Fourth Day (17 page)

‘I don’t like it,’ Epps said, not taking his eyes off me while he spoke. For a moment it was hard to tell if he was expressing his dislike for the proposal we’d put forward, or me in particular. Probably both.

‘We’re not asking you to,’ Sean said, and though there was apparently nothing more than idle amusement in his voice, his own eyes were very cold.

If Epps registered this composed hostility, he didn’t show it. Instead, he said calmly, ‘If you expect my cooperation and approval for this exercise, Mr Meyer – not to mention access of any kind to my resources – then I do believe it’s a requirement.’

My turn to butt in
. ‘What makes you think we’re asking for anything?’

Epps continued to stare at me for a long time. I smiled back blandly and thought I caught the faintest tic in his face, just before he finally gave in. He swept a slightly pitying gaze over Parker, and there was something patronising about it, as though he took being contradicted as a sign Parker lacked
control over his men – and I’m damned sure that’s how he thought of us collectively. None of Epps’s own people – all male – would have dared speak unless directly questioned.

It was three days after my return from Scotland. We were in Parker’s office, with Conrad Epps in one of the comfortable client chairs in front of the desk, and Parker, Sean and I ranged against him. Epps was outnumbered and off his home ground, and still managed to look like he was running the show, elbows propped on the armrests with fingers linked, legs crossed. There was no telltale tension in his arms or hands, and his loose foot dangled, relaxed.

It was interesting that he’d ordered his usual protection detail to stay out in the reception area. If they were offended by this exclusion, they took it stoically, and were currently involved in a monumental stare-out competition with Bill Rendelson across the polished floor. I’d been almost unbearably tempted to whistle some Morricone spaghetti western theme while crossing between them.

‘I would have thought,’ Parker said now, matching his tone to Sean’s, ‘that after the failure of your last operation against Fourth Day, you’d have been glad of this new opportunity to gather valuable intel without any further risk to your own personnel.’

There was nothing in Parker’s voice to give away the fact that both he and Sean had tried hard to dissuade me from going back into the cult. Not under cover of night, with a highly trained backup team surrounding me and a SIG on my hip, like last time. But alone, unarmed, in broad daylight.

Perversely, the more they’d argued against it, the more determined I’d become. Parker’s frustration, even bordering
on dismay, had been more than evident at the time. Now it was imperceptible.

‘You make an interesting case, Mr Armstrong,’ Epps said. ‘But you have nothing concrete to support it.’

‘We’ve traced major donations from shell companies based in the Caymans to both Debacle and Fourth Day, and it seems Witney is not the first former member of the cult to die in violent circumstances,’ Parker said. ‘Four in the last year – home invasions and hit-and-run accidents – all unsolved. How much more do you want?’

‘And what does this have to do with your client?’ Epps asked.

‘It makes her even more anxious to remove her grandson from their influence and from possible danger,’ Parker said. He waited a beat. ‘You of all people should appreciate what it is to lose a child.’

‘Your daughter, wasn’t it?’ Sean supplied.

For the first time, Epps looked smaller, almost human, his shoulders a little less square and his back less ramrod straight. His silver hair no longer seemed a distinguished badge of rank, was simply a sign of age.

‘Do not go there, gentlemen,’ he growled, moustache bristling. ‘You’ve made your point. I still do not see what this has to do with your client. If she wants the child out, surely it’s a simple job to extract him?’

‘Not until we’re sure of his identity,’ Parker said. ‘And in order to do that, Charlie is volunteering to go in there and see what she can find out. You admitted that your investigation is stalled. We’re offering you a chance to move it forward, without things turning into another Waco.’

Epps responded to Parker’s sly digs with less subtlety.
‘It has been my experience that women do not make reliable undercover operatives,’ he said flatly. ‘They do not have the mental resilience, and they become emotionally involved.’

‘I have no intention of sleeping with Bane,’ I said mildly. ‘Or staying awake with him, either, for that matter.’

Epps’s stony expression never varied at my flippancy, but his loose foot bounced betrayingly, just once, and his voice was dangerously soft. ‘And how do you know that isn’t one of his stipulations for entry?’

‘If it was, I’m sure Chris Sagar would have included that fact in his dossier,’ I said, nodding to the document itself, which lay open on the table between us. ‘If there’s one thing Bane
has
done since he took over Fourth Day, it’s clean up the cult’s previous unsavoury reputation.’

But I closed my mind to the memory of Bane himself stepping out to meet Maria as she was brought back to him, weeping and on her knees. That strangely gentle caress.

‘Just as well,’ Epps said, quiet and deliberate, ‘because I very much doubt you would cope well with that kind of treatment, would you, Charlie?’

I froze, as much at his silky use of familiarity as the threat itself, felt rather than saw Sean’s sudden stillness alongside me.

‘Nobody copes
well
with violation, Mr Epps,’ I said, managing to keep my voice cool and colourless. ‘You just cope. Male or female has no bearing.’ I paused. ‘Trust me – you would fare no better than most.’
And probably a lot worse than many
.

Epps continued to meet my gaze, but something recoiled behind his eyes. He looked away and I didn’t need to
watch that twitchy foot flap again to know the barb had hit home.

‘I’m afraid, gentlemen, that I still don’t like it.’

Gentlemen
. Neither Sean nor Parker seemed to notice this casual sexism. It was endemic in the field. And seeing the three of them together now, their similarities sent a sudden, unaccountable chill across my bones. Like they were all members of the same exclusive club, and I was the outsider here.

Sean smiled at him. ‘This isn’t a request,’ he said. ‘It’s just a heads-up out of courtesy.’

Epps absorbed that in brief silence. ‘So far, we have been unable to link the three men apprehended in California either to the deaths of my agents, or to the kidnap and murder of Thomas Witney,’ he said at last. Then, with reluctance, ‘However, one of my dead agents had gambling debts he’d suddenly promised to repay. It looks like whoever hired him decided to save themselves the money. That case is still open and I would very much like to close it.’

Parker inclined his head, acknowledging the concession for what it was. ‘Anything Charlie learns that’s of relevance,’ he said gravely, ‘we will, of course, pass on.’ He rose, the dismissal obvious.

‘Oh, we’ll be keeping a close eye on things, Mr Armstrong, make no mistake about that.’ Epps stood, treated us all to a slow survey while he buttoned his coat. ‘Her cover story will need to be good. They
will
pressure-test it,’ he said finally, eyes on Parker again. ‘If you want to place an agent into Bane’s wilderness programme, I would strongly advise that you make use of Mr Sagar’s expertise to construct something…suitable.’

‘We intend to,’ Sean said sharply. ‘But if Bane’s looking for the kind of people we suspect, he’ll pick out Charlie. Some qualities you just can’t hide.’

He sounded confident, but it was ironic that, the moment I’d suggested going back, he and Parker had voiced much the same doubts as Epps. The fact that their minds ran along similar grooves did not please him, I could tell.

Epps nodded briefly to Parker but made no immediate moves for the door.

‘What happens if she cracks?’ he asked. ‘What happens if she goes over as easily as Witney did, five years ago?’

That last bit surprised me. So, for all his snide comments, Epps still thought I might be of some value to the enemy.

‘I’m not planning on being in there for more than a few days,’ I said. ‘And if I buckle that quickly, I won’t be much use to him, will I?’

‘I meant as a bargaining chip,’ Epps said. His eyes skimmed across me again, merciless and chilling. ‘She doesn’t have to remain functional for that.’

‘If we become concerned in any way for Charlie’s mental or physical well-being,’ Sean said, ‘we’ll get her out – whatever it takes.’

Parker slid behind his desk, smoothing down his tie. ‘Thank you for your input. We’ll take it under advisement,’ he said. ‘Sean, would you see Mr Epps and his people out of the building.’

Sean briefly showed his teeth. ‘It would be my pleasure.’

Epps thought about making a stand, for no other reason than because he could. I saw the urge to pull rank cross his features and narrowly lose out to some darker consideration
I couldn’t quite catch the meaning of. I was impressed by his willpower, if nothing else.

Maybe he just thought that anything we might conceivably provide was better than nothing and left it at that.

Sean was already holding the door open, careful to keep any hint of provocation out of his demeanour. So, his willpower was on a level with Epps’s.

As I made to follow them out, Parker said, ‘Charlie – a moment?’ and I turned back, but not before I’d caught Sean’s eye. There was no more expression on his face now than when he’d looked at Epps. It almost made me shiver.

‘Close the door,’ Parker said quietly.

I complied, walked sedately to stand in front of his desk and clasped my hands loosely behind me like I was back in the army.

Parker leant back in his chair and stared up at me. ‘Don’t do this,’ he said calmly. ‘You don’t have to do this, Charlie. Nobody expects or even wants this of you. Not me and certainly not Sean.’

‘I want it,’ I said. ‘I promised Witney he would be safe with us, then helped deliver him to his death, and I don’t like the feeling I lied to him. If Bane had a hand in that, or he knows something – or was involved in what happened to Liam – I want to find out. I
need
to put this to rest.’

He made a small gesture of impatience. ‘We still suspect that Bane may have arranged the kidnap, torture and execution of Thomas Witney. You’re asking me to put you naked into the arena with a tiger.’

‘From what Sagar’s told us, he’s not a stupid man. Even if he suspects who I am, he’ll know that if anything happens
to me after I go in, that’s just the excuse Epps needs to tear the place apart.’

‘Epps would have to wait his turn,’ Parker said with a grim smile.

‘Right now, we don’t know who killed Witney, or why,’ I said. ‘If it
was
Bane, to stop him talking about what’s going on inside Fourth Day, we need to know. And if it was because Witney found out his wife was somehow connected to the death of his son, then…’ I shrugged, ‘…we need to know that, too.’

‘But—’

‘And most of all,’ I cut in, ‘if that’s Liam’s child – Lorna Witney’s grandchild – in there, I couldn’t live with myself if I left him to his fate.’

‘Is that what this is all about, Charlie?’ Parker snapped, a mix of anguish and temper in his eyes. ‘You lost a child and now you’re trying to save them all?’

‘I…’ I paused, swallowed, said in a low voice, ‘Honestly? I don’t know.’

Parker was silent, then he sighed and got to his feet. At the window, his back to me, he said, ‘We haven’t lost an operative for more than a year. I don’t want to spoil that run. Especially not with you.’

‘We put our lives on the line every day, Parker. I accept that as a normal part of the job. You should consider me no different from anyone else who works for you.’

‘Our job is to expect trouble, and to prevent or deflect it. We don’t go seek it out.’ Parker turned abruptly, gaze skating over me. ‘Besides, you
are
different, you know that. And this job is hardly normal, Charlie – you know that, too.’

He moved round the desk, smooth and fast, and put his hands on my shoulders. Just for a moment I felt his fingers tighten and wondered if he was about to try and shake some sense into me, the frustration plain on his face. ‘Any decisions you face at the moment are not yours alone to make, and I don’t want to have to be the one who breaks it to Sean, if anything should happen to you,’ he said tightly. ‘You still haven’t told him, have you?’

‘I—’

The door opened and Sean took a stride into the office, then froze momentarily when he saw us. Such a brief hesitation, gone before it fully formed.

He glanced at Parker, said, ‘Still trying to talk her out of it?’

‘Yeah,’ Parker said, wry. He let his hands drop and regarded me almost glumly. ‘I don’t suppose there’s any chance I’ve succeeded, is there?’

I let my gaze take in both of them. ‘No,’ I said. ‘None at all.’

I walked in to Fourth Day’s land with the sunrise, dressed in cargo trousers and a lightweight cotton shirt, neither chosen with camouflage in mind. My booted feet scuffed at the dirt, not attempting to hide my trail. I had a bush hat with a floppy brim to keep the sun off and a sports-type water bottle in a neoprene holder slung on a strap over my shoulder.

On my back was a canvas rucksack containing two switched-off cellphones, a deactivated radio distress beacon, a map, two chocolate bars, a bundle of cash, a knife, a
first-aid
kit which included shots of morphine and adrenaline, my SIG, and a box of 9 mm Hydra-Shoks. The gun, wrapped in an oiled cloth, had a single round in the chamber, but the magazine was out and empty. Everything was packed into two plastic Tupperware boxes to keep out the elements. It was like going on the most bizarre picnic ever.

Apart from that I carried no bag, no wallet, no ID, and no weapon other than what lurked inside my own head.

Sean dropped me by the side of the road that bordered
the cult land, almost the same point of entry we’d used for our surveillance of Thomas Witney. He gave me a brief ‘good luck’, but we’d said our farewells before leaving Van Nuys in the dark, and had been largely silent on the drive.

There was nothing left to say.

For the last mile, the only sign of habitation had been a wind-blown roadside bar, hunkered down by the side of the road, its neon faded and blinking in the pre-dawn glow.

By the time I’d climbed carefully through the barbed-wire fence, Sean was already accelerating away. I didn’t look back and, I suspect, neither did he.

I struck out roughly east, using the hour hand of my watch to work out a rough north-south bearing from the sun, and ready-reckoning from there. The watch was a cheap analogue I’d bought purely for this purpose, with a simple face and a rubber strap. It would be a classic disorientation technique for them to take it away from me, and I didn’t want to lose the Tag that Sean had given me.

The sun lifted solemnly from the horizon, stately in its progress, a pinkish globe that slowly lost definition as it began to burn more fiercely. The misty light hardened, the shadows of the dumpy trees shrinking back towards their trunks as if compressed by the heat. Overhead, some large bird of prey drifted lazily, feathering at the high thermals with wing tips splayed.

It was a long walk, which gave me plenty of time to think about the briefings I’d had from Chris Sagar over the past few days, sitting in a cramped office in the government hangar where we’d set up a temporary base of operations. This time, we had taken no chances with security.

‘Fourth Day use a form of attack therapy,’ he told me.
‘Think of it as a hostile encounter group. The object is to jar you out of your personal belief system.’

‘How physical are they likely to get?’ I asked, but he shook his head.

‘Unless things have changed a whole hell of a lot since my time, they’re not,’ he said, and I didn’t hide my relief. ‘But there’ll be a strong element of psychological abuse.’

‘Sounds like fun. What does that mean in English?’

He sighed, absently pushing those little round glasses back up his nose. ‘I look at you and I see someone who’s strong, self-confident. You have a pretty good idea of who you are and where you’re going in life, and you believe in your own moral code, am I right?’

‘Of course,’ I said, only mildly surprised at the even note I managed to inject into my voice.
You have no idea
…

‘You must, Charlie. I saw you in action. You never hesitated, I mean, not for a second! You can’t act that way and not believe absolutely in what you’re doing.’ He looked down at his hands. ‘Well, Bane will do everything he can to strip that certainty away from you. Make no mistake, it’s gonna be brutal.’

‘How does he justify such a technique in order to get people to submit to what is, basically, brainwashing?’

‘I was a computer geek in college,’ Sagar said, and it wasn’t hard to believe it, looking at his ageing rock band T-shirt and baggy cargoes. ‘The way Bane described it, someone who seeks sanctuary in Fourth Day is like a computer riddled with a virus. They’re useless. They can’t function. But you can’t go after the virus a bit at a time, which is kinda his view on conventional therapy. He believes you have to wipe the hard drive completely and rebuild the
system with clean programs. Start again from the ground up.’

I reached for my cup of coffee from the corner of the desk. It was dark and bitter. ‘Is that what happened to Thomas Witney?’

‘He wasn’t just riddled with that virus,’ Sagar said. ‘He’d crashed. Bane didn’t need to break him down, because Witney was already at rock bottom. He’d suffered enough.’

‘And suffering is what it’s all about?’

‘Bane believes that if people haven’t suffered enough, they can’t or won’t change. Not on the kinda fundamental level he’s aiming for.’ He shook his head. ‘You might think you can fight him, Charlie, but you can’t. Not for ever. He’ll get to you in the end.’

‘Like I said, sounds like fun…’

Now, the sun continued to arc into a cloudless sky above me. I checked my heading and walked on.

The temperature would have been pleasant if I’d been sitting on a lounger by a swimming pool, with a tall
ice-filled
glass by my elbow. Sadly, all I had was tepid water and slightly greasy chocolate that was beginning to melt. I drank sparingly, just a few mouthfuls, and ate half a chocolate bar, licking the excess off the wrapper. I’d stocked up on Cadbury’s before I left Aberdeen. Hershey bars just didn’t do it for me.

Amid sparse vegetation and rounded rock formations, I was completely out of sight of the road now. There were no man-made structures or signs of habitation. I moved more careful of where I put my feet, but saw no animal or reptile life either. Even the bird of prey seemed to have abandoned me. The silence took on a shape all of its own,
surrounding and engulfing me. I was achingly aware of my own vulnerability, of being utterly alone.

By the time I saw the first of Fourth Day’s armed patrols, I’d been walking for over an hour. My shirt was stuck to my back and my water was half gone. I ducked behind some scrubby bushes and waited to see what path they would follow. I hadn’t come across a regular worn route, but it would be good practice not to follow one.

As soon as they’d passed, I looked round for a suitable landmark. There was a tall rock just ahead that looked, from this angle, vaguely like a dog sitting on its haunches, head down. I circled it twice, just to be sure it was distinctive, then knelt at the base of what would have been the dog’s tail and began to dig in the soft sandy earth, first with my hands, then using a flat stone as a shovel.

It took a while to dig a hole big enough to take the rucksack, and I worked with concentration, stopping every minute or so to listen for the guards’ return. When Sean and I had been watching the cult compound, we’d timed their patrols in and out but, even so, I knew I was cutting it fine. The second hole I dug was smaller, and took less time.

When I was done, I made another slow circuit of the rock. This was my emergency escape kit, and being unable to locate it again if I needed to was not a healthy scenario.

As it was, I had my tracks brushed away and the worst of the dirt washed from my hands, using almost all the remainder of my water, before I heard the patrol on their way back.

I stepped out onto my original course and kept walking, apparently oblivious but on a deliberate closing heading. I tried to keep my shoulders down and my mind
empty. One question kept coming back to haunt me.

‘Why are you doing this?’ Chris Sagar had asked.

Sean and Parker had asked me that one, too, and I’d given them both the same answer. ‘Quite apart from finding out if Billy
is
Lorna Witney’s grandchild, I’m doing it because we took Witney out of there and we lost him, and I want to know why.’

They’d both accepted it, in the end, but I couldn’t tell Sagar about our new client’s brief.

‘Come on, Charlie,’ he’d said quietly. ‘I spent most of my time inside Fourth Day asking people, “Why are you here?” Everybody who wanted in, I asked them that, and you know what I discovered inside a month of doing it?’

‘What?’

‘That the first answer they give you is never the real one. It just never is.’ He shook his head sadly. ‘Half of them, they didn’t even know it themselves, what finally drove them under. But you? You
got
to have an answer. A good one. One that sounds real, even if it isn’t. Because, if you don’t, Bane will kick your ass straight back out again.’ His face pinched. ‘That’s if you’re lucky.’

‘So, it’s a cover story within a story,’ I said.

‘Yeah, you got that right. It’s like peeling an onion. Your outer layers can be kinda flaky, but once you let him under your skin, your story’s gonna have to be solid. So, you need to look deep inside yourself. Why are you doing this?’

I paused, idly swishing the silt around the bottom of my cup. What could I tell him? A cynical part of my mind recognised a certain amount of clutching at straws about the whole thing. I’d been through plenty of conventional therapy of sorts, and I knew how to do the self-analysis
thing. The problem was, my attitudes had been wholly shaped by experience.

If I hadn’t learnt to release my latent ability to kill, I’d be dead by now. I’d been through pain and utter humiliation, and come out stronger on the other side. And while there were those who’d tried to persuade me to let go of my anger, I knew I needed it, and had kept it close like a secret.

But discovering I was pregnant had changed everything, as it was supposed to. The desire for change on a fundamental level had overwhelmed me, along with a burst of hormones and the sudden urge for Marmite-and-banana sandwiches.

I put the empty cup down on the desktop, noted that my hands were as steady as they had been after I’d shot the three men in the van on the road out of the canyon, and couldn’t work out if I’d been more surprised then or now.

‘I don’t know,’ I said calmly, ‘but I’m sure, when the time comes, I’ll think of something.’

Now, I timed it so that I crossed the path of the guards about ten metres ahead of them. Unless they had their eyes shut, they couldn’t fail to notice me. They hadn’t, and they did.

I felt the vibrations through the ground as they began to run, saw one closing on my right, knew the other would be circling behind me. I let my gait falter.

‘So,’ Sagar had said, last night, just before we’d turned in, ‘bottom line, Charlie, give it to me straight. When Bane breaks through those outer layers, when he gets to the heart of you, and you’re all out of excuses and there’s no bullshit left, what is it you’re gonna tell him that you want from Fourth Day?’

I heard the guards shouting at me to stop, felt the
pounding of their feet grow heavier and stronger through the soft earth. As if at the end of my reserves of strength, I staggered and went down on my knees, hands half-raised out by my sides and my head bowed, like I’d made a last effort to get here and, now I had, I was spent.

‘
What is it you’re gonna tell him that you want from Fourth Day
?
’

‘Redemption.’

One of the guards stepped round in front of me, careful not to bisect his partner’s line of fire. It was the big black ex-Marine, Tyrone Yancy. One of the pair who’d gone after Maria, the day we’d seen Witney teaching his little class under the juniper tree.

The second man was a stranger. He stayed back just far enough to slot me if I looked like making trouble, keeping the M16 pulled up tight into his shoulder, eyes checking the vicinity. They were well trained. Question was, what for?

‘You’re on private property. Didn’t you see the signs?’ Yancy demanded. ‘You lost or crazy?’

Squinting into the sun, I looked up at him.

‘Both,’ I said.