The Lucifer Network (55 page)

‘Any food in this little palace of yours?' she asked. ‘We gave Liam a McDonald's for lunch, but all I had was a diet-cola.'

‘No idea. I didn't look.'

‘Shall I go see?'

‘Excellent idea.'

She wrapped one of the bedspreads round herself for warmth and padded into the kitchen. She found the fridge astonishingly well stocked. Eggs, cheese, milk, sausages and a large pepperoni pizza, plus a fresh Romaine lettuce and some tomatoes. On the opposite side of the small space was a built-in oven. She turned it up to 200 degrees.

‘Supper in about twenty minutes. Okay?' she shouted.

‘Wonderful.'

Thirty minutes later they'd showered and dressed and were seated at the repro dining table, eating. Sam had found a bottle of wine and a CD labelled
Music
for
Candlelight
which he'd inserted into the hi-fi in the corner.

‘Whoever's looking after you must think pretty highly of you,' Julie commented, getting stuck into the food. ‘This place is pretty swish for a temporary home.'

Sam shrugged. ‘They happened to have it available. If not, they'd have put me in a shoebox at some army camp.'

Julie tried to imagine life for a man always looking over his shoulder, forever on the move. And if he'd had to give up being an intelligence agent, what then? She couldn't imagine him in a normal job.

Imagining was pointless anyway. In a few weeks' time this would be history.

‘D'you . . . do you know when you'll be going away?' she asked, breaking her resolve not to raise the subject.

‘No.'

They ate on in silence. Her question had made him
withdraw into himself and she kicked herself for asking it.

‘Coffee?'

Sam shook his head. He was back in Vienna, annoyed with himself for letting Max Schenk slip through his fingers in Stammersdorf three nights ago. Now the man was on the run. Determined to survive. And that made him dangerous.

Julie saw that she'd lost him and decided to bring the day to an end while she was still on a high.

‘I'm going to have to go home to Acton,' she told him. ‘I've got an early start in the morning. We still have to find an antidote to that rabies variant. The virus exists now, so it'll turn up again. They always do.'

‘Mmm.' Sam resolved to ring Waddell shortly to see if the Porton people had found any reference to the mutation on the Russians' laptop. ‘I'll drive you home,' he told her.

‘That's okay,' she murmured, a little disappointed he'd made no effort to persuade her to stay. ‘I can get the Piccadilly Line.'

‘I'll drive you,' he insisted.

‘Well, okay. Thanks. I'll just clear up a bit.'

‘Leave it. You made the supper. I'll clear it up later.'

She shrugged. It was becoming obvious he wanted to be rid of her. She stood up, telling herself not to be upset.

Five minutes later they were in the car driving west. When he stopped at traffic lights Sam gripped her hand. ‘It's been great today,' he said gently. ‘And I hope Liam doesn't take it out on you when you see him next.'

‘He will, but don't worry about it,' Julie answered. ‘I give him plenty of attention and he knows I've got a life
of my own to lead.' Even if she didn't know where it was heading.

‘He's a nice kid,' Sam commented.

‘He's lovely – most of the time.' The one part of her life that was constant. The one person whose needs she was certain she could satisfy.

At the Chiswick roundabout, Sam turned north, heading towards Gunnersbury.

‘I'll give you a ring tomorrow,' he told her. ‘D'you like theatre?'

‘I don't often go. Christmas panto was the last time.'

‘I'll look in the papers and see what's on.'

‘That'd be nice.'

Three minutes later they turned into Julie's street. Sam looked out for the house with the washing machine but couldn't see it.

‘Here,' Julie shouted as they drove past her home. Sam stepped on the brake.

‘Where's the . . .?'

‘The landlord's moved it,' she answered. ‘Having the press snapping pictures of the place shamed him into it. He saw my face in the paper and decided I must be important.'

‘You are,' Sam said, kissing her mouth.

‘I wonder,' she whispered, hooking her fingers into his shirt.
How
important, was what she wanted to know.

‘See you soon, then.'

‘Yes please.'

They got out. He draped his arm round her as they walked to the front door. When she turned the key and opened up, the hall of the house smelled of cooking spices and stale cigar smoke.

‘Thanks for having me,' she purred, stroking his face.

‘Don't suppose you fancy another quick one . . .' he rumbled, nuzzling her ear.

‘Get outta here.'

They kissed again and he promised to ring tomorrow. Then he walked back to the car.

Julie smiled to herself as she crossed the hall to the door of her flat. The day had been very special. Whatever happened, it'd be something to hold onto. She inserted her key, opened up and stepped inside her bedsitter, closing the door behind her without turning on the light.

She leaned against the door for a moment, as if unwilling to step further into the emptiness that awaited her here. Preferring darkness to light so she wouldn't see the squalor of the place where she slept. She didn't want to live like a student any more, she realised. She wanted to share some proper, decent living space. To make a home with someone. With Sam.

She filled her lungs with air and let out a long sigh, trying not to let her imagination run away with her. Telling herself it wasn't going to last with him and she simply had to accept it.

Suddenly she froze. She'd heard a noise. The sound of someone swallowing.

Fear gripped her. An icy shiver ran up her spine. The sinister, guttural sound had been very close. Petrified, she reached behind her back for the door handle, knowing that if she didn't get out of this room immediately she was going to die. Because she knew who it was who was in there with her. Knew it from the smell of cigar smoke that clung to him like some vile ectoplasm.

Before she could turn the door handle, a hand clamped over her mouth and another cupped the back of her neck and jerked her forward into the room.

She wanted to scream, but no sound came.

Sam guided the car through the back streets of Acton,
heading for the main A4 into central London. By rights he should have been wallowing in the contentment Julie had left him with, but he couldn't get it out of his head that there was a missing link in the puzzle.

Halfway along the Chiswick High Road he pulled into the kerb. Porton had had all day with the laptop which he'd liberated from Palagra. They should know by now whether it contained rabies files.

He rang Waddell's number and was diverted to the duty officer at Vauxhall Cross who patched the call through to his controller's home.

‘It's Sam.'

‘Heavens. Made up your mind already? About where you want to go?'

‘That's not why I'm ringing. I wanted to know what Porton have come up with.'

‘Still a mystery. There was no reference to rabies on any of the computer files. There's one simple explanation, of course – whether it's right or not is another matter.'

‘What is it?'

‘The laptop had only been in use for four months, yet Jackman shipped the virus material to Palagra a year ago. So it's possible the rabies work was done in the first part of the year, with notes written by quill pen for all I know. The records could have gone up in the bonfire.'

It made sense but didn't satisfy Sam's need for certainty. He thanked Waddell and rang off, putting the mobile into the dashboard locker.

He tapped at the steering wheel, then turned on the ignition. He stared at the red light, but didn't start the engine. Unease was fluttering away inside him like a sixth sense. He switched off again and folded his arms. His anxiety was to do with Julie. He should've been more positive. Should have made it clear he was interested in
her,
not just in what she could do for him in bed.

He took the phone from the locker again, not sure what he was going to say, but knowing he had to say something. He felt in his pockets for the piece of paper on which he'd written her number.

Not there. He'd left it in the flat. Too bad. He'd ring when he got back to Prince's Gate.

He started the engine and engaged first gear.

‘Damn!'

It was no good. The niggle was getting stronger.

He switched off the ignition once more and snatched up the phone, prodding away at the menu button until he found the call register.

Julie's number was in the memory.

He pressed the redial button and listened to it ringing.

‘Come on,' he muttered. No answer. He looked at the display to check he'd got it right. He scratched his head. If she'd turned her phone off, there'd have been a message saying so. Eventually he ended the call.

In his mind he re-ran the parting at her flat a few minutes ago. The ‘goodnight' that hadn't said enough. The driving up to the house, the kiss in the car.

He dialled again and let it ring ten times. Still no answer.

‘Shit!'

He switched the phone off. But his mind wouldn't let it alone. The walk from the car to the house . . . The front door opening and the smell in the hall . . . Old cigars.

The same damned smell as in that wine tavern bedroom in Stammersdorf . . .

‘Fuck!'

He scrambled the ignition, jammed the car into gear and did a U-turn, narrowly missing a bus and a taxi.

Max Schenk snatched the troublesome phone from Julie's handbag and switched it off. She lay on the floor watching his every move. It hadn't been hard for him to overpower her. After dragging her into the room and switching on the light he'd pressed a kitchen knife into her neck so hard it had drawn blood. Then he'd ordered her to kneel on the floor with her hands behind her back while he bound them with tape. Shocked, she'd complied like a lamb. Now there was more tape across her mouth and round her ankles. And he'd switched on a loud CD to confound any ideas she had of trying to make a noise.

She'd thought his intention was rape, initially. The sheets on her bed were half turned down. Then she'd had a vision of him having already done something foul on them, gratifying himself with her pillow or her underwear. Soon, however, she'd realised it was her silence he'd come here for, not her body.

He'd demanded to know why she was here. ‘It is the weekend. You should be in Woodbridge. You told me you are always there with your boy on Sunday, until late at night. Later than this.' He'd said it angrily as if she'd cheated on him.

‘You came like a spy in Vienna,' he'd hissed, kneeling on her back and twisting a hank of her hair until it hurt. ‘With microphones. That was not right.' He'd spoken in gulps, like a child fighting with its emotions. ‘You said you saw me with your father last year . . .'

If she could have spoken, Julie would have told him that she'd made that up.

‘Then I think that you will start to remember more things, Julie. Things I said to you in restaurants. About politics. About mutated viruses. All of this we have talked about, even if I think you were not always listening. I fear it will come back to you.
Julie
knows,
I tell myself.
Julie
knows
too
much.
'

She'd wanted to scream out that she
didn't
know anything and that he should bloody well leave her alone.

‘What you know can put me in prison, Julie. You are the only person who can.'

He'd put his hands round her neck, squeezing enough to frighten her. He'd kept sniffing, like a man overcome with emotion. Then he'd goaded her with a description of the death he'd planned for her. Somewhere in that turned-down bed he'd been about to hook a couple of little barbs, coated with a nutrient gel containing the genetically engineered rabies virus. When she'd climbed between the sheets later that night they would have cut her skin and infected her with the very disease she was working to find an antidote to.

Proudly he'd shown her the inside of his briefcase with its vials and syringes and the sealed plastic box containing slivers of razor-sharp glass carved under a microscope in his own laboratory with deep grooves to provide a reservoir for the killer plasma.

And now he was kneeling over her again, fingering her neck once more. Hard, probing movements, as if unsure whether to strangle or caress it. A quivering breath that stank of tobacco. She smelled his sweat, his desire and his readiness to kill. He ran a hand down her back and over her rump, squeezing her cheeks as if testing the tenderness of a steak. He
was
going to rape her, she decided, clenching her teeth. Rape her, then kill her.

Suddenly he stood up. Julie listened for the unzipping of his trousers. Instead she heard him fiddling with the briefcase. Terrified as to what was coming next, she rolled onto her side and watched as he prepared the syringe that would end her life. She knew she had to do something. There was no one else to help her. If only she'd let Sam come into the flat with her. She screamed his name, but from behind the tape it
came out as a whimper. And the rock music drowned it.

Schenk knelt over her with the syringe, touching lightly on the plunger so that a small quantity of liquid spurted from the needle. Julie caught the whiff of chloroform.

‘It will be quick, Julie,' he mouthed above the blast from the loudspeakers. His razor nose was poised over her like a guillotine.

Julie lashed out, kicking against his shins with all her might. She rolled away from him. Schenk yelped and lunged forward trying to plunge the needle between her breasts, but she rolled again. Over and over, crossing from one side of the room to the other, squealing and coughing, desperate to be heard above the CD's beat.