The Cradle of Life (11 page)

“Lady Croft?”

Lara nodded.

“I am your host, Armin Kal.” He laughed, and spread his arms in welcome. “Welcome to Fantasy Island.”

Lara was in no mood. “Take me to Sheridan, please.”

Kal frowned, his smile disappearing as quickly as it had come.

“Perhaps we can discuss this a moment, Lady Croft. To see this man is not a good idea.”

“I'll grant you that,” she said. “But it's necessary.”

“May I ask why?”

“No.” Lara put a little extra bite into the word—she'd only known this fat little man for thirty seconds, and already she disliked him intensely. “You may not. Now please—I'm on a schedule.”

Kal shrugged. “As you wish. Come this way—I will take you to him.”

Twin ramps, built to accommodate the wheels of a missile transport trailer, led up to the prison entrance. Kal turned and headed up one of those ramps, Lara staying a step behind.

As they reached the top, the main doors to the prison opened. Two men emerged, carrying a stretcher. The someone occupying the stretcher was covered by a sheet—one hand dangled from underneath it. The fingers looked wrong—it took Lara a second to figure out why.

They were twisted around, front to back. Broken, each one of them, not once, but several times.

Fantasy Island indeed.

Kal was waiting for her at the steel doors.

“Please—we don't get many visitors here,” he said, allowing her to enter first. “Not like you. You're very brave.”

Lara felt him leering at her without turning around. She didn't say a word. No way she was going to get drawn into a conversation with this man. She had business to do here, she was going to get it done, and leave—with or without Sheridan.

Kal preceded her down two sets of stairs, then into a long concrete shaft wet with ground water, and finally through a series of locked gates. At the last gate, he paused, reached underneath his coat, and pulled out a set of headphones.

“What are those for?” Lara asked.

“You,” Kal said. He gave a thumbs-up sign to a guard standing on the other side of the gate. “Go ahead.”

Lara frowned, but before she could ask him what he meant by that, the gate hissed open, and Kal entered the cavernous main cell block. Lara was a step behind.

The space before her was huge—five times the size of the Luna Temple, big enough to hold a football pitch, and that tall again. There were three levels of cells, surrounding a central atrium—she saw guards everywhere, again patrolling in groups of three, and an old missile gantry that was now doing duty as a guard tower.

She took a step forward, and the prisoners caught sight of her.

They erupted.

All at once she understood why Kal had donned headphones, why he'd said they were “for her” as he put them on.

The residents here, Lara realized, probably hadn't seen a woman since they'd been locked away. The things they were shouting at Lara, about her…well, nothing she hadn't heard before, though never in so many languages at once. Only one way to deal with that kind of verbal abuse, really.

She shut off for a few minutes, and simply moved her feet forward, one after the other. Staying behind Kal, her eyes focused on the back of his coat, until he stopped walking.

“We're here,” he said, pulling off his headphones.

Lara looked up. Four guards stood ramrod straight in front of a single steel door, two on either side, rifles slung across their shoulders.

She stepped past Kal and walked to the door. A set of bars at eye level covered a small window in the door. Lara peered through the opening.

The only light in the cell came from a window directly across from her. She could make out a cot against the wall to her left and the outline of someone sitting on it. The light touched his hands.

The backs were calloused, and bruised—even more so than the last time she'd seen him.

Sheridan rose from the cot.

“I always knew one day you'd rescue me,” he said, taking a step out of the darkness.

Lara's first thought was, he can't have been in here five years. He looks exactly the same as he did the day I last saw him.

Terry was unshaven, in a military-issue T-shirt and trousers. He looked strong and healthy. Like he'd spent the last five years at an island resort—not in a prison cell.

“Hello, Terry.”

“Croft.” He frowned. “You're favoring a leg. What happened?”

For a moment, Lara was taken aback.

She'd forgotten all about the injury—it had happened two weeks ago, in Prague, chasing Eckhardt through one of the catacombs. It had hurt like hell at the time—faded to a dull roar in the days following, and now to a barely noticeable twinge.

No one else—not even Hillary—had even noticed it. For Terry to pick up on it so quickly…

Time in prison clearly hadn't dulled his senses.

“Argument,” Lara told him. She saw that there was a cut on Terry's hand. “What happened to you there?”

“Argument.”

“Ah. I'd hate to see the other bloke.”

“Maybe you did. They're offloading him now.”

The corpse she'd seen while entering the prison, Lara realized. The fellow with the broken fingers.

Time in prison clearly hadn't dulled Sheridan's skills, either.

Terry smiled. “What do you think of the place?” he asked. “Not quite Croft Manor, is it? A little more like Chasong, wouldn't you say?”

She glared at him.

“Let's cut to the chase, shall we?” Lara asked. She pulled a set of keys out of her pocket.

“Ah.” Sheridan smiled. “Key to your heart?”

Lara shook her head. “To a flat in Zurich. You can pick another city if you want. Your record will be expunged, citizenship restored—”

“By?”

“M-I-Six.”

He was silent a moment.

“Would that make me Faust, or the devil?”

“No need to be melodramatic—it's business, Terry. You do a service for them, they'll do one for you.” Lara shrugged. “You can be Faust, if you want. You can be anyone. Pick—they'll arrange a new identity for you.”

“If I was out of here…” He shook his head. “You think I'd need their help—to disappear? Become someone else entirely?”

“Having two faces doesn't count,” Lara snapped.

“Temper, Croft.”

“Just making a point. Are you interested?”

“What do I have to do?”

“Is there anything you wouldn't?”

He laughed. “You like that about me.”

“Answer the question.”

“Sorry.” Sheridan smiled. “Just making a point.”

“Noted. So again—are you interested?”

“And again—what do I have to do?”

She met his eyes. “You have to take me to the Shay Ling.”

Sheridan suddenly found something interesting to look at on the cell floor.

“The Shay who?”

“Ignorance doesn't become you.” Lara pressed closer to the bars. “A man named Chen Lo took something from me—I want it back.”

“You—or M-I-Six?”

“We're in this together.”

“Now who's being two-faced?”

Lara bit back the first reply that came to mind, which was she'd get in bed with Satan himself if it meant her getting a shot at the people who'd killed the Petrakis. Damned if she was going to tell Terry Sheridan about them unless she had to. Damned if she was going to expose any of her feelings to him at all.

“As I said,” she told him, “it's business.”

Sheridan moved closer to the bars as well, till his face was scant inches from hers. “The Shay Ling are hard to find, but then you know that—or you wouldn't be here.”

“The government will wire you five million pounds when we succeed. Call it second chance money.”

“I don't need any second chances,” Sheridan said.

“Happy where you are?”

“Don't press me, Croft.” He smirked. “Maybe we should call it life insurance for you.”

“Ha.” She met his eyes. “I don't need any life insurance.”

Terry shook his head.

“You and I, Croft—working together. I can't see it, somehow.”

“Easier to see through you that way.”

Terry paced back toward the window, disappearing from her view. “What happens afterward, Lara—when M-I-Six decides that having me back in the world is not such a good idea?”

“Then I'll feel sorry for whomever they send to get you.”

“Who they send is not the point.” He stepped forward again, stared straight at her. “It's you I'll hold responsible.”

“Naturally.”

“Doesn't that frighten you at all?”

“Do I look scared?”

“No.” Sheridan smiled. “You have authorization to kill me.”

“Anytime, any reason.”

“That must have pleased you.”

“You have no idea.”

“What is it they say, ‘Hell hath no fury…'?”

“Oh, please.” Lara shook her head, and laughed. “You weren't that good.” Her voice hardened again. “Are we going to do this or not, Terry? Make up your mind—the clock is ticking.”

“Don't rush me.”

“Fine. On to candidate number two.” Of course, there was no candidate number two, there was only MI6 itself, and Lara didn't like the idea of working that closely with them, but if Sheridan was going to pass…

She'd do what she had to.

Lara spun on her heel, and walked back to Arman Kal, who was standing a discreet distance away from Sheridan's cell. “Let's get out of here,” she told the man.

Terry called out from behind her.

“The Shay Ling are ghosts, Croft! They move constantly, their home base is the most remote region of mountains in China. Maybe on Earth. I'm the only one who can get to them without being killed.”

Lara stopped.

“Is that a ‘I'm interested in your deal, Lara', and ‘All right, I'll take you to the Shay Ling, Lara?' If so, you'll have to be a little more exact than ‘region.'”

“Get me into China—I'll get you to them in a day.”

“That's about what we have.” Lara turned to Kal. “Unlock the cell.”

He shook his head. “This is a very bad idea.”

“It's my call, and I want him out.”

Kal sighed, and shrugged his shoulders.

“As you wish.”

He waved the guards forward. There were four locks on the door—each of the guards took out a key and unlocked one.

Terry Sheridan stepped out into the hall. Cracked his knuckles, smiled at Lara, at Kal, and then turned to the guards.

“Boo!” he said suddenly.

All four flinched as one, and took a step backward. One tripped over his own feet, and stumbled to the ground with a clatter.

“Priceless,” Terry said.

“Stop showing off,” Lara told him. “Come.”

The two of them, walking side by side, followed Kal down the corridor.

“Five million pounds, Croft,” Terry said. “I'll be able to hobknob with the same crowd as you.”

“When the job is done,” Lara said. “Until then—no money, no guns, no weapons of any kind.”

“Talk about taking the fun out of life.”

“You don't have time for fun, Terry. Your only concern is Chen Lo. Run, you'll be hunted. Give me trouble, you'll be back here. Are we clear?”

He nodded. “We're clear.”

Kal slipped on his headphones again, and Lara saw they were about to reenter the main cell block.

“Brace yourself,” she told Terry. “They're quite loud.”

The noise started up again—and just as quickly died down.

Lara was puzzled. Then she realized everyone was looking past her, at Terry. Assuming that she was with him, so she was under his protection, so she was no longer a target for their abuse.

She didn't like how that made her feel.

“Keep moving,” she told Terry.

“Sure, Croft.” He smiled thinly, then, as if he knew exactly what she was thinking, “You're in charge.”

She'd forgotten what a cold bastard he could be.

They climbed in the half-track. Lara and Terry sat opposite each other on the bench seats in the back. A guard sat on either side of each of them. Add in the driver, that was six of them to handle Sheridan. All of them armed, while he was weaponless.