Fourth Day (3 page)

My vision cleared, heart rate slowing. Two hundred and fifty metres away, the girl was still on her knees in the dirt. The men still had her by the arm and shoulder and she’d drooped under the burden of capture. She was weeping, great wracking sobs of wrath and heartbreak. Briefly, I considered another challenge to Sean’s restraining hand again but, with a last squeeze, he let go, withdrew.

I turned my head, found him watching me intently. And suddenly that cool gaze angered me. Not just his confidence that I wouldn’t do anything to jeopardise our purpose here, but because he was right. If I wasn’t professional enough to ignore such distractions, then what was I?

But there were questions here. What was Thomas Witney’s connection to the girl, I wondered? Were the guards there to keep people out, or keep people in? And what were they afraid of?

Sean’s eyes flicked back to the girl, and her captors. They had her on her feet now, were leading her towards the building she’d so nearly escaped, one on either side. Her keening had reached a pitch where she was almost incoherent with it, losing coordination along with whatever burst of energy had fuelled her failed attempt. They were forced to support her, keep her upright as she stumbled along, pliant, between them.

Just as the three of them reached the doorway, it opened
and a new figure stepped out. Sean had the camera to his eye and I heard him suck in a sharp breath as he recognised the newcomer. It was hard not to.

Parker had shown us pictures of Randall Bane, but they were poor-quality images, snatched perhaps from a moving car, through glass, on the fly. They’d showed a man with a high-domed head, close shaven in the style that his follower, Thomas Witney, seemed to have taken to heart.

But by contrast, the man behind Fourth Day was tall, well over six feet, and fast approaching fifty. The covert photograph had been taken as he walked along a city street with a long stride that flapped the skirts of a well-cut overcoat around his legs. He had been surrounded by people but somehow elevated above them. Command radiated from him like a Roman general.

If I’d been staring at him through the scope of a sniper’s rifle, I wouldn’t have needed to see his badge of rank to know he was a high-priority kill.

Now, Bane folded his arms almost delicately and waited for the girl to be brought before him. The men let go of her when they were only a couple of metres away. Without their support she dropped straight to her knees, shoulders bowed so the vertebrae of her spine formed a peak at the back of her neck, utterly subjugated.

A cold fear pooled in my belly. I’d seen this pose before, in South America, and the Balkans, and the parts of Africa they don’t mention on the wildlife documentaries. When he reached towards her, it took a blinded moment for my mind to recognise that his hands were empty.

Instead of the execution I’d been half-expecting, Bane touched the top of her head, so lightly it was almost a caress.
She lifted her face very slowly, fearful, and then through the magnification of the glasses I saw wonder there, as if she, too, had been expecting a bullet. He said something, only a few words, and let his fingers skim the side of her cheek with a softness that made me shiver.

He spoke again, receiving a downcast nod in reply, then held out his hand to her and there was something vaguely sensual about the gesture.

After the briefest irresolution, the girl put her hand in his, allowed him to help her to her feet, slide his arm around her shoulders. The four of them went back inside the building. The door closed behind them with a faint rattle that was barely audible at our current distance, amid the clicking of the insects all around us, and the rustle of a sudden winding breeze.

Beside me, I heard Sean hiss out a long breath. When I looked back across, it was to see a muscle jumping in the side of his jaw. His head turned slowly to meet my eyes and I put words to what was going through both our minds.

‘Jesus Christ,’ I muttered. ‘Just who the hell
are
these people?’

It was a question I repeated later, after Sean and I had hiked out of Fourth Day’s land on the edge of the San Gabriel Mountains, retrieved our rented 4x4 from a rest area, and gone hand to hand with traffic on Interstate 210 that crawls across the northern edge of the city of Los Angeles. Two hours later, we were back in Calabasas, where Parker Armstrong had set up his temporary base of operations.

Calabasas nestled into the hills of Santa Monica just above Malibu, and Parker had arranged use of an
eight-bedroom
mansion, part of an upmarket gated community on the outskirts, not being one to slum it if he didn’t have to.

Although it boasted magnificent views and undoubted seclusion, the house had been built into what seemed like the side of a cliff, which struck me as a precarious location considering California’s uncertain geology. Nobody else seemed overly concerned that we might be woken suddenly in the middle of the night to find ourselves at the bottom of the nearby canyon.

‘Fourth Day was formed back in the Fifties,’ Parker said now. ‘Nobody’s quite sure of their original doctrine except it’s a fairly black-and-white interpretation of good and evil. Hence the name.’ His voice took on that of a preacher from his pulpit. ‘“And God made two great lights; the greater light to rule the day and the lesser light to rule the night… And to rule over the day and over the night and to divide the light from the darkness… And the evening and the morning were the fourth day.” Book of Genesis.’ He shrugged. ‘I’m paraphrasing, but that’s the gist. Read into it what you will.’

‘When do you get to the bit about scaring young girls half to death?’ I murmured.

Parker frowned. ‘Well, they managed to convince some wealthy donors to bankroll them, claimed some success with delinquency and drug addiction. For a time they kept pretty much to themselves, stayed below the radar, but by the mid Eighties things had moved in a more extreme direction.’

‘How extreme?’

Parker glanced at me for a second, as if gauging how much I needed to know. Unusual, because as a rule there was little hesitation about him. Tall enough to appear deceptively slim, Parker hid a wiry frame beneath well-tailored dark suits, and a calculating brain behind an often bland expression. A native New Yorker, he was good-looking without being outright handsome, seeming able to subtly alter his looks, his voice, even his age, almost at will. He’d greyed prematurely, which I’d learnt was a family trait, but his gaze had aged faster still, cool and watchful. He and Sean were very much alike in that respect.

‘There were rumours of rape and incest among the
followers, use of hallucinogenic drugs, widespread abuse.’ He smiled but it didn’t reach his eyes. ‘You name it, these people made an art of it.’

I thought again of the girl’s fright, and her despair. ‘How come these damn cults never advocate abstinence, chastity, and
not
marrying your own prepubescent granddaughter?’ I said, wry more than bitter. ‘And why didn’t someone shut them down?’

‘Various people tried – relatives, mainly,’ Parker said, and I heard a flinty echo in his voice. ‘But nobody could prove any of it, and Fourth Day’s lawyers made ’em wish they’d left well alone.’

‘So that was it?’ I demanded roughly. ‘They were just allowed to do whatever they liked, so long as it was behind closed doors?’

‘Eventually, they couldn’t keep a lid on it. A group of former members got together and threatened legal action about eight years ago. Fourth Day settled, but it finished them.’

‘That’s not what we’ve been seeing,’ Sean said, pouring coffee from the filter machine on the credenza. Good coffee was Parker’s vice and his virtue. This particular grind was full and rich and dark, the smell of it alone reminding me of New York pavement cafés in the summer with the beat of traffic echoing against the high stone and steel and glass. Sean handed me a cup and sat on the arm of my chair with his own, close but not quite touching.

Compared to Parker, Sean was wider, heavier, more overtly aggressive in his make-up. Time in the corporate world had given considerable polish to his working-class origins in a small northern English town, but there was
still no mistaking what lay beneath the surface gloss.

We were using the Great Room as the nerve centre. It had an eighteen-foot ceiling and one wall made entirely of glass, which looked out over the lap pool and the far distant hillside of similar, exclusive and excluding homes. Parker had hit the switch for the massive full-length curtains as soon as we’d arrived, and they hadn’t been opened since. We were not here to enjoy the view.

One end of the room was dominated by a huge fireplace that had apparently been lifted wholesale from a French chateau. A motorised home movie screen was dropped down in front of the chimney breast. There was a laptop hooked into the projector, into which we’d downloaded the pictures taken during the course of our surveillance.

Now, Sean leant over and selected one of the digital images. A distance shot of Fourth Day’s compound flashed up onto the screen in cinema-quality high definition, half a metre high.

‘Everything we’ve seen of them, from armament to vehicles, shows they’re well equipped, and their gear is either nearly new or at least of good quality and looks well maintained,’ he said, raising an eyebrow in Parker’s direction. ‘What happened to revitalise them?’

‘Randall Bane happened,’ Parker said flatly. ‘After the settlement, Fourth Day was broke. Bane bought up the land and buildings for a song. It was assumed he’d turn it into a private ranch, but he kept things up and running, and nobody’s heard jack about the cult since.’ He reached for the laptop himself and put up the original picture he’d shown us of Bane.

Maybe it was because I’d seen him for real, but that
covert photo didn’t begin to do justice to the presence of the man. Where Sean – and Parker, come to that – could radiate menace as naturally as breathing, Randall Bane was something else again. Something I couldn’t quite put my finger on, except that it made me thoroughly uneasy.

I glanced at Parker, found his eyes fixed on the figure on the screen. It could just have been the projected colours that made his gaze seem suddenly very hard and bright. ‘Bane’s kind of an enigma. It’s rumoured he made his money in the more volatile areas of the Middle East and the former Soviet Union, but nobody knows for certain and, needless to say, those countries are not exactly free and easy with the United States when it comes to information traffic. You would have thought somebody, somewhere, would have a file on this guy a couple of inches thick,’ he said, ‘but nobody seems to know who he really is, or what he’s doing running a two-bit cult in California.’

‘What about the other two guys we saw today?’ I asked, taking a sip of my coffee. ‘Any luck identifying them?’

Parker pulled his eyes away from Bane’s likeness and clicked up a picture of the two men we’d seen with the M16s. ‘The black guy’s name is Tyrone Yancy. Ex-Marine. Dishonourable discharge in ’ninety-eight. Was having an affair with his CO’s wife. When the CO found out, he slapped her around some. Yancy broke the guy’s jaw. Since then he’s worked construction, militia training, security, whatever comes along that needs muscle.’

‘What about the other guy?’ Sean asked. ‘Of the two of them, I would have said he was in charge.’

‘John Nu.’ Parker’s eyes flicked to ours. ‘A Brit. Another ex-military man. Corporal in the Parachute Regiment. Saw
action in the Balkans and failed Selection for the SAS twice. Left five years ago and has been working the private military contractors’ circuit ever since.’

‘A mercenary, then,’ I murmured. ‘Sounds like Bane surrounds himself with interesting people.’ I glanced up. ‘You said he left five years ago, so how long has he been with Fourth Day?’

‘Just the last six months. Bane suddenly started recruiting additional security. Took on eight guys, including these two.’

Sean frowned. ‘How does Thomas Witney fit in to all this?’

‘He’s just a guy who suffered a family tragedy and decided to take a little time out from the world,’ Parker said, and there was the blur of evasion beneath the quiet words. ‘Apparently, it was never supposed to be a life-changing event but there were…complications. Now our client wants a retrieval and they’re prepared to go to considerable trouble to achieve it.’

‘Yeah, but how much trouble are they expecting
us
to go to?’ Sean asked. ‘From what we’ve seen of Fourth Day, they’re prepared for something – almost as if they’re expecting an incursion of some kind, and taking on people like Yancy and Nu confirms that. So, just what are we dealing with?’ His tone was deceptively mild. ‘You haven’t exactly been forthcoming on this one, Parker.’

‘I’m sorry to go all cloak-and-dagger on you guys,’ Parker said stiffly. ‘But the client’s kinda paranoid when it comes to confidentiality.’

‘He must be,’ Sean said, and there was definitely a touch of bite to him now, like a prowling shark. ‘Seeing
as you haven’t even told
me
who the client is.’

I glanced up from my coffee in surprise. Sean might be a junior partner in Armstrong-Meyer, but he was a partner nevertheless. And Parker wasn’t usually so secretive.

Parker’s right eye twitched fractionally, narrowed down. ‘That’s not important,’ he said. ‘What
is
important is that we extract Witney as soon as possible. You’ve told me yourselves what the situation is in there. He’s nervous of something, surrounded by armed guards. He may have gone in voluntarily but, from what you’ve seen, it kinda looks like he’s having second thoughts.’ He stopped, took a breath. ‘I have given my personal assurance to the client that we will get him out again – no matter if he’s willing or not.’

It was as close as I’d seen him come to temper. The bark of it was enough for silence to form uneasily around the edges, like frost.

Keeping my voice bland, I asked, ‘Why the hurry?’

Parker’s head snapped round, and for a moment I thought his tongue would follow, then he seemed to shake himself, said without inflection, ‘If there’s something on your mind, Charlie, spit it out.’

‘The picture you showed us at the original briefing was of a very different man to the Thomas Witney we’ve been watching,’ I said. ‘And he didn’t get that way overnight. How long, exactly, has he been behind the wire, and why the hurry to get him out now?’

Sean glanced at me and I caught the barest flicker of surprise on his face. Then he fixed Parker with a dark gaze, echoing my own enquiry.

Parker sighed.

‘Witney went in to Fourth Day a little over five years ago,’ he admitted.

‘And you were going to tell us this piece of information when, exactly?’ Sean’s voice was never more deadly than when it was soft as now.

Before Parker could answer, there was noise in the hallway and one of the three-metre-high front doors swung inwards, signalling the arrival of the rest of the team. Parker quickly crossed to greet them, not hiding his relief at the interruption. I glanced up at Sean.

What’s going on
?

I don’t know
.

The two men came in, said their hellos. Joe McGregor I’d worked with before on numerous occasions. A young black Canadian who’d been through two tours in Iraq on exchange with the US Third Infantry, before deciding he’d had enough excitement. As he dumped his kit down on the tiles he nodded to me and Sean with the wary friendliness I’d grown to expect, ever the total professional.

But the second man was someone I’d never thought I’d see back out in the field. Not just on this job, but ever.

Bill Rendelson had been one of Parker’s first
close-protection
officers, had worked alongside him right up until a radical extremist group sent a parcel bomb to the businessman he was protecting on a trip to South Africa, four years ago.

I’d seen the photos in the file. The bomb missed its intended target but, in doing his job, Bill left his arm behind in the ruins of a Cape Town hotel suite, and his active service career along with it. The right-hand sleeve of his jacket now hung straight and flat from the shoulder,
clipped together halfway down just to make the point.

Since the amputation, he had adapted his stance to cope with the uneven distribution of his weight, giving his blocky torso a slightly twisted look that mirrored accurately, I’d always felt, his state of mind.

Neither Parker nor Sean seemed surprised to see Bill, but maybe they just hid it better than I did.

‘OK,’ Parker said, once rooms had been allocated and bags carried up the overly grand Scarlett O’Hara sweeping staircase. We were back in the Great Room, the only background music provided by the coffee machine gurgling through a fresh cycle. ‘Now you’re all here, I can bring you up to speed. First of all, it’s been pointed out to me that I should start with an apology.’

An almost imperceptible ripple went through the assembled group. He settled us with a cool stare, said, ‘I’ve made it a rule never to send people in on surveillance operations – on
any
kind of operations – without adequate intel, but I’ve done that here.’

‘Why?’ It was Sean who asked the question, calm and without judgement. Their earlier clash might never have occurred.

Parker glanced at him for a moment and I had a brief mental image of two glaciers impacting with slow but inevitable force.

‘Because time is not a luxury at our disposal in this case.’

‘Why the rush, boss?’ Joe McGregor asked, unconsciously repeating my earlier question.

‘As you know, we’ve carried out these kind of snatches on cults before, on behalf of parents of misguided children,
but our target now is a whole different ball game.’

He brought up two new images on the screen, side by side. The first was the same picture of Thomas Witney that he’d shown to Sean and me before we’d begun our watching brief. The second was a covert surveillance picture, taken earlier that day. I was struck again by how much Witney had changed during his time in the cult.

The original snap had been taken at some formal occasion. One of Witney’s hands was wrapped tightly round the stem of a champagne flute, with the awkward grip of a man more at home grasping the neck of a beer bottle. He looked uncomfortable to have been caught on camera, and despite the half-hearted smile, an air of misery hung over him like misted rain.