lights off and a silhouette behind the wheel.

  Several times during the past two nights she had got out of bed, walked to the window and peered through the curtains. Conor was leaving for Washington on Tuesday and she wished they could go together on the same flight, but her father did not expect to have a result before late Wednesday night at the earliest.

  She was deeply nervous for Conor. Charley Rowley had gone to Hawaii and had been killed. She was afraid something similar could happen in Washington. And she felt uncomfortable at the thought of being on her own in the middle of nowhere for two days.

  With her fear for Conor’s safety in America in mind, Monty decided that she should at last go and approach the Chairman, talk to Rorke off her own bat.

  Ribbons of smoke rose from the pan. ‘Ready!’ she called out.

  Conor came into the kitchen. ‘Wow, French toast – my absolute favourite breakfast!’ She served him his two slices, with the rest of the plate stacked with bacon, then sat beside him. There was maple syrup and a jug of fresh orange juice on the table. ‘I’m dangerously hungry!’ he said, pouring syrup over Monty’s toast, then over his own.

  ‘Will you still fancy me if this makes me fat?’ she joked, eyeing her own portion appreciatively.

  ‘I guess I could always have the guys in the Bendix Transgenics Division clone a thinner version of you. So even if I didn’t fancy the actual you any more, I’d still fancy your genes, OK?’

  She gave him a dubious grin. ‘So what changes shall I make in a cloned version of you?’ She slipped a hand inside his dressing gown, and pretended to make for his groin. ‘Think there could be room for improvement down there?’

  ‘Thanks a lot!’

  She leaned across and licked the sticky syrup off his lips affectionately. ‘No I don’t really want to change anything. I like every single bit of you.’

  And I’m deeply frightened for you.

  They wrapped up warmly and set off for a walk after breakfast. As they crunched across the hard, frosted grass on the back lawn, a faint tinge of smoke from Monty’s fire hung in the air.

  ‘God, it’s beautiful here,’ Conor said, looking round in awe. ‘Just incredibly beautiful.’ He sighed. ‘You know, sometimes I find it hard to believe this whole world was created simply by two bits of dust colliding out in space and causing one tiny spark.’

  ‘Does that mean you believe in God?’

  ‘I believe in forces of the universe. I don’t like to use the word “God” – more some kind of intelligent energy out there. Something of far greater power than man.’

  Monty stared at the watery half-crescent of the moon, still suspended in the noonday sky like a ghost. A red helicopter clattered by, heading in the direction of the military airfield a few miles to the south. She turned her head suddenly towards Conor, and spoke. ‘I love you,’ she said. Then added meekly, ‘I’m sorry.’

  ‘Sorry?’ He smiled back, a tiny glint on the far hill catching his eye at the same time and distracting him.

  ‘Yes – I – I can’t help it. I love you. I really do.’

  Conor said gently, ‘You don’t have to apologize.’ He looked back at the hill, not wanting Monty to see his concern. After a moment, he saw the glint again. Binoculars, or a telephoto camera lens?

  Unaware that danger was closer than she thought, Monty continued, ‘I – I’m so scared of something happening to you to us.’ He touched her shoulders lightly with his fingertips and kissed her forehead. Strangely, the words of his mother over a couple of months ago, on his last night in Washington, echoed in his mind.

  You don’t have to go. There are other companies – right here … You just don’t know what you’re getting into. Maybe I’ve taught you too much, given you false confidence. Believe me, I’ve seen it for myself, I’ve experienced what they can do. Think again while you still have the chance.

  Maybe she was right, but how could he have lived with his conscience if he had just not tried? And anyway if he had not come here, he wouldn’t have met Monty.

  He squeezed her shoulders, and told her, ‘I love you too. More than anything in all the world.’

  87

  Tuesday 6 December, 1994

  The ala
rm went off at five in the morning in Conor’s flat. He sat up immediately and switched on the light. He had to get up early in order to finish some work before catching his flight to Washington.

  ‘Want me to make you some breakfast – eggs or something?’ Monty offered.

  ‘It’s OK, you go back to sleep,’ he said quietly. ‘I’ll get some coffee in the office.’

  She heard him showering, then rooting around packing last-minute bits and pieces into his suitcase. Then he kissed her on the cheek. ‘Call you this evening – you’re not going down to your cottage on your own?’

  ‘I’ll stay here, like we discussed.’

  ‘Promise?’

  ‘Promise.’

  ‘Good.’

  She reached out and took his arm. ‘You will be careful, won’t you, Conor?’

  ‘Washington’s my patch, I’ll be fine. Just get over and join me as fast as you can.’ He kissed her again, then she heard the click of the door and he was gone.

  Wide awake now, she rolled out of bed and walked naked through to the living room, which was tinged with orange from the street lighting. She watched Conor emerge from the front door, put his briefcase and hold-all into the boot of his BMW, and hoped he might look up so she could wave, but he didn’t.

  To her horror, as he pulled out, so did a Ford saloon a hundred yards further back. Keeping its lights off, it followed Conor’s car down to the junction at the end of the street, then turned right, after him.

  She felt a stab of panic, unsure what to do. Conor was going to the office and it was early in the morning: all she could think of, suddenly, was Jake Seals.

  Wishing to hell that Conor had a car phone, she dressed in her clothes of the night before, grabbed her coat, checked that she had the spare keys to the flat, then threw herself out of the door into the morning darkness.

  The MG’s screen was misted on the inside; she cleared a small patch, then drove off far too fast, taking several lights on amber and one on red.

  There was little traffic as she raced up Warwick Road, across the White City roundabout. But once she was on to the Westway, she found herself overtaking car after car, constantly hoping that the next set of tail lights would be Conor’s, but disappointed each time.