The Tower (25 page)

‘How many dead?’

Athanasius took a breath as a rush of faces crowded his mind: friends, colleagues, enemies and rivals all now bundled together into the same anonymous statistic. ‘One hundred and four.’

Kaplan nodded, mentally adding them to the number he held in his head.

‘And what have you observed to be the life expectancy once someone is infected?’

‘About forty-eight hours.’

‘No longer?’

‘Sometimes, but no one has survived more than three days. The Apothecaria – the medical guild of monks within the mountain – kept records of the initial infection and its subsequent spread, which may be of some use, I have them over here.’ He walked across the floor, weaving between empty beds steadily filling with bound figures on stretchers. He stopped by a long refectory table that was covered with medical equipment from inside the Citadel, some modern, some crude and home-made, evidence of the severe strain the infection had put on the community’s resources. Athanasius hunted through piles of sheets that had been shredded to serve as bandages and bindings until he found a sheaf of papers and handed them to Dr Kaplan.

Kaplan looked at the carefully handwritten notes through his plastic visor. ‘Can I not speak to one of the doctors?’ he asked.

‘I’m afraid all the medical brothers succumbed to the infection early on. Next to the gardeners they were amongst the first to contract the disease.’

‘Why the gardeners?’

‘There is a garden at the heart of the mountain and a blight struck the trees first. The gardeners worked hard to cut it out and the infection seemed to pass to them first and then anyone they had been in extended contact with. The doctors naturally fell into this category and succumbed shortly afterwards. Consequently, there is no one left here in the Citadel qualified to do anything other than provide comfort to the dying. The best way we can help now is by assisting you to find a cure. All the data we have is in these notes. This entire chamber is at your disposal as am I and all my staff.’

Dr Kaplan nodded, scanning the notes as he listened. ‘I would like to take blood samples from all of you, sick and healthy. You have been exposed to the disease in confinement and yet have not been infected. There may be something in your blood, some natural immunity, that has protected you. If I can compare samples and isolate whatever might be doing it I can start working on an antidote.’

‘Of course, I will pass word for everyone to present themselves to you as soon as you are set up and ready.’

They stepped back as another stretcher was carried past, the occupant moaning and writhing against his bindings. Athanasius glanced at the contorted face of the patient then looked again when he realized who it was. ‘How long has this man been ill?’ he asked, following the stretcher to an empty bed.

‘That’s a good question,’ Kaplan replied. ‘He’s the one variable in this whole equation. He’s the only one so far who has remained lucid, or semi-lucid. We’re not sure how long he’s been infected, but longer than anyone else certainly. He claims it’s been five days and that he caught it here in the Citadel.’

Athanasius stared down at Gabriel’s tortured sweat-drenched face, hair plastered to his forehead by fever. ‘He’s telling the truth,’ Athanasius said. ‘He was here, eight days ago, just when the disease first appeared. He could well have been infected then.’

A howl rose from Gabriel as he bucked against his restraints, desperate to free his hands and scratch at his tortured skin. Dr Kaplan looked down at him, ravaged by the disease and driven half out of his mind by it.

‘Then this man may well prove to be the saviour of us all.’

The Westside Charleston Police Department building sat on the upper shoulder of the old town like an epaulet. It had a nice view of the Ashley River and a baseball diamond over to one side that made it look more like high school than a police headquarters.

Franklin and Shepherd stepped out of the cab and picked their way along the narrow path that had been cleared in the snow all the way up the two flights of steps to the main entrance. They opened the door and both looked up as the noise hit them. It sounded like every phone in the building was ringing.

‘Think we might have caught them at a bad time,’ Franklin murmured as they moved towards a solid desk sergeant who was pushing buttons and juggling the phone.

‘You here to help or hinder?’ the sergeant asked before either of them had even produced their IDs. He was old-school and well padded and wore a thick grey moustache that made him look like a walrus in uniform.

‘Neither, really,’ Franklin said, flopping his creds open. ‘We’re just a couple of fellow law-enforcement agents looking for a port in a storm. We need to borrow an office for a few hours.’

The sergeant shook his head and reached for the phone. ‘You got the storm bit right.’ He punched a button and stood up straight, his shirt buttons straining against the impressive girth of his stomach. ‘Shit storm is what we got going on here. Only we got a ton of shit and only a couple of shovels to clear it with. Half the force didn’t turn up to work this morning and the other half are having to deal with this.’ He nodded at the thick snow falling outside.

The phones continued to ring throughout the building. Someone, somewhere picked one up. ‘Bryan, we got a couple of Feebies down here dripping snow onto the floor –’ he peered at their open IDs through his reading glasses ‘– Special Agents Shepherd and Franklin.’ He squinted at Franklin’s and covered the mouthpiece with his hand. ‘Ben Franklin, that for real?’

Franklin nodded. ‘You may have seen my picture on a hundred- dollar bill.’

The sergeant shook his head like a disappointed uncle. ‘You better come quick, Bryan. One of them’s so damn funny I’m in danger of peeing my pants.’

He put the phone down and nodded at a row of chairs. ‘Sergeant Freeman will be down directly. He’s in charge of the pencils round here so he’ll fix you up with whatever you need.’ The phone rang again. He snatched it up and turned away.

‘Well he’s a character,’ Franklin said as they settled in their seats.

‘I kind of like it,’ Shepherd replied. ‘Beats the hostility we usually get.’

‘An example of which appears to be heading our way.’

Shepherd looked up at a stocky man with thinning brown hair bustling across the entrance hall. He offered his hand, introduced himself then hustled them into the back of the building with a minimum of charm and maximum speed. They passed through a door into an open-plan office empty but for the sound of phones.

‘This OK?’ he said, pointing to a desk in the corner.

‘Not really,’ Franklin said with a smile. ‘Too public. Have you maybe got somewhere a little more private? The case we’re working on is classified.’

‘Sure,’ Freeman said. Then he smiled and pointed to a row of solid doors with small windows in them set into the back wall. ‘I got just the thing for you.’

‘Cosy,’ Franklin said, the moment the door closed on the interview room.

‘You kinda asked for it.’ Shepherd surveyed the white, anonymous walls. It was soundproofed at least, so they could no longer hear the clamour of ringing phones. The only noise was the hum of the building’s air conditioning belting out dry heat and making the claustrophobic room even stuffier.

Shepherd stepped over to the metal table in the centre of the room and tried to pull the chair out from under it. It was bolted to the floor. The table was bolted down too. He sat down, slid the laptop from the case and fired it up.

‘Local law tend to regard us with the same sort of suspicion as criminals, so sticking us in here probably makes sense to them,’ Franklin said, doing a circuit of the room and reading the desperate graffiti scratched into the walls. ‘Freeman is probably spreading word round the building right now that we’re in here. The first tourists should be coming by in the next few minutes to gawp at us through the two-way mirror.’ He nodded at the side wall then sat down in the other chair and Shepherd felt a moment’s discomfort as it dawned on him that he had unwittingly sat in the ‘suspect’ seat.

‘Anything you want to confess before I start beating on you?’ Franklin said, reading his mind.

‘I confess that I could do with some more coffee,’ Shepherd said, studying the screen and clicking the menu to hook up to the station wi-fi.

The sound of phones burst in on them again as the door opened and a weasel-faced cop stepped into the room. ‘God damn,’ he said, staring straight at Franklin. ‘I thought it might be you. What the hell you doing back here? You anything to do with the ships and the mass migration?’

‘Hi,’ Shepherd said, getting up from his seat and shaking the man’s hand. ‘Joe Shepherd. You already seem to know Agent Franklin.’

‘Dan Jackson,’ the man said. ‘Yeah I know Franklin from way back.’

‘Why don’t you show me where the coffee is,’ Franklin said, moving to the door, clearly anxious to get the guy out of the room.

‘What do you mean “mass migration”?’ Shepherd butted in.

‘I mean everyone seems to have got it into their heads to hop in their cars and drive someplace. We got almost solid traffic heading into town. People from all over just packing their cars and heading for the city. We got people leaving too but that’s not so much of a problem. It’s the in-bound traffic that’s the headache. It’s blocked up all the main roads into the city and, what with the weather on top, we got a major headache and hardly any manpower to deal with it. I thought maybe that’s why you were here.’

‘’Fraid not,’ Franklin said, grabbing Jackson's shoulder and easing him towards the door.

‘How come you’re so short-staffed?’ Shepherd asked.

‘Beats me, half the squad didn’t show up this morning.’

‘And these no-shows,’ Shepherd persisted, ‘are they local guys?’

Jackson considered the question then shook his head. ‘No. As a matter of fact they’re all out of towners: all the local guys showed up.’

‘Listen, Dan,’ Franklin cut in, ‘why don’t you show me where you keep the coffee and I’ll tell you why we’re here.’ He turned to Shepherd. ‘See if Smith has managed to dig anything new out of the Kinderman files. I’ll be right back.’ Then he practically pushed Jackson out of the room.

Shepherd stood for a second, staring at the spot where they had both just stood, wondering about Franklin’s strange behaviour. Then the screen flickered, drawing his attention and he sat back down, his fingers drumming the keyboard as he typed in the ID and password Agent Smith had given him earlier. A directory loaded up on the screen, different icons representing all the various databases he now had access to. Any new information Smith had found would be archived in the ghost file, listed in the directory under a Pacman ghost icon – something Smith always maintained proved the FBI did have a sense of humour. He dragged the arrow over to it but did not click on it, his eyes drawn to another icon, lower down in the directory, with MPD written beneath it – the Missing Persons Database.

Shepherd had been rehearsing this moment for the past seven years. All he had to do was click on it, type in a name, a few details then sophisticated algorithms and search spiders would scuttle out across police networks covering more than half the world.

He clicked on the icon and a simple command box opened. It had spaces for key search data: name, DOB, age, height, weight, hair and eye colour. His fingers moved over the keyboard, finding keys on their own.

Name
: Melisa Erroll

Date of birth
: He never knew it and she would never say

Age
: She would be about thirty-six now

Height
: Around one sixty

Build
: Slight

Hair
: Black

Eyes
: Brown

He paused and took several deep breaths. The room smelled of sweat and fear, though that could just as easily be coming from him. The MPD had primarily been designed to locate people fast to rule them out of investigations. Consequently the search engines were programmed to trawl through death registers first. If he got a hit back quickly it would mean her name had been found amongst the roll call of the dead – and, even after seven years of unanswered questions, he wasn’t sure if he was prepared for that. But there was also something else that made him pause. The misuse of FBI resources for personal ends was pretty high on the list of prosecutable offences, for obvious reasons, and every search on the MPD was logged and could be checked. Then again, he wasn’t searching for any more sensitive details, like bank accounts or passport activity. Not yet at least. But pressing the button would still be crossing a line. And despite everything that had happened in his life, he still believed in rules and obeying them.

He re-read the words he had typed into the search criteria, the barest thumbnails of a human life, and wondered what Melisa would do in his situation. She would probably have instigated a search the moment she got her hands on the laptop. Melisa was passionate and impulsive, a do-er.

Love is a verb
– she used to say –
Love is a doing word.

A single tear slid down his cheek. Then he hit
Return
.

And the search went live.

O’Halloran sat in the den of his house, his eyes fixed on the old bulky TV in the corner that had once been the main family set. The American military exodus from Afghanistan was now the lead story, confirmed by several sources and top of a lengthening list of similar military stand-downs. As well as the Chinese withdrawal from the Senkaku Islands there were now additional reports that the British were also pulling their troops out of Afghanistan, the North Koreans had pulled away from the border with the South, Israeli tanks had done the same from Palestine and government-backed troops in Syria had ceased many of the ongoing assaults on rebel-held cities, leaving artillery batteries deserted. It was as if the over-riding imperial and destructive impulse of thousands of years had been cured overnight by a simple, universal human desire to return home.