Bite (29 page)

‘You loved him and he's not here any more.' Max rested his lips briefly against her torn cheek. ‘But time heals all in the end.'

Saskia's rusting Ford roared into VIP parking bay at Utrecht Laboratories. It was five past eight, and Professor Friederikson was already waiting for her in reception. He escorted her down to his basement laboratory. She looked at the antiquated equipment, the yellowed walls and the ancient refrigerator, surprised that a world renowned expert should struggle for resources as if he was just another research student.

The professor sat her down at his desk opposite the tank of
Anopheles gambeii
mosquitoes, in front of a dish of orange tablets and a densely-inked trace print out from a chemical analyser. He started to talk before she had a chance to examine what she was looking at.

‘I powdered a pill then mixed it with a solvent before putting it in the thin layer chromatagram. The trace we have here contains talc and dextrose and all the other rubbish one would expect in an amateur narcotic, but among these proteins here,' he pointed to a series of six tight inky peaks on the print out, ‘Will be the active ingredient we are looking for.'

Friederikson scurried across to a desk and brought over a cage of five white rats. ‘These have had the equivalent of two tablets each mashed into their food, and they're still alive. We'll keep them under observation.'

‘But toxicity can take months to establish!' Saskia wailed.

‘Yes of course,' he snorted. ‘We are confined to schoolboy science. It is the best we can do in such a short time.'

He opened the refrigerator and took out the vial of Caroline Sivali's blood. ‘I just finished a thick film slide of the sample a few minutes ago. Your daughter's blood is seventeen per cent infected. We'll see if we can bring that percentage down.'

Friederikson opened it, and with a teat pipette deposited a few drops in a petrie dish. Then with a fresh pipette he dropped onto the blood a few drops of colourless liquid.

‘That is a solution of the powdered tablet. I have tried to filter out the impurities as best I can. Now all we can do is wait to see if it kills or inhibits the parasites.' Professor Friederikson shrugged. ‘Thank God we are doing this in secret. Any science journal would shred my reputation for such rough and ready work. But then we don't want to be famous, do we? We just want to save your daughter's life.'

The phone rang and Friederikson snatched it up. He offered the receiver to Saskia. ‘The transfusion service, for you.'

Electricity has officially arrived. Crocodile came in and announced this to us. Unable to contain his excitement, he opened up the cells and trooped us out to admire the creaky old diesel generator towed behind the Land Rover, which was now painted with camouflage colours. Proudly, he told us that his rapid reaction forces (at this he pointed to the Land Rover) had liberated it from the hospital in a daring raid on the government-controlled village of Mologwe.

While we watched, Crocodile ordered Rambo-Rambo and Dakka to the rear door of the Land Rover from which they dragged a battered refrigerator. Dakka seemed surprised by the weight of it. He slipped and the door came open, spilling medicine bottles, vaccines, ampoules, and various medical packages onto the mud.

The long trip through the heat would already have ruined all of it, but it still angered us to see it all dropped in a muddy useless heap. Crocodile seemed to be angry too, gesticulating until five of his men gathered and stood the refrigerator upright. Crocodile closed and opened the door. Once he was satisfied the hinges and seal were intact, a grin spread onto his face and he tapped the top. ‘Civilization!'

(Erica's Diary 1992)

Max was caught in a typical Amsterdam summer shower as he waited for Lisbeth at the tourist boat marina. Dozens of low glass-topped boats manœuvred into busy jetties, disgorging hundreds of tourists who shrugged up their raincoats and sheltered under colourful umbrellas.

Behind Max a dented maroon van cruised by. It had one cracked headlamp, held in place with tape, and corroded wheel arches. The driver lowered his tinted window, and stuck his head out to reverse into a parking space. If Max had turned around he might have recognised the driver. This was the ordinary-looking middle-aged man who had sat next to him on the plane from New York. The man who had introduced himself as John Davies. And Lisbeth would have recognised the younger muscled man who sat in the vehicle's dark interior.

A huge coach pulled up at the roadside, and a large party of middle-aged Koreans headed towards a jetty. A European woman with sunglasses, headscarf and a large shoulderbag converged with them, and turned to Max. It was Lisbeth. He hurried up to her, she handed him a ticket and they waited in line to board a low glass-topped boat. A bearded captain, nautically dressed in blazer and cap, was taking pictures of each couple as they boarded, forcing smiles from the reluctant with an absurd squawking rubber bird. Max and Lisbeth grinned, arm in arm like lovers, and squeezed towards the back of the boat.

Lisbeth passed across the shoulderbag and whispered in Max's ear. ‘This is about as safe as we can be. No cops, no Anvil, and hardly anyone here speaks English.'

The boat reversed away from the jetty, made a sharp right and slid under a low bridge into a broad, curved canal. A tape crackled into life, describing in a half dozen languages the architectural features to be seen from the water.

Max undid the bag. The casing of the laptop was badly scratched but the computer powered up okay. The e-mail program was password protected. Max tried a few of the obvious birth date and middle name candidates, but none of them got him in. After half an hour he shrugged and put it back in the bag, his head in his hands.

‘I'm at a dead end, Lisbeth. Three weeks she's been gone, and this was the only real hope I had. I guess we have to find Anvil's hiding place before he finds either of us. If there is any place you can think of, any places you ever went together…'

Lisbeth shook her head. ‘It wasn't that kind of relationship. We never went out for meals or to the cinema or on holiday together. It was more physical than romantic.'

‘Yeah, why am I not surprised about
that
.'

They passed a line of houseboats, jerrybuilt structures festooned with house plants, homemade trellis work and washing lines. On one a woman sat in a swimsuit, reading under an umbrella with a cat on her lap, waiting for the sun to break through.

They passed sedately under another hump-backed brick bridge just as a maroon van crossed it, tyres hissing on the rain-greased cobbles.

‘His only other pastime was fitness. It was a secret passion, an obsession. I once watched him through the crack of the door do one hundred one-handed press-ups in two minutes.'

‘One handed! I can manage about one and a half.'

‘He said his ambition was to build himself a floating gym out of an old Rhine barge, so he could be away from everybody.'

‘That might be a clue. Did he ever own a barge?'

‘I don't think so, but maybe. He hid a lot of his life from me. He had the money, that's for sure.'

‘Did you meet any of his friends?'

‘Friends, no. People do what Anvil wants through fear, or in my case excitement and fear. For him there is nothing in between, nothing equal enough to be called friendship.'

‘What about you, Lisbeth?'

‘I need friendship, and I need time to heal. In every way.' She closed her eyes and took a deep breath. She held Max's arm gently. The sun had come out and the captain rolled back the glass boat roof to murmurs of appreciation from the passengers.

They were now heading back towards the jetties. Lisbeth opened her eyes, suddenly gave a little shriek and squeezed Max's hand.

‘What is it?' he said.

‘Get down quick.' She pulled Max down behind a Korean couple.

‘Anvil,' Lisbeth said. ‘On the next pier.'

‘Where?' Max said, peering under the panning video camera of the Korean man ‘Jesus, I wish I knew what he looked like.'

‘Short pale hair and a burn shaped like a dagger on his forehead and nose. But don't look for him. He'll spot you easily that way.'

The tour boat moved in slowly, taking a different pier to the one they began on. Passengers jostled to get off. Max and Lisbeth joined the queue, trying to mingle with the others, heads down.

‘How did he know we were here?' Lisbeth hissed. ‘I don't get it.'

‘Well he's here and that's that. Next thing is to figure how we survive the experience.' Max could feel Lisbeth trembling violently against him.

They stepped out from the boat, and joined the Koreans in a press around the passenger photographs, developed and printed since they had got on the boat. Max paid the exorbitant fee for their print and offered it to Lisbeth. She managed a brief smile, and slipped the picture into her bag.

The pavements and bridges around the marina were open. Max reckoned they could be spotted easily as soon as they moved away from the crowds. But from where they stood it was only a few yards to a line of six tourist buses parked on the Damrak. They couldn't pass for Koreans, which ruled out the two nearest, but the third vehicle forward had a group of Scandinavians climbing aboard. Max led Lisbeth around the back of the buses, so they were hidden from Anvil, and then slipped round the front of the Scandinavian coach. No-one checked who they were, and they took rear seats. Lisbeth peered out towards the harbour through the green-tinted windows.

‘He's there.'

This time Max saw him, from behind, fifty yards away. He was tall, maybe six two. The raincoat couldn't hide the quarterback physique, nor mask the aura of physical capability and strength he exuded. This was the man Max had glimpsed watching Der Ridder burn to the ground. This was the man who wanted to kill them both.

Anvil turned. Max and Lisbeth ducked but still felt the intensity of the gaze as it swept the parked buses like radar.

Everyone on their coach was seated, the engine was idling, but the driver was reading a magazine, and the door stood open. Come on, let's go. Max willed urgency at the driver, then lifted his head to peek from the window. Anvil was walking slowly along the line of coaches towards them, as if he was somehow smelling them out. Fifteen yards away, then ten, with a hand to his right ear.

Anvil peered in the windscreen of the coach right behind them, then turned and passed right underneath Max's window, his scarred crew cut head just a foot below him, heading for the open door. Then he stopped. Underneath the raised hand, Max could see a plastic earpiece, and a thin spiral wire going down into the raincoat.

Something told Max that Anvil was going to look up, so he pulled Lisbeth below the level of the window, hardly daring to breathe. The instructions from Alex reverberated in his head.
Put metal doors between you…don't force actions upon him…at less than ten feet say your prayers ‘cos you're going to heaven.

The only reassuring feeling was his hand shoved deep in his raincoat pocket, gripping the Walther, magazine full, safety catch off.

The driver tossed aside his magazine. With a hiss the door shut, the engine revved, and Max breathed again. He risked a peep through the window as the bus inched forward waiting for a gap in traffic. Two feet away Anvil looked right up at him, eyes widening in anticipation of slow and evil pleasures, an outstretched fist an inch from Max's heart, beating a funeral march against the metal skin of the coach.

It took Saskia only twenty minutes to race back the thirty kilometres to the hospital. She dumped the car in a disabled parking bay and waited impatiently for the lift to take her up to the intensive care unit on the sixth floor. Waiting by her daughter's bedside were Professor van Diemen, Paul Jeker, two nurses and an official from the Dutch blood transfusion service.

The AB blood had arrived and the transfusion was about to begin. Saskia watched as blood flowed into her daughter's right arm. Caroline's heart rate was stable and her breathing normal but no machine trace can describe a mother's view. All Saskia could see was how frail and tiny her daughter looked, how pale and vulnerable.