Omega Dog (22 page)

That shut him up again, and Beth didn’t feel like breaking the silence this time.

She sat seething behind the wheel for the next hour. The road wound through increasingly dense pine forest, and the air felt noticeably cooler as they climbed higher.

Venn said, ‘Do you want me to take over?’

‘The little lady’s perfectly capable of driving a car, thank you very much,’ Beth snapped.

Venn held up his hands in resignation.

The satnav spoke up in its slightly robotic woman’s voice, telling them to turn off in a hundred yards.

Beth looked at the display.

Their destination was just twenty miles away.

For the first time since the episode with the Jaguar man, she felt a shiver of fear.

––––––––

S
helly drove well above the speed limit most of the way, using the speed camera detector in the Hummer to dodge the highway patrols. She made it to northern Massachusetts in under two hours.

By then her sources had provided her with a few updates. The local cops had interviewed a motel clerk nearby the scene where the dead guy had been found in the trunk of the Jaguar. The clerk, Al Kennedy, had described two people who could only have been Colby and the big man who was helping her. They’d checked out, but he hadn’t seen which car they’d driven away in. Or he couldn’t recall. His story was a little vague.

Well, Shelly would have to jog his memory.

Her contact had told her back in New York that the body in the trunk, though badly beaten, fitted the description of the guy who’d killed the police officers last night and escaped from the ambulance. Shelly figured there had to be a connection with the big guy, Colby’s helper. Probably the big guy had killed him.

So he and Colby were headed north through New England.

As she drove the Hummer into the parking lot of the motel, Shelly saw four men emerge from the reception. They all wore lightweight suits, Italian-cut and flashy, and all had slicked back hair or mirror shades or both.

Shelly knew mobsters when she saw them.

She waited for the men to leave – yep, Italian sports cars, too – and then climbed down from the Hummer. She had the Sig Sauer in a holster inside her jacket, and the Ka-Bar knife in its sheath at her side.

The interior of the reception was gloomy in contrast with the brilliant sunshine outside, and stank of stale sweat. Shelly turned the sign on the door to
Sorry, we’re closed
.

A skinny guy sat behind the desk, studying a copy of
Penthouse
magazine. He glanced up, ran his gaze down Shelly and up again, then flicked his eyes back to the magazine. As if he was combining two images in his head.

‘Al Kennedy?’ Shelly said, smiling sweetly.

‘Who wants to know?’ he grinned back, unable to keep the leer out of his voice. Shelly guessed he was something of a minor celebrity at the moment.

‘Police,’ she said, flashing her shield long enough that he could see it was genuine but not long enough to reveal she was from out of state.

He raised his eyebrows, taken aback for a moment. But he quickly regained some of his cockiness.

‘How can I help you, Miss Officer?’ He glanced about, as if wondering where her partner was. Cops always worked in pairs, didn’t they?

‘Those guys just now,’ she said. ‘The ones in suits. Who were they, and what did they want?’

Al Kennedy smiled ruefully, as if to say,
I really want to be able to help, but...

‘I’m afraid that’s confidential, Officer.’

Shelly wasn’t in the mood. With a quick movement she drew the knife and grabbed the guy by his greasy hair, pressing the tip of the blade into one nostril.

‘I’ll ask again, Al.
Who were those fuckin’ guys?
’

His eyes wide with shock, his nose wrinkling in an attempt to get it away from the cold steel tip, Al stammered: ‘I c-c-can’t tell you. Believe me. I just can’t.’

‘Why not?’ Shelly pressed infinitely gently. A bead of blood formed on Al’s nose.

‘They’d k-kill me.’

Shelly chuckled. ‘Boy, have you got your priorities screwed up, Al.’

She didn’t think he’d make a run for it, but she drew the Sig Sauer anyway, and motioned for him to precede her through the door leading to the office in back.

As luck would have it, steps led down from the door to a basement office. Perfect. She gave Al a little push so that he stumbled into the room. Then she indicated for him to sit down on one of the rickety chairs that were standing about.

Amongst all the clutter in the office, Shelly found several very useful items. These included a roll of duct tape, a hammer and some nails, a pair of pliers, and a disposable cigarette lighter.

Quickly she taped him securely to the chair and wound some of the tape round his head, attaching a piece of cloth to be used as an on-off gag.

‘Now, Al,’ Shelly said cheerfully. ‘How about we start again?’

He held out longer than she’d been expecting, and Shelly was impressed despite herself. These guys really had put the fear of God into old Al here. It took her a full fifteen minutes to get everything she needed from him, or at least everything she was reasonably confident he was capable of providing.

By the end, when even Shelly was starting to sweat a little, she’d learned the model and license plate number of the Chevy that Colby and the big guy were driving. She learned the name of the big guy: Joseph Venn. She learned that the gentlemen who’d just paid Al a visit were working for DeeDee Rosetti, and that several other such teams of mobsters had also come calling, each seeking an angle. And the reason Al had told the cops he hadn’t noticed or couldn’t remember Venn and Colby’s car, was that Rosetti had told him to shut up about it.

Even though they were in the basement, Shelly didn’t want to risk anybody hearing Al’s screams, so she had to keep replacing the gag. And at some point, Al vomited while the gag was in place, and choked on his own puke.

Ah, well. He’d probably told her all he knew already, anyhow.

Shelly cut his throat, just to make sure he was dead. She took care to do it from behind and not to get enough of his blood on her that it might be noticed.

Outside, the sunlight was blinding, and Shelly slipped her shades on.

Well, well. So Rosetti had given up on Shelly and had decided instead to carry out the hit on Colby in-house, using her own goons. And by the look of it, she was throwing everything but the kitchen sink at the problem.

Shelly was already thinking how she could use this to her advantage.

She was on the phone as she started the Hummer’s engine.

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T
hey’d been following a seemingly endless winding road up the side of a steep hill, dense forest concealing almost everything but the immediate path ahead, when Venn spotted it.

The log walls of a cabin, up ahead through the trees.

‘Pull up here,’ he said.

Beth looked at him quizzically.

‘It’s better that we approach on foot,’ he said. ‘Less noisy.’

She parked up at the side of the road and they got out. All around was an immense silence, broken only by occasional birdcalls, as if the forest was acting as some kind of seal between them and the world outside.

Venn had already stripped and reloaded both his Beretta and the Smith & Wesson that had belonged to the dead guy. His gun was a little scuffed, but otherwise none the worse for having been clipped by the man’s bullet earlier.

He handed the S&W to Beth, indicating for her to put it away. She did so awkwardly, stuffing it down the waistband of her trousers.

Together they crept between the pine trees, Venn leading the way.

The cabin was a large one, a home rather than a place to stay on a weekend break. It spread out across a couple of acres of land, the lawns neatly trimmed. In front of the cabin was a gravel forecourt on which were parked two cars. An SUV of some kind, though Venn couldn’t see the make from where they were. And a Toyota sedan.

‘Stay on the perimeter,’ Venn muttered. At a crouch, they began to advance round the edge of the lawn toward the cabin.

The front door opened suddenly, and an enormously obese man came lumbering out. He was in his sixties, easily three hundred pounds although he couldn’t have been more than five feet eight tall. He was unshaven, and he had long, oily gray ringlets tumbling down untidily around his face.

In his hands he carried a hunting rifle.

Without pausing to speak, he took aim and fired.

Venn barreled into Beth, knocking her to the ground as the shot sang over his head, too close for comfort.

‘Wait,’ he yelled. ‘Hold your fire.’

And he stood up, shakily, his arms raised.

The man stood on the porch, sighting down the rifle.

This is it
, thought Venn. He braced himself.

To Beth behind him, he hissed: ‘For God’s sake,
run
. Get back to the car and get out of here.’

Time froze.

Across the expanse of lawn, Venn imagined  he could see in minute detail the tightening of the man’s finger on the trigger.

Venn would dive, of course. But there was no way he’d avoid a second shot. Nor did he have a snowball’s chance of drawing his own gun in time, far less aiming and firing.

The large man lowered the rifle to the level of Venn’s throat.

In heavily accented English, he called out: ‘Who are you?’

‘We’re friends of Professor Lomax.’

The name had an electrifying effect on the man. He raised the gun again sharply. Again Venn gritted his teeth against the shot that was coming.

Before he could stop her, Beth stepped forward so she was alongside him.

‘Prof Lomax doesn’t know this man,’ she called. ‘But he knows me. Dr Beth Colby.’

The fat man stared at her. Then, very slowly, very deliberately, he paced backward, the gun never wavering from Venn. When he got to the front door of the cabin, and without turning his head, he called something through the door which Venn didn’t catch.

From far off, another voice sounded, barely audible.

The fat man once again lowered the gun a fraction.

‘Come,’ he said.

––––––––

T
he doorway was low, so that Venn had to stoop when walking through it. Inside, the cabin smelled musty, like it needed an airing.

Beth followed him in. The fat man, still holding the gun but with it pointing down now, watched them suspiciously.

Behind him was the living room. And rising from a couch was a man Venn recognized, though he’d never met him before.

Slight build, thinning, graying hair, thick eyeglasses.

He’d seen the face on the phone Corcoran had given him.

‘Professor Lomax,’ he said, at the same time as Beth said, ‘Prof!’

‘Beth,’ said Lomax, wonderingly.

She ran forward, ignoring the big guy with the rifle, and they embraced. Venn thought the professor looked older than his fifties. Older than in the photo he’d seen. He guessed stress did that to you.

Every instinct screamed at Venn to take out the phone and call Corcoran. Tell him the mission was accomplished, that he’d located the professor, and now could Corcoran and his government boys kindly come and get them all the hell out of there before the assassins found them?

But something stopped him.

He said to the fat man, ‘You’re Papakostas, I presume.’

The man glowered at him. ‘How you know my name?’

Venn ignored him. ‘There are people coming after us. People who will kill us all, if they find us.’

Beth said, ‘You think they’ll find us here?’

‘They’ve found us before. They’ll find us again.’ Venn prowled about the room, his training kicking in, looking for vantage points, places where they’d be most vulnerable if they came under attack.

Turning to the others, who were still clustered together, he said, ‘But we also need to figure out what the hell is going on here.’

They sat, and he let Beth begin, because she was great at summarizing. She did an admirable job, covering everything the two of them had experienced and pieced together up to that point.

Lomax watched her intently, his glance occasionally flicking to Venn. His expression barely changed, though he did wince when Beth described some of the near-misses she’d endured. And when he heard that Margaret McNeill had been killed, he dropped his gaze and shook his head.

The big man, Papakostas, was also listening, his eyes heavier and more hooded than the professor’s. He tended to watch Venn more than Beth. As if he still didn’t quite trust Venn, wasn’t convinced he wasn’t a threat.

When Beth had finished, there was a long silence. Lomax closed his eyes, drew a deep breath, and said: ‘Yes. You’ve worked it out.

‘Stavros here –’ he indicated Papakostas – ‘sent me that letter you found some three months ago. As soon as I read the papers he included, none of which I’d come across before, I knew he was on to something. The link between C-77 and cancers was too great to be coincidence.

‘I contacted Stavros and came up here to meet him. Stavros’s a scientist himself, but he’s not affiliated with any institution. He lives and works up here independently.’

Venn looked at Papakostas. The big man tapped his forehead.

‘Voices here,’ he said. ‘Hallucinations. Too crazy to hold down normal tenure job.’

Too crazy to be trusted with that rifle?
wondered Venn. But he said nothing.

‘The problem Stavros and I came up against,’ continued Lomax, ‘was that although the evidence was strong for a carcinogenic effect of C-77, it wasn’t strong enough. There was still room for doubt in strict scientific terms, even though my gut told me we were right. So we started a much more sophisticated search. For the past three months, in parallel with the Zylurin trial, we’ve been amassing as much evidence as we can find of long-term follow-on effects of people around the world who’ve taken C-77. It hasn’t been easy, and the data’s far from complete. But the stats are significant. The link’s there, and can’t be denied any longer.